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  Nic 12:03 pm on November 4, 2009 | 1 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: Marketing (18), Mobile (14), New Media (6), Online, Sales (5), social networking (5)

  Jobs of the future are hard to predict.

  What will we all be doing in 5 years? Who can tell.

  I studied to be a journalist. No, I studied to be a print journalist. And now I work in and around mobile social networking strategy and development.

  Let’s just quickly repeat that: Mobile social networking strategy and development. I am almost 100% certain that when I started studying at Rhodes University in 2003 that my current job didn’t even exist.

  There is one job in particular that is going to need a lot more focus in the coming years:

  New media sales and advertising.

  The reason that I think this job is becoming increasingly important and increasingly neglected is because there is a marked lack of skilled and experienced people to fill this position.

  What does this position entail?

  Sales and advertising has traditionally (back in the old days) been about selling and advertising products. Getting people to buy in to your product or getting advertisers to place an advert in to your publication, on to your store walls or on your car and so on.

  Sales and advertising is becoming a much more complicated and intricate art. You cannot just sell banners, text links, full page adverts, splash screens, in-video sponsorships or product placements. Social networks and new media businesses need to have a salesperson who understands every aspect of the business. This person needs to be able to cross sell, integrate campaigns, work on new media, old media and media that might not exist yet.

  What does this person need to succeed?

  This person needs to understand CPC, CPA, CPM, CPSA and how to make these models work. This person needs to not only know what CRM stands for but what it actually is and how to make it relevant to the client.

  This person needs to know who the client is or should be and how that clients business or latest campaign fits in to the business of a new media business.

  Sales is shifting as fast as media is shifting and technology is growing and developing. The trick here is that technology, websites, mobile content and advancements can push forward as fast as they like but if there is no team able to monetize the products, there may as well not even be a product.

  It’s time start thinking about integrated salespeople, sales teams, sales in relation to your core business and if sales actually might be your companies core business.

   

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  Nic 12:26 pm on June 19, 2009 | 0 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: boston globe, citizen journalism (7), hyper-local (2), location-based, Media (10), Mobile (14), Online

  Is mobile, hyper-local, location-based news content the way to save mainstream media in the USA?

  I think it might be. I have been watching closely over the past few months as newspaper after newspaper has fallen away in the US. It’s a very scary and very sad situation that American media finds itself in. Resistance to change over the past few years has positioned many papers in a dire situation where it’s a matter of shit or get off the pot. And many are shitting themselves.

  Boston Globe is a one example that I have been watching withe extreme interest. Boston.com is a great resource that has not been used effectively enough to pull Boston Globe out of financial trouble.

  The resistance to change coupled with a severe drop in advertising and circulation (with thanks to a recession and online media emerging as a force in the media industry) has left the Boston Globe almost crippled. Many people are set to lose jobs and Boston, the city, is set to lose it’s competitive media market. If Boston Globe closes down the city of Boston will be left with a single daily newspaper. This defeats the purpose of mainstream media acting as a democratic watchdog or fourth estate. With one media organisation remaining things are not looking good.

  Enter hyper-local, location-based news content fed to mobile phones produced by hyper-local citizen media producers who put content up via cellphones on to hyper-local portals.

  This is what Martin Langeveld of Nieman Journalism Lab had to say on the topic of Boston Globe:

  Langeveld’s advice is to go (almost) online-only with Boston.com, and to launch or subsidise a network of hyperlocal sites all over the area, and launch a network of local niche verticals focussed on weather, traffic, jobs, entertainment, education and more. He proposes a tiered, variable pricing model for all, with most of the content free, but paid premium access for a “small but highly-engaged group.” This income could be supplemented with transactional revenue, through selling theatre tickets, for example, or facilitating restaurant reservations.

  This model could also expose the Globe’s city-wide reach to a hyper-local market of advertisers (a longer tail than they would previously had access to). This coupled with a free/premium hybrid mode and the paper could be on its way back up.

  Regarding the print side of things it’s a simple mechanic to alleviate some immediate strain: Make the paper a weekly and include the news created over the week from the hyper-local portals and citizens media. Pull city-wide, larger advertisers in to this weekly printed publication to subsidise the cost of the print and drop the price to allow for quantity to be sold and to make the paper appear to be more accessible to the everyday person in the street.

  There is no quick-fix for papers such as the Boston Globe, that is certain. But it is imperative that these papers start to adapt or simply succumb to a swift death.

   
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  Qik is just that, a quick way to stream live video

  Nic 11:39 am on February 16, 2009 | 0 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: Mobile (14), Online, Qik, streaming, streaming video, Video (9)

  I am incredibly impressed with Qik and the service it offers.

  Basically it’s a live mobile streaming service. You download the software to your phone. Open up the application and click “Stream”. The video is then recorded and streamed live to your Qik profile.

  Find me at qik.com/nicharry

  
  

   
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  The Onion writes off Sony as an advertiser forever

  Nic 4:34 pm on February 11, 2009 | 1 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: Advertising (15), Marketing (18), Online, Sony (5), the onion

  With this simple video, funny as hell, The Onion (unless they’ve planned this whole thing) have taken it to Sony, hard.

  This really does illustrate the independence of an online brand. Sharply contrasting how beholden old-media is to their advertisers. I love this sort of campaign, I love the brashness of it and I love that they had the balls to put it out there.

   
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  Honesty is the best business policy when selling online

  Nic 2:39 pm on February 2, 2009 | 1 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: Advertising (15), Honesty (2), Marketing (18), Online, Sales (5), transparency

  Honesty in business, sales, marketing and advertising is by no means a fresh new concept. Yet it is fast becoming an integral one in the world that we inhabit.

  There are many posts that discuss transparency online in a personal sense. Don’t lie, cheat, steal, defraud or do anything that might dent your reputation online. But I am referring more to the concept of honesty when selling online to the less knowledgeable.

  This has become an absolutely imperative part of selling and talking about online with people. Many companies and agencies are interested and intrigued by online at the moment because it is the direction in which the world is moving. But there are dangers.

  The main danger that I have come across is the overselling of the potential of online right now. Many companies almost have their finger on the pulse of things. But this means that they know of Facebook, Youtube and other sites that they can use in a social arena to promote their products. Yet many of them think that the viral nature of the social web world wide applies directly to South Africa. It doesn’t. Viral in SA probably means, if you’re lucky, a few thousand views of a video and a couple of blog posts. In the Western world viral translates to a few million views of a video and a few hundred thousand links to or embeds of a video. Those are the cold hard facts and expectations should be readjusted accordingly.

  Unfortunately the “people in the know” often oversell the potential of social media in South Africa to get the hype up and the profit margins higher. This is bad. This sort of selling is doing detrimental damage to the truth and success of the market in SA. This sort of selling makes it very difficult to create a consistent and successful stream of clients, revenue and business in the online industry. People are being burned and are staying away from spending money online because of misleading sales and delivery pitches. Return of investment (ROI) is being oversold and underdeliverd. Again, this is bad.

  Honesty is key. Clients need to know the truth and still want to go forward with a campaign and experiment, play in the space and engage with one or two hundred people in stead of hoping to gain one or two million. It wont happen so don’t sell it that way.