The Business of Resolutions

January 4th, 2012, In Business, Entrepreneurs, Must Share, by Beverly Crandon

It’s that time of year again where we close out one year and leap into another; and with this annual transformation comes the compelling need to transform even ourselves. Unfortunately, many of us start off in full gear and then fizzle as the first quarter of the year progresses; for proof of this, just look at how busy your gym is now and then compare today’s volume of exercisers to what you will see in three months.  I guarantee you’ll see at least a 30 per cent drop-off.  Now, if I take it close to home and focus on my peers and colleagues who run start-ups or are an integral part of a technology team, having to focus on  the ebbs and flows of the changes in digital media and technology.  Often times many of us who fall into the category above, force ourselves, given our responsibilities, to not only keep abreast of the latest and greatest, but to also stay ahead of it.  To remain as innovative forces in the marketplace.  This compelling need to ‘one-up’ last year to this extent, can be overwhelming, so there are a few credent rules that I try to remember this time of year, as I try to one-up last year, stay abreast of the latest and greatest, and remain innovative.

Resolution Aids:

Include your community – don’t think  you have to do it on your own. Use your social tools to put your resolutions out there.  If you are concerned that you may be seen as too delicate or weak because of the items on your list, don’t be.  Transparency and the act of looking for support from your network will keep you honest and earnest in completing your goals.

Don’t forget that you deserve a reward – this is truly all about you and given this, when you’ve accomplished a marked milestone on your quest to complete your list of resolutions, reward yourself.  Don’t just reward yourself for each time you conquer the world, reward yourself for small touch-points in time.  This will help you keep the momentum going.

Track – track your  ’to do’s’ and accomplishments as much as you can.  Breakdown the items on your resolutions list into compartments and track the completion of the compartmentalized items – this will also help you put your reward system in play.

Take it one day at a time – you know the saying, ‘Rome wasn’t built in a day’, and it’s true.  Focus on what you can control and affect.

 

In closing, we’ve compiled a list of apps. and tools that may just help you keep on track of your resolutions, this year:

Web Services

Declare-it (http://www.declare-it.com/)  – a tool that assists you in creating, tracking and being held accountable to your goals

Goal Pro (http://www.success.net/goalpro/?affid=50001) – a goal setting software that lets you create, categorize and simplify goals

Goalscape (http://www.goalscape.com/) – a visual display that allows you to identify, develop and communicate the key elements of a project: overall structure; relative importance; and progress tracking.

Aherk! (http://aherk.com/) - if you don’t mind being blackmailed into doing what you are supposed to, then you’ll like this service.  After you tell this service your goals, they will hold you to it and if you don’t make good on what you said you would accomplish, it sends out horrific pictures of you.

iOS and Android Apps.

MyLifeOrganized – a task manager that allows you to rank and compartmentalize your activities

Pocket Informant – integrated calendar and task solution

My Fitness Pal – good if your resolution was to lose weight this year

Quit Now – an aid to help you stop smoking

 

Good Luck Everyone!

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China Gives the US a Run for It’s eCommerce Position

December 13th, 2011, In Advertising, Social Media, by Beverly Crandon

Currency through eCommerce, we all know, is expected to rise over the next phase of our forecasted digital futures, and mostly, the US has taken the lead when discussing eCommerce trends.  comScore, for example, has released countless reports on the viability of this area of our market.  Their most recent account shows that eCommerce sales are up a whopping 15 per cent, when compared to just a year ago and if trends continue as

they are, we could very easily see the 2012 holiday season, eCommerce dollars, approach the 28 billion dollar mark.  However, given that Internet penetration is, as of October 2011, 79.8% in the US, the potential for new growth is minimal.  The ideal markets, in my mind, are the ones with strong economies, decent Internet penetration, but one that shows room for sizeable growth trends.  To put it simply, getting in on an emerging eCommerce economy, where your financial benefits will yield sizeable returns, for a longer period of time.

Based on highly published Web stats, the ideal emerging market or emerging market template is China.  China has a population of 1.3 billion people, of which 485 million are online, giving us a penetration rate of 36 per cent.  A far lower Internet penetration number, when compared to the US.  So, not only do the afore mentioned statistics shape it to be prime for an eCommerce waive, but it is how the culture has played in to world of eCommerce in China that also leads to higher forecast expectations now, and moving forward.

In past, China’s residents have been somewhat skiddish about online shopping.  It was too impersonal.  The act of giving a faceless entity your credit card information in hopes that they will make good on their promises of a product, in return for your money, was too hard to fathom.  To combat this, top online listing, auction and classified sites in the country have worked tirelessly in trying to build their own eWallet solutions, which has worked out well.  These online giants were home grown, and known to the residents of China, so a natural sentiment of trust was casted, now making for a smooth transition to electronic purchases.  One such online listing giant, is Baidu, and if you are familiar with recent Baidu news, you will know that they formed a partnership with Facebook, earlier this year.  Which was a likely partnership, considering that Facebook has 505k Chinese subcribers. It’s not a number that would, upon first glance, scare a partner such as Baidu, but the growth trends in this area have been astronomical.  So, as we speak about eCommerce and its future potential in China, the Facebook partnership is making a heck of a lot of sense for Zuckerberg.

When it comes to eCommerce, it has been said that more and more online stores are integrating Facebook’s social features, to the point that today 88% of Internet Top 200 retail sites are integrated with Facebook. This creates a viability to use Facebook as an eCommerce platform, in partnership with Baidu.  Promoting in profile purchases, through recommendations or through a posting of a company you have chosen to like, would be a nice addition to the Baidu offering.  Facebook would have to forget the virtual currency concept – we don’t see this working well in China.

With the Chinese population themselves referencing the lack of stock in brick and mortar retail outlets, as their

main reason for turning to eCommerce solutions, it is clear that the growth potential is limitless.  We had forecasted that the Baidu/Facebook relationship would result in an early 750 million dollar uplift for the social network site, but, should they get the eCommerce strategy right and remain respectful of culture and the nature of business in China, our forecast could be too remedial.  At any rate, our eyes are on China.  Could we even see a makeup between China and Google, given the potential?  Who knows, but opportunity does make everything possible.

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Mainstream Media Pinned Against Social Media – our view…

December 12th, 2011, In Newspapers, Online Journalism, Print Media, Social Media, by Beverly Crandon

I came across what was taken by me to be a very unfortunate article entitled ‘Three Reasons We Need Mainstream Media‘  by Chris Syme.  Now don’t get me wrong, it’s not the title that concerned me, it was the spin of the article that caused me to raise an eyebrow, which once you were finished reading it, you would think that the content you and I post to our social persona’s was worth far less than commentary posted by editors and traditional media content curators.

To build her article, Syme referenced a college basketball game that turned into a brawl.  Apparently, just post the eruption, she had taken to Twitter to gather more information, but was met with para-phrased accounts and some half truths, according to her and it was this experience, from what we read in her article today, that caused her to write this post.  Before we go further, let me get on the record by saying that in my mind, mainstream media is not as Syme would define it (traditional media).  To me, mainstream media is social media. The very thing that makes something ‘mainstream’ is if it is dominant and widely accepted and therefore, some could argue that social media (largely made up of lay person commentary) is ‘the’ mainstream.

Nonetheless, it is quite shocking that the ‘us against them mentality’  still exists today amongst traditional media advocates.  Imagine the deepness of our content if those she classes as ‘mainstream media’ were to consistently and actively take part on the same social platforms as the lay-folk living the experiences.  Utilizing the same hashtags as you and I and posting as soon as it happens, as opposed to waiting for the piece to be published in print or on air, before it can be syndicated on a social platform.   If I can grab commentary from multiple sources, I can create my own opinion on the case.  The author of today’s article also assumed that we were not smart enough to discern emotional banter from fact.  There have been  countless times where Fox News or even CNN led us down the wrong path, through lack of detail and content omissions, and they are what this author would call mainstream media. To further cement her point, the author then used the headings of Reliability, Accuracy and Professionalism as her basis for her viewpoint, where under each heading she discussed why mainstream media was better in each.  This was followed by a weird closing line, which we’re confident the editor at Social Media Today asked her to add to make it relevant to their readers “Social media and traditional media make good partners. One without the other is lacking. Like yin and yang, we need both to get a complete picture”.  Weird, nothing like the rest of article, which was very much, it seemed in support of controlled conversation and the word conversation is probably not the best used in this situation, more like autocratic.

Traditional media and those who share their views depicted above, will never let the social platform prowess work for them at this rate.  Instead, I suggest editors, writers, and content curators of traditional media concern themselves with the following:

Understanding the Tools: the platforms and how they work.  What is the culture on Twitter versus Facebook and what are they most passionate about?  What engages them more, platform versus platform?

Understanding the Reasons Behind the Tools: Twitter, Facebook, etc…, will mean very little to you or hold little impact to your day to day, if you do not understand the premise behind them.  Understanding the mini sub-cultures that their users have built through being open and social.  How this new social me has suddenly connected with colleagues to better my know how (and I hope their’s) and how I have build online relationships that compliment my real world and as a result, I am probably smarter now and better for it.

Using the Tools to Your Benefit: If they were to look at the tools from a users perspective and not as a rival, understanding how they can integrate it into what they do will become far easier.  Consider that the emotions that ring out in a users Tweet on a topic you may be covering for your organization, gives you greater sentiment into how the public feels on an item.  Liken it to trying to grab a quote from someone in the community, just after a local tragedy ensued.

All of the above to say that speaking in terms of which one is better than the other is really a waste of time and counter intuitive to what social media is all about.  Under our new and social rules, more good can be done through collaboration versus separation.

 

Header mage courtesy of: ZoofyTheJinx

 

 

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Why the Mixi Twitter Relationship is Bigger Than we Think

November 30th, 2011, In Social Media, by Beverly Crandon

The Mixi Twitter arrangement that broke via press conference late last week was overlooked by many, but deeper analysis of what this means to Twitter, or what it would have meant to any western company, is quite immense.  For years, popular North American organizations have tried to make inroads in the Asian market, but found themselves up against cultural nuances and mostly large home grown, ‘like’ companies.  So, some western companies gave up before even trying or tied and realized they needed to give up.  Take Google and China search for example.  Though the example may be a little far reaching, it does address the fact that taking a western approach to a business model that is supposed to excel on continents found on the other side of the world, just does not work.

Many may argue that if partaking in another market means bending on your business model and strategy, it just isn’t worth it, but for others, the connected population is too large to ignore.  If you fall into the bucket of those that cannot just turn away from what a market with so many connected residents can mean to your technology enterprise or service, then in our minds, the best way to break-in, is through partnership.  This is exactly what Twitter was able to do in Japan, with it’s Mixi partnership.  I argue, it was a much needed move, given that Facebook beat them to a partnership in China, with Baidu.

Mixi is a social networking site founded and launched in Japan, in 2004.  By 2008 it had an 80% market share in the social arena and today,

according to Burson – Martseller, it is still the social network of record in Japan. Take these numbers and compare it to Facebooks marginal 2%+ share in the market.  Nonetheless, it is argued today by some that Twitter could be just as strong, if not stronger than Mixi in terms of popularity.  We’ve seen Twitter be responsible for major entertainers losing large endorsement contracts, in Japan, due to alleged malicious tweets that have caused mass histeria – this alone highlights the popularity of Twitter in Japan.  So, with Twitter understanding that to keep relevant in the Japanese market, it needed a partnership with a home grown brand that users loved and most of all trusted, and with Mixi  realizing Twitter’s popularity as somewhat of a threat, the partnership represents a mutually beneficial relationship.

The agreement, to start, sees the two companies joining forces on an an app. called Mixixmas.  The app. will come with the built in ability to allow Mixi users to syndicate content to Twitter.  From what we can see, the app. focuses on the holiday season, wish lists and gifting. This upcomming holdiay season is also the first of such endeavors for the two.  On a more serious note, Mixi and Twitter will team up to find ways to aid Japanese citizens in communicating during pressured times, such as what we saw with the use of Twitter, during the Japanese earthquake.

For Twitter, this move to partner with Japan’s Mixi will keep the other North American platforms, namely Facebook, at bay, making themselves and YouTube the only social platforms from abroad mainting headway and growth in Japan’s social arena.

Header image courtesy of: feedmerobotfood

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Jeff Jarvis at Toronto’s Third Tuesday – Introducing Public Parts

November 18th, 2011, In Must Share, Online Publishing, by Beverly Crandon

Last nights, Third Tuesday event, on a Thursday mind you, in Toronto, was one I could not miss.  The nights speaker was Jeff Jarvis, someone I admire given his multi-faceted background, which encompasses both traditional and new media.  Nonetheless, his talk was not just centred around getting Canadian’s familiar with Mr. Jarvis and his views , but also to promote his latest book Public Parts.  Given the book’s theme, much of his talk surrounded privacy and what it really means, from a global perspective.  His global discussion was much welcomed, as often times speakers focus on US positioning and forget that the rest of us exist.

Jarvis referenced his bout with prostate cancer and how he made his plight public, to aid or in certain support of others going through the same thing.  While communicating about his personal  health matter, he shared a funny story in which he was verbally castrated by someone who thought he should not be sharing this type of information on the public web, much less syndicate it using social media. Javis’ response was a colourful ‘f-you’.  The ‘aha’ moment here was when Jarvis asked the audience why society put such a stigma on discussing health, and health was used as just one example, but the question can be asked to many who move to limit openness.  In the end, he chalked it up to fearing a loss of control.  ’If I share this information which was once deemed private, I am relinquishing control over a part of my life that was once protected’.

 

Jeff Jarvis did say that he believes that not everything that we do should be shared, at which point he referenced Twitter and our many misuses of it –  ”what we had for breakfast”.   With that being said, he did push for a majority openness, as, the way he put it, “being open helps us all”.

He closed his talk by saying this, that he thought the Internet as we know it today, is still in it’s infancy.  There is much learning and transformations still in store.  His concern was that if we moved to control something that we do not yet know the full potential of, we as a society, could be manacling our ability to utilise the Net for good and in ways we haven’t yet conceived of.  After that bit, you couldn’t help but think, he does have a point!

What are your thoughts on privacy and openness?

 

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Age Old Question Still Lives: how to digitize your editorial newsroom…

November 17th, 2011, In Newspapers, Online Journalism, Print Media, by Beverly Crandon

For those of you who have been on both sides of publishing content, print versus Web, the age old question of how news content should be treated in today’s digital market, is an old one.  However, what’s old for those of us who have been living the double-edged sword, is still very new and very pressing to others.  Today, for example, I came across an article that was addressing a Detroit newspaper groups Managing Editor’s trials and tribulations, as she tries to move her editorial staff through to incorporate digital reporting, in their story suite.  Quite naturally, and as I have seen in the past, this Managing Editor is coming up against opposition, where her editorial staff haven’t yet drank the Kool Aid.  To them, adding the social media tasks to their list of things to do, when covering a story is too mundane, tedious and again to them, damn near impossible, given all of their other responsibilities.  When I first read the Managing Editors point of view, the view of one of her editorial staff and lastly the gentleman who wrote the all encompassing article, I was surprised that these conversations still existed, given all that we’ve learned about social media today and the consumer interaction levels with it.  At one point in the article, the writer makes reference to the social media tasks that the Managing Editor is asking her staff to do, as setting up the group to give away all of the newspapers content, and then some, online, making the printed edition obsolete.  News flash … the peril of the print newspaper has nothing to do with the tasks the editorial staff is being asked to do, it has to do with the choices now available for the public to consume information.  The worst thing a newspaper could do is cut itself off of an obviously publicly accepted information source – social media.

We here support the Detroit newspaper groups Managing Editor in her efforts, but we do think she has missed the mark in one area.  Social Media and its effective use can seem somewhat daunting to the average person, especially when you’re asking them to use it in a professional sense.  Given this, not everyone will embrace it – it’s something new that for them outside of posting pictures of their vacation or latest addition to the family, its other uses appear foreign.  This newspaper group should look at staff aptitude.  Are they asking the wrong employee profile to assume these tasks?  Are they setting them up for failure, if the digital Web isn’t something they grasp?  Instead of asking why her incumbent staff isn’t on board with social media, she should be asking who would be.  What does the ideal reporter look like in this digital age? What experience and background would they need to come equipped with?  What tools should they have already used to be a part of a digital editorial team?  Stop harping on the ones who refuse to commit and start working on building a team of editorial staff who work to usher your paper and digital divisions forward, in our ever changing digital world.

We strongly believe that there is still room for both printed news and digital news and the folks who will succeed will apply the right balance and remove any content protectionist  plans.  The bottom line is, if you refuse to offer the information digitally, your readers will utilize other Web sources to find it.  Thinking that by hiding the content behind a ‘walled garden’ with a smile will be enough to protect your product road map and growth plan will be enough, is a sure fire way to set you up for demise.

You can read Michelle Rogers’ viewpoint here, the Managing Editor we’ve made reference to above.

 

Featured image above courtesy of: alancleaver_2000

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Think Lemon Wedge: there is often beauty in simplicity

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November 4th, 2011, In Business, Design, Software, Strategy, by Beverly Crandon

A few weeks ago, I invited a few friends over for dinner and cocktails, with the highlight of the evening being a new cocktail I had created  You see, I specifically went to bar tending school, not so I can work in the local bar (mind you, if there is any truth to the tech bubble I

guess I do have a skill to fall back on, when I move to the South of France), but so that I could entertain appropriately.  Conjure up concoctions with unassuming ingredients, making a libation that my guests would talk about for weeks.  Nonetheless, and back to the story, a few weeks ago I was featuring one of these libations, which I decided required a lemon and lime wheel.  Now in bar tending school, there was a third of a class spent on garnishing, but really… I didn’t pay attention.  I remember thinking to myself, the garnish means nothing to me – it’s what’s in the glass that counts.  So I, proceeded to crack jokes in class and take part in idle chatter, during the garnishing session.  So,

bringing us back to today, this new libation that just must have a lemon and lime wheel, was in a pickle.  Believe it or not, I could not get the perfect circular shape I was looking for and the pieces I did cut, didn’t sit on the rim of the glass in the perfect way I had envisioned.  I then decided to stop worrying about the garnish, and I started to concern myself with the taste of the drink.  I tried it, and it was delightful – and actually came out better than the practise batch I had made the week prior.  So, I was happy with the drink, but not the garnish.

Friends started to arrive and I pulled out the evenings signature drink.  I watched them all look at the garnish and fumble with it as it fell either on the floor or in their drink directly.  They too then looked past the garnish and sipped the drink.  Their response was more than pleasing and the amount of returns to the signature drink tray, proved that their love of the drink wasn’t just lip service.  Nonetheless, I slowly started to notice that folks just started to take the lemon and lime wheels and place them directly in the drink.  To them, what was more important was adding that touch of lime or lemon to the cocktail and not so much the rimming of the drink.  It was then I realized that the 99% of us are interested in the basic art of the featured item.  The garnish, tinsel and diamond we in the industry think an item must have, aren’t necessarily the things that will make the 99% appreciate and love what we produce.  This rule of what the 99% want in order to become advocates, does not just apply to technology, marketing and libations, it really does apply to all industry verticals.

I urge you to think Lemon Wedge, when venturing down your next design or product path. Is your product light on functionality, but heavy on garnish?

 

Header image courtesy of: Red Door Creative

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Hashtag Experiment: how our audience assessment turned into a lesson learned

November 2nd, 2011, In Advertising, Entrepreneurs, Social Media, by Beverly Crandon

Today, we had the pleasure of being asked to speak at one of Toronto’s foremost entertainment collegiates, Trebas Institute.  The instructors thought was that they were teaching one of their classes how to market themselves or the artist brands they represent and to be more forward thinking than the music industry has been pegged as being in the past, they decided including digital marketing to the syllabus was an acute move – hence our inclusion.

Days prior to the talk, we asked specific questions about the students in the class, to try to peg our audience and pre-determine, to some extent, how these folks already use digital devices, blogs and social media. Yes, we applied some of the persona building strategies to this talk, as we would when setting out on a branding strategy.  We assumed a few things going in:

• Knowing that the class consisted of mostly Gen Y’ers, we assumed that they were very connected, digitally
• We assumed that they were actively using things like Twitter, Facebook and YouTube, in their personal lives
• We assumed that some of them had already started playing with Fan Pages for their professional brands
• We assumed that some of them had already started playing with things like hashtags on Twitter

We decided that based on our above assumptions and the fact that we were talking to the class about maximizing their exposure online and through other digital devices that we would integrate the very tools we would be chatting about, in class. On the day of the talk, we asked the class to either use their computers or smartphones freely in the class and post, using a specified hashtag on Twitter, burning questions they hoped to have answered from our time together and or any other thoughts they come up with during the session.  We promised to then check the hashtag at the end of the session, and ensure we’d covered all they wanted and or talk about the posted items during the open Q&A period.  Our intent behind the hashtag exercise was to obviously show the class, how many of these tools could be used to complete common offline activities, we had once done in other ways.  We wanted to show them how communications methods had expanded to include many awesome platforms.  Sounds good right?  Well, that’s what we thought too, until we reviewed the hashtag at the end of the session.  Although we spent time explaining the reason for the hashtag and how to enter the hashtag phrase, the class didn’t use it.  When asked why they didn’t, they said things like “I’ve never used hashtags on Twitter before”; “I never knew until today what #hashtags were”; “I just signed up for Twitter”.  When asked about the session overall we had comments like “This makes sense.  I have got a lot here that I can use for my business” or even keenly put “I am going to put this in motion tonight”.  So it wasn’t that they didn’t get the information imparted to them or didn’t embrace it, their mind sets were shaped to think in a different way.  Give me a moment and I will further explain that last point. Now, for some facilitators this would have been deflating – seen as a debacle, but not for us.  It was a great highlight and accent point on a lot of what we talked about, around digital marketing, which was having a plan before you execute.  How is your brand to be perceived? Who are you talking to? What do you know about them? What platforms do they use? etc….  Remember our persona assumptions above?  It was a solid list and for any other group with the same age and geographical profile, it would have worked, but one thing we missed was that the students were aspiring music industry moguls and like those before them, the digital side of their business provides less of a concern to them, while in the planning stage.  That industry propels so many other faucets as ‘must do’ and ‘must have’ that go to market strategies often tier the Web to a lower position. You, see we used our general data sets and understanding about that demographic, but did not use the specifics, the thing that makes them different – the music industry factor.  So again, it wasn’t that they didn’t get the information imparted to them or didn’t embrace it, their mind sets were shaped to think in a different way.

In closing and on a good note, these students are more digitally tuned than those in the music industry before them and the questions and comments from this group in today’s session, tell us that with the changing of the guard, we’ll continue to see transformations in this industry and more avantgarde decisions being made.  The very fact that the school has included digital into their curriculum says a lot.

So today,  the students learned some kick-ass strategy and we here at ad-ition learned that there can, by chance, be a caveat in your persona strategy that you didn’t think of before hand and rinse and repeat, is every marketers (teachers :=)) best friend.

Share with us your stories of real-world and digital world experiments you’ve embarked on.  Your lesson’s learned would be fruitful to many.

 

Header image courtesy of:  Robert Griffith

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Webinar: Not-for-Profits and the Successful Social Campaign

October 31st, 2011, In Events, Social Media, Strategy, by Beverly Crandon

Date: Friday November 4th, at 1:00 pm eastern
Duration: 30 minutes
Register: http://eepurl.com/gLUvn

Description:  Social Media, for many business types, follows some of the most standard rules and if applied consistently, they can prove to create a fruitful campaign. However, in some community outreach campaigns, the rules differ.  In this ad-ition webinar, we’ll look at one such group, the not-for-profits. We’ll walk through the recipe of a successful social media campaign for a nonprofit, as well as samples of past notable campaigns. At the end of this webinar, if you run or actively participate in a not-for-profit, you’ll walk away with new ideas and even the gumption to invigorate some of your old.

This webinar will be presented by Beverly Crandon of ad-ition.

 

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What Employers Can Learn About Social Media in the Workplace from a High School Experiment

October 21st, 2011, In Social Media, by Beverly Crandon

To this day, we still encounter employers who question the use of social networks, while at work.  We often refer them to tips and tricks on how they can at least divert some of that employees affinity to Twitter or Facebook, to benefit the company and its marketing and branding goals.  Yet, the trepidation continues.  Given this, we’re hoping that by sharing this story about Burton High, in San Francisco, will help to put things in perspective.

We are all well aware that cell phones are not allowed in schools, for obvious reasons, so imagine Burton High 11th and 12th grader’s surprise, when they were asked to do an assignment using Twitter.  The focus of the assignment was to get the students thinking about 9/11 and its effect on America and the world in general.  Now their teacher, Wendy Berkelman, could have asked them to write a paper, which in many cases would have just touched the surface of their real feelings and thoughts, as the other rules and regulations around essay writing would have taken precedence.  At Burton High, the students were asked to Tweet what they remembered about 9/11.  The fact that they were asked to do an assignment on a tool they love and use regularly in their lives outside of school, stepped up the participation and the discussion around their classmates thoughts on the historical moment.  The feedback from the students themselves, framed their resulting passion around the assignment:

“I think that using Twitter to do an assignment is maybe the coolest assignment in school,” said Jason Wong. “I like how we are able to do this through the phone and people can see our thoughts.”

“I learned about 9/11 that many of my peers were too young to understand about the situations and they were really clueless about it,” said Japhet Sabucdalao. “I think it really helped my experience because it made be see different ways of things, like different perspectives of people during 9/11.”

“What I learned is that everybody has different ways of reacting about this situation and it’s really sad that all these beloved ones lost their lives during 9/11,” she said. “This helped me understand more about what I don’t know and also, I want to learn more about it for references in the future.”

It’s clear that handling this assignment any other way would not have provoked the conversation and the peer to peer learning that this did.  Not only was the class able to discuss the social issues around 9/11, but it also provided a perspective on media and communications.

So, case in point – taking a tool that someone is passionate about and allowing them to use it to spread your message or a strategically designed intent, could result in powerful things.

 

Header image courtesy of: noraelisabethphotos

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Understanding Intelligent Conversation

October 5th, 2011, In Advertising, by Beverly Crandon

I was reading a book a few weeks back, on the topic of search, and a phrase read then has continued to resonate in my mind.  Although I cannot remember the exact line it was something about the winning recipe would be having the ability to understand the intent behind a query.  At first glance or read, there doesn’t seem to be much ‘umph’ to such a phrase, until you read it over a few times.

Though the crux of our business is not search, I still found this phrase pertinent to what we do as digital marketers.   It speaks to providing a level of intelligence behind the digital solutions we come up with, instead of giving your customers the me too or the norm products that everyone else employs.  It is our job to take each ask or project and transform it into something that has staying power and long term residual impact.  Our clients reach out to us because they have a product, service or message they wish to make known to a target audience and as a result, they need our help in making the exchange between them and their audience as impactful as possible.

The natural result of looking past the norm in a brand to consumer relationship and understanding the intent, is that both parties win. The brand wins as it now has an intelligent and pertinent way in which to communicate with its target audience, and the target audience now has a brand or product, engaging them in intelligent conversation.  It is important to note here that we see conversation as covering several things, messages in creative images, messaging in video, social media strategies, copy strategy on your Web entities, etc…. In basic terms, it is whatever you put out to your public, as a representation of your brand.  Nonetheless, intelligent conversation is your desired state.  We’re not referring here to using long and complex words to give off an air of intelligence, but we’re talking about tailoring our conversations based on our audience, with some suggestive instances that looks at all that they’ve done thus far and how they’ve done it, and pulls interest points from that, that help you in guiding them to discover and explore where what you have to offer, fits nicely in their life or fills a need.  It is understanding the actions, however similar or dissimilar to what you do, anticipating the needs or issues that come come up based on those actions and then being prepared to intelligently communicate how you can help.

The intent behind the query in our world of marketers still holds some similarities to the phrases original intended use.  We see understanding intent as covering these things

Understanding the Clients ‘Success’: and this cannot be revenue.  Revenue targets, budgets and fiscal responsibility will come up – trust me, but very rarely do we spend enough time with the client understanding action and emotion quotient success.  Understanding these levels of success now aid you in starting to form your intelligent communication strategy.  Intelligent and effective conversation cannot start off with a dollar figure.  Could you imagine “Hello. We’re company x and we’re a fortune 500 company with annual revenues currently sitting at 125 million and our goal this year is to see an increase by 7 points.  We want you to buy our clothes because they are cool and will make you cool too”.  Yes, we know the example above is pretty crass, but when our conversation starts off in a random state (not specific to the audience segment), with campaign goals focusing on the wrong success quotients, it might as well sound like the above.

Understanding the Passions: of your clients audience.  What they naturally take interest in, based on where and how they spend their time and the things they are most engaged with.  Here too, you now start to form the beginnings of intelligent conversation, as you can draw on specifics of the audience and their lives.

This business of personalizing the query to understand, more deeply, the intent of the individual behind it will never change.  It’s one of the basics in effective communication and relationship building.  The unfortunate thing is that so much of us get caught up in the ‘doing’ and neglect the ‘listening’.

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Using Social Media For Good: female students account of post Iranian election

September 23rd, 2011, In Must Share, Social Media, by Beverly Crandon

So often we blog about the uses of social media for business gain or brand betterment, but every once in a while, we do come across a story that shows the positive uses of social media, with the intention of bettering the lives of others.  This is the case with this story we found that speaks to how women in Iran are using social media to spread the word on the injustices and their personal experiences, post the election, brought on  by Iranian authorities.  Most of these women were either raped, or beaten and in some cases both, because they voted for Mir-Hossein Mousavi, in the June 2009 election.

It was only this year that a 28 minute video account of a young students horrifying experience had been published and syndicated using various social media outlets, and it continues to be shared with as much fervor today.  Hadi Ghaemi, executive director of the New York based International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran, gives recognition to social media for spreading the word:

Social media gave the young woman a voice, enabling her to speak out about her experience and encourage other women on the margins to follow her example

These are the sobering world going-on’s that cause me to think twice as I use Twitter and the likes to discuss the frivolous activities in my life that clearly show how well I have it, versus more than half of the rest of the world. The things we take for granted such as voting, freedom to be female and expressive for example, are real and shameful realities.

We’ve added the video clip here and hope that you too will use your social voice to cause awareness -

Iranian Woman’s Testimony of Rape and Torture from IntlCampforHRinIran on Vimeo.

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Taking Targeted Advertising and Advertiser to Consumer Relationships to New Heights

August 11th, 2011, In Advertising, Search Marketing, Social Media, by Beverly Crandon

The business of targeted marketing is not a new one, but it is an evolving one and often times we find new tools or platforms that so transform the activity of sentiment based marketing that pundits continue to reach for other options, on where this will  go.  We at ad-ition strongly believe in making all digital communications, with users, as targeted as possible.  In today’s busy and hectic world, with everyone in a hurry, no one has time to waste and worse yet if it is being wasted by advertisers communicating in ways that do not resonate with me.  Nonetheless, this business of building relationships (friend to friend or more specifically here, advertiser to new consumer) is one that has spurred a lot of study.  Microsoft, has just invested in a research project being led by Jure Leskovec. The Leskovec study looks at the science of connections made on social networks and it very early on  attests to the fact that these relationships are not happenstance, but can be predicted.  This is the exact desired state for advertisers – to get to a point where based on a users behaviours, likes, dislikes, comments, friends, job, geography, digital communities and groups, one can anticipate their next step or their resulted sentiment towards something you put in front of them.  Imagine how successful, we as marketers, would be if that exact formula existed?  Well exploring this and many other aspects on the building of social relationships will be covered in Leskovec’s study.

Many have also commented on what studies such as Leskovec’s could mean to the future of advertising, such as Lauren Fisher.  Fisher goes so far as to say:

…it essentially takes out the element of choice by the user. Instead of allowing them to arrive more naturally and organically at the decision to try out your brand or product, you cut out this waiting time and get right in front of them straight away, pre-empting their decision to purchase. And of course, while you can’t physically force someone to purchase your product no matter how targeted your marketing is, the freedom of choice is largely removed.

I doubt (hope) we’ll get to the stage where absolute decision making power is lost, as it would remind me of a Ridley Scott futuristic film, which I always find all to predictable, but I do think studies such as Leskovec’s are fascinating, as they turn us on to smart means of communications and advertising.

In closing I strongly encourage you to review Leskovec’s article entitled : Supervised Random Walks, which is all about predicting link sharing and recommendation activity on social networks.  This will further provide insight into his thinking and the business of predicting advertising precision.

Header image courtesy of: FadderUri

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There was a while where the issue of online news property paywalls, consumed much of our blog posts and it was a trend triggered by Rupert Murdoch himself, when he rolled out his plan, publicly, to take all of his news titles to a pay for access format – a promise which has yet to be fulfilled.  Then the news of paywalls died down somewhat, until raised by the New York Times in the spring.  Regardless, many felt that given pained performance (Web traffic and revenues), the topic had been muted for most. So, it was to our surprise to see that The Onion was embarking on their own form of a paywall that will see international users of the site, pay to access more than five articles per month.

The Onion is a satirical online news site, which was originally founded in 1988 in print format and then taken to the Web in 1996.  It has operated in an open environment for all this time, so their wanting to move to a pay for content format is surprising.  Further, their reasoning’s for the move seems to follow a ‘the other kids are doing it so…’.

Our position on paywalls is now what it always was, publishers need to amass an audience of readers and work to monetize the audience through their adver tising platforms. It’s unfair to the reader to want to monetize their patronage and yet still charge them for it.

The road of a paywall is not an easy one, just ask Murdoch and even the New York Times, who has taken to launch a Living Social Deal for their titles to try to increase subscription revenues. It will be interesting to see how the Onion will adapt.

‘Mobile ROI’ And Why So Many Are Disconnected From What It Means

August 4th, 2011, In Advertising, Mobile Advertising, Mobile Media, Social Media, by Beverly Crandon

We’ve been chatting for years on the benefits of mobile and how smartphone adoption and mobile, will impact search and commerce moving forward. But even though the writing is on the wall, the number of business adopting market relevant mobile strategies, does not add up. The numbers of those dabbling in mobile appears lower or stagnant, at best.

In a new study by the Relevancy Group, the data points to an apparent low ROI being the reasons businesses have not ventured into or have pulled their dollars out of mobile campaigns to date.  The Relevancy Group numbers show that 43% of respondents said they won’t increase their mobile spend in 2011 because the ROI simply isn’t there, but that if it was, 93% of them would feel comfortable improving their spend.  The comment and viewpoints of these business owners and advertisers clearly contradicts the mobile behaviours of consumers that we know exist.  More and more, users are turning to their mobile devices to source information they were once had to be wired to find.  So then, why the disconnect?  To put it simply, advertisers are utilizing the mobile medium, without taking the consumer behaviours and life-cycle to thought.

Today, many believe that placing banner ads on mobile news apps qualifies as a well oiled mobile campaign and that given smartphone adoption rates, their mobile click-thrus should be through the roof, but that’s just not the case.  The more targeted your strategy so it fits to the advertising medium and your target demographic using that medium, the better.

Those interested in embarking on mobile strategies should be thinking about things that:

• Better blend the online world, with offline, given the use of mobile applications and campaigns
• How global positioning tools on smartphones can aid in the directory process, consumers embark on almost everyday, when trying to find retailers or restauranteurs
• How mobile devices can be used to allow patrons and consumers to make advanced mobile purchases
• Building recommendation agents that takes the user mobile GPS quadrants into consideration

In addition to changing the approach to mobile, the expected way to measure revenue and or return must change.  Businesses need to look at cost per registration, cost per download, etc… but make all of the measurable actions, actions that are specific to the world of mobile.

The above is the same issue many marketers faced with social media – they knew thy should be there, but did not know in what fashion.  In the beginning many dollars were wasted as folks tried divergent campaigns and wondered why they were not getting the following that they felt they should have.  The same goes for mobile.  If advertisers think in specific platform and mediums and create plans that fit the specificity required, mobile ROI would start to be a comparable partner to smartphone adoption and usage numbers we’er all wowed by, regularly.

Header image courtesy of: Ewan McIntosh

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BlackBerry Touting Download Numbers That Aren’t Quite True

July 13th, 2011, In Mobile Media, by Beverly Crandon

You’ve got to hand it to BlackBerry.  They’re still producing press releases and blog posts that tout the positives of their business – and they should.  The negative press they are getting needs to be mitigated by a source and what better a source than themselves.  However, the most recent release to support their product health claims, caused me to raise an eyebrow.  Yesterday, on the RIM blog, they announced that they reached the 1 billion download mark, in their BlackBerry App World store.  This caused us to raise an eyebrow, not because it took them two years to get there and Apple only 1 year (Apple is  now at 1 billion downloads per month), but because we learned that the download number they were advertising include application updates – now that’s a bit misleading.  What’s stopping them from posting the download numbers, exempt of the application updates? This leaves me a bit suspicious and yelling corporate propaganda.  Nonetheless, my position is and has always been that RIM is not fighting a losing battle, if they focus on the things they do well, and stop trying to be a me too product (the iPhone killer, etc…).

If RIM left their BlackBerry division focus on providing tools for the business user, both independently and from an enterprise approach, they could maintain that level of the marketplace.  Their dabbling in entertainment add-on’s is causing for a fragmented corporate mentality and as a result, their bounce-back strategies seem scattered.  Their need to release numbers to show breadth that are not true, is really showing their lack of depth.

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Google Plus Highlights the Fact that the Twitter Business Model Needs an Overhaul

July 11th, 2011, In SEO, Search Marketing, Social Media, by Beverly Crandon

If you’ve been following our blog, you will notice that we have posted many a narrative on how Twitter has changed and how it no longer supports it’s early adopters or those looking to maintain true, digital relationships, with friends, and colleagues.   Moreover, our Twitter sentiment, at the end of the day, has always been (at least for the past 16 months or so) that  given the commercially focused changes made to Twitter, there is room for something else to disrupt the social network space.

With the launch of Google + we’ve seen many posts, comparing it to Facebook and talking about user adoption of Google + and their rejection of Facebook. We here are more interested however, in if and how Google+ will effect Twitter usage, based on everything we said, above.

Firstly, and for more remedial purposes, let’s get clear the different components, one gets with Google+:

Circles: allows me to build my personally labeled groups and place those who I follow in their appropriate bucket.  Similar to Twitter’s lists, but much much easier to create, and manage.  You can still search for folks to follow, based on industry and relevance, but again, you can group them appropriately

Sparks – allows me to share items I find with a selected group of people who I know share the same interest

Hangouts – a group video chat service

Instant Upload - self explanatory - it uploads photos from your mobile phone to the Web instantly

Huddle – group chat on steroids

The above was a rudimentary explanation of the Google + variables and you can get a more eloquent run down here. We’re more interested in how these elements, even in their early days, will impact Twitter, the one social network we feel needs an immediate overhaul.

How Google + Beats Twitter

1. Rocky Road  for Twitter Over the Past 16 Months

Google +, to be fair to Twitter, had a chance to sit back and learn from the mistakes made by Twitter and their user grumblings and to some extent, the errors of Google Buzz.  So, you will find that Google + will come with some out of the box features that make it tons easier to manage.  However, let’s not forget the biggest product production aid of all time —  it’s still in private beta (probably one of the largest I have ever seen), with more than 1 million users (estimate) participating, engaging and providing feedback to Google engineers.

2. Hard to Manage Lists and Follower Streams

In addition, to the general mishaps with the sites business model, another one of Twitter’s  drawbacks today is that users need to create multiple profiles to streamline their outgoing messages and or they need to create hard to manage lists, to streamline their incoming content.  Google + aids you in managing all of that in set up.  A big plus here, as it also means that my access to the information I want to utilize will be that much more easier to get at, when compared to Twitter.

3. Commercial Versus the Private User

Twitter’s other flaw, which some may argue is not realized yet, but we argue it will soon be coming to pass, is the integration with commercial advertising.  The folks at Twitter themselves have talked about how they plan to add elements to the micro-blogging site that will give advertisers more prevalence and these items include, adding commercial ads amongst your Twitter stream.  A major intrusive point!  Now, in the early stages, there are no certainties about how much monetization will be enough for Google and their + product.  One can argue that with users “+’ing” data, we are enhancing their search mechanisms and making them more pointed for our network of friends and or people who are similar to us.  This type of targeted  communication is priceless and hard to find and therefore it could be argued that this is a form of monetization, being realized by Google.

In the end, the point is that Google+ makes collaboration and communication easy, pointed and relevant and this is something Twitter has lost over the past 16 months.  Now, it’s true, we’ve spent a lot of time talking about Twitter in the above, as we feel they will feel the brunt of the Google+ arrival, more than Facebook will. Facebook will still be the location that the not so web savvy may stay for some time, but Twitter has made so many shifts in their business model that their user base is now, as they say, ‘fair game’!

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Twitter For Newsrooms Now Launched

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Twitter For Newsrooms Now Launched

June 28th, 2011, In Online Journalism, Social Media, Strategy, by Beverly Crandon

Twitter has officially launched its product, ‘Twitter for Newsrooms‘ today, as it tries to leverage the already existing, yet accidental, relationship, it has with journalists and news reporters, on the micro-blogging site. The Twitter for Newsrooms (TfN) site is filled with tips and tricks that should aid journalists in the business of search and finding sources, mobile tips, effective tweeting, branding, publishing tools, and it also comes with a handy dandy Twitter glossary.

Although TfN was a logical move for Twitter, I can’t help but wonder if it was Facebook’s Journalism Meetups that urged them on.  The other thing that this TfN announcement brings me to think about is Twitter’s revenue model.  Not too long ago, we blogged about their wanting to include ads to users Twitter streams.  We then also speculated that the future for Twitter will be two pronged; they will reap the financial benefits of their advertiser relationship (cool), and secondly start to charge lay-users for an ad free environment (not cool).  Twitters move to provide TfN as an added resource, for one of their business user groups, is exactly where they should be looking to find other sources of revenue and in turn, leave the private user experience alone.  Create robust tools that not only aid key business segments while working directly on your platform, but also when they are working offline, with other related tools or actions.  Creating a business or professional use, product suite like this, is something one could charge for.  Disrupting the consumer experience could lead to diminishing user levels and therefore, negatively effect a businesses monetization strategy.

Nonetheless, I have no doubt in my mind that Twitter for Newsrooms will work.  Twitter as is, has been the revealing source of many key moments in our now recent history.  Today, it would be difficult to not find anyone in a room who found out about Osama Bin Laden’s death on Twitter or on a more lighter note, the Anthony Wiener story.  Whether traditional media likes it or not, Twitter does have the inklings to be a news changer and a product like TfN, could fast track them in the right direction.

Well we’ve heard of buying a list for call centre sales or mailers, but we didn’t think the concept would spill into social media.

We were turned on to USocial, a service that gets you random Facebook fans and other social followers for a fee, but were surprised when we actually rolled up our sleeves to find that there were many others, in the same business.

The way these services work is that a business or marketer will pay them, sometimes up to $10,000 to buy 250k+ fans on Facebook.  Sounds good right?  Wrong.  The challenge with these services is that the randomness of the followers you will gain, inevitably make these followers useless.  Think about it, you try to garner brand followers because you have the intention to communicate in a targeted fashion, with the hopes of converting them.  If you’ve gained followers from buying them and not attracting them through a previous interaction that they or their friends have had with your brand, you no longer have the opportunity to strategically communicate and your propensity to convert lessens.  In my mind, running banner ads on an industry related Web site would be far more effective, than buying Facebook fans or likes.

Below is a list of only a few of these services, accompanied by some interesting first impressions we got, when visiting them.  By the way, if you think the business of buying fans is not popular and something you don’t need to worry about your marketer or agency doing, we can tell you that the term  ’Buy Facebook Likes’ for example, has seen month over month increases in search volume, meaning that these services are being used at an increasing and alarming rate.

USocial: visiting the site brings you to a coupon that gives you 10% off your next purchase, but wait … that coupon expired April 30th.  It’s now June.

Raj Promotions: they tout that their process is targeted because the business gets to indicate the gender, geography and such of the fans they would much rather have on Facebook.  But again, if you’ve had no interaction with the user where they voluntarily choose to follow you, because of an emotion you triggered in them, your conversation will by no means be targeted.  Regardless of what you do.

MyFBFans: these folks are a little cheaper than the rest, and they have five packages for you to choose from.  What’s concerning though, is that even though all of the packages shout that you can buy fans for xx price, only the most expensive package ‘Guarantees’ fans.  So, does that mean with the other packages, you pay for them, with the hopes of getting the fans they’ve listed, but it may not actually happen?  Or the fans you get in lesser tiers may be made up of a few not so true accounts?

Buy a Follower: the name says it all.  As a Facebook user, I am a little offended to know that someone out there is looking to ‘buy a follower’, who could be me.  Nonetheless, once you get to the site, it totes that is has been “Voted the #1 Online Marketing Solution”, but by who?  We scoured the site for an article or press release that validated this – but, to no avail, we came up empty handed.  Hmm…..

In short, as a business owner, the above highlights how important it is to ask questions of your marketer or agency when they say they guarantee a particular amount of followers. Ask them how?  And ask them what their engagement strategy is? (Engagement quotient with a follower or fan is a far more important statistic, as it leads to customer longevity).  Lastly, although you may be tempted to buy fans or followers, think twice.  The positive effect you are looking for, will never be realized in the business of buying fans.