The word “Portmanteau” is used to describe a linguistic blend, namely “a word formed by blending sounds from two or more distinct words and combining their meanings.” My favourites Portmanteau words include

Tryverting - The process of sampling or giving away products and services in order entice customers to buy your product
Freemium is a business model that works by offering basic services for free, while charging a premium for advanced or special features.
Chilax – This can be used or directed at someone to calm down or not get stressed out. It combines the words chill and relax.
Trysumers - Trendwatching describes them as a transient, experienced consumers who are becoming more daring in how and what they consume, thanks to a wide range of societal and technological changes.  This I believe is still the case and even more important now in economic downtimes.

Every wanted to read a book about the future that talks in simple terms?  The cluetrain Manifesto is one such book.  The manifesto was written in 1999 by Rick Levine, Christopher Locke, Doc Searls, and David Weinberger.It discusses how A powerful global conversation has begun.

Through the Internet, people are discovering and inventing new ways to share relevant knowledge with blinding speed.

As a direct result, markets are getting smarter—and getting smarter faster than most companies. These markets are conversations. Their members communicate in language that is natural, open, honest, direct, funny and often shocking. Whether explaining or complaining, joking or serious, the human voice is unmistakably genuine. It can’t be faked.

You can find out more by visiting the site at cluetrain.com The book is  also on Amazon

This weekend my girlfriend and I went to see the new Twilight movie. (I have to admit I am a fan) I think we were the only people older than twenty in the cinema.  Undeterred we enjoyed the film, what I enjoyed more was the lessons you could learn from the audience. The video below is a great example of how if done correctly you can create anticipation and desire in your customers and audience.

“Creating anticipation” is not a new phenomenon and is standard practice in the movie industry.  You have the teaser trailer, and now the use of social media to create anticipation and in some cases hysteria in your audience or customer as highlighted in the video above.  In short create buzz and anticipation and you will have customers wanting your product or service as much as  vampires crave blood.

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How to be an entrepreneur.  The question it’s self makes me frown.  Having just done a search on those exact key words Google presented me with 11,500,000 search results.  In my opinion there are 10 steps to becoming an entrepreneur.

10 Steps to become an entrepreneur:

1. Be fair
2. Be understanding
3. Be creative
4. Be tough
5. Be polite

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If you haven’t heard about the “BRIC MARKETS” then you better start now! BRIC is an acronym for the emerging markets and covers the following countries. Brazil, Russia, India & China.

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Brazil

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Population:

198,739,269

Economic Overview

Once again Brazil is turning into one of the world’s favorite investment destinations. With the Brazilian economy recovering and its stock market rated as the world’s number one in percentage gains, this is no surprise. Amidst the world’s economic pessimism the IBOVESPA (most important Brazilian stock indicator) has advanced 27,41% according to the MSCI scale (created by Morgan Stanley Bank). View oringinal article at www.helium.com

This is just priceless.  As entrepreneurs and business people we have to be creative at times, however thankfully the creative execution doesn’t get mixed up with the creative idea which can sometimes happen.

My latest tweets this week

1. Google says PC will start in seven seconds or less http://bit.ly/8stSaB
2. Secret of Business Success: most important value in the the world http://bit.ly/496pgx
3. The F.U.T.U.R.E will be Fast, Urban, Tribal, Radical & Ethical http://bit.ly/7P1XMt
4. @cyclehoop Cool – look forward to getting the info about 1 hour ago from web in reply to cyclehoop
5. Quote of the day on the tube home “If I wanted it with chicken, I would have asked for it” lol
6. Great insight into #ActivityStreams #dataflows #privacy & clipping analysis of sentiment from @torgo & @ssethi at Adam Street
7. Meeting at the Adams Street members club. Bob Geldof is sitting opposite.
8. @Enterprise_UK just joined as I thought I would support your good work

There comes a time when the old modes of conduct  make way for more innovative technological advances. Google prooved to be one such organization.  The company has become that popular that they are in fact a verb.

To Google refers to using the Google search engine to obtain information on the Web that did just that. If you’re over the age of 90 or have been living in a cave as a hemit then you will not be aware of the vast amount of products and services that Google now has in it’s porfolio including Images Maps News Video Mail

1. Giving outstanding service
2. Be honest
3. Be yourself
4. No hard sell

I once heard a joke that went something like this:

“A young boy comes home from school and says to his dad.  “Dad will you help me with my homework.”  The dad says.  “Of course son, what is it?”  The young boy says.  “I’ve got to find out what probable reality is?”  The dad scratches his head then tells his son to go up stairs and ask his mum if she’d sleep with Robert Redford for a million pounds.  So the young boy goes upstairs to see his mum.  He says.  “Mum would you sleep with Robert Redford for a million pounds?” “Yes I would!” Replied the mum.  “But don’t tell your father.”  So the young boy

If your not familiar with Flash Forward the premise is simple:

A mysterious event causes everyone on the planet to simultaneously lose consciousness for 137 seconds, during which people see what appear to be visions of their lives approximately six months in the future – a global “flashforward”. A team of Los Angeles FBI agents, led by Stanford Wedeck (Vance) and spearheaded by Mark Benford (Fiennes), begin the process of determining what happened, why, and whether it will happen again. Benford contributes a unique perspective on the investigation; in his flashforward, he saw the results of six months of investigation that he had done on the flashforward event, and he and his team use those clues to recreate the investigation.

The team investigates a number of events related to the flashforward, including “Suspect Zero,” who did not lose consciousness during the event, the sinister “D. Gibbons”, and a similar mass loss of consciousness in Somalia in 1991. Meanwhile, personal revelations contained within the flashforwards occupy the personal lives of the principal characters. Mark Benford sees his alcoholism relapsing, his wife sees herself with another man, and other characters grapple with similarly unexpected or surprising revelations in their flashforwards.  (Source from wikipedia )

The premise is an interesting one, as it brings about questions of faith, morality and belief.  Like the programme I think you should create your own Flashforwards and here is how I suggest you go about doing it.

1. Have a goal or objective eg “I want to have launched my new business and have one major client”
2. Focus on achieving small elements of that goal
3. Leverage expertise.  This will help you reduce the mistakes you make and increase your chances of success
4. Have a deadline.  Like the programme, the “Flashforwards would all come true on on April 29, 2010  10:00pm
5. Never give up

If you haven’t seen Flashforward here is a short trailer:

Just a quick note to say that I will be speaking at the (ACYE) African & Caribbean Young Enterprise. The  (ACYE) aims to encourage, support, inspire and empower more sustainable young black business.  For more information visit (ACYE)

Do you have lots of different email account?  Do you find it hard trying to manage them all?  Well worry not.  Inbox2 is here to help.  Inbox2 is an application collects all your mail (messages and content) and micro blogging updates from friends and contacts into a single activity stream.

The activity stream can be sorted by contacts or the configured accounts known as channels in Inbox2. Your mail activity stream is always in sync. Check out this simple video that explains all.

For Facebook users:
Log into Facebook and use the following linkhttp://apps.facebook.com/emailstream to start Inbox2 in Facebook.

Check out your customers profile and find out which groups of people are most engaged with your content.

For an explanation of these groups (Creators, Critics, etc.), see a presentation (8 slides) or read Chapter 3 of Groundswell. Bars indicate the percentage of the selected demographic that are in each Social Technographics group. The white marks indicate the same percentages for the whole population of the country selected.

The index indicates how the demographic compares to the population — a score of 100 means the demographic is the same as the population average. The message “No data available” appears when you request a profile for which our survey samples are not large enough to provide a reliable answer. This occurs for age groups in Japan, Metro China, and South Korea. To see profiles in these countries, set the Age to “Not specified”. Original source from forrester.com

I came across a new service today that I am really loving.  It’s called Mixcloud.  In thier words “Mixcloud is a London based startup, with a home in the warehouse pictured in West West London. We’re friends old and new (many of whom met at Cambridge University) connected by our love for radio, problem solving and building exciting new projects.

It was through this intersection of interests that we realised there’s an obvious problem on the Internet that we need to fix – that of connecting radio shows, DJ mixes and Podcasts to listeners.  We think all these forms of content offer a very similar listening experience – a “Cloudcast” – that is curated by a human enthusiast or expert.

That’s the important bit – we’ve always discovered great new things through people we respect, so we want to help guide listeners to those people more easily.  We also believe in simplicity. We love clean design, enjoyable user experience, intuitive navigation and clear information architecture.”

Having had a play around with the site, I will definitely be using them again. I suggest you check them out and find out for yourselves whether they  really will be the youtube of radio.  You can check them out here: www.mixcloud.com

As the future is uncertain, and the past is, well, the past, instant-gratification seeking consumers are embracing anything real-time with more passion than ever before.  Great overview from trendwatching

Nowism

Re-tweet if you like it.

As humans we are invariable creatures of habit.  Understanding what drives people can be fundamental in terms of generating  revenue, building relationships or simply having better social interactions.

On the web or in email, or more particularly within social media the desire to scan or browse, skip information etc..is greater. Therefore, in order to capture your users/Fans attention, there are several key things you can do to drastically boost your engagement.

Teasers, Desires & Goals.  These are specific human qualities to which you can manage in order to increase the attention factor when engaging with your audience.

a) The Three Greatest Human GOALS.

The Three Greatest Human GOALS are to either save or make 1) time, 2) money or 3) energy.  If you can provide your user/client/Fan with something that can help to make more money, save more time, spend less energy and so on, then you will have more success at not only engaging with your audiences, but also retaining your audiences.

Now I for one am not a fan of X Factor! I hate the humilation that all the contestants have to go through.  My girlfriend on the other hand loves it and can be heard humming the theme tune around our house which drives me mad.

The popularity of the show then got me thinking about business.  The video below is of one of the contents called Danyl Johnson.  The video has already recieved 8,480,213 views on YouTube due to the popularity of the voting format and also for the controversy that it sometimes causes.

I for one would love to see a business program like Dragons Den or the apprentice in the format of Britain’s Got Talent.  Essentially budding entrepreneurs would get between 30 seconds to 2 minutes to pitch their ideas.  The best business ideas would then win a chance to win a prize?

Think of it as X Factor meets Dragons Den meets Britain’s Got Talent!   Is this a good idea or not, would it work?  Leave a comment and let us know.

This book will change your life!  I know that sounds like a cliche, however to anybody who is struggling with who they are Marci Alboher’s book is a real revelation to anyone who is labelled as X, however is also X.

Here’s a synopsis of her book

From lawyer/chefs to surgeon/playwrights and mom/CEOs, today’s most fulfilling lives are the ones filled with slashes. One Person/Multiple Careers is essential reading for anyone who is loathe to answer “What do you do?” with a singular definition.

Marci interviewed hundreds of people pursuing multiple careers simultaneously — from a longshoreman/documentary filmmaker to a management consultant/cartoonist — and discovered how slash careers integrate and fully express the multiple passions, talents, and interests that a single career often cannot accommodate. The book is a blueprint for building a life filled with slashes and custom-blending a career.

Has anyone else read this book?  Re-tweet and comment

There is also a great video from AtGoogleTalks with her & Tim Ferriss which discuss their books..

I was reading an article on by Dan Gillmore from the Guardian on Saturday 3, October 2009, about The new rules of news. One of the points he mentions in his 22 ideas for changing the way news is produced is that he “would replace PR-speak and certain Orwellian words and expressions with more neutral, precise language.

If someone we interview misused language, we would paraphrase instead of using direct quotations. (Examples, among many others: The activity that takes place in casinos is gambling, not gaming. There is no death tax, there can be inheritance or estate tax. Piracy does not describe what people do when they post digital music on file-sharing networks.”

This got me thinking about language in the context of social media and more importanlty “HOW TO TALK.  I then went onto search on Google for “How to talk” the results showed 1 – 10 of about 302,000,000 – everything from how to Talk To The Opposite Sex, and even how to talk gangsta?