Today was the second time I have seen Seth speak. If you get the chance to see him, I highly recommend it. He’s a mix between a new school marketing thinker and a motivational speaker.

Here are my takeaways from today’s talk.

Seth on Education
Public education isn’t enough. Parents need to provide education that requires thinking about

College is just like high school, but with more binge drinking and debt. Take a year off before college and “experience”

On Getting Stuff Done
The devil doesn’t need an advocate. He’s doing just fine on his own.

If you need to sacrifice perfect to ship, do. Good enough is good enough.

All stakeholders need to give their input at the beginning of a project, not at the end, or you will never ship.

If you want to ship on time, allow thrashing at the beginning only. And then forever hold your peace.

I’ll know it when I see it” that’s lizard bullshit. Get the client to sign off on the brief before you start.

Don’t compromise the edges that matter. Art is edgy

If you don’t ship, you can’t do art. If you don’t do art, you can’t make a difference.

Take a Risk
Take away denialability. Take the risk

Will I get fired for doing something small without getting my bosses permission?

The way to move up the ranks in an organization is by solving problems that aren’t in the manual.

Be generous. Leave a trail. Create connections. Don’t wait to be given “authority.” Take responsibility & risks alike.

Take responsibility even when you have no authority.

On Making A Difference
Google has made it so that everyone is somewhat famous.

If you want a job, the resume is the last way to get the job. Leave a breadcrumb trail online, that’s the real you.

People are genetically wired to organize in groups of 150. (Dunbar’s number). TRIBES. Lead one.

We have been trained not to be wrong or criticized. Those that break the mode will succeed.

Creating Differentiation
We will pay extra for remarkable goods/ services. But when companies race to homogenize, we have no incentive but to go cheap.

It’s better to whisper to customers than yell at strangers!

You can win the race to the bottom – you don’t win when you are more compliant or trying to be cheaper – you win when u solve interesting problems.

In a world where marketers are yelling louder, personal, relevant, anticipated information is welcome.

How many people would miss you if you didn’t show up for an ad?

The Internet is a connection tool, not organized as a commerce machine or promotional engine.

To build a culture of experimentation, publicly fire those who don’t make mistakes

If you don’t start making mistakes, you’re fired.

For the first time, there are no barriers. Go and do it

How do you solve a problem? Blow up the barriers

The people who are making things happen today are doing so without history and credentials

The recession is huge opportunity for us to rethink and do better work.

Rethink what you actually DO all day.

Ad agencies that help you build a tribe are in high demand, not those that want to help you talk to strangers

The dip…when most people quit…is your opportunity to push thru & make a difference & win.

On Education
Stop taking notes it’s useless! Kids need to solve interesting problems- we teach them not to think – just take notes

Rather than teach students data easily found on wikipedia, we need to teach our students to solve interesting problems.

The real world doesn’t require #2 pencils or memorizing and regurgitating the next day. We need to blow the way we learn.

Public school was invented to create compliant factory workers.

In the month of July, RMG did a series of radio broadcasts on Social Media. Below is a script of my interview with Jim Poole on July 3 covering Social Media and Linking. This is a longer version than what you heard on WCCO as we had to cut down on the length in studio, but I thought you would want to see the whole recording.

Jim Poole: Jennifer, last week you shared that linking is important to your online visibility and search optimization. What role does linking play, if any, in social media?

Jennifer Risdall: Social media is all about creating dialog with your audiences… your customers, your vendors, your prospects, media, industry analysts or others …
virtually, ANYBODY who is looking for information about your brand, your company, your products, your services or you.

The operative word here is “looking”. We like to say, if people are raising their hands in social media, you better be there to answer those questions. If you’re not there, your competitor will be.

Search engine optimization is about being there when your audiences are looking for you in the search engines. Social media optimization is about being there when your keyword terms are being mentioned within social media. This can be accomplished in two ways:

• Listening and responding when your keyword is mentioned

• And creating social media content based on keyword phrases

As you can see, social media and search optimization are inseparable when talking about linking. Linking plays an important role in both. A link to your website:

• Drives traffic
• Builds online visibility
• And gives you the opportunity to create new customers and serve existing customers.

Linking can take place on all types of online media – from
• websites
• to Social Networks
• to Blogs
• to Wikis
• to Forums
• to Videos
• to RSS feeds
• within Applications
• to directories

Practically anywhere online.

Jim Poole: How do you get links within social media?
Jennifer Risdall: Remember that social media is all about building a relationship. Listening to your audiences and then joining in the conversation starts and builds the relationship with your audience. It is INVALUABLE.

The secret sauce is to listen first and provide value through engaging.

The conversations and networks you are listening to will shift and change – but the key is to be a part of the conversations, not just a fly on the wall.

Linking is part of this process. It may be an answer to a question on your brand or a customer service question, it may be an offer to your social media following, it may be sharing industry news…Whatever it is, a link to the appropriate web page can give your audiences the information they are looking for.

Jim Poole: How do you know where to listen and when to join in?
Jennifer Risdall: That’s social media optimization. At Risdall, we have 5 key pillars that we use to optimize social media for our clients. They are:
• Listen
• Identify
• Strategize
• Engage
• And Measure

Each is integral to being successful on social media and together, they create an ongoing process that needs to be nurtured.

(…don’t believe everything you see on the Internet)

With the real-time speed and global reach of the Internet, information can spread far and wide like wildfire as a recent posting revealed. In it, a woman quits her job via a series of email messages in which she uses a dry board to tell her office why she is leaving. It was funny and connected with all of us that get fed up with our jobs now and then.

It was also not true.

It turns out it was what is called an Internet meme (rhymes with cream) that fooled even the mainstream media. In its simplest form, a meme is the propagation of a digital file or hyperlink from one person to others using email, blogs, social networking sites, instant messaging, etc. This is also commonly referred to as something going “viral”.

In business, a meme can work for or against a company. Viral marketing is a fast and cheap way to create brand awareness and spread information about your company or product to a huge audience.

There is a meme currently circulating about a drinking game called icing that many suspect Smirnoff is behind, although the company denies it.

Unfortunately, memes may also take the form of a false or disparaging rumor about your company. This is where it pays to actively listen to what is being said about your company online via social media monitoring. In this case, being aware of information critical of your brand or company enables you to respond quickly and put the cork back in the bottle before the genie gets too far away.

The Risdall McKinney Public Relations (RMPR) blog has moved. Our blog “Highlighter” is now an integrated element of RMPR’s updated website.

With RMPR’s updated website, blog and overall social media efforts (Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook) there’s some definite perspective to share. On today and the future. Not just daily, stream-of-consciousness commentary and retweets, but some solid and substantive highlights. Entertaining, too.

And not just from me, but from our team, clients and agency friends. That’s you — especially, you. We want you to weigh in. Otherwise, it’s not really a conversation.

With the RMPR Highlighter, we hope to challenge your perceptions of public relations, offer insights into not only the marketing but also the management aspects of our discipline, and show how brand and reputation intersect.

Our posts might include glimpses of pop culture, fun tidbits on media personalities, opinions on current events, recaps of things we’ve attended and what we’re learning, and more. Through these posts and your comments, we think this will be a personality-laden exchange, which research says is one of the best ways to build loyal relationships. Certainly, it’s one of the most rewarding.

I bought an iPad a few months ago to see what all the hype was about. I decided to wait for the 3G because I rarely use my iPhone on a wireless network.

Up until this weekend I primarily have been using it to take notes at meeting. This allows me to email everyone my notes from the meeting as soon as the meeting ends. I have also been using a lot at conferences to Tweet the events.

My favorite apps so far include:
o eBay allows me to check my eBay listings and the browsing feature is much better then viewing it on a computer
o Hotmail is a full-featured email client for Hotmail
o TweetDeck is my favorite twitter client on the iPad as well as on a laptop
o IM+ Lite allows me to IM from
o HelTweetica is a pretty cool Twitter app to let run in the background when you are not using your iPad
o Flipboard is an amazing application. I use it primarily to see the stories people are sharing on Twitter
o CraigsPro is a craigslist application that allows you to search all of craigslist and has a more intuitive interface then browsing online
o DocsToGo allow me to create and edit Microsoft Word, Xcel and PowerPoint documents
o MobileRSS is the best RSS reader that I have found that integrates with my Google Reader account

On Sunday my laptop died on me. Since then I’ve been using my iPad and have found it to do about 95% of what I need my laptop to do. With a little more exploring of apps, I could probably live without my laptop.

Jared

Being a consumer today allows for many different perks than it did 20 years ago. Today, consumers have the ability to voice their opinions about businesses in the online space, for the whole world to see.  As a business owner, it is uncomfortable not being able to reply back to these comments.  Well, the tables have turned. Google rolled out an update that allows business owners to respond to reviews posted to Google Place Pages of Google Maps.

The means of online communication today are very transparent and emphasize connectivity, so this feature seems like a great supplement for business owners. But at the same time, these business owners should be cautious with responses and consider listening to the conversations before jumping right in. These comments have a lengthy shelf life, so you can imagine the weight they hold. Let the chatter begin!