“This is extremely important because it comports with Barack Obama’s world view in ways harmful to American sovereignty. ”
Okay, okay. I know a lot of you know about this already.
For about a week I have been getting emails about Barack Obama surrendering American sovereignty to Interpol, the international criminal police force under the UN’s jurisdiction, but I honestly couldn’t believe even Obama would do that.
The people emailing me were, frankly, mostly of the black helicopter crowd variety so I dismissed it is as overhyped.
Then RedState regulars like Kenny Soloman and Veronica Estrada started taking it seriously. I had to pay attention.
Finally, I got an email with several links from a friend saying I needed to say something about this. He wanted to make sure it was on my radar screen.
This is an extremely serious issue.
The best and most reasonable take comes from Andy McCarthy. Let me put this in perspective for you.
American law enforcement agencies at the local, state, and federal level are bound by open records act laws. At the federal level, the Freedom of Information Act applies.
Knowing that an intrepid reporter can, after establishing credible sources, file a judicially enforcible FOIA request to obtain information from a law enforcement agency is one of the chief deterrents to law enforcement agencies from abusing discretionary power.
Additionally, Interpol is a foreign power, but operates out of the U.S. Department of Justice inside the United States. While Interpol has some limited immunities given by Ronald Reagan in the early 1980’s, it does not — or at least did not until last week — have immunity from the 4th Amendment. Consequently, this international agency could, should it abuse its powers, have the federal government seize its assets, etc.
In other words, the international police organization Interpol was treated like every other law enforcement agency in America — it was subject to FOIA requests and could, like any arm of a municipal, county, state, or federal government agency, have its property taken by the federal government if it crossed the boundaries of criminal law protection for the accused.
For no discernible reason whatsoever, last Wednesday when no one was looking, Barack Obama signed an executive order giving all immunities of foreign powers to Interpol.
In other words, Interpol is now in a better position than any American law enforcement institution that operates on American soil. It cannot have its records searched or seized and it is not subject to the restraints of sunshine and transparency that FOIA requests can bring.
At a time when Obama is worried about ensuring the rights of terrorists against the abuses of the American government, he has no problem surrendering American rights to an arm of the United Nations.
This is extremely important because it comports with Barack Obama’s world view in ways harmful to American sovereignty. Obama has said repeatedly that he views no nation as greater than any other nation. He has said repeatedly that one nation should not be able to impose its will on another. He applies this even to the United States.
In Barack Obama’s world, the United States is no better and no worse than Iran, China, North Korea, or Kenya. In his world view, we are all players on an international stage with the United Nations as the leader. Therefore, while Obama will not give up American sovereignty to Peru, he is perfectly happy to give up sovereignty to the United Nations.
The man is not just an amateur. He is also a damnably naive fool.
This is also a backdoor to the International Criminal Court (”ICC”). The United States chose, before Obama took office, to avoid the ICC. Interpol has become the law enforcement arm of the ICC. By taking away the limits to Interpol’s immunity in the United States, Barack Obama has freed the organization up to conduct criminal investigations of individuals inside the United States on behalf of the ICC without any of us knowing about it.
And who does the ICC want to investigate? The lawyers, CIA operatives, and soldiers who have defended the United States in the War on Terror by setting up GTMO and prosecuting the war. These men and women now have yet another deterrent to keep them from being fully effective — the fear of an international criminal investigation that they don’t even know about.
How many Americans will get killed because of the policies Barack Obama is employing to undermine our safety and security in a dangerous world?
Those who watch King of the Hill (with the awesome Hill family: Hank, Peggy, and Bobby) know that it was earlier in September that the show ended it’s 13th and final season. Even now, I’m still disappointed about not being able to see more new adventures. My spirits are lifted once more as only a few days ago I received a friend request from an old and friendly familiar face on Facebook.
P.S Yes, I know it’s not really him…but it was rather exhilarating to be friend-ed by possibly the best salesman of propane and propane accessories. Now I’m off to play some video games…or as Mr. Hank Hill would call them “them dang vidja games“.
I spent some time over the holidays sorting through the images I made during 2009. We didn’t take as many trips as usual and I didn’t get out with the frequency to which I am accustomed. Our little dude Jackson, who is now 9 months old, is to blame. Not that I’m complaining. I’m not – at all. Adding Jackson to our family is the most amazing adventure of my life. It isn’t his fault that he’s just so damn cute I’d rather lie on the living room floor stacking wooden blocks just to watch him knock them down than go out and photograph.
Even without traveling like gypsies I still managed to make a few decent images this year. I was in the process of narrowing them down to the top 5 when my friend CAZ suggested that I let my friends and fans make the selections from a larger group of photos. Brilliant idea, CAZ! So, I sorted through all my photos to select the top 15 for a gallery on my Facebook page. I tried and tried and tried to limit it to 15 but in the end, I couldn’t do it. So, I posted my top 17 images. Nice round number, eh?
You’re probably wondering, “Soooooo, what’s the contest all about?” Here’s the scoop: Votes are being accepted on my Facebook page until Jan. 8, 2010. After that I’ll tally all the votes to select the top 5 of 2009. Everyone who voted will have their name thrown into a hat. I’ll have my wife draw one name from the hat and that person will win a framed 12″ x 18″ print of their choice from the top 5 photos.
Visit my Facebook page to cast your vote!
Fifty-five Year Old Cartoonist & Internet Entrepreneur Named 2nd Top Twitterer In The World
Rick London of Hot Springs, Ar. was named today the 2nd top Twitterer in the world by
Teqnolog the only statistics service that monitors the social networking industry.
London, who founded Londons Times Cartoons www.LondonsTimes.us and its
peripheral funny gift shops with over 80,000 cartoon gifts. London also created the world’s
only famous love quote shoes (ShoesThatAmuse.com) which he designs in conjunction with
U.S. Keds on ladies champion Keds shoes.
A sample Londons Times Cartoon "Salad Bar Exam"
London, 55, was born in Hattiesburg, MS and is now a resident of Hot Springs, Ar where
he enjoys mountain climbing, fishing, hiking, and just about anything outdoors or that has to
do with nature. He supports numerous animal and environmental causes. His cartoon has
been the number one ranked offbeat cartoon (by Google and MSN) since 2005.
——————————————————————————————————————–
Rick London is the founder of Google’s number 1 ranked offbeat cartoon, Londons Times. He also founded the world’s only famous love quote shoes ShoesThatAmuse.com. He has over 80,000 cartoon gifts and collecitbles in his funny gift stores such as Rick London Collection and his mega funny gift shops LTSuperstore.
On March 19 I will be fortunate to be one of the workshop presenters at the North Fulton Business Expo. I’m still working on that days presentation but today I’d like to help you by sharing a little information about social media and 6 tools that I think are essential for you to make it work for you.
Many people use the term “Social Media” to represent the vast array of social networking sites, social media sites, and tools available. What we’re really talking about is the Social Web. The Social Web is made up of Social Networking and Social Media.
Social Networking is about sharing the conversation. Social Media is about sharing content. Combined they form an effective toolbox to grow you business.
Sharing the Conversation
There are hundreds social networking sites available and you could spend unlimited time trying to determine how to use each. I’m looking to use social networking in as efficient manner as possible so I focus on two networking sites and one hybrid.
The two sites that I use are LinkedIn and Facebook. Both allow me to build communities of people, engage and interact with them, and communicate to on an ongoing basis. The results may include branding but the end goal is always monetization.
LinkedIn
LinkedIn is a natural fit from a membership perspective. The average household income per member is $109,000, close to 80% have attended college, and 49% are decision makers. The average LinkedIn member is a great prospect.
LinkedIn is a somewhat closed environment and it takes time and effort to build the right communities and typically most of our communications are indirect in nature. I want those in my networks to see the messages I deliver over time and to get to know, like, and trust me so that when they have a need for the services I provide, I’m top of mind.
It also doesn’t hurt that you have the ability to prospect and then see how you connect into each opportunity.
Facebook
Things are much looser on Facebook. Building communities of the right people still takes time and effort but you can reach out to others without some of the restrictions on LinkedIn. I still primarily communicate with indirect messages, but it just seems easier to do on Facebook.
Most of my prospects live in Atlanta and the Atlanta network on Facebook has over 1.8 million people. If I can engage the right ¼ of a percent, that’s 4,500 people to communicate my message to.
Twitter
The hybrid is Twitter. Twitter is a microblog which seems like it would be part of the social media side. But there is a community aspect in terms of those you follow and those that follow you. Relationships do develop and you can build a significant community of people.
Twitter to me represents a great communications tool. At any point I can tweet a message that will be seen by a percentage of my followers and a percentage of non-followers through the public timeline.
If I build a community of 10,000 followers then at any point that I tweet a message it has the potential to be viewed by a percentage of my followers who are online at the time. Not everyone will be online and see the message. But if I consistently tweet two times a day, every day for six months, then I should be able to place several messages in front of the majority of my followers during this time.
The goal is to communicate the right message that is viewed by a number of followers at the right time. It’s a numbers game and I trust that stars will align often enough to be an effective vehicle to drive traffic and eventually business.
Sharing the Content
The internet is nothing more than a super database of content that people search through to find relevant information. Your goal is to provide valuable content that can be found. If they find your content, they find you.
YouTube
On the Social Media side YouTube allows you to share video content. The site drives a tremendous amount of traffic and can be an extremely useful tool. The ability to tag your videos with keywords allows you to gain exposure to a targeted audience. You simply need to know the keywords your prospects use to find services such as yours.
Another benefit is that in video you can communicate your message in a more engaging format than with simple print. A picture may be worth a thousand words, but a good video is worth a million. You can demonstrate expertise, convey an image, and create a mood. Do it creatively and you may find that not only do people want to view your “commercial”, but they share with those they know.
Flickr
Flickr is simply a photo sharing service. The key to Flickr is the ability to tag photos with keywords. Once again you simply need to know the keywords that your prospects use to search online for your services.
Flickr isn’t the most important part of the puzzle but it does play its part in creating your Digital Footprint…which we’ll discuss shortly.
Business Blogging
The final tool that I use to communicate with prospects is a business blog. Most people have websites and they should. A website establishes a presence. It allows you to list your products or services, it can provide educational or information content, and drive sales through ecommerce features.
Most websites “tell and sell” but don’t really do a good job of communicating. Blogs on the other hand are perfect for communicating to and engaging with your visitors. A business blog should convey what your business is about through what it talks about, the information it shares, and the interaction with those posting comments.
The SONARconnects website is designed to tell people who we are, the services we use to help our clients, and how to contact us. On the Social Media Sonar blog I’m more interested in providing valuable content to people, engaging in conversations, and building trust over time.
There’s a difference in the people who contact me through the website compared to those who contact me after reading the blog. The website prospects are contacting me because a service I provide interests them, where those from the blog are contacting me because through the blog they have come to know, like and trust me. They still have a need for a service I provide but the conversation starts from a position of trust.
Wrap Up
Back in the early 2000’s I used Pay-Per-Click campaigns to communicate my message to prospects at the right time…when they were searching for a need based on a keyword. For a while it was cost effective generating $5 for every $1 I spent. Over time the economics changed as more competition came online and competed for the keywords. As a small business I simply couldn’t compete dollar for dollar with the larger companies.
That’s when I turned to social networking. I can compete on cost because most of the sites are free. I only needed to out think and out hustle the larger companies. That’s much easier than competing based on dollars. (note: for some client’s we still conduct Pay-per-click campaigns where the ROI makes sense)
There’s also what I call your Digital Footprint. Most of the activity that you conduct on the various sites is googleble, meaning it gets picked up and indexed by Google. Over time with the right activity you have the ability to capture front page real estate on Google for specific keywords.
These are the six tools that I use on an ongoing basis. The key is to build your communities, engage in conversations, build trust, and communicate your message so that when the time is right you’re top of mind with the prospect..
What are some other social networking/media tools that are working for you?
I hope you’ll attend my workshop. If you need assistance we provide training for the six tools listed above and we provide ongoing management of social media strategies. Call me at (404) 939-7186 or visit the SONARconnects site for more information.
There’s a new app making the rounds on Facebook that generates the pretty little graphic below with a selection of status updates. It’s kinda silly, I realize, but it was fun to look back through all the stuff I posted through the year. There were a few recurring themes, including coffee, meetings, the Caps, beer, colds, and travel — not necessarily in that order. Facebook clearly remembers more about this year than I do. Maybe I should just use this for my Christmas letter…
Click to enlarge. It's much more legible that way.
On Apr 3, 2009 @ 14:13 , I posted “Personal Branding and the Evolution of the Resume“.
I have always contested that LinkedIn is the business equivalent of Facebook. However, in both of those social networking models, there is a fundamental difference as it relates to me. The sheer size of my business network compared to my social network requires the necessary toolsets that LinkedIn provides. It provides not only a framework for connecting professionals but also presents an opportunity to collaborate across multiple industries and disciplines like no time before through groups and connections. LinkedIn is now a required business tool in my opinion no different than Office, eMail, Business Contacts (i.e. old school Rolodex), Reference Materials, and your number one business card – your resume.
The resume has evolved a lot over the years. However, when you talk to many, they tend to still focus on the basic elements: work history, STAR stories, and keeping it down to a few pages. While these are still valid points to consider when putting together your resume, they only partially achieve the real goal which is Personal Branding. Personal Branding in my opinion represents the next evolution of resume writing and career development.
How does Personal Branding apply to the knowledge worker and how can LinkedIn help with your Personal Branding?
A grassroots campaign led by UK-based Facebook users has done the remarkable, helping Rage Against The Machine’s 1992 single “Killing In The Name” take the top spot in the Christmas week singles chart in the UK. (The Christmas Number 1 single has been a big deal in the UK for years.) Over the past few years, the Christmas week top single has been taken by the winner of the UK TV talent show The X Factor. (The X Factor features and is produced by Simon Cowell of American Idol fame.) This year’s winner of The X Factor, Joe McElderry, has released a cover of Miley Cyrus’s “The Climb” as a single, and it was favored early on to be the Christmas week number one single in the UK. In the end, Rage Against The Machine sold 500,000 copies of Killing In The Name” to McElderry’s 450,000 copies of “The Climb” single. Rage Against The Machine is donating a large amount of the proceeds from this week’s sales of their single to the UK charity Shelter, which aids the homeless.
A statement from Rage Against The Machine read in part:
“We’ve shown that we can make a difference and that you don’t have a right to Number One just because Simon Cowell says so, especially with a bad cover!”
The top ten singles in the UK for Christmas week are:
1. Rage Against The Machine – ‘Killing In The Name’
2. Joe McElderry – ‘The Climb’
3. Lady Gaga – ‘Bad Romance’
4. Peter Kay’s Animated All Star Band – ‘The Official BBC Children In Need Medley’
5. 3OH!3 – ‘Starstrukk (feat Katy Perry)’
6. Robbie Williams – ‘You Know Me’
7. Cheryl Cole – ‘ 3 Words’
8. Rihanna – ‘Russian Roulette’
9. Journey – ‘Don’t Stop Believin”
10. Black Eyed Peas – ‘Meet Me Halfway’
For more on this incredible story, see the article from NME.com.
Powerline A.D. extends congratulations to the organizers of the Rage Against The X Factor campaign for showing that enough people still care about good music and are tired of having musical pablum shoved down their throats. Well done to everyone who was involved!
Strategic Relationship Engineering Both On & Offline
chalkARTblast 006
As we wrap up 2009, we wish to extend sincere holiday greetings to each of you. In addition we want to welcome new relationships; thank our stakeholders, clients and partners and generally give thanks to a very intriguing first six months.
Chalkboarder.com Client News
It’s been a very busy six weeks since we last released a chalkARTblast. We’re busy with some new clients and had to dive right in. Here’s some of the more intriguing things coming up on our calendar for the first quarter of 2010.
Filming “Deadly Claws” Aboard An Oregon Dungeness Crab Boat
We were approached by a Dungeness Crab fishing vessel the F/V Harvester sailing out of Coos Bay OR, to sail with them, blog about off-shore crab fishing and do some cooking dockside with the freshest Dungeness Crab you ever had. Well, one thing has led to another and its become a full-fledged video documentary. Now we’re planning (and writing the storyboard for) an hour long production for WebTV, telling the “farm to table” history of off-shore crabbing, the canneries and the danger. They’re going to put me to work as a deckhand in February catching crab for a day in the cold wet swells and then I’ll don a chef jacket and do some cooking at the cannery. The Captain states that this is twenty times more dangerous than “Deadliest Catch”. As an adventurer and complete extrovert, who is passionate about where our food comes from and cooking – its right up my alley.
Marsha Collier Requests Chalkboarder.com Research Collaboration
Marsha Collier, author of “eBay for Dummies”, with over 1 million copies in print worldwide and the top-selling eBay author, requested Chalkboarder.com’s assistance and collaboration through two methods.
Marsha has been commissioned to write a book due in June 2010 on Customer Service, with a chapter on restaurants. After reading our “10% of USA Restaurants Using Social Media” study (September, 2009), she requested us to redo the study in March 2010 for inclusion in the restaurant customer service chapter.
Additionally, Marsha and I are launching this next week a Twitter-based discussion on customer service. This discussion will be weekly on Tuesdays at 9 pm eastern – you can participate by following #custserv.
FohBoh.com Conference on Social Media
We’re still waiting for confirmation of this one – but Michael Atkinson, CEO of the largest social network, FohBoh.com, for the restaurant industry internationally, invited me to participate as a panelist in a conference sometime in 2010. If the conference is confirmed, I’ll be joining Guy Kawasaki and the founders of LinkedIn and Ning.com on-stage to discuss how the social web can and does impact the restaurant industry. I’m extremely humbled and flattered by the invitation and do hope the conference happens.
“Branded” – The Legacy Five Generation Montana Rancher
We’ve been in dialogue with the oldest cattle ranchers association in the USA, Montana Stock Growers Association, for a long time. I started this relationship in 2007 when we were talking about bringing a line to the national restaurant industry of natural Montana beef, raised and processed from birth to box in-state.
Over the past three months we’ve been in dialogue with them about their social media strategies. Again, one thing has led to another and now we are talking about another hour long documentary exploring “farm to table” and what it means to be a five-generation Montana rancher. More danger! The ranchers want to bring me and the filmmaker out during spring branding, put me on a horse, make me handle a rope and possibly make a few Rocky Mountain Oysters (yes, cutting). At the end, after documenting the history of Montana cattle ranching and exploring the myriad issues they face today we’ll do some cooking of beef.
We have much more news below…
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The Oregon Truffle Festival
Seattle’s top food blogger and restaurant consultant, Traca Savadago (http://seattletallpoppy.blogpost.com) and I are headed out to the vineyards of Oregon at the end of January to blog the Oregon Truffle Festival. Willamette Valley Vineyards just seeded 16 acres of truffle spoor and Oregon truffles are rapidly edging out European truffles for reputation. Traca will be with the chefs in the kitchen over the two days while I am video-blogging the two day “Train Your Dog to Hunt Truffles” workshop.
Coffee Fest
We just started a year long relationship to handle all of Coffee Fest’s social media. As part of this, I’m seeking certification as a barista. Coffee Fest is the most respected tradeshow for the specialty coffee and tea industry internationally, with shows in Meadowlands NJ, Minneapolis and Seattle.
We’re launching an internationally comprehensive social media strategy for Coffee Fest, to increase attendance, exhibitors and overall show experience. A very intriguing part of this relationship is that we’ll be live web streaming the Barista Competitions at all three tradeshows! We decided to call this “bean-casting” (instead of sports-casting) the competitions. In addition, I’ll be speaking on the social web at each Coffee Fest Executive Summit during the tradeshows.
Renaissance Gourmet
We’ve been working with Renaissance Gourmet (British Columbia, CAN) on clarifying their casually elegant lifestyle brand and market the past month and finding them sponsors. As part of this, we’re helping to create and develop a strategic brand/concept in WebTV, e-Books, blogging and other content. The market for Renaissance Gourmet is international female 25 to 55, with significant existing traffic (over 125,000 views per
month) coming from the USA, Australia, Canada and the UK. This project also involves international strategies in social media to grow viewership and further monetization of the brand.
Renaissance Gourmet offers casually elegant lifestyle advice, simply upscale gastronomy, travel, farm-to-table documentaries and just shot a pilot for a non-exclusive series on the Australian Lifestyle Podcast Network.
Challenge Issued to USA Restaurant Industry
We’ve tossed a challenge down to the restaurant industry in the USA. With 945,000 restaurant operations in the country, we think we’ve got a great challenge.
We asked the industry to put over 100 marathon runners into the 2011 Boston Marathon, each sponsored with over $1000 in pledges. The fund-raiser would benefit Share Our Strength, a twenty-five year nonprofit working to end childhood hunger domestically by 2015.
We caught the interest of Share Our Strength, which referred the challenge to its Great American Dine Out steering committee and other C-Level industry leaders. Really, all this is my effort to get myself running again J. Just teasing… I’ve been involved with Share Our Strength since 1994.
Rewarding Feedback
Strategic networking on behalf of Rewarding Feedback (Toronto, CAN) continues. We’ve introduced them to several potentials on both coasts of the USA and are waiting for the crush of the holiday chaos to end to close these deals. A very intriguing inquiry occurred from an 87 unit restaurant outfit with four brands from South Africa. It’s really tough to coordinate communication between North America and South Africa.
Event Mingle
Event Mingle is a social web based community platform for trade shows. With extremely robust metric analytics and structure, it empowers tradeshows to largely expand the return on investment for both attendees and exhibitors participating. We’ve crafted a relationship with Event Mingle to introduce and refer them through our deep proprietary networks off line.
Great American Spice Company
Great American Spice Company is a large web-based retailer of spices. We’re spreading the word about them to consumers through a social media strategy.
Social Grub
Social Grub is a robust Facebook application for service industry businesses. This application has powerful back-office tools and empowers businesses to use the social web to offer promotions, coupons and broadcast of events and news both through smart-phones and personal computers. We’re in a mutual relationship with Social Grub, referring their product while they refer us.
Other News & Pursuits
In the first quarter of 2010, we’ll be combining our two identities (Chocorua Group and Chalkboarder.com) into one brand under the Chalkboarder.com logo and identity. We’ve asked a few diverse peers to provide us critique during this process.
We’re waiting for a yea/nay decision on a pitch we made a few weeks ago to the PR firm handling 1800 Tequila (a brand of Cuervo), 5WPR in New York City. This proposal laid out a six-month global social media strategy. The PR firm indicated to us they were taking the proposal to Cuervo and we’re standing by.
We’re in negotiations with a former client in KennebunkportMaine, Old Vines Wine Bar, to strategize and execute their social media.
We’re in negotiations with Wind Horse Coffee in MilwaukieOregon to strategize and execute their social media.
While there are other negotiations underway across North America and internationally, we just don’t feel comfortable yet sharing them.
Well, that’s all the news that we see fit to print this month. We’d like you to know that chalkARTblast will be distributed monthly from here on – distributed sometime right after the 15th of each month.
Peace On Earth and Goodwill To You!
Jeffrey J Kingman
Happy Holidays from Judith, Bill and Jennifer – partners.
chalkARTblast is produced and distributed by Chalkboarder.com
1. The asexual girl from high school whose gunt stuck out farther than her tiny tits is listed as ‘married’ and has her recent ultrasound of her trannyspawn as her profile pic.
2. The guy you just banged after the office party posted a comment on the trampy hot girl from work’s page about how he wished her hot ass could have made it to the party.
3. Your alcoholic status being confirmed to your family and coworkers in the form of tagged photos where your eyes are half open and you’re dumping domestic vodka down your throat straight from the bottle. Other photos in the series show you sticking your tongue through your imaginary hand vagina.
4. Fresh photos of your ex dry humping the local cumdumpster keep showing up in your newsfeed.
5. The general realization that you are older, fatter, uglier, less successful and lonelier than everyone you have ever met. EVER.
Reasons to dislike Christmas: chavs decorating the outside of their houses with an inordinate amount of lights.
My rule of thumb is this… the more lights there are, the lower class the house owner is.
This looks shit
The chavs haven’t thought this through. They’ll have to pay for the electricity out of their benefits. They could’ve spent that money on the usual fags and booze and junk food.
Or maybe they get free or discounted gas and electric from the council.
Some lights are nice; a lot are vile. Just like the owner.
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So the winner of X Factor this year is a bland nobody, releasing an utter pile of dirge. Why does everyone get so excited about this show?
Let me offer a wager that his album will be in the discount bin in 12 months time, he’ll be dropped by his record label in two years and singing on a cruise ship in the Med in three years.
This guy is not a star and never will be.
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Good job I didn’t over-react to Leicester City’s back-to-back league defeats. Normal service was resumed with a 3-0 win at the weekend.
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More Christmas parties were out and about at Pussycats at the weekend and I guess the same will be true over the next week or so. You get people coming out who probably don’t do much clubbing for the rest of the year and certainly over-indulge to some comic effect!
It's a tough job
Check out the latest photos in the gallery at www.djwanker.com – the official club pictures are at www.telfordnightlife.co.uk – come and see me for a photo, you know where to find me – also get a sticker and a shout out. Just remember your manners…
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My services aren’t required on Christmas Eve at Pussycats this year so I’ll probably head into Leicester with my best mate Phil (that’s DJ Phat Phil, who plays funky tunes at Vox Bar every Saturday, by the way) for some liquid refreshments. I can see it getting messy.
It’s what Jesus would’ve wanted. If he ever existed. Which he probably didn’t. But let’s not let the truth stand in the way of an excuse to over-indulge. Quite a few £1 drinks at Walkabout have our names on them. And it would be rude not to partake at that price.
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I will be at Cats on New Year’s Eve in charge of the main room as per the last three years.
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The International Centre in Telford staged the UK snooker championships last week. One of the competitors was Mark Selby who, like me, is from Leicester. He returned from a match one night to find his room had been ransacked with several items stolen, including his car keys – and then discovered to no great surprise that his fancy motor had been nicked.
There’s a pretty good chance that the thief was from Telford and knew exactly what he was doing and who he was targeting. Selby is probably no stranger to scumbag criminals as he grew up in an area of Leicester called New Parks which is like a larger version of Sutton Hill or Malinslee.
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Sometimes a TV show is ideally named for those who watch it. Let me give you an example… a programme mainly viewed by people waiting for death: Countdown.
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Some status updates airing dirty washing on Facebook are funny. Some are out of order. Some are random. And some are like this:
“I TELL U WOT MUM U WANT ME TO SLATE U I SHALL !!! u need 2 grow up and wake up to the real world not everything is going 2 go ur way, u cant stamp ur feet just cuz it doesnt. i cnt believe u kicking off bcuz i cnt av 8 ppl in a 2bed flat. ur a spoilt brat and immature thats y every1 ends up fallin out with u in end. u seem to 4get how much stuff u put us ova 3 kids through and 3YRS DNT MAKE UP FOR IT!!
And go on disown me again us lot are used to it we never bin good enough as *****, **** and ***** (names removed) ..obviously….3yrs dnt make up for the rest of missin the rest of our life or wot u put us through wen u did have us…. OUR DAD IS NOT PERFECT BUT HE TOOK US ON AND IF IT WASNT FOR HIM WE DONT NO WHERE WE WUD B !!!”
Come on love, tell us what you REALLY think.
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Here’s what I’d write about my mum “I love you more today than I did yesterday and not as much as I will tomorrow.”
And the same goes for my dad.
Anyone thinking I’ve gone all soppy will suffer temporary memory loss and never mention what I’ve just said…
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You know you’ve turned into your dad the day you put aside a thin piece of wood specifically to stir paint with.
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Groups on Facebook I may avoid joining:
“Anatidaephobia – the fear that somewhere, somehow, a duck is watching you” This group has nearly 100,000 members!
“I like spoons!” Congratulations to the 16 members who joined.
“I have texted lying down and dropped my phone on my face.” Over 200,000 members… grow up.
*****
From BBC news:
A woman who was given an anti-social behaviour order banning her from making loud noises during sex has admitted breaching the order. Caroline and Steve Cartwright’s love-making was described as “murder” and “unnatural” at Newcastle Crown Court. Neighbour Rachel O’Connor said: ‘The noise sounds like they are both in considerable pain. I have never ever heard anything like it.”
Here are what the sexy people look like…
Keep the noise down
Well, you can see the attraction…
*****
Nike sponsor Tiger Woods.
Their advertising slogan is: “Just Do It.”
I think he took brand loyalty a little too far.
*****
One of the women who claims to have had a fling with Tiger Woods told American TV this week that he would text other ladies while in bed with her. “I don’t think he’s an honest man,” she said.
As honest as sleeping with someone you know is married then?
For the record, and to avoid any accusations of throwing stones in a glass house, I must admit that I have slept with a married woman before.
I said to her: “Look Angelina, it’s a secret between us – I won’t tell Brad.”
*****
Why can’t women put on mascara with their mouth closed?
*****
Tesco have withdrawn a light-hearted Christmas card which said: “Santa loves all kids. Even ginger ones.” This follows a complaint from over-sensitive customer Davinia Phillips who has, yes you guessed it, three ginger children as well as way too much time on her hands.
Here is what the humourless bitch looks like…
Not for me, thanks
After looking at that I can imagine you’re thinking the same as me: “Who was the lucky man who shagged her at least three times?”
*****
I can see a day when someone complains about my blog to the police. Someone did actually threaten to do that earlier this year. She committed a criminal offence (but the complainant didn’t report it to the cops) and I berated her for her behaviour. I still have her email somewhere. I read it whenever I need cheering up.
*****
It’s very hard to have sympathy with the burglar in Buckinghamshire who tied up a man and his family in their home and then suffered permanent brain damage after being viciously attacked with a cricket bat as he fled the scene of the crime. I don’t agree with vigilante behaviour but none of this would’ve happened if he hadn’t committed the offence in the first place.
*****
Another joke from Jimmy Carr: “My mum told me the best time to ask my dad for anything was during sex. Not the best advice I’d ever been given. I burst in through the bedroom door saying: “Can I have a new bike?”. He was very upset. His secretary was surprisingly nice about it. I got the bike.”
*****
And finally… I hope plenty of postmen were intending to fly with British Airways this Christmas. See how they like it.
Cheers for now, Geoff / DJ Wanker
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An officemate introduced me to English singer Lily Allen’s “Fuck You” song a few months ago. It’s kinda cute when I first heard it, but only got to remember the catchy “Fuck you, fuck you very very much” chorus. It was only a few days ago when I got to read the whole lyrics. It was hilarious. The first person who came into my mind upon reading it was none other than she who pretends to be the President of the Republic of the Philippines: Gloria Macapal Arrovo (hey, I’ve been a champion speller since high school; so don’t antagonize the way I spell).
I posted it in my Facebook account. Then one of my friends commented that it was the same song made for George W. Bush. I thought it was interesting (especially for an Englishwoman to write an anti-Bush song). And upon quick research, here’s what Wikipedia has to say:
The song originally appeared on Allen’s Myspace page in 2008 alongside the songs “I Could Say” and “I Don’t Know” (now known as “The Fear”) under the title “Guess Who Batman”. Despite its titular reference to the caped crusader, according to NME and Rolling Stone magazines the song is an anti-George W. Bush protest, while another source the Urban Review states that it was originally inspired by the right-wing British National Party, adding Allen now “feels the track is relevant everywhere now so has removed a particular target.” At the 2009 Glastonbury Festival prior to performing the song, Allen made reference to the elections to the European parliament that had commenced 3 weeks earlier in which the British National Party gained their first ever representative seats, citing this as a reason to sing the song. The song was written by Lily Allen and Greg Kurstin. Lily Allen wrote:
“ We are the youth, we can make coolness for our future, it’s up to us. Go green and hate hate.”
Well, if you ask me, the song is very relevant in the Philippines now, especially for GMA. Anyway, both Bushy and GMA have many similarities in common. Aside from downright evilness and an extreme urge to lie, both of them came into power in 2001. Their respective fathers were ex-presidents (♪ ♩ you want to be like your father / its approval you’re after / well that’s not how you’ll find it ♩ ♫). And George Dubya and Arrovo are now being hailed as the most corrupt and unpopular leaders their respective countries ever had.
I suggest to political activists that they play this happy-soundin’ “Fuck You” song whenever they stage protest rallies against GMA. Or better yet, let us all sing this song the moment she leaves Malacañang Palace next year! Who said protest marches couldn’t be this fun? LOL!!!
This partisan dirt bag is beyond redemption, he has virtually no chance of keeping his job, he can barely fog a mirror, the people in Nevada think he is a scumbag. But he will so his best to screw us over and America trying to bring his Marxist agenda to our country. News Flash Harry, sure you have the fix in with the nuclear option, but the rest of your party is going down in flames, next November. If most of your wing nut ideas pass they are clearly Unconstitutional, the key will be finding a judge or court that still believes in the Constitution. Random thoughts while observing the passing parade, J.C.
Senator Harry Reid claims to be an ethical politician and he often employs his Mormon religion in order to demonstrate his alleged immaculacy. However, the reality is that he is, in fact, one of the most ethically challenged politicians in office today. This report will review his alliances with corrupt individuals, his support of ACORN, his ties with organized crime figures and his chronic failure to comply with campaign finance laws.
Harry Reid’s Alliance with Jack Abramoff
Soon after the Jack Abramoff scandal broke, Reid took the lead in attacking Republicans for fostering a “culture of corruption.” (1)
But shortly after making these comments, it was reported that Reid took almost $68,000 from Abramoff’s firm, its PAC and its Indian casino clients. (2)
Reid then tried to distance himself from Abramoff, stating, “[D]on’t lump me in with Jack Abramoff. This is a Republican scandal. Don’t try to give any of it to me.” (3)
Here’s the key passage:
Harry Reid wrote at least four letters helpful in Indian tribes represented by Jack Abramoff, and Reid’s staff had frequent contact with the disgraced lobbyist’s team about legislation….Reid collected nearly $68,000 in political donations from Abramoff’s firm, lobbying partners and clients…Abramoff’s firm also hired one of Reid’s top legislative aides as a lobbyist. (4)
The bulk of the donation money came from Indian tribes who were Abramoff’s clients, most of whom owned casinos in the region. Reid’s letters were meant to influence the Interior Department to reject applications that would allow certain Indian tribes to open up new casinos. Reid was not acting in opposition to gambling, but was rather protecting the existing Indian casinos (Abramoff’s Clients) from having new competition in their regions. (5)
Reid Protects ACORN from Investigation Complete Story
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Thank you for helping me solve a problem that it took almost a year for me to solve – consolidation of my live spaces blog and my blogspot page to produce one source of the truth. It was not easy, but I’m glad that the blogosphere that you reside in and google were available to help me close this chapter.
I credit this nifty little tool for helping me with the migration – http://suncan.net/2009/04/live-space-saver-v103-capable-to-export-comments/. Comments were able to come over automatically – the only work I had to do was ensure that my date fields were consistent in live spaces to ensure that the API could pick up my posts dating back to 2006.
Social media is the new shiny toy that everyone around me, professional or otherwise is gravitating towards. I was able to use wordpress’ stats to prove out that a simple push to various social media sites can drive traffic back to the blog. I pushed two of my recent posts to Twitter and Facebook and saw an immediate uplift in traffic from these sites. I’m slowly buying into this as the new shiny toy with little cost of entry and the opportunity to get instant feedback, if someone cares enough to give it to you.
Downtown Raleigh restaurants turn to social networking to bring patrons in and keep them coming back
Note to readers: This is a revised version of an article written as an assignment for a course on digital writing that is part of the UNC Certificate in Technology and Communication. You can also read the original post.
By Noelle Talley
RALEIGH: Next time you’re hungry, you might want to check Twitter or Facebook to decide where to grab a meal or snack. Restaurants, including some in downtown Raleigh, are using social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook to bring in customers and to keep them coming back by highlighting specials, seeking feedback, and offering prizes.
Eric Harris started using social media to promote The Pit in March 2009, soon after becoming manager of the barbeque restaurant on West Davie Street. He said he’d read and heard about businesses using Twitter for marketing and decided to try it.
“With everyone having smart phones and being linked in with each other, the timing was right for it,” said Harris, who posts to both Facebook and Twitter on behalf of The Pit.
Gaining fans and followers
Harris estimates that he spends about an hour and a half a day using Twitter and Facebook for The Pit, which has 373 members in its Facebook group and more than 1,600 followers on Twitter. He initially gained followers by following local breweries and other people who posted about barbeque.
Harris posts photos of The Pit and lists weekly beers on tap on the restaurant’s Facebook page. He averages around six tweets, or Twitter posts, a week.
Recent tweets by Harris included a pre-lunch reminder about the restaurant’s pulled pork barbeque and ribs, a promise of a special desert for people who dined at The Pit that night, and a link to a song about southern barbeque on YouTube.com.
Staying local
Harris credits social networking with helping The Pit build and maintain relationships with its local customers following a wave of national publicity that helped turn the restaurant into a destination for barbeque lovers from beyond the Triangle.
“We want to keep our hometown, local flavor,” Harris said. “Our focus, when I finally figured out what I was doing with it [social networking], was to really emphasize local things. For example, highlight specialty beers on tap and that brings in customers.”
“It’s one more marketing tool to use to keep your name in their frontal lobe, in the top three or four choices,” Nierman said.
Enticing customers with gift certificates and prizes
518 West posts messages about once a day, with most posts appearing on both Facebook and Twitter. The restaurant tries to bring customers in by listing specials and giving away gift certificates and other prizes, Nierman explained.
For example, in early November, 518 West gave two tickets to South Pacific to the first person to comment on a Facebook post about the musical. Every Wednesday, 518 West offers gift cards to the first person to re-tweet, or repost, its drink special.
Nierman said he initially offered gift certificates more frequently and counted on word of mouth to bring in fans and followers. 518 West has 314 fans of its Facebook page and 242 followers on Twitter.
“Cost-effective and timely”
Sara Coleman, owner of The Cupcake Shoppe Bakery located at 104 Glenwood Avenue, said she started using Facebook as a marketing tool soon after she launched her business in July 2007, and then opened a Twitter account for her bakery under the name bakeshopgirl in 2008.
“We have a pretty varied client base, from stay-at-home moms to corporate clients,” Coleman said.
She thought Facebook and Twitter would be good ways to communicate with her customers quickly and cheaply, especially compared to printed advertisements and mailings, which must be planned months in advance and cost money.
“It’s a cost-effective, timely way to reach customers,” Coleman said.
As the owner of a busy small business, Coleman also said she likes the convenience of posting to Facebook and Twitter.
“I can do it at 5 AM, or I can do it at midnight,” Coleman said, describing her posting schedule. She said she spends one to two hours on social media in an average week, and three to four hours during busier weeks.
The Cupcake Shoppe Bakery has 853 fans of its Facebook page and 476 followers on Twitter.
Flavor of the week
Coleman uses Facebook and Twitter to share The Cupcake Shoppe’s special flavor for each week. Recent cupcake flavors of the week include sweet potato with marshmallow frosting, cranberry orange, chocolate bacon, and German chocolate.
Coleman also uses social media, especially Facebook, to invite customers to events at the bakery, like a holiday open house. To gain more fans, she said that she makes sure Facebook users can share her invitations with other friends.
Responding to customer feedback
Facebook and Twitter aren’t one-way streets; customers can also share their own views and respond to businesses’ postings.
During the week of November 8-15, 2009, other people mentioned The Pit more than 40 times on Twitter, including several re-tweets of Harris’ posts. A re-tweet means that followers of The Pit shared several of his posts with their own followers. During the same week, 518 West garnered four re-tweets on Twitter and six comments, or online responses from fans, on Facebook, while The Cupcake Shoppe got x re-tweets and 10 Facebook comments.
Nierman said he thinks responding to customers’ comments is key. A customer identified as Pamela posted a comment on Facebook on October 30 questioning a recent health rating of 90 for the restaurant.
“I hope this is something that is being addressed b/c [sic] it’s a shame to have such a low rating for such an otherwise fantastic restaurant,” Pamela commented.
518 West responded to the comment by explaining that the restaurant had purchased new coolers to fix the problem and had requested a re-inspection.
Nierman also recalled a comment from a customer criticizing a dish and suggesting ways to improve it, feedback he says was helpful.
“Any comment, whether good or bad, is going to help us be a better restaurant,” Nierman said.
Coleman said that most of the comments she’s gotten via Facebook and Twitter have been positive, although she recalls one post from a customer who was unhappy about having to stand in line for cupcakes on Valentine’s Day.
On The Cupcake Shoppe’s Facebook page, customers share photos and comments about cakes they’ve ordered for special occasions, like birthdays and wedding anniversaries.
“We send the cake out in a box. We never really get to see where it goes and who’s enjoying it. It’s nice to get to see that and nice to get the feedback,” Coleman says. She also pointed out that other potential customers get to see those positive comments, too.
Free marketing?
Neither Facebook nor Twitter charges money for posting to its site. The low cost of marketing through online social networking is a large part of its appeal for Harris and The Pit, and for Coleman and The Cupcake Shoppe.
But Facebook and Twitter aren’t free for 518 West. After starting the restaurant’s Facebook and Twitter pages, Nierman hired a marketing firm to take over posting duties. He’s considering bringing those duties back in-house to save money.
“We feed them ideas and they actually post it for us,” Nierman said, adding that it’s expensive.
Nierman said he recognizes the irony of paying to use a service that is usually considered to be free. He also thinks it’s hard to tell whether online social networking has actually helped his business’ bottom line.
Advice for other businesses
Doug Sutton, Jr., marketing and community relations manager at NBC 17 and MyNC.com, believes that most businesses can benefit from using tools like Twitter and Facebook.
“This is how people are getting their information. They’re not watching TV all day anymore, but they have their computer or their mobile phone with them,” Sutton said. However, he recommends against relying solely on social networking to bring in business.
Harris recommends that businesses strike the right tone in their messages, which he describes as jovial but professional.
“The real pain of it for me was getting what I wanted to say down to 140 characters and not sounding cheesy like a used car salesman,” said Harris.
Messages posted on Twitter can be no longer than 140 characters, spaces included. Messages posted to Facebook can be up to 420 characters.
Both Nierman and Coleman recommend against posting too many messages because customers may find it annoying, and Sutton cautions that businesses need to make sure they’re using Twitter and Facebook to communicate with their customers, not just to promote themselves.
“Don’t necessarily make it about selling something. People like to make friends online. People go to match.com to find dates. People go on Facebook to find friends. Make it about relationships,” Sutton said.
He recommends finding someone with the business who has the right personality to develop relationships with potential customers through online social networking.
Harris, Nierman and Coleman said they would recommend that other businesses consider using Facebook and Twitter.
“In this economic time, you don’t know what’s driving people to come to a restaurant,” Nierman said. “You need to be willing to try anything to see what’s going to work.”
“You’d be crazy not to use it,” said Coleman.
Tips for Businesses: How to use Facebook and Twitter
Learn how Facebook and Twitter work before you start using them for your business.
Find someone entertaining and engaging to post on behalf of your business.
Check out what the competition and similar businesses are doing and saying online.
Focus on building relationships with customers, not just on promoting your business.
Encourage and respond to comments from customers.
Don’t go overboard by posting too many messages. Know your customers and think about how much information they’ll want to receive
Make Twitter and Facebook work with traditional marketing, not replace it entirely.
Be patient. It can take time to gain fans and followers online.
Sources: Sara Coleman, Eric Harris, Blaine Nierman and Doug Sutton.
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I used to watch the crowds in airport lounges when I traveled, studying how people read newspapers. Even with circulation declining, you could see people reading newspapers intently. Especially after 2001, people would have plenty of time to read while waiting for flights, and newsstands stocked a variety of papers to choose from.
Look around an airport lounge now. You’ll see more people looking into their phones than holding newspapers.
I get disgusted as people in news media companies fret over trying to squeeze some money out of Google or trying to charge for the privilege of reading our content. Whatever the merits of those arguments, they are essentially pleas to slow time down. But when I see people in the airport lounge, I know time is only accelerating with each tap of their thumbs.
My concern over this acceleration pushed me last month to call for news companies to pursue a mobile-first strategy. I was pleased with how many people agreed with my call, either in blog comments, tweets or their own blog posts. New York University journalism professor Jay Rosen wasn’t satisfied, though. He called for me to “describe what a ‘mobile first’ newsroom would do differently.” That’s what I’m trying to do here, start the difficult but important job of answering the question: How do we need to work differently (not just in the newsroom, Jay) to command the attention of those people reading and tapping small screens?
In a different context (not addressing me or the mobile-first strategy), Jeff Jarvis issued a similar call to “futureshockers” this week:
What would be helpful is to see you … flesh out your own visions for a sustainable future of journalism starting TODAY.
I’ll try to answer Jay’s question and Jeff’s challenge on six levels: journalists, designers, technology, sales, marketing and executives. A successful mobile-first strategy will require effective work by all these people (and probably more; please feel welcome to add an area, or to expand on any of my suggestions here). Both men called for detail, so this post will be long, though it won’t provide enough depth in some areas (I invite you to help me add to the depth).
The mobile-first strategy needs to be move beyond advertising and embrace new relationships with the community, as described in my blueprint for the Complete Community Connection. That principle is fundamental to mobile-first success. We can’t simply transfer our failing business model onto mobile platforms.
As with web operations, a crucial question will be whether mobile opportunities should be the responsibility of a separate operation focused exclusively on mobile or whether the full operation needs to share mobile responsibilities. My answer is that if news companies want to succeed in pursuing mobile opportunities, we need to make this success the top priority and responsibility throughout the company. News companies have not succeeded in doing that with the web and may not be able to do that with mobile either.
Certainly some of the companies disrupting us will be focused exclusively on mobile (or mobile and web) opportunities, and some news companies might succeed with small mobile-only operations. I recognize the cultural obstacles will be huge, but I believe the greatest opportunity for success lies in converting an entire existing news operation to a mobile-first strategy, so that is what I will address here. If you are either a mobile-focused startup or a news company trying to succeed with a mobile SWAT team, some of the suggestions here may apply, with adaptation to your situation.
I should also humbly acknowledge here that the best I can do is point a direction and share some ideas. The real answers to Jay’s question will come from the people pursuing mobile opportunities and learning from their successes and mistakes. Here is my effort to point in that direction.
Journalists
The traditional job titles of editors, reporters and photographers are painfully out of date, and the new titles seem inadequate, so I’m just calling them all journalists for purposes of this discussion. Journalists will need to change how they gather, process and distribute information.
Every journalist must quickly get serious and fluent with metadata, data about data (think of the story behind the story). This will feel scary and unreasonable at first. Even the term is a bit scary. But reporters and photographers have always gathered more information than we shared with readers. We often have to tell editors about a story or photo, to help editors understand the context and connections, so they can understand where and how to play a story. That’s sort of what metadata does; it tells the computer, or the phone, about the story (or photo, video or piece of information), so the mobile device knows what to give the user when and where. Think of metadata as context.
Location. Where has always been a journalism fundamental, the fourth of the five W’s. Well, in the mobile-first world, it might become the first W. In gathering content of any kind, we need to provide specific location metadata wherever location is relevant. Our technology staffs will need to automate this as much as possible, when journalists are sending text or images from a location, their phones or laptops should be GPS-enabled to provide the location.
But journalists need to be able to supplement and override automatic location information. Many events and stories have more than one location, and journalists don’t always have access to relevant locations. So a journalist should be able to quickly and easily supply locations not automatically generated and correct the automatic locations.
The data and technology specialists will need to develop ways to use this location in multiple ways. We need to be able to convert addresses automatically to GPS coordinates, because sometimes content gatherers will have an address but will not be at the location physically, so their phones cannot supply GPS data. The presentation needs to let people access information by proximity to their physical location or by other meaningful ways such as a route, a neighborhood, a city or political boundaries such as school districts, wards or legislative districts.
I just enabled geotagging on my Twitter account through Tweetie, so every tweet I send on my iPhone through Tweetie bears a map that other users of clients such as Tweetie and Tweetdeck can see. While it was an amusing novelty to see tweets pinpointing me while traveling in Russia, the value will grow rapidly as we assemble news, information and commercial opportunities from all around town.
We can only begin to imagine the possible uses of location-specific information. Think back to your first cell phone. You could see that it gave you mobility, but you didn’t imagine all the ways you are using it today.
Tagging. Where isn’t the only W we need to provide in the metadata. We need to tag content efficiently with the other relevant W’s: Who is pictured in this photo or video? What is happening? When did it happen? Sometimes why or how or how much will need to be in the tags as well, and some of those questions will need to be answered many times, for each person in a story, video or database or for each date in a narrative story. Efficient tagging is going to require effective semantic tools as well as disciplined use of the tools.
Tagging will help us provide relevant content for users and will help us link to more relevant content. We can’t afford to leave tagging to the whims of individual journalists or to the arbitrary reading of software. We need to train the journalists to use the software (and keep improving the software).
I saw a blog post a while back about a politician who had been “testing the waters” for the 2012 presidential election. A semantic program posted four links with the post: One was appropriate, about the politician in the blog post. Another was about a different candidate testing the waters in 2007 for the 2008 caucuses. A third was about a different politician testing the waters for the 2010 Iowa gubernatorial race. A fourth was about the University of Iowa Hydrology Lab actually testing water. Usually a good semantic program will do better than that in suggesting links or tags.
We need to develop (or work with vendors who are already developing) better software to analyze content and suggest tags more accurately. We need to train journalists to check and correct inappropriate tags and links. We need to train journalists to understand what sort of information needs tags, so they can quickly read and correct or approve the suggested tags and add any other tags needed. Just as journalists learned to use AP style widely, we can and should expect them to follow a uniform style in tagging content.
These tags will help the mobile-first operation quickly provide content that answers the questions and addresses the needs of the user.
Investigative. Newspaper journalists tend to equate investigative journalism with long text stories, so at first blush it might seem that a mobile-first strategy would downplay or eliminate investigative reporting. But effective watchdog reporting deepens a news organization’s bond with a community and it must be part of the mobile-first strategy.
I hope that Investigative Reporters and Editors will be a strong voice in taking advantage of mobile technology for investigative journalism, just as it has with teaching journalists to analyze data and to use the web as a tool both for gathering and distributing investigative journalism. As traditional financial models for news media have been failing, some of the most encouraging business-model innovation has been in the area of investigative reporting, including the community funding of Spot.us and the philanthropic models of ProPublica and the Center for Investigative Reporting. I am confident investigative reporting organizations will lead the way on mobile-focused journalism as well.
Some ways that I think mobile-first strategy might shape investigative reporting:
Crowdsourcing holds great potential for investigative reporting, as some journalists are already demonstrating. A news organization that effectively engages its community on mobile devices will have a valuable crowd enthusiastic about contributing to investigative efforts. Imagine how quickly and effectively a community linked through a mobile-first journalism operation could identify election-day voting problems.
Emails, texts and tweets, the favored short communication forms of the mobile world, can give headlines and summaries of investigative projects, with links to full-text and video accounts or promotion for applications that users can dig into on their phones, on computers with bigger screens, on the printed page or television.
Increasingly video, audio and databases need to be part of the presentation of investigative projects. These can be presented effectively on mobile devices and should be designed primarily for the small screen.
Don’t rule out the possibility that people will read long text on the small screen if you engage them effectively with well-presented content. Amazon has a Kindle iPhone app for people to use for reading books on their phones. I do expect long-form writing to continue to be part of mobile-first journalism.
Newspaper staffs spend lots of time on the print (and sometimes web) presentation of an investigative project. A mobile-first operation might sacrifice some of the print or web package because the first presentation priority will be developing a killer mobile app for the project.
Data. Some of the best innovation of web-focused journalism has been the widespread and creative use of interactive databases, which I detailed in my Newspaper Next report, Be the Answer. Databases are an effective tool for delivering location-specific information and other answers that are valuable for mobile users. News organizations need to maintain (or strengthen) their commitment to development of interactive databases and make mobile presentation a top priority in design of the databases.
One of the best-known journalism databases, EveryBlock, has developed an iPhone application. Development of applications to easily and quickly deliver answers for mobile users needs to be an essential step in developing interactive databases. News organizations need to support the development of the skills and tools for developing effective databases for mobile use.
Archives. Newsrooms maintain extensive archives primarily to serve our staffs. Most archives available to the public are usable by search and for pay (pay that brings in only a trickle of revenue). A mobile-first organization will want to offer appropriate archived information relevant to your location. The information might be free, supported by businesses who want to reach customers at that location, interested in that topic.
Effective use of archives for a mobile-first organization will require tending the metadata of content you produce and collect. I’m sure I don’t know all that we need to do to make full use of our archives, but some possibilities:
We need to add metadata to content gathered from the public. We may do this by a combination of prompts to help contributors submit accurate metadata and staff supplementation of the metadata from contributors.
We might want to add appropriate metadata for mobile-first use to content the organization has created prior to the adoption of mobile-first metadata for new content. For instance, in Cedar Rapids, we might decide that information about how a certain location was affected by the 2008 flood might be valuable to provide, so we would add location metadata, where needed and possible, to content in our archives relating to the flood. Or an organization might decide topic pages on community landmarks or important community issues would be helpful to the mobile audience, so the staff would need to add metadata to archived content on that topic.
Social media. I have blogged and taught extensively about social media’s impact on journalism. I see social media overlapping with the mobile-first strategy, but not duplicating. Many people engage with social media primarily on their laptop or desktop computers, so a social-media strategy needs to be focused more on how to engage through social tools, regardless of which devices people use. However, lots of people use their phones to tweet or check their Facebook pages or watch YouTube videos, so a mobile-first strategy needs to consider at every step how to use social media.
Especially as Foursquare and other location-based platforms grow, and as Twitter and Facebook start adding location metadata, any location-based service needs to aggregate social content for that location. EveryBlock shows the value of aggregating Flickr photographs and videos by location. That’s just the start of how a mobile-first strategy will use social media.
Training. Newsroom training has taken a severe hit in the cutbacks of the last few years. We can’t succeed in shifting to mobile-first strategy without heavy training in a variety of areas, both concepts such as how journalists need to think differently in a mobile-first operation and specific skills such as tagging and using metadata. (I cover training specifically in relation to journalism, but we could add a similar paragraph under each of these areas.)
Design
In a mobile-first operation, design may be both a journalism function and a technology function, or it might be a separate area of the operation, combining both skills. However you organize, you need to make mobile service the priority of everyone involved in design.
Shifting resources. Newspapers spend lots of staff time designing the print edition, and spent lots of money and time over the past few decades redesigning print editions. Considerable but less time and money has been spent redesigning web sites. None of that investment has changed the fact that newspaper circulation is declining rapidly and that most newspaper sites provide frustrating user experiences. While I personally appreciate a strong newspaper design and valued that skill (partly because I lacked it) as an editor, we need to minimize staff and consultant time spent designing the daily newspaper. Other than section fronts, newspaper pages should be templated and even automated as much as possible, so copy editors can flow content into them with minimal time spent on design.
This will make the paper marginally less attractive, but it will have far less negative impact on performance of the print product than the positive impact of all those snappy redesigns on which newspapers spent millions of dollars in staff and consultant time. Print customers pay primarily for content, selection and convenience, which can be provided in a format, still allowing for news judgment, and reserving design flair on the covers. (Of course, when big news breaks, you still blow up the templates for dramatic headlines and photo packages.)
Some staff design time will be required to automate formats of inside pages, but that will be a wise investment of time, if it saves the daily cost of print design. If this is a difficult shift in priorities to imagine, try to remember the last time you spent a lot of time and money to make dramatic improvements in the presentation of your newspaper: Chances are that you received a lot of complaints from readers, even if you thought the redesign was a stunning improvement. Spend those resources instead on delivering a better experience for the mobile user.
Web design has already been formatted pretty tightly in many operations, and most news web sites do need improvements in navigation and design. A web-first operation would spend considerable staff time in improving web design. A mobile-first operation recognizes that the best design for the larger screen of a laptop or desktop computer isn’t the best design for an iPod or cell phone. You need to both minimize staff time spent in web design, to free resources for mobile design, and keep mobile web consumption in mind when you do spend staff resources on web design (for instance, simpler display and larger headlines and body type will make for easier mobile web use).
While vastly better print design delivers only a marginally better user experience (if at all), design is critical to the mobile user experience. Type that is too small or an application that loads slowly or is confusing to use can doom a mobile project. But a “killer app” can develop viral momentum as users talk, tweet and blog their delight. The mobile-first operation needs designers with visual and technical skills to design new products and to carry out the daily execution of existing products. Staff design resources need to be shifted to ensure top priority for mobile design.
Sometimes we will want to do multiple versions of content. For instance, we might change text size on a video clip so the TV and web versions are the right size for those screens but the mobile version has bigger type that is easier to read on the small screen. But in a mobile-first operation, if you can take the time to make only one version, you make the font large enough for the mobile screen and let web and TV users get used to larger text.
Technology
The information technology staff of a news operation faces multiple, constant and often conflicting demands from throughout the operation. Priorities need to be set to ensure that technology experts, whether part of a central IT staff or assigned to a department such as a newsroom, have the training and time to help other departments execute an effective mobile-first strategy.
Development. The web-first operation (or even a print-centric operation with a web site) can make constant demands on web developers. This staff resource needs to shift heavily into mobile development. To the extent that you still commit staff time to web development, you need the training and priorities to ensure that all products developed for the web provide a strong user experience for mobile web use.
Applications. A news operation needs staff developers who can quickly and effectively develop mobile applications. The evolution of mobile devices will dictate whether you can develop effective applications that work on multiple devices or whether you have to develop separate apps for iPhones, Droids, BlackBerries and other products. But applications appear likely to become the primary platform for content and commerce in the mobile world, so they need to become a high priority for the mobile-first operation.
Apps will be important in several ways. You will use apps to deliver content. For instance, you might have apps for specific parts of your routine content, such as a calendar app, obituaries app, local sports team app or business directory app. Or you may develop apps for an investigative project, a new interactive database or for coverage of a big event (for instance, Gazette Communications might develop an Orange Bowl app, providing access to a variety of content about the Hawkeyes’ participation in the Orange Bowl).
Don’t think of apps just as devices for delivery of your content. Apps should become a revenue source, too. Just as newspaper and television companies help business customers produce advertisements for their products, a mobile-first organization is going to help business customers develop mobile apps to promote their businesses and sell their products and services. Many of the aspects of the mobile-first approach will require shifting resources from current print, broadcast or web operations to mobile operations. But development and deployment of commercial applications will produce revenue to support eventual expansion of mobile operations.
Development of commercial applications will need to stress applications whose content can be updated easily by merchants. For instance, if a local pizza parlor has an application for ordering pizzas for pickup or delivery, the operator should be able to update prices or add new ingredients or menu items easily from an office computer, so that applications will update automatically when a user next opens the pizza application.
Sales
Sales staffs need to listen to consumers and businesses and learn how to help businesses serve the mobile audience. In the early stages of a mobile-first organization, sales efforts will be focused heavily on educating and training business customers on mobile opportunities and our organization’s role in connecting businesses in our community with mobile customers.
Traditional advertising was intrusive and often unwelcome. You open your newspaper to continue reading a page-one story and photos of women in bras attempted to catch your eye about the lingerie sale at the local department store. Or you tune in the evening newscast and ads for local car dealers shout at you between the news reports. We still need to sell those ads because they deliver value for businesses in traditional ways and because they are the revenue streams that keep us operating today. But mobile revenue will keep us operating tomorrow and, as I have blogged before, we need to learn how to help businesses pursue mobile opportunities.
Mobile commercial content will be convenient and responsive, rather than intrusive. Search advertising provides the answer that the potential customer was seeking. Location-based advertising should not be intrusive or people will devise ways to turn it off. Our community apps and sites need to provide location-based tabs such as “shop nearby,” “dine nearby” or “nearby entertainment.” The user can ignore those tabs if she knows where she wants to go and just wants information on parking, for instance. But a user who clicks on such a tab welcomes our help (and the help of businesses paying us for access to these customers).
As described in the C3 revenue approach, we need to be sure we don’t fall into the trap of focusing just on advertising. Some of the best mobile opportunities will go much deeper than simply delivering business messages to an audience. We may make the sale, using a customer’s credit card (or possibly an account with us that taps into a credit card, checking account or prepaid balance). We may make a reservation or enroll a user in a class or a business’s preferred customers club. We may send the business an inquiry from the customer.
We also need to be careful not to use just a single mobile tool, such as a mobile web site or iPhone application. Some businesses may want to sponsor breaking news alerts, reaching the text-message audience with a link to the company’s web site or to its enhanced listing in our business directory. Some may want to sponsor a podcast or an email newsletter, reaching people wherever they access email.
Sales staff will need training in how mobile opportunities can work and how to teach a local business to pursue those opportunities. While we need to be willing to invest heavy sales staff time in landing accounts and in training businesses to use their apps, we also need to design self-serve mobile accounts that the business customer can change and update after we get them launched, as describe in the pizza example in the technology section.
We need to develop pricing that helps businesses use our mobile services. We can’t discount services that we know will be valuable. We need an affordable base rate, with most of our pay based on performance as we deliver for our business customers. For instance, in the pizza example, we need to charge a reasonable fee for development of the app. But most of our revenue will come from pizza orders (of course the app needs to record orders accurately for both us and the business customer). We may collect the revenue ourselves from customers’ debit and credit cards, taking our cut before we pass most of it along to the pizza parlor. Or the merchant may collect the money (in this example, we might want to leave an option of paying cash) and we invoice for our fee. Or we may use a third party such as PayPal to handle the transaction.
More and more, we need to sell customers into a full range of services. We sell them an enhanced listing in the business directory, so we can connect them with customers searching for the services they offer. We help them determine the best way to use our services to move the customer toward the transaction or to actually make the sale. We sell them location-based premium listings. We develop an app for them and help them deliver the app to the phones (or other devices) of the right customers. Yes, web, print and broadcast advertising will be part of the package for some customers, too, but we can’t just call on our usual suspects. Location-based advertising will appeal to some merchants who haven’t been interested in reaching the full community through a newspaper or TV ad, but absolutely want to reach the person who’s nearby at lunch time.
Marketing
News companies know how to market newspapers and newscasts. We shouldn’t stop marketing those products and our web sites, but the mobile-first organization will have a mobile-first marketing department. The community knows about the legacy products and will continue to find them with a reduced marketing effort.
We will need an aggressive (and vastly different) marketing effort to tell the community about all the ways we serve your mobile audience. The effective marketing strategy needs at least a two-pronged approach: sophisticated and witty to alert the savvy mobile customer to our services and simple and educational to teach the new or confused mobile customer how many jobs we can help her with.
Of course, print and TV ads will still be a part of the marketing strategy (Apple’s “there’s an app for that” ads and Verizon’s “there’s a map for that” ads have helped both companies pitch their mobile services effectively).
We need to work aggressively in sales channels to get our apps onto people’s phones. Obviously we need to use iPhone’s App Store. We also need to connect with local retailers selling phones and other mobile devices, perhaps offering free apps that introduce and promote our apps or offering to load our package of apps on each phone sold (perhaps as part of a deal that includes advertising for the retailer). We can offer classes in the community on how to use our location-based services and our applications.
We might consider cross-promoting: Get a new iPhone with all our mobile apps with a full-year newspaper subscription.
Other departments
I am sure that I haven’t described all the ways that a legacy news organization needs to embrace a mobile-first strategy. The finance department needs to work with sales on the pricing issues I discussed. The human resources and finance departments needs to update compensation to include incentives for achieving mobile goals. Human resources also needs to work on training and recruiting issues. The details will vary with each organization and its structure and strategy.
Executives
Top executives of news organizations – CEOs, publishers and general managers – need to lead the way to a mobile-first future. If you want to launch a mobile-first SWAT team but not change the whole organization, then the top executive may not need to do much more than provide resources and direction. But if you want to transform a legacy media operation into a mobile-first company, executives need to lead the way aggressively, firmly and consistently. Our default settings are powerful and the whole company or individual departments will veer back to our print-broadcast-web roots if the top bosses are not demanding and vigilant.
The bosses need to set the example by using and mastering mobile apps for their personal use and by consuming our products and rival products on their mobile devices (and talking with managers and staff about how they use them and the lessons they learn). The top bosses need to spend their most time and attention on pursuing mobile opportunities. You can say mobile is important, but if you spend your time on print, broadcast or web issues and hold feet to the fire in those areas, managers and staff will see. They will know by your actions whether mobile first is a wish to achieve in spare time or a priority for all to embrace.
Unless you’re loaded with cash (and who is these days?), you can’t pursue a mobile-first strategy without risk. Traditional media such as print and broadcast provide the revenue that supports your company. The inclination will be strong to try to pursue a mobile strategy on the side, while you protect those core operations. Top executives need to acknowledge the short-term risk of shifting resources away from those core revenue streams and also to reassure managers, staff and shareholders that the long-term risk of timidly pursuing mobile opportunities is far greater.
The top executives need to coach all managers in pursuit of a mobile-first strategy. This means tolerance of mistakes and risks in pursuit of mobile opportunities but no patience for protection of the old priorities. If the top executives preach mobile-first and practice mobile-whenever, whenever will win.
Staffing
A mobile-first operation will need different skills and a different outlook from an organization focused on established pursuits such as print, broadcast and web. Through a combination of training and recruiting, we need to move quickly to the right staff for a mobile-first organization.
I have spent enough time in the training business and learned enough new skills and new thinking myself to know that committed staff members can learn the skills and outlook that a mobile-first organization needs. The more we can help staff members transform, the more we will benefit from their other skills and their community knowledge.
But some staff members will be unable or unwilling to make such a transition. And we will need to hire some people for skills so specialized or advanced that we can’t reasonably expect staff members to reach the necessary level fast enough.
Examples to come
In coming posts, I will provide some examples of how a mobile-first operation might work, both from the company and consumer perspectives. For now, I call your attention to an example published in May by Xark! blogger Dan Conover (the post has a long lead-in that I like, but it’s not why I’m calling this to your attention; the example starts with the subhead, “From documents to data structures”). While he wasn’t writing specifically about mobile-first strategy, Dan gives a great example of how mobile-first journalists would cover a fire. Recovering Journalist blogger Mark Potts also provides an instructive example, with his critique of how the Washington Post, a renowned journalism institution, fails in its mobile operations (again, the example follows a lead-in, in this case, praising my call for a mobile-first strategy).
Let’s get started
In the coming weeks, I will be discussing this approach with my colleagues at Gazette Communications. CEO Chuck Peters has praised the mobile-first approach, and I hope we can start making some significant steps in this direction. I hope your organization starts doing the same thing. As we make progress (or encounter setbacks) here, I will share the story on this blog. I hope others will similarly share the stories of your efforts to pursue mobile strategies.
As we proceed, we need to remember the “good enough” principle of disruptive innovation that Harvard business professor Clayton Christensen taught in the Newspaper Next project. An innovation doesn’t have to be perfect to launch; in fact the cost of pursuing perfection can doom a project to failure. “Good enough” performance along traditional lines is sufficient for launch, if it is providing a distinct advantage over existing products in some new approach.
The cell phone is a perfect example. One of the first times I used a cell phone to dictate a news story was in 1995 in Herington, Kan., as authorities were searching the home of Terry Nichols, Timothy McVeigh’s accomplice in the Oklahoma City bombing. The phone was huge. It dropped the signal twice during the call and I had to call the city desk back. I pretty much had to shout to be heard. And the battery was about to die (as it almost always was, because it didn’t hold its charge very long). By every respect that I would have measured the performance of the phone back in the office on my desk, this cell phone was just barely good enough. But the phone wasn’t back in the office on my desk. It allowed me to dictate from the sidewalk across the street from Nichols’ home as I watched the search. (I think Herington probably had two pay phones and 100 reporters that day; fighting for time on a pay phone to dictate would have been a nightmare.) I knew reporting would never be the same.
Now I carry an iPhone that I use to take pictures and post them to my Flickr page while traveling in Russia or to text tweets to my Twitter feed. And if my Siberian host tells me it’s minus-23, I can use my “Units” app to convert from Celsius and comfort myself that it’s only minus-9 Fahrenheit. That good-enough start didn’t mean we were settling for mediocre. It meant we were getting started on a new road to excellence I couldn’t even imagine then.
That’s what we need to do now with mobile-first strategy.
On March 19 I will be fortunate to be one of the workshop presenters at the North Fulton Business Expo. I’m still working on that days presentation but today I’d like to help you by sharing a little information about social media and 6 tools that I think are essential for you to make it work for you.
Harry Reid’s Alliance with Jack Abramoff
se is gravitating towards. I was able to use wordpress’ stats to prove out that a simple push to various social media sites can drive traffic back to the blog. I pushed two of my recent posts to Twitter and Facebook and saw an immediate uplift in traffic from these sites. I’m slowly buying into this as the new shiny toy with little cost of entry and the opportunity to get instant feedback, if someone cares enough to give it to you.