November 2011
4 posts
4 tags
Cloud Decisions
• Evolution rather than replacement.
The private cloud can evolve from existing virtualized infrastructure, enabling the transition to cloud computing without a complete and disruptive infrastructure overhaul.
• Security and compliance.
With a private cloud, data is retained within the enterprise, behind the corporate firewall, where IT can exercise full control over security, privacy, and...
3 tags
7 Primary Business Drivers for Social Media
Enhance branding and awareness Protect reputation Extend public relations Build community or loyalty Extend customer service Facilitate research and development Drive sales or leads via briansolis.com connect with me Posted via email from Jeffrey Blake - The Enterprise Architect | Comment »
Social Network Users' Bill of Rights
1.Honesty: We will honor our privacy policy and terms of service.
2. Clarity: We will make sure that our policies, terms of service, and settings are easy to find and understand.
3. Freedom of speech: We will not delete or modify user data without a clear policy and justification.
4. Empowerment : We will support assistive technologies and universal accessibility.
5. Self-protection: We will...
2 tags
The 5 Laws of Engagement
Law 1: We seek comfort in relationships: Surround us with community, which we’ve seen success with like Facebook, Twitter and 4chan. Most interestingly is PostSecret, an ongoing community art project where people mail in their secrets anonymously on one side of a homemade postcard. Law 2: We all have something to say. So give us tools to express ourselves. Tools include comments, notes, and...
September 2011
2 posts
2 tags
Anne Boe's Keys to Successful Networking
Clarify your career goals. Develop long-term win-win relationships. Nurture your network daily. Be actively involved in your community. Meet as many people as you can. Take your business cards everywhere. Make friends, even when you don’t need them. Act like a host, not a guest. Become an interested person. Develop your listening skills. Trust your intuition. Take people risks. ...
5 tags
Creating an IT Strategy - Management by Maxim
I have heard that 90% of all businesses do not have a written Business Strategy. Its in their heads - but as an Enterprise Architect how do you extract it so that you can create a viable IT Strategy? Often times CxOs don’t have time to have a strategic dialogue. One way to solve this problem is to employ the “Maxim Process” The Maxim Process is described by Broadbent and...
August 2011
1 post
1 tag
What Does an Enterprise Architect Do ?
Business Technology Strategy What You Know What You Do What You Are Your organization’s business and technology strategy and rationale Your competition (products, strategies and Processes) Your company’s business practices Your Technology Portfolio Influence business strategy Translate business strategy into technical vision and strategy Understand...
July 2011
2 posts
2 tags
Kim Cameron's 7 Laws of Identity
1. User Control and Consent: Digital identity systems must only reveal information identifying a user with the user’s consent. 2. Limited Disclosure for Limited Use The solution which discloses the least identifying information and best limits its use is the most stable, long-term solutio. The Law of Fewest Parties Digital identity systems must limit disclosure of identifying...
2 tags
Ten Topics a Venture Capitalist Cares About
According to Guy Kawasaki The ten topics that a venture capitalist cares about are:1. Problem 2. Your solution 3. Business model 4. Underlying magic/technology 5. Marketing and sales 6. Competition 7. Team 8. Projections and milestones 9. Status and timeline 10. Summary and call to action [Image courtesy of FreeDigitalPhotos.net] connect with me Posted via email from...
June 2011
1 post
3 tags
Five Ways to Organize Information
In his book Information Anxiety, Richard Saul Wurman notes that there are five basic ways to organize information: Alphabet: The organizing principle used by dictionaries and telephone books. Category: The segmentation of things by attribute or functionality, such as color (shirts) or capabilities (product line). Continuum: Similar to category, but rather than using discrete buckets, this...
May 2011
1 post
10 tags
10 Places to List Your Local Business
If you have a small business and you have just created a website then you want to started advertising your site. The best way to get recognition is to have your URL listed on other websites. The easy way to start is to create a business listing in as many directories as possible. Here is a list of 10 to get you started. Google Places Yahoo Local Bing Business Portal Super Pages ...
January 2011
2 posts
2 tags
Quirky - Socially Developed Products
A Socially Developed Product™ via quirky.com Inventors pay $99 to submit their idea to the this co-creation platform. Then the community of designers with co-design and improve the product. Then Quirky helps the inventor sell the product and if enough people buy it - then it will go into production. Revenues from the “e-shop” are shared with the community of...
2 tags
Pay with a Tweet - A social payment system
Sell your products for a tweet. In today’s world the value of people talking about your product is sometimes higher than the money you would get for it. ‘Pay with a Tweet’ is the first social payment system, where people pay with the value of their social network. It’s simple, every time somebody pays with a tweet, he or she tells all their friends about the product. Boom. Click here...
September 2010
4 posts
3 tags
WiseStamp - Email Signatures
I thought this was quite amusing. Just another clever html email signature tool you might say - but makes it easy for a normal person to put it together. It can bring in your last tweet and last blog entry - along with some other social media choices - making it easy to spread your brand. I would imagine businesses would like something like this for their email signature. If you are an...
4 tags
Johnny Bunko - The Last Career Guide You will Ever...
If you are looking to reinvent yourself or just want to tune up your confidence and job hunting skills - you might check out this quick reading graphic novel about Johnny Bunko. In the story Johnny learns what it takes to make a successful career. It can be summarized in 6 lessons.
There is no plan
Think strengths not weaknesses
It’s not about you
Persistence trumps talent
Make...
2 tags
Social Media’s Critical Path: Relevance to...
Before creating or distributing any social object, ask yourself a few important questions:
- What value am I introducing into the mix?
- What makes this object worthy of attention?
- What action do I want to inspire?
- How does this contribute to our standing within each community?
- How can I make this shareable?
content and image via briansolis.com
Brian Solis reminds us what goes into...
4 tags
Dreaming Big and Outside the Box
My friend Gordon just said on Facebook that he is “Dreaming Big and Outside the Box”. More of us need to do this. I have a small slew of near genius friends - but very few dream big. Its not like they are living lives of “quiet desperation” - but close to it. Even the Zen Master gets tired of small pleasures. Sometimes we have to break out of the box and do...
August 2010
3 posts
4 tags
POIG - Meetup On the Spur of the Moment
POIG is a great idea thats finally happened. Have you ever wanted to just meetup with someone to grab a cup of coffee and talk about social business? Or maybe you are having a hard time finding enough players for a pickup game of hoops? You might try Poig. The more friends you have the more the site makes sense. Poig is not about RSVPing for a meetup or happening that wont be until...
4 tags
dlvr.it - You Publish. We Deliver
Deliver It! - can take any of your RSS feeds and route them to any number of social sites including Twitter, Linkedin, and Facebook. You can filter, schedule and plan what goes out and where it goes. This a well thought out tool that gets your material out into the social grid right away. I can see small business using it to promote their business - by doing quick mini blog articles using...
2 tags
Photofunia - Amazing and Free Online Photo Editing
See and download the full gallery on posterous
Photofunia is another free online photo editing site. What is remarkable is not just the array of effects - but the use of face recognition technology. Photofunia can extract a face from a photo image and then super-impose it into different situations - as putting your mug on a billboard. I had crazy fun just playing with it. I imposed my...
July 2010
3 posts
4 tags
SmarTweeter - Smart Tweets for better SEO
SmarTweeter is a new tool to help small businesses promote themselves on the web. SmartTweeter will create tweets out of every page on your website. You can edit the twitter messages and can schedule the tweets to be sent out automatically - or you can do it manually any time you like. You can optionally use avoo.net to shorten all your urls. All you tweets can be saved as they go...
2 tags
Phixr - Online Photo Editing
Looks like a pretty useful tool for someone who doesnt have photoshop. Phixr is not a photo gallery and doesnt store or show your photos - and your uploads are deleted after a short period. Photos are only deleted if they are “idle” for 6 hours, never while you work with them (for registered users the period is 12 hours). Essentially - it lets you add features and effects...
3 tags
How can I create a custom URL for my Facebook...
You can create a custom url for your own page or for any fan page that you manage. If you haven’t already set your personal username already - now is a good time. A custom url makes it easy for others to find you. You can print it on your business card or list it in other social networking sites. Once you set it - it cant be changed - so choose wisely. I always recommend to use your...
February 2010
5 posts
1 tag
LEET Speak 1337 Translation
Note: The commas are added to separate symbols The symbol | (Example: B = |3 ) is a “down-slash”, or “pipe”, and not a lower-case “L” or capital “i” The symbol ` (Example: T = 7` ) is not a standard apostrophe, but is a “Grave Accent” and is found on the tilde (~) key Also keep in mind that the use of /-/ for H for example,...
10 tags
Invite all your Facebook Friends
I thought this script was clever. I rarely want to invite all my friends to anything. But this script works.
I set up a couple of groups on Facebook and wanted to invite all my friends, but it would have taken an eternity because for some strange reason Facebook doesn’t allow you to “select all” friends when sending an invite. I mean, they’ll let you do it… but only if you click one at a...
10 tags
Bing SEO Tips
Here are the Bing SEO tips:
1. Domain Age is Key Bing appears to put a lot of stock into how long ago a domain was registered. For marketers, this means that you may look to purchase older domains if you want to get on good position in Bing.
2. Text Rules On most search engines, the amount of text on the page usually isn’t usually a huge factor. However, Bing appears to really like pages with...
3 tags
Dont You Love Email Scams?
I was just cleaning out my spam folder and ran across these two jewels. We have all seen variations of these things where in order to get money the dupe has to send some amount to free up a much larger amount. Not all of us have been educated about scams - and the good ones are always deceptive.
Madam Rita Osborne. 42 Dryden Street, Leicester, L15, England.
As you read this,I don’t...
10 tags
William Arruda's Personal Branding Predictions
1. Video, Video, Video
Thanks to greater bandwidth, cheaper storage, and a proliferation of products and services that make shooting, storing, viewing, and sharing video easy (Flip video, iPhone 3GS, YouTube, vimeo, blip.tv, vodpod, etc.), video will be king in 2010. Video is ideal because it allows careerists to deliver a complete communication and convey their personality—a critical...
January 2010
58 posts
8 tags
10 steps to a practical social media business...
1. Create a mission statement — What are your top-level objectives for applying social media and Web 2.0? And how will you achieve them? Ideally, this can be boiled down to one statement, articulating both the vision and where you aim to focus in terms of specific strategies. Don’t skip – or skimp on – this one; it’s important.
2. Assign owners – Who will take the mission, build the...
4 tags
How to Link Facebook Wall Entries to Twitter
You might be wondering how you can automatically post your wall entries on Facebook to Twitter. You want anything new happening on your fan page to be shared on Twitter. Its really quite simple. First go to http://www.facebook.com/twitter You will see a simple page that directs you to make the connection. After clicking you will be taken to a page showing all of you fan pages that you...
10 tags
The Four Tenets of the Community Manager
1) A Community Advocate As a community advocate, the community managers’ primary role is to represent the customer. This includes listening, which results in monitoring, and being active in understanding what customers are saying in both the corporate community as well as external websites. Secondly, they engage customers by responding to their requests and needs or just conversations, both in...
2 tags
Social Media Marketing Approaches
Web Strategy Matrix: Social Marketing Approaches, Shotgun vs Laser Shotgun Laser Description Hiring multiple agencies to conduct social campaigns Building a deeper relationship with a core group of influencers Similar to Interactive Advertising, “Fishing” Influencer Relations, ‘Friending” Benefits Efficient way to get started, identify hot spots to pursue. Deeper relationships...
What is Content Strategy
At its best, a content strategy defines: key themes and messages, recommended topics, content purpose (i.e., how content will bridge the space between audience needs and business requirements), content gap analysis, metadata frameworks and related content attributes, search engine optimization (SEO), and implications of strategic recommendations on content creation, publication, and...
The 5 Reasons You're Failing In Social Media
1. You really don’t want to engage directly with customers, employees, etc.—you just want them to hear what you have to say. 2. You’re not ready to create new roles, update process, re-distribute resources and budgets, re-train people, and revise old policies. 3. Social media actually threatens how you make money—but you pay lip service out of fear. 4. Politics. 5. You see it...
Five Reasons why Content Strategy Comes Before...
Here are five important reasons why a content strategy needs to be considered before integrating social media into your marketing plans. Social media does not work unless you have something valuable to say! Developing a content marketing strategy is about understanding your customers’ pain points, and then delivering multi-channel content that solves those customer challenges....
10 tags
Personal Branding is about Fashion
I recently presented my pitch on personal branding at two lunch time events in Sunnyvale. On the first occasion I wore tan corduroy pants with the shirt you see above. And more recently I wore black pants with the same shirt. I didn’t really think too much about it except that I know this is a good color on me.
I started a small buzz when people realized that the business cards I was...
3 tags
The Brand Evangelist and Social Media
A Brand Evangelist is a person who promotes your brand without regard for compensation. Their reward is the association with your brand. Your brand becomes part of their identity. The goal of any brand is to find and cultivate Brand Evangelists who can promote your brand everywhere without costing you a cent. Social Media provides a great platform for you to grow some Brand Evangelists for...
6 tags
Chris Brogan's Online Ecosystem
Facebook: connect with friends and family. LinkedIn: share professional networks. Twitter: communicate in real time, and find the new good stuff. Google Wave: work on the future. Blog: think and muse and share and publish. via chrisbrogan.com I thought this was a good summary of the uses of online tools. Many people struggle with how to use these things. I say...
4 tags
Personal Branding - You Are The Fulcrum
“Give me a place to stand,” said Archimedes, “and I will move the world.”
As you probably know, a fulcrum is the pivot point for a lever. And we know that Archimedes was planning to use a lever to move the world. But a lever by itself is worthless. It needs the fulcrum to actually do the leveraging. You are that fulcrum.
Part of a good brand is being focused on a dream that you want to come...
4 tags
Selling the Dream Using Social Media
An Evangelist is not a well known role but is experiencing a resurgence in the age of Social Media. Guy Kawasaki was probably one of the first to popularize the roll of the evangelist working for Apple computer. I was recently re-reading his book on evangelism called “Selling the Dream” It is still inspiring.
One of the jobs of a product evangelist is to consume, distill and...
2 tags
The Well Branded Business Card
Ive seen many a business card in my day. Mostly all forgetable. When I meet someone interesting and get their card I usually invite them to join me on Linkedin as soon as I get home. The card gets tossed into a stack of other business cards never to be retrieved again. Sometimes after a large event I have a card for someone who I cant remember. Nothing on the card jogs my memory...
1 tag
Listen and Engage At the Point of Need
We all know that listening is the key to a great social media marketing strategy. But listening goes for naught if you cant connect with your customers and grow your business. There is a concept called “The Point of Need” which is a dividing line between the hard sell on one side and a welcomed and connected sales pitch on the other. The key is to know when to merge into...
1 tag
Characteristics of a Technology Evangelist
The most salient characteristics of the typical technology evangelist role include being:
Proactive in rapidly connecting with others; open and generous in extending time and assistance; willing to build and leverage relationships to accomplish tasks and meet goals.
Able to communicate large volumes of content rapidly and clearly. Enthusiastic and persuasive, motivating others by considering...
2 tags
Interact First - Sell Second
via thelostjacket.com I dont know how many times this idea has been drilled into my head. Im a believer. However, it appears to be quite a difficult concept for many on the web. I think you have to have a marketing/customer sensibility before you can understand it. Posted via web from Jeffrey Blake - The Brand Hammer | Comment »
3 tags
Your Personal Brand Can Change The World
I remember a comment Neil Young had about Live Aid and other similar events. He said “save yourself”. I have always thought about that and realized that after I find my true self and act upon that fact - the world will change around me.
Posted via web from Jeffrey Blake - The Brand Hammer | Comment »
3 tags
Personal Branding - Expertise vs Expert
I have found that when we talk about ourselves we might say that we have some particular expertise in something and only rarely do we say “I am an expert”. This is a personal branding mistake. For example, I might say that I have expertise in Java Software Architecture. But it would be better expressed as saying “I am a Java Software Architecture Expert”. And another...
2 tags
Open Directory Project Directories
You may have tried to get your website listed in ODP and found that you had difficulty finding the right category for your site. I know I had the problem when attempting to list Ceboa, an online suite of tools for expensing and invoicing. One easy way to determine your category is to first go to Google Directory. Once you are there you can enter a keyword expression that best represents...
3 tags
Internal and External Brand Mantras
We have all heard about taglines sometimes called “brand” taglines. A tagline is really an external mantra for your customers to resonate with. Its also important when developing a personal career brand to have an internal mantra. Just like the word “OM” - which is chanted to bring inner calm - we need an internal mantra to guide our career and to give it meaning.
...
The Social Media Manifesto – The Future of...
It all starts with respect. Listening is marketing. Participation is marketing. Media is marketing. Conversations are marketing. Comments are marketing. via briansolis.com and it all leads to relationships. Posted via web from Jeffrey Blake - The Brand Hammer | Comment »
1 tag
Criteria for a Great Brand Name
DISTINCTIVENESS - always important in branding. You must standout. Ive seen some pretty interesting names lately that have been creative with spelling - apptizr.com as an example. This company provides a smart way to find iphone apps. BREVITY - Often you want to have your brand name be your domain name. So some brand names or company names are just too long and you are forced to have...