Time to update your RSS-feed

You are what you share, said the mood message of a good colleague the other day.


I now share more. If you update the RSS-feed for this blog to http://feeds2.feedburner.com/andrus you'll not only get a feed with less CO2-emissions, but a range of unwanted goodies on top.


Namely the occasion photo on Flickr, a few timeless quotes, some tried and tested links and Pledgehammer blog posts. I used Yahoo Pipes to mash it all together, added salt and pepper, cooked for half an hour - and so far all seems to work nicely in this feed casserole, mind the initial chronological mess after subscribing.


Let me know if this feed doesn't work for you (and advise how can I fix the bloody thing).

Dinner conversation gone horribly philosophic

Had a truly enjoyable dinner conversation with a friend this Sunday evening. You know the kind where you start from random trivia but somehow make your way to the very important topics in life. We started from snowboarding destinations, made our way to the economy (as you do these days) and then ended up defining the pillars that support the sanity of a man past his 65th birthday. Four things are worth being written down here as notes to self and as my endevour to win the title of The Most Random Blog Post of 2009:

Defining yourself in more than one way. It's great if you love your work but that doesn't mean you shouldn't pursue additional 'careers' - academic, relating to a hobby, playing a role in society; whatever makes you tick.

Having kids.

Staying physically active. Just look at our fathers. My father can still probably beat me in rollerblading and his father has been featured on posters of Tartu cross-country skiing marathon. Say no more.

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Continuing to learn new things. My 82 year-old grandfather is regularly improving his vocabulary in English (a language he never learned at school) and can use Skype better than most people. It's only a matter of time he posts his first tongue-in-cheek comment here.

Let's see in about 40 years whether we were right or not.

A quick book review - Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell

Outliers is a book about people that achieve outstanding things, about what sets them apart from everyone else. It doesn't give you "5 proven techniques that will guarantee success" but it highlights some very useful ideas . My quick notes to self:

It takes 10.000 hours of work become outstanding at something. Almost anything. And these 10.000 hours go easiest if you're enjoying what you're doing.

It doesn't matter whether your IQ is 115 or 170 to be successful, one just needs to be 'smart enough'

IQ or skills of a genius can't be put to use without social intelligence ie. expressing oneself clearly, solving tough situations etc.

The environment plays a hugely important role. Where, when you are born, family situation and the wider social arrangement around it eg. Jewish immigrants in New York in the beginning of the twentieth century. (While you can't change this for yourself you can do so for your kids.)

My blessing to this book. Read or listen as I did (read by Gladwell himself).

Blood, sweat and viral marketing

Shit doesn't happen. Shit takes time and effort.

I was recently in a meeting where co-founder of a next-big-thing-startup, when probed about marketing plans, said something to the line of we'll do something viral so we don't need to worry about marketing too much. Right. I'm in no means a viral marketing expert but this much I know: viral marketing does take time and effort.

There seems to be a widely spread misconception that viral marketing doesn't cost anything and that if you do even tiny bit of it, customers will turn up on your door or website like zombies. In my view this is only true on four occasions. First, companies like Skype or Facebook whose product is so viral in nature that they seem to grow "just like that". Second, brands like Apple or Obama that have such loyal followers that every step they take is echoed on blogs, social network profiles and T-shirts of fanboys across the world. Thirdly there are those whose idea is just so spot-on that no-one can refuse to pass it on to a friend. Blendtech's Will it blend? campaign is a good example of that. And lastly, some just get lucky because a celebrity blogger somewhere happens to like it.

That leaves 99% of folks to make viral marketing happen with their sweat and/or marketing dollars. I've seen the behind the scenes of quite a few viral campaigns, and none of them have been super cheap or super easy to do. Take my recent task of generating blog coverage for Pledgehammer. I now know I have to do about a dozen units of work (this can be an email, blog comment or a guest blog post) to receive one unit of coverage. I've made north of 250 contacts to get about 20 people interested and writing about Pledgehammer. That's good many evenings and weekends spent on creating "something viral". (Luckily the weather has been rubbish). See here, here, here (got to love this one) or there for results, more links are available on Pledgehammer blog.

Long story short - viral marketing is a powerful thing, definitely worth some experiments, it just takes time and effort to work.