Guy Kawasaki: Creating Enchantment No.10 Using Technology to Communicate
Let's talk about technology for enchanting people. First, you need to remove the speed bumps from your technology. This is what you call captcha. It is done to eliminate robots and spammers. You're making it hard to sign up. What word is this? Is it Farsi? Is it Katakana? Hiragana? Is it Yiddish? What is that? Is it a Cyrillic language? What language is that? Why don't you just tell me you don't want me to register? Think of the speed bumps. When you say you can have a free account, just give me 35 fields of personal information. Oh, yeah, give us your Visa card number. We're never going to charge it. But just in case we need to verify your existence. Just tell people you don't want them to use the service. Just be honest. Remove the speed bumps. Second thing is you need to do one of these three things in most social media circumstances. You either provide information. Information like Amazon just shipped an iPhone app where you can be in a store, take a picture of a barcode. The barcode will go up in the cloud, talk to Amazon. Amazon will come back and send you an immediate message how much that thing would cost at Amazon. It's information to know that Amazon has released such a cool app. That's useful. The second kind of thing you could do is provide insights. What does it mean that Amazon has done this app? Does this mean the end of shopping in an analog sense? What does it mean to have such a great app on an iPhone? And the third way is assistance. How can I get this app? Where do I get this app? How do I use this app optimally? Those three things are the key to social media. The next thing is some benchmarks for you. You want to use technology. Well, you need to engage fast. Fast means within 24 hours. Every app message, every direct message, every email, within 24 hours. This is a goal, believe me. I am as guilty as anybody of not being able to do things in 24 hours. But this is the ideal goal. In 24 hours, you should engage many people. Again, plant many seeds. Lonelyboy15 writes to you. Answer back. It doesn't just have to be the A-lister from the New York Times. Answer back. And then, you should consider the use of technology, something you have to use all the time. It's not something that you do after everything else is done. Maybe I'll answer my email. Maybe I'll get on Twitter. Maybe I'll update my Facebook fan page. It's core to your existence as an enchanter. You have to do it all the time. It's core, not context, to use Jeffrey Moore terminology.
