I will be coming back from a brief hiatus.

I have been off the map for a few months but I wanted to let you know that I will be coming back.

The cool thing about taking a break is that I got the chance to work on some business inventions that have been keeping me awake all hours of the night.

I will also be sharing some of the new techniques I am using with Social Media and Social Networking to garner future business opportunities. Hang on because you are in for a ride!

Gabriel

Tweet This Post

Speak Like A Geek!

Tweet This Post

The Tao of Credit Union Blogging Tip #6

Make certain that your blog communications can do at least one legitimate chair push up.  

Anyone remember junior high school and those physical educational assessment tests? 

I remember that I had this gym class teacher named Mr. Mills and for the life of me I can still hear his merchant marine voice in the back of my head. 

“Garcia, give me one legitimate chair push up and I just might find compassion for you.” 

Mind you I was no physical specimen – OK, I was overweight. 

But I remember digging into an old wooden chair set up in the corner of the gym with what seemed like the whole world watching. 

My seldom-used tricep muscles cried out in pain as I struggled to keep my frame balanced above the chair and I held my breath as I begged my massive body downward into the abyss – “two degrees down bubble!” (submarine talk) 

What happened next probably happens to a lot of other kids with my particular stature back then – I split my lip wide open after crashing into the chair. 

There was no need to take that shameful walk back to the locker room to peruse the assessment grade chart on the wall – I knew what a zero would bring. 

I may have suffered a loss of dignity that day, but this lesson has helped all these years later, especially when I am thinking about how best to communicate my ideas in writing. 

I live by the philosophy to endeavor to write something that will inspire at least one person to “push up” from their chair. 

What I mean is that the best way to engage an audience is to attempt to make a connection with the reader that will keep them anticipating the next line of your text. 

If your material is “heavy” then “trim some fat” – never go by the assumption that more is better, especially when the material is for a blog communication. 

I also often notoriously break writing conventions to make reading my posts easier. 

Don’t be afraid to write three or four lines of text and then kick to another paragraph, you will find that your audience will appreciate it. 

Experiment with both long and short blog posts and find the combination that best fits your style of writing. 

So try to get at least one person to “push up” from their chair with your next blog post but be careful not to “split your lip” by giving them more material than they can handle reading in one blog post. 

Make longer posts into a series of posts. J

Tweet This Post

Download the WiredCU Podcast #1

Download the WiredCU Podcast #1

 This is my first edition of the WiredCU Podcast 

Click Here To Download or stream it directly below. 

Tweet This Post

Is it a perfect storm for Social Media and Credit Unions?

 

The definitive answer unless you have been hiding yourself in the 1990’s is a resounding YES! 

I will admit right now that sometimes I feel like the “Social Media Noah” at my corporation, telling everyone that will listen that they better start pitch in and help to build that “Web 2.0 Ark,” lest they all start practicing the “flotsam backstroke.” 

Truth be told, not everyone is “on deck,” most of the traditionalists are in reactionary mode with the Fed, the stock market, and the law of diminishing funds. 

Maybe it is the entrepreneurial spirit that I have been “weather-proofing” within myself that sees the latest turn in the economy as an opportunity as opposed to a negative consequence. 

I have been fascinated by the P2P services (Zopa, Prosper, Lending Club, etc), the integration of social finance applications integrated within Facebook and the online discussions occurring about ideas for the future of credit unions and finance with a few of my colleagues in virtual space. 

I am looking forward to participating in my first BarCamp (3/29 in S.F.) where I hope to interact with some of the bright minds of the industry. 

Because I prefer to “try and build things” – all I need is the tattered robes on my back and a handsaw (OK, maybe my laptop and assorted electronic gizmos – I’m more of a modern day Noah).

 P.S. As I finished writing this I read that a Facebook API will let you display a Facebook application on a website, here is the link.  OK – give me two programmers, two computers, two…well you get the idea.

Tweet This Post

Social Blogism

I was thinking about Charles Darwin and his theory of evolution on my way home tonight – OK, yes is the answer to your next question – it was just as I finished my customary quad espresso.

 I was thinking that it might not be too far fetched of an idea to theorize that “the survival of the fittest” concept could be applied directly to the “evolution” of some of the current social media trends. 

If you are thinking early fossils that are deeply embedded into the conscious of most of our minds when it comes to originating the decentralized P2P file sharing concept, then you HAVE to be thinking Napster. 

Napster thrived as an early primitive specie and proliferated the idea of file sharing over networks, garnering millions of music file sharing users. 

Natural Selection however (and the Recording Industry Association of America) stomped it out with a stud-laced Metallica boot. 

It’s funny to think about it now because it was ultimately the unauthorized release of the demo song “I Disappear” by the hair band that fueled the early extinction for Napster. 

The great thing was that while Napster slept with the fishes, a couple more lung-breathing fishes made their way to shore and transformed the concept in bold new ways. 

There would be no iTunes without Napster and certainly no BitTorrent type file sharing services without that “disruptive” and “trendy” concept. 

I look at some of today’s concepts of P2P in particular P2P lending and read those same type of comments about a ”disruptive” and “trendy” model for lending money. 

Right now there are several models for P2P lending “evolving” and not all of them will “survive,” but you have to think that one will, and it just might completely transform the lending business. 

Some of the other type of forward thinking businesses that were called “disruptive” and “trendy” were companies like eBay and more recently, YouTube. 

I predict that other Social Media technology will evolve the concepts of Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn – maybe even combine them. 

I imagine that I will someday have a widget on my desktop that feeds me lending rates in P2P format where I can see the institutions (or personal lenders) information on a network and in several click gain access to statistics on their financial stability (sort of like BitTorrent feeds where you can see the “health” of a feed).  

I also predict that I will be constantly managing my money daily – searching for the best return on investment – and probably being even more hunched over my computer than I already am.

 

Tweet This Post

The Tao of Credit Union Blogging, Tip #5.

 

When you creative ideas are running on empty– Prime your carburetor.

 There have been occasions where I have walked the hallways at work with my hand on my chin pondering the latest developments in the space of social media and wondering how I could best take advantage of them. 

Truly in a world of my own I have been known to carry on conversations with my cellphone voice recorder. 

You see, I commute about 62 miles one way to get to work and recently my trucks antenna snapped in thirds, leaving me with a pointed stub that at best, gets two stations – cellphone  morse code and scratchy easy listening. 

I’ll opt for cellphone morse code if I’m trying to stay awake, but usually it will be the scratchy easy listening for about 15 miles and then I’m stuck with my thoughts. 

Enter the cellphone voice recorder. 

My one-sided conversations are typically fueled on by the copious amounts of espresso shots I’ll consume along the way to stay awake. 

To various Starbucks drive-thru personnel I have become to be known simply as the “quad espresso guy.” 

That’s right. – Four shots of high-octane, caffeine-laced cocoa beans. 

Grinded, pressurized, steamed and served up “au natural.” That would be – “without any other additives” to you city folk. 

I imagine that this same process repeats itself the moment the caffeine contents of my beverage dissolves it way through the synapses my brain. 

Here is a sample “thought explosion” that results from forcing “pure rocket fuel ” straight into your brains carburetor:

Download here or stream it at the bottom of this entry:  wiredcu02.mp3

While I don’t recommend taking four shots of “rocket fuel” to spur your creativity for your communications, I’m simply just saying to use moments of opportunity to think. 

When your brain is sending you RSS feeds, make sure to subscribe to those channels and come back – you just might find some relevant material to write about.

Tweet This Post

Don’t let your “networked polyester” get publicly scratched!

 

I have noticed an interesting trend occurring in my journeys through the networked polyester that is the Internet and RSS feeds. 

I like the word “networked polyester” because it sounds much more apropos to how I feel about what I am going to tell you next – BUT, because this is a one-way conversation, you’re going to have to wait! 

Here’s my favorite definition of polyester swiped directly from wisegeek.com: 

“Polyester is a manufactured product made from synthesized polymers. It tends to be very resilient, quick drying, resistant to biological damage such as mold and mildew, easy to wash, and able to hold forms well. While polyester is often maligned as a textile, it has many useful applications. Polyester is, however, highly flammable, so care should be taken when wearing it.” 

OK, so now you have a word I will probably use quite frequently in future blog entries and I am sure to invent other words along the way and add them to my accumulating lexicon. 

There are now several podcast production companies “tailoring” themselves specifically to credit unions. Some are actually quite good and probably quite expensive, but others smack of a turnkey model. 

It is in very small circles we travel, so I will not name any names, but they know who they are. 

As a credit union podcaster myself, I am all for sparking up the microphone and participating in conversations that are informational, lighthearted and fun.  

There are occasions where talking about products and services serves a purpose in podcast form – I’ve created a few for companies that wanted to use short YouTube videos with a voiceover to demonstrate a product to a potential customer from their iPods. 

What I discovered though was that nobody wants to actively download a recurring marketing pitch say on iTunes or on YouTube – it becomes in a sense, just another commercial that is quickly tuned out.  

I’ve experimented and have also gotten reamed publicly for doing so when one of my test polyester molecule productions got RSS’ed into iTunes and inadvertently indexed in Google – big mistake, I deserved it. 

So a hard lesson I learned that you could definitely benefit from – Don’t let your “networked polyester” get publicly scratched!  

If you are going to go the turnkey route with a podcast production company, make sure you really invest the time to research a format that rings authentic and “breathes” and is not just a bunch of synthetic polymers that may resist mold and mildew, but stinks and goes up in flames under the bright lights! 

(p.s. I will talk more about podcasting tips in future blog entries.)

Tweet This Post

The Tao of Credit Union Blogging. Tip #4.

Tip #4: The First Rule of Social Media Club.

Talk About Social Media Club-But Prepare For A Fistfight!

So you’ve done the research and you have tracked the trends in your industry and they all point to a shift in the world you’ve previously know as traditional marketing.There are no more 30 second radio commercials to be produced, no over-the-top television commercials featuring some non-desrcript actors you’ve parlayed your diminishing budget funds over to in hopes of scoring the right branding message for your company and finally earning you that key to that elusive executive lounge.

Nope!

You’ve discovered in your infinite wisdom that the key to winning product loyalty from your members is this new media marketing technique known as word-of-mouth marketing and social networking. In earnest you’ve experimented on your own, often blogging and podcasting into the late hours of the evening, furiously cross-seeding URL links into various social networking platforms and finally seeing the light at the end of the tunnel.

Of course, you’ve attached metrics to your efforts and you’ve painstakingly watched and tweaked those tiny little graphs and have watched your seedlings grow from a few page views to thousands of page views; each with a heartbeat of their own.

They pulse with activity and your Google search rankings begin to rise in the spectacle that is RSS (Really Simple Syndication) and yet, you’ve invested nary a single dime.Or have you?The moment has arrived for you to convince the traditional marketing executives that you’ve stumbled on Black Gold, Texas Tea…and your ready to be a movie star.

You enter their world of half mast smiles, charts and groans and tell them that the future is in actually participating in conversations with members online.

And then you realize that only half of them know what Social Media is and the large percentage of them associate the word “social networking” with Myspace and YouTube.

The moral of our story: Give them the education they lack when it comes to new media strategies. Make sure you track every effort in social networking circles with measurable data and research.But also remember to strength your neck so you can avoid those razor sharp samurai swords!

Tweet This Post

The Tao of Credit Union Blogging, Tip #2.

Tip #2 Do not try to come off Gen Y in your messaging, especially if you had to use Wikipedia.Org to look up the definition of “fo’ shizzle.”

Do NOTand I repeat it again, DO NOT attempt to use Gen Y slang in your blog communications. The moment you drop your first slang word (even if you’ve used it in the correct context) you run the risk of losing credibility for everything your write thereafter.

As part of your overall blog strategy, make sure that you have a review committee setup (usually two people in your marketing department will suffice) to provide feedback/suggestions before you hit the “publish now” button.

Try to “think outside of the box” with your posts and collaborate with others on how you can pique the interest of your potential readership.

Although it is recommended not to try and speak Gen Y in your writing this doesn’t mean that your company can not experiment with creating company presences on Social Networking sites like YouTube, Facebook, and Linked In. If your company has television commercials that have run their shelve lives over traditional broadcast medium (and we know how expensive that is!) , why not create a company YouTube Channel (hello –it’s free!) and upload them there? 

Tweet This Post