Study: Millennials value workplace friendships but sacrifice them for their benefit

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Credits: Gerd Altmann / pixelio.de

Credits: Gerd Altmann / pixelio.de

A friendship is not a friendship, when it comes to moving on with your career – at least for millennials. A recent study published by LinkedIn this week shows that millennials believe in friendships at work boosting happiness, motivation, and productivity. However, friendship has an end and makes millennials competitive when it comes to career promotions.

The report states that 27% of the respondents think that workplace friendships boost their job performance. The negative part is that it also makes them more ambitious. Those millennials (68%) would even sacrifice a workplace friendship to get a promotion. The majority of millennials (3 in 5) believe that socializing with coworkers improves their workplace, and every third millennials thinks it will advance their career. Interestingly enough, almost every second millennial states that they would even discuss their salary with coworkers.

The results show quite a big difference to the Baby Boomers where almost the same percentage would never dare to have such a thought. From those workers at the age of 55-65, almost half of them even think a friendship with their coworkers had no effect on their professional performance in any way. Talking about salaries? Only 23% of baby boomers would think about it (and probably not do it).

The study shows that millennials are more open to talk about their very personal business situations like compensation and benefits with their millennial counterparts. Millennials are even heading for those informations instead of showing understatement and not disclosing any information about their personal salary conditions like the baby boomers do. Management should be coaching millennials here, and making sure that they give them insights in why it would be better not being too open with their coworkers.

Don’t limit conversations to only email or formal meetings. Take a walking meeting! Walking meetings are part of LinkedIn’s culture, and they are popular because people tend to relax during a walk, which allows for a more open and creative discussion. Plus, not having a phone or computer interrupt you every second, allows you to be more focused on the person you are talking to, and ultimately more connected.

Take an interest in the personal. While you may not want to give relationship advice, you should have an interest in your teammates as people. Take a few minutes during every one-on-one meeting to connect on a personal level. If your colleague always jets out with their yoga mat, ask them about it! Work is only a part of who we are; if you get to know people’s other passions, it may give you a glimpse into what motivates them.

Congratulate, share and like! A simple gesture on LinkedIn can do wonders for employee morale. Think how great it feels to get “a job well-done” email from your boss, and then imagine having the same recognition shared with your network. It feels great to get acknowledged for your hard work, and by sharing it publicly, you also help to build your professional brand.

The study shows that millennials are more open to talk about their very personal business situations like compensation and benefits with their millennial counterparts. Millennials are even heading for those informations instead of showing understatement and not disclosing any information about their personal salary conditions like the baby boomers do. Management should be coaching millennials here, and making sure that they give them insights in why it would be better not being too open with their coworkers.

How do you manage the millennial workforce in your company? Are they also as open as described in this study?

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The YouTube revenues (and more) in a minute (Infographic)

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The guys at YouTube Downloader Blog have created a very interesting infographic. Where they have recently explained why Saudi Arabians are the most engaged YouTube viewers in the world, this new infographic shows us the YouTube world in one minute in order to reveal what happens during 60-seconds on the world’s leading video sharing site.

The infographic shows the amount of video uploaded to YouTube each minute and gives insights in the ad revenue that the site’s top channels generate in that minute. Thus, we get to know that PewDiePie earns more than $13 a minute.

According to the infographic, YouTube generates more than $10,000 in revenue per minute. A figure that is base on the site’s estimated annual revenue of $5.6 billion, which means over $14 million of revenue each day.

Youtube-In-A-Minute

The (Mighty) Future of Selfies

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When you think a “selfie” is nothing but a “selfie” (meaning a photo of yourself), then you are still living in the past. The future of the selfie is already here – in various forms. You just need to know where to find the next evolution step, how to make it, and see who can assist your efforts. And even if you want to take it to extremes. There are all sorts of selfies ahead.

Although, I have to admit I have taken some selfies lately, I had decided to leave it from now as of bad (or mad) output. However, maybe I just need to go to the DELL Center for Selfie Improvement. No joke! Well. Maybe.

Dell is always good at jumping on the latest trends in the world of social and sharing. Their new “Center for Selfie Improvement” is meant to help people optimize (if not perfect) the art of the selfie. People shall be trained using different techniques handed down from the very original selfie taker. How this works is explained in this video and on their Tumblr website.

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Some people might say “selfies” are just for people with mega egos. Now, if you are a person of that sort, this winning Cannes Lions Innovation Grand Prix might make you happy. It’s a mega Kinetic installation which enabled people to create massive 3D selfies. The installation can transform in three dimensions. It recreate a selfie face from visitors to Khan’s pavilion. The Khan’s building was a 2,000 m2 cube placed in the Olympic Park in Sochi during the 2014 Olympic Games.

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MegaFaces: Kinetic Facade Shows Giant 3D ‘Selfies’ from iart on Vimeo.

And if you are living in Sweden or Australia, you might not even want to use the release button from your camera or your smartphone any more for your selfie. Just get the latest app from the guys at Crunchfish then. With their GoCam app (just Apple yet) you can take a selfie with their touchless-A3D-software. Simply raise your hand to “push” the release button.

The future of the “selfie” is weird, unimportant and funny. Well, it just reflects the nature of a selfie, right?

Websites that teens love (Infographic)

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Are teens real trendsetters when it comes to using the latest online gig or social networks? Well, Niche gives some insights into the websites that 7.000 high school graduates in the U.S. were using lately.

Although many of us would have thought that Facebook is not the biggest hype for them any longer, the interactive infographic provided by Niche proves that 87% of the graduates are still happy with reading their news and being active on Facebook. Instagram makes up 66% and Twitter is used by 55%.

In terms of quick chat platforms, 72% use Facebook Messenger and 65% are active on Snapchat. Those platforms that are said to be the latest trend like YikYak and Whisper are not really getting big activity rates – 97% and 95% don’t use these platforms.

From a broadcasting point of view, it is interesting to see that YouTube, Netflix, and Pandora are the leading edge platforms whereas Hulu, Spotify and Beats like Amazon Prime are not yet their main interest spot.

PS: The interactive infographic with further info can be seen at Business Insider.

Websites Teens Niche 2014

When sensors make cars feel (Vivid Light Festival)

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At the Vivid Sydney, Festival of Light, Music and Ideas, the team of Soap Creative made cars feel. The installation was implemented into some cars with sensors and projections from inside the car to their windows in order to illustrate some artificial intelligence that made cars come to life, showing feelings as well as motivating people passing by to do something like hug them, and then responding. The campaign was supported by the hashtag #CarsThatFeel by Toyota. The whole idea reaching more than one million Australians who came to the Sydney Harbour to watch the interactive art show.

PS: I just wondered how cool the self-driving Google cars would have reacted on their first ride.

What do you think of the creative idea?

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Why 'A' marketers are better than the rest (Infographic)

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Although many marketers have heard of the analytics, data and technology challenges, a minority of 26% of marketers understand their value for the business they run. This is the latest results of a joint study from VisionEdge Marketing (VEM) and ITSMA Marketing Performance Management (MPM) with input from 380 marketers gives insights on marketing performance and best-practices.

The study shows how marketers can earn an “A” grade from the C-suite as they understand impact on data for business. The outperforming marketers know how to make performance management a priority. They know how to plan and implement a well-defined and documented road map for performance improvement. While many marketers measure effort and activity, these “A” grade marketers find the right metrics on ROI efficiency, while building dashboards in order to communicate business benefits of their efforts.

Not surprisingly, “A” grade marketers know how to align their marketing objectives with business priorities, which are the basis for selecting the right metrics. They understand why their offerings create a bi-directional benefit for customers and shareholders.

Of the top performers, 63% claimed increased customer share of wallet. This is a massive success when compared with 48% of “B” marketers and 38% of low performing marketers. When monitoring improvements for business growth, 54% of “A” respondents confirmed improvements in their win rates. This stands against 39% of the “B” competitors and 25% of laggard marketers.

However, some of you marketers might think you should have the ROI in focus, the “B” grade marketers
are too much looking for sales figures. They are spot on getting leads for their pipeline and try to map the customer journey intensively. Still, they lose the big picture of the long-term web strategy. The lazy laggard marketers just see the production of marketing campaigns as their target instead of producing and generating real business results, according to the study.

ITSMA-VEMMPM-Study-2014

Study: Social and Native Ads beat Email in Branding

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A recent study suggests that marketers should focus more on social media advertising and native promotions. The results of the study conducted by Millward Brown Digital for MediaBrix show that these tactics are more effective than email.

The respondents -300 marketers from Fortune 5,000 companies in 17 business categories- of the study answered with the follwowing response on which advertising formats and types “meet their digital branding objectives” on a multiple choice and multiple selection questionnaire.
– Social (51%)
– Native (46%)
– Email (36%)
– Paid search (23%)
– Mobile Web (23%)
– “Emotionally targeted” in-game (20%
– Mobile in-app (20%)
– Programmatic (18%)
– Regular in-game (14%)
– Text messaging (12%)
– Direct purchse ads from websites and blogs (11%)

When Millward Brown asked marketers on their preferences on “what types of digital ad campaigns has your company conducted”, the reponses were quite similar. Of the responding marketers, 77% mentioned that social is their way forward where as 73% replied email and 68% were heading for native. Although this might suggest that email marketing is a thing of the past, the marketers did not say that email does not work any longer.

Seeing news from Procter & Gamble marketing lately, it illustrates the confusion generated by the marketing industry on what’s the future of advertising going to be like. P&G will invest 70% of their advertising in programmatic in the future. A move that follows the American Express example trying to shift 100% of digital ad buys to programmatic. Against this movement stands some results of the Millward Brown study which shows that 30% of digital marketers understand that programmatic advertising creates some negative consumer experiences, with the unfavorable result in not leveraging but hurting brand loyalty or negating their branding objectives.

Please finds the main results of the study in the following infographic.

Infographic-Social-Native vs Email

Infographic-Social-Native vs Email

Catch Up! Essential Skills of Modern Marketers (Infographic)

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If you are a great marketer, you always want to be ahead of the curve with your marketing team. But what talent ingredients does it need today to be among the leading experts of modern marketing? eMarketer has just come up with their latest “Skills of the Modern Marketer” report.

In this report we get to know the skills that senior marketers have to achieve or to be coached for in order to manage their teams correct supported by the latest trends. And it becomes clear that it is not only about knowing the right marketing tactics and trends, we also have to shape our personality with empathy, adaptability and collaboration skills. And furthermore, it has become a challenge to understand the latest marketing technologies and how they can foster the ROI of your business.

The following infographic summarizes the report and the findings, based on interviews and a survey with senior level marketers.

eMarketer Essential Skills Modern Marketer Infographic

The Challenge: Measuring ROI on Social Media (Infographic)

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After three years, the guys at MDG Advertising have updated their last infographic on ROI on your social media “The ROI of Social Media: Is Social Media Marketing Effective?” This new version will be helpful to challenge your business objctives, your metrics and the understanding of how to leevrage your social media reccruiting efforts. The good thing about this infographic is that it shows 45% of social media marketers can build new partnerships through social media. Furthermore, an astonishing 72% of respondents claim that Social Media has helped “closing business.” And, 6% more respondents state they used successfully Social Media to recruit people for their business.

These are their 3 main factors of measuring from MDG Advertising which can be used as a guideline to foster your social media program.

Social Media Understanding
Look beyond the sales numbers and cost structure. Do your brand monitoring first, not for one month but for at least three in a row and on a daily basis. Then, try to figure out how your brand perception and recognition has changed latey (with or without latest social media efforts). Which significant issues have changed your brand perception? Which tools have help identify the changing brand perception?

Business Objectives
Most companies and their leaders start and change their social media program when the trial-and-error mode has proven the fail of the social media strategy. You better start defining your business objectives first, and one thing is for sure. You do not start, just because your competitors are active in social media platforms. Maybe you want to have a look at your brand perception and web conversations first, then you ask what engagement do your customers show in the various channels. Does all this engagement make an impact on sales? And how is your brand perceived along the social web clutter?

Measuring Figures
According to the infographic, CMOs use the following metrics to measure their social marketing efforts. It shows that as in earlier years, quantity comes first, however I would suggest you better go with quality. How says what and when, and how does this affect other consumers of your brand.
68% Site traffic
66% Conversion
63% Number of members
50% Revenue
43% Number of page views

You have good different thoughts about it? How does your company or brand measure the ROI on Social Media? Share them with us, or just have a look at the infographic, and maybe some ideas on the ROI of Social Media will come up then.

MDG Advertising 2014 ROI SOcial Media

Facebook & the "Freemium". What if Facebook charges one dollar a month?

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money-sepiaStop reading this blog post if you are a Facebook fan. You might hate it. You might like it. Stop it! You won’t? Well then, don’t try to be a consultant and just read this and act like a Facebook user. This is our idea how Facebook could become even better…

When I wrote about The Social Globe -a world of paid social networks- some years ago, people called me “mad” and “crazy” teasing such “wild” and “early” paid ideas around social networks. Sometimes, I wondered why The Social Globe – a “network” of social networks like the broadcasting network Sky (earlier Premiere in Germany) never kicked off, bearing in mind all big social networks needed revenue. Maybe it was too big an idea. Maybe too superficially explained. Maybe… Whatever. I never found an answer. Well, maybe one. All major networks want to outplay their competitors. Collaboration is out. Although, we all have the social media philosophy in our heads: Sharing is caring. It does not count for social networks it seems.

Some years are gone since, and we all think about and discuss the value of Facebook. We wonder about it’s algorythm deciding what we see, watch and read. And we blame their advertising programs which often don’t make the user happy, nor does it seem to meet the personal targeting criteria. Well, in case people even notice the ads.

Traveling a lot, I have discussed a new monetization approach with social media and social networking insiders all over Europe. What happened if Facebook would change their business model according to the following “freemium” scenario. Yes, I know that Mark Zuckerberg has said, Facebook will never cost the user anything.

But what is the value of restricted and filtered content? What if I cannot see the content of my real friends? What if I don’t see (the ads of) my favorite love brands anymore on Facebook? What if Facebook loses it’s personal benefit and value for me more and more?

So, this is the moment of truth. Users get two account options on Facebook in the future…

a) Free Account
Filtered user account. Ads and branded content to be displayed according to Facebook’s targeting system. Facebook decides what content the user sees. Who your “real friends” are is decided by the algorithm.
Costs: 0 EUR per month

b) Paid Account
Unfiltered user account. Opportunity to personalize the own stream. Ads and branded content of the user’s favorite brands will be displayed according to their love brand personalization. The users decide what content they see. Who their “real friends” are is decided by the user.
Costs: 1 Dollar per month

Facebook has opened up a new field of communication, a new way of bringing people closer to each other. No matter how far separated they are. It is a great way to make us aware how close we are living, breathing and experiencing our daily lives.

The idea of paid for Facebook accounts is out there to being discussed. Go ahead and give us your thoughts.

Maybe this is the start of a new way of thinking about Facebook. Maybe we can start a real discussion on how to make Facebook a better social networking place with more personal value, less self-glorification, and so on. One that leverages “real” personal connections.

Would you use such a paid version, or stick with the old free account?