This shall prove to be a busy month!
For starters, there is a certain sports events happening. But I have talked too much about that already.
This weekend I'm traveling to mi wife's hometown
By the end of the month: vacation; 1000 mile drive to Bariloche and, hopefully (as in "if it snows", and "if ski passes are somewhat affordable"!) some snowboarding.
The 24th, my wife's birthday, not to mention my mother-in-law's and grandmother-in-law's.
I have to thank Augustus (the Roman emperor) who decided to name a month after himself and gave it 31 days instead of the 29 it used to have when it was know as "Sextilis" under the Roman Republic's Calendar. Those 2 extra days shall prove to be quite useful to fit all events going on this month.
About 10 minutes ago I finished going through the draft posts on this blogs. The original number was 47, current number is 15.
Many of those posts where no more than a couple of lines long. Some I couldn't even remember what drove me to start writing them in the first place. Others would of never seen the light of day anyway, since they where pretty aggressive rants and reactions to certain experiences, cathartic words that rejoice my soul on the sheer thought of having the possibility to *maybe* (just maybe) push the "publish" button.
This seems to be a recurring fact of life with me and literature. I have started writing books (fiction) at least 3 times. On neither of those cases did I go over 100 pages. I still have those drafts, but, much to the demise of the characters frozen in time, I never found it in me to go back and continue those truncated stories.
I think the only way to be somewhat successful in writing for me is to do things Hemingway-ly. Not that I would even dream on comparing my literary skills with great Ernest (as I also wouldn't try to compare my Drinking habits), but in case you don't know, the guy really struggled to get his writing done.
Most of his original scripts have word counts all over the place. He forced himself to write at least a certain number of words every day. If I wanted (or had the time to) write the stories and non-fiction stuff I have in my mind that is the path I should follow. Guess I could call it a method.
Over time I have learned to assume that some (most?) things won't ever see the light of day. This statement is true not only for writing but also applies successfully to all things. If I had to estimate the percentage of ideas that actually become something tangible, I'd have to admit those account for less than 1% of the total.
Some ideas are plainly bad, some are non-viable, some just die because I don't pay enough attention or push hard enough. The latter category is painful. I'm haunted by some of those ideas for years. "Ghost ideas" I call them. The only exorcism is to see them realized (usually by somebody else) or refurbished into novel thoughts that actually make it into the real world.
I lack method, I lack time and I probably lack the will to transform ideas from gray matter haunting ghosts to living and breathing experiences.
For those who don't have the luck of being married to a Biotech Phd (well, almost Phd) here's the wikipedia definition on extremophiles:
An extremophile is an organism that thrives in and may even require physically or geochemically extreme conditions that are detrimental to the majority of life on Earth.
Hopefully the definition helps in the hyperbole I'll make an effort to build here.
For the past 2 years or so we've been hearing about the web 2.0 bubble. I have advocated this belief myself, stating that many companies are either overpriced or directly unprofitable; "doomed" for short. The most recent post from the "mayhem is near, repent" series I have read is one by Dennis Howlett, its title is worth of a Stephen King novel: "Are we headed for a nuclear winter?".
It is true that the economy is cooling (more evidently so in the US) and that will drive costs cut, heads rolling and venture capitals to become as cold as an iceberg. Many companies will fall, particularly when credit starts to get crunched (an unavoidable step if policy makers don't want to get us into a much nastier situation). The web 2.0 bubble will burst sooner or later.
But "Social Media" and many "services" that came to life under the two-point-oh label are here to stay. Sure enough many sites will disappear or evolve due to the harsh economic conditions, but the same way that "portals" didn't just vanish into nothingness in 1999, web 2.0 will not become just a mere memory overnight.
A recession is to Marketing what "physically or geochemically extreme conditions" are to microorganisms: not good. When the belt starts to tighten we all know that Marketing spend is one of the first to suffer.
I won't get as optimistic as Jeremiah and say social media will be "effective", but rather keep a more moderate point of view. I'll say it will "survive" I have to admit that I tend to be more conservative on expectations because I know that not every single CEO and CMO out there shares (or gets) the enthusiasm for Social Media. Jeremiah writes:
(...) Social Media, which tends to have lower costs than other forms of marketing (commodity tools) can be very cost effective for those wanting to get customers to spread and share messages. On the other hand, marketers need to be careful, because doing it wrong will result in more work, and in some situations, brand backlash.
Cost effective is good, particularly under economical uncertainty, but I think the most important features that will keep the social media marketing boat floating are adaptability, accountability and being (somewhat) measurable. (For honesty's sake I must say the latter two are sketched on Forrester's report).
Here are the thoughts on SMM's advantages:
Adaptability.
Social Media Marketing is adaptable due to what I believe is its definition (for once the wikipedia definition of SMM didn't please me, so I'll give my own): "A direct engagement from a company to its -prospective and existing- customers through online community (social) tools".
Note: although I do believe that things such as transparency and authenticity are premises for a successful Social Media Marketing strategy, I left the terms out of the definition because I can certainly picture scenarios where strategists would leave them out of the equation.
Engagement is constant and tools are variables. Processes are variable as well. This makes SMM a very adaptable task; it can downscale our upscale depending on available budget, tools and bandwidth.
Accountability.
One of the most beautiful things about SMM is that it puts real people's faces to otherwise faceless companies. People relate better to other people rather than to logos or press releases. This is a double-bladed weapon, though. As Social Media Marketers our visibility goes up, but so does our accountability. If I say something or do something wrong on a public site it is my head that's out for chopping. And that is refreshing.
I've witness lack of accountability for far too long in the corporate world. We, as corporations, have grown the awful habit of shielding behind teams and collectiveness when things don't work. I have as a personal premise that if I screw up I'll stand for my mistake (and hopefully learn something out of it).
The same happens when a campaign or social media marketing initiative backfires. There is -quite usually- a personal "touch" (for lack of a better term) on this ideas that can be backtracked like breadcrumbs to the intellectual author. So bosses always have someone to shout at, and that is always cathartic for those in decision making positions.
Measuring.
Social Media Marketing's metrics accuracy stand someplace in between Internet and traditional advertising. It is not possible to relate sales with spend as effectively as with, say, Ad Words but it is not as nebulous as TV ads. Yet, there is a lot that can be learnt and turned into numbers, figures, pie-charts, trends and power point presentations with SMM. In the worst case scenario it can serve as a barometer for the general sentiment towards a brand.
Bonus.
There is one other very powerful reason why SMM will be around even Marketing budget will equal to a take-a-penny tray: People. Fortunately there is a growing number of customers who have grown numb to traditional marketing BS. There is still value on traditional Marketing, but the signal-to-noise ratio on consumer's ears is tilting towards the noise side. There's a whole new niche that won't ever get engaged by a TV ad but will become active participants and even evangelists for a brand if the messaging is good enough. Many companies would of never turn around part of their negative image if they didn't engage into SMM.
I'm quite certain there's a big chunk of the pie of customers that would be lost if SMM was ditched. And that is something no companies are willing to do.
My prediction: SMM is like roaches; it will survive the nuclear winter.
This post was adapted to Spanish and posted @ Denken Über. Thanks to Mariano for the invitation.
Ok, I know I'm going to have to eat up my words. I'm tweeting.
I decided that as an external observer I had no-clue on what the appeal Twitter has, thus I'd decided to give it a try, use it more or less intensively and then make up my mind and, hopefully, draw some conclusions.
What surprises me is that I'm usually an early adopter of geeky stuff and although I have had the account for well over a year I have not used it at all so far. Something kept me on the skeptical side of things.
It is too early to say anything really useful other than "I'm stevie_glas, feel free to follow me". Sidebar widget coming soon to this blog as well.
Oh, and I'll blame David if I get too hooked up, idiotized or end up hating the thing.
I've neglected this blog. And it shows. Visits are down, Feed subscribers are down, comments are down. I've given no link love lately. I've barely posted. Shame on me. You already know what has kept me busy lately, but I intend to come back on posting full scale from now on.
I have plenty o'stuff to write about, I just need the time to make put it into words other human beings can understand.
So, After reading about it @ uberbin I decided to download Google Talk labs edition. Besides a perked up interface there are some really nice features. If only I were able to move my corporate IT infrastructure out of the corporate IT infrastructure Google Talk and a Browser would be almost everything I'd need up and running for most of my tasks. (Well that and EditPlus and a couple of Notepad instances which I use all the time to write down... notes)
From within Google Talk labs edition you can launch gmail (nothing new in that), Calendar and Orkut (too bad no one outside Brazil seems to use even know Orkut). You can get Calendar updates and alerts as well as notifications from Orkut. You can also set Gmail as the default mail client for the PC. I was tempted, I would give up a limb or two to get rid of Lotus Notes.
I've always been fond to Google Talk, the simplicity of the interface contrasts quite nicely with the information overload that other IM systems seem to have (MSN and Yahoo!, for instance).
A couple of things missing: Voice functionality has been hosed in this edition. Also being able to access Google docs or getting alerts when others start editing shared documents would be nice. Picasa and YouTube integration might be interesting as well. I could picture the ability to embed videos or pictures in a Chat being a very interesting new way of wasting even more time.
Pardon the blurring out of my contact's info on the screenshot, although I'm sure my contacts appreciate it!