When I’m in a playful mood and you ask a playful question, almost anything can happen – and usually does. Such was the case at SES Chicago when Greg Jarboe asked me to join him fireside and surprised me with the first question.
Lots of people got the chance to answer, “What do you want from Google for Christmas?” But Greg’s first question set me off….
Happy Holidays!
The worst part about companies being divided up into silos is not the lack of shared messaging.
Although that is a tremendous loss of opportunity.
The more coordinated the outbound messages, the more impactful those messages can be in the marketplace.
The worst part about companies being divided up into silos is not the lack of shared data.
Although that is a tremendous loss of opportunity.
The more an organization can share information about customers, the better it can serve them.
The worst part about companies being divided up into silos is not the lack of an ability to hear.
Although that is a tremendous loss of opportunity.
The more a company can listen to the marketplace, the better it can hone its messages, products and services to accommodate that market.
The worst part about companies being divided up into silos is that ownership is local, personal and Balkanized. When ownership is not shared, when goals are not shared, when the organization does not act in support of itself, it competes internally and cannot properly serve its customers. Instead, individuals within silos do their best to prove their own worth rather than making it a team effort, to the detriment of customer service.
My ox was gored this morning by the New York Review of Books. Hey, @nybooks this is nothing personal – whoever you are, however many of you there are. No, I was annoyed by those hard working people in your direct mail department.
You see, my wife loves your publication; ‘The premier literary-intellectual magazine in the English language.’ Unfortunately, her subscription just ran out. Luckily, it’s almost Christmas! Perfect. She left a little hint on my desk at home – a Business Reply Mail blow-in card from her last issue. Is she great or what?
The card is a classic.
It is such a classic, that it has
no URL and
no phone number
DON’T CALL US and WE WON’T CALL YOU!
DON’T CLICK
DON’T CALL
DON’T PURSUE!
So it’s off to the website (thank you Google) to find the phone number (thank you web people for making that a one click endeavor) and call the nice lady at the subscription center (the work of a moment – well done call center!).
Why, oh why didn’t the direct mail people simply give me that URL and that phone number on that subscription card?
Silos.
[sigh - low]
Welcome to Sterne Measures
November 23, 2009
Subscribe by email at
http://www.emetrics.org/sterne_measures.php
——- ——- ——- ——- ——- ——- ——-
In This Issue:
1. Fifteen Years of Fame – Dr. Ralph Wilson
2. My Next Book on the Amazonian Horizon
3. When to Hyphenate Anal-Retentive
4. Deliver Insight So it Can Be Received
5. Twitter Me Timbers
6. Where in the World is Jim Sterne?
7. Brought to You By
===========================================
1. Fifteen Years of Fame – Dr. Ralph Wilson
===========================================
For 15 years, Dr. Ralph Wilson has been lending an
intellectual hand (not to mention moral support!)
to thousands of small business owners all over the
world.
I offer hearty congratulations to all of those who
have spent time at http://www.wilsonweb.com/,
absorbed his advice and been more successful because
of it.
In his 15 years of service Ralph has had a genuine
impact on the way business is conducted online and
has made the World Wide Web better for small business
and better for consumers. Ralph – congratulations and
thank you.
See the Web Marketing Today press release here:
http://tinyurl.com/ye9qbup
========================================
2. My Next Book on the Amazonian Horizon
========================================
Eight years ago I stopped writing books because I
was busy producing the eMetrics Marketing
Optimization Summit. Then I started blogging (not
very well or frequently) and then I started tweeting.
But books are my favorite format.
You really get to dig into a subject in a book. You
really get to do the sort of research a serious
subject deserves. So writing books appeals to me
almost as much as public speaking.
And now, the pressure is on. John Wiley & Sons are on
top of things and have posted my next book on Amazon:
Social Media Metrics: How to Measure and Optimize
Your Marketing Investment
I am proud, scared, thrilled, intimidated and
overwhelmed by what passes for book marketing these
days.
Time to fire up the blog, start tweeting more, record
a few videos and whip up some more PowerPoint decks.
Here we gooooo!
===================================
3. When to Hyphenate Anal-Retentive
===================================
@justincutroni pointed this one out via Twitter:
For the truly data obsessed, now you can track
all your everyday data with datum.
“Daytum was conceived in 2008 by Ryan Case and
Nicholas Felton as a way of creating an elegant
and intuitive way to count and communicate the
personal statistics generated by each of us every
day.
“Whether you would like to tally an afternoon or
a year, Daytum can help you collect and communicate
the most important statistics in your life. From an
up-to-the-moment personal dashboard, to a tabulation
of an event, a home for sports scores, or as a corporate
tool, the uses for Daytum may be limitless.”
Socrates will tell you that an unexamined life is not
worth living but I’m just not that into my own navel.
http://tr.im/zBLQ
========================================
4. Deliver Insight So it Can Be Received
========================================
You know how some people absorb info faster via words,
some via numbers and some via pictures? So if you want
to really get an analytical point across, you have to
know your audience. Are they more likely to understand
a paragraph, a spreadsheet or a chart? How do you know
which kind of person you’re dealing with?
Here’s a white paper about one possible method from
the mind and technology of Joseph Carrabis.
“Evolution Technology monitors non-conscious psycho-
dynamic and -motor cues from the user to determine
best presentation formats based on a predetermined,
(external) rule set provided by (decision support
system) designers. ($45)
http://tinyurl.com/nsedss1
=====================
5. Twitter Me Timbers
=====================
What? You don’t follow me on Twitter?
Then you’ve missed all this:
Would you believe 28 cookies for one click? 5 minute
YouTube video from @checkyourfuel
http://bit.ly/6NHQf8
Predictive Analytics World Feb 16-17, San Francisco
http://www.predictiveanalyticsworld.com/
RT @jdersh: Free Semphonic webinar Dec 3: “How do you
Measure Social Media ROI?” http://bit.ly/3OC42A
(Me: just registered)
What do you want out of Social Sentiment Tracking?
http://bit.ly/3o1m0p
Any suggestions / additions for this page on Web
Analytics Education? http://bit.ly/wa-training
And more of the same by following me at
http://twitter.com/jimsterne
====================================
6. Where in the World is Jim Sterne?
====================================
Home for the holidays – except for Search Engine
Strategies where brand new Majordomo Mike Grehan
has me working hard presenting or moderating
multiple panels December 7.
http://www.searchenginestrategies.com/
Listen to my fifteen minute pre-conference interview
on Webmaster Radio… http://bit.ly/2Zhe4N
After the holidays? Toronto, Montreal, Ottawa,
Amsterdam, London… and then on Tuesday…
====================
7. Brought to You by Jim Sterne at Target Marketing:
====================
Practical strategy
for getting the most
from your Web site
Fifteen years of online experience:
http://www.targeting.com
Five (soon to be six) books on online marketing:
http://www.targeting.com/books.html
One industry conference series:
http://www.emetrics.org
One industry association:
http://www.WebAnalyticsAssociation.org
===================================================
Please forward this to your friends, your colleagues,
heck – even your boss. Why not? They can subscribe
themselves at www.emetrics.org/sterne_measures.php
===================================================
Jim Sterne Target Marketing of Santa Barbara
jsterne@targeting.com http://www.targeting.com
Author, Speaker, Consultant +1 805-965-3184
Blog: http://emetrics.wordpress.com
Twitter: http://twitter.com/jimsterne
———————————————————-
Copyright 1994-2009
Target Marketing of Santa Barbara
211 East Victoria, Suite E
Santa Barbara, CA 93101
805-965-3184
Note: I put this was in a recent Sterne Measures newsletter but realized it should go here….
Just saw a tweet from @rdo where he asked:
>> Why should all tweets be relevant?
>> Do we always talk relevant stuff?
>> Twitter is about discussions, not
>> news coverage. Or did I get it wrong?
Well René, you’re not wrong, you’re just asking the
wrong question. Twitter is about discussion and news
the same way a pencil is about discussion and news. It’s
a communication tool.
When Edward Tufte published his rant, “The Cognitive Style
of PowerPoint: Pitching Out Corrupts Within,” I just about
blew a gasket. PowerPoint is a communication tool. It’s a
freakin’ pencil! Use it well, use it badly – it doesn’t care.
What’s the best use for Twitter?
Stand by for my favorite answer:
It depends.
What are you trying to accomplish?
If you want your family to know that you arrived safely,
then get a familial Twitter account and don’t cross the
streams (Ghostbusters’ reference) with your business
account.
I tweet for business and it shows up on my Facebook page.
That confuses the heck out of my regular friends who have
no idea what I’m talking about and they Really Don’t Care.
@avinashkaushik does a masterful job of walking the line.
His equally masterful blog http://kaushik.net/avinash is all
business. But his tweets are mostly cool things he has found
online that he feels other intellectual, analytical, online
marketing professionals might like. Some are business,
but most are just cool things. And every now and then,
he tweets about his next book or his next public appearance.
Brilliant.
So is Twitter about discussions or news coverage?
Yes.
That said, it seems obvious that this should have been a
blog post that I should have tweeted about. Someday, I’m
gonna get the hang of this communication thing…
Kim Bayne, is a marketing communications and PR veteran, best-selling author on technology and marketing, freelance writer, conference speaker, former syndicated public radio host, pioneer of marketing discussion listservs, occasional crafts artisan, obsessed social media maven, Second Life freak, and opinionated, cynical nitpicker who shares her thoughts with no one in particular. She makes mouth-watering lemon chicken, stir-fried rice and other equally satisfying comfort food — at home, from scratch, claims her family — but only when she manages to drag her butt away from the computer.
All of the above is according to her, on her blog so, as John Stewart would say – no disrespect.
Kim, AKA @mincedmedia, was one of five speakers at what I still like to claim was the first Marketing on the Internet seminar series in September and October 1994. We toured five cities that first time: Los Angeles, San Jose, Seattle, Dallas, and Denver.
Those were heady days. In San Jose, only half the audience had an email address and only about 10% had actually seen the World Wide Web.
Yesterday afternoon, @mincedmedia tweeted this:
@jimsterne Let’s play “Where are they now?” http://www.targeting.com/previous94.html
As it turns out – I can manage 4 out of 5.
And let’s start with Kim… Aside from the above, Kim is a Senior Technical Writer/Content Developer at Intuit.
OK – that was easy – I would have said too easy, but that distinction belongs to Mark Gibbs.
Mark is still writing several columns for NetworkWorld, still involved in not-quite-yet-on-the-radar start-ups and still living close enough to my place in Santa Barbara that we meet mostly monthly for seaside dining, conversation and cigars.
Ron Richards continues to astonish his clients from his offices in San Francisco. He understood marketing optimization loooong before the Internet came to be and is a the master at using human psychology to tell you which variations you should be testing.
Jeff Osborn remains a bit of a mystery. He did very well from UUnet before the first bubble burst and was last seen on his ranch in one of the Virginias. Jeff – if you’re out there, do drop us a line, tweet, email, call, telepathic impulse or company launch.
That leaves me – Where am I now?
I am programing the next eMetrics Marketing Optimization Summit, still chairing the Web Analytics Association and have just committed to writing yet another book.
Where will I be tomorrow? Perhaps coming to a city near you?
Thanks for the walk down Memory Lane Kim. And it only required a 4GB upgrade.
