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What I Hate About Market Research…
Say you did a focus group on packaging colors. The focus group liked the green package, but what you don’t know is that the group was overly influenced by one charismatic person who liked green that day. It didn’t reflect the whole population. But now you’re stuck with green, regardless of what’s really right. And nobody in your group is... [read more]
Risks to Gartner’s smartphone forecasts: will Microsoft beat Apple, Nokia execute, and Samsung fail?
Gartner has just released some very interesting forecasts for smartphone operating system sales until 2015, as below. In an nutshell, they predict that in 2015 Android will take almost half the market, at 48.8%, and that Microsoft will overtake Apple, with 19.5% share compared to 17.2% for iOS. Nokia’s Symbian platform will fade to... [read more]
The Empire (Mass Media) Strikes Back
The Demise of Social Media and the Rise of Mass Media from Tom Foremski at Silicon Valley Watcher suggests that mass media is dominating online media output. Key quote: "I see a world of mass media where a few large media brands still control most of the media output and thus the conversation around the topics that they choose."... [read more]
The Rise of Custom Content
The Custom Content Council recently released a survey showing the growing role custom content is playing in marketing. The Council defines custom content and publishing as: "Custom publishing marries the marketing ambitions of a company with the information needs of its target audience. This occurs through the delivery of editorial... [read more]
Small Business Economy Picking Up Steam
It's taken a long time, but the small business economy is finally shaking off the Great Recession and showing solid gains. A couple of data points: - The overall job market is picking up with March's job report showing a gain of 216,000 jobs, and more importantly a gain of 230,000 private sector jobs. Great quote from an AP... [read more]
Twitter is a Broadcast Medium
Interesting academic study on Twitter from Yahoo Research. The bottom line of the study is Twitter is dominated by a small number of users and much more of broadcast medium than a social network. Key quote from the study: “We find a striking concentration of attention on Twitter—roughly 50% of tweets consumed are generated by just... [read more]
The Amazing Growth of the Pet Industry
As a life long dog owner, I love following pet trends. The Mini Trends blog has a nice post on both pet trends and the "Petrepreneurs" who are building businesses related to pets. The post has a good "state of the pet nation" description: "Even though more households have a dog than a cat, cats have the upper paw, with 93.6 million... [read more]
Facebook Stores Deliver Sames Sales Rates as Web Sites
According to a new white paper from Webtrends, Facebook stores now have the same sales conversion rates as e-commerce Web sites. “The Effect of Social Networks and the Mobile Web on Website Traffic and the Inevitable Rise of Facebook Commerce” was created in conjunction with Adgregate Markets, a leader in... [read more]
The Changing Face of Entrepreneurs
OK, I admit we are patting ourselves on the back here. In early 2007 we released the Intuit Future of Small Business report The Changing Face of Entrepreneurs. In it we forecast that the next decade would see entrepreneurs become much more diverse than their predecessors in age, origin and gender. The report also... [read more]
Why a Lot of Small Business Don't Need to Use Twitter
eMarketer reports that 9% of the adult (18+) US Internet population currently uses Twitter at least once a month. Their new forecast substantially lowers the Twitter use forecast they made last April. Key quote from their press release: “Twitter has continued to gain traction but at more moderate levels than we had... [read more]
Small Businesses Emerging From Recession
The latest economic news and surveys show that the small business economy is finally recovering from the Great Recession. Key indicators include a strong, positive uptick in small business sentiment surveys and stronger projected growth in the overall economy. (Click herefor a WSJ article on Citibank's sentiment survey, here for an... [read more]
Disruption and the Analyst Industry
I signed up for GigaOm Pro recently. It is a analyst service that provides research reports and analysis on emerging technology. It costs $79 a year to subscribe. GigaOm is trying to fill a need for timely, high-quality yet low cost data and commentary on emerging technology. The traditional players in this... [read more]
Research on Tweeting Inside and Outside the Enterprise
We need more research like this. I recently read an interesting study by my friend Kate Ehrlich at IBM and her colleague Sadat Shami, It is titled, Microblogging Inside and Outside the Workplace and looks at how corporate employees use microblogging tools. This effort conducted a content analysis comparing over 5,000 posts between March... [read more]
Wanted: More Women in Business and Technology
I have written many times in the past on the subject of wanting more women in technology roles – or in the wider field of business. This is not just a favorite topic of mine – it has dramatic ramifications for every business, large and small. As Claire Cain Miller reports in the New York Times, there are clear correlations between... [read more]
Is There No Way To Prove The Value Of Content Strategy?
I’m trying to convince non-creative folks about the value of content strategy. I need facts and figures. Bonus points for graphs. All I need to prove is that the stuff on your website is valuable to visitors. That content matters. But there is a serious lack of empirical research to prove this. Why aren’t there studies done on the... [read more]
Three Tips For News and Media Companies on How To Leverage Facebook
Heather Hopkins at Hitwise has been doing some interesting research on how Facebook is becoming an important sources of traffic to news and media websites. First, she found that Facebook (3.52%) is the #4 upstream source of visits to News and Media sites last week, after Google (17.32%), Yahoo! (7.89%) and msn (4.43%), much ahead... [read more]
6 Small Business Sales Trends for 2010
Many business owners and entrepreneurs are bruised and confused about what it really takes these days to achieve sales breakthroughs. In fact, the art of selling may be changing faster now that at any point in the last half century. For one thing, the skyrocketing importance of social media has transformed the selling landscape forever... [read more]
Cheers to SMB’s Who Are Getting the Research Message
I have spoken here at Frank Thinking about how it seems that SMB’s just don’t get it when it comes to Internet marketing and social media. Too much chasing rabbits and too little chasing reality. Well, I am real happy to say that I am seeing a shift. I am not ready to say that all SMB’s get it because that would not be realistic. I... [read more]
How to Gain Access to that Executive You Simply Must See
To get in the door in new accounts at the executive level, you must first establish your value with the executive. There in lies the challenge. If you haven't spoken to the executive, how can you possibly establish value? Follow these three critical steps and you will demonstrate value in meeting with you and get your appointment. 1.... [read more]
Avoiding bad judgment calls
New academic research is being published this week [1] about making good judgment calls in the CEO’s office. Owner/CEOs days are filled with judgment calls about people, products, purchases, and customers ad infinitum. Interestingly, one of the key ways to consistently make good judgment calls is to avoid bad judgment calls. Here are... [read more]
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“To your final comments, right on. Those who cheat will do so regardless of how simple or complex the tax laws, or the rules of the road, or whether they have an admission ticket.”
“To your final comments, right on. Those who cheat will do so regardless of how simple or complex the tax laws, or the rules of the road, or whether they have an admission ticket.”