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I’ve been pretty busy the last few weeks. Who hasn’t I suppose. Here’s a rundown of some of the highlights

Conversation with Allaire Diamond

My friend Allaire is finishing up her graduate degree at the University of Vermont where she studies non-timber uses for forests. All the foraging, crafting and other uses for land that don’t involve chainsaws. Meghan, Allaire and myself were having a tea and conversation hang out and came up with some thoughts on combining technology and social networks to help connect people to their landscape. Sort of a localism for rural environments and field observation.It’s these sort of conversations that really get me going; synthesizing two or three disciplines to see what sort of meaning and overlap occurs.

Strategy development for media property in a post-television world

I’ve been working a lot on putting all the ducks in a row for a children’s media property. Assembling all the revenue streams, operations pipelines and marketing strategy for making a business (as opposed to straight licensing to a television network). It’s a lot of fun to work on this and you’ll definitely be hearing more about it over time. I’m not withholding details to be “hush hush,” I just want to have something more solid to show off later.

Hanging out and listening

I attended a well-organized (thanks Nicole!) Tweetup where I got to talk to former co-workers, new and old #BTV twitterati and have a good time. Tweetups are fun because in many ways, the participants have so little in common: they all use an internet-enabled publishing tool. But they might be non-profit workers, PR workers, artists, general business folks, education employees etc. So there’s lots of room for mixing up ideas.

I also made it to a Last Monday Interactive event and heard the full rundown on Vermont Film Incentive and how it didn’t make it through the legislature this year. Getting ideas and insight into the process is always eye-opening. I also got to grill a great Etsy shop-owner for ideas that I’ll be using with the childrens media property.

I had a slew of one-on-one meetings, lunches and coffee dates with area tech-heads and marketers. It was a great work for socializing with the weather getting nice around here.

Helping out

I was given the opportunity to present at the Burlington Women’s Small Business Program again this year. My topic was internet marketing and I start them out at the very beginning (you need to buy a domain name and get some web hosting) and then go as far as I can. I’ll be parsing out the slides and presentation and putting it here over the next few weeks. Speaking to that group is always fun because each of the participants has a different business and focus. Hearing how they solve problems and what questions they ask helps me remember what it’s like for people who don’t have their head in the code all the time.

Reading

I plowed through Guy Kawasaki‘s “Art of the Start” (for some of the pitching activities I’m involved in) and it was great. I’m probably going to be referring back to that frequently. Funny story about how I obtained the book. I went to Borders on Church Street to get it and at the checkout they did the usual “Do you have your Borders Rewards Card?” to which I said “No but I know my email address” and they took that and then when I asked about the discount was informed that they don’t give the discount unless I can remember the exact amount the discount was for. What’s the point of me being in the rewards program if I don’t get the rewards? I checked the book out of the library.

I’m also reading Osinga’s book about the strategic theory of John Boyd. Anyone who has talked with me for long knows how much I love the OODA loop. It’s great to have a dissertation on how the theory was put together, exploring the finer details.

Note: This is part of my speaking notes for the Women’s Small Business Program of Burlington Vermont.

Reach: how many people come into contact with your message.

Now that we know why we would want to use a consumer behavior model, let’s start understanding the RAECS model. The first phase of the RAECS model is Reach. Before you “reach” people, they don’t know about you or your message or your product or campaign or anything. You don’t have much of a chance to form a business relationship with them because they don’t know about your offer yet. Your message hasn’t reached them yet.

Read the rest of this entry »

Note: This post is part of my speaking notes for the Women’s Small Business Program in Burlington Vermont.

Getting the most from your web efforts: Understanding the RAECS behavior model

A consumer behavior model helps content producers make the right things for the right people by matching the content produced with behaviors exhibited by people coming into contact with the content. If you want to be able to measure the effectiveness of the stuff you’re making or if you want to learn from how people behave in relation to the stuff you’re making, then having a consumer behavior model is going to help. Read the rest of this entry »

I’m getting ready for a presentation on using the web to market a business to the Women’s Small Business Program in Burlington, Vermont. One of the things I’ll most certainly talk about is the “consumer behavior model” I tend to use: Reach, Acquisition, Engagement, Conversion and Satisfaction.

I first learned of the first four phases of this model from Justin Cutroni, web analyst and partner at EpikOne. I bolted on the last one, Satisfaction, because it helps with some of the media work I’m doing lately and I think it will complement the other four well.

I originally developed this slide deck to give in the hallways of BloggerConnect in New York, January 2009. I showed it to several people using my iPod Touch and they let me know that it was helpful. I’ve since revised the deck to include a slide about Satisfaction and include all the fancy links at the end.

Notes on the slides:

1. What’s a consumer behavior model? Learn why having a well-aligned consumer behavior model might provide your business with a strategic advantage.
2. Reach: how many people see your message Learn what Reach is, how to measure it and how to use it to take action.

Over the next few days I’ll be making explanatory posts for each of the slides in the deck.