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TEDxSMU An Experience of a Lifetime

Thursday, December 8th, 2011

 

 

TEDxSMU 2011

I spent this past weekend at TEDxSMU. To get to attend the live event you have to apply (okay no big deal), fill out a form (name, address), answer the essay question (ANSWER THE ESSAY QUESTION!?!). I haven’t answered an essay question in oh, since college. Oh, and 130 people are going to be selected. No pressure there…

So I filled out the form, wrote my essay and waited to receive the email that says “TEDxSMU invites you to TEDxSMU 2011: Disruption”. Woo Hoo! I’m in. I click to attend (you have to go through Eventbrite to pay) – ah, another TED test. You have 15 minutes to finalize your registration, including choosing three icebreakers (words or short phrases). Yikes, who knew just registering would be so challenging!

Okay, I finally make it to The Dee & Charles Wyly Theatre (where it was held). An amazing group of people; everyone is friendly. I run into people I know almost immediately. We head in and I am lucky enough to get one of the coveted FatBoy beanbag seats right up front and the show begins.

Absolutely amazing speakers. I can’t mention them all but a couple stood out for me – Elise Ballard, Peter Brown and Kate Canales from frog (okay, okay – the girl from ribit liked the speaker from frog – get the amphibian jokes out of the way now…).

Elise talked about her journey to start what became her book: epiphany True Stories of Sudden Insight. She started with an epiphany of her own that changed her life and then she began asking others if they had ever had an epiphany. She then began taping people’s stories and before you know it she had a book, a web site and a new career.

Peter Brown, of Peter Brown Architects took us on a journey through the design of Dallas, Texas. Having grown up here in Dallas (yes, I’m a native Dallasite!) it was a trip down memory lane, as Peter showed postcards of my past – hotels with “modern features”, Neiman Marcus fortnights (does anyone remember fortnights – where Stanley Marcus traveled to far away countries like Japan and turned his stores into a foreign land for a week, where we could taste the food and see the culture…), and the foresight of Raymond Nasher, who built Northpark in 1965 as the largest climate controlled mall in the world. Nasher built the mall with an eye to design as anyone who has been there can tell you, from the art sculptures inside and out. Which all led up to Peter showing us the latest school he designed, the Hector Garcia Middle School. It is gorgeous and still qualifies as a LEED certified building.

And then there was Kate Canales from frog. Kate spoke to us about interesting things she has seen and just had to take pictures of: like the restroom with a sign to the left of the door that said Women’s, a sign on the door said Women’s Room and then someone had taped a piece of paper on it that say Women Only. As Kate said, you wonder what happened to prompt the handwritten sign…. She also showed us a sign she found while looking for someplace to hang some of her clothing in a hotel she was staying in. The sign said (and I am paraphrasing) ‘Do Not Hang Anything on Sprinkler Head. It Will Break and Cause Flooding.’ Kate suggested that if they had spent money on adding hooks people could hang clothes on, rather than signs…. Some designs solutions are just so simple they have to be overlooked!

We learned about many other things: helping to teach children in underserved countries by teaching them where they are, not by trying to get them to schools. That if we use lignin to produce plastic bags, it will cost the same, but they will biodegrade in 150 days and still cost the same as traditional plastic bags! Not to mention how Chef Homaro Cantu took us on a “flavor tripping” experience where he made bitter dark chocolate sweet and lemons less sour!

Going to TEDxSMU was an awesome and inspiring experience. I learned a lot and I’m looking forward to the videos of the event being available on the TEDxSMU web site so I can go back and see if I missed anything!

If you get the chance to go to a TEDx event, go. You will meet awesome people, learn valuable lessons. And if you’re lucky, you’ll get to do down front, sitting in a FatBoy!

TEDxSMU-2011

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Posted in Design, Marketing, Technology | No Comments »

Facebook Changes Lists To Be More Like… Circles!

Wednesday, August 31st, 2011

Facebook Changes Lists to be More Like... Circles

Yes, competition is good. Facebook finally feels like they have competition (Google+) and now they are starting to take certain things seriously. Like privacy. Finally.

It is finally really easy to create lists, just go to your wall and click on Friends. Then click on Edit Friends, then click on Create a List, Then you Enter a List Name. The really easy part is Facebook will show you a list (with pictures) of all your friends and you can click on everyone you want on that list!. You can add people to an existing list easily, when you are in the Edit Friends area, just rollover the hidden area to the left of the x (see picture) and you can Edit Lists. I know, I know. Why did Facebook hide this, well if it was visible everyone could use it!
Facebook Hidden List Information from ribit

Facebook announced (and implemented) ways to make it easier to “Share With Who You Want” in a blog that came out at 1pm on August 23rd. You can now choose who you share your posts with.You can make posts Public (now the entire world will know you just ate dinner!), you can share with friends, or you can customize your sharing (share just with specific people, hide from certain people, etc.). And this is where lists come in, you can choose customize and type a list into the field and your post can be shared, or hidden from the people in that list! Very Google+ if you ask me. Google+ wants to know if I want my posts to be public or which “Circles” I want to share my post with….

You can also now approve all posts or photos you are tagged in (yippee!) before it is visible in your profile. While you can’t keep people from tagging you, you will have more control over who sees it. Hmmm, wasn’t this something Mr. Zuckerberg said people weren’t interested in?

Facebook is also allowing you to change your mind, after the fact. If you post something to the public and realize you don’t want everyone to know that you went to a concert when you called in sick to work, you can go back and change the posting status to just “Friends” and keep your fingers crossed that your boss didn’t see the post.

Now if you loved using the “Places” feature on your mobile phone, I have bad news. Today, Facebook officially killed Places. Places is mobile only and their new location feature will be available on your desktop and/or laptop as well as your phone (I often take my desktop to places I want to check into…). But seriously, the new location “button” allows you to share where you’ve been, where you are now and where you’re going.

Check-in Deals will remain intact. If you go to a store/restaurant offering a Check-in Deal, it will show up in your News Feed…. Are we all clear now :) All of these great new features will started to roll out last Thursday, so if you haven’t already started to see the new privacy features (I started seeing some of them yesterday) you will see start to see them soon!

And the best thing, the very best thing… Facebook now has backups baked in! Just go to Account Settings (in the upper left corner) and at the bottom of the page it has Download a copy of your Facebook data. Click on the link and you will be taken to a page with a green button that says Start My Archive. Once you click on that button, Facebook will start the lengthy archival process and then email you a backup that include photos, videos, wall posts, messages, chats, your friends’ names and some of their email addresses!
Facebook Backup by ribit

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Social Media Protection – Facebook Facial Recognition

Thursday, June 23rd, 2011

ribit on Social Media Protection and Facebook Facial RecognitionIn February I blogged about protecting your brand online (Protect Your Brand by Listening to Your Mother!). Unfortunately, Representative Anthony Weiner did not read my insightful post about thinking before you tweeted, or posted, or e- mailed. Now it is even more important to heed my warning. Just this week the FTC ruled in its investigation of Social Intelligence Corp. that they are in compliance with the Fair Credit Reporting Act in keeping “our” posts and tweets and such in a dossier on us that they can keep for seven, yes seven, years. Michael Santo wrote a great article in the Tech Buzz Examiner about it!

In my previous post I said you should not post something you wouldn’t want your grandmother to read. I am amending that to include your future/prospective boss! Yes, that is who is using Social Intelligence’s services. All your college photos showing your drunken parties might seem like harmless fun to you, but your next employer might see it as a potential problem and pass.

And if you think you can control your photos think again. Facebook has now introduced a new “feature” called Facial Recognition. Yup, now Facebook will find you in pictures and tag you. Perhaps you should think of that before doing some of those really fun things your “friends” can capture on their cellphone cameras and upload. Once again, this “feature” is automatically “on”. So if you don’t want your friends to have pictures of you suggested to them that they can tag with your name (yes, Facebook scans through all the pictures on your Facebook page – of your friends and family – and then sifts through all the pictures on all their servers and “suggests” pictures that might be you so you can tag them with your friends names) you need to turn this “feature” off. With this new feature your friends can tag your pictures without your knowledge!

Now if all of this seems a tad futuristic and creepy, well you can turn it off. You just have to follow the simple guidelines (courtesy of How to Disable Facebook Facial Recognition by Rob Young)

  1. Log into Facebook
  2. In the top-right corner click on Account and go to Privacy Settings
  3. Click “customize settings (toward the bottom-middle of your screen).
  4. Look for the section title “Things others share.” the permission you accidentally gave Facebook to use facial recognition suggestions is located in the “Suggest photos of me to friends” option. Click on “Edit Settings” to change that
  5. Choose “Disabled” and then push “OK.”

Now you can be sure that your friends are not getting your photos without your knowledge (through Facebook) to tag. But still be aware that what you are posting lives on without your knowledge through companies like Social Intelligence, even after you delete it.

I’m not saying never have fun, I am saying you just need to be aware of the consequences. If you tweet people pictures of your private parts, it might cost you your job. Whether you work for Congress or not.

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Protect Your Brand by Listening to Your Mother!

Wednesday, February 9th, 2011

Protect Your Brand by Listening to Your MotherI can’t believe it. I’m turning into my Mother. I’m here repeating all the parent tapes that run through my brain: “think before you speak”, “don’t put anything into writing -or on video- you wouldn’t want your grandmother to read (or see)”, “the only secret you have is the one you don’t share”, “don’t run with a sharp stick in your hand”. Oh wait, that last one doesn’t belong in this blog… but maybe it should.

In the category of thinking before you speak we have Kenneth Cole (check out Shelly Kramer’s great blog from the 4th) using the civil unrest in Egypt to promote his new spring collection. And now Groupon has joined in the controversy, with ads linking them to Tibet, Save the Whales, and Save the Rainforests. The thing that might be the saving grace for Groupon is that if you go to savethemoney.groupon.com and make a donation of $15 you get a $15 Groupon credit.

Then of course there is what you don’t want your grandmother to read (or see). Our latest example is the pop star in Indonesia, 29 year old Nazril Irham who happened to make a sex tape (why?) that he says was stolen from him and then leaked to the internet. He was just sentenced to 3 1/2 years in jail. Seriously, hasn’t he learned from Paris Hilton and Kim Kardashian what can happen when you make a sex tape? Oh wait, that is what launched Kim’s career – never mind….

Why do people think they can put something on Facebook and it will be a “secret”. Remember earlier this year the teacher from the Massachusetts high school, June Talvitie-Siple who made a post to her Facebook wall that ended up getting her fired. Don’t put something on Facebook that you want kept a secret – Facebook is not Las Vegas (what happens on Facebook, does not stay on Facebook!).

Remember, when you are “giving your status” on Facebook, “tweeting” on Twitter, “updating” on LinkedIn, etc., you are representing your brand, just as much as when you air a Super Bowl ad. What you say can have a lasting effect on your audience. You want to be sure that you leave a good impression. Be sure that what you say reflects well on you and your brand. Be sure that you won’t mind seeing it again in twenty years, because what happens on the internet, stays on the internet.

And remember, don’t run with a sharp stick, you could fall and hurt yourself!

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Posted in General, Marketing, Social Media | 4 Comments »

Google Web Fonts, Will They Change the World?

Wednesday, December 8th, 2010

The constant battle over fonts on a web site, is there a solution in sight? Clients always want to have beautiful fonts on their web sites, the only way we have had to do that and assure that “everyone” can see them has been to use images. The issue with images of course is that they have to be downloaded, have to be worked into your layout and they don’t get the same SEO (search engine optimization). Now Google has a beta solution for us.

So what is the big deal about fonts. Presently a web site can only display a font that is installed on your computer. So to make sure that everyone sees the same exact thing on every computer (more or less – lets not go into different browsers and different versions of different browsers…) web designers end up using a short list of fonts that all computers (both Macs and PCs) have pre-installed.

Unfortunately, clients are not satisfied with the limited amount of fonts that are presently available. There are some work arounds to this such as Font Burner, which has a WordPress plugin – but it is only compatible up to WordPress version 2.8, while WordPress is up to version 3.0.3; or hardcore code, which Internet Explorer and 64-bit Windows machines don’t render correctly – so these are not a perfect fix.

Now enter stage left – Google Web Fonts. Yes Google. They have approximately 38 fonts (with a smattering of variants) that reside on Google’s servers and you can use their API to make your text beautiful. And as of last week they work on most mobile devices including Android, iPhone and iPad. There is even a WordPress plugin (compatible up to version 3.0.3) for Google Fonts that has had over 12,449 downloads! Is it the answer to our web designer prayers? The jury is still out on that (it is still in beta), but it does look exciting! We’re looking at using it on our site…check back soon to see….

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Posted in Design, General, Marketing, Search Engine Optimization, Technology | No Comments »

Google Instant Saving Seconds and Changing SEO Forever

Thursday, September 30th, 2010

Those of us working with SEO had to come to grips with the fact that every “searcher” gets slightly different results (due to their search history) making our jobs slightly harder, but now Google is psychic. In an effort to save 2 seconds per search, you no longer have to type in a word or phrase before Google will present you the results.

And while the day Google Instant was introduced A was for AOL, now it is for Amazon! So… do we know have to try to optimized for a letter (gosh instead of putting our effort into cookies, we should focus on “c”!)? I realize that some people will start adding letters into their keywords, but I don’t suggest this as Google does not look at keywords in determining its web search rank, so this will not help you and it will only confuse the other search engines.

And how is that going to work out for Google AdWords, not so well it seems. As I looked through the alphabet (one letter at a time) only a few letters had AdWords. So is Google Instant a revenue “killer” for Google AdWords? Only time will tell.

So how is Google Instant really changing SEO? For the moment this will not change how we optimize pages. Content is still king. And I truly believe that with good content, good use of social media, good backlinks and all the tricks in our toolkit that we will continue to allow our clients to be easily found in search engines, include Google.

I think it will make a difference in long tail keywords. Many of the long tail searches are based on three and four word search terms. I am no longer sure people will type that many words in before Goggle Instant gives them a result they are happy with, or at least willing to click on. I will be evaluating long tail searches to see if my theory holds true.

The things I can tell you: it is more important now to have good page titles and meta descriptions. Google still uses this information and more importantly, it was what searchers read to determine which of the search results they will click on. Register in your local search engines sites such as Google Places, Local Yahoo and Local Bing. Claim “your” page on review sites such as Yelp! and ask your clients to add reviews to all of these (Google Places, Yahoo, Bing, Yelp! all have places where you client’s can review your business. The more reviews you have the higher you can rank in the search results!).

Happy searching and remember anything you want on Google, you can find in an Instant!

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Posted in General, Marketing, Search Engine Optimization, Technology | 1 Comment »

Web Site Design for Beginners – Part 3

Friday, August 27th, 2010

The third and final post in this series, Web Site Design for Beginners, is now up on Edmee Roche’s (@edmeeroche) She’s Gone Blogging site.

This blog post covers one of the most important decision you will have to make: what type of web site you are going to develop: informational or e-commerce. Will your site be static, or will it be built with a Content Management System (CMS) so you can easily update the content. If you have an e-commerce site do you want to host your e-commerce site or do you want to use a hosted solution.

Whether you choose a static site, a CMS driven site, an e-commerce site you host or a hosted solution, don’t forget Search Engine Optimization (SEO). I cover all this and more!

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Posted in Design, General, Marketing, Search Engine Optimization, Social Media, Technology | 1 Comment »

Web Design for Beginners

Tuesday, August 10th, 2010

I was honored to be asked by Edmee Rochee (@edmeeroche) to guest blog on her site She’s Gone Blogging about Web Design for Beginners. It is a fun topic, one I really enjoy.

It is being done as a series of posts, so you need to keep going back – it covers what you need to know before you start to design a site. I even go into the basics of shopping carts and the differences between them. It is an overview for beginners, so if you just want the basics, you should check it out!

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Is the Influence Project Influential?

Wednesday, July 28th, 2010

Fast Company wanted to show that they could make anything go viral, so they got together with Mekanism. Mekanism is “a creative company that builds digital audiences.” They also guaranteed Fast Company that anything they do will go viral. Okay, I can believe you can do something so out there, so outrageous, that it can go viral – and with the backing of Fast Company (Fast Company did put it out in their e-mail newsletter, online and in their print publication) I buy that. But what does it prove and what does it gain you. So together they launched the Influence Project.

So what happened with the Influence Project (which was launched the first week in July), in the first week 13,000 people signed up. I admit, I was one of them. Funny thing is, since then (another 3 weeks) only 7,000 people signed up. What went wrong. Easy, it was ill conceived. How you ask. Lots of ego and little planning.

Web sites are for people, not for going viral. The Influence Project web site was created all in Flash 10. You don’t have Flash 10 you can’t get in. Rule out iPhones and iPads (okay, most of them have computers at home). Now let’s talk about corporate users (you know, Fortune 500 companies and the like), they control what applications are on the computers and trust me, they are not all on Flash 10 – I know, those people can wait till they get home. It is just that you made the site more difficult to use.

Okay, everyone is at home using their modern computer with Flash 10. Let’s hope they all have broadband, because this puppy is slow to load (about 20 seconds on my Uverse account)! You load up the link your friend sent you. But the instructions on the page are really poor (although it appears they recently changed them (perhaps from criticism from the crowds). When you went to the site it said nothing. Now it tells you to click on the picture to show influence, but in actuality you have more influence if they sign up, no one got that from the site. No one. Everyone called me and asked me what to do.

News flash. Good site design does not require phone support to navigate. Presently I am ranked 2,183 out of 20,076. I sent out one tweet and posted it once on my personal Facebook page (and I am not a big FB user and have limited friends). Two of my friends signed up, two. Guy Kawaski (big name got 56 people to sign up. Mari Smith managed to get 304 people to sign up. These are not big viral numbers people.

Mekanism and Fast Company want you to think that 20,000 people joining the Influence project is “viral”, I’m here to tell you 20,000 people is nothing. While I would love for 20,000 people to subscribe to my blog or follow me on Twitter. Put the number in perspective, Fast Company has a subscriber base of 723,230. So out of their subscriber base (which doesn’t include all the people who read their online magazine or subscribe to their e-mail newsletter, follow them on Twitter, etc.) they were able to get 20,000 people to sign on. Oh, and the people that signed on tweeted about it to their connections, so it went to people who might not follow Fast Company.

Fast Company might think this was a great success, but I think it was a great dud. They started building this up with an article about viral campaigns and Mekanism in their May issue of the magazine. What they didn’t mention is a lot of viral campaigns don’t bring in a return on investment (luckily, online campaigns often are inexpensive). Take Burger King’s Subservient Chicken, even Burger King admits they only had a minor bump in sales (9%) for a campaign that got them millions of hits online.

Viral campaigns sound great, but are you reaching actual potential clients or are you just reaching “people”. Keep your eye on the ball, which is growing your business. You want to reach those people that can and will use your products and services. Going viral is great, growing your business is better.

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June 30, 2010 – Social Media Day

Wednesday, June 30th, 2010

Wow, we have our own day. Mashable has announced that today is Social Media Day. The first question is, will anyone notice. It is very prominent on the Mashable site (first thing you see), so then I went to Facebook. Facebook has the ability to sent a message to everyone. I expected to see something announcing to the almost 500 million members that this was a very special day, a day celebrating what Facebook has helped shape – social networks. Alas, no global message, Facebook let the moment pass.

So I went to Twitter and checked my stream, and lots of social media, but not a lot of Social Media Day. Hmmm, how could Social Media Day go unnoticed. I checked CNN (online of course) They even link to Mashable and The Wall Street Journal (checking the technology sections of course). Then I went old school, I “Googled” Social Media Day and no major news media outlet (sorry KCTV Kansas City) came up, only Mashable.

So does this mean social media doesn’t work? No, it means social media doesn’t work in a vacuum. It is what I tell my clients. You want to be on Facebook, because if Facebook were a country, it would be the third largest country in the world. You want to be on Twitter, because you want to have the opportunity to meet people, influence people, show people that you are smart, funny, engaging, etc. – pick your adjective that best describes you. You also want to be on Twitter so that you can know what people are saying about you and your company and your product. You can’t respond if you are not a part of the conversation. You need to have a LinkedIn profile so other professionals can find you and know who you are and what you do. You want to have a YouTube channel so they can see you in action (keep checking back, I am editing our video!).

So why did my Google search yield only Mashable links (okay and KCTC), because Mashable forgot that the traditional media, and other social media outlets still look to old fashioned ways to be kept up-to-date: press releases, phone calls, personal interviews. Social Media works, you just need to use it in conjunction with more traditional forms of media if you want to be sure to get wall-to-wall coverage of your very first Social Media Day. Maybe next year, we will be everywhere!

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Posted in General, Marketing, Search Engine Optimization, Social Media, Technology | 2 Comments »

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