John Moore of Swimfish blogs about social support communities. On October 1, he posted his early thoughts on the so-called SSCs, a phrase he coined to describe “discussion groups on steroids.”
As Moore sees it, SSCs incorporate existing social networks (blogs, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Pip.io, YouTube, etc.) as additional channels where customers talk to each other. Moore points out that participants in SSCs typically exclude the larger community, companies, partners, and competitors.
Bottomline: Customers are looking for -- and finding -- ways to talk to each other, get frank answers and unfiltered feedback, and even get and give mutual support.
Organizations and institutions used to control groups. Across industry segments, associations in particular were the meeting ground for people of like mind. Not long ago, if an association didn’t already exist, the only way to gather people of like mind was to actually form an association, which some folks with a cause did (MADD, is a good example, but there are thousands).
The Internet, of course, has changed all that. Today corporations, nonprofits, and associations struggle to maintain relevancy (and control) of the digital community hall.
At the Direct Marketing Association of Washington’s “Association Day” this week, one of the most popular sessions focused on social media. While talking about how to get associations involved in social media, participants noted that some of their members had broken away to form their own groups via Yahoo, Google, onlinegroups.net, Convos, and any number of the other “group formation” facilitators. This is challenging for traditional associations – not because members are necessarily unhappy, but because splintering is such an easy process.
Splintering doesn't always work, though. LinkedIn Groups – which began as a terrific example of comrades gathering -- are, in my opinion, floundering. The original concept was good, but in short order, many LinkedIn groups were over by people trying to sell something. That’s bad and will likely kill-off or make obsolete some of the (especially larger) groups that originally populated LinkedIn with good intentions.
The point is that associations, nonprofits, and corporations still have a chance to participate, but only if they are cognizant of how people genuinely want groups to function in today’s free-wheeling social media environment.
Finally, a personal case in point: Yesterday I tweeted about Mozy, the offsite computer backup company. I love Mozy because it’s affordable and easy. A recent collaboration with their support team sealed the deal for me. I wanted the folks who follow me to know about Mozy because, for me, it was a real find. I’ve got no skin in the Mozy game so my experience is impartial. I hope somebody out there will read my Mozy tweet and appreciate the news.
That’s how people are finding and sharing info today… from each other. John Moore calls it social support communities. I call it long overdue.
-- scrubbed by Marketing Brillo
Friday, October 30, 2009
Tuesday, October 27, 2009
Information Sells: Hitwise Gets It, Shows It, Does It
I was struck this morning by an email from Experian Hitwise, a nifty global brand that is an information powerhouse in fun-to-read format. Experian acquired web Intelligence firm Hitwise in April 2007 for $240 million, but just got active with its outreach in September.
What struck me this morning was the usefulness of information the company is giving away in its newsletter. Not only were there thought-provoking stats (Top Fashion Websites Visited by Men Aged 25-34, most popular keywords related to “costume,” tips for leveraging competitive intelligence, etc.), the newsletter featured a worthy downloadable pdf titled “2009 Holiday Marketer: Benchmark & Trend Report,” plus links to three FREE archived webcasts about holiday content planning. Nice touch for a late October, pre-holiday communication.
There's a larger point. Hitwise’s first-class approach to communication underscores the allure of contemporary marketing that starts with education and training for current and prospective customers. E-newsletters, webinars, white papers, and videos increasingly replace "advertising" in the new social media "conversation" with customers. It's instructive to watch the formerly somewhat staid Experian master the concept.
-- scrubbed by Marketing Brillo
What struck me this morning was the usefulness of information the company is giving away in its newsletter. Not only were there thought-provoking stats (Top Fashion Websites Visited by Men Aged 25-34, most popular keywords related to “costume,” tips for leveraging competitive intelligence, etc.), the newsletter featured a worthy downloadable pdf titled “2009 Holiday Marketer: Benchmark & Trend Report,” plus links to three FREE archived webcasts about holiday content planning. Nice touch for a late October, pre-holiday communication.
There's a larger point. Hitwise’s first-class approach to communication underscores the allure of contemporary marketing that starts with education and training for current and prospective customers. E-newsletters, webinars, white papers, and videos increasingly replace "advertising" in the new social media "conversation" with customers. It's instructive to watch the formerly somewhat staid Experian master the concept.
-- scrubbed by Marketing Brillo
Friday, October 23, 2009
Technology Also Creates Jobs... Think About It
This week, the Wise Marketer featured a new position paper from Hawkins Strategic that dealt with the way retailers handle stuff as it flows into the warehouse and out the door in a shopping bag [or not]. "..what happens between products flowing into the warehouse and shoppers leaving with them is the retail equivalent of a black hole," Sterling Hawkins writes. "In fact, at best, retailers are able to measure only the periphery of what actually happens in-store."
Apparently, technology manages many retail functions – transactions, checkout activity, inventory, restocking, traffic measurement, etc. But when it comes to actually getting products onto the shelves, guess what? That takes people. The people point is where technology can go no further. Technology is good with numbers, but it's not so good with creativity or decision-making. For that brain work, so far we still need human strategists and executioners.
Marketing Brillo mulled over this thought and, yes, it seems accurate. For example, we have Adobe Creative Suite, but without a marketing genius to envision it and a graphic designer to execute it, CS4 just takes up space on the hard drive. It’s the same for website design. And for variable data printing (managing VDP takes an expert and an innovator). Even list ordering won't return a favor unless some creative soul connects the digital dots. Somewhere, someplace -- between the technology and the customer -- a human being still needs to gets involved. And that, my friends, is where the jobs are.
Technology does replace jobs, but it also creates them. As the Hawkins’ article noted, “Many retailers have tried to fix this problem, and several firms now provide promotional compliance services ... In the end, most of these are manual, labour-intensive processes (such as a person photographing certain categories, shelf sets, or displays).” Hawkins goes on to lament that, “While these [promotional compliance] services deliver value today, the whole area demands an automated solution.” Well wait, Sterling. Maybe not.
What's wrong with a redefined job for humans? The Promotional Compliance Creative Manager, for example? As technology takes over some of the more mundane human endeavors (like counting beans), apparently it leaves gaping holes that only human ingenuity can fill. That's certainly true for the new marketing favorite: Social Media Manager.
To wit (and as Hawkins put it): "Retailers also invest huge sums of money in store design and research to maximize the number of shoppers exposed to high margin products during their shopping trips but, at best, this is simply good guesswork ... The industry has no mechanism by which to accurately measure traffic flow around the store and conversion rates within aisles and categories on an ongoing basis." Meet The Promotional Compliance Creative Manager .. hello-oo!)
-- scrubbed by Marketing Brillo
Apparently, technology manages many retail functions – transactions, checkout activity, inventory, restocking, traffic measurement, etc. But when it comes to actually getting products onto the shelves, guess what? That takes people. The people point is where technology can go no further. Technology is good with numbers, but it's not so good with creativity or decision-making. For that brain work, so far we still need human strategists and executioners.
Marketing Brillo mulled over this thought and, yes, it seems accurate. For example, we have Adobe Creative Suite, but without a marketing genius to envision it and a graphic designer to execute it, CS4 just takes up space on the hard drive. It’s the same for website design. And for variable data printing (managing VDP takes an expert and an innovator). Even list ordering won't return a favor unless some creative soul connects the digital dots. Somewhere, someplace -- between the technology and the customer -- a human being still needs to gets involved. And that, my friends, is where the jobs are.
Technology does replace jobs, but it also creates them. As the Hawkins’ article noted, “Many retailers have tried to fix this problem, and several firms now provide promotional compliance services ... In the end, most of these are manual, labour-intensive processes (such as a person photographing certain categories, shelf sets, or displays).” Hawkins goes on to lament that, “While these [promotional compliance] services deliver value today, the whole area demands an automated solution.” Well wait, Sterling. Maybe not.
What's wrong with a redefined job for humans? The Promotional Compliance Creative Manager, for example? As technology takes over some of the more mundane human endeavors (like counting beans), apparently it leaves gaping holes that only human ingenuity can fill. That's certainly true for the new marketing favorite: Social Media Manager.
To wit (and as Hawkins put it): "Retailers also invest huge sums of money in store design and research to maximize the number of shoppers exposed to high margin products during their shopping trips but, at best, this is simply good guesswork ... The industry has no mechanism by which to accurately measure traffic flow around the store and conversion rates within aisles and categories on an ongoing basis." Meet The Promotional Compliance Creative Manager .. hello-oo!)
-- scrubbed by Marketing Brillo
Wednesday, October 21, 2009
Your Work IS Making You Crazy and You ARE Too busy
In an article on his Salesopedia blog, Lee Saltz scoffs at “full-plate syndrome” (where prospects appear too busy to place orders). Saltz says full-plate syndrome melts in the face of a the right sales pitch. No marketer can argue that targeted marketing has tremendous merit, but – in the current saga of overworked Americans – something more serious is going down.
Case Study One: My friend works for a direct marketing consultancy that has been laying off staff since January. The workload hasn’t diminished, however. It's simply been dumped on my friend, who hasn’t lost his job (yet) .
Case Study Two: This horror story is so dramatic you may not believe it. Believe it. A young man with blue chip undergrad and postgrad degrees is working for a large financial services firm in New York City. He’s being paid $40,000 a year. If he can make it through this freshman year, he’ll “very most probably” get a $100,000 bonus. The real question is whether anyone – even an energetic 28-year old -- can survive what this ageploitation Wall Street firm is putting him through. Recently, he worked from Friday morning to Monday morning on a single hour of sleep he grabbed under his desk. That weekend was extreme, but he does -- routinely -- work from 8:00 a.m. until 2:00 or 3:00 in the morning, every single day, seven days a week. And his boss verbally abuses him.
Anonymous Employee is a website devoted to problems in the workplace from the employees’ perspective (imagine that!). The site says about half of all employed people feel so overworked they’re suffering from headaches, fatigue, extreme tiredness, regular sleepiness, continuous irritability, and even panic attacks.
Another website, overtimepay.net decries the 2004 regulations that classify certain employees as "exempt administrative, executive, or professional employees." We all know what that means: lots of overtime for no extra pay.
High-stacking of work onto desperate employees is one aspect of this recession's unemployment that's getting little attention. Think it's temporary? It's probably not. A 2006 study confirms that the U.S. slashed middle management jobs in the 90s. The saved salaries were dispersed to top management. People laid off back then thought things would get better, but many of those jobs were never replaced. Some people went to work for themselves, some sent spouses to work, some took lower paying jobs. In the long run, things added up to working longer hours.
Joel Cutcher-Gershenfield, Dean of the Institute of Labor and Industrial Relatons at the University of Illinois, doesn’t see a lot of hope. “In the 1990s, layoffs shifted in many cases from a last resort in a downturn, to a strategic choice aimed at increasing the value of a company’s stock. Given this recent history, there is a real risk of massive layoffs happening today without careful consideration of the alternatives or options.”
It’s a little bit easier to put this one over on Americans, with their strong work ethic. The Europeans chortle at our misery. Writer Rick Steves reports that Europeans work roughly 25 percent fewer hours for 25 percent less money. Writing on TechCrunch, Michael Arrington reported that a conference he attended last year drew jeers from Europeans at the American notion that success takes a lot of hard work and not too much time off.
No wonder we have road rage and substance abuse. People are living in fear and losing their minds. So let’s be clear about stress in the workplace. It’s real. Stuck in a rock ‘n hard place, many of our colleagues are understandably irritable, missing deadlines, finding it difficult to concentrate. In this wicked time -- when there's little else to be done -- awareness, coupled with a little patience and kindness, can go a long way.
-- scrubbed by Marketing Brillo
Case Study One: My friend works for a direct marketing consultancy that has been laying off staff since January. The workload hasn’t diminished, however. It's simply been dumped on my friend, who hasn’t lost his job (yet) .
Case Study Two: This horror story is so dramatic you may not believe it. Believe it. A young man with blue chip undergrad and postgrad degrees is working for a large financial services firm in New York City. He’s being paid $40,000 a year. If he can make it through this freshman year, he’ll “very most probably” get a $100,000 bonus. The real question is whether anyone – even an energetic 28-year old -- can survive what this ageploitation Wall Street firm is putting him through. Recently, he worked from Friday morning to Monday morning on a single hour of sleep he grabbed under his desk. That weekend was extreme, but he does -- routinely -- work from 8:00 a.m. until 2:00 or 3:00 in the morning, every single day, seven days a week. And his boss verbally abuses him.
Anonymous Employee is a website devoted to problems in the workplace from the employees’ perspective (imagine that!). The site says about half of all employed people feel so overworked they’re suffering from headaches, fatigue, extreme tiredness, regular sleepiness, continuous irritability, and even panic attacks.
Another website, overtimepay.net decries the 2004 regulations that classify certain employees as "exempt administrative, executive, or professional employees." We all know what that means: lots of overtime for no extra pay.
High-stacking of work onto desperate employees is one aspect of this recession's unemployment that's getting little attention. Think it's temporary? It's probably not. A 2006 study confirms that the U.S. slashed middle management jobs in the 90s. The saved salaries were dispersed to top management. People laid off back then thought things would get better, but many of those jobs were never replaced. Some people went to work for themselves, some sent spouses to work, some took lower paying jobs. In the long run, things added up to working longer hours.
Joel Cutcher-Gershenfield, Dean of the Institute of Labor and Industrial Relatons at the University of Illinois, doesn’t see a lot of hope. “In the 1990s, layoffs shifted in many cases from a last resort in a downturn, to a strategic choice aimed at increasing the value of a company’s stock. Given this recent history, there is a real risk of massive layoffs happening today without careful consideration of the alternatives or options.”
It’s a little bit easier to put this one over on Americans, with their strong work ethic. The Europeans chortle at our misery. Writer Rick Steves reports that Europeans work roughly 25 percent fewer hours for 25 percent less money. Writing on TechCrunch, Michael Arrington reported that a conference he attended last year drew jeers from Europeans at the American notion that success takes a lot of hard work and not too much time off.
No wonder we have road rage and substance abuse. People are living in fear and losing their minds. So let’s be clear about stress in the workplace. It’s real. Stuck in a rock ‘n hard place, many of our colleagues are understandably irritable, missing deadlines, finding it difficult to concentrate. In this wicked time -- when there's little else to be done -- awareness, coupled with a little patience and kindness, can go a long way.
-- scrubbed by Marketing Brillo
Friday, October 16, 2009
Can Our Precious Digital Media Be Saved Or Will It Disappear?
This morning, I ordered two photos from Shutterfly. The shipping chargers were $1.79 for two prints, but I didn’t mind. I remember when it cost $7.00 to “develop” a roll of film -- and only two photos among the 24 were useable. I figure I saved $5.21. A tidbit, but not the point of this blog.
The whole Shutterfly experience got me to thinking about all the trillions of photographs being taken hourly (in June 2009, 3 billion 600 million photos were archived on Flicrk.com). What will happen to all our precious photos when current digital storage devices/practices/options become obsolete?
Oh yes, they will.
You may have forgotten, but Wikipedia remembers the Iomega ZIP drive.
If you were a graphic designer in the Y2K years, you needed this “disk” to transfer files to the printer (more common today for file transfer, of course there's the ever-convenient, if insecure, ftp.) For storage and back-up, we now have behemoth terabyte external drives (Iomega itself sells a 1TB external for about $100), not to mention ultra-convenient “key drives” that will pack on 2gigs for $10. Thirty-two or more gigs can be stored on the new “wallet” style flash drives.
Problem is, both devices use USB technology. USB 1.0 is already outdated, replaced by USB 2.0, and about to be replaced by USB 3.0. The 3.0 version, boosted by fiber optic cabling, is promised for 2010 and should be mostly “backward compatible” but, just like computer operating systems, USB upgrades can’t go on forever. At some point, technology will trap something new and better that won’t work with our older and slower computers.
Will we store “in the clouds”? Organizations are skittish, the rest of us less so. Archiving stuff “someplace else” is a hurdle already navigated by sites like Mozy, Delicious, Flickr, etc. Even TypePad /Blogger /WordPress are “out there somewhere.” And yet ... this week Microsoft and T-Mobile somehow lost a gazillion bytes of user data stored on the Sidekick smart phone. Some observers blame Microsoft’s information management practices and not cloud computing. Others say data isn’t safe in the clouds.
Interestingly, two days ago Iron Mountain introduced cloud storage worthy of a radiation shelter. Are we actually regressing in efforts to protect our stuff (which increasingly seems to have become us)?
Me? I worry… and I order a few precious print photos. At least if my photos or files get destroyed by fire, flood, or civil disturbance – unlike Sidekick users who are wondering “where the data went?” -- I’ll know what happened.
-- scrubbed by Marketing Brillo
The whole Shutterfly experience got me to thinking about all the trillions of photographs being taken hourly (in June 2009, 3 billion 600 million photos were archived on Flicrk.com). What will happen to all our precious photos when current digital storage devices/practices/options become obsolete?
Oh yes, they will.
You may have forgotten, but Wikipedia remembers the Iomega ZIP drive.
If you were a graphic designer in the Y2K years, you needed this “disk” to transfer files to the printer (more common today for file transfer, of course there's the ever-convenient, if insecure, ftp.) For storage and back-up, we now have behemoth terabyte external drives (Iomega itself sells a 1TB external for about $100), not to mention ultra-convenient “key drives” that will pack on 2gigs for $10. Thirty-two or more gigs can be stored on the new “wallet” style flash drives.
Problem is, both devices use USB technology. USB 1.0 is already outdated, replaced by USB 2.0, and about to be replaced by USB 3.0. The 3.0 version, boosted by fiber optic cabling, is promised for 2010 and should be mostly “backward compatible” but, just like computer operating systems, USB upgrades can’t go on forever. At some point, technology will trap something new and better that won’t work with our older and slower computers.
Will we store “in the clouds”? Organizations are skittish, the rest of us less so. Archiving stuff “someplace else” is a hurdle already navigated by sites like Mozy, Delicious, Flickr, etc. Even TypePad /Blogger /WordPress are “out there somewhere.” And yet ... this week Microsoft and T-Mobile somehow lost a gazillion bytes of user data stored on the Sidekick smart phone. Some observers blame Microsoft’s information management practices and not cloud computing. Others say data isn’t safe in the clouds.
Interestingly, two days ago Iron Mountain introduced cloud storage worthy of a radiation shelter. Are we actually regressing in efforts to protect our stuff (which increasingly seems to have become us)?
Me? I worry… and I order a few precious print photos. At least if my photos or files get destroyed by fire, flood, or civil disturbance – unlike Sidekick users who are wondering “where the data went?” -- I’ll know what happened.
-- scrubbed by Marketing Brillo
Thursday, October 15, 2009
Think Your Business Is Into Social Media? Chances Are You’ve Barely Begun.
If you think your business is into social media, you might want to check-out some of the many lists of social networking sites.
1. The Inside CRM blog has a list of 50 Social Sites That Every Business Needs a Presence On. It's an awkward title, but it’s a useful list, though a trifle outdated (late 2008).
2. Wikipedia has its own list of social networking sites. This is a mishmash that also includes hang-outs like dating and genealogy sites, but the participation numbers posted here are illuminating.
3. In February, David Wilson blogged his list of "Top 25 Social Networking Sites." The appearance of blackplanet.com and asiantown.net on this list demonstrates that social networking has a powerful ethnic dimension. Cafemom.com brings lifestyle to the social media gathering place. Expect more of the same.
4. Top Ten Reviews lists the usual suspects, but also surprised me with the internationally-inclined Zorpia, described as "the largest social network we never heard of."
5. eBizMBA lists its "Top 20 Most Popular Social Networking Sites." The list carried no date, but who knew Friendster still has an audience or that the big badoo even existed?
A couple of observations:
• Ning -- the create or find your own social network site -- keeps popping up as a popular gathering spot .. which could mean that human tribal instincts may well fracture out of Facebook into millions of discrete social gathering spots.
• Any corporation that thinks it doesn’t need a Social Media Manager should read some of these lists. Nothing gives the marketer a clearly notion of what it means to have an "internet presence." Yes, it's a full-time job.
-- scrubbed by Marketing Brillo
1. The Inside CRM blog has a list of 50 Social Sites That Every Business Needs a Presence On. It's an awkward title, but it’s a useful list, though a trifle outdated (late 2008).
2. Wikipedia has its own list of social networking sites. This is a mishmash that also includes hang-outs like dating and genealogy sites, but the participation numbers posted here are illuminating.
3. In February, David Wilson blogged his list of "Top 25 Social Networking Sites." The appearance of blackplanet.com and asiantown.net on this list demonstrates that social networking has a powerful ethnic dimension. Cafemom.com brings lifestyle to the social media gathering place. Expect more of the same.
4. Top Ten Reviews lists the usual suspects, but also surprised me with the internationally-inclined Zorpia, described as "the largest social network we never heard of."
5. eBizMBA lists its "Top 20 Most Popular Social Networking Sites." The list carried no date, but who knew Friendster still has an audience or that the big badoo even existed?
A couple of observations:
• Ning -- the create or find your own social network site -- keeps popping up as a popular gathering spot .. which could mean that human tribal instincts may well fracture out of Facebook into millions of discrete social gathering spots.
• Any corporation that thinks it doesn’t need a Social Media Manager should read some of these lists. Nothing gives the marketer a clearly notion of what it means to have an "internet presence." Yes, it's a full-time job.
-- scrubbed by Marketing Brillo
Friday, October 9, 2009
So They Call It Augmented Reality, Do They?
Americans went from TV shows in the 50s that framed our attitudes about family … to Friends in the 80s that effortlessly defined how a generation of twenty-somethings would view personal relationships … to this decade's “Housewives of Everywhere” that keeps us entertained by the rich and becoming-famous. So where are we going with our increasing personal involvement with MeTube?
No doubt we’re heading to a situation where all of us can virtually “get into and onto” any TV show we want: sports, home decorating, cooking, travel, Flav o Flav, dog rescue, or food orgy – you name it. Participation in reality TV is the next logical step, as couch potatoes clamor to become the entertainment they seek.
There's a name for this techno fantasy: It’s called augmented reality, and a survey by Infegy.com says people in general are very psyched about it. If my 10-year old friend can play Wii simultaneously with her pal down the street, Marketing Brillo can't be too far from joining the gals in Atlanta for a smack-down ... right?
Want to see what augmented reality looks like in its infancy? Check out this provocative -- though still extraordinarily primitive -- YouTube demonstration. Or watch how the World Wildlife fund is already using the technology in its marketing/fundraising efforts.
See you soon on Flipping Out.
- scrubbed by Marketing Brillo
No doubt we’re heading to a situation where all of us can virtually “get into and onto” any TV show we want: sports, home decorating, cooking, travel, Flav o Flav, dog rescue, or food orgy – you name it. Participation in reality TV is the next logical step, as couch potatoes clamor to become the entertainment they seek.
There's a name for this techno fantasy: It’s called augmented reality, and a survey by Infegy.com says people in general are very psyched about it. If my 10-year old friend can play Wii simultaneously with her pal down the street, Marketing Brillo can't be too far from joining the gals in Atlanta for a smack-down ... right?
Want to see what augmented reality looks like in its infancy? Check out this provocative -- though still extraordinarily primitive -- YouTube demonstration. Or watch how the World Wildlife fund is already using the technology in its marketing/fundraising efforts.
See you soon on Flipping Out.
- scrubbed by Marketing Brillo
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