Dan Butcher - August 31, 2010
Jeffrey Hayzlett, former Eastman Kodak executive, "Celebrity Apprentice" alum and author, said that mobile lets consumers interact and experience the depth of a brand like no other medium can.
Mr. Hayzlett, former vice president and chief marketing officer of Eastman Kodak and author of "The Mirror Test: Is Your Business Really Breathing?", has joined the advisory board of video and rich-media mobile advertising network iVdopia.
Mobile Marketer's Dan Butcher interviewed Mr. Hayzlett. Here is what he had to say:
What insight into marketing in general and mobile marketing/advertising in particular did you take away from your days at Kodak, and how will you apply that to iVdopia?
During my time at Kodak, we not only moved our product line from "analog" to digital but our marketing as well.
We left behind more traditional forms of marketing, some which had been in place for years.
We did this to address the changing customer landscape that included mediums that were more social, personal, immediate, digital and interactive.
This included mobile marketing, which we recognized as an emerging yet very powerful medium that let users interact with brand in ways that other mediums just can't provide.
Also, during my time Kodak, we began to use social media to a large degree as well which allow us to interact with and "listen" to customers and prospects in ways we hadn't been able to do in the past.
When I first met iVdopia, I quickly recognized that they were the pioneers of mobile video advertising, being the first to launch mobile video ad innovations that reaches users across all devices—imagine a single ad experience for your brand that plays across all smartphones, regardless of its operating system.
Their mobile video ad and rich-media formats are the first of its kind in the market and it is amazing to see how users spend time, interact and share this eye-catching ad experience through their own social networks.
Interestingly enough, iVdopia has also been the leader in launching the only video ad-serving platform for HTML5, called V5, which makes it possible for advertisers to serve a rich video ad experience on any mobile device.
As I began to work with them, I also found that they have partnered with some of the biggest brands in the industry to create multiple video ad formats that bring together the stunning visual effects and impressive direct response rates for a powerful interactive brand experience.
I believe that iVdopia is the one to watch out for and they will be a leader the mobile marketing industry.
What is the current state of mobile rich media and video advertising, and what is its potential going forward?
Currently, mobile marketing is thought to account for a little more than 3 percent of marketing's overall spend, approximately $4 billion in 2010 out of an overall market of $288 billion in the U.S., and therefore somewhat of a niche market at this point.
Also, according to a survey by media-buying software company Strata, nearly one-third of advertisers say that mobile advertising is the focus of their interactive spend, up 107 percent compared to the first quarter of 2010.
However, given its potential, interactivity and portability, I think the potential is huge and mobile advertising should be part of every B2C company's marketing mix.
In addition, new location-based targeting is going to change everything, since your mobile phone will be able detect the retail outlet closest to your location and then deliver a highly personalized mobile ad accordingly to your physical location.
Mobile is going to be one of the biggest media interaction tools for the consumer and what better than video advertising to attract and engage the audience.
IVdopia's own data shows that mobile video ads perform close to 100 times better than Web browser-based video ads, allowing users to replay multiple clips, share with friends and spread the video virally.
With the wide range of campaigns running on the iVdopia network, I'm convinced that mobile video advertising is the way to go.
Why/how should a brand integrate mobile advertising into its 360-degree marketing strategy?
There isn't a "silver bullet" for marketing and effective marketing and advertising needs to take into account their audience and how and when they want to be marketed to.
A successful marketing strategy includes a mix of marketing mediums or channels to be considered.
However, studies have shown that the combination of mediums or multichannel communications has proven to be very successful.
However, I will say that mobile advertising is proving to be an extremely effective advertising medium, allowing portability and giving users the ability to interact and experience the "depth" of the brand like no other medium can while allowing them to share their positive experiences with others.
http://www.mobilemarketer.com/cms/news/ad-networks/7199.html
martes, 31 de agosto de 2010
Geotargeted mobile coupons and ads more effective than online
Dan Butcher - August 30, 2010
Mobile coupons are one way to drive commerce
Holiday marketers take note: Mobile coupons and ads that are targeted by location are more effective than online coupons and ads, according to a FitForCommerce executive.
Mobile calls to action featuring an SMS keyword and short code or mobile bar code can make holiday-themed traditional media actionable. Savvy retailers can get the word out about holiday sales via SMS, the mobile Web and branded applications, while brands can use various forms of mobile advertising to achieve their holiday-specific goals.
In the sixth installment of a series focused on mobile marketing during the holidays, Mobile Marketer's Dan Butcher interviewed Jill Dvorak, senior consultant of mobile commerce at FitForCommerce, Short Hills, NJ. Here is what she had to say:
With so much noise and holiday-themed advertising starting around Thanksgiving and even before, how can a brand use the mobile medium to get noticed during this period of very competitive media?
Like any other marketing medium, cross-promotion and a seamless transition for customers between the different retail channels is necessary.
Site promotion codes should work on all channels, but having special mobile coupons to increase adoption is becoming more common.
Geotargeted coupons and ads will have a much higher redemption rates than online versions, and can potentially make a non-shopper into a shopper by adding that extra incentive.
Also, since social and mobile typically trend close together, having a mobile site with share to social abilities and vice versa is an easy win.
Retailers can make a splash by thinking creatively about their brand and what the customer would want. If you go in with this strategy, the possibilities are endless.
Which sectors/verticals are most important during the holidays, and which sectors/verticals match up best with which demographics?
Affluent shoppers are currently spending the most per demographic on mobile sites as they were the majority of the first adopters to have phones capable of surfing and shopping.
Since mobile adoption is occurring five times faster than other technologies, you can be sure a segment of your customer base wants to interact with your site from their mobile device.
Look at your analytics—preferably your mobile ones if you have them—to see how and where people are arriving and dropping off.
Ultimately, you want to have your mobile site pages tagged so that you know your best and worst converting pages to make tweaks before the holiday rush.
If your customers love gaming, they probably have an iPhone. If you have a strictly corporate audience, BlackBerries are your first device to target.
The younger the demographic is, the more important it is to have a mobile application.
If your demographic is still shopping bricks-and-mortar, then investing in mobile may not be the best use of development or marketing dollars this holiday season.
If your demographic and customers are really into social media and your fans are following tweets, then a mobile application is probably very important.
Overall, you need to understand what your customers' needs and wants are and spend that money appropriately to reach them.
Given that many people are traveling and away from the TV and their PCs during the holidays, and the fact that people need to do more in less time, how can mobile address these types of general advertising challenges?
Think about other forms of marketing and advertising—nothing has a continual touch point with the customer the majority of their day.
People have their phone out at work, it's with them—and likely their entertainment—on the ride home, and it's even next to people when they sleep.
Studies have shown that people would rather lose their wallet than their phone.
All that said, people still demand immediacy. Mobile sites need to load quickly, be quick to help solve a problem or let the user find what they want in a hurry.
There are also a number of basic tips to follow including making the search function larger than normal, linking "My Account" to the Web version and checkout should be streamlined with secure payments as an option.
Whether at a retail store location or not, the mobile site should to help increase efficiency and save consumers time. This gain can come in many forms.
For example, give a customer the ability to research ratings, prices and reviews on your site—and you can be sure they will check other sites—from their phone, which will help them avoid the wait to talk to a sales associate.
Shoppers can also save time by using a mobile site checkout to avoid lines or can even pre-order ahead of time from their phone and have their purchase delivered to their car outside of the store.
Why is mobile advertising significant/necessary for marketers during the holiday season?
According to a Deloitte survey, during the 2009 holiday season one out of five shoppers intended to use their mobile phone.
Of those who used their phone, forty-five percent used it for research, nearly a third used it to get coupons or product reviews, and 25 percent used their mobile device to purchase a good or service.
Since the mobile commerce revenue numbers are projected to double from $1.2 billion to $2.4 billion this year, the 2010 holiday season will be no exception to the growth.
Mobile adoption is occurring five times faster than other technologies, with no signs of slowing yet.
More than 50 percent of consumers used mobile devices for 2009 in-store holiday shopping activity, according to a study by Motorola Enterprise Mobile Solutions.
Sixty-four percent of consumers between ages 18-34 used their device for shopping, while 33 percent of consumers over 34 years old used their device.
These percentages will continue to grow, so being in the mobile space is more important than ever.
Today, mobile is a relatively fresh marketing and branding tool, thus retailers can expect a much more engaged experience with the customer than currently seen on the Web or other channels. But this channel cannot operate in a vacuum.
The speed of mobile device adoption is starting to give most retailers a real chance to create a direct connection to their customers in a very busy marketing world.
Ultimately, like any other marketing tool, brands have to be relevant.
The brand, product offerings and value proposition should dictate how a company can add something useful for their customer while they are on-the-go
http://www.mobilemarketer.com/cms/news/advertising/7187.html
Mobile coupons are one way to drive commerce
Holiday marketers take note: Mobile coupons and ads that are targeted by location are more effective than online coupons and ads, according to a FitForCommerce executive.
Mobile calls to action featuring an SMS keyword and short code or mobile bar code can make holiday-themed traditional media actionable. Savvy retailers can get the word out about holiday sales via SMS, the mobile Web and branded applications, while brands can use various forms of mobile advertising to achieve their holiday-specific goals.
In the sixth installment of a series focused on mobile marketing during the holidays, Mobile Marketer's Dan Butcher interviewed Jill Dvorak, senior consultant of mobile commerce at FitForCommerce, Short Hills, NJ. Here is what she had to say:
With so much noise and holiday-themed advertising starting around Thanksgiving and even before, how can a brand use the mobile medium to get noticed during this period of very competitive media?
Like any other marketing medium, cross-promotion and a seamless transition for customers between the different retail channels is necessary.
Site promotion codes should work on all channels, but having special mobile coupons to increase adoption is becoming more common.
Geotargeted coupons and ads will have a much higher redemption rates than online versions, and can potentially make a non-shopper into a shopper by adding that extra incentive.
Also, since social and mobile typically trend close together, having a mobile site with share to social abilities and vice versa is an easy win.
Retailers can make a splash by thinking creatively about their brand and what the customer would want. If you go in with this strategy, the possibilities are endless.
Which sectors/verticals are most important during the holidays, and which sectors/verticals match up best with which demographics?
Affluent shoppers are currently spending the most per demographic on mobile sites as they were the majority of the first adopters to have phones capable of surfing and shopping.
Since mobile adoption is occurring five times faster than other technologies, you can be sure a segment of your customer base wants to interact with your site from their mobile device.
Look at your analytics—preferably your mobile ones if you have them—to see how and where people are arriving and dropping off.
Ultimately, you want to have your mobile site pages tagged so that you know your best and worst converting pages to make tweaks before the holiday rush.
If your customers love gaming, they probably have an iPhone. If you have a strictly corporate audience, BlackBerries are your first device to target.
The younger the demographic is, the more important it is to have a mobile application.
If your demographic is still shopping bricks-and-mortar, then investing in mobile may not be the best use of development or marketing dollars this holiday season.
If your demographic and customers are really into social media and your fans are following tweets, then a mobile application is probably very important.
Overall, you need to understand what your customers' needs and wants are and spend that money appropriately to reach them.
Given that many people are traveling and away from the TV and their PCs during the holidays, and the fact that people need to do more in less time, how can mobile address these types of general advertising challenges?
Think about other forms of marketing and advertising—nothing has a continual touch point with the customer the majority of their day.
People have their phone out at work, it's with them—and likely their entertainment—on the ride home, and it's even next to people when they sleep.
Studies have shown that people would rather lose their wallet than their phone.
All that said, people still demand immediacy. Mobile sites need to load quickly, be quick to help solve a problem or let the user find what they want in a hurry.
There are also a number of basic tips to follow including making the search function larger than normal, linking "My Account" to the Web version and checkout should be streamlined with secure payments as an option.
Whether at a retail store location or not, the mobile site should to help increase efficiency and save consumers time. This gain can come in many forms.
For example, give a customer the ability to research ratings, prices and reviews on your site—and you can be sure they will check other sites—from their phone, which will help them avoid the wait to talk to a sales associate.
Shoppers can also save time by using a mobile site checkout to avoid lines or can even pre-order ahead of time from their phone and have their purchase delivered to their car outside of the store.
Why is mobile advertising significant/necessary for marketers during the holiday season?
According to a Deloitte survey, during the 2009 holiday season one out of five shoppers intended to use their mobile phone.
Of those who used their phone, forty-five percent used it for research, nearly a third used it to get coupons or product reviews, and 25 percent used their mobile device to purchase a good or service.
Since the mobile commerce revenue numbers are projected to double from $1.2 billion to $2.4 billion this year, the 2010 holiday season will be no exception to the growth.
Mobile adoption is occurring five times faster than other technologies, with no signs of slowing yet.
More than 50 percent of consumers used mobile devices for 2009 in-store holiday shopping activity, according to a study by Motorola Enterprise Mobile Solutions.
Sixty-four percent of consumers between ages 18-34 used their device for shopping, while 33 percent of consumers over 34 years old used their device.
These percentages will continue to grow, so being in the mobile space is more important than ever.
Today, mobile is a relatively fresh marketing and branding tool, thus retailers can expect a much more engaged experience with the customer than currently seen on the Web or other channels. But this channel cannot operate in a vacuum.
The speed of mobile device adoption is starting to give most retailers a real chance to create a direct connection to their customers in a very busy marketing world.
Ultimately, like any other marketing tool, brands have to be relevant.
The brand, product offerings and value proposition should dictate how a company can add something useful for their customer while they are on-the-go
http://www.mobilemarketer.com/cms/news/advertising/7187.html
Retargeting Ads Follow Surfers to Other SitesBy
MIGUEL HELFT and TANZINA VEGA - Published: August 29, 2010
The shoes that Julie Matlin recently saw on Zappos.com were kind of cute, or so she thought. But Ms. Matlin wasn't ready to buy and left the site.Then the shoes started showing up in ads on other sites she visited.
Then the shoes started to follow her everywhere she went online. An ad for those very shoes showed up on the blog TechCrunch. It popped up again on several other blogs and on Twitpic. It was as if Zappos had unleashed a persistent salesman who wouldn't take no for an answer.
"For days or weeks, every site I went to seemed to be showing me ads for those shoes," said Ms. Matlin, a mother of two from Montreal. "It is a pretty clever marketing tool. But it's a little creepy, especially if you don't know what's going on."
People have grown accustomed to being tracked online and shown ads for categories of products they have shown interest in, be it tennis or bank loans.
Increasingly, however, the ads tailored to them are for specific products that they have perused online. While the technique, which the ad industry calls personalized retargeting or remarketing, is not new, it is becoming more pervasive as companies like Google and Microsoft have entered the field. And retargeting has reached a level of precision that is leaving consumers with the palpable feeling that they are being watched as they roam the virtual aisles of online stores.
More retailers like Art.com, B&H Photo, Diapers.com, eBags.com and the Discovery Channel store use these kinds of ads. Nordstrom says it is considering using them, and retargeting is becoming increasingly common with marketers in the travel, real estate and financial services industries. The ads often appear on popular sites like YouTube, Facebook, MySpace or Realtor.com.
In the digital advertising business, this form of highly personalized marketing is being hailed as the latest breakthrough because it tries to show consumers the right ad at the right time. "The overwhelming response has been positive," said Aaron Magness, senior director for brand marketing and business development at Zappos, a unit of Amazon.com. The parent company declined to say whether it also uses the ads.
Others, though, find it disturbing. When a recent Advertising Age column noted the phenomenon, several readers chimed in to voice their displeasure.
Bad as it was to be stalked by shoes, Ms. Matlin said that she felt even worse when she was hounded recently by ads for a dieting service she had used online. "They are still following me around, and it makes me feel fat," she said.
With more consumers queasy about intrusions into their privacy, the technique is raising anew the threat of industry regulation. "Retargeting has helped turn on a light bulb for consumers," said Jeff Chester, a privacy advocate and executive director of the Washington-based Center for Digital Democracy. "It illustrates that there is a commercial surveillance system in place online that is sweeping in scope and raises privacy and civil liberties issues, too."
Retargeting, however, relies on a form of online tracking that has been around for years and is not particularly intrusive. Retargeting programs typically use small text files called cookies that are exchanged when a Web browser visits a site. Cookies are used by virtually all commercial Web sites for various purposes, including advertising, keeping users signed in and customizing content.
In remarketing, when a person visits an e-commerce site and looks at say, an Etienne Aigner Athena satchel on eBags.com, a cookie is placed into that person's browser, linking it with the handbag. When that person, or someone using the same computer, visits another site, the advertising system creates an ad for that very purse.
Mr. Magness, of Zappos, said that consumers may be unnerved because they may feel that they are being tracked from site to site as they browse the Web. To reassure consumers, Zappos, which is using the ads to peddle items like shoes, handbags and women's underwear, displays a message inside the banner ads that reads, "Why am I seeing these ads?" When users click on it, they are taken to the Web site of Criteo, the advertising technology company behind the Zappos ads, where the ads are explained.
While users are given the choice to opt out, few do once they understand how the ads are selected for them, said Jean-Baptiste Rudelle, the chief executive of Criteo.
But some advertising and media experts said that explaining the technology behind the ads might not allay the fears of many consumers who worry about being tracked or who simply fear that someone they share a computer with will see what items they have browsed.
"When you begin to give people a sense of how this is happening, they really don't like it," said Joseph Turow, a professor at the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania, who has conducted consumer surveys about online advertising. Professor Turow, who studies digital media and recently testified at a Senate committee hearing on digital advertising, said he had a visceral negative reaction to the ads, even though he understands the technologies behind them.
"It seemed so bold," Professor Turow said. "I was not pleased, frankly."
While start-ups like Criteo and TellApart are among the most active remarketers, the technique has also been embraced by online advertising giants.
Google began testing this technique in 2009, calling it remarketing to connote the idea of customized messages like special offers or discounts being sent to users. In March, the company made the service available to all advertisers on its AdWords network.
For Google, remarketing is a more specific form of behavioral targeting, the practice under which a person who has visited NBA.com, for instance, may be tagged as a basketball fan and later will be shown ads for related merchandise.
Behavioral targeting has been hotly debated in Washington, and lawmakers are considering various proposals to regulate it. During the recent Senate hearing, Senator Claire McCaskill, Democrat of Missouri, said she found the technique troubling. "I understand that advertising supports the Internet, but I am a little spooked out," Ms. McCaskill said of behavioral targeting. "This is creepy."
When Advertising Age, the advertising industry publication, tackled the subject of remarketing recently, the writer Michael Learmonth described being stalked by a pair of pants he had considered buying on Zappos.
"As tracking gets more and more crass and obvious, consumers will rightfully become more concerned about it," he wrote. "If the industry is truly worried about a federally mandated 'do not track' list akin to 'do not call' for the Internet, they're not really showing it."
Some advertising executives agree that highly personalized remarketing not only goes too far but also is unnecessary.
"I don't think that exposing all this detailed information you have about the customer is necessary," said Alan Pearlstein, chief executive of Cross Pixel Media, a digital marketing agency. Mr. Pearlstein says he supports retargeting, but with more subtle ads that, for instance, could offer consumers a discount coupon if they return to an online store. "What is the benefit of freaking customers out?"
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/30/technology/30adstalk.html?src=me&ref=general
The shoes that Julie Matlin recently saw on Zappos.com were kind of cute, or so she thought. But Ms. Matlin wasn't ready to buy and left the site.Then the shoes started showing up in ads on other sites she visited.
Then the shoes started to follow her everywhere she went online. An ad for those very shoes showed up on the blog TechCrunch. It popped up again on several other blogs and on Twitpic. It was as if Zappos had unleashed a persistent salesman who wouldn't take no for an answer.
"For days or weeks, every site I went to seemed to be showing me ads for those shoes," said Ms. Matlin, a mother of two from Montreal. "It is a pretty clever marketing tool. But it's a little creepy, especially if you don't know what's going on."
People have grown accustomed to being tracked online and shown ads for categories of products they have shown interest in, be it tennis or bank loans.
Increasingly, however, the ads tailored to them are for specific products that they have perused online. While the technique, which the ad industry calls personalized retargeting or remarketing, is not new, it is becoming more pervasive as companies like Google and Microsoft have entered the field. And retargeting has reached a level of precision that is leaving consumers with the palpable feeling that they are being watched as they roam the virtual aisles of online stores.
More retailers like Art.com, B&H Photo, Diapers.com, eBags.com and the Discovery Channel store use these kinds of ads. Nordstrom says it is considering using them, and retargeting is becoming increasingly common with marketers in the travel, real estate and financial services industries. The ads often appear on popular sites like YouTube, Facebook, MySpace or Realtor.com.
In the digital advertising business, this form of highly personalized marketing is being hailed as the latest breakthrough because it tries to show consumers the right ad at the right time. "The overwhelming response has been positive," said Aaron Magness, senior director for brand marketing and business development at Zappos, a unit of Amazon.com. The parent company declined to say whether it also uses the ads.
Others, though, find it disturbing. When a recent Advertising Age column noted the phenomenon, several readers chimed in to voice their displeasure.
Bad as it was to be stalked by shoes, Ms. Matlin said that she felt even worse when she was hounded recently by ads for a dieting service she had used online. "They are still following me around, and it makes me feel fat," she said.
With more consumers queasy about intrusions into their privacy, the technique is raising anew the threat of industry regulation. "Retargeting has helped turn on a light bulb for consumers," said Jeff Chester, a privacy advocate and executive director of the Washington-based Center for Digital Democracy. "It illustrates that there is a commercial surveillance system in place online that is sweeping in scope and raises privacy and civil liberties issues, too."
Retargeting, however, relies on a form of online tracking that has been around for years and is not particularly intrusive. Retargeting programs typically use small text files called cookies that are exchanged when a Web browser visits a site. Cookies are used by virtually all commercial Web sites for various purposes, including advertising, keeping users signed in and customizing content.
In remarketing, when a person visits an e-commerce site and looks at say, an Etienne Aigner Athena satchel on eBags.com, a cookie is placed into that person's browser, linking it with the handbag. When that person, or someone using the same computer, visits another site, the advertising system creates an ad for that very purse.
Mr. Magness, of Zappos, said that consumers may be unnerved because they may feel that they are being tracked from site to site as they browse the Web. To reassure consumers, Zappos, which is using the ads to peddle items like shoes, handbags and women's underwear, displays a message inside the banner ads that reads, "Why am I seeing these ads?" When users click on it, they are taken to the Web site of Criteo, the advertising technology company behind the Zappos ads, where the ads are explained.
While users are given the choice to opt out, few do once they understand how the ads are selected for them, said Jean-Baptiste Rudelle, the chief executive of Criteo.
But some advertising and media experts said that explaining the technology behind the ads might not allay the fears of many consumers who worry about being tracked or who simply fear that someone they share a computer with will see what items they have browsed.
"When you begin to give people a sense of how this is happening, they really don't like it," said Joseph Turow, a professor at the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania, who has conducted consumer surveys about online advertising. Professor Turow, who studies digital media and recently testified at a Senate committee hearing on digital advertising, said he had a visceral negative reaction to the ads, even though he understands the technologies behind them.
"It seemed so bold," Professor Turow said. "I was not pleased, frankly."
While start-ups like Criteo and TellApart are among the most active remarketers, the technique has also been embraced by online advertising giants.
Google began testing this technique in 2009, calling it remarketing to connote the idea of customized messages like special offers or discounts being sent to users. In March, the company made the service available to all advertisers on its AdWords network.
For Google, remarketing is a more specific form of behavioral targeting, the practice under which a person who has visited NBA.com, for instance, may be tagged as a basketball fan and later will be shown ads for related merchandise.
Behavioral targeting has been hotly debated in Washington, and lawmakers are considering various proposals to regulate it. During the recent Senate hearing, Senator Claire McCaskill, Democrat of Missouri, said she found the technique troubling. "I understand that advertising supports the Internet, but I am a little spooked out," Ms. McCaskill said of behavioral targeting. "This is creepy."
When Advertising Age, the advertising industry publication, tackled the subject of remarketing recently, the writer Michael Learmonth described being stalked by a pair of pants he had considered buying on Zappos.
"As tracking gets more and more crass and obvious, consumers will rightfully become more concerned about it," he wrote. "If the industry is truly worried about a federally mandated 'do not track' list akin to 'do not call' for the Internet, they're not really showing it."
Some advertising executives agree that highly personalized remarketing not only goes too far but also is unnecessary.
"I don't think that exposing all this detailed information you have about the customer is necessary," said Alan Pearlstein, chief executive of Cross Pixel Media, a digital marketing agency. Mr. Pearlstein says he supports retargeting, but with more subtle ads that, for instance, could offer consumers a discount coupon if they return to an online store. "What is the benefit of freaking customers out?"
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/30/technology/30adstalk.html?src=me&ref=general
lunes, 30 de agosto de 2010
How 16 Great Companies Picked Their Unique Names
Glen Stansberry (Wise Bread) - Jul 08, 2010
Anyone who's ever had to form a company can sympathize with how difficult it can be to create a company name that is descriptive yet unique. However, some companies have gone a less-traditional route and used some pretty unique naming conventions. Here are some examples of interesting company names and the backstories behind them.
1. Google
The name started as a joke about the amount of information the search engine could search, or a "Googol" of information. (A googol is the number 1 followed by 100 zeros.) When founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin gave a presentation to an angel investor, they received a check made out to "Google."
2. Hotmail
Sabeer Bhatia and Jack Smith had the idea of checking their email via a web interface, and tried to find a name that ended in "mail." They finally settled on hotmail because it had the letters "html," referencing the HTML programming language used to help create the product.
3. Volkswagen
Volkswagen literally means "people's car." Adolf Hitler initially came up with the idea for "cars for the masses," which would be a state-sponsored "Volkswagen" program. Hitler wanted to create a more affordable car that was able to transport two adults and three children at speeds of 62 mph. He choose the car manufacturer Porsche to carry out the project, and the rest, as they say, is history.
4. Yahoo
The word "yahoo" was coined by Jonathan Swift in the the book Gulliver's Travels. The term represented a repulsive, filthy creatures that resembled humans (think: Neanderthal). Yahoo! founders Jerry Yang and David Filo considered themselves yahoos, and thought the term would be appropriate for their joint venture.
5. Asus
The consumer electronic company is named after Pegasus, the winged horse of Greek mythology. The founders dropped the first three letters for the high position in alphabetical listings. In 1998 Asus created a spinoff company named Pegatron, using the other unused letters of Pegasus.
6. Cisco
Contrary to popular belief and theories, Cisco is simply short for San Francisco. Their logo resembles the suspension cables found on the Golden Gate bridge.
7. Canon
When Canon was founded in 1933 under the name Precision Optical Instruments Laboratory. Two years later they adopted "Canon" after the company's first camera, the Kwanon. Kwanon is the Japanese name of the Buddhist bodhisattva of mercy.
8. Coca-Cola
Coca-Cola's name comes from the the coca leaves and kola nuts used as flavoring in the soft drink. Eventually Coca-Cola creator John S. Pemberton changed the 'K' of kola to 'C' to create a more fluid name.
9. FranklinCovey
The planning product line was named after Benjamin Franklin and Stephen Covey. The company was formed in 1997 from the combining of the two companies FranklinQuest and the Covey Leadership Center.
10. IKEA
IKEA is simply a random collection of letters, based from the first letters of founder Ingvar Kamprad's name in addition to the first letters of the names of the Swedish property and the village in which he grew up: Ingvar Kamprad Elmtaryd Agunnaryd.
11. Lego
Lego is a combination of the Danish phrase "leg godt," which translates to "play well." Initially the company built wooden toys, and later switched to making plastic bricks. Lego also means "I put together" in Latin, but the Lego Group claims this merely coincidence and the origin of the word is strictly Danish.
12. Reebok
Reebok is simply an alternate spelling of "rhebok," an African antelope. The company founders found the word in a South African edition of a dictionary won by the Joe Foster, son of the Reebok founder J.W. Foster.
13. Sharp
The Japanese consumer electronics company is named after its first product, an ever-sharp pencil that was created in 1915.
14. Six Apart
Six Apart's name has one of the most interesting origins. The web company's co-founders Ben and Mena Trott were born six days apart.
15. Skype
The original prototype of the company's flagship product had the name "Sky-Peer-to-Peer," which was shrunk down to Skyper, then finally Skype.
16. Verizon
Verizon is a combination of the words veritas, which is Latin for "truth," and horizon.
https://www247.americanexpress.com/MoblOpenWeb/articles.do?TargetID=how-16-great-companies-picked-their-unique-names-glen-stansberry&showOnOne=true
Anyone who's ever had to form a company can sympathize with how difficult it can be to create a company name that is descriptive yet unique. However, some companies have gone a less-traditional route and used some pretty unique naming conventions. Here are some examples of interesting company names and the backstories behind them.
1. Google
The name started as a joke about the amount of information the search engine could search, or a "Googol" of information. (A googol is the number 1 followed by 100 zeros.) When founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin gave a presentation to an angel investor, they received a check made out to "Google."
2. Hotmail
Sabeer Bhatia and Jack Smith had the idea of checking their email via a web interface, and tried to find a name that ended in "mail." They finally settled on hotmail because it had the letters "html," referencing the HTML programming language used to help create the product.
3. Volkswagen
Volkswagen literally means "people's car." Adolf Hitler initially came up with the idea for "cars for the masses," which would be a state-sponsored "Volkswagen" program. Hitler wanted to create a more affordable car that was able to transport two adults and three children at speeds of 62 mph. He choose the car manufacturer Porsche to carry out the project, and the rest, as they say, is history.
4. Yahoo
The word "yahoo" was coined by Jonathan Swift in the the book Gulliver's Travels. The term represented a repulsive, filthy creatures that resembled humans (think: Neanderthal). Yahoo! founders Jerry Yang and David Filo considered themselves yahoos, and thought the term would be appropriate for their joint venture.
5. Asus
The consumer electronic company is named after Pegasus, the winged horse of Greek mythology. The founders dropped the first three letters for the high position in alphabetical listings. In 1998 Asus created a spinoff company named Pegatron, using the other unused letters of Pegasus.
6. Cisco
Contrary to popular belief and theories, Cisco is simply short for San Francisco. Their logo resembles the suspension cables found on the Golden Gate bridge.
7. Canon
When Canon was founded in 1933 under the name Precision Optical Instruments Laboratory. Two years later they adopted "Canon" after the company's first camera, the Kwanon. Kwanon is the Japanese name of the Buddhist bodhisattva of mercy.
8. Coca-Cola
Coca-Cola's name comes from the the coca leaves and kola nuts used as flavoring in the soft drink. Eventually Coca-Cola creator John S. Pemberton changed the 'K' of kola to 'C' to create a more fluid name.
9. FranklinCovey
The planning product line was named after Benjamin Franklin and Stephen Covey. The company was formed in 1997 from the combining of the two companies FranklinQuest and the Covey Leadership Center.
10. IKEA
IKEA is simply a random collection of letters, based from the first letters of founder Ingvar Kamprad's name in addition to the first letters of the names of the Swedish property and the village in which he grew up: Ingvar Kamprad Elmtaryd Agunnaryd.
11. Lego
Lego is a combination of the Danish phrase "leg godt," which translates to "play well." Initially the company built wooden toys, and later switched to making plastic bricks. Lego also means "I put together" in Latin, but the Lego Group claims this merely coincidence and the origin of the word is strictly Danish.
12. Reebok
Reebok is simply an alternate spelling of "rhebok," an African antelope. The company founders found the word in a South African edition of a dictionary won by the Joe Foster, son of the Reebok founder J.W. Foster.
13. Sharp
The Japanese consumer electronics company is named after its first product, an ever-sharp pencil that was created in 1915.
14. Six Apart
Six Apart's name has one of the most interesting origins. The web company's co-founders Ben and Mena Trott were born six days apart.
15. Skype
The original prototype of the company's flagship product had the name "Sky-Peer-to-Peer," which was shrunk down to Skyper, then finally Skype.
16. Verizon
Verizon is a combination of the words veritas, which is Latin for "truth," and horizon.
https://www247.americanexpress.com/MoblOpenWeb/articles.do?TargetID=how-16-great-companies-picked-their-unique-names-glen-stansberry&showOnOne=true
Comscore: 1,2 millones de argentinos usan Twitter
La auditora Comscore, en un informe difundido hace pocos días presentó cifras del alcance del social media en varios países, entre ellos Argentina.
A continuación, una síntesis de los datos sobre nuestro país:
Argentina (datos mayo 2010)
- 12.7 millones de usuarios online (32% de la población total)
- Cada habitante consume 27.2 horas mensuales de internet
- Es el país con mayor penetracion de internet en mayores de 45 años : 14,5 %
- 9 millones de argentinos utilizan mensajería instantánea. (71.2% de los usuarios de internet)
- 10 millones de argentinos utilizan Facebook 78% (78% de los usuarios de internet)
- 1,2 millones de argentinos utilizan Twitter
El informe completo, que analiza con foco particular la situación de internet en México se puede descargar en http://bit.ly/cQFgID
Octavio Paulise
www.pantalla4.com.ar
A continuación, una síntesis de los datos sobre nuestro país:
Argentina (datos mayo 2010)
- 12.7 millones de usuarios online (32% de la población total)
- Cada habitante consume 27.2 horas mensuales de internet
- Es el país con mayor penetracion de internet en mayores de 45 años : 14,5 %
- 9 millones de argentinos utilizan mensajería instantánea. (71.2% de los usuarios de internet)
- 10 millones de argentinos utilizan Facebook 78% (78% de los usuarios de internet)
- 1,2 millones de argentinos utilizan Twitter
El informe completo, que analiza con foco particular la situación de internet en México se puede descargar en http://bit.ly/cQFgID
Octavio Paulise
www.pantalla4.com.ar
4 premisas falsas sobre Community Managers
12 January, 2010
Siguiendo una sabia recomendación de dos amigos, que saben de esto, voy a trocear en varios posts mi artículo "Frivolización del Marketing 2.0", porque la peña anda muy líquida para leerse una decena de folios, y menos en estas fechas.
En ese artículo analizo nueve prácticas que considero equivocadas a la hora de adoptar principios y herramientas del Social Media Marketing o Marketing 2.0. Ya publiqué el primer post en el que compartía mi extrañeza sobre esa rara práctica del "outsourcing de conversaciones", y que tuvo tan buena acogida.
Hoy quiero hablar de los "Community Managers". 2009 ha sido el año del descubrimiento y reconocimiento oficial de los también llamados "gestores de redes sociales" o "gestores de comunidad", y en 2010 veremos una explosión de esta figura como nuevo profesional en las empresas.
Es sin dudas una profesión emergente, con presente y futuro, pero bastante mal entendida. ¿Qué hace o debe hacer un buen "community manager" (CM)? Para responder a esta pregunta, voy a resumir lo que me ha parecido más interesante de artículos escritos por Guzman Garmendia, Dolors Reig, Jeremiah Owyang, Juan Freire y Connie Bensen:
•Conocer a fondo a la empresa, con la que debería llegar a tener una conexión emocional y un sentido de pertenencia genuino, para poder "conversar" en nombre de ella.
•Conectar con mucha empatía con los usuarios para estimular conversaciones P2P ricas en contenidos, y por encima de todo, generar confianza. Ésta es quizás la función número uno del CM: "construir confianza genuina".
•Facilitar la creación de redes de usuarios proactivos, más implicados con la empresa, que estén dispuestos a colaborar de un modo sistemático y comprometido con la generación de contenidos.
•Actuar como "defensor de la comunidad", siendo su rol principal el de representar a los usuarios, lo que implica sobre todo escucharlos y comprender lo que quieren decir en los foros que participan opinando sobre la empresa.•Responder rápidamente a dudas, preguntas o solicitudes de servicios que la comunidad transmita a la organización, convirtiéndose así en generador-canalizador de contenidos. Para ello tiene que comprenderla muy bien y tener relaciones fluidas con los miembros de la misma que pueden generar las respuestas, y aportar los contenidos que pide la comunidad.
•Interpretar y transmitir de forma transparente y clara hacia adentro las nuevas demandas y "señales" (patrones y tendencias) que emite el mercado en términos de solicitudes de nuevos productos y servicios, o de mejora de los existentes. Es un observador privilegiado, un colector y traductor de información, conocimiento y feedback de enorme importancia para la empresa.
•Movilizar y coordinar a otros "conversadores" dentro de la empresa que quieran publicar blogs, microblogging, podcasts y otros medios sociales que ayuden a multiplicar los canales por los que la empresa puede "conversar" con la comunidad.
•Definir métricas o sistemas que ayuden a sintetizar periódicamente el "estado de opinión" de la comunidad, para intentar medir la evolución y hacer comparativas que ayuden a la toma de decisiones.
Una vez descrito el modelo óptimo de CM, tengo que decir que varias de estas funciones se quedan en "papel mojado" en muchas empresas que los contratan. Por eso me gustaría discutir algunos mitos o premisas falsas que rodean a esta figura:
1º) El CM no controla, ni "tiene poder" sobre la imagen de marca, ni sobre las opiniones que circulan en las redes que él sigue sobre la empresa.
Suponer (o vender eso) es sobrestimar la capacidad del CM. Está claro que el control y el poder lo tienen los usuarios, la comunidad.
Guzmán Garmendia dice que el CM "tiene la llave del armario con el que nos vamos a vestir para la presentación ante el cliente en Internet", y yo digo que la llave del armario la tienen siempre los usuarios.
Lo más que puede hacer el CM es dotar al armario de una colección de piezas atractivas, de opciones de contenidos que añadan valor para que los usuarios al final "vistan" a la empresa con la mejor ropa posible.
Personalmente no me gusta un término que se usa mucho para definir un rol principal del CM, que es "Brand Evangelist" (evangelista de la marca), porque creo que subraya en exceso el discurso hacia afuera, hablar bien de la empresa, y devalúa una función que me parece más primordial, la de "escuchar". Con perdón, el término "evangelista" no lo asocio precisamente a la capacidad de escuchar, sino más bien a la de hablar, incluso demasiado.
2º) El perfil tecnológico no debería ser el requisito que más se exija a estos profesionales
Siempre se dice que el CM debe ser un profundo conocedor de todo lo que tenga que ver con Internet. Vale, está bien, es un valor añadido, pero de nuevo, no creo que sea tan importante el perfil tecnológico.
La virtud más importante que debe tener un buen CM es la EMPATÍA, tanto para conocer y comprender la propia empresa desde la que pretende "conversar", como para ponerse en el lugar de los miembros de su comunidad.
Aquí Guzmán Garmendia sí que da en el clavo: "¿Es más fácil ponerse al día de las herramientas o de cómo es la empresa y su negocio? ¿Y si resulta que ese señor o señora lleva a la vez varias empresas? Es importante cerciorarse de que el flamante asignatario de tan raro nombre conoce en profundidad la empresa, la marca, su historia, sus clientes y su comercialización"
Otra forma de expresar esto es cuando se reclama, con razón, que el CM tenga una personalidad compatible o similar a la de la empresa "porque existe un factor de personalidad que no es entrenable".
Juan Freire explica muy bien ese tenso equilibrio (o desequilibrio estable, como prefiero decir) que debe mantener un buen CM para hacer bien su trabajo cuando indica que: "estas personas deben saber dialogar y gestionar la 'cultura corporativa', pero manteniendo al tiempo un estilo alternativo y 'no corporativo".
3º) No hace falta que el CM sea un experto o profesional del Marketing
También se insiste mucho en que ese profesional "tenga formación en comunicación, marketing y publicidad". Tampoco me parece tan importante porque es una cuestión más de actitudes y habilidades que de conocimiento o experiencia en marketing.
Es más, mucho me temo que un "experto en comunicación" termine filtrando y descafeinando tanto la conversación que la convierta en un discurso, y por ese camino pierda toda su gracia.
Ya lo he dicho, un buen CM lo que tiene que tener es mucha empatía, para saber conectar en clave P2P con los usuarios y miembros de su comunidad. Para ser personas "sociales y comunicativas", como aconseja Juan Freire, no hace falta haber hecho una carrera de marketing.
4º) El CM no tiene por qué ser el portavoz-en-exclusiva, y en su lugar podría actuar como facilitador de una conversación distribuida
Otro debate es si debe ser una sola persona o varias. Yo prefiero que la conversación sea distribuida, en lugar de centrarla en una especie de "portavoz 2.0", que me parece algo empobrecedor e incoherente. El modelo ideal para mí es aquel en que muchas personas de la empresa pueden conversar con la comunidad de usuarios.
Ahora bien, una conversación distribuida es perfectamente compatible (y deseable) con que haya un CM que se encargue de formar, facilitar, asesorar, e incluso coordinar esa compleja red de salidas-entradas para extraer valor de ella y corregir comportamientos que entiendan erróneamente la libertad sin responsabilidad.
Pero también cabe la posibilidad de que la labor de CM se adopte por un equipo de personas de la empresa, por un grupo de "conversadores" que la entiendan muy bien y actúen con
cierta coordinación.
Creo que el modelo distribuido añade frescura y diversidad, y se acerca más al espíritu "no corporativo" y espontaneo que tanto premia la Red.
Parafraseando a Connie Bensen, podríamos resumir que el CM es la voz de la compañía hacia afuera, y la del cliente hacia adentro. Su principal valor es humanizarla hacia afuera, y al mismo tiempo, generar feedback de calidad hacia dentro.
http://www.amaliorey.com/2010/01/12/4-premisas-falsas-sobre-community-managers-post-129/
Siguiendo una sabia recomendación de dos amigos, que saben de esto, voy a trocear en varios posts mi artículo "Frivolización del Marketing 2.0", porque la peña anda muy líquida para leerse una decena de folios, y menos en estas fechas.
En ese artículo analizo nueve prácticas que considero equivocadas a la hora de adoptar principios y herramientas del Social Media Marketing o Marketing 2.0. Ya publiqué el primer post en el que compartía mi extrañeza sobre esa rara práctica del "outsourcing de conversaciones", y que tuvo tan buena acogida.
Hoy quiero hablar de los "Community Managers". 2009 ha sido el año del descubrimiento y reconocimiento oficial de los también llamados "gestores de redes sociales" o "gestores de comunidad", y en 2010 veremos una explosión de esta figura como nuevo profesional en las empresas.
Es sin dudas una profesión emergente, con presente y futuro, pero bastante mal entendida. ¿Qué hace o debe hacer un buen "community manager" (CM)? Para responder a esta pregunta, voy a resumir lo que me ha parecido más interesante de artículos escritos por Guzman Garmendia, Dolors Reig, Jeremiah Owyang, Juan Freire y Connie Bensen:
•Conocer a fondo a la empresa, con la que debería llegar a tener una conexión emocional y un sentido de pertenencia genuino, para poder "conversar" en nombre de ella.
•Conectar con mucha empatía con los usuarios para estimular conversaciones P2P ricas en contenidos, y por encima de todo, generar confianza. Ésta es quizás la función número uno del CM: "construir confianza genuina".
•Facilitar la creación de redes de usuarios proactivos, más implicados con la empresa, que estén dispuestos a colaborar de un modo sistemático y comprometido con la generación de contenidos.
•Actuar como "defensor de la comunidad", siendo su rol principal el de representar a los usuarios, lo que implica sobre todo escucharlos y comprender lo que quieren decir en los foros que participan opinando sobre la empresa.•Responder rápidamente a dudas, preguntas o solicitudes de servicios que la comunidad transmita a la organización, convirtiéndose así en generador-canalizador de contenidos. Para ello tiene que comprenderla muy bien y tener relaciones fluidas con los miembros de la misma que pueden generar las respuestas, y aportar los contenidos que pide la comunidad.
•Interpretar y transmitir de forma transparente y clara hacia adentro las nuevas demandas y "señales" (patrones y tendencias) que emite el mercado en términos de solicitudes de nuevos productos y servicios, o de mejora de los existentes. Es un observador privilegiado, un colector y traductor de información, conocimiento y feedback de enorme importancia para la empresa.
•Movilizar y coordinar a otros "conversadores" dentro de la empresa que quieran publicar blogs, microblogging, podcasts y otros medios sociales que ayuden a multiplicar los canales por los que la empresa puede "conversar" con la comunidad.
•Definir métricas o sistemas que ayuden a sintetizar periódicamente el "estado de opinión" de la comunidad, para intentar medir la evolución y hacer comparativas que ayuden a la toma de decisiones.
Una vez descrito el modelo óptimo de CM, tengo que decir que varias de estas funciones se quedan en "papel mojado" en muchas empresas que los contratan. Por eso me gustaría discutir algunos mitos o premisas falsas que rodean a esta figura:
1º) El CM no controla, ni "tiene poder" sobre la imagen de marca, ni sobre las opiniones que circulan en las redes que él sigue sobre la empresa.
Suponer (o vender eso) es sobrestimar la capacidad del CM. Está claro que el control y el poder lo tienen los usuarios, la comunidad.
Guzmán Garmendia dice que el CM "tiene la llave del armario con el que nos vamos a vestir para la presentación ante el cliente en Internet", y yo digo que la llave del armario la tienen siempre los usuarios.
Lo más que puede hacer el CM es dotar al armario de una colección de piezas atractivas, de opciones de contenidos que añadan valor para que los usuarios al final "vistan" a la empresa con la mejor ropa posible.
Personalmente no me gusta un término que se usa mucho para definir un rol principal del CM, que es "Brand Evangelist" (evangelista de la marca), porque creo que subraya en exceso el discurso hacia afuera, hablar bien de la empresa, y devalúa una función que me parece más primordial, la de "escuchar". Con perdón, el término "evangelista" no lo asocio precisamente a la capacidad de escuchar, sino más bien a la de hablar, incluso demasiado.
2º) El perfil tecnológico no debería ser el requisito que más se exija a estos profesionales
Siempre se dice que el CM debe ser un profundo conocedor de todo lo que tenga que ver con Internet. Vale, está bien, es un valor añadido, pero de nuevo, no creo que sea tan importante el perfil tecnológico.
La virtud más importante que debe tener un buen CM es la EMPATÍA, tanto para conocer y comprender la propia empresa desde la que pretende "conversar", como para ponerse en el lugar de los miembros de su comunidad.
Aquí Guzmán Garmendia sí que da en el clavo: "¿Es más fácil ponerse al día de las herramientas o de cómo es la empresa y su negocio? ¿Y si resulta que ese señor o señora lleva a la vez varias empresas? Es importante cerciorarse de que el flamante asignatario de tan raro nombre conoce en profundidad la empresa, la marca, su historia, sus clientes y su comercialización"
Otra forma de expresar esto es cuando se reclama, con razón, que el CM tenga una personalidad compatible o similar a la de la empresa "porque existe un factor de personalidad que no es entrenable".
Juan Freire explica muy bien ese tenso equilibrio (o desequilibrio estable, como prefiero decir) que debe mantener un buen CM para hacer bien su trabajo cuando indica que: "estas personas deben saber dialogar y gestionar la 'cultura corporativa', pero manteniendo al tiempo un estilo alternativo y 'no corporativo".
3º) No hace falta que el CM sea un experto o profesional del Marketing
También se insiste mucho en que ese profesional "tenga formación en comunicación, marketing y publicidad". Tampoco me parece tan importante porque es una cuestión más de actitudes y habilidades que de conocimiento o experiencia en marketing.
Es más, mucho me temo que un "experto en comunicación" termine filtrando y descafeinando tanto la conversación que la convierta en un discurso, y por ese camino pierda toda su gracia.
Ya lo he dicho, un buen CM lo que tiene que tener es mucha empatía, para saber conectar en clave P2P con los usuarios y miembros de su comunidad. Para ser personas "sociales y comunicativas", como aconseja Juan Freire, no hace falta haber hecho una carrera de marketing.
4º) El CM no tiene por qué ser el portavoz-en-exclusiva, y en su lugar podría actuar como facilitador de una conversación distribuida
Otro debate es si debe ser una sola persona o varias. Yo prefiero que la conversación sea distribuida, en lugar de centrarla en una especie de "portavoz 2.0", que me parece algo empobrecedor e incoherente. El modelo ideal para mí es aquel en que muchas personas de la empresa pueden conversar con la comunidad de usuarios.
Ahora bien, una conversación distribuida es perfectamente compatible (y deseable) con que haya un CM que se encargue de formar, facilitar, asesorar, e incluso coordinar esa compleja red de salidas-entradas para extraer valor de ella y corregir comportamientos que entiendan erróneamente la libertad sin responsabilidad.
Pero también cabe la posibilidad de que la labor de CM se adopte por un equipo de personas de la empresa, por un grupo de "conversadores" que la entiendan muy bien y actúen con
cierta coordinación.
Creo que el modelo distribuido añade frescura y diversidad, y se acerca más al espíritu "no corporativo" y espontaneo que tanto premia la Red.
Parafraseando a Connie Bensen, podríamos resumir que el CM es la voz de la compañía hacia afuera, y la del cliente hacia adentro. Su principal valor es humanizarla hacia afuera, y al mismo tiempo, generar feedback de calidad hacia dentro.
http://www.amaliorey.com/2010/01/12/4-premisas-falsas-sobre-community-managers-post-129/
sábado, 28 de agosto de 2010
6 Consejos para capitalizar los comentarios negativos en las Redes Sociales
Por Jorge Avila agosto 26, 2010
Independiente de la plataforma e independiente de si estás en las redes sociales o no, los comentarios negativos o quejas hacia tu persona u organización se van a dar. Por qué?, porque "nadie es monedita de oro para caerle bien a todos" aun así "no hay mal que por bien no venga".
El día de hoy te damos 6 consejos para capitalizar los comentarios negativos o quejas en las redes sociales.
1.Actúa Rápido. Sí, cuando existe un malestar es muy importante que te pongas en contacto rápido. De aquí la importancia de monitorear tu nombre y los términos relacionados al mismo. No hay que esperar a que te mencionen directamente, muchos usuarios no lo hacen, usarán otras palabras para referirte a ti. Actuar rápido envía un mensaje muy importante: aquí estoy y me importas
2.Responde a la queja en público pero atiéndela en privado. Es importante que si una queja se hace en un medio público tú inicies su atención de la misma manera; esto ayuda a que tu comunidad se de cuenta que estás al pendiente de tus posibles errores y que eres una persona u organización seria que le interesa mejorar, y sobre todo consiente de que no eres perfecto (al final quién lo es?). Al mismo tiempo no quieres llenar tu timeline con un tema que a pocos le interesa, así que lo mejor es que invites al usuario a ser contactado vía telefónica o vía email para darle un seguimiento formal a su comentario
3.Da una atención personalizada al caso. Aunque cambies de medio (de red social a email) se tú quien de el seguimiento al comentario, bien puedes involucrar más gente en el tema pero mantente al tanto; tú eres el responsable de tu comunidad y necesitas saber qué pasa con sus miembros
4.Ofrece ser tú quien se ponga en contacto. Un error muy común es pedirle al usuario que haga algo, ejemplo: Manda un email a quejas@empresa o marca a nuestro centro de servicio; si de por si está molesto y tú todavía quieres que haga algo?, simplemente No. Ofrece ser tú quien le mande un correo o quien le hable. Es un muy buen detalle para iniciar el dialogo y manda un mensaje de apertura. Te sugiero comentarios como: "Lamentamos la situación, me gustaría ponerme en contacto por email para ver este tema. Me mandas tu email?"
5.Identifícate. Si eres parte de un grupo de personas que atiende una cuenta, indícale al usuario cómo te puede identificar, por ejemplo en Twitter se usan las firmas o coTags (en el caso de dosensocial mi firma es ^JA por Jorge Avila). Esto permite al usuario saber que hay varias personas atrás de la cuenta y que eres tú el que trae su tema. Esto minimiza el riesgo de futuras confusiones y molestias
6.Ofrece un foro para el tema. Si el tema es muy popular (negativamente hablando), tal vez requieras crear un sitio o foro para ofrecer información que clarifique o brinde un espacio para atender y manejar todas los comentarios de forma ordenada. Por ejemplo, podrías crear un micro sitio para publicar tu respuesta oficial; tal vez un video donde hables del tema, las razones, políticas o reglamento que estás siguiendo de tal manera que no exista el efecto "no leíste las letras chiquitas?" y/o evite que estés repitiendo las mismas cosas una y otra vez
Estos consejos te ayudarán a capitalizar en lo posible el efecto negativo de los comentarios. Recuerda también atender y crecer tu comunidad, siempre es bueno contar con una comunidad dispuesta a ayudarte cuando lo necesites.
http://www.dosensocial.com/2010/08/26/6-consejos-para-capitalizar-los-comentarios-negativos-en-las-redes-sociales
Independiente de la plataforma e independiente de si estás en las redes sociales o no, los comentarios negativos o quejas hacia tu persona u organización se van a dar. Por qué?, porque "nadie es monedita de oro para caerle bien a todos" aun así "no hay mal que por bien no venga".
El día de hoy te damos 6 consejos para capitalizar los comentarios negativos o quejas en las redes sociales.
1.Actúa Rápido. Sí, cuando existe un malestar es muy importante que te pongas en contacto rápido. De aquí la importancia de monitorear tu nombre y los términos relacionados al mismo. No hay que esperar a que te mencionen directamente, muchos usuarios no lo hacen, usarán otras palabras para referirte a ti. Actuar rápido envía un mensaje muy importante: aquí estoy y me importas
2.Responde a la queja en público pero atiéndela en privado. Es importante que si una queja se hace en un medio público tú inicies su atención de la misma manera; esto ayuda a que tu comunidad se de cuenta que estás al pendiente de tus posibles errores y que eres una persona u organización seria que le interesa mejorar, y sobre todo consiente de que no eres perfecto (al final quién lo es?). Al mismo tiempo no quieres llenar tu timeline con un tema que a pocos le interesa, así que lo mejor es que invites al usuario a ser contactado vía telefónica o vía email para darle un seguimiento formal a su comentario
3.Da una atención personalizada al caso. Aunque cambies de medio (de red social a email) se tú quien de el seguimiento al comentario, bien puedes involucrar más gente en el tema pero mantente al tanto; tú eres el responsable de tu comunidad y necesitas saber qué pasa con sus miembros
4.Ofrece ser tú quien se ponga en contacto. Un error muy común es pedirle al usuario que haga algo, ejemplo: Manda un email a quejas@empresa o marca a nuestro centro de servicio; si de por si está molesto y tú todavía quieres que haga algo?, simplemente No. Ofrece ser tú quien le mande un correo o quien le hable. Es un muy buen detalle para iniciar el dialogo y manda un mensaje de apertura. Te sugiero comentarios como: "Lamentamos la situación, me gustaría ponerme en contacto por email para ver este tema. Me mandas tu email?"
5.Identifícate. Si eres parte de un grupo de personas que atiende una cuenta, indícale al usuario cómo te puede identificar, por ejemplo en Twitter se usan las firmas o coTags (en el caso de dosensocial mi firma es ^JA por Jorge Avila). Esto permite al usuario saber que hay varias personas atrás de la cuenta y que eres tú el que trae su tema. Esto minimiza el riesgo de futuras confusiones y molestias
6.Ofrece un foro para el tema. Si el tema es muy popular (negativamente hablando), tal vez requieras crear un sitio o foro para ofrecer información que clarifique o brinde un espacio para atender y manejar todas los comentarios de forma ordenada. Por ejemplo, podrías crear un micro sitio para publicar tu respuesta oficial; tal vez un video donde hables del tema, las razones, políticas o reglamento que estás siguiendo de tal manera que no exista el efecto "no leíste las letras chiquitas?" y/o evite que estés repitiendo las mismas cosas una y otra vez
Estos consejos te ayudarán a capitalizar en lo posible el efecto negativo de los comentarios. Recuerda también atender y crecer tu comunidad, siempre es bueno contar con una comunidad dispuesta a ayudarte cuando lo necesites.
http://www.dosensocial.com/2010/08/26/6-consejos-para-capitalizar-los-comentarios-negativos-en-las-redes-sociales
viernes, 27 de agosto de 2010
15% of USA consumers have made purchase with mobile device:
By Dan Butcher - August 26, 2010
Consumers are increasingly using their mobile devices to make purchasesA retail study from AT&T Inc.'s Sterling Commerce and ecommerce service provider Demandware Inc. found that consumers are increasingly turning to mobile devices to add depth and convenience to their in-store shopping experience.
The independent survey, which examined consumer preferences and attitudes surrounding mobile shopping, found that 15 percent of consumers have used their mobile devices to make purchases. However, the study also found that concerns around security and ease-of-use threaten the progress of mobile shopping and payments.
"The key finding is that 15 percent of all mobile phone users—not just smartphone users—made a purchase from their mobile phone," said Adam Forrest, product marketing manager at Demandware, Woburn, MA. "The age demographic with the highest usage was 25-34 with 21 percent of them making a purchase from their mobile phone.
"Not surprisingly this is also the same demographic that had the highest percentage of smartphones," he said. "The speed of mobile networks, screen resolutions and overall usability of the phones are increasing the growth of mobile shopping."
This online survey was conducted by SmartRevenue in June/July 2010 and surveyed 3,611 male and female consumers ages 18 and older living in the United States.
Mobile shopping adoption is growing
While nearly all (96.2 percent) of consumers surveyed own a mobile phone, just under half owned a smartphone, which are designed to deliver a more optimal shopping experience.
The study revealed interesting trends surrounding how consumers are looking to their mobile device to support their in-store shopping experience.
More than 60 percent believe that being able to use their mobile phone while shopping to verify product availability at a particular store location is important to very important.
Nearly a quarter of shoppers use their phone while in a store to competitively price shop an item.
Approximately 20 percent of consumers currently use their phones to create shopping lists or baskets, and slightly more than that number would be interested in a mobile application to help with shopping list or basket management for their favorite retailers.
Two-thirds are interested in the possibility of using their mobile phone to scan and purchase items, thus enabling them to bypass checkout lines.
A quarter of shoppers believe that receiving specials and promotions such as coupons would be an important use for their mobile phone when shopping, although they were less enthusiastic about receiving advertising via their phones.
While the increasing consumer adoption rate of mobile devices has long been recognized by retailers, these survey findings suggest that offering mobile access to the brand is no longer just a "nice to have"—it has become a necessity, according to Demandware.
The mandate for retailers is not only to create a mobile channel to give consumers more options, but also to find innovative ways to leverage mobile to influence consumer shopping and purchase behavior across all sales channels.
"Consumers are purchasing off their phones at a rapid rate and if your site is not optimized for mobile shopping by using a mobile Web application, you run the risk of losing customers to competitors that make the shopping experience on their mobile phone easy," Mr. Forrest said.
Concerns linger
Other findings of the survey continued to highlight consumers' concerns around security and ease-of-use with mobile devices.
Respondents cited the following concerns:
• Internet non-connectivity (40 percent)
• Difficulty with the small screen size (34 percent) and therefore difficulty in visualizing the products (31 percent)
• Security issues (28 percent)
• Slow interaction with the retailer Web site (22 percent)
• Difficulties in entering information due to a small keypad (21 percent)
Although security issues were mentioned as a concern by only 28 percent of respondents, the top solutions that would encourage more mobile phone purchases all deal with security.
Nearly half of consumers would like the option of using PayPal.
Nearly 40 percent would feel secure knowing that the mobile phone application would not store their credit card number.
A quarter of consumers would prefer that the mobile phone would only show a truncated credit card number using the last four digits.
About 20 percent would like to be prompted to enter their three-digit credit card security number.
"The most surprising finding was consumers' security concerns," Mr. Forrest said. "Transacting through a mobile phone uses the same secure protocols as using a laptop or PC.
"Consumers access HTTPS sites and all information is encrypted," he said. "Demandware's mobile Web application follows all the same security standards and PCI Compliance as the sites accessed through the PC."
http://www.mobilecommercedaily.com/15pc-of-consumers-have-made-purchase-with-mobile-device-study/
Consumers are increasingly using their mobile devices to make purchasesA retail study from AT&T Inc.'s Sterling Commerce and ecommerce service provider Demandware Inc. found that consumers are increasingly turning to mobile devices to add depth and convenience to their in-store shopping experience.
The independent survey, which examined consumer preferences and attitudes surrounding mobile shopping, found that 15 percent of consumers have used their mobile devices to make purchases. However, the study also found that concerns around security and ease-of-use threaten the progress of mobile shopping and payments.
"The key finding is that 15 percent of all mobile phone users—not just smartphone users—made a purchase from their mobile phone," said Adam Forrest, product marketing manager at Demandware, Woburn, MA. "The age demographic with the highest usage was 25-34 with 21 percent of them making a purchase from their mobile phone.
"Not surprisingly this is also the same demographic that had the highest percentage of smartphones," he said. "The speed of mobile networks, screen resolutions and overall usability of the phones are increasing the growth of mobile shopping."
This online survey was conducted by SmartRevenue in June/July 2010 and surveyed 3,611 male and female consumers ages 18 and older living in the United States.
Mobile shopping adoption is growing
While nearly all (96.2 percent) of consumers surveyed own a mobile phone, just under half owned a smartphone, which are designed to deliver a more optimal shopping experience.
The study revealed interesting trends surrounding how consumers are looking to their mobile device to support their in-store shopping experience.
More than 60 percent believe that being able to use their mobile phone while shopping to verify product availability at a particular store location is important to very important.
Nearly a quarter of shoppers use their phone while in a store to competitively price shop an item.
Approximately 20 percent of consumers currently use their phones to create shopping lists or baskets, and slightly more than that number would be interested in a mobile application to help with shopping list or basket management for their favorite retailers.
Two-thirds are interested in the possibility of using their mobile phone to scan and purchase items, thus enabling them to bypass checkout lines.
A quarter of shoppers believe that receiving specials and promotions such as coupons would be an important use for their mobile phone when shopping, although they were less enthusiastic about receiving advertising via their phones.
While the increasing consumer adoption rate of mobile devices has long been recognized by retailers, these survey findings suggest that offering mobile access to the brand is no longer just a "nice to have"—it has become a necessity, according to Demandware.
The mandate for retailers is not only to create a mobile channel to give consumers more options, but also to find innovative ways to leverage mobile to influence consumer shopping and purchase behavior across all sales channels.
"Consumers are purchasing off their phones at a rapid rate and if your site is not optimized for mobile shopping by using a mobile Web application, you run the risk of losing customers to competitors that make the shopping experience on their mobile phone easy," Mr. Forrest said.
Concerns linger
Other findings of the survey continued to highlight consumers' concerns around security and ease-of-use with mobile devices.
Respondents cited the following concerns:
• Internet non-connectivity (40 percent)
• Difficulty with the small screen size (34 percent) and therefore difficulty in visualizing the products (31 percent)
• Security issues (28 percent)
• Slow interaction with the retailer Web site (22 percent)
• Difficulties in entering information due to a small keypad (21 percent)
Although security issues were mentioned as a concern by only 28 percent of respondents, the top solutions that would encourage more mobile phone purchases all deal with security.
Nearly half of consumers would like the option of using PayPal.
Nearly 40 percent would feel secure knowing that the mobile phone application would not store their credit card number.
A quarter of consumers would prefer that the mobile phone would only show a truncated credit card number using the last four digits.
About 20 percent would like to be prompted to enter their three-digit credit card security number.
"The most surprising finding was consumers' security concerns," Mr. Forrest said. "Transacting through a mobile phone uses the same secure protocols as using a laptop or PC.
"Consumers access HTTPS sites and all information is encrypted," he said. "Demandware's mobile Web application follows all the same security standards and PCI Compliance as the sites accessed through the PC."
http://www.mobilecommercedaily.com/15pc-of-consumers-have-made-purchase-with-mobile-device-study/
Choosing Goals for Social Media
August 26, 2010 by Amber Naslund
When it comes to business – and most especially social media – measurement is still a vast, ongoing discussion that's fraught with questions. Many of those questions start at the very beginning: How do I know I'm setting the right goals?
As we've said a zillion times before, the right goals for you are going to be heavily dependent upon your business. But, what we can talk about are the underlying reasons that most goals exist: to solve a problem.
One of you will undoubtedly point out – and you'd be right – that goals can often be set in order to create or capitalize upon new opportunities. But when you break down that opportunity into it's pieces, what you're again left with is a set of problems or challenges that need to be solved in order to put you on the path toward that opportunity. So when we say problem, think in terms of "thing that needs solving" versus a heavily negative connotation. Problems aren't always bad things.
The Need Buckets
In a business context, and specifically social media, most external goals seek to solve problems in one of three main buckets:
Money (M): there's either not enough coming in, or there's too much going out, or both
Attention (A): either the attention you have is the wrong kind, or you need more of the kind of attention you do want. You might want that for brand purposes, or even something like recruitment.
Longevity (L): you're looking for more customer loyalty, donor retention, or more referrals from your customers or the community at large.
Just about any goal you have can eventually tie back to one of these overarching business needs. Also, keep in mind that you can rarely if ever do all three of these at once with a consistent and equal level of effectiveness. You've got to prioritize your needs, and decide which one is going to serve as the backbone your social media efforts.
Someday, when we're all big and mighty with fully wired social media into every facet of our organization, perhaps we can all being dedicating armies of people to do all three simultaneously via different avenues. But my guess is that you're not at that point yet – very few of us are – so try and start somewhere focused and where your need is greatest. And be careful of always jumping to money as the problem that needs to be solved. Are you sure it's just more leads you need?
There's a Goal In the Bucket
Once you've got your bucket or your business need identified, then you can build the solutions that get you there.
(If you're not sure the difference between a goal and an objective, I talk about those a bit over here, but basically, the objectives get specific with things like numbers and timeframes.)
The solutions and ensuing goals themselves can usually be pretty solidly categorized, too, and tied back to one or more of those buckets (M, A, L). They'll usually take the shape of:
Thought Leadership (A, L): creating and spreading ideas via online content, speaking, or other methods that showcase expertise/industry knowledge
Reach & Lead Quality (M, A): Getting the word out more broadly, to the right people, via lead generation or awareness efforts outward, or SEO or content marketing inward
Reputation Stewardship (A, L): Probably a blend of many solutions, but a longer term effort to shift or reinforce brand perception
Customer Satisfaction (L, M): If there are issues there that need correcting, or to back up a strength you're known for
Relationship Quality (L): From building new communities to growing existing ones in order to strengthen relationships and networks, and be available and responsive
There are probably more, and you can slice and dice them a few ways. But do you see where I'm headed here? Goals gather in groups around overarching needs.
One Ring To Rule Them All
If you're shrewd, you might be looking at this and saying "But Amber, if I have goals to improve customer satisfaction, doing that well could impact all three of those need areas." You could say the same for something like leads; if I have more and better of them, that can address at least the money and attention buckets.
Aha. Yes, indeed it can. But here's the deal.
Doing all of this well – or any part of it really well – will make the need buckets look like something familiar: a business cycle. Attention leads to money leads to longevity. They're all dependent upon one another for survival. Right?
What your social media goals are likely to be addressing, however, is the movement in between those stops on the cycle. How are you moving people from zero to attention? From thinking you suck to thinking you're pretty okay? From liking you to purchase? From purchase to loving you forever and ever and telling all their friends?
Crash Course in Measurement
This concept – need buckets and solutions – is a rather simplistic one, but maybe it helps you. And if you're looking for some other guidance about goals, metrics and measurement in social media, I've got a bunch of other stuff here on the blog, including an ebook, that might help.
http://socialmediatoday.com/ambernaslund/169696/choosing-goals-social-media
When it comes to business – and most especially social media – measurement is still a vast, ongoing discussion that's fraught with questions. Many of those questions start at the very beginning: How do I know I'm setting the right goals?
As we've said a zillion times before, the right goals for you are going to be heavily dependent upon your business. But, what we can talk about are the underlying reasons that most goals exist: to solve a problem.
One of you will undoubtedly point out – and you'd be right – that goals can often be set in order to create or capitalize upon new opportunities. But when you break down that opportunity into it's pieces, what you're again left with is a set of problems or challenges that need to be solved in order to put you on the path toward that opportunity. So when we say problem, think in terms of "thing that needs solving" versus a heavily negative connotation. Problems aren't always bad things.
The Need Buckets
In a business context, and specifically social media, most external goals seek to solve problems in one of three main buckets:
Money (M): there's either not enough coming in, or there's too much going out, or both
Attention (A): either the attention you have is the wrong kind, or you need more of the kind of attention you do want. You might want that for brand purposes, or even something like recruitment.
Longevity (L): you're looking for more customer loyalty, donor retention, or more referrals from your customers or the community at large.
Just about any goal you have can eventually tie back to one of these overarching business needs. Also, keep in mind that you can rarely if ever do all three of these at once with a consistent and equal level of effectiveness. You've got to prioritize your needs, and decide which one is going to serve as the backbone your social media efforts.
Someday, when we're all big and mighty with fully wired social media into every facet of our organization, perhaps we can all being dedicating armies of people to do all three simultaneously via different avenues. But my guess is that you're not at that point yet – very few of us are – so try and start somewhere focused and where your need is greatest. And be careful of always jumping to money as the problem that needs to be solved. Are you sure it's just more leads you need?
There's a Goal In the Bucket
Once you've got your bucket or your business need identified, then you can build the solutions that get you there.
(If you're not sure the difference between a goal and an objective, I talk about those a bit over here, but basically, the objectives get specific with things like numbers and timeframes.)
The solutions and ensuing goals themselves can usually be pretty solidly categorized, too, and tied back to one or more of those buckets (M, A, L). They'll usually take the shape of:
Thought Leadership (A, L): creating and spreading ideas via online content, speaking, or other methods that showcase expertise/industry knowledge
Reach & Lead Quality (M, A): Getting the word out more broadly, to the right people, via lead generation or awareness efforts outward, or SEO or content marketing inward
Reputation Stewardship (A, L): Probably a blend of many solutions, but a longer term effort to shift or reinforce brand perception
Customer Satisfaction (L, M): If there are issues there that need correcting, or to back up a strength you're known for
Relationship Quality (L): From building new communities to growing existing ones in order to strengthen relationships and networks, and be available and responsive
There are probably more, and you can slice and dice them a few ways. But do you see where I'm headed here? Goals gather in groups around overarching needs.
One Ring To Rule Them All
If you're shrewd, you might be looking at this and saying "But Amber, if I have goals to improve customer satisfaction, doing that well could impact all three of those need areas." You could say the same for something like leads; if I have more and better of them, that can address at least the money and attention buckets.
Aha. Yes, indeed it can. But here's the deal.
Doing all of this well – or any part of it really well – will make the need buckets look like something familiar: a business cycle. Attention leads to money leads to longevity. They're all dependent upon one another for survival. Right?
What your social media goals are likely to be addressing, however, is the movement in between those stops on the cycle. How are you moving people from zero to attention? From thinking you suck to thinking you're pretty okay? From liking you to purchase? From purchase to loving you forever and ever and telling all their friends?
Crash Course in Measurement
This concept – need buckets and solutions – is a rather simplistic one, but maybe it helps you. And if you're looking for some other guidance about goals, metrics and measurement in social media, I've got a bunch of other stuff here on the blog, including an ebook, that might help.
http://socialmediatoday.com/ambernaslund/169696/choosing-goals-social-media
jueves, 26 de agosto de 2010
Japanese spend 2 hours per day on the mobile web
August 17, 2010
Some ideas from Google on mobile developments
"We tend to overestimate the effect of a technology in the short run and underestimate the effect in the long run." Roy Amara.
It was a long time ago in tech terms, but last year I sat down with Robert Swerling who looks after mobile startups for Google UK. We're now in an age where Google App Creator (above video) will encourage ever younger developers (i.e. schoolkids) to make mobile applications, as well as an inevitable tipping point coming soon in those buying Android phones that run Google products and those kids' apps.
Here's some of Rob's stats that give me this confidence in believing we need children to be aware of how to create, as well as consume, the apps around them:
•91% of Americans keep a mobile phone within 1 metre for 365 days a year
•63% will not share their phone with anyone else
•Mobile is the 7th mass medium
•The prevalence of iPhone apps as an alternative medium to consume and share now generates 50x more search queries than pre-iPhone.
•60% of time on the mobile phone is now spent on non-calls activity
•The average person downloads 40 applications, or apps
•The Japanese spend 2 hours per day on the mobile web
•There are 9m new subscribers each month in India
•In Kenya paying by text message is fast superceding credit cards as a means of payment
•Mobile video fingerprinting will soon create a translation magnifying glass when you're abroad
•5 of the top 10 novels in Japan were written on the mobile phone
These might be read in conjunction with the last stat dump I did in 2008 on the state of Mobile in Asia.
So, if you're going to get students making mobile apps, what would Robert advise the pros, and how might these affect some higher order planning and thinking in your students?
1.Velocity
Give customers what they want as fast as possible. Stop putting up so many barriers such as checkout: experience is the same in Prada, fish and chip shop...
If you give people what they want and get them away from your site as quickly as possible, then they'll come back.
This is about students learning how to make less mean more. What is the core of what you're trying to say, write or achieve with a project? What elements can you do without? What elements will you save for later when you're upgrading the app for users? What will you leave out to keep the jar half full?
2.Visibility
Don't surprise customers. In a good bar the price is on the beer, you know whether it's available, you know how quickly you can get it. This affects choice.
This got me thinking about how visible (or not) learning is when the learner is not driving its direction, its content, its timing and its pace. Teacher-driven planning of learning leaves too much invisibility. If it doesn't work in the marketplace, how on earth can it work for learning in the classroom?
3.Value
Understand the medium and deliver. Online is cheaper, offers depth, reviews, suggestions, interacting with others.
A basic learning in doing your research - too many student-driven projects are let loose before the students have done their research. The result is painful for everyone involved. Building apps like this forces you to research in depth and from the perspective of a potential customer, so empathy is trained and honed here.
4.Variation
Never come out of beta. You can constantly experiment using your feedback and stats.
Lifelong learning anyone? This is the core skill of the app builder, and the core skill of any successful learner. It's just that this has a context some learners might grasp a little more.
I like Robert. He works for a company known for its constant agenda of change, change in itself and making change in the world. But I like Robert for the realism that he betrays now and then. As he put it:
"A great wind is blowing and that gives you either imagination or a headache."
http://edu.blogs.com/edublogs/2010/08/some-ideas-from-google-on-mobile-developments.html
miércoles, 25 de agosto de 2010
Radiografía de los usuarios de Redes Sociales
Un aspecto fundamental en el diseño de la estrategia de Social Media es comprender que no todos los usuarios de las redes sociales poseen la misma estimación como objetivo estratégico.
Si bien nuestra actividad online debe fundamentarse en la transversalidad de las relaciones, focalizar los esfuerzos en aquellos más influyentes, con mayor autoridad, visibilidad o relevancia será clave en la consecución de los objetivos de negocio, lo que implica conocer en profundidad las diversas personalidades existentes en el ecosistema social de Internet.
Identificar y determinar el contexto de participación de los usuarios será de gran utilidad tanto para las tácticas de entendimiento y vinculación como para establecer un marco de referencia que nos permita orientar el monitoreo para la localización de insights, el reconocimiento de buzz, gestionar reputación, prever escenarios de oportunidad o crisis y para determinar las tendencias de consumo (seguimiento) de nuestros públicos y leads (potenciales clientes).
Considerando que en la actualidad un número significativo de consumidores recurre a las redes sociales para orientar su decisión de compra, el boca a boca adquiere (al igual como sucede offline) una elevada relevancia, por lo que la estrategia digital debe dirigirse con especial énfasis hacia aquellos usuarios que manifiestan una habilidad única de influir sobre los demás. Este tipo de audiencias son las que finalmente evangeliza marcas, dan bidireccionalidad a los mensajes al actuar como líderes, ampliando los target y fomentando el surgimiento de nuevos consumidores.
Según el último estudio de la consultora Gartner, una quinta parte de la población consumidora presente en redes sociales clasifica bajo el denominado "grupo influyente", capaz de orientar las dinámicas de consumo de un 74% de la población. En este sentido, Gartner propone una interesante segmentación de perfiles de los "consumidores sociales":
1. Los Vendedores
Aquellos que muestran una habilidad de persuasión excepcional (animan al resto a actuar). Tienden a orientar el comportamiento de consumo mediante la exposición de sus propias ideas y preferencias. Generalmente forman parte activa de varias comunidades online, poseen gran número de contactos e intercambian de manera activa opiniones sobre productos y servicios.
2. Los Conectores
Aquellos consumidores que actúan de nexo entre las distintas tipologías de compradores (grupos dispares). Poseen contactos en diferentes grupos sociales, gustan presentar a usuarios y compartir opiniones sobre productos y servicios.
3. Los Expertos
Son los denominados "brokers de información", especializados en un área en particular. Poseen autoridad en temas y los usuarios tienden a pedirles consejos, lo que habitualmente influye sobre la decisión de compra. A diferencia de los vendedores, los expertos no tratan de convencer a los demás sobre la adquisición de un producto o servicio, sólo les proporcionan información.
4. Los Buscadores
Es aquel consumidor que manifiesta dependencia y otorga valor a las recomendaciones de otros para tomar una decisión de compra. Confía generalmente en los usuarios con experiencia y sigue los consejos de éstos en relación a marcas y precios.
5. Los Autosuficientes
Son escépticos y por lo general confían poco en los consejos de otros consumidores. Prefieren investigar por sí mismos y en base a la información recopilada, tomar una decisión. Son los públicos con los que es más difícil conectar.
6. Los Otros
En esta última tipología se integran aquellos consumidores que reúnen características del resto de grupos. Dependiendo del contexto, asumen el rol de mediador, de vendedor, de buscador, de experto o de comprador independiente.
Una estructura complementaria es la que nos proporciona Forrester, en donde además de identificar el perfil de usuario, determina el contexto de participación social específica, mediante la identificación de 6 tipos de públicos: Creadores, Conversadores, Críticos, Carpinteros, Espectadores e Inactivos:
1. Los Creadores
Aquellos que poseen la autoría del contenido social consumido por otros. Escriben blogs, suben videos, música o texto.
2. Los Conversadores
Los que expresan sus opiniones con otros consumidores y empresas. Utilizan canales sociales como Facebook y Twitter.
3. Los Críticos
Responden al contenido de los demás. Postean reviews, comentan otros blogs, participan en foros y editan artículos en comunidades como Wikipedia.
4. Los Carpinteros
Conectados a plataformas como MySpace y Facebook
5. Los Espectadores
Aquellos usuarios consumidores activos de contenidos de blogs, videos, podcasts, foros o reviews.
6. Los Inactivos
No crea ni consume contenido social, de ninguna clase.
En conjunto, estos 6 grupos constituirían el ecosistema social de Internet. Comprender las implicancias de la escalera tecnodemográfica (como la define Forrester) así como identificar sus personalidades específicas (que expone Gartner), permite determinar qué tipo de estrategias tienen sentido para llegar a nuestras audiencias con mayor efectividad
http://fanultra.posterous.com/radiografia-a-los-usuarios-de-redes-sociales
http://www.socialmediablog.cl
Si bien nuestra actividad online debe fundamentarse en la transversalidad de las relaciones, focalizar los esfuerzos en aquellos más influyentes, con mayor autoridad, visibilidad o relevancia será clave en la consecución de los objetivos de negocio, lo que implica conocer en profundidad las diversas personalidades existentes en el ecosistema social de Internet.
Identificar y determinar el contexto de participación de los usuarios será de gran utilidad tanto para las tácticas de entendimiento y vinculación como para establecer un marco de referencia que nos permita orientar el monitoreo para la localización de insights, el reconocimiento de buzz, gestionar reputación, prever escenarios de oportunidad o crisis y para determinar las tendencias de consumo (seguimiento) de nuestros públicos y leads (potenciales clientes).
Considerando que en la actualidad un número significativo de consumidores recurre a las redes sociales para orientar su decisión de compra, el boca a boca adquiere (al igual como sucede offline) una elevada relevancia, por lo que la estrategia digital debe dirigirse con especial énfasis hacia aquellos usuarios que manifiestan una habilidad única de influir sobre los demás. Este tipo de audiencias son las que finalmente evangeliza marcas, dan bidireccionalidad a los mensajes al actuar como líderes, ampliando los target y fomentando el surgimiento de nuevos consumidores.
Según el último estudio de la consultora Gartner, una quinta parte de la población consumidora presente en redes sociales clasifica bajo el denominado "grupo influyente", capaz de orientar las dinámicas de consumo de un 74% de la población. En este sentido, Gartner propone una interesante segmentación de perfiles de los "consumidores sociales":
1. Los Vendedores
Aquellos que muestran una habilidad de persuasión excepcional (animan al resto a actuar). Tienden a orientar el comportamiento de consumo mediante la exposición de sus propias ideas y preferencias. Generalmente forman parte activa de varias comunidades online, poseen gran número de contactos e intercambian de manera activa opiniones sobre productos y servicios.
2. Los Conectores
Aquellos consumidores que actúan de nexo entre las distintas tipologías de compradores (grupos dispares). Poseen contactos en diferentes grupos sociales, gustan presentar a usuarios y compartir opiniones sobre productos y servicios.
3. Los Expertos
Son los denominados "brokers de información", especializados en un área en particular. Poseen autoridad en temas y los usuarios tienden a pedirles consejos, lo que habitualmente influye sobre la decisión de compra. A diferencia de los vendedores, los expertos no tratan de convencer a los demás sobre la adquisición de un producto o servicio, sólo les proporcionan información.
4. Los Buscadores
Es aquel consumidor que manifiesta dependencia y otorga valor a las recomendaciones de otros para tomar una decisión de compra. Confía generalmente en los usuarios con experiencia y sigue los consejos de éstos en relación a marcas y precios.
5. Los Autosuficientes
Son escépticos y por lo general confían poco en los consejos de otros consumidores. Prefieren investigar por sí mismos y en base a la información recopilada, tomar una decisión. Son los públicos con los que es más difícil conectar.
6. Los Otros
En esta última tipología se integran aquellos consumidores que reúnen características del resto de grupos. Dependiendo del contexto, asumen el rol de mediador, de vendedor, de buscador, de experto o de comprador independiente.
Una estructura complementaria es la que nos proporciona Forrester, en donde además de identificar el perfil de usuario, determina el contexto de participación social específica, mediante la identificación de 6 tipos de públicos: Creadores, Conversadores, Críticos, Carpinteros, Espectadores e Inactivos:
1. Los Creadores
Aquellos que poseen la autoría del contenido social consumido por otros. Escriben blogs, suben videos, música o texto.
2. Los Conversadores
Los que expresan sus opiniones con otros consumidores y empresas. Utilizan canales sociales como Facebook y Twitter.
3. Los Críticos
Responden al contenido de los demás. Postean reviews, comentan otros blogs, participan en foros y editan artículos en comunidades como Wikipedia.
4. Los Carpinteros
Conectados a plataformas como MySpace y Facebook
5. Los Espectadores
Aquellos usuarios consumidores activos de contenidos de blogs, videos, podcasts, foros o reviews.
6. Los Inactivos
No crea ni consume contenido social, de ninguna clase.
En conjunto, estos 6 grupos constituirían el ecosistema social de Internet. Comprender las implicancias de la escalera tecnodemográfica (como la define Forrester) así como identificar sus personalidades específicas (que expone Gartner), permite determinar qué tipo de estrategias tienen sentido para llegar a nuestras audiencias con mayor efectividad
http://fanultra.posterous.com/radiografia-a-los-usuarios-de-redes-sociales
http://www.socialmediablog.cl
Cómo promocionar tu negocio en Foursquare
25 Agosto 2010
Las aplicaciones basadas en la geolocalización cada vez son más populares. Foursquare ha anunciado que está a punto de llegar a un millón de usuarios pero los verdaderos ganadores de esta tendencia son los 1,4 millones de negocios que forman parte de esta red, según ha señalado Rosaura Ochoa en su Social Media Blog.
Las aplicaciones de geolocalización ofrecen nuevas oportunidades a las empresas y la posibilidad de mejorar su relación con los clientes. Además de ofrecer promociones a nuevos clientes, Foursquare anima a que los usuarios compartan su ubicación con sus contactos cuando están en establecimientos con la función "check-in", sus propias reseñas sobre las ofertas o sus experiencias.
Éstas son algunas prácticas interesantes que se pueden llevar a cabo para promocionar tu negocio e impulsar las ventas con Foursquare:
• Recompensa al cliente más frecuente. Premiar al "mayor" o "embajador" de tu negocio, es decir, al que mayor número de "check-ins" tiene, es la forma más habitual y sencilla de promocionarte. Recompensar a alguien hace que tus clientes usuarios de Foursquare te aprecien más, además de que se generará una competencia entre ellos para logar ocupar el primer lugar en la lista de visitantes más frecuentes. Ten en cuenta que la recompensa tiene que ser llamativa, algo por lo que valga la pena competir.
• Ofrece descuentos. Ofrece pequeños descuentos a todos aquellos que hagan "check-in" en tus establecimientos.
• Recompensa por el número de visitas. Usa Foursquare para marcar las visitas de los clientes y, cuando hayan alcanzado un determinado número, prémiales.
• Premia a los primeros "check-in" del día. Ofrece un premio a aquellos clientes que sean los primeros en registrarse en tu establecimiento. De esta forma, aumentan las ventas y el tráfico de clientes.
• El primer "check-in". Si consigues crear una buena impresión en la primera visita registrada de un cliente, se sentirá valorado y querrá volver. Es un gesto simple hacia tu cliente con un pequeño detalle pero que hará que se sienta especial y, probablemente, le lleve a compartir la experiencia con sus contactos en Foursquare.
• Publicación de los especiales en la zona. La función "specials nearby" permite que, cuando un usuario hace "check-in" en un establecimiento cercano a otros que se promocionan en Foursquare, reciba una notificación sobre las ofertas especiales que se ofrecen en los cercanos, aunque no esté en ellos. Esta función ofrece la oportunidad de que, clientes que de otra forma difícilmente accederían a tu establecimiento, se sientan atraídos por las ofertas.
• Rastrea a tus clientes. Foursquare ha anunciado que lanzará nuevas herramientas para conseguir información más detallada sobre los clientes. Permitirán conocer quién hace "check-in", cuáles son las horas con más movimiento en tu negocio y facilitan publicar promociones de forma instantánea.
• Forma una relación más personal con tus clientes. Además de conocer a tu cliente más frecuente, Foursquare te permite tener contacto con otros clientes frecuentes o con aquellos que no te visitan desde hace tiempo. Es una posibilidad de ponerle cara a tu empresa y demostrar a tus clientes que te importan y les aprecias.
• Analiza las reseñas y datos de tus clientes. Escucha lo que se dice de ti, cómo piensan y qué les gusta a tus clientes, y en función de ello crea nuevas promociones que les sigan atrayendo. Si es posible, reconócelos cuando vuelvan y diles que agradeces sus comentarios, incluso si son negativos y analiza si se pueden hacer cambios o recompensarle por ello. Para estudiar tu mercado puede ser útil conocer más datos sobre tus clientes, si en Foursquare están sus cuentas de Twitter o Facebook, síguelos o hazte su amigo para poder tener un contacto más personal.
• Entérate de lo que hacen otros negocios. Existen infinitas formas de promocionarse en Foursquare y esta red está abierta a escuchar tus ideas y llevarlas a cabo. Por tanto, mantente al día de lo que están haciendo otros negocios para promocionarse.
• Diviértete. Foursquare es un juego y, aunque no revolucionará el negocio, es una herramienta útil para acercarte a tus clientes más frecuentes de forma personal e individual fomentando la fidelidad, y de atraer a nuevos clientes que reciben recomendaciones sobre tu negocio.
http://www.marketingdirecto.com/actualidad/social-media-marketing/como-promocionar-tu-negocio-en-foursquare/
Las aplicaciones basadas en la geolocalización cada vez son más populares. Foursquare ha anunciado que está a punto de llegar a un millón de usuarios pero los verdaderos ganadores de esta tendencia son los 1,4 millones de negocios que forman parte de esta red, según ha señalado Rosaura Ochoa en su Social Media Blog.
Las aplicaciones de geolocalización ofrecen nuevas oportunidades a las empresas y la posibilidad de mejorar su relación con los clientes. Además de ofrecer promociones a nuevos clientes, Foursquare anima a que los usuarios compartan su ubicación con sus contactos cuando están en establecimientos con la función "check-in", sus propias reseñas sobre las ofertas o sus experiencias.
Éstas son algunas prácticas interesantes que se pueden llevar a cabo para promocionar tu negocio e impulsar las ventas con Foursquare:
• Recompensa al cliente más frecuente. Premiar al "mayor" o "embajador" de tu negocio, es decir, al que mayor número de "check-ins" tiene, es la forma más habitual y sencilla de promocionarte. Recompensar a alguien hace que tus clientes usuarios de Foursquare te aprecien más, además de que se generará una competencia entre ellos para logar ocupar el primer lugar en la lista de visitantes más frecuentes. Ten en cuenta que la recompensa tiene que ser llamativa, algo por lo que valga la pena competir.
• Ofrece descuentos. Ofrece pequeños descuentos a todos aquellos que hagan "check-in" en tus establecimientos.
• Recompensa por el número de visitas. Usa Foursquare para marcar las visitas de los clientes y, cuando hayan alcanzado un determinado número, prémiales.
• Premia a los primeros "check-in" del día. Ofrece un premio a aquellos clientes que sean los primeros en registrarse en tu establecimiento. De esta forma, aumentan las ventas y el tráfico de clientes.
• El primer "check-in". Si consigues crear una buena impresión en la primera visita registrada de un cliente, se sentirá valorado y querrá volver. Es un gesto simple hacia tu cliente con un pequeño detalle pero que hará que se sienta especial y, probablemente, le lleve a compartir la experiencia con sus contactos en Foursquare.
• Publicación de los especiales en la zona. La función "specials nearby" permite que, cuando un usuario hace "check-in" en un establecimiento cercano a otros que se promocionan en Foursquare, reciba una notificación sobre las ofertas especiales que se ofrecen en los cercanos, aunque no esté en ellos. Esta función ofrece la oportunidad de que, clientes que de otra forma difícilmente accederían a tu establecimiento, se sientan atraídos por las ofertas.
• Rastrea a tus clientes. Foursquare ha anunciado que lanzará nuevas herramientas para conseguir información más detallada sobre los clientes. Permitirán conocer quién hace "check-in", cuáles son las horas con más movimiento en tu negocio y facilitan publicar promociones de forma instantánea.
• Forma una relación más personal con tus clientes. Además de conocer a tu cliente más frecuente, Foursquare te permite tener contacto con otros clientes frecuentes o con aquellos que no te visitan desde hace tiempo. Es una posibilidad de ponerle cara a tu empresa y demostrar a tus clientes que te importan y les aprecias.
• Analiza las reseñas y datos de tus clientes. Escucha lo que se dice de ti, cómo piensan y qué les gusta a tus clientes, y en función de ello crea nuevas promociones que les sigan atrayendo. Si es posible, reconócelos cuando vuelvan y diles que agradeces sus comentarios, incluso si son negativos y analiza si se pueden hacer cambios o recompensarle por ello. Para estudiar tu mercado puede ser útil conocer más datos sobre tus clientes, si en Foursquare están sus cuentas de Twitter o Facebook, síguelos o hazte su amigo para poder tener un contacto más personal.
• Entérate de lo que hacen otros negocios. Existen infinitas formas de promocionarse en Foursquare y esta red está abierta a escuchar tus ideas y llevarlas a cabo. Por tanto, mantente al día de lo que están haciendo otros negocios para promocionarse.
• Diviértete. Foursquare es un juego y, aunque no revolucionará el negocio, es una herramienta útil para acercarte a tus clientes más frecuentes de forma personal e individual fomentando la fidelidad, y de atraer a nuevos clientes que reciben recomendaciones sobre tu negocio.
http://www.marketingdirecto.com/actualidad/social-media-marketing/como-promocionar-tu-negocio-en-foursquare/
lunes, 23 de agosto de 2010
Best Buy Launches Location-Based Retail Experiment
August 23, 2010 by Brian Rice
Best Buy recently launched a location-based retail experiment, using the "shopkick" mobile application rewards system. Best Buy will examine the ways in-store shoppers value and redeem offers and rewards through their smart phones.
Under the plans, the "shopkick" system launched on August 17th in 187 Best Buy stores in the San Francisco, Los Angeles, San Jose, New York City, Chicago markets, with an additional 70 stores in Dallas, Minneapolis-St. Paul and Miami markets scheduled to go-live by Oct. 1st.
"We think consumers have more opportunities than ever to bridge their digital and physical shopping experiences, particularly through smart phones and mobile technology," said Matthew Smith, vice president, marketing services, Best Buy. "We intend to explore ways we can use the power of location-based technology to personalize a Best Buy shopping experience, from check-in to check-out, with rewards and offers delivered right on a customer's smart phone."
How the Program Works
A Best Buy customer can choose to download the free "shopkick" mobile application for their smart phone. When the "shopkick" app is open on the customer's phone, it detects the "shopkick Signal" technology installed in the participating Best Buy store as the customer walks through the door. The customer then instantly receives rewards, called "kickbucks," which can be accrued over time, then redeemed in the store or converted into Best Buy certificates through a user's shopkick account.
Additionally, Best Buy has integrated shopkick directly into its point of sale system to streamline the redemption of special in-store offers and/or added bonuses for scanning barcodes of specific products, all of which will be sent to the user's phone. Customers may walk up to the cashier, provide the mobile phone number connected to their shopkick account, and any applicable personalized discounts immediately appear on their receipt.
Unlike traditional GPS location-based services that require a shopper to "check in," and offer an accuracy radius of 100 to 1,000 yards (within a block or two), the "shopkick Signal" technology requires no consumer check in and detects that a user is truly present in the retail location. And because the detection occurs on the consumer's phone, the privacy of presence information is completely under the user's control.
Best Buy intends to run a series of promotions and offers through the stores participating in the experiment, as variables to determine how much customers value the experience.
http://socialmediatoday.com/brianrice1/167239/best-buy-launches-location-based-retail-experiment
Best Buy recently launched a location-based retail experiment, using the "shopkick" mobile application rewards system. Best Buy will examine the ways in-store shoppers value and redeem offers and rewards through their smart phones.
Under the plans, the "shopkick" system launched on August 17th in 187 Best Buy stores in the San Francisco, Los Angeles, San Jose, New York City, Chicago markets, with an additional 70 stores in Dallas, Minneapolis-St. Paul and Miami markets scheduled to go-live by Oct. 1st.
"We think consumers have more opportunities than ever to bridge their digital and physical shopping experiences, particularly through smart phones and mobile technology," said Matthew Smith, vice president, marketing services, Best Buy. "We intend to explore ways we can use the power of location-based technology to personalize a Best Buy shopping experience, from check-in to check-out, with rewards and offers delivered right on a customer's smart phone."
How the Program Works
A Best Buy customer can choose to download the free "shopkick" mobile application for their smart phone. When the "shopkick" app is open on the customer's phone, it detects the "shopkick Signal" technology installed in the participating Best Buy store as the customer walks through the door. The customer then instantly receives rewards, called "kickbucks," which can be accrued over time, then redeemed in the store or converted into Best Buy certificates through a user's shopkick account.
Additionally, Best Buy has integrated shopkick directly into its point of sale system to streamline the redemption of special in-store offers and/or added bonuses for scanning barcodes of specific products, all of which will be sent to the user's phone. Customers may walk up to the cashier, provide the mobile phone number connected to their shopkick account, and any applicable personalized discounts immediately appear on their receipt.
Unlike traditional GPS location-based services that require a shopper to "check in," and offer an accuracy radius of 100 to 1,000 yards (within a block or two), the "shopkick Signal" technology requires no consumer check in and detects that a user is truly present in the retail location. And because the detection occurs on the consumer's phone, the privacy of presence information is completely under the user's control.
Best Buy intends to run a series of promotions and offers through the stores participating in the experiment, as variables to determine how much customers value the experience.
http://socialmediatoday.com/brianrice1/167239/best-buy-launches-location-based-retail-experiment
39pc of on-the-go consumers want location-based coupons
By Peter Finocchiaro - August 23, 2010
Thirty-nine percent of on-the-go consumers are interested in receiving coupons for nearby stores through devices such as their mobile phones, according to JiWire.
As location-based services become more prevalent, consumers are growing more comfortable with exchanging their whereabouts in return for targeted advertisements and promotional offers. JiWire found that there is a significant opportunity for brands to tap into location to drive foot-traffic and sales.
"Think about the way advertisers are constantly thinking about marketing budgets, and directing resources for different portions of the purchase funnel," said David Staas, senior vice president of marketing at JiWire, San Francisco. "The top is introducing the brand, the middle is introducing specific products and services and the bottom is driving direct response from the consumers.
"What's great about the location capabilities that are now emerging – location-based advertising and location apps – is that brands can now bring location into the mix across that funnel," he said. "I can connect you to the nearest store, I can tell you about local products and services and, all the way down to the bottom of the funnel, and I can get you in the store to redeem a coupon given to you based on location.
"The opportunity for location-based targeting is becoming pervasive, and we're just at the beginning in terms of tapping into this, with the way consumer behavior has shifted over the last six months."
JiWire operates a location-based interactive media channel, enabling advertisers to identify and deliver ads to audience segments based on a person's physical location while taking the venue type and brand into account.
The company conducts quarterly Mobile Audience Insights Reports in which it analyzes activity across 300-plus WiFi enabled locations worldwide and randomly surveys consumers on its media channel.
Study results
Survey participants were asked what features they found most valuable in location-based applications.
The most common response was GPS and maps, followed by coupons and discounts and location-based business reviews, respectively.
At least 50 percent of consumers ages 18-54 expressed willingness to share their location via WiFi-enabled devices, such as their mobile phones, to receive more relevant advertising.
Consumers ages 25-34 indexed highest for interest in location-based advertising, 53 percent saying they were more interested in ads that took location into account.
Here is a graph showing answers to the question "Are you willing to share your current location to receive more relevant advertising," broken down by age:
Likewise, nearly half of consumers are more likely to respond to mobile ads that are relevant to their location.
Here is a graph that breaks down likelihood of engagement with location-based advertising by age:
Forty-seven percent of men and 40 percent of women surveyed said they were interested in location-based advertising.
In addition, 36 percent of respondents were interested in receiving location-based advertising for nearby stores, while 29 percent said they would like to receive information about promotional offers nearby through their wifi-enabled devices.
Here is a chart detailing consumers' interest in different location-based advertising tactics:
Usage of free public wi-fi via mobile phones is also increasing, despite the growing prevalence of 3G.
Fifty-seven percent of consumers use their mobile phones to access public WiFi connections, either as a primary or a secondary device, according to a JiWire report.
While the vast majority of consumers (76 percent) say their primary devices for accessing public WiFi are their laptops, 14 percent surveyed said they mainly accessed WiFi on their mobile phone, while 4 percent said they primarily used iPads.
"Growth in WiFi usage is driven by devices, particularly smartphones and emerging devices like the iPad that are both 3G and WiFi enabled," Mr. Staas said. "Particularly with some of the congestion and challenges people have with 3G, people are beginning to take advantage more of wifi.
"It used to be, 'I'll use 3G and maybe wifi when it's available,'" he said. "Now it's 'I'll use wifi, and default to 3G when that's not available.'"
Location-based opportunities
National brands are turning to location-based services to drive foot traffic to their locations with increasing frequency.
For example, apparel retailer Journeys recently launched a campaign in the location-based mobile game SVNGR that awarded coupons for the completion of certain tasks at Journeys locations (see story).
Likewise, restaurant chain Chilis awarded coupons to customers who checked-in to its locations via Forusquare (see story).
JiWire believes promotions like this will only increase in prevalence in the next year.
"In the future, you'll find that brands will get a lot more savvy about how they localize themselves," Mr. Staas said. "The opportunity is similar to the transition over the past few years with social media becoming very prevalent.
"We're entering the era of local media," he said. "If I had to socialize myself before, in the same way, how do I localize myself now?
"That's the transition we'll see over the next 12 months."
http://www.mobilecommercedaily.com/39pc-of-on-the-go-consumers-want-location-based-coupons-study/
Thirty-nine percent of on-the-go consumers are interested in receiving coupons for nearby stores through devices such as their mobile phones, according to JiWire.
As location-based services become more prevalent, consumers are growing more comfortable with exchanging their whereabouts in return for targeted advertisements and promotional offers. JiWire found that there is a significant opportunity for brands to tap into location to drive foot-traffic and sales.
"Think about the way advertisers are constantly thinking about marketing budgets, and directing resources for different portions of the purchase funnel," said David Staas, senior vice president of marketing at JiWire, San Francisco. "The top is introducing the brand, the middle is introducing specific products and services and the bottom is driving direct response from the consumers.
"What's great about the location capabilities that are now emerging – location-based advertising and location apps – is that brands can now bring location into the mix across that funnel," he said. "I can connect you to the nearest store, I can tell you about local products and services and, all the way down to the bottom of the funnel, and I can get you in the store to redeem a coupon given to you based on location.
"The opportunity for location-based targeting is becoming pervasive, and we're just at the beginning in terms of tapping into this, with the way consumer behavior has shifted over the last six months."
JiWire operates a location-based interactive media channel, enabling advertisers to identify and deliver ads to audience segments based on a person's physical location while taking the venue type and brand into account.
The company conducts quarterly Mobile Audience Insights Reports in which it analyzes activity across 300-plus WiFi enabled locations worldwide and randomly surveys consumers on its media channel.
Study results
Survey participants were asked what features they found most valuable in location-based applications.
The most common response was GPS and maps, followed by coupons and discounts and location-based business reviews, respectively.
At least 50 percent of consumers ages 18-54 expressed willingness to share their location via WiFi-enabled devices, such as their mobile phones, to receive more relevant advertising.
Consumers ages 25-34 indexed highest for interest in location-based advertising, 53 percent saying they were more interested in ads that took location into account.
Here is a graph showing answers to the question "Are you willing to share your current location to receive more relevant advertising," broken down by age:
Likewise, nearly half of consumers are more likely to respond to mobile ads that are relevant to their location.
Here is a graph that breaks down likelihood of engagement with location-based advertising by age:
Forty-seven percent of men and 40 percent of women surveyed said they were interested in location-based advertising.
In addition, 36 percent of respondents were interested in receiving location-based advertising for nearby stores, while 29 percent said they would like to receive information about promotional offers nearby through their wifi-enabled devices.
Here is a chart detailing consumers' interest in different location-based advertising tactics:
Usage of free public wi-fi via mobile phones is also increasing, despite the growing prevalence of 3G.
Fifty-seven percent of consumers use their mobile phones to access public WiFi connections, either as a primary or a secondary device, according to a JiWire report.
While the vast majority of consumers (76 percent) say their primary devices for accessing public WiFi are their laptops, 14 percent surveyed said they mainly accessed WiFi on their mobile phone, while 4 percent said they primarily used iPads.
"Growth in WiFi usage is driven by devices, particularly smartphones and emerging devices like the iPad that are both 3G and WiFi enabled," Mr. Staas said. "Particularly with some of the congestion and challenges people have with 3G, people are beginning to take advantage more of wifi.
"It used to be, 'I'll use 3G and maybe wifi when it's available,'" he said. "Now it's 'I'll use wifi, and default to 3G when that's not available.'"
Location-based opportunities
National brands are turning to location-based services to drive foot traffic to their locations with increasing frequency.
For example, apparel retailer Journeys recently launched a campaign in the location-based mobile game SVNGR that awarded coupons for the completion of certain tasks at Journeys locations (see story).
Likewise, restaurant chain Chilis awarded coupons to customers who checked-in to its locations via Forusquare (see story).
JiWire believes promotions like this will only increase in prevalence in the next year.
"In the future, you'll find that brands will get a lot more savvy about how they localize themselves," Mr. Staas said. "The opportunity is similar to the transition over the past few years with social media becoming very prevalent.
"We're entering the era of local media," he said. "If I had to socialize myself before, in the same way, how do I localize myself now?
"That's the transition we'll see over the next 12 months."
http://www.mobilecommercedaily.com/39pc-of-on-the-go-consumers-want-location-based-coupons-study/
domingo, 22 de agosto de 2010
How to Write Compelling Blog Posts
August 21, 2010 by Debra Murphy
Now that your content strategy for your small business is in place, it's time to begin writing that great content to attract attention and develop your expert reputation.
Develop a List of Post Topics
It's important to have a list of 50 to 100 blog post topics before you start to post. What often happens is that new bloggers get excited about blogging, write a few posts and then stop. They've run out of ideas.
To avoid that pattern, make a list of topics in your niche that you could write about. Get ideas by searching the web and reading other blogs. I have a blog post draft that is my running list. When I need a post, I can select one off the list if I don't have something else in mind.
Craft Post Titles that Get Attention
Your title will determine whether anyone will read the post especially if your subscribers have their RSS reader set up in list mode. Read How to Write Magnetic Headlines by Copyblogger, a compendium of 11 blog posts that provides templates and great information on the topic. If you learn how to get your reader's attention quickly, you stand a fighting chance of keeping their attention a little bit longer. And yes, keywords do matter in your post titles.
Write for Scanning, not Reading
Most people now scan content looking for words and phrases that catch their attention rather than read the copy word for word. Write your posts using formatting techniques to make it easy to get the context without having to read every word.
•Use headlines and bullets to break up your content for easier scanning;
•Emphasize words and phrases using bold, underline, italics or color to catch the eye;
•Insert images to reinforce your message;
•Use video to take a break from text;
•Write in short paragraphs to make the content easier to digest;
•Highlight important messages using shading or the blockquote feature of WordPress;
•Use expanded line-spacing and a medium to large font to help the eye consume the information quickly.
Use a Casual and Friendly Tone
Write as if you are talking with your audience face to face, not as if you are writing your doctoral thesis. Use simple words and phrases to get your point across. Make your topic easy to understand and your reader will appreciate the information.
Link Out to Relevant Content
A link to a great blog with a post that complements yours adds to your credibility because it gives readers a broader perspective. When you share and link to others, you are seen as a hub of your network.
Eliminate Unnecessary Words
Once you write your post, save the draft and come back later to proof read. Eliminate "filler" words that take up space but don't really add any value. By removing unnecessary words, you reduce the information people have to consume. And while you are proofing, check your spelling and grammar as well. Typos and bad grammar distract the reader from the message you are trying to send.
Stay on Topic
An occasional off-topic post is fine, but the majority of your posts should be relevant to your subscribers. To be seen as an expert, you need to focus on your discipline and continually put out great content.
Being able to write great blog posts time after time is not easy. For some of us, coming up with the topic, researching and writing the post, adding images and reviewing the final piece is a project that takes hours, and maybe a couple of days. If you want to be known as an expert in your field, posting regularly with quality content is necessary and worth the effort.
Now go create your list of topics, write your "magnetic headlines" and start blogging to create visibility for your business and achieve a return on your writing investment.
http://socialmediatoday.com/debramurphy/166177/how-write-compelling-blog-posts
Now that your content strategy for your small business is in place, it's time to begin writing that great content to attract attention and develop your expert reputation.
Develop a List of Post Topics
It's important to have a list of 50 to 100 blog post topics before you start to post. What often happens is that new bloggers get excited about blogging, write a few posts and then stop. They've run out of ideas.
To avoid that pattern, make a list of topics in your niche that you could write about. Get ideas by searching the web and reading other blogs. I have a blog post draft that is my running list. When I need a post, I can select one off the list if I don't have something else in mind.
Craft Post Titles that Get Attention
Your title will determine whether anyone will read the post especially if your subscribers have their RSS reader set up in list mode. Read How to Write Magnetic Headlines by Copyblogger, a compendium of 11 blog posts that provides templates and great information on the topic. If you learn how to get your reader's attention quickly, you stand a fighting chance of keeping their attention a little bit longer. And yes, keywords do matter in your post titles.
Write for Scanning, not Reading
Most people now scan content looking for words and phrases that catch their attention rather than read the copy word for word. Write your posts using formatting techniques to make it easy to get the context without having to read every word.
•Use headlines and bullets to break up your content for easier scanning;
•Emphasize words and phrases using bold, underline, italics or color to catch the eye;
•Insert images to reinforce your message;
•Use video to take a break from text;
•Write in short paragraphs to make the content easier to digest;
•Highlight important messages using shading or the blockquote feature of WordPress;
•Use expanded line-spacing and a medium to large font to help the eye consume the information quickly.
Use a Casual and Friendly Tone
Write as if you are talking with your audience face to face, not as if you are writing your doctoral thesis. Use simple words and phrases to get your point across. Make your topic easy to understand and your reader will appreciate the information.
Link Out to Relevant Content
A link to a great blog with a post that complements yours adds to your credibility because it gives readers a broader perspective. When you share and link to others, you are seen as a hub of your network.
Eliminate Unnecessary Words
Once you write your post, save the draft and come back later to proof read. Eliminate "filler" words that take up space but don't really add any value. By removing unnecessary words, you reduce the information people have to consume. And while you are proofing, check your spelling and grammar as well. Typos and bad grammar distract the reader from the message you are trying to send.
Stay on Topic
An occasional off-topic post is fine, but the majority of your posts should be relevant to your subscribers. To be seen as an expert, you need to focus on your discipline and continually put out great content.
Being able to write great blog posts time after time is not easy. For some of us, coming up with the topic, researching and writing the post, adding images and reviewing the final piece is a project that takes hours, and maybe a couple of days. If you want to be known as an expert in your field, posting regularly with quality content is necessary and worth the effort.
Now go create your list of topics, write your "magnetic headlines" and start blogging to create visibility for your business and achieve a return on your writing investment.
http://socialmediatoday.com/debramurphy/166177/how-write-compelling-blog-posts
sábado, 21 de agosto de 2010
5 Huge Trends in Social Media Right Now
Jennifer Van Grove
What's the first thing young women do when they wake up? Check Facebook. How do enterprise employees pass the time at work? With social media. With so many studies highlighting ever-accelerating social media usage rates, the conclusion is obvious — social media is everywhere.
What follows are five of the hottest social media trends right now. Each are influencing our social, online and mobile behaviors in significant ways.
Entertainment checkin services are changing the way we watch television. Mobile loyalty applications are helping us connect the dots between our real-world shopping behaviors and digital rewards. A new breed of Q&A services are changing the way we search. Barcode scanning applications are making products social, and deal-of-the-day sites are giving us ways to save by recruiting our friends to the party.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1. Social Scanning
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Smartphone owners have the world at their fingertips. As grandiose as that may sound, advances in mobile barcode scanning technology have given rise to applications that allow for comparison shopping, QR code place checkins and ultimately a social experience around product barcodes.
What this means is that at any given moment, any smartphone owner can pull out their device, fire up a barcode scanning application, scan a code and complete activities or gain access to a wealth of immediately relevant information. Really, what we're seeing is the convergence of social media and barcode scanning to create "social scanning."
The consumer's scanning behavior is so significant that location-sharing checkin services such as SCVNGR are giving away QR code decals to retailers free of charge. Even Google() is sending their own QR code decals out to small businesses with popular Place Pages. What makes the scan so significant? It is a tangible connection between the physical and digital world. For Google, SCVNGR, and the businesses they serve, it's about access to measurable offline behavior.
These scans aren't inherently social in nature, but because they can double as verifiable place checkins, they can also possess the social properties of a checkin: location-sharing with friends on the same service or via social network distribution.
Services such as Stickybits and Bakodo are taking the social scanning experience beyond the checkin and creating product-driven communities around brands and items via barcodes.
Stickybits lets users add video, text, photos and audio to the barcodes they scan in the physical world via iPhone and Andriod apps. It's a clever way to use barcodes to help people tag, share and connect around items. It has also recently become more brand-friendly. "Official bits" are barcodes that brands can claim in order to highlight their own content. New social features allow for user response in the form of threaded conversations, and voting to ensure that the best content attached to the code rises to the top.
Bakodo's iPhone app began as a barcode scanner primarily for comparison shopping, but it's evolving to add social scanning functions as well. App users can scan barcodes of all varieties to review items and check out recommendations from friends. The barcode intelligence search engine combines a wealth of product-related data and socializes the process for a comprehensive product-driven experience.
As scanning becomes a more socially acceptable practice, the barcode scan will only become more social in nature. Expect future QR code marketing efforts to tap into the social opportunities, and for brands to explore ways to engage with consumers at the scan touch point.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
2. Q&A and Intelligent Information Discovery
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Web-based Q&A services have been around for years. Now the previously sleepy space is seeing renewed interest from some of the Internet's() biggest names. This second iteration of Q&A services will likely forever redefine the way we find information, because it re-imagines "search" as intelligent information discovery.
The most buzzy of the bunch right now is Quora, an intuitive and relatively straightforward Q&A site whose co-founder, Adam D'Angelo, is most known for his past role as Facebook's CTO. Quora was founded in June 2009, released into private beta in January 2010, and immediately became a hit Q&A site with the technorati crowd. In fact, web celebrities have been known to use the site to answer questions about themselves.
There are few Q&A services that have received the same type of attention as Quora, but the just-launched Facebook Questions project — which mirrors Quora in purpose and function — was released before Quora ever achieved mainstream recognition. Now the two products are essentially going head-to-head, competing for the same audience.
Facebook() has the clear edge when it comes to its built-in user base, but we've repeatedly seen bigger companies fail at side projects — just look at Google Wave() — simply because smaller startups can innovate faster and have the benefit of progressively scaling over time. Quora's opportunity lies in Facebook's somewhat bungled launch of Questions, and its smart exposure through search results.
Another notable Q&A site that contributes to the intelligent information discovery trend is Google's Aardvark().
Aardvark approaches the space with a model that helps users surface answers through friends of friends. It's an algorithmic social system that should help Google improve its search algorithms. In fact, Google should be able to use the technology to provide socially-relevant answers in search queries.
Google does have a reputation for letting purchased startups wilt after their pre-acquisition bloom, but given how closely aligned Aardvark is with Google's core search product, that likely won't be the case here.
There's also the freshly enhanced Ask.com, which is seeking to join the "people plus search results" party with its new beta Q&A offering.
Most of the key players in the space believe in the power of intelligent information discovery and define it as the intersection of people and their social circles, with scientific methodologies for surfacing the best possible answers in the shortest amount of time.
Apple-owned artificial intelligence app Siri(), however, eliminates the social and instead focuses on the science of finding the right answer.
Right now the overlap between services such as Aardvark and Siri is minimal, primarily because Siri focuses on solving immediate problems of convenience — finding food, calling a taxi or making a reservation — and not on long-term, more conceptual problems. Still, Siri is unquestionably a mobile search engine keen on intelligent information discovery, which means the technologies could become more competitive in the months ahead.
Another startup to watch for in this space is Swingly. The private beta service describes itself as a "Web-scale answer engine designed to find exact answers to factual questions." Humans are largely eliminated in Swingly's machine-driven Q&A formula, so it too challenges the notion that social integration enhances the Q&A experience.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
3. Group Buying
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Group buying is the deal-a-day group coupon trend made popular by Chicago-based startup Groupon. It's also a slight variation on flash sale sites such as Woot, an Amazon property, which originated in the early 2000s.
Groupon is the brain-child of CEO Andrew Mason, who came up with the group buying idea after founding the earlier group-focused site The Point in 2007. The Point is a campaign platform designed to support group action around causes. In 2008, nearly a year after launch, the platform was repurposed to bring Groupon's deal-of-the-day vision to life in Chicago.
Today, Groupon deals are available in cities across the world, thanks in part to the acquisition of international clone Citydeal. The company has also managed to come by a $1 billion valuation, partner with Twitter() to power @EarlyBird deals, find alternative distribution via newspapers, and start personalizing deals for subscribers in select cities. Just yesterday, Groupon introduced its first nationwide deal — a 50% discount at the Gap — to much fanfare, attracting roughly 10 Groupon purchases every 10 seconds.
Over the years, Groupon's successful model has been copied with ease. LivingSocial, 8coupons and a host of other clones have found their own way on the web. Recently, Yelp(), Zagat and OpenTable have veered away from their core product strategy to bring group buying to their respective site audiences.
The clones and copycats keep on coming, but what's also interesting is that a host of group buying enterprise-targeted software-as-a-service products are also cropping up. Each hopes to attract brand clients interested in offering their own Groupon-style deals. Wildfire has a Facebook-friendly do-it-yourself Group Deals product, Megachip Technologies just launched their own daily deal coupon software, and daily-deal site Adility launched a Groupon-like platform for small business earlier this summer.
All signs indicate that the group buying trend will only increase in popularity over time. Local businesses are finding that they can successfully attract new and repeat business by introducing customers to their services with a deeply-discounted group coupon. In fact, Groupon asserts that 97% of merchants featured on the site want to be featured again, which further demonstrates just how much demand they are dealing with.
In the future, look for more brands to create their own Groupon-style deals and for Groupon and its larger competitors to snatch up smaller clones in order to expand and enhance their offerings. Also watch for checkin and location-based services to intersect with group buying to create services similar to GroupTabs. The notion of having patrons check-in in masses to unlock deals is extremely business-friendly.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
4. Mobile Meets Loyalty
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
As consumers purchase more and more smartphones and phone technology heads in the direction of the "super," it's only a matter of time before old-fashioned loyalty, rewards and club card programs head in the mobile direction. Two applications — Key Ring and CardStar() give us a preview of what's to come.
Both applications are designed to eliminate plastic loyalty card buildup with a single digital repository. The apps leverage barcode scanning technology so users can save gym cards, grocery store cards, drug store cards and the like, right to their phone.
This trend is just beginning to take shape as smartphones become more commonplace, scanners become more sophisticated and retailers become digitally savvy. In the future, we can expect integration with merchant loyalty programs, as well as integration with checkin services like Foursquare(). The latter also demonstrates the inevitable convergence of social media with traditional loyalty programs, which we're already seeing from Tasti-d-Lite's innovative approach to automatic, POS-integrated social media rewards system.
Shopkick's retailer-friendly automatic checkin service is currently being tested by Best Buy, Macy's, Sports Authority and Simon Property Group. This early interest in Shopkick points to retailer interest in verifiable, checkin-driven rewards. There's also private beta mobile app Pushpins, which seeks to leverage QR codes to further enmesh the in-store shopping experience with digital retailer rewards, the likes of which resemble the sophistication of SCVNGR's recently released rewards program.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
5. Checking-In to Entertainment
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
What are you watching on television right now? Whether it's the latest episode of Mad Men or the next installment of a reality dating show, chances are that you're sharing the entertainment experience either through face-to-face interaction with friends and family, or by posting outrageous and shocking moments to your favorite social media channels.
Consuming most entertainment media is an inherently social experience. A crop of services have popped up in recent months to refine that social experience through entertainment checkins — the act of checking into the television show or movie that you're watching right now.
We've already explored why entertainment will drive the next checkin craze, and three of the emerging startups — Philo, Miso, and GetGlue — propelling this trend toward mainstream audiences.
There are a few other services in the same mix that are certainly worth watching. CBS recently released their entertainment checkin service, TV.com Relay. It's a browser-based mobile app for most smartphones that allows users to checkin to live television shows and follows the same TV guide-style format that Philo employs.
The CBS offering is nice to look at, and offers content-driven badges like the other guys. It also excels in the real-time comment department. In talking with the Senior Vice President and General Manager of CBS Interactive's Entertainment and Lifestyle Division, Anthony Soohoo, it became clear that the vision behind TV.com Relay extends far beyond entertainment checkins. Soohoo also iterated that the application, which is just a few weeks old, already has 100,000 users thanks to TV.com's built-in audience.
Tunerfish is another mobile and web television checkin service. It's backed by Comcast and boasts partnerships with networks including HBO, Showtime and NBC. App users answer the question, "What are you watching?" by typing in the name of a show or movie and clicking the "I'm watching" button. The service also provides behavioral incentives in the form of awards, and has been actively working to bring network-sponsored, show-themed awards into the mix.
There's also Clicker Social, a relatively new addition from Clicker() that turns the television search engine and web TV guide into an entertainment checkin service as well.
The re-purposed entertainment version of the checkin is a smart way to link entertainment consumers with content they love, enhance the social experiences around television, and potentially inspire new audiences to tune into trending or friend-approved television shows. The enormous amount of competition in such a brand new space means that things are just starting to get interesting.
All of the services need to evolve to attach real value to the checkin. They each recognize that awards, badges and stickers are easy ways to encourage new user participation, but these existing game mechanics merely scratch the surface in terms of user engagement. In the coming months, look for constant iteration on this front. For example, we can expect Miso to introduce even more show-specific content exclusives via its show fan clubs and for GetGlue to experiment with offering discounts and coupons that users can redeem for their Glue points.
http://mashable.com/2010/08/20/top-5-social-media-trends
What's the first thing young women do when they wake up? Check Facebook. How do enterprise employees pass the time at work? With social media. With so many studies highlighting ever-accelerating social media usage rates, the conclusion is obvious — social media is everywhere.
What follows are five of the hottest social media trends right now. Each are influencing our social, online and mobile behaviors in significant ways.
Entertainment checkin services are changing the way we watch television. Mobile loyalty applications are helping us connect the dots between our real-world shopping behaviors and digital rewards. A new breed of Q&A services are changing the way we search. Barcode scanning applications are making products social, and deal-of-the-day sites are giving us ways to save by recruiting our friends to the party.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1. Social Scanning
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Smartphone owners have the world at their fingertips. As grandiose as that may sound, advances in mobile barcode scanning technology have given rise to applications that allow for comparison shopping, QR code place checkins and ultimately a social experience around product barcodes.
What this means is that at any given moment, any smartphone owner can pull out their device, fire up a barcode scanning application, scan a code and complete activities or gain access to a wealth of immediately relevant information. Really, what we're seeing is the convergence of social media and barcode scanning to create "social scanning."
The consumer's scanning behavior is so significant that location-sharing checkin services such as SCVNGR are giving away QR code decals to retailers free of charge. Even Google() is sending their own QR code decals out to small businesses with popular Place Pages. What makes the scan so significant? It is a tangible connection between the physical and digital world. For Google, SCVNGR, and the businesses they serve, it's about access to measurable offline behavior.
These scans aren't inherently social in nature, but because they can double as verifiable place checkins, they can also possess the social properties of a checkin: location-sharing with friends on the same service or via social network distribution.
Services such as Stickybits and Bakodo are taking the social scanning experience beyond the checkin and creating product-driven communities around brands and items via barcodes.
Stickybits lets users add video, text, photos and audio to the barcodes they scan in the physical world via iPhone and Andriod apps. It's a clever way to use barcodes to help people tag, share and connect around items. It has also recently become more brand-friendly. "Official bits" are barcodes that brands can claim in order to highlight their own content. New social features allow for user response in the form of threaded conversations, and voting to ensure that the best content attached to the code rises to the top.
Bakodo's iPhone app began as a barcode scanner primarily for comparison shopping, but it's evolving to add social scanning functions as well. App users can scan barcodes of all varieties to review items and check out recommendations from friends. The barcode intelligence search engine combines a wealth of product-related data and socializes the process for a comprehensive product-driven experience.
As scanning becomes a more socially acceptable practice, the barcode scan will only become more social in nature. Expect future QR code marketing efforts to tap into the social opportunities, and for brands to explore ways to engage with consumers at the scan touch point.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
2. Q&A and Intelligent Information Discovery
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Web-based Q&A services have been around for years. Now the previously sleepy space is seeing renewed interest from some of the Internet's() biggest names. This second iteration of Q&A services will likely forever redefine the way we find information, because it re-imagines "search" as intelligent information discovery.
The most buzzy of the bunch right now is Quora, an intuitive and relatively straightforward Q&A site whose co-founder, Adam D'Angelo, is most known for his past role as Facebook's CTO. Quora was founded in June 2009, released into private beta in January 2010, and immediately became a hit Q&A site with the technorati crowd. In fact, web celebrities have been known to use the site to answer questions about themselves.
There are few Q&A services that have received the same type of attention as Quora, but the just-launched Facebook Questions project — which mirrors Quora in purpose and function — was released before Quora ever achieved mainstream recognition. Now the two products are essentially going head-to-head, competing for the same audience.
Facebook() has the clear edge when it comes to its built-in user base, but we've repeatedly seen bigger companies fail at side projects — just look at Google Wave() — simply because smaller startups can innovate faster and have the benefit of progressively scaling over time. Quora's opportunity lies in Facebook's somewhat bungled launch of Questions, and its smart exposure through search results.
Another notable Q&A site that contributes to the intelligent information discovery trend is Google's Aardvark().
Aardvark approaches the space with a model that helps users surface answers through friends of friends. It's an algorithmic social system that should help Google improve its search algorithms. In fact, Google should be able to use the technology to provide socially-relevant answers in search queries.
Google does have a reputation for letting purchased startups wilt after their pre-acquisition bloom, but given how closely aligned Aardvark is with Google's core search product, that likely won't be the case here.
There's also the freshly enhanced Ask.com, which is seeking to join the "people plus search results" party with its new beta Q&A offering.
Most of the key players in the space believe in the power of intelligent information discovery and define it as the intersection of people and their social circles, with scientific methodologies for surfacing the best possible answers in the shortest amount of time.
Apple-owned artificial intelligence app Siri(), however, eliminates the social and instead focuses on the science of finding the right answer.
Right now the overlap between services such as Aardvark and Siri is minimal, primarily because Siri focuses on solving immediate problems of convenience — finding food, calling a taxi or making a reservation — and not on long-term, more conceptual problems. Still, Siri is unquestionably a mobile search engine keen on intelligent information discovery, which means the technologies could become more competitive in the months ahead.
Another startup to watch for in this space is Swingly. The private beta service describes itself as a "Web-scale answer engine designed to find exact answers to factual questions." Humans are largely eliminated in Swingly's machine-driven Q&A formula, so it too challenges the notion that social integration enhances the Q&A experience.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
3. Group Buying
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Group buying is the deal-a-day group coupon trend made popular by Chicago-based startup Groupon. It's also a slight variation on flash sale sites such as Woot, an Amazon property, which originated in the early 2000s.
Groupon is the brain-child of CEO Andrew Mason, who came up with the group buying idea after founding the earlier group-focused site The Point in 2007. The Point is a campaign platform designed to support group action around causes. In 2008, nearly a year after launch, the platform was repurposed to bring Groupon's deal-of-the-day vision to life in Chicago.
Today, Groupon deals are available in cities across the world, thanks in part to the acquisition of international clone Citydeal. The company has also managed to come by a $1 billion valuation, partner with Twitter() to power @EarlyBird deals, find alternative distribution via newspapers, and start personalizing deals for subscribers in select cities. Just yesterday, Groupon introduced its first nationwide deal — a 50% discount at the Gap — to much fanfare, attracting roughly 10 Groupon purchases every 10 seconds.
Over the years, Groupon's successful model has been copied with ease. LivingSocial, 8coupons and a host of other clones have found their own way on the web. Recently, Yelp(), Zagat and OpenTable have veered away from their core product strategy to bring group buying to their respective site audiences.
The clones and copycats keep on coming, but what's also interesting is that a host of group buying enterprise-targeted software-as-a-service products are also cropping up. Each hopes to attract brand clients interested in offering their own Groupon-style deals. Wildfire has a Facebook-friendly do-it-yourself Group Deals product, Megachip Technologies just launched their own daily deal coupon software, and daily-deal site Adility launched a Groupon-like platform for small business earlier this summer.
All signs indicate that the group buying trend will only increase in popularity over time. Local businesses are finding that they can successfully attract new and repeat business by introducing customers to their services with a deeply-discounted group coupon. In fact, Groupon asserts that 97% of merchants featured on the site want to be featured again, which further demonstrates just how much demand they are dealing with.
In the future, look for more brands to create their own Groupon-style deals and for Groupon and its larger competitors to snatch up smaller clones in order to expand and enhance their offerings. Also watch for checkin and location-based services to intersect with group buying to create services similar to GroupTabs. The notion of having patrons check-in in masses to unlock deals is extremely business-friendly.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
4. Mobile Meets Loyalty
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
As consumers purchase more and more smartphones and phone technology heads in the direction of the "super," it's only a matter of time before old-fashioned loyalty, rewards and club card programs head in the mobile direction. Two applications — Key Ring and CardStar() give us a preview of what's to come.
Both applications are designed to eliminate plastic loyalty card buildup with a single digital repository. The apps leverage barcode scanning technology so users can save gym cards, grocery store cards, drug store cards and the like, right to their phone.
This trend is just beginning to take shape as smartphones become more commonplace, scanners become more sophisticated and retailers become digitally savvy. In the future, we can expect integration with merchant loyalty programs, as well as integration with checkin services like Foursquare(). The latter also demonstrates the inevitable convergence of social media with traditional loyalty programs, which we're already seeing from Tasti-d-Lite's innovative approach to automatic, POS-integrated social media rewards system.
Shopkick's retailer-friendly automatic checkin service is currently being tested by Best Buy, Macy's, Sports Authority and Simon Property Group. This early interest in Shopkick points to retailer interest in verifiable, checkin-driven rewards. There's also private beta mobile app Pushpins, which seeks to leverage QR codes to further enmesh the in-store shopping experience with digital retailer rewards, the likes of which resemble the sophistication of SCVNGR's recently released rewards program.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
5. Checking-In to Entertainment
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
What are you watching on television right now? Whether it's the latest episode of Mad Men or the next installment of a reality dating show, chances are that you're sharing the entertainment experience either through face-to-face interaction with friends and family, or by posting outrageous and shocking moments to your favorite social media channels.
Consuming most entertainment media is an inherently social experience. A crop of services have popped up in recent months to refine that social experience through entertainment checkins — the act of checking into the television show or movie that you're watching right now.
We've already explored why entertainment will drive the next checkin craze, and three of the emerging startups — Philo, Miso, and GetGlue — propelling this trend toward mainstream audiences.
There are a few other services in the same mix that are certainly worth watching. CBS recently released their entertainment checkin service, TV.com Relay. It's a browser-based mobile app for most smartphones that allows users to checkin to live television shows and follows the same TV guide-style format that Philo employs.
The CBS offering is nice to look at, and offers content-driven badges like the other guys. It also excels in the real-time comment department. In talking with the Senior Vice President and General Manager of CBS Interactive's Entertainment and Lifestyle Division, Anthony Soohoo, it became clear that the vision behind TV.com Relay extends far beyond entertainment checkins. Soohoo also iterated that the application, which is just a few weeks old, already has 100,000 users thanks to TV.com's built-in audience.
Tunerfish is another mobile and web television checkin service. It's backed by Comcast and boasts partnerships with networks including HBO, Showtime and NBC. App users answer the question, "What are you watching?" by typing in the name of a show or movie and clicking the "I'm watching" button. The service also provides behavioral incentives in the form of awards, and has been actively working to bring network-sponsored, show-themed awards into the mix.
There's also Clicker Social, a relatively new addition from Clicker() that turns the television search engine and web TV guide into an entertainment checkin service as well.
The re-purposed entertainment version of the checkin is a smart way to link entertainment consumers with content they love, enhance the social experiences around television, and potentially inspire new audiences to tune into trending or friend-approved television shows. The enormous amount of competition in such a brand new space means that things are just starting to get interesting.
All of the services need to evolve to attach real value to the checkin. They each recognize that awards, badges and stickers are easy ways to encourage new user participation, but these existing game mechanics merely scratch the surface in terms of user engagement. In the coming months, look for constant iteration on this front. For example, we can expect Miso to introduce even more show-specific content exclusives via its show fan clubs and for GetGlue to experiment with offering discounts and coupons that users can redeem for their Glue points.
http://mashable.com/2010/08/20/top-5-social-media-trends
Will Facebook Places revolutionize location-based mobile advertising?
By Dan Butcher / August 19, 2010
Facebook is upping the ante with LBS
With a half-billion users and 100 million of those mobile, Facebook will make major waves in the mobile space with its location-based Places platform—if it is able to get it right.
At last night's awkwardly timed press conference to announce the launch of Places, Facebook professed that it wants to collaborate, not compete, with other location-based mobile social networking platforms, promising to open up APIs to developers. Facebook even called executives from Foursquare, Gowalla, Booyah and Yelp on stage to talk about each platform's integration with Places.
"If Facebook goes full throttle as a location-based mobile social network and develops [brand and retailer] partnerships like Foursquare, Gowalla and shopkick have, and if they can do this correctly, which remains to be seen, the implications are huge," said Josh Martin, senior analyst of wireless media services for the global wireless practice at Strategy Analytics, Newton, MA.
"Facebook has 500 million users, and these other platforms have maybe 10 to 15 million combined," he said. "Introducing these types of location-based services to a larger audience is key, and the potential is huge, but will Facebook fall on its ear due to the privacy issue?
"Historically, Facebook has not been good at protecting privacy, and that could cause people to be fearful."
Facebook Mobile
Private Places?
Mobile social networks that leverage location such as Foursquare, Gowalla, Booyah's MyTown, BrightKite, buzzd, Loopt and MocoSpace, have courted consumers and brands with check-in features and gaming elements.
Compared to those platforms, Facebook clearly has the reach advantage, but it has been held back from ramping up location-based services due to backlash related to privacy concerns.
To address those concerns, Facebook executives offered a litany of bullet points designed to set people's minds at ease about Places:
Facebook's Android app
· The default setting shares a user's location with friends only
· Places users have full privacy control and customization
· Just as with photos, users can untag themselves from a Place
· Users can only tag their friends when they are checking in at the same Place
· Users are always notified when they are tagged
· Places users can opt out of having friends tag them
What about monetization?
Because of Facebook's impressive reach, brands and retailers will flock to its mobile properties, especially if they are able to target their mobile campaigns using location data.
Strategy Analytics' Mr. Martin said that if even 10 percent of all Facebook users — a conservative estimate — adopt location-based services in some way, shape or form, that would add up to 50 million users, which would be huge.
Tens of million of new consumers using a service such as this could multiply the location-based mobile social networking market by three times or more, according to Mr. Martin.
However, at the press conference, Mark Zuckerberg, founder/CEO of Facebook, deftly dodged a question asking him about plans to monetize Places via brand or retailer partnerships, rewards earned for checking in or advertising.
Mr. Zuckerberg said that while one could certainly imagine such things in the future, for now Facebook is focused on getting the Places user experience right.
Which, of course, left more questions than answers, and sparked speculation among marketers and analysts about the possibilities.
"One question Facebook avoided was about monetization," said Augie Ray, San Francisco-based senior analyst of social computing for interactive marketing professionals at Forrester Research Inc. "When asked how Places will make Facebook money, they instead refocused attention on the benefits to users.
"There is no question that knowing where people are and what places they visit will be valuable data for Facebook and its advertisers," he said.
"It will permit Facebook to better understand [the] individual's likes and dislikes not simply based on what buttons they click but on their actual real-world behavior - and knowing where an individual is at a given moment will permit Facebook to serve better and more relevant ads based on user location.
"To date, Facebook has not been in the mobile advertising business, but it's easy to see how Places will change that."
Boon for mobile advertising?
EMarketer estimates that advertising spending this year on Facebook will reach $835 million in the United States, up from $500 million in 2009.
Worldwide, Facebook is expected to bring in an estimated $1.28 billion in advertising revenue.
"With a quarter of its users on mobile and being the largest social network, bigger than many countries in terms of users, the impact [of Facebook adding geolocation features] is potentially significant," said Noah Elkin, senior analyst at eMarketer, New York.
"Facebook has a degree of scale and reach that no other social network can offer, and adding location features really helps to bring the advertiser closer to the consumer at the point of his or her interest, which is likely to influence purchase intent," he said. "I think that's why you see so many companies trying to wrap their heads around this location factor.
"Place has a lot of power, because it's very much in line with what the consumer is doing or what he or she is intending to do."
However, in addition to assuaging users' privacy concerns, Facebook and the marketers that run campaigns on its platforms must provide a compelling value exchange.
Why would people want to share their location unless there is a tangential benefit to them as consumers?
For some consumers, a branded badge, sticker or other virtual goods may be enough. For others, a mobile coupon or discount offer on real-world goods would be more compelling.
Whatever the incentive may be, an I'll-scratch-your-back-if-you-scratch-mine proposition is key to encouraging consumer participation in marketing campaigns, location-targeted or otherwise.
Growing ecosystem
While it is too early to evaluate how Facebook Places may affect other players such as Foursquare and Gowalla, there is no doubt that it will have a huge impact on the intersection of mobile and social, which is a burgeoning field.
Collaborating with other developers may turn out to be a deft move by Facebook.
"Facebook has felt some degree of competition from mobile social networks, but part of what gives the site its appeal is that it ties into a broader ecosystem," eMarketer's Mr. Elkin said.
"I don't see Facebook as eradicating these supposed competitors, but rather finding a way to tie them into Facebook," he said.
"Facebook sees that Foursquare and Gowalla have tapped into something that is important to consumers, and that's the motivation for Facebook to get into this game."
Others analysts agree that Facebook is correct to court developers and encourage rivals to integrate with its platform, rather than compete outright with it.
"My anticipation is that Facebook will be both competitor and partner with the existing location-based service companies," Forrester's Mr. Ray said. "I look to social gaming as the model—Facebook doesn't create social games, but they offer a platform on which social games can thrive.
"I don't think Facebook is interested in creating a true standalone geolocation service with mayors and points, but instead will weave individuals' self-reported location into the data they have," he said.
"How this data gets used—be it for new social games, for loyalty programs or for Foursquare-like mayorships—will likely depend upon how developers make innovative use of that data."
Facebook dominates the Internet experience of an entire generation of people who spend their lives interacting via the platform.
Many of these consumers do not use Foursquare or Twitter, so when Facebook adds different features, they pay attention to it.
Location will bring out different uses of Facebook, and raise the profile of mobile location-based services.
If a rising tide lifts all boats, then Facebook may provide a boost to competitors, or "frenemies," as the case may be.
"If Facebook gets location right, it will bring a bunch of new people to interact in that way and be willing to share their location," said Oren Michels, CEO of Mashery, San Francisco. "The potential for location-based advertising is obvious.
"The point of a great mobile app is to do a couple of things incredibly well and easily, so it will be interesting to see if Facebook will be able to really dive in and do geolocation really well, or if apps that make use of Facebook Connect and integrate with Facebook can provide a more compelling experience," he said.
"Facebook's open platform provides an opportunity for people to see what Facebook is doing and maybe do it a little better—smart entrepreneurs will work on a more compelling experience but still leverage the compelling experience that Facebook provides, with reach to half a billion people that are connected to each other."
Influencing purchase decisions
The real potential of location-targeted advertising for brands and retailers is influencing consumers' purchase decisions when they are out-and-about, close to various points-of-sale.
Location increases the relevance of advertising, and the more relevant an ad, the more likely it is to be effective.
"Adding location to advertising on mobile phones makes the inventory more valuable if there is a buyer," said Julie Ask, vice president and principal analyst at Forrester. "One of the challenges is that it is hard—or has been—to sell truly local inventory from local shop and salon owners.
"Events and movies tend to be local, as do restaurants," she said. "With cell phones, applications tend to have more 'curated' experiences—so, I have an OpenTable application, I have a Yelp application and I have a movie application."
Hopefully the powers-that-be at Facebook realize the ability of location-targeted advertising to impact consumers who are low in the purchase funnel.
"The real power of location is when it is coupled with intent to buy," Ms. Ask said. "If consumers are low down in the purchase funnel and close to buying, they can be directed into a store or theater to make a purchase."
http://www.mobilemarketer.com/cms/news/social-networks/7107.html
Facebook is upping the ante with LBS
With a half-billion users and 100 million of those mobile, Facebook will make major waves in the mobile space with its location-based Places platform—if it is able to get it right.
At last night's awkwardly timed press conference to announce the launch of Places, Facebook professed that it wants to collaborate, not compete, with other location-based mobile social networking platforms, promising to open up APIs to developers. Facebook even called executives from Foursquare, Gowalla, Booyah and Yelp on stage to talk about each platform's integration with Places.
"If Facebook goes full throttle as a location-based mobile social network and develops [brand and retailer] partnerships like Foursquare, Gowalla and shopkick have, and if they can do this correctly, which remains to be seen, the implications are huge," said Josh Martin, senior analyst of wireless media services for the global wireless practice at Strategy Analytics, Newton, MA.
"Facebook has 500 million users, and these other platforms have maybe 10 to 15 million combined," he said. "Introducing these types of location-based services to a larger audience is key, and the potential is huge, but will Facebook fall on its ear due to the privacy issue?
"Historically, Facebook has not been good at protecting privacy, and that could cause people to be fearful."
Facebook Mobile
Private Places?
Mobile social networks that leverage location such as Foursquare, Gowalla, Booyah's MyTown, BrightKite, buzzd, Loopt and MocoSpace, have courted consumers and brands with check-in features and gaming elements.
Compared to those platforms, Facebook clearly has the reach advantage, but it has been held back from ramping up location-based services due to backlash related to privacy concerns.
To address those concerns, Facebook executives offered a litany of bullet points designed to set people's minds at ease about Places:
Facebook's Android app
· The default setting shares a user's location with friends only
· Places users have full privacy control and customization
· Just as with photos, users can untag themselves from a Place
· Users can only tag their friends when they are checking in at the same Place
· Users are always notified when they are tagged
· Places users can opt out of having friends tag them
What about monetization?
Because of Facebook's impressive reach, brands and retailers will flock to its mobile properties, especially if they are able to target their mobile campaigns using location data.
Strategy Analytics' Mr. Martin said that if even 10 percent of all Facebook users — a conservative estimate — adopt location-based services in some way, shape or form, that would add up to 50 million users, which would be huge.
Tens of million of new consumers using a service such as this could multiply the location-based mobile social networking market by three times or more, according to Mr. Martin.
However, at the press conference, Mark Zuckerberg, founder/CEO of Facebook, deftly dodged a question asking him about plans to monetize Places via brand or retailer partnerships, rewards earned for checking in or advertising.
Mr. Zuckerberg said that while one could certainly imagine such things in the future, for now Facebook is focused on getting the Places user experience right.
Which, of course, left more questions than answers, and sparked speculation among marketers and analysts about the possibilities.
"One question Facebook avoided was about monetization," said Augie Ray, San Francisco-based senior analyst of social computing for interactive marketing professionals at Forrester Research Inc. "When asked how Places will make Facebook money, they instead refocused attention on the benefits to users.
"There is no question that knowing where people are and what places they visit will be valuable data for Facebook and its advertisers," he said.
"It will permit Facebook to better understand [the] individual's likes and dislikes not simply based on what buttons they click but on their actual real-world behavior - and knowing where an individual is at a given moment will permit Facebook to serve better and more relevant ads based on user location.
"To date, Facebook has not been in the mobile advertising business, but it's easy to see how Places will change that."
Boon for mobile advertising?
EMarketer estimates that advertising spending this year on Facebook will reach $835 million in the United States, up from $500 million in 2009.
Worldwide, Facebook is expected to bring in an estimated $1.28 billion in advertising revenue.
"With a quarter of its users on mobile and being the largest social network, bigger than many countries in terms of users, the impact [of Facebook adding geolocation features] is potentially significant," said Noah Elkin, senior analyst at eMarketer, New York.
"Facebook has a degree of scale and reach that no other social network can offer, and adding location features really helps to bring the advertiser closer to the consumer at the point of his or her interest, which is likely to influence purchase intent," he said. "I think that's why you see so many companies trying to wrap their heads around this location factor.
"Place has a lot of power, because it's very much in line with what the consumer is doing or what he or she is intending to do."
However, in addition to assuaging users' privacy concerns, Facebook and the marketers that run campaigns on its platforms must provide a compelling value exchange.
Why would people want to share their location unless there is a tangential benefit to them as consumers?
For some consumers, a branded badge, sticker or other virtual goods may be enough. For others, a mobile coupon or discount offer on real-world goods would be more compelling.
Whatever the incentive may be, an I'll-scratch-your-back-if-you-scratch-mine proposition is key to encouraging consumer participation in marketing campaigns, location-targeted or otherwise.
Growing ecosystem
While it is too early to evaluate how Facebook Places may affect other players such as Foursquare and Gowalla, there is no doubt that it will have a huge impact on the intersection of mobile and social, which is a burgeoning field.
Collaborating with other developers may turn out to be a deft move by Facebook.
"Facebook has felt some degree of competition from mobile social networks, but part of what gives the site its appeal is that it ties into a broader ecosystem," eMarketer's Mr. Elkin said.
"I don't see Facebook as eradicating these supposed competitors, but rather finding a way to tie them into Facebook," he said.
"Facebook sees that Foursquare and Gowalla have tapped into something that is important to consumers, and that's the motivation for Facebook to get into this game."
Others analysts agree that Facebook is correct to court developers and encourage rivals to integrate with its platform, rather than compete outright with it.
"My anticipation is that Facebook will be both competitor and partner with the existing location-based service companies," Forrester's Mr. Ray said. "I look to social gaming as the model—Facebook doesn't create social games, but they offer a platform on which social games can thrive.
"I don't think Facebook is interested in creating a true standalone geolocation service with mayors and points, but instead will weave individuals' self-reported location into the data they have," he said.
"How this data gets used—be it for new social games, for loyalty programs or for Foursquare-like mayorships—will likely depend upon how developers make innovative use of that data."
Facebook dominates the Internet experience of an entire generation of people who spend their lives interacting via the platform.
Many of these consumers do not use Foursquare or Twitter, so when Facebook adds different features, they pay attention to it.
Location will bring out different uses of Facebook, and raise the profile of mobile location-based services.
If a rising tide lifts all boats, then Facebook may provide a boost to competitors, or "frenemies," as the case may be.
"If Facebook gets location right, it will bring a bunch of new people to interact in that way and be willing to share their location," said Oren Michels, CEO of Mashery, San Francisco. "The potential for location-based advertising is obvious.
"The point of a great mobile app is to do a couple of things incredibly well and easily, so it will be interesting to see if Facebook will be able to really dive in and do geolocation really well, or if apps that make use of Facebook Connect and integrate with Facebook can provide a more compelling experience," he said.
"Facebook's open platform provides an opportunity for people to see what Facebook is doing and maybe do it a little better—smart entrepreneurs will work on a more compelling experience but still leverage the compelling experience that Facebook provides, with reach to half a billion people that are connected to each other."
Influencing purchase decisions
The real potential of location-targeted advertising for brands and retailers is influencing consumers' purchase decisions when they are out-and-about, close to various points-of-sale.
Location increases the relevance of advertising, and the more relevant an ad, the more likely it is to be effective.
"Adding location to advertising on mobile phones makes the inventory more valuable if there is a buyer," said Julie Ask, vice president and principal analyst at Forrester. "One of the challenges is that it is hard—or has been—to sell truly local inventory from local shop and salon owners.
"Events and movies tend to be local, as do restaurants," she said. "With cell phones, applications tend to have more 'curated' experiences—so, I have an OpenTable application, I have a Yelp application and I have a movie application."
Hopefully the powers-that-be at Facebook realize the ability of location-targeted advertising to impact consumers who are low in the purchase funnel.
"The real power of location is when it is coupled with intent to buy," Ms. Ask said. "If consumers are low down in the purchase funnel and close to buying, they can be directed into a store or theater to make a purchase."
http://www.mobilemarketer.com/cms/news/social-networks/7107.html
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