Here is a glimpse into the future of online shopping from Korea. What is exciting and significant here is that customers using mobile phones are able to use QR codes to short cut straight to a shopping cart by scanning those codes directly off a poster.

We have seen some use of QR codes and mostly it has been trivial to date.

“A QR code (abbreviated from Quick Response code) is a type of matrix barcode (or two-dimensional code) designed to be read by smartphones. The code consists of black modules arranged in a square pattern on a white background. The information encoded may be text, a URL, or other data.”

For QR codes to be useful shoppers need to have access to a QR reader cable ecommerce shopping system, a smart phone and fast, inexpensive mobile data.

The display posters are close to lifesize photos of each of the products. I can see this is an exceptional idea for extending online shopping functionality to busy locations where a billboard space might be available.

In effect shoppers are able to browse the equivalent of a several metres wide screen image of key products without going near a computer. Although to be fair their smart phones do need to be able to read the qr codes off the posters.

We need to do some more research on exactly how to do this for online shopping sites but I suspect billboard owners will be extremely excited about this

My QR code is displayed at left and if you have a reader you can scan my contact details but just imagine I could also sell you an ecommerce report at the same time.

Now we’re talking business !

P.S We’ve been watching all of the coupon sites and while that seems like a good way to drive offline media traffic on to online channels not all deals work that well for vendors or the media channels.

Also the price of accessing the old media (TV for the most part) is still expensive and the unintended consequences of a huge rush of traffic to a website or physical store is not easy to manage or profit from. Getting repeat business is not easy to do if most of the shoppers are deal takers who just chase discounts.

“We’ve also heard consistently from certain categories of businesses (very popular ones I’m afraid) that daily deals are uneconomic for them, which does raise questions around the sustainability of “50% off” daily deals for these types of businesses.”

Yelp CEO says they are working on new developments to the daily deal type of business.

My money is on QR codes and this store concept from Korea is the future of online stores and no unsustainable 50% off foolish deals are needed to get more online business by heading down the QR path.

When my daughter was 3 she used to ask what I did for a job. She has a much better idea now but to keep things simple I used to say something like this.

“I talk with people, I take lots of notes. Then some web stuff.”

Fairly often now some of this takes place all at the same time. Live twitter streams from events are now part of the (new) media mix.  Services like Be in the Room can aggregate social media feeds and we can take questions from external observers via the use of hashtags.

Here is recent example (August 4th) from the Unitec Forum for the Future series on Auckland Super City debates. Look at earlier posts on theDomm website for more about that event and/ or follow on twitter @UnitecFTF At the UnitecFTF those who couldn’t be there asked questions via twitter.

This was the 6th forum event so far. More are planned. Noted business commentator and journalist Rod Oram is the chair for the event and Associate Professor & Head of Department Rob Davis deserves full credit for being the catalyst & firestarter on this project.

As this debate took place in a TV studio with lots of outside media present some of this was captured on video. I even got a rare chance to see myself at work because when you are on live streaming it all tends to be a bit of blur in the moment.

The super city changeover for Auckland is an important change and  it deserves better, smarter, more engaging media and new media engagement.

Well done Unitec cast and crew for making a difference.

At WordCampNZ I was planning to talk about what I do most of the time which is online marketing projects integrated with WordPress.

On the day I talked more about the logistics around WordCamp rather than the stats & case studies I had planned to do.

My business is focussed at the marketing end of the scale and so I use email tools especially Campaign Monitor and MailChimp plus various other social media plugins to make it as easy as possible for customers and partners to engage with each other.

Again not having enough time (or sleep) I mentioned these WordPress plugins in passing.

This is the partly the presentation that I had planned but on the day it seemed more important to go wider and talk about WordCampNZ future planning.

1. Google Analyticator is one of my favourite plugins as it gives a rolling 30 day view of GA on the WordPress dashboard. This saves going into the google account which not many of my customers want to do. The plugin has role settings and so that desktop widget can be rolled down to below admin and editors if that is what you want to do.
2. FB Like is Facebook like plugin that we use on WordcampNZ. I like it (sorry about the pun.) Much as I personally have mixed views about Facebook (privacy & commerce) there is no doubting the huge clout it has when someone that you know likes or comments on stuff we all care about. (see also my post from June 06 Trust & verify on trust cues.)
3. Backtype Connect is another plugin that is used extensively to feed in the twitter and other social streams into blogs. Part of the reason we use it is that it provides some twitter analytics which is a growing area of interest for many businesses. Have a look at these analytics for the post on Richard Hollingnum.The other reason I / we use Backtype is that some of the automattic people invested in it. (P.s you may need to setup a free account with Backtype if you can’t see the full set of stats)
4. In passing I also referred to VaultPress for backups and VideoPress for video hosting also very much worth checking them out.
5. WordPress Mobile Edition plugin from Alex King is one of my favourites. I don’t mind reading the instructions as there is a theme part and a plugin part. So this plugin needs a FTP whiz to do upload. Auto install won’t get the theme part in the right location.

The other point to remember with these kinds of lists is that plugin versions and WordPress versions are a moving target and do change.

This means that – as always there might be a particular combination of versions that may not work with your theme or other setup configuration.

Congrats to Bill Bennett for his piece on Writing for the web in 300 words one of my favourites and now I’ve just hit 482 so time to publish.

We have been hearing that Facebook is due to hit 500m users this month.

As a student of human behaviour this seems to be one time when the passenger get to be the driver in pretty much any way they choose.

Unlike in many areas Facebook is ideal for 500 m niches of 1 and that works pretty well for everyone. Expression is a very powerful thing.

You may have seen an earlier version of this video.

I watched the Digital Nation documentary on the multi tasking clicking on everything that moves lifestyle that many of use are heading towards. Is this wholesale immersion helping us or hindering us while making us feel like we are doing better than we really are.

Perhaps the illusion of instant activity is not just amplified by the web but actually it is distorting our perspective. (Cue Rat in Cage song here. ) See how easy it is to be distracted even by the good things we love.

View Digital Nation Chapter 1 Distracted by Everything here.

It seems that at least some of the really frenetic texting, facebooking, sm twitching is very much an illusion when it comes to focus. Here are the other chapter headings below.

• Chapter 2 What’s It Doing to Their Brains?
  Tests given Stanford multitaskers yield troubling discoveries. Other research into Net use and the brain raises more questions.
• Chapter 3 South Korea’s Gaming CrazeSome cautionary lessons from a country where Internet addiction has become a public health crisis.
• Chapter 4 Teaching with TechnologyTeachers are embracing digital media–’it keeps students engaged; new skills are needed for a new age.’ But is there a catch?
• Chapter 5 The Dumbest Generation?The debate has just begun on whether we are losing as much as we’re gaining in a 24/7 wired world.
• Chapter 6 RelationshipsMillions of people are inhabiting the Net as if it were a real place, satisfying the urge to connect to others in online games, virtual worlds.
• Chapter 7 Virtual WorldsSecond Life offers a totally new reality for humans, says its creator — and IBM has begun shifting its meetings into this virtual space.
• Chapter 8 Can Virtual Experiences Change Us?The U.S. military is using virtual spaces for PTSD therapy and for flying drones in Iraq while based in a room in Nevada.
• Chapter 9 Where Are We Headed?A school is organized around learning through video games–maybe its students are getting something we aren’t yet able to measure or recognize.

—- Very Much worth a look —-Watch it online

Anyone who has been around for more than a decade will have seen incredible change come – and go.

“Action is no substitute for direction.” Me

I actually wrote that more than 20 years ago in a list of recommended reading books that I used to try and compile every year or so.

Outcomes are what really counts most of the time. And yes there are many distractions along the way. For my 2 cents – I reckon switching down a gear and going to the film festival or for some really long swims works better for me.

At least that is the plan.

For years we ‘ve had endless conversations about online traffic. Now its all here and on tap I believe it is time to be more selective. Sure not every movement means anything in the way that sometimes a cigar is just a cigar but lets see some outcomes other than burnout and various over use symptoms.

Traffic is NOT the same as engagement. A like on facebook is not the same as a comment on a blog but the ability to click on the like button does give some clues. #justsaying (like they do on Twitter:)

So is a Facebook fan worth anything ?

I’m sure that there are some formulas.  All fans are different and their FB activity may give some clues as to what their influence or “clout” might be.

If only life was that easy to quantify.

Mashable had some ideas on what FB, LinkedIn and Twitter might be worth. A simple division of total by numbers of actual users might give some ideas.

Of course Linkedin may well be close to reaching full potential and actual earnings. For FB and Twitter they have yet to really monetize much more than a fraction of what they might be capable of.

In a few weeks I’m off to my 4th WordCamp. WordCamps are community organised and local events for bloggers and othere users of WordPress.

What I really, really like about the WordCamp crew is that everyone has a story and often they are are extrememely proactive about projects and outcomes.

WordCampNZ is on Aug 7th & 8th at Unitec in Mt Albert Auckland. Feel free to come along and join in. Go on change the world with us.

Here are just 16 of the speakers ( * a few more to be annouced)   who will be sharing their insights with us.

• Bill Bennett – Writing Online
• Sacha Dylan – Who Are Your Audience
• Alex Shiels – Automattic
• Jeff Ghazally – extending WP e-Commerce through Plugins
• Dan Milward – WP e-Commerce
• Robert Popovic – BuddyPress
• Quintin Russ – WordPress Security
• Grey Lynn 2030 – Community Management Suzanne Kendrick & Pippa Coom
• Courtney Lambert – Marcomms
• Online Video – Wine Vault Way Jayson Bryant
• HTML5 & CSS with Darren Wood
• Advanced Webhosting with Liz Quilty
• Jo Couchman Creative Web Ideas
• SEO 101 for WordPress Michael Brandon – Searchmasters
• Mogul Time Matt Miller
• Blog Design – Rachel Cunliffe

Here are three great post insights on how twitter is changing the game for all businesses.

The three featured writers are Andrew Dubber, Dr Mark Drapeau and Laurel Papworth. 

Andrew Dubber has just noted that this is one of the top posts on his site this year. Read Andrews full post here. Adding context and interest. It has special interest for musicians.

“Steve Lawson, one of my top must-read music business thinkers, wrote a blog post today that explains Twitter in the face of some terrible journalism. I caught up with him for lunch in London and we had a chat about it.

Quite predictably, I made a video.” (Note: Included below)

Steve Lawson from Andrew Dubber on Vimeo.

 
Dr Michael Drapeau made some comments over here on on a post by Brian Solis. It is a long comment but deserves a good long read. Brian Solis is also worth checking out – THis comment was in response to a post by Brian Solis called “Is Twitter a Converstaion or Broadcast Medium”. 

“When I wrote “Expand Your Twitter Base” I commented that people should look at their last 40 tweets to see if they’re generally interesting. 

People can use Twitter however they please. But many people using it for “conversation” are speaking 1:1 with someone, and saying things that are not generally interesting. (@myfriend OMG so funny!) There’s no context, no proper nouns, no generality. There’s nothing compelling that makes people want to follow you in that example. 

Twitter is used *most successfully* as a broadcast medium within which some content can be discussed in a general way. This is like a radio talk show host making statements and interviewing a guest, and then taking a few questions. If all he did was take phone calls from his friends and have brief “conversations” that would not be a hit show. 

Brands and popular people alike do not need to converse with everyone who asks, nor reply to every comment made about them. It’s not clear that this approach has help Comcast any – they get some good blog stories and their hardware is still the source of heads banging against walls. 

What is far more valuable is for brands and people to provide information that they think is interesting and adds value to some audience, who can then comment on it. No one can effectively control who follows them on Twitter; thus, people will high followed/following ratios tend to be “popular” by definition. Unless they are truly famous, they are generally adding value to the mix, unlike many, as the statistics show (who have few followers and/or even ratios). 

Clay Shirky describes Wikipedia as “co-creation without collaboration.” There, as with Twitter, very few people are responsible for the overwhelming majority of content development. While a wiki and microsharing are different, on Twitter maybe the 10% of people that contribute 90% of the tweets can be thought of as subject-matter experts who would write an entire Wikipedia page. Sure, some edits are made, some discussion ensues, but they are the “knowledge broadcasters” and the other 90% of people are the gardeners and readers. And there’s nothing wrong with any of that. In theory, everyone is getting something out of the complex system.”

Mark’s earlier post on HOW TO: Win Friends and Twinfluence People is also an evergreen type of article which has a top 10 list and concludes with this advice below.

“The Bottom Line

There aren’t any secrets. You get out what you put in. Work hard, add value, and don’t rest on your laurels. Note what’s happening in the news, and in life. Always evolve; adapt to your environment. Embrace trial-and-error and a spirit of lethal generosity. Take risks. Be surprising. Be awesome.”

Online reputation management by Laurel Papworth. Laurel is based in Sydney and is clearly a star writer and marketing evangelist. There are many great posts on her website – however a good place to start is here.

What I like about Laurels posts is that she often uses diagrams so the visual element is there as well.

“Reputation
Reputation is the long tail of your content. Have you been naughty or nice. Asking questions – or answering them? Asking for stuff – or offering? Giggling with a great sense of humour or snarking off with rude words? You want a bad boy rep? YA GOTTA EARN IT. Anyway, you get the general idea. One blog post, one tweet, one facebook status does not build your reputation. It accumulates over time.”

As always your thoughts are welcome here. 

• To follow Andrew on Twitter go to @dubber
• To follow Mark on Twitter go to @cheeky_geeky
• To follow Laurel on Twitter @silkcharm

I was on Twitter a couple of years ago and terminated my account after a few days as there was no one the network. I should have kept my account but who could have foreseen what has happened.

Twitter has had a huge rise in popularity in the past 6 months as celebrities and wannabes flock to jump on the bandwagon.

Despite the usual reservations that go with engaging in another layer of communications it is worthwhile setting up a twitter account to keep an eye on some of the players in your patch.

In a business context having access to a partially qualified SMS style list of “followers” which are like subscribers certainly has some attractions.

I’m told by some Vodafone customers that twittering via their phones is possible / I thought that was an SMS function but might be a different way.

I use Twitterrific which is a mini application on an iTouch and that keeps it all away from the desktop.

From my experiences the real time aspect works best when there is instant feedback on an idea or a question. There is always crossover between business and personal and many of the best tweeters can mix both.

Especially after work hours it becomes more of a social water cooler and can be an instant alert if for example something is on teev that is amusing or there are some good guests on Jon Stewart for example.

Updates or “tweets” that I hate the most are ones which are “something interesting here go to the link. ” Yeah right you’re off my list buddy.

Originally there was a reciprocity concept – if someone follows you you follow them back but now there are so many time wasters on the system that it is better not to “follow” them.

Note: If you don’t follow someone you won’t see their updates.

Because of the 140 character limit it is mostly impossible to know what that link is and also it it way better if the tweet offers some instant information such as “a status” which is what it was designed for.

One person who has written two very useful summaries on the topic is Lance Wiggs so here they are:

How NOT to Twitter if you are a corporation
(VodafoneNZ account got hijacked by an idiot for a project)
and
How to twitter if you are a corporation
Lance is on the money with both posts but check the comments also as this is a fast moving river.

How to take advantage of Twitter

The real power of Twitter is the 1-1 interactions, and yet there are only so many people that sit in corporate relations units. Moreover their job should not be to look after every tech nerd’s customer complaint, nor to understand every bizarre happening on the internet”

Some NZ related tweets you may want to check out are

@lawgeeknz / Rick Shera

@TeamXero / Team Xero

@VodafoneNZ Vodafone – could be safe again if Paul Brislen has that account back but see How not to link first.

@lancewiggs / Lance Wiggs

@bernardchickey Finance – Interest rates

@gnat / Nat Torkington – conference maestro

@dialogCRM Jason Kemp which is me by way of comparison. As a media watcher my tweets are fairly random and wide ranging whereas most of the others on this list are more business focussed.

Many people operate corporate and private twitter accounts. Best to read the Lance Wiggs posts and comments to find out if that works.

Thanks for comments by Piero – check his stream out below.

@piero_ / Piero – strategic planner http://www.thewhispershop.co.nz/

Back in the late ’90′s the ClueTrain Manifesto* was perhaps the first widely read document on the future of marketing as a (two way) conversation.

*The manifesto is still a good read today – look at the 95 theses first or over here for more background.

The discovery and invention of new ways to engage both suppliers and customers at the same time in conversations about what is relevant to the participants now,  can generate very powerful outcomes around what  is ultimately delivered to the market.

The “marketing as an ongoing conversation” idea seems incredibly obvious now but to place it in context for 1999 most media was all “push” and the closest similarity to conversation was “letters to the editor” or early forums  like “The Well” which weren’t that easily accessible at the time.

Of course, all  those letters were filtered and with tighter publishing logistics then it was less easy to facilitate ongoing market based conversations about anything other than extremely popular topics.

Over the past 10 years online media, blogging and web 2.0 styled tools for annotating, enriching , slicing and dicing content have extended both richness and reach

All good so far but we are now fast approaching another tipping point where the noise outweighs the signal.  Some would argue that social media has become part of the problem and that may be true; but it is really just another phase on the ongoing marketing journey.

Some marketing departments have mistaken  messaging for meaning and getting the balance between what the company thinks it provides and what the consumers want to pay for is an ongoing challenge.

4 Questions  For Marketers

How do we tune in past the noise and the cyber loitering that passes for conversation on some sites?

Do social media tools like Digg, Delicious and even regional and local ones like Scoopit help us to cut through to the core ideas ?

Is there a way to mine conversations and test social media idea distributions that gives us a greater depth of analysis and measurement?

How do we translate these ideas to the into guidelines for the marketing team on Monday morning?

All markets go through different stages of adoption up to the point at which they mainstream. In the early phases the leverage of new tools received disproportionate results.

For example I remember sending direct emails to various authors in the late 90′s and most of the time making useful and very clear connections.  Of course that couldn’t last and the sheer velocity of changes and technology induced spin has made it harder to make those connections on a meaningful basis.

Many of our work projects are based around the idea that we can use online iterations and feedback to regenerate a more highly tuned marketing campaign in real time as the markets respond to ongoing change.

Ironically in some cases as big businesses have added systems to cope with all of these ongoing conversations they have not kept pace with the editorial and analytical side effects.

In another  example  using an FAQ (frequently asked questions) based system to log faults,  issues and hopefully provide quick answers for  user based searching is a key way that companies can help themselves.

Unfortunately many of those systems have been set -up in such a way that there is no active and ongoing review process so that staff and customers just work out new ways to sidestep the existing process so they can talk to a human.

And the issue with many of the social media bookmarking tools is that they have been gamed right from the start by those who understand page rankings and also those with more spurious objectives.

The big promise of Cluetrain and conversational marketing was to get to a level of  “human to human”  connection so that we all get smarter, better and more relevant products and services.

The challenge for most business managers is quite simply they need to have definitive measurements on what works and what doesn’t so that they can persuade the finance department to make sense of themes and memes and and mine significant meaning.

Finance departments can’t deal with ambiguity at any level for the most part. Many of us have worked for companies whose philosophy is ‘if we can measure it we won’t do it.”

The Best Buy story linked to in the Hirshberg link (below) noted one key metric that finance would definitely understand. Before Best Buy started using social media tools the employee turnover in the company ran at 130% ! each year and it has now dropped back to 50%. That is a mind blowing result to say the least.

My personal view is that blogs and wikis can still add incredible value to customers and suppliers on a regional basis if we add them to our websites and a conscious and  useful way.

Even without specialist medial tools we should always be able to see the impact of better engagement between customers, suppliers, managers and staff and that should flow through to improved profits and even market share.

Here is another example of what we can easily do.  Back in November I linked to a great essay from Paul Graham on Why to Start a Start-Up in a Bad Economy where you really need to check the comments to get a better read on that piece.

Ideally the comments should be more closely connected but the point is while the essay can be read in isolation it is so much better if we look more closely at the context and that means comments.

Here are some other  answers and some more clues – please feel free to add your own ideas as well.

• Conversational Media watch this space (Conversation Measurement Toolbox from Federated media.)
• A code of Conduct for conversational marketers
• What this all means on Monday Morning (4mb PDF)
• Try something new capture your passion and communicate that.

Last but not least,  a few weeks ago I wrote about Peter Hirshberg. He has another video interview on his blog at where Best Buy CEO – Brad Anderson notes that as we move from

“simply distributing product to insuring customer delight under countless usage scenarios, only a method that tapped the wisdom of everybody made sense. “

And this is the point at which all of your group wisdom and comments become more pertinent.

A true self learning organisation won’t wait for the accountants to catch up and this is where we can all help out by decoding the market signals we know are out there.

Best wishes for the Christmas Season. Thanks again for stopping by.

Be present, be engaged and be renewed – see you again in the New Year.

P.S. While at Zeitgeist Google I also found this clip which features Lee Clow of TBWA and Alex Bogusky talking about the transition from narrative to interactive and implications for brands. It is definitely a related topic as are many of the other 117 other videos on that Zeitgeist 08 channel.

Marshall McLuhan once said that “The old medium is always the content of the new medium.”

He was talking about the way that movies were being morphed into TV but that idea is more than relevant now with all kinds of media being filtered through millions of eyeballs online.

It is tempting to think we will know what the results will be when we mash up content across the media universe but the truth is far more interesting than the fiction.

There is an ongoing need for individuals and businesses to reinvent the way they talk to and otherwise engage with customers- in McLuhan’s description – for the customers to fulfill a extended role in the process and feel themselves to be part of the media / inside the moment.

Peter Hirshberg is one of those  who understood early on some of the implications and the huge social changes coming. He also missed a lot at the time (like most of us) but was able to link a number of the crossover points between TV and the web into a coherent and entertaining story about cultural disruptions and technology.

The video contains a fair amount of archival footage including some classic McLuhan moments.

Peter Hirshberg on TV and the web -31:41 Posted: Sept 2008 on TED

On Peter’s blog he links to a Sept 2007 paper over at HBS If you are an online marketer go read it now.

For digital marketing practice and theory, the last decade has brought two related surprises: the rise of social media and the rise of search media. Marketing has struggled to find its place on these new communication pathways. Old paradigms have been slow to die.

This paper reviews early beliefs about interactive marketing, then identifies 5 discrete roles for interactive technology in contemporary life and 5 ways that firms respond.

It concludes that the new media are rewarding more participatory, more sincere, and less directive marketing styles than the old broadcast media rewarded.

Key concepts include:

• Successful interactive marketing may be less a matter of domination and control, and more a matter of fitting in.
• There is a human need to assert and present to the world a self-serving identity and to manage one’s personal reputation.

The form of interactivity most attractive to marketing is one that facilitates people’s ability to construct their identity and contribute to the making of meaning.

That was the exec summary – I also liked this quote buried in the abstract.

“It concludes that while meaning-making remains the central purpose of marketing communication, the shift from broadcasting to interaction within digital communities is moving the locus of control over meanings from marketer to consumer and rewarding more participatory, more sincere, and less directive marketing styles.”

So there you have it – Engagement and roleplay by the consumer.

This goes all the way back to Shakespeare putting those extra scenes into his plays for the groundlings to watch.

Modern marketing turns out to be live theatre at its best playing 24/7 on all of your networked devices and no auditions!  Wait… I feel a Shakespeare quote coming on. What do you think?

Had a great conversation the other week about the growth fixation of business.

The idea is that with most businesses we focus on growth all the time – however we can get to it.  As mentioned previously growing business with existing customers seems an obvious but overlooked area for most.

The follow-on idea was just imagine you can’t get the obvious growth angles like customer numbers and revenue – what would you focus on?

My guess is quality improvements for existing customers would have to be at the top of the list.

And it is getting to be much cheaper to go to market with some of the systems and processes on offer.

David Cowan has written again about the reducing cost of those systems…

“My Internet Law
The time and money required to produce (design, develop, secure, test, launch, scale) a typical data-oriented form application on the web drops in half every 2 years.
This seems to have held true since the public emergence of the web in 1994. Do you agree? I don’t have much hard data, but McCain proposes new internet laws with far less.

For example, I recall the large systems integration firms charging as much as $20 mlllion to completely outsource development of a web application. (I forget the name but I recall a DFJ-backed pay-me-to-advertise-to-me startup that spent as much in 1996 with someone like Perot Systems and the app still never worked.)

Is there any doubt that most apps today can be launched with as much scalability for $300,000? The implied factor of improved efficiency is 0.5 to the sixth power over a 12 year period.

Cheaper hardware (Moore’s Law) accounts for only a small fraction of this effect. The real gains seem to come from decoupling and automating specific steps of the process. Major disruptions that come to mind: Microsoft FrontPage, SSL, Exodus hosting, Apache, Java, ActiveX, Javascript, Shockwave, Flash, load balancers, PHP,  XML, Ruby on Rails, web service APIs, AJAX, Amazon S3, DIY communities (Ning).”

We could quibble about the significance of some of his picks but it does make sense.

Not sure you can extract a reliable formula for this but the point that development costs are roaring lower makes huge sense. I have based a business on open source.

It is the only way to compete in the longer term I believe.

Guy Kawasaki has blogged often about this idea. Marketing and sales are still going to be much larger. The analogy might be production costs for a movie going much lower but marketing costs increasing at the extreme as competition for mind-share escalates.

In the future more businesses can be competitive but will need to do much more to get noticed and win business.

There is a still a certain level of novelty around online networking now / the equivalent of “free ink” is available but it won’t last. More of us will be in the advertising and communications sector for more of the time.

The idea of a Moores laws echo is a good one for gaining attention but the math doesn’t really hold up and for the reasons I’ve mentioned the game is being played elsewhere.

So production cost are lower – marketing costs are rising.

Possibly Related articles

• Oracle sits big iron on Amazon cloud
• Jump start your Web app deployment with a JumpBox
• EnterpriseDB plops Postgres on Amazon’s ‘cloud’

Here is a great little conference (Freelance08) on next Wednesday, May 7 and Thursday, May 8 at the Hyatt Regency hotel in Auckland.

It offers huge value for members of the freelance nation. Also a chance to hear from Nicky Hager, Brenda Ward, Virginia Larson and John Cranna as well as old favourites David Cohen and Rod Oram.

The scope is wide enough to include useful business tips for all contractors regardless of whether they get paid to write for a living. And at $100 for the whole day it is very good value.

Registration needs to be before close of business tomorrow so don’t delay. I’ve decided to go along to a few sessions myself. So if you make it, be sure to say hi.

As it happens still do some some contract research and writing for various business documents and it is always helpful to understand the best ways to frame up that kind of work since the creative element and the craft often has to be rationed to the budget at hand.

There is also a big difference between a quick note and a research piece or marketing content and that is not always so easy to explain or get paid for.

Breakout sessions: Freelancing nuts and bolts (Some examples only)

• Hawking your wares overseas
  David Cohen, journalist Tracey Barnett, journalist
• Negotiating – a way to better pay
  Jenny Ruth, freelance business journalist Julia Thorne, photographer and writer
• Slicing/dicing your interviews/expertise
  Gill South, freelance writer Rod Oram, journalist and commentator
• Making your writing a business
  Baubre Murray, director, Dowse Murray Chartered Accountants Simon Penlington, partner, Jones Fee, barristers and solicitors

Hat tip to Kim And Phillipa for nurturing this idea. I believe this is the 3rd conference and it looks like the combination of practical help and actual facetime together has achieved some critical mass.

See you there?

Related posts that you may also like

• Media Meltdown or New Era @ Dow Jones – sale of Dow Jones to Murdoch
• Media Chess – Murdoch Style can Murdoch make the numbers work
• Attention Profiling online trends
• When Self Publishing Makes Sense the power and choice shifts to the author
• One Little Song & Publishing Futures content producer and a consumer same time
• Creative copyright thinking creative commons

“media futures”