Zane Safrit

You can do both with Social Media

And with social media, you can do both. You can stay in your corner of the forest or world or rural Iowa...AND...go to them in their corner of their forest or world or rural Iowa.

Great quote tweeted by Dabney Porte, aka Diva Coach Dabney, and RT'd by Charmaine Hunte aka Caciamotv8s. 

This blog post is an example. We can reach each other and never leave our desks.

The significance of 11,000 followers on Twitter

A member of the Twitter community recently followed me. I received the standard email notification. I went through my criteria for engaging with new followers on Twitter. And this member passed.

And, in the process I noticed they had over 11,000 followers and were following about the same number. A few thoughts, then, crossed my mind:

• Woo-who! Somebody with that many followers found something interesting enough to add me to their huge list of followers!

• Woo-who! Something I said stood out from the stream of tweets they are reading!

• Um....what? What interested this member so much to follow one more. Why me?

I asked. No response.

Cool. Whatever. They're busy. They have 11,000 people to follow and 11,000 people to keep happy.

A week or so later Qwitter informed this same person had...quit following me.

And a few thoughts crossed my mind:

• Woo-who! Somebody with that many followers found something I tweeted annoying enough to remove me from their huge list!

• Woo-who! Something I said stood out from the stream of tweets they are reading!

• Um....what?

I didn't ask.

At the end of the day, none of it mattered.

What matters with social media are the interactions. With Twitter, it's the ReTweets, DMs and replies.

And in this instance, there was no interaction.

And in this instance, there was no significance.

BlogTalk Radio Guest: Steve Farber, author of Greater Than Yourself

Steve Farber, national best-selling author of two great, best-selling, books on leadership:  The Radical Leap and The Radical Edge books on leadership, joins me tomorrow at 1:00 PM Central, 11:00 AM, Pacific to talk about his latest book and project: Greater Than Yourself: The Ultimate Lesson of True Leadership. You can listen here.

A few things about Steve:

* He's an amazing public speaker. I think he used PowerPoint slides. I can't remember. I was too engaged with his words, his presentation, his engagement and interaction with the audience and how seamlessly and spontaneously he presented.

Of the many presentations I've seen at conferences...I'd put Steve's in the top 5. Outstanding content, useful content, inspiring content. He's mastered the content. He's fluent in its presentations. He's passionate about the topic and his purpose: helping grow true leaders.

* He's an excellent author. I read a lot of books. But I rarely read one straight through. Greater Than Yourself was a book that...ok, started for me a bit slow (that may be from my high expectations) but within a few pages I was compelled to finish the book. I don't do compell well. But I was compelled by the story and the principles shared.

Ultimately, his book surpassed my expectations. And it's more than theory illustrated with a great story. Steve offers tips and resources to help us  become Greater Than Yourself.

I hope you join us at this link, tomorrow at 1:00 PM Central, 11:00 AM Pacific.

 

Small Businesses: Smallness Works to Our Advantage

With us, a client is considered a large fish in a small pond. So these accounts that we're competing with nationally, I think we have more of a personalized approach, and specifically they get attention from myself as the owner, management staff that average 12 years of experience, collectors that average four years. At a lot of these larger agencies, just because of sheer volume, they don't have these numbers. Being a big fish in a small pond is an advantage to our clients. - Small Business Salon, Frank Cann Collection Agency

This is a great interview with the owner of a small business. He showcases the competitive advantage of every small business. That's the ability to deliver a personalized approach...with the attention of the owner, management and experienced employees.

Personalized attention, from experienced professionals, passionate about their business...is the one competitive advantage every small business can deliver.

This advantage is critical as the pace of change in the global economy increases. This pace of change isn't an abstraction. It gets very meaningful when you consider industries and their companies move faster through the standard stages of development from innovative, through growth through maturity and into commodity-hell.

However, through all these phases the one competitive advantage that remains constant, and constantly in the favor of small business, is the ability and the desire to deliver.... personalized approach...with the attention of the owner, management and experienced employees.

Forget this theory I riffed on here. Read the interview with this small business owner. Then see if it applies to you and your small business. It should.

Immediate, specific, rewards add the most meaning

Tim Berry posts a great reminder at US News & World Report on How to Treat Model Employees.

When a customer reports beyond-the-call-of-duty action by one of your employees, then reward that employee immediately and specifically. Don't wait for the annual review.

• Reward the employee right then.

• Be specific for why you are rewarding them. Tell them how you heard about their greatness, what it meant to that customer and what all of it meant to you. Connect the dots.

• Offer a specific, exceptional, reward. Don't lose the significance of the reward within their payroll, net of taxes...Make the reward exceptional. And doing so, you create a ceremony. Ceremonies signify important events. Ceremonies serve to celebrate these significant events.

I post this today, Tuesday, when I normally post about small business strategies, tactics, issues, etc. Here's why: the dots of a small business remain connected. Communication ties  and relationships and the connections of everyone to the results for their company are strong. Immediate decisions are easy to implement in a small company. And their impact is felt throughout your company.

A decision like this, an immediate and specific reward, connected to the activity and result that inspired, leverages all those dots and their connections that have created your small business.

It's an incredibly meaningful action to take. And it requires little investment or disruption.

It does create a cause for celebration. And that's something every small business should be able to do, daily.

Where's the real competition in our healthcare system?

Creating real competition among health care suppliers is going to be the hard part of health reform, and necessary if insurers are to retain their place in the system. - Dana Blankenhorn, ZDNET healthcare blog

I agree. And with the advantage of hindsight, I'd expand that sentence to read:

Creating real competition among health care suppliers and between the insurance companies is going to be the hard part of health reform, and necessary if any of them are to retain their place in the system.

Where is the real competition in our healthcare industry that designates it both as a free-market, capitalistic, system (and not an industry run oligarchy) that keep it lean, responsive, to the needs of the consumers?

Personal Responsibility, Smoking and Government Intervention

My wife and I were riding down the road this weekend. The driver was happily delivering nicotine by inhaling smoke into the system, his body, that craves it. His lungs were losing their ability to deliver life-giving oxygen and removing carbon dioxide from his bloodstream. His heart was losing its ability to pump the blood through his lungs and throughout his body.

And on the driver's rearview mirror hung...a handicap parking badge.

A few weeks back, my father-in-law was yelling from the back seat I don't want the government in my life... when discussing the idea of raising taxes to stop smoking. (Note: he doesn't smoke.)

I agreed. I don't want them dictating morality or personal choices for me either.  That's always the first step towards controlling a population.

However, I don't want to suffer from their choice in the form of 2nd-hand smoke nor higher healthcare costs from those whose health and inability to pay for their care, is passed on to me and mine in the form of higher health insurance costs and higher procedure costs.

And this single driver, minding his own business, out for  a pleasant drive listening to a few tunes and puffing on a cig and looking for a handicap parking spot because his cardio-capacity no longer allows him to walk long distances...illustrates in a personal way this conversation of healthcare costs, personal responsibility and goverment intervention.

I'm a live-and -let-live guy. I grew up in NC where tobacco at that time was spoken of in almost reverential tones. I don't really care whether people smoke or not, can't walk from the far end of the mall or not as a result, drink till their liver turns to stone, whatever.

As long as they do it on their time, and their dime, not on me and mine.

I don't want them to put us in a position of needing the government to test the  waters of telling me what I can and can't do.

I don't want to be put in a discussion of them vs us, I'm the bad guy because I'm raising expectations or accountability.  Yet, here I am.

Be responsible for our health. Then we don't have to suffer from either healthcare boogeyman czar, the current one in the form of the insurance companies or the unknown one in the form of federal government czar.

We waved at the driver. He waved back...without dropping the cigarette.

Here's two view on this from CNN's iReport site:

For taxing the hell out of cigarettes



You disgust me...Obviously not in favor of taxing tobacco use.

Healthcare Costs: 9 Reasons They're High and Getting Higher

From The System MD blog post, Why are Health Care Costs So High?

In 1960, the USA spent 5.1% of GDP on healthcare and last year it was over 15%. Why are health care costs skyrocketing? Where is all that money going?

There are nine reasons for escalating health care costs.

1. New value (new medical capabilities) resulting in
2. More people who live longer.
3. Inefficiency
4. Regulatory compliance and unfunded mandates
5. Perverse incentives
6. Defensive medicine
7. Adverse outcomes and errors
8. Profits taken out of healthcare (insurance and medical malpractice)
9. Fraud and embezzlement

No percentages are given because the only information available are WAGs (wild-assed guesses). To state that more clearly, the true costs of anything in healthcare – hernia repair; HIPAA compliance; medical errors – are unknown. All of the nine cost categories are real, significant, but not precisely quantified.

To the proponents of our free-market healthcare system....one of the core principles of a free-market, capitalistic, system is understanding costs. Costs determine prices; prices determine supply and demand ratios. Here, our free-market system and the companies who both benefit from and hide behind that label, can't even identify true costs.

Can deductive reasoning bring us a solution:

healthcare costs are rising
healthcare costs are not precisely quantified
(Therefore,) healthcare costs are rising because they are not precisely quantified.

The solution then is to do the opposite of that which is causing the problem: quantify these nine categories of healthcare costs, as they're listed above.

Seems pretty clear.

All those detective shows on TV always tell you to follow the money. It's no different here. There's a reason healthcare costs aren't quantified. Somebody benefits from that status. And it seems it's neither doctors, nor nurses, nor patients.

And those that make money have a vested interest. They have a vested interest in keeping these costs...obfuscated.

Therein lies the rub. Our free-market system of healthcare is more like a nationalized industry where inefficiencies are hidden to protect the vested interests of those who've created them and whose prestige and access to perks and power rests on hiding their inefficiencies.

Failure: Rush Towards It

Hurry up. Your next chance for success rests on the other side of failure. Like Todd says: rush through your failure. Your success awaits you.

Inspirational tweet from Todd R. Jordan aka Tojosan.

It's our attitude, silly

For our success, it's our attitude that determines it.

Inspirational quote from Raiha

Branson Talks About Failure with Seth

Richard Branson talks with Seth Godin about Learning from Failure.

...not to take failure too seriously. It happens to something like 80% of businesses and that's a lot of people. And some people take that really badly. The important thing is to learn from it. And come back and start again.

...just fall forward.

 

We're going to fall. Our knees will get scraped. We'll get embarassed. But, just fall forward.

If we do that, then we can fall over that obstacle only once.

We'll keep moving towards our goal. Our audience will see we're moving towards them, getting back up, dusting ourselves off, rubbing our knees, moving towards them. They'll appreciate it. (And if they don't we'll know we're racing towards the wrong audience and that's VERY helpful to know. And know, fast, too! Nothing worse than getting beat up while we stumble towards the wrong audience.)

We're going to fall. Don't be afraid. Just fall forward.

Inspirational tweet from Patrick Stuart.

Note: Did you know Andy Garcia was so wise? Was he great as the casino owner in Ocean's 11?

You've never tried something new?

And exactly, how DO you account for your growth from childhood to adolescent to adulthood?

And exactly, how DO you account then for your company's growth from startup through first sales through rapid growth through maturity, cash-cow, profit maximizing phase?

And in respects, our economy reflects the reluctance of mature brands to...try something new. Make a mistake. Stumble. And find a new market or product or customer base or talent pool or allow their talented employees to lead with their own inititiatives.

The irony is that's the biggest mistake. Risky is the new safe; safe is the new risky. Avoiding mistakes is the biggest mistake; making mistakes is the path forward.

Inevitably, there are literalists in the crowd.  I'm not saying hey, you can grow your company faster if you do lots of stupid stuff. Just pick some easy mistakes to make and presto...you're a global brand by tomorrow.  Yippee-Skippee. You can't move forward without mistakes. The faster you move forward it's likely the faster you'll make mistakes. So go ahead...get moving, start making mistakes.

Inspirational tweet from Gene Marshall.

To Innovate Regularly You Need Actionable Insights

Actionable insights.

What is it? It's what every business wants. That's what the top performers in any industry generate consistently. Top performers? Other terms may be sustainable businesses, growing businesses, great businesses.

What is it? The ability to make informed choices about which new products are likely to be hits with consumers...

How do you get it? Develop comprehensive, systematic, sources of information. (Yawn. Sounds like b-school blather you memorize for exams.)

How do you get it? Talk to your customers, prospects and employees. Ask them, listen to, what they want and what they buy. Ask. Everybody's motivated to help in the process of having what they want.

How you ask and what resources you use to ask and listen are up to you and your company size. But, regardless the size of your company or your budget for developing actionable insights...there's nothing keeping you as a leader or those in your company from picking up the phone and asking a customer. Or ask your employee or colleagues.

•  What are people buying?
• What are they saying?
• What do they like?
• What's the biggest source of happiness for our customers?
• For you in your role with the company.
• What's the biggest obstacle to your happiness with our company, as customer or employee?

Bottomline, don't wait. Ask someone today. And keep asking everyday. You'll find better, more accurate, more comprehensive sources of information.

But you won't until you start asking. Start asking today. Get some actionable insights and be the top performer in your industry. No one's holding you back, but you.

More case studies and profiles of bigger companies and their approaches to developing actionable insights can be found at Target Practice.

Nine Ways to Make Innovation...a Permanent Process

Ok. They're not my ways. They're Kare Anderson's Nine Joyful Steps. She writes at Say It Better.

She says it better in her post Nine Joyful Steps to Making a Change Permanent.

Now, what ifyou take those Nine Steps...and apply it to an innovation challenge at work? If change begins within, then I think it's possible.

Scenario: You're charged with ...innovation, or leading an innovation, or finding a new solution. What if you could take those Nine Joyful Steps...and walk them, together, with your team? 

The first challenge may be getting past that term Joyful. Joyful and work; Joyful and yet another challenge added to your plate, with limited budget and people who are reluctant recruits, some maybe lugging around that baggage they've carried with 'em since their first work experience. (That's not us, right? ) are just asynchronous. Right? But, that's our choice right? (I've never had anyone force me to make my day miserable. I usually am first to volunteer for that assignment. How 'bout you?) What if we chose to make the process of change...joyful? That would be innovative.

So...what if? What if we applied these Nine Steps to this innovative challenge we face?

1. Find Your True North to Become More Joyful


What's your purpose? Begin with the end in mind according to Stephen Covey. Or What's your reasonable aspiration according to Erika Andersen in her book, Being Strategic.

But it's more than what's your purpose. Why does that purpose matter? Why does anyone on your team care about this purpose? Hard to experience joy in marching towards a goal which has no meaning.

What's your purpose and why's it matter. And it better, too.

2. Picture Being Your Hero


Going back to Ms. Andersen, picture your team's reasonable aspiration, your True North.

• What's it look like when you lead your team there?
• What will you look like, feel like, experience when you reach your reasonable aspiration, your true north, your group's purpose?
• Why is it that meaningful to you?
• Why will that make you proud, your family proud, your team proud?

Maybe, picture being THEIR hero.

Picture them being YOUR heroes.

What's those pictures look like, what's it feel like to see them as your hero?

3. Use Your Internal Homing Device


Compelling targets have a magnetic force that pulls you towards them.

See first point. That's why you have to be very clear on that first point. Where's your True North which brings the greatest joy. We all gravitate towards fields of greater pleasure, joy, satisfaction, rewards.

Create a purpose which includes high doses of these and your team will experience that magnetic force pulling you toward it. Magnetic trains run really fast, don't they? Ok, then.

4. Surround Yourself With Mutual Support Systems


Yeah, baby. You gonna need them, too.

Change is wonderful, it's how we survive and thrive and grow. And the experience is beautiful when it's our change at our pace.

But...be the leader. Be the point person for delivering change to your team members whose comfort levels with change varies person-to-person and sometimes day-to-day, whose ability to embrace your vision of True North varies as much...and then add a little pressure like profit goals or a rapidly changing marketplace or deadlines...throw in a pinch of family challenges like child-care, family illness, etc...and you become the lightning rod for a whole lot of well...that baggage I mentioned earlier...may find a convenient dumping point on your shoulders. Often, that's not deliberate or conscious on the member's part. They can't help it in the moment. And it's part of your job description.

Oh. And then there's those others who don't want to see your team succeed. Your success will inflict change on them with none of the rewards your group will receive. Granted, the hard work isn't seen by this group. 

Surround yourself with mutual support systems. That's you, personally, AND, your team.

That support system MUST include senior management. You have to have their buy-in, support, explicit and implicit. They have to have your back and your front, too.

5. Involve Your Senses
 to Stay on Your Path

Write it down. Write it all over your workplaces, your wikis, your whiteboards, sticky notes, your car...your True North. Say it out loud. Make a rally cry. Create a chant. Sing it in a song.

Tell everyone, as appropriate. Definitely tell your support groups. These are the groups you can tell when you fail, too. In that process comes understanding and the learning process that makes failing so beneficial. Painful, yes. But, beneficial too.

6. Notice Where You Get Detoured

This point is a pleasant surprise. Detours can happen every day. Every day around 3-ish, I run out of gas. I recognize that, now.

I take a little time then to:

• walk away from my desk and computer
• walk the halls
• go outside
• go to the gym (Just means I work later.)
• tidy my desk
• organize for tomorrow.

And, usually, in those steps I find the path to get back on track.

Each of your team members is going to have the same daily challenge. Each will manifest differently.

Work with them to find their detour points and a plan to find their way back to your road. Yours being the one you both share. One way to work with them is to share yours: your detour point and how you get back on path. That leads by example and adds an element of trust and transparency.

7. Confirm That You're on the Right Path


Ask the group. Point North. Then, ask them:

• Are we on our way?
• Does everyone understand where we are, where we're not?
• Do we have the right resources?
• Is there any obstacle now in our path?

8. Savor the Practice and the Goal


Absolutely. Strengthen the ties within your group by doing this step.

Point out:

• how unique they are to accept this challenge
• how it sets them apart
• what's being learned
• what's being accomplished
• the obstacles you've overcome together
• the opponents you stared down
• what happened
• what didn't happen. 

Create and share these stories. They are the ties that bind.

Before truly great innovations are born, strong ties are needed. 

9. Plan a Grand Reward


You've earned it. Reward yourself and your team. The reward and its bestowal are the crowning ceremony for your group. It caps off the accomplishment. It creates the story you'll tell and the entire company will tell. 

Make sure the grand reward and its ceremony are clearly described with the description of your True North. 

SUMMARY

Now. I've had fun connecting these  Nine Joyful Steps to Making a Change Permanent to my meme today of innovation, how to do it, what its benefits can be.  Thank you, Kare, one more time. A great post like yours makes it easy to see the common threads as they may apply in different areas.

But, let's go back to the premise of this post. You've been assigned to lead R&D or an innovation initiative or a restructuring. 

And you're nervous. Stage-fright.

Come back to Kare's post. Go through all nine steps for yourself.

Why?

Well, change comes from within. For you to bring change to your group, to lead them in this process of change your organization needs, you'll need to bring permanent change to yourself, first. That enables you to be the right leader, an inspiring leader, and lead by example.

Following the steps in Kare's post,  Nine Joyful Steps to Making a Change Permanent can help start your group's new challenge on the right footing, so to speak. And that can help make the process for your team members...joyful, too. And who wouldn't want to be part of that team?

Why creativity/innovation (as we know it) is a myth

There's a great post at The HR Capitalist blog titled Why The Concept of Creativity is a Myth.

And he quotes from Geoff Colvin's book, Talent is Overrated: What Separates World-Class Performers From Everybody Else.

It's easier for most of us to believe that a great tennis player achieved his success through the principles of deliberate practice than to believe that a great inventor got there that way.  But the evidence shows that the most important factor in their high achievement is the same for both.

I'm not as smart as Mr. Colvin, but there's too many quotes I've seen in my research on failure that supports this. So many world-class performers in politics and science, arts and humanities, remind us that their overnight success or brilliantly simple solution that's so obvious to us all arose from their hours and years and decades of dedicated work and the many failures they experienced in the process.

And let's forget about those world-class performers...let's talk about us. There are systematic methodologies that require attention to their details and steps that can bring results for our goals that make us world-class for a day, ourselves or with our team.

My two favorite approaches are contained in these books:

Being Strategic, by Erika Andersen

Jack's Notebook: a business novel about creative problem-solving, by Gregg Fraley.

They've kindly shared their time with me in an interview on my BlogTalk Radio show. Below are links to listen in streaming mode their thoughts on creativity, problem-solving, innovation.

Erika Andersen

Gregg Fraley

Both books are smartly written, with engaging stories that illustrate their methodologies and their methodologies are concise, immediately usable, immediately productive for any size innovation challenge you face or goal you you strive for.

Trickle-up Innovations: radical and inexpensive

That's a good combination for developing new products, innovative products. Radical and inexpensive.

Radical is...an attention getter, a disruptor, a first-entry into a market, maybe a market definer. It's WOM-worthy, generates lots of free buzz. And radical's unique. Unique justifies fatter pricing, too.

Radical is also...failures. Plenty of them. Sometimes highly visible like a meteor across the sky. But, they're...

Inexpensive. So you can afford lots of failures, faster failures, to find the radical, distruptive, unique, market-defining, fat margined innovative product.

Trickle up innovations are where ideas take shape in developing markets first, then work their way back to the West. "If it's radically innovative and reduces costs, it's going to get looked at and will accelerate," says Michael Chui, the consultant doing heavy lifting on a McKinsey Technology Initiative. How Innovations Trickle-Up from Developing Nations, Fast Company.

This article points out what should be the obvious. Credit markets are squeezing existing, mature, companies and industries. R&D is often the first expense cut.  The irony is that at the time a company most needs innovation, it's least able to afford it.

But, in developing nations, the high costs of innovation are missing. Also missing are the existing infrastructures with vested interests that can stifle innovation's threat to their order. And, together, very low costs and very few obstacles....we see more and more companies like Nokia working in developing countries to debut a free classifieds service (think a mobile-phone version of Craigslist), complete with a first-ever feature that lets people shop using voice commands to browse for goods.

They're going straight to mobile. Screw the web version, as no one's used it. If no one's used it, then no habits must be unlearned by consumers. (Consumer habits are a big part of existing infrastructure that impeded innovation.) And no investments by companies in the web version need be discussed.

Two things.

1. Look for more trickle-up innovations.
2. Brace ourselves for more disruptions in how we do business and live our lives as these reach our shores and before we can renew our own pace of innovation.

 

Innovation can save advertising?

...it is time to see micro-communities of related sites band together and create advertising experiences across domains.  It is time to create advertorial opportunities that actually provide value to the reader.  It is time to try things that haven’t been done before. Recessions lead to innovation.

Opportunities that actually provide value to the reader....things that haven't been done before.

There's a reason those ideas flow together when we talk about advertising.

I've always marveled at the creativity and humor and smarts in ads. Incredibly bright and smart and talented people. Great sales skills, too.

But at the end of the day, the value they create seems mostly for their agencies and their book of campaigns. Constantly building their book of campaigns is necessary to stem the constant churn of clients who are dazzled by the sizzle and disgusted by the steak that's served with their campaigns. Then comes the check. And,  there goes the client.

What if...they sat down with a client and said...what if we give your readers, your audience, your customers...something of value, something never done before, something...worth talking about, something that adds value for their lives, that inspires them to put their reputation on the line for your brand...? Do you have that something now? Ok. How can we help you create it?

You're gonna get in the trenches with the company and their business model and the execution of it. All the headaches of operations and delivery and honoring brand promises...actually being able to deliver on the promises in your ads.

That's the foundation for adding value for their clients.

Sure, it's a tougher assignment. And it's a longer assignment. It's one that adds value for your client.  But consider how many resources must be spent in constantly stemming the client churn. Then consider redirecting them to identifying Opportunities that actually provide value...things that haven't been done before. See which offers a lasting business model for you and your client, they and theirs.

BlogTalk Radio Guests in April

Some brilliant, generous, helpful, experts and national best-selling authors will share their time and resources and knowledge as guests on my BlogTalk Radio show in April.

Here's the lineup of each guest with the date and times for their shows. Each guest here is hyperlinked to their show's url where you can listen in streaming mode, live or archived:

* Steve Farber, author of Greater Than Yourself: The Ultimate Lesson of True Leadership. - April 1, 1:00 PM Central, 11:00 AM Pacific.

Steve Farber will discuss how the goal of a genuine leader is to help others — teammates, employees, and colleagues—become more capable, confident, and accomplished than they are themselves.

Steve's written best-selling books The Radical Leap and the Radical Edge and is a nationally-recognized expert and sought-after speaker and consultant on leadership.

Note: I've read all of his books. They're excellent. Greater Than Yourself may be his best. He's generously shared a guest post here:

* Evan Rosen, author of The Culture of Collaboration: Maximizing Time, Talent and Tools to Maximize Value in the Global Economy. - April 2, 1:00 PM Central, 11:00 AM Pacific

Evan will discuss the cultural shift happening now that is rapidly changing how we work, learn and interact. He'll share some of his insights into how we can use this shift to maximize time, talent and tools to create value in the global economy.

I first read this book 18 months ago. It's stayed close at hand ever since. Finally, through Twitter, I think, we reconnected. Now, we get to talk in person. And you can join and listen. Website: Culture of Collaboration.

* Jack Schultz, from BoomTown USA blog and BoomTown Institute - April 8, 9:30 AM Central.

Jack Schultz is the author of BoomTown USA: 7 1/2 Keys to Big Success in Small Towns and the blog Boomtown USA. His purpose with his Boomtown Institute is to provoke innovative thinking throughout rural America to spur out-of-the-box thinking to revitalize, reinvent communities into a destination, a place to work, a place called home.

I've been a fan of his blog and his passion and vision for small towns for a long time. Now, we finally can have cup of coffee, together, digitally, and talk about how great small towns can be.

* Mark Silver, Heart of Business

When you want to make a difference and need to make a profit, Mark Silver is the expert. Mark shows how business owners and leaders can both drive profits and expand the hearts of all those touched by your company and brand.

Mark, with his Heart of Business approach to success, is one of the hidden gems in the business world. I met him a few years ago when he shared his book, Unveiling the Heart of Business, with me. We've been friends ever since. Business experts and friends with the heart of Mark, with his wisdom and inspiration and integrity, are the treasures in your life. And he's brought riches, for their hearts and their wallets, to his clients around the country.

* Fred Gratzon, author of The Lazy Way to Success: the happy, healthy, wealth-generating way to success. - April 22, 11:00 AM, Central.

Fred shares the happy, healthy, wealth-generating alternative to hard work. Bertrand Russell once said "The morality of hard work is the morality of slaves." Fred shares his tips for success he learned with his two successful startup companies that will bring us freedom, happiness and success.

Watch his movie. 

* Kare Anderson, author, speaker, consultant and founder of the Say It Better Center.

Kare's the publisher of the international "Say It Better" (tm) E-Zine. She's the author of several books, including Getting What You Want (in 19 languages), Resolving Conflict Sooner, Walk Your Talk: Grow Your Business Faster Through Successful Cross-Promotional Partnerships, and Beauty Inside Out.

She's a trailblazer in media, business and politics. She's a former journalist for the Wall Street Journal, Le Monde, UPI, and other newspapers. Kare was Pacific Telesis' first Wideband and Cable Division Director, a co-founder of a national public affairs and advertising firm and is now president of the Communicate to Center.

I have to tell this story, briefly. Through the serendipity (her choice of words) of the blogosphere, Kare left a very kind comment at one of my posts.  It was simple, concise. But it showed a real clarity and kindness and precision in her thinking. It helped that her sentiment was positive. But, still, I was compelled to see who was this person. I visited her blog, Moving From Me to We. And there was even more of the same! Then I found she has another blog, Say It Better, with more!

And a few of her posts inspired me to connect some ideas rumbling around. And fortunately, she approved of my collaboration with her posts. And, she kindly agreed to share her time with an interview.  You'll really enjoy her!

* Brent Leary, Co-Founder and Partner with CRM Essentials, LLC.

Brent is focused on small and mid-size enterprises. CRM Essentials has trained thousands of business people on the benefits and best practices of implementing CRM strategies and technologies.

CRM Essentials is the creator of the CRM2 Index, a quarterly survey of women and minority owned businesses gauging CRM awareness and adoption.

And he writes regularly and smartly at Brent's Social CRM Blog.

(Note: The url for the last three shows links to my home page on BlogTalk Radio.  The URL specific for these shows wasn't available at the time of this post's writing.)

Social Media Links: Week of March 19 - 25

* How to Tweet Your Way Out of A Job

The irony of the twittersphere mob turning on one of its own for being...open and transparent... reinforces my impression that the twittersphere (me, included) too often suffers from its own high-school- popularity-contest mentality.

Open and transparent is ok, even demanded, by the mob at the cocktail party that never ends: twitter.

Except, when one member really buys in to being...open and transparent.

What? You're open and transparent? You don't really believe that crap, do you? That's how you lose your job....!

I offered a longer response at Dan Thornton's post, The Dumbest Tweet Ever..., at his blog 140Char.  There's a good conversation there on this point. And Dan offers some good counter points.

But, there's no halfway point for open and transparent in a relationship. You either are, or you're not.

Agony is where we are now: in the middle. We're all shocked, shocked I say, to see in print what we say in casual conversation.

The line between personal and professional lives fades more every day. (It's too late to ponder the goodness of this movement.)

But, hiring execs and prospects need to understand we're going to be privy to the same conversations they have with their peers and realize...in many cases our dialogue is much the same in its brilliance, compassion, creativity and otherwise.

Maybe, eventually, that will be a good thing. Maybe, eventually, some of our own excesses will come to light and we'll stop them. Peer pressure does have its uses, when peer pressure is open and transparent for all to see.

Then, we can focus on finding commonalities and solutions and free ourselves from wondering about a prospect's enthusiasm for a job if he questions the hell that's known as the 405 around San Jose.

Link is from ...any number of sources, naturally on Twitter. I didn't note the original one.

Post is from I'm not actually a geek.

* Will Google's Purity Pay-Off?

The time is December, 2000. A simpler time, no doubt.

 Gasp: Google's garnered 25% of the search-market. Kleiner-Perkins-Caufield has just invested a whopping $25 million in a company that has...NO REVENUES!

There's no banner ads on its home page, either! (For the love of all that is right in the world...you got to have banner ads on your home page, covering them...everywhere....!)

And BusinessWeek asks:

But how will Google ever make money? There's the rub. The company's adamant refusal to use banner or other graphical ads eliminates what is the most lucrative income stream for rival search engines. Although Google does have other revenue sources, such as licensing and text-based advertisements, the privately held company's business remains limited compared with its competitors'.

Limited. That's such a funny word to use today to describe Google's business model.

Ah....it's always fun to look back at those good old days with the benefit of hindsight!

Ok. In all fairness to BW, who saw then what Google would become, now?  Did even the founders see that? Maybe. Probably.  To some extent, maybe. To some extent.

And, in 2000, a company whose business model was limited compared to its behemoth competitors was a fair target for the question: How will they make money?

Blogs are thought by many to be the foundation of your social media campaign. I'm one of them.

But, what's the foundation for blogs, many of them...free to their users? Google adwords, maybe? Maybe.

Back to the question: did Google's founders see then what Google today is, including its revenues? Maybe. Maybe at that point, they were focused on...what they offered, their purpose.

Article's at BusinessWeek, from 2000.

Link from copeterson.

* Even Facebook Employees Hate the New Design

Um. So, if your customers hate your design and use your new design to blast it and you...and your employees hate the design enough to run a guerrilla media campaign at your expense...who then are you serving with this new design?

Granted, the tone of that rhetorical question implies...your answer will be self-serving: Your new design serves only you. And if you're truly omniscient and omnipotent outside your boardroom then...you are the embodiment of enlightened self-interest. And any decision that serves you serves the collective. So, of course, a truly disruptive (today's cool word for visionary...) company such as yours need not ask their customers, much less their employees for direction.

Still...

Someone, some company, smart enough to build and grow FB into what it is today must have a better answer than that. So, share it with us and we'll share it with others who'll use it to grow their company and tout your paradigm as the foundation of their success. And they'll tout it on FB as well as on your competitors...like Twitter.

We're all in this together. Help us reach our goals. We'll help each other, and you, reach our goals.

That's truly the definition of enlightened self-interest, isn't it? It's definitely one definition, I think.

Link from BenMcConnell.

Article at Gawker's ValleyWag.

* The UK Wants Your Twitter Chatter Under Surveillance.

I confess. The headline here is alarming. No matter how many times I remember that twitter chat is digital, the headline still sends shivers down me spine, laddie.

Our phones and internet traffic are digital,too. Digital communications of all types, phone-data-chat-internet-social media-blogs-etc,  share the same fiber-optic cables.

I seem to remember that all digital traffic is being shared by most, if not all, of our telecom providers with our government.Wasn't there a story about that this summer...?

And I have a hard time believing that a government likes ours, or what the UK's appear to be, would siphon off twitter traffic onto a separate server and say...don't look here, at this. 

Let's just assume this is a false-flag, straw-man, issue of the we're-already-doing-that-now kind. The cynic in me now raises his head and says They're just softening ye up for the reality. The more times we hear this story, the more comfortable we are with its reality.

It's the corollary of Tell a lie often enough and people will believe it. Here, it's Tell a truth often enough and people will accept it.

Or, Rattle our chains loud enough, long enough and in our faces...and we'll come to love the sound for the security and convenience it provides. (Don't forget companies have been watching our traffic for years, now. Cookies is such a  quaint a term for spying on us.)

Link from RobMcNealy.

Article at Inquistr

* SalesForce Pairs Up with Twitter.

See? Companies are watching what we discuss. And it's right out in front of us. And this is how Twitter makes money...And we say, yes, please can we have some more, please? You're so smart to integrate commercial spying into your business model! We, includes me: I love Twitter. (I can't wait to hear a salesman pitch me based on my tweets...)

Link from ScottAllen.

* Twitter Drives Traffic to Blogs and Social Media not to Retail Sites.

Aha! We're in control of this conversation....We use twitter for us, not them. For now, anyway.

Link from Kbraga

Article at ReadWriteWeb

* Advertising's Apocalypse Now Moment

Amid 23% population growth in the past two decades, U.S. newspaper circulation has dropped 20% -- one reason your morning paper, downsized every which way, is no match for a stiff breeze. Craigslist, siphoning off $7 billion worth of classifieds, is another...

As for The Wall Street Journal, nobody knew when Rupert Murdoch plunked down $5.5 billion for a $3.5 billion paper last year whether he was a genius of synergy and valuation or a sucker. The recession obscures the answer, but last month News Corp. declared a write-down of $8.4 billion in assets -- about 40% of it attributed by Wall Street analysts to the Journal deal. Oops.

Disclaimer: Sam Zell's acquisition of the Tribune Media empire is discussed, also. I just take a little pleasure in sharing Rupert's...story.

So, it's an odd dynamic:

• Advertising revenues are plummeting.
• Twitter and social media sites are replacing traditional media as news sources.
• And they (social media), we, are not referring our friends to retail sites.

So...how do businesses attract clients online?

What about...wait for it...word-of-mouth?

What if...a retail site offered its audience, viewers/commenters/members/customers...something truly unique and amazing and worthy of putting our reputations at risk to tell our friends and neighbors to visit, maybe even buy their products?

And what if these media properties did what no one else can do: 

• Investigative reporting! ( The Sunday lifestyle section just doesn't draw like it once did.)

As opposed to offering press release and pr-sponsored puff-piece profiles and party-sponsored talking points as ...news, why not do what you once did best: investigative journalism.

Why not fulfill your responsibility as a 4th estate? Investigate lies and corruption, not propagate lies and corruption.

I guarantee the first media enterprise to put that as their lead resource...and can invite their readers to participate in investigative reporting (I'm not talking about iReport stories like thunderstorms and flooded drain sewers...)...that media will see its revenues and audience explode in growth.

There's so much material and so much hunger (audience, people!) for it, the truth, to be exposed. Are you listening, CNBC? 

Article's at Ad Age. 

Link from Yvonne Divita.

I gotta go. Thanks for reading.