The event was hosted by the Boston Globe’s Scott Kirsner (who kindly linked to our footage at his InnoEco blog) the evening was composed of two panels, a panel of venture capitalists (in the above video), and a panel of area entrepreneurs (in the below video). We found the most remarkable moment was in the unofficial vote of the panelists and audience members in the above video that showed a nearly unanimous feeling of optimism for technology ventures in the Boston area.
Check out the videos and let us know what you think.
Above is the video I shot at the 140 Characters Conference (#140conf) in New York City yesterday. Recording artist Wyclef Jean has only been using Twitter for about 3 months but has received tremendous value from it – not just because of the PR he can immediately generate but also because he is using feedback from his followers to help write songs as well as launch his non-profit, Yele Haiti.
He is also using Twitter to make a spiritual connection (see the “Sunday Twittering” segment) as well as provide comedy relief (see the very off-color “Hector Story” segment). While it’s absolutely true that Wyclef Jean already has a huge following in the non-Twitter world, thus making it fairly easy to develop a large list of followers on Twitter, he’s using the tool in ways that are beyond self-promotion and that’s the most important thing to remember about Twitter: it’s not really a separate world, news source, or social environment that you have to adapt your life around – Twitter is a tool for you to leverage for your own life, your own business. Don’t be intimidated by it, commit only what you want to, but get involved.
While covering the 2009 TV Land Awards at the Gibson Amphitheatre for LAist, I had the chance to talk to Jeff Probst, the host and producer of CBS’ “Survivor”. Probst blogs about “Survivor” for Entertainment Weekly and is keenly aware of the influence of the internet, blogging, and social media, on TV programming. He is very aware of, but has not yet, opened a Twitter account – we urged him to do it!
Probst is a great example of someone in “old” media who perceives value in social networks and the web instead of viewing it suspiciously as a threat. Even in this brief conversation, he understands that there are currently limits on what he can do with the feedback but he’s willing to do more and try more things.
About a month ago I had a several hour meeting with sales guys from a software magazine that we’ve advertised in. These guys have heard of Twitter yet they hadn’t looked at it, much less used it, but they are media reps – their existences hinge upon communication and dissemination of information.
I was pleaesed that after the meeting, one of the two fellows created a Twitter account, and has twittered – perhaps 3 or 4 times. What is even more frustrating is that they didn’t create a Twitter account for the magazine – they aren’t rebroadcasting their content, the content they want me to support with my advertising dollars. The content that my ad will run next to.
Fail.
Every media/marketing/communications professional needs to be on Twitter. They don’t need to be on Twitter all day every day, but they need to be there. Any print property, if they have a shred of hope to sustain themselves, needs to have a Twitter account and they need to establish themselves, on Twitter, as experts in their area. They need to be accessible and to make their content accessible via Twitter – or they might as well hang up their hats and move on.
It sounds dire but it’s just common sense, get with the program.
A question to ask here is: when is the last time you attended or even heard about a such an open, accessible, and informal meeting with representatives from a company as large, pervasive (as in embedded/utilized/available/etc.), and important as Google? These folks from Google, execs and evangelists, engineers and public affairs managers, wanted to meet with actual users of their professional systems. This is a company that operates under a microscope, with no end of analysis and press coverage, who decided to go around these sources of broadcast information to interact with real people.
This was not a focus group or some kind of measured and cross-referenced experiment. This was an environment to have interesting and relaxed conversations, to hear frustrations, suggestions, and praise. This was an environment for no-pressure networking between people, local and out-of-town, Google and non-Google.
I have a hope that Google will be able to pull off these kinds of meetings across the country, and hopefully even back in Boston. Due to Google’s extreme popularity, I think that this might be difficult unless they are prepared to put a cap on the number of attendees. I personally couldn’t believe that the event was for real and that I managed to get in. I know that many people who attended this event are eager for the next one and would sign up for it as soon as they hear about it. Count me in – I can’t wait for it to happen.
I also have a hope that other companies would follow Google’s example and provide this kind of access, it’s in their own best interests, it’s proof of availability, and it’s proof of goodwill.
Another great WebInno Group meetup that I covered for Bostonist. I was a bit alarmed that the next one isn’t until summer as these are getting even farther apart. I would suggest that they put a limit on reservations and enforce them. Get my full story at Bostonist.
It seems like a million years ago but back in December I did a presentation about web analytics for members of a local technology collaborative. One of the members of the audience was Diane Sabato, a professor in the business school at Springfield Technical Community College. Diane is also very involved with STCC’s Entrepreneurial Institute and has tailored one of her classes so that groups of students team up to help real businesses establish online lead generation using Google AdWords. This was the first time I went onto the old Springfield Armory part of the campus – what great history and what wonderful architecture, I can’t wait to go back and get a tour.
Knowing from my presentation that, as VP of Marketing, I manage several Google AdWord campaigns for Atalasoft, Diane asked me to speak to her class to give them an overview of the platform so this last Tuesday night I dropped by and ended up spending the evening with her class discussing mainly AdWords but also digressing into web analytics, and even Twitter.
I had prepared an outline (below) that was to cover about an hour of Google AdWords basics, but questions from her class led to us creating an actual campaign from scratch as well as answering business-specific lead generation strategies for their clients. The majority of her students asked questions, some of them asked several. I think the informal tone went well and I saw only a couple heads nodding by the end of the 3 hours that we spent together, and I don’t blame them. I can’t thank Diane and her class enough for their time, their patience, and their incredibly focused questions. [If any of the class reads this post, please feel free to email me with follow-up questions: tomdog "AT" gmail.com]
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- What are AdWords? AdWords are for Lead Generation – they aren’t really a part of the Traditional Advertising Mix. Your ads will only be presented to those who are looking for the specific keywords you are targeting. The size and format of the ads prevent any real branding.
- Are there other adwords options? Why go with Google AdWords? Google gets 58.9% of all search queries worldwide, they are distantly followed by Yahoo! at 22% and then MSN at 9%. Take care of the majority of search first – everybody is pressed for time, if you have the bandwidth to take care of these other lead generation venues, their priority is secondary.
- How can you connect AdWords to your business? You will be compiling lists of words that should be core to business. These are terms that shold be integral to the business and its customers.
- We’ve heard the term: Customer Centric. The premise of AdWords is as customer-centric as it gets because it is the customer who is in control, it is the customer who will be typing the words, as they perceive them, about their needs, as they perceive them.
- AdWords force you to think about the customer. Who are these potential customers? Where are they geographically/socially/domographically? How do these prospects talk about themselves, their needs, and the products/services they are interested in? Where do they hang out online? You will have to create customer profiles and customer roles.
- How to get started with Google AdWords:
Don’t be intimidated
You are in control
There is nothing that you can do that is “wrong”
You won’t spend any of your budget until you are ready to
The sooner you open up the interface and start a “fake” campaign, the better
- Start a New Campaign
- Placements vs. Keywords (Content vs. Search) = Do not do placements as a preliminary project
- Start With Keywords
- Choose via language (English I am assuming)
- Choose via location: you will be in better shape if you can do some geo-targetting of your campaign(s)
-Create an Ad:
Headline (25 char)
Description Line 1 (35 char)
Description Line 2 (35 char)
Display URL (35 char)
Destination URL (1024 char)
- Keyword Input (you will need to work closely with your clients to get their keyword list, this is their homework):
Put in your list and pay attention to the “suggested keywords” that appear in the right column
Add the appropriate “suggested keywords”
Pay attention to and review Match Types:
keyword = broad match
“keyword” = match exact phrase
[keyword] = match exact term only
-keyword = don’t match this term
- Hopefully the URL your ad links to will have some kind of action or goal on it: Product/Service Page, Newsletter Sign Up Page – you and your customer/client will need to find some way to measure the success of your ads [As you get more sophisticated, web analytics with conversion measurement should be employed]
- Don’t be intimidated. Just get started. Read as much as you can about the basics. Ask questions.
I December I did a presentation about using web analytics for organization success. The presentation ended up being about 90 minutes long, about 1/2 hour longer than I wanted to but as I do these more often I know I’ll trim the content down to what matters and figure out how to communicate on fewer points more effectively.
I had been trying to do more straightforward and inspiring presentations throughout the year, mainly presenting my analytics findings as well as the performance of blog content created by our engineering staff. I think I did pretty well on those but those were much shorter in lenght, around 25 minutes maximum. To adopt a new attitude about presentations I read Garr Reynolds’ excellent book, “Presentation Zen”, which I hightly recommend to anyone in business. “Presentation Zen” is not just about presentations, it illustrates a philosphy towards information, sharing, transparency, and maybe even, life.
After reading “Presentation Zen” I was really on a roll so I decided to read Nancy Duarte’s“slide:ology”. Duarte is best known for her work in helping create Al Gore’s “Inconvenient Truth” presentation. “slide:ology” is beautifully put together – great use of empty space, nice colors and typeface, but it is a huge project to read this book. The problem I had with “slide:ology” is that it tries to do everything:from technical particulars of slide design to color palettes and texture options, from a primer on font and typeface design to animation. Each of those topics deserve their own books so I felt that “slide:ology” doled out enough information to make you dangerous but not effective. The simplicity of Reynolds’ approach vs. the noise and volume of “slide:ology” made my favorite very obvious.
This post isn’t meant to bash Duarte, I’m sure there a lot of people who have enjoyed this book very much, but in retrospect I should have taken what I learned from Reynolds and ran with that. Reading more took away focus from devoting the time my presentation needed. The first 1/2 of my presentation was great but I just ran out of time and ended up with more text on my slides than I wanted which meant I spent more time talking about each slide which slows everything down and can get boring. When I gave the presentation and found myself in that situation I cut back on what I said and asked if I could go on unless there were questions, this kept the pace going a bit better.
When doing a presentation there is a degree of paranoia and there is a lot of self-criticism after the event so I’m probably harsher than necessary. I think it went well and I can’t wait to do another one. I gave the presentation to the Pioneer Valley Regional Technology Corporation on December 5th at the Springfield Technical College. When the presentation was over, a representative from Springfield Tech asked if I could expand the presentation into a daylong or multiday course and I’m developing it to that end now. I’ll post more as I find out where it’s going. If you have any recommendations on developing coursework, I’d love to hear them.
For a while I had checked out the desktop-based analytics machine, Tableau, which is very capable, highly technical, and most likely overkill for my needs and the needs of most marketing managers who are interested in new views of their Google Analytics data. Google is now releasing customized report making and custom segmenation capabilities that are very similar to what Tableau provides but now you don’t have to export your data to Tableau and massage it there. I’m not saying that GA is now as powerful as Tableau, I’m saying that GA has dumbed-down enough reports that are available in Tableau so that I don’t have to purchase and learn how to use that system (yet).
Let’s be clear though and remember that other than some online tutorials, your experience with GA is essentially on-your-own whereas Tableau has entire support teams, guided coursework, and other resources available to you. If you have questions, you can actually call someone up and get help – this is a huge advantage and it very much keeps Tableau in the game and at the top of my list if/when I can get the budget and time to invest in that system. In the meantime, I very excited to try out what Google has to offer in this latest round of upgrades.