Original Page: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/socialmediatoday_allposts/~3/J7Z9vGKPzq8/7-reasons-youre-not-generating-leads-social-media
Welcome to the very first episode of Duarte.com/edy (we pronounce it "Duarte Dot Comedy"), starring our puppets, Bob & Finn. They're both really excited about their on-camera debut, so sit back and enjoy the zaniness.
If you like what you see, please share with your friends, and be sure to leave a note in the comments. You just might hear back from Bob or Finn in person!
Visit www.duarte.com/edy to sign up to be notified about future episodes.
Original Page: http://blog.duarte.com/?p=7946
There's a sad truth about mobile, but I don't want to hear it.
Smartphones are becoming more and more popular and the same can be said about the meteoric rise of the tablet (with the iPad as the clear leader), but even with all of the impressive numbers, we're still looking at a penetration rate amongst the general population of anywhere between 25% - 35% (depending on which research group you want to believe) for smartphones. Beyond the low penetration, it's also important to note that within that small percentage, it's even smaller when it comes to people that are paying for apps, downloading apps and actually using apps (we've all seen the depressing stats surrounding this in a myriad of different places). Making things even more complex are the telco companies who are still charging confusing fee structures for mobile data. As you'll note, text messaging is not the same as mobile Web and different devices use different amounts of data (and we're not even talking about the complete confusion or price gouging that happens when you roam beyond your country of origin). Beyond that (as if that's not enough!), it's hard to get adoption of smartphones to become ubiquitous if consumers are locked into three-year contracts, etc...
It's too small for most Marketers.
It's not only too small, but it seems like faster adoption may not be happening if all of those spokes can't get the tire to spin faster and much smoother. It's hard to convince a large brand to think about mobile when they just don't see the uptake and motion from the consumer. It's an ever bigger challenge to stop brands from thinking about mobile as a strictly transactional type of advertising ("ping the consumer with an offer when they're near our stores!") and get them to see mobile as a consumer platform instead of an advertising channel (or to think about mobile from a utilitarian marketing perspective). The cost, effort and general stress of transitioning their current digital ecosystem over to mobile is also a daunting task. While HTML5 could well cure a lot of the woes, it's still an expensive endeavor to get everything they're doing "mobile friendly."
Don't let purgatory get you down.
I often lament this moment in time as being one where us Marketers are trapped in media purgatory. It's not heaven... it's not hell... it's somewhere in the middle. The challenge is what we all do at this unique moment in time. The skeptics see the data above as half-empty... I see it as half-full and rising. The reason why I don't want to hear the woes of low smartphone adoption or the challenges of data charges and long-term phone contracts is that I believe - beyond the shadow of a doubt - that mobile is everything and that mobile is our future (and that future is not as far off as the data may lead us to believe). Fixed screens will simply be places that we toss our cloud-based content, marketing and advertising to for convenience. I believe that smartphones (and devices like the iPad and others that have yet to be created) will be the source of our ever-growing connectivity, and that everything else will just be a big dumb terminal or a piece of glass for viewing (for more on that: The One Screen World).
How long will mobile ubiquity take?
Some are stuck on trying to figure out if this is "the year of mobile"... I am not. It's not relevant to me (it probably already happened... who knows?). I'm more curious to see how mobile connectivity benchmarks and trends with the ubiquity of other utilities like electricity, phones, home heating and beyond. What I am convinced of is this: mobile ubiquity is coming fast (very fast). If you think that most brands still struggle with the Web, e-commerce and Social Media, I'm proud to state that I think mobile - and how it will connect us - will make everything else look like a joke... a blip in time. This doesn't diminish or change what's happening for marketers in-market now. Brand advertising is (and will be) important going forward. The same for loyalty, analytics, data, and every other media channel we're currently engaged with (my saying, "everything is 'with' not 'instead of'" still rings true), but the majority of media will (without question) be consumed and created on some type of mobile device.
The question is: do you get going now, wait for it to take more hold or try and catch up after it's too late?
Tags: advertising analytics app brand brand advertising cloud computing connectivity consumer corning data digital ecosystem ecommerce glass html 5 ipad loyalty marketer marketing research media channel media purgatory mobile mobile app mobile data mobile friendly mobile web one screen roaming charges smartphone sms social media tablet text messaging the year of mobile utilitarian marketing youtube
Original Page: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TwistImage/~3/z3npLMd_WQw/
What is your personal competitive advantage? Are you following orders and checking your brain at the door (old school) – or trying to bring real creative, expansive thinking to your work (new school)?
The latest column from Seth Godin really struck a chord with me. Creative thinking is what I strive to bring to MY work. It also gets to the heart of what this blog is all about:
So I created a mind map to summarize Seth's key points and add a bit of perspective around them.
Depending upon where you work, your employer may not appreciate this mindset, however. A past job I had prized the "old school" skills. Because I worked smarter, I was able to get work done within a 40-hour week. But the leadership of the firm believed if you wanted to be a key player, you had to work long hours and weekends. I'm in a much more supportive environment now that appreciates and rewards my "new school" way of thinking!
Want to create a competitive advantage in your work, stand out and get promoted? Follow Seth's "new school" mode of thinking. These are the skills that are needed today, more than ever!
Original Page: http://mindmappingsoftwareblog.com/your-personal-competitive-advantage/
Original Page: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/AppleCaffe/~3/OZnCAhvxh74/la-vera-tv-italiana-su-ipad-e-iphone-e.html
Una delle cose che mi colpisce di più quando mi trovo a parlare con operatori del mondo web (in particolare sul neonato mondo delle social media company) o con manager che si occupano di marketing e, di conseguenza, web marketing, è la "fumosità" con cui di si definiscono gli obbiettivi di misurazione dell'efficacia delle azioni di web marketing, o delle Digital Strategies: i KPI.
Obbiettivi che poi quando di va a parlare di strategie di marketing offline (su cui ricadano budget immensamente più grandi) diventano in molti casi nulli o beceri. Della serie: "se vendiamo di più allora funziona", "faccio promozione su questi media perchè la facciamo da anni", "la fiera si deve fare per forza", "quello è il periodico di riferimento, non si può non fare", "mi hanno proposto un buon prezzo per quello spazio", "non sappiamo bene il perchè spendiamo tanto con alcuni e poco con altri", e giu con sciocchezze simili…
Webmarketing123.com ha fatto un ottimo sondaggio per capire quali sono i KPI più utilizzati, intervistando sia manager di aziende B2B ch B2C. Questo il risultato:
Fortunatamente, l'attenzione rispetto ai dati emersi da analoghe interviste passate, si sta spostando su KPI meno generici rispetto gli accessi (purtroppo ancora al top) o i posizionamento su Google per il SEO, ma su elementi più significativi, in particolare le Lead o le vendite o le conversioni .
Purtroppo noto però ancora moltissime agenzie e molti marketer spostare l'attenzione su obbiettivi fuorvianti che spesso fanno fare percorsi errati alle strategie digitali, obbiettivi come ad esempio il numero di fans nelle fanpage di facebook, i posizionamenti nel SEO, il valore della vendita singole e non nel valore cliente nel suo arco di vita.
La Lead Generation è probabilmente un KPI più significativo su cui misurare l'efficacia delle strategie di web marketing e promozione online. I manager puntano essenzialmente su 3 canali:
Questa la ripartizione dei budget:
Quando si persuadono i clienti a misurare i risultati dei loro investimenti dedicando al dovuta attenzione nella scelta dei KPI, normalmente accadono cose interessanti (per me):
Ma soprattutto accade una cosa che piace: l'azienda comincia a crescere per clienti e fatturato con un percorso organico, strutturato e graduale, ma dove giorno dopo giorno si capisce sempre di più come indirizzare il tiro e, cosa altrettanto importante, si impara dagli errori (perchè "perseverare diabolico est").
Original Page: http://www.searchadvertising.it/marketingblog/?p=1329
I've blogged about Malcolm Gladwell before, and given him mixed reviews as a good storyteller, but a speaker with some quirks that got in the way of maximum effectiveness.
Well, it's time to give Gladwell a second look. His TED talk from July 2011, posted in October, is a masterpiece of the storytelling art, and it is delivered well. This is a talk that any speaker can learn from. If you're a polished performer, learn from Gladwell's pacing and tonal variety – and his storytelling. If you're a novice, then focus on Gladwell's storytelling, because it is so good that it makes me wish that more speakers would up the ante on themselves and weave a tale as well as he does.
OK, what is it that Gladwell does so brilliantly? Five lessons of the storyteller's art come from this TED video and the "Strange Tale of the Norden Bombsight."
First, Gladwell grabs our interest with the high stakes of the story. The best stories are matters of life and death. Of course, a story about a bombsight is exactly that. Our interest is piqued because we're talking about war, death, and destruction. It's the storyteller's equivalent of shouting "fire!" in a crowded theatre – it gets our attention.
Second, Gladwell structures the story in three parts or acts, with the right kind of conclusion. In the first part, or act, Gladwell tells us about Norden and his bombsight and what it was supposed to do. In this way he builds up the interest in the device. Instead of telling us the story retrospectively, he puts us in the time period, in the search for an accurate way to aim bombs, and he tells us why that's important.
In the second part, Gladwell tells us what actually happened with the Norden bombsight, and why it didn't deliver on its promise for pinpoint accuracy. This unexpected turn keeps our interest in the story high, because he's made us care about the device and we want to know why it fails.
And in the third part of his tale, Gladwell draws the larger moral of the story. The point of his tale, again surprising, is that the search for pinpoint accuracy is not the right quest. Instead, we need to be thinking about things like the bombsight in a different and more profound way, with their inherent limitations. The complexity of human issues, we learn, defies solution by the simplicity of things.
And stay tuned for the postscript with which Gladwell closes his tale. It's brilliant.
Third, Gladwell peppers his story with precise, relevant details – but not too many. Details bring stories to life. And they kill stories when there are too many of them. Gladwell knows exactly when to give us a telling detail, and when to ease up and keep us at the 20,000-foot view. We know exactly how many SCUD missile launchers the US successfully took out during the Iraq war -- zero – but we never get a precise description of the bombsight itself. Why? Because only an engineer would care. The bombsight is too complicated. The average listener only care about its effects.
Fourth, Gladwell has (mostly) conquered his 'happy feet' problem. In his earlier talks, Malcolm's nervous energy showed up in relentless pacing up and down the stage. Now, he's relaxed enough (or practiced enough) to come to a halt and plant his feet occasionally, and that simple shift makes an enormous difference in his effectiveness. A storyteller's job is to stand and deliver, so that motion doesn't get in the way of comprehension, but rather reinforces it.
Fifth, Gladwell varies his pacing and pitch with the ebb and flow of the story. Advanced speakers should watch and listen to the video focusing on Gladwell's voice. It's resonant and strong, and he varies it expertly, speeding up and raising the volume at times, and slowing down and lowering both pitch and volume when he needs a dramatic emphasis. This TED talk shows Gladwell at the peak of his game. Now, if we can just get him to tuck in his shirt….
Original Page: http://publicwords.typepad.com/nickmorgan/2011/11/speakers-worth-catching-5-malcolm-gladwell.html
Piccole e medie novità per Google Analytics in questi giorni: alcune vi saranno molto gradite, altre dipende un po' da come siete abituati ad usare lo strumento:
Iniziamo con le cose annunciate ma non ancora disponibili: nelle prossime settimane anche nell'interfaccia v5 torneranno disponibili l'export in PDF e l'invio schedulato di email. Per l'export PDF non ci sono novità di sorta (anche se voglio proprio vedere come e se si potrà esportare un goal flow con 5 step! 
), mentre l'invio schedulato di email sembra aver avuto un miglioramento di sorta. Guardando allo screenshot postato da Phil Mui sul blog ufficiale
si notano due differenze rispetto alla v4: si potrà scegliere il giorno della settimana in cui inviare il report (e non sarà più prederminato da Google Analytics) e si potrà decidere per quanto tempo far durare gli invii, utile ad esempio nel caso di campagne con termine già deciso a priori.
La notizia ottima è che si potranno anche inviare i custom report, la notizia "cattiva" (cattiva per chi non è già passato definitivamente all'interfaccia nuova ed è affezionato alla vecchia) è che a Gennaio 2012 la versione v4 cesserà di esistere e tutti dovranno usare la nuova. Anche le email precedentemente schedulate dovranno essere ricreate da zero e non potranno essere migrate.
Altra novità è l'introduzione di un nuovo tipo di ordinamento: oltre al classico ordinamento per visite, e a quello ponderato quando disponibile, se si attiva un confronto temporale sarà disponibile una nuova voce: "cambio assoluto". In sostanza le righe del report saranno ordinate in base al numero assoluto di visite di differenza tra i due periodi, invece che in mero ordine di quantità di visite del primo periodo. Molto utile in alcune situazioni, io sento però la mancanza di un "cambio relativo", cioè la possibilità di avere l'ordinamento in base alla percentuale di cambio tra i due periodi.
Ultima cosa di cui mi sono accorto, ma magari è vecchia di mesi, è che si possono cambiare i colori dei segmenti avanzati: o meglio, i colori sono predefiniti, ma si può scegliere quale colore deve avere ogni segmento. Ad esempio, nella visualizzazione classica con tutto il traffico, nuovi visitatori e visitatori di ritorno il primo è blu, il secondo arancione e il terzo verde. Se mi posiziono con il mouse sopra a "tutte le visite", subito sotto al titolo del report (e quantomeno su Chrome), il cursore diventa una croce e posso trascinare il segmento al secondo posto, in modo che venga visualizzato in arancione, praticamente scambiando i colori. E la cosa vale anche per il grafico, ovviamente. (nell'immagine qui sotto non si vede il cursore purtroppo)
Piccoli miglioramenti, ma sempre utili in alcune circostanze!
Original Page: http://www.goanalytics.info/?p=2055
There are some things a PowerPoint alternative should be able to do that are just surprising. And if you're not surprised by what you find, just keep on looking.
Our last two posts listed out the 7 smart features of an alternative to PowerPoint, and the 7 essential features of PowerPoint alternatives. Taken together, these 3 posts give you the ultimate checklist for evaluating a new presentation platform to impress, grow, and engage your audience.
#1 Twitter Plugin
Twitter is a great source of real-time information generated by millions of people around the world. Flowing that stream of ideas, observations, and opinions onto your slides can have a powerful effect. But make sure it's a simple point-and-click to set up, and customizable to your keyword or #hashtag.
#2 Web Meetings
Web meetings aren't revolutionary, but having them integrated with your presentation tool is. Need to launch a meeting to share your slides without all the fanfare and complexity of Webex or GoToMeeting? Make sure your PowerPoint alternative can do this with just a few clicks, and no messy applications for your viewers to download.
#3 Fun Fonts
Delicious, lobster, Irish growler, chunk five, and door jamb. If the PowerPoint alternative you're reviewing doesn't have fun font names like this, keep on looking. Your final choice should have robust presentation creation capabilities.
#4 Music
Presentations don't have to be limited to pictures and words. Adding music changes the whole experience and greatly increases the amount of time viewers will spend on your presentation. Music can be added to PowerPoint relatively easily, but it's the ability to share and view the presentation easily despite being packed with huge music files that makes all the difference. If an awesome presentation with music is never heard, is it still awesome?
#5 Voiceover
Yes, your voice does sound like that. Record your voice over your slides and it instantly becomes a recorded webinar. Make sure your PowerPoint alternative can help you expand your audience by easily adding voiceover to your slides.
#6 Blogs (and websites)
There are over 1 billion active blogs in the world. Think about that for a minute. And to think how difficult it can be to post a PowerPoint to a blog. A great trick of an advanced PowerPoint alternative is to enable you to easily post your presentation to a blog or website with the simple cut-and-paste of an embed code, and have it update immediately when you update your presentation.
#7 Creative Freedom
Don't compromise your creative freedom when choosing a presentation program. Animations like fly in, wipe, and fade should all be available. As should effects such as sparkle, bevel and drop shadow. Don't forget to check for transitions like page turn, cube rotate and push. Oh, and image cropping should be available, as should color adjustments for images, and…and…and.
Original Page: http://www.sliderocket.com/blog/2011/11/powerpoint-alternative/
Seven (somewhat snarky) new rules for public speaking in the social media era.
It was painful to watch. Jon Bond, the former ad giant turned social media honcho, was actually getting heckled at the Pivot Conference. When faced with what was a feisty crowd to begin with, Bond admitting that he "didn't like Twitter" was like throwing fresh meat at rabid dogs. But rather than raise their voices, they let their fingers do the shouting. So while Bond continued to speak, a steady stream of snarky tweets projected on the wall behind him, acting like foghorns and essentially drowning him out.
Being a great speaker was never easy, but now, with your audience likely to have a mobile device in hand and real-time access to multiple social channels, the challenges have gotten that much greater. To get a sense of the impact of social media on conference presentations, I interviewed a bunch of regulars on the social media circuit. In the process, they helped me identify these seven (somewhat snarky) new rules for public speaking in the social media era.
1. Don't Panic if They Aren't Looking at YouSure, it's disconcerting when you gaze out at the audience and no one looks back. But whatever you do--don't panic. Just because they are transfixed by their mobile devices, doesn't mean they aren't all ears. "I think the body language tells you if they're paying attention--it's far more distracting to see people whispering to each other than it is to see someone tapping on an iPad" said Jenny Dervin, VP of Corporate Communications at JetBlue, who received raves at a recent BDI event.
2. Stifle the Temptation to Ask for a Device MoratoriumAs tempting as it might be to ask your audience to shut down their devices, every speaker I talked to thought this would be a huge mistake. "I might get their undivided attention, but it would be mixed with their ire at being told how to watch my presentation," said former actor and speaker extraordinaire John C. Havens, who reminded me that in the old days, before digital devices, a lot of people would take notes on a pad of paper, which isn't all that different than tapping out a tweet.
3. If You Aren't Nervous, You Should Be NowWhen I first learned public speaking, an experience advisor suggested that you "imagine the audience is naked," to quell the initial butterflies. Today, speakers are probably better off reminding themselves that they are the naked ones. If your facts are wrong, your audiences will Google then tweet the corrected data before you can say, "I'm just sayin'." And if that isn't scary enough, as author and speaker Jeff Jarvis proclaimed this year at TED, "the lecture, as a form, is bullshit," so you better ask yourself what you're doing up there, anyway!
4. If You Don't Speak Twitterese, It's Time to Learn ItLet's just imagine for the moment that your audience is absolutely riveted by your every word. Chances are some, if not many of them, will want to share your wisdom with their network, not tomorrow when they get back to the office, but right at that very moment. It is for this reason today's effective speakers are not just sharing their Twitter handles upfront but also mixing in tweetable quotes. "Puns, sound bites and pithy phrases are [also] ways to aid in retention," Havens said.
5. Congratulations! You May Be Speaking to Millions You Can't SeeThe irony of speaking in the social media era is that audience in front of you may be far less significant than the collective reach of that particular group. "I'd much rather have the broader reach; it is one of the better measurements of speaking at events," said Frank Eliason, SVP of Social Media for Citibank. Havens adds that if his audience is glued to their devices, "odds are half of them are tweeting about my presentation and they're helping market me!"
6. The Reviews Are In--In Real TimeRather than waiting to ask a friend after the fact how you did, today's skilled presenters welcome this feedback in real time. "It's fun to respond to a tweet when I am on stage, and it personalizes the interaction with the audience," said Eliason. JetBlue's Dervin finds these tweets helpful as well. "I go back in the stream to see what landed, based on how many people tweeted the same quoted," he said. "It's an instant evaluation of my key messages."
7. When All Else Fails, Surprise the Audience with HonestyBringing this article back full circle, Jon Bond perplexed the Pivot crowd with his admission of not liking Twitter. While this honesty may have cost him some street cred with a Twitter-loving crowd, I recently saw another speaker use honesty to extraordinary advantage. Ray Kerins, VP of Corporate Communications at Pfizer, transfixed a BDI crowd with tales of a crisis that had befallen ChapStick on Facebook the day before. By admitting that Pfizer's social media activities were a "work in progress," Kerins earned credibility that reverberated through the Twitterverse.
Final Note
All of the people we spoke to for this piece are very effective speakers, and though each has their own distinctive style, there are a few other commonalities I'd like to point out. First, none of them depend on word-laden PowerPoint presentations. Second, most are good storytellers and use humor, often self-deprecating, to connect with their audiences. Finally, each of them manages to keep their presentations short enough to allow time for a healthy Q&A. Speaking of Q&A's, you can find my complete interviews with Dervin, Havens, Eliason, and Jarvis on TheDrewBlog.com.
For more leadership coverage, follow us on Twitter and LinkedIn.
[Image: Flickr user ubrayj02]
Original Page: http://www.fastcompany.com/1792478/giving-a-kick-ass-presentation-in-the-age-of-social-media?partner=rss
Computerworld ha pubblicato una lunga video-intervista che Steve Jobs concesse alla Computerworld Information Technology Awards Foundation nel 1995, nell'ambito di un più ampio progetto storiografico dello Smithsonian Institute. Sono 75 minuti di "puro Steve Jobs" durante i quali l'allora CEO di Pixar racconta moltissimo di sé e della sua vita. Da questa intervista, per altro, deriva molto di quello che si conosce dell'infanzia di Steve e delle sue esperienze pre-Apple. Anche il biografo ufficiale dell'iCEO, Walter Isaacson, ha attinto da questo video grazie alla collaborazione di Daniel Morrow, l'executive director del Computerworld Honors Program, che condusse l'intervista. Jobs aveva allora da poco compiuto 40 anni e ne mancavano ancora due perché tornasse a Cupertino in veste di CEO. I suoi più grandi successi erano ancora da venire, ma ciò nonostante già allora godeva di un'aura di genio-tecnologo grazie alla sua prima esperienza alla Apple, al suo "fallimento" alla NeXT e alla straordinaria storia di successo di Pixar.
Computerworld ha messo a disposizione l'intera intervista (link: 75 minuti in streaming, ininterrotti – necessario abbonamento "insider") e ha provveduto a spezzettarla in 16 filmati di minore lunghezza (liberamente visibili) sulla base dei vari temi toccati da Jobs.
[via]
Steve Jobs in 75 minuti, pubblicato su TheAppleLounge il 02/11/2011
© Camillo Miller per TheAppleLounge, 2011. | Commenta! |
Tag: ComputerWorld, intervista, Pixar, RIP Steve Jobs
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Original Page: http://www.theapplelounge.com/?p=69201
