Ideas and Concepts from Damian Davila
What name do you like best for a “locals recommend” tourism website?
a) whatlocalsknow.com
b) wearelocals.com
c) localsknowbetter.com
d) wherelocalsgo.com
e) other
This is the poll that I shared to my LinkedIn network using LinkedIn polls.
It appears a as a pretty straightforward question, however I learned a lot from the comments of my LinkedIn network.
Here are the key things that I learned from this poll.
There was a great response to the article on how to attract fashionistas online and even Avinash Kaushik, Google Analytics Evangelist, stopped by to comment on it.
Let’s recap on the conclusions from the original article:
The second conclusion is very relevant with the booming industry of widgets. For an overview of how widgets look and feel like, take a look at the guys of Sprout.
To provide a better insight on the world of widgets and unobtrusive ads in the online fashion industry, I was contacted by Poonam, a Product Manager at Harbinger Group. Poonam looks after Raptivity Web Expert software to make websites interactive without programming. She holds a Bachelors degree in Computer Engineering and is an active blogger.
Flickr.
Photobucket.
Facebook.
These are just some of the many options available these days for sharing photos online. I’ve always wondered what are the true drivers for one person to choose one option over the other, so that is why I started this online poll at LinkedIn.
What drives you to choose a service to share photos online?
Continue reading “What drives you to choose a service to share photos online?”
A couple days ago I ran into a good friend that is trying to make it big in the fashion industry. She is one of the coolest persons that I’ve met: a Japanese born gal that grow up in Mexico speaking mostly English and moved to Montreal to work in the field of fashion design.
We started talking about her experience in Montreal and how the economy has hit the fashion industry pretty hard. Not only is she having a hard time hunting for a job, but she has noticed that most fashion websites that she’s visiting are starting to (gasp!) advertise more and more.
Here’s a review of what I learned about the user experience of a fashionista visiting a fashion related website: what turns her off, what engages her, and what are her thoughts about online surveys.
Back in May 2009, I wrote a review of the application LinkedIn Polls available on LinkedIn and how LinkedIn Polls can be used to do some great permission e-mail marketing polling.
I strongly believe that this LinkedIn application is a great way to gather data fast and to create actionable bar graphs that you can e-mail to your colleagues. More importantly it follows the fundamentals of permission e-mail marketing by making polls more personal, relevant and anticipated.
On this post I wanted to provide an example of how we can use LinkedIn Polls not only to meet the fundamentals of an e-mail permission marketing campaign but also to gather useful qualitative data from your respondents.
Continue reading “Keeping in Touch with Classmates via Facebook”
Back in March 2009, we reviewed that video ads are a savvy strategy for marketers because the number of online video viewed has been steadily growing, as reported by eMarketer, and has a high click-through rate when compared to its alternatives. We found that the success of online video ads lies in the law of reciprocity.
The law of reciprocity by Robert Cialdini, in his book, Influence: Science and Practice (New York: Harper Collins, 1993). Basically, the law of reciprocity boils down to this: “a person can trigger a feeling of indebtedness by doing us an uninvited favor”.
Online video ads are a form of entertainment and people are willing to be entertained. An IBM study reveals that almost 60% of its study respondents said they were willing to provide to advertisers some personal information about themselves in exchange for something of value, such as access to high-quality music videos, store discounts or airline frequent-flyer points.
Therefore, the success of online video ads lies in the law of reciprocity.
Continue reading “The Law of Reciprocity and Direct Mailing Campaigns”
A summer 2009 survey conducted by Harris Interactive for CareerBuilder.com indicates that only 26% % of U.S. HR professionals use LinkedIn to search for the names of their job candidates. This percentage is lower than the 29% of U.S. HR professional that use Facebook and the 47% that use Google for the same purpose.
This statistic reveals the fact that there appears to be a misunderstanding of the true networking power of LinkedIn by HR professionals.
So, what is LinkedIn? Here’s the answer from its developers:
However, HR pros seem to be missing the vision of LinkedIn’s founder, Reid Hoffman (yes, that’s a link to his LinkedIn profile). On August 25, 2008 , in an interview with Fortune, Hoffman explains that the main goal of LinkedIn is to improve the life of its users. In his own words:
What I realized before PayPal was sold was that there was going to be a confluence of two forces.
One was how the world of work is changing — every individual is now somewhat entrepreneurial. They’re getting the next gig themselves.
The other was the Internet, which could empower all these individuals to establish profiles online so that people can find them. You’d be able to use your network to get access to people to better chart your path.
I started LinkedIn because changing people’s professional lives is a massive transformation.
Continue reading “Using the True Networking Power of LinkedIn”
In August 14, 2009 I wrote about how web visitors are flocking to career sites such as Hotjobs and Monster during the current recession. More than 65 million visitors checked out career sites in June 2009. This is great news for career sites because that provides a lot of leads for the HR professionals that post jobs at career sites.
Continue reading “How HR Professionals Analyze Your Facebook Profile”
Measuring the success of your permission e-mail campaigns is often oversimplified. Marketing managers are often happy to see rising open rates and click-through rates. (If you have no idea on how to measure the click-through rates of your e-mail campaigns, here’s an easy tutorial using Google Analytics). The problem of being content with just measuring open rates and click-through rates from our e-mail campaigns is that we are victims of the brochure mentality.
What’s the problem with the brochure mentality?
The brochure mentality is the mindset that tells us that as long people get our brochure, open it and browse it for a while; somehow they will get “aware of our brand” or that they will “eventually act on it”. Notice that how exactly the readers of a brochure become aware of the brand or act on it is not really defined, it is just left to, yes you got that right, pure chance.
I am sure that newsletter services and talented newsletter writers will challenge the above statement. But think about it for just a second. When discussing with a graphic designer or an e-mail newsletter, how often do you discuss about the actual objective of your e-mail campaign defined in one sentence and whose success can be tracked with one simple measure?
I am not talking about how many people click on your “read more” link or how many people open your “Labor Day Blowout Sale!” e-mail. I am talking about how many people actually end handing you cash in exchange for the product or service that you offer.
Let’s take a look at what Avinash Kaushik has to say on this (Web Analytics: An Hour a Day, p. 220):
Before you start your analytics, it is important to understand, at least at a high level, that there several important steps to the process of executing e-mail campaigns:
- Define business objectives and how e-mail fits into them.
I just quoted the first step out of 4 to emphasize the importance of this concept. If you’re a frozen yogurt shop, are you in the business of selling frozen yogurt or are you in the business of making people open e-mails? If you’re a humane society that protects animal rights, are you working hard towards increasing the number of people adopting stray dogs or are you working hard that people click on a YouTube video of a sad dog looking for a home?
Before jumping into e-mail (and social media, for that matter) campaigns, you’ve got to have a clear idea of what objectives you want out of it. A clear one sentence objective that can be tracked with one measure.
Here are some great real life examples that I have encountered during my online marketing practice:
Not so fast, monkey!
There are several e-mail newsletter services that work great (e.g. MailChimp), but before you sign up for any of them, do your homework. Even though some offer free trials, hold off signing up for them until you have figured out your one sentence objective whose success can be tracked with one measure.
Helpful Links:
In June 2009, I posted a slide show presentation trying to answer the question “Does Digital Media Advertising Make $en$e?“, which used some examples such as Google’s Picasa and Skitch to provide insights into this topic.
Recently eMarketer released the results of a survey of 211 participants indicating their use or plan of using social media marketing.
Of those 59% who responded that they social media marketing is currently part of their marketing activity, more than 50% indicated that Facebook, Twitter, blogs, and online videos are the core of their social media marketing strategies. From those that are planning to implement or are not using or not planing to use social media marketing, it appears that they seem to be stuck on trying to answer the question: “Does Digital Marketing Make $en$e?”
I would like to point out a couple of important problems that become clear with the results of the survey above:
Even if you “feel” that you don’t need any online presence at all, do probe further into fulling supporting your reasons. Don’t be surprised if you find that at the very least you must take care of your presence that happens from search engine visits.