Alpha Mind Blog

Shel Israel, discussing how BuzzLogic Calculates Influence, says:

What I liked was that this was a simple, straightforward measurement designed to see a monetary return on a hard dollar investment.

But, much of social media’s goals is less tangible.

(emphasis mine)

What he’s referring to at the start of the quote is Kami Huyse’s wonderful work calculating the ROI of the Sea World San Antonio campaign that launched their new roller coaster. It was a great case study by a fast-rising star of social PR.

But I’m struck by that last sentence of Shel’s quote (and not only by the grammatical gaffe.) When I heard Shel Holtz discussing Kami’s work on For Immediate Release, as soon as he mentioned measurement of ROI, and before he got into the meat of the segment, I remember thinking “Who measures the ROI of having a desk or wearing decent clothes?”

Yes, when you launch a social media campaign, you ought to think about how you’ll define and measure success. But if you’re still on the fence about using social media at all, I believe it’s time you started thinking about having a presence (on Twitter and a blog at minimum) in much the same way you think about basic office equipment and your business wardrobe. No, a social media presence isn’t a minimum requirement of doing business, not just yet, but that corner will be turned so soon, so suddenly, and so quietly, that you’re safest–by far–turning the corner yourself as soon as you can.

Seth’s Blog asks: Would you do me a favor? What he wants is for me to lend out my copy of his wonderful book, The Dip.

Oh, Seth, my friend, I’ll happily recommend your book, but I just don’t seem to get the books I lend out returned to me. I’ve already bought at least 3 copies of Gerald Weinberg’s Secrets of Consulting, and I still can’t seem to find one on my own shelves. Why? Because I’m so enthusiastic about the book that I keep lending it to people.

Seth, I’ll lend out the book if you’ll make me a promise: If it isn’t back in 6 months, you’ll sell me a new, autographed copy.

Deal?

Technorati Tags: Gerald Weinberg,Seth Godin,The Dip,Secrets of Consulting,consulting,books,lending

Just after posting my last post, about how thoroughly up-to-here I’ve had it with stuff that doesn’t work, Google Reader brought me Lee’s feed, with this post.

Lee, my friend, it happens that I do have some advice:

Admit that Mrs. BetterComms is right. For technology that really works, is really mobile, is really supported, you’ll need to pay enterprise prices. I’m afraid that’s just all there is to it.

Full disclosure: I gave up on all of it while I was still on a paltry pastor’s salary, and I suppose I could now pay a bit more and might get some cocktail of ingredients that works. But, for now, here’s what I’ve settled on:

I keep my contacts (a quite large number) in a very old version of ACT!

I keep my calendar and my to-do lists on my Palm, using Palm’s basic, native applications. I don’t use Palm’s to-do list app, because I need too many different lists (they’re context-specific, a la David Allen). So they’re simply in Palm Memos.

I write notes on whatever I find, and I clear all the notes out of my wallet fairly often so they’ll get into the software.

I have to keep using:

• a linux laptop (for video editing)…
• a Vista laptop (which is my basic business machine now)…
• a Win XP laptop (because elements of my podcast rig won’t work with Vista)…
• and a Palm Z22 because I don’t need anything fancier in a PDA, and even if I bought something snazzy I know full well I’d never get its apps to work across the other platforms.

And I will absolutely not attempt to get my do-lists, contacts, and calendar all working across all these machines until I have at least US$4K and a full week to throw at the problem. And I won’t put my data online until I find Internet service that’s truly ubiquitous and fully trustworthy (I believe this is a long way off.)

I’ll be curious to see how others advise you. For now I’m happy with a non-integrated, somewhat low-tech solution.

BTW, Lee, I think you meant U3, not E3.

P.S. New additions to my list of stuff that doesn’t work:

• Enidicia electronic postage (U.S. only) doesn’t work with Vista.
• Twitter
• Jaiku (gave up on that piece of trash a month ago, should have been 5 months)
• URLtea, which went down for days last week, after I’ve sent out a lot of URLS using the service. None of those URLs worked, of course, because the whole URLtea server was MIA.

From Mark Driehorst, a fine post about a problematic issue in social media: lynch mobs.

I saw things get ugly on YouTube this summer, as a virtual lynch mob formed against LisaNova, one of YT’s most popular directors.

Here are two of my responses…

…the serious…

…and the silly (but not a lot less serious than the other, really):

As you can tell from looking at the videos on my YouTube channel, I got way too involved with LisaNova this summer. But it was the quality of her best videos that got me involved with YouTube in the first place. And she and I had had a pleasant exchange of emails before she became YT’s most notorious “spammer” (in quotes because although she spammed I can’t think of a word that really says what she is). So I was quite distressed when she got so much hate thrown at her that she took more than a month off.

I don’t like spammers. Not at all. But I like lynchings even less.If “thought leader” has an opposite, I think “lynch mob leader” is probably it.

Thx to Kami Huyse for the link to Mike’s post.

And, oh, if you haven’t discovered LisaNova yet, here are two of my favorite videos: Teenie Weenie RAW & UNCENSORED, and Breaking News!!!

So, I was more than half right.

When I cornered Hugh at Tuesday’s geek dinner, he told me that while he’s not a great fan of Hunter S. Thompson, he really likes Ralph Steadman, the illustrator of Fear and Loathing. Which after all was what I really had in mind.

I enjoyed Hugh’s talk about his work in his video with Scoble.

Better to save his disappointment for when he gets back. I got all excited when he blogged that Kathy Sierra was back to blogging.

Oh how I wish it were so. Lee posted a link to Kathy’s last post from April, when she quit. Perhaps he hadn’t seen it.

It’s not nearly as funny as an Elvis sighting. Because so many of us truly want her back.

Lee, it’s simple. You have one of the most popular blogs on earth that mentions one of the most popular dishes in North America. The very fact that you mentioned tuna casserole once (now twice) on your blog means you will get lots of clicks from people who are actually looking for a recipe that will remind them of their midwestern (U.S.) parents.

Most of these people, BTW, are probably annoyed to find you don’t give a recipe. If you’d like to allay their annoyance, just ask and I’ll send a seviceable recipe for tuna casserole.

You realize, don’t you, that having started this discussion is only going to give you greater prominence among tuna casserole bait-and-switch sites?