Is it really as complicated as you think?

Sometimes we see things from the wrong perspective.  We think they are complex, complicated and wicked to learn, use to do.  We see them as something unattainable, something that will always be either just out of reach, or a million miles away.  Sometimes we stop and think to ourselves, “That will never happen…”, or “I could never do that…”  Is it really that complex, that complicated or that wicked?  Many times they are not, and we all need to learn that about ourselves, the things we do, the thing we would like to accomplish, use or do.

I think we all sometimes just need to step back and re-evaluate how we are peering into our path.  How we perceive the obstacles on that path, and where we ultimately want that path to take us (whether it involves a turn, a new path or more).  Sometimes, we have to brave where the is no visible path – and with the right support behind us – our group of people, whether online or offline, that are our backing, the pushers pushing us to excel – we can build a path.  Our own path.

Does it need to be complicated?

Sometimes, and being a web programmer by trade I see this alot (and have even been guilty of it myself), we over complicate things.  We make them harder than it should be.  It’s nothing with our perspective or outlook, but in our natural habits.  We add steps, layers and side trails – not out of the fear of failure or other things pertaining to our paths and such, but out of a necessity to be thorough to the point of complications.

Why?  We all have off moments, and sometimes that is all it is.  A moment of clouded clarity, or no clarity at all.  Other times it’s the best we know at the time, and we just haven’t honed out skills to work, create and be lean, mean machines at what we are doing.  Finally, sometimes we just do it to see if we can – which can work against us, or for us, depending on what the outcome should be and what the outcome ends up being.

How about we make things uncomplicated?

Let’s face our fears, let’s build that new path, let’s learn about who we are, what we can do, should do and want to do.  Then, let’s get out there and do it.  No more complications from us not pushing forward, okay.  How about we try to maintain clarity – yes sometimes we just need to slow down or stop to gain that clarity – and that’s okay.  Your competitors (if your applying to a business mentality) aren’t going to get that far ahead of you if you stop or slow down to renew the clarity.  Think about it, they won’t get any farther ahead than you staying in a cloudy state for a longer period of time, now will they.  And that clarity may give your business just the edge it needs.

In our personal lives – let’s slow down and find that clarity – to interact well, live well and take more moments to cherish those around us.  Those who are helping us on our paths deserve nothing but our best in return for what they do for us.  Let’s give them that, shall we?

Why not.

What do Cowboys, Computers, the Web and Social Media all have in common?

They are joining forces to bring high-tech into the daily happenings of the Professional Bull Riders Built Ford Tough Series. Through the use of social media, the web and computers (and by computers I mean desktops, laptops, netbooks, smartphones and more) they are expanding their reach into new markets, new genres and opening up the sport to a much wider audience than ever before.

The 2009 season has seen quite a few changes at the PBR – from the main web site (http://www.pbrnow.com) getting a complete face lift early on, to the event information pages being completely redone to provide more information and better timed, to using social media, such as Facebook, Twitter and MySpace to not only communicate with fans, but provide more pertinent information even faster, the PBR has expanded its high-tech offerings to the world at large in the digital age.

You can follow @teampbr on Twitter to get behind the scenes photos in real-time from the events, including the currently happening PBR World Finals. They also provide some scores as they happen in real-time, along with photos of riders, bulls, opening ceremonies and more. They also run some trivia and other fun items during the events to engage followers even more. The same can be said for their MySpace and Facebook pages, with information going out faster and through more outlets than ever before.

One of the late offerings of 2009, which debuted two events prior to the PBR World Finals, was the addition of the Live Event Center. What the Live Event Center brings to the fans is a real-time, live updated ride-by-ride scoring system viewable in their web browser. Within seconds of a rider either riding a bull or bucking off, fans have the ability to see the rider score, buck-off-time if the rider bucked off and in all cases the bull’s score. The fans now have the ability to see the scores and other information at times they cannot watch it on television or the broadcast is delayed rather than live.

Additionally, one of the staff writers, Keith Ryan Cartwright, is “live blogging” – sending updates every few rides with information about the riders, their rides, the bulls, their bucks and behind the scenes text commentary with the riders, and others. This has been placed on to the live score page, so that visitors not only can see the scores, but then get a flight-by-flight “blog” update of all the action that gives some perspectives behind the scores. So now visitors to the PBR site can not only get live scores, flight-by-flight commentary, but they can follow the @teamPBR team and get some photos from in arena as well as other updates in regards to the rides, riders, bulls, bull fighters and more.

If that were not enough, for the debut of the 2009 PBR World Finals, visitors to http://www.pbrnow.com can click on the live photo page and get a very special treat. Andy and Matt from Bull Stock Media, the official photographers and stock provider to the PBR, are posting real-time live in-arena photos. These are in-your-face photos of the bulls, the riders, the rides – all the dirt, grime and hustle that makes the PBR THE Toughest Sport on Dirt. The photos are posted from the start of the show, including the rider introductions, the bull introductions, during the presenting of the American Flag, all the way through to the round winner circle, and eventually at the close of the 2009 World Finals World Champion ceremony.

Combine all of that with a mobile powered web site with the latest news and feature stories, http://mobull.pbrnow.com, blogs from some of the best in the businesses, including 9-time World Champion Ty Murray, and a complete online Audio podcast and Video archive located at http://pbr.tv – it is easy to see how the Toughest Sport on Dirt is fast becoming a high-tech sport – reaching new fans, new avenues and generating more content for viewers than ever before.

Who is in your VAN?

No, I am not talking your grocery-getter mini-van, or your creepy stalker van, or any other gasoline powered vehicle of the boxy van type. I am talking about your Value Added Network. Say what?

We seem to spend so much time these days building networks of all types. Whether it is a computer network, a social network, a family network or what ever type of network – we are fervently trying to connect all the various pieces of our lives together. The people, the places, the things, the ideas – trying to connect it, make sense of it and build our lives from it.

Maybe, just maybe, in our quest to build our networks – online, offline, within social circles and outside the social sphere of our lives we have failed to cue into what should be the most important part of our network – our Value Added Network. So, what exactly is a Value Added Network? I will explain my view of it below.

Value Added Network – the portion of our network that we either directly receive value from, or directly provide value to.

That’s a pretty broad definition if you ask me, so let’s break it down a bit. In any given network we possess, use or a part of, there are any given number of nodes, people, places, things or ideas. These nodes, people, places, things and ideas all have the ability to either give, take or destroy value to our network. This can happen any number of ways – which I might explore in another post later – but will touch on here.

Let’s examine the three things that can happen. Give – this does not mean a physical object, material object, or even any object at all. We can receive value from our network in many forms. We might get an uplifting note on a day we are struggling, which is good because it may improve our outlook and allow us to do something spectacular that day. We might get a small bonus or token from a client, customer or friend…just something to let us know we matter. We might get help from someone on a project, maybe an idea from them that helps us solve a problem. We might setup a new connection that we find is a wealth of information that we can personally apply to our activities and enrich those around and give back. Speaking of giving – we must do our part back to our network. If you can give an encouraging word, do so. If you can give some ideas, help or other resources, do so. Likewise maybe you can give someone an object, something material or whatever that enriches their life within their network, and within yours since they are a part of it.

Taking – yes there are those items, people and places that simply take and never provide any value back. We do have to be careful of these. Why? Sometimes it is wonderful to give, have it taken and not have any expectations in return. However, sometimes people, places and things simply take all they can, and we willingly give all we can and run to the ragged edge because of it. How? Take the highly addictive games we play on our computers. How many hours can we spend doing that? At what point to we cross the boundary and it becomes a time waster? What about the days we spend several hours doing activities that take away from things we really should be doing? Maybe we spend 2 hours being sidetracked on a web site, in a store, driving aimlessly when we really need direction. See how it can run our network dry? Sometimes we become the taker – simply consuming the people, places, things and ideas around us – needlessly, endlessly, ferociously, and selfishly. If you find your self doing this – STOP. It will better your network and those whose network you are drying up.

Destruction. It happens to us all. Those things which simply have no good outcome. There are things in our networks out to destroy out networks – whether it is a person, a piece of equipment, a place – they are there. The sole purpose is to disrupt as much as possible. If it is a person, it might be jealousy, anger, hate or malice that is driving this destruction. If it is something, say a computer or office equipment, maybe it is old and needs replaced, maybe it is malfunctioning, maybe it was no good to begin with. Either way, this destruction can not only destroy and dwindle our networks, but also destroy and dwindle ourselves.

So what is a VAN? A value added network is ensuring that what we spend the most amount of time with in any of our given networks is that which provides a harmonious balance between giving, receiving and realization that we can each give and take as much as it takes if we have built the proper network of people, places, things and ideas. It is merely the idea that we want to give and take, and get rid of that which is not balanced – if we are taking too much, out to destroy or not giving enough and are out of balance, we have a limited value from our network. If those items in our network are taking too much, out to destroy or not giving enough, again it is a limited value network. However, when we can find that balance, we have our value added network – the proper balance of give and take…whether it is interaction with people, places, things or ideas – they all can effect our network equally, just as we can equally effect them.

Your thoughts? Have you evaluated your networks recently? What did you find? Did you find any of the things discussed? Do you agree or disagree with the analogy? Share below in the comments!!

That brings me to social media. Does YOUR Business NEED social media? Chances are, with the infancy of this new paradigm, you may not. You may not need to be interacting on every social network, such as Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIN and others. There may not be much that you can accomplish right now. Besides, launching a complete social media plan and then executing it is not easy, just read Chris Brogan’s thoughts on the subject.

However, there are two things that you should do, right now.

1. Protect Your Brand/Business/Name: Simple enough – go out and register your brands, your business name and your trademarks on the various social tools so that some unscrupulous would-be wanna-be doesn’t do it for the sheer fact you haven’t yet. This also keeps the said wanna-be from causing damages by impersonating you, your business or your brand. Even if you don’t use these accounts right now, just like a domain name, protect who you are.
2. Social Search Your Brand/Business/Name: This one can’t be said enough. If you are not actively searching through Google, Google Blog Search, Twitter Search, on Facebook, MySpace and the other plethora of social networks and social media tools, you are causing damage to your business, your brand and your name. You will have no idea that your product was a trending topic on Twitter, and that 95% of what is being Tweeted is NOT in your favor. Cleaning up this fall out is messy at best, and disastrous with long-term, if not permanent, damage.

There you have it, protect your business, your brand, your name and become proactive. If you should happen to notice chatter in the socialsphere, you have the accounts already in place, with which you can respond.

What if some damaging comments are made, and you find out that some 17-year old registered your preferred name, your brand name or business name and you now have to be ambiguous on your identity until you get that resolved?

What if that 17-year old (or 33 year old) who impersonated you responded to the chatter?

Rules? We Don’t Need Stinking Rules
One common trend is people trying to define the Rules of Social Media. That’s funny. Do you know why? There are none. What works for you, may not work for me. What works for Skittles (or doesn’t) may or may not work for Milky Way. Get over it. Move on.

My Social Media Rules
What? You just said no rules. I know – be quiet now and listen.

1. Connect
2. Communicate
3. Be Real
4. Be Transparent

Pretty simple.

Explanation For Those That Need It
Connect to people, customers, clients, friends and family which are, by definition, all human capital. They are PEOPLE, Businesses ARE people. Human Capital = PEOPLE. You can’t use the tools if you don’t connect.

Communicate with the aforementioned list of people. Communicate in a TWO-WAY fashion – you must LISTEN to be a great communicator – even in Social Media.

Be real with the aforementioned list of people. If you are not being real to who you are, who your business is, you are killing your chances of success. Seriously. Of all the Internet tools, social media seems to be best at identifying failures by individuals and businesses merely trying to broadcast, exploit or make a quick buck by NOT being real and genuine.

Be transparent with aforementioned list of people. Transparency ensures success with being real. If something is paid – a blog post, a tweet, a comment – it doesn’t matter what, DISCLOSE that fact up front. If you work for a company and do things on their behalf, DISCLOSE that fact up front….and if said business doesn’t want you to – evaluate WHY they don’t and evaluate if you should still be interacting with them. Gimmicks, trickery, lies, and shadiness DO NOT work with Social Media.

There, rules from the most NON expert on Social Media. Rules that aren’t rules, but principles. Things that if we do right, I PERSONALLY feel success will be within reach on Social Media whether you are an individual, a business or an individual acting on behalf of a business. I would think it would work for Government, Education and Non-Profit as well. In fact, I bet these four “principles” would work no matter who you are representing using Social Media.

What do you think?

You see, the tech came out and checked and we have a bad drop from the box at the corner of our property to our house. So he ran a new temporary line. About 2 hours later I was contacted by the contractor that is going to run a new underground line to the house. I no more hung up from that call and Steph from @TalkToQwest sent me a DM through Twitter. The purpose? FOLLOW-THROUGH! She wanted to make sure things were getting resolved. When she found out we needed a new line, which will take some time given they have to locate underground utilities, mark them, dig, run line and test she apologized that it couldn’t all be resolved today. No problem – I understand what it takes to run cable, been there-done that type of thing. But the follow through. Amazing.

Oh yeah, I was also thanked for the post yesterday giving props to the Qwest team and their service on this issue. That was unnecessary albeit welcomed and impacting.

So how about it. Do you follow through with your customers? Even if just to say hello or to check and see how things are going? Why or why not? Should you?

This is 2009, right? My T-Mobile Shadow, a Windows Mobile based cell phone, offers better quality and sometimes faster Internet speeds, which is saying something since T-Mobile has probably the smallest 3G network and my phone is definitely not 3G compatible.

A while back my wife (@raekaye) contacted our phone provider Qwest and was told we would need to install filters on the lines in the house and hook a phone up to the DMARC box outside to verify the problem existed at the point where the outside line transfers to the inside line. Pointless since we have their Linebacker service which means they will inspect, test and repair lines inside and outside of the house. But I digress. Testing done. Same issue.

Yes, the installation technician noted he filtered the line at the DMARC box. Why? He ran a brand new line, about 12 feet from the DMARC to where our DSL modem is in the house. He filter the other line that comes in to the house and powers the other phone outlets at that DMARC box. Filtering is good. Just to be safe I installed a filter on the only phone we have hooked up.

So time goes on, problem is getting worse. I Tweeted a time or two a few weeks ago. Venting really. I did the same today, and in under 3 minutes got a reply from “Steph” on Twitter, who works for Qwest. They can be found at @TalkToQwest on Twitter. Shock and Awe!

Needless to say, in under 20 minutes they contacted me on Twitter, verified my phone number and address via DM on Twitter and called me on my cell phone (since the main line was having trouble). At this point, Steph had a support tech on the line, conferenced us together and the support tech setup a support ticket to get a tech on-site at 9:30 AM the next day (March 11, 2008).

The fact that Steph stayed on the line until the tech was done scheduling the appointment and made sure that I was satisfied at the end of the call meant quite a bit. She took ownership of the situation. That is POWER in customer service. 100% pure power if employees are allow, nay encouraged, to take ownership of customer situations.

At this point, I will update the post once the service tech makes an appearance and I have been instructed to followup after the tech is here to ensure that it was satisfactorily accomplished. They told me to follow up, and that they would follow up. That’s power too. Too many customer service departments provide a fix, or what they think was a fix, and never follow through to ensure adequate completion and satisfaction.

So, what you and your business? Do you exercise 100% pure power in customer service? Have you experienced 100% pure power in customer service? Share your stories in the comments!

Personal? Not quite!

Case in point – a local car dealership (name withheld purposely) sent a solicitation for business. It is attached at the top of the post. Name blacked out of course. Why does this bother me?

“We’ve Missed You!” – No they haven’t. I have never stepped foot inside this dealership before in my life.

“As a preferred customer…….” – No I am not. Again, having never stepped foot in their dealership, how can they call me a “preferred customer”? Quite simply they cannot.

Now I understand that this was simply a piece of bulk mail, sent from some out of state agency (why they didn’t choose an in-state agency in keep dollars in their home state – or better yet an entity in their COMMUNITY to do this service is far beyond my comprehension) to a list that was most likely purchased from a mailing list broker, that somehow included my name and address. So why, then, have a problem with it?

How many people do you suppose they sent this to? 100, 1000, 10,000 maybe 100,000? How many people received this piece of mail calling them a “Preferred Customer” are actually even a customer of this business at all?

Something to think about when marketing/advertising is the message matching the audience. Otherwise it is a waste of time and money.

Instead I started getting more posts, but no quality. So I gave up on it. Smart move in my view. I wish to create some form of positive value for those that come along this blog – and that just wasn’t accomplishing it for them. Nor for me.

It’s about quality, not quantity in many realms – this one seems to be one of the most classic applications of that mantra. Blogging, Twitter and truly social media as a whole seems to have two camps: Those focused on quantity and those focused on quality. There are a few who accomplish both…they are the kingpins of social media so to say. They consistently produce thought provoking content, interact with a large number of people and do both at an astonishing rate. Then there are those who create tons of content, but nothing that jumps off the screen if you will and generates readership.

What about you – do you focus on quality or quantity in your content creation, social interaction and general day-to-day activities?

Food, Tobacco, and Alcohol.

Food is pretty obvious. People need to eat to live. Tobacco?? Alcohol?? Some would argue that the latter two increase during recession – people calming themselves, “taking the edge off” as it might be put.

That brings up this idea – if people spend wastefully during a recession, and I am just as guilty being a smoker, who at one point quit for 2 years and then started up again about a year ago, what else will they spend wastefully on?

Now let’s look at the value in what we spend our money on when times are tight. What products services do you offer that create a positive value for people otherwise struggling to make sense of things? What could you offer that would create a positive value or help ease the struggling?

I know what I am going to do…..how about you?