Blab was shut down the other day. You may be forgiven for having no idea what I'm talking about. (Though I did touch on Blab in an earlier post.) While a few large brands (e.g., ESPN, Adobe) jumped on board the Blab livestreaming train, it never become a go-to...
Independent Thinking Blog
Innovation
Are You Telling Customers What They Need to Know?
Your marketing is awesome. Your website looks great. The descriptions are descriptive. The photos are top quality. The colors are realistic. And the e-commerce piece is working without a hitch, Your marketing may be awesome -- but is it effective? Here's a quick case...
Will Chatbots Solve Customer Service?
Comcast received a lot of praise at one time for being an early adopter of Twitter for customer service. Really, people said nice things about the company. Look it up. If you took to Twitter, you could get "escalated" help. Otherwise? Good luck. We talk a lot about...
Publishing Platforms & Your Business
Do you publish? If so, where? The folks at Atomic Reach asked me to be the guest on a Twitter chat about publishing platforms to grow your business. Because I had to pull together some ideas on the topic, I thought I'd share them with you here. That fact that more and...
The Growing Importance of Voice Recognition
I think I'm in love, and her name is Alexa. Alexa is the voice of Amazon's Echo. I purchased an Echo recently to start to understand how voice recognition and connected devices are going to change the way we live and work. Make no mistake, this stuff will be...
These 22 Trends Point to the Future of Business
Look no further to understand the future of business. Wired has released its 2nd annual list of the people creating the future of business. The magazine calls them "the unsung creative, technical, and social visionaries working to bring the incredible world of...
4 Reasons + 8 Ways to Use Text Messaging
Call it text messaging. Or call it SMS. Or just send a text, maybe without using periods. Actually, you want to send a text. A friend of mine just redesigned his company's mobile app to embed text communications. He figured out what a lot of businesses have been slow...
Social Media Productivity Hacks 5
I’m using the phrase “productivity hacks” because it sounds a lot sexier than saying “tools I found online to help me do my job a little better or a little easier.” And, yes, my best hacking days (such that they exist) are ahead of me. This edition is all about design...
The Employee Engagement Disconnect
Are you doing right by your organization or by your customers? These should be the same thing. An "and" not an "or." The answer should be "both." What improves the business should also improve the people the business serves. I don't care if you're selling widgets,...
Why You Need to Pay Attention to Livestreaming
Livestreaming has arrived. In my last post, I talked about dark social, one of the two seemingly diametrical evolving trends in the digital space. Now I want to talk about live everywhere. Don't confuse the livestream with video. Video has been a hot trend on...