I’m currently reading Here Comes Everybody by the brilliant Clay Shirky and in one chapter he writes:
“The hallmark of revolution is that the goals of the revolution cannot be contained by the institutional structure of the existing society.
As a result, either the revolutionaries are put down, or some of those institutions are altered, replaced or destroyed.
The increase in the power of both individuals and groups, outside traditional structures is unprecedented. Many institutions we rely on today will not survive this change without significant alteration…”
Let’s make no mistake about it. We’re currently living in a time of revolution.
Perhaps it’s not the same kind of revolution as the printing press or the Industrial Revolution, but it is one that is more subtle and yet pervasive. It is one that is increasingly changing our perceptions of what is “normal”.
And existing organisations are not ready for that. Look at the Toyota fiasco this year or Dominos last year (or any other brand in between). They only reacted to the revolution when they needed to – and by then, arguably it could be too late. What if Toyota embraced the need for communication and transparency and had acted from the first defect instead of waiting for it to kill someone before acting? Would that have mitigated some of the PR nightmare that they’re facing now? I think so.
So here’s the question: Are you embracing the revolution or are you going to be caught unaware – and maybe destroyed – by it?
I don’t think there’s a middle ground. The way we live, interact and communicate as individuals and businesses is fundamentally changing and every day you delay the choice to embrace this new (and scary) way of life, is a day you’re heading towards extinction.
I remember the first time I watched a Gary Vee video – his website had been hacked and he was explaining what happened and how he was resolving it and his character and passion just jumped off the screen (you can watch the video at the end of this post).
That same character comes through right off the page in Crush It! as well. This book is not for those who are afraid of change. What Gary presents is a roadmap to understanding yourself, tapping in on your passion and building a brand around yourself to get the job done.
While the book is aimed at the entrepreneur, there’s a lot of takeaway for big and small businesses alike. The 13 step plan he highlights in the book can be applicable to anyone but one thing he emphasises is that while monetary cost may be low, this is going to require a heck of a lot of hours. “Just Do It” isn’t a strategy that’s going to work here unless you’re prepared to put in those hours.
Crush It! is as much about knowing yourself as knowing your audience. Gary Vee makes you think hard about what you think your “passion” is, whether you’re an audio, visual or text person and what medium is best for you and if you’re really going to make it work.
At the end of the day, what Gary Vee encourages is building your personal brand first (not pushing your product in front of people’s face!) and letting that passion energise your audience, grab their attention which then you can monetise later. If you’re willing to do this, for free – it can pay back big time later.
Who should read this book?
If I had to pass this book to someone, I’d pass it to someone still in school or a fresh grad. Never before has having a personal brand and standing for something been so important. Maybe it’ll work against you in some cases – but when you connect with the people who are genuinely interested in you for who you are and what you stand for, you’ll be Crushing It.
Earlier in the year I reviewed Tactical Transparency and said that it’s a good book for an introduction to the social media scene. However, I now feel Personality Not Included is the book I would recommend as the intro book, simply because it explores more than social media, and is about really changing the mindset of organisations from within, which is what the vast majority of organisations these days need to do. Social media is merely a byproduct and tool to helps make achieve this change in mindset easier.
There are five main thrusts to the book:
Find (and use) your accidental spokespeople
Define your personality by being unique, authentic and talkable
Craft a backstory people will care about
Conquer internal fear about embracing this change
Finding and using personality moments
The first half of the book is about explaining why these are important and providing many case studies of real world examples, and the second half provides steps that can be taken to bring the aforementioned concepts to reality. Of course, the steps are general guidelines and must be tweaked to be made relevant to your organisation.
Many of these concepts and steps will sound simple and intuitive to those of us who have grown up in a world where mere transactions aren’t enough anymore, but is probably difficult for the Generation X or Baby Boomer boss at work to wrap their heads around. If so, buy this book and give it to him or her, and make it an office copy after that.
There’s a really good video introduction to Personality Not Included that I encourage you to check out at the Personality Not Included blog (sorry, I couldn’t find a way to embed it on the site!)
As a listener of the podcast For Immediate Release (co-hosted by Shel Holtz, one of the authors of the book), I decided to check out Tactical Transparency and it’s the first book I finished in 2009, and it was a fairly quick and good read.
One thing that is clear about this book, is that it’s not for people who are already “in the know” in the social media scene, but instead for people who are curious about social media and might be thinking about “taking the plunge”. One of the reasons why the book was a quick read was because most of the material was familiar to me.
Although the book is titled “tactical” transparency and indeed many of the chapters focus on a tactical perspective instead of a strategic perspective, there is a fair amount of the book that is dedicated to embracing transparency as a culture. Depending on what you’re looking for (specific steps vs broad perspectives), the book may or may not work out for you.
The one thing I’d like to see from future books dealing with social media, is perhaps a wider range of case studies. We’ve all heard about Dell Hell, the Target story, the Comcast guy who fell asleep on the couch. I’m hoping to see new examples in future books.
I think for anyone thinking about checking out the social media scene, Tactical Transparency will be a good introduction and summary and I’d definitely recommend it. For depth and experience however, no book can replace actually experiencing it yourself, and hopefully books like Tactical Transparency help provide a road map for your journey.
If needing to take notes is my personal benchmark for how good a book is (like Joseph Jaffe’s Join The Conversation), then Andrew Keen’s Cult Of The Amateur falls firmly in the opposite category. To be honest, for the first half of the book I was waiting for the “haha gotcha!” moment, because no one could be this blind towards the benefits of Web2.0 and community and collaboration.
But I soon discovered it would never come.
Keen fancies his book a polemic, but what it really is, is a rant. After reading the first chapter, every subsequent chapter was merely a repetition of what was said before, albeit with different examples and/or research.
Speaking of research, that is the one thing that Keen does well. I enjoyed reading the statistics, but not the conclusions drawn. for example he gives a timeline for the decline in music sales and says something to the effect that is no coincidence that this happened at around the time of the internet’s birth.
Keen loves the old world. He loves the “cultural gatekeepers” like reporters, news anchors, editors, movie reviewers and the like. Maybe crowdsourcing doesn’t always work, but I would almost always rather determine whether I want to watch a movie based on what people say online, than that one singular review in the newspapers by a “cultural gatekeeper”. In fact I’m working on a deck talking about “The New Gatekeepers”, so obviously I am in direct opposition with Keen here.
One thing Keen does do well, is highlight the problems the internet has brought. Online gambling addiction, pornography, plagarism, not watching one’s online identity. I’m in agreement with these social ills, but the way he writes the book, it sounds like these eclipse everything good about Web2.0 (democratisation of media, more choice than ever via the long tail, experiences that we’d otherwise never have, collaboration, discussion, community, the list goes on). And he makes it sound that these are so terrible that we should just get rid of the internet entirely, although he stops just short of saying that.
Keen also points to Viacom suing YouTube as a “powerful message”, but my bet is that Viacom (who owns MTV, VH1 and Nickleodeon) is wishing they had bought YouTube instead of Google. Just think of the possibilities if Viacom owned that media channel.
All in all, I did not enjoy reading this book at all. Not just because it goes against everything I believe in about social media and community, but because the arguments are one sided. He talks about the money lost by Frito-Lay choosing to go with an amateur advertising campaign, and makes it the fault of social media. But is it anyone’s fault that “professionals” failed to deliver better content and creativity than the “amateurs”? He simply takes one side of the coin and runs with it.
For people already in this space, I wouldn’t recommend reading this book because it isn’t going to change your mind. The arguments are just not strong and/or compelling enough, and your money will be much better spent going towards a book that will help improve your social media life.
But hey don’t take my word for it, check out visual bookshelf on Facebook for many similar reviews, or just check out at this user-generated content by another reviewer (which I found while looking for the cover image). I bet Mr. Keen hates all these “amateur” review and wishes it were all done by a “cultural gatekeeper” instead.
The biggest compliment I can give to Joseph Jaffe’s new book, Join The Conversation (currently #37 on Amazon’s business books list), is that I took so long to finish it despite receiving it in late February as part of the UNM2PNM initiative. I whiz through fiction fairly quickly, but when it comes to non-fiction, specifically marketing, communication or social media specific, I need to read the book with an open notebook and pen next to me so I can take notes and review them later. Obviously, this means more time because doing that on a bus can be a hassle, so many hours of camping at Starbucks and Borders later, I’ve finally finished the book and what can I say, it it any surprise I love it?
The first thing I need to tell you, is that if you’re already well immersed in this social media fishbowl, then as Joseph has said many times on the Jaffe Juice podcast, this book isn’t really meant for you. It’s less of a “how to” book and more of a “why you should” book, which you should probably pass on to your manager or CEO to read, and get more buy in for your social media experiments.
What I really enjoyed were all the case studies. I’m almost embarrassed to mention that I didn’t recognise most of them. I’ve realised more and more that case studies are important when trying to sell your social media idea. Showing the best examples of initiatives that worked, and the worst examples of ignoring the consumer (the latest comes from Joseph Jaffe himself with Delta Airlines), can work wonders in getting execs stuck in their prehistoric ways to wake up.
If you’re currently struggling with implementing a social media experiment, or even thinking about it, give the book a read. Learn from some successes and failures and do better! If you don’t have the time to read it, try tuning in to Jaffe Juice (the podcast). I’d recommend starting with #105 which is a nice roundtable discussion with executives from different companies talking about their initiatives and the results, or check out the Join The Conversation blog
I picked up a couple of books at Borders over the weekend:
Quirkology by Richard Wiseman – been wanting to pick this up for a long time. Wiseman explores some interesting behaviors like why we wouldn’t think much of a $15 discount on a $20 item, but might do so for a $15 discount for a $90 item, even though the absolute value is identical
Starbucked by Taylor Clark – supposed to be a good read.
Wicked by Gregory Maguire – didn’t get to watch the Broadway show in New York, so I’ll make do with the next best thing
Purple Cow by Seth Godin – I’ve read numerous things by Seth, Meatball Sundae, Small Is The New Big, All Marketers Are Liars, but it’s time for the book that started it all, centered around a simple premise: Be Remarkable.
I’ve also started on The Long Tail by Chris Anderson. This has been on my shelf for a long time, about time I got started on it.
I blogged just about a week ago about starting Meatball Sundae, unfortunately I got too bogged down with deadlines to read more, until tonight. Two trends struck me:
Trend #1: Direct communication and commerce between producers and consumers
Here Seth Godin talks about why permission is not up to you (the marketer), my favourite points:
Permissions exists to help me, the moment the messages sent aren’t personal or relevant, you cease to exist in my world
I don’t care about you. Not really, I care about me. If your message has something to do with my life, then perhaps I’ll notice, but in general, don’t expect much
I demand your respect. I can get respect from plenty of organisations, so if you disrespect me (by mistreating me, by breaking your promise, by cheating or lying or by undervaluiing our relationship), then sure, that’s right, you’re history.
I’d say those are the reasons why various feeds are in my Google Reader, and I allow mails from Men’s Health, Amazon, Last.fm, Facebook and the like to get to me, and almost every other email from clubs are automatically thrown into the spam box. (By the way, Google’s spam algorithm is amazing. I don’t even know why the clubs bother)
Trend #3: Need for an authentic story as the numbers of sources increases
Basically his point here is that whatever your company stands for should be conveyed by everyone, all the time, consistently. This reminded me of one nasty experience at Starbucks, where this staff went around telling anyone who looked like a student “Sorry, no studying in here” even before they sat down. I emailed this in and got a response of remorse, typical politically correct response.
The point here is that it doesn’t matter if Howard Schultz comes out and says that the Starbucks experience is commoditised, or that he intends to return it to its roots. As long as that isn’t believed, communicated and executed on by every single touchpoint in the company, it fails.
On a minor note, Seth also mentions John Moore over at Brand Autopsy as someone worth reading, and it humbles me that John took the time to reply to one of my posts that referenced him. After all, an SMU student probably doesn’t compare much to the people he rubs shoulders with!
If you’re unwilling to plonk down $30+ for Meatball Sundae, there’s a new manifesto on ChangeThis which will probably act as a pretty good executive summary for you. Also, there’s news on how to get your very own Seth Godin action figure (!!).
This is really the whole idea of the Web connecting people/things/ideas come to life.
So first I open my Google Reader and see a feed from Brand Autopsy, with three links. One of them being The Pirate’s Dilemma. Sounds pretty interesting, so I click on that.
That brings me to a page talking about the book with a nice little video talking about the book. I actually think it’s pretty interesting, the premise being about how youth culture (hey, that’s us!) is driving innovation and changing the way things work. Actually this brings up a topic in Michael Netzley’s class today where he was wondering why locally, companies who set up websites still do it the old, Web 1.0 way when we’re in the age of Web 2.0.
And the answer is clear. From my time at MTV and visiting various companies in New York, the “old” people in charge of the companies can barely work powerpoint. They’d be scared into next year by the idea of “communication” or “trackbacks” or anything like that.
Anyway, after reading up a little bit about The Pirate’s Dilemma and adding it to Google Readerm I decide to check out the main page, and it brings me to the blog, and a post about JJ Abrams at TED. I love JJ Abrams for Alias and Lost (and in a few days, Cloverfield), and I love TED. So from all that unexpected linking, here’s an awesome TED video. (But then, aren’t they all?)
Edit: I’m sorry I can’t seem to embed the video. I know my html skills don’t suck, but still, something is wrong. Watch the video here.
Takeaway from today? Check your feeds often and follow the links. You’ll never know what you’re going to get.
I’m currently reading Here Comes Everybody by the brilliant Clay Shirky and in one chapter he writes:
If 
