It should read:  Engaged customers are more valuable customers.

Read here for the full post:

But in 2009, CareOne started using a social media team, led by Nichole Kelly, to not only help spread the word about CareOne through social media channels – Facebook, Twitter and YouTube – but to engage customers in their already active online community as well.

…

What CareOne found was that the personal connection for consumers (having some sort of social media contact with the company) led to a longer buying cycle (24-28 days versus as low as 30-minutes for those without a social media relationship with the company), but an incredible jump in successful conversions through the sign-up process and ultimately the point of purchase.

How much of a conversion? Social media connections filled out the consultation (lead-generation) form at a 179% higher rate than the typical customer. Sales? They were 217% more likely to make their first payment. For one particular problem area (people who partially fill out the sign-up form then quit), social media prospects went back and completed the form at a 680% higher clip than non-social media leads. They made their first payment at an astonishing 732% better rate.

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From A VC:

Imagine you are building a mobile app that connects to the Facebook platform, the Twitter platform, the Foursquare platform, and the Google Maps platform. Assuming your users have all of those apps on their mobile, you can quickly and easily do the connections directly on the mobile device. And then you can pull data from those apps to create new experiences for the mobile users. You can create cross app notifications and other data driven experiences for users.

Way too many mobile applications require signing in too much. The phone itself transmits a unique ID. Once in, you should never be out. That’s huge.

Ah, the future’s looking so bright, we should be wearing shades.

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Great post. Read on.

Persuasion design is marketing. UX isn't.

I have struggled for months to unify my understanding of these two political wings, and now conclude that I cannot. I believe that persuasion design is not part of user experience design. It is marketing. Persuasion design prioritises business goals above those of the user, and its values are irreconcilable with empathy, the central value of UX.

That's not to say that persuasion design isn't highly valuable and attractive to business. After all, it matches the recognised business patterns of marketing, making its effects felt in tangible measures that UCD's intangible altruism cannot: conversion rates, signups, and so on.

I subscribe to  Peter Drucker‘s view that business has only two functions: innovation and marketing. Under this model, user experience design is innovation. It uncovers people's needs and and gives makers the knowledge to develop new products and services that meet those needs.

This, finally, is why I disagree with Josh Porter's assertion that  UX is really just good marketing – however, my disagreement isn't with his framing of marketing, but of user experience. As far as persuasion design is concerned, he is right – but the equation does not apply to UCD and UX.

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From Business Insider:

She gets to keep 70% of her book sales — and she sells around 100,000 copies per month. By comparison, it’s usually  thought that it takes a few tens of thousands of copies sold in the first week to be a New York Times bestselling writer.

The comparison isn’t entirely fair, because Hocking sells her books for $3, and some $.99. But that’s the point: by lowering the prices, she can make more on volume, especially impulse buys. Meanwhile e-books cost nothing to print, you don’t have to worry about print volumes, shelf space, inventory, etc. And did we mention the writer keeps 70 percent?

Note that the 70 percent number is the same exact number Apple plans to payout for the App Store subscription model. And Publishers are all up in arms.

Who says you can’t make money in content?

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From Mashable:

Charlie Sheen may or may not be "winning," in life, but he has won a rare honor: the "Fastest Time to Reach 1 Million Followers" Guinness World Record.

Guinness community manager Dan Barrett says the agency "just researched and approved" the record this morning. According to Barrett, Sheen reached that milestone in 25 hours and 17 minutes. As of this writing, Sheen's Twitter account,  @CharlieSheen, has close to 1.2 million followers. Guinness did not have a previous record for that category, Barrett says. Sheen also set a Guinness record for "Highest Paid TV Actor Per Episode – Current" at $1.25 million.

Sheen  joined Twitter March 1. In a matter of minutes, Sheen acquired more than 60,000 followers and a Klout score of 57 – without even tweeting. According to  a report in  Advertising Age, Sheen was able to get his account verified so quickly because Internet startup Ad.ly brokered his account with Twitter.

Says a lot about our society, doesn’t it?

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This was originally published on the Jobvite blog (I’m working with them on a redesign). I thought it was also appropriate here.

Writing a great job requisition is hard but not as hard as you would think.

It’s exactly like writing a marketing email. You get a few seconds for the job seekers to make a decision if this is a job they want to apply for or not based on your job description of 400 words or less.

Constructing requisitions is sometimes an afterthought with a company in startup mode, or gets lost in the world of corporate standards and communications. What your job requisition says is the best marketing your company can do for finding amazing talent for your culture.

I’ve managed and recruited large teams and consistently refer candidates that get hired to recruiters. Here are the strategies I used to find people I wanted to work with in putting together great requisitions. Some of them worked so well, recruiters have asked me for my secrets.

Read On…

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