- Three years since I found the friends who understood what I needed vs. what they needed
- Three years since I rebuilt my life and my Five and Ten Year Plans
Somewhere in the three years I stopped thinking about you every day. But, you do cross my mind most days. Today is one of those days. Today I miss you. Today I love you more than shoes
Like linking to something that everyone and their mom reads, there are a few phrases that annoy me.
IMHO (In my humble opinion). I groan when people write this. It’s their way of being snarky and telling you that you’re wrong and they’re right. Although, they’re too wimpy to say it outright so they hide behind IMHO. With that term, the person shys away from rocking the boat. But, more boat rocking and real opinions are what this world needs.
FTW (for the win). Just annoying. Not to mention uber geeky.
That’s what she said. Ugh. I hate this one. It’s stupid and every time a guy says it I want to punch him.
Trust me, you will never catch me using any of the above three phrases. I only wish others would stop using them as well.
Who knew that more chocolate was sold in relation to Easter than Valentine’s Day? I guess that’s why everyone is always smiling. I searched high and low for funny Easter pictures or videos.
While I found a Peep Show:
And Easter Keesters:
Far and away my favorite is still the video I found last year which I am posting again for your viewing pleasure:
When I first heard about location based services, they creeped me out. Being a single woman with family 2,600 miles away, I’m usually overly cautious. Therefore, understandably, allowing my “friends” to know exactly where I was at any given time was a huge red flag.
BUT, then I got an iPhone. Finally, I’m starting to understand the beauty of location based services. For someone who has no sense of direction, iPhone’s Map feature is a godsend. Now, I don’t have to know where I am because my iPhone does
In terms of social networking and taking those interactions to immediate/unplanned real world settings, Loopt, Bright Kite and Tweetie are cool.
What does it mean for marketers? Well, I think this post starts to touch on it. It gives SMART marketers the ability to provide their customers with relevant, high value offers that, in theory, lead to faster and larger sales conversions. But, since 18% of today’s marketers don’t even target/track their email campaigns, I wonder how many will really hold fast to only sending high value offers and/or targeting them.
Unfortunately, I’m already seeing marketers simply think of the phone as just another marketing channel. The same offer from Target I get via email I also get via their SMS program. Same with Victoria Secret. Same with many of the hotels in Las Vegas. In fact, I usually get these SMS offers the SAME day I get the email offer.
What a shame. Couple desperate marketers with customers and a technology that aren’t quite there yet and I think we have a long way to go before any of us start receiving relevant SMS offers let alone ones that are immediate-location targeted.
Twitter’s been all a flutter over the new Sprint commercial that references, you guessed it, twitter. I finally watched it tonight, and… I LOVE it. It’s sharp, it has tons of random trivia (which I’m a total sucker for) and it’s funny.
On a side note, I’ve been hearing some interesting rumblings about 4G technologies. One of them launches in Vegas April 13ish and I’m excited to see how it will change the Vegas landscape, especially the landscape of the Strip.
It drives me bonkers when people skate around the ROI question, especially when it comes to Social Media.
If you’re leading your Company’s Social Media efforts and you haven’t put some sort of measurement in place, then shame on you. You can put an ROI to anything.
Supposedly, during the Marketing 2.0 Conference in Paris, when asked the ROI question about Social Media, Scott Monty said, “What’s the ROI of your e-mail account? What’s the ROI of putting your pants on in the morning”?
Yep, I get what his point was. Yep, I’m sure I’ve taken his point out of context. But, there’s an ROI to both of those things. The ROI of putting on pants in the morning? Well by golly, that would be my salary divided by the cost of the pants. Hell, you could even break down that ROI hourly.
The ROI of my email account? Well, that one’s slightly tougher. But, it would go something like: Cost of Outlook ($100) divided by how much time I saved from not having to see the person face to face or how many more “cold notes” I could make in an hour vs. cold calls. You get the point…
The next time you wonder about the ROI of Social Media, here’s some suggestions. I’m sure you’ve heard them before:
Decide why your Company wants/needs to use Social Media (i.e. Customer Service, Marketing, getting feedback, etc.)
Put a measurement to it. Hell, you can even put a daily measurement to every one of the above reasons.
Figure out what it costs (whether it be in time, money or something else) to do that some other way (i.e. staffing a Call Center).
Tonight, on Celebrity Apprentice, the task was to create a “viral video” for All Laundry Detergent. Surprise, surprise both videos sucked. In fact, the creative from every episode is lame, but that’s another story. However, unlike other episodes, two new “viral” videos were professionally created that better represented the All brand. These videos were then posted and for every time one video is sent to a friend, $0.50 is donated to charity.
The great part? All used YouTube to stream the videos. What does that mean? You can see exactly how many views each video got aka you can see:
How many people who watched Celebrity Apprentice were paying attention, were by a computer and were intrigued enough to immediately act on the Call to Action (go to www.all-laundry.com for a $2 coupon and to view the new videos).
As of 11:59pm PST Sunday night, the two videos had combined views of 711. According to Nielsen Ratings, approximately 900,028 people tuned into the show and it had an 18% share of the audience. In internet marketing speak? The Call to Action had a 0.08% success rate.
Hmmm… makes you think. By itself, 711 views in four hours is semi-impressive. But, a 0.08% CTR is underwhelming. It’s also the same as a CTR from most online display banners or tweets. And, it was a helluva lot more expensive. Here’s a great example. Threadless gave away $200 in gift cards on twitter. In less than two hours, almost 1,500 people retweeted the message. They have 200,000 followers. The CTR? 0.75%. Hmmm… while Twitter is niche, it (a) gives you access to brand advocates (b) is more immediate than TV and (c) is less expensive.
I’ve talked about sharing vs. searching before. While the above examples aren’t apples to apples in terms of call to action, etc., maybe sharing is also the new advertising.
PS – You can view the videos here. Both are 4+ minutes long and since I could only watch about 30 seconds of each, I refuse to post them here
I’m lazy, so to kick off April, here’s a few good links:
Casino Marketer. A blog that our Slot Director sent me (love it!). It’s fairly basic, Social Media 101, but if you’re in the Casino business, it’s worth a read.
If you do surveys for your company, the Voice of Vovici is great. They have lots of good tips for people just getting started and/or who aren’t really analytical people.
I stumbled upon Tippingpoint Labs while searching for agencies. I’ve enjoyed the blog and they update fairly often (sadly starting to see my favorite blogs update less and less). The odd part of the site? No client list and no portfolio. Ummm… while I like your blog, I’d like to see some real work.
SpyFu. I’m sure you’ve seen it before, but the site is very cool. It has lots of interesting data and fun tools.
If you were thinking of buying me a half birthday gift (April 21) I’m currently eyeing one of these or another one of these. I’m also on the search for new office toys. I think this will be one of them.
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