Creating a differentiated customer experience
Posted on 15. Nov, 2010 by Dean Whitney in Marketing, User Experience and has 0 Comments
Aspire to be the next Nordstrom’s or Zane’s Cycles? Do you marvel at the legions of Apple fanatics? These companies all have one thing in common: a customer experience that is completely unique in their market.
The Zone – Super charge your productivity
Posted on 01. Nov, 2010 by Dean Whitney in productivity and has 0 Comments
I’m sure you know what its like to be in “the zone”. That’s the magical place where you are working or playing and time disappears and you are 100% focused on the task at hand. You may experience the zone while writing, painting, skiing or working on a project. All of a sudden. Kapow! Something snaps you out of it. A phone call, a close call with another skier, an annoying colleague, a sudden realization that you were supposed to leave 30 minutes ago.
Most of us rarely enter “the zone”. The “Norm” is constantly checking email, answering calls, running from one meeting to another, checking our social networks, blogs, news etc. Most of us don’t even put work time on our calendars, if there’s no meetings we call it “free time”. For most of us our focus is far too fragmented across too many commitments. We think we are multi-tasking when in reality we are going from one thing to the next, or ’serial tasking’. (more…)
Redmine for web project management
Posted on 15. Oct, 2010 by Dean Whitney in process, web development and has 0 Comments
I’ve worked with many project management tools over the years. AtTask, Basecamp, GoPlan, Microsoft Office Project Server, Zoho Project to name a few. They all have strengths and weaknesses. We started using Redmine in January 2010 – its very well suited for Agile or Scrum project management. It may have a little less glitter than the others but has proven to be an effective tool that I recommend for agencies and marketing teams.
How to create a formatted email signature in Gmail
Posted on 01. Oct, 2010 by Dean Whitney in productivity and has 0 Comments
I’m a big fan of Gmail so when I started my agency I didn’t even consider Outlook for email. We set up a Google Enterprise account with email, calendar, pages, apps. The email is the same as Gmail with our own domain (@deanwhitney.com). This has been amazing so far and very cost effective. The one thing we hate about Gmail – the email signature functionality – or lack of. (more…)
Can a viral YouTube video sell B2B?
Posted on 15. Sep, 2010 by Dean Whitney in Humor, Inbound Marketing, YouTube and has 0 Comments
The answer is yes. IBM’s “Mainframe: Art of the Sale” is “The Office” meets corporate sales training video. Selected by Comedy Central as a “staff favorite” in its comedy test pilots contest. The series got serious press coverage worth far more than its production cost; over achieving all their objectives. (more…)
Content Strategy: Make an idea into dozens of influence building social interactions
Posted on 01. Sep, 2010 by Dean Whitney in Content Strategy, YouTube and has 0 Comments
Content strategy is all about publishing content. You need to create a high volume content mill with minimal cost and overhead. To do so you need a system that maximizes interactions for each content event. This process allows you to turn simple content ideas into dozens of influence building social interactions. (more…)
Deciding which social networks to focus on
Posted on 15. Aug, 2010 by Dean Whitney in Inbound Marketing, Social Media and has 0 Comments
Focus is important in social media. Without focus it can be like boiling the ocean. So when marketers new to social media begin they wonder which social networks they should focus on. Twitter? LinkedIn? Do they need a Facebook Fan Page? How about MySpace? A YouTube Channel? Flickr? The list goes on.
Wikipedia maintains a list of social networking websites with a column for registered users. It’s shocking how many social networks there are with over 10 million registered users that I haven’t heard of before. Habbo, a social network for teens has over 160 million registered users, over 8 million unique visitors per month, and 75,000+ new registrations per day!
Prepare healthy lunches for the work week in 10 minutes
Posted on 01. Aug, 2010 by Dean Whitney in productivity and has 0 Comments
Not too many of us can honestly say we don’t need to lose fat. To achieve this our diets should consist of a very high amounts of lean protein and green water based veggies, like sprouts, salad greens, celery and avocado. As for vegetables the closer to raw the better to deliver those healthy enzymes to our intestines to help with overall digestion and nutritional absorption.
If you are like me, when it gets busy at work your diet is the first thing to go. When we resort to fast food take-out, delivery, catered lunches typically equates to bursting buttons on your waistline. These foods are so irregular we tend to eat meals with the wrong mix of protein, carbohydrates and vegetables.
Often the meals have too high bread/pasta to meat/protein ratio. The cookies, fruit or high-calorie frappachino really throws the sugar/carb intake over the top. Furthermore we find ourselves dragging our feet or nearly comatose come 4PM. Our coffee intake sky rockets, water intake drops and the coffee is a diuretic making half of that water pass right through.
(more…)
Features Matrix Scorecard for agile project management
Posted on 15. Jul, 2010 by Dean Whitney in User Experience, process, productivity and has 0 Comments
One of the biggest challenges for agencies and clients is keeping interactive projects right-sized and avoiding scope creep. The Features Matrix Scorecard is a tool for managing technology, business and user experience requirements and selecting a software platform. The goal is to reduce the scope and complexity of the project; thus reducing cost and risk while greatly increasing the likelihood for a happy and successful project launch. In the IT world it’s been proven statistically that the higher the project cost the chance of failure increases exponentially.
IT projects above $500k have a 1 in 5 chance of failure. And the research shows that out of the successful projects the ranks aren’t all 5 stars; so it would be safe to say more than half are just above the ‘acceptable’ line. Today’s marketing and user experience projects have so much technology tied in these days its smart to use an agile approach and build up incrementally. When building a house you don’t start with the marble tile; you begin with the foundation. The Features Matrix helps you define a solid foundation to build your solution. Iterative enhancements can put your product on the road to success. (more…)
Positive Social Proof
Posted on 01. Jul, 2010 by Dean Whitney in Marketing, Social Media, psychology and has 0 Comments
Social proof, also known as informational social influence, occurs in social situations when people are not sure how to behave. They make the assumption that surrounding people possess more knowledge about the situation and assume the behavior of others will yield the best outcome.
“Positive Social Proof” is similar to the “Bandwagon” or “Cromo Effect” in that people tend to join a way of thinking, a movement or in an activity. When introduced to the environment they see clear indications that its very popular with people either similar to people they are attracted too (celebs, wealthy, sexy). (more…)
Featured
Social Bookmarks