Digital In Motion

Content is King (and Queen), Again

So content strategy is the topic of the day. The week. The year maybe. Some folks look at me a little googly-eyed when I say that, as if it has always been that way. But I don't think so. It's the perfect storm of elements that make it so. And they are:

1. Panda and Penguin
2. Multi-channel consumption behaviors
3. Social (media) Engagement

I could have just put the Google updates in number 1, 2 and 3, but that would be boring.

So for us digital strategists who aren't knowledgeable enough about SEO nitty gritty to use all the right words to describe this, here is scoop using my own language.

You have customers. You have a business. You want customers to find you in organic search results (where you don't have to pay for it), preferably somewhere on the first page. Your customers want to find you, too, if you have what they need. So, how?

Well, start by understanding what your customer wants from you. And put content on your websites that gives it to them. Then put a content calendar together that plans out what the central narrative or theme should be on the site, say, every week. Plan out little snacklets of content related to this core theme and sprinkle them around on Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Tumblr. All links go back to your site. Videos go on YouTube and Vimeo. Make sure your content has keywords and key phrases that matter to your core customer! Robots like that, too. Watch what happens. Adjust. This is not a task for the most junior member of your team!!

And don't forget those smart little devices that we carry with us everywhere. What does your content look like there? Not so great? Well, then you need a mobile web strategy and fast. Mobile first, if possible. Need help with all of this? Contact us at Cimarron Winter. We'd love to meet with you.

So relevant content, frequent updates, social engagement, mobile presence, and click throughs will give Google what it needs in order to give your customers what they want so they click through and get to your website . Which makes you happy, and that's why content is King. Again.

Theme of the day is content strategy. Which is likely to produce a 'duh' sound from those in digital circles, but seriously, this is a really big deal today.

Personalization and Social Engagement. Happy New Year!

If 2010 was the year of social, 2011 is going to be the year about data. How marketers manage data. How they use it. And it's going to get a little complicated as we move into more of a push/pull world. Yes, we've been talking about pull for awhile. But now we're really there. Email is push. Your mobile app is pull. We are eager to help clients frame a strategy that will help personalize communication in both a push and pull way. API development is a big part of that picture.

Think Big. Execute Small. Fail Often.

In today's perpetual-beta digital world, it is increasingly more important to think big about how to solve business problems, but to solve them in small and measureable ways.

I'm mid-way through day two at Pop!Tech, a yearly conference about world changing people, projects and ideas. This year's theme is about Brilliant Accidents, Necessary Failures, and Improbable Breakthroughs. There are truly innovative and brilliant people here from all over the world. And the most striking conversations and presentations have really been about how we do more with less and embrace the idea that failures are simply expected consequences on the road to greatness.

Through an environment of open thinking, a strong mission, articulated realistic goals and measureable results for all projects, the Kemp Team will continue to provide strategy and guidance that embraces core concepts of innovation, collaboration, and experiementation. 

 

 

Digital Business Strategy

Not sure if you need a digital business strategy or strategist? If you don't have someone responsible for this in your company, then you need it now more than ever.

We used to talk about just needing a website strategy. Today it's just a lot more complicated than that. You might need a new website design, new functionality, too. But what's your strategy for the whole Web eco-system? Your site, SEO, direct and indirect social engagement, and online marketing? What about mobile strategy, marketing, apps, and web? And how are you using technology to engage with your customers in physical spaces so that you can continue the conversation back in your/their virtual environments? How do you make sure you are present and engaging where your customers are living, working and playing, instead of spending all your marketing dollars to make them come to you? This is the digital business landscape. And it should tie to your overall business objectives so that everything you invest in will provide return in a relevant way for the growth and success of your business.

Working with an IA/Design team for our work on the Arabian Horse Times website that is just stellar.

Personalization and Privacy

There's a lot of talk today about the trade-offs between personalized content/experiences and privacy. Is this a generational issue? Or a communication issue? It seems that if, as marketers, we are transparent about what we are doing and why we are doing it, that our customers will welcome the more relevant and targeted communication.

More Personalized and Experiential, The Next Wave?

Thinking about the ease and ubiquity of communication today, due in large part to social technology. It gives us visibility to infinitely more people, possibilities, and stories, but it doesn't necessarily increase the quality or depth of an experience. It's broad, but shallow. Will more focused, personal experiences and depth be part of the next wave?

Starbucks & ATT: Multi-Channel User Experience Gone Wrong

I collect user experiences.

I take pleasure in observing or experiencing the good ones. The ones that plant favorable memories about brand so that I, in a purely unconscious and Pavlovian way, will seek to repeat these experiences. Obviously unpleasant memories have an equal yet adverse effect on consumer choice and behavior.

I'm particularly interested in experiences that move from one channel to another, connect, intertwine, aggregate, get smarter about me and what I want. And remember it the next time.

So I have stories. Lots of stories. That I pull out for client meetings, or presentations, and to help build business cases and to explain to people what multi-channel interactive solutions are and what this means to their brand.

Naturally, on this journey I am exposed to and collect bad multi-channel user experiences as well, although I don't seek them out. Here is an example:

Like so many urban professionals, I do meetings at coffee shops. I often do work in coffee shops, restaurants, and hotels, picking up wi-fi wherever I go. It's there, it's easy to tap into, it's free. Caribou was the first one to really get us going on the idea that it should be free and easy. I thank them for that.

Starbucks wi-fi to my knowledge has never been free. So if I can choose someplace else to meet someone for coffee, I will. Last week, I had a meeting at a Starbucks, got there early and really wanted to get on the Internet. Asked the barista if they had free wi-fi. She said no, but that I could buy a pre-paid coffee card with a code that would give me access to wi-fi. Okay. Did that.

Step 1: Buy Pre-paid Card with Code
Step 2: Open browser, follow URL and instructions on back of card where I enter the code and the scratch off secret number associated with it

(Now, this is all it really guided me to do on the card and after submitting the code online. So for someone really not familiar, they would think this is all there is to it, right? Wrong.)

Step 3: Go to Starbucks home page, click on link to get on the internet (ATT co-brand)
Step 4: Enter your promo code to get on. It is denied. Fat-fingered? Try again. Denied.

Get up, go to get in line at coffee counter, ask why code from card does not work. Barista comes over to my table, takes me to a completely different URL on the Starbucks site where I have to set up a full account with ATT. Hmmmm. Just for Wi-Fi. And I'm supposedly pretty advanced in terms of this crazy InterWeb space. If I were an average customer and not an experience collector I would now just give up, because it has already been 30 minutes and I am still not on. Barista cheerfully explains to me that the account set-up is necessary because the card I bought is actually a rewards card and now I would be eligible for all sorts of special stuff from Starbucks! I look at the $5 coffee card I bought and it says nothing at all about rewards. Or that it is a rewards card. Barista who sold it to me said nothing about it being a rewards card.

I go back to the Starbucks/ATT homepage mash-up login interface, enter my new login ID and password, hold my breath and lo and behold, I have a connection to the Internet!! Wow.

I think this is what we would call too much squeeze for the juice.

This, my friends, is a multi-channel user experience. There is the physical store presence where the card is sold. There is the drive to the virtual world where the brand attributes live on. There is engagement (and co-branding) with other properties in this space, and there is a trigger email that reaches out to me beyond the confines of the site itself.

Did someone at Starbucks and/or ATT actually go through this process like a user would?
Have they been to their competitors spaces to understand what that experience is like?
These are user-centered questions and should result in improvements and changes to the process.

Good Web Strategy, UI and IA Matter

As the digital world gains dominance and prominence in the hearts and minds of consumers all around the globe, companies are taking heed and are investing more of their marketing budgets in their web presence and representation in the Web as a platform overall.

This is a good thing. 

A cursory evaluation of many company websites shows plenty of lackluster 1990s/early 2000 user interface design elements with broken information architecture from years of bolt-on information and functionality. Beyond that, many of these sites are still very Web 1.0, that is, read only, static information. They are presented with the underlying assumption that the audience will somehow find their site via search engine or from the links provided in all of their marketing collateral.

As these companies evaluate their options for a re-design and re-launch of their web presence, they are increasingly looking to in-house or existing advertising agency relationships to do this work, with the assumption that creative is creative, right? A (print) designer can design a website, right?

Wrong. First and foremost, Web strategy should not be optional. Hire someone who has at least 5 years of experience doing this type of work. This is a complex discipline that requires knowledge of the business, marketing, technology (past, present and future) and behavioral trends, in addition to the critical processes, understanding and skills needed for a good website project’s success.

Second, information architecture (IA) and information design are critical to any website projects success, even if it is a refresh, even if it is a small project. Sometimes you get lucky and have an experienced designer that will do the IA for small sites, but typically these are separate skill-sets.

Third, print designers are not the same as web designers. Not that they can’t evolve these skills, but don’t assume that you can just have your print designer design your website. Web usability, design, production and front-end development are all unique in this channel.

A strong web producer or project manager are the glue that keep this all on track and they should also have experience in this channel, as the knowledge of the process is unique to this space.

If you don't know if you've got the right team to deliver what you need in the Web channel this year, hire a good Web strategist and they will help you create the right kind of plan and process for your business.

Kemp & Company provides strategy for multi-channel interactive solutions: On the Web, on mobile devices, and in physical spaces.

 

Collaboration and the Rise of the Creative Class

 A colleague invited me to lunch this week. What was different about this invitation was that the lunch spot offered up was in the middle of the Minneapolis Art Institute. Clever boy. It was a perfectly fine lunch and conversation. But the truly memorable part was the last half hour where we walked a few of the galleries together and mixed conversations about business with observations about art.

 

If I were to take the pulse of the many conversations I’ve been having most of this week, the beat would be pounding loudly about the connections between the small players (consultants, independents, freelance), the big players (interactive agencies, full service agencies) and the companies large and small that buy their services. The conversation is about the work, how much of it there is, and if there will be changes in the way that work is procured.

 

Well, yes, in challenged economic times there will certainly be changes in the way talent is procured. And maybe there should be. We all know of agencies and individuals that have been black box selling everything from advertising to interactive services by wrapping them in a cloak of AOR and the ability to be so cool they don’t have to explain anything.

 

Valuable (and memorable) resources will come to the client table with a clear understanding of the problems clients are facing today and with that understanding as a basis, they will need to bring truly differentiated creative thought and action that will help their clients make money, save money, create efficiencies within their organization or in some way demonstrably move the dial in the direction of growth.

 

Being a super-smart and truly creative thinker are important elements for differentiation. A genuine love of and passion for what you do is another. The rest of the magic comes from all the other team members doing their part; then the ideas start to blend, form and grow and something truly worthwhile gets created.

 

Today’s market will value IQ and the creative class more than ever. It is that unique talent, in collaboration with a companies’ own key resources, that will move the dial in the right direction.