Millenium Marketer

What is it like in your city?
I live in Silicon Valley and it is a little bit crazy. I don’t know if there are other places like this in the world, because my other point of reference is Wales where people end the day at 4 or 5 and go straight to the pub. I know they are nothing like this. But then Hong Kong and Tokyo are a bit crazy too, and not like this. Silicon Valley’s word is Geeky. There are girl geeks here too.

Silicon Valley is like a mad scientist’s haven, everyone here is obsessed with creating or funding a new innovation or providing a service (PR, consulting, accounting, coffee houses, entrepreneur launchpads) that is the oil to keep innovation engine running.  There are engineers who spend their days dreaming of owning their own start-ups, lots of  emerging companies who want to make it big. It’s the only place I know where is possible to meet entrepreneurs as young as Mark Zuckerberg at Facebook, or even younger, like Mark Levie at Box.net. If you’re not working in these companies, you’re writing about them in VentureBeat, TechCrunch or ValleyWag.

We have a ton of venture capital companies here: Sequoia Capital, Garage Technology Ventures, GRP Ventures, Elevation Ventures (where Bono of U2 is a Managing Director). It’s so real that I have shaken hands with Kawasaki once at a movie theater event, met wild eyed Levie briefly, and yes, worked at hi-tech PR firm supporting an emerging VC funding start-up. I have friends who own tech start-ups, dodged the Google IPO or have experienced a start-up acquisition. It’s that real.

Housing prices can go as far as the millions, in my area, the average housing price is $2,343, 246.  Renting is cheaper than buying, a concept that profoundly confuses my Taiwanese family abroad.

It’s practically Darwinian the way we are filtering out folks who aren’t necessarily interested in this innovation madness and all this blinding brilliance. To stand out, it appears that you have to either attend Stanford to shortly quit like Page and Brin, get an MBA, learn a technical skill like Photoshop or javascript, OR tweet like mad  @SocialMediaClub.

New products start with E, like the WD e-Book or i as in iPod and iPhone.

It’s the only place I know where people will turn down an impromptu invitation to dinner because they are on leave from Google to work their side hustle, or promise to teach you to be rich. Unless, your obsession IS food and you’re cooking the latest celebrity chef dinner.

If you live in Silicon Valley, is there something else you would add?

Is it like this elsewhere?  What drives the engine of young professionals in your city?

Last week, I attended a public speaking boot camp hosted by Peter (a former engineer) and Allan (a former educator and actor) of Method Speaking. Both are now speaking coaches and they are some of the most authentic people I have ever met.

No one had prepared speeches, we were just focusing on the experience of going up and talking in front of a group. Often times, people would blurt out “I don’t have anything to say.”
Ever experienced that? Perhaps during a networking event, or writing a blog post, or responding to someone else’s question.

Here’s a wacky idea: no matter where you are, whether speaking one-to-one or one-to-many, you have something to important to say. Yes, you! As Peter and Alan coached us, they pointed out this: “You have a life of many, many experiences. The reason you think you don’t have anything to say is because you most likely have too many things to say!”
In fact, the left side of your brain is overwhelmed by all these experiences and has gotten stuck trying to parse out the details.

The next time you feel the urge to tell yourself that you have nothing to say, activate right brained thinking and just say the first thing that comes to your mind. You may just surprise yourself and delight others.

Wacky Ideas, Silly Stories is a series of posts describing people’s strange experiences in life, as well as some of my hare-brained theories.

I saw this on the GetSatisfaction blog. Some of the headlines are non-sensical (in an attempt to be funny) but unfortunately they don’t accurately describe the data below it, so I’ve pointed out a few things for you here.

• One-third of us are likely to create or contribute content to a social network online.
• 9 out of 10 will own a technology device.
• 21% or 1 in 5 are likely to purchase things online.
• In addition, Gen Y is likely to desire a connect to a brand, rather than only buy from brands they recognize.

The last point intrigues me the most. Gen Y will buy from brands that they have a personal and authentic connection. I say, absolutely right! You’ll want to use social media to talk to us about the things we care about, and not about your brand per se.

Case in point: Kristen (on my Brazen Careerist network) said in a conversation that she would only get a tattoo of the Ironman logo if she finished a triathlon. That’s interesting, because that Ironman brand would have a very personal meaning to her. I have another friend that will only buy artisanal, small producer brands because she likes the feeling of contributing to her local economy (think cheese from local Marin county or farmer’s market, etc.). Me, I love Anthropologie for communicating who I aspire to be, a free-spirt, casual, international and creative person :o)

Elizabeth Gilbert in Eat, Pray, Love writes that every person has one single word that they live by.
I had to remind myself today that my word is not “marketer.” A little bit shocking given the name of this blog, but marketer suggests a professional or expert.
Have you ever had this experience? You’re so entrenched with reading social media blogs and are so on-trend and steeped in marketing theory, you forget to connect with your actual customers.
At least that’s what was happening to me. So I had to tell myself this.

News flash, ace, your audience is not other professional marketers, it’s people who want to be marketers.

Identifying your Influencers is a Catch Phrase
A couple of years ago, when social media was still growing, I read a lot of catchy buzz phrases through the blogosphere.
Listen to the conversation.
Identify your “influencers.”
Engage or die.
Target your key words and measure your traffic.

I have to say the messages are changing a bit, and I don’t deny that they are true in their own way. The problem is that many bloggers (including myself) have gotten in the habit of repeating these catch phrases. I’ve gotten a bit tired of experts standing on their soap box, because if you are to follow their steps, you may not get your desired result. (A while back, I took some of Chris Brogan‘s advice about blog ideas way too literally. I managed to take some pictures of my neighborhood and post them on Flickr. In hindsight it is funny to me because none of those posts resulted in any of the conversations I desired to initiate.) The point is I started following instead of reaching out to others in diverse contexts.

And, Reciprocation in “Being Social” is Not Equal
Look at Freakonomics on Twitter, how many people do you see Freaknomics following?

The All Stars are few, and the chances that I will collaborate with THEM, are very slim. I may shake hands with an All Start Social Media talking head. It will satisfy that “can I have your autograph, I’m Starstruck” impulse. Still, these are people with already busy lives, families and many other fans to tend to, and I am not writing this blog to impress them.

There are so many more of the RIGHT people who want to have their 5 minutes of fame. So many more who would love to have their say, and who want to talk back.

Truth Is, Real Connections Happen in your Target Community
I met a blogger last week. His name is Will, and he is on a blogger network called Brazen Careerist. He has an awesome blog called Peoplegogy and has been very successful at bringing in guest writers. It is pretty cool, you can see people coming from different backgrounds talking about their lives. He likes to write, and clearly has an interest in social media as a means. I don’t think he pays much attention to the talking heads, the All Stars. He focuses on his audience.

What do you think? Is connecting with your audience hard or easy? How do you initiate conversations about the things they value and want to talk about?

I got in this conversation with my husband this morning about Twitter.
He, like many of my friends, doesn’t perceive Twitter as something that is as pervasive as Facebook or YouTube. It is also thought that Twitter is more of an emerging tool compared to others.

The question is: “Is there a different, natural progression of how Twitter will grow as a social networks, (where when social products become more mainstream, corporations start joining the crowd)?

I thought this was an interesting question because it affirms that those who use social networking tools tend not to use all that are available. Certain groups of people will associate themselves with one social networking tool and not others. Those “others” are seen as less pervasive, less popular and in some cases, less successful models of social networking and crowd-sourcing.

I do have some thoughts on what groups of people tend to use which social networking tools. Think of it as cliques in a high school. Different people hang out in different cliques, while there are some folks who are cool with everyone all around (and use all social networking tools.)
For now I’ll just comment on Twitter and mention others in a different post.

Twitter users are in a group that I like to think of as “Fledglings.”
You tend to see a lot of start-ups, bloggers and small businesses on Twitter a lot. In other words, those who tend to be more mobile heavy. These are people who embrace new media technologies and don’t stop to ask what is it but figure out what they want to use it for.

I have been there as part of my personal Twitter community…it is a nice way to “escape” from your one person office and stay connected to the world at large and keep up on the news. And, those in Africa with limited access to robust tools have made Twitter their communication vehicle as well.

Yeah, yeah, new iPad. Great, and rumors have it that there will be a 3rd gen iPad by the end of the year! Steve Jobs (bless his health, he’s only 50!) made a surprise appearance yesterday and says, “Everyone is coming out with tablets, will this be the year of copycats?” I can’t help but think OK, yeah, iPad 2 and hearsay has it there will be a 3rd gen before Christmas.

iPads in the same year can only mean one thing: Jobs must be getting a little nervous. After all, how do you beat perfectionist products? While all the cool kids still wants to get their hands on a new shiny, iPad, there was still some (muted) excitement around the Samsung Galaxy tab. I am reminded it of it every time when I get an announcement in my Gmail box.

I admit, you can only ignore glamor for so long, but I am determined. So how much was it again for a Galaxy tab? At 50% the price of iPad, I can afford the running costs of being Always On in my social networks, too.

I love this article on the New York Times (Does Your Language Shape How You Think?) which absolutely echoes my on-going internal debate and struggle with language:

When your language routinely obliges you to specify certain types of information, it forces you to be attentive to certain details in the world.

If you speak a romance language, like French or Spanish, and I tell you  I spent time with a friend, I am obliged to tell you the gender of that friend. Not true in English.

In English, though, we say whether it happened in the past or present, but Mandarin does this in a more subtle way where the tense is implied through the context.

So, does language shape our thinking? Or is it the other way around, where our cultural attitudes and perceptions can shape the way language was developed in the first place?

As witnessed by some accidental browsing on Borders, it looks like the mobile devices market is getting more dispersed.

Mobile devices, by the way, used to be cell phones, period. But that market has expanded greatly to include cell phones, laptops or netbooks, tablets and eBook Readers. All of that just twenty years ago was like science fiction. Amazing.

Anyway, if Android-based mobile phones (28% in sales vs. 21% of iPhones), then Android on tablet devices is a natural progression.

Now, it’s up to the classic hardware makers like Sony (among others) who are lagging behind to stay ahead of the game, because clearly this market is going to get noisy and fast. The interesting thing about Sony is that they were the first to come out with an eBook reader (I have seen these devices at Borders stores way before the Kindle was born) but they did not grab the market in the same way.  When I speculate on this, I think of it this way: new internet players such as Amazon and Google have an edge because they are the companies people aspire to be like in this millennium age. I don’t know why, but they are definitely “cooler” than a company like Sony, which has been very savvy in many electronics in the 90s.

By the way, let’s not forget that eBook reader devices came about as a reaction to other kinds of mobile technologies. As a result, book publishers and newspapers are scrambling to innovate and sell through this new, more efficient channel. Technology often has its way of creating a net effect on other industries and causing massive change.

A Victim Treats His Mugger Right : NPR.

A Facebook friend led me to this story, and I was so touched by it when I read it. I  especially admired Julio Diaz’s courage and how he was not afraid to do the right thing.

Said Diaz: “”I figure, you know, if you treat people right, you can only hope that they treat you right. It’s as simple as it gets in this complicated world.”

My sister, a musician on a much more unconventional career path, often says this: “You are your own path.” And more recently, she asked me, “Are you doing what you wanted to do when you were a child?”

It’s a poignant question, and I realize that this year, I have not yet sat down to do a personal branding audit. It is crucial, every individual “careerist” should do it, every business should do it, and the number reason to do it at all is to find your center, your mission and who you are all about. Whether it is to affirm the current path you are on, to remind others of what you are about, re-assess the path you are on, or to move in a totally different direction, your story is the one way you can build your own path.  With all the demands of every day life, responsibilities that we enjoy, it’s important to come back and remember who YOU are and what that means.

That “path” is not always defined by technical skills. It is also your character and how it is a unique character from others that will allow you to stand out against someone with equal talent. So, I took the Strengths Finder 2.0 (by Gallup) recently and out came some cursory answers or pointers to who I might be.

My top 5 strengths are:

• Connectedness: This works for me on two levels. On an intellectual level, I make quick connections to ideas, events or people, even if they do not seem related to the present subject matter.  It comes in handy when someone is looking for a reference, or when patterns in data come out of the woodwork. On an emotional level, I care greatly about how actions and words affect relationships between friends and family. (Although sometimes I miss the mark on this, and am myopic at times with my own friends)
• Empathy: People with this trait can quickly develop intuition about how others are feeling at a given moment, or anticipate an occurrence before it actually happens.
• Intellection: People with Intellection are avid readers and have a strong memory. I find myself sometimes remembering inane events or statistics that aren’t necessarily useful. In other cases, I can remember minute details that I need to access quickly, mostly because it is something I have read and understood many times over. Intellection also suggests that I prefer a world of ideas and theory than practicalities.
• Adaptability: “By nature, you realize that each day offers its own surprises. You trust you can handle whatever occurs. Even when you do not know exactly what to do, you probably know someone who does.” I would atribute this potential trait to my many travels and early trips volunteering in Asia.
• Responsibility: As for this one, I can sum up the one thing that stood out most for me on this one. When people ask me to do something, I want to do it, and it is very hard not to get overwhelmed by over-committing. I have had to learn to push back and pick the things that I want to do, but on the flip side, I get so easily interested in so many things it is not easy to say no. :)

Now, by no means do these Gallup traits really “form” my personality, but it’s an interesting jumping off point to keep developing my story, or my unique value proposition. Because, there is one truth that stands out in my mind: no single person is like another, not even siblings or twins, and to be reminded by a simple quiz that each individual has the potential to stand out is a small comfort.

What are your top five strengths? I’d love to hear about your “aha!” moments and what got you closer to understanding yourself better so you could share that message with other people on your same career path.

Thanks to blogger friends for the kernel of this post: John Saddington, who says “I am not defined by any “Personality Profile” nor is my identity found in them”, although he and I would share the idea that it is important to be connected and self aware, and Rebecca Thorman, who also likes to be connected.