Tag Archive - Australian Digital

Winning Back Time

December 15, 2011 in Australian Digital, Digital, Management with 0 Comments

This was originally posted on 6 December 2011.  After a bizarre error where an old post was emailed to subscribers this week, this post disappeared from Kelly’s Digital Days.  Perhaps I was not meant to share this experience, or perhaps all the bits and bytes responsible for publishing had a little too much fun at their holiday party and got confused.

could be my odesk employee

My lesson of the week is very simple:  Management is management, whether virtual or in real life.

Like everyone at this time of year, I feel the challenges of Continue Reading…

Starting Oola.com.au

December 1, 2011 in Australian Digital, Digital with 1 Comment

It’s been one month since I launched Oola on 31 October.  And what a month it’s been.  In fact, it’s been quite a quarter since deciding in August to do this.  Yesterday, as I closed my first month’s trading, I had happily exceeded my first month’s target.  It isn’t guaranteed to happen that way each month, and my first goal was a modest one, but I will keep working on it until we hit more than we miss.

Oola is Australia’s newest online toy boutique.  We are becoming the best place to go for enduring toys that engage little minds and encourage hours of fun play, rather than a quick addition to the discard pile.  We are committed to great customer service and attention to detail with the ultimate goal of making life easy for mum and dad.  I am confident that we can build our business on these hallmarks and stay focussed on being the best at what we do.

Continue Reading…

How Important is Facebook in Today’s Marketing Mix?

October 10, 2011 in Australian Digital, Digital, Media with 1 Comment

Ever experienced those times where you feel like you don’t know how to really make the most of a channel, but everything you read from the “experts” just tells you what you already know?

I’m having that experience right now, and it is driving me crazy. The problem is Facebook. And the real problem is that for me as a user, most brand pages just don’t resonate. I like them because I actually want to hear from the brand (and in some cases it’s competitive research), and then I unlike them because I’m tired of having my personal newsfeed that I use for entertainment and keeping up with my “in real life” friends cluttered with marketing messages and low quality content begging to be ‘liked’.

I’ve been thinking about some of the philosophy behind Facebook and transparency outlined in David Kirkpatrick’s The Facebook Effect to help me find the solution to using this channel better. Fundamentally, the race for fans, likes, and the lot, is not the actual answer. And there are many companies measuring all sorts of things – comments to fans, likes to fans, and other engagement ratios. All this is good and well, but I still think we’re all missing something.

The skeptic within me thinks that this can’t work for brands because it is a tool by Facebook to benefit Facebook. But there are some (a few) who swear by the channel.  Today, 247wallst.com reported on some of the most successful.  Most people I know admit that building fans doesn’t translate as efficiently into sales as other channels.

This was reinforced for me a couple of weeks ago at the Online Retailer Conference in Sydney. Many people were talking about f-commerce, and one exhibitor would even take a fairly high payment for setting up a page for their customers. But the nail in the coffin came when Jon Kamaluddin from Asos was asked how important Facebook was as a channel and his response was simply “I wouldn’t rush to do it”.

However, Facebook is an important part of many of our lives, like it or not. So there must be a way to take advantage of this commercially in an unobtrusive way. After all, Advertising in the digital world continues to evolve becoming ever more integrated with a user experience so that soon we’re learning about products and services we want when we want them. I know I still want to know about what new products are out there in a range of categories. I just find it really difficult to get good information about where to find them. Surely there must be a good way to use Facebook for this. Or isn’t there?

If you have a good example of Facebook being used to promote a brand, please share it in the comments.

 

Related Posts: Finally, I Notice A Banner Ad

 

A Personal Lesson in Online Privacy

May 21, 2011 in Australian Digital, Digital, Media with 0 Comments

Are we ever too old to learn from our parents?

When I started work at AOL more than a decade ago, I often grinned at the common product question which was asked – would your parents be able to use this?  In nearly all cases, mine would, but then my parents have proven to be early adopters of technology even before the internet (except for one small blip when the compact disc was invented which will live on in family lore for a long, long time).  Because of this, I listened attentively when on a recent visit both of my parents asked me a number of probing questions about what they could and could not trust online, including using their email address to subscribe to this blog.

Imagine, my own parents nervous about what kind of mailing list they would end up on as a result of subscribing to their daughter’s blog.  This was startling and mildly alarming to me as someone who relies for my livelihood on people exchanging their information (not just email, but often credit card details to make a purchase) for a product or service that I provide.

So today in my news round up over my morning coffee, I’ve come across this article in the LA Times:

Facebook executive warns senators that restrictive privacy rules could squelch benefits of social Web | Technology | Los Angeles Times.

It is just one of many covering the privacy legislation introduced by Sen. Kerry.  My normal response would be the same as Facebook’s CTO – let the innovators in the industry get on with figuring out a commercial solution.  In effect, “trust us, we won’t abuse our customers“.  Well, I still believe that most of us won’t abuse our customers.  And in fact, I will always be a consumer advocate in any digital business I am involved with.  However, I am not sure that we as an industry have earned the trust of the people, and therefore their government.  This statement is true not just for the US, but also for European and Australia markets where governments are equally concerned with privacy and trying to determine how to legislate protection.

I definitely do not want to push for this legislation because the likelihood of governments to really understand the issue and the ramifications of their laws is low.  Digital privacy is a complex area with some stellar experts working in the space around the world.  My wish is that all businesses could act responsibly and respectfully when using and sharing consumer data.  More laws, more lawsuits, and more compliance is sure to dampen innovation, especially for individual entrepreneurs and small businesses.

On the other hand, something must change so that my parents once again feel comfortable surrendering their email address to me via my blog.  How can we help legislators understand all sides of this issue?