Category: Infographics

The @MarsCuriosity Rover Has More Personality Than Most Brands

Branding, Infographics, Social Media, Storytelling

When NASA’s Curiosity Rover hit the ground on Mars, it was minutes before we knew its fate (see infographic below). It takes some time for light and data to travel the 35 million miles between Earth and Mars. And yet we sat glued to the streamcast of dozens of people sitting at desks at Mission Control – hanging on every disembodied word from the flight controller – effectively living moments that had already happened.

Meanwhile, across the twitterstream, the @MarsCuriosity account was brimming with enthusiasm and pithy one-liners. One of my favourites is below.

It makes me wonder … why can’t brands adopt social media with such passion and interest? Why can’t they embrace an attitude that engages their audiences?

But it’s not just Twitter that NASA has mastered. They have open sourced their imagery and data – allowing anyone to design their own NASA-focused infographics (aka the social media expert’s tool of choice). After you have created your own infographic, you can then upload it to be shared with the NASA audience – giving you more than just a touch of space nerd celebrity.

At a guess, NASA have followed this path for a strategic reason – to drive a powerful emotional connection with a global, passionate and technically-literate audience. And at some point – around budget time – that audience will be called upon to help sway the thinking of penny-pinching politicians.

And if NASA – can orchestrate this type of sophisticated global engagement program – why can’t brands?

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With Mobile Commerce, We Are All Retailers Now

Future of Your Brand, Infographics, Innovation, Mobility, Retail, Social Business, Social Media

Closing DownThe early days of eCommerce were a hard slog. The technology was cumbersome and unreliable, the gateways were expensive and the business community was sceptical. And the shoppers … well even the early adopters were hesitant – concerned about credit card numbers, identity theft and having to pay for goods in advance that may never arrive.

But over time most of those issues have been overcome. And even those that still concern us – like identity theft, security and so on – are traded for convenience. After all, we are generally happy to share our credit card information when a deal is ready to be done.

Mobile commerce – or mCommerce – however, has been able to ride the shirt tails of eCommerce. In many ways, the success of sites like Apple’s iTunes and Amazon have not only changed our sense of trust – they have changed our consumer behaviour. Just think, for example … when was the last time you bought a DVD or a music CD from a shop? For many of us, digital experience is at the core of our understanding and acceptance of so many brands.

And as we follow the bridge of convenience through our mobile devices, we will find ourselves using what businesses call mComerce (though we will just view it as convenience). And this makes me think again – that for the future of our brands, we need to think mobile first but with a social heart.

But our businesses challenges do not stop at the mobile gateway. In fact, they are just the start of a business trend that is going to transform our industries. A couple of years ago, well respected content marketing evangelist, Joe Pulizzi  urged us to think about EVERY business as a “publishing business” – but now in the same way – we have no choice but to consider ourselves RETAILERS too. We are always on, always connected and always SELLING as the infographic from BigCommerce, below, shows. The question is … are you ready?

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Correct Sizing for Your Social Media Images

Infographics

I must admit to being a little lazy when it comes to changing the images on my social media profiles. My avatar on Twitter has been the same one for well over a year. And LinkedIn … about the same. I can’t really be bothered with Facebook and the various size options for the timeline – for whenever I try something, it seems to crop unexpectedly or just look plain wrong. What I really need is a reference for all the social media platforms in one place. Now thanks to Original Ginger, I have what I need.

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What Google Searches in the Blink of an Eye

Infographics, Web/Tech

I can remember the day I switched over to Google for my internet searches. Before that I had a number of favourite search engines – each with its own specialty. One I would use for searching forums, another I would use for question and answer content. Still another would be used for web page and blog searching.

I quite liked the feeling of control that I experienced in those old days. I knew which tool to use and when. I could find things that other people couldn’t. This made me valuable.

But this process was time consuming. Sometimes I would need to work through many variations of my search terms using two or three different search engines before I found what I needed. And all the while, the clock was ticking.

Eventually I began turning more regularly to Google. It started with a blog search here or there. A boolean search from time to time. But it wasn’t just the results that made me switch. It was the relevance. And it was the speed.

Google’s search far outstripped all the others for speed. The clean, white page offered by Google smashed the slow loading, ad heavy portal offered by Yahoo! It was easier to read than Alta Vista … and it was just more relevant than Ask Jeeves.

But how does Google actually find and return such powerful results so quickly? This infographic explains nicely. And you may just be surprised to know that since 2003 Google has answered 450 billion unique queries that it has never seen before. And only a small percentage are mine!

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Sometimes Open Source Software Just Wins

Infographics, Innovation

When I first came across open source software I was amazed. I could hardly believe that good quality software could be made available for a minimal cost. Sure there could be issues with support and maintenance from time to time, but the flexibility and pure value for money equation was hard to beat.

My first real experience with open source was about 15 years ago implementing Norwegian CMS developers ezPublish. Not only was their content management system way ahead of most of the commercially available providers, it was built in a way that was collaborative and had a strong developer community around their various solutions. And – almost intuitively – they had built in community / social networking features which many other CMS platforms still struggle to deliver.

As I put the business case together, I remember laughing as I entered a software license line item. I knew it would generate questions – and sure enough I was called in to speak with the CFO. “Did I make a mistake in my costing?” I assured him that the figures were correct – but that there were trade-offs that came with open source.

Two years down the track, the software was still powering our corporate website and had transformed the way that we thought about the web, our customers and the distribution of our corporate information.

These days it seems that open source is a corporate norm – with 98% of enterprises using open source software in some form. As the folks from Source Ninja point out, it’s not just about lower acquisition costs – flexibility and abundance of code are vital elements when it comes to choosing open source software for business.

But the question for you is … does this ring true? Are you using open source in your business? Why?

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Influence: I Do Not Think It Means What You Think It Means

Influence, Infographics, Social Judgement

Most of us are in love with the idea of influence. We love the idea that we are influencers or influential within our peer groups, we seek out the favour and attention of others who influence us, and we attempt to measure track and trace influence across different cultural, societal, economic and demographic groups. And yet this thing – influence – remains elusive.

Some time back, Malcolm Gladwell came up with an easy to understand model of influence. It seemed to resonate with many of us who are deeply immersed in the web and have seen, first hand, the apparent randomness of online sentiment and human digital behaviour. His book, The Tipping Point took its lead from Stanley Milgram’s principle that we are all only separated by six degrees – suggesting that within a network, the “hub” or “connector” plays a vital role in the transmission of information across that network.

I have always viewed this theory with scepticism – preferring the strength of weak ties model popularised by Duncan Watts. It’s a shame in a way, as the Gladwell model – the Tipping Point – is easily articulated and understood, while Watts’ approach is more complicated, random and difficult to apply in the real world. Yet, even a casual glance at the social media landscape will show you just how difficult it can be to boil “influence” down to a single factor or variable. Klout has tried it as have PeerIndex and Kred – and there are dozens more on the horizon offering different versions, metrics and tools that attempt to measure the chaos of our behaviours and patterns of indifference.

Ultimately, when it comes to influence, I keep returning to one important point –> it’s not about influence, it’s about trust. And until we, as business leaders, as marketers and as publishers of information and content, understand this, we will continue to dance around the real issue.

And what IS the real issue? Just take a look at this infographic from CrowdTap and read between the lines. Hint: it’s not about your brand.

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For B2B, Google+ May Be Your Best Friend

Facts & Figures, Infographics, Social Business, Social Media

For years I worked in business to business marketing in one form or another. I understood how all the different channels worked, loved the way that the newly emerging web brought immediacy to my communications and got a sense that the concept of “branding” was shifting under my feet.

And then I landed in the world of business to consumer marketing – working for an agency on big FMCG/entertainment and QSR brands. Despite years of experience I felt out of my depth. And one of the most challenging aspects was understanding the nature of SCALE. In the B2B world, your focus is on much more narrowly defined audiences – whereas for large consumer brands, scale is what works.

Over the last 10 years there has been a lot of cross-pollinating between B2B and B2C. Much of this has been driven by social media – or by our new appreciation of audiences that are a by-product of social media. Yet, I can’t help feeling a little disappointed that we haven’t learned another lesson of social media – that it’s not scale or reach that is important. It’s the engagement – and the potential to impact BEHAVIOUR – that is vital.

Take a look at this infographic from Pardot comparing Google+ and Facebook brand pages. The numbers are huge. The scale is amazing. But think about it – in B2B you often know WHO you want to reach (I don’t mean “who” in terms of a persona – I mean actual people working in actual businesses). The challenge is to find innovative and creative ways to not just reach, but to engage and prompt them to action. And if you think about that rather than the being dazzled by statistics, you might just find that Google+ is your new best friend.

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Inbound Marketing for CMOs

Infographics, Innovation, Measurement

One of the benefits of the rise of digital marketing has been the abundance of analytics. No longer do we need to rely on what people “say” they are going to do or “would do” in a certain brand scenario. With the right tools in place we can actually observe their real time behaviour. We can see how customers arrive into our sales/business process, where they spend their time and where they reach a decision point – to convert or not.

We can even go further. With a mobile and/or social layer integrated into our digital business process, we can remove barriers, accelerate the movement from one part of the sales process to the next and close the loop on the customer feedback and advocacy. Perhaps most importantly, however, the real innovation is happening in the way that the marketing funnel has been inverted. These days, it’s not about creating awareness and outreach but about creating a centre of gravity that draws your customers to your business.

But many businesses fail to grasp the opportunity. Especially in retail.

This neat infographic from the Marketo folks provides a handy snapshot for marketers, explaining how traditional and “inbound” marketing differs. And once you see the opportunity, check out the Sticky 360 degree approach. It may just be the solution you need to your inbound marketing challenges.

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Google Visualizes Your Brand

Facts & Figures, Infographics, Strategy

One of the benefits – and strategic advantages that Google is able to tap into each and every day – is the huge volume of data that is generated by our collective use of the free website measurement tools known as Google Analytics. Not only do these tools provide rich data and analytics capabilities to organisations and individuals the world over, that information is also aggregated by Google.

So while we are able to learn more about how people find, use, convert and engage on our websites, so too is Google able to tap this data store to reveal trends, understand behaviours and make sense of our globally connected work and life styles.

Add the abundance of information that comes from our daily use of the Google search engine, and this data store is awe inspiring.

Over the last few years, Google has made a range of tools available to tap into this data. Google Trends provides fantastic insight to search data – but the new Brand Impressions tool from Google thinkinsights team takes it a step further. You simply enter a brand name and wait while information is drawn from Google+, YouTube, Google Images and Google News, Google Maps and of course, Google Search. And in a few moments you have a nice, interactive infographic built specifically for your brand (or your clients’).

Here’s what was revealed when I queried global software brand SAP. Fascinating. And I am sure this is only the beginning. Over time, this tool is bound to improve – making it a great addition to your strategic insight toolbox. After all, data is great, visualisation can be breathtaking, but true insight is divine. Time to put your thinking caps on!

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Getting Started with Online Marketing

Digital 101, Infographics

Over the last couple of years I have developed checklists galore, but some of the most useful have been the most simple. One in particular I use when setting up a new blog or website. It steps me through the process of establishing a digital footprint – the spaces in which your online conversations and interactions will take place.

And while these checklists are great, usable and effective, they are nowhere near as pretty as the unbounce Noob Guide to Online Marketing.

I will be printing this out and ticking off the spokes in the wheel. And then, when the footprint is done, it's down to some quality time with Darren Rowse's 31 Days to Build a Better Blog. From there it is almost like clockwork!

Via Andy Moore.

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