The Hopkinson Report - Wired.com's Marketing Guy Jim Hopkinson takes a fresh and funny look at marketing trends in the Wired world.

Nov 06 2011

Episode 175: A Special Announcement From Jim

*** UPDATE 11/6/11 ***
Good news, Hopkinson Report fans!

I have been told that I WILL be able to maintain control of past, present and future content for The Hopkinson Report. This is great news for me and I sincerely appreciate Conde Nast understanding the depth of personal commitment I put into this blog and podcast for the last 3+ years.

So what does that mean moving forward?

Well, now that I will be pursuing a freelance career of speaking, teaching, and writing, I am going to take a moment to step back and see where this blog and podcast fits in with my overall goals. I would love to get reader feedback. Here’s where I think I am so far:

Previous Content
- All of the 175 episodes will remain as an archive. One thing that I had wanted to do for some time, which will become a nice project for me, is to create a system both for new users arriving at the site, and for all users to get to past projects.

WordPress is not great at archiving, so someone that is brand new to the site might be overwhelmed to see a list of shows, dated in reverse chronological order. What if they are looking for interviews? Or Facebook help? Or iPhone news? They’ll have to search and dig through everything. I have always tagged and categorized my posts very well, so I will need to work off of this.

The model I will loosely base this off of is Pat Flynn over at Smart Passive Income. He uses three elements:
1) When you land at SmartPassiveIncome.com, the top ‘post’ has a ‘Don’t know where to start?’ banner to direct newbies.
2) On his Getting Started page, he explains what the blog is about, and the benefit to the reader, including a video.
3) Lastly, he has a Best of Smart Passive Income page that categorizes all the top posts within each topic that he covers.

The Hopkinson Report — The next generation
- Audio podcast — not sure if I want to keep doing this. The main advantage is interviewing people, which I really, really enjoy.
- Blog — This will most likely remain my outlet for blogging, but the topics may expand
- Video Podcast — I think it is doubtful that I will do a full “video podcast.” The production time is just too much, and my gut tells me there is a very limited market for long form video.
- Quick hit video — What I might want to invest time and effort into is short form video (under 90 seconds). I’d love to create a “set” in my apartment with proper lighting, greenscreen, and illustrated screencapture video from a monitor. That would be fun and effective.
- Mailing list — I’d like to build out a mailing list and/or newsletter.
- Redesign — Short term I will be removing Wired branding, but once the new direction is decided, I will give the site a refresh.

What say you? Please provide your feedback in the comments below or write me via email.

Special Announcement 11-4-2011

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Hey fans… I have an update for you. Friday, November 4th will be my last day at Wired/Conde Nast

As of right now, the future of The Hopkinson Report is uncertain.

There are a few options here:
- Things will go on as totally as normal
- I will lose access to the archives, but continue moving forward in the same format
- The Hopkinson Report might remain, but take on a new direction
- I might do a completely new podcast, with a new name, on slightly different topics
- And yes, there’s a chance, that this might be the final podcast I do. If that’s the case, 175 episodes was a good run and nice number to end on

How will you know?

1) Check here on TheHopkinsonReport.com. I SHOULD be able to do all updates here.
2) JimHopkinson.com should be done by the end of November. Right now this redirects back here to this website, but as you know, I have been documenting how to set up a website using this as an example.
3) Follow @HopkinsonReport on Twitter, as this SHOULD remain my own

This situation has come up quickly, and I will be able to share more in the future.

I want to make some things perfectly clear.
- It has been an honor to do this over the past 3 1/2 years.
- I’ve learned an immense amount about digital media and marketing, hope you have too.
- The people have been the best. I’ve met so many amazing and talented entrepreneurs.
- I am ecstatic about the new projects I’m going to be working on.

Thank you, the listeners. Stay Tuned.

Jim

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Nov 04 2011

Episode 174: The three pillars of Facebook engagement

Discover the three best ways to engage with readers on Facebook

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Facebook continues to be the social media giant. It’s funny to look back at Episode 105 eighteen months ago back in May 2010 when I wondered whether recent privacy events could signal the fall of Facebook, and I went through 7 reasons the mighty giant might fail.

Needless to say, they’ve recovered from some of the issues I posed, including privacy concerns and revenue generation. In fact, the New York Times and Wired ran a stories about a group of students that were taking on Facebook with a new product called Diaspora, and it gained some pretty good buzz.

Where are we 18 months later? Well, Diaspora seems to be in alpha release still and in retrospect, was just a tiny fly on the back of a Rhino. And that Rhino would be Google Plus, which Facebook seems to be going head-to-head with and still winning.

Of course by now if you’re a brand, you have already have a robust Facebook page. You’ve updated some graphics, built up your following, and have widgets on your website to drive people to Like you on Facebook.

But now that you have fans on Facebook, how do you engage with your audience?

I’ve been running the Wired Facebook page for some time now, and am also managing Community Managers for four other Conde Nast brands. Needless to say, we are seeing lots of feedback and data, and are constantly trying to glean learnings from our users.

I recently did a deep-dive analysis of 60 days of Facebook posts on Wired, analyzing 250 posts for a theory that I have, which I’ll share with you in a moment.

But what I came up with his week was a fairly obvious observation, but one that I think can still really help The Hopkinson Report readers. When you’re posting something on your page, you need to have a goal.

Ask yourself, what is the purpose of this post?

Keep in mind that Conde Nast properties have magazine and websites and are content publishers, so if your business is retail or selling a physical product your mileage may vary, but in general when I looked at all the ways you can interact, three became clear.

The three pillars of Facebook engagement

1. Driving traffic
The first type of post is to drive traffic to your website. For the extreme newbies out there, the steps are:

a) Choose the “Link” option and post in a URL from your website

b) This will bring up a thumbnail option if you have a photo on your page. I highly recommend that you do so that it catches the reader’s eye, and note that if you have multiple photos on your page, you can page through them and select the best one.

c) You can also edit the title and description of the post that is automatically brought in by facebook by clicking on the text.

d) Lastly, you write a description of the article you are posting. It can be the same as the title from the post itself, or you can customize it. It’s a good practice to word your text with a call to action to nudge the reader in that direction.

Again, the goal here is to actually encourage people to LEAVE Facebook itself and go to your website. The reason you would do this is to get them to read an article or view a slideshow (where you have ads that generate page views and revenue) or buy a product on your site.

Example:
Wired Product Review team takes a look at the new iPhone 4S. Click here to read their full review on Wired.com.

2. Driving comments
The second type of post is meant to keep people ON the Facebook page and engage directly with readers. Driving people to your website in step one is great, and might be what you ultimately want to do as a business, but if you constantly are asking people to leave Facebook and do something for you, it becomes robot-like.

In order to engage on a new level, it is important to ask questions, respond to your fans, and get fans talking to each other. There are a few ways to do this.

a) Post a link, but ask a direct question. In this model, you are doing Step 1 and posting a link, but how you write your status is much different. To build on the example above, you might say “Wired reviewed the new iPhone 4S this week. Do you feel that it is a significant upgrade over the iPhone 4, and how does it compare to the top Android Phones?”

In a perfect world, readers will go to your site, read the article, give you page views, and then return to Facebook to give their opinion. But in many cases, people already have made up their mind about the iPhone, and will go right to the comments and speak their mind. And let me tell you, the iPhone vs Android battle is alive and well.

b) Ask a question without a link. In this manner, you are asking an open-ended question about a topic that your audience is familiar with, and driving people right to the comments.

For example, we might simply say: “It’s seems clear that the smartphone race is going to come down to Apple vs Android. Leave a comment below to say why you chose one platform over another.”
The goal of this is to spark a discussion on your Facebook page and get readers interacting with each other. It’s a good practice for you, as the brand, to jump in and stoke the fires a bit and keep things going.

3. Driving shares
Facebook has only recently surfaced the statistic of “shares” on a brand’s page, but it’s a helpful one. This tells you the reach that you are getting BEYOND your immediate audience. If one of your readers feels compelled enough to take your content and distribute it to their friends, then you’ve really nailed a topic that people like.

By sharing content, it has the true chance to go viral, as one person exposes it to their several hundred friends, and then those people might share it again to their several hundred friends.

What drives shares? A great story will be shared. A great question will be shared. And of course, you can be blatant and say “Like this post? Share it with your friends.” But one of the best ways to drive shares is through PHOTOS.

Through the proliferation of cameras on mobile devices, high-end DSLRs, quick blogging services like Tumblr, and apps like Instagram, photos are being shared on the web at dizzying pace.

Photos are eye-catching, evocative, and let’s face it… people have ADD and are lazy. Sure, they can spend a few minutes coming up with an intelligent response about the advantages of Android as an open platform, but it’s a heck of a lot easier to see a killer photo of a planet and share it on their wall.

In my research, I determined that users were:
- 1.5x more likely to comment on a photo
- 2.5x more likely to share a photo
- 3.5x more likely to like a photo

So there you have it, the 3 pillars of Facebook engagement. Depending on your brand and your goals, you should determine what the best mix of posts will be for you. It’s important to keep it diversified, but whether you split them 33% each, or decide to go 70% photos is up to you.

I’m off to go take some photos.

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Oct 25 2011

Episode 173: 8 Life lessons from a fallen friend

Jim gives 8 lessons in marketing, design, technology, and life

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Hey everyone. I was struggling all last week for a podcast topic, and nothing was coming to mind. I was looking at Wired stories, items on Mashable.com, thinking about past case studies, and marketing in general.

It was midnight on Thursday 10/20 and I needed a story to post for the week.
(Note: As it turns out, I copied the wrong file to my thumb drive and thus couldn’t post it on Friday, and forgot again on Monday. Thus, the plan is to try and post two this week.)

In the end, my thoughts drifted to my friend Jeffrey Baun, a former co-worker who recently passed away. I figured it would be a nice little tribute to do a show that highlighted some of the things I learned from him.

The quick background is that I hired Jeff at my startup back in 1994, a few years later he got in a terrible car accident and was disabled, went home to live with his parents to rehabilitate, and had worked his way back for the last 13 years before passing away suddenly on September 16.

Here are the eight things I chose to remember and celebrate:

As always, the podcast contains the full story… here are some highlights of what I cover.

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Oct 13 2011

Episode 172: Interview — Kevin Hartz, co-founder and CEO of Eventbrite.com

Jim interviews co-founder and CEO Kevin Hartz of Eventbrite.com.

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This week I had a great interview with with co-founder and CEO Kevin Hartz of Eventbrite.com.

Eventbrite is a simple but powerful tool to manage, promote, and sell out your event. I’ve used it in the past and can attest that it takes the process of planning an event — be it a class, a meetup group, a yoga retreat, or a concert — and makes it simple and professional.

As a user, the interface is clear and easy to understand, and makes it feel like you are buying a ticket from a professional ticket agency.

As an organizer, you can plan the fun things about your event, without having to worry about building an RSVP system, creating tickets, or collecting money at the door.

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Oct 06 2011

Episode 171: Interview – Krista Neher, social media and digital trainer and CEO of Bootcamp Digital

Jim has a high-energy interview with author, speaker, and social media pro Krista Neher.

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This week I had a great interview with with author, speaker, and social media pro Krista Neher.

As usual, for the full interview — and trust me, we had great energy and lots of fun sharing stories — make sure to download and play the podcast. The summary below highlights what we cover:

Krista’s background
- Her start at Proctor and Gamble
- Working on marketing for brands like Tide and Folgers Coffee
- Her transition to a startup
- The founding of Bootcamp Digital, which teaches companies how to use the web and social media to build their business

Her travels from Canada to Cincinnati
- What does that have to do with bowling?

Social engagement
- Not the kind of engagement you like – we’re talking on a train to New Jersey

Boot Camp Digital
- What makes a truly good social media program?
- Huge opportunity to show businesses how to do their own social media
- “You’re doing it wrong” – what is the #1 thing companies are doing incorrectly with social media
- Why “free” social media is a problem

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Sep 28 2011

Episode 170: What are you so afraid of? Overcoming fear and uncertainty.

Jim talks about how to overcome fear in your life and Jonathan Fields’ new book Uncertainty.

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One of the best compliments anyone ever paid to me actually had to do with this podcast. I was walking down the street in New York with my girlfriend at the time, and we were talking about the origins of how I started this show. I was recanting about the things I had gone through, pitching the idea to Wired, setting everything up on the technical side, designing the website, and lining up people to interview and topics to talk about. Now that it is up and running a weekly routine, sometimes I forget how much effort went into the initial setup.

We stopped for a moment and she looked over at me and said,

“You never once thought about what would happen if it failed, did you?”

It was an interesting question… one that caught me by surprise and made me stop and really think about the answer, transporting myself back through time to put myself in that place when I was just starting out. I thought long and hard, did an honest assessment, and then gave her my answer:

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Sep 22 2011

Episode 169: Interview – Rey Flemings of Stipple a startup powering the evolution of web images.

Jim interviews Rey Flemings, the cofounder and chief executive of Stipple, a company trying to revolutionize online photos.

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Photographs. With billions of Facebook photos being tagged, Tumblr, Flickr, Instagram, camera phones, Flip cameras, low-cost high-res DSLRs and more, there’s no doubt there’s huge numbers — and business potential — around this industry.

One of the companies trying to take advantage of this is Stipple. I spoke with cofounder Rey Flemings, and you can listen to the entire podcast for his insights. Highlights include:

What is Stipple?
Imagine this: You tag a photo in Facebook, but your friend grabs it and brings it outside Facebook’s network and puts it on their blog. Thus, you lose all of the tags.

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Sep 15 2011

Episode 168: What six crappy part-time jobs taught me about life.

People talk a lot about their real-world career, but sometimes it’s the part-time jobs of youth that define you as a person.

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What do you do for a living?

When you’re asked that question in “real life,” you rarely start with your current job and go all the way back to your very first part time jobs. But in a way, what you did for money as a teen, be it babysitting, lifeguarding, or cleaning out your Dad’s garage, can have a profound effect on your life.

OK, so the jobs I list below aren’t really THAT crappy (it made for a better headline), but they weren’t always glorious either. However, they did teach me some valuable life lessons.

As always, listen to the podcast for the full show. Highlights below:

The Job: Paperboy
Lesson Learned:
- Consistency (If you didn’t deliver every single day, someone was not going to be happy)
- Delayed gratification (Friends want to play baseball? Not till your route is done)
- Value of money (You mean the harder I work, the more money I’ll have for arcade video games? Ah, I get it now)
- Stay away from large German Shepherds (Seriously. I was chased and bitten several times)

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Aug 31 2011

Episode 167: What would YOU do with 250,000 HP Touchpad tablets?

HP has had a tough year. What would you have done differently?

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Today I talk about the troubles at HP, and the interesting story around the Touchpad.

Listen to the podcast for the full story, but here are the highlights, grouped around articles:

8/18 HP Kills TouchPad, Puts WebOS in Hibernation

A funny thing happened after HP killed the touchpad.
- They offered them at a fire sale price of $99
- This created huge demand
- It become a “must-have” item for geeks
- People were waiting in line, with even stories of suburban “stampeding”
- They got huge buzz on the internet

8/22 From HP to Amazon, the Tablet Dilemma: Go Big or Go Home

- Great story by Wired’s Tim Carmody
- The Kindle has competed against the iPad. And the Book. But not much else.
- Leading to the quote: “There is no tablet market, just an iPad market”

From blogger Justin Lowery

“Gizmodo published the stats yesterday to illustrate the fact. The iPad totally eclipses all other tablets in sales. Apple has made 281 times more profit from the iPad 1 alone—in just three market quarters—than all other “tablet” manufacturers have made from all their models, across all their brands, combined.”

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Aug 26 2011

Episode 166: How to create a viral infographic to market your brand.

How to create an infographic

Jim interviews designer Shaun Sanders to learn the key to building amazing infographics.

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Today I speak with Shaun Sanders, a graphic designer specializing in infographics. I met Shaun through our mutual friend Alexis Ohanian, who hired Shaun to produce some awesome infographics for Hipmunk.

Listen to the podcast for the full interview, but here are the highlights, thoughts, and things that we discussed:

Definition of infographics
I view infographics as another option in a marketer’s social media arsenal. Surprisingly, there are a lot of people that don’t know what the term means when I told them my plans for doing one.

The easiest, old school comparison I make is like the USA Today “Snapshots” that would appear in the newspaper, using cartoon-esque images to represent data. You know, like the quantity of pasta consumed:

Shaun jumps in to give me us a more purist definition: Data visualization
The key: Crossing data visualization with fun, color, and additional elements

“Infographics work because most people will look at them vs sending them a long text article. Because it comes across as fun cartoon, they are more likely to check it out, as well embed it and share it on Facebook.”

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