Since a couple of weeks I have been using a tool which makes it even more fun. It’s an iPhone application called Runkeeper which tracks your running efforts.

Now what’s so special about that you might ask?

It’s brilliant. Not just because it is good software but even more because it allows you – the runner – to share your run with your friends. Next to that, the team behind Runkeeper is doing an excellent job in marketing their product, using social media and their fans to get more people to use it.

Any brand can learn from Runkeeper’s online approach. Why? I’ll explain below…  

You become the publisher

After you completed your run, the application allows you to share it with your friends on twitter and facebook. It sends out a short message that will tell them you just completed your run, a link to your personal page on runkeeper.com that includes a map, your trail and your statistics. It also includes the @runkeeper twitter account and #runkeeper hashtag.

Social Proof

Think about it…when you are running you know that your friends will actually see your results when you complete it. That is definitely a motivator. Next, they see you use the application and get a direct link to the runkeeper website. Runkeeper uses ‘social proof’ for marketing their product. If you use it, it is almost a ‘silent recommendation’ to your friends, isn’t it?

Using the hastag #runkeeper, you can easily find other people that like to run and use the application. I even got recommendations from someone on where to run next. Awesome experience I must say. 

Great niche

It is estimated that Apple will sell 45 million iPhone units by the end of 2009. That’s a lot of potential customers for any iPhone application. Runkeeper focuses on a great niche; people that run or bike (it also has a mode for biking). By providing a free version and a pro version, they make it very easy to get to know the product and switch to the pro version once you have sampled the application. The pro version allows you to listen to your stats in real-time during your activity and it comes with training workouts that can be completed by voice guidance.

Overall a great piece of software and I definitely recommend you take a look at it. What’s even more interesting is to take a close look at their online approach.

Can you reuse any of it in your business?

Give me 3 minutes – and I’ll give you 3 insights about Runkeeper

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That’s because I have been extremely busy with a fantastic new project:
Het Nieuwe Werken Blog.

It’s an independent blog were information, experiences, knowledge and expertise around ‘The New World of Work’ is shared by more than 20 authors.

We launched it last week and it already picked up some great press on blogs suchs as Lifehacking.nl, Microsoft.nl and others.

I was also recentely interviewed by Denise Lappain of Frankwatching.com, one of Holland’s biggest independent blogs that covers digital trends, events, startups en tips & tricks.

You can read the full interview here (in dutch).

And while you’re there, please don’t forget to vote for us at the end of the article for the ’site top 50′. Thanks!

Interviewed on Frankwatching.com

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A quick solution to your problem.

That’s because you did not even wanted the problem in the first place. When there is no quick solution available, other drivers become important that impact your satisfaction:

• Response time
• Technical knowledge of the support engineer
• Support engineer’s ability to communicate (empathy, understanding, managing expectations, etc)

Very often, when you are not satisfied with a companies’ support, it’s because they failed to deliver on one or more of the drivers just mentioned.

Now how does this relate to the title of this post?

This post is a story about my support experience I recently had with a company called Disqus. They provide a commenting system for blogs/sites and I hope this post helps you to make a well considered decision on what commenting system you want to install on your site/blog.

The Story

A couple of weeks ago, I installed Disqus as the commenting system for Alexve.com. One of the reason I started to use it was because Robert Scoble is using it on his blog as well. Before installing it on my production site, I tested it thoroughly on my development site where everything worked just fine. However, after installing into production, one particular posting’s comment count and actual comments were not showing up. Since that post had 15 comments, it was only fair to the people who commented to get that fixed. 

So I reinstalled Disqus and imported of all my comments into the system a couple of times. As that did not solve the issue, I checked the FAQ/Wiki. It turned out I wasn’t the only one with missing comments as there is a checkbox in the Disqus WordPress plugin, that tells you ‘Check this if you have a problem with the counts not showing’. Unfortunately, the extra imports and enabling this option had no effect at all: that one particular posting still wasn’t showing any comment counts nor comments. At point I decided to contact Disqus and ask for their help.

The Support Experience

Here is the chronological overview the support experience with Disqus:

What Made Me Very Dissatisfied

Disqus is a free service. However that does not mean the support experience should be poor. You can hopefully understand why I am very dissatisfied with the support received and switched to IntenseDebate for comments on my blog. In a nutshell:

• No solution provided
• Extremely poor response time, or response at all
• No expectations management (or Service Level Agreement)
• No Empathy
• Not Listening to my feedback
• Not Answering my questions
• Not Communicating at my level

Providing support by e-mail is a difficult because you cannot see or hear the person you are serving. When only providing email support, it becomes very important to read, listen and show that you care about your customers in your responses. If something is not clear, you should ask for clarification. Again and again.

How Can Disqus Improve Support?

1. Focus on providing a quick solution
2. Improve the automated initial response email:
3. Always thank people for contacting you (they have an issue with your service)
4. Include ways people can contact you
5. Include global support hours you can be reached
6. Mention your Service Level Agreement and response times
7. Are there any files that you often need to quickly resolve an issue? Ask them as quickly as possible
8. Point people to the FAQ, just in case they haven’t seen it
9. Improve your response times (get more people/better tools)
10. Use tools/text templates to improve your productivity in answering emails professionally
11. Try to understand what kind of customer you are dealing with (beginner vs technical experienced, etc)
12. Communicate on his/her level
13. Avoid using the word ‘problem’
14. Repeat your customer’s question in your response to verify if you understand him/her correctly
15. Include a signature that tells your customers point 4), 5) and 6)
16. Don’t set the priority of your reply e-mails to ‘low’. This sends out the message you don’t find these e-mail conversations important
17. Just say you are sorry if you experience any delays
18. Listen to your customers if they tell you they are not happy
19. Put the customer and his/her experience in the centre of what you do
20. Consider investing in a real support system that integrates with your site to provide web based support (e.g. Clarify)

A note to Giannii, the Community Manager at Disqus: Please consider this as open feedback to the whole Disqus team on how Disqus can improve the support experience for its users. This is nothing personal. I am sure you are doing your best to serve all Disqus customers, answering tons of email, tweets and that this impacts the quality of the support I received.

Last, a personal note to Fred Wilson (investor in Disqus): you should consider investing in a technical support team for Disqus too otherwise they might just loose from Js-kit or IntenseDebate. I’m not the only one who has recently removed Disqus from his site.

What’s Your Experience With Disqus?

Have experienced something similar? The complete opposite? Please let everyone know by sharing your experience via the comments on this post.

If You Depend On Disqus For Commenting, Don’t Count On Technical Support

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As you start following more people, you almost automatically move your conversation to a larger room and some even to a stadium, so there is room for everyone and you can still hear them. However, you also notice that it becomes more difficult to listen to everyone.

At the same time, there are new people ‘entering your stadium’, as they are interested in what you have to say. This is the equivalent of people following you on Twitter, effectively saying ‘Hi, nice to meet you! I am interested in getting to know a little bit more about you’. Still with me?

Personally, I think it is decent that you say ‘hi back’ by following them too, when someone introduces him or herself this way. It is also fun to open new connections!

No More Noise

However when you follow everyone back, you also introduce additional noise…

Noise comes from people that are trying to sell you something or promote themselves, often via automated tweets (you’ve all seen the ‘get a 1000 followers in a week and get rich in a month’ direct messages, haven’t you?). These people don’t understand that the conversation is not just only about them. My advice is to carefully ignore those tweeps as they bring no real value to the conversation.

So how do you ignore the noise and keep listening to the people that provide real value to you?

Meet TweetDeck Groups

TweetDeck is the most used Twitter client available.  I use it too and I’ve created a short video on how you can use TweetDeck’s group functionality to minimize the noise from Twitter. It also included a bonus tip on how to use TweetDeck across multiple devices.

How do You minimize the Noise?

There are several ways to minimize the loud chatter from Twitter. Some just don’t follow back, others move the conversations to FriendFeed as it allows you to create groups from within the service. What is your preferred method? Please write it in the comments area below and leave your name if you want credit.

You Don’t Have To Stop Following People To Get Rid Of The Noise

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A couple of weeks ago, there were post flying around the web claiming once again that blogs were dead and that you should drop it in favor of lifestreaming. While I am a big fan of lifestreaming (I have a dedicated lifestream page on my site), I do not believe that blogs are dead.

I believe the opposite is true and that blogs are evolving. In the past, a blog would be a ‘single voice of a person’. Nowadays, blogs have become the voice of a community, driven by technology that is starting to make real-time conversations possible. With this post, I’d like to share some solutions that can help your blog stay ahead of the game and move into the era of the real time web.

Make It Easier To Have a Conversation

With the rise of social networks and tool such as Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, etc, conversations are happing around the web. So how to you encourage people to have their conversations on your blog? The answer lies in the innovation of commenting systems that can help you bring back the streams of conversations back to your site. They are making ‘real time’ conversations possible.

There are currently three solutions that facilitate better conversations:

• Disqus
• IntenseDebate
• Js-kit’s Echo

So why should you should consider to implement one of these products?  Because they make it easier for your visitors to engage on a conversation with you and other readers. Here’s how:

• Integration with Facebook Connect, Twitter OAuth and 3^rd party services
  A reader’s identity can now flow from their favorite social network to your site. They do not have to create a profile and upload their picture anymore to leave a comments under their own online identity. This makes the commenting experience a lot easier and more sociable, as you can see who you are talking to.
• Comments are threaded and more
  Although threaded comments now come with most blogging platforms, these systems provide a massive improvement over those standard solutions. Your readers can comment very easily on other comments, subscribe to comment updates via e-mail and even leave a reply by video if they wanted.
• Broadens the conversation
  As a visitor leaves a comment, they can share it with their friends across their favorite social network. So effectively, they share your content too – broadening the conversation and driving new traffic.

Which one to choose?

In terms of functionality, the solutions mentioned offer almost the same feature set. And when one of them introduces new functionality, it doesn’t take long before the others catch up. Disqus seems to be the most popular choice amongst blogger, probably because of the fact that high traffic sites such as Mashable.com or Scobleizer.com have been using it for a while now. As you can see, I have choosen to use Disqus on Alexve.com. It is a solution that works on several platforms, including WordPress. My experience so far with the technology has been great, although I’d like Disqus to improve their response time on support tickets…I am still waiting on a proper response and resolution for a ticket that I logged almost a week ago.

UPDATE: As you can see, I have removed Disqus from my site completely. Disqus failed to resolve a simple comment count issue on one of my blog posting and provide decent support. I’ve contacted them more than 10 times in the past two weeks via e-mail/twitter, asking for their help. They just didn’t listen…I was really excited about Disqus and its functionality but because of the extremely poor support experience, I have taken Disqus off my site and now switched to IntenseDebate. 

Would you consider upgrading your commenting system? Which solution would you choose and why?

How to Move Your Blog Into The Era of the Real Time Web

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It got 15 inspiring reactions, pretty awesome!

The thing about change, as one of the commenters pointed out, you just have to go ahead and do it.

So why do I mention my previous post again? Because last weekend I had an epiphany that led to a change in personal strategy and with this post I like to share that story.  

What was the fuss about?

For now, let’s rewind to Friday evening one week ago.

That Friday evening, I started the weekend knowing that I had to make a decision before Monday on whether I would say yes to an assignment to work as an interim manager for an American software company. It was an assignment for 12-18 months where the director asked me to run his support business in Europe.

That was a tough decision.

This was an awesome opportunity, however it was was also something I had done before while working at Microsoft. Although I was honored and tempted to say yes, I noticed that I wasn’t very excited and sure whether I really wanted to do this.

As a coach, I know that you deliver the best results when you are doing something that you just love to do. This is one of the fundamentals of finding pleasure in your work. The trick is to listen yourself and actually find out what you love to do most. Very often you make other drivers (such as money, image, etc) important factors in deciding what kind of work you want to do. However it’s important to pull these drivers out of the equation as much as possible and stay true to yourself while making decisions like these.

Crystal Clear

As you can understand, I didn’t get much sleep during that weekend while thinking about it and discussing it with my girlfriend, friends and family. Two years ago, it would have been a very logical step in my career as I had been managing support (and consultancy) teams at Microsoft for more than six years. However, the past two years running my own business have definitely changed my perspective on why you do things and what’s important to yourself. I even think that I left Microsoft to learn these lessons…

So on that Sunday morning it hit me: while I was rereading my the second right answer of my about page in my head, it became crystal clear that I have been following a path that spelled ‘Internet’ for a long time:

• Have been online since late 1992
• Started my own Internet business in 1995
• Microsoft hired me in 1997 because of my knowledge of the web
• In 2000 I became part of the Web TV team in Mountain View
• While running my own business, I just love working on websites, the content and building online strategies to support the brands
• Today, when speaking to clients, potential customers, friends, we always talk about innovation on the web, social media, how to generate traffic and optimize web pages
• People in my network specifically come to me to talk about how to optimize their online strategy, branding and results
• My work on Alexve.com brought together my passion for the web, technology and innovation. It ignited new passions for WordPress, Personal Branding, Blogging and everything surrounding that.

Steering into a new direction

After this epiphany, it became a lot easier to stay true to my path. It was then that I decided to say no to the interim assignment I mentioned. I also made a commitment to myself to adjust the direction of my current career, even moving away from my CEO work for Team vNext BV.

In the upcoming weeks, I will be focusing on opportunities to provide my services to help you and your business get the most out of the web. I will be looking for ways to combine them with my experience running a consultancy business, managing teams, being a coach and entrepreneur. I know I will have the most fun doing that! In case you are interested in partnering or already see opportunities, please do not hesitate to contact me. Thanks!!

P.S. If you are a regular visitor, you will probably have noticed some of the updates on the site already that reflect the change in strategy. I will share more about the site updates in the following days.

Have you changed or adjusted your personal strategy lately? I’m curious and love to hear from you via the comments on the site.

How a Tough Decision Made It Easy To Become An Internet Strategist

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1. The future is here. It’s just not widely distributed yet – William Gibson

2. Strategy is about seeing distant things as if they were close and to take a distanced view of close things – Miyamoto Musashi

3. There are risks and costs to a program of action, but they are far less than the risks and costs of comfortable inaction – John F. Kennedy

4. A mind once stretched by a new idea, never regains its original dimension – Oliver Wendell Holmes

5. The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams – Eleanor Roosevelt

6. Change will not come if we wait for some other person or some other time. We are the ones we’ve been waiting for. We are the change that we seek – Barack Obama 

7. The only limit to your impact is your imagination and commitment – Anthony Robbins

8. There is no doubt that creativity is the most important human resource of all. Without creativity, there would be no progress, and we would be forever repeating the same patterns – Edward de Bono

9. You can never cross the ocean unless you have the courage to lose sight of the shore – Christopher Columbus

10. The pessimist sees difficulty in every opportunity. The optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty – Winston Churchill

Have a favorite quote of your own? I love add it to the list. Please write it in the comments area below and leave your name if you want credit.

Top 10 Quotes That Inspire You to Change

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We are using the best controller ever invented: You!

Natal, a rectangular bar that sits on your TV, tracks your body’s movements and recognizes what you say to it. It also understands your tone of voice, allowing you to truly interact with a game and enter the virtual world. No announcements were made on when the solution will be available or how much it will cost, however it will be compatible with every Xbox 360 system.

To get a good impression on what’s possible, checkout the Milo video here:

For me, it is one of those innovative solutions were you think “yes, I’m living in the 21^st century”. With it, we are quickly approaching a future where you can take part in a virtual experience that is nearly indistinguishable from the real thing. Perhaps this technology is bringing the Holodeck from Star Trek a step closer to reality…

There is another great video that shows how much fun it can be to play using the technology in a game called Ricochet.

It is clear that Project Natal is Microsoft answer to Nintendo’s motion controlled gaming solution you see in the Wii today.

Want to see more action? Checkout the official Project Natal video:

There are some intriguing questions arising though: if a tennis video game requires the same body movements as actually playing tennis, why not go to the tennis court and play the game? What will be the impact on real life relationships, if you can have authentic conversations with a virtual person? What do you think of Natal? Please share your thoughts in the comments area below!

What Everybody Ought to Know About Project Natal

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Do you have an Amazon Kindle or have you pre-ordered your Amazon Kindle DX?

You can start reading Alexve.com – Innovation Conversations on your Kindle in under a minute.

Don’t have a Kindle? Get yours here!

A Nice Additional Publishing Stream

While you might only know the Amazon Kindle as an electronic book and newspaper reader, you can also read blogs with the device. In the past, only establish blogs were allowed on the Kindle list. Since two weeks however, Amazon is allowing much more blogs to be listed through the Kindle Publishing for Blogs beta program. With this step, Amazon has innovated its publishing platform by leveraging popular (user generated) content for anyone to read.

Each blog subscription has a price tag though, so I am not yet convinced that many people will choose to read blogs this way. Especially since free alternatives are available, take Google Reader for your mobile phone for example. However even if you doubt anyone would subscribe to your blog this way, it is still a good idea to sign up and get listed on one of the biggest websites on our planet. It is a nice additional publishing stream to the available subscription methods of this blog and the free exposure can’t hurt!

Innovation Conversations on the Amazon Kindle

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You want to achieve something more when you share your contact details, right?

Perhaps you want to be better remembered or you want people to welcome your business more. Now why not embrace social media to achieve these goals? Let’s look at the benefits of sharing social media profiles on your business card.

Supports Your Personal Brand

A social media enabled business card provides a personal experience to those who receive your card. You make it easy for them to find extra information about you, your professionals skills and company. This helps you to differentiate yourself professionally and support your personal brand.

Take for example the business card you would receive when we would meet for my work as independent contractor. It provide links to the subscription pages of this website, my Twitter account and Linkedin profile. All are direct invitations for you to connect with me online. The back of the card is a larger version of my avatar, making it easier for you to recognize my online identity and personal brand.

Make a Better Connection

Now picture the moment you normally give your business card to someone.

You usually just met that person face to face for the first time, right? By giving your card, you support your efforts to make a connection with him/her during that first meeting.

What if your card triggered the person you just met to also connect with you on social media networks after your meeting?

You get an awesome opportunity to fast track your business relationship.

Give So Much More Than a Card

If you take a closer look at social interaction in business, you see you can only ‘cook’ (do business) successfully with the right ingredients. Whether it is a prospect, your new boss or co-worker, you build successful business relations using the following ingredients:

1. Trust
2. Value

Social Media allows you to give a transparent view of your business activities (helps build trust) and articulate the value you provide. It also allows you to show your sincere interest in the person you just met and give so much more than just a card. It directly enhances your chance of success in business.

Easily Continue Your Conversation Online

Once connected you have a fantastic opportunity to follow up on your first conversation. In the ‘old days’, you just had e-mail or a telephone. Now you have Tweets, Facebook Status Updates, FriendFeed, just to name a few. If your business card enhances the initial connection you make with someone, social media allows you to continue your conversations and build on possible opportunities.

Your Next Business Card?

It makes sense to enable your traditional business card for social media. However, you also have some great alternatives for that small piece of paper. Take Pokens (I like to give them away to potential customers) or Dutch solution My name is E for example. These technologies allow you to create an online business card and share it in real live, all with a single touch via a small device or even your mobile phone.

What you might find however, is that not everyone is ready to adopt to this type of technology just yet. Perhaps if all mobile phone manufactures conform to a single standard for contact exchange. Until that day, we will probably use a combination of traditional cards and this type of technology. Just make sure your card is social media enabled (and you use FSC certified paper), more people will remember you. Guaranteed!

Something to think about when getting new business cards

• What is your business’ social media strategy
• What is the most important information for the person that receives your card
• What do you want people to do when they get home with your card

Do you use social media in your business?

The astounding growth of social media sites such Twitter and Facebook is amazing. It’s also fun and allows you to stay connected with more people than you ever imagined. Does your business card invite people to connect with you? Why not? Love to read your thoughts or ideas on the whole subject! Please share them in the comments area below.

The Secret of a Social Media Enabled Business Card

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