Archive for August, 2007

how to travel well…when you’re an internet addict

Aug 29, 2007 Social Media, social networks

1. Carry a Blackberry then you will never be without Facebook notifications, Google Alerts, and of course e-mail

2. May I recommend using a web-based email service for your regular personal email? I love Gmail – not only can I get this email on my Blackberry – but I always have access to my folders, starred emails and contacts – no matter which computer I use.

3. If you aren’t taking a laptop or a Blackberry – you can still get your Facebook notifications – with the Mobile Application and have your alerts sent to you on your mobile device! You can also update your profile, write on walls and send messages!

4. I have my iGoogle (another post topic?) as a bookmark on my Blackberry, and of course the Google Reader Module is included on my personalized page. Which means if I visit my iGoogle I can easily view new RSS feeds. You can also visit from your mobile browser by going to this url: http://www.google.com/reader/m/view/

5. Text messaging and Instant Messages is accessible on most cell phones. No need to lose touch with friends…

6. Load an iPod with your favourite music to make any road time or flight time enjoyable
Fill the above iPod with Podcasts and Video Podcasts that can entertain you in down time (driving, flying as per above!)

7. If you are staying at a hotel, ensure they have FREE internet access and take along a laptop.

8. Never stay with someone who has dial-up or satellite- it is painfully slow (believe me, I am working off satellite right now!)

9. Read my post Social Bookmarking 101 which talks about the website Del.icio.us . No matter where you are, or which computer you are using you will have your favourite bookmarks with you.

10. If you Twitter you can do this from your mobile phone through text messages, or via instant message devices.

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Facebook 101

Aug 22, 2007 Family and Friends, RSS, Social Media, social networks

I know I don’t have to do a Facebook 101.

Perhaps I am wrong but I suspect most of my readers know how to use Facebook. My mother is even on Facebook! Although, since my mother also has a blog – that isn’t a great example.

I did however, want to share something that I learned today about Facebook:

I have a best friend, we have known each other since second grade, and we are both on Facebook. I never see any of her news feeds, and she never gets mine. We thought that perhaps it was because I post at night, and she checks in the morning and by the time that happens mine has rolled on by. But we tested that theory. She still didn’t get my feed if she went on an hour after I wrote a note, uploaded a picture or changed my profile.

Today I learned why! I was reading my usual string of blogs on Google Reader when I read Scobleizer and had an “Aha!” moment – which felt more like an “of course you dumb *ss” moment. Check this out:

There’s a set of algorithms that keep track of which friends of yours are closer friends to you than others. For instance, if you write on someone’s wall, you’ll get more of their items.

So since my best friend and I keep in contact via phone, mobile, and email – rather than wall, facebook mail and profile updates – to the Facebook algorithm we aren’t close friends so likely we don’t want to hear about each other on the News Feed.

Well I must run and send her a Facebook email, writer on her wall and maybe send a free gift.

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A Stock Issue

Aug 20, 2007 Advertising, Branding, Consumer Brands

I am going to extend my blog out of teaching new web applications and take you into my other interest…my work. My role at work is in marketing. It is not my job to create the ads, nor am I the one to write the copy. In the past we have relied on the US office to create our ads, and then slightly tweak them (as much as is allowed) for the Canadian market. Only recently have we been given the ability to create ads specifically for Canada (as long as they are done by our US creative office).

With that caveat – that I am not an advertising professional – just an interested party – I am going to point out the failure of someone else.

When I was in Halifax this weekend I passed by a billboard for Alpha Course. For those who don’t know – Alpha Course is a program that introduces Christianity and explores the meaning of life in a 10-week course. The billboard showed this picture (taken from their website):

The tag line said on the ad said: “Is there more to life than this?” Now perhaps it was because I was looking forward to a night out with friends where I didn’t have to get up at 6:30 in the morning, but my first thought was ” What more do I need!” So the ad stuck in my head momentarily.

On my return drive, on the exact same street I saw this Billboard – advertising Moosehead’s new Cold Filtered beer. Notice any similarities?

Yikes! Stock photography at its best. Why would Moosehead use stock photos for a giant billboard? Perhaps Alpha Course is a religious organization looking to save money – but Moosehead? What is their excuse? Why would they not use rights-managed photographs? Or better yet spend money to shoot their own?

Now I know sometimes marketers are limited in budget – believe me – I deal with this everyday. But if your budget includes Billboard advertising , sponsorship, and television advertising in the quantity that Moosehead does – they should have the budget for a few decent pictures so they can avoid this catastrophe.

Perhaps I will tell them myself! I have sent them this URL – perhaps they will be kind enough to clarify what happened by leaving a comment…

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Must Read Business Books

Aug 14, 2007 Books, Marketing & Communication

In my opinion…( and based on what I have actually read)

I also have a list of “want to reads”….

What are your favourite business books?

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Social Bookmarking: Top 30

Aug 12, 2007 Social Bookmarking

eBIZ MBA just posted the top 30 Social Bookmarking sites. If you aren’t familiar with at least 2 of the top 10 – you really need to wipe the dust off your monitor.

1. Digg
2. Netscape
3. Technorati
4. Del.icio.us
5. Fark
6. StumbleUpon
7. MyBlogLog
8. reddit
9. Kaboodle
10. Slashdot

For the full list visit eBizMBA.

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Social Bookmarking: 201

Aug 12, 2007 Social Bookmarking

Two days after I posted my Social Bookmarking 101 article – this appeared in my feeds from Mashable. from Common Craft. It will explain Social Bookmarking visually

Enjoy!

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Social Bookmarking 101

Aug 7, 2007 Social Bookmarking

Some of my readers likely already know what social bookmarking is, some of you may already frequent Del.icio.us, Ma.gnolia or StumbleUpon, but I suspect there are a few of you who are thinking “social what?”

Most of us bookmark our favourite websites, we go to the “Bookmarks” menu in our browser and click “Bookmark this Page”. We also spend a lot of time copying and pasting URLs into emails to our friends – “Hey, check out this hilarious video” or “Read this, he is right on the mark!” Social bookmarking combines these two tasks into one, and so much more.

In social bookmarking, users store links to web pages that they find useful – just as they would in their browsers “bookmarks” or “favourite” menu. However, these link lists are either accessible to the public or to a specific network, meaning other people with similar interests can view the links by category, randomly or by tags.

Tags: An Introduction

Tags are a popular topic on this blog it seems! So, what is the big deal with “tags”? With the quantity of information being added to the web everyday we have arrived at a point where the content simply exceeds the ability of anyone to categorize or index it all! The task of processing all that content poses an overwhelming problem – how do you maintain a taxonomy to accommodate the pace at which new content is produced. Solutions are emerging as technology advances- and one such solution is Tagging. Tags categorize the information by the use of informally assigned, user-defined keywords. By harnessing the power of the large network of humans using the Internet – anyone can contribute to the categorizing of the net – we are able to build and refine the taxonomy as the need arises.

This type of tagging, also known as folksonomy is used on numerous online services including Flickr and Del.icio.us. The key to these systems is that it is collaborative and open – there is no rigid taxonomy. Users can assign whatever tags or labels that they want. To the organized this type of open categorizing might seem more like chaos. With no one controlling the tags, users will obviously develop multiple terms for the same thing. For example if you want to find web sites related to cars you might have to look up “cars” and “automobile or for the city of Toronto you might have to look up “Toronto”, “T.O.” or “GTA“. Of course by looking up “GTA” you will not only find websites about the “Greater Toronto Area” but websites about the game “Grand Theft Auto”. But, as Chris Anderson stated in The Long Tail:

“These probabilistic systems aren’t perfect, but they are statistically optimized to excel over time and large numbers.There designed to “scale” or improve with size. A little slop at the microscale is the price of efficiency at the macroscale.”

Perhaps, order appears out of the chaos.

Del.icio.us: The Basics

For the purpose of this blog post I am going to focus on Del.icio.us simply because it is the one I use. I have recently started using StumbleUpon but I will leave that to a future post. Del.icio.us allows you to import your current bookmarks, which means if you have bookmarks at home and work you can merge these favourites and access them from any computer.

Once you have registered you will be invited to install Del.icio.us buttons and menu onto your browser. The buttons make it a one-click process to add any website you want to your Del.icio.us bookmarks.

Import Your Bookmarks
By visiting the “Settings” page (top right hand corner) you can at any time import your bookmarks from your browser. The instructions on how to save your bookmarks will differ by browser. Essentially you will have to export your bookmarks as an HTML file and then import that file into Del.icio.us. You can edit these bookmarks, add notes, and tags. You can also delete them.

Add New Bookmarks
With your Del.icio.us browser buttons you can simply click on the “TAG” button to add a new bookmark. For example let’s say I am going to tag “Boing Boing: A Directory of Wonderful Things” . A window will pop-up :

The URL will already be listed, and often so will the Description (if the site had previously been bookmarked). All you have to do is add your notes and your tags that will help you find the URL later (or to explain the website to friends). So for Boing Boing you might use:

Description: A directory of the weird and wonderful
Tags: blogs culture

For pages that have already been bookmarked by others you will be given a list of suggested tags or “popular tags”. Once you have started bookmarking – it may also give you “recommended tags” a list pulled from your existing list of labels.

Share Your Bookmarks
If all Del.icio.us did was save your bookmarks so that you can access them from anywhere – it would be a cool app – but mediocre. That is, of course, not all you can do! Just by posting a link and tagging it you are sharing it with other Del.icio.us users. (You can make links private too – just visit the “Settings” section for details on how to do this.)

If I want to share this hilarious video, (Warning: I think it is funny, Anton says its annoying) called Fast Food Freestyle. It has been saved by only 8 people (apparently not too many people think this is amusing). If I wanted to share this with my network as I am tagging it I will be given the opportunity under “Your Network” – where it will list people in my network – and I just click to share! If , however, you want to share a link that you have already bookmarked you will need to click on “edit” by the URL link, this will bring up the basic fields: URL, Description, and tag. For some reason you need to go to the bottom of this box to “Full-screen edit” – in order to bring up the “Your Network” list. From here find your friend and click to add them. I sent the link to my brother the blogger over at OMOVO – so Jeff did you think it was funny?

Find New Bookmarks
For example you want to find out more about the television show Heroes. You can find bookmarked sites a few different ways:

  • In the upper right hand corner type “Heroes” and choose Del.icio.us – click Search. This will show you a list of sites either tagged “Heroes” or with “Heroes” in the title. It will also show you a list of related tags (tv games series nathan/peter television) so that you can continue your search.
  • Set up a “Subscription”. At the top of the page click on “Subscriptions”, then on the right hand side (bottom of the blue box) click “edit”. On this next page there are two fields “tag” and “Only from this user”. In the tag field type “heroes” and subscribe. You could use the “only from this user” if you happened to notice a user that had similar taste and you wanted to make sure you kept up -to-date on their Heroes bookmarks.

You can of course just browse

  • Browse your network, just click on the top where it says “Your Network”. This will bring up the latest bookmarks saved by your network of users. You can scan page by page using the bottom bar “earlier/later”. Or on the right hand side you could simply choose the user name you are interested in browsing.
  • I have a subscription set up to find bookmarks on “wordofmouth“, if I happen to see a URL I like, I could also check out other bookmarks the user has posted – just by clicking on their user name. I can then browse through their bookmarks.
  • At the top right hand side of the page you can click on “Popular” for the hottest bookmarks, or “recent” for bookmarks just tagged by other users.
  • You can also start at the homepage and browse through the “Hot list” and “Tags to Watch” section.

So, start sharing your bookmarks!

Join my network (click on the right)
Subscribe to my Del.icio.us Feed

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Market Watch

Aug 4, 2007 Marketing & Communication

I was recently asked to contribute to the Market Watch – section for Homestyle Magazine, the trade magazine for the Housewares market in Canada. It was honour and I enjoyed pondering over the questions I asked. I will share them here.

Did you always want to work in marketing?

Actually, no! I had planned on being on award winning journalist. Sadly, I disliked Journalism School and after two years I transferred to Mass Communication. After I graduated from Carleton, I went to work in the “glamorous” world of book publishing. I worked in various sales roles over the course of a five-year period. It was in these roles that I discovered that I really enjoyed the marketing and communication aspect of my position. I began reading Marketing books – focusing on communication and strategy – and went back to school part-time to complete the Ryerson Marketing Management program. I worked in marketing roles in book publishing and children’s products before joining Conair Corporation’s Kitchen Division.

What is the most important element in a successful marketing/advertising plan?

The most important element for any marketing campaign is starting with an understanding of the desired result. If you know where you want to go, it can help determine the best route to get there. However, the best-laid plans don’t always work. You need to be able to go with the flow, if something isn’t working examine it and make necessary changes. If an opportunity presents itself that can help get to your desired outcome – try it.

Are name brands still important today? Why/why not?

I believe that brands are still very important. What we wear, eat and drive has become a source of our identity. However, the traditional view of how to build a brand may need to be modified. The conventional view is that “branding” is done solely by the marketing department – positioning the brand in consumers mind – differentiating a company’s products or services from its competitors.

I believe that a good marketer understands the brands aren’t built solely on advertising and one-way communication from the company. Consumers are more informed and more organized– and they are speaking to each other in more ways then ever before. The Internet is facilitating conversations not possible before with social networking and communication software such as Blogs, Facebook, LinkedIn, Podcasts, and Flickr. Companies need to build brands with their consumers, which means talking to them, listening to their feedback and then incorporating it into the brand.

What do you love most about your job?

My position allows me to develop and implement a variety of marketing programs. I take part in all aspect of communication with regards to the brand and products. From advertising to PR, and packaging to retail marketing – I can help to build a consistent communication to our consumers. Between planning events and developing communication tools – I never have a dull day!

What’s the most challenging part of your job?

Balancing priorities! Finding time to do all of the things I want to do.

Do you think it’s more difficult to reach the consumer today? Why?

It is more difficult to reach consumers today if we go about it in the same way we did 10 years ago. Just as trends change over time, so does what works in communication and marketing. Competition and proliferation of marketing messages has made it difficult to continue making an impact with one-way marketing communication. We need to adjust how we talk to our consumers – make it a two-way conversation, and create an experience that consumers will talk about. Word of mouth is no longer just a marketing tool it is becoming one of the only trusted source of information.

What has been your most successful campaign in this industry so far? Which was the most fun?

My most successful campaign was also the most fun. If you are passionate about what you are working on, your products and your strategy – it will be fun! The “Word of Mom” campaign Cuisinart began in September 2006 has been very lucrative – getting consumers talking about Cuisinart, building loyal customers, garnering PR (including an amazing piece in Chatelaine, May 2007) and ultimately driving sales. The Kitchen Party offline and online at Urbanmoms.ca has allowed us to have conversations with our target market and generate feedback. We have built a community of women and moms that will help us shape what Cuisianrt Canada does in the future.

What ad or promo campaign do you admire the most (any brand, any industry)?

The cult of Apple! In particular the Mac brand. They have taken what consumers believe and perceive the brand to be and built their marketing campaign around it.

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