Tracksuit CEO

By Daniel Hope

photo credit Adland

I thought Make My Logo Bigger cream only worked on logos.  But look what happened when I used it on the Panel Picker Thumbs Up icon the great folks at SXSW sent me.

Before —————– After

If you would like to get the word out about your panel proposal and that small thumbs up icon just isn’t doing it for you have two options:

You can order your own tube of Make My Logo Bigger cream

or

Go visit the SXSW website where they now offer the icon in small and LARGE!

Speaking of shamelessly promoting panel ideas, go and check out the proposal me and Scotty Iseri put together: The Value of Wasting Valuable Company Time.

* I may have used too much cream on this one

By Daniel Hope

What if employers encouraged workers to set up Facebook accounts?
or
What if employees used their LOLcat browsing time to promote their company’s product?

That is precisely what Scotty Iseri and I are proposing in our panel: The Value of Wasting Valuable Company Time.

This is a very exciting topic and it’s one that employees and employers need to be talking about.  Employers are increasingly encroaching on their worker’s personal time.  Scotty put it well when he said that if employers expect workers to answer their Blackberry at home then they should expect their employees to answer personal email at work (at the very least).

So what happens when employers and employees sit down at a table to discuss this topic?  What are the gives-and-takes?  Will employees and management ever see eye-to-eye?

That’s what we will find out at SXSW 2010.  So please go now and place your vote for our panel, it’s going to be a blast!

Vote here:  The Value of Wasting Valuable Company Time

By Daniel Hope

This morning I go to log in to my Twitbin sidebar to have a quick look at my @replies.  In case you don’t know what I’m referring to, @replies are responses from other Twitter users who have included your username (in my case @tracksuitceo) in their tweet.  This is done either in response to one of your tweets or they are simply mentioning your name in their post.

But instead of seeing my @replies I see the error message above.

In the interim while Twitter is offline I decided to do some macro-blogging (as opposed to micro-blogging).  I want to consider what would happen if Twitter never came back online?

For my Facebook status I posted: Twitter is still offline. How am I supposed to get any work done?

I was only half kidding.  Twitter has actually become a vital tool that I use regularly for personal and professional purposes.  Vero Pepperrell, the UK Social Media blogger, replied in frustration, apprarently there is information she needs that is only available in other people’s Twitter feeds.

This really is no laughing matter and the possibility of permanently losing all of your tweets is not so far fetched.  Just ask my friend Jon Carroll who occasionally wears a t-shirt, sent to him Twitter when they lost his original Twitter account.  I repeat: they lost his entire account!  It was on a server that was fried and that was that.  A “Wearing my Twitter T-Shirt” shirt is great and all but hardly makes up for what was lost and the effort (not to mention wit) that was put into crafting those tweets.

The Value of Trust
How important is trust when it comes to online presence?  I am looking forward to the release of the book Trust Agents by Chris Brogan and Julien Smith.  This question is what the book addresses and judging by Chris’s success at gaining my trust, as well as the trust of thousands of others, I know this will be an informative and compelling read.  I expect this book will become staple reading for anyone looking to increase influence or enhance reputation online. 

The Importance of Listening

In my previous post I talk about the importance of listening when it comes to Social Media.  Social Media is as much about receiving information as it is about pushing it out.  The good news is that Social Media offers so many ways to listen.

At last night’s SEO Meetup I heard Ben Wills of Ontolo talk about identifying the websites that should be linking to you.  Ben talked about the importance of strategically tracking what is being said online about you and your industry.

Ben suggests reading Andy Beal’s Online Reputation Management Beginner’s Guide.  Here is a tip from that guide:

Create custom RSS feeds based on keyword searches: Feedster.com, Technorati.com, IceRocket.com, Google.com/blogsearch, Blogpulse.com, MSN Spaces, Yahoo! News, Google News, MSN News and PubSub.

When the Fail Whale Surfaces

Artwork by Etherbrian

Twitter is a tool that trust (or one that I want to trust) and it is also one that use for listening to the community; listening to what is being said about me and about others.  But what happens when my listening tool is rendered useless?

I know that Twitter actually fell victim to a Denial of Service attack this morning, but still each time the Fail Whale appears the trust we have in Twitter is strained.

I love Twitter and will use it religiously … until something better comes along.

In the comments:  What if Twitter never came back?

On Twitter: #permafailwhale

  
               Follow me on Twitter

By Daniel Hope

As if any of the major airlines needed another headache, United Airlines so alienated one of their customers that he felt forced to produce this song and video to get their attention:

Dave Carroll had the misfortune of band’s instruments manhandled by United baggage handlers, as he and the rest of his band watched on in horror.  Apparently throwing a $3,000 guitar into the luggage hold of an airplane can actually do some damage, which is absolutely what happened.

Carroll tells his story here of his 6 month saga of endless blame shifting and telephone transfers.  It all ended when a Ms. Irlweg denied his claim.  To which he responded:

In my final reply to Ms. Irlweg I told her that I would be writing three songs about United Airlines and my experience in the whole matter. I would then make videos for these songs and share them on YouTube, inviting viewers to vote on their favourite United song. My goal: to get one million hits in one year.

At the time of this post this particular video is at 3,913,468 views!

This must be an incredibly painful lesson for the battered airline to learn but it is such an important example of how powerful word-of-mouth communication can be.  In this case the word-of-mouth communication has been amplified by social media.

As social media becomes increasingly popular, this type of thing is going to happen more often.  Each social media outlet is becoming its own little hometown where good news spreads fast and bad news spreads faster.

In the small town of social media it is more important than ever to actively listen.  A common misconception about social media is that it is only for pushing out information.  Social media is great for pushing out information, but if you are not using it as a listening tool then you may end up like United’s own Ms. Irlweg, immortalized in song and video for hassling the very people who keep her company afloat (if only just barely).

Twitter is an excellent listening tool, with its @ reply and # hashtag searches.  A friend of mine joked about Rush Limbaugh’s Twitter account claiming that he has not once updated it because he is such a good listener.  But seriously, all of this web 2.0 media is about facilitating conversation.  Conversation is not just about listening or talking, it is a careful balance of both.

The next time you interact with others on any social network think about your actions and decide if they are a good balance of both talking and listening.

Follow me on Twitter

By Daniel Hope

Vs.
Photo Credits: NPR

I wrote recently about the use of Bing in its past tense, inspired by a hilarious and fateful conversation Scotty Iseri had with his boss.  I have been trying Bing out a bit lately and have been impressed with its search results. 

The Vanity Folder

One thing I teach my students is to set up a vanity folder in their RSS reader.  This is a folder where you unapologetically subscribe to all things pertaining only to you (your name, your company, etc.).  In this folder I tell people to include Google Alerts and other search engine results.  Getting Google Alerts via RSS is a little tricky but this tutorial should make it easy.

Practicing what I preach, I performed a quick search for Daniel Hope on Bing:

Just as I expected, the top spot is taken by violinist Daniel Hope.   Daniel Hope is a British musician who grew up hanging out with Yehudi Menuhin and Ravi Shankar.  He has even jammed with The Police on his 239 year old instrument (purchased from Menuhin on a 15 year note).  Judging by fame and talent alone, the UK’s Daniel Hope deserves the front page in any search engine’s results.

But look here at the #3 spot:

Who is this impostor Daniel Hope talking about LOLcats?  Oh wait . . . that’s me!  The Daniel Hope who began writing under the pseudonym Tracksuit CEO; whose true identity was probably one of the worst kept secrets in the history of anonymity.

When I began blogging in June of 2007, the violinist Daniel Hope dominated the first pages of Google, Yahoo! and all the other search engines.  But my current place in the search engine results is a testament to the SEO power of the blog. 

Here are the steps I took:

• Started a blog (the original was a free blog on WordPress)
• Posted original content (and kept it current)
• Encouraged conversation (comments, links, etc.)
• Posted my blog links to Social Networks (Digg, Delicious, etc.)

These are powerful steps and can be applied universally to any blog in any industry.  So while the violinist Daniel Hope was busy practicing his arpeggios, the blogger Daniel Hope was busy practicing his linkbaiting. 

Speaking of linkbaiting, the title of this post mentions a smackdown.  This may be a bit sensational; no suplexes were dealt and no atomic elbows were dropped, but it does make for a great title.  And anyone who has practiced the dark art of linkbaiting knows that each campaign’s success hinges on a great title.

If I ever do have the singular pleasure of meeting the other Daniel Hope, I hope we can both agree that the Internet is big enough for the two of us.  If not, I think we should meet on neutral territory; settling our differences with a dance-off.

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