Micro-Reporting & Google Juice

I recently attended the Consumer Electronics Show otherwise known as CES. I had the opportunity to listen to a round table which included my company’s CEO Brett Hurt, alongside the CEO of Nowpublic.com, Leonard Brody. It was an amazing discussion around social networking, the internet, and the impact these new technologies have on traditional organizations.  Nowpublic.com is a news site which aggregates news from thousands of its citizen reporters located around the world. Nowpublic.com relies on the reporting from everyday individuals, who are also called “micro-reporters”.  Nowpublic.com is a microcosm of the internet, which has allowed for instantaneous reporting combined with a reporter base that that spans millions of people in every part of the world. A traditional news staff which employs thousands of reporters at high salaries could never match the millions of reporters around the world who are hyper-reporting local, national, and international news at virtually no cost.

Google has shown how much they value micro-reporters by indexing blog posts in under four hours. By reporting a new piece of news, you could sky-rocket to the top of search-engines like Google making you a source of information overnight. Recently the AP contacted Scot Herrick over at Cuberules.com to report on the lay-offs banks have been making in recent times. The reporter found him through his blog. Scot’s micro-reporting was highly relevant and has allowed him to attract new readers & new opportunities.

While I don’t think this type of reporting has or will replace journalism, it has certainly replaced the need for traditional news reporting. It reinforces the power of blogging from a reporting standpoint and certainly reinforces the importance of branding yourself in situations where your thoughts and perspectives on current events can be discovered and amplified.  Google has given this system legs, because without a discovery tool, the millions of contributers around the world would likely be muffled.  Yet again, they are changing the way we consume our daily information.  Only this time, we all have a voice.

Dressing the Part

To follow up Tony Capasso’s guest post, I thought I’d share this study from Sports Psychologist Iain Greenlees covered by Lauren Aaronson. This goes without saying, but in any situation that you are in, dressing the part is half the battle. Not only does dressing appropriately help you feel more confident in a given situation, but others are more likely to give you the benefit of the doubt. In short, you will perform better and be given more leeway than someone who is dressed inappropriately.

In the study, athletes were shown videos of their opponents warming up.

“When the on-screen athletes had confident body language—good posture and robust eye contact with the camera—player-viewers felt that they would win fewer games than they would against opponents who slouched and averted their eyes.

Additionally, the athletes felt more confident of beating opponents who wore generic sportswear, like sweatshirts, than opponents who wore sport-specific clothing, like brand-name polo shirts and spiffy shorts.”

If simply dressing better makes you feel more confident and competent, why don’t we all do it? Does dressing the part get old? Is it a habit we form, just like exercising? I’d say that unless you dress the part on a consistent basis, you won’t identify with role you’re dressing for. You’d feel like an actor wearing a wardrobe. To dress the part for real, the wardrobe and your identity have to be completely congruent. I believe it is a habit you must pick up, but there is no reason that any of us shouldn’t be dressing the way we could be.

 

 

Personal Branding Magazine Issue 3 — Available February 1st

About 6 months ago I joined Personal Branding Magazine. It has been a fantastic experience as I helped with sponsorships and contributed a couple food-for-thought articles. If you are new to Personal Branding or just want to read up on all the great thinkers on the subject, I would recommend subscribing or at least taking a look. Issue 3 is looking to be even better with interviews with top bloggers like Om Malik and Gina Trapini.

Below I’ve included my piece I wrote for Issue 2.

Word-of-Mouth Marketing and the Personal Brand

by: Adam Salamon

When promoting our personal brands, how do we balance our own marketing efforts with the fact that most people trust advertising less and less each day?

We’ve been lied to by advertisers. Each one of us has had experiences with products or services that didn’t meet our expectations. It’s no wonder that people now turn to each other when in doubt about services or products. Word-of-mouth is now the number one trusted form of advertising according to Edleman. And that isn’t strictly for products or services anymore–it’s for all of us, too. Creating a personal brand is not only about gaining recognition about what you do, but it’s also about creating loyal brand advocates who will recommend you when someone asks them for advice. Because we know that word-of-mouth is trusted, we know that people will ask their friends for advice when looking for an expert marketer, salesman, or writer.

Keep this in mind during your Personal Branding journey. Remember that people don’t like being lied to. Be authentic and open. Promote yourself on what you can deliver, that way when someone asks about you, they can say with confidence that you deliver on your promises.

Best of luck,

Adam

Guest Post – Tony Capasso: Look AND Feel the Part

I just came back from Las Vegas at the 2008 Consumer Electronics Show and what a spectacle! If you like to geek out to latest and greatest in technology this is the event for you. The consensus from most people who have traveled to Las Vegas is that 48 hours is enough! Not so for CES, but in general why do most people feel that way? I think it is because Vegas is very much a facade. Lots of lights, camera, action, but when you really get beyond all of that, it does very little to nourish the soul. I ate at one restaurant where at first glance it looked 5-star, but when I searched beyond the walls and sponge board crown molding I found something very different. I put my hand on the chair and what looked from afar like a $2,000 throne felt like something I would buy from a department store as patio furniture. I tried to lift it expecting its solid weight to hold it to the ground and I almost thrust it to the ceiling. Weak!

Let’s relate this to personal branding. If you look the part you are half way to being the part, but when are you actually THE PART? You are when you truly FEEL that you are. So it goes without saying that for a job interview, a client meeting or big date you always want to look the part. Dress appropriately, if it’s an interview for a bank wear a sharp blue suit with a white shirt and red tie, for a big client meeting wear well coordinated slacks and a jacket(and a tie where appropriate) and on a big first date leave the ripped jeans at home and tuck in you button down. Having said all that a clean hair cut, well groomed nails and a shave go without saying, and always, always shine your shoes. So there you go, you’re half way there.

 

The other half: Be prepared! If you are prepared you will feel that you’re going to nail it! Think of the time when you didn’t study for a test and you went into the classroom flustered and unsure of yourself versus the time you studied 20 hours and you knew your stuff inside and out! That’s confidence and that’s feeling the part. Once you feel it, you ARE it, and no one can stop you. That confidence comes from within when there’s substance and you have taken the time to prepare yourself to add value. Prepare for the job interview by studying the company, its offerings, and the Linked In profile of everyone you will meet. For the big client meeting know all of the latest news and the positive and negative press so you avoid putting your foot in your mouth and for that big date figure out who you know in common and a little about what he/she likes to do in their spare time.

“Luck is What Happens when Preparation Meets Opportunity.” So guess what if you feel lucky you will be lucky. Personal branding is a state of mind.

A Connection Made

This post was originally posted at Conversation Agent. Thanks so much to Valeria Maltoni for hosting the series on Using Foresight to Provoke Strategy and Innovation.

Technology is changing the world with amazing speed, and the more technology advances, the more we come to expect from it. This has a broad impact for the people, politics and businesses of the future, especially as Generation Y enters the workforce. Generation Y is a generation of inflection as far as generations go, as we are a generation that has grown up with the so-called technologies of the future. We are the first generation to have been brought up with Internet, social connectivity, and instant information. Our generation is essentially defining the pace of information, and as we enter the workforce, we expect the rest of the working world to be in-step.

Speed and Connections

Older generations call us impatient, but our eagerness and expectation for immediacy is really only a product of the technologies that raised us. Simply put, we are a broadband generation. We are accustomed to fast connections, where web pages load without delay and communication is virtually instantaneous. And outside our web browsers, we expect a similar pace. We want replies now. We want prices now. We want our grades and purchases – now. Any hiccup in this feedback loop frustrates us. So, these older generations are dubbing our progress as impatience, making no concessions for perspective. Metaphorically, we process the world with T1 connections, while everyone else is still stuck with dial-up.

Our connections have given us confidence and belief in our ideas. In the connected age, ideas are so free-flowing that the intern in the mail room could have the idea that changes the world. In the past, that intern was mostly powerless, but now that intern lives in a world of collaboration. In our generation, a person with an excellent idea can get people from around the world to contribute, rebuttal, and help implement that idea from one minute to the next. For those without the connections, it means an idea is not actionable. But our generation has the connections. And as we come into the workforce in full force, we have the expectations that the workforce will move just as fast as the world we’ve been brought up in. There has been a convergence between space and time with the advancement of information, technology, and connectivity. The implications these technologies create spread far and wide.

The Future of Connections for Business

When access to information increases, we can expect things to become more efficient. My parents owned a fabric and textile store on the Mexican border during the 80’s and 90’s. The majority of their business came from Mexican day-shoppers who came to the US for products they couldn’t find in Mexico. For years they made great money. However, once NAFTA was instituted, Mexican shoppers could get these same products in Mexico directly from the people my parents bought from. Now, there was no reason for Mexican shoppers to come to the US side. They had access to the source.

This trend will continue in the future and will affect many businesses. Retailers will have a harder time doing business as middlemen between consumers and products. Consumers will want and demand access to manufacturers. Consumers will bypass the dealers and get straight to the source, so as a retailer who sells a broad selection of items, it means you will have to be in the business of selling experience and convenience over merchandise. CompUSA going out of business is a good example of this trend. Consumers of the future will naturally make connections with manufacturers, giving direct feedback, and expecting to have retailer-like experiences. As this continues, retailers will cannibalize each other as margins become thinner and consumers demand transparency.

Global Connections

This transparency will spill into politics as well. In the past, territory and space separated cultures, but people from all over the world are now connecting and finding out that we have more in common than we could have imagined. We are creating real relationships with real people, and the effect this will have on geopolitics in the future will be profound. Interests are no longer aligned based on an area or territory, but on the human interests that connect us. Those in power will need to be cognizant of these grassroots connections, as any decision that ignores these connections has the opportunity to ostracize.

In all aspects of the world, time and space are converging and changing the way people create connections and make decisions. Businesses and employers will have to evolve with the changes in the way people are connecting and the way they seek information—that is, straight from the source rather than going through intermediaries. Younger generations are coming to expect a transparent world where access to information and connections are instantaneous. Future generations will only come to expect more. Even our generation will have trouble adapting and keeping up with those new speeds. We are at an inflection point, but this is only the beginning. Ultimately, technology is enabling us to transcend boundaries and connect information with people. Through these connections, the future will empower individual decision makers, giving them the ability to implement their own ideas, whether they are business, political, or personal.

Adam Salamon writes for Creating Your Name Brand and is a Senior Market Developer at Bazaarvoice.