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Shop Talk

Resolutions for 2008

January 7, 2008

Posted by leah.jones

While I realize that I kept marking the days off on my calendar, I'm shocked that 2008 is already here. That means resolutions, goal setting, list making, intention creating or habit breaking, guess it depends on how you look at things.

Coming up on day 8, I honestly have no idea what my resolutions are this year. Sure, sure, sure. Like everyone else and their mother, I want to eat better, exercise more, and balance my checkbook. I want to frame the resolutions as positive tasks that I can reach, instead of sweeping life changes that will be overwhelming and go ignored due to stress.

Regardless of the resolutions I eventually pick for the year, here are five tools I might use to complete them. All different list making tools available for free and recently featured in a Friday5.

1. 43 Things is a site that asks you, “What do you want to do?” Users ender short phrases, in fact the shorter the better, and 43 Things tells you all the other people with the same goal.

2. A free offering part of 37Signals suite of software is the very simple Ta Da List. You can set up an account in seconds and share the list with your team. For a team list, you can subscribe to the via RSS for updates.

3. “Honey, remember the milk!” You won’t have to be told to Remember the Milk anymore, not when this aptly named site will remind you via IM, text, or email. This site is far beyond a simple to-do list and includes integration with maps, mobile, email and calendars.

4. If you just want to track a few things that you hope to do routinely, then Joe’s Goals might be the right place for you. Set the must-dos and hope-not-to-dos on Joe’s Goal and mark it with a check mark or frown every day.

5. Getting Things Done has spawned plenty of sites for GTD implementation like GTD TiddlyWiki and Nozbe.

How are you tracking your goals this year?

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posted by leah.jones

Shop Talk

Customer Service and the Mobile Phone

January 10, 2007

Posted by leah.jones

Each week, with the help of my fellow me2 co-workers, I send out an email with five tips about social media, trends, must read blogs, and sometimes just humor. Last week we shared our predictions with the company for 2007 and I wanted to talk about one of those today.

Customer Service and Mobile Phones.

Ming suggested it and I agree, companies need to realize that ubiquitous camera phones are going to quickly change the landscape of customer service. I'm certainly not the first to write about how social media is impacting customer service. Remember the Comcast video?

If you get a parking ticket, you can quickly snap a photo of the broken meter. If your hotel room isn't up to snuff, you can shoot a video. Unacceptable service can now be recorded and shared much easier.

So what does it mean to you and your clients?

There is as much power in good customer service as there is in a well written press release. If you have added searches of YouTube, Flickr, and blogs to your daily routine, you might find examples of bad customer service. Customers are taking their complaints straight to the internet, do not pass the 1-800 number, do not collect a $20 rebate.

Make sure that you are shareing these with your clients. Help them come up with a plan. Are you empowered to answer the critics for your client? Has your client empowered someone in-house to respond? Are you sharing the raves about great customer service you find online?

Your assignment.
1. Remind your client that camera phones are changing feedback.
2. Regularly check YouTube, Flickr and other media sharing sites for content about your client.
3. Help your client respond to negative and positive comments.
4. Rinse and repeat.

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posted by leah.jones

Shop Talk

The Long Tail Wags the Dog

July 13, 2006

Posted by Rick.Murray

Who says advertising doesn’t work (especially a roadblock)?

I happened to see this full page spread for Chris Anderson’s new book The Long Tail in the NYT yesterday.

Twenty minutes later I stopped in the Border’s store between the train station and our office in Chicago and picked up a copy. So kudo’s to whoever wrote the copy. You got me.

More importantly, Chris got me. I started and finished the book last night, reading through delays at O’Hare, a flight to NY and the ride into midtown from LGA. It made me really think. Check out the notes I scribbled on the inside front cover.

Long Tail Small Shot.jpg

Seriously, these are on half the book’s pages. Why? Because this book isn’t about blogs, vlogs, wiki’s or social networks; The Long Tail isn’t about word of mouth marketing or any kind of communications at all – though communications plays a starring role throughout.

No, The Long Tail is about the seismic shift our economy is going through – from one exclusively focused on creating demand and achieving scale (mass merchandising, mass-reach communications, etc.) to one where individuals satisfy their demands for whatever it is, wherever they are, whenever they want, etc. And the best part is there are probably 100 easy-to-digest cases of how the long tail is creating real value for companies big and small.

I’m still trying to wrap my mind around what all this means to us. As I do, let me suggest that if you read one business book this summer (hell, if you read one book this summer) you’d do yourself really well to make it The Long Tail. It doesn’t answer all the questions. But it does help paint what we’re seeing all around us in an undeniably clear light.

Cheers,

RWM

Technorati Tags:
long tail, chris anderson, pr, public relations

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posted by Rick.Murray

Shop Talk

Continuous Partial Atten... Oh, wait... Over there...

July 9, 2006

Posted by Phil.Gomes

I've been skipping through the hours of audio I recorded during Edelman's recent General Manager meeting and annual four-day Summer School event.

Futurist Linda Stone spoke to both groups and I was fortunate enough to corner her for an interview. (It'll make its way into an upcoming episode of earSHOT.) Key to Stone's worldview is the concept of "continuous partial attention," or the idea that we we are often forced or accustomed to accepting simultaneous inputs from various sources. (As I write this, I have four IM services, a phone, a mobile phone, a browser, and my email operating.)

"Attention" -- gaining it, keeping it -- continues to be a word on the lips of many. When I took Dr. John Beck's class at Annenberg, he described attention as the scarcest resource. Beck codified these thoughts in The Attention Economy. Beck, it seemed, informed some of Stone's work.

I've lately been reminded of the great advertisement for Marshall guitar amplifiers from several years ago. The sole picture was a grenade. The copy read "Just because something is loud doesn't mean you'll want to listen to it."

People who have listened to my podcasted interviews know that I'm one of the more conservative voices when it comes to new-media adoption and evangelism. Too often, people are seduced by the newness of the tool such that it blinds them to its practical use. That's why I advocate reading Aristotle's Rhetoric -- taking a more radical (def. "to the root of") approach to persuasion.

My point: Gaining attention, though no trivial task by any means, is among the easier challenges facing marketers. Developing sustainable, compelling, and defensible communications is key...

...And it has little to do with tagging, blogs, Web 2.0, podcasts, RSS, AJAX, and so on.

Take an intellectually honest look at your communications objectives before you start throwing tactics up on a wall. Your efforts at gaining attention will be more meaningful and relevant. The PR industry -- and the groups it most wants to influence -- will thank you.

Technorati Tags:
pr, public relations, aristotle, rhetoric

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posted by Phil.Gomes