Along with the advancements we have made in tech, believe it or not, come some responsibilities. Yes, we are all more accessible thanks to the mobile phone and the social Web but that does not mean you should be calling me in the middle of the day to pitch me about your startup, does it? Does it?! In fact, one can make the claim that because of all this new tech, privacy needs to be honored and respected even more than before.
OK, let’s jump right in. I had a chance to test out Google Glass last week. I have to admit, I can’t remember the last time I wanted to try a new device as much as Google Glass. The first thing I noticed about Glass is that there is an unprecedented amount of Buzz surrounding its existence. Everyone was staring, asking questions, pointing, and snapping pictures. It’s as if, someone had sat with every person in my vicinity five minutes before and explained to everyone that “In a few minutes, there will be a man wearing something on his face that represents the future. You are going to want to take pictures because you won’t get another chance”.
It has been over 6 years since I picked up my virtual pen to start my first blog post. Throughout those years, there has been a small group of elite journalists who have served as a role model and inspired me to keep writing. This group includes names like David Pogue, MG Siegler, Joshua Topolsky, and Robin Wauters. I have been following Robin for years and I believe I first encountered his work when he was just getting started at TechCrunch.
So there I was minding my own business in a Tel Aviv mall, trying to decide what to eat for dinner. As I walked through the food court, there were many options including burgers, sushi, pizza, and a Chinese restaurant that looked like the food was quite tasty. Then the person behind the counter of the Chinese place did something smart that could have easily been the “differentiator” that would lure me in to becoming a customer.
When Apple introduced the iPad Mini, it was the first ever Apple announced that sparked an emotional reaction from your truly. No, it was not excitement or happiness that the company finally reversed a policy put in place by the late Steve Jobs that there is no room for a smaller tablet in the Apple portfolio. My reaction to the iPad Mini announcement was actually disappointment and frustration, maybe even borderline anger.
Please forgive me if this post comes off as a rant, but enough is enough. Every few months, a new handset/mobile platform comes out and the same claims are repeated by the pundits. “Too little, too late”. Apple and Google own the mobile market and that can’t change. And every time I read those words, I realize just how fast people forget.
Oh, so you think I am exaggerating about the “Nicest guy in tech” title? Then you have not met Amir. The guy is just plain awesome. Now that I got that out of the way, Amir plays a central role in the activities of Google Israel. And let there be no mistake about it, Google Israel plays a central role in the global scope of what Google accomplishes daily. In fact, I was shocked to discover just how much of Google’s core offering was and continues to be developed here in Israel.
Today, I am adding to the list of my role models who I had the opportunity to interview thanks to the social Web. If you, like me, spend most of your dat reading/writing/talking about the world of tech and innovation, you must have come across the name Mile Elgan.
I know what you’re thinking, “Learn from BlackBerry? Who said it will succeed? Why is BlackBerry in a place to teach anyone anything?” Good question. I thought you’d never ask.
OK, so as you know, BlackBerry launched what it hopes will be the vehicle the company rides on its way to comeback land, BlackBerry 10. Will it really save the company? Who knows? What I do know is that initial reactions to the phone and platform have been positive and based on analysts watching closely, so far, it has been adopted nicely as well.
So as far as the launch goes, not the success of the platform, Microsoft and by extension, Nokia have a lot to learn. I will explain.
Branding
One of the bigger surprises in the launch of BB10, aside from the company’s choice of Creative Director of course, was the fact that the company rebranded from Research In Motion (RIM) to BlackBerry. Some hate it, I think it was the most brilliant thing the company has done in years.
You see, when a company has one product, I see no reason they should separate the name of that product from the name of the brand. BlackBerry users love their devices, right? So why not leverage that loyalty to the brand as a whole? Why confuse users with a name like Research in Motion when everyone knows BlackBerry? Imagine if Facebook would call its site that and call the company something else? That would cause unnecessary confusion and such confusion in the brand causes confusion and frustration in the product.
I have spoken to quite a few startups who were debating this exact topic. Should we call our company one thing and our app/product another, or just go with one name? My answer is always “If this is going to be your only product, then why confuse users? If you plan on having other products down the line, then you need an independent name for the company.”
BlackBerry was gutsy enough to change its name, something many companies would never do and I praise them for that….
Now while Microsoft has many products so its mobile platform has to have a different name than the company, I am fairly certain that there are enough smart minds in Redmond that can come up with a better name than Windows Phone! In fact, pretty much anything they choose will be better than that name. So while it might be a risky move, if BlackBerry can pull it off, so can you, Microsoft. Get on it.
Focus
This is a loaded topic with Apple on the one side and Google on the other. Focus on one or two products or spread your wings and offer any possible option in the hopes that that product will find an owner. Samsung is of course on Google’s side, ie make mobile devices in every possible size so people can use them while sitting in the back seat of their self driving car wearing Google Glass. But, wait, isn’t Google a search/advertising company? What’s with the cars and the glasses? Yea, exactly.
BlackBerry took a good look at its core audience now and what it hopes will be its user base in a year from now. iPhone and Android users love their big touch screens and think of hardware keyboards as somewhat primitive. For those folks, BlackBerry has the Z10.
But what about its loyal fan base? The ones that swear by their keyboards? Boom. The Q10. And that is all, folks. No Z10 Pro, Q10 2, or Z10 5.5. Will that change in the future? No way to know but I sure hope not.
Now take a look at the Lumia line. Why, can someone explain to me, do we need a Lumia 620, 800, 810, 820, 822, 900, and 920? Did I catch them all? Doubt it. Who needs all those phones?
Well Samsung will tell you that creating a phone in every shape, size, and color is the way to go. But you know what? Samsung can afford to do that, Microsoft and Nokia cannot at this point. Focus, people!
Make one high end Lumia (920) and one lower end one (620). Push those devices with everything you have, then pray. Don’t confuse users with so many devices that when entering a store to buy a phone, feel so overwhelmed that they opt for the simpler option from a certain Cupertino company.
Focus, Nokiasoft, focus!
The 70,000 Elephants in the Closet
Sigh. I hate to be writing these words, but I guess we all agree that they are necessary. Apps!
BlackBerry could have launched BB10 years ago with no apps and impressive hardware alongside a few nice gestures. They chose not to while they build out their ecosystem (even if it is via an Android emulator…) Smart move!
Microsoft, after years, still has not gotten the developers on board. Yes, there are quite a few apps in the Windows Phone Marketplace, but from where I am sitting, 80% of them are flashlight apps. No, not really, but you know what I mean.
Microsoft has to try harder to get the big boys on board. I have one question for Microsoft. Don’t you own part of Facebook? Doesn’t Facebook own Instagram? I can’t imagine it is too difficult to get Instagram on your platform, yet you haven’t done it. To name one example.
The bottom line? Microsoft has to focus its energy less on getting Nokia and HTC to make yellow phones and more on premium apps that will show off what is up there with the nicest mobile OSes on the market.
A Product, NOT a Prototype
Once again, BlackBerry could have released a half-baked BB10 years ago but it chose to polish it, polish it some more and then release it. Is it perfect? No, but from what I can tell, any issues with BB10 are by design and not by accident.
Notifications are a perfect example. The way BB10 handles notifications is loved by some, despised by others. But at least it handles notifications. You don’t like it? That is fine but BlackBerry did not release a mobile OS without addressing one of the main pain points of users on a mobile phone. Microsoft did.
Notifications are just one example but it seems like Microsoft just released its OS with the thought of fixing this “small” missing feature in the next version.
This is true across the board. Windows Phone was always not a complete product. It was always close but it lacked the polish that we are all used to from iOS and now from BB10.
Microsoft can’t turn back the clock now to release a finished product but what it can do is start cleaning up its mess and get Windows 8 to offer everything we have grown to expect from a mature mobile operating system. I love my Lumia 920, I really do, but no quality apps or notifications, alongside a lack of polish keep driving me into the arms of my iPhone 5.
In conclusion, we don’t know what will be with either platform but I still think BlackBerry pretty much nailed this launch, and for that alone, they deserve the opportunity to make the biggest comeback in the history of mobile.
People really hate when you tell them how to tweet, and rightfully so. Twitter is an open platform (or it used to be, but that is a topic for another time.) that entails writing a message of 140 characters max, and there are no rule books, so who made you the authority on Twitter? All that is fine and true, but anyone who spends a lot of time on Twitter can attest to the fact that at least 90% of the points mentioned below annoy the heck out of them.
Anyway, back to our point. It seems Twitter bots and spammers will always exist, but if you want to avoid being labeled one of those things by everyone you follow, the following five “rules” are a good place to start:
First One on One, and Only Then One to Many!
The way Twitter was built and engineered enables one person to communicate with many (followers). Except, when you sign up for a Twitter account, it doesn’t come with 10,000 preinstalled followers, nor is there any magic trick to achieving those numbers. You want to talk to many people at once? Try talking to one at a time first.
If I had a dime for every company that asked me “How do I get more followers?” or “Can you or someone you know give my product a shoutout so we can go viral?”, I would personally have enough money to send all those people to an extensive course on marketing. That is not how it works!
There are no shortcuts and there are not supposed to be. Want a lot of followers? Find interesting people, follow them, and then comes the difficult part. You sitting down? Talk to them. Yes, engage in conversation. No, not conversation that involves shameless plugs, just regular conversation. You know, the kind of conversation you would participate in in real life when meeting someone for the first time and building up a relationship.
Do that and you will not only get that person to follow (assuming the conversation is somewhat interesting and relevant), but that person’s followers might see your conversation and find it interesting as well, and your conversation might also come up in search so others might find you and follow. The point is, don’t think numbers, think people.
Remember Who You’re Talking to, First and Foremost
In continuation of the previous point, once you get those followers you so eagerly wanted, remember that they are listening. Don’t start tweeting things you think will get you more followers and ignore the people who already jumped on board. You will lose them.
Yes, Twitter is public and anyone can see your tweets. That means if there is an event that many people are following, tweeting with that event hashtag might get you some new followers. If you think spamming your followers with ten hashtags per tweet will get you far, you are in for a very big surprise.
Yes, some people might find you via search, but you know what else will happen? The people who are already following and are now being bombarded with hashtags and spammy tweets will unfollow you. Aaaand we’re back to square one. By the way, this might be somewhat controversial since many people seem to like what is known as “Twitter chats”, but in my book, these fall under the same category and the name of that category is “Annoying things people do on Twitter to get more followers.”
There is RSS and There is Twitter.
Whatever your opinion of RSS feeds/readers is, you need to understand that if your Twitter feed is a glorified RSS feed with link after link and no added value of your own, then you are in essence competing with Google Reader. Good luck with that.
Sharing interesting content is important and even crucial to succeed on Twitter (assuming your definition of success is building up an engaged audience/community. If not, you can close this post right now.) but if you are not adding your own touch, then what exactly are you offering people in exchange for clicking that Follow button?
Share content but add a comment to your tweet with your take on the matter. Or tag the author and give him/her your feedback. Do not just share link after link because, well, that is boring and unnecessary when there are countless apps that do the same thing.
Doing PR on Twitter? Chances Are You Are Being Super Obvious
If you are trying to promote something, Twitter is a very very effective tool. After all, things have known to go viral on Twitter, right? Well, contrary to popular belief, the difficulty of doing PR of any kind on Twitter is not finding the right people or doing the outreach.
Why not illustrate this point with an example? If your Twitter bio says the words “PR”, “Marketing”, “Evangelist”, or anything else that implies the need for press coverage or exposure, then when reaching out to journalists/influencers, they are reading you like an open book. They know that when you tweet them about the product, you are doing your job and they are therefore more hesitant to respond than if it was just some random person recommending the very same product.
Well, many PR folks get this so what do they do? Well, they start by making an assumption that the very same journalist/influencer is either blind or very very unintelligent. If you think that writing one tweet to a journalist NOT about your product and upon getting a response, pitching your product, solves your problem, you are very wrong. No one is falling for this.
When people say build a relationship, that does not mean send one non promotional tweet, then promote the heck out of yourself. It means the same thing it means offline. Build trust, a connection, a reason that person should take any interest in you and after that is done, there is nothing wrong with sharing what you’re working on. But the big challenge in doing PR on Twitter is not outreach, it is the time spent building the relationship needed to make that outreach effective.
I Shouldn’t Have to Tell you This…
No really, you (and when I say “you”, I mean every human being on the planet) should have figured this out on your own. Unfortunately, that is not the case for many people. Do not use Twitter to offend others. Furthermore, do not say things that will offend people, even if that was not your intention. I am not implying that you should censor your thoughts, but it is important that you remember just how public Twitter (and the web in general) is.
Is that advice too abstract for you? OK, I didn’t want to do this but you forced my hand. If you are looking to build a wide and general audience on Twitter, you might want to stay away from tweets that fall under the category of TMI. You might also want to avoid tweeting about politics, unless of course your audience is following you for your input on politics. Other topics to avoid? Religion (again, some people have an audience that follows them as an authority on religion, this is not aimed at those people.), um, private/intimate topics (that is what DMs are for. KIDDING!), and well, any other topic that is going to offend the people who gave you the stage that is Twitter. Be sensitive to those people. Again, I shouldn’t have to tell you this…
Final Thoughts
In conclusion, I will say that it is true, there are no real rules to Twitter. Having said that, there are things that annoy many people and there are things that help you achieve your goals faster. If I had to sum up all the above points in one sentence, I would say “Act online as you would offline and do not do online what you would not do offline”.
If you want some other ideas of what annoys people on Twitter, take a look at my tweet below and the responses it got by clicking the date and time I tweeted it.
Hypothetically speaking, if someone were writing a blog post about annoying things people do on Twitter, what would u tell them to include?
