From the noise around the web they have certainly achieved that goal. Whether you support their efforts or think that they are misusing funds, the misconception that we can make a difference with a few tweets without researching to get the bigger picture is irresponsible at best. (And though it’s inflammatory I have to mention that photo of the filmmakers with guns, a joke or not, is chilling in it’s implications.)

The truth behind the conflict and violence merits more than 26 minutes of video.  Be responsible enough to look for more information and understand what you’re supporting before sending out a tweet from your couch in the US.  True understanding comes with educating yourself.

Reading a declaration from documentarians at SXSW has left me with the feeling that we need a better understanding of what making a difference truly means. “Dyer, however, thinks, there’s a larger achievement here. “Now 13-25 year olds around the world are at least talking about it [strife in Uganda]. That’s the most important thing to come out of that film.” I very much disagree with that statement. I’m disheartened that the attention could cause more harm to come to children who have already experienced horrors that thankfully our children never have.

What’s done is done now, we are limited in what we can do to prevent the harm of children so many thousands of miles away.  There are some reputable charities that are able to help feed those children. I would caution you to do some research and investigate which those are and give to them instead of Invisible Children.  IC’s quest to bring attention to the unjust methods the LRA is idealistic and not realistic in truly providing help. If you aren’t sure where to donate, I would encourage you to consider the International Red Cross Uganda’s National Society. Recommended reading: Wil Wheaton on KONY2012

The long version, but important: The Bill – SOPA

A good summary on why SOPA sucks by Mashable.

I came across a Search Engine Land experiment on how the new Google Search plus Your World works. Google has done some pretty unremarkable things in the past (Hello turning off sharing in Google Reader!). The one thing they’ve always excelled at are their efforts to try and improve search results.  For example, Panda was a huge move and it removed some of the most irrelevant sites from the top search results pool (spam, splogs).

Google’s Violation of their Philosophy

With the introduction of Google Search+, it’s clear that they are moving away from their core values.   Not to mention they are drawing the attention of the FTC and complaints of anti-trust violations.  It isn’t simply that they aren’t indexing other social networks, but it’s how they are changing search results in a way that does not benefit their users.

“The perfect search engine,…would understand exactly what you mean and give back exactly what you want.” – Larry Page

Going by their own standards, Google is no longer the perfect search engine and are taking steps away from that goal. If I’m looking for something or someone online, Google+ doesn’t strike me as the best place to find them.  I’d rather have the place most relevant based on a variety of factors.

When I want Google+ results specifically, I’ll search for them, yes?

Google’s core philosophy also mentions “Focus on the user and all else will follow.”  I don’t believe that Google is focused on the user right now.  Danny Sullivan seems to agree if I’m reading his experiment with Google Search+ (linked above)correctly. It’s about goals, yes, namely their goal to make Google+ a success.  Not their user’s goals in searching for relevant results.

Danny notes:

Google’s job as a search engine is to direct searchers to the most relevant information on the web, not just to information that Google may have an interest in.

All of this has had the compelling effect of making me change my search habits and engine.  I want a search engine that will help me find what I’m looking for, not one that will show me what it thinks is relevant to what I am looking for.

Can Google Marry Search and Social Successfully?

Maybe they can, but they certainly aren’t winning any battles by damaging one of the tools that users love them for.

“It’s best to do one thing really, really well.”

Yes, yes it is; now perhaps you can get back to doing that?  This change takes them beyond search and into social.  For those of you keeping score at home, that’s two things, not one.

Don’t get me wrong there are some great things about Google+ and I love interacting there. It’s not about hating their social network. I very much hope that Google can take a step back from this and understand the mistake that they’ve made with forcing this change.  If nothing else, Buzz should have taught them not to shove things down people’s throats.

For me, I will be experimenting with different search engines for a while.  Until search shows me what I’m looking for minus the favoritism of Google+ search results, I think it’s best we took a break from each other.

If you aren’t a fan of this change, the best thing you can do to send a sign to the executives at Google is to turn off the new search or use a different search engine.

How about you?  If you have the new search plus, do you love it?  Hate it?  Why?

Accompanied by some great minds, I wrote a post that pushed the boundaries of my usual writing style and includes the words “invisible pink monkeys”, if that doesn’t make you want to download and read it I don’t know what will.

Other than I can promise that it will help you find your inner strength to complete the challenges that you face while moving ahead.  (See below for other formats.)

Other formats

• Download in MOBI Format for Amazon Kindle
• Download in EPUB Format for Nook and iBooks
• Download in PDF Format for all other readers

1. Stop Using Your Inbox as a Todo List
2. The last to do list you’ll ever need
3. 4 Sanity Saving Tricks for Gmail
4. Social Inbox Zero
5. How Klout Scores Could Be More Useful to Marketers (though this applies to brands giving away perks too)

Okay no more looking back, use these to help you jump forward and make 2012 a grand success!

Flow, Insight, Commitment.

Flow

There is a common thread running through each of the things that I do professionally.  There are many strands that bubble to the top when I try to give voice to answer the question, “What do you do?”  This past year I’ve been feeling very stuck in the seemingly chaotic whirlpool of non-direction. I would like to harness that energy and transform it into something that hits all my sweet spots in terms of skill.

As I did some contract work for WhatCounts, I had to utilize many skills from different skill sets to fill a marketing manager position.  This ranged from extremely technical (involving WP, CSS, analytics, etc) to communications (email, newsletters, blog posts, etc).

It pointed out the need to me to gain a sense of direction that comes from using those skills to help *a* company reach their goals.  While I can do that on a bigger scale now, my brain is calling for a single endeavor to put my heart behind.  I haven’t yet decided WHAT that is exactly.  My goal is by the end of 2012 (hopefully mid-year at the latest) have that settled and becoming firmly integrated into whatever it may be.

Insight

If I look at the chaos, one thing stands out to me, each of the things I want to learn about and understand will give me better insight into the way things work.  My curious nature is what pushes me to learn new things and use that knowledge to help others.  It’s a wonderful thing as I approach new things and ideas not only with an open mind, but a sense of excitement.  The puzzles teach me something new that I can use to help others succeed using my skills.

The question for me is, can I find a place that have puzzles to solve and can use my skills to help?

Commitment

I see the need and desire to shape the next steps in the new year with flow and insight.  Something that will help me do is to practice commitment.  Not in the sense of being married to the outcome, but in the sense of committing to a punch. I need to be all in, understanding my skills, understanding the chaos and finding the insights to move forward.  Committing entirely so that I lose myself in the processes and stop over thinking the outcomes.

Goodbye, 2011.

All in all, 2011 wasn’t that bad.  I learned some interesting things about myself.  I challenged my strength.  I started running (and love it).  I worked part time while maintaining my consulting business.  I became an editor of book.  I learned that I have limits in what I can achieve in one day and in one week.  I traveled a bit more (and love it).

And finally, as you go through your own three words for the year, try to remember that the course may change and that’s okay.  You may discover an entirely different path…and that’s okay too.  The key is to end 2012 looking back at how much you’ve grown and being proud of how you get there.

We get hundreds of messages a day from Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc.; not to mention the many email addresses to manage daily.  Everyone looking for a one button/tool solution, stop now.  Maybe one day we’ll have a one button push marketing computer that weighs the pros, cons and responses and chooses the appropriate path and then posts the answer for you on various social networks.  But today is not that day.

Set Up a Routine

Setting up a system for yourself varies according to how each YOU work best.  In my case, I’m great at responding to email later in the day rather than first thing in the morning and then I check into social things several times a day.  I like to tackle things on my to do list first.  Many people need to work the reverse way.  This is an individual preference and not single one will apply across the board.

A caveat. Avoid “tool jumping”.  Checking out new tools is fine, but invest time in them when the shiny meets a need.  Not because it’s deemed “tool of the moment”.  Honestly the tools don’t matter as much as your responsiveness.  No one gives a flying pig what you use to tweet/post, as long as you’re responding to their concerns.

Luckily (or not), we have numerous choices of tools between Radian6 and other enterprise level monitoring systems to more small business tools such as Argyle, Batchbook, Tweetdeck and/or Hootsuite, etc. with special lists and columns including interfacing tools via API.

Set Boundaries

The first lesson?  Investing your time wisely.  Come to an agreement with your employer about how responsive you are expected to be in the social forums in your off hours. Talk to your family, make a commitment to removing yourself from the online world completely between the time you leave work and (their?) bedtime.  I make it a habit to check in before bed.  If you find this is stressful to you and not helping you sleep, you may want to avoid it.

No matter your routine, you will want to check for replies, direct messages on Twitter and/or comments on your Facebook page, etc on various social channels upon starting the workday.

These messages are a signal that commenters feel they have a relationship with your company enough to interact with your team.  Hold those doors open for the customer and potential customers.  If there are complaints or a screaming rabid pack of zombies, be polite.

An Example – Importance of Communications

One example that never fails to amaze me is Blizzard’s World of Warcraft message board on Tuesdays when there is maintenance.  Blizzard will set maintenance times typically the night before, most times between 5 am PT – 11 am PT.  Sometimes they have to extend the downtime.  It happens.

The “problem” arises when the deadline passes and Blizzard’s community team doesn’t have updates ready at that time for the players to keep them from yelling about the “injustice of it all”.  Their customers who are paying a monthly fee to play this game have a clear habit of asking that question.

When you know there’s bound to be a conflict, anticipate issues as best you can, prepare the answers, or find the answers.  If you don’t know, then say ”I don’t know” and commit to finding the answer as soon as you can and then inform the customer.

If you find that a conflict arises and you aren’t able to keep a cool head about, measure your words carefully, take a break from the keyboard for a few minutes, vent your emotions in a safe place. It works wonders when you find yourself losing your cool.

In the End, Act!

No matter your routine or how you choose to track your interactions online, taking action is a way to build community trust that you care about the issues/questions/comments that customers and evangelist alike take the time to share.  It is possible to do this without letting social interaction overtake your life 24/7.

So dig in, share your experiences, let others know what works for you in the comments.  If you have questions about something that isn’t working for you and need suggestions, please let me know.

Photo by superfantastic on flickr.

Go ahead, think of something that you want to do but you’ve put off because of every reason excuse imaginable.

Now go read The Flinch.  

You have no reason NOT to read it, it’s one of the best damn life lessons you’re going to get and it’s free.

First you need to know if they have a cat or talk about cats or are influential about cats. Enter Klout.  It has a nice nifty easy number for you to tell you exactly who to approach, right?  Wrong.

It doesn’t matter how high a blogger’s Klout score is, if they don’t have a cat or talk about cats, they really don’t care that you have a fancy cat litter box for sell.

But Klout’s +K topics?  Klout is on to something there that is slightly more useful to marketers, but it’s still a system that can be gamed.  There has been a lot of talk about this recently and a lot of folks are calling Klout out and for their poor judgement in ranking underage profiles on Facebook (which I agree is a very stupid move on their part).

How can Klout make it more useful and accurate?  One way: if +K influenced your score on a topic or topics specifically rather than overall influence.  Imagine a scoring system for influencers on topics as a variation of Postrank.  Let’s call it KloutRank (I want idea rights on this one!)

What’s PostRank?  PostRank “gathers where and when stories generate comments, bookmarks, tweets, and other forms of interaction from a host of social hubs. Publishers and people interested in their content use PostRank Data Services and Analytics to gauge influence and reach with audiences.”

In Google Reader, I’ve installed a Chrome Extension that allows Postrank to rank every RSS post and give me a number between 0 and 10 for how popular the post is based on actual reader activity.

Let’s dig into how it would work…

Instead of basing a score on the users activity without acknowledging the quality or focus, KloutRank would be a great variation on this based on the topical areas of influence using the topics/+K scoring system.

If I have a score of 52 on the area of Black Lab‘s music (52 +K on Black Lab) and that scoring is done by my peers and their fans who are influential in the area of said music.  They know I know my stuff about the music, the band and score m as a result. That topic influence demonstrates my influence far better than randomly picking people above the score of 50 for perks.

In other words, a moderate quality highly targeted summary would be better than high quality off target score.

This idea came to me while listening data extraordinaire Tom Webster‘s presentation at Blog World Expo which point pointed out the significant flaws with Klout’s scoring mechanisms. A number is just a number and it conveys nothing about the person’s “influence” on all topics.  If you’re a marketer that needs to target a specific audience, picking a random Klout number and aiming high won’t get you the results you or your clients are looking for from a campaign.

We’d still have to do the work (Thanks Tom for making that stick in my brain.) to find out if this person is actually as influential as the score/other people claim them to be.  If that wasn’t a part of the strategy anyway, that’s just plain lazy.  Nothing will ever give you a one button solution to anything in life, the sooner we accept that the better.

And why would you want that one button solution anyway.  A big part of what makes life exciting is finding the answers to the questions that intrigue us.

NONE of this would be a *true* measure of influence in reality.  Christopher Penn is going to influence me to a different degree than someone that I do not know, no matter what their Klout score is,

Simple way to make your own topic influencer lists?  Search Klout for your topics and then add the folks who got a +K for those topics to Twitter lists and make a list of the folks that retweet you too.  Then at the end of the day you’ve organically grown a list that will be responsive to what your business has to offer.