#ContentMarketing Metrics to Munch On

Millennials like #visualcontent

Visual content such as webinars (64%) and infographics (59%) are some of the most popular forms of content for Millennials. Several factors are driving the popularity of more visual content, including increased adoption of mobility and social media, which make content more accessible and “snackable.”

For B2B solutions, there are two common expectations that Millennial buyers have: Simplicity and speed. They seek case studies (73%) over any other content type, proving that they are looking for real-life examples and results from using particular solutions. Millennials are looking for the connection between a brand’s message and their specific wants and needs.

The search for a quick, reliable solution gives Millennial buyers leeway when making the final decision on what solution is the best fit. Millennial buyers are more inclined to go through a trial-and-error process when shopping for a solution, compared to older generations who are more likely to work with what they currently have in order to improve efficiency. This will create a step change in the way technology is sold in the future.

Millennial buyers leverage information available via digital channels to educate themselves on B2B services and solutions rather than interacting with anyone on a sales team. Millennials use their mobile technology to research their needs.

Source: http://www.demandgenreport.com/industry-topics/content-strategies/2785-reach-millennial-buyers-with-bite-sized-social-content.html#.U_KeB_m-2M4

Curated Metrics on Automotive Content Marketing to Millennials

Curated Metrics on Automotive Content Marketing to Millennials
By Howard Oliver, Chief Content Marketing Officer, What If What Next
holiver@whatifwhatnext.com, 416-568-5254

“By 2025, millennials will account for 75% of vehicles purchased. Millennials have turned against both cars and houses in dramatic and historic fashion. Just as car sales have plummeted among their age cohort, the share of young people getting their first mortgage between 2009 and 2011 is half what it was just 10 years ago, according to a Federal Reserve study. “A new study by the Pew Research Center on millennials (age 18-34, also known as Generation Y) provides financial data that support new vehicle registration data collected by IHS Automotive/Polk. According to the Pew study, millennials have more student loan debt, poverty and unemployment than both the preceding generations did at the same age, and, predictably, lower levels of wealth and personal income as well.

With less buying power, millennials have been less likely to purchase a new vehicle, and this is reflected in the new vehicle registration data. Only 11.2% of all new vehicle registrations in 2013 were to millennials, the lowest level in six years and down from 14.1% in 2008. Also, in each of the last ten months of 2013 this metric was down substantially from 2012, although the year-over-year difference narrowed in December.”

More than three-quarters (78%) of millennials surveyed do not care if a carmaker is social media savvy, largely because it rarely provides the information on pricing and availability buyers seek. They turn to third-party sites for comparison shopping, Helms said.”
Source: http://blog.polk.com/blog/blog-posts-by-tom-libby/millennials-buying-fewer-new-cars-but-more-brand-loyal

“Once they decide, younger shoppers will go to an automaker’s website to get the location of the nearest dealer, hours of operation and whether their vehicle is available. Dealers should recognize that buyers are using computers and laptops less and using tablets and smartphones more. Not having a mobile site hurts a brand, 35% of millennials said. It is important we start investing in mobile applications and optimize experience for those devices,” Helms said. “If you are going to have a mobile presence, do it right or don’t do it at all. If done badly, it can hurt perception of brand. Once they enter the dealership, younger buyers want treatment comparable to what they find in an Apple store. They expect someone to greet them and be a product specialist, providing more detail about the car and its technology. “The dealership experience should reinforce the decisions made online,” Helms said. Social media can be used to keep in touch with dealers after the purchase.”
Source: http://www.freep.com/article/20140812/BUSINESS0104/308120158/Millennials-AutoTrader-com-study-auto-dealers

When it comes to car shopping, Millennials depend heavily on research to help drive their purchase decisions. Millennials rely more on word-of-mouth when shopping for a car than other generations1 (Millennials: 43%; Gen X: 28%; Baby Boomers: 32%), and most of that is face-to-face (face-to-face: 90%; blogs/forums: 41%; e-mail: 36%)2. They’re also most likely to be first introduced to their car of choice through a family member or friend, as opposed to Baby Boomers who are most likely to be first introduced to their car on the dealership lot.
Source: http://www.vehlux.com/Articles/Generational-Differences-in-The-Luxury-Car-Buying-Experience.aspxhttp://www.vehlux.com/Articles/Generational-Differences-in-The-Luxury-Car-Buying-Experience.aspx

Dead Zone Times for Social Media Posting

Recent studies have identified the best times to post on social media platforms. It’s just as important to know when NOT to post. We came across this infographic highlighting the absolute worst times to post content.

What trends have you noticed?

 

 

Enterprise Results at Startup Prices

We all want the 250% spike in leads that social media can deliver to businesses. The problem is that having one or even two full time employees to produce high quality content costs $$$$$… especially if you are not sure of what you need to do and you spend months writing random posts with zero results.

Every morning these potential leads don’t call and don’t submit your contact forms because you are not talking to them!

It seems like everyone is already doing great business using social media but you…

The learning curve just seems too risky with the current economy.

Our offer is simple. You don’t need to buy a cow to have a glass of milk every morning.

We have the best social media and content creation team that money could buy and we produce and sell highly tailored content to businesses like yours.

With this offer you get a free evaluation of your current social media budget and expectations and the first 10 pieces at a 50% discount; but only if you are one of the next 10 customers that sign up…

We estimate that you have a day or two to take advantage of this promotion.

Please download this file for a description of our company, and our social media marketing with associated pricing:

WIWN Social Media Programs 14-4-14-V2D

Contact us today at 905-709-8582 or whatifwhatnext (at) on.aibn.com.

Equity Crowdfunding 101

We are happy to report that since being published in late January, Equity Crowdfunding 101 has been downloaded close to 1,000,000 times.   I am currently working with Oscar Joffre on another project. Stay tuned!

Howard Oliver, CEO, What If What Next

Really want to get on a Longboard this summer!

Equity Crowdfunding 101

January 28, 2014 –NEW YORK, NY – Oscar A Jofre, CEO of BoardSuite (www.boardsuite.co) with the help of Howard Oliver, CEO What If What Next has released an ebook on equity crowdfunding.

Equity Crowdfunding is now becoming a reality around the globe.  Now is the time to get everyone involved and providing them the tools to understand equity crowdfunding.

The ebook, titled:  “Equity Crowdfunding 101, The Global Guide to a Financial Revolution”, was written for entrepreneurs, lawyers, accountants and consultants who want to raise capital via equity crowdfunding and are looking to get a basic understanding.

“On a daily basis I meet with entrepreneurs, equity portals, lawyers who want to learn about equity crowdfunding opportunities.  The constant in all my discussions is the need to provide a basic understanding of equity crowdfunding before I could assist them with their opportunity.  This is the first ebook in a series that will dig into equity crowdfunding around the globe”, said Oscar A Jofre, Founder, President/CEO BoardSuite.

To download the eBook for free click on this link below:
http://bit.ly/MagPp7

About the author
Oscar A Jofre was recently named top 100 crowdfunding thought leaders.  He is a member of CFIRA and is active in the equity crowdfunding sector.

About BoardSuite
Provided as a FREE SaaS-based service, BoardSuite enables management to manage, organize and share their corporate information securely.  BoardSuite enables management to manage their documents, calendaring, people, committees, contracts, capitalization table, and to communicate with and manage shareholders.

Love this

 

 

 

Friday Rocks: Neal Young and Crazy Horse – Everybody knows this is nowwhere

Here is a real treat: U2 New Year’s Day

A New Year’s Day Muse: If You Were an App

How would you dazzle and amaze users if you were a Mobile App?

Think about what BIG problems you could solve with your skills, stories & wisdom (internal algorithms).

What unique experience would you create that would be functional, motivating, entertaining?

Thoughts?

Howard

Engagement with mobile video is three times higher than desktop

Continuing our exploration of mobile video, a study published by Unruly out of the UK stated that Mobile Video video viewers are almost three times more likely to click through to a brand’s website from their smartphone than their laptop or desktop computer. The research found the average Click Through Rate (CTR) for mobile is 13.64% compared to 5.45% on desktop and the interaction rates for mobile have more than doubled in the last year (up 105.63%) to 22.64% in Q3 2013.

Click here for the complete report.

For fun, look at one of the most shared smartphone ads of all time – Deadmau5 in London. Enjoy!

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SX2Gd-kqV5s%5D

Thursday’s Lunch’n Learn: The Rise of Mobile Video

Are you aware of these stats?
– YouTube: some 40% of YouTube’s traffic now comes from mobile. Compare that to just 25% last year and a paltry 6% only two years ago.
– Audience boom: About 50 million people in the U.S. now watch video on their mobile phones. Fifteen per cent of all online video hours globally are viewed on tablets and smartphones.
– Machinima is one of the most-watched YouTube channels in the world. The channel, focused on video and computer gaming, has a global audience of 200 million people. HBO, by comparison has roughly 30 million subscribers.
– Netflix: Netflix widely went with an iPad app first, not a smartphone app. Today, a reported 23% of all Netflix subscribers say they have watched on smartphones, and 15% have done so on iPads.
– Bandwidth hogs: One-third of all home broadband Internet traffic in the U.S. is generated by Netflix videos. YouTube accounts for nearly one-fifth of all mobile data traffic.
– VEVO: The music video platform’s mobile and TV app audience exploded by 184% this year. Half of its views are from mobile.
Amazon: The company has about 16.7 million Prime subscribers that get unlimited video streaming on Kindle devices and via Amazon’s mobile apps
– Cisco’s projects 1.5 billion daily online video viewers in 2016, which would be 15 times as much as current levels.

From Mobile Marketer: “As mobile video views continue to grow rapidly and ad offerings get better almost every day, mobile video advertising is shaping up to be a significant part of brands’ mobile strategies next year.” They report that Twitter is also building up its mobile strategy on the location front. Location-enabled social posts provide marketers deeper insight into the behavior of the Twitter community and provide a way to send hyper-targeted messages and offers to their customers.

According a recent article in the Globe and Mail, online video giant YouTube is expected to bring in $5.6-billion in revenue this year, up 51 per cent from 2012, representing 11 per cent of Google’s total ad revenues. An analyst at eMarketer concludes “growth in impressions and viewership, particularly across devices, is probably the major growth driver (behind YouTube’s ad revenues)” for 2013.

One potentially more thorny challenge is how different the mobile experience is. As a result, marketers have struggled with what a successful mobile video ad campaign looks like.  From previous experience with our in-house videographer,  great mobile video requires strategic vision, an eye for a what looks and sounds great on camera, strong Omni-Channel integration and metrics.

From bite sized to longer format video productions, the brands that stepped up showed the world how to do online video the right way. “The top 20 list shows how brands, big and small, local and global, can make a big impact using social video across the web,” Richard Kosinski, U.S. president of Unruly, said in a company blog post. “With the right content and the right distribution strategy, advertisers have the ability to engage consumers at speed and scale.

If you are an SMB or Not-for-Profit, do you have a plan for mobile video in 2014? We have developed a cost-effective mobile video program for Toronto organizations who want to shine above their competitors’ in 2014. To get started, click here or call 905-709-8582 to receive our NEW Mobile Video Marketing Campaign Brief.

Morning Muse: Building The Omni-Channel

With Omni-Channel marketing, customers can in real time interact and transact across multiple channels and touch points interchangeably. Socially connected, consumers move from one channel to another, expecting their stopping points to be “bookmarked”, allowing them to return through a different channel to finish browsing or make a purchase. Strategy: Facilitate each step of the customer journey to maximize customer value and minimize customer effort by allowing real-time switching between channels and touch points. Click here for an example.

Curated collection of links and notes on LinkedIn marketing especially for professionals

Leading up to a meeting we had this week, we have built a list of best practices for using LinkedIn (LI) to marketing legal services, the client in question. The approaches listed below would however apply to all professionals. Happy to share our web search:
– Create some news.
– Talk about what you are doing and share your expertise.
– Schedule time for business development every day – at least 30 minutes online.
– Create a community or participate in one.
– Complete your profile with relevant key works.
– Create a company page.
– Focus on Updates, Groups and Answers.
– Update your personal page with relevant and useful short messages you share with your network.
– Complete your bio as thoroughly as you can. Your bio should be about what you want to do, not only what you are doing now.
– Fill out the “Publications” and “Skills” portions of your profile.
– Import your contacts from Outlook or a web-based email account like Gmail.
– Use the LI tool to seek out alumni from your college and law school who are members of LinkedIn.
– Watch the “People You May Know” suggestions LI provides.
– When you meet someone at an event connect to them on LI.
– At a LI icon and link to you email signature.
– Provide links to you website, blog, twitter accounts and other social media.
– Change your public profile link: The default URL for your LinkedIn profile contains a long set of characters.
– Build expertise on Twitter and broadcast on LI (our secret sauce)

Adapted from: http://www.americanbar.org/content/newsletter/publications/youraba/201205article01.html
– What is LI REALLY: LinkedIn maps professional connections and relationships, and then provides tools to connect to your network and participate in it.
– Get actively engaged to gain the most benefit possible from LinkedIn. Send personalized invitations, follow up with contacts, make an effort to help others and provide as much value as you can to an ever expanding network.
– Before jumping in to specific activities, think about these questions: How much time and what budget do you have? Who is your target audience? How do you network to get referrals and new clients? How do you reach out to existing clients and prospects? Do you write articles, speak, participate on boards or community groups, sail, curl, play golf or do other things? Once you understand your “outreach style”, the ways that you might use LinkedIn will become more apparent.
– Participate in relevant groups: share information, brainstorm ideas discuss interests and challenges, and post informational articles and links. Make it easy to get to know others, and for them to get to know you.
– Be active —discussing, writing, commenting and connecting with group members. When you participate, other group members will see your picture and a mini profile with your name and headline, and they can click to see your full profile. Participating in Groups helps you to establish your knowledge and expertise.
– If you speak, write articles or like to let people know about new legal developments, sending regular updates with links to articles or developments will make sense. Use some of the LinkedIn apps to make articles and slides available.
– If you like to bring together groups of people with common interests, participate in or starting your own LinkedIn Group(s).
– If you network by matchmaking—putting people together who should know each other—LinkedIn’s connecting tools might be a powerful way to use LinkedIn.
– LinkedIn is returning search results directly linked to the skills listed in your profile. It is important to add something to this section for the best search results possible. Completing this section is an opportunity to highlight specific skills that potential clients (or potential employers) may be seeking.

If you have further interest in mounting an economical, ongoing LinkedIn marketing and lead generation campaign, contact us. The first step would be a productive one-on-one briefing using a presentation we have build leading to a detailed campaign proposal.

Click here to set up a meeting or call us directly at 905-709-8582.

Building Your Equity Crowdfunding Campaign

Consider these key components of your pre-launch kit:
– Your passion
– Project and campaign team
– Completeness of your governance
– Quality, uniqueness and originality of your company’s product , service or event
– Campaign video
– Pitch, text, content and pictures
– Social Media campaign
– Press releases and media kit

We have a completely evolved pre-launch kit that will be published shortly in a e-book we are writing on the world-wide Equity Crowdfunding movement. Click here to pre-order the e-book.

Thursday’s Lunch n’ Learn: HR’s Supporting Role in Marketing Strategies

This morning I participated in Federated Presses’ 3rd Mini-MBA for HR course delivering a talk entitled: HR’s Supporting Role in Marketing Strategies. A great group of people attended from several large Canadian organizations.

Please click here for the deck I created for the presentation.

Discussion questions that arose during the talk:

– How can HR most contribute to the marketing process?
– How can HR contribute the building of an amazing brand?
– How can HR best use social media marketing for internal communications?
– How should sales people be trained to be more effective?

Thursday’s Lunch n’ Learn: How to dramatically increase meaningful results from your blog

I scan the web, mostly via Twitter, for evidence based best practices to drive our work on behalf of clients and for our own marketing efforts. The best ideas get refined into protocols that evolve over time. For today’s Lunch n’ Learn we will present part of our protocol for blog campaigning. Read through and, if you have a moment, contribute an idea or two in the comment section.

Here we go. For an amazing blog:

Sit down and write a real marketing plan for your blog. Answer these questions:

• Who do you want to talk to?
• What are their issues?
• How can you help them with expert information?
• How will you profit from the exercise?

In the planning process, think about the best way to set up the blog to deliver and extract the most value from visitors. Value can mean: links built, social shares, subscriptions, user generated content, comments, requests for down loads, information inquiries and requests, leads, calls, media coverage and sales. Also don’t forget real conversations during presentations, conferences, sales calls and social gatherings.

Notwithstanding a written plan, understand that your blog will most certainly evolve over time. Allow for discoveries. Rome was not built in a day!

Hire a designer to build a customized theme with a great branded top banner. Get a logo and tag line that portrays your value proposition in a compelling fashion. We suggest working in the WordPress universe. It’s a proven platform with a broad community you can access. Also, find a dependable web guy or gal that can build the thing for you and help maintain it. Designers and Builders are rarely the same person. One has graphic design skills and the other specializes in programming (i.e. CSS).

Work hard to create unique/original content that is focused on the common questions and challenges of your reader community and establishes you as an authority in your chosen field. Publish original research if you can and quote others with proper attribution. Make use of different presentation formats: video, audio, articles, images, PowerPoint presentations, interviews, infographics, guides, tutorials, list of helpful resources and links. Keep the mix varied to maintain interest.

Use sharing social media sharing like StumbleUpon, Delicious, Digg and Reddit to telescope your posts.

Your content can also be posted to relevant social media for ongoing outreach (i.e. LinkedIn, Facebook, and others: Google+, Tumblr, Instagram, Pintrest, article sites, landing pages, blogs, media portals, YouTube, Slideshare, etc).

Do not hesitate to write about company events and milestones. Some product information can be on your blog. Do seek content from your partners and suppliers.

Spend time on relevant forums/blogs to understand the problems in your niche. Use LinkedIn groups to ask questions that will help you discover hot buttons. Also, ask your sales people, partners, suppliers and customers.

Decide on your writing style with a written guideline. Get some help from a professional writer/editor to make sure you stay true to the approach and to eliminate minor typos. Get a copy of the Canadian Press Stylebook or (U.S.) Associated Press Stylebook and use it. Over time your writing will improve with it by your side.

To attract people to your blog build a list of popular forums and social media sites. Visit them regularly and help people out. Provide linking to your content where relevant.

Learn what your important key words are and use them appropriately. Do not compromise on the quality of your writing.

Set up Google Alerts to be aware of conversations where people need guidance.

Ultimately we are proposing real, good old fashioned human interactions! Remember there are real folks behind visits and page view metrics.

Speak to your designer about making your blog easy to interact with. Use sticky request forms, social media share buttons, links, sign me up forms, and side bar widgets.

When someone submits a comment or requests information they should be taken to a page that thanks them and invites them to subscribe, become a Friend on Facebook, a Connection on LinkedIn or a Follower on Twitter.

Encourage comments by asking people to post any questions or problems that you or your company could help with.

To build traffic over time consistently ask, at the end of every post, that readers share your content with their friends. The multiplier effect can be huge.

There is more to discuss but, for now, I know you can advance your blog program with today’s Lunch n’ Learn.

For discussion:

1. What are your thoughts on the value of business blogs?
2. What challenges do you face with your blog?
3. What questions do you have on blogging and the effectiveness of the medium?
4. Can you add to this blogging protocol?

Click here to drop us a line to receive our NEW Social Media Marketing Strategy Presentation.

Breaking News

Facebook to Provide Free Photos for Businesses to Use in Ads http://t.co/FXoeaGfLSq.

Thursday’s Lunch n’ Learn: Yahoo Is Bigger Than Google

Yahoo Is Bigger Than Google

Yahoo has returned as the top U.S. according to comScore Media Metrix, which just released its July report of top 50 U.S. web properties. Yahoo is working to change market perceptions that it is the dinosaur of the Internet and this result shows it is making progress. More than 196 million Web users spent time on the portal’s sites during the month, up 21% from a year earlier. That is 4.3 million more than Google. The above numbers are a positive sign, as is the the Tumblr acquisition. The company is also working on rebranding.

Yahoo`s Chief Executive Officer Marissa Mayer has been pushing Yahoo’s developers and designers to make improvements to the company’s products and services since she was hired in July of last year from Google. “Hire and retain a great team; build inspiring products that will attract users and increased traffic; that traffic will increase advertiser interest and ultimately translate to revenue,” Mayer said recently. “People, then products, then traffic, then revenue.”

Here are some initial ideas for your social media marketing work using Yahoo:
– Get going with a Yahoo mail account and spend some time on their portal.
– Register your web assets on Yahoo here.
– Consider a Yahoo PPC campaign tested against similar efforts on Google.
– Evolve and execute a Tumblr and Flickr campaign.
– For a broader perspective click here for a list of Yahoo sites and services on Wikipedia.

For discussion:
– What are your thoughts on Yahoo versus Google?
– Do you think that Yahoo is on a roll that you want to leverage for your online social media marketing efforts?
– Can you add to our Yahoo to-do list?

Click here to drop us a line to receive our NEW Yahoo Social Media Marketing Strategy Brief.

Howard

Classic Rock for a Summer’s Afternoon – Enjoy!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Click here to listen to Neil Young’s Harvest Moon on YouTube.

Your company web site might have a blog section for news, technical articles and marketing material. The question we want to ask in this article is; does that blog do enough for you?  We know that Warren Buffet has recently invested in local newspapers, believing in their viability and business model. We are suggesting that you consider that local media marketing idea by creating a free standing News and Information Blog.  The term is Social Media after all. With readily available technology, talent and information, you can have your own ‘media venue’ and treat it as a true profit center.

The best thing is that you control cost, editorial, timing and formats, providing a significant advantage over working with traditional trade magazines. You can also scale your growth to ensure effectiveness as you build. Here are some advantages to be gained.

Content is king. The more quality content your site contains, the more likely it is that you’ll be able to provide content to answer a visitor’s question or to help them make an informed decision about the product or service they visited your for.

Each new article is equivalent to a new page of website content and every page of your website is an opportunity to rank in search engines for one or more key terms.   Frequently producing high quality relevant content provides more opportunity to rank on search engine results pages.

If you frequently produce and publish high quality relevant content, visitors will want to share it and naturally generate the links, citations and the signals your website needs for link equity from search engines.

Search engines measure how long visitors stay on a page and website after clicking from the search results page. A well written blog article, providing information visitors are seeking, keeps visitors on the site longer and provides and opportunity to expose additional content to your them.

Committing to and publishing high quality content to a blog on a frequent  interval ensures that search engines will return to your site to get the index and include the latest content in the search engine data base.

Importantly, well-branded News and Information Blogs can build a stature that corporate web site blogs don’t ever. The third party nature builds credibility and dynamism. Our experience managing several blogs has shown us that opportunity dramatically.

How to get started?

Assemble a small team of inside and outside talent. Involve your channel partners and suppliers. Appoint one experienced champion-leader who will make things happen.  Impose expectations for close measurement and accountability. You are building a profit center after all.

Get the team to start thinking about who your communities are. Ask your sales folks who these people are, identify their hot buttons, and what they like to talk about.  Most importantly, what information can appear that will keep your company top of mind and help customers move through their buying cycles.

Develop a business and editorial plan to deliver timely well thought out content (i.e. written, audio, video, images, infographics, online conversations, contests, polls, interactions, webinars, live events, links to other social media platforms and more) to address the needs and wants of well defined targeted buyer personas and market scenarios. Plans must integrate with broader marketing programs.

To consider this idea more deeply, let’s talk.  We have several examples that will get your business mind and creative juices going!

Click here to contact us.

2013 Fortune 500 Are Bullish on Blogs

Are you planning to get more aggressive with your blogging this fall? 

Last year, the Center for Marketing Research, UMass Dartmouth, announced that blogs were falling out of favor with Fortune 500 enterprises. This year, more of these marketers are returning to blogs. 44% of enterprises in this survey say they are using blogs as a marketing tool. This is 7% higher than last year. Note the Infographic below from the research.

So why are blogs attracting this attention? Why do blogs work? Maybe the technology isn’t very sexy, but the utility sure is. Blogs are search engine magnets and search is still the killer app for people researching purchases. Your will gain key word and phrase prominence from you blog posts significantly impacting SEO rankings.

It will be so for a long time. We actively manage blogs for several very large and SME companies and maintain our own on a variety of subjects of interest to us. Consider other benefits to having a company blog that we have observed:

• Communicate news and specials to your customers.
• Engage your customers in two-way conversations.
• Support long term sales cycles with pertinent information.
• Expand your customer and prospect list.
• Track interest in your company and marketing campaigns over time.
• Maintain top of mind awareness beating out your competitors.
• Positions you company and team as industry thought leaders.
• Published content on your blog in written, video, infographics and other formats will make your appear to be more knowledgeable to your customers and prospects.
• Strengthen traffic and interest to the rest of your online marketing campaigns.
• Increase downloads for white papers or special reports, or more online product sales.

There is more to discuss. Click here for more information on our blogging programs.

Clip on the positive impact of Electronic Medial Records (EMR)

We are currently driving the launch of an EMR for a Toronto-based client.

Be relevant and connected

Do you have a plan for August to connect with your customers and communities with interesting, useful and timely information?

Trends: Consumer demand for technology leading digital business push

Quotes worth noting from a Oxford Economics global survey conducted earlier in the year:

“Consumers want to stream digital content and they want content to be “personalized” to what they like and on their preferred screen size.”

“In the mobile world, if you discover the problem at 9:00, you need to fix the problem by 9:05 and have it ready to go into the field at 9:10. That’s just how it works now.”

“Product lifespans are also getting shorter and shorter and companies need to realize their products could only last for months, not years or decades before something else comes along.”

“You need to be aware that your solution today and your revenue stream today could be gone tomorrow and you continually need to reinvent yourself.”

Read more: http://www.ctvnews.ca/sci-tech/consumer-demand-for-technology-leading-digital-business-push-1.1331915#ixzz2WfIQEZoa

Twitter In Canada and other developments

Bell, Twitter partner in social analytics

Bell Media and micro blogging site Twitter yesterday announced a partnership that will involve research and analytics initiatives around social media and television viewing.

Statements from both companies indicate that the partnership will be around the analysis of social conversations gathered from Twitter which could be sold as marketing intelligence to media advertisers

Read more: http://www.itworldcanada.com/news/bell-twitter-partner-in-social-analytics-move/147201#ixzz2WZj1w8BH
or visit http://www.itworldcanada.com for more Canadian IT News

We are also following the opening of Twitter’s Canadian office. Keep an eye on Twitter’s analytics capabilities.  Large advertisers here and south of the boarder have moved to accelerate the integration of their broadcasting and Twitter feeds.

Interview by Howard Oliver

An interview with Oscar A Jofre Jr., Founder, President and CEO BoardSuite
By Howard Oliver, What If What Next
Click here for the entire piece published to the Canadian Cloud Network.

We are being asked to create this type of content for our clients on a regular basis.

Insight. Inspiration. Impact.

Innovation is at the core of everything we do. Every day on our website, and in each issue of the magazine, we delve into the new ideas and radical creativity which are upending status quo in the business world; our mission is to determine how and why these changes matter.

At Innovation Uncensored, we turn this coverage into a real- world conversation, where the people on the pages come to you and share what they know. Surprising stats, smart techniques, best practices, true confessions—it’s not just the nuts and bolts of business; it’s the heart and soul. And that’s what makes this event different. It’s a two-day master class from the world’s most innovative companies.

Really like the the copy for this recent Fast Company event.

Ted Talk – Shyam Sankar: The rise of human-computer cooperation

We are in the era of fusion of machine and human, this fusion not only will be a evolved biological entity, we are talking about a much more complex symbolic field than the human mind can imagine, the expansion of consciousness is a reality and the two forces have begun to collaborate with each other.

EMR systems deliver better health care – but not necessarily from massively expensive systems.

Breakthrough solutions at a clinic or health facility level will come from more modest EMR systems. In the Long Term Care sector for example, simpler, smaller highly focused EMR systems allowing facility managers, healthcare professionals, patients, and their families to track healing processes will do the most good.

Its about minimizing the friction between people and the system. Watch the talk to understand this idea.

Infographics

15 Fast Fat Facts infographic

One of a series of infographics on health and weight loss. We like the idea of producing a series of infographics to communicate a big notion and generate demand for a brand.

Big Data infographic by wakeuptj.

Monetizing Big Data

 

 

 

 

 

 

We came across this article by Scott Stainken, General Manager, Global Telecommunications Industry, IBM. It our intent to cover “Big Data” on this blog. Your comments are appreciated.

In the history of business, data has never been more important than it is today. Knowledge has always been key, but we’ve never before been able to access, manage and act on so much real-time information.

The systems we are developing and deploying all over the world are helping enterprises understand and use all this ‘big data’ to make really smart decisions.

Click here for more.

For definitional purposes see the reference on Big Data from Wikipedia below:
Big data is a collection of data sets so large and complex that it becomes difficult to process using on-hand database management tools or traditional data processing applications. The challenges include capture, curation, storage, search, sharing, transfer, analysis, and visualization. The trend to larger data sets is due to the additional information derivable from analysis of a single large set of related data, as compared to separate smaller sets with the same total amount of data, allowing correlations to be found to “spot business trends, determine quality of research, prevent diseases, legal citation analysis, combat crime, and determine real-time roadway traffic conditions.

As of 2012, limits on the size of data sets that are feasible to process in a reasonable amount of time were on the order of exabytes of data. Scientists regularly encounter limitations due to large data sets in many areas, meteorology, genomics, connectomics, complex physics simulations, and biological and environmental research.  The limitations also affect Internet search, finance and business informatics. Data sets grow in size in part because they are increasingly being gathered by ubiquitous information-sensing mobile devices, aerial sensory technologies (remote sensing), software logs, cameras, microphones, radio-frequency identification readers, and wireless sensor networks. The world’s technological per-capita capacity to store information has roughly doubled every 40 months since the 1980s; as of 2012, every day 2.5 quintillion (2.5×10¹⁸) bytes of data were created. The challenge for large enterprises is determining who should own big data initiatives that straddle the entire organization.

Big data is difficult to work with using most relational database management systems and desktop statistics and visualization packages, requiring instead “massively parallel software running on tens, hundreds, or even thousands of servers”. What is considered “big data” varies depending on the capabilities of the organization managing the set, and on the capabilities of the applications that are traditionally used to process and analyze the data set in its domain. “For some organizations, facing hundreds of gigabytes of data for the first time may trigger a need to reconsider data management options. For others, it may take tens or hundreds of terabytes before data size becomes a significant consideration.

The What If What Next spirit.

Love Pasta and this Infographic

An inforaphic by Think Sicily
Holidays

 A Master Class on Strategic Social Media Marketing and Sale Campaign Planning

with Howard Oliver, CEO, What If What Next

WebVoyaging® (a term coined by What If What Next™) is a social marketing engagement methodology that optimizes the deployment of cloud based, best-in-class marketing automation solutions. The WebVoyaging® process is inspired by the great visionaries who conceived of and built history’s great sailing vessels, which helped establish trade routes and created huge wealth. In the context of this workshop:

• Media coverage
• Web traffic
• Alliance recruitment
• Lead generation
• Account acquisition

Iterative rounds of Web Voyaging® attract customers, engage in high quality comments/conversations, and establish inbound links from relevant social networking sites, discussion groups, blogs, and online media. Efforts that yield real traffic, online and sales. The workshop will help you sales and marketing team make WebVoyaging® a daily activity driving the success of your marketing campaigns. Envision an upward spiral of activity touching more and more stakeholder communities and target markets.

Industrial Trends: On one hand and the other

We are tracking these stories…

One one hand:

Researched by Industrial Info Resources (Sugar Land, Texas)–Industrial Info is tracking more than 900 industrial projects worth an estimated $148.85 billion that are set to begin construction in Canada in 2013. A large portion of the spending is planned for the western half of the country, primarily due to the large oil sands projects set to kick off, which help make the Metals & Minerals and Oil & Gas Production industries the country’s top spenders.

And on the other:

Canada’s Mid-Sized Firms in Decline, BDC Study Shows

Manufacturing sector suffers biggest blow

Highlights

• Canada’s number of mid-sized firms plummeted by 17% from 2006 to 2010. Mid-sized companies have 100 to 499 employees.
• The worst-hit sector was manufacturing, which saw over half its mid-sized companies disappear from 2001 to 2010.
• While every region saw declines, Ontario was hit hardest, with a 25% drop in its number of mid-sized companies followed by Quebec
• Mid-sized businesses cited access to financing as the most important barrier to growth

MONTREAL, Feb. 13, 2013 /CNW Telbec/ – Canada’s mid-sized companies, a key motor of the economy, saw their numbers decline by 17% – 9,370 to 7,814 – from 2006 to 2010, according to a new study by the Business Development Bank of Canada (BDC).

Hardest hit was the manufacturing sector, which saw over half its mid-sized firms vanish between 2001 and 2010 from 2,807 to 1,381.

BDC undertook the study to fill an important research gap on mid-sized firms. The study is based on StatisticsCanada data and supported by survey results from market research firm Harris/Decima. The study is one of three that the BDC plans to release this year on economic issues of importance to Canadians.

“This decline should signal a call to action as mid-sized firms are vital to the Canadian economy,” says Pierre Cléroux, BDC Vice President, Research and Chief Economist and lead author of the study. “They’re few in numbers, yet their contribution to Canada’s economic prosperity cannot be overemphasized. They really do punch above their weight.”

Mid-sized firms represent 1% of the total number of companies, but contribute disproportionately to the Canadian economy, accounting for 16% of Canadian jobs, 12% of GDP and 17% of exports. It is worth noting that a greater portion of mid-sized firms have their head office in Canada, compared to large firms (90% versus 77%).

“During the last ten years, medium-sized firms have faced serious challenges from the rapidly appreciating Canadian dollar, financial crisis and recession,” added Cléroux.

The study also found:

• 14% of mid-sized firms became small firms (below 100 employees) or closed down each year from 2006 to 2010. Only 1.4% grew to become large-sized corporations with 500 or more employees.
• While mid-sized companies declined across the country, Ontario was hit worst, losing 25% of its number of mid-sized firms between 2006 and 2010 (from 3,810 to 2,861).

But the news is not all bleak, the BDC study found. Many CEOs are optimistic about their prospects during the economic recovery, with 64% of mid-sized firm leaders saying their annual sales will go up by 4.5% over the next three years.

Firm owners said the main obstacles standing in their way to becoming large companies are fierce competition, availability of financing and employee acquisition and retention.

Mid-sized firms with a board of directors or an advisory board are most likely to say they expect sales to go up.

“Canadian businesses will continue to face major challenges as competitive pressures will not disappear. As Canada’s development bank, BDC will look closely at how it can better support our mid-sized firms, particularly in the manufacturing sector, in order to help them make the investments required to increase their competitiveness,” Cléroux said.

For detailed study findings consult BDC’s “Analysis and research“. Do read the report.

 

Note the comment about fierce competitiveness. Canada has a huge domestic industrial construction market. We wonder if the introduction of innovative products and  effective, measurable marketing remains an underlying issue to the survival and growth of Canadian mid-sized firms.

LinkedIn

Hurray! I have one of the top 5% most viewed @LinkedIn profiles for 2012. http://www.linkedin.com/pub/profile/0/025/738

Interview of Howard Oliver

Tending – Native Advertising

However you cut it, Native advertising is a disruptive technique that is will evolve the business model of advertising.

Watch for huge amounts of coverage since Native Advertising was used in The Atlantic by the Church of Scientology.

For a good overview read the following piece from From iMedia

Native advertising will be the fastest growing monetization solution this year. For those unaware, native advertising goes by a few definitions. CEO of Sharethrough Dan Greenberg refers to native advertising as “a form of media that’s built into the actual visual design and where the ads are part of the content,” while Deep Focus CEO Ian Schafer defines it as “advertising that takes advantage of a platform in the ways consumers are actually using it.” The most prominent current examples are Facebook’s Sponsored Stories and Premium Ads and Twitter’s Promoted Tweets, but look to a greater number of media sources and networks like LinkedIn and Pinterest to partner with native ad platforms like Sharethrough to offer advertisers a valuable method to deliver good content without interrupting consistent user experiences.

Definitions that resonated with me are:

– A form of media that’s built into the actual visual design and where the ads are part of the content
– Advertising that takes advantage of a platform in the ways consumers are actually using it
– Good content and a user experience that’s consistent.
– A specific mode of monetization that aims to augment user experience by providing value through relevant content delivered in-stream

Some initial observations from the coverage of this tend:
– Native advertising is a natural extension of content marketing. Brands trade relevant information for brand exposure or time spent directly on their websites. The difference is that with native advertising, you pay to put that content in front of more eyes.
– Until now, content marketers have been happy to focus on owned and earned media. Paid media brings its own benefits to the table, including the opportunity to extend reach to your intended audience across trusted channels.
– Publishers accept that the life span of a blog post or other piece of content is unpredictable. With native advertising, there is opportunity to bring older but still powerful content back to the forefront.
– Native advertising fits with the evolving nature of content personalization, using advertising to guide prospects through the sales funnel. There is a fit with marketing automation.

I wonder if some of the trade media I know will jump on this?

I’m going to send along this post to some of my friends and colleagues that work in the agency space. Looking forward to their reactions that I will report on later in the week.

Howard

Trending – Crowdfunding

Deloitte Predicts that Crowdfunding will raise $3-billion globally in 2013 – a 100% increase over 2011.

Click here for more

OK. It’s the weekend and its really cold outside…..

On innovation

A recent George Brown College report titled Toronto Next: Return on Innovation explains why companies struggle with the concept of innovation. We are most likely to think of innovation as creating new things, rather than creativity to solve problems. However, the study shows that innovation is best tied to concrete and measurable outcomes, especially making a an existing business or technology process more efficient or effective. Innovation as it turns out is about solving concrete problems.

One area we are interested in, suggested by the study, is creating data roadmaps to achieve innovation. Big data is expected to go from a $200 million industry in 2011 to a $3 billion industry in 2013. To our interest, there are many opportunities for marketing folks leverage this massive business analytics opportunity. We are actively building a data science resource to bring this capability to our core social media marketing efforts. Stay tuned.

Click here for more on the report.

Click here for a white paper entitled: 7 Tips to Succeed with Big Data in 2013 from Tableau Software.

Upcoming Speaking Events

Marketing and the Cloud

This event will focus on how Cloud applications can help grow marketing success, covering topics such as marketing automation, Site Search technology and SEO (Search Engine Optimization).

Speakers
Efrem Habteselassie, Cloud Search Portal – How to improve customer satisfaction and conversion rates by leveraging the latest in Site Search Technology.

Howard Oliver, What If What Next – How Lean Marketing can reduce your marketing spend and drive measurable results
• How Lean Marketing can reduce your marketing spend and drive stronger measurable results
• How to build your own cloud-based marketing automation resource – from Pardot to WordPress plug-ins.
• How to profit from the Semantic Web and Enterprise Search – cutting-edge web design, SEO and on demand content generation.

The founder and CEO of What If What Next, Howard Oliver for more than 25 years has been an entrepreneur, writer, thought leader, PR Guru, business development strategist, technology evangelist, manager and consultant for numerous service, industrial and high technology companies. Howard provides leadership in the application of Agile and Lean project management methodologies for technology enabled social media marketing and PR campaigns that deliver revenue, customer and alliance engagement, and media buzz. Clients recognize him as a driven, highly creative and disciplined thinker. He also created the WebVoyaging® brand, a market engagement methodology that optimizes the deployment of cloud based, best-in-class marketing automation solutions. The WebVoyaging® process is inspired by the great visionaries who conceived of and built history’s great sailing vessels, which helped establish trade routes and created huge wealth. An accomplished business educator, Howard has recently created the WebVoyaging® Master Class, a training program for organizations interested in implementing Lean marketing automation solutions.

For more information or to attend click here.

Media Release: Vendor Consortium Launches Cloud Revenues Program

Vendor Consortium Launches Cloud Revenues Program

24 Oct, 2012, Toronto — Vendors including Cohesive FT, ACIS, Guardtime and PerspecSys have joined the CloudBestPractices.net (CBPN) to launch a Cloud Revenues Program for hosting providers.

Following an intense three year in-depth research program into key customer segments for cloud enablement including government, healthcare, small business, and enterprise sectors; the Cloud Revenues Program offers hosting providers the ability to successfully launch new Cloud services into these high-growth markets.

The CBPN Cloud Revenues Program will organize vendor partners into new solution suites that hosting providers can deliver across their existing Cloud platforms and launch into these sectors. The Cloud Revenues Program also provides a complete support program including Cloud application technical blueprints, template product plans with revenue models, Cloud migration professional services, turnkey marketing campaigns, PR and sales training.

CBPN CEO, Neil McEvoy says of the initiative: “Although the Cloud hype has been deafening, the reality is that it has yet to turn into meaningful revenue streams for hosting providers. Many are still focused mainly on traditional co-location and dedicated web hosting. The CBPN Cloud Revenues Program is a significant step forward in identifying the new services that will meet that need.”

What If What Next CEO, Howard Oliver commented: “Our research clearly shows that the target markets we are addressing will respond favorably to cloud offerings delivered by hosting providers they trust. The opportunity for the companies participating in this ecosystem is substantial.”

A consortium of vendors has been selected that will enable a complete Cloud migration roadmap and a portfolio of next generation Cloud Applications.

Ryan Koop, CMO for Cohesive FT says: “Cohesive FT enables hosting providers to compete head-to-head with the incumbents like Amazon. In the IaaS market today, providers need a software-defined networking (SDN) story. We bring that to the table, and also enable them to cater for the customers Cloud migration requirements of BYON and BYOI – Bring Your Own Networks and golden images.”

Efrem Habteselassie, CEO of ACIS Consulting adds: “Hosting providers are looking for ways to differentiate their service offerings and add top line revenues by providing value-added services that are conveniently located within the same trusted platform. Our Cloud Search Portal service (CloudSearchPortal.com) is a perfect example, offering to reduce customer’s TCO through an Enterprise class hosted search solution.”

Mike Gault, CEO of Guardtime, says their pioneering work with ‘Keyless Signatures’ can power a suite of next generation secure Cloud applications, in key areas like E-Discovery: “The ability to assure the legal integrity of Cloud-hosted information is the big leap forward for Cloud security, that can underpin a suite of new business process tools that can disrupt traditional BPM markets.”

David Canellos, CEO of PerspecSys, commented: “Many enterprises must satisfy strict data privacy, residency and compliance requirements – a challenging task that makes cloud adoption extremely difficult. PerpsecSys’ Cloud Data Protection Gateway is an innovative server-based solution that can be deployed by hosting providers to keep sensitive corporate information local and out of public cloud applications like Salesforce.com – without any impact on SaaS usability or performance. Hosting providers offering this service are truly making the move to the cloud a possibility for organizations with these challenges.”

About:
The Cloud Best Practices Network exists to bring together leading Cloud Computing experts and entrepreneurs, and provides a single forum to collate and publish their knowledge to help grow awareness and adoption. The Cloud Revenues Program enables hosting providers to leverage best practices as a framework for revenue generating product innovation.

Contacts
Neil McEvoy, CEO, Cloud Best Practices Network, neil.mcevoy@l5consulting.net.
Howard Oliver, CEO, What If What Next – PR, 905-709-8582, holiver@whatifwhatnext.com.

Innovation Tracking

Warren Buffett says his company is likely to buy more newspapers in the next few years and added that he believes all newspapers need to quit offering their product free online. Buffett said he believes newspapers will do well if they remain the primary source of information about their communities.

“The original instinct of newspapers then was to offer free in digital form what they were charging for in print,” Buffett wrote. “This is an unsustainable model and certain of our papers are already making progress in moving to something that makes more sense. It’s you job to make your paper indispensable to anyone who cares about what is going on in your city or town.”

What a comment about the how local newspapers will compete against the local web!

Click here for the whole story.

Innovation Tracking

MIT PhD candidate Dave Smith and a team of mechanical engineers and nano-technologists from the Varanasi Research Group, have finally solved the problem of geting condiments out of the bottle. The super slippery, non-toxic coating keeps condiments like ketchup, mayo and mustard from sticking to the sides of glass and plastic bottles, and allows them to slip right down to the most important place: your food.

There are currently 106 news articles on Google for this slippery coating. It was covered on Breakfast television this morning. ‎

Spring 2012 on the St Clair River