That’s why we spend a proportion of our time – and money – supporting charitable causes. Today Annette, one of the LCubed team, chose to donate her bonus to two fantastic causes – Kampuchea House in Cambodia and the Oxfam East Africa Food Crisis Appeal.

One of our company initiatives is to top up any LCubed employee donations to charity with an extra 50%. We’re delighted to be able to add to Annette’s generous contribution. Here’s a little detail about how the money will help less-fortunate communities …

Kampuchea House is an Australian-based organisation, which runs an orphanage in Siam Reap, Cambodia.  It provides orphaned Cambodian children in the Sotnikum District with housing, security, education and a family environment in a traditional setting.  They have recently completed a new house and have taken in 8 new orphans, so the money I and LCubed are donating will go towards a range of things such as:  bedding, clothing, medical & dental tests, school books & school uniforms.

Our donation to The Oxfam East Africa Food Crisis Appeal will help to provide urgent relief and develop sustainable solutions to provide food for the future for the millions in Africa who are facing a humanitarian crisis caused by drought, conflict, and rising food prices.  Note: Should the funds raised exceed the amount required to meet the immediate and longer term needs of the people in the affected areas, Oxfam Australia will direct donations to our International Crisis Fund to enable us to rapidly address emergencies as they occur. Visit their website to donate online.

For more information about how we get involved with charitable causes, visit the community page of our blog site.

There was a time when marketing was simpler. When advertising men wore sharp suits with ties and drank martinis. When a web site was the domain of a spider. And when media selection boiled down to a choice between TV and print.

Things have changed a little. Ad men (and women) rarely wear ties these days. More importantly, there are so many media channels now – from email to Facebook to blogs to YouTube and eBooks – it’s often hard to know where to start communicating with potential customers.

The first thing you should do is get your message straight. Too many brands dive head-first into social media or blogging or email marketing without first working out what it is they want to say.

The unfortunate truth is, your potential consumers are exposed to thousands of marketing messages every day, most of which they ignore. What’s more, consumers are more cynical and savvy than ever – if they do happen across your marketing message they will sniff out an over-egged sales pitch or a little white lie from fifty feet.

The good news is, new online mediums give you more control than ever and more avenues to connect with potential customers. You don’t have to rely on big media outlets to tell your story, you can do it yourself. Done properly, building a content marketing strategy for your brand can be an effective way of building trust, brand awareness and ultimately, sales.

Here are a few tips for developing content for your brand.

Tell a story

All brands have an interesting story to tell. That you are cheaper or bigger or shinier is not an interesting story. Any brand can make similar claims and savvy consumers are unlikely to believe them or care.

But your story may be how or why you are cheaper or bigger or shinier. How are your products made? Who is the person behind your latest innovations? How did your business start and why? ‘Behind-the-scenes’ insights are not only appealing to consumers, they can also be a convincing way to differentiate your brand.

Tell the truth

Some brands act as if they’re posting a profile on a dating site when they create content. Six foot tall, blonde, impossibly beautiful, flawless personality.

It’s not believable and your potential customers will just click off if you try this approach with your brand. Instead, tell the truth: admit when things go wrong, turn negatives into positives and have a laugh at yourself from time to time. It will make your claims about why your product is so bloody good all the more convincing.

Educate and add value

Consumers are selfish. If they are going to spend the time to interact with a brand, they’re probably going to want something in return. What you provide them will depend on your industry and your target market. It could be a list of the best camping spots (for an outdoors retailer), a free recipe to download (for a food company) or a ‘how to grow your business’ guide (for a marketing company).

Entertain

We’re all busy. We’re all overloaded with information. So we’re much more likely to read (or watch) something that entertains us. Blendtec, a blender company, used humour to engage consumers while illustrating the benefit of its product with its ‘Will it Blend?’ videos.

Speak to your market

It’s easy to fall into the trap of producing content for ‘everyone’ in the hope that ‘someone’ will find it useful. Chances are nobody will. Research and understand your market intimately and produce content directly for them.

Once you know the theme of your content – what your story is, how it will be told and who it is for – it’s easy to adapt it for different channels. A white paper for example, can be edited into a blog post, referred to on Facebook, Tweeted about on Twitter and made available to download on your website.

And when new content channels pop up, as they no doubt will, you can adapt your message for them as well.

The last few weeks have been particularly interesting for them, a financial bonanza (apparently they have more cash on hand the US government and increase year on year profits), but the competition are on the rise, particularly Samsung handsets and Google’s Android operating system.

Apple chose a bold path, reportedly driven by Steve Jobs, one of strict control of their environments and user experiences. But in doing so they also decided to control and limit the industry that services and profits from tech / digital / web. This included significant players like Adobe and Google that were not going to lay down and acquiesce quietly.

There are a number of operating systems and companies that are catching up, they have successfully crossed the perceived gap between Apples iPad / iPhone (highly graphical / interactive / intuitive) interfaces and functions.

The rise of the competition has been widely predicted and is inevitable – no one company or approach, particularly one that demands such a level of control and high cost of participation can fend of the wider world for long.

Some of the competitors also had the brand awareness to drive developer community involvement and have created buzzing app market places. Google’s Android taking the lead, creating app store equivalent with hundreds of thousands of apps. https://market.android.com

Key facts:

• Recent estimates show that Samsungs market share has grown a staggering 520% year on year (~19.2 handsets) which is getting very close to Apples 20.3m. 17.5% and 18.5% market share respectively.
• It is estimated that Apple will hold an 18.5 percent market share at the end of 2011, while Google will have 38.9 percent of the market — over twice as much.
• Around 50% of Apples revenue comes from the iPhone

This is, of course, all good for us consumers – my next phone could well be an android, a sure predictor of market dominance – but there is more going on than the best technology wins battle. This is more of a  Big Corporate vs Big Corporate market struggle.

One of Apples potential downfalls is the gouging of those that have helped make their devices so attractive – the app developers. Apple not only strictly controls what can and can be sold via their app store, but they also demand a large percentage of the revenue from every sale (30%). And that must really smart if you have invested considerable time, money and love in building your app, not to mention the risk!

Apple have also refused to facilitate the use of flash within their OS, so no websites using flash, nor apps built using the flash platform. This must have alienated a large portion of the development community who love flash.

Google have adopted ‘the enemy of my enemy is my friend’ approach; and they have a serious war chest to arm their friends. Creating Android as an open source OS and an open market place has seriously dented revenues at Apple, and no doubt will continue to do so, ensuring that one potential rival has reduced capacity to compete in future markets.

Another interesting indicator is the quantity and breadth of Apples legal action. Whilst this widespread in the corporate world Apple seems to be going to town in its adoption of this ‘defensive’ behaviour . HTCs’ general counsel labelled Apple “an Uncompetitive Lawsuit Drama Queen” which makes for a headline!

So, it’s all fun and games in the mobile world, but whilst these shenanigans appear to be about technology they are closer to corporation battles for dominance in an ever changing and fast moving market.

Three separate scenarios arose over the last few days:

1. The online senses in Australia

2. The reaction to website user feedback amongst one of our clients teams

3. The nervousness that often occurs around user testing time in the project lifecycle

Yes, these are all web related, but more importantly they are expectation related: Exactly what does a ‘good’ outcome look like?

A recent article in the age highlights some of the perceived difficulties with the online version of the census, the article title reads: More than 670,000 households fail to submit census correctly. Which at a glance sounds pretty poor; that’s a lot of houses, individuals and data. But not so dramatic in light of the fact that over 2 million people used the system and that 30% of the Australian population is expected to submit their details via the web. The error rate is relatively high, but the engagement rate is fantastic.

Taking the census online is a bold initiative; it is not one that is going to be glitch free. Let’s be honest, nothing new (or old for that matter) is glitch free, not even the mighty Apple.

In a more modest example that is closer to home, we have recently been in conversation with clients who are worried about to indicators within their business:

1. Complaints from users about their website
2. Level of uptake of certain online payment options

I cannot go into detail, but the principles we can explore.

It is important to remember that ‘feedback’ is predominantly negative where there is a relatively low level relationship in place; we have road rage at one end of the spectrum (no relationship) and careful treatment of friends’ feelings at the other.

Website users seem (to us) to express discontent consistently not because they are all enraged, but because the ones that were happy or even content are off doing more important things than patting us on the back.

Usually a tiny proportion of people provide feedback, and unfortunately the desire to leave it is often generated from a negative experience. To make things more confusing the negative experience does not even need to be connected to the website, it could just as easily be the nagging child in the background or a crappy drive to the office.

I argue that adoption rates are the antithesis of complaints; the fact that people are using a system is a good indicator that it is working and they are relatively happy with it. There are many caveats to this which I will not go into here, however if you have a system up and running and it has been adopted by a healthy percentage of your target audience (30% for the census – I would say >50% for other systems where a processes is not optional), then it is time to stop and see the woods as well as the trees. This is particularly true if you have created a new system that your users have never seen before.

The expectation issues here are:

1. We see established systems everyday, and the look simple… from the outside. So therefore we tend to expect our new systems to be simple, easy, cheep and error free …. but the reality is that they are often none of these
2. Regardless of how close to perfect your systems are some people will always hate them with a passion. We actively resist change; our lives are busy enough without the unexpected need to learn something new just to interact with you on a website. Even though we might love it later (ATMs, Internet banking etc) change is not generally enjoyed, so be ready for push back

So, take-aways:

• No system is perfect, particularly new ones – get used to the idea and let others in your organisation know too. It is key that execs and senior project staff understand this and communicate it to others
• Complaints are inevitable – but our reaction to them is not, particularly if we are expecting them
• Feedback is one source of ideas and inspiration – it should not be ignored or swept under the carpet. There is a cost to the customer giving it which we should value, even when the feedback is negative
• Wide spread adoption of a system will take time – it requires moving people to change and that is not a system function, but it can be helped by good communications and assistance

If you need with system adoption or getting your organisations ‘corporate mind’ around imperfection, please drop us a line. Our phone and email systems are up 99% of the time!

On the other hand it helped transform ‘The worst song in the world’ into a hit…

Whilst many believe that the web is impacting our ability to remember stuff (search engines are replacing memory), others have pointed out that fiction (often cited as brain stimulation) is nonexistent online. Mashable however recently ran an article which shows that even fiction is finding its way online… when it published the top ten fictitious character blogs (The Batman, Mrs Stephen Fry, Death Star PR).

The digital world is becoming an eclectic place both good and bad it is morphing further and further away from corporate / government Web 1, we are firmly in web 2, or possibly Web 3.
What to make of all of this? I have little to add, and am a gape much like the next person at the sheer impact that of the digital world.

And yet even on this some can go too far… Every person on Earth to have a mobile by 2016 (Ericsson’s CEO as reported by the age), I could be wrong, but I find this just a little offensive on behalf of those that ‘we’ are currently not helping to feed themselves and who’s world we are impacting through climate change and other eco issues. I am pretty confident that mobile phones are not a priority for them right now – and nor will they be in 2016.

I/We love the web, but also think that it is important to keep some perspective. Yes the internet is impacting the real world, and on occasion it is both important and constructive, other times… not so much.

Team Kiva is expanding it’s generosity across even more international borders.

We’ve added Costa Rica and Peru to the list of:

• Cambodia
• Kenya
• Mongolia
• Nicaragua
• Philippines
• Senegal
• Tajikistan

Our newest LCubedpreneurs are

• Esperanza Parrales Medina from Costa Rica who is hoping to embrace technology by purchasing a computer to relieve her from the toil of manual book keeping: http://www.kiva.org/lend/314677 and the names keep getting longer with…
• Maria Isabelita Hidalgo De Sanchez, at 64, she is a great example of age not limiting entrepreneurial-ism: http://www.kiva.org/lend/315049

Thanks for your support!

Cap’n Kiva on behalf of Team Kiva

Not sure if you have seen this crew but they are a local volunteer based organisation that have made a portable “swag” that they are currently providing via charities to homeless people.

The product has won various design awards and is a simple way of providing real assistance to those in need.

More information on their website. http://swags.org.au/

They have a donation program, $68 pays for a swag for one homeless person….

You can donate here if you are willing and able! : http://fundraise.swags.org.au/karen_trapani

Please forward to anyone else who might be interested in a good deed!

Kind regards,

Karen

The media is reporting that Distribute.IT have been hacked to the extent of 4800 websites being unrecoverably wiped out. I can only imagine the impact to their clients, and of course their own business.

Before we point fingers and go on the attack (which is the natural reaction) we should keep in mind that these (and/or other) hackers have broken into the CIA and other very high profile organisations websites and servers. These groups have security budgets and expertise that stagger comprehension, and they still get hacked! So no one is 100% secure or immune.

Having said that, I do find it hard to understand how (and why) back-ups were not kept ‘off-site’ or even just on alterative servers.

We do not use Distribute.IT so our clients have fortunately not been impacted, but my above statement still stands – no hosting provider is 100% risk free / secure or immune to potential hackers, so what can you do to minimise risk? Here are some suggestions:

1. Be aware of the risks – very low, but still proportional to your exposure – and take appropriate mitigating action
2. Use HTML ripping tools to take back-ups of your site and store them on CDs safe in your office – this at least helps you store a record of the website ‘front end’
3. Create ‘live’ back-ups of your site by copying all of the databases and files from one server location to another online – preferably a separate provider – that you can switch over to live
4. Reduce and manage the quantity of sensitive / personal information
5. Keep copies of the original designs / content / Information Architectures (any components you have access to) – making a rebuild much faster and cheaper
6. Put tools in place to monitor up time and response time – a good idea anyway but sites (or domain servers) disappearing might give you an early warning
7. Mitigate legal risk by:
   1. Having good/ up to date terms of use
   2. Informing visitors / users of the possible risks (in addition to T&Cs)
   3. Having a disaster recovery plan
   4. Putting in place procedures that guide your teams actions if the worst happens
   5. Have a Communications / PR plan in place – what and how will you tell people what has happened

All of these suggestions will cost time and money, and the fact remains that risks are very low – so you will need to make a sensible decision on how much to spend and in what areas.
Call us to help understand the risks or take action with any of the above, we can provide a number of services and help you make a plan.

Here is my view – and it is opinion only and does not replace direct assessment and advice! If you are a smaller organisation and use your site for non business critical activities (i.e. you are not delivering services or selling product online) then it is likely that a simple back-up (1 above) is enough. If not, you need to look carefully at your exposure and options.

My view is that expectation of production quality has come down (from the heady heights of the TVC world towards the iPhone vid level).

In part this is due to exposure via the likes of YouTube – people are just seeing lower quality video more often, but perhaps also because phone captured video is being used by reputable organisations (think the BBC), because regardless of quality a moving picture still spells many thousand words.

There are some fantastic examples of sophisticated high cost video marketing campaigns (I particularly like this one) – which is actually the second of two parts, but it is more about YouTube than video…

However this one that dates back much further, and is a great example of how NOT to communicate anything (including video) is this.

Enjoy – and as you do notice how long it is? We now expect video to be only a couple of minutes and this goes on for almost 4.

I have no idea how these guys learned their lines – but would love to have seen the take-outs.

Conference sessions are a kaleidoscope of communication approaches,  some we resonate with, some we don’t.  Here’s one I came across that would surely put a smile on every attendees face: