This is a continuing series of posts by Speakers for speakers. If you are currently a speaker and looking to improve, if you are an aspiring speaker and worried about the mistakes that others make this is the series for you. Each Wednesday a speaker who I value will share their thoughts on how speakers can be better, their experiences as a speaker and generally tell you the insider secrets that make it look so easy when they take the stage.

This weeks post is by Lynette Young. Lynette is CEO of Purple Stripe Productions, Lynette Young is one of the first podcasters to have received a six-figure sponsorship just to chat (and that was her first year).  Since then, she has been helping others put their dreams into action as a social media coach, social technology specialist, and a strategist for businesses regarding implementation services.  Her love (besides her family) is Google+.  Ms. Young believes that Google+ is the future for business and, as such, is the founder and curator of The Women of Google+.

Know The Lingo

As a professional speaker, I present within my own industries of social media, women entrepreneurs and technology, but most of the time I speak at events in other industries. While I know the lingo we throw around, I am not always privy to the terminology of other industries. It is imperative that to be a professional speaker you do some research to find out about the people warming the seats. If you don’t what matters in their industry or day to day jobs, you will never connect with them with your content from the podium.

I have witnessed probably a hundred spectacular train wreck talks over my twenty years as a speaker (yes, a few were mine). I will give an example to show a point, and to hopefully learn a lesson. I attended a conference for the insurance industry and was waiting in the wings as the speaker before me was on stage. The speaker was from the real estate world, which was a good fit for the content presented that day. Problem? It was obvious that the speaker assumed everyone in the audience understood what he was talking about when he threw around industry-specific terms like CRV (certificate of reasonable value) and PITI (principal, interest, tax, and insurance). Do you know what a cricket sounds like in a room of five hundred people? I do now.

It was obvious to me the speaker had not taken the time to know that the people filling the seats. The attendees had no real understanding of the inner workings of the real estate world. Had the speaker thought to rework his talk a bit to be more ‘plain English’ the audience could understand and not use his talk as a sleeping aid. The audience wasn’t only lost, but made to feel stupid and uninformed. Not one person left their seats when he was finished to get his business card. (Truth be told, he may have just walked straight to the exit door when he was done, but that’s an entirely different article.) By taking a glance at the conference agenda and sales sheet it would have been very easy to know that these were not attendees that understood real estate financing. Lesson? Talk to your audience as if they were actual people, and do a bit of research to find out who they are and where they come from.

“Lingo-vomit” is probably the most common screw-up I see along with assuming the audience knows all the things you do, or talking to them like they are idiots. There are the rare gems where I get to see a speaker set themselves on fire by jumping into a talk written for authors when the are really in a crowd of nurses. The location slip-up is the all time personal favorite of mine. A battle cry of ’Go Pats!’ when they are really in New York Giants territory is always fun to watch. How a speaker recovers from that is a good judge of their abilities outside the slip up. The correct comeback for that faux pas is “just keeping you on your toes – GO GIANTS!”

“GO EAGLES!” is not.

See last weeks post – Speaking Is About More Than Speaking by Thom Singer

Micro-Investing is providing those of us without the funds to become Venture Capitalists or Angel investors the opportunity to experience the thrill of investing without the risks. The model is somewhat similar to that employed by charities for years. A small amount multiplied many times equals a much larger amount. So instead of seeking thousands of dollars, asking for only a few, but asking thousands of people can equal the same amount.

Micro-Investing: What’s In It For You?

While the rewards of micro-investing are never going to match that of being a VC or an Angel, the amount invested and the risk associated with that amount is much lower as well. What you mainly get from micro-investing is the sense of helping someone get to a goal and a thrill of having backed the right horse.

Sites like KickStarter, Appbackr and newly launched Apptopia provide platforms for would be investors to find ideas that they like and make small investments in them. Kickstarter focuses more on arts based projects, Appbackr and Apptopia are focused on providing funds for mobile app development and the sale of the rights to apps respectively.

Micro-Investing:What’s In It For Them?

In a word, money. Depending on which platform you are using what they have to provide you, the investor with, varies greatly. Kickstarter projects might involve a product, a picture, a song or something similar, but it might just be a thank you card – depending on your level of investment. Appbackr investors get a small revenue share based on the sale of apps and the amount of their investment. Apptopia is a wholesale clearing house for the rights to an app – you are basically taking over the ownership of that app, code, IP the whole package.

For “starving artists” Kickstarter can mean the launch of a project that would otherwise wither in the wasteland of “good ideas”. Appbackr means that app developers can realize some money early on so that they can continue development and marketing of their app and go on to realize a full revenue stream.

Micro-Investing: My Experience

I’ve been playing with these platforms for about 9 months now and have invested in several projects.

One of the early successes was Cliff Roth‘s “Google Plus Speedpaint Hangout Project” – Cliff was looking to raise $2000. I noticed this project just before it’s deadline, he was $33 short of his goal. If a goal isn’t met then none of the investors are required to part with their money, also the project goes unfunded – in other words there is no “part funding” it is all or nothing. I chipped in the $33 and his project was funded. For that investment I was added to a Special Google Plus Circle and invited to Backers-Only Speedpaint Hangout Sessions, in addition I will also receive a pencil drawing of myself signed by Cliff. I felt that was a very fair exchange.

Another huge success was Creatures. This  is a card game and I actually invested in this to get the game as a gift for the holidays. I’ve had a lot of fun playing the game. But the real story here is that they were seeking $2,500 they actually raised over $56,000 in funding. People like me invested anywhere between $1 and $750 to receive various rewards from the creators of Creatures. This game is now available on Amazon.

My latest investment appealed to the geek in me. Twine is a device that allows you to interact with other devices and platforms like Text, Email, Web etc based on certain conditions. The interesting part about it is that it requires no coding. The interactions are all controlled by a very simple web interface. Again this project really appealed to the Kickstarter community. The Twine project was seeking $35,000 in funding, they raised over $500,000.

I have also backed a couple of apps on Appbackr but to date those have not made it into production and therefore I have not actually been charged any money. I’m hopeful that I will pick a winner soon.

If you haven’t tried micro-investing yet I definitely recommend it. Don’t expect to retire on the returns but you will have a lot of fun being part of the micro-investing community.

Check Your Hair, Make Sure Your Mic Is On is the title of a  post I wrote a few weeks ago in which I talk about the importance of appearance for speakers. In talking with new, aspiring and even existing speakers it seems people would like to read more of the same.

Rather than simply share my thoughts on speaking  I thought you would find it more interesting to hear from other speakers. To this end I have extended the invitation to some of the speakers that I enjoy a lot to share their stories of being a speaker. What works and what doesn’t, how to handle technology, the good stories and the nightmare stories.

Watch the video below and you can see why I wanted to put this series together:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=3rHFNJnDPYY

Each wednesday there will be a new post from a speaker who will share their experience. Who are these speakers? Well to name drop a few – Ann Handley – Chief Content Officer for Marketing Profs, Hank Wasiak – 14 time Emmy Nominated TV Host, Lynette Young, Podcaster and Founder of Women of G+ and many others.

The best way to make sure you don’t miss this great content?  Subscribe by email in the top right of this page and get it delivered to your inbox.  Of course I’d love you to just keep coming back to the site because, well that helps my stats and makes me feel good about myself – but I’d rather you got the content the way you want it.

image used under CC License by Ford Buchanan

Last week I wrote about the Three Types of Social Content. I want to extend that conversation by looking at how the use of Social Content is killing Social Networks. Consider your own Social Network streams, whether it is Twitter, Facebook, Google Plus – I’d place a bet that most of what you see is content that has been curated for the purpose of capturing your attention. Very little of it is original content. From Cat videos to reposts from news outlets users want to be able to share others content and be known for sharing helpful, funny, and interesting content.

Social Content – Not Friends but Publishers

When we decide to Follow, Circle or Friend someone – our major points of contact (unless we know them in real life) with them are not who they are but what they share. Does what they share fit into our groups of interests? This removes the effort of seeing them as a person but instead we are seeing them as a source of Social Content. Will they provide us with interesting, informative and importantly shareable content?

If you think about the way Social Networks were originally structured, they were meant as virtual places for meeting people. The people you met revealed something about themselves and you in turn revealed something about yourself, in other words a normal social interaction. Now we are moving to a situation where we careless about the actual person and more about the content they share. We like people who share original content, but actually we are hopeful that they will simply share something that is going to be popular and will in turn increase our own Social Currency.

Social Content – Content For Content’s Sake

We are used to hearing that content is king. We all want to be a part of that royalty, the Social Web thrives on popularity and users are seeking ways to promote themselves, their business, their brand through the use of content. Content Marketing is the panacea to all your woes. Your content will help you build a business, develop a network, create a platform. All of these things are actually true. The problem with this is that while these mantra’s were developed originally for business, they have permeated the personal world.

Every user is now a brand, but instead of that philosophy humanizing brands, it is having the opposite effect, it is dehumanizing people. Users of Social Networks are less interested in being Social and more interested in being publishers. There are endless posts on tactics to get “more retweets, more links, more views”, which are great if you are in the content marketing business, however, these posts are being read and utilized by people, real people, ordinary individuals who are actually quite interesting in their own right.

Social Content – Stop Publishing, Start Humanizing

I know that you won’t stop sharing cat videos – I’m not really asking you to. But every once in a while how about sharing a story about you. Share something that lets me get to know you as a person – heck I might even like you and if I don’t well that’s ok too, because there are plenty of others out there that will.

Take a risk and be a human being on a Social Network and let’s stop seeing ourselves as just producers of Social Content.

image used under CC license by tölvakonu 

The Three C’s of Social Content – Creation, Curation and Cultivation. In looking at online content, particularly that shared on social networks I’ve come to the conclusion that there are generally three broad categories of social content. I’m going to expand on this premise in this and a couple of upcoming posts and certainly the later posts will be colored in part by the responses I get to the original concepts that I outline here.

The Three C’s of Social Content – Creation

While seemingly self explanatory, content creation seems to generate a lot of controversy. What constitutes content creation? Is it something wholly original, can it be something that is inspired by other work? Can it be an adaptation of existing work?

I honestly don’t think there is a hard rule for this. I have a personal opinion about what I consider original work and therefore content creation, but that is just my opinion. I happen to think that for content to fall into the Creation category it needs to be wholly original in nature. Now that of course would mean that 99% of everything I write wouldn’t fall into that category because it is, in one way or another, inspired by other external influences. I write about things I have seen online, in real life, about books I have read, commercials I have seen etc. However, I would like to think that my interpretations of these external influences is unique and therefore original.

I occasionally create images, either for this blog or for Google Plus posts that are based on words that I have seen in other places – I consider those not to be original content. Yes, I have used the words in a way that might well be original, but the emotion that is being evoked is not original. I didn’t create that response originally, the words that I have chosen have already done that.

The Three C’s of Social Content – Curation

Many social networks have really become social curation depositories. Google Plus particularly strikes me as being this type of network. While I do see plenty of original content there I also see much that is the collecting and resharing of content. Sometimes grouped together in an organized manner, sometimes not so organized. I personally tend to think that truly curated content has at least some form of index to allow it to be found quickly. Pinterest is a great example of a social network that focuses solely on content curation – to the point of having indices that allow users to quickly find content that they are looking for.

The point of content curation was of course originally a selfish one. I find something interesting that I want to refer to later and I want some way of  finding it later, browser bookmarks and then bookmark sharing sites were great forms of this. The rise in popularity of sharing these pieces of curated content led to more sophisticated sharing strategies, ones that focus on carving a niche based on the content of others.

The Three C’s of Social Content – Cultivation

This is the last form of Social Content in my observation. When a publisher – someone who posts content of any kind to a social network focuses on a specific niche to attract or nurture an audience it can best be described as content cultivation. The content itself is less important than the impact it has on the end goal of audience development. Frequency, density, imagery, time of day, all of these things start to play an increasingly important role in the social content cultivator’s arsenal.

Which type of Social Content do you consider you produce?

Check your hair, make sure your mic works – sound advice given at the start screen of a Google Hangout. Increasingly bloggers, marketers, and others involved in the online world are making appearances in the real world. Taking their content from the virtual to the real world. I asked a question on Google Plus a few weeks ago – is speaking the new blogging? It seems that every blogger wants their 30 mins of stage time and there are no shortage of conferences for them to speak at.

Check Your Hair – Paying For the Dancing Bear

Some are realizing that they can supplement their income and in some cases generate their entire income from paid speaking. Like blogging this is something they have stumbled upon and they are watching the success of others and want their share of the pie. When bloggers see other bloggers earning six digit speaking fees they believe that it is as easy as that. Just put a price tag on their last blog post and deliver it. What they are missing is the years of hard work that goes on between deciding you have something worth sharing and being paid to share it.

I reject far more conference requests than I accept simply because the organizers want my content but have no way or intention of paying for it. They also expect me to cover my own travel and accommodation costs. All this while they charge attendees anywhere from $150 to $5000 per ticket to attend. However, speaking for free is definitely something that all speakers do at the beginning of their careers and will continue throughout their careers given the right circumstances.

The point here is that just because you think you have something worth sharing don’t expect to be paid for it immediately.

Check Your Hair – The Dancing Bear Show

If you are tempted by the thought of speaking then you have to consider a lot more than just what you are going to say. The best speakers provide not just information but entertainment. The session is an experience. The audience walks away talking about it, not just the content but the presenter and the way in which the information is presented. Everyone has a horror story of having Powerpoint slides read to them in a conference session. Presentation goes past this, a long way past.

The trend for a many recent years has been to follow dress codes from the work place, in other words downwards. Jeans and a T-Shirt are considered “cool”, almost de rigueur. I’m not saying that your outfit is more important than your content, but consider your audience. They have paid good money to sit in front of you and look at you for anywhere between 30 and 75 mins – giving them something that is comfortable on the eye is definitely going to win you points. Personally I prefer to be slightly over dressed than under but that is my preference. Blending in with your audience is unlikely to leave a lasting impression.

Don’t go the other way either – I’m not suggesting you come to your session dressed like Bjork in a Swan Gown! Think of it more as an interview situation. In that audience are potential clients, potential event bookers, in other words people who might just want to spend money with you. Even if you have the most compelling content available, image matters. Having the audience see you as not only knowledgeable but also capable of sitting in their conference room might just be the line between additional work and none.

Check Your Hair – Pictures Are Worth A Thousand Words

Find someone to take your profile picture – preferably a professional but at least someone who knows their way around lighting and can make you look good. When someone is considering you for a speaking opportunity you can guarantee they are going to look at your online presence – and if your profile doesn’t project the right professional image – if it looks like you just rolled out of bed and took it in the bathroom mirror are they going to trust you to deliver quality content to their audience?

If you are seriously thinking about adding speaking as a revenue source or just as an additional way to promote your content you really need to think about the whole show and not just what you are going to show on the screen.

What do you think of speakers who don’t pay attention to their appearance?

image used under CC license by RPhlegm

I was sent a link to a Michael Bublé video the other day. I’m not a big fan of his singing – though I readily admit he has a great voice and it makes for decent background music. What I saw surprised the heck out of me and made me rethink my impression of him. It also made me think a lot about what I and others in marketing are trying to teach brands about listening. We focus a lot on the how and even the when, but we often miss out the why. We assume that brands want to listen, or the brands assume that they have to listen because bad things are being said.  Take a moment to watch the video and then I’ll share what Michael Bublé reminded me about listening.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=_cw1uLVSl1Y

The first thing that struck me was the fact that Michael Bublé stopped the show to listen to this mother heckling him from the audience. He could easily have had her removed by security. In terms of brands that would equate to ignoring the unhappy customer who tweets about you – the way 70% of brands currently do – see this post from Jay Baer on that topic.

Instead he chose to stop the show (business as normal) and sit down and listen to what this mother and fan was trying to say. He points out that he is a singer, he turns up and thousands of people pay to listen to him (reminding the customer of what business he is actually in) but he allows her to continue with the story.

The mother pleads to have her son be allowed to sing on stage with Michael Bublé (change the way you do things to help me, the customer). Having heard her story, he decides to allow it (trying a new approach with customers). His expectations are no doubt fairly low, after all, all mothers think their sons are wonderful (brands don’t expect customers to bring much value to the discussion). What he gets is a huge surprise, one that evokes the “Holy Shitballs Mom” response (Why didn’t we listen to our customers before?).

At the end of the video Michael Bublé states in a half joking way that he has four years before the young man he just brought on stage will kill his career by winning a TV Show (if brands don’t continue to change based on customer feedback they will become irrelevant).

The point is that listening without knowing why is pointless. You can have all the tools you like at your disposal, have in place all the processes but if you aren’t prepared for the surprise that customers will bring to your brand then perhaps you would be better off not listening at all.

What “Holy Shitballs” moments have you seen with brands?

Yesterday saw the confirmation of the sale of Social Location Marketing app Gowalla to Facebook for as yet undisclosed sum. This is part of the compression of the space that many predicted would happen this year. Earlier in the year we saw Whrrl bought and closed down by Groupon. Gowalla, in their announcement yesterday noted that the service will close at the end of January.

Gowalla Closing:Impact for Marketers

So what does this sale mean for marketers who, for the most part are only just discovering the power of Social Location Marketing? Firstly, it means that their choice of potential partners is now limited to only one serious player – Foursquare. While there are other apps available they are either minor players or niche focused. A great example of this is CarZar, which is both a photosharing app and a location sharing app rolled into one. However, it is only of interest to car enthusiasts. Good for marketers in that space but limiting for marketers outside of it.

Gowalla Closing:Impact for Users

I’ve been a Gowalla user since its first version. I loved collecting the digital objects, these became increasingly less important as Gowalla tried to become more Foursquare like with badges. Even then their focus on being a “beautifully designed” platform set them apart. Their focus switched to being more about experience and location, providing badges for states, which as someone who travels frequently were fun to collect. However, their latest iteration seemed poorly thought through. Some pundits have said that while Gowalla is going to Facebook your data is not. Josh Williams has been quoted as confirming this though the official announcement on the Gowalla blog does not say that.

I think it is naive of anyone to think that the Gowalla purchase was solely about hiring talent. Facebook is about data, the more data the better. The value that Gowalla brings is from its users data, so you can expect that the data was part of the deal. After all look at the game developer Zynga, their potential valuation at somewhere in the region of $10bn is not because investors think that Farmville is the most awesome game ever created, it is because Zynga collects vast amounts of user data every day about the millions of people who play their games. Your Gowalla data is much to valuable to Facebook for them to simply let that slip away.

Gowalla Sale: Facebook & Location

Some pundits are postulating that we can expect to see a Gowalla like environment in Facebook next year with a renewed emphasis on Social Location Sharing. I doubt this very much. Facebook knows its audience and its audience never really saw the benefit to sharing their location through Facebook when they were already using Foursquare and other platforms to check in. I do agree with those that say we might see some of the design ethic from the Gowalla team make an appearance in Facebook and I for one would definitely welcome that.

I’m sad to see the end of Gowalla, having lived in Austin and met the team several times I know that they truly believed in their product as did their users. They have a lot to offer Facebook and I hope that they are given the opportunity to contribute to the direction that Facebook takes next year.

Update: Josh Williams, Gowalla CEO – restated on Twitter that “Facebook is not acquiring any user data. It’s just that simple. No story here. No spin.”

If you attend any conference that has any kind of social media component you will no doubt hear reference made to the savvy consumer. You will hear how they are demanding transparency and engagement and want to be included in the conversation. Most importantly you will hear that they don’t believe the lies of advertising anymore and that social is the way forward.

The Savvy Consumer – Mythical Being

The Savvy Consumer is not a new being. Contrary to what social media “guru’s” might tell you. Consumers have been savvy for decades. They have been discerning, they know a real deal when they see one and they know when they are being ripped off. The rise of social technologies like Facebook, Twitter and Google Plus didn’t give rise to the Savvy Consumer. Consumers have been having the conversations over the garden fence, around the water cooler, on the phone and in the stores where they shop for as long as shops have existed.

The demand for transparency pre-dates social technologies by several decades – I don’t remember reading about Erin Brockovich using Twitter to demand transparency from Pacific Gas & Electric Company – though I have no doubt she would do so today. Consumers have always wanted to have transparency in their relationship with brands. So where does this idea of the sudden appearance of the Savvy Consumer come from?

The Savvy Consumer & Social Technologies

It is far more likely that social technologies like Facebook, Twitter, Google + and blogs have woken marketers to the depth of understanding that consumers have of their methods rather than those technologies giving rise to the Savvy Consumer. Marketers are being shown that Social Media allows them to follow and even join in conversations, as though these conversations were new. They are being sold on the idea that if they adopt these technologies that they might stand a chance of catching up and perhaps regaining the upper hand with the Savvy Consumer.

The Savvy Consumer has decades on the newly sophisticated marketer. Social technologies will not make up for that gap. Social technologies are revealing the extent of the gap between marketers and the Savvy Consumer. Social technologies are providing the opportunity for the Savvy Consumer to organize around issues that matter to them faster and in a much more cohesive manner than ever before. The biggest revelation that social technologies has brought is not the existence of the Savvy Consumer but the existence of the unsophisticated marketer.

The Savvy Consumer and the Savvy Marketer

The Savvy Marketer is learning from the Savvy Consumers behavior. Learning to use the social technologies in the same way. Social technologies have brought back the need for artistry to marketing. Finesse rather than brute force in messaging has always been the core of great marketing. Perhaps this is the most important lesson marketers can learn from the Savvy Consumer, not that they don’t want marketing, not that they don’t want to be sold to, but rather that they want it to be done with style and grace.

I tell audiences, clients and anyone else who will listen that there are three main components to any successful marketing campaign that involves social technology. Fun, Repeatable and Shareable. To combine these three in one campaign is a difficult act and one that actually requires a lot more thought than many marketers are willing to give to their campaigns. The Savvy Consumer knows when they are being played, they also know when it serves their purposes to join in.

What are you learning from the Savvy Consumer?

Image used under CC license by Elsie

After three months of waiting Google + Brand pages have launched. Businesses were told that the wait was necessary as Google wanted to get the brand pages right, so that there would be a great user experience for both the brands and the regular users.

Google + Brand Pages: Not Worth The Wait

After all the waiting, what did Google actually deliver? They delivered exactly the same page that regular users have been using for the past three months. The only slight variance is that the default circles are named differently. Did the Google + team hand this project over to a bunch of interns? There is no imagination in these pages, it’s less usable than Facebook business pages. For example the pages can only have one administrator. When you use the Google + business page it signs you out of your personal account, meaning that any action you then take on Google + is as the brand page – a PR nightmare waiting to happen. It also requires you to sign back in to access your personal account – this is cludgy and poorly thought through.

You know you have screwed things up when one of your most vociferous advocates – in this case Robert Scoble – states on his blog:

Anyway, this is just a way for me to tell anyone thinking of signing up their company for a Google+ brand account to think twice.

That’s a pretty damning statement for the platform, which undeniably a lot of people want to see succeed. Perhaps Mark Zuckerberg’s assessment of Google + as being Google’s “own little version of Facebook” wasn’t far off the mark.

Google + Lacks Imagination

Google is a complex beast of a company, with most staffers having very little insight into the bigger picture of the organization. This hasn’t stopped it from producing some incredibly innovative products, from the Android Operating System to self-driving cars. The one area that Google has consistently missed the mark is social. Google + is the best attempt by the company so far, after the messes that were Wave and Buzz. However, the sheer and obvious lack of thought that has gone into Google + business pages is bewildering. They had the chance to change the game and bring something to both businesses and users that would have sealed the deal and had mass migration from Facebook at least for businesses.

Instead what we have is just another place for brands to post their press releases, product announcements, blog posts and generally annoy the rest of the ecosystem. Google has missed the opportunity to redefine how brands act on Social platforms. They could have made Facebook look very 20th century and laid the ground rules for the 21st century. What went wrong?

Google + Business Pages – What Went Wrong?

Firstly, Facebook, like it or hate it, is a tough act to follow. Google has its work cut out for it trying to persuade anyone from the mainstream to move over. Of course the rush of social marketers, tech geeks and brand managers was great at first and the platform has certainly carved out a niche in the hearts and minds of those people, it still isn’t offering anything radically new. Yes there are differences between it and Facebook – Hangouts are cool but so what? One cool feature doesn’t a successful platform make. MySpace was “cool” for years before Facebook.

Secondly, the lack of apparent thought that has gone into some of the features makes me wonder who exactly is designing this product, it certainly isn’t the same talent behind things like the Android OS. Perhaps the problem is that Google is primarily a geeks club. They produce some awesomely geeky tools. Android OS is much more favored by the geeks than iOS for a good reason. With Google + its like the matheletes have been placed in charge of organizing the prom – they know what their fellow math club members want but have no idea how to appeal to the jocks, debutantes, or any of the other students.

I’m with Robert Scoble on this one. If you run a business think long and hard before setting up a Google + business page, because ultimately you are going to be struggling to produce additional content for it.