Northwest Harley Blog Hits 1 Million Views

NWHog Stats

Good morning.  This little hobby of a motorcycle blog logged its 1 millionth viewer today. Woo hoo!

Unfortunately there will be no falling balloons, bells and whistles or motorcycle give away as it’s a low budget operation.

There once was a time where I thought a million was a massive amount of views.  At one point I had “Content-Creation Madness”… thinking that all I had to do was post new content every day and then sit back and watch the hordes of new readers and the corporate decision makers find me.  I watched and waited for my clout score to skyrocket.

It didn’t.

And in today’s social media over hyped up marketing world with the aggregators, intermediaries and pyramid viral tricks,  I’m now thinking that I should be asking why is it only a million?!  If you were to benchmark entertainment or compare this blog to other viral legends like Susan Boyle, Lady Gaga, Old Spice Guy and Rebecca Black it’s really nothing but a dismal failure.

Number of Days To 100 Million Views

For example, let’s look at the number of days it took each of them to reach 100 million views:  Susan Boyle did it in nine. Lady Gaga’s Bad Romance, which currently has over 900 million views, took 18 days. Rebecca Black’s Friday, currently at 430+ million views, took 45 days. Even Justin Bieber’s Baby, which has topped 1.1 billion views, took 56 days, one day faster than Miley Cyrus’ Party in the U.S.  Even Modern Warfare 2, one of the biggest entertainment gaming launches ever, hit 100 million views after 77 days.  I won’t go through all of them, but you can see how long it took some of the biggest viral names ever to reach 100 million views in the chart above.

This blog is about one-tenth that amount.  Yeah, I know it’s not an A-to-A comparison, but a million views is hardly a blip on the score board these days when you contrast it with entertainment.

In the beginning, the plethora of content distribution “paths” once exited me.  I developed a Twitter feed.  I started a Facebook feed then stopped it due to privacy concerns.  Early on I caught the eye of some savvy social media folks at Harley-Davidson who were convinced that product reviews (HERE) were the wave of the blog future.  It wasn’t.  I developed an iPhone app for mobile users.  There was even a shout out from the reality series man himself… Kurt Sutter (FX – Sons of Anarchy) HERE.  Then there was the Daily Newspaper (HERE).  Most of these were all attempts to help scale out the blog or content reach.

NWHog Geo Stats

Now, I realize that much of the blog content is landing in the “cloud dumpster” and I no longer think “view statistics” are a good gauge of a blog.  This blog has never been about attracting leads and transforming them into customers.  Customers of what?  I don’t sell anything so creating content for each stage of the buying process (awareness, consideration, and decision) is silly.  The characteristics that make for a great blog are typically never tracked.

Characteristics like:

Clarity – Is the blog/author clear about details such as the time period and subject.  Who or what does it apply to and are there updates to the information as new data unfolds over the days/weeks ahead.  Content should appear or link to many forms, ranging from videos, infographics and/or links to legal or report summaries.

Credibility – Is the information the author posted derived from sound research and is the methodology related to the facts.  Is the article sharing an opinion or is just biased?  Is the blog nothing but a repost-er of previously reported news articles or does it provide commentary and analysis of the potential impact to the motorcycle community?

Attribution – Is there clear attribution to the original source and an accurate/valid link to that source provided when possible.  Does the author/article provide links to the study or legal filing/report or just refer to it as “information found on the web.”

Though I generally don’t hold to a “hits mean much” worldview, I’m intrigued by the search results that send readers to the site and that readers are coming to this blog from all continents including places that I wouldn’t have thought — for example: Afghanistan, Iraq, Nigeria and Guam.

The point of this post today is to say that I appreciate all the readers who’ve joined in the discussion on this blog.  More importantly I’ve realized that some readers had better ideas than I or had important insights that I wanted to share.  The blog has evolved a bit from my original intention and is far better.

I learn every day and for that I thank you.

Photo courtesy of Visible Measures and WordPress.

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The 99%

Did you notice that over the holiday’s it was everything Joanne Stefani Germanotta (i.e. Lady GaGa)?

Lady GaGa cemented her mainstream outreach which began with “A GaGa Thanksgiving,” then proceeded with “A Very GaGa Holiday” album and concluded with the “GaGa Workshop”, the singers interpretation of “Santa’s Shop” at Barney’s in NYC.  And don’t forget all the Lady GaGa-themed gifts from flame pressed-on-nails, spike moto gloves and even an eatable facial likeness cookie!   Talk about gagging!

Lady GaGa is the 1%.

I don’t mean that she’s to be hated like those over paid, real estate wrecking wall street bankers, or that she has no talent, only that she won, she’s ubiquitous, she’s rich!

You see society demands a certain amount of commonality, things we all know about and comment upon.  This accounts for the growth in reality TV and awards shows.  We all watch the Super Bowl, so we can comment on it the following day.

And speaking of football, doesn’t it seem like the song remains the same… but, the teams come and go?  I’m referring to Madonna who is set to headline Super Bowl halftime show.  Announcement HERE.  The league calls the show “the most-watched musical event of the year,” with more than 162 million people tuning in last year in the U.S. alone.

Huh?  MTV doesn’t even call itself “Music Television” anymore. What happened to my country when football became the jumping off point to showcase the sad state of affairs of the music business?  Madonna is aging so fast you can see the sell-by date.  I suggest they should broadcast the performance in 3D so when people get dizzy watching the “cones”, the league will have a wardrobe scapegoat.  It was the glasses…yeah, that’s it… the weak battery in the 3D glasses warped the faux glitz and glamour she provided on stage.

Did someone in the NFL front office make a mistake?  Was there old farts running focus groups to provide homogenized entertainment to people who don’t really exist and they booked Madonna thinking it was really Lady Gaga?!  The NFL enlisting Madonna who is doing her best to look younger than the players is laughable.  The nipped and tucked Madonna is a contemporary of the players mothers. Hip-hop runs the NFL. Just check the iPods they listen to to get psyched up before the game.

I’m part of the 99%.  And we used to be awed at the show, we used to need to tell everybody about the music. If we speak about Madonna by the water cooler the day after the Super Bowl it’ll be because of a wardrobe malfunction, or something she says. Her music, unlike the game, is dead.

Photo courtesy of Madonna.

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Harley-Davidson – The Lady Gaga Edition

Let’s be clear.  Lady Gaga (a.k.a. Stefani Joanne Anglina Germanotta) grates on me.

Her lifetime achievement of ten songs are not only a derivative, but uninspired.  More on music later.

She’s been everywhere: award shows, gay-rights rallies, magazine covers, stadiums, YouTube, Letterman, SNL, Grammy’s, etc.  She consistently makes headlines for wearing outrageous outfits – a meat dress here, a spiky scepter there – and for spouting sound bites such as, “I can mentally give myself an orgasm” or “I smoke a lot of pot when I write songs” … it’s gag-a, gag-a all the time.

She is clearly a celebrity overexposed and should just go away.  But, her “little monsters” are goo goo over gaga and won’t let that happen so, what to do?

Call Mark-Hans Richer to suggest he create and capitalize on a “Sputnik Moment” as President Obama evangelized.  So here it is… drum roll please…the headline would read: Harley-Davidson signs Lady Gaga to an endorsement deal!  I can’t think of anyone else other than Lady Gaga who cuts across multiple gender identities, social boundaries, is an erotic taboo breaker, a mainstream manufactured product who claims to be singing for freaks, the rebellious and the dispossessed.  If there ever was a Harley-Davidson brand ambassador she would be it!

So, I put the question out to the Northwest Harley Blog think tank (a.k.a. my pet cat Smurf!) and the name H-D: Lady Gaga Edition rose to the top.  A close second was Lady Gaga: Dare To Be Different clothing line.  Honestly I think Lady Gaga’s fashion style is weird and qualifies her for worst dressed, but what do I know?  My fashion wardrobe is mostly black t-shirts.  However, the youth crowd demographic — which H-D desperately seeks – see’s her as agent provocateur.

Now I could wax on about some ideas of a limited edition, “Bites of Enlightenment” Sportster model with Beef Jerky strips as the paint theme or “The Fame Monster” FatBoy model complete with a “Glam” accessory kit like a hair bow, hat, sunglasses, gloves and even a couture neck brace!   But you’d likely think I’m just grousing and I wanted to get back to music.

Speaking of, there’s no cheating music.  Let’s be clear, you can imitate, you can rip off what’s been done before, but there is no short cut.  There’s a schism between “performers” and true artistry.  The artist stories are all the same.  They bought records and practiced in their basements until they were good enough to get a gig.  Then they gigged long enough until someone noticed.  Then they got a chance and some broke through.

The Eagles - 1973 on BBC

Speaking of breaks.  A reader emailed me a video.  My jaw dropped.  It was an Eagles performance on the BBC.  It was like being transported back to 1973 instantly.

So for all you Gaga haters out there the clip begins with “Train Leaves Here This Morning.”  What’s stunning is the band is sitting on stools singing all the music.  ALL the music.  Incredible harmonies.  There’s no one in the background, nothing electronic-fied or on tape.  The 4-part harmonies are almost perfect.  And when something is almost perfect you get “chicken skin.”  Hell, Bernie Leadon is wearing a UCLA t-shirt which was likely the first thing in his suitcase.  It was about the music not the look.  Randy Meisner smiles when singing “A Certain Kind of Fool” and when Don Henley sings “Witchy Woman” it takes you back to the first time you ever heard it, when you had no idea who he was.  This is a band.  Remember bands?

This is not Glee.  It’s not a look-a-like tribute to Madonna.  It’s like stumbling onto the Dead Sea Scrolls.  You can be broke and still sing “Take It Easy” with the wind in your face on the open road and you’re right where you want to be.  It’s reminiscent of a time where radio was about music, not commercials.  This is the way it use to be.  Something that exists in the mind of the artist/players not some stylist standing in front of the mirror perfecting your ‘do.

Photo courtesy of Lady Gaga, The Eagles, BBC and various publishers.

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Noiseless Police Sneak Up On The Unsuspecting

Vectrix Electric Scooter - Police Edition

I’ve been in Las Vegas for the better part of January doing a work gig where 3DTV, Audio/Video equipment and musicians saturate the Consumer Electronic Show.  It’s the largest trade show in the world and is quite the rat race as people grind it out over days of endless announcements and product demonstrations.

It was all there.  From 50 Cent’s launch of his new branded “Sleek” headphones to Lady Gaga’s new high-tech sunglasses that double as a camera.  Even Harley-Davidson got in on the evangelization with a testimonial of Intel’s AIM Suite – a product that anonymously monitors viewer metrics such as age, gender, and attention span in a retail setting.  Ms. White of H-D Canada gave it a glowing report.

While running around with the other 140,000 people attending CES plus the additional 27,000 photo snapping people attending the Adult Entertainment eXpo I was nearly run over by law enforcement on a motorcycle.  An electric motorcycle in fact.  It turns out that the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department recently unveiled the no gas, no noise electric motorcycles at its Convention Center Area Command. These motorcycles were donated by the Consumer Electronics Association and are nearly silent with a top speed of 62 mph.

Lady Gaga - Camera/Sunglasses

The scooters are manufactured by Vectix Corporation who advertise them as the world’s first pure-performance electric maxi-scooter.  On their web site there are testimonials from Police officers who have pushed them to 65+ mph. Clearly not for high-speed chases, but they are being used on “The Strip”, and the convention center – both location some of the most congested areas in the entire state.

 

Vectix Corporation is a well financed and international effort with production facilities in Poland.  They’ve received start-up help from Lockheed Martin, Alcoa and Parker-Hannifin.

There’s a perception that Police scooters make people feel closer to the police by taking away the barrier created by a squad car.  I’m not so sure about how it changes the approachability, but can provide my experience as a person with no criminal intentions… I wasn’t looking for a “stealth officer” on two wheels and the no noise device startled me when I didn’t hear it coming.

Photo courtesy of CEA, Lady Gaga and Vectrix Corporation.

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Harley-Davidson Reach And Relevance

HOG Bank

Start with the “charisma and swagger” of Charlie Sheen, add a little Lady Gaga recklessness, mix it all together with the sensibility of John Mayer, and you’re well on your way to a vibrant digital marketing campaign.

Or at least that’s what Harley-Davidson’s, CMO, Mark-Hans Richer seems to believe.

Taking a page from celebrities and musicians who blazed the path before them they’ve embarked on a crowd-sourcing recipe with Victors & Spoils, a Boulder-based crowd sourcing agency who intends to deliver successful digital marketing.  It would seem that every American company on the planet is amassing a rapidly growing list of crowd sourcing digital data to give marketers an even more precise method for targeting their ad messages to specific consumers.

I know, you hate social media.  More people despise Twitter than use it.  You thought Foursquare was a church.  You like Facebook, but you fear its Big Brother qualities.

Well, you probably don’t understand that Twitter is the number one news source for news happening right now.  But if you can’t wrap your head around that, maybe you should look into SproutSocial, which allows you to track your company in social media.  And if you don’t think social media is key to any company’s future, you’re on the road to extinction.

Mr. Richer totally gets it.  H-D has a multi-generational and multicultural customer strategy with a need to get potential customers more engaged in the brand.

You do that through social media.  But, part of the problem for the motor company is its audience knows too many people, who connect with each other online.  Once consumers start talking to each other not only do they spread the word about the so-called “motorcycle lifestyle,” but they also let each other know which products are good and which ones are bad.  Suddenly, the dealers can no longer jam any old product down the motorcycle riding public’s throat.  It’s bad enough when new products leak in advance and are dead on arrival due to bad word of mouth, but even those that make it to the release date intact are not guaranteed sales.  Because by the end of the week, the target audience knows whether the product is worth owning via references from friends.

It all comes down to who you know.

But, the reason I’m writing this is because of the job market.  Unemployment.  It’s steady at 10.5% here in Oregon.  About a point above the national average and has remained there most of the past year.  Just this past week the Oregonian reported another 300 layoffs by 3 different companies closing down operations.  And if that wasn’t enough did you happen to catch Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke last night on 60 Minutes?  He painted a grim picture.  Stating that the U.S. recovery is still not self-sustaining while defended his $600B bond purchase to help keep interest rates low.  Heady stuff.

Oregon and U.S. Unemployment - Dec 2010

I hate to frighten you, but all your partying and drunken pictures are going to work against you in the job market. Inebriation is not a criterion for employment, not even at Miller Brewing.  You see you’re building your resume every day online.  And whether you can get a job or not is based on this resume and who you know.  People always complain how they can’t get a job in this industry or that industry because they aren’t connected.  Hate to tell you, but it just got worse!  No one’s going to hire anyone without a history, who can’t be recommended by someone.  The days of placing a blind ad and taking on all comers is history.  That doesn’t even work on Craigslist, and have you seen the type of jobs on that site lately?

If you want to succeed in the future, you’ve got to know people.  Who can vouch for you.  Ever get called for a reference?  You never lie if you know the caller, it’s your reputation on the line.   And now that we’re all networked through social media, there’s always someone who knows you, who if they won’t say something negative, certainly won’t say something positive.

And you thought you were just playing online?  You see we all live in a social media world.  Scary huh?!  And as if to help prove my point the CEO of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg, was also interviewed and talked about changes coming in a redesign.  For example, instead of a single profile picture, people who visit your page will soon see a row of photos you’ve been recently tagged in.

It might be time to start making deposits in the persona-curating bank account…

Photo courtesy of Harley-Davidson, SocialSprouts and Google.

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