Trumblog

Sara Taylor is the former political director of the Bush White House and she has one idea [about what will be next in harnessing grass-roots political support via technology]. “We’re at a place in the country where almost everybody has a cell phone, but not many people have a smartphone, meaning a video-enabled phone. But that will change over the next three to four or five years” and by then Taylor says if you are a mom with two kids who cares about education “a smart, forward-leaning campaign will know that. They will have had you sign up into their system and they’ll be able to serve you advertising, via a text message that links right to video, with your candidate speaking, in a beautiful video, about the importance of education reform. That, I think, is most likely to be the next iteraction of new technology .”

Obama Looks To Harness Grass-Roots Support
by Mara Liasson Morning Edition on NPR 11/12/2008

It feels like since the election news has been either deciphering the Obama campaign or prognosticating about the Obama administration and last week on Morning Edition there was a piece on technology and social media discussing what Obama would do with his enormous database of volunteers collected and motivated to action online.  In the report, Sara Taylor from the Bush White House envisioned a country of soccer/ hockey moms, smart phone in hard having exactly the right message targeted to them.  That’s not far fetched and I’m sure that in 2012 it will happen.  But if that is what Taylor learned from the Obama campaign then the Republicans should prepare themselves for a longer absence from the oval office than they think.  What they should learn is exactly what I told the radio “It’s not about advertising it’s about conversation.”

Targeting audiences is nothing new.  Direct mail has been doing it for years.  And targeting an individual voter/ consumer through their smart phone, a highly personalized medium that can deliver faster a more dynamic video message, would clearly have a significant impact.  But it’s still a one-way communication.  Taylor’s not seeing the opportunity in the revolutionary way that Obama used the internet this election.

Obama succeeded because he engaged in a conversation with his audience, a two-way communication.  He didn’t just send messages, he encouraged a response.  And the response that he got was amazing.  New websites, blogs, songs on YouTube and artwork about Obama appeared every day.  My wife and I wondered if any candidate had ever inspired such art before.  Probably not, but even if they had the internet allowed the artists to promote their art and social media helped to spread the word and make it viral.

Supporters shared the latest inspired reaction to Obama via email, Facebook, MySpace, blogs, etc. and those recipients forwarded them along again. The echo chamber got louder and louder.  A message from a politician is one thing.  A message from a friend about that politician is quite another.  Why?  Because your friend is trustworthy, or an expert on some issue, or you just want to be like her.  Whatever the reason, hearing about the campaign from a friend is a powerful and persuasive message.  And messages from many friends about the same politician becomes a movement.

Understanding what audiences want and how to reach that particular segment is tough. Smart phones can make that easier. But the real revolution will be the mom with a smart phone who records a rally and sends to her friend’s phone the part of her candidate’s speech that resonates with her.  That’s an even more targeted message from a trusted source.  That’s the message that changes minds and inspires action. That’s what leads to a historic election result.

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Three weeks ago I started a blog post with a description of my luck ending up with an empty seat beside me on the Jet Blue flight to Oakland visiting a client. Since then I’ve been back to SF, traveled to NY for a day, launched a website for this client and saw the world’s view of the USA change on November 4th.  But I still haven’t finished that blog post.  The topic of that post was the same as this one; a commitment to blogging. Ironic huh?

Blogging is hard.  It takes commitment to keep doing it, to pay attention day after day and develop content. It takes time that could be spent with your family, working, reading, meditating.  It takes creativity to come up with ideas and new takes on existing ones rather than writing “me too” posts.  It takes resolution to stay on message, maintain a theme and keep up with the topic that you and the occasional reader care about, rather than drift willy-nilly from idea to idea.

I’ve been a crappy blogger lately.  If you look back at posts for the last few months you’ll see post after post of auto generated “My bookmarks…” Del.icio.us links with a post here and there.  My last real post was written 2 months ago, back in September.  Between then and now there have been 7 posts with a combined total of over 40 links, but no real content from me.  I’ve been a lazy blogger and am going to change that.

I can’t promise to do this over night, nor that I won’t stumble now and then, but here’s what I’ll commit to.

• At least 1 real post a week, hopefully 2
• Stopping Postalicious posts, if you really can’t live without those bookmarks then check out my lifestream or subscribe to my del.icio.us feed
• Add better social features to the blog; cocomment is toast, my About section needs updating and links to contact me are needed

The first commitment is the hardest.  The second is done as of right now. The third I’ll get to in the next few days as long as it doesn’t conflict with the first.

The commitment that I ask of those of you who read regularly is to keep me honest.  Ping me if I didn’t post this week.  Let me know if I’m just saying the same thing everyone else is about some new topic.  Help me be blogger that I tell my clients that they should be.

Thanks for your patience and wish me luck!

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These are my links for November 8, 2008 through November 9, 2008:

• Blogging Hits Mainstream, Integral to Media Ecosystem - Summary of Technorati’s 2008 State of the Blogosphere Report. Characteristics of Bloggers, Top Tools and Tactics, Topics for Bloggers, Blogging for Profit, Blogger Analytics
• Twitter Grader | Score Your Twitter Profile Power - Measures the power of a twitter profile and assigns a rank.
• Website Grader SEO Tool - Website Grader is a free seo tool that measures the marketing effectiveness of a website. It provides a score that incorporates things like website traffic, SEO, social popularity and other technical factors. It also provides some basic advice on how the website can be improved from a marketing perspective.
• Compare Alexa, Compete, Google Trends, and Quantcast Traffic Graphs … - Attentionmeter gives you a quick snapshot comparing traffic on up to 5 websites you want using Alexa, Compete, and Quancast.
• People More Likely to Fib in Email, Study Finds - Professors at Rutgers, DePaul, and Lehigh universities conducted studies with 48 full-time MBA students. On email, 92 percent of students lied. In contrast, 64 percent of those that used pen and paper. Moreover, email communicators said they felt more justified in lying.

  "It’s not just that emailers were more deceptive," said Lehigh's Liuba Belkin, one of the authors of the report. "It’s that the magnitude by which they lied was significantly greater."

  A second study of 69 MBA students showed that if emailers are familiar with each other, they were less deceptive — but still likely to lie.

• Readability.info: Readability Scores, Grades, Sentences, Paragraphs … - Get analysis of the characteristics of your writing and ascertain a multitude of readability scores. Upload documents and urls.

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These are my links for November 8, 2008 from 22:46 to 23:27:

• Web Page Analyzer - free website optimization tool website speed test … - Enter a URL to calculate page size, composition, and download time. The script calculates the size of individual elements and sums up each type of web page component. Based on these page characteristics the script then offers advice on how to improve page load time. The script incorporates the latest best practices from Website Optimization Secrets, web page size guidelines and trends, and web site optimization techniques into its recommendations.
• Internet Archive - Wayback Machine - Browse through 85 billion web pages archived from 1996 to a few months ago. To start surfing the Wayback, type in the web address of a site or page where you would like to start, and press enter. Then select from the archived dates available. The resulting pages point to other archived pages at as close a date as possible.
• Google Insights for Search - With Google Insights for Search, you can compare search volume patterns across specific regions, categories, and time frames.
• Google Trends - Enter up to five topics and see how often those topics been searched on Google over time. Google Trends also shows how frequently your topics have appeared in Google News stories, and in which geographic regions people have searched for them most.
• Xinu Returns - SEO Site Statistics Tool - Check PageRank, Backlinks … - Find out how well your site is doing in popular search engines, social bookmarking and other site statistics
• Compare Your FeedBurner Subscriber Numbers with Others - compare the number of subscribers of up to 4 RSS feeds
• PostRank - PostRank™ measures audience engagement and provides integrated tools to enable you to customize your RSS subscriptions.
• Statbrain.com - Tells you how many visitors any site really has - Using several sources, Statbrain’s algorithm computes the number of visitors to a website based on offsite factors like backlinks, Alexa Rank etc. Statbrain does not have access to log files or any hit-counter information. Use this as a rough relative benchmark of your traffic to theirs. First run your website and compare the results given by StatBrain to your actual results to get a sense of its accuracy in your category. Figure out what the multiplier is and then try it on a competitor.
• How can I change my Zune Tag? - Go to "my account" and under "Account Information" you'll see the option to "Change Zune Tag." It will cost 800 points, just as it does on Xbox Live.
• WeAre.Us - Social Support Networks for People Like You! - WeAre.Us is a platform and a network of sites providing Social Support Networks by which those with similar interests, conditions, and visions can communicate, collaborate, share information and experiences and form communities. On WeAre.Us sites, you can share the wealth of their experience and plan for the future with those like you. Find others with similar interests and goals.

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These are my links for October 30, 2008 through November 8, 2008:

• Growing Number of Consumers Trust Online Resources Over Other Media for Researching Drug Treatment Information - A recent online survey conducted by Prospectiv shows that consumer reliance on online resources for researching health and drug treatment information grows. 83% of consumers who said that they have previously used the Internet to research ailments and drug treatments also reported that online media is their most trusted and reliable resource for health-related information – up from 75 percent when a similar Prospectiv survey was conducted in 2007. 74% of respondents have used the Internet to research ailment or drug treatment information. Other data includes where consumers go online for health information, what information they are looking for and the use of eNewsletters in gaining health information.
• Women are proactive in health search - According to research by comScore Inc., the Web is second only to consulting physicians for women seeking health information. A large majority, or 85%, of women using the Internet have researched women’s health issues online. Nearly two out of three, or 63%, have used the Internet specifically to learn about birth control options.
• GenderAnalyzer - Determine if a homepage is written by a man or woman - Artificial Intelligence to determine if a homepage is written by a man or woman.
• Google Sitelinks Research, Examples, Theories and Best Practices … - Information on Google Sitelinks, the display of between three and eight indented links for the top ranking website shown for particular search query. Includes a number of examples, theories and best practices.
• FlickrDown - Freeware for downloading multiple images from Flickr.

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These are my links for October 22, 2008 through October 29, 2008:

• 6 All-in-One Tools for Quick SEO Diagnostics - Six tools that aggregate plenty of useful SEO related information; QuarkBase.com, Website Grader, CubeStat.com, Statbrain.com, Popuri.us and Test Everything
• Multicolr Search Lab - Select up to 10 colors and receive 50 images in that color palette from 10 million of the most “interesting” Creative Commons images on Flickr.
• Wordle - Wordle is a toy for generating “word clouds” from text that you provide. The clouds give greater prominence to words that appear more frequently in the source text. You can tweak your clouds with different fonts, layouts, and color schemes.
• YouTube Enables Deep Linking Within Videos - YouTube will now allow you to send users to a specific point in a video by appending a short tag to the end of a video’s URL. To specify a point, append a tag to the end of your video link with the following syntax: “#t=1m45s” (you can change the numbers before the ‘m’ and ’s’ to edit the minutes and seconds, respectively. YouTube will also automatically detect when someone mentions a time in a video comment and add a hyperlink to that point in the video.
• Flickr2Facebook: Unofficial Flickr to Facebook Uploader - Upload photos from Flickr to Facebook using a handy Firefox bookmarklet.

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These are my links for October 15, 2008 through October 22, 2008:

• How Engaged Are Consumers in Their Health and Health Care, and Why Does It Matter - The level of patient activation, a person’s ability to manage their health and health care, varies considerably in the U.S. population, with less than half of the adult population at the highest level of activation, according to a new study by the Center for Studying Health System Change (HSC). Activation levels are especially low for people with low incomes, less education, Medicaid enrollees, and people with poor self-reported health. Higher activation levels are associated with much lower levels of unmet need for medical care and greater support from health care providers for self-management of chronic conditions.
• Biggest Mistakes Made by Social Media Gurus - Mashable - A list of some all star errors in engaging in social media. Don't respond to all negative comments. Don't participate in flame wars to increase traffic. Don't hire a voice talent for $2,000 to read a podcast for you. Don't send a specially selected mass mailing to your friends. Don't assume that social media doesn’t exist until you arrive. Don't post a comment on your own Facebook profile wall. Don't engage with people who only want to push their own initiative. Don't over-architect a site with features and content without talking to your customers. Don't be overly careful about everything you say online.
  Don't come to your own defense when people bad mouth you online. Don't accept friend requests from people you barely know. Don't stalk women on Facebook.
• What Makes for a Good Blog? - Nine things that make a good blog
  1. Good blogs have a voice.
  2. Good blogs reflect focused obsessions.
  3. Good blogs are the product of “Attention times Interest.”
  4. Good blog posts are made of paragraphs.
  5. Good “non-post” blogs have style and curation.
  6. Good blogs are weird.
  7. Good blogs make you want to start your own blog.
  8. Good blogs try.
  9. Good blogs know when to break their own rules.
• The Internet Marketing Handbook - The web's best resources and tools on internet marketing and search engine optimization techniques. Compiled by Danny Dover all of the items are available to the general public and most are free of charge.
• List of “White Label” or “Private Label” (Applications you can Rebrand) Social Networking Platforms, Community Platforms - List of social networking platforms that can be rebranded with details on each.
• Where is Your Username registered - Tool to find where a given user name is registered. Find available user names and where you have forgotten that you registered.

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These are my links for October 6, 2008 through October 15, 2008:

• Twittertise: Advertise on Twitter - Manage a Twitter account for advertising and track the success of branded communications with your customers. Schedule your communications on Twitter and effectiveness analytics.
• Handle Your Site Footer Wisely - Optimize your site's footer by focusing on both making it useful and avoiding any chance of being blamed for breaking any rules. Don’t add too many elements to the footer - it should be clean and concise. Focus on people (SEO value of the footer is too insignificant anyway). Follow the common fashion: people want to see common elements at there common places.
• Number Of Patients On Dialysis Set To Double In Next Ten Years, But Already The NHS Can’t Cope, UK - The number of patients requiring dialysis is set to more than double over the next 10 years creating a huge demand. It is important that healthcare professionals are educated to recognise potential kidney problems and refer them appropriately to renal units, and that renal units enable patients to be involved in the decision about which treatment would suit them best as the outcomes for patients who present later, require longer hospital admissions, intensive input from the renal team and have poorer outcomes.
• Internet Surpasses Doctors as the Top Source of Health Information - More U.S. adults used the Internet than doctors to obtain health and medical information over the past year, according to pharmaceutical and healthcare market research company Manhattan Research. This trend represents a noticeable change in consumer behavior from previous years, as doctors have traditionally been the top source of health information.
• During Tough Times, The Echo Chamber Can Be Your Best Friend - Why companies should engage bloggers and use Twitter, Digg and PR 2.0 to earn the support of innovators and early adopters take the time to listen to feedback then iterate based on real world needs, preferences, pains, and new ideas to gain advantage.
• About listener badges - Description and requirements for the bronze silver and gold, artist, album and forum badges for a Zune Card. If you listen to an artist or album enough times in the last month, Zune awards you a badge. You also earn badges for contributing useful information to the Zune.net forums. Forum badges do not appear in your Zune Card; they are visible only in the forums.Badges expire if you drastically reduce the number of plays for an album or artist.

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These are my links for September 22, 2008 through October 2, 2008:

• Americans Expect Companies to Have Social-Media Presence - An overwhelming majority (93%) of online Americans say companies should have a social-media presence, and 85% believe these companies also should be interacting with consumers through social media. Americans are eager to deepen their brand relationships through social media. It isn’t an intrusion into their lives, but rather a welcome channel for discussion.
• Study: Seniors Not Quite Embracing Generic Drugs - Seniors are more likely to choose the more expensive originals when the government is covering the costs, but ask their pharmacist for generic medications when they are paying. The study was published by Medco Health Solutions Inc
• Narcissists easy to spot on Facebook—if you know how - The quantity of social connections on Facebook correlate strongly with a user's narcissism. Pictures posted by narcissists had strong elements of self-promotion and appeared to be ones that made their owners look attractive. Average people are not looking to the web as a vehicle for self-promotion, since they could be distinguished from narcissists. However, the researchers caution that those who are overly fond of themselves tend to cultivate a wide-but-shallow social network.
• WordPress Developer’s Toolbox - WordPress-related links to Helpful Resources, WordPress Tutorials, Basics of Creating a Theme, Multiple Hints, Tips, and Tricks, Working with Categories, Navigation Menus in WordPress, WordPress as a CMS, Working with Comments, Working with Headers, Footers, and Sidebars, Web 2.0 Integration, Styling, WordPress SEO, Working with Feeds, Working with Featured Posts, Working with Custom Fields, Other Tutorials, Articles from the Official WordPress Codex, Blank Themes, WordPress Design Inspiration, Icons for Your Themes, Places to Distribute Free Themes You Have Developed, Galleries of Free Themes that Accept Submissions from Designers and Marketplaces to Sell Your Themes.
• Divide and conquer: novel patient-segmentation approach leads to new … - A novel patient-segmentation approach leads to new opportunities: anonymized patient-level data can be used to segment patients according to clinical factors, therapy usage, and demographics, allowing pharmaceutical companies to reach the right physicians and patients with the right messages.

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After lunch, if the day is nice, we sometimes take a walk along the Charles behind our office to enjoy the fresh air, look at the turtles and if we are lucky see a heron and talk.  Today along the path there was a 3×5 card that said Audacious with the definition on the back.  A little further was another card with Anomaly on one side and with the meaning on the other.  Finally there was one that was definition side up, which we puzzled over and turned out to be Arduous. It got us talking about what was going on.

“Someone’s not going to do well on their spelling test,” Sheena sighed.

“A dedicated teacher wrote those out for a student who needed the extra help and they’re just throwing them away,” Donna complained.

“That student is going to do really well since they’re throwing away the cards as they get the answers right,” I said.

Three very different ways of looking at the same information leading to three very different conclusions.  Why Sheena was negative, Donna sure that someone’s effort was squandered and me so positive I don’t know (especially me considering my issues with spelling). But we all see events through the lens of past experience.

Whether it’s cards on the walk, news, consumer research or website usage data, we all interpret the evidence that we receive through the lens of experience. The ability to strip it from our insight into the meaning of the data that we receive is necessary, but at the same time the experience that we bring to the table is usually why we are seated there in the first place. We are asked to walk the fine line between an open mind to the meaning of information and the knowledge that comes from having been in similar situations before.  Not always an easy task. How do you bring these two opposing forces together for insight?

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