Hitting the Stage Again

Co-author of "The Last Original Idea" Alan K'necht will once again take the stage when he delivers the opening keynote address at Socialize Monetizing Social Media in Toronto on January 27, 2012. The theme of his address will be "Past, Present and Future: Measuring Social Media’s Impact".

Rest assured that in his address Alan will be taking attendees on an entertaining ride through the history of social media/marketing and he'll even attempt to measure it.

Alan dropped a hint yesterday by stating he is quoting a Barenaked Ladies song in the presentation. This morning he revealed the song's title "It's All Been Done" (watch the video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zs3xXlXSOKk) A simple listen to the chorus says it all

As part of his speaking agreement with the conference organizers, 100 copies of our book "The Last Original Idea" will be given away at the event.

For more information on this event and to register please visit http://www.mediabistro.com/socialize/ We are also happy to offer a discount code for 15% off the registration price. Simply use the code “SOCSPKR” when registering. While at the event be sure to say hi to Alan and he'll be happy to sign your copy of the book. Co-author, Geri Rockstein, will be attending the event, so say hi to her and she'll also be thrilled to sign your copy of the book as well.

Measuring Social Media

Alan K'necht's Keynote at at Dublin City University

Alan is off to his fourth conference in 3.5 weeks to spread the word of how to measure social media & to promote "The Last Original Idea - A Cynic's View of Internet Marketing". His vision & concepts have taken him from San Francisco (Socialize West) to Dublin, Ireland (DCU When Search & Social Collide where every attendee was presented with a copy of the book), to an online presentation (where one participant won a signed copy) and today to PubCon in Las Vegas where he'll be sharing his wisdom this Thursday (Nov 10, 2011) plus 50 copies will be giving away during an after hours event (The Epic Dinner) and he'll be holding a book signing on Thursday afternoon.

Alan has established 3 things he wants people to take away with them after each session  some of which are contained in the book:

1. Social Media is a tool and what we need to measure is the success of "Social Marketing"! So stop grouping all the tools into one bundle. To be successful you need to measure the importance and success of each tool in your social marketing tool box.
2. Don't use scoring tools (Klout, PeerIndex, Twitalyzer, etc.) to compare your score to anyone else. They measure how well you are doing in achieving your goals using the the different collection of tools that they attempt to score.
3. People have been social since the days of the cavemen, and methods of measurement started not much after that. So stop trying to reinvent method and take a look back and apply those time tested methods to your new tools.

Think of how a hammer looked a hundred years ago, a 1,000 years ago and 5,000 years ago. What a hammer is made of and the look has changed, but the goal hasn't "drive a nail into a piece of wood". This analogy is how everyone needs to look at their set of social marketing tool kit (social media), define the goal and objectives and then measure how many nails you have successful driven in using them.

Alan is always happy to speak to groups of a variety of size. Arrange to have Alan give an address your next event contact us.

The next major speaking event on Alan's agenda is the opening Keynote at Socialize: Monetizing Social Media Toronto January 26-27 2012.

Helping Leah Raise fund for The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society of Canada

Helping 6 Year Old Leah Raise $20,000 for The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society of Canada

 

Just over a year ago, Leah (at the age of 5) was diagnosed with Leukemia and a big part of the reason she is still with us today is because of organizations like The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society of Canada. Leah is the daughter of The Last Original Idea's author Alan K'necht cousin.

In support of  The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society of Canada on Saturday October 15^th Leah and her family will be participating in their first charity event, Light The Night Walk. They will be walking in honour of Leah’s courageous battle. 

They have set a goal for their team (Leah’s helpers) to raise $20,000. As of writing this, the have already raised $3,571.00!

While we won't be able to join them in this event, we will support them in every way we can. This includes donating $0.50 for each copy of our award winning book “The Last Original idea – A Cynic’s view of Internet Marketing” that is sold on Amazon between now and October 14, 2011 to Leah's fund raising efforts. This includes both the traditional paper version and the Kindle version.

This donation is in addition to the book’s initial pledge to donate 10% of the its profits to the Toronto Seals Special Olympics Swim Club.

Please help support this important cause by ordering a copy of the book Today. To order Simply visit any Amazon website and place your order or click one of the following links:

Amazon.com

Kindle Version

Paperback Version

Amazon.ca

Paperback Version

If you'd like to personally support Leah and her efforts you can sponsor her team as well by clicking on the following link and then choose a team member to sponsor. You have to sponsor a member of the team, you can’t just sponsor the team itself: http://my.e2rm.com/TeamPage.aspx?teamID=225954&langPref=en-CA

For more information on “The Last Original Idea” and to download a sample chapter visit http://thelastorginalidea.com

Has Branding Really Come a Long Way?

We perceive Brand Management as a modern concept, but how much do you really know about branding? This great, modern concept actually began in 1931; yes I said 1931! No, it wasn’t borne in the advertising Mecca of Madison Avenue, but in Cincinnati at the headquarters of Procter & Gamble.

Brand Management was in essence the brainchild of Neil McElroy, a 27-year old advertising executive assigned to the Camay Soap brand. He needed to hire two more people in his department and to make a case for the new hires he wrote a ground breaking memo (commonly referred to as the “Brand Man Memo”). McElroy did get his two hires, but more importantly this memo was so powerful that Proctor & Gamble changed how it managed its brands. This was quite an impressive feat when you consider that Proctor & Gamble was hardly a struggling new kid on the block. Au contraire, P & G was almost 100 years old at the time and it was nothing short of a miracle that they embraced change.

It’s remarkable when you consider that 80 years has passed. We like to think of ourselves as great innovators, but are we really just arrogantly repackaging old ideas and repurposing them, hoping that no one will notice?

Alan is Speaking at the Search Marketing Expo

In case you missed Alan today, you have another chance to catch him live on Friday, April 29 at the Search Marketing Expo taking place at the Sheraton Centre Hotel in downtown Toronto, conveniently located at 123 Queen Street West.

Alan will be part of a panel addressing important issues related to Search Analytics in the Civic Ballroom South from 11:00 AM - Noon. Don't miss this great panel discussion and come with your questions.

Search Analytics [SA]

[SA-2] Data Diving: Segmenting, Insights and Action:

Once you’ve defined your KPI, there are hundreds of other data points that may be impacting your key results. In this session, experts take the audience deep into the process of segmenting data and isolating metrics to gain greater insight, take action and improve search marketing ROI.
Moderator: Vanessa Fox, Contributing Editor, Search Engine Land
Speakers:
John Hossack, President, VKI Studios
Helen Overland, VP, Search Engine People
Alan K’necht, Founder, K’nechtology

The Printed Word & Revolution - No Original Idea

When Gutenberg invented the printing press (1436-1440) one can only imagine what was going through his mind. Most believe that his goal was(beyond making money)to bring down the cost of producing books, making them affordable for the masses and yes, to help increase the distribution of the Bible (the Gutenberg Bible).

It's hard to believe that he could foresee the consequences of this invention. Firstly reading, once the exclusive domain of nobility and the clergy, was now available to the common man. As the knowledge of how to operate a printing press spread and the price of the equipment declined it led to another evolution - the ability of a handful of people to rapidly print messages for mass distribution and consumption. The deployment of this tactic is well documented in helping spur on and influence the French Revolution 300 years after the introduction of movable type by Gutenberg.

As Internet technologies evolved Sir Tim Berners-Lee had similar goals to Gutenberg when he invented the World Wide Web. In essence it took publishing out of the hands of the few and put it in the hands of the many. Yet it wasn't until the wide adoption of Twitter around the world that we can truly see history repeating itself. Twitter as a technology allows anyone to post a message of 140 characters and have it distributed to the world in a matter of seconds. You don't have to be a friend or fan as in Facebook. You don't have to monitor a website for details; you just need to follow a person or a hash tag or monitor it for a specific phrase.

With this power available to so many, no wonder countries faced with uprisings and revolution are now trying to shut down Internet access in its entirety and not just block specific websites. Yet the powerful backbone of the Internet TCP/IP as we saw in Egypt earlier this month allows applications like Twitter to function beyond the confines of political borders and actually accelerate the speed of the revolution as the printed word did for the French Revolution.

So is Twitter the reincarnation of Gutenberg's printing press? Perhaps not the technology or the application of it, but most certainly its use. Ultimately the use of the printed word to stimulate and spread the word of revolution isn't an original idea, but modern technology like Twitter can make revolutions happen faster.

Spend Some Time With Alan on Valentine's Day

On Monday February 14th at 12:00PM ET Alan K’necht will be featured on Breakthrough Business Strategies.

Mobile listeners dial 646-200-3742 Or Listen Online

Alan is an in-demand keynote speaker and lecturer in addition to being the co-author of the Last Original Idea, which was in fact Alan’s original idea. On Breakthrough Business Strategies Alan will be sharing his wisdom and insights on Internet Marketing, Search Marketing, Web Development, and Web Analytics. And, he will be taking questions! Find out if you are caught up in the hype or really on the right track to achieving your Internet Marketing goals. If you’ve got the questions, Alan has the answers.

Before you head off for a romantic Valentine’s Day evening, spend some time with Alan on Breakthrough Business Strategies.

Going the Distance for Charities

Right from the start, The Last Original Idea has supported charitable efforts. We made a commitment to the Toronto Seals Special Olympics Swim club to donate 10% of the books' profits to their effort. Now we’re taking our support for charities to another level.

The Last Original Idea wants to help your favourite charity as well. We are willing to donate $0.75 US per book sold during a designated period to your charity. The concept is simple; add your promotions to our standard promotion and based on the publisher’s monthly sales volume report, we’ll send you a cheque.

To be fair, we can only support 1 charity at a time, so you need to apply and tell us why we should support you, what you are going to do to promote the event, and when you want to run the campaign. Generally sales periods will be 1 or 2 weeks in length, but we can make them longer upon request.

Interested? Then contact us by leaving a comment on this post with your contact details or through the book's website.

The Last Original Idea In Marketing Winners

The votes have been tabulated and the winners of our contest for the last original idea in marketing have been determined.

1st Place - Morgan Brown's "The Last Original Idea in Marketing was the Brand" with 108 votes

2nd Place - Kristine Schachinger's "Truly The Last Original Idea (In Marketing)" with 77 votes

The following winners were drawn at random from remaining entries for the following consolation prizes

• A Selection of organic gourmet popcorn from 479 Popcorn - Amy Teeple
• A copy of Jim Stern's book "Social Media Metrics" - Dawn Wentzell

----The Prize Packages ----

1st Place Prizes: Value $3,100

• Full conference pass to (your choice) either SMX Toronto or eMetrics Marketing Optimization Summit Toronto - April 28-29, 2011 (approx. value $900)
• 3 months subscription to gShift Labs(approx. value $1,000)
• 6 months subscription to Raven Tools Pro (approx. value $594)
• 6 months subscription to SEOmoz Pro(approx. value $594)

2nd Place Prizes: Value $600

• 3 months subscription to SEOmoz Pro(approx. value $297)
• 3 months subscription to Raven Tools Pro (Value $297)

Will New Usage Caps Bring Us Back to Basics?

When the Internet was shiny and new everyone acknowledged that content was king. Of course we couldn't resist some razzle dazzle and pretty soon audio and video were considered must haves to attract an audience. Instead of relying on content to deliver the message some websites were featuring full blown video productions. Ad agencies caught on quickly and grabbed onto this new revenue stream, recommending video for any company that could afford it. However, this gravy train may have now come to a screeching halt.

Internet Service Providers are not stupid and they are constantly working overtime to come up with a new cash grab. The latest is limiting the amount of data that you can download and upload. Of course you can continue to download and upload at will as long as you are willing to pay for the pleasure. Bell, Rogers, and Shaw have had downloads limits in place for a while and you may not have noticed; but if you are going to avail yourself of movie rentals and television services online you will soon find out.

How many companies who have videos on their websites or planned to have video on their website are going to put a halt to their plans? Have effective will the videos be if they incur a cost to the end user?

Will the new usage caps bring us back to basics when we all acknowledged that content was king?