Digital Transformation – Let’s learn and re-learn!

This is the compilation of my notes from my learning. The views or content here doesn’t represent my current, past or future employers.

Let’s start:

In the last few years, working as a product manager and Strategic advisor, one topic is for sure coming back multiple times, digital transformation.

Not only we as individuals generate data, a massive amount is also created across the value chain of any industry.

During the manufacturing process, for example, factories are equipped with sensors that continuously assess or track the performance of every machine.

Disruption is nothing new. In fact, disruption is arguably a natural product of market economies. We want to go deeper on a narrow set of technology trends we saw in the most recent years. Processing technology, communication technology, and other digital technologies are moving very fast in time.

What I am trying to achieve via these readings?

I am trying to learn and re-learn aspects of digital transformation, and understand the fundamental technology laws underpinning today’s business disruptions. I am trying to understand the economics behind the disruption, the digital trends of past and future, and how businesses can pull together a Digital Transformation program? How can we create a comprehensive framework to help us think through this process all the way from business strategy to organizational and technology implications.

I would also try and apply the business motivation model, and come up with a value stream and business canvas for an industry (I haven’t yet decided which one it is going to be).
The Pace of Change: Exponential Evolution of Technology

Within 15, 20 years, digital has not only changed our personal lives but has also fully transformed the business world and no industry, no industry was immune.

There are three fundamental laws which have made it possible:

Moore’s law.
- What this law says is that every 18 months, your computer will have twice as much power to process information.
  - Originally, it was formulated slightly differently. It says that on a given silicon chip, every 18 months, you can double the number of transistors you fit in there. The reality is this law in this original formulation is being challenged but we will not go into further detail here.
Buttler’s Law.
- It states that the amount of data communicated through a single optical fiber doubles every nine months. If you plot the typical speeds and megabytes per seconds on a log scale, we see a straight line, which means an exponential increase over the years.
Kryder’s Law.
- This law looks at hard drive storage capacity and state that the amount of data stored per centimeter square of a hard drive will double every 13 months. At least, this was the case in the late ’90s and early 2000s, when Mark Kryder formulated his observation. The trend has actually slowed down to double every 16 or 17 months. But, anyway, this remains faster even than Moore’s law.

These laws have strong implication on the business world, and I am still studying those and understanding.

But we know that technology develops rapidly. However, as the human intuition is tuned to seeing linear developments, we tend to always underestimate the progress.

It is not surprising, therefore, that companies also tend to underestimate or even be completely blind to the impact of digital technology. If companies develop linearly and technology evolves exponentially, we see a gap between the two, a gap between the company’s actual value delivery and what would be possible technology-wise. And this gap is widening very quickly over time.

The gap is often filled by innovative startups using technology to satisfy customer needs in a very different way, a way incumbent players were unable to see or even worst, saw and couldn’t fully understand. We have the examples of companies like Kodak, Nokia or Blockbuster which have to pay a heavy price for this tendency of underestimating the trend!

What did I learn from my readings:

First, the exponential increase in processing power, communication bandwidth and storage capacity are the technological foundation of today’s digital transformation.

Second, our minds are tuned to seeing and predicting linear developments, therefore, the first challenge that both individuals and companies need to overcome is one of perception, of understanding how digital technology is evolving.

And last but not least, a gap tends to appear between how companies evolve and the technology potential. This gap is often filled by startups that come to disrupt incumbent players.

What’s next for me

Now as I understand how digital technology has gone through an exponential evolution and how this can be a foundation for a massive change for individual organizations, I want to know more about how business architecture as a whole has been transferring in the recent years.

What I mean by business architecture is how players in an industry are organized to deliver a certain value add to the end users. This includes competitors, suppliers, and players from adjacent industries, how do they interact together and who do they interact with. Industry architecture plays a huge role in determining a given company structure, processes and ultimately its business strategy. Interesting times ahead!

Video: Microsoft views of Digital Transformation

Fascinating Stuff on O365 Groups

An everyday guide to Office 365 Groups

Its not just the change in ‘Logo’ – it has more to it!

Recently Google changed its logo, and well like anyone else I also loved it. I went over quite a few article and also watched the video which talked about Google transition from ‘Blue lines’ to this new ‘Serif “Free” Logo’!Wait a second…”Serif Free”? What does Google and its new logo has to do with it…actually a lot!

Before I go in more detail; did you ever happen to open Google on a low bandwidth internet connection –

If you are using a low-bandwidth connections you would see not the image version of the logo but a close text approximation which is created using SVG (Scalable Vector Graphic), Actually SVG is the best file format, and more and more logos are now appearing using SVG.

In the above image the one marked as SVG is for low bandwidth!

How much Google pays attention to detail and being ‘Pixel Perfect’ which actually is a learning for Product Managers, Designers, and UX researchers; read this:

The new design allowed Google to optimize the assets for its size and latency.

This new logo actually is of only 305 bytes where as compare it with older one – 14,000 bytes! Now this is the reason why Google for slow internet connections served a text version of the logo. This is amazing thinking!

This is how it works after the new logo came in to picture:

So Google actually got rid of Serifs. Serif actualy has tiny decorative lines attached to the edges of many of the letters which help your eyes with readability when you’ve got a lot of text. But serifs are not as useful on text that needs to be shown at many different sizes, like: Logos!

They also don’t scale; if you ever happen to see the ‘g’ fav icon; you would easily resemble it to 8; the more you shrink ‘Serif’ the more spindly letterforms start to disappear, and when it’s really tiny, it’s essentially useless.

Fonts says a lot! So do I love them 🙂

Read more: https://design.google.com/articles/evolving-the-google-identity/

Inconvenience regretted – Saying this won’t improve your Customer Satisfaction!

Sensitivity to the consumer/customer’s time should be at the center if companies want to address their concerns and complaints

It is working as designed…There is nothing I can do for you…I am sorry but that’s our policy…Our rep will contact you…

Sounds familiar right..you bet! If you ever have been indulged in conversation with customer reps regarding the faulty product and / or services you must have had come across these lines…

So what are we talking here; we’re talking about a very sensitive issue involving ‘Customer Satisfaction’. And which not only applies to B2C but also to B2B services and / or products.

There have been very few organization who have done it pretty successfully; the likes of Apple, Xerox, Zappos – to name a few.

Why is it so difficult to manage a customer? Probably a million dollar question!

You need a strategy to handle customer – Well start by developing the ability to listen to the them.

By the way what Organizations get as a part of achieving Customer Loyalty?

To understand this let’s first see what exactly Customer Loyalty mean:

Customer loyalty is the feeling of attachment or affection for a company’s products, people or services.

The measure of loyalty is actually the share of purchases in the specific category. For example in the restaurant business, as John Martin Taco Bell president and CEO says, it is “share of stomach.” For a Social Networking Site it is Ad revenue, for automobile business it is the share of a garage….

But in order to achieve this loyalty; how far you should go?

Not too far…just solve their problem! That’s it!

What customer really wants (but rarely ever get) is simply a satisfactory solution to their problem.

Try and address the emotional side of the interaction, listen to the ‘Noise’ coming out from customer, learn from it, and focus always on problem solving and Not on speed with which it is solved.

Personally I feel we should train our Customer reps on not to exceed customer’s expectations, but to “Make it easy for customers’ which eventually means “Remove obstacles”!

Ask yourself as a customer; what exactly is the issue that you face while going through a customer rep; I can count these:

Need to contact company repeatedly or being transferred to get one issue resolved
Repeating the information
and having to contact different service channels; for example after you may have to call customer center after trying to resolve the issue on website

Ideally from my point of view as a customer, I would expect following:

Let’s say I am a broadband customer and my wi-fi is not working. Your customer rep figures out that and provide the resolution…fair enough..I try and implement the solution and realize that issue is not yet resolved..via because of a downstream issue which is related to my original problem for which I called at the first place.So what do I do, I will call again…and that is a frustration…why you can’t anticipate at the first time that I may end up in to some other issue too…! My call is not just about a particular issue it is about an issue with the service…which may have several links to it!

Overly focusing on managing ‘time’ of call, results in less satisfied customer…Don’t just resolve my current issue but also anticipate and move to next one!

As an organization we should not only train our customer reps in resolving the current issue but also train them in anticipating and providing with a manual which allows them to provide “Suggested solution”, “Upcoming issues and how to resolve them”, “What-if” guides…and so on.

I wish all my utility bill for the first time tells me how to make sense of their numbers…that would have had reduced at least one call and call time!
Now as a customer there have been instances when I have not trusted a particular information…and at times didn’t like the answer given to me…so what did I do…I called them again and this time a different rep was talking with me…
For example once I was ordering a particular brand of Air cooler…and called up the customer rep…their simple answer…Sir, we don’t have this item in stock! I was surprised and asked them when it will be available, response: We don’t know, we can’t tell…You can almost feel the negative vibes coming out from this transcript…I mean..instead of saying “we don’t have”, better say We’ll have stock availability in so and so weeks time.” How hard is it?
Go to a product website and for sure you’re going to see this:

Phew! You may have all this, but at the end if your customers have to pick phone…well then you have to think again!

Cisco has a very nice way to take care of customers coming on to it’s site:

Based on the expertise of the individuals visiting their site they route users to specific channel. As per a research in order to resolve an issue on an average it takes 2.4 emails compared to 1.7 calls

Another very easy way of reducing your call rates and making sure your customers are keeping their loyalty; look out for your search page. Look out for the jargon that are used, how the layout for search looks like, is it easy to search and so on.

Don’t have your customer hoping from one channel to other; try and address it via first channel itself.

With these simple steps you can actually make a dramatic improvement in Customer Loyalty.

What You do matter more than what You say: Replace ‘You’ by Brands!

This is turning out to be a great learning so far, I learnt “What is Content Strategy?“, “How should I understand my audience?“, and once I have understood my audience, “How shall I segment them“. This has been a great learning experience.

As I go more and more in detail, now is the time to know about the “Connection” between Marketing and Content Strategy, and we will try and go over quite a few interesting facts here:

Marketing is:

Understanding consumer and designing products and services to meet their needs and wants, and communicating this to consumer that you’ve done this.

Any content you produce is like a product which you should definitely market. In order to engage with people you want to reach, you must understand them. Content Strategy needs to benefit services and products that your organization creates. Your content should be meaningful and relevant to the products your organization makes. It should be able to brand your product or service. Both should be an absolute part of your content strategy.

Content needs to communicate about the Brand which your product or service defines…!!!

But What is a brand and how Experience is important!

Is Coke a brand or is Sony a brand?

A brand is not just the name or look of a product or service! Its your understanding of the product,its your best idea of the product or service, and how this idea or concept is different from alternative that you have!

Let’s spend some more time on this, and let’s talk about the experience which coke delivers!

Coke ad links coke with the experience of feeling happy when consumer feel happy they drink coke, and are taken to the Coke experience of happiness. By speaking to these experience Coke is able to engage consumers in the brand.

Today, more than ever, how a brand behaves is more important than what it says. Messaging is important, but what really matters is how a brand engages and interacts with the people who impact the business, from
its customers to the people who influence customers.

In order to build a strong experience brand, it’s important to understand what the drivers of experience are, and how they variously impact consumer perception and purchase.

Fundamental to build any brand is:

1. Product. What you do, sell, and how well you meet your customers’ needs. It’s how you name and define your products or services and price them.

2. Communication. How you consistently promote your brand through marketing and sales – presenting your promise. It is the marketing collateral, advertising, materials, graphic standards, etc. that communicate your brand attributes, create awareness, and develop a brand image.

3. Service. How well you deliver your brand promise. Customer interaction with your company before, during and after they purchase.

An important addition to the brand-building fundamentals:

4. Experience. Synchronizing the entire business in order to generate a unique and consistent experience with the brand. Creating emotional involvement between the brand and the customer.

How to make sure content strategy is relevant to the brand?

You should be able to articulate the concept clearly. The best tool to do this is to write a positioning. That specifies who the target statement is, and what is the core concept! And how it is different from competitor!

You use this positioning statement to see how your content is relevant to the same experience the brand speaks to. The positioning is central to the content strategy because this is what keep the content on strategy.

Inspiration: Making consumer believe that they can accomplish things in their own lives.

Many brands have been successful as they inspire their users. Famous example is Nike which challenges the consumers to take challenge and just do it!

The fact that you are able to do something is far more important than the fact how you did it?

Identity: Identity experience is seeing oneself as being a successful person! As a brand if you can provide useful advice and tips on how to use clothes to appear successful, this will in turn create an excellent identity experience. For this one contact point can be a sales person coming to you and suggesting you a tie which will go well with your suit!

Second example could be an example of say Tesco retail store in UK, where they do a utilitarian advice by suggesting a recipes.

In order to make sure that all the content fits in Content Strategy you need to generate the storyline which is for your brand!

You need to keep it generic enough so that any individual piece of content will tell its own story, but that component is rich enough to stick together to make sure that it caters to the brand and experiences it relate to.

We will get in more details on Experiences, in our next post…this is getting really interesting!

How do I segment my audience?

I never understand what segments are? How do you keep someone inside the segment, and someone outside of it?

The harder it is to measure something the better it is in understanding the audience.

In our previous post we talked about understanding audience by targeting them, and creating personas!

Organization talks about Geographical measurements (Where they live which block etc., or demographic (How old they are, how many children do they have etc). But these are weak measures of segmentation, since ultimately two 28 yrs old may look strikingly similar but will have absolutely different needs!

It’s time we start thinking about something like psychography; Who they are, what they need; segmenting based on those needs, values, and the motivation to consume information is important for organization. The more difficult it is to measure a segment the more successful it will be to segment a market.

Let’s take a cue from TV industry:

They use Day parts, they study that what people do in the morning to what people do in the night is something different, and they were different over the weekend…but this is one part, if you keep Demo and Geo at one end and Psycho graphic at the other end…you then need to understand what is happening in someone’s life in the morning, compared to what is happening in the afternoon…it is different.

For example; in the morning you may want to know about the Weather or say how to make best out of your day and in the noon, may be an update on the news, or say something which recharges you! At the end of the day you don’t need a repeat…hence a deep understanding comes from understanding your segment…

Experience a user has makes a lot of difference; how?

Experience work is very important to understand the audience. Because when you start to look at a specific experience, you tend to see how it creates an emotional reaction to the material…let’s say time out experience…when we look at people who are consuming some kind of media message because they are enjoying a release from their regular life, it is one of the reason why reality TV are so successful

There have been instances where women creates time out experience…especially when they are raising kids, and or working…especially in the evening when they can curl up a cup of coffee…and now let’s say an iPad and consume material, so what your organization is doing to provide some kind of time out experience?

It is not created by you throwing the information at them, it’s going to be a soft touch that really understands that moment in a woman’s day! What kind of information she is looking for, and make her life more interesting!

Create Stories!

Idea of story first and content flowing from it is a brilliant one. Narrative story telling is a huge hit, story illuminates thing for people…but at different levels. Some appreciate visual content in the story, some appreciate stories to be made available for them in chunks…some appreciate telling stories through words; that is where target audience come in picture, and that is where you have to understand the importance of target’s definition of story telling…so that your company can achieve a successful relationship!

In this post and in the previous one, we learnt about how we can define and understand our audience, be it story telling, creating personas, or targeting by knowing their behavior; one aspect is common in all these approaches; You have to understand your audience by being the ‘Audience’.

In our upcoming posts we will talk more about relationship between organization’s brand and its content! Till than happy reading!

Please help! I don’t understand my audience!

If you give people engaging content which improves their lives they will consider giving you their time.

Yes…right…but I never understand my audience, their behavior, and how can I communicate my message across to them!

This is in continuation of my previous post, where we touched upon the importance of content strategy. In this article we’ll ponder more thoughts on segmenting our audience and basing our content based on that!

In all practical ways organizations have to determine the few messages that are key to fostering their strategic message forward.

As a common rule of defining the content strategy; People will only learn about things which they are motivated to learn. People will accept what they need to know from an org that will deliver what they want to know.

Think about a newspaper or a magazine, you are more willing to read what is relevant to your need.

Know your Audience:

I want to target ‘Mass Audience’!

There is nothing called Mass Audiences…that something we have to accept…Organizations should aggregate a number of targeted audience which is only way to reach out to your audience, and be successful.

Facebook has a large mass audience, because it serves number of small set of audience which has variety of needs…a Senior graduate student will use it in a different than I or you would use it…ultimately FB has been able to aggregate these audiences in to a large mass audience and create a product…that is exactly what an Organization should do!

Key point is targeting the audience, defining segments…but again How?

Let’s understand this:

People’s emotions and cognitive limitations are real, they can only attend to certain number of topics deeply at one time, so people only pay attention to topic when they are motivated to do so…

The idea that self interest and social identification precedes motivation; Org have to understand the Social ID, and self interest need of the audience so that they can craft message on “where they are” and “who they are”, and “how they are receiving the message”!

We need to craft message as per audience need, attitude, and behavior in such a way that improves their life style. And you should be able to predict “what user needs before she even telling you!

Don’t ever dare to ask user what they need! They never know this! Did anyone knew they need an iPhone?

Create Personas:

While census data or a questionnaire may help provide you a more complete picture about a target audience segment, understanding how people naturally interact with content with no external influence is essential in identifying their needs and wants and how you can design content to maximize its impact with minimal time and intrusion.

Image courtesy: Moz.com

Personas are successful, since it helps Organization in understanding what their user type is? Its base? Persona is always based on research and not on intuition It’s about interviewing people, following them on their daytime, experience their life style, understand various stakeholders…

Aspirations are different for different cross culture boundaries but organizations have to spend time with the target audience, follow them, see what is their day like, what they do in their time understand what is valuable for them. This is how you can design something which is regardless of the culture market!

Let’s take an example of Personas:

A major Pharmaceutical company is trying to understand the aging population of the USA. With this they are modifying their shelving needs to re-craft and to serve Older American. They are mimicing Arthritis, what it is like to stand up for patient who have Arthritis. After a seeing the user base or personas so to say; they made the shelves lower to make sure it is less pain and easy shopping for users. With age comes the problem of vision; hence to improve this they have increased the font size of the signboards so that user can see those…and their goal is to appeal to that market.

For more on Personas please visit: Moz.com

In our next post we will talk about Segmentation, Creating Experience, and Stories. Till then happy reading!

Why no one is paying for my Freemium App?

Having an issue with lower conversion rate for your ‘Freemium Apps’? You’re not the only one! Creating a compelling user experience and meaningful feature is critical to the success of any mobile application! It will not make a difference if you play around with the price or promotion; if users don’t value the experience your apps provide.

As the history goes on to say:it was in March 2006 when Fred Wilson described a business model that involved giving fully featured software for Free. And the term freemium was coined by Jarid Lukin a former director of eCommerce.

As a practice it is a simple concept; where you need to build a great product and give away majority of it for free! With-in the application you will have some built-in hooks’ that would lead customer to purchase something – a digital good, better experience, a locked feature, or say a unique level!

Ever wonder why would a bank give you an app for ‘Free’? Or why is it seamlessly so easy for you to purchase a ‘Paid’ version of Dropbox? As an app developer how you can make your users convert from freemium to a premium version of your App without forcing them to do so!

There are few things as app developer you should keep in your mind…

What you are giving away for free has to have a fantastic UI design as well as some value.Customer care about what are they getting for free…and the value it provides for them. Just giving anything for free and in turn expecting them to pay for more feature will not work!

Let’s talk about Evernote; they have close to 100 million+ users, and only 3.5 % of users are actually paid users. The conversion rate is very small but if you think in the context of 100 million; it is in fact huge! So why is that Evernote is successful?

Realize this: Evernote > always had a search option. You could search for documents and it is beautifully designed; however, with the premium version to get to search within the document…now that is a real good need! The question that comes in the mind of a user who is using a freemium app,

“what if I can search with-in documents”

This is where seamless transition happens, Evernote is not selling you something new, it is just an expanded version…as a developer or product manager for the app you need to entice some one; and then capitalize on the desire! And that is where you can leverage freemium to generate revenue!

Apart from creating a great product which generates revenue, it is to build something that people come back…

Another example is of Dropbox; why would you convert? You always had free storage…at your disposal, but there is a need for more…and that is where you ask a question to ‘Virtually’ yourself and App; how can I get the more storage? And this is where the Premium helps you!

Measuring the Usage and not just Download!

You need to understand that just because your app is a free to all, and scores huge number of downloads; doesn’t always mean that it is being used! You need to have very very targeted effort on Average Weekly/ Monthly/ Yearly usage, and not jus the downloads. User should care enough to use, come back and see the value in your App.

As a product manger for these apps you should think, and think on What if terms, you should know what questions user could be asking themselves? What are the use cases for premium apps.

This is absolutely clear that in App business you are talking in currency, and one of them is “Currency of User’s time” : If your app can make the first impression, for the first time; and for freemium it is very important, that is the initial sell. And once this is done, you need to make it a part of their pattern, day and / or week. From there you should then use the hooks that allows the user to willingly pay you for usage…this way you create a natural balance to use!

And also you end up closing the gap between use and Pay!

Your users should not even feel like it is a conversion, for them it should just be extending what you’re doing
Introducing a new feature…I am searching now, I can search more [Evernote]…I am dropping more[Dropbox]…

Are not you seeing a great pull from users…it is so much pull from them…this is not just selling…you should find that sweet spot, where there is no friction…

Another important point is Price!

There is always a threshold of price like say for games they are almost always charged at USD 0.99 or say INR 99 etc..There is always a mental threshold for mobility…which says anything accept very low!

Pricing is a strategy…for Evernote it is USD 40 for a year, and this is a mental threshold, for one user USD 40, and for 3.5 million…whooo hooo! This is huge!

Why don’t people convert? You only have the answer for this!

Because your app doesn’t make things easier for them…once they wanna buy its a huge trend in favor of you! You have to make it very simple…have an option feedback in case something goes wrong if you are using a security code, let user know what does that mean…use less of abbreviations which your user staff may know, but your users may not! Don’t make it painful for them. Since you’ve got the value proposition, now you need to make experience of buying simple…for example don’t ask for Credit Card again and again!

How do you promote to let people know that there is a paid model?

This is immensely important, as you really don’t want to stick it in to their face…It is very critical for you to not to interrupt users in the middle of a task! Users really do’t convert when the real value is hidden behind the ‘Paywall’

Make your App and the experience associated with this app so beautiful that you create get big community, and in turn the community advertise for you! This is pretty obvious but at times the focus is so much on the conversion and getting business value out of the app, that you almost forgot that app needs to have a great user experience.

I would end it by saying, why is that a bank gives away the app for free..? Simple since its the app which is a front end for the services they have to offer, and in turn it only increases the business for them.

Some times let it be free, it can be a front end for your customers!

Content Strategy: Engaging Audience everywhere!

What is Content Strategy? How is it different from Content Marketing? How can Content Strategy help in engaging our audience? And how in the world of Enterprise Social Network (ESN), a well defined Content Strategy can help?

These are few questions which have always alarmed me with no answers! You tend to get lot of ‘Noise’ on Google, but again does that cater to my need, when I need, where ever I want?

I am learning about Content Strategy, and during this process its alignment with ESNs too. Before we go deep, let’s take a look at this small video:

The video is called Drag Him Away. It was created by Britain’s National Centre for Domestic Violence (NCDV). It not only raises awareness with credible content but gives people a personal experience that reinforces that they can intervene and do something to stop abuse.

The London billboards are one great example of Content Strategy. Let’s learn more about the concept!

In simplest of words ‘Content Strategy’ is

Effectively communicating the story, in a Credible. trustworthy, and transparent manner!

Why is it important to understand and master the concept of ‘Content Strategy’; simple: because the content that you’re sharing and / or using to communicate and share your goals and objective with your audience consumes their time!

Most of the minutes which you want your content to consume are already committed to working, eating, sleeping, and being with friends and family.

Let’s view this from an end user who will be consuming yours and ‘Like Yours’ information, for her:

There is ever-rising tidal wave of information, and it will continue to rise
No more time (Not even an addition of one more minute to 1440 minutes of a day!)
And it is getting more complicated by every passing second…

As a content administrator for your brand, or for your organization, you have to communicate in something that matter to them, and not the message that You want to communicate, even if the message is important…

Remember, if your audience is receiving more than what they want to know, means you are asking them to spend time on what you Like!

What I am learning along the way is:

“If the content is not smart it is not strategic”

We as content originator have to understand that just because we’ve put it does not mean it is really engaging…You need to remember the pressure on their time! We need to STOP sending out non-strategic messages which consumes time…lot of time! Respect Time!

Strategy refers to the direction and the goals that people often leaders have, and they are thinking about where the organization should be going!

Wait a sec, you said…you don’t have a strategy…ok…no worries…let’s decompose strategy: Do you have Goals, and priority label on these goals…well Yes! Every Organization has certain goals which are prioritized, ad hence becomes a strategy…

However, you need to understand the difference between Strategy, and Tactics!

Tactics are primarily basic things which need to be done, and last for a Year or less whereas Strategy: conveys a roadmap…it refers to the prioritized roadmap and lasts more than a 2-3 years!

While developing the ‘Content Strategy’, for you the First imperative should be to deliver value to empower customers, think about what they value, and how they behave; What matters to them and their work. This should become the base of your strategy.

How effectively you can create a content that enhances your communication, and address customer needs defines how successfully you’ll be able to communicate your Organization goals!

You should communicate in an engaging way. It should be articulated so that the ‘where‘, ‘when‘ and ‘how‘ audience will receive this message gets addressed. If your audience doesn’t receive your message: Where they need it the most, When they need it the most, and how they receive it; your message is bound to fail!

Make sure you know who your audience are! The more specific you can define and understand that narrow set of people…the more expressive and targeted your content will be to them!

Your content may reach and address various geographies and diversified culture but remember

How people decide to spend time with their content is not a function of culture.

All right then, what did we learn, let’s summarize, and keep learning…

Rest in coming days…Happy Learning!

Top Social and Digital trends for 2014

2014 Digital Trends

2013 has been an aggressive, fast paced, innovative and a year of Collaboration! 2014 seems to be taking a cue from it and moving on a rapid path of exciting Enterprise Social Media; Cloud, and mobility. Talking about the various trends which we may see in 2014; here is my list of few trends which we may see in coming year!

Content Marketing: 
2014 set to see a major revamp in the way marketing is done.

Brands need to act more as publishers; grabbing the attention of customers will become more and more tricky and good content for sure is going to be one way of doing so… This communication should educate consumer about the brand, and its strategy. Today consumer interacts online with brand, they read the content, they read articles, content that appeals to them, which educates brands on the type of content that is relevant and important to their prospects. These insights can provide valuable input for brands to device their strategy and communication!

The Data...and it's Big Data

We have data, and then we have huge data…and now we have BIG DATA! Lots of news around this, and this for sure will continue to exist for major part of 2014.It is estimated that the volume of data produced is expected to be ~44 times greater in 2020 than it was in 2009. Phew! That’s massive…. Let’s understand why this is important: First thing to realize is: From where this data is coming? This data is coming from? Data that we are talking about is from all corners, be it customer feedback, the way they interact with your product / services; what your competitors are doing, how are the y doing; and where you stand in all this… This is huge data, and with this come problems of doing a comprehensive analysis of customer preferences, transaction backgrounds, online interactions; analysis of competitor moves, and their strategy etc. Data Analytic, and various tools which are provided in the field, are there to stay and in fact will continue to improve! Data will be analyzed by marketers and use the insights from big data to measure and impact customer engagement, customer retention and loyalty, and marketing optimization/performance.

Images: We Love them...so we love Instagram!

We all love to communicate, and primarily the mode of communication has been words…but 2014 will be a change…2014 will witness communication happening around Images… It’s a fact that posts with images get more responses, likes, comments and shares. Users surely want to communicate by showing rather than telling. The 140 characters; will face a bigger challenge from images…and hence I feel images are going to rule; and rule in big sense!

Crowsourcing: The Social way

Crowdsourcing is an exercise or a practice, by which you can obtain a service, content, or an idea by reaching out to large group of contributors, rather than individuals or employers…

Threadless.com is one such example; crowdsourcing is less expansive and more focused. Let’s see how ‘Porsche’ utilized the crowdsourcing:

Porsche

I don’t know about you, but I for sure am not in a position to afford a Porsche anytime soon. The company also Understand this and think similar for about a significant percentage of their fans.

So here’s an idea, why don’t you let them help design the ultimate fan car? Well; they did come up with this brilliant idea of crowdsourcing this deal!

“The campaign started on Feb. 4 with Porsche asking “the best expert panel in the world: our fans” to choose an exterior color. The post resulted in nearly 16,000 likes and 1,200 comments, with Aquablue Metallic winning the most fan support.

Similarly there are other campaigns which ran around the crowdsourcing; which is sure to get a huge hit in 2014…

We will continue to explore further trends in our next post…

Everything Digital

Digital Transformation, Design Thinking, Human Centric Design, Mobile First

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