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To be honest, I haven’t got a clue of what will happen. I just know that if I keep doing what I am doing, something is going to happen. I have no way of knowing whether it’s something better or worse — probably just different. Whatever, it still beats nothing. That thought alone is enough to keep me going. August 8th, 2009 |
“Trust”, “earning trust”, “building trust” are some overused phrases these days. Businesses are making it way too complicated than it needs to be. Maybe it’s even by design, so that some professionals could make a living by teaching others how to trick people into trusting them. Funny. Uncomplicated: to earn and build trust, your business simply needs to be 100% honest, all the time. August 7th, 2009 |
My good friend and mentor Michele is a remarkable person. You see, it’s almost unthinkable for everybody else I know to even consider attempting to run a marathon, but she has finished the 26.2 mile race on many occasions. I am not suggesting that you must finish a marathon to be called remarkable. There are plenty of other goals you can reach in life that will make you remarkable, this is just one of many. Building a successful business is very much like running a marathon. 1. Everyone knows how to run, and with very little exceptions, everybody can run. 2. But most people don’t do it — most people are out of shape and usually are incapable of finishing a 2 mile jog. 3. Out of those who run regularly, most won’t even think about attempting a marathon. 4. A small portion of those runners finally decide to give it a try, and they start to learn about the race. 5. All the information of running a successful marathon is available to you online, free of charge. You just have to look for it. 6. You then join training programs (strategies) and buy equipments (tactics) to help you. 7. Some may even hire a coach. 8. Most people who start a training program won’t stick to it, or go on to sign up for a race. 9. Out of those who sign up, some fail to finish the race due to lack of preparation or readiness. Some may not even show up. 10. Two things will happen after that: you either quit for good, or learn from your failure and keep trying. ————————— Here is the “cutoff line”. Most people who have ever finished a marathon race will tell you that it’s a life changing experience. ————————— 11. In the end, you are left with a tiny tiny fraction of “everyone” who have accomplished their goals. They are the ones who had the passion, determination, and work ethic to finish the entire 26.2 mile race. 12. All of the sudden, your goals change. Some aim to run more races, others, longer (ultra) or faster (Boston). 13. Out of those, an even smaller fraction will end up finishing the amazing 100 mile ultra run and/or qualifying for the prestigious Boston Marathon. Like I said before, I don’t believe Twitter will save your brand. I can explain better now. There is a reason why I put so much emphasis on passion and purpose. When you are running with fancy equipments (tactics), it makes life easier. When you stick with a good training program (strategy), you are much more likely to succeed. As you can see, strategy outweighs tactics by a wide margin: a well-trained person with a pair of average running shoes beats a person wearing $500 worth of running equipment with no training anytime. But theoretically speaking, you can reach the finish line of a marathon with neither. There is no way on earth for you to ever finish a marathon, though, without a) knowing why you are doing it in the first place and b) having the heart to push through all the obstacles during a race. August 6th, 2009 |
Sometimes, you come across something that’s so amazing, it will make you go, “wow, I have got to share this with everyone I know.” This is one of those things:
Culture
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August 5th, 2009 |
Wobo Library Updated, and added: Google Fortune. *Wobo is just a word I made up to call those businesses who aren’t honest with the customers. Wobo Name(s):
The Bottom Line: Once you signed up, be prepared to be charged $99.95 a month.
August 5th, 2009 |
“If you’re not proud of where you work, go work somewhere else. You don’t get the benefit of the brand when it’s hot without accepting the blame of the brand when it’s wrong.” “Play with everything but stick with what’s works best for you.” “If you are not prepared to be wrong, you will never come up with anything original.” “People have been a bit sloppy with the word advertising. I think we’re going back to the original meaning of the word, which is to say, I hope that people are aware of my brand and interested in knowing more about it.” “Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don’t know which half.” August 4th, 2009 |
Here is a guest post I did for FragDominant.com over the weekend. The most powerful and profitable websites today are starting points of something. They work hard not to keep you within the boundaries of their sites, but rather to become a path to your destination, wherever you want to go. The most obvious one, of course, is Google. Mistake #1: Many business websites assume that they are the starting point for their customers. They spend hours and hours working on their homepages trying to create a user experience with navigation paths which they want their users to take. If you sell something online, chances are, you website goes something like this: Home -> Product Category -> Individual Product -> Features/Spec/Pricing/etc. -> Where to buy or Call to action. The process flows in one direction and if you turnaround to go sideways or backwards, all of the sudden, the website doesn’t not make a lot of sense. That’s the old millennium way. Today’s web users don’t surf, they jump. The starting point is Google, and they jump from Google to a place, and when they don’t find something they look for, they jump back and start over. So instead of treating your website as a spider web with your homepage sitting in the middle, you should decentralize — think of it as a lake full of islands: i) each webpage serves a single purpose and stands on its own, ii) none is more important than the other, and iii) when a user lands on any of them, he could look further into any direction and he will be presented with the options to go to another island. The process should be random, logical and endless. Mistake #2: Most businesses websites don’t work on becoming the starting point for their customers. They spend all of their effort on pulling a customer in and trying to make a sale, then couldn’t wait to send the customers away, hoping that the only time the customer returns is when he wants to buy something new or needs technical support. While there isn’t anything wrong with that, you are also not taking full advantage of the resources you spent to get the customer there. The basic requirement of a starting point is to be either unique or complete, or perhaps both. Provide information and/or knowledge that couldn’t be found anywhere else, and/or put together everything that a visitor needs to know on the topic. The key of becoming a starting point, however, is to go way beyond expectations. Whichever method you choose, you must present your story in a way which is not only relevant and useful to your users, but also pleasantly surprising: being 10% better won’t make a difference, you have to aim to be at least 10 times better than anyone else in the world who is doing the same thing. Here is a simple checklist I came up with a while back which might be helpful. Keep in mind that the checklist should be applied to every single webpage on your site. August 3rd, 2009 |
I used to get tons of proposal letters from gamers who are seeking sponsorship , and it usually goes something like this: Several weeks ago, as I was writing to a young gamer to give some advices, I thought about what I would’ve done if I was asked to write a proposal letter, and I thought it made sense to outline it like this: If you are a marketer, chances are, you are looking for some kind of sponsorships from your audiences one way or another. As I am writing this, I suddenly realized that it wasn’t the best advice that I could’ve offered. Sponsorship is taken, not given. You are not going to get any sponsors if you go up to people and say, “Hi, I am hoping that we could get some hardware and/or money from you in exchange for your exposure in the gaming world.” Instead, you get it by saying, “I am the best possible choice you could ever dream of, and you know it!” And somehow, you can make the person you are talking believe you. So here is what my proposal letter would’ve looked like today: August 2nd, 2009 |
I have seen companies and their marketing people act as if “trying” is their job. They give some new ideas (Twitter, Facebook, Blog, whatever) a try for 3 months and it didn’t work. They throw their hands up in the air and go, “well, that didn’t work, at least we have tried”, and revert back to their old ways. I am sorry, but I think you are confused. Your job isn’t to “try”, instead, your job is to “keep looking until you find the thing that will actually work“. “But what about the fact that our old ways worked 3 years ago?” You mean when Lehman Brothers was still in business? August 1st, 2009 |
If you haven’t heard the story yet, a Chicago real estate company called Horizon Realty Group filed a lawsuit against one of its tenants on Monday. She apparently made a remark on Twitter to 20 of her followers on 5/12/09, saying that, “Who said sleeping in a moldy apartment is bad for you? Horizon realty thinks it’s okay.” The user’s Twitter account is now deleted, but as I mentioned yesterday, with the help of Google Cache, people were able to locate her exact tweet.
Horizon, worried that the tweet will be “distributed throughout the world” and that it has been “greatly injured in its reputation”, is suing her for $50,000 in damages to their reputation. The spokesperson for Horizon, Jeffrey Michael, is quoted in the Sun-Times saying that Bonnen wasn’t contacted before the suit was filed or asked to remove the Tweet. He then made this stunning statement: “We’re a sue first, ask questions later kind of an organization.” As you can imagine, this really didn’t sit very well with the online community. Within hours after the story was first introduced, it has made its way to ALL the popular online news site and blogs. At the time of this writing, a Google search of “Horizon Realty, mold” returns 474 news articles, and 53,200 search results. And if that’s not enough, every single one of the results on the first page is linking to an article relating to the story.
What’s even worse? 5 out of the 10 first page Google search results of “Horizon Realty apartment” will also lead you to that story. If there is “bad publicity”, this is it. All right, if your first reaction was “we’d better watch out before we do something stupid to any Twitterers”, you have got this all wrong. If your marketing personnels don’t see this as a clear indication of potentially accomplishing something remarkable online, then they oughta be fired. Take a minute and think about this: if an average person with 20 Twitter followers created such a tidal wave online, what then, exactly, should your organization be capable of generating? More importantly, why isn’t it happening? The platforms are there; the people with interests are there; the audiences are there; they have all been there for a long time, and better yet, they are eagerly watching, searching and awaiting every minute of the day. What’s missing is you, with an extremely interest story, for them to tell. Make something amazing, and the world will find you, guaranteed. July 31st, 2009 |
I often suggest everyone I know to build a website — be it a blog, wiki, forum, CMS, whatever — even if it only has a single page. I also suggest people to claim their name online at FirstNameLastName.com. A $10 per year investment in this case is well worth it, just for the simple reason that you now have a personal space online which you can do whatever you want . It’s not for the people who don’t know you, those people don’t care. Instead, it’s for the people who know your real name (future employer with your resume, old friend from college, or relative from overseas) and want to find out more about you — you want to make sure that when they do, they can. Plus, it’s also a good idea to ensure that a Google search of your name doesn’t return some random website with your naked pictures as the first result. But what if you are not proud of some of the work you have done in the past? Unfortunately, whether you like it or not, it’s out there waiting to be discovered as long as you did it online. And with tools such as Wayback Machine and Google Cached Pages, even after you thought you have deleted everything, it’s still there, available to anyone with an Internet connect and a browser. Lesson to take away? If there is any doubts or indications which you might regret later for posting something online, you are much better off not doing it at all. P.S. Scroll down to the bottom of a Google search result of your name, have you set up your Google Profile yet? July 30th, 2009 |
Wobo Library updated. Added: Purity12 Wobo Name(s):
The Bottom Line: You will be charged at least $89.00 for one month usage of Purity12.
July 29th, 2009 |
Introducing The C.H.I.E.F. formula. This is the formula that you should follow while building something online: Business, community, or personal. Care – Care is the foundation of everything. If you don’t care, don’t even bother. And I don’t mean to care for others; I know you are selfish, everybody is. Care for yourself. Care about the legacy you will build and leave on the Web. Two things to keep in mind: 1) the Web doesn’t forget and 2) it takes just as much effort to build something remarkable as it does to build something average. The only difference? Care. Help – How do you feel when someone go out of their way to help you for no particular reason, and don’t ask for anything in return? …Exactly, which is precisely the reason why you should do it. Inform – People like to know stuff. They’d like to know when the next full solar eclipse is going to be, when Apple is going to release their tablet netbook, or maybe even something interesting about your company. Don’t be afraid to share the information you have on hand, sometimes even if it’s marked “confidential”. By the way, “i” could also stand for interesting. Educate – If people have a hard time telling the difference between a browser and Google. Don’t assume that they will understand what DotA is. Teach them. Fun – “Fun and a little weird” is what Zappos is all about, and it worked out pretty well for them. Oh also, have you ever read the label on a Vitamin Water bottle? Chances are, every successful website has some or all of these elements. The more you have, the better off you are. July 28th, 2009 |
A couple weeks ago, someone on Linkedin started a discussion and asked the question “why Social Media fails sometimes”, and I answered: expectation. Businesses are having all kinds of wrong expectation about online marketing/web 2.0/social media/whatever. Yes, it’s true that the web space is filled with people — potential customers who might just turn your failing business around. Yes, all these new tools are cool and fun to play around with. And yes, if you are lucky, you might just stumble onto something that attracts tons of traffic to your website. You hear about these stories all the time, all around the web. So naturally, you expect to have the same kind of success by following the success stories. Don’t get me wrong, I love Copycat marketers who steal ideas. I am all for marketers who search outside of their industry, try to figure out what works, and apply it onto their own business. But here is the thing, it’s easy to see and copy the tactics at work, but much more difficult to grasp the strategies behind the tactics. Lazy marketers do the former because it’s simple; the smart ones do the latter because it works. Example: But if you take the 10 core values that Zappos lives by, combine it with a entirely open company culture, and get rid of all your call-center scripts, you might have just found something that will actually work. No, you probably won’t end up selling your business to Amazon, but do it for 10 years, by then you will be writing your own success story. July 27th, 2009 |
Marketing lessons to be learned from Quentin Tarantino and company: July 26th, 2009 |
Facebook wants to know whether or not you approve of sharing more of your personal information with the public, so they decided to run a survey. And here is one of the questions: My problem is that this is wasted resource. Is there any doubts that the majority of people is going to give the “in between” answer? I mean, if you are going to spend the effort and resources designing the questions, and ask me to spend my time answering the questions, why not have the courage to come up with something a little more effective? Have the guts to get out of your comfort zone. Don’t do something just for the sake of doing it. It’s a shame to waste your life on mediocrity only to avoid criticism. July 25th, 2009 |
Do you treat your customers like toothpaste? You know, try and squeeze every bit of usefulness out of them and dispose them the minute they stop functioning. Within seconds after a new acquisition, you stop thinking or talking about them. The ultimate commodity: use them, then forget them, and repeat again tomorrow. I am not suggesting that you see your customers as blood relatives, but at the very least, consider treating them like your car. Put gasoline in them every week; change the oil every 3,000 miles; pay for a maintenance job every once a while. Understand that a little investment goes a long way, even on the days you don’t need to use them. Take good care of them, and they will return the favor — makes everyone happy. Reminder: shopping for new cars are both time consuming and expensive. Do it only when you can afford it. July 24th, 2009 |
Here is something for you to think about: workplaces aren’t that much different from a prison. - The more “accomplished” you are, the “higher” your will be, also the bigger institution. - It’s what you have done that will get you in. But once you are in, the only thing you are left with are your knowledge and skill setl. Your past “accomplishments” don’t really matter. You start from scratch, and you work hard to earn a reputation. - The longer you work, the more reputation you have, but it usually only applies within the institution walls. Under normal circumstances, a 20 year “veteran” is worth more than a first year “rookie”. - 1 year, 5 years, or 20 years, doesn’t matter, most people do the same tasks everyday. The old saying, “you don’t have 5 years of experience, you have the 1 year experience, repeated 5 times”, applies perfectly in both cases. - Regardless of what you like, both your company and a prison are run by dictatorship. The top management controls everything. They also set the rules for everybody to follow. - The ultimate goal, of course, is to work as hard as possible and hope for the early release or retirement. - Everyone has thought about a plan for breaking out; few has the courage to try; of those, most will fail; the ones who succeed, enjoys a better life than the rest. July 23rd, 2009 |
Wobo Library updated. Added: Dentech Whitening. Wobo Name(s):
The Bottom Line:
You will be charged at least $88.97 plus $9.99 for Dentech Tooth Whitening Kit and Axis Wellness Portal. July 22nd, 2009 |
Wobo Library updated. Added: Earth4Energy. Wobo Name(s):
The Bottom Line:
Keep in mind that $49.97 is only the cost for the ebook, you will also need to spend a LOT more to purchase the actual hardware for building a solar system in your backyard. July 22nd, 2009 |
Fact: Japan makes the world’s most advanced cellphones, by a wide margin. The first generation of iPhone was launched in June of 2007. Fact: They can’t reach the global market. Fact: They are no iPhone. They believe that the problem is the software; I think the problem is the marketing. As do most other high-tech companies, they conduct extensive market researches, follow the latest trends, and invent new features everyday. At the very core of their business, the focus lies on the capabilities of technology. Unfortunately, technology is bound to fail. The win, of course, goes to the people who figures out how to tell a compelling story about their product and touch their customers in ways that they weren’t expecting. In other words, the people who knows marketing, wins. July 21st, 2009 |
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