I love to create infograms and stuff like that – recently with my involvement manifesto – but today I give you something less serious and more playful: the preconditions of viral effects on the social web infogram. Something you can turn too if you want to enhance the word of mouth of your brand on social media. It’s simple it’s fun but it’s a good pointer (and it’s totally Henriette Weber =)

If you want in a larger size, it’s up on  Toothless Tiger Press for grabs (we have problem with the browsers though, so if it doesn’t start downloading try to switch – something with the RPX) Toothless Tiger and pinterest as well..

Hope you’ll love it to pieces =)

Next week Media Evolution The Conference is taking place in Malmö. Yesterday, the always awesome Joakim Jardenberg wrote the first piece in a blog relay to put focus on some of the conference sessions, today it’s my turn (yay!) and  tomorrow I’m handling the baton to Helen Alfvegren.

I’m looking forward to attend The Conference both because the speaker list looks amazing, but also because conferences in general are my favorite playing field. And I think the 3 different themes for the conference are übercool and relevant. They’ve asked me to write something for their blog relay, and even though I wanted to pick something else, I can’t help but to choose to write about creativity or ”New business opportunities with disruptive thinking” (as one of the talks is called).

However I’ve decided to change that around a bit and write this instead… Because that’s what you can do on the internet. On your own website. I’m my own Henriette Weber social media, word-of-mouth La-la-land that I’ve created, where I’m the law, the rockn’roll queen and I make the rules. Hey Facebook! – I can even hold a competition here without making an app – and you can’t shut me down If I don’t abide the rules or can’t figure out the terms of use =) – anyway here goes peeps – I look so much forward to see you in Malmø.

Creativity is my homeboy and I love him to pieces.

Now, Inspiration is a big thing in my network, I work every day with creating value and happiness for my blogreaders, my newsletter subscribers (both here and on toothless tiger.com) and helping my clients to create value for their clients and prospects. Mainly in an advice-based how-to form, but also based on inspiration. I think inspiration and creation go hand in hand on the social web these days, sometimes it even seems like inspiration overload. I mean if I spend 10 minutes on pinterest.com – I have enough DIY projects to make with my daugther for the next month. If I visit a persons webpage or blog, there are 100 things I can download, read, share and be inspired by. It’s. All. Creation.

One of the things we tend to forget is that everytime this happens and people they decide to create something that gives value to their surroundings, they are breaking the normal boundaries for doing business. They are adding to their “brand” with creation. And this is a crucial and important thing for businesses because it shows that the boundaries for when you can do what in business has changed tremendiously. We literally have all the tools, now we just need to look within and find out what we should be creating and for whom.

That rocks doesn’t it ? It’s one of the things that makes me get out of bed every morning, mostly because when people they notice this, they also find out that they can basically make anything on the internet! Yay! It’s a cool great world out there for creation these days. The internet is so filled with inspiration you can dig into.

My biggest problem with all of this? The fear. The fear of people not liking you. The fear of people saying that something you’ve created isn’t good enough or doesn’t meet their extremely high standards. I have a secret to reveal to you: Last night when I was reading in my ton of books beside my bed (a couple of  nights a week I curl up in bed and I become smarter.. i LOVE books). I read Twyla Tharp’s “the creative habit” in preparation for this blogpost. I don’t know what it was, but something was triggered inside of me – and when it was time to go to bed I used 20 minutes to write my translator and tell him that we where translating my danish book (return on involvement – how to use the social web to create business unusual) published in aug 2009 in Denmark to english in it’s original format.

Now I’ve changed my mind a gazillion time about this but the reason I do this, as a part of the creative process is that Im so afraid I will fail. And my standards are too high. Even though the book was very very well recieved in Denmark, I think I needed to change it into something that Seth Godin, or Hugh Macleod or Brian Solis or Danielle Laporte could write.  And I don’t have to anymore, because it needs to be something that I could write. And I already did. And it’s perfect with it’s imperfections and totally not tailored for the english market. It’s short, it’s filled with strategic recipes and it’s written in my own tone of voice. But I need to give it a shot, I need to change the market out there by seeing if it will survive in english. It’s a piece of art to me and I hope you will all love it.

So I’m holding my breath here and I’ll be brave, because that is one of the most important things that creativity is to me. Boldness. Difference. And totally in the hands of the person creating.

So what are you waiting for ? Execute those cool ideas, don’t let the fear get you down and start creating.

I get a lot of ideas – some of them are really huge, some of them too huge and some of them are put into a context that I can carry out on a daily basis – and still have a huge perspective. I thought I would write a blogpost about how I make my evil plans. From HUGE to tiny worldchanging actions.

The first thing you need to do, is to know what your HUGE evil plan is.

I like to say I have several.  Actually I have one for everything I do, and they are all attached to my driving forces in life: epic, unusual, creativity and action. Really when it comes down to it I just want to die at 120 years old and know that I made a huge difference in the world. That I mattered, and that I’ve created a legacy that my family is going to be proud of.  I strive everyday to be the change I want to see in the world. But I want to make a lot of money and have a ton of fun doing that as well.

To make that happen I need other plans – such as business plans.

I find inspiration in other fields of work than my own for my business plans. I find inspiration in large companies and software in general, and I find inspiration in NGO’s and cold canvas sales. I mostly find inspiration in what it is they should do, and aren’t doing, and I tend to tell them as well.

Then I find inspiration in my darling network and especially with my advisors. I pay a lot of money for advice and inspiration, and I value it so much more than I pay.
I find so much inspiration in music, art, nature and health.

And I find inspiration in unusual business books.  One of the ones I refer a lot of people to is Marina Hjørdies “the visual businessplan/den visuelle forretningsplan” (only in danish so far, but hey, you get to brush up on your danish as well =)”

I love the “business model generation” book and I could cry myself to sleep at night, thinking about the fact that we didn’t have that book when I went to school, I would have loved it because it literally makes business models into a game =)

To make business plans happen, I need my action plans.

I think a lot in flows. I like to ask questions. A question I get a lot is “how do we turn this viral?”  The answer to that is that we create great content that our target group actually adores, and make sure that they love us as well. It’s that simple (and yet very complex at the same time). I mean we could make the best content but if the target group is wrong there’s not a thing in the world we can do to to make it viral. It’s not gonna happen. So we turn things viral with more questions and answers to more evil plans.

To make my action plans happen I need to take action.

It kind of make sense right ? But I love to see my actions as creations. I love to see my work as art and change. If I am creating art and change instead of business, I’m more inclined to do so. Here’s a secret for you: I get so turned off by boring things. If I think a thing is boring, there’s not anything in the world you can do to make me prioritize it. I think business per se, is really boring. However I think that business unusual and how I make my living is crazy cool and fantastic – and it’s still business – but not business as-we-know-it. It’s Henriette-business because it’s defined by me, and it is me who decides if it works for me or not.

To take action I need my lists and my structures.

I need my to-do lists and my timer to take action. I set the timer on a half an hour or something and then I work work work until it rings, take a break and then over again. I need structure in form of people telling me what to do, or timers, otherwise I end up not prioritizing what’s urgent or important, but what’s fun (sometimes I’m lucky that it’s both urgent, important and fun=)

And that’s the evil plans of Henriette Weber. What’s yours ?

I don’t really like lotteries. I think they are incredibly mainstream, and I don’t do mainstream very well.

I constantly deal with them, because it looks like it has become a commodity; that it’s the way to involve people on the social web: lotteries. Giving people cake as Marie Antoinette would have put it. I’m biased as I write this, because I know that a lot of companies out there are trying to grasp this social web space and win over more and more people to “like” them, involve them, engage them, follow them around like puppy dogs, digging what they do – making them into a cool company and brand.

But my idealistic, outsider-ish self says that it becomes too much of a commodity for the public to “sell” their personal facebook identity to win a lottery. I mean you’re giving them permission to be right in your center of attention: the newsfeed! My point isn’t the lottery in itself. Heck sometimes I, myself even enter and win stuff (and I’m happy when I do!).  My point is that;

1. It’s filling up my newsfeed on facebook. I mean I evangelize that with the social web you have a hands-on tool to save the world for the better, and you decide to earn your own fame instead, by doing lotteries?

1. It’s filling up my rss reader - the place I turn to daily to get my ladies magazine kick and getting to know what smart people think about business.

2. Lotteries are so widely succesful that it’s the ONLY thing that a lot of companies do on facebook to “involve” people. You can WIN! Wow. I want to be a winner! It reminds me of all those times where I’ve sat in agency meetings talking about a new concept and the finishing touch to that concept often becomes “let’s get some celebrities to endorse this” – people will identify themselves with the celebs and we sell, sell, sell. I really hate those concepts. I think I will write about that in another blogpost though.

BUT: I am willing to cut you some slack people. I am willing to accept that you need to do this in order to get more people involved in what you’re doing, on one condition: that you also start doing something else.

Here’s some advice for what I would do if I was you (in addition to the lotteries):

- Find 3 things in the soul of the company. Communicate them. Storylive (what I call storyliving, when you in addition to telling the story (storytelling), document it on the social web) them and get people to see that you’re not just a lottery company, you do cool stuff as well.

- Practice “strategic creativity”. Don’t just put up stuff on the internet that are going to get you facebook likes and followers and stuff, because it’s cool. Define how the creativity is going to bring in the dough. What is the strategic flow of your actions on the social web?

“You may say I’m a dreamer” – I’m madly in love with companies that dare to tell the world what they dream about for the future. I get euforic when I see that they are working towards it in a targeted way. Have you told the people around you (aka. your peers) today what you dream of, why they should give you the money instead of the competition, Because you’re sassy, cool and you dream and act big, not just for the sake of the company you work for, but for the whole world.

I look forward to see how you’re doing out there.. =)

This is the 3rd article out of 100 about creativity – you can see the total list here (3 years old).
As you might know, i decided to elaborate on the oneliners in the list- and here goes number 3:

“What doesn’t work in one context – might work in another. Test your options”

Context is one of the most important things, to whether or not your thoughts are looked upon as creative, or not. Context to me, can both be on a personal, a micro level (such as surroundings) or a macro level (culture, countries, regions etc).

I wrote in my Klout and PeerIndex article a couple of days ago,  that one of the things that bothered me about Klout and PeerIndex was that it seems like they both measured your influence (or your index with your peers) without context, or without naming in what context it’s given.

It could be that your klout score is huge within one context, but not so huge in another. Context is super important, because it gives us definition, especially because of the culture we’re in. Now if we switched a part of the context (or we changed the culture). The “score” might be different.

I guess it’s because perception is so different – not only from person to person but also from culture to culture. So if something doesn’t work in one context, I think one of the things you can do, is to find another context to show it in. I think it’s one of the cores of creativity, that it’s never constant and that it’s continuously changing because the context is different.

So if something doesn’t work in one context, try another, on a smaller or larger scale.

One of the most fantastic books I’ve ever read, was “Story” by Robert Mckee. It was a book I read as a part of my  media studies at Copenhagen University. One my key takeaways from “Story” was that creativity, to dear Robert, was choices of inclusion and exclusion.

Some of you already knows that I am a sucker for reusing stuff and think that this approach to creativity is about copy and pasting bits and pieces from the old and put it into new shapes and boxes. I had a teacher at commerce college who insisted that everything that needed to be created, was already created. I beg to differ, but he has a good point, and I think it’s absolutely impossible to create something from scratch nowadays. There’s so many other roles you can take, there’s so much information and inspiration. But the strategic approach of choices of inclusion and exclusion is something I really digg. And something I think it’s needed for people who doesn’t see themselves as creative people.

It’s simple: Include + Exclude = Creativity

So one of the most popular blogpost I have written ever is about 3 years old now, and it’s called “the complete creativity 100″. I thought about it and I want to elaborate more on advice in the blogpost- which was short sentences. So during the next year I will go through all of the 100 small pieces of advice – and when it’s done I will turn it into a book. If you want to be a part of please elaborate in the comment field.

the first advice on the list is “your knowledge of “what’s out there” makes you base your choices on your knowledge of what works and what doesn’t work”.

I think it’s really important to think about that you only base the choices you make in your life, on what you already know – and adding to that, what you have experienced works and doesn’t work. Sometimes I just think it’s important to look beyond that. Look deeper. Sometimes some of the things that didn’t work in one context, will work in another, and the other way around. So sometimes we have to look at what’s out there + then a whole lot more. I mean I always teach people that what normally puts the cherry on top when it comes to messages, viral effects and social marketing, is teaching people what they didn’t know that they really wanted to know, surprise them! -and surprise yourself by keeping your mind open.

Sometimes you have to ask yourself if what you perception of things are the absolute truth – and it would be ridiculous if it was.

I love the quote of Socrates saying “The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing” and i don’t know anything for sure – but it’s so creative and so much fun to work around it, and it leaves you humble and feeling blessed. Adding to that quote, I love the Einstein quote of “imagination is more important than knowledge” – im rooting for that one.

I got back from Roskilde Festival sunday night. Monday was for catching up on stuff and today I feel like creative writing. It’s fantastic, because it’s one of the things I love the most, the total flow of needing to get things down on “paper” and shared away for inspiration.

These days I feel like im in some sort of vacuum waiting to burst out. It was the same when I released “return on involvement” in Danish last year. And with the english book “return on involvement” coming out + my new e-book (working title “social media value chain”, which I still need to find out if I can publish calling it a value chain without getting myself in trouble).

Another things that’s on my mind is the process of moving. We are (still) selling our gorgeous apartment and we’re moving back to my childhood home in Elsinore (about 50 km around from where we live now). Talking to the bank and facing the “when will your apartment be sold” question or “how many has been out to see it” makes me tired.

But – I turn to writing and researching for clients and myself. Now, one of the things that popped up in my curly head today, was a fun trick that I think will help you gather acknowledgement and fame (and make you into the rockstar that I KNOW you want to be).

One of the most important and interesting parts of my business is to figure out what people are saying about you. Both the lovers and the haters, the likers and ignorers (the people who ignore you for some apparent reason) and the rest who hasn’t had the chance to meet you yet. There’s a couple of things that always gets me going and makes me put myself on the spot all the time.

These things are the facts that:

- I believe that about 10% of all people in the world will be straight out negative about you. If you expect that, then the path to being your fullest self and daring to be different isn’t that hard. You will experience that some people thinks that what you’re most passionate about is the most stupid waste of time. Accept that these people are around and get going. Don’t focus on them. on the contrary I choose to believe a lot of people thinks that what I do kicks a**. I need to believe that – you do too.

- It takes quite a long time to get people to find out what you actually do – don’t worry they will come around if it’s for them.

- “They” will screw you over. it’s likely to happen so why not expect it?

- I will come out of every situation stronger.

- That you need to think about these things in a positive way, otherwise you wont publish your next piece of brilliant content, or the next – maybe it’s not exactly accurate, but it get’s your self-esteem up and makes you dare to be yourself. You’re on a special mission and nothing is going to stop you. You’re doing something that no one else has done before – because it has that magic touch of you on it.

But a way to direct this and to strategize around people, is to get aware of what it is that you want people to say about you. Put it down on paper.

So here’s the questions I asked myself (and my own answers below):
Why do you want the lovers to love your work ?

Because they think it rocks. Because it gives them value and that kind of “Henriette” insight and creativity that they didn’t know they where looking for. Because it’s made to inspire. Because it will make them more money and have their business running better… (and that’s also why I believe that Toothless Tiger (aka. my business) has been in business for 5 years, and is still going better than strong=)

Why should/would people hate you ?

If you think I’m an obnoxious woman, who likes to voice my opinion and whom you can’t stand. Don’t like me. Not even on facebook. Don’t retweet. Don’t sign up for my newsletter.  It’s ok. Question my authority. Tell your friends to hate me too. I’m fine without you. No worries. You will be fine without me as well.

Why do they like what you’re doing ?

Because they are inspired by me and my work. They think I am a creative individual who gives them value.

Why do they choose to ignore you ?

One of the things I continuously say in my head is that they deliberately ignore me because they are afraid of me – sometimes I even say it’s because they are jealous. I need to believe that  it’s because I am better, faster, smarter, sexier and more insightful than them

What do you want the in-betweeners to say after the first time the read/hear/see you ?

That I gave them insights they haven’t thought about. That my ideas where genuine. That they would love to work with me at some point.

This is a giving exercise to do. It helps you position yourself. Now look at the answers to your questions and figure out: how will you make it happen ?

There’s a lot of talk about insecurity and lack of self-confidence all around these days. Here’s my creative advise for you on how to boost your self-confidence while being yourself and a “personal brand” which in my case means – erhm : Henriette Weber.

1. be thankful for who you are
2. ignore everybody
3. believe that you’re NOT misunderstood
4. if you don’t feel like a princess, a style icon, a glamazon – it’s OK I don’t either – I feel like me.
5. don’t listen to what other people say
6. start creating – be active and proactive
7. do epic shit
8. state stuff. Maybe even do a personal manifesto
9. get going everyday – don’t do too much
10. don’t believe that you have to be perfect
11. live in the now
12. don’t focus on the negative – focus on the support from people who love what you’re doing
13. Creativity is the way to differentiate
14. look gorgeous no matter what size you are
15. embrace your faults
16. interview people and ask them for your opinion on you
17. if you did something that sucked (hey it happens sometime) don’t linger – get back up on your horse
18. find out how you should start selling – what fits your personality and go after it
19. Get THOSE shoes – they’re probably worth every penny they boost your self-confidence
20. don’t hide behind social media – participate
21. be thankful for the challenges you get
22. stand out
23. if you see something and think it’s cool – it really is
24. keep writing/going
25. follow-up
26. network strategically
27. Love
28. And (- I’ll personally get really upset if you don’t do this one =) rock on.

(please add more in the comments=)

Today I am not going to go easy on work and simply relax and do fun stuff together with my daughter. Though I have some Coworkingboat Pan shareholder interviews that is waiting to happen.

the Chief web Hackery gets cozy on Pan -  photo by Ton

Here’s the answers to the shareholder questions by Mark Wubben, a dear friend and one of the worlds coolest webhackers =)

1. name

Mark Wubben

2. city

Copenhagen

Chief web hackery

Rescuing an old boat from sinking on dry land is always a worthy cause, especially if it’s a family boat. I love how you’re sharing the process and the boat itself with a wider world.

Set sail for the quiet of Øresund, combined with a 3G Wi-Fi router and the hopes of reception, to work a little and to relax a little, all with friends.

Not sure I understand the question…

Getting new stuff is too easy. Appreciating what’s there, how to work with it, improve it, that’s actually valuable.

Then again, those iPads sure are shiny.

8.anything else ?

Keep the energy flowing, and how can we all help?