Being Peter Kim

Guest post: @jackiehuba on Monster Loyalty

The post below is from my friend Jackie Huba. Her third book, "Monster Loyalty: How Lady Gaga Turns Followers into Fanatics" publishes on May 2nd and is available now for pre-order.

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I love the Pittsburgh Steelers. I was born near Pittsburgh and watched them win 4 four Super Bowls as I was growing up in the '70's. I run the Steelers fan club here in Austin. I own six Terrible Towels and went to the Super Bowl in 2011 to see the Steelers play. When I was considering getting a tattoo -- almost all Austin, Texas residents have one -- I knew getting the Steelers logo was a safe bet because I knew I would love them for life.

Understanding China's digital and social media landscape

China is the world's most populated country, with over 1.3 billion inhabitants. It also maintains the world's second largest economy, on track to become the largest by 2016. This growth has contributed to the rise of consumer classes within the country and in turn captured the attention of global brands.

Don't believe the hype

"Don’t assume that everyone who is loading information onto their blogs or pushing it onto Twitter is doing it in a sharing spirit of helpfulness. There are people — you can see this already — who are opportunistically using this to feed their egos, angle for jobs, or generally to stir up trouble. More than ever, it’s important to be skeptical about the sources of the information you consume."

"The New Bird Flu, and How to Read the News About It," Wired, 5 April 2013.

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Can you teach old dogs new tricks?

A couple of months ago, I got a speaking inquiry. The highlights: during SXSW, technology-related, and involves dogs. The first two parts were typical for me. The last wasn't. Call me intrigued.

It turns out that Purina launched a new line of pet food earlier this year along with a companion training app called P5. Their first event was at the Super Bowl featuring Daryl "Moose" Johnston, who taught his 3-year old dog Gunner to catch frisbees and had his 11-year old daughter run Gunner through exercises they had learned leading up to the event.

So the ask was easy - use the P5 app to train my dogs and show them off at a SXSW event. Although we only had about six weeks, it seemed possible...except for one thing.

My dogs are 11.5 years old.

In human equivalents, this means my bichon is 62 and my black lab is 74.

The truth is out there

What is the capital of Tajikistan?

Is there life on Mars?

Who will win the 2013 World Series?

All knowledge falls into one of three categories: the known, the knowable, and the unknown.

• Known: The capital of Tajikistan is Dushanbe.
• Knowable: NASA's Curiosity rover is currently running tests on Mars to determine if life exists.
• Unknown: While current odds favor the Angels, Tigers, and Dodgers, no one knows who will ultimately win baseball's Fall Classic.

Now, think about measuring business results in social media.

Instagrammers doth protest the T's & C's too much, methinks.

Now, the image [Jasmine Mikulski] shot is a billboard off IH-35, perched atop the Whip In near the Woodland Ave. exit. It was put up by Ben & Jerry’s, which hosted a contest to find the best Instagram photos expressing the hashtag “#CapturingEuphoria.”

Though she didn’t win any money...she’s enjoying the attention from having her photo blown up as a giant ad.

"It’s local advertising with a local person. I think it was a really, really great use of social media," she said.

-- "Instagram pic earns Austin designer her own billboard," austin360.com, 1/15/2013

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On the road in 2012

Some highlights from the 150,000+ miles I flew during the past year.

Twelve ideas from 2012

I'm not writing as much here as I used to, but here are twelve posts from the past year that I enjoyed working on. 

1/11 :: 101 Examples of Social Business ROI

2/2 :: Is social media free?

3/29 :: What Matters In Social Business?

4/6 :: Be curious, not furious

5/1 :: Sharing Social Business By Design #SBBD

6/5 :: sCRM: Stop me if you think you've heard this one before

7/5 :: Own the experience, own the future

8/6 :: I'm a free agent

9/10 :: What's next for business and why I joined @RGA

10/9 :: The Social Businesspeople Archetypes

11/13 :: The illusion of individual vs. institutional control

12/4 :: Seven trends for a lucky '13

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But will it make you happy?

Various world and personal events from the past few weeks, coupled with the holiday season, have had me reflecting on work, life, and beyond. The context for the following insight is applicability to business strategy; however, you can see how easily it applies to other areas.

People are bad at estimating how much pleasure or pain they will feel if their circumstances change dramatically. Social scientists have shown that when people undergo major changes in circumstances, their lives typically are neither as bad nor as good as they had expected. People adjust surprisingly quickly, and their level of pleasure ends up, broadly, where it was before.

This research strikes a chord with anyone who has studied compensation trends in the investment-banking industry. Ever-higher compensation during the 1990s led only to ever-higher expectations -- not to a marked change in the general level of happiness on the Street.

-- "Hidden flaws in strategy," McKinsey Quarterly, March 2003

This certainly isn't a vote for inertia and the status quo. Just know that the grass on the other side may actually be greener by all objective measures -- but you'll get used to it soon enough.

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Information overload > filter failure

Source: "Push to exploit an ocean of information," Financial Times, December 9, 2012.

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