Danny Brown

podcaster - author - creator

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Remembering Jacob Weiskopf – A Personal Post for National Suicide Prevention Week

“Phoebus is dead, ephebe. But Phoebus was a name for something that could never be named…the sun must bear no name, golden flourisher, but be in the difficulty of what it is to be.” – Wallace Stevens

Life at 17 is meant to be so different. You’re young; vibrant; full of life; a whole new world awaits you.

The cute boys and girls awaiting you at college; the adventures you’re going to have in your first car; the experiments in forbidden fruit; the sports you’re going to excel at or the geekdom you’re going to embrace instead (or maybe both).

17 is a time for celebration; it shouldn’t be about being remembered for the things you enjoyed and feeling helpless and bitter for the ones you were yet to discover.

Remembering Jacob Weiskopf

Jacob Weiskopf was just 17 when he took his own life a few short months ago on July 19. The son of my friend Anne Weiskopf, everyone that knew him spoke of him through fond and special words.

When I was driving home from work early last night, there was a single star in the sky. Normally it would have been too light out to see any stars, but this one was was the brightest I’ve ever seen. To Jacob, the baddest bitch in heaven – you outshine everyone else. I hope you know how much we all love and miss you.

Jacob was the best at weird compliments/declarations of affection.?My two personal favorites that he used on me were: ?”You’re my heroine and crack”?and ?”You know I love you more than Lana loves sweaters that fit well”.

I met Jacob when he was a patient in my office. So full of laughter and always smiling. I came to love that young man as if he were my own. Every time he came in he would come around to my desk and say “here I am” and I would get the biggest hug. Always made my day.

He had a cat named Obi Wan?? Why am I just finding out about this? Omg… This makes me love him that much more.

These are just a few of the words taken from the wall of the In Memory of Jacob Facebook group set up after Jacob’s death. Looking through the assortment of pictures and memories shows a young man full of life, happy and mischievous.

In memory of Jacob Weiskopf

Sadly, like many others that shine bright on the outside, on the inside Jacob battled the darkness of depression. Despite the love and support surrounding him, and the arms that were ready to catch him every time he fell, on July 19 Jacob’s depression won the battle. His smile and infectious character was gone.

But we can help his memory live on, and help others that take their own lives through depression, through a special project by the IMAlive project.

Giving Hope and Strength to Others

The Kristin Brooks Hope Center operates a service called IMAlive. It?s?the first online crisis chat centre?- a place where people in dire need?can get instant help from trained volunteers. It?s not a cure-all; it?s?first aid that can help someone get to more lasting assistance.

While anyone can use the IMAlive service, it may be particularly useful for young people. And young people are especially vulnerable to depression and suicidal.

  • More than 1 in 10 young people in the US have a depressive disorder.
  • Depression can lead to distorted thought patterns and suicidal thoughts and behaviours.
  • Suicide is the tenth most common cause of death in the United States?and Canada.
  • For every death from suicide, 11 attempts are made.
  • Only homicide and traffic accidents cause more death among those 15-24 in the US.
  • Providing information about care resources and referral to professional is an effective way of preventing a suicide attempt.
  • 11 % of young people in the US have a depressive disorder, and suicide in in the top three causes of death for those 15-24.

But the good news is that treatments and support are out there that can help young people deal with their depression.?And you can help.

The IMAlive 24-7 Giving Challenge?gives those who are at their lowest ebb access to trained volunteers online. A chat may be the first step to help, and the end of a downward spiral.

If we can raise $50,000, the Kristin Brooks Hope Centre will be able to keep their chat service up and running 24 hours per day, 7 days per week, until next August. Currently, the total stands at just shy of $25,000, with a little less than a week to go.

Here’s how you can help:

I?m a member of Team Jacob, a group of people touched by the loss of?Jacob Weiskopf.?We?re participating because we want?to help keep young people like Jacob around as long as we possibly can.?Your donation can help IMAlive reach that goal.

Do it. Click here, or use the special Team Jacob widget below, to?donate between September 8 and 14, National Suicide Prevention Week in the US.?There are prizes and draws for donors. If you?re interested in those you?can learn more at the Challenge home page.

As someone who’s spoken about my own suicide attempt when I was just a few years older than Jacob, I know how important a project this would be for people in that situation.

Thank you. Your donation may be the difference between grief and joy.

Social Business or Humanizing Your Business Through Social?

Along with the term Big Data, “Social Business” has become one of the terms du jour when it comes to how organizations work.

Several agencies and organizations have come up with their definitions of what a social business is.

As we begin to be able to measure the degree to which employees collaborate in helpful ways through social technology, we will be able to build improved reward mechanisms to drive the desired behaviours and break down long-standing cultural barriers. Nigel Fenwick, VP and Principal Analyst, Forrester.

An organization must promote a business culture of transparency and trust from senior leadership to those working in the field. It must work to encourage a culture of sharing as well, employees need to feel comfortable sharing their sentiment and collaborating across teams and departments. Sandy Carter, VP, IBM.

Stop focusing on the technology and move into?how people work… [in] their day-to-day tasks. Luis Suarez, Social Computing Evangelist, IBM.

A social business is something altogether different as it embraces introspection and extrospection to reevaluate internal and external processes, systems, and opportunities to transform into a living, breathing entity that adapts to market conditions and opportunities. Brian Solis, Principal, Altimeter Group.

As you can see, there are several takes on what defines a social business, yet they all have a common theme – the people behind the business.

It’s these people that both agencies and organizations alike are recognizing the need to empower with decisions and deeper interactions within the business, and to be able to do the work they’re best at and be provided with the tools – more often than not, social tools – to help them do just that.

Make that happen, and you have a far better culture, internally and externally. Achieve that culture, achieve more success.

Except, that’s not really what a social business is all about – instead, that’s more about humanizing your business through social collaboration. And there’s a difference.

A True Social Business

Perhaps it shouldn’t be too surprising that so many seem willing to jump onto the social business definition as the one highlighted by the above examples. After all, social media has been a constant when it comes to definitions outside original scopes:

    • Return on anything (Relationship, Influence, Connection, Empathy, etc.) except what matters to the bottom line – Investment;

 

  • Explosion in marketing terms (Content, Influence, Social, Social Media, Empathy, Relationship, etc.). Even though they all have a singular goal – results through marketing.

These are just two areas where social has – forced or otherwise – changed the language while not really changing the methodology or meaning behind the new terms. Social business is a little different, though.

A true social business isn’t about using collaboration, social tools and technology to improve the culture of an organization. Instead, a true social business can be defined as such:

[A business] created and designed to address a social problem (with social being societal).

[A business that is] a non-loss, non-dividend company (either financially self-sustainable, or profits are reinvested in the business, or used to start another one, with the aim of increasing social impact).

The above descriptions of what a social business looks like come from Nobel Peace Prize laureate, Professor Muhammed Yunus.

Muhammed Yunus

Given that the actual term “social business” was defined perfectly in his books Creating a World Without Poverty – Social Business and the Future of Capitalism (PublicAffairs, 2009)?and?Building Social Business – The New Kind of Capitalism That Serves Humanity’s Most Pressing Needs (PublicAffairs, 2011), I think it’s fair to say these definitions are the ones that truly identify what a social business is, and does.

Adding to this perception of social business are respected business professionals across various sectors.

That’s how I define it – not the social media one. Doing social good while making a profit. It’s why I love Beloved Beadwork in South Africa; they are a true social business and I love their energy and drive to make the world a better place. Anne Marie van den Hurk, Principal, Mind the Gap PR.

Unfortunately, web marketers got hold of the term and confused the meaning. Jon Aston, Consultant and Social Change Agent.

So if the definition of social business is that of a business looking to make a social impact, and better the world around them, where does that leave today’s term and its buzz?

Humanizing Your Business to Be More Social

Perhaps agencies and organizations need to look just a little more closely at their definition of a social business. By doing so, they’ll realize that what they’re actually referring to is two separate yet complementary terms – humanizing and socializing.

In their excellent book Humanize – How People-Centric Organizations Succeed in a Social World (Que, 2011), authors Maddie Grant and Jamie Notter?share their years of combined experience in changing organizational culture to be more about its people.

In detailed analysis, Grant and Notter highlight why organizations struggle in today’s socially-savvy world, and where they need to improve. From the book:

We like being human. We like having the capacity to publish our own thoughts and to create things and share them with the people in our communities who actually matter to us. One of the reasons social media has grown so fast is that it taps into what we, as humans, naturally love and need and want to do – create, share, connect, relate.

Our organizations, however, are not as enthusiastic. We see the potential that social media has for our organizations, because of the energy and attention social media attracts, but we are having a hard time trying to fit these new practices into our existing systems. The challenge is to make our organizations more human.

Grant and Notter go on to break down what this challenge looks like, and how to overcome it.

By diving into all facets of the organization – Human Resources, management, hierarchy, silos, behavioural management, and decentralizing closed cultures for open ones – Humanize becomes the essential roadmap to change culture through collaboration and social tools.?Sound familiar?

Yep, it’s exactly what today’s “social business” definition looks like.?The closest organizational comparison to the social business meaning as defined by Yunus is “social enterprise”.

[A term used to describe] commercial activity by socially-minded organizations. -?Wikipedia.

For example, a social enterprise may run employment schemes and opportunities to help those that would normally come up against barriers to that work. Additionally, by supporting the local community or sponsoring aid programs either at home or abroad, organizations can write off certain income and reinvest.

Having said that, even a true social enterprise goes beyond these two examples.

[A social enterprise] applies commercial strategies to maximize improvements in human and environmental well-being, rather than maximizing profits for external shareholders. Social enterprises can be structured as a for-profit or non-profit, and may take the form of a co-operative, mutual organization, a disregarded entity,?a social business, or a charity organization. – Wikipedia.

Which closes the loop and circles back to Muhammed Yunus’s definition of a social business.

The Future of Business is Social. Or Humanizing. Or Both

That’s not to say that businesses need to reconsider calling what they do today “social business”. After all, they may have a philanthropic involvement with either the local community or a need further afield.

Perhaps they allow employees time off for community projects, or they allocate their Christmas Party money to the local food bank. At its heart, these are the actions of a true social business.

But let’s not confuse how organizations are creating culture changes (humanizing their business) with real societal impact (social business) by and for business owners, employees and stakeholders.

The world of social media consultants and agencies already have enough adoptions of differing terminologies – it’d be nice to keep one that really matters true to itself.

image: James Dellow

Without Context, Data is Meaningless

There’s a big push at the minute by marketers and technology vendors around the concept and importance of Big Data. Run a Google Search for the term and the resulting titles of posts, articles or books speak for themselves:

  • Big Data: The Next Frontier for Innovation, Competition and Productivity;
  • Big Data: A Revolution That Will Transform How We Live, Work and Think;
  • Big Data Transforms Business;
  • Put a Fork In Big Data – It’s Done (just to balance the positive/negative results).

So, Big Data is clearly big business, and – with more than 1.7 billion search results – something that businesses are looking to understand, come to grips with and benefit from.

That’s understandable – after all, the potential of Big Data is huge. In March 2012, no less an institution than the White House itself announced the Big Data Research and Development Initiative.

So, yes, Big Data = Big News.

The thing is, though, while access to such huge amounts of data helps us be better marketers and – by association – better businesses, there’s also the danger that we let this data inform our decisions, without stopping to think of that most important aspect of any data analysis – context.

Context Drives Educated and Informed Decisions

Think of any major decision you’ve made in life, either personally or professionally. While there will be examples of impulse buys or snap decisions made in the heat of the moment, the majority of your actions will be based on the context surrounding them.

  • I wanted the sports car, but it wasn’t kid-friendly;
  • Job A offered more money, but Job B offered me deeper satisfaction;
  • The penthouse condo in the city offered amazing views, but the suburb neighbourhood was safer.

Three very simple examples of decisions that looked at the bigger picture of context, and took into account the long-term view versus the short-term buzz. Each option would satisfy our basic instincts, but the latter option of each choice is the one I’d go for based on its deeper context.

It’s simple economics of educated decisions, based on the data available – yet as the following examples show, context is still being missed where it’s needed the most.

Visual Data is Great, Real Data is Better

Professional social network LinkedIn is continuously looking to increase connections and the viability of its service with new additions, some useful, others less so. At least, currently.

One of the new features they’ve released is the visual ability to see who’s viewed your updates, and how far they’ve spread. Visually, it’s pretty cool, as can be seen below:

LinkedIn Visual Data

The problem is, functionality-wise, it’s very limited.

While the image on the left tells me my update had 536 views, it doesn’t allow me to dive into the data to see who actually viewed the update. The same with the image on the right – I can’t click into the big purple circle to identify the type of people viewing my content.

The potential for this visual data is obvious – I can see if I’m attracting my target audience to my content – either potential clients or new employers – and, by having access to this information, tailor my sharing even more, as well as connect with these folks in particular.

It’s not just LinkedIn that’s missing the importance of context, though. Check out the image below from technology vendor Jugnoo?(click to expand):

Visual data screen

The results are from a search around the words “social business”, and show not only the main keywords around the topic, but also who’s discussing them, via what platform, and the time they’re most likely to be discussed.

This basic data offers a simple overview of that particular search – but where’s the bigger context?

For example, you can see that “business” is the most discussed word, and then I’ve highlighted “product”, “agencies”, “customers” and “platform”. As you can see from the two yellow circles I’ve overlaid, a couple of people are in multiple results. So what’s the context behind that?

  • Is it because they’re connected to these different communities?
  • Is it because they’re seen as influential around these joint topics?
  • Is it because they’re more active than the other profiles?

Again, these are simple questions, but ones that the software doesn’t answer, or at least attempts to help with. Because of this, other software and analysis is needed to see how valuable these folks might be to my business.

That’s not to advocate lazy marketing, nor to forget about the legwork that real analysis requires. But if a software tool can’t provide further context around the solution it offers, why use that platform at all?

Dig Deeper, Think Bigger

And this is where Big Data’s main weakness can be found – it’s encouraging lazy solutions that seem to offer reams of data, but in reality offer very little. By doing so, it’s impacting the true potential of Big Data when used properly.

It’s this type of limitation that’s attracting valid critique of Big Data.

In his 2013 paper entitled Big Data for Development: From Information to Knowledge Societies, Martin Hilbert raised the concern that Big Data-led decisions are “informed by the world as it was in the past, or, at best, as it currently is.”

Last year, Harvard Business Review published an article, Good Data Won’t Guarantee Good Decisions, which highlighted the bigger issues around the data available to us today.

For all the breathless promises about the return on investment in Big Data, however, companies face a challenge. Investments in analytics can be useless, even harmful, unless employees can incorporate that data into complex decision making.?Meeting these challenges requires anthropological skills and behavioral understanding?traits that are often in short supply in IT departments.

Simply put, we can have all the data in the world available to us, but unless we understand the context in which it’s presented, and the actions that will drive based on our analysis, we’re as effective as driving at night with the lights off.

It’s up to us to think bigger when it comes to Big Data, and start providing the context and meaning behind it, as opposed to just the “But it looks cool, right?” mindset that seems popular today.

Challenge on.

image: Kris Krug

Why Our User Experience Should Be Determined by Data

Anyone that follows this blog regularly will know there’s a wee bit of a running joke at how often the site design changes.

What started out as a semi-regular update (say, once or twice a year) to keep the look fresh, and the content front and centre, has become almost as regular an occasion as Facebook platform updates messing up everyone’s privacy settings.

Now, while I’m really happy with the current design and the way everything flows, there’s a reason behind the recent design changes, tweaks, and community feedback – simply, data informs our decisions and user experience.

Yes, gut instinct comes into play too, but when it comes to content and how that’s displayed and acted upon, for me data analysis, community feedback and AB testing is key. Here’s why.

The Data of Trends

The world is ever-changing. What we found popular and best practices 10 years ago is nothing like the best practices and popular trends of today. Heck you could halve that timescale at least, and find we move in a constantly-changing cycle of new trends, methodologies and preferences.

This is particularly true when it comes to content.

While there are several areas where the consumption of content has changed in recent years – curation, syndication, and accessibility, for example – perhaps the biggest game changer is how advanced mobile browsing has become. For example, in a study from June this year of U.S. consumer habits:

  • 76% access social networks, with 46% using a mobile browser versus an app;
  • 68% access news sites, with 63% using a mobile browser versus an app;
  • 56% watch video, with 58% preferring to use a mobile browser versus an app;
  • 41% read/access blogs, with a whopping 75% using a mobile browser versus an app.

Make no mistake, mobile is fast becoming the default browsing option for many of the platforms where we create and share content today. If we’re not ready for that, we’ll lose visitors, readers, subscribers and customers.

Web access preferences

From my own analytics, mobile visitors now make up 27% of my audience. If my site wasn’t set up to accommodate these folks, that’s a big potential loss in traffic just waiting to happen.

From that angle, and from the continued advances in the way people consume content on the web, the move to responsive design was key.

The Data of Analytics

I’m a data geek. It’s what got me into marketing to begin with, and it’s what drives me today. By understanding the data we have access to, we can make informed decisions on pretty much everything around us.

When it comes to content, that’s a given – or should be. It’s the one single biggest piece of advice I recommend whenever people are talking about blogging, whether they’re new bloggers-to-be, or existing ones: always be tracking and watching your analytics.

Analytics are key for several reasons:

  • They offer knowledge into how your content is being received and where it’s lacking;
  • They offer information about your visitors and their behaviour on your blog (entry point, pages visited, actions taken, exit points);
  • They offer actionable insights into improving your audience reach, interaction and participation (comments, shares, subscribers, downloads);
  • They offer opportunities to new audiences, based on external discussions (trackbacks, bookmarks, referrals).

Simply put, without analytics, you’re essentially producing content in the dark, whether that be blogging, video production, podcasting, or similar. And if you’re doing that, you’re wasting good resources that could be put to better use elsewhere.

From my own analytics of the first half of this year, the following became clear:

  • While traffic was good, people weren’t staying on site long enough;
  • The entry page was usually the same as the exit one, so people weren’t exploring;
  • My bounce rate (how long people stay on site) was horrendous.

DB JanJun13

Digging deeper into my analytics, especially around the stats highlighted here as concern areas – Pages Visited, Duration of Visit and Bounce Rate – a few things became clear.

  • The incentive to check out other pages wasn’t prominent enough;
  • Certain “drivers of traffic” were doing anything but (more on that shortly);
  • The content wasn’t conducive to long stays and participation.

Clearly things had to change. So they did.

  • I changed to a design that had a sticky navigation menu, where the Page tabs would follow you all the way down the post. This increased additional page clicks;
  • I stopped using Triberr, the content curation / blogger platform;
  • I deliberately changed to longer form content, as opposed to the standard 300-600 word approach.

The results? While it’s just one month’s analysis, they’re encouraging (click to expand).

Dashboard Danny Brown

As you can see, the three key metrics I wanted to improve have done so:

  • Pages per Visit rose from 1.40 to 2.23;
  • Average visit duration rose from 1.09 to 1.37;
  • Bounce rate dropped from 81.45% to 35.68%.

Now, it’s early days, but the signs are good. If I keep tracking where visitors hover their mouse/keypad, and what actions encourage them to stay on-site, I can optimize even further and improve these stats even more.

The Triberr thing? I applaud the guys over there for what they’re trying to do for bloggers, but I’ve been finding – both myself, and with other bloggers I talk to – that Triberr is referring less traffic, and simply adding to social proof. ?The number of tweets may be up, but the desired action – traffic to the blog – isn’t.

Indeed, Triberr placed at a lowly #73 for traffic sources, and accounted for a mere 9 visits in the last 30 days.

Triberr Google Analytics

Then again, looking a little bit deeper into one of the larger Tribes I was part of, it perhaps shouldn’t come as a surprise that the level of traffic provided by Triberr was so low.

Triberr inactivity

As you can see, the activity within the group is very low, and it almost appears that people have left, or forgotten about the group, or simply don’t share anymore.

Looking at my own Google Analytics, visits from Triberr had a high bounce rate and low site duration time, so by removing that option, it added to the positive impact on these stats.

However, this is my own experience, and I’m sure Triberr woks well for some folks.

The Data of Community

For any content creator, but especially bloggers, the community around the content is hugely important to the success of the blog. Without a community, there’s pretty much nothing there except a part of the web that’s for an audience of one.

From regular readers to occasional commenters, and discussions elsewhere via Twitter discussions, Google+ threads, Facebook wall comments, etc., a community not only helps promote content, but improve its creation as well as its presentation.

This was evident from the excellent feedback and suggestions I received when I implemented my new design last week. After finishing, I dropped an update on my social networks, asking for thoughts, feedback and suggestions – and got great advice.

    • On Google+, marketer and blogger Ana Hoffman mentioned the font size of the headlines looked great on mobile, but looked too big via desktop browsing. After analyzing, I agreed, and dropped the pixel size down a few points. And Ana was right!

 

  • On Twitter and by email, social strategist Mila Araujo really delivered, with some great advice on dropping the Archives tab for a Topics one (to improve access to content), as well as advising of some areas that weren’t showing up on mobile. This information helped immensely, as did the suggestions to offer a separate tab for each of my books, particularly useful for mobile browsing.

By asking for, and acting upon, the fresh eyes of my community and their suggestions to improve the user experience, I was tapping into a rich source of data that helped improve the presentation of the content here, which should (hopefully) build upon the improvements on how it’s consumed.

Data is Everything and Everything is Data

Like I said at the start of this post, I don’t discount gut instinct at all when it come to making decisions. Some of the best experiences in my life happened because I acted on gut instinct over logical reasoning.

But for content, or for anything that has some form of marketing slant, for me data is everything.

By utilizing the data I had access to – archival analytics, visitor behaviour, trends in browsing, etc – I could immediately see where changes needed to be made. By accessing the experience within the community around this blog, I had even more data points from which to make choices to.

For me, this is invaluable, and can only help us grow, improve, and continue to make the user experience more enjoyable. Which, at the end of the day, is what really matters, no?

image: Marketing Charts

Where Does Online Video Sit in Social Media for Marketers?

Video and social media

With the recent implementation of video posts for popular photo app Instagram, and the swift uptake of the Vine platform when it was released on iPhone and later Android, video has continued to make bigger inroads into the marketing tactics for brands and agencies alike.

Whereas previously marketing budgets would allocate a certain amount for professionally-filmed video for promotion and media ad spots, the rise of YouTube as a content-rich medium for brands saw tactics change.

Videos could be more “real”, with less focus on polish and more on the brand: its story, its products use cases and, most importantly, what its customers felt.

Big Things Can Come in Small Packages

This richer interaction has led the way for Vine’s short, snappy videos, which – despite early criticism of the six second limitations of the format – saw successes for brands that adapted to its style.

Instagram’s new video feature isn’t slouching when it comes to brand usage, either. Despite being later to the market , their longer videos – 15 seconds, compared to Vine’s six – has seen a variety of ways to showcase a brand’s message and culture.

These are just some examples of how brands are not only using video effectively for promotion, but using short-form video and making it count.

So how does this impact where marketers focus when it comes to integrating different tactics when it comes to social media?

The State of Video for Social Media 2013

A new mini-report from digital publishing company Uberflip shares some statistics regarding video’s continued ubiquity when it comes to online and social media crossover.

Using data from reports by Google, Forrester, ComScore, The Guardian and The Globe and Mail, they’ve compiled this overview into a short video that shows just how much we’re using video, both from a creation and curation standpoint.

Some of the key stats that stand out include:

Search Google for “online video marketing statistics” and you’ll get about 97 million results, with stats, figures, predictions and more around this ever-growing medium. Simply put, it’s about to be very big.

How this impacts your brand marketing is up to you – but as both the Vine and Instagram examples linked to in this post show, as well as the more traditional marketing videos, it’s an impact that is growing.

Are you ready for it?

[youtube]http://youtu.be/VyqD0Vzo_K8[/youtube]

image: Daniel Proulx