Yesterday I started using the free Cardmunch app, built by the LinkedIn team. Here’s how it saves you time:

* Scan the business card (like in the picture) and if you’re happy, upload it.

* The app will process the data on the card and match it with the same person’s LinkedIn contact!

* Finally, you will get a record of the card at the very top of the contact page and if you scroll down you will see more valuable information about the professional plus all connections in common.

* You can also add notes for each card.

* From now on, all business cards travel with you and every time you pull one, you will get a lot more than a piece of paper

Have a look at Cardmunch in action:

Note: This new iteration of the app went live yesterday. Currently, it’s only available for iPhone and in the following countries: Australia, Canada, New Zealand, UK and US.

Have you tried it? What do you think?

The roles of the writer, publisher and distributors are forever changing and intertwining in different ways where at least one thing is certain: If you are in this game you’d better adapt and reinvent.
Last week I listened to Seth Godin being interviewed by Leo Babauta from Zen Habits. Here are some thoughts on the writing landscape. I’d love to know your opinion.

On the times we are living

There seems to be a consensus that we are living exciting times in which the author can connect with the reader at whatever level she chooses to. The physical barriers previously imposed by gatekeepers and by the lack of the very technology to communicate don’t exist anymore. Things like blogging, webinars, podcasts, email marketing, Skype, are accessible to any writer that wants to reach out to her community of readers and engage at some level.

I think the keys to understanding what the new space means for authors and publishers reside exactly in knowing if that desire to communicate beyond the book is paramount to all writers or mainly a necessity imposed by the “social wave”.

Let us look briefly at the imminent shifts before going back to what the author desires or doesn’t. I would like to leave out of this post the monetary advantages or disadvantages of the new landscape. However, at a general level in order to look at the scenario we can say that 3 facts are changing the economics of the publisher-writer-audience relationship:

1. The role of the publisher as a risk taker who believes in a writer to provide an advance & then help market the book is becoming obsolete since writers can now “pick themselves” as Godin says.
2. The fact that anyone can become a writer and self publish from one day to another means that there will be over-abundance of content and noise.
3. Since the old model was based on the scarcity in shelf-space, spotting an opportunity to have something written and then marketing the book to people made sense, together with the advance apparatus and so on. This has become obsolete due to ebooks solving the scarcity problem (advantage?) and “you may also like” technology in sites like Amazon.

The new role of the publisher

Godin is currently an innovative breed of publisher (particularly focusing on point 3) through his Domino Project, where he is trying to change all-things-publishing as much as possible. The fundamental shift he is successfully achieving is that of proving that seeking for buyers is not the way to go but keeping an active community of readers that await your next release is the best solution in a sea of noise. I’m a Domino Project subscriber and have bought some of its bestsellers because I’m part of those like-minded readers who envisage a good read in most of what Godin (or his “cousins”) bring out. The reasoning in my simple mind seems to be “any friend of Seth can be my friend”, and that’s how the sale happens. But Domino doesn’t want to be a “social-community-builder” for selected writers. I think I’ve even heard Godin say in an older interview that he only picks authors that “get-it” and already have their community, which I guess makes sense. Domino is a publisher based on permission-marketing, relevance and promise-keeping.

The author and the future

Let’s go back to what the author wants. It is easy to think that every writer wants to connect with readers and be more social. After all, those are the times we are living, right? I suspect otherwise and I believe Seth does too (if you listen to the interview he shares how a lot of people apply to be “picked” by him even if he strictly says that he doesn’t want applications). Many people don’t want to take the initiative and would much rather do what they do best which is writing and then let the publisher do the rest. Yet, it is inevitable that in a noisy world, authors who want to sell will have to work at keeping their community of readers (buyers) ready for their next release somehow. Seth says in the inetrview that those who are not willing to engage should find someone to do it for them. Someone like Domino? Possibly, but remember that they don’t pick authors that don’t “get it”. I guess what this means is that it is only a matter of time before many publishers reinvent themselves mirroring practices from Domino Project but accepting applications. Since the abundance of content and noise is inevitable as well as the quality decrease in books, these publishers will more likely be less picky than the precursor. It really hit me in the interview when Godin clarifies that Domino is in fact a Project (that will end). I think I understood that he will inteligently move into the next innovation before the unwanted copycats come in.

What does the future look like then?

I believe there will be 2 big author groups in the years to come:

• A minority of go-do-it authors who will enjoy and assume the post-writing-engagement capacities (think Chris Brogan, Brian Solis in the Social Media world for instance). To this, we need to add the upcoming young authors who are already “wired” for social (think about a boy who is now a 16 year old but will publish his first book in let’s say 3 years time).
• A (temporary) majority of authors who would rather hand over all pre-post-writing efforts to a new “social-relevant” publisher that will promise the captive community of readers.

This is probably only the short term. Would you agree? What does the longer term look like? I’d love to hear your thoughts.

What we’ve learnt in just 90 minutes was gold dust. As a result, we’ve worked on the twenty one main takeaways from Fred’s valuable talk and at the end of the post (yes, there’s more!) you can enjoy the full presentation   (Thanks geirfaysson.com for the picture)

1. Pick a co-founder. Single-founder startups are hard to back. Note: Two or three are fine. Four equal co-founders probably means a “disaster”.
2. Don’t get married too fast. The typical scenario is the tech guy that looks for the business guy and viceversa. Take the time to work together first. Don’t build and scale immediately.
3. Make sure when you start to have zero fixed costs and that your family understand what you’re getting into. You should expect to dedicate about 10 years of your life to your startup.
4. “Lawyer-up”: don’t start giving away equity and hiring people if you don’t know what you’re getting into. Get a lawyer ASAP.
5. Consider “reverse vesting”: Ideally, all co-founders must carry the same weight. However, if this is not the case, for example, in three or maybe four years your partner is no longer with the business or decided to cover much less that he originally committed to, their stock should drop.
6. Equity is scarce. Use it wisely.
7. Most of the companies fail not because of their product but because they misunderstood market requirements.
8. 30% of all code is wasted in unnecessary features.
9. “Data lives outside the building”: You think you know what the market wants but you’re probably wrong. Instead of coding, take your developer with you and go out see your clients.
10. Learn and discover before you execute. Don’t ever spend your money until you clearly know what you’re going to achieve with it.
11. Ignorance is a starting point. You think you know about marketing to users, you probably don’t.
12. Repeatability is the key. You can build free automated companies.
13. If you only ever build companies that solve already identified problems, you’re not changing the world.
14. Google analytics is not “tooling up”. Most of the companies suck at Metrics. If you don’t tool-up early on then it gets worse. You get tons of data you cannot interprete.
15. 30-million dollar businesses go bust everyday. Getting big revenues is not enough.
16. Giving too much money to a startup is toxic. It’s very difficult to have a lot of money in your bank account and not be influenced. It takes a lot of maturity in a founder to take her time and not spend a penny until she knows how she’s going to spend it wisely.
17. Premature scaling is by far the number one cause of startup death.
18. As a startup you will be fighting organisational obstacles all the time. So, keep your processes and decision making simple and your people engaged.
19. Recruitment will become your number one issue when you scale.
20. MVP: bring a Minimum Viable Product early to the market and get contact with users to learn what the market really wants.
21. Recommended books: “The Four Steps To The Epiphany” by Steven Gary Blank, “The Lean Startup“ by Eric Ries, “Business Model Generation” by Alex Osterwalder. Follow also VC and  B2B expert David Skok www.forentrepreneurs.com

Let’s start with the verdict: Yes, go for it.
Let’s follow with the a word of caution: Read it with an open mind and ignore the type of business Michael is in (content business).

Michael is the founder of Socialmediaexaminer.com, a magazine-style blog focused on the latest trends and advice for social media marketers. “Launch” is a comprehensive content marketing strategy book which at the same time describes the author’s journey bringing Social Media Examiner from nothing to a 1 million + USD turnover business.

As the title suggests, the book is full of space travel analogies and the author calls the main principle sustaining all content marketing strategies the “Elevation Principle”.
It makes sense and it is in line with what people like Dale Carnegie, Seth Godin or the guys at HubSpot have been saying for ages:

Great Content + Other People – Marketing Messages = Growth.

In other words, people are tired of being hammered with unidirectional marketing messages and companies making it all about them. By making it all about people and giving away great content that solves people’s basic problems companies can actually reach out and connect in a more meaningful way that results in business.

My Take-aways

The book is full of great case studies ranging from B2B companies like Cisco saving thousands with social media & content generation to B2C players like Procter & Gamble reaching out to Dads through Manofthehouse.com . If you focus on those case studies you will surely find common angles and techniques that you can use in your own content marketing efforts.

Besides the elevation principle, which should be at the core of the content generation programme, Michael clearly works with the space travel analogy by defining primary fuel & nuclear fuel.

Primary fuel is content that you offer to your community on a regular basis, for free and that solves basic problems.

Nuclear fuel is special content that you release occasionally and is so interesting that attracts the attention of many people.

In our case for instance, this blog and our regular YouTube videos can be regarded as primary and our occasional webinars and the Social Media Summer Twist Contest, nuclear.
I really liked this definition and we are already even using it at the agency because it helps us explain strategies better. The important thing about it is that it clearly addresses the need for all companies to become a publisher in some shape or form if they want their online strategy to be successful but above all sustainable.

The author’s background is in copywriting and white-paper production. Therefore the book is full of tips and techniques to produce and re-package content in meaningful ways. It is also quite based on the strategies of a hardcore content producer like Social Media Examiner so that’s why I gave you that word of caution at the beginning of the post. Still, if you stick to the case studies, strategies and techniques and avoid feeling overwhelmed by lack of resources (trust me,  you shouldn’t), you will get a lot of value out of your reading.

Finally, what I liked the most about the author telling his story is his cheekiness in getting things done and reaching out to people. He once needed 3 renowned judges for a contest but didn’t have enough credentials for the judges to show interest in him. In order to tackle this, he sent the same tweet to the 3 at the same time, addressing one judge and referencing the other 2 “Ann, would you be willing to be on a panel to judge a social media contest with join Scott Monty and David Meerman Scott?”, “Scott, would you be willing to join…”. He obviously got the three on board.

I’ll leave you with that last anecdote.

Have your read “Launch”? Are you going to?

Here are the 5 facts that surprised me the most. But before I continue, a couple of caveats:

a) Dan claims that his assumptions are based on correlation and not causation.

b) These discoveries not necessarily go against best practice , they simply aim to prove what works and what doesn’t in terms of reach.

5 interesting claims:

1. Engaging in the conversation doesn’t result in more reach, sharing interesting content does (links). Dan run an experiment confirming that accounts with under 1000 followers are more conversational while accounts with more than 1000 followers tend to share more links. He also got admin access to important Facebook accounts, confirming that loads of commenting didn’t result in more views but sharing loads of interesting links did. I assume this has to do with people re-sharing interesting links and this gaining more visibility in Facebook compared to the visibility that one’s own commenting gets towards your network.
2. More blog commenting does not translate into more views or visits.  Again, another experiment analysing popular blogs from an admin perspective and finding no correlation. This one is a dubious one in my opinion, especially in relation to the commenting system the blog uses. For instance, if using Disqus or Intense-debate, which allow users to identify themselves with their Facebook account, their comments gain visibility in their Facebook stream too. Commenting system aside, I’m also not sure in statistics terms what level of sampling would be needed and how many assumptions should be made to reach something like this. It’s good to consider it anyway.
3. Taking advantage of “information voids” is effective: Dan suggests that researching unanswered questions and producing content to tackle them work. It sounds obvious, but how many of us do it? Do you have a Twitter column open with your typical industry keyword and a question mark so you can serve people?
   
4. Friday’s and weekends can be good days to publish:  This is another logical one but not everyone takes advantage. It’s simple, during weekends people receive less email and streams are less cluttered, therefore you can typically have more visibility (please don’t discontinue your work-day efforts though!)
5. Social proof and novelty are different (my favourite one): Dan ran an experiment with 2 given blog posts, altering the “tweet button” and running an A/B test. In one version the tweet button was fixed to show zero tweets. In the other version it showed 776. Dan (and I) would have assumed that the one showing more social proof would be shared the most but it is actually the contrary. What one needs to understand is that social proof is good for mitigating risk (you choose the restaurant full of people over the empty one to reduce the chances of an awful dinner). Once you understand this, you need to combine it with “why people share things”, which is partly because they want to be seen as a reference/ authority. So using a tweet button has probably not much to do with risk and more with our egos. Bottom line: When it comes to sharing, nobody wants to be 777th person breaking the news. You could argue that this is valid for breaking-news-content and not for more perennial content and you would probably be right. My takeaway is that we need to experiment more with sneak-previews to a privileged segment, if we want to maximise the chances of our content being shared. We also need to offer social proof in more clearer risk scenarios (e.g. email subscribing), where phrases like “1000 people can’t be wrong” may mean a lot to our visitors. 
   

This is just my selection of interesting facts. You can grab Dan’s latest book here, which is free for Kindle users for a limited time. I’m nearly half way through it and I’m liking it, even if I don’t agree with some statements. But that’s the way it should be right? Regardless, I think the book makes a tremendous effort in moving away from a lot of rhetorical industry talk, which is something anyone with a bit of “social media saturation” requires

Have a look at the full presentation below and please share your thoughts.

From last Friday until today (almost five days) our social media monitoring software pulled 346,229 mentions (and counting) about the “Googlerola” deal. Let’s take a look at some insights:

Where did conversations take place?

This should be no surprise to most of you. Twitter dominated the scene with over 81% of the mentions.

Can Google+ kill Twitter? No way, unless Google introduces a game-changing move.

How did the trend in conversations look like?

The obvious spike in conversations happened on the very 15th (135 thousand) with most of the mentions neutral (spreading the news). I would have guessed that the deal would have generated more than one big spike.

The topic is pretty much dying out in terms of mentions after 48 hours. Maybe, it means that in general, people don’t really know what to expect.

Where did the news resonate?

The US is naturally number one. However did you imagine Brazil and Japan in 3th and 5th place? Looks like Canada has reacted to the news within the past 24 hours (Based on difference in mentions from last week)

What relevant keywords are showing around the topic?

Without digging into sentiment analysis, we can see on the conversation cloud that there’s no presence of negative keywords (at least for now).

What do people think?

Mashable published this Poll yesterday. The results support the tag cloud above.

What’s your opinion about the Google-Motorola deal? Is it a waste of cash or a valuable strategic move for Google?

“It’s a community space reflecting the vibrancy and global outlook of the technology scene.”

We’ve been networking at Techhub since last year and recently became members. It’s a phenomenal place with a creative atmosphere, full of talented people.

After meeting many great start-ups, as video bloggers we thought it would be cool to do one-minute videos featuring who they are and what they do. We also created a short intro to make the videos look nicer

The first two featured companies are:

• Sharkius Games (Facebook Games) by CEO,  David T. Kramaley
• Caped Koala Studios (featuring Pora Ora) by CCE, Conor Murply

We drilled drown into all the relevant conversations about the  e-G8 conference to learn more. (Keywords tracked: eg8, e-g8, #eg8. Time period: past 7 days)

Conversation trend

We registered 74,361 mentions. It looks like the opening (and maybe the fact the it’s a new thing) has the most impact. I would have guessed that the second day would have had more resonance, especially with Mark Zuckerber’s talk.

What were the main keywords mentioned?

We can clearly see Zuckerberg, Erich Schmidt as the main Internet leaders mentioned and John Perry Barlow @jpbarlow and Tariq Krim @tariqkrim as one of the Twitter accounts with the most resonance.

Where did most conversations happen?

The scene was clearly dominated by Twitter. However, we couldn’t fairly compare the conversations with those on Facebook since the monitoring software can only pull what’s not set as “private”. 3,378 blog posts in the past seven days, seems quite reasonable. The most important posts though, will be those coming up in the next few days. Will country leaders read at least a piece of them? Hopefully.

Conversations by country (Including difference from previous week)

There weren’t surprises for the first two countries, however Germany has gone from the tenth to the fifth place in 24 hours.

Negative Vs positive mentions

Most of the mentions were neutral so we hid visibility of neutral posts to drill down into the positive Vs negative comments. Surprisingly, the opening day (Tuesday 24th) with the most mentions also had record negative comments ( @jensbest played a big role here. He was massively retweeted). On Wednesday, the coin flipped and positive mentions outnumbered negative. Loads of the conversations with positive sentiment on Wednesday quoted Mark Zuckerberg.

I hope the analysis was useful. If you want to research further into what was said on Tuesday 24th and Wednesday 25th you may download the e-G8 conversations HERE

In line with what we did last time, a week after the Tipp-Ex “Bear” campaign launched, this time I’d like to share with you a few stats about the Volkswagen campaign. Sentiment won’t be included this time since it would be a bit redundant. We know how the majority of the people felt about the video

Performance Vs previous week

“The Force” video was launched last Wednesday, February second. Even though mentions and views are starting to naturally slow down, have a look at what Volkswagen accomplished in a 7-day period: Mentions went up 123% (More than 185K mentions)

Was the video really responsible for this?

Yes indeed. The fact that it was also playing at the SuperBowl certainly helped as well. However, have a look at the circled keywords in the tag cloud. They all belong to the “The Force” video.

Where did the buzz happen?

As you may have imagined, the majority of the mentions occurred in the US, followed by… (surprise) The Netherlands? Yes.

Brand mentions by media type

It does make sense that most of the buzz happened on Twitter and blogs, however you will see that 7.6% for Facebook might be too low. The reason for this is because monitoring software at the moment can only track Facebook accounts that have their data open. There are loads of impermeable profiles that certainly contributed to the mentions but can’t be tracked

Conclusion

The video was great and probably generated the desired outcome for the Volkswagen folks. Let’s not forget though, that the video/campaign was launched to generate awareness about the New Passat. Bottom line: more people know about the 2011 Passat and hopefully it will translate into more sales. It’s too early though to see the sales but I wonder, if I went out there and asked people what’s the product in the Volkswagen Darth Vader video… will they know?

What are your thoughts?

Ebook readers are NEW to absolutely all of us. No one has really a clue what’s like to read on one of these devices until you try it. I was a bit skeptical at the beginning (didn’t see myself reading much with an ebook reader) but I must say… It went above expectations very soon (We don’t have any affiliation with the product)

During this holiday, I read a few books on the Kindle. I made this very short video to share with you five quality tips on how can the Kindle help you and your business in 2011.

(Affiliate Link)

Have you tried it? Would you consider buying one? Share your thoughts below!