timjamesbrennan.com

Show Notes:-

This show was originally recorded on Tuesday 15th April 2008 at 8:00pm EST.

2:55 It’s been a huge week in internet marketing

3:07 That big thing that has happened is Twitter. I really want to strip Twitter back to understand the psychology of it.

(Ed shows Pink Thong Video)

7:24 The Alexa ranking of the thirtydaychallenge.com site has gone through the roof since the start of April. Although, Alexa ranking is fundamentally flawed, because we’re comparing apples to apples they’re all flawed together, so the data is interesting.

8:02 I think that’s down to a combination of three things, although Dan and I would argue about which one. I say it is down to the TV show and the Twitter phenomenon. Dan would say that it’s down to a bunch of scripts and search engine stuff related to the Thirty Day Challenge.

9:04 Twitter has all the characteristics of something that I suspect will turn out to be the marketing phenom of 2008. It is a classic example of a service that couldn’t have existed without the internet. The very first radio shows were just people reading out newspapers – the persuasive medium of the day before radio existed. Then they worked out that radio shows could be more immediate than radio shows.

9:54 The first television shows were dominated by the stars of radio shows; just someone talking into a microphone. It wasn’t until they understood the medium, e.g. the concept of the soap, that TV really took off.

10:23 With the internet, the first thing companies did were to put up brochures and made an online version. It didn’t really impact or take advantage of the internet at all. If you look at things that did take hold, eBay for example, could not have existed… you could not aggregate that kind of audience without the internet providing the interactivity.

10:52 By the way, what is it with eBay at the moment? Are they on cocaine down at eBay headquarters? Some of the moves they’re making are just total bone head moves. In Australia here, they are making PayPal the only way of payment. Apparently, having someone deposited money direct into your bank account these days is not good enough these days. That’s not as “secure” as using PayPal. That’s crazy.

11:30 For people with high ticket items, people have PayPal limits – there’s certain amounts that they can and can’t send through PayPal. It’s really bananarama – I don’t get it. I’m sure there will be a big outcry.

11:45 How did I find out that eBay had done that? Did eBay let me know? No. Ed, aka NextInstinct, did a Twitter on that… which brings me on to this story that Twitter could not have existed without the internet infrastructure. That’s part one of what makes it so exiting.

12:18 Part two, which really hit me about Twitter is following some news events, like the US presidential elections and the Olympic torch debacle at San Francisco. The hot news was not coming through blogs, but from traditional sources, which was extraordinary.

13:13 Let’s have a look at why Twitter is so cool. So the first thing you need to realise is that Twitter takes advantage of two things which I hold dearest to my marketing philosophy heart. The first thing is the Check Move theory that although I didn’t invent it, I am a big advocate of it. Check move theory is a very, very important element. 

14:55 It basically says that your success as a sales person in is direct proportion to the amount of times you have had a contact (aka “a touch”) with that person. The thing about Twitter is that it is the check move machine miracle, because you’re able to do really high touch activities, you’re able to provide real value, and you’re able to talk to so many people so directly. 

16:02 I’d encourage you to go back and look at the check moves video, because that’s really important to the whole thing.

16:48 I want to show you a video example of how one business is using Twitter just superbly. What’s ironic is that when I leaked this video out to people on Twitter of course, I believe Richard actually made quite a few sales. Check out this case study of how someone is taking all these technologies and applying them to a traditional business. Most people wouldn’t actually think would be appropriate, but he does it and does it brilliantly.

17:31 (Video – “How to Use Twitter for Business” runs from 17:31 – 33:00)

17:53 I was thrilled when this guy sent me a tweet about what he was doing. I don’t mind showing this example because what this guy does is so unique there’s no point in competing with this guy. What he does is actually a passion of mine, but not one I ever considered. There are so artisans nowadays that work in their garages and make these incredible hand build custom guitars. Nike are also doing this with shoes.

19:07 This week when we talked about Daniel Pink and his “A Whole New Mind” book, this whole concept of being able to design your own things or have custom, hand made things is such a huge part of society as we move forward. So it’s a real thrill to talk to you about Richard

19:39 Check out this site: RichardInk.com. The guys name is Richard Merritt, and apart from being a guitar super-enthusiast and a great player, he’s also a lover of coffee. So, we’ve a heck of a lot in common. He’s also a bit of a pipe man – that’s not my thing, as you can hear my lungs are completely conkers.

20:03 As you’ll see soon, I think that Richard has absolutely nailed how to use the blog and how to use Twitter and show off. Check out these most astounding fountain pens. That is just superb!

20:38 What I wanted to talk about is his taking the stuff he’s learnt from the Thirty Day Challenge and else where and apply it to his real world business. Something that I really want to emphasise this year is that the biggest successes we’ve had in these past 12 months has come from people applying the 30dc to their real world business.

21:14 This is actually a blog, and each pen that he makes actually has its own blog post. Check out this artisan pencil. Just look at the comments, “I just tweeted you”. Hello, when did that language come into the vernacular? Take it from me, it will become more and more and more. He’s conducting a business using a blog!

23:27 Now the thing about blogs of course is that they are so easy to update and automate. I just think that he has done this so tastefully. When you’re buying a pen, what do want to know? You want to know its construction – he describes it and gives it a story.

24:00 Look at this – fountain pen care tips. This is so cool. For all those people doing eBay products, this is so important. This is what we’re talking about when you start to care for your customers are really bring them in. Remember high concept, high touch – those are the messages from Daniel Pink’s “A whole new mind” This is both of those things.

24:48 We’ve got the workbench here. A brilliant way of doing this type of site. 

25:25 Gary Halbert used to have special pens and I have too. This is the Mount Blanc pen I used to sign the contract when I sold my websites. I feel silly now because Richard Ink are not only better price wise, but are just much better pens.

26:18 Let me show Richard’s Twitter – this is where it gets really cool.  I just love this (reading from Twitter posts) “Taking it easy today. Smoking a Maestro De Paja pipe which was a gift from artist @jasonclaydunn… Maybe head out to the studio…”

27:44 The way he talks to people, and this is crucial, when you reply to people, you need to make it readable to other people. For example, he writes  “No, not a new material. I do pens in several types of resins, acrylics, and celluloids as well as wood burls”.

28:33 You see it’s detail, and it’s engaging. He’s not trying to sell anything here; he’s not pitching. This is my greatest fear for people who have just jumped on to Twitter. If you pitch people, you’re gone because Twitter is the most democratic messaging service ever invented.

29:10 (Reading Richards twitter), you feel part of the creation process. You can do this quickly and easily without breaking your flow. So, if you’re doing any sort of creative endeavour, you can make people feel involved, and they’ll pay much more. When your reading Richard on Twitter, you don’t feel like you’re being sold to, it completely disengages all of the “I’m being sold to” defence mechanisms.

30:03 I don’t know whether Richard’s set out to do that deliberately or not, but he’s passionate about what he does and that comes through with every post. Look at  his response to comments – what has that told a prospective buyer?

30:43 You’ve got to understand the psychology of this and how important it is. It’s not the classic “person buying car vs. car salesman” interaction. It’s like two people discussing my snowball microphone and the third person comes and listens in on this conversation. This is why Twitter is so amazing in marketing.

31:28 Seth Godin did a brilliant post in the last couple of days. He says that if you do want to sell something then there’s nothing wrong with that, but if you follow someone one day and then sell to them the next it’s bad practice.

32:00 Why am I not worried about stuffing up Twitter? It’s because if you are noisy and offer no value, then they can stop following you.

 32:14 Buy some of Richard’s pens, because they are brilliant. More importantly, have a look at how this guy is conducting his artisan business. I’ve never met the guy, I’m just getting this from his website. I encourage you to go and have a look at it and think about how you can use twitter and blogs for your own real world business or your own e-store business.

33:05 The exercise that I want you to do and think about right here is, “How can I take what Richard has done and apply it to my own niche?”  It’s all about high-concept and high-touch (explained in a minute).

33:53 This week, I have been reading “A Whole New Mind – Why Right-Brainers will Rule the Future” by Daniel H Pink. This book is an absolute must read. It talks about the left brain, the more analytical brain; and the right brain, the more creative side. In truth you use all parts of your mind at all times, but there are definitely biases between the two.

35:05 One interesting fact from the book that I found fascinating is that in languages where they don’t use vowels, and only constantans (Hebrew, Arabic, Mandarin, etc) they write from right to left. This is because to make the intuitive leap of putting the vowel sounds, in Arabic and Hebrew, engages the right side of the brain. Whereas in western languages we include the vowel so there’s no need to make a creative leap, so the left hand side of the brain is engaged.

35:51 I found that fascinating, but that’s almost a distraction from why this book is so good. He talks about “the conceptual age”… we’ve had the agricultural age, the industrial age, the information age, and his basic contention is that we are moving from the information age to the conceptual age.

36:33 I thought, “This sounds a bit airy-fairy”, but in chapter 2, “Abundance, Asia, and Automation” he’s talking about how these factors are really going to make a huge ground shift the way we value and pay for things.

37:01 For example, we’re familiar with the whole outsourcing debate and we’re big encouragers of outsourcing. The information marketing area is quite advanced when it comes to outsourcing, because any task that is repetitive or follows a set of rules can be effectively outsourced. You can debate the politics of this in the after show section if you like, but the facts are that people in India (do the outsourced work), where US$650 per month is 25 times the average wage.

37:59 I was surprised to learn that “the knowledge worker” is also in this automation category. It’s startling to learn that 90% of tax returns in the US are done in India

39:00 They did a study of how long it takes until a patient is interrupted by their doctor when they are explaining what is wrong with them. The average is about 20 seconds, because they have a diagnostic process, which they‘ve realised is all you need to cure a large percentage of ailments.

39:44 What makes this book so fascinating for us is that to protect yourself in the next 10-20 years, you need to look at things in the conceptual age (Ed starts to look up the 6 characteristics).

40:12 Dan Pink used to be a speech writer for Al Gore so it’s really, really a good read.

40:20 The 6 Characteristics are:

1.Design

2. Story

3. Symphony

4. Empathy

5. Play

6. Meaning

These are the things that in the conceptual age can’t be outsourced. Think about it. Why does Apple do so well? Yes, they get all their stuff made in Taiwan, but the design of something as beautiful as the iPhone is not something that can be outsourced. In the US, people who are in the creative arts are more increasingly becoming important to the economy. This really, really, is a big, big deal.

41:40 I won’t spoil the book, you’ve just got to read it.

42:15 If you look at those characteristics, empathy, symphony, play and story are the key constructs  of what good information marketing is all about. Then if we overlay Twitter onto all of this… Twitter is a tool for the conceptual age. Let me show you some examples:

43:10 (Ed mistakenly brings up a picture of an interesting looking tomato – whoops)

44:10 How did I find out about Richard (Merritt)? He Twittered me.

44:45 PollDaddy is a cool service that enables you to use Twitter people to do surveys. Twitter is great for utilising people’s brain power, I can’t believe how effective it at helping me when I get stuck.

Nez (Andrew Nesbit) has done a new design for my blog.

45:44 What is so cool about PollDaddy is that I saw that Dan and Lisa Hartwell have already run polls. NextInstinct, one of our favourite Thirty Day Challengers, has had a poll featured!

46:38 Twitter from a masterminding perspective is just huge. It is a torch created for it.

47:09 (PollDaddy) is my reason why Twitter is different to instant messaging such as Skype, iChat, etc. It is the absolute bomb and it enhances your Twitter experience 10 times.

47:51 (Video – “Why I Don’t Follow Many People On Twitter - I choose to follow EVERYONE!” 47:51-1:05:39)

48:15 I just want to show you a real, live, amazing example of why Twitter is so cool. I also want to point out again why I don’t follow many people. One reason is that there are just over 3,000 people following me. If I were to follow them back it would take 12.5 hours to read just one message from each of them. I only follow people that are part of my team or very close friends.

50:15 It’s not a snub. It’s not that I am being rude. Twitter is not an instant messaging where there is 2-way reciprocation. There is no obligation on the part of the person that you’re following than to do anything other than provide interesting information to you. If we fail in that endeavour, then we’re gone, and you lose a follower.

51:06 People think that because I don’t follow I’m being rude and I miss the conversation. I’m going to show you with this brilliant site (Quotably.com) that I can be across far more with a couple of amazing tools than I can could ever be. If followed 3,000 people, my Twirl would be like a Vegas slot machine, it would be continuously going off, making it unusable.

51:35 Let me show you this incredible Twitter tool – it’s going to change your Twitter life.

51:42 This is Quotably.com. We are going to at random pick a username… oh, I don’t know… “Ed_Dale”… and click Follow.

52:09 I did this video on why I don’t follow people much, and I used Seesmic which is this amazing video tool which integrates with Twitter. I can quickly whip off a video message that will encompass much more than a 140 character Twitter message. That’s amazing tool #1.

52:20 (Referring to Quotably conversations) Do I follow these people? No, all of these people used “@Ed_Dale”. Here’s the thing, if you use “@Ed_Dale” I will get that message and I’ll respond.

52:35 Now check this out. I follow John Reese. Why? Because he’s a good friend – not that he’s got anything to teach, I taught him everything he knows (joke).

53:55 The first thing that quotably does is that it brings you the entire conversation, which is so cool. I can laugh at John being stuck on a runway in Orlando, how cool is the world when you can do that?

54:29 Then I saw something: “Anyone know why @Ed_Dale doesn’t follow his followers back?”

55:25 You should be doing everything that you can to provide magnificent content so that people will be desperate to follow you. YaroStarak does that, he’s a really interesting blogger. Gideonshalwick is also someone who I’ve got some time for.

55:50 (Referring to Quotably conversation) I can see that Mari and Gideon are doing a bit of business. Would I have known that without (Quotably)? Would I know that Gideon was doing interviews with people? No. Am I inclined to do a video interview with Gideon now I know this? Yes, because it’s over the shoulder, it’s shoulder to shoulder marketing, not face to face marketing.

56:45 Now here we are. This is where we get into the meat. I wouldn’t have picked up that SethGodin and Jason without this Quotably tool.

57:05 I would use Twitter differently if it was just a group of friends instead of me as a character if you will… people follow me, I hope, because I’ve got some interesting insights in the use of technology, and marketing, and so on. It’s either that or rampant sex appeal.

37:38 (Referring to Quotably conversations) Jason said “But it certainly sends a message”. What’s going on here? I want everyone to like me, now of course that’s not going to happen in any world.

57:55 I wouldn’t have known that Jason has a negative view of me except for this use of this amazing tool. I’m way more over everything, and so can you be, by using this tool. It just shows you how powerful twitter is. I can literally put a hose on the bush fire before it gets out of control.

(Ed demonstrates how to reply to people directly using the @username trick.)

1:01:02 (Reading from Quotably) “ DonEttore: @marismith doesn’t practice what he preaches. Most of his inner circle just follow each other. One way marketing? Not very social.”

(Ed replies) “Ed_Dale: @DonEttore Mate - not true - this is I Dont Follow People much on Twitter - Redux http://seesmic.com/v/6C87sPJcYB”

1:01:31 The cool thing is that I know that Don is going to get that. How long has it taken me? 5 Seconds? For me I jus think that’s brilliant.

1:02:23 Now this has all been about me, but if I was a trout fisherman and I typed in trout fishing in the search all of a sudden it becomes fantastic.

1:02:47 This has turned into a much longer video than I hoped, but here’s the pièce de résistance. Look up here;    R – S – S  FEED. I can click on this… in this particular case I’m using Safari not Flock because I’m upgrading from Firefox to Flock which is another video I’m going to show you guys.

So anything to do with me – I’m across it.

1:03:29 I’m going to go through (Quotably) and respond to the rest of these people just to make sure they know I’m watching and that I do care. This is better than a two way conversation, because with instant message we feel obligated to reply all the time, instantly, and that’s why it becomes such a time suck. With Twitter, you answer on your own terms. It doesn’t mean you don’t care, it means you’ve got to balance it out. If you want to go live online, do World of Warcraft. I’m not saying that’s wrong.  I love World of Warcraft. I love all of these things, but you’ve just got to understand what you’re using them for. Please don’t mistake the fact that I don’t follow you personally as being a slight against you. It’s just not.

1:04:23 You can always contact me. This is why I love Twitter so much. If you just use the good old “@Ed_Dale” like Dustin has, I’ll get it. If Dustin sends me some interesting info, then I’m going to go, “Wow, I want to see what this guy’s doing”, and follow him. You’ll see in a new video I’m going to release very shortly, that’s how I found someone who’s doing amazing things with small business on Twitter.

1:04:53 For a whole philosophical discussion on Twitter, you want to tune in to this Tuesday night 8pm EST. We are going to dedicate the entire Thirty Day Challenge Show to a discussion about the ins and outs, the etiquettes, and the perspectives of utilising Twitter.  

1:05:45 (Ed singing “Don’t Ya Wish Ya Blog Was Hot Like Mine”)

1:07:20 What I love about Twitter is that it’s a completely permission based system. If someone sends you some links that you don’t like, or indeed if I start using Twitter in a way that is not comfortable with you, then one click and I’m gone. That’s the way I think it should be.

1:07:48 It’s about you having great information so that people are interested in following what you’ve got to say.

1:08:46 (Responding to Chat?) That Twitter launch stuff… Justin Brooke… It’s already happening. Don’t you worry about that.

1:08:53 (Ed demonstrates TweetScan feature in Twhirl) If I just type “Ed Dale”, every time anyone has mentioned “Ed Dale” I can see it which a very, very cool thing. The reason why I like to use it in Twhirl as opposed to the Tweetscan (site) is the ability to click on the photos.

Thank you guys and I will speak to you next week.