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Want to make sure a photograph survives your lifetime? Print it out. That’s the warning Internet pioneer Vint Cerf gave at a talk recently, saying that vast amounts of digital information may soon be lost in a new digital “dark age.”

In historiography, the “dark ages” refer to a period of time in Europe in which relatively few historical records survived, causing that section of history to be hidden from the view of modern historians.

At a recent American Association for the Advancement of Science conference in San Jose, Cerf — one of the “fathers of the Internet” — warned that a second dark age may be looming in the horizon due to the fact that so much of our data these days is kept in digital formats.

“If we don’t find a solution our 21st Century will be an information black hole,” Cerf warned the audience. “We think about digitizing things because we think we will preserve them, but what we don’t understand is that unless we take other steps, those digital versions may not be any better, and may even be worse, than the artifacts that we digitized.”

He warned specifically about the loss of precious personal photos that may not be readable in the future:

We have various formats for digital photographs and movies and those formats need software to correctly render those objects. Sometimes the standards we use to produce those objects fade away and are replaced by other alternatives and then software that is supposed to render images can’t render older formats, so the images are no longer visible.

This is starting to happen to people who are saving a lot of their digital photographs because they are just files of bits. The file system doesn’t know how to interpret them, you need software to do that. Now you’ve lost the photograph in effect.

If there are pictures that you really really care about then creating a physical instance is probably a good idea. Print them out, literally.

Backing up photos on multiple drives and discs may be a good option for the short term, but these digital storage methods all suffer from the same flaw in the long run: the gradual decay of data over many years — something known as data rot.

A longer term option may be to store your data in the cloud with giant Internet corporations (e.g. Google, Amazon, Microsoft), but this can be a pricey option, and there’s no absolute guarantee these companies will still be around in the coming decades.

As Cerf says, one of the best options you may have right now for ensuring the long term survival of important photos is to print them out physically (with materials designed for longevity) and to keep the prints in a safe place.

(via The Telegraph and DigitalRev)

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Image credits: Header photograph by Elon University, and prints photo by Leo Hidalgo

Hanging a picture frame up on a wall often isn’t the simplest of tasks, at least if you’re a perfectionist, but a new product has arrived to change that. Called the Beehive Picture Hanger, it’s a new hanging system that makes hanging a frame perfectly a breeze and something that only takes a few moments without any measurements.

Created by inventor Herb Bigelow and photographer Matt Bigelow of St. John, Indiana, the product comes in the form of a honeycomb metal attachment for your frames and a Support Pin for your wall.

To install, simply attach the Beehive Hangers to your frame:

Then press the frame into the wall where you’d like to mount it. Little metal points on the hangers will leave a small indentation where the pins need to go:

Hammer the pins into the wall where the indentations are:

Then, simply slide the hangers onto the support pins. If it’s not positioned the way you want, simply slide the pin into a different hole in the hanger to make adjustments in a matter of seconds:

Here’s a view of what the mounting system looks like through a transparent frame:

It’s a system that lets you hang perfectly straight frames in a short amount of time with no measurements and no mess-ups.

There will be two different hanger options available. The Max variant has 143 holes in each hanger, providing much more flexibility for adjustments after you’ve pounded in your support pins, while the Original hanger has 68 hexagonal positions.

The support pins are designed to hang up to 30 pounds on standard drywall alone, and you don’t have to worry about drywall anchors or locating wall studs.

Here’s a 7-minute video in which the Bigelows introduce the Beehive system:

The duo is currently raising funds to launch the Beehive in a Kickstarter campaign, where a $5 contribution will preorder a Max hanger that lets you hang up one frame. As long as the campaign is successful, the target launch date for the Beehive is July 2015.

Beehive Picture Hangers [Kickstarter via SLR Lounge]

Streetlights polluting your shots of the starry night sky? A strategically placed laser might be just what you need.

Destin Sandlin of the YouTube channel SmarterEveryDay recently paid a visit to the house of NASA astronaut (and photographer) Don Pettit, who showed Sandlin a trick that he uses to temporarily disable an annoying streetlight just down the street. You can see this “life hack” in action at 1:04 in the video above.

We’re not sure about the legality of this trick in places around the US and the world, but here’s the gist of it: you can turn off certain streetlights by pointing a semi-strong red laser at it.

Pettit says green ones won’t work, at least in his experience. The astronaut found his surplus red laser at a junkyard and mounted it to a pole in front of his house:

Next, point the laser at the sensor found near the lamp on streetlights. These are light-sensing sensors that turn the lights on when the sun goes down:

After a brief moment, the laser should trick the sensor into thinking that it’s daytime again, and the lamp should switch off:

Again, you should check the safety implications and legality of doing this in your city before putting this in your bag of tricks. It could be a very bad idea if you’re on a busy street, but on the other hand, it might not affect anyone else if you’re at the end of a cul-de-sac with a personal streetlight in front of your house.

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P.S. You can find more SmarterEveryDay videos here. We’ve also featured Pettit’s photography a number of times in the past: here’s a talk he gave on space photography, photos of him floating in space with cameras, and a couple of inspiring videos on shooting from the ISS.

(via SmarterEveryDay via Reddit)

Google and Uber are building self-driving cars, it’s rumored that Apple is going to be building self-driving cars, Tesla has launched driver-assistance features, and many traditional auto manufacturing companies are advancing their features to include driver assistance and, eventually, automation.

Ride sharing and car sharing pave the way for the self-driving car industry.
Ride sharing startups, like Uber, Lyft, Sidecar, BlaBlaCar, and car ownership-sharing, like Getaround, DriveNow, Car2Go, RelayRides, and Zipcar are paving the way for this market. Society is learning we don’t need to own a car to complete our journey, increasing the demand for this new product. Yesterday, at a Silicon Valley Forum event in Palo Alto, experts predicted that self-driving cars will be rolling out within 5-10 years, which is just about the time car payments will end on any recently purchased cars. Also, keynote speaker, Stanford’s Stefan Heck shared this stat: “The leading cause of death for 25-40 year olds is human driven cars”, demonstrating the market need for safer and effecient transport. The potential impact to society is staggering. I’ve outlined the findings below.

The four phases of self-driving car development suggest we’re 5-10 years out.
The Personalized Car event, hosted by SVForum was held on illustrious tech-centric Sand Hill Road in Palo Alto, with speakers from Stanford, BMW, consulting firms, investors, inventors, entrepreneurs, and forecasters. Four states currently allow the testing of self-driving cars, including California, Florida, Michigan, Nevada, as well as the District of Columbia. The speakers discussed the four phases of self-driving car automation (see maturation chart, courtesy of Morgan Stanley, below) at the most basic-level, driver-assist features, like Tesla’s autopilot. The second phase, which we’re in now, is where cars can self-drive along with human fail-safes, like the Google self-driving car I see whizzing around Silicon Valley. In the next phase, we can expect to see cars transporting people, without assistance. In Phase 4 the need for human drivers will be eliminated altogether.

Above: The event verbally cited these four phases of car automation.

Speakers at the opening panel discussion were asked to forecast when they might expect to see self-driving cars for mainstream deployment. They forecasted 5-10 years, in agreement with the preceding Morgan Stanley graphic. Many of the speakers discussed the impacts self-driving cars might have on society at large. Here’s a list:

Partial list of who’s disrupted by self-driving cars:

• Taxis compete with Uber, Google, Apple self-driving cars. Ride sharing was just the first blow.
• Ride sharing drivers at Uber, Lyft, Sidecar, BlaBlaCar will be disrupted as autonomous cars do a safer job at lower cost.
• Local couriers, like TaskRabbit, Instacart and bike messengers will be impacted.
• Mid range and long range transportation and delivery services would be impacted as local delivery becomes automated.
• Retailers may see a change in foot traffic as people order goods to be delivered to their homes by driverless cars.
• Auto and life insurance should be impacted, due to fewer accidents and the introduction of per-mile-based insurance.
• Paramedics may be impacted if victims choose self-driving cars to whisk them to ER for less than severe injuries.
• Car ownership could dwindle. Self-driving cars means fewer cars will be needed, as they’re efficiently routed as needed.
• Airbnb may benefits as urban areas convert garage spaces into living areas for short term stays.
• The parking industry could suffer, as lots are converted to other uses.
• Parking fines and local taxes could dwindle with fewer cars on road and robotic efficiency.
• Radio and podcasts could become less popular, as people play video games and watch videos in the self-driving rides.
• Short distance airlines could suffer, as people choose to take a relaxing trip in a mobile living room.
• Communities or attractions not connected by rail could prosper as people easily travel there for business or pleasure.
• Auto repair could be impacted as self-driving cars automatically head for maintenance without the driver or owner present.
• Hotels and motels could be affected as families are able to sleep in the comfort of a self-driven vehicle on the way to their destination.
• Leave a comment, below, on who else might be disrupted.

I’m on the advisory board of Sparks & Honey, an agency based in NY that looks at future trends and their impacts on society. They recently published this SlideShare, below that shows the impacts of self-driving cars on logistics, retail, culture, and even our love lives. Their list of disruptions goes far beyond what was mentioned at the event yesterday. Also, I captured notes from the event in real time on my Facebook feed, which you can read, along with community reactions.

There’s more discussion about this article on Linkedin, and on Facebook.

A security guard at a yeshiva in Midwood was forced to deal with a disruptive drunkard yesterday, according to several reports. And deal with him he did. [ more › ]

Pinterest is in talks to raise $500 million worth of funding, expected to increase the value of the photo bookmarking site to $11 billion, according to a report.

The Wall Street Journal first reported the new funding round, citing sources close to the matter as saying the company, founded in 2010 by Ben Silbermann, Evan Sharp and Paul Sciarra, is looking at a new round of funding

With more than 75 million users globally and a new monetization push — with the offering of promoted pins to all advertisers — the company is showing no signs of slowing down. The social advertising strategy, where advertisers pay for photo content appealing to the user that appears in their regular content stream, is already being pushed out by Facebook and Instagram. Read more...

More about Pinterest, Business, and Apps Software

Looks like we haven't see the last of Missy

BBC America announced Thursday that Michelle Gomez, who played Missy/The Master on the most recent season of Doctor Who, will return to the show for its new season

Gomez was last seen in Doctor Who's season finale.

"Things have been a little beige since I left Missy behind, so I'm delighted to be putting my lippie back on," says Gomez in a statement via BBC America. "I'm positively dying to see The Doctor again!"

The two-part season premiere of Doctor Who does not have official air date but will debut sometime in fall. The two-part episode, titled "The Magician's Apprentice" and "The Witch's Familiar," was written by Steven Moffat and directed by Hettie Macdonald, who also oversaw the award-winning weeping angels episode "Blink." Read more...

More about Television, Doctor Who, Entertainment, Tv, and Bbc America

Got something to get off your chest? A new Twitter tool lets you submit your secret to thousands of people, and they’ll never know it was you.

Social networks that let you share your darkest thoughts anonymously are nothing new – Whisper and Secret are just two that have had some success – but so far the concept hasn’t really taken off on Twitter.

Tweet Your Secrets hopes to change that. Simply visit the website, type in that 140 character secret that you couldn’t possibly send from your actual Twitter profile, and hit the share button.

Voila: your secret confession has now been sent to @tweetursecrets more than 14,000 followers.

There – don’t you feel better?

The site owners say that they’re dedicated to making your experience as fun and positive as possible, but recommend that you check out their privacy policy before getting started.

(Top image via Shutterstock.)

Pinterest drives a lot of traffic: Throughout 2014 it was second only to Facebook in terms of overall referral traffic. To capitalize on this power, some of Pinterest’s users were taking advantage of affiliate links to generate revenue. Now, Pinterest is going to clamp down on the practice.

The social bookmarking site sent its users an email notifying them that affiliate, redirects and trackers on pins would be automatically removed. The email also noted that users could still participate in paid social media marketing, but they would have to abide by the company’s acceptable use policy.

According to a Pinterest spokesperson who was quoted in the WSJ Digits blog:

We observed affiliate links and redirects causing irrelevant Pins in feeds, broken links and other spammy behavior. We believe this change will enable us to keep the high bar of relevancy and quality Pinners expect from Pinterest.

Another stated reason was that affiliate links were interfering with the metadata associated with \"Rich Pins\" such as Pinterest’s location sensitive Place Pins.

However with recent speculation about Pinterest’s intent to introduce a buy button, some are wondering if this decision is motivated by a desire to keep all the profits. Lauren Orsini, a contributor for Readwrite draws that very connection:

By retiring user commissions, Pinterest is paving a path to potentially draw commissions for itself on every product recommendation made. Pinterest has told ReadWrite that its primary motive is to make it easy for pinners to find useful, relevant images, but the company has got to be feeling the pressure from its many investors.

A Pinterest spokesperson later reached out to Orsini, stating “This is not about monetization, this is 100% about the Pinner experience and ensuring relevant content on Pinterest.” Still, the talk around a buy button and a forthcoming marketing API indicate that Pinterest is considering it’s monetization plans carefully.

While the change may not be directly related to a buy button, there’s also the possibility that Pinterest is trying to remove spam and useless content from the site before its rumored IPO this year.

The IPO is not yet confirmed, but with a \"buy\" button potentially on the way, a coming marketing API, and the exclusion of affiliate links, perhaps Pinterest is getting its house in order for the big day.

While cinemagraphs aren’t exactly new, more companies are embracing the power of these mesmerizing GIF/video hybrids to generate engagement on Facebook and Instagram. Partly due to their creative nature, but also in response to Facebook’s autoplay video and Instagram’s ability to play videos on a loop, the end result offers a powerful incentive to test this medium in your visual content mix.

When done well, cinemagraphs are elegant and eye-catching. It’s unexpected to see one element in motion without sound, surrounded by a still image. Consider this type of visual in a cluttered newsfeed where you have between 2.8-8 seconds to capture someone’s attention, and you can see why more brands are testing cinemagraphs.

Despite their creative prowess, the intriguing nature of cinemagraphs has made them subject to debate. Although defined as “still photographs in which a minor and repeated movement occurs,” some prefer to think of cinemagraphs as an animated GIF, while others think of them as a video.

However, this visual media is alluring for advertisers, as it brings motion to static images, which are still largely the purview of major social platforms such as Instagram and Facebook, especially when Instagram alone sees over 58 million photos a day. Cutting through the clutter in today’s era of infobesity is harder than ever, and this may be the media that does it—a very tempting prospect for advertisers (highlight to tweet).

So, how are companies leveraging beautiful creative format? Take a look.

Chanel

The original pioneers of the cinemagraph, visual storytellers Jamie Beck and Kevin Burg of Ann Street Studios have created hypnotic images like this one for Lincoln, Armani, Balenciaga, and many more. In looking at this cinemagraph, it’s clear that the format is made for luxury brands. Refined and elegant, the motion of the sparklers that spell out “Chanel” in the model’s headpiece really pops and pulls you into the visual. For more cinemagraph inspiration, check out more of Ann Street Studios’ work here.

Coca-Cola

This cinemagraph is an oldie but a goodie. Originally posted on Coca-Cola’s Tumblr, it’s been re-blogged over 80,000 times. Why does it work? It’s simple but eye-catching with the contrast of the red Coke can and the bright blue water in the background. It also plays well to the lifestyle cues of Coca-Cola. Who doesn’t want to be sipping a Coca-Cola while sitting poolside on a hot day?

General Electric

Never one to shy away from unique visuals, General Electric used a cinemagraph to show the capabilities of its at home jet engine assembly kit. This cinemagraph showcases how a company can use the format to demonstrate a product feature in a way that cuts through the noise and forces the user to focus on it. GE could also use this feature on other more B2B parts of its brand, such as showing a wind turbine in action or a specific feature of a machine working.

Introducing #GE’s at home jet engine assembly kit. Made possible by 3D printing, this is the perfect thing for that #AVgeek in your life. Celebrate the beauty of #aviation design with us and enter to win one at artsandaircraft.com!

A video posted by GE (@generalelectric) on Jul 11, 2014 at 9:06am PDT

Honda

In case you missed it, here’s a special sneak peek sketch of the next-generation Ridgeline that we released at the Chicago Auto Show today.

A video posted by Honda (@honda) on Feb 12, 2015 at 9:04am PST

Honda used a cinemagraph to offer a sneak peek of a new vehicle: the next-generation Ridgeline, which the company introduced at the Chicago Auto Show. When preparing for a new product launch, it’s always a good idea to focus on a special creative execution on social media to truly make it stand out. Case and point: this cinemagraph of sketch paired with the animation of the sky causes the viewer to pause and take a second look at the image.

Continue the conversation on our Facebook or Google+ pages.

On Tuesday, February 17, 2015 at 8:30 p.m. ET, the #PRStudChat community will participate in a Twitter chat discussion focused the state of healthcare communications. The healthcare arena has experienced continuous change with social media empowering the digitally demanding patient.  We’ll be exploring topics that include how healthcare organizations are creating quality content and marketing best practices, managing healthcare privacy online, understanding the social life of health information and consumer behavior, as well as the role that social media plays in educating patients.

We’ve invited a few special guests to join our discussion who will share their expertise on healthcare issues and the many advancements that we’ve seen in communications. Our panelists include:

Dana Lewis (@DanaMLewis)

Dana Lewis created and moderates #hcsm, the international healthcare & social media community on Twitter that meets Sunday nights at 8pm CT. (She started in #hcsm in January 2009 as an undergraduate PR student!) For her day job, she leads a team of digital content strategists for Providence Health & Services, the third largest not-for-profit health system in the U.S. And 24/7/365, she’s also the chief data producer and an inventor of #DIYPS – the first DIY closed loop artificial pancreas system.

Susan Young (@SueYoungMedia)

Susan Young is an award-winning news, social media, PR and communications professional with 27 years of experience. She works with colleges to teach students how to integrate social media and business to achieve communication, sales, and leadership success. Susan is CEO of Get in Front Communications, a 15-year-old communications consulting and training company. She is the editor of Ragan’s Health Care Communication News.

Anneliz Hannan (@AnnelizHannan)

Anneliz Hannan is a corporate communications professional with strong advocacy qualities and analytic acumen. She is tactful and persuasive in communicating about complex health care issues from clinical settings to executive and media boardrooms, and through the halls of Congress. Her credible, reliable and tenacious voice for the brand has chartered the course for independent companies, nonprofit organizations and corporations by building strong partnerships and constituencies.

If you have any questions that you’d like to ask our panel members, then please share them with @PRStudChat, before our session. We’re looking forward to a really informative and insightful tweet chat that will enlighten us on healthcare communications in 2015. See you on February 17th!

A Little More About PRStudChat:

It began with a simple question asked by Angela Hernandez, then President of PRSSA at Central Michigan University (CMU). “Is PR Right for me?” A follow up blog post by PR 2.0 expert Deirdre Breakenridge inspired a series of direct messages on Twitter between Breakenridge and fellow PR industry pro, Valerie Simon. This was an important question and one that should be explored beyond one student or one blog post. Why not build a community to help students across the country, and even the globe, learn from the experience and perspective of industry professionals… A community where everyone can learn and grow together. Read more …

 

The post Join the #PRStudChat Community for a State of Healthcare Communications Twitter Chat on February 17th appeared first on Deirdre Breakenridge.

Editor’s note: In celebration of Black History Month in February, PRSA invited prominent public relations professionals to offer their views and ideas for achieving greater racial and ethnic diversity in the profession as well as what Black History Month means to them. via: Dmitriy Pinchuk At age 5, while delivering the valedictorian address at my preschool commencement ceremony, I […]

Ad blocking technology presents a growing threat to digital publishers and ad-tech companies.

Those that remain at Vivaki will now focus on training, research and development, data management and analytics.

Many people engage in online media to promote their services. The idea of choosing between becoming an online influencer or a communicator probably doesn’t occur to them. After all, they just want to win a few clients and projects.

I reached a point where I needed to prioritize my own online interactions versus a desire to do the work, scale a business, and maintain balance in my personal life. Some are able to build larger agencies and businesses that coincide with significant online profiles, but I struggle to do both. So a choice was needed. In many ways, it is a living decision, one that I constantly need to reinforce.

Last week, a top 100 influencers metric came out, as usual based on Twitter reach, though this time it measured the reach of persona’s following, specifically “how many people are following those followers.” I guess that’s potential RT reach? Anyway, I am not sure how that translates to influence, but many friends whom I do consider to be influential were deservedly on the list. My congratulations to them.

As I watched the usual accolades posted on my social streams, I grew jealous. I could have been on that list if I’d only chosen to focus on my personal network growth over the past few years. But then I reminded myself about my choices. I was able to detach.

How This Choice Impacted Me

I secured an opportunity for my client Cade Martin serve as the primary portrait photographer for the NBA Wives Association (Behind the Bench) black tie gala last weekend. Cade is photographing MLB great Prince Fielder here. Check out all of his shots.

Many who have known me over the past 10 years would agree that I am not as prolific as I used to be online. I am a practitioner now, not an uber-influencer on the social media conference speaking circuit. Ratcheting it back was necessary to achieve those other objectives.

Instead, I am present enough to contribute to the larger conversation and market my business. Further, I use the tools to demonstrate competency with social media, particularly with my photography.

Frankly, I feel like online tools like Twitter, this blog and others are awesome, but they can blind you. You think the attention is necessary to succeed, but it takes a lot of energy and time to keep that influencer flywheel turning. Plus the necessary, um, political schmoozing is not my favorite activity. So I made and continue to make the choice to focus on other things.

This decision hasn’t been unkind to me. I earn a bit more than I used to, and I have better family relationships.

Having attained the right balance, I believe I am still credible to clients. At the same time, my intent is to promote them first, and not myself. I guess that’s old school, the client should be in the limelight, and not me.

Perhaps I have become just a member of the community rather than one of the top voices. Others have taken the mantle, and today, it seems some leaders are newer voices, at least to this old man. I kind of like that. Perhaps it is time for the next generation of influencers.

Me, I just want to build a good business, and do what is necessary online. My time as an uber-influencer — real or imagined — has passed.

Marketers have become very focused on measuring the effects of their work—which is both good and bad.

On the one hand, quantifying things can prove that certain strategies and tactics are effective and worth additional investment. On the other hand, we don’t always do a very good job at understanding the numbers our work produces, which means data may be driving us to the wrong conclusions.

For instance, most brands haven’t figured out attribution, and therefore don’t know the return on investment they’re getting. According to Salesforce’s 2014 State of Marketing Leadership report, 48% of senior-level marketers rate “quantifying marketing’s ROI” as a major challenge, second only to “budgetary constraints.”

Without an attribution model and ROI visibility, it’s difficult to have a cohesive, holistic strategy.

Complicating this further is evidence that channel marketers aren’t using the same metrics to measure success that their leaders do (highlight to tweet). Our State of Marketing Leadership report indicated that revenue growth, return on investment, and conversion rates were the top three success metrics for senior marketers. Those are great, business-oriented, bottom-of-the-funnel metrics.

However, when we asked channel marketers the same question in our 2015 State of Marketing report, we got very different answers. For instance, social marketers said their top success metric was website traffic from social media. Mobile marketers said their No. 1 mobile marketing success metric was mobile website or app traffic. And email marketers said their biggest success metric was click-through rates.

It’s interesting that all three of these channels focus most on engagement-level metrics—which is the type of metric that leaders said they valued least. Engagement rates (opens, clicks, downloads) was the 10th most popular success metric, at the very bottom of the list for success metrics among marketing leaders.

There are a few different possibilities for this disconnect. First, channel marketers may not have visibility all the way down the funnel. Some of that might be limitations of their software, and some of that might be limitations on data flow.

For instance, most email marketers are not able to use conversion rates strategically because their companies do not feed conversion data back into their email service providers. This forces them to rely on inferior—and sometimes misleading—metrics like open, click, and click-to-open rates, which were three of the top four success metrics named by email marketers.

Second, channel marketers may not be fully aware of how to best use the various metrics available to them, which is completely understandable considering the torrent of data that’s at their fingertips nowadays.

For instance, email marketers have dozens and dozens of metrics at their disposal. Metrics exist at the campaign, channel, and customer level and can be either email-centric or business-centric in nature.

Some metrics, like click-to-open rates, are helpful in optimizing emails at the campaign level.

Others, like inbox placement rates per ISP, are helpful in maintaining the health of the email channel.

Still others, like email marketing revenue, are primary indicators of business success at the channel level.

To provide a better view of the email marketing metrics landscape, I’ve pull together this Email Metrics Matrix that shows where various metrics fit in.

And finally, a third explanation is that channel marketers are being measured by different metrics. Sometimes channel marketers steer performance goals toward channel metrics instead of business metrics, but other times executives task channel marketers with achieving channel goals that don’t correlate to business success, such as growing their email list by X percent.

Both channel marketers should be working toward the same customer-centric, business-centric goals—and channel marketers should be using their campaign- and channel-level metrics to set themselves up to achieve those higher level goals.

The year is still young. It’s not too late to revisit your key performance indicators for 2015 and re-orientate them around the customer and business metrics that really matter, and avoid prioritizing metrics like opens, clicks, and list growth that can undermine top-line performance.

Let’s get everyone focused on the same goals.

Marketing is no longer about talking at the customers. It’s about talking with them, and figuring out which content they’re most interested in seeing.

To accomplish this, you can look at analytics, such as subscriber numbers on email newsletters, click-through rates, site visits, Facebook likes, and the amount of comments you receive on a blog post.

While it’s extremely useful to know where you stand in terms of ROI, it’s also necessary to get direct feedback from your customers to determine if your marketing efforts are working and your objectives are being reached.

One way to find out your customers’ opinions is by sending out a survey. The following are some tips to keep in mind, as well as some websites that will help you effectively survey your audience.

Decide Upon a Goal

A single, all-encompassing survey for every one of your marketing campaigns isn’t going to cut it. You’re going to need several surveys out there for all your different projects. Before you begin thinking about which questions you’ll ask, you have to know how you’re going to use the answers you’ll obtain.

For example, let’s say you want to know where most of your site visitors are coming from. From there, you can then start to formulate the questions. You might ask your visitors how they found your site, what other sites they like to visit, and whether or not they saw you on social media platforms.

When generating your surveys, specificity is key (highlight to tweet). Have a precise goal you want to achieve, and then work from there.

Determine the Best Platform

You have some customers who follow you primarily on social media, while others only receive your e-newsletters. If your survey isn’t relevant to your customers, they will take one look at it and decide not to fill it out.

After you come up with your purpose for the survey and the questions you’re going to ask, you have to post it on the correct platform. Then, you will actually reach the segment of the audience you’re hoping to target.

When you post or send the survey, make sure that it’s prominent so that your audience can actually see it. One week, instead of sending out your e-newsletter, email your customers the survey instead, just like Weight Watchers did.

If you receive a lot of hits on your Facebook page at a certain time of day or day of the week, post it then. For a limited time, run a pop-up survey before customers check out of your e-commerce store on your website. If you don’t feature your survey and make it a priority, customers won’t either.

Make It Short 

Your audience doesn’t owe you anything. If they’re filling out your survey, you should be grateful. Therefore, it’s important that you keep it short and write simple, easy-to-answer questions.

When blogger Brian Casel asked his followers for feedback, he called it a “60-second” survey. “I know people are donating their time when filling out a survey, so I wanted to respect that,” he wrote.

You should have the same attitude when you create your survey. If you go back and answer your own questions, and the whole process takes more than a few minutes, eliminate some and save them for the next time around.

Don’t Bombard Your Audience

Surveys are essential, but you must know how often to send them out. If you ask your audience for feedback too frequently, you risk irritating them and ultimately turning them off your brand.

Fortunately, you have more leeway on your social media accounts. In a New York Times article on customer surveys, Claes G. Fornell, the founder of the American Customer Satisfaction Index, said that young people are fine with answering surveys on social media because, “When you think about it, the whole concept of social media is, ‘I’m going to give my opinion whether I’m asked or not.’”

E-newsletters, however, are a different story. When it comes to email marketing, blogger Pam Neely recommends sending surveys out once or twice a year. For text message marketing, keep the same general rule of thumb in mind. Your survey is being delivered into people’s personal email and cell phone inboxes, so you don’t want them to feel as if they’re being hassled.

Offer Incentives

Want to get the answers you need and increase brand loyalty? Provide your customers with discounts or prizes for filling out your survey. At the end of every survey, you could include a coupon code or ask customers to fill in their email addresses to be entered into a raffle. Walmart, for example, gives out $1,000 gift cards to some select participants.

Customers always appreciate free things. By offering them prizes and incentives, you’re showing that you value the fact that they took precious time out of their days to give you feedback. Next time, they’ll be more inclined to fill out another survey.

How to Start Surveying

There are many survey generators available. The most popular company is SurveyMonkey, which has both free and paid options. Here is what one survey creator template from SurveyMonkey looks like:

Some other tools that companies use are Qualtrics, Google Forms, Doodle, and SurveyPlanet.

What are your favorite survey generators? Do you find that surveys help you reach your marketing goals? Tell us about it on our Facebook or Google+ pages.

The "Fifty Shades of Grey" movie is terrible.

But the movie does have one redeeming quality: the sex. 

The movie is slightly more complicated than the book (which is terrible), I think, because it makes some attempt to respond to the book's major critique — that the relationship between Christian Grey and Anastasia Steele is not actually consensual.

The movie addresses this without overcoming it. The sex in the movie seems pretty clearly consensual, and, with the exception of the last scene, appears to be enjoyable.

The problem, of course, is that the sex scenes are completely at odds with the actual plot of the movie, which depicts the beginnings of an abusive and coercive relationship. The sex scenes are important, though, and not just because they're softcore porn being shown on giant screens all over America. They're strangely progressive.

(I don't mean the bondage, that's awful. Rope and cable ties bought at a hardware store are torture devices, not restraints.)

Within the realm of mainstream Hollywood film this movie is something of a breakthrough.

There's oral sex, performed by a man on a woman. There's even a hint that Anastasia may have had an orgasm that was asynchronous and unrelated to her partner's.

Despite everything else in the film suggesting the opposite, the sex scenes are closer to actual sex between two people who like each other than almost anything I've ever seen in a theater.

They're not even really that good, but they are better than the male-centric sexual cliché that Hollywood usually churns out.

It's really depressing that it takes a story about a man who coerces a college student into being his sex slave to make a mainstream Hollywood movie that includes a woman enjoying sex.

SEE ALSO: Authorship is quickly dying, and artist Richard Prince is in legal trouble again

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: This 'Fifty Shades of Grey' trailer recreated with Legos is way better than the original

Social media has quickly revolutionized the world of marketing, and one area in which it’s been particularly effective is events promotion.

Indeed, social platforms such as Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn now play a key role in all stages of conference marketing. But how do you ensure your event experience is optimized?

Start by getting the word out early, beginning with organic promotion at least one to three months in advance. Be sure to loop-in attendees, influencers and other organisers, moving on to paid promotions to boost momentum and awareness.

A few weeks prior to the event, release teaser content, announce contests and create custom social profile branding, continuing to engage with attendees throughout.

On the big day, feature onsite interviews with speakers and influencers, promote your hashtag (and engage with anyone using it) and encourage non-attendees to take part in the online conversation.

After the event, create and curate all content (including articles, videos and presentations), measure return on investment and encourage feedback.

Check the visual below for more insights, which comes courtesy of Gryffin.

(Source: Gryffin. Event image via Shutterstock.)

The acquisition has surpassed the parent: According to data from GlobalWebIndex, Facebook usage in the U.K. is down 7 percent over the past 12 months, while Instagram has seen an 18 percent rise in active users over the same time period.

GWI said in an email to SocialTimes:

During the past 12 months, Facebook saw a 7 percent drop in the U.K. in terms of active usage — hardly the dramatic decline that some headline-writers like to report, but still illustrative of the rise of smaller platforms like Instagram, Pinterest and Tumblr. Indeed, Instagram grew its active user number by 18 percent over the same period, driven by the trends toward multi-networking across numerous social media services.

Compared to Facebook, Instagram can also boast a much younger audience: 39 percent of its U.K. users are aged 16 through 24, compared with just 16 percent on Facebook. Instagram’s users also spend longer per day on social networks, although they have a much bigger skew toward women.

One place where Facebook still leads all other networks is in relation to usage frequency. Some 53 percent of its U.K. users log in multiple times per day, versus just 29 percent on Instagram. This pattern is repeated globally, too, underlining the key role that Facebook plays even as members use it more passively.

Readers: Did any of GWI’s findings surprise you?

Image of U.K. flags courtesy of Shutterstock.

Winter storm Juno was what finally did it for me. I’d been seeing more and more autoplay videos in my Facebook News Feed over the previous few months, but during the storm it seemed like 2/3rds of the stories in my Newsfeed were native videos. There were plenty from people enjoying their snow days, as well as a huge number from brands or publishers I follow.

Video, it’s been pointed out, is having something of a moment right now. It currently accounts for 78 percent of all web traffic (in terms of data, not time spent), and that number is only poised to grow.

And native video is seeing even faster growth. Native here meaning native on social networks, i.e. videos that are uploaded to or created on social networks and played in-feed, as opposed to links to videos hosted on other sites.

Native video will be one of the dominant elements of major social networks in the years to come. Here’s a look at some of the key concerns for brands.

First, Twitter just rolled out its native video tools, available in the latest iOS and Android updates. Here are the basics of how it works.

Users can shoot and edit video in the app—you can shoot clips as short as one second and rearrange them to create a video up to 30 seconds. You can also upload videos up to 30 seconds from the camera roll. The interface for shooting and editing video is really well done. Advertisers get a good deal more time to play with; videos can be up to 10 minutes long.

Twitter had been testing native promoted video with advertisers leading up to the announcement. It’s not clear if the new focus on video for the network will mean different options for advertisers soon, but it seems likely.

I’ve already started seeing a lot of videos cropping up on Twitter, and it’s easy to imagine them becoming even more dominant on the network.

And for Facebook, I’m not the only one who’s seeing videos all over my newsfeed. They’re getting a ton of views, and those views are increasing at a staggering pace—there were over 1 billion video views a day last June, and that number is now reportedly 3 billion. And, crucially for brands that are looking for ways to connect with their fans on Facebook, natively posted videos are getting better organic reach than posts featuring videos that are hosted elsewhere, Ad Age reported.

How to nail your native videos

Facebook and Twitter, with their nine and ten digit audience numbers, also host trillions of pieces of content. Your videos compete for attention with all of it. If you don’t get people’s attention, and quickly, they’ll just scroll on by. Here are a few best practices for increasing the impact and success of your native video.

Silence is Golden

Clips need to work without sound, especially on Facebook, where autoplay means that videos will be wordless for users unless they are intriguing enough to get people to click. Master Chef Junior’s most watched video, involving gordon ramsay and pastry to the face, works just as well without sound. Enjoy.

Put your best frame forward

In a similar vein, the first frame, or first few frames in the case of autoplay, of your video need to be compelling enough to get people to stick around. Viewster, a free online video service that operates the world’s largest online film festival, noticed that the preview images and where they edited clips to start had a big impact. Even a matter of two seconds, \"can make the difference between getting 10,000 and 50,000 views,\" according to Hank Smith, Social Media Editor for Viewster.

Tease with text

Getting the copy right has always been important on social. Text accompanying videos should be short, but it can still make the difference between a hit and a flop.

By now, the curiosity gap as a headline writing style—vague article titles designed just to get people to click—is bringing diminishing returns.

With clips, however, there is a lot of room to tease or leave room for uncertainty in text—hinting at the content of a video can create more interest than explaining it, if done correctly.

Whatever your feelings regarding Fifty Shades may be, the copy leading into the native video makes it more intriguing than \"Watch the official Fifty Shades trailer.\"

How far will you go? #FiftyShades is in theaters Valentine’s Day. Get tix: http://t.co/6ISOtt9s3E #EmpireWednesday https://t.co/yKUaVIDSJJ

— Fifty Shades of Grey (@FiftyShades) 4 Février 2015

What does the shift towards native video mean?

For the networks, this shift is primarily a play to increase user engagement and time spent. Even if hosted videos could be viewed on Twitter and Facebook before, native posting removes the intermediary, and increases the likelihood that people will stay on the network, instead of, say, clicking through to Youtube, then viewing other videos there.

For brands, the new emphasis on native video will likely mean the end of youtube as the central hub for all branded video content. Facebook and Twitter are making it worthwhile for companies to post content on those channels directly, and it’s not likely that will change in the near future.

And the overall trend towards video is here to stay as well. brands, if they haven’t done so already, are going to have to shift more and more resources to producing engaging, quality video.

Matthew Klein is a content manager at Facebook Preferred Marketing Developer Falcon Social. Like them on Facebook and follow them on Twitter. Falcon Social enables enterprises to Listen and Engage, Publish and Measure – all from a unified platform.

Check out this awesome series of old Japanese commercials featuring some very popular Transformers robots from a time before they were actually called Transformers.

[thespacebridge | Via Kotaku]

The post Transformers Ads From Before They Were Called Transformers appeared first on Geeks are Sexy Technology News.

I recently went to the eastern shore of Maryland and came across this awesome bank logo on the outside wall of a bank. It made me want to walk in and give them my money. and other people’s money. and sacrifice some children in their name.

Now let’s compare it to citibank’s logo, which only succeeds in evoking slightly positive associations for a series of tween magazines that I will never read:

I am a huge fan of simple and memorable. but I think branding has overtaken design – companies just pick something catchy and throw it in peoples faces over and over until it becomes “them”. It’s important sometimes to remember a time when a logo actually evoked real emotions. Look at the font selection. Look at the kerning. Look at the stone they chose for the outside wall of the bank as a background, that has aged beautifully over the years. Look at the bird. It’s a real sculpture with depth, shadows, and gravitas. I mean, wow, it’s just stunning.

Ok, now everyone can chime in with pithy observations about how this would look terrible on a webpage banner, or how it makes them think of nazis.

Kids reacting to stuff that didn’t exist anymore when they were born is hilarious. TheFineBros recently let kids react to an old-school point-and-shoot film camera, the final video is incredibly funny but see for yourself: Here are a couple of the best things the kids said in response to the cam: There’s something else you [...]

The post Kids Hilariously Reacting To An Old Film Camera appeared first on DIY Photography.

Forrester survey finds that only half of respondents think strategy is "somewhat effective"; the problem may be in the execution.

If you're lost in the sea of marketing jargon permeating the digital advertising industry, there's a browser extension you may want to try.

Last week I gave the cyborg thumbs up to the Art of Fred Gambino in a full length review. This is an artist who’s worked with likes of WizKids, LEGO, National Geographic and even Der Speigel.

The review included a video tour of the book to showcase Gambino’s fine style and work. Geek Native video tours are always based on photographs and put behind a filter. This helps you look at the art without simply giving the contents of the book away.

We’re lucky this week though as Geek Native has permission to showcase six crystal clear examples of art from the book. Enjoy.

The Art of Fred Gambino is available from Amazon.

The post A gallery of space art from Fred Gambino appeared first on Geek Native.

While double-exposure photography all started in-camera – most likely by accident – it’s since become an actual style and genre of photography all its own. And while it can still be done in-camera through film or a number of DSLRs that offer the capabilities, it can also be done in Photoshop. Here to show us how is wedding photographer Andrew Klokow, with a quick and efficient workflow for nailing double-exposures in post-production.

One step at a time, Klokow’s tutorial goes over how best to prepare the individual images for the eventual composition. Once each image is tweaked as needed, Klokow shows off how to properly choose the blending modes to get your desired effect. The result is a seamless composition that combines the best of both original photographs to create a light and airy double-exposure.

At just over seven minutes, it’s a thorough, but concise walk-through of how to create unique double-exposures through clever editing in post-production. If you’d like to keep up with Klokow, you can do so via YouTube, Facebook and his website.

(via Fstoppers)