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JohnChow

• Building Free Surveys For Your Target Audience 22 January, 2012, 11:09 pm
  Information is easily one of the most powerful commodities in the world and surveys are one of the better ways to acquire more information. In today’s review, we actually take a look at two online services that approach the world of surveys, but from utterly different directions. Even so, the sites have been designed to work together for an even more impressive result. Build Surveys With Survey Builder The first of these online services is called Survey Builder and it is a free survey tool. In effect, you get a utility where you can build up a number of online surveys, gathering valuable data from users all around the Internet. And yes, it is completely free to use as you see fit. After signing up for a free account, you can dive right into building your first survey. The most basic type would have a single-select list, as depicted above. This is where you ask a question and the visitor has the opportunity to select just one of the possible options via the available radio buttons. That’s straightforward enough. However, you can easily ask all sorts of other questions too. You can build surveys with multi-select lists, drop-down menus, matrix-style questions, and more. Single-select and multi-select image options are in the works, which is great if you want respondents to react to two different product images, possible logos, or whatever else. Free or Paid Responses To test out the service, I built a quick single question survey (your surveys can include dozens of questions if you’d like) asking about the upcoming election in the US. I was then provided with two options: invite my own audience or access the on-demand audience. With the former, I’m given a simple link to the survey that can then be freely shared via email, on a website, through social media, and so on. With the latter, I can pay to have people within a specific demographic take the survey. The “target audience” can be defined based on country, age, gender, education, household income, employment status, location, and so on. A single response to a standard survey of up to 10 questions costs 10 credits, which works out to $5. When you sign up. for an account, you are given 200 free credits to start. Analyzing the Data What’s great is that the analytical data is supplied to you in real time. This shows how many people started the survey, how many are currently taking the survey, how many completed it, how many were terminated, and how many didn’t finish. Of course, you get a breakdown of the responses too. All of these responses can be freely downloaded as an unfiltered CSV file for offline viewing. When you have a lot of people responding to your survey, you can also filter the results so that you are only looking at one sub-group. The filters include traffic sources, questions, date range, and time in survey. When you have multiple questions, you can filter the data based only on people who answered a certain way in one or more of the questions. Getting Paid to Take Surveys So, you can offer a monetary incentive to people to fill out your survey, but where do you find these people? That’s the other half of the equation and it’s called Survey Head. This is where you can find paid online surveys to fill out. After filling out some basic demographic information, you are presented with the dashboard where you find surveys matching your profile. The “reward” amount can vary, but I found that most surveys paid between $0.10 and $2.00. That’s not a heck of a lot of money, especially when each individual survey typically takes 15-20 minutes, depending on the number of questions. The credit you earn isn’t really cash, in the strictest sense, either. Instead, it can be converted for a number of different “rewards” from the Survey Head catalog. These include gift cards to places like the NFL Shop and Tiger Direct. Surveys for Fun and Profit I understand what the developers were trying to achieve here. They have a complete ecosystem where people can build the surveys, as well as fill out surveys for money. The layout and user interface is easy to understand and the services seem to work without a hitch. For my part, there is more value in Survey Builder from a market research perspective, since the payouts from Survey Head aren’t really substantial enough to pique my interest.
• Dot Com Pho – 170 Degrees of Separation Edition 21 January, 2012, 6:08 pm
  This edition of Dot Com Pho Orange County was created using the GoPro Hero because Sally Chow took over my iPhone in order to watch Mister Maker. The GoPro offers an 170 degrees point of view so this is an extra wide screen episode. For the 170 Degrees of Separation Edition of Dot Com Pho OC, we have Sally’s Tiger, how to win friends and influence kids, whipped cream filled iced coffee, new intros, two gadgets of the week, and a whole lot more. We had two tables filled with 11 people making it out to the Pho Ba Co patio to network, enjoy the sun, and a nice bowl of Pho. Anyone is welcome to join in the fun. Follow me on Twitter to find out the time and place of the next Dot Com Pho Orange County. There are also Dot Com Pho chapters in Vancouver and Seattle. Find out more about them by following @DotComPho. Dot Com Pho Vancouver – Lucky Envelope Edition Over in snow covered Vancouver, the Dot Com crew went back to Happy Pho to talk about proper chopstick technique with Vance, the lucky red envelopes of Chinese New Year with Lexi, and the hot new Sony Tablet S with Michael. Gung hay fat choy!
• Dot Com Pho – 170 Degrees of Separation Edition 21 January, 2012, 6:08 pm
  This edition of Dot Com Pho Orange County was created using the GoPro Hero because Sally Chow took over my iPhone in order to watch Mister Maker. The GoPro offers a 170-degree point of view so this is an extra wide screen episode. For the 170 Degrees of Separation Edition of Dot Com Pho OC, we have Sally’s Tiger, how to win friends and influence kids, whipped cream filled iced coffee, new intros, two gadgets of the week, and a whole lot more. We had two tables filled with 11 people making it out to the Pho Ba Co patio to network, enjoy the sun, and a nice bowl of Pho. Anyone is welcome to join in the fun. Follow me on Twitter to find out the time and place of the next Dot Com Pho Orange County. There are also Dot Com Pho chapters in Vancouver and Seattle. Find out more about them by following @DotComPho. Dot Com Pho Vancouver – Lucky Envelope Edition Over in snow covered Vancouver, the Dot Com crew went back to Happy Pho to talk about proper chopstick technique with Vance, the lucky red envelopes of Chinese New Year with Lexi, and the hot new Sony Tablet S with Michael. Gung hay fat choy!
• The 6 Essential Traits of Super Successful Bloggers 20 January, 2012, 9:37 am
  Have you ever thought about what separates the superstar bloggers from the mediocre bloggers? I know you must be thinking that maybe they are a genius, or that they eat something entirely different from you? Well, it’s not that. They are created in the same way as you are, and they can hardly do anymore than you are capable of doing. The real difference is that they have learned to cultivate some essential traits over the years, and some of these traits aid them in making their blog a success. In this article I will be sharing with you the 6 essential traits you should learn from successful bloggers if you want to build a super successful blog. 1. They Write for Readers No. They don’t write for Google, and they don’t write for the next big social media site. Contrary to what you might believe, the reason why most successful bloggers are successful is because they have their readers in mind, and as a result their content is always tailored towards their readers. Try to take a look at the most successful article on any of your favorite blogs and you will understand what I’m talking about. A lot of people will like to believe that being successful as a blogger is easy, but if you calculate it you will notice that it isn’t. Most of the bloggers you look up to have been in the game for over five years now, and within this period they kept on writing quality articles for their users without thinking about the results. By this, I mean they didn’t use big grammars to make their readers think they’re professors, instead, they focused on making their articles easy to read in a way that appeal to all readers, and their blog ended up growing as a result. 2. They Are Ready to Market, Smartly Another thing you really need to know about super successful bloggers is that they don’t just write great content and expect it to get a million hits. Instead, they are always out there marketing themselves. And by marketing themselves, I’m not talking about spamming forums and building a million links, I’m talking about marketing themselves in a very smart way. The big bloggers focus on building successful relationships with each other, which is why you see all of them blogging about each other if there is a big event. Big bloggers are also always building their base for so many reasons, especially because it can be a great source of leverage. For example, if you have 150,000 people subscribed to your blog you don’t need to depend on others to help you sell your products or make an article go viral, and by having that much subscribers you will also be able to move influencers in your industry to help work with you. 3. They are Highly Analytical Successful bloggers are also very good at one thing, and that one thing is analytics! They are always on the lookout for better sources of traffic, and as a result are always studying and optimizing existing traffic sources. If you want to build a successful blog, the most dangerous mistake you can make is not caring about where your results are coming from. It doesn’t matter if it is studying which kind of blog post brings the most comment or generates the most traffic, or if it is looking at how that new traffic source you tried Yesterday converts, analyzing your blog on a constant basis can help make your blog a success. You need to know where your visitors are coming from, and as a result you should also be ready to improve your existing traffic sources and gain new ones. 4. They are not Afraid of Failure Yes. That’s why you see those big bloggers launching products upon products every time. Does that mean the products they are launching are always a success? No, and they know that already. Big bloggers aren’t afraid of failures, and as a result they are always ready to test the new waters. You need to be prepared for anything and you should make sure you don’t allow your fear for failure to cripple you. As a blogger you will face a lot of challenges, you will have to take a lot of new steps and go on a lot of daring adventures, but the only way you can succeed is if you can realize that failure is inevitable, and instead of running away from it, embrace it. 5. They are Always Ready to Learn But…aren’t they big bloggers? That’s exactly the point! You might think they are always creating new concepts and are not ready to learn because they have achieved great success, but just take a look at Brian Clark’s twitter page and you will know what I mean. Even though Brian has around 100,000 Twitter followers, over 150,000 blog subscribers, and one of the biggest blogs online, he still shares links to several quality blog posts on the web, and he only shares what he reads. Can you now imagine how much he can achieve with the knowledge he gains every day? Don’t ever make the mistake of thinking that the fact that you have achieved a little means you should stop reading. Education is the friend of the successful, so make sure you are always ready to learn new things and improve your knowledge. 6. They Have Respect for their Readers One of the major mistakes any blogger will make is to start thinking he is greater than his readers because he has a great blog and a big audience. Don’t try to deceive yourself; you are nobody without your readers. You might think it is just one of your readers, and that if they minus one person from the thousands of readers you have it won’t make a difference, but imagine what will happen if each of your readers start to leave one by one. Don’t ever be too big to a stage whereby you lose your respect for your readers. Successful bloggers know the value of their readers, and as a result they respect and are always on the lookout for them. John is an expert blogger and writer that writes for Weight Loss Triumph. He also helps his readers find the best weight watchers promotion code and nutrisystem discount code.
• The 6 Essential Traits of Super Successful Bloggers 20 January, 2012, 9:37 am
  Have you ever thought about what separates the superstar bloggers from the mediocre bloggers? I know you must be thinking that maybe they are a genius, or that they eat something entirely different from you? Well, it’s not that. They are created in the same way as you are, and they can hardly do anymore than you are capable of doing. The real difference is that they have learned to cultivate some essential traits over the years, and some of these traits aid them in making their blog a success. In this article I will be sharing with you the 6 essential traits you should learn from successful bloggers if you want to build a super successful blog. 1. They Write for Readers No. They don’t write for Google, and they don’t write for the next big social media site. Contrary to what you might believe, the reason why most successful bloggers are successful is because they have their readers in mind, and as a result their content is always tailored towards their readers. Try to take a look at the most successful article on any of your favorite blogs and you will understand what I’m talking about. A lot of people will like to believe that being successful as a blogger is easy, but if you calculate it you will notice that it isn’t. Most of the bloggers you look up to have been in the game for over five years now, and within this period they kept on writing quality articles for their users without thinking about the results. By this, I mean they didn’t use big grammars to make their readers think they’re professors, instead, they focused on making their articles easy to read in a way that appeal to all readers, and their blog ended up growing as a result. 2. They Are Ready to Market, Smartly Another thing you really need to know about super successful bloggers is that they don’t just write great content and expect it to get a million hits. Instead, they are always out there marketing themselves. And by marketing themselves, I’m not talking about spamming forums and building a million links, I’m talking about marketing themselves in a very smart way. The big bloggers focus on building successful relationships with each other, which is why you see all of them blogging about each other if there is a big event. Big bloggers are also always building their base for so many reasons, especially because it can be a great source of leverage. For example, if you have 150,000 people subscribed to your blog you don’t need to depend on others to help you sell your products or make an article go viral, and by having that much subscribers you will also be able to move influencers in your industry to help work with you. 3. They are Highly Analytical Successful bloggers are also very good at one thing, and that one thing is analytics! They are always on the lookout for better sources of traffic, and as a result are always studying and optimizing existing traffic sources. If you want to build a successful blog, the most dangerous mistake you can make is not caring about where your results are coming from. It doesn’t matter if it is studying which kind of blog post brings the most comment or generates the most traffic, or if it is looking at how that new traffic source you tried Yesterday converts, analyzing your blog on a constant basis can help make your blog a success. You need to know where your visitors are coming from, and as a result you should also be ready to improve your existing traffic sources and gain new ones. 4. They are not Afraid of Failure Yes. That’s why you see those big bloggers launching products upon products every time. Does that mean the products they are launching are always a success? No, and they know that already. Big bloggers aren’t afraid of failures, and as a result they are always ready to test the new waters. You need to be prepared for anything and you should make sure you don’t allow your fear for failure to cripple you. As a blogger you will face a lot of challenges, you will have to take a lot of new steps and go on a lot of daring adventures, but the only way you can succeed is if you can realize that failure is inevitable, and instead of running away from it, embrace it. 5. They are Always Ready to Learn But…aren’t they big bloggers? That’s exactly the point! You might think they are always creating new concepts and are not ready to learn because they have achieved great success, but just take a look at Brian Clark’s twitter page and you will know what I mean. Even though Brian has around 100,000 Twitter followers, over 150,000 blog subscribers, and one of the biggest blogs online, he still shares links to several quality blog posts on the web, and he only shares what he reads. Can you now imagine how much he can achieve with the knowledge he gains every day? Don’t ever make the mistake of thinking that the fact that you have achieved a little means you should stop reading. Education is the friend of the successful, so make sure you are always ready to learn new things and improve your knowledge. 6. They Have Respect for their Readers One of the major mistakes any blogger will make is to start thinking he is greater than his readers because he has a great blog and a big audience. Don’t try to deceive yourself; you are nobody without your readers. You might think it is just one of your readers, and that if they minus one person from the thousands of readers you have it won’t make a difference, but imagine what will happen if each of your readers start to leave one by one. Don’t ever be too big to a stage whereby you lose your respect for your readers. Successful bloggers know the value of their readers, and as a result they respect and are always on the lookout for them. John is an expert blogger and writer that writes for Weight Loss Triumph. He also helps his readers find the best weight watchers promotion code and nutrisystem discount code.
• Planning Broadcasts with The Email Marketing Calendar 19 January, 2012, 7:03 pm
  From Christmas to New Year’s to No Pants On Subway Day, holidays and special events present an awesome email marketing opportunity. Wouldn’t it be great if someone made a calendar to remind us of those days so we can prepare our promotions? Well, someone has. My pals over at Aweber have compiled an email marketing holiday calendar for businesses and marketers everywhere to use. The calendar lists all the major public holidays in several countries and a few novelty holidays you can leverage your campaign with. You can add the email marketing calendar to your own Google Calendar or download it to your computer. The new email marketing calendar covers major holidays in the US, Canada, the UK and Australia. To give you a head start on your campaigns, the email marketing calendar includes campaign reminders on the first of every month with an overview of important holidays to focus on. The calendar also gives you a heads up for holidays that fall at the beginning of the following month, plus reminders two weeks ahead of major holidays to help you make sure your campaign is on track. In addition to the major holidays like Christmas, New Year’s and Thanksgiving, the email marketing calendar also added seasonal reminders for events like graduations, back-to-school and when to start planning your winter holiday campaigns. You’ll find other special events too, like month-long observances (did you know that July is National Ice Cream Month in the US?) and holidays you might not have known about (like International Women’s Day on March 8, International Museum Day on May 18 or Ask a Stupid Question Day on September 28). Click Here To Get The Free Email Marketing Calendar
• Planning Broadcasts with The Email Marketing Calendar 19 January, 2012, 7:03 pm
  From Christmas to New Year’s to No Pants On Subway Day, holidays and special events present an awesome email marketing opportunity. Wouldn’t it be great if someone made a calendar to remind us of those days so we can prepare our promotions? Well, someone has. My pals over at Aweber have compiled an email marketing holiday calendar for businesses and marketers everywhere to use. The calendar lists all the major public holidays in several countries and a few novelty holidays you can leverage your campaign with. You can add the email marketing calendar to your own Google Calendar or download it to your computer. The new email marketing calendar covers major holidays in the US, Canada, the UK and Australia. To give you a head start on your campaigns, the email marketing calendar includes campaign reminders on the first of every month with an overview of important holidays to focus on. The calendar also gives you a heads up for holidays that fall at the beginning of the following month, plus reminders two weeks ahead of major holidays to help you make sure your campaign is on track. In addition to the major holidays like Christmas, New Year’s and Thanksgiving, the email marketing calendar also added seasonal reminders for events like graduations, back-to-school and when to start planning your winter holiday campaigns. You’ll find other special events too, like month-long observances (did you know that July is National Ice Cream Month in the US?) and holidays you might not have known about (like International Women’s Day on March 8, International Museum Day on May 18 or Ask a Stupid Question Day on September 28). Click Here To Get The Free Email Marketing Calendar
• RevResponse Monetizes Feedburner Alternative 18 January, 2012, 11:04 pm
  Feedburner. It’s a name that should be familiar with most of the bloggers in the audience, because it has always been at the forefront of RSS management and RSS syndication. However, that doesn’t mean that it is necessarily the best solution for everyone out there and the Internet has evolved greatly to provide us with new and more interesting options. One tool that you might consider adding to your blogging and Internet marketing repertoire is the RSS to Email Tool from the folks at RevResponse, powered by NetLine Corporation. It may look like just another way to take your RSS feed and turn it into an email newsletter, but there’s more to it than that. Let’s make our way through today’s review and see how it’s different. RevResponse Sounds Familiar And there’s a reason for that. I first reviewed RevResponse way back in 2008, following up with another review in April 2009. As a quick refresher, RevResponse is an advertising network that lets you give away free resources to your readers and you get paid on a CPA basis each time they download one of those free resources. The new RSS to Email Tool builds upon that existing infrastructure, utilizing what is already there and adding in the ability to better monetize your RSS feeds and email newsletters. I think you can figure out where they are going with this. The Feedburner Alternative The RevResponse RSS to Email Tool is being positioned as a Feedburner alternative. It still has the same core functionality of taking an RSS feed and converting it into an email newsletter, but it also has additional features that Feedburner does not provide. There are multiple sample templates that you can use with your newsletter, including the ability to adjust the colors and include your own custom header image. It is fully customizable, so you can have the look and feel of your newsletter stay in line with your overall brand image. Another major plus is the ability to cull together multiple RSS feeds into a single newsletter. As can be expected, the RevResponse RSS to Email Tool also provides full list management, so it’ll deal with all the opt-ins and opt-outs for you, including the ability to view or export the subscriber list through the online portal. And yes, there are a number of widgets and templates so you can embed the opt-in form on your website too. Setup and Monetization In addition to being a Feedburner alternative, this RSS to Email tool is also a monetization tool. Yes, you can embed contextual AdSense ads in your Feedburner feed, but RevResponse works in tandem with its existing advertising network too. What this means is that there is an “offer” embedded at the bottom of the newsletter where you can give your readers the opportunity to download a relevant white paper, e-book, or other digital resource from the RevResponse library. Each time one of these is downloaded, you earn between $1.50 and $20. The setup process only takes a few minutes and you can get a better sense of it by watching the overview video that they have posted on YouTube. As you can see from the screencap above, you can name your mailing, choose your subject line, enter your customer service email address, and so forth. You only have to do this once, but you can edit it at any time. The offer inserted at the end of the newsletter can be selected based on an industry or country, but you can also hand-pick the offers from the growing RevResponse library too. If you choose to do the latter, you just have to copy-paste the specific offer codes into the relevant field. As mentioned earlier, the delivery schedule can be customized too. With FeedBurner, it is more typical to send out a daily newsletter, but that may not suit your purpose. With the RevResponse RSS to Email Tool, you can choose weekly or monthly schedules too. How Much Does It Cost? So, how much does it cost to get your hands on this Feedburner alternative? After all, you get several more features, plus a new way to monetize your RSS-based email newsletter. Here’s the kicker: the RevResponse RSS to Email is completely free to use. There is no catch, giving you a possible alternative to paid services like MailChimp and Aweber too. It only takes five minutes to set it up and you can turn back at any time. FIND OUT IF YOU’RE ELIGIBLE FOR REVRESPONSE RSS TO EMAIL TOOL
• RevResponse Monetizes Feedburner Alternative 18 January, 2012, 11:04 pm
  Feedburner. It’s a name that should be familiar with most of the bloggers in the audience, because it has always been at the forefront of RSS management and RSS syndication. However, that doesn’t mean that it is necessarily the best solution for everyone out there and the Internet has evolved greatly to provide us with new and more interesting options. One tool that you might consider adding to your blogging and Internet marketing repertoire is the RSS to Email Tool from the folks at RevResponse, powered by NetLine Corporation. It may look like just another way to take your RSS feed and turn it into an email newsletter, but there’s more to it than that. Let’s make our way through today’s review and see how it’s different. RevResponse Sounds Familiar And there’s a reason for that. I first reviewed RevResponse way back in 2008, following up with another review in April 2009. As a quick refresher, RevResponse is an advertising network that lets you give away free resources to your readers and you get paid on a CPA basis each time they download one of those free resources. The new RSS to Email Tool builds upon that existing infrastructure, utilizing what is already there and adding in the ability to better monetize your RSS feeds and email newsletters. I think you can figure out where they are going with this. The Feedburner Alternative The RevResponse RSS to Email Tool is being positioned as a Feedburner alternative. It still has the same core functionality of taking an RSS feed and converting it into an email newsletter, but it also has additional features that Feedburner does not provide. There are multiple sample templates that you can use with your newsletter, including the ability to adjust the colors and include your own custom header image. It is fully customizable, so you can have the look and feel of your newsletter stay in line with your overall brand image. Another major plus is the ability to cull together multiple RSS feeds into a single newsletter. As can be expected, the RevResponse RSS to Email Tool also provides full list management, so it’ll deal with all the opt-ins and opt-outs for you, including the ability to view or export the subscriber list through the online portal. And yes, there are a number of widgets and templates so you can embed the opt-in form on your website too. Setup and Monetization In addition to being a Feedburner alternative, this RSS to Email tool is also a monetization tool. Yes, you can embed contextual AdSense ads in your Feedburner feed, but RevResponse works in tandem with its existing advertising network too. What this means is that there is an “offer” embedded at the bottom of the newsletter where you can give your readers the opportunity to download a relevant white paper, e-book, or other digital resource from the RevResponse library. Each time one of these is downloaded, you earn between $1.50 and $20. The setup process only takes a few minutes and you can get a better sense of it by watching the overview video that they have posted on YouTube. As you can see from the screencap above, you can name your mailing, choose your subject line, enter your customer service email address, and so forth. You only have to do this once, but you can edit it at any time. The offer inserted at the end of the newsletter can be selected based on an industry or country, but you can also hand-pick the offers from the growing RevResponse library too. If you choose to do the latter, you just have to copy-paste the specific offer codes into the relevant field. As mentioned earlier, the delivery schedule can be customized too. With FeedBurner, it is more typical to send out a daily newsletter, but that may not suit your purpose. With the RevResponse RSS to Email Tool, you can choose weekly or monthly schedules too. How Much Does It Cost? So, how much does it cost to get your hands on this Feedburner alternative? After all, you get several more features, plus a new way to monetize your RSS-based email newsletter. Here’s the kicker: the RevResponse RSS to Email is completely free to use. There is no catch, giving you a possible alternative to paid services like MailChimp and Aweber too. It only takes five minutes to set it up and you can turn back at any time. FIND OUT IF YOU’RE ELIGIBLE FOR REVRESPONSE RSS TO EMAIL TOOL
• Why You Should Read John Chow dot Com 18 January, 2012, 11:30 am
  I met many John Chow dot Com readers while at the 2012 Consumer Electronics Show and Affiliate Summit. It’s always fun to see what kind of impact one can make on people’s lives. One of the things I never get tired of is hearing the success stories from readers of my blog. Normally, it’s a conversation shared between me and the reader. However, I decided to film a few of them this time. The four readers in the video come from a wide range of backgrounds, but they all have a common goal – to make money online. Not only is the video a great testimonial to me, it’s also quite motivational to you as well. From the story of the reader who’s making a living blogging about eating hotdogs, to the reader who went from $2 a day to six figures and a staff of ten writers, I’m sure you’ll find something to help you along the road to success.

31

BrianSolis

• How Suntrust Uses Social Media to Comply with Regulation and Engage with Customers 20 January, 2012, 10:37 am
  Financial institutions are bound to rules and regulation that other companies experimenting in customer engagement, specifically in social media, can ignore. Over the years, SunTrust has stood out as one of several examples that understand how to use regulatory boundaries to inspire a new generation of customer engagement. The result is finding balance between risk and reward to meet customer expectations and improve customer experiences now and over time. Bianca Buckridee, AVP of Social Media Engagement at SunTrust shares her story with us on this episode of Revolution. This episode was recorded during the Salesorce Social Advisory Board meeting in San Francisco. Participants included brand managers from the likes of Disney, Livingsocial, P&G, Nissan, SunTrust, Dunkin Donuts, Get Satisfaction, and VW, we address the need for businesses to not only react to conversations but also lead them. Season Two: S2E1: How Mercedes Benz Successfully Uses Social Media to Engage S2E2: Technorati’s Richard Jalichandra on the State and Future of Social Media S2E3: Guy Kawasaki on the Art of Enchantment S2E4: Adly CEO Arnie Gullov-Singh on the Social Era of Celebrity Endorsements S2E5: Filmmaker and Webby Awards Founder Tiffany Shlain S2E6: Jim Louderback, Revision3 CEO on the Future of Broadcast and Web Television – Part 1 of 2 S2E7: Jim Louderback, Revision3 CEO on the Future of Broadcast and Web Television – Part 2 of 2 S2E8: Marcel LeBrun of Salesforce Radian6 on the Future of Social Media Monitoring S2E9: Our Digital Society in the Next 30 Years: An Interview with John Battelle S2E10: How Social Customer Service is Changing the Culture at Comcast S2E11: Dunkin’ Donuts Uses Social Media to Improve Customer Relationships and Experiences S2E12: USA Today’s Jon Swartz on Disruptive Technology’s Impact on Business and Culture S2E13: Ford’s Jim Farley on the importance of putting your brand in the hands of customers Season One on YouTube Now on iTunes!
• Brand-Jacking: Social disaster or the highest form of flattery? 19 January, 2012, 6:15 pm
  Guest post by Ekaterina Walter, a social media strategist at Intel. She was recently elected to serve on the Board of Directors of Word of Mouth Marketing Association (WOMMA). Follow her on Twitter With the growth of social media and all the two-way channels of communication open to organizations, brand identity is potentially stronger but more at-risk than ever. Losing control of your brand’s ‘voice’ can be hugely damaging. And companies who have been brand-jacked, that is, had their brand hijacked, often move quickly to shut down the problem. But brand-jacking doesn’t have to be a negative thing. Companies that have learned lessons from the feedback it has given them can grow from the experience. Let’s look at the good, the bad and the ugly of brand-jacking. Cultural awareness Writers who long for their characters to take on a life of their own would give their right arm to see their creations appearing on Twitter with their own profiles. Lord Voldemort, Darth Vader, Frodo Baggins and Edward Cullen all tweet regularly. Some accounts are more flattering to the original creation than others, and at some point brand managers have to decide how far they are comfortable in letting these unauthorized versions take the joke. AMC famously blocked the unofficial (but character-faithful) Twitter accounts of the Mad Men characters, only to backtrack when fans complained. AMC may have realized too late that social media character-jacking can be a sincere form of flattery and the ultimate proof that your fictional creation has made the transition to cultural relevance. Identity jacking Twitter-jacking isn’t limited to fictional characters. When your name is also your brand, this can potentially be very damaging. Celebrities and politicians have had their social media accounts hacked, and there can be multiple fake accounts for high-profile individuals at any one time. While Barack Obama, Sarah Palin, Britney Spears and Miley Cyrus have all been victims of malicious hacking, some fake accounts are more amusing than malevolent. Many are so obviously fake as to not cause offense. Some are created for a satirical or surreal purpose. Bad PR The creation of malicious fake Twitter accounts can be equally detrimental to companies and organizations. There have been many examples of Twitter accounts being hijacked in protest to a company’s unpopular policy or handling of an event. Oil companies Exxon Mobil and BP have both been victims of Twitter impersonation, and following BP’s handling of the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill disaster, the satirical @BPGlobalPR has attracted over 160,000 followers. While this can be seen as a brand disaster, a company wishing to engage in some positive PR could use the feedback such channels offer to gauge the public’s perception and respond accordingly. Contrast the endless examples of companies who delete negative blog and Facebook posts with the policy of the @virginmedia team. The company makes a point of responding to every customer online mention whether it is positive or not. In one case, a woman tweeted that her Virgin Media connection wasn’t working and her two year-old daughter was upset at having to miss her favorite TV show, Peppa Pig. Not only did Virgin send an engineer immediately, he was carrying a Peppa Pig toy for the little girl. Think what this type of response can do for your brand perception, loyalty and preference! Fake Amazon reviews and tags Following the popularity of the Amazon ‘The Mountain Three Wolf Moon Short Sleeve Tee‘ prank, protesters have begun to use Amazon’s open review and tagging model to highlight unpopular products or issues. The pepper spray used in the UC Davis Occupy incident has been given over 360 tongue-in-cheek reviews on its Amazon page, as well as satirical product images and tags such as ‘tools of fascism’, ‘oppression’ and ‘police state.’ Note, the product is currently listed as unavailable. Similar cynical additions have crept into otherwise serious product pages, particularly books by controversial public figures or products by companies with disputed ethical practices. Aspirational branding One problem facing aspirational, luxury brands is when their product is adopted by an undesirable demographic, which can lead to the alienation of their core customers. This occurs most commonly with name-checking by rappers or in popular culture although it is rarely a serious concern. A more serious predicament is when the product has such an identifiable design that a mainstream take-over can have a disastrous effect. This happened in the 1990s in Britain to Burberry when its iconic tartan pattern became popularized by soccer players, then adopted by working-class fans who wore cheap imitations to such an extent that its customer base abandoned it in droves. Image: goodhumormarketing.com Knowing where to draw the line Brand managers are always going to want to deal with a negative image but sometimes an over-reaction can lead to more bad publicity than simply doing nothing. The recent attempts by Stella Artois to move away from their ‘wife beater’ stereotype. For those who don’t know, the beer’s high percentage of alcohol was allegedly linked with violence and anti-social behavior in Europe. When the company attempted to make changes to its Wikipedia page to remove the ‘wife beater’ reference, it backfired when the deletion was traced back to its own lobbying group. Given Wikipedia’s ethos of user-generated material, this led to a backlash that was quickly picked up in the press. The references were restored on Wikipedia, but the negative publicity had already reached a far wider audience than the original Wikipedia article. The good side of brand-jacking But image hijacking can work the other way. Corona was originally marketed in the USA as a Mexican beer for Mexican people. Then, it was adopted by surfers in the 1970s who identified with it as a ‘beach beer’. They helped to popularize Corona among the wider population and by the late 1990s, it had overtaken Heineken as the number one imported beer. Customer evangelism It can be difficult for companies to let go of their tightly-controlled image and allow fans to steer the direction of a brand. But the enthusiasm of fans can be instrumental in popularizing products or media. Coca-Cola’s fan-created Facebook page was the second most popular page on Facebook in 2009. Company representatives asked to partner with them rather than demanding to take it down, realizing the power of fan-driven social media. Many brands choose to create an official page alongside unofficial ones knowing that heavy handed attempts to block fan pages can lead to a damaging backlash. Although, there is always the problem that a site’s popularity can be potentially damaging if it publishes unfavorable news or views about the company to thousands of followers. Conclusion The rise of social media has given customers unprecedented access to brands. This can be a double-edged sword: companies are able to communicate with customers in more ways than ever, but brand managers need to be aware that communication is a two-way process. Customer expectations have risen accordingly and they are willing to act against companies who don’t meet their expectations. Managing communications successfully, however, can be enormously valuable to a company that recognizes the importance of its customers’ voice. Registered Image: Shutterstock
• Married to your business Twitter or Facebook account? Think before you say, I sue 18 January, 2012, 9:51 am
  About a year ago, I was asked to testify as an expert witness in a celebrity case where the celebrity in question had Tweeted a negative assessment of a particular service provider. The service provider sued claiming that the said Tweet caused significant damage to their reputation, which ultimately contributed to an unrecoverable loss in overall sales. I turned down the opportunity because in my research, I couldn’t substantiate with confidence that the Tweet caused the amount of stated damages…or anywhere close to it. Naturally, that made my testimony undesirable by the attorneys representing their service provider client. The celebrity eventually lost the case and as a result, paid a hefty sum. This case now serves as precedent for any and all case that will emerge as people seek restitution against potentially damaging status updates. Ever since that suit, I often think about the value of a Tweet, its reach, and ultimately the worth of an account and its followers. The same is true for any social media account. In recent news, there is a developing case that is prompting me to rethink value once again as well as the importance of putting into place measures for responsible social media communication and overall management. The situation this time around involves PhoneDog, a popular interactive mobile news and reviews resource, and a former employee by the name of Noah Kravitz. Before leaving the organization, Kravitz helped bring the organization onto Twitter, creating an account with the company name in his handle. @PhoneDog_Noah was an account he created on his own accord to engage with customers and promote the company. He also used the account for personal interaction. Upon his departure, Noah states that he informed management that he would be taking the Twitter account with him and changing the name from @PhoneDog_Noah to @NoahKravitz. Now, according to his side of the story, his management was more than fine with this change. As he asserts, his management casually asked for him to update the account with PhoneDog related information “every now and then.” I should also point out that the @PhoneDog account remains in the possession of the business. Now, either in a turn of the tides or simply protecting what it believed it owned all along, PhoneDog is suing Noah Kravitz for $170,000 in damages it claims were caused by Kravitz not turning over the account. That’s $2.50 for every one of the account’s 17,000 followers for the 4 months Kravitz has not transferred back account management to the PhoneDog team. This is a good moment for pause and reflection. $170,000 is not a trivial amount. Noah most likely does not possess the means to pay these damages should he lose. In a recent interview, he projected only the utmost confidence that he was in the right and that he believes this case has no merit. He states that his employer was not interested in the account at his time of departure and because he made it a point of conversation during his exit, that he pursued reasonable measures to communicate his intentions. More importantly, $2.50 is on the block to become a precedent in the assignment of value to Twitter followers. It’s a number that’s difficult to fathom as it’s practically arbitrary. So who’s right in this case? Noah? His employer? They say possession in nine-tenths of the law. In this case, it comes down to intention. We do know that Noah created the account with good intentions. But he did create the account to help his employer earn relevance in a new and important media channel. Chances are that he managed the account and grew its following during business hours, which can be considered an “invention” during his course of employment. As a result, this can be considered property of the organization because they have a vested interest in its development and Noah was compensated for his time. In Noah’s defense, he claimed that he presented his intentions to take the account to management and received the blessing to take official ownership of the account. This can represent a form of negotiation that protects Noah from damages. He did not however, receive this approval in writing and as such, all impressions and statements are challengeable. Another angle to examine here is that of the Twitter followers in question. Do they remain loyal to Noah or to PhoneDog? Using an automated engagement platform such as PeopleBrowsr, all 17,000 followers can be asked via DM whether they would like to remain a follower of Noah’s, unfollow Noah and now follow @PhoneDog or follow both. When British TV journalist Laura Kuenssberg changed stations from the BBC to ITV, she struck a deal that allowed her to take her 60,000 followers. Her last BBC tweet read, “@ITVLauraK Laura Kuenssberg Thanks you for all your messages excellent followers! My last tweet as @BBCLauraK – shortly to become @ITVLauraK.” While the results of this case will play out in either court or arbitration, businesses and employees should take this time to communicate intentions and expectations. Additionally, companies should invest in the development of clear policies, guidelines, and compliance processes and systems to protect employees and intellectual property (IP). If we look at email as precedent, it’s largely understood that the email account and all communication remains company property when an employee leaves. The contacts made during employment are exportable. But, businesses already possess proven rules that govern the engagement of employees and past employees in regards to how contacts can be engaged post employment, how, and for what duration. For example, a sales person is typically not allowed to make contact with business clients during a fixed period of a year or longer. There’s one other angle to review here and it is worthy of serious consideration and ultimately new internal rules and procedures. If we use Noah Kravitz as an example, at some point he will join a new company and start a new career. With his 17,000 Twitter followers, Kravitz boasts a notable personal brand. This brand can be of great value to the organization of course, but it is his brand to cultivate. Additionally, Noah would need to treat his personal brand and any presences that he manages as an employee-owned carve out. In his HR file, it would then be noted that these accounts are his personal assets. However, businesses must now consider policies, rules, and procedures for managing a personal brand without disrupting the employees role, focus, or the employer’s brand. I took a moment to speak with Joe Chernov, VP of Content Marketing for Eloqua (an Altimeter Group client). He believes that communication and regulation are key, “I am concerned both as the architect of my employer’s social strategy and as a hiring manager. The two questions on my mind are Will an eventual decision require me to forfeit my personal following? And, how can I ensure the organization maintains rights to relevant follower lists should we onboard additional social media personnel? The battleground for employees and employers alike may shift to employment offer negotiations, when each party has an opportunity to assert rights to intellectual property. Employers may wish to add specific language requiring that all social media handles, followings and content be transferred completely and exclusively to the Company. Meanwhile employees interested in developing and protecting their own “brands” might push back against the same with specific exclusionary language to ensure they may take their tweets with them upon termination. Of course, these battlegrounds can often be avoided by thoughtful dialogue.” Social media is new and at the same time the laws that should govern account management, customer engagement, and community development are already established. Like in any customer or employee facing account, the rules of engagement must be defined, articulated, and accepted. Additionally, these rules of engagement should be observed through compliance practices to ensure brand integrity and employee performance through training, improvement and also reward. Connect with me: Twitter | LinkedIn | Facebook | Google+ Order The End of Business as Usual today… Image credit: Shutterstock
• Digital Trends: Strategies for Reaching and Influencing Connected Consumers 16 January, 2012, 5:42 am
  In 2011, the digital landscape underwent a significant shift that will have profound effects on business in 2012. The challenge is that hardly any business leaders noticed. That’s not their fault however. Although the impact of technology on business and consumer behavior was widely reported, in-depth reports on what to do next or how this will affect their business specifically were scant at best. What the social media gurus aren’t telling you is that the landscape for business isn’t changing because of social media, it’s changing because consumer expectations are evolving. Your customers are empowered through technology where social media becomes only part of the disruption. Your job in 2012 is to not embrace new technology with arms wide open, but instead understand it and learn which disruptive technologies separate you from existing and potential customers. What’s unique about “connected” consumers is that they find and share information differently than their more traditional counterparts. They make decisions differently than the everyday consumers you’re used to engaging as well. But keep in mind, the connected do not displace your traditional customer, they simply expand your opportunity to grow your business. How you’re marketing, selling, and servicing customers today is largely missing this new breed of consumer, and thus limiting your overall opportunity for growth. To reach the connected consumer, you must first walk in their footsteps. It takes research, not guesswork. It takes understanding, not skepticism. And it takes a dedicated, not generic or approximated, approach. Why? Because while your traditional consumer relies on tangible media such as TV, radio, newspapers, direct mail, email, Google search or static websites, the connected consumer is not blindly seeking information, they are reliant on the right information finding them, in the right places. For example, your new prospective customer lives on their smartphones and tablets. They network with friends, family and the businesses they support in mobile and social networks. They check in to locations to signal to people nearby that they’re in the neighborhood and to alert businesses that they’re ready to interact live. Consumers install apps to better make decisions and to broadcast those decisions to their social networks. What’s more, they research products and services based on the experiences of their peers in real-time, and in turn, share their experiences with everyone else to shape and steer the experiences of others. In doing so they expand the idea of “audiences” to something far more efficient and expansive — an audience with an audience of audiences. While it seems foreign or dismissible to those who are not actively embracing or even dependent on disruptive technology, connected consumers are only growing in size, magnitude and influence. Ignoring them is a step toward digital Darwinism. Today, no company is too big to fail or too small to succeed. Simply knowing your customer is one thing. But, understanding how they make decisions and participating in that process influences behavior while building meaningful relationships. Connect with me: Twitter | LinkedIn | Facebook | Google+ Order The End of Business as Usual today… Image credit: Shutterstock Originally published on Monster.com
• The Hierarchy of Contagiousness 12 January, 2012, 7:38 am
  Guest post by Dan Zarrella, author of Zarrella’s Hierarchy of Contagiousness The key to applying science to marketing is being prescriptive. Calculating and analyzing data that is interesting is fun, but information becomes useful when it tells you how to achieve a specific goal. Throughout my career, one of the goals I’ve focused on is the engineering contagious ideas. I’ve worked for years, using science and data to understand how to craft content that spreads like wildfire. Humans have been spreading ideas for thousands of years, telling each other where to find the best hunting ground, what dish detergent to use and what god to worship. The web provides unprecedented access to these conversations, allowing researchers to analyze millions of ideas to reverse engineer what it is about them that makes them spread. Generally, when you ask someone why certain ideas go viral, the best answer you’ll get is “because they’re good.” That video I sent you last week was so funny, I had to share it. Any more than a few moments of thought reveals this to be entirely untrue. There are plenty of good ideas that go nowhere and lots of bad ideas that spread like crazy. Clearly there are some other factors that determine how contagious ideas are. And it is exactly those factors I’ve devoted my work to studying. If you’ve been to enough social media conferences, or read enough books or blogs about modern marketing, you’ve undoubtedly heard a ton of what I call unicorns-and-rainbows advice. Feel-good stuff like “engage in the conversation,” “hug your followers,” and “have a personality.” It’s hard to disagree with this kind of stuff, because I’m not going to get on stage and tell you to punch your customers in the face, but it’s generally not based on anything more substantial than what sounds right, or makes the listener feel good. Unicorns-and-rainbows advice is kind of like the snake oil and magical cures peddled before the rise of real, scientific health care. No real doctor would treat his patients with a certain procedure simply because it “sounded right.” It’s time for social media marketing to move beyond the dark ages and embrace the deluge of data now available to us. One of the biggest problems with the superstitious approach to social media is that success is considered luck. Under the hegemony of unicorns-and-rainbows it’s black magic to make a piece of content “go viral.” The only things those myth-based marketers use to guide their efforts is gut feelings and anecdotal (and often misleading) “experience.” I for one, don’t like to base business decisions on luck or gut feeling. I prefer to use science and data to create reproducible and reliable results. To accomplish this, I crafted a model for understanding how ideas spread and I’ve studied how marketers can optimize for success at each step of the process. I call this model Zarrella’s Hierarchy of Contagiousness. It’s what my latest book is all about. While the name is reminiscent of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, the actual model draws on two other concepts: AIDA and OODA. AIDA is a sales methodology that describes the steps in the selling (or buying process): awareness, interest, decision, and action. Each of those steps must occur if someone is going to buy something. OODA comes from military strategy and describes the decision making process in a confrontation: observe, orient, decide, and act. My framework describes the 3 steps that must happen if someone is going to spread your idea for you: 1. The person must be exposed to your idea. They have to be following you on Twitter, subscribed to your email list or “like” your page on Facebook. 2. They must actually become aware of your idea. I follow 8,000 people on Twitter, so I don’t see every tweet. Your target must actually read your Tweet, open your email or see your wall post in their feed. 3. Something in that content has to actually motivate them to spread your idea. Once I’ve read your tweet, it has to make me want to retweet it. Your email has to make me want to forward it. At each step of this process, marketers can optimize for success. My book goes into detail about each of these steps and provides data on how to do the best, but here’s a run down: 1. To increase the number of people potentially exposed to your ideas, you must increase your reach. Get more followers, email subscribers or Facebook likes. 2. You have to learn to be heard over the noise of social media. By being more attention grabbing or using contra-competitive timing. 3. Your content must include motivation-raising features. Combined relevance, calls-to-action and us vs them are examples of contagious “hooks.” For more social media science like this, pickup Zarrella’s Hierarchy of Contagiousness on Amazon.
• Ten Social Media Strategies to Define a Successful 2012 10 January, 2012, 5:56 am
  Welcome to another New Year! While everyone else is busy thinking about or already breaking their New Year resolutions, it’s time for us to take a moment to rethink what it is we can really do better now and over the next 12 months. I’m sure you heard it everywhere last year. Experts found the highest blog mountains and social network skyscrapers to Tweet in concert, “You need a Facebook brand page! Why are you not on Twitter yet? Have you checked-in on Foursquare? Hurry up and get set up on Google+. If you don’t get on social media, you’re going to go out of business!” And, here you are…still in business, I presume. But like any keen business leader or entrepreneur, you’re avidly thinking about your next move and your social media strategies for 2012. You already know that running the show in a mode of “business as usual” is not only limiting, it’s terribly complacent.  But if you are to change, you need to better understand exactly how technology is influencing the behavior of your customers and why. The truth is that you can create your company brand pages on every social network you can imagine and you won’t succeed unless you know whom you’re trying to reach and where, what it is they expect and value, and how these channels represent a meaningful opportunity for you and your consumers to connect. You first must answer what’s in it for them and what’s in it for you. Defining your Social Media Strategy Social networks, smartphones, tablets, review sites, gamification, geo-location, et al. are producing a new breed of consumer, and businesses are largely missing them altogether. In fact, the emergence of this more “connected consumer” is forcing the end of business as usual. At the same time, the decision patterns of these connected consumers has ushered in an era of risk where any business, large and small, is vulnerable to digital Darwinism — the evolution of consumer behavior when society and technology evolve faster than the ability to adapt. Ten Social Media Tips In 2012, consider yourself a digital anthropologist or sociologist as you immerse yourself in a day in the life of your connected consumer and seek to close the chasm between you and them. There are many professional social media analysts, researchers and strategists who can help you find the answers you seek. Starting now and forever, technology and empathy are now part of your business strategy. To what extent disruptive technology impacts your markets will depend on your industry and the rate of adoption within it. Priority areas for your social media strategy should include an understanding of the following: 1. Social Networks from Facebook to Twitter to Google+ and how they’re connecting to influencers and businesses 2. Geo-location check-in services such as Foursquare and Facebook location updates to share locations and earn rewards or opportunities for discounts. 3. Crowd-sourced discounts and deals including Groupon and LivingSocial and what’s valued and why. 4. Social commerce services like Shopkick and Armadealo and how they create personalized experiences that are worth sharing. 5. Referral based solutions like Yelp, Service Magic, and Angie’s List to make informed decisions and how shared experiences can improve your business, products, and services. 6. Gamification platforms such as Badgeville and Fangager, and why rewarding engagement improves commerce and loyalty. 7. How your consumers using mobile devices today and what apps they’re installing. Also, how they’re comparing options, reviewing experiences and making decisions while mobile? 8. The online presence your business produces across a variety of platforms such as tablets, smartphones, laptops and desktops. You must realize how consumers are experiencing the online presences you create and whether or not they deliver a holistic and optimized experience for each platform. 9. The consumer clickpath based on the platform consumers are using. Are you steering experiences based on the expectations of your customers? And are you taking into consideration the device or network where the clickpath begins and ends? Are you integrating Facebook F-commerce and m-commerce into the journey? 10. The expectations of connected consumers, what they value in each channel and platform, where they engage and how your business can improve experiences and make them worthy of sharing. This is your year… 2012 is the year for you to grow your small business while earning relevance among a growing class of connected consumers. Regardless of technology, the future of business isn’t created, it’s co-created. To succeed, it takes a culture of customer centricity and the ability to recognize new opportunities and adapt based on what they present. In the words of Charles Darwin, “It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent. It is the one that is most adaptable to change.” Connect with me: Twitter | LinkedIn | Facebook | Google+ The End of Business as Usual is now available ____ Originally published on Monster.com Image Credit: RedKid.net
• Ford’s Jim Farley on the importance of putting your brand in the hands of customers 6 January, 2012, 11:56 am
  During Blogworld Expo in Los Angeles, I was given the opportunity to interview Jim Farley, Ford’s Group Vice President, Global Marketing, Sales and Service live on stage. The discussion was focused on a powerful theme, putting your brand in the hands of customers. Certainly for any business, large and small, the idea of empowering customers to shape and steer your brand can be perceived as both frightening and dangerous. But here, Farley brings a refreshing perspective on why businesses, including Ford, need to engage customers in a more human and genuine manner. He looks beyond marketing to bring executives, employees and customers together in building a stronger brand, more relevant products and services, and investing in meaningful relationships to ultimately create a remarkable business…a business that matters beyond its goods. “My responsibility is to teach the organization something they’re not willing to learn. If I get fired because of it or if I don’t fit, I should not have been there any way. We live in a new paradigm…with a new opportunity.” – Jim Farley I think you’ll enjoy this video. Please take a moment to watch and share… Season Two: S2E1: How Mercedes Benz Successfully Uses Social Media to Engage S2E2: Technorati’s Richard Jalichandra on the State and Future of Social Media S2E3: Guy Kawasaki on the Art of Enchantment S2E4: Adly CEO Arnie Gullov-Singh on the Social Era of Celebrity Endorsements S2E5: Filmmaker and Webby Awards Founder Tiffany Shlain S2E6: Jim Louderback, Revision3 CEO on the Future of Broadcast and Web Television – Part 1 of 2 S2E7: Jim Louderback, Revision3 CEO on the Future of Broadcast and Web Television – Part 2 of 2 S2E8: Marcel LeBrun of Salesforce Radian6 on the Future of Social Media Monitoring S2E9: Our Digital Society in the Next 30 Years: An Interview with John Battelle S2E10: How Social Customer Service is Changing the Culture at Comcast S2E11: Dunkin’ Donuts Uses Social Media to Improve Customer Relationships and Experiences S2E12: USA Today’s Jon Swartz on Disruptive Technology’s Impact on Business and Culture Season One on YouTube Now on iTunes! Photo Credit: Isaac Brekken for The New York Times
• Digital localization optimizes global strategies to improve experiences and results 3 January, 2012, 5:34 am
  Part 15 in an ongoing series that serves as the prequel to my new book, The End of Business as Usual… The world is becoming a much smaller place. But even with social media contributing to a globally connected society, businesses that continue to take a global approach to social content and engagement may be missing opportunities for greater resonance and relevance. While a global presence is necessary for any organization hoping to connect with customers around the world, placing reliance on one prevailing strategy is just the beginning. In any web strategy, including social and also mobile media,   localization is king. In my work and research over the years, I’ve observed a significant number of businesses that employ English-driven initiatives across the Web. As customers grow increasingly depended on social networks, paying particular attention to Facebook, a “one size fits all” program may make assumptions that miss the opportunity to engage people their way in the last mile. Data shows that customizing or localizing content for specific markets and cultures dramatically multiplies desired effect. In the great race to win the hearts and minds of customers, localization also helps customers feel better about the resulting clicks they make following each engagement. Social CMS and SMMS systems such as Buddy Media, Vitrue, Wildfire, Spredfast, Involver, Expion, among many others, enable brands to publish once to many pages across social networks. Whether it’s Facebook, Youtube, Google+, Twitter, all of the above or a combination there-of, English-centric strategies can not only be centrally managed by the global brand team, but also further localized for important countries by the local country manager or their local team. A brief study of average customer engagement on Facebook Fan pages around the world in 2010 helps illustrate the point of why localized strategies are important. In the review, Starbucks and Blackberry country pages that featured localized content in addition to the global initiatives fostered interaction as much as 10 – 15x than those which featured English-only content. And now with F-commerce and social and mobile commerce becoming pivotal in defining and activating customer relationships within their channels of preference, localized initiatives will only grow your opportunity. To that point, Translated.net recently published its T-Index report, which projects the top countries global businesses should examine to increase online commerce and engagement. According to the report, the Top 10 countries for selling online through 2015 are as follows… China Unites States Japan Brazil Germany Russia France United Kingdom South Korea Mexico Translated.net projects China to earn a market share of 18.8%, compared to 11.5% in 2011. According to these numbers, China is estimated to overtake the Unites States, which may see its aggregate online sales decline from 24.4% in 2011 to 16.8% by 2015. It’s estimated that Japan will remain third overall despite a market share reduction of -25.7% compared to 2011.With an estimated market share change of +43.3%, Brazil will jump into fourth place. Russia too will leap two positions to sixth overall with a change of +27.5%. As you plan you global content and commerce strategy, it’s also important to review the languages that offer the highest potential. According to the T-Index report, English will continue as the top language with an estimated 25.4% through 2015 with Chinese Simplified growing to 18.9%. Spanish follows in third with 8.5%. As you can see, many other languages will play a role in your strategies, which is why it’s vital to employ a syndicated and localized content, commerce, and engagement strategy across all media. Yes, the world is becoming a much smaller place. And, yes, global strategies establish a unified brand. In 2012 and over the next few years, going local will only improve engagement, resonance, and ultimately commerce in the last mile.  To make the most out of the oppotunity 1. Employ a Global Strategy, but also focus on Localized Initiatives for content, commerce, and engagement within in important market. 2. Empower Country Managers to extend the global vision, mission, and purpose for essential languages and cultures. 3. Create a centralized Global Directory that points customers around the world to their specific country page 4. Design a Syndicated Content, Commerce, and Engagement program that connects with customers their way in their channel of preference (the recipe of mobile, social, digital, and emerging media will vary from market to market) 5. Explore the data shared in the T-Index report to prioritize your Global Initiatives Order The End of Business as Usual today… Part 1 – Digital Darwinism, Who’s Next Part 2 – Social Media’s Impending Flood of Customer Unlikes and Unfollows Part 3 – Social Media Customer Service is a Failure! Part 4 – I think we need some time apart, it’s not me, it’s you Part 5 – We are the 5th P: People Part 6 – The State of Social Media 2011: Social is the new normal Part 7 – I like you, but not in that way Part 8 – Are You Building a Social Brand or a Social Business? Part 9 – CMO’s are at the Crossroads of Customer Transactions and Engagement Part 10 – From Social Commerce to Syndicated Commerce Part 11 – You can’t go back to create a new beginning, but you can begin to change the ending Part 12 – How to Make Customer Service Matter Again Part 1 Part 13 – How to Make Customer Service Matter Again Part 2 Part 14 – Long Live Blogs! The State of the Blogosphere 2011 Image Credit: Shutterstock
• Social CRM Needs Clarity 30 December, 2011, 2:13 pm
  As the headline implies, even though Social CRM exists as an official category, what it is and what it is not is blurry and hotly debated. No, it doesn’t need a new definition. And, no, it doesn’t need new leadership. sCRM, and now “social enterprise” as categories could however, benefit from clarity around what it is they’re solving for, which companies actually provide solutions against those objectives, and ultimately, how everything works together for the benefit of customer engagement and relationships. Think about the vast array of vendors selling social media solutions for a moment. Many of them are positioned as Social CRM or sCRM tools, but when you examine true capabilities versus stated positioning , you will find that many vendors are in fact stronger players in social media management (SMMS), social CMS, listening, collaboration, intelligence, and conversation management. If you think about this from a business perspective, it’s almost impossible to identify which vendor is truly qualified to deliver against the goals of a new social CRM system.  Decision makers have to spend an inordinate amount of time attempting to sort through what is true and what is simply good marketing. Often, they must recruit experts to help survey the landscape and qualify vendors. Earlier in the year, I met with Houston Neal to discuss the state of Social CRM, where it’s headed and where it needs to go. As you can see, I believe that 2012 is the year when we finally start to accurately segment the market while better defining what Social CRM really is and how businesses need to think and rethink their approach to customer relationship management. So, no. This is not a post to redefine sCRM. Nor is this a post to argue about nomenclature. This is an attempt to bring clarity and alignment around real world business problems and vendor capabilities. More importantly, in 2012, I hope to see greater movement toward solving for the business issues that software and social media cannot fix. It’s part technology and part philosophy. Because, in the end, it’s about relationships. Here’s the transcribed conversation… Houston Neal: To begin, do you think a true social CRM suite exists in the market? Brian Solis: That’s a good question. Let’s first take a step back. The thing that’s a little bit more interesting about Social CRM – and definitely one of the things that’s under appreciated – is the idea that it forces us to rethink the definition of CRM. By that I mean, CRM was originally about putting together an infrastructure, processes, and methodologies to support customer and sales processes and customer relationships. With Social CRM, we are introduced to a customer that resides in different channels, channels businesses don’t control. This introduces new touch points within the business ecosystem that we didn’t design around originally. Paul Greenberg introduced a working definition of Social CRM that I think helps frame the conversation, “Social CRM is the integration of traditional operational customer facing activities including strategies, programs, systems, and technologies with emergent social channels to provide businesses with the means to communicate and engage with customers in their preferred channels for mutual benefit.” When you ask if there are any solutions out there, the answer is yes and no. What was CRM and what will be CRM are two very different things. By this, I mean this is an opportunity to evolve an aging infrastructure and philosophy to adapt to customers where they expect engagement. And, as a result, you’re actually going to see a complete transformation in business in general. It goes by names like “social business,” “adaptive business,” and “holistic business.” What we’re learning now with the democratization of information is that individuals are in control of the brand and brand experience as much as the business. This is paramount. This is at the heart of what’s fueling the socialization of CRM. If I could put it into one nutshell statement it would be that customer relationships and engagement channels used to be defined and governed businesses. That was because they controlled the technology and the media. When you try to design software around capturing this activity, you have to begin by questioning your business strategy and your intentions for customer engagement. What is it that you are trying to accomplish? Are you trying to steer experiences at the beginning, during, or after? Or, all of the above? Tools are starting to emerge that allow you to identify decision making processes across distributed platforms outside of the firewall or call center at every step. They are all, in one way or another, adapting to certain parts or many parts of this social CRM idea. But if indeed social CRM is much bigger, as we’re discussing here, then it’s just getting started. Finally, just to make things a bit more interesting, what if for the sake of this discussion, we removed the “C” from CRM? For all the pundits who read this, I’m not calling for a new category. This is about perspective or how businesses view customers. Let’s say that in a connected world where customers are gaining influence, customer relationship management becomes only part of the opportunity. What it’s really about is relationship management, before, during, and after meaningful transactions. You can influence the decision of someone before they’re even a customer. You can manage the whole information work flow process, channel it within the organization so that you’re not just learning and responding, but so that you are adapting as a business to be better structured to handle the customer of the future. Moving on to a more specific question, what type of applications do you think would make up a social CRM suite? I recently wrote an article about Dell and Gatorade building social media command centers. These rooms resemble NASA’s mission control with screens everywhere displaying conversations, relationships, keyword clouds, sentiment, and real-time trends. But it’s so much more than social media marketing. It’s about intelligence. It’s about learning from customer activity to design new engagement programs, better products and services, and ultimately optimized processes. This is one way that the social CRM system would really start to begin. From there, it’s a matter of technologies and work flow that allow you to hear, see, process, respond, and adapt all within the infrastructure in the way the business is designed. Take Nimble for example. It will allow you to track all of these different individuals, then at a point of engagement it, let’s say its Twitter, channel one individual to someone in customer service or product management. If I send a Tweet, customer service then uses a tool like Nimble to bring in more information than what you would normally find in that tweet or bio, for example, the person’s name, what other accounts they have across other networks, etc. It would then introduce that information into a centralized database. Customer service can then push out a response and track the response. Nimble could also send a signal to the listening agent to say, “we’ve got this one handled, you can check it off your list.” If the listening manager finds a sales opportunity, they could funnel it over to sales. If you look at my early blueprint for the social business you’ll see this thing called the conversation cloud on the left side of the blueprint. You’ll notice Get Satisfaction. What they represent is this conversation cloud that channels conversations into one place. So, let’s just say somebody asks a question on Twitter, or somebody asks a question on Facebook, or somebody goes to the website to ask a question. The magic of Get Satisfaction is that they can put together common responses and common answers from a knowledge-base, directly to the individual. So it can just constantly serve up the right answer without even having to have a human being present, which is huge. It saves them a massive amount of time. This is yet another dimension to CRM that we really haven’t seen before. So, when you look at Get Satisfaction, combine them with Nimble, then combine with a command center, we’re starting to see pieces of this complete social CRM suite emerge. Then there is going to be some type of glue that brings it all together. That glue is probably going to be somebody like Salesforce who buys all of these pieces to offer one complete solution, or parts of the solution. What trends are you seeing in the market, both in terms of product development, and general market activity? I’ve seen a lot of innovation from vendors who claim to have leading social CRM solutions. Many however, offer facets of a bigger of social CRM system. There is great confusion in the market as businesses attempt to qualify vendors based on stated capabilities. For a while, it seemed that if you could track conversations on social networks and respond from one interface, that was all you need to qualify as a sCRM solution. There’s obviously more to the story. I believe we need to not redefine sCRM, but instead clarify what it is and isn’t. Additionally, we need to better align vendor capabilities with real world business needs. One trend that I see unfolding in 2012 and 2013 is a shift from a groundswell-driven process of move-and-react to a top-down leadership approach to innovation in technology adoption, innovation in processes, and a reassessment of mission, vision, and purpose. As a result, how businesses see the customer and in turn engage and manage relationships will dramatically evolve and improve to the benefit of all parties. So basically coming up with use cases? Ahh, use cases. Let me start by saying, I’m open to seeing case studies on this subject. Feel free to email me with your stories. Here, I’d like to talk about Dell,  a case that is often used in the realm of social marketing. But, I believe the true story is around how a big company used a crisis to innovate around processes, services, and ultimately transform its culture as a result. For years, Dell was subject to severe problem that were catapulted into mainstream media via blogs and social networks. Michael Dell – and the rest of the company – took it so seriously that they innovated systems around solving the problem at a customer engagement level and also in product design. And it’s still evolving today. When there’s a problem on Twitter, blogs, Facebook, or anywhere else, they watch to see which issues gain momentum. As this happens, they unearth what the problem is, get a team to fix it, then push the fix before it’s a mainstream problem. This completely extinguishes those discussions. So that means that it went from a listening component to a development component to a distribution component of a CRM system. They’ve got the same infrastructure for sales, human resources, finance and legal. Dell is building an infrastructure, and more importantly, a methodology of philosophies around engaging with those experiences, dealing with those experiences, or managing those experiences. So while they’re far from being the complete example of an entire solution, Dell is by default, building a social CRM system for the entire organization. On another note, I also wanted to send a special note of thanks to Lauren Carlson, Houston Neal,  and the Software Advice team for including me in the 2011 Authority Awards. Other winners include good friend Mr. Paul Greenberg and Denis Pombriant, who is someone I look forward to getting to know better in 2012. Connect with me: Twitter | LinkedIn | Facebook | Google+ The End of Business as Usual is now available
• Is the Golden Age of tech blogging over? 28 December, 2011, 6:57 am
  My colleague Jeremiah Owyang sure ruffled some feathers with his post claiming that the Golden Age of tech blogging is over. Aside from being a mentor and a tireless analyst, he’s also a long-time blogger. His words over the years helped blaze the trail for blogging and ultimately the micromedia bonanza that he believes is contributing to the erosion of long-form social prose. In his article, he quotes good friends Loic Lemeur, Ben Metcalfe, Ben Parr, Francine Hardaway, Chris Heuer and Dave McClure. Their perspective is always interesting. And, his post also drew telling comments from some of the best known names in tech blogging including Pete Cashmore, founder of Mashable, Sarah Lacy, Marshall Kirkpatrick, and Dylan Tweney, executive editor at VentureBeat. His points are worthy of consideration. Kudos to him for sparking this conversation…feels like old times. I believe that in brevity there’s clarity. While a chapter in the ongoing development of tech blogging is certainly coming to an end, in the overall story, it’s (finally) growing up…as it should. See, tech is more important than a locale. It’s more important than funding or personnel shifts. Its impact on culture, society, business, and human evolution is more profound than the pundits who usually cover it. Evolution is a good thing…and I believe tech blogging is merely undergoing a form of digital Darwinism of sorts. I recently wrote about my thoughts on the state and future of blogs, which is of course far grander than the world of tech blogging. And as you can see, blogging is alive and clicking. Yes, micromedia, video, and social transactions/actions are breaking through our digital levees and causing our social streams to flood. And, yes, Flipboard, Zite, and the like (get it?), are forcing our consumption patterns into rapid-fire actions and reactions. You have a choice. You are either a content creator, curator or consumer. You can be all of course. But, think about this beyond the mental equivalent of 140 characters. What do you stand for and what do you want to become known for? The answer is different for each of us. But, content, context, and continuity are all I need to learn, make decisions and in turn inspire others. I can assure you that the right voices will find the right platforms to escalate the genre and continue to influence all forms of media and those who create it. Watch what happens in 2012. It’s part survival of the fittest and survival of the fitting. I’ve got my eye on some of the names you know as well as many that you don’t (but soon will). This part is important…If we assume that human beings can only process bytes instead of depth we are confined to competing merely for the moment. That is a game for the AOL’s of the world. What’s changing right here, right now is the players, not the game. In fact, this is the time to compete for attention by not just feeding it forgettable snacks here and there, but enrapturing it through value, direction, and insight. Do the work no one else can make the time to do. There’s always a market for intelligence…it’s just a matter of which market you decide to pursue. I believe the next Golden Age lies in syndicated context (yes it’s a play on words) and like a multidimensional chess board, we will compete for attention on several different fronts (playing their game, their way) while expanding reach in the process. There’s tremendous value in trusted content. The secret lies not in character count, but in perspective…seeing what others can’t and doing what others won’t. Just don’t lose sight of who you are and why you’re here. You’re part of the reason we’re here in the first place. #AdaptorDie Connect with me: Twitter | LinkedIn | Facebook | Google+

12

Econsultancy

• Groupon acquires social commerce company Mertado 23 January, 2012, 4:35 am
  According to reports, Groupon was primarily interested in Mertado’s expertise in the social commerce space, including the launch of Mertado TV, which combined video content with products. The concept is similar to French Connection’s YouTique ‘store’, which uses YouTube’s annotation feature alongside clips of a stylist showing viewers how to wear the brand’s latest collection. Mertado wrote on its site that the company was no longer accepting new registrations and will officially shut down on Feb 28, while customers are currently being redirected to Groupon Goods. This is the company’s answer to Amazon, acting as an online retail site for physical products.  Today, we're pleased to announce that we are continuing this journey by becoming a part of the Groupon family. Groupon has been a pioneer in social commerce in many ways, and when we started talking with them, it became extremely clear that they shared the same set of values as us." Groupon’s shaky financial footing continues to fluctuate. Its shares fell below the company’s initial public offering price at the beginning of this month, and public confidence in the deals industry is dropping as people turn to trusted brands for ‘daily deals’ direct from the horse’s mouth. O2's Priority Moments is a great example of this. This talent land grab feels like the slow and steady rise of panic; an attempt to bring smart people in that might be able to change the path of a sinking ship before its too late. We’ve said before that 2012 will be the year the deals industry either matures or dies, and for now, the jury is still out on which side Groupon will fall.
• Making the affiliate Long Tail wag : part one 20 January, 2012, 5:59 am
  The Long Tail In his words a ‘Long Tail’ utilises “the efficient economics of online retail to aggregate a large inventory of relatively low sellers.”. For offline bricks-and-mortar stores it is not feasible to stock low-selling items due to shelf space; they instead stock the big-sellers, and unsurprisingly that is what people buy because that is what is available. However, things are different online. Without the problem of shelf space, Amazon for instance, can sell everything. Anderson notes that this creates the effect of inexhaustible demand even at the end of the Long Tail: even the 500,000th best selling product still sells in the thousands, and the Long Tail never reaches zero. Thus there is a market for almost everything. So how does this apply to affiliate marketing? The ‘Long Tail’ of an affiliate programme is collective name for the sites that share the same distribution curve Anderson noted with Amazon, but of affiliates rather than products. It is the affiliates themselves that form the Long Tail, the multitude of sites outside the top performers that sell in small volumes individually but large volumes collectively. Every affiliate programme has a Long Tail if defined solely as those outside the top 10 or 20, but as the concept implies that endless choice available online creates unlimited demand, affiliates can help advertisers to cater for this demand. It is through this natural affinity that affiliate networks are able to target relevant partners for advertisers’ programmes. In the affiliate world, the Long Tail should be able to cater to all audiences. Just as a retailer captures more of the market by selling more products, so an affiliate programme can capture more potential customers with more affiliates. Search, for example, is the predominant way to find products online, but advertisers are unlikely to cover Long Tail keywords that are as niche as their Long Tail of affiliates: they are simply unable to bid on as many products as they sell. However, their affiliates may rank naturally for these terms. Advertisers can thus use their affiliate Long Tails to effectively expand their search budgets. Volumes from the Long Tail are potentially huge. One telecoms advertiser saw its Long Tail grow over the last four years to generate collectively as many sales as a top 10 affiliate. However, Long Tail optimisation is a long-term strategy requiring investments of time, money and resource. Moving from theory to practice, we find advertisers constantly asking questions about their affiliate programmes which indicate that, practically, engaging this Long Tail is tricky. Indeed, their questions are symptomatic of problems with Long Tail engagement: ‘Why are there not more affiliates referring sales?’; ‘Why are we so reliant on a few top players?’; ‘Why can I not just cull non-performers and bring my top affiliates in-house?’ What is the extent of this problem? Studying the growth in commissions paid to affiliates by Affiliate Window over the last four years shows that the top 200 (on a network of 75,000+) account for the vast majority of all commissions paid. At the same time, commissions to those outside the top 200 are decreasing rather than following the same growth trajectory of total network pay-outs, with the gap between commissions to the top 200 affiliates and those from the Long Tail having grown in 2011 compared to 2010. So is there an affiliate divide? Amongst Affiliate Window’s top 20 advertisers, the average programme has 2,716 affiliates, with 16% driving at least one sale, and 47% at least one click. In the period September 2010-2011, the top 10 revenue-drivers contribute an average of 76% of total sales. The gap between sale and click-drivers therefore suggests that the problem is one of conversion rather than engagement. Many affiliates are engaging enough to get a click, justifying their value to advertisers, but cannot convert. Perhaps the issue is one of context over content: whether or not users are in the right frame of mind to buy when they are browsing such sites. Of course, each advertiser may define their Long Tail differently, but it's useful to make a three-way distinction not just between the top 10 and the Long Tail, but between the Long Tail and the potentially larger number of inactive affiliates. The Long Tail in this sense would still drive sales or click-throughs, just in smaller numbers. What is important is the extent to which there is a divide between the top 10 and everyone else. Distinguishing between the Long Tail and inactive affiliates helps address this by aiming to raise the game not just of the Long Tail but also raising inactive affiliates into the Long Tail. Having got a measure of the extent of the issue, in the next part we will look practically at how Long Tail engagement and optimisation can be achieved.
• Monkeybars wants to reward fans for buying content online 18 January, 2012, 2:40 pm
  One of the latest entrants hoping to be a panacea for indie musicians: Monkeybars. Targeting music, as well as films, books and art, Monkeybars thinks it has found the magic formula for using social networks to sell content. Its concept: give indie artists the ability to sell their wares directly, and reward their fans when they recommend that content to friends. As Monkeybars' CEO Tom Thimot sees it, "Right now, friends are constantly recommending content through social networks, but they are not getting anything for it, while the artists—from the popular to the undiscovered—continue to hand over large percentages of their worth to third parties in order to have their voices heard." Monkeybars biggest differentiator is that its reward is cash, not points that can later be used to redeem a physical or digital reward. Monkeybars calls those types of rewards "antiquated and meaningless." The big question, of course, is could something like this work? To be sure, although Monkeybars is billing itself as "the first e- and m-commerce platform that enables artists to monetize and distribute content directly while rewarding their fans for sharing and recommending it" the general concept isn't exactly new. There are numerous challenges. A big one: getting consumers to pony up for content. It isn't always easy, and someone who has just discovered your music may not become a fan or customer immediately. There's also the challenge of making sure that recommendations don't lose their appeal because they're effectively paid for. After all, there's a huge difference between introducing a friend to a great musician and introducing a friend to a great musician through what amounts to an affiliate link. From this perspective, it's worth considering that new models for content distribution are warranted in the age of social networking, and there may be room for an affiliate-like model, but there will be a lot of artists and fans to whom the model doesn't appeal.
• Christmas 2011 stats: the affiliate perspective 16 January, 2012, 5:50 am
  Sales revenue Firstly, it is interesting to take a look at the sales revenue. In my previous article, the largest day for our advertisers in terms of sales revenue was Tuesday December 6th. This fell the day after ‘Manic Monday’. Having looked at the remainder of December, the 6th turned out to be the biggest day of the whole month with £7m of revenue delivered for our advertisers. If we look at the remainder of December, the lowest day in terms of sales revenue was Christmas Day with just over £2m in sales revenue generated. The biggest day in terms of revenue post Christmas was 29th December with sales topping £5m. Despite Boxing Day being stated as the largest online shopping day by Hitwise, this was actually one of the lowest for Affiliate Window when it came to revenue. However, it was double that recorded on Christmas Day. If we look at how this compared to Christmas 2010 there were very similar trends (please note, we have compared the beginning and end of the month): The peak that was seen on the 6th December was also apparent in 2010 (where the 6th actually did fall on ‘Manic Monday’). Again, Christmas Day was the lowest in terms of sales revenue in 2010 and 2011. The main differences that we see are in the post Christmas period where there are different peaks and troughs for each year. We can now look at the actual number of transactions. The 6th December was again the largest – not surprising considering that most revenue was generated on this date too. Amazon predicted, and later confirmed, that December 5th was their largest day, primarily driven by sales of the Kindle. Mobile sales As with sales revenue, Christmas Day was the lowest in terms of number of transactions (second lowest for mobile). Again, the 29th was the largest day for post-Christmas sales (also through mobile devices). Pre-Christmas sales via mobile peaked later than desktop, hitting their stride on Sunday 11th December, possibly reflecting how consumers interact differently to desktop but also showing how mobile peaks at the weekends, (also reflected in the growing ‘Mobile Sunday’ phenomenon and Sunday 4th was also a strong trading day for the network); an interesting future trend to monitor. Also intriguing is the resilience of mobile sales post-Christmas. A combination of significant new handset activations, tablets given as presents and less deskbound consumers surely helped mitigate the post-Christmas dip. (Mobile sales plotted on a second axis) If we compare the number of transactions across the whole network to 2010, including all mobile devices and desktop sales, the trends are also very similar with 2011 sales mirroring those of twelve months earlier. 2011 had an additional peak on the 2nd December which was not seen in 2010. Traffic Looking at traffic (clicks), the key trading Mondays received the most amount of traffic alongside Tuesday 6th December. However, if we look at mobile traffic, the peaks came a lot later in the month. Each of the peak days for traffic through mobile came after Christmas. Incidentally, Boxing Day was the highest through mobile. In conjunction with our earlier data on transactions the trend browsing rather than transacting trend is clear as conversion rates fall away. Also worth considering is whether the heightened awareness of specific brand sales resulted in consumers transacting directly with those retailers, cutting out the affiliate middleman. This could also account for the similar trends we saw with cashback and voucher code sites, with consumers assuming that due to sale period they were receiving the best deal by transacting directly.  Traffic through desktop for Boxing Day was again low (only the 19th highest day in terms of traffic). Hitwise data is based on traffic rather than transactions; however our data still shows traffic through the affiliate channel to be low on Boxing Day. Finally, we are able to look at the average order value per transaction during this period. More has been spent on average through the affiliate channel after Christmas than prior to it. The top seven days for the highest AOV all came after Christmas Day and were all over £70. Prior to Christmas, most of the AOVs were under £60. This indicates that post-Christmas sales encouraged visitors to spend more.  If we compare this to Christmas Day 2010, again, a relatively similar pattern is followed. However, AOVs were a fair bit higher in 2010 on each of the days. There was also a major peak in AOV before VAT was increased in January 2011 with customers taking advantage of offers before this increase. This was especially the case across the electronics sector, a trend that was never likely to be repeated.   So what conclusions can we draw from all this data?   In essence it’s a confusing picture and one that is difficult to generalise about. Having spoken to some of our key affiliate partners we know their traffic and trends broadly followed ours but with significant discrepancies on a specific advertiser level. We also looked at half a dozen of our big, blue chip retail clients and picked peak sales and traffic days for them. Not one of them matched with another, all producing wildly differing results, ultimately proving the influence an advertiser can still have on shaping consumer behaviour. One of the most fascinating and clear cut patterns was the spike in post-Christmas average order values. An equally interesting task would be to look at which products over or under indexed before and after Christmas. Finally December saw a significant spike in mobile traffic, setting 2012 up to be the year when affiliate traffic through mobile devices could hit double figures for the first time. It’s impossible to say at present when that is likely to be but there’s no doubt the affiliate channel continues to throw up fascinating retail trends for data geeks everywhere.
• Affiliate marketing: mining the long tail 11 January, 2012, 8:35 am
   These smaller, but often more rewarding, sites are commonly known as the long tail and there's a certain skill to tapping into this niche group.  Whereby an advertiser’s top performing affiliate may be well established, investing in the long tail to build a relationship with key influential sites for a specific audience demographic could have a substantial boost to any affiliate programme.  You may not reap rewards immediately, but investing in the long tail could be vital for a successful long-term affiliate programme. So how do you do 'mine' the long tail?  Many advertisers look at separating their affiliate outreach to top performing affiliates and the long tail, working with two networks to target these two groups.  However, this could be a detrimental method as to be successful in the long tail needs substantial investment of both time and finances. It’s always worth re-investing some of the big win successes you have with top performing affiliates to then focus on the long tail.  It’s a big mistake to separate the two, you should make your budget work for you and dividing it up is easier but not necessarily the best option.  It’s key to remember that the long tail will never deliver immediate returns, it’s an investment.  A publisher that’s currently delivering one conversion a month will not suddenly jump to be in your top five publishers pushing hundreds of sales, or at least it’s highly unlikely.  However, what is a possibility is that 50 publishers in the long tail move from delivering one sale to four sales a month. That’s a 400% rise in sales and an extra 150 sales a month. These are realistic figures and something advertisers should be aspiring to achieve. What’s difficult is making this a cost efficient proposition. Identify the publishers who have the capacity to deliver The first thing is to identify the publishers who have the capacity to deliver, those who want to push your products and can deliver for you.  The best way of doing this is to incentivise, it doesn’t have to be a dramatic investment, but it’s a perfect way of dividing up the thousands of publishers in the long tail to see who has the capacity to deliver.  Rather than incentivising everyone, you can simply incentivise the top 5% of your long tail with quadruple commission if they deliver, that way you’re rewarding only those who are providing results by simply slimming your margins.  This is a great way of showing you exactly who delivers within your affiliate programme and who you need to start building a relationship with.  Look for responsive affiliates The next thing to think about is communication. You want affiliates who are responsive and can offer feedback, not an affiliate who is simply going to deliver for high returns but not put the extra work into providing regular clicks.  However, building relationships takes time and effort. If you want to build rewards from the long tail this is where you need to invest.  It’s always better to use some of the successes from quick win big publishers to reinvest into an affiliate programme to allow the capacity to establish and nurture long tail relationships. These will eventually deliver the rewards you want. Establishing long tail relationships There are several ways to start these relationships: Meet people face to face Trade shows, expos and hosting webinars are great ways to ensure you have plenty of avenues of communication.  Communication is key to any relationship and will build the foundation to any affiliate programme, though it needs to be a two way discussion.  Listening to feedback  Feedback is integral to building and shaping an affiliate programme. Publishers will offer insight that isn’t obvious to an outsider. This is particularly true in the long tail as many of the sites targeted are small and niche, the individual publishers will know what works for their audience, and it’s always worth listening.  This may seem like obvious advice, but the basics are often the most difficult to master.  Small investment into the affiliate channel can provide substantial rewards, and relationships are at the heart of success for any affiliate programme, particularly when you want to mine the long tail.
• Q&A: John Watton of Expedia on innovation 4 January, 2012, 6:31 am
  What makes something innovative? I sometimes think people confuse "innovation" with "invention", and get hung up on creating something completely new. Innovation to me is about taking something existing and transforming it in a way that radically enhances the function or design of that "thing". It can be an improvement, a new twist or the combination of things that were never combined before. How do you build an innovative company, or foster innovation within your organisation? I get frustrated when companies start up a separate innovation department. Innovation should be part of your operational DNA. It can't be taught, it has to be experienced. You can only build innovation by measuring, experimenting and learning. So if you're not measuring the impact of marketing, start. Then encourage experimentation and A/B test the hell out of everything. Be positive about mistakes, and celebrate successes. Employees will get used to a culture of taking chances, thinking differently and ultimately innovating what they do. Are most stakeholders happy to go along with innovative ideas, or do you have to work hard to persuade them to take chances? We're all intrinsically conservative. Especially in businesses with shareholder expectations. You have to work hard on measurement and ROI. You have to build trust with your key stakeholders. Innovation is practically impossible if you have no track record to build trust upon. In politics, lobbying firms are hired to convince stakeholders in advance of a vote of a bill. Do the same in your job! Think like a lobbyist. Identify your stakeholders. Understand their concerns and then work up to innovation by delivering great results to each and every one of them.  Get them in a position to be your biggest advocate when you want that innovation vote. Can any company become innovative? What are the barriers to innovation within organisations? Of course. In my experience it’s harder to get innovation through larger businesses, just because you have to convince/get the buy in of more people. But you can't generalise. I've worked in some innovative small businesses, as well as much larger ones. With the proliferation of low cost, open technology the traditional barriers of technical, effort & financial issues are no longer valid. What remains is personal - job protection, fear of the unknown, comfort zones.  How do you persuade them to take risks and embrace innovative ideas? Difficult. It varies, but I like to use the old classic of Moore's "Crossing The Chasm". Think of getting innovation into your business like getting a technology solution into market. Group your stakeholders into Moore's market segments and treat them just the same. Why is innovation so important in digital? Is there still plenty of scope for new innovation?  Innovation is important as digital continues to be the new frontier. We can only learn and advance by trial and error. No one knows the answers, and it’s all to play for.  We need the innovators to help us move forward. What will you be looking for when you judge entries to this year’s Innovation Awards? Measurable results linked to definable business objectives. I never lose site of the commercial realities of working in marketing. That said, I am a sucker for cool creative stuff... What are your top three innovations for 2011? For how it has transformed my life, Ocado (convenience, service), Naked Wines (for combining start-ups and retailing) and Kindle (a lesson in how focussing on doing one thing well is no bad thing)! What do you see as the major trends in digital / multichannel for the next 12 months? The combination of mobile, social and local in innovating how we shop, search and buy. The death of the digital or social media department. The coming together of SEO+SEM teams. Why are they separate?!!
• House of Fraser improves campaign measurement with TagMan 3 January, 2012, 8:34 am
  TagMan will replace all of the tags on House of Fraser’s website with universal container tags and re-house them in its independent tag management system. This enables tags to be implemented much faster and for all their data to be reported together to produce combined path to conversion reports. Andy Harding, director of e-commerce at House of Fraser said that this kind of marketing attribution means it can be much more effective in the way the company tracks, rewards and motivates the contributions of online partners and providers.  We can focus our efforts on all the things that need to work together to attract and convert customers and not just the activity that seals the customer’s final visit to a website.” The move is expected to give House of Fraser a much clearer view of the contribution of non-paid media channels such as its website and SEO, the role of which will be tracked alongside its traditional paid activity. Alex Rodriguez, UK MD of TagMan, said that online marketers have been held hostage to the last-click model since tags on sites often can’t track everything in one place, particularly when it comes to non-paid channels like SEO.  With systems only able to report what drove clicks, the entire industry has been built to deliver them and that has meant crucial activity like brand building has been left to fight its corner with only common sense to back it up.” As part of an increased focus on multichannel integration, House of Fraser has also diversified its mobile offering of late, following the launch of a mobile site last year. Over the past few months it has worked with O2, using Priority Moments, real time location and O2 wi-fi to deliver personalised targeting for House of Fraser’s O2 customers. The retailer continues to embrace new technology in an attempt to stay ahead of its competitors, additionally redesigning its website in the summer using data from customer experience experts ForeSee.
• Affiliate Marketing 21 December, 2011, 10:44 am
  Well-managed affiliate marketing can really pay off. But even though the theory is pretty straightforward, it’s often overlooked by advertisers because putting it into practice can be difficult. This one-day course will give you a practical understanding of affiliate marketing, outlining the strategies, techniques and tricks to achieve a successful, well-managed programme.
• 11 things Santa won't bring you this year 21 December, 2011, 8:58 am
  1. The death of SEO Santa would be a grumpy one to bring you this. Not a chance. I've seen how some of the UK's biggest SEO companies have adapted to the challenges that, let’s face it, Google sets continuously. Advances in technology, SEO tools and opportunities created by the end of Yahoo! Site Explorer have actually breathed new life into the SEO blood stream. In 2012, clients will see more value from great SEO. Read – Google Instant and SEO     2. More keyword data from Google The numbers seem to be rising; now an estimated 20% of keyword referral data is not reported. This is a problem when looking at site statistics and analytics. It hurts the US and will roll out to EMEA in the next month or so into 2012. Google says this is a privacy issue and is down to retargeting of sites, plus secure search on SSL. However, if you use Google Adwords you can have the data. Google say it is for security. Bad news if you want to use data for site analytics if you're not using Adwords services. In 2012 we will really see if Google is moving to keep all user referral data away from SEOs, killing off rival retargeting companies and competitive ad networks at the same time. Read - SSL and the experts view    3. A reduction in Google Market share We all know Google’s not going to go away. Google’s expansion into other avenues such as display and social (with Google+) is a sure fire sign of its ability to flex muscles and make market decisions that have a very subtle, but detrimental, effect to what they consider low revenue stream channels.  Bing initially grabbed some market share, but recent figures suggest that Google grew to 65.6% of US market share with Yahoo! at 15.2% and Bing at 14.8%. Read - 2012 trends that everyone should be aware of   4. The year of mobile It is already upon us as the diffusion of mobile marketing innovation spreads at a rapid pace. The smartphone has enabled mobile marketing to move from concept to deployment. According to Google, 79% of smartphone owners use their mobiles to assist with shopping and 74% make a purchase as a result. 2012 will see some of the coolest innovations in digital coming from the mobile technology sector. Read - 2011 the year of mobile commerce   5. An end to digital media fragmentation 2011 was the year of fragmentation in digital marketing, from fragmentation of media in the search and display space through to the overcrowding and confusion in the social media world. 2012 will see further fragmentation in other sectors such as the SEO tool/vendor space and a revision of the specialist versus generalist debate. Read - Digital fragmentation and specialists   6. An end to talent wars Digital has always suffered from a lack of talent due to the immaturity of the market. However, as the market matures, people with diverse skill sets become more in demand. As media and organisations integrate having just one core of specialism does not necessarily guarantee maximum return. In some technical disciplines a degree of specialism is required. However, as search, social, mobile and display campaigns are often run in tandem, people really need to develop their skill sets in all areas of digital to remain top of the talent pool. Read - The digital talent time bomb    7. An accurate measurement of social media There have been some great advances in the measurement and attribution of social media in 2011. Huge strides are being taken to measure and show the value of interaction, particularly within Facebook. Social media attribution places a value on any engagement using cluster based technologies that track 'Likes', purchases and such. From this you can attempt to measure both the viral nature of actions and conversions, while highlighting the key influencers. However, social media by its very nature and its viral causality means it is difficult to truly measure its immense impact all of the time. Read - Social media attribution    8. An end to cookie compliance issues Last week the the ICO released its updated guidance for UK website owners. Although this is a comprehensive document that can be seen as a step in the right direction, it still does not address the underlining issue of educating users. Until people truly understand the value of cookie tracking and remarketing, marketers will continue to face tough challenges in 2012. Read - Cookie compliance   9. A truly integrated digital organisation As marketers get their heads around multichannel attribution, 2012 will see a seismic shift in the integration of online marketing teams. To do this organisations will need to adapt, restructure and manage talent across a number of different disciplines. The role of a digital marketing agency has changed and simply saying you have SEO, search, display, social media, email, and affiliate departments working with your offline and PR teams does not always mean you are good at integrating your market efforts. In 2012 I hope clients can go to agencies and see SEO people sat with creative and social teams, PPC and display experts sat in ‘biddable media’ departments. Hot desks should be everywhere as people need to share knowledge and data across the whole organisation (on and offline). It’s human capital, almost a physical thing. Read - Is the digital agency dead    10. The mega return for VCs Digital has indeed held its own in the recession. 2011 saw a large number of acquisitions and a lot of consolidation, especially in the display area. VCs have seen this as a time to reinvest. The key challenge for companies with funding is differentiation in crowded spaces. Mergers and acquisitions that consolidate digital channels may bear more fruit in the short term, and some VCs may have to be extra patient to see return on their investment. Read - The Acqhire    11. This is for you to decide  These are only my opinions and there are many other things I have missed. Feel free to add more - maybe something relevant to ad networks or display? Any ideas are welcome.
• Top 25 Econsultancy guest posts of 2011 21 December, 2011, 4:36 am
  Kelvin Newman takes the top two slots with The ultimate guide to the Facebook Edgerank algorithm and 51 essential link building tips  Glen Allsopp presents some excellent tips. The affiliate's guide to dominating big niches with SEO. User experience tips from Paul Rouke: Booking.com: improving conversion with best practice persuasive design. Paul Rouke takes inspiration from ASOS: Persuasive checkout best practice from ASOS Kevin Gibbons with some useful tips: Ten ways to advertise your business on Facebook Matt Clarke with some great analysis of e-commerce best practice: 25 e-commerce mega menus dissected Paul Cook reveals some interesting conversion stats: Social media and SEO massively undervalued: study Paul Rouke looks at what we can learn from ASOS: Shopping basket best practice from ASOS Matt Clarke presents a useful walkthrough: How to use Google Analytics to find the best time to send emails Matthew Curry presents The five suppliers you should avoid like the plague Paul Rouke discusses his findings from a user testing session with 9 women: 9 women x 9 hours = 9 usability insights Dan Barker shows how we can steal some 'not provided' data back from Google According to Chris O'Hara, changes to the media business are threatening the current business model for digital media agencies: The death of the digital media agency? Kevin Gibbons presents 25 reasons why you should be blogging Douglas Orr gives us Eight reasons why 2011 is the year of mobile commerce Another great GA walkthrough from Matt Clarke: Tracking on-site tweets and follows with Google Analytics Ben Gott talks us through new GA features: Introducing Google Analytics Multi-Channel Funnels An early look at Google+ and SEO from Kelvin Newman: Why Google + is already giving better social ranking signals than Twitter Kelvin Newman looks at psychology and marketing: Five tricks our minds play on us and what marketers need to know Socialbakers CEO Jan Rezab asks: Which Facebook marketing metrics matter the most? Tim Roe looks at the implications of recent Hotmail changes: Hotmail declares war on newsletters Shane Quigley lists The seven deadly sins of PPC By Tamara Littleon: What attracts consumers to take part in social media campaigns? Andrew Girdwood looks at Four ways the SEO industry could kill itself We're always on the lookout for great guest bloggers, so if you'd like to contribute in 2012, please email eval(decodeURIComponent('%64%6f%63%75%6d%65%6e%74%2e%77%72%69%74%65%28%27%3c%61%20%68%72%65%66%3d%5c%22%6d%61%69%6c%74%6f%3a%65%64%69%74%6f%72%40%65%63%6f%6e%73%75%6c%74%61%6e%63%79%2e%63%6f%6d%5c%22%3e%65%64%69%74%6f%72%40%65%63%6f%6e%73%75%6c%74%61%6e%63%79%2e%63%6f%6d%3c%5c%2f%61%3e%27%29%3b')).