“let’s adore and endure each other” – taken in Hackney, London last night

The world is filled with words and some are bigger then others =) Some of them are huge and some of them has become diluted.

For the last couple of years, statements has become huge on the internet in a “keep calm and carry on” way. Stating a lot of stuff we should be and should do. On a good day, I love them, I love that it inspires people and it makes them strive for more.

On a bad day I think it sucks that all these great actions becomes words without any meaning behind. It’s like a really bad social media presentation where all these buzzwords are being mentioned (you need to authentic, trustworthy, remarkable, outstanding, epic etc). And it’s not really the words that’s my problem. My problem is that it has become so easy to make them into a game of buzzword bingo, where you just mention a lot of cool stuff, but where it doesn’t go deeper than that. To me that doesn’t seem valuable, it seems hectic and unserious.

I mean if you really want me be to authentic – shouldn’t your primary task be, how to get me to elaborate on what authentic really means ? It’s the same in the business world – I mean everybody is talking about some “smart fancy pancy thing” but should you instead of talking about it, see if it would fit your company and start to implement it ? To me these words becomes diluted because everybody is mentioning them and not a lot of people goes into detail around them.

There are some people out there who really can put action behind buzzwords just by mentioning them, but that’s because of the identity of the person who says the words. it’s about her esteem (or kloutscore or whatever, you choose =)

Anyway it would be SO cool if we, instead of doing the buzzword bingo – started to elaborate a bit more on what is it that we use these fantastic HUGE words for, because in that aspect they truly can be world-changing =)

Yesterday I saw this on the road in Copenhagen;

First I thought it was a coffeeshop called FACEBOOK. Then I read the small letters which said “find us on FACEBOOK”… (Im writing in capital letters because it really did scream to me).  It was really bizarre because FACEBOOK was written right where you would look for the storename.

It reminds me a bit about this inserted on a webpage (underneat the “we-take-these-credit-cards-statement”):

Or this thrown in at the bottom of a newsletter (and then when you open it, it errors because they haven’t gotten a username for their page)

It just seems so not-very-well-thought-through. I don’t have a problem with people stating that they are on facebook – it just seems like such an empty shout and very end-of-the-90s, because back then, everybody was shouting “FIND US ON THE INTERNET” it later became a URL.

My problem with it is when it seems half-assed.

Having nothing but sales pitches and corporate speak in a newsletter and then stating “find us on facebook” is annoying the hell out of me. Having no personal contact or human reach out on your website and then putting up a huge “F” underneath your creditcard logos – is something I see as a sad attempt to be something your not. You’re trying to be hip, but you aren’t. You want to show that your shop is cool, but you haven’t quite putted in the effort. It’s a quick fix and I get the old “you just don’t get it” feeling. It literally destroys your brand and your identity for me. Sorry, but it does.

Well au contraire, maybe it’s me that doesn’t get it. Maybe Im a writing lunatic that wants to make companies into something they’re not, and something that they don’t really want to be ?

On a totally different and personal note: Spring is here. I’ve stolen the husbands big black leather chair which I will be working in today, opened the door to the garden and let the dogs sit outside. I have a feeling they need a bit of spring and sun as well. Im happy the light is finally here.

Happy first spring workday from me to you=)

Im a girl who came home crying from school in 3rd grade because the ozone layer was going away and I was afraid that the earth would be turning into a living hell because of consumption. This article probably isn’t anything new, it’s just my reflection and call for action to other people, hoping that it will help them to do a little more…

I woke up this morning to the horrifying images and videos from a gigantic earthquake and Tsunami sweeping over Japan. It left me sitting and crying in front of the computerscreen. Im convinced that these devastating earthquakes and tsunamies are manmade and a part of the climate change we are experiencing in these years. It’s now a fact that glacier movement increasingly are causing earthquakes and tsunamies I guess Im sad and in tears because I feel like there’s no actions that I can do to prevent this. The things I am told to do by the danish government agencies is to save water and oil and try not to use as much energy. It’s putted sharply in contrast with what other people are doing around the world. I don’t want to point fingers.

I am sure that we can sit here for a couple of years yet to come and see “it” happen, before the iceberg tips and words are putted into action on a global scale. Im a democratic girl all the way, but I seriously feel that this is an issue that is so much bigger than democracy. It’s so hard to grasp because it affects us all in a timeframe that is called “the next 30- 50 years”.

This is the only ONLY time you’ll hear me say this, but in an ideal world, I think the world needs a climate dictator, superior to none. Someone who can say “ok that’s it – you ain’t getting any more oil”. We need global action, people.

If I could change the world, I would like to see that the climate was putted on the top of the list of the political global agenda, by all leaders of the world. Call me an idealist, but this is going nowhere, the leaders are meeting at COP-whatever and I am wondering how many years will go by before we see that it’s becoming back to normal – whatever normal used to be. Normal just didn’t use to be monthly catastrophes around the world and melting icebergs. I can’t put my finger on the climate status quo- but it sure isn’t this.

So how can we fight this? What is our most powerful weapon ?

I think my most powerful weapon is my action and my voice. I will not tolerate that the earth will be completely fucked up when my grandkids and great – grandkids are born. I don’t want this to be a part of my generations legacy! I want you to do more. I want you to show up. I want climate demonstrations online and offline and I want the whole of the rightminded world there. I want to shout out to my friends on the internet and say “stop what you’re doing, this is so more important, it’s about survival of the species”. I want to take these tears and these tweets, facebook updates and prayers and I want them to change what you do and how you do it. I want the whole world to jump at the same time and say – this is enough. I want legislation to tell us what we can and cannot do, if we are supposed to be here tomorrow. I don’t want to be able to choose between have an oil heated house or a solar heated house. I need to have the solar heated house to save the climate – it’s that obvious to me.  I want you to ban stuff and choices that’s not good for me!

And still I’m searching for political action on a global scale. Im trying hard to find cases of companies that are doing something really good for the climate. Im sorry guys, but I truely feel that the time of choices is over, because we’re just not choosing what’s best for us on a global scale. We need leadership and we need action. I promise you I will do whatever it takes to get us there – and I am sure you will as well.

I love good business karma, there’s nothing more exciting for me than to work with clients and partners where the work just flows – anyway I am real grateful for that but that’s not what I am going to be putting down on henrietteweber.com today.. I want to talk about business energy vampires.

Sometimes this thing happens. You run into companies or people that are business energy vampires. Companies that will like you to do stuff for them, simply because you’ve acknowledged that they have a great idea.
I ran into one of them lately.

My problem was that I love idealism in business. I love it when they aim for something bigger. And I love to love companies that gives it all it got, and yes, I will endorse you if I think you’re cool. You can get me to speak and blog about you if your ideas are genuine.

However I don’t want to stay in daily contact and I don’t want to keep doing stuff to help you if you then drain me of my energy, I don’t have more blood to give you.

I’ve made a short list of 3 so you can spot these vampires out:

- Businesses who wants to do a partnership with you, but where you end up giving and giving and no acknowledgements comes out of it. Maybe except a salespitch towards you at the end of the line – thanks guys.

- People who wants you to do stuff for free, even though they don’t know you. (I will write a rant blogpost later on today, about how to approach guestblogging – because I get a lot of requests for guestblogging from people I don’t know, who hasn’t tried to connect with me on twitter or fb and who makes me feel kinda random in they approach to getting their message across to the world. )

- Businesses who pushes your limits and needs you to be available to them 24/7 – even after the project is done.

I think the pattern is they’re doing a whole lot of taking, and not a lot of giving. They are unrespectful towards you, your time and your business. It makes you put your foot down at some point and never ever want to talk to them again. If you meet, it makes you turn awkward, because you’re hurt. The biggest thing is that there’s no way you will ever EVER recommend their work or anything they’ve touched to anyone else. Because they weren’t exactly nice to you..

A couple of days ago, I decided to try out Klout and Peerindex to find out how popular I was in social media.  I have been reluctant to do so in the past because I basically think influencer measurement like that are bullshit and it’s made for companies to find out who they should target in the mainstream of social media, instead of finding out what people they should be talking to on a 1 on 1 level, based on the relationships and word of mouth. This article in Wall street journal confirmed a part of my belief, and I decided to look more into it.

I see influencer measurement as a shortcut and as a mislabeling of a lot of really cool people out there, and I think these measurements are missing the whole point of the social web: substance, creativity and proactivity. There, I said it.

First up: here are my personal reactions checking the services out

Peerindex:
I got really anxious and paranoid about  that my Peerindex was only 26, and my authority was only 17.  I added all the stuff they said I should and it still didn’t move the measure. Apparently being an Author in Denmark, having published a blog for more than 5 years + written ebooks in english and danish doesn’t really give me authority. I got this feeling that the reason they have measured it like that, is probably from an american standpoint. I think if they did localized versions of peerindex, it would probably be different.

Klout:

I felt a bit better about Klout than Peerindex, because it seems like they measure my influence in a more transparent way. Still it annoys me to pieces that I can’t see how they make out the numbers of “my influence”.

So I had a discussion about this on twitter last night with Hans Henrik Heming, Morten Saxnæs and Jesper Andersen. After the discussion and my own observations, I think my main problem with the current influencer measurement tools are:

1. It seems like both peerindex and klout are measuring my influence, not by quality but by quantity.

To me,  it would be the same as to measure a readership of a blog, by how many comments you get on that blog. I don’t get a lot of comments – still my blog has been a large part of my bread and butter for the last 5 years. People still come up to me at conferences and meetings and knows what I been doing since I saw them last time, because of my blog and my activities on social media. The influencer measurement tools look at the retweets and the direct messages and who follows me and stuff like that. But the internet is so much more than Facebook and Twitter. If I want to increase my influence score – it seems like I need to follow less people on twitter, get more followers there, and add more friends on linkedin and facebook. Does that make me influental ? Maybe from the outside and in the numbers, but it doesn’t really add to the substance of the real me, and I think that is misguiding.

2. It looks like it’s easy to manipulate your influence.

Kind of like if you buy your twitter followers… I really think the Klout is broken article is spot on and shows a worrying thing that you can do with data.

3. It isn’t based on content

I preach substance and great content. No matter how many measurements you set up, I do believe that the great content is the key here, and it doesn’t really matter if it get’s retweeted or not. In some geographical areas, cultures and languages, I would believe that retweets are less used than in other parts of the world.

I guess what Im trying to raise here, is the question of whether this should be an indicator of how influential we are. I think numbers on the social web are good, but they can also be terribly labeling and misleading. I mean it’s like measuring the ROI of social media – it’s numbers that companies want to find out who would give them most impact, not based on who is best suited for the company, but based on their rating and their quantitative digital activies.

So can they make me into an internet superstar? It sure looks like I can manipulate them to make me look like one. I think I would say that they could make me into a fake internet superstar If I wanted to do that, and Im sure some douchebags out there would. But the substance, the real valuable deep connection and the content is not taken into consideration here. So until they start defining measurements for that, I think I’ll just do my normal way: feel and act like an internet rockstar, believe in myself and my value as an entrepreneur, business owner, influencer (or wannabe influencer? who cares) and superstar.

Breaking up is hard to do, but to some services/communities/companies it seems like they’re just waiting for the loyal users to get out so they can use the service for something else. Last.fm (who used to be one of my big loves of my digital life) is the last service to break up with me – quite literally. In a way that doesn’t only leave me heartbroken, but it also makes me feel like shit and like they never cared about me at all. Now I won’t be sobbing and drinking whiskey in a dark bar where I wouldn’t normally go. There has been a lot of development within social networks evolving music, so I’ll just grap another service and keep exploring my music somewhere else.

See, I have always loved music websites/radio on the internet, ranging from blip.fm, over pandora, to last.fm, to spotify to name a few. I think it’s interesting to see how they have developed, what they are now, and what they will be in the future. Anyway the other morning I almost spewed my coffee toward the computer screen when I saw that I had 3 plays left of my “free trial” on last fm. I hear my 15 minutes of song and now it shows this fantastic little message:

Nice – a free trial – , oh  a commercial message to get me to subscribe for a mere 3 months. Normally I wouldn’t mind at all. the thing is that last.fm and I we go WAAAAAY back… and Last.fm even knows it and show it to me on my profile page. A free trial ? well thank you. I think I have tried you out.

(ps I included the very ugly commercials on the top of my profile as well.  as you also can see here (on my profile page) I have been on last.fm since 30th of march 2006 and I have scrobbled/played 24209 songs. Now I can’t play anymore radio, I can’t discover more music, unless I pay you. You have me scrobbling for ages, and this is how you reward me – as a loyal customer. I have tried your pro account out a couple of times, but it just didn’t do much for me – except for I could listen to my radiostations. Yey.

It makes me feel like it’s my fault that you did a shitty pro-product that I don’t want to buy – not even for mere 3 dollars a month. Thanks.

I don’t know what happened to last.fm. it used to be a place where i browsed music and explored new artists and now it seems like a ghosttown, There’s so many limitations in there to the music experience.

Update – I had a chat with Kirpus on twitter and he linked me to two blogposts he wrote about last.fm first one praising their humanity and their embrace of the community (simply by being human) and the second about a year later, where they’ve gone all corporate-talking.  Adding my thoughts on the break up with loyal users and you have a social network gone anti-social and very corporate.. nice work guys – not.

Dear Last.fm, it feels like you’ve broken up with me – a loyal user for more than 4 years. I  I mean normally loyality is rewarded – but not in the last.fm community.

It leaves me feeling sad, misunderstood and angry, as I vaguely remember my other break up used to do.

I think it’s amazing to come across some people who have their own startup – or are responsible for selling a product, and who still approach sales and meetings like they are bothering others.

I used to be just like that, but fortunately I don’t think like that anymore. The last couple of months have done so many wonders for me in that direction – both with a new partner in Toothless Tiger, but also with some of my kickass advisors. They have worked on convincing me that I am the best social web strategist out there, and that I am the brain behind the coolest social web agency on the planet.  Because of that, I get to choose who to work with, and not the other way around. I feel truely blessed for figuring this out, and it has taken me a long time.

Radical self-esteem and business-love, people: It rocks!

One of the first reasons not to get that client or that meeting is that you don’t believe in you’re going to get it. You make your product seem like a hard sell, even to yourself.

Well I am here to tell you that your product is totally groovy! It’s like thinking things are easy. Running a startup is a piece of cake. Starting a business is something I only have to do 3 days a week and I still get loads of loads of clients. See?

I want you to think your product is groovy. Because it is, if you threat it as a puppy and not as crap. I’m convinced you’re the most competent person to sell your groovy product – right ?

Have a fantastic weekend rockers=)

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 =)