Talk It Up!

Please rob me: the truth about online privacy risks

Last night, Social Media Club Seattle featured a stellar panel on Ethics, Money and New Ideas, with panelists Andru Edwards of Gear Live Media, Izabelle Gorczynski (privacy attorney for Microsoft), Matt Haynes of Wunderman and moderated Andy Boyer of Spring Creek Group. Some interesting questions were raised, not the least of which was "What would you do if you had run across the iPad at the bar before release?"

If you're curious, answers ranged from "I'd take pictures of it and then give it to the bartender to return" to "It's abandoned; I'd keep it. But I wouldn't sell it for $5,000."

More interesting to me was the fairly tired debate over location-based services and privacy/safety. I'm considering establishing a new drinking game: when the subject of privacy comes up with respect to social networking sites and/or location-based services, the first person to mention Please Rob Me loses--and everybody drinks.

Does social media put its users at increased risk?

Frankly, it's pretty silly to believe that an average level of participation in Foursquare or Facebook mean that you're a significantly more likely target for burglars. First of all, as was explained to me when my own Chicago apartment was robbed eight years ago, long before Facebook was more than a gleam in Mark Zuckerberg's eye, robbery involves taking something of value by force or threat of force and or by putting the victim in fear. For robbery, the victim is present and threatened. Burglary refers to a crime involving breaking and entering, usually for the secondary crime of theft of personal property. So the site should be entitled "Come Burglarize Me."

Grammar aside, I'd also like to point out that that particular burglary managed to take place without the aid of Twitter, Facebook, Foursquare or Gowalla. Some kids (we think) climbed onto the garage and in a window when I was at Fourth of July festivities in another part of town. They had no way of knowing I was gone; the building had no assigned parking spaces.

Crimes of opportunity happen, but I'm not convinced that participating in social networking sites, microblogs and location-based services heightens the risk significantly, provided the user takes a moderate level of precautions. So the question isn't "does participation in these sites put the user at risk?" it's "does participation in these sites put the user at increased risk?"

Consider the following:

• It's uncommon to publish a home address on Facebook. One panelist suggested that it was common for Facebook users to publish street addresses publicly on their profiles. A poll during the question-and-answer session showed that only one person out of 150 attendees published a home address on Facebook. It's not a common practice.
• It's uncommon to publish a precise home address on Foursquare. Despite the fact that my buddy Mike Foley will check in to "Foleymo World Headquarters," he doesn't include an exact address, just a neighborhood. with his exact address ("It's 1510 23rd Ave. And I don't care who knows it," he Tweets), most users don't publish their home addresses. It's more common to list a title such as "The Homestead" with mention only of a neighborhood, such as "Fremont." If someone wants to hit every home in Fremont, he could be our guest, but I suspect a burglar's time would be better spent actually casing homes to physically see who isn't home and has valuables to steal. And most people don't check in at home, just to social venues.
• Just because one person is out doesn't mean the home is empty. Spouses, children, housesitters and petsitters are often still present in the home, so simply because one resident checks in at a hotel in Hawaii doesn't mean the home is abandoned and free game. In my case, a burglar would have to make his way through a concierge, a secure building and some pretty feisty house- and pet-sitters. And frankly, my most valuable assets, my laptop and electronics, will usually with me. Sadly, there is no hidden stash of Tiffany diamonds or Faberge eggs in the back of my closet (that I know of).

None of this is to say that another burglary couldn't happen, but is the risk increased? A few months ago, five scant months after my move to Seattle, my car was stolen out of the building's "secure" parking garage. Again, it was a crime of opportunity for joyriders looking for a nondistinct ride to take on a crime spree--and nothing was more nondistinct than my silver Honda Civic. Would my checking in on Foursquare and indicating that I was on foot, nowhere near my car, have made that particular burglary any more or less likely? Doubtful.

If you're concerned about your online presence increasing the chance of your becoming the victim of a crime, just take these basic precautions:

• Don't publish your address anywhere. Not on Facebook, not on Twitter, not on Foursquare or Gowalla.
• Don't mention the name of the street on which you live.
• When away for extended periods of time, make it known that others are occupying your home and that you are checking in frequently
• For extra security, don't publish your work address, either.

I'd welcome your anecdotes with social sites and increased risk of crime--what has been your experience?

Setting kids up to fail: does education squash creativity?

Last night, I attended my first Biznik event in Seattle. It was focused on The Power of Pull: How Small Moves, Smartly Made, Can Set Big Things in Motion, a new business book by John Hagel and John Seeley Brown (abbreviated in Tweets as JSB). I haven't read the book yet, but I'm very much looking forward to it.

Hagel and JSB had some solid information to share on the power of pull and what draws people together, whether it be through the medium of social media or in other life channels, including my favorite tidbit of the evening: passion begets passion. Passionate people seek each other out. (To which I added my own geeky insight: visit any Trekkie convention for proof!)

However, one of their insights made me a bit tetchy. The statement was made that the educational system in this country is steadfastly designed to squash creativity. Heads nodded, and the conversation continued, as if the statement were an accepted truth, such as "we all pay taxes" or "no one trusts Congress."

As a student who was always encouraged and challenged by nearly every teacher, professor and trainer that I've ever come in contact with and as a former devoted writer of high school textbooks, I was taken aback at the universal acceptance of this statement. Is this truly an accepted truth? I had always assumed that those who'd muttered this type of educational put-down were those whose thinking was either so far outside the norm as to be disruptive to the learning of others--a select few. Does everyone really believe this, or is it just something that no one bothers to argue with? Was everyone other than me treated with disrespect by every teacher? Was no one else encouraged to think critically, to push themselves, to be creative and rewarded for doing so?

I had fantastic teachers. In elementary school, they gave me extra work because I'd ace the spelling test the first time in. In middle school, they challenged me to think differently about Texas history and what a Pringles can is for. I loved high school so much I didn't want to leave: Mrs. Burrows, 9th grade English, got me so passionate about literature I found out which books the non-AP kids were reading and read all of those, too. Another one dressed up like Charles Dickens and subjected herself to our literary grilling. Mrs. Sinnamon, my beloved French teacher, got us all college-level books so we could start writing thoughtful essays and doing projects instead of just grammatical work (that was during a time when the pedagogical trend in language instruction was grammar-based, not communication-based). I still have my 12th grade British literature book to this day because the textual explorations with Mrs. Dale were what I looked forward to every day. My god, we memorized the intro to The Canterbury Tales and loved it! And Mrs. Bartlett instilled in me a deep love and appreciation of European history and art history that influenced both my French major and art history minor in college and led me to a master's degree in French literature.

I spent the first eight years of my professional career in the educational publishing industry, working as a staff French textbook writer for Holt, Rhinehart and Winston, textbook sales to high school teachers at Heinle & Heinle and then an English and grammar editor at McDougal Littell. Every staff member I worked with was a former teacher, driven by passion to create classroom materials to help busy teachers to inspire students to creativity. At Holt, the French department was a small team of devoted former teachers, all seeking to make the classroom fun for students and instructors. We'd spend staff meetings arguing the grammar/rote versus communication approach for the textbook series we were scoping. At McDougal, I proofed samples of real student sample essays showing innovative approaches to the literature and critical thinking skills, encouraging student to not just grasp the story but offer and support personal insights on its message.

In my experience, dedicated teachers, both in the classroom and writing textbooks, are what has helped form our educational institutions. And there are a lot of dedicated teachers out there. I  know; I've worked with dozens of them. I'm not claiming that every school or every teacher is perfect. I've no doubt there are some bad apples out there. So I wonder: is the institution really all that broken, or are there just some bad teachers out there?

Five Reasons You Should Never Send a Slide Deck

This post will be a bit ranty. If you're not in the mood, just move along. Because I have to admit, this issue is one of those pet peeves that has grown up and planted a homestead in my craw.

Never, ever, EVER send a slide deck to a prospect before a live presentation. Here's why:

1. A good presentation is meant to be seen AND heard. Since most human beings are visual learners, your presentation should be full of powerful visuals and images that you, as a live presenter, speak to so that the prospect can easily digest the information. When sent in email, with no additional information, the images can (and should) fall flat. And so do your products.
2. Your slides are not your presentation. The deck should not contain all the information you wish to deliver; it should serve as a jumping-off point. The deck will not (and should not) give the meat of your presentation for you.
3. You're stealing your own thunder. So, you send the deck, minus your explanation, personality and insight. Then... you show the deck when the prospect comes in. So... he's already seen it and feels you're just repeating content. Like a bored student ignoring the teacher reviewing before the test, your prospect is LESS likely to pay attention during the actual presentation, since he may feel that he's now being talked down to. I mean, he got the information already, right?
4. Scanning isn't understanding. At most, a prospect will take 10-15 seconds to scan through a slide deck that arrived via email. Even if the deck is just 20 slides long, that's under one second per slide. Even if the prospect is just scanning for the gist, you'll feel the effects of #3 when you finally do present. And let's remember that this type of approach--taking a multimedia, visual-heavy presentation and forcing the prospect to read it like a book--isn't respecting the way human beings process and absorb information.
5. You look uncreative. When you do finally give the presentation and it's exactly the same as the prospect received via email, you will leave the prospect with the impression that you weren't creative or smart enough to create a summary one-sheet PDF of your products and services. This has the added benefit of making you look like a small company with only one pony in barn.

Instead of sending a slide deck, pull the key points into a one- or two-page PDF. The design should be attractive and information-heavy, touting the key benefits and some of the features. In short, the one-sheet should inspire the prospect to want to learn more, so that she is looking forward to the presentation. Then, after the presentation, she should feel that she learned something and has additional questions for you and your staff.

Dork is the new black

Exuberant video that makes any geek feel cool. Thanks to Jackie Huba and Rod Brooks for pointing it out:

Anyone else feel just a little cooler now?

From eyeballs to engagement: social media measurement

Thanks to the wonderful Deb Hagen, I had a delightful time speaking to her marketing entrepreneur class at UW last night. Lots of great questions, giving me food for thought for the next talk. Thanks to everyone who asked questions and participated; it was a great experience!

From Eyeballs to Engagement: Socia Media Measurement

View more presentations from Heidi Miller.

 Download SM Measurement Pres 4-20-10

Did you miss Social Media 201?

Did you miss Social Media 201? I had the absolute pleasure of spending a good chunk of the day yesterday at Social Media 201, among the cream of the social media elite. Well, not so much "elite" (because this would imply some type of snobbery) as "really brilliant strategists with great insights, while yet still remaining humble and personable."

Mike Whitmore from Fresh Consulting and Joe Kennedy teamed up to put on the 201 event, and it didn't disappoint. Really, anyone smart enough to bring in Eric Weaver and Tac Anderson, two of the foremost strategists of our day, are going to get some great content knocking around the conference. And Local Color Media did a bang-up job with the high-definition video for the event (yes, that's right--high-def streaming live video), and I'm not just saying that because they made me look ten years younger on camera.

And I had the delight of sitting between Shauna Causey and Tac Anderson and down from Aviel on the Next Steps panel, with Mike Whitmore as moderator. We were posed an excellent question: should a brand have a national microblog presence or a local one? Shauna brought up the example of her Comcast team, which has a national brand presence on Twitter, with each team member personalizing with name. And for a different case, I submitted the example of Domino's Pizza, which does have a national account, but each franchise owner Twitters under DPZ(Name) about his or her local experiences and offerings. The conclusion is that there are models for both, so the question is, how local is your business? A local pizza joint has more likelihood of building an engaged local network than a monolithic cable company, and those factors should affect the choice of model for participating in the channel.

Highlights of the conference from panels I wasn't sitting on:

• Fish where the fish are.--Eric Weaver. Find where your audience is and engage them in that space.
• The brands with the best stories win.
• KnowEm is a nifty tool that will grab your brand name across social media channels.--Darren Williger
• I would disagree that "getting value" out of social media is the same as "monetization."
• "It is personal. And it is business. And it touches people's lives."--Mike Whitmore
• Mine the neutral. Engage with posters of neutral brand mentions and ask for more opinions and information.
• "Engagement" is the new "um".--Barbara Evans
• Don't ever wait to be invited. Call up and ask if you can come.--Barbara Evans

So this conference got me wondering. What would you want to hear about at a Social Media 201 event? What are you tired of hearing about? What do you think the Next Big Thing is?

Presenting demos with the iPad

Ill admit it; I'm a sucker for a nice, tightly-organized presentation. Throw in a nice Apple gadget, and I'm all in.

So when Spoken's illustrious CEO, Howard Lee, got his iPad, one of the first things he did was to load up Keynote and let us play with it. And now... well, there's just no way around getting iPads for the entire office. You know, as presentation tools. :-)

The iPad hooks up to a projector just as a laptop would, via a proprietary connector. And while you can edit the presentation in Keynote's slide view, in order to project it onto the screen, Keynote must be in slideshow mode. In that mode, the iPad screen shows only the slide number you're on (3 of 15, for example); there is no option to mirror displays on both the iPad and via the projector as you would on a loptop. However, there is one really nifty added feature: tap and hold instead of a light tap, and you bring up a red, animated laser pointer!

Likewise, we tried playing one of our demo videos from the iPad, hooked up to the projector. The audio was even louder than on a regular laptop, and the video played beautifully:

Can you use social media to sell an airplane?

If you haven't already spent time, there, Online Case Studies is a treasure trove of case studies for social media campaigns and initiatives.

This particular case study is fascinating: with a budget of just $40,000, an agency created a campaign around the new light sport aircraft PiperSport plane, which has a $140,000 price tag.

The campaign involved some careful SEO, a strategize Facebook page, targeted Facebook ads, a strategized Twitter feed and monitor, blogger outreach and a YouTube video, all surrounding the live launch event. The case study doesn't give a tally of hours involved, but with the careful strategy and content creation, it must have been quite a few.

The results? In the first day alone, Piper Aircraft sold one PiperSport plane online.

Yes, online. Though PayPal.