Excerpts from the Wall Street Journal, 11/29/08, Marketing in the World of the Web, on how retailers need to move their marketing online:

We have been studying the challenge and have concluded that very few of the traditional techniques of classical marketing (call them Marketing 1.0), or even of eCommerce (Marketing 2.0) will work in the world of social networks. A very different set of tools, concepts and practices is needed. Call it Marketing 3.0. Here are five:

- From loyalty to attention. Before you can win consumer loyalty, you have to capture and reward consumer attention. Old propositions -- network television's tired offer of 22 minutes of canned sitcoms in exchange for eight minutes of untargeted commercials -- won't cut it. Consumers are demanding a better deal...

- From crowds to clouds. Once you get that attention -- once you generate heavy traffic to your site, gather a large league of "friends" on MySpace, or spawn a dedicated following on Twitter -- how do you monetize the crowd?...

- From places to spaces. Consumers are increasingly organizing themselves into new communities -- not just the big generic social communities, but myriad idiosyncratic slices of narrow, passionate interest (i.e., BlackPlanet, Inpowr and MomsCafe)...

- From memes to bemes. In the Age of Broadcast, good advertising could occasionally manufacture memes of tremendous social impact. Think of "Where's the Beef?" or "I can't believe I ate the whole thing." If you can't recall an irresistible or effective turn of phrase of late, it's because it is exceedingly difficult to spread a meme in today's fragmented media environment. Marketing 3.0 is now the science of devising and managing directed business memes: call them bemes. Bemes are sent by members of social communities to each other and typically contain a reward or exclusive offer, which, when redeemed, also results in a reward coupon for the sender. This encourages members of social communities to propagate a "viral" ad. One well-documented beme was "The Subservient Chicken" from Burger King...

- From silos to simultaneity. Too many retailers today persist in believing that online shopping is merely a virtual extension of real world shopping. That is a big mistake...

All of this suggests that Marketing 3.0 is not only different from its predecessors, but actively undermines them. If your marketing program fails to adapt to this new world, it won't just become irrelevant -- it will actually work against you.

From Melinda Marcus, intern with Handshake 2.0:

I have a problem.

I have a hard time saying "no" to great volunteer and leadership activities. Just this past week, I was asked to be part of a volunteer leadership team for one of the many organizations with which I am involved here at Virgina Tech. I love the opportunity to serve others and gain experience, and I am therefore having a hard time figuring out whether I should do it or not. I really want to say "yes," but I know I should say "no." The thing is, though, that I don't even know how to say "no" in this situation.

Realizing that I have a problem, I wondered if professionals in the non-profit and social entrepreneur world have this same issue - overcommitment and the inability or difficulty to say "no".

As it turns out, they do.

In a blog entitled Mental Meals: Brain Food for Your Business, Bart Gragg, President of Maverick Business Advisors, writes that "because they (non-profit professionals) are givers they are also giving time and energy to other organizations, or individuals...  When they don’t have the energy to give anymore, because they give more than receive, they begin to burn."

So, people in this sector like to "do do do" and give themselves passionately. Those are great things - but there seems to be a fine line between passion and burnout.

I don't want to become burned out in my future career, so I'm looking for a cure, or at least a method to prevent burnout.

Here is some radical advice from Ken Goldstein: "I suggest a new movement today: The nonprofit Selfishness Movement. We all need to set aside certain times and days to something entirely selfish (and legal). A little "me time" to guiltlessly get away from the stress of constantly being other-focused." Goldstein has a blog entitled The Nonprofit Consultant Blog in which he writes tips, stories,  and advice about managing and running a nonprofit organization. 

To me, Goldstien seems a bit selfish. But then again, maybe that is my problem. Maybe I am not selfish enough.

After being close to burning out myself this semester, one of the best pieces of advice that I have received came from my supervisor Anne Giles Clelland. In the midst of my almost-burnout she told me this: "The over-committed, with the best of intentions to serve everyone well, under-serve everyone."

I still have this "problem" of being a giver. But it seems as though practice and prayer are the best things to avert burnout. So, this week I am going to practice saying "no," starting right after I say "yes" to playing in the snow!

You can follow the entire Defining the Local Social Entrepreneur series by Melinda Marcus.

From Adam Scouse:

In an effort to better familiarize myself with the so-called blogosphere, I described in a previous post looking into what my buddies were reading online in their spare time.  However, the power of blogs has not been limited to those within dormitory walls.  Businesses have also embraced and encouraged blog writing within their company for a variety of reasons. 

According to Social Text’s Fortune 500 Business Blogging Wiki, 12.8 percent of the Fortune 500 companies are currently blogging.  Topics vary by company and post; however, they seem to correlate mostly with current events and recent product developments.  A fascinating example is General Motor’s FastLane Blog .  Recent posts address the looming economic downturn and its effect on the car industry while the blog fosters reader discussion through commenting. 

Not all blogs are created equal.  Social Text also offers links to blog reviews that base ratings on ease of finding, frequency, engaging writing, relevance, focus, honesty, social-interaction design, and responsiveness. 

Author David Kirkpatrick wrote about the evolution of blogs within companies in his article for Fortune.  He mentions the multiple applications he has witnessed for blogs and refers to managers who strongly encourage blog writing to their employees.However, Kirkpatrick is quick to mention that there are trade-offs and examples where lay-offs have occurred after personal posting.

Coming from an academic perspective, I originally did not associate much validity with what I read in blog posts.  In fact, Internet sources in general are frowned upon by professors.  However, research done by Thomas Johnson and Barbara Kaye during the 2004 presidential election investigates how the public perceives blogs.  Realizing that this study is specific to presidential topics, the study sheds some light on the typical blog reader. 

According to the study, blogs have maintained credibility among those “politically interested Internet users, journalists, and public officials.”  The study even mentioned that readers prefer blogs to traditional media sources.  It appears that readers believe writer bias within blogs is somewhat of a strength over traditional media sources and the depth of blogging material is greater. 

While I may not be able to use blogs in my traditional research as a student, I certainly do use blogs to do research in my everyday life much like one might use Wikipedia.  As long as I understanding the strengths and weaknesses of blogs, I can use them as an effective tool for keeping informed on a daily basis. 

You can follow the full series of posts by Adam Scouse for Handshake 2.0 at The Hypothetical Entrepreneur.

Adam Scouse is an intern for Handshake 2.0, a member company of business acceleration centerVT KnowledgeWorks, located in the Virginia Tech Corporate Research Center, a technology park, a research park, and a science park on the Virginia Tech campus in Blacksburg, Virginia.

Handshake 2.0 brings you the third edition of Connecting People in the RNR with Stuart Mease.

Stuart Mease offers free booth space to regional exhibitors for the 3rd annual Roanoke Holiday Career and Lifestyle Fair, sponsored by the Renick Group, Express Employment Professionals and WDBJ7, at the Roanoke Civic Center on December 30, 2008.  for further information, please contact Stuart Mease at stuartmease@gmail.com.

"RNR" refers to the Roanoke Valley and the New River Valley of Virginia.

Stuart Mease writes the blog Connecting People.  On Stuart Mease's about page, you can find myriad ways to connect with him online and in person.  You can find out more about Stuart Mease on Handshake 2.0.

Connecting People in the RNR
a video show by Stuart Mease
for Handshake 2.0

The opinions Stuart Mease expresses are solely his own and are not necessarily shared by Handshake 2.0 or its sponsors or advertisers.

From Handshake 2.0's Web 2.0 Developer:

The quintessential childhood Thanksgiving arts-and-crafts project is the hand turkey, so I decided to make one. Unfortunately, a rigorous scientific education has enabled me to suck all the fun and child-like innocence out of any enterprise, so I ended up making a graph.

The graph in question is of a parametric equation. Whereas the graphs we are most familiar with give one variable as a function of another (y in terms of x, for instance), a parametric graph gives x and y in terms of another, or in our case, two other variables. I've parameterized in terms of r and t.

 

 

 

 

The parameterization, in terms of t, graphs the "shape" or "outline" of our mathematical hand turkey. It's a modification of a polar function that would normally give us a "rose" with nine petals. My fingers are not all the same size, though, so I tweaked the function with a square root of t to vary the petals a little bit. A few more changes gave me five "fingers."

Then, I multiplied by my second parameter, r. Since it ranges from 0 to 1, then for every possible value of r, the "t" function it is affecting will be drawn with a slightly different radius. When we put all these functions on top of each other, we get a continuous series of "outlines" which smoothly merge into a solid region.

Not entirely devoid of childlike aesthetic taste, I then used Mathematica to graph the function and, more importantly, apply a gradient of "Thanksgiving colors" to it.

All in all, though, you're still probably better off asking your kid to make a hand turkey.

***

If you're interested here's a high-resolution .pdf of the Mathematica notebook. It's big (8559K), and requires a little crunching from your computer, but the image it produces is gorgeous.

And for the sake of complete documentation, here's the original Mathematica notebook, in case readers of H20 use Mathematica.

From Z. Kelly Queijo:

When it comes to technology, gadget geeks everywhere will agree “If it fits in your shirt pocket, it's got to be good.” Flip Video by Pure Digital fits.

About the size of a cell phone and weighing just 3.3 ounces, the world's smallest camcorder is also the number one best-selling camcorder in the U.S., having sold over 1.5 million units.

Released to market in 2006, this small, highly portable video recorder goes way beyond cute or cool to totally practical for everyone from soccer moms to CEOs who are recording everything from events to corporate annual reports.

Even broadcast professionals make use of Flip Video. At WDBJ7, news director Amy Morris says “It's just one more tool we use to get video back to the station and on the air and on the web as quickly as possible.”

The device can record up to an hour of video and comes equipped with video editing software producing MySpace, AOL video or YouTube compatible files. The transfer from device to computer is as easy as, well, flipping a switch. To transfer video, the user flips out the built-in USB connector and plugs it into a computer. Prices range from $129 for the 1GB to $229 for the 4GB, HD model and are available direct from Pure Digital or through other retail partners.

Social media guru, people connector, and owner of a Flip Stuart Mease, says “Video is going to be king if it is not already and you need a way to add this media to your online strategy."

Adding the Flip to your Christmas list is a good idea, too.

Stuart Mease is shown using a Flip Video to record a segment of Connecting People in the RNR.

Z. Kelly Queijo writes about people and their passions for business and technology.

 

From Melinda Marcus, intern with Handshake 2.0:

If there is one thing I have learned over the past three months as an intern with Handshake 2.0, it is that connections, passion, and communication are the basic keys to success in the business world.

I recently had the chance to interview the well-connected Cory Donovan, Executive Director of The NewVa Corridor Technology Council (NCTC), whom I first met at the Virginia Tech Business Horizons Career Fair in September, 2008.

NCTC has connections with almost everyone and everything here in the New River and Roanoke Valleys.  Just take a look at all their events - with almost two events per week, this non-profit organization is connecting people and creating jobs and relationships that are helping this area grow!

Right off the bat, Mr. Donovan defined what Social Entrepreneurship (SE) means to him, a businessman in the non-profit sector: SE is "being proactive to find a solution to a problem," in a business sense and helping to raise awareness about the issue that the entrepreneur is passionate about.

Perhaps the best piece of advice that Mr. Donovan gave me was to be passionate and gain experience in the passion, no matter what that means. He encouraged me to find out what I need to do to get the job I want and do it, even if that means taking a lower paying job or the road less traveled.

One desire in my life that I have is to live a passionate life! Ever since high school, I have wanted to be a woman who lives a creative, adventurous, and passionate life. However, there is one thing I need to get over: fear. I fear not "succeeding" according to the world's standards of wealth and prosperity.

Mr. Donovan encouraged me as a young business student is to be educated in what brings me happiness and why it does. In the end, happiness is much better then wealth.

To sum up what I have learned from Mr. Donovan:  Passion is key. If I want to make a difference in the world (or even in my community), I need to find out what brings me happiness and brings out my talents and skills, and then put everything I have into it!

You can follow the entire Defining the Local Social Entrepreneur series by Melinda Marcus.

From Dan Smith, Editor, Valley Business FRONT:

About halfway through my recent explanation to a prominent business leader that, yes, we hope to eventually become an online only magazine at Valley Business FRONT, she stopped me in mid-sentence.

“Oh, no,” she said. “Please don’t do that. I just love the size and the feel of this magazine and you can’t get that online.”

Well, no, you can’t. But people are already reading FRONT online 10 days to two weeks ahead of the day it arrives in their mailboxes. They’re printing the pages they want to preserve and have confidence that the others will be there in the archive when they want them. They like that little page-turning feature (complete with sound effects that somebody compared to opening potato chips in a darkened theater). And, frankly, every day more of us are turning from paper to electronic impulse for our reading material. I no longer read a hold-it-in-my-hands newspaper, for example, and that doesn’t have anything to do with me being part of the digital generation. I’m 62 years old and when I began as a journalist in 1964, type was made of lead (and men of iron).

The trend, obviously, is toward the Internet and don’t give me the baloney about not being able to clip out articles--the one used when a story was on TV. Reading habits have changed more dramatically in the past few years, I suspect, than in the previous 200. I am of the opinion that Americans in general are reading more, albeit in smaller individual portions.

We determined when we kicked off FRONT that 500 words was a goodly length for the normal story and that 700 words was fine for a more complex piece. It takes a disciplined writer to accomplish that. Covers can run to 1,000, but that’s the exception in a magazine with 40 or more articles per month.

I just finished a story on a woman retiring after running a candy store on Roanoke City Market for 23 years that ran 400 words, has a good photo and will be read. If that story had come in at 1,000 words -which would have been easy to write - it would have looked intimidating, would have continued on one or two more pages, and would have lost substantial readership. Now, it’ll contain on a single page and will invite readers in.

Anyway, back to the topic at hand: the online version has a number of benefits for the reader (feel not being one of them), but it has several  substantial and lasting benefits for the owners. First, we won’t have to kill any trees to print it, and our ink use will not pollute any waterways. Both my partner Tom Field and I are sensitive to environmental issues and this is one way we can actively support a cleaner environment. Second, we won’t have to pay for printing. And third, the Post Office will no longer hold us hostage and charge us outrageously (nearly 50 cents per magazine, if we do all the work) to mail FRONT. Mail takes days to complete delivery and the Internet takes no time at all. Our two major expenses right now are printing and mailing. If we can reel that in, we can pay writers more, market our product better, contribute more to our community.

That’s the trade: look and feel swapped for practical solutions and a changing world of reading.

When can we accomplish this major change for a magazine that’s going into only its third month of publishing? That’s a decision readers will make in a democratic fashion, one that is market-driven.

When we have as many unique visits to our Web site as we have subscribers, we can begin re-tooling. So hang on for the ride and cast your vote with your actions.

The Valley Business FRONT Post is written by Dan Smith, Editor, Valley Business FRONT, a monthly business magazine featuring the Roanoke Valley and the New River Valley of Virginia.  Dan Smith writes the blog fromtheeditr.

Dan Smith's e-mail signature quotes Kingsley Amis:  "If you can't annoy somebody, why write?'

The opinions Dan Smith expresses are solely his own and are not necessarily shared by Handshake 2.0.

Gotta love a guy who begins a talk, “I have not found a way not to be annoying.”

I found Bob Metcalfe not annoying, but inspiring.  And thought-provoking in an uneasy, thought-challenging way. 

When Metcalfe questioned the use of terms like “green” and “sustainability” and the premises underlying them, he said, “We’re not going to conserve our way to a solution about energy.”

My bike-riding, no-paper-napkin friends would love that.

What I cherished most was Metcalfe’s prediction of the origin of the solution to finding cheap and clean energy:  research professors at research universities, their graduate students, and “scaling entrepreneurs.”

The synergy of research and "scaling entrepreneurs" is happening right here, right now, at business acceleration center VT KnowledgeWorks.  Metcalfe even referred to two VT KnowledgeWorks companies, TORC Technologies and VPT Energy Systems.

For finding solutions, we’re in good company here.

And Bob Metcalfe was very good company. 

Handshake 2.0 thanks Bob Metcalfe for visiting and thanks Virginia Tech, the MIT Club of the Blue Ridge, and the NewVa Corridor Technology Council for inviting him.

Bob Metcalfe is the founder of 3Com, inventor of Ethernet, and a partner with Polaris Ventures.  He gave a talk entitled “Enernet: Lessons from 62 years of Internet history for how to meet world needs for cheap and clean energy,” at the Skelton Conference Center, Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, Virginia, on November 21, 2008.

Added 12/02/08:  Thanks, Bob Summers, for this link to a video and slides from the event.

That was the subject of an e-mail from Anne Giles Clelland of Handshake 2.0 in reply to a friend who sent her a "tangy plant" the first day she joined Facebook.

The friend replied:

ROFL  [From H20:  An abbreviation for "Rolling on the floor laughing."  Humph.]

It's one of the thousands of applications you can add to your FB page (and one that probably the largest number of my friends have installed). The vast majority of the apps are "silly little time-wasters," and this is probably no exception, but it wastes very little time (comparatively) and is theoretically for a good cause (fight global warming). If you want to play - and you certainly don't have to - you have to install the app (which you can almost certainly do via the invite I sent) and then you'll have a little "garden" on your screen of plants you've been sent. You can get more points/etc. by sending other people plants, tending their plants, taking care of their gardens, etc.

Here's a link to the (Lil) Green Patch app page.  According to that page, "Our sponsors contribute money to save the Rainforests as you use this application. After expenses we will donate revenue to funding a portfolio of reforestation project.."

"Using the application" means sending plants to friends' FB pages, etc.

It's all a bit silly... but good clean fun.

***

Hmm.  How does one download the application?...

Ack, another request!

"Here is a Bany plant for your (Lil) Green Patch. Could you help me by sending a plant back? Together we can fight Global Warming!"

Send a plant back?!  Wouldn't that fall into the "silly little time-wasters" category? 

I wonder what kind of plants they have...