Google Apps - Never Delete Anything

A few years ago I made the decision to move my entire email inbox, document storage and calendar scheduling activities to the Cloud. My inbox overload had reached apocalyptic levels and both my installed Microsoft software and communications provider were straining under the weight of a massive mail archive. At the time, the latest productivity meme was to declare email bankruptcy - which despite its anarchic appeal, also seemed to be the technology equivalent of starting with a clean sheet of problems. However, once I started using Google Enterprise Apps - I realised the absolute futility of deleting as a behaviour. A clean inbox is not a sign of personal efficiency, but wasted effort and poor filters. Storage is Google’s problem. Once I stopped worrying about keeping my inbox to a reasonable size, I started devoting energy to the more useful task of tagging conversations, setting up email filters, and using search tools to mine my own correspondence for commercial opportunities.

Wordpress - Plug-in, Not Lock In

I was a big fan of Typepad for years, but eventually I ceded to the inevitable. The power of Wordpress is its universe of third party plug-ins - modular pieces of code that extend the functionality and aesthetics of your blog to that of a professional publishing platform. And for non technical users like myself, that was a Godsend. Suddenly I could experiment with new features and design templates without spending money on development. Hiring someone to build you a website is a form of lock-in. You may have a wonderful platform for a few months, but you will both lack the ability understand the mechanics of what is going on under the hood, and the capability to make changes in response to what you learn.

Mailchimp - Don’t Wait, Automate 

Mailchimp provides incredible tracking tools, the ability to correlate social media information with your database, and advanced subscriber segmentation. But none of these features sold me on Mailchimp’s email distribution platform. My primary motivation was simple - laziness. When I write a blog post (this one included) - Mailchimp’s RSS to Email service identifies the new content, formats it into a nice template and sends it out automatically. As any writer will tell you - one less barrier to getting things done, is one more step to getting things out.

Hubspot - Nurture Your Flock

If there is one book you should read on the new rules of marketing, it is “Inbound Marketing: Get Found using Google, Social Media and Blogs”. The book has a very simple premise - in an age of decentralised discovery, the best marketing strategy is to create relevant content that allows your customers to find you when they are looking for insights and information. Reading the book led me to Hubspot - the platform created by the authors. It was not a cheap decision, but it has been worth it. I host my corporate website on Hubspot, and it handles all of my primary interactions with visitors, subscribers and potential clients. Through embedded cookies, I get a sense of both what content my audience responds to as well as real time feedback into the social platforms that generate the highest conversion rates. Landing page creation, keyword analytics, and a vast library of marketing resources - Hubspot is like a specialist digital marketing agency in a box.

Shoeboxed - Scan And Discard

Ironically for someone who published a book in physical form, I really hate paper. Receipts, business cards, letters, contracts - dead trees take up space, require organisation and inevitably in my case, get lost. Shoeboxed was a revelation. Using their mobile app I simply take pictures of my receipts and business cards. They process and verify them, and upload the results to the Web. I regularly sync the records with my CRM tools and eliminate the time consuming exercise of scanning business cards and correcting errors myself. Bliss.

Highrise - Always Be Closing

It always annoys me that just like Wall Street and bankers, too many real estate agents still don’t realise that Glengarry Glen Ross is a dark satire not a sales motivation movie. But you can’t argue with its most famous tagline - always be closing! Sage advice, although I'm sorry to say I only recently started using CRM tools in my business. For years, I flirted with the idea of Salesforce.com - I liked its philosophy but hated its complexity and clunky interface. Highrise, created by 37 Signals, is a great alternative. Simple, efficient, and focused on tracking the people and conversations necessary to close deals. It doesn't do everything, but what it does, it does well. And best of all, it integrates with a variety of other Cloud based programs.

Freshbooks - Show Me The Money

Freshbooks is a very simple Web based invoicing program - but don’t be deceived. Its simplicity belies the fact that asking for and collecting money represents 99% of what it takes to be successful in business. After using the service for a while I realised three things. Firstly, once you set up client profiles and billing templates, sending out an invoice is an activity that should take not more than 15 seconds. Secondly, clients will stop pretending not to have seen your invoice once you explain to them that Freshbooks informs you the minute they open it on their computer. And finally, when it is easy to see at a glance your received payments, uncollected invoices, and clients who repeatedly pay late - it completely changes your perspective on how you should run your business.

Evernote - Pay Attention To Everything

Evernote is an application that I use all the time but paradoxically, am still not entirely sure what it is for. Using my iPhone, I take pictures of newspaper articles, book spines, ticket stubs, retail displays - anything that catches my eye. I tag these with the topics I speak about, and every now and then dip into the Cloud based storage archive looking for something interesting to spice up a presentation, an article or a client meeting. For now Evernote is my ultimate visual diary - but I have a feeling it could also be a lot more in years to come. At least I can feel reassured in the meantime that I'm not forgetting anything.

Geckoboard - If You Don’t Watch A Kettle, It Will Never Boil

To paraphrase Lord Kelvin, what gets measured, gets done. My new favourite Cloud service and the final one on this list - links all the other platforms together. I have Geckoboard running on a separate screen in my office - it gives me a live dashboard of all the key operations of my business. I can see at a glance my monthly revenue from Freshbooks, my web traffic and visitor activity from Google Analytics, a feed of the deals I have waiting to close from Highrise, the performance of my last email newsletter from Mailchimp, my current total Facebook and Twitter followers and a host of other essential metrics. Real delight awaits when you can watch the magical cogs of your business spinning in real time. There is no better way to turn your day job into a video game.

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So that’s my current list of Cloud applications I use in my own business. They are not for everyone, but they are a useful set of tools for you to start redefining not just the way you work, but how your business creates value for its customers. In the end it is not even a question of saving money or being more efficient - the real driver of the Cloud Revolution is its ability to let individual users tap into the power of networked data. And that is a silver lining indeed!

Now its your turn. Are you using any of these services and if so, what has been your experience? Have I missed any that are essential to your business? Please contribute to the discussion.

Networks have power. Politicians, mafia dons, matchmakers, Freemasons and photocopier salespeople all have something in common - their ability to nurture and exploit those invisible social ties that bind us. Whether it be trading favours or swapping information, the network has always been the most subtle and powerful weapon for those astute enough to use it. So there is something deeply perverse that in the moment that online networks offer such dazzling new opportunities to connect, that we have found ways to punish people for it.

And there is a deeper irony. Even as HR and IT departments crack down on their in-house digital dissidents, marketing teams are doing their best to curry favour with the socially networked. This holiday season numerous large retail brands partnered with 'haul video' kids, whose YouTube shopping confessionals have become rallies for pampered tweens. Elsewhere, fanboy bloggers are courted aggressively by consumer electronics firms, amateur Twitter celebrities leverage their influence for social media consulting dollars, and surgically enhanced netstars trade their geek fame credentials for commercial endorsements and b-grade Hollywood roles. For now, at least, it looks like a motley parade. But the underlying trend is worth considering.

What if you could assess someone's online social standing and influence as easily as checking a credit score? Eventually employers will have access to highly sophisticated systems that will allow them to do just that. When that happens - instead of being castigated for their blogs, tweets and friend lists - job applicants will experience the opposite. The best hires will be the ones that bring their networks to the table. 

Limited social analysis software is already in the market. There are already some interesting applications like Twitter Grader, Twitalyzer, TweetLevel and Klout that use algorithymic voodoo to estimate your Twitter authority. When I tested my own handle, I was given a wide variety of different scores and curious facts which did not mean very much to me, other than it was fun to discover that I joined Twitter on the same day as eBay founder, Pierre Omidyar. More comprehensive analytical platforms are needed, with some targeted smarts that look at the relevance of networks for particular industries or goals. Sheer brute connections are not enough. Its better to have just 100 people in your network, rather than a million - if they are the right 100. 

I know what you are thinking. There is something sickening about all of this - the rabbit like multiplication of networks and connections. Surely it should be enough to be good at what you do, without having to also ape the online promiscuity of Kim Kardashian and Ashton Kutcher. But in the future, who you know will also be what you know. And to misappropriate Yeats - the best lack conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity.

Of course, the hot hire to make these days are social media experts. A terrible title, to be sure. Like ‘horseless carriage' or 'moving staircase', 'social media' is a retro tautology that only highlights how attenuated our conceptual models have become. My favorite is one most people don't notice - 'mobile phone'. Think about kids. Have they ever used a phone that isn't mobile? Or for that matter, ever experienced media that isn't social? Every savvy marketer today is grappling with the question of how to resource themselves in a world where consumers are often better at leading brand discussions than they are. But does the world really need more twitchy Twitter junkies ready to jump on every consumer bleat with a canned corporate response? I'm hoping that your future digital A-Team will be somewhat different. 

With the war for attention looming, here are three new recruits that should be on your list:

1. The Quant

As any diehard Tron fan will tell you, the geeks shall inherit the earth. And if Wall Street is any indication, the same guys who transformed the business of money during the eighties with their algorithms and super computers are set to take up permanent residence in the marketing space as well. We are still in the early days of consumer monitoring. Marketers are starting to listen to what consumers are saying on social platforms, analyzing traffic spikes and studying keyword search behavior. Its a good start, but horribly primitive - equivalent to trying to run a sophisticated hedge fund with a slide rule.

If you really want to understand where we are going, spend some time with an affiliate marketer. These guys are like forex traders - constantly scanning the online world for traffic arbitrage opportunities, and creating revenue programs that slip between the gap between acquisition costs and performance margins. Your future marketing quants will be a lot like this - part ethnologist and part math savant - they will use state of the art technology to monitor the shifting networks of consumer memes and traffic flows, always looking for new opportunities to exploit and conversations to 'lean into'.

2. The Storyteller

Media has always operated on a simple premise - professionals create content so that marketers can hitch a ride to sell their messages to unwitting consumers. But increasingly brands are realising that in an age where consumer networks are capable of mass distribution, they need to be in the content business themselves. Luxury brands do this better than anyone. They tell seductive stories about provenance, family history and craftsmanship - to gloss over the less salubrious truth of third world factories, conglomerate ownership and mass production.

The storyteller role in your marketing department will soon be filled by clever creative types, who will work with professional writers, photographers and filmmakers to spin brands into engaging pieces of entertainment capable of standing on their own. Media companies will still have a role providing eyeballs and context for branded material - but I believe the creative imperative will shift from the traditional custodians of content. As I wrote in my book Futuretainment, in the future media companies will need to think like brands, and brands like media companies. 

3. The Makers

As Johnny Vulkan, founder of Anomaly likes to point out - we always forget the first P in Philip Kotler's classic 4 P's of Marketing (Product, Price, Place and Promotion). So the final role that I believe you will see more often in marketing departments are true product evangelists. Not just product managers mind you, but true 'makers' who have responsibility for the total consumer experience.

If you have ever watched one of those fan boy videos of an 'unboxing' you will realize the power of product and packaging as a platform for branding. The maker role in the marketing department of the future will be the link between the creators of the brand and the creators of the stuff. They will be alchemists of the physical - from the design of objects to the beauty of packaging, from the tone of instruction manuals right through to the design of retail stores and experiential marketing events. 

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No doubt, some of the more enterprising of you will already be wondering if you fit any of these roles. And the really ambitious ones might even be asking yourselves, if you were to pick being a quant, storyteller or maker - which has the best chance to take the reins of CMO? But as before, I'd suggest that you are asking the wrong question. If the new marketing department of the future will be so central to a company's core brand and product, the real question is not who will be CMO, but what successful CMO should not be CEO?

I was quoted in a magazine article on the office of the future, appearing in the December 2010 edition of Virgin's inflight magazine, Voyeur. In the piece I discuss the rise of 'immersion rooms' capable of modular virtual stacking, equipped with pressure mats, motion sensors and full screen wall projections.

There was a game I used to like to play when I first started traveling. When I arrived in a new city, I'd set out with a map, a notebook and a coin. Rather than follow a plan, I'd delegate all choices to a coin toss. Heads, turn left. Tails, walk into that book store. Heads, walk three blocks and then take the first left. A flick of the wrist, sunlight catching shiny metal on a downward arc - a decision made. As I recorded my random adventures on my map - a new world would gradually render into being, like one of Calvino's Invisible Cities. I thought about those maps the other day when one of my clients asked me how they should embed innovation into their culture. Chance has always been a willing mistress to creativity - but could it also play midwife to innovation?

Sadly, companies often talk about innovation like it is a form of calisthenics. We have all read those over enthusiastic internal memos encouraging staff to be more innovative - as if, like sit ups or star jumps, it was just a matter of exercising a previously unused muscle in your brain. Some years ago, the Singaporean government was so worried that its citizens were hard working but not innovative, that they instituted a series of creative programs at schools. During the appointed creativity hour, kids were strongly encouraged to all be as innovative as possible, naturally in a quiet and diligent way. It was not, as you might expect, a stellar success. The problem is, whether you are a kid or a corporate VP - being innovative is not something you can just switch on. Inevitably we face a ‘white paper problem’.

One of my favorite artists is Max Ernst. Despite his prolific output of surrealist landscapes and images rich in personal mythology - he sometimes complained of the paralysing effect of a blank white sheet of paper. With an infinite number of possible things you can create, how do you simply get started? To get around this problem, he would begin some of his works by rubbing black lead over a piece of wood or a section of floorboard. From the randomness of the resulting images, he would be inspired to then create a masterpiece. 

You will often hear people talk about Google's 20% program - the policy that their engineers can spend a fifth of their time working on their own pet projects. Interestingly though, this is not the really smart part of how Google builds a culture of innovation. Simply telling people they can spend time working on their own stuff is to invite a 'white paper problem'. When I recently interviewed Justin Baird, an 'innovationist' (yes, that is his real title) at Google he told me that they have an internal online forum that allowed people to list projects and ideas that interested them. When you were looking for a project to innovate around, you didn't have to just stare at the ceiling and think up something entirely new - you could browse a database of ideas, people and initiatives to look for areas where you could contribute and collaborate. Sure - its great to stand on the shoulders of giants, but sometimes lots of very small people stacked on top of each other is just as useful.

I think we can learn an interesting lesson from Google’s innovation forum. Despite the persistent hype about the information revolution, we are still at the very early days of how we leverage the information, ideas and intellectual capital that is hidden in the substratum of businesses. Knowledge management was the hot buzzword in the nineties - but most projects, which required people to create masses of useless documentation - failed to engender either participation or inspiration. But what if we could introduce a little more randomness into the process. 

A colleague of mine, who visited the CEO of Best Buy told me that he saw three screens in his office - that constantly updated with what consumers were saying on Twitter, blogs and other social networks. This is just the beginning of a new way of visualising innovation triggers in real time. In coming years, the business analytics space will need to be overhauled with a bit more creative flair. Rather than relying on just formal reporting and planning processes, we should be presented with attractive infographics that randomly display customer comments, unusual transactional patterns, cross referenced data, and even random images and videos sourced from the Web. The true starting point of innovation is pattern recognition - seeing possibilities in changing consumer behavior or deeper truths in everyday business processes. 

So, if you could put your business on shuffle what might that look like? Are there opportunities you are missing because you are not exposing yourself to a wide enough set of new possibilities? If you look closely you will probably discover that the best ideas are not waiting for a brillant demiurge to invent - but are already lurking in the minds of your staff and customers, ready for the right opportunity to spring into being. 

Flip a coin and find out.