Out of Chaos Comes Order - The Internet's Future

It is said that great things are born out of chaos. Some say the start of the Universe was the result of a 'Big Bang' wherein an event triggered the explosion of a dense and hot mass and that explosion continues to this day 13.7 billion years later where planets exist in an orderly manner, relying on each others gravitational pull and characteristic relationships.

Another example of great things being born out of chaos can be seen in you and I. From a singular event where we 'exploded' into this world, screaming and terrified, we ultimately became cooperative, caring and collaborative human beings (for the most part;-)).

So it's no great surprise that the Internet itself was born out of chaos and destruction. In 1962, the Internet seeds were planted as a means of remotely controlling nuclear weapons. It was a network of computers that were strategically placed throughout the country for the sole purpose of destruction and control.

Over the years, researchers recognized it's potential value and through the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) ARPANET was created , enabling the communication and collaboration of researchers nationwide. Replaced in 1992 with the help of Tim Berners-Lee and the adoption of his HTTP and HTML, the Internet as we now know it was able to evolve.

As more and more users found reason to engage in the use of the Internet, the transition from research and technical boasting has moved to more mainstream interactions. We are all finding relevancy in the Internet now. Whether it's looking for directions, seeking out referrals, checking bank balances, purchasing items, you name it, the universe has expanded.

Where we go from here is a continual evolution towards a sense of order and relevance. The techies and researchers were vital to the foundation of this great Internet universe. The graphic designers and the game makers were key to engaging more users. But it is the communicators and more specifically, as Malcolm Gladwell so famously illustrates, the Connectors, the Maven's and the Salesmen that will be the true builders and the future of the Internet.

Just look at Social Media today. We see Connectors whenever we see a referral or a link. We see Mavens in various blogs, research postings and articles. And we see Salesmen in the various websites and portals that we find when ever we search for a product or service.

It is early still, but as more and more people come to recognize the true essence of the Internet, it will continue to grow more orderly and relevant and quite frankly become the universe that everyone will come to rely on.

Cold Calling Is Dead....

It's funny how a little recession is all that is needed to get companies to recognize the inherent problems and wastes that have permeated their existance for years. When revenues plummet, sharper pencils come out to see what is working and what is not, and what has become explicitely clear is that marketing has changed, and activities like cold calling are a waste.

We have a great client who half jokingly told us that he still does cold calling. It's a practice that he's done for years. He has diligently made 15 cold calls a day and has not made a sale from a cold call in over five years. It was the practice of doing something active that made him feel like he was being productive, but the fact remained that it wasn't doing anything. Guess what he's stopping?

We're in an environment where people now realize that they are the masters of their own universe. We all know the goals and objectives of a cold caller. Make the sale, and use whatever manipulative tools you can use to do so. Add in the incentive of commission as an influencer in the process, and it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that the activity of cold calling is flawed and has forced it's own demise.

There is a greater chance of succeeding at solving a problem by simply asking trusted friends and associates than there is in waiting for a stranger to call. The reality is, we are tired of the old 'in your face' advertising and marketing games...and we don't trust them.

The bottom line is that we will have a much greater chance of succeeding by building on earned and trusted relationships. Honest networking, demonstrated expertise, successful execution of promises beyond expectations and being available will go a lot further than cold calling ever will.

Rest in Peace, Cold Calling!

Think Links! But Not Just Any Links

It wasn't that long ago that marketers were habitually manipulating sites and submissions to gain greater rankings in prominent search engines. Originally, in the 1990's search engines had minimal staffing and very little power and at that time the concept of search could barely keep up to the fast growing number of new sites. That of course, left it wide open for abuse and manipulation. Today, however, the scene has become considerably more evolved and civilized. Search engines have gotten smarter, especially around evaluating the connections that are their bread and butter: the links.

Web crawlers, or the small little programs that search engines use to index any and all sites they come across, utilize links to not only get to other sites, but to evaluate their worth. It didn't take search engines long to realize that the value of their engines was determined by the value of the results. So it was imperative that they would change the way they indexed sites.


What search engines can't live without though are the hyperlinks that help them travel from one site to another, and it is in these hyperlinks that search engines have put greater prominence and stricter rules on when evaluating a site for ranking.

Here are five very important considerations for using links to get better rankings:

1. Links from related sites hold more value then links from unrelated sites. Don't link to sites about training dogs when your core business is selling electronics. Instead, try to link to sites that use electronics and have related keywords in their sites.

2. Backlinks (links from other sites to yours) are extremely important in helping engines determine your value. But again, not just any site. Sites that are 'influencers' such as related association sites, news sites, international customers are more valuable than sites that appeal to a limited audience.

3. The number of inbound links is important. Search engines are looking for popularity with quality references. The more popular you are with outside interests, the more valuable your site.

4. 'Anchor Text' of inbound links is another means of identifying the keyword relationship and value of the search. 'Anchor Text' is the word content which is visible on the browser. The link may in fact be http://www.watersdenison.com but the 'anchor text' could appear like this: Internet Marketing Experts

5. You could become an authority site. In other words search engines will define a site that has numerous relevant outbound links as being a 'hub' or an 'expert', thus giving you greater prominence in the searches.

Mastering your link strategy is only one of many ways to maximize your site's potential on search engines. Stay tuned for more insights on Internet Marketing and the World Wide Web in upcoming articles, and please feel free to follow us on Twitter at @billwaters

Analyze This! On Twitter

Twitter has become one of my favourite tools for keeping in touch with the people, subjects and events that I care about. As is typical with anything that becomes phenomenally successful, there are those that will blast it and denounce it as wasteful time mongers and vanity tools, but to those that have given it the time and effort, it has become invaluable. And to truly appreciate how well you are using this powerful tool, there are some equally impressive analytical tools to make it easier.

The first application can be found at twitter.grader.com, a product from Hubspot.com. This easy to use twitter analytics tool simply asks for the user name and you hit 'enter'. What you get is a report on your rank (I was 477,851 out of 2,853,905) and your grade out of 100 (I'm at 83....my buddy @seedgirl is at 97.3). Following things like number of follows, power of followers, updates, recency and a number of other factors, Twitter Grader has created an algorithm to help you easily determine your effectiveness on Twitter.

Twitter Analyzer is another tool that I stumbled upon. It has cool dashboard like features that help you track how you are using Twitter. I consider this tool to be a surface level analysis in that it tells you things that you could probably gather on your own, but it's impressive to see in graphs.

Now for influence, an application called TwInfluence was created to measure the combined influence of twitterers and their followers. When you enter your address, it gives you your ranking based all others that have submitted their names. At 145,296, it's a small sampling so far. It's primary measurement of success is based on the number of followers your own followers have. If I have 10 followers each with 5000 followers, I'm deemed to be more influential than if I had 5000 followers with only 10 each.

Twitter Score uses a different algorithm to assess popularity and influence, but comes up with similar metrics as TwInfluence. It too looks at who follows you and who their followers are. They also analyze a few other things like updates and retweets and in the end assign a single score out of 10. I guess I have some work to do because I'm sitting at 3.9:-(

Now for me, I think the power of social networks is how remarkable you are. In other words, how do your followers take what you offer. Do they retweet, do they click on the URL, do they respond? So a good measurement for me is delivered by Twitterank. Right from their page, 'Twitterank calculates a score for each Twitter user indicating how engaged, interesting and/or prominent they are. As the name implies, Twitterank is sort of like Page Rank for twitter users, and uses "back references" of sorts to calculate a user's score'.

There are a few other analytic tools including Twitalyzer, Tweeple Rank, Klout, and TwitRank. Each one has their own merits and each one gives you a benchmark and a means to helping you measure your performance on Twitter.

Talk With Me, Not At Me

The social media audience in the US, according to comScore Inc., now exceeds 122 million or 64% of the entire Internet audience. Some would say that the meteoric success of social media is but a flash and people will grow tired of it. Of course, those who are saying it are the traditional marketers and media people who really don't understand it. We have a huge hill to climb to get traditional marketers to accept that we don't like being talked at, presumed or interrupted.

My company joined forces with a highly respectable and very popular printing company, Denison Print. For a couple of years we had talked about being the backend supplier of websites for their large customer base. During those years the owner of this printing company really tried to understand the value of websites beyond being a destination place. It wasn't until I accompanied him on two separate client visits that the light went on. He gets it now.

Topics like engaging in customer conversation, adding value, observing behaviors and adjusting to fill needs lead everyone to understand that social media for business is about authentic respect and true customer service. Marketing 101. Now we have tools that make the process so much easier and effective.

We have gone from a one way information flow where marketers made assumptions of what consumers wanted, to conversations where consumers participate in the evolution of the business....and this scares the traditional business person to no end. Of course change is always scary. The worst thing you can do is try to avoid it.

Best Way to Sell...is not to Sell

There is nothing worse than having to sit through a time share presentation. You're fished in because of a fantastic offer (free weekend, tickets to Disneyland, free golf etc) and you know that the only objective of the 'representative' is to find out ways to take your money and put it in their pockets. In this day and digital age, if you are not authentic and sincere, you stand out like a dandelion in a manicured lawn.

We happen to own a time share at a resort about two hours away, and have owned it for over ten years now. Very rarely have we ever spent time there, usually opting to trade our week for destinations elsewhere. So periodically we get invites from the resort to come up and visit for a few days and see they 'improvements'. The only condition, of course, is that you spend 'only one hour' in their presentation.

I know many of you have been through this experience. It becomes a game...and the true success is when you can finally escape with your wallet in tact and your dignity secure. What kind of relationship is that?

Over the years, our travelling experiences have allowed us to explore many different alternatives to the time shares. They have left us wanting to return, making the time share experience a thing of the past.

Then there's the phone company....you know the one I'm talking about. Over the years, not only did we get their phone service, we got their satellite, their wireless and their internet. It was all smiles and giggles when we first started our 'relationship', spending thousands and thousands of dollars a year and all was well...until we had problems, which didn't take long.

Every call to our 'friends' at the phone company was directed to someone with little experience with the 'mother tongue'. Every concern turned into a battle of frustration with no record of previous calls or their misguided solutions. Every attempt to communicate turned into an attempt to upsell. What kind of relationship was that?

In fact, once we got rid of them, we ended up getting cards saying 'we miss you', or 'has anyone seen Bill'? We actually received multiple cards of the same issue from their different departments. We received calls from many people in many different departments asking the exact same questions and not having any record of the other calls. How sincere is that?

We still have our timeshare, but for how long is questionable. It served it's purpose, but I am finding many alternatives that we use far more often.....and I feel clean and happy when I use these alternatives. We moved to the 'other' phone company....and so far they are treating us with respect and genuine concern. It appears that they have a centralized customer relationship system where all their reps can see the history of all the previous dialogue. How refreshing is that.

When the focus of the company shifts to true customer satisfaction and clearly demonstrates authentic concern then sales and loyalty are a given. The best way to sell....is not to sell, but to be true, sincere and authentic in every aspect of your organization.

Consume or Contribute - What's Your Value?

It takes at least two to get a conversation going. Well, for most people anyways. And as I go through my various social networking groups I'm amazed to see how many blog posts are created (oh ya, just like this one), how many discussions are started, how many tweets (Twitter posts) are initiated and how many community mass mailings are created only to end up like Gilbert O'Sullivan's song....alone again, naturally!

The communication culture of an organization is really a statement about the community. If a culture of committed communication does not exist, then you really cannot expect the community to exist, let alone grow. So, the question is, who is responsible for maintaining a culture of committed communication? I would argue that absolutely everyone in the organization is.

Linkedin.com provides great demonstrations on the value of committed communication. I've joined a number of discussion groups on this particular social network. In some groups there are over 30,000 members. In others there may be under 30. In the smaller groups, no discussions are ever initiated, and in others there are 10 to 20 discussions posted each day. In any case though, it's a rare occurrence to to see any responses, but when you do, it gets interesting.

Grant it, there are tons of lame discussions initiated, so seeing no responses to those are not surprising. However, there are great topics started and when you have 30,000 members you would think some activity should happen, but it doesn't. When that happens continually, the group ultimately fades away. Members join other groups hoping to find a sense of common unity there. What they fail to recognize though is that the problem typically isn't the group.... it's the members, and at the core of this problem is consumption verses contribution.

For a community to truly succeed, we need to collaborate, share ideas, share values, define missions and reinforce purpose. Members need to continually and positively interact, engage and support the very community that they have chosen to be a part of. If no one is responding then the outcome is predictable.

It takes good leadership to encourage and facilitate a commitment to communication, but it's the membership that needs to contribute to make it work. For me, I'd much rather be part of a community that prides itself on a good balance of consumption and contribution. If it were up to me on Linkedin, I'd 'cull the herd' regularly. Kick out those who are there to simply consume and reward the those who regularly contribute. Actually, we should be doing that in all our groups.

I admit that I am involved in more groups than I can count, and rightfully I should not be in some of the groups because of my inactivity. I have taken myself out of groups for this reason, and if you are not adding any value whatsoever to a community that you have joined....then make an effort and start...or get out.

In an adapted version of the great John F. Kennedy famous statement, ask not what your community can do for you, but what you can do for your community! Contribute, get your fellow members to contribute, and see what happens. There's beauty in collaboration.

Social Culture- Change or Get Eaten

It's hard to focus on the shore when the sharks are biting at your ass. In this recession, where most corporations are fighting for their economic life, trying to focus on changing corporate culture and social engagement is the last thing on anyone's mind, but it's probably the only thing that can save these corporations.

One of the bloggers I enjoy following is David Armano, VP of Experience Design at a company called Critical Mass. He just recently attended the Marketing 2.0 conference in Paris and wrote about the highlights in his latest blog post. In it he describes the experiences that companies such as Lego, Ford and SouthWest Airlines have had by getting involved with social media and social networks. The culture shift that this engagement required was tremendous, but if you ask anyone of them, they would tell you how valuable it has been for their company.

Interestingly enough, SouthWest Airlines has one person dedicated to responding to their customers via Twitter. Now there's commitment, and admittedly they weren't sure how they were going to leverage the service, but they jumped in and eventually figured it out. It's not surprising though. SouthWest Airlines has been recognized as one of the leaders in effective management with their core values focusing on people inside and out of the organization.

In fact, most leadership management consultants have used a video describing the cultural transformation of Southwest Airlines to kick off initial discussions with their clients in an effort to guide cultural change. For years Southwest trumpeted the value of transparency, leading by example, open door policies and authenticity. Employees genuinely love to work at Southwest, and when times got tough, employees remained committed and loyal, as did their customers.

I won't name any organizations, but the same loyalty or commitment to helping the company survive is totally nonexistant at some of the big auto companies, banks or grocery companies that I see. Quite the opposite is happening. Corporations that received big bailouts have to pay their critical staff huge bonuses just to stay.....what does that tell you.

It's never to late to start making cultural changes, but ignore it and look out.

It's not what business you do....it's how you do business that will save you from the sharks, especially in today's social environment.

It's time to get social!

Bottom's Up! The Art of Building Social Networks

A colleague of mine asked me this morning what social networking systems I could sell right off the shelf. He was preparing to meet with an organization that is keen on finding ways to connect with their membership, and they think that building a social network will do the trick. It's a very good idea, but one that hundreds of thousands of organizations around the world are doing....and failing at, largely because they simply buy 'off the shelf'.

Social networking is not a simple collection of interconnected applications, or even something you can buy off the shelf (don't tell NING that;-)). Social networking is a way of life. It truly is a paradigm shift that has seen the balance of power and control move from the top of the establishment to be dispersed and shared amongst all the individuals. Progress and success are shared by all, and ideas and solutions come from the 'bottom up'.

The goal now is 'how do I harness this power'. The fact is....you cannot! You have to attract it, and in order to engage with individuals it takes a true understanding of their needs, offering something others are not, building trust and being authentic. Taking 'Off the Shelf' social networking tools and throwing them at the membership does little more than reinforce the 'old ways', or in other words pounding down solutions from the top down.

There is no doubt that social networking and social media are the keys to success for any organization. Just look at what Cisco has done. They have converted themselves into a ‘socialist enterprise’.... with $26 billion in reserves! Check out Ellin McGill’s article in Fast Company’s e-magazine. This transformation took incredible cultural changes that were strategically and methodically implemented and supported fully by the leadership.

In an excerpt from the article, 'John Chambers, CEO of Cisco puts it this way, ‘"We want a culture where it is unacceptable not to share what you know," he says. So he promotes all kinds of social networking at Cisco: You can write a blog, upload a video, and tag your myriad strengths in the Facebook-style internal directory. "Everybody is an author now," he laughs. Blog posts are voted up based on their helpfulness. There are blogs about blogging and classes about holding classes -- all gauged to make it easy for less-engaged employees to get with the program.'

I’m not saying you have to go to the same extent as Cisco to transform your organization, however, recognizing the value of freedom of contribution and identifying ways that make it easier to collaborate and engage can have powerful outcomes....and it all starts from the Bottom Up.

Traditional Media Just Can't Keep Up

It has been a fascinating journey over the last fifteen years to see not only the evolution of the Internet, but also the dramatic shift in traditional media and those that live in that world. We now live in a society where we get news within seconds of it happening....well before television, radio or newspapers can get it to us. We now get our news in a format we choose, at a time that we want and in a manner that we can control. In the wake of the demise of one of North America's larger newspapers, what was being predicted as the death of traditional media is now painfully evident...digital has taken over and traditional media cannot keep up.

A point that hit home for me came in an article regarding the closing of the Seattle Post-Intellegencer, David Lonay, 80, a subscriber since 1950, said he'll miss a morning ritual that can't be replaced by a Web-only version. "The first thing I do every day is get the P-I and read it," Lonay said. "I really feel like an old friend is dying." And I don't blame him. I feel the same way about our local paper, but sadly though, I'm finding that the content of our paper has already hit me well before the paper is delivered.

Coincidentally, the initial report on the newspaper's possible demise came out through the social networks. One such post was made on January 30th by Sarah Gilbert. Sarah refers to getting the 'rumor' through her 'twitter'. The eventual news came out on March 16th.

In another example, my 18 year old son started recieving posts in a number of social networks he belongs to regarding a moronic display on Fox News regarding our Canadian Forces. It spread like wildfire! And it wasn't until the following day that the traditional media players caught up.

In another case, a local friend had accumulated enough votes in the International promotional search for an Island Caretaker to place second among 34,000 entries, strictly through social media and well before the traditional media jumped on it.

Unfortunately, traditional media are stuck in a paradigm of top-down pushing and processes that restrict the speed of delivery. Simply moving content online is not working either. The demands of social media including open dialogue, free speech and unrestricted interchange are contrary to the mindset of traditional and over regulated media players. Frankly, it's almost an unfair advantage that Social Media players have.

Don't get me wrong, I love the traditional media. The integrity, the people and the commitment to our community are amazing. What is evident though is that the world of information is changing and the old ways are fading....like an old friend.