Inline, Online, Off

On Facebook: Stay On Topic, Stay Top Of Mind

A few weeks back I was Questioning Your Question of the Day and lo! Sean Bruich, head of measurement platforms and standars at Facebook has data to back up my instincts. 

Yep, as AdAge puts it, “The touchy-feely strategy is meant to be conversational — human, even. But new data from Facebook itself tell us that what looks good on the social-media guru’s presentation deck isn’t the best approach for making Facebook work for the brand. “

Ooh I love it when data makes me right about things and like I suggested, Facebook says brands oughtn’t completely omit their seasonal, conversational posts. 

The AdAge piece goes on, “To get more precious shares, Mr. Bruich advises posting more photos and videos. Asking questions of your fans increases commenting, but not liking and sharing.  

These findings hold true across verticals. “There’s some order to this universe,” said Mr. Bruich. “There are general truths.”

Read the rest of their article, which highlights some successful question styles and conversational strategies for brands… while I sit here being smug. 

Eyetracking at Shelf, in Store? Kinect Makes It So

Ecommerce researchers have made shopping experiences richer and shortened the path from perusal to purchase on the Web thanks to heatmaps, eyetracking, and enough click-through data to drown in. Good old fashioned brick and mortar stores have relied largely on anecdotes, expensive and not-that-effective panels and samples. 

Enter Shopperception, a Kinect-based tracking system that gathers data on shoppers’ interactions with the products on retail shelves. 

Shopperception: tracking real world conversions like web analytics from Administrator Agile Route on Vimeo.

On Actualization: The Quantified Self, The Quantified Brand

As friends embrace UP, Fitbit and other health and habit-tracking devices, I went back to Gary Wolf’s TED talk on The quantified self.

The theory holds that if we want to do better in the world, we have to know more about ourselves. The act of observing, then monitoring (and broadcasting) our stats makes us more accountable… we become more accountable, we get more motivated, and ultimately become more likely to make better choices, more often.

So instead of a nagging spouse, a barking trainer, concerned friend, or that little inner voice telling us to put down the fork or pick up some weights, these digital devices empower us toward personal governance.

And they’re not just for staying fit, getting good sleep, or avoiding those empty calories. There are apps and devices that track our sexual encounters, heart rates, daily doses of drugs and vitamins, meditation, ovulation, defecation, errands and to-dos, spending habits, fuel consumption, books read… and most of them publicize these results either across social networks or privately back to us, with beautiful charts to make it all make sense and keep us on track.

While people are becoming more transparent thanks to the tools that encourage us to create, capture, and share our innermost data, open government and open brands are publicizing their wares but largely still controlling their message as much as possible. At most companies the PR or marketing department does the updating and tweeting, while Legal looks it over, scrubbing that post here, deleting a comment there. 

Corporate and brand governance is still for the most part crafted and I’m not suggesting that need change. More, imagining if companies had tools and tracking devices to automatically quantify and publicize what they were doing. 

Can that company with recycling bins on every floor of its HQ and the infographic on its website that shows how many trees they saved that year actually put weight scales on those recycle bins that automatically post that to their site? Perhaps a GPS on the waste management truck that arrives and carts the stuff off each week could be plotted via Google Maps? 

If trust, transparency, and openness are qualities being embraced in hallways and boardrooms around the world, can unedited data streams be the future of corporate governance? 

Would that make us trust brands even more? So what if they screw up once in a while or miss the target. My Fitbit can’t actually make me get up at 6am when it’s 40 degrees outside and go for a jog. But if this quantified self makes me more able to do better in the world, shouldn’t we be building quantified brands, too? 

How The Top 50 Nonprofits Do Social Media

This infographic was posted all over the Interwebz this week. While I think some of what this tells us is a little flawed, it’s interesting to pore over some the datapoints and featured organizations. Here’s a link to a larger view and digest of the data via HuffPo.