Testing the online movie-making tool Xtranormal

This morning I had a direct message (DM) on Twitter with a link to a YouTube video advertising a Superbowl-related service. I clicked through out of curiosity and watched the short video.

If you watch that, you’ll notice the credit that comes up at the end for Xtra Normal, with the intriguing tagline “If you can type, you can make movies”.

I tried it out.

Signup was easy and free.

The interface and the various pre-fabricated scenes, avatars and so on reminded me a bit of Second Life (who ever talks about Second Life these days? Is it still there?) but at a really basic level.

I proceeded to type in a conversation about a topic that has been buzzing along in a forum on LinkedIn, viz. how can you tell if someone is a real social media expert.

Out of a bunch of quite bizarrely attired avatars I chose a couple of conservatively dressed types who looked more like humans than the avatars in the football item above. The result will not will me any prizes. It’s corny, not easy to see or hear, and I am including it here just to illustrate.

No matter what I did I could not get the avatars to the front of the scene as they are in the football item.

So there is a lack of flexibility in being able to mix and match avatars and settings.

No doubt a more skilled user would do something much more interesting and I’m inferring from the text accompanying the exhortation to download the desktop version that it may be possible to be more creative with that. But I looked at the resource specifications and decided I did not need the aggravation of my computer possibly seizing up or slowing to a crawl.

There is a link from the Xtranormal site for uploading to YouTube, but after following the instructions and trying several times, I gave up.

Verdict. Interesting, and I really like the idea of telling stories in novel ways like this, but at this stage Xtranormal is not a good use of my time.

Last few remaining copies of Big Biller at a special close-out price

When my friend and colleague Bill Vick invited me, back in 2006, to collaborate with him on a book about recruiting’s “big billers”, I was intrigued. 

The idea was that Bill would interview a range of top producers in the recruitment industry and elicit from them their secrets of success. Then from all those interviews we would put together a book, summarizing the key lessons and insights that had emerged.

An ambitious undertaking, but from having co-authored LinkedIn for Recruiting book with Bill I had a good idea of the esteem he has in the recruitment industry, so I was pretty sure he was not going to have any problem finding outstanding people to interview. And so it turned out.

But what I didn’t know then was how generous the interviewees would be with sharing their experience and advice. Listening to the interviews – and I did that more than once – I was continually amazed at how much they “gave away”, so as to be able to help others achieve success.  No “king of the castle” (or “king of the hill”) selfishness here.

Nor were these interviews about one-off or occasional successes. A lot of the stories and comments were about good old fashioned work, but focused, systematic work to produce stellar results. I thought Jon Bartos put it beautifully:

If you look at my average fee, it’s about twenty thousand. It’s not fifty thousand, it’s not a hundred thousand, it’s only twenty thousand. So it’s not huge as an average fee. What that means, with transactions at twenty thousand, is that in order to do a million dollars I need to have five placements on a monthly basis. Now I typically average from five to ten on a monthly basis.

And once the project was done and our Big Biller “audiobook” (recorded interviews on a DVD plus an e-book) was published early in 2007, we realised that we had produced what was effectively a manual for success as a recruiter. But success not just as a recruiter, because the rich lessons about business and life that these highly successful people shared could be applied to any business, any career.

Bill commented on the Big Biller project as follows:

There is no question the Big Billers are a competitive breed and the game they play is not for the faint-hearted. They like to win and second-best is not an option. At the same time they are generous-spirited people and happy to share their secrets of success, for the benefit of anyone who might wish to follow in their footsteps. I was fortunate to be a member of their ranks and their friendship and support created this book.

Over the course of thirty one interviews, recorded live and provided as part of this book in full and unedited recordings, these superstars of recruiting spell out what they do, what tools they use, what drives them to achieve as they do, how they spend their working days, hour by hour, their approach to study and continuing training and the fundamental philosophies that underpin their achievement.

The interviews provide a unique insight into what makes a Big Biller tick. They show, in detail, step by step, how anyone with the right attitude and determination can copy the success of the Big Billers.

With my background in education and training I also saw the audiobook as an excellent resource for any firm which wanted to bring new hires up to speed with the kind of thinking and experience that would help them become top producers themselves. Or as a refresher and motivator for even the most experienced people already on their team.

You could in fact use the book and the audios as the basis for a series of company training exercises over a period of weeks or even months.

Be that as it may, we are down to the last few copies. Because the content, in terms of the shared stories of life and business experience and the lessons drawn from those stories, is effectively timeless, we could probably do a new edition of Big Biller. But as we both like to do new things and are in fact moving on to some new projects with social media, we have decided that for these last few copies it’s “out they go” time.

So we can wrap this up quickly, we have halved the price: the race is to the swift.

The DVD with 10 hours of interviews + the accompanying ebook and guide are for sale now at http://BigBiller.org

I have to admit that at any given moment I don’t know whether to be highly impressed or highly amused by the way Twitter, which allows you to share messages with a 140 character limit, has taken the social media world by storm.

Maybe a bit of both. It mightn’t be – no, isn’t – the only game in town, but it is a fascinating game and one I see as going on for quite a while.

And while I don’t know, and doubt that anyone does, how many Twitter users are owners of home based businesses, I’m guessing that the answer is A LOT.

Jeremiah Owyang’s estimate, as of late January, is for around 5 million registered Twitter users and some 3,400,000 active users.

So what would be a reasonable guesstimate of the number of Twitter users with home based businesses or – not the same thing but interesting anyway – users who work from home? A million? Two million?

Whatever the figure is, I find, as  a professional working from home, that Twitter has a special appeal for me. On any given day I am as likely to be:

• amazed at how a tweet has made me aware of a resource I would not likely have known about otherwise
• annoyed with myself for wasting time on Twitter trivia
• amused and entertained by the wit of fellow twitterers
• inspired by how helpful people on Twitter can be – and have been, to me and to others

In March last year I listed five ways Twitter helps me in business.

And now Anita Campbell, who edits the Small Business Trend site, has put together the ambitiously titled Ultimate Small Business Twitter List.

I have to say I think Anita has been very brave in doing this list. There will always be people who feel left out. As Anita acknowledges, in seeking to list “the people on Twitter who regularly provide information by, about and for small businesses”, she had taken on an “impossible task”.

Nevertheless, for anyone in small business interested in exploring Twitter, this is a great list of tweeple to start following.

Good to see @BeckyMcCray there, whose blot Small Biz Success is focused on business in rural communities and small towns.

Denise O’Berry – @deniseoberry at Justforsmallbusiness.com – has been providing resources for small business for as long as I can remember, as indeed has Anita herself.

What I found more interesting than the listing of individuals on Twitter – “tweeple” – was the listing of corporate Twitter presences.

Some of these are anonymous, others have individuals fronting the brand: there is a third category of what appear to be individuals but may or may not not represent real, individual people.

@AngelaATHP and @tacanderson at HP look like real people.

As does @DannyUrquiea at American Express.

@bbsnewswire is a disembodied corporate id for Better Business Bureau.

@gowithabc is not representing a broadcasting company but a group blog, America’s Best Companies – tag line “The Future of Small Business”.

Some seem confused: for example, at Microsoft there is Louise Rasho as @officelivegal and Amanda as @officelivegirl who has a tweet on Feb 7 saying “Merging accounts here. Please start following me at OfficeLiveGal”. So would that be Amanda or Louise we would be following?

I would love to see a list of Twitter people with home based businesses and Twitter names for companies servicing that market. If you are part of one or both of those groups, please feel free to leave some info about what you do and your Twitter id in the comments here.

If you choose to follow me on Twitter – @deswalsh is my handle there – I’m likely to reciprocate as long as I can see something real about you, preferably a blog, or LinkedIn profile. I don’t usually follow anonymous corporate Twitter identities or sales pages.

Tweetbird image courtesy of ProductiveDreams

I realized the other day that somehow, in a changeover of themes perhaps, this site seemed to have lost its Privacy page.

That made me uncomfortable, because I have always thought it important, even essential, to have a privacy page.

The situation has now been remedied. Although my first effort at doing so meant that I included the text of the Privacy page in the orginal version of this post. I guess that could have been confusing for some people who read the posts in an RSS feeder.

In the second of this short series on Business and Branding, Finding What Works, I mentioned that my core brand these days is effectively my own name, as in the name of my other main blog, Des Walsh dot Com.   Another way I could put that is to say that I am practicing “personal branding”. The decision to use my own name as my brand, or as the focus of my brand, was influenced by several factors, including:

• flexibility in being able to make the brand refer to what I’m working on now, rather than what I was focused on previously
• ability to build on the presence I have established online, especially through the past 4.5 years of blogging and related social media/social networking activities
• it doesn’t hurt that there are not, so far as I’ve noticed, namesakes in the business spaces in which I am interested

The Brand YOU concept

As I mentioned in that previous post in the series, I actually started using my own name as a business brand way back in the late 1980s, when I started in business and – like most of the people I knew who established their own consultancies – just took my own name and added “& Associates”. In between then and now, actually just before I started blogging, I became aware of the branding implications, via the “brand you” concept as I learned it from Dave Buck, now CEO of a coaching organisation I belong to, Coachville, who in turn acknowledged the use and promotion of the term by Tom Peters. In the onsite explanation of his program on the Brand YOU topic, Dave says:

Your brand is your trust mark – it distinguishes you from the field. Not like competition, but like uniqueness. As Tom Peters aptly predicts “It’s Brand YOU or canned you; become distinct or extinct”. It makes you a (very well) known entity. It’s how you connect with the people you intend to serve.  Speaking of service, that’s the real essence of Brand YOU – making your talents, gifts, experience, knowledge and value adding products so well known, that the people who want and need them can easily find you.

This is not about an ego trip – although I suppose it could be for some people – so much as about using your own name as a business brand. And social media, which by definition is more about people than about companies or other organizations, lends itself to processes of “Brand YOU” marketing.

Nor does that have to be restricted to promoting only the businesses of solopreneurs and other one-person operators.

Personal branding and company promotion

Paul Chaney explains how personal branding can also be used to promote a company brand. He cites some outstanding examples in the social media space, people who have become, in that world, “household names”. He outlines how, by becoming well known and respected, these individuals have helped raise the profile and reputation of the companies employing them.

The question that immediately arises for me, with my coach hat on, is this: assuming a client buys the idea that the CEO or some other person in the firm could be allowed, encouraged even, to build their reputation online as  a thought leader in their field via a personally branded blog, with the accompanying/supporting idea that this can only enhance the firm’s reputation as well as the blogger’s, what happens when that person gets a better offer and leaves to work with another firm?

Surely the obverse of the company’s fortunes rising with the blogger’s comes into play, with that blogger’s subscribers and other readers now seeing the blogger’s new firm as the one to consider buying from, hiring, etc.

Could companies being asked to support executives and others blogging require them to sign a “non-compete” document, effectively stopping them blogging for a period once they left the company? Taking “gardening leave” from blogging?* And if so, would that requirement constitute, in some jurisdictions, an unacceptable restraint of trade?

Blogger contracts? Attorneys at twenty paces?

For those of us who are home-based, solopreneurs this is not likely to be a problem. But many of us are also in the business of coaching or consulting to companies, which can be expected to have an interest in the topic. If we encourage them, say, to help one of their key people to build their personal brand as a thought leader, in the expectation or hope that the firm will have an “aura” benefit, what do we say to them about what happens when that person gets a better offer and leaves to go and work for – and perhaps blog for – a rival company? Or at least keep blogging but with people knowing he or she is with the new firm?

*Interestingly, in checking for a link to explain the UK/Australian term “garden leave” or “gardening leave”, I found a link to a recent legal decision in the Supreme Court of Victoria (Australia),  in which one of the protagonists was Bearing Point, who from what I’ve read fought their case down to the wire: so who does Paul Dunay, one of the stars in Paul Chaney’s post, work for? Yes, BearingPoint. Small world. And in fairness it should be noted that Paul Dunay has an ‘opinions are my own’ type disclaimer on his personally branded blog, as well as stating his connection with BearingPoint.

What’s your take on the personal branding via social media possibilities? Any drawbacks? And do you buy the argument that personal branding via social media can help the brand of the company which the practitioner – blogger, podcaster, tweeter – works for?

See also:

Business and Branding #1: Built to Last or Built for Now

Business and Branding #2: Finding What Works

Business and Branding #4: Online Reputation Management