Posted in design, technology, work on 05/26/2008 04:19 pm by karen
Found some great notebook/sticky note/note pad products from Behance Outfitter. Geeky and designy. What more could I ask for?
They have an “Action Method” — 1) identify and document action steps, 2) document backburner items, and 3) document reference materials.
Very simple, yet few people seem to do it automatically. Action steps: what comes next, specifically — ought to start with a verb (e.g., “schedule meeting,” “draft proposal,” “send out status report”).
Documenting backburner items is a good way to prioritize: list action steps for in-progress projects and document less-pressing ideas as backburners. That way, they won’t be forgotten, but they also won’t gum up the projects that need to be attended to right now.
And then note all reference items: supporting info/articles/etc.
Simple. Low tech.
Nice.
Posted in design, technology, work on 05/14/2008 05:08 am by karen
I know, I know, it’s 4:56 AM and I’m back to the “where does marketing and product management fit into the social networking puzzle” question.
Here’s an interesting post that is a little helpful for thinking about this issue.
The pressure on PR firms and marketers alike to adapt and take advantage of this new paradigm is strong. Many will not survive the transition. The two most important ideas that must be relearned are that a) your communication channels are radically expanded by social media and user generated content…you must have a solid understanding of your potential online media outlets and the right message for each and b) it no longer stops there, you must learn to modify the medium to your advantage. More concretely, don’t just go to the NY Times and pitch your case study, consider what your presence should be on social networks, blogs, etc that are relevant to your customers…ask yourself: Where do my prospects congregate on line? Can I create my own community around my brand? Then, create your own content and adapt the message to both the audience and the medium: don’t just make a viral video, because they are hot…you might be as well served simply by posting insightful comments to the right blogs. And finally, focus on the medium itself to accelerate distribution and build a trail that leads back to your own website. Link, link, link. Syndicate, syndicate, syndicate. Everywhere, all the time. A news story in the print version of the NY Times lasts a day and then goes into library archives. A blog post or a gadget can be redistributed across the Web, and a link from your story back to your website on a page rank 9 site has a much longer lifetime in cyberspace than the print equivalent in physical space.
The post is specifically about the expansion of user-generated content into the “news” space. But it can apply to the expansion of social networking into the “product” space — in other words, in its positioning on the web.
Geez. Placement on the web. Good luck to anyone with that job.
And yes, I’m amused at the suggestion that all PR and marketing people brush up their understanding of linguistics and postmodernism. But mixed in with that amusement, I must admit, is a good dose of despair. Because as Freud might say, “Sometimes ‘the medium is the message’ is not just ‘the medium is the message.’”
