Day: August 13, 2011

The Ongoing Love Affair With Our Mobile Phones

The results from a very intriguingly-worded survey conducted by TeleNav reveal some very telling facts about Americans and what we’re willing to give up if forced to make a choice between our cell phone and…

To paraphrase the late, great Robert Palmer, “you might as well face it, you’re addicted to… your cell phone.” That’s the only conclusion I can come to after reviewing the findings from the aforementioned survey.

What TeleNav did was pose the following query to respondents:

Are you willing to give up your mobile phone for a week or…

  • Alcohol
  • Chocolate
  • Caffeine
  • Exercise
  • Sex
  • Toothbrush
  • Shoes
  • Computer

Care to guess which one of the above more people willing to give up instead of their phone?

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If You Build It, The Leads Will Come

It’s quickly becoming the mantra of interactive strategists: lead or be led. You either lead your online community, or they will lead you. There’s no stopping the swell of communal opinion generation that has become the hallmark of our society’s online engagement.

The most die-hard critics of social media are beginning to utter: If you cant beat them, join them. But is simply joining the online community enough for a business to discover the elusive Return on Investment from social media activities? Many practitioners call this the catch 22 of the medium: overtly selling in social networks is counter-community and quickly kills your following; not selling is counter-intuitive to most business culture.

So if selling is counter-intuitive to community-building where do the leads come from? My philosophy has always been to let the leads find me! Its quite ingenious if I do say so myself! Why sell when, if done right, social media will have people lining up to ask for my service? Sound good? It is, but its not easy to achieve.

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Selling the benefits of charity

Everything we do, we do because somehow it benefits us.

We go to work for the satisfaction (I hope) and because we get paid. We smile at a stranger because it feels good to be nice (and perhaps we’ll get a smile in return). We pick up litter when no one is looking because telling ourselves a story about being a good person is worth the effort.

Some people have figured out that charity is an incredible bargain. For the time and money it costs, the benefits exceed what could be attained in almost any other way. A bargain compared to chocolate, or an amusement park visit or buying a shiny new car you probably don’t need.

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