One thing that annoys the heck out of me about the end of every year is that starting in December, the entire blogosphere becomes Miss Cleo and obnoxiously tries to predict what will happen in the next year in social media/tech trends, fake Jamaican accent and all. (OK, maybe I just read them in a fake Jamaican accent to make them more entertaining and bearable. Try it–you’ll see.)

Yet, seldom do most of those fake-Jamaican-accented, blogging tech prophets actually compare how well their last year’s predictions stacked up to what really happened.

I’ve never been a fan of this yearly tradition of Miss Cleoing*; all it ever does is just stir up more unnecessary noise in the echo chamber. Any idiot can pull predictions out of their butt about what the next year will bring, and few ever do any real research to make educated guesses.

As fate would have it, last year I was charged with doing just that — not pull predictions out of my butt and write a blog post, but researching past and current trends, past and current predictions, what might be under the radar, yet up-and-coming, etc. and, along with the assistance of a colleague, write a big ol’, in-depth paper of educated guesses

predictions for our own “11 Trends to Watch in 2011″ (original, I know).

Unfortunately, because of some situations beyond our control that we could not have predicted, our paper was never published.

However, I’m a pack rat when it comes to research (both digital and hard copy), and upon cleaning my desk a week or so ago, I came across my printed-out research for this shelved project, an inch-thick stack bound together by a binder clip which must have been magical because it seemed to defy the laws of physics. (I should have taken a picture.)  Practically every end-of-the-year Miss Cleo post and whitepaper I could find in the blogosphere, printed out, hand-highlighted, notes written in the margins — it was enough for me to basically say  to myself, “Holy crap, I did this all in vain.” 

Or maybe I didn’t.

I’d like to not think that all of my research and efforts were futile. After all, I did subject myself to combing through everybody’s Miss Cleoing, which not only fueled my disdain for end-of-the-year predictions posts, but was enough to unconsciously get me reading everything in a fake Jamaican accent for the next three months. (It’s funny when you do it in your head but when you accidentally do it out loud … well, I digress.)

Anyway.

Even though it was never published, I wanted to see how I did in my educated guesses

predictions compared to what actually happened. So I dug up the outline from my files and took a look. I didn’t do too bad. I was WAY off on a few things, but you know what? Very few end-of-the-year blogosphere Miss Cleos revisit their last year’s predictions and compare them to reality (or, at least not publicly). But I will.

So here it is. The outline for the unpublished paper, my own attempt at Miss Cleoing last year and predicting what 2011 would hold. I haven’t modified it except to add the preface at the top, and clean up a couple typos.

About the beginning…

From everything I read of everybody else’s, I noticed that there was a LOT of what seems to be a common problem in this field — stating the obvious. In December 2010, many people were “predicting” what was already happening, things that were already a given. Saying that people will use a lot more apps for their every day needs (whether on tablets, phones, in browsers, etc.) is hardly prophecy. It was already happening. Saying “search will get more social” had been happening, too. Growing concern for privacy? That too.

Things that are obviously becoming  (if not already) omnipresent do not count as “trends” to “predict.” That’s called practicing your superpowers as Captain Obvious.

So I acknowledged these things and moved on. After the jump, I’m going to attempt to examine each of these and whether or not they came true. As I said, I know I was way off on a few of these. Some of them I was right, but others, I’m honestly not sure and maybe you can help me out to let me know if it happened or not.

[Note: This ended up being a much longer post than I originally anticipated, but it reads quickly, I promise.]

Oh hai! You’re still reading! Woo! Now, let’s get down to it…

Theme 1: Stop the Insanity!

• Trend 1) People suffer from internet information overload; strive to pare down and simplify their social stream.

I would have to say CORRECT.I don’t know about you, but I’ve noticed a lot of my friends go on mass unfriending exoduses on Facebook, mass unfollowing on Twitter, etc. (I haven’t yet but it’s on my To Do list.)

• Trend 2)  “Everything old is New Again” — smart brands understand Trend 1; need to stand out of the clutter so revert back to tangible content marketing (Sbux pamphlet), direct mail

I don’t know to what extent “smart brands” have noticed they need to bring content marketing back offline in the past year, but I have noticed it. A pamphlet about Coffee 101 from Starbucks I picked up while waiting for my drink. Leinenkugel inserts a newspaper-like publication in their 12-packs.  David Meerman Scott recently wrote about content marketing historically being offline and reminded his readers after being inspired by a placemat from a hotel in Finland.

• Trend 3) Gadgets and other devices continue to get simpler in design, ease of use (see iPod, FlipCam, Jitterbug phone, Amazon interface, etc.)
• “Less is More”

OK, so the FlipCam died, and I don’t know how many grandparents use the Jitterbug phone, but the point was more simplicity in design and function of gadgets. I’d say this could have been filed under Captain Obvious in the beginning, but really, who’d have thought this simplicity and ease of use would stretch so far as a learning thermostatbeing one of the year’s hottest items?

Theme 2: Social/Mobile Melding

• Trend 4) Peace Treaty in the “Location Wars”
• Facebook doesn’t “win” as many project because of privacy, slow adoption, apathy
• Other LBS grow but stay niche
• Gowalla/Whrrl will rise in numbers dramatically, be more mainstream
• FourSquare plateaus and becomes stagnant because of difficulties in partnerships, slow to introduce new features, loses its “cool factor”

I don’t know if I would say there was a “Peace Treaty,” but it was certainly a busy year for location-based services.  Facebook killed off their “Places”  mobile “FourSquare competitor” check-in feature. Groupon bought Whrrl and shut them down. FourSquare raised an insane amount of money and it looks like they’re doing even more partnering. Facebook bought Gowalla.  So I was pretty off on this one.  But whether or not location will ever become “mainstream” … I doubt it.

• Trend 5) SHOPPING because a seamless geo-social-mobile group (or individual) experience (I drew a diagram for this)

Yesterday I bought a Groupon from my phone for a sandwich at a nearby restaurant and within ten minutes walked to said restaurant and got my sandwich. ‘Nuff said.

BLIPS ON THE RADAR:

• Trend 6) Augmented Reality rises, remains niche, but WordLens opens door for tipping point in future

Yep. Augmented reality got a bit more attention but it’s hardly mainstream yet. It wasn’t until later in the year that household brands like Starbucks and Volkswagen Canada (definitely check out that link) started integrating AR into their marketing efforts, but if big brands like them continue to do so, expect AR to be much bigger in 2012. 

• Trend 7) NFC gets more attention, not as big a blip on radar as AR, there are infrastructure reasons for why this will take a lot longer to catch on than people think

Yep. Near field communication is the technology behind the Google Wallet idea. Theoretically, you can pay for something with your phone by tapping or holding your phone close to a “reader.” (NFC can obviously be used for more than payments but I’m using this as example.)

The problem is, not all phones/devices have the NFC chip. And not all merchants have the technology (yet) to process such payments. The biggest hurdles are time and logistics. NFC payments will eventually become commonplace, but just like it took a long time for merchants to be able to process credit card payments, it will take a while for this technology to be widespread and fully integrated. People usually get a new phone every couple years, so outfitting phones won’t be the problem, it will be on the receiving/processing end. It’s going to be at least 2015 before this NFC payments are as common as Google wants it to be now.

• Trend 8) Social Scoring (Klout, PeerIndex, etc.) gets a lot of attention, but lack of accuracy, etc. leads to much debate, this one’s a big miss

If there was anything we (read: I) got sick of hearing/reading about other than the word “occupy” in 2011, it was The Great Klout Debate. Just google “social media influence score”and you’ll see what I mean.

Theme 3: It’s DATA’s Time to Shine! (“DATA is a ROCKSTAR”)

• Trend 9) Visualized Data will be HOT

Personally, I’m a total geek about data visualization. I seek out stuff from FlowingData and JESS3 because it fascinates the crap out of me. That said, because I seek this kind of thing out, I don’t know how popular it was to everybody else. (Help a sista out here?) If I had to guess, I’d say infographics were much more popular in 2011 (there is a difference), but really bad, misleading infographics.

• Trend 10) Email will make a comeback (esp. since the rise of Groupon & clones)

Email never really went anywhere to begin with. I was implying email marketing, thanks to Groupon and its clones, but I don’t know this to be true or not. I do know that every day I get an email from Groupon, LivingSocial, CBS Daily Deals, and a couple others, but I don’t have any stats about the rest of the world and their reception to email marketing, and daily deals in particular. Anybody?

• Trend 11) Cloud consumer data becomes an invaluable resource as brands/corps realize the value in target marking w/the info they already have

I was a year ahead on this one. Seems everyone under the sun is now predicting 2012 to be “the year of Big Data.”

Bonus Round/Conclusion

• Tablet Frenzy – iPad will remain dominant

I’d say this one is true.

• Mobile Handsets – BB is safe in home base in corporate environments (iPhone won’t take over) because BB is much more secure; Android wins in VOLUME of handsets, but iPhone/Apple still dominate

Boy, was I wrong about Blackberry!!  As for the other, as of December 30, 2011, Android has the volume, but iPhone/Apple do still dominate.

• Apple incorporates each of these trends into its brand in some way, shape or form, with design/simplicity, streamlined ecosystem/platform for content, other reasons

I think that the iPhone 4S is a pretty good indicator here.

What do you think? 

If you’ve made it this far in reading this gargantuan post, I’m impressed! Thanks for sticking around.

Overall, I think I did pretty darn well, save for a few things. Of course, many things happened in 2011 that nobody on the “outside” of those projects could have predicted, such as Google+ and the Facebook Timeline. And of course, there will always be the unexpected … in the field of tech communication and the world at large. Which is why I’m not a fan of year-end Miss Cleoing, but I am a fan of research, educated guesses, and postmortem analysis.

Now it’s your turn.

Did you make year-end predictions last year? How did they fare in retrospect?

If you were a year-end Miss Cleo blogger last year, I would love to see you do a similar post comparing how your predictions last year stacked up to what actually happened in 2011. I think it would be both interesting and a good exercise, not to mention a great habit to get into. If you do, please track back to this post so I know where to go look, or drop me a link in the comments.

Thanks, and Happy New Year! Here’s to a great 2012!

 *I just coined that term. I encourage you to use “Miss Cleoing” liberally and incorporate it into our modern lexicon. Attribution appreciated but not necessary.

No related posts.

In my last blog post, I ruminated (for lack of better term) about what happens when we rely too much on our social media/technology and questioned why we don’t talk about the bad things that happen when intended messages aren’t received.

Well, there’s another edge to this sword, which I found out recently in a rather painful way, and that is when our technology delivers us messages that we otherwise would not have received.

Without divulging any identifying information or details, I’m going to attempt to explain the story. (Names and other details will be changed for privacy reasons.)

About six months ago I was doing some work in my home office one night and catching up on one of my favorite music podcasts. One episode had just finished and the next one began with the podcast host’s usual opening words after the intro music. Preoccupied with my work, it was only background noise but I heard his words “This episode is dedicated to Kevin Samuelson*, host of the _____ music podcast, who died unexpectedly in his sleep in early August. We’ll miss you, Kevin.”

Cue the screeching needle-on-vinyl noise.

Did he just say Kevin Samuelson? I had to play it again. Knowing that his name is not uncommon, I had to look up the podcast this late Kevin Samuelson hosted to see if it was the same guy I used to know. I held my breath, hoping it wasn’t him, but knew he loved music, was very tech-y, and there was a very good chance that this could be him.

It was.

My heart sank and I was as equally shocked to learn of his sudden passing as I was by the method of how I found out.

Kevin and I used to be very close. I won’t get into details, but we were very close, and then I broke it off and I hadn’t spoken to him in over six years. I thought it was better that way. I didn’t speak to any of his friends nor did he mine, and though we completely broke off all ties I knew it was the best decision in the long run.

Oddly enough, we met via this weird thing called the internet back before the term “social media” was coined. (You know, back when meeting somebody on the other side of the computer meant surely you were going to get molested or murdered). We were both on a music mailing list in ’97ish, which became a community, then a year or so later met in person, yada yada yada… we were very close, and let’s just say that had I not made certain decisions, I could be a widow right now.

Since we did cut off all contact with each other, I was wondering if any of our mutual friends from back-in-the-day even knew. The day I found out about his passing happened to be one of their birthdays, and I was going to call her and wish her a happy birthday, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it because there was no way I could say “Happy Birthday” and “by the way, did you know Kevin died?” in the same phone conversation.

I knew she’d understand.

Over time I’ve had conversations online with a few of our mutual friends  — friends that we met before “meetups” and “tweetups” existed, when our gatherings of online friends in real life were simply called “gatherings.” (Imagine that.) None of them knew of his passing until I told them. I felt awful, and still do, that I had to be the bearer of such bad news, and also that it was/is not my place to contact his family and/or friends to express my grievances.

It’s been six months from when I found out, and I’m still having a hard time with the fact that he passed away (and so suddenly), and with how I learned of it.

It got me thinking. A lot.

In this ever-connected world we live in, it seems hard to get away from people we thought we’d never hear from. We’ve all gotten friend requests on Facebook from people we knew in high school and even elementary school. With our location-based social networks like FourSquare and Gowalla (among other GPS-tagged technologies that many are unaware of), it makes us all rather easily findable.

When Kevin and I parted ways it was a mutual understanding that we’d never contact each other again, and we’d keep to our own friends, families, worlds. I honestly never expected to hear from him again.

Little did I know that somewhere between now and our parting back then, Kevin happened to befriend a guy in another state through a different shared interest, who also happened to have a music podcast. It’s a podcast that Kevin would never have listened to on his own, but I happened to have been a fan of since it began in 2006… a couple years after we last spoke.

And because “the internet has made the world shrink” (as I like to say), I learned of Kevin’s passing through that podcast. If this were ten years ago, or maybe even five years ago, I don’t think I ever would have found out.

Try as we might, we can’t escape our ever-connected world. It’s not the just messages we don’t receive through our technology that can cause hurt, but also the ones that we do. In this case, it was “accidentally” receiving a message that was painful.

It makes me wonder if we really are better off having all this access to information – on a macro, “world” scale or a micro, “interpersonal” one.

I know I can’t possibly be the only one who has had a bad/awkward/hurtful experience by our technology delivering a message that was likely never intended for us. Has anyone else? I’d love to hear your experiences if you’d like to share, and would love to hear your thoughts on this and similar experiences.

*not his real name

Pic 1 via Albion Europe ApS , pic 2 from 28 misguided souls.

Possibly Related posts:

1. The 800 lb gorilla of social media dependence: When it fails us.

Last week I found myself in a very engaging discussion over at Shonali Burke’s blog on the challenges of authenticity on the social web. The post was a guest post by Erica Holt, who posed the question of whether it’s possible to truly be yourself online.

The discussion in the comments got into dissecting what exactly it means to be “authentic” or “transparent” on the web, and why some people find it much easier to be their true selves online than others. (If you’d like to chime in, I highly recommend going over to Shonali’s and reading both Erica’s post and our discussion in the comments.)

Erica brings up many points in her post, but there was one line in particular that resonated with me:

“. . . when miscommunication occurs, this can be dangerous.”

This is something I’ve been thinking about a lot in the past year or so.

Again and again, we celebrate all the good that comes out of this new media we call “social” — the connections we’ve made, the business we’ve acquired, the friendships we would have otherwise not found, or the friendships we’ve rekindled. We have frequent “tweetups,” applaud one another for the accomplishments and connections we’ve made, and even hold myriad conferences in the name of these tools and technologies that we hold so dear to our hearts. Our love for our real-time communication and rapidly-advancing technology is evident in everything we do, but seldom do we talk about how dangerous our dependency can be.

Social media can indeed create many ties that bind; but how often do we talk about how our dependency can break those ties, and sometimes open up old wounds?

I think it happens a lot more than we’d like to admit.

Miscommunication has always happened by relying on medium. We’ve all heard stories of the letter that got lost in the mail from a woman’s fallen soldier husband, only to be finally delivered decades later, tying up loose ends. If only she’d have gotten that letter sooner, when it was supposed to be delivered …

Of course, you know where I’m going with this. Many of us have had instances of misunderstanding because of an important email accidentally getting caught by the spam filter, or worse yet, never being delivered. Or perhaps being delivered way too late. (I recently received an email dated 2005 regarding my student loan consolidation!)

But it goes a step further, and this is what confuddles me: WHY do we not openly talk about those times when beloved tech fails us? Those times when text messages or emails get lost in space, which sometimes cause arguments, or at the very least, confusion? Are we so forgiving of Facebook always having glitches, that the fight that breaks out because of messages not received or returned is somehow just magically OK? Are we so forgiving of Twitter that DMs containing important information that are never received are somehow to be instantly dismissed?

Not long ago, I spent almost a week wondering why one of my best friends blocked me from seeing everything on her Facebook account. I couldn’t see her wall, her pictures, nothing. I was worried she was mad at me about something, and I couldn’t for the life of me figure out what I did wrong, other than forget I was signed onto Facebook chat and didn’t respond to her quick “Hi, how are you?” IM that morning. I thought that was hardly a reason to be so mad at me that she’d block me. I wrote her a note on Facebook and didn’t hear back from her. She didn’t reply to my text messages, either. Finally I asked her husband what was up with her, and asked if I did anything wrong. Turns out, it wasn’t me at all — her account got hacked and she was having issues with her phone. All that worrying for nothing!

That’s a pretty mild incident, but the potential for much more severe instances is prominent. Our addiction to our technology can unite us, but our dependence can (and sometimes does) severely divide. What price do we put on that?

Is our dependence on our tech a prescription for inevitable social disaster?

In the fine print on most prescriptions, it says something like “Your doctor has prescribed this because s/he believes that the benefits far outweigh the risk of side effects.” At what point do realize that the benefits of our tech DON’T outweigh the risk of the cost? Then what?

Back before the internet (for those of us who can remember) it was usually pretty easy to tell when someone gives us the “cold shoulder.” Unfortunately, the “cold, new media shoulder” is often misinterpreted.

Do we assume that someone with whom we THOUGHT we were very good friends never wants to speak to us for some reason, or do we ask them for an explanation? And how?

Every semester, at the beginning of every communications course he taught, one of my favorite professors in undergrad always started out by stating,

“Even by not communicating, you’re communicating.”

… and that’s the cold hard truth.

Communication, in its simplest definition, is the delivery of ideas and/or messages. Think of the speculation that abounds in courtrooms (real or movies) when someone is declared guilty of murder and their reaction is stoicism. (“They have no remorse! They have no soul! Monster!” when in reality, said person could simply be in shock.)

What messages are you sending to people by not saying anything at all? Or, worse yet — what are you saying (or not saying) to people by depending on the medium (e.g. Facebook, Twitter) over face time?

I ask a lot of questions in this post and don’t really have any answers. But these are things I’ve been thinking about a lot, and I’d love to hear your take.

Photo 1 by Search Engine People Blog, photo 2 by Thirteen of Clubs.

Possibly Related posts:

1. Social media is way too smurfy these days.

Real quick shameless self-plug:

There is a new weekly podcast entitled “Conversate” from Portage Digital Media (disclosure: I consult with them), which is essentially your opportunity to be a fly on the wall of the PDM office whilst a conversation takes place. Said conversation can (and usually does) go anywhere, and is chock full of intelligent discussion sprinkled with a healthy dosage of shenanigans for good measure.

This past Friday I was at the office and participated in the conversation, which evolved into a podcast-in-gestation when the “record” button was pushed. Our conversation included everything from authenticity in marketing, to what a seminar on social media won’t get you, to what makes good (and bad) business copywriting, to cats awesome enough to have Facebook pages.

I can only stand to listen to myself talk so much (believe it or not) but if you, for whatever reason, want to hear my recorded voice along with two handsome gentlemen, head on over to the PDM blog and take a listen. If you like what you hear, subscribe to the podcast, why don’tcha?

I probably won’t be a regular weekly voice on Conversate, as my schedule will be picking up in upcoming weeks, but I’ll definitely be back as an occasional contributor. Don’t let that stop you from subscribing, however — these guys are hilarious and definitely worth a listen.

So what are you waiting for? Head on over to PDM and take a listen — who knows? You might learn something! At the very worst, we’ll tickle your funny bone and make your neurons dance a little jig.

Possibly Related posts:

1. Musical Monday Podcast Edition: What I listen to on the road.

Recently on Facebook, I posted the story about how Michael Arrington over at TechCruch quit the iPhone. In a nutshell, Arrington loves Google Voice but doesn’t like having two numbers, which is understandable because changing your number is a pain when everybody already has one for you. Soon Google will be introducing number portability, meaning that you can keep your number and transfer it to Google Voice. Well, it turns out that Apple and AT&T are blocking the iPhone app that makes using your one Google Voice number much more seamless between the two.  Says Arrington:

Why? Because they absolutely don’t want people doing exactly what I’m doing – moving their phone number to Google and using the carrier as a dumb pipe.

So I have to choose between the iPhone and Google Voice. It’s not an easy decision. Except, it sort of is. Google isn’t forcing the decision on me, Apple and AT&T are. So I choose to work with the company that isn’t forcing me to do things their way. And in this case, that’s Google.

I have Google Voice now and so far I like it, but I’ll admit that yes, having two numbers is inconvenient.  However, I do not have an iPhone, because my brand loyalty was with Verizon long before it was with Apple. When I posted the story on Facebook, I prefaced it with my own commentary, which was:

I won’t get an iPhone because I refuse to leave Verizon, and I knew that a LOT of iPhone users weren’t happy with AT&T, but whoah … had no idea people were all-out abandoning theirs. I have Google Voice, a different number than my usual one, and now I’m wondering how long it’ll be before I can just transfer my usual number to it.

I had no idea that that little post on Facebook would spark such a conversation among my friends. I know a lot of people who share the same I-love-Apple-but-I-love-Verizon-you-can’t-make-me-switch sentiment as me, but I wasn’t prepared for the comments of some of my friends. Here’s a sampling:

I know, my husband and I just recently had this conversation, and iPhone is cool but I know I cannot beat Verizon! They have proved over and over and over again that they take care of the customers, not to mention the service is great! - Leah McChesney

[My fiancé] & I both have Verizon (LGenV2′s) and we LOVE it. He’s been working in NYC for about 5 years & in that time, we had tried at least 3 different carriers. Verizon is the ONLY company that we didn’t get dropped calls with every five minutes (or less!) I’m sorry, but AT&T SUCKS. I have several friends with iPhones — our calls drop randomly — it’s always THEIR phones dropping the calls, not mine! Even out here in the Poconos, we have friends come to visit & the only company that has a signal consistently out here is Verizon. I’m with them for the long run … I have my iPod Touch … it’s the best of all worlds w/o the pain in the ass service you HAVE to take with the iPhone… – Marilyn

Will have to pry my Verizon service from my cold clammy hands. ATT is the worst. – Michael Spleet

Verizon, are you listening to all this? People love you. People are refusing to get the “Jesus Phone” because they don’t want to give up your service. What are you doing with your marketing to tout this?

I had to Google what Verizon was doing as far as social media. Whaddya know, they have a social media hub that links to their presences elsewhere. Except, I had no idea any of it existed, and I keep up on this kind of stuff. So I decided to take a look at what Verizon was doing on the social web.

The Good News

Verizon has an active community forum where staff and consumers help each other out and discuss things like FAQ, plans, devices, and other products and services. That’s great.

Also, Verizon is blogging. Every day on their PolicyBlog, and at their Verizon At Home blog. Entries look pretty interesting and helpful.

The Bad News

Most entries on the PolicyBlog have zero comments, and they were almost as sparse on the At Home blog. One entry I saw had 24 comments, but the next most popular one had 5, and it went downhill from there.

Nobody is reading them, because nobody knows about them. Here’s why:

Twitter

As of this writing, Verizon Newsroom has 693 followers on Twitter, FiOSFans have 118 followers (I didn’t know what FiOS was, I had to look that up. It’s only available in New York and New Jersey, apparently), VCast Music has 33 followers. Eric Rabe, the SVP of Verizon Communications – “internet, FiOS TV, all that” is on Twitter with 149 followers.

Facebook

The Verizon Facebook page has 160,000+ fans, but if you think about it, for the nation’s largest network, that’s pretty sad. Even sadder, the Verizon Newsroom Facebook page has 51 fans.

YouTube

There’s a YouTube channel with 10 videos, and it’s been a month since anybody signed in. There is some video on MediaSeed.tv that I stumbled upon accidentally, but if I didn’t know it was there, most people don’t either.

Come on, Verizon. You’re the nation’s largest network. You can do better than this. Here are a few suggestions, from me to you:

Ditch the “Verizon Newsroom”

When I found this a few minutes ago, I was expecting to see a social media newsroom about all things Verizon. [Note: I eventually did find the Verizon Newscenter, which isn't bad for a SMNR, but it wasn't where I expected to find it.]  Instead, I saw this page that looks like it’s trying to compete with Yahoo, MSN, and other portals. That’s not your game. You do cell phones and wireless service. Don’t try to compete where you can’t compete. Nobody is going to go to Verizon for news, they’re going to go to get a new phone or change their plan. If I want to change my wireless plan, I don’t go to the Huffington Post, do I?

Don’t call it “PolicyBlog”

That’s misleading and confusing. I was hard pressed to find anything about Verizon policies on the PolicyBlog at all. Call it something Verizon-relevant, but don’t call it something it’s not. Call it “Can you hear us now?” or something. There are 9 authors on that blog, together you can come up with something a little more accurate, I’m sure of it.

Don’t make us register to comment

As a general rule, if people have to take extra steps in order to comment on a blog, they won’t.  Oddly, though, the Verizon At Home blog requires registration and the PolicyBlog doesn’t, yet the At Home blog has more comments (though they’re both sparse). Just think of the interaction you’d get on the more popular blog if you didn’t make people jump through that extra hoop.

Please do something about your Twitter problem.

To be fair, Eric Rabe is doing pretty well interacting with people on Twitter. He pimps his blog quite a bit but overall he’s not doing bad. But he could do better if he were listening and responding to when “Verizon” is mentioned, and gain many more followers that way. I also suggest that somebody please do something about http://www.twitter.com/verizon. Is the brand jacked or does someone at Verizon actually have that handle and isn’t doing anything with it? Either way, it’s orphaned and it needs some love.

Integrate online and offline

OK maybe Verizon already does this, I don’t know because I don’t watch TV and I’m not very observant when I go to the Verizon store. But something just as simple as saying “Follow @EricRabe on Twitter” at the end of a commercial will call enough people to action to take notice of other Verizon online stuff. Integrating your marketing campaigns even further can have pretty awesome results.

Listen.

I save for last what you should be doing first. I already suggested the simple act of following a keyword on Twitter. Set up an RSS feed for it. That’s easy. But there are other ways to listen, ways as simple as setting up Google Alerts, blog searches, and stuff like SocialMention to monitor the social web. Since Verizon is ginormous and has the budget, I strongly suggest a professional social search like Radian6 because it’s better and more comprehensive. If you were doing these things, you’d be much more visible on the social web, more people would be commenting on your blogs (hell, more people would know about your blogs), you’d be responding to any concerns people may have with your products and services, and the great customer service I know you have would be bleeding over to your web presence.

If you really were listening, you’d know how awesome you are to people like me who sacrifice having the most kickass phone just because we don’t want to leave you, and you’d be using that to your advantage in your marketing efforts. And you’d be reading this blog post.

So, Verizon, can you hear me now?

No related posts.

Yesterday my pal Robin of InnerMedia Coaching & Consulting and I took a field trip to Ann Arbor for one of the LA2M Marketing Meetings, whose speaker that day just happened to be one of my favorite people in all of Metro Detroit, the lovely, smart, and talented Ms. Shauna Nicholson, marketing manager for Biznet Internet Solutions in Wixom. She was leading a discussion on viral marketing.

Though I did RSVP on LA2M’s Facebook event page, I forgot to actually tell Shauna I was going to be there, and forgot to check to see if there was an official hashtag for the event. (I hadn’t been to one of these events before so I wasn’t sure.)

Robin and I were sitting at the far end of the room from Shauna. It was pretty packed, and there was a big table full of people in between us. I didn’t really want to get up just to ask her that, so what did I do?

I sent her a text message from across the noisy room:

is there a hashtag for this? #la2m?

I saw that she was just putting away her iPhone so I nudged Robin and said, “Watch this. . .”

Shauna suddenly looked at her phone, looked up, looked all the way down the long table of people and gave me an affirming nod.

I turned to Robin and said, “See? This is yet another reason I love technology!”

No related posts.

January 18, 2009: Day 1 without my MacBook Pro.

Sent out tweet around 5:00 p.m.: “I haven’t tweeted all day. I’m OK, but feeling so empty and useless without my MacBook Pro. This is going to be a long week.”

Online activity sparse: Checked email, sent a couple DMs via Twitter. Read a couple blogs and commented. Couldn’t get into Facebook because it was down for maintenance or something.

People have been asking me what I’m doing this day or that day. Realized I can’t answer those questions because my schedule is in my iCal, in my laptop, which I cannot access. Yes, it does sync with my iPod, but I haven’t synced my iPod in a few days and have added appointments, etc. since then. Must do my best to remember everything. Think I’m going to follow Laurie’s lead and go back to using an actual planner that you write in. Have been thinking about it lately, the only hindrance being my god-awful handwriting that is illegible even to me.

Otherwise, have been mapping out in my head how much of my current projects I can do with this bare-bones PC and whatever tools/data I’ve got online. Think I should attempt to map these things down on paper now, trying my best to write legibly.

10:13 p.m. I’m sitting here, staring at this monitor, and I feel like I have a LOT to do … I just can’t remember what any of it was.  This is not good.

January 19, 2009: Day 2

Tweeted around 10:30 a.m.: I’m tweeting, I’m tweeting … how long is this going to last? I feel like less of a person without my MBP.

Last night I tossed around the idea of getting a new MacBook Pro. I definitely can’t afford one, but I’m in the process of officially starting my own business (attempting to, anyway), and thinking about including a new MBP in my startup costs if/when I apply for a loan. I can justify the need. Even if this had never happened, I needed to buy an external hard drive because my internal one only has about 15 GB left on it. My MBP is about 3 or 4 years old, it’s tired, and its programs/OS need upgrading. Hmm… may be wishful thinking, but I can dream, right?

There is a Tweetup tonight in Novi at B-Dubs. My presence is expected and I would like to go see everybody, but I’m also kind of in the dumps and should probably stay home and get as much work/research done as I can tonight. I don’t know.

January 20: Day 3

Went to the Tweetup in Novi last night. It was huge. Had a lot of fun (maybe too much?), met a lot of cool people, hung out with friends. Brain is kinda fuzzy today. Was going to go to Shauna’s & Kasey’s inauguration party tonight but fuzzy brain + not getting the stuff done I wanted to last night = no go.

Scott Monty & me at the Novi Tweetup.

It’s technically the third business day from when I ordered my keyboard, but it did not come. It was a good mail day, though: I received my $50 rebate card from Verizon, my $15 from the Nielson people for taking that looooooong online survey, and my coupon for a free Whopper I earned for “sacrificing” 10 Facebook friends … before Facebook sacrificed the app. (They were people I barely talked to/knew, anyway.)

I need to bury my face in some research now. Well, maybe I’ll eat first. Maybe a Whopper.

January 24: Day 4

I am so non-productive that I can’t even think of what it was I was supposed to do in the first place. My brain feels like Jell-O when I stare at my TweetDeck. Tried to accomplish what would be a relatively simple errand for anybody else but me, ended up visiting two VG’s & an out-of-order ATM with no dice. Found a dead bird in my yard, can’t wait to take care of that on garbage night.  Attempted to do a lot of research and read until I thought words were going to spill out my ears. I think my brain is broken. Nothing is going right for me today.

January 22: Day 5

Keyboard finally came. Woo-hoo! Spent an hour or so installing it and putting my computer back together. First thing I did when I turned it on was sync my iPod. And now, I am so tired of dealing with this whole issue that I’m grumpy and don’t even feel like being online. Hmph! Signing off.

January 22: Day 6

I realized that after all that, the left side of the keyboard isn’t secure and flat like it should be, and my caps lock doesn’t work. I’m going to have to take this thing apart all over again and try to adjust it. WILL THIS EVER END?!

(That was hard to type without caps lock, btw.)

Image 1 by makelessnoise, image 2 by Daniel Eizans, image 3 by hyperscholar.

No related posts.