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I have just finished flipping through two books by the late, great Paul Arden, ”It’s Not How Good You Are, It’s How Good You Want to Be” and “Whatever You Think, Think the Opposite“, and it reminded me again why I make it a habit of revisiting these at least once a year.

These books are a must read for anyone - be you a Creative, Suit or on the Client side in Advertising (although there are beneficial insights for anyone in business).

If you haven’t had a chance to read them, grab them and do so. The ideas may seem simple and obvious, but it is amazing how quickly you can forget when you get snowed under in busy periods at work.

You may have noticed recently that new editing features on YouTube allow you to add notes or links to your videos. This has essentially opened the door up to a host of new ways of interacting with the video you are watching, and even allow you to utilise the interface to control the narrative.

A recent example of this is in the set of videos created by production company ChadMatt&Rob entitled The Time Machine. Remember those choose your own adventure books? This essentially takes that format, and places it in the video, allowing you to make decisions for the characters and have the story unfold the way you want it.

New interactive video looks like a big bonus for content delivery sites. It should offer a reason for people to hang around on a website longer as they navigate through the experience, and offer better engagement with what you are consuming. After all, television can only offer a linear experience, so this gives a new reason to open up your computer.

Who says an IT&T / B2B company can’t have some fun.

Watch A Special Valentines Gift From CISCO…

I have recently been catching up online on all of the controversy surrounding two recent viral campaigns - the Witchery “Girl in the Jacket” and the Tourism Queensland’s “Best Job in the World”. These have really seemed to polarise both consumers and industry folk alike once they were revealed as “fakes”.

At the negative extreme, both campaigns have been labelled deceitful, misleading, and a new form of Spam attacking us virally on video sites like YouTube (although how 14 year old girls complaining about their lives or cute hamster videos aren’t considered Spam before these I will never understand).

What they fail to realise is the new opportunity for consumers to not only be involved with the brand on a personal level, but to be actively be involved in the story - even if the end result was not what they expected.

What this begins to do is enter the world of Alternate Reality Games (ARG’s). Essentially these are games or narratives played in the real world, with active participants across the globe working together to move the story forward (often solving puzzles to do so).

ARG’s have recently been used to promote brands or products. My favorite example was the ARG created by 42 Entertainment for the band Nine Inch Nails, for the release of their album Year Zero. I won’t go into detail of what was created to promote the album (check out the NINWiki to get the full details), just that it involved everything from coded messages, leaked songs with hidden information, live stunts, and a massive amount of websites ‘discovered’ online. This allowed the fans to actively participate in the album in the real world or online, outside of simply listening to the songs.

So with Witchery and Tourism Queensland, they turned out to be fakes. But consumers got to interact with a narrative, and feel like they were part of a community (either helping a girl in distress, or competing for a great prize against other like minded people). Added on to regular advertising (like print or outdoor ads) and this opens up a whole new and exciting world of audience engagement.

Getting good quality Inbound Links is an important way of improving your websites SEO. But how do you find out what sort of links you are currently getting to your website?

The easiest and fastest way is to use a search engine. Simply go to Google, and type the following into the Search Box:

site: mysite.com

(With “mysite” being the target URL you are searching. Make sure to keep a space after the colon).

This allows you to see what links are coming in, or the kind of links other sites are getting such as your competitors. Try searching for an established website in your industry - if they are receiving links from a free directory or listing, you should aim to get on them straight away.

In the business world, and especially in the B2B environment, the benefits of Social Media are becoming increasingly apparent to the point that organisations who don’t embrace these technologies stand the chance of being wiped out by smaller and more savvy competitors.

This poses the challenge of convincing the Marketing Department and Upper Management of adopting new “Inbound Marketing” technologies that can essentially fly in the face of traditional practices, and push them outside their comfort zone. This may also be compounded by the very nature of the word they are being asked to adopt - Social Media.

Lets look at the first word:

Social = Fun, relaxed, with friends (time wasting) 
Social = Activities outside of work (not business) 

How many times have you said you don’t have time for social activities because you are too busy working? 

In addition, many organisations block a range of Social Media sites for this very reason - they view them as time wasting or not business activities. I have at least three friends who are not able to access Facebook in their offices. 

What I would suggest is adopting a new term to explain Social Media to CXO roles in order to present the benefits and eliminate the negatives associated with “social”. My own suggestion would be Business Networking Media. 

The analogy is this, think of a Business Networking Event you have attended recently. Now think of this same event not constrained by time, space or location - and with the benefits enhanced. That is the power delivered by Business Networking Media solutions, an effective tool to add to your marketing mix.

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