One of the Official Blog’s of BusinessCard2.com
Now it’s incredibly easy to create and display a slideshow in your BusinessCard2. Slideshow is the newest way to communicate and engage with people visiting your card. Slideshow is also a great way to tour prospects through your product or service offering.
Using strong visual elements, your Slideshow can help strengthen the way you present your professional self. You also have an “info” area for slide descriptions (so customers can read data while viewing your Slideshow).
The new BusinessCard2 Billboard tool allows you to upload a custom, full-size image to your card. Here are some ideas on how to use Billboard:
Billboard is easy to use with the new image cropper tool. Simply find the image you want on your computer, upload it, and crop it the way you want it to appear in your card.
We’re please to announce that you can now integrate your YouTube videos into BusinessCard2 within seconds. BusinessCard2 has merged the power of YouTube to make video a reality in your card. Use the Video t
ool to introduce yourself, broadcast information about your products and services, and provide on-demand demo’s to educate your prospects. The possibilities are limitless.
My friend Dan Schawbel, founder of Personal Branding Blog, put on his futurist cap and wrote the post, “The Personal Brand Marketplace of the Future. Are Your Prepared?” In this, Dan made the point that we rate products and companies, so why not rate people? That is a good question Dan, so let me tell you why I think we don’t rate people:
In 2007 we launched a little web product based on an algorithm we wrote here at Workface Inc. We never marketed it, and it never took off, but we for a very short period of time allowed for the rating of people. The service is called PeopleTrusted. You can find a link to the people rating site here.
The reason a company like ours has such a problem ranking people isn’t the fact that it would provide value to some other person or group of people, it’s the CYA problem (CYA as in cover your ass). Rating or ranking a specific person (vs. a company or product) has substantial (libel) defamation of character implications. The nature of providing a service like this comes down to the courts historical preference in protecting a person’s name and status, and awarding damages for those who inflict any harm on their name/status/personal character.
I agree with Dan that having nothing but positive fluff out there doesn’t help other people in making decisions. In most cases when you rate a vendor in Ebay, you’re really talking about your buying experience with that person, but Ebay can avoid the slander and defamation by calling them a vendor.
How many negative recommendations have you seen in LinkedIn? If you’ve every seen one, I want to know about it. Of course you haven’t. The recommendation system is filtered by the respective account owner. There are only good recommendations in LinkedIn, NEVER bad ones.
There have been many recent additions to BusinessCard2. Here is what’s new:
BusinessCard2 is the new way to connect with customers. Because of great users like you, BusinessCard2 has recently been covered on CNN.com, Wall Street Journal Online and Dow Jones MarketWatch. We are continually improving BusinessCard2 to make it an even more powerful tool for managing the way customers see you online.
You have many choices for your online marketing. Thank you for choosing BusinessCard2.
Have you ever heard of the word Weltschmerz? It’s an interesting word for which I’ve not been able to find an English equivalent (synonym). Weltschmerz comes from the German for “world pain” and is a general sadness over the state of the world. If you’re still curious about the word, you can find a little more at Wikipedia.
A combination of H1N1, macro recessionary economic conditions, and fashionably pessimistic friends have many of us walking around in the fog of Weltschmerz. And who can blame us? A person only goes to the moon for the first time once, right? What is the next milestone in human achievement we can aspire to? We all need something to put on a pedestal; that special something to give us hope that new opportunities exist right around the corner.
I’m pleased to say that over the last several days I finally shed myself of my Weltschmerz. No, this didn’t happen by me being sick and tired of being sick and tired. Rather, I discovered that the Kryptonite of Weltschmerz is connecting with people at a hyper personal level. This singular act of understanding the human condition that governs other peoples’ lives makes the world seem a more joyous place to live in. It is egoless empathy that enables us to replace the “world pain” with shared optimism. When you can recognize the promise in those around you, it makes groundswell plausible.
I’m seeing the slow but steady adjustment in people’s demeanor. People are starting to build (or at least talk about building) their own businesses. I’m hearing whispers of a slow, but noticeable uptick in commercial activity. I’m hearing people talk more about the things they cherish (rather than those they renounce). I’m witnessing incredible technological advances in computing, environmental awareness, and medicine. What an incredible time to be alive!
If you want to free yourself of Weltschmerz, sit down with a couple of people and ask them what makes them hopeful. Ask them what inspires them and what they are working towards. In the process, you might just find the optimism you’re desperately seeking.
UPDATE: You have to check this out if you don’t think the future holds anything new & exciting: http://www.terrafugia.com/index.html.
Dunbar’s Number and Social Rules as they Apply to Business, Online
For those of you who know the BusinessCard2 team, you’ve heard us talk at almost every occasion about the Rule of 150 (also know as Dunbar’s Number). In short, the Rule of 150 suggests that we are limited in our ability to manage our social networks as a rule of social nature. Although the Rule of 150 certainly applies in the authentic world, we also feel strongly that this law applies to social networking on the web as well.
See, in both the real and virtual worlds, you can accumulate as many friends/contacts as you wish, but there are limitations to managing all those relationships. Your time, your channel of communication, your frequency often means that you’re simply not able to maintain some of these relationships. Even under artificial methods (such as automated emails or responses) it is nearly impossible to fulfill the fine details of actually maintaining the relationship.
In both the real and virtual worlds, we have people coming in and out of our 150 circle all the time. Some stay in the circle and never leave (a spouse, best friend, etc.) and some enter and leave quickly (a teammate on your softball team) and some are there, leave, and come back again. For every person who enters your circle of 150, there is an equal and opposite reaction with someone leaving your circle.
No doubt there are instances of incredible social butterflies who can legitimately manage say 200 or 250 people, but that is the extreme and not the norm. Likewise, there are people whose circle is probably limited to 75 or 100. The point is that there are theoretical limits to maintaining enough intimacy in your social network relationships for them to qualify for your circle.
In both the real and virtual worlds, people argue us on whether the Rule of 150 applies. The naysayers swear that they are living proof this 150 limit can be broken. These skeptics say advances in social networking technology are helping them supersede the theoretical limits. Yet, a survey of those they claim are part of their network quickly exposes a myriad of people that don’t consider the naysayer in their circle of 150. This is a point of great distinction: someone is only in your circle of 150 if they too say you are in their circle of 150.
A couple of weeks ago we had the opportunity to meet with and attend a great presentation by leading blogger Seth Godin here in Minneapolis. Seth is a respected thought leader in the evolution of tribes, and someone who well understands the social implications of being a human on the internet. To quote his recent blog post, “Dunbar’s Number isn’t just a number, it’s the law.”
The Rule of 150 is especially important as companies of all sizes strike out to find customer gold on the web by using social networking. If you could do more business with your online network, you already would be. Growing your business online is about connecting with NEW PROSPECTS AND CUSTOMERS. Your professional life will be made much easier if you accept that your circle is limited to roughly 150, and you turn your energy from trying to tap the network you have to the prospects (nodes) that you don’t already know.
How do you connect with those you don’t already know? The answer isn’t your social circle. Rather, you need to find points of need. For example, if a prospect needs a new purse and goes on the web, she will probably run a search. If she knew that you sell purses already, she would have probably just called you or visited your website. The fact is that she doesn’t. The problem for you is that you also don’t know about her and that she’s on the market for a new purse. So, you need to find a way to tap her interest/need. We all know how advertising with Google Adwords works: we can capture her eye by advertising at the point of need in a search engine. But, let’s take this approach to a social network situation…
Say she mentions, “I’m looking for a new purse” on her Facebook page or Twitter feed. If you don’t know her and don’t follow her, you’ll never know about it. Now maybe one of her friends or followers will read about the fact she is looking for a new purse, but unless her friends recommend you as a great purveyor of purses, you’re still missing the intersection of need with your solution. If you’re following the point here, you’ll understand why it’s so difficult to use social networking for commercial purposes. To grow your business you are looking to connect with new prospective customers (not just the customers you already have). Since there are limitations to your prospects’ social circle, the idea that they will follow you or seek you out is an unreasonable expectation.
To discover and connect with new customers, you need to think like an engineer. The question to ask yourself is, “How to I build a bridge between two previously disconnect points?” That is, how does someone that doesn’t know about you connect with you, and how do you connect with someone you don’t already know? In the real world, it’s called leads and referrals. On the web, it’s discovering prospects at the point of need. In the highest percentage of web-based social networking this will not work, because of the Rule of 150.
[Note: if you have created new customers by using Facebook, LinkedIn, or Twtter, please share your story. How did they find you and how did you convert them?]
[Also: Read, "Is the Promising of Social Media Enough? What about ROI?"]
Our vendor, Cision, just sent me a link to a short slideshow on “Personality 2.0: Eight Ways to Control Your Personal Reputation and Social Media Brand.” It’s sort of cute/funny, but more importantly I think it’s spot on. If they really evaluate this space, I think their eight tips could have been more like fifty tips, but a good start nevertheless.
You can watch the slideshow here.
This week Lief Larson spoke to the Minnesota State Bar Association; the presentation topic was Lawyer 2.0. For any lawyers out there interested in websites where they want to grow their online presence, just send a message to Lief through his BusinessCard2. Part of the discussion was on whether people who follow you on Twitter actually read your tweets? The advice was that only a small percentage do, but that is mostly because merely following someone by name or company doesn’t always mean that their posts are relevant to all the followers. Interestingly, Kevin Rose who founded Digg, has been working on a side project called WeFollow. Digg acquired Kevin’s service this week. WeFollow has interesting implications because it helps people interested in specific and relevant content to follow thought leaders based purely on relevancy of subject matter (something desperately needed).
Behind the scenes at BusinessCard2, we’re working on some new features… several of which will be pushed live over the weekend. First, we are nearly completed with testing of “Inbox”, which is basically an internal messaging system. We still forward all messages to your email address of record, but now we’re also providing tools for management of those messages in the web app. Second, we will be releasing “Contacts”, which has been long awaited. With “Contacts” you can now store other people’s business cards (it’s like a Rolodex). Third, we’re wrapping up some work on “Slideshow”, which basically helps you to compile and presents photos in a slideshow format in your BusinessCard2. Lastly, we are very near to powering video playback in the card (thanks to Danny Patterson and the YouTube Chromeless team for months worth of work on this.)
If you really want to geek out, please stop by and say “hello” to us at DeFrag ‘09 in Denver on November 11-12. BusinessCard2 is a sponsor for the event and it promises to be a great conference. Thanks to Erik and Kim of DeFrag for your tremendous efforts in putting this one-of-a-kind event together.
As BusinessCard2 grows, I’ve been spending much more time speaking with the media and networking events around the country. This has provided me the opportunity to shed some light on how I perceive the tangibility of social media in moving the needle for your business, as well as feedback from audiences on just how confusing it can all be. One of the biggest questions I get is, “Should I do it at all?”.
For anyone who is using social networking, the answer to this question is almost always “yes, you should be doing social networking.” I think that people naturally answer with a YES! is because they want others to either join in their misery or bliss. The reality is, maintaining a social networking presence, for many, can be a time vampire that provides little or no tangible or intangible return on investment (ROI).
It is a mistaken belief that just because an audience migrates to one place, that means you need to have to be there too. Before embarking on a social media campaign, the three questions I recommend you ask are: 1) Why do I want to be there?, 2) What can it do for my business?, 3) How will I determine/calculate if it really matters?
I am and have been convinced for the better part of five years that social networking is only tapped for ROI by a select group of people and companies. Typically those who are successful have invested time in understanding how social media works and how they will successfully use it, as well as investment of financial resources to see successful implementation of that planning.
At the end of the day, the 1-2 hours spent maintaining a social presence is 1-2 hours taken away from another part of your life. It is time you will never get back. Social networking can be a novelty where not all experience windfall. It needs to be carefully thought out, attempted, and scaled back if it can’t be measured. Note: Reality Digital is helping calculate social media ROI.
So let me be clear, so their is no uncertainty in my opinion: social media can be one part of overall marketing tactics and a vehicle for integrated marketing communications, but it is not always a worthwhile trade-off of your time in resources unless expectations can be realized.
