Best of Everyman Links #8

Clubs Over Crowds

CopyBlogger post on the value of a site’s aggregated data from hits, comments and up-votes to strengthen community relationships. Small and engaged is better than big and vaguely interested. My people and I feel more like a club than a crowd.

#business, #marketing, #content

Content Sharing Factors

Social Times article listing seven factors that promote content sharing. They include sharing something that makes you laugh so that your friends can laugh, too. Inspirational content is shared. Cuteness, originality, shock factor, surprise and nostalgia complete the list.

#content, #socialmedia, #marketing

Finding Nuggets in Upcoming Conference Presentations

This Duct Tape Marketing post describes how upcoming conference presentations can be a gold mine for fresh content ideas. The post suggests that apart from gaining content ideas, upcoming conference presentation lists can provide useful information like industry trends.

#marketing, #trends, #content

China Blue

Excellent PBS Independent Lens episode on how young people are being exploited in China’s factory system to make blue jeans.

#video

Knowing What To Do Next

A warning to not extend our expertise beyond our bounds by managing business functions better performed by others.  One-person shops often “do it all,” but successful long-term businesses are about more than just doing the work. I’m talking about intentionally building a structure and a strategy and a position, not focusing your energy on the mechanics, because mechanics alone are insufficient. The organizations that matter are busy being run by people who figure out what to do next.

#business, #career

Broken Screens

Mitch Joel on the kids today becoming the adults of tomorrow. “Imagine, we’re at that exact moment in time when a young person who can’t interact with a screen by touching it will assume that the screen is broken.” My equivalent “real world” anecdote with the broken screen–and maybe yours, too—is when Scotty talks into a mouse before typing the formula for transparent aluminum in Star Trek III. “How quaint.”

#trends, #future

Gotta Ask

CopyBlogger with advice on helping our customers do what we want them to do. Simply put, we gotta ask. “Online marketers seems to fall into two camps. A few aggressive types pitch too much. Everything they send is a pitch. The second more common camp is the one we don’t see. They’ve got something valuable to offer. But they’ve over-internalized the advice to ‘give before you get.’ They give and give and give and give and give. But when it comes time for the ‘get’ part, they freak out. Not coincidentally, many of these people are broke. Lovely, but broke.”

#marketing, #business

Fields of Asphalt

Thousands of miles of highways stretch across the U.S., and every day they soak up heat from the sun, sometimes to the tune of 140 degrees and more. An early Clean Technica article on harvesting solar energy from America’s roadways.

#solar, #cleanenergy