Mitch Joel's Blog: Six Pixels of Separation, page 277
August 25, 2013
Get Ready For The Collaborative Economy
Episode #372 of Six Pixels of Separation - The Twist Image Podcast is now live and ready for you to listen to.
Jeremiah Owyang is on to a new thing. He calls it, The Collaborative Economy, and he thinks it's going to change everything (again). He's currently Partner of Customer Strategy at Altimeter Group, a research based advisory firm started by Charlene Li (Groundswell and Open Leadership). I've been following Jeremiah (and admiring him) since his days at Forrester Research and was one of the earlier readers/fans of his blog, Web Strategist. In June of this year, he launched his latest research report called, The Collaborative Economy. This is how Owyang explains it: "Right now, customers are sharing media and ideas on social technologies, in the near future, they'll use similar technologies to share products and services, which will cause a ripple of impacts far more disruptive than what we've seen before." Think about Uber, AirBnB and even Netflix. A world where we share stuff... not own it. I spent an afternoon with Owyang a few weeks back in Menlo Park (but we recorded this conversation prior to that). He's got a great mind for business, technology and marketing. Enjoy the conversation...
You can grab the latest episode of Six Pixels of Separation here (or feel free to subscribe via iTunes): Six Pixels of Separation - The Twist Image Podcast #372.
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August 24, 2013
Six Links Worthy Of Your Attention #166
Is there one link, story, picture or thought that you saw online this week that you think somebody you know must see?
My friends: Alistair Croll (BitCurrent, Year One Labs, GigaOM, Human 2.0, Solve For Interesting, the author of Complete Web Monitoring, Managing Bandwidth: Deploying QOS in Enterprise Networks and Lean Analytics), Hugh McGuire (PressBooks, LibriVox, iambik and co-author of Book: A Futurist's Manifesto) and I decided that every week the three of us are going to share one link for one another (for a total of six links) that each individual feels the other person "must see".
Check out these six links that we're recommending to one another:
The Histomap - David Rumsey Map Collection . "I hadn't seen this epic map until a Slate article by Rebecca Onion explained its history. It's a gigantic, unified map of history--a four-thousand-year cheat-sheet. While it was first revealed nearly a century ago, it seems strangely modern, full of potential for a navigable, interactive application or life-feed." (Alistair for Hugh).
Slow Ideas - The New Yorker . "Some notions spread like wildfire; others take decades to catch on. In this The New Yorker piece, Atul Gawande considers why. I love the contrast between anesthesia (fast) and antiseptic (slow) and it's an example I will likely us often; I'm sure that someone as interested in how messages disseminate as you are will find it equally useful." (Alistair for Mitch).
There's a Hole in My Bucket - Wikipedia . "In which Wikipedia wins the award for the most pedantic page on the Internet, for the week of August 24, 2013." (Hugh for Alistair).
Ballet dancers in random situations - Leenks . "With the NSA spying on everything we do on the Internet, Egypt falling to pieces, UK spies smashing newspaper hard drives, Syria falling to pieces, journalists' partners getting detained under terrorist laws, Fukushima leaking radioactive water, fracking, Quebec sinkholes, bankrupt exploding railways, prorogued parliament, for starters, I've had my fill of shitty news this summer. Instead: ballet dancers in random situations." (Hugh for Mitch).
What Is Medium? - The Atlantic . "I was speaking with Anil Dash this past week at HubSpot 's Inbound 2013 summit in Boston and we somehow got on the topic of Medium . Medium is a new publishing platform founded by two of the people who created Twitter . It's all the buzz now. I was curious as to what Anil thought it was, and if there was any merit to it (he actually blogged about it right here: What Medium Is ). Sure, the content is stellar, but what makes it anything more than WordPress or The Huffington Post ? Is the hype there simply because of who created it or is there something more... creeping beneath the surface that isn't so obvious? The Atlantic investigates (and, make sure to read Anil's piece too!)." (Mitch for Alistair).
Then and Now: Photos of Real Places Mentioned in Fiction - Flavorwire . "I love features like this. They hunt down the moments and real spaces that took place in some of fiction's greatest work and show us what it looks like today. As a marketing professional, I'm all about the modernization of our world (and I love technology), but it can be jaw-dropping to see just how much change has transpired in a few short years." (Mitch for Hugh).
Now it's your turn: in the comment section below pick one thing that you saw this week that inspired you and share it.
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human 20
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link sharing
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medium
nsa
pressbooks
rebecca onion
slate
social media
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the atlantic
the huffington post
the new yorker
twitter
wikipedia
wordpress
year one labs
Nate Silver, David Carr And Charlie Rose
Have you seen this episode of Charlie Rose?
It originally aired on July 25th, 2013. It's a great piece of video content to watch. These a traditional media personalities starting to better see just how much disruption the world has been through... and just how much further things are still going to go.
Interested in traditional media, new media and how we'll be using content? Watch this...
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August 23, 2013
There Is A Bigger Picture (And It's Worth Thinking About)
I had not seen Steve Garfield in a long time.
That's not entirely true. We schmoozed a little bit when I spoke at the Radian6 user summit a few years back in Boston. I first met Steve in 2006 at the first-ever PodCamp Boston. Since then, I always pegged him as the video podcasting guy (and the author of the excellent business book, Get Seen). We caught up over dinner this past week at HubSpot's incredible Inbound 2013 event in Boston. I was surprised to hear that he doesn't do much video podcasting anymore. He invests in startups. In fact, he's had some interesting exits in the past few years as Qik got acquired by Skype (for $100 million) and MakerBot got acquired Stratasys (for over $400 million). As we munched on chicken and waffles (don't ask!), I asked him how he got involved in such amazing startups. He answered in two words: social media.
Thinking differently about social media.
Everybody wants everything right now. Today. Instantly. Steve doesn't think like that. He gives abundantly. He shares. He connects. He brings people together. He makes himself available to people interested in the space. Whether it was video podcasting, blogging, running a new media meet-up or being active on Twitter, Steve isn't always looking for his next play or how much money he's making from the videos that he used to post online. He took his time. He built trust. He helped others and look what happened. He put in the time. He still puts in the time. People always ask me how to make money from blogging or podcasting or if there's any money in blogging and podcasting? Well, when Steve told me about his life, how it has unfolded and how all of this investing came from relationships he made via social media, it occurred to me that he is a another shining example of what can happen when you embrace social media for what it truly can be.
The good stuff isn't always directly connected.
There are a lot of stories similar to Steve's. Did you hear the one about Michelle Phan? She's 26 years old and has been creating YouTube tutorial videos about makeup. Currently, she has over 4.5 subscribers to her YouTube channel, and some of her videos have cranked past 40,000,000 views (not a typo). This week, Phan announced her own cosmetic line, em michelle phan, backed by L'Oreal. Yes, that L'Oreal. Mashable published a great story about Phan and her cosmetic line with L'Oreal: Michelle Phan: Behind the Makeup of YouTube's Fairy Godmother.
Seeing the bigger picture.
With each and every passing day, we're seeing more and more people build networks of trust through the creation of content that adds value and - by doing so - wind up in some pretty spectacular positions. It's easy to be negative and see these individuals as some kind of exception to the rule or an anomaly, but that is shortsighted. These individuals are doing what most brands (and individuals) don't have the ability or integrity to do: spend the time to actually build the trust first, instead of looking for that quick, big fix. It also speaks volumes to what the future holds for those eager to become entrepreneurs.
When you think about social media and what you're doing online, these stories may give you pause to think about a much bigger picture.
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Your Brand Is Tweeting Too Much
How much is too much Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Pinterest for a brand?
It's getting ugly out there. Brands and fellow agencies will often ask me the same question: how often should we be on _____________ (insert your favorite social media channel here)? In the past, research be damned, my response would typically be: so long as it's quality and your audience cares, shares and keeps on about it, don't listen to the research reports or what any pundit has to tell you. The unique pulse between and a brand and its consumers is highly personal and unique on a case-by-case basis.
I may be wrong.
This morning, I was reading the Marketing Charts news item, Majority of Top Brands Tweeting At Least 30 Times Per Week, which offered up these interesting pieces of data:
Global brands tweet about 30 times per week.
US brands tweet about 220 times per week.
25% of the brands use it for purely broadcasting purposes.
63% of the brands tracked in the report had multiple accounts.
Dell has 44 different accounts.
57% of brands tracked switched tools or started using more than one tool in the past year.
Has anyone spent any time speaking to a consumer?
Do me a favor. Stop reading this blog post. Set your timer for 60 seconds and start listing off all of the brands in your life that you would like to hear from about 30 times a week on Twitter. I'll wait....
...And, we're back!
So, how does your list look? Now, before you think about the answer, please remember that if you're reading this, you're already a convert. You're already (somewhat) in love with marketing. You're interested in how brands are doing what they do. You believe that new and amazing channels offer up all kinds of opportunities for brands to better engage with their consumers. All of this is true. But, what about the average consumer? These people are connected to but a few people. Some of them are acquaintances, while some of them are celebrities. Are brands that interesting? What brand does a consumer really need to hear from on Twitter (or see in their feed) upwards of 30 times per week?
The advertising mindset flaw.
One of advertising strongest metrics is frequency and/or repetition. We bring that same traditional advertising ethos to social media, where the distribution is free (or, somewhat free) and this is what happens. Brands go crazy. So yes, consumers will experience fatigue and brands will react as they always have: with more. They did it with their TV spots, they did it with email blasts and they're doing it in social media. The problem with social media and scale in social media marketing is that frequency and repetition does not equal quality. It becomes noise, no matter how high the level of quality.
What makes this worse.
There's also something bigger and scarier happening here. In this instance, we're just taking about Twitter. What about Facebook, Pinterest, YouTube, blogs, podcasts and beyond? If brands are pumping 30 tweets into the system at a consumer just on Twitter, what do you think their cumulative content push is like when you bring all of the social media channels together? I'm an unabashed fan of social media marketing and the ability for brands to have these amazing direct relationships with consumers, but it is data points like this one from Marketing Charts that makes me wonder how sustainable this model is in a world where these channels are so personal. It just doesn't make sense. No matter how much love an individual has for a brand, these numbers feel alarmingly large.
Even if the 30 tweets are quality, at what point does the quality not matter because of the sheer volume of output?
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August 21, 2013
Are Creative Types Just A Bunch Of Slackers?
When you think of creative types, what do you think of?
If they are creatives and they work in the marketing industry, most people think of individuals wearing shorts, t-shirts and bouncing rubbery objects off of their walls until its lunchtime or until an idea strikes. For others, it's a scene out of the movie Limitless, where Bradley Cooper is a wannabe writer who has a publishing contract and a literary agent, but he spends his time seeking out inspiration by doing anything (and, I do mean anything) but the hard work of putting the words on to paper or a screen. It's not wrong to say that creatives are often given a bad rap. For the most part, their reputations are often summed up in one word: slackers.
It's simply not true.
Recently, Jerry Seinfeld was on Howard Stern and it was one of the most fascinating pieces of content I've consumed in a very long time (you can listen to it here). Stern (like me) is fascinated with the mechanics of standup comedy and how Jerry puts together a set. Much in the same way that I love the Paris Review because of the way they not only interview authors but dissect their work environment and writing habits. Seinfeld is obsessive. He works on jokes like he's sitting on the assembly line: day in and day out. Tinkering with it. Wordsmithing it. Perfecting the timing. It's the complete opposite of doing nothing. You can't look at authors like Stephen King and J.K. Rowling and not be impressed with their output. It takes other authors years to pull together enough words to call it a book. It's not a question of speed (some have it, while others don't), but it is a question of habits. I was first introduced to the concept of bringing a blue-collar work ethic to the creative space in Steven Pressfield's amazing book, The War Of Art. It was re-introduced to me when he updated some of the concepts for the book, Do The Work (which was a part of Seth Godin's The Domino Project publishing imprint). I used to believe that writing (whether it's a book, article or blog post) is a lot easier when you know you're not the only one suffering to find the idea and the words to match it. I've since changed my ways. My views were further changed during my book launch event for CTRL ALT Delete that happened at the Google office in NYC a few months back. I was fortunate enough to have a live conversation on stage with Seth Godin. Someone in the crowd asked us about our writing output and Godin stated that he doesn't believe in writer's block because there is no such thing as thinker's block or talker's block and he likes to write like he talks (you can watch the video footage of our conversation below).
What it's really all about.
I am about 70% through an amazing book called, Daily Rituals - How Artists Work, by Mason Currey. It looks at everyone from Hemingway to Kafka and beyond. The book features writers, painters, architects and artists. Some entries are short, while others are more well-documented. Through the ages, there are three common threads that keep coming up that, to me, that demonstrate why we consider these individuals great. It also demonstrates just how absurdly wrong our perception is of the creative class.
Hard work. There are no entries about people who wandered around the local pub scene, partied late into the night and magically were able to create great work. Some of these artists are early risers (we're talking 4 am wake-ups), while others were able to work deep into the night (we're talking about going to sleep at 4 am). All of them brought a rigid work ethic to what it was that they were creating and - for the most part - were somewhat obsessive with delivering something of excellence. This hard work and dedication is not about how many hours they spent on something, but every one of them spent countless hours during the day hard at work on getting the work done. It only be defined as the opposite of slacking and procrastinating. They were on a tight schedule.
Take notes. When these people weren't spending their working day toiling towards perfection and on a schedule, they were taking notes. Some kept notebooks on their night tables, while others would frequently be seen out and about, but off in a corner taking notes or working through a problem. I'm reminded of a story that famed author Jeffrey Gitomer once told me about his father and how he would always be writing notes on a pad of paper that he kept with him. When Jeffrey asked him what he was writing, his father would reply, "I'm doing my homework." The world's most admired creatives do a lot of homework by taking a lot of notes when they're not "on the job."
They walk. Through the decades, each and every one of these creative types took time - every day - to go for a long and/or vigorous walk. Yes, they would often stop and take notes as well, but they would frequently go out for an extended period to think, ponder or spend time with family and friends. While some would walk alone, others would walk with their spouses or partners. Each and every one of them found time to do some kind of deep and intensive physical exercise, but - more often than not - it was walking. It feels like it was done as a holistic exercise. One that moved the body, mind and spirit.
So, the next time you're not feeling creative, it may be best to stop wondering about where that next idea is going to come from and ask yourself if you have dedicated daily rituals that will let the million flowers bloom.
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August 20, 2013
Is Smart Marketing An Oxymoron?
We need to forget about the idea of mobile marketing and start focusing on smart marketing.
In my second business book, CTRL ALT Delete, I lay out the case for the one screen world. It's not about three screens (TV, Web and mobile) or four screens (some people like to say that the tablet is the fourth screen)... it's about one screen: whatever screen is in front of me. Too many brands continue to build digital ghettos where the Web, mobile, social and even e-commerce occupy and have their own, unique, strategies. These strategies are often run through different departments, managers and teams. Sometimes, the only unifying quality is that they all represent the same brand. In a world where screens are connected, ubiquitous, cheap and in the palms of our hands, perhaps all of those strategies are stupid, and what brands are in dire need of is a smart marketing strategy.
When mobile is less about where you are and much more about who you are.
The indication of mobile used to be about portability and location. Knowing who the consumer is, where they are and what they're doing. In 2013, it really has become about that last part: what we're doing. The context of the situation. In theory, you can be on your mobile device, but sitting on the coach at home. Trying to market against this using a mobile strategy seems almost as ridiculous as trying to get conversion from a QR code that's lambasted on a billboard that is situated on the interstate. So many brands are struggling to understand that mobile is less about the fact that everyone has a phone on them and much more about the fact that these phones are not phones at all. They are, as my good friend Andy Nulman likes to call them: the remote control for our lives. To this day, too many brands are looking at the advertising opportunity (how to get a message in front of these users), instead of the marketing opportunity (how to create something that will add value to their consumers lives) that these connected screens offer the world.
Are we still talking about the need for brands to embrace mobile marketing?
In fact, we are but we should not be. The truth is that the consumers have already made the choice and now brands are woefully behind. You would think that they would have learned their lesson after watching the adoption of websites, then e-commerce, and then social media over the past two decades, but they have not. Just last week, there were a handful of interesting factoids that point us to a post-PC and post-Web browser world that should make brands stand up straight and take notice.
Factoid #1: Smartphone sales now surpass feature phone sales. This may seem like something that was inevitable, but it has finally come to pass according to the TechCrunch article, Smartphones Finally Overtook Dumbphone Sales Globally In Q2, Android Now At 79%, Says Gartner. With Samsung leading these sales (close to one third of all sales) and Apple in second (at about 14% of all units), the growth may be coming from areas like Asia Pacific, Latin American and Eastern Europe, but sales have grown in all regions (according to the analysts). It won't be long before all phone sales are smartphone sales.
Factoid #2: Smartphone traffic continues to grow by leaps and bounds. "Smartphone traffic has grown 10 times more quickly than desktop traffic over the past year," stated the Marketing Charts news item, Smartphone Traffic Growing by Leaps and Bounds. We're looking at a traffic growth of about 125% between the first half of 2012 and 2013. Desktop had a 12% growth. Furthermore, the data reports that mobile devices (feature phones, smartphones and tablets) closed in on 30% of all website visits in Q2 of 2013. This is a staggering growth point that seems to be moving at an exponential pace with no decline in sight.
Factoid #3: Mobile devices account for over one third of online conversions. This is where it gets interesting. We're talking about money spent. Consumers gaining confidence in the platforms and comfort in transacting from these devices. The Internet struggled to find this level of legitimacy in the early years. Many brands thought that the Internet was simply a fad or something for the truly nerdy back when it was first commercialized. There were years of discourse and public outcry about consumers who feared putting their credit card number into a website. Smart devices are driving people to spend dollars. According to the Marketing Charts news item, Mobile Devices Accounting for Almost One-Third of Online Conversions Across Major Verticals, saw that 31% of conversions in the telecom, retail, auto and travel verticals happened on a mobile device, and that 65% of those conversions took place on a tablet. This works out to a growth of close to 30% over the past year. Once again, this is a massive stride from where we were just a few short years ago.
Factoid #4: Mobile commerce is close to 20% of all e-commerce revenues. According to the news item, Mobile commerce contributes 17.4% of total ecommerce, from Retail Digital we're seeing entirely new ways for brands to provide levels of personalization, service and commerce to consumers. While e-commerce introduced the concept of shopping around the clock on an as-needed basis instead of waiting for regular store hours, being able to transact anywhere and everywhere seems to be a major attraction for consumers and an increasingly easier way for them to connect with brands.
We need to get over the words "mobile," "Web" and "social media."
What this data points to is a smart consumer using smart devices. These could be connected televisions, smartphones, tablets, laptops or anything else. These devices - in a one screen world - are smart. They're getting smarter and more connected and the only thing that brands need to be paying much closer attention to, is just how well they are building a Smart Marketing plan around these consumers. The digital strategy ghettos are rampant in most organizations (both B2C and B2B), and this is primarily because brands don't see smart devices as a business strategy. Sadly, they see them as engines of advertising or engines of commerce instead of being what they truly are: a digital representation of the the business entity.
Let's see if smart marketing can become something more than an oxymoron.
The above posting is my twice-monthly column for The Huffington Post. I cross-post it here with all the links and tags for your reading pleasure, but you can check out the original version online here:
Huffington Post - Is Smart Marketing An Oxymoron?
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August 18, 2013
Customer Loyalty? No! Monster Loyalty? Yes!
Episode #371 of Six Pixels of Separation - The Twist Image Podcast is now live and ready for you to listen to.
It feels like I have known Jackie Huba forever. She's a master at understanding, talking about, writing about and teaching about customer loyalty. She's written a batch of bestselling business books like, Creating Customer Evangelists and Citizen Marketers. She's been at it for a long time. She's been talking about a lot of the things that the smart brands are finally doing... but Jackie was talking about it long ago. Most recently, she published a new book, Monster Loyalty - How Lady Gaga Turns Followers into Fanatics. Don't mistaken this for another book about how brands need to turn customers into fans. It's not. It's about something much more powerful and that much deeper. Enjoy the conversation...
You can grab the latest episode of Six Pixels of Separation here (or feel free to subscribe via iTunes): Six Pixels of Separation - The Twist Image Podcast #371.
Tags:
advertising podcast
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blogging
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creating customer evangelists
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August 17, 2013
Six Links Worthy Of Your Attention #165
Is there one link, story, picture or thought that you saw online this week that you think somebody you know must see?
My friends: Alistair Croll (BitCurrent, Year One Labs, GigaOM, Human 2.0, Solve For Interesting, the author of Complete Web Monitoring, Managing Bandwidth: Deploying QOS in Enterprise Networks and Lean Analytics), Hugh McGuire (PressBooks, LibriVox, iambik and co-author of Book: A Futurist's Manifesto) and I decided that every week the three of us are going to share one link for one another (for a total of six links) that each individual feels the other person "must see".
Check out these six links that we're recommending to one another:
NSA: The Decision Problem - Edge . "I had the pleasure of meeting George Dyson a couple of weeks ago, and while I only spoke with him briefly, I heard him present and explain the tides of technical history. He is a careful, convincing researcher of the near past, and in doing so, of the probable future. So when I saw that he'd chimed in on recent NSA revelations, I thought it was worth a look. I wasn't disappointed. 'The ultimate goal of signals intelligence and analysis is to learn not only what is being said, and what is being done, but what is being thought.'" (Alistair for Hugh).
Snooping on your kids: Sometimes surveillance defeats the purpose - GigaOm . "Two very different pieces on spying, this week. Next up: Mathew Ingram is one of my favorite tech writers. He's never better than when he looks beyond the news to its consequences. In this epic, four-part series, Mathew talks about how he's snooped on his kids for nearly a decade--and what he's learned. Part confessional, part cautionary tale, as Mathew says, 'it was the interference with their development as fully functioning social human beings (whatever that means in an online context) that really gave me pause, and finally made me step back from all of my monitoring.'" (Alistair for Mitch).
How The Government Killed A Secure E-mail Company - The New Yorker . "When the Snowden affair broke, it occurred to me that there would be a huge new market for secure, encrypted Internet communication services; where users would pay for privacy. It turns out that the US government is pretty much making such services illegal. The government position is: let us spy on all your users communications, or you will go to jail. The scary thing about all this is that the companies and individuals who are trying to provide these services are not even allowed to talk about the legal threats they receive from the government: secret courts make secret orders. The contents of which must remain secret. Welcome to modern freedom, everybody." (Hugh for Alistair).
Out Loud: Everything Is Interesting - The New Yorker . "Mitch and I share an admiration for what might be the best article ever written about participation culture on the Web, Nicholson Baker's The Charms of Wikipedia. Here is a The New Yorker podcast interview with Baker about LCD screens, the craft of writing, the importance of slowness, cigars and many other things." (Hugh for Mitch).
Struggling Immigrant Artist Tied to $80 Million New York Fraud - The New York Times . "My cousin loves this online marketplace where he can pick any piece of art, choose the sign and someone - in some village in Asia - will paint it (by hand) for next to nothing. The results are impressive and it looks a whole lot better than a poster or print. I couldn't stop thinking about this story. Imagine this: taking a hot and breaking artists and then convince someone to paint original work that is similar and then position it as an original. It scary. Scary smart. Until you're caught. Then, not so good. (Mitch for Alistair).
Reshaping new York - The New York Times . "If you want to make online publishing interesting, you have to do something with it that you can't do in other formats. The traditional copy and paste of content to the Web has been an example of what not to do. Still, it's mostly all that we've got. This is a fascinating piece. Not just for the breathtaking changes that New York has gone through in the past decade, but because of how this is all presented. It's inspiring. Still, it feels like we're at the very nascent stages of what digital publishing is... and what will soon be able to do." (Mitch for Hugh).
Now it's your turn: in the comment section below pick one thing that you saw this week that inspired you and share it.
Tags:
alistair croll
bitcurrent
book a futurists manifesto
complete web monitoring
edge
george dyson
gigaom
hugh mcguire
human 20
iambik
librivox
link bait
link exchange
link sharing
managing bandwidth
mathew ingram
media hacks
nicholson baker
nsa
pressbooks
social media
solve for interesting
the charms of wikipedia
the new york times
the new yorker
twitter
year one labs
August 16, 2013
Into The Night With Garry Kasparov And Peter Thiel
One word: WOW!
You have to spend an hour with this. It's an amazing (and really deep) conversation with Gary Kasparov (world chess champion) and Peter Thiel (billionaire entrepreneur thanks to PayPal, some hedge fund management and an early investment in Facebook). These two talk about everything, but what will most stand out are their perspectives on success, technology and business.
Watch this:
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business
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gary kasparov
hedge fund
into the night
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Six Pixels of Separation
- Mitch Joel's profile
- 80 followers
