Lets start with me stumbling over whether this is a “holiday” post or a “Christmas” post. In the UK it’s firmly Christmas and calling it a holiday post would demonstrate that I am talking to a US audience. Writing and delivering persuasive, engaging content even in a shared English language is a subtle business.

Back to the topic – regardless of your tradition, I think we can agree that Christmas (or the holidays) is pretty much about some omnipotent being watching your behaviour, seeing if you are bad or good and making a judgment on what you can get in return (hopefully comparing a god with Santa isn’t too offensive, undoing my good work on the ‘holidays’ thing).

Anyway, in our house, the tradition is firmly hallmark, cocoa cola or Turkish saint (whoever you blame for a jolly red Santa) – it’s family, food and presents and whilst we may not be omnipotent, we do the same thing – looking for clues on what will make our loved ones the perfect gift.

Despite this, we have cupboards and shelves that hide tucked away dusty, untouched gifts from me to my wife over the years – indicating that I am not that good an observer of her want, need, taste or behaviour. I am clearly rubbish. How could I improve?

I could invisibly watch her wandering into shops lingering over a scarf or handbag she likes, but doesn’t buy. I could listen as she tells me, she’d much prefer me to spend the money on the children. I could monitor what she tells her friends and family. I could test her reaction, comparing the successful gifts with the dusty rejects. Is this starting to sound familiar?

Well yes, all this is an analogy of how we should be delivering content to our web visitors. They come to us expecting a content gift, tailored to their specific requirements and not in the least bit interested in the holiday tradition of the moment of “surprise”.

There are thousands of little gift givers in the pages of Google search results that this visitor has just come from and one dud pair of socks or an ill judged kitchen implement is going to send them scuttling off to see what everyone else has to offer.

Don’t get me wrong, I think your visitors will love a surprise, a little bundle of content they hadn’t thought of or a special offer on the very thing they wanted to buy – but it needs to be perfect for their needs – your website as a secret Santa – not a lucky dip.

It doesn’t need to be complicated, I often use the analogy of my daily visit to my favourite news site; clicking on sport, clicking on my favourite sport, clicking on my favourite team. I am telling them what I want, I am introducing myself to this site on a daily basis. You wouldn’t need to do that in real life.

So, great Auntie BBC, this Christmas, like every other Christmas I am a Chelsea fan – please remember me.

Image of Christmas presents published under Creative Commons License, courtesy of  allerleirau

It was an incredibly absorbing meeting as we took a fast ride around all elements of where a citizen touches the government, (each of which I would love to have explored for longer than we had) and an interesting mix of mandatory policy, education and technical enablement that his department are driving.

David courteously and patiently indulged my interruptions and there is plenty to write about but, in this post, I’m just going to focus on one very interesting topic – the reduction in the number of government websites.

At first glance it’s easy to assume that this initiative is the old clumsy cost cutting exercise, a not terribly enlightened confusion between the words ‘platform’ and ‘website’,  which we’ve seen before. Whilst there is an understandable element of cost consciousness in this initiative – of recognising that a single WCM platform can manage multiple sites and a new website shouldn’t demand a fresh procurement process – I thought there was a more interesting driver behind it.

That driver is a recognition that the people look for information using search, not by turning up to the correct government agency website (or some obscure sub-site) and dutifully following the navigation. They are using Google and choosing from a list of results which is in direct contrast to the early days of DirectGov – of grouping information around ‘life stage’ on a single portal and assuming people will slot into the right shaped information hole. Today there is recognition that our lives are much more complex and subtle than that, and the way we access information reflects this.

Recognising that would not seem to be rocket science, ooh Truscott that’s SEO you say. But I say this is subtly different. It’s different because if you are looking for the cheapest TV or the information about Persuasive Content, the dynamic of sites competing for those clicks is different from if you are a Government hoping to engage with your people.

If you are a Government agency that provides services, advice or benefits for your citizen you are not competing for clicks – you are the authority, the source; you have the likely #1 search result the searcher needs. For example, there is only one definitive version of the truth when it comes to entitlement to state benefits, how safe a certain food is, the cheapest public transport to Manchester, whether it’s safe to travel to Uzbekistan and how to get a Visa.

What I think COI are saying is that by pruning the number of websites it avoids agencies and other government bodies, sub-sites and campaign sites from competing for those positions on the Google rankings, enabling the citizen to cut through the clutter to the single source of the truth.  They are looking to effectively manage that search page as our portal into government.

This then shifts their focus from individual website silos, to figuring out how search can bring together the information that the citizen needs – a single web page then needs to stand alone in terms of content and context.

To deliver this the UK government is on the vanguard of adopting the semantic web, standards such as RDFa and attracting the advice of Internet luminaries such as Tim Berners-Lee (read about their call for developers).

There is plenty more to explore here, but first lesson of Citizen Engagement seems to me to be that the COI have recognised that Google is the new Government portal.

Using that phrase does rather alienate half the population and maybe doesn’t even translate that well into US English but, forgive me, you know what I mean – it’s the most basic, fundamental fear of most normal people in most social situations, and social media is the most extreme of social situations.

I thought for a bit that this was a peculiarly English trait, that we are slow to embrace the ‘paradigm shifts’ of ‘Personal Brand’, we have a terribly over acute sense of… well.. being British about the whole thing and “after you, no.. after you”, a debilitating cynicism and apologizing for being in the way, but it transpires that my modest US colleagues feel it too.

Take Twitter for example, here you are in 140 characters or less trying to be interesting, whilst negotiating the subtle niceties of ‘twittiquette’. One chap who confidently writes excellent, witty, entertaining blog posts was agonising over whether he should tweet them twice, for the UK and US time zones of his followers – or if double tweeting made him look like “a douche bag”. I’ve met the fella, he doesn’t seem to be a douche bag.

I’ve agonised over it in a couple of blogs posts, I’ve tried to figure out who ‘I’ am and who the ‘you’ should be when representing your companies – heck, I may not even publish this post as the mortal fear of ‘cockness’ overcomes me.

But, the fact is, I think you need to be yourself, as Oscar Wilde said:

“Be yourself; everyone else is already taken.”

Alright so sometimes that needs to be corporate you, but you none the less, the ‘you-ness’ is important. (For more on this, Chris Brogan makes a great point in his post about being aways ‘on‘).

I can’t believe that anyone can maintain a Personal Brand for long; people are not products. Nestle can reinvent their chocolate and make it tasty with two glasses of milk and make that their thing, their brand. Toyota can make owning a car cool for Californians again with the Prius, by adding a slightly more efficient engine. But surely we are eventually going to come unstuck, by making promises our talent, knowledge, coolness – whatever – can’t keep?

(Sorry to keep throwing links at you, but there’s a great discussion on that here, on David Spinks’ blog)

Surely your personal brand is your aspiration to be good at what you do, but recognising that you aren’t quite there yet? By trying too hard to be cool, by subtracting the real ‘you’ out of your social media persona – you’ll really end up looking more of a cock? Or way worse, bland and uninteresting – part of the echo chamber, rather than saying something new.

Lets look at the superstars of this stuff – take for example Seth Godin – in this inteview with Josh Berhoff he talks about his secret – which is to love what you do and write about it. It’s effortless for him, as he’s found that magic formula. Seth can write freely and without shame, galvanised by the love and enjoyment of the thing.

Someone once said to me after I came off stage at a conference, “You looked like you enjoyed that, you didn’t care if anyone else was watching”. I took that as a compliment, I do deeply care about the audience, but any nervousness or anxiety was carried away by enthusiasm for the subject and the opportunity to spend half an hour talking about it.

So maybe it’s time we all just relaxed, admitted that being a bit of cock sometimes is actually part of our personal brand. Yes, maybe I’ll commit some sort of embarrassing Twitter faux pas, but surely if I admit my mistakes and come over all human – my little community will forgive me?

So… here are 10 things about me…

1. I have very little education! I wasn’t focused at that critical point in my life, educationally torn between art and computer science – try a morning of deep computing theory followed by an afternoon of abstract impressionism – of say Mark Rothko – too much for my 17 year old mind. Combined with being from a modest family – I chose to work and got my education by teaching myself computing working the night shift as a compter operator in the UK civil service. I am kind of proud of that, which is why I blogged about Jacqueline Guichelaar Deutsche Bank Enterprise Services CTO, who started out the same way.
2. I have always liked tea, but now I am recent convert to leaf tea after a great experience being served ‘real’ tea at a meeting in a hotel. I recently got an infuser type tea pot from my wife and working through the range at Whittards of Chelsea – current favourite is Russian Caravan – which is a Yunnan blend – it makes a cuppa something akin to a good cigar.
3. Talking of Chelsea, I am a fan – as anyone who’s met me or sees me speak knows as I seem to sneak it into every presentation.
4. I am also a fan of F1 – wish they’d all stop making the sport look foolish and extremely happy with the success of Jenson Button, well until the next rule change.
5. I am apparently an ENTJ on the Myers-Briggs personality scale and I am a fairly good public speaker, I get a lot of energy from talking to people and yet I consider myself quite shy, hate using the telephone – use e-mail far too much. I read that Kas Thomas is midly agoraphobic when travelling alone, locking himself in his hotel room rather than being in the bar – I can understand that and yet if my colleagues are around then I’ll be in the bar first (and probably last!).
6. Currently one of my guilty pleasures is driving through tunnels! I have a previous shape BMW M3 and I love to open the windows and give it some beans, hear its evil howl and slow down and hear it pop on the downshift. (It also makes my kids scream!!)
7. So, I am a “petrol head” (despite living there, I am not sure what the US translation is, surely can’t be gas head!) and once sat next to Lord March on a transatlantic flight. Lord March owns Goodwood, I am a big fan of the Goodwood Festival of Speed and we got chatting, not realising who he was and his intro of being ‘something to do with organising events at Goodwood’ didn’t help – although the penny slowly dropped a few hours in. In my defence, you don’t expect to find aristocracy in Premium Economy.
8. I lived in the US for two years, in the DC suburbs in Virginia, had a superb time – confused everyone by driving a Camaro – with the license plate BRIT IAN
9. I have two lovely daughters, that I insist on calling ‘little fellas’ and ‘my boys’ – at 8 and 5 they are now old enough to complain about that…
10. Although I have travelled a fair amount in the last 10 years, I am increasingly feeling like a ‘home body’ and no longer travel well. I especially hate travelling economy long haul – but who doesn’t?

There done…

I also suggest checking out Julian Wrath and Jon Marks – who have also been drawn into Kas’ evil meme game.

As the rules of the game dictate, I need to tag some folks. So my colleagues who contribute to the this-is-marketing blog @mike_talbot, @joestanhope, @bob_barker consider yourselves tagged and I wonder if @dirkmshaw would like to play?

Joe it turns out is making lots of professional contacts through Facebook and ponders on the future of LinkedIn, which I found interesting. In turn Joe wondered why I had two Twitter accounts, the professional me and the friends and family me?

I have very few business colleagues on Facebook and feel a bit uncomfortable with the few that are there, who I would not now consider friends.

LinkedIn on the other hand is exclusively business contacts and I wouldn’t post anything chatty to LinkedIn, staying close to professional matters.

Twitter is currently work focused, although I do share some ‘water cooler’ type chit-chat on the tea I am drinking or the weather (come on I am British!). I am sort of business casual here, I guess.

Facebook updates are much more personal and the audience (of predominantly old friends and family, who have no idea really of what I do) would think me dull if I post “Ian is thinking Seth Grimes ‘snarky’ (his word) observations on semantic web practitioners are interesting”.

So, it seems that Joe has a very different experience, and it got me thinking why would that be? I am no social software expert, but in mind this picks at something deeper - (that someone else has probably commented on more authoratively and at this point I should Google furiously and find out who…).

It could have something to do with my personal journey through life, that as I have discussed previously, the place I am in now, is not the same as 20 years ago – or especially at school (you don’t meet many software company execs in our alumni and I (cough) skipped on university). Yet the social web has allowed me to span these ‘lives’ and be in touch with people who have followed their own journeys. Maybe Joe (and I haven’t asked him) finds that his Facebook directory of old school friends, siblings and in-laws is full of similarily bright, successful professionals who know the Joe of 2009 very well.

Or could it be that Joe’s relationship with the online community is more open than mine, that the cultural difference between the US and UK plays into that or that (gulp) he is ever so slightly younger than I am!

Or is it that we choose our identity? But – hang on – I don’t choose who follows me on Twitter, who wants me as a contact on LinkedIn or as friend on Facebook. I haven’t turned down a single friend request on Facebook, yet it’s a veritible high school reunion in there.

Why haven’t my professional colleagues found me there like Joe’s experience?

The dynamic at work here is interesting, I do very little to promote my profile on social networks, but the little I do has the effect.

A school friend finds me, I say hello, all of the school friends who know them find me, as do all of the school friends that know them, I get engaged and wonder what happened to that truck mad kid I used to hang out with and suddenly I have a small hockey stick effect of school friend adoption. I do nothing to seek out colleages on Facebook, so that snowball never sets off – yet on LinkedIn and Twitter I do seek out those folks and in turn, etc etc…

Interesting – or is it just me? I tried hard to tweet back at them on this, but as you can see – couldn’t fit it into 140 characters!

Maybe it never went away, but I associated pushing content with the rise and spectacular fall of PointCast, back in the heady days of the late 90′s – tarnishing push with a reputation for heavy bandwidth use and a proprietary client. Since then I have been fed a steady diet of pull being the future, not only on-line but of our TV viewing and all media consumption.

It seems that on-line gaming and our need for instant real time data has re-ignited this sector, with Darren Hudson (the CTO at Push Technology) bullishly referring to recent sales successes and a strong pipeline of the great and the good in on-line betting and finance.  This is from a company that is too young to have really started marketing yet.

This got me looking at this fairly tight little software sector and what makes Push Technology cool is that whereas others simulate push by constantly polling and then pulling – hence ‘push’ having a reputation for placing a heavy toll on web servers –  their Diffusion product only pushes when the content changes.