Influential Marketing Blog

How Algorithms Could Finally Revolutionize Social Media Marketing

It is nearly the anniversary of the closing of a 3 year quest you may have heard of. The Netflix Prize was a $1m contest launched by the popular video rental service to improve their movie recommendation engine by a specific algorithmic percentage. The challenge was open to any and all mathematics and University teams and was finally awarded on September 21, 2009 to a team that submitted their winning entry just 24 minutes before the closing of the contest.

What does a prize to solve a longstanding mathematical challenge mean for the future of marketing? More than you might think. Algorithms are at the heart of something that has long been promised by the social web but never quite delivered ... a truly personalized online experience. A social network, for example, that can learn your likes and dislikes so well that it can predict what you will want before you even look for it. Such a system and experience has long been visualized in science fiction, but our reality has been 20 million search results for any search and illogically served banner advertising that promises deals on airfare to Turkey when you actually just want a Thanksgiving recipe.

The solution to this challenge was always to build smarter algorithms, and one way to do that is by having learning systems where they get better and smarter the more you train them through your behaviours. Of course, this requires users to spend some time inputting data in order to make the systems better. Time was the barrier. Luckily, there are a few models for getting users past this barrier which mean that these algorithms now may finally be able to achieve what people have hoped they might for years:

1. Integration with existing behaviours and platforms. If you are a Gmail user, you may have noticed their new Beta feature of the "Priority Inbox" which promises to help organize your inbox by learning which emails you might consider a priority. Using simple logic like highlighting those emails which you open and respond to most frequently, the system will learn over time based only on your hitting a button next to emails to indicate whether others like them should or should not be considered priorities. By integrating with a utility that a large number of people user already, this system makes it more likely that you will take the time to train the system to get usage out of it.
2. Using gaming techniques to encourage engagement. Hunch is one of several increasingly popular sites that helps to personalize recommendations on things you may like. By having people answer questions in a quiz-like format, they create an engaging way for you to train the system through an activity that feels more like a game than a cold form that you check boxes in to describe yourself and your views. Then product recommendations with links are shared alongside your content and you can choose to click on them and follow through to purchase something.

When you have systems like this that make it acceptable and even commonplace for users to take the time to train their algorithms about themselves and their behaviours, then you start to see the vast possibilities for targeting and serving more relevant marketing to people online. This is not about finding your target audience for a product or service message. This is about being able to finally customize a message to what someone may want or respond to before they even click a link or type a term into a search engine.

How The iPad Will Transform Mainstream Media (But NOT The Web)

If you believe some pundits and fanboys, the coming of the iPad and the new market for Tablet PCs that it is expected to open up will revolutionize how I use a computer. It will change the way I browse the Internet, do email and make coffee in the mornings. Here are a few choice marketing promises from the Apple website about the iPad:

"See and touch your email in ways you never could before."
"Lets you see web pages as they were meant to be seen."
"Feel completely immersed in whatever you’re watching."

Now take a deep breath and let's take a look at reality. The iPad is not a mobile device, it's too large for that. And it's not meant to be used at a desk (ie - at work for most people) since it would be too awkward for that (or you could get the external keyboard and mouse, but then it's just a glorified monitor). So if it's not good on the go and not good in the office, what does that leave? Two places: the couch and the bed.

What does this mean for how the iPad and tablets may change the way we use the computer then? Actually, not much - but that's not to say they won't matter or have an impact. Ironically, I believe that it will be "mainstream" media that realizes the biggest transformation. Here are three of the biggest shifts in media that I believe the iPad and Tablet PCs will bring as they hit the market in the next several months:

1. Digital Magazines - For years now magazines have struggled to create digital versions and hardly any have found a profitable model to charge people to access them. Premium content, archived articles, or niche content are all micropayment models that have been tried, but it's just not a powerful enough reason for someone to pay extra. With the full interactive touch screen tablet PC, you can finally create an immersive magazine experience that duplicates the quality and design of the magazine layout. Full page images, unique text layout and most importantly ... you can even go beyond by incorporating video or interactivity right into the story. If the story mentions a YouTube video, you can embed it right there and let someone watch it. Chris Anderson shared the vision for Wired's new iPad version of the magazine last week at the TED conference and it demonstrates the vast potential of this new type of device for magazines.
2. Interactive Television - One of the behaviours that we know is growing is the idea that people are multitasking while watching TV. When ads come on, they go to the laptop sitting on their lap to do something else. The iPad and other tablet PCs have the potential to completely transform your TV watching experience. Now you can add complete interactivity to any program. Everything from live voting on a reality show to managing your Fantasy Football team, to interacting with an ad as it is being shown on screen, to watching extended bonus scenes during or after the show. There are limitless possiblities for how you could enhance programming through delivering extended content onto a device that is in your watcher's hands while they are watching TV. More than that, you could build in the programming controls so the tablet would also become your remote control. You could argue that some of this is already possible with a laptop, but the intuitive nature of a touch screen will make it far easier for programmers and advertisers to make the tablet experience part of the live experience of watching a program.
3. eBooks & Social Reading - The one prediction I have heard that I do agree with is how the tablet could change the way that we read books. Everything from integrated links and images to live notetaking, to sharing notes with others in your community are all major shifts in behaviour when it comes to reading books. For students, the other major benefit (in time) could be that finally you don't need to lug tons and tons of books around with you for any class, you can just load them up on a tablet or iPad device. Even more importantly, the ease of sharing notes around a particular book will make reading and studying much more informed and perhaps lead to a next generation version of Cliffs Notes where you can get the context of a certain piece by how others have described it.
   

Don't Be A Password Nazi: Rethinking Your Approach To Passwords

How many sites are you currently registered for? Unless you are particularly organized with all your sites, usernames and passwords in one place - chances are there are probably too many to count. Among those dozens or hundreds of sites, there are a select few that you access everyday and the rest fall into your own long tail of sites you have registered for but only log into infrequently. Over the last several weeks, I have found myself resetting passwords, sending reminders and guessing my own passwords for some of those sites that I don't access that often. Along the way, I started to think about some password setting best practices that I wish sites would adopt. What if there was a best practice for setting and requiring passwords that didn't make life harder for users?  Here are a few ideas that could be part of it:

1. Let users choose an appropriate level of security. I understand that to access your online banking, you need to have a really secure password. The problem is that many sites take a one size fits all approach to passwords. Do we really need the same security to log in to read my subscription of the NY Times? Of course not. More sites need to consider how secure their site really needs to be, and give users more flexibility to choose any kind of password instead of doing things like requiring capital letters, numbers or changes every 3 months.
2. Use password hints instead of just resetting. Many times, a user will know their password, they just need a hint in order to get it. For this reason, password hints can be very effective, because they are immediate and let a user get their password without submitting a form, waiting for an email, clicking a link and going through a long process to access your site.
3. Share your syntax rules. I have one type of password I use if a site requires me to use a capital letter. I have another if a site tells me I need to do that along with a number. Sometimes, if I knew the syntax rules that a particular site used, that would be enough of a prompt for me to "remember" my password and get into the site. The most frustrating thing as a user is to go through the whole process to reset your password only to realize that you had it correct all the time, you were just forgetting to capitalize a letter.
4. Think outside the "password." One thing that I have always loved about Priceline is after entering my email address on the site, it never asks me for my password. Instead, based on the email, the site asks my response to a personal question that I set when I first registered. As a result, I have never forgotten or had to look up my password for the site. It also makes me FAR more likely to visit that site first and return over and over - because they make it easy for me to login.

NOTE - Before I get lots of comments about how I should save my passwords through the browser so they automatically come up when I visit a site ... I do that, however for sites I access infrequently sometimes these are cleared when I clear cookies or if I'm using a different computer.

How to Speak at a Conference Without Getting Skewered on Twitter

I'm headed to NY this morning to speak at an IAB event dedicated to social media and user generated content. It's first of two events this month put on by large marketing bodies where the entire event is focused on social media (the second is OMMA Social in a few weeks). It's certainly a sign of the times that the topic has enough attention from top marketers to warrant two full day events in New York within weeks of one another. So with all this focus on social media from "mainstream" marketers, it seems like the perfect time to write about something I've been thinking about since being on an ill-fated panel at SXSW earlier this year ... how to speak at an event where the feedback channel is instant, unfiltered and sometimes brutal.

Not that I'm any kind of expert about not getting skewered (I've had my fair share of negative tweets directed at me), but for any other speakers attending events where there is likely to be an active and vocal "back channel" - here are a few things I've picked up about how to avoid getting skewered (or deal with it if it happens):

1. Get a Twitter account. The only thing worse than getting killed on Twitter while you're on stage is getting branded as being clueless about it. One of the first ways to avoid that is to get your own Twitter ID. That way at least when people are talking about you, they can search and find you llll
2. Prep by checking out the event conversation. At most events with a decent amount of social media creators attending, people are tagging their conversations as a meme around the event. On Twitter, a meme is indicated by a keyword that is preceded by a "#" symbol. So for the mesh event in Toronto that I was at last week, the twitter meme keyword was "#mesh08." And the tool that most people were using throughout the day to monitor the stream of Twitter conversations from the event was Twemes.
3. Focus on the audience reaction. Perhaps the nicest side benefit of the Twitterati is that it should force you to pay more attention to the audience and less to the sound of your own voice. Though hopefully you won't be in a situation where people are encouraging each other to shed clothing in the audience at your session (an actual string of conversation at SXSW), often you can sense audience displeasure about your panel or session while it is happening. This is BY FAR the most effective way of dealing with the live feedback stream of Twitter ... actually responding to feedback as it happens in your session.
4. Monitor mentions about you. This is an obvious point, but the first thing you need to do is learn what people are saying about you, both before and after your session. Two of the most popular tools for doing that right now are TweetScan or Summize. In both, you can enter a keyword (such as your full name, or your Twitter ID, or your company name) and monitor conversations.
5. Respond to tweets. Now comes the biggest point, you need to actually be listening to the commentary and responding wherever you can. Nothing will buy you more credibility than actually being part of the conversation happening, especially when it is about you.
6. 6. Learn for next time. Lastly, repeat your experience and start the process over for each new event. As a result, you'll get smarter about what sorts of complaints people have during sessions and ironically, you may even become a better presenter as a result.

Good luck at your next event, and if you're going to be at the IAB event tomorrow - my Twitter ID is @rohitbhargava. Looking forward to reading what you have to say!

Addictomatic Offers The Ultimate Ego Search

If you're among the social media initiated, chances are you are Googling yourself more than once a day. In fact, you probably have Google alerts set up with your own name to notify you (and your ego) whenever anyone mentions you. It's ok, you can admit it. As many of us build our digital profiles and publish content online, seeing who else is talking about us has become more than a voyeuristic thrill ... there is a personal ROI that is rapidly emerging, and it relates to your personal brand.  I have lots of thoughts about personal branding, including something that I'm planning to share very soon which will hopefully be quite useful for any of you trying to build your personal brand.

In the meantime, you might want to check out a site called Addictomatic that I was just referred to by Dave at Rollyo - a site from several years ago that offered the then-unique ability to "roll your own search engine" based on offering search within a selected subset of sites that you could create. Addictomatic is a relatively simple meta search that returns results on a set query from multiple online services. It essentially pulls lots of services through widgets together on the same page - and is not a technically difficult solution ... but I like the way they have positioned it as sort of the super charged personal search. If you want to see what the real buzz is about you, visit the site and type in your name to see who's talking about you on Twitter, videos and photos tagged with your name, who's bookmarked your content on del.icio.us and lots more.  It's ultimate ego search for the ultimate egomaniacs ... bloggers.

Example search for "rohit bhargava":

Blog Marketing Skill #1: Master the Ego

Blogs are all about ego.  Anyone who disagrees is just kidding themselves.  Of course, ego is a word that comes with all sorts of connotations.  Many people assume it is bad.  To a degree, marketing has always been about ego, because it is a necessary element of each of your personalities.  However, here is the biggest flawed assumption about ego: having an ego is not the same thing as being egotistical.  Ego, in itself, is not bad - it's natural.  The reason I am reminded of this fact now is that Guy Kawasaki recently launched a site called Alltop.com that has been generating some great (and heated) conversation online.  The site is essentially a simplified aggregation of blogs categorized in a several different categories including fashion, green, celebrities, and "ego" among many others. 

The conversation basically breaks into three points of view:

1. This is nothing new and is available through other tools like Netvibes or PopUrls
2. This fosters the kind of A-lister vs. other bloggers rhetoric that Guy himself has railed against
3. Offense at being included in the group provocatively titled "Egos"

Personally, I think the site offers one of the simplest UI models that you can have, whether is just took a day to build or is more complicated than that.  I wish our Blogfeeds http://blogfeeds.ogilvypr.com (a similar concept to Alltop) were built on an interface like this.  But obviously there are probably other solutions out there to accomplish this as well.  Which really brings me to the title of this post ... blog marketing skill #1.  Whether you are a blogger or do outreach to bloggers, you will rapidly have to learn that ego is all important.  I would argue that many of the most commonly cited blog outreach campaigns where products were offered, such as the Microsoft Laptop Giveaway or the Nikon D80 program as two case studies were mainly criticized negatively by those who had bruised egos from not being included.

What Guy knows about blog ego is that having one of his categories for the site titled in this way is sure to stand out and get people's reactions.  Along the way, his site (which may very well be only slightly different from other competitive sites in terms of functionality) gets a lot more attention, conversation and traffic.  Since the site's launch, Guy has also been actively commenting on posts, and inviting bloggers to share their thoughts (full disclosure, he also sent me a note - but I had this post half written over the weekend anyway).  All of this adds up to what anyone would have to consider a successful launch into the blogosphere of a new service.  He has used his reputation to build a buzz, got some top "egos" writing about the site and created just enough controversy to make the site memorable.  Don't let ego get in the way of letting you see the obvious marketing lesson here.

Guest Post: Creativity 2.E

The Evolution of Creativity is Underway.  Which Side Are You On?
By David Armano

Are you a Planner who thinks about design?  Maybe you are a designer who obsesses about the business impact of your designs.  Or you might be an Information Architect who thinks about motion, transitions, multimedia, and uses tools like storyboarding and visual scenarios.  Or how about a Developer who comes up with the “big idea”? 

If you haven’t noticed, creativity is evolving. 

The perception of creativity itself is slowly but surely transitioning into a mutated and adapted life form.  In the traditional world, a “creative” person usually meant someone with savant-like talents excelling in a specific creative discipline defined by fairly concrete parameters.  Copywriters wrote copy.  Art Directors directed art.  There are still talented visual designers who can make anything look good.  Brilliant copywriters who can come up with that magnificent tagline which stops you in your tracks.  And don’t forget about smart, methodical Information Architects who devote their existence to usability and being an advocate for the end user.

These skills, talents and abilities are needed—no doubt about it.  But what’s also needed is the evolution of them—the next iteration.  But what does this look like?  An Information Architect who completely grasps Human Computer Interaction but can also think fluidly—can do things like rapidly create prototypes, facilitate user testing, understand visual design and occasionaly write copy.  This kind of individual possesses a multi-dimensional creative brain that has evolved over time.   

This type of mind is capable of creating customer experiences which provide competitive advantage in a fast moving world where customers are increasingly calling the shots.   

In this world marketing/advertising/technology/and customer experience all blur together.  So what does this mind look like?  I have a perspective:

With consumer behavior evolving toward a more empowered status—the definition of creativity has shifted from one-dimensional skills to a four-dimensional type of creativity that blends logical thinking with creative problem solving.  Individuals possessing this “New Creative Mindset” blend Analytical, Expressive, Curious and Sensual qualities into their thinking process.  The result is a holistic approach to creativity that is effective across multiple touch points and experiences.

Can an Information Architect embody this kind of mindset?  What about an Account Director?  I think as human beings we are all capable of thinking like this.  But as designers, communicators, marketers and creators of experiences—for us, it’s even more critical to become multi-dimensional creative thinkers and problem solvers.  I’m not the only one talking about this.  Tim Brown from IDEO evangelizes “Design Thinking” and “T-shaped People”.  Both principals are related.  Design Thinking encourages Designers to think past aesthetics and design simple solutions for complex problems.  T-shaped people have a core competency but branch out into other areas and can do them well (thus forming a T).  And of course there is the new kind of collaboration that comes with this—where we combine people with diverse skill sets who often times speak very different languages but need to come together to make their collective and diverse skills work together.  This kind of collaboration sounds easier than it actually is, because when you get a few T-shaped people together, they tend to “play in each other's sandbox”.  Translation?  Ego’s need to be unlearned.  In short, it’s not just about T-shaped people. 

It’s about how we work together to create something that people will want to use, experience and ultimately—compel them to take action. 

You could call this kind of collaboration—T-Shaped Creativity:

I don’t think that any of this is very new.  It’s been happening for a while.  In my time spent at agency.com, we developed pageless prototypes, pushed technology like Flash + Ajax and created human-centered “web applications”.  But with the rapid and pervasive nature of Web 2.0 going mainstream—it’s becoming mandatory to be able to think and execute like this.  Need proof?  Take a look at this collection of thoughts + work from a recent grad of the IIT Institute of Design.  Notice anything about how he approaches his work?  He’s a “designer”, but aesthetics are only one small part of how he exercises his creativity.  In fact, this brand of creativity is more like creative problem solving vs. the way many people still traditionally view creativity.  And what about the teams?  Aside from this evolved creative individual, what kind of team is needed to drive the next generation of communication, interaction and marketing engines?  There’s not a clear answer to this question, but signs are heading toward smaller interdisciplinary teams composed of individuals possessing complimentary skill sets and overlapping talents.


So where does this all go from here?  If you feel like you fit the bill, you’re probably thinking about how marketable you are right now.  And remember, we’re not talking about a “jack of all trades” here.  “Creativity 2.E” is not about doing everything and learning every application under the sun.  It’s about being curious, empathetic, analytical, insightful and expressive all at the same time.  It’s about being willing to do anything to get into the heads of your customer/user.  It’s about adopting new tools, techniques and artifacts to help make your case for creating the right kinds of communications, interactions and experiences.  So what to do if you’re feeling left out? 

Resist the urge to become defensive and territorial—put that energy into developing an acute sense of curiosity and optimism.  Become like a child. 

Participate in the emerging media.  Start a blog, update your site or if you don’t have one—set it up.  Dive into the digital social communities and be willing to do what your customers do.  Try methodology that you might not ordinarily consider.  PowerPoint isn’t just for presentations.  Flash isn’t just for motion.  Move past boxes, arrows, colors, layouts, charts, funnels, and metrics.

Creativity 2.E is both old and new—and like evolution, will continue to change and modify over time.  The question is will we?

David Armano is VP, Experience Design for the Chicago office of digital agency Critical Mass.  He also authors  the blog, Logic + Emotion.

Influential Marketing Blog Featured in Wall Street Journal

Many of you may have already caught this yesterday, but this blog was cited in the Recommended Reading  section of the Wall Street Journal yesterday in an article by Keith Huang.  As Jay Berkowitz from Ten Golden Rules shares on his team blog, my blog was one of 60 resources that they recommended to the journalist as part of their reading list and was selected from that list as a recommended resource for companies looking to "optimize their online presence."  Here's the writeup:

Influential Marketing Blog, rohitbhargava.typepad.com
Rohit Bhargava's blog is intellectual and educational. In a recent post, he discusses the art of stamp collection and how, even today, many smaller countries use stamps as a key marketing tool. He writes, 'Next time you pass a post office in any country, pay attention to how they are using their philately to promote the country, cater to tourists, or commemorate moments of significance.'

It is a great media hit and to be selected from a list of what I am guessing were 60 stellar resources is flattering.  I'm in awe at being included among the other bloggers and authors mentioned in the article - including Seth Godin, Steve Rubel, Matt Cutts, John Battelle, Chris Anderson, Joseph Jaffe, and Danny Sullivan. Thanks to Jay for including me in this great list, and to Keith for selecting to include my blog!

5 Web2.0 Sites That Don't Forget About Usability

Several years ago I wrote a two hundred page thesis for a Masters program all about user interfaces.  The premise was that simplicity and usability were guiding principles to making any online site successful (seems obvious, I know, but it didn't use to be).  Since the late nineties, the importance of usability had slowly been getting more and more important.  If the beginning of the web was about presence (look, we have a website!) then in the late nineties and early 2000s, the focus shifted to improving that experience and making it more usable and intuitive.  So, here we are in 2007 and the new buzz is Web2.0 and interfaces that are focused on helping people to collaborate with one another and network.  The largest social community online is MySpace - and every month new sites are launched promising the latest and greatest in technology to make your friend circle wider, your life more productive or your blog more popular.  The only problem is, many of these sites are losing focus on the power of having a good and usable interface. 

MySpace is the easiest example of the devolution of user interface quality, but neither Facebook or Second Life offer what anyone could call an easily usable experience (though after using each for enough time, most users likely get over it).  I see new sites every week with basic usability problems such as poor navigation, unclear menu items, confusing design, unreadable text, and extra steps.  So it's easy to wonder if, in the craze of Web2.0, we have lost sight of the importance of a good user interface?  Thankfully, there are a few sites that still have great interfaces, and they seem to be getting recognized for it.  Here are just a few (of the hundreds I have seen) that I would single out as being great examples for anyone out there putting together a site and needing a guide on interfaces that work:

1. 37Signals - The company behind services like Basecamp, Highrise, and Backpack, they are probably the ultimate company to watch in terms of creating an amazing interface that makes it easy to work better.  Basecamp is the one site and service that I have recommended to the most people - and one that I am using extensively to coordinate research for my book.  They even have their own book on building successful web applications.
2. Wufoo - I have written about this site before, but it's worth mentioning in this list only because they make something that used to be extremely tough (creating forms for websites) into an easy drag and drop experience.  Wufoo makes forms sexy, and adds good reporting on the backend. 
3. Harvest - As someone who has spent years working in agencies, I am used to timesheets.  No aspect of agency life is as universally hated - but the reason most people despise it is because of the systems companies have in place to track it.  Harvest is an alternative that offers an easy to use interface to track time, and reinvents this hated task into something much easier to do. 
4. Picnik - A relatively new site, Picnik is already getting rave reviews from all kinds of sites, including one of the most influential ... TechCrunch.  The site lets you edit your photos with easy fixes and save the edited versions.  Offering a much simpler interface than Photoshop, the site has lots of little features (like a running tracker telling you the pixel dimensions of your edited image) that make it a pleasure to use for editing photos.
5. Flickr - This is the only site that makes my list of great interfaces which you might call "mainstream" with millions of photos, dedicated users and a growing community.  The site is not only one of the largest photo sharing communities online, it also offers lots of tools like photo clouds and tags to search and organize images.  All that stuff is great, but what makes it really useful is that it can be used by all members of the family - even the non-techie ones.

What each of these sites have in common is an understanding of what their users are trying to do and an interface designed to help them do it.  Web2.0 shouldn't just be about finding new ways for technology to let people collaborate.  It should also mean that we don't forget all the lessons we have learned over the last ten years about how people use the web and the importance of usability.

How To Find Sites Faster Online Without Using Google

Google is great when you are searching for a single webpage or source of information.  Many of my searches still fit that category - so I'm a big Google user.  The problem is, more and more often I find myself searching not for a single page, but for a web site.  A lot of times that may be a new website or a popular website that many people have found useful.  When it comes to a search like this, Google is not so helpful.  Here are a few reasons Google doesn't work so well in these situations:

• Newer websites seldom appear highly because they have not been out long enough to get ranked and assessed in Google's algorithm
• The most useful content is sometimes not optimized and therefore appears too low in results to ever be found
• Crawler brings back any page, and not just the homepage of sites, not useful if you want to find a site instead of a page
• There is no popularity index to see what sites or pages people recently found useful (pagerank is based on links and clicks)
• Using keywords and algorithms is sometimes not as powerful as using tags and keywords other people have assigned to content online

Instead, I use del.icio.us. Rather than using an algorithm, you can use del.icio.us to "search" using the tags that people have assigned to links.  Each link has a rating based on the number of others who have also saved that link. The difference is, you are finding sites instead of individual web pages.  For an example of the difference, here's an experience I recently had when seeking new online food communities to check out:

Google search for "online food community web2.0"
(Useful sites returned in first page: Tablefinder - if only I could read Swedish)

del.icio.us tag search for "food+community+web2.0"
(Useful sites returned in first page: foodio54, OpenBottles, Cork'd, Tastefora, GroupRecipies, OpenSourceFood, Imcooked, Chowhounds, TheDailyPlate)

Just this week I have already used del.icio.us to find usage statistics for women online, popular new online food and cooking communities (example above), and a list of green blogs.  Each search was much faster on del.icio.us and yielded useful results much more easily.  This is the power of using tagging and social bookmarking to find information online.  It is also the reason why the next time you seek information online you might want to start on a site like del.icio.us instead of with Google.