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Yesterday was a interesting day in Chicago. In the afternoon, there was the Blogwell conference which featured real life case studies from large organizations executing initiatives in the social media space. Companies like:
And later that evening, I gave a talk at the Social Media Club in Chicago (above). In both talks I noticed a reoccurring theme. When companies engage a social manner, even the big ones—their initiatives are often powered by individuals. People with real names. faces, families and lives. In fact, most of the more successful examples included people who worked for brands who were beginning to become known on a fist name basis. The Home Depot for example has Sarah, who handles their Twitter initiative. This poses a question for all organizations. What happens if the Sarah’s of the world leave your company? Isn’t it better for a brand to just be a brand?
Enter the “brandividual“, a term I blurted out in my talk about personal branding later that evening. The phrase was born of a series of questions from the audience which all focused around the same topic. Where is the hard line between my employer’s brand and my own? The answer is not a simple one—but I believe that trends are pointing us to a blurring of that line whether we like it or not. “Brandividuals—people who represent your brand and their own, balancing the two may be something we see more of, not less as companies and brands try to figure out how to engage on a web that’s become increasingly social and personal.
Wordle <http://www.wordle.net/> is a DIY site to make a word cloud for any of your favorite words, websites, blogs, feeds and social bookmarks. It’s simple. Enter a block of text to create a word cloud and various settings allow you to change colors and fonts.
The cloud above was created from the words on our very own Experience Matters page. There’s a lot of great words in there that make up an exceptional customer experience. I think we’ve got a great representation of our priorities:
· People. Consumers have to be the priority, this is marketing best practices 101.
· Technology. Technology helps brands reach consumers at the right time at the right place. It also helps us streamline those 1-on-1 conversations with consumers.
· Still. Consistency and relevancy is key to our practice. We live & breathe in perpetual beta.
· Collective. Live and breathe what consumers are saying about your brand. It’s not what you say your brand is – it’s what they say it is.
Let’s say you’ve got a site, blog or any digital property equipped with an RSS feed and you feel like like you’re doing a good job of serving up bite sized morsels of content custom created for this “snacking culture” we live in, but you’re concerned about the lack of an “artifact”—something which can last a bit longer.
With Tabbloid, you can insert your feed, or multiple feeds and create an instant PDF with the click of a button. It even designs it to look like a print publication in seconds (check out the one we’ve created for Experience Matters Download CM_tabloid). You can also combine multiple feeds and have copied sent you your inbox—you get to decide how often.
Read the rest of this entry »
We’ve been thinking about the current economic climate and the pressure, not to mention scrutiny digital (if not all) initiatives are currently under. Digital by definition is highly measurable, which can increase the focus of ROI (return on investment) for project before it ever gets off the ground. The challenge however is that there is so much to learn from initiatives that launch—insights can be applied directly to that project, or indirectly to something else. In addition to launching our own initiatives as organizations, we realize that companies may not see the advantages they can have simply by listening and potentially participating in what we like to think of as “The Collective”. Every day, millions of people are talking about what they care about, and your products and services are most likely part of that story. Download our POV
on “The Collective Is The Focus Group” and let us know what you think about what we have to say about tapping the collective for insights. Is this something that can yield a real return? You can also see a version of this article on BusinessWeek.
The Collective Is The Focus Group
Today I found myself browsing the Quaker Oats Website. I’m adjusting my diet and wanted to look up some nutritional information. Being that I work in the interactive industry, I started browsing the site a bit more because I liked the design of it. The navigation was clear and intuitive, the photos and type were easy to read and visually pleasant. And then it happened…
BLAM!
The “invitation” to take a survey. Except it’s never really an invitation now is it? Now, I want to be fair—marketers have a job to do and surveys can provide valuable data that we need to help market the products and brands we represent. I totally get the business challenge. But it is a business challenge. The average user doesn’t care about surveys, and brands don’t typically benefit from them because they can be seen as a nuisance. Still, it’s commonplace and we see this all over the Web, not just the Quaker site.
The problem with surveys is that they create a “disturbance in the flow” not unlike a “disturbance in the force” to quote a bit of popular culture. So we’ve got a marketing, design and experience problem on our hands here. How do we include surveys without disrupting the entire experience. Especially when its’ a good one? It’s like the equivilent of settling down with a good book or television show only to have someone slam the book shut or stand in front of your screen.
I have a few ideas—maybe a window that floats off to the side, or what if the site could detect mouse movement toward the browser bar and only serve it up to you then (that would indicate you were about to leave). But these are just some initial random thoughts and I know a few smart people read this blog. So what do you think? Is there a way to serve up surveys or polls without disrupting flow?
I thought 2008 would be a non-year for events, at least as far as technology was concerned. I was off on that prediction — there were a few notable points (such as an attempted Yahoo! takeover and the iPhone 3G launch). I played it “safe”.
This year is different. “Safe” isn’t an option. This isn’t going to be an easy year, folks. It’s gonna get ugly. That’s how I see it, anyway… Read the rest of this entry »
A year ago today, I put on my prognostication cap and looked to what we’d see in 2008. At the time, I declared that I was playing it safe, owing to “not seeing any change”. Well, when you play it safe, you’ll probably get things more right than wrong.
In that sense, I did pretty well for predicting. But that’s also like saying the Dallas Cowboys will probably win against your local high-school team — not really cheating, but going with the obvious.
That said, I’m still going to go over what I said, and toss in some new commentary. Read the rest of this entry »