YASN

Darian likes to refer to "Yet Another Social Network." Seeing the growth among business acquaintances reminds me of a year or two ago, when a steady stream of folks discovery LinkedIn. Now everyone's joining Facebook, which makes for some interesting collisions of worlds. What am I supposed to make of the announcement that "[former president of the company I used to work for] added the Pillow Fight application?"

3 double cheeseburgers - what does it mean?

Yesterday, the large fellow next to me in line at McDonalds ordered three double cheeseburgers off the dollar menu (sign of the economic times?) and a Diet Coke. I couldn't help wondering about the Diet Coke the rest of the day. Did he like the taste better? Was it a self defense mechanism - given you fill up your own drink, there's no need to call out a brand, so he was saying to himself - hey, I'm careful about what I eat?

Silver Spring post office

Always nice to encounter unexpectedly good service. Last week, I needed to send some tax information in. Turns out there's a small post office in Silver Spring, right across from the office here. I assumed I'd be lucky to be in and out in under an hour - it was just a couple of days before tax day. Instead, in and out in 5 minutes - including time for instruction from a cheerful counter person on how to appropriately fill out a return receipt requested form.

A tale of two conference sessions

I recently returned from Channel Advisor's Catalyst Conference. Two sessions stood out, one memorably bad, one memorably good.

First, the bad. Staying Ahead of the Pack – How to Evolve Your Brand in a Multi-Faceted Arena by: Chris Shimojima, Nike. Chris had been a CMO at three or four companies, so I was very curious to hear him speak. However, he may have violated one of the cardinal rules of speaking, "know your audience." From the people I talked to, most folks in attendance were merchants, at a different variety of sizes, ranging from basement operations to Internet Retailer 500. No one I talked to was doing much in the way of "brand advertising" and one of the nicest parts of the conference is the high ratio of merchants to vendors. The presentation could easily have been subtitled "We're Nike, and here are some things you should buy". It focused on their Nike Plus (running shoes + Ipod = mileage tracking) and their Nike ID product (unique, customized shoes). It tried to show how these products evolve community - but it was also clear that they had a huge budget for experimentation. And, there never was a message that tied into the audience, beyond "try, listen and learn", which was up on a slide for a minute.

Second, the good. Old School vs. New School – Defining the Life Cycle for a Successful Small Business. Scott Wingo, the CEO of Channel Advisor hosted. This was fantastic - it had different businesses talking about parts of the Internet Merchant lifecycle they'd gone through. There was a fascinating chart that Scott had, that showed the typical level of revenue at different sizes, and the different types of advertising that merchants were doing. It showed where paid search and comparison engines entered the mix. I talked to a number of people who loved the session, and felt it was very inspiring as they could see where it was possible to go.

Overall, the conference had a great mix of attendees, and useful sessions. Hopefully, next year they'll have additional sessions with merchants talking about the mechanics of their businesses.

Best Espresso in the Neighborhood

One area of marketing I've focused on in this blog is the idea of congruency and authenticity. You should deliver an authentic experience, congruent with the image that your company and/or product represent.

I was surprised yesterday to see on the door of the Starbucks in downtown Silver Spring, a sticker saying "Best Espresso in the Neighborhood." This immediately raised a number of questions in our group, none of them positive for Starbucks.

1) We're not really part of a neighborhood, at least, not with connotation they're searching for. Downtown Silver Spring has been gentrified. The street this particular Starbucks is on, includes Potbelly, Noodles & Company, Barnes & Noble, Cake Love, a kebab place, Ben & Jerry's, and a few more chains.
2) Everyone knows Starbucks is a huge chain. Clearly, it's not a homemade sticker, of a small, beleaguered coffee shop, trying to assert its position in a competitive marketplace. They're a big brand - "Starbucks - we're the biggest coffee buyer in the world, and we bring the best coffee to you" would at least line up with who they are at this point.
3) The sticker implies a certain type of atmosphere... Maybe a small group of devoted coffee fanatics toiling away in search of coffee nirvana. This location, on the other hand, typically has a high percentage of high school students flirting with each other, crowding the store, and ordering drinks that likely contain a higher percentage of sugar than coffee.

What's interesting about this particular store, is that the people working it, are some of the nicest you'll meet in the chains locally, who manage long lines with panache. "Starbucks - good people getting you your coffee quickly" would work better :)

SEO job in Reston

If you're looking for an SEO job in Reston, I have some friends who are hiring. Nice opportunity...you can ping Lisa, at Simplexity , at 703-657-4834.

Proflowers

Interesting online shopping observation on ProFlowers yesterday. No shopping cart. They're all about selling you that one arrangement, and getting you checked out as quickly as possible. Given that's probably 90-95% of their business, it makes sense. But, there doesn't seem to be any allowance for ordering a combo of two of their products. I know one of their marketing folks, so I'll see if I can learn more about the rationale behind it, and pass it along.

Pepperjam vs. CJ

Good summary of the PepperJam vs. CJ situation by Zac Johnson.

Blogger Slideshow

Blogger has a neat slideshow feature, showing all the pictures currently being uploaded to blogger blogs.

Checklists

Great article on how Checklists can transform medicine.

Where's the blogroll?

The rest of what was the blogroll has gone missing. I was in the process of upgrading, and much of it got cleaned out. I've recreated some of it from Yahoo Site Explorer, which does a nice job of showing top links to a site. If your site was previously listed, drop me a note, and I'll add it back in.
I am curious to see what will happen to rankings. Back in 2007, I had done about 20 link trades... There had been a bit more traffic, a better Technorati ranking, and a slight move up in what was the original goal, ranking for "Josh Greene". Currently, #3 in Google, but I've moved up to #1 in Yahoo, sometime in the last two months.

Blogger to WordPress transition

I'm contemplating switching from Blogger to WordPress. Anyone done it? The import feature looks pretty easy, but I'm concerned about changing the URLs of all 300 or so posts on this blog.