Henriette Weber

I see a lot of really cool stuff these days.  I see a lot of companies struggling to survive and I see people who are working so hard to change the world but only have around 50 hours a week to do it. I see companies who are trying to do different kind of old-school sales activities that doesn’t work at all – or at least have a minimal effect compared how effective it used to be.

I see companies using social media as a distribution channel instead of a conversational tool, I see people talking about social and doing the anti-social moves themselves – I see spam everywhere and I find value in the strangest places. I see current business models broken and bend and not functioning at all. So how do you if you need to set in – here’s a couple of ways to  find out if you business model is close to broken:

- If the best way for you to get people to hear about your newest product launch is to spam you network with personal messages on Linkedin (not status updates but the real serious ones that get’s into you inbox)

- if you keep on doing flyers and print material that doesn’t get noticed

- if you’re not into creating market shares instead of competing for it

- if people don’t know what you stand for – or you really don’t stand for anything at all

- if the first thing to be cut off is the networking events for your employees (or for yourself)

- if you don’t involve yourself in your surroundings because they are not that important to you

I would love to collect 100 ways for you to see if your business model is broken – I have a couple more up my sleeve – but I would need your help on this – please add more in the comment field =)

Creativity  is one of the things that I keep on repeating in my talks on business and how to grasp being a company in something that looks more and more like a people-driven economy. I personally think It’s  dead-exciting but there’s so many uncertainties that makes people freak out and maybe not make great choices when it comes to creativity. Even though I have told you over and over again (in e-books, books, though videos and tweets) – what really drives an online identity in a people-driven economy is the same things that adds up to what I call “rockbandism”. Authenticity, Trustworthyness and Remarkability (if you haven’t read my ebook on “why every company should be a rockband” you should download it now and find out what you need to work on in your company to rock your online identity). To me, these are the big magic three when you are talking online identity. But sometimes we tend to get so focused on the tools. Forget about the tools. To me they are not that important. They are great. but – not key to success on them (whatever you define it as)..

What really is key is creativity. A word that’s really diffuse and has so many different meanings depending on in which context you are talking about it. To me,  in a context of a people-driven economy it means that you  need to do something different than other people are doing. Or other companies are doing.

I am actually writing this blogpost to revolt against the time and time again that I have sat at a table and talked about rockbands and great content and proactivity and all these wonderful things I have connected with dots inside my head that I truely believe my clients can become or rock. And how it sometimes seem like they aren’t ready for it. Sometimes I leave projects because the identity and what the company is bringing to the table is not a great vision, is not creative, but ends up as a competition, a bunch of celebrity endorsements or worst case scenario a textpage in addition to a facebook page – that you get to visit first. It represents the brand and tells you to sign up at the newsletter or visit a website. it’s the same old thing in a new social context and it doesn’t work. Not for me at least. It stops me from sleeping at night.

Is this the creative promise-land ? is this why I have kept teaching companies about the social web ? So that we can give people competition, celebs and textpages to reel them in as fish to our websites. NO. I have kept teaching it because i truely believe that getting creative and grasping the people driven economy will make you better as a company. It will make you happy. because you will learn how to relate to other people, and you will learn how to be authentic and cool.

Creativity to me is to turn things upside down and do stuff that matters to you. It’s business unusual . it’s involvement  – and it’s dead important to me, and it’s a good idea to make it important to you as well =)

I have, during the past week, had a lot of clever conversations with cool people about the secret behind social media. Because let’s face it, what we are really after is what the viral effect could possibly do for our brand/company/NGO – and with social media it has become a bit easier – or so we believe. But going back to before social media/communities/forums etc was mainstream I tend to believe that it was easier to stand out. It was easier to rock and be cool online – because not that many else did it – or tried to do it.

But viral effects today – is something that people believe can be attained if we start engaging on social media – well it’s both true and not true. It depends on the initiatives and the creativity, and for most companies, it’s utopia. A perfect country that is completely unrealistic.

However – every minute spend on a crazy creative idea – accelerated on social media, gathering people, not only lets you into their mindspace, but creates a momentum that is continiously updated from every tweet and statusmessage.
Meaning that people who are interested enough in you to become fans or followers or whatever you’ll call them – will actually know what you’re doing – which to me is a priceless opportunity, But it’s also an empty space – it’s what you put in there that matters, and that’s the creative anarchy of my everyday life as well.

So maybe the version of viral effects that we can attain – the realistic viral effect, are the effect of people who knows you and like you and trust you enough to become fans and followers.

I would work with the know/like/trust combined with the viral effect utopia. Oh and I would proactively get to know more people – not because they are potential fans/followers/clients – but because most people are cool and fantastic and rocks =)

This morning (while my daugher woke up at 5.45 am and wanted to watch cartoons), I found myself browsing through one of my many attention stream and stumbled across this amazing post by Chris Heuer. Chris is a fantastic talented man that I met when we both spoke at next09 and disruptive media (in germany and sweden in May), even though we have only been together for a couple of hectic days, he’s one of the people that I have liked the most (yeah Im crazy about you Chris =)….

It moved me because I could so see myself in it and I started to comment to share my own beliefs and my own views on this. And as courageous as I think that Chris is to post something like this – I thought I would do the same. So this is my comment for Chris (and for myself and for the rest of you)

“Hi Chris – what an amazing post. I just want to share – that one of the things I live and breathe by everyday is that you “do” things out of fear or out of love. Those are really the two options there is out there. If you think about every action or every reaction you do/give. it’s an either made in love or hate. Personally I struggle everyday with discovering myself… I don’t know if you know tut.com (and their letters from the universe) but it’s something I think is so totally transforming and gratifying for me… the other day this ticked into my inbox from tut (and I am not associated or anything with their service) :

henriette, I know what it’s like. I’ve seen it played out a few
zillion times. You’re waiting for that magical day when someone makes
the connection and recognizes who you really are. Maybe they’ll first
catch the sparkle in your eye. Or perhaps they’ll marvel at your
insights and the depth of your spirit. Someone who will help you
connect the dots, believe in yourself, and make sense of it all.
Someone who will understand you, approve of you, and unhesitatingly
give you a leg up so that life can pluck your ready, ripened self from
the branch of magnificence. Ahhhhhhhhhhh…

Well, I’m here to tell you, henriette, your wait is over. That someone, is you.
Good thing you rock,
The Universe

This completely states how I feel and what I have been feeling like since forever.. I crave for approval and I would love that day where I actually get it. People really close to me always say that everytime I have achieved something or people they tell me how much of a difference I have done in their life – I don’t let it in. My first thought is always “you’re jokin – right” – and not ” thank you so much, it means the world to me – as I normally say. And it really means the world to me that people say that – BUT: I can’t take it in. I can always do better. I can always strive for more. it’s a never ending story where I am afraid on the impact it has on me. So what if I have recently published what looks like (by the feedback from people) a fantastic book (in danish only so far), so what if my thoughts and my ideas implemented and putted down on paper is mindblowing and lifechanging – there’s really more for me out there to do – so I better not relax and get going, hurry hurry I might miss out on something. And as that Tut.com quote from above, all I need to do in order to be happy and confidentand settled right now (and ever) is to acknowledge myself and embrace myself and i just don’t know how. there’s no key, there’s no hint. I don’t know how to do that…I might learn it. I know the answer is inside of me, but it’s a no go for me so far.

People always tell me, that when I start to realize how much of a difference i actually do, working on projects, doing events (like the amazing socialmediacamp copenhagen from yesterday), currently starting up social media club copenhagen, promoting and market my book “return on involvement” and how my views, processes and ideas about business and marketing are spot on, then the world should watch it’s back and be ready for changes. As soon as I discover myself. I really want to. but I don’t know how- yet. ”

Thank you so much Chris for sharing – I really needed to get this of my system =)

I have been giving my looks upon social marketing on a danish blog ( sorry in danish only guys) lately, I have been elaborating on it over and over again in my head and I have a couple of points I would like to discuss here on my own blog. Now if you decide to let go of the control of your brand and start using the involvement and the engagement as a marketing tool (a couple of campaigns lately has done that – without the “best” outcome for the brand – skittles, starbucks, motrin, slideshare etc.) The problem is that people on the business side of life see this as a failed marketing campaign. Heck “fail” is probably the box they normally put these things of “oh people did not act around the brand the way I expected”.

From a consultants side of the table, on of the first things I would encourage companies to is to let go of the control and start putting their content where people already where. Places like facebook, youtube, digg and one the 10.000 other social media and web 2.0 tools out there.

But seriously is it still a discussion about control ? – well not really – not in my eyes for sure. Is it about failing ? Nah. it’s about companies getting their act together and start doing cool stuff. It’s about not seeing a campaign as a failure because you achieve getting people to engage in a brand, but then they don’t engage in the brand doing only good stuff. Some of the stuff they do with your brand might be pretty scary shit for the management of the company, it might be scary for business as usual. But seriously if you can get in the attention stream of people and having them spending 10 minutes taking anti-pictures of your brand – you don’t have to see this campaign as a failure, you should see it as something that you seriously need to adress.

In my view there is no magic middle for companies to lie in the sun and make money with no opinion and nothing to stand for anymore. Motrin got their ass kicked pretty bad with their motrin mommy ad (I as a mother cannot see how the commercial could air, because in short it is offensive and disrespectful to mothers) – but if that’s what they stand for, fine by me, I just wouldn’t buy their products. Other people would probably.

My point is, that there’s no magic place in the sun – where people don’t have opinions about you anymore, either people will think you rock or they will think you suck. Sucking is to be taken seriously because it shows that some people think that your existence as a company – well basically shouldn’t be  (rockin’ is for partying hard and being cool – and do more rockin stuff and being cooler)…

Engaging people makes you wiser, for good or bad, it shows you what you really need to work on as a company – especially over time.

So yesterday was April fools day – a day where companies can be untrue and funny. First thing in the morning I tripped over my friend André’s blogpost that his wine community Adegga.com was buying the much larger wine community Cork’d. I totally fell for it – mainly because it would be remarkable strategic move. That was, right until I had tweeted it, looked at the date and hammered my head into the table. April fools day. sigh. Anyway I think the internet crowd was struck with a lot of weird stuff yesterday, some of it more funny than other.

Then during the afternoon I recieved a mail from slideshare.net saying that I was a slideshare rockstar, because my presentations have had a lot of traffic during the last 24 hours. And yep. my “why every company should be a rockband” presentation had around 100.000 views. I mean it didn’t take me long to figure out that something was wrong, and I thought that slideshare had been hacked or something. Later on I find out that it’s an april fools joke. Right. Ha ha.

Companies makes marketing stunts around april fools day every year which is great. Slideshare left me feel like an idiot. Why?

slideshare actively involved me in the marketing stunt by mailing me – it was in my face. Normally marketing stunts turn viral from the communities and from the media because people think they are cool. It’s not instantly in your face.

there was absolutely no value (no value) in it for me as a user of slideshare. They wanted me to tell everybody else and I did.

One of my golden rules in marketing involvement of communities is that if you are going to disturb people (fx. by mailing them) you should definetly give some value to the users.

Slideshare didn’t.

I feel like an naive idiot who has been used by a service that I don’t care about.

Well done.

I have had this blogpost coming in a while. Both because of the above picture, but also because of a SXSW panel called sustainability and social media, but the buttomline is, that I see a lot of people and media actually making  talking down on great initiatives for the environment – because they don’t make a difference in the bigger picture. It’s probably the same guys talking down on greenwashing – (I will state that even though greenwashing is not optimal it comes from good) I would rather see that there was really green initiatives but the effect of companies being active about the environmental problem is a great thing.

They are actually moving themselves in a problem, where they used to be passive to being active.

There’s nothing really we can do as a single person, on a larger scale, that can help enviromental problems. But as I, in my work, work around viral effects, the effect is a bit bigger for every person that actually starts doing green stuff. This is how every movement in society has worked. In Denmark these days a lot of companies and municipalities and people has signed up for “turn of the light – denmark” which is a campaign where all people signing up commit to turn their lights off between 20.30 and 21.30 tonight.

This is a great thing.

However the danish newspaper Politiken (the same with the wonderful add above) wrote an article yesterday about “how initiatives like this doesn’t make a difference because the energy is sold to other countries”. Yep that’s true and I can’t believe that they actually call that a newsstory. Anyway as on the sustainability and social media panel at sxsw, this attitude on change is wrong. At the panel there was one guy who made me really angry because he was really annoyed that the companies didn’t do things right, and they did greenwashing.

We shouldn’t be angry at companies doing greenwashing. We should support companies doing greenwashing because if they get a lot of support for their greenwashing initiative, they will continue do it. on a larger scale, we as customers, can change the demand and supply, and that is why companies do greenwashing. They will optimize their products etc to be more green because then they will sell more.

Where we need to be, as a society, media and as a person is where we are active. where we do green things. Where we are not passively listening to what media are telling us. but we involve ourselves. Even though we might now inside that it doesn’t do much of a difference if one single person does it, it makes a difference if all the people surrounding that person are actually doing the same.

no more passivity, do something. greenwash. I don’t care. And if people say that it doesn’t make a difference anyway – see it as your own little revolution and think to yourself with a wink in the eye “I know something they don’t, im changing the world with my actions”.

You can’t change the world if you’re not active. And people (and surprisingly even media) will tell you that we’re doomed and it doesn’t make a difference.

Well I know better than that. Please know better than that too.

I just read Matt Balara’s very short blogpost on his impressions from SXSW (which I also attended and you guys probably know that by now – okay I’ll stop writing about SXSW soon).

Anyway what we should all take away from SXSW (even those of you out there just terribly annoyed that I keep mentioning SXSW) is that we need to do epic shit. Epic-whatever-field-your-in. And do things while you keep your integrity, don’t sell out -life’s too short.

I think this story is extremely frigtening, because it really shows that sometimes you create sensations as a blog, just to be able to talk about something.

I stopped reading Techcrunch for good a while back because of well.. excuse me.. Mike Arringtons blogpost about “european” vs. “american” entrepreneurs (just that he stated that all entrepreneurs in Europe under one roof, despite of culture etc makes me a bit well… mad).

And last week, Techcrunch did it again. Raising the question whether Last.fm (a webservice I love and admire) has handed user listening data over to the RIAA. Of course completely undocumented , stating it as a rumour. Last.fm stated on their blog that techcrunch was full of shit.

There’s a golden rule being taught from internet generation to internet generation. it’s called “don’t be rude”. It won’t get you anywhere in the long run for sure. Rudeness especially online doesn’t really go away – because it’s documented and people can really read between the lines, if you have created some content that is well documented or it’s just (excuse me) a bunch of bull.

So learn it from techcrunch. Don’t be rude, it’s like shooting yourself in the foot. the internet isn’t only rock’n'roll – I think this is such a vicious rumour to act upon, and it’s not in my good book that techcrunch decides to blog about it. No matter if it’s right or wrong, as long as it’s not well documented – I wouldn’t post it. Would you ?