Every venue of communication has a window of opportunity.   The window for generic holiday eCards has opened and shut.  Finis.  Done.   It has been taken over by the mob.  If you have clients and want to do a holiday outreach,  read on.

Why do I say this?  In my email inbox today, I had over 20 holiday eCards.  Their were some nice ones, but most, I think missed the mark.  No bah humbug intended, I love the holidays.  In the 20 days leading to Xmas, my whole family sings a holiday tune each night.  Each of my three children pick a song and put an ornament on a wall hanging xmas tree that grandma made for them.  A new tradition, with fun and meaning for a 2, 4 and 5 year old.  We put the time in.  Parenting, like a business relationship is about the time.  It would not matter what we did.  I could spend the time telling my 5 year old about the “big bang” and the origin of the universe (her favorite story).  It’s about putting in the time.

I’m not here to make a commentary on the spirit of the holidays, this is pure, good business advice.  I hope you read it in time.

First, a history lesson:  Holiday eCards emerged with the advent of email.  It was a natural fit. Easy to do and send.  You could reach out to clients that you may never go to the expense of mailing a card to.  On the receiving end, it was a new thing, unique and unexpected.

This is not the case today.  Today, if I wanted, I could send a generic holiday email to my 10,000+ linkedIN connections for less than $1.  I asked one of my engineers on the actual server time cost… it really is less than $1.  This is not taking into account the persons time to pick a holiday design, choose a generic, well wishing slogan, and click the send button.

This year, I initially thought about sending an eCard.  I’m a technology person and it seemed “logical”.  Thank you to April, Jenny & Mike from Broadlook for stopping me.  Broadlook sent out hand – signed cards this year.

The axiom that I’ve learned in this:

The impact of your holiday outreach is in direct proportion to the time and care you put in.

I like to classify things. From the cards that I got, I thought I would put together a continuum of impact.

Generic holiday eCard – These simply suck.  Stop sending them.  Few people care unless you are the only one sending them a card.    FAIL

Animated holiday eCard – These were cool and fun…3 years ago. Please stop sending these as well.  (Mom can you hear me?)  FAIL

Company branded holiday eCard - The same as Generic company eCard, except sporting a company logo on top of the usual snowflakes and mistletoe.  For the 3rd time…please stop sending these.  FAIL

Holiday Photo eCard - This is acceptable and hats off to the team at Entice Labs who sent out a great eCard. Why was it great?  It had a picture of their entire company.  For me, it was nice to see people I had met once a trade show and had talked to several times.  This passes my “time and caring” litmus test.  At some point, all business at the company had to stop so they could go outside and take a group photo. Nice touch.  PASS

Personalized eCard – When I say “personalized” I mean that someone took the time to write something.  Not a simple one liner, but a well thought out something.  One of the best cards I got this year was 3 pages from a family run business, who lost a husband and father to a tragic accident.  The card was a thank you, a year synopsis of how the business was faring and a heart felt holiday greeting.  Yes it was mass-mailed, but the content took several hours to write. They put the time in.  PASS

New Media eCards - Last year, this was cool, and for those who haven’t seen it yet, it can still be cool this year.  If you have no idea what I am talking about, see http://www.elfyourself.com.  If you wait until next year, it won’t be cool. PASS (this year)  FAIL (next year)

What did Broadlook send this year? We went with hand written cards.

Our card features our new company mascot, Captain Archer.  180 pounds of love and the chagrin to the cleaning company.  We lost Archer’s Mom & our 1st company mascot, Captain Janeway to cancer this year.  I miss her.

Igor & Janeway as a puppy in the 1st Broadlook office in 2002.  400 sq ft of fun!

Steven Covey published The Seven Habits of Highly Successful People and it was a great book.

When Dr. Covey came out with a new book, The 8th Habit, I was skeptical.  Why didn’t he think up the 8th habit right from the start?

Now I understand it.  Ideas evolve.  We are the sum total of your experiences at any point in time. You create a set of rules that you believe are universal.  In my case, I am the author of The Seven Laws of Internet Search.

The Original Laws …
1. Permutation
2. Completeness
3. Iteration
4. Frequency
5.  Process
6. Taxonomy
7. Measurable Results

It has been about a year and a half and now, guess what?  I came up with another Law of Internet Search.  The 8th law could not have been created by me…unless I was able to observe people learning and implementing the first seven laws in their Internet search activity.

Here is what I observed:  The Internet is “non-homogeneous”.  The idea of homogeneity  also resonated with me as I wrote the original seven laws.  I played with the idea of a Law of Non-homogeneity.  This means that the Internet exists in many different formats and there is no way to query everything, with a single method or game plan.

“Non-Homogeneous” sounds ugly.  To define something with “non” in front of it…it would be like cheating.  Each of the seven laws of Internet Search is meant to be a simple axiom of advice.    I failed to get my concept of Homogeneity into the laws.

Why did I fail?  It is simple.  Each of the seven laws is a solution.  Whereas “non-homogeneous” or “non-homogeneity” was talking about a problem.

What was I trying to get at?  It is also simple.  The Internet is not homogeneous, therefore, many different methods are needed to search it.  It is those very search mechanisms that the 8th Law takes into account.  The 8th law is  The Law of Environment.

In fact, the 8th Law is so important, I have moved it the top spot in The Laws of Internet Search.  It is now The 1st Law of Internet Search.

To understand the Law of Environment.  Get your mind around the concept of the Internet having many modalities. Many sites, each with it’s own set of rules or search environment.

Next.  There are some simple questions to ask.   What is the access method?  What are the sites restrictions?  Etc

In addition to the simple questions about the environment, the more advanced Internet search may want to dive into further understand the full capabilities of the search environment.

Once the simple questions about the environment are answered, the Internet search can proceed with quantifiable expectations on what to expect from their chosen search medium.

For example, it is important to understand that Google will only give you a maximum of 1000 results from any search.  Even if Google reports that their are 2450 results, you only have access to the first 1000.  Understanding this is understanding the limitation of the environment.

Here are the The Laws of Internet Search, Reloaded

1.  Environment
2. Permutation
3. Completeness
4. Iteration
5. Frequency
6. Process
7. Taxonomy
8. Measurable Results

Dr. Steven Covey, now I understand. Looking forward to the ninth law.

Semantic search is a fantastic technology, if used correctly.  I am not talking about users of semantic search technology, I am talking about the technology vendors that make it part of a system

I was inspired to write this blog after reading Glen Cathey’s (The Boolean Black Belt) Article on Why Do So Many ATS Vendors Offer Poor Search Capability.  The article made me think about search engines (google, yahoo, etc) and how semantic search is being used with them.

What is semantic search?  To put is simple: semantic search can take, as input, a word like “Java” and offers up other related terms like “J2EE” or “Beans” (both are related to Java).  This allows the user to type in a few terms but match many, many terms.

The matching terms are built into an “expert system” that is continually built over time.  Many fancy names are given to these systems, based on how they are built, but basically they are sets of rules.

Semantic search is not AI (artificial intelligence).  If you hear that, it probably started in a marketing department somewhere.

Companies that have built semantic search engines, while they have not created AI, have spent a tremendous amount of time and resources to build these sets of rules.  The better engines can build rules on the fly from a new set of data, like resumes.  This is very cool stuff.

Overall, I like semantic search.  It has great potential, however, it has great weaknesses if used incorrectly.   If built into the engine itself, semantic search can be very powerful,  this is because semantic processing is done at the search engine side, without any limitations or constraints.  However, if bolted onto a search engine, it can be more harmful than good.

Here is what I mean.  I’ll try to keep my logic simple.

1. The Google search engine has a limit in how many terms can be submitted to it.

2. Semantic search, by it’s nature, creates permutations upon given terms. For example:

“Senior VP of Sales”  can be “SVP Sales” or “Senior Vice President of Sales”

to translate that into a boolean expression you get

“senior vp of sales” OR “SVP sales” OR “senior vice president of sales”

3.  After creating permutations upon several concepts, you are out of search terms.

I’m a big believe in laws (maybe not speed-limit laws), but more the “laws of the universe” type stuff.  I like to understand and deconstruct the rules and see if each one stands alone, or, do I need to recheck my premises.  In this spirit, just before the first sourceCon conference, I developed the Seven Laws of Internet Research.  I felt there was too much emphasis on memorizing search strings and the latest search engines or sites, but not enough fundamental thought leadership on how to think about searching the Internet.

The first two laws are

1. The Law of Permutation
2. The Law of Completeness

The Law of Permutation simply states that when searching the Internet, as it is not a homogeneous source of data, you must describe what you are looking for in the language of the many vs. the language of the one.  (YES, this is what Semantic search is doing).

The Law of Completeness states you must strive for completeness of search engine results in order to have the superior outcome

Big Question:  What happens if semantic search is applied before you reach completeness of results?

Answer:  Missing data. Competitors eat your lunch.  If you are a sales person, it means missed sales leads, if you are a recruiter, it means missed resumes or passive candidates.

Does this mean that I am anti-semantic search?  No way.  I think it has great potential.

Here are my take-aways:

-Semantic search should be inside the search engine for optimal results

-Semantic search bolted onto a standard search engine is severely limited.

-Semantic search will cause data to be missed if applied before reaching completeness of possible results

-When combining a standard search engine and semantic search, it is best to apply the semantic processing AFTER completeness of data has been reached.  In reality, this would not be semantic search, but semantic filtering.

The definition and very nature of contact information is changing.

Why is this important?  If you are not able to connect with people, you cannot sell to them, you cannot recruit them, you cannot market to them.   As I talked about in the video intro, things are changing.   If there was a contact information historian, it would be me.

What gets me irritated is when something gets reported as the “next best thing”, when in reality, it is simply, the next, extremely predictable innovation in a continuum.  In this blog, I’m going to play part historian, part reporter and part futurist as it relates to contact information.  When the “next big thing” happens, and I’m including social networks, you probably won’t be surprised.

First, a definition is in order.  What is Contact Information?  I define it as:

“an information venue that facilitates communication with a person”

Why am I spending my time doing this?  My day job is steering the ship at Broadlook Technologies.  Broadlook provides technology that empowers sales and recruiting professionals with contacts at corporations.  To stay ahead, we must innovate.  To innovate, we must research.  To research we must watch, listen, learn, explore and dream a little.

One interesting aspect about contact information is that very rarely does a new form replace an old form.  For example, with the advent of SMS (or texting) people are still using email; perhaps not as much, but they are using both.  Even faxes have not been fully replaced by email.  In some cases, legal wants the paperwork.  Take it a step farther and faxes are not enough and good old paper mail is still being used.   What does that mean?

1. The nature of new venues of contact information is additive.

2. New venues lead to more specialized usage of existing venues.

3. The nature of contact information must be part of system design.

Why is this stuff, in turn, important?  Example:  If you are designing a CRM for holding contact information and you “hard code” (design something inflexible)  to store phone, fax, email and that’s it…big problem. Each time a new type of contact information is created, a hard-coded CRM would have to be updated and reprogrammed.  Some may think that a SaaS model overcomes this, but it does not.   A good CRM will have the changing nature of contact information built into it’s design and not solve it with revisions.

“A good CRM will take into account the changing nature of contact information and  design for that nature from the start and not solve it with revisions.”

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Don’t get caught up in the naming of things with words, it gets confusing.  Words change the very nature of how we think about something.  It is “this”, therefore it is “that”.  Now, a tree is a tree and a rock is a rock, unless you are in some altered state on consciousness, but we won’t go there. I’m focused on the newcomer words that are still in flux.   Too often it is herd mentality that gives  new things their name.

Today I stared on my iPhone, Blackberry, GPhone and Palm pre on my desk and ask myself  “what are these?”

Cell Phones, Mobile Devices or Mobile Computers?

My company, Broadlook is developing software for mobile devices and I needed to have all of them.  I’m also a gadget freak, so I enjoy having all of them. Perhaps the collection of them, together, was odd and put me into a bit of a trance.

“What are these?”, I asked myself again.
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