Tag: Guy Kawasaki

40 years of getting’ high with John Denver

Click the image to get the Wikipedia article on the album…

Guy Kawasaki has this right:

There are a few folks out there who are about to feel really old. Forty years ago today, back in the groovy era that was the seventies, John Denver’s “Rocky Mountain High” album was released, which pushed the folk singer into the Top 10 for the first time in his career.

Though he lacks the edge of the artists who are usually celebrated from the time, hipsters should appreciate the flannel shirt and puffy vest and Muppet fans can’t help but hold a special place in their hearts for such a good friend of Kermit.” via 40 years of getting’ high with John Denver – Holy Kaw!.

That means I was 14 years old when this album came out and I played it constantly. I had to go to Spotify and take a trip down John Denver lane. OMG! I may even have to tune my guitar!

http://youtu.be/OwARpaKHx_w

Hmmm. Miss Piggy hasn’t changed a bit. I wonder what her secret is?

:-D

Here’s one of my favorite songs off that album; didn’t get a lot of airplay but…

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Guy Kawasaki, American venture capitalist and ...
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I’ve been following industry oracle Guy Kawasaki for over 25 years and I agree with him almost all of the time. He was right about the Mac, he’s right about Posterous and he’s right about Alltop. He’s right about so many things. When he speaks, I take notes. This time, however, I take issue…

He posted a recent article on the topic of Facebook pages recently and this is one of the rare times I need to take issue…

“Q: I’m a small business entrepreneur, and I’ll be introducing a consumer product soon. Should I create a website for my company or a Facebook fan page?

A: I faced a similar question a few weeks ago for my book, Enchantment: The Art of Changing Hearts, Minds, and Actions. I had three options: create a site for the book, add a section for the book to my existing website, or create a Facebook fan page.

After five minutes of thoughtful deliberation, I decided to add a bare-bones section to my website (which I haven’t gotten around to do yet—which should tell you something) and create a Facebook fan page but not to create a website for the book. Here’s why I did not choose a website:” Source: Ask the Wise Guy: Facebook Fan Page or Website? : The World :: American Express OPEN Forum

Guy goes on to elucidate 4 reasons why he did not choose a website and 8 reasons why he chose a Facebook page along with 3 potential ‘gotchas’ — go to the source and read the entire article if you’d like…

Here’s where Guy and I part thinking. In business, the answer is rarely either/or. Frequently it’s both/and. Guy’s advice is great for someone launching a product or a book, but it’s not really great long term advice for an entrepreneur launching a company. As a short term strategy I recommend that entrepreneurs buy a domain, set up Google Apps and create a Facebook page. Google Apps will give them the ability to send corporate email from their domain and their domain name can be temporarily directed toward their Facebook page until they build a blogsite. This will give them a total ‘appearance package’ that will allow them to look professional immediately while they contemplate their website and further social media strategy and tactics…

On this issue I side with author Lisa Barone who recently posted…

“Brace yourself: Facebook is trying to take over the world. Or, if not the world, at least the entire Internet. With Facebook partnering up with popular sites like Yelp, many SMB owners may feel as if their load got lighter. I mean, why waste time worrying about your building your blog or your own site when you can grow your Facebook presence instead? If Facebook’s opening up the doors so that people can take you with them, you don’t have to worry about anything else anymore, right?

Wrong!

It doesn’t matter how hot Facebook or any of the other social media sites are looking right now. You still need to be focused on using your blog to create your own authority and brand.” Source: 10 Reasons Not To Ignore Your Blog For Facebook

Reason #1 she cites? “You don’t own Facebook”…

The problem with Facebook from my perspective is that you’re not only a renter, you’re a free renter and you can expect all the rights and privileges thereof. In other words, you have no rights on Facebook — not even privacy. You use it at your own risk. Facebook can — and has — made major changes to their technology without notice or recourse. Using a Facebook page is a great place for an entrepreneur to start but not to stay. I agree with Chris Brogan, Darren Rowse and other internet visionaries who propose an internet ‘homebase and outpost‘ strategy that puts a blog at the center of your online presence. The key is that you have to own that presence and be ‘master of your domain’ name and internet brand…

In the future, these homebases may become less important as more people understand the wisdom of David Sauter and his team at Envano. Their ‘autobahn’ model describes a future where a website becomes less important as a company embraces appropriate social media tools to build their internet presence, but the lack of an ‘easy button’ or unified social media dashboard makes this more of a future vision than a present reality…

Guy, I love you, your thought leadership and your content, but just this once I think your Q&A might have done the reader a disservice. Readers? Questions? Feedback? Please comment, call or use the contact form to connect so we can talk about how this applies to your business…

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Image representing Google Reader as depicted i...
Image via CrunchBase

Are you still getting email newsletters? I’m doing everything I can to eliminate them and keep my inbox for ‘just in time’ information only. Wait! Where do I get the information which was contained in those newsletters? Through newsfeeds. Here’s a post that might help you get started…

“Do you have a huge number of blog and news feeds in your feedreader that you can’t possibly keep up with on a daily basis? Or, on the other end of the spectrum, have you resisted deciphering those three little letters, RSS, and continue to check your bookmarked links regularly to see if your favorite web pages have updated?

Now there is a new — and incredibly simple — solution. Guy Kawasaki, whom I used to read in Macworld Magazine when he was the original brand evangelist, recently started a new network of websites called Alltop.com. Based on the popurls model, the sites — each focusing on a specific topic — show the latest five posts from a wide range of news sources and blogs covering that topic, all on one page. Topics include celebrities, health, “green,” social media, small business and many others.

I suggested to Guy that he create a “nonprofit” topic and worked with him to identify news and blog feeds that should be included. And that’s how nonprofit.alltop.com was born.”

Whether you take the Alltop approach or use the free Google Reader to subscribe to feeds — just do it! Getting newsletters out of your inbox and into your browser is a great way to resist following the rabbit trail of an interesting newsletter in the middle of your work. Save your inbox for action and your newsreading for a newsreader! Contact me if you’re interested in learning how to make the switch…

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It’s always easier to just buy an ad.  There are people that will take your money and use it to produce a commercial, tv spot or print ad.  People will see your ad and a few of them may even come into your store if your ad has a good call to action or a coupon.  There is a problem with that strategy.  There’s an easier way that takes more work.  How can something be easier and take more work?

It’s more work to…

…gather contact information for all of your current clients or members.

…communicate with them about things other than your organization, store or “sale of the century”.

…talk to individuals instead of buying an ad for the masses.

But it’s easier to…

…get information of your current clients than to get information from strangers.

…talk about what’s important to their lives if you’re listening  on their terms (Facebook or Twitter come to mind).

…talk to individuals and get a response than to buy an ad and get the attention of the masses.

As with all things worth while it’s easier in the long run if you do more work in the beginning.

Stop throwing money at the masses and start talking to individuals.

via andytraub.com

Nice post by Andy Traub. For me, it’s like Guy Kawasaki says ““If you have more Money than brains, you should focus on Outbound Marketing. If you have more Brains than money, you should focus on Inbound Marketing.” [Just in case you’re not sure, ads are outbound, social media is inbound.] One of the things I love about social media marketing is that it takes more time than money! All of us are working hard in the current economy but imho, the smart ones are channeling that effort into inbound marketing in the form of social media. Questions? Feedback?

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Tumblr Leaves Posterous in the Dust [?!]

Image representing Posterous as depicted in Cr...
Image via CrunchBase

Rising social media rockstar Kelly Neuville of Envano sent me an article from ReadWriteWeb [you can follow the ‘via’ link below the graph to the source and read the rest of the article if you’re interested] that would seem to suggest at first glance that I should abandon my love of the Posterous platform in favor of my first interest in this space, Tumblr. If I apply logic like this at every level in my life, I would learn a lesson from the flies on my farm and favor a steady diet of cow manure — after all, the sheer volume of their vote would indicate that manure is clearly a better food product, right? :-D

Now I’m not saying that Kelly was wrong to send me the article or that Tumblr = cow manure, although it would appear my analogy is heading in that direction. What I am saying is that there will always be a reason why the masses favor one product over another and it may have nothing to do with elegance or technological superiority. I posted the same data from a different perspective yesterday here; the article postulates that ‘The growth in Tumblr’s visitors probably has something to do with its popularity among celebs.’ and says ‘Earlier this week John Mayer made waves this week by shutting down his Twitter account, where he had 3.7 million followers, and switching to Tumblr full time.’ If that’s the case, then Tumblr has an ‘unfair advantage’ — it’s becoming the destination of choice for the MySpace crowd. My response? Meh…

via readwriteweb.com

Laura Ingraham was right — entertainers should shut up and sing. What I want to know is what are the thought leaders using? I was really impressed with Tumblr until I saw that Guy Kawasaki picked Posterous for his Holy Kaw! blog and then I wondered “what did I miss”?! And what about social media rockstar Steve Rubel? And what about me? Seriously, Posterous rocks at the two most important things I could expect any blogging tool to do; ingest almost any content for creation and curation effortlessly and autopost as part of my homebase and outpost strategy. I use Posterous as the foundation of my ‘e1evation workflow‘ and it made me one of the top thought leaders in my industry on the internet rapidly elevating my site to within the top 40k of all websites in the US in 3 months. I will and I have put my humble Posterous blogs up against the best and they’ve held their ground — believe me when I say I have no fear of Katy Perry on Tumblr…

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Hmmm. I think I may need to rethink Posterous…

I’ve been a fan of tumblr for a long time, but the fact that Guy Kawasaki chose Posterous for his ‘Holy Kaw‘ blog got me thinking and testing this morning. My jury’s still out, but I’m curious. Here’s a video tour from the ‘digitalchiropractor’ on YouTube — forget the doctor content and follow along. I think you’ll see why I’m intrigued — Posterous may just be the perfect social media front-end…

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qxeFOD5lZ4k
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