I’m filing this under lessons learned.

When developing anything for the Web or from any IT perspective, there are two things that need to be considered:

1.) It’s very challenging to develop a digital process where there’s no human process.

It’s not that creating a digital process can’t be done, it’s just that it has to be pursued. When you start developing a Web or IT endeavor it’s all about the process that you’re trying to digitize. So having process map is crucial to developing the workflow for a given Web or IT project.

2.) Sometimes a Web or IT project can’t replace real human contact

Some processes, many processes have the luxury of being able to be replaced by computers. However, there are some that no Web site or computer can replaced. In my business, it’s a beautiful idea to streamline or refine work processes, and it’s a work that I love and look very forward to doing, but sometimes there’s no replacement for human contact. Sometimes, creating a digital process where a human one is needed can hurt the process.

What I’ve learned is that you really have to evaluate the projects, analyze them, and sometimes the best thing to do is avoid digitizing a process, allowing the human process to stand.

As an entrepreneur, small business person, or artist/musician looking to get themselves or their business more exposure, there’s no single tool greater than YouTube. I’m sure that you’re already familiar with YouTube for funny and silly videos, as well as other things, you’ve seen here or there, but the hidden benefit to YouTube is making your own video, and using it to bring a greater awareness to your work or business.

For instance, let’s say you own a dry cleaners. You might think that nobody could have any possible interest in the business of a dry cleaners on YouTube; you’d be wrong. The Web is filled with just this kind of stuff, these minor curiosities that folks would love to spend a few minutes watching while they’re eating their lunch.

Take this video, for example, with almost 76,000 views… what if you made this video, and promoted your company simply by including a small logo in the bottom corner, or having the people in the video wear shirts with your logo, boo-yaa! I guarantee business would increase:

Then there’s this one, which, Paula Berg from Southwest Airlines talked about at the Digital PR Next Summit I recently attended, and it made me laugh out loud. This is a video of a jet engine being washed, basically, three minutes of water being blown through a jet engine, almost 97,000 views:

Anyway, I think you get the point. YouTube can bring great awareness to your work whether you’re an entrepreneur, small business owner, artist or musician. Surf around YouTube, and look at folks in your business are using it. You’ll be amazed at what you’ll find.

For entrepreneur’s, small business owners, and self-starters of any kind I would say that you should get started using social media. In fact, this should have been the first post in the Social Media Take Away series, but hey I’m improvising and making things up as I go here…

What is social media?

Social media is any web tools that allows groups to generate content and engage in peer-to-peer conversations and exchange of content (examples are YouTube, Flickr, Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, etc…)

Social media is particularly valuable for entrepreneur’s, small business owners, and self-starters in-general, I’m thinking artists – painters, musicians and the like, because it gives them low cost, high value, far reaching exposure for whatever they’re doing. As I write more about the social media value, I’ll cover some of these. For starters, I would say see this post on Twitter or items tagged with social media on this blog. Though, I’ll be covering stuff more in-depth, and high level, alike as I develop this feature of the blog.

Doing the right thing isn’t easy; it takes courage, follow-through and a near-constant defense of what’s right. It’s not that people don’t want to do what’s right, but it’s not the path of least resistance. Sometimes, though, you can’t fight all the good fights, but rather you have to pick your battles strategically.. What will have the best outcome? What are the pros and cons? How would this  benefit the team, the organization, the world, etc… Sometimes this makes it easier to choose, sometimes not. Doing the right thing, often, is tough, but there’s personal solace in knowing you did the right thing. Somehow, this is what matters more than anything.

For many years, I’ve been inspired by the Taoist concept called Wei Wu Wei, doing by not doing. This philosophy can be applied in many ways, but since the focus of this site is digital strategy, let’s focus on that: When you’re doing digital strategy the greatest success is found when you’re working with the Tao, or loosely translated, the unseen current of the universe. If you’re working against the Tao, then somehow, you just won’t succeed, or succeed for very long. Why? Because you can force anything, but forcing, by its very nature infers opposition, or opposing something… many dollars and much energy can be spent to force things, but eventually dollars and energy run out and whatever was being opposed prevails. If you’re working with the Tao, then there’s no need for force, because there’s no opposition.

You only have to look at what drives and what’s driven the Web to see that this is true. Whether it’s open source projects like Unix, Linux, Apache, or openness and sharing that occurs naturally on the Web, think Twitter, Facebook, or earlier BBS systems, or the approach of company’s like Google who’ve tried to harness these open source, sharing models. They’re successful, because, mostly, they work with the Tao rather than opposing it. Microsoft is a good example of an organization working counter to the Tao, specifically now, as they try to use dollars and energy to push their Bing search service to overcome the natural and organic (or Tao-centered) adoption of Google.

If you want to succeed, be concerned less about being a success, and more about how you can add value, centered in the Tao the rest will surely follow.

Note about Taoist references.

I’ve been a student of Taoism and Zen Buddhism for nearly 15 years. Early Zen was influenced greatly by Taoism, which preceded it, philosophically, in China, and so much of what’s been written in both schools of thought is complimentary. This isn’t always true, but frequent enough to mention. Taoism isn’t a religion as much as it’s a life philosophy. I’m wary of mixing anything that be construed as religious with my professional work, but I’ve been working on a translation of the Tao Te Ching, and I’ve come to see many examples of how working with or against the Tao can predetermine success or failure. In fact, patterns were so great that there was a point when it was hard to not correlate success and failure to how centered or uncentered in the Tao a given organization or service was. Anyway, there are sure to be more references to Taoism as I move through the translation and come to understand more of these small and ordinary mysteries…

Site Pro News is a great resource, and one that I look at daily. Late last week, I came across a great story on linking and SEO, two things that confuse a lot of folks. So in an attempt to provide value to readers of this blog, as a digital concierge, of sorts, I wanted to add a link to this site. The story is called Links 101 – Puritans, The Puerile & The Pragmatic by Ben Kemp, who also maintains his own blog called The SEO Guy, and as far as I can tell, this is the most brief and definitive discussion on the place of links and SEO I’ve come across. I’ve wanted to take the time to discuss these same things, but when I read Ben’s article, I decided why should I reinvent the wheel, I’ll just repost this article. I highly recommend that anybody interested in linking and SEO, or for those just confused by the whole things, read this story.

With all of the hype that’s going around right now about Bing potentially knocking Google of the search mountain, I felt that this article was very timely; and yet another story that talks about open and transparent is better than closed and opaque. This is the story of Netscape, Mozilla, Firefox and Microsoft Internet Explorer. The article, by Michael Calore taken from the This Day in Tech pages at Wired.com: June 5, 2002: Browser, Philosophy Born of Turmoil, Defeat.

There’s an interesting post here, called The Web Will Be the Death of Google. This is a good article that ties into all the press that Bing and it’s attempt at knocking Google off the top of the search mountain is getting. The thing that’s easy to forget is Google did next to no marketing for their search (interesting Salon article from 1999 that touches on this a bit, as well as a 1998 Cnet article here). I know for me, back in 1999 or 2000, numerous people recommended that I use Google, as I had been a big user of Yahoo! for everything. Eventually, Google became the search tool of choice, not just for me, but for a lot of folks. Was it because it worked well? Was it because it was lean and uncluttered? Was it because it was quick? Honestly, it’s probably some combination, but I know that value that Google offered came to me through word-of-mouth, and when I tried the tool, it delivered as promised. It was no frills, just a simple tool that worked well.

Again, Google did very little marketing; they put something out there that worked, and people came to it. Clearly, they knew what people wanted, and how to add value. This is a piece that Microsoft has never figured out. I’m not sure if it’s just been a case of willful ignorance, or just customer indifference because their OS monopoly made them a required player. However, either way I would say to serve is a privilege, and if your tool is chosen, then it’s bonus and bonus! Create the tool of choice, and cherish the privilege of service.

So as many folks sound the Google death knell, I say Google will die only once they’ve decided that they don’t want to serve the customer with imaginative and innovative ideas. Anyone, who saw the preview of Google Wave, last week, knows that they’re clearly not there yet. Yahoo! might be there, MySpace might be there, and there are others, but then there are folks like Twitter, and Facebook who keep trying to develop innovative tools to serve the customer.

The fact is any company that stops thinking about, or doesn’t consider their, customer is going to go out of business; whether they’re selling Web services or hot dogs… I only have to look at my home of Detroit to know this is true.

Read an interesting survey today that kind of confirmed some of my suspicions, at least preliminarily. You can read it here. The gist of the survey is that people are using social networking to chat with and build networks of friends and colleagues, but not buy stuff. That makes sense to me. I’ve always thought that the social media piece, as it pertained to growing business or selling products, seemed kind of questionable, at least and unproven at best.

I come to this opinion first and foremost as a user. I like to get my hands on stuff that I hear my friends talking about, and that has influenced a lot of purchases over the years, but there’s a higher likelihood that I’ll read about something, hear a review on NPR, or just generally pick up something that I heard about through word-of-mouth. I’d love to get other folks opinions on this, as the monetization of these services and the possibility of growing business through social media is getting a lot of press these days.

You can’t do much without a plan. It doesn’t have to be a super-detailed plan, because that kind of plan doesn’t allow for the organic expanding and contracting that comes with anything living. Yes, a plan is a living thing. Especially when people or an organization are living and breathing that plan every day. So you have to have a plan.

Without a plan there’s no strategy.
Without a plan there’s no way to calculate ROI.
Without a plan there’s a journey, but no destination.

Sometimes, it’s Ok to be on a journey without a destination, but other times it can lead to a feeling of purposeless meandering into infinity.

Even a very loose plan is better than being without any kind of plan whatsoever…