Reflections & analysis about innovation, technology, startups, investing, healthcare, and more .... with a focus on Minnesota, Land of 10,000 Lakes. Blogging continuously since 2005.

Tag: marketing (Page 2 of 3)

Why I Haven’t Been Blogging Much Lately: Micro-Blogging!

So, here’s a chart that shows what I’ve been doing lately instead of blogging here.  Yep, micro-blogging on Twitter. There’s a free service for us twitterers (or, as some call us, "tweeple") — it’s called TweetRush, and it lets us graph our recent Twitter activity. Pretty cool. Graemetwitterusage_2

So, for you blog readers out there that may have been wondering why I’m so quiet, I’m really not!  🙂  Heck, 232 tweets since July 19th is pretty darn active, wouldn’t you say?  And virtually none of these tweets is about what I’m eating for breakfast, or some lame thing like that, which is what a lot of Twitter detractors think people do there. Darn near all my tweets or "micro-posts" are news items or insights that I think my "followers" — approaching 400 now — would be interested in. Occasionally, some are replies to certain followers, too — though I prefer to do a lot of that privately via what Twitter calls "Direct Message" or DM.  Some people go nuts with Twitter replies, though — almost using it like group email or IM. Letting everyone sort of be voyeurs into their personal, one-on-one conversations. But I find that quite silly, actually, for the most part. I much prefer to use Twitter to publish useful tidbits and, especially, links that open people up to even more connected knowledge out there — and create conversations on the back channel, whether via DM or email. Twitter is having huge implications in marketing and PR. Game changing, as a matter of fact. I even have a friend — a reporter — who’s about to publish a book called "Twitter Means Business," which gets into a lot of that. (He interviewed me and people from about three dozen other companies.)

Do you use Twitter?  Are you following me there?  If not, please set up your own free account, and then click "follow" here: www.twitter.com/graemethickins. If you’ve already been using it, what do you think of it?  Is it changing your online life, as it is mine?

Mixed Messages in The Blogging Landscape (ReadWriteWeb) – And I Weigh In, Too!

Here’s the RWW post. Excerpt: "There has been a lot of discussion recently about the changing face of the blogging landscape. On one hand many bloggers have turned to the likes of FriendFeed and Twitter to express themselves, instead of their blogs. On the other hand we have a group of professional blogs that are becoming more and more like ‘old media’."  See my lengthy comment (#7) — what do you think?

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General Mills, Target, Best Buy, and Fingerhut Bare Their Social Media Souls

I blogged about a big event here in Minneapolis last night, featuring four of our larger hometown brands (well, three, plus one pretty big direct-marketer you may have also heard of). The topic was social media, and you can tell it was hot by this shot I grabbed with my iPhone of the very crowed room. Mimasocmedia051408
My post about it is over at my NewMediaWise blog, because that’s where I talk more about marketing and all the changes happening in that field. The session was excellent, if for no other reason than I felt the panelists were sincere and candid in their remarks, and yet had as many questions as answers. It wasn’t fluff or BS — I think we heard what’s really on their minds, and they got us thinking about how much more still needs to be done….by big brands as well as small.

Thanks to our great local interactive marketing organization — MIMA.org — for putting on this gig.  They said it was the largest of any of their regular monthly meetings to date.  Hot topic, and lots of good networking before and after.  I had the opportunity to chat at length with two of the panelists afterwards, Jim Cuene of General Mills and Gary Koelling of Best Buy, and also to meet several other folks as well.

Tell ya what, after experiencing Minnebar on May 10 and MIMA on May 14, I’ll say this…..this town is rockin’ this spring!!

So, What Have I Been Up to Lately?

Glad you asked. Would you believe I launched another blog? That’s right, I’m a glutton for punishment. It’s actually a blog for my business.  (So, I guess that means this one becomes my personal blog)  The new blog is the first online wrinkle for a new practice of my consulting firm (GT&A Strategic Marketing), which I call NewMediaWise — so that’s where you’ll find it.
Its purpose is to explore the new world of marketing that’s being enabled by social media tools and technologies. Nmwscreenshot
Design of the site is by Geise Design. Randy and I have worked together much in the past, including when we did interim gigs together for the launch of BestBuy.com back in 2000. Randy’s a real master at web site design and development, and is particularly adept at ExpressionEngine™, an amazing platform behind many great sites (such as PaidContent.org and iLounge). I’m looking forward to getting the rest of the site built out.  Meantime, I’ll be blogging there about all things new media and marketing related. Here at Tech~Surf~Blog, I’ll continue to write about all kinds of other topics, including my coverage of tech conferences…and, of course, a little surfing from time to time.  If you’re interested in new media and marketing, I hope you’ll get a chance to check out the new blog and become a reader there as well.

What else have I been up to?  Well, I was quoted twice in the media in the past week or so — first in a business article in the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, and then in an article on "The Business of Blogs" in the December 2007 issue of Twin Cities Business magazine (but that site doesn’t yet feature the current issue at the time of this posting).  So, its been a busy November so far.  Happy Thanksgiving to you all, and now bring on December!

UPDATE (the day after Thanksgiving): Oh, I almost forgot another thing: Tech~Surf~Blog was named one of "Top 100 Analyst Blogs" by Techobabble 2.0 (a blog written by an Edelman PR exec in the UK) . Can ya beat that?
 

Steve Jobs: ‘iFlubbed’ – I Don’t Think So!

So, have you heard about the term being applied to Uncle Steve’s move last week regarding the iPhone? Yes, you could have guessed — it’s “iPology” 🙂 …. There’s some interesting insight on this whole overblown thing on a great new blog called MarketingApple. This guy (also named Steve) I think really sets the record straight. An excerpt from that post:

Folks, you are living through what has to be the Golden Age of marketing and Steve Jobs is its king.  Enjoy the ride.

Stevejobsiflubbed

Then, a followup post yesterday on the same blog heralds the latest news that — you got it — one million iPhones have now been sold.

I was discussing this whole thing as it happened with my close colleagues — all of us huge Apple users and supporters — and I got a great summation from one of them over the weekend. He doesn’t want me to use his name, but he’s a very smart guy (serial entrepreneur), and I just have to share his recap and insights with you:

Jobs is the king of concept and design. It’s easy to market the coolest phone ever and the best MP3 player ever, but good luck conceiving, designing, and developing them.

By cutting the iPhone prices, Jobs created a problem, then conceived and developed a solution. Typical Steve Jobs.

When the first rumors surfaced about Apple getting into the cell phone market, people laughed and predicted instant failure. Before the iPod, the Diamond Rio had more than 50% market share, and they were dropping the price quarterly to meet new competition. Apple came out with the iPod (with a hard drive) at 3-5 times the price of the average price of MP3 players at the time and couldn’t make enough of them. Other MP3 players with hard drives came out shortly after at half the price, and those companies couldn’t sell the ones they produced for the launch, while Apple couldn’t make enough of theirs. Then, when you could buy flash MP3 players for $20, Apple released the Nano at $250 and the Shuffle at $150, and, again, they couldn’t make enough of them.

Steve jumped on 2.5″ and 1″ hard drive technology for the iPod and, later, on multi-GB flash, when they were both expensive, new technologies, and Apple’s volume alone drove the technology towards commodity pricing. Apple never dropped prices, they just come out with new models at the same prices with thinner designs and more storage.

They can’t release iPhones the same way, even though their prices have fallen, because they are using so much flash. It costs them less to make the 8GB today than the 4GB four months ago. They could drop the price to gain wider market acceptance, so they did. Adding more storage and making the iPhone thinner won’t be enough to release a new model. They need to bump up the speed, make the display as big as the case (40% larger), add faster broadband, and add a VoIP softphone. (Nokia has them and HP just released the new iPaq with more features and a VoIP softphone built in.) All the new cellular chips designs have WiFi embedded, so ALL new phones next year will have WiFi. The cellular carriers may block the SIP (the de-facto standard for VoIP, session initiation protocol) ports to disable VoIP, and there will be a new RTP (real time protocol) invented to transmit VoIP over any open port — maybe that’s what Steve is up to next? 🙂

People just keep laughing every time Apple does the unexpected, but their concept and design is so good that they become the market leader. I can’t wait for the iTV-LCD, the iDVR, the iCarStereo, and the iGameBox.

Now, does that nail the situation, or what? (And also raise some interesting new possibilites.) I told you I hang around with smart guys….

UPDATE: To correct a typo….sorry.

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