As an employee of many start-ups I get asked by friends, family and acquaintances, “What exactly do you do?”  I have my standard elevator speech answer, so I don’t bore them after the first 30 seconds.  However, I found my new answer! My new answer will be, “Whatever the ’10 Foot Rule’ requires me to do.”

The “10 Foot Rule” is a practiced by many companies to simply have employees responsible for anything that can be executed within 10 feet of where that person is standing.  As an entrepreneur and business development professional, I don’t know if I could come up with a simpler way to describe what I do on a daily basis…whatever needs to be done.

Props: I’d never heard of this rule; but this morning I heard about it on The Herd.  He mentioned that Longo Toyota in Los Angeles (the country’s leading Toyota dealer) requests this from its employees.  When I Googled it, I saw that this is a staple of Wal-Mart too.

Shiny new toys come out all the time. Our human ADD kicks in…we blush…we buy.

The shiniest toy of late is Google+.  Yes, it’s cool but calm down.  It’s even got smart people like David Armano fooled.

1) I get it.

2) Great they have degrees!!  This is LinkedIn circa 2004!  Do you really think Facebook can’t pull this off tomorrow? Of course they can! They don’t want to until they have to or Zuck decides it so.  If this Google+’s biggest differentiator, then let’s say goodbye right now!

3) 90% of users are men.  We like big boy toys that make big boy noise.  It’s why we’re typically the largest early adopters of tech and do things like buy Harleys.

4) My dad doesn’t give a rat’s a$5!  I have over 100 people in my Google+ already.  Guess what?  The only people I see posting in my feed are the same people creating inside of Twitter, which means the rest are just passer-bys.

5) Success? Yes. I think Google+ has great potential, and I love what it can do.  But I’ve met too many talented people and products in my young life that never cashed in on their potential.

Bonus: Did you see The Social Network? Zuck had the insight to let it grow, to get its own identity…to grow organically.  The majority of posts in my Facebook newsfeed are not from brands or the social media nerds like me.  They’re from my real friends.  When Google+ gets that, then I’ll make crazy statements like, “EXTRA! EXTRA! Google+ Defeats Twitter!” or “Read All About It…Facebook Slain by David!”

Product: Rapportive for Gmail

Cost: Free (Beta)

Browser Support: Chrome // Firefox // Safari

Problem Solved: Quick Access to Social Media Profiles

Situation: I used to use Google to search for the social media profiles of my contacts, colleagues and friends.  Now, I simply use Rapportive.

Why?: Once I receive an email from a contact in my Gmail (business and personal), Rapportive displays a column on the right that provides me with an overview of that person’s social media profiles.  From there, I can request to connect without ever having to leave Gmail.   It’s just that easy!

3rd Party: It also integrates with several outside CRM systems including MailChimp and TechCrunch’s Crunchbase.

GET RAPPORTIVE!!

The following is from my post at American Express’ OPEN Forum. 

The question I receive most frequently from my clients is: How do I increase the number of fans on my fan page? First of all, I would like to note that Facebook fan count is not the only way to measure ROI for your social media efforts. However, if it is your current objective, then promotions are one of the easiest and most popular ways to increase your fan count.

Promotions are the oldest form of advertising, and the primary reason for this is because they play on our basic human function of competitiveness. People love to win! Social media is exploding because it harnesses the human need for interaction on all fronts. Connecting your brand to competitive events that allow your customers to display their talents and opinions is an excellent method for growing your Facebook fan page.

1. Sweepstakes and giveaways

Everyone loves the chance to win something, especially when winning is easy. Sweepstakes will not only help engage your Facebook fans, but they will also help increase your e-mail marketing list as Facebook requires an email and date of birth for all sweepstakes.

Tip: Create a sense of urgency amongst your fans by advertising that the promotion will only run for a limited amount of time. Car dealers have mastered this technique.

2. User generated contests (UGC)

Essay and photo contests are the best methods for UGCs that increase fan count. These contests work so well because they maximize game theory. Not only do UGCs provide a chance for your fans to voice their thoughts, but they also encourage them to share their entry with their fans.

Tip: Add a voting element, and don’t be too restrictive with the rules. (Also: baby photos rock!)

3. Coupons

These are best things to happen to grocery stores since sliced bread. The concept is simple: You give up a little in order to get a lot more.

Tip: Add a game element by randomizing the coupon value.

4. Group deals

The industry powerhouse Groupon has popularized group deals, which are are an excellent way to your fan count exponentially because they require others to participate. They’re an effective form of coupon for promoting because they require group buy-in and leverages the basic human need for belonging.

Tip: Only make relevant offers to your fans or you will lose them.

If you need to drive traffic to your Facebook fan page or simply keep your current customers engaged with your brand, promotions are a sure fire way to success!

Within the past 10 days, I’ve had 2 people come to me about their relationship issues…1 man, 1 woman…both about 29.

The common theme from both was that they were ready to quit social media as a whole.  My immediate thought was actually wish I could too.  Neither of them works in a realm that relies on active participation in social media; but, like many, they joined to keep tabs on their friends and to stay trendy.  They both have Facebook accounts, LinkedIn and nothing more.

The woman has a dream job as the behind the scenes person for a rather large Chicago based motivational speaker (basically, if you want the speaker, then you have to go through her).  The other is a BPO consultant for one of the major firms, and he spends an insane amount of time on the road.

Her Issue: The guy she’s dating is trying to move very fast with her (level jump), and she’s tying to take it slow.  The complication is that her friend’s love him and are constantly getting involved.  Basically, if he can’t find her, then he can IM/SMS/FB her friends to find out where she is.

Her Solution: She broke up with him, and is now MIA on Facebook.  She somehow privatized her account to virgin status again.  In fact, the only reason I touched base with her recently was because I noticed there had been a lack of status updates.

His Issue: The girl he’s dating basically dumped him to take a higher position in Germany (they work for the same firm).  She had a chance to move up, and she took it.  He was promoted shortly thereafter but chose to remain stateside.  The complication is that his friends, mostly ladies, were constantly asking him “what happened?, what are you going to do?, do you still love her?”…And on.

His Solution: He straight up deleted his Facebook account.  All 856 friends, 1,032 pictures and personal contact information pulverized!

Hearing these 2 speak, I was actually a little envious of their abilities to delete themselves from the social media universe and not miss a beat.  For what many of us do, it’s simply the most efficient tool we have to stay ahead in our careers.  Social media is not the only avenue, but it’s certainly the most efficient; however, it can get tiring trying to figure out all the gray areas that exist between personal and professional.

My questions:

-At what point does social media meet its Judgement Day?

-Will there be a core few core platforms like Facebook, Google, Tumblr or maybe even AOL one day and then the rest die?

-Facebook aside, I would venture to guess that mass creation of ideas on social media is a very low figure like 1% of the population; so what happens when the early adopters lose their lust for new social media platforms?

-Will Facebook and Google just become utilitarian where most people simply keep them just to keep up?

I’ve been intrigued with History Channel’s recent product America: The Story of Us. Last night, I caught up with my DVR to watch Episode 6 (Heartland).  One entrepreneurial story covered was that of R.W. Sears.  It obviously struck me from an entrepreneurial aspect; but it really dawned on me that in the 100+ years of advertising & direct response marketing innovations we have undergone, we are in the exact same spot from which we began in the 1870s.  The quick story on Sears:

Once the four standard time zones were created (reduced from 8,000!), Sears bought a handful of unwanted pocket watches and through the use of Morse Code sold them to other train station attendants using the trains to make deliveries.  The next year he expanded his product offerings by getting products to farmers and their families in the Midwest that had limited access to stores for products such as bicycles, sewing machines and even automobiles.  At its maximum, the catalog was over 700 pages!  People ordered what they needed and received it in a relatively timely manner.  Less than 20 years later, he was fulfilling 30,000+ orders per day.

So how have we not evolved in over 100 years of direct marketing?

Big brands are freaking out and having to work harder than ever for customer loyalty because customers are back in control with word-of-mouth discourse that can be released to thousands of people on impulse.  That impulse is very real and very measurable. Customers tell brands what they want and not the other way around.  When I think about it, the time of Mad Men (1950s) to let’s say 2000 were really an anomaly in our nation’s history with regards to advertisements.  Brands used to push and tell people what is popular.  The people are back in control of their buying habits.

The only difference between now and the 1870’s is that the scope of access has dramatically increased.  I can now go to Google to find my favorite sewing machine* at the lowest price and then virtually truck on over to Facebook to instantly discuss my potential purchase with thousands of my sewing buddies*.  Relatively soon, I will use my Android-based GoogleTV to purchase my favorite advertised sewing machine* (based on my Facebook viewing habits) at its lowest price in the middle of my favorite History Channel show.

*Disclaimer: I do not sew!  That is all.

An acquaintance of mine, Josh Martin, today asked, “What is Twitter’s future?”

It’s a question that has been asked many times and answered many ways over the past 15 months or so.  Many who attended SXSW this year were hoping for some earth-shattering insight into Twitter’s next big thing and were largely underwhelmed with the announcement of @anywhere.

Here are 3 future areas of development I see for Twitter:

TwitterSense: I’m more anxious to see Twitter release and ad revenue model similar to that of Google’s AdSense.  Many 3^rd party apps such as HootSuite are already doing this, but I bet stakeholders in Twitter are dying for a piece of this action.

Loyalty Marketing: An area being severely overlooked in my eyes as I see many opportunities to tie dollars back to loyalty marketing campaigns.  @CoTweet, which was recently acquired by @ExactTarget, has the right model.  Who will adapt it for the loyalty marketing space?  With my company, Dukky, our clients’ offers are shared across Facebook 3 times more than Twitter; but Twitter redeems at 10 times the rate of Facebook.

B2B Twitter: This is CoTweet’s bread and butter; but no one has really pushed the boundaries of selling internal business Twitter technologies.  For instance, at tech conference all of us geeks go to town with our hash tags to communicate; but do people really efficiently utilize this in other industries such as healthcare or industrial machines?

These are a just a few future growth areas I see for Twitter.  What do you see?

Todd Skidmore pulled out the win with his design.  Heather and I, independent of each other, chose his design as the best.  The contest was close between four participants, but I liked that Todd made the laces hot pink.  Hot pink in the laces will allow me to replace them with black after the wedding.  Rolling to the gym with too much hot pink might look a little funny on me.

While I did get some cool new kicks out of the contest for my wedding, I was interested to see the viral effects of the contest.  Overall, I was very pleased with the results.  The contest ran from March 9th to March 31st.  Here are some stats from the contest:

-Over 1,500 hits to my site
-Almost 1,000 unique visits
-Over 20 user-generated submissions
-Trackbacks to multiple shoe blogs
-Twitter helped push my blog up to readers in Beaverton, OR (Nike HQ)

I learned a great deal about how users interact online.  However, there are several things that I would have done differently next time.

1) Make it easier to submit designs.  The process did cause more problems than I expected.  It would’ve been easier to have the users email their designs to me.
2) I wish more public commentary on the design had ensued.  I was disappointed with this aspect of the contest.
3) Get more people that bleed Nike to participate.

Thanks so much to everyone that participated in any form! If you tweeted the post, created an entry or simply left a comment about what you liked, I really appreciate you helping me have fun on my big day!  It’s going to be fun!

The response to my Nike Shox Wedding Contest and your chance to win $50 has been pretty impressive so far.

The Back-story…

About 6 months ago while discussing wedding plans with my fiancée, I tried to convince her that my groomsmen and I should be able to wear customized Nike Shox as our shoes for the wedding.  Somewhat of a debate ensued.

“It will look horrible!” she playfully exclaimed.
“Jerry Seinfeld did it!” I anxiously responded.
“You’re not him!” she responded as if she were my mother.
“I’ll make sure all the Shox match the vests.”
“No, it the worst idea ever!” she exclaimed in her customary, enthusiastic and playful 5-year old like pitch.

At that point, I proceeded to work on her friends, thinking that she might seriously consider it if it had some strong XX chromosome backing.  Outside of one that works for an ad agency, the idea never picked up steam; but I did manage to help the girls burn off lots of calories through laughing.

Fast Forward…

Two weekends ago, my fiancée informed me that she had spent $300 on her wedding shoes.

And of course, being made up of XX chromosomes, she can’t help but brag about the “deal” she received, especially since the deal is related to shoes.   This price phenomenon is one of those female conversation starters that I’ve never quite figured out, and I consider my female knowledge slightly above average.  Anyway, she saved some $600 on the “Something Blue” Manolo Blahniks that Carrie Bradshaw wears in the Sex and the City Movie.  If I was a girl, I would have jumped up, hugged her, hit her with a pillow, kissed her and then started to…well, you know all that stuff that Cinemax says that women do when men aren’t around.  Unfortunately for both of us, the conversation took more of a logical approach.

“Wait! You get to wear blue shoes with your white (ivory) dress, but I can’t wear my NikeID Shox?” I asked with sarcastic inquiry.
“But, baby,” she said pleadingly.  “They’ll look terrible; and besides, no one will be able to see my shoes,” she said hesitantly as if she knew what my next move was.
“Then, whyyyyyy are we spending $300 on shoes that no one will see?” I responded in typical guy fashion I assume.
I then heard a voice from above whisper to me, “Well played sir.”

I’m not really sure what happened next because I think I mentally blacked out from my strategically placed response; but when I regained consciousness she was telling me about something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue.  The part about blue sounded made-up to me, but I didn’t care because she informed me that if I wanted to wear Nike Shox to the reception only then I could do so.  Victory!!  A series of questions ensued with the only stipulation being that she gets the final say-so.

The Result

After I declared victory, I told her that I would put my social media skills to the test to help choose the colors of my new shoes; thus, we now we have the Nike Shox Wedding Contest.   The goals of the contest are simply to illustrate how the various aspects of social media can be used to create a successful marketing campaign, show how easy it can be to create personal involvement in a brand movement, get people to use their creative talents and for me (and the groomsmen) to be comfortable on my wedding day.

Within 24 hours, I had hits on my site from over 10 countries and a few from Nike’s corporate headquarters.  The contest has a little over 2 weeks to go and there have already been 16 submissions.  So far, I like what I see, but I’d like to see some more questions to make the shoes as personal as possible.   I can’t wait to see what other submissions come forth.

Fine Print: Nike is not officially involved with this contest other than they’ve done their part to keep me as a customer for throughout my entire athletic career.  My fiancee is just simply awesome for letting me do this.

Over a year ago, my friend Darren Herman wrote a post about the social networks Facebook and LinkedIn colliding.  I saw this happening on a small scale at the time but not on the major scale it is now.  I now have clients, MBA classmates, colleagues, friends, family, Michael Phelps, dogs, cats, etc. all in one place!  This is NOT why I signed up for Facebook!  I signed up because I wanted to have easier access to my family as well as friends of past and present.  Also, when I was single, I could see if that girl I just met was crazy or not.  Anyway, like Darren, I wanted a place that I could keep in touch with real people or friends that I’ve actually met.

I have another acquaintance Ryan Coleman, a successful entrepreneur, that runs NextForce and argues (in short) that it shouldn’t matter what picture, videos, etc. are on your site because if your culture lines up with a prospective employer’s culture, then it’s all “gravy.”   I agree and disagree with him, and this is where my aggravation with Facebook comes into play.

Gen-Y understands Facebook…the new business networkers (largely Gen-X and beyond) do not understand it beyond having an electronic organizer.  I can tell they don’t get it because they have no picture or one, most likely from their company website, and then there is nothing else on their Facebook page.  People are becoming scared to put things up about themselves.  I have friends looking for jobs that feel the need to take down their walls, delist their relationship status and disassociate themselves with groups their passionate about.  I don’t blame them.  I would do the same…now.

Facebook is about to become LinkedIn Part 2.  It’s going to become a contact tool instead of a place to share things.  Facebook isn’t going to be the only one dying off.  This cycle will repeat until a solution is found.  Maybe an invite-only Ning is the way to go or the ever-elusive ASW.   Maybe Web 3.0 is all about tagging people as entities or degrees of separation.  i.e. Darren Herman (email, facebook, linkedin, mobile, AIM, in-person) or Ryan Coleman (email, facebook, mobile).

Gen-Y is still another 10 years from being the majority in hiring roles.  Until then, I can’t fully buy into Ryan’s way of thinking.

BTW, ONLY add me to Facebook here if you meet any of the following criteria:

1)    I have no idea who you are.
2)    You have 1 or 0 pictures of yourself up.
3)    You are reading my blog for the first time.