Mitch Joel's Blog: Six Pixels of Separation, page 287

The Niche Of Things And Other Stuff

When was the last time you went to a conference and took twelve pages of detailed notes?

Here's a truism: I am spoiled. As part of my role at Twist Image, I go out and speak to about sixty groups every year. In short, I get to see it all (and I feel very fortunate because of it). Personally, I also attend two events a year that allow me to sit in the audience, soak it in and be the student (those events are TED and Google Zeitgeist). This past week, I spent two days locked in the financial district of New York City at the Mirren New Business Conference. This was my second time attending the conference (I went the year before last), and it was one of the best professional development things I have ever done for myself. So, make it three must-attend events now.

Have you ever heard of it?

You probably have not heard of Mirren or their conference. The conference is geared towards those who work on business development in marketing, advertising and communications agencies. That's it. BD folks in agencies. The conference sells out every year and even with multiple tracks, it supplies ample access and information to the point that my Moleskine runneth over. As I sat there, with my head spinning over all of the better ways I could help connect Twist Image with new clients and optimize the organic growth of the agency, it gave me pause. What, exactly, was Mirren doing so well that was keeping this room of Type A, hustle and bustle sales folks so captivated? It wasn't the food. It wasn't the venue. Both of those were typical conference fare. It was the depth of the niche. The deep and intense focus on this one tiny sliver of agency life (which is still the lifeblood of how the work gets a chance to be created).

We're all in this together.

What you quickly realize is that Mirren is doing what every brand should do, but doesn't. They don't focus on the whole industry. They don't focus on everybody. They stay laser-focused on business development for agency professionals. Everything from the materials you get, to the speakers and the topics that all have one sole focus: how do you make these agency business development people smarter, better and more effective. Every moment wasn't brimming with epiphanies, but even the stuff we all know (which does get repeated) acted as a strong reminder. This depth of content, which spilled over into breaks, hotel lobby meet-ups and dinner conversations kept everybody there with their proverbial heads in the game.

So, where's the news here?

Most conferences are generalists. They try to placate to everyone. They try to give a smidgen of everything. And, what you feel after you really deep dive at a conference like Mirren is that a smidgen of everything gives you knowledge of nothing. The same is true about brands. The same is true about blogging. The same is true about Twitter and on and on. What will make you, your business, your event, your content production powerful, profound and impactful is how deep you dive into that niche. How well you advance the topics that lie within it and how well you connect to those who really care. This creates true attention. The kind of attention that the heavy consumers (or your best customers) want and demand. The kind of attention that will force those on the periphery to pay attention. So, the next time you're looking at attending an industry event, try to find the one that best mimics what Mirren is doing for business development professionals in agencies. And, if one doesn't exist, you may want to pull your team together and start one of your own.

Because those who own the niche can truly own the industry that it serves.  

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advertising

agency professional

business development

communications

conference

content

generalists

google

google zeitgeist

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mirren

mirren new business conference

moleskine

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professional development

public speaking

ted

twitter

Designing A Better Website

It seems like online publishers are starting to think about the digital-first experience.

In the past short while, we have started to see what could only be described as "true online publishing" taking on a new (and pretty) look and feel. It started not too long ago when Fast Company did a full overhaul of their website. If you choose an article on their site, you will mostly see a big and beautiful image, a bold headline and that's when the scrolling begins. You intuitively move down the page for the content or left to right at the top of the page for supplemental images associated with the piece. The New York Times had a breakthrough with Snow Fall, which was their interactive coverage of the rise in fatalities from skiing. Reuters is currently previewing their latest web version and there are grumblings that a major redesign of The New York Times is on the way as well.   

In response to responsive design.

While the language of how we design the Internet continues to evolve (thanks to HTML5), we are also now seeing responsive Web design and parallax scrolling techniques take hold. Websites will now adjust to the user's experience (which could be happening on a computer, smartphone or tablet) and adapt (or respond) to the user's needs accordingly. While it's not as simple as it sounds in terms of the design and cost to get there, it's an excellent concession position for online publishers (instead of having to design native experiences for the Web and multiple mobile app platforms). But, what makes these techniques most fascinating is the user experience. Instead of a fixed, square page buffered by banner ads, the user is actually moved through the piece because of the design experience it creates in flowing them along with the story. It's no longer about having those annoying page numbers to click through at end of each page, and much more about a page that is unencumbered by any physical page limitation.

Beyond paper.

When television first came on air, it was mostly people performing radio in front of a camera. There was no real acting as we see it today. There were no multi-camera shots. It was mostly live and, if we're going to honest here: it was boring. It was only exciting because we could see people and the technology was new. While the Web wasn't boring beyond the recent changes in how we're designing and publishing stories now, it wouldn't be unfair to say that most online publishers were simply replicating the print experience. Copy and paste. We took our text from the newspapers and magazines and copy and pasted it on to a Web page. Sure, links added depth to these stories and comments enabled people to add to the discourse (or, as Arianna Huffington likes to say about blogging and the Huffington Post: "self-expression is the new entertainment"), but online publishing still looked and felt like traditional publishing. The thing is that now we're starting to see and understand the landscape in a much more profound and powerful way. A web page is not limited to the same constraints as a printed page, consumers are better at understanding how to manipulate digital spaces, while tablets and smartphones add a whole new perspective with hand gestures. Plus, legitimate designers are now starting to take the Internet more seriously as a design medium. So, we're moving beyond trying to make the Internet look, feel and read like paper, and this is the moment in time when it feels like the Internet is about to become a true publishing medium unto itself. And something a whole lot more interesting to look at.

No, it's not just Twitter .

Blogging, Twitter and more are original ways to spread, share and create content. Facebook, tumblr, YouTube and even the latest entry, Medium, are all doing their fare share of the work in creating new and fascinating ways for content to be penned and distributed, but the majority of the design still harkens back to the day of the printing press. What is about to make all of this digital publishing most fascinating will be more than the words, images, audio and video content, but in how it is designed to create something new. Traditional publishers are no longer just publishing content online, but working - harder than ever - to create a true experience that is native to a digitally connected screen. This the true power and opportunity of online publishing. Articles suddenly look like microsites and stories suddenly have three-dimensional depth to them that could have never have been achieved in the classic formats. For some, these new experiences may be too busy or have too much going on. Personally, these nascent examples are the bedrock of what will make digital such a rich and interesting next-generation publishing engine. It seems like we've scratched well beneath the surface with the content part of the equation in the past decade, but now it is time for the designers and user experience people to really up the ante and move us beyond the limitations of pages and fixed spaces to help stories flow in new and interesting ways. The challenge (and there is always a lot of them) will be in figuring out if things like banner ads and text links can maintain their dominance as the revenue generation engine that supports these more robust forms of content.

What do you think? 

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 - How to Design a Better Website .

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arianna huffington

banner ad

business column

content

design experience

digital first experience

digital space

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fast company

hand gestures

html5

huffington post

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magazine

medium

microsite

mobile app

newspaper

online publisher

online publishing

parallax scrolling

publisher

publishing

radio

responsive web design

reuters

smartphone

snow fall

tablet

technology

television

text link

the new york times

tumblr

twitter

user experience

web designer

website

website design

website redesign

youtube

Reinventing You With Dorie Clark

Episode #357 of Six Pixels of Separation - The Twist Image Podcast is now live and ready for you to listen to.

How important is a personal brand? Is that phrase even able to stay alive in this day and age? There is no doubt that our individual reputations are online and available for the world to see, but what does that really mean in a world where everyone is connected, has a Facebook profile, a Twitter feed, a blog and more? Dorie Clark has spent some serious time trying to figure out how individuals can better connect and build their personal profile and reputation. In this fascinating chat with the Harvard Business Review and Forbes contributor, the newly published author of Reinventing You looks at the power of personal brands and what they mean in this day and age. 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 #357.

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advertising podcast

blog

blogging

brand

business book

business podcast

david usher

digital marketing

dorie clark

facebook

forbes

harvard business review

itunes

marketing podcast

personal brand

podcast

podcasting

reinventing you

Six Links Worthy Of Your Attention #151

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:

Nikola Tesla's Amazing Predictions for the 21st Century - Smithsonian . "Some of these were spot on (the EPA, robotics); others were just plain weird or evil (eugenics, forced sterilization.) But given that most of Tesla 's life looks like that of a displaced time-traveler from the 21st century, it might be worth thinking about, anyway." (Alistair for Hugh).

The Matrix Retold by Mom - Pixels Per Second . "One of the most challenging things in marketing and product design is cognitive overhead, which Bump 's Davie Lieb has written eloquently about recently . Each of us approaches something with a lot of context, and when we try to market it to others, we fail to see the world as our customers do when they lack that context. Here's a good example: A guy watches The Matrix with his mom, then tries to get her to explain it, then animates the results. Every product designer and copywriter needs to watch this." (Alistair for Mitch).

Allowing Knives on Planes? Yes, It's a Good Idea - Bloomberg . "As a relatively frequent traveler, I have seen my fair share of security line stupidity, but I've never really seen objections to security policies articulated as clearly as this: every dollar and minute you spend on security stupidity is a dollar and minute you don't spend on doing security right. Security done right can be counterintuitive, and confiscating knives is probably a big waste of time, says Bloomberg ." (Hugh for Alistair).

Every page is your homepage: Reuters, untied to print metaphor, builds a modern river of news - Nieman Journalism Lab . "Something I've noticed over the past year: a whole lot of very good, very interesting design thinking going into (some) news/magazine sites. Here's a preview of Reuters ' new look. The 'homepage' isn't so exciting, but I love what they've done with individual articles, turning them each into a home page in a very clever way." (Hugh for Mitch). 

The Money Shot - Vanity Fair . " Facebook buys Instagram for about one billion dollars in the same month that Kodak files for Chapter Eleven protection. Just that part of the story alone is enough to send you on a long, strange trip through the world of innovation, digitization, technology and the new economy, but what really happened? How did a deal like this go down? What can other startup learn from Instagram's meteoric rise and how deals in Silicon Valley get done. This Vanity Fair piece deconstructs Instagram's 18-month journey from idea to sale, and it's one of the most compelling stories about our brave new world that I have read in a long time. Keep a notebook handy for this one." (Mitch for Alistair). 

How a First-Time Author Got a 7-Figure Book Deal - The Blog of Tim Ferriss . "This one should take you about an hour to read (if you take it seriously). Maybe longer is you really want to score a major book deal. Not a week goes by that someone, somewhere doesn't contact me for counsel on how to score a book deal, but I think that this blog post offers more insight, wisdom and knowledge than anything I have been through personally (or have read in a book, magazine article or online). The always-amazing Tim Ferriss hands the reigns of his blog over to John Romaniello to tell his amazing story of how he conquered the book publishing industry, but what takes this post from amazing to extraordinary and 'must-read' is Ferriss' additional commentary and links (of which you should click on and read as well). Not to be outdone by Ferriss, the one hundred-plus comments from his community also contributes tremendous color and depth to this topic. So, before you head on out and self-publish your book, you may want to take a read of this." (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

bloomberg

book a futurists manifesto

book publishing

bump

complete web monitoring

david lieb

facebook

gigaom

hugh mcguire

human 20

iambik

instagram

john romaniello

kodak

librivox

link bait

link exchange

link sharing

managing bandwidth

media hacks

nieman journalism lab

nikola tesla

pixels per second

pressbooks

reuters

smithsonian

social media

solve for interesting

techcrunch

the matrix

tim ferriss

twitter

vanity fair

year one labs

youtube

If Someone Is Watching, You Will Pedal Faster

We are creatures of evolution. No matter how hard we try to deny it.

Marketing is about understanding the human condition. And, while we have changed so dramatically as people, there are certain evolutionary things that stick with us. When trying to figure out why we do things, there are few people as interesting as Adam Alter. Alter is an assistant professor of marketing and psychology at NYU's Stern School of Business and psychology department. His research focuses on the intersection of behavioral economics, marketing, and the psychology of judgment and decision-making. His first book, Drunk Tank Pink: And Other Unexpected Forces That Shape Our Thoughts, Feelings, and Behaviors, is a fantastic read. We recently recorded an episode of Six Pixels of Separation, but until it gets published (which should be in the next few weeks), you should watch his recently published talk at Google.

Watch Adam Alter and learn about the types of strange and fascinating decisions that humans make...

(like why we pedal a bike faster when other people are watching us).

Tags:

adam alter

behavioral economics

drunk tank pink

google

google talk

human condition

marketing

marketing professor

nyu

podcast

psychology

stern school of business

You Don't Have A Branding Problem...

You have a marketing problem.

How many meetings have you sat in where people want to refresh the logo, redo the website, create a mobile app, build a Facebook page, get new brochures and more because they think that they're having a problem getting their message through to their potential audience? The issue is systematic. Unfortunately, too many marketers think that they have a branding problem. That the message that they have is simply not connecting to an intended audience.

Maybe that is all wrong.

Before you go changing things, take a deep breath... a few steps back and ask yourself this:

What is the path to purchase? Do you know how people find out about your product (or service), learn more about it, make a decision and then finally buy from you?

Tracking. How much of that process are you both tracking and optimizing? Do you know your true conversion rates? Where these potential people are in your sales funnel? Are you constantly tweaking that tracking with a better understanding of what it costs to acquire a customer, keep them and their overall lifetime value?

Fixing what you have. Before a redesign of your website, mobile app or whatever, what do you really know about what is going on? How well-versed are you in web analytics? What insights are you culling from the data and tweaking/testing to ensure that with every move, you are making it simpler for someone to transact with you?

Telling your story. Have you truly leveraged social media and traditional communications to uncover the real stories of your business? The types of stories that people will actually want to find and share? Making the content that you are creating as shareable and as findable as possible? Or, is this still a world of frustration because the trades won't pay any attention to your standard press releases and nobody watches those boring corporate videos on YouTube?

Finding like. Are you busy chasing likes, friends, followers and plus ones and spending little-to-no time engaging with those who actually care about the industry that you serve? Are you expecting everyone to come to you, when you spend no time going to them and being active in their community?

Tough questions. True questions.

All too often people think they're doing something wrong... or not doing anything at all. My experience (twenty years and going) says this: most people don't know what they have and spend too much time doing the whole, "the grass is greener" thing. So, even if they keep adding and redoing, they're still not doing the hard work of figuring out who is doing what and why. It's better to point to something else, blame a logo, think the website is not performing or buy more advertising instead of truly understanding what there is, what is working (and what isn't) and what has been done to rectify and optimize. Yes, marketing optimization has been on the brain lately. It's mostly there because we (finally) have the technology, data and information to know. To know everything. To fix it. To do the right thing.

And so... let's fix the logo? Or... let's fix our marketing?

Tags:

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branding

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data

facebook

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social media

technology

web analytics

website

youtube

Two Terms Marketers Need for Today's Media Landscape

We thought that the Internet would bring with it a whole wave of new media disruption. We were unprepared for just how massive the disruption has been.

You needn't look any farther than this one staggering statistic to understand the change that has been afoot in the past short while: Google's advertising revenue is larger than that of the entire print industry's revenue. In the past short while, we have seen the rise in new ways for advertisers to connect with consumers like never before. You can't throw a marketer down a flight of stairs these days without hearing the terms, real-time bidding, big data, retargeting and native advertising tumbling off of their tongues. It has become so pervasive that it's beginning to make social media, mobile marketing and plain-old digital advertising seem somewhat antiquated. With this, we're seeing an increasing amount of media budgets shifting from traditional channels to digital advertising. So, where do you, the business leader, place those ad dollars? Do you spend them with the latest and greatest shiny object? Do you stick to your traditional guns? Do you sprinkle it around in the hopes of hitting the jackpot on the advertising table of roulette?

It is time to create a media model that transcends these divergent ways that consumers are connecting brands.

What if we tossed away the terms we have used to date? What if we forgot all about traditional media, social media, mobile marketing, banner ads, QR codes and more and simplified the media creation process by simply asking if the media is active or passive? Passive media is any form of media where the consumer can't physically do anything with it, except for consume it (newspaper, television, radio, etc...). Active media is any form of media where the consumer can physically engage with it (Facebook, Twitter, Google, etc...). But there's a hook to this (there is always a hook, isn't there?). We can't just look at one aspect of the experience to see whether it is active or passive, we have to look at all four quadrants to find true equilibrium that will drive success.   

Quadrant #1: The Consumer. When is the consumer active or passive with the media channel? Do all consumers want to tweet, share, chat and create when they are engrossed in a TV show late in the evening, or are they most comfortable sitting back and watching the drama unfold? We live in a world where television broadcasters are pushing at a feverish pace to make what was a very passive media channel (sitting back and watching) into an active one (adding widgets, encouraging tweeting and more). Understanding how the consumer best connects to the media is core to understanding what type of advertising they will best engage with. So yes, you can tell TV show viewers to follow along on Facebook, but how many of them simply want to watch the TV show and go to bed?

Quadrant #2: The Media. How do you think Google - as a search engine - would be performing if the sole form of revenue was driven by banner advertising on the search results and not the contextually relevant format of AdWords? In fact, banner advertising is a very simplistic and non-active type of media. Online publishers replicated the print model by creating these little boxes that resided on web pages that had content on them back in the mid-nineties. The model was simplistic: "we have content on a web page, why not put an ad next to it like we do with magazines and newspaper?" While banner advertising still generates billions of dollars in media advertising, the truth is that it is a very passive advertising format that was simply copy and pasted over to the a very active new media (the Web). We could talk about how "interactive" these banner ads are (or were promised to be), but the analytics don't lie: banner ads couldn't perform any worse. Over 99% of banner ads fail to generate any kind of click. They are passive forms of media that are pasted into very active digital channels.

Quadrant #3: The Channel. Are you the same person on Google as you are on Facebook as you are when you are reading this post on Harvard Business Review? Digital consumers are not only different, but are both passive and active in the digital platform depending on which channels they are using. When you are doing a search on Google, you have a very different intent and mindset than when you're on Facebook and connecting to friends or catching up with acquaintances. It becomes abundantly clear that you're also in a dramatically different media mindset as you read these words than when you're creating a board on Pinterest. Understanding how these channels operate and which types of advertising matches the consumer's intent is critical to building a successful advertising campaign.   

Quadrant #4: The Platform. Is the platform an active or passive one? Think about digital books as a medium. Do readers really want links, embedded video, extended audio interviews, sharing capabilities and more? Will they, intuitively, turn what has traditionally been a very passive medium into an active one, simply because book publishers feel they are competing for attention with everyone from YouTube to Twitter? As we watch the "smartening" of the television, it will be interesting to see just how many viewers truly deep dive into the myriad of new ways that television is hoping the viewers will. Most newer televisions are Internet enabled, but what is the true number of households that actually connect their TV sets to the Internet and engage with channels like Netflix and beyond? According to eMarketer, nearly one quarter of US households now have a TV connected to the Internet, so we're about to find out just how active this typically passive platform can become.

It's not a zero sum game when it comes to active and passive media.

As with all things, understanding the quadrants and then matching your marketing to best meet the needs of the consumer will be paramount for success. That being said, it is not a zero sum game, and the ways that consumers engage with different forms of media is not an absolute. While some will claim that Twitter is useless unless you're constantly tweeting and retweeting, there is a large user base that is simply interested in following celebrities (these people are very passive in an active channel). And, for every person who watches The Voice while building up a hearty Doritos stain on their jammies, there is a ever-growing segment that will tweet, share, chat and follow every move that that Team Usher makes (these people are very active in a passive channel). So, instead of worrying about social media marketing, mobile marketing and more, why not sit back as ask yourself these questions: when are our consumers active or passive with our brand? Is our advertising active when they're active and passive when they're passive? Are the channels that we're advertising on active when the consumers are active or passive when they are passive and more? And, lastly, is the platform - in and of itself - a predominantly active or passive one? From there, you can truly start to better understand what a proper advertising mix can look like and you will also be better at defining which opportunities could potentially work against the others that are woefully flawed.

Active media. Passive media. Active consumers. Passive consumers. The world of media continues to change.

The above posting is my twice-monthly column for the Harvard Business Review . 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:

Harvard Business Review - Two Terms Marketers Need for Today's Media Landscape.

Tags:

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adwords

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big data

business column

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digital consumer

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internet

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marketer

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media

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media disruption

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mobile marketing

native advertising

netflix

new media

online publisher

passive media

pinterest

print industry

qr codes

real time bidding

retargeting

search engine

smart tv

social media

social media marketing

television broadcasting

the voice

traditional media

twitter

web analytics

youtube

CTRL ALT Delete - The Ultimate Business Reboot Audiobook Sweepstakes

Want to change the way you think about business forever?

On May 21st, 2013 my second business book, CTRL ALT Delete, will be published. The question this book asks is simple: do you want to employable in the next five years? Well, what are you going to do about it? The book is divided into two parts. The first section is called, Reboot: Business, and it uncovers five key movements that have changed business forever that most brands are doing nothing (or very little) about. The second section is called, Reboot: You, and it walks you through the seven triggers you need to apply to your business/life to work in this forever-changed environment. My good friends at Audible provoked me to come up with a list of audiobooks that would create the "best of the best" when it comes to rebooting your business. And now, they want you to win The Ultimate Business Reboot Sweepstakes audiobook library.

First, here are the amazing audiobooks that are yours to win (in alphabetical order)...

A Whole New Mind - Why Right-Brainers Will Rule the Future by Daniel H. Pink.

Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead by Brene Brown.

Delivering Happiness - A Path to Profits, Passion, and Purpose by Tony Hsieh.

Groundswell - Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technologies by Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff.

The Innovator's Dilemma: When New Technologies Cause Great Firms to Fail by Clayton M. Christensen.

Linchpin - Are You Indispensable? by Seth Godin.

The Little Red Book of Selling: 12.5 Principles of Sales Greatness by Jeffrey Gitomer.

Macrowikinomics - Rebooting Business and the World by Don Tapscott and Anthony D. Williams.

Made To Stick - Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die by Chip and Dan Heath.

Makers - The New Industrial Revolution by Chris Anderson.

The New Rules of Marketing & PR 2.0 by David Meerman Scott.

Practically Radical - Not-So-Crazy Ways to Transform Your Company, Shake Up Your Industry, and Challenge Yourself by William C. Taylor.

Predictably Irrational - The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions by Dan Ariely.

Quiet -  The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking by Susan Cain.

Re-imagine! - Business Excellence in a Disruptive Age by Tom Peters.

BONUS: Ctrl Alt Delete -  Reboot Your Business. Reboot Your Life. Your Future Depends on It by me :)

What you win:

A one year Audible Listener Gold Membership plus all 16 game-changing audiobooks that have been personally selected by me to help you reboot your business.

How To Enter:

Go to http://www.twistimage.com/audible.

"Like" Audible on Facebook (the sweepstakes is exclusively available to Fans of Audible).

Enter for a chance to win by providing your email address.

PLUS: For each person you refer that enters the sweepstakes, you can earn 2 additional entries to increase you chance of winning the grand prize.

But wait... there's more!

If you also pre-order my latest audiobook, CTRL ALT Delete on Audible, you get $10 off of the audiobook and for each pre-order, Audible will donate $5 to the charity Jumpstart to support education for pre-school children in low-income neighborhoods. Alternatively, you can also get the CTRL ALT Delete audiobook for free when you try Audible risk-free for 30 days.

The fine print:

The sweepstakes is open to US residents only. 

You must be 18 years and over to participate.

The pre-order promotion applies to all pre-orders, including Canada.

Thanks, Audible!

I have been a fan of Audible and listening to business books for as long as the company has been in business. They have a massive selection of digital audiobooks and as I was choosing my books for The Ultimate Business Reboot Audiobook Sweepstakes, I was pleasantly surprised to see that all of the titles I had on my initial list (which was close to fifty titles long) were easily found on Audible. Plus, the offer they are making for anyone who pre-orders the new book is not only very kind, but the money to Jumpstart will make a difference in people's lives. I hope you will enter the sweepstakes and/or pre-order the audiobook for CTRL ALT Delete right here:

The Ultimate Business Reboot Audiobook Sweepstake.

Tags:

a whole new mind

anthony d williams

audible

audiobook

bill taylor

brene brown

business

business book

charlene li

chip heath

chris anderson

clayton m christensen

ctrl alt delete

dan ariely

dan heath

dan pink

daniel h pink

daring greatly

david meerman scott

delivering happiness

don tapscott

facebook

groundswell

jeffrey gitomer

josh bernoff

linchpin

macrowikinomics

made to stick

makers

practically radical

predictably irrational

quiet

re imagine

seth godin

susan cain

the innovators dilemma

the little red book of selling

the new rules of marketing and pr

the ultimate business reboot sweepstakes

tom peters

tony hsieh

william c taylor

Pay Closer Attention To YouTube

It's not just about the views anymore.

There are two strikingly new(ish) things happening on YouTube that could very well position it to be one of the most interesting developments in how television (and eve movie-like) content gets consumed and monetized. At this moment, marketers have one of the most compelling platforms to better understand which of their messages resonate. Prior to jumping into the two new(ish) developments that are worthy of your attention, it is still somewhat fascinating to note how few brands leverage YouTube to better understand their consumers. Simple multivariate testing is one way: posting different television ads on YouTube and seeing which one gets more views, ratings, shares and more. Search is another fascinating domain. YouTube remains the second largest search engine (after their parent company, Google). From tutorials to product demos and reviews, it's amazing how few brands actually leverage the channel to extend their brand narrative and give consumers more in-depth understanding of their products and services. Without question, there are countless other imaginative and innovative ways that brands can use YouTube, sadly we're still seeing a vast majority of brands simply pumping and dumping their videos on YouTube as if it is one big and free receptacle for all things video. The prevailing attitude still seems to be, "hey, just post it to YouTube as well... it's free!" as some kind of after-thought.

Two new developments on YouTube to pay attention to:

TrueView. TrueView is YouTube's way of understanding how consumers feel about the pre-roll video ads that happen before a video starts. You may have noticed that some of these ads now feature a button that allows consumers to click and skip an ad after five seconds. There is little doubt that regular YouTubers lament the day that the company started running pre-roll ads on videos. Now, with TrueView, YouTube can have a better understanding of which ads get zapped and which ads work. It's interesting to note that TrueView forces brands to not simply run their 30 second TV spots on YouTube, and that the brands who are getting the most efficacy out of TrueView know that they have less than five seconds to keep the viewer from zapping them. The business model for TrueView is also similar to that of Google AdWords. If a consumer clicks the "skip this ad" button, the advertiser does not pay. You can well imagine that Google will soon be kicking off advertisers who don't get the full view in a bid to create a better consumer experience. Much like AdWords has matured as a performance-based marketing engine, you can see a time - in the not too distant future - where TrueView offers the same type of performance and analytics to TV ads. Just think about that: TV ads may get better and more relevant over time if advertisers are forced to create content that actually performs.

Paid channels. YouTube is planning to allow video makers to charge a monthly subscription fee on channels. Don't panic, everything you're seeing for free will remain the way it has always been, but giving the video makers an opportunity to charge for access to certain types of content creates a fascinating new layer to the YouTube story. If you look at some of the massive success that mobile app developers have with the freemium model, you can see how compelling of a business model this could be for YouTube. Take, for instance, Joan Rivers. Currently, she is building an audience for her new video podcast, In Bed With Joan. In theory, she could produce 4 episodes a week and offer up only one of them for free as a compelling and consistent ongoing show, but for her more adoring fans, she could charge a monthly fee of five dollars for access to the other three episodes. Brands could use these paid channels to offer heavy users more personal and in-depth content that is worthy of being paid for.

The new, new media model.

Both of these YouTube business strategies help pave the way for business leaders to better understand the true dynamics of digital media. We started off in the raw terrain of selling advertising online much in the same way that traditional media was bought and sold. Now, close to fifteen years after the first paid banner ad appeared, we are still at the very early stages of seeing how digital can actually transform and improve upon the old model. Whether it is turning a TV ad into a performance-based marketing engine or allowing brands to create their own paid subscription channels to see if consumers would actually pay to be connected to said brand, we could well be entering into a entirely new domain for how video content and advertising is produced, consumed and engaged with... across multiple consumer experiences (think YouTube on traditional TVs, Apple TV models, computers screens, tablets and smartphones). Ultimately, this means that media could be shedding its reliance on advertising as the sole income earner.

The one screen world never felt closer.

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Blogs And Business Success With Mark W. Schaefer

Episode #356 of Six Pixels of Separation - The Twist Image Podcast is now live and ready for you to listen to.

If you could choose one media channel to create and own, in the year 2013, would it be a blog? Personally, I still think that blogging is as fresh and powerful of a publishing medium as it ever has been. I also think that it is still very nascent in terms of opportunity for brands to create compelling content in a unique voice. Yes, I'm a die-hard evangelist for the platform, but it would not drive me to write a book about it. Well, it did for Mark W. Schaefer. If you're a frequent listener of the podcast, you know that Mark is a regular guest, insightful marketing professional (and professor) and passionate communicator about how marketing has changed. He's already written two very successful business books (Return On Influence and The Tao Of Twitter). In February, he published his latest book, Born To Blog -  Building Your Blog For Personal And Business Success One Post At A Time, with co-author Stanford A. Smith. Mark wasn't an early adopter to blogging, but he is living proof that it is never too late to enter the fray and share. His blog, Grow, is not only immensely successful, but has community engagement that is off the charts. Take a listen to this show and decide for yourself if blogging could well be the "next big thing"... again. 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 #356.

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