OK, we’re back to Sunday Songs. The next few weeks are just great songs I want to share. There is a strong chance you know these very well, so enjoy.
Bruce Springsteen, Streets of Philadelphia. Never been a huge boss fan (but happy to be converted!) but this reminds me of living in Edinburgh.
Have you seen this before? This is the 4th update to the cool web map published by Information Architects. Designed to look like a tube map, it plots the key points and key people in the web today.
You need to see this much larger. Click it.
If you have time, compare it to 2008′s map and see what has changed.
Click for a bigger version
I listen to a lot of music. I love indexing it in Last FM but don’t actually spend that much time ‘discovering’ new stuff. I was, however, pleased to see a competition from Sony on there. The competition is effectively a fantasy festival. You have a budget, you choose your artists and you score points based on their popularity on last FM, updated weekly. Great. As you would expect the more popular artists cost you more so you had to choose carefully.
Now, I have my line up ranging from Pink Floyd to the North Sea Radio Orchestra and I like it. BUT. I haven’t got a clue how well it is doing, nor do I really care any more.
Why? To participate actively, you have to check back weekly. Sure there are charts and you can compare your performance to others but all the hard work is left for you. I don’t get any emails telling me whats going on, no live updates on Twitter or Facebook. I don’t have time nor don’t feel the need to pop over very often, I couldn’t even tell you where it is on Last FM, I’ll have to look it up for this article. (found it)
You can see how this would have been pitched, a place for music lovers to battle it out with their favourite bands. Not only would it be social but it would be potentially viral and smart, hooking into the Last FM scrobbling.
Shame it didn’t turn out that way. Oh Well. I am on Last FM if you want to do the old school connecting thing.
Want a colour named after you? There’s a site for that. Myhexcolour allows you to buy choose any colour you wish and buy it. You buy it for a dollar, name it, link it and its yours. This is cool and yet utterly pointless, which is clearly why I have been drawn to it.
This site could be the next milliondolllarhomepage just because it is simple and ‘cheap’ (yes, if you consider paying one dollar for effectively nothing) but they have been suspended from taking any more money by PayPal. Looks like I’ve saved a dollar.
Title Song: What’s Your Favourite Colour? Living Colour [Spotify]
I am about to sit down and spend the afternoon writing and started thinking about what music I would like to accompany me. I was tempted to tweet for recommendations and then I thought no.
When I write I need music that I can enjoy, music I can lose myself in but music that doesn’t require much of my thoughts to enjoy. This is clearly not the time to break in a new band or album. Like running a marathon in brand new trainers, new music won’t help. So I will be turning to the old reliables to keep me fuelled this afternoon. These would include:
Tubular Bells & Incantations by Mike Oldfield – pretty much vocal-less and well worn in.
1999 by Prince. Once the first two tracks have settled down there are long periods of quite introspective music. I’ve been listening to this album for over 20 years now so there are no surprises to knock me.
Brian Eno – like Mike Oldfield, some of his work can be very melodic and calming. ‘Background music’ some people may call it but I find it works in harmony with my moods, allowing me a comfortable base to think. Music for Airports would be the obvious choice but all his ambient recordings are worthy on this list.
On the ambient theme, Kate Bush’s last album Aerial had an amazing second disk ‘a Sky of Honey’ is a beautiful tapestry of a Spring Day that is both inspirational and uplifting. At 42 minutes long it is regularly on repeat.
Genesis, being one of my all time favourite bands would obviously feature with The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway an easy way to lose yourself for two hours, although I would not recommend this for newcomers – it may need some breaking in before acting as your accompaniment. Trespass is also a wonderful album from very early on (their third album I think, pre Phil Collins.)
Talk Talk – now I only really got into their albums last year whilst I was writing a lot for the agency. I had always loved Natural History but had never really got into their albums. It’s My Life and The Colour of Spring are the ones to lose yourself in.
The KLF Chillout is also awesome, a bit like the Future Sound of London Radio 1 Sessions, very deep layered soundscapes – sadly not available on Spotify.
Rounding off the list is Clutching at Straws, the last studio album Marillion made with Fish before parting company. Just the first few bars make me feel like there is a warm blanket wrapped around me and we’re off for a great 45 minutes.
I guess a lot of these albums could be seen as quite introspective, dare I say ‘down’? But there is a balance, get really down and miserable and bang goes the inspiration – Lou Reed’s Berlin of course springs to mind but doesn’t appear here (I save that for long journeys) nor does Roger Water’s Pros and Cons of Hitchhiking which is also worth of discovery.
Do you have favourite albums to write to, work to? Fancy sharing them? I love new music and always keen to add to the roster of writing music. Leave a comment if you would be kind enough.
A recent blog post was called, ‘the art of a good customer survey‘ and highlighted a survey that I liked and I filled in. It rightly got quite a response from Carl who knows a lot more about customer surveys (and plenty of other stuff) than I. So, with reflection I think that post was a little pompous and I come to realise that every post does not have to preach or teach – I guess if I write good content the reader can decide if it is valuable or not. So, here is my pledge to you [yes both of you] – we will have no more pompous headlines on this blog. OK?
And if you are wondering why there is a picture of a man with a moustache on this post (on the homepage), well I searched Shutterstock for pompous and thats what came up.
I have to admit, I haven’t spent much time looking at Twitter lists. Apart from a little play when they came out I haven’t really made any proper lists nor really followed any lists. So I was pleasantly surprised to see that I was on 70 lists. Once I got over the astonishment I started to look at what lists I was on. This is when I started to think about how others must perceive me and I guess that perception must come from what I tweet and far less about my biography or indeed CV.
Before I go on, I must note that I am flattered to be on the lists and I am not critiscising anyone for their classification – I am happy to be on your list 
So,
Well, I thought it was interesting.
I rarely fill in customer surveys. Mainly because I don’t feel that any of my answers will be noticed or acted upon. Just recently I  did answer a customer survey questionnaire, gladly. I hope they don’t mind if I take  you through the reasons why I would fill in this survey and perhaps you or your brand may learn from this. Alternatively you may have or have seen an awesome customer service questionnaire, I’d love to see it (leave a link in the comments.)
The survey was for Hildon Water from whom I order water on a regular basis. I have always rated their service and the delivery whilst their site could benefit from some PayPal support I have little to complain. I think, therefore that the brand loyalty or sentiment you feel will play a large part in whether you fill in a survey or not.
The second reason I chose to complete it was the offer of a free case of water. That was a valuable offer to me and one that I felt was a valuable exchange for my time. There was no prize draws or unrelated gifts to patronise me.
The questionnaire itself was two pages long with a link to an online version if I wished to. It was not daunting and shouldn’t take long.
The fifth question on the survey really impressed me – ‘What social networks do you use’? I thought this was a great question, finally a brand was paying attention to this shift in consumer behaviour. I think it would have been beneficial if they had asked my Twitter username – that way if they came onto Twitter they would at least have a base of people they could connect with.
The home delivery question threw me a little, did Amazon count as a ‘home delivery service’? That’s what I wrote anyway – the question could have benefited from some clarification.
On page two there was a slight wobble. I was asked my age, occupation, wife’s occupation, income and the age of any children in the house. I put a line through this – I didn’t see it was relevant to the survey but thought it was very interesting.
I can understand why they wanted this information – such data can be used to profile their audience like a Mosaic profile. Such profiles have been the backbone of customer research for years now and still play an important part for marketing. But in this instance they had already asked me about myself with their social network question. I understand that they cannot check every profile, although I would argue they should, but we had gone from page one ‘let’s learn about you’ to page two, ‘lets put you in a box’.
With marketing evolving at such a rapid rate there is a very real chance to understand your customer to become someone real, more than just a number or a socio-demographic group. I am not saying that Mosaic style profiling should not be used but there must be a potential to integrate this better into the overall ‘customer picture’.
The rest of the questions were good, asking about their service and would I be interested in another service they may offer and whether a recent promotion was my incentive to purchase.
Overall, this was a great survey from a great company. They didn’t give me an envelope or stamp to send it back [or I have lost it, that is a possibility]. The lack of stamp and envelope is not a biggie but could delay the sending of a survey until you root around to find what you need. Again, the online survey negates this issue.
So, a good survey from a good company which is why I completed it. I think there is a bigger picture to think about with the evolution of consumer profiles from ‘what box can we put you in’ to ‘who are you’ – no doubt with associated data protection and privacy issues.
That’ll do.
Hello, its me [as if it would be someone else!]
A great shot from Benjamin Ellis
So, I always start my posts with So. I blame @feralibix for that. As we start the new year I start to look at my blog and think it needs a new design. There is nothing wrong with the design but I get bored quite easily or I am always seeking fresh challenges and inspiration. The thing with this blog though, is that I can spend more time mucking around with the design and the twiddly bits than actually writing content so really I should write content and leave the design but there is something nagging at me now every time I see the design. When I was a kid, I got a school friend to design the front of my french book. I showed my dad and he said, “it is more important whats on the inside than on the outside.” As the inside was full of red marks, low marks and corrections he was not wrong there.
Looking at the content, I am happy that I have written some interesting stuff, or I hope it is interesting but all the content has been ‘reasons to do this’ or ’5 tips’ which are just basic link baiting stuff and an attempt to produce interesting and valued content. Whilst I am quite a personable person I don’t share much of my personal life and or feelings, nor am I am about to start ‘opening up’ – I don’t want to or need to and I find this post hard enough as it is. With my Sunday Song posts I wanted to share some of my musical passions in a more ‘permanent’ way that just tweeting about them. although that is a great place to share and explore music. I plan to keep doing them and find things that you may not have heard.
2010 looks to be an interesting year. 2009 was a year of two halfs, and three quarters. The first quarter I was preparing to leave the agency I founded and sold. This was actually a heck of a lot harder than I thought. I had decided to leave because I had achieved my business ambitions but to the detriment of my personal ambitions like learning to play music, get fit and enjoy life a little. So the second half of the year which was the three quarters of post agency life. Going from something that takes up all of your time and thoughts, to not having that was a massive and unexpected wrench. We took off to Oz for three weeks the weekend I left which was amazing and helped the transition but I did still wake up when I returned thinking I had to be somewhere.
What am I going to do? I have enjoyed being a man of leisure, spending time with my beautiful wife and family whilst trying to keep up some form of relevance in ‘the digital sector’ – I am spending more time watching and trading [mainly] tech stocks which I find fascinating as well as keeping up the writing. At the end of 2009 I was asked to contribute to The Next Web which I was delighted with as I had always sought inspiration from their blog. I was also delighted to attend Social Media in Business 09 speak at MediaCamp London 3 and attend LeWeb in Paris. I will also be MC’ing Social Media in Business 10 (May 21) which is going to be awesome.
I am also editing a blog for a close friend of mine, Celandine Rose. The blog www.greenwisdom.co.uk is a natural remedies website aimed at informing others about alternatives methods of keeping healthy. The project is non profit but I enjoy editing a whole new subject. The blog gets updated when I get the time but I plan to devote a little more structured time this year to help it grow.
On top of that I have some more writing opportunities coming up, which I can announce once it is in place. I will also be doing more work to help startup businesses grow with my self defined role as Business Mentor which came off the back of my well received ‘ten tips for starting a business with no investment’ which also went down well on Scribd.
I look forward to playing more with video and Jez is the man who is going to show me how. I know video ‘is massive’ but I have still to get over the ‘shyness’ issue of speaking to the camera and find a way to make ‘talking head’ videos more than just a boring man with large speaking lots.
And I plan to do more travelling. Going to try ski-ing this year so expect lots of stupid questions on Twitter about ski-ing holidays.
Thank you for reading, and thank you for your continued support.
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It is funny, I feel very strange about posting this. I debated tweeting this which is why I ended up with the tweet ‘these feelings belong in a zoo’ , the best line in ‘An Imagined Affair‘ by Elbow.
OK there have been some interesting articles of late talking about how brands don’t get Twitter [this NMA article is a good start]. With my experience of brands and with social media, I have seen that luxury brands are even further behind their take up and attention to social media. I am not sure how they don’t get it, really. So, based on my experience [blog post coming] here is the simple equation all luxury brands need to pay attention to.
Take 1 Luxury Car – Retail Value £40,000.
Add in some appalling customer service.
Annoy said customer with over 4,000 Twitter followers.
Customer complains on Twitter to his audience.
If 10% of this audience are engaged then 400 people will see the brand is not delivering against its values.
If 5% of this 400 were in a similar demographic and lifestyle to me then we are talking about 20 potential customers.
If 50% of the 20 potential customers decide against buying that luxury car then the potential lost revenue is £400,000.
We haven’t even calculated the lifetime value of those ten lost customers.
The time taken for me to tweet said complaint? 60 seconds. Long term damage – considerable.
Do I need to explain more?
Now, these figures are open to argument – the engagement of my audience may be higher, the number of people that take action could be a lot lower, but it could be higher. Just because a brand is deemed as luxury it does not mean they can ignore the masses. Of course, offering good customer service would negate this equation in the first place but you can’t take that for granted either.
Take this equation, put your own numbers in and see what happens and let me know what you come up with.
© 2009 Jamie Riddell. All Rights Reserved.
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