Ian M Rountree

Copywriter, Project Manager, Digital Marketing

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The NOW Revolution Book Winner – Ryan Caligiuri!

March 2, 2011 by Ian Leave a Comment

Ryan Caligiuri, a fellow Winnipeg-based marketer and columnist for the Globe and Mail left an insightful comment on my review of the NOW Revolution regarding social causes and how they attach to social media. Because of that, I chose him to receive my second copy of the book.

Ryan is the new Director of Marketing for Imaginet, a Winnipeg-based application life cycle management firm specializing in Microsoft-enabled web solutions for businesses. I asked him for some insight about how the media and marketing landscape has changed in the last few years – check out the video below for details.

 

Can’t see the video? Watch on YouTube – The NOW Revolution Book Giveaway Winner – Ryan Caligiuri

Update: The Modern Earth Blog has also featured this video, with a bit more background about Ryan and the work he does.

Filed Under: Reviews Tagged With: amber naslund, innovation, jay baer, marketing, now revolution, ryan caligiuri, small world, Winnipeg

The NOW Revolution – A Guide For New Businesses

February 18, 2011 by Ian 13 Comments

Viewing this on a feed, or having trouble seeing the video? See the original article, or watch the video on YouTube.

The NOW Revolution is one of those books that’s approachable by a broad audience, applicable in a wide variety of situations, and instantly appealing from page one. These three qualities alone make it worth buying.

There’s a lot about this book I liked. However, there was one thing that stuck out as a little weird. Throughout the book, there are an array of Microsoft Tags – proprietary QR codes – which direct the reader to further meta-data about the book. While I think this is perfectly appropriate for the book’s subject, it’s a choice made on behalf of the audience; to get everything the book has to offer, you’ve not only got to be savvy enough to understand how, when, and why the Tags are there (they are explained in the beginning), but also be willing to install an app on your smartphone to read the tags themselves. I delayed doing so, in fact, in order to finish the book quickly and not rabbit-hole in the meta data.

Despite this hiccup, The NOW Revolution picked up the ball where other, more theoretical books left it off.

The book really begins to shine, though, around Shift 3. By the time you’ve built the bedrock of your new business, and found some talent you can trust, you’ll be prepared to organize your new armies to do good in the world.

You should go buy The Now Revolution: 7 Shifts to Make Your Business. It’ll help you really dig into setting up the scaffolding you need in order to make the most of the current, super-connected business landscape.

If you’re still struggling with the idea, read Six Pixels of Separation and Trust Agents first, in that order. Once you’re done those, and have the NOW Revolution well studied, read Inbound Marketing.

Disclosure: I got the book through the authors’ blogger review promotion. I was sent two copies of the book, on the proviso that I review the book (good, bad or ugly) and give one copy away in an interesting way.

How you can get my second copy of the NOW Revolution…

I believe in using social tools for social good. So, I want to see how much good can be done by means of social media.

Leave a comment here. I’d like to hear your ideas for how we can make businesses smarter, faster, and more social. In particular, I’d like to know what you think of using social business for social good. Is your business involved in charity of any kind? What do you think of using your wattage as a business to benefit social causes? If you’re in a position to make this kind of action through your business – will you? Or, if not, why?

The winning comment will also have a donation made for the cost of the book, to the charity of their choosing. Now. What can we do with this social media thing?

Filed Under: Reviews Tagged With: amber naslund, book review, books, connected commerce, jay baer, now revolution, social business, social media

Embracing Practice and Theory in Social Marketing

January 10, 2011 by Ian 5 Comments

In a typical paroxysm of brilliant insight, Amber Naslund posted what she called “one of those pensive posts [that needs a lot of thought]” on Sunday evening. The crux of the post was how theory can play a role in such highly action-sequence oriented fields like marketing – especially social media and content marketing.

As Amber says in the post, current social media advice is largely prescriptive; How To and 3 Steps To, and so on. This is beneficial to a point, but is it all we can do to move the work forward?

From her post – Elements of Knowledge and Embracing Social Media:

And in many ways, when you’re starting something new, that’s exactly what you want. The what and the how. Some understanding of what the established and familiar rules are, some guideposts to meter your own activities and behavior, and some reassurance that you’re headed in the “right” direction, or at least one that makes sense to you.

But when it comes to comprehension, there’s more than just the instructive side of the equation. There’s also understanding.

This is an important point, and one that I think needs some more elaboration and consideration.

The Case for Theory Before Practice

If school has taught us anything, it’s that there’s a use for having domain knowledge before practice begins. Just like we teach our kids (or try to), if something’s too hot to touch, there’s an effect from touching it regardless of cautions. Learning anything early that we can apply before negative happenstance can be helpful.

There’s also the possibility for analysis-in-the-moment, for anything we have knowledge of before practice. When something beneficial comes from what we might otherwise perceive as a negative action (for example, breaking up a flame war by making an explosive remark yourself), a theoretical understanding of human motivation and debate habits can be really helpful; with a theoretical knowledge to guide us, we might understand why that explosive comment worked to diffuse the situation, and another one might have made things worse.

The ability to understand the effects our actions might have can be hugely beneficial. The question is not whether theory has a place, but whether or not it should come first.

The Case for Practice Before Theory

In the Karate Kid, when Ralph Macchio is being taught to wax cars and paint fences, he spends a lot of time being annoyed that he’s not really learning karate. His sensei, Mr Miagi, smiles and fails to explain until much later. After weeks of labour and practice, finally the lesson becomes clear; the Kid was building muscle memory for the activities relevant to his required expertise.

Of course once the purpose of the practice is explained, there’s a blossoming of understanding. Having the muscle memory for the work that needs to be done makes the actual doing of the work so much easier. All that needs to be done in each instance is decide which skill to apply in which circumstance. This makes activity of any kind highly strategic – counter follows block follows jab and so forth. Natural progression and rhythm of action becomes easily apparent, for reasons entirely different to the in-the-moment analysis that those who learn theory before practice take advantage of.

But Which Should Come First?

And should it always be that way? Matt Ridings (@techguerilla) almost immediately responded with a question about why linear thought about theory and practice were such a big deal. It’s a good question; not everyone needs the muscle memory that comes from preemptive practice, and not everyone else can apply theory to their initial exploration of a task or domain.

I think there’s a case to be made for both directions, but it’s a case that has to be made on a per-instance basis. Some of us are polymaths, able to learn a huge variety of things easily. Some of us are intuitive learners, others kinesthetic. There is a huge variety of learning style out there – and it’s on the teachers, the instructors… The sensei among us to look for the signs that a student (hello, fellow grasshopper) can benefit better from one style of teaching than they can from another.

Before we can decide which style of teaching to employ, however, we need to define our theory. That, I think, goes far beyond just deciding who learns what better in what form.

Me? I’m going to do some more study. I’ve spent the last year playing karate kid – and I know, from how the year turned out, that I need more of that. My muscle memory isn’t as strong as it should be in some areas. However, I know I can’t survive on practice alone. Part of my work this year, I think, will be building some core theories out of observations of my own habits, and tending to the things that have succeeded.

What do you think? Where are you on the scale of theory vs practice?

Image by Woodley Wonderworks.

Filed Under: Social Media Tagged With: amber naslund, blog measurement, Blogging, blogs, follow-the-linker, internet, learning, metahuman, practice, rant-alert, social media, sociology, the-web, Theory

The Rise of Presence Media

April 8, 2010 by Ian 2 Comments

Valentine rose on flickrForget the real-time web, we’re skipping that entirely.

Soon, the idea of presence will become a major part of how we view communication. How do I know? Because it’s everywhere – and that’s part of the point, a big part of the mystique.

How do I know this? Because humans always outpace. We’re wired for it. No matter what’s going on, we sprint ahead, finding ways not just to cut corners and shorten process, but to make things efficient, usable, simple to communicate. As much as complexity is a necessary part of societal growth, to a point, so is precision of communication. And because precision and presence playu so nicely together, we have a natural tendancy to want face-to-face contact with our information.

The Real-Time Web is here. Like it or not, someone well enough equipped can find out just about anything with not a lot of lag time. We search, we aggregate, we syndicate and broadcast. Some of us even publish from our keyboards directly. Why? We want to connect. We’ve talked about connection, right? It’s fairly important.

One of the biggest components of connection is presence.

Amber Naslund sparked this with a post about presence journalism and immediacy that made a lot of sense – and as I responded, younger generations (younger then me anyway, being late Gen X, early Gen Y) believe rightly that without immediacy, media is uninspiring. Their worlds have never lacked the communication capacilities we now begin to take for granted.

Amber’s not alone – Jay Rosen made a comment about CNN preserving the View From Nowhere, and how that’s becoming a failing part of their business by limiting their journalistic capabilities. I agree wholeheartedly. Think back to the first time you saw a local reporter “On location” for a national news team. Did the story hit home a little more? Did it make more sense, even if it wasn’t in your back yard, to have someone intimately involved in the details reporting them?

You bet your sweet Tweets it does.

Jay and Amber were talking about reporting, but I think this argument has to extend to all manner of human communication on the web. Julien Smith just dropped a post entitled “The End of Bookstores” which talks about the immediacy of technology adoption, specifically comparing how long it takes to get a book on your Kindle or iPad, compared to the time it takes out of your day to hit the local Chapters or Borders for the same piece of text. The costs differ, not just in dollars, but in time. Yes, local bookstores have people, and a sense of community, but that’s a poor tradeoff for some people.

Presence nullifies a lot of arguments.

Did Tiamamen Square happened? If they’d had Foursquare, there would be proof beyond cover-up. Was there a second shooter on the grassy knoll? Geolocation and Twitter could have solved that one easily. In a lot of cases where details are the difference between a headline and a news phenomenon, current and emerging technologies change not only the information that’s reported, but the way it’s reported.

Look at the Iran elections where Twitter broke before CNN did. Trouble in India. The last three earthquakes. Do you remember the headlines? Probably not, as catchy as they certainly would have been. But I bet if you think you’d be able to remember what the first tweet was, or who it came from.

Presence media goes beyond making yourself available to others; it makes others available to you. Are you going to wait for a life-and-death situation before you make yourself aware and involved?

Photo by alicepopkorn

Filed Under: Blog Tagged With: amber naslund, jay rosen, journalism, julien smith, presence, presence media, real-time web, speculation, the future

Stop Acting Like a Fool and Blow Something Up!

January 13, 2010 by Ian 5 Comments

Double Explosion, Lake Austin Fireworks on FlickrWhen I initially made the switch to retail, one of my first managers – a very wise dude we refer to as Yoda – told me that “there is no such thing as a big deal. Anything can be handled, if you have the presence of mind to approach it the right way.” I’ve let this be my guiding principal for everything I do relating to client care for five years, and it’s turning out pretty well so far.

Amber Naslund of Altitude Branding made a very good point this morning with her post about Tough Love. In short, she says that there’s a lot of work to be done in any organization, from the giants to the individuals. We all need to get better at whatever it is we do, and one o the answers isn’t necessarily training or new tactics, it’s as simple as personal evaluation and nose-to-the-wheel effort.

It feels like a big deal, doesn’t it? It’s not, really, if you know where to look for the tools that will help you do better. They’re not the same for everyone, but I do have a few suggestions:

  • Rest up! Make sure you’re taking time for yourself, and make sure it’s on purpose. There’s a big performance gap between people who rest whenever there’s less work to be done, and those who rest actively, taking part in community activities, or hobbies, or even doing hobby style work on the side. While moonlighting is stressful most of the time, having a hobby business loosely or not at all associated with your “real work” can give you something meaningful to do with your time. Active rest means avoiding the Summer Break syndrome at the end of the weekend, keep your momentum going and growing, and leave the lazy in the dust.
  • Stop absorbing so much! Face it, we all love our blogs. If we didn’t, I wouldn’t be talking to you like I am now. But when we notice, forlorn, that our Google Reader unread list grows by a hundred articles a day, and it’s largely passive amusement, it’s time to pare down. Do something with what you’re reading. React to it on a blog, comment on the articles, encourage conversation. If you’re a creative, follow the tutorials and actually do them, don’t just read them. Our problem isn’t search overload, it’s stack overflow. We can only retain so much information in a useful way before it all becomes a blur of meaningless white noise. How much value do you get out of the two dozen blogs you follow then?
  • Read Up! Counterintuitive, I know, given that I just said stop absorbing. But what I mean is, change formats once in a while. If you mostly read blogs, pick up a book. I don’t care if it’s hardcover, soft cover, kindle – fiction, non-fiction, a technical manual. Just read something different, exposure to new things is always a good idea.
  • Blow Up Your Routine! Stop wasting your time! Active rest is a big help for this, but going through your day with intention is bigger. For example, the first thing I do in the morning is spend five to ten minutes outlining. I write much of what I post over lunch break, and edit when I get home in the evening, schedule for the following morning. This broken up routine beats writers’ block effectively because it keeps me engaged all day with a subject, but never allows room for getting overwhelmed. And that’s the trick.

After all, it’s all about avoiding the feeling of being overwhelmed, and knowing how to steer your own boat. You have massive opportunities waiting in the five minutes of down time you see three or four times a day. Even if you’re doing things not entirely related to work, building the habit of some kind of productivity, and eschewing the tendency to non-productive activity, is pretty likely to help with whatever it is that you’re doing to pay the bills.

Nothing’s a big deal. Go at it consistently and, most of all, make decisions! No one got anywhere waiting for a committee vote on their own lives. You’re the one who has to pull the trigger.

Photo by Jim Nix.

Filed Under: Blog Tagged With: altitude branding, amber naslund, explosions, lessons, perspective, retail, work to do

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