Aug 02, 2011
"Shoppers will be encouraged to bundle their purchases, but fresh off the Groupon tide, they will shop for sport, hunting for low ticket items—or value packages—to fulfill pent up anxiety of not spending during bad economy." 360 Convos: 'Preductions' the art of predicting the known.
Today, 360 Convos gives you the fourth reference to Groupon. After five months, the COO of Groupon, Margo Georgiadis, quit and went back to Google.
Those weighing in surmise "skepticism of the company's business model."
As the business community continues to second guess Georgiadis' decision and the reasons behind it, I'd like to cut to the chase. It only took Georgiadis five months to figure out what I knew all along.
Groupon is no place for smart people.
A retailer or service company cannot run a successful business model on the idea of anesthetizing the consumer to price. Consumers need to believe in the value of the product or service they are receiving. Employees need to see the value beyond the big paycheck they may have been wooed with. They need to see the value in the company,
Shed the focus on price. Sell the value.
Or, like Google does, give everything away free, and sell the consumer.
Sundays, we look back through the 360 Convos lens, approximately four weeks back, to see how the posts did for a two week period.* It's not an exact science, after all, the Sunday post could potentially have more play than the others, so take everything with a grain of the proverbial salt, my favorite mineral.
The dead heat continued into second place between my daughter, who's famous for keeping me in line with her quips–which I dutifully write down in a little blue notebook so I can remember what the heck I was laughing about, pulled in one more page view than Great is the enemy of good. The enemy piece was a thought process of finding the balance between productivity and the quality we yearn for in our projects.
I'll take the one page my daughter's piece had that pulled it out in front as a sign I'm barely ahead of average on parenting skills. Like the wise people say, "You don't know how well you did as a parent until you meet your grandchildren."
I can wait.
Here's where it gets interesting, the first two posts pulled into 38% of the pageviews, the next two posts pulled in 30% of the pageviews, the next three the last 32%. An even week, where it was hard to truly determine what dominated.
I continue to search for the balance between good blogging, feeding the audience and balancing my time.
I worked with a fellow who balked at creating a gmail account because he didn't want too many passwords out there (here's the post).
"It puts my bank account in danger," he explained.
My guess is, he still uses his cell to make phone calls.
My other guess is that the rest of us use our cell phones to check our gmail, listen to music, google the earth, check on our blogs, our twitter, our foursquare, our LinkedIn, our fitness plan, our stock prices, jot notes to ourselves, and record a voice message.
I shudder to think what my former co-worker will do when he discovers he will be making payments via his mobile phone.
"It’s not a matter of if, but when," says Alan D. Mutter.
"The check's on the phone," we'll promise creditors.
During their follow up contact we'll swear, "We got disconnected before I could complete the transaction!"
If you lose your phone, as I did recently, and thank you Stephen King for it's safe return, you'll be making payments with what? Cash? The importance of the receipt will rise and bury us in unneeded slips of paper. We'll have to prove we paid that bill in cash with another piece of paper. Or, a scan of a piece of paper.
We will no longer have credit reports, we'll have phone numbers that denote our status of good payers. It will morph to our 'phone-it-in' score. A good score will make our KLOUT rise along with our perks of unnecessary offers.
We'll be drowning in credit-connectness, personal QR codes based on our ability to pay, finance, float or dodge. Our phones will act as personal transponders that open doors, gates and bridges.
Waving our phone at someone will be an honor of respect and will probably leech a few dollars out if we shake it too hard.
Yesterday, I disclosed my genius idea to take down Google by offering free ads on my blog. The disclosure was made mid-stream on a post about choosing to be a consistent blogger.
Before I began my 'daily blogging' journey I was actually on a different path. I had planned to write a post to help other people blog. A few ideas had been percolating. The first one was to create a great check-off list from ideas I'd gleaned around the web.
Tips for Bloggers:
1. Start with clear objectives
2. Develop a strategy
3. Keep content focused on a topic
4. Have an editorial calendar
5. Measure based on objectives
6. Integrate social tools, allow logins from social networks
7. Encourage for word of mouth (WOM), integrate into all you do
8. Most effective blogs are conversational or controversial
9. Treat your site (and you) as it's own company or brand
10% for fun, stuff you ♥
I never posted my list.
I decided to live it.
My objective would be to test the theory that posting with consistency changes the world. I wasn't sure how it would change my world, but I knew that it would.
My strategy was to post for thirty days in a row. It was June 18 and that month I'd only posted sporadically. Exactly nine times. I began with earnest on July 19.
360 Convos had its incubation when I wanted to write about business topics, as opposed to blogging on fiction writing and life themes, the center point of my other website. When I was building the strategy for this daily blogging adventure for 360 Convos, I considered a wide array of topics. In staying with item three on the above list, I decided to keep the content focused on business.
I did not keep the content focused on business. (I'm practicing, not shooting for perfection). I did, however, learn a few lessons while blogging everyday:
Jot down blog ideas whenever they occur. Do not use paper for this.
The best place a blogger can jot down ideas is somewhere online. I chose a Google calendar. No, I haven't taken Google down, yet. I still find most of their products useful. In keeping with item four on the list noted above, I dubbed my Google amenityEditorial Calendar and made it public.
I wrote down measurements to evaluate my success (item 5). I integrated social media and made sure the icons were large and easy to find (item 6):
I talked about my blog (WOM). I left a screen up on my computer at work and reeled in a co-worker. I played around with style – conversationaland tested controversial by using the word 'hell' in a headline. I sought a parental tone, I toyed with a touch of PR. I made a confession and made a personal disclosure that had left me dry-mouthed with guilt. I paraded a cute kitten. I preached to myself. I preached to no one else. I outed myself as a distracted parent (more than once).
I treated my blogging journey as a job. I treated my blog as its own company. I integrated my online presence and it became part of my personal branding strategy.
I love to write. I had fun.
I learned that when I was clueless about what to write about, I could refer to my editorial calendar and pick up exactly where my brain had left off. I learned I was in charge of the calendar and could change it when another topic felt more important. I learned I could take on a writing assignment – I could write not just for me, but for someone else as well.
Library Director abruptly retires
after correcting 360 Convos post.
After I pulled the trigger on my starting post, Literacy is the key to the internet, I received an email. A community member chose to send me a kind note, instead of lambasting me in the comments section on my disarray of facts. (I didn't know the difference between a bond and a levy). He coached me through several re-postings, so I could be accurate, mostly.
(Thank you Bruce Ziegman).
The effort to exchange those eleven emails and set me straight, apparently taxed Ziegman beyond his literary capabilities. Two and a half weeks later, he announced his retirement. Today, August 22, is my 35th consecutive post. I have no idea who will give up and retire today because of it.
Today, is my 35th consecutive post. I have no idea who will give up and retire because of it.
What I do know is that the disciplined effort to blog everyday taught me life lessons.
More on that tomorrow.
If you'd like to read the other posts in the blogging series, try these:
“When did blogging ever generate revenue?” I wondered.
I'd been blogging since January 2009, and at any one time I had two to three separate blogs bouncing along on separate topics. After almost three years of blogging, my Google Ad Sense account still only boasts a whopping $16.23 credit. That would almost buy me lunch and a coffee.
At one point, I got so mad at Google's practice of serving up my pageviews without sharing the wealth, I started a protest. I single-handily came up with the concept to take Google down.
If you're going to blog for free, I said to myself, GIVE THE ADS AWAY FREE.
On one of my blogs I added advertising for local businesses free of charge.
Google was so scared they started Google+, an ad free environment.
That money thing was intriguing though, and I kept thinking about what it meant to 'pay yourself first.' It took me awhile to figure it out. It wasn't about money, it was about mindshare and market influence.
If I were re-writing Owyang's post I would paraphrase it to read, “invest in yourself first.” I would encourage writers to do something that benefits the id, the ego and the super-ego before they attacked a single piece of email.
Jeremiah Owyang is interviewed by Nate DiNiro on visit to Portland, OR.
Photo courtesy of Jeff Bunch, vimeo.
Let the inbox overflow, folks.
Build a blog. Add content. Add free ads. Readers will come.
As long as they find something new on a consistent basis.
Tomorrow I share tips for blogging everyday. And don't worry...Google survives.
News Item: Direct mail program for the post office targets advertising clients of newspapers. (FYI, newspapers are the post office's biggest clients).
The Flipside: Newspapers threaten to use online payment programs for subscriptions instead of mailing bills. Wait. Who has a subscription to the newspaper? Okay, newspapers threaten to switch TMC products from direct mail to porch delivery.
News Item: Twitter pushes ads into the timeline...again The Flipside Prediction: Number of fans for participating companies plummet as Twitter users unfollow them to get away from the featured ads, but look for discounts on Groupon.
News Item: Newspaper that never made money closes. The Flipside: Laid off workers are told they can apply for jobs at newspaper that almost makes money, should they ever open up (info from same link).
News Item: Yahoo Exchange Adds Publisher Real Time Basis Tools The Flipside Prediction: In order to control advertising quality, publishers spend too much time deciding what inventory to sell to which buyer at what price, and overall site content slips.
According to a recent e-newsletter from Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten, a new website to track Google+ statistics was built on a Sunday and launched on a Monday. At the end of the week, the site, Social Statistics.com, boasted 300,000 unique visitors which produced 1,000,000 pageviews.
Success was measured in the fact that the servers didn't go down.
Kind of beats God's stats. It took him a week to build his world and he only had two unique visitors at the end of his seven days.
If nothing else, that should illustrate how fast our current world is moving.
I sat in on a recent planning session where a dedicated, enthusiastic co-worker pitched the idea of bringing in 50-100 community members to assist in researching a new release. My neck snapped back. That would work if we were NBC and launching a program that might require an investment of a cool million. But we're talking about a small start-up partnering with local talent willing to trade resources to create relevant, useful content. Our partner brings in the expertise and resources. We deliver it packaged in high-concept videos.
Win for us. Win for the talent. Win for the community.
Why wouldn't it work?
The people who sat around that table were as smart as any 50-100 random folks plucked from the street.
Aren't you?
For a company our size, the idea of making a big investment in research only makes sense in a pre-internet world. But we live in the world where you can talk about it, fine-tune your idea, dig in and produce something cool, throw it up and let the audience vote with their pageviews and social media broadcasts.
If the idea bombs, don't throw more resources at it. Learn a lesson. Throw something else up.
If it really bombs. Reformat. Change your 'wavy-buzzy' name. Try again.
There is something genius about the +1 concept. The first time I saw '+1' was infront of the letters 'RT' on Twitter. It took me a moment to understand it meant 'I agree.' At that juncture in time, I surmised it was the lazy man's way to comment, and assumed the man responding thusly must be pressed for time, and likely all thumbs on a smartphone with a teeny screenpad.
I, of course, took more care with my RT's, laboring over witty responses to attach myself to good content and make us both memorable.
But why not respond like lightning and electrify good ideas?
Why not, indeed, and Google now offers us that opportunity in a full and official way by using the +1 button. By clicking +1, we concur. We vote. We promote content to higher planes.
When we click the +1, we also thrust ourselves into those higher planes, exposing more of ourselves, and not just to our Twitter followers, but in a real dynamic way that can be tracked and followed (by Google), and we share with even more people who we are.
Do you want to more about me? Maybe not, but Google does. And the more Google knows about me, the better opportunity Google will have to correctly identify my psychographic profile. As a marketer, I am keenly aware that serving up relevant advertising that consumers will respond to in a meaningful way (read: spend money), has great value.
Yes, Google is profiling me and using my interaction with you to know you, and to market to both of us.
Is this a good thing?
It's a genius thing.
If you own a search engine and you create the *bling* that makes the engine more interactive, and from there the engine tugs users through a more meaningful maze of the Internet, the '+1 Drazzle' (razzle-dazzle yet to be defined as positive or negative) is genius.
I like smart people.
I like Google.
The only thing that would make Google better for me would be if they were located in Washington State, because I am pro everything good for the local economy. Those things will get my +1's.
For a generation taught to demand privacy from the companies it transacts business with, Boomers have readily abandoned that concept and joined Gen Xers and Gen Y in a very vibrant, public information sharing performance. Transparency is touted as the answer to what ails us and everyone is encouraged to step out on the information dance floor and boogie.
With each rotation of the mirrored information globe the dance hall twitters with life and we attempt to catch the flickers and make sense of them. In one ear interesting voices chirp in 140 characters, in another social media presentations sing. Associates are LinkedIN, family and friends are Facebooked, and everyone wants to know where and when via Plancast, Foursquare or Gowalla, and we blog all about it.
We share a lot, but most of it is lost in the mayhem.
Garnering salient information about the people who are important to us, especially in business, can be as illusive and dazzling as chasing the mirrored reflections of the disco ball. Gist, a Washington State corporation founded by T. A. McCann, created software for "relationship-centric professionals" to address our need to sort and prioritize the dazzling information mayhem.
For its unique, relationship deepening, innovation, Gist is my choice for 360 Biz of the Month.
I was introduced to Gist by a fellow Twitter-mate turned real-life friend, Ed Borasky (@znmeb). Boraksy is geekedIN and has enough online influence to beta test new products. He received a first round Googlewave invite and tossed one my way before I barely knew what a wave was. Right on the heels of Googlewave Borasky gifted me with Gist.
I like being among the first to know things and seeing the big picture puzzle in a comprehensible map. Gist provides me with all that and a scorecard. My relationship with the people and businesses in my database are weighted or scored based on a proprietary algorithm. A yellow or red alert tells me when too much time has passed between interactions with my inner circle. A detail screen offers an in-depth look of who our shared contacts are, and constant information monitoring keeps me abreast of their blog posts and news mentions.
Gist integrates inside Outlook, Salesforce, and the iPhone, and allows me to focus on my contacts one at a time—in order of their importance to me.
It's most valuable asset is that it saves me time. Instead of me plowing through a sporadic stream of Twitter submissions to find the person of the hour I want to connect with, then tracking down the latest piece of news on them, or signing up for constant Google alerts, Gist allows me to review that individual’s entire online interactions and news spotlights in a date sort that includes a company profile from Dow Jones Business & Reltationship Intelligence. Gist creates a clear portrait, a complete dossier of my contact, and reduces the time needed to pull the varied pieces together to the time elapse of a log-in. The information can be browsed lightly or explored deeply by following provided links.
Gist can be used as a brand monitoring tool, too. I had no intention of using it for this, but it unearthed a dozen copyright infringements for the company that employs me.
Because I have a native bias of Washington State businesses, I took the time to reply to the emails Gist sent asking for feedback. As a result, I connected with Greg Meyer, Customer Experience Manager. He was easily coerced into doling out a generous number of Gist invites for my network. Don’t be shy. Gist is ready for more people to test its beta product. And it’s offered free to my blog readers.
Congratulations Gist and T.A. McCann for earning 360 Biz of the Month for January 2010 status. I was too enthusiastic about your product to hold this post until after the first of the year. Wishing you much success in product development.
I just received a message from Google Wave with a handful of invites.
I'm offering them up.
Leave a comment of your favorite interview question—either one you ask a job candidate, or a question you've had to answer in an interview.
Love or hate.
I'll choose best responses by Thanksgiving, notify you so I can capture your email (required to submit request for invitation), and then submit your invitation order.
Invitations are not sent immediately, but should arrive as my Christmas present to you.
