Tim.McGuinn.es/s

Just spell it out

All In

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If it seems that my responses are faster, more thoughtful, and with some extra snark — it’s because I have a new MacBook Pro.  Fully loaded with Photoshop and new video tools that will keep me wishing everything could be done in one take.

Apple MacBook 2,4 GHz

Realize that I’m going all in, since I am was always a IBM/Windows user probably based on my former job with Big Blue.  Since getting my iPhone 4 years ago, we have added newer iPhones and an iPad, so it only seems natural to take the path of least resistance and to make them all work together.  This means that since I have also been looking to expand my central storage, a new Apple Time Capsule is also on order.

I’ll keep you updated.

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Parent – Child UI

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iKid

An iKid

So what do you know about good UI? I know one little monster that is glad that the Apple people made life easy for her. In the side picture, she is pictures on the plane going to visit family in Florida about a week after her fourth birthday and , yes, she is playing on an iPhone.

It would be cool (check that, scary) to say that she booked her own flight, but we’re not ready for bringing that up, but she did utter these words on that trip: “you can get it at the Apple app store. Mama, what’s an apple app?”

However, she is very comfortable grabbing an iDevice in the house and scrolling the screens until she finds the photo gallery to look at pictures of herself or her Olivia app, who is a little piglet that also likes to look at pictures of herself.

Friends had suggested around Christmas about getting one of the other new kid-targeted tablets that had come on the market, but the one fear in introducing one of these is understanding the UI and how early frustration can make-or-break whether she would use it. Now, full disclosure, the fear of understanding the UI was about me. I knew that I would be the person that had to set it up and download the apps for this new device, so my first thought was that it had to be easier just to set up the retired iPhone 3. This isn’t an everyday toy for her, but it has certainly worked for longer trips.

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It’s Search & Replace with Social

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It was back to Times Square today for the DigiDay Social event and thanks to some video being available it will be able to bring you some information.

In a session “Publishing for Social Media” Jim Bankoff, Chairman & CEO of SB Nation, discussed using social media to drive traffic to generate revenue. It could have been 2005 at AOL where Jim’s content team passed that same message to those of us on the search team. The goal then was to use search to drive traffic to higher CPM pages. Now just change “search” to “mobile” and the story is the same

The first of the two videos is from Rishad Tobaccowala, Chief Strategy & Innovation Officer, VivaKi. He spoke about The People Network and the top piece of advice from him when it comes to working with new technologies is to use them.

The other video is along the same path — it’s not a case study, but it goes more to approach. This is from Adam Kmiec, Director of Social Media at Walgreen’s. He discusses choosing partnerships, asking your agency “explain”, and look for a wow factor that can separate your program from your competitors. He cited Walgreen’s program to donate a flu shot for every Foursquare check-in and how that beat CVS to the punch.


Watch live streaming video from digiday at livestream.com

Video:
Rishad Tobaccowala, Chief Strategy & Innovation Officer at VivaKi
Adam Kmiec, Director of Social Media at Walgreens

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Starting the Week with Mobile

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This is a big week since I attended the DigiDay Mobile event earlier today, and tomorrow I will be attending the DigiDay Social event.  Both are being held at the Marriott Marquis in Times Square.

Today’s Mobile event was split into two sections.  The morning focused more on using mobile as a platform to build brand and the afternoon’s program was called “Mobile Apps.”  It focused more on the business of building apps and using them in your online model.

The one lesson that came out of the afternoon apps session is that the most important thing an app developer can do to get in the top 10 is to be in the top 10.  Because Apple promotes the top 10 in each category the most important move to make is to get into the top 10 because it is so difficult to dislodge an app from the list.

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NYC Start-Up Scene is Hot Like the Armory

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It was a great, eye-opening, day at the Silicon Alley Talent Fair.  My orginal list of companies printed from the event’s website on Tuesday had about 125 company names listed.  In itself that would be impressive, but the reality was that there were at least 150 after you included late additions and sponsors.  It was a great representation of the start-up activity happening in the NYC area.

Even with some major heat inside the 69th Regiment Armory, the event seemed like a big success.  I was lucky to meet with some good people from groups like Proclivity Systems, Figment.com, 33across, and EveryDay Health, and hope to have some future follow-up.

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How Do You Measure ROI in Social Commerce

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I posted the answer below on LinkedIn in a thread called: Social Commerce the next big thing?.

ROI is always important, but I think the issue at this stage of the social commerce experience the difficulties is in identifying the ROI + vs -.

It’s straight forward to do the simple math of how much you took in vs how much you gave away, but there are other numbersthat need to factored in, but they may be tough to qualify.

Off the top of my head, so please add others:
Some positives:
1) After the buyer gets the $X of product for the $Y they spent, did they by more?
2) Did they come back again?
3) How about the publicity of being promoted to all the subscribers and then virally to the friends of the buyer

Some negatives:
1) Need to generate more margin to make up for discount
2) discounts bought by clients who would have paid full price anyway (make it sound like a ‘treat’ for them in the copy)
3) Does discount hurt the brand? Could it turn people into ‘waiters’? That wait until deals come out before they come back?

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Countdown = 0 – And the Top Tactic in Social Media …

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Count down

Top Tactic in Social Media

Today is the day. The tactic used in social media to stir up interest: The Countdown.  Just like I did to get you here.

First my apologies for using a self-serving trick, but I did so to make a point.  And that is — it works.  Even with nothing really to offer I added 14 new followers in the last 3 days.

The best thing about the Countdown tactic is that it’s really easy. The only challenge is the planning because you have to get out in front of it to give you the lead time.  What should you do:

  1. Find a reason — a new product launch; the anniversary of an event in your industry; anything with some relevance and value to your intended audience.
  2. Layout your announcements.  I think it’s best to write them up in one sitting, so when it comes time to execute it’s just a matter of paste and schedule.  Remember that these are just teases, so they shouldn’t be too long, so writing up a bunch isn’t that difficult.  I advocate this, rather than write as you go, because it’s tough to stay on topic and on schedule if you write as you go over multiple days.
  3. Plan your Twitter posts to hit different parts of the day. Not everyone reads Twitter at 8am, so spread them out at different times to hit different users.

Coming Next Week — Just 4 days until I give you the next most popular tip: What do you think it is?

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