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Make the Right Choice
After watching a video about Google Goggles, I was reminded of its potential.. and was motivated to give it a whirl. However, as I walked through the activation steps in the app, the final screen asked if I wanted to Enable Search History.
It read “With search history, you’ll be able to view and manage saved copies of the pictures you take. Your images will also be retained by Google to help improve our service.” The finer print explained my IP address, and all my information available through my Google Account will also be retained by Google, in association with the picture, for up to 5 weeks.
Knowing that, which would you choose: Disable or Enable?
The trouble with this is I can’t know how I will use Goggles. I don’t expect there would be any reason not to enable this setting, but then, might I regret that some day? How could I know? How does anybody know?
I suppose, if in doubt, I should choose Disable. But then I’m not contributing to the enhancement of a tool I’m using. Seems a bit contradictory, no?
What’s at issue here is the false appearance of empowerment that companies like Google give us. They’re telling us we are in control by choosing privacy settings such as the one stated above, but when we can’t possibly comprehend the impact of those choices, how empowered are we?
To explore how Google Goggles works, simply click on this picture below to launch a video.
Erin
@eringarrity
Tags: Erin, google, Google Goggles, privacy, search
5 Tips to Manage Your Inbox
Considering we are in an age when the majority of business is done over email communication, it is important to know how to manage our inbox in order to separate the good from the not so good. Here are 5 tips on how to manage your inbox.
- Have a separate email account for subscriptions, online memberships, enewsletters, or sign ups. Basically, anything that requires you to give up your email address when you are signing up for something. This way you don’t get a daily ingestion of special deals, and e-newsletters to deal with.
- Make sure you have your junk email filters activated. Once you activate the junk mail feature, make sure you customize the filters to suit your needs.
- Use filters and set “rules” to manage incoming emails from certain people. When you set up a rule that a certain email from a specific person should go into a specific file you can get to that file whenever you need to and know that all the emails in that file are from a certain person.
- Disable email notifications when you are working. It’s nice to know when you have new mail but if you are trying to focus on getting the task at hand complete you might want to disable email notifications so you don’t get distracted every few minutes.
- Delete emails that are not important completely off the server. We all save emails thinking one day we might want to go back to a certain conversation or may need it to reference, but all we are doing is keeping unnecessary information making it difficult to sort through when you really need to search for something important.
We all have a lot of information headed in our direction on a daily basis, why not learn how to manage some of this information so we can be more efficient and effective with our time!
Maryam Mehrtash
@socialmaryam
Tags: communication, digital strategy, email, filters, inbox, management, Social Media
What if You Described Your Digital Strategy as a Volleyball Team?
Other than digital marketing, one of my other passions is Volleyball. I’ve been playing volleyball on school teams since I was in elementary school and I continue to play today, recreationally, in various Vancouver volleyball leagues. It is through the years of playing volleyball that I understood the meaning and value of being a part of a team.
A digital strategy, I believe, is a lot like a volleyball team (or any other sports team). A volleyball team is composed of 6 different players and likewise, a digital strategy is composed of different channels (eg. company website, Facebook Page, Twitter profile, YouTube channel, etc.) Each piece of the team or strategy has its strengths and its weaknesses. Most importantly, no single piece is greater than the whole.
A team plays offense, actively trying to score a point, just like how PPC advertising, inbound marketing and key influencer outreach actively tries to attract sales leads. A team plays defense, actively receiving the ball, just like how social media monitoring, crisis management and customer support actively tries to prevent a company from “losing”.
Each player on a team has his/her own role to play and likewise, each channel in a digital strategy has its own role. A Facebook page may be used to cultivate loyal customers, a Twitter profile may be used to offer customer support and a PPC campaign may be used to attract new customers.
Each has its own role, but truly excels once each piece plays or works in unison.
Does your company website say one thing while your Facebook Page says something else or is your digital strategy a well oiled machine?
Victor
Digital Strategist
Photo Credit: desmorider
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What If …Series
What if the Marketing Rule of 7 Became the Rule of 1?
What If There Was a Formula for Viral Content?
What If Only 100 People Can Visit Your E-Commerce Website Per Day?
What If Your Twitter and Facebook Posts Were Deleted After 24 Hours?
What If There Was a 2-Tweet Per Day Limit?
Tags: digital strategy, Social Media, team, vancouver volleyball
Coffee Cup Makes Hearts Soar
Shove over QR codes. There’s something faster and slicker moving in on your turf.
Yesterday I picked up a drip coffee from Starbucks. It came in a Valentine-themed cup. The fine print underneath the cup’s giant love heart was a message instructing me to download the free “Magic Cup” app. I did so of course and when I held my phone up to the cup – suddenly I could interact with that giant heart on my cup, peeling it away and having it fly toward me. This was followed up by a bunch of smaller, fluttering hearts flocking wherever my finger moved on the screen. (See the video demo below) Pretty cool foray into augmented reality for Starbucks, but I would argue this may also represent a significant shift away from the need for QR codes. The steps involved to connect audience to content with augmented reality (AR) are similar to those involved with QR codes. However, I would suggest the impact of that connection is more interactive and potentially more powerful. Do you agree? Have you tried both a QR code and an AR experience?
One caveat, the prices involved in creating a QR code vs. an augmented reality offering, are vastly different: virtually free vs. virtually prohibitive.
Erin
Tags: Augmented Reality, mobile, QR codes, starbucks
What if the Marketing Rule of 7 Became the Rule of 1?
What is the Rule of 7?
The Rule of 7 is an old marketing concept, which states it takes 7 exposures of a marketing message before a consumer will remember it or be inclined to make a purchase.
I’m not here to argue whether 7 is the golden number or not, but I think we can all agree that it takes a good number of product exposures before someone is willing to make a purchase. The number of exposures required may be relatively higher especially for products which have inherent financial and social risk (aka high risk purchases).
Products with high financial risk are expensive products such as cars, vacations, computers and home entertainment systems. Consumers tend to spend more time doing research and consider more factors before making the final purchase.
Products with high social risk are publicly visible products susceptible to personal criticism or judgement from peers, such as cars, mobile phones and clothes.
At the other end of the spectrum are low risk purchases such as candy from a convenient store or soda from a vending machine.
With consumer behaviour changing and the importance of online and social media marketing increasing so quickly, does the Rule of 7 still apply online?
Yes and No.
Yes, because for high risk purchases, a consumer will still conduct a fair amount of research online, be it on a company website, review sites and/or on social media, before committing to the purchase. However, I think the number of exposures required now, is fewer than what it had been with only traditional media. My reasoning is because the impact and influence of online content is much higher than traditional print ads, TV commercials, billboard ads or radio spots. Consider the influence of an online review vs a print ad, a friend’s Facebook Like vs a radio spot, the multi-media used on a company website vs a print catalogue.
Could the Rule of 7 become the Rule of 1, online? A Rule of 1 would see consumers being more impulsive with their online purchases. This may be less likely for high risk purchases, but possible for lower risk purchases like:
- Consumers who see an about-to-expire Groupon deal to a restaurant they have never heard of
- Consumers who use UrbanSpoon may choose a restaurant simply because of a recent, positive review.
Have you ever made an impulse purchase of an unfamiliar brand, online? Share with us your reason for doing so or a situation where you might make an impulse purchase, online.
Victor
Digital Strategist
Photo Credit: ttarasuik
- – - – - – - – -
What If …Series
What If There Was a Formula for Viral Content?
What If Only 100 People Can Visit Your E-Commerce Website Per Day?
What If Your Twitter and Facebook Posts Were Deleted After 24 Hours?
What If There Was a 2-Tweet Per Day Limit?
Tags: concepts, marketing, rule of 7, what if
