Marketing Safari

The liberation!

There are two things changing the world today.

One is technology: the ability to record everything that happens where ever you are, the mobile device with a camera, GPS, videorecorder, transmitter and the ability to live broadcast globally from wherever you are.

The other is community: the ability to share what you record with people all over the world, and their ability to spread the word even further.

We call it: social media!

Many people, specially corporate people, are terrified of the devastating effect this has. The reason for this fear is that it's no longer possible to sweap problems and mistakes under the carpet. You can't keep the flawless image of a perfect, untouchable corporation that brings happiness and prosperity to it's clients every single time. You can't stay in your ivory tower any more with your expressionless stone cut marble face. People will tell. The cracks and the flaws, the dents and the spots will all become visible. But you know what that's called?

- REALITY!

Once you get over the fear you will experience a liberating feeling.  The liberation from perfection and lies, and the stress and anxiety that accompanies it. The liberation from loneliness thinking you're the only one struggling or with problems while all the others are perfect. The liberation from intolerance because to most peoples surprise, people are tolerant about mistakes, about imperfection, about struggle. And they're not only tolerant about those things, they can relate to it. And when people can relate to your company, you're on the right track. They're just not tolerant about dishonesty, lies and cover ups.

Go liberate your self and your company - with social media :)

Hjörtur

Catch of the week - October 18th

Swineflu and Pneumothorax.

Yep, that's about it folks. Caught both this week and not really anything else. Been lying in hospital so sick that I couldn't even be online. Well, almost nothing.

There was one thing I managed to do this week though. I managed to post my interview with Rohit Bhargava, author of Personality not included, on the IMinnovation blog. In the interview Rohit tells about the importance of including and keeping the personality in start-ups.

I asked my twitter friends what they had come across this week, and here are a few of their favorites:

Mikkel deMib, the Danish SEO guru, wrote an interesting article called "Google is to the Internet what the white man was to Africa"

14 levers you need to be pulling to build a Facebook community from John Haydon

And a framework for measuring what everyone struggles to measure - the ROI on Social Media from the Metric Man.

Finally one interesting story from travel marketing online. You all remember the "best job in the world", right? Well, Ben Southall, who won the competition for the dream job, just got his contract extended. He's going to be rowing 1.600 miles in a Kayak along the great barrier reef. Nice!

Hope to have a better week coming up :)

Hjörtur

Catch of the week - October 11th

Each (ok, sometimes monthly) Sunday I post links to the most interesting articles I've come across that week. Most of them are found via Twitter, Sphinn or my RSS reader. Enjoy!

Marketing, SEO and Social Media

Jill Whalen disagrees with SEOmoz's Rand Fishkin about which should come first, the search engines or the users. An excellent article.

Seems like everyone is becoming a social media expert now. Some people have actually been doing social media marketing for well over a decade, like Marsha Collier, author of eBay for dummies. She might know a thing or two to check out.

So how can you tell who is an expert and who is not? Jennifer Leggio gives a few tips to follow that might help you determine who's an expert and who's not.

The Gourmet magazine is quitting after 68 years. And who's to blame? Twitter and the Internet. Well, that's what the editors say. You can read about it here.

Mashable published recently a post called "5 Advanced Social Media Marketing Strategies for Small Business". Worth reading.

The Wild Catch
(other stuff than marketing that I still find interesting and worth sharing)

Drew! - Who comes in mind? Barrymore? Carey? Olanoff? Well, @drew belonges to a Drew Olanoff, who's best known for #blamedrewscancer. He's been fighting cancer and things are looking good for him. He's been looking to his social media community for support - and got it. Know he's going to give back by putting his twitter account up for auction - and Drew Carey got wind of it. Mr. Carey has actually bid 1 Million US Dollars for the account if he reaches 1 million followers before January 1st. So what are you waiting for? Go add Drew Carey and encourage everyone in your network to do the same!

I met a fluffy tech girl in the Blue Lagoon a few days ago who interviewed me about IMinnovation.org and the start-up scene in Iceland. I got to take one of my favorite Icelandic start-up companies with me that did a pitch in the Blue Lagoon (since we don't have elevators in our igloos here in Iceland ;) You can check it out on Techfluff.tv.

Happy reading

Hjörtur

If this is your first time on my blog, you might want to consider subscribing to my feed or email updates (here on the left). You can also follow me on Twitter.

You can't milk a dead cow!

Today it is exactly one year since I wrote my "Surreal Reykjavik", describing the feeling of being in a collapsed country. So I think it is appropriate to give you an update on live in Reykjavik, Iceland, one year after the economic collapse.

 

It's all about the money
The third government since the collapse, a left wing coallision government, seems to be about to collapse. The reason is the same in this coallition government as in many marriages - and divorces - in Iceland at the moment. Money. People can't agree on the money and on the debt. They're not satisfied with the solutions being offered. The problem is just that there are only bad options so no matter what we choose, it sucks. We just need to bite it and stick to it.

 

ICESAVE
The Icelandic banks found a great way to finance themselves. They offered superb interest on online bank accounts abroad. The only problem was that, in the case of Landsbankinn, the Icelandic government was responsible if things would go bad. And they did, and now we're left with tremendous debt to pay for banking in Britain and the Netherlands. The people in Iceland is obviously not happy to be paying when the governments in those countries were reaping the benefits but did not take any responsibility. Not only that, they also used anti-terrorist law to confiscate Icelandic banks in Britain making their assets worthless in resale. Of course we can debate on what's fair and what's not. The thing is, we are very few here in Iceland and for a nation of 300.000 to pay for a collapsed bank in a nation of 60.000.000 might be a bit difficult. The amount we are talking about is at least 1 million Icelandic krona per capita. We are a family of seven, so that leaves us with 7 million ISK or 35.000 pounds my family needs to pay, just for that one deal. That is beside everything else that we, the people in Iceland are left with to pay.

 

Our fault?
Of course we can blame ourselves. Blame us for allowing the banks to grow way beyond what the Icelandic economy could carry. But that just exactly it. There's only so much we can carry. Any attempts beyond that breaks us. We've all seen what happens then. If people are confronted with extreme demands, you'll get an extreme reaction. We all know what happened in Germany in the '30s when people couldn't pay the war debt and the economy was in ruins. They voted for someone who was willing to use extreme measures to stop it. I don't want a lunatic prime minister, but desperate people make desperate decisions.

 

Icelandic families
Twenty percent of Icelandic families can't make ends meet as is. Over 40% of Icelandic families are technically bankrupt and over 70% of companies are in serious trouble. People are struggling to keep their homes and bring food to the table. The government has announced that they are offering packages to ease some of the mortage payments so that families have a better chance of surviving. It is obvious that it doesn't benefit anyone to put 40% of homes up for auction. There's no one to buy them and people have to live somewhere.

But at the same time as the government is offering this, they are announcing higher taxes, a reduction in child support and a reduction in all sorts of other support and benefits. For my family it means that yes, we can lower our payment on the mortage, but it is nowhere near the increase in taxes and deduction in support and benefits. We are going to be paying much more than we are now.

It's just like riding a bike. If you're going up a steep hill, you need to change into a lower gear. But the government is changing into a higher gear thinking that will speed things up. And what will then happen? We come to a stop.

 

You can't milk a dead cow
It is simple. Milk it to hard and you get blood instead of milk, untill you've killed the cow. Where will you get your milk from then?

Hjörtur

(Image by Jóhann Ludwig Torfason)