Is Klout becoming more useful?
Klout.com has been getting a lot of flack lately, with many blogs and bloggers saying that it is only as important as you want it to be. But has Klout’s latest move shed some light on their intentions of where they are wanting to take the platform?
In the early days of Klout, and indeed up until a few days ago, Klout seemed largely to be a measure of how much noise a person made online. There was a slight bonus as it let you know what the user was most vocal about and had a few metrics in place to measure how often conversations about certain topics were had as well as measuring how often messages were retweeted or shared, but largely the more you spoke, the higher your Klout score.
So what’s new?
Klout have started rolling out a new aspect to the much talked about platform. Now you can easily identify who is influential on a specific topic. This new dimension to Klout indicates that they are beginning to get to grips with some additional aspects of social marketing and online reputation management.
Essentially, now you can identify users of the popular platforms like Twitter, Facebook and Google+ who you should be following as they are influential on the topic that you are interested in.
Klout have called these new features “Topic Pages” and they allow you to also see content that has been shared frequently.
Essentially their measure of influence now has a purpose which goes a little further than just small bragging rights!
Whatever your opinion of Klout, I think that as The platform continues to develop, it is going to become one of the many platforms that “experts” are judged on when their peers as well as potential clients look at exactly how recognized their opinion really is; not to mention the potential for recruiters looking at finding that special new employee.
Context and Content within Social Media
I was at the Heavy Chef Session at Deloitte last night and I was privileged enough to listen to Rich Mulholland speak on the misnomer that is ‘Social Media’. What follows here is my interpretation of his talk, as well as a hypothesis of my own, and some problems that we may encounter in the future with this “social” world that we live in.
What went down!
Rich was talking about the lack of context int he social media world; about how there is a lot of content being generated about any topic that you can think of, but if you take a break from being online and interacting in social media networks like Rich did for a week you will quickly realise at least 2 things : (I am paraphrasing a bit here)
- You will not miss the conversation
- The conversation will not miss you
Now this epiphany is rather ground breaking; especially if you are lucky (read popular) enough to have a couple of hundred odd followers; these people that hang on your every word for a drip of wisdom to fall from your lips (erm… fingers)!
But there is the kicker! These followers don’t know you; they “know you”, but they don’t really know you. They follow you because you ,at some stage, had something of value to say and they were, at that moment, impressed enough to take action on what you said and clicked on the all powerful Follow Button!
Where am I going with this?
What this boils down to is context! There was context between what you were saying and what they were looking for. A correlation between a supply and a demand at that moment in time. Sadly though this was, in most cases, a fleeting meeting of minds, likes and dislikes. There is no relevant or credible reason as to why this person who follows you would now be interested in your choice of deserts, holiday destinations or advice on which car to buy. All that they will now be getting from you, when following you, is a lot of content that is not in the slightest bit relevant to you.
So does this mean that we should only follow people that we know really well and would have more than one small thing in common with?
No.
Our social media networks need to converge to give the world a holistic image of ourselves and not an image fragmented by space and time with different algorithms scratching and pasting together bits of info about us.
Perhaps the answer is not within social networking; but rather in context networking. A network that (borrowing from Richard again) underpins the wide range of networks we are currently a part of and gives us true value by showing us information from sources who know us for more than a fleeting second because we both happened to think an orange sofa was hideous!
Context is key and context is, for my money, the future of media – and not just the social kind!
Car Magazine tries out Augmented Reality
In an incredibly welcome bold and adventurous move; Car Magazine have started experimenting with the concept of Augmented Reality! This is excellent news for consumers and even for the ailing offline media industry who have been hit considerably hard by the recent recession.
Even though their foray into augmented reality is a small one; it is the start that is going to set Car Magazine apart from the rest of the magazines that play in this space.
Recap on Augmented Reality
Augmented Reality is simply put; using the digital world to enhance the real world through the combination of the two. In other words you can use the camera on your smart phone or tablet; combined with specific augmented reality software to overlay an enhanced image of what you are looking at. So if you are looking at a car through your smart phone and your augmented reality software is geared to “read” the image; it can overlay additional information about the car such as engine size, kilo wattage, price etc.
How have Car Magazine done it?
Car Magazine have inlaid a reference image on the cover of their May edition of their magazine. This image when viewed through the Car Augmented Reality Webpage; with your computers web cam activated, will display a video. Once you have watched this video, you can close it. This will then allow you the opportunity to click on any of the other feature stories on the cover of the May Car Magazine.
The downside to all of this is that if you are not using 2x screens, you are going to have to juggle rather frustratingly between holding the magazine up to the camera and trying to see the screen. In fact, even if you are using 2x screens; let’s hope that you are ready to exercise some upper body strength as you need to keep the magazine up to the camera the entire time that you are trying to play with Car Magazine’s Augmented Reality.
What will this do for Car Magazine?
This will undoubtedly earn Car Magazine some “cool points” with their techno savvy readers and also push them ahead of the competition in terms of ensuring that they are giving their readers something new all the time.
Whether this will get them some additional long terms subscribers is yet to be seen; but seeing this level of integration between offline and online marketing is truly excellent news for their current subscribers and even better news for the greater marketing industry.
I look forward to seeing a lot more augmented reality features from a lot more offline media and cannot wait to see how they try to out do each other - which is inevitable!
Is Search Engine Optimisation becoming Search Optimisation?
This article really does contemplate a very interesting question about search. Is Search Engine Optimisation (SEO); the concept that an entire industry has been build on, primarily around the awe-inspiring Google; shifting gear and morphing in to Search Optimisation?
The hypothesis is quite simple. Where are people spending their time online and more importantly what are they doing while they are online and not using a search engine?!
For my money, the answer in short is that internet users are spending their time online using their social networks – the places they spend a lot of time – to search a few things :
- the product or service that they are looking to make use of.
- references from friends who have used the product or service that they need.
In short the power of search within social networks is only really beginning to be understood. These social influences are what drive people far more than what you can say on your website or blog.
According to Alexa the following sites have the most traffic in South Africa : 
- google.co.za
- facebook.com
- google.com
- youtube.com
- yahoo.com
- wikipedia.org
- twitter.com
- blogger.com
- gumtree.co.za
- news24.com
- linkedin.com
- bidorbuy.co.za
- standardbank.co.za
- fnb.co.za
- live.com
While Google is at the top of the list – which means that they are getting a the most of the traffic – there are sites like facebook, youtube, wikipedia, twitter and linkedin that are being highly visited and searched. In other words, here are the average search statistics for a number of networks :
- Google: 88 billion per month (this is ALL Google properties (youtube, Google web search, Google image search etc)
- Twitter: 19 billion per month
- Yahoo: 9.4 billion per month
- Bing: 4.1 billion per month
With 19 billion searches on Twitter every month; can you afford not to be found if someone is looking for information on a product or service that you are able to provide?
As I said in the beginning, this is very much just a hypothesis; but ultimately you cannot afford to put all your eggs in 1 basket.
Internet users are getting more and more savvy about where they are searching for what they need. If you are not positioning your company to be found online – yes that’s right – online; not just on Google; then I am afraid that the internet using public is going to pass you by.
Search engine optimisation is not dead… It is just evolving…
Social Media in the South African Local Government Elections
By the looks of things; some South African political parties are finally waking up to the digital revolution and are beginning to embrace online marketing and its integration with offline media. From having a functional website, through to using social media like Twitter and Facebook – the times they are changing!
Of course as with everything; there needs to be a balance and there needs to be integration between everything that is being done offline and everything that is being done online. Added to this in politics is the fact that different parties are trying to attract different sections of the market so we cannot look at their marketing strategies and assume that they are both targeting the voting public. So let’s look at arguably 1 of biggest horses in the Local Government Elections, 2011: The Democratic Alliance and their entrenchment with new media.
Website.
The DA website has a decidedly Barack Obama feel to it; especially compared to when he was running his last electoral campaign.
The site is light and dynamic; it invites you to interact and most importantly it highlights the critical campaign messages of the DA :
- Donate to help the campaign
- stamp out corruption
- build the country together without discrimination.
Social Media.
Helen Zille has thrown herself into social media and opened herself and The DA up to the public. Allowing the public to interact, to ask questions and to most importantly voice their opinions. This social approach has definitely done the DA good as they have ensured that their campaign messages have been heard by a very important voting demographic : The Young South African!
These social media users are literally the future of the country and it is a very strategic and brilliant move; in my opinion; that The DA have realised that this is where the elections will be won or lost.
There are a number of DA Twitter profiles and personalities who are taking advantage of the media. There are Twitter profiles such as : DA News; DA_SA; votetowin and DA_parliament. Each of these profiles is pushing out information relevant to either the local elections; what impact the DA is having in government as well as general party news.
Engagement is the name of the game in politics and social media is the perfect medium to completely engage with an audience in a way which has very quickly become second nature to young South Africans.
From Facebook to Twitter and from Flickr to YouTube; the Democratic Alliance has ensured that they have not left any popular social media platform unattended.
Integration.
Online marketing and by extension social media are merely one channel of communication though and it is the integration between each of these channels which truly makes for a powerful campaign. once again the Democratic Alliance has echoed the last Obama campaign and has ensured that the offline voter has been catered for as well by using TV, radio, print and outdoor media to adequately enforce and repeat the major campaign messages.
Good luck to all the political parties on voting day! But most importantly; good luck to South Africa! Remember, you can’t moan, comment or pass judgement unless you do your part and vote!
IMCC : Integrated Marketing Communication Conference
The Integrated Marketing Communications Conference is coming to Johannesburg in June of this year (6 – 7 June, 2011). This is the second time the conference is being held and the first time it is coming to Johannesburg.
What’s it all about?
The general thrust of the IMCC is to get industry experts to share their knowledge around integrating marketing communication and why this is important. These top speakers will be sharing their thoughts and ideas of marketing for the upcoming years as well.
The speakers include : Heidi Brauer; Isis Nyong’o; Walter Pike and Ben Wagner as well as a few mystery speakers from international companies marketing departments.
The conference will not only have the run of the mill conference format (speakers present and the masses listen) there are also workshops and a keynote panel discussion.
The workshops are there to ensure that you delegates get the most out of the conference and up close exposure to marketing experts; ensuring that you can ask the pertinent questions and get expert answers.
I will be writing more on the IMCC 2011 as we get closer to the date; and I will also be live blogging from the conference itself.
To keep up to date on what is going on; you can follow me on Twitter
Advertising; Augmented Reality and the future!
I dove into the world of augmented reality today for the first time; and to tell you the truth I basically only just scratched the surface!
First, augmented reality refers to a display in which simulated imagery, graphics, or symbology is superimposed on a view of the surrounding environment.
Augmented reality really allows you to experience a literal new dimension to the world around you. This technology simply put allows the camera, gps and a layer of software on your device to function as one. It pulls all these resources together to work out exactly :
1. Where you are.
2. what you are looking at.
3. What information has been attributed to whatever you are looking at.
In the example image above the user of the phone is looking at buying a new house. They simply look at the houses in the area that are shown to be available and the software interface does the rest by flagging the pertinent info and showing the user the detail relevant to the house they are looking at.
Advertising alert!
This opens many millions of doors to advertisers both online and offline! Magazine adverts can have augmented reality features built in so that the adverts “come alive” when you move your phone or media consumption device (trying really hard not to say iPad – D’oh!) over the advert additional info can be displayed.
Billboard advertising can really begin to flourish and the “3D” advertising we have at the moment (thank you Eno’s 3D billboard) will soon be a thing of the past and look like amateurish outdoor advertising. With augmented reality, the billboards will again be able to live and move.
As dangerous as it sounds, image having the windscreen of your car acting as the platform on which these additional bits of info were displayed. No longer will you have to squint your eyes to see the tiny GPS screen; now your entire windscreen IS the gps (I should patent that if its not already taken!).
The reality (augmented or otherwise) is that every media device being launched at the moment already houses some augmented reality software and with developers launching AR (augmented reality) apps every day; the future is here already. The device houses that don’t keep up with this digital trend are going to lose market share and are going to find themselves scrambling to keep up.
Mixed Reality.
For the moment there is still mixed reality; the tiny little stepping stone that might get completely forgotten. It’s the bridge where you can still use your hand held device to look at an image and then translate that image into a online experience.
An example of this is the 2D barcode 
(if you are using a BlackBerry, you can use BeeTag which is available in App World). When you scan this image with your phone, BeeTag then reads this info and pushes you to the website destination.
When this becomes mainstream; as many people still don’t use this either as marketers or as consumers; augmented reality will be hot on its heels and ready to blow us all away from advertising to the way we experience the world in general!
Landing Page Optimisation : physical shops understand the concept
Landing Page Optimisation and indeed Website Optimisation make up what I believe is the most misunderstood and ignored part of online marketing to date.
What is Landing Page Optimisation?
It’s the process of ensuring that your specific landing pages convert as many visitors into customers as is possible. Landing Page Optimisation involves taking layouts, colours, calls-to-action and various other elements and testing how best these elements work together.
Officially it is defined as :
Landing page optimization (LPO) is one part of a broader Internet marketing process called conversion optimization, with the goal of improving the percentage of visitors to the website that become sales leads and customers. A landing page is a webpage that is displayed when a potential customer clicks an advertisement or a search engine result link. This webpage typically displays content that is a relevant extension of the advertisement or link. LPO aims to provide page content and appearance that makes the webpage more appealing to target audiences.
What’s not to understand?
Both web designers and clients (bless their cotton socks) are guilty of this. They believe that they know the audience and therefore the layout better than anybody else does. However when it comes to Landing Page Optimisation, there is no 100% correct answer. There are so many subtle variances that can be (and should be) tested, that theoretically you can never get to the perfect page.
Putting it in context.
Simply put; think of your landing page like a physical shop. Shops test their layouts all the time. They are always moving things around to ensure that they are getting the products they want to push in your face as quickly as possible. You walk through the entrance and immediately in front of you as clear as day, is a big display with the weekly specials on.
The important take out there is that the specials are large, in your face and very compelling. Just like they should be on your landing pages.
Another lesson to learn from physical shops is that everything is categorised. Things are easy to find. You don’t walk into the tinned food goods isle and find yoghurts. It’s just not done. The same things should be said about your landing page. Don’t over complicate it by adding in additional items that are on offer. Keep it simple and keep it focussed.
Lessons Learnt.
The basic take outs from this are that :
- Testing is good. Continually test layouts to ensure that you are converting as many visitors as possible.
- Test everythign within reason on your landing pages.
- Don’t complicate the issue. Keep it simple and focussed.
- Don’t make your visitors think about what you want them to do on the page.
Marketing Strategy is like solving a Rubik’s Cube
This is rather a weird thing to say when you look at it at face value. But the metaphor is really actually quite beautiful when you dig a little deeper in to it.
When trying to solve a Rubik’s cube, you cannot just look at the move you are about to make in isolation, but rather you need to be living a few moves in to the future and make sure that you know how each move affects the other blocks on the cube.
The same can be said about marketing strategy. Each and every marketing decision you make has a ripple on affect that can go in a few different directions. As a marketing strategist or a marketing planner you need to keep these possibilities at the very forefront of all your decision making.
Marketing connects everything!
The ripples that your marketing can make do not only change the way in which clients can interact with you, but they also change the way in which different departments within your business behave as well.
This means that if you are running a marketing campaign on a certain widget that your business makes then in your planning you need to be sure that you looked at :
- Can you supply if the demand picks up?
- Is there enough staff to process the orders?
- Can you meet the delivery times promised?
- Is the widget actually profitable at the marketed price if the uptake is low?
These are just some of the very simple questions that marketing strategists need to ask and again this is because everything that marketing does is connected to everything else.
Planning for success.
Back to the analogy.
The business goal is to solve the Rubik’s Cube. To have every colour neatly on its own side of the cube. The marketing strategy is getting the individual squares to play with and move where you need them to.
Careful thought and planning of your marketing initiatives is critical. But more important than how cool your marketing looks; is it moving you closer to your business objective of solving the Rubik’s Cube?
Planet Fitness : Not Making Friends or Winning Members
My usual disclaimer when starting a controversial post. This article is a real rant about the last few communications that I have received from Planet Fitness. I want to illustrate how business operations can greatly affect your marketing campaign and leave you with little control over the backlash is to follow.
Setting The Scene
Around 2 weeks ago, I received an email from Discovery letting me know what my monthly rates for Planet Fitness would be for 2011. That’s where my first inkling of annoyance started. I am on Discovery as a medical aid primarily because of the fact that Vitality allows me to – for a minimal monthly fee – be a member of the fine fitness institution that is Planet Fitness. There was no talk, when I joined up, about additional monthly fees.
To further my love for Planet Fitness, I then received a further sms, from Planet Fitness themselves this time, letting me know that my bank account would be double debited on the first of December for my membership fees.
(Cue the boiling blood…)
Now a few questions sprang to mind at this point :
- What on Earth is going on with Planet Fitness and Discovery’s relationship!?
- How dare Discovery pass my banking details across to Planet Fitness?!
- Where can I find a new gym?
Luckily I went to gym that afternoon and joined the picketing masses at the front desk demanding to know what on Earth was going on. We were curtly told that, “these messages were not meant for you, delete them and move on.”
Which I did. Ready to put this whole tirade behind me. But then….
The plot thickened…
This morning I received the following sms from Planet Fitness :
“Due to SA power demands, Planet Fitness will reduce our operating hours from 1 Jan 2011. We will nolonger be open 24 hours. Contact your club for details.”
The thing that really irks me is that Planet Fitness must think that I am stupid. Don’t lie to me and pretend that you are closing early to reduce the load on the Eskom power supply within the country. You are closing early because you are not making money between 02:00 and 04:30!
Let’s look at the damage.
From the beginning Discovery and Planet Fitness have been guilty of database mismanagement. They should have segmented their database enough to realise who on their database was a Vitality member and then NOT send the fees messages to them. Both of these messages have left bad tastes in their members mouths. Couple to this the fact that the Planet Fitness level of service delivery has dropped significantly (my opinion) over the last few months and you have a lot of members not loving Planet Fitness.
On another level, with Planet Fitness choosing to cut their operating times, they are losing what I deem as being one of their biggest differentiators. Now their offering does not differ significantly to Virgin Active.
In my opinion, Planet Fitness now have a huge mountain to climb to re-elevate their brand. They would need to start managing their online reputation. Second to that they need to evaluate what it is that they are bringing to their target market that makes it different from their competitors.
Let’s hope they don’t choose a wannabe comedian to be their spokesperson though…
