Like most entrepreneurs, we all want to be as involved as possible.  For some of this means keeping up on Entrepreneur magazine.  Others may tap into the social scene with events like Startup Weekend where they can interact with other like-minded people to share ideas.  I myself, along with Amber and Mike, am always looking for new and exciting opportunities to connect with others and share our ideas/concepts to anyone that’s interested…especially in the Chicago area.  Enter TechSocial.

            “TechSocial specializes in connecting Chicago’s Technology and Entrepreneurship communities to interesting events. Technologists and business people who want to start businesses need to get out and meet each other. Tech Social facilitates that by providing updated calendar of high tech seminars, talks, clubs, meetings, meetups, etc.”

TechSocial’s calendar is actually kept very much up to date.  From just a quick check today I saw four events in September ranging from marketing tactics to financing strategies.  What also makes TechSocial great is that you can post your own items on the calendar, making it easy to spread the word about your event/company/seminar.  All in all, a very useful tool for passionate entrepreneurs to share, connect and learn.  Looking forward to reading up on further events and possibly posting something of my own in the near future. 

-PB

Are you on LinkedIn?
Yes? I thought so.
No? I strongly encourage you join.

Why Join?
Beyond the ability to flaunt your successes and connect with colleagues and friends, LinkedIn Answers proves to be a highly useful feedback mechanism. It allows you to tap insight from and initiate relationships with high-level execs. (Another fun tip: you can “introduce” yourself to hot shot professionals via your connections — see “get introduced to a connection” on a desired connection’s profile page.)

Earlier this week, Mike, Paul and I had a little hang-out sesh where we discussed online advertising, interactive marketing, CGM and the ability to quantify and measure success. I recalled hearing about the usefulness of LinkedIn Answers at a work meeting so we decided to give it a shot.

Experiment in Action

I asked: What are the most valuable online marketing metrics/KPI’s (i.e. # of impressions, demographical data, cost per impression,etc.)?

The response? Overwhelming (in a good way). Received 16 very insightful responses in less than twenty-four hours. Here’s a snapshot…

“I think most of our knowledge on what are the most important KPI’s generally are outdated. Many people have said the Cost per Sale or Cost per Lead are the key drivers of interactive media, which I don’t disagree with. But if we are still measuring these metrics with simple clicks and impressions, I think we are generally missing the picture. Relational and interaction data are the most important drivers of interactive marketing. To understand the state of a customer and the relationship the advertiser has with the customer, all at the point of interaction is the holy grail of interactive marketing. And to transpose this understanding web wide (display, search, email, website interaction), we can start to see the internet in a much more robust way.

To be able to understand that a customer is not just represented by a click and impression, but rather by a story which marketers can use to offer the right product at the right time is finally possible on the internet.“ - Brian Murphy, Senior Sales Executive at TruEffect

“As you probably know, the primary benefit of online marketing (as opposed to traditional marketing), is the ability to track ‘conversions’ and identify which campaigns, creative, and channels lead to the most conversions and lowest cost per conversion. By the way, I am using ‘conversion’ as opposed to ’sale’ since a sale in online marketing could be a user simply filling out a form, watching a video, etc.

Therefore, sorry for the long-winded answer, the most valuable online marketing metrics are (1) conversion rate and (2) cost per conversion. Conversion rate allows you to identify the most effective campaign, and cost per conversion is a necessary input to ROI.” – Private answer so I’m withholding his name, however, the company he works for is Barefoot, a BBDO company

“The most valuable online KPIs are totally based on your particular situation. That being said, there’s a huge push in online advertising to measure “engagement.” It’s a nebulous word with lots of definitions, but at the end of the day it means marketers are trying to find metrics that tell them how interested people are in their brands. Time spent, pages viewed and repeat visits are but a few indicators of engagement. I’ve included a link to an article from ClickZ that has lists some metrics one might use to measure it.

Links:

• http://www.clickz.com/showPage.html?page=3522616” – Talib Morgan, CEO and Founder of Actuan

“The net is a market place, and it is important for any seller to be in the marketplace in the first place. You want to be where your customers are, and you want to engage them right there with the solution to their information queries. I think therefore that brand engagement should be the key goal of the online marketer, encouraging users to interact with your content is the ultimate deliverable that can actually be tracked and compared across industries.

To this end, I like any stats that show engagement with content – (eg. PV per visitor, time on site – adjusted to weed out anything below about 30 seconds and anything above about 20 minutes.) I think you have done your job if you can get the people you want to stay on your site and learn more about your product/service. I think in this way, you are committing to a strong presence online and also to the founding principals of the net – i.e. to educate and share rather than expressly to make sales – I think these are more sustainable and also realistic goals.” – Philip Cockrell, Manager Usability & SEO at Firstlight ERA

” Bounce rate

CTR (click through rate)

CPI (cost per impression)

Unique visitors

Cost per conversion

These five metrics are arguably the only metrics you will ever have to look at to determine if your site is a success or not. Each one is important for a different reason and each one, when combined with the other four, paints a clear and concise picture as to what is happening with the site.

These metrics answer the following questions:

What is the consumer doing when they reach my site?

Can the consumer reach my site?

and Who is coming to my site?” – Jesse Liebman, Search Engine Marketing Specialist at Engine Works

Good stuff. More to come soon.

xo,
A.rae

Flock – the Social Web Browser – is my new favorite find. Positioned as “the browser for the modern web,” Flock offers a very solid and attractive user experience. By integrating email, social networks and other web-based applications (Flickr, Twitter, RSS, etc.) into one window, Flock simplifies online activities and increases efficiency and productivity.

Not sold yet? Well, think about your room at home… or your work space. For me, I’m very neat, like order and organization, and aesthetic appeal is very important to me. Perhaps I’m borderline OCD but moreover, a clean space enables me to think clearly and work productively. Clothes on the floor, unmade bed, dishes lying around and so on are distractions that inhibit work flow.

A screen grab of “My World”… (gorgeous.)

Do you use Flock? Like it? Love it? Hate it? Let me know.

-A. Rae

I received an invitation today to the Chicago New Media Summit…

I am extending you a personal invitation to be a participant for the Chicago New Media Summit 2008.

We are asking you to represent your industry and participate as one of 300 modern media pioneers. 

September 15th-16th, you and 299 others, will gather at The Museum of Contemporary Art to create new allies, exchange vital resources and invent new business. This history-making event will include talks and performances by 43 of Chicago’s breakthrough pioneers across diverse industries, it will galvanize the city’s talent and money around a shared passion for the interactive future, host a start-up marketplace and promote Chicago as “The New Media Capital of the World”.

Each talk will be filmed and streamed via the Internet.

The link below will take you to the new CNMS08 site where you can see the Schedule, Register and Sponsor links.
This invitation expires on Friday August 29th.

Be part of history, 

John Patterson
Founder & President
Chicago New Media Summit

Its online community describes the event as one that will “unite Chicago’s most innovative and influential individuals with two days of talks, presentations and performances about the mergers of technology, entertainment, advertising, activism, and more … It will give its members access to participate in new ideas and new ventures. The long-term vision of the summit includes an idea awarding crowd-sourced new ventures with the capital to begin a business born during the event. The site is birthing new ventures, relationships, commerce and networks of new communication and collaboration.”

Sounds amazing. And I’d be thrilled to attend. Unfortunately tickets are $425 — which is fairy reasonable considering the schedule/lineup/opportunities — but this is well-beyond my monthly discretionary income. Fortunately, tickets for the Monday night Social Gala go for $75 and include performances, presentations and a networking event. This sounds much more feasible… I’ll keep you posted.

- A.Rae

There is no doubt that we have seen the power crowdsourcing spread its branches across numerous industries.  Today however I came across a first…a restaurant fueled entirely by an online community of voices.  Elements, a Washington based eatery, prides itself on creating a “third place between home and work for people of all ages, preferences and backgrounds to meet and nourish themselves, the people around them, and the planet.”  The Elements project was originally launched in 2007 by Linda Welch, a Washington business woman who partnered with friend and local entrepreneur and crowdsourcing proponent Neil Takemoto.  Welch had originally purchased the business and liquor licenses of nearby Sparky’s, a failed coffee shop, but had no idea what to do with them.  Soon thereafter Takemoto and Welch had a very deep and inspiring chat.  According to the Washington Post the conversation between the two went something like this:

Takemoto:  “How about crowdsourcing the restaurant?”

Welch: “Great!’ “ She remembers. ” ‘What the hell is that?’ “

A month later, the group had its first meeting.

 ”I ordered one pizza and picked up a six-pack of beer,” Welch said. “I thought if there were three or four people there, that would be a lot.”

In my most recent episode of “white wine +introspection,” I came across this excellent article about productivity and finding your passion and purpose. The premise is that once you find your passion and pursue it, productivity and goal setting will follow.

So how does this relate to crowdsourcing? Well, the people who choose to create content have that passion. They enjoy what they do and they have what it takes to be one of the best. Crowdsourcing is essentially tapping the masses who may not know the right people to get to the top but they sure have the talent to get there. Of course not everyone who participates will be have this talent, but that’s the thing, unless you’re good, the crowd won’t like it either. It’s survival of the fittest in its finest form… the best will prevail. And it’s in your own terms.

So on to that article…

If you don’t have passion and purpose, greater productivity won’t help you!

“Edopter is social trendcasting, combining user insight and worldwide buzz to tap into the next big thing. Users create and follow trends, share and discuss them – then watch as they spread across the world. The site provides a social interaction point around trends in people, places, things, ideas, fashion, media and the web. Part wiki, part stock market game, users get in on trends with potential and earn points as they gain popularity both online and off”

Social trendcasting website Edopter is attempting to do something no other website has successfully acheived – predicting upcoming trends.  The model is fairly simple.  Edopter allows users to create “trends” based on what they believe will eventually catch on.  Some current trends are obvious such as ”Batman: Dark Knight” and others not e.g. “Tap Water”.  The user that creates the trend is then faced with the task of writing a “pitch” surrounding why they feel the trend will catch on.  Edopter’s system then scans the web searching for content around the trend and returns a measurable level “buzz” back to the user.  From here, users have the capability to post videos, pictures and discussions surrounding a trend.  With more discussion and content comes more users and popularity, thus increasing the value of the trend.  Users must “buy into” each trend using points accumulated from various activities on performed on the website.  Each user starts with 500 points and the earlier you get into a trend the cheaper the buy-in, hence users are encouraged to spot trends as early possible. 

The ultimate goal of Edotopter is to gain access to a specific demographic that has never before been tapped…trendsetters.  These are the early adopters that are always on the lookout for new ideas -the big picture people if you will.  However, I feel there is one major flaw in this system.  From my perspective it seems that most of the trends posted on Edopter are ones that already exist, i.e. “Batman: Dark Knight”.  Yes, the movie is tremendously popular and many people are buying into to this trend, but it is in no way anything new.  In fact, unless there is pre-existing internet buzz floating around a current topic, Edopter won’t assign a high trend value to the topic following its scan of the web. Personally, I struggle to see how value is created simply from discussion around a movie that has already broken the single weekend box office record or any other topic already being discussed all across the world.   

Hopefully as the site progresses (only in the beta stage now), more users will join and create content for their own “big ideas” rather than the current pre-existing trends, however, I personally would be hesitant to post any of my own “big ideas” until I know it’s rock solid and ready for feedback/criticism/praise.  That said, I think this is a cool concept and is worth checking out. 

Thoughts?

-PB

Nvohk takes crowdsourcing to the next level by crowdsourcing, well, almost everything. Nvohk (Invoke) is the first community-managed eco-friendly clothing company, and probably one of the first community-managed companies in general. Members make key business decisions including logo design, product design, advertising, product mix, and other design related activities.

The basics go something like this – first, one must become a member for $50/year – from there it is possible to submit logo ideas, vote on certain business decisions, and win rewards and cash based on what you have done. It’s certainly an interesting and brilliant business concept, and will prove to be a very interesting experiment in business management, marketing, and design.

With all “co-founders” having an equal share in the business by submitting the $50 fee, they almost become de facto “shareholders.” By allowing the customers to have an extremely influential effect on the everyday business decisions, this becomes an easy way to get consumers to evangelize the brand – they are actually making the decisions and have a vested interest in the Company’s success.

If successful, this model could potentially lead the way for other small start-ups to take similar paths by ceeding some amount of control, creative or otherwise, to the masses.

-Mike

Social Media in Plain English

Thanks to The Common Craft Show.

So What’s the Point?

Social Media fosters meaningful relationships. It’s authentic and organic. And it gives everyone a voice.

Social Media + Business

Today, “the people” have the control. They call the shots. And they drive conversations and recommendations.

Brands and companies are defined not by what they think but rather by the relationship that exists between their customers and their products and/or services.

Enter Social Media.

A powerful tool that enables companies to ignite conversation with the audiences who ultimately define their success. By leveraging Social Media tools, companies can create and maintain meaningful relationships with those people who matter most. (Apple, I love you.)

The Question Remains

Why are so many companies afraid of Social Media? What is there to really lose?

My Two Cents

Ignorance is a Bitch. Open your mind. And embrace change.

-A. Rae