As I've mentioned in this blog before I think the next evolution of the web will be aggregated content. We have spent the last two years scattering content all around the web; reviews, comments, profiles. But what I really want is my content to accrue back to me, Marty. I have reviews on Amazon that accrue to Amazon's content but that doesn't help me share it with my peeps. Until the content management sites improve content sharing features gadgets are the band-aid that will allow aggregation to happen. I do have to give a shout out to Facebook here. They have received some well deserved flack for their new service Beacon but the experience has improved. It was very clear to me that the Yelp posts I made were about to appear on my Facebook page. And once I got to my Facebook page it gave me the option again to remove the posting from my profile.

Back to gadgets... Case in point, notice the Yelp gadget I added to my Space on the right column. This allows reviews I post on Yelp to accrue back to me and share it with my peeps through my blog. Just about any Space, blog, MySpace page, etc can receive these gadget, your page just has be able to post HTML. I have to admit when I posted this gadget this morning it wasn't the easiest process. I am lucky enough to share an office with the expert Product Manager for Spaces so he helped me out. But recognizing that most people don't have that luxury (OK, no body except me does) I thought I'd share the process so it's easier for you.

1. Once you are signed in to your Space go to Customize, then select Add Modules.
2. Make sure you are on the Modules tab. Scroll down to Other section and select Custom HTML. Make sure it says Hide in the right column. If you ever want it to go away come back here and click Hide. It will change to Show and the module is hidden.
3. Click close and Save in the upper right. If you want to move the location of the module on the page click Customize and select Rearrange or Hide Module on the drop down menu. You can then click on the module and drag it wherever you want it to go.
4. Click on the down arrow in the upper right corner of the module and select Setting to change the title from Custom HTML to whatever you want.
5. Now you are ready to embed the code. Click edit and it will bring up the HTML text box. Copy and paste the HTML code from the gadget page (the code comes from the gadget provider, in my case Yelp). Make sure you are embedding Flash code or MySpace code. Spaces doesn't read JavaScript. The yelp Gadget defaulted to JavaScript so double check this if something isn't working right.

Walla! Happy content aggregation.

I mostly love working at Microsoft. I do. I love the possibilities and endless opportunities it offers. I love what it has done for my hometown. I love that admins were made into millionaires. I love that nerdy, computer geeks became among the wealthiest and most powerful people in the world. I especially love that this company - it's employees I mean - Give more philanthropically in both time and treasures that any other company on the planet. All of that being said, this week MSFT beat me down. I was called names, made to feel insecure and quite frankly incompetent. Now, I own that. I know I do. I can only feel that way if I allow others to let me. And this week I did.

This week  made me question why I'm here. I could have a simpler life. I could stay home, work part time maybe. I would have time to run around Greenlake everyday, visit my mother more, take my kids to the park, write that book I have in me. I could do all that, but I chose to be here and fight the fight. And most days I'm okay with that and I know I've made the right decision for me. Unfortunately when I get beaten down like I did this week I pause and say, "really? Is this what I'm doing it for?"

The old saying of sticks and stones isn't really true. Words do hurt. They have caused wars for centuries. We are all human. When we are cut, we bleed. There is no island to be voted off. It is not kill or be killed. Please remember you are talking to someone's sister, mother, brother, friend. Everyone is somebody to someone.

I will be better, stronger for this week. And I vow to pay it forward. I was extra nice to the smoothie lady this morning. Small victories. Peace.

I got 'elfed' at least five times that I can remember this holiday season. Did you? Being an obsessive marketer I kept asking myself 'is this campaign really driving sales for Office Max?" Results are in and while sales wasn't the goal of the campaign, it did in fact drive brand awareness.  Here is an article that breaks down the results.

What I really like about the article is the mention of engagement as a form of metric, not just page views. The Office Max elf site had a ridiculous amount of page views. Good for them? Well, maybe. You can't take page views to the bank and deposit them. Page views don't show up on the shareholders report (at least they shouldn't if that's not the company's revenue stream). So page views alone for a retail business that only makes money if someone buys something isn't a good metric to use. However, the AdAge article addresses this concerns and calls out the goal for the campaign was brand awareness, not sales. They reported the increase in the search term Office Max for the month of December as a gage for increased brand awareness. I buy that. And as someone who got more than a few of these elf e-cards I have to say I was surprised at how well I could recall the brand behind it.

I like that Time didn't take the easy road out on this one. 'Worst' to them means meaningless or hard to use, not least popular. I agree with this approach.

1. eHarmony - bummer here. I have two friends that have found partners with this site. Unhappy to hear they don't allow gays.
2. Evite - This would be a great time to promote Windows Live Events
3. Meez - Never heard of it
4. MySpace - Definitely agree! This site is a mess (IMHO). The last thing I would do is put any kind of personal information up here.
5. Second Life - As I've been saying all along, don't get this site at all.

I was having drinks with my BFF last night. She is a marketing director at a consulting firm in Seattle. She was talking about her work that day and says she had just completed a series of exit interviews. What a coincidence - I just talked about doing exit interview in my post here. If you are a consulting firm or agency of any kind that works with clients you should absolutely be doing these.  Being from the client side I work with many agencies to drive my campaigns. I will tell you the first question any body asks after a campaign is complete is "will you use them again?"  The second one is "would you recommend them to others?" If you are an agency you want the answer to these questions! My BFF was nice enough to share her exit interview questions. Here they are. She also recommends definitely keeping the interview short, 20 minutes max.

1. What was your expectation of working with [agency] for your [campaign]?

2. Do you feel we met, exceeded, or fell short of those expectations? In what ways?

3. How well do you feel our team understood your organization’s unique strengths and challenges? How did we demonstrate that to you?

4. How well did our team listen to your team, and address issues that were of most importance to your organization?

5. Can you please describe the overall quality of the [agency] team assigned to your project, including any particular strengths or weaknesses of individual team members?

6. Did you have the opportunity to work with the Project Coordinator or any of our support staff?

7. On a scale of 1 to 5 (5 being highest), how would you rate the success of the campaign?

8. What was the most valuable contribution [agency] made to your project?

9. What, if anything, was the least helpful? Or you felt was unnecessary?

10. Has working with [agency] helped you to move forward accomplish your goals?

11. May we quote you and use you as a positive reference for prospective clients?

12. If given the opportunity, would you hire [agency] again?

13. Is there anything that we didn’t cover, that you would like to talk about?

There are several different high level marketing strategy's a company can engage in from top down. Knowing different strategies appeal to different parts of a business, how do you chose your true north? Here's what I think - FIRST; find your hole and plug the leak. In other words, build a kick-ass engagement or retention plan - whatever you want to call it. We all know the old additive 'it's cheaper to keep a customer then go find a new one.' But even I will admit sometimes we all stray. The new customer is exciting and, well, new. Quite frankly it feels more like marketing to report number of new customers. But let's play that out for a minute.

Say you build a rockin' awareness campaign that gets 15% new customers. Not bad. Pretty exciting. But what if at the same time 12% of your existing customers got bored or saw something new and sexy from your competitor and jumped ship. Your net new for the month then drops to 3%. How much did that awareness campaign cost you? Was it worth only 3% increase? What is your cost per customer acquisition then? Not so good.

But say you'd already done the hard work, you shored up your leak. Then the same acquisition campaign nets you the 15% new customers. How do you do that? Do exit interviews if you can. This is probably wishful thinking in most cases so do some research studies to understand why your customers are leaving. Does the product or service suck? If you are selling a commodity are your prices too high? [BTW, if you are a consulting business or some king of business that doesn't have regular repeat customers you could think of this as does your existing customer base refer you to other customers? I used to work at an architecture firm and know most customers only need a Master Plan about every 20 years. So we focused on how we could leverage the happy customers to get new business.]

Another great thing about having a strong engagement campaign is the viral payoff. If you invest the same amount you spent for the shiny new acquisition campaign into a great engagement campaign not only will you stop the churn so any new customers are net new, you will also find payoff in viral growth. Happy, engaged customers talk!

One thing that was very clear to me this week as I have been inundated by two news stories, CES and the New Hampshire primary, is that the biggest chance anyone has for success whether they are selling a product or running for office is to find out what you can do for others. Does your marketing focus on the needs of your company or on the needs of others? It has been said that the recent serge in the polls by Obama is due to the fact that his campaign focuses on what he will do with people, putting the focus on others, not himself.  As another famous politician said, "ask not what your country can do for you but what YOU can do for your country." 

The same is with CES. I've been demoing Windows Live to people who stop by the Microsoft booth this week. There is a fair number of start-ups looking for partnerships, or possibly acquisition.  I've had several people come by asking me questions, looking for the right person to pitch their product or service to.  What's interesting is they spend a whole lot of time talking about what their service does or how their product works, but they spend little to no time talking about how their product will empower the customer to do more. Here's a bit of advice, could be worth the amount you paid for it but here goes. When pitching;

1. Focus on what you can do for others, how does your product or service empower others to be better or do better?
2. Understand how your product benefits my business. I had someone pitch me a service that would charge $0.03 per photo for storage. I explained to him we don't work on a subscription fee and would have to absorb that cost against our advertising revenue. Had he thought about that in his pitch? No.
3. Understand what my customer values. If you haven't done your research on my customer my ability to be dazzled in significantly decreased.  Someone pitched me a concept that from all of our customer research I know my customer doesn't value enough to pay for.
4. Believe in your product 110%. I'll ask tough questions in order to see your passion. If you truly believe in your product your confidence won't falter.
5. Be willing to accept that your product doesn't meet the needs of everyone and that's okay. Whenever I'm at a show I get the obligatory guy (yes, it's always a guy) that comes up and tells me he's about to buy a Mac and he can't deal with Vista anymore. My response is "If your needs are met by a Mac better than a PC then you should definitely go with the one that works better for your needs."  They never expect me to say this, they think I'm going to try and sell them on a PC but I have no interest or desire to sell someone a product that doesn't fit their needs.  Chances are great they won't be happy, they will either return it or tell all their friends how unhappy they are. Not a good experience for anyone. Usually after I've said that the guy then says, "Well, show me what you've got. Maybe I'll change my mind." I'm not kidding, that really happens.

I, like most American's, have been pretty interested in the political race this year. The first big step happens tonight in Iowa. I've never lived in a state that Caucuses so I had no idea how it works. Turns out it's much like our voting system, created by our founding fathers 250 years ago and hasn't changed since.  Caucus 101 here.

Caucuses are a flash back to a simpler time before computers and social networking. In fact, before paper and pencil in some cases. God love them they still use the good old fashion US Post Office system, surprisingly they don't rely on midnight rides across the prairie flashing one light for Barack, two lights for Hillary and three lights for Edwards.

First of all did you know the democrats and republicans don't even caucus the same way. Hmmm. But what I really love is the democrats have built a system the allows the voter to be persuaded by social pressures, not unlike MySpace. Democrats stand in a room from 7-830pm at night, you can't be late because anyone after 7pm doesn't count (republicans do this too). Then the democrats physically get up and walk to the corner of the room that represents the candidate they THINK they want to support. During round one any candidate that doesn't have 15% of the room gets dropped. At that time any of the candidates still in the running can go recruit people from the candidates that have fallen out. You get to vote again! Social pressure tells you where to go. In the world of MySpace it would be equivalent to you joining someone's friends list and if they don't get enough friends you drop them like a hot potato and go to the MySpace page that has the most friends. Then, you go back and get all the other losers on the Space you were just at and bring them along with you so you all are on the popular Space. Then the guy or gal with the most popular MySpace page gets to run for president of the free world. SWEET!