Strategy/Analysis Archives - Page 34 of 48

Trendspotting: How to Crawl into People’s Heads

May 23, 2006 by Liz

Your job — should you decide to keep working here — is to figure out what our customers want NEXT.

Trendspotters

I belong to a networking group which requires endorsements. As I was editing my profile last night, I came across this endorsement from a client.

” . . . Liz can spot an emerging trend before it is even on the horizon. — Blake Education, AustraliaÃ¢â¬?

It’s true I often can. My friend, Chartreuse BETA, is phenomenal at trendspotting, as is our friend, Copyblogger. Scot Karp is excellent at seeing what trends are about to happen. Sometimes it depresses him. Don’t leave out Tom Peters. . . . How exactly do we do that?

What does it take to spot a trend before it takes root and actually happens? What does a person need to watch for? Seeing trends seems to be a factor of intelligence, learning style, and world view. Allowing that you have the prerequisite intelligence — we’re talking business acumen, common sense, and people smarts, not rocket science — the rest is a matter of doing the work and being open to what’s happening. This is lesson 1 on being a trendspotter. [Read more…]

Critical Skill 5A: 3 Parts of Spectacular Ideas

May 21, 2006 by Liz

Originality

When I compiled this list of ten critical skills, it was an original list — the list came from my head not from the Internet, not from some book. I’ve done continuous work on thinking skills for years so it wasn’t a huge hardship to think some more on the skills I consider critical. Is any one idea original? No. Not one on that list is unique or spectacular. The value-added is that I put them together and pointed the need to have them for success.

Originality Versus Spectacular

Originality is often how we look at things. The most original thought I’ve encountered — that hasn’t been around for years — was my six-year-old son’s drawing of the solar system as if he were standing on Pluto, looking in toward the sun. Even that was just a new take on a picture that’s been around for a long, long time.

True originality –a brand new idea — is hard to come by, but that’s okay. It rarely works in business. True originality is expensive and rarely sells. As good as I am with ideas I’ve learned if I find one that has been done before, tha it’s because of one of three reasons. [Read more…]

Out WikiPedia, Hello Encyclopedia of Stupid

May 20, 2006 by Liz

Wikipedia Called Us Nonsense

So maybe you were around when we got mired in the labyrinth of the Wikipedia, or when we tried to find out why an article, written by Martin Neumann of the Small Office Herald about the Link Leak Virus, a term coined by Mike Sigers, was summarily deleted within minutes of it’s submission.

I actually wrote to Wikipedia about the situation. The official Wikipedia response to my email said I’d get a response in a few minutes . . . that was over 13 days ago. Hope the young man took food and water with him. A reader friend let us know that some editor said that it was “nonsense.” Kudos to the Advice Librarian who helped us make sense of everything.

We at Successful Blog needed that. We hadn’t had our ideas or our writing called nonsense by a stranger who didn’t know us for a very long while.

Finally I’ve found the home for us — The Encyclopedia of Stupid! [Read more…]

The Show Is in the Comments

May 18, 2006 by Liz

Blogging Is Conversation

I’ve heard it said before that the internet has changed the world of news. That the news used to end when it was put into print, now that’s when the news begins. HART said it first, Half the show is inthe comments. Sometimes it’s more than half. Yesterday, 37signals published a small piece by guest poster Ryan Carson teaching bloggers how to use digg.com to market their articles.

The current 46 comments that follow discuss the pros and cons of self-promotion using digg.com and in some ways overpower the original article. It’s also a great demonstration of how a blogger deals with mixed reviews of a posting.

You can access the whole thing by clicking the title shot below.

One truth about blogging is that you can never know for sure where a post might take you.

Thank Ryan for the well-written post that started a fine discussion — one that we should all think through from every angle.

–ME “Liz” Strauss

Writing– The 2 PowerQuestions

May 17, 2006 by Liz

The Second Question

When I start with that blank page, whether I think about it or I stare into space, two questions are waiting in white letters on the white space. I have to make myself see them and answer them before I will ever be able to write. The questions are basic and always the same.

What will your topic be?

and

What do you want to say about it?

If I can answer those two questions, the piece pretty much writes itself.

It really is as simple as that.

–ME “Liz” Strauss

Belated â State of the Blogosphere 2

May 12, 2006 by Liz

Move Over English

Though I was at a conference, then deathly sick (note the use of hyperbole), when David Sifry came out with his State of the Blogosphere Part 2 — On Language and Tagging, think there is still important data here to get reported for the record. David’s ability to cut through information on the index of 37.3 million blogs to bring coherent thought to the table is a gift he shares several times a year and we should take advantage of it to get the big picture of how our lives are changing.

For this post, I choose to focus on the analysis of the language data.

David Speaks

He begins by offering a few disclaimers about the data set he’s about to offer. Three important caveats he reminds us to keep in the foreground when studying his data.

First that the automated language software they use may not be perfect and my over- or undercount a particular language or group of languages, due to bugs wthin the software. He follows that comment with a statement that Technorati, however, still feels fairly confident in its reliability across the millions of blogs and posts they index each day.
One part of the blogosphere, Mr. Sifry is certain that is being under-reported is posts and blogs written in Korean. This is due to the fact that the main services are not indexed by Technorati at this time. A second that is being undercounted to a lesser degree is French language blogs and posts, because Technorati has not yet got a good system for indexing skyblog.
This third caveat is that Japanese bloggers write shorter posts. This could be due to their predilection to posting from mobile telephone. This fact could be skewing the results of the data that follows making the numbers higher, as the data tracks quantity of posts not length.

Within these caveats, Dave Sifry aso offers this invitation,

if anyone at these (or other) blogging services is interested in being indexed, please drop me a line.

[Read more…]