Author: Andrea Vascellari

Online Personal Marketing Strategy

Few weeks ago I was in Rome with my ‘Get the Best Out of Twitter‘ for the Ignite Italia -O’Reilly. Among the people I met at the event there was also Robin Good. Inspired by my presentation he decided to invite me for a nice walk at the Villa Borghese park and record a video interview focusing on:

  • What steps do you need to take to create a valuable online service or business
  • What’s the strategic approach that an individual can follow to create value, authority, credibility and the opportunity to make business online

Video highlights below. Enjoy it!

@Robin: Thanks for the great time, it was nice to see you again! 🙂

Andrea

Video highlights:

Anyone can do what she/he wants for a living

There is one thing that everybody should keep in mind. Nowadays, more than ever before, everyone has a chance of doing what he or she loves for a living.

Going Global

Why? Because we are going global. With a simple blog and few clicks you have the chance of connecting with the entire world. It’s definitely interesting period the one we are living in.

Being Passionate

At the base, before focusing on technology, it’s important to be really passionate about what you are doing. I see way too many people who are unsatisfied with their jobs, and I can’t stand that. Maybe it’s because I am an entrepreneur. I really do what I love. I love my job. That is what I am really passionate about in my life and I think everyone has some passions. I think they should go for it. Online you are instantly connected with the entire world. You will find other people that have your same passions becoming your target audience, whether you do it for business or not.

What you do doesn’t have to be necessarily related to business (it could non-profit etc.) but let’s say that you have the possibility of finding a place to express yourself. Usually, if something is done with passion, you have that drive to go on that usually other people do not have. It’s not going to be easy. Every time you do something, you will find roadblocks. Ultimately, passion is the drive that makes you go on. Nothing really starts or works in first place if you do not really want it badly.

Start By Listening

First thing you should do is to start by listening a little bit what’s going on and understanding who is already out there. Let’s say you want to start your own small business. You should carefully listen to which are the other players in your field and to understand in which environment you will have to move, because sometimes it will happen… you won’t be the first. You definitely have to pay attention to them, and then of course build a presence on the web that express your strategic communications plan. It doesn’t have to be just ‘a blog’, your online presence is going to be the gate between you and the world or your target audience, so it has to be done really carefully.

Jump Into The Conversation

After that, you can start to jump into the conversation that is happening out there – I do not want to say “join” the conversation, because I am sick of hearing it. Everyone is talking about “joining the conversation” and just few people actually do it. Anyway… you have to start to jump into that, where the conversation is already happening, with your audience, with people within your niche. After that, when you establish a basic connection with this environment that is out there, then you can start to be proactive.

Build Trust, Engage Deeper

Once the trust is built, then you can start to engage at a deeper level and eventually this will translate into business. It could also be just for a passion or for the organization you are working for. It just depends on which is your focus and what are your objectives.

When Does The Money Show Up?

The money comes after you establish a real connection with your audience, after your target audience trusts you. The money will come after, as a consequence.

I tell you an example.

Every time I go to Venice – I come from Venice region in Italy – I go to the market on Friday morning. I go there and buy some good fresh fish. There are tons of people that are selling fish, but I always go to the same lady. There is no way I can go and buy fish from anyone else, because I bought fish from her for years.

How she convinced me at first?

  • observing the crowd and stopping me when she noticed that I need some fish,
  • showing me the really good fish she had,
  • why would have been better to buy from her and not from others,
  • giving me good tips on how to cook fish, and so on.

She established a real emotional connection, so I trusted her and I became her client.

You can basically do the same online. At that point – after you have built all these connections – is where the money is going to come. It’s going to be a consequence.

Word of Mouth

Another important thing is what you call in Italian “il passaparola“, the power of word of mouth. Happy clients will talk to other potential clients and they will bring them to you. It’s going to be also your community that will help you and your business grow.

The Trust Circle

What is it?
Relationships that people have on the web can be described with concentric circles. The innermost represents the people we trust the most, our closest friends. When we start to move out from that close group of people, our trust starts to fade away until we reach the point in which we start to rely more on the opinions of ‘experts’ or more authoritative and recognized voices in that space.

Update based on comments: Existence of multiple groups of circles around each individual. Each one of these groups is dedicated to a specific niche (professional, personal life, etc.). Although certain contacts can be present on different groups, according to the niche we are looking at they can have a different level of influence/trust.

Why it’s important?
The understanding of the trust circle dynamics can offer great positioning advantages for brands, strategists and other communications practitioners. Understand where you are standing or where you should eventually be helps the listening process, the engagement, the acquisition, the support and the retention of your target audience.

Take this as a conversation starter. What would you add to it? What’s your take?

I’d love to hear your thoughts here in the comments or via twitter @vascellari (remember to link to this post!).

Andrea

How to use Google Calendar as Project Management Tool

Featured on Lifehacker Top Stories
Featured on Lifehacker

Do you need a great tool to better manage your team, timelines, deadlines, relevant project’s data for you and for your clients? Here’s how Google Calendar can help you out.

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Create a calendar for each project – To preserve client privacy I temporarily changed the title of each calendar you see in this first screenshot. The syntax though remains the same, ‘year’ (11=2011, 10=2010, etc.) and then the ‘name of the project’. Using a proper syntax helps you to keep your calendar in order and makes them easier to browse/search.

Sharing – Share the calendar with the members of your team involved in the project. You can even share calendars with clients if they express the need to monitor the stream of activities and project deadlines. I’ve been in this situation a couple of times.

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Timeline – By placing the tasks on the calendar you’ll automatically turn each calendar into a detailed project’s timeline. I found the ‘agenda’ view particularly valuable because it gives a clear overview of the upcoming deadlines you have set.

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Manage client access – Like I said above when I was talking about ‘sharing’, sometimes you can plan to give (or the clients want to have) access to the calendar/timeline. A problem I faced is that in complex projects you might want to create two versions of the calendar. One for the team with the technical details they need/want to edit during the project development, and a second one for the client with all its relevant information (periodic results, deadlines, key data, meetings, etc.). On larger projects you can create dedicated calendars for multiple teams, too.



Problem solving – With every project comes a good number of problems, roadblocks or issues. Often these issues are spotted by members of the team while they are taking care of their tasks. What can be done? The member of the team that is facing the problem writes it in the calendar as an ‘all day’ entry adding his/her name next to it. Other members of the team, that can/know how to solve the issue, take care of it or write on the entry tips on how to solve it. Once the problem is solved the entry will be marked as FIXED. If  at the end of the day the problem is still not fixed, it can be moved (click & drag) to the next day or to a different date. I know that at first this might not sound easy or natural but I can guarantee you that, once you get into it, it will help you working faster and better with your team. It’s like an open and on-going problem solving channel. Of course, the internal organization of how and who takes care of solving problems can change from company to company and team to team. You can really take this to the next level by enabling your team to add the ‘mobile’ component to it (check the links I shared at the end of this post to learn how to sync these features with your iPhone).

(again, to preserve client privacy I temporarily changed the date and subject of these entries)

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Hashtags # – I mentioned the use of hashtags for internal data management in a couple of other posts but I’ll bring it back in this one, too. Google calendar is searchable (I’ll never get tired to remind it!). This is very important because it turns our calendar into a database. Using hashtags in our calendar’s entries helps us in searching and tracking specific items over time. Use a unique hashtag for each project you work on. The tags are the same I use with my team in tweets and shared content (photos, video, etc.). Result? Whenever I search for a hashtag I’ll get a complete list of the performed tasks with relative date and time. Here’s where things get interesting, go on reading the next point…

Export data (PDF) – Every calendar, search results or specific layouts (day, week, month, 4 days, agenda) are printable and therefore exportable in PDF format. This is really handy when you need a summary of the work you’ve done (you can get it by searching for a specific hashtag related to a project) or for the list of future tasks of your project (printing/PDF the ‘agenda’ layout is what works at best for me). Believe it or not there might still be occasions in which people will ask you for a PDF version of the data. It happened to me with external teams and clients (especially government and public organizations, they often still need something to print out on paper. Well yes they could access it online but… you go and figure that out).

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What makes Google Calendar a great tool is its simplicity. I’m sure there are many other ways it can be used to help with project management. In this post I shared my tips & suggestions, what about yours?

If you liked this post you might be interested in also checking out:

How do you use it? How does Google Calendar help you in better managing your projects? Go ahead and share your experience in the comments here on the blog or via a quick “comment-ready-tweet” @vascellari!

Andrea

SWITCH 2010

May 15-16 2010 Coimbra (Portugal). I’ll be there to deliver a keynote at the SWITCH conference (disclosure: itive.net, my company, is official partner of the event).

The aim of the event is to gather scientists, entrepreneurs, do-ers, thinkers, technologists and everyone in between to discuss the present and the future in a knowledge and idea sharing experience. It will be all about diversity (of ideas, people and themes) and will count an amazing line of portuguese and international speakers.

Differently from many other events the tickets for SWITCH fit anyone’s budget (the organizers did a great work to make this possible) + they have a special offer for students. You can grab your tickets here!
If you want to find out more about the conference I suggest you to have a look at the official Twitter channel and Facebook page of the event.

For insights directly from the venue make sure to connect via twitter with me @vascellari (please, read my policy first) and of course with itive.net @itive 🙂
I’ll try to record my presentation so if won’t make it to Coimbra you’ll be able to watch it on-demand here on my blog. Stay tuned via RSS!

Andrea

Wind of Change Blowing on Content Producers

Photo by Martin-Neuhof

“Hey Andrea! When will you release a new post on your blog? Can’t wait for it!”
I’m happy when I receive direct messages like this one. Yes I will keep blogging, I’m just going through an intense period that doesn’t leave me much space for producing ‘free content’ here on my blog.

In the last 6 months business exploded for my team and me at itive. We are taking care of several new projects and have new clients waiting down the line to work with us. This period in which I’m living now got me thinking about the time I spend creating and sharing free value VS payed work for my clients.

The good side of the free content is that it helps me to share snippets of what I do with people who find value in it and end up contacting me when they need help with their marketing, PR, web design, etc. This ultimately translates in more work for my team. Sharing free content on my blog also gives me the chance to exchange thoughts, ideas, and opinions with you. Learning from each other is priceless. I am and will always be thankful for what I learned and will keep learning from our conversations.

On the other hand, the client work I do with itive is what ultimately puts food on the table and pays the bills. So when new projects come, I have to take care of them.

I see many other friends and colleagues changing their relationship with the free content they produce. Here are a few names:

The balance between investments in free VS payed is my dilemma and it’s not something that I extend to the people I listed. Someone might be drowning in new tight schedules, others have less or nothing more to say so they are reducing the amount of time for producing free content to leave space for other activities that add more value at a personal level or for the organization they are working for. Priority is shifting.

I feel that we (content producers) all have arrived to a point in which we are evaluating more carefully where to invest our time, energy and experience.

Am I going to start charing for my content?
I don’t think this will happend anytime soon. Part of the what I produce will keep being released for free, but recently I’ve been thinking about if/how this will change in future.

There’s a wind of change blowing in our industry that is making me and many other content producers think. Do you feel it? What’s your take? And if you are a content producer how are you dealing with it?

Andrea

[video] Branding Today – Keynote Shift Conference

Episode: VMC #223 – Branding Today – Keynote Shift Conference

This is the keynote I delivered today at the Shift Conference in Lisbon (Portugal).

The effective promotion of a brand, especially when you ‘do it yourself’ is about the understanding of the new environment in which we operate, the new technologies at our disposal and the way people want to be approached today. The understanding of these three points is fundamental but it doesn’t have to drive our attention away from the brand itself and from the essential aspects that make a brand unique and worthy of attention. Often times people get too caught up in the promotion of a brand without giving the proper attention to what that brand represents overall. The desire to “put stuff out there as fast as possible” without a strategic plan keeping a brand’s fundamental values at the forefront of a promotional campaign is detrimental to the successful marketing of that brand.

Enjoy it! (video and slides below)

Andrea

Branding Today

Get the Best Out of Twitter

Last week I spoke at the Ignite in Rome (Italy). My presentation was in Italian but on this post you’ll find all the notes related to each slide (below) in English.

Learn how to use Google to take Twitter search to a whole new level. Enjoy!

Andrea

Get the Best Out of Twitter

NOTES:

  1. Intro about me and itive.net
  2. Every time you go to an event it’s nice to take something back home. Something practical to play around with and experiment. So in my presentation I wanted to give more practical tips then just theory.
  3. Passive VS Active use of social media. Many people use social media in a passive way. They just use the standard features but they don’t use the tools at full and they don’t even combine them with others to get the best out of them. In this presentation we’ll do exactly this: Combining twitter with Google to get the best out of it.
  4. Challenge: Find stuff that matters. This is an open challenge for many communicators. When we are searching for something we look for information that can help us in better achieving our objectives. Searching junk that doesn’t apply to our aims.
  5. So from where we can start our search? Well social media/networks are a good starting point. According to Nielsen consumers spent more than five and half hours on social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter in December 2009, an 82% increase from the same time last year. In this presentation we have a closer look at Twitter.
  6. So where do we start to search something on twitter? We start from http://search.twitter.com.
  7. Let’s say that I have a client, a restaurant for which we are conducting a competitive analysis. Among other strategic moves & tactics we want to search on twitter for potential competitors that we can examine and study. So we are looking for other restaurants on twitter that are located nearby our client. By typing and searching for ‘restaurant’ we’ll get thousands of results of tweets that contain the word ‘restaurant’ but that are not necessarily tweeted by restaurants.
  8. We need something more accurate. If we have a look at the advanced twitter search we can use multiple search terms, a specific location etc. but it’s still something that doesn’t help us much in narrowing down our results to only restaurants in that area.
  9. What we noticed with my team at itive is that the best result we can get at this level are the one that contain links. In fact when people share valuable information online they usually do it with a link to add more value to what they are sharing.
  10. What the advanced twitter search doesn’t offer (yet) is the possibility to search for multimedia content. For example videos and photos. This data can be really useful at times in our searches (keeping in mind that you might want to use these tips I’m giving also for other searches and not just for restaurants). Twitter is full of photos, but do we find them?
  11. It’s simple. You’ll just need to add to your search term some of the services that people use to share photos on twitter (like twitpic, etc.). Here’s what you need to type: restaurant twitpic OR ow.ly.
  12. But let’s try to use these channels in an active way. As you probably now recently Google started to index tweets in its search results. We can use this as an advantage that can help us achieve better results for what we are looking for. We’ll use Google to search Twitter.
  13. We can start by searching twitter profiles that have in the name/title the word ‘restaurant’. We’ll do it by using intitle:”restaurant* on twitter” site:twitter.com in our search. Interesting isn’t it?! 😉
  14. Yes but what is the this twitter profile (in my slide I used my own to not share the one of any restaurant -privacy) has the word ‘restaurant’ in their Bio instead of in their name/title. Example: The name could be ‘Delicious Food’ and the bio description could be ‘We are an Italian restaurant etc…’. How to we search our relevant info in the bio?
  15. we’ll simply need to change the attribute in our search with this: intext:”bio * restaurant” site:twitter.com. Keep in mind that we would have found any of these restaurants by using the previous ‘title search’. At this point our research is starting to give us better results but we still need to focus on our location.
  16. Location is very important. But once again the search we perform on the basic advanced search of twitter just gives us ‘general’ results. (to get these results we specified the location in from the advanced twitter search page). What we can do is something smarter…check the next point.
  17. A this point we can combine the two previous searches (title, bio) and add on top of those a third attribute, the location. So we’ll search for twitter profiles of restaurants (whether is specified in their title or bio) that are in New York City (I chose NYC as an example you can enter any other location/area/state/city). Here’s what we’ll nee to type: (intitle:”restaurant * on twitter” OR intext:”bio * restaurant”) intext:”location * NYC” site:twitter.com. The results are exactly what we were looking for 🙂
  18. Remember that this is nothing without a strategic communications plan. This tips are at tactical level, not strategic.
  19. Tactics like this can help us in monitoring trends, analyzing competitors and of course in gaining a competitive advantage.
  20. You can find more info related to similar topics on my blog andreavascellari.com. If you have any questions or you would like to talk more, drop you comments or get in touch via twitter @vascellari (please read my twitter policy if you start to follow me, thanks).

[Communications Report] for April 5th 2010 – AndreaVascellari.com

Do you want to get these report-updates in real time? Subscribe to the live-report RSS feed! This feed includes only report related items. It’s not a substitute but a complement to my main RSS feed which still remains the official one that brings you all my blog posts.

  • The Collapse of Complex Business Models « Clay Shirky – Some video still has to be complex to be valuable, but the logic of the old media ecoystem, where video had to be complex simply to be video, is broken.
  • Report – Future of the Internet IV – In an online survey of 895 technology stakeholders’ and critics’ expectations of social, political and economic change by 2020.
  • Facebook Summarized In A Single Picture – The chart breaks down Facebook’s history as well as some of the most important facts and figures from the company. Included in the chart is information about the site’s user base as well as the impressive engagement levels that Facebook is able to maintain.
  • Study: Mobile internet traffic is set to grow 400% by 2015 – What does that mean? As smartphones become more commonplace, phone companies could start charging a lot more money to keep them up and running. But consumers may not go along willingly.

Get The Communications Juice on Facebook

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Become a fan of my Facebook page, that’s the place where you’ll find all the extra communications juice that I share in addition to my usual posts.

Focus?

  • Digital marketing, social media, communications and PR.
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Why should you join the page?

  • By joining my page you’ll get all my insights on recent communications news directly delivered to your news feed -displayed on your facebook home page.
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See you on Facebook!

Andrea

It’s time to get busy – #AOC3

Age of Conversation 3

I’ve been out of the loop. I have tons of posts almost ready to be released but zero time to publish. Busy, busy, busy…This period is so intense for me. With iTive we started to work on some new projects so I’ve been drowning into a countless number of meetings with my team and with our clients. But no worries I’ll be back to my normal blogging schedule soon.

To make this period even busier comes the upcoming launch of the book I signed a contract for last year. I’m one of the ‘Age of Conversation 3’ authors. A special thanks goes to Gavin Heaton and Drew McLellan for inviting me to join this amazing project.

What’s the book about? Conversational branding, measurement, influence, trust, identity, corporate conversations, social media, innovation, execution and more…

Who I wrote it with? Some of the sharpest minds in the industry 😉

The book is due to be released no later than mid-April. Stay tuned via RSS, I’ll keep you posted once it will be out!

Cheers,

Andrea