click2engage

I’ve recently read an article in Inteligent Life discussing which city should be the next capital of the world (which makes for a very interesting read), but what caught my eye was how at some point the author describes the most common type of trade these days, where parts are manufactured separately and then shipped for assembly to form the end product.

Don't leave it to chance. The odds may stack up against you.

Every product starts of as a concept and goes on to be born from the individual parts produced by various manufacturers. Leaving aside any justification of cost that drives the production of these, one of the reasons why this happens is because each manufacturer can offer a strong advantage in the production of a certain part. While the final product does not yet exist, everyone involved in bringing the concept to life would know from the start how to go about achieving this. In short, they will have a strategy.

This got me thinking that the phenomenon of social media functions very much the same and this can spur an interesting approach to define social media strategy. It all probably starts off with a concept that identifies the main objective and the content created and shared on idividual social media platforms (representing the separately manufactured parts) that comes together in one place and constitutes the social media strategy.

So if one was to carry this analogy forward, it can be argued that post-production every product would undergo a quality control to determine if it all stacks up to expectations. Is this happening with companies social media strategy or are any discrepancies between the concept and the end product swept under the carpet? Imagine what the consequences would be if a car manufacturer would do that – or better yet just think back to the Toyota recall incident in January of this year Now think back to your social media strategy. Do you think this is pushing it too far? Then think if the worse should happen and your company’s reputation would literally go up in flames because one seemingly insignificant defect was overlooked.

Traditional media is not gone, but it is no longer efficient on its own. When magazines require companies to commit to an ad six months in advance, from the time you design your ad to when it’s finally out there for the public to see, you run the risk of sending the wrong message because the environment around your industry has changed. This can be because of economic factors, competitors’ offerings or any other change in your customers’ purchase and decision making behaviour.

Social media has obviously revolutionised the way companies interact and engage the customer, in that it offers a chance to engage in conversation with the customer in real time.

Running a social media campaign is a lot like running a political campaign. It needs to be monitored on a day by day or week by week basis, while constantly changing the message, adapting to the changes happening in the world of the customer, talking to the them while they’re making the purchase decision and watching what the competition is doing and engage in a coordinated effort to differentiate the offering.

At a recent conference I have attended, James Whatley of 1000heads said it’s important to put a real human message behind your social media efforts (or any marketing efforts for that matter). Make your message relevant to the customer and don’t end your story like the average love story film: boy meets girl / girl meets boy, they go through a series of unfortunate events that keep them apart, they come to their senses at the end of it and kiss to suggest that they’re finally together. The END!

Is it really? Seems to me this is only the beginning!

So when you do meet / engage / get a confidence vote from your customer just let them know that all the efforts you both went through to get to this point are just the beginning of the journey.

How does your story unfold?

The Art Fair 09 RDS took place this weekend. If you had a chance to visit you probably saw over 100 galleries and artists showcasing their works. All in all it was a good day out and a great event to familiarise yourself with artists (national and international) and different painting styles, ranging from traditional landscaping to abstract and experimental works. For those looking to buy art it certainly was the place to be this weekend with plenty of art pieces to choose from and prices for all pockets.

Leaving the actual event aside, though, I was surprised to see that most artists present at the event (not including galleries) were doing so little to promote themselves and spark an interest in their work.  I’ll highlight some of the things I’ve noticed:

• a handful of artists were interacting with the visitors stopping by their stands
• possibly around four or five present had more than a business card or a brochure to make their art known.
• I’ve seen one digital photo frame displaying images of their works and one or two laptops with an interactive gallery display
• most of them had “guest / visitor logs” on the tables or chairs; however very few made any use of them and apart from that they were not accessible requiring visitors to bend in order to reach down and fill in their comments
• two or three artists had a prize draw or some contest for visitors, in order to get them involved in their creative process or just to make them aware of their existence and out of those, only one interacted vividly with the visitors to attract exposure
• what was most surprising was that a great number of artists present (again not including galleries) only had an email address and a phone number on their business cards or brochures, that were left laying passively on the tables.

Apart from the obvious lack of interaction, which I would presume visitors would have enjoyed, do you notice anything missing?

The cards, brochures and flyers were missing any sort of online presence, be it a website address, a profile on social networking websites (i.e. Facebook, Twitter, Bebo) or a presence on an online art community (such as cgsociety.org, deviantArt.com, conceptart.org, behance.net) account or even a blog.

No longer is there a predefined path to access artist, they can take ownership of creating their own path through online tools (most of which they have complete control over, as opposed to being affiliated to a gallery and being obliged by the T&C of that gallery).

Galleries are only one venue to showcase art.

Placing works in coffee shops and restaurants may work too, but I feel it can never hurt to have a website next to your work. The coffee shop’s patrons may be in a hurry and just getting a coffee on their way to work – having an easy to read and to remember website address may just do the trick if they liked one of the works. As with any other product or service, I believe that making it convenient for the customer and easy to access you increase your chances of success.

I’ve met this brilliant artist yesterday, who paints the most extraordinary watercolour pieces about “the past in an attempt to define the present in sharp relief”. The canvases he uses are huge (some are 165 by 240 cm) and his paintings are inspired from “archaeology, pre-history and ancient art” as he defines his paintings on a simple flyer. His name is Adam White and the only way I could find him online was by entering the email address he had on a flyer he gave me. And I only find him here. To say that his presence, his very existence as an artist is at this time underexposed, is simply an understatement.

The internet has facilitated contact and promotion by removing the gateways between talented individuals and the world. The online tools, such as image blogging, can not only help artists gain exposure and but also understand what the audience wants, get feedback, engage the audience and get them involved in the creative process or make their art understood.

If you’re a painter you can show a step by step video of your creative process or just take a photo of your work every day (also known as time-lapse photography) and get viewers to comment on it or even suggest the direction the painting should be headed. If you’re a writer, record yourself reciting poems and share them on different platforms.

The Internet has made it so much easier for anyone to draw attention to their art, service, product or even themselves and, with the advent of social media, it has never been easier to spread the word about whatever we are passionate about.

And then I ask: why did I see so few artists at yesterday’s fair who had an online presence?



One of the blogs I found recently and absolutely love it, asked this question: Is anything private anymore?

I would say that once you enter the world of online communication / sharing and connecting, one should openly and consciously acknowledge that  the online world is a private as the information one chooses to share on this medium.

Despite my age and despite not fitting into the “less tech-savvy” category, I was one of those people who believed that what you put out there (whether in the form of information about yourself, comments on different blogs or forums ) is the ultimate measure of how people will judge and see you (which is why I waited so long to even open a blog). To a certain extent I still believe that (i.e. this comment will instantly generate an impression of me for whoever chooses to read it and they may like it or not), however in this day and age everyone has an opinion about everything and while some may agree with what you’re saying, others will not.

It’s just a fact and users of online tools must learn to accept that as long as they’re online they’ll probably have as much privacy as a fish in a bowl.

On the other hand, privacy is definitely an issue and users cannot be expected to automatically know what to post online and how to protect themselves. An article published  on the irishtimes.com was debating this exact issue:

Presenting a keynote address at the RSA conference in London, People Security’s chief security strategist Hugh Thompson said that while posting on social networks has grown, “there hasn’t been a commensurate education about what information we should be sharing”.

A good example of this lack of education and knowledge among users,  is the photo blogging site launched in February of this year – www.dailybooth.com - which already has approximately 6 million active users.

This new trend of blogging attracted various groups of people specially teenagers that uses pictures to express themselves instead of words. Amazingly, others responds also in their photos as a reply. Though you can also reply in written comments.

The majority of its users are women between 15 and 25 years of age, who posts photos and comments about their daily life in pictures.  Therefore, despite the fire Facebook came under regarding the privacy of the photos users post online that were used without their consent by 3rd parties, users don’t seem to mind posting their webcam photos on dailybooth.com. The issue here is that, although the site does offer users some privacy settings, is it  really educating its users enough in the issues involved in “Documenting and sharing their lives with others”? Or is it expecting users to know what it’s involved?