Todd Lyden

I preface this by saying I read both Jay and Amber in their blogs and suggest you do so as well. With that, I was disappointed. I'm not entirely sure who this book was written for. I know who they SAY it is for. The people on the cover tell me who it is for and plenty of folks online have said, but I wonder if we've read the same book. You can  read the first chapter for FREE here . The introduction says that this book is a "playbook for making [the changes needed to address current challenges faced by business in a synchronous world], and for reexamining and retooling your company or organization to make real-time business work for you, rather than against you." The opening of the book isn't much different from any management book you might pick up such as the always popular " Good to Great ," which does get cited at one point early (without much surprise). There are lots of buzz words and some decent case study examples, but the audience for this boo...

What would you do to win a copy of "The Now Revolution" the new social media in business book by @ jaybaer and @ambercadabra. I have a copy and will write a review of the book once I give it away. I have no clue what to do, so come up with the contest entry for me. They were running their own for the give away books and I don't want to steal ideas out there. One of my favorites  being @ginidietrich 's. Put your ideas in the comments and I'll justify why I selected one by next week. Related articles Win a copy of The Now Revolution by Jay Baer and Amber Naslund (shuaism.com) oneforty News Roundup: Top 20 Social Media Monitoring Tools (oneforty.com)

photo © 2009 Lauren O'Grady | more info (via: Wylio ) A great response to a common Twitfliction: reciprocity. @ambercadabra  wrote a slight diatribe here  about folks on Twitter and Facebook to a lesser extent feeling that they are entitled to your attention for theirs. Head over, good stuff. My only contribution was to check out one of the sites that appears to be helping the cause.  Head over and check out: who.unfollowed.me  - not the most useful Twitter toll in the world, but I suppose if you really want to have an idea about WHEN people are ditching (thus avoiding such Tweets in the future) it could be handy.  I doubt that self-reflective reasoning is why when it seems some people are calling out others for not following back. Weird! I think the real reason you might see some expectation of follower reciprocity is that many are viewing these communication methods as if they were just collecting Pokemon or even worse that they were just...

Image via Wikipedia New Year 's or ANY resolutions are pointless. I love @ambercadabra 's take on resolutions here: http://www.brasstackthinking.com/2010/12/the-brass-tacks-of-resolutions/ It needs to go that one more step. Don't make resolutions, make PLANS. She reminds us to have resolve EVERY DAY and that if you want change, you have to want it bad enough. Both true and the last step? MAKE A PLAN. It sounds ridiculous and trite. But it's true. This New Year's or any other time of the year, if you want to change something about yourself, your life or how something is within your control, MAKE A PLAN. Now, where are my index cards? Related articles Don't Make Another Resolution Before You Read This (socyberty.com) Resolutions to Make 2011 A Success (ybpguide.com) How to Stick to New Year Resolutions ( Self Development Blog ) [Dr JOY Madden] (ecademy.com)

Everyone is sinking in it. And it is only going to get worse.  Social media and other associated tools, apps, tweets, fans, etc are all on the rise. The Tea Party's successful use to help their grassroots rise is a GREAT example. @jaybaer has this great post  about getting on board. The gist is: everyone doing it now is still learning but business needs to get on social media now. Why? Because once everyone is, you won't be so special anymore just because you were on Twitter in 2008. Jay makes his case about being involved in social media and I think most people agree that folks need to get on social media. However, its seems like we already have winners and losers.  This is a  double edge sword .  Everyday, there are little rewards for those ALREADY using it. This is about market analysis. While Jay works with Fortune 1000 companies, most small businesses are really playing catch up to what Jay is talking about. Mind you, there are a lot of folks just gett...

I focused much on customer service two weeks ago and I really can't escape it. I was on a call yesterday making a large order for lunch coming up. The woman on the other end was insanely pleasant as she tried to walk me through a new menu and my inability to be more quickly decisive. She did have to put me on hold an inordinate amount of times and each time was PROFUSELY apologetic. I was prepared and thankfully not in a hurry. I can quickly imagine someone else taking conversation and turning it into a complaint (unjustified, but I can see it). Amber Naslund has a related piece back last month that I liked discussing our aptitude to taking complaints online. I agree with Amber that #FAIL is overused, but also we need to be aware that failure or BAD customer service is in the eye of the beholder. For companies, SMALL mistakes can be huge to a customer. Like I said with my example, I could easily see someone taking it out of hand and quickly getting annoyed. I knew ...