Current Location: Home / Archives for 2009

No #RefreshCA for December

December 8, 2009 By Leave a Comment

We had originally planned on having a Central Arkansas Refresh meeting for December but with everyone having such a hectic schedule this time of year I think it’s going to be hard to pull it off.  We will be back in January with Nick Brewer speaking on WordPress so be sure not to miss out on that one.  We will also go back to our regular schedule of last Tuesday of the month.

Thanks for understanding, and I hope each of you has a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year! Please help by spreading the word so no one shows up tonight expecting there to be a meeting.

Filed Under: Central Arkansas Refresh Tagged With:

The Rejected Christmas Card Photo…

December 7, 2009 By Leave a Comment

Am I the only one that sees the humor in this?  For our Christmas card photo this year I came up with the idea of having my wife standing over me w/ a golf club in her hand.  You know, Tiger Woods style.  Well, I will say that there was a compromise made on the Christmas card photo, we were both happy.  But, just for those of you who share my sick sense of humor, here is the photo we didn’t use…

rejected-christmas-card-photo

Filed Under: Funny

Thank You Conway Area Chamber of Commerce!

December 5, 2009 By 1 Comment

conwaychamberlogo In case you missed my twitter or facebook posts yesterday I wanted to share something very cool that happened to me yesterday.  I won a twitter-based competition that was held by the Conway, Arkansas Chamber of Commerce. 

The prizes for the competition total over $800, this is what caught my attention.  It wasn’t your normal, free book on Amazon, or Best Buy gift card thing, the prizes for the competition were awesome! Here’s the list:

The rules were simple:

Follow these folks on twitter and we put your name in the hat for each account you follow: @mcdowellrealty, @caldwelltoyota, @my100bank, @brooksinsurance, @24_7fitness, @strombolis1, @rockefeller, @chambergates, @chambertj, @chamberwes, @chamberkathy, @chamberwhitney, @chambermary, @chamberbrad, @chamberlaura, @chamberchad, @chamberjamie

Well, long story short, my wife and I were out doing some Christmas shopping when I got a tweet from @chambergates that I needed to go check out a YouTube video of the drawing.  I went out and low and behold, I had won the competition.  How cool is that??  Here’s a link to the site where they drew my name.  Oh, and here’s the YouTube video.

I just wanted to say thanks to the Conway Chamber of Commerce, Strombolis, 24/7 Fitness, and the Winthrop Rockefeller Institute for putting on this drawing.  My wife is already looking for a new dress!! 

Filed Under: Miscellaneous Tagged With:

Open Letter from Mark Zuckerberg

December 2, 2009 By Leave a Comment

Facebook is still amazing in terms of it’s growth.  This morning I took a few minutes to read Mark Zuckerberg’s open letter to the Facebook community regarding the future of Facebook.  Sounds like they are putting a lot of emphasis on networks (from a regional standpoint).  This is one area that I think they have needed to work on for a while now.

They are also hoping to do a better job of simplifying their privacy controls, which if any of you have ever worked with will know that there is a lot of room for improvement.  Another thought to ponder each time you use your Facebook account to login to an external website, Facebook has successfully grown from being a social network to much, much, more.

Here’s the letter in case you missed it:

It has been a great year for making the world more open and connected. Thanks to your help, more than 350 million people around the world are using Facebook to share their lives online.
To make this possible, we have focused on giving you the tools you need to share and control your information. Starting with the very first version of Facebook five years ago, we’ve built tools that help you control what you share with which individuals and groups of people. Our work to improve privacy continues today.

Facebook’s current privacy model revolves around "networks" — communities for your school, your company or your region. This worked well when Facebook was mostly used by students, since it made sense that a student might want to share content with their fellow students.
Over time people also asked us to add networks for companies and regions as well. Today we even have networks for some entire countries, like India and China.

However, as Facebook has grown, some of these regional networks now have millions of members and we’ve concluded that this is no longer the best way for you to control your privacy. Almost 50 percent of all Facebook users are members of regional networks, so this is an important issue for us. If we can build a better system, then more than 100 million people will have even more control of their information.

The plan we’ve come up with is to remove regional networks completely and create a simpler model for privacy control where you can set content to be available to only your friends, friends of your friends, or everyone.

We’re adding something that many of you have asked for — the ability to control who sees each individual piece of content you create or upload. In addition, we’ll also be fulfilling a request made by many of you to make the privacy settings page simpler by combining some settings. If you want to read more about this, we began discussing this plan back in July.

Since this update will remove regional networks and create some new settings, in the next couple of weeks we’ll ask you to review and update your privacy settings. You’ll see a message that will explain the changes and take you to a page where you can update your settings. When you’re finished, we’ll show you a confirmation page so you can make sure you chose the right settings for you. As always, once you’re done you’ll still be able to change your settings whenever you want.

We’ve worked hard to build controls that we think will be better for you, but we also understand that everyone’s needs are different. We’ll suggest settings for you based on your current level of privacy, but the best way for you to find the right settings is to read through all your options and customize them for yourself. I encourage you to do this and consider who you’re sharing with online.

Thanks for being a part of making Facebook what it is today, and for helping to make the world more open and connected.

Mark Zuckerberg

Filed Under: Social Media / Web 2.0 Tagged With:

Interested in Special Rates for #SXSW?

November 23, 2009 By 3 Comments

SXSW-2010-Logo I was on the phone today w/ the Registration people at #SXSW (South by Southwest Conference) negotiating a special group rate for the Central Arkansas Refresh group.  They have offered us a pretty good rate on admission and they mentioned some housing options as well that we might be able to take advantage of but we need to get a headcount on how many from within our group are looking at making the trip down…

If you are interested in making the trip, please leave me a comment on this post so I will know what kind of headcount we are looking at.  I will then forward you on an email that I received from them today regarding our discount…  Please also share this with any of your co-workers that are also considering making the trip down…

Filed Under: Central Arkansas Refresh Tagged With: ,

The By-Product of Social Media Becoming a Buzzword

November 23, 2009 By 4 Comments

If you work in the web / interactive marketing industry you have no doubt had to sit your clients down and have the social media talk.  The whole social media buzzword comes up in just about every conversation these days.  Something that I have found myself having to do is to debunk a lot of pre-conceived notions as to what social media can bring to a customers bottom line.

While I agree that there is no better tool for getting the message out there, it still all comes down to the message.  If a clients message is not as good as their competitors message, or their product or service description is lacking, it’s going to get pointed out a lot quicker in a user generated content environment than it is anywhere else.  Now, this is not to say that all of our clients have bad products or services, let’s just say that they have a great product or service but they don’t do a good job “selling” it in an interactive environment.  I will go as far as to say they might have an awesome product but are promoting it with dry white-papers or boring static content and product pages that, frankly, no one wants to read.  Adding social media to the mix is just going to irritate the problem instead of making it better…

I think that before pushing existing content onto the social spectrum, a close evaluation should be done to see if the information on hand is in tip-top shape.  This blog post comes on the heels of another post I recently launched where I talked about how Social Media has caused a lot of us in the industry to stop preaching the basics of web2.0 to our clients, primarily blogging. 

As I mentioned earlier, I find myself debunking a lot of myths about Social Media with people that I talk to today, and this is probably partly my fault, I talk about it a lot.  Probably because as long as I have been in this industry, no greater tool has come along for pushing content and building an audience, but losing sight of the fact that social media is a tool has given a lot of businesses the idea that they can just plug into it and boom! overnight success!!  This is not the case.

Granted, having a presence in the social realm should be a top priority for any business, regardless.  I always tell clients that the conversation is going on anyway, you may as well have a voice, but it’s the voice (aka your message) that needs to be right on target and where you focus your efforts.

As I watch clients sit there as we discuss social media I can’t help but notice their wide hopeful eyes, and misleading clients is something my partners and I would rather get stung by hornets than do, so we are cautious as we go into our spill to emphasize that it’s all going to come back to what they are already doing.  If they are doing a terrible job promoting their brand right now, it’s going to be compounded by adding social media.  They need to re-evaluate the basics before going into any type of social campaign…

I see this wide-eyed hopefulness that we have to debunk, or rain on, as one of the biggest byproducts of social media becoming a buzzword.

Filed Under: Social Media / Web 2.0 Tagged With: ,

Blogging is Foundational, Social Media a Tool

November 23, 2009 By 1 Comment

While everyone is out spreading the gospel of social media I have found myself spreading a slightly different message lately.  Now, don’t get me wrong, social media is an awesome tool for running a marketing campaign, I am on board completely with this, but it is just that, a tool.  Social Media is not the answer, it’s the delivery mechanism.  I feel that while everyone is serving up the social media cool-aid, we (as an industry) might not be doing our clients any favors by not preaching the basic fundamentals of web2.0, specifically blogging.

While it is true that there is no greater way to build an audience than Social Media right now, I still feel that once you have accumulated this audience you have to “entertain” them, for lack of a better word.  By “entertain” I am not referring to song and dance, or anything like that.  Your social media audience, whether it be on Facebook or Twitter, has chosen to align themselves with your brand for a particular reason, whatever this reason is, they obviously expect to hear more about it or interact with others about it. 

Granted, Twitter offers an excellent opportunity to push content to your audience but when used by itself it only allows you 140 characters to get your message across.  Now, I realize that a lot can be said in 140 characters, for instance, coupon and promotional codes can easily be tweeted, but there are always going to be instances where you need more than 140 characters.  Without going into a lot of examples, let’s just say you have a new product that you are planning on releasing.  You want to push this product information out to your subscribers but it’s impossible to describe with 140 characters, this is not uncommon.  It’s widely accepted today to post a shortened URL linked to a blog post with details about this product such as it’s specifications, proposed release date, pricing information, etc.  It is for this reason that I find myself emphasizing to clients over and over that blogging is foundational to most campaigns and not so much the social aspect.  Yes, we are going to use social media to push your content out there but it’s the content itself we are pushing…

Getting Past the Idea that Blogging is Different…

While the concept of blogging is not hard, a lot of companies wrestle with it when they finally get around to implementing it.  I know because I see it everyday.  In fact, I have been talking with a close friend recently who has had a corporate blog for several years now and has wrestled with pushing it because he comes from the old school where it’s either published content (web pages) or white papers (pdf’s) that are both carefully worded and lengthy.  After talking on the phone for 2 hours one night we determined that the whole informal perspective of a blog post is what he is wrestles with the most.  I carefully worded my response to him to let him know that the whole informal thing that he is wrestling with is just the new language of the web. 

Now, do I think that white papers or static content on the web is going to go away or become less important?  No.  I think that there will always be a place on the web for formally worded, static content.

But… just like how Nirvana came along in the 90’s and made it hard for Poison to sell records, blogs and user generated content have forever changed the way we research products and brands…  (I am pretty proud of this analogy for some reason!)

Here is a real-world example, I am currently in the market for a digital video camera.  I had a few brands in mind so I have naturally been on their websites to see what the technical specs were, but when it comes down to brass tacks I go out and read blog posts that others have written about these products.  It is here that I get the big picture.  I also don’t think that Apple shows you how to jailbreak the iPhone on their website either, but there are people who have bought the iPhone just to jailbreak it and make it do certain things that they have seen others talk about on their blogs. 

With this being said, I hope you can see the point that I am trying to make.  The blog is foundational and should be thought about as the center spoke on the wheel of your campaigns.  Now, keep in mind that I am well aware of the scenarios where blogging is not foundational, some of these I mentioned earlier, but a lot of our clients will never find themselves in these scenarios based on their business models.  It’s our job as consultants to ready our clients with the tools they need for success.  It is for this reason that I am going to be pushing a few posts out over the next few weeks that deal directly with the business of blogging.

The By-Product of Social Media Becoming a Buzzword…

On a sidenote, by social media becoming such a strong buzzword, a lot of clients are inquiring about it.  I think it’s good to be a realist and debunk a lot of myths regarding social media when talking to clients who sit there with hopeful eyes as you discuss Facebook & Twitter.  This is one thing that my partners and I try to do when we meet with our clients and the topic of social media comes up.  We emphasize that, yes, in some cases amazing things can happen, sometimes almost overnight (we have seen this first hand), but it’s important to stay grounded and not put all of your eggs into one basket.  Something else that I try to emphasize that while we might not be re-assuring you that you are going to do great things w/ your social media presence, it’s extremely important to have this presence regardless, the conversation is going on anyway (probably more on this topic here…)   

Filed Under: Social Media / Web 2.0 Tagged With: , ,

Reflecting on #RefreshCA User Group 2009

November 23, 2009 By 3 Comments

As 2009 is starting to wind down, I was looking back at some of the goals I set for myself in 2009.  One of these goals was to do a lot more business networking.  Since my partners primarily operate from our corporate headquarters in Batesville and I live in Conway, I primarily work from home.  This is not a bad thing for me, because if you know me, you know that I am ADHD and a bit OCD, and when it all comes down to it I get easily distracted and obsess about things like folders on my desk that really aren’t that important.  While we have been able to medicate the ADHD part, the OCD thing seems to be getting worse, and for this reason working from my home office 90% of the time is still the best thing for me, except when my partners come to visit and drop 100 bouncy balls in my desk chair… 

If you have ever worked from home you know that it can be a drain on your social skills, as well as your creativity.  For a long time I would find myself taking a break and heading out to our local Starbucks to meet up with freelancers, programmers, sales people, etc., just to talk shop.  The camaraderie in the interactive and development industry is second to none, especially when you add an overpriced latte to the mix.

It was with the personal goal in mind of doing more business networking in the back of my mind that the idea for #RefreshCA was formed.  I figured that for the sake of posterity it would be nice to archive how things kind of got started, especially given the success the group has had.  Now, I want to state for the record that while I might have had a hand in the idea that got the group started, I can’t take full credit for what it has become.  There are tons of people to thank, some I probably will fail to even mention in this post, they know who they are, and I appreciate them wholeheartedly for the work they have done to keep the group growing. 

Background Info on #RefreshCA

One afternoon Nick Brewer and I were talking about forming some kind of a group that could meet once monthly to discuss our industry.  We would cover a variety of topics from Web2.0, Social Media, and even web development.  We started a Facebook group for our idea and decided to go w/ the Refresh type format for the group. Today our facebook group has 162 members.  It wasn’t long that I was contacted by David Kinkade, a blogger in the state that covers political topics, and he mentioned that he would be interested in being a part of our steering committee for the group.  Wow, we have three people at this point.  Okay, so almost overnight we started mentioning the group on our blogs just to see what kind of response we got back from around the area.  We started picking up members in our facebook group and on Twitter a lot of people were expressing their interest.  So, we decided to have our first informal gathering at a Starbucks in Little Rock to more or less brainstorm the group idea and see if we were all indeed on the same page. 

About 10-15 or so of us showed up at the first Starbucks meeting and it was obvious at the onset that we were all onto something and that this group idea was going to be viable.  Darren Huckey, a phenomenal artist and developer emailed me a logo for the group one morning and by that evening we had a website online.  All the while our group was continuing to grow in numbers on Facebook thanks to the exposure we were getting in blogs and on Twitter. 

Our second meeting we had a lot more people than we had expected show up at Starbucks, I can remember seeing one guy that had to park across the street and cross 4 lanes of traffic just to get to the meeting and when he got there there wasn’t a chair for him to sit down so he stood at the door.  I was thinking in the back of my mind the entire time that yep, this thing is going to be cool.

We immediately started discussing ideas for how our meetings should flow and we all arrived that each week we would have 2 presenters from within the group come and discuss a topic that they are knowledgeable about or currently working on.  While planning our third or fourth meeting it was painfully obvious by the RSVP’s we were getting on Facebook for the meetings that we were soon going to be fire code our Starbucks location so we went to work trying to find an alternate location.  Wade Austin talked to some of his connections and an alternate location was found downtown at the Flying Saucer.  Now, we had some room…

Our next couple of meetings went great, we had speakers on a wide variety of topics and the level of audience involvement was awesome.  It didn’t take us too long to realize that two speakers a meeting was going to be too much so we decided that going forward we would only do one speaker.  Some of the topics we have had at our meetings have included Google Wave, Drupal, Joomla, WordPress, and Elgg, just to name a few.  Over time we have learned what topics are of interest and will draw a crowd pretty well, this past meeting we had close to 50 people in attendance, and for the first time ever, we had girls there…

A couple of our group members have even helped us to stream and video our meetings for those that couldn’t attend in person.  And I would be remiss if I failed to mention Rob McBryde and Brant Collins who have bailed us out on more than one occasion when it came to equipment and video, something I am not good at managing…

It was Probably about our 3rd meeting or so we decided that it would be nice to have some sponsors that would donate swag to us to hand out at our meetings.  I leveraged some of my industry contacts and was able to get about 700lbs of t-shirts, notepads, stickers, magnets, software, and squeeze balls donated.  We also have some sponsors that have donated wordpress themes and software for us to raffle off.  I had initially thought that this would be a big draw but it turned out that the biggest draw for the meetings was the fellowship and the discussions.  We even had O’Reilly send us 2 big boxes of books and give us discounts on books for the group, which was a pretty nice haul for the group, something a lot of them are still talking about.

I am not for sure what 2010 holds for the Central Arkansas Refresh user group but I do know this, in just a few months, this thing has grown into something that I enjoy and almost crave on a monthly basis.  Just to be able to get in a room w/ others who speak my language and share ideas, exchange stories, etc., it’s awesome!  The friendships and business networking aspect of a user group like this have also proven to be beneficial for everyone. 

If you work in the interactive / development / or marketing industry and live in Central Arkansas, hopefully you have at least heard of #RefreshCA but if not, check out our Facebook Group and try to come to some of our gatherings.  Everything is totally free and open to the public.  Oh, and by the way, our website contains a lot of information from past gatherings.  We also broadcast our meeting announcements over Twitter w/ Twitvite, something that is managed by Keith Crawford.

Filed Under: Central Arkansas Refresh Tagged With: ,

Thoughts on Mark Martin, Jimmie Johnson, NASCAR

November 22, 2009 By Leave a Comment

Okay, so I watched the race yesterday with the hope tucked away in the back of my mind that there might be some off-the-wall chance that Jimmie Johnson and the 48 team would slip up.  Maybe a blow-out or engine failure, something that wouldn’t be serious, but enough to make him finish up in the 30th position, but it wasn’t to be.  And it’s not that I didn’t want to see Jimmie make history by winning 4 straight titles, that’s not the case at all, in fact I am a student of history and was glad to witness it, I just really, really, really, wanted to see Mark Martin win the championship.

Now, in the interest of full-disclosure, Mark Martin is one of my clients and I am probably a little partial when it comes to my favorite driver, keep in mind that he’s also a good ole’ Arkansas boy too!

Over time my partners and I have come to know him as more than a celebrity, a lot more so in the case of my partners in Batesville who work a lot closer on a day to day basis with Mark’s organization than I do, but I have still managed to spend some time with him through the years and I must say, he’s just as awesome of a guy off the track as he is on the track.  I also consider myself to be a pretty good judge of character, and have met a lot of celebrities over the years, and it only takes being around Mark for just a few minutes to know that he genuinely cares about his fans. 

I also know that this is going to be hard to believe too, but I honestly think that the fact Mark didn’t win the championship this year bothers him more that he wasn’t able to deliver this to his fans than it does he won’t have that trophy in his trophy case.  He is that driven by the fans.  I watched an interview that ABC did with Mark prior to the race and in the interview he was talking about how the fans gave him a standing ovation at his 1000th race start and spelled out his name in the bleachers by holding up cards, he literally got choked up talking about this.  That’s just the type of guy that Mark Martin is.  If you are a Mark Martin fan you probably already know what I am saying…

On the topic of Jimmie Johnson, what can you say?  Jimmie and Chad Knaus, his crew chief, have a special relationship, and they have the best equipment on the track, along w/ his teammates Mark Martin, Jeff Gordon, and Dale Earnhardt Jr., not to mention the other drivers out there with Hendrick equipment, but when it all comes down to it, there is still a driver strapped into a car that has to make split second decisions.  With that in the equation, there is no one right now better than Jimmie Johnson, bar none.  There, I have said it.  Jimmie is as good as it gets right now…  And, just like they boo’d Dale Earnhardt, they are going to boo Jimmie Johnson.

Now, let’s all look toward 2010.  I have a couple of things I would love to see coming out of the gate, Mark Martin winning the Daytona 500 is one of them.  I would also like to see Mark competing at the exact same level he competed in this year, but with the end result being a championship.  Let’s all keep looking ahead!! 

For a couple of reasons, that I won’t go into, I didn’t do a lot of blogging at my personal blog this past year on the topic of NASCAR and I missed it, especially during the weeks of the chase.  Earlier in the season I blogged everyday for another entity, and loved it, even showed up on a couple of podcasts with some really great people.  Also, for a long time during the first half of the season I communicated w/ many new friends I made in the social realm on the topic of NASCAR but again, for some reasons that I won’t go into here, I wasn’t able to be as active as I would have liked the second half of the season.  Maybe next year we can do that all over again, I am going to be talking about NASCAR regardless, I may as well blog about it.  So, when 2010 rolls around, be on the lookout for a lot more emphasis on NASCAR here at the Cotton Club…

Filed Under: NASCAR™, Sports Tagged With:

Thoughts on Facebook Marketplace

November 20, 2009 By 2 Comments

This morning I had someone call me and ask me my thoughts on Facebook Marketplace.  I remember reading about it but hadn’t honestly spent very much time in the app so I went out and took a look. 

I have to admit that I think the idea is genius, Facebook could do really well from this, after all they have built the user base, and certainly have the traffic, but I am a little concerned about the format.  While pretty much anything related to Facebook is impressive in terms of numbers, heck the Farmtown people have even cashed in, I think that the direction the Facebook Marketplace should head is towards what Ebay has done so well for years, possibly integrating Amazon’s model as well. 

Another avenue that Facebook could explore with this marketplace application could be the payment processing market, I know that there has already been a lot of speculation regarding this but I think it’s worthy of mention because if and when it happens, it’s going to be big. 

The current Facebook Marketplace model was put together by a company called Oodle, here’s some info from Facebook’s blog back in March about what they are doing…

Today, we’re launching Facebook Marketplace powered by Oodle—and adding even more functionality so you can easily create, share and respond to listings. Facebook first introduced the Marketplace application on Facebook Platform in May 2007 as a way for people to post classified listings on the site. Marketplace helps people buy and sell furniture and household items in a trusted environment. Late last year, Facebook turned to Oodle for its expertise in online classifieds, and Oodle has built an entirely new version of Marketplace focused on giving people a place to buy, sell or give things away to the people they know.

If you previously had the Marketplace application installed, you’ll continue to see it bookmarked on the Applications tab in the lower left hand corner of your screen. And if you have an active listing in Marketplace, you’ll be given the option to transfer it to the new Facebook Marketplace powered by Oodle.  You’ll be able to access the Facebook Marketplace powered by Oodle from the Application Directory, as well.

We’re also excited to introduce new features including Sell for a Cause, which allows you to donate the profits of the items you sell to over a million participating charities including UNICEF, the Sierra Club and local organizations like the Boys and Girls Club of San Francisco. For instance, I’m selling some of the toys that my kids have outgrown to support the Samaritan House, a local charity in Oodle’s hometown of San Mateo, California, that supports programs for families in need. If every person on Facebook sold something for just $1, we would be able to collectively raise over $175 million for causes around the world.  In the coming months, we’ll be rolling out even more functionality and categories, so please be sure to let us know how we’re doing.

Filed Under: Social Media / Web 2.0 Tagged With: ,
« Older Posts
Newer Posts »