Archive for October, 2007
Keep checking until you get it ….
Posted on October 24th, 2007 by MichaelJohn Doerr at Summit
John Battelle’s Searchblog says:
The video is not up yet, but honestly, I found John’s message utterly compelling. A good review of it here.
Who’s Doing Your Thinking for You?
Posted on October 23rd, 2007 by MichaelFrom Super Crunchers by Ian Ayres …
Recommendations make life a lot easier. Want to know what movie to rent? The traditional way was to ask a friend or to see whether reviewers gave it a thumbs-up.
Nowadays people are looking for Internet guidance drawn from the behavior of the masses. Some of these “preference engines” are simple lists of what’s most popular. The New York Times lists the “most emailed articles.” iTunes lists the top downloaded songs. Del.icio.us lists the most popular Internet bookmarks. These simple filters often let surfers zero in on the greatest hits.
Some recommendation software goes a step further and tries to tell you what people like you enjoyed. Amazon.com tells you that people who bought The Da Vinci Code also bought Holy Blood, Holy Grail.
Netflix gives you recommendations that are contingent on the movies that you yourself have recommended in the past. This is truly “collaborative filtering,” because your ratings of movies help Netflix make better recommendations to others and their ratings help Netflix make better recommendations to you.
The Internet is a perfect vehicle for this service because it’s really cheap for an Internet retailer to keep track of customer behavior and to automatically aggregate, analyze, and display this information for subsequent customers.
Google’s Profits Surge, Beat Estimates
Posted on October 21st, 2007 by Michael
In its report after the bell Thursday, Google announced a 46% increase in quarterly earnings and 2,130 new employees.
The company earned $1.07 billion ($3.38/share) compared to $733.4 million ($2.36/share) last year. Excluding certain items, Google earned $3.91/share, beating analysts’ estimates of $3.78/share. Revenues jumped to $4.23 billion, 57% more than last year and 9% more than last quarter. Net revenue (minus payments to partner sites) came in at $3.01 billion, also surpassing analysts’ projections of $2.94 billion.
The top and bottom line numbers beat the Street’s lofty expectations, but it is yet to be seen if it will prove enough to support the stock’s positive momentum.
Word of Mouth Politics 2.0: Now Powered by the Internet
Posted on October 20th, 2007 by MichaelFrom the New Politics Institute:
Progressive political operatives can rightly claim that they know a lot about how to use “word of mouth” in campaigns. It has been a staple weapon in the arsenal to use against conservatives who often are much better funded and can buy more advertising. However, in recent years word of mouth marketing techniques have gone through an upgrade in the private sector due largely to innovative uses of the internet. Word of mouth is now a hot topic in corporate marketing circles and many leading companies are using new approaches to reach consumers.
Those in politics can benefit from these new word of mouth developments too. So the New Politics Institute asked Brad Fay, the chief operating officer of a research and consulting firm that specializes on word of mouth marketing, to report on some of the recent developments in the field. Brad also happens to be running as a progressive candidate in his local township in New Jersey and has been thinking about how some best practices in the private sector might migrate into politics.
World’s first blogcoach …
Posted on October 17th, 2007 by Michaelnewsellcoaching.com is a new kind of coaching service. It’s the world’s first blogcoach–coaching that runs completely by blog.
In a blogcoach, the trainees become the coaches.
Because of its superior aesthetics NewSell uses the WordPress personal publishing platform. Like NewSell, WordPress is also free.
The Art of the Word of Mouth Conversation
Posted on October 16th, 2007 by MichaelWhy is it that some people are listened to while others are ignored? Why do some ideas people talk about “tip” while others die off?
As part of our Influencers community project, we added a section called How To Spread Effective Word of Mouth as an Influencer.
We studied the best of from the fields of academic, psychology, word of mouth, marketing and anthropological life and pulled together our list of 30 tips.
After all, about 4 out 5 word of mouth occasions are face to face conversations. Some of it is very Influencers’ focused but thought it might be of some value to the blogosphere.
SOT Principal awarded Visiting Fellowship in Thinking
Posted on October 13th, 2007 by Michael
Dr Michael Hewitt-Gleeson was awarded the first Visiting Fellowhip in Thinking by the Biosciences Research Division at Latrobe University yesterday.
Professor German Spangenberg, Executive Director, presented the award at a meeting of 60 top scientists from around Victoria at the John Scott Meeting Mouse at Latrobe saying, “In the context of competition and knowledge-based economy, innovation has become more and more mandatoy. Dr Hewitt-Gleeson will be conducting School of Thinking programs at BRD to help raise the innovation intelligence of our new organisation”.
Michael conducted the first 3-hour program for the scientists yesterday on Darwinian thinking and new brain software.
GE X10 - ‘Multiply GE by Ten!”
Posted on October 9th, 2007 by MichaelCASE STUDY: Using ‘X10 thinking’ across the enterprise can be very powerful. For example, in September, 1984, I suggested to General Electric in New York that they take “the road to the BVS”.
What’s a BVS? A BVS is a quantum leap, an order of magnitude (see Universal Brain Software: CVSTOBVS).
It’s the X10 strategy, the deliberate use of the power of TEN. I suggested to Jack Welch and Bob Wright that they ‘multiply the company by TEN’ and gave them a strategy for doing it.
So, GE formally adopted as their theme “the road to the BVS” and Jack Welch, CEO of GE, enthusiastically embraced my CVSTOBVS strategy. At that time, in 1984, GE was a $USD30 billion manufacturer. Jack announced, “To maintain a leadership position we need nothing less than a reorientation of our culture away from incrementalism. We need to shun incremental thinking and go for the quantum leap. We’ve gotta grab, we’ve gotta grope, we’ve gotta reach for the BVS!”
Jack reached his BVS and left his shareholders a company with a market capitalisation of over $USD300 billion and, as a result, GE’s shareholder value had grown by a power of TEN.
How to get customers to do your selling …
Posted on October 2nd, 2007 by MichaelArticle by Douglas Gantenbein
Word-of-mouth marketing can be an affordable, powerful tool for a midsize business. Done correctly, it can give your company’s marketing efforts more leverage, credibility, and reach than many traditional approaches.
But finding the customers you need to spread the word is the challenge–and it takes thoughtful analysis of what motivates someone to talk about your product or service.
In Summary:
| • | Word of mouth generates sales in a cost-effective way. |
| • | People don’t spread the word for pay or favors — if they love your product, they’ll do it for free. |
| • | Invite people to discuss your product or service through company blogs or other communication methods. |
