We all know technology is changing our world, but have you ever thought of using it to take care of your own healthcare needs? Believe it or not, lots of apps are in the marketplace to help you do your own medical diagnosis. And, according to statistics, technology may be able to replace up to 80% of what doctors do.
Infographic courtesy of InsuranceQuotes.com.
At NMX this month, many conference go-ers filled out fun infographics about their NMX experience. The fine folks at Lemon.ly created these for attendees to color in at its booth and at our infographics session led by John Meyer. We loved this idea and thought we’d share photos of some of the finished products.
Want to create your own NMX infographic as you reflect on your conference experience? Just download the updated infographic below, fill it in, and send it to our Community Manager Deb Ng at deb@nmxevents.com. She’ll share them on our Facebook page!
Although there’s more technology use in developed countries, those who live in third-world nations are quick to learn how devices work when given the opportunity. The One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) organization recently gave tablets to children in Ethiopia to see if kids could learn without the benefit of an actual teacher. Here’s what happened:
Infographic courtesy of BachelorsDegreeOnline.com
Most don’t have it; a fortunate few do. Only a handful of very talented “naturals” have the ability to engage an audience through their brilliantly-crafted stories. Not only are they able to use their charisma and emotional intelligence to captivate and charm, they’re able to ignite and convince their audience to take action through the use of their story. These are the people you love being around. They enthuse, entertain and inspire!
The practice of using stories to motivate is an extremely effective leadership tool and has been used throughout history. Think of some of the great biblical leaders and how they leveraged parables and narratives to inspire their audience. Look at how George Washington, Henry Ford and Martin Luther King and many other thought leaders incorporated stories into their speeches.
“Today, I want to tell you three stories from my life. That’s it. No big deal, just three stories.” – Steve Jobs
The leaders that employees follow and admire most are those that tell meaningful stories rather than reciting boring and useless statistics. Consider the now famous speech that Steve Jobs gave at Stanford graduation. Within the first 30 seconds of his address, he says “Today, I want to tell you three stories from my life. That’s it. No big deal, just three stories.” He immediately engaged his audience and then goes on to deliver one of the most inspiring commencement speeches in history through the effective use of his stories.
In Telling Tales, Stephen Denning writes, “Analysis might excite the mind, but it hardly offers a route to the heart. And the heart is where we must go if we want to not only motivate people to take action, but do so with energy and enthusiasm. Even the most logical arguments or well-crafted PowerPoint slide deck won’t do the trick. Story telling can translate those dry and abstract numbers into compelling pictures of leaders’ goals.”
The heart is where we must go in marketing! This is especially true in content marketing. However, the challenge of reaching the heart through text heavy content lies in the lack of emotional hooks a writer can place as they convey their message. Without being able to see, gauge and interpret the audience, only the most talented writers capture their reader’s attention. In addition, readers today are inundated with information and if an emotional hook isn’t set within the first few seconds, the reader is gone.
This is where the data visualization can more effectively tell your story and “translate those dry and abstract numbers into compelling pictures.” With the right infographic, a writer is still able to tell their story, but the likelihood of setting an emotional hook and catering to the reader’s attention span increases significantly.
Imagine that it’s Monday morning and you’ve just jumped online to read about the release of Apple’s iPhone 5. As usual, you’re pressed for time and are looking for some quick content before you make your buying decision. You come across two “stories” that are essentially the same thing; a breakdown of what it will cost to own the new device. The only difference is one is an infographic and the other is an article. Which are you most likely to spend your time on?
If you’re like majority, you’ll favor the graphic over the written. The reasons:
This is where the two worlds collide. You put the art in the story and your audience engages on two levels; with the story AND the visualization. For this reason, infographics have become a quintessential marketing tool that:
An infographic that’s well designed and promoted through the right channels can tell a story in such a compelling way that it’ll inspire your audience to take action. Stories told visually should be considered a key component of any corporate communication and marketing strategy.
With each passing year, we share more, invest in new tech toys, and the way we get the news of the day evolves. Information is everywhere and all of us are a part of shaping the social sphere around us. As we get ready to wrap up 2012, what will the year be known for? Who was the most talked about athlete this year? What country had the biggest growth in social? What was the most shared event? See what AddThis has to say about the trends from 2012 in this infographic.
This fall, Mark Fidelman, our Conference Director of BusinessNext Social, set out to find the most socially active group of CMOs in the Fortune 100. Surprisingly, the group is overall not on the early adopter end of the social media spectrum. Only one in five CMOs or top-level marketing / communications executives from the Fortune 100 list have an active public presence on social networks. In our experience, having a large digital network is a significant advantage for anyone in positions where communication and influence are key ingredients to success.
The study revealed that the following individuals have social influence which distinguishes them from their peers. Mark said, “These visionaries have demonstrated their ability to sustain an adaptive social business by implementing new strategies, embracing cutting-edge mobile and social technologies and developing engaging content.”
Note: Only the highest ranking marketing executives were considered in each of the companies.
While CMOs may apply different methodologies for engaging digital communities on an array of social platforms, these few rank highly on a formula pioneered by Mark Fidelman that considers metrics such as Twitter followers, retweet frequency, social engagement frequency, social mentions, KRED scores, and Klout scores. Weights are assigned to each factor to determine the final rankings of each CMO’s social impact.
There is obviously a major discrepancy between the low social rankings of most CMOs and the significant focus placed on the impact of social media in business and the evolving role that marketers are taking in social media activities. A recent CMOSurvey.org study predicts that social media spending as a percent of rising marketing budgets is expected to increase from 7.6 to 18.8 percent over the next 5 years, while Gartner Research predicts the CMO will spend more on IT than the CIO by 2017.
Ironically, these 100 CMOs are charged with leading social initiatives for the world’s largest enterprises, yet our analysis shows that the majority have relatively little experience building influencer communities. “That is a major stumbling block,” says Mark. “The consensus among the people who top our list is that CMOs need first-hand experience building online communities to connect with customers and foster loyalty, trust and engagements.”
“An adaptive business is the only business that will survive the new challenges ahead, challenges caused by a massive shift of power from corporations and traditional media to customers and influencers. Companies that don’t make the transition to adaptive, social business will face overwhelming challenges that they are ill-prepared to overcome. Too often, we’ve witnessed organizations fail to understand and act on these shifts, and surrender to their competitors and creditors.
We want to change that.
At BusinessNext Social, we’re giving business leaders the opportunity to learn how the most successful companies remain relevant, sustainable and profitable. What’s the secret? Combining new social and mobile technologies with smart content. When produced in the right culture, this creates a powerful growth machine that can automatically adjust to changes in market conditions.”
– Mark Fidelman, Conference Director, BusinessNext Social
If Mark’s vision for social business sounds too good to be true, then we have to recognize that the transition to social business is incredibly difficult. And, effective change needs to start at the top. Only by “walking the talk’’ can CMOs and other C-level executives demonstrate credibility and set the example for fellow workers. Clearly, some CMOs already “get it.” Dozens will be speaking at the upcoming conference and hundreds more will join. But what about Fortune 100 executives leading some of the most prominent brands that touch our everyday lives? How many of them are leveraging the power of social as a best business practice?
What do you think? Does the future belong to those who know how to grow and influence their own digital networks? Are CMOs and other C-level executives equipped to drive social inside the organization and out?
Although teen and young adult students are some of the most entrenched in social media, it’s ironic that more colleges aren’t taping into social trends when it comes to crisis communication. The following infographic from OnlineColleges.net shows some interesting stats (and missed opportunities!) for today’s institutes of higher education. Although, truth be told, many businesses outside of academia are all too slow to embrace social media and implement it into their crisis communications plans, as well.
Brought to you by: OnlineColleges.net
To learn how to incorporate social media into your business strategies, be sure to register for our BusinessNext Social conference which takes place in Las Vegas, January 6-8, 2013.
Planning on organizing a big heist today? Well, be sure not to announce it on Twitter or Facebook! Ok, sure, that sounds silly. But, you’d be amazed at how effectively law enforcement is able to use social media to gather evidence, establish probable cause, or identify suspects. This nifty infographic from Backgroundcheck.org sheds some light on how the law is tapping into the social web.
Compiled By: BackgroundCheck.org
September was an exciting month for GoDaddy and their 50 million-plus users. Whether it was a hacker or DNS issue, the downtime happened and it was affecting a great portion of the internet. In addition to domain names, GoDaddy also does hosting for millions of their customers. While GoDaddy is one of the largest companies online for domains and hosting, the downtime issue is one that many will not forget… and not one of the first problems they have had.
In the world of web hosting, just a few seconds seems like an eternity. If there is one thing that web site owners and bloggers don’t enjoy, it’s seeing their web sites being down. Another thing we hate to do is deal with any hosting issues or having to transfer/find a new web hosting solution.
At the end of the day it’s important to choose a reliable hosting solution that has a long history of success, a ton of positive reviews, reasonable rates and an excellent support system. A reliable and quality web host that can grow along with the growth of your website or blog is just another component to the secret formula for having a successful blog.
This is something that many new website and blog owners may fail to see. The first thing people usually see is the price and most people will go with the cheapest solution they can find. Many hosting providers have accounts available for less than $10 a month, but if you have a site that is making thousands of dollars a month, how can you jeopardize your site for such a small investment. Instead you should be hosted on your own dedicated server with 24/7 downtime monitoring–yet so many site owners are still picky about saving just a few dollars at the end of the day.
If you are looking to start your first website or blog and still in the hosting selection process, be sure to go with a name that is reliable and has excellent customer support. To help you with the process, Blogging.org has compiled a list and infographic of the top 25 hosting companies in the industry today.
I’ve personally been with more hosting companies over the past decade than I would like to think about. Today I am hosting with HostGator and am extremely happy to have them managing all of my sites and blogs today. As for hosting solutions, I’ve also been through it all. From being on shared servers to dedicated servers and even having my own set of 16 Dell servers in a data center to handle one of my sites that was getting 100,000 visitors daily…I unfortunately know more about web hosting than I would like to!
College and universities are embracing social media as a means to connect with the current student body, alumni, prospective students, and donors. According to BestCollegesOnline.com, one in three schools indicate that they achieve better results with social media than through traditional media.
According to recent data conducted by the University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth:
Check out the infographic below to learn more about how those in higher education are using social media:
Compiled By: BestCollegesOnline.com
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