The Future of Advertising
In a recent Guardian magazine article the CEO of Groupon, Andrew Mason, explains the success of his business model.
In laymans terms the success of Groupon lies in it’s ability to breakdown the feeling of inertia in all of us when we see a special offer.
All too often in the past we have the option of becoming complacent with the ability to shop around or come back later. Now with Groupon we have the urgency of a call to action that we know is ticking away like a time bomb.
But what is really great about the Groupon guys’ vision is that this isn’t enough. The daily deal model is a stepping stone to his fulfilment of the service thanks to the technology that all of us now carry around in our pockets.
Using the GPS enabled mobile handset that is now common place (or even the basic GPRS that all mobiles have) Groupon are launching a new service in the States called Groupon Now! It’s a simple idea. Firing it up gives you just 2 options – I’m Hungry or I’m Bored. Clicking will take you either to food options or entertainment options in your close proximity.
This is nirvana for advertisers and consumers alike. Not only do advertisers reach a wider audience and still make a profit, increasing brand awareness through the by-product of word of mouth, but consumers can act on their impulses when they want to and on their own terms in real time and space.
If you had the ability to get a deal wherever you were whenever you wanted it wouldn’t you?
I think this is the future of advertising. I just wonder whether it will help us get over the discount hunting mentality that is all too common in the UK when it comes to this kind of thing, or whether we’ll discover a new motivation for exploration and the urge to do something different, and do it together.
A guide to setting up your own blog
This is a guest post by Tim Aldiss from aldissandmore.com
I’ve done this so many times I thought I would document the process for the benefit of others! So here it is – my guide to setting up your own blog.
What do I mean by this? Well firstly I’m not talking about an automated process – this is a full installation in your own hands so that you control everything. This means that it’s an install on your own domain name, which has lots of benefits for search engine optimisation over hosting on a sub domain as is typically the case for a blog.
I’m using WordPress, the worlds favourite blogging platform. It’s free to download and install. The set up is possibly the most complicated process in the whole job as you need a database connected to run WordPress and setting this up is fiddly. However there is a great guide on the WordPress site that they reckon can be followed in just 5 minutes.
Hosting is the other consideration. You’ll need a package that allows database use (one will do).
So what are the costs?
Well unbelievably the price of everything has come down so much that cost just isn’t a factor any more. Domain registration is as low as a few pounds a year. I use freeparking.co.uk and registered my new domain (www.brianaldiss.co.uk) for just $15 for 2 years!
I’ve hosted websites for 10 years and check out new providers all the time and right now I’m using Server Centre who will do you Linux webspace (good for WordPress) that includes the databse use you need for just £25 a year! Awesome.
And that believe it or not is it! Those are the only costs other than your time. Themes for your WordPress blog are free – you can pay if you want a fancy one or to upgrade.
Steps to setting up your own blog
Once you have registered the domain name and paid for the webspace you will need to let your domain registrar (freeparking.co.uk are mine) know what the Domain Name Servers (DNS) are for your web hosts (Server Centre are mine). For Server Centre Linux web hosting they are as follows:
Primary DNS: ns1.hu-dns.com
Secondary DNS: ns2.hu-dns.com
(you’ll need both)
Set them in the admin interface at the registrars. This connects the domain name to the web space.
Next stop is WordPress.org where you will see the download link clearly labelled. Download the latest version of WordPress here for free.
When you signed up for your web space you should have received a confirmation email that will have a whole bunch of other detail in there that you need to hang onto.
In there will be FTP details. FTP stands for file transfer protocol and you need it as you are in control of the files that are uploaded to your site. You’ll need an FTP client too. If you don’t have one you can download one of many good free options here. I’m a Mac user and find Transmit does the job I need.
Stick you FTP details in; connect to your webs space for the first time; locate the public html folder where your files will reside, and upload the WordPress installation that you downloaded.
Now comes the tricky bit – the WordPress database set up
While those files are uploading you can go ahead and set up your database. I’m using Server Centre so obviously your access details will be slightly different with another provider. They’ll be a Control Panel URL somewhere in that email you received.
It will take you to a log in screen so you’ll need to details for this too (they are usually the same as your FTP details).
Find the SQL Server Database Wizard…
…and follow these steps:
1. Create a new database – any old name will do. Write it down somewhere along with the username and password. Click next
2. Create a new database user – any name will do. Write it down somewhere along with the username and password. Click next
3. Give that user full rights (you’ll need one admin account and this does need all rights).
Your’re done!
Finishing the WordPress installation
By now all of your files should have uploaded to your webspace in your FTP client. At this stage you don’t need a theme – the default will do. You can follow the steps on the WordPress site if you like, but it’s nice and simple:
1. Locate the wp-config-sample.php file in your local WordPress folder. Change the file name so it is just wp-config.php. Open the file (notepad will do). Add in your database parameters that you wrote down… you did write them down didn’t you?! DB_NAME, DB_USER & DB_PASSWORD need to be changed, the rest stay the same. Upload the file;
1. Go to your new domain name in a browser and you will see a config prompt. Click the button.
2. You’ll now be prompted to get your database ready to talk to WordPress. Click next.
3. Add all those details you wrote down. Leave Database Host and Table Prefix as the default. Click submit
4. The nest screen is a prompt to say that you can delete the config file for security after installation – it’s worth doing. Click ‘try installing now’
5. This is the final screen. Fill in all details. Make a note of the username and password again. Leave the default check box checked to allow your site be indexed in search engines – an importnat step in this whole process… Click install
Hopefully WordPress will install and you’ll be prompted to log in on the next screen. If not it’s always those access details that are wrong – check your config file, that’s usually where the problem is…
Well done! You’re in! This is what your dashboard should look like:
And this is what your homepage should look like with the default theme in all it’s glory:
Good luck . Hope this helps. Plenty of other WordPress tutorials online to get you going from here. happy blogging 
Social CRM: The next big gold rush?
Beyond dealing with my extended friends in my own network I have often wondered what the best way is for brands to deal with what they might call ‘friends’ in their growing and presumably far more extensive and complex networks. So I’m sat here at the Technology for Marketing & Advertising show about to witness what Sage have to say about how they approach this growing area, which to a lot of people is the next gold rush: Social CRM
Presenting their current case study for SAGE the key thing is to have common components across networks and through the technology. Using buzz words like interoperability the speaker says that monitoring the language used and when and why the ‘purchase’ happened is the key thing to tying it all together. How do they do this? Well of course it’s by integrating their own proprietary technology! Hmmm
It is true that connecting sources of information makes the experience richer, I’d certainly agree with that, but what I really want to see is how. Maybe it’s the geek in me, but what information can you gather from say a tweet that starts the process of building a CRM entry around that individual. What value is applied? How does that CRM entry get linked through to lifetime customer service?
Our SAGE speaker mentions the term ‘vendor love’ which to some I’m sure is a big turn off. Amazingly the example used is not just a response from corporate Twitter account to the user but a written letter follow up! How they linked up the user with their home address was never explained, and more importantly what they thought the impact of the use of this kind of personalised approach might have been (I’d be pissed off that they’d found my postal address) was also no explained. This unfortunately lost my interest in the seminar.
However the talk went on to feature some dimensions for their own social media use. They cited topics as a key area for interaction. So talking specifically about things rather than generalising works well for SAGE. Traditional media is also a huge influence (no surprise there), but they did point out that directing people to content once it’s been created created is key, meaning community management is an essential task.
In regards to managing time when dealing with social media the presenter states that (as an author) he typically interacts with less than 50 people at a time so there is less of a worry about workload for those interested. For him frequent interaction is just with a few people (2-6) and too much interaction effort can cause a tipping point and turn people off. However any assets created can bring users back over time.
Disappointingly our speaker had just one slide about aggregating user data into CRM. I guess I should have expected that I’d want to know a lot more of the technical side of things. What value can you apply to a Twitter user in CRM? DO you add their followers to give them more value? Can you use Klout or Social Oomph to weight them? Does this update automatically? How do you match a different username on Facebook with one on Twitter? …time to get my hand up…
New kid on the block: Google Squared
Wow Google have some cool tools in dev! As well as the (below) aforementioned Google Wave Google Sqaured looks like a really clever new way of co-ordinating info from search. In fact it sits nicely against Wolfram Alpha‘s mathematical based results format presenting data in a more creative/visual type way.
Have a read of what James Turner says over on the O’Reilly Radar blog, and below is a screenshot of a results page for the search term ’2009 movie gross’. He thinks it’s a game changer.
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