Stop everything you are doing and listen to this podcast!

Seriously, if you have never met or had the opportunity to listen to Avinash Kaushik you must hear this podcast – I guarantee you will learn something from this podcast.

Sometimes you meet someone so passionate about something that it’s contagious and if you listen closely you can hear me firing off emails to my team in the background about what I am hearing and learning on this podcast.

I had the opportunity to do a podcast with Avinash to discuss some areas where marketers are doing things right and wrong but all of them are simple but extremely powerful uses of web analytics to make their websites and businesses better on the web. We also took some live Twitter questions as we were doing the podcast. But stop reading this and start listening to Avinash – its 25 minutes long but positively electric!

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About Avinash

Avinash Kaushik is the author of the recently published book Web Analytics: An Hour A Day. 100% of Avinash’s proceeds from his book are donated to two charities: Doctors Without Borders, The Smile Train.

Avinash is also the Analytics Evangelist for Google and a co-founder of Market Motive.

As a thought leader Avinash puts a common sense framework around the often frenetic world of web research and analytics, and combines that with this philosophy that investing in talented Analysts is the key to long term success. He is also a staunch advocate of listening to the consumer, and is committed to helping organizations unlock the value of web data.

He is a frequent speaker at industry conferences in the US and Europe, such as eMetrics, Ad-Tech, iCitizen, and SES.

You’ll find Avinash’s web analytics blog, Occam’s Razor

Here are two links to posts about the dashboard (the first one was the one I had promised):

http://www.kaushik.net/avinash/2008/04/the-action-dashboard-an-alternative-to-crappy-dashboards.html

http://www.kaushik.net/avinash/2007/03/five-rules-for-high-impact-web-analytics-dashboards.html

 

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The Internet has eliminated the barriers of geography, cost and time. Social tools like blogs and social networking sites are helping crowds form around very discrete topics.

But what is missing from these crowds are leaders. Like any social network that you may join you have those that join and just lurk, those that maybe make a comment or contribute but then you have those who stand up, take some initiative and lead! And that’s what these social networks really need is more leaders!

That’s what Seth Godin’s new book Tribes is all about.

For example, the internet is a great place for Ukrainian Folk Dancers because now for the first time people who love Ukrainian Folk Dancing can ban together and create their own “Tribe”.

This is an important fact since traditional media is no longer working. There is just too much noise out there to shout at people. No consumer brand has been built on the back of traditional media for a while now. TV certainly isn’t working for the creation of new consumer or B2B brands.

Which means your only option is to define your brand in a way that is open to a dialog (no Command and Control branding please) and in a way that is narrow enough to start or tap into a “movement”.

Take for example – Harley Davidson – here is a consumer brand that also is a movement a Tribe. Take from the brand what you want and maybe even lead your own Tribe in your own area.

Seth recently held an event in NY to bring his own Tribe together. You can view his slides here and you can listen to the audio of his presentation here.

Some of the highlights from my notes were

7 elements of leaders
-    Challenge – leaders challenge their tribe
-    Culture – leaders create a culture within the tribe
-    Curiosity – leaders open up a curiosity gap for outsiders
-    Charisma – being a leader gives you charisma
-    Communicate – leaders communicate
-    Connect – leaders connect others in the tribe
-    Commit – to the movement

5 things tribes want
-    Connect – they join to connect with others
-    Create Meaning – joining gives them purpose
-    Make a difference – joining allows them to make a difference
-    Be Noticed – they join to be noticed
-    Matter – they join because it matters to them

Marketing management is now Tribal leadership. Start doing things for people not to them. It’s an obligation and it up to you!

Normally email and profit don’t go in the same sentence at least in the minds of most B2B marketers – but actually they should.

Everything has a cost associated with it and email is no exception – so this podcast focuses on how much lift in revenues and profits you can get out of your email program if you are in B2C or B2B marketing.

To accomplish this I decided to speak to Steve Webster, Chief Strategy Officer from iPost who has published several case studies on the topic of improving profits via email. Don’t miss he views on this topic.

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About Steve

Stephen Webster leads iPost’s Sales team and co-founded iPost in 1996 to address the need for well-designed, professional email services and software. Prior to founding iPost, he worked on email systems for an IBM-funded consortium called ITC, and served as engineering director for the award-winning Z-Code, co-founded by iPost’s CTO, Bart Schaefer, PhD. Webster is a frequent keynote speaker on behavioral targeting, profitable and effective email marketing, and cross-channel marketing programs. He holds a BSEE from Carnegie Mellon University.

 

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Not long ago, Times Square was the epicenter of digital signage in the U.S. It may still represent the highest concentration, but digital signage is exploding and you see it just about everywhere now. Digital signage is officially “the next big thing” for a lot of marketers. In a recent Razorfish survey it was ranked second to mobile as the most important emerging media channel in the coming year. Roughly 51 percent of respondents ranked mobile as the most important, followed by Digital Signage with nearly 32 percent. Other channels trailed by a wide margin.

Interestingly enough in a recent article in Wired Magazine they featured a company called MegaPhone that combined both of these emerging areas.

MegaPhone is a mobile gaming company whose latest project is to connect cell phones with games embedded in big-screen billboards in places like you guessed it … Times Square!

People can interact with these billboards via a special phone number which will show them as special avatars identified by the last four digits of the caller’s phone number.

When I first read the article I thought it was just another super geek application but the more I thought about it – the more you can think up new applications for this.

For example, Jumbotrons at sporting events where they can pick attendees to play an engaging mini game of basketball, baseball, football, hockey, or whatever sport you are watching. Rock Concert goers could dial into the Jumbotron to participate in a live chat with the band backstage. Tradeshow events could use this to allow real time Twittering and live Q&A via mobile. Anywhere you are waiting in line – airports, hotels, on airplanes, amusement parks (read Disney) could not only pre-engage their audience with the ride – perhaps they could let us sign up for tickets once we enter the park and call us when we are due to blast off!

This one article opens up the wide world of mobile marketing, digital signage and more importantly a glimpse at the future of social media marketing (SMM).

If you are an avid reader of this blog you will already know that I am fascinated with Virtual Worlds and Virtual Events – but I was never truly enamored with Second Life and was not in favor of it for business from the start (must have been that scary looking penguin that tried to strike up a conversation with me)

All that aside – I encounter a virtual world from the moment I step foot into my house with my two boys being avid RuneScape players. So I can’t help but think there must be something redeeming here for businesses.

One thing I am investigating and heavily considering for 2009 is a Virtual Events Strategy. It’s like a virtual tradeshow but a space all your own for your own business events.

Because of this I decided to speak to Stuart Bowen who has put into place a virtual events strategy a few times now and is currently doing this for ON24. Don’t miss his insights into what you should be doing.

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About Stuart

Stuart Bowen, Senior Director of Virtual Events, ON24

In his current position, Stuart overseas the Sales and Business Development of ON24 Virtual Show, working with Sales, Executive Management and Product Development. ON24 is a global provider of webcasting and virtual events solutions.

Stuart has spent his working life in the B2B media space. Stuart has held a number of positions including VP Sales in which he was responsible for creating the first ‘online-only’ sales team at UBM (formerly CMP Media) and then pioneering the original cross-product (print and online media) sales team. In his last position at UBM Stuart oversaw and evangelized the use of virtual worlds in a business environment to internal and external customers

ON24 Virtual Show. Learn more on http://on24.com/products_virtualshow.html

 

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