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Trendspotting — Where 97.9% Fail

Filed Under Analysis, Branding, Customer Think, Marketing, Strategy, Successful Blog, Trends | 37 Comments

Learn Everything

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We all want that ability to be able to see the next big trend before it happens — what people will be wanting, doing, needing, going to, and buying NEXT. We want to be there ready and waiting for those customers.

Some folks can see that next trend and hit it fairly often. No one can do it 100%. No one can get any customer base to behave 100% predictably.

Good morning, Class.
Find the next trend. Oh yes, 97.9% of you wll fail this test.

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Don't Read Your PR, Read Your Marketing Copy

Filed Under Branding, Business Life, Customer Think, Marketing, Successful Blog | 4 Comments

Diverse Portfolio

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A high-power company in educational publishing, bought three smaller companies and put them together. They think they offer a diverse portfolio. I think they offer a menu of bacon, ice-cream, tofu, and cognac. They are quite equipped to make the district-wide, state-wide sale. But rare is the sales rep who has the time or experience to speak to the details and nuances of the four individual product lines that they offer.

The Emperor has clothes bought by the bean counters. The bean counters think in BIG NUMBERS. The PR says that’s wonderful. The enterprise doesn’t see the world becoming niches and moving online. Read more

The TECHNORATI Business Model Revealed

Filed Under Analysis, Business Life, Customer Think, Outside the Box, Strategy, Successful Blog, Technorati | 45 Comments

Smoke and Mirrors

Don’t be fooled by smoke and mirrors. Five blogs on an AP website is nothing. Technorati on every one of them is a big deal. Technorati is joining the mainstream. That doesn’t mean bloggers are.

By virture of it’s index of OUR blog posts, and 3 deals in announced in the last 3 days, Technorati is one of the worlds largest content providers with it’s name on every Paramount Classic and AP website.

It sure looks like we provide their content for nothing. Technorati gains plenty of fame and who knows how many dollars?

I was wrong before. The strategy here is brilliant. It’s so far outside the box, I didn’t even see it.

Sorry David, this too clever by half for me to be quiet about. What is it that I misinterpret here? Please set me straight. I really want to believe I have something wrong, but all of the pieces fit as I look at it.

How did this happen? Why doesn’t anyone see this? [links via Bloggers Blog]

–ME “Liz” Strauss

Related articles
Technorati–Shopping Is NOT Strategy
Technorati — Hollywood and International
Technorati Blog Cards
It’s Not Your Blog, It’s Technorati
Put Your 2Cents In–What’s Technorati Worth–Without Janice?

Customer Solve Your Own Problem

Filed Under Branding, Business Life, Customer Think, Successful Blog | 12 Comments

That’s Customer Centered

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I still keep my personal blog at two click exchanges. I do that for lots of reasons. I feel a little sentimental. My little blog found it’s first friends in such places and I still like exploring them. I also like to watch how such things work. The business models interest me. I want to watch as they introduce new features. I want to see how each community reacts to them.

Brand You and Me

Over the last year, I got to be good friends with a tech at one click exchange. Rachel was like me, a nice one. They had a problem for a few weeks with a spell of trojans. It seems everyone tried to crawl onto my computer I caught four or five in three weeks. Read more

Trendspotting: How to Crawl into People's Heads

Filed Under Analysis, Branding, Customer Think, Marketing, Strategy, Successful Blog, Trends | 5 Comments

Your job — should you decide to keep working here — is to figure out what our customers want NEXT.

Trendspotters

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I belong to a networking group which requires endorsements. As I was editing my profile last night, I came across this endorsement from a client.

” . . . Liz can spot an emerging trend before it is even on the horizon. — Blake Education, Australiaâ€?

It’s true I often can. My friend, Chartreuse BETA, is phenomenal at trendspotting, as is our friend, Copyblogger. Scot Karp is excellent at seeing what trends are about to happen. Sometimes it depresses him. Don’t leave out Tom Peters. . . . How exactly do we do that?

What does it take to spot a trend before it takes root and actually happens? What does a person need to watch for? Seeing trends seems to be a factor of intelligence, learning style, and world view. Allowing that you have the prerequisite intelligence — we’re talking business acumen, common sense, and people smarts, not rocket science — the rest is a matter of doing the work and being open to what’s happening. This is lesson 1 on being a trendspotter. Read more

Technorati — Hollywood and International

Filed Under Business Life, Customer Think, Successful Blog, Tech/Stats, Technorati, Trends | 2 Comments

Technorati and Paramount Classics

So much going on at Technorati these days, who can keep track of all of it? David Sifry has been signing his name a lot.

Yesterday, May 21 Peter Hirshberg announced on the Technorati Weblog an 18-month “relationship” that joins Technorati and Paramount Classics. The deal will connect up-to-the minute blog posts about a film’s content to each of Paramount’s film sites. The relationship launches with the site for the film, An Inconvenient Truth, a new movie about global warming. The documentary starring former Vice President Al Gore, opens in theaters beginning May 24. Its blog will provide live blogger commentary and feature posts from the Technorati index. The press release went out on May 18th.

Technorati and International Edelman PR

Today, Peter Hirshberg posts that Technorati and Edelman, the largest independent global PR firm, are announcing a relationship that’s all about supporting the international growth of the blogosphere. He goes on to say that Edelman will be providing full support for service to the international bloggers that are now such an important part of the Technorati index.

Whew! What relief! Janice Myint’s team has enough to do.

Mr. Hirshberg ends his post with this sentence.

Both of these developments are testimony to the incredible changes to media, marketing and communication that blogosphere is bringing about— and to the increasing global reach of these developments.

For the life of me, and for all of my years unraveling sentences as an editor, I don’t know what this sentence means.

I do know my link count has finally moved this morning — the first time in almost 4 weeks.

I don’t know what that means either.

Of course, hours and new links later — it’s stuck on the same new number. I guess that means that nothing’s changed. UPDATE: IT’S CHANGED AGAIN. That makes two times in one day.

–ME “Liz” Strauss

Related articles:
Technorati Blog Cards
Technorati Still Wonky
It’s Not Your Blog, It’s Technorati
Put Your 2Cents In–What’s Technorati Worth–Without Janice?

Technorati Blog Cards

Filed Under Business Life, Customer Think, Successful Blog, Tech/Stats, Technorati | 8 Comments

Another Feature

Technorati has rolled out another new feature. It’s sort of like a baseball card for your blog. This is how it looks for Successful Blog.

Technorati Blog Card

To see yours, go to Blog Finder, type in your URL and click search. You’ll see your card and the latests posts indexed for your blog. It’s nice to be able to see whether our latest posts have made it into the index.

It’s a great feature, Mr. Sifry, but could we have a word over here? Read more

How THEY Work — Why the Heck Do I Care?

Filed Under Branding, Business Life, Customer Think, Marketing, Outside the Box, Productivity, Successful Blog | 25 Comments

The Fortune Series

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You might have caught the Fortune Magazine piece by Cait Murphy that featured 12 successful individuals at work. It was called Secrets of Greatness: How I Work. The article presents a gallery of leaders and their work secrets, including those of Marissa Mayer of Google, Howard Schultz of Starbucks, Wynton Marsalis of the Lincoln Center, and Judge Richard Posner of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, Chicago. That was followed later by How I Work: Bill Gates.

After I read these articles, I filed them aside. I thought maybe I might find a use for some detail from the profiles some day. I didn’t know what, and I didn’t know why.

How Other People Work

Apparently, some folks thought this model was worth exploring. They added to it. Here are two more and one that won’t be happening:

Though each profile was only a few paragraphs, I kept wondering, “What am I supposed to learn from this?” I needed something, so I have figured one out. I found a “Liz answer” to the question of how to filter and use this kind of information to build a business and a brand. Read more

Ideas in Your Refrigerator

Filed Under Branding, Customer Think, Idea Bank, Marketing, Motivation/Inspiration, Outside the Box, Productivity, Successful Blog, Writing | 10 Comments

You Know You’re Procrastinating When . . .

Finding Ideas Outside of the Box logo 2

. . . cleaning the refrigerator takes on a new and miraculous sense of urgency with a heavenly glow.

Go ahead give in and do it, but don’t lose to procrastination. Turn that refrigerator chore into an exploration for ideas. Here are three things you might think about.

Procrastination just became an idea session, and on top of that you’ve cleaned your refrigerator! That’s productivity where you could have been doing what I’ve done — standing in front of an open refrigerator door thinking about how the light goes on and off.

Bet you can think of more ideas to find inside of that Big Box. How about sharing some with us?

–ME “Liz” Strauss

Related articles
Don’t Fear the Blank Screen — Be a Miner
Exploring for Ideas at Technorati
Eye-Deas 1: Have You Started Seeing Things?
More ideas in the Idea Bank category and in Writing Power, Thinking Outside the Box, Customer Think, and Brand You Series on the SUCCESSFUL SERIES PAGE

How Was Your Day as a Customer?

Filed Under Branding, Customer Think, Marketing, Successful Blog | 5 Comments

Whatever You Did Today

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Whatever you did today — enjoy a cup of coffee reading the paper, watch TV, work on your computer, clean the house, go to the mall, drive a car, eat lunch, read blogs, take a shower — you used a product. You were a customer.

How was your customer experience? Did anything about it leave you wishing that some business knew you better?

What percent of your experiences leaves you feeling more than satisfied, makes you want to tell people what a great experience you had?

It’s hard to miss when you’ve bumped into a business that values a customer. It’s hard to forget the name of their brand.

Brand you and me.

–ME “Liz” Strauss

Related articles
Feeling a Customer’s First Response
Customers and Credibility
The Customer Think Series on the SUCCESSFUL SERIES Page

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