I don’t want or need an iPad.
I have a MacBook Pro that powers my need to work anywhere. It’s portable, powerful and, for the most part, works really well.
Yet, the iPad is becoming increasingly more difficult to resist. It’s not the advertising that is threatening to break me down but the people who have iPads. Their cool enthusiasm about owning an iPad is irresistible. Then, you see them flipping from application to application, and it gets even worse.
This is when the mental justification begins to happen. One part of your brains says things like “You’re a leading edge kind of guy, you should have an iPad” or “You’re a power mobile computing person, the iPad is perfect for you” or “The iPad would be the perfect companion to...
While social media attracts a lot of attention, it is still early days. Many companies aren’t even looking at social media, while many others are cautiously exploring their options.
This will probably change over the next few years as social media becomes a part of the corporate communications, marketing and sales arsenal. It will be interesting to see when that happens because social media will no longer be a novelty. Companies that have differentiated themselves by embracing social media will no stand out from the crowd.
It begs this question: what happens when everyone has embraced social media? What happens when every company has a Facebook Page, tweets, posts videos on a YouTube channel, and offers discounts to Foursquare users?
Then, what?
You can already see some marketers...
In a rare moment a few weeks ago, I watched an hour or so of TV live - that is, not recorded on our PVR. So I wasn't able to skip the commercials. It was on a Saturday morning and a number of the ads were for charitable organizations. And there were essentially two kinds of ads: those that used guilt as a theme and those that used inspiration as a theme.
The guilt ones were what you would expect from a typical charity advocating for children in the developing world - lots of emaciated children, either sitting listlessly on a stoop or poking around a contaminated pool of water or garbage site. These were the most prominent of the ads. And the message was … don't you feel guilty as you sit there on Saturday morning in your comfy home watching this - shouldn't you be spending...
Within the social media world, return on investment (better known as ROI) is a raging conversation, probably because more people are starting to take a pragmatic look at how their social media programs are performing.
One of the challenges in measuring ROI is that social media offers two kinds of metrics: hard, which includes metrics such as Web site traffic, click-throughs and sales; and soft, which takes into account a stronger brand, better customer service, and happier customers, partners and employees.
Given the focus on social media ROI, it will be interesting to see the reception for a new and innovative service from Sysomos (Note: I’m the company’s director of communications) called Audience, which measures social media ROI and provides a value to potential customers....
The Art of Marketing is heading West! Hot off the heels of their great conference in Toronto, they are taking the show to Calgary on Monday, June 10, 2010.
The line-up has changed a little. They've added Gary Vaynerchuk, author of Crush It who will be excellent, I'm sure. Also slated are Mitch Joel (hi, Mitch!), Sally Hogshead, Chip Heath and Max Lenderman - all of whom I've seen speak and enjoy very much.
But the new speaker I am most excited about, in that annoying fangirl kind of way, Sir Ken Robinson. Sir Ken! In Calgary!
Go and get your ticket now!
Need proof?
I first saw Sir Ken at TED back in 2006. Dreamy. And hilarious. He spoke again this year at TED. Still dreamy. Still hilarious. Oh, and smart too. This is the video from 2006.
Did you watch...
I haven't blogged about clients lately. Well, ok, about anything lately. But there have been a few developments on the client front that I wanted to share.
FarmCity.ca
We just launched a redesign of FarmCity.ca. FarmCity specializes in backyard and balcony organic gardening for Vancouver and the Lower Mainland. Seaton and her team will inspect your proposed garden plot or garden, help you figure out what to grow, build the necessary structures and get you started on your path to urban gardening. I'm particularly thrilled with their strawberry condos - the ability to grow strawberries in small places on a balcony: super cool!
Also, Seaton is an amazing photographer. We've got her started on Flickr, sharing photos of the fruits of her and her clients' labour....
Earlier this week, I did an interview with the CBC in Thunder Bay about a video by a local rap singer that had gone viral with more than 150,000 views. For a small city such as Thunder Bay, this was a major news story because the video went from being the toast the town to being an online phenomena in a few days.
One of the questions asked by the CBC host was how and why videos go viral. The answer is far from simple because it can be a difficult, if not impossible, to pinpoint why a video captures the imagination of people to the point where they enthusiastically share it with other people, who share it with other people, and so on.
So what does a video need to go viral?
Perhaps the most important element is it needs to be entertaining to engage people enough that they want to pass it...
Video is a powerful storytelling medium. Just ask Thomas Clifford, who has been using video for many years to tell some great stories. Many of them might have seemed dull or unclear at the outset, but video and smart storytelling can work real magic.
We’re seeing quite a few startups use video prominently on their website as a quick and very helpful way to show off their products. This makes a lot of sense; not because what they’ve built is necessarily complicated or difficult to understand, but because visuals are almost always more compelling and interesting than text. I can read five bullet points that speak to your value proposition, or you can just show me.
Short videos also force you to think creatively and distill your value proposition down to its very essence. You...
I’m a big believer in content marketing. I’ve produced content to help market and promote my own business, and I’ve seen it used successfully by others as well. One of the biggest challenges with content marketing is that the barrier to produce content online is so low, everyone can do it. As a result, the quality of content online has dropped significantly. Noise goes up, signal goes down. Such is life. As a result, the bar is continuously being raised on the expectations that your audience has in terms of content quality and delivery.
Here’s a free e-book that can help — ClickPredictions: Key Content Marketing Trends and Predictions for 2010 (PDF download)
The e-book was produced by ClickDocuments. It’s a good refresher on the key content and social...
The Art of Marketing - now, this is a conference I'd consider heading into the Big Smoke to attend. I've seen most of these speakers before (all except Dan Heath and James Othmer), and they are all amazing and inspirational and smart.
Here's the line-up and what they're speaking on:
Seth Godin on Leadership & Creativity
Dan Heath on Strategy & Communications
Mitch Joel on Digital Marketing & Social Media (@MitchJoel)
Max Lenderman on Branding & Experiential Marketing (@MaxLenderman)
Sally Hogshead on Persuasion & Influence (@SallyHogshead)
James Othmer on Advertising & Branding (@JamesPOthmer)
Sally Hogshead is one of my favourite speakers. I saw her at a CMA conference a few years ago. Her book Radical Careering had just been released...
Earlier this week, I did a post on the Sysomos blog about how community managers will become increasingly important in 2010 as social media is embraced by more companies. The reception was so positive I wanted to share it with MET readers:
Within the social media ecosystem, the unheralded stars are the community managers who toil away behind the scenes.
These are the people who spend countless hours on the Web (seemingly 24/7), engaging with customers, writing blog posts and leaving comments, tweeting, updating Facebook, uploading videos, and answering questions from the media/bloggers, customers, partners and investors.
While the “A-List” social media bloggers capture the spotlight, community managers are walking the walk rather than just talking the talk. They’re in the trenches...
For all the talk about social media marketing (and there’s been a lot of it this year), the biggest news of the year may be Pepsi’s decision to abandon the Super Bowl. Instead, Pepsi will be embracing a $20-million social media campaign called The Pepsi Refresh Project in which consumers will be encouraged to suggest projects to make a better world.
The significance of Pepsi’s decision should not be overlooked given it has spent $142-million over the past 10 years on Super Bowl ads, which costs millions of dollars to make and broadcast. The fact Pepsi has pulled out completely is stunning – perhaps as stunning as Apple’s decision to do a Super Bowl ad in 1984.
It’s also a tremendous boost for social media. To be frank, 2009 has been the year of talk in...
My eye was caught by Scoble’s recent
2010: the year SEO isn’t important anymore?
I thought most of what he said made sense, but the fact is that they’re still
out there and what they’re selling is mostly bogus.
I was impressed enough with Scoble’s argument that I watched the video,
in which a couple of SEO types tried to talk about the future. It was
completely disconnected, pretty well the same-old same-old, near as I can
tell. I think that for most people who are trying to get a Web presence on
the air, SEO is part of the problem, not part of the solution.
In fact, up at the top of the article, I said “bogus” and, rather than
defend that position, I’ll refer you to Derek Powazek’s
Spammers, Evildoers, and
Opportunists. He oversimplifies Google’s approach...
I've been wanting to start a workshop series on digital marketing and social media for a while. Well, finally, the day has come! Woot! So I'm thrilled to announce that I'm holding the first one on January 22, 2010. And I've even more excited that I've been able to partner with the lovely and talented Annemarie Tempelman-Kluit, founder and editor-in-chief of yoyomama.ca and yoyobelly.ca. Annemarie has a wealth of experience as an entrepreneur as well as in email marketing and web strategy - essential components to any social media program.
We've designed Social Media Springboard to be a little different than a typical seminar.
First, we're limiting the numbers - only 10-14 participants in each session.
Second, since this workshop is all about sharing ideas to...
It goes without saying that things have been pretty grim economically over the past year – millions of people have been laid off or restructured, while consumer spending has plummeted as people decide to hold off purchases after a decade-long shopping spree.
But there appears to be a few signs the recession is starting to disappear.
One indication is the re-emergence of demo opportunities. Over the past few months, I’ve been lucky to have been given the opportunity to evaluate a lot of new products and services. Some of this activity may have to do with the fact companies and PR firms are paying more attention to bloggers, but I think it also has to do with marketing budgets being expanded after nearly disappearing for the past year.
Another sign is the return of the holiday...
I’m a big believer in inbound marketing. I’ve seen it work, and I’ve leveraged many of its tactics for myself, my business, and for others. I believe it will (and has already started to) fundamentally change how companies market to consumers.
Dharmesh Shah and Brian Halligan are smart guys. They’re the founders of Hubspot, and masters of inbound marketing. And they’re the authors of Inbound Marketing: Get Found Using Google, Social Media, and Blogs (The New Rules of Social Media). I read the book in an afternoon (it’s an easy read with great cartoons) and wanted to share 10 key insights gained from it.
The book is a worthwhile read for anyone in marketing and social media. Even if you consider yourself experienced with social media, you’ll get...
One of the more interesting things to happen since the launch of ME Consulting in January has been the relatively modest amount of social media-related business. For the most part, my clients have been focused on more basic marketing and communications projects: branding and message, refreshed Web site content, new marketing collateral, and the creation of better stories that can be used to pitch the media and bloggers.
This is not to suggest everyone has been ignoring social media because it has been part of the overall marketing mix, but it hasn’t been the biggest strategic priority.
In the last few weeks, however, I have seen a surge in interest about social media with a steady number of companies looking for meet to talk about what they should be doing. The theme has changed to...
With less than 100 days to go til the Olympics officially kick off here in Vancouver and the Torch Relay finally underway, there have been a lot of Olympic-themed campaigns that have started around the Internets and beyond.
The Canadian Olympic Committee launched their "Paint the Town Red" program. If you need ideas on how you, your organization or your town can Paint the Town Red, you can download their idea booklet (pdf). Some of my favourite suggestions (tongue only occasionally in cheek here):
Hang strings of red Christmas lights from your porch or balcony (note to self: stock up on red lights - these will go fast at Canadian Tire, I bet)
Have a ‘wear red to work’ day, with roving facepainters (the idea of roving facepainters scares me - yet, it's the kind of...
Say that 5 times fast, will ya?
The truth is, I don’t have 650 reasons to do anything, but having spent the last few days doing some research into digital agencies, social media agencies, web companies, PR firms, etc. (all service companies) it’s somewhat shocking and hugely disappointing to see the amount of wasted bits and bytes used on superfluous nonsense.
I’m not going to name companies here, that’s not the point. It’s a general frustration with copywriting on the Web. Most of the companies I took a look at had very nice sites (some were very sparse/simple, some more complex), and most of them had very rich portfolios of fancy design, development and marketing work (although they were almost universally lacking any real case studies with metrics and...
Social media is not a silver bullet or panacea that will magically provide the answers to all of your personal or business needs. Rather, social media can be a valuable and interesting way to augment, enhance and jump-start your communications, marketing and sales efforts. By effectively using some of the tools (blogs, Twitter, Facebook, etc.), social media can bolster your strategic and tactical arsenal.
Here’s a quick summary of nine things that social media can do:
1. Improve customer service – It wasn’t that long ago that customer service involved calling a 1-800 number (ultra-frustrating) or perhaps writing a letter, which, if you were really lucky, generated a response. Today, customers can talk publicly about a company’s product and service. And if a company...
Turns out, people like surprises. Who’d a thunk it?
Actually, some surprises may anger, disgust, scare or shock people — but that’s a good thing!
And most important for businesses out there: People will pay for surprise.
Andy Nulman is Mr. Surprise. Go read his blog on surprise. But come back, ok? Better yet, stick around here for awhile, but bookmark his blog link in a separate browser window or tab for later enjoyment.
Beyond being a flamboyant, extravagant genius, Mr. Nulman is also an author. His book is Pow! Right Between the Eyes: Profiting from the Power of Surprise. Go buy it. You won’t regret it. In fact, John Cleese (who wrote one of the book’s forewords) spells it out for you, “But this book. Or you will die.”
People buy a lot of...
There’s an element of risk when you do something new – be it start a business, launch a blog, go back to school, buy a house…or create a new conference.
This is probably why the mesh gang spent a long time thinking about whether we wanted to create a marketing conference. In theory, it made a lot of sense because people attending mesh made it clear they wanted an event that would give them insight into the tactics and tools to do marketing online.
In practice, however, running a conference is a lot of work, especially for people like us who have full-time jobs and family commitments. At the end of the day, we decided a marketing conference was a natural extension of mesh, which we started in 2006 simply because we wanted to have a place to talk about all the exciting...
Do you remember those mini-essays that teachers made you write on the first day of school in which you had to write about what you did for my summer vacation? This blog post is sort of like that but rather than going away to summer camp, I spent a good part of the summer organizing the first meshmarketing conference.
While co-organizing the mesh conference with the mesh gang has given me some valuable insight into what goes on, trying to put together a conference over the summer is a different kind of proposition.
For one, many people take these things called vacations, often for several weeks in which they sometimes let their in-boxes collect dust. As well, people get into summer mode, so the last thing they want to think about is stuff happening after summer is over.
Still, these are...
Before you spend time & money increasing leads, you should look at improving and optimizing conversions.
In order to optimize conversion you do need some number of leads, but the number doesn’t have to be huge. As soon as you start to see consistent metrics on conversion (and you need to make sure you define conversion clearly too), you can look at optimization.
It’s a lot cheaper and less risky to work on improving conversions than it is to generate more leads.
Fairly simple A/B testing, landing pages and basic metrics analysis can give you the tools needed to optimize conversions. None of this has to be expensive or overly complicated, but it does require a lot of attention to detail, focus and commitment.
As soon as conversion increases – even a small amount...
For Twitter, advertising is low-hanging fruit to generate revenue. But Twitter continue to insist it’s not something being actively considered. So while Twitter makes up its mind about whether or not to place ads into Twitter streams, there’s a growing number of companies doing just that.
A new player is Toronto-based Assetize, which emerged from Extreme Venture Partners‘ Extreme University, a 12-week program done last summer to nurture and incubate start-ups. Assetize bills itself as a smarter way for advertisers to tap into Twitter because its technology does a much better job of connecting ads to relevant content than players such as Magpie.
Assetize offers a self-service platform for advertisers and Twitter users looking to have ads within their Twitter stream. Using...
A few months ago, the mesh team — in other words, Rob Hyndman, Mark Evans, Stuart MacDonald, Mike McDerment and I — announced a new event we’re calling meshmarketing, a one-day series of keynotes, presentations and in-depth workshops about online and digital marketing ideas and tactics. During the summer months, we’ve been lining up some world-class speakers and marketing experts for the event, and we wanted to get as many details about it out there as possible, because the event is coming soon (October 22 at CIRCA) and tickets are relatively limited.
In a nutshell, meshmarketing is focused on insights, tools and tactics that are designed to help you get more out of the growing online marketing and advertising markets. It’s designed to provide you with ideas...
One of the lessons we learned from the last mesh conference is how many people within the public relations, advertising marketing sectors want and need more insight into the right approach, techniques and tools to attack the fast-growing online advertising/marketing marketplace.
As a result, we decided to create meshmarketing, a one-day event on Oct. 22 in downtown Toronto that will, hopefully, provide attendees with a fresh perspective on what’s happening and what they need to do, and how to do it.
We’ve got a great keynote speaker, Hugh MacLeod, two great food-for-thought panels, and eight hands-on, interactive workshops. It should make for a day full of insight, information, perspective and learning.
For more details, check out the mesh blog, as well as the meshmarketing...
Disclosure: Petro-Canada is a client of mine.
When you have a corporate blog (or any blog, really), you want to find ways to regularly engage new readers. And it is highly likely that some of those readers will be offline. Consequently, I was quite pleased to see this recent development from the downstream corporate communications team over at Petro-Canada (now Suncor). Petro-Canada used to have a decal on their gas station pumps very similar to this pie chart.
It certainly gives you the factual breakdown, but it certainly didn't encourage a conversation. However, starting this summer, Petro-Canada changed the sticker quite radically.
Now they are using a decal shaped like a gas pump with a link to their blog PumpTalk.ca and an invitation to customers to join the...
A week or so ago, I wrote a post looking at whether the shine was going to come off Twitter soon, and how it appeared that Twitter fatigue was creeping into the scene.
Recently, there have been some articles and blog posts about how anything and everything Twitter is over-reported – another sign that people are tiring of the Twitter story, if not Twitter itself.
Robert Scoble steps into the fray with a solid post about how he believes Twitter is under-hyped, and that it’s just starting to to scratch its potential as a valuable communications, business and marketing tool.
“I’m now convinced that Twitter has locked up a whole raft of businesses and that Twitter is actually worth five to 10 billion dollars,” he says.
Personally, I don’t think Twitter is...
I've been quite remiss in keeping up with my book reviews. Lots of wonderful authors and publishers have sent me books that I HAVE actually read. But then I haven't gotten around to writing the review. Bad Kate.So ... without further ado, here are some that I've read through in the first half of the summer (shh - Sept is NOT 6 days away):YouTube: An Insider's Guide to Climbing the Charts by Alan Lastufka and Michael W. Dean If you're determined to become an online video star, or, want to have your marketing video seen by more than your mom and your boss, then you should definitely check out this book. Authors Lastufka and Dean cover the gamut from shooting video for online distribution to sharing it on YouTube to getting involved with the community. Now that YouTube is...