The tragedy at Virginia Tech is a horrific, unforgettable event. My heart and prayers go out to all the family and friends affected by the hell they are going through.

Earlier this week, Tim O'Keeffe and Michael Clendenin both talked about VT’s response to the crisis and mused about the use of a second website or ‘dark site’ for crisis communications. The killings and the ensuing confusion of fearful parents and family was accentuated by the loss of the school’s website in the immediate aftermath of the shooting. One only hopes that VT was only not prepared for the potential spike in traffic and that the crowds of concerned visitors crashed the website (for it would have been an extraordinarily bad decision to have made the conscious decision to pull down the website voluntarily during such a crisis).

In short, there were likely many tens-of-thousands of concerned people attempting to access the VT website for more information on the tragedy – and likely were hoping to glean some information about a loved one. The website though was not available.

A secondary or ‘dark site’ that could be published quickly in a crisis to communicate breaking news and information would not have solved this dilemma. Proper infrastructure planning and hosting could only have prevented a site collapse. If the university lacked the ability to publish information to the home page and therefore decided to turn-off the website, then shame on them. With modern content management and near instantaneous publishing capabilities for even the lowest-tech luddites, VT wouldn’t require a special dark site to communicate details of the unfolding tragedy. The university would merely publish information to the website as it became available and provide links from the home page and media center. For example, after I write this column in MS-Word, it takes about 60 seconds to publish it live (but I could do it in as little as 20 seconds).

Dark sites have their place and purpose, and are particularly valuable in large, planned and complex events (such as a merger or acquisition), but the use of a dark site for crisis communications has largely been supplanted by modern publishing technology and the advanced content management system. Every organization should have a crisis communications plan, and every organization should be able to publish very quickly as the need arises. Furthermore, in the event of a crisis and a landslide of unexpected traffic, it is wise to plan in advance with your website host to ensure they can accommodate large spikes in traffic should the event arise.

How pervasive are social media tools (such as blogs and podcasts) becoming? Here are some of the numbers (taken from my CNW seminar series Social media (Web 2.0): are you in?):

  

·         There are approximately 55 million English language blogs – 45,000 new blogs created every day

·         44% of web users in the U.S. read political blogs

·         20% of Canadians say they read blogs on a regular basis

·         Three of the top 8 most trafficked sites on the Internet are social media sites that didn’t exist a couple of years ago (e.g. YouTube.com)

·         13% use RSS (real simple syndication ) for reading

·         29% of U.S. adults who own MP3 players have downloaded podcasts (The Pew Internet & American Life Project)

 

Listen to the complete webcast of my and Brent Holliday’s presentation Social media (Web 2.0): are you in?

 

Also includes a link to the Social media checklist handout and the presentation slides.

 

Tips for adoption

 

James Robertson has a number of tips for adoption:

 

• Create a prototype or pilot.
• Use stories to articulate (and capture) needs.
• Build on existing platforms.
• Use case studies from similar organisations.
• Be passionate about the right things.

 

See James’s complete list of tips for adopting enterprise 2.0.

 

My own tips for adopting social media tools:

 

• Social media is reinventing the Internet, creating a space where your audience can talk about you in a whole new way. On a regular basis, monitor the social web to see what is being said about you.
• Ensure you’re aware of which community websites (e.g. YouTube) are growing in popularity and evaluate how they might change the way people talk about your organization.
• Planning is an essential requisite for success. Develop a plan that is based on a thorough assessment and contains measurable success indicators.
• Leadership must set the tone. Your executives must be leading the dialogue and controlling the message.
• Relevant, up-to-date and valued content that supports, promotes and details your products, services and competitive advantages.
• Know the link between your website, sales and customer service. What is your website worth?
• Understand the ingredients of a good blog. Benchmark and cherry-pick from the leaders (e.g. Boing Boing, IntranetBlog.com, etc.)
• Keep pace with the trends and best practices, technological advancements and latest developments. Subscribe to newsletters from leaders such as CNET, eMarketer and Prescient Digital Media.

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A 3,600% surge in page views on the day a new website debuts would certainly qualify as a success, and validate a decision to perform a comprehensive revamp of the site. That success is what the Town of Banff and its partners enjoyed last Thursday when it unveiled its new website.

 

As anyone who has even a passing familiarity with websites knows, a comprehensive site redesign is a process not an event. They also know that visits, while critical, are only one success indicator for a site.

 

In Banff’s case, the process that culminated in its successful launch began a number of months ago when it set out to improve a site it knew was not working. In tackling this project, Banff had to achieve a goal that few other municipalities with under 10,000 residents would require: bringing a unique experience online.

 

Prescient was fortunate to be chosen as the partner to collaborate with Town and its partners on this project, which let me experience first-hand the qualities that had to be captured on the site.

 

That experience can best be summarized by the first day of one trip. Walking down Banff Avenue, I had a 360-degree view of the spectacular Canadian Rockies which, because the town sits in a national park, were unobstructed by commercial development. I paused to watch some kids from the local school playing soccer on a pitch by the school before bumping into several people I’d met on previous visits. And at the end of a meeting, I was invited to go canoeing, rock climbing and running. I opted for the run, after which I dined on Buffalo cheeks in a terrific restaurant.

 

Banff, in other words, provides unmediated access to one of the world’s most spectacular environments, which makes it an exciting place to visit. It also attracts residents who have a passion for enjoying that environment. They have a deep-rooted respect for the values of the national park, and are happy to disclose their knowledge of how to enjoy the Rockies. They also appreciate that sharing the town and park with visitors is a reality of living in one of the world’s premier tourist destinations.

 

Research on the old website resulted in a number of key findings, with one emerging strongly: visitors wanted to understand what made Banff special, and residents wanted to see their experience of the town and park reflected on the site.

 

This research played a vital role in driving the process that resulted in last week’s launch. In addition to the spike in visits, Banff’s webmaster Kevin Elliott cites a number of features that have resulted in the site’s positive reception by town residents:

• There’s a lot of information on the site, and it’s easy to find thanks to an intuitive Information Architecture and other navigation aids.
• The look-and-feel incorporates many images of Banff and conveys the Banff experience online.
• The acquisition of a Content Management System (CMS) means town staff can up-date information in minutes instead of hours.
• There’s good information for visitors, but residents can still find the information they need easily.
• The weather appears prominently on the home page.

 

Another excellent feature, one that enables the residents to share their passion for enjoying the Rockies, is “what the locals do”. It means one doesn’t have to step into a Banff watering hole to learn the best way to experience the town and park from the people who know it most intimately.

There was no missing the unveiling of Apple's iPhone last week. It electrified the media and had the audience at Macworld whooping. Almost eclipsing the phone itself was Steve Jobs, and his vision for applying ease-of-use and aesthetic design principles to every device his company produces.

 

A cult of personality was not evident in the presentation by Bill Gates in the same week at the Consumer Electronics Show, however, and the media reaction to Microsoft’s flagship announcement, Vista, had little of the delight that greeted the iPhone.

 

Microsoft’s new operating system has generated interest, but not enthusiasm. While there are passionate exchanges among a certain set whenever Microsoft does anything, the mainstream emotion has been one of resignation about the software giant’s ability to brute force its OS into the market.

 

The contrasting appearances by two giants of the technology world provides an excellent opportunity to think about the role that vision plays in a company’s strategy, and a leader’s responsibility to establish and maintain that vision.

 

The Globe & Mail’s Simon Avery picked up on this opportunity to offer a useful discussion on the styles of Jobs and Gates. In the article, he quotes Roger Kay, president of Endpoint Technologies Associates Inc., a research firm in Wayland, Mass. who observes that: “Microsoft has a certain cult of personality. Gates is thought of as a special guru, and people sit at his feet trying to understand what he’s thinking. That’s totally different from Steve Jobs. He’s an autocrat. He’s a sun king. He’s very capricious, autocratic, and creative and charismatic. He’s all kinds of good things, mixed with some pretty strange things. It’s a totally unique formula.”

 

Where Jobs sets a strategy based on a vision of innovation and elegance, Gates has positioned Microsoft to be a “fast follower,” letting Netscape or Google develop a market and then moving in to dominate it.

 

Famously, before it followed Netscape, Microsoft pursued and then overtook Apple. This story is told in the remarkable PBS documentary “Triumph of the Nerds.” The series not only documents the birth of the rivalry between Jobs and Gates, it also reminds us that the vision on display from both men was present when they conceived their companies decades ago.

 

Consider this statement from Jobs: “The only problem with Microsoft is they just have no taste, they have absolutely no taste…I don’t mean that in a small way I mean that in a big way. In the sense that they don’t think of original ideas and they don’t bring much culture into their product… if it weren’t for the Mac they would never have that in their products and so I guess I am saddened, not by Microsoft’s success - I have no problem with their success, they’ve earned their success for the most part. I have a problem with the fact that they just make really third rate products.”

 

According to Apple’s ex-CEO, John Sculley, Microsoft succeeded because, “The problem was the industry wasn’t measured by who has the best selling personal computer or who has the most innovative technology. The industry was measured by who had the most open system that was adopted by the most other companies and the Microsoft strategy ultimately turned out to be the better business strategy.”

 

The unique qualities of Jobs and Gates could foster admiration more than emulation. But while few of us possess the intelligence, ego, insight, charisma, and drive required to transform industries, the success of both men teach valuable lessons about vision and strategy that we can all apply:

• First, a strategy requires a vision, and it’s the leader’s responsibility to ensure it exists, whether she creates it or facilitates her team to do so.
• Second, it requires a commitment to sustain the vision even when the external environment changes. The same focus on design principles that drove the Mac is guiding the iPhone today, just as Gates is promoting a world of networked entertainment.
• Third, the leader can’t allow the organization to deviate from the vision, especially by trying to emulate a competitor’s strategy. Jobs may begrudge Microsoft its success, but stays focused on inventing products with culture. Gates may admire the elegance of the iPhone, but he’s not going to be first to market with one.

 

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Like every other Christmas for the last several years, we left the high tech metropolis for the much more pastoral setting of Southern Saskatchewan. But unlike previous holidays, we found technology to be as pervasive on the farm as it is in the city. Which made for a much more sociable time.

 

In the past, technology divided more than it united. Teenage nephews would spend hours alone in the basement playing video games no one else enjoyed. Smaller children could only watch, and pose for, the adults who monopolized cameras. Teenage nieces would complain because the phone line was occupied. By adults who were spending hours checking e-mail through dial-up.

 

This year, technology brought people together in ways that demonstrate the dramatic changes that occur when it becomes available or affordable or, most important, easy to use.

 

An obvious example was the Nintendo Wii which my nephew brought. Rather than installing it in the basement, he set it up in the living room. At first, only the young ’uns, had a go. But soon uncles and aunts were drawn in by the simplicity of operating the game, and the physical motions that replicated activities they knew well, notably golf and bowling.

 

The Wii phenomenon is well documented, and is causing interesting changes in behavior. One of the more fascinating is the attempt being made by one blogger to see if his Wii “workout” will result in weight loss.

 

Aside from video games, we saw digital photography go way, way down market, into the hands of my three-year old daughter. Her new Fisher-Price camera is a marvel of simplicity and user-centric design, notably the big hand grips and two-eye viewing. It gave her the ability to participate in the ritual of documenting family gatherings, admittedly from an angle that places crotches in the foreground. The camera’s delete button is also easy to find.         

 

The most significant change, however, was the presence of broadband in my mother-in-law’s house. She recently signed up, adding to the incremental growth in at-home Internet usage (3.1% in the U.S. last year, for example).

 

Access improved with the arrival of our nephew who, before he had unpacked his bags and well before he set up the Wii, configured a wireless hub. That enabled us to make full use of the Internet. At times, we had four laptops connected, with notable social benefits. The nephew could play multi-player games with friends. Our brother-in-law could manage his sales forecast and check updates on his beloved Packers… from the sofa while still interacting with others. We could download recipes and stay in touch with e-mail. And, when a medical emergency necessitated a hospital visit, we could check medical symptoms online.                                                                         

 

The personal benefits enjoyed by our family as a result of broadband have much broader implications. According to eMarketer’s estimates, “an important milestone will be reached over the next 12 months — high-speed Internet penetration will surpass 50% of US households, equating to over 60 million residential broadband subscribers.”

 

According to eMarketer analyst Ben Macklin, “Broadband is now no longer about the size of your pipe, but how you use it.”

 

Based on what I saw over the holidays, the uses will be varied and defined by the users, which now include my three-year-old daughter and 80-year-old mother-in-law.

 

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The news that Google will pay at least $900 million in advertising revenue to have its search boxes and keyword-driven ads on MySpace helps to answer an important question about social networking: can companies monetize the strong traffic growth of this Web 2.0 phenomenon?

 

The deal means that Fox Interactive is starting to see a return on its $580 million acquisition of MySpace. Google, in turn, is expected to realise net revenue of $50 million to $200 million from its deal.

 

So there’s money being spent, and not just by Google. Debra Aho Williamson, Senior Analyst with eMarketer, writes in her breakdown of the deal that it will have no significant impact in 2006 because the payments do not start until 2007. eMarketer estimates that MySpace will generate $180 million in US ad revenue this year, two-thirds of total revenue in the social networking category.

 

“As for succeeding years, News Corp. executives stated in an Aug. 8 quarterly earnings conference call that less than 10% of the $900 million guarantee is earmarked for 2007. That leaves around $810 million to be divvied up over 2008, 2009 and the first two quarters of 2010. And that’s assuming Fox Interactive Media makes its minimum targets – both companies believe the upside will be far greater.

 

“eMarketer estimates that US social network ad spending will rise to nearly $1.9 billion in 2010, from $280 million in 2006. With the Google/MySpace deal, ad revenues at MySpace may top $1 billion as soon as 2010.”

 

But while the social networking opportunity is being monetized, the relationship between two Web 2.0 poster children and the thoughts of an influential business professor suggest companies considering how they can participate must consider “three Cs” if they want to master the opportunity: core competence, Consumer Generated Media and controversy.

 

MySpace has demonstrated that it has discovered a formula for attracting and holding the attention of an extremely distractible, and highly desirable, demographic. But it has not yet developed an e-commerce platform to generate revenue from its audience’s interaction. Enter Google, which is constantly finding new applications for its Web 2.0 competence in managing complex data. Uniting the competencies of the two entities could create a new model for online transactions.

 

Aho Williamson points out that: “New products such as Google Local and Google Checkout are crying out for an audience and MySpace could be a convenient place to give them a big push: Local businesses could offer a seamless way for MySpace users to find their retail storefronts using Google Local, or they could simply handle online transactions with MySpace users by using Google Checkout.”

 

As for Consumer Generated Media (CGM), John Deighton, Harvard Business School Professor and an expert on interactive advertising, provides an interesting perspective. He was interviewed by the Harvard Business School’s Working Knowledge newsletter about the deal, and sees MySpace as “a really exciting marketing frontier.” For one reason, the utilization of CGM means that it can continuously remain linked with the needs and interests of its audience: “MySpace will evolve with its users. It relies on user content, so this is bound to happen. As member tastes grow up, so will their profiles.”

 

With concerns about online predators targeting MySpace users, one can’t mention social networking without noting the controversy it attracts. Deighton suggests that advertisers not be scared off by this concern, and even sees it as part of MySpace’s appeal: “It is popular precisely because it sits between safe-boring and truly frightening. I don’t think News Corp really minds MySpace’s racy image.”

 

There is no doubt that social networking can be monetized. But the companies that do so must have a competence in managing content in Web 2.0—in this case, harnessing collective intelligence and handling a complex database—know how to build a business model around CGM and be willing to handle the controversy that can be involved.

 

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If you spend any time on the Internet, you will have at least a passing interest in blogs. But if you’re responsible for communicating your corporate message and managing your advertising budget, you need to be using this social media actively. Recent statistics demonstrate that blogs are an extremely cost effective way to reach an influential audience at a fraction the cost of traditional media vehicles.

 

The phenomenal growth in the number of blogs has been well documented, and recently released statistics from comScore Media Metrix, demonstrates that this explosion in content has driven a corresponding increase in usage. They report that the traffic to blogs continues to grow, up 56% over the past year to 58.7 million visitors, and that represents 34% of the total Internet audience.

 

 As with many Internet-related trends, a younger demographic plays a key role in driving the numbers. Users between the ages of 12 and 17 are 21% more likely than average to visit blogs.

 

However, certain blog niches (like politics) have a median age of 45 and median income of $85,000, and a high level of C-level executives.

 

Effective blog advertising

The stat about blog niches was provided by Henry Copeland, president of blogads.com, in a discussion with B.L. Ochman on MarketingProfs.com. According to Copeland, the appeal of this new media has driven a 300% growth in blog advertising in the past year. He adds that, if used well, blog advertising can allow companies to establish significant brand awareness for as little as $25,000 to $75,000.

 

The article makes a strong case for the importance of utilizing blogs for corporate marketing, and provides a number of useful examples about how the media can be used to achieve spectacular—and cost effective—results. But it also cautions that advertisers must adopt a blog mindset it they want to succeed with blog advertising.

 

“With click-through rates in traditional online advertising dropping, inexpensive blog click-throughs are as high as 1%,” writes Ochman. “Advertisers are starting to appreciate the influencer constituency on blogs, where the distinct advertising value of these audiences ‘isn't their eyeballs, it’s their mouths,’ Copeland says.

 

“Successful blogs are edgy, have a sense of humor, and are recognized experts in a narrow niche. Blog audiences look at traditional ads, like ‘Click here, get 20% off,’ and say ‘screw this, I've seen it everywhere,’ Copeland says.

 

 

In his discussion, with Ochman, Copeland offers the following guidelines for effective blog ads:

 

                            

Effective corporate blogging

Given the significance of blogs for on-line communications, every company should be incorporating them into their communications mix. Not only is a corporate blog an inexpensive way to deliver information, best practices in corporate blogging have become obvious and are easy to apply:

• Establish your credibility as an expert.
• Know your target audience, connect with them and engage them.
• Use an informal, conversational style.
• Keep your information real and relevant.
• Provide links.
• Respect your competition.

 

Microsoft provided a high profile example of the benefits of corporate blogging with Robert Scoble. His blog attracted millions of readers and his departure captured mainstream media attention. For instance, in its coverage of Scoble’s move to a video blogging start-up, Forbes.com wrote that: “To err is human, to blog, divine? For the last three years, one man has shown how a blog, plain-spoken and irreverent in its tone, could be a tool to significantly help soften the monopolistic bullying image of a corporate giant like Microsoft.”

 

Scoble epitomized the practises mentioned above, winning praise for himself and his company. He was clearly an expert who connected with his tech savvy audience, wasn’t afraid to respect Microsoft’s competition—praising nemesis Google, for example—or to criticize his own company. As a result, writes Forbes, “industry watchers came to appreciate both Scoble's honesty and his inside look into the traditionally insular world of software development.”

 

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Some people really like to gamble, and they always have. According to Open-Site, “anthropologists find solid implications that gambling took place within a large portion of the greatest societies to have ever existed. Dating back to 2300 BC, gambling artifacts have been recovered from some of the oldest civilizations including China, India, Egypt and Rome.”

 

But while gambling has always been popular, it may never have been as popular as it is today. There’s strong evidence to suggest that the Internet is to blame, and calls for online gambling to be eliminated as a result.

 

The latest example of this growing interest in gambling, and the Internet’s role in the activity, is the recently completed World Series of Poker (WSOP) Main Event, which attracted a record 8,773 entrants, up from the previous best of 5,619 set in 2005. They were competing for US$154 million in prize money, which is an increase from the 2005 sum of $103 million.

 

I don’t like to gamble, due mainly to the fleecing I endured from a gentleman named Dave Scharf when we were teenagers. After losing $15 a few too many times to his vastly superior poker skills, I stormed away from the table and have remained absent ever since.

 

As for Dave, he was just getting started and is now one of the top poker players in Canada and has competed in a number of WSOP Main Events. Ironically, despite killing my desire to gamble, Dave is also responsible for my current interest in the WSOP because I enjoyed reading his blog postings from the event.

 

After recovering from the shock of learning how much money Dave was prepared to lose at the poker tables, one item that caught my attention was his observation regarding the impact the Internet has had on the WSOP: eight of the 10 players at his table had qualified through one of the on-line poker sites.

 

According to a recent piece in Newsfactor Magazine Online, Dave can blame his company on Chris Moneymaker, who “turned his $40 investment in an online game into $2.5 million for winning the 2003 World Series of Poker, [giving] anyone with a modem and a fantasy the idea that he might be the next Virtual Amarillo Slim.” At this year’s WSOP Main Event, for example, it’s estimated that 4,000 of the 8,773 players won their $10,000 stake on an overseas-based Internet poker site.

 

The sites are not based in the U.S. because the Justice Department says that playing poker for money online is illegal, although there are estimates that 15 million U.S. citizens are prepared to break the law by doing just that.

 

Online gambling is a controversial topic, with proponents, like poker professional and author of multiple books on the game Mike Caro, going so far as to say in the Newsfactor article that: “They’re trying to cut off the United States while the whole world is bonding around Internet poker. Here our representatives are criticizing China for trying to cut off access to activities and information on the Internet, and we are trying to do the same thing.

 

“I think this is an issue of freedom. Anybody who loves the Internet ought to be concerned with this.”

 

While Caro’s rallying cry is way over the top, the issue is worth considering for people who are interested in the Internet and its impact on business and government regulations. The Internet makes it easier to do things that people enjoy, and there are always entrepreneurs seeking to profit from that simple fact. In most cases, government stays out of the way and lets the market determine winners and losers.

 

When it comes to gambling, there are people like me, who don’t like the thought of losing thousands of dollars in the hope of winning millions and are happy to use the Web to live vicariously through people like Dave, who has the wherewithal to lose thousands and the ability to win millions. Unfortunately, there are others who, like our ancestors from 2300 BC, are prepared to lose much more than they can afford by gambling. Those losses are prompting the calls for government action, but it should be apparent that banning online poker won’t work: we like gambling and the Internet too much.

There is no event that can match the World Cup for capturing the globe’s attention and stimulating national passions. This year’s tournament is also providing a valuable lesson in how the Internet, when well deployed, plays an essential role in the media mix.

 

Personally, I’m experiencing the tournament’s ability to bring people together from all over the world through the pool in which my old soccer teammates are participating. Many years after our last provincial championship, we’re living across Canada as well as in the U.S., Australia, Spain and  Ireland. E-mail remains one of the key Internet applications, and the organization of our pool—as well as the sharing of video clips of diving Italian strikers and photos of our children—would be impossible without it.

 

The World Cup also energizes the city in which I live, because Toronto has a wonderfully diverse population. Flags adorn vehicles driving through the streets, and entire neighbourhoods shut down after key wins cause impromptu celebrations. Traditional media simply can’t reflect the depth of the passion on the streets, but Consumer Generated Media (CGM) is more than up to the task. One blogger brings a commitment to watch games with national supporters in their favourite hang outs and a digicam to capture the experience of how the tournament is enjoyed in this multi-cultural city.  

                                 

Of course, the tournament would be inconceivable without television. A Global Market Insite (GMI) survey, reported by e-Marketer Daily, showed that over 95% of all global fans will follow the cup on their televisions, with the vast majority (93%) choosing to watch at home. But the Web is becoming an important complement to television.

 

According to figures from comScore, in April there were 5.7 million unique visitors to the official 2006 FIFA World Cup site hosted by Yahoo! and 4.2 million visited in March. Not surprisingly, the bulk of these visitors are in Europe. E-Marketer reports that Europe contributed the greatest proportion of visitors in April with 51%, or almost 3 million people. The next highest region was Asia Pacific, with 17% of the total, nearly 1 million people. Traffic from Latin America represented 12% of the total, and only 10% of the visitors came from North America, highlighting the still limited popularity of soccer in the US.

 

The many North Americans who are not visiting the FIFA World Cup site are not only missing out on the passion and excitement of the tournament, they are not seeing a superb example of how to present information online and engage visitors.

·        The site itself has a remarkable depth of content, including multi-media elements like video highlights. It is also very interactive, with a live match cast that provides comprehensive minute-by-minute up-dates of the games and live fan chat.

·        In addition, if you don’t have access to computer (for example, if your daughter’s gymnastics class coincides with the England-Ecuador match), the site is optimized for viewing on a mobile device. It loads quickly and presents just the information you need to see on a small screen.

 

While following the World Cup offers many Internet-related learning opportunities, I’ve been focused on the lessons provided by the competition and who is involved, such as:

• Don’t let your heart prevail over your head when making crucial decisions, like predicting that Ivory Coast will survive the “group of death” at the expense of Argentina.
• Expect mocking e-mails when bad decisions become known to a global audience, such as predicting that Ivory Coast will survive the “group of death” at the expense of Argentina.
• Don’t drive to Little Italy for pancetta with 15 minutes left to play in an Italian match.

Most business people understand that they can never stop learning and seeking new ideas for their business. And the most successful ones grasp the need to seek those learning opportunities from expected sources—such as conferences and business journals—as well as from unexpected ones, such as other industries. They also know that in today’s economy, the Internet will play a vital role in that learning process.

 

I was reminded of this lesson while preparing my presentation for last weeks’ International Prepress Association’s Technical Conference in Chicago. In a session called “Leveraging Technology to Grow Your Business,” I’d been asked to provide business owners and senior technical managers with ideas on how to do exactly what the title suggested. That could sound like a challenge, if one’s understanding of the growth opportunities for output service providers stops at the headline: “Print is Dead! Long Live the Internet!”

 

To help prepare for the session, I dusted off the March, 2005 copy of Harvard Business Review, which contained an article called “MarketBusting: Strategies for Exceptional Growth.” The article featured a small case study on a printer called Madden Communications. That company had pursued one of the article’s suggested strategies—changing its unit of business from selling a product to selling a product-service mix—and had achieved great success.

 

The magazine described how Madden used a combination of customer insight, strategic planning and operational execution to make the transition and achieve impressive business results: “Madden’s revenues grew from $10 million in 1990 to $133 million in 2004, in an industry thought by many to be hopelessly mature.”

 

The last line, of course, is an elegant way of saying “Print is dead.” But HBR was able to look past that simple statement and see a company that had a lesson to offer for any businessperson willing to learn.

 

And anyone who wants to learn more about Madden can check out their website, which offers a strong example in how to connect a company’s online presence to their business strategy, notably the core competencies page which states: “Madden has transformed what were transactionally siloed steps into an integrated retail solution that we manage better than anybody else. This integrated solution process is our service.”

 

With attendance up 30% from last year, the IPA Conference clearly appealed to a membership that is committed to learning how to manage their technology more effectively. The IPA, in turn, is committed to delivering those learning opportunities and has recognized that its members expect to find that knowledge in an expanding number of ways. At the kick off session, the organization launched its new website, which features an expanded set of online learning tools such as webinars.

(Washington, DC) The inaugural Transformation + Innovation finished here yesterday. The event, organized by Nathaniel Palmer, promised that “participants will learn the most up-to-date strategies, techniques, and technologies for SOA, Leveraging Open Source, Enterprise Architecture Modeling and Modernization as well as Best Practices for BPM and Process Optimization.”

 

Given the event’s strong attendance, that promise resonated with its audience, and more importantly, it was delivered according to the attendees with whom I spoke. They also credited Nathaniel for ensuring that the senior IT staff attending the event had the opportunity to understand the management implications created by collaborative technology like blogs, wikis and RSS.

 

Attendees could learn about these issues in my presentation, “Leveraging Social Software and the Technologies of Web 2.0.” We enjoyed lively interaction in the session, especially around the generation gap relating to the usage of social software.

 

A number of heads nodded when I put up the famous quotation by Max Planck, father of quantum physics: “A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.”

 

Planck’s observation is relevant to social software, because as Prescient’s President, Toby Ward, has blogged: CIOs don’t respect social media. Their adoption rate and, more significantly, personal usage of these tools trails that of the MySpace generation, who now spend an average of 1 hour and 22 minutes a day using their computer for social networking. This usage contrasts to the 51% of CIOs for whom social networking has “no interest/not on radar screen,” according to the CIO Magazine study that Toby references.

 

A participant in the session provided an excellent reason for why this generation gap must be taken very seriously by the senior IT people who decide what technology an organization’s employees can use within its environment. Not only was she a senior manager in a large high tech firm, she also lectures at an engineering college. Each year, she hands the graduating students a form they can use to evaluate prospective employers, with a key criteria being the technology they make available for online learning and social networking.

 

Every manager is, or should be, aware that winning the competition for talent is a critical success factor today. It would be a shame for an organization to lose this battle because its CIO is ignoring the world outside her server room.

 

Credit goes to Nathaniel for keeping social networking on the radar screen for attendees at his conference, and to the participants in my session who are deploying the technology to good use in their companies, but always looking for ways to do it better.

The greatest barrier to website success is politics. Technology, budget, skillset are all secondary barriers. The website is a political football.

 

Why is the website so political?

 

Well, most websites don’t grab the attention and focus of senior management. As such, the current state and evolution of the website is left to middle managers mostly in communications, IT and HR who have limited power and decision-making ability, and a limited budget. However, the website represents the entire organization, not just a department, business unit or silo. Therefore, communications, IT, HR and all the other business units and corporate departments are left to cooperate and collaborate on a single channel representing all.

 

This cooperation and collaboration is of course usually in the absence of little or no direction from senior management. So, the kids are left to themselves to play nicely. Uh-oh.

 

 

Of course all know by now that….

 

• Communications sees the world quite differently than IT
• IT views the website far differently than HR
• HR are not technologists and are focused people
• Business units have a laser like focus on their own markets and profit & loss
• Finance cares about the bottom-line which is not a driver of websites (except fore e-commerce sites)
• Etc., etc.

And so the predictable happens: conflict.

 

• Conflict over vision
• Conflict over ownership
• Conflict over application priority
• Conflict over content
• Etc., etc.

With predictable conflict, little consensus and no direction from senior management the website stalls. Often, it stalls for years.

 

An additional problem lies with the traditional growth and evolution of the intranet. Read Why is the intranet so political?

 

© 2006 Toby Ward - Prescient Digital Media

For a consumer preparing to spend a substantial portion of her household income on a family vacation, travel is about finding the right experience for the best value. For the business providing that experience, travel is about standing out in a hyper-competitive, global market while maintaining a sustainable margin. For both parties, travel has also become about mastering the Internet, which these days means immersing themselves in the emerging world of Web 2.0, notably the deep respect for data and the collaborative creation of content.

 

It’s well established that travellers rely on the Internet to make their plans. For example, in its North American Consumer Technology Adoption Study, Forrester discovered that US online leisure Bookers research across an average of 3.2 sites, plus one offline resource, to plan their trips. But in an age in which Intelliseek reports that consumers are 50 percent more likely to be influenced by other customers and individuals than by traditional advertising, travellers are increasingly using the Web to engage in a dialogue with one another about their trips.

 

“User-generated content has exploded over the Internet, and, from blogs to Wikis to MySpace, real-life user commentary is trumping established media and brands,” writes Matt Rand in Forbes.com. “Travelers have taken to the Web and are now providing real-time, illustrated, no-holds-barred travel guides.”

 

The online travel industry, which has reached sales of US$60 billion in revenue, or about one-quarter of the overall US travel market, has recognized the importance of these trends, and as a result provides helpful examples of how to incorporate the technology and mindset of Web 2.0 into their business plans:

 

• A new generation of travel search sites have stolen a page from the Google Web 2.0 playbook, and perform meta-searches to offer comparison-shopping pages that aggregate pricing data from many retail sources. Unlike the travel agent sites like Travelocity, the meta-search sites include every airline and travel-booking agency, including Orbitz and Expedia. Kayak, for example, features the slogan: “search with us, book with them.”  As interesting as the model is, however, Forrester reports that these sites owns less than 5% of all online travel.
• The industry offers an interesting deployment of a wiki to assist with travel planning, World66, a site on which everything is written and edited by random visitors.
• Social networking has become one of the most talked about Web 2.0 phenomenon, and the travel industry has a numerous examples. FlyerTalk, for instance, features thousands of posts from frequent flyers who are helping one another, trading discount certificates and swapping customer experiences. The established travel players are attempting to participate in this Web 2.0 world. Starwood, for example, created a new blog, TheLobby.com, and invited the Starwood Lurker, who had become a celebrity on the FlyerTalk community, to address hotel issues.

 

While these examples provide a good reference for any company contemplating how to incorporate the mindset and technology of Web 2.0 into its strategy, Yahoo! demonstrates how organizations that develop a competence with CGM can enter new markets and pose a significant threat to incumbents.

 

“With features like Yahoo! Shoposphere, an add-on to Yahoo! Shopping that gives users a chance to make lists and guides for others, Yahoo! is tapping into its 400 million users to create content and foster communities that will keep the Web traffic flowing,” notes Rand. “In addition to reviews and photos from Flickr, the service includes a trip planner, where people can create itineraries for trips that other users can then vote for in Yahoo! Travel’s listings if they like the trip plans.”

 

Reiterating the point that Yahoo! sees travel as being a market that requires Web 2.0 technology, it bought travel meta-search site FareChase in 2004 which enables users to check fares while looking at reviews and trip planners.

 

RELATED ITEMS

Content in the Web 2.0 world

Getting it right: Travel and the Internet

Favorite Web 2.0 applications

The NY Times has redesigned their website to make it more like the paper version (credit to Tom Marciniak ).

 

Famed Canadian media guru Marshall McLuhan, called the "Oracle of the Electronic Age", coined the phrase and book title, The Medium is the Massage (not ‘message’ but massage… though it’s assumed that this was a carefully crafted pun). While this quote has largely been bastardized and misinterpreted, McLuhan espoused that the medium or channel that conveyed the message shapes the message (or alters it). In other words, the complete message or meaning of a story on TV could be different than the same story communicated in, for example, a newspaper.

 

 

The NY Times is attempting to make the website look and feel more like the newspaper with a five column layout, less color, etc. However, a website is not a newspaper and shouldn’t be mistaken for a newspaper. People read very differently online than they do when actually holding a physical newspaper. When reading a newspaper you can be sitting in almost any position with no screen glare, no animation, no up-to-the-minute stock quotes, etc.

 

However, I must admit, there are things that I really do like about the new site… and the more I look at it the more I like perhaps better than any other newspaper site.

 

The home page is rather busy with its five columns – I don’t know quite where to start reading. But I like the white space. It looks clean. I very much like the three column layout they use under the Today’s Paper tab which includes an enlargeable JPEG of the actual paper version.

 

When reading an article, the page offers the reader a number of interactive options including E-mail, Print, Reprints, Save This and Single Page (though I’m not sure what this option actually does except strip out one or two ads). Also presented a tabbed box called Most Popular. It lists the top 10 most e-mailed articles, the top 10 most blogged articles, and the top 10 most searched terms (top searches were ‘immigration’ and ‘Colbert’ (as in the very funny current affairs comedian and talk show host).

 

 

 

I like the new site; it works for me. What is agreeable to me though is not necessarily agreeable to the masses. (In fact, I guarantee you the NY Times get a handful of both complaints and kudos.) Users generally like a far more simple layout and less cluttered look. In addition to it hugely effective search engine, there’s a reason why Google is so popular. The Google home page is simple to digest and fast to load. The trend to simplicity is more than just a trend – users demand simplicity.

 

Should you consider a five column layout or try to emulate a hard copy publication? I certainly wouldn’t do it. The medium is the message. However, more important than media theory, is an intimate understanding of the needs and expectations of your users and delivering flawlessly.

U.S. consumers are becoming more and more comfortable shopping online. And they’re spending more – particularly on clothes and luxury items.

 

eMarketer predicts consumers will dramatically increase their spending at online retail shops from $877 per consumer in 2005 to $1,512 per consumer by 2009.

The report shows that, although the average annual growth rate of retail e-commerce sales will slow from the 26% seen between 2001 and 2005, it will remain robust at 18.6% from 2006 to 2009.

"Online shoppers, who have faster online connections and more Internet experience, are venturing beyond the safe purchase categories of books, videos and toys that marked the first e-commerce success stories," wrote eMarketer Jeffrey Grau, senior analyst, in the report.

The retail sector of computer hardware and software is on the cusp of becoming the first category to derive a majority of its sales online, 54.5% by 2010, according to eMarketer calculations. But the categories of jewelry/luxury goods and health and beauty are making the deepest inroads into total sales, with online purchases expected to about double their percent of total category sales by 2010.

Apparel, perhaps more than any other category, demonstrates the maturity of online sales and the comfort level of consumers. Apparel e-commerce as a percent of total retail sales is expected to climb from 5.9% in 2005 to 11.4% by 2010, as specialized niche sites, high-end e-tailers and attention-grabbing technology converge to bring consumers online to buy clothes.

See U.S. Retail E-Commerce

Content should be at the core of your internet strategy. Yes, think about balancing sales channels, connecting the site’s goals to your organizational objectives and getting your look and feel right. But content remains king, so knowing how to effectively deploy and manage it will be critical to your online success.

                                                    

Before presenting at the Gilbane San Francisco conference, I was able to take in a few of the sessions, and two in particular provided excellent insight into the role that content can play in achieving business objectives and the business considerations that must go into being able to manage content.

 

Actionable content

Gilbane Consultant Bill Trippe discussed this useful concept in a presentation to the CM Professionals Spring Conference, which started the day before the Gilbane event.  Bill explained that Forrester originated the phrase “transactional content,” which Mary Laplante and Bill Zoellick from the Gilbane Group have defined as:

Transactional content can be defined as shared information that drives business-to-business processes. It is the content that flows through the commerce chain, initiating and automating processes such as procurement, order management, supply chain planning, and product support. Transactional content is shared in the sense that it is exchanged among partners, suppliers, customers and distributors who each can contribute to it.

Bill and Gilbane colleague David Guenette have taken to calling it “actionable content,” and Bill provided some eye-catching stats explaining why the concept is so important:

 

• Less than 10% of users will contact a supplier whose Website does not provide detailed product and service information (2004 Content Solutions User Needs)
• 91% of industrial buyers rely on the Internet to collect information and 90% of industrial buyers visit the Web and eliminate potential suppliers before they even consider calling (Outsell, Inc, ICR Research, others).

While understanding actionable content is critical, implementing it is complex and difficult. As Bill notes, it requires multiple media, multi-platform integration, and cross-functional teams.

 

In our experience, many companies are beginning to recognize the important contribution content makes to their business goals, even if they are not yet familiar with “actionable content.” And, once they accept the need to tackle an important business challenge, they recognize the importance of developing an effective plan.

 

Managing content

In his outstanding tutorial called “Web Content Management Systems: Architecture & Products,” Tony Byrne of CMS Watch provided a comprehensive overview on the topic. Among the key messages that emerged was that acquiring and implementing a CMS is not a straightforward business decision due to:

 

• Complexity of choice. Tony estimates that there are approximately 2,000 systems available, although about 1,600 are “consulting-ware” that have only been implemented a few times.
• Wide variance in price points. With Enterprise Web CMS solutions starting at $250,000 and Open Source options beginning at $1,000, assigning a budget prior to searching for options may prove virtually impossible.
• Estimating Total Cost of Ownership. TCO can be summed up with a simple question: what does a free dog cost? Open Source provides a great example of why a TCO model is very important for a CMS. As Tony pointed out, these “cheap” solutions often require extensive integration, a cost for which many companies fail to budget. He suggests that for every $1 spent on software, you allocate between $2 and $8 on services.

 

RELATED ITEMS

Take Prescient’s CMS Survey and win

(San Francisco) There are three certainties in life: death, taxes and, if you manage a website, you will acquire a content management system. Attendees at this week’s Gilbane San Francisco received in-depth information about how best to make this inevitable purchase. They also received an important reminder: content still ends up on paper.

 

For the first time, the session featured a track on automated publishing. The sessions were organized by Gene Gable, with assistance from Thad McIlroy, who are well known in publishing circles for their work in documenting the digitization of the production value chain.

 

The track provided the opportunity for participants to learn how the printed page can best be managed in a broader content management plan. It also enabled them to understand how new publishing technology can benefit all players involved in creating and distributing content.

 

For example, I presented in a session called “Accommodating creative needs in content management.” The key message was that when planning to implement a solution that will have a profound effect on the way an organization communicates—whether it’s a CMS or automated publishing system—success depends on understanding two phrases:  who is “in the tent” and who has put “skin the game.”

 

In the tent

Prior to beginning to evaluate new technology, the project manager needs to determine who to put on the project team. In other words, who should be in the tent? It sounds like common sense, but we still see too many examples in which one department acquires a system and then starts approaching other groups to gain their support. The required buy-in is often secured, but at the expense of precious time and energy that delays the implementation of the system. Or worse, the company discovers the system is missing critical functionality.

 

 

Putting skin in the game

Aside from not putting the right people in the tent before initiating the search for a new solution, another common problem is allowing an individual or a department to develop and implement the acquisition plan on their own. Not only does this approach mean that there’s no load balancing of the work, it also creates the impression that it’s “their plan” not “our plan.”

 

There are many reasons why people don’t get behind other people’s plan. Some are negative, like if the plan fails you can preserve the ability to say it’s not my fault. Some are benign, like you don’t understand it and can’t see why it should be a priority. Once it becomes “our plan,” however, we take partial ownership for its success. In other words, we’ve put skin in the game.

 

The approach is important when evaluating any major content management system, but so is remembering that content still ends up on paper. Frank Gilbane deserves a lot of credit for bringing Gene and Thad into the conference and making sure that paper stays in content’s tent.

 

 

RELATED ITEMS

Tuning in the right employee communication channel

Take Prescient’s CMS Survey and win

With some rare exceptions, the answer is likely “very few”. According to a new Forrester research study podcasting is more hype than reality. The report Podcasting Hits the Charts reveals that only 1% of U.S. households regularly listen to podcsts.

 

Anecdotally, I have to tell you, I don’t know a single person that listens to podcasts except for one or two people – and they’re hard core tech nerds that have their own podcasts. And I know and meet a lot of like-minded people who are hardly luddites. They’re technology savvy and have iPods. But they have no interest in listening to an amateur broadcaster talk about their favorite (fill-in-the-blank).

 

Does that mean that all podcasters are amateurs and geeks? No certainly not. All listeners are nerds? Absolutely not. However, the medium is primarily dominated by tech enthusiasts with very, very few average everyday workers or families partaking.

 

While some of you iPod fans reading this will be shocked and angered by these low numbers (as some podcasters such as PodTech.net founder John Furrierh who has already expressed his outrage over this study) there is a difference between hope and reality. The hope – and certainly all expectations – is that podcasting will explode with millions of users by the end of the decade. The reality is that this media is limited in use and practice to just a few techno geeks.

 

Does that mean you shouldn’t launch your own podcast? No. If you have a desire to do so then go for it. It’s practically free (if you have a computer and microphone). But temper your expectations regarding potential listenership. Unless you only plan this as a side hobby there are far better media for reaching your target audience – unless that target audience is hardcore tech fans. If you plan to start a business podcast for employees or customers you better know what you’re doing and a well-defined plan is a must. If you want to build an attentive listener base you’d better understand your target audience and market to them accordingly.

 

A good podcast is more than an investment of 15 or 20 minutes a week. Understand that the return on your time in these early months and years of podcasting likely won’t amount to much despite all the hype indicating otherwise. But the future looks bright…

 

RELATED READING:

Podcasting @ IBM

Podcasting the intranet at IBM

Value in podcasting?

Learning to the beats of iPod

A new report form the Annals of Family Medicine finds that the computer, if used well by a skilled physician, can enhance the patient-doctor relationship.

 

Physicians, Patients, and the Electronic Health Record: An Ethnographic Analysis finds that when used,  the electronic health record (EHR -  the medical record, patient education materials, and Internet search capabilities) can add a valued dynamic to the patient relationship and enhance therapeutic relationships.

 

However, the computer can weaken the patient-doctor relationship if the physician uses it as a substitute for dialogue with the client. Therefore, it depends on ‘how’ the doctor uses the computer.

 

Whether the computer enhances or weakens the relationship depends both on how easy it is to use and how skilled physicians are in making use of it.

 

These conclusions were derived from a study of participant observation (80 hours) in 4 primary care offices and individual interviews with 23 physicians, 52 patient and other support works. This was accompanied by 5 focus-groups of participants.

 

"Physicians were often conflicted between recording data in the EHR and giving patients one-on-one attention," wrote the study's authors, led by William Ventres of Multnomah County Health Department in Portland, Ore.

 

Ventres (et all) found four key factors in influencing this relationship:

 

• Spatial Factors - for example, how the physical location of the computer monitor influenced dialogue between the patient and doctor (“Large, fixed monitors located in the corner of the examination room caused consternation among both physicians and patients, whereas flat-screen monitors on mobile arms were universally praised.)

• Relational Factors - how doctors and patients used and perceived the computer. "There are times where it’s obvious you’re going through a structured way of dealing with a presenting problem. It’s click, click, point, and your note is done. Then there are these much more complex, human interactions. It just isn’t appropriate to be sitting there typing at the time,” was a quote offered by one of the study’s participant doctors.

• Educational Factors – how skilled and experienced the doctor in using the computer and EHR.

• Structural Factors - factors such as the cost and funding for EHR, and how the host organization (e.g. clinic or hospital) perceived and influenced (culture) the use of EHR.

RELATED ITEMS:

EHRs Enter Patient-Doctor Relationships

A lot has been written about the evolution of content management and the CMS market. This emerging but uneasy market has been around for a number of years now but is still very immature (see CMS market evolution and Content Management Trends – Growing upward, outward and onward…).

 

There are literally thousands of solutions. No hyperbole – thousands of solutions. They range from free to millions of dollars and most are horribly user unfriendly, complex and over-priced. As such, this nascent market relies on a lot of smoke and mirrors to sell their products as true success stories are rare and ephemeral.

 

Case in point: I was recently invited, as was our VP, Carm Porco, to an upcoming Ziff Davis seminar next week called Content Management for the Rest of Us. I was not able to attend but I sent the invite to our resident CMS expert Tom Marciniak.

 

Both Carm and Tom were confirmed to attend this event that featured ‘wine tasting’ (perhaps not smoke and mirrors but you get the point). Today Carm and Tom received notice that they were uninvited – there’s no room for them. Both however RSVP’d and had received confirmation of their attendance.

 

So, it is perhaps good news for Ziff Davis that their event is ‘oversold’ and they have to turn people away. It shows the degree of interest in the CMS market. However, to underscore the reality and my point about a very immature market relying more on ‘smoke and mirrors’, here’s a little perspective as to why someone like Ziff Davis should rollout the carpet for Carm and Tom at Prescient Digital Media. In the past year and a half Prescient has been involved with and recommended the implementation of 7 or 8 content management systems for our clients including Scotiabank, the Ontario Ministry of Health, BC Lottery Corporation, Atomic Energy of Canada, Ontario Realty Corporation and others. These are not insignificant companies – nor were the size of the contracts. On top of that, Carm and Tom both have written articles on the subject and spoken at conferences as well.

 

These guys are key influencers in this market. In short, they’re VIPs and absolutely ideal target audience for Ziff’s event. But they were uninvited. Needless to say this ‘un-invite’ from Ziff Davis does not look good on them or the sponsor Oracle. Worse yet, in addition to being known consultants that influence the CMS purchasing at some big name organizations we are also an organization of writers and our blogs receive on average 2,000 visitors a day – clients, prospective clients and other consultants with influence in the content management space.

 

Now if I was a vindictive sort I might look into the event to try and determine the exact sales pitch and make light of it. However, that’s not the point nor my desire. The point is this: the CMS market is incredibly immature and many solutions in fact represent a dangerous investment. For example, I’m talking with a client that spent $2.5 million on implementing a CMS and they’ve contemplated scrapping a little more than a year after going live). Buyer beware has never held so much urgency for businesses looking to buy a CMS.

 

Now I won’t rule out ever working with Oracle or Ziff Davis on behalf of a client, but you can be sure the mention of either won’t have me running to hire either.

 

RELATED ITEMS:

CMS market evolution

Content Management Trends – Growing upward, outward and onward…

 

STATUS UPDATE:

I sent Ziff Davis a note highlighting this issue and telling them of my blog entry. I received no response. However, this morning I received two more spam invites from Ziff Davis – invites to the same event we were uninvited to!!! Unbelievable!! Quality PR and event management.... Now three days later and I received two more invites -- now a grand total of 6 invites in all -- for the same event that we've been uninvited to. Who is running the show over there?!?!

 

Web 2.0 continues to be all the rage and certainly warrants a lot of discussion (see Wikipedia for an overview; and Favorite Web 2.0 applications). So why not hold a confab to discuss and debate the future?

 

mesh is the first Web 2.0 conference in Canada, on May 15 & 16 in Toronto.

 

You will hear from thought leaders, connect with peers, and get a better understanding of the impact of new developments online. mesh brings together people who are passionate about the potential of the Web to change how we live, work and play. Meet the next generation of Web ideas, leaders and companies at mesh.

 

mesh features more than 40 speakers including Om Malik, Steve Rubel and many others.

 

mesh is the brainchild of a number of technology writers and web heads including colleague and National Post technology writer Mark Evans (and fellow tech blogging enthusiast at http://evans.blogware.com/blog), Mathew Ingram, technology writer for the Globe and Mail; Rob Hyndman, a technology lawyer; Mike McDerment, an online entrepreneur; and Expedia.ca founder Stuart MacDonald.

 

"mesh is happening because toronto - and, for that matter, canada - needs to jump on the web 2.0. bandwagon," says Evans. "There's so many new and exciting things happening on the web, it's important to have an event where people learn, network and share ideas."

 

You know they’re on to something when there initial out-of-the-gate sponsors include: eBay.ca, Yahoo!.ca, Microsoft, Rogers, Edelman, Bell, Telus, IBM, and others.

 

Interested in participating? Here’s where you register...

There’s nothing remarkable about the fact that I received The Simpsons opening sequence – with real people from four different people. Receiving the link from more than one person means I know more than one person who engages in one of the most common web-enabled applications: forwarding funny e-mails.

 

What is remarkable is how simple and inexpensive marketing on the Internet can be, provided one grasps how people use it and how much value they place on well crafted, humorous and original content.

 

A study by Sharpe Partners revealed that 89 % of adult Internet users in America share content with others via email. The study on viral marketing also found that 63 % of the respondents share content at least once a week and as many as 75% of the respondents forward this content to up to six other recipients.

 

In addition to capturing the frequency of content sharing, the study also showed that the most popular content is humorous material, with 88 % forwarding jokes or cartoons.

 

Content Shared by US Internet Users (%of respondents)
Content	% Sharing
Humorous/jokes/cartoons	88%
News item/article	56
Health care/medical	32
Religious/spiritual	30
Games	25
Sports/hobbies	24
Business/personal finance	24
Sexually provocative content	12
Source: Sharpe Partners, Inc, January 2006

 

The Simpon’s video,a  viral marketing campaign by UK satellite broadcaster BSkyB, was viewed millions of times in less than a week, according to Reuters. Meticulously created by Sky and ad agency Devilfish, the video was intended as an on-air promotion until they had an insight about the viral power of the Internet.

                             

“If we had only showed it on air, you might turn to someone and say that was really cool,” BSkyB communications director Matthew Anderson told Reuters. “Putting it online, there’s a fantastic discussion between millions of people—it’s bringing the Simpsons to them instead of having them tune in.”

 

We all have to monitor emerging trends and technology like social networks and increasingly powerful content management systems. But we can never lose sight of the importance of helping people engage in basic interactions. Like sharing a good joke.

               

Building a brand is tough. And it’s getting tougher. Advertising Age numbers reveal that, for example, the number of brands on North American grocery store shelves has tripled since 1991 from 15,000 to 45,000 products. At the same time, the number of your competitors with websites likely has grown ten-fold (or perhaps even greater) since 1995.

 

On the Web, the power of Google has leveled the playing field between the haves and the have nots – big brands can’t necessarily spend their way to a better brand, and new kids on the block are constantly emerging from seemingly nowhere.

 

A recent McKinsey article (Better Branding; subscription only) highlighted the dilemma for marketers: “Building strong brands isn’t getting any easier. An explosion in the number of brands—as well as a proliferation of ways to communicate them, from hundreds of cable channels to the Internet, product placement in movies, and even mobile-phone display screens—has made it tougher to get messages through,” writes McKinsey’s Nora A. Aufreiter, David Elzinga, and Jonathan W. Gordon in Better Branding. “In addition, converging product-performance and service levels in many industries have made it more difficult to sustain existing brands. Meanwhile, the economic downturn has hamstrung marketers by cutting their budgets.”

 

All of that clutter and competition makes it harder to stand out in a crowd. Cash fueled advertising campaigns may create awareness and recognition, but not necessarily build a ‘better’ brand. The brand is all encompassing – from product to service to perception. Understanding your target audience, your users and their expectations and needs, and delivering accordingly, is tantamount to success.

 

Easier said than done.

 

Understanding the user audience requires an analytical approach to consumer research. Although research itself cannot build a brand, the adoption of both old and new analytical approaches to understanding customer behavior and preferences can build sounder strategies for enhancing the corporate brand and winning the hearts and wallets of consumers.

 

“The solid analytics at the heart of the new approach may not only require new skills in the marketing department but also highlight steps that other parts of the organization—from product development to operations to customer service—must take to help deliver the brand,” say Aufreiter et all. “Moreover, some marketers may worry that adopting more quantitative techniques will compromise their creativity. In our experience, though, getting analytical about customer needs and the brand identity helps channel the imagination into areas in which it makes a difference. And the ability to avoid costly trial and error and to build a better brand more efficiently is too compelling to pass up, particularly in challenging economic times.”

 

The good news, however, is that the web is still a relatively new media, when compared to, for example, the ultra competitive retail world. Yet the Internet, as we are coming to know by experience, can propel no names and young kids working in garages into branding superstars.

 

Brand building

 

It goes without saying that building a web brand is far more complex than marketing. A number of key contributors must be carefully mixed and executed to create a valued resonation:  

 

• Site design
• Usability
• Site layout
• Content quality
• Product value
• Order fulfillment
• Customer service

 

Of course these are not the only contributing attributes to the web brand. Some attributes, what Mckinsey calls “antes”, are auxiliary or added benefits that some customers might, for example, expect from a competitor. Think of Amazon.com’s free deliveries – now commonly offered by many of its competitors. Or a hotel website that offers 360 degree pictures of their rooms and property.

 

Successful brands deliver on both customer expectations and also differentiate from the competition.

 

 

Those web brands that have high relevance and a high degree of differentiation from the competition include Ebay, Google and MySpace.

 

Understanding your users

 

Notwithstanding more complex methodologies such as pathway modeling (see Successful Brand Repositioning: Aspirations vs. Achievable Strategies) and conjoint analysis that you may not be looking to digest in a 45 second blog read, there are a number of key measurement tools you should know and use…

 

• One on one interviews
• Customer surveys
• Focus groups
• Usability testing
• Call center tracking
• Market segmentation
• Benchmarking
• Etc.

 

A multiplicity of tools is recommended using both quantitative and qualitative tactics. Depending on your site’s position in the evolutionary curve, some tools and tactics are better than others (see When to use what research tools and Measure your efforts).

 

Moments of Truth

 

Brand is built and reinforced at web touchpoints or moments of truth. Moments of truth would include the initial impression of the site (color and design), product information, checkout process, search engine use, etc.

 

It goes without saying that there are a lot of touchpoints in a standard web transaction – whether or not e-commerce is involved. So, to leave on a practical note after many wasted paragraphs on Mckinsey influenced brand theory, here are some practical suggestions for reinforcing you web brand:

 

•         Prominently display your organization name/logo (upper left corner is now considered standard)

•         Organization’s “tag line” or “value proposition” should also be prominently featured

•         Design that differentiates from competitors

•         Emphasize the most frequently used and high-priority tasks/information

•         A single “Home Page” that is clearly distinguishable from all other pages

•         “About Us” and “Contact Us” sections are clearly labelled in the global navigation or footers on all pages

•         Sections and categories designated with customer-oriented language

•         Site offers multiple navigation paths to priority content and tools

•         Primary navigation area is prominently situated and similar items are grouped closely

•         Straightforward, informative language

•         Succinct grammar, with consistent capitalization and design standards

•         Concise instructions for necessary tasks

•         Search engine optimization (strong page titles, active links, keywords, etc.)

•         Clearly communicated and supported customer service and privacy policies

•         Deliver on your promises

 

Last word of note: branding is not a one-off exercise. Web branding is a continual, fluid journey that requires constant attention, tweaking and care.

 

Here is some additional reading (all the articles are more than a year old but all have offer good lessons – both implicit and explicit):

 

Don't Shout, Listen (Fast Company)

On the Web, Branding Is Back (Business Week)

Web branding is more than skin deep (Gerry McGovern)

Controversial, perplexing for marketers and beloved by their users, social networking sites have become a critical trend for web strategists to monitor.

 

In an article called “Social Networks as a Marketing Channel,” eMarketer provides powerful stats on the popularity of the sites and helpful links to articles about companies that are developing business models around collaborative publishing.

 

The article contains comScore Networks data showing that the two leading social network sites, MySpace.com and Facebook.com, attract more than five million unique visitors a month. The number of visitors to Facebook.com increased by 14% in December 2005, while MySpace.com saw a 34% increase.

 

Such growth, and the seismic shift in online behaviour it represents, is sure to attract the attention of mainstream media. Along with the skepticism for which big media is known. ABC News Radio, for example, is conducting an in-depth series of reports on social networking. Included in their coverage is an interview with Nate Elliot, an analyst for Jupiter Research.

 

“Certainly there are a large amount of people spending a large amount of time on this site,” says Elliot. “When you look at the huge numbers they throw out there — 50 [million], 60 million registered users — those are a mirage….”

 

Elliot says that 12 percent of Internet users in the United States say they’re registered at an online networking site, but over half say they don’t go back and only 18 percent visit networking sites weekly or more often.

 

Those who have been following the growth of social networking know that pesky analysts poking holes in their numbers has not been the main concern. Predators, scam artists, employers and campus authorities have discovered that the sites contain a treasure trove of personal data that can used against the social networkers.

 

In “Big Brother is Reading Your Blog,” BusinessWeek provides a number of examples of how this private information can be abused, and how the sites’ users are responding. These include:

• Avoiding getting “dooced” (fired for comments on blogs) by adding fictional information to postings to throw employers off the scent.
• Aggressively using the privacy controls supplied by the sites.
• Searching sites for evidence that campus police are monitoring them, baiting the authorities with bogus events and then surprising them when they show up.
• Moving to sites that promise greater safety, such as YFly.com that has a “report the creep” button on every page. If users suspect an adult is on the site, they refer complaints to a team of volunteers at the high schools represented on the site who will verify the person’s identity.

 

Whether or not these social networking sites are actually delivering the numbers they claim, there is no disputing two important facts:

1. The hardcore users are making innovative use of technology, their imaginations and fundamentally important social models to make them work.
2. People are already monetizing the opportunity, whether it’s the vendors of social networking software products or services, or the founders of MySpace who sold it for US$580 million.

If anyone doubts that content is king on the Internet, they have obviously been ignoring the rapid emergence of Consumer Generated Media (CGM). Whether a company has built its business model on content creation and dissemination, or selling deodorant, it must incorporate an understanding for CGM into its web strategy.

 

Not that getting it right is easy.

 

The New York Times reported that, after proclaiming grand plans to bring elaborately produced sitcoms, talk shows and other television-style programs to the Internet, the head of Yahoo’s Media Group, Lloyd Braun, is sharply scaling back those efforts. He said the group would shift its focus to content acquired from other media companies or submitted by users.

 

“I didn’t fully appreciate what success in this medium is really going to look like,” Braun a former Hollywood executive told the Times. “This is not about creating one-off hits like in my old business. That is not going to create a sustainable competitive advantage over the long term.”

 

His answer? CGM. “I now get excited about user-generated content the way I used to get excited about thinking about what television shows would work.”

 

In an article in CRM Magazine, Alexandra DeFelice provides a number of interesting case studies of major brands who are not only excited about CGM, they’re making it work.

 

For example, Kao, the manufacturer of Ban deodorant, created a contest asking, “What would you ban?” It generated roughly 50,000 website visitors, about 10 percent of whom entered ads they had created online. Nine semifinalists were selected and given promotional materials to try to get people to vote for their ads. Within two weeks, those nine individuals generated 150 percent more traffic than all the company’s advertising had in the previous few months.

 

“As consumers are inundated by ads, marketers will need to stand out by finding better ways to reach them. Simply put, companies must develop methods that are interesting and compelling to consumers,” writes DeFelice.

 

She also offers seven tips for fostering creativity:

 

1. Stay grounded, but consider alternatives. Alternate channels are a complement to other forms of marketing and rarely can be used as a standalone effort.

2. Get buy-in. Make sure your corporate culture will allow you to experiment.

3. Set goals. Have a sense of what you want to accomplish before trying it. Understand overall ROI versus return on brand equity, which helps build future consumer loyalty or shift customer attitudes. Know how to put the metrics in the context of your company’s broader measurement strategy.

4. Budget. Allocate roughly 10 to 15 percent of the overall marketing budget for innovative techniques and alternative channels.

5. Test, test, test. It’s imperative to know what works and what doesn’t as well as which metrics work and which don’t.

6. Keep watch. Get proof of performance so that you know if things are going according to plan.

7. Think strategically. Don’t get caught up in cool ideas. Choose alternate channels that make sense based on your strategy.

 

 

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This week, organizations which rely on as many people as possible having inexpensive, reliable access to the Internet received some good news and some interesting news.

 

First, the good news. Associated Press reported a study showing that high-speed Internet services were growing in rural areas. According to the report, which is based on a survey by the Pew Internet and American Life Project:

• Last fall, 24% of rural Americans had broadband Internet access at home, more than double the 9% rate reported in 2003.
• By comparison, 39% of urban and suburban dwellers had broadband last fall, up from 22% in 2003.
• Adding in people who use dial-up or access the Internet only at work, 62% of country dwellers use the Internet, compared with 70% elsewhere.

 

This is excellent news for companies with business models that would benefit from extending their markets out of urban areas. It is also important for organizations which had no alternative other than delivering services or information through channels less efficient than the Web in rural areas.

 

Associated Press also provided us with the interesting news. “Telecommunications companies want to be able to provide ‘tiered service,’ guaranteeing that, for a price, some packets will get to their destination on time.”

 

AP reports that the opponents of this approach fear that abandoning the “network neutrality” may allow the carriers to cut off sites that are late paying or competing with their own services.

 

For companies that have built a business model on near ubiquitous access to the Internet—notably Google which is now actively opposing this scheme—this change poses a considerable threat.

 

Of course, as AP points out, the carriers also have a business model: “Whether they tier their service or not, telecommunications companies need to expand capacity. To do so costs money, and the telecoms argue that Internet users will have to pay, one way or another. They say it’s preferable that the money come from those who need and are willing to pay for better service, rather than spreading the cost out over all users.”

 

The last time I wrote on this topic, I suggested this was an issue to monitor occasionally. You might want to start following it a lot more regularly.

 

 

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People shopping online are generally more satisfied with the experience then those who shop in stores. This is nothing new; the trend has been evident for a couple of years. However, the gap looks like it could widen as more and more consumers shop online.

 

According to the annual American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI) E-Commerce Report from ForeSee Results, customer satisfaction with the e-commerce sector improved to a total satisfaction score of 79.6 out of 100. While this is a point lower than the rating two years ago (80.8), it has been steadily improving over the past year – up 1.3 points over last year. This compares to offline shopper satisfaction of 72.4% - down 0.3% from last year.

 

The gap between online and offline satisfaction is now more than 7 points or a total of 10% greater. A number of factors could explain why the trend in favor of Internet shopping:

·         Greater price comparison opportunities online

·         Less time spent shopping (no need to worry about parking!)

·         Free delivery options by many e-tailers

·         Increasing customer demands and standards

·         More aggressive competition drives sites to improve customer services as a point of differentiation

The reports states: "As consumer standards rise, the "best of the best" e-commerce organizations are increasingly standing out from the rest of the pack, challenging competitors in their categories to enhance their focus on customer satisfaction in order to compete successfully."

Leading the pack of the top performers are e-retailers (e.g. Amazon) with an 81% customer satisfaction rating. Auctions, brokerage, and travel sits are close behind.

Source: ForeSee Results

"E-retailers used to be at a disadvantage because customers couldn't touch and feel their products, but they've figured out that there's a whole lot more they can offer to make up fo that," said Larry Freed, CEO of ForeSee Results, in an interview with eMarketer.com (see Shoppers Show Rising Satisfaction with Web Shopping). “Today's online stores have evolved significantly, offering advances such as 360° views of products, customer reviews, side-by-side product comparisons, and extensive product information and specifications that often exceed what is available in a store or catalogue."

The report cites Amazon.com as a proud retailer with some past ups and downs. The e-tailer had lost 4.5% in customer satisfaction ratings, but posted a 3.6% gain after making significant site changes. Though I have to admit, Amazon.com is very good on fulfillment of customer orders, but the site lags behind leaders with respect to site usability.

The lesson is simple: if customer satisfaction is a priority for your organization, then you should be using the web as a differentiator over the competition.

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© 2006 Toby Ward - Prescient Digital Media

Delloite Research has released its latest TMT Trends: Technology Predictions 2006. It refers to it as “The technology sector's top trends.”

 

Immediately I am skeptical since the intent is to predict the future which 98 times out of 100 is pure unabashed marketing. So I decided to see what DR considers the top 10 trends…

1. Search engines will challenge email as the leading digital application.
2. Research and development will become more collaborative as business, government and academic institutions increasingly work together on new innovations.
3. Offshoring as a way of minimizing costs and optimizing efficiencies will continue to grow in popularity.
4. Classrooms of the developed world will incorporate more digital aids in their instruction.
5. Open source will pose an ever-greater challenge to the established software model, impacting both providers and end users.
6. Governments will increasingly regulate the Internet.
7. Technological advances such as speech recognition and voice synthesis, along with improvements in artificial intelligence, will change the way humans interact with computers and computers interact with each other.
8. Products will become less static with the launch of many more devices, from cameras to cars, that can be upgraded remotely.
9. The gap between those with digital technology and those without will widen and put undeveloped countries at an even greater disadvantage.
10. Those technologies that permanently change human behavior will continue to be the most profitable.

Did anyone catch the first trend statement, “search engines will challenge email as the leading digital application”?

 

Does anyone really believe that? Who aside from those that hold the title or role as a researcher spend more time doing search engine queries than email? I can’t name a single one; not one. And I’m a power Google user undertaking 20-30 searches every day. Knowledge workers I know, those that have a computer at their desk, most average more than 75 e-mails a day. Some clients and colleagues process 500 or 600 emails a day. That’s extreme but I know of no client or colleague that processes less than 50 emails a day. I know of no client or colleague that comes close to undertaking that many search queries.

 

My point: we are being inundated by marketing messages every day and those messages are rapidly growing in frequency and rate. Some organizations are getting more clever in packaging their marketing. This report is a perfect example. DR is full of very smart people and very clever marketers. This report is superb marketing (I’ll admit that my company Prescient Digital Media does a little bit of this too. However, despite the name you'll not find me spending too much time on predicting the future, except for specific client endeavors).

 

Caveat emptor (buyer beware) – not everything you read is the truth.

 

NOTE: It is my goal to be as honest as possible in my writings and severely limit if not completely eliminate any commercial messages within articles if it has no relevance to the readers (you’ll also note that I have forsworn any Google ads on either of my blogs or websites). Sometimes however I may separately promote an event or a job opportunity that might be relevant to the user but has no direct compensation relation to the author. Though if you suspect me of trying to use any of my articles as a direct sales tool then feel free to call me on it.

 

© 2006 Toby Ward - Prescient Digital Media