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Panel description: “Based on a similar motivation, two research-based communities Ytribes and Millennial Marketing ‘Super Consumer’ Community launched early in 2010. Both communities were built around gathering research and insights on the Millennial generation. Each community utilized open source platforms (Kickapps and Ning) to house the environment and facilitate engagement. The end goal of gathering qualitative research from consumers and turning the content into valuable and actionable material is shared by both communities. The approaches however, were very different. This panel will explore the purpose, ideation, success, failures, results and implications not only of developing a research-based community but also maintaining and monetizing such a project. From gaining Sr. Management buy-in to selling through to a client, we will discuss what we learned, what worked and what didn’t. “

That being said - I decided to take my knowledge of Digital Marketing and place it into a similar format; except each page has a distinct and incredibly clear takeaway. It’s a culmination of the basics of how to survive, understand and thrive using Digital as a marketing tool.

It’s called the Tao of Digital - meaning The Way of Digital. Digital Marketing is often seen as a communicated complexly as it is a complex subject matter. Utilizing the format and metaphorical writing styles of Lao Tze, I’ve crafted a useful survival guide that’s good for the beginner all the way to the experienced professional.

Sure, there’s some opinion in there, but the book is mostly logic. It’s also meant to be a bit tongue in cheek, and slightly ridiculous at times. I make comparisons to everyday things in order to draw connections to how you should think about each aspect of digital.

Topics covered include: websites, branding, media, SEO, SEM, social marketing, user experience and more.

Here’s a short preview:

Get the book FREE until August 15th:

DOWNLOAD TAO OF DIGITAL

However, a month later, I moved in and the service had not been transferred. Blast.

I called the service center - 20 minute wait time. 20 minutes is an incredibly long time to wait on hold - especially during a work day that revolves around being in three places at once.

So I turned to Twitter to see if that would help. I found CLP on Twitter fairly quickly, but I noticed they only had a tweet or two - not so promising. However, I also noticed that the tweets had been made in the last week - good news!

I followed them and then @ tweeted them. I received a DM back within a few hours asking me to call their customer service line… Lame. So I replied back telling whoever was tweeting about my issue - both with wait times and with my service. A few hours went by, then I got a voicemail on my iPhone from a CLP rep. She says she was calling in response to my tweet! She mentioned that she fixed my account and left me her direct line as well!

Now if that isn’t serious customer service on Twitter, I don’t know what is.

Anyone else had any sweet tweet experiences with brands?

“13.9 Billion” was an art installation I did for Colere Libere, a monthly gallery show in Stamford, CT that highlights local artists. This particular piece highlighted the entire evolution of the universe and life on earth in relative scale on a timeline. Colored yarn went back and fourth on the ceiling 26 times and each inch of the timeline represented one million years. Found object sculptures were created and placed throughout the timeline at their respective times of occurrence to represent things like the big bang, and evolution of each of the stages of life on earth.

Say Time in this instance represents a year. What happens most of the time is that marketing budgets get dumped into three or four major activation campaigns throughout the year - predominately on a quarterly basis. This in turn, leads to big huge spikes in 1) online buzz 2) traffic to websites and 3) sales. However, its a short lived spike. These three elements often die down rather quickly and come to rest at a level just above where it was before the initiative was enacted until the next initiative kicks off. This methodology is pricey, and normally due to the complexity and magnitude of the projects requires longer lead times for execution. These longs lead times cause advertising efforts to be less responsive and less relevant which leads to having less than optimal impact.

Now consider a second option: take the same amount of marketing budget as option A (above) only roll out low-cost, high-frequency efforts throughout the year.

An activation strategy like the one pictured in graphic B demonstrates the possible outcome of a successfully executed high-frequency methodology. These campaign initiatives should be low-cost, have shorter lead times for execution, and be rolled out more often, say once a month. To clarify, I’m not talking blog posts or small content plays; I’m talking a small app here, a viral campaign there, a Facebook game integration thrown in there, and maybe a great event that’s being thrown that has some simple yet effective online integration as well… you get the point. Now, due to a smaller budget on a per-activation basis, it might prove difficult coming up with ideas to execute against that are cheap, easy and effective. However, simplicity is the name of the game here. No big gigantic builds, no huge CGI video shoots that cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. Simple, clever, effective.

The flip side to this is “well, won’t each activation have less impact and reach a smaller number of people?”. The answer is yes. But there exist gains in word-of-mouth, relevancy, and top-of-mind-ness when implementing a strategy like this. Consumers won’t have time to forget your last big media push when you’re already coming at them with something new and cool in another few weeks. In addition, it allows brands to be highly agile - granting them the ability to respond to cultural memes, PR efforts, and current events at the drop of a hat while they’re still relevant to the consumer. This increase in relevancy leads to an increase in word-of-mouth and viral pass-along online and off.

The web is changing how people roll out content - all marketing efforts are is content. Albums are gone, singles can be released one per month over the course of a year. Why should campaigns be so different?

A big thank you goes out to DMNews; I am truly honored to be mentioned along side such well accomplished marketing professionals.

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Thanks to a handy code pack put together by seaofclouds I was able to crank out a sweet little project tonight that always tells you what the best thing ever currently is… in case you were wondering. The page updates automatically, so it’s always up-to-date.

Try it out: Send a tweet containing the phrase “the best thing ever” and then refresh this page. Magic.