Search is powerful, essential and lucrative. Google demonstrated just how much value can be created when you let people easily find what they want.
Sort, on the other hand, is easily overlooked and something that most of us can work with.
For example, the way a restaurant sorts the wines on the wine list at will have a dramatic impact on what people order. If you list the cheap wines first, people will probably end up spending less. And when your wine list migrates to an iPad and you let the diner sort by price, popularity and other indicators, consumption patterns will instantly change.
Hotels.com, Zagats, Kayak and hundreds of other sites let you sort by quality, ranking and price. Not only does this change the way we choose, it also changes the behavior of the those being ranked! Once a metric for ranking becomes popular (or the default) then those being ranked will work to make their ranking go up. No surprise. Then how come Airbnb.com doesn't let users rank places by the quality of their reviews? It would cost them close to nothing, but it would dramatically change how hard a location works to earn good ratings.
When someone encounters what you make, you must make a choice about the order of what's on offer, and you also make the choice as to whether or not you'll let the user sort by other attributes. Typepad doesn't provide me with a way to let you sort the posts on this blog by popularity, but it would certainly change how you consumed it if they did.
Alphabetical, numerical and first-come sorts by default are primarily a copout. They imply that a simple search is what the user is after, but that's almost never the case. Users want you to build information into the order of things. When we have the guts (and tech) to provide relevant sorting, we present a point of view and train our users as well as our providers.
When we rank people, or the products we create, we have the opportunity to not only change the way people select, we can also change what we make.
July 20, 2013
No one talks about what color the success is, just how it smells.
When Amanda Palmer was busking on the streets of Harvard Square, she made enough to pay her rent. She supported herself, she made it work. She didn't plan on busking, think about busking or get ready to busk. She did it and she succeeded. One person, ten people in the crowd… Didn't matter, she was working, she was a pro.
I sold my first book project (I owned half of it) for $5,000. I didn't worry about how big the advance was, I celebrated that I had a publisher. I followed that up a (very long) year later with another book (I owned half of that one, too) which I sold for even less. But now I had TWO publishers, and stories to go with each.
You will be labeled, like it or not. If you earn the label of, "person who builds things, ships them and sells them to someone who values them…" you're way ahead of the pack. You're going to be doing this for a long time. When you have the chance, engage with the market, declare victory, make the sale.
More chocolate chip cookies don't smell that much better than just a few.
July 19, 2013
than any other profession I can imagine. What an opportunity…
If we were building bridges this badly, the safety of our nation would be in doubt.
The local sub shop makes a fine sub, but has a dumb name, a typo in its sign, no attention paid to customer service and on and on. Same for the big hospital down the street and the politician you wish would get a clue.
There are three reasons for this:
1. Everyone is a marketer, so there's a lot more of it being done.
2. Most people who do marketing are actually good at doing something else (like making subs) and they're merely making this up as they go along.
3. There's no standards manual, no easy way to check your work. Without a rule book, it's hard to follow the rules. (For the innovators and creators out there, this is great news, of course.)
The cure? Noticing. Notice what is working in the real world and try to figure out why. Apply it to your work. Repeat.
Learn to see, to discern the difference between good and bad, between useful and merely comfortable.
And after you learn, speak up. Noticing doesn't work if you don't care and if you don't take action.
July 18, 2013
I've posted five that will make you think and get you all the way to September.
If you want to understand how the NSA thinks, be sure to dig out a copy of Dunn's Conundrum. Funny and probably true.
PS today only, Derek's classic bestseller is on a huge Kindle daily sale.
July 17, 2013
It's so easy to have a black and white list of the things you're not capable of doing. A hard limit, a boundary that says you just don't have the genes to make art, speak up, write, give a speech, be funny, be charming, be memorable, come through in the clutch, survive an ordeal like this one… it's easy to give up.
In response, we ask, "not even once?" Never once have you been funny or inspired or connected? Not even once have you been trusted, eager or original? Not even once have you written a sentence that someone else was happy to read, or asked a question that needed to be asked?
Now that we know it's possible, the real question is, "how often can you do it again?"
The connection economy is built on ecosystems, and they depend on partnerships.
- Don't change the rules.
- If you have to change the rules, tell your partners in advance.
- And even if you can't do #2, at least tell them the new rules.
Trust is precious and easily wasted, and guessing is a lousy foundation for future progress.
July 16, 2013
Our series continues…
Dennis O. Smith wrote in with this question about Unleashing the Ideavirus: "I understand the concept of spreading the idea, but how can you control or direct that growth? 'Going viral' is great for fast growth and sharing of your idea, but are there mechanisms to steer it, trim it, shape it, etc."
The reason that so many people catch a cold every year is that no one is trying to control where it goes. The reason that Wikipedia is so robust is that control is decentralized. The reason that there's a huge disconnect between corporate marketing and ideas that spread is that the culture of contagious ideas is anethema to the command, control and responsibility mindset of the industrial marketer.
There's a huge difference between, "I want people to talk about this," and "I want to control what people say."
But, and it's a huge but, the marketer decides where the virus starts. She decides who the first sneezers will be. She decides on what easy-to-use tools may be made available to the group that she's identified. These decisions go a very long way to determining what happens next.
Napster and Facebook were both optimized for college students and were intentionally seeded there. Sure, the founders could have picked nursing homes or military academies, but the character and culture of the college campus ensured that not only would these ideas spread, but that they would spread in the desired direction.
If you want to spread an idea among policy wonks, don't involve People-magazine style celebrities, or aim for big numbers. Instead, find the hive that matches the group you'd like to be discussing your idea, and (this is the big and) create an idea that not only interests this group, but is easy and fun to spread precisely among this group.
[When I launched this book, I knew which group I wanted to read it. So I wrote in a tone that appealed to this group, placed a long excerpt in Fast Company, which was sort of patient zero for this group, and then gave the book away for free (it's still free online) with explicit instructions to share and email it to people who might become engaged with it.
No, I couldn't control what would happen, or where it would go, or what the impact might be, but by picking the 3,000 people who got it first, and then making it easy for this group to share it, it quickly got to over a million readers. This wasn't the fastest way to get to a big number, but it was the best way to get to the right number and kind of people.
The temptation is to be big, when the real goal ought to be effective.]
PS last time I checked, you can get a used copy of the 13-year old edition of the book for a penny. You may notice that I've chosen not to update past blog posts, past books or past websites. That's because each is a testament to when it was written, as opposed to being a constantly updating resource. Even so, I hope these older books can add value and give you perspective.
PPS Fritz Lieber wrote about the out of control ideavirus in his short story "Rump-Titty-Titty-Tum-TAH-Tee" published more than fifty years ago.
July 15, 2013
You need to choose.
Customers hear you say, "here, I made this," and they buy or they don't buy.
Clients say to you, "I need this," and if you want to get paid, you make it.
The customer, ironically, doesn't get something custom. The key distinction is who goes first, who gets to decide when it's done.
The provider is rarely better than the clients he is able to attract. On the other hand, the creator often gets the customers she deserves.
I understand why we may have evolved to have the automatic, out-of-control feeling of embarrassed in some situations.
But is it useful?
Has being embarrassed ever helped you accomplish anything useful? We can (and should) work to eliminate it from our emotional vocabulary. If it's worth doing, it's worth not being embarrassed about. And if it's not worth doing, don't do it.
One reason to avoid doing something is because it leads to embarrasment. A better reason is because it's not the right thing.
July 14, 2013
The Lone Ranger turned out to be one of the biggest movie flops in history. The movie (before marketing) cost more than a quarter of a billion dollars to make.
Here's the thing: thousands of people touched this project. From the dozens of well-paid and ostensibly talented executives to the marketing and the make up and the foley folks—this wasn't a random accident, it was the output of a deliberate effort.
Each of these people got handed a turkey, and some money, along with instructions on how to somehow improve it, promote it or otherwise dress it up. Alas, no one had the guts and the leverage to say, "stop."
Basting the turkey might sound like your job description, but ultimately, we're known by the projects we get involved in. Saying "no" or even "stop" is the hallmark of the professional you want on your team.
July 13, 2013
