Because challenge brings opportunity, 2012 might be your chance to influence your future.
Offering new services, improved products, innovative paths or add sense could be your stepping stone to make the difference that will matter to your customers.

So here is our wish: may your ambition and energy enable you to change the world (even just a little) bringing happiness, serenity and success for you and your peers!

And if you need a team to help you reach this goal, contact us or tell us how we can help.

All the best for 2012!

The netinfluence logo evolved slightly but most importantly our website features now our activities.  Ever since the beginning, netinfluence has been perceived as a communication agency but also as a technology expert.  The thing is, we are more than that ;-)  How do we define ourselves?  We are a Digital Pure Player agency.

We help brands in designing or enhancing customer’s online experience. And what is unique is that not only do we “THINK“, but we are also get our “hands on” and CREATE, help in planning better ways to REACH customers, and GROW business & attention and at last, CARE to train our customers and help them monitor their activity to improve it.  We “walk the talk” by using the experience we have been accumulating overtime and sharing it with our customers.

If you want to know more, I let you discover our new website.

You might also have noticed that our blog changed accordingly to offer you a better experience, discovering 4 years of really rich content.  We hope you will appreciate this new design.  Your feedback and suggestions for improvement are welcome so do not hesitate to drop us your comments hereafter.

And stay tune to discover our portfolio which will soon be unveiled on our new website.  If you like to be the first to know about our news, subscribe to our newsletter.

My grandma can be sure she will see them because they come to get their presents…
As cynical and sad as it may sound, some brands tend to behave the same way when it comes to influencers.

For a brand, working with bloggers is not easy.  Spotting them is hard and brands don’t often get it right.
Instead of building relationships, regularly, closely, with dedicated ressources, they want to have them – purchase them? – when they need it.

Bloggers are like your grandma and mine.
If you only ever pay attention to them when you need them, how do you think they will consider you?

Credits for picture : http://www.flickr.com/photos/sabertasche2/4101160357/ (very nice picture of his grandma gracefully shared under CC)

Despite the number of marketers who reported testing mobile, some basic research is not being performed: 63% of marketers told eROI they were not measuring how many of their email subscribers were viewing messages on mobile devices. Mobile-optimized messages were sent by 25% of respondents.

Usage of marketers’ websites via mobile was even more likely to be ignored; just 23% of marketers reported having a mobile-optimized website. The vast majority of those sites were limited versions of the full company website designed to include information relevant to mobile customers. via emarketers

According to ExactTarget’s “Subscribers, Fans and Followers” report, there is little cannibalization among the three channels—instead, there is significant overlap. Most internet users studied in April 2010 engaged with brands only via marketing emails, but nearly a third subscribed to emails in addition to being fans of brands on Facebook.

Provided by emarketers

This means that socialmedia clearly is a way to further engage your readers, transforming them into fans and followers and further deepen the relationship you have with them.

Emails does not replace social media, it is complementary.

For each of the projects leaders, the same anxieties return loop: If we sell online, we will cannibalize our network!

At the same time, in a downturn economic situation, they all throw in the hope of additional revenue coming from online sales, but the fear.

No Man’s Land
To prove my point of view, I would like to take the example of Apple.
2 years ago, Lausanne (the town where we work in switzerland) was only having a few Apple resellers. “mémoire vice” (Riponne), Macs – horrible service btw – (near train station), an obscure dealer near to Aclens and a hard to find dealer in the the center of Morges.
It may be there were some other smaller, but say these 4 there were “big” players.
Finding a Mac in a Mall or in a supermarket was impossible.
Ordering Apple Macs however, was possible via the website.
You could buy online at the same price any computer (sometimes having to add additional delivery costs too).

Uber Marketing
The launch of new products, increased marketing and especially the release of the iPhone (brilliant marketing too) has boosted demand.
Within a few months, demand exploded.

• Fnac (specialized hi-tech, CD, Music, Computer shop) began by introducing one Apple Mac, sadly presented on a table.  Then two other joined.  Now an entire space has been dedicated and redesigned to offer the Apple products almost the quarter of the floor space.  The whole Apple range is now available with a dedicated and trained salesperson.
• A 100% Apple shop – Computer Art – the size of the largest resellers previously mentioned, was installedat in the most exclusive part of the city.
• “Mémoire vive”, which just had its shop in Riponne, opened another small shop in flon (presumably to compete with Art Computer) 100% mac too.
• Media Markt now has a full corner for Apple Macs with vendors that can provide you a printer that runs under Mac (it took time)
• Large malls such as Coop, with stores like Interdiscount, also offer dedicated Apple Mac cormers.

The more, the merrrier

Despite the presence of the online store, retailers developped, and some new came up.

So if having an online store really was cannibalizing (preventing) traditionnal sales, why would so many retailers jump in selling Apple products?

Ambassadors
If you ask retailers how they sell their products they will say “we sell products people ask for.”

They do not sell what does not sell. Watches, shoes, jewellery, clothes…. no matter the product type, retailers don’t care to sell what takes an effort.  This requires efforts, training, marketing budgets to turn retailers into ambassadors to the point they care enough to sell also the “unwanted” products (understand the products that might require a little demo or more explanation to the customer for him to buy).

To sell, they need above all that YOU do the appropriate marketing that makes people want to buy your product.

People used to by what was advertized (so advertising was enough then to publicize your product, get exposure).
Now they purchase what is “visible” and “recommended”.  And the only way to be visible and recommended today is to have an active online presence.

online, online, online
Can you compete with Apple’s inventive marketing, product innovation and advertising budget to get the same results?
Probably not.
But look at the case closely because it is emblematic.

• The company has created demand for products exceptionally different
• They have developed an incredibly efficient marketing based on storytelling, values (statutory) and non-technical communication (they sell a vision of people’s ego, not products)
• They have a range of product which is easy to understand, thus to compare with others and easy to communicate
• They sell wherever they can sell – direct, online, via retailers
• The pricing strategy is to offer international prices, not discounted, non-negotiable, standard
• Selling online offers advantages that retailers don’t (engraving of a tagline, availability of the whole product range, new products immediately accessible)
• Retailers have however advantages the online store does not : easy to go to because close, physical show room and trial, after-sales service

The more you are visible, understandable and orderable – especially the more you are present and facilitate access to your products – and the more they will be purchased by customers.
An online shop offers access to the entire range. It is a direct presence of the brand which will advertise its products. A brand having direct contact with its customers will be able to grow, learn and improve to better match demand.
Facing both great and bad product reviews, they will learn and improve.
The product reviews being referenced by search engines, and major social networking tools being connected to the shop, the store will become a weapon of mass recommendation.

In short, a brand that sells online is”facing” and improving. It benefits both the clients and the whole network (including offline retailers).

• Better communication
• Availability of the whole product range

A network of retailer who has the chance to represent a brand that sells online benefits of this marketing and experience

• An online referral (provided that the site is not a version or poorly coded flash blabla) and a presence in social networks (conversations, links, not to mention the various connections)
• The availability of the complete range for customers in a hurry but also the potential of upcoming sales, additional sales (accessories) or maintenance of more products for situations where the physical presence bearby is critical
• A wider exposure and therefore a lower learning curve meaning customers know and then ask for the products spontaniously
• A great level of details on the net, which helps find resources for better advice, thus increase knowledge, easing recommendation and increasing satisfaction

A little known brand has everything to win from selling online as it will increase “on the shelves” requests at retailers shops

Installed brands will have to fight against the fears from retailers but will gain in “exposure”. An increased visibility inevitably reflectig back on outlets

I do not think that brands today can afford not being in direct contact with their clients: the marketing ivory towers have fizzled.

To understand the customer and its needs, a brand shall experience direct feedback from an online store. Nor can a brand only rely on a single sales channel.

If people want to buy online, you must be there. If you don’t competitors will.  And those being the more active online wiil generate increased outlet requests, thus, eventually, be also more ordered by retailers.

Cannibalization, I think, is a protectionist argument made by individuals who want the status quo. But status quo does not exist.

Lors du salon Paris 2.0, auquel Sandrine Szabo a participé, elle a fait la rencontre de profils intéressants, notamment celui de Yves Voglaire, de formation designer industriel et fondateur de la société Originn, qui est spécialisée dans le design de services.

Le design de services c’est quoi? Le blog NoDesign a consacré un article sur ce sujet que je vous invite à lire. C’est un métier qui aide les entreprises a créer de la valeur ajoutée en développant un service.

Retrouvez l’intégralité de la conversation entre Sandrine et Yves sur le métier de designer de services:

Many rumors have been circulating in the last 2 years, but nothing has been unveiled yet. I feel that either one of the following directions could be considered.

Twitter Affiliation and Ad track

Considering the revenues made by companies like Dell with its outlet tweets, one of the direction could be to open special accounts for monetizing, including affiliates type of contracts to allow for brands to get premium and, could be, targeted visibility (upon opt it, not to fail onto facebook’s traps) or allow companies to create coupons, creating a purchasing platform or dealing with a service like paypal to get revenue refund.
The “leak” made by one ot twitter’s investor this week – immediately denied by the founder, gives some credibility to this option. Twitter is not willing to raise another round of funding and therefore really needs to start making money.
Considering the “emotional” reactions on similar facebook’s initiative, I am really not suprised how fast Evan williams clarified the position. Badly or uncompletly announced, such a news could act as a “bomb” and really harm twitter in its communication.

Twitter value added service track

I would clearly however favour the second option. I mentioned in a reply to a post that I believed in the possibility of raising more clever value and services that just ads usual. I indeed believe in twitter’s value for marketers, brands, communities and companies. Less in the couponing direction which would be the “first track” I described above, with direct (ads /affiliation) revenue generation. I believe in services that would allow us to improve our conversation on the quality side :

• Understanding better our brand perception for instance with “tweetanalytics”
• Go in the direction of tweeteffect which analyzes the impact of each tweets (but this should be improved) and therefore help understand what works or not
• Help us handle our tribes like the service Twibes
• What they did with wefollow, responded very well in the twitosphère. The service is clean, brilliant, simple. Creating a directory allowing to find themes, people of interest, could also end up in a value added service at some point

I trust more the second option, especially since I read this article from Nial Kennedy mentioning that twitter has two records in the state of California (see below extract from Nial Kennedy weblog).

Technically there are two Twitters on record with the state of California: Twitter Inc. and Twitter Services Inc. The difference may be a remnant from Twitter’s beginning in incubator Obvious Corp. or it could be a sign of the company’s plans to operate its services business separate from the blogging platform.

Those services would be of value not only to large companies making big spendings but to many of us, including just individuals willing to improve their conversations. Only future will tell but I believe we are not far away of a solution now, especially with the crisis pressure and money fundings issues. And you, what is your guess ?

Lock in syndrom
The main problem with facebook (the same goes with linkedin increasingly) is the lock-in. You invite friends, create your tribe within facebook, but once it is there, you can take it nowhere. Facebook as chained you by not allowing you to get anything out of their platform.
You may create apps, facebook connect things in but this is a one way trip.

It probably would not be a problem if we only used this network. But when you start to have linkedin friends, facebook friends, twitter friends, plaxo and address book info, your online networking social life becomes a nightmare.

Generation divide stressing business model weakness
The main assumption facebook is making is that they can monetize your 150 million profiles by using ads and eventually targeting you and use your recommandation power to gain money out of affiliate programs.
Whilst “generation Y” does not mind using silly apps, filling people’s walls and get locked-in, they tend to be allergic to facebook’s attempts to generate revenue with them, pouring ads on their profiles.
81% of gen Y do not think ads are relevant.
30-40 people mind less the ads but those are more of the linkediniens than the facebookiens. Reason behing that when you are 35+ your preoccupation when using social networks is usually more your job and career than “writing or poking people’s walls”.

Miscommunication and continuous mistakes
It started in 2006 with the “feed” story.
The founders assumed that showing networks changes in a mini feed would be smart, and so they inititated the feature.
This generated a vast petition of people feeling facebook was going far in their privacy, not asking if they could use the data.

It was not a big deal in the end (since the info was indeed public) and was solved by adding “opt in” features in our profile to allow for users to decide for whether they wished to share, or not. But people started to feel manipulated and reacted highly emotionnally. They acted fast, solved the problem and said they would do next changes asking people about it. We thought they had learnt the lesson…

When they revealed the beacon project in 2007, they surely were not expecting for people to react emotionnally again. The main problem for facebook is that after 3 years of existence and above 8.5 million users, was still not making money neither having an effective business model.

The beacon project was THE plan. By using people’s info and exploiting their purchasing behavior, they had imagined they could get “affiliate” money out of people sharing what they liked and friends purchasing what others would get.

The project did not even came close to be launched : it scared people out so much and generated such a fierce hostility that they had to stop it right away.
Here is just an example of a few reactions : Mashable; Facebook loses retailers / Mashable; Facebook track users / Business insider / Guardian

They explained that it was not such an evil plan, and that part of people’s perception was wrong because of communication they had under estimated and misachieved. But it was there. Trust was broken.
Of course when you have 8.5 millions users then, and now 150 millions users 2 years later, which represents an amazing growth, you want to make money out of it. The main issue is that people feel fooled. They like the service and wish to use it for free but are not ready to pay for it; neither as dummy ads / affiliate generators.

Between 2008 and 2009 we see again some privacy issues. Deleting a profile seems to be impossible. More annoying, [the new terms and conditions issued in 2009, suggest facebook owns their users' content !
|http://www.techtree.com/techtree/jsp/article.jsp?article_id=99030&cat_id=643]

Under no circumstances can a company highjack user’s content, and here, again, they go back.

Because they still can’t figure out how to work with users and believe they know better, they decided to change the homepage early this year.

This was not a unwise decision. They start to feel the pain from twitter increasing power which they tried to buy unsuccessfully and start to suffer from their size and bandwidth costs. So the redesign is anything but a “design” decision; this is market pressure.

The problem is that here again, they make decisions without sharing and that people get made at it. See the following Poll where 94% of users polled claim hating the design or the article of econsultancy talking about the flop.

A real value problem
Not that I am saying that facebook is useless but let’s face it : the more it goes and the less people feelings about facebook get enthousiastic.

• The new interface is loosing it, showing mainly feed of news which ends up just being a twitter feed or blog feed
• Creating profiles for companies is not possibile and “within platform promotions” (sending mails, informing) is so limited that it makes it a pain to use.
• Groups are now hard to find in the new interface and attract less and less people
• Facebook by locking in people data is making it so difficult for groups that open alternatives like twitter, friendfeed, get increasing attention.
• Moreover, facebook, by concentrating on monetizing its users’s stuff and on locking us in, has lost focus and stopped innovating.
• The real value of facebook if you can only add things in, and install silly apps is not demonstrated.

90% of my news feed comes from blogs feeds I followed in netvibes and from twitter conversations.
In the end, I have figured out this week that I was increasingly considering moving outside facebook, concentrating on twitter and linkedin which is not either satisfactory as it tends to lock us in more and more but which, at least, provided me with “site core value”.

Break or make year
This year is really important for the facebook guys, and probably their last chance to make it.

Things you can do within facebook mostly depend on apps which are not made, not monetized, not controlled by facebook.
In the end, the only thing that facebook owns is YOU but you owe them not much.

• Take you tribes out and they get nothing
• Leave your tribes in and you don’t get much more

When the difference between staying and leaving is not worth much, then, there is a high danger that people, like in fashion, loose interest and leave for another trendy tool. It might be that they develop new things and really start to hire marketing boys to work with them on core value, but they won’t be able to stay like this much longer unless they really change their approach.

And you, how long will you stay loyal to facebook ? Are you happy with value facebook offers you ?

Do you feel comfortable with their new ad plan ?

Read also :
The Facebook Takes Over Top Spot, Twitter Climbs
The founder BIO
The “intense year” article made by Robert Scoble

Agissez pour rendre votre expérience utilisateur unique et soyez les tribus et vous gagnerez le coeur des foules.  C’est du reste ce qu’explique brillamment, comme toujours, la dernière présentation de seth godin :

Connaissez-vous vos tribus ?

The conference gathered hundred people from all over europe and we even had a visitor from Canada.  The organization went well, the catering was great and both speakers and attendees seemed to be very happy at the end of the day : it was a real success for a firts venue.

How all this happened

Back in july, trapped between Adrian’enthousiasm back from the WWDC and my perception of the marketing potential of the iPhone and the frustration to see no planned event around the iPhone, we decided to create ours. Most companies are lagging behind in understanding and using new media.
They missed the train for the web and shall now not miss that of mobile.  You might think mobiles are there forever and that the iPhone is only just another device.  In fact it opens up an entirely new perspective, of exactly the same kind as the web 2.0 wave. So 3 months ago we decided to create a conference about the iPhone and our approach was to discuss first with decision makers because this is how you can move things.
We wanted to concentrate on the marketing potential. Taking the decision to organize such an event is not easy I guess but it appeared to us as a pure necessity : we had to do it.

The organization

Then the organization took us 3 months out of which 2 were intensively devoted to communicating, finding speakers, inviting people and looking for sponsors.  I think we can be proud of what we did since we managed to get 100 invitees, great presentations and a smoothly running organization. Things went as expected and we got some interesting presentations.
Of course, as a first venue, we can consider improving things.  But to be honest, we had a lot of good feedback (which we will check with the survey) and some great contacts.

The sponsors

We hardly break even financially due to the total lack of implication of paying sponsors (don’t get us wrong we had wonderful sponsors helping us for visibility, see below).  I must say that I am not happy with this sponsoring part, namely with the telecom industry and the communication agencies.  Is it the crisis effect ?  Too early ?  To new ? The first venue ? Probably a mix of all this…

Instead of complaining that nothing happens and that creative people are not around, they should support such projects as it clearly breaks barriers and leverages ideas…
So here is my call, we need support to do more and better.

Please help us !

However, some really important sponsors help us and namely for the visibility.  And we owe them a lot for their support without which we would not have had this success.
Bilan immediately supported us and I am really impressed with how they helped us whether with the advertising or the speaker. Thierry Weber and Klewel had an amazing implication, namely filing the event and helping us to get our content shared.

Considering the time & money it involves, I think we can only be really thankful to them for that. I take the opportunity to advertise their service as keeping a trace of your event REALLY is key to your visibility.  So whatever event you plan to organize, make sure you get a budget for that and contact Klewel & Thierry.

All our other sponsors helped us so much on promoting the event that I really want to thank them, namely the SAWI, 20minutes, emailvision or the swissmarketing club.

Participants

We managed to gather some really different speakers but our success comes mainly from our participants.  30% of them were technical which means that most of the participant were either decisions makers or marketing / sales related.

What is next?

We already have a lot of ideas for next year but were not expecting so many people to be asking us when our next event was going to be planned. So the feedback is really positive and gives us some very good reasons to keep up in this direction.  Stay tuned to follow our ideas

On doit compter avec le web mais maintenant également avec le mobile.

C’est un pas nécessaire pour les entreprises de concevoir une présence multi-médias.  Le mobile est un canal privilégié car il vous permet de vous retrouver dans la poche des gens. C’est de cela dont nous allons vous parler durant la conférence iPhone.
Ce mobile a révolutionné l’image même et l’utilisation que nous avons de nos mobiles.
A tout instant, nous pouvons consulter ce qui se passe autour de nous, savoir où sont nos amis ou bien ce que la ville dans la quelle on se trouve nous propose comme divertissement. EGO marketing © et GEO marketing ce sont les vrais forces de l’iPhone. Pour les décrypter et expliquer comment une entreprises et les forces marketing pourront en tirer des bénéfices, nous vous proposons une conférence unique dans son genre.
Pour la première fois en Europe, vous assisterez à une conférence destinée aux responsables marketing, aux décideurs, aux responsables IT mais également à tous les département communication.

Nous vous attendons nombreux.
Ajoutez la date dans votre agenda – 31 octobre, Genève, de 8h à 18h
Pour vous inscrire : http://www.iphone-conference.ch/registration
Pour nous soutenir et parler de cette conférence dans votre blog : http://www.iphone-conference.ch/promote
Pour s’inscrire en tant que journaliste : http://www.iphone-conference.ch/medias