Wednesday, October 31, 2012

Can things get worse for the U.S. print media?

Can things get worse for the U.S. print media? Unfortunately, yes. Newspaper ad spending in the United States peaked in 2000 and has since then dropped to a level as low as it hasn’t been in 50 years. Magazines have suffered a similar fate and according to data released by eMarketer last week, the situation could get even worse for print media in the United States.

eMarketer compared selected media’s share of the time Americans spent with media with their share of total ad spend in 2012.

While in the cases of TV, online and radio, the time spent with the medium is roughly proportionate to the share of ad expenditure, newspapers and magazines hold a significantly larger share of total ad spend than they should if ad spend were proportional to the time spent with the medium.

American adults on average only spend 3.1 percent of their media time reading offline newspapers, yet newspapers rake in 11.5 percent of total media ad revenues.  The opposite holds true for mobile: Americans spend 11.7 percent of their media time on mobile devices, yet mobile advertising only accounts for 1.6 percent of total ad spend.

If the numbers at hand are any indication for the future growth of advertising mediums, mobile ad expenditure is about to take off. For newspapers and magazines however, the worst may be yet to come.



http://www.statista.com/topics/979/advertising-in-the-us/chart/682/share-of-media-time-vs-share-of-total-ad-spend/

Tuesday, October 30, 2012

The anywhere office

Home Office

Over the last year, we have been experimenting with an office anywhere approach. We have combined this with a new collaborative environment in our physical office. So … after a year in, how is it working? Here are a couple of recent quotes from 2 of our staff.
I feel like I have the best of all worlds… I can come into our open area at work when I need to meet with staff or someone in particular. I can hole away in my home office to do solitary work, and I am in fact, in my home office most of the time. My home office is a quiet environment (most of the time) and I can actually think and work. While there, I feel totally connected just by having my Lync window up showing all my team's status colors. I think the work-life balance benefits of this arrangement are incredible and I feel empowered knowing that I don't have to "show up" in the collaborative area just to be seen.

And another.
I enjoy telecommuting because I have the option of staying away from the masses, the drive byes, and the side conversations if I wish.  My favorite days are those where I have few meetings and I can actually do work.  Unfortunately that doesn't happen very often so I have to find other ways to get real work done or to just think/strategize.

So, what do you think? Are you an anywhere office kind of person?

Monday, October 29, 2012

Where's the walls now to your office? Not so clear anymore ... is it?

Industrialization

Walls to offices during the Industrial Age intended to guard leaders from the daily onslaught of activity and requests. Today, leaders are bombarded with Facebook requests, Twitter feeds, texts, IM pings, SPAM, an eMail from their boss demanding the most recent numbers in a report, and another eM just below the eMail from the boss ... from a friend sending a stupid "forward" eMail with cats in it.

Where's the walls now to your office? Not so clear anymore ... is it?

via Saying Goodbye to the Industrial Age | MAGsays.

We have moved to an "open world". Whether we want to believe it or not, the command and control world is now gone. It seems to me we have a choice. We can continue to ignore it. Where will that lead me? Or, we can embrace it. What would that look like?

Sunday, October 28, 2012

Good bye my good friend iGoogle

Recently I noticed something on my home page which is iGoogle. I've used what seems like forever.

I see a note that they are going to take it down completely. Click on the link and here is what I see. I am in shock. Not sure why but it is an emotional reaction I guess. I've been loyal. I've introduced lots of people to the power of iGoogle over the years. So what is the payback for my loyalty to Google and their products?

Apparently it isn't worth much.
Related articles

Friday, October 26, 2012

From the oracles at IBM - 5 very interesting possibilities

Image representing IBM as depicted in CrunchBase

Big Blue always has some great ideas in their “IBM 5 in 5” — five innovations that “have the potential to change the way people work, live and interact during the next five years.”

Here’s the Cliff Notes version:

  1. Generating electric power through everything from your running shoes to water flowing into your home;

  2. Eradicating passwords through facial and voice recognition technology;

  3. Linking your thoughts to your devices (i.e. technological mindreading);

  4. Wiping out the digital divide, thanks to mobile broadband advances;

  5. Targeted ads so precise that spam ceases to exist.


More here: http://bit.ly/uINd4p

Wednesday, October 24, 2012

Are we denying the facts?

This happens way too much. It clearly isn't helpful to deny the facts. It is also important to actually know the facts.

Transformation starts with reality. It doesn't stop there. It moves to, despite our reality, what kind of world do we want to create. True transformation requires both.

Let's advocate for "the facts" and "a vision".
Transformational leaders don't start by denying the world around them. Instead, they describe a future they'd like to create instead.

Denying the truth about relative market share, imperial power or the scientific method helps no one.

Gandhi didn't pretend the British weren't dominating his country, and Feynman didn't challenge Einstein's theory of relativity or the laws of thermodynamics.

It's okay to say, "this is going to be difficult." And it's productive to point out, "our product isn't as good as it should be yet."

The problem with Orwellian talking heads, agitprop, faux news and Ballmer-like posturing is that they take away a foundation for a genuine movement to occur, because once we start denying facts, it's difficult to know when to stop. Tell us where we are, tell us where we're going. But if you can't be clear about one, it's hard to buy into the other.

via Seth's Blog: Denying facts you don't like.


Tuesday, October 23, 2012

Will Yahoo turn it around? Third quarter results are in

Image representing Marissa Mayer as depicted i...

Yesterday afternoon, Yahoo! held an earnings call announcing third quarter results. The results modestly beat analyst expectations, but gave little insight about where the company is heading.

Revenue appears to have stabilized but shows no signs of growth either. Net income was extra-ordinarily high last quarter due to Yahoo’s sale of half its stake in Chinese Internet company Alibaba. Operating income declined 14 percent year-over-year though, giving a better idea of the state of Yahoo’s business.

CEO Marissa Mayer announced that her company will increasingly focus on search and mobile in the future and sees Yahoo! in a good starting position for the shift to mobile platforms.



http://www.statista.com/markets/21/internet/chart/669/yahoo-s-business-in-numbers/

How did being on-line change things for you so far this year?

oh, da's leuk :)

We are all online now more than ever. So how did being online change things for you this year?

Here are some questions to help get the answers:

  1. What business opportunities have you discovered through social media or other online channels this year?

  2. What online tool did you start using this year that changed the way you work?

  3. What online project helped you develop new knowledge or skills this year?

  4. What is the most important business or personal relationship that began or grew online this year?

  5. Which of 2012's entertaining online discoveries have helped you bond with friends, family or colleagues?


I would love it if you would share your thoughts on any of these questions. What do you think?

Monday, October 22, 2012

Will the iPad Mini release continue Apple's domination of the tablet market?

English: Apple iPad Event

Tomorrow Apple will hold an event in San Jose, CA to unveil a highly anticipated addition to its iPad line-up. The long-rumoured smaller iPad (reportedly called ‘iPad Mini’ or ‘iPad Air’) is expected to be priced to compete directly with Amazon’s Kindle Fire and Google’s Nexus 7 tablet, both priced at $199. Although it is considered unlikely that Apple will match that price point, analysts expect a starting price way below the $499 of the cheapest full-size iPad.

Apple’s competitors will likely be on the edge of their seats when Tim Cook and Co. announce details about the all but confirmed tablet. If Apple manages to offer a competitive product at a price close enough to $199, Google and Amazon will see the biggest selling point of their tablets disappear. This could reinforce Apple’s stranglehold on the tablet market just as its competitors were starting to see some light.

 

In the second quarter of 2012, Apple’s market share was 68 percent, i.e. Apple shipped more than twice as many tablets as all of its competitors combined. In the September quarter (the numbers are not out yet), Apple’s market share will likely come in a little lower, as Google’s Nexus 7 has reportedly had a successful start. It will be interesting to see how the tablet market develops over the next few quarters with another iPad, more Android tablets and the first Windows 8 tablets in the mix.

 



 

http://www.statista.com/topics/841/tablets/chart/530/global-tablet-shipments-from-q2-2010-to-q2-2012/

 

 

Sunday, October 21, 2012

Screw business as usual....this is the real world

Brian Solis is principal at Altimeter Group, a research-based advisory firm. Solis is globally recognized as one of the most prominent thought leaders and published authors in new media. A digital analyst, sociologist, and futurist, Solis has studied and influenced the effects of emerging media on business, marketing, publishing, and culture. His new book, The End Of Business As Usual, looks at the changing consumer landscape, it's impact on business & what companies can do to adapt & lead.

In this video overview, Brian nails it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b3hi0V13oag&feature=youtu.be

How do you turn bad customer service into a win-win?

Customer service isn't always easy. No product or service is perfect. Customers get frustrated. There are some basic principles that executed consistently can turn bad customer service into a win-win.

Here are some very good ideas from Amber Schaub, founder and CEO of RuffleButts, an online retailer specializing in clothing for toddlers, offers a few tips on providing excellent customer service based on her five years’ experience as a small-business owner:


  • Always respond promptly. Even if you don’t have an immediate solution, customers like to know their complaint has been heard. Offer a tentative time frame if possible, or let them know you’re working on a solution.

  • Carefully choose employees. Employees who will be working in the customer service department or handling any customer interactions. “They are ultimately your voice,” says Schaub.

  • Make it personal. Include a handwritten note or a personal follow-up call.

  • Follow the golden rule. Treat your customers as you would like to be treated in a similar situation.

  • Use the Wow factor. Wow them. They will never forget it.


via How to Turn Bad Customer Service Into a Win-Win : topic :: American Express OPEN Forum.


Saturday, October 20, 2012

How can you turn a problem into an opportunity? Great service is the key!

customer-service

We all experience problems with products we buy or service we receive from companies. We know it happens and can to some extent deal with it. What we can't deal with is a lame effort at resolving the problem. This is a great story on how to set up service to handle the inevitable.
Customers expect great service all the time but great customer service shines through mainly when something goes wrong. And despite their best attempts, organizations will face circumstances when their customers are unhappy with their experience.

The trick, and what differentiates great brands from the rest, is how they recover from these roadblocks. I recently purchased a highly discounted cardigan from one of my favorite companies, the flash sales site Ideeli. When the item arrived, I noticed that the belt that was supposed to be included was missing. I quickly emailed the organization to explain what happened and ask whether they could send me the missing belt.

Read the rest here: Great Service Turns Problems into Opportunities - Think customers: The 1to1 Blog.


Friday, October 19, 2012

Are Smartphones the new wallets?

eMarketer expects the transaction volume of mobile payments in the United States to reach $640 million this year and predicts a 100-fold increase until 2016. But are we really ready to ditch our wallets in favor of our smartphones?

When Apple released the iPhone 5 last month, some people were disappointed that Apple chose not to include a Near Field Communication chip for mobile payments. Others interpreted Apple’s omission of an NFC chip as proof that the time has yet to come for the technology to become relevant to the mass market. After all, Apple has a history of dismissing technologies until they have proven their viability. eMarketer expects 8 million Americans to make a point-of-sale purchase with their smartphone this year. That’s roughly seven percent of U.S. smartphone users and clearly shows that mobile payments are still in the early stages of adoption. If eMarketer is right, almost 50 million Americans will be using their phones to make in-store purchases by 2016. So the iPhone 7 will probably have NFC.



http://www.statista.com/topics/840/smartphones/chart/665/mobile-payment-forecast/

What is the urgency of now?

[caption id="" align="alignright" width="207"]Cover of "Digital Darwinism" Cover of Digital Darwinism[/caption]

Jon Swartz is a veteran technology reporter based in Silicon Valley currently covering emerging and disruptive tech at USA Today. This is the second time he's been invited to Revolution. His take on news trends is less about hype and more about how technology impacts everyday business and society. Sometimes technology is the solution as much as it is part of the problem. For consumers, the ability to use mobile, social and the web is not only enlivening real-time experiences, it’s also delivering immediacy to e-commerce and social commerce.

On this episode, Jon explores the importance of “the urgency of now” and how its changing the landscape for commerce. From shopping to how we pay for what we want, and the technology that changes customer expectations along the way, businesses must now evaluate how to adapt to not only react but lead customer experiences before they fall to digital darwinism.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=G17SO-HV9hY#!

Brian Solis is principal at Altimeter Group, a research-based advisory firm. Solis is globally recognized as one of the most prominent thought leaders and published authors in new media. A digital analyst, sociologist, and futurist, Solis has studied and influenced the effects of emerging media on business, marketing, and culture. His new book, The End of Business as Usual explores the emergence of GenerationC, a new generation of customers and how businesses must adapt to reach them. Engage, Solis' previous book, is regarded as the industry reference guide for businesses to build and measure success in the social web.

Thursday, October 18, 2012

The mobile war, transforming customer expectations and business capabilities ...

English: Stephen Monaco speaking about Social ...

The Mobile War CEOs should be aware of an approaching tech war -- because its outcome is going to change their customers.  As the Web becomes the AM radio of digital, the mobile App Internet will rise. This market will be dominated by two or three ecosystems -- semi-closed worlds built on a closely fitting set of apps, phones, tablets, computers, operating systems, and partners. An ecosystem owner will possess extraordinary market power -- able to dictate terms to content providers, customers, and application developers. It doesn't matter what you sell -- insurance, pills, cars, energy, bonds -- you'll be reaching many of your customers through these ecosystems in the future.

Social Media Has Transformed Customer Expectations At Every Step Of The Customer Journey After moving to a new apartment, do you need to get a new TV. The first instinct may be to gather information from a few sources. Do you browse online retailers to get an idea of prices, and look atoked at manufacturers' marketing content to understand the latest technologies like 3D TV. After all of that, you may turn to consumer reviews and discussions to get a feeling for whether you would actually find those features valuable. (For example, some customer reviews may help you confirm that you don’t want 3D TV.)

Where did you find those reviews? Everywhere -- there are star ratings and comments on product pages at retail sites (like John Lewis and Amazon.com), technology media sites (like CNET) and manufacturer websites. Interestingly – you get the feeling that the manufacturers still aren't entirely comfortable with the transparency that social media brings. They'd like to put a spin on the message, even if they can't entirely control it -- For example, Panasonic's UK site has a page that promotes "5 Star Reviews Of The Month". Can you think of a situation when you’d want a firm to guide you only to the most positive reviews of its products. Can you?

Business Capabilities Are The Strongest Foundation For Tech Strategy In developing a technology strategy for your organization, what will be your basis for deciding which technologies to pursue, when to pursue them, and how to implement them? In other words, what will be the foundation for your technology architecture and strategy? In considering this question, I assume we agree that technology strategy should directly support improvement of business outcomes, both now and over the long haul. To provide for the long haul, your technology architecture and strategy must be crafted to support a continuous stream of business change, both small incremental steps and large radical shifts.

Wednesday, October 17, 2012

Motivate millennials, bill customers later, Klout perks, LinkedIn recruting and more

Motivate Millennials: Take a Cue From Video Games Millennials don't readily accept doing tasks just because "I said so." They want to understand why they should do something--the overall objective, goal, or purpose. And they want to wrap their heads around how the work that we do as a company impacts our customers. To keep millenials engaged, take time to explain the purpose, and cause and effect of how their role is important. Just like popular video games, they need a princess or a kingdom to save.

Bill Customers Later, Get Paid Now Just in time for the holiday shopping season, PayPal will let you offer customers a buy now, pay later option. Bonus: You get paid right away.

Klout Makes Perks Easier to Claim Klout announced several enhancements to its Perks program Wednesday, including an update to its iPhone app as well as a new Passbook card.

How Small Businesses Can Use LinkedIn to Recruit In one sense, LinkedIn has revolutionized job recruiting, but in another sense it hasn't. After all, the social network is just a giant database of potential employees. To actually recruit, you still have to email or even -- gulp -- pick up the phone. If you're a small business, you have to do some number-crunching to determine how much to invest in LinkedIn. If you're looking to fill just one or two positions, then spending $7,000 or so for LinkedIn Recruiter might be a bit extravagant. However, if you considered hiring a specialist or firm to fill those positions, that 15% to 30% of a hire's first-year salary might go to the recruiter.

Applying Customer Centricity Beyond the Private Sector Customer centricity is often associated with steps that companies in the private sector can take to build closer relationships with their customers and to deliver products, services, and experiences that are designed with the customer in mind. But customer centricity doesn't just apply to the business world. As a Peppers & Rogers Group white paper points out, a growing number of governments, associations, and non-profits around the world are adopting best practices from the business community and designing citizen-centric offerings and experiences for its constituents.

Digital media is fragmented globally

In our globalized world, it is strange how fragmented the world of digital media still is. Graham Spencer of MacStories has compiled data showing that many of the services we have become accustomed to, are only available in a handful of countries. Take iTunes music for example: Apple’s music store is by far the largest digital music store out there. Yet, it is only available to 27 percent of the world’s population. All those Chinese lining up to buy iPhones and iPads currently have no chance of purchasing music or movies for their iDevices (unless they get an American iTunes account, which is impossible without violating Apple’s terms of service).

Also interesting is the fact that people from no more than six countries can get TV content from Amazon and co., speaking volumes of the difficulties in licensing content from content creators (e.g. cable companies) who own a distribution channel (cable TV).

This chart provides a nice overview of the international availability of the content offerings of Apple, Google, Amazon and Microsoft.



http://www.statista.com/markets/14/media-advertising/chart/661/international-availability-of-digital-media-offerings/

Tuesday, October 16, 2012

The Acute Heptagram of Impact. Should you get it tattooed on your hip?

This makes a lot of sense. Many times we focus on what we are good at but ignore essential items that we need to be successful. Great teams, working collaboratively, pull all these strengths together.
Not as catchy a title as Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs, but I hope you'll walk through this with me:

I can outline a strategy for you, but if you don't have the tactics in place or you're not skilled enough to execute, it won't matter if the strategy is a good one.

Your project's success is going to be influenced in large measure by the reputation of the people who join in and the organization that brings it forward. That's nothing you can completely change in a day, but it's something that will change (like it or not) every day.

None of this matters if you and your team don't persist, and your persistence will largely be driven by the desire you have to succeed, which of course is relentlessly undermined by the fear we all wrestle with every day.

These seven elements: Strategy, Tactics, Execution, Reputation, Persistence, Desire and Fear, make up the seven points of the acute heptagram of impact. If your project isn't working, it's almost certainly because one or more of these elements aren't right. And in my experience, it's all of them. We generally pick the easiest and safest one to work on (probably tactics) without taking a deep breath and understanding where the real problem is.

Feel free to share the AHI, but please don't have it tattooed on your hip or anything.

Godinshierarchy

via Seth's Blog: The Acute Heptagram of Impact.


Are you thinking customer experience?

Passion for our customers is what it is all about. Here are some recent articles focused on the customer experience.

Protecting Our Data-Driven Efforts In a world that's ever-more reliable on data, some proposed policies in front of Congress threaten to hamper companies' customer-experience efforts. If Congress passes some of the proposed data privacy bills, personalization in marketing and one-to-one communications will deteriorate.

Data, Data Everywhere The new reality of marketing is one in which consumers expect a sophisticated level of personalization in their communications, offers, and interactions with companies. At DMA2012 in Las Vegas, thought leaders from all aspects of the direct marketing industry will converge to discuss and share best practices about how to help organizations move forward on the path toward integrated, one-to-one communications.

Why Some Companies Succeed--For Now--Despite Their Poor Customer Experiences Recently there was a question via email from one of Forrester's clients, who asked: "How do you explain the success of companies that consistently provide a poor experience but perform well financially?"

Delivering Customer Service That Makes an Emotional Connection Many companies strive to provide great customer service. However, few companies deliver the kind of customer service that makes an emotional connection with customers - the kind of connection that fosters loyalty and willingness if not an eagerness among customers to recommend a company to a friend.

Monday, October 15, 2012

What is happening in social media today?

Here are some updates from the exciting world of Social Media.

Social Media Marketing: Take Richard Branson’s Word for It Into the social breach steps Sir Richard Branson, the clear exception to the CEO social despondency narrative. Branson embraces social. He loves social. In fact, he owns social, using it as a platform to expand his personal and corporate brand influence and reach, honestly engage with his audience, and shape events within and without his industry space.

Social Media Intelligence Brief: October 15 2012 Today's Social Media Intelligence Brief includes stories from Major League Baseball, Red Bull, Fuji Film, and a social media campaign case study from the Bahamas.

Is The Federal Drug Administration (FDA) Embracing Social Media? When regulated companies participate in social media their activities are monitored, saved and archived. Though the FDA recognizes these companies are wanting to expand their use of social media, to date it has provided limited guidance.

Scaling Engagement Through Social Media Training Social media training programs are a practical way to scale engagement because they ensure everyone on your team has the same understanding of key concepts, best practices and the actual mechanics of the various social networks so they can work together to bring your message to a broader community.

Pain Relief: Your Prescription for Highly Effective Online Marketing Your readers have pain. Successful content marketers know how to expertly manipulate, talk about, and address their readers' pains and get them to take next steps. Have you jumped into the pain game yet?

The Present and Future of Content Marketing Top content marketing experts predict what’s ahead for the industry in the coming year by Skyword, Inc.

9 Social Media Fun Facts to Shock or Maybe Just Awe Most Americans still think they need Gym shorts for Foursquare. In fact, while only 3% have claimed to checked in this year, it is even down from the year before. The concept of “checking-in” will probably soon be replaced by “Opting-in” to share location data.

How to Make an Infographic in Five Steps Infographics are relatively new; new enough for the word "infographic" not to be recognized by my spellchecker. As with all things "new" on the interwebs their comes a near obsessive, cult-like following that insists that this phenomenal new thing will be the massive change to overtake the online world and alter the way we computer forever.

Exploiting Facebook's Newsfeed Algorithm You’ve read it many times: Don't post too often or you’ll bother fans, causing them to unlike or ignore your posts, which will, in turn, affect which posts FaceBook will promote in your fans' newsfeeds. Here are 3 key justifications for posting more often and still getingt fans to see your posts.

Social Media Is Not Your Job Perhaps, interacting with people, building relationships with them, creating emotional bonds, offering and getting feedback, answering private messages on Facebook requesting information, building brand perception...is actually your job.

Social Marketing: Don't Fall for Shiny New Tech, says author David Amerland. "It is easy to lose sight of the wood for the trees and go for shiny new toys here. The truth, however, is that social marketing is marketing."

What is your cloud strategy?



Where is the Cloud going over the next few years? Have you defined your strategy to move there yet?

According to Forrester's projection, the global market for cloud computing will grow from $40.7 billion in 2011 to more than $241 billion in 2020. Software-as-a-service (SaaS) will play the most dominant role and will be an estimated market of about $80 billion in 2015. SaaS will especially disrupt the customer relationship management (CRM), HR, and governance, risk, and compliance (GRC) software markets in coming years, and it has already disrupted other software categories such as content management and ePurchasing solutions.

Clearly the cloud isn't going away. Are you on board?

Friday, October 12, 2012

The global mobile phone market continues to sky rocket

By the end of 2012, more than 5 billion mobile phones will be in use around the globe. Among these will be 4.4 billion camera phones and 1.2 billion smartphones. To put things in perspective: the installed base of television sets and personal computers is 1.9 and 1.4 billion, respectively. These astonishing numbers come by way of Tomi Ahonen, a former Nokia exec rated the most influential expert in mobile by Forbes in 2011. Ahonen released his annual analysis on the mobile phone industry this week and pre-published these numbers along with some other statistical tidbits on his blog.

The data provides some neat insights about the scope and composition of the mobile phone market. For example we tend to forget that less than one quarter of mobile handsets are actually smartphones. Moreover, even in 2012, only 11 percent of global handset sales will be premium smartphones, Ahonen notes. I.e. those phones everybody keeps talking about currently account for little more than one tenth of the market (in unit terms). Almost 60 percent of all mobile phones sold in 2012 will cost less than $79 dollars and that is without the carrier subsidies we all grew accustomed to.

This chart shows the prevalence of selected features in the global installed base of mobile phones.



http://www.statista.com/topics/840/smartphones/chart/653/prevalence-of-selected-features-in-the-global-installed-base-of-mobile-phones/

Thursday, October 11, 2012

What is the future of digital education?

Now this is radical thinking and it clearly has some big advantages and big disadvantages. My guess is that more and more of our world, including education, will move to be “virtual”, including the social aspects.

[caption id="" align="alignright" width="130"]Online education and Financial Aid Online education and Financial Aid (Photo credit: Wikipedia)[/caption]
In a radical rethinking of what it means to go to school, states and districts nationwide are launching online public schools that let students from kindergarten to 12th grade take some—or all—of their classes from their bedrooms, living rooms and kitchens. Other states and districts are bringing students into brick-and-mortar schools for instruction that is largely computer-based and self-directed.

Very balanced article from the WSJ. Online Education: My Teacher Is an App - WSJ.com


Wednesday, October 10, 2012

How secure is cloud computing?

I have been having a lot of conversations about how secure Cloud computing is or isn’t. I have given briefings to our Audit Committee. One of my points has been that in many cases it can be more secure than traditional IT infrastructure.
Conventional wisdom says clouds are inherently insecure.

But are they? Or are clouds actually more secure than conventional IT environments? A growing number of technologists are making that argument. And they're not cloud vendors or marketers or startups who have placed their bet on the cloud. They're some of the senior-most technology officials in government, including those from intelligence agencies and the military, which might be the last place you'd expect to hear such talk.

Cloud Security: Better Than We Think? - Government - Cloud/SaaS - Informationweek


Tuesday, October 9, 2012

How valuable is Facebook to online retailers?

The question has been asked many times: is Facebook of any value to online retailers? For a publicly traded company, this is a pretty important question.  According to data recently released by RichRelevance, it is of value.

The e-commerce specialist analyzed 689 million shopping sessions between January and August with a special focus on sessions that were initiated through social channels.

Not surprisingly given its user base, Facebook drives significantly more traffic to retail sites than Pinterest and Twitter do: the world’s largest social network accounted for 86 percent of all shopping sessions that started off on any of the three sites.

What’s more interesting is the fact that shoppers coming from Facebook are more than twice as likely to make a purchase as those coming from Pinterest, a site much more visual appealing and product-focused than Facebook is.

In terms of average order value, Pinterest is far ahead of its peers, which is possibly attributable to the fact that Pinterest has a design-conscious high income user base.



http://www.statista.com/markets/21/topic/194/social-media/chart/643/social-media-channels-as-a-source-of-e-commerce-traffic/

Do the (extra) work

This is invaluable. This perspective, regardless of what your boss thinks, is worth its weight in gold.

Work is a privilege.  No one is making you. It is my choice, every day. Will I make it?
Do the extra work not because you have to but because it's a privilege.

Get in early.

Sweep the floor without being asked.

Especially when it's not your turn.

Not because you want credit or reward. Because you can.

The industrialist wants to suck everything out of you. Doing extra work as a cog in an industrial system is a fool's errand.

For the rest of us, the artist and the freelancer and the creator, we know that the privilege of doing the extra work is the work itself.

The habit of doing more than is necessary can only be earned through practice. And the habit is priceless.

via Seth's Blog: Do the (extra) work.


Monday, October 8, 2012

How much does it cost you to get one new customer?

In the world of marketing and the customer experience, there are two things worth knowing. Do we know the answers? If not, we should. Seth Godin nails them both.
Two things every business and non-profit needs to know:

  • How much does it cost you to get one new customer?

  • On average, what's that customer worth over the relationship you have with her?


The internet revolutionizes both sides of the equation.

For more, read Seth's Blog: Lifetime value of a customer/cost per customer

Saturday, October 6, 2012

Remember when the family gathered in the living room to watch TV?

The old idea of families gathering in the living room to watch TV together undistracted is on its way out, if not gone already. Today, people actively use tablets and smartphones while they watch, and sometimes even watch TV entirely on these mobile devices. This is more than a fad.

Last night I wanted to watch the Atlanta Braves and the Texas Rangers. I also had a local homecoming game to go to. Not a problem. I subscribe to MLB.tv. I stated on cable. Moved (still at home) to my iPad as I got ready to go. Switched again to my iPhone at the game.

I have one child who gave up their set top box in their room. All they do is stream. Two others stream Netflix a lot on their phones. My wife and I use Apple TV a lot.

[caption id="" align="alignright" width="240"]Intel Mobile Device Intel Mobile Device (Photo credit: Frank Gruber)[/caption]

Is traditional TV and cable going the way of newspapers? What are the implication for advertising?

Friday, October 5, 2012

Online fund raising trends for 2012

This is an interesting trend in the online world. While the August numbers have a footnote relative to natural disasters, the overall trend is not good.
The Blackbaud Index of Online Giving is a broad-based fundraising index that reports online revenue trends of more than 1,978 nonprofit organizations representing $406 million in yearly revenue on a monthly basis. The Index is based on actual revenue statistics from nonprofit organizations of all sizes representing arts, culture, and humanities; education; environment and animals; healthcare; human services; international affairs; and public and society benefit sectors.

The Blackbaud Index of Online Giving reports that online revenue increased by 2.4% for the 3 months ending August 2012 as compared to the same period in 2011.

High levels of giving to International Relief organizations in 2011 in response to a record number of natural disasters impacted the Index of Online Giving. Excluding International Relief organizations, online giving was up 7% for the three months ending August 2012.

via Blackbaud Index of Online Giving | npENGAGE.