If you subscribe to a blog, any blog, congratulations. Not only have you figured out how to keep up, for free, with huge amounts of information, you’ve done it in an elegant and efficient way. While it may be fun to try to remember which blogs you read and then go visit them in some sort of order, RSS and other subscription tools are way smarter.
If you previously subscribed to this blog via Twitter, please read this post from Phil. Due to previously confusing settings, some people signed up in a way that sends updates to all the people following you as well, which is not part of the plan. Phil explains how to remedy this error.
If you subscribe by email, I hope you’re happy with the free service we’re offering. Most people love it. If not, I can highly recommend a wide range of RSS tools, which can take your browsing efficiency way up.
And if you’re not a subscriber (to this blog and others) today is a great day to start. RSS is a little like radio. Every blog and many news services ‘broadcast’ a tiny little signal that you can’t hear, but your RSS reader can. (It’s like a radio tuner). You tell the RSS reader which blogs and news feeds you like, and whenever it senses that signal, it goes out and grabs the post for you. Quick and free. With a good reader, you can easily keep up with 100 blogs in less than an hour.
Some media companies don’t like RSS because it means you don’t see their ads. I, on the other hand, love RSS because my goal is to reach people regularly, not just with the occasional juicy headline.
If you have a reader, the subscription tools you need are on the left hand column of this blog, and near the top of just about every blog or news site you visit.
October 7, 2008
Perhaps you’ve experienced it. You do a presentation and it works. It works! That’s the reason we keep coming back for more, that’s why so many of us spend more time building and giving presentations than almost anything else we do.
Here are some steps to achieve this level of PPT nirvana (Your mileage may vary. These are steps, not rules):
- Don’t use Powerpoint at all. Most of the time, it’s not necessary. It’s underkill. Powerpoint distracts you from what you really need to do… look people in the eye, tell a story, tell the truth. Do it in your own words, without artifice and with clarity. There are times Powerpoint is helpful, but choose them carefully.
- Use your own font. Go visit Smashing Magazine and buy a font from one of their sponsors or get one of the free ones they offer. Have your tech guy teach you how to install it and then use it instead of the basic fonts built in to your computer. This is like dressing better or having a nicer business card. It’s subtle, but it works.
- Tell the truth. By this I don’t mean, "don’t lie," (that’s a given), I mean "don’t hide." Be extremely direct in why you are here, what you’re going to sell me (you’re here to sell me something, right? If not, please don’t waste your time or mine). It might be an idea, or a budget, but it’s still selling. If, at the end, I don’t know what you’re selling, you’ve failed.
- Pay by the word. Here’s the deal: You should have to put $5 into the coffee fund for every single word on the wordiest slide in your deck. 400 words costs $2000. If that were true, would you use fewer words? A lot fewer? I’ve said this before, but I need to try again: words belong in memos. Powerpoint is for ideas. If you have bullets, please, please, please only use one word in each bullet. Two if you have to. Three never.
- Get a remote. I always use one. Mine went missing a couple of weeks ago, so I had to present without it. I saw myself on video and hated the fact that I lost all that eye contact. It’s money well spent.
- Use a microphone. If you are presenting to more than twenty people, a clip on microphone changes your posture and your impact. And if you’re presenting to more than 300 people, use iMag. This is a setup with a camera and projector that puts your face on the screen. You should have a second screen for your slides–the switching back and forth is an incompetent producer’s hack that saves a few bucks but is completely and totally not worth it. If 400 people are willing to spend an hour listening to you, someone ought to be willing to spend a few dollars to make the presentation work properly.
- Check to make sure you brought your big idea with you. It’s not worth doing a presentation for a small idea, or for a budget, or to give a quarterly update. That’s what memos are for. Presentations involve putting on a show, standing up and performing. So, what’s your big idea? Is it big enough? Really?
- Too breathtaking to take notes. If people are liveblogging, twittering or writing down what you’re saying, I wonder if your presentation is everything it could be. After all, you could have saved everyone the trouble and just blogged it/note-taken it for them, right? We’ve been trained since youth to replace paying attention with taking notes. That’s a shame. Your actions should demand attention (hint: bullets demand note-taking. The minute you put bullets on the screen, you are announcing, "write this down, but don’t really pay attention now.") People don’t take notes when they go to the opera.
- Short! Do you really need an hour for the presentation? Twenty minutes? Most of the time, the right answer is, "ten." Ten minutes of breathtaking big ideas with big pictures and big type and few words and scary thoughts and startling insights. And then, and then, spend the rest of your time just talking to me. Interacting. Answering questions. Leading a discussion.
Most presentations (and I’ve seen a lot) are absolutely horrible. They’re not horrible because they weren’t designed by a professional, they’re horrible because they are delivered by someone who is hiding what they came to say. The new trend of tweaking your slides with expensive graphic design doesn’t solve this problem, it makes it worse. Give me an earnest amateur any day, please.
October 6, 2008
Some people want to do things because they are interesting.
Some people want to do things because they work.
Some people want to do things because everyone else is doing them.
And some people are satisfied/scared/shy/lazy and don’t do anything.
Think about blogging or buying a new pair of shoes or voting for a candidate or picking one career over another. Different people have very different agendas. The key in understanding someone’s actions is understanding their agenda.
That salesperson who does everything by the book is not interested in the thrill of discovery. That retired steel worker that is hesitating to vote for your candidate is wondering what everyone else is going to do. And that unpredictable blogger keeps changing the rules because the rules bore him.
October 5, 2008
The old adage is that for someone with a hammer, everything looks like a nail.
It’s a warning that people who are only good at one thing often believe that the one thing is the answer to every problem. And it’s a good warning.
But what if you’ve decided that in fact, a hammer is exactly the tool that will solve your problem? My advice: hire a guy who only uses a hammer. Odds are, he’s pretty good at it.
If you need cognitive behavioral therapy (the technique proven most effective for many conditions), don’t go to a therapist who does six different kinds of therapy, as needed. Go to someone who has only one tool, but uses it beautifully.
Don’t go to this person for advice about what sort of therapy you need. You need a generalist for that. Go to this person for her hammer.
If you want a piece of handmade furniture made with hand tools and hand finishes, get it from a craftsman who owns no power tools. And think twice before buying SEO services from a general purpose ad agency.
It sounds like I’m endorsing specialists, but that’s not really what I’m doing. What I’m proposing is that when you’re forced to choose (as opposed to mix or compromise) your tactics, it pressures you to make better stuff and to make better choices.
This is why the Journal’s report that Google is flirting seriously with a big advertising buy is so troublesome. Once you start buying TV time, you just added another tool to your marketing belt. Now, plenty of your development and marketing team will say, "Oh, we’ll just buy ads. People will use it!" Suddenly, you don’t focus so much on building word of mouth and remarkability into your products, because now you can easily use TV to spackle over less remarkable products.
Bad news for an organization that’s so good at one thing (building remarkable products that spread virally) to start pivoting into an area where they’re likely to be not-so-good. This will lead to TV-friendly products that aren’t viral, along with ads that aren’t quite good enough to make them pop. By diversifying their toolset, they’ll get less good at their core skill.
Choosing your marketing tactics drives the products you design just as much as the products you design choose your tactics. By having the discipline to run no TV ads, Google forces the organization to use the hammer they’re really good at. More tools isn’t always better.
October 4, 2008
Things flip.
Many cultures long viewed photographs with fear, worrying that a piece of the soul disappeared when a photo was taken.
Today, celebrities hire publicists who have no other job but to get their photographs to appear in print.
Oprah doesn’t pay authors to appear on her show, they pay publicists for the privilege… even though they are "giving away" all the ideas in their book for free.
It’s a tricky line to walk. Perhaps this pastry shop on Rodeo Drive is concerned that competitors will take photos of all the pastries and then copy them. Of course, all the competitor has to do is buy a pastry, so I’m not sure that’s a real problem. Some museums forbid all photography, even without a flash, for no other reason than fear. Clearly a famous painting is worth more than an unknown one–and just as clearly, the artist who painted the image probably wanted other people to see it.
This is a hard flip for people to make. Largely it’s about control. It’s your pastry, after all. A long time ago, bakers gave up trying to stop people from taking free smells of their labor. I wonder if they benefit by letting people (begging people) to take free photos?
October 3, 2008
People and brands and organizations that stand for something benefit as a result. Standing for something helps you build trust, makes it easier to manage expectations and aids in daily decision making. Standing for something also makes it more fun to do your gig, because you’re on a mission, doing something that matters. Of course, there’s a cost. You can’t get something for nothing.
It’s frustrating to watch marketers, politicians and individuals fall into the obvious trap of trying to stand for something at the same time they try to please everyone or do everything.
You can’t be the low-price, high-value, wide-selection, convenient, green, all-in-one corner market. Sorry.
You also can’t be the high-ethics CEO who just this one time lets an accounting fraud slide. "Because it’s urgent."
You can’t be the big-government-fighting, low-taxes-for-everyone, high-services-for-everyone, safety-net, pro-science, faith-based, anti-deficit candidate either.
You can’t be the work-smart, life-in-balance, available-at-all-hours, high-output, do-what-you’re-told employee.
To really stand for something, you must make difficult decisions, mostly about what you don’t do. We don’t ship products like that, we don’t stand for employees like that ("you’re fired"), we don’t fix problems like that.
It’s so hard to stand up, to not compromise, to give up an account or lose a vote or not tell a journalist what they want to hear.
But those are the only moments where standing for something actually counts, the only times that people will actually come to believe that you in fact actually stand for something.
If you have to change your story because your audience is different (oh, I’m on national TV today!) (oh, this big customer wants me to cut some key corners) you’re going to get caught. That’s because the audience is now unknown to you, everything is public sooner or later, and if you want to build a brand for the ages, you need to stand for something today and tomorrow and every day.
October 2, 2008
Squidoo is giving $2 per vote (up to $80,000 total) to charity. Visit this page, pick your charity and you’re done. There is no catch. One vote per person, feel free to organize mass group voting.
Thanks to every single person who helped us raise this money. More than 300,000 lensmasters and more than 80,000,000 visitors to the site contributed to our ability to make such a substantial contribution.
A nickel, a dollar, a dime… it adds up, drip, drip, drip. If the real world is about big wins, the web is about a long tail of little victories.
PS If you visit the Squidblog, you’ll see this post from Megan:
People online are real people.
If you send a nasty email, there’s a real human being on the other end who gets it.
If you flame in a forum, you’re wasting real people’s time.
If you spam someone, you’re really only making yourself look bad.
If you write IN ALL CAPITAL LETTERS it sounds like shouting.
If you want something to happen your way, try asking instead of demanding.
If you give, you’ll probably wind up getting, too.
If you blog just to pick fights, don’t be surprised when people don’t trust you.
If you collaborate, say thanks.
If you’re independent, say no thanks.
If you like someone, tell them.
If you don’t, walk away from the computer.
If you’re giving feedback, lead with just one good thing.
If you’re getting feedback, realize that the person must care a lot to have sent it.
If you goof, apologize.
If you apologize, mean it.
If you smile, mean that too.
If you don’t like something, don’t do it.
If you do like something, spread it.
But far far more important:
Give people a break.
The break you probably deserve yourself.
People are out to do good, 99% of the time.
You probably are too.
Say thanks out loud and a lot.
Try making someone’s day.
Chances are they’ll make yours in return.
[Thanks to Debi for the photo]
October 1, 2008
In high school, I coached the school quiz bowl team. We made it to the finals. The last question was to name the first man-made satellite. Our team buzzed in and said "Sputnik" to win the city championships. Of course, we didn’t win, because the host said we were wrong. The right answer, he said, was "Sputnik 1".
Playing Trivial Pursuit years later with family, the question to win the game was, "What is the official color worn during the world Ping Pong championships?" My team argued back and forth between black and brown and finally picked black. "No," we were told. "The right answer is ‘dark’."
And on a recent math test, the challenge for students to answer each question to the nearest tenth. Question five was something like, "what is 10.2 plus 1.8?" Answering "12" would cost you a point, apparently, because the correct answer is 12.0.
Oh.
Please understand that I have no problem at all with precision. Precision is great, it’s essential to engineering and to the function of many elements of society. It’s almost impossible to be on time without precision, and quality depends on it. But when we reward people for senseless precision (and punish them randomly for not guessing what we actually meant when we asked a question) then all we’re doing is muddying the waters about what matters and what doesn’t. Is there a difference between the Dow falling 107.4 points and it falling nearly 1%? If not, don’t try to wow me with needless precision please.
This baseless precision fetish has infected all of the soft arts, of course. Now, we reward students far more for following specific instructions for an essay and not nearly enough for saying something original, powerful or useful.
I want precision where it matters, but only there. And dark is not a color.
September 30, 2008
…that you’re afraid of.
And it’s easy to be afraid of something that you don’t understand.
September 29, 2008
How much of your day is spent doing things you have to do (as opposed to the things you get to do.)
In my experience, as people become successful and happier (the subset that are both) I find that the percentage shifts. These folks end up spending more and more time on the get to tasks.
You’d think that this happens because their success permits them to skip or delegate the have to tasks. And to some extent, this is true. But far more than that, these people redefine what they do all day. They view the tasks as opportunities instead of drudge work.
A simple redefinition transformed the quality of their day, and more important, the perception of their work.
