The Power of Influence

I met a very interesting digital influencer today. His name is Ian Mckee, and he is the CEO of Vocanic – a leading digital and media monitoring / word of mouth marketing agency. Ian had great conviction to influence quite a few of us to think about the power of influence. He runs a blog by the same name, and its worth your time.

Ian’s Blog

Ian’s Interview to Channel News Asia about Word of Mouth Marketing

Now, he believes that there are influencers in every brand out there today – the digital ‘obsession-ist’ and the digital ‘terrorist’. The former would kill to protect your brand, the latter will not hesitate to kill you (and your brand) if he had a chance to. Focusing on the digital terrorists, these disgruntled folks have plenty of avenues to complain due to the vectors or tools available today. If they spend 15 minutes a day scanning through your product forums and web community and decide to drive away new users due to the pathetic product you have (that he believes will do more harm than good), you have a digital terrorist you need to manage.

And today’s monitoring tools like Brandtology can take all the sentiments from the internet, put it into a bucket and analyze it for you – a sentiment analyzer of sorts for your brand across the digital medium. And if the adjectives, tags and keywords found are positive, you know you are doing it right; if negative, fix it; if neutral, then be more remarkable – you do not strike as stellar.

So before you get to the tools, what does your gut say about what your influencers are feeling about you?

Now act.

2 Marketing Take Home Messages I found interesting

Saturdays are great to reflect back on your weeks learnings, activities and happenings (actually any day is). Being one such day for me, I stumbled across 2 interesting points for marketers and campaign managers. The first is more applicable in the offline setting, but lets try to extrapolate into the digital realm, while the second is right up the digital marketers alley.

1. Selling Features vs Benefits:  Feature is the physical attributes of your product, the components that make up the product, the small pieces that add up to the product you are trying to sell. On the other hand, benefit is the connection a customer feels when he / she uses (or potentially use) the product. For instance, the car you are trying to sell might have dual-powered engines, a robust ABS, leg space, and what not. They are all features. They become benefits when the consumer takes the car out for a test drive and feels the power in the veins; the key here is how to get the customer to test drive the car. Drawing parallels in the digital world,  Enterprise Software is something that could be the same for instance. Company A might offer you the best CRM, but Company B that offers good CRM on top of giving you a trial and free on the house first month of membership has a greater chance of getting you in than company A with a laundry list of features. So if you are a digital marketer, ask yourself if your current AdWords, Facebook  and Twitter strategy is getting you closer to where you can make the ultimate sell, a wind that sweeps your prospects away to say yes before they even realize.
2. The Art of Psychology in selling: Human Emotions play a big role in selling. Sentiment analysis is driving social media and making selling more tangible. Understanding your brand sentiments in the social sphere can help you understand if you are doing something right. For instance, I got introduced to this concept called ‘Five Ideas that Matter‘ and the co-author Haydn Shaughnessy who talks about metatrends and the concept of connecting lexicons and emotions in measuring brand perception.

In a nutshell, the relevant questions to ask are:

• How will the person’s life be better, easier, or more fun with my product or service?
• Why will they want to tell their friends about my company?
• Without my product or service, what will the prospect be missing?
• How will the prospect justify this purchase to themselves or their spouse?

SIME Barcelona Registration Opens. Your SIME Experience is on us, for free!

SIME Barcelona June 16th opens its doors open for registration, and thanks to the City of Barcelona who have been lovely partners to work with, we are opening up the registration for free – your SIME experience is on us. And as its become part of the legend, we are thankful to our top notch speakers who have agreed to share their learnings with us and to party even harder to celebrate the digital scene and the personas.

Enter year 2 of SIME Barcelona, a half a day event featuring the best of SIME (speakers, content, discussions and party). Taking our learnings from 2009′s SIME Barcelona, SIME is once again bringing top minds to converge and discuss the digital world and this time adding in more flavor with a rock star, a criminal turned author cum director and many more.

We want you to enjoy the SIME journey with us, and we invite you to read up about the speakers, the agenda, and to register, to enjoy a quick download SIME version, a preview of sorts to the main Stockholm event in November.

• The Agenda
• The Speakers
• Register

Come, lets celebrate and learn the nuances of the digital world and explore greater digital opportunities.

Registration is right here

Very Welcome to the big SIME Day in Barcelona on the 16th of June!

The Business in Running a Marathon

“We’re world famous for being humble“: That’s how I used to portray MySQL AB for the press and for our user community. Humility and ambition is a great combination to rely upon when building a business, and when running long-distance. With Stockholm Marathon coming up in just a matter of days, here’s my take on what you can learn from running when founding an IT startup.

As an illustration of the similarity of business endurance with running stamina, I’m taking the Seven Steps of Runnism. Runnism is the Religion of Running, which I’m establishing with a combination of humour and seriousness. Yes, it has its own Twitter ID, its Facebook page, its web site, and its YouTube introductory video (and video explanation of the Seven Steps). And if you think the humble ambition of founding a world religion qualifies for proclaiming me insane, then I won’t argue with you.

Picture yourself running the Stockholm marathon (on the right, that’s me running my first Stockholm marathon in 2000). You’re well trained. At km 25, you’re not dead tired as you haven’t run into The Wall. You’re enjoying yourself. The crowd is cheering. The drums keep you running faster than you’d believed. You manage the high Västerbron bridge without walking, much less puking. The last 5-10 km, you will at times rely on sheer will power. When entering the Olympic Stadium, you’ve forgotten how tired you are. More crowds cheering! More music! Your name is publicly listed! You finish with a new personal record, exhausted but happy to have reached your goal.

How can we transport this picture into business? Your goal may be a public listing or a trade sale, or it may simply be a successful launch of a new Web 2.0 offering. The values that take you to your goal are similar in running and in business.

Let’s take a look at the Seven Steps, Runnism’s core beliefs:

1. A true Runnist lives life to the fullest. Running makes for a more profound life, a deeper understanding of yourself. So does establishing a new company. Had I not run a couple of marathons or established a couple of companies, I would have missed out on a lot of what makes life worth living.
2. A true Runnist values long-term health. Without long-term financial health, you’re unlikely to see credible value in a company. Sure, you can sacrifice long-term health and perhaps finish a race quicker. But why do you run? Hopefully not just to brag about your finish time. The analogy to a trade sale or an IPO should be apparent: You’re hopefully caring for your long-term reputation in the industry.
3. A true Runnist understands well-being doesn’t come without sacrifice. You cannot drink, eat or stay awake without certain constraints. You might even experience some initial resistance from your inner self, before running is second nature to you. To succeed in business, you’ll also need to focus, focus, focus. Say no. During hectic phases, there may be time for nothing more than your business.
4. A true Runnist competes only against his or her earlier self. Few of us think “I can do better than Larry Ellison”, or Haile Gebrselassie. And you don’t need to. Focus primarily on your own performance. And when running, unless you’re Haile, never mind the competition. In business, though, keep an eye on the competition; the Fourth Step doesn’t fully apply to business.
5. A true Runnist improves gradually, not overnight. Incremental improvement rules in running and in business alike! Small steps accumulate. You may at times progress quicker, and occasionally find a plateau. Expecting instant success will lead to disappointment, getting out of business, heading back for the couch.
6. A true Runnist may occasionally feel pain but seldom suffers. You may get a sore on your foot. You may even fall. Yet, if you listen to your body and don’t overdo it, those small nuisances are far overshadowed by the happiness endorphines. Similarly, non-entrepreneur friends may overinterpret the difficulties you occasionally go through in business.
7. A true Runnist sees running as a gift, not a burden. “Why on earth do you run, out of your own free will?” — I had a bit of that reasoning before becoming a runner. Nowadays, I reward myself for a job well done, by going out for a run, whatever the weather. In business, you’re also hardly likely to succeed if you see your job as a burden. Enjoy running! Enjoy your web startup!

Inspired to go out for a run, or would you prefer to work on your a Web 2.0 business? No need to choose. You can do both. Runners get more endurance for long-term undertakings, so worshipping physical well-being goes hand in hand with building business.

And, are you running the Stockholm Marathon 2010? Lucky you, if you are! When I wanted to register, it was too late. So this year, I’m missing a big, early-June Scandinavian, Interactive Media Event with over 20.000 highly energetic participants. But I’ll be sure to register in time for the slightly smaller event in November.

Links:

• Stockholm Marathon: http://www.stockholmmarathon.se/
• Runnism in Facebook: http://facebook.com/Runnism
• Runnism on Twitter: http://twitter.com/runnism
• Runnism.com: http://www.runnism.com/
• Runnism introductory video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vW5AuSEUbMw
• The Seven Steps of Runnism explained: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XKqv5reXONw

Featuring Kaj Arnö and 'The Kaj Korner' – SIME's very own guest blogger

Jim Morrisson, the frontman of the American band Doors was once quoted as saying

O great creator of being grant us one more hour to perform our art and perfect our lives

Its with great pleasure and happiness that we welcome Kaj Arnö as SIME’s guest blogger. Kaj, a digital explorer, more of a digital renaissance artist if I may will, enjoys a body painting art work as much as an elegant piece of python code and, at the SIME blog we have made a nice cosy corner for Kaj to talk; we plan to call it the “The Kaj Korner“. Featuring Kaj’s musings, The Kaj Korner promises to take an interesting personal twist on various aspects of the digital ecosystem – from art and coding to aesthetics and humanity, all around the digital ecosystem presenting a diverse mix of the flavors of the man.

Who is Kaj Arnö?

Kaj has a day job as VP MySQL Community at Sun Microsystems GmbH, currently being merged into Oracle. Aside from his day job his list of passion work runs quite deep. Founder of a running religion called “Runnism”, believer in the concept of Everyday Aesthete which has a digital / Internet / technology / communication core, while at the same time being fundamentally humanistic, he is a culmination of various interesting ideas, theories and concepts all layered around the digital realm making a fascinating personality to have around. And to add some more proof to the pudding, check his following footprints out (mostly Swedish)

Kaj’s Home Page
Kaj’s MySQL Musings
One of Kaj’s talks on social media

SIME caught up with Kaj over Skype to do a quick interview to introduce him to you, and check what he plans to write on at the Kaj Korner. Below is an audio embed of the interview, and a summarized text of the interview (6.18 minutes in total).

Very welcome Kaj. The stage is yours to inspire us, and as Jim Morrisson said, we hope SIME can add that extra layer for all of us to perfect our online personas.

Audio Interview

Introduction and What keeps me busy

I’m one of the MySQL AB oldtimers, joining the company in 2001 as VP Training. I had various other positions, VP Consulting, VP Engineering, VP Services, CIO, until I settled for VP Community in 2005. That means keeping the non-paying MySQL users happy — and MySQL has over 10 million of them. When Sun Microsystems acquired MySQL in 2008, I got the additional task of being MySQL Ambassador to Sun, meaning travelling over 200.000 km in one year meeting with customers, community and colleagues.

Now, with the process of Oracle acquiring Sun taking so long, I’m still with the Sun Germany legal entity and don’t ask me how things will work with Oracle, as the dust hasn’t settled yet. So you asked me what keeps me busy. With the year of uncertainty regarding the Oracle/Sun acquisition, I had some additional time to think. My thoughts went quite far away from managing the MySQL database user community, but are inside the realm of coping with today’s digital world, and combining its fast pace with some timeless values.

Tell us little about Running and Aesthetics

Running: I’m founding a new world religion, Runnism, the religion of running. I’m doing it tongue in cheek, with the Seven Steps of Runnism defining the credo a bit like the Ten Commandments. But I also seriously believe that running is good for you and that it’s good to worship physical well-being.

Aesthetics: That’s not religious to me, but I think we should surround ourselves with more beauty. That’s why I’m starting a website called “The Everyday Aesthete”, not just discussing how to put our many digital pictures to use, but developing some thinking on design, order, and being fooled by commercial interests.

What will be the focus of your writings?

So SIME, I think, is about the love of technology and of making business out of it. It’s also about communication and strategy. My writing will not be general buzzword dropping, but personal reflections on how to apply technology and social media for a better life, and not just for its own geeky sake. I attempt at building communities around my own reflections in two areas, Running and Aesthetics. That involves many digital and Web 2.0 aspects, branding, people, content production. And while my subjects may seem highly specialised, I hope to help my readers draw general conclusions on how to view digital life and how to make business in it.

If 2009 was the year of the recovery, what do you think 2010 holds?

Well this year I’ve already spent 4 days stranded on the wrong continent due to volcanic activities. And you talk about bad economics, that’s not just Iceland and it won’t end with Greece. But I don’t believe in doomsday 2010. The digital world is full of business opportunities, and we’ve still just seen the beginning of how to apply technology to our daily lives.

The State of the Internet driven by power of mobile

Morgan Stanley has published a very concrete mega trend report on the power of mobile overwhelming the desktop as being the defacto internet device moving forward. Taking into account various communication channels, physcographic behavior of different online consumer profiles, trends across sectors like gaming, social networking vs email, online shopping amongst others the report has some clear take aways.

1. Mobile Ramping Faster than Desktop Internet Did and Will Be Bigger Than Most Think – 5 Trends Converging (3G + Social Networking + Video + VoIP + Impressive Mobile Devices)

2. Apple’s iPhone + iTouch + App Store Launches Over Past ~3 Years Created the Spark for Mobile Internet Liftoff as Microsoft’s Launch of Windows 3.0 did for the PC in 1990 and the Netscape Browser (and its IPO) did for the Desktop Internet in 1995

3. Massive Data Growth Driving Carrier / Equipment Transitions

4. Rapid Ramp of Mobile Internet Usage Will be a Boon to Consumers and Some Companies Will Likely Win Big (Potentially Very Big) While Many Will Wonder What Just Happened

You can download the report here

In conclusion, when consumers are empowered by the Internet, usage changes can occur very quickly

SIME Barcelona – June 16th building up an incredible speaker roster. Who do you want to see at SIME Barcelona?

SIME Barcelona is about 40 days away, and we are building up an incredible speaker roster – a rock star, a screen play writer, a hacker, a futurist all on stage talking about digital opportunities, talk  about marrying diversity and maximization.

Take a look at last year’s SIME Barcelona Speakers

16-17 June SIME Barcelona is hosted together with Barcelona Day of the Entrepreneur with 5 000 entrepreneurs, business leaders, investors and representatives of the press. SIME Barcelona is a day with the best of SIME followed by business matchmaking for companies interested in doing business in Spain and Barcelona as well as expert workshops with international speakers. SIME Barcelona is offered free and matchmaking and knowledge tracks are charged separately based on your needs.

Take a look at a proposed v 0.1 agenda – to be fine tuned in the coming days

Barcelona has been a great host city to SIME. SIME held in partnership with the Barcelona City Council go back 2 years in time. Couple of folks came from the City Council Barcelona to SIME Stockholm in 2008, were quite impressed with the show and wanted to export the concept into Barcelona to give Spanish entrepreneurs access to world class digital knowledge. And we had SIME Barcelona last year to much critical acclaim giving the best of SIME in a quick download format. This year we have revised themes and speakers, but the concept remains the same – a quick format held in conjunction with one of the biggest events to be held in Barcelona for entrepreneurs and investors.

Very welcome to hang out with us in Barcelona. You can find more details about the event here