The Importance of Real-Time Data to Marketing and Journalism

Part 2: The Key To Facebook's Success

Facebook didn’t invent real-world online profiles but it has been instrumental in driving a shift from an internet of imagined personas to one that directly reflects our real lives. This simple insight has been key to Facebook’s success and central to the development of the Internet over the past five years. Contrast the Facebook’s, Twitter’s and Foursquare’s of today with the MySpace’s and Second Life’s of recent history. The Internet is less and less a place to escape to – social networking only recently overtook porn as the key internet activity – and increasingly a very real part of our lives. 

I remember being in a job interview, aged 23 or 24, and being asked what my favourite website was. As an aspiring digital marketer, this should have been a simple enough question. I used more websites than most back then, but most performed a particular function. Few held the integral place Twitter or Facebook currently do. I made a hash of the question, much to my embarrassment, but that moment stuck with me and left me wondering what the Internet really was.

The Internet is no longer simply a place we go, or something we use, but a massive real-time connection of people and things, a “digital shadow” on reality if you will. And privacy concerns aside, this development path shows no sign of abating. We are sharing more and more information about ourselves and our experiences. At last count, Facebook delivers 60 million status updates each day, roughly one for every eight of its 500 million members. Add to that the more in-depth blog posts, and the quasi-active data sharing from applications such as Nike+, WiFi-enabled scales and Google’s PowerMeter data explosion. 

CES 2011 was awash with connected devices from GE, LG and Samsung. 2011 will likely see the first persistent-location mobile apps, tracking our location continuously rather than prompting us to “check in” to specific locations. All of these actions are generating an exponential rise in the amount of data sharing and the existence of “massive, passive” data sets: data created from everyday, low involvement actions. Although some way off, we are converging on a situation where our every waking hour is captured and analysed, and we all become sensors in a hugely developed internet. 

– Oliver Snoddy, Director of Digital Services, Doremus NY

 

A snapshot of the "massive passive" from the GlobelWebIndex, which shows media consumption habits by geographic location. 

7 Steps to Successful Business to Business Communications

Recently, I was conducting some focus groups, part of a research initiative to ascertain “effective communications” by Doremus and the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth. As I listened to the participants, senior financial and technology executives across a variety of industries, I realized there are certain basics about B-to-B communications that many of us seem to forget in our enthusiasm – and often our rush – to get our stories out there. They are:

• Be concise. B-to-B decision-makers are short on time but big on brains. There’s no need to elaborate on every feature and attribute in your products.

•  Balance old and new channels. While most senior business executives are not on the cutting edge of new technologies or new media, they are closer than you think. They consume information in a myriad of ways, traditional media as well as new. However, having said that:

•  Don’t overwhelm them with messaging. While multiple channels and touch-points are important to reach them and build awareness, offer them options, i.e., mobile, or email. A direct mail piece or an online white paper. They will appreciate the sense of control over their time.

•  Know their business inside and out. Show you’ve done your homework and they’ll take the time to hear what you have to say.

•  Balance the rational with the emotional. Business people are people first. They’re more likely to listen to your message if it’s human and engaging as well as factual.

•  Relationships are key. Senior executives rely a great deal on relationships with the people at their suppliers. An integrated communications program will drive the message, but familiarity and engagement with your customers will reinforce it.

•  Don’t underestimate the role of communications to reinforce purchase decisions. All forms of communications, both broad-based and individualized, should help customers feel smarter for buying your products (and make them more likely to repurchase and recommend them to others).   

It’s not rocket science, but these common sense guidelines go far to engender long-lasting relationships between company and customer.

-- Hope Picker, Director of Research, Doremus New York

The Importance of Real-Time Data to Marketing and Journalism

Part 1: The Rise of "Massive, Passive" 

People often think that Hal Varian, Google’s chief economist, is joking when he says that being a statistician will be the sexy job to have in the next ten years. He goes on to predict that “the ability to take data – to be able to understand it, to process it, to extract value from it, to visualise it, to communicate it – that’s going to be a hugely important skill in the next decade.”

Nowhere is this more relevant than in journalism, and mainstream news organisations have already taken note. From the Guardian's Data Store, to excellent infographics and data visualisations from The New York Times and the BBC, “data journalism” is a hot topic. The Wikileaks saga may be the best current example of data journalism in action, but journalists are increasingly gaining access to a wide variety of large data sets, from governments, NGOs and whistleblowers alike. They are using this “new” data to create compelling visualisations about military casualties in Iraq and Afghanistan (such as in the BBC’s reports on UK military deaths in Afghanistan and Iraq), local incidents of swine flu (the Guardian’s swine flu data in the UK) and the unemployment rate according to demographics (The New York Times’s Jobless Rate For People Like You), to name but a few.

Image from the Guardian's Data Blog

New publishers such as Flowing Data and Visual Complexity are also developing this space. Journalists are both responding to, and helping to shape, an era of unprecedented data availability. We are, however, still at the very early stages of data journalism. Most data journalists would admit that they need to get better at telling compelling stories with data, rather than simply producing innovative and arresting visualisations that may or may not help their audiences understand a subject better. More fundamentally, the rise of “massive, passive” real-time data from almost 2 billion connected individuals around the world points to a new type of data journalism.

Journalists will increasingly gather and process data, in addition to making sense of data made available to them – investigative data journalism if you will. They will also need to be able to predict and represent the mood of the world at a variety of scales. In addition, they will need to leverage tactics for getting their stories distributed across the internet. Journalists will, thus, need to develop many skills. They will need to be entrepreneurial, multi-media storytellers, community builders, bloggers and curators. Some programming skills will also come in handy. Above all else, however, they will need two core capabilities: great editorial and storytelling skills – as they always have – and a new fluency in how real-time data can capture what is really happening in the world. Data journalism is going to be core to the future of journalism as a whole, and real-time data an increasingly important driving force. 

-- Oliver Snoddy, Director of Digital Services, Doremus NY

Domesticating the Cheshire Cat

The digital cat is out of the bag. We are all enamored with this cat because it does new and magical things. It can measure faster and more deeply. It can easily morph. It can travel at light speed. It can share. It can create ongoing engagements. It can be whatever we want it to be wherever and whenever we want. And that’s the problem. How do we harness it to our best advantage?

To wit, I just returned from a vacation that required lots of air travel. When you looked around the terminal, all faces were buried in some sort of screen (myself included). To complicate matters further, today’s B2B target audiences are time-constrained, multi-tasking, sound biters without fixed and dependable habits. We jump from email to text to online to smart phone to iPod/Phone/Pad/Shuffle/Touch behind an ever-expanding assortment of apps and distractions. Couple that with Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, WordPress, and a myriad of other viable and emerging technologies and a wonderful conundrum of opportunity without rules now exists.

Digital is indeed a smiling, morphing herd of Cheshire cats many don’t yet know how to properly wrangle or leverage. So what does that mean for business?

To start, companies must be extremely good at what they do – even better than before. They must set the vision for where their company is heading and do a darn good job of meeting those expectations. If not, business media outlets, disgruntled employees, analysts, and others will quickly expose those not fulfilling expectations (right or wrong). Those committed to meeting and surpassing expectations will be well positioned to survive and thrive. 

Larger companies have much to lose because they are most tied to the success or failure of that industry. Companies must actively engage in category conversation and digital communications allows them to do that. Those consistently and effectively communicating with relevancy and leadership are well positioned to secure their right to lead – and for the broader market to follow. 

Given all that can be done, where and how should companies effectively wade into this digital sea? 

First. Isolate your core business objectives and determine which channels of communication will provide the highest ROI (digital, traditional, both?). What is your firm trying to accomplish? What are the sources of information used by customers and prospects? Who are the core influencers? Knowing this will help isolate the right combination of channels that allows you to participate in the conversation and engage with your key stakeholders, including employees.

Second. Make the commitment. Digital is no longer optional. It’s your online storefront and the #1 source of information about your firm. To get repeat visitors, which increases the likelihood of purchase, relevant and updated information must be available. This is a full-time endeavor that requires constant upkeep and proactive outreach.

Third. Invest in the basics. Search engine optimization (SEO) and linking strategies help prospects find you. If you cannot be found, your time-constrained target will find someone else. Also, show your thinking by setting up a corporate blog. Discuss the larger issues that surround your industry to provide context to the true value of your offering beyond price. 

Fourth. Get more involved in B2B trade organizations. Author articles or studies, speak or panel at shows, post a few comments to their site. This shows you believe in the broader category and, more than likely, your participation and leadership will be captured on their site.

Fifth. Keep advertising. Traditional marketing greatly helps build brands, particularly in the B2B space, while digital marketing provides the detail many seek to fully understand your product or service. Both are critical to drawing warm leads to your doorstep. 

Don’t get smitten or distracted by all the new whiz-bang applications and technologies as they may be irrelevant to your B2B needs. Make a smart and strategic assessment of what you need to accomplish, and then leverage an integrated solution of digital and traditional channels to deliver against your communications objectives. The more we eliminate the complexities and confusion of digital marketing, the more we domesticate the Cheshire cat.

-- Doremus