Dumb as a Rock: My Path to Understanding Emoticons.

s continue to rear their cute little faces. This article, on the science of emoticons, lead  to reading a 2011 NYT story on emoticons in the workplace. Today, as I used Slack for the first time, it was surprising to discover emoticons embedded in the ecosystem. This revelation lead to an Emoji Cheat Sheet  for enterprise tools including Github, Basecamp and others. Facebook added them back in 2013 in an effort to, "...bring more ways for users to express themselves through small pictures" according to Adweek. Though friends and connections have been using emoticons for years, I'm an emoticon.  I thought their use degraded the written word, especially in a professional setting. Call me a curmudgeon. (Yes, as a matter of fact, I do believe people drive too fast these days).

Then it hit me. Nestled just off 101, right over the Golden Gate Bridge you'll find Ring Mountain: a Marin County Parks Open-Space Preserve and my favorite refuge. The area was home to Coastal Miwok Indians who carved petroglyphs into the mountain's boulders  more than 2,400 years ago. You can just make them out in this image (oval shapes in the center).


Zooming out from Petroglyph Rock and shifting slightly to the right, you'll see San Francisco's skyline. The view changes daily as sky-scrapers continue to sprout. These buildings house tech boomers, like Twitter, that specialize in brief, rapid communication. So it's full-circle, from carving images in rocks to inserting digital faces. Each medium is a shade on the palette of self-expression. To downplay or ignore new colors is a limitation, not a better path.

Long live .

If Ellen DeGeneres was a lawyer...

The spark for this post was something like, “Want a master class in new media? Follow Ellen DeGeneres.” But it’s not a level playing field. As an entertainer, with a television show in daily syndication by NBC Universal throughout the US and Canada you’d anticipate a large fan base.

85,832,900 subscribers though? It’s a ridiculous number. To put it in context, Oprah Winfrey has about half of Ellen’s subscribers (+10M likes on Facebook, +27M followers on Twitter, 435,000 subscribers on YouTube, +3.7M on Instagram). Jimmy Fallon also has about half with +24M followers on Twitter, almost 7M subscribers on YouTube, nearly 5M likes on Facebook, 3.2M on Instagram, and over 300,000 followers on Google+.

Ellen DeGeneres doesn't wait for people to come watch her show, or hope they record it, rather her brand constantly adapts to new tools and places content where people spend time. She inserts her daytime talk show in different locations online throughout the day, reaching people who have regular 9 to 5’s and allowing those who do catch or record her show to share their favorite clips with their communities online.

But it’s not just thatshe uses new media tools, it’s howshe uses them. Bouncing them off of each other….from games that started on her syndicated television show to an app for one and a syndicated spin-off television show for another.

Peruse her pages and, as you do, think to yourself, “If Ellen DeGeneres was a lawyer or insurance agent instead of a comedian, what kind of thought-leadership-empire would she build?”.

P.S. Shhhh! Don’t share the answer, go out and do it for yourself!

Ellentv.com

Wikipedia Page

TheEllenShow - YouTube (+ 11.5M subscribers)

Ellen DeGeneres - IMDb

Ellen DeGeneres (@TheEllenShow) | Twitter (+ 42M followers)

The Ellen DeGeneres Show | Facebook (+ 17.8M likes)

Ellen DeGeneres on Pinterest (425,000 followers)

Instagram (@theellenshow) (+11.3M followers)

Good Things by Ellen on Tumblr

Ellen only has 2 connections on LinkedIn but 7,900 followers on The Ellen DeGeneres Show Company Page.

Ellen on Vine  (+ 2.8M followers)

Ellen has an App

Ellen has one of the highest RTs ever – 3.5M

Ellen is on Snapchat.

It's Spring now. So here is my Twitter Post

Forgive me, Father. It's been more than a year since my last confession, oops, wrong forum.

It's been more than a year since my last original tweet. By social media standards, my profile is in the nether graveyard overgrown with mossy weed and an illegible tombstone.

I corrected that today, spruced up my profile and started to engage in conversation (Twitter recommends an 80/20 rule). I learned that I have
been on Twitter since October of 2008...the same month we met SNL Weekend Update Financial Expert Oscar Rogers. In the early days the goal was to get a huge follower count. The same is true today in terms of leveraging your followers for financial gain though you could argue quality should beat out quantity.

Over the last year, some things have changed: advertising has become more of a prominent thing, publishers have gotten their acts together with regularly branded updates, hashtags are a little more cohesive.

Some things have remained exactly the same: food updates, puns, people following people with the exact same political beliefs or trolls following just to pick a fight.

My timing seems to be precipitous (though maybe it just always feels that way on Twitter) as I saw a tweet to an article about new video live streaming technology from Periscope and Meerkat. So I retweeted it. I also started following @StationCDRKelly and his #yearinspace quest because it's so interesting to think about the length of a year, especially when you are away from home.

Good to be back to basics and brush up on best practices. Happy Tweeting.

Yik Yak you can't take that performance back

What it is: Yik Yak is a college/high school platform that delivers anonymous commentary, jokes and news to a home community (the stream is limited to a tight radius like a college campus). It's on more than 1300 campuses and estimated value is in the hundreds of millions.

Why it matters: It would primarily be useful as a listening or intelligence tool in the B2B community but if you are considering particular recruitment campaigns or speeches on college campuses, let Ted Cruz's Liberty University speech be fair warning, the media is already listening to Yik Yak and sharing the results with their audiences. The posters might remain anonymous but your performance certainly won't.

7 Search Tools that Don't Start with the Letter G

Here are some tools to supplement your daily intake of of Googling:

1. Buzzsumo their tagline is "Analyze what content performs best for any topic or competitor". A paid service with a free trial offer. Lots of interesting filters and you can export search results.

publisher image from Alexander Hislop & Company

2. BoardReader is a search engine for forums and boards. Includes results from LinkedIn Groups, Reddit, Morningstar and other more niche groups like Bitcointalk.org.

3. Quora is more consumer-focused and requires registration but could be a good place to gather ideas if you are in a creative mindset, here is a recent article based on results "What Are the Major Differences Between the Disneyland and Disney World Experience?"

4. Use Bing advanced search options, check out this article "How to Use Bing’s Advanced Search Operators: 8 Tips for Better Searches" from How-To Geek. For example, use "Feed:" to find RSS or Feeds for topics of interest.

5.A new favorite of mine is Social Searcher which organizes the results by platform in a really clean top-level display. Offers Premium Paid features.

6. Topsy is still great for finding for Twitter shares

7. Social Mention has some interesting data on the sidebar (not sure of its relevance).

Bonus: Alerts from Google for yourself, your brand, your competitors and the topics that matter to you. Ok, it starts with the letter G but it is proactive search tool.

Search is a cycle of being being found and finding what matters to you. It is more important than ever to have best tools so that you can precisely identify your audience, their interests, their chosen platforms, etc. Happy hunting.

Google+, easy to do & time well spent

Google+ is the youngest major social media platform and it offers the most diverse palette of sharing, connecting and positioning.

G+ Circles allow for precise slicing and dicing of your network, not only between personal and professional but also levels of your professional and personal life (i.e. volunteer work, professional associations and your 9 to 5 can each have their own circle). You can decide who sees which section of your profile (sections include: work section, personal, education, story...).


Must do:
Revisit and update your Google+ Profile and +Page. This article from 2013 is nice inspiration: "15 Examples of B2B Google+ Pages & Why They Stand Out From The Rest" by Derek Edomond and check out Google's Best Practices Guide

Seriously Consider doing:
Add G+ into your social media mix and engage with your circles on a regular basis.

Snapchat ripe for B2B applications? You decide in 4 Quick Steps

Snapchat is barely three years old and geared toward a consumer market, definitely not ready for most business purposes. Why not imagine a future recruiting or event-centric application now while the investment is still minimal?

Here are 4 easy steps to allow this emerging tool to find its' place (if any) in your digital strategy:

Must do:
Read The ultimate Snapchat primer (with a B2B twist) by Sarah Dawley B2B News Network and Why is no one using Snapchat for B2B marketing (yet)? by B2B PR Blog. Great context.


Consider doing:
-Download Snapchat and play with it. The platform is exclusive to mobile so, unlike Twitter and LinkedIn, you can't simply observe from your laptop.

-Use as a Competitive Intelligence tool. Most likely, large events (like SXSW) that intersect with your target industries are already in the Snapchat mix. Get a feel for the energy of an event without leaving your office.

Strongest contenders for B2B application: Events and recruiting.