Digital

Women in Tech – A Digital Intervention

By Paul B. Kaiser on March 8, 2017

Today is International Women’s Day, which is shining a spotlight on the achievements of women around the world and a chance for organizations across the globe to show support for women’s advancement. We’re taking a look at women in tech. The organizers of the Women’s March on Washington have created “The Day Without a Woman,” a general strike. It’s the latest in a series of strikes aimed at protesting the policies and sympathies of the Trump administration, preceded by last month’s “Day Without an Immigrant” and the massive New York City bodega strike. But how do women rate in the tech and digital world? Do they have any prominence in the industry and is there hope for women to succeed?

According to the Department of Labor, only 26 percent of people employed in computer and mathematics jobs are women. And a big chunk of that 26 percent comes from outside Silicon Valley.

While men still dominate these fields, it’s not because women can’t be in this space. As an incentive, I’d like to look at some of the positive women influences in the digital world right now. And discuss how women can take action.

12 badass women running the tech world – see full story here.

women in tech — Whitney Wolfe left her job as a co-founder at Tinder

7 most powerful Arab women in digital media- See full story here.

Visit Women in Technology on Twitter @WITWomen

Not-for-profit organization aimed at providing women in the technology field with networking and professional development opportunities

GirlsWhoCode on Twitter and their website.

We’re a national non-profit organization dedicated to closing the gender gap in technology.

A writer from the publisher “The Drum” interviewed a few women in digital and these are their suggestions to move the needle.

Sarah Jordan, a digital transformation consultant who has spearheaded digital change within Oxfam and the MS Society, said: “Explaining all the different careers that ‘digital’ covers would be a great starting point, as many people don’t realize the full range and how creative and ‘people-focused’ the jobs can be; not just involving coding or technical skills.

“More buddying and mentoring schemes would be really helpful, particularly for women in the middle of their careers to help them progress to more senior and leadership positions. We need more female role models at every level in digital to help show the benefits to those thinking about coming into the industry.

“Greater flexibility from employers to help women get into new roles and gain experience, as well as move around within them, would also help.

Sally Anderson, a lead digital consultant at Code, suggests: “Highlighting and celebrating women who are already in the industry, especially in the more technical roles, is a positive move the industry can make as it’s not always obvious from an outsider looking in at how many women may be behind a company, discipline or movement.”

So what can I do?

A first step to tackling the issue is by creating inclusive environments. Some simple ways to achieve this will be by:

Ensure diversity is on the business agenda with leadership commitment.
Collating business data to develop a true understanding of the workforce.
Celebrate success stories that represent diversity and share them.
Support and promote networking events that advocate diversity in our industry.
Provide real-world knowledge and experiences in schools, colleges and universities, raising the profile of STEM industries and careers.
Join a movement – WomeninTechCampaign.com See here.

Women in tech — the missing force: Karen Catlin at TEDx College of William & Mary

The Power of Podcasts – Top 5 Podcasts

By Paul B. Kaiser on January 15, 2017

Podcasts are more popular than ever. We all have something to say or something to sell. While this is just another channel. It is a channel that holds its audience attention, and reinforces your business goals. So why are so many people turning to podcasts to et the word out? Because content can be delivered in a unique way and with expertise.

The power of podcasts

Podcasts can perform so many functions:

They can educate.
They can entertain.
They can inform.
They can inspire.
They provide authority.
They can provide a humorous personal side of your business.

At the end of the day, you can make a connection with your audience. You are able to talk directly to your audience and provide the voice that migt no come out in a blog.

Podcast Listening Grew 23% Between 2015 and 2016 and monthly podcast listenership has increased 75% since 2013.

Podcasts are also portable. In this world of accessibility, we all have multiple devices to listen to podcasts. Where we want and when we want. All this sounds great but who is really listening?

To provide some context for what 21% of the entire country represents, 13% of the US listens to Spotify monthly, and 21% of the country uses Twitter. The same number of folks listen to podcast and use Twitter.

All this sounds great but in order to grow more listeners, the age barrier needs to be broken. Those 55+ age bracket are pretty flat with listening. If this changed the podcast would go through the roof.

Even mainstream media is investing in podcasting:

The New York Times, which in March 2016 announced the creation of a podcast team focusing on news and opinion programming;
Public radio broadcaster WNYC, which announced in October 2015 its plan to raise $15 million in funds for a new podcast division (for more on the role of podcasts within the public radio world, see the public broadcasting fact sheet);
The Wall Street Journal, which introduced WSJ Podcasts in December 2o15;
And on the local front, the Des Moines Register, which turned to long-form narrative podcasts in order to explore one story in depth.

Startups and newer media organizations investing in podcasting included:

Slate, which launched the podcasting platform Panoply in February 2015 in partnership with several other media organizations, including The New York Times, WBUR and The Huffington Post;
Buzzfeed, which launched its first two podcasts in March 2015 – and launched The Tell Show and No One Knows Anything in 2016;
Radiotopia, which received a grant from the Knight Foundation for $1 million to fund new stories and support a pilot fund;
Gimlet – a podcast network that launched in 2014 – attracted $6 million in new funding in December 2015 to fuel expansion. Plans for the funds included new studios, an increase from four to 12 podcasts and a tripling of staff over the next couple of years;
Goat Rodeo – a podcast network focusing on local issues around the Washington, D.C., area – launched in October 2015.

So, what are we all listening to in the podcast world?

Here are the top 5 podcasts when writing this article 1/13/17.

1. Pod Save America is here

A no-bullshit conversation about politics.

This is a political podcast for people not yet ready to give up or go insane hosted by Jon Favreau, Jon Lovett, Dan Pfeiffer and Tommy Vietor.

2 Hollywood & Crime is here

A fictional crime series.

3 TED Radio Hour is here

Networks surround and sustain us, in nature, in our bodies, in relationships, in the digital world. This hour, TED speakers explore how we rely on networks and how we have the power to shape them.

4 This American Life is here

Most weeks This American Life is the most popular podcast in the country, with around 2.5 million people downloading each episode.

5 Hidden Brain is here

The Hidden Brain helps curious people understand the world – and themselves. Using science and storytelling, Hidden Brain’s host Shankar Vedantam reveals the unconscious patterns that drive human behavior, the biases that shape our choices, and the triggers that direct the course of our relationships.

Coffee Podcast

Do Not Follow these Digital Trends or you will be Ahead of the Game

By Paul B. Kaiser on October 26, 2015

I never heard of the Mary Meeker Digital Trends Report, but when I came across it, I have to say it’s pretty impressive. If you’re in advertising/marketing and you have been hiding under a rock, then here is your wake up call from Mary Meeker. Or as Digital Intervention likes to say “buy stock in these company’s now.” Check out her full report here Mary Meeker’s Internet Trends. This is a global view of digital trends and encapsulates the mobile and social industry in

Meeker looks at how people around the world use the Internet, how many are on mobile, how they spend their time online, and which companies and industries stand to gain the most. Below is a segment of her slideshare presentation.

Here’s your to do list for next year in digital and mobile:

Mobile Internet use is growing faster than Internet usage in general: There are 2.8 billion Internet users, up 8 percent from 2014, and 2.1 billion mobile Internet users, an increase of 23 percent.
Mobile data usage rose 69 percent last year, and 55 percent of mobile data traffic is from video.
In 2008, Americans spent 20 minutes a day on average with the mobile Web. This year, they spend close to three hours, more time than they spend on laptops.
The mobile ad industry is still short $25 billion. Mobile commands 24 percent of time spent with media but accounts for only 8 percent of ad dollars spent.
Facebook and Twitter are growing but not like they used to. Revenue per user and monthly user growth is slowing. Facebook revenue per user is at $9.36, up 29 percent over last year, but growth neared 60 percent last year. Year-over-year user growth was 13 percent last quarter, the slowest growth ever.
Twitter revenue per user was $5.14, an increase of 45 percent over last year, whereas growth was 80 percent last year at this time. User growth was 18 percent, down from 25 percent a year ago.
The mobile ad industry as a whole grew 34 percent year over year, while desktop digital advertising only grew 11 percent.
Mobile ads are getting more motion but in short bursts. There are four new styles of ad: Pinterest’s Cinematic Pins, Vessel 5-second video ads, Facebook Carousel ads, Google Local Inventory Ads.
Buy buttons equal optimized for mobile, and they have popped up across Google, Facebook and Twitter.
Vertical screens and vertical content are a big deal now with 29 percent of people’s daily screen time spent looking at smartphones. Five years ago, time spent in front of such vertical-oriented screens was only 5 percent of overall viewing time.
Snapchat is all about vertical ads and says users watch them until the end nine times more frequently than they watch horizontal ads in its app.
Snapchat now has 100 million daily active users, and the app generates 2 billion video views a day. One event like Coachella can draw 40 million video views to Snapchat Live Stories.
Facebook gets 4 billion video views a day, 75 percent of which are from phones.
Pinterest is getting manlier with the number of men’s fashion pins up almost 100 percent over a year ago—car and motorcycle pins were up 120 percent.
Watching video games like it’s TV is becoming a top entertainment choice. Video game streaming site Twitch has 100 million monthly users now, an increase of or 122 percent.
Twitch can draw 1 million viewers at the same time.
Teens continue to be trendsetters. The five most important social networks for U.S. teens, in order, are Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, Snapchat and Tumblr.
E-commerce is starting to pick up, with $300 billion in spending last year representing 9 percent of retail sales. E-sales accounted for less than 1 percent of retail revenue in 1998.
Alibaba, China’s e-commerce giant, has more than $350 billion worth of merchandise on its platform. Amazon has closer to $100 billion worth.
Online, on-demand platforms are growing. Airbnb, for instance, has booked 35 million guests—25 million of those were in the last year. Uber drivers are up sixfold to more than 1 million. Etsy has 1.4 million sellers, up 26 percent.
The average Etsy seller makes $1,400 a year. The average Airbnb host makes $7,700 a year in New York.
China is huge and can be big for content. A documentary about smog, Under the Dome, got 200 million views in three days, and 41 percent came from the messaging app WeChat.
WeChat can be used for government services, too, in China, where it has 550 million users.
India will be the next frontier, opening opportunities for Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, LinkedIn and Amazon.

Digital Eye Candy

DISCOVER Snapchat Popularity

By Paul B. Kaiser on March 17, 2015

Snapchat has quickly become the “go to” App for kids. And now maybe adults. What started out as a simple photo messaging app is transforming into a true storytelling application. What the kids like about it and maybe you too, is that the content disappears seconds later. Or at a time you specify. With that premise in mind, the content you post maybe from a different perspective.

Snapchat 101

Snapchat is a photo messaging application developed by Evan Spiegel, Bobby Murphy, and Reggie Brown, then Stanford University students. Using the application, users can take photos, record videos, add text and drawings, and send them to a controlled list of recipients.

The social media app Snapchat is built around telling your story with pictures. Snapchat is also a handy tool to have if you want to send pictures to your friends and family without taking up more memory on your phone.

Best Friends are the Snapchatters you chat with most frequently, decided by a “magical Snapchat friendship algorithm.”

What are Snapchat Stories?

Your Snapchat Story is essentially a group of images that you’ve captured and would like to share over the span of 24 hours. You choose who can access your Snapchat Story, whether it’s your friends only, a custom list or the public. Snapchat Stories live slightly longer than regular snaps, but after 24 hours they will self-destruct.

Enter DISCOVER from Snapchat

For the first time, Snapchat is allowing its users to explore outside video and text content within the Snapchat platform. They launched a section called Discover which allows the user to go into News. The new apps within Snapchat Discover are really engaging. Cosmopolitan, ESPN, People, National Geographic, CNN, Daily Mail, and Food Network are all there.

Yahoo News offers a good example of how Discover repackages content with pretty wrapping paper: millennial sex symbol Katie Couric does five-second voiceovers at the start of each story, and call it a day. It’s worth keeping an eye on how Discover evolves in the coming months. We’ll have to see if Couric makes the cut with kids or brings in a new audience. You never know what will succeed in social media so time will tell.

Fresh Thinking at the Digital Strategy Innovation Summit [UPDATED]

By Paul B. Kaiser on March 10, 2015

Are you ready for the Digital Strategy Innovation Summit in New York City – March 19-20.

Special Announcement!
A discount for Digital Intervention readers only.

Anyone interested in going to the show and still needs to register, follow this link and use this code DI20. This will save you 20% off any two-day pass.

This summit will gather the world’s most dynamic and high level executives in digital strategy. Get details!

Speakers
Hear industry insights from digital decision makers. See some of the world’s most innovation organizations as they share their lessons learned through interactive presentations. Click for full speaker list.

“Expect to see ideas and innovation around the trends and challenges of content, digital ROI & platform integration.”

Schedule

As organizations and the global market place grow, the role of the digital strategy leaders has become more important for ensuring successful digital implementation and execution.
Understanding current trends & challenges will leave you with fresh ideas to take back to the office.
See the schedule for this year.

Overview of Summit [Infographic]

Venue

The Conrad New York hotel is a contemporary architectural landmark conveniently located in the midst of thriving lower Manhattan, where business and leisure meet.

Registration starts at 7:30am on the 4th Level in the Gallery Ballroom Foyer of the Conrad New York, 102 North End Ave, New York, NY 10282.

To find the Gallery Ballroom Foyer, take the elevator from Reception to the second floor and walk up the stairs.
Our Registration Desk will be straight ahead when you reach the top of the stairs.

Multi-Screening Marketing is changing the way you buy Bacon

By Paul B. Kaiser on March 21, 2014

Whether you realize it or not, many consumers start searching on a mobile device and finish purchasing or viewing on another device. The Oscar Meyer App being auctioned off right now for lucky winners promises to go off in the morning and wake you up with the smell of bacon. A marketing program that starts with a tweet, goes to a video and ends with a download of an App.

Our behaviors online are changing and the ways of how we consume information is mainly through multiple screens and not old school methods. In fact Google found that “90% of media is consumed by screen vs traditional at this point.” How we like to interact determines the channels we consume from. Consider this baby trying to perform “gestures” on a magazine.

No such luck. The millennials will not be consuming information on paper-based products.

Google did a study on consumer behavior and milt-screening habits. That is to say multi-device hopping. The study was very interesting and ties multi-screen marketing with multi-channel marketing. Some observations of a multi-screen world and cross platform behavior showed us that:

We are a Nation of multi-screeners
The device we choose is driven by our context – Where we are at the time.(The phone is usually the closest.)
Sequential screening starts us on one device and takes us to another during the day
- Search bridges our tasks between devices
Simultaneous screening looks at those users who are using multiple devices at one time. For instance watching the Oscars on TV and sitting with a tablet or smartphone and interacting on Twitter.
TV no longer commands our full attention
Smartphones are the backbone of our daily interactions

So what can we learn from multi-screening and applying it to your business?

Marketing Lessons from Multi-Screen Usage

Optimize your content for multiple devices
It’s no longer enough to optimize your content for PCs/laptops. Mobile optimization on tablets and smartphones should be a priority
A cohesive experience and user-friendly as possible across screens
Know your End users behavior
- Context plays in a consumer’s decision to use one device over another
Critical to understand how your audience accesses your content so you can cater your marketing strategy
Consumers seek information or shop differently across devices so tailor the experience to each channel

Marketers should be sure to integrate and align any TV advertising with their online strategies or align your multiple devices to coordinate with each other
Even though TV is still widely consumed by the user, consider that 77% of viewers are simultaneously using another device while watching it

And finally one square fact for you.The way you buy your toilet paper and find a bathroom are now forever changed as well. Happy hunting with the “Sit or Squat” App from Charmin.