The first part of a series of altogether essential tips for business, marketing and life - as gleaned from iconic movies of the 1980s…

Bullied underdog Daniel LaRusso learns karate from wise, old Okinawan Mr Miyagi, defeats the evil Cobra Kai, wins the tournament and gets the girl, all the while teaching us everything we’d ever need to know about car waxing/fence painting techniques.

Business Analysis

The median expected salary for a typical janitor in the United States is $23,820. Mr Miyagi is not a typical janitor. He is perhaps the world’s worst janitor.

Look at the state of this pool which is under his ‘care’:

Let’s be honest, he’s going to be lucky to get minimum wage with a poor job like that. So he’s making $8/hour in California right now.

Karate lessons, however, run from about $75-$200/month for weekly 45 minute sessions. Let’s split the difference and say $135. There is obviously the demand for lessons in the area, we see around 20 kids at the Cobra Kai dojo, plus plenty more at the tournament.

With Miyagi’s exceptional skills (he takes Daniel from no-hoper to champion in a month) he could easily attract 50 kids a week, 5 classes of 10 kids a day.

So, he’s working just 45 minutes a day, plus set up time, so maybe an hour, and pulling in $81,000/year.

That’s over $300/hour.

Mr Miyagi may be a great Sensei, but he is a terrible business man, and knows nothing of Ricardo’s Law of Comparative Advantage.

The Lesson Learned?

Time and again we meet with businesses and find that the person put in charge of managing the pay per click campaigns for a company is simply the person who is most competent with a computer.

He may have no experience with marketing or Internet advertising at all, but he’s the guy in the office everyone looks to for help with email problems, or booking tickets online or whatever. You know, the ‘computer guy’ that every office has. And PPC is just another computer-thing, right?

No, in this case you’re being a Miyagi-janitor instead of a Miyagi-teacher.

If you’re in real estate, sell houses. Run a restaurant? Get cooking!

Do what you’re best at and you’ll have the money to pay someone else to the other stuff. Everyone wins.

Just like Daniel-san.

Do you remember your last vacation?

Whether it was Disney World, Aspen, Paris, New York or wherever, chances are you probably heard a recommendation before you went. That recommendation more than likely came from friends, family or co-workers.  Someone whose opinions you trust.

Do you remember the last time you vacationed somewhere because a politician suggested it to you?

Exactly.

So, you can see the problem in this story - South Carolina taxpayers are funding a trip for German politicians to visit Myrtle Beach this Fall. At a cost of $100,000.

These politicians will then return home, spread the word, and the German tourists will come flocking to the Grand Strand, eager to spend some of their hard-earned Deutsche Marks. Or, at least, that’s the theory.

Now, maybe I’m overly cynical, but try thinking of this in reverse. Imagine one of your state’s senators is given a free trip to somewhere in Germany. Dusseldorf say. He (or she) then comes back with a glowing report about what a wonderful time he had. Would you be booking the next available flight?

I started thinking about this after another blogger, Jacob Morgan, had tweeted (Twittered?) about an upcoming trip to Turkey.  I lived in Turkey for a short time and loved it. Any time anyone mentions going, or thinking about going, I try and convince them that they won’t be disappointed. And no-one in the Turkish government has had to pay me a dime to do this.

This is the kind of advertising that is truly effective. Not paying politicians to say nice things.

So, how could that $100,000 have been better spent?

Well, in 2006 over 17,000 Germans came to South Carolina as their primary destination. If each one of them went home and told their friends about the great time they had had, wouldn’t that have some impact? How about if the SC government spent $100,000 to make it easier for those people to share their stories, videos, photos and so on.

Many tourist destinations are already doing this. For instance, Aviemore in Scotland, a popular skiing resort, already incorporates Flickr streams, Youtube videos, blogs and more on a website aimed at attracting more visitors to the area. New Zealand actively solicits travelers’ blogs for “straight talking thoughts and opinions about our places, people and adventures”.

The most frustrating thing about this waste of money is that it’s so close to being a good idea. Word of mouth works. We all know that. The state government obviously knows it, which is why they want the German politicians to spread the word. But the beauty of word of mouth is that it’s cheap!

Wouldn’t that $100,000 be much better spent creating a central location to gather the experiences of people who are already coming? Of course it would!

To anyone paying attention, it is quite clear that businesses have to be a lot more engaged these days in managing their reputations online.  Yet I’m still amazed at the number of people who have still failed to grasp this fact.

The world has already changed. You have a problem with a company’s customer service, you’re not limited to bad-mouthing them to a couple of friends anymore, you can blog about it, Twitter, put up a rant on YouTube, etc, etc and have your complaint heard by millions. At little or no cost to you at all.

Some people are catching on, and unsurprisingly, those in high-tech industries are quick to adapt. Here’s an example I loved this week, showing with humor how to turn the tide from negative to positive:

A couple of years ago, games maker EA Sports released the 2007 version of the popular Madden Football game. It contained a bug which caused your quarterback to throw the ball backwards. Not a big deal, but pretty funny - one fan’s video has had over 300,000 views on YouTube since he put it up.

Then this week, another game from EA Sports, Tiger Woods PGA Tour 08 had a similar bug. With a certain shot you could make Tiger walk on water and play the ball from a floating spot. Again, a fan video generated over 250,000 views.

This time though, EA Sports was on the ball (so to speak). They responded with their own video, featuring the real Woods ‘really’ walking on water to play the shot from the game:

At the time of writing, this has had just shy of a million views. In a week. That is an enormous amount of free publicity, and an even better example of how to manage your online reputation.

I’m a little late picking up on this, but it seems that Google Minus Google is garnering some major attention.

The site utilizes Google’s own Custom Search Engine, which allows you to tailor your search to specific sites, topics and so on, to remove all the Google-owned sites from the results.

So searches on Google Minus Google will not show any results from YouTube, Blogger, Knol, Orkut and others, removing the potential bias that some are suspecting may be going on behind the scenes.

I wrote previously that I was skeptical that Google would allow Knol pages to rank artificially well, but I may have been too hasty. Much has been made in the search engine community during the last week of some results that are doing exactly that. At the time of writing, for instance, a search for ‘buttermilk pancakes‘ has a Knol page as the top result.

Is that page really the most useful one to be found throughout the whole Internet? Better than all the recipe sites which have been around for years, all the manufacturers, How-To sites and Wiki pages? Perhaps, perhaps not. What is more important, to paraphrase Lord Hewart, is not that Google be impartial, but that that Google is seen to be impartial.

Much has been made of Google’s ‘Don’t Be Evil’ policy. Something which initially helped establish the company as trustworthy and set them apart from the Big Business types at Yahoo and Microsoft has become something of a millstone around their neck. Every controversial move they make now is analyzed to a greater degree than perhaps it would be otherwise, and Google really needs to be careful.

There have been questions raised about Google’s role in shutting certain political Blogger accounts, silencing controversial videos on Youtube and skewing Google News results in China, among other things. All of which Google has answered with seemingly reasonable explanations.

The problem will be when there are so many questions raised about ethics, along with eyebrows raised at the search results, that people will begin to look elsewhere for their search. Google Minus Google is not going to be the answer, but it is a warning sign that Google would do well to heed.

I was intrigued by a stat I heard on the most recent Brand Bandits podcast, that Facebook had finally overtaken MySpace in May for the number of unique visitors. This surprised me - not because I thought MySpace was dominant, but because I thought Facebook had done that months ago!

These were ComScore numbers being cited, Google Website Trends seems to show that Facebook actually overtook last Fall:

Either way, however, I think most people would agree that MySpace has a serious problem on its hands.

Which brings me to Justin & Britney (bear with me).

Five or six years ago, they were an item.  Both former Mickey Mouse Club members. Both attracting legions of teenage fans. Heavily managed ‘brands’, Britney as a pop star, Timberlake as a member of N*Sync.

You wouldn’t have bet a lot of money on either one becoming respected, or perhaps even still relevant today. And yet…

Britney has had a spectacular, and well publicized fall from grace - breakdowns, divorce, custody battle, drugs, failed comebacks, etc, etc.

Justin Timberlake, amazingly, seems to have re-crafted himself and is something of a 21 Century Renaissance man. A hugely praised stint as host of Saturday Night Live . Cred-building collaborations with top producers like Timbaland and Will.i.am, and well received acting roles in Indie films. Oh, and he hosted the ESPN awards, dated a lot of beautiful women and impressed with his golf skills at the PGA Pro-AM. You get the picture.

So, how does this apply to MySpace?

Well, right now MySpace is Britney and Justin 7 years ago. No-one can predict which path it will take - burn out and fade to irrelevance, or reinvented and loved by everyone.

Despite the beating it may or not be taking, MySpace still attracted 115.7 million unique visitors in May, just a million or so behind Facebook. It is still a big brand name. It has the financial clout of News Corp behind it, and it drives a ton of traffic to Google, Youtube, Flickr and many other of the top sites.

In other words, it’s not dead yet.

How to Save MySpace

Simply, MySpace needs to reinvent itself a la Justin Timberlake:

• Just like N*Sync, MySpace is, or appears to be, aimed at kids. The gaudy, blinking backgrounds and embedded tunes are like a particularly bad Geocities page from 1997. They need to be overhauled, desperately.  Facebook has shown the way that profiles can be made personal with photos, interests and so on, while keeping the headache-inducing extras to a minimum.
• Stop the Spam! I’m sure that a large number of people jumped ship due to the increasing amount of spam that was filling up inboxes. Combating bogus accounts, and only allowing mail from verified people would go a long way to helping.
• Be like Timberlake, focus on what you’re good at! Music, events, live shows, etc. For all it’s growth, Facebook is doing a pretty terrible job of promoting its Fan pages. Can you even find them in the new look? MySpace, on the other hand, is still the best place for new bands to demo songs, grab fans and keep them interested. In the last couple of years singers as diverse as  Lily Allen, The Black Kids and Glasvegas have all picked up record deals after building a fan base on MySpace. Push this - let people promote sports teams, politicians, movies, and other things that people get passionate about.
• Grow up! When your parent organization, News Corp, chooses your main rival to promote their news channel, you have an image problem. Fox News wants to be seen as serious. So they *don’t* want to be seen in the same neighborhood as kids with Scarface backgrounds and blaring music. Take back some control. Be the adult and set limits for the children.

Almost everyone I talk to is rooting for MySpace to fail, as they prefer Facebook. I’d rather that we had two strong competitors in the field, so that we don’t have another Google-like near monopoly. I think there’s room for both Facebook and MySpace…they just need to figure out how to get their sexy back!

I know that we’re all supposed to be more attuned to avoiding hype these days, but I think the folks at Facebook are setting the bar a little too high…

(and if so, how?)

This is a question that Bud, Lyn and I discussed for our clients at Step Ahead. Being pretty evangelical about Twitter, we wanted to try and figure out how best to use it. Short answer? We don’t know.

Rodney Rumford has a great post ‘33 Brands that Suck on Twitter‘ - the basic premise being that most top brands, Budweiser, Disney, Marlboro, etc have either had their Twitter name hijacked, or they’ve claimed it and then failed to use it.

My initial thought was, what a waste! Here are a whole host of companies that are failing to interact with their customers. They’re missing the boat, stuck in the past, and many other cliches, but after giving it some thought, that might be too harsh.

There are a few companies that are doing Twitter well - Comcast and Dell both received press for using Twitter to respond to customer complaints for instance - but, not coincidentally, they are both in the tech field, where many Twitterers are. They can monitor for “Comcast sucks!” and try and help. But how exactly would that work for Marlboro?

Further, it isn’t specifially DELL that is writing, but Richard at Dell. He can engage in conversations without having to worry about misrepresenting the corporate overlords. Similar to the way Matt Cutts can blog about being a Google insider, and offer tips, news, etc, but all the while he makes it clear that the opinions are those of him as an individual not those of Google as a publically traded company.

So, how can companies use Twitter? Well, possibly as a replacement for RSS -linking to their latest blog post, or news release - which, while not groundbreaking, I actually find quite useful for keeping up to date on things. I don’t necessarily need to have a conversation with everyone! Beyond that, it’s time to use your imagination, think about who you want to attract and give them what they want.

I looked at a few top brands that *are* using Twitter to find out how they are approaching things.

• Quickbooks seem to be using it as a somewhat interactive training tool, with links to webinars, Q&As, videos and things.
• M&Ms have tried to use Twitter to create an identity of the Green M&M character, which I’m not sure works perfectly, but at least is an attempt at something different.
• Whole Foods is probably the best corporate use I’ve seen. They are actively engaging in conversations with their followers, joining in rather than just selling, and it seems to work for them - at the time of writing they have over 2600 followers!

So, we’re back to the begining. Should Brands Twitter? Maybe. I guess it depends on your brand and customers, but like with blogging, I think you’d be much better to not Tweet at all, than do it half-heartedly…I’m looking at you, MGM Grand!

It is often said that the pr0n industry is at the cutting edge of any new technology, well if that’s true, then the jokers are not far behind.

Have you ever wanted to make a prank phone call but found yourself too busy? Well, never fear, Getmooh.com is here.  Simply enter the number you want them to call, along with a time, then select your message and you’re all set - you can have Alec Baldwin give your mom an abusive phone call for absolutely nothing!

Of course, it doesn’t have to be for prank calls. They also suggest you can use their service to escape from a tricky date (”I’m so sorry, I have to run, my room mate has lost his keys”), or send a ‘funny’ birthday message to a friend. The possibilities are endless. Especially as you can record and submit your own message for others to use if they wish.

Don’t you feel lucky to live in the 21st Century?

I really liked this idea from Charleston blogger Allisson Skipper, of eight things she’s into right now, so I thought I’d play along. In no particular order:

8 in Chinese

1. The Wire on DVD. My all time favorite show. I watched them all originally on HBO, but now I have my neighbors hooked on it, I’m re-watching with them. It’s just incredible the things you spot on a second look - plot lines that are subtly begun whole seasons in advance. And it’s still just as funny/moving/scary/etc each time.

2. Fantasy Football. Pre-season games have begun, so it’s time to start the research. I was terrible in one league last year, but won in my other one. Determined to do better this season, so I’m starting my reading now. And, of course, there’s the all important matter of picking the perfect team name. Any suggestions?!

3. Cryptonomicon, by Neal Stephenson. I first read it about 8 years ago, but I seem to go back to it every couple of years. It’s by far the geekiest book I own (from Wikipedia “(it contains) some highly technical and detailed descriptions of modern cryptography and information security, and subjects ranging from prime numbers and modular arithmetic to Van Eck phreaking.”) - but sometimes it’s fun to be a geek!

4. Twitter. If you’re already using it, then you know. If you’re not, you don’t see the point. I understand. *But*, give it a try! It’s so easy, and fun, you can actually forget that it’s a great tool for interacting with pretty much anyone. People who wouldn’t normally open your email will be replying to your tweets, if you have anything interesting to say.

5. Jott. You know when you’re driving and you suddenly remember that email you forgot to send? That’s when you need Jott. One quick call from your cell phone, and you can have Jott send it for you. Or you can set it to text you a reminder. Or you can create a shopping list as you run out of things. Or update your Facebook. Or search Amazon. Or, well, you get the idea. It’s so useful, that’s why it’s my favorite Web 2.0 tool.

6. English soccer. Or football as we call it. The season starts this weekend, so I’m full of optimism about Liverpool’s chances to claim a first title in almost 20 years. I’ll be depressed and disappointed by October probably, but right now the dream is still alive!

7. Big Brother. I’m so embarrassed. Each season I promise myself I won’t watch, as it’s the worst kind of trash television, but somehow I find myself in the room when it’s on, and that’s it.  I’m hooked again.  Oh well, at least now that I’ve ‘come out’ I can cheer for Catholic School Teacher Dan with a clear conscience.

8. Spaced. Finally got a US release on DVD after many years of waiting.  And with tons of extras (a whole DVD’s worth in fact) I’m so happy! If you liked Shaun of the Dead or Hot Fuzz, you should definitely check out the show where it all began.

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