Posts By Dick Davies

Analytics, Vision, and Reality Checks

I got another question about analytics from a business owner who was thinking about adding social media to her toolbox. She wanted to know what analytical tools she should be acquiring…even before moving beyond her website. I’ve decided analytics are seductive, because they offer the promise of buying some packages and then knowing more. ThatRead… Read more »

After BlogLab Email #1 Commenting

Julie Perlmutter and I designed a new training for improving corporate blogging operations, modeled after the Sales Lab Status Meetings. This was a one time, interactive presentation for bloggers and managers investigating how to improve their blogging programs. Most of the participants got the BlogLab handout a week before the program. We told everyone itRead… Read more »

Welcome!

“They’re rioting in Africa, they’re starving in Spain. There’s hurricanes in Florida, and Texas needs rain. The whole world is festering with unhappy souls. …And I don’t like anybody very much! ” Kingston Trio There’s August ugly in the Congress and citizens, media and bloggers, students and teachers and facebook, police and crims, workers andRead… Read more »

Editing Social Media

In snail mail times, published exposure was expensive and constrained. “Editing” was selecting the best offering and making sure it was centered on message. With social media, exposure is easy and infinite. “Editing” is delivering everything that might be interesting to your audience as quickly as possible. Underestimating audience interest is one of today’s mostRead… Read more »

Blog Lab

Social media leadership is a game of balancing goals and resources. I’ve learned to “begin with the end in mind,” balancing results, cost, time, staff capabilities, and continuous innovation for optimum value. Continuous Innovation? A long time ago I asked a customer CTO how could I tell when I was buying enough software? He grinnedRead… Read more »

War of Art

A post is a sprint. Keeping an active blog for years is a marathon. A sales presentation is a sprint. Winning a sale and delivering the intended result is a marathon. Infatuation is a sprint. A relationship is a marathon. A sprint is a technique, part of a marathon. There are many books about keepingRead… Read more »

Culture

If culture is the organizational behavior that is not written in the rules, what happens to your culture when you add a lot of rules? Or, Software is the written record of an organization’s culture. What do you think? Check out Blah, Blah Blog at the Web Managers Roundtable, on August 9. We’ll be investigatingRead… Read more »

Building an Online Community

Guest Post by Dana Blankenhorn I first met Dana Blankenhorn when I left enterprise software and was building an open source company. He was blogging about open source and about two of every three of his posts I had to implement immediately. He was my teacher-from-the-cloud for over a year. He is still the onlyRead… Read more »

Facilitation and Collaboration

I watched a “professional facilitator” absolutely waste 16 person-hours. The opportunity made me so mad, it took a while to figure out what I think. Here’s what I think: Unless you are working by yourself, you need enthusiastic buy-in from your team to get superior performance. Taking time to get everyone on board is usuallyRead… Read more »

Best Behavior

Jack and I were wasting time talking about how just when you create an overwhelming advantage, the game changes, rendering your advantage obsolete, from dinosaurs to asynchronous warfare. We looked at various leadership behaviors and the philosophies behind them, The Golden Rule, a little Game Theory, even Seth’s Game Theory. Seems like the farther theseRead… Read more »