Gmail’s Permanent Failure, by Adam Rifkin

I really like this TechCrunch article. Here are some reasons:

1. It is not overlong but it manages to touch all the needed bases of Rifkin’s subject. All writing should be EXACTLY the length to cover the subject properly. That’s a truism, and you can take it home with you.
2. His ad hoc subject matter carries relevance not just to him, but to all of us Gmail users. This is not an essay written in the desperation of providing content, but to understand and expound upon a specific situation.
3. Rifkin takes a local, personal experience, and expands its relevance to a greater audience.

The thrust of the essay hits home because Rifkin nails a sore weakness in the Google. The giant lacks feel for the user’s experience.

Google is curiously lunkheaded in terms of  communication. It would seem that the effort of empathy has not been proclaimed positively at the company. Instead, the user must measure up to the well-schooled creators of the company’s myriad products and services. Google’s aristo glow is a fake if they can’t talk normal to regular folk.

Seriously!

Google’s collegium of high gear prototypes loses the Get It test. And their funneling answering machine to stroke your issue presents a hopeless future. Service is merely advice.

Google doesn’t care because caring is not part of the program. The program turns to proliferation of product while scanting on service. Google is too busy to respond adequately. Instead, Google relies on failsafe technology. The people part is abandoned. Hi, my name is Why Bother.

Selling Real Estate

My wife is studying to become a real estate agent. I have accompanied her the last few weekends to check out open houses. Doing this let me see interesting opportunities.

Beth always identifies herself right away that she is not a buyer but intending to enter the profession. The agents have been varyingly helpful, within the human norm.

As an agent, you have the resources of the company for which you work, but you largely work alone. I have had the opportunity to talk shop with some of these agents. The smart ones understand that strong communication is essential.

I do not know that the challenges of selling a house are larger than selling other things, but the scale of the purchase certainly adds considerable concern. Agents must be able to communicate clearly with prospective buyers, to overcome the fears and confusions associated with that scale of concern.

The agent must reassure clientele that:

1. His/her knowledge of the business is adequate
2. He/she understands the needs of clients
3. He/she is scrupulous, both in the sense of perspicacity, but also in the sense of ethics.

Should an agent dress up particularly when showing a $3 million house? I was asked that. This is one of the things one must decide. A blanket answer does not exist. Regard the specific situation and decide.

That same agent asked me to help him with some of his communications. His company puts out quarterly flyers that associate with the agents. He wants to be sure that this effort ties in with his own initiative.

I can help him, because I think in terms of the language. This is a matter of training, both in the sense of taking courses, and in asserting my own course of study. The language of communication for these sales situations must be dynamic, concise, accurate, and clear.

Temptations to skirt these necessities abound. A lovely house was two miles from the center of town, not “steps”, as the flyer reported. Perhaps one was to understand that by steps they meant 5000. Why even attempt to suggest closer proximity? The ruse is obvious.

Some people will accept the necessity of sump pumps in the cellar. For others, no gilding will suffice. Words of communication must be framed by verities. Show the house in good light, but acknowledge the faults. Those faults can be ameliorated or accepted.

Within these strictures, I take my duty as removing obfuscation and duplicity, highlighting verifiable features, and trusting that an honest delivery will find the proper audience. I know that an urge to sneak by exists, but that is a bad implement, and one I will not use.

Writer as Slob

I was just reading a blog that I like. It supplies good information that I can use. Unfortunately, it is a mess of typos and poor grammar. I read Internet as well as anyone (I speak it pretty well, too), but I find the situation problematic.

At best, the sloppiness produces distraction. The missing apostrophe or the ‘e’ before ‘i’ situation cause me momentarily to lose track of the sentence. At worst, I am confused, like when the run-on sentence leaves me lost.

I like the blog because it supplies good information, but I hate accepting the sloppiness. Should I even recommend it to people? Should I contact the author(s) and let them know? Or are low standards the norm now?

Content Farms, Sucking Our Lifeforce

Content farms are high production sites for content. Check out this brief rundown. Content farms provide the disappointing muck you find at the end of many a search. They illustrate how the information revolution can go astray.

People perform Internet searches exactly 27 bajillion times a day. Canny entrepreneurs have discovered that providing likely content for those searches, and tacking ads to that content, will create revenue. The more page views, the more revenue. It is a business model, and it works. Whee haw!

A  fearsome amount of content must be created to satisfy those 27 bajillion daily searches. Production has been honed with algorithms to determine what topics and data people seek. At the scale of content farms like Direct Media, whatever effort expended to check data and maintain decent levels of grammar simply cannot match necessity. Slapdash is the byword.

So what else is new? This is Web 2.0. Deal with it. One finds oneself thinking that. Alternatives remain, however. One can choose to avoid the crap and stick with good content.

Crafting good content cannot be a mechanical exercise. I stress good here. Good = original. Original means an ad hoc reaction to and presentation of a subject.

Many templates exist for a good blog post. These templates include ideas like asking questions (thereby eliciting reader response), numbered lists (people love them), use of keywords (search engines love them), an 8th grade vocabulary (just 8th graders apparently read blogs), and so forth. These are good ideas, useful to keep in mind. Like with all rules, though, these can be usefully broken at times.

The surprise factor still scores points. I base this assertion on no statistics. I just know that I tire of the same old. I also know that new things, original things, intrigue people. Content farms offer no surprises, and barely any content. Content farms cheat readers with the barest minimum of pay off.

My thesis is that readers will follow you if you take a left turn where the content farm authors always take a right. Surprise—in subject, in vocabulary, in viewpoint—will carry the day. That is my hope as a writer, and my belief. Originality is still a good thing.

Elevator Pitch

The following is the elevator pitch for my company. If anyone would like to offer criticism, please leave a comment, or write to me directly at tributary.communications@gmail.com.

 

Tributary Communications

Focusing Your Business Communications

Tributary Communications uses social media to build your customer base, increase your profits, and save you time. Interested? Here is how:

Internet: I will create a focused and effective web base for your business that customers will be drawn to.

Email: I will develop targeted email campaigns tailored to the specific needs and interests of your clientele.

Social Networks: I will create a profitable social media presence that will engage customers with lively content and a clear sense of your business strengths.

Blogs: I will set up your blog and either write strong content or edit yours so that customers will want to visit your blog regularly.

Is That Ringing in Your Ear a Death Knell?

Seth Grodin, author and—can I call him this?—marketing guru, announced on his blog that he was through with traditional publishing. The blog post is here. This should surprise no one who reads his blog, he has been clear about the possibility. Does this signal the end of traditional book publishing? Well, how should I know?

I do know that many options exist now. You can deliver your work by website, pdf, e-reader, or print on demand, and give the publishers a bye. This is one more example of when traditional businesses should get on their toes rather than back on their heels.

Grodin has established himself, so this step is not so precarious as for a lesser known writer. A lesser known writer can still succeed with the new alternatives, but must put the effort in.

I do not hear the death knell of publishing in Grodin’s decision. We will still need publishers, of some sort. They did not just select what to publish, they got work designed, printed, and marketed. those services were valuable. If you do not want to do all that, or cannot, then publishers provide the service.

Publishers unwilling to change may hear a death knell to the way they did business, but if they are savvy they might see a need for gatekeepers. I hate saying that, because publishing has been a guarded playground for so long. We have so much ‘content’ now, however, that filtering seems necessary. The market will settle the matter of course, but the market is pretty weird right now.

Grodin points out that with traditional publishing, you sell to an editor. Nowadays, you can sell to the reader. That’s who I always wanted to read my writing. Possibly we can move away from the model of publishers creating crap excitement with celebrity tell alls and copycat memes, though I suppose there will always be a market (and a marketing) for that.

So publishing will have to change, just as the music and movie industries had to change. Death knells are heard by pundits but that has more to do with their own clamor than actual events. It is certain that those who cannot change will find themselves forced from the playing field.

Is Marketing Lying or What?

Marketing attractively presents a product or service to prospective customers. Having gotten that difficult definition out of the way, I would like to look closer at what marketing encompasses.

In the wine business, I performed marketing in two ways. I met customers face to face, and I wrote reams of marketing material with newsletters, brochures, and shelf talkers. Naturally, I tried to present our wines in the best light.

Presenting products or services in the best light represents the essence of marketing. At what point does “best light” actually obscure the truth?

Truth is a fuzzy word in this context because everyone has their view about things. Good marketing should not make anything up,  however. That is not the same as tellin’ it like it is, but honestly, the goal is to give a good picture.

I did not work on commission so I lacked that consideration. Still, inventory concerns and supplier relationships, among other forces, influenced me when I directed selection ideas toward customers. That’s business. But I wasn’t trying to hoodwink anyone.

In the end, customer satisfaction rules. You cannot afford to disappoint customers in the slightest, whether you work on commission or not.

In these circumstances, I did my best to hear what customers wanted. Why not? We had a good selection. Each wine is an individual statement, and everyone’s taste differs. Something accurate and positive about a wine could always be said. Besides, we did not carry faulty wines. Whether I would purchase a wine need not enter the conversation.

Marketing, then, presents what is good about the product or service. This does not mean hiding flaws. To do that will bite you in the ass every time. Every time!

Big companies like Google and Microsoft cannot get marketing straight so I offer a numbered list of marketing rules.

1. Explain the product or service clearly. That fuzziness in your head after reading Google explain Wave or Microsoft explain Live is not your fault.
2. Explain pricing clearly. In other words, do not act like a cable company.
3. Regard problems with your product or service as flaws to be fixed not features to hide.
4. Learn from your competitors but do not copy them. Create your own niche using your own innovation and distinction.