The Web in Sixty Seconds

Lovin' Every Minute of It


A fun infographic that has been making the rounds is one that shows the multitude of things that happen online every minute. It was developed by the web design company Go-Globe and when I first saw it, like most, I was impressed. But then it reminded me how overwhelmed business owners and managers feel on a daily basis. How do you keep up? What channels do you choose? Where do you focus your efforts? How can you digest the never ending amount of content?

Some highlights of what happens on the Internet every minute along with some additional items you may experience today.

• There are almost 700,000 Google search inquiries
• Flickr receives more than 6,000 photo uploads
• You surfed that car site instead of making another sales call
• Over 70 new domains are registered
• Twitter gains 320 new members and almost a hundred thousand tweets are sent
• More than 22 million meetings ended with no definitive decisions
• In excess of 168 million emails are sent
• iPhone customers download 13,000 applications
• You read this post
• Over 350,000 minutes of voice calls are done by Skype users
• LinkedIn gains another 100 members
• You started another game of Angry Birds at your desk
• Over 25 hours of videos are uploaded onto YouTube
• 700,000 status updates, 80,000 wall posts and 500,000 comments on Facebook
• More than a hundred questions are asked on answers.com
• Scribd receives another 1,600 reads
• You checked your Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter profiles
• Over 1,200 new ads are created on Craigslist
• Pandora streams more than 13,000 hours of music to users

How will you spend the next sixty seconds?

Kneale Mann

image credit: goglobe

Awareness Is Not Enough

The noise is deafening.

Content is produced every minute of every day. The pile grows; there is no end in sight and we all try to find customers and make a living.

What do you offer?

Where can you compete?

How will you tell your story?

Assuming your offer has value – to them, not you – it is time to ensure more people hear about it and in turn buy some of it. This is the toughest part of the gig. You could spend millions to get as many eyes and ears and minds to discover your awesome product as possible.

You can buy email lists and cram complete strangers with messages they didn’t ask for and even get a bunch of people in a cube farm to randomly call people and ask for their money. You could produce a bright shiny pamphlet to put in everyone’s mail box.

Wait! There's More!

Then you can start a Twitter page where you bark out your daily specials while disregarding what others may have to offer. Thousands will follow you and there will be no need for you to follow them back. The same is true with your Facebook and LinkedIn groups. Thousands will love the Flickr pics of all your fabulous products while you will become the biggest viral video in the history of YouTube.

Once in a while, a wave can hit or go viral but that’s not our call, it’s theirs and they will leave us as fast and love us. Possessing awareness means nothing on its own.

Before you want others to be aware of you, make sure you know what you want them to do. What's in it for them?

I am aware of you. Now what?

@knealemann
Helping you integrate all you do with all you do.

photo credit: rlv.zcache

We Can't Convince You

Protocol and guidelines, policies and business strategy, tweet this and blog etiquette that can be exhausting. And like this space, it's all just opinion.

If you don’t know why you should have a LinkedIn group or how the content delivered to cell phones is going to help you, don't do it.

If you think Flickr is spelled wrong and Blip just sounds silly, no worries. Or if you don't understand why people are talking about four square when you know you will never lose weight if you eat that much, that's okay.



What Do You Have To Lose?

If you don't understand it, others can't convince you. What we can do is show you options and you can pick the ones that make the most sense to you and your situation.

As part of my job as a strategist, I help clients with business, marketing and social media plans. There are two questions you need to ask through the process - how and why.

Pick A Card. Any Card.

But with digital channels there is no one answer, site, background theme, writing style, logo color or font choice. Pick one, experiment, pick another one, experiment, throw stuff against the wall, collaborate your brains out and have some fun.

The best social media policy I've heard of yet: Don't be stupid. Keep your company or personal brand's best interest in mind, then experiment.

Remembering

One of the most gifted music minds in history was killed twenty-nine years ago today and his music still lives on. He didn't follow the rules, he didn't ask for permission. John Lennon | Oct 9, 1940 - Dec 8, 1980

And it is with that in mind...

Just ask yourself two simple questions: How? Why?

Then one more: Why Not?

@knealemann
marketing and social media strategy

Social Media | Beyond Pictures and Profiles

Mediums Socialized.

Three quarters of North Americans have Internet access. Six hundred million are online in Asia. The Internet is growing 18% annually.

Social Media has become a viable opportunity in which to weave business and careers.


Big stinkin' deal. What does that mean to you?

If you're a business owner, there are measurable statistics about your industry, offering, products, company and the conversations people are having right now that are worthy of paying attention to or you could be leaving opportunities on the keyboard.

Payoff NOW!

The concern that social media may be a waste of your time, energy, resources and sweat equity seems to be a common one. However, if you could have a better sense of the landscape, wouldn't you want to know about it?

As return on investment and metrics are tossed around like chips at the blackjack table, the finesse and care needed to understand behavior is even more important.

It's a buyer's market.

You are a customer and a facilitator. You are in charge of your own online environment. You are not in charge of mine or your customers' experience.

This is not a niche or a boutique.

Social Media has been around since we began carving images on cave walls.


With our technological advancements, these actions have given us the ability to share instantaneously with any one of the 1.6 billion other humans online.


User experience is not just a slick phrase developed by the ICT community. These are the creature comforts we want in order to create the atmosphere best suited for our personal or business needs. We want to be able to create our own surroundings. We can and we do.

Social media is not a campaign or an add-on to your existing business plan, it must be part of it. It is also not simply a collection of websites.

Patience and commitment are required or there is no need to bother. If you are in search of an absolute sure thing that will raise your bottom line with minimal effort, buy a lottery ticket and cross your fingers.

How you can better connect with your customers on their terms on a human level? How have your competitors already done so?

@knealemann
marketing and social media strategy

image credits: cjonline | wikipedia

The Social Economy

Imagine the Internet is your investment portfolio.

There are an estimated 1.7 billion people online. That’s one quarter of the world’s population.

There are over 400 million in Asia with Internet access and three quarters of North Americans are online.

We're Rich! We're Rich!


The number of people on the Internet is increasing at just shy of 20% annually. Venture capitalists are frothing over these numbers and it is the reason why some of our favorite social channels receive more funding.

Media are/is Mediums.

We can officially stop making the distinction between "traditional" media (print, radio, television, outdoor/transit) and digital media. What is paramount is our ability to navigate all of the available mediums as well as the communication between companies and customers.

A flag and an anthem.

With a population of over 300 million, Facebook would be the fourth largest country on the planet where 1.6 billion pieces of content is exchanged every day.

Blogger, Digg, Flickr, YouTube, LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter get over 900 million daily visitors. We can safely put the apples and oranges away and call it all media and mainstream.

Social Media are the mediums in which we socialize.

We all too often forget what it’s like on the other side of the counter. We are all customers and we are all service providers. But the connection often breaks down when discussions surround building online communities with a business application.

If you could see a 20 point increase each year, would you be interested?

If giving up control to your customers would increase their spend, are you still reading?

Are you willing to let your customers have the ability to have actual direct contact with you?

Are you ready to put some time and resources and sweat equity into your Internet portfolio?

@knealemann
marketing and social media strategy

image credit: doorsofperception.com

Alternative and Mainstream Converge

I spent many happy years working with musicians and their music. I loved it. Some still know me as a former radio guy but there is a much deeper story.

Below The Surface

Radio – like every industry – has much more under the surface than those outside comprehend.

Overseeing a radio station requires regular business stuff like budgets and talent development; promotional duties such as website management and database marketing; and external oversight on such items as advertising and event management.


Turn It Up

As part of my radio career, I worked in what is called the alternative rock format at two stations. Alternative is a distinction that carries as much negative connotation as positive reinforcement.

The core of alternative music fans are rarely happy once a band gains even a modicum of success while those unfamiliar with the genre think it’s full of strange people with purple hair.

It's important to note that both alternative radio stations continue to be successful measured against mainstream metrics. And perhaps with the exception of one year at Hallowe'en, I've never found the need to dye my hair purple. Not that there's anything wrong with that.

I like purple and I digress.

Can you be cutting edge and mainstream at the same time?

In 1988, Michael Trent Reznor formed an industrial rock band called Nine Inch Nails - no doubt you’ve heard of them. Twenty-one years later they have sold millions of albums, CDs and downloads, played in front of massive festival and stadium crowds and won Grammy Awards.

Despite this worldwide success, Nine Inch Nails and Trent Reznor remain categorized as alternative not mainstream.

When NiN formed, there wasn’t the long list of social networking channels we have now. Today, Reznor has over 600,000 followers to his personal Twitter account and his band is well represented through their YouTube and Flickr spaces.

Imagine. Create. Share.

In 2006, Jack Dorsey was looking for something that would kick start a creative slump for his company Odeo. His original idea was to create a conversation space through sms called my.stat.us.

Today, Jack and his partners Biz Stone and Evan Williams, seventy-five employees in a modest San Francisco building and millions in venture capital have grown Twitter to one of the fastest growing web portals in the world with millions of regular users.

From 1975 to 2009, Microsoft has grown from an idea Paul Allen and William Gates had to develop software for the microcomputer to over 90,000 employees in 100 countries and over $58 Billion in annual revenue.

So is Twitter the alternative and Microsoft the mainstream?

Whether you a musician and producer of industrial music, three geeks from Silicon Valley or the world’s largest software manufacturer, you have to start with an idea.

It may be a concept yet to be adopted by anyone else, it could be quite different than the current mainstream thought, but if it’s a good one the audience will discover it.

At that point, will it really matter what label we put on it?

@knealemann
Helping you create your best business,
marketing and social media strategy.

image credit: colourlovers.com

Social Media: What Are Ya?

What does Twitter do?
nothing, it's a website.

Social Media may only be about 15 years old but social networking or human networking is as old as creatures have lived on earth.

Tweet Bark Meow Tweet

This is not just a human thing, the animal kingdom is socially networked too. And with the advent of places like Barn Mice and ASN, animal lovers have their own dedicated social media sites as well.

More Friends = More Money?
there's no correlation.

Twitter has grown 1400% in the last 18 months, LinkedIn is exploding and there seems no end in sight, MySpace has over 250 million user pages, Facebook gets over 800,000 picture uploads a month and the list of other places people congregate online is virtually endless.

Technorati measures the performance of over 180 million blogs and monitoring companies offer you a chance to harness the conversation around your brand on the web. And to a growing number of people, online social networking is quickly becoming a preferred form of communication over even traditional email.

Who Has All The Answers?
no one, not even self-proclaimed "experts".

There are readers and feeds and analytics and optimization - all bells and whistles that can confuse you if you are still wondering "what is social media".

Companies that not only embrace but commit to the Internet are seeing its power first-hand. The key component is commitment. You can’t tweet once a week or read a couple of blogs and grasp the vast potential social media can bring to your life and career.

Social media = Online billboard?
absolutely not.

One thing is for sure, there is not one correct way to navigate all this stuff. You just have to find your own, whatever way works for you.

If you think you may be out of uniform or not connected as well as you should be, just pick one, any one and connect to that.

Grab your miner’s helmet, some patience, an open mind and start diggin'. You'll find your voice.

What says you?

@knealemann

image credit: ceoworld.biz | imdb.com

Earth Hour: Real Social Media

It was born in Sydney, Australia two years ago. Just over two million businesses and homes shut off the lights for an hour. Last year: the worldwide initiative reached over fifty million.


Today over a billion people will turn off their lights for an hour as part of a global vote to save our home – Earth.

Whenever we hear naysayers quip we can’t do it, think of today. Whenever we have to endure negative comments that cite the lack of the human collective to join hands and accomplish the impossible, think of today.

Earth Hour is social media and the medium is Earth.

From two million to over a billion in just two years. That is the power of the human spirit. That is you and that is me.

At the core of social media is our hierarchy of needs. It has absolutely nothing to do with a particular website or profile design. It has everything to do with the connection of human beings and our need to belong.

What are you doing for Earth Hour?


Website

Twitter

Flickr

MySpace

Bebo

Facebook

StumbleUpon

Connecting the Connections

Keith Burtis gave a great presentation at PodCamp Toronto last weekend. It’s especially engaging when the entire room gets involved and Keith let the discussion run wild. It was fantastic! I love Keith’s story too. Eighteen months ago he was working in a warehouse and now he is helping others around the world embrace social media.

These Are The Days Of Our Lives...

Keith compared traditional business models (the funnel) to social media models (the hour glass).

Traditional business shoves as many through the pipe on the hopes to be left with a handful of paying customers. While in social media, you may start with a larger group of people but each one represents the chance to develop a deeper personal relationship.

The funnel starts with a large group and ends with a small group. But the hourglass starts with a large group, develops into small one-on-one connections with people who have their own network, and can result in a larger group.

Traditional model is transactional
Social media model is relational

It was amazing how much chatter ensued after getting back to the office. There were people who reached out to say they wish we had had a conversation at PodCamp and I did the same. Perhaps you experienced this as well.

I have started applying Keith’s suggestion even more to develop stronger one-on-one connections past the follower/friend relationship. After all, we are all just people. Extend a hand or an email, perhaps a call or even a meeting and break through traditional circles.

One-To-One Across The World

Proximity is the single biggest way to meet people: you work together, you’re in the same industry, you are blood related, or you know someone who knows someone. But with social media you can meet people from all walks of life, all over the world, and expand not only your scope of relationships but your knowledge base.

Hop into the conversation. Dig a little deeper. See if you can learn more about someone.

What do you have to lose except the chance to meet someone you otherwise would never would have met?

@knealemann

ustandout.com

Twitter Doesn’t Make You Hemingway

A couple of years after the invention of what is now known as the Internet, Ernest Miller Hemingway died of a self inflicted gun shot wound on July 2, 1961.

Today you can have the choice of creating a multitude of social media profiles, picture sites, and blogs with gadget add-on doohickeys and thingamajigs. Most offer the choice of colors and backgrounds, font choices and design options.

But none will make you a better writer or contributor.

There seems to be quite a bit of chatter in the blogosphere lately about the responsibility we all share as our own personal broadcasters, content providers, writers, editors and information givers and takers.

Start a blog. Get in the game. Have your say. Add your thoughts. But don’t expect any of the trappings to make you interesting or entertaining. Hemingway used paper and a pen, a typewriter and a bottle, to create timeless literature. Today, with a cup of coffee and blog software you can start.

Writing and being a writer are vastly different things.

I have worked in radio, television, and online for quite a while and there are two camps in this world. The scared old-school bunch that is afraid of an open source user-created entertainment model. And the ever-growing group that understands we have the power to; create, contribute and share.

That still doesn’t guarantee any of us are any good.

Some say Ernest Hemingway was the greatest short story writer in history. That’s a personal decision. But forty years after his passing, his books are still sold and his work is still studied in the most respected schools on earth. And he did it without templates and software.

If you have a passion, follow it with fervor. If anyone follows you, bonus.

km

WE Are The Network

I woke up this morning, had some coffee, and listened to some tunes. And while The Thievery Corporation filled my office, I caught up on the news and sifted through emails, various blogs and social networking sites. Then it hit me. The comments and updates that were most prevalent were about family and weekends and great weather and sharing pictures of experiences.

After a few tough weeks for all of us, I was looking at pictures shared and comparing music tastes again. Oh yeah, that’s what we’re supposed to be doing. It isn’t all about work and having the most friends on Facebook!

We get caught up on work and issues and problems and technology and what’s next and how each of us contributes. But through honest open moments, people were sharing simple human pleasures. It made me appreciate that stuff too. The coffee was delicious too.

It may sound trite but we tend to forget that the endgame is to be able to enjoy ourselves for the instant we’re here.

We are not on this sphere sharing and comparing and building to keep doing the same without breaking the cycle to breathe. We are here to stop once in a while and enjoy the important element we tend to forget – us.

We are the network. And once in a while, it's okay to share on a much more human level.

As I sat in my backyard with the laptop off and a book in my hand, I let the unusually warm October sun wash over me while I laughed at a wonderfully written and hilarious book a friend gave me three months ago. I had been too busy to give myself the break to enjoy it. By the way, if you want a great belly laugh, check out Bill Bryson’s “In A Sunburned Country”.

Happy Weekend.

km