The Sunday Summary: Interest media, de-Googling, great logos, and defining spam

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In an effort to help me keep up with everything I post each week, here is my latest “Sunday Summary” of my posts from the week.

Mon, March 10: Social media is becoming interest media
I believe we’re no longer in the era of social media but in the era of interest media. Social was like “who are your friends?” and now it’s “what are you interested in?”.

Tue, March 11: Two more big steps in de-Googling
I’ve made two major changes, switching our Google TV devices for Roku and trading my Pixel for an iPhone. This post explains why.

Wed, March 12: Great logos are often just brands that you admire
You think some logos are noteworthy because you admire their brand, not because the logo itself is necessarily great.

Thu, March 13: What is considered spam?
Some say that “when you deliver content you know people are interested in, right at the time when it’s useful to them, that’s not spam. It’s just a good customer experience”. I disagree.

Fri, March 14: Branding is building a story
People want to know the story of why your company matters to them.

Sat, March 15: AI bots talking to each other is very inefficient
Rather than having two AI bots convert everything to human speech, if they had a way to negotiate directly using text it would be far more efficient — a 30 minute “conversation” could be done in seconds.

I hope you found some value in this. If you ever have questions, ideas, or disagreements regarding anything I write, please don’t hesitate to reach out.

AI bots talking to each other is very inefficient

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The podcast series “Shell Game” was quite eye-opening to me, where host Evan Ratliff created an AI bot of himself and tested it in various scenarios (answering spam calls, calling customer service, even calling friends). His approach to testing things out was fantastic, and it really got me thinking about how these AI bots can behave and what’s coming in the future.

One part that’s sticking with me is the idea of AI bots talking to one another, which is certainly happening a bit already and will be growing rapidly in the coming years. If you have people using AI bots to make robocalls, but then have people using AI bots to screen them, you’re going to have a lot of bots talking to one another. It’s similar to the idea of using AI on both sides of an email conversation.

Bot conversations are inefficient

What struck me was just how inefficient those bot conversations are. Compared to the speed of computers, human speech is painfully slow. A typical human speaks at around 150 words per minute, whereas a computer can easily process millions of words per minute. Rather than having two AI bots convert everything to human speech, if they had a way to negotiate directly using text it would be far more efficient — a 30 minute “conversation” could be done in seconds.

That said, what is the purpose of AI bots talking to one another? The biggest use of them today seems to be spam-related (or “customer service”). The spam pieces are fine, as inefficiency doesn’t matter. How about with customer service? If I need to rebook a plane ticket and I send a bot to do the work, why do they need to “talk” through everything? There should be some kind of mechanism where they can connect directly and just knock things out.

This opens a new can of worms related to protocols and connection methods, as there are already thousands of types of bots out there, so getting them to “connect directly” is far easier said than done.

Of course, as Evan shares in his show, maybe the time that they spend “talking” is irrelevant. It’s not tying up a phone line in the traditional sense, and the time it takes them to accomplish something isn’t usually a big deal. Maybe working through the unnecessary human speech pathway isn’t a big problem.

AI bots are changing things quickly, and it’ll be interesting to see where we end up in a few years. If you haven’t already, I encourage you to check out the Shell Game podcast and see what kind of thoughts it conjures up in you.

Branding is building a story

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When people think about branding, they often think about logos and colors. Those are important aspects to a brand, but they’re really just reminders. Your true brand is telling a story.

This isn’t the story of your founder. It’s awesome that your grandfather started the company during the great depression and that it’s been in your family for 90 years, but that’s not the story that people care about. People want to know the story of why your company matters to them.

It’s the story of how your product will make them feel better, or work more efficiently, or raise more money, or keep their employees safer. It’s the story of how your product will make them healthier, or how it will help their children perform better in school.

Even moreso, it’s the story behind those stories. What does working more efficiently really gain for a company? Why does it matter if their children perform better in school?

You need to have this story polished, and it should be front and center. People have problems, and your business solves a problem of theirs. Share the problem, share your solution, and share how their life will change as a result of working with you.

Then, once they’ve become a big fan of yours and how you’ve helped change their life, they might find it really neat that to learn about how your grandfather was able to get things started all those years ago.

What is considered spam?

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The definition of spam and cold calls is pretty simple — it’s outreach that the recipient didn’t ask for. If you do cold outreach, you’re showing that you’re not an expert and you’re not really “marketing” to folks.

I recently read (part of) a book called “No Forms. No Spam. No Cold Calls.” by Latané Conant, largely because the title grabbed my attention. I talk about this stuff a lot, so I was curious to see their angle. It wasn’t good.

Early on, Conant shares the experience of being super busy with life (arms full, dropping the kids off at school, worried about a meeting later that morning) and being disrupted by a cold call. It’s the worst, no doubt. The book is very clear that cold calling is awful, which I completely agree with.

However, later in the very first chapter, she shifts gears with this:

“If you follow that rule— if you only send emails to people you know a lot about and who are in- market— it’s nearly impossible to spam. When you deliver content you know people are interested in, right at the time when it’s useful to them, that’s not spam. It’s just a good customer experience.“

By their definition, it’s not “cold” or “spam” if you research your targets ahead of time. Does that really track? I don’t think so.

So what is spam?

Seth Godin says spam is “the email you didn’t ask to get” and that it’s “not moral to steal people’s attention“.

David C. Baker asks if any other experts ever reach out cold, saying “divorce attorney, or maybe it’s a medical practitioner, an expert, or maybe it’s somebody that’s trying to get you out of a tax issue or something, did any of these people call you ahead of time and ask for your business?“.

Baker also shares that “outreach is unprofessional and unbecoming of the expert firm“.

The bigger problem is what Conant says above, with “when you deliver content you know people are interested in…” because every spammer thinks that way. They (hopefully) believe that their solution will help people, and therefore it’s their duty to send it to as many people as possible. Maybe they’re right, maybe they’re wrong, but either way it just doesn’t scale. If every company that thought they had the solution to your problem cold called you, your phone would literally never stop ringing.

I hope that the product or service that you’re offering is truly valuable and that you make a ton of sales, but I also hope you do marketing the right way so you can be part of the solution rather than part of the problem.

Great logos are often just brands that you admire

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Think about a great logo. A truly classic logo. One that everyone knows and admires. Do you have one in mind?

You likely though of Nike or Apple or a company like that. Their logos are perfectly fine, but you thought about them because you admire their brand, not because the logo itself is necessarily great.

You can extend this to other brands like Starbucks, whose logo isn’t particularly good by most standards. It doesn’t matter, because to millions of people Starbucks is a brand that is dearly admired and the logo is a reminder of that.

In the end, that’s what a logo is — a reminder of who you are. Your logo and brand are not about how you look at feel, but they’re about how other people think you look and feel.

Don’t cheap out on your logo, for sure, but don’t think that a “great” logo is going to solve your problems. A great logo will be recognizable, and it will scale well in different situations, and it’ll have a well-thought color palette, but at the end of the day it’s simply going to remind people what your company is already about. Will it be a positive reminder for them?

Two more big steps in de-Googling

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Over the last year I’ve taken a lot of little steps to de-Google my life. I won’t be able to escape Google completely for a long time, but some little shifts have been helpful. So far, it’s been three main things:

In the past few weeks, I’ve just made two more big shifts.

Google TV –> Roku

This was a pretty easy change to make. I’ve been needing to update our Google TV (Chromecast) devices for a while now, so instead of getting newer devices from Google we purchased some Roku Ultra players to use in the house.

Setting them up is always a bit of a pain (logging in to all of those streaming apps again), but they’ve ultimately worked out great!

Android –> iPhone

The biggest shift for me was moving back to iPhone again. While Apple is still a huge company that shouldn’t be trusted too much, they are much more privacy and user-focused than the other big tech firms (Google, Amazon, Microsoft and Meta). In recent weeks, two things happened that pushed me a bit more toward Apple and it was finally time to make the leap.

Google’s isn’t as bad as it seems, and Apple’s isn’t as good as it seems, but both are nudges to push me further from Google and more toward Apple, so I made the move.

I won’t bore you with all of the pros and cons of Android versus iPhone, but here is a bit of what I’ve found.

  • The Apple Messages app is fine, but without a Macbook (I’m still using Windows), it’s not as helpful. In fact, it’s a bit worse for me because I can no longer get my text messages inside of Beeper (though Beeper is still an amazing app).
  • The Pixel Watch was great, but the Apple Watch is far superior. Better experience, more features, smoother performance.
  • The lack of a folding device is a bummer (I’ve had the last two Pixel Fold devices), but it’s not a huge deal. The ability to unfold was nice for reading if I didn’t have my Kindle and for browsing large photos, but there wasn’t a whole lot beyond that.
  • The AirPods Pro aren’t as good as the Pixel Buds Pro, largely for the ability to tap them. Apple’s require a more focused and firm touch to change songs, pause, adjust volume, etc, whereas Google’s would respond to any glancing touch as if by magic.
  • iPhone’s homescreen use, particularly for badges and widgets, is much smoother than Android.
  • In the car, Android Auto has a notable better user experience than Apple CarPlay, though they’re quite similar.
  • Everything else it the same. App parity is real, and 99% of my apps are indistinguishable from their Android counterparts.

All in all, I’m pleased with both moves and I feel good about giving Google a bit less money and personal information. Neither Roku or iPhone is perfect, but they’re at least as good as what I had before.

I’ll continue to work to whittle out Google services from my life. Next on the chopping block is likely YouTube TV, but other tools (such as Google Workspace for our business) are unlikely to get touched for years. We’ll see.

Have you de-Googled much lately? What moves have you made?

Social Media is becoming Interest Media

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The nature of social media is undergoing a huge change. All of the major social networks are changing to show you less content from those you follow and more posts that they think will interest you. This has worked wonders for the growth of TikTok, and we’ll see how it does for the rest.

In a recent podcast, Gary Vaynerchuk summarized it well, saying:

I believe we’re no longer in the era of social media but in the era of interest media. Social was like “who are your friends?” and now it’s “what are you interested in?”.

There are good things and bad things about this, but the main thing is to simply accept that it’s happening. Unless you control the algorithm at Meta or something, you can’t change where this shift is heading.

The main takeaway is this: instead of focusing on building the number of followers that you have, focus instead of producing amazing content. The goal of creating amazing content should have always been a high priority, but it’s the only priority these days. It was nearly a year ago that I shared how the value of your “followers” was dropping quickly, and that trend has continued. Getting more followers isn’t a bad thing, but it’s simply not nearly as valuable as it was a few years ago.

You no longer need a “big spark” to have a chance to go viral. Your next post (or even your first post) on social media has the potential to be seen by millions. Make awesome content that attracts interest and you’ll tend to do very well.

The Sunday Summary: Messy brains, duplicate content, and easy credentials

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In an effort to help me keep up with everything I post each week, here is my latest “Sunday Summary” of my posts from the week.

Mon, March 3: Our brains are all messy
We all have bad memory and a hard time remembering things, but there are tactics you can use to help improve those.

Tue, March 4: Duplicate content is a good thing
Duplicate content has never been a big problem, but now it’s becoming a benefit.

Wed, March 5: The BOOX Note Air4 C
A bit about the new reading tablet that I purchased to replace my Kindle.

Thu, March 6: Appreciate their interests
“If you want the other side to appreciate your interests,” Fisher wrote, “begin by demonstrating that you appreciate theirs.”

Fri, March 7: Credentials are the easy part
“credentials are awarded to folks who are good at being awarded credentials“

Sat, March 8: Change your mind or prove that you’re right?
Once we’ve made a judgment about someone, we spend the rest of our acquaintanceship seeking to prove ourselves correct. Everything we see and hear gets filtered through this initial impression.

I hope you found some value in this. If you ever have questions, ideas, or disagreements regarding anything I write, please don’t hesitate to reach out.

Change your mind or prove that you’re right?

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I write quite often about the value in changing your mind, largely because it’s something that I work hard to do. I don’t want to change my mind simply for the sake of mixing things up, but rather to avoid holding an incorrect position simply because it was something that I used to believe.

In her book “The Charisma Myth“, author Olivia Fox Cabane shares this thought on changing your mind:

Why do split-second impressions last for so long? One reason is that, according to economist John Kenneth Galbraith, when “faced with the choice between changing one’s mind and proving there is no need to do so, almost everyone gets busy on the proof.”

Behavioral research has since proven him right. Once we’ve made a judgment about someone, we spend the rest of our acquaintanceship seeking to prove ourselves correct. Everything we see and hear gets filtered through this initial impression.

As Galbraith says, this is something that we all tend to do to some degree or another. If you don’t intentionally seek to change your mind, your default will be to defend your position even when that’s a bad move to make.

Sadly, I see some folks moving in the other direction. Seven years ago I shared about my friend “Joe” and how he often did a great job of sharing both sides of political situations. I didn’t generally agree with him, but he was influential in my eyes because of his ability to share the good and bad from every angle. In the years since then, he’s shifted from that to simply “getting busy on the proof” and making wild claims that seem out of character. In an effort to prove that his side is right, he’s instead forcing people away.

It’s easy for all of us to slip into that mode, but everyone is better off if you’re willing and able to change your mind when the information calls for it.

Credentials are the easy part

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As recently shared by Seth Godin, there is a big difference between credentials and expertise. They might overlap a lot, sure, but they don’t always.

As Seth says in his post, “credentials are awarded to folks who are good at being awarded credentials“. If you’re a good student you’ll have an easier time earning a degree, but that doesn’t necessarily mean you have much expertise.

Personally, I appreciate the value in someone earning a college degree as it shows that they know how to buckle down and work, but that’s about it. When we’re hiring someone, we barely glance at their credentials and instead dig directly into their expertise, habits, and personality.

  • Do they have the skills for this role?
  • How will they continue to improve those skills?
  • How will they work with a team?
  • How do they respond when they make a mistake?

If they have credentials that will help in that role that’s certainly a fantastic thing, but it’s among the pieces that matter least.