Shorter is Sweeter (And Smarter) — The Proof

When communicating, make your point early. While you still have your audience's attention.

Just one of the many brilliant things about digital branding/communications/advertising and the like is that the results are so easy to measure.  We look at a lot of results data at Rassak–and often use it to improve things, even on the fly. But the data is often proprietary and unshareable.  I thought I’d share one interesting tidbit with you from some personal communications I put out on the web last week. Nobody can yell at me (except me) for sharing this.

Last week was the week leading up to the Jewish new year AKA Rosh Hashana  (in fact it is actually today… so if I were an observant Jew I would not by typing right now!). I’ve traditionally made a new year greeting and sent it via email to people who I think would be interested in the week before the holiday. Even though my greetings have been in video format for a few years, this time I decided to upload the video to YouTube and share it that way.

Once the video is seen a minimum number of times, YouTube gives you back viewing data — demographics, etc. One of my favorites is the “hotspot” data. This data compares your video to other videos of similar length — and shows where people, on average, tend to leave your video.

My new year video, is about one and half minutes long. You can see, in the image above, where people begin to get a bit antsy. This data is based on about 900 or so views on YouTube.  If you like, you can check out my  video for yourself here. And happy new year!

Now.. not all videos (of course) have the same graph. Here’s a cool video of a guy explaining hotspots.. and he shows some of his graphs.

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Ideas Worth Spreading — to 4.5B More People

The smart people who put on the TED (Technology, Entertainment and Design) conference — but who actually are also becoming a very interesting digital media brand —  announced something interesting today. It is now possible to either translate yourself or view translations of any of the many interesting videos (AKA “Ted Talks”) at TED.com. The idea: make the talks useful to the 4.5 billion or so people who don’t speak English. To quote head-TED Chris Anderson:

The TED Open Translation Project will enable thousands of volunteer translators to use subtitles to make TED available to their own communities. To do this the right way has taken a year of preparation. But now we’re ready.

The site is filling up with  what they call “interactive transcripts”. They allow you to click on any word in English or a translated language — and actually make the video of the given talk play from that word on.

This is all very good for making the site and videos people-friendly to many more people. But it’s also very good for TED.com’s search engine friendliness… talks are searchable and findable, increasing the site’s profile on Google and other engines.

BTW, here, per TED, are the languages with the most talks translated in them, as of this posting.

Source: TED.com

Smart. Or, if you like, inteligente, интелигентен, 智能, חָכָם, لبيب, วิทูร

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The 2 C’s of Email Communication

Lately, my life seems to flow through my inbox, and I’ve started to think about how I can improve the experience, no matter what the platform.  The CC line is low hanging fruit in this regard, especially since it seems to have lost its way these days.

For many people, the CC line is where you put “extra” people because you don’t want to clutter up the TO line.  For others it’s a Fight Club for passive-aggressive power plays. For the most part, though, CC’s simply fail to set clear expectations for what you want people to do.

I have a rule, and I let everyone know about it.  Three weeks ago I put the following line in my signature, above my contact information:

Please Note:
If you are CC’d: this email is only for your information and requires no action on your part.

This gives people in the CC line license to read and trash without a second thought. Since then, my emails are read more, answered faster, and I get fewer extraneous responses.  I’ve also noticed more people adopting my approach.

By clearly setting expectations, I save time for everyone, but most importantly I save it for myself.

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Booktips: “The Art of Letting Go, Enterprise 2.0″

I have been checking out a really interesting/smart book called The Art of Letting Go, Enterprise 2.0.  The book is a series of essays by people like Stefan Bocking, who runs webs services at Vodafone, Gotz Hamman, business editor for the big German weekly Die ZEIT, Andrew McAfee, a professor in tech and ops management at Harvard biz school. The essays address ways web 2.0 technologies (many of which are communications technologies which is one reason I’m so interested in them) can be used as business tools.

Enterprise 2.0 – The Art of Letting Go

Here’s one bit that caught my eye.. I’ll quote directly from McAfee’s essay called “A Definition of Enterprise 2.0″

One of the most common phrases I hear in discussions of any type of IT initiative …. is “It’s not about the technology (INATT).” I’ve heard this from vendors, consultants, technologists, executives … analysts, pundits and academics ….

People usually mean one of two things when they say INATT; one of them is correct but somewhat uninformative, and the other conveys a lot of information but is incorrect and even dangerous. The correct-but-bland meaning  is “It’s not about the technology alone.” In other words, a piece of technology will not spontaneously or independently start delivering value, generating benefits, and doing precisely what it’s deployers want it to do. Technologies have to be managed in order to do any of these things; they’re not magic bullets or miracle cures.

….

The other meaning behind INATT is “The details of this technology can be ignored for the purposes of this discussion.”

As somebody who has seen many  times how the details of anything — including, and often especially, technology — is experienced by users/customers can have huge impact, I think McAfee is right on! in saying how wrong this second point is.

But I disagree that the first point is bland and does not bear repeating early and often — even if people seem to get it. Communication is aided by technology… but it really (really, really, always) is about people.  I am going to start using the acronym myself… but I am going to add a letter to really make the point: INATTA (the second A being “Alone”).

My little note isn’t nearly as smart as many of the points in McAfee’s essay and in the book in general. Check the book out for yourself.

Thanks to Tina Kulow for the booktip.

Oh, BTW, the book as a website.

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Coldplay Analytics

I liked this quote by Coldplay’s Chris Martin in the band’s recent 60 Minutes interview

“When we look out from the stage you can’t really see people so much but you can see the light of the doorway of all the exits. So the way to tell at the beginning of a tour which songs are working and which ones aren’t is if you see people’s silhouettes in the exits then it means you’re probably not playing the right song. ‘Cause a lot of people are probably going to get a hotdog or whatever. So I know we’re doing OK when all the exits are clear. That’s my way of judging it.  The Silhouette Factor”

It’s a bit like tracking “exit pages” in Google Analytics to see what pages are causing people to leave a site.

The bigger picture idea here is that it is really useful to listen to your audience. Yes, it can be good to survey them in advance of something … but it’s REALLY GREAT if you can keep an eye on them while they’re actually interacting with you. This makes everything you do better… your products are better, your communications are better. The web provides some pretty excellent tools for tracking real customer interactions with your ads, your content, your messages, and often with your product itself.

Honestly, though, I’d rather have Martin’s job :-)

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Giving Voice

foto: "notsogoodphotography"

Social media is more dynamic (great social media is MUCH more dynamic) so finding a voice that can resonate in this way is more tricky. And monitoring the voice in real time and over time kinda freeks pr managers and brand committees (is there an emoticon for shuddering?).

I believe these people should chill out a bit.. social media can really humanize a company. It is, after all, called social media, not antisocial media.

By chilling out I mean finding people who can be trusted to give voice to the company and let them go for it.. let them blog, tweet, facebook, comment, chat and otherwise schmooze up the world.

Companies don’t really have voices. People do. Companies have people. Use ‘em.

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Explore The Commons

While poking around the web for a project recently this fish caught my eye — in The Commons public photo archives project on Flickr.

It’s just one of 45 photos in the Belize Larval Fish Group which in turn is just one of many many sets of photos uploaded to The Commons by The Smithsonian. Many other institutions are posting images there as well. Images have “no known copyright restricitons” so you can use them all you want.

From the website description: “The key goals of The Commons on Flickr are to firstly show you hidden treasures in the world’s public photography archives, and secondly to show how your input and knowledge can help make these collections even richer.”

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Hmmmmm. Track Web Analytics in Real Time and Then Get on E-Mail

I got this email yesterday. It was a little invasive, I guess, but I didn’t really mind. In fact I think it’s pretty smart. Though perhaps a tad more subtly in the language/approach would have worked better. The names have been changed to protect the innocent.

On Dec 10, 2008, at 7:12 PM, _____________ wrote:

Hi Barak,

I just saw that you did a password reset for your ________ account and I wanted to send you a quick email to see if there was anything that I can help you with.

_____

__________________
Sales Development
___________, Inc.
______________
New York, NY 10010
Office: (212) ________
Skype: ________
________@________.com

http://www._______.com

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