Author Archive
Five takeaways from Tools of Change Conference
A few riffs on the 4th annual Tools of Change conference, which I attended last week in New York City for ForeWord Reviews magazine:
Self-expression is the new entertainment
So said keynote speaker Arianna Huffington at the fourth annual Tools of Change Conference in New York last week. That statement – from the founder of the most popular political news web site in the blogosphere – drew some raised eyebrows and mild grumbling from conference attendees. Huffington was making the argument that today users aren’t just idly sitting on the couch waiting to be entertained, they want to be involved in the entertainment. They text, they blog, they tweet. They attract fans, followers, audience. They are entertainment. She argued that publishers must embrace new media to help draw in these self-expressionist users, who create bits and bits of content themselves. But not all self-expression has value, some would argue. In fact, many would argue that most self-expression is crap. Publishers will need to learn how to separate the weed from the chaff.
63% of something is better than 100% of nothing
The pricing model for eBooks is highly-charged with controversy. When Google it’s Almighty Self reared their head at TOC, most of the questions laid at their feet came in two flavors: pricing and DRM. The industry wants to know how large a slice of the revenue pie they’re going to have to share to be listed in Google Editions, and how much control they’ll maintain over their products. The answers: Google will take 37%. Publishers and distributors will set the list price. “We think the publisher is far more qualified to set prices on their products [than we are],” said Google’s Abe Murray. While many publishers may bristle at the notion of sharing more than a third with Google, they ignore Google’s crowd-gathering skills at their own risk. Worldwide, nearly 40% of all Internet traffic travels through Google, and more than 80% of all mobile traffic is Google-charged. Of the top 25 most visited blogs, 45% of their traffic is referred by Google. Whatever Google Editions may look like, and however the pricing models and distribution channels work themselves out, if you have a product, you want it pumping through the Google pipeline. Google seems to be saying to the traditional publishing world: “We’ve figured this ‘E-Thing’ out, come along with us, unless you think you can do it better yourself.”
Tablets to the rescue?
Yes, the January announcement of Apple’s iPad was exciting. It remains to be seen if the device, set to hit the streets in March, will prove to be a smash hit or just an oversized iPod. The tablet PC has been trotted out before, only to fail miserably in the marketplace, making little more than a novelty-sized dent on the industry. Apple promises an online bookstore that will do for reading what iTunes did for listening to music. But, as WWW founder Marc Andreesen points out in a recent interview with Fortune: “Businesses built on the written word… have to reinvent their whole businesses from top to bottom if they want to survive.” If you’re a publisher and you think Steve Jobs has come to your rescue with his latest shiny gadget, you may be ignoring the fact that your business practices and content needs to evolve to keep pace with the new medium.
It’s the content, stupid
In a now famous memo by the same name, Bill Gates wrote back in 1996 that “Content is King.” Yes, way back when Kindle wasn’t even a twig yet, Microsoft Bill was talking about the future of the Internet and web sites in general. But the phrase has since taken on broader meaning as it applies to media in general. However, it still appears that many of the folks who use ink and paper to deliver their content think they can just cram that content into a new device and survive. It’s increasingly apparent that there’s a shift in the way end users consume information. An eBook on Amazon’s Kindle is essentially a physical book displayed digitally on a handheld device. With few exceptions, it fails to utilize the powerful tools that even a desktop PC offers. We saw this sort of lazy transition back in the early days of television – another milestone in the evolution of content consumption – when networks relied on radio programming to fill their schedules (similarly early motion pictures were mostly filmed stage plays). Consumers quickly demanded that TV utilize new technology, which resulted in live satellite news reports, the 30-minute sitcom, etc. Content morphed to match the medium by which it was being delivered. Oxford Media Group’s Kirk Biglione gets it: “The customer expects to find their content quickly and easily, and in the format they want it in.” Publishers need to realize that they’re publishers, not book creators.
Why can’t my eBook do this?
Kurt Vonnegut wrote that there were two requirements for any new invention: that it be simple to use and that it advance the cause of human happiness by taking into account the needs of people. So far, digital books and publications are oh-for-two on Vonnegut’s criteria. Sure, some eReaders are fairly easy to use – the Kindle is a megastar in these still early years of eBooks – but until a format is adopted as standard, getting eBooks onto the reading devices will continue to be a pain for most non-tech consumers. The process of buying an eBook needs to be as easy as downloading and listening to music. On Vonnegut’s second point, eBooks themselves have a long way to go. Most of them are woefully impractical to search, nearly impossible to annotate, and difficult to recommend to friends through social media sites. In contrast to other media such as film and even plain old web sites, eBooks have failed to push the envelope when it comes to functionality. A pair of TOC presenters: Jeff Gomez and Peter Meyers, examined how eBooks of the future can “advance the cause of human happiness.” In “Book Meets Tablet: 10 Ways to Enhance Your iPad Books,” Meyers, who once cut his teeth as the co-founder of Digital Learning Interactive, outlined specific features he’d like to see in eBooks. Especially interesting were his ideas for a Notes & Highlights Browser that would enable the reader to organize and share his notes in a multitude of ways, a Visual Table of Contents (show me the chapters in order or Inspire Me), and Character Notes, where the reader gets to dig deeper into the back story of the main characters of the novel. In “Storyworlds: The New Transmedia Business Paradigm,” Gomez shared how a handful of companies are telling stories using digital media in exciting ways. If publishers listen to the likes of Gomez and Meyers and integrate just a few of the new features into their devices and content, eReading can be much more fun in the near future.
Web reach is still a numbers game
Increasingly fewer people are actually visiting web sites in a web browser. Theincreased reliance on mobile devices and social media has changed the way we “surf the web.”
In the 1990s, when companies were first dipping their toes into this ocean called the World Wide Web, they built brochure-like web sites that gave contact information and stale descriptions of their products and services. The Internet was little more than a digital yellow pages.
In the late ’90s there were enough web sites online that users started to rely on search engines to find information. The best way to get to the top of those search engines was to have relevant content. That drew visitors, and the more visitors the better. The more visitors the more you could potentially reach through email newsletters or email contact forms, or possibly even message boards. A metric was born: traffic equals audience. And the more traffic you got, the more email subscribers you got, and the more you got to visit your site frequently the more you may sell your products or services. It was a numbers game. A webmaster could predict with fairly certain accuracy how much return on investment he’d get based on how many page views, which translated to purchases, etc.
Now, folks aren’t going to traditional web sites as much. Many of the most visited and used web sites are social destinations built around communicating with friends and family in our extended networks of connections. We click and swipe and share information instantly. And let’s face it, web sites are hard to read on cell phones.
So how do business and organizations measure and predict their success on social media networks like Facebook, MySpace and Twitter? The answer hasn’t changed. It’s a numbers game.
Followers are to Twitter what unique visits is to a web site. If you grow your followers on Twitter (or friends/fans on Facebook), that should eventually (and quite often quickly) translate into a longer online reach.
When you attract followers through social media you’ve earned an audience that’s willing to ENGAGE your brand. The importance of that relationship cannot be overstated.
From there, it’s not important WHO your followers are, it’s who THEY KNOW and how they can help you deliver or influence those extended followers to be loyal to your products and services.
Why Twitter is too important to ignore
Twitter is simply a new method of communication, like the telegraph, phone, radio, and television before it. Except it’s even more powerful than those mediums. Brands that fail to recognize this, especially smaller brands and emerging brands, are missing the point of social media, and risk failure.
Social media is not a time waste. It’s a platform to engage your customers and would-be customers. Why wouldn’t you want to engage your customers?
The Twitter doubters, and there are still many, make the mistake of thinking of Twitter as a destination, instead of as a medium to reach consumers. If a brand can carefully carve a presence on Twitter and attract even a few hundred followers, they can effectively disseminate and/or solicit information.
Want examples? @JetBlue is using Twitter to communicate flight information, special fare deals, and travel tips. One of the largest cable television companies, Comcast, is providing customer service on Twitter through @comcastbill, where subscribers can ask questions about their service, billing, installation, etc. Even the NBA’s Chicago Bulls (@chicagobulls) have embraced the medium, tweeting injury report moments before game time.
If you own a business in a competitive industry and you haven’t started tweeting, you should find out how Twitter can help transform the way you interact with your customers.
Nine Free Wordpress Themes
If you’re a blogger or blogger wanna-be, you should know about Wordpress. It’s the most downloaded open-source blogging platform available. Quite simply, it rocks. But Wordpress is much more than just a blogging tool. With very little effort, Wordpress can be used as a full-fledged Content Management System (CMS).
My website, DanHolmes.com has been running on Wordpress for several years, and many of my other sites do as well. I’ve built countless sites for clients on Wordpress. I can’t say enough about how easy it is to use, and to theme.
Today I’m presenting a new Wordpress theme-set titled Vanity. The Vanity themes are all center aligned, three-column, widget-ready for Wordpress. The Vanity themes have skinny mastheads that you can customize with your own blog name and tag line, or you could drop your own masthead image in there. The themes use a “burst” background image and come in nine colors.
Please feel free to download these themes (available here in ZIP format) and use as you desire. If you enjoy the theme and find it useful, consider leaving the link back to me in the footer.
Vanity Bubbles |
Vanity Burst |
Vanity Cherry |
Vanity Dreamer |
Vanity Festival |
Vanity Plum |
Vanity Sahara |
Vanity Summertime |
Vanity Surf |
Fidrych was a rare Bird
Tucked away in the corner of the home dugout of Tiger Stadium, the Detroit City police officer spent nine innings with a towel wrapped around his head. Had he not, his ears would have rung from the chirping that came from behind him. It wasn?t a bird, but The Bird that chirped incessantly, relentlessly, and LOUDLY throughout the ballgame.
Mark Fidrych had the day off. But his famous beak didn?t.
It was July of 1976, the Summer of The Bird. When Fidrych, the 21-year old rookie, was on the mound – actually IN the game – he was the center of attention. He couldn?t help but be. The spotlight found him, and it was for the simplest of reasons. He was himself. Refreshingly so.
Back in April, before he captivated the city and ultimately the entire baseball world, Fidrych made his big league debut without expectation, without fanfare. He was just another hard-throwing right-hander, a gangly kid from New England who said things like ?Pahk yuh cah in the yahd.? He was a late addition to the roster out of spring training, a new face on an aging team that had collapsed the previous season on the way to 102 losses, including an embarrassing 19 in a row.
It was nearly a month before he made his first start, facing the Indians at Tiger Stadium on a Saturday afternoon in front of less than 15,000 fans. Less than two hours later, Fidrych was finished, having tossed nine nearly perfect innings. He set down the first 14 batters he faced before issuing a walk, and took a no-hitter into the 7th inning, before surrendering a pair of scratch singles. A groundout, a strikeout, and a flyball later, he was out of the inning, nursing a 2-1 lead. Four groundouts and a pair of strikeouts followed in the 8th and 9th, and that was it. The rookie had his first victory, a complete game two-hitter. It was the first of his league-leading 24 complete games. An unheard of total for a rookie hurler.
He quickly became ?The Bird? in large part because of his slender build (his knees almost popped out of his uniform pants, stork-like) and curly blonde locks. Less than two months later Fidrych had a 9-1 record, and adoring female fans were bribing his barber for strands of his famous mane. He was big-time. There was the cover of Time Magazine and Sports Illustrated. There was an appearance on the Donny & Marie Show and Flip Wilson. At least two biographies were published mid-season. There was the City of Detroit passing a resolution recommending that the Tigers give Fidrych a pay raise. Five years before Fernanado Valenzuela spawned Fernandomania in Los Angeles, there was Birdmania in Motown.
And there were fannies in the seats. Lots of fannies.
There?s no evidence that Tigers General Manager Jim Campbell made an effort to pitch Fidrych at Tiger Stadium as much as possible, but during one 13-start stretch at the peak of The Summer of The Bird, the right-hander made 10 starts at the Corner of Michigan and Trumbull and just three on the road. Draw your own conclusions.
Opposing teams salivated at the opportunity to have The Bird on the mound in their ballparks. In Cleveland, where they normally drew about 10,000 fans, 37,000 showed up for The Bird in July. More than 30,000 flocked to see Fidrych and the Tigers in Minnesota. Even in The Bronx, home of the Yankees, Fidrych was a draw. Oakland, which finished 11th in the 12-team league in attendance, drew more fans to see The Bird than they did for a three-game series the previous week.
Why did fans around the country clamor for The Bird? It was his refreshing antics, something rarely seen on a diamond before or since. When The Bird was between the lines, it was a Show. He didn?t take the mound, he pranced on it. He didn?t have a pitching motion, he had a rhythmic, almost hypnotic ritual. Dipping his shoulders toward the ground, bending, leaning, bobbing and weaving as he addressed the plate. And he spoke. He talked – was it to the baseball? Was he telling it where to go? What was this Harpo of the hill up to? Did he have a special relationship with the magical sphere? It seemed he did. He waved his hands in the air, gesturing the ball toward the plate, coaxing it to do his bidding. And it did. He fired 94-mile-an-hour fastballs at the knees like lasers. He carved the corners of the plate. Opposing batters shook their heads, trudged back to their bench, and wondered what had just happened. The Bird fired a four-hitter, two five-hitters. He pitched an 11-inning shutout. 11 innings!
It didn?t seem to matter who was at bat, in fact he didn?t notice, and rarely even knew who they were. He was playing catch. He was hurtling the baseball toward the catcher?s mitt, firing it to a target that he was intensely focused on. The manner in which he pitched – the talking (which was never TO the ball, but rather a dialogue for himself, to help him stay focused on his mechanics), the gesturing, the handshaking of his teammates after they made a fine play behind him, the tossing balls out of play which had resulted in a hit, because they needed to ?learn to be an out? – it was never contrived. It wasn?t for the cameras, it wasn?t to get his name on billboards. It was mop-haired Markie Fidrych, the funny looking bundle of energy from Massachussetts who knew only one way to play baseball. And the people loved it.
He started the All-Star Game. He defeated the New York Yankees on national television on Monday Night Baseball, earning praise from the curmudgeon Howard Cosell. In August, Yankees third baseman Graig Nettles went to the plate and talked to his bat, trying to psych out The Bird. Fidrych laughed, smiled that famous, infectious smile, put his arms out in a ?I can?t believe it? manner, and proceeded to strike Nettles out with another knee-high heater.
He won 19 games, led the league in ERA and complete games, and won the AL Rookie of the Year Award easily. He finished second in the Cy Young Award voting and 11th in MVP voting despite playing for a team that was hopelessly out of contention. None of the attention fazed him. He wore ragged blue jeans, drove a rusty pickup, and drank cheap beer.
The following spring he was still Mark, still that character, care-free and youthful. He was playing around in the outfield during spring training, shagging flies with his teammates. A ball sailed toward him and The Bird leaped in the air in a futile attempt to snare it. But he wasn?t a bird, and he didn?t have wings – he couldn?t fly. When he landed, he wrenched his knee. He continued to pitch, and with that bum knee, he altered his motion, tearing the muscle. But he didn?t know that then, no one did. He started the ?77 season with two losses, then strung together six Bird-like victories: crisp, two-hour games with plenty of knee-high fastballs, cheering fans, and antics on the mound. But by July his wing was dead.
He was never an effective big league pitcher again. He was always ?attempting a comeback? or ?poised to return.? He was still ?The Bird? when he pitched, but it wasn?t as glamorous when he couldn?t win like he had in the Summer of 1976. It wasn?t until the mid-1980s, after he had been released by the Tigers and failed in a comeback with his hometown Red Sox, that doctors (with new technology) recognized the severity of the damage to his famous right arm. The rotator cuff was nearly torn clean through. But by that time he was a truck driver, a farmer, a former ballplayer.
And that?s the way Mark Fidrych spent his years after baseball, and that?s the way he died on Monday. It?s tempting to see his end as tragic. But Mark Fidrych stopped being tragic decades ago, when the failed promise of his fantastic start was exceeded by that amazing rookie season. He played baseball the way he lived life – with a genuine heart and carefree abandon. He lived his post-baseball life the exact same way. His death is sad, but The Bird will always be remembered for his breath of fresh air back in the Summer of 1976.
Setting up shop in Facebook nation
I’ve been getting a lot of questions about Facebook lately. I don’t know what it is, but Facebook seems to be hitting critical mass, as even my parents are on FB now. Here’s an article we ran on the Guru Blog at Boone Digital on how to set up a Facebook page for your business.
I’ve received two good leads and one client through Facebook, and since it’s free advertising and networking, that’s gravy. My Facebook page can be accessed from the link at the top of this web site.
Social Networking websites like Facebook are increasingly becoming the place to find more clients and business partners. These websites are not just for social networking, but for networking, period. In the first month of 2009 alone, more than 20 million new users opened a Facebook account. Tapping into that market is free and fairly simple. Here?s how to create a Facebook page for your business or organization.
This tutorial assumes you have already created a Facebook account. You need a personal account before you can create a Facebook page for your business.
- Log into Facebook and scroll to the very bottom of your screen.
- Click on the Advertising link in the footer links.
- Click on the ?Pages? link (there?s a flag next to it at the top of the page in the links for the Advertising section)
- On the Facebook Pages page, click the button ?Create a Page?
- Select the type of business, enter the name, and proceed through the setup for your new page as prompted.
- Upload your logo and make sure to add your phone numbers, website address, fax number, email address, etc.
- To activate your page, you will need to ?Publish? it. There will be a link to prompt you to do this.
- Now that you?ve created the page for your business, post it to your wall on your personal Facebook page so your friends will know about it. You can even email your friends (Facebook only allows you to message 20 at a time) to encourage them to become fans of your new page.
- In the future, to manage your Facebook page for your business, a link named ?Ads and Pages? will appear on your Facebook page. To manage, you will click this link to access both areas.
- That?s it!
So you?ve created a Facebook page for your business, now what? What can it do for you? How do you utilize it to create new business?
- When other Facebook users ?fan? your page, a mini version of your logo will show up on their profiles. You can?t ?friend? people with your page, but people can ?fan? your page.
- From within your Facebook page for your business, you can send ?Updates? to your fans to tell them when you have a new product, specials, events, or anything else. This is probably the best use of the Facebook pages for your business.
- Post ?Links? on your page that go to specific pages on your company website, such as your products or services page. Or post a link to an article you wrote on your website that will garner interest.
- Create and run Facebook ads for your business and send the click-throughs to your Facebook page and ultimately to your company website. There is a cost for this, but it?s fairly affordable compared to other forms of online advertising.
There are many social networking websites, but Facebook is currently the leader in users and buzz. Don?t miss a chance to market to the hundreds of millions of users that lurk on Facebook every day.
