Clever. I like that and may steal it.

So I had a think as to where I take my mental breaks and get inspiration…besides blogs and RSS feeds. Looking back on my behavior over the last couple of months – I get a lot of inspiration from reading Smart Money and Fortune Small Business. I tend to read those magazines cover to cover. Why? Because from them you can read several different packs of tea leaves from several different angles. For example in this month’s Smart Money there is an article about the housing marketing – What’s Your House Really Worth?. Now, I haven’t read the entire article yet but the part of the article that got me thinking was how new home purchasers are using mortgage data pulled from multiple internet sites to make their offers – and getting great deals. Then they had a side bar reviewing the different sites.

What peaked my interest is how the internet is exposing data and the changed behaviors we have because of it. That there is enough data, accessible in a way for the average user to make a smarter decision about anything. I wonder if I need to make a t-shirt that says, “Did you check your internet before making that decision?”

I kid about that…but really, how many smarter decisions could we make if we would look at internet first?. I mean, I love my android barscan app to price check wine to compare prices and read reviews (although, hasn’t stopped me from buying it at that location yet…but I’m sure it will soon)

I like reading Smart Money and Fortune Small Business because it tips me off to the innovative ways people are solving problems around the business they create or the financial problems they are solving. You can learn a lot from what others are being successful at, and re-purpose that to ideation in your own life. That is one of the places I get inspiration. Thinking about it, I should probably ad the Economist to that list.

And no, this post was not solicited by either magazine

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This site is slick, but could they add some tag clouds, topic trends, etc. of what the Congress was saying? I really digging sites that helps us share data and create new ways to look at data. And I think people in general are as well. But one thing I haven’t sorted out is why do people like it? Do we like becoming conscious of our numbers or more a ‘gold star – Look at how well I did’ effect (an interesting conceptual consumption theory). Because we’re seeing more and more aggregated data sites like Mint.com getting us hooked on personal metrics.

Speaking of watching numbers and thinking you’re cool… guess who is #1 on dodgeball in the twin cities this weekend so far?

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I love watching/learning about Augmented Reality projects for two reasons. 1) It’s really interesting to have a technology force the discussion/idea to what is a ‘platform’ and how “digital” is moving off the computer screen 2) It’s a technology idea that is growing up right in front of our eyes. The improvements and cleverness are rapidly evolving. Here is one of the cooler ones I’ve seen in lately, spotted on Games Alfresco.

Want to watch those spots from days gone by? Duke University has put a collection online. See what the Madmen were making

No, can’t drive your car with your iPhone, but close

Speaking of mobile phones, Americans no longer use them predominately to talk…52 percent of Americans use mobile for non-voice activities: Study. Which is pretty crazy to think about. I think we’ve passed the tipping point for mobile devices, and we should really start to think of mobile as another communication platform. Much like we think of the internet as a platform, we should think about how to weave mobile into our communication efforts as another main 360 connection point (and not just apps, but how people connect to data/communication on the go).

The Forrester Groundswell Awards are coming in, and it looks like some really interesting stuff. Nominated is the BLT (Bacon Lovers Talk) site.

I think this article is worth a read for a couple of reasons… it points to an interesting side of the evolution of media. Because of the financial impact of both newspapers folding and newspapers (along with other publishers) not being able to send reporters to cover the races Nascar realized that they needed find a new way to get coverage to help keep fans informed/enthusiastic about the sport. They opened it to find top sites that covered Nascar and give them passes to races.

This has impact on several areas of our business.

Media – we know that traditional publishers are dying. This could really impact the fragmentation of “eyeballs”.
PR – Traditional reporters are losing both their “voice” and “ access”.
Digital – There is more content to aggregate, more opportunities to help fans find and access the content.

Brands – Could “sponsoring” reporters, i.e. give them money to help them just cover events, be way to develop relationships with a “publisher” and their readers.

What are your thoughts?

Thinking about how it is difficult to understand user intent on the web. Are they just searching for a price for a car because they are about to buy or because they are looking for a friend? I know, broad. But what I’m wondering is if there is a way to pre-shape intent before they arrive at your persuasion content/architecture.

I know we are getting better at filtering intent. I work on Subaru and if someone is on an endmenic site research cars and we have a creative message that adds value to their search and they click on it to get content directly from Subaru we have a better idea what content to get them because of the message they clicked on to get there…so there experience is better because it matches their intent.

And maybe that’s the answer…but it feels like there is something I’m not thinking about. It’s been a long day.

This just might be me rambling, going to explore this idea some more.

Social Media – ROI, Value, Etc – It’s some sort of glue

I’ve been stepping back and looking at social media in a bigger picture context, and I think that is where you can prove value and ROI. As a stand alone project, social media’s ROI/Value can be difficult to prove to a CMO. “So, let me get this straight, by blogging you will increase my sales?” Now this in the thick of social media do have charts and graphs that can prove this… but it takes some digestion to get it (and having CMO’s actually participate to really get it). But if social media is part of a larger web presence for a brand/product – the value of why do it makes a lot of sense.

Organic Search/Search + Social Media
Reach + Social Media
Impressions + Social Media

In any of those contexts it gets much easier to explain the value/ROI of why you need social media involved in your web presence strategy.

This thing called the Web – No mom, that’s not just “another link”

Explaining what I do for work to anyone can at times be challenging. Explaining it to my mother is an art. One I have not completely mastered. But I will say, if you need to test any of your web ideas out…always run them past my mother. She will break your experience design without even trying. She’s brilliant like that and doesn’t even know it. Same with my father. May be the best usability testing team on the planet. But I digress ( I love saying that).

When I was trying to explain what I do the last time something really stuck with me. That the web is all activity or search, and that Web 2.0 is really about the activities we can do with the web. I know, I know…this is obvious to most of us. But not to my mother. And when you have to slow it down and explain it…that when we go to the web we are looking to “do something”, it makes a lot of sense that your web presence should be about an activity design, what do you what consumers to do where.

Leading by example – or, get out of the way

I’ve be dormant on the web presence/social media front for awhile. And I think the echo chamber has hit a point…put up or shut up. I sat down and looked at the projects I’ve done over the last 2 years. Some pretty cool stuff that I’m guessing nobody knows about. And some pretty cool things that never got done. It’s time to fail forward, fast.

Just a couple of things, rolling around in my head…

But saw this today, Bookmarkable Banners with Reminders over at Ad Lab blog…and could not stopping thinking, yes, this is what I want…this is what will help me.

The example above is an ad for what looks like a music event, but you can see how this format can work with any date-based information: promotions, coupons with expiration date, sales and so on. To quote from an email from Spongecell, “We’re adding our Add to Life technology to a standard IAB advertisement to make it easy for a consumer to easily move relevant content from an advertisement into the tools they use every day – Calendar, Social Network, Mobile device or home page – think of it as a bookmark for an online campaign.”

Putting in context some of my online behavior, you’ll understand why I like this idea and wish we would see more of it. Online content…no matter what it is, I’ll “pull” it – i.e. I’ll grab something I like, I’ll save it for later.. Most of the time I’m just scanning content online (which I think is becoming the norm for most of us). What I mean by scanning and pulling:

- I’ll click a link to open in a new tab in Firefox…read it when I get to it.
- I’ll mark a scanned RSS item in Google Reader for later (and tag it), just noting it in my brain.
- I’ll tumble something if I think it’s clever, to have to look at later.

I rarely click and read something right on that click. Content for me is always pulled and pushed around when I want to deal with it. I think more and more online behavior is moving towards that. So when I saw the ad on AD Lab blog that basically setups up a reminder/save this for later/pull type of ad…I was like – YES! This is what I want. If your add gets my attention, let me pull it somewhere for me to save it, grab it when I need it again. Let me see the new cool shirt or whatever, and even though I might not be in market to buy right then, let me save it for when I am. I think most ads should offer this feature. Of course this would alter search…because would I search my ’saved ads’ for a t-shirt first or online in general. Ahh…the can of worms.

ps – the coffeeshop is playing Iggy Pop right now. I have a secret love Iggy Pop music.

Update: Thoughts for myself…After thinking about this more, I think I have several other links that could prove this would be good for online consumer in general. I’ll try to write up more soon.

(yes, this is a re-post…lost the original)