#mitchjoel

Mitch Joel has been classified as one of the top 100 Marketers in the world, he has also made the highly regarded top 40 under 40 list. As the president of Mirum (Twist image) a global digital marketing agency, he steers the company to specialize in driving change within the digital marketing realm at a brand level.

Playing on the notion, Six degrees of Separation, which indicates we’re all connected by 6 or few steps. Joel insinuates the connection is much more noteworthy to the point of only Six pixels of Separation. With a quick google search we have the world at our finger tips. It’s a dwelling ground of real people looking for real interactions, where we can connect with communities, individuals and groups to form a voice.

In the B2C world, we’re now part of an era where consumers have the same voice as corporate companies. Feedback and reviewing platforms encourage people to be transparent, allowing the opportunity for communication, in turn encouraging the thoughts and ideas of both business’ and consumers to flow.

This book endorses the tactics, insights and tools to empower entrepreneurs to create an online experience, and be engaged with the online community.

There will be 5 posts summarizing some key points throughout the book:

1) I Google you..Just like you Google me

2) The channels, the opportunities

3) Entrepreneurship 2.0

4) Viral Expansion

I don’t think I’ve ever read a book with a finer comb. Although written seven years ago, Mitch Joels’s Six Pixels of Separation stands the test of time.

Sure some of the stories and references are a bit dated, but his fundamental premise - that everyone is connected and it’s time to connect your business to everyone – is even truer today than it was in 2009.

This being my final post on the subject, I’ll leave you with my top Six Pixel take-aways:

1)    Go digital or go home: it’s not a matter of choice, it’s a matter of survival

2)    Be prepared to listen to those who share your passion to find out where and how to capitalize on the opportunities available to you in an online universe

3)    Start small, think different and expand your digital footprint gradually over time

4)    Good things come to those who give their knowledge and expertise away – for free

5)    Be honest, be yourself, mind your manners and always respond … quickly

6)    It’s all about building trust, relationships and adding real value to your community

7)    Doing business online is an interactive sport that everyone can play

8)    Personal brands are alive and well in the digital age

9)    The good guys online outnumber the bad guys but be careful nonetheless

10)  Those who evolve with technology will survive and thrive, those who don’t won’t.

11)  Going digital may not be as scary as I thought.

Salut!

Advent calendars have been around for hundreds of years. According to Wikipedia, German Lutherans were the first to use them in the 19th and 20th centuries to mark the 24 days of Advent leading up to the holiest day of the year for Christians around the world.

By now, you’d think we would have seen every possible iteration – just check out Etsy’s stunningly creative collection. So you’d think that when award-winning author and journalist, Michael Hingston went looking for advent calendars with a literary bent a couple of years ago that he’d find what he was looking for. He searched high and low, but to no avail.

So, he made a mental note of this void in the marketplace, and the following July, he decided to create a literary advent calendar with book designer and his co-publisher, Natalie Olsen. He gathered some of his stories and put a call out to his writer friends and colleagues who eagerly agreed to contribute a short story and voilà – the first Short Story Advent Calendar rolled off the presses in 2015. The newly minted calendars, which were available for purchase online and at major booksellers across Canada, sold out quickly. The 2016 SSAC went on sale earlier this fall.

True, the product itself is old school – the stories come in printed form in a beautifully designed gift box. But being able to buy it online and have it shipped all over the world is making good use of today’s technology. So is building a community of writers keen to contribute, and people who love the written word and sharing some quiet family time together. I know in our house, the 20-minute -a-day reads have started a whole new holiday tradition. But I do think the creators could make better use of their social networks to really bring this new venture to life - maybe next year.

A new take on a centuries-old tradition, but admittedly not the best example of what Joel calls Digital Darwinism. Like the famous scientist’s Theory of Evolution, the digital landscape is evolving with new bells, whistles and apps being added all the time. Those who can harness these new-fangled tools to truly and meaningfully engage people, and create and evolve a satisfying online experience for their online community will survive. Those who don’t, won’t.

Mitch Joel mentions in the book how "user-generated content is not new". He takes us on a mini history lesson. He reminds us of cave wall paintings and how they were the earliest sign of communicating and producing image based content. They were used to give and deliver a message to the intended audience.

However the difference now is that with social media we are given great and often free publishing tools to share and express our thoughts and feelings with the world. 

This concept which is called in the book "know control" on one hand can be wonderful for your personal brand and business but it can also be negative and for some people scary.

Scary because by having your user generated content available on the internet for all to see you need to be careful because the result could be negative.  

However Mitch Joel acknowledges that you can't control the conversation surrounding your user generated content but you can control

"whether or not you take part",

"whether you will encourage your customers and/or followers to be so moved or passionate about your brands, services and products that they will contribute to the marketing of your company".

And you can control if you will be "available, present and active if things do go wrong"

Here is the youtube video referred to in the book about Juan Mann and his FREE HUGS sign.

On June 20th, 2004, Juan Mann was feeling sad. He made a sign that said FREE HUGS and walked through the open Pitt Street Mall in Sydney, Australia holding his sign over his head.

What happened next is beautiful. The journey and growth of the FREE HUGS movement is shown in this video.

This was my favorite example in Six Pixels of Separation.

It teaches us many things such as

That a simple act of kindness can not only heal yourself but others and even the whole world.

How meaningful real direct contact with real people is. It has the potential to be powerful.

I really enjoyed reading this book. It had many examples, ideas and concepts that I could relate to. Often I was nodding my head while reading this book in agreement.

come to think of it since I often read the book on public transit and in other social setting I must of looked funny.

I learned a lot and the book got me to think about and look at various social media tools that I personally use or are aware of in a different way.

Overall I loved the book and I highly recommend it.

It will definitely be a reference book, a book I will read and use in my present and future social media projects.

A quote from an excerpt of Mitch Joel's book, Ctrl Alt Delete, as published on FastCoExist. 

For those of us in the arts industry, it's always a good reminder that the linear path is 1) almost never exist, and 2) not really that satisfying. This idea of "rebooting" yourself (career, life, business, etc.) amidst the "squiggly line" of your life is not novel, but it sure is reassuring.