We're pleased to announce that you can now integrate your YouTube videos into BusinessCard2 within seconds. BusinessCard2 has merged the power of YouTube to make video a reality in your card. Use the Video tool to introduce yourself, broadcast information about your products and services, and provide on-demand demo's to educate your prospects. The possibilities are limitless.
My friend Dan Schawbel, founder of Personal Branding Blog, put on his futurist cap and wrote the post, "The Personal Brand Marketplace of the Future. Are Your Prepared?" In this, Dan made the point that we rate products and companies, so why not rate people? That is a good question Dan, so let me tell you why I think we don't rate people:
In 2007 we launched a little web product based on an algorithm we wrote here at Workface Inc. We never marketed it, and it never took off, but we for a very short period of time allowed for the rating of people. The service is called PeopleTrusted. You can find a link to the people rating site here.
The reason a company like ours has such a problem ranking people isn't the fact that it would provide value to some other person or group of people, it's the CYA problem (CYA as in cover your ass). Rating or ranking a specific person (vs. a company or product) has substantial (libel) defamation of character implications. The nature of providing a service like this comes down to the courts historical preference in protecting a person's name and status, and awarding damages for those who inflict any harm on their name/status/personal character.
I agree with Dan that having nothing but positive fluff out there doesn't help other people in making decisions. In most cases when you rate a vendor in Ebay, you're really talking about your buying experience with that person, but Ebay can avoid the slander and defamation by calling them a vendor.
There have been many recent additions to BusinessCard2. Here is what's new:
BusinessCard2 is the new way to connect with customers. Because of great users like you, BusinessCard2 has recently been covered on CNN.com, Wall Street Journal Online and Dow Jones MarketWatch. We are continually improving BusinessCard2 to make it an even more powerful tool for managing the way customers see you online.
You have many choices for your online marketing. Thank you for choosing BusinessCard2.
Have you ever heard of the word Weltschmerz? It's an interesting word for which I've not been able to find an English equivalent (synonym). Weltschmerz comes from the German for "world pain" and is a general sadness over the state of the world. If you're still curious about the word, you can find a little more at Wikipedia.
A combination of H1N1, macro recessionary economic conditions, and fashionably pessimistic friends have many of us walking around in the fog of Weltschmerz. And who can blame us? A person only goes to the moon for the first time once, right? What is the next milestone in human achievement we can aspire to? We all need something to put on a pedestal; that special something to give us hope that new opportunities exist right around the corner.
I'm pleased to say that over the last several days I finally shed myself of my Weltschmerz. No, this didn't happen by me being sick and tired of being sick and tired. Rather, I discovered that the Kryptonite of Weltschmerz is connecting with people at a hyper personal level. This singular act of understanding the human condition that governs other peoples' lives makes the world seem a more joyous place to live in. It is egoless empathy that enables us to replace the "world pain" with shared optimism. When you can recognize the promise in those around you, it makes groundswell plausible.
I'm seeing the slow but steady adjustment in people's demeanor. People are starting to build (or at least talk about building) their own businesses. I'm hearing whispers of a slow, but noticeable uptick in commercial activity. I'm hearing people talk more about the things they cherish (rather than those they renounce). I'm witnessing incredible technological advances in computing, environmental awareness, and medicine. What an incredible time to be alive!
Dunbar's Number and Social Rules as they Apply to Business, Online
For those of you who know the BusinessCard2 team, you've heard us talk at almost every occasion about the Rule of 150 (also know as Dunbar's Number). In short, the Rule of 150 suggests that we are limited in our ability to manage our social networks as a rule of social nature. Although the Rule of 150 certainly applies in the authentic world, we also feel strongly that this law applies to social networking on the web as well.
See, in both the real and virtual worlds, you can accumulate as many friends/contacts as you wish, but there are limitations to managing all those relationships. Your time, your channel of communication, your frequency often means that you're simply not able to maintain some of these relationships. Even under artificial methods (such as automated emails or responses) it is nearly impossible to fulfill the fine details of actually maintaining the relationship.
In both the real and virtual worlds, we have people coming in and out of our 150 circle all the time. Some stay in the circle and never leave (a spouse, best friend, etc.) and some enter and leave quickly (a teammate on your softball team) and some are there, leave, and come back again. For every person who enters your circle of 150, there is an equal and opposite reaction with someone leaving your circle.
No doubt there are instances of incredible social butterflies who can legitimately manage say 200 or 250 people, but that is the extreme and not the norm. Likewise, there are people whose circle is probably limited to 75 or 100. The point is that there are theoretical limits to maintaining enough intimacy in your social network relationships for them to qualify for your circle.
In both the real and virtual worlds, people argue us on whether the Rule of 150 applies. The naysayers swear that they are living proof this 150 limit can be broken. These skeptics say advances in social networking technology are helping them supersede the theoretical limits. Yet, a survey of those they claim are part of their network quickly exposes a myriad of people that don't consider the naysayer in their circle of 150. This is a point of great distinction: someone is only in your circle of 150 if they too say you are in their circle of 150.
A couple of weeks ago we had the opportunity to meet with and attend a great presentation by leading blogger Seth Godin here in Minneapolis. Seth is a respected thought leader in the evolution of tribes, and someone who well understands the social implications of being a human on the internet. To quote his recent blog post, "Dunbar's Number isn't just a number, it's the law."
The Rule of 150 is especially important as companies of all sizes strike out to find customer gold on the web by using social networking. If you could do more business with your online network, you already would be. Growing your business online is about connecting with NEW PROSPECTS AND CUSTOMERS. Your professional life will be made much easier if you accept that your circle is limited to roughly 150, and you turn your energy from trying to tap the network you have to the prospects (nodes) that you don't already know.
How do you connect with those you don't already know? The answer isn't your social circle. Rather, you need to find points of need. For example, if a prospect needs a new purse and goes on the web, she will probably run a search. If she knew that you sell purses already, she would have probably just called you or visited your website. The fact is that she doesn't. The problem for you is that you also don't know about her and that she's on the market for a new purse. So, you need to find a way to tap her interest/need. We all know how advertising with Google Adwords works: we can capture her eye by advertising at the point of need in a search engine. But, let's take this approach to a social network situation...
Say she mentions, "I'm looking for a new purse" on her Facebook page or Twitter feed. If you don't know her and don't follow her, you'll never know about it. Now maybe one of her friends or followers will read about the fact she is looking for a new purse, but unless her friends recommend you as a great purveyor of purses, you're still missing the intersection of need with your solution. If you're following the point here, you'll understand why it's so difficult to use social networking for commercial purposes. To grow your business you are looking to connect with new prospective customers (not just the customers you already have). Since there are limitations to your prospects' social circle, the idea that they will follow you or seek you out is an unreasonable expectation.
To discover and connect with new customers, you need to think like an engineer. The question to ask yourself is, "How to I build a bridge between two previously disconnect points?" That is, how does someone that doesn't know about you connect with you, and how do you connect with someone you don't already know? In the real world, it's called leads and referrals. On the web, it's discovering prospects at the point of need. In the highest percentage of web-based social networking this will not work, because of the Rule of 150.As BusinessCard2 grows, I've been spending much more time speaking with the media and networking events around the country. This has provided me the opportunity to shed some light on how I perceive the tangibility of social media in moving the needle for your business, as well as feedback from audiences on just how confusing it can all be. One of the biggest questions I get is, "Should I do it at all?".
For anyone who is using social networking, the answer to this question is almost always "yes, you should be doing social networking." I think that people naturally answer with a YES! is because they want others to either join in their misery or bliss. The reality is, maintaining a social networking presence, for many, can be a time vampire that provides little or no tangible or intangible return on investment (ROI).One of the challenges, and opportunities, in making new connections on the web is being approached by, and approaching new people. BusinessCard2 is different way to manage this challenge. At BusinessCard2 we don't see the web space much differently than the real world. You want to connect with new people to grow your business. You do not want to be limited by degrees of separation. You do not want to have to pay to freely make connections with new people, especially when you're doing the work to find them. You are willing to be transparent about who you are, and you carry the digital version of yourself with the same decorum as you do in the authentic world.
Still, how is the other person you are approaching supposed to qualify you? How are they to trust you? How are they to know that entering into a new relationship with you is a worthwhile exercise?
These questions are the same ones we've had in mind for the last several years while engineering BusinessCard2. The underlying premise and intention has been one of solving the problem of making online connections with those we don't already know, but would like to. The concept of the business card was a natural solution, since it has a 350 year track record of creating connections in the real world.
Historically speaking, the business card is really just the evolution of the calling card (also known as visiting card). Calling cards were used by nobles as an essential tool for formal introduction. A person would typically send the calling card ahead of a visit, thus introducing an impending arrival. The calling card helped qualify the experience of entering into a new relationship.
What is so difficult today on the web is that we don't know who we can trust. Each of us carries around a certain level of suspicion about those we come across as we navigate the web. Some of us choose anonymity in defense. However, it is increasingly commonplace for many of us that we'll give up anonymity (be identity transparent) if it means a greater likelihood for opportunity and success. Still, it can be uncomfortable to be approached online by someone we are not familiar with; the internet does not convey human qualities such as facial and hand gestures, and tone of voice.
BusinessCard2 is specifically designed as your calling card for the web. It is designed as a method of formal introduction. It is also a firewall to protect against jumping into a relationship before knowing more about the other party. It is a dignified and orderly way to expose you who you are, what you do, and why it matters. It is a polite ice breaker for possible conversation, supported by ample data for due diligence. It is your best foot forward to digital manners. It is something more friendly than the impersonality of bits and bytes.
Netiquette is the set of rules by which we govern our online conduct. Increasingly we are seeing BusinessCard2 used specifically as a convention of online conduct. So, we thought it appropriate to start a short list of best practices for BusinessCard2. Note: this list is not inclusive and only suggests ways in which BusinessCard2 may be more useful for both the card owner, and the intended recipient:
- Be honest and transparent in your card.
- Be professional in your card.
- Share your card where and when appropriate.
- Have a colleague edit your card, for thoroughness.
- If you want to be contacted, leave contact information in your card.
- Use information, pictures, files, and links in your card that tell your story.
- Share your expert knowledge in your card.
!!!WE NEED YOUR HELP!!!
We're working behind the scenes at BusinessCard2 on a delivery technology. This internal effort basically started in 2008. It helps people who have a BusinessCard2 with a "set-it & forget-it" delivery mechanism. It's sorta marketing, sorta advertising, but really, really simple (like push one button simple). Basically we take your web business card and put it on other sites for you.
Anyway, back a number of months ago we needed a name. We started with the term "identity broadcasting", but didn't like that because it was too ambiguous. Then about seven weeks ago we decided on the term "PUSH". It was short and simple. Basically we'd be pushing the cards out to various places on the web.
Then two days ago the whole conversation came up again when a couple of team members who didn't have a vote on PUSH decided it needed to do a better job of saying what it is. I didn't want to use any terminology associated with the word advertising because I think it's more than advertising. However, I was outvoted by the team and we settled on the brand "adcast" yesterday (even though the two team members who didn't like the term "PUSH" but wanted to use something about "advertising" were not present to vote, but we assumed they would like it because it had the term "ad" in it, signifying that it constituted some type of advertising). Note: During that same meeting the term "CardCast" was suggested.
Well, we emailed the two other team members that we'd decided on using "AdCast". To our surprise, they didn't like it. Totally independently they emailed back with the suggestion of "CardCast". 'Great!' I thought. Something we can all agree on. So I send out an email saying it is official. Well, not so quick...
All of a sudden a fraction was created for and against CardCast. Emails were being slung to and fro with arguments for and against. Here are some quotes from the email, just to give you context:
"Team. After much dialogue & debate, I'm making the recommendation that "push" becomes"CardCast". Randy/Gordy independently arrived as this name (as did we). I'm personally convinced that there will be some level of explanation that will have to occur regardless of the name. I think CardCast is verby enough to differentiate this as something special/different/beyond merely having a card. I think there are legitimate concerns about being categorized purely as advertising. Lastly, the trademark activity around the term "AdCast" is questionable enough that we might have difficulties in securing protection. From my research we have complete freedom to operate with CardCast. Unless there are any major objections, I think we should commit to this trademark and move on...Lief"
(A hint: it isn’t just you.)
Your name is your name. Your name in funky lettering is your logo. But neither is your personal brand. Instead, your personal brand is what those who know you and work with you say it is. Managing your personal brand is an exercise in influencing how you exist in the mind of others.
Others form ideas about you. These ideas are based on attributes you exude. What do you look like in dress and physical appearance? What types of information do you convey verbally and with gesturing? What are people saying about you? Are you trustworthy? Are you charismatic? It is these questions – not an evaluation of the benefits you offer – that will lead people to construct your personal brand and ultimately want to do business with you.
You can always see the people with charismatic personal brands stand out in popular culture. Steve Jobs, the energetic pitchman and CEO of Apple Inc., has immediately recognizable personal brand qualities: black shirt, circular glasses, intellectually stimulating conversation, powerful speeches, and self-assuredness. In addition, hard to quantify things like success, style, innovation and creativity are what many observers associate with the name Steve Jobs.
Although Fortune noted Steve Jobs “is considered one of Silicon Valley's leading egomaniacs,” many tech fanboys and consumers have translated his larger-than-life persona into trust and dedication to the products his company creates. It is no wonder than that the company’s stock took a hit after his health problems were made public, or that there is tremendous buzz around his possible appearance at the Apple event tomorrow. Here is a recent comment from Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster:
“We expect CEO, Steve Jobs, to announce a new iPod lineup featuring cameras in re-designed iPod nanos, iPod touches, and the iPod classic. We believe investors will view the new products as a non-event, as iPod growth slows and the segment becomes less of an investable theme. However, we also believe Steve Jobs will present at the event, a first since his health-related leave of absence, which would likely be a slight positive for shares of AAPL and the first public confirmation of Jobs’ health since his return to the company.”
Can your personal brand influence the stock market? Well, maybe some day.
There are no boring people, only dull personal brands. If you want to understand how to better influence people’s perception of you, these are the three questions to ask yourself: 1) Who are you?, 2) What do you do?, 3) Why does it matter? The exercise of answering these questions will lead you to the qualities that differentiate you.
Next, be distinctive. Consider going against the crowd. Be open to standing out; most "visionaries" started life as contrarians. This is an exercise in creativity over logic.
Then, be trustworthy. I’m not talking about credibility, but rather giving people something that they can come to expect from you with some level of consistency. Be human. Allow people to know you make mistakes and you’ll help your personal brand agents form bonds with your personality attributes, thus further enhancing your personal brand value.
Finally, solicit feedback. Ask people what they think about your persona and messaging. As your personal brand rises, pay careful attention to the conversation. In this dialogue you’ll discover just who makes your personal brand.
New features are available for your BusinessCard2. You can now upload files for easy sharing with anyone, link to your social networks, create special offers, and share your work and education experience directly in your card.
New this week:
• File Share: BusinessCard2 now gives you the ability to share files within your card. Add informational brochures, photos, text documents, spreadsheets and much, much more.
• Social Network Links: Link to your Facebook, Linkedin, and Twitter account directly from your card.
• Special Offers: Have a special offer you want to extend to your customers? Create a customized coupon especially for BusinessCard2 users.
• Experience: Show your customers you have what it takes to get the job done. List any experience or relevant credentials that give you and your company an edge over competitors.
We are continually updating BusinessCard2 to make it an even more powerful tool. Watch the News section on your homepage for the latest on BusinessCard2. Sign in now: http://businesscard2.comOn Tuesday, August 18th we had the opportunity to present BusinessCard2™ to the audience of local NBC station Kare11 for their TechTuesday's segment. This show is simulcast on television and the web, and we were sure appreciative of the opportunity to talk a little bit about our offering.
Here is a direct link to the video: http://tinyurl.com/l43mb6
We are continually updating BusinessCard2 to make it an even more powerful tool. Today we have several new features that we would like to share with you.
New at BusinessCard2:
Need help using BusinessCard2?
Check out our all new FAQ section under the information tab for answers to the most common questions about BusinessCard2. Have a question that is not answered there? Submit it to our feedback section and we’ll get you an answer right away.
Sign In now: http://www.businesscard2.com
Steve Curtis from Omniture just sent me the link to this image. He said, "one of the challenges they’ve had with communicating the importance of social media is explaining what the different outlets are and what they do." I too can agree it is hard to explain what social is, and combating sometimes people's (incorrect?) perceptions and assumption about what social is and what it has to offer.
We have launched the new BusinessCard2™ technology. It is a personal branding vehicle for mass positioning. What we're trying to accomplish with this technology is a user controlled tool (in the form of the internet business card) that can extend beyond an single website.
This current launch only incorporates basic features. We wanted to ensure it is light enough to be practical and scale. Nevertheless, in the days and weeks to come we will be systematically adding in a ton of more features and benefits that we believe people will find very compelling.
Just had the opportunity to read a really insightful article on socially networked CEO's (or lack thereof). The article comes out of my local market, but it really has broader implications. Our own locally-based Best Buy CEO Brian Dunn appears to be one of, if not the most, web networked CEO out there.
Social is good way to communicate with employees, customers, and other constituents. But so little adoption by corporate CEO's begs the question, "Why have they dismissed the graph as a communications channel?" Here are my thoughts:
- For large companies there is tremendous accountability, SOX compliance issues, and potential legal exposure.
- CEO's are busy guys. Using Twitter is a recent phenomenon and I think many are waiting to see the hard and soft ROI from investing the time to use such media.
- Large companies have large marketing/communications department. Every statement (historically speaking) is controlled and polished before flying out the door.
- Most large corporate CEO's (IMHO) are entirely oblivious to how the line between authentic and virtual reputation management has blurred.
- I suspect that many of these CEO's are aware of LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, et al. My guess is that they see these platforms as a fad. They will only adopt when they see critical mass. I don't think this will happen anytime soon. Heck, most of these CEO's never created a blog, even when that was so terribly fashionable in 2005.
- There are likely unperceived consequences to appearing so approachable by communicating within the social graph. One that I could anticipate is that people feel spite or neglect if they comment to a communique tag and the CEO doesn't respond. [A happy customer/employee tells three people, a pissed off customer/employee tell 30 people.]
So I’ve had some great discussions lately about the macro economic environment. In the last week I’ve been meeting with fund managers overseeing hundreds of millions of $$$ in cash. The pretty unanimous response is that we’re looking at economic instability until about Q2 of 2010. Depending on the specific conversation, the average response is that we’ll see a sharp uptick in economic activity thereafter, with a major spike in inflation. The reality we’re all facing right now are layoffs, generally less demand for products & services, tougher times accessing capital, and all the other stuff that comes with a prolonged recessionary period.
On Feburary 2nd Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer put it best when he said, “The truth is, you only get economic growth from the following things. Population growth, inflation, productivity increases…and financial leverage.” So with that I’ll get into what I really wanted to talk about.
BusinessCard2 has been experience tremendous user growth in new sign-ups, but the traffic level of searchers has not (yet) grown at the same rate. Nevertheless, we offer the service freely to those looking to market themselves. The benefits are: 1) Improve SEO/rank performance, 2) no competing with ads since YOU are the ONLY advertisement, 3) you can store files and other data in our cloud to inform/educate prospects who visit your page, 4) It’s FREE.
My experience in building out this offering has provided me unique perspective in tactics for climbing the social graph. Now this is good experience and knowledge when you’re running a company, but as of late it has also meant that lots of people are crawling out of the woodwork asking me for my infinate wisdom on social strategy and how to climb the social graph. It seems that as the economy worsens, more people are taking this stuff seriously.
To maximize your time, and my efficiency, I’m putting this post out. It’s more of a place to direct people to so I can keep focusing on the work in front of me. It’s not perfect, but it’s my top-level recommendation to get you started…
1. Set-up a “blog” link on the website, and start to build up a readership of interested readers. This can also be done by attaching a wordpress or blogger account. In testing, I have found it performs pretty well to create BOTH a wordpress AND blogger account and simply post the same content to both sites. I call this mirroring. Both have good SEO performance and weighting, and will probably entertain readers that wouldn’t otherwise be discovered simply through a site-specific blog (although I recommend he consider mirroring this same content to your site-specific blog as well).
3. Create both a “group” AND “product fan page” on Facebook.com, and do an initial invite of friends into each. When this is done and people either join the group or become a fan of those pages, it shows on the wall of all those people’s friends. This is the viral effect.
4. Create an RSS feed of your updates. There is a good population of people out there that would like your RSS feed for their feed reader. To create an RSS feed, this is good guidance: http://www.rss-specifications.com/create-rss-feed.htm From the feedreader or google reader, users simply capture the RSS url and load it into their reader. You want to make it as easy as possible for visitors to grab your content rss and put it in their reader, so slap those orange rss buttons all over the place. To create and convert to rss, I recommend www.feedburner.com.
5. Create a Twitter account for your message/brand/website/you/etc. Twitter is probably the most convenient way for you to quickly/easily update people with content. Although somewhat limited for narrative (the have a character limitation for each message), a social strategy is to create a summary and TinyURL in twitter linked back to your longer blog posts and pictures, or other content.
6. The social graph does extend to email!!! Create an email newsletter subscriber list. Send out a weekly or bi-weekly email newsletter with top-level summary of activities, and also post links to all the other ways people can follow you on a daily basis (facebook, flickr, your website, wordpress/blogger, rss feeds, twitter, etc.).
7. Be aware that effective social is very hands on. It means altering your lifestyle by accommodating these updates to keep constituents informed. It’s very easy to fall into the trap of letting a couple of days slide without updates. Social is a snowball effect and takes time to build up the audience.
[This advice was recently passed along to a dude that's been on the Oprah Show, but it now just starting to get going on a real social strategy.]
So now that other part of all this effort…the EXPECTATIONS. In other words, what in the hell is going to come of all these efforts!?! Well, speaking honestly, for many of you it will be an exercise in learning social, but it won’t result in much benefit. For the few of you who take it deadly serious, these are some of the things you might expect…
1. Exposure and buzz
2. Personal, profession, or business branding and awareness building
3. More effective management of your personal, profession, or business reputation
4. Sales and new lines of business
5. You will get hired for a new job
6. External links will be created by other people to your content
7. People will become viral carriers of your messages
8. Your sites will rank higher in search engines
9. All this will grow on inertial and will manifest into a well-oiled machine positioning you as a though-leader in your space. You will have unforeseen traffic volume increase and people will be clamoring to know you, buy from you, or have your baby.
A word of advice…
It’s a lot easier putting this stuff up than taking it down, so always take a very professional and respectful tact to any content you put up, because it might be there for many years to come. Make sure your content is appropriate to the audience you want to serve.
