Toluu

Vaspers the Grate

corporate honesty in social mediaJune 1

Blogging and social media usage has a netiquette and a clear, if not always publicized, set of ethics and morals, a consensus list of rules for conduct. Not to limit creativity or innovation, but to use the new tools most effectively. This means deviating from old school corporate fluff, we-orientation, and MSM hype.

What are some of these new values that are reigning in the new media?

Authenticity. Passion. Transparency.

Three of the values that some old fashioned organizations consistently violate, thinking they can get away with it.

Incentivized opinions are not wanted, nor respected, in the social media realm.

It’s like your husband being secretly paid by a university, in an ethnomethodology experiment, to say romantic things to you, at $10 per statement. Once you found out he was being paid to seduce you, you’d surely be quite disgusted and upset, never trusting his advances ever again.

It’s PayPerPost and other compensated, coached, inauthentic recommendations, or slurs and reproaches, that will poison, pollute, and make worthless the peer-to-peer recommendation

enforcing Terms of Service violationsMay 25

If you provide Terms of Service (TOS), are you ethically or legally obligated to enforce them? Let's look at the Twitter TOS controversy, from a simple, common sense point of view.

Ariel Waldman is a Twitter user. She complained to Twitter about another user who was harassing her on Twitter. This was beyond mere disagreement or a casual "you're nuts" type comment. The harassment involved filthy language.

Twitter, not known for being open to user requests and suggestions, not only did not enforce their own Terms of Service. They also shamed the victim, whined about their small staff, and declared they were "offended" at the victim accusing them of not caring about users.

This is not the proper way for a company to respond.


Some relevant items from Twitter's Terms of Service (due to change soon):


[QUOTE]

4. You must not abuse, harass, threaten, impersonate or intimidate other Twitter users.

...

Violation of any of these agreements will result in the termination of your Twitter.com account.

While Twit

blogs are the NASCAR of the internetMay 24

Corporations can learn a lot from NASCAR.

People are losing faith in corporations, for many reasons. People are sick of the aloof, pompous, unapproachable nature of many CEOs and companies. Customer service is often reluctant, insincere, and even outsourced to individuals who don't speak good English.

Blogs can repair much of the damage to public perception of corporations.

If the CEO, or some passionate and informed company spokesperson, has a blog, then trust can be built. Customers and prospects can post comments, which may be questions, suggestions, or criticisms. A smart business values all input, both positive and negative.

Increasingly, in the new digital world we live in, if you don't have a blog, you don't exist.

If you don't have a blog, you send this message:

"I don't care about starting conversations with anybody. Why form relationships? Why be transparent? Why value customer input? I value only customer dollars. Buy my product now."

Dale Earnhardt, Jr., in his book Driver #8 (page 5-6), said:

"Being a Winston Cup driver means being

12 tips on live streaming videoMay 21

Today I received an email newsletter from UstreamTV, regarding best practices for live streaming video shows.


[QUOTE]

“What are the keys to a good stream?”

The basics are pretty simple:

* Make sure you have good lighting - This is super important.

* Make sure you have a good internet connection - this prevents frame loss and choppy video.

* Make sure you close programs on your computer that you aren't using - computers bogged down by other programs can cause your stream to be lower quality.

Lastly...have good content!

[END QUOTE]




To expand a bit on that message, here's my list of some additional best practices. These tips will help your live streaming video show be more interesting, enjoyable, and successful.




(1) Purpose

What's the goal of your show? To ramble on about anything that pops into your head may work for some, especially pretty females, but generally, it's a formula for failure.

Share your expertise, passion, skill, or hobby, in a way that will benefit or entertain oth

hype vs marketingMay 12

Is marketing just hype? Or is marketing, in the best sense, something other than bullying, exaggeration, and fluff?

What is hype? What is marketing? What separates them as opposing concepts?

Hype is any form of pushy sales, where the company wants to overpower, overwhelm, and overcome your resistance to purchasing their product right now.

You, as a potential customer, are not important or interesting: it's your wallet they're after. They don't have time to understand your specific problems and needs, they just assume you could use their product, so they try to clobber you with thought clubs. Beat you into submission. Trick you, seduce you, lure you. Force you or dazzle you into buying their product.

Hype, being product-centric, rather than user-centric, uses "we", "us", "our" instead of "you" and "your".

Hype is akin to frenzy, hysteria. It's fluff in higher gear.

Hype is arrogant, egotistical, neurotic. Hype is grasping, craving, obsessing over converting you into a paying customer, then moving on to the next "conquest". As in romance, the conquest is not treated kindly by the pursuer: cust