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Why I’m Not an NFL Owner

by Daria Steigman on January 5, 2012

Green Bay Packers, Business, Sports, and Reading the Fine PrintYou might have read that the Green Bay Packers are selling ownership shares. Which means that, for $250, you can own a share of the franchise. You can’t sell you share (or shares) and it won’t increase in value–but it makes you an owner of the NFL-Super-Bowl-winning franchise that was once coached by Vince Lombardi.

It would look really cool on my LinkedIn profile. But I’m not going to be an NFL owner.

$250 is real money. It maybe buys my next smartphone. It definitely buys lots of pints of beer at the ballpark this spring. But that’s not the problem.

The fine print is.

Ownership has its privileges. And its price.

Page 5 of the Common Stock Offering Document has a clause entitled NFL Rules that reads, in part:

The NFL Rules prohibit conduct by shareholders of NFL member clubs that is detrimental to the NFL, including, among other things… publicly criticizing any NFL member club or its management, employees, or coaches or any football official employed by the NFL.

Which means that, as an owner, I could be fined by the commissioner and/or required to sell my stock back to the organization–for $0.025 per share. (Come to think about it, that’s better than zero. But I digress.) Which means I couldn’t opine about whether Dan Snyder is the worst sports franchise owner since Marge Schott. And I couldn’t tweet that even a 2-year-old has more discipline than the Oakland Raiders. Not to mention that “what’s up with [insert name of player here]” would be off limits.

There’s a point here. And it’s not about American football.

It’s about reading the fine print.

Fining fan-owners of the only public NFL team would be a public relations nightmare. It’s not going to happen (unless someone really provokes it, or behaves in “conduct unbecoming” that defies public mores). But the business reality is that buying into this deal requires limits on your free speech. Not illegal limits–it’s not a 1st amendment issue. But limits nonetheless.

Business is about choices and trade-offs. Before you make your next deal, make sure you understand both.

Photo by Jeramey Jannene (Flickr).

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Why Google+ Circles Matter

by Daria Steigman on July 21, 2011

Google Plus, circles, LinkedIn, Facebook, social media, Independent Thinking, Steigman CommunicationsIf you’re read anything about Google+, the company’s latest foray into the social realm, then you’ve probably heard about Circles. Here’s my early take, which I shared via a LinkedIn answer on the topic the other day:

From my initial view of Google+, Circles are what Facebook needs but doesn’t have: a way to share based on real life versus the digital world.

You can create as many circles as you want–and share information across Google+ in multiple ways (public, or with one or more circles). As a result, this is the first platform that starts out with the premise that all people aren’t equal. So, for example, you might want to share an article that’s about politics with your family, a not-suitable-for-work cartoon with friends, and a great article about finance with your colleagues. I have, for example, set up a couple of broad categories around business/small business and communications/marketing. I can see people setting up circles around friends, colleagues, intramural sports teammates, book club members, etc., over time.

As someone who thinks that the private realm doesn’t belong online, I’m unlikely to share ANYTHING that I’m not comfortable with everyone seeing. But I think Google has been thinking about how people share. If they have any ambition of being “the next Facebook” (note: I’m not sure Facebook is going anywhere soon), being able to easily create “share” categories is a good first step.

Personally, I think Circles is just one of the interesting elements of what Google is doing with Google+.

Have you set up Circles yet? What do you think?

I actually have 6 business reasons I think you should watch Google+.

Sign up for my latest newsletter (sign up form in sidebar–or click through here if you’re reading this in RSS) to read my 6 reasons to watch Google+. As a bonus, I have five beta invitations to Google+ to give away to the first five people who sign up for the newsletter and then e-mail me your Gmail address and tell me why you want to test out Google+. (You have to have a Gmail account to use Google+.)

Photo by J Ronald Lee (Flickr). 

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Are Customers High Maintenance?

by Daria Steigman on June 20, 2011

Business, Social Media, Customer Service, Independent Thinking, Steigman CommunicationsI read a LinkedIn question the other day that asked whether companies should spend more time focused on their core business–and less, perhaps, on social media. While I don’t think this is really an “either/or” question (you have to do both), I also think it’s pretty clear that if companies spent more time doing what they do best, there’d be less need to be reactive online.

Being reactive, of course, isn’t an invention of the digital age. It’s a challenge that typically arises from limited resources, organizational silos, and/or a failure of imagination. Just as you don’t need a survey to know what good customer service looks like, it shouldn’t take bad press to know cutting corners is a bad idea.

So what’s changed?

In The NOW Revolution, Jay Baer and Amber Naslund suggest that:

“Possessing the time and information required to make sound product, pricing, operations, and customer service decisions is a luxury–a luxury that’s facing extinction.”

Yes–and No. Companies today get rewarded for excellence–same as they always have. But companies that have been coasting can’t get away with it (as much) any more.

I’ve heard some people say that, in this age of the real-time Web, customers are increasingly high-maintenance. As a customer, I think we’re empowered.

As a business owner, I see this as a good thing.

What say you?

Photo by Katherine Johnson (Flickr).

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4 Reasons to Use SlideShare

by Daria Steigman on March 2, 2011

Are you using SlideShare?

In addition to leading a session on captivating content at the Frederick New Media and Technology Conference last week, I also had the opportunity to present a 3-minute, 101 overview of the presentation-sharing platform.

4 Smart, Simple Ways to Use SlideShare

As the examples above show, there are four big reasons to use Slideshare:

  1. Upload your presentations and showcase your smarts. This is a great way to share your knowledge (and thought leadership) beyond the initial audience for your presentation. This presentation, uploaded just a few days ago, has already garnered 85 views on SlideShare. My presentation on engaging your audience: over 200 views in the same timeframe.
  2. Enhance your LinkedIn profile. The LinkedIn SlideShare app lets you embed a presentation directly into your LinkedIn profile. Bonus tip: you can also use it to embed a video.
  3. Keep Tabs on Your Contacts. Once you’ve installed the app, you can also use it to keep tabs on the presentations that your LinkedIn contacts have uploaded to SlideShare.
  4. Competitive Intelligence. In putting together my presentation, I performed a search on the topic of electronic medical records. SlideShare returned over 1,500 results. If I targeted that search more strategically, I might find some very useful data. Remember, people speak a lot at both company meetings and industry conferences–then post their presentations afterwards.

Also of note: SlideShare is just rolling out a new feature, Zipcast, which will let you share presentations in real time. It’s worth keeping an eye on.

What’s been your experience with SlideShare?

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5 Must-Have Tech Tools for Business

by Daria Steigman on February 14, 2011

Technology, Business, Independent Thinking, Steigman CommunicationsIn an interview with The New Small author Phil Simon, Zane Safrit asked a great question about essential business tech tools. It got me thinking about the  five tech tools my business can’t do without:

1. Access. People talk a lot about the cloud and cloud computing, but what good is having your documents and work processes offsite if you can’t access them? To me, being able to work anywhere today is dependent on a hard-wired Internet connection, a good router, a broadband card, and/or great WiFi.

2. WordPress. If Simon hadn’t mentioned WordPress in his top-5 list, I might not have thought about it. But WordPress is an essential technology platform because it powers my Web site and my blog–the “home base” for my business.

3. SmartPhone. It seems hard to fathom that I once walked around without a portable phone. Now I can’t imagine not being able to check e-mail on the go. And that doesn’t even touch on all the other productivity apps I access daily–and, of course, the mobile phone. My current phone of choice: Motorola’s DROID.

4. TweetDeck. My Twitter client of choice, I don’t just use TweetDeck to keep up with trends, breaking news, and my Twitter community. With its real-time streaming, it’s also great for tweetchats. In addition, I use the platform to monitor LinkedIn status updates and my Facebook feed.

5. Google Reader. I don’t know why anyone says RSS is dead. Between the 130+ blogs I read regularly and the alerts I’ve set up, Google Reader makes it possible for me to organize and process a great deal of information. I also like that I can follow smart people and aggregate–right in Google Reader–what they are curating. Plus there’s a terrific mobile app so I can catch up with my reading on the go.

What tech tools are in your business arsenal?

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