Tag Archives: innovation

Update on BarCampBankSeattle

BarCampBankSeattle is now on both Google Groups and, more importantly, upcoming.

BarCampBankSeattle is described on upcoming as

If you are an innovator, a disruptor or a professional of the banking and finance industry, if you are excited by or just curious about all the innovations that the new technologies could bring to the banking and finance world, if you want to present a project, confront your ideas or just echo lively debates with your own experience, then you should definitely consider joining us on BarCampBankSeattle.

Looking forward to it!
Wm

ROI on community.

I have been asked many times about the ROI of community projects like ChangeEverything.ca. Up until last month I had an answer, but it wasn’t very good, and I can’t even remember what it was any more. Just some mumbling about how we can’t measure ROI on everything.

At Net.Finance I heard Michael Seaton speak and he asked the audience, “What’s the ROI on a round of golf or lunch with a client?” I loved it. If a company is interested in being innovative, some money has to go towards projects where the ROI cannot be expressed ahead of time. You have to try it and see if it works. Certainly I wouldn’t recommend this for more than, say, 10% of your marketing or development budget. But if you want to innovate you have to have a little fun money to play with for experimentation purposes (rumour has it that Google developers can spend 10% of their time on side projects, that can end up creating important innovations).

And then, via Colin I came across this post by Will Pate: Online Community Success and ROI. He has found metrics and stats from a variety of sources indicating the benefits that community features will give to a website’s ROI. Nicely done.

Thanks Colin and thanks Will…

Twitter as a marketing tool?

I have to admit, when I first came across Twitter (I think it was Shari Storm who first invited me to the Twit) I wasn’t impressed. But something about it has kept me coming back.

I recently came across a neat example of a business using Twitter to market itself. A restaurant in Buffalo uses it to promote its daily specials. Very nice.

Here’s a great and very thorough article on iMedia Connection about what makes Twitter so sticky and how it can be useful. Well worth a read.

Oh, and by the way, here’s me.