Citizen Marketer 2.1

Aaron Strout

It’s Truck Day

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Nearly two and a half years ago I announced that I was packing up my belongings and moving down to Austin from a place I had called home for most of my life. When I decided to head south, not only was I leaving a comfortable job as VP of social media at a company called Mzinga, I was also saying goodbye to most of my family and many of my friends that I had grown to know over the years.

Since then, I’ve had an amazing run that’s included meeting hundreds of new friends both here in Austin and all over the country; helping my company, Powered, acquire three other companies; working closely with two of my colleagues (and good friends), Joe Jaffe and Greg Verdino to launch and market their books; landing several great new clients; securing a book deal of my own with friend and co-author, Mike Schneider, to write Location Based Marketing for Dummies; and then ultimately getting acquired by social business consultancy, Dachis Group.

As you can imagine, getting acquired is not an insignificant thing. Throw in the fact that the company acquiring Powered is the largest social business consultancy in the world AND I happen to be friends with the managing director (Peter Kim) and CEO (Jeff), along with several other folks that work there and you have the potential for something pretty incredible. I tried to convey some of this excitement in the post I wrote on the day we announced the acquisition. To that end, I’m a huge believer in the power of social business design and I have been for years. But…

Yes, you knew there was a “but” coming, especially based on the title of this post (more on that in a minute). In spite of my respect for Jeff, Peter, Kate, April, Bryan and all my former Powered colleagues like Natanya Anderson, Kevin Tate, Greg Rau, Steve Kleinberg and Jen van der Meer, I’ve decided to once again pack up the bags and move my little old self over to another company called WCG. This time, the move requires a lot less distance and many fewer goodbyes. Fortunately for my family and me, WCG has one of their offices here in Austin so I’ll just be about four blocks down the street from my old office.

At the end of the day, this has zero to do with me leaving a great company with a ton of smart people and a winning game plan. Instead, it has everything to do with me joining another great company with a ton of smart people and a winning game plan… but with a personal mandate of focusing on location based marketing. And as I mentioned earlier when I mentioned my book deal, I’m very passionate about helping companies figure out how to tap into the power of mobile and location based services like foursquare, Gowalla, Whrrl, Where and Bizzy to deepen customer loyalty.

With perhaps the longest preamble in history… that brings us to the topic of Truck Day. For any of you that follow baseball closely, you might know that “Truck Day” is the day where Major League Baseball Teams pack up their trucks and head south to the likes of Florida and Arizona to kick off spring training. Any of you that follow me on Facebook or Twitter also know that I am a HUGE Red Sox fan so after a long, baseball-less winter, I get really excited about things like Truck day because it means that the season is just around the corner. Seeing that today is my first day in the office at WCG, I look at this as my “truck day” or my day to kick off what I expect will be an amazing journey.

Before I forget, however, I would like to take a minute to thank the Powered team with special shout outs to Natanya, Kathy, Ron, Ken and David. You took a chance on me two and a half years ago and as a result we all had the opportunity to hold on for what turned out to be a crazy yet fulfilling ride. In addition, I want to thank Jeff Dachis and Peter Kim for being such good friends, supporting my decision and helping me through the transition. And finally, to Bob Pearson and Jim Weiss for giving me this fantastic opportunity to join the WCG team (this is also where I give a big hat tip to my friend, Greg Matthews, for helping start up the conversation between Bob, Jim and myself). Oh, and of course my loving wife, Melanie, who has been nothing but supportive through the entire process.

Now it’s time to PLAY BALL!



image courtesy http://msmaggiemoo.blogspot.com/

Pluralitas Non est Ponenda sine Necessitate

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For those non-Latin speakers out there, you are asking yourself right now, what the hell does “pluralitas non est ponenda sine necessitate” mean? Literally, it means “plurality should not be posited without necessity.” It’s a theory made popular by 14th century friar, William of Ockham, and is better known as Ockham or Occam’s Razor.

Why am I thinking about 14th century friars and Latin phrases about plurality and necessity on the day after Thanksgiving you ask? The short version of the story is that my friend, Kyle Flaherty, recently shared a great post with me by analytics wizard, Avinash Kaushik. Avinash writes a well known blog called — get this — Occam’s Razor. After reading his lengthy, but thought-provoking, post on social analytics, it got me wondering about the inspiration for the name of his Avinash’s blog.

Now I think it’s mandatory that we all learn about Occam’s Razor at some point in high school or college but of course that, along with billions of other pieces of knowledge that don’t fit into our everyday lives, somehow fell out of my head along the way. But after reacquainting myself with this concept of seeking the “simplest answer,” I’ve been thinking a lot about streamlining my work and personal life these days. In particular, slimming down my information sources and my day to day work flow.

I wrote about taking steps in this direction several weeks ago following my brief retirement from Twitter. But the place I’ve really fallen down is on keeping up with my Google Reader. I know some people like Bob Scoble have abandoned their readers altogether but I realized the other day that there are a dozen blogs, mostly written by friends, that I haven’t been keeping tabs on as closely as I would like. And the reason was because their quality content was getting drowned out by the 50 plus other blogs that I was keeping in my Google Reader, many of which contributed to my reader consistently registering 1,000 unread posts mark.

Maybe I’m unique in this fashion (although I doubt it) but thinking about 1,000 unread posts is just too daunting. Instead of going in and chipping away, I tend to ignore my Google Reader and thus miss out on dozens of great posts by people like Kyle, Peter Kim, Rachel Happe,  Tim Walker, Greg Verdino and others. So in a fit of “pluralitas non est ponenda sine necessitate” (which is really more about the concept of “the simplest solution is usually the correct one), but inspired me to “simplify” or slim down my reader to about 15 blogs.

The result is a much more manageable, 137 posts, all of which I was excited to read. The downside is that I will miss out on the good posts on ReadWriteWeb, ChrisBrogan.com and the HBS blog. But the way I look at it, it’s better that I read a few blogs all the time then have lots of great blogs that I never look at.

What about you? Are you able to keep up with it all? If so, how?

Experts in the Industry: Peter Kim (7 of 45)

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Peter Kim, Sr. Partner at the Dachis Group, is one of my favorite people in the “social” space right now. Partly because he spends a good chunk of his time in Austin so I’m able to grab him for the occasional coffee or dinner, but mainly because of his no nonsense approach to blogging and business. Interestingly enough, Peter and I actually worked together briefly at Fidelity Investments but really got to know each other over the last year and a half.
In one sentence, please describe what you do and why you’re good at it.
I think about disparate, ambiguous information and analyze to create opportunity – currently in support of building a new software + services company.
How did you get into the world of online community, social media or social marketing?
After working in strategy consulting and digital marketing, I merged my personal inclinations with my professional investigations – first as an industry analyst and now as a business builder.
 
If you had $10 million to invest in one company and one company only based on their use of “social,” which company would it be and why?
My own, of course.  We operate by the principles and structure we advise companies to adopt.  Other than mine?  Cisco.  They’re not using social technologies just for point solutions like marketing campaigns.  Social is in their culture and approach to business.
 
Which business leader, politician or public figure do you most respect?
Tough question.  I don’t idolize anyone and skipped this question on all of my college application essays.  All of us are human with strengths and weaknesses, capable of influencing one another equally.
Maybe.  But I’ve never been invited to join one! [NOTE FROM AARON HERE – MY FRIEND SARA DORNSIFE JUST ALERTED ME TO THE PRESENCE OF SOMEONE THAT ACTUALLY PLAYS IN THIS SPACE – http://toothhugger.com]
 
Freeform – here’s where you can riff on anyone or anything – good or bad. Or just share a pearl of wisdom.
I believe that we haven’t yet seen the potential of what social technologies can do for the enterprise.  I’m building a company to address this opportunity that happens to be in Austin, so I look forward to connecting with anyone heading down for SXSW who wants to discuss further.

5 Ways to be a Better Twitter Spammer

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Ever notice that spam has a way of making its way into any new medium, particularly after that medium starts to hit critical mass. Sadly, microblogging tool/service, Twitter, is now experiencing the joy of “get rich” or “get women” messages from people we don’t know and don’t care to know. Rather than complain, I’m going to try and fix it. How? I’m going to tell the spammers how they can do their job better. Plus, I promised Peter Kim that I’d do this post as he’s tired of the same old “he same asian girl01 showing me how to make $4k monthly” tweets.
So listen up all you Twitter spammers because here are five ways you can be more succesful getting your message out to the masses:
  1. STOP putting numbers at the end of your twitter handles. The second you do that, there’s at least a 98% chance that you’re a spammer and that I’m not even going to look at your profile nevermind follow you. I know it’s easier to write a program that takes a name and adds new digits onto it but technology has evolved to the point where you could get more clever. For instance, run a query against the list of top names in the Social Security database and add it to common last names like Smith, Johnson and Williams. That’s good for at least several thousand new accounts right there.
  2. When you spam people, put a few real tweets in between your spammy “Just Posted: Getting a Girl – Getting The Girls + SPAM URL” tweet (thanks to spammer @datingschool for the example). For instance, a few “watching the latest episode of The Office” or “just downloaded the latest Coldplay album” would help add a little credibility to your account.
  3. As a follow on to tip number 2, try @-ing a few folks, even if they’re fake accounts. I can tell in about 1 second that either a) you’re a spammer or b) you don’t know how to use Twitter if I scan your tweets and none of them are directed toward anyone.
  4. STOP using the picture of the hot girl as your avatar. While I appreciate the asthetics of an attractive woman when I click on your profile link, I am immediately skeptical of any account where the picture is of model-esque, scantily clad young woman. Try picture of a 35 year old guy once in a while. Or a slightly overweight woman. It’s all about being authentic!
  5. Work a little harder on your follower/followee ratio. When I see that you’re following 1,723 people and are being followed back by 36, it’s pretty easy to tell that you’re a spammer. While I know it will take longer to build a more respectible ratio, it will be worth it to get people to read your message.
How many spammers do you think will read this post? Probably zero. But it was worth a shot. Am I missing any good tips or tricks that you can think of that would help our spammer friends?

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