LISTEN TO THIS | Focus Groups
I’m a podcast junkie, and LISTEN TO THIS is a recap of my favorite tidbits, soundbites and short bursts of brilliance that I have to share with everyone who will listen. After digesting hours and hours of podcasts, here’s the best 9 minutes from this week.
I LIKE TALKING TO PEOPLE AND THE OPPORTUNITY TO LEARN SOMETHING
HERE’S THE THING | David Letterman
BIAS ONE: I love Alec Baldwin’s Here’s the Thing. He interviews fascinating people, and his interview style is sincere, engaging, insightful, and witty. I get an instant smile whenever I check my subscription list and see a new episode has downloaded.
BIAS TWO: I’m a huge David Letterman fan. His show started just as I was old enough to start staying up that late. Carson was awesome, truly the best, but I grew up with Letterman. So here’s the thing, Letterman rarely gives interviews which made his detailed career log fascinating to hear. If you’re not as enamored with these two icons as I am, at least catch Dave’s story of his mother complaining about Ed Sullivan at 6:40 in the podcast.
A COMPLETE NARCISSISTIC ACT
SIX PIXELS OF SEPARATION #310 | The Startup of You with Ben Casnocha
Six bookmarks. In 44 minutes! That’s a bookmark every 7 minutes. Mitch Joel and Ben Casnocha challenged each other and me in the process with plenty of practical career practices for professionals. Topics covered: developing an entrepreneur mindset, taking risks, using technology to make you smarter, ways to learn, and investing in yourself. You’ve heard some of these tips before, but the way Mitch and Ben tackle them bring new life and energy to actually taking steps forward. The climax of the conversation comes at 32:20 when Mitch asks about Ben’s use of the word “Hustle.” Check it out.
THE LANGUAGE OF BUSINESS
ON THE MEDIA | Public Relations for Dictators, Photographing Death, and More
My favorite part in this podcast is actually an excerpt from another podcast Lexicon Valley, but I decided to call out where I heard it first. Jump in at 38:33 in the On the Media podcast or at 14:56 in the original Lexicon Valley where Bob Garfield and Mike Vuolo discuss the work of grad student Ben Schmidt who compared Mad Men scripts to other writings from the sixties to identify anachronistic phrases. For example, focus groups existed in the sixties, but the phrase “focus groups” did not. You NEED TO listen to it.
Podcast Test Drives:
Slate Presents Lexicon Valley - clever, nerdy (not geeky), and absolutely fascinating. It’s an audio version of a weekly language observation paper.
Unsubscribing from:
Sales Guy Quick and Dirty Tips - honestly, I took the easy way out this week. He hasn’t produced a new episode since April 20. NPR Topics: Business Story of the Day has racked up 10 unplayed episodes, but they are daily and so short that I keep hope alive thinking I can scan for the right topics or marathon listen to them and catch up.
OTHER PODCAST POSTS YOU MIGHT ENJOY:
What about you? What podcasts did you enjoy this week and what do you recommend? Leave your favorites in the comments below.
Measuring Online Influence
As social animals, humans have been trying to influence each other since long before 108 suitors gathered to woo Penelope in Odysseus’ absence. With today’s options of instant exploring and ever-expanding social networks, our opportunities to sway one another have exploded. Determining who has influence and influencing those influencers is every marketers dream. The recent FIR Live panel discussion on influencer marketing jump started my mental gears into a grinding quest to understand how to effectively assess influence. Despite Klout’s claim that it “measures your influence on your social networks,” there is no quick fix to quantifying an individual’s online impact. Kred’s CEO Andrew Grill, one of the four panelist, summed up the dangers of companies relying solely on a score:
One key take-way is the real need for education to dispel the myth that anyone with a high influencer score is automatically valuable to a brand. We need to go “beyond the score” to find out why someone is influential. As David rightly stated, even with the tools available, you still need humans who know what they are looking for to make sense of the information you uncover.
The other key takeaway is that you as a brand or agency need to know exactly what your goal is before you even start the search for influencers or advocates.
My key takeaway was how the quality of the content plays as big as a role as the scope of the influencer’s network. As this realization hit me during the conversation, I quickly sketched out a rough model.
With a few days of digesting and noodling, here’s my refined take:
LOW-IMPACT
When someone with a micro network shares a recommendation with little emotional appeal it doesn’t have much of an impact. Example: my father tries a new restaurant and posts on Facebook how much he likes it. A few of his friends may try it, but it’s not going viral.
FIRST CIRCLE
A influential personality with a macro network shares something with low emotional content. It has a huge audience and creates some action but does not experience much second and third circle sharing. Example: Lady Gaga tweets about her new perfume. She has over 25,000,000 followers on Twitter. Many of them adore her and will buy her perfume, but not neccesarily recommend it to their individual followers.
SHARING
A story with strong, compelling emotional appeal that starts in micro networks. The content drives the spreading as it gets shared and shared again. Example: A family where the mom has breast cancer experiences an additional unexpected financial hardship when their only car breaks down. An online fundraiser gets established and within hours they’ve raised enough to repair the car.
HEAVY-IMPACT
An influencer with a big following shares compelling content. Example: Oprah’s book club - when she selects and recommends a book, she shares why she liked it so much and what it meant to her. Her emotional testimonials get her fans to share her recommendations with others.
What do you think of this simple model? I’d love your feedback and reactions in the comments.
LISTEN TO THIS | Bro Call
I’m a podcast junkie, and LISTEN TO THIS is a recap of my favorite tidbits, soundbites and short bursts of brilliance that I can’t help but share with everyone who will listen. After digesting hours and hours of podcasts, here’s the best 9 minutes from what I heard this week.
THE JOHNNY CARSON OF PODCASTING
Thanks to Myke Hurley and Terry Lucy for inviting Dan Benjamin to switch sides and be interviewed instead of interviewing. Dan Benjamin is the Johnny Carson of podcasting. He’s thoughtful, authentic, funny, intelligent and a genuine giver. I am impressed by the quality of everything Dan does. His explanation of the Talk Show demonstrated a level of class that serves as a new personal standard for me to try to achieve. My favorite section of this Bro Show interview comes at 15:03 where Hurley asks about the current state of podcasting. Check it out.
TREAT A CUSTOMER AS THEY SHOULD BE
HBR IDEACAST | Who Your Customers Want to Become
“If customers don’t want to go where you want them to go, my goodness, you’re going to have a problem winning in the future.”
~ Michael Schrage
Michael Schrage is looking to update the question “What business are we in,” originally posed in Ted Levitt’s Marking Myopia, by asking, “What are we asking our customers to become?” The question provides a slightly different angle of attack in approaching your business strategy. If you want a quick intro to the idea, skip to 4:28 where he illustrates the premise with Disney princesses.
EMOTIONAL EXPERTISE
THE MOTH | What Can’t be Fixed
Martha Manning tells a powerful story of serving as a therapist for Annie who suffered from a terminal case of breast cancer. I highly recommend that you listen to the entire story (it’s only 16 minutes long) and that you have a tissue on hand when you do. Manning frames the journey with a powerful perspective that challenges what it really means to be an expert. At a minimum, catch Annie breaking the bad news of her diagnosis to Martha at 3:21.
Podcast Test Drives:
- WNYC’s Radiolab - well crafted and edited. Dan Benjamin recommended during his interview.
- On the Media - another exceptional WNYC show. This one recommended by Merlin Mann in his Back to Work Bulk Bag newsletter.
- Roderick on the Line - Clowns, pirates, and gangsters. Downright funny.
Unsubscribing from:
Get-It-Done Guy’s Quick and Dirty Tips to Work Less and Do More - one too many corny puns (like running the local prison’s literary book club - Prose and Cons).
OTHER PODCAST POSTS YOU MIGHT ENJOY:
What about you? What podcasts did you enjoy this week and what do you recommend? Leave your favorites in the comments below.