Archive for the 'Digital Ramblings' Category

Vancouver Net Tuesday, November 2009 – Part II

This is the continuation to the first video segment of the presentation by Steve Williams during the latest Net Tuesday, on November 3rd.

Even though Net Tuesdays are centered around non-profit organizations, some concepts can easily be migrated to companies.

Watch the video for more. Remaining installments will soon follow. Videos were edited to fit into YouTube’s maximum length of 10 minutes per file.

Vancouver Net Tuesday – November 2009

Another month has passed, and the first week of November brought us another installment of Net Tuesday.

This month’s presentation featured Steve Williams. The focus was on “Question Zero”, and why non-profit organizations should care about answering it.

I have recorded the presentation on video, and am painstakingly editing and uploading it onto YouTube. There will probably be three or four segments altogether, since videos on YouTube can only be up to 10 minutes in length. This is my first time preparing a video like this, so the process has been arduous. Forgive me in advance for the lack of stability in the image quality. Hey, I didn’t have a tripod, so bear with me!

So, without further ado, here’s the first segment. I’m planning on finishing editing and uploading the remaining segments in the upcoming days.

Vancouver Net Tuesday: Google Website Optimizer & Simplified A/B Testing

Just got back from this month’s installment of Net Tuesday. Very informative, and well worth taking the time to attend.

For those not familiar with Net Tuesdays, they are events that aim to unite Social Change Makers with Web innovators.

The first Net Tuesday that I attended was in March. We were still wearing our winter coats here in Vancouver, and no surprise, I was already wearing mine tonight.

Today’s sessions were split between a presentation on AdWords by Omar Al-Hajjar, search marketing director at Cossette West, and John Hossack, from VKI Studios.

Because I’m already well familiar with AdWords, I chose to attend John’s presentation. Loved it. He focused on the use of Google’s Website Optimizer for website testing. Basically, it’s a free tool by Google, that allows different variations of a webpage to get tested – so you can decide, with data in your hands, which version yields the highest conversions.

For those not entirely familiar with the concept, a conversion is a specific action that you’d like your Web visitors to take once they arrive on your site. It could be filling out a contact form, downloading a free white-paper, making a purchase, etc.

VKI Studios was hired by YouTube to perform an optimization analysis of their homepage. The irony is… that YouTube is owned by Google… and VKI used Google’s own Website Optimizer tool to make recommendations on how to optimize the YouTube homepage in order to increase its conversion. In this case, the objective was to raise the number of signups on that site.

A few things I’ve learned:

- If you’re planning on using Website Optimizer to analyze your site, it must receive enough traffic to generate at least 100 conversion actions per variation that you’re testing. So, for example, let’s suppose that in your testing you’ll be analyzing two different pages (to see which one gives you the most conversions), then your traffic needs to be high enough for you to get 200 signups (100 signups per variation that you’re testing). If there are three versions tested, then 300 signups are needed, and so forth.
- If the site to be analyzed is not yielding enough traffic to get those numbers, then you’re better off using UserTesting.com. This type of tool does not give you empirical data. Rather, it gives you a subjective analysis, from people, on the usability of your site.

There’s a lot more that I’ve learned tonight, but this is just a sampler. If you have any questions, write them in a comment, below, and I’ll do my best to address them. Thanks again to John Hossack for taking the time to present VKI’s YouTube case study, and everyone who participates in putting together Net Tuesdays here in Vancouver.

Cheers,

Guacira

Twitterville Book Launch

Just got back from the Vancouver launch of “Twitterville”, authored by Shel Israel. For those who are not familiar with Shel, he has also written “Naked Conversations”, that one co-authored with Robert Scoble (@scobleizer).

Shel Israel & Ferg Devins

A good chunk of the Vancouver Twitter community turned out for the launch at Canvas Lounge. Some of the people I came across were @jaypiddy, @hummingbird604, @CathyBrowne (who’s actually mentioned in the book!), @raincoaster, @cognoscento, @johnbiehler, @tinybites and @bluelimemedia, among many others.
Shel graced us with an entertaining and informative presentation about the book. Here are some of the points, along with a few pictures for good measure:

• People, communications and conversations are changing. Whereas prior to social media conversations took place from the “top down” (i.e. – from the upper ladders of corporations down to end consumers), the advent and adoption of social media have reversed that.
• Shel’s perspective is that Twitter has a small-town feeling, where conversations start out similarly to two neighbours chatting across one fence. At first, the chat may be superficial, but then a deeper rapport is created. Conversations are one-on-one. Twitterville tells stories that were relayed to Shel through Twitter.
• Wondering how to stand out in the social media crowd? “Outgenerous” your competition. By giving more (advice, that is), people get to know that you’re the person to go for insight in your field… which increases your reputation.
• Social media gives companies a chance to humanize their brands (as told by @MolsonFerg – Ferg Devins – head of public affairs in Canada for Molson Coors and one of the case studies in Twitterville)
• Wondering if anyone can make money off Twitter? Just look at the example of @CrowdSPRING. According to Shel, CrowdSpring’s business model is basically to tweet RFPs. The company makes a 15% revenue based on the value of each proposal that is approved.
  

  Cathy Browne. One of the stories in Twitterville.

• Yes, Twitter can be used in more “traditional” fields. Just look at how doctors at Henry Ford Hospital “tweetcasted” a live, robotic surgery – one tweet at a time. time. Results from tweets kept on arriving even after the surgery was over: because the type of surgery performed is elective, the increased exposure created more inquiries from private clients. More students were interested in practicing at Henry Ford. More innovative doctors were keen to bringing their skills to the hospital.
• Shel Israel explained that his attraction to Twitter is that it is one tool which allows people to act more like in real-life. Hence why it’s probably so popular.

Other observations, these from the question & answer period:

• Instead of monitoring what everyone is saying about its brand, Dell only looks at conversations coming from those with slightly positive or slightly negative perceptions. They ignore what comes from consumers who have pretty much made up their minds that Dell sucks. Instead, they focus on consumers who they have a chance to transform into advocates. To do so, they use a mix of measurement tools that include Radian6 as well as… Google (who would’ve thought?)!
• Another member of the audience (I’m so sorry I didn’t catch his name. All I know is that he sounded slightly British) brought up a couple of very valid points: to measure your influence on Twitter, don’t look at you number of followers. Instead, examine how relevant your followers are to your message. Number of RTs is also a great index to measure the value of what you’re communicating.

Ok. It’s late at night, so this post is going out as is. Hope you get some good value from it!

Trying Flock as a Browser

Yesterday, while catching up on my RSS feeds, I came across an article on Mashable about 10 Fabulous Free Mac Social Apps. Unfortunately, as I still don’t have a Mac (hopefully that will change soon), I can’t use many of them… except for this little beauty: Flock.
To put it in a nutshell, Flock is a browser that easily integrates your social media activity with your browsing. One example of its features is its incorporation with your blog profile, which allows you to post blog posts right from the browser. All it takes is clicking on one little icon on the toolbar, and once you have added your blog credentials to the browser, off you go.
Flock also has a Feed Reader that displays and enables you to organizer your RSS feeds in much the same way that you’d organize your bookmarks, by using folders. You can also open the embedded People Sidebar and keep up to date on what your Facebook friends are up to – while you go through your browsing. I’m looking forward to exploring more of this browser, but so far… I like it!


Cheers,


Guacira

Tags: flock, browser, web