Spending too much time managing new technologies to deal with your core business? You’re not alone. Let’s look at a brace of Harvard Business Review articles that address change, technological disruption and strategies for coping then close it up with an amusing video.

Moving toward a world in which the constant is change

According to John Hagel III, John Seely Brown and Lang Davison in their HBR article “The New Reality: Constant Disruption,” models of economic and business change followed something along the lines of Stephen Jay Gould’s punctuated equilibrium model, where significant turbulence is introduced, change in response to that turbulence occurs and then a period of calmer equilibrium follows.

For example, once centralized electric utilities learned how to capture the economies of scale in electricity production and distribution, businesses could focus on how to reconfigure their own operations to take advantage of this new infrastructure, secure in the knowledge that the basic infrastructure was now stable.

Makes sense in a consumer-product world where things are made and physically shipped. However, it doesn’t sound like the world of today where we all have multiple Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, MySpace, iTunes and more profiles (how many of you have old Friendster accounts to throw in there as well?)

The authors continue by outlining a fundamental difference between the consumer-goods and product driven past to the service-industry and communication driven present:

Today’s core technologies—computing, storage, and bandwidth—are not stabilizing. They continue to evolve at an exponential rate. And because the underlying technologies don’t stabilize, the social and business practices that coalesce into our new digital infrastructure aren’t stabilizing either. Businesses and, more broadly, social, educational, and economic institutions, are left racing to catch up with the steadily improving performance of the foundational technologies.

The end conclusion of the article is: if the above is an accurate picture of the world then we are in for continuous disruption rather than the punctuated equilibrium of the past. The authors believe that the combination of digital computing as the driving technology with the easing of regulations and other policies will create a constant state of change.

If you don’t like disruption that’s a pretty scary picture of the future if not the present.

Luckily, the authors produced another article.

The core and the edge, defining moving parts in a world of change

In “How to Bring the Edge to the Core,” John Hagel III, John Seely Brown and Lang Davison outline a strategy for business organizations to work within an environment of constant change. They begin by creating definitions for a concept about “edge” vs “core.” This edge/core concept can apply to many aspects of your business and life:

• Markets: existing/profitable market is core while an emerging market is edge
• Personal traits: primary experience/skills/talents are core while developing/hobby/auxilliaries are edge
• Geographies: saturated and developed geography is core while emerging geographic market is edge
• Products/Services: existing commodity-like product/service is core while new/under-developed products and services are edge
• Business practices: established practices have resources and well-developed policies, edge practices operate with few resources or management oversight.

Basically, edges occur anywhere there is growth potential. There may be a practice that is untapped or addresses a currently untapped market.

Core occurs anywhere the potential for growth has already been seized upon. A core business practice is currently capturing most of the available resources and has well defined processes/policies to maintain itself. At the organizational level, the authors define core as “where the money and resources are today.”

Integrating edge technologies into the core, an outdated strategy?

When confronted with a new technology or business practice (aka a disruption) some organizations follow a strategy of trying to integrate or absorb the new technologies/methods (edge) into their established practices (core). A logic pattern like this might occur:

1. Twitter is a new communication technology.
2. Email newsletters are a communication technology.
3. Let’s use and measure Twitter the same way we use and measure email newsletter technology.

If we follow through with this line of thinking, we will short-circuit the available growth potential of Twitter for helping with customer service, market research, etc.

Here’s another example of a core-absorbing-the-edge strategy, see if it sounds familiar:

1. Someone invented a computer thing called a website and all of our competitors are getting them.
2. These websites involve computers.
3. The IT gurus know about computers, let’s put them in charge of our website.

This line of thinking is how more than one organization put the communication tool with the largest growth potential in the hands of a group which is not traditionally known for its marketing or communication skills.

Because these examples are so much fun I’ll give you one more, from the ad agency side:

1. Someone invented a thing called a website and all of our clients want to buy one.
2. You look at these website things on a screen.
3. The television ad production team knows about screens, let’s put them in charge of websites.

Remember those websites with 90 second “skip intros” that took so long to load? Now you know how that happened.

When you put the same burdens and requirements of a developed, core business practice onto an edge technology, your success and results will depend on the size of the hammer you’re using to put a the square peg in the round hole.

Core support for edge practices, a strategy for constant change

The authors suggest an alternative strategy: instead of integrating edge practices into the core, you extend support from the core to promising edge practices. You probably caught that last phrase: “promising edge practices.” If we all were adept at identifying the promising edge practices then we wouldn’t much need to read the Harvard Business Review in the first place.

The authors do help us out though, here four attributes to define the promising edge practices:

• offer significant headroom for performance improvement
• a large potential user base
• require modest investment for participation at the outset
• offer the prospect of significant short-term returns to support bootstrapping efforts by lots of participants

Note that the phrase “performance improvement” is included in these four attributes. Just because edge practices aren’t held to the same set of criteria as core practices, doesn’t mean there is a blank check on performing edge work. Some method for measuring performance improvement will need to be adopted, even if it is much different than that of your core practices.

Assuming you’ve identified an edge practice or technology, what do you do?

To exploit opportunities on the edge, executives must resist the temptation to prematurely integrate edge resources into the core of their operations. Instead, they should determine what resources they can offer to help scale the innovations being developed by edge participants. This could catalyze the development and deployment of growth platforms, platforms that edge participants can then use to more effectively design and deploy new innovations.

Note that the focus is to incorporate as many participants as possible. A core business unit, according to the authors, should be interacting and supporting as many edge units as possible to increase the opportunity for growth and information exchange in a changine world.

Here’s that funny video I promised at the beginning:

A lot great articles about search lately. Not just search engine optimization, but the whole concept of what search is and how it can be used for engagement etc. Here are some that I’ve been reading:

Mobile Search

People search for things in a context. They are somewhere in the universe and they need to know something. Ten years ago if we wanted to search for something we could use this fancy new thing called the internet and it was awesome. We logged in on our dial up modems and typed our questions. We used computers weighing at least eight pounds to interact with the data. The screens were maybe a foot wide or more.

Increasingly, we’re out in the world and looking for something. We use devices weighing a few ounces. The screens are a few inches wide. We can’t type into them and a noisy real-world environment surrounds us. But we still want to search for something.

“Mobile Search Engine Optimization” describes some of the different ways we use search on the go. We think and act differently when using mobile devices. Your search engine optimization that works so well on a desktop at your office, might not be reaching and engaging a customer who is standing within ten feet of your product or service. This is an emerging area of research so expect more in this vein.

Want to get ready for a mobile search world? The future of the mobile web is available to you every weekend.

Lifestyle Real Estate Search

While Union Street Media customers have been using our One Click Real Estate Search technology to craft custom lifestyle real estate searches on their sites for some time, there are an increasing number of services and aggregators focusing on creating real estate searches that highlight more than just price and location. Joel Burslem gives a roundup of several, including the Onboard Infomatics Lifestyle Listings Engine (which looks pretty sweet).

How do people search for real estate?

Understanding what people type into search engines is very important to getting the reach you need for your site. It helps you put your site in front of people that may find your site relevant. There’s been a fair amount of chatter about “natural language search” vs the “old” checkbox-zip-code-how-many-bathrooms approach. The FBS Blog (quickly becoming one of my favorites, by the way) gives a quick take on natural language search and whether it applies to real estate.

Image by luc legay via Flickr

When I first started writing on the Real Estate Internet Marketing Blog I wrote a weekly review roundup post every Friday. I’m going to revise this practice for a couple (of selfish) reasons:

1. It’s fairly easy to do, I’m reading these things anyway.
2. I think you’ll find something useful in the links provided and remember this blog as a place that points you towards something useful.
3. I’m hoping you engage in the topics represented and as a result your business, life or both improve.
4. I the trackbacks/pingbacks on the articles listed bring relevant and useful traffic to this blog.
5. I want you to know what sort of things I read so you can tell me about other things I might like.

For what it’s worth, these five reasons are good for you to link to others as well. It isn’t about “linklove” or helping to promote someone or any of that stuff.

At Inman Connect New York, Jeff Turner had a great presentation about understanding and using the concept of engagement to help your website perform better. One of the charts he used is from Logic + Emotion, a blog by David Armano. This week’s outbound post features several of Armano’s great charts about social media marketing.

Are you creating, providing or receiving unexpected value?

In the short, text-only post Unexpected Value, Armano describes some thinking that occured as a result of a small bit of text at the end of a friend’s email. It was about “the little things.” But that’s a little too simplistic perhaps. He describes the hand written notes and personal touches and, related to social media marketing, the “unexpected value I recieved from the millions of micro-interactions I have with people online—most whom I’ve never met before.” (I think I might be responsible for one of these) For those of us engaged in social media marketing, there are all sorts of small things that we learn and share in a casual and offhand manner which may have significant impact on someone else. Here’s what Armano has to say to those who get too focused on defining “value.”

Value, is subjective—but the way we respond to it isn’t. We save things of value, we recommend them to others, sometimes we can’t even put a price on it.  When it’s unexpected, it’s even better.

I try to provide unexpected value by writing on this blog and trying to stay focused on useful things you can do to improve your business. I also try to route ideas and thoughts to people who can use them in other ways. Watching interesting information sources, putting it all in context and then disseminating it is something we all can do to provide unexpected value all the time.

Becoming a social media believer

Next up on the Armano-train is his graphic + essay on the Social Media Conversion Scale. It describes the phases people go through as they adopt social media. For anyone just getting started, it’s good to see what you’ll go through. It also helps you understand the people who are pushing some new technology just a little too hard. Does this describe anyone you know?

“When becoming immersed so deeply in something, you begin to lose perspective on how things look from the outside—you become so intent on enlightening others that your zeal can actually turn them off creating un-belief.”

Luckily, he goes on to describe all the phases and helps you get through them and get on with your work.

The social media scale

An auxilliary graphic to the previous article, perhaps, the OMG-WTF spectrum is just a simple graphic. Once you’ve actually started to use social media, it might be worthwhile to look at this graphic and determine where you belong.

Blogging for community

Moving on from Armano’s conceptual work, let’s talk about blogging. Even though Twitter is all the rage (follow me) and Facebook is very sexy, your blog is probably your best and most important hub in a social media strategy. You can talk and chatter all day long using various tools and networks but sooner or later you’re going to want to bring people home. Your blog is that home. Chris Brogan has 27 tips for blogging that help you get the most out of your blog.

A tool to consolidate to your social media presence

I was fortunate enough to have lunch one day at #ICNY with Jeff Turner, Stacey Harmon, Ines Hegedus-Garcia, Jay Thompson and Pat Kitano. During our conversation the topic of where to keep all these different fragments of our online content together. Once you have a LinkedIn profile, Twitter stream, blog, Facebook profile and on and on. And ongoing. It can get far too distributed in a hurry. Jeff was very much in favor of a dot-info domain name. Some were in favor of using FriendFeed. I’m sort of into my Netvibes thing but not super-committed to it.

Someone who wasn’t at that lunch but I admire a great deal is Joseph Ferrara from Sellsius. He has an article about using Extendr (web 2.0 requires such poor spelling). Myself, I like the dot-info more. But I have the tools and skills necessary to do that sort of thing. Extendr might be a best option for those who don’t want to get muddled in web-hosting and DNS issues.

Participating in these quasi-chain-letter internet events is really more of a distraction from your usual content and SEO tactics. But they’re usually a good distraction.

Memes usually don’t take much time (at least if you don’t spend time explaining all the related concepts) and they give your audience a chance to know more about you as a person. Perhaps participating in memes is be good for your YEO (you engaging others) campaign.

Understanding how memes spread can be valuable. Memes outline the strength and diversity of your network and make it transparent. At the end of the day, human beings are making decisions about who they should send the meme to. I think they balance the following three questions (what do you think?):

• Will the person I ask participate?
• Will the person I ask provide an interesting response?
• Will my association with this person help me or make me look good/cool/increase my SEO?

Now that I re-read that list it sounds like asking someone to the 8th grade dance.

How memes spread: a social media hypothesis

I received the meme from Adam Fullerton. I know Adam because he worked for Union Street Media first as an intern and then as a sales/marketing guy after he first graduated from Champlain College. He and I worked together on several projects and I was always grilling him about various online marketing ideas. You can read my recommendation for Adam at his LinkedIn profile (if you’re logged in, which you can do because having a LinkedIn account is part of your profile marketing campaign, right?).

Fully got the meme from Mike Volpe who is the everpresent cheerful voice of Hubspot, purveyors of fine internet marketing insights, blog posts and their weekly HubspotTV video podcast. Volpe was kind enough to let us all know a little about why he chose who he chose to spread the meme to. In Adam’s case, it was because Adam is a regular attendee at the HubspotTV videocasts. Adam is present online.

I have a feeling that participation in the “micro-blogging” platform Twitter assisted Adam’s decision to select me as part of his meme spreading. You see, while it’s been nearly half a year since Adam even lived in the same town as me, we follow each other through Twitter.

I sometimes post photographs on Twitter and often share what I’m doing/thinking. My presence on Twitter is part of my social media strategy. A recent college graduate, Adam Fullerton is just now entering the workforce and I like to tap his brain for new ideas. I also keep a special watch on his feed in case there’s something I can help him with (I believe in a strong company alumni program). I am present online.

When Adam was deciding who he should tag, I wasn’t his geeky colleague from six months ago. I was the guy who posted a link to a crazy photograph of a horsedrawn snowboarder last night. Or both maybe.

I think my use of Twitter has increased my presence and relevance with Fully. Sure this means I have to respond to this meme thing, but it also means I know what’s happening in the Boston area and am inspired to write this post about memes and marketing for you, my dear readers.

The Meme: 6th Photo

So far I’ve written quite a lot about how the meme got to this blog. Now I’ll write as if I was just participating in the meme itself, without feeling the need to write about marketing or ethnography of meme-spreading.

Well, Adam Fullerton has chosen me for a meme spread. Usually memes involve writing a little list of things about yourself or weighing in on a thought. The one that Fullerton has passed on to me involves photography. The meme is this:

1. Go to the sixth page of your Flickr photostream.
2. Go to the sixth picture on that sixth page.
3. Embed the picture on your blog
4. Write something about it.
5. Pick six others to pass on the meme.
6. Everything else in this meme is six so there must be a sixth step.

So here’s my image:

To start with, this photograph is taken with a Holga plastic camera. This is part of what gives the image that vignette look with out-of-focus-ness increasing as you get towards the corners (check the lower left for the most extreme example in this image). The Holga is a 120, medium format film camera. I take a lot of pictures with it (I have two pre-Lomographic Society Holgas that I nearly always have loaded and ready to go). Usually I shoot in color, like this image. With 400 speed film because it’s easier to find. Then I drop off the film for developing and have the shop transfer the image to CD. From there, I do some quick adjustments (often just hitting the ol’ “enhance” button in iPhoto… but sometimes I get into the Photoshop editing).

The image itself is of a stone fence in the garden of Shelburne Farms in Shelburne Vermont. The garden sits right on the edge of Lake Champlain. The grounds of the Shelburne Farms estate are beautiful and well maintained (despite the appearance of this fence). Everything there looks like something out of a postcard. They also have a killer breakfast/brunch.

This image and many others in my Vermont set of images, have a lenient Creative Commons license that allows you to use these pictures for whatever you like as long as you attribute me as the creator/owner of the image. For example, if you’re a real estate blogger looking for a picture of a crumbling fence at the end of the world, you shouldn’t feel guilty about using this one.

Also, in a Droste effect whirlpool of internships, the comment on this photograph in my Flickerstream is from an intern I had before I started working at Union Street Media (and if anyone in NYC is looking for a narrative photographer who makes great images and is a pleasure to work with, you should contact her).

I’m going to pass this meme on to the following:

1. Morgan Newcomb (sits near me at Union Street Media and also likes cameras, his site was down when I wrote this post but he says it will be back soon)
2. Nicole Nicolay (her 5 tips for using Twitter is what got me started posting pictures in my Twitterstream)
3. Amey Ryan (recently completed her initial blog coaching and I want to give her a challenge)
4. Elaine Young (A Burlington VT social media scenester, I’m hoping she’ll comment on the hypothesis in the preamble to the meme)
5. Nicole Ravlin (she’s my “biggest competition” on the Shorty Awards on Twitter for the #BTV space and  a great public relations resource)
6. Dan Cypress (a friend of mine from before I started working at USM, I’m pinging his blog to remind him it’s time to update–Hi Dan!)

Memes spread from person to person, like a cold virus. A person answers and then passes it on.

I have received my first meme ever. From no less than Joseph Ferrara over at the Sellsius Real Estate blog.

I met him for the first time in person over a lunch organized by Pat Kitano at Inman Connect SF ‘08. He’s behind the Good Sam Real Estate Network, a project that is built around the idea of helping people avoid foreclosure. I recommend you check that site out. Karma goes all directions.

Alright, so here’s the meme: 6 Random Things You Wouldn’t Know About Me Unless You Asked

1. I once apprenticed at a letterpress, setting metal type by hand.
2. I was a competitive pole-vaulter as a freshman in high school.
3. I have played a solo on French Horn on stage at Carnegie hall.
4. I grew up in North Dakota.
5. On occasion I will let a telemarketer try to sell me something just to hear the pitch as well as to have some fun seeing what happens when I bring the conversation off their script or flowchart.
6. I choose to believe in the existence of Champ, the monster who resides in Lake Champlain, because it makes life more interesting. I also have a normal, well-adjusted friend who grew up around fishing and boats who has seen Champ.

According to the code of meme-dom I must pass this question along. For the recipients who are tired of these chain-letter type things, my deepest apologies.

Sean Bossie, IT Systems Manager over at Wright Realty who really gets this internet marketing thing.

Bill Simmon, teacher videographer man-about-town who will probably chuckle quietly about being memed.

Anyone at the 7DVT staff blog because local is what matters.

Adam Fullerton, Marketing Intern alumnus of Union Street Media.

The future of SEO may require being your own middleman, according to O’Reilly. Hat tip to Drew Meyers.

The Bloodhounds make note that the hard part of doing web marketing is creating the content. Here’s a choice quotation:

“Just compare the quality and depth of content Amazon has around a $10 copy of Home Buying for Dummies to the average listing for a $500k ranch on Realtor.com.”

Joel Burslem gives the Consumer Reports real estate study some thought on Future of Real Estate Marketing.

In case you missed it, Union Street Media’s Adam Fullterton provides a strategic outline for integrating social media into your online marketing via a presidential metaphor.

A lot of us talk about transparency but at 1000Watt they ponder when it’s too much.

Rothamel cuts loose with a manifesto for the recently wired realtor.

I spend a lot of time thinking about real estate search and how to improve the experience. Marc Davisson nails it over at Inman.

Doing your own SEO instead of hiring Union Street Media’s excellent SEO for real estate pros? Better be prepared to deal with the SEO Ninjas.

Happy Friday: Is this house in your neighborhood? I hope you blog some more about it.

Google Insights is the New Secret Decoder Ring

Sellsius lays it down. Lots of posts on the interwebs about this but I like Sellsius’ best because it has the screencaps and the tactical focus.

IDX Search is the New Steak Dinner

Brian Boero sets the table for understanding why brokers should be able to perform well in the face of listing aggregation.

Website Testing is the New Fruit Fly

Jeff Stibel, writing in the Harvard Business Review, outlines the way that good online marketing happens.

Bigfoot Press Conference is the New Volcanic Keyword

It is, after all, Friday. Also, don’t forget the Times article.

Social network use and age

A hat tip to Nick Bostic who highlights the results of a recent AARP study on social network use among older Americans.

Takeaway:

Just because your newest hire is fresh out of college doesn’t mean they should run your social media strategy.

Walking the hyperlocal talk

Ben Boero gets down to the nitty gritty on what “hyperlocal” is really about. As an added bonus, be sure to read his last paragraph which gives you some tangible action ideas.

Takeaway:

If you really do know the neighborhoods you serve, you can probably do much much better than just recycling that stale Schools data on your site.

Heard about “duplicate content?”

We can never state enough how important it is to make original, useful content. Rich Jacobson, the Active Rain Community Builder lays it all out in black and white about what is plagiarism and what is attribution.

Takeaway:

Use snippets and link. It makes you look smart. Plagiarism doesn’t look smart.

The full service real estate firm

As part of his ongoing series on re-envisioning the real estate business Notorious R.O.B. gets very in depth about what service should really mean.

Takeaway:

Data is great, but will anyone ever enter it so we can get a 360 view?

Social media participation

Something appears to be wrong with Bad MLS photo of the day so here’s a great piece from the Onion. If you don’t like the Onion then best to skip this over. If you do like the Onion, don’t let their scathing irony and satire prevent you from participating in social media. Local idiot to leave a comment on the internet.

Takeaway:

It’s Friday.

Use Facebook as a marketing tool. Practical tips from Joel Burslem.

Seth Godin works the math of low hanging fruit. Don’t tweak the already optimized, fix the area which has the most to gain.

Chris Brogan talks about community, social networking and real estate. Read this for the comments (especially the non-real estate industry)

You’re jumping Twitter like it’s Friendster to MySpace. Jay Thompson gives you tools.

Transparency is more than a buzzword. Nick Bostic gives us examples.

Bad MLS Photo