Will Marlow

Whenever a new social networking product is launched, the question of whether it will KILL its rivals always comes up. 

But for those of you who are loyal to Facebook, never fear.  Google+ will NOT kill Facebook.

Here's why.  Google+ is not in the business of being the virtual glue that holds together your real world relationships.  That's Facebook's mission.  Facebook wants to make your real world relationships richer by letting you share, chat, and interact in a safe place online.

Google+ doesn't do that.  It doesn't even TRY to do that.  Instead, Google+ wants to be the catapult that helps you launch your message/product/company/idea to greater and greater numbers of people more effectively.  It also wants to be the net that you use to pull in the best information from the people you respect.  That is Twitter's business, and my guess is that Google has a weakened Twitter (there are no full-time founders left at Twitter day-to-day) in its crosshairs right now, but most people are missing that story.

Just look at the reviews of Google+.  My hero Thomas Hawk wrote a great analysis of why Google+ is great for promoting photography.  He's mostly correct in what he says, but the very fact that Google+ is great for photographers is evidence that it is NOT competing in an area that Facebook cares about.

By the way, if anyone wants an invite to Google+, just let me know in the comments below, by email, or send up smoke signals.

I just noticed that I was quoted in this news article about Toyota's social media strategy.  I was interviewed because of my background cofounding AlumniFidelity, which helps schools and nonprofits execute modern online fundraising campaigns, as well as for my former profession advising political candidates on their communication strategies.  You can read the full story here.  If you want me to send you updates like this, or to receive new blog posts by email, just subscribe by putting your email address in the field below and clicking "subscribe."

I create leads and targeted visibility for products / companies / websites / ideas.

I love helping people get the right kind of attention for their businesses.

Here are some highlights from my background and career:

You can also get my attention on Twitter, where I'm @willmarlow.  My Twitter stream is where you'll find links to my new blog posts, updates about some of the companies and organizations I work with, occasional updates about my personal life, and some of my photography.

A  little more about me

Capitol Hill was where I first learned the fundamentals of PR and digital communications.  My first job after college was for Congressman Frank Wolf.  Despite knowing basically nothing at the time about online communications, I was put in charge of designing a new website for my boss, setting up an E-Newsletter and building up the subscriber base for it, as well as integrating social media into his communications strategy.

Later, I co-founded AlumniFidelity based largely on what I learned about online fundraising and digital communications in the political space.  The concept of "friend-to-friend" fundraising goes back a long time, well before the invention of the Internet, but online friend-to-friend fundraising was pioneered in the political world by people who later worked for Barack Obama.  I saw how awesome it was in 2006, and I wanted to build a system that could help schools, athletic teams, and charities.

We founded AlumniFidelity in 2007, and today AlumniFidelity has over 50 clients, including the University of Virginia, the University of Oklahoma, Bowling Green State University, Georgetown's Capital Breast Care Center, Towson University, and my alma mater, William and Mary.

In Q4 of 2010, I joined LogiXML (a venture capital-backed business intelligence company) to help them get publicity in places like InformationWeek and Information Management, which is an early-stage software startup in the business intelligence (BI) industry.  LogiXML provides software that helps organizations do interesting and useful things with data.  Ever since co-founding AlumniFidelity (a SaaS-based company that itself pushes off lots and lots of data), I have been fascinated by the business intelligence industry, because I believe that the most interesting things that are happening right now are happening due to innovations in the way we visualiz, represent, and consume data.  I helped LogiXML get covered in over 30 major publications like InformationWeek, Information Management, Dr. Dobb's Journal, the Financial Times of London, and others.

I periodically work under the business name Marlow Marlow Strategies.

About this blog

Just so you know, I am doing my best to keep this blog optimized for two things: (1) delivering content and (2) engaging with my readers.  To this end, there are only two levels of navigation.  Everything is organized chronologically or from the "anchor navigation" along the right side of every page.  For those of you who like to "search" a website, you have that option too.  I let people connect with me on Twitter and you can also subscribe by email or RSS.  In the "anchor navigation," I include four crucial sections: "About me," "About this blog," "My most popular posts," and "My reading list."  These four sections should give you everything you need to know about me and this blog.  I also do my best to make it easy to contact me.

Some photographic highlights...

Here is me with my boss Congressman Doc Hastings in a radio studio back in 2007:

And here I am with my first boss, Congressman Frank Wolf, who I served as Deputy Press Secretary for two and a half great years from 2005 to mid-2007.  The image below was scanned from a photograph that he signed as I was leaving the office, which you can read in the top right hand corner.

Here is me with my hero Buzz Aldrin back in 2005.

I once heard a great story about someone who accidentally sent an email containing embarrassing personal information to the wrong recipient.  The information in the email was potentially embarrassing to the sender, but it wasn't John Edwards-scale traumatizing, and the sender decided to use an interesting tactic to deal with the error.  Rather than contact the recipient and explain the error, or ask that the recipient to delete the email without reading it, she simply sent the recipient 20 more identical emails - with the embarrassing sections omitted, of course.  This way, the recipient read the most recent email and assumed they were all identical, and deleted the rest without ever noticing that the first email contained a unique section.

Today I am beginning to unfollow 12,000 people, making my way down to zero.  Currently, almost everyone I am following is also following me back.  And starting last Friday, I began informing my "followers" of this experiment, and anyone who has been paying attention to my feed has had ample time to hear me announce that I am culling faux-followers, and that I will quickly begin to add people back who I interact with, or who reach out to me, or who I am interested in.  

(Click here for the second part of this post.)

Before I get to the problem with my Twitter strategy (and what I intend to do about it), I want to explain a few things first.

As of today, I have 12,730 followers on Twitter.

The way I've built my following is fairly simple.  I post updates that are focused on my expertise (education technology, charitable fundraising, and web marketing), and I make myself easy to find for people who are interested in the same topics, I update at regular intervals daily, and I follow back individuals who follow me unless they are a spammer or look weird. 

In addition to this, I have been on Twitter for awhile, and in my early days I proactively sought out other like-minded and interesting Twitterers and I introduced myself to them by following them.  Many times they followed me back, @replied me, or interacted with me offline.  I also talk to people via Twitter, respond to DMs, and maintain public profiles on Flickr and at this blog at www.willmarlow.com to give my followers more insight into my personality and my work.  In addition to all of this, as the cofounder of AlumniFidelity.com, I am regularly interacting with customers, investors, and end-users who are tech-savvy.  This has led to lots of my followers.

I also never engage in obnoxious spam activity or use obnoxious Twitter “clients” that alienate the people who I hope to interact with.

One problem with my Twitter strategy is that my liberal “follow back” approach (like Guy Kawasaki, I follow people back as part of Twitter courtesy), I have accumulated a large number of spammers and faux-followers in my following column, which I have recently gotten sick of.  It occurred to me that I’m currently following a large number of feeds that I don’t read, and the fact that I’m following them increases their own credibility (spammers try to build up followes for that reason, I’m compiling a list of users who I interact with regularly, or whose insights I appreciate, or who I happen to know are legitimate users, and I’m going to unfollow all 12,400 people, with the exception of this relatively small list.

If you are NOT a spammer, and I’m currently following you, please @reply me or DM me if you want me to add you to my private list of people who I will follow back after I hit zero.

I’m not sure how long it will take me, but starting in 6 days, I’m going to unfollow all 12,400 people, until I reach zero, and then I will slowly begin adding followers who I’m truly interested in.

To summarize: problem = I’m following too many spammers and bots on Twitter.  Solution: unfollow everyone, and re-follow only a select number of people who I am actually interested in. 

As always, send me an email if you want to chat about any of this.

Glad to be back ;)