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Why I’m Not an NFL Owner

Daria Steigman — Thu, 05 Jan 2012 07:02:58 +0000

You 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

Daria Steigman — Thu, 21 Jul 2011 10:05:05 +0000

If 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).

Are Customers High Maintenance?

Daria Steigman — Mon, 20 Jun 2011 14:21:23 +0000

I 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).

4 Reasons to Use SlideShare

Daria Steigman — Wed, 02 Mar 2011 19:34:34 +0000

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:

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.
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.
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.
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?

5 Must-Have Tech Tools for Business

Daria Steigman — Mon, 14 Feb 2011 10:13:10 +0000

In 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?

LinkedIn: The New Frontier for Spammers?

Daria Steigman — Mon, 07 Feb 2011 10:15:37 +0000

I’m seeing a disturbing trend of late: people using LinkedIn to blatantly self-promote and hawk their wares.

It started with a trickle: An occasional e-mail suggesting I might be interested in a Webinar, a conference, or a book. Then it progressed to group owners sending regular “updates” (yes, you can ask click off “allow group manager to send me an e-mail”–but should you really have to?). Now it seems at least once a week someone’s offering me something I can’t refuse. Oh, but I can.

It’s rare that I delink from someone, but it’s happened occasionally. The first time was a person who decided to use my contacts as their personal prospecting list. The most recent was someone whose response to my polite query to take me off their LinkedIn e-mail list was “this comes through LI. In order to stop them disconnect me from your list.” (By the way, you can target your lists if you want to.)

Do We Need to Rethink Our Connections?

Like many people, my use of LinkedIn has shifted over time. Where I once linked only to people I knew personally, I’m now connecting to people I interact with on other social networks, have met at a conference, or with whom I otherwise have a “weaker” starting connection. Perhaps because these connections are weak, some people don’t mind adopting a scattershot approach to promoting their business.

What’s been your experience?

Photo by Ray MacLean (Flickr).

9 Steps To Your Social Media Check-up

Daria Steigman — Wed, 02 Feb 2011 19:40:58 +0000

Your work is all around you. The reality in this age of spidered content and 24/7 WiFi is that other people can find out a lot about you really fast. And this holds true whether you’re online a little–or a lot. Heck, I bet even people who live “off the grid” are finding themselves tagged in pictures on Facebook or otherwise showing up online. So doesn’t it make sense to know what’s there to be found when someone checks you out?

My latest Independent Thinking column provides guidance on where to look and what to look for when conducting your own social media check-up.

It also includes a book giveaway aimed at those of you new to social media. My friend and colleague Beth Schillaci has written Your Social Media Roadmap. It’s a workbook that takes you through the process of building a strategy and identifying what channels make sense for your business.

Book Contest Details

Want to win a free copy of Your Social Media Roadmap? Beth Schillaci has given me a signed copy of her book to give away here. Read the column, and then come back and leave a comment here on my blog about your social media goals for 2011 and what you hope to learn.

The best answer (judged by me) wins a copy of the book.

Photo by Ivan Walsh (Flickr).

Quora: Do We Need Another Q&A Site?

Daria Steigman — Mon, 31 Jan 2011 10:17:11 +0000

Quora, which bills itself as “a continually improving collection of questions and answers created, edited, and organized by everyone who uses it,” is a great example of the social media fishbowl in action. Its buzz comes from the fact that it’s a go-to (0r at least test-out) spot for early tech adopters and online “influencers.”

Unlike LinkedIn’s Q&A, however, it seems easy to game. (Robert Scoble, for example, recently voiced his irritation on this topic). Which makes it great if you’re in a popularity contest.

As a communications pro, I see it as part of my job to be aware of new online channels and tools and understand their potential uses. I’m not using RockMelt, but I have played with it. Similarly, I’m not using Posterous–but can speak to how it might be useful. Ditto for Amplify.

There are tools we monitor and tools that become part of our digital footprint. For now, Quora’s firmly in the first category. The service has yet to demonstrate it’s different enough (or broad-based enough) for me to warrant spending my time there.

Are you using Quora? If so, what’s been your experience?

Update: TechCrunch has a post this morning that pretty much underscores my point about the whole Quora fishbowl thing. Some of the comments are well worth the read.

Photo by Tristan Ferne (Flickr).

RockMelt: First Impressions

Daria Steigman — Wed, 10 Nov 2010 14:41:47 +0000

RockMelt, unveiled yesterday, touts itself as a social browser “designed around you and how you use the Web.” And it might be the future — but the future, in this case, isn’t now.

1. You have to “log in” via Facebook to use the browser (see #2), which is designed to make your data portable and your usage seamless. Okay, but I can already access my social graph and more via Chrome or any other browser–not to mention TweetDeck (see #3).

2. RockMelt is built around Facebook. It’s the way you log in, request a beta invite, and issue invitations to your friends. A list of your friends populates the left-hand corner. The problem for me is that Facebook isn’t the center of my online network. I think RockMelt might be a lot more valuable if it let me pick my primary network.

3. I’m used to streams, and RockMelt’s interface feels static in comparison to the dashboard, real-time model I’m grown accustomed to with TweetDeck. Plus I can now pull in multiple streams and platforms at once (including Facebook and LinkedIn).

On its blog, RockMelt calls its product “still a baby… but we’re most excited about what it will grow into.” I think RockMelt may well be onto something, so I’m going to keep an eye on it. But, for now, I’ll access my social graph elsewhere. Meanwhile, Robert Scoble has an interesting analysis over on his blog.

Have you tested RockMelt. If so, what are your first impressions?

Honing Your “Me” Message

Daria Steigman — Mon, 25 Oct 2010 12:39:40 +0000

I have a confession: I hated my “About Us” section for a long time. It was impersonal. Static. Written like it belonged in a so-last-century corporate brochure.

Despite that, it took me two years to figure out how to rework the language to get the balance I wanted of informative, business smarts, and personality. (It’s been up for a little while, so you can check it out and let me know what you think.) It’s not that I didn’t try. Or that I can’t rework other people’s resumes, LinkedIn profiles, and About pages.

I just couldn’t get mine right. It’s just really hard to write about “me.”

Have you looked lately at how you’re talking about yourself? If so, did you change anything?

Photo by Liz West (Flickr).