As you may know, I am going to cover Ad:Tech San Francisco.
They are asking all the bloggers attending to answer some questions and I think many of my readers will find both the questions and even my answers of interest. I'm going to summarize some of the questions as they were a bit long.
1. New Tech Tools: New tech tools like Twitter and Seesmic are making major changes in how people communicate on a personal level and are expected to do so like so many other next gen technologies that make it easy to shoot short text messages or videos in easily digestible forms. Have you joined the Twitter brigade? If so what's been the main benefit? If not, what do you need to know to make a decision whether to join the club
2. Business Faces Facebook: Are platforms like Facebook good as internal applications to help run a company? Once you strip the platform of silly apps, some top execs are coming around to the idea that it's better than sales force or outlook-based tools given the friendlier interface for as it relates to events, identifying groups, business content and ways to chat with their customers. Do you agree?
3. SEO & Blogging: A majority of purchasers use the internet for research before a purchase is made. Blogging gives a company a lot of content containing a lot of keywords, and, with a lot of incoming and outbound links, that's SEO gold. Will this trend continue in an evolutionary process or do you think it will be leapfrogged by another format which will increase a shopper's research patterns?
Image Source: See-ming Lee 李思明 SML
The ultimate answer to most of the above is nothing I need ponder or write. Paul Isakson and David Armano have done that for us this very morning.
I stayed home today because I was still under the weather from being sick this weekend. At around 11, I managed to make my way to my computer with a cup of some steaming foul "flu" tea. I was working through a never ending backlog of email when a tweet appeared, hovering in the air for 30 seconds before disappearing. A tweet is a message from someone I have chosen to follow on the twitter service.
I've highlighted the tweet from David in the screenshot below. Click to enlarge.
David is telling all of the people that follow him on twitter of something amazing he had just seen on Slideshare from Paul Isakson. Slideshare is a tool for sharing presentations digitally. You can upload powerpoints and then embed them on blogs or other social media spaces. Paul had done just that. He had uploaded his latest presentation on "What's Next in Marketing and Advertising."
So I clicked through and watched his presentation. I've embedded the presentation below. For those of you who enjoyed "The Brand Gap", you are in for a treat.
Let's review those questions, just to pound the message home.
1. Twitter is overrated, sure. I'm on record calling it "instant messaging for 40 year olds" as it lacks granularity of control over segmenting your "followers". But like any service in this space, it's value is in three thigns: the scale of the network using the service (how many people in the world), who is in your personal network, and how these "friends" in your personal network use the tool. To not participate is to ensure you are even further out of touch in 2-3 years when there is a more complex series of tools that allow you to control and manage your social connections to a finer degree.
2. Facebook as an internal tool for companies. No, I don't agree. It's not about using any technology. It's about creating value for our customers. It's about content and services that provide utility in their lives. "The conversation age" is more than just communicating with people - it is a metaphor for two parties each taking value from a situation, each providing input and currency back to the other in different forms. If using facebook by your company brings value to both parties, then go for it.
3. Search Engine Optimization and blogging. There are a number of convoluted questions embedded in this one and I'm unsure how familiar everyone is with all the issues involved. Search Engine Optimization is generally a hoax. There are a few firms that do a reputable job, but most just charge outrageous sums of money and build fake pages with lots of links back to your site. This answer also comes back to utility and value. If we create something of value to our audiences, there will be links aplenty. Not from jus blogs, but from everything our audience has access to: journals, chat rooms, bulletin boards, blogs, twitters, SMS messages, etc.




I can't help but recall the early days of the web. My firm was called in to many a boardroom and it was always the same question, "So, this web thing, is it just a fad?" And sure enough, every example we showed was questioned. I was a geek caught up in my techno-futuristic dreams and this web thing would surely not apply nor impact the company in question or their industry.







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