First Four Months of 2012

We are one third plus six days into 2012. At the beginning I targeted eight different priority areas to change/improve. I’ve given myself scores on each of these areas as does not meet expectations, meets expectations, and exceeds expectations (0,1,2). Adding up the numbers reached 6/8. Not bad, considering the fact that all of these are changes (and not status quo). A few areas were things like saving, exercise, and others had to do with business objectives and professional development (aka learning new stuff).

In any case, four months is a good timeframe for measurement (one month being too short and one year being too long). This assessment also provides insight into what to change programmatically in order to achieve the goals. As well, some goals are not necessarily the priority and may be jettisoned or replaced with others. But it is in having these eight improvement areas in front of me (on a post-it note on the side of my monitor), that has helped in focus and therefore progress.

Market-Driven Blogging

I want to do market-driven blogging – a market being defined as a group of people with similar interests who reference each other. Instead I have been doing interest-driven or task-driven blogging. Such as I have an interest or a task at hand (for example, configuring media sharing on my home network), and I spend time and learn some things, then share them with others on the blog. Yes, surely this will continue, as the blog is a repository for my own information as well.

However, I’ve been doing some marketing and technology podcasts, and those became tedious (and completely invisible to most of the world, that is there was no market involved. Meaning is important (i.e., that stuff that has internal motivation involved) but value is no less important (i.e., that stuff that is meaningful to other people). Hence, market-driven. Let’s lead with the market, and find something of interest there.

Ok, easy to say, but what does this mean? Well, I’ve got to find a suitable market first. Market discovery. I’ve got some ideas, we’ll see…

In this podcast we take a look at various Ebooks, Mobile and Tablet, Social Media, Search/SEO/PPC, and Images/Audio/Video topics.

Ebooks/Publishing/Education

• Comparing Kindles

Mobile and Tablet

• Angry Birds skips Windows Mobile
• Firefox 11 and Firefox for Android. Also see the Mozilla Blog for various goings on, such as the Open Badges initiative.

Social Media

• Use of Google Alerts, Facebook and Twitter to keep content flowing
• Posterous Acquired by Twitter
• Google Analytics gets Social Media

Search/SEO/PPC

• Google Adsense

Images, Video, Audio

• Canon over Nikon for video

Media and Content

• Content Marketing Myths

Innovation

• Why Steve Jobs couldn’t find a job today, “when it came to hiring and promoting practices businesses consistently marked down the creative managers and bypassed them, selecting less creative types” … “Until we start hiring and promoting innovators we won’t have any innovation.”
• Efficiency as an Innovation Killer

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qCjMmEqDbmI

In this podcast we take a look at various Ebooks, Mobile and Tablet, Social Media, Search/SEO/PPC, and Images/Audio/Video topics.

Ebooks/Publishing/Education

• Khan Academy ipad app has 2700 educational videos
• Bowker ISBN pricing model: 1 for $125, 10 for $250, 100 for $575, 1,000 for $1,000

Mobile and Tablet

• Mobile Apps vs. Mobile Web

Social Media

• Tumblr as Social, Marketing Land’s Why we are Tumblr

Search/SEO/PPC

• More Google Updates
• App Store Optimization

Images, Video, Audio

• Flickr copyright infringement notification, link to 404, and request to use snailmail to contact legal department. Funny, this other guy had the same problem.
• Camera+ Iphone App
• TheVFXBro
• Figuring out the next camera (Nikon)… Various reviews at Stuck in Customs
• Pinterest, wherefore art thou?

Media and Content

• Ora Internet TV launched

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=un4i4YVb8f0

In this podcast we take a look at various Ebooks, Mobile and Tablet, Social Media, Search/SEO/PPC, and Images/Audio/Video topics.

Ebooks

• Google Ebook FAQ for Google Play

Mobile and Tablet

• 50% of US phone users now have a smartphone
• Price of a 16gb MicroSD Card, 900 THB to 600 THB in 9 months.

Social Media

• Measuring Social Media for Distributed Brands

Search/SEO/PPC

• Chrome browser begins to lag, with Firefox 10 and IE9 on the rise

Images, Video, Audio

• Standing Desktop

Open Source

Nothing to report this week.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ft2LNC5lnBE

In this podcast we take a look at various Ebooks, Mobile and Tablet, Social Media, Search/SEO/PPC, and Images/Audio/Video topics.

Ebooks

Ipad iBooks2 that Apple announced, including tools for creating ebooks (ibooks). Lots going on in the content/publishing front these days. I expect iPad3 will further spur interest.

Mobile and Tablet

• One billion handsets searching the Internet in 2012
• Android and iOS dominate
• Windows 8 Tablet vs. Ipad

Social Media

• Campaign Variables for Social Media
• Google+ Badges, no longer just for pages
• Social Media for Business Yammer raises $85m

Search/SEO/PPC

• Big updates to Google Search, with a link signal being turned off
• Another article out there on Guest Blog Posts for links and recognition
• Facebook finally has mobile ads, note the emphasis on stories

Images, Video, Audio

• Lytro Review

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x1YfkV_qKg0

Interesting how books that provide instruction on how to be liked, or how to win friends and influence people, are so culturally constrained. Behavior advocated in those books simply would not work in Thailand. Not only are the social signals different, but establishing rapport and gaining access to resources (which is the ultimate goal of being liked) has a very different structure and protocol.

That said, we can abstract a bit to reduce the set of behavior into a cross-cultural (content-free) mode:

Social Signals and Communication Elements

• Eye contact or not, degree and timing
• Smile or no smile (kind of smile)
• Leaning forward or back, personal space
• Greeting volume, tone, language and timing
• Synchronization behavior (matching other person’s posture and behavior)
• Conversational skill, topics
• Control over own cheerfulness
• Know what you want (out of a person, situation)

Brand Artifacts

• Comic strip
• Coloring book
• Colors
• Fonts, typography
• Images, figures, drawings, graphics
• Sound, song, theme song
• Industry
• Markets
• Competitors
• Customers
• Products, offerings
• Competitive advantage
• Brand as beverage or cereal (cereal box, beverage container)
• Strategy map
• Value grid
• Stakeholder analysis
• Experience of brands
• Expectations
• Brand personality
• Activities
• Resources
• Strategy
• Cost accounting
• Mission
• Vision
• Price
• Tag line
• True line
• Video
• Channels
• Tag cloud
• Statement of onliness
• Brand obituary
• Logo
• Trading cards
• Pecha kucha
• Meet Dave
• Future artifact
• Favicon
• Strategy Canvas
• Values
• Utilities
• Quality
• Job people are trying to do

• Some customers/distributors won’t pay you, some will pay extremely slowly. Consider this.
• Don’t change your tax status unless you absolutely have to (consider carefully if a partner/distributor requires new tax status)
• Your product will be damaged. How much damage and the impact on sales as well as cost should be considered.
• With anyone doing anything, check on work being done. If you wait too long, it will have to be redone at a higher cost (and take longer).
• How can you create customer demand?
• What are the costs of customer acquisition?
• Do you have enough capital? Do you have enough time?

The Many Different Kinds of Tourism

• Culinary tourism
• Medical tourism
• Health tourism
• Language tourism
• Culture tourism
• Ecotourism
• Sports tourism
• Environmental tourism
• Responsible tourism
• Adventure tourism
• Sustainable tourism
• Volunteer tourism / Voluntourism
• Metropolitan tourism
• Amusement park tourism
• Shopping tourism
• Nature tourism
• National park tourism
• Volcano tourism
• Mountain climbing
• Diving
• Sightseeing
• Maternity tourism
• Carbon neutral tourism
• Animal tourism
• Orphanage tourism
• Atrocity tourism
• Religious tourism
• Fitness tourism

Android

• Ubuntu on Android

Marketing

• From Books to Subscriptions

Search and SEO

• Long Tail marketing
• Title Tag Optimization
• Run your PPC like a project

Information Design

• Ecommerce Navigation

Content

• Guest Posts
• Customer Focused Content
• eBooks will be big

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZCmE_iyMii4