Tag Archives: Social Media

Are cross-media hooks, hashtags, and social badges the new footer for advertising? A study of 7 magazines reveals that use of cross-media hooks is low.

Posted on November 4, 2011 | Leave a comment

 

The introduction of the Internet as significant competition for traditional advertising sources opened the door for wider adoption of hooks, or cross-media connections. Now advertising is containing more and more integrated forms of communication geared to take people from one medium to another. The medium in which advertising is consumed is a factor in the success of the campaign, which accounts for the massive advertising industry with its unique niches carved out by agencies vying for some of the more than $100 billion spent on advertising (last year’s figure) in the US. Whether in out-of-home mediums like rail and subway advertising or the sometimes-more-focused print magazine advertising, cross-media hooks like QR codes, social media badges, and hashtags are used today across various market segments. Based on a recent casual survey of the latest issues of seven magazines, however, cross-media hooks are not used as frequently as one might guess.

 

Cross-media hooks in these magazines included references to Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn either by use of the traditional square badge, tag line (“Follow” or “Friend”), or URL. Among the seven titles reviewed, no one cross-media hook was used by more than 20% of the advertisements in each title. So here we have a market of 4.8 billion mobile phones worldwide, with 428 million units sold in 2011 alone, many of which may correlate to a significant portion of the 175 million Twitter and 800 million Facebook users worldwide. Why don’t more magazine advertisers focus on implementing cross-media hooks? In the age of the downward spiral of circulation and poor conversion to electronic media, why aren’t more magazines pushing the use of cross-media hooks in their advertising sales and internal advertising efforts?

The higher use of QR codes points to the prevalent misuse of the technology, as many of the codes in the sample group lead to non-mobile-optimized webpages. With the right social media metrics platform in place, traffic from cross-media hooks leading to social networks like Facebook and Twitter can lead to a better understanding of how particular market segments respond to advertising.

This all begs the question: With the massive expansion of social media and the use of cross-media hooks, are we isolating any one group of our target audience? Fifteen years ago, with use of the Internet rising, many advertisements contained references to mailing addresses and 800 numbers for consumers who wanted more information. Websites were in the minority, but now a company logo, tag line, and website (and legal disclosure) are standard for virtually all advertisements. In other mediums, like out-of-home advertising on mass transit, the use of cross-media hooks like hashtags and social media references are significant. They tell the viewer, “Look, we are trendy and current––find us on social media.”

 

Are we isolating the portion of the target audience who doesn’t get the contextual clues of a square of color with a letter or bird and an octothorpe (#) used in front of a word? Yes, we are, but the numbers don’t lie. The exponential adoption of Internet-capable devices with cameras and an operating system capable of supporting third-party apps shows that the collision of mobile, social, and local is the future of visual communication. Use cross-media hooks and integrate social media into marketing and advertising efforts to be one step ahead of the curve.

P.S. Infinite Utterly Orange points for anyone willing to submit a book report on the ISO 18004:2006 IT specification for automatic identification and data capture techniques––just the type of winter reading this author loves!

Author: John Carew

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Welcome to My Death Space: A Site for the Non-Living

Posted on November 2, 2011 | Leave a comment

It’s the time of year when life as we know it begins to change. Our long, warm, sunny days become short, cold, and gray. Life all around us begins to shrivel up and die. I’m referring, of course, to our never-late-to-the-party season: autumn—elder brother to Father Christmas and Mother Nature’s pimp.

Fall is our reminder that the best part of the year is now over. So suck it up. Life is about to get a lot more difficult. If I were a drug user, I’d have to imagine fall to be the drug user’s final hit before rehab. Enjoy it while it lasts; you’re about to get locked up for six months with nothing but chamomile and reruns of Hawaii Five-O.

This is the time of year when many people in our society celebrate the changing of the seasons. I really don’t see what all the fuss is about. People find fall beautiful and often comment on the changing color of leaves. “Look at the beautiful leaves––they’re changing colors,” one might say. “Isn’t fall beautiful, what, with the color changing on leaves and all?” another might say.

“The leaves are dying!” I might say. When you see a majestic bird recently struck by an 18-wheeler, you don’t comment on its beauty, do you? Would you say “Look at that doe-eyed, little deer lying peacefully on the side of the road. I think it’s taking its last breaths. What a wonderful sight!”?

Sound depressing? It shouldn’t be. At this time of year I’m reminded of an Associated Press article I read that has that Halloween sort of vibe. The article encouraged those with an affinity for the morbid to check out a website called MyDeathSpace.com. At first, I was confused about what MyDeathSpace.com was. My first thought was probably similar to yours: “Here is a website for people who are frustrated with their current social environments and want an online vehicle to acknowledge their discomfort.” I mean, think about it. How many “death spaces” do we all have?

Death Space #1 – You’re waiting in line at Target as the 95-year-old woman uses a debit card for the first time in her existence. You can literally count the minutes until the cashier will inevitably take the card away from the old hag and do it herself. Yet you sit there, impatiently, waiting for the show to unfold.

Death Space #2 – I think we’ve all been here before.

 

(For more relatable situations like this, check out: www.pleaseshutup.com)

Death Space #3 – You’re waiting in line to pick up a new license. It’s not that it expired, it’s that you lost it. Well, you didn’t really lose it. You put it on the table that night when you had your friends over and everyone did that thing where you show each other what’s in your wallets. But then you get drunk and don’t want to drive, and Liz is being her typical self—crazy—and you just want to get her out of there. So you offer to drive, but then Jim—also crazy—is trying to be the responsible one but always ends up getting way too drunk to make any sense. So you just kind of look at him, as he leans, and try to remember why you’re friends. You decide to put both Jim and Liz in a taxi. The next day you find out that Jim accidentally grabbed your ID instead of his, but it doesn’t matter because he left it in the cab.

Maybe I’m alone here. And maybe I spend too much time in lines. The point is I assumed that the site discussed our personal death spaces as a way to create a sense of camaraderie. A way to say, “Hey man, I’ve been there. I think about putting my boss in a Porta-Potty and tipping it over too.” Well, I was wrong. MyDeathSpace is actually a social networking website for the recently deceased members of myspace.com. If someone dies, you submit his or her death and people can chat about the––sometimes grotesque––details. Oh, and there’s a forum section where you can complain about things like the new features of Facebook that really T you off.

What!? Are people really into this? Are we really so voyeuristic? Burning ants with a magnifying glass: okay. Discussing profiles of dead friends: not so okay! Maybe I just have no clue of what it’s like to be this creepy. I think the darkest thing I’ve ever done was get up in the middle of the night and pee without turning on the light.

I suppose we’re all entitled to our own niche likes and dislikes. You’re able to like the changing of leaf colors for example. And I’m entitled to loathe you.

In the meantime, this begs the question: Can a forum like this really be considered a social medium? Hell, these people are dead.

Happy Halloween!

Author: Eric Swenson

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Tear down this paywall Mr. Zuckerburg!

Posted on September 30, 2011 | Leave a comment

Bird Scarer

The Internet is built on information, and often the information that is time-sensitive gathers the most traffic, i.e. news. Back in the day, AOL and their keyword ivory tower tried to keep users in their “portal” for as long as possible to keep the targeted advertising in their face while raking in the results. One little glitch though, the Internet grew beyond the walls which AOL had built and they would fall into history remembered for “you’ve got mail,” that annoying AOL Instant Messenger icon with sound and, last but not least, they would be known for littering the planet and landfills with millions of mostly useless CDs.

Fast forward to today and we see Facebook following some of the very same footprints which AOL laid, made some cash and then fell extinct. In March 2011, Allfacebook.com, the unofficial facebook resource, covered a story depicting how the New York Times handles inbound links to their content from social sources versus search engine traffic. The key difference was the inbound traffic from social sources would receive unlimited reading on the NYT site, while search engine driven inbound traffic would receive a cap of five free visits per day. Any Facebook user has probably experienced someone in their network sharing content from a major news outlet, but wouldn’t it improve the user experience if the news source pushed their content directly into a social platform like Facebook?

Why yes, it would, and the Wall Street Journal announced last week the availability of WSJ Social, which lets users share content directly through Facebook. The service is free for now, but with financial partners like Dell and Intel, one can only wait so long for the paywall to be erected around that content.  Yes, paywall in a social network, you are not suffering from double vision. As news media history can reinforce, news organizations have no idea how to properly price their product in a digital market. News companies are used to the model where they controlled the distribution of their content with little outside intervention, except for a few strategic partners. Now, they have to negotiate getting a vehicle in the right market which carries an optimized form of the news content to the receiving device or online platform. Not only has it complicated the distribution channels, but it has also introduced significant technology learning curves which even the largest organizations in both news media and magazines have yet to truly understand. Communication-minded professionals learn technology mostly by experience and not by discipline, where technology-minded professionals are taught from the ground up how to build a platform and market that platform. Both parties need one another as a complement to either side of the brain if nothing else, but failure in the digital market backed by the speed at which content is shared on the social web, can make or break any marketing communication effort.

Facebook and a paywall model for organizations requiring that level of division is a natural step for the mega-social site, but will it improve the social web? A better solution would be to build a split advertising model where both the social platform and the news service get paid for clicks and views to their ad content. Any online effort that puts a barrier of any kind between a user and their desired content will eventually be made extinct by a more creative method to attain that same desired content. The wild west entrepreneurial spirit of the net, made innovations like Netflix, Groupon, and Craigslist. Competition to the social web behemoths like Facebook from the likes of say Google+, will push the platforms to innovate and maybe bring better features to the users. Either way, as communication professional in any field, remember that every barrier erected between you and your desired reader/audience/customer/client make the communication less effective. Share content in the social world to gain visibility and expand your brand presence, but don’t muddy the waters with convoluted revenue mechanisms which separate the haves from the have-nots.

Author: John Carew
Photo Credit: Jonathan Baker-Bates

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Lingering Vibration: Not Phantom Ringing This Time. How Did the Social Web Fare in Some Recent Real-life Tests?

Posted on September 9, 2011 | 1 Comment

Hmm, does the social web work in a crisis? Irene, Steve, Virginia, and Jason––four names one might give to a child or possibly a pet, names that over the past few weeks have left a lasting impression on the social web. Let’s examine what these events and their aftermath mean to our social web efforts.

Fail: Social Web + Mobile Service After Hurricane Irene
As someone who lives in what is technically called New England, Irene did some incredible damage not only near coastal areas but also far inland, as the media has covered along with the devastation in New York. Densely populated areas in these early Colonies developed back in the days of our first and only Revolution! Geographic barriers (rivers, mountains, etc.) often defined the boundaries of these old towns, and municipal infrastructure has been tied to existing human populations and often governed by poor, short-sighted legislation ever since. Fast-forward to Hurricane Irene and the reliance on above ground power, cable, and phone lines––thousands were without power for 14+ days. Ironically, major electrical providers like Connecticut Light & Power have advanced online systems that can give the percentage of affected customers by town, but once an over sized toothpick-to-be falls on the lines, off goes the power, phone, and––often––the Internet. The natural backup was mobile devices, which were also affected by damage from the falling trees, so the basic online functions that help people stay in touch were gone, leaving many in the dark in more ways than one. Connecticut-area Cox Media stations, including 95.9 The Fox and Star 99.9, banded together and broadcast three FM and two AM stations simultaneously, providing old-school radio information to those without Internet access. Hurricane Irene made it clear that:

  1. Many do not rely on the Internet for information.
  2. Once the Internet goes out, those who rely on it become disconnected.
  3. Traditional media sources have abandoned the core local-information food chain that made them successful in the past.
  4. Our infrastructure has no redundancy and needs an overhaul (think buried lines, faster mobile connections, and the ability for networks to bring cell service to disaster areas quickly, i.e., in hours, not weeks).

It must be stated, however, that many community officials and local news sources had outstanding hyper-local coverage after the winds subsided, with reports on closed roads, delayed school openings, and locations where people could get fresh water, charge phones, or shower. Some municipalities used robocalls or Twitter or Facebook, but that meant that users had to be connected to the social web via Twitter or Facebook (primarily). We love touting how deeply social media penetrates into the average American home, but not everyone is online and, even more important, not all have smartphones or know how to use the social web in a mobile environment. The argument can be made that the radio of the 20th century has been replaced with the smartphone of today, but the cell signal needs to be strong enough to hold the masses once they jump from one channel (landlines) to the other (mobile).

Steve: A Resignation Sends Its Own Vibrations Through the Tech World
On August 24, the media reported that Steve Jobs had resigned from his position as CEO of Apple. The vibrations were not the phantom feeling on your hip from your vibrating phone of choice––no, these vibrations were of a different sort. Analysts jumped at the news and hinted at an uncertain future for the tech giant. Former Apple COO Tim Cook has now taken the helm, and many believe that the iPhone/iPad-creating innovation machine still has two to three years of Jobs-era technology in the works. A pretend screenshot of Steve’s new schedule currently making the rounds on technology blogs jokes about his new daily task of managing Cook from afar. Regardless of the future, Apple brought innovation and put good design first with its operating systems as well as hardware. Without Jobs and his positive force, we might all still be coveting BlackBerrys with their amazing “scroll wheels” (but poor RIM’s future looks grim either way).

Farewell to the black turtleneck and jeans. Thanks for the leading Apple toward better products and forcing the rest of the market to catch up. Your efforts made the marketplace more competitive, and toddlers, fan boys, gadget lovers, and soccer moms the world over have you to thank for the delicious visual goodness that is iOS, the iPhone, and the iPad.

Virginia: Quake Rocks the East Coast


Sitting on the twenty-second floor in Midtown Manhattan Tuesday with two of my tech-loving colleagues, I was surprised by the shaking of my chair at 1:55 pm. While other employees leapt from their offices and cubicles, the sub-thirties jumped to social media and the mobile web. Utterly Orange contributing blogger John Mehl found mentions on Twitter that confirmed our experience as an earthquake, and I sought answers with the iPhone Quake Watch app by LateNightProjects. The intraplate earthquake situated in Mineral, Virginia, kicked off a social tidal wave (tweetquake) of content surrounding the natural event. Check the video below and coverage from Mashable. If people were watching Twitter in NYC, it is highly possible that they found earthquake posts before they felt the vibrations. The mobile web exploded with laughter shocks, and the left-coast folk were amused by the right-coast crazies as we screamed and ran from our homes and offices.

Jason: Coffee Lounge “Cyberpadlocked” on Google
Maybe it is the lingering sensation that someone or something is out to get you. Something perhaps in the social web. As reported by the New York Times, Jason Rule, owner of Coffee Rules Lounge, was the victim of a false “permanently closed” status on Google Places. As the article points out, this is an increasing trend, and the source could be competitors or angry customers/ex-employees.

The article highlights some important issues:

  1. We have no clue how to clean up personal or business online presences.
  2. Crowd-sourcing can go wrong, and preventative measures need to be in place.
  3. Businesses that aren’t on top of their online profiles can lose business.

Author: John Carew

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Social Media + Web + Smartphones = No More Analog Systems

Posted on August 5, 2011 | Leave a comment

A decade ago, supporters and pundits predicted the end of analog ways, classifieds, bulletin boards, and libraries. It wasn’t until the explosion of social networks and the expansion of smartphones/tablets, however, that the digital services that replaced the analog processes had the momentum to take off exponentially. Now, smartphones and social networks, in conjunction with trusted gatekeepers, are spinning the threads of social connection that were once made through local social groups.

Check out this list below, which includes both start-up and established online entities that have built digital pathways for analog problems. If you have additional suggestions, post a comment and we will expand the list.

Books PaperBack Swap
Classifieds/Goods Exchange Claz Hand Things Down

Krrb

NeighborGoods

Zaarly
Disaster Relief Housing Sparkrelief
Platform for Reporting Local Issues SeeClickFix

The grandparents and great-grandparents of the current generations lived in a time without mass transit, without telephones, and without worldwide networks. Social groups were small and heavily rooted to geography. Technological and logistical breakthroughs like the United States Post Office (now the USPS) parcel post service, railroads, the combustion engine, refrigeration, radio, telephones, and television connected ideas, services, and goods with people from afar. Before those breakthroughs, local social networks centered on societal kingpins, the social butterflies of a group who acted like the router and switch between not only conversation but the ability to fulfill needs within social circles.

For better or worse, today’s gatekeepers are the “admin” and moderators of trusted online sites and communities. Often, an organization’s legal team develops terms and conditions that govern the operation of the body, and then a team (paid or unpaid) manages the operation of the sites. Others are even more laissez-faire and use a self-policing model where users report issues to system administrators and moderators to correct. These websites have replaced the classified ads and the grocery store bulletin board and are infinitely more useful because they are more timely, targeted, searchable, sharable, and integrated.

The major benefit of analog networks was that the user’s anonymity was protected much farther down the line than with today’s digital variations. A user could traditionally wait until literally the moment before completing a transaction before exposing his or her identity (assuming that no one involved in the process knew his or her face). Anyone could anonymously tear the contact information off the bulletin board, jot down the information for an event, or browse the shelves of a bookstore without leaving a trace. Today, the entities that have built pathways to connect users to their needs put up tollbooths to collect information on those who want what is on the other side. Sometimes the data is used to safeguard the community from the likes of criminals and those who detract from the conversation. The amount of data that users must give up varies from site to site, but the burden of protecting this data falls to the builders of the pathway. The financial and healthcare industries have been saddled with this data security issue for the full length of their tenure on the Internet, with every possible transaction requiring a high level of data security to protect both the organization and the end user. Much of the security in both industries is tied to professional standards or government legislation, further placing data security as the focal point of operations for any financial or healthcare organization.

So what about all these new online organizations and the data that users are providing in order to gain access to the pathways and communities that they have built? The same level of attention needs to be paid to any information a user gives to any sort of online community or entity for no other reason than trust. An online hack or security breach, whatever the size, undermines the fundamental trust of users in an entity, ultimately eroding the very community they built.

Whether user or pathway builder, both must remember to be vigilant about data security and support the community with whatever means possible. Recent news of organized online “hacktavist” groups and their high-profile targets are the digital protests of today, comparable to the nonviolent protests and sit-ins of the civil rights and anti-war movements of the middle part of the last century. These online communities and tools––the replacements for the analog bulletin board distribution systems––are the future. The rate of adoption is yet to be determined, but they will become more and more mainstream as the user base increases. Sites will come and go, with brands starting and ending as the economy and market shift, but look at eBay, Amazon, and Craigslist. Founded in 1995, 1994, and 1995 respectively, each has defined a transactional service in three distinct areas––and has seen the subsequent rise of competitive online services––but each is still a strong entity in its particular segment. Entrepreneurs are taking risks with new ventures to provide digital solutions to analog processes. Wait until the next wave of start-ups carves out niches in the interwebs and replaces existing analog needs. The world we live in, the Internet-connected world, can be as global or as local as you choose––you just have to change the search radius.

How will you leverage trust (and innovation) in the communities that you build around your brand, service, or product?

Author: John Carew

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Google+: Facebook’s Competitor, Plain and Simple

Posted on July 22, 2011 | Leave a comment

Google isn’t perfect––Buzz and Wave flopped. Although both Google and Facebook are supported by advertising, the companies’ origins may prove to be the deciding factor in the race for social media supremacy.

Stats Compared

Facebook Google+

Users

 750,000,000 10,000,000*

Launched

 February 2004 June 28, 2011

Ad Revenue

 $1.86B (2010) $28.2B (2010)**

*Estimates reported by the media––no official numbers have been released by Google.
**-Total ad revenue for Google, including all Google products.

How It All Began
As the legend goes, Facebook started as a dorm room project at Harvard with Mark Zuckerberg and team. It was a techie way to view classmates in a dynamic personal directory format with functions for communicating. The platform quickly expanded beyond Harvard to other Ivy League schools, then to other universities, and ultimately to anyone with a valid email address over the age of 13. Google was the research project of two Stanford PhD students, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, and was based on an algorithm that used relationships between sites to determine page rank and search results. The algorithmic love child of two soon-to-be entrepreneurs was received as a fresh way to find content online. No one saw the full potential of either company. Fast forward to today: Both are powerhouses commanding the attention of millions of users’ eyeballs for a lot of time each day.

The Matchup
The big difference between Facebook and Google lies in their draw of new and returning users. Facebook attracts new users through the forces of human nature, specifically the desire to shout down a long hallway hoping people listen (i.e., the desire to communicate or, more specifically, to silently stalk or whine incessantly about mundane things). Most users come to Facebook to share, comment, play, stay connected, or some combination thereof. While eyes are glued to the blue and white goodness, advertisers pay to get their messages to you backed by the delightful demographic info that Facebook uses to target ads to users.

Google, on the other hand, built free tools––often some of the best free alternatives on the market––for its users and then built an advertising model around it. Stamped with the “do no evil” mantra and avoiding the missteps of the likes of Microsoft and Yahoo, Google’s free approach was refreshing and adopted by users of all types. Google has an audience of users who already use its core applications like Gmail, Google Calendar, Contacts, Picasa, Google Maps, Google Earth, etc., across multiple devices––from desktop to mobile to tablet. These users have Google accounts and already understand how the arsenal of Google products interacts. Adding social media to that arsenal is easy and natural. Instead of receiving an email or pushing notifications to a mobile device or Gmail account, you can receive notice of social interaction through the status bar now found at the top of many Google applications.

Facebook is continually adding new features. An underlying function of many of Facebook’s new bells and whistles has been to keep users on the site longer. Facebook users already spend an average of 14 minutes on the site per day, and the longer users stay, the more ad revenue Facebook earns. Facebook has added features like Chat, Games, and iFrames integration to its business pages, where companies can create engaging experiences that will keep users on Facebook instead of clicking out to other sites. Google, on the other hand, already has users coming to its sites daily to use core productivity applications like Gmail, Google Docs, and Google Calendar. Those key productivity functions combine both business and personal use, and it is these overlapping reasons for visiting Google sites that is a massive advantage for Google.

Facebook has fumbled with privacy and security issues over the past five years, and limited differentiation between groups of “friends” makes sharing content complicated. Facebook added “Lists,” allowing users to combine groups of friends and share limited content, but the feature was added years after the start of the platform. The security and privacy settings for Facebook have been complicated from the beginning, and with each new release and update, the settings have become even more complicated. The average user may be sharing content with the world and have little knowledge of what he or she is sharing. Many argue that it is in the best interest of companies providing social tools to educate and protect their users’ privacy above all else. Facebook has failed its users again and again in terms of privacy, but it is Facebook’s failures and missteps that can guide Google+ toward larger user adoption.

Google+ Circles vs. Facebook Friends

Let’s be honest, few people really have hundreds of friends if you define friend as someone close to you with whom you share personal thoughts or experiences. Many users with hundreds of friends (Facebook claims the average is 130 per user) would consider only a limited number among their close friends. Facebook doesn’t provide an intuitive way to share content with specific groups of people. Google+ is based on the concept of “Circles,” or groups of friends combined by any label the user chooses. By default, Google+ offers Friends, Acquaintances, Follows, and Family. With the ability to make your own circles, the sky is the limit, not only for sharing but for parsing the streams of content each circle shares in order to further connect with your contacts.

As Google+ increases its user base and Google+ “Entity Pages” (for businesses and brands) are introduced in the coming months, the competitive pressure from a different social media platform will make waves across the net. Facebook needs to adapt to the pressure, but based on its history, the adaptation will hinge on user adoption and innovative features, which Google has also proven itself capable of over the past 5 years. Hang on folks, it may be a wild ride, but why not join both and compare Google+ and Facebook for yourself? Now we must begin to think about whether to include a new platform in our social media mix…

Author: John Carew

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Vanguard Direct Participates in Social Media Healthcare Forum

Posted on July 21, 2011 | 1 Comment

Last week, Vanguard Direct sent a member of Utterly Orange to a forum on Social Communications and Healthcare at The Graduate Center of the City University of New York. This forum brought together a variety of people within the healthcare and pharmaceutical industries as well as the agencies that work for them. Several case studies were presented, and roundtable discussions were held.

Each case study, introduced by the organization involved with each project, showcased how social communications were used to reach patients and consumers. Among the cases discussed were “How To Use Social Media to Engage with Physicians Online,” “Connecting Both Healthcare Professionals and Consumers Through Social Strategies,” and “Showcasing Sustainability Through Social Communications.”

During the presentations, a large video screen behind the presenters showed the live Twitter feed. The hashtag #bd1 was used for all tweets pertaining to the event. Audience members were able to engage with each other as well as the event organizers, discussing the presentations as they were happening.

The roundtable discussions were led by the presenters of the case studies. Our Vanguard representative sat in on discussions that included “Measuring/Monitoring Social Media” and “Social Communication for Hospitals.”

Vanguard Direct has a lot of experience with the healthcare industry, and this forum was an excellent way to learn more about how to help our customers navigate the ever-changing world of social media.

If you’re participating in social media, let us know what you think about the changing dynamics of this new medium and its impact in the Healthcare field- we’d like to hear from you!

Author: Dustin Hill

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And now for something completely different!

Posted on July 11, 2011 | Leave a comment

As one who appreciates innovations in new media I am excited about Google+ and am looking forward to the full roll out which is scheduled for the not too distant future.  I have had an opportunity to see the product in the early testing phase and after using it, I foresee a myriad of exciting possibilities from a personal as well as consumer and business stand points in the application.

Simply put, the functions of Google+ allow users to make the on-line connection seem more like a real world one by creating communities that mirror those in real life.  An interactive tour of Google+  details five key features:

o Circles which let users share different things with different people thus ensuring that the right information is shard with the “right” people. Circles make it easy to put
friends in one circle, parents in another, and colleagues  in a third.
o Hangouts which facilitate online meet ups between users and friends (or entire circles) in real time.
o Instant Upload which eliminates the frustrations and hassles currently associated with on-line photo and video upload.
o Sparks which serves as a web concierge that sends the user customized content specific to preselected interests.
o Huddle which allows multiple users to merge different conversations into a single group chat.

And what of its application to the business community? Brands go to where the customers are and this emerging social technology looks to be something completely different that consumers will flock to as the next best thing in technology.  Take the tour and see for yourself!

Author: Paul Wry

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Tourism, Moose, iPads, and Social Media: How Can They Get Along (and Make Money)?

Posted on July 8, 2011 | Leave a comment

Moose
iPads and moose have a lot in common. In their native habitats––large metropolitan areas or the backwoods of northern states, respectively––both are highly sought after and sometimes hard to find. Moose are hunted as prized big game, and so are the elusive white AT&T iPads, depending on the season. Moose are large, graceful creatures who use their body mass, speed, incredible strength, and height to fulfill certain roles (soccer player, landscaper, car washer, nurse, fence technician), and the iPad uses its powerful A5 processor to display videos of moose accomplishing these herculean feats. Alaska bull moose weigh upwards of 601 kilograms (depending on the rack), and the Wi-Fi iPad weighs in at 601 grams (depending on the case). The iPad’s need for signal strength and electricity make it found most often in populated places and in comforting and protective confines of small bags, purses and murses. Moose’s need for large territory and its enormous daily calorie requirements make it difficult to survive in suburban areas where fresh terrestrial vegetation and aquatic plants are scarce.

Question: What do moose, iPads, social media, and Maine have in common? Answer: Tourism!
The presence of iPads means data, and data means the possibility of social media, but moose habitats––primarily rural areas of North America––currently have few iPads and minimal social media activity by tourism-centered businesses. Moose-inhabited rural areas tend to rely on tourism as a major source of income, therefore moose, iPads, social media, and Maine should all be connected. Moose and iPads are elusive in and around rural areas of North America––Maine’s Mount Desert Island, for example––many of which rely on tourism dollars to support the local human residents. Sure, moose and iPads may occasionally be seen near Acadia National Park, but both are not common sightings during a summer trip to the area.

Social Media & Tourism
Tourism has always been a social experience. Rarely do you wake up one morning and exclaim, “I want to travel to latitude 51.392351, longitude -68.667297!” and arrive to find that it is a remote crater lake in Northern Canada. The natural link between tourism and social media is huge. People view images from their friends’ proverbial “summer vacations” via Facebook, Twitter, and other photo-sharing sites (most often with geolocation data), which just might spark their interest in traveling to the same locations to share similar experiences. Without the social connection, their friends may never have wanted to travel to a new locale or experience a different area in their own backyard. The bottom line is that travel is social or, at the very least, the preparation and planning for it can be enhanced by social media.

In yesteryear, say before 2000, planning long-distance travel involved trips to the bookstore or library to check out dated travel books. Once you selected a destination, you would make a trip to a travel agent or make a series of calls to various airlines, hotels, and tourist destinations to make a bevy of inquiries and reservations. Beginning in 1997, as Internet access became more prevalent, many of the big airlines and hotel chains began to move their rates, availability, and reservation systems to the web. Fast-forward to 2007. The smartphone revolution was just beginning to crest, with BlackBerry still standing strong, iPhone just bursting onto the scene, and Nokia, Palm, and the rest of the pack picking up the pieces. As the adoption of web-capable mobile devices soared, travel sites took notice and designed apps that allow users to book entire trips to Tahiti while sitting the mass transit hell on NJ Transit. As social media becomes more integrated into websites of all types, users are able to see what their friends have liked, commented on, shared, and tweeted. The social backbone of many sites ties in greatly with travel and tourism, with more tourist destinations adding social media functions to their web presence every month.

So where do iPads and moose fit into tourism?
Plain and simple, they don’t––at least not yet. The scarcity of mobile technology (let alone voice and data service) in remote tourist destinations may never increase, but some interesting observations can expose areas of opportunity for marketing professionals and advertisers both on and offline. The table below compares two similar burger/bar establishments in two coastal towns: the tourist destination of Bar Harbor, Maine, and Stamford, Connecticut, a larger city with many residents who commute to NYC.

Geddy’s Pub Casey’s Tavern
City Bar Harbor, ME Stamford, CT
Estimated Regional Tourists per Year 2,000,000 (proximity to Acadia National Park) No data available, but significantly less by concentration
Population 4,820 117,083
Yelp.com Reviews 34 9
Foursquare Check-ins 239 423
Foursquare Tips 8 5
TripAdvisor Reviews 136 No presence
Facebook No presence No presence

The frequency and quality of the reviews for the Bar Harbor restaurant and the social media activity surrounding it may surprise you, but consider the incentives and circumstances. Sites like TripAdvisor allow users to see if any of their Facebook friends have traveled to a given destination and add a second level of data to a prospective visitor’s deluge of information on any locale. For better or worse, people are reviewing places where they travel, and because of human nature, the bad reviews tend to be the only comments worth the effort to post. Visitors to Bar Harbor are frequently reminded to leave a review on TripAdvisor or similar sites, as local proprietors have begun to learn the value of a good  review online.

The adoption of social media and check-in based deals (like Foursquare) among Mount Desert Island–area businesses is very low. The same is true of many rural tourist destinations across the country. One might guess that this is due to a lack of understanding or personal adoption of this technology among proprietors. Sound the alarm: (huge) opportunity ahead.

What does this mean?
Climb aboard rural, tourism-driven business or get left behind. Smartphones/tablets, social media, and better voice and data coverage combined with a better strategic presence for rural, tourism-based businesses can and will be instrumental in their future. As more visitors adopt the combination of hardware, software, and network coverage that allows them to interact in the social web, the gap between businesses that have invested the effort in developing an online social presence and businesses that have not will increase. The Bar Harbor/Stamford example was only to illustrate the power of concentrated visitors and how they can propel a given business to the top of various social media and travel review sites. As more and more people use these sites and as more social and review sites enter the marketplace, businesses with a strategic marketing plan that includes a social, mobile, and online presence will increase their chances of long-term success.

Author: John Carew
Photo Credit:  Natalie Lucier

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Are You Location-Aware?

Posted on July 1, 2011 | 1 Comment

A few months ago, the world learned that their every step was being recorded! Well, maybe that’s an overstatement, but let’s get down to the details. Since 2007, over 100 million people have purchased iPhones. In April of 2011, these people learned that Apple was recording their location and storing this information on their phones––forever! This data contains the phone’s latitude and longitude coordinates with a related time stamp. When this story was scooped up by the mainstream media, it was a fire storm for about a week, and then it died. But this is just the tip of the iceberg.

Personally, I love the fact that the iPhone records my location; it helps jog my memory if someone asks me, “Where did you go today?” With over 20,000 data points stored in my phone, I have a pretty accurate record of my whereabouts. I can even load up a map of all the data points and then run through them in chronological order. I fear that I am in the minority, though; most everyone that I have talked to about this is up in arms. So, this got me thinking, how else are people sharing their location without knowing it?

Photo Sharing: Do you like to take photos on your smartphone and email them to your friends? Did you know that inside the photo’s metadata is the time when and location where you took that picture? Sometimes this metadata carries through when you post pictures to social media outlets, too.

Check-ins: Love to check in at local hot spots on Foursquare, Facebook, or any other social media application with check-in capabilities? Surely you know that this shares your current location with all of your connections!

What this all boils down to is this: If you don’t want people to know where you are, then you have to be very careful about what you do on your smartphone. If you do want everyone to know where you are, then continue on with business as usual! And don’t think that this is just on the iPhone. This is integrated across all smartphones these days––I just chose the largest population for this article. Yes, it may be concerning to many that Apple (or others) can get access to your whereabouts, but what can they really do with this data? The answer is: not so much. They basically want this data to feed back to the service provider for use in determining which areas need more signal strength. This is not real-time tracking and is most often very inaccurate! So, unless you are the President of the United States or someone who is in the witness protection program, this probably doesn’t affect you negatively. But you would be in the majority if you said you didn’t like this!

If given the option, would you switch off all location services on your smartphone?

 

Author: John Mehl

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