I love to see how technology continues to be woven deeper into the fabric of baseball and how it benefits everyone from teams to players to fans.
These days technology is driving millions of interactions that happen at the speed of light. Players utilize video to break down their latest at bat, and might watch in between innings to make changes for future at-bats. Teams use scores of computer-generated statistics to analyze player performances, and breakdown their opponents. Things like variable ticket pricing, enhancements to television broadcasts (pitch tracker), and social media channels have altered how fans interact with the sport. Read More »
One of the most consistent challenges in designing for your customers’ digital experiences is understanding what things they’ll be doing when, which in turn governs what device they’ll be doing those things on. Will it be on the couch with a tablet? On the go with a smart phone? At work on a laptop?
On the Cisco digital team, we do a lot of research and planning on this very topic, and have found that some tasks are very time/device specific (such as looking up appointment information or background information on your phone right before a meeting) while some are more broad and could happen anywhere, such as checking product information or searching. To illustrate this better to our teams internally, we put together a storyboard to illustrate how our customers and partners use multiple devices (desktops, laptops, tablets, smart phones) within the course of their day when interacting with us and each other. Here’s a panel from it:
What this doesn’t show is that there are also “could happen anywhere” cases. These are often the most mundane of things, but important ones. For instance, our login page on Cisco.com receives more than 2,000,000 visits per month. But when we took a look at the mobile part of the login experience, we knew something had to be done!
The most obvious problem with this page above is the teeny tiny type. And then, to use it, you have to stretch and zoom to get the fields big enough to even type into. It was, as we euphemistically say in the tech biz, “suboptimal.”
One solution would have been to create separate login designs for large tablets, small tablets, phones and desktops. Instead, we chose a smarter way, using Responsive Design, which I have blogged about previously: We used one “smart” code base that adapted the display for the size of the current device. The result was very simple and very nice: A clean login page we launched recently that retains its normal behavior on the desktop browser, but shrinks to fit for tablets and smart phones. It’s a simple example of where Responsive Design saves time in deployment because we could write the code once and put it through one development and test cycle, rather than creating three or four different experiences and having to develop and test them all separately.
Responsive design doesn’t solve every problem — and there are many, many experiences on mobile that need to be designed specifically for venue and device. But use responsive design where it helps save time and money, and can provide some consistency in basic behavior.
Thanks to our mobile, design, and IT teams for pushing this out. Enjoy!
Cisco, the leader in networking, is transforming how people connect and collaborate with social media. Cisco has paved the way for employees, customers, partners and visitors to view how we listen and engage via all social channels. Our new Social Media Listening Center is a state-of-the-art interactive experience featuring 6 touch-enabled screens showcasing real-time information about Cisco conversations in the social web. This will continue to enhance how we at Cisco integrate and interact with the voice of the customer as well as increase internal adoption of social media listening.
“We have two ears and one mouth so that we can listen twice as much as we speak.”
Travelocity’s former CMO talks about the ‘Roaming Gnome” and what works for everyone.
In today’s Internet-hyped society, even the presidential candidates and their veeps are thriving on social networks. At least seven YouTube channels are broadcasting the vice presidential debates live from Kentucky.
Victoria Treyger, chief marketing officer at Kabbage.com, was CMO at Travelocity from 2008 to 2010 when the travel industry took a nose dive.
Treyger has also worked at Amazon, American Express and RingCentral. She says for brands that are 100 percent web-based (like Travelocity), it’s more important than ever to have that touch or emotional connection with customers. She talks about how they took the gnome on the road to excite people to travel again …and how they used social media.
Like most social media users, I use sites, such as Facebook, LinkedIn, and Blogger, to reach out to family and friends, network with colleagues, and share personal blogs. These venues make my social conversations both manageable and enjoyable. However, when I sought to utilize social media as a way to market our department brand, I went from a fast food menu of the big three (Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn) to a dizzying array of social media networks from which to select. Google+, Chimein, Dribbble, Picasa, Pinterest, Digg, and Instagram are just the tip of the iceberg in a sea of social media networks that number in the hundreds. Add in the many international social media networks found around the world and what were a few simple choices, became an overwhelming social media menu; and new social media networks continue to pop up faster than I could say, “I’ll have fries with that.”
With so many choices, how would I pick and choose the most effective social media networks that would provide the perfect social media options for my branding plan? After all, part of the “mystique” is the desire to utilize the next social media network de jour. An impossible task that would have had me spending more time on investigating every social media option rather than actually using available networks productively, so I backed away from the menu and outlined a social media strategy by asking the following questions:
Who was my audience?
What was the purpose of using social media?
How would I dedicate and manage my time resource and stay involved?
Budget – do you have one?
My audience is made up of fast moving and customer driven, professional technical teams who digest information quickly and move on. Social media is the vehicle that would put the information I need to get into our engineers’ hands at real time speed and with interaction exchange. I listened to their conversations and identified topics of interest and will present information in an engaging format that will enlist their attention. Visuals, such as pics and videos, and sound bite titles, such as tweets with links, are most successful for this group. Additionally, by employing gamification methods as a fun teaching tool, I would build awareness in a group that is often too busy to engage. Factor in that I had both a finite amount of time I could dedicate to these resources and encourage active participation and no budget, I would have to use free, social media resources and utilize the tools they provide for metrics oversight.
Being able to answer the above questions allowed me to narrow my choices, from the many social media networks available, to purpose-specific and globally popular social media platforms. With recognized voices such as Pinterest, Twitter, and Facebook, most of my audience was already familiar with these social media networks and would provide an easy learning curve to those who were not.
There are countless social media tools out there and not every tool works best for all business plans. Define your social media goals and the outcome you want before you begin selecting from the social media menu and if you are still not sure what to do, invest in a social media agency. They can assist you in defining a social media plan with the outcome you desire.
Like most social media users, I use sites, such as 