Eco-Safe - Nice Idea - Needs Much Better Execution

Just saw Eco-Safe installed on Chris Brogan’s blog. It looked super cool and was excited to try it so I emailed a file to my self.

I was massively disappointed by what followed…

A giant and unnecessary pdf file weighing in at a hefty half a megabyte arrived in my mailbox. :(

Giant pdf files are anything but eco-friendly!

Sometimes those massive pdf’s are jammed into archaic email servers with small file size limits like the joke of the size of my chicagogsb.edu email address (the quota hasn’t ben raised from 20MB in it’s history and creates networking bottlenecks). Secondarily, large files are not eco-friendly in general as they take up larger amounts of hard drive space which drives demand for more hard drive space - this is hardly eco-friendly. This isn’t even mentioning RAM implications.

I would hope that Eco-Safe would chose to immediately work to limit the file size of it’s output or better yet eliminate pdf’s altogether…

Net.Finance 2008: Jon Kaplan of Google - YouTube and Financial Services

Before I post about Jon’s interesting session, I’ll note that it’s important that marketers considering using this channel read my post on YouTube Video Optimization as there are many highly unique search engine optimization techniques that can improve your success in this area.

Jon Kaplan’s talk starts here: Youtube was founded at a dinner party in 2005. There was no easy way to share video files.

Online video viewing in the mainstream

Americans stream of 10 billion online views monthly…

Explosion of Content = connection of people + democratization of the tools of production + broadband penetration + falling cost of data storage

Sharing is the new viewing - 150M unique users globally

Demographics: 2/3 of YouTube users are over 35, 37% earn above $75,000

800 content partners attended YouTube Videocracy in February

Four ways to think about marketing in 2008
- Target your audience with video profiling
- Integrate your brand into the user experience – on YouTube and Beyond!
- Leverage your offline assets and ones YouTube is creating
- Think about measurement differently

Video Profiling – Building Tools for Effective Targeting – using traditional demographics in the search by audience features…

YouTube’s Creative Standards – 20 million home page views a day

Animated flash overlay is the current YouTube ad format – NO Pre-rolls are shown
Promote Your Video: Video Search capabilities

Integrate Your Brand into the Experience – HP example

It’s all about interesting content: Turbotax

It’s about all about educational content: Vanguardinvestments brand channels

Launched test of video ads in the 1st Quarter of 2008

E*TRADE – pre-seeded SuperBowl commercials – 2,000,000+ views on Youtube.

American Express sponsored fashion week

YouTube Global Gathering

Metrics – the social side of YouTube
- Users can rate videos
- User can comment on videos
- User can add videos to their list of favorites
- User can share videos with friends
- Users can subscribe to their favorite channel

New metrics will accompany this, Google Trends data – admitted that this drives need for Adwords campaigns. Discussed other metrics in terms about how the video was measured and then closed with questions.

Audience question: Should YouTube provide statistics for videos with completed views or the average time of engagement with viewers so that more accurate measures of engagement could be provided?

Answer: That’s a good question. Said several things about exploration of new areas. Did not say yes we’ll add it or no we’ll never do that. It will be interesting to revisit this issue at some point.

Google Creates Alumni Relations Program Manager Position

It appears that Google is starting to prepare for the inevitable acceleration of pre-IPO employee departures and exodus as it has posted the role of Alumni Relations Program Manager. UPDATE: While I at first thought this was creating an employee alumni program from my quick read, it’s actually to create relationships with university alumni programs.

Many strategy consulting organizations with outstanding reputations have alumni relations programs including: McKinsey & Company, Booz Allen Hamilton, Boston Consulting Group (BCG), A.T. Kearney, Bain & Company, Katzenbach, ZS Associates, Marakon Associates, L.E.K. Consulting, The Parthenon Group, Oliver Wyman, Kurt Salmon Associates and Monitor.

Some investment banking and institutional money managers have started to follow this trend of starting alumni relations groups that the consulting companies started such as: Goldman Sachs and Lehman Brothers. I’d be delighted if BlackRock joined this elite financial services thought leader club creating alumni networks shortly as I’d love to reconnect with many of my former BlackRock, reconnect with them, form and fund entrepreneurial ventures with them. There is amazing value that can be created for everyone that puts a common social network experience in the center of the conversation.

In all of those companies there is a diversified portfolio of services and business development that can be created from these interactions that is good for the company. In Google’s case, I’m struggling to see what value can immediately be created beyond selling Adwords to alumni’s new companies and facilitating funding or acquiring start up companies via Google’s corporate development department.

One thing is clear, Google is planning for a future that includes more former Googlers who have moved onward!

UPDATE: One word changes ALOT of meaning. I neglected to notice the word university. Apologies.

Ironically this makes this role even more unique. As I’m unaware of any companies that partner directly with either of my university alumni programs in this manner. Makes you wonder if they have plans to offer a service offering to this sector.

Lee Odden’s Top Ten Online Marketing Tactics for 2008 Survey

Lee Odden has posted the results of his online marketing survey. The blog result is likely directionally correct, but is likely skewed on the high side a bit due to the survey being on a blog. Go figure. :)

Chicago’s Lake Shore Drive and Other Potholes

The Chicago Tribune has a nice user generated content piece where they allow readers to input pothole locations. It is an open thread that simply says: “Tell us: Where are the worst potholes? Potholes seem to be everywhere this winter, but who has the worst — the city or suburbs? Tell us where you’ve seen the biggest and deepest.”

What’s upsetting is that just like the mismanagement of the CTA for decades, many of the comments allude to years of neglect and mismanagement by the government of the City of Chicago (along with visible disgust for the waste of resource on the Olympics 2016 bid instead of focusing on the basics). CBS put together a story on how to file a claim for damage. Why must everything become a crisis before anybody does anything about these things? Maybe the city and state will put in resources to fix the lack of easy access to entrepreneurial grants and angel investor tax incentives like Wisconson has next - while we still have an economy…

Here are a few answers Chicago Tribune readers gave (some make you laugh and cry at the same time):

Potholes on my entire way to work on Devon Avenue Between Northwest Hwy and Caldwell Ave. Noticed several vehicles with flat tires this morning causing a traffic jam

Westbound on North Ave, there are are at least 2 or 3 massive potholes just before and after Elston Ave. Stay out of the right hand lane

On Webster between Clybourn and Ashland. There is a fifty foot section with about 25 potholes

One more vote for Lincoln Ave. between Petersen and Devon — avoid at all costs if you care about your car

Central Road, from Milwaukee west to River Road. It is like driving a road in a third world county. Cars bob and weave into oncoming traffic. You can’t driver over 20 mph. Someone at county should be fired for letting a road deteriorate to this degree

Just as you get off LSD on to LaSalle North exit going south right lane is full of potholes

Park Ridge: Cumberland Avenue between Devon and Higgins

Worst — take your pick, LSD Irving Park Road to Foster. Second worst — Oak Street underpass northbound to LSD. Third worst. 47th underpass to LSD. Some of these above holes are a foot deep and several feet across

Cicero Ave and Lawrence, in the left hand turn lane on Cicero… it’s like an unavoidable abyss

On westbound Lake Street between Ashland and Western there are so many little potholes the drive seems like you are off-roading

Under the pass to get on Lake Shore Drive from Oak it’s been like that for over a year! Disgraceful! The CTA ride is awful and 311 doesn’t do anything about it! The drivers try to drive on the left side when possible as the busses bounce horribly!

Western bridge going over Belmont, southbound, west lane. They’ve been there for at least a month

Have you seen the pothole on the bridge at Division and Halsted… Big enough to make a person disappear

Westbound on Grand just east of Milwaukee Ave. The whole thing is one series of huge potholes

The pot hole at Archer & Cicero in the northbound lanes just cost me $550 in repairs - yeah lets spend some more $$ on the Olympics -idiots

Like others have said, Cicero between 21st and 51st is a landmine. It’s so bad, I saw a small car driving along and it just disappeared into a hole….lol

I CANT BELIEVE DALEY HAD ALL THAT MONEY TO USE TO TRY AND BRING THE OLYMPICS TO CHICAGO BUT DOEST HAVE ENOUGH MONEY TO FIX OUR STREETS. WHAT ABOUT THE BRIDGE ON 31ST BETWEEN PULASKI AND CICERO IT LOOKS LIKE MINES WENT OFF

Southbound on N. Clark Street, just north of Upper Wacker Drive, right lane swallowed my car. Still can’t find it

Right lanes of Ridge Road in Evanston. Very bad in both directions

The worst pothole is on the east edge of the southbound Fullerton entrance ramp to LSD. A close second are numerous potholes on Halstead between Chicago and Erie. You have to drive like you are going through an obstacle course

Almost all lanes of LaSalle Street between the Lake Shore Drive ramps and the intersection of LaSalle and Clark

4200 South Ashland. Even the CTA bus won’t go near it! And avoid at all costs Pershing Rd. between Halstead and Ashland

Bridgeport - 31st street between the Dan Ryan Expressway and Halstead (especially under the viaduct near Canal St) and the ENTIRE 31st St ramp getting onto the inbound Ryan. I’ve already replaced two tires this year.

Try driving on Cicero Ave. anywhere near the Stevenson. Pot holes deep enough to strand tanks. Been this way for weeks.

del.icio.us Integrated Into Yahoo! Search Results (Finally)

Michael Arrington has broken this extremely important story of Yahoo! integrating del.icio.us results into the search engine results on a test basis.

As many of you might recall, founder Joshua Schachter (who has not yet bookmarked my blog in del.icio.us) sold del.icio.us to Yahoo! in December, 2005 making Fred Wilson a happy man.

Many people in the search engine community tell me at conferences that other search players have actually been getting more value from del.icio.us since the acquisition because they have crawled del.icio.us. If Yahoo! were to hire me as a consultant, it’s something I might want to do some testing and learning with to see how it would affect the competition.

To test this theory, I registered a domain last Summer and tossed it on a host and had a few friends post a del.icio.us entry but gave the site no other links and checked it once a week. The following engines indexed the domain in this order: Google, Live.com/Msn, Yahoo! and then Ask. A few weeks ago I noticed a significant shift in some Yahoo! rankings and now it made sense now that this change is apparent.

Just in case you’re wondering good tags for my blog in del.icio.us are - chicago gsb mba marketing business development startup executive seeking venture capital funding - for a limited time every person who bookmarks me with those tags and emails me (see my Chicago gsb marketing bio for the email) with a the del.icio.us page and their blog, I will add a link to them in the bottom of this post. One exception to this currently would be Jason Calacanis (whom I wouldn’t actually consider linking to until he returned my phone call from October when I was in Santa Monica). :)

So why did this take so long? This is a good question. You may recall all the hub bub in 2006 about Yahoo! building modular programs that could be easily swapped out. This obviously has taken considerably longer to complete than the initial estimates. But this is a sign of a much needed glimmer of light eminating from Yahoo!

Analysis:

- Good move for Yahoo! overall in terms of relevancy (though this did not need it to be visible?).

- This move is not without a significant risk. What if Yahoo! users were to migrate enmass to del.icio.us and make it their default search engine? It’s not monetized. If this scenario were to occur in the current state Yahoo!’s earnings would take a serious hit. Robert Peck at Bear Stearns should most definitely analyze this scenario.

- The display of the del.icio.us social media result might prove distracting to the user and users may defect to other search engines.

- This may attract more del.icio.us spam activity.

What do you think of this move by Yahoo! to test integration of del.icio.us into Yahoo! search results?

Links from del.icio.us pages project:

- Bryson Meunier from Chicago has bookmarked me in del.icio.us

How To Do YouTube Video View Optimization Part 1

Looking around the net this political season, it’s amazing to see the number of conversations I’m seeing that discuss YouTube Video View Optimization in non-SEO communities. It’s a unique ecosystem with distinctly different rules and people figuring out how to optimize the current system. It would be impossible to summarize all of the things I’ve witnessed, so this is a summary that is a work in process and I welcome your contributions and discussion.

There are three primary prizes you are shooting for:

1) Becoming a “featured video” on the Youtube homepage.

This is apparently an internal process at YouTube and the system is not transparent. Andy Mckee’s “Drifting” was added to the Youtube featured videos after thousands of views, while Mike Huckabee eating a hamburger named after him in NH yesterday was added when it had zero views. One thing is clear, being featured on the YouTube front page can provide rocket fuel for perpetual viral status. For example, Andy Mckee’s “Drifting” now has 10,000,000+ views.

2 ) Ranking well on the any other social, tagging or metadata metric.

Most Viewed, Most Discussed, Top Favorites are all categories accessible within one click of the home page. The later two categories have been dominated lately by supporters of Ron Paul who have been actively doing the work necessary to get their videos featured. Each of these has subcategories to think about when you chose a category, tags and content wording - Autos & Vehicles, Comedy, Education, Entertainment, Film & Animation, How to & Style, Music, News & Politics, People & Blogs, Pets & Animals, Science & Technology, Sports, Travel & Events and Watch on Mobile. Do you have a community to mobilize?

3) It’s not a complete one to one correlation, but videos with higher views, comments and favorites tend to be the ones featured in Google universal search results.

This can keep the viral traffic going to that video long after the YouTube event. Critics would note that this creates an echo chamber effect that is as entrenched as a Wikipedia page.

OK, how do I do this?

- Start with making quality content that creates passion.

- Start with standard SEO of your video content.

- Build links via best practices - consult these expert entries on how to optimize for: StumbleUpon, Digg, del.icio.us, link to the videos on blogs etc.

- If you have a community get them to view the YouTube video content, favorite it, rate it and comment on it in a tightly clustered time frame.

I’d also experiment with some new tools such as:

- Tubemogul (thanks to Karl Long for the suggestion)

- Video Sitemaps - though it’s not clear whether that is only for self-hosted videos.

For the gray hats out there:

- Tags appear to be valued highly in YouTube’s current search relevancy process. Yet unless a viewer clicks to see all of the content the tags will never be seen.

- After a video is popular on YouTube, you can edit the category and get it to rank in a new category using the traffic that was built in a different vertical. This tactic surprised me in that I did not know you could change the video after publishing in that manner, though I’m surprised by how well it works. Please keep in mind this only works for videos with existing high traffic.

There is an amazingly thin amount of content on this subject, I’d highly welcome other people’s thoughts on the subject for inclusion and expansion of this research to date. But for now I hope this serves as a useful guide to you for your YouTube video view optimization!

UPDATE 1/16 - this has been translated and expanded upon in German!

Snowy Chicago Blogger Brunch

Several Chicago area bloggers, including Joi Podgorny, Liz Strauss and Jean Russell joined out of town visitor Tara Hunt for some breakfast grub at Over Easy where the delightful server Gwen brought us quite tasteful helpings quite flavorful food!

Though I’ve exchanged many emails with Tara before, I had never met her in person. After the meal we chatted and did some shopping. It was really nice talk to Tara as our conversation was focused and introspective - the kind of conversation that makes both people better for it, it was fun. Great fun with everyone chatting about things they are working on and things they want to achieve in 2008 and beyond.

Thanks to everyone who came out on a snowy Chicago morning (and those who didn’t) for some blogger bonding! May many future trackbacks take place…

Tara and Joi are fans of the site Ma.gnolia, is anyone else out there a big fan? I might have to try it out.

SES Chicago 2007 : Troubleshooting Dynamic Website

Moderator:
Anne Kennedy, Manager, Managing Partner, Beyond Ink
Speakers:
Laura Thieme, President and Founder, Bizresearch
Matt Bailey, President, SiteLogic

Begin Your Research Project:

URL Structure
Search Engine Indices
Current Rankings
Spider Activity (Net tracker gives great spider research…)
Determine Target Terms
Overcome technology, resource and/or political challenges
Index, Optimize
Monitor improvements

Your Page Titles: Are they Really Optimized?

Example: Wine racks (Pier 1)

Page title - is it right?

Dynamic versus static – do they need to be static? No.

Basic Optimization Tactics – keyword embedding

Home page title matters – a lot!!!

Relevant Page Title page, Footer – best first quick steps

Are pages titles enough? H1, H2, Intro optimized, URL optimized, page rank updated.

Hierarchy of a website – URL, how deep and often is the crawl?

What We Found

- We found minimum of 3 issues

- Additional reports and trending are important

When that isn’t enough?

Universal Search?

Update the robots.txt file to remove things.

Canonical issues, soft 404’s get it right!

301 redirects – are they still in place?

Matt Bailey, Sitelogic

IT for marketers

IT and marketing need to work together.

Robot.txt is the welcome mat to your house…

Redirects.

Use Webbug

Architecture – if you using JavaScript, it will not work properly

Duplicate content – avoid it!

Cannibalization problems

Legacy spam – invisible text links…

When Google finds pages though natural crawling, its’ better – Using Webmaster Central helps…

SES Chicago 2007 - Digital Shelf - The Search Marketing Opportunity for Packaged Goods (CPG)

Moderator:
Kevin Ryan, Vice President, Global Content Director, Search Engine Strategies and Search Engine Watch
Speakers:
Matt Wilburn, Senior Category Director, CPG, Yahoo!
James Lamberti, Senior Vice President, Search and Media, comScore, Inc
Dana Todd, Board of Directors, SEMPO
Randy Peterson, Search Marketing Innovation Manager, Procter and Gamble

****************************************************************************

Everyone on this panel clearly put a lot of long, hard work into the concepts, thought and research into this panel and this blog post won’t do the great conversation the justice it deserves. It’s bleeding edge, this is fun and interesting stuff that will eventually transform the way consumers chose products and discover need brands that specifically meet their needs.

****************************************************************************

Does search help CPG? Comscore and Yahoo! provided the data for the SEMPO study.

James Lamberti, Comscore

The search marketing opportunity…100 million unique visitors in food alone, and babies

Who are these searchers? Average income, dramatically higher, 80% female

They enjoy cooking and entertaining.

Allergy sufferers are a prime underserved demographic. The opportunity to build brands via presences made through educational experiences.

Matt Wilburn, Yahoo!

Order of importance to searchers

- Information & Help

- Purchase Decision

- Promotion

- Company Website

Content matters more than a direct navigation. (I see a pattern developing here)

Consumers expect a digital shelf to be similar to a store shelf.

Out of stock, hard to find are issues.

Are you visible in paid and organic? Are you creating a nice impression?

Dana Todd, Sitelab

This is a compelling proposition. We believe in the promise of search for branding issues.

We need to think outside ROI. Back away from the spreadsheet. You need to get people thinking outside direct acquisition.

The first brand for cheese is on page three of the Google organic listings. Why?

Chinese toothpaste issue was a counter reaction to the ingredients article in Wired.

Develop problem and solution content.

If searchers are special, treat them as such!!!

End of session comments…

67% of searchers found a brand they weren’t aware of… (Kevin Ryan)

The term PPC is useless outdated and should be changed – Digital Point of Purchase? (Dana Todd).

Question by me in Chicago: Dana brought up the cheese in PPC and no brand organic terms, to use the Liz Strauss conversational blogging element, there are actually 10 posts on toilet paper on Technorati today, shouldn’t brand managers be engaging this, not only for the SEO benefits, but the innovation road map as well?

(all panel heads nod in agreement) Using the data during the planning process is the next frontier after this issue (which is still in the early days)…

This is certainly an area where the conversation will continue and evolve, it’s a challenging area due to the issues of massive change.

SES Chicago 2007 - Bryan Eisenberg - Redefining the Customer Conversation

Bryan Eisenberg gave a great talk on the multitude of issues surrounding the challenges of successful customer conversions and conversation.

Marketing (r)Evolutions

Mass advertising on passive customers was what used to work.

People sleep while watching TV, hard to pay attention to advertising when sleeping.

Sleeping while surfing the Internet is not something that happens.

Godaddy.com Super Bowl XL TV commercials didn’t use the same model on the web site. Did Godaddy leave money on the table.

Money is better than traffic.

Apple had to give rebates due to word of mouth on iphone pricing.

Marketers still think customers are dogs.

But search puts the power of when and how in their hands (the sonsumer).

Overcoming sales friction – 85% of car purchases start online – you arrive knowing more than the salesman in many cases. Attack of the blogs – Consumers trust other consumers more than marketers. 54% resist, 56% avoid, 69% block ads – yet we still want to buy.

Customers will control the conversation. People have forgotten how to have relationships.

The web is a major influencer, a mere 26% of consumers were SATISFIED with the experience. They are missing the BASICS. Conversation rates are continuing to fall.

All new brands are based on the experience model. Invest in the customer experience.

We are obsessed with the how many, not the who. This needs to change.

Customers desire great and meaningful experiences.

SCENT, ads must think it has scent to be useful.

80% of traffic dies off within three clicks.

GEICO – connects the story…

Zafu – bras in launch video didn’t match website.

Usability – Frederick Winslow Taylor is the father.

We are all connected and customers will control the conversation. It involves persuasion architecture!!!

Traffic generation is about money. Don’t imitate your competitors. It’s the tiny pieces that matter. Focus on making your service better.

Business Week Article - So Many Ads, So Few Clicks

Nice article talking about he decline in click through rates of ads.  It includes this statement:

But as responsiveness declines, ad targeting grows more attractive. Marketers see increases of 30% to 300% in click rates when ads are customized based on criteria such as the location, content of Web pages visited, or information researched on search engines.

Exciting data indeed for a project I’m working on right now. It’s all about relevancy, not quantity, of viewers.

FCF07 - Social Media Brought My Jacket Back!!!

Wow!!! On Friday when I posted about my lost jacket, I stated this:

Then I had a talk with security who informed me that there are multiple video cameras in the Grand Ballroom and if someone did walk off with it’s highly likely that they would be able to pinpoint the person especially since the room was 3/4 empty at that point.

Then you find out who your friends in the blogosphere are, Jeremiah Owyang mentioned it on his blog and verbally to several conference luminaries.

The rest of Friday I heard nothing and considered the jacket lost. Then on Saturday 44 hours after the time I lost it, an anonymous person turned the jacket in at the front desk and declined to be named when asked! When the Hilton called me I couldn’t believe it at first! While the blog posts and Jeremiah’s efforts were likely directly responsible, I must say that I’m pleased that whomever had it decided that turning it in was the right thing to do whether it was out of good intentions, guilt or fear being exposed by the videotape. It’s one of those events that strengthens my faith in the goodness of people and that things can turn out for the best - so in the end that is the positive message - be transparent, communicate and good things will happen!

I’d also like to sincerely thank Ray Stokes at the Hilton for his amazing helpfulness during this event, it will long be remembered.

Thank you everybody!

FCF07 - My Leather Jacket is Missing

Let’s experiment to see if the power of Social Media can bring my jacket back to me at the Forrester Consumer Forum!!!

Yesterday after Robert J. Bach from Microsoft spoke, I lost/had stolen one of my most valuable possessions, a rather expensive size 46 leather jacket that I bought a few years back. I *loved* this jacket. It didn’t have that motorcycle look, it didn’t look like it cost 8 zillion dollars. It just look professional and nice - always - and was appropriate in any type of social gathering whether upscale or downscale. That’s how you know something is perfect, you feel comfortable in it anywhere. It took me a long time to find that coat and to say that I feel like my better half is missing this morning is not an understatement.

It all happened as I was reading this awesome summary blog post by Jeremiah and I was talking to Mellissa Stock from Yahoo!. All of the sudden, Sean McDonald from Dell interrupted us and asked to inspect my laptop based on an earlier conversation in the day. As Melissa grew a bit tired of that conversation and started to get up, I asked Sean if we could finish the conversation later. I then walked out with her and didn’t notice I was missing the jacket until I was giving Karl Long a giant hug on Ustream for the world to see. I went back to the location, only about 15 minutes or so after I had left and the jacket was gone. 50 feet away was a jacket that was ready for the trash - it’s my gut feeling that someone ditched that jacket and walked off with mine. But in a crowd of people at a Forrester Consumer Forum? I would expect people to do the right thing and I’m hopeful that they still will.

I then retraced my steps in the hotel just to be doubly sure I didn’t leave it somewhere else. Then I had a talk with security who informed me that there are multiple video cameras in the Grand Ballroom and if someone did walk off with it’s highly likely that they would be able to pinpoint the person especially since the room was 3/4 empty at that point. So if it doesn’t turn up by Noon today at the Forrester coat check or hotel security, I will be filing a police report and hotel security will start the investigation.

I then took my cold trip home, I’m sure Jeff Jarvis might blog about how “Dell Hell froze over today”, but the combination of the flurry of activity, being interrupted and the fact that it’s been warm here for the past week and I wasn’t in “jacket mode” is more likely the cause. Irregardless, if it doesn’t turn up, theft is theft and it’s majorly uncool.

If anyone knows anything about this situation, please email me. My cell phone charger for my Nokia N73 was in the bag and my phone has very little juice left!

Based on the video cameras, it would be wise for whomever has this to do the right thing and turn it in - no questions asked.

Thanks in advance for everyone’s help in this manner. But hey who knows, maybe it’s a sign from a higher power that I’m about to move to a warmer climate where jackets aren’t necessary.

Sexy Social Media Revolutions Emerging - Forrester Consumer Internet Conference 2007

There were a few critical points in Charlene Li’s speech and then Christie Hefner’s speech that I want to get to. But before I do an overview of Charlene’s speech.

New term POST

People

Objectives

Strategy

Technology (notice how this is listed last? Charlene pointed out that this is on purpose! In other words don’t execute until you have things thought through!)

Mantra: Embrace your customer to turn revolt into reformation

Ask yourself: How do you turn (customer) revolt into revolution?

Hopefully both speeches will be online later.

What was the high point of the speech for me that told me that a revolution was taking place at Forrester?

It was when Charlene pointed to a technology adoption benchmarking slide and then put a red X through it saying “don’t pay attention to that”!!!!

What does this mean to me? It means that benchmarking it starting to die due to the increased cycle times and shorter shelf life of information. I’ve long felt that you can’t benchmark your way to the top. You have to lead and take risks. To lead and take risks you must have the top generalist thought leaders of our times on your team. People who understand things like search engine optimization as a strategic tool, social media, bottom up communities and cultures, defining a defensible data model from the start and who practice customer listening for their innovation.

After Charlene, Christie Hefner gave an amazing speech about the history of Playboy’s brand and demonstrated how it’s always been customer focused dating back decades and how it’s embracing the demise of the one to many media model. I hadn’t been aware of this but Playboy has had a mobile presence since 2002! Wow.

She also talked about the brands usage in search and have it’s a frequent search term. In fact a quick check of Google trends indicates a large lead in search volume for Playboy over the New York Times.

Her speech was fascinating from the historical side, yet the brand of Playboy is softening as it’s constantly evolving, Charlene’s conversation was far more disruptive and unnerving to many of the people seated around me. Yet it became clear to me that Playboy is a company that has lived many of today’s social media principles long before they were fashionable.

In in the end, it’s all about building a bottom up culture that has the executive support to constantly innovate. Most people don’t get that yet and if they do it’s even more unlikely that they view customers and other stakeholders as critical to success. We are just starting this journey and I can’t wait to participate fully in the fun parts of this revolution to come!

fcf07

eComXpo is October 9,10,11, 2007

Chicagoland’s very own eComXpo is October 9,10,11, 2007. You can join the fun and learning from anywhere in the world though!

eComXpo is the premier virtual Internet Marketing conference that is FREE to attend. I’ve also had the honor of speaking there previously. It’s a great resource for learning Internet marketing concepts and networking. Register now.

SMXLOMO Denver - Day 2 - Show Me the Money!!!

Moderator:
Greg Sterling, Founding Principal, Sterling Market Intelligence

Speakers:
Ian White, CEO, Urban Mapping
Shawn Riegsecker, Chairman & CEO, Centro
Justin Sanger, CEO, LocalLaunch
Alfred Chow, Head, Yellowbook

Justin Sanger, Local Launch

I can’t help but get caught up in some of the hype. “Context galactic scale” – thanks Google. He then said, “Talking about local search in 10 minutes is like spitting into the grand canyon.” Then said a few words to get Greg Sterling to actually blush! Really funny stuff.

Tremendous opportunities in the IYPs. Local and vertical are merging. Social networking is also converging with local. What is the differentiation of these local search sites? Even within Yahoo! you have a multitude of options. SMEs are overwhelmed and confused. The mission of marketplace consolidations – our goal is to remove the complexity not only for our small businesses but for our sales forces as well. The traditional relationships

$                                             Cost of Traffic                     $$$
Content>>Proprietary>>Organic/SEO>>Paid Placement>>Paid Search / SEM

Silos and advertisers don/t mix in local search!!!

You need to be inventory agnostic…

Shawn Riegsecker, CEO, Centro

Brand marketing increases future clicks. Newspaper growth is slowing in terms of rates of growth, national advertisers are exploding this year. Next will be the regional advertisers, which now comprise less than 3% of advertising.

Ian White, CEO, Urbanmapping

? Where the hell is the money?

7FTE, San Francisco based, geo-spacial data to enable advertisers

Why and what?

Technical limitations

User behavior

Search Engine “Keyword Lockdown”

GEO IP lookup “geotargeting” SUCKS

99% accuracy country level

95% accuracy state level

Viewpoints.com Launch Party Friday Night

Matt Moog at Viewpoints let me in on a secret. There are a limited number of RSVP spots left for the Viewpoints launch party Friday night in downtown Chicago…

I am pleased to announce that we have officially launched Viewpoints. To celebrate we are holding a launch party on September 28th, at 6pm at (edit - location will be mailed to you upon RSVP). I hope you (and a few friends) can attend. We will have a T-Shirt for everyone who has written a review and special prize drawings (iPhone anyone?) for those that attend. Be sure to bring a print out of your review to claim your T-Shirt!

Through the beta period we have built an audience of more than 100,000 monthly users. Be sure to explore the site to see some of the great reviews that users just like you have written. We encourage reviewers to write about products and services that they are passionate about.

Check out some of these great reviews. Electronics, Travel, Home & Garden or on the lighter side see what TV Shows, Movies, Music or Books you could discover. Of course we also have a great section for Local Places that features local Restaurants, Shopping, and even local Doctors & Hospitals. Our mission is to bring the reviewers profile, passions and personalities to life. We believe that user written reviews are more powerful when the reader knows more about the reviewer.

To RSVP please email jolie AT viewpoints DOT com prior to 2PM Central time Friday - send this post link as a reference to how you heard about the Viewpoints launch party. See you there.

Lisa Barone Points Out a Privacy Concern in Facebook

Lisa put together a really thoughtful post that outlines some interesting issues that those concerned with privacy should take a few moments to read.

Perhaps those people wishing to take the valuation of Facebook to the mooon might want to pause and think about this issue along with other privacy and safety concerns regardless of page view growth. Do people not remember the lessons of Myspace - lack of monetization anyone?

Jason Alba Author - I’m on LinkedIn — Now What???

Recently I blogged about how retained recruiting firm executive search activity on Linkedin was rising. Maybe they got an advance of Jason Alba’s new book, I’m on LinkedIn — Now What???, and started putting the concepts to immediate good use! I had this to say about the book:

“Jason has written a highly practical guide to Linkedin that will quickly allow a new user to understand and utilize Linkedin. It’s also a great guide to the Linkedin’s hidden gems - finding high quality people through endorsements and off Linkedin content such as groups and identifying thought leaders through blogs linked from profiles.”

I’m honored to have been asked by Jason to contribute ideas to the book as well as some Linkedin best practices at the end of some of the chapters. Jason is one of the people I’ve met via Linkedin and I know my life is much better for that as he always makes himself available to talk and help my goals in any way he can.

While certainly any Linkedin novice would benefit, Jason’s book most needs to be read by c-level executives, all HR executives and recruiters who don’t yet understand how to fully utilize Linkedin. There tools on Linkedin besides last company worked at and job title - the community would function better if people learned to use the community more wisely and this can happen quickly if people read Jason’s book.

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