Andrew Lark

Quora War Breaks Out

Love this quote:

our new policy on self-promoting “social media experts” is to just kill them all, and let God sort it out. - Quora User (name redacted)

Saying that, it seems a little ridiculous that Scoble can’t comment on the functioning of a community that he is a member of, in the same way any other member can.

Does Online Advertising Work?

In my role as a marketer, I get to see mountains of data. Online advertising does work, but its incredibly inefficient. Chris Anderson – the TED guy – has some interesting ideas as to why it is so ineffective. It’s a must watch for any marketer. He notes:

• the advertising value associated with one hour of an Internet user’s time is less than $.10 and one third of that goes to Google. This number is low even compared to the challenged performance of television which comes to $.25 and print which is $1.00.
• current solutions, to impose a 15 or 30 second ad in the form of a video segment, is designed to engender frustration and even hatred, worse than pop up ads

One reason he cites is a preoccupation with reach and attention with little consideration with intensity. In other words, we do little to engage and create a relationship, instead favoring the impression or opportunity to see. And he is right.

Great ads tend to still be measured on their ability to secure attention – through creativity – rather than build a relationship through engagement. He has thoughts on how to solve this – and Aker expands on this over on his blog:

• Become part of the community rather than transmitting to it.
• Embrace radical openness – just like you see at TED conferences. While the conferences only touch 800 members twice a year by putting them online the talks engage more than 320 million viewers. I like his idea that firms have employees talk about their values and experiences, to let the audience inside. Tony Hsieh of Zappos.com may be a role model.
• Recognize why people attend to stimuli and are motivated to pass it on. Within our tech communities at Dell, for people to engage they have to be motivated to showcase their knowledge and smarts. Small rewards help with that. But the real driver is the simplicity and transparency of the tools.

For me it’s less a question of whether online advertising works or not, it is a question of how efficient it is.

Interesting Read On Google Strategy

This is worth a read – and reveals how focused Google’s strategy is on mobile. Great quote from Schmidt.

"We envision literally a billion people getting inexpensive, browser-based touchscreen phones over the next few years," wrote Schmidt. "Can you imagine how this will change their awareness of local and global information and their notion of education? And that will be just the start."

That’s the way to build a product demo…

I’m sure Word-lens will become an indispensible travel and business app for many… cool…

A Web Where Ignorance Is Bliss

At least for those looking to monetize it.

A story is unfolding about the third largest advertiser on Facebook. I’m not going to mention their name – I don’t want you to go there. Needless to say, they are monetizing the web by praying on the less savvy browser. What they are doing doesn’t seem illegal, but it is wrong.

What is it? It's a paper-doll-type site that lets you put eyeglasses and mustaches on top of a funny looking baby's face. At least that appears to be what it is; before you can do anything the site says you have to install "a browser plug-in to present an enhanced experience." If you do so, according to the fine print, your browser's default search and home page will be switched to Bing. Once you do so, the affiliate company behind the toolbar, called Zugo, will capture a slice of the revenue whenever you click on a search ad…

… Microsoft's Bing, like many other companies online, offers affiliate marketers a percentage commission for revenues they drive to the company. When Zugo gets users to use Bing, those users will click on some number of search ads. Bing will charge advertisers for those clicks, then give Zugo a percentage of that revenue.

At some point, there needs to be an ethical standard for affiliate marketers. And if the industry doesn’t do it, I’m sure the Government will. Marshall is right, prompting people to give access to their browser's settings under false pretense, and then changing their search provider and home page, is unethical.

Facebook, like any fast growing, young enterprise, in an equally young industry, has it’s work cut out for it in managing dynamics like this. Moves like their late-night retraction of its controversial new feature that allowed 3rd party apps on the site to request the home addresses and phone numbers of users was a good move and gives me confidence that they will sort this as well.

How to drive a successful social media campaign

Some good principles here. Nothing new and most of them have been batted about over the past few years, but I am still astounded how many don’t get the Engagement point. The steps:

• Focus: Hand pick small audiences that will have a positive emotional reaction to the campaign you’re pushing.
• Grab attention: The more you remove barriers for the audience to help you, the better your chances. Breaking those down, in fact, is possibly more important than encouraging action on their behalf.
• Engagement: Humans aren’t set up to understand logic. They’re set up to understand stories. Want to hook an audience? Talk to it, not at it.

Oh, This Is Too Real…

It’s not that the Internet might be making us stupid that should have us worried. It’s that is is making our kids stupid. Whether you buy that or not, the need for play is critical in the development of our kids. A great read from the NYT reinforces this:

For several years, studies and statistics have been mounting that suggest the culture of play in the United States is vanishing. Children spend far too much time in front of a screen, educators and parents lament — 7 hours 38 minutes a day on average, according to a survey by the Kaiser Family Foundation last year. And only one in five children live within walking distance (a half-mile) of a park or playground, according to a 2010 report by the federal Centers for Disease Control, making them even less inclined to frolic outdoors.

Behind the numbers is adult behavior as well as children’s: Parents furiously tapping on their BlackBerrys in the living room, too stressed by work demands to tolerate noisy games in the background. Weekends consumed by soccer, lacrosse and other sports leagues, all organized and directed by parents. The full slate of lessons (chess, tae kwon do, Chinese, you name it) and homework beginning in the earliest grades. Add to that parental safety concerns that hinder even true believers like Ms. Wilson.

On Building Communities

We are big Teligent users at Dell and have invested a great deal in building our communities. Was interesting to see this synopsis of a whitepaper authored by Teligent pop-up on Mashable. Lots of good points and learnings – many which we have institutionalizes. These two are critical:

• Highlight Influential Members: Influential members in a community have a direct impact on the behavior of other users in the community. By engaging and highlighting your biggest fans, you’ll empower them to help shape and grow your community.

• Reward Members in Pixels, Not Pennies: If Foursquare has taught us anything, it’s that people will do a lot for a little digital recognition. Making a leader board, developing badges, or another effort to reward participation with recognition in the community will be an important component of a world-class community.

One point implied in their paper but not called out explicitly is that for great online communities to thrive the proprietor, in our case – Dell, has to recognize that it isn’t their community. The community belongs to the members. At best you get to curate content and be a great custodian.

Marketing Stats

Thanks to the FM Blog for the pointer. Great look at marketing stats from 2010. Worth noting for benchmarking.

Austin Eats, Treats & Reviews

• Kristen says her lunch at Soleil was great. New York Times seems to agree. Will give it a try soon.
• Had Ceviche from TacoShack today – thanks Bryan! – was outstanding. Small but spicy and fresh. Yum!
• Listening to my Kiwi friends complain about American coffee, I often wonder where they get their coffee when in the US. In Austin, I highly recommend (and my standards are ridiculously high):
• Mellow Johnny’s bike shop – owned by none other than Lance Armstrong – has a terrific coffee bar – Juan Pelota’s Cafe. And get this, they even have a Kiwi Blend developed for a couple of the mechanics in the shop from NZ.
• Houndstooth is fantastic. They know how to brew it and make it. With the added twist it is a short skip from one of Austin’s finest Sushi joints, Uchiko.
• Down the road from me in Westlake is Lola Savannah – very good coffee and normally prepared well.