Eventually, Colbert got around to asking about the campaign, recalling that Biden had said recently that he wasn’t sure if he is “emotionally prepared” to run for President. Biden looked up at the klieg lights and gave a jut of the chin. “Look, I don’t think any man or woman should run for President unless, No. 1, they know exactly why they would want to be President. And, No. 2, they can look at folks out there and say, ‘I promise you have my whole heart, my whole soul, my energy, and my passion to do this.’ And, and, I’d be lying if I said that I knew I was there. I’m being completely honest. But nobody has a right in my view to seek that office unless they are willing to give it a hundred and ten per cent of who they are.”
Biden Administration’s Whitehouse.gov WordPress Setup
Fascinating breakdown here…
With the change of administrations comes a new website, and this morning the all-new Whitehouse.gov debuted. Like its predecessor, the site is powered by WordPress – but this version carries […]
“Wait, you’re playing Pac-Man?”
We finished up with our science lesson this morning and sat down at the kitchen table for a snack. This is usually when the five-year-old has “tablet time” (we’re not the type of parents that abides by the “Screen Time!” mantra or severely restricts device usage…).
As I was putting snacks out, I noticed he was playing Pac-Man. PAC-MAN. “Wait, you’re playing Pac-Man?” I asked in that sort of parental stunned manner that even a five-year-old recognizes as a question that warranted an immediate response. “What is Pac-Man?” he responded. I’d loaded a few classic games on his tablet a few weeks ago but didn’t think he’d necessarily take to any of them just yet.
“You’re playing it!” I said. “Oh, he said… I call it Bubble-Eater.” Fair enough.
I sat down and we enjoyed some Pac-Man together. He’s almost better than I was as a middle schooler emptying quarters into the Pac-Man machine at our local skating rink on a Friday night. It’s been a while.
This all makes me reflect on how we often put emphasis on things that really don’t matter in our marketing. Our son doesn’t care about the name “Pac-Man” but enjoys the experience, the music, and the sound effects. If you’re of a certain age, you can close your eyes and imagine those sound effects right now.
Often when I’m working with clients on a new project, there will be unlimited amounts of time and energy spent on seemingly massive details that in the end only matter to the actual organization (or more often, specific committee members).
In reality, it’s the sound effects that stick with people and transcend generations. Focus on the details that matter and not the ones that you think matter. “I know my business better than anyone” is often the death knell of a marketing campaign.
Tech companies freezing political spending and why tech still matters
This is the death knell of PACs for tech companies with activist employees,” one source told Axios. “This is the final straw.”
This is a really fascinating development. First Microsoft and now Facebook are suspending PAC (Political Action Committee) spending in Washington. They’re joining financiers Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, and Citigroup, along with Marriott, Blue Cross Blue Shield (caveat — our insurance co), Boston Scientific, and Commerce Bank. Bank of America (caveat — one of the banks we do business with), Ford, and AT&T, CVS, Exxon Mobil, and Wells Fargo are considering pulling their political monies.
This hits politicians where it really hurts.
For years, many of us in the “tech world” have decried these PACs and looked at them as a unnecessary evil that needed to be banned or done away with for a number of reasons.
Here are my personal convictions:
- The PAC system reinforces the existing system of graft and corruption that so many Americans claim to abhor.
- PACs favor the privileged both socio-economically and relationally. It’s a blight on a Democratic Republic and shouldn’t be seen as a “necessary evil” to doing business in the United States. Whatever your sector.
- Tech boomed in the late 90’s and then again in the early ’00s because it was seen as a disruptor. From Google to Tesla to Uber (well, maybe they aren’t a great example but they did usher in a transportation paradigm shift) to even Twitter, the tech sector excited us with the promise of something different and more democratic to challenge the status quo. However, as the going got weird, the weird turned pro and put on suits. I want a return to the weird disruption tech that spurred creativity and a hope for a better representation to the powers that be. We’re not so far gone that it can’t happen in light of #metoo, BLM, LBGTQ+, trans rights, accessibility emphasis, and recognition of differently abled persons. Real revolutionary tech that can change the world… I still believe. PACS stand in the way of that.
So as we continue to process and deal with the terrorist insurrection on our Capitol last week, let’s take a second to recognize what these companies are doing by restricting or redirecting their PAC monies and how we can all do our part to not just “unify and move forward” but to cause real change.
“Surely some revelation is at hand”
As the world responded to the epidemic of 1918-1920 and recovered from World War I, Yeats penned this… seems fitting for us to consider a century later.
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Source: The Second Coming by William Butler Yeats | Poetry Foundation
Client Website Updates Late At Night
Every Friday and Saturday night, we run client website updates focused on speed, security, and just general maintenance. It’s become a ritual of sorts for me over the years to check-in on how things are progressing.
It’s completely nuts to say, but I look forward to these late-night updates as a time to watch the percentages tick upwards as each of our client sites get updated (we’re well over 100 at this point) and dip into a few of them to see how they are progressing.
The typical process takes a couple of hours and allows me time to look back on our business and our relationships with our clients. It spurs thoughts about follow ups I need to take or new pitches I need to do or new services I need to offer to our client partners.
In a weird way, “update time” as I mark it down on my calendar, is a sacred time that is about improvement and reflection. It’s literally that way in regards to the updates and maintenance we’re providing each week, but it’s also an update in terms of the individualized service we offer for our hosting.
There’s such a limited understanding of what website hosting means these days in this era of DIY website building. But for the people that have reached out and become our client partners, it’s something I truly treasure and enjoy.
Don Jr’s Site is on Shopify
Donald Trump Jr is tweeting about how “big tech” is cracking down on “free speech” after his father was booted from Twitter, FB, IG, YouTube etc over the last few days as a result of the Jan 6 terrorist attack on our nation’s Capitol.
What’s interesting here is that Trump Jr is using Shopify to sell books and bulk up his newsletter subscriptions after Shopify moved to also ban Trump-related sites this week:
Shopify does not tolerate actions that incite violence. Based on recent events, we have determined that the actions by President Donald J. Trump violate our Acceptable Use Policy, which prohibits promotion or support of organizations, platforms or people that threaten or condone violence to further a cause,” a Shopify spokesperson wrote in a statement to TechCrunch. “As a result, we have terminated stores affiliated with President Trump.
Shopify statement
Regardless of your politics of late, I urge you to build on your own property. Own your own domain, own your own intellectual property, own your own content, and don’t rely on third party providers to host your digital presence, one of your most important assets.
“A lot of things get caught at the end and we’re not paying enough attention.”
This was a fantastic conversation with Dave Maxfield last week on the Thinking podcast. I’m not a huge fan of “business” podcasts, so I intentionally try not to make them. But the last few conversation episodes, especially this one with Dave, have been applicable to all of life regardless of age, stage, or chosen profession.
Go have a listen:
Technology as a marketing vehicle for community
This is an inspirational and aspirational piece from Douglas Adams in 1999 that I return to from time-to-time. Partly out of appreciation for Adams’ prescience and partly out of my own selfish need to remind me that this internet we’re building (21 years later) is still a thing of beauty and promise.
What Adams points to here has seen realization on social media platforms that originate with younger populations and then spread out to the wider groups of us older people either for various reasons. I first wrote about this five years ago here.
The same thing is happening in communication technology. Most of us are stumbling along in a kind of pidgin version of it, squinting myopically at things the size of fridges on our desks, not quite understanding where email goes, and cursing at the beeps of mobile phones. Our children, however, are doing something completely different. Risto Linturi, research fellow of the Helsinki Telephone Corporation, quoted in Wired magazine, describes the extraordinary behaviour kids in the streets of Helsinki, all carrying cellphones with messaging capabilities. They are not exchanging important business information, they’re just chattering, staying in touch. “We are herd animals,” he says. “These kids are connected to their herd – they always know where it’s moving.” Pervasive wireless communication, he believes will “bring us back to behaviour patterns that were natural to us and destroy behaviour patterns that were brought about by the limitations of technology.”
We are natural villagers. For most of mankind’s history we have lived in very small communities in which we knew everybody and everybody knew us. But gradually there grew to be far too many of us, and our communities became too large and disparate for us to be able to feel a part of them, and our technologies were unequal to the task of drawing us together. But that is changing.
Interactivity. Many-to-many communications. Pervasive networking. These are cumbersome new terms for elements in our lives so fundamental that, before we lost them, we didn’t even know to have names for them.
Source: DNA/How to Stop Worrying and Learn to Love the Internet
“Persistent beliefs which are not just demonstrably false…”
Must read here. I won’t summarize the article as you need to read the entire piece for yourself, but the implications for things I care about very deeply (such as marketing, politics, technology, religion, and education) are serious.
Take some time and read:
Sloman and Fernbach see this effect, which they call the “illusion of explanatory depth,” just about everywhere. People believe that they know way more than they actually do. What allows us to persist in this belief is other people. In the case of my toilet, someone else designed it so that I can operate it easily. This is something humans are very good at. We’ve been relying on one another’s expertise ever since we figured out how to hunt together, which was probably a key development in our evolutionary history. So well do we collaborate, Sloman and Fernbach argue, that we can hardly tell where our own understanding ends and others’ begins.
WordPress 2020 Stats
Interesting… didn’t realize the bit about the WordPress 5.6 release team. That’s admirable and something that we need more of in the open-source world (and the tech world in general):
One thing I’ll call out WordPress 5.6 had an all women and non-binary release squad of over 50 people, a first for WordPress and probably any large open source project. Also the market share of WordPress grew more in 2020 than it has in any year since it started being tracked!
Marketing Joy
Hearing from Spectrum never brings joy. We have been Time Warner Cable (which became Sprctrum) customers of their high speed internet offerings since moving to our new home in 2013. We regularly receive mailers and calls from them asking us to consider their phone plans or cable tv packages. Remarketing is a powerful tactic, but has to be deployed wisely. There’s also been the occasional past due notification (comes in a pink envelope and all) when we’ve changed debit card numbers and forgot to update the auto-payment on their app (which is a whole other blog post).
We never hear anything good from Spectrum.
This morning I’ve been receiving text message notifications about their service outage here in our area. That’s definitely not good news on an otherwise busy Monday morning working from home during my “busy season” with a few Zoom calls planned, some website audits that need to be done, and lots of charts to be made for clients. Not to mention, my partner runs her business and ministry from home, and our children have become digital natives during the pandemic (although they are much more resilient than we are when the web goes down).
I remember about 12 or so years ago, a Comcast customer service rep began the @comcastcares account on Twitter. These were the fun days of the Twitter platform and we users were so anticipating how the service would transform everything from customer service to entertainment to politics. Cory Booker was the Mayor of Newark at the time, and his revolutionary use of Twitter as a way for his community to reach out for help with downed trees or kittens stuck in trees was fascinating to watch. It brought joy. Little did we know how future politicians would use the service in the coming years… but I digress.
The @comcastcares account went viral and sparked a number of other services to open their own accounts for people like me who were valued customers but preferred a Twitter DM to submitting a support ticket on a terrible website, or (God Forbid) picking up the phone. It was a marketing play, but it brought joy from an otherwise joyless interaction when people are at their most frustrated. It’s also why every company uses carefully researched “hold music” and why some are better than others like Verizon’s terrible repeating 4/3 beat monstrosity.
During the pandemic, I’ve become fascinated by restaurant marketing. I’ve only worked with a handful of restaurants and restaurant groups as clients and the sector is admittedly not in my marketing wheelhouse.
However, watching local and national restaurants and chains adapt to new types of marketing technology and techniques during the pandemic has become a learning experience for me. I’ve downloaded dozen of restaurant and chain apps and had a few chats with various marketing teams.
A couple of large scale standouts have been McDonalds innovative use of their app to bring joy to an otherwise mundane human experience with promotions like a free item each day during the Holidays. Wendy’s has also been using marketing technology in a daring manner to build experience and interaction. For instance, their edgy Twitter account isn’t for everyone, but even snark can bring joy during a pandemic. Wendy’s is also using platforms such as Twitch to stream their team playing live games of Animal Crossing while giving away promo codes in the flowing chat. Again, it’s not for everyone and that’s the point.
Just like Comcast reached out to users with marketing technology that wasn’t “mainstream” or seemed silly in 2008 to do both outreach and perform a service, it’s important to bring joy and not just interruption.
So while our family scrambles to hook up internet hotspots and figure out how to work in new ways (yet again) this morning while our Spectrum service sorts out, think of ways that your organization can bring joy with marketing technology.
Don’t just send emails offering new services, asking for more donations, or updates about a new award you’ve won to your intended audience. Don’t dismiss Instagram Reels or TikTok or Twitch or Clubhouse or Reddit or even Twitter because you don’t think your audience is there or you don’t have the time to experiment. Stagnation is death. Stagnation doesn’t bring joy.
Joy will be a prime marketing technique in 2021. Embrace that and think outside the interruption.
Don’t Look Over Instagram Reels for Your Marketing in 2021
I remember the first few times I saw a friend post a Reel on Instagram and thought “well, that’s a weird knock-off of Snapchat and Tik-Tok” and wondered how or if my clients should even know about (or bother) with it.
Then in November, we also got word from Instagram that major changes were coming to how they promoted content in a much search-friendlier way (without having to use hashtags!).
Those two combined together means that Instagram with its 2 billion active users and built-in affinity groups shouldn’t be overlooked in 2021.
Use Reels for whatever you’re marketing or trying to message about and don’t skip over the functionality there.
2021 is going to be the year of 15 second videos.
Engagement umbers are already through the roof with Reels and that’s only going to continue to increase.
To further help Instagram categorize your account, you want to consistently post content that’s relevant to your niche. To illustrate, if you run an Instagram account for your dog training business, you’ll want to focus on posting content about dog training and avoid content that strays into an unrelated category. Other ways to help you show up in search within your category include following other similar accounts and adding a relevant keyword to your name in your bio (i.e., Alexa | Dog Trainer).
To compete with the rise in popularity of TikTok, Instagram launched Reels, a new form of video content delivered in 15–30 seconds to create quick, attention-grabbing moments in a creative and entertaining way. Instagram’s new UI update, which put IG Reels front and center, should hint to marketers that Instagram Reels will be here to stay in 2021.
Source: Social Media Marketing Trends for 2021: Predictions From the Pros : Social Media Examiner
Thinking with Sam Harrelson Episode 167: Thomas Whitley
I was thrilled to be joined again by my long time co-podcaster Thomas Whitley on the most recent Thinking Podcast. We discussed what he’s doing in his capacity as Chief of Staff for the Mayor of Tallahassee, FL to work with (and help) businesses in their city navigate the ongoing Covid crisis and its rippling effects…
Thomas Whitley is the Chief of Staff for Mayor John Dailey’s office in Tallahassee, Florida. In this episode, we discuss what Tallahassee is doing to help citizens and small businesses deal with the economic impacts of Covid as well as marketing efforts that the Mayor’s Office is undertaking to get the word out about those efforts.
Source: Thinking with Sam Harrelson Episode 167: Thomas Whitley
Marketing to Your Own Beliefs
I get these sorts of questions frequently from new clients:
“Why aren’t my Facebook Page posts getting more likes?”
“Why isn’t my website getting more views?”
“How can I let more people know I’ve written / made / created / offer the best service / product in my area?”
“When will people start responding to the emails I’m sending them about our product / church service / nonprofit fundraising?”
“What is the best way to market this because what I’ve done hasn’t worked so far?”
After being in the marketing world for almost 20 years now, these are among the most common questions I get from people just beginning to take marketing seriously (and have hired me to help them realize that vision).
We’ve all asked ourselves similar questions after the initial excitement of an idea has faded away due to the lack of engagement from everyone else who didn’t respond the way we wanted.
But that’s the beauty of marketing… it’s a system of nuance and subtleness and not a blunt tool. It’s not meant to “convert” (that’s sales) as much as “persuade” … and that takes extra effort and thinking outside of our own heads. Some do that with data. Some do that with incredible gut instincts.
Nonetheless, don’t fall into the trap of letting your own perspectives dictate all of your marketing efforts…
The dilemma for my boss, for me and for you – as humans – is that it’s very difficult to admit that you were wrong, or even stupid. It’s is the last thing someone will admit. The alternative is, instead of believing the evidence, you double down on your initial belief – belief perseverance – and say it’s the other person who’s wrong.
Source: Cognitive dissonance, conmen and cults: The ways marketers delude themselves
Workplace Gender Equity and Covid
I’ve been a work-from-home type for years, but as a man it’s been hard to share the experiences of being on an important client call while changing a diaper or cleaning up my son’s lunch with my male friends (or society in general).
I’m definitely not patting myself on the back here (at all… I suck at parenting but everyone’s winging it… “Here’s another marshmallow, Junior… don’t tell Mommy”), however, I am glad that more males are having to face the reality that working women and partners have had to endure for ages while exhibiting equity and egalitarianism for their children.
If anything, this pandemic will hopefully lead to a fuller understanding of the struggles and challenges that working women and partners have to endure to balance career and family…
The presence of more men sharing more fully in domestic duties for an extended period of time has the potential to create a sea change in gendered norms — at home and at work. Men teleworking during the pandemic are more likely to appreciate women’s work-family experiences, understand the value of flexible work arrangements, appreciate the benefits of relationships with work colleagues, and role model more equitable work-family gender roles for their children.
Source: Gender Equity Starts in the Home
Google Shopping Gift Guide and Importance of Trending vs Popularity
Google’s annual Shopping Gift Guide is out for 2020. While it’s a handy tool for personal shopping, it also has some incredibly helpful stats for marketing and messaging.
The trick is to focus on trending items using data. The same is true for Instagram… the hashtags that you should be incorporating into your posts for more exposure and likes (and follows) are the ones that are trending but not necessarily popular.
So, if you’re looking for some fun market research in your business’ sector, don’t pass up these sorts of insights:
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Monitors and headsets with microphones both saw 450%+ spikes in searches.
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Searches for streaming increased 33% this year.
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Searches for ring lights are at their all-time high, as they provide ideal lighting for video recordings and meetings.
The Google Shopping Gift Guide provides a helpful list of products rising in popularity based on Search trends in the US.
Source: Google Shopping Gift Guide
TikTok and WordPress Integration
I’ve had a few people reach out to ask me if there’s a way to integrate TikTok with their WordPress site… so I recently did some research and testing and this is the plugin I’d recommend:
TikTok Feed is premium WordPress plugin to create stunning gallery of TikTok videos for any user, hashtag/challenge, Music or Trending feed.
With 40+ shortcode options to adjust the feed to suit your need, the plugin comes with interactive shortcode generator tool to play with and preview the output with the changes.
Source: TikTok Feed – WordPress Plugin by WPPressPlugin | CodeCanyon
Facebook and Instagram’s New Social Good for Business Platform
Along the same lines of posts I’ve been making about authentic marketing outreach aimed at specific communities, causes, and moments… this isn’t just about crass capitalism.
Businesses, nonprofits, churches, community orgs, public officials etc need to be engaged in this sort of marketing messaging regardless of your political or religious affiliations but in respect of what your group’s ethos represents… super powerful:
Show up where and when it matters.With advancements in communication, moments create new avenues for marketers, planners and creatives looking to connect with these once-a-day, once-a-year and once-in-a-while moments. Find a moment like Giving Tuesday, Ramadan or Pride Month when your business can connect with customers and communities who share the same values.
Source: Social Good for Business: Facebook Resources to Make an Impact | Facebook for Business
The Economics of Mask Wearing
For the last 18 or so years that I’ve been in marketing, I’ve used “democratization” and “community focus” as consistent buzzwords in both my consulting work as well as speaking at conferences etc.
I don’t think there’s any better example as to why those terms are important than the experience of living through 2020. Specialization is everything as people are looking for a community in new ways online to replace the in-person human element we all miss.
Regardless of whether we are able to have in-person gatherings again soon and not have to worry about the virus, things have changed for many of us and there are new habits and norms (Zoom and hyper-special media isn’t going away) that will not be going away. I don’t know about you, but I’m going to be wearing a mask for a while.
One key I’m pushing with all of my clients is the idea of specialization in community building. As marketers, we’ve generally done a poor job of handling “community building” correctly. There has been too much focus on affinity metrics, KPI’s and NPS (Net Promotor Score) that has resulted in insulting generic surveys when we happen to purchase anything from dog bowl from a pet’s store all the way to a car. “TELL US HOW WE DID!” is now one of the least clicked email subject lines in our inboxes.
Engagement, authentic presence, customer service, and democratization of the message are very important. But “generic” is a poison pill. Choose wisely in your messaging in 2021.
DeepMind AI Cracks Protein Folding
Incredible advancement in very important science…
“With its latest AI program, AlphaFold, the company and research laboratory showed it can predict how proteins fold into 3D shapes, a fiendishly complex process that is fundamental to understanding the biological machinery of life.
Independent scientists said the breakthrough would help researchers tease apart the mechanisms that drive some diseases and pave the way for designer medicines, more nutritious crops and “green enzymes” that can break down plastic pollution.”
Tuesday, November 17, 2020
Since I was in college (maybe before), I found the concept of pillows strange. So, I started sleeping without one. I’ve always primarily been a “stomach sleeper” (which is a benefit if I ever do contract Covid, I guess). My normal sleeping posture involves my head resting on my left arm face down with my right arm curled up so that my right hand is curled just below my chin.
I’m not sure why I have such an aversion to pillows. I’m not alone, evidently. King Henry VIII banned the use of soft pillows for anyone except pregnant women.
Maybe it’s that independent streak I have and my assurance that I shouldn’t have to rely on things like external pillows for comfort and sleeping posture if I can do it all on my own. Which seems to be a good metaphor for this time in our lives where we are all forced to reconsider what is important and what we rely on to make it through our days and nights. Whether that’s the camaraderie of a busy office space with our co-workers, or meals with friends, or opening night of a major movie in a crowded theater… our brains are undergoing cognitive loads that many of us aren’t realizing but definitely feeling the effects in our day-to-day walk through life.
But in times of change and disruption, the creative spark is made more available as our brains try to make sense of a new reality. Perhaps that what’s the pillow was supposed to prepare us for over the last 10,000 years or so that we’ve actively been using them as human beings. Learning to find comfort in the dark and mysterious time of night with all of its dragons and witches and spells while we give our brains time to defrag from a long day of processing being human.
Most of us aren’t spending our days gathering barley, millet, and emmer or stalking a herd of antelope hoping for a successful hunt to feed our families and appease our gods… but 2020 is weird. Give your brain time to rest and process at night whether you use a pillow or not. Dream up new avenues for your own creativity whether you’re looking for a business angle, a sermon message, or just a new hobby to replace Netflix binging.
What I’m Thinking About Today
At Tuesday’s hearing, Jack Dorsey, Twitter’s chief executive, said the company would no longer make policy exceptions for Mr. Trump after he leaves office in January. During Mr. Trump’s time as a world leader, Twitter allowed him to post content that violated its rules, though it began adding labels to some of the tweets starting in May to indicate that the posts were disputed or glorified violence.
“If an account suddenly is not a world leader anymore, that particular policy goes away,” Mr. Dorsey said.
Well this out to be interesting…
- Yeah, Apple’s M1 MacBook Pro is powerful, but it’s the battery life that will blow you away – TechCrunch
This thing works like an iPad. That’s the best way I can describe it succinctly. One illustration I have been using to describe what this will feel like to a user of current MacBooks is that of chronic pain. If you’ve ever dealt with ongoing pain from a condition or injury, and then had it be alleviated by medication, therapy or surgery, you know how the sudden relief feels. You’ve been carrying the load so long you didn’t know how heavy it was. That’s what moving to this M1 MacBook feels like after using other Macs.
- Keyword search is coming to Instagram – The Verge
Instagram users’ ability to search is getting an upgrade. Today, the company announced that English-speaking users in six countries, including the UK, US, Ireland, and Canada, will be able to search the platform using keywords. Before today, they could only search for hashtags or accounts. So, for example, if you previously wanted to find “healthy recipes,” you’d only be able to search for posts that tagged #healthyrecipes or accounts with variations on “healthy recipes” in their name or bio. Now, however, Instagram will let people search the keywords themselves, meaning posts that feature healthy recipes should surface, even if the specific tag is missing.
This is super helpful for content creators in specific niches and should help elevate quality posts that otherwise get buried in heavily trafficked hashtags.
Well that’s interesting.
To be updated throughout the day…
Monday November 16, 2020
This is something else…
Monday’s are always slightly (if not totally) chaotic here at home. Like many Americans, we’re homeschooling our children while working from home. After 8 months or so of this, we’ve gotten into a pretty good rhythm and everyone basically understands our schedules and roles. There are days when emergency client projects or calls or ZOOM meetings pop up alongside the occasional last-minute work emergency that throws off the routine, but for the most part we’re making our way through Covid-Times.
What’s fascinating for me are the institutions, businesses, and organizations that don’t express an understanding of the incredible amount of cognitive load that most of their employees or workers or volunteers are under. I’ve seen it with large businesses that I consult with, but especially churches.
There are a number of variables, but I’ve heard horror stories from many employees and pastors of churches (caveat that my partner Merianna is a pastor and the church where she serves has been incredible through all of this) whose congregants or boards or deacons are acting out of an “individualist” rather than “cooperative” model of messaging to staff and the church community.
We all want to go back to “normal” but that’s just not going to happen anytime soon. That’s especially true with Thanksgiving and the Holidays ahead of us. Vaccines are months, if not years, out and in the absence of leadership we’re going to have to rely on ourselves to make it through this Winter, the Spring, and probably the Summer of ’21.
In the meantime, think about your messaging if you’re a church or nonprofit. Think about intentional communication, and realize that there are public health professionals who are experts on this topic. We should listen to them (and not just our Facebook news feed and social media). Use messaging and marketing as an advantage. It’s the only advantage that many churches have these days. But it’s possible to survive and thrive in a pandemic as many healthy congregations are learning. Don’t wait for “normal” to return before your church faces reality. And be kind to your pastors and staffs.
What I’m Thinking About Today
You Still Need to Have the Conversation – Culture Study
“Maybe you can promise a big gathering next year, or hours this year on the day-of playing Among Us or just watching a movie together. You can use the health of your own children or your cousin or your grandparents as a cudgel. Just remember that the most affective appeal to an individualist is always going to be from the people they care about in their immediate sphere. A state-wide lockdown might not change their behavior. An emailed article certainly won’t. But you might.”
Very important post that you should read before Thanksgiving. Don’t enable or assume. Confront people with facts and care.
Squarespace’s New Feature Could Help Businesses Survive the Pandemic – Fast Company
The company is introducing what it calls Member Areas—special sections of customer websites that are restricted to people who’ve signed up for a membership, which can mean paying a regular subscription charge, coming up with a onetime fee, or simply creating a login. The goal is to give Squarespace customers a new way to offer content to their own customers and fans, whether that’s fitness instructors providing paid online classes during the coronavirus pandemic, writers offering regular newsletters to people who provide their email addresses, or chefs sharing virtual cookbooks with onetime purchasers.
Interesting move from Squarespace… we use the platform for a few client sites still (mostly small business and churches). I’m technically a certified Squarespace Developer, but I’m not a huge fan of designing or developing there. Many of our clients who insist on starting with Squarespace “because it’s cheaper” eventually make the jump to WordPress and our hosting packages (don’t get me started on Wix). All that said, I welcome these sorts of new opportunities for businesses and individuals to utilize their own sites for these sorts of features rather than having to use a 3rd party service like Patreon etc.
You can now embed Apple Podcasts on the web – TechCrunch
Apple is making it easier to discover and listen to podcasts via the web. The company announced today an Apple Podcasts embed web player is now available, allowing anyone — including creators, listeners or marketers — to generate embed codes for the over 1.5 million shows available across the Apple Podcasts service.
Good on Apple. You can now embed Thinking.FM on your own site!
New Zoom feature can alert room owners of possible Zoombombing disruptions – ZDNet
The new “At-Risk Meeting Notifier” Zoom feature scans the internet and alerts conference organizers when a link to their Zoom meeting has been posted online.
That’s helpful… should have been developed and deployed a few months back, Zoom.
Open source: Better solutions and a more inclusive society – Yoast Blog
Volvo designed the first three point belt design in the sixties. It is patented, but open for everyone to use. Also, Volvo allows open source access to its crash-research data.
Big believer in open source technology (and knowledge rights) here. Super interesting post.
Vikings unwittingly made their swords stronger by trying to imbue them with spirits – Big Think
To strengthen their swords, smiths used the bones of their dead ancestors and animals, hoping to transfer the spirit into their blades.
There’s a little bit of magic in all science.
To be updated throughout the day…
Friday, November 13, 2020
It’s been a week but still relevant:
Here in South Carolina, I’m seeing a mix of responses to the spiking Covid rates. Some of our friends (especially parents of young children) are full of despair and “over it” to put it lightly. I also have clients in-town who seemed confused when I say “No, I can’t come to your office for that meeting. We’re still hunkering down and trying to avoid indoor spaces when possible.” But, there’s a general feeling that we know the worst is yet to come and people are taking masks seriously (distancing not so much) in public spaces and in grocery stores etc. Let’s keep it up. We won’t see a vaccine for months (if that), so it’s on us to not have “pandemic fatigue.”
Business wise, there are many small businesses, nonprofits, and churches (big and small) that I know are hurting. I find it astonishing we don’t have something like a second federal stimulus package. To leave it up to cities and states seems like a complete hand-washing from our federal representatives. We need another stimulus package. I’ve done more pro-bono work for church and nonprofit clients in the last couple of months than I should have, but it’s heartbreaking to hear the constant stories of pure budget fallouts (along with volunteer hours etc).
Be kind to each other out there.
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Today’s big puzzle has been trying to figure out how to display post time (not just date) on a WordPress post… there has to be a PHP function for that and I’m completely blanking on it. I’ll blame it on being Friday. But I’ll figure it out.
What I’m Thinking About Today:
- Why I Hope to Die at 75: An argument that society and families—and you—will be better off if nature takes its course swiftly and promptly by Ezekiel J. Emanuel (love when he’s on MSNBC)
Maybe it’s the pandemic and my Aunt passing away last week, but death and dying has been on my mind a good deal recently. I had an email yesterday about my life insurance policy, so that didn’t help change my brain. We have so much work to do with rethinking and reconditioning how we think about the process of death in our country. Particularly from the balance between spiritual development and scientific/medical understandings, there seems to be a real need for people to find balance. I highly recommend reading the Emanuel piece above. Good stuff.
Big Sur hasn’t gotten off to the best of starts. I always caution friends and clients these days to wait a little while before installing the new iOS or iPadOS or macOS update because Apple has proven time and again that launch day is a precarious time if you’re running updates. It’s a fantastic operating system, though. Once things get ironed out, make sure you update if you have a modern Mac (you know, if you don’t mind your computer phoning home and compromising your security and all).
- Your Computer Isn’t Yours – Jeffrey Paul
It turns out that in the current version of the macOS, the OS sends to Apple a hash (unique identifier) of each and every program you run, when you run it. Lots of people didn’t realize this, because it’s silent and invisible and it fails instantly and gracefully when you’re offline, but today the server got really slow and it didn’t hit the fail-fast code path, and everyone’s apps failed to open if they were connected to the internet.
Oof. Must read for the “APPLE IS MORE SECURE THAN OTHER OPERATING SYSTEMS!” crowd and the rest of us.
Radiant now sells a stripped-down Samsung smartwatch as a social distance monitoring tool. When an employee wears the watch, it constantly searches for other similar devices worn by other employees, and estimates their distance based on how strong that signal is. If a strong signal is detected for more than 15 minutes, the interaction is recorded and uploaded to the cloud for the company to reference later if a worker tests positive. In addition, an employer can opt to use the device to monitor the specific location of individual employees.
I don’t ever want to work in an office building “for” a company again. I fear this sort of thing will become much more mainstream during and (eventually) after Covid.
The year 2020 has been kind to Turchin, for many of the same reasons it has been hell for the rest of us. Cities on fire, elected leaders endorsing violence, homicides surging—to a normal American, these are apocalyptic signs. To Turchin, they indicate that his models, which incorporate thousands of years of data about human history, are working. (“Not all of human history,” he corrected me once. “Just the last 10,000 years.”) He has been warning for a decade that a few key social and political trends portend an “age of discord,” civil unrest and carnage worse than most Americans have experienced. In 2010, he predicted that the unrest would get serious around 2020, and that it wouldn’t let up until those social and political trends reversed. Havoc at the level of the late 1960s and early ’70s is the best-case scenario; all-out civil war is the worst.
Turchin is certainly a polarizing figure. I admit that I’m a passive fan of megahistories (being a mostly-white male and all), but I do think there’s something to the idea of applying mathematics to history and liberal arts. Maybe I’ve read too much Asimov.
I can’t stress this enough and tell my clients this all the time… make sure you have your Google My Business listing set up and connected to a GMail or Google Suite/Workplace account that you trust and will keep for a while. Don’t just assume that you don’t have to do this. Google is placing a high amount of energy, time, and resources to developing and promoting My Business, and if you run or are a part of a business, group, church, organization etc… make sure to claim and keep up with yours.
In this Best of Whiteboard Friday edition, Tom Capper explains how the sessions metric in Google Analytics works, several ways that it can have unexpected results, and as a bonus, how sessions affect the time on page metric (and why you should rethink using time on page for reporting).
Good video here on Sessions in Google Analytics… my clients typically are suprised when I show them how useful having an understanding of Sessions can be for their overall digital marketing campaigns.
The platform saw a spike in users, doubling from roughly 4.5 million members last week to about 8 million this week, and surging to 4 million active devices from 500,000 two weeks ago, according to Parler chief operating officer Jeffrey Wernick. He added that daily active devices are up approximately tenfold and session growth is up 20 times on the app.
I’ve been monitoring Parler (Twitter alternative), MeWe (Facebook alternative), and Rumble’s (YouTube alternative) growth over the last few months. There’s also banned.video that was created by InfoWars / Alex Jones after he was banned from most mainstream social media platforms. The growth on all of these “conservative-friendly” social platforms is astonishing and a sign of virality. I know a number of prepper and Q themed groups jumped over to these and that’s only accelerating. Will they have sticking power? That depends on a number of variables from how the transition of administrations occurs, whether Parler figures out its own internal bugs and advertising, and if Trump manages to congeal a media empire and stay relevant in the coming months.
To be updated throughout the day
Instagram’s New Home Screen and Importance of Reels
Today we’re announcing some big changes to Instagram – a Reels tab and a Shop tab. The Reels tab makes it easier for you to discover short, fun videos from creators all over the world and people just like you. The Shop tab gives you a better way to connect with brands and creators and discover products you love.
Source: Introducing a New Home Screen for Instagram
Instagram’s new layout announced today isn’t a massive overhaul and most people will probably adjust just fine… but the inclusion of Reels as a separate tab is super interesting and yet another way that Facebook and Instagram are looking to capture some of the virality and buzz around TikTok.
There’s not much conclusive data on Reels’ success or adoption so far (released back in August), but it is notable that it now has its own tab in an interface that hundreds of millions of active users visit daily (or hourly depending on your demographic).
Shopping also gets its own tab. Again, like the talk late in the summer about how Wal-Mart was interested in acquiring TikTok due to its ability to be a platform for e-commerce, Instagram is making it easier for users to make direct purchases from their app rather than the janky “link in the bio” workaround we’ve been using for years. I know I’ve personally made a few impulse buys of new camping gear or knives (looking at you, Smoky Mountain Knife Works) because of an Instagram Story or pic.
But take note that the landscape is changing ever so slightly from Instagram (and TikTok) being places of consumer-generated content to consumer buying and selling. That will continue, especially as we all hunker down in our homes this winter to avoid Covid outbreaks.