Monthly Archives: November 2014

November 6, 2014 · 12:04 pm

Inbox

I got an invitation to use Google’s new email app, Inbox, yesterday. I installed it on my phone and that allows you to use it with a web browser as well. My first impressions are all positive. It’s a very intuitive interface and is much more visually appealing (and friendly) that the standard Gmail interface.  I’m not sure if any of you have got it yet (it’s still invite only) but I’d love to hear your thoughts and/or tips if you have.  You can email inbox@google.com to request one.

One thing I noticed pretty quickly is how much easier it is to deal with older mail. You can label mails as lower priority, snooze them (they go away from your mailbox for a bit), make them add themselves to “bundles” and other nice features.  This article from Lifehacker does a decent job explaining it.

Naturally, I had a broader business thought as I was using it.  The activities – reading and responding to email – were things most of us do every day (all day in some of our cases!).  But because I was approaching the activities in a new way and was looking at the information in a new way, I was suddenly getting more done.  My inbox is cleaned up and there is a system in place to ping me with reminders.  The information I use daily is better organized and much more findable.  That, to me, seems to be an approach we can all try out in many of our other business activities.  Look at the same old things in a different way with a different approach and maybe, just maybe, we become more productive.

What do you think?

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November 5, 2014 · 12:13 pm

Owning It

There was a report issued by Piper Jaffray which is the latest iteration of an on-going study on teens.

Piper Jaffray

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

In it was a nugget about how teens are (or aren’t) using Facebook.  As reported in The Washington Post:

Between fall 2014 and spring 2014, when Piper Jaffray last conducted this survey, Facebook use among teenagers aged 13 to 19 plummeted from 72 percent to 45 percent. In other words, less than half of the teenagers surveyed said “yes” when asked if they use Facebook.

For those of us who work in other businesses, this issue isn’t really so much about where teens are spending their time.  The problem isn’t confined to Facebook either.  Facebook, like Google, Reddit, and many other social/news sites, don’t generate the bulk of the content that populate their sites.  Users do, so when a chunk of the user base vanishes so too does the content that chunk generates.  Could the site replace it?  Maybe, but it wouldn’t be in an authentic voice nor reflect the topics that are on the mind of the intended audience.

I’m always wary about a business that is so dependent upon that model.  Traditional media creates (or buys) content itself.  There is a different issue there (is anyone paying attention to what they’re producing) but the base product is unaffected regardless of usage.  One can argue that Facebook is just a tech platform but if their business model is selling ads (and it is) then they are a media company.  Google produces none of the content is serves.  Search results are just reflective of what’s out there.  If the content becomes unavailable, either through “no index” tags or otherwise, what does that do to the quality of the search results?  How is usage affected?

Sound businesses are built with as few “uncontrollable” elements as possible.  If your model is built on the output of others and those sources dry up, does your business do so as well?  I say we need to own the product stream as much as possible.  What say you?

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November 4, 2014 · 12:24 pm

Mine! Mine!

Two of my current clients are start-ups. They’re small but getting bigger. Although there are a number of challenges in this environment one big challenge that I used to see all the time in the “big” corporate world is missing and it’s a wonderful thing.

Big companies tend to breed silos and possessiveness. You don’t really get that in a start-up since everyone is overlapping and helping with almost everyone else. Those silos are a huge problem, as is the possessive nature of the executives involved since that fosters them. Want an example?

I saw an article yesterday which reported on a study conducted for Yes Lifestyle Marketing. This is some of what was in the study:

A sizable chunk of marketers are having trouble coordinating efforts between divisions, and well over half think their marketing departments don’t even share common goals. Generally, oversight under one group seems to be lacking at a lot of companies with 68% of respondents saying enterprise marketing executives lack central ownership of programs across channels.

According to the study, poor data practices appear to be one of the biggest reasons for the failure of multichannel marketing programs. Only 37 percent of enterprise organizations and 29 percent of mid-market companies have a central repository for customer data. Less than a third of marketing executives overall said their companies centralize customer data into a single record across channels.

That data division and lack of coordination seems not to be an oversight. In other words, turf wars are derailing marketing, and that is having a negative effect.  One could also look to the other types of conflicts (read turf battles) between sales and marketing, IT and marketing, and even business analysts (the dreaded “strat planning” department) and everyone else in some companies. How can we fix this?  In the words of my Mom: “Oh grow up.”

The start-up mentality of interdependence is visible every day when the entire company is in a small space.   Out of sight, out of mind might just hold in bigger companies.  Maybe it’s easier to vilify the group on the other floor.  There is no “mine” other than accountability for the goals the entire group is trying to achieve.  You can’t win if other members of the team lose, not in the long-term anyway.

Those are my thoughts.  Yours?

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