As I’ve been taking more photos lately, and plan to continue that trend through the year, I thought I’d have somewhere other than Flickr to showcase my work. I always wanted a portfolio to point people to, rather than a Flickr photostream, so here goes…

Foursquare, Gowala and Facebook Places are not seeing the uptake that was predicted before the turn of the decade, as where entered “the year of the where”, with BrandRepublic reporting that almost half of UK young people are completely unaware of the services.

To get past the hype and see why, social agency Beyond conducted some research to try to understand the difference between what people are saying online compared to the actions of the early adopters. They also sought the views of the rest of the internet community when it comes to mobile check-in habits and motivations. The result is the following infographic:

Click for full infographic

The results show that those non-users, who could access to these services through smartphones, don’t see the point and are worried about publishing their whereabouts on the internet for all to see.

From a personal perspective, I did use Foursquare a year back. I joined in with work colleagues as we competed for badges and mayorships. Once I had all the badges and mayorships I was realistically going to get (I wasn’t going to get the astronaut badge) I got bored and, with nothing to check-in for, gave up.

Things have changed since then, with businesses getting involved with social check-ins and playing along. In fact, the Wetherspoons near our office has a poster in the window saying the  Foursquare mayor of the branch gets 20% off. And it is these deals that hold most interest with current users, those considering using and those talking about the services.

It seems that the thing holding back social check-ins is the “point” and security. Deals are starting to give people the motivation to use them, but the key trade-off is between how much they value their privacy and how much they really want to save a few pennies on their pie and a pint…

My job doesn’t involve a huge amount of email marketing, but I like to feel I have a grasp of some very basics, such as having the user’s experience in mind…

Today I saw someone completely disregard their audience. Ebuyer sent me this:

Click for full size

It looks like spam. It looks like something has gone horribly wrong. It isn’t, and it hasn’t. My Outlook client disables most images by default, so all the blank parts are blocked images. Problem is, Ebuyer have created this email from nothing but images. I don’t want to be forced to enable images to know the content of the email, I’m a busy and lazy guy, so I pass and it gets deleted (after a screenshot obviously).

Ebuyer may have had the best deal, the best design and the best copy under the sun just waiting for me to read and act upon. Trouble is, as Ebuyer didn’t consider their end user’s experience, I’ll never know about it – and I bet I’m not the only one. In fact MarketingSherpa found that only 33% of users have email images enabled by default, so an average of 67% of Ebuyer’s audience were greeted with the same blank stare above.

If find this amazingly thoughtless. When creating any email marketing creative for my employer I ensure that content is readable without images and even, in the case of our plain text subscribers, without any formatting or links!

The MailingManager blog gives some tips on how to tailor email marketing so it still has an impact without images, such as using background colours, web texts and pre-headers (“If you can’t see this email”, etc). Aweber have also posted some good advice, highlighting using text to highlight the important information.

All of those techniques were overlooked by the online electronics retailer. Instead, Ebuyer left me and 67% of their audience with a large chunk of white nothingness falling into their inbox…

PLUG: If you like reading a mix of email marketing critique and praise, then @beckr‘s Email Fail posterous is for you!

It is a widely accepted fact that all marketing activity needs to justify itself, whether it be advertising, public relations or direct mail. Yet because of the explosion in the use and popularity of tools such as LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook, social media has had a period of grace, with people were finding their feet in a brand new space.

However, this period is over.

Social media measurement is barging it’s way to the top of the digital marketing agenda as companies look to see what they are getting for their tweets, statuses and discussions. There has been huge growth in the social media monitoring (SMM) market, with plenty of options. You can combine several free services such as SocialMention, Google Alerts and Tweetdeck, or opt for well-rounded paid services like Alterian SM2.

And it is from the amount of successful paid for services that indicates that the market is getting serious about SMM. Research by social media software hub OneForty (presented in inforgaphic form!) found that an impressive 45.3% of companies surveyed are using paid for ($100 per month or above) SMM tools. But what are they monitoring? Are they looking for sales? Are they looking for brand engagement?

A quick ask to my Twitter followers found that while the answer varies, but the attitude was clear: whatever you do with social media, you need to monitor.

We’re at a point where people understand how that it is a must to monitor, but we’re at a stage where there is no clear set of rules in which to do so. The market has so many tools, with many of them hard to compare side-by-side. One might only monitor Twitter but provide sentiment indicators, whereas a rival might monitor several social services but provide no insight.

So, we’re past the first stage – standardisation of use – and have moved on to defining the second stage – standardisation of measurement. How long it takes to pass this stage remains to be seen, but the days of unmeasured social media activity for businesses is over.

(Image by Steve Harris)

Today they have announced another kick to users by announcing radical changes to their free use model from May 1st. The official Spotify blog announced, in a “this is to help make things better” kind of way, that free users will find their service restricted, with limits on the amount of plays and hours allowed:

New Spotify users will be able to enjoy our unrivalled free service as it is today for the first 6 months.

As of May 1st, any user who signed up to the free service on or before November 1st 2010 will be able to play each track for free up to a total of 5 times. Users who signed up after the beginning of November will see these changes applied 6 months after the time they set up their Spotify account.

Additionally, total listening time for free users will be limited to 10 hours per month after the first 6 months. That’s equivalent to around 200 tracks or 20 albums.

While Brand Republic report this as a halving of an allowance that is already in place, they do not consider the early adopters. Age-old Spotify users, who signed up before the new Open structure (like me), are not currently restricted

These new limits change the entire way that they will work with Spotify. I use it for at least 20 hours a week, so I would burn through my ‘allowance’ in a couple of days. Also, there are songs I love. Everyone will have a few (Last.fm even allows you to mark them as ‘loved’), so to be restricted to only 5 plays of those songs a year is like restricting an avid Twitter users to only allow them to follow 10 people, tweet twice a week and only retweet 4 times a year…

It is obvious that this is a move to push Spotify past the 1 million subscribers it currently has, as the ad-led model is not working. Yet, with 1 million subscribers on a minimum of £5 per month, Spotify have a turnover of at least £60 million from subscriptions alone. Add into that advertisers and people who have a casual premium month (for use on holiday, etc) and they’re aren’t exactly strapped.

Although the free model is hard to sustain, Spotify were leading a revolution in the way people listened to music. It allowed people access to music buying purchase, reducing the probability that people would source their musical tasters illegal.

The main problem I have with this move is how they’ve treated loyal users. I’ve been a big brand ambassador of Spotify since I started using it. I would quickly tell Twitter is something good was on there, if it recommended something catchy or an ad was effective. but now they’ve come out with a ‘pay up or get out’ approach to me. No relationship. they want my money or else. i’m sure I’m not the only one feeling this way…

With only 20 minutes a day and a 5 listen limit, I fear that the progress they’ve made over the past few years will quickly fade away as labels look to increase control over music and the listeners suffer more and more.

What do you think? Would you make the jump from free to £10 per month, or would you jump ship?

(Images by myself and Andreas Blixt)

Pencil case staple Tippex and tequila-flavoured beer Desperados have taken advantage of YouTube brand page to create experiences that break out of the traditional viewing structure.

Back in Septmber, Tippex a created a ‘video’ titled ‘A hunter shoots a bear’. We find a tent being ransacked by a bear, with a hunter lined up to teach the bear a lesson, but he eventually gives up and refuses. He then reaches out of the screen, grabs a Tippex mouse from the ad box on the right hand side, covers over the ‘shoots’ part and invites you to type anything you want instead. It then redirects you to a video reflecting your title. I tried ‘dances with’…

The hunter and bear dance as part of the Tippexperience

The ‘Tippexperience’ allows you to do many things with the free text box, with a few humourous results for such words as ‘screws’ and ‘blows up’, while there is also a good 404 response should they not understand what you meant.

So now beer brand Desperados launched their brand page and got in on the act of expanding past classic ‘sit and watch’ YouTubing. It is a much more expansive and interactive attempt.

Once you enter your date of birth and which sex you want to ‘party’ with, a first-person video starts, wandering through a party and into the kitchen. You’re then thrown a beer, with water droplets splashing out of the constraints of the video border, dribbling down the rest of the page.

The interaction then begins in earnest as the whole page shakes, everyone looks confused and there is a hole in the wall on the ‘video’. You then use the YouTube progress bar to pull back and help open it up. The rest of the page, normally taken up by ads and related videos crumbles away and you have a party scene that dominates the whole page!

Both of these companies have thought outside the box, literally, for these campaigns and they really work. They are engaging and interactive, which improves the sentiment towards their brand no end. Hey, I might even buy a few beers because of it!

What do you think of this approach? Does it reflect well on their brand or is it just a big time-wasting gimmick?