Every company has employees brimming with great ideas but sometimes it can be difficult to get them out there and develop them into something real. Intuit aim to solve this with their new product, Brainstorm, but for a price.
Brainstorm is a web based collaboration tool designed to source and develop ideas within organisations by encouraging employees to submit and develop ideas.
While the most sites designed with the same function focus on posting updates in the hope that colleagues will respond to them, Brainstorm focuses more on networking and connecting ideas to the right people and developing them further. Ideas posted on the site can be rated and commented on by colleagues and shared across the board.
Users can create Challenges specifically for their organisation and a Pipeline which helps organise and rank active ideas and develop them. Ideas can be shared to anyone within an organisation as well to specific groups within companies in case you wish to keep the number of people contributing more focused.
The site was originally created as an internal tool created during the company’s unstructured time, (the time they use to work on pet projects). Intuit claim that after they created Brainstorm, participation within their company increased by 500 per cent and ideas created also jumped by 1,000 per cent.
Similar to its competitors Kindling and Brightidea, the service comes at a price which will put smaller groups off it although users have the opportunity to try a 30-day free trial before being required to pay. Currently, the rates start at $5 a month per user with the minimum cost being $500 per month. Yet with the number of complaints online being aimed towards this may convince Intuit to lower this minimum cost or scrap it altogether so that smaller organizations can afford it.
Youtube has paved the way for budding film makers and anyone with a camera or webcam to post videos and post it onto the internet. Yet when posting onto youtube, you don’t just post for your friends but leave your handiwork available for a global audience to see with only the best ones which stick in the mind and compel you to share your discovery via Facebook, Twitter or Google+ become successful.
A while back, Lauren wrote about how twitter’s success is down to the importance of sharing links and the success stories from Youtube can be attributed to this very practice. Some can transform the life of those who created them, others can give a person or group’s career a shot in the arm and then there are those who videos helped create their career. Below are examples of what can happen when videos and clips are shared, becoming viral and reaching a global audience.
Ted Williams
Youtube hits: 13,870,000 for one of many videos
After having a field trip to a radio station when he was 14, Ted Williams aspired to become a radio announcer. Yet despite attending a school for voice acting and working overnight shifts for a soul music radio station, Williams’ life took a turn for the worse when drug and alcohol problems took over his life.
Yet it was a chance encounter with a videographer for the Columbus Dispatch where Williams’ talent was discovered. Posted on Youtube, it gained massive attention and Williams was offered interviews alongside jobs for voiceover work. Currently he is
Greyson Chance
Youtube hits: 41,500,000 for Paparazzi
Greyson Chance uploaded a video of his performance of the Lady Gaga song, Paparazzi, where it got 10,000 views. After Chance’s brother, wrote to Ellen DeGeneres suggesting that she should watch it, he was invited to perform on DeGeneres’ show. The video went viral and Chance signed a record deal with DeGeneres’ record label ‘eleveneleven’.
Pomplamoose
Youtube hits: 8,000,000 for Single Ladies (Beyonce)
Forming in 2008, Jack Conte and Nataly Dawn created a band that focuses on “videosongs”, the two rules for this are ‘What you see is what you hear (no lip-syncing for instruments or voices) ’ and ‘if you hear it, at some point you can see it’ (no hidden sounds). The result are cover songs which amalgamate different vocals and instruments played by Conte and Dawn to create something unique. The duo sold 100,000 single songs in 2009, their record sales coming solely from online vendors, and have built up a dedicated following despite not having a record label.
Freddie Wong
Youtube hits: 12,300,000 for first person Mario
A graduate of the University of Southern California School of Cinematic Arts, Freddie Wong’s videos are a mixture of impressive special effects and humour meaning that he has over 319 million views overall and over 1.8 million subscribers. His success has resulted in him being asked by Jon Favreau to record a video for his upcoming movie, Cowboys and Aliens, starring Daniel Craig.
Zero punctuation
Youtube hits: 1,600,000 for Fable: The Lost Chapters
One day, amateur game developer and blogger, Ben ‘Yathzee’ Croshaw, decided to do something different for his blog. Taking a headset mic, Windows Movie Maker, Photoshop and a cynical sense of humour, he created a youtube video filled with rapid talking, visual gags and lots of gags.
A month later online magazine, The Escapist, contacted Croshaw and offered him a contract to produce episodes every week. Stating that his humour is inspired by Charlie Brooker, the show combines rapid-fire jokes and cynical, bitter humour (many fans ask him to review games before becoming horrified when he criticises it). The show has become one of The Escapist’s most prolific features on the site (Warning: below video NSFW).
The best job in the world
Youtube hits: 255,648 (but 610 hours of added content)
In January 2009, Tourism Queensland had to appoint an island caretaker to explore the islands of the great barrier Reef in Queensland Australia. Yet instead of just doing a straightforward advertisement, the job was advertised as the best job in the world and a campaign was launched to find the best person for the job.
Over 34,000 applied which was brought down to 50 before being brought down to 16. The hits for the original advertisement is small in comparison to the other examples but the website got 8 million visitors and generated over 610 hours of user generated content on Youtube making the campaign a massive success. The job eventually went to Ben Southall of the United Kingdom.
Michelle Phan
Youtube hits: 28,000,000 for Lady Gaga ‘Poker Face’ tutorial
After being turned down for a behind t French Make up line, Lancôme, Michelle Phan started offering make up tutorials on Youtube and now her videos have been view over 150 million times. She now owns a skin care line IQQU and has recently released her new website michellephan.com, earlier this year.
Applegirl002
Youtube hits: 4,500,000 for ‘Poker Face’
Armed with four iPhones, Kim Yeo Hee performed beyonce ‘Irreplaceable’ and Lady Gaga’s ‘Poker Face’ which receive two and four million views respectively. She signed under the music label, Dream High Entertainment, where she has released three singles and an album so far.
The Baseballs
Youtube hits: 15,600,000 for Umbrella
German rock and roll band, the Baseballs, formed in 2007 but it was when they released their cover version of the hit Rihanna song, Umbrella, did they gain widespread popularity. Their style is taken from music of the fifties and sixties and has contributed to their success. In their native country, they were the winners of the German Echo Award 2010 for best Newcomer release for their album ‘Strings’n’Stripes’.
Atomic Tom
Youtube hits: 4,878,000
New York based band, Atomic Tom, had formed in 2006 but their idea for a new video in 2010 gave them the publicity they needed. With the fictional story that their equipment was stolen earlier, the band got onto the subway and played a version of their single “Take me out” using only iPhones. The video was a success giving the band the first major break when their first album, ‘The Moment’ was released on iTunes and Amazon.
Creativity and a unique hook are some of the similarities that each example here shows but like all things, not all vidoes that follow this method achieve the same number of hits as these videos. Perhaps the success or failure of a video on Youtube is best summarised by one of the above examples, Ben ‘Yahzee’ Croshaw, where he’s explaining the news that the escapist offered him a contract because of his video.
When navigating a company or service site, inevitably there will be cases where site viewers will have a question or inquire for more information. Even if the answer is already provided on the site, they may not always be obvious for people to find, which is why many sites include an FAQ section to answer the most common queries.
Accessibility and information are two main components for any site to have. Visitors want to be able to navigate sites with minimum hassle and find the information they’re looking for and if not they’ll become frustrated and look elsewhere. The FAQ page is to solve this problem yet for some sites, their FAQ pages are either poorly thought out, badly designed, display out of date information or in the worst cases, don’t even exist.
This is where FAQme.com comes into play. The site, created by ADHD Labs, seeks to remedy these problems by allowing users to build sleeker and more useful FAQ and contact pages. The style of the FAQ pages created are designed to be simplistic, allowing the user to put one together quickly while users can navigate it easily. Admins can customise their pages, add edit or delete entries as well as re-order them through dragging and dropping entries
A second feature is the use of a specialised FAQ inbox, where users have the option of either replying privately or publicly by including the query in the actual FAQ. This allows every inquiry and query to be used if deemed helpful for others so that an FAQ can be regularly updated.
Users are provided with their own analytics pages which tracks unique visits, time spent on the page and what browsers are being used to view the page. The site also allows you to create multiple FAQ pages if you so wish, letting you manage each of them on the same page.
The site is designed by ADHD Labs, a company experimenting in sites and apps creation, whose sites include TinyLetter, a site which allows you to create email newsletters.
With Youtube commanding a dominant presence in online video sharing, anyone who creates a similar site and takes them on has a job on their hands. Something unique is required to attract attention and drawing users to your site is always easier said than done.
Enter EyeHandy, a how-to site that uses the tag line “where how-to gets sexy.” Based in Las Vegas, their videos feature attractive bikini-clad models who guide you through step-by-step tutorials (with female voiceover) for topics like re-gripping golf clubs, changing a tyre, waxing your surfboard and most bizarrely, how to build a cyclorama studio (a white background used for photography). There are also step-by-step instructions with photos underneath the video in case you need them.
As you have probably guessed, the site is aimed purely at a male demographic in the hope that its approach will sway them to use the site on a regular basis.
Describing the approach of EyeHandy’s founder and CEO, Alex Merriman, their site says that “he knew there had to be a more interesting teaching approach…[and this] would bring EyeHandy to the forefront of the web. With many creative ideas in the works and ones that have yet to be seen, there is no limit to what the future of Eyehandy holds.” It’s not clear what those ideas are or whether they’ll include a version for women but presumably it will follow the same approach that’s already featured.
So what do you think, are videos and adverts like this harmless and not meant to be taken seriously or are they yet another cynical example of sex being used to entice a male demographic and drum up publicity?
Facts. Cold hard facts. Delivering on waffle free promises is what drives successful online marketing. No persuasion or manipulation. No marketing speak. Not even any exaggeration. Your customers are on your website because they are smart and want to be smarter. Treat them as you like to be treated.
Online, clarity trumps persuasion every time.
When you're this hard, you can wear ridiculous shorts and get away with it.
Tiddlywinks marketing is a waste of time when your customers are online to play Ultimate Fight Club. This ruthless, cynical, ripped-off-once-too-often tribe of bargain hunters have questions they want answered and objections they need overcome before they’ll even think of doing business with you.
All they ask for is clarity. Concise, unexaggerated, clear facts.
Don’t even think of welcoming them to your website (they don’t care), telling them about your corporate history (it’s not your mother visiting your site, to see what a success you’ve made of yourself), patronising them with well known statements about your industry (we all know how hard it can be to get widgets at a good price, that’s why we at WidgetCo can…), exaggerating the truth (do you honestly think they won’t search for customer testimonials or third party reviews) or speaking vaguely to them, they’ll destroy the sales opportunity before you say another word.
They’re not interested. Get that? N O T I N T E R E S T E D ! ! !
Check out the top guidelines for overcoming objections within an e-commerce website. Make the number of steps in checkout process obvious. Add a progress indicator. Provide links back to all products. Add pictures to the baskets. Be up front about P&P costs. Show stock availability and delivery times. Make the next step obvious. Build for the new customer. Make it easy to edit the cart. Display helpful error messages. Provide meaningful company information. Enable the user to call you, at your cost. Focus on the new customer. Add third party testimonials. Deal with pricing issues head on. Offer lots of payment options. Provide point of objection reassurance. Trace mistakes. Save the user’s cart for the next visit. Survey, talk and listen.
Name: Cybil Fawlty; Specialised Subject: The bleedin' obvious
What do all those instructions have in common? They’re boring and self-evident.
Before you immediately dismiss them therefore as stating the obvious, ponder why so many websites ignore these principles, focussing instead on the less noble disciplines of waffle and marketing promises.
The June 2010 Web Analytic Clinic carried out by the good people of Marketing Experiments suggests that your web pages must within three seconds (yes, three seconds) answer the questions “where am I”, “what can I do / buy / get here” and “why should I participate / buy?” Within this context you need to be very careful how you spend your customer’s attention span. Don’t squander it.
If you catch yourself doing one of the following three things you’re doomed. Trying to answer the “why” before the “what”, presenting a solution before the problem is clear or using presumed authority (boasting) instead of credibility (testimonials and objective commentary).
Your website should mimic the clarity of a newspaper headline, not the subtlety of a murder mystery novel. Tell them it was Rev Green, in the study, with a crowbar on the first page.
Facts. Cold hard facts. Delivering on waffle free promises is what drives successful online marketing. No persuasion or manipulation. No marketing speak. Not even any exaggeration. Your customers are on your website because they are smart and want to be smarter. Treat them as you like to be treated.
Online, clarity trumps persuasion every time.
When you're this hard, you can wear ridiculous shorts and get away with it.
Tiddlywinks marketing is a waste of time when your customers are online to play Ultimate Fight Club. This ruthless, cynical, ripped-off-once-too-often tribe of bargain hunters have questions they want answered and objections they need overcome before they’ll even think of doing business with you.
All they ask for is clarity. Concise, unexaggerated, clear facts.
Don’t even think of welcoming them to your website (they don’t care), telling them about your corporate history (it’s not your mother visiting your site, to see what a success you’ve made of yourself), patronising them with well known statements about your industry (we all know how hard it can be to get widgets at a good price, that’s why we at WidgetCo can…), exaggerating the truth (do you honestly think they won’t search for customer testimonials or third party reviews) or speaking vaguely to them, they’ll destroy the sales opportunity before you say another word.
They’re not interested. Get that? N O T I N T E R E S T E D ! ! !
Check out the top guidelines for overcoming objections within an e-commerce website. Make the number of steps in checkout process obvious. Add a progress indicator. Provide links back to all products. Add pictures to the baskets. Be up front about P&P costs. Show stock availability and delivery times. Make the next step obvious. Build for the new customer. Make it easy to edit the cart. Display helpful error messages. Provide meaningful company information. Enable the user to call you, at your cost. Focus on the new customer. Add third party testimonials. Deal with pricing issues head on. Offer lots of payment options. Provide point of objection reassurance. Trace mistakes. Save the user’s cart for the next visit. Survey, talk and listen.
Name: Cybil Fawlty; Specialised Subject: The bleedin' obvious
What do all those instructions have in common? They’re boring and self-evident.
Before you immediately dismiss them therefore as stating the obvious, ponder why so many websites ignore these principles, focussing instead on the less noble disciplines of waffle and marketing promises.
The June 2010 Web Analytic Clinic carried out by the good people of Marketing Experiments suggests that your web pages must within three seconds (yes, three seconds) answer the questions “where am I”, “what can I do / buy / get here” and “why should I participate / buy?” Within this context you need to be very careful how you spend your customer’s attention span. Don’t squander it.
If you catch yourself doing one of the following three things you’re doomed. Trying to answer the “why” before the “what”, presenting a solution before the problem is clear or using presumed authority (boasting) instead of credibility (testimonials and objective commentary).
Your website should mimic the clarity of a newspaper headline, not the subtlety of a murder mystery novel. Tell them it was Rev Green, in the study, with a crowbar on the first page.
Use the funnel to determine the marketing tools & content needed for each part of the customer journey
Creating an online marketing strategy is as much to do with balance, as it is to do with tactics.
I created this funnel to help me check if I am addressing the entire customer journey when constructing an online marketing strategy. Whether you are after customers, votes or donations, the process is the same.
Driving traffic to a website isn’t the same as converting a prospect to a customer. Many marketers feel that if they had more traffic they would get more customers. My experience tells me that if you focus harder on converting prospects already on your site the outcome is much more profitable.
For many businesses, the sales process doesn’t take place online so the purpose of the web presence is to drive sales opportunities to the phone.
Some businesses, like hotels for example need a blend. A hotel may wish to promote and sell hotel rooms online without ever speaking to a customer, whereas for conferences and weddings the hotel would like to get customers to visit their premises as this is a consultative sales process.
Understanding the customer decision making process determines how you create a successful customer journey and eventually determine the tools needed and the emphasis you put on each channel.
There is evidence left at every stage of this funnel to allow for forensic analysis of the sales process. Perhaps it’s time to get CSI on your web strategy.
Since the dawn of time, how delighted you say you are to announce something, how passionate you say you are about a certain subject matter, or your report on your mood generally has been of no interest whatsoever to your potential customer.
Web copywriters of the world, this remains the case, and if it ever changes I promise you, as my solemn oath, you shall be the first to know!
Bleating on inanely about how thrilled, excited, passionate, fervent, ardent, zealous, avid, obsessive or fanatical you are about your subject matter is of absolutely no interest to me, or your other customers. And yes I did use a thesaurus to get all those words. But you started it!
The briefest of journeys around the web will convince you that the web is just falling over itself with this sycophantic self serving copywriting style. This vanity parade is the online equivalent of talking about yourself in the third person; something Gareth Dunlop has a strong dislike for.
I recently tried to get car insurance online and was pleasantly surprised to see a product which matched my needs exactly with just the call to action I was looking for “get a quote”. I followed the link to read “Thank you for your online enquiry. Every day in Ireland we continue to insure a significant number of people and we are very keen to have you as a customer. To get a quote please phone 0800 123456 8am – 6pm on week days.”
Does their marketing team have any understanding of how little interest I have in the number of people they insure on a daily basis? Or how little it matters to me that they are keen to have me as a customer? Perhaps their marketing team go home to their loved ones and say “You know what honey, Insure Co were quoting EUR 1000 to insure me for the year and Crash Co were EUR 750, but Insure Co are continuing to insure a significant number of people in Ireland. I think that’s worth at least EUR 250, let’s go with them?” Good luck to the man who tries to make that one fly with my wife, he’s a braver / stupider / faster man than I am!
Lately this farcical copywriting style has started to manifest itself with passion.
We are passionate about design.
We are passionate about sofas.
We are passionate about tax optimisation.
We are passionate about rainfall numbers in Co Clare 2000 – 2010.
OK, so I made the last one up, but the others are real.
A child's first steps - BORRRRRRING - compared with tax optimisation
Think about what makes you passionate. Gourmet food and fine wine? Seeing your children take their first step, or learn to read? Watching Brian O’Driscoll score a try? A former lover from college days? Not me, it’s tax optimisation that gets me going. At first I was merely keen, and then became interested, expressive almost, but before I knew it I was passionate.
But not as passionate as a company I read about online just last week. “To say we’re passionate about [ subject matter x ] is an understatement.” An understatement! Wow! Imagine what words they would have used if it was a real statement?
Perhaps my favourite of all time is “Company X – passionate about everything”. Surely these people must live on coffee and Red Bull just to keep their energy levels at the requisite levels to continue this joie de vivre for every single aspect of life?
The facts are simple. People go online not to read promises, but to do things. Don’t tell them how fervently you bounce out of bed in the morning to serve them. Just serve them. Stop yarning on about how excited you are about doing business online with them. Just do the business online. Enough already about how thrilled you are to provide a public service. Just let the public renew their passport, get a new driving licence, find out when their bins are collected, or whatever matters to the public.
Those who can’t, bleat on about how passionate they are online. Those who can, do.
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Every company has employees brimming with great ideas but sometimes it can be difficult to get them out there and develop them into something real. Intuit aim to solve this with their new product, Brainstorm, but for a price.
