Beth Harte

Would you be shocked to know that I’ve only met Beth Harte once and it was during this past year’s South by Southwest Interactive conference? That’s the beauty of using Twitter, I suppose. You can connect with anyone and chat with them about their thoughts, ideas, projects & blog posts and when you actually see each other in real life, nothing really steps out of place and you can continue the conversation.

Beth is a remarkable woman whom I’m proud to say is really moving up in the world. She’s now become the Community Manager at MarketingProfs – a website that I receive emails about the latest and greatest marketing insights from – and has been really everywhere when it comes to marketing and the web. She’s up to date on the latest trends, got a great sense of humor, and did I mention that she’s uber smart? No? Well she’s uber smart. You’ll get occasional gems of wisdom from her tweets and perhaps even some humorous ones as well. Definitely someone to watch out for in the Twittersphere.

Dr. Mark Drapeau

Dr. Mark Drapeau is one of the foremost experts on Government 2.0 policy and issues that I follow on Twitter. He’s really smart when it comes to how the game is played in politics and also understands the idea of using social media to help better govern. With the election of Barack Obama as the nation’s 44th president, so comes the new wave of technology that Obama used successfully in his rise to power & office. Dr. Drapeau understands all of that and has hosted at least one event to my knowledge about using social media to create “Gov 2.0″. It’s one of those hot topics that you wish you had an expert around for…oh wait! You do! It’s Dr. Mark Drapeau!

Marie Domingo

Somehow I find myself seeing Marie Domingo everywhere I go. And I mean that in a good way. Nearly every event I go to in San Francisco and in the Bay Area finds me seeing her and Harry McCracken around networking or organizing tweetups. She’s a remarkable force when it comes to promotion, public relations, and overall getting to know people. I’ve found her to be very helpful in many times when I needed information. Marie is a long time public relations expert who specializes in technology, social media and, according to her website, has had the pleasure of “spreading the word about breakthrough technology products and services for some of the world’s coolest companies–including Sony Electronics, Sun Microsystems, Hewlett Packard, Edelman, and Autodesk.“ You’re telling me that someone with that type of background is not someone you would follow? She’s connected to some great people and with that comes phenomenal insights that you can pick up on.

Brian Remmel

I first met Brian Remmel at a Social Media Club event and we’ve kept in touch ever since. He’s a great hard-worker who has become, what I believe, is a great asset and account guy at one of the leading public relations firms in the Bay Area – Future Works. Folks, if you want someone who really knows his stuff and understands social media and promotion, then you got to follow Brian. His blog is also pretty interesting as well where he focuses on (again) social media. It’s got some pretty insightful stuff.

Cory O’Brien

Finally I get to talk to someone who’s cool, local and not in PR! Actually Cory O’Brien is someone who I think has the coolest job around. He works for an integrated marketing company called Swirl in San Francisco and gets to talk to clients about executing social media strategy. I’m certain that his agency has some remarkable projects for him to do and he does a great job of it. His tweets often relate to the social media realm and then there are some other oft-topic ones but that just makes following him that much more amusing and entertaining. Oh…and to top it all off, he’s also has several blogs that he’s working on. One of which is on the Future of Advertising and also about t-shirts and other interesting things you might not have heard about.

Rachel Polish

Rachel Polish simply astounds me. She is absolutely brilliant and always cheerful everytime I see her! I met Rachel at the sneak preview of Seesmic Desktop at the (where else?) Seesmic offices and it was there that I found out that we had something in common at the time – we were both in search of new opportunities. It was after talking to her that I knew that she was in for an optimistic forecast and before I knew it, I received an email from her recently announcing that she had got her next big break – and BOY was it a break! She’s now the Vice President of Digital Strategy at Ogilvy in San Francisco! Wow…simply amazing. I encourage you to chat with Rachel and you might just pick up at least a few bits of wisdom and insights. I sure have!

If you keep up with my blog posts, you’ll notice one that I wrote about Haamonii Shochu and an exercise that I participated in at a recent Social Media Club event. Well many of the ideas and even the presentation to the rest of the group stemmed from Rachel herself. She’s a rockstar and has a great understanding of what people’s needs are. Absolutely outstanding and great person to know.

You want to know more about #FollowFriday and who other people are recommending? Then check out this great site created by Micah Baldwin.

I’m serious. I probably didn’t. I’ve heard so many good things about Tara Hunt, the author of The Whuffie Factor, on her speaking and presentations and how awesome they are. So when I finally got a chance to hear her speak, it was about five of the components to generate good “whuffie”. What exactly is Whuffie? I’ll get to that a little bit later on. But let me get back to my story.

I had first heard Tara speak about her book during a Social Media Club event featuring three authors of published & upcoming books, although it wasn’t all that detailed as the next time I heard her speak at this past edition of WordCamp in San Francisco. It was here that I heard her expound on what she’s talking about in The Whuffie Factor and how folks can build up their social media campaigns and brand awareness using what she calls “whuffie”.

So I thought to myself that after hearing that and automatically learning the secrets to creating whuffie, I didn’t need to buy her book. It would have saved me at least $20, right?

Wrong. I bought her book. And I loved it.

I’m a fan of Tara’s and when I heard she was publishing The Whuffie Factor, I immediately added it to my “wish list” of books to get. It’s taken me a while and I thought that once I heard what she had to say during WordCamp San Francisco, I didn’t need to read her book because she practically gave it all away for free. But I kept my convictions and ultimately bought the book to read on a long trip I took recently and found it quite compelling.

So let’s get back to the question that was asked earlier: what IS this “whuffie” and how can it help you?

Whuffie is basically street credibility that you have when dealing specifically with social media. There’s no direct monetary value to whuffie. I doubt you can go to your bank and ask for a loan on whuffie. It’s a non-tangible form of value that you earn from being online and interacting. As Tara puts it in The Whuffie Factor, whuffie is “the residual income – the currency – of your reputation.” Like with all forms of currency, it’s entirely possible for you to lose or gain it based on how you behave. There are five key components that Tara lists to help you become a superstar and build significant whuffie (I’ve covered this on my blog post for Network Solutions that you can read here):

1. Turn the bull horn around.
2. Become part of the community.
3. Create amazing feelings.
4. Embrace the chaos.
5. Find your purpose.

I’m not going to cover the meanings behind these here but you can read my thoughts on them on this blog post. However, while you might think that all you need are these five steps, you need to still read the book. Why? Because there’s much more wholesome goodness that you’re not going to get by simply blindly following these steps. You don’t truly understand the meaning without reading The Whuffie Factor.

Tara’s book is filled with definitions, meaning and plenty of real-life examples that you can take with you to the bank to learn how to properly create whuffie. Also, there’s advice in her book on how you can lose all your whuffie in the process as well – oh yeah, it’s a two way street. You can gain it all but also just as easily lose it in a heartbeat.  Find out how folks like Gary Vaynerchuk and companies like Threadless, 37Signals and even the Library of Congress have embraced whuffie and become a success.

Reading one of the reviews on Amazon about The Whuffie Factor, I found this one statement about the book totally true:

The fundamental concept is that marketing to your customer has changed.

This statement is from James Beswick and is very true. There is so much noise going on in the industry that every marketer & advertiser is practically SCREAMING to be heard. I guess Tara’s meaning behind it all is to try and stop the screaming and instead focus on the individual relationships and if you have enough whuffie, you’re able to have enough credibility that people will trust you more than someone who is constantly pushing and pushing their message to you – which you’d probably automatically assume that they’re just interested in the sale.

What this book is NOT: it’s not a guide book giving you step-by-step instructions on how you can create a social media campaign. It’s not going to give you tips on which applications to use to help generate more sales or traffic to your website. It doesn’t offer any real best practices on using Facebook or Twitter or even YouTube. But what it DOES offer is a strategic look at your engagement with your communities and customers online and how you can properly take advantage by building relationships. I suppose if you think about interacting with people in real life, how are they going to take what you have to say seriously? You need to be able to not only “talk the talk”, but also “walk the walk”. Are you prepared to do that offline AND also online?

No? Well let Tara Hunt help you out. Read The Whuffie Factor and get a better understanding on how you can earn incredible street credibility in a social media setting.

Just last week I was fortunate enough to watch the movie Up! in the theatre and the above scene got me thinking about one of the character’s reaction and how it relates so closely to one of my favorite books, The Purple Cow by Seth Godin. In the above clip, the stars of the movie encounter Dug the Talking Dog and comedy hilarity ensues. Watch the last reaction by Russell when they start to walk away and he says “But he’s a talking…dog!”

That line just reminded me of Seth Godin’s explanation of the Purple Cow. Basically the point is that as you’re driving along a country road, you’re going to see a pasture filled with cows. At this point, all the cows look the same. There’s nothing unique or different that will separate one from the other. Now, if you’ve continued driving and saw a purple cow, that’s something you’d remember. It’s different. As Seth Godin puts it:

For dozens of kilometers, we all gazed out the window, marveling at the beauty. Then, within a few minutes, we started ignoring the cows. The new cows were just like the old cows, and what was once amazing was now common. Worse than common: It was boring.

Cows, after you’ve seen them for a while, are boring. They may be well-bred cows, Six Sigma cows, cows lit by a beautiful light, but they are still boring. A Purple Cow, though: Now, that would really stand out. The essence of the Purple Cow — the reason it would shine among a crowd of perfectly competent, even undeniably excellent cows — is that it would be remarkable. Something remarkable is worth talking about, worth paying attention to. Boring stuff quickly becomes invisible.

Just like Dug the Talking Dog & the Purple Cow, what you do online needs to be memorable. I’m not talking about just your website. Hell, at this point, everyone has a website. That’s the easiest and simplest way to get yourself online. But what else are you doing to get yourself noticed and separate yourself from the competition? Are you looking at your community and seeing that they want to receive emails? Are they being referred to your site via search engines? Maybe they need to have a mobile application developed to make it more accessible over your competitor? If you’re going to do something, make it really outstanding so when people come to it, they’ll stand up and take notice.

But let’s look at it from another angle. First of all, chances are that if you’re producing a social network to compete with the likes of Friendster, Myspace and Facebook, then your work is probably cut out for you. It’s going to be hard to get in with that community but more so because you all look alike. I’m serious! All social networks have become homogenous. There’s nothing really separating you at face value. So why should I invest my time when I know more of my friends are probably already on Facebook first, Myspace second, and maybe one or two will be on Friendster? This is where you become Dug the Talking Dog…

Taking the above example of producing your own social network, you might want to do things a bit different than the established competitors? Maybe focus on aesthetics of the website better so that it looks good along with strengthening its usability? Maybe even clearly stating your privacy policy and terms of service in an easily understood manner? That might attract some people who don’t want to spend time or any at all wondering about whether data they produce is their’s or not. Maybe creating a truly unique desktop widget that integrates with all other social media, email, website mechanisms whatever they may be?

What I’m trying to get at here is that all products of the same line will eventually begin to look like cows in a field. They all look and act the same. Beef is beef from a cow no matter what the color the cow is. So how are you going to make it so that the consumer picks your one cow to make a remarkable product? Everyone wants to try and solve a problem – it’s the cornerstone of capitalism (that and making lots of money). So while you’re thinking you have the greatest idea, you’re going to need to remember that you can’t just sit around, put together some product that will fix the problem but have its packaging be rather boring and complacent. Start thinking of revolutionary ideas that you can use to help grab people’s attention. The time for laid back marketing is over. It’s all about communicating and making sure that they understand that you’re trying to help them. Be creative with your marketing and show them that your product will help them over all other products.

Maybe your company will standout and become amazing and creative through its personalized service when your competitors offer none? Perhaps this is what Virgin America has done successfully to be the Purple Cow of the airline industry – they were the first to offer free wi-fi on all of these flights around the United States and much more personalized service. What about allowing for more portability of information? Is that something you would  think businesses might want to look at to make their product stand out from others? When you’re doing the marketing, think about how others are seeing it online. It’s one big shelf of websites, email campaigns, etc. People only have seconds to make decisions so you have that time, as a marketer, to really punch your message through and tell people that what they’re seeing is a talking dog!

Have you found the Purple Cow? What exactly is your Dug the Talking Dog and how will it leave people wanting to take it with them?

If you’ve been living under a rock over the past few days, you may not have known that a new American Idol was crowned. But we’re not here to debate whether the right contestant won. Rather, the focus is on the example this show has on the power of crowdsourcing. Just what is crowdsourcing? According to Wikipedia, crowdsourcing is

A neologism for the act of taking a task traditionally performed by an employee or contractor, and outsourcing it to an undefined, generally large group of people or community in the form of an open call.

Basically it means rather than looking at your internal teams for assistance, you can delve into the use of social media or web 2.0 technologies to have the general population offer you ideas. Using sites like Twitter, FriendFeed, or putting your thoughts on a blog are all means to crowdsource information. Interestingly enough, there is a site that people use to solicit creative ideas for their own brand and “creative” people are willing to provide their design & others can vote and offer feedback – and I use the word “creative” loosely as there are some discussions as to whether this site is helpful to the design industry or not.

So what important lesson can we learn from American Idol? Well have you seen the process that show goes through? Every week hundreds of millions of votes are cast for the contestants that America wants to remain on the show – the lowest vote-getter is eliminated. Granted the votes are often duplicated since people can vote multiple times, but the finale of each season is where the lesson is at. During this past season’s finale, the host Ryan Seacrest mentioned that over 100 million votes were cast to determine which of the final two would be crowned the next American Idol. Historically, when a winner is named, their first single & subsequent records hit the top of the charts and they become really popular celebrities – along with the runner up. Just look at who has succeeded out of the series: Kelly Clarkson, Rueben Studdard, David Cook, Jordin Sparks, Carrie Underwood, Clay Aiken, and perhaps others. The point is that crowdsourcing made this happen. The producers of American Idol felt that if they wanted to create a true sensation that would generate huge hits (and money), they would bend to the will of the people. So they created the show and filtered out who they thought had talent and then offered the vote to the viewers. The winner would have the majority of the popularity contest and many would think that he/she was the most talented and there you have an instant winner. That’s crowdsourcing.

If you handle crowdsourcing correctly, it can be a very powerful tool to help drive insight and meaning behind your projects. You’ll know what will succeed and what won’t. I’m sure that there is some scientific methodology to make sure there is as much validity in the data as possible so don’t think that by simply pouring it out there on Twitter and getting three responses constitutes you crowdsourcing. By all meaning, yes, you have, but there needs to be some formal sample that you should achieve.

Looking for help on how to implement a campaign? If you’ve built up a good enough rapport or influence amongst your peers and those you connect with online, then make use of crowdsourcing by sending a request for help. You might be surprised at what you get. Don’t think that you’re all by yourself because people online want to help you. I’m not advocating giving away state secrets or anything like that – because you shouldn’t. But if you want to validate some thoughts like whether or not your company should be targeting folks on Myspace instead of using email blasts, then that might be something noteworthy. Or, you could boil it down to as simple as “How can I get my business noticed on Twitter?” and put it out there on message boards, LinkedIn, Facebook groups or even Twitter.

The power behind crowdsourcing is extremely powerful. But you must build up a trust and relationship with the people you want help from. American Idol has done really well because they have the judges telling the contestants and viewers what they think and they’re being as transparent & authentic as they possibly could be. It seems that the majority of the eliminations that happen on the show agree with what Simon Cowell says the night before – he can be really harsh and doesn’t filter out his opinions, but that’s what Americans are probably looking for and put some trust in his judgement. So if you want to succeed in crowdsourcing, you better be honest, transparent, and understanding. Don’t make the mistake thinking that you can put out your request for help and assume people will be knocking down your door with advice. You’ll need to give some insights as well. Give & receive is a good motto here: when others are asking for help, give it and they will offer it back in return, if they can. That’s true crowdsourcing.

Shel Israel & Robert Scoble

When I was at the local Border’s store one day, I wasn’t sure what book to get – just knew that I needed to get a book. Don’t get me wrong, there were plenty of options from me to choose from, but up until that point, I didn’t know how to choose. And that’s when I came across it: Naked Conversations. It was probably my first real book that I bought from someone who I followed on Twitter but that I didn’t know much about the authors – just that they wrote this book and it was really well-received. So obviously when you get a lot of press and good reviews about a book, you just got to buy it, right?

I don’t regret it. In fact, if anything, it really jumpstarted my drive to learn more about the social media and web space. You can read my review of the book here, but suffice it to say that I’ve finally met the great Shel Israel and Robert Scoble in real life and they really are smart guys. I’ve definitely kept my copy of Naked Conversations with me as a reference and you should too. It’s one that you want to reference close by.

Rohit Bhargava

I first heard about Rohit Bhargava while I was in Washington, DC and saw a livestream of an event hosted by Network Solution’s Shashi Bellamkonda at Bus Boys & Poets where they were talking about Rohit’s new book Personality Not Included. I didn’t have a chance to meet him then, but I did eventually buy his book and not soon after I moved to San Francisco, I was fortunate enough to find out that he would be traveling here on business as part of his book promotion and I went to his event. It was a bit more intimate than I imagined but still an awesome time nonetheless. I have since met Rohit on numerous occasions including at South by Southwest and he always impresses me. His book Personality Not Included is a great book that talks about how you shouldn’t be so conservative or emotionless when dealing with your customers. Rather, you need to engage with them and show them that your brand has some passion and personality in it. YOU need to be the one who adds that into the brand…it doesn’t come as part and parcel. You can read my review of his book here.

Rohit Bhargava is a really smart guy who definitely demonstrates what he preaches. I’m sure that his clients that he deals with while at Ogilvy are pretty impressed by the fact he can show them the right things to do from a digital marketing standpoint and generate results. His book is one that I have kept with me on my shelf and luckily I have also an autographed copy which I’m especially proud of. If you’re planning on setting up a brand, it would be adviseable to read this book first.

Tara Hunt

Isn’t Tara Hunt the queen of karaoke? Well I give you that and much more. She’s also the author of one of the best social media books recently published The Whuffie Factor. I’ve heard Tara speak on Whuffie, which is basically social capital (or probably can be translated to social media street credibility) that you can use to leverage yourself or your brand, and I’m an instant fan all over again. Her book is filled with examples and interesting insights and on top of that, it’s an easy read and makes absolute sense! Why would you engage in a social media campaign or strategy without even having people trust who you are. Tara’s book is a great resource for those who feel they want to strike at social media sites and become influencers.

Charlene Li & Josh Bernoff

One of the most complicated books that I’ve ever read and I’ve loved it! Charlene Li & Josh Bernoff are the authors of one of the most reference books that I know: Groundswell. It’s amazing how this book has become a cornerstone in how social media or any digital marketing efforts are started and how they will evolve. Why is it so good? Because it’s not all about thoughts and insights anymore. While at Forrester, Charlene worked with Josh to create a book filled with market research data and introduced the POST method, which is also one of the best ideas that I’ve heard in a while. What is the POST method? Charlene explains it here, but basically it’s a great idea on how to set up a social media strategy. Much more than an advice book, it offers a methodology and statistical resources that will help shape your marketing efforts. You can read my review of Groundswell here.

Guy Kawasaki

Everyone online probably knows Guy Kawasaki. He’s the guy who worked for Apple all those years but now is the creator of AllTop & author of one of Reality Check. I’ve had the fortune of actually meeting Guy Kawasaki but unfortunately have not been able to get his autograph for his book. Reality Check is an interesting perspective on how business really is from a startup, venture capitalist, lawyer, marketer, salesperson and user standpoint. It’s not one to harp over how to do better but rather a slap in the face type mentality that will let you know what you need to be doing, not what you should be doing. You can read my review of Reality Check here.

Brian Solis & Deidre Breakenridge

I have probably never recommended a book as much as I have with Putting The Public Back In Public Relations, but there’s probably a reason why. It’s an outstanding book and the authors Brian Solis and Deidre Breakenridge have done a phenomenal job reaching out to non-public relations professionals. I’ve admitted that I’m not in PR and I don’t claim to have any insights. At first I’ve thought that reading Putting the Public Back In Public Relations might be a big turn off because it wasn’t about marketing, but having known one of the authors, I felt at ease knowing that I wasn’t going to be disappointed. I haven’t yet. I’ve enjoyed their writing about how to look at promotion of your brand and product through new methods of PR. Social media basically has become all about promotion and communication and in order to gain an effective grip on it, you need to understand how the system and culture works. Think about social media as another country with its unique culture. There’s so much more to it than simply jumping feet first. If you do that, you’re going to fail. Brian Solis and Deidre Breakenridge offer you a blue print and gives you also some insight into how to reach out to bloggers, what metrics to look for to assess the ROI or success, and much more. You can read my review of their book here.

Sarah Lacy

A slight confession is probably in order here. Several years ago I was at Borders and I was debating whether to get a book written by Sarah Lacy or buy Groundswell. I ultimately decided that I would like to read Sarah Lacy’s book first simply because it was a brand new book and was intrigued about what she had to say after her “debacle” during the 2009 South by Southwest interview with Mark Zuckerberg – which has now become ancient history. Once I started reading her book Once Your Lucky, Twice Your Good, I found that I couldn’t put the book down. Sarah Lacy has given an interesting view on how the world of startups has become such a big thing and how hard it is for companies to achieve success twice, let alone once. Like I said in my review of her book, Sarah Lacy doesn’t evanglize or hollywoodize the Silicon Valley scene, she just tells it like it is. It’s not all glamour and glitz, but rather Sarah has given us a view that there are some serious people here who really want to help solve a problem. I really thought it was a great book and luckily had the chance to meet with Sarah Lacy at an event during her user-generated book tour in Washington, DC coinciding with the first annual Twin Tech event hosted by iStrategyLabs and Peter Corbett. Fortunately I was able to chat with her and get her to autograph my copy and for that, I’m most appreciative.

You want to know more about #FollowFriday and who other people are recommending? Then check out this great site created by Micah Baldwin.