Just a reminder that all Glass Explorers must:
Be US residents
Be at least 18 years old
Purchase Glass for $1,500 + tax within the US
Provide a US shipping address or pick up their Glass at one of our locations in New York, San Francisco or Los Angeles

If I get anymore folks to sign up, I'm thinking about starting a group where we can share what we're doing and learning thorough glass.

#GlassExplorer #GoogleGlass

In this interview from 2010 when I was at the ARF, I spoke with Samantha Skey about what was then emerging as the new marketing. Interestingly enough, many brands still don't understand how important customer engagement is today.

I post this today, because this conversation is still as relevant as it was the day that I conducted it. Watch, listen, learn.

Customer Engagement as the New Marketing from The ARF on Vimeo.

Related Content: Developing An Engagement Framework

OPPORTUNITIES

The Future of Shopping Becomes More Social
In this video, Cisco takes a look at the future of shopping. What is clearly evident from research and current trends, is that shopping is going to become more social. For example, say a customer “checks-in” to a store, and they receive recommendations of what they may like to purchase based on past purchasing behaviors or recommendations from friends in their network. Already with Bing, you can use Twitter and Facebook on the HTC HD2 smartphone to check if Bing shopping has given you the best prices.

In 2007, Facebook launched Beacon, a service that shared your purchases on several retail sites online with your friends within Facebook. With better opt-in and privacy measures than what Facebook offered, the opportunity is there for a partner to make such social shopping experiences exist on a mobile to digital display format. (Update: As we already know, Facebook became a crucial factor in building out the future of social shopping as brands like Levi's proved below. We already know from various studies that peer recommendations drive purchase intent and increase engagement with a brand. But how does this translate to digital signage?)

Location-Based Technologies To Play A Greater Role in Digital Signage
As can be seen in the LocaModa Foursquare example, the opportunity exists, again at store level for a rich interactive experience. Restaurants, retailers, and C-Stores can employ such technologies to publicly share who is checking in to their locations. This might go one step further, enabling customers to share with one another what theyʼre currently doing (as in purchasing or eating) at their location. A restaurant example might include uploading a photo of your meal with a message that can be displayed on a digital display and sent to your social networks to share with your friends.

Augmented Reality at Point-of-Sale Increases Engagement and Purchase
Behavior
An example such as Legoʼs Digital Box Kiosk uses Augmented Reality to show customers what they can do with Lego Technic. Itʼs an opportunity to see in 3D imaging, or as close to reality, how a product actually works and functions. Legos boxes also have AR built in with a QR code that can be held up to a Kiosk to activate an AR feature that displays a 3D model of the Lego kit inside. The opportunity exists to include social sharing of the AR experience, but also of mobile QR code features being added to the experience. Several mobile apps can already scan QR codes to provide consumers with more information and interactivity. (Update: While the QR code hasn't been as successful in the US as in some other countries, barcodes are capable of and more likely to be scanned.)

Revenue Models are Becoming More Attractive
Revenue models are increasingly changing as hardware prices per-screen continues to become less expensive. Overall, prices have deflated by approximately 30% over the past few years. This makes the ROI for digital signage much more attractive. Also, because of media convergence, economies of scale can be achieved, therefore making planning and purchase of DOOH much easier than ever before. With this in mind, integration costs are still high, yet since hardware costs are now a smaller fraction of the overall deployment costs this channel is still a valuable spend for advertisers.

Digital Signage Has Great Impact on Lift
Research has shown that digital signage communication has potential to lift product and service inquiries, as well as purchases and usage. This creates brand awareness as well as customer relationship management opportunities. There is an increased reach for a product or service with digital signage, and social media enables a higher level of engagement. Through social--texts, downloads, mobile browsing, sharing, voice-there is great potential to increase foot traffic to locations and web traffic to sites, also increasing in-person, web, and mobile purchases. Shopper behavior is greatly influenced by digital messaging, as outlined in the Out-of-Home Video Advertising Bureau guidelines, which provide results for measuring the size of an audience in a given space. Nielsen research further supports that digital signage changes consumer behaviors. Social media and friend networks can be the driver of those changed behaviors as the trust level for friend recommendations outweighs the trust level for messaging coming directly from brands. The industry should also focus on increasing the ability to precisely target intended audiences.

Four Screen Cohesion
The opportunity for providing campaigns and context to the user experience that work fluently across the four screens --TV, Web, Mobile, Digital Signage -- is becoming a greater reality. As millennials increasingly become the target consumer for advertisers and venues, their socially connected lives will bring with them greater opportunity to provide deeper, richer, consumer experiences not only across the four screens but in a heavy integration of mobile, social, and digital signage.

Overall Opportunity for Mobile In the SM/Digital Signage Space
Mobile is the primary connector between social media and digital signage, providing the real glue to ensure delivery of real-time content and interaction. Partnerships with retailers, as well as social media digital signage operators and networks and brands will provide overwhelming opportunities in this space. Mobile brands also have the opportunity, as Nokia has shown, to push brand awareness and product launch messaging in novel ways. The tremendous opportunity for hyper-targeting, increases the interest in mobile (social networking and location-based) digital signage campaigns for advertisers.

CHALLENGES

The Digital Divide of Digital Signage
Agencies are allocating spending to DOOH, but they have yet to fully adopt or grasp the full capabilities of this marketing channelʼs potential. This should be a natural fit for a digital agency, especially as it regards the cohesive interplay of four screens into one campaign. Part of this misunderstanding for agencies is that the ROI is not fully understood. Another factor in the slow to speed digital agency adoption for digital signage is that there are always new networks cropping up. This makes it nearly impossible for agencies and marketers to fully understand and keep track of the media available to them or even to understand the benefits of what one network offers over another.

Measurement Standards Donʼt Exist
One of the primary challenges for digital signage are with measurement and creative unit standards. In 2010, network operators have begun to offer audited and accepted metrics, but again these are not standardized across the industry. Since metrics are not clearly defined, the industry-at-large is advocating for aggregators and aggregation models. Broadsign has released audited measurement results from Arbitron to enable advertisers to measure ROI. Together with SeeSaw, BroadSign is releasing an open API to enable the industry to collaborate on open standards for measurement of DOOH. The Out-of-Home Video Advertising Bureau has also issued guidelines to better understand the value of a DOOH audience to further address the challenges of calculating appropriate metrics within the industry.

AllSystems Arenʼt a Go
Many of the systems for DOOH are complicated and expensive. There are many different groups (players) involved in getting one Digital Signage deployment launched. In this regard, the opportunity for creating large, scalable campaigns is an overwhelming challenge because it is a complex landscape to traverse when it comes to networks. Also, there are myriad environmental considerations at play. Platforms that break down silos need to be created in order for scalable models to thrive in this space.

Technology Challenges
Mobile and DOOH integration isnʼt as easy as it seems, but together they will be the drivers of the interactive and customer engagement model of the Digital Signage industry. Another technological challenge is presented by the varying formats, files structures, and standards between systems, which creates a further technological gap. The major challenges in the tech area come in the form of aggregation and real-time delivery.

Digital Signage is Very Local
According to Adcentricity, 70% of all network sales are from local sales efforts, driven by the network sales staff. Most networks have no national sales force, which translates into agencies and branbrands being unaware or uneducated on the value of DOOH offerings.

What About Those Legal Issues?
There are many issues when it comes to user generated content in the legal arena. Since there are rules for mobile carriers when it comes to mobile content, anyone serving SM DOOH campaigns should consider using systems that support filtering, moderation, and curation. Also mobile users must have full disclosure on messaging pricing, and it is suggested that there be no premium set for messaging to DOOH systems as pricing could prove to be a barrier to interactivity. Disclosure must also be met on the level of access to the user in terms of whether the operator will send further messaging to the user. This can get into murky waters with spamming issues (CAN SPAM Act). Further, attention must be paid to copyright, defamation, privacy rights, and public decency laws when it comes to UGC. Because of this, it is becoming expected that network operators, event planners, and messaging suppliers provide Professional Liability (Errors and Omissions) insurance, covering possible inappropriate content being displayed in public.

For more of what I learned, see the report yourself:

And if you're wondering whether there's still any relevance to this report, here's a recent factoid from Frost & Sullivan.

New research from Frost & Sullivan's Analysis of the Global Digital Signage Systems Market analysis finds the market earned revenue of $1.27 billion in 2012. This is estimated to reach $2.55 billion in 2018, driven by the emergence of turnkey digital signage solution providers across regions. The research includes a market overview, external challenges, market and technology trends, forecasts, market share and competitive analysis, hot company watchlist, in addition to breakdown analyses of digital signage displays, software and media players. The analysis also looks at various verticals, including retail, transportation, hospitality, corporate, education, government and others.

"When properly executed, in-store digital signage reinforces purchase behavior or creates the impulse to make incremental purchases, and are therefore rapidly gaining acceptance," saidFrost & Sullivan Digital Media Program Manager Aravindh Vanchesan. "Content can be highly targeted and, since the merchandise is close to the message, the call to action is clearly communicated to accomplish the desired objectives." (More)

There were things from my past...things I'd written in New Word or One World or Beat Down or and other now defunct independently owned magazines. Some interviews I conducted in the past and stories I'd written were photographed, and sent into the cloud -- Evernote, Google, Dropbox, and other such places we hope stay in business because what then will we do with all of our content and data? My nearly year's worth of tech writing on BlackPlanet, and writings from Africana, all nicely printed out because a lot of it was no longer out there in the ether, and much of it not even on the waybackmachine -- all made their way to a shredding machine. Shreds of paper. Shreds of words. Shreds of a former life. Shreds of self, or at least what I thought was self.

There were letters and poems to and from former lovers. There were endless writings, thoughts, doodles. Stops and starts at watercolors. Books started and unfinished. Spoken word recordings. Piles and piles of magazines. Some I'd written in. Some held for research. Some held just because they looked fly or were no longer in print. Just so much memorabilia, that at times I didn't even know how to classify or categorize things. And even with a storage room on lease, I knew I wasn't going to keep it all. I knew I couldn't keep it all.

So I started a rule. If I hadn't thought about it, looked at it or longed for it in the last 5 - 10 years, then perhaps it was time to part with it. Some books ended up in storage, and some did not. Some CDs ended up in storage, and some did not. Some cassette tapes made it into storage, and some did not. Those that didn't, are perhaps in a landfill now laid to rest as if at the end of their lives. A lot of clothes and out-of-date electronics made their way to the Salvation Army drop off. An ending for me, but a new beginning for someone else. Some furniture items made their way to Craigslist for a quick cash sale, while others stood solidly on the sidewalk until someone came along to cart them away.

Photographs though, were off limits. Whether from childhood or recent past, I was not going to part with photographs, even if they hadn't made it to photo albums or the cloud. The visual memories, deserved a place to be timeless and held dear. These things made it to storage. These things made it to that special place called forever.

A tinge of sadness welled up inside as I sorted through item, after item, after item. Yet as my past went slowly through my hands, I marveled at how it seemed that I had become a hoarder of sorts. That I was holding onto things as if there was some future to come in which these items would be important. And then, how could I come to terms with a past thrown in the trash, that was not trash? I reminded myself that I held all of these memories close and dear to my heart. I reminded myself that it's fortunate I have somewhat of a photographic memory -- so just by looking at the things I parted with, just by looking at them one last time, they would become forever etched in my brain computer and I could call them up from the catalogue that is my mind at any time. Sure my mind could go, as I get older, but no one could ever change my experiences. They would always be mine. A part of me.

There's so much more I could write and say about all of the pieces of me that were wrapped up in physical items, that moved with me from place to place to place all across Brooklyn. There's so much I could say about the move, about the past, about letting go, about learning to live in the present that I guess I'm just not ready to say. But what I do know is that I learned to let go of who I was, and who I thought I was, and all of these little perceptions I held about myself and what I thought should be happening right now in my life, and what I think I deserve and have a right to, so that I could slowly unveil and accept who I am becoming now and what is happening now.

Realizing now, that perhaps I was stuck in a definition of self that was created by things I had done, places I'd been, people I'd known, and not necessarily who I really am. It's not that my past didn't make me, it's just that the past isn't as important today as it was yesterday. Today is important today. What I do now, what I say now, who I be now, is what's important. I'm learning that in order to be, we must be bare. Pared down to the bare essentials in order to see reality. In order to see clearly. In order to be.

Before planning any communications strategy nowadays, it's very important to begin with true audience insights. While demographic data still proves useful in developing an overall strategy, it will be those rich, deep, and often even real-time insights that communications and marketing pros utilize to help their clients stick out from the pack and get heard in the never-ending sea of constant chatter. As consumers become more empowered by technological tools and social media platforms that enable them to insert themselves into the brand narrative and conversation, it is becoming increasingly important for brands to listen in.

Some brands are honing in on this fact. Dell launched its global command center as far back as 2010, as a means of monitoring the customer conversation and providing customer support globally through social media. What started out as brands simply monitoring conversations to track:

• sentiment
• share of voice
• conversation mapping
• volume/reach, and
• influencer and advocate identification;

quickly turned into brands and companies like Gatorade using the real-time data they gather to adjust and optimize marketing tactics and surprise and delight fans by giving them something extra, like free music or real-time interaction with athletes. Other companies utilize the listening data to help shape messaging, like MasterCard did with its command suite and the announcement of its MasterPass digital wallet at Mobile World Congress, after learning that early adopters were frustrated by their point-of-sale experiences and perceived lack of customer support and non-adopters cited security and confusion as core concerns. And then there's Nike, a company that in the past has used social media to drive sales conversions and even build new products with consumers as co-creators, just recently bringing its listening and community management in house in order to gain a deeper understanding of its consumers. While the activities of social analytics and monitoring going in-house with brands taking fuller control of how their insights are gathered and used is on the rise, it's definitely not the norm.

Social listening and the road it paves to big data is now a core marketing activity, and with all of that activity the CMO is destined to outpace the CTO/CIO on IT spend in the coming years.

Before taking the dive though, it's important for brands to have a clearer sense of:

• what are we listening for?
• who are we listening to?
• what is an insight?
• where does listening belong (how do we staff for listening)?
• how do we allocate resources to listening?
• where is the statistical rigor (what is the difference between social media monitoring and social research?)

Social listening is about so much more than simply knowing what's being said and being able to listen, act, and engage to develop an effective strategy, you must know who these people active in the conversation are. Sure, it sounds like a daunting and fruitless exercise, but it's important to know who is shaping the conversation. In order for social media monitoring to move from simply listening to developing actionable insights, brands need to start integrating other data sets and layering them with social to get a fuller picture of their intended audiences.

If a brand wants to know if their followers are actually their intended market, and that they people talking about them are who they really want to reach, they'll be some additional demographic mapping necessary to get to a deeper level of understanding. Going beyond demographics, the "like" is now the new intent. As the hub of a consumer's interest graph, "likes" "ReTweets" and anything similar on social platforms offers insights into people's brand affiliations, interests, and most talked about topics. Building apps and programs that leverage this type of data will offer brands deeper insights. The next level, where we get on the road to social intelligence, is integrating social data with customer and transactional data to make a better correlation between social media behaviors and actions. And finally, all business units must work together to bring all of this understanding together so that the business is deriving the most value from the customer data.

For a long time, I've held the belief that I couldn't be an entrepreneur because I don't have the basic skills to make that kind of thing work. I've long held the belief that I lack focus. I mean, not like an ADHD lack of focus, but more like trying to do too much at one time lack of focus. I mean trying to do too much at one time so that I'm not able to discern what's going to be more enriching either financially, spiritually, or otherwise.

And I've held onto these beliefs for eons.

Many years ago, when I worked in a bookstore, I once told a friend who I worked with that I really, really feared failure. He pondered what I said for a second and then asked, "How do you know you fear failure, and it's not really success that you fear?" Whoa! BOOM! I tucked this one away into my back pocket -- for eons.

So here's the deal. A few times in my life I've been laid off from FT gigs for a slew of reasons, but mostly having to do with budgets. And I'd say that each time this happens, I get committed to becoming an entrepreneur, a freelancer, a consultant. But that's only until some FT job offer comes along and I simply bow out. I'm in one of those phases of my life right now and there's a long list of reasons why a FT gig sounds better.

That's especially true when I pile up all of these reasons why I can't go it alone. "I'm not good at the biz dev part." "I need more structure in my day and in my life." And, yadda, yadda, yaa. But doesn't that sound like fear talking?

This past weekend, while watching Oprah's Lifeclass with Dr. Brenee Brown on vulnerability and daring greatly, it clicked: This lack of focus is really masked by a little something called fear. So instead of things working out, I make things hectic. I bring the chaos and the drama. So here's what I'm learning to do.

VALUE MY TIME: This is also called having a plan. There are but only so many hours in the day, and if you want to be successful at being productive on the things that matter (be they personal or professional) you've got to plan them out. Sure, you can be Zen about it and just live in the moment, but even living in the moment requires a plan. What is it that you're about to do in this moment? How will you be present if you don't know what it is you're doing?

LEARN TO SAY NO: Now this is a big one for me and it goes along really well with valuing my time. No one person can do everything. It's just completely impossible. People will understand if you have to say no, and if they don't, oh well. They will get over it. That goes for both the personal and the professional. Multi-tasking successfully is a myth, so if you can't learn to say no, you'll be drowning yourself in a list of to-dos that never get checked off and you'll never have any time for yourself.

DON'T SWEAT THE SMALL STUFF: And I'm sure you've heard this one a million times, but it's really true. That dialogue we start in our heads about why we can't do something, only creates a lack of focus. We start jumping from thing to thing without a plan, and unfortunately, without motivation. Trust me, I've been there.

Fear is that crazy thing that can make us do a pile up. A pile up of what ifs. And a pile up of things that we just won't ever get to. Don't worry if you don't answer all of your email or all of your voice mail. Choose a set amount of things to do each day. And focus on what's important. Use programs like RescueTime and TimeTracker to track how you spend your time. You'll be amazed when you see how much time you spend doing things that aren't a part of your plan. And then there's a slew of programs to help you block those distractions, once you figure out what they are. StayFocused and Concentrate work for Chrome. I settled for RescueTime, as a solution I could use on both my desktop and my phone, and track my time as well as block time-wasting sites.

And most important, stop fearing what people will think of you. And stop fearing that you're not choosing the right stuff to do. If you feel it in your gut, it's the right thing for you, right now.

The other side of the crazy fear is that it can make us stand completely still. Stillness is fine as it helps us to be mindful and clear out any misgivings. But when that stillness makes us completely immobile and unproductive for a length of time, well, it's a problem.

So do I fear success? Well, we can all learn a little something from failure couldn't we. We can learn to be successful from failure. Making mistakes teaches us how to do something right, or better. But it's about taking that risk and opening ourselves up to the possibilities of what's to come without judging ourselves or others in the process. So maybe there's more a fear of not believing that I'll get to success.

Do I suffer from a lack of focus? Certainly. But most of it can be attributed to fear. And well, I'm in recovery and already learning how to kick fear in the A.

And while I'm definitely not against taking a FT post again, I want to do it for all the right reasons. And I don't want any of those reasons to be that I was afraid to at least try going it on my own.

What do you fear?

I'm in also on the beta for Unibox, but can't use it because my current computer is only Mac 10.6.8 and I need to be on Mountain Lion 10.8. So, I haven't been able to actually test it. (Don't ask me why I haven't upgraded yet. Seriously, don't.)

Anyway, here's a video of what Mail Pilot for Mac can do:

Unibox looks prettier than Mail Pilot, and it seems to bring all of your messaging into one box (including social network messaging). That's helpful, and saves time from having to log into so many sites (and/or apps). Can't wait until these innovations in Mail come to the Android. Right now, the only innovative mail app I've seen on Android has been Boomerang. I tried that Beta for a while, but it had too many kinks at the time. But I am thinking about going back to it, since it's a lot lighter than Gmail and enables you to "Send Later" and schedule mail, and track responses.

What innovations have you seen in mail? What are you using on your phone or desktop and why does it work for you?

This book, The Decision Book: 50 Models For Strategic Thinking, seemed like just the right book I needed to take things to the next level in both my personal and professional lives. It immediately signaled to me that it fit right in there with Edward de Bono's Lateral Thinking: Creativity Step by Step and/or Dan Roam's The Back of The Napkin. All three together, fully understood, it would seem, could make one seriously poised for better articulating and selling ideas. At least that's what I'm hoping.

But as much as I knew I needed this book. I waited. And I waited. And, oh, I waited. The wait was a process of debating whether to get it in print or as a Kindle version. It felt like I needed it in print, to carry it around, to feel it and turn its pages, to mark it up, and to reference it wherever and whenever I wanted to. But I wanted it fast, and now, and I had already killed nearly a week trying to decide whether I should get the print or Kindle edition. Some books just have to be in print, and this felt like one of them. But unfortunately, I had no more time to waste. I got the Kindle version. I didn't have to wait any longer for it. I didn't have to pay shipping fees. And yes, I could still mark it up and refer to it wherever and whenever. (To tell the truth, I still want it in print.)

And this experience made me think deeply about the question in my headline: What Happened To Knowing More About A Person By The Books And Vinyl On Their Shelves?

I remember back in the days, you'd go visit someone at their house, and you'd look at their bookshelf and/or vinyl collection and you'd pretty much know who you were dealing with and whether you'd be compatible as friends (and in some cases as lovers or partners). But today I wonder, now that so many people have digital collections of everything, how we'll any longer have this ability to know a person's character by the music they listen to or books they read. I doubt we'll become a generation of people who look into other people's phones, iPads, or Kindles just to figure this sort of stuff out.

So while everyone wonders how people become more social or connected in this age of digital selves, I guess owning digital property vs physical property gives us a little more to talk about. It gives us a little more to expose (to those we deem worthy I guess.) Nowadays, people will only know what we're listening to or what we're reading if we tell them. If we share it on social media, or write about it on our blog, or talk about it in conversations. Long gone are the days of sizing someone up by staring at their bookshelf or vinyl collection or stack of magazines on the floor for hours and hours and comparing what you know or own to what they know or own. While it's an activity surely and (sorely) to be missed, it also opens up opportunities for newer and different kinds of experiences and connections. Are these experiences richer? Well, it really depends on how we approach them.

I guess some of the newer questions to ask folks nowadays are questions like: what's the most played genre (artists, song, album, etc.) on your phone or iPod? What were the last three books or magazines you downloaded? Or we can follow them and look at their last.fm charts, or follow their profiles on Spotify or Rdio or Soundcloud, or any other music service that allows folks to have a profile and be followed. And we can learn more about what they read by following them on Amazon Kindle or Goodreads. These are the new ways of looking at someone's vinyl or book shelf. These are just new and different ways of sizing someone one up and getting to know more about them. Somewhat different, and just a little bit the same.

When I got onto the project, didn't seem I had a lot of time left on the project to fully develop the types of plans it seemed the company was seeking. A 3-month project was sold in, for what the company needed, someone needed to spend a good 6-9 months (if not longer) on their business to really make an impact. Initially, I didn't let that worry me though. I knew that whatever work I was going to do, had to be grounded in a framework and had to consider other methods of digital communications the company utilized (so as to not simply focus on social, but to connect the dots instead).

So I started with a White Board (as I tend to do when I'm thinking problems through). Starting with the notion that the client wanted to ATTRACT, ENGAGE, and INSPIRE its intended audiences, I came up with this.

I didn't think it was simply necessary for the client to think about how they engage audiences, but more into how they think about inspiring audiences. Engaging me, means simply you have my attention, but if you inspire me, you might actually drive me to do something. So Inspiring content or experiences go beyond engaging ones because they motivate me.

But this didn't seem to be enough. How was the client going to fully arrive at their business goals? They wanted to bring in new business and close deals, and they wanted to get their employees involved in social media. And so, I took it a step further, thinking more clearly about the stages. ACQUIRE, ACTIVATE, ADVOCATE.

I then realized that the framework had to be an amalgam of the two. With the right framework in place, I could apply to any client social media or content marketing problem. And not just specifically in this case. So here's what I finally came up with.

Based on this premise: Social media starts with uncovering your audience(s)’s needs, responding to those needs in relevant channels with engaging content that inspires them and turns them into loyalists and advocates who spread your message, converting them into brand advocates and ultimately sales.

Monitor & listen to your existing audiences and communities (employees, media, influencers, etc.) to uncover their needs and where they are so that you can deliver the right content in the right places.

Engage your audiences by creating compelling targeted content (campaigns, contests, crowdsourcing) tailored to specific audiences on specific platforms and distribute through paid and social media, implementing a process for tagging and SEO to acquire the right audiences in the right channels.

Inspire the audience with content that is provocative, visionary, differentiated, relevant, timely, positions you as a thought leader, fulfils their needs, and has a narrative to drive them to action. Include call to actions to share content, sign up for newsletters, take surveys, etc.

Acknowledge your engaged and inspired audiences via rewards (both tangible and intangible) such as RTs, Mentions, adding to a leaderboard, enabling co-creation (video or text story sharing), sharing in social stories, etc. Empower audiences to spread your story and awareness about your brand so that you can acquire new audiences.

Measure & Learn by setting up dashboards to measure against KPIs, to find influencers, to monitor sentiment, generate leads, and evaluate your messaging and campaigns in case you have to reset the agenda.

This is where your management and optimization comes in. Every few months you need to do an audit, not just looking at your own efforts, but your competitors as well. Also see what your influencers are doing (be they media, customers, employees, etc.). This will all help in developing future and better strategies.

And the cycle repeats.

What do you think? Are there any phases/steps missing from this framework/process?

NEXT UP: An Approach To Digital Strategy

PREVIOUS: Digital Storytelling For Brands

Looking for new clients now

Currently working as a Content + Community Consultant developing digital and social marketing programs and campaigns, with a focus on INSIGHTS, STRATEGY, PLANNING & EXECUTION that help brands build engaging relationships with target audiences in order to reach their business goals. Services include:

- Social Media Audit(s) + Benchmarking and Recommendations
- Creative Concepting + Campaign Planning (Across Channels)
- Content Strategy and Development for Blogs and Micro-blogs
- Influencer Strategy + Identification + Outreach
- Competitive and Industry Analyses + Audience Profiling
- Social Media Education + Workshops
- Editorial Concepting + Planning + Development
- Writing + Editing (Reports, POVs, Briefs, White Papers, etc.)

And more.

Resume below...

I spoke more about an approach to digital storytelling, instead of exactly how to do it. Key points of focus of this presentation included what makes for a good story, what is the framework for developing a story, and understanding your brand. Flip through the deck to see the highlights, as well as the accompanying video of my talk below. (More on brand reputation and brand promise in "Developing Your Online Presence In Social Media," which should have been called "Developing Your Digital Brand.")

Here's the video of my talk that accompanies the deck above.

Overall, I'm not always as interested in the tactics as I am in the research and insights that go into developing the strategy. To me, that's the hardest part. For strategy, I start with 3 of the Ws, the who, the what, the why and the how and the when are all part of the tactical plan.

Brands and individuals looking to get their stories heard, must first start with understanding their audiences (their passions and their pain points -- and most importantly how they use technology and digital media). After making some inferences based on data and research, it's on to understanding why you want to tell this story or communicate this message. In other words, what are the goals you're trying to achieve?

Now let's dig deeper into the what. You know you want to tell a story about you, or a story about your company, but based on what you now know about your audience and your goals (and your competitors and the industry overall) what aspect of your story is going to resonate.

What is your strategy? Story = Strategy in this scenario. (More on that in the next post on "Developing an Engagement Framework") What is that differentiating factor that will make you or your brand stand out from the pack?

Once you have the first three questions fully answered, it becomes a lot easier to work on the how and when and where. That will be your content strategy. Your data gathering should have gotten you to the point where you can determine whether you need to develop a creative campaign, start a blog (or change your blog strategy), make some infographics, start a pinterest, etc.

More on that later as well. My next two posts will focus on "Developing an Engagement Framework" and "An Approach To Digital Strategy."

Funny innit? I mean how the universe has its own way of telling you exactly what you need to know. Right now.

Anyone can follow along with the 21-day meditation challenge. Again, like my 7-day detox, it's about altering your life one small step at a time.

Anyway, developing bad habits in a time of crisis or stress may seem to be a normal response. Sure I could chalk it up to being recently laid off, but those are just excuses. If I want to lead an optimal life, I need optimal health. Besides, in a few weeks, I'll be hitting a new year of life and that always seems like a great time to start developing new and healthy habits. So let the 7-day detox begin.

I've been eating far too much food, and drinking far too little water. Water is necessary to produce good digestion and keep the body hydrated. So I'm going mainly liquid, and some raw foods and snacks here and there.

So for day 1, today, I hit up Juice Generation and got the Daily Detox, which contains carrot, cucumber, lemon, apple and ginger with a calorie count of about 145. The 12 oz is 130 and I super sized to the 20 oz. When it's healthy, you can super size. See the contents below.

But since I've been eating so much lately, I know this juice won't be enough. I'll also need water (I already mentioned that it's an essential ingredient for any day). And I also got a Cooler Cleanse Raw Cooler kale avocado salad, with kale, avocado, raisins, sunflower seeds, lemon, cold-pressed extra virgin olive oil, black pepper, and sea salt.

Here are my goals with this 7-Day Detox:

1. Cleanse the body
2. Cleanse the mind
3. Increase the energy
4. Reduce fat intake, therefore reduce body fat

How will I stay focused and on path?
1. Start w/breakfast (I missed it this morning, but I have GNC Total Lean
Banana Shake at home that I normally mix with either water or almond milk.)
2. Use Evernote to outline a daily plan, down to the time for consuming meals
3. Increase exercise to at least 2 - 3 times per week (I've been doing much of nothing the past couple of weeks)
4. Get a good night's rest (this will improve brain functioning and digestion)

What goals are you working on currently? Have you developed a plan for reaching your goals?

I like to set really short-term goals, because life fluctuates so much and I'd hate to commit to a long-term plan when there's sure to be change. Plus, if you do enough short-term plans like this repetitively, over the course of time, you'll effectively change your habits overall. Instead of starting out saying, "From now on I'm going to..." How about, "For seven days I'm going to..."

Small steps.

I'll let you know how it goes for me, if you let me know how it goes for you.

I want to give more than 140 characters to what I think of Jay Z's #MCHG (no hyphen, didn't you get the memo?) I want to talk more about what I thought when I first put on Google Glass than what any first photo I snapped can convey. I want to analyze my sleep patterns and how they impact my overall health by researching them in my Jawbone Up and providing anecdotal context (granted I don't always remember to turn sleep mode on).

@Toure You start #MagnaCartaKingdonCome w/a long bit of singing from JT to show your evolution.

— Lynne d Johnson (@lynneluvah) July 13, 2013

While I'm all over the social media Web -- (see me on Twitter, see me on Facebook, see me on Google+, see me on Instagram, see me on Pinterst, see me on Slideshare, see me on yadda, yadda, yaa) -- there's no context or connection to bring the entire story together. And as someone who practices digital and social media strategy, I should know better. There has to be a main story -- one that is packaged and repurposed for other forms of media .. not that's told only through other forms of media with no Vine (lol, yeah I'm on there too). There needs to be a core, a home base, so to speak.

Here's a perfect example. I've been writing different kinds of posts about Warby Parker and my experiences with the company on Twitter and on Facebook, but as it's not one complete story, no one can tell why I love the company so much, and will sing it's praises forever. How about I just tell the entire story here? Wouldn't that make sense? Sure I could storify it, but it would still be missing something...because i didn't start from the core idea and then spread it around. I started spreading it around first. Yikes! Tactics before strategy.

So, hold me to it. Because it's coming. That's right, I said it. In 2014, I will relaunch this thing and it will be easier to find content that might interest you. Some stories will be personal. Some stories will be analytical. And some stories might just be images or video. But I don't want to share simply to pump my ego. I want to share to connect. To help others and help myself. That's how it was in the old days of blogging. When we all connected over our stories. Do you remember the time?

Presetned at PRSA Digital Impact Conference June 28, 2013 #PRSADIConf - Augmented Reality lets you overlay digital images and information on smartphone screens or computer monitors. But Augmented Reality is more than catchy 3-D graphics. Successful marketers use it to connect to people’s social networks and provide incentives for their purchases. In this session, you’ll learn how this technology layers mobile commerce, social networking and location-based advertising for consumers and brands.