If someone "Googles" your name what will they learn about you? And...do you have any control over what they see?
You may have more control than you realize.
When I Google "Henrik Joreteg" my professional profile on LinkedIn.com is the first search result. This includes all the professional details about me. It's a lot like posting your resume. There are also references and recommendations that add credibility to what is written in my profile and there are links to my business (HouseFLIX.com) and to this blog.
This blog happens to be the second Google search result which will again, hopefully give a better view of who I am and serve to further increase my credibility.
By publishing a blog and posting a profile on LinkedIn you can dramatically increase the quality and accuracy of information that is available about you on the Internet.
Tuesday, December 18, 2007
Tuesday, December 4, 2007
Sticky Ideas
Why is it that some arguably worthless, incorrect, ideas such as urban legends spread like wild-fire while other far more intelligent and worthy ideas don't get anywhere.
They're not "sticky!" Companies spend so much time trying to say things that are descriptive or include all the messages they want to broadcast, but they often fail to spend the time tweaking the presentation of the idea to make it interesting... to make it stick.
That's what the book "Made to Stick", by Chip Heath and Dan Heath is all about. It's about deconstructing what makes ideas sticky.
The book gives the example of a man who worked for a non-profit group that educates the public about nutrition. His organization discovered that a typical medium sized bag of movie popcorn contains 37 grams of saturated fat. So what?!?!
In reality 37 grams is a tremendously unhealthy amount to consume in one sitting.
This man's job was to turn that statistic into a captivating story. The typical numeric explanation or graph would not have made much of a stir. The line he came up with was:
"A medium-sized 'butter' popcorn at a typical neighborhood movie theater contains more artery-clogging fat than a bacon-and-eggs breakfast, a Big Mac and fries for lunch, and a steak dinner with all the trimmings - COMBINED!"
The story was a sensation! It made the front pages of USA Today, the LA Times, and The Washington Post's Style section. It was featured on all kinds of news casts and the end result was a noticeable drop in popcorn sales and ultimately several major theater chains changed the type of oil they used!
The idea stuck! It's a fairly uninteresting stat, but it was crafted into a very "sticky" idea. That's the crux of effective marketing. Build a captivating idea, focus on how it needs to be presented, and take the time to make it "sticky".
The book concludes that sticky ideas generally need to have these characteristics:
1. Simplicity
2. Unexpectedness
3. Concreteness
4. Credibility (real or implied)
5. Emotions
6. Stories
The authors expand on this significantly. But that's the gist of it. It's a compelling concept.
They're not "sticky!" Companies spend so much time trying to say things that are descriptive or include all the messages they want to broadcast, but they often fail to spend the time tweaking the presentation of the idea to make it interesting... to make it stick.
That's what the book "Made to Stick", by Chip Heath and Dan Heath is all about. It's about deconstructing what makes ideas sticky.
The book gives the example of a man who worked for a non-profit group that educates the public about nutrition. His organization discovered that a typical medium sized bag of movie popcorn contains 37 grams of saturated fat. So what?!?!
In reality 37 grams is a tremendously unhealthy amount to consume in one sitting.
This man's job was to turn that statistic into a captivating story. The typical numeric explanation or graph would not have made much of a stir. The line he came up with was:
"A medium-sized 'butter' popcorn at a typical neighborhood movie theater contains more artery-clogging fat than a bacon-and-eggs breakfast, a Big Mac and fries for lunch, and a steak dinner with all the trimmings - COMBINED!"
The story was a sensation! It made the front pages of USA Today, the LA Times, and The Washington Post's Style section. It was featured on all kinds of news casts and the end result was a noticeable drop in popcorn sales and ultimately several major theater chains changed the type of oil they used!
The idea stuck! It's a fairly uninteresting stat, but it was crafted into a very "sticky" idea. That's the crux of effective marketing. Build a captivating idea, focus on how it needs to be presented, and take the time to make it "sticky".
The book concludes that sticky ideas generally need to have these characteristics:
1. Simplicity
2. Unexpectedness
3. Concreteness
4. Credibility (real or implied)
5. Emotions
6. Stories
The authors expand on this significantly. But that's the gist of it. It's a compelling concept.
Sunday, November 4, 2007
The Big Wheel
Jim Collins, the author of "Good to Great" presents an analogy that I found to be extremely useful in explaining the phenomenon of extraordinary business growth.
He says that there are not really all that many true overnight successes. The reason we view them that way is because when the publicly visible upswing occurs it can be very dramatic. But, if we study what caused the successes, which is exactly what Jim Collins did, we often find that there were months, if not years of preparation leading up to that "overnight success".
Collins explains it as a giant, heavy, wheel that is mounted on a center post. Imagine it like a big merry-go-round weighing many tons.
Something heavy has a tremendous amount of inertia. It's impossible to spin it with a single hard push or even lots of individual pushes every now and then. More than anything else, consistent pushing is required to get it spinning.
Getting the business model articulated may be one long push, then making the right partnerships is another one, getting the right technology working for you can be another one, getting a key clients may come next, getting a bit of external funding, increasing market awareness, refining product offerings... you get the idea. All these things are pushes. Together they can get the wheel started in the right direction. It may be slow, but you just have to keep pushing and pushing. Soon it may be spinning at 1 revolution per minute, then 2, then 5, then 20...
Now, momentum is on your side. Steady pushing is still required, but each push now has greater impact and it starts to go... and go... and go. When it spins, and I mean really spins, it would take some really big set backs to even slow it down. You can then use smaller motors to keep pushing on your behalf. The whole goal is to just keep pushing. You just crank and crack.
At that point, you may get the media to tune in, and they may be there to watch you go from 20 revolutions per minute to 1000 rpm. From their perspective it will all have happened very quickly, without all that much effort. Well, they don't know about the thousands of pushes the company made before the media started paying attention. It all started long before that with one single push followed by thousands of others.
Seeing incredible results requires consistency more than anything else. I've been pushing my company HouseFLIX for almost two years now and now we're finally seeing inertia working for us rather than against us. There's no way it would have even been spinning at all if I were the only one pushing. I've got several committed people working to make it happen. Together we're seeing that big wheel turn.
He says that there are not really all that many true overnight successes. The reason we view them that way is because when the publicly visible upswing occurs it can be very dramatic. But, if we study what caused the successes, which is exactly what Jim Collins did, we often find that there were months, if not years of preparation leading up to that "overnight success".
Collins explains it as a giant, heavy, wheel that is mounted on a center post. Imagine it like a big merry-go-round weighing many tons.
Something heavy has a tremendous amount of inertia. It's impossible to spin it with a single hard push or even lots of individual pushes every now and then. More than anything else, consistent pushing is required to get it spinning.
Getting the business model articulated may be one long push, then making the right partnerships is another one, getting the right technology working for you can be another one, getting a key clients may come next, getting a bit of external funding, increasing market awareness, refining product offerings... you get the idea. All these things are pushes. Together they can get the wheel started in the right direction. It may be slow, but you just have to keep pushing and pushing. Soon it may be spinning at 1 revolution per minute, then 2, then 5, then 20...
Now, momentum is on your side. Steady pushing is still required, but each push now has greater impact and it starts to go... and go... and go. When it spins, and I mean really spins, it would take some really big set backs to even slow it down. You can then use smaller motors to keep pushing on your behalf. The whole goal is to just keep pushing. You just crank and crack.
At that point, you may get the media to tune in, and they may be there to watch you go from 20 revolutions per minute to 1000 rpm. From their perspective it will all have happened very quickly, without all that much effort. Well, they don't know about the thousands of pushes the company made before the media started paying attention. It all started long before that with one single push followed by thousands of others.
Seeing incredible results requires consistency more than anything else. I've been pushing my company HouseFLIX for almost two years now and now we're finally seeing inertia working for us rather than against us. There's no way it would have even been spinning at all if I were the only one pushing. I've got several committed people working to make it happen. Together we're seeing that big wheel turn.
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