Sent an email to a client invoicing the client…but failed to attach the actual invoice.
Contacted an opportunity, and (due to an editing error) referred to a DIFFERENT company instead of the opportunity’s company.
Obviously I am not eating my own wildebeest food (yes, I’m burned out on iguanas). While these were short missives which would have been significantly delayed if I had literally “slept on it,” I could have caught these errors if I had read my communications just ONE MORE TIME.
In the first case, the client alerted me to my mistake before I realized that I had made it. I have a good relationship with the client, so I just re-sent the message WITH the attached invoice and thanked the client for alerting me. I WAS paid.
In the second case, I had no previous relationship with the opportunity, so I couldn’t draw upon any goodwill. Perhaps I would have lucked out and the opportunity wouldn’t have caught my mistake…but I doubt it. I could have remained silent and just chalked it up as a loss, but I proactively apologized for the mistake. Perhaps I’ve lost the opportunity anyway, or damaged my chances severely, but it was the right thing to do.
Sometimes mistakes are intentional
I guess I could have used the excuse that I made the wrong company name mistake intentionally.
For example, the title of this post is an example of an intentional “misteak,” designed to grab the attention of the discerning reader.
And phishers and scammers often embed intentional mistakes in their pitches, figuring that if the reader completely ignores the intentional mistake, the reader is more likely to fall for the scam. Although I’m sure that this product (advertised in a game app) is NOT a scam, but is a perfectly legitimate product.
Actually, this mistake may have been TOO MUCH of a mistake. It took me several readings to figure out what “bad stars” was supposed to mean. (If you’re similarly confused, it’s supposed to be “bed starts.”) Then again, I’m not the target audience.
But I can’t think of a way to claim that I INTENTIONALLY messed up the opportunity’s company name. There goes that excuse.
Why to proactively own up to mistakes
Some people may have legitimate reasons for not revealing a mistake to someone else. Perhaps the person is a secret agent, and doesn’t want to let the enemy agent know that the information is incorrect. Or perhaps revelation of a mistake to a competitor could allow the competitor to take advantage of it.
But in most cases, you’re not a secret agent, and you’re not talking directly to a competitor. Therefore, it’s best to admit the mistake and not let it fester.
Laura Click of Blue Kite Marketing described an instance in which the company sent out an email but didn’t format the email correctly. As a result, their subscribers received a message that began:
Morning, <name>!
This was especially embarrassing to Blue Kite because it is a marketing firm, helping clients to better market their products and services. An error like this seems to suggest that Blue Kite doesn’t eat its own wildebeest food.
So Blue Kite Marketing sent a follow-up email. If you read the post that described the episode and included the text of the follow-up email, you will see that Blue Kite did the following:
Admitted the mistake.
Described how the mistake happened (without making excuses for it).
Noted that these mistakes can happen, even to seasoned marketers.
Apologized profusely.
Thanked the people who pointed out the error.
Used the episode as an opportunity to have the recipients update their profiles (“if you want to make doubly sure we know your name”).
The recipients appreciated Blue Kite Marketing’s honesty, and that email admitting the mistake resulted in tremendous engagement. As Blue Kite noted, an episode like this “builds trust and loyalty.”
Of course, apologizing for a mistake is not a guarantee that things will be better. We’ll never know, but perhaps one recipient was so incensed by the error that the person resolved never to do business with the company again. And in my case, I very well could have blown my opportunity by using the wrong company name.
But I still maintain that sincerely apologizing for a mistake is better than doing nothing at all.
And it could have been worse
But if I think about the two mistakes that I know that I made over the last two weeks, and all the mistakes that I DIDN’T know that I made over the last two weeks, and all of my other mistakes over the past few decades, they all pale in comparison to a mistake that I made about 15 years ago.
I was working for Motorola (pre-split) at the time, and if you know anything about Motorola, you know that Motorola is very big on process. Our little division at Motorola was working on achieving a particular Software Engineering Institute – Capability Maturity Model (SEI-CMM) assessment, and I was one of two people responsible for the Requirements Management Key Process Area (KPA). Our team would revise the division’s processes at times, and would announce these changes in release notes.
When I wrote the notes for a particular release, my notes made a reference to “qualtiy.”
Yes, that’s “tiy,” not “ity.”
Even <name> criticized me for that one.
Postscript
After I drafted this post, but before I published it, someone sent me a “God job” message.
But the message came with money, so I didn’t quibble.
You may recall that I previously announced a desire to repurpose and extend my content by revisiting some of my five (plus one) goals that I set for Bredemarket in 2021.
Today I’m ready to revisit my “pursue multiple income streams” goal, with a specific WAY in which I plan to pursue multiple income streams. Because multiple income streams can potentially merge into a large income stream.
Goal 2: Pursue multiple income streams. This is really an internal goal for Bredemarket, but it affects my approach.
While I know WHAT I want to do—I’m not going to quit marketing and writing and start selling nutritional supplements—I’m exploring HOW I want to do it. In some cases I’m approaching potential clients directly, while in others I’m using one of several intermediaries to do it.
There are advantages and disadvantages to direct vs. intermediary solicitation, but it’s wise to have multiple options. Some options may perform better at some times, while others perform better at other times. We’ll see what happens.
Which brings me to a conversation that I had a few months ago.
At about the same time that I became a free agent last July, one of my coworkers also became a free agent. Jenna Beck, in addition to managing proposals for biometric systems, has also consulted and written in many other disciplines.
One day, Jenna reminded me of Wordman.
Wordman? Who is Wordman?
Now there are a number of superheroes that are saving the galaxy, but those of us who know our APMP from our STC are well aware of the super powers of Wordman. While other superheroes can leap tall buildings in a single bound, Wordman can optimize your use of Microsoft Word via supplementary software, consulting, and training. This is a super task indeed.
When he is not wielding macros and styles, Wordman goes by the identity of Richard (Dick) Eassom, Vice President of Corporate Support at SMA Inc.
Jenna knew that I was already set up as an independent contractor, and suggested that I consider signing up as an associate with SMA.
SMA? What is SMA?
SMA is a consulting firm, originally established as Stephen Myers & Associates (SM&A) in 1982. It started as a proposal assistance firm (Fun fact: many proposal assistance firms incorporate “wins” either in their corporate name or in their web URL, and SMA at smawins.com is no exception.) Over the years, and after several acquisitions and pivots, SMA has grown from a proposal assistance firm and now helps clients with all aspects of a program lifecycle, from pursuit through performance. A complete list of SMA’s capabilities can be found here.
To fulfill this, SMA needs associates (independent contractors) with experience in a variety of disciplines. Figuring that SMA could possibly use an identity professional with strategy, marketing, proposal (primary state and local) and product management position, I put my name into consideration.
This required an evaluation of my experience in a format consistent with SMA’s Talent on Demand® system. As part of this process, I identified approximately 40 specific projects that I have worked on in the last 25 years. Yes, it’s a thorough process.
After completing this evaluation as well as two interviews, I was officially accepted as an associate with SMA late last year. Now that the paperwork has been completed, I am officially on board as an associate, available to serve SMA’s clients as a market / competitive strategist.
Thanks to Jenna, Wordman, and everyone else who helped me to onboard with SMA. I will still be consulting with clients directly—in fact, SMA assumes that its associates have income streams outside of SMA—but now am also available to clients via SMA’s TOD system.
When thinking about content to create, there’s one idea that I’ve had. “Over the course of 2021, why don’t I make a point of revisiting my 2021 goals and seeing how I’m doing on them?” (Content repurposing and extending for the win.)
I hope to soon revisit my multiple income streams goal. But for now, this is an ideal time to revisit my “have fun” goal.
I’ve already talked about how I snuck iguanas into a proposal for a potential client.
Well, I just had the opportunity to write a proposal for a particular opportunity.
The title of the opportunity?
“Funny and Witty Creative Writer.”
The potential client needs to create some content, but fears that if the content is too dry, it won’t be digested by the people who read the content.
So the opportunity description talked about how the content needs to be funny and witty.
I certainly had fun when I wrote my proposal to this client. Iguanas made another appearance, for example. But I also pointed out that funny and witty is NOT enough.
Here’s how my proposal began.
Having read your description of the work needed, I believe that I can provide the balance that you implicitly requested – namely, a balance between conveying the necessary content, but conveying it in an interesting manner. A service provider that can only do one without the other is as useful as a two-wheeled automobile – you’re not going to get anywhere.
My proposal continued by describing the types of content that I could provide before veering into…iguanas. (I’m going to need to find another example. The poor iguana is getting tired of being used over and over again.)
My iguana content started with a story about my former coworker who despises the cliché “best of breed.” She managed technical proposals, not entrants to the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show.
This example served to explain why one of my 2021 goals was NOT to “eat my own dog food.” Continuing my story, I then reproduced some of the text that I’ve already reproduced in this post.
After some more of the same, I changed from a yuk-yuk tone to a more serious tone. Leaving out some of the “fun” text, this is what I said to my potential client.
So what have I done here?
I have satisfied the requirements in your description by using a conversational tone that employs storytelling.
I’ve provided you with links to my web and social media content, and given you an incentive to explore them….
I have ensured that you understand my distinction between “fun writing” and “fun writing with a purpose.” You still need to convey the content.
The examples that were provided, including the attachment, exhibit different facets of my writing style, and also exhibit the breadth of topics that I can address.
We’ll see if my conversational, iguana-infused tone will actually help me get business with this particular client, and if the client is prepared to address more serious topics, such as the overall goal of the content that the client wants me to create.
While it’s important to have fun, it’s important that the fun contributes to the overall goal. Remember when I told a group of people at work that I was going to “play” with something? Some of my coworkers understood that I wasn’t going to play for play’s sake. They understood that I was going to play and ensure that the item in question achieved the goals set by the corporation.
Have fun…with a purpose.
And remember that different clients have different needs and require different conversational tones. Perhaps I may have fun while RESEARCHING the benefits and risks of using temperature sensors as a COVID-19 response, but I may choose NOT to exhibit a “fun” tone while WRITING about these benefits and risks.
(Oh, and if the “funny and witty creative writer” potential client happens to read this particular post while reviewing my writing examples, I’ll give you a bonus iguana color: orange. Let’s talk about that…and other things.)
When I wrote Bredemarket’s goals for 2021 (latest version here), my second goal was to pursue multiple income streams. This requires me to sign up with various middlepersons that marry service providers (such as Bredemarket) to contractors.
Or to TRY to sign up to such middlepersons.
I signed up with one such middleperson a month and a half ago, and never heard back from them. I had occasion to ask someone from the middleperson how long signup takes, and the person indicated that the process should complete within 10 business days. So I contacted the middleperson to see where my application stood, and waited…and waited…and eventually re-read the signup process instructions and realized that the middleperson only contacted SUCCESSFUL applicants. Non-successful applicants receive no response.
Anyway, there’s another middleperson that’s much better at these sorts of things, and I’m trying to solicit work from that service. Essentially you bid on jobs by providing a rate and a text-based technical proposal. After that you either hear from the potential contractor…or you don’t.
I began wondering if there was a way to increase my chances of hearing from the potential contractor.
As I was bidding on a content and social media strategy opportunity, I hit upon an idea.
After describing the service that I would provide, but before my call to action, I included the following section in my text proposal. (If you read my goal 2, you already know why I talk about iguanas.) Pay special attention to the last paragraph.
REFERENCE WEBSITES
If you’re contracting with someone to manage your company’s social media, you’re probably asking if I eat my own iguana food. (Dog food is boring.) Please check out my Bredemarket and Bredemarket-related online channels:
I do not have Pinterest, Snapchat, or TikTok accounts, and I have not posted YouTube videos in years.
Incidentally, if you check out the links above, one of them will specify the color of the iguana. Let me know if you see it.
I have no idea who the potential contractor is, but I’m hoping that he/she is an ex-IDEMIA employee who exhibits curiosity. If so, the person may click on the links to discover the color of the iguana.
If so, I could be really cruel and wait to reveal the iguana’s color until the very last link (Instagram).
But I’m a nice guy. The color of the iguana is being revealed right here, in the second link (the Bredemarket blog). THE COLOR OF THE IGUANA IS PURPLE. (Color purple. Geddit?)
Then again…perhaps I’ll specify a DIFFERENT iguana color in one, or more, of my OTHER social media channels.
There may be an entire army of multicolored iguanas waiting to be discovered.
Obviously I’m wondering if my potential contractor is curious. And I might be wondering if others are curious.
This post examines a number of issues regarding the use of facial recognition. Specifically, it looks at various ways to use facial recognition to identify people who participated in the U.S. Capitol attack.
Let’s start with the technological issues before we look at the legal ones. Specifically, we’ll look at three possible ways to construct databases (galleries) to use for facial recognition, and the benefits and drawbacks of each method.
What a facial recognition system does, and what it doesn’t do
The purpose of a one-to-many facial recognition system is to take a facial image (a “probe” image), process it, and compare it to a “gallery” of already-processed facial images. The system then calculates some sort of mathematical likelihood that the probe matches some of the images in the gallery.
That’s it. That’s all the system does, from a technological point of view.
Although outside of the scope of this particular post, I do want to say that a facial recognition system does NOT determine a match. Now the people USING the system could make the decision that one or more of the images in the gallery should be TREATED as a match, based upon mathematical considerations. However, when using a facial recognition system in the United States for criminal purposes, the general procedure is for a trained facial examiner to use his/her expertise to compare the probe image with selected gallery images. This trained examiner will then make a determination, regardless of what the technology says.
But forget about that for now. I want to concentrate on another issue—adding data to the gallery.
Options for creating a facial recognition “gallery”
As I mentioned earlier, the “gallery” is the database against which the submitted facial image (the “probe”) is compared. In a one-to-many comparison, the probe image is compared against all or some of the images in the gallery. (I’m skipping over the “all or some” issue for now.)
So where do you get facial images to put in the gallery?
For purposes of this post, I’m going to describe three sources for gallery images.
Government facial images of people who have been convicted of crimes.
Government facial images of people who have not necessarily been convicted of crimes, such as people who have been granted driver’s licenses or passports.
Publicly available facial images.
Before delving into these three sources of gallery images, I’m going to present a use case. A few of you may recognize it.
Let’s say that there is an important government building located somewhere, and that access to the building is restricted for security reasons. Now let’s say that some people breach that access and illegally enter the building. Things happen, and the people leave. (Again, why they left and weren’t detained immediately is outside the scope of this post.)
Now that a crime has been committed, the question arises—how do you use facial recognition to solve the crime?
A gallery of government criminal facial images
Let’s look at a case in which the images of people who trespassed at the U.S. Capitol…
Whoops, I gave it away! Yes, for those of you who didn’t already figure it out, I’m specifically talking about the people who entered the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday, January 6. (This will NOT be the only appearance of Captain Obvious in this post.)
Anyway, let’s see how the images of people who trespassed at the U.S. Capitol can be compared against a gallery of images of criminals.
From here on in, we need to not only look at technological issues, but also legal issues. Technology does not exist in a vacuum; it can (or at least should) only be used in accordance with the law.
So we have a legal question: can criminal facial images be lawfully used to identify people who have committed crimes?
In most cases, the answer is yes. The primary reason that criminal databases are maintained in the first place is to identify repeat offenders. If someone habitually trespasses into government buildings, the government would obviously like to know when the person trespasses into another government building.
But why did I say “in most cases”? Because there are cases in which a previously-created criminal record can no longer be used.
The record is sealed or expunged. This could happen, for example, if a person committed a crime as a juvenile. After some time, the record could be sealed (prohibiting most access) or expunged (removed entirely). If a record is sealed or expunged, then data in the record (including facial images) shouldn’t be available in the gallery.
The criminal is pardoned. If someone is pardoned of a crime, then it’s legally the same as if the crime were never committed at all. In that case, the pardoned person’s criminal record may (or may not) be removed from the criminal database. If it is removed, then again the facial image shouldn’t be in the gallery.
The crime happened a long time ago. Decades ago, it cost a lot of money to store criminal records, and due to budgetary constraints it wasn’t worthwhile to keep on storing everything. In my corporate career, I’ve encountered a lot of biometric requests for proposal (RFPs) that required conversion of old data to the new biometric system…with the exception of the old stuff. It stands to reason that if the old arrest record from 1960 is never converted to the new system, then that facial image won’t be in the gallery.
So, barring those exceptions, a search of our probe image from the U.S. Capitol could potentially hit against records in the gallery of criminal facial images.
Great, right?
Well, there’s a couple of issues to consider.
First, there are a lot of criminal databases out there. For those who imagine that the FBI, and the CIA, and the BBC, BB King, and Doris Day (yes) have a single massive database with every single criminal record out there…well, they don’t.
There are multiple federal criminal databases out there, and it took many years to get two of the major ones (from the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security) to talk to each other.
And every state has its own criminal database; some records are submitted to the FBI, and some aren’t.
Oh, and there are also local databases. For many years, one of my former employers was the automated fingerprint identification system provider for Bullhead City, Arizona. And there are a lot of Bullhead City-sized databases; one software package, AFIX Tracker (now owned by Aware) has over 500 installations.
So it you want to search criminal databases, you’re going to have to search a bunch of them. Between the multiple federal databases, the state and territory databases, and the local databases, there are hundreds upon hundreds of databases to search. That could take a while.
Which brings us to the second issue, in which we put on our Captain Obvious hat. If a person has never committed a crime, the person’s facial image is NOT in a criminal database. While biometric databases are great at identifying repeat offenders, they’re not so good at identifying first offenders. (They’re great at identifying second offenders, when someone is arrested for a crime and matches against an unidentified biometric record from a previous crime.)
So even if you search all the criminal databases, you’re only going to find the people with previous records. Those who were trespassing at the U.S. Capitol for the first time are completely invisible to a criminal database.
So something else is needed.
A gallery of government non-criminal facial images
Faced with this problem, you may ask yourself (yes), “What if the government had a database of people who hadn’t committed crimes? Could that database be used to identify the people who stormed the U.S. Capitol?”
Well, various governments DO have non-criminal facial databases. The two most obvious examples are the state databases of people who have driver’s licenses or state ID cards, and the federal database of people who have passports.
(This is an opportune time to remind my non-U.S. readers that the United States does not have national ID cards, and any attempt to create a national ID card is fought fiercely.)
I’ll point out the Captain Obvious issue right now: if someone never gets a passport or driver’s license, they’re not going to be in a facial database. This is of course a small subset of the population, but it’s a potential issue.
There’s a much bigger issue regarding the legal ability to use driver’s license photos in criminal investigation. As of 2018, 31 states allowed the practice…which means that 19 didn’t.
So while searches of driver’s license databases offer a good way to identify Capitol trespassers, it’s not perfect either.
A gallery of publicly available facial images
Which brings us to our third way to populate a gallery of facial images to identify Capitol trespassers.
It turns out that governments are not the only people that store facial images. You can find facial images everywhere. My own facial image can be found in countless places, including a page on the Bredemarket website itself.
There are all sorts of sites that post facial images that can be accessible to the public. A few of these sites include Facebook, Google (including YouTube), LinkedIn (part of Microsoft), Twitter, and Venmo. (We’ll return to those companies later.)
In many cases, these image are tied to (non-verified) identities. For example, if you go to my LinkedIn page, you will see an image that purports to be the image of John Bredehoft. But LinkedIn doesn’t know with 100% certainty that this is really an image of John Bredehoft. Perhaps “John Bredehoft” exists, but the posted picture is not that of John Bredehoft. Or perhaps “John Bredehoft” doesn’t exist and is a synthetic identity.
But regardless, there are billions of images out there, tied to billions of purported identities.
What if you could compare the probe images from the U.S. Capitol against a gallery of those billions of images—many more images than held by any government?
Clearview AI’s…facial-recognition app has seen a spike in use as police track down the pro-Trump insurgents who descended on the Capitol on Wednesday….
Clearview AI CEO Hoan Ton-That confirmed to Gizmodo that the app saw a 26% jump in search volume on Jan. 7 compared to its usual weekday averages….
Detectives at the Miami Police Department are using Clearview’s tech to identify rioters in images and videos of the attack and forwarding suspect leads to the FBI, per the Times. Earlier this week, the Wall Street Journal reported that an Alabama police department was also employing Clearview’s tech to ID faces in footage and sending potential matches along to federal investigators.
But now we need to return to the legal question: is “publicly available” equivalent to “publicly usable”?
Certain companies, including the aforementioned Facebook, Google (including YouTube), LinkedIn (part of Microsoft), Twitter, and Venmo, maintain that Clearview AI does NOT have permission to use their publicly available data. Not because of government laws, but because of the companies’ own policies. Here’s what two of the companies said about a year ago:
“Scraping people’s information violates our policies, which is why we’ve demanded that Clearview stop accessing or using information from Facebook or Instagram,” Facebook’s spokesperson told Business Insider….
“YouTube’s Terms of Service explicitly forbid collecting data that can be used to identify a person. Clearview has publicly admitted to doing exactly that, and in response, we sent them a cease-and-desist letter.”
For its part, Clearview AI maintains that its First Amendment government rights supersede the terms of service of the companies.
But other things come in play in addition to terms of service. Lawsuits filed in 2020 allege that Clearview AI’s practices violate the California Consumer Privacy Act of 2018, and the even more stringent Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act of 2008. BIPA is so stringent that even Google is affected by it; as I’ve previously noted, Google’s Nest Hello Video Doorbell’s “familiar face” alerts is not available in Illinois.
Between corporate complaints and aggrieved citizens, the jury is literally still out on Clearview AI’s business model. So while it may work technologically, it may not work legally.
And one more thing
Of course, people are asking themselves, why do we even need to use facial recognition at all? After all, some of the trespassers actually filmed themselves trespassing. And when people see the widely-distributed pictures of the trespassers, they can be identified without using facial recognition.
Yes, to a point.
While it seems intuitive that eyewitnesses can easily identify people in photos, it turns out that such identifications can be unreliable. As the California Innocence Project reminds us:
One of the main causes of wrongful convictions is eyewitness misidentifications. Despite a high rate of error (as many as 1 in 4 stranger eyewitness identifications are wrong), eyewitness identifications are considered some of the most powerful evidence against a suspect.
The California Innocence Project then provides an example of a case in which someone was inaccurately identified due to an eyewitness misidentification. Correction: it provided 11 examples, including ones in which the witnesses were presented to the viewer in a controlled environment (six-pack lineups, similar backgrounds).
The FBI project, in which people look at images captured from the U.S. Capitol itself, is NOT a controlled environment.
As some of you know, this is a revision to a post that I wrote on December 4, 2020. December (and January) are the times of the year when companies and people publish end of year posts. Frankly, I didn’t really feel like writing an end of year post for 2020, so instead I shared my goals for Bredemarket for 2021. And now I’ve revised those goals by adding a new goal, and explained other goals in more detail.
Goal 1: Help my clients to communicate and reach (and understand) their goals. My chief goal, of course, is to help my clients reach THEIR OWN goals. Bredemarket aims to thoughtfully and strategically provide marketing and writing services that align with client needs.
If I may briefly look back at 2020 in a positive light, I have helped clients establish themselves as subject matter experts, I have helped them to attract customers in the best possible way, and I have helped them to win business. I’m not sure how much additional business I’ve won for any of these firms, but hopefully I’m helping them lay the groundwork for securing future opportunities.
Part of my services involves determining WHAT clients actually need. Some of my clients simply ask for a blog post, but there’s often a need to dig deeper. For example, several small businesspeople and I were recently discussing how to use the “five whys” to elicit underlying needs from clients. What is this deliverable (white paper, blog post on 2021, whatever) supposed to accomplish?
I’d like to add a comment about this general “customers first” goal. When I was helping a client communicate his company’s goals for 2021, the client did not want to include this as part of his list of goals. The client preferred to talk about unique goals, and frankly putting the customer first should be a goal of every company. (OK, Sir Richard Branson disagrees with me.)
But there are times when it is wise to state the obvious. Schlitz achieved image differentiation by emphasizing the cleanliness of its brewing process. All brewers were doing this…but only Schlitz was talking about it. (Plug: I heard this story from one of the participants in a Jay Clouse Freelancing School online meetup.)
Goal 2: Pursue multiple income streams. This is really an internal goal for Bredemarket, but it affects my approach.
While I know WHAT I want to do—I’m not going to quit marketing and writing and start selling nutritional supplements—I’m exploring HOW I want to do it. In some cases I’m approaching potential clients directly, while in others I’m using one of several intermediaries to do it.
There are advantages and disadvantages to direct vs. intermediary solicitation, but it’s wise to have multiple options. Some options may perform better at some times, while others perform better at other times. We’ll see what happens.
Goal 3: Pursue multiple communication streams. This is a goal that I explicitly added to the list in January. I’ve been working on it all along, but I believe that I need to dedicate myself to it more.
I’m already communicating on dedicated platforms on the Bredemarket website, on LinkedIn (three separate pages, one of which has over 100 subscribers), and on Facebook.
But I can always do more.
I need to make a renewed commitment to my podcast.
I also have to ask myself whether other communication streams will be valuable to disseminating Bredemarket’s messaging.
Do I need dedicated Bredemarket pages on Twitter or on Instagram?
Should I launch a TikTok channel?
Should I fly a plane over Los Angeles with a Bredemarket banner?
The questions should at least be asked.
Goal 4: Eat my own iguana food. (Dog food is boring.) The original version of this very post originated from this particular goal. I wanted to pitch clients on writing 2021 blog posts for them, so I thought it best if I wrote my own. And as I previously noted, I was able to help a client enunciate his company’s 2021 goals.
Some of my other activities, such as my establishment of LinkedIn Showcase Pages for identity and technology, also satisfy this goal (and originated from another pitch idea).
Goal 5: Have fun. Years ago, when I was working for a large company (it might have been the original pre-Solutions/Mobility Motorola), I told a group of people at work that I was going to “play” with something. Use of the term “play” in relation to work did not sit well with some of the group, who thought I wasn’t taking things seriously. Others in the group knew exactly what I was talking about.
When work is fun, and you can approach it with a sense of play, it not only isn’t work, but you’re more energized about doing it. Obviously not everything can be play, but when there are opportunities to enjoy what I do, I’m going to take advantage of them.
Goal 6: Be prepared to change. This is the point where perceptive readers interject, “But John, the title only mentions FIVE goals! You goofed!”
Consider this sixth goal an added bonus! (And I’m, um, playing with your perceptions…)
Obviously I was prepared to change, since I added a new goal in January 2021 about communication streams. However, this change was relatively minor compared to the changes that many of us went through in 2020. For me, I had to pivot early in 2020 when COVID forced my employer to re-evaluated its business lines, then I pivoted again a month later when I had to start working from home, and then I pivoted three months after that, etc., etc. You’ve probably had to pivot a few times yourself.
So I recognized that these goals as of December 4, 2020 at 11:00 am could change, and they did change on January 8, 2021 at 9:30 am. “But,” as Stuart Smalley would say, “that’s…OK.”
What are YOUR goals for 2021? Oh, and can I help you express them? And what do you want to accomplish by expressing them?
(This past illustration describes something that I performed in my career, either for a Bredemarket client, for an employer, or as a volunteer. The entity for which I performed the work, or proposed to perform the work, is not listed for confidentiality reasons.)
PROBLEM
A company wanted to enter a lower price tier with a product designed specifically for that price tier.
For an early version of a product for this market, I created product requirements and demonstrated the product to prospective clients.
For a later version of a product for this market, I was in a different role, but I assisted by using county population as a proxy value to identify target customers for the new product. As the target requirements were modified, I adjusted the list of targeted counties accordingly.
RESULTS
The early product sold in limited quantities and was subsequently discontinued. (This pricing tier is in a challenging market.)
In many cases, identity fraud is accomplished by a bad actor impersonating the identity of another person. Many people have found unauthorized credit or debit card transactions that they didn’t perform, and have had to shut down and re-open their cards as a result.
However, there are other cases in which the identity fraud is accomplished by inventing a “person” out of whole cloth. Or partial cloth; a real piece of identity, such as a legitimate U.S. social security number, is combined with fake information, such as non-existent addresses, stock photography headshots, and unverified social media accounts.
The process could be less rigorous, such as creating a Twitter bot to inflate followers (no government ID needed), or it could be more rigorous, in which the synthetic identity gains legitimate credentials such as passports (although this is becoming more difficult as facial recognition compares applicant faces to existing faces).
Synthetic identity fraud can be damaging. Henry Engler of Thomas Reuters cites a figure of $6 billion in losses to U.S. lenders from synthetic identity fraud.
But sometimes the fraud, while still fraudulent, is relatively innocuous.
Take the case of a particular web design company in North Hollywood, California. If you visit its website (which, oddly enough, is on the “org” domain), the only listed contact for the company is a guy named Eric.
It’s a whole different story on LinkedIn, however.
According to LinkedIn, the company has dozens of employees, including a vast number of co-founders, chief technology officers, and chief information officers. While some are based in Los Angeles, others are based in Chicago, Dallas, Maidenhead, Kyrgyzstan, and other exotic locations. Most remarkably, based upon some of the employee pictures, the company goes over and above in its attempts to attract female technologists. It’s a statistical anomaly!
Under normal circumstances, this remarkable string of oddities would have gone completely unnoticed. I have never interacted with any of these employees, and they don’t seem to be all that active on the LinkedIn platform. Well, with some exceptions; the Chicago-based CEO of the company has made a valuable contribution to the LinkedIn discussion.
Now most of this went under the radar, until a number of LinkedIn employees made connection requests to a particular individual. Unfortunately, this particular individual was Kris’ Rides, a cybersecurity specialist with Tiro Security.
(Before you ask whether Rides himself is a bot, I should note that he has received 40 recommendations on LinkedIn from people that appear to be real, and has amassed over 500 connections. So if Rides is a bot, he is a very effective one.)
When Rides received these connection requests (including two CTOs and two CIOs at the same company), they struck him as odd. So he shared his experience with his connections, which included other cybersecurity professionals, and people (such as me) who were connected to those other cybersecurity professionals. And they’re talking.
Pro tip: if you’re engaging in synthetic identity fraud, don’t reach out to a cybersecurity professional.
Now this story probably won’t be a trending topic on Twitter, even if the bots try to make it so, but it’s certainly gaining traction in the audience that counts: namely, technology experts who have the power to tell LinkedIn and others about questionable marketing techniques.
So what happens next? A mea culpa from Eric (or whatever his or her real name is)? Time will tell.
I may be a writer who specializes in biometrics, but I write about other things also.
Perhaps you didn’t know this, but my favorite record album of all time is The Beatles, more commonly known as The White Album. Side 3 of that album concludes with a George Harrison song, “Long, Long, Long.”
Harrison was NOT talking about blogging when he wrote “Long, Long, Long.” Heck, we didn’t even have Usenet back in 1968. But if “Long, Long, Long” had been about blogging, most people would think that Harrison lived in a crackerbox palace.
Ain’t She Sweet, when sweet is a blog post?
For years, I’ve subscribed to the theory that blog posts need to be short and sweet, and have corrected myself when I thought that my blog posts were getting too long. After all, my first blog post in October 2003 was only two paragraphs long. My second consisted of a single sentence.
However, the vast majority of my subsequent posts were much longer, which finally led me to try to embrace succinct writing. Or try to, anyway.
Even Bredemarket’s business tactics are geared toward shorter blog posts. The reason that Bredemarket 400 is called Bredemarket 400 is because the target minimum length is 400 words. I’d certainly be open to writing a 2800 word blog post—after all, it provides me with more revenue—but so far my blog post customers have preferred the shorter length.
And the shorter length seems to fit the consumption preferences of some people. When seeking information, many people prefer a few minutes of reading to an hour of reading. Even if something is broken up into a series of posts, do you really want to read a 27-part series?
But what if posts aren’t read by people?
Which brings me to a comment that I made toward the end of a recent, short blog post.
And yes, Rhonda, this blog post has far fewer than 3,000 words…
Most of the people who read the post may not have had any idea why I said that. But Rhonda certainly knew, because in the interview that formed the basis for my post, Salvestrini briefly referred to a preferred blog post length of 3,000 words or more. She didn’t really go into detail about WHY longer blog posts are better, since this was outside of the scope of the interview.
You see, short blog posts can be great if a human is reading them. (Or perhaps not. We’ll come back to this later, when I give you 70 reasons why longer posts can be better in some cases.)
But in many cases, HUMANS AREN’T THE ONES READING BLOG POSTS. At least not directly.
Perhaps I’m going out on a limb here, but I suspect that most of you don’t wake up every morning and say to yourselves, “I’d better go check the Bredemarket web site and see if there’s a new blog post.” That’s NOT how this website, or many websites, get the majority of their traffic. In many cases, people visit a particular blog post because they’re searching for an answer to a question.
A question that they asked a search engine.
As a result, the people aren’t reading the blog posts. THE SEARCH ENGINE is reading them.
And how do search engines find content? Patel’s post links to another post that discusses long-tail search engine optimization. In brief, this post asserts (and Patel agrees) that more descriptive phrases are more beneficial than single words.
Let’s use an example, and say that you’re looking for a writer who specializes in biometrics. If you search for “biometrics,” you will get a lot of results that don’t really pertain to what you’re seeking. Perhaps “biometric writing” might be better, but, as I found out (iguana food, you know), that presented a number of results about a particular biometric modality. “A writer who specializes in biometrics,” while not yielding perfect results (yet), appears to provide results that are much closer to what you’re seeking.
Back to Neil Patel. His post includes a graphic (I don’t have permission to reproduce it here, so you’ll have to find it) that asserts that 70% of search traffic is long-tail traffic. And it stands to reason that longer posts will tend to have more of those longer phrases that are search engine gold. (Don’t try shorter posts that use keyword stuffing; Google’s on to that.)
In summary, posts often AREN’T read by people, but by search engines that are seeking the phrases for which searchers desire the answers to questions.
Why not go to seventy different sites to answer your question?
But Patel asserts that there are other advantages to longer posts. One of these is the fact that a comprehensive post on a particular topic will serve the reader better, since it can answer all of his or her questions.
How many of you groaned when you saw my question above about visiting seventy different sites? If you want a comprehensive answer to your question, I’m sure that most people would prefer to read one comprehensive well-written post instead of reading seventy different posts.
You’re perceived as an authority in your industry. Your audience appreciates comprehensive posts that delve into intricacies of their pain points. They won’t need to jump on 10 different websites to get the same information.
Yeah, Patel referenced ten sites while I referenced seventy. My pain points are truly painful.
A few moments ago, I made the statement that “short blog posts can be great if a human is reading them.” This is sometimes true, and sometimes not true, depending upon what the human wants to know.
If the human’s question is fairly simple—for example, “When did the Cuban Missile Crisis occur?”—then a short post with a single sentence may be sufficient.
But what if the human asks a more complex question—for example, “WHY did the Cuban Missile Crisis occur?”—many people aren’t going to be satisfied with a one-sentence answer. This article devotes over 2,500 words to the topic.
So, who’s right on blog post length?
If you’ve come to this post to find the definitive answer on blog post length, I’m going to have to disappoint you.
Blog posts are designed to do one of the following three things:
Regardless of attention span, SEO, or anything else, a blog post will be as long as it needs to be to satisfy its purpose. (Yes, I’m channeling Abraham Lincoln here.)
This particular post is roughly 1,200 words long, which is too long for a “succinct” blog post and too short for a Patel-optimized blog post. But I don’t feel like padding it to get to an optimum word length, and I don’t feel like cutting anything.
I especially don’t want to cut the George Harrison song.
UPDATE April 15, 2023: It has come to my attention that people searching for Rhonda Salvestrini’s services are ending up here. If you were searching for Salvestrini’s website and ended up at my blog post, I should clarify that I didn’t intentionally hijack Salvestrini’s traffic to draw it to my content. By happy accident, I just happened to use the magic words that drew searchers to my post. But if you’re interested in Salvestrini’s services, go to her website RhondaSalvestrini.com.
I just listened to an interview of Rhonda Salvestrini, conducted by Sumair Abro. During the interview, Salvestrini made the following point:
Content for your business is one of the best ways to drive organic traffic. It’s your secret salesperson because it’s out there working for you 24/7. And it’s evergreen, so not only is it working…day in and day out…it’s available years down the road.
Excellent point. In my 17 years of online writing, I’m consistently surprised when someone contacts me about something that I wrote years ago. The Internet, for better or worse, never forgets.
So if you’re reading this quote in 2029, and the quote inspires you, let Rhonda know.
And if you’re reading this in 2020 or 2021 and are looking for a writing coach to give your enterprise a voice, Rhonda is available to assist you.
(If you’d prefer to outsource the writing rather than doing it yourself, Bredemarket can help.)
Finally, if you want to hear the rest of the conversation between Salvestrini and Abro, here it is. Both the interviewee and the interviewer share many other insights on content creation.
And yes, Rhonda, this blog post has far fewer than 3,000 words, which kinda sorta limits its repurposing.
Bredemarket 