Faces in Places

Facebook has been busy.  Open Graph, new  design and layout changes to Pages, it’s all making it easier for brands to work with and communicate on Facebook. It’s no wonder,  integration is on every marketers to do list. Add a couple of movies featuring the social network and all seems very well for Facebook. And they continue to roll, all systems go.

This week Facebook officially announced it’s rumoured and hotly anticipated new check-in feature – Places. Check-ins aren’t anything new, a few players have been at it for a bit (Yelp, Gowalla, and Foursquare) but even their combined user base doesn’t come close to Facebook’s 500+ million users.  Facebook could easily show up and crush these smaller check-in services, but they didn’t. So why not? Well they’ve all partnered through some form of integration. Why would Facebook even consider this? And why would the others hook up with Facebook?

What’s in it for Facebook.
The learnings from the other services to start. Facebook has sat back and watched and examined the errors and successes of others, and hopefully applied the learnings to their new product. The big reason is easy adoption. Foursquare alone has 3 million users and these users should be considered early adopters by Facebook. Furthermore these early adopters are most likely influencers in their social circles, so by including them through integration, their social graphs who are not into check-ins will be more likely to adopt the habit on a platform they are familiar with.

What’s in it for the Others.
Well really it’s an extended lease on life for the others. They have the opportunity to evolve their service to integrate with Facebook. This for them is a much better option than being trampled by the giant. For them to survive they need to adopt and evolve plain and simple. They too will also gain from the added exposure to new users through Facebook. Foursquare had their biggest day for sign-ups after the announcement of Facebook places. At least for the time being, Foursquare is reaping the benefits of Places.

So how does it all work?
Although the service is not available to Canadians yet, there is an iPhone app, a HTML5  based mobile site (http://touch.facebook.com) and a desktop client to be released in the future. Basically users can check-in to venues, see who’s around them , and find out “cool new places”, sounds pretty familiar doesn’t it?

When a user checks in, the update appears on the Place page of the venue, and a message is posted to a friend’s wall. At that time, a list of friends will briefly appear, and the user has the option to either check their friends in, or be checked in by  others.

According to Facebook If a friend checks you in, you will receive a message. You will have the option to approve or reject the check-in. If approved, you will appear as checked-in. If you refuse to be checked in, you can still be tagged, if you allow it. Users also have the option to un-tag themselves, this works similar to photo tagging on Facebook.

At this point it’s unclear what opportunities advertisers and brands will have with Places. I imagine a similar deals and offers currently available in Foursquare could be in the works.  So will you be checking yourself and friends in using places? Or do you just find this way too creepy?

Know Your Audience

Creating an engaging user experience isn’t about 3D flash and kinetics. Although those elements help wow your audience, they don’t really ensure any level of engagement. Take our website for example, those of you who have been following us may have seen our old website. At the time it was pretty nifty piece of flash. We wowed users with slick movements and lightning bolts, yes lightning bolts! As time passed the website just wasn’t performing the way we wanted it to. Alas the site was so 2005 and we needed to “live in the now” as our good friend Garth Algar would say.

As technologies change the all flash website still has its purpose but for us and our users it just wasn’t the case. We wanted to provide our users with quick access points to our creative portfolio and contact information. Creating great user experiences means giving the user what they want and need. Sure making things spin, pop, and fly around the screen may get us excited but is it what the audience is looking for? Users are looking for specific information and they want it fast. Mobile browsing and usage growth is testament to this. Content on demand whenever and wherever.

Today’s  users are also expecting some form of social engagement on websites. Facebook open graph, tweet meme, and social bookmarking are all norms, and almost every client wants them. The key is how you integrate them, simply adding these elements to any all content on your site isn’t the right approach. Of course Facebook would love for all of your sites content to be social elements. One may even venture to say they are on a mission to kill the website and bring everything onto Facebook.

Whatever platform or technology you employ be sure you know your audience. Build your digital property based on what your user is using and not what you think is cool. Know their platform of choice, browser usage, and connection speeds. This may mean creating multiple versions for mobile, and browser delivery but by having a handle on these key pieces of information it will help you deliver engaging content to your users on their terms.

The Caffeinated Agency

Anyone who works in advertising, specifically digital will tell you caffeine is a vital source of energy when tackling tight deadlines that require a little bit of afterhours work.  Looking around the agency at the abundance of coffee brands peppering desktops we decided to take a look at our own in-house  coffee brand loyalty.

To no one’s surprise the ever present house of Double Double Tim Hortons came out on top. This could have something to do with one being across the street from our office. One surprise was the emergence of Balzac’s tying for second place with Starbucks.  Of course neighbourhood favourite Dark Horse made it on the list as well.

What did we learn? Not much other than we really like our coffee at Dashboard.

To Contact Us Please Answer: (square root(64) x 14) / 2

I recently came across an interesting post from Rethink. The aptly titled “Five more reasons your website stinks” post had a great little tidbit (reason #10a) about uber long forms complete with CAPTCHA’s that actually deter people from contacting you. I found myself asking, “Why are we still using them, in the first place?”. In today’s landscape of instant communication, the contact form just feels archaic – inconvenient and not very user-friendly. The entire process of completing a typical form takes way too long and often requires the user to surrender too much irrelevant information.

So why do we use forms in the first place? SPAM. Evil SPAM bots have forced regular old mailto links off the page altogether. The bots easily spider page content searching for @ and .com/.ca/.net/.everything combinations. Embedding the recipient address in a form worked until bots were programmed to automate the entry process and compromise the form. Enter the CAPTCHA, an undecipherable, accessibility-hindering, annoying little samurai sent to halt the nasty bots from entering Form Kingdom… and in the process upping your abandonment rates to record levels. So why do we still use forms for simple contact?

Well we shouldn’t, period. Or, at the very least, we should give users some options. Why not adopt the communication technologies and channels of your end users? At this moment these are based around social platforms like Facebook and Twitter. Think about the difference in user experience between offering nearly real-time interaction or expecting someone to wait over an indiscriminate amount of time for a response to a submission (assuming one actually arrives at all). Which scenario better represents your company’s value proposition?

Yes, we already know you’re worried about resources… but don’t you already have a resource assigned to reply to those form submissions? Have those same individuals monitor the newly-minted contact channels as well. Chances are these team members are already well-versed in company policy, legal, and brand positioning and should be able to easily adapt to the new technology. It’s really about improving user experience and engagement by removing barriers between the user and the brand or company.

I guess the one thing to remember about all of this… We don’t build websites for ourselves, we build them for users. So try and give them what they want, and always what they need.

So wanna talk? Tweet me here @mrbrain or here @dashboarddotca or leave me a comment using the form below (CAPTCHA FREE!).

p.s. the answer is 56.

FWA Public Shortlist For Drive in Another Dimension!

A big thank you is in order for all those who voted for our work on theFWA.com. Our work has now made it to the public shortlist! Great work by the Dashboard and Rubber Pixel teams on this one, and a special thanks to the Ontartio Toyota Dealers for being an awesome client.

Deflate The Elephant takes home a Strategy Cause+Action Award

We’d like to take this opportunity to congratulate the Responsible Drinking team at the LCBO and our great partners at Due North Communications for the recent win in Strategy Magazines Cause+Action awards. The issue is available now, and you can check out the article online here.

From the Judges:

“They really went for a showstopper. They used a big symbol to demonstrate the point. It is very well done and makes the consumer feel better about stopping a friend from driving [drunk].”

We were very fortunate and proud to work on such a great campaign with great clients and partners. Great work everyone!

Content is King: Make Sure Yours is Worthy of the Crown

In today’s world of digital marketing, content really is king. I’m sure most of you have heard this many times over, but most misinterpret what this really means.  It’s not filling web pages with endless scrolls of 10 point type; no one will read that much online. It’s about understanding your medium and how your audience consumes content within that medium.

Online visitors skim and scour copy, they forage blocks of text for information relevant to them. So when we create content for use online we must always remember that it’s not what we think should be online, it’s what the user wants online. After all, we don’t create websites for ourselves, we create them for users and their experience is paramount.

Always Be Engaging

The Internet today is a two way street. Consumers expect and appreciate the ability to connect with brands and companies online. Unlike traditional broadcast and print media, consumers want to engage in a conversation with you, so make sure your content is accessible and promotes user engagement. Implementing sharing, bookmarking and commenting are simple ways to create engagement with your content.

Also, you should try and develop content that encourages engagement from users. Ask questions, solicit feedback and opinions, this will empower users and increase the popularity of your content. Make your brand accessible and remember that user feedback is important. Use it to improve your brand and digital marketing efforts.

Things to remember when developing web content.

• Keep SEO in mind when writing for the web. Search engines love to scour copy, so incorporating keywords into your copy will help users find you. Remember not everyone enters your site through the front door.
• Visitors scan web pages for information, so organize your content in a way that helps them find the most relevant information on your page. Effective use of H1 tags, lists and callouts will draw their attention to your key messages. Reading on a monitor is more difficult than reading on paper, so your writing should be clear and lean.
• The back button is only mouse click away, so be engaging. Visitors respond to content they can relate to. Ensure your copy gives them a reason to read on and never lose sight of who your audience is.
• Make user direction clear, don’t leave them guessing. Use the copy and design to make it clear what users should do next.
• Write with the intent of generating buzz, feedback and comments.

I’m always looking for great ideas and feedback so let me know your web content development rules of thumb. If you disagree, leave me a comment and let’s chat.

H&R Block Gets Social for Tax Time

With the emergence of social media, H&R Block wanted to showcase their expertise and provide support in the social space beyond just Facebook and Twitter. For H&R Block it was about building a community, while raising brand awareness. The social media plan focused on delivering expertise, advocacy, innovative articles and resources directly to their target audience.

Dashboard, in partnership with Due North Communications and Calador Communications, launched H&R Block TaxTALK in early January just prior to Canadians actively seeking tax advice. We created a social media hub to house all the online activities providing a perfect forum for answering tax questions. Within the site, users can ask Tax Experts their questions, browse a multitude of FAQ questions and peruse through blogs and resources, such as podcasts and articles. Ultimately, users can share information and provide input on the content that H&R Block provides.

All areas of the site are managed through the back end content management system which allows non-technical editors the ability to update blog posts, answer questions posed by users and send the response by email, and add tax resources all from one easy to use system in both French and English.

This project had the whole shop excited from day one. A great client and great partners made this an easy build and something we could all get behind and relate to. Let’s face it, all of us have felt the stress of preparing taxes and often can’t find the answers we’re looking for. By creating a community and delivering on an expressed need of relevant and timely tax information on a personal level, Tax Talk is giant leap forward for H&R Block to tighten their relationship with their consumers. I can also honestly say everyone who has worked on this project has found some helpful bit of information regarding their own taxes.

Tax Talk has allowed H&R Block to listen to what clients are saying about the brand and showcase their authentic and real expertise from some of the best Tax pros in Canada. We believe this framework will successfully launch H&R Block into the social space and showcase to Canadians that H&R Block is there for you during this taxing time.