What Facebook, Google And Foxnews Have In Common

Posted by Israel Rothman on Jul 20th, 2010 | 1 comment home title

Highlights of ForeSee Results report on the ACSI E-Business study (Creative Commons) that was released today:

“Social Media: Customer satisfaction with social media sites is poor (70) as the industry enters the Index for the first time. It has the lowest industry aggregate score of any of the e-business or e-retail industries measured by the ACSI. Wikipedia leads the social media industry with a score of 77, which is 14 points above industry giant Facebook.com (64), a surprisingly low performer given its market presence.”

I will add my 2 cents here: it is very difficult to a get a site that tries to do too many things to work for the average consumer: the simpler the interface, the better. (This Moviepals.org example combines over 200 advanced features for collaborative video production and distribution with a clean and simply graphic user interface)

The dilemma, for social network website design company like us, is to provide more and more features, which once were expensive, for free; and still to maintain a simple interface that allows the gradual adaptation that supports the learning curve of the visitors: if it is easy to get started, the visitors will eventually learn about the more advanced features: it is like what we used to call a “puppy dog close” in copy machine sales: in this case it is a “puppy dog learning curve” that is the rule online: example:

“How much is that puppy dog in the window?”

“I’ll check, would you like to hold him while I see?”

It is a good idea if it takes a while to look up the price (in our case, to charge anything at all), because by the time the clerk returns, the prospect has bonded with the dog: exactly like a free user does with an anonymous profile on an online online dating site, and like all of us did with a search box named Google, and with ‘friends’ on Myspace.com and Facebook.com, etc.

However, as the application grows, the user interface becomes more and more busy, and that makes it intimidating to new users:

Meritocracy Trumps Seo | The Rules Have Changed Again

Posted by Israel Rothman on Jul 18th, 2010 | 2 comments home title

Believe it or not, it is a documented fact that I reserved socialmediasystems.com and .org for $8.95 each in the spring of 2007, and everyone asked me:

“Why did you call it social media?”

(CC Wikipedia | ‘A moment’s insight is sometimes worth a life’s experience’ – Oliver Wendell Holmes)

As silly as that question sounds today, it was legitimate only three years ago.
I answered: “You will see soon enough.”

But this heads up is not about me, or the past: it is about today, and the future:

First a Wikipedia definition:

” Meritocracy is a system of aristocratic or oligarchical government^[1^[2 or other organization wherein appointments are made and responsibilities assigned to individuals based upon demonstrated intelligence and ability (merit), evaluated using (frequent) institutionalized examination.

This is opposed to other value systems, where reward and legitimacy is based upon possession of wealth (plutocracy), origin (aristocracy), family connections (oligarchy), property, friendship (cronyism), technical expertise (technocracy), seniority (gerontocracy), popularity (representative democracy), or other historical determinants of social position and political power.”

Now our modern, shortened, slightly enhanced spin from the MoviePals.org Manifesto:

“Those who do the most work on a project should have the most say in the direction of that project. If votes are used, they should be weighted by participation (called a Meritocracy).”

If you are wondering how much more if this you are going to read: read this list well known and existing online meritocracies first:

Google.com
Facebook.com
DIGG.com
Meetup.com
Linkedin.com
Yahoo groups
AssociatedContent.com
Activerain.com
Hotornot.com
OKCupid.com
this list will be way too long!

Now I will get very close to home: In the past, Hollywood controlled access to the audience, the Associated Press controlled the news, the AMA controlled all remedies; IBM and 3M and Zerox controlled the office machine industry; Yahoo was the largest search engine in the world….this list would also be too long…

Are you beginning to see a pattern here? “A moment’s insight..” right now, will conquer your market permanently in one year or less if you listen to me now: almost every niche community, from lawyers, to doctors, to dentists, to government employees is up for grabs: what online meritocracy do yo need to create? This is less expensive than it has ever been, and your other methods will fade faster than you ever imagined: will you stay in business?

Non-Meritocracies that are in real trouble right now:

The AMA
The SEC
Almost every government in the world ..again the list is too long… and your business if you do not adapt immediately: forget SEO, the algorithms will favor one of the existing Meritocracy replacements for your website in your industry every time: example:

Take a good look at the software we have built in the last six months to automate the next wave of online Meritocracies: a picture paints a thousand words:

My latest list of predictions:

Every City and State will have at least one and probably many online meritocracies
Every occupation will have them
Every sport will have them
Every art form will have them ..again the list is too long…

SEO is dead! Long Live Social Media Meritocracy! Support this cause with your comment below!

The Recession Is Over | What Are You Going To Do About It?

Posted by Israel Rothman on Jul 16th, 2010 | 2 comments home title

Ricoh Copy Machine In my youth I sold 3m Copy Machines, the Secretary 2 weighed over 200 ponds, had to be wheeled in on a dead body gurney; and it would start on fire if you got a paper jam during the presentation.

The reason I share this is to draw parallels: it was not long before there were Savin, Rico, Royal and a host of other competitors breaking down every door challenging 3M (who invented the copy machine) in their marketplace. Just as this market has changed, so has Real Estate.

Stuff changes:

If there is fat on a hog (market), somebody will show up to do the butchering
Price competition always increases
Ebb and flow in this market, the construction business, any market: are constants
The playing field has been leveled – home court advantage removed
Increased competition confuses the market – consumers are confused
Many Baby Boomers have failed to adopt to new technology, making their clients fair game
A major changing of the guard is underway

Some stuff never changes:

The young are quicker, smarter, healthier and more educated with technology
Doing the same thing yields the same results: perpetual decline
Innovators win
Followers work for innovators
There is a dollar somewhere in the world to chase every dime over here!

Please bear with my parallels: there are many:

The top salespeople do not share their secrets until they no longer work
Beware the self proclaimed consultant/trainer!
Call reports have been falsified for so long that good office politics involve who can falsify the report to satisfy the boss and get away with it
You cannot do everything all the experts tell you to do and succeed
News flash: nobody makes 24 cold calls per day and does it well
The market is huge, constantly growing, constantly changing
I never made more that a few cold calls per day, although QUOTA was 24!
The system was messed up to where it was impossible to be honest and still win – terrible
I never did what everybody else was doing
You are sitting on a gold-mine that nobody is working!
I was number 1 out of 150 reps in nine states selling Savin copiers two months after I ‘jumped ship’

The rest of the story: very relevant

In those days they gave us keys to the office
Being an ex-logger (healing from broken ribs and a broken back) I woke up at 4:00 am every morning
With the rest of the world sleeping, I had nothing to do
The office was full of old files, some them dead for years, of past customers records
The ‘old clients’ were what I like to call ‘warm calls’
By 8:00 in the morning when the others started showing up, I already had a hit list of past clients to call
By 9:00 AM I was on the phone
By 12:00 noon I had appointments
They wanted us to sell four machines per month to keep the job
I sold 20-30 copy machines per month
I did not have time to chat, share war stories, or otherwise lolly gag – I was busy

Ok now I am hitting closer to home, hmmm? Now some you can use:

You cannot compete by doing what everybody else is doing – especially true online!
Most raining is outdated, regurgitated crap with the best stuff left out – again especially true online and in your industry
Technology is outdated before it hits the market – think if this in terms of technology training!
Everything you learn from self-proclaimed coaches is outdated by definition, because everyone is doing it
Doing things the same old way is like betting on the stock market by following the crowd: you will always loose by definition
If you are a follower you need to realize that and join a team with a leader: you cannot lead from behind

Now the challenge:

What are you doing different that will make you excel?
What is the top producer in your office doing that they are not telling you or anyone else about?
When are you going to wake up?
Who are you going to call today?
How is your phone call going to be different so that they do not hang up?
Why should I choose you over all the alternatives? If you do not know the answer, who does
What are you doing to maximize your exit traffic: how big is your list?

A major changing of the guard is underway: but you have an advantage: they do not make American real estate in Japan!

Need and excuse to call? Call me, I will give you many in a free consultation you will not forget! (yea, shameless plug)

Social Media Holy Grail | User-generated+user-rated+user-filtered Content

Posted by Israel Rothman on Jul 3rd, 2010 | 0 comments home title

Social Media Holy Grail It is time again, in on July 4th, 2010 to redefine the ‘down and dirty’ low down on who what where how and when for social media marketing and advertising campaigns:

There are revolutionary changes in the way people find their way to all media – it is a user-driven media

Interactive media means just that: that there is a two way conversation going on between the consumer of the content and the content producer: putting artist or author, critic or poet, advertiser and target market, manufacturer and consumer constantly in touch with each other in real time. The media becomes a user-rated distilling process where the best prose, video, and other media find their way to the top of the pile through the distribution system itself, which is modern organic search influenced by the depth and the breadth of what I like to call “organic media” – large amounts of perfectly formatted and robust user-generated, user-filtered, user-rated content exists now, and with existing audiences by way of social media marketing through niche communities and groups. I can get to exactly whom I want to reach out to with the right content that they are looking for online: the “black hat” search marketers and spammers of the last ten years in this new media are now being replaced quietly by a new breed of content producers and distributors, circumventing main-stream channels and creating a new marketplace:

The proverbial cheese has moved:

As the media driven society evaporates the society-driven media appears in it’s place!
Huge transfers in power and wealth and influence are taking place accidentally, changing the landscape of media and the marketplace forever
In a user driven, user filtered, user-rated, user distributed (sometimes called ‘viral) media, THE VALUE OF THE CONTENT DELIVERED UP TO THE CONTENT CONSUMER IS THE MOST IMPORTANT FACTOR
The race is well underway already to capture little cyberspace acres of niche communities. While large main-stream media are finally experimenting with tightly controlled user comments, a next generation of internet billionaires are already reading the hidden grail in these niche communities and online neighborhoods, and they are literally building to suit the properties that will pay them ‘triple-net’ for many years to come.

What to do about it:

Pick a niche
Research the appetite of the target content consumer
Become the source of that content

More here:

Rothman Guide to building successful website

Topics include: web design, website development, and search marketing

Social Media Holy Grail | User-Generated+user-rated+user-filtered content

Trade Shows Dieing A Slow Death – The Future Of Social Media

Posted by Israel Rothman on Jun 1st, 2010 | 0 comments home title

I have been watching the trends closely for 10 years and this is what I think: trade shows are in decline: there is less and less attendance, and more and more competition from online competitors: according to this article from Chicagobusiness.com:

“…conventions and trade shows are sustaining double-digit declines in attendance this year, squeezing local hotels, restaurants and other businesses that cater to conventioneers.

With the recession forcing them to cut costs, companies are sending fewer employees to meetings at the South Side convention center or not showing up at all. The impact is rippling through the local economy, which has lost 17,900 hospitality-related jobs in the past year, a 5.2% drop, according to the Illinois Department of Employment Security…”

According to this article about the decline of large automated exhibitions:

“Large, central automation exhibitions used to be major events a couple of decades ago, attracting hundreds of thousands of attendees from all over the world. Today exhibitions are steadily declining because there are more effective ways to disseminate information and provide opportunities for customer and supplier networking.”

“..alas, those days have gone. Attendance at all the large automation exhibitions has declined to a fraction of former times. Attendance at the annual ISA exhibition has declined to about 15,000. The vendor to end-user ratio which used to be as much as 10 to 1 is more like 2:1 today and sometimes less (my estimates). Traffic is sparse, with forlorn exhibitors spending their time reviewing each others products and bemoaning hard times. To offset distance/travel problems, ISA came up with a solution – to have smaller, “local” shows. But this hasn’t worked – and the attendance at those is sparser.”

I agree with Jim Pinto in the above article he wrote for Automation.com, there is a mega trend away from large physical trade shows.

This is saddening to me, as I love trade shows, I love the energy, and it once was a viable way to sell products and services to, for instance, real estate executives.

However, realistically, the trend will continue; and those of us who once got most of our business from these shows must rethink our marketing plans.

Fortunately for me, I have always put all the business cars through a card scanner, and added them to my triple-opt-in newsletter, the Rothman letter:

Although it is not nearly as much fun as the trade shows that no longer cash-flow (as far as I know, I have not been to one for a while); I have been able to replace my income from the trade shows by sending out a newsletter at least quarterly and often monthly.

Opt-in-email marketing is very effective, especially when you have over 9000 prospects that you have met in person opting-in to read whatever you send, and it is much less expensive than a trade show: even if you must still attend the shows, building this list as I have from the attendees is a great way to leverage the investment and make it pay all year long.

A word of caution, though: the stuff you send out must be useful and i do not recommend touching basis more that once per month.

Now that I can reach literally thousands of people on linked-in, Activerain, and Realtown groups ( to name a few of many), I can sell right from here, but it is not nearly as much fun in my opinion.

All of business becomes more exact and competitive all the time, making it more important that ever that you have:

Good branding
Good Graphics
A clear knowledge of who your prospects are and where to find them
A follow up system to maximize results
Opt-in (permission based) marketing is the way to go

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