For-Profit Online Universities are Raping the System

A few years ago while researching information on education assistance for veterans I ran across some startling numbers regarding the veteran graduation rates from for-profit universities and the percentage of federal funding allocated to them.  (Since I do not have the actual link available to the research I must make a note that these numbers are from memory so we’ll say they’re approximately correct).  So “approximately” 60% of all federal education funding for active duty personnel and veterans is allocated towards for-profit institutions (e.g. University ofPhoenix) but unfortunately the graduation rates of these same veterans is below 30%.  HOW IS THIS POSSIBLE?  These schools are raping the system.

Fortunately, a new startup, Ranku, founded by CEO Kim Taylor has also taken notice. Taylor is a former University of Phoenix employee where she was responsible for user acquisition; so she understands how these schools are taking advantage of students looking for an online education.

Ranku, will guide prospective students to non-profituniversities, while barring for-profit schools.  Taylor’s hope is to allow students to discover different name brand schools who recently adopted an online model (e.g. Georgetown University, UNC, Stanford, etc). 

Although, Ranku has an uphill battle since these for-profit universities are notorious for gobbling up competition and will most likely try to stop this type of service from hitting it mainstream.  

How do you think Ranku can overcome a potential lash out from for-profit schools?

Portal site vs search site

    I usually use Yahoo Japan not Google Japan. I was surprised that most of American uses Google usually and not use Yahoo. From the lecture, I learned it depends on the country. Some of countries, including Japan, use another site, not Google because of the culture and the internet history in each country.

     According to some articles, top-ranking websites for a ton of countries to compare rankings between Yahoo’s and Google’s websites are as below. Here is where Yahoo still gets more traffic than Google:

    Japan – In Japan, the localized version of Yahoo, Yahoo.co.jp, is ranked as number one in the country, followed by Google’s localized Google.co.jp in second place. Yahoo is big in Japan. To get an idea of how big, check out the chart a bit further down.

The Philippines – In the Philippines, Yahoo.com is ranked in second place (after Facebook) and is followed by Google.com.ph in third place.

    Taiwan – In Taiwan, Yahoo.com is ranked number one, with Google.com.tw showing up in fourth place.

    Hong Kong – In Hong Kong, Yahoo.com is ranked number one, with Google.com.hk in third place.

(http://royal.pingdom.com/2011/04/29/where-yahoo-still-beats-google/)

     I believe Google is a kind of just search tool but Yahoo can provide us with a lot of information at the same time. Why do Americans like Google? Does Google provide us with more information or accurate search result? I definitely cannot tell the difference between search result of Yahoo and of Google.

     Generally, I need trend information and news at the same time when I search something or I just need this kind of information. Sometimes I can get interesting story and news from the top page of Yahoo unintentionally. Since I use Yahoo every time and every day regardless of using search engine or not, I’m now used to see Yahoo not Google and seldom use Google.

     Also, I think internet history is a key factor of this. In Japan, Yahoo JAPAN launched and advertised frequently from the begging of internet era, so that Japanese people began to use Yahoo JAPAN and it seems difficult for another competitor to win Yahoo. When you do marketing internationally, you need to take care of the culture and history.

Big Data … Big Ideas … Big Thinking

We all keep hearing more and more about how "big data" is changing the world around us...and I am a huge fan!  The opportunity to find patterns and links between things that were previously unknown makes my OCD brain very happy.
But - in the world of Human Resources, I've often found it difficult to articulate why data (big or small) can't always explain the whys of human behavior; e.g. predicting productivity of employees based on some pre-screening test or other personality profiling tool.  I appreciate the implications: "people who scored this way are 75% more likely to xyz", but inevitably, you will be faced with the outlier - the person, or people who did not behave as predicted and how do we explain that?  More importantly, how do we prepare managers and organization to address those circumstances?
I guess ultimately I find some comfort in the fact that humans can be as unpredictable as we are predictable and why I appreciated this posting by David Sable and his ending thought, "Smart people get that algorithms are no substitute for human intuition, insight and judgment." http://www.linkedin.com/today/post/article/20130625162558-234814-big-data-big-ideas-big-thinking?trk=cha-feed-art-title

Bing for Schools

In an effort to gain market share, Bing will be offer its engine to schools devoid of many of the features you would not want children and teens to have access to, particularly in school.  Quoted directly from the article, Bing Offers Schools a Safe, Advertising-Free Search Experience,on Search Engine Watch, "the program is open to K-12 schools and will:

• Remove all advertising from search result pages.
• Filter out adult content.
• Use SafeSearch by default and remove the ability to change it.
• Offer additional content to enhance digital literacy skills."

Schools need to actively sign up to be part of the program, and although available details are limited, my guess is that in order to make the program worthwhile for Bing, once a part of the program, students will not be able to access other engines, such as Google.  After all, if students still had access to other engines, students may avoid Bing solely on the fact that their searches are limited.

If schools sign up, this could work out great for Bing.  Although it will probably negatively impact their revenue in short run, if Microsoft can successfully get their brand in front of young impressionable minds early in their search lifetimes, it could have huge payoffs down the road.

Of course I good see this backfiring on Bing, particularly among teenage boys, if it becomes known as the engine where searchers cannot get "good" results.

Google......America's Weapon?

If history rings true then economic might and military strength are highly correlated. America has had an impressive run but the world is getting flatter. If America wants to continue to promote its interest globally, maintaining military dominance is critical. The challenge now is that military dominance does not mean having more soldiers, more bombs, and bigger bombs. Military strength is now technology. The question is when does/should/could Google become the Vanguard of America's armed forces?

Google has computers so advanced that they are secret, touches billions of people a day, and collects information constantly. Doesn't that sound like a critical military asset. China already attacks the US by deploying an office full of tech geeks against of technological infrastructure. Imagine all out warfare when the US redeployed Google's talents from not "being evil" to "winning for America." This might seem far fetched but I think it is closer than many people think.

NY Times creating creative ads to mitigate print revenue decline

The New York Times is creating new display ads in an attempt to offset declining revenue from print ads. Some of the creative new ads are listed below. I find the concept of the ads extremely engaging and fun, especially the Prudential campaign that let readers see the front page of the NY Times on the day they were born, or any other day for that matter. This really points to the power of digital marketing, and how creative marketers can get in today's day and age. While I think these ads are great, I'm not yet convinced that companies, specifically, big brands will be rushing back to the NY Times to invest in this display advertising. I appreciate that the NY Times predicts their reader data and performance metrics will persuade companies to spend money, even in their private ad marketplace, I just don't believe these ads can generate a strong conversion rate or ROI metrics since the customer is not showing any specific intent. I do think these futuristic ads will be great for companies looking to do brand marketing and will help offset a portion of the decline in print ad revenue for the NY Times, but in today's environment where marketing budgets are tight, I would imagine marketers will continue to invest where they have the best chance for conversion.

http://paidcontent.org/2013/06/19/the-new-york-times-is-making-ads-for-the-future-but-where-is-the-present-day-money/

• A Prudential campaign that invited readers to pull up the front page of the New York Times on the day they were born. The ad format, which drew on pre-existing Times’ archival tools, was a hit on social media. Here’s a screenshot:
• 
  
• A Wisk campaign that was derived from a Times’ culture story about how Picasso painted over canvasses. The original story invited readers to wave their mouse over a Picasso photo to reveal what lay underneath. For the detergent ad, Wisk asked readers to use their mouse to undercover underlying dirt stains. According to Haskell, those who did spent an unusual amount of time fussing over the ad. Here’s a screenshot (you can touch up Picasso here and play with stains here) 

• The Times‘ city guide app, The Scoop, inserted a Citibank map for New York City’s new bike-sharing program

• A National Geographic campaign drew on the “Times Machine” (which Haskell says is normally used only by “history geeks”) to provide historical backdrop for its Killing Lincoln show

Yammer - another social network expanding...

I am currently reading the Facebook Effect book and am just amazed how a small idea that not many believed in turned into something as huge as Facebook is today. What I am even more surprised about is how many people copied it as they realized its potential. However, I was really amazed today when my firm sent us a notification today looking for pilot teams to collaborate on our client engagements using...Yammer!

Yammer is an enterprise social networking tool which was bought my Microsoft a year ago and is now used by approx. 8M users. This number represents an 55% growth over last year's user base. It enables users to collaborate on various levels from sharing of documents to internal and external messaging. It is also expected to become fully integrated with SharePoint and other tools offered by Microsoft to enhance its existing products.

It really amazes me that the company as conservative as mine (large consulting firm) would actually go for social networking tool as one of the options for us to internally communicate. We are a very conservative firm which takes some time to introduce new technology tools as they are revealed due to various safety testings we have to perform to ensure the confidentiality of our clients' data. Thus, the intro of Yammer was just shocking to me. However, it does sound promising and it just shows how social network really took over the world...

Read on for more:

http://techcrunch.com/2013/06/25/a-year-after-microsoft-bought-it-yammer-nears-8m-users-plans-for-deeper-integration-and-a-new-klout-partnership/

https://www.yammer.com

Creating an effective viral campaign

Viral marketing is encourage people to share and pass on the marketing message which will result in achieving higher levels of reach, improving brand awareness and potentially revenue. Can we effectively use the social media platforms to create a successful viral marketing campaign ? I found this article which outlines a framework that is simple and effective.

http://www.thedigitalbus.com/are-you-brave-enough-to-go-viral/


The integration of brand, service, product into a campaign by creating a sharable message is key to having a successful campaign. Off the Internet, viral marketing has been referred to as “word-of-mouth,” “creating a buzz,” “leveraging the media,” “network marketing.” But on the Internet, for better or worse, it’s called “viral marketing.”

Like viruses, such strategies take advantage of rapid multiplication to explode the message to thousands, to millions. It is not just creating messages but more conversations that draw people. This is truly an art.

Do ads on Facebook Mobile annoy you?

Lately I have noticed an ever increasing number of ads inserted in between posts from my friends or things that I like.
I understand the need for Facebook to generate revenue to support this great free service, but I'm concerned that there will be too many ads and I will have to do a lot of scrolling to see what is mine.
How many ads are too many?

Mobile Marketing Trend

I don't know a great deal about mobile marketing so I wanted to do a little research and I came across an interesting article on 10 trends for mobile marketing in 2013:

http://readwrite.com/2013/02/14/10-actionable-trends-for-mobile-marketers-in-2013#awesm=~o9O7Mft5X3FGgZ

There was a table with the trends highlighted and the actions that needed to be taken.




Looking at this list, I see one particularly important underlying fact: most companies are not well equipped to take full advantage of the mobile channel. The first trend says marketers will realize that mobile requires a total shift in their marketing approach. Trends 7-10 all relate to a need for increased investment in mobile.

It's interesting to me that mobile has existed as a channel for as long as it has and major companies still have a lot of heavy lifting to do to prepare themselves to be ready to take advantage of the channel. I suppose part of the answer is due to what I witnessed while working in online display, that the senior people in the marketing departments of many large companies are still "traditional marketers." What this means is that they existed and built their careers during the prominence of traditional media (newspaper, direct mail, TV, radio) and the amount of sophistication / overwhelming nature of digital media prevents them from necessarily being the most qualified to take advantage of these channels.

As a result, I see two opportunities: first, being for companies that can make the mobile channel extremely easy to use and understand for these traditional marketers. Second, for individuals who want to build a successful career in marketing as needing to become experts in this channel in order to have a promising career a few years now. I look forward to seeing how mobile marketing evolves over the course of the rest of this year.

Tips on managing FB fan pages

1. Don't stop posting new status on weekend

Research shows that the interactive rate is 14.5% higher in weekend than in weekdays. However, only 14% of the posts are post in weekend.

*interactive rate: (number of like+number of sharing +number of comments)/number of impressions per post

2. The best date to post
Advertising and Consulting industry, CPG, Finance, F&B,  : weekend
Automobile, Retail, Healthcare and beauty,Tech : Monday
Fashion, sports and travel: Thursday

3. The best timing to post
8 P.M-7A.M. This period has 14% higher interactive rate than the rest.

4. Raise a question
Will raise 15% of the interactive rate and 200% of comments.

5. Call of action
Directly imply your fans how to response. Eg, you want your fans to leave comments, likes or sharing.



Resource: Buddymedia
http://www.inboundjournals.com/facebook-strategies-for-effective-posting-analysis/

How tweets reveal your personality

Over the last couple of years, I've read a lot about how the rise of social media has lead to lots and lots of rich data- most of which was never available for researchers and marketers in the past. Most of the data-mining techniques I've read about centered around segmenting consumers and identifying ways to sell things to them.

But, I recently read this Economist article about how a group of researches can now gauge someone's personality reasonably well from as few as 50 tweets. This personality tracking measures the "big five" personality traits- openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness and neuroticism. For example, according to the article, using the word "bar" correlates with extraversion and the word "awful" correlates with neuroticism.

While all this is interesting to read about and fun to talk about, the real implications of how these data-mining techniques can be use is a little bit frightening. I can see these techniques being used by employers to screen potential job candidates. They will no longer be only scanning for past employment history or ill-advised photos from a fun weekend- they could potentially collect a bunch of mundane tweets to create a personality profile. And we as individuals may not know what these profiles look like and may also not know how to actively manage it.

For more, here is the original article:

http://www.economist.com/blogs/economist-explains/2013/05/economist-explains-21

Social Marketing for B2B

In a Forrester report titled “How B2B Marketers Use Social Now” Zachary Reiss-Davis discusses the channels that are on their way up and on their way out in the B2B digital marketing world.  Not surprisingly, some of the popular B2C digital marketing tactics are not so favorable in B2B.  There are also some stand outs that perhaps B2C marketers are missing out on.

Reiss-Davis shows that social marketing is just as important in B2B marketing and gives some insight to where advertising dollars may be best spent.  Specifically for lead nurturing, Facebook, Pinterest, and Google Plus have been losers while Twitter, LinkedIn, blogs, and videos have proven themselves.  One of the interesting standouts was virtual events.  According to Reiss-Davis, business decision-makers find them more influential than public social networks, including Facebook and LinkedIn.

His advice: “Use more-expensive social channels for their ability to break through the noise.”  While videos and virtual events require a bigger investment, they should be included as part of a holistic marketing plan.

“How B2B Marketers Use Social Now” by Zachary Reiss-Davis can be found here: http://www.forrester.com/How+B2B+Marketers+Use+Social+Now/fulltext/-/E-RES94263

Search without Ads?!

John Paczkowski reports on allthingsd.com that Microsoft just released a version of Bing that is designed for students K-12 grade.  The student version has enhanced privacy protection measures, adult-content filters, and...wait for it...NO  SEARCH ADVERTISING!

My gut reaction is that Microsoft has an angle somewhere.  I don't have any stats to share on click-stream revenues driven from this demographic, but I have to imagine it is not insignificant.  Microsoft must be generating immediate revenue somewhere, this couldn’t simply be a branding/PR play.  Paczkowski suggests that Microsoft is offering Bing this way to get educators using the site at school and to get students used to using Bing so they will continue to use it outside of the school.  While I believe this is much of the strategy, I wouldn’t be surprised if advertising appears on or another revenue stream is derived from the student-friendly version of Bing once Microsoft has a foothold in this market.  Time will tell.

Check out the full article here: (http://allthingsd.com/20130624/looking-for-a-head-start-microsoft-tailors-bing-for-classrooms/?mod=atd_homepage_carousel)

Digital Marketing- How to Use Adwords

Last week our group met with our start-up to discuss their intentions and goals for digital advertising. I was struck by how new and open the media and digital marketing world is. As new media evolves and start-ups such as ours gain traction, it seems to me that long-form journalism and deep reporting may recede permanently. This would be tragic. I like our start-up, and think that often the videos are a teaser to learn more. For this reason, they are used by major long-form media outlets to draw a new audience and a new generation. Perhaps the videos will serve as a gateway to deeper understanding.
I also like the brief history clips that our client uses. They allow people to get quick information on a topic, and then decide if and how they want to continue to research. What I hope to get most from this project is a working knowledge of digital media and marketing, and specifically how to best leverage the available tools.
 

Facebook graph search update - SEO meets social

Facebook's introduction of the graph search in Jan 2013 is a significant milestone for the company to officially pursue the convergence of social network and search. Media and analysts have viewed the announcement as a commitment to enrich user experience, expand marketer’s reach and establish a new stream of long term revenue. This announcement is not a surprise because Facebook has a great baseline, 1 billion queries per day before the announcement. With that said, below I will provide a brief update on Facebook graph search.

Facebook graph search offers a few benefits to users and marketers. First, users gain richer experience to find relevant content and marketers gain higher engagement. Specifically, search result is social data (personalized - pages, apps, groups, photos and places) based on personal connections and not web data (keyword match across the web). In addition to personalized data, Facebook has 1 billion active users, more than 240 billion photos and over a trillion social connections. Despite the scale, Facebook content is limited to privacy settings.  Second, friend's preferences and likes (movies, restaurants etc) are the most powerful word of mouth advertising. However, one can argue that friends’ recommendations are neither reliable nor salient relative to the public forum such as Yelp.  However, earlier this month, Yelp has expressed a strong interest to partner with Facebook's graph search. This news indicates that Facebook graph search is causing a concern for Yelp and quickly catching up. http://bit.ly/16rBzgK

Facebook graph search is more than search; it is messages, photos, traffic and a culture. The big data platform has many unstructured data and difficult to parse. However, businesses which take the time and investment to analyze, understand and act based on the big data will amplify marketing channel efforts, drive qualified traffics and achieve a higher conversion rate. This platform is well positioned with younger demographic. Thus, it is important that business start early and integrate organic, paid, and earned advertising on the Facebook graph search channel before it is crowded. http://bit.ly/1caxxuA

Below is a chart that highlights how advertisers can leverage key search optimization techniques and social sharing best practice. The process starts with the Facebook page and ends with how you engage and share content. Read more on http://selnd.com/16rCyxw

A Marketers tips to combat negative posts about your brand, your company

Smart Marketer:  Part 3

Apple has demonstrated through its very effective TV Ad ‘Think Different’ campaign that creating a persona for the brand/company will help target the right audience and build a loyal base of customers, who are willing to spend hours in line for the newest product launch.  Today, live sports events are the only broadcasts where TV ads are most likely to be watched, thanks to technology innovations.  This necessitates the need for companies to build personas via other channels, mainly online presence.   

The savvy customer depends extensively on blog posts, word-of-mouth and search engines to find information when she needs it.  Reads the comments posted by fellow bloggers/customers before considering a purchase.  This leads to an interesting problem for companies…people are more likely to post a message when they are dissatisfied with a purchase than when they are satisfied.  So every consumer searching is more likely to come across negative comments than positive comments.  If I were to hazard a guess, I would say that the buyers/customers are more likely to discount the statements from the company and value the comments of the dis-satisfied customers more.  This is true even when customers have no context on the percentage of buyers with a negative experience. 

The smart marketer has a challenge of not only building a persona, providing content about their product but also framing the negative comments in the right context. Many research studies have shown the consumers are more likely to disregard a negative comment if they have a favorable view based on their experience.     A recent study released by http://www.conecomm.com/contentmgr/showdetails.php/id/4008 showed that 4 out 5 buyers changed their mind about buying a product based on negative customer comments.

Here are few suggestions for the savvy marketer to combat negative comments (source: http://sloanreview.mit.edu/article/what-influences-customers-online-comments/)

1. Be prepared to act. Monitoring the conversations taking place online can be very beneficial for a social media strategist who knows how to interpret what he or she hears and is prepared to act on it. While product managers have been known to modify their product strategy in light of what they hear online, social media strategists can also respond to the online chatter by managing the social media environment in such a way that healthy social dynamics are fostered.

2. Encourage the less involved to post. Less involved customers tend to be more favorable, while more involved customers tend to be more critical. If you’re trying to foster a positive tone, incentives for posting reviews should be provided to the more casual customers.

3. Don’t be afraid of disagreements. While disagreement among opinions tends to attract more negative posters, it also fosters more discussion. This insulates product sales from a few uncharacteristically negative opinions.

4. Resist the temptation to try to manipulate opinions with artificially positive reviews. An online opinion forum tends to take on a life of its own. While the temptation is high to strategically manipulate expressed opinions, the benefits in terms of product sales are limited — not to mention the steep downsides associated with the legal ramifications and the potential for negative publicity.

Facebook ads are transforming B2C marketing. With 800 million users, facebook has claimed loud and clear that 80% of its revenue will come from ads when it went to IPO May 2012. In about one year, we have seen overwhelming number of small, medium and large firms advertise on facebook. There are obvious reasons for that, firstly, facebook is the leading social media network, no company can pass the temptation of 800 million usage base, secondly, it's cost effective based on pay per click payment method, thirdly, it's customizable. But, is it too much? What needs to be done to make sure it does not backfire your company image? Your company will need a dedicated member of staff who can monitor and respond to posts on a regular basis.Your support staff must either rectify the customers issue on Facebook or direct them to a support e-mail address via your website. Deleting the users comment is a BIG NO NO and can back fire. Lack of interaction on Facebook and not publishing regular content can reflect very poorly on a business. A Facebook page is not just something to create and then forget about. You need to be committed - post regular updates to your fans and provide useful content.

In this digital age, remind ourselves the importance of having a technological foundation

"Labdoo's Missions is to use grassroots, decentralized, social networking tools to efficiently bring excess laptops to children in the developing world without wasting additional Earth resources."


Unlike the technology 20 years ago, it has evolved that allows individuals to do what we thought  was impossibles years ago. Social network is one of them. People around the world use social network services such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn to connect with others and communicate real-time and dynamically to accelerate their business . Moreover, social network can expand scalability once one  established the right infrastructure. This means there is no limit how many people are in the system and amount of data is exchange (as long as they expand the capacity of the server, hardware, etc). Many individuals and businesses utilize those platforms to market their business.

At the same time, the current technology allows individuals to easily develop their "own" social network that fits their business needs and operation. Labdoo is a young NPO based in California, operating all around the world to provide laptops to children in the developing world. The laptop becomes a tool enhancing their educational experiences. The organization focuses on creating their infrastructure, specifically its social network site that provides most efficient way for the different types of users to communicate. Once the framework is developed, it can withhold number of its users and transactions, and can reach out to any people with internet access. Sudden increase in the users and transactions has not impact on the growth on its operation.

Business can have smart and wonderful mission and business model. But without strong technological foundation, the ideas are hard to implement. What we need to remind ourselves is that regardless of what digital and technological tool one choose, one cannot underestimate the power of IT, and has to always consider IT strategy while developing business and digital marketing plans for longterm growth and sustainability.

Is this the future of window shopping ?

Kate Spade opens 24 hour shoppable window as a way to deliver the ecommerce experience in a very new way. 

Shopping takes place through a large touch screen display. Customers can browse the entire collection and get specific product information.

The checkout process simply requires entering a mobile phone number. A confirmation text is sent and following approval, a messenger will deliver the products within select NYC areas within an hour for free. Just like a take-out food order, payment happens upon delivery.

The four window stores will be open 24 hours a day between June 8th and July 7th 2013. You can find the list of locations here.

Is this digital purchase experience purely promotional or something we will see with other retailers? Ebay Now delivers within hours of your purchase. Surely on-demand-toyour-doorstep shopping is here to stay.