Author Archive
Yesterday on The Mike Hackmer Show, I had the opportunity to talk a little bit about social media and widgets with Terence Thomas. During the interview, Terence and I talked about where widget technology is a bit lacking, and what some of the companies Terence interacts with are looking for in widgets or desktop applications. The interview was part of a larger discussion that occurred that day on social media.
The Mike Hackmer Show is on WEBR, Fairfax, VA. The show airs every Sunday at 12:00 pm Eastern time, and is dedicated to talking about traditional media, new or social media, and the world of marketing. Listeners can listen online at: http://www.fcac.org/webr
It struck me as I was reviewing my plans for the upcoming Internet Retailer Conference and Exhibition in June that there is not a lot of attention on using email to reach one’s customer base in the Conference agenda and session discussions about online marketing. In the not so distant past (which means a year in the new technology era), strategic email marketing was still regarded as the most effective and affordable means to reach an audience and maintain a connection.
So, what has changed?
For starters, people are suffering from email fatigue in a substantial way (Wikipedia actually refers to this as “email bankruptcy”, but I’ve since added the term today). According to some estimates email is a $650 billion drag on the economy, because people engage in too many unnecessary responses and waste time reading messages that they either should not have received in the first place, or simply add no value to their overall productivity (I’ve actually been guilty of that several times as I am writing this blog entry).
The other factor is SPAM. Heinz Tschabitscher, contributor to About.com, writes that
This is not to say that email is no longer a productive solution to marketing and lead generation. In fact, Spam exists not because a group of a few thousand people globally have nothing better to do until they get their Nintendo Wii, but rather because it is highly profitable.
As a basic premise – assume a mid-level spammer distributes between several hundred million messages to a billion messages in a month, and just received a .03% or .05% response to those emails, the number of leads would be in the tens of thousands. According to Consumer Reports, in one month last year, approximately 650,000 Americans made purchases in phishing scams initiated by spammers.
I think it is safe to say that the issue surrounding email as a marketing tool is not a question of profitability. Pound for pound, it still remains highly cost effective and can yield positive results. However, the shear mass of data coming through nowadays and the volume of Spam that each of us receives, truly minimizes the ability of email to really inform and engage people in a way that builds positive brand recognition. If anything, people are shying away from email marketing, because there is a growing stigma surrounding it, but also because they are finding that reaching the “Inbox” is no longer the value it once was.
This leads us to the question, “If not email marketing, then what?”
A lot of the buzz lately is around using social media to get your marketing message out to the masses. In fact, the IRCE agenda is filled with sessions on Web 2.0 strategies and social media solutions designed to help eretailers.
In our own experience, we have found using social media, such as blogs and webinars, social networking sites (For example, check out our ParentPower community on Facebook and join me on LinkedIn), Twitter, and the like, to be a very helpful way to both discover new solutions and new ideas as well as get more direct interaction with our customers and content providers, which enables us to hear about the user experience first-hand… sometimes as it is taking place. You simply cannot get that from an email that someone may or may not get a chance to read – assuming you reached the inbox in the first place.
The challenge surrounding social media, however, is often overlooked by its dynamic appeal, uniqueness and the subtle suggestion by the news media that everyone is doing it, and if you are not – you’re missing out. In fact, the challenge with using social media and networking is quite obvious when you think about it: it’s time intensive.
Just ask yourself, “How effective would I be if I walked into a room of 50 or 100 strangers, all engaged in their own conversations, and shouted, “I’m offering a 20% discount on a new product that will mean you never have to clean your kitchen floors again!”? Not only would you annoy a lot of people, there is a strong likelihood that you would discourage the very people who may be interested in such a product under normal circumstances from even approaching you.
The truth behind these strategies is that they are based on building relationships (see Livingston on wooing bloggers), and relationships take time. This whole concept of building relationships is what the new marketing paradigm is built around. In the not so distant past (we all know what that means now, right?)… email campaigns were the quick and easy way to broadcast your brand and offerings to the masses. Today, quick and easy is how you bake a cake or clean a toilet bowl (And yes, I lifted that from Tango and Cash). Is it how you run your marketing?
Right now, as you read this, the masses are worn out from it all, and they want meaning… they want substance. On the one hand, this forces all of us in marketing to take on more responsibility and work. But on the other hand, it gives us a tremendous opportunity to provide meaningful solutions to people (fyi – its the customer’s perception of what is meaningful that you need to address) and establish relationships that go deeper than a name on a message.
Of course, this brings us to another solution to the growing decline in the value of email and online marketing strategies, which are desktop applications.
The benefit of desktop applications, more so than one-dimensional widgets or email, is that they are all-inclusive communications vehicles. Not only do they engage your audience by providing a bridge to relevant web content, they provide a one-stop resource for video, audio / podcasts, flash-based games, and in the case of ActiveAccess, include a built-in RSS reader, interactive weather map and links to other resources. The multi-faceted nature of a desktop application, not to mention that the application is on the desktop all the time a person is on their computer, is more engaging for the user, less fatiguing, and helps build a content relationship between the provider and the user that is unique.
What’s more, desktop applications, as a piece to your Web 2.0 puzzle, are not nearly as time intensive as other social media strategies. In fact, they are used to enhance your existing web strategy by providing a portal for your customers to reach you when they are not browsing the Internet.
For more information on how ActiveAccess can help your company or organization, shoot us an email at: info@activeaccess.com.
Or you can DM us through Twitter at: http://twitter.com/activeaccess.
Geoff had the pleasure of interviewing Stefania Pomponi today – professional writer and blog editor/producer of CityMama. Known for her “keen eye for observation and her sharp wit”, Stefania, proud mother to “Bunny” and “Wallie” and wife to “J.”, writes about style, food, pop culture, and parenting with her own unique twist.
GEOFF: The parent blogosphere is extremely diverse. You recently wrote that you are a 1.5 generation Korean American. Does your cultural heritage provide a different view of the parent blogosphere?
STEFANIA: I am actually a 5th generation Korean-American and a 2nd generation Italian-American. My family on my Korean side arrived in Hawaii (an American territory back then) in 1898, and my father is Italian—he lives in Rome. This means that I don’t speak Korean but I do speak Italian! My cultural heritage provides a different view of the parent blogosphere only in that there are certain cultural practices particular to Asians or Italians that I can instantly relate to when I read other Korean-American and/or Italian parenting blogs. Other than that, the fact that I am Korean-Italian doesn’t change my view. I still have the same breastfeeding, diaper-changing, potty-training, preschool search, what do I make for dinner, how do I stick to my budget, “my kids are driving me nuts!” issues that most other parents have.
GEOFF: On CityMama you write a lot about food and politics. Which do you prefer to write about and why?
STEFANIA: On CityMama, I prefer to write about food and how I, as a busy mom of two, strive everyday to create delicious and healthy meals for my family. Cooking is my “arts and crafts.” It’s what I live to do. I am trying to raise children who appreciate good food, but that doesn’t necessarily mean “gourmet.” I do love to cook and am constantly improving my skills and repetoire of recipes, but for me good food means locally grown or sourced products as much as possible, non-GMO ingredients, a respect for seasonal produce, knowing where our food comes from, and making vegetables appealing without resorting to culinary chicanery. That being said, sometimes Happy Meals make everything better. For parents, too.
I do touch on politics on CityMama, but prefer to blog about those issues on MOMocrats.com. I co-founded the blog with two other noted parent bloggers and now we’ve grown to 22 progressive Democrat mom bloggers who write about issues that affect our families—like education, healthcare, poverty, and war—which, when you think about it, are issues that affect everyone.
GEOFF: In your mind, how do CityMama and Kimchi Mamas contribute to the conversation respectively?
STEFANIA: CityMama is really the place for me to blog about my life, my beautiful family, and what we eat. Kimchi Mamas is a culture and identity blog where we strive to connect with like-minded individuals. I measure the success of Kimchi Mamas by every email or comment we receive that says, “Thank God I found you. You relate to me and my experience raising a family.”
GEOFF: What could you leave behind in the parent blogosphere?
STEFANIA: Do you mean what would I like to leave behind as my stamp on the blogosphere? I hope that my recipes and stories about cooking for my family inspire other parents to conquer their fear of the kitchen and to cook for their kids more. To me there is no higher compliment than my girls giving me a thumbs up after tasting their meal and saying, “Mmmmm! This is really good!”
And, I know it’s a cliché to say it, but I also hope that when my kids are old enough, they can read CityMama to know just how much I love them. It really is my tribute to them the best way I know how. And if it’s around 30 years from now, when they have their own children, I hope they can read CityMama to know that they are not alone in their frustrating and joyful parenting moments.
GEOFF: What do you hope your children will get out of social media?
STEFANIA: To tell you the truth, I haven’t really thought about this question much. Because my husband and I are both work in the tech field and are so connected to our laptops, we purposely strive to keep our kids away from the computer. They are 5 and 3 so there is time for that. Recently they both received Webkinz and we went onto the site to register their pets. Both of them were turned off immediately preferring to actually play with the pets rather than buy them food and furniture online. That’s age-appropriate, I think, and is totally fine with me. My five-year-old gets a big kick out of Twitter, though. She cracks up everytime she sees the “What Are You Doing?” at the top of the screen. It makes me wonder what she is thinking. She is also at the age where she can read everyone’s tweets so I have to be careful not to Twitter around her. Thanks to one of my tweets, she knows that “shit” is spelled S-H-I-T. Not one of my finer parenting moments.
CityMama can be found at: http://citymama.typepad.com/citymama/
As part of our efforts at Geoff Livingston recently interviewed Shannon Entin, homeschooling mother, blogger, web designer, and, as she puts it, “lover of all things internet.” Shannon is the author of PHAT Mommy, as well as a contributor to New Jersey Moms Blog, and a Web Guru at Blissfully Domestic.
In addition to being a talented woman and parent of 2 children, Shannon has been blogging since 2005, and also is very active in pushing RSS technology.
What else is there about Shannon, you might ask? Here is some more insight in her interview with Geoff.
GEOFF: The parent blogosphere is extremely diverse. You write on New Jersey Mom’s blog. How is the parent blogosphere different in the Garden State?
SHANNON: I don’t think it is. The greatest part of the blogosphere is that no matter where you live or what your background is, you can connect with, identify with and support other parents.
GEOFF: PHAT = Parenting, Homeschooling And Thriving. Tell us about your blog, and how it discusses these three descriptions?
SHANNON: The original plan for my blog was to share updates on our homeschooling with family and also to archive the activities I do with the kids. But once I started blogging, it became much less about homeschooling and much more about connecting with others and sharing my thoughts. Over the past 3 years, I wrote a lot about parenting, but not much about homeschooling. That was also a function of the ages of my children – they were young and we weren’t actually doing that much “homeschooling.”
Now that my kids are getting older (3 1/2 and 9 1/2), I’m actually about to re-focus the blog a bit. I’m becoming less comfortable writing about the escapades of my children as they get older. It’s not “cute” anymore – and it could be embarrassing to them as they grow older. My son uses the internet now and could read my blog if he wanted to. In the next few days I’ll be re-designing my blog and tag line to: Parenting, Homeschooling and Tech-Loving. I’ll be writing more about social media – which is one of my passions.
GEOFF: What do you love about the parent blogosphere?
SHANNON: I think my answer to #1 applies here. I love how easy it is to “meet” new people and get answers and support at the click of a mouse.
GEOFF: What could you leave behind in the parent blogosphere?
SHANNON: Comment trolls. Judgmental parents. The whole (dreadfully tiresome) “mommy wars” thing.
GEOFF: What do you hope your children will get out of social media?
SHANNON: Well, first I hope they will be smart about it. I personally love social media, but it can get out of hand. I don’t want my kids sharing too much. I plan to teach them how to use social media wisely — to use it to further their goals. What do I want them to get out of it? Education, friendship, support, and fun.
GEOFF: Thanks, Shannon. If people want to reach your blog, where do they go?
SHANNON: My personal blog is at: http://phatmommy.com
If people are interested in New Jersey Moms Blog, they can go to: http://www.newjerseymomsblog.com
Lastly, Blissfully Domestic can be found at: http://blissfullydomestic.com
If you are interested in being interviewed for ParentPower, please let us know. We can be reached at: myvoice@parentpowerindex.com
Following the launch of the ParentPower Index and Application (BETA), Geoff Livingston of Livingston Communications had the opportunity to speak with parent blogger Christine Louise Hohlbaum, author of the book DIARY OF A MOTHER, and “SAHM I AM: TALES OF A STAY-AT-HOME MOM IN EUROPE”. She also is the publisher of the blog, Mama’s Musings.
A part from being an award-winning American writer and frequent commentator on NPR’s The Parent’s Journal with Bobbi Conner, Christine is one of a few American bloggers operating overseas in Germany – providing a fascinating perspective on life and parenting.
GEOFF: The parent blogosphere is extremely diverse. How is it different in Europe?
CHRISTINE: I don’t think you can make geographic delineations. I live in Europe, but my voice is distinctly American. That’s the beauty of the blogosphere. You can blog from wherever you are and carry on the conversation as if you were at home. If you read some of the foreign blogs, you get a distinct flavor for their culture as well.
GEOFF: Tell us about your book: Sahm I Am: Tales of a Stay-at-Home Mom in Europe?
CHRISTINE: SAHM I Am is the sequel to Diary of a Mother: Parenting Stories and Other Stuff, my first book about the transition from being an Ivy League educated career woman turned housewife. Mind-blowing stuff.
Diary of a Mother sort of left my readers hanging. “So what happened once you got to Europe?” they chimed. SAHM I Am was the answer.
In reality, I find blogging to be a fabulous extension to my other writing. It’s also very liberating as I can write whatever I want (within reason – I don’t like to use profanity because one day my kids will read it and then they’ll roll their eyes that they aren’t allowed to curse like Sailor Mom…)
GEOFF: How does Mama’s Musings continue the conversation?
CHRISTINE:I suppose you could look at it in terms of the grieving process.
My book, Diary of a Mother, was about denial through humor, then anger.
SAHM I Am is less desperate and transitions into acceptance.
Mama’s Musings is really a celebration of life with kids, what will make moms’ lives better, and a motley of personal stories tossed in the mix. It’s meant for people to feel better about themselves when they walk away, chuckling to themselves about the silly things that happen in life, and feeling grateful for what they do have.
GEOFF: What could you leave behind in the parent blogosphere?
CHRISTINE:It’ll be a blast for my children’s generation to read what preoccupied their parents’ generation. Most likely they won’t understand all the references, but what a great way to leave a legacy.
GEOFF: What do you hope your children will get out of social media?
CHRISTINE: Social media has an addictive component to it. Trust me. I know. I was offline until today for five weeks, yet I still blogged when I could (bloggers are Creatives – we get creative when we can’t get online any other way than to beg the local Internet café owner for one more minute – please, just one more minute, man!). I never knew how much time I spend in front of the computer until my DSL subscription didn’t transfer when we moved to a new house!
What I’d like for my kids to get out of their interaction with social media is a sense of place in the Universe. Sound lofty? It really isn’t. They can connect with people from all over the world, establish relationships with kids in foreign countries and learn new things.
GEOFF: Thanks so much for your time, Christine. If people want to reach your blog, where do they go?
CHRISTINE: Well, thank you. My blog is at: http://diaryofamother.blogs.com
If you are interested in being interviewed for ParentPower, please let us know. We can be reached at: myvoice@parentpowerindex.com