Infinite isn’t what it used to be. There used to be an infinite number of stars, and probably an infinite number of kids in high school who didn’t like you very much, but that was about it when it came to a typical human being’s interaction with the uncountable.
But now, infinite is everywhere.
There’s an infinite number of books at Barnes and Noble (you can’t read em all, in fact, you can’t even find enough time to know the name of every one, or even just the first name of every author.)
There’s certainly, for all intents and purposes, an infinite number of web pages. And even Facebook, just a small subset of the web, has an infinite number of friends for you to make.
That’s where search comes in. Search makes the infinite finite (at least for a while). With search, we turn the infinite selection on Amazon into a nearly manageable finite selection. Except search (no matter where you look) is pretty lame, and it doesn’t really turn infinite collections into manageable choices. There are thousands of Godins on Facebook, too many for me to count (though one Godin friended a family member and it appears she’s trying to friend every Godin in the world–even though my name is a three-generation old fiction). There’s a lot of haystacks out there, and the needles are really good at hiding.
There are essentially an infinite number of good causes to contribute to, an infinite number of people to help, an infinite number of great records to listen to as well. The problem is finding them. Connecting. Feeling like you were successful and not missing something you really needed or wanted.
Search on the web is now grappling with this. If you know 100,000 words, names and brand names, there are now a hundred trillion different searches you can do… with only two words in combination. No, you might not want to search on Starbucks Matzoh, but you could. Just knowing what to search for is now as difficult as the search itself.
In the face of infinity, many of us are panicking and searching less, going shallower, relying on bestseller lists and simple recommendations. The vast majority of Google searches are just one or two words, and obvious ones at that. The long tail gets a lot shorter when you don’t know what’s out there.
Organizations that can help us manage the infinite are facing a huge (can I say it? nearly infinite) opportunity.
April 28, 2008
If you have a Squidoo lens, I hope you’ll check this out. (Type in the name of a lens, like sinclairlewis or michelangelosdavid or rick-roll).
Taking it a step further, the idea of being able to check everything you need to know about your blog or website (any website) seems like a powerful business for someone… Technorati and Compete are doing things like this, but no one seems to put it all in one place.
You would think that the Red parking lot, parking lot #8 at JFK, would be the last place you’d find someone who actually cared, never mind someone who pretended to (a pale imitation).
And yet, that’s where Greg works. Greg was the airport parking lot attendant who found the bag carelessly left behind on the third floor of the garage. I called, he grabbed it and secured it for me.
He even turned down the reward I offered him. Next time you fly American, be sure to thank the cashiers as you drive out.
Thanks, Greg. People who care are in short supply. I hope to repay the favor one day.
April 27, 2008
I spent part of the day in New York yesterday.
First stop, an expensive sporting goods store that prides itself on service. I bought some skates, paid and then asked the security guy (the one with all the shelves behind his desk, where people check stuff they bring in) if I could leave my stuff there for ten minutes while I ran an errand.
"No, I’m really really sorry," he said, "but we can’t take responsibility and I’ll get in big trouble if I do. I know it’s a hassle for you…"
I left and did my errand. A little later, on my way back to the car, I had one last street to cross. Suddenly, a motorcade of 20 police cars, sirens roaring, whizzed by, blocking the crosswalk and making me miss the light (if anyone knows why NY City cops are suddenly doing this a lot, please let me know. Where are they going? Why? If it’s an emergency, why don’t they go faster? [Ari knows]).
As I waited for the cops to go by, I watched a meter guy walk up to my car and slowly start to write me a parking ticket. I was being penalized for being a good citizen and waiting for the endless motorcade!
I ran up and begged.
He turned to me and said, "I’m so sorry. I know what a hassle it is, but once I press this yellow button here, I have to finish. But I bet if you go to court and complain, they’ll waive it." Then he reached into his pocket and handed me a lollipop. "Thanks for coming to New York, and I’m sorry."
Except this story isn’t true.
The guy at the sporting goods store just grunted at me. Explained it wasn’t his job and just dared me to return the skates I had just bought. And the meter guy didn’t even bother to acknowledge me or make eye contact.
No, you can’t always hire exceptional people for these jobs. No, you can’t always invest enough time to train them sufficiently. But yes, you can make, "pretending you care," a barely acceptable alternative.
It doesn’t take much to take the edge off an encounter.
[Boy does this sound cynical. How inauthentic! How manipulative! Isn’t it better to just hire people who actually care? Of course it is. But as far as I can tell, that’s a lot harder than it looks–because so many organizations are organized around policies, not caring, and because so many employees have been trained not to care.
So, the essence of the lesson here is this: if people start out pretending to care, next thing you know, they actually do care. They like the positive feedback and they like the way being kind makes them feel. It spreads. It sticks.]
Just about a year ago, I published The Dip.
It turned out to be one of my most successful books. Perhaps you have a copy–which I appreciate more than you can guess. Now, here’s the favor:
A year later, would you mind sharing your copy? Take it off the shelf and loan it to someone. Someone at work or in your family, perhaps. If I could double the number of people who read the book, it would be pretty cool.
Thanks.
April 26, 2008
Who is Brad Pitt? [insert your brand/name here]
Get me Brad Pitt!
Get me someone like Brad PItt, but cheaper!
Get me a newer version of Brad Pitt!
Who is Brad Pitt?
[original source unknown–though readers have suggested Mary Astor, Kirk Douglas, Jack Elam and of course, Ricardo Montalban!].
[Leon adds a few more:
– I wonder what happened to Brad Pitt.
– Get Brad Pitt back.
– Get me someone like Brad Pitt, who was around the same time as Brad Pitt. ]
Of course, it’s hard to tell where you are when it’s about you.
April 25, 2008
This is a truth of the Internet: When traffic comes to your site without focused intent, it bounces.
75% of all unfocused visitors leave within three seconds.
Any site, anywhere, anytime. 75% bounce rate within three seconds.
By unfocused, I mean people who visit via Digg or Stumbleupon or even a typical Google search. If your site is spammy or clearly selling something, the number is certainly higher. If you’re getting traffic because you have a clever domain name, it might be even higher. I don’t know of many examples where it is lower.
It’s good for your ego, that’s certain. You can brag about hits if you can get away with it, or pageviews or visits. But the bounce rate is still that scary 75%.
So, what should you do about silly traffic?
The tempting thing to do is to obsess over it. If you could just convert 10% of the bouncers, you’d be increasing your conversion rate by almost a third! (7.5% is about a third of the 25% who don’t bounce). There’s a million things you can do to focus on this, and almost none of them will show you much improvement.
One other thing you can do is get hooked on the traffic, focus on building your top line number. Keep working on sensational controversies or clever images, robust controversies or other link bait that keeps the silly traffic coming back
I think it’s more productive to worry about two other things instead.
1. Engage your existing users far more deeply. Increase their participation, their devotion, their interconnection and their value.
2. Turn those existing users into ambassadors, charged with the idea of bring you traffic that is focused, traffic with intent.
“I’m just looking,” is no fun for most retailers. Yet they continue to pay high rent for high-traffic locations, and invest time and money in window displays. Very few retailers lament all the traffic that walks by the front door without ever walking in. A long time ago, they realized that the shoppers with focused intent are far more valuable. Smart retailers work hard to get focused people to walk in the door and to keep the riff raff walking on down the sidewalk.
Your website can do the same thing. In fact, you might want to make it more likely that bouncers bounce, not less, but only if those changes increase the results you get from the visitors you truly care about.
April 24, 2008
The best way to keep your bank from getting robbed is to not open a bank.
Sometimes, in our zeal to avoid loss at all costs, we focus too hard on the false positives (that guy might be a robber) and not enough on the false negatives (we just turned away a good prospect).
I just discovered that my gmail spam filter has been blocking orders from Google checkout! Astonishing.
I have also heard from two people who applied to my internship and never got the note I sent announcing that we’d completed our hiring cycle. (I hope to report more on the intern program in a month or two). Stopping spam is a worthless endeavor when you also stop non-spam.
Tolerating some noise and shoplifting and cranky customers is part of the deal. Better to be too open than too closed, I think.
April 23, 2008
Are you better at what you do than you were a month or two ago?
A lot better?
How did you get better? What did you read or try? Did you fail at something and learn from it? Does that mindless stuff you do at work when the boss isn’t looking (or all those meetings you go to are all those emails you answer) make you better or just pass the time?
If you got better faster, would that be a good thing? How could you make that happen?
A lot of questions so early in the morning, but the truth is that marketing rewards improvement. It didn’t used to. It used to reward stability. Corn Flakes are Corn Flakes.
You probably get feedback from customers. Sometimes you even get letters.
Occasionally (unfortunately), it’s negative.
Two weeks ago, I left my car at (an expensive) parking garage in midtown New York. When I got back four hours later, I discovered that they had left the engine running the entire time. That, combined with the $30 fee and the nasty attitude of the attendant led me to write a letter to the management company.
The response: it was my fault. When I dropped off the car, I should have taught the attendant how to turn off my Prius.
What’s the point of a letter like that? Why bother taking the time? It’s not even worth the stamp. Does the writer expect me to say, “Oh, great point! Sorry to have bothered you. I’m an idiot! In fact, I’m so stupid, I’ll go out of my way to park there again next time…”
It’s pretty simple. The only productive response to a critical letter or piece of a feedback from a customer is, “You’re right…”
You’re right, I can see that you are annoyed.
You’re right, that is frustrating.
You’re right, with the expectations you had, it’s totally understandable to feel the way you do.
You’re right, and we’re really sorry that you feel that way.
Every one of these statements is true, each one is something you are willing to put into writing. It validates the writer, thanks them for sharing the frustration and gives you a foundation for an actual dialogue.
But isn’t this pandering? I don’t think so. The writer is right. They are frustrated. His opinion is his opinion, and if you don’t value it, you’re shutting down something useful.
How about, ‘you’re right, it’s reasonable to expect that we would have turned off your Prius. We’ll post a note for all our attendants so they pay better attention in the future.’ A note like this makes the customer happy and it makes your garage work better.
Someone wrote to me last week, complaining that the handwritten inscription in a book I had signed for his colleague wasn’t warm enough. I responded that he was right to be frustrated, and that if his expectations had been so high, I should either have lowered them or exceeded them. Of course he was right… with expectations like that, it’s not surprising that he was disappointed.
Arguing with a customer who takes the time to write to you does two things: it keeps them from ever writing again and it costs you (at least) one customer. Perhaps that’s your goal. Just take a moment before you launch an unhappy former customer into the world.
April 22, 2008
