Getting into your home and understanding domestic habits has been central to the last 100 years of brand development and economic growth, P&G for one would give up a lot for the type of data that Google could provide if let into your home.

Consider what is being said about personalisation.

I can see the strategy now, we’ve done the web, we’ve done the libraries, now we need to do people. The time might come when we all need a “disallow” tag for our mind for fear of seeing our thoughts in the SERPS

Google is present whether you invite it or not.

With Google accessing and indexing all your domestic data, habits and thoughts, the semantic web could take on a rather apocalyptic theme. While governments struggle to get us to invest in the idea of an identity card, corporate companies like Tesco have collected through their Club Card scheme more data on our personal life and habits through what we consume in one year than the Government has data on us for the last 10 years.

Google, I am sure would have loved to have gained purchasing info like Tesco over the last 20 years and while I’m sure with Google Checkout they are starting to collect this info, getting direct content from your home will put Google one or two steps ahead of every other commerce driven business in the world. Only Government intervention on a global scale would stop the rampant monopoly of information.

So what happens when Google gets in your home?.

From the Fridge Food Management, Google will know:

When you eat, what you eat, how often you snack, how much you snack, how much alcohol you consume…

From the Lighting Control, Google will know:

When you’re at home, when you sleep, when you’re kicked out of bed and told to sleep on the sofa, when you’re away, where you’re away (iphone app using geo-location when you log in the turn the lights on and off)…

From the Heating Control, Google will know:

The energy efficiency of your house, home routines, when you shower, when you bath…

There is no limit.

I personally wonder what Google will do with all this information, how would this effect the search personalisation filters and if the time has come when Google is less interested in delivering us access to published information or more interested in our personal unpublished data.

They could always tell us they are not collecting it.

It is an exciting time to be involved in technology and web, Search Engineers will be very busy.

Because of this attention deficit customers become increasingly impatient. As a consequence conventional means of connecting with your customer such as paid for advertising are placed under increasing strain. Costs rise through an increase in the available media leading to a diffusion of your target audience and uncertainty that they are paying attention to the message. Do they read, do they listen, do they make a connection with your Brand? Are they connecting by accident or by demand?  Are they real customers or perceived ones? Do they stumble upon your message by accident or are they deliberately seeking you out? The former is neither an effective nor efficient use of time or money. The latter provides an efficient Return On Capital.

This raises the point of effectiveness, doing the right thing, and efficiency, doing the thing right.  You think you know who your customers are but maybe they are not who you think they are. Are you engaging with the right analytics? Can you afford the analytics to find out? With Intelligent Positioning you can.

Targeting and understanding your customers.

Our Web based targeting is about understanding who and where people are connecting with a brand. From this analysis the brand’s communication with its target audience can be improved by deeper understanding of the targets’ mindsets, tastes and behaviour.

“Context is irrelevant. Remember that behavioural targeting is about reaching groups of people with similar interests, not pages containing specific content.”
Paul Goad, Managing Director, Tacoda

Engaging in the web more fully may be the answer to many of your pressing business problems.  The Web is a tool of revelation, uncovering important evidence that can change your view of a market, a sector, and the people within it. It can expose cultural diversity and diverse mindsets. It can create speed of information, depth of insight, and create a dialogue so rich that it can move you to destroy business models and build new ones that would have seemed eccentric a short time ago.
From atoms to bits.

Look at the example of Amazon. They moved from storing physical products to virtual and distributed inventory. Amazon built a business that kept inventory not as atoms but as bits by creating a print-on–demand system. Books stay as digital files until they are ordered through Amazon’s website. They are then printed on laser printers that look just like high quality traditional printed books. This shift in business model means that the cost of holding inventory is zero. This opens up the potential to print any book that has ever been written without ever holding it in a warehouse. The economic effectiveness and efficiency of this is clear.

These technological improvements have not only allowed Amazon to lower the costs of connecting supply and demand but have also increased Amazon’s marketing power through greater choice, provision of satisfaction to niche interests, and fast delivery times, all at competitive prices.

A similar business model shift took place in the music industry through i-Tunes where a vast selection of music is stored in bits, sampled, bought, and delivered on demand through the i-Tunes website. Netflix has created a similar model with a vast inventory of DVD’s stored on a server and delivered on demand. As Chris Anderson, Editor-in-Chief of Wired magazine commented “ Increasingly, the mass market is turning into a mass of niches”.

The age of dialogue.

This is the magic of the web and of the long tail. To make it work you need an open mindset, an ear for listening, and the courage to engage in a constant flow of innovation and originality. You also need to know who you are talking to and why.
This truly is the age of dialogue between the individual and the group; enabling understanding and satisfying the mass and the niche at one and the same time.

The web has many virtues and key amongst them is its ability to provide an insightful way to anticipate need whilst satisfying it in a democratic and choice filled way. This is why you need to engage in it because the opportunities are endless, the rewards specific.

Garry Titterton, March 2011

The big news agencies such as Sky, Fox, CNN, and the BBC have all been relying upon the ordinary people inside Iran creating reports and filming breaking news events on mobile phones.

The old media model of third party interpretation and “tell me what you think” has been shaken to its foundations by this new media model of immediacy and “this is what we filmed, make your own mind up.”

Twitter and YouTube have been the big beneficiaries of this. The power has been transferred into the hands of people in the street creating their own reports, albeit more subjectively than some of the main news media would have broadcast .

This social media immediacy and subjectivity transfers into everyday life things such as football transfers, opinions on politics, products used and liked, gossip, and humour. In fact all the things that interest and affect consumers from all walks of life and ethnic groups. Social media not only challenges conventional media but also the legitimacy of conventional market research.

Tuning in and listening, really listening, to these people is a much more accurate gauge of what people think and how they behave. Engaging in a dialogue with them through their chosen means of communication can be a much more insightful and ultimately profitable experience for the marketer.

Talking Appropriately and Directly to a Social Media Audience

It means that through social media, the marketer can go direct to the consumer without intermediary advertising media. Take for example, beinggirl.com from P&G. Directors of Intelligent Positioning have had direct experience of working on this site at its inception in Asia.

They know that ads speaking directly to a thirteen year old girl are difficult to construct in the language of a young girl, in different cultures, without sounding patronising and parental. So the P&G strategy was to use social media by creating a site, beinggirl.com that produced an indirect approach to feminine health care. The site talks about what it is like being a thirteen year old girl and discussing issues involving parents, relationships, music, fashion, health etc. It connects in subtle ways and P&G responds to the feedback.

P&G have found that talking about people’s problems allows them to talk with more authority about helping to find solutions.

Has it worked? Well, P&G say that it is, by dollar criteria, four times more effective than traditional advertising.

Moving from teenage girls to a financial audience, Bloomberg have devised a new marketing strategy that communicates through the screen of the mobile phone. Why? Well, to people who want to be informed on the gyrations of the financial market and news that could affect investments from hundreds to trillions of dollars, it is more effective to communicate through a tool that is with you all the time, and is more immediate and discrete for people on the move than a TV screen or computer.

Some of the world’s largest companies are seeing social media as the way to more immediate and effective dialogue with consumers. Learning directly about their behaviour and actions.

Events in Iran have brought a focus to this.

Author – Garry Titterton, CEO IP-SEO

Twitter Usage

If you haven’t a Twitter you’re so 2007! Everyone has one nowadays including me – Andy Francos (hello!). So what can you do? You can type in a maximum message of 140 characters explaining what you’re up to. In terms of functionality – that’s about it! However, there is plenty more things Twitter can offer you, which we will touch on in a bit. But for now here is my message for you guys – which is known as a Tweet:

So all of my many followers (sure) will be able to read what I am up to and tweet back with comments of their own. Or Twitterers scouring the ‘Public Timeline’ – might even consider following you:

Everyone that is anyone has a Twitter account – check out the BBC, SkySports and FourFourTwo – who don’t even have to update their feeds regularly! An RSS feed can be setup so that news items appear as a Tweet – meaning that followers can keep up to date with the latest news and views of that organisation – brilliant!

Celebrity Twitters

Other than climbing a tree across the road with a pair of binoculars and a box of doughnuts – you don’t get to find out what your favourite celebrities are upto on a daily basis. You could have found out what Barack Obama, Larry David,Stephen Fry, Britney Spears and Lance Armstrong are up to! – Like I said, anybody that is anybody is on the sensation that is Twitter!

Help Engine

This is where it gets very interesting as Twitter is now defining a new way in which we search for information. Of course Google is the king of information, hence the enormous market share the big G has in the UK – but we are now seeing the creation of help engines – namely the big T.

Using this article as an example – I made a Tweet about famous people on Twitter:

Rather than going to a search engine and looking for the information, I asked my beloved followers if they new the answer to my question. Low and behold – I received a tweet back from HighRankings adviser and fellow SEO – Jill Whalen:

So in less than three minutes I’d received a great response to my query! Brilliant! You can also even search for Twitterers who include your keyword within their Tweets:

So as you can see, Twitter usage is endless and there are so many things you do to appeal to your audience. Whether it be getting news items across, updating clients on specific information or generally using it for social networking with your friends – Twitter is here and it looks like staying for a while.