Tag Archives: Instagram

Training the Bot (who was smarter than I thought)

Perhaps I was a little agitated or excited this afternoon.

  • Perhaps I was a little agitated because five (or maybe more; I lost count) scammers had sent me LinkedIn DMs when they gravitated to my #opentowork LinkedIn banner…like flies speeding to a carcass. (Which gave me an excuse to write about identity management on LinkedIn.)
  • Or perhaps I was a little excited because a Never Search Alone participant had shared an identity management product marketing position with me.

The bot says hello

After applying for said job, I was reading the company’s website to learn about its identity management product when the company’s bot kept on messaging me.

At 2:30 pm Chat Bot says: Hello, this is an AI Rep from [COMPANY]. If you need any assistance, feel free to ask.

At 2:30 pm Chat Bot says: Saw that you’re interested in our SaaS management and identity governance software. Any questions?

Being the curious type (after all, I worked for IDEMIA), I wondered how the chat bot would deal with what I REALLY wanted to ask about.

  • Not about a demo.
  • Not about the company’s recent funding round. (Series B, $35 million.)
  • Not about how they want to save the badgers or whatever.
  • But about my just-completed job application.

At 2:47 pm I say: With 30 years’ identity experience and 9 years as a PMM, I just applied for your Sr PMM Identity Management role. So the only question that I have is when you will interview me.

Yes, 30 years. Not “over 29” years. See my prior post.

And yes, my assumption that the company would immediately drop everything and interview me may have been a little overconfident. But it’s better than imposter syndrome.

And after all, this was just a bot. I assumed that the bot would be completely confused by my question, so no harm would come from overconfidence.

You know what they say about people who assume?

The bot exceeds expectations

At 2:47 pm Chat Bot says: Thanks for applying for the Sr PMM Identity Management role! Could you provide your email address so we can follow up on your application status?

One note here: the bot parroted my response back to me. The company’s job description does not include a job title with the “PMM” acronym.

Regardless, I was pleasantly surprised. The bot was trained to respond to job applicants. So I provided the email address that I used for my job application.

The bot does not meet expectations

That’s when I was UNPLEASANTLY surprised.

At 2:47 pm Chat Bot says: Thank you for your interest. Please provide a business email address so we can follow up on your application status.

Apparently the training wasn’t thorough enough. Think about it; if you’re an individual applying for a job, why would you apply with a “business email address”? Which one? From your current employer? THAT is not a good idea.

But as it turns out, I DO have a business email address-the one for Bredemarket. So I entered that, even though that email address does not appear anywhere on the job application that I had just submitted.

At 2:47 pm Chat Bot says: Thank you for providing your email. Our team will review the conversation and follow up if necessary. How else can I assist you today?

So it will be interesting to see whether the company contacts me at both of my email addresses.

(Post image generated at craiyon.com)

Postscript for those who don’t click on every link in a Bredemarket post

You missed Brian May’s collaboration with the Weebl folks.

From https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EllYgcWmcAY.

This resonated with me because in mid-September I spent some Instagram time thinking about the word “flash” (as in how fast a human can create content).

Friction Is Bad

(NOT part of the biometric product marketing expert series)

Friction is bad.

I know some people think that friction is good, because if you tolerate the friction to get to the thing, then you must really want it.

But more often than not, friction is bad.

Which is why when I create a reel, I try to post the native reel in all places where appropriate.

Take my most recent 8 second “biometric product marketing expert” reel.

But you don’t have to leave this blog post to see the original reel.

See how easy a frictionless experience can be?

More here.

Biometric Product Marketing Expert.

Are My 15 Second Videos Too Long?

You’ve probably noticed that I’ve created a lot of Bredemarket videos lately.

But…

Even Bredemarket’s “short” 15 second videos may be TWICE AS LONG as they should be.

The Microsoft 8 second study

In 2015, Time magazine reported on the results of a Microsoft study:

Researchers in Canada surveyed 2,000 participants and studied the brain activity of 112 others using electroencephalograms (EEGs). Microsoft found that since the year 2000 (or about when the mobile revolution began) the average attention span dropped from 12 seconds to eight seconds.

As many noted, a goldfish’s attention span is 9 seconds.

Celestial eye goldfish image public domain.

Some argue that the 8 second attention span is not universal and varies according to the task. For example, a 21 minute attention span has been recorded for drivers. If drivers had an 8 second attention span, we would probably all be dead by now.

But watching a video is not a life-or-death situation. Viewers will happily jump away if there’s no reason to watch.

So I have my challenge.

Ironically, I learned about the 8 second rule while watching a LinkedIn Learning course about the 3 minute rule. I haven’t finished the course yet, so I haven’t yet learned how to string someone along for 22.5 8-second segments.

When 250ppi Binary Fingerprint Images Were Acceptable

(Part of the biometric product marketing expert series)

I remember the first computer I ever owned: a Macintosh Plus with a hard disk with a whopping 20 megabytes of storage space. And that hard disk held ALL my files, with room to spare.

For sake of comparison, the video at the end of this blog post would fill up three-quarters of that old hard drive. Not that the Mac would have any way to play that video.

That Mac is now literally a museum piece.

By Tmarki – Own work, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=8058630.

And its 20 megabyte hard disk illustrates the limitations of those days. File storage was a precious commodity in the 1980s and 1990s, and we therefore accepted images that we wouldn’t even think about accepting today.

This affected the ways in which entities exchanged biometric information.

The 1993 ANSI/NIST standard

The ANSI/NIST standard for biometric data interchange has gone through several iterations over the years, beginning in 1986 when NIST didn’t even exist (it was called the National Bureau of Standards in those days).

From https://csrc.nist.gov/nist-cyber-history.

Fingerprints only

When I began working for Printrak in 1994, the image interchange standard in effect was ANSI/NIST-CSL 1-1993, the “Data Format for the Interchange of Fingerprint Information.”

Yes, FINGERPRINT information. No faces. No scars/marks/tattoos. signatures, voice recordings, dental/oral data, irises, DNA, or even palm prints. Oh, and no XML-formatted interchange either. Just fingerprints.

No logical record type 99, or even type 10

Back in 1993, there were only 9 logical record types.

From https://www.nist.gov/system/files/documents/2021/02/03/ansi-nist-csl_1-1993.pdf

For purposes of this post I’m going to focus on logical record types 3 through 6 and explain what they mean.

  • Type 3, Fingerprint image data (low-resolution grayscale).
  • Type 4, Fingerprint image data (high-resolution grayscale).
  • Type 5, Fingerprint image data (low-resolution binary).
  • Type 6, Fingerprint image data (high-resolution binary).

Image resolution in the 1993 standard

In the 1993 version of the ANSI/NIST standard:

  • “Low-resolution” was defined in standard section 5.2 as “9.84 p/mm +/- 0.10 p/mm (250 p/in +/- 2.5 p/in),” or 250 pixels per inch (250ppi).
  • The “high-resolution” definition in sections 5.1 and 5.2 was twice that, or “19.69 p/mm +/- 20 p/mm (500 p/in +/- 5 p/in.”
  • While you could transmit at these resolutions, the standard still mandated that you actually scan the fingerprints at the “high-resolution” 500 pixels per inch (500ppi) value.

Incidentally, this brings up an important point. The series of ANSI/NIST standards are not focused on STORAGE of data. They are focused on INTERCHANGE of data. They only provided a method for Printrak system users to exchange data with automated fingerprint identification systems (AFIS) from NEC, Morpho, Cogent, and other fingerprint system providers. Just interchange. Nothing more.

Binary and grayscale data in the 1993 standard

Now let’s get back to Types 3 through 6 and note that you were able to exchange binary fingerprint images.

Yup, straight black and white images.

The original uploader was CountingPine at English Wikipedia. – Transferred from en.wikipedia to Commons., CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=90286557.

Why the heck would fingerprint experts tolerate a system that transmitted binary images that latent fingerprint examiners considered practically useless?

Because they had to.

Storage and transmission constraints in 1993

Two technological constraints adversely affected the interchange of fingerprint data in 1993:

  • Storage space. As mentioned above, storage space was limited and expensive in the 1980s and the 1990s. Not everyone could afford to store detailed grayscale images with (standard section 4.2) “eight bits (256 gray levels)” of data. Can you imagine storing TEN ENTIRE FINGERS with that detail, at an astronomical 500 pixels per inch?
  • Transmission speed. There was another limitation enforced by the modems of the data. Did I mention that the ANSI/NIST standard was an INTERCHANGE standard? Well, you couldn’t always interchange your data via the huge 1.44 megabyte floppy disks of the day. Sometimes you had to pull your your trusty 14.4k or 28.8k modem and send the images over the telephone. Did you want to spend the time sending those huge grayscale images over the phone line?
Sound effects not included. By Wilton Ramon de Carvalho Machado – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=3572726.

So as a workaround, the ANSI/NIST standard allowed users to interchange binary (black and white) images to save disk space and modem transmission time.

And we were all delighted with the capabilities of the 1993 ANSI/NIST standard.

Until we weren’t.

The 2015 ANSI/NIST standard

The current standard, ANSI/NIST-ITL 1-2011 Update 2015, supports a myriad of biometric types. For fingerprints (and palm prints), the focus is on grayscale images: binary image Type 5 and Type 6 are deprecated in the current standard, and low-resolution Type 3 grayscale images are also deprecated. Even Type 4 is shunned by most people in favor of new friction ridge image types in which the former “high resolution” is now the lowest resolution that anyone supports:

Excludes record types 20-22, 98, and 99. From https://nvlpubs.nist.gov/nistpubs/SpecialPublications/NIST.SP.500-290e3.pdf
  • Type 13, Variable-resolution latent friction ridge image.
  • Type 14, Variable-resolution fingerprint image.
  • Type 15, Variable-resolution palm print image.

We’ve come a long way.

Now that you’ve read this whole thing, I’ll share my video which covers everything in 25 seconds.

Fade to gray.

By the time I upload this video to Instagram, I’ll probably use Instagram’s music facilities to add this song as background music.

  • And note that the band name is spelled Visage with one I, not Viisage with two I’s. (Now part of IDEMIA, along with Printrak.)
  • But the spelling inaccuracy is not surpring. The band can’t spell “gray” either.
From https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eZHk4RwIp_g.

Maximizing Event ROI with the Bredemarket 2800 Medium Writing Service

Part of the IBM exhibit at CeBIT 2010. CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=10326025.

When your company attends events, you’ll want to maximize your event return on investment (ROI) by creating marketing content that you publish before, during, and after the event.

This is how you do it.

Including:

And I’ll spill a couple of secrets along the way.

The first secret (about events)

I’m going to share two secrets in this post. OK, maybe they’re not that secret, but you’d think they ARE secrets because no one acknowledges them.

The first one has to do with event attendance. You personally might be awed and amazed when you’re in the middle of an event and surrounded by hundreds, or thousands, or tens of thousands of people. All of whom are admiring your exhibit booth or listening to your CEO speak.

Technically not a CEO (Larry Ellison’s official title is Chief Technology Officer, and the CEO is Safra Catz), but you get the idea. By Oracle PR Hartmann Studios – CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=47277811.

But guess what?

Many, many more people are NOT at the event.

They can’t see your exhibit booth, and can’t hear your speaker. They’re on the outside, TRYING to look in.

CC-BY-2.0. Link.

And all the money you spent on booth space and travel and light-up pens does NOTHING for the people who aren’t there…

Unless you bring the event to them. Your online content can bring the event to people who were never there.

But you need to plan, create, and approve your content before, during, and after the event. Here’s how you do that.

Three keys to creating event-related content

Yes, you can just show up at an event, take some pictures, and call it a day. But if you want to maximize your event return on investment, you’ll be a bit more deliberate in executive your event content. Ideally you should be:

Planning your event content

Before the event begins, you need to plan your content. While you can certainly create some content on a whim as opportunity strikes, you need to have a basic idea of what content you plan to create.

Content I created before attending the APMP Western Chapter Training Day on October 29, 2021. From https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9rS5Mc3w4Nk.
  • Before the event. Why should your prospects and customers care about the event? How will you get prospects and customers to attend the event? What will attendees and non-attendees learn from the event?
  • During the event. What event activities require content generation? Who will cover them? How will you share the content?
Some dude creating Morphoway-related content for Biometric Update at the (then) ConnectID Expo in 2015.
  • After the event. What lessons were learned? How will your prospects and customers benefit from the topics covered at the event? Why should your prospects buy the product you showcased at the event?

Creating your event content

Once you have planned what you want to do, you need to do it. Before, during, and after the event, you may want to create the following types of content:

  • Blog posts. These can announce your attendance at the event before it happens, significant goings-on at the event (such as your CEO’s keynote speech or the evening party launching your new product), or lessons learned from the event (what your CEO’s speech or your new product means for your prospects and clients). Blog posts can be created relatively quickly (though not as quick as some social media posts), and definitely benefit your bottom line.
  • Social media. Social media such as Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn can also be used before, during, and after the event. Social media excels at capturing the atmosphere of the event, as well as significant activities. When done right, it lets people experience the event who were never there.
  • E-mails. Don’t forget about e-mails before, during, and after the event. I forgot about e-mails once and paid the price. I attended an event but neglected to tell my e-mail subscribers that I was going to be there. When I got to the event, I realized that hardly any of the attendees understood the product I was offering, and were not the people who were hungry for my product. If I had stocked the event with people from my e-mail list, the event would have been more productive for me.
  • Data sheets. Are you announcing a new product at an event? Have the data sheet ready.
  • Demonstration scripts. Are you demonstrating a new or existing product at the event? Script out your demonstration so that your demonstrators start with the same content and make the points YOU want them to make.
  • Case studies and white papers. While these usually come into play after the event, you may want to release an appropriate case study or white paper before or during the event, tied to the event topic. Are you introducing a new product at an industry conference? Time your product-related white paper for release during the conference. And promote the white paper with blog posts, social media, and e-mails.
  • Other types of content. There are many other types of content that you can release before, during, or after an event. Here’s a list of them.

Approving your event content

Make sure that your content approval process is geared for the fast-paced nature of events. I can’t share details, but:

  • If your content approval process requires 24 hours, then you can kiss on-site event coverage goodbye. What’s the point in covering your CEO’s Monday 10:00 keynote speech if the content doesn’t appear until 11:00…on Tuesday?
  • If your content approval process doesn’t have a timeline, then you can kiss ALL event coverage goodbye. There have been several times when I’ve written blog posts announcing my company’s attendance at an event…and the blog posts weren’t approved until AFTER the event was already over. I salvaged the blog posts via massive rewrites.

So how are you going to generate all this content? This brings us to my proposed solution…and the second secret.

The second secret (about Bredemarket’s service)

By Karl Thomas Moore – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=58968347.

The rest of this post talks about one of Bredemarket’s services, the Bredemarket 2800 Medium Writing Service. For those who haven’t heard about it, it’s a service where I provide between 2,800 and 3,200 words of written text.

“But John,” you’re asking. “How is a single block of 3,200 words of text going to help me with my event marketing?”

Time to reveal the second secret…

You can break up those 3,200 words any way you like.

For example, let’s say that you’re planning on attending an event. You could break the text up as follows:

  • One 500-word blog post annnouncing your attendance at the event.
  • Three 100-word social media posts before the event.
  • One 500-word blog post as the event begins.
  • One 300-word product data sheet prepared before the event and released on the second day of the event.
  • One 500-word blog post announcing the new product.
  • Three 100-word social media posts tied to the new product announcement.
  • One 500-word post-event blog post with lessons learned.
  • Three 100-word social media posts after the event.

For $2,000 (as of June 2024), you can benefit from written text for complete event coverage, arranged in any way you need.

So how can you and your company receive these benefits?

Read about the Bredemarket 2800 Medium Writing Service

First, read the data sheet for the Bredemarket 2800 Medium Writing Service so you understand the offer and process.

Bredemarket 2800 Medium Writing Service (June 2022)Download

Contact Bredemarket…now

Second, contact Bredemarket to get the content process started well BEFORE your event. Book a meeting with me at calendly.com/bredemarket. Be sure to fill out the information form so I can best help you.

From calendly.com/bredemarket.

Alternatively, you can

But don’t wait. If your event is in September…don’t contact me in October.

Is Bredemarket STILL on Your Favorite Social Platform? (The May 2024 edition)

The third image in the “houseboat” series of posts that I’ve run on SOME social media outlets.

Beginning May 2, Bredemarket is on fewer social channels. The information in this post is not new.

  • If you were reading some of Bredemarket’s social channels, you may have seen a similar announcement on May 15, but that announcement listed the services where I was no longer posting.
  • If you were reading some of Bredemarket’s OTHER social channels, you may NOT have seen that announcement. Because those other social channels were the precise ones where I was no longer posting.
  • The May 15 social media account is a follow-up to a prior announcement from May 2, which said in part that I was “pausing activity on some Bredemarket social channels (and some related personal channels) that have no subscribers, exhibit no interest, or yield no responses.”
The second image in the “houseboat” series of posts that I’ve run on SOME social media outlets.

But rather than dwelling on the negative aspects of the social channels where Bredemarket has suspended activity, I’m going to concentrate on the social channels where Bredemarket is still active.

Here they are. Be sure to follow or subscribe!

Yes, it’s definitely a shorter list than the old one. But I feel a lot better.

And maybe I’ll return to the other platforms at a later date. You never know.

Take Me to the (Login.gov IAL2) Pilot

From https://imgflip.com/memegenerator/Pepperidge-Farm-Remembers.

As further proof that I am celebrating, rather than hiding, my “seasoned” experience—and you know what the code word “seasoned” means—I am entitling this blog post “Take Me to the Pilot.”

Although I’m thinking about a different type of “pilot”—a pilot to establish that Login.gov can satisfy Identity Assurance Level 2 (IAL2).

From https://pages.nist.gov/800-63-3/sp800-63a.html#sec2.

A recap of Login.gov and IAL2-non compliance

I just mentioned IAL2 in a blog post on Wednesday, with this seemingly throwaway sentence.

So if you think you can use Login.gov to access a porn website, think again.

From https://bredemarket.com/2024/04/10/age-assurance-meets-identity-assurance-level-2/.

The link in that sentence directs the kind reader to a post I wrote in November 2023, detailing that fact that the GSA Inspector General criticized…the GSA…for implying that Login.gov was IAL2-compliant when it was not. The November post references a GSA-authored August blog post which reads in part (in bold):

Login.gov is on a path to providing an IAL2-compliant identity verification service to its customers in a responsible, equitable way.

From https://www.gsa.gov/blog/2023/08/18/reducing-fraud-and-increasing-access-drives-record-adoption-and-usage-of-logingov.

Because it obviously wouldn’t be good to do it in an irresponsible inequitable way.

But the GSA didn’t say how long that path would be. Would Login.gov be IAL2-compliant by the end of 2023? By mid 2024?

It turns out the answer is neither.

Eight months later we have…a pilot

You would think that achieving IAL2 compliance would be a top priority. After all, the longer that Login.gov doesn’t comply, the more government agencies that will flock to IAL2-compliant ID.me.

Enter Steve Craig of PEAK.IDV and the weekly news summaries that he posts on LinkedIn. Today’s summary includes the following item:

4/ GSA’s Login.gov Pilots Enhanced Identity Verification

Login.gov’s pilot will allow users to match a live selfie with the photo on a self-supplied form of photo ID, such as a driver’s license

Other interesting updates in the press release 👇

From https://www.linkedin.com/posts/stevenbcraig_digitalidentity-aml-compliance-activity-7184539504504930306-LVPF/.
From https://www.gsa.gov/about-us/newsroom/news-releases/general-services-administrations-logingov-pilot-04112024#.

And here’s what GSA’s April 11 press release says.

Specifically, over the next few months, Login.gov will:

Pilot facial matching technology consistent with the National Institute of Standards and Technology’s Digital Identity Guidelines (800-63-3) to achieve evidence-based remote identity verification at the IAL2 level….

Using proven facial matching technology, Login.gov’s pilot will allow users to match a live selfie with the photo on a self-supplied form of photo ID, such as a driver’s license. Login.gov will not allow these images to be used for any purpose other than verifying identity, an approach which reflects Login.gov’s longstanding commitment to ensuring the privacy of its users. This pilot is slated to start in May with a handful of existing agency-partners who have expressed interest, with the pilot expanding to additional partners over the summer. GSA will simultaneously seek an independent third party assessment (Kantara) of IAL2 compliance, which GSA expects will be completed later this year. 

From https://www.gsa.gov/about-us/newsroom/news-releases/general-services-administrations-logingov-pilot-04112024#.

In short, GSA’s April 11 press release about the Login.gov pilot says that it expects to complete IAL2 compliance later this year. So it’s going to take more than a year for the GSA to repair the gap that its Inspector General identified.

My seasoned response

Once I saw Steve’s update this morning, I felt it sufficiently important to share the news among Bredemarket’s various social channels.

With a picture.

B-side of Elton John “Your Song” single issued 1970.

For those of you who are not as “seasoned” as I am, the picture depicts the B-side of a 1970 vinyl 7″ single (not a compact disc) from Elton John, taken from the album that broke Elton in the United States. (Not literally; that would come a few years later.)

By the way, while the original orchestrated studio version is great, the November 1970 live version with just the Elton John – Dee Murray – Nigel Olsson trio is OUTSTANDING.

From https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cC1ocO0pVgs.

Back to Bredemarket social media. If you go to my Instagram post on this topic, I was able to incorporate an audio snippet from “Take Me to the Pilot” (studio version) into the post. (You may have to go to the Instagram post to actually hear the audio.)

Not that the song has anything to do with identity verification using government ID documents paired with facial recognition. Or maybe it does; Elton John doesn’t know what the song means, and even lyricist Bernie Taupin doesn’t know what the song means.

So from now on I’m going to say that “Take Me to the Pilot” documents future efforts toward IAL2 compliance. Although frankly the lyrics sound like they describe a successful iris spoofing attempt.

Through a glass eye, your throne
Is the one danger zone

From https://genius.com/Elton-john-take-me-to-the-pilot-lyrics.

Postscript

For you young whippersnappers who don’t understand why the opening image mentioned “54 Years On,” this is a reference to another Elton John song.

And it’s no surprise that the live version is better.

From https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rRngmF-AcFQ.

Now I’m going to listen to this all day. Cue the Instagram post (if Instagram has access to the 17-11-70/11-17-70 version).

Ofcom and the Digital Trust & Safety Partnership

From https://dtspartnership.org/.

The Digital Trust & Safety Partnership (DTSP) consists of “leading technology companies,” including Apple, Google, Meta (parent of Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp), Microsoft (and its LinkedIn subsidiary), TikTok, and others.

The DTSP obviously has its views on Ofcom’s enforcement of the UK Online Safety Act.

Which, as Biometric Update notes, boils down to “the industry can regulate itself.”

Here’s how the DTSP stated this in its submission to Ofcom:

DTSP appreciates and shares Ofcom’s view that there is no one-size-fits-all approach to trust and safety and to protecting people online. We agree that size is not the only factor that should be considered, and our assessment methodology, the Safe Framework, uses a tailoring framework that combines objective measures of organizational size and scale for the product or service in scope of assessment, as well as risk factors.

From https://dtspartnership.org/press-releases/dtsp-submission-to-the-uk-ofcom-consultation-on-illegal-harms-online/.

We’ll get to the “Safe Framework” later. DTSP continues:

Overly prescriptive codes may have unintended effects: Although there is significant overlap between the content of the DTSP Best Practices Framework and the proposed Illegal Content Codes of Practice, the level of prescription in the codes, their status as a safe harbor, and the burden of documenting alternative approaches will discourage services from using other measures that might be more effective. Our framework allows companies to use whatever combination of practices most effectively fulfills their overarching commitments to product development, governance, enforcement, improvement, and transparency. This helps ensure that our practices can evolve in the face of new risks and new technologies.

From https://dtspartnership.org/press-releases/dtsp-submission-to-the-uk-ofcom-consultation-on-illegal-harms-online/.

But remember that the UK’s neighbors in the EU recently prescribed that USB-3 cables are the way to go. This not only forced DTSP member Apple to abandon the Lightning cable worldwide, but it affects Google and others because there will be no efforts to come up with better cables. Who wants to fight the bureaucratic battle with Brussels? Or alternatively we will have the advanced “world” versions of cables and the deprecated “EU” standards-compliant cables.

So forget Ofcom’s so-called overbearing approach and just adopt the Safe Framework. Big tech will take care of everything, including all those age assurance issues.

From https://dtspartnership.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/DTSP_Age-Assurance-Best-Practices.pdf.

DTSP’s September 2023 paper on age assurance documents a “not overly prescriptive” approach, with a lot of “it depends” discussion.

Incorporating each characteristic comes with trade-offs, and there is no one-size-fits-all solution. Highly accurate age assurance methods may depend on collection of new personal data such as facial imagery or government-issued ID. Some methods that may be economical may have the consequence of creating inequities among the user base. And each service and even feature may present a different risk profile for younger users; for example, features that are designed to facilitate users meeting in real life pose a very different set of risks than services that provide access to different types of content….

Instead of a single approach, we acknowledge that appropriate age assurance will vary among services, based on an assessment of the risks and benefits of a given context. A single service may also use different
approaches for different aspects or features of the service, taking a multi-layered approach.

From https://dtspartnership.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/DTSP_Age-Assurance-Best-Practices.pdf.

So will Ofcom heed the DTSP’s advice and say “Never mind. You figure it out”?

Um, maybe not.

(Pizza Stories) The Worst Time to READ a Pizza Post on Social Media

Designed by Freepik.

Have you ever seen those posts from self-appointed gurus?

Specifically, the ones that authoritatively state the BEST time to WRITE a post on Instagram, or LinkedIn, or TikTok, or whatever?

I religiously ignore those posts for a simple reason: My country has multiple time zones. So the best time in one time zone may be the worst time in another time zone.

However, I can tell you the WORST time to READ a post in the PACIFIC Time Zone…if the post concerns pizza.

And I’ll explain what all this means…eventually.

Ophir Tal on awareness

In addition to saying WHEN to post, the gurus also provide authoritative (and often contradictory) advice about WHAT to post.

For example, some gurus assert that you MUST prioritize bottom of funnel (conversion) content over top of funnel (awareness) content because it’s most important to get people to buy.

Ophir Tal disagrees, and has evidence to support his position.

Ophir Tal on pizza

From https://www.linkedin.com/in/ophir-tal/.

Ophir Tal self-identifies as a “LinkedIn Ghostwriter & Personal brand Builder for CEOs & Founders”…and part of the way he builds personal brands is via awareness. Here’s where Tal made this assertion about the importance of awareness.

From Ophir Tal on LinkedIn.

Let’s look at Tal’s hook:

How I Got An Inbound Lead From A Post About Pizza

From Ophir Tal on LinkedIn.

This hook caught my attention. People want leads, and people like pizza, so I paid attention. But I also paid attention for a third reason that I’ll discuss later.

Tal describes how he wrote a LinkedIn post about a piece of pizza that he dropped by mistake, and how he acquired 9,400 views, 97 likes, and 112 comments from that single post. So he told the story a second time.

Tal then noted that the gurus would have recommended NOT posting this because he was “doing it wrong.” Specifically:

  • The post didn’t solve a problem for his potential clients. (Unless they regularly drop slices of pizza, I guess.)
  • It didn’t have a strong call to action.
  • It wasn’t targeted to his ideal clients. (Again, unless they regularly drop slices of pizza, or unless they love chicken wings.)

But despite doing everything wrong, that particular piece of content attracted the attention of someone “at a 6 figure ecom company.” After viewing the content, the reader looked at Tal’s profile and realized Tal could meet their need for ghostwriting services.

Tal earned a lead from his pizza post.

Again, this is only part of Tal’s story. I encourage you to read the rest here.

And now I’ll tell you the third reason why I paid attention to Tal’s post.

John Bredehoft on birthdays

As I noted above, I paid attention to Ophir Tal’s pizza post for two reasons:

  • People want leads.
  • People like pizza.

Now let’s jump back to a post I wrote all the way back in 2023, one that described why I’ve soured on the term “target audience.” (Or, in Tal’s words, “ideal clients.”) I started that post by wondering if the term “needy people” would be better than “target audience.” Yes, but not good enough.

I’ll grant that “needy people” has a negative connotation, like the person who is sad when people forget their birthday.

From “I’m Questioning Everything About Target Audiences, Including the Name.”

Why did I include that sentence?

I’ll let you in on a personal secret. When I wrote that, I was myself sad because a few people had forgotten my birthday.

Teddy alone at his pizza birthday party in 2018. Picture shared by Nick VinZant. Story here.

It turns out that these people had a VERY GOOD reason for forgetting my birthday. However, I cannot reveal this reason to you because the disclosure would force me to reveal someone’s personal identifiable information, or PII. (Mine.)

So after they remembered my birthday, one of them asked what I did for my birthday…and I told them that my wife, father-in-law, and brother-in-law went out to dinner.

For pizza.

And I also told them that there were leftovers, which my wife and I enjoyed a few days later.

Leftover pizza is the best pizza. Preparation credit: Pizza N Such, Claremont, California. Can I earn free pizza as a powerful influencer? Probably not, but I’ll disclose on the 0.00001% chance that I do.

A nice story, and while I was reading Ophir Tal’s story on dropped pizza, I realized that I had missed an opportunity to tell my own story about leftover pizza.

Time to channel Steve Jobs…

Oh, and there’s one more thing

I forgot to mention one thing about the Ophir Tal story.

When I read the story, it was around 4:00 pm in California.

So when I read about Tal’s dropped pizza, and thought about my leftover pizza (which I had already eaten)…I was hungry.

Target audience, needy people…hungry people

Coincidentally, “hungry people” is the phrase that I eventually decided was better than “needy people.”

Tal’s lead was hungry for ghostwriting services, and when they saw that Tal offered such a service, they contacted him.

What does this mean? I’ll go into that in a separate post.

But for now, remember that stories that raise awareness with your “hungry people” (target audience) are good stories to tell.

Maybe I should tell more stories.

One (Just One) of Jessica Morisette’s Six Genius Tips for Increasing Instagram Engagement

Before I launch into the post…

Milestone time

This is the 500th Bredemarket blog post. Woo hoo! But I’m not going to celebrate now, because we have to get down to business.

Back to Instagram engagement

Do you want to increase engagement to solidify commitment?

Photo by Derek Ramsey (Ram-Man) – Self-photographed, CC BY-SA 2.5, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1051815

No, not THAT type of engagement, although there are parallels between engagement with a person and engagement with content.

In the same way that content impressions can move a prospect to awareness, content engagement can move a prospect to consideration. And even if you don’t believe in the traditional funnel, it’s obviously a good idea to get prospects to engage with your content.

Morisette’s six-step strategy

Jessica Morisette of JM Virtual Solutions recently wrote a blog post entitled “Increase Instagram Engagement With This One-Hour Strategy.” Although I’m sure that she wouldn’t object if you spent 59 or 61 minutes (rather than an exact 60 minutes) on daily engagement, and she DEFINITELY wouldn’t mind if you took some of her techniques and applied them to social media platforms other than Instagram.

Personally, I started trying to put her engagement strategy in practice over the weekend, both on Instagram and (with some adaptation) on LinkedIn. Depending upon time, I may try to apply it on your favorite social platform.

From https://jmvirtualsolutions.org/blog/f/increase-instagram-engagement-with-this-one-hour-strategy

Morisette introduces the post with the following:

Building engagement on Instagram involves creating a genuine connection with your audience. It’s not just about getting likes and comments; it’s about creating meaningful interactions that lead to brand loyalty and growth. To achieve this, you need a strategy that focuses on targeted accounts, not just random. 

From https://jmvirtualsolutions.org/blog/f/increase-instagram-engagement-with-this-one-hour-strategy

She then lists six steps to her suggested media engagement strategy. Now I could rip her off and reprint all six here, but then you wouldn’t read her post (which you should do).

So instead I’m going to briefly cover her step 5, engaging with your peers and community.

Skipping to step 5

After devoting time to particular portions of the Instagram platform, Morisette suggests that you start engagement with particular segments. One of those segments is peers and community.

Why?

Supporting others in your niche can encourage them to reciprocate.

From https://jmvirtualsolutions.org/blog/f/increase-instagram-engagement-with-this-one-hour-strategy

I know that content creators are often perceived to be in competition with other content creators, but since each of us is targeting different ideal clients, that competition is less than you think. Since content creators are all in this together, there’s a clear benefit from us supporting each other.

In fact, Morisette believes that this mutual support is so important that she recommends that you engage with your peers and community BEFORE you engage with your ideal client (step 6).

Why does Morisette believe that?

CTA time

Well…you’ll have to read her post for the answer.

For those who are keeping track, that’s the call to action (CTA) for MY post.

Oh, and also follow @jmsocialsolutions on Instagram. And meaningfully engage!

From https://www.instagram.com/jmsocialsolutions/