Internet Marketing and Digital Media Strategy Sydney Australia

Connection Addiction - pull out the plug

Don't you hate it if you're talking to someone and they take a call or worse receive and reply to a text.  You're better to concentrate on the task at hand and let the message go through to the keeper.

Anyway, I'm due for a new phone and have been thinking about a Crackberry (Blackberry) so that I can check emails all the time. On the other hand all this technology is increasingly intrusive to our lives. 

My question is how much value does instant messaging really add to corporate communications? 

I read yesterday that there is an increasing number of people who, when they first wake up of a morning check their computers or phones for messages - even before a pee and a cup of coffee - "I'm not alone!" I cry but then I realise I've got "Connection Addiction!" - YOU KNOW that one message that has to be replied to in an instant.

When you think about it - what a load of crapola!

How do we deal with this constant flow of information?  Are new skill sets required?

"Shallow rivers run fast, think strategic" I hear my dad say.

I look around my office - I currently have four screens on my desk - two for each computer - my laptop and my desktop - geez I'm in deeper than I thought! 

1. One has my Skype account,
2. TweetDeck (Twitter client) and Woopra live web tracking,
3. my emails (multiple accounts)
4. my web browser

Facebook, LinkedIn, Flickr and all that other social connection stuff are accessed through the day - they run from early morning till late.

It's madness but I suppose that's the business I'm in - it's no wonder it's a challenge for most businesses to comprehend and implement.  It's not like a 9-5 shop.

I wonder what would happen if I just suddenly turned them all off or took back control  

• limiting emails to 2 or 3 x 1 hour sessions a day - setting up auto reply to let senders know you'll get back within 24 hours or to call if urgent. 
• Twitter at periodic coffee breaks.  (the water cooler metaphor)
• Facebook to social times (the pub metaphor)

What would the prospects and clients think?  How would it impact sales?  Would more important work get done?

I know from my pub and call centre management days that response time is very important but what about web businesses?

So anyway we'll see - brb - the phones ringing!

Interested in your thoughts?

The Search for Australia's Top Bloggers and Influencers

It's hard enough for the tech savvy to keep up and stay in touch with the latest online trends and developments so you can imagine the challenges for most businesses and the general population.

I remember a conference I spoke at in June to about 100 new businesses and asked how many had email (95%) websites (50%) through to Facebook (20%) and Twitter (1%)

From an online marketing perspective a majority of new customers begin at Google Search. To rank highly you need to optimise your website for search engines. One of the most important elements of SEO is links coming into your site. The more people write about you the better your website ranking and so on. How do you increase market awareness on the web?

Case in hand - for the rollout of our CLIVEvideo Project I've been deeply interested in online social media as an online marketing channel - you know the stats - 1 in 6 minutes online now spent on social sites like Facebook.

This interest stems from my old pub days around customer service as a USP with customer word of mouth marketing - for the pub it took time but we ended up with high quality, loyal, repeat customers - a sales force of thousands.

From an online perspective the idea of targeting and developing relationships with Internet influencers and early adopters who then help spread the word.

In a lot of ways this approach of targeting influencers is not much different than the old PR and publicity days of a relationship with a journalist; reporter or politician but in the new online world of heavily fragmented media - influence is also heavily distributed.

The Search

The search for Australia's top 100 Australian Bloggers and influencers took me to Meg's Top 100 Aussie Bloggers list a month or so ago.

Funny, Meg, the author of the blog has a photo from Illawong looking back over the Woronora River to my childhood home at Como...but I digress.

I was keen to see who was blogging and what Australians were blogging about. Australia as a whole hasn't really embraced blogging from a social marketing perspective.

I subscribed to a few of the blogs I liked - either via RSS feed or simple daily email using technologies such as Feedburner.

For a month or more I then let it breathe - wanting to get a feel for the type of content being written and help understand a few of the writers.

One blog I'd been following was Gary Hayes, Director Australian Film, Television and Radio School and LAMPS

At some point you feel confident enough to comment on an article and dialogue begins - you move from a consumer of content to a commentator.

Forresters Research

Social Technographics Explained

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: social media)

Last Wednesday Gary featured CLIVE on his blog and was speaking at a conference I was going to the next day.

Creativity on the Web

Thursday night Chris (Creative Director RidgeFilms and CLIVEvideo project) and I headed into the Museum of Sydney for a debate on creativity and the web put together by old friend Rachel Slattery from Slattery IT.

Speakers included

• Martin Hosking, Chairman of building and construction collaboration provider Aconex [old BANGitUP and CADX competitor and who just raised $107m two days before the financial market collapse) and founder of art community Redbubble;
• Gary Hayes, Director, Laboratory for Advanced Media Production (LAMP);
• Angela Thomas, Lecturer, English Education, University of Sydney;
• Therese Fingleton, Project Manager, Australia Council;
• Jeff Cotter, CTO, SIMMERSION Holdings

The debate was whether the internet is helping unleash creativity. What opportunities are there for the creative on the internet? The enormous potential of user generated content, the new business models and whether the technology is driving or restraining creativity.

The debate was good and I was introduced to leading Aussie blogger Lauren Papworth and social media/ Twitter champion (Silkcharm)

Twitter

I'd been experimenting with Twitter for quiet a while - I have Ubiquity feeding into Twitter which then populates my Facebook status but never really delved into too deeply.

Could Twitter be the thought leaders I've been looking for? A search for Australias top Twitters

http://www.shiftedpixels.com.au/blog/2008/10/australias-top-50-twitter-influencers.html

I check each and look at their webpage and blogs, subscribe to a few and follow.

I was very impressed to see Malcolm Turnbull on Twitter.

Twitter can connects CEO's directly with their customers - hmm very powerful. I play around and download twirl, hmmm, Twitter is microblogging, like an online SMS broadcast.

Gawd, another communications system I have to incorporate

It will be interesting to watch this unfold.

 

TELECOMMUNICATIONS TODAY: INTERNET ACTIVITY AND CONTENT
Australian Communications and Media Authority

Email, on-line banking, paying bills and news and weather updates are the most common uses of the internet by Australians this year, according to research by ACMA 

http://www.acma.gov.au/webwr/_assets/main/lib310210/report_6_telecommunications_today.pdf

Old Hollywood and television advertising models based on controlled distribution channels, the misconception that customer attention is cheap and where retail and marketing captured the most value, are now dated. 

In the Internet Media 2.0 world, customer attention is scarce, where technology vaporises distribution and retail costs, exploding media and content supply.

We saw a very similar thing happen earlier with newspapers and the music industry in terms of creation and consumption 

For musicians the path to fame suddenly changed with the emergence of "disruptive" Internet music download programs and online social networks like Myspace and later Youtube and Facebook. 

All of a sudden, music content producers (singers and bands) could record professional quality songs from home studios and then distribute and connect with fans and consumers from all over the world via the Internet - effectively cutting out inefficient intermediaries and opening up other creative opportunities. 

The market power shifted back towards artists and consumers and the big record labels had to eventually modify their business models and embrace the web.

The film and music industry business models are similar but television, like newspapers and magazines, is mainly funded by advertising.

Free to air commercial television faces the greatest challenge.

The effectiveness of the traditional ‘interrupt and repeat' model of advertising is decreasing and audiences and advertisers have been moving away from old mass media like television and newspapers towards online advertising for a number of years. 

Given the current economic outlook this will only increase as businesses look for more innovative ways of doing things, they are looking online for smarter ways to engage customers with their brands and services. 

The real winners out of the industry shakeup will be customers, advertisers and skilled creative talent.

For creative talent - presenters, performers, scriptwriters, and producers then there will be more production opportunities but also intense rivalry for customer attention and increased competition around production values.

For advertisers, although the Internet fragments consumers making advertising management harder, increasing web site ease of use and effectiveness will increase online sales.