Sin estudios universitarios un tipo se hace multimillonario

Así es como un tipo de 21 años sin título universitario ha ganado 1.500 millones de euros
La compra de Oculus Rift por parte de Facebook convierte a Palmer Luckey en el último gran héroe tecnológico
Por: Jordi Berrocal - PlayGround

Así es como un tipo de 21 años sin título universitario ha ganado 1.500 millones de euros |  | Actualidad Musical
Cuando acabó el instituto, Palmer Luckey se enroló en la California State University de Long Beach para estudiar Periodismo. A mitad de la carrera, decidió largarse para preparar el lanzamiento de Oculus Rift. Ayer, a los veintiún años de edad, se convirtió en multimillonario al vender su invento a Facebook por 1.500 millones de euros.

Oculus Rift es un dispositivo de realidad virtual que proporciona una experiencia totalmente inmersiva. En un principio estaba pensado para los videojuegos, pero Mark Zuckerberg se ha apresurado a explicar que la tecnología “cambiará la forma en que trabajamos, jugamos y nos comunicamos”. A tenor de las reacciones que provoca en los usuarios, es evidente que la experiencia que proporciona es de lo más realista:




Luckey empezó a desarrollar Oculus Rift cuando todavía era un adolescente. Mientras sus amigos dedicaban su tiempo libre a socializar, él se encerraba en el garaje de sus padres para manipular los cascos de realidad virtual que coleccionaba. Quería dar con algo para divertirse más jugando a sus videojuegos.

Durante esa época, Luckey empezó a ganar dinero reparando iPhones. También dio clases de vela a niños ricos, reparó barcos y limpió jardines. El dinero que ganaba lo invertía en adquirir viejos dispositivos de realidad virtual en subastas, por una fracción de su precio original. Leyendo manuales en Internet, aprendió a modificar sus adquisiciones. Pronto se dio cuenta de que no encontraría el dispositivo que buscaba simplemente customizando los diseños de otros; tenía que partir de cero y construirlo él mismo.

Utilizando unas gafas de esquí y componentes de smartphones y tabletas logró su objetivo: una experiencia de juego que fuese como la vida misma.

Sus primeros prototipos llamaron la atención del reconocido programador de videojuegos John Carmack, conocido por su papel en el desarrollo de títulos míticos como Doom o Quake. Gracias al padrinazgo de Carmack, la expectación por el proyecto se multiplicó. Fue entonces cuando Luckey decidió abandonar la universidad, fundar la empresa Oculus VR y poner en marcha una campaña de Kickstarter para recaudar fondos. El éxito fue abrumador. En solo un mes recaudó cerca de dos millones de euros, un 974 por ciento más de su objetivo inicial.

Con sólo 20 años, Luckey había logrado lo que la industria de la realidad virtual no había logrado en tres décadas: acercarla al gran público.

La clave de su éxito fue la polinización. En vez de intentar capitalizar en exclusiva al desarrollo de su invento, Luckey repartió miles de prototipos a programadores independientes para que crearan su propia versión de software para el dispositivo. Esto fue clave para que el mundo comprendiera la verdadera dimensión de sus posibilidades. De momento sigue siendo un prototipo, pero ya sabemos que puede servir para experimentar conciertos, ponerte en la piel del sexo opuesto o, incluso, visitar el apartamento de Jerry Seinfeld.

Poco antes de ser adquirida por Facebook, Oculus había logrado cerca de 15 millones de euros más de financión gracias a inversores privados. Pero el dinero nunca ha sido la prioridad de Luckey. A diferencia de la mayor parte de start-ups, la mayoría del equipo de la compañía está enfocado a su desarrollo tecnológico, no a su mercantilización. Todos los trabajadores están centrados en diseñar el mejor dispositivo posible. Incluso el CEO sabe programar.

Esta dedicación ha permitido a Oculus crear el mejor dispositivo de realidad virtual conocido hasta el momento, así lo corroboran todos los que lo han probado. Pero su verdadero factor diferencial es la accesibilidad. Existen diversos dispositivos similares en el mercado, pero la mayoría tienen precios prohibitivos o están reservados a segmentos específicos como el ejército o las escuelas de pilotos. El precio definitivo de Oculus Rift no ha sido revelado, pero probablemente no será superior al de una consola de última generación.

El espíritu independiente y abierto que había mostrado la compañía hasta la fecha ha provocado que muchos de sus seguidores se hayan sentido defraudados por su venta a Facebook. Lo que parecía un plataforma innovadora en manos de los usuarios ahora pertenece a un gigante conocido por su intrusismo y su sometimiento a la publicidad.

En este punto, el papel de Facebook es todavía una incógnita. Ayer, Mark Zuckerberg explicaba que cree que la realidad virtual puede revolucionar el modo en que las personas interactúan en la red. “Oculus tiene el potencial de convertirse en la plataforma más social de la historia. Imagina que además de compartir momentos con amigos puedas compartir experiencias completas”, dijo.

En todo caso, y a pesar de haber enfadado a un puñado de geeks, Luckey parece estar más cerca que nunca de su objetivo: conseguir que, de una vez por todas, la ciencia ficción deje de serlo.

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5 habilidades para ser emprendedor

5 más importante capacidades de negocios que un emprendedor debe tener 
POR MURRAY NEWLANDS - INC.com
Si quieres ser un empresario exitoso, estas son las habilidades que necesitas.


El funcionamiento de su propio negocio significa tener que llevar todos los diferentes tipos de sombreros. Ya se trate de su sombrero de marketing, su sombrero de ventas, o el sombrero general de habilidades de la gente, usted va a necesitar saber cómo cortejar ventas, y en el otro lado de las operaciones, usted también va a tener que saber cómo funciona un cuenta equilibrada y seguir creciendo su riqueza.

Aunque hay muchas habilidades de negocios que un empresario de éxito tendrá, las siguientes cinco habilidades son las que es absolutamente necesario para hacer su negocio con éxito:

1. Ventas

Esta es una obviedad - por supuesto que vas a necesitar habilidades de ventas con el fin de administrar su negocio! Después de todo, el marketing puede atraer clientes a su negocio, pero las ventas van a ser lo que les hace volver y mantiene poner dinero en su bolsillo. No es de extrañar por qué la mayoría de los empresarios en realidad provienen de un fondo de ventas!

2. Planificación

Teniendo un mal paso puede hacer o romper su negocio, especialmente cuando todavía está en las primeras etapas de desarrollo. Los empresarios que tienen éxito con sus empresas hacen un plan y se adhieren a ella, pensando en todos los riesgos, beneficios, y el costo de una opción disponible para ellos. También hacen sus planes realistas y tener en cuenta cosas como el tiempo y el presupuesto con el fin de hacer sus planes una realidad.

3. Comunicación

La comunicación es una habilidad fundamental para muchos otros en la empresa (incluido). La comunicación es cómo va a ser capaz de cultivar leales empleados, clientes encanto en volver una y otra vez, y los inversores de los tribunales y otras fuentes para aumentar los ingresos para su negocio. Esta habilidad también puede ser útil cuando se trata de proveedores o cualquier otro servicio empresarial necesarias que pueden aplicarse a su empresa - ser amable en las relaciones de negocio a negocio es una manera segura de ser tratados un poco mejor, por lo tanto haciendo al menos un aspecto de su trabajo un poco más fácil.

4. Enfóquese en el cliente

Los empresarios exitosos mantienen un enfoque limitado - en el cliente que está pagando sus facturas. No hay que olvidar que todo lo que hacen es para el cliente, ya que el cliente es el que les está permitiendo hacer nada en el primer lugar. El propietario de un buen negocio siempre tendrá tiempo para un cliente, si tienen una queja o elogio. Tener un buen enfoque en el cliente, se entenderá que se ve todos los clientes como una oportunidad para mejorar y crecer, frente a una molestia o una dificultad.

5. Curiosidad

La mejor habilidad para los negocios ha sido siempre una sana curiosidad. Esto le llevará a la mira en lo que están haciendo sus competidores, y también le permitirá utilizar las nuevas tecnologías a la medida de su capacidad para optimizar su negocio e incluso llegar a nuevos clientes. Cuando el único límite que tiene es lo que se puede imaginar y aplicar, casi cualquier cosa es posible.

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Comunicando el liderazgo

The Best Leaders “Talk the Walk”
by Bill Taylor  - Harvard Business Review
 


One of the most ubiquitous aphorisms in business is that the best leaders understand the need to “walk the talk” — that is, their behavior and day-to-day actions have to match the aspirations they have for their colleagues and organization. But the more time I spend with game-changing innovators and high-performing companies, the more I appreciate the need for leaders to “talk the walk” — that is, to be able to explain, in language that is unique to their field and compelling to their colleagues and customers, why what they do matters and how they expect to win. The only sustainable form of business leadership is thought leadership. And leaders that think differently about their business invariably talk about it differently as well.

I saw the power of language come to life earlier this summer when I made an eye-opening visit to a day-long orientation held every six weeks or so for new employees of Quicken Loans, the online mortgage lender based in Detroit and owned by high-profile billionaire Dan Gilbert. Quicken Loans is known for lots of things, from torrid growth (the company closed a record $80 billion worth of home loans last year, up from $70 billion in 2012), to much-praised customer service (it is a perennial JD Power customer-satisfaction winner), to its intense and outgoing corporate culture. But behind it all, at the heart of the company’s approach to strategy, service, and culture, is a language system that defines life inside the organization and reminds everyone what really drives success.

Founder Dan Gilbert and CEO Bill Emerson call this language the company’s “Isms” — which is why the rollicking, fast-paced, eight-hour orientation session is called “Isms in Action.” Gilbert and Emerson, who present separately and together over the entire eight hours — an executive teaching marathon unlike anything I have seen before — march employees through the company’s 18 Isms, with a combination of slide shows, stand-up humor, war stories from the trenches, and unabashed appeals to the heart. A few of the Isms get covered in 10 or 15 minutes, some take an hour. But the end result is a full-day immersion in a whole new language — a “vocabulary of competition” that sets the company apart in the marketplace and holds people together in the workplace.

On the day I attended, more than a thousand participants crowded into a ballroom in the Marriott Renaissance Center on the banks of the Detroit River. Gilbert and Emerson urged their new colleagues to embrace the idea that, “The inches we need are everywhere around us” — in other words, there are countless small opportunities for people to tweak a product, or improve a process, that lead to big wins in the marketplace. They insisted, no excuses allowed, that everyone agree with the Ism, “Responding with a sense of urgency is the ante to play.” Gilbert personally emphasized again and again, sometimes with jokes, sometimes with withering disdain, the absolute requirement that Quicken employees return every phone call and every email on the same business day they were received. “We are zealots about this,” he thundered, “we are on the lunatic fringe. And if you’re ‘too busy’ to do it, I’ll do it for you” — at which point he gave out his direct-dial extension and promised to return phone calls for any overwhelmed colleagues.

On and on it went — funny stories, sure, sage pieces of advice, a quick history of the company. But mainly an urgent iteration ands reiteration of the company’s Isms:

“Numbers and money follow, they do not lead.”

“Innovation is rewarded, execution is worshipped.”

“Simplicity is genius.”

In business leadership, as in all forms of leadership, words matter. Indeed, several of the attendees with whom I spoke weren’t new employees at all. They’d come back for a refresher, a reminder, an opportunity to spend a day reacquainting themselves with the language that defines life at Quicken Loans, a chance to spend a day watching the founder and the CEO “talk the walk.”

So ask yourself, as you try to lead an organization, or a business unit, or a department: Have you developed a vocabulary of competition that helps everyone understand what makes your company or team special and what it takes for them to be at their best? Can you explain, in a language all your own, what separates you from the pack and why you expect to win? Even as you make sure to walk the talk, do you know how to talk the walk?

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Una idea para cambiar el mundo

Esta chica inventó un nuevo material que podría cambiar el mundo. Usted nunca mirar a una banana de la misma manera! 

Es probable que no es de extrañar que Elif Bilgin de 16años de edad, está en una escuela para niños dotados en su nativa Instanbul, Turquía. Su enfoque único para la creación de plástico biodegradable a partir de cáscaras de plátano ha llamado la atención y el reconocimiento internacional - Elif ganó el "Premio Inspired Idea" en la Feria de Ciencias Google el año pasado, así como el premio americano de la Ciencia "Ciencia en Acción". Como si su cerebro y la belleza no fuera suficiente, este adolescente es también un atleta dotado. Cuando ella no está apareciendo en las reuniones mundiales de innovación o explicar su avance científico a los líderes políticos y empresariales, Elif se mantiene ocupado como capitán de su equipo de voleibol de la liga en Estambul.

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Aplicaciones para Bahía Blanca

Las aplicaciones que benefician a los bahienses
Con 25 años, este estudiante de Ingeniería Química amante de la computación hace que los teléfonos inteligentes sirvan para diversas consultas inmediatas.

para La Nueva


Todo un creador. Javier Luján continúa haciendo aplicaciones para el beneficio de toda la población bahiense.
Por Damián Vallejos / dvallejos@lanueva.com

Tiene 25 años, estudia Ingeniería Química pero en sus ratos libres programa. Sí, programa: escribe en lenguajes que transforman los ceros y unos de las computadoras en aplicaciones amigables para hacer, de alguna manera, más fácil la calidad de vida de los bahienses.

Mirar el saldo en la tarjeta que se utiliza para viajar en colectivos para saber si hay que cargarla, ir en auto al centro y conocer las cocheras que tienen espacio en su interior para guardar el vehículo, o enterarse de la calidad del aire de la ciudad antes de salir de casa, son algunas de las facilidades que dan las aplicaciones para celulares inteligentes que creó Javier Luján.

Casi 10.000 bahienses tienen en sus smartphone “Saldo Urbana”, la app que permite consultar el dinero que tenés en tu tarjeta y todos los movimientos que realizaste.

En algunos casos, el joven se mete en las bases de datos de Gobierno Abierto para extraer la información y en otras oportunidades utiliza el abanico de posibilidades que le da Internet.

Por ejemplo, meses atrás presentó “Aire Bahía”, una herramienta que evalúa el aire que se respira en la ciudad con parámetros en tiempo real (una información que en la web del Municipio aparece sólo en promedio de las últimas 24 horas). Con eso uno puede decidir si conviene o no salir a la calle teniendo en cuenta la condición respiratoria de cada uno.

El estudiante universitario también creó “Reportá tu problema“. Ahí los bahienses pueden subir quejas por cortes, pozos, baches, caída de árboles, inconvenientes de tránsito y basurales entre otras cosas.

Al hacer aplicaciones que, de alguna manera podría haber hecho el propio Municipio, y consultado acerca de si se le acercaron para ponerse a disposición, Luján afirmó que solo lo llamó el gerente de Transporte Sapem para felicitarlo. Después nada.

“No espero algo económico, sería interesante que bajen un poco más a la Tierra y que integren a las personas que quieren hacer cosas”, se quejó.

Según dice, un diálogo más fluido con los funcionarios permitiría crear más facilidades para todos.

“Tienen datos, logística y gente. Si quiero hacer una app para ayudar con el estacionamiento, podrían darme la lista de playas”, comentó.

Semanas atrás, Luján publicó “Cochera Urbana”, una herramienta que informa sobre las cocheras con lugares disponibles al momento de llegar al centro. Claro que lo hace con un altavoz, para no dejar de prestar atención al volante.

La desventaja es que solo tiene 6 comercios. “La hice recorriendo y hablando con los dueños. Aportan los datos reales por un sistema que les dejé. Con un listado podríamos incorporar a todas las cocheras”, sostuvo.

“No necesitamos grandes cosas, sino algo tan sencillo como que demuestren interés en potenciar a los emprendedores y no dejarlos solos”, opinó.

El año pasado Luján presentó “Punto UNS“, una aplicación con información para los alumnos universitarios.

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Marketing en tiempo real

Real-Time Marketing Isn’t What You Think It Is

By Rob Carpenter - Evergage

Every couple of years there seems to a new marketing darling, innovated by big brands, that will change the face of marketing forever. Today’s belle of the ball isreal-time marketing.

The definition of “real-time marketing” seems be similar across the board amongst the major marketing media outlets, big brands, and the agencies that serve them both.

In short, they portray real-time marketing as the practice of brands engaging their audience via content, advertising, and product placement that is relevant to a specific current event or cultural happening. The content is most often in the form of a “meme” or graphic advertisement shared through social media channels.

Some brands have had great success with their real time marketing efforts, with thousands of consumers sharing their content. While others are missing the boat. Resulting in the recent barrage of media coverage, and the rise of pundits on the subject.

The Initial Problem with Any Marketing Craze

The beginning of any marketing craze is fraught with insta-experts that rush to be a thought-leader and resource on the subject. You see this often when new technologies launch, and within days experts are already providing in-depth advice and best practices for success.

Thus, definitions and best practices start to form well before most businesses jump in. All based on the successes (and failures) of a few big brands that can afford such marketing experimentation. With most experts likely not having executed on the strategy themselves at all.

There is nothing inherently wrong with this trend. People are interested in learning whatever they can, and writers do their best to provide valuable advice with the limited data available.

The marketing strategy eventually starts truly taking shape as everyday businesses start putting those early ideas into practice. They discover what actually works for them in driving business value. Practical use cases arise, and the best practices of yesterday often turn into the myths and misconceptions of today.

A similar trend is occurring with the term “real-time marketing”.

Before we go about definitively defining what real-time marketing is all about, let’s take the time to break it down, review some history, and get a gauge for what most marketers really think about the term.

The Definition of Real-Time Marketing Over the Years

Real-time marketing may seem like a brand new marketing phenomena, but that is only really the case in it’s current media defined definition.

The first burst of discussion for the term “real-time marketing” happened at the beginning of 2005. The Google Trends graph below can go as far back as 2004, but 2005 is when the term first comes up.

 “real-time marketing”

The first thought that came to my mind to explain the initial big spike in conversations around real-time marketing was the emergence of social media marketing happening around this time. Social media marketing was the first major channel for brands to monitor and engage in real-time conversations after all.

But, when I add “social media marketing” (in red below) into Google Trends next to the term “real-time marketing” (still in blue), there isn’t much of a correlation. In fact, “real-time marketing” sprung up in marketing nomenclature before “social media marketing” was starting to be used heavily in 2006.

 “real-time marketing” “social media marketing”

So, if there was talk about real-time marketing well before social media marketing even prominently existed, then what could it have been talking about?

Put today’s popular media definition of real-time marketing aside, and you would probably think of real time marketing as marketing that happens in real-time. That is, instantly. Not potentially hours or days later on social media.

What topic of discussion sprung up in 2005 that fits this criteria? Web personalization is what.

As shown below, there is strong correlation between the (first) rise of real-time marketing and the rise of the term “web personalization”.

 “real-time marketing” “web personalization”

The chart shows how both real-time marketing and web personalization decreased in hype quickly after 2005, with web personalization continuing to decrease over time for the most part, and real-time marketing gaining it’s second wind in 2013 under the definition promoted today.

Why didn’t web personalization and real-time marketing remain synonymous in the media?

A few thoughts that could explain…

• Web personalization in 2005 was mostly hype.
  While big brands were starting to offer personalized website experiences, powerful software was not yet available for the mass market to utilize. The idea of marketing to website users in real-time was a hot topic. There just wasn’t a way for most of the market to put the idea into practice without serious technical resources or by spending enterprise-level dollars on a solution that wasn’t even all that powerful yet (or actually real-time).
• “Real-time analytics” entered the fray.
  As “web personalization” started to lose it’s popularity in the media, “real-time analytics” started to gain popularity. Real-time analytics was a big step in the right direction in helping marketers get data quicker so they can act on data quicker.
    “real-time marketing” “web personalization” “real-time analytics”
  
  
  Real-time analytics providers started popping up, at reasonable prices, and with well-documented implementation. Once again, people used the term “real-time marketing” as a way to describe this new technology. When Google rolled out their real-time analytics in 2011, and as real-time A/B testing became more and more popular, real-time analytics earned a name of it’s own. “Real-time marketing” was again up for grabs.
• David Meerman Scott wrote the book, “Real-Time Marketing and PR”.
  The other points I made above at least show correlation data with Google Trends. This point is more of a hunch. The book I continue to see quoted in articles talking about real-time marketing today is “Real-Time Marketing & PR” by David Meerman Scott. First published in 2011.
  

  From my research, this book is the first time real-time marketing was thoroughly discussed in the context of the definition widely used today in the media.

  The book showcases multiple case studies from brands that quickly react to external current events and cultural happenings, finding a way to inject their brand into the conversation. It’s possible that as this practice started to become more prevalent, this book was the best resource to reference to help explain the phenomena, and learn from.

  David Meerman Scott isn’t the originating reason why brands started marketing this way, but he may be a huge influence as to why this practice is being called “real-time marketing”.

What Marketers Actually Think Real-Time Marketing Is

While real-time marketing has been getting a ton of press as of late with a very specific definition, the meaning of real-time marketing in the mind’s of most marketers today is actually very different than what is being promoted. Even with big brand marketers.

Neolane and the Direct Marketing Association recently released a study of 235 North American marketers. 16% of the participants work for an enterprise with over $1Billion in revenue, with 53% from companies with under $99 Million in yearly revenue.

Here’s what they think real-time marketing means.

• The majority of the participants (43%) think of real-time marketing as “dynamic, personalized content delivered across channels.”
• 64% of participants believe real-time marketing revolves around some kind ofdynamic personalization.
• Only 23% believe real-time marketing is about making quick responses to mainstream events or injecting your business in social media conversations.
  

The study further breaks down the concerns marketers have with real-time marketing and where real-time marketing really matters.

• Only 49% of the participants believe providing real-time marketing within social media channels is highly important.
• While 69% believe that providing dynamic, personalized content is highly important on the web channel.

While the term “real-time marketing” has had multiple different meanings over time in the media, marketers still think of web personalization for the most part.

Marketers are mostly concerned with how they can increase business metrics like customer retention (43% of respondents say this is their biggest marketing challenge, 3rd in votes) and conversion rates (57%, 2nd in votes). Not how they can improve brand sentiment, or how they can inject themselves in external, cultural conversations.

It just so happens they believe real-time marketing is the potential cure to these challenges. Stating that real-time marketing’s greatest benefits are “marketing effectiveness” (higher conversion), and customer satisfaction and retention.

Why then aren’t marketers implementing dynamic, personalized content in droves?

Why is “real-time marketing” being used to describe clever content creation and product placement, when most marketers believe real-time marketing actually means marketing to your audience in real-time with dynamically personalizedcontent and offers?

It’s the same reason why the term “web personalization” initially started to decline in the first place.

The media and the majority of the market have yet to discover a tangible web personalization solution that most marketers can easily start using.

Web personalization solutions have historically been difficult to use, priced only for the enterprise, and lack in capability and power. Many may personalize content for website visitors, but only on the next visit, not in real-time while the visitor is engaged on the website. Others only personalize basic elements on a marketing website, but do not allow personalization within modern Software-as-a-Service products or secure consumer web applications.

What use is writing about web personalization as “real-time marketing” if most businesses still see personalization as a major challenge (getting 60% of the vote in the aforementioned study as their organization’s top marketing challenge) and there not being a tangible solution available?

It’s time web personalization gets an upgrade so that marketers from businesses of all sizes can reap the benefits of (the real) real-time marketing, and prompt the press to reconsider their recently popular definition.

Well, it has...

Introducing Real-Time Web Personalization, True Real-Time Marketing

Evergage has created the first and only real-time web personalization platform that covers every point that marketers have been waiting for in a web personalization solution:

• Real-time analytics. Tracks website visitors, signed-in users, and entire accounts in real-time. A complete view of customer engagement in the past and the now.
• Real-time response. That means responding to who people are, what they have done with your business and what they are doing in the moment, instantly. Finally, making big data actionable in real-time.
• Captures attention and drives action. Personalize inline content, and trigger dynamic on site messages such as header bars, popups, tooltips, and task lists. All based on user behavior.
• Ridiculously easy implementation. The Evergage point-and-click Visual Editor allows anyone to use personalize their site or web app in minutes, without coding.
• Works throughout the customer lifecycle. Nurture anonymous website visitors to free trials, convert free trials to paying customers, guide customers to success, and create brand advocate.

Some could consider this blog post as real-time marketing. We saw the overwhelming conversation about real-time marketing and felt compelled to share our take on the subject, while the conversation was popular in the media. The term is trending, and we saw an opportunity to inject our brand into the conversation.

But, we don’t believe that is real-time marketing. We believe that is simply opportunistic content marketing and advertising. We believe that truly relevant, compelling engagement happens when you take into account the full picture of who someone is (past and current behavior) specifically with your business (not with what’s currently on TV). That is real-time marketing.

Getting to know who your anonymous website visitors are...

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4 errores cuando se intenta ser viral

4 Mistakes Marketers Make When Trying to Go “Viral”
by David Spitz  |  Harvard Business Review



Can we agree to kill the word “viral” – unless it’s referring to something that leads you to call a doctor, or download a security patch?

The problem with this term is that it suggests there’s something inherent in the content itself that makes it travel. The virus, once released into the wild oceans of social media, preys on its victims. In fact, quite the opposite is the case: unlike viruses, people actively choose to engage with marketing messages and to share them (or not) with friends.

That’s why some have suggested describing what the best marketers create as spreadable media rather than viral content. While less, ahem, catchy as term, it’s a healthy reminder that, while marketers create the media, it’s people who do the actual spreading.

Marketing has always been about meanings created between a company, their audience and a wider culture or community — as the great ad man Jeremy Bullmore once said, “People build brands the way birds build nests, from scraps and straws they chance upon.” The difference is people are now able to create brand messages and distribute them to others at scale like never before. The reverse is also true: as social networks increasingly become the primary vehicle for content discovery, companies that don’t involve audiences in the creation and spread of their messaging will not be found.

Taking this concept a step further, the anthropologist Grant McCracken has suggested we need to shift the vernacular for how we refer to the agents of virality. Rather than apply passive descriptors like “audience”, “consumers” or “targets”, McCracken suggests we use the term multiplier instead. As in, “Who are the multipliers we are trying to reach with this campaign?”

Thinking of the people you are reaching as multipliers and your content as “spreadable” rather than “viral” will help you avoid several all-too-common pitfalls:

Mistake 1: Trying to start from third gear. It’s hard to predict what will be spread. Yet how often have you labored over a video or an infographic stalled on social, despite spending promotional dollars to generate traffic for it?

You need to build momentum before shifting into higher gears. Create a test budget to put different articles, videos, charts, and headlines in front of potential multipliers before investing more heavily behind them. The fastest path to maximum acceleration is to start in lower gears and then upshift once you see something being spread at above normal rates, or else stop spending and move on to the next test. With Facebook, it’s even possible to test posts among small groups and not have those test messages appear on your brand’s published Timeline – so-called “dark posts”.

Mistake 2. Asking people to “share” as if sharing itself were the goal. If you are of the mindset that your content is inherently “viral”, then you might expect people to share it automatically. If you’re a not-for-profit raising awareness around issues people care deeply about –inequality, pollution, cancer – you may be right. But If you’re an IT services company, it’s a lot trickier. Most people don’t share simply for the sake of sharing. Content that is spreadable, on the other hand, is sharing with a purpose.

Choose a topic or cause related to your brand that inspires passion and then find ways to involve people in it. Remember that people are a lot more likely to spread media when they are part of in some way. Think of mechanics to involve them, like a social pledge or petition, that call them to action around the topic, as opposed to merely asking them to “share on social” without a reason why.

Mistake 3. Assuming your work is done when you hit “publish.” There are petabytes of valuable content on the web that have only been seen by a handful of people. No matter how great the story, the web can be brutal on old content, where search and social algorithms favor recency as a key factor determining what gets seen by your multipliers. According to a Simplereach study, the average article reaches half of its total social referrals within 9 hours on Facebook (and in even less time on Twitter). Keep the story alive with additional tweets and posts, focusing on different angles and ongoing developments, and invite your multipliers to keep the story alive with you. (Thinking of people as “multipliers” instead of “consumers” makes it clear, notes McCracken, “we depend on them to complete the work.”)

For example, an article published on TheDodo.com about scientists spotting a 103-year-old Orca off the Pacific coast – and why that was bad news for SeaWorld — generated 900,000 Facebook likes in its first week. That’s great, but even better was that 100 readers contributed their own full-length posts through theDodo.com’s guest blogging platform, of which 20 articles generated more than 50,000 Facebook likes each. In total, that’s more sharing of articles contributed by multipliers than of the original post itself! While traffic to the Orca article page has slowed, the subject overall continues to generate significant amounts of traffic to theDodo.com as of two months later and is nearing 1 million pledges to the cause it supports.

Mistake 4. Failing to develop relationships with your multipliers. “Viral” is often fleeting; someone stumbles across a widely shared video, watches part of it, and the marketer never has the opportunity to figure out who he is. The relationship ends there. Instead, identify your multipliers. Get to know them. Encourage them to share often. You don’t need to offer financial rewards (e.g. “Tweet five times more for a free coffee”) to get great results. Often simply the act of acknowledging them publicly, either by featuring them on your website or responding to them on social, is enough to generate an additional act of multiplication. Where possible, you should also capture their email addresses so you’ll be able to deepen the relationship further with truly useful updates, offers, and calls to action.

When we stop thinking of content as viral and start thinking of it as spreadable, it helps us refocus on our relationship with the community. When it comes to multiplying your message, that’s just as important as creating great content.

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Cómo diseñar el producto para que los consumidores lo vean

29 Eye-Tracking Heatmaps Reveal Where People Really Look

GUS LUBIN AND HAYLEY HUDSON

Business Insider

They say the eyes tell all. Now thanks to eye-tracking technology we can tell they're saying. Tracking eye movements can give us fascinating insights into advertising and design and reveal a few things about human tendencies.

We've picked out some of our favorites below:

Everyone focuses on Scarlett Johansson's face in this Dolce & Gabbana ad.

sticky

Here you can see how the eyes follow a few different animations.

Sands Research

Sticky

Sticky

In this package of meat, people look at the meat right away. Then, they read the label and check out the sticker.

Beef Retail

In this viewing of The Last Supper, people are looking at Jesus and the apostles. The eyes also seem to naturally fall on that space between two of the back windows.

Tobii Technology

Grocery shoppers are mostly looking for prices.

Kissmetrics Blog

This is a gaze plot. It shows how people are checking out a shelf full of shampoo.

Eyetracking.me

No one seems to care about this Porsche. They'd rather read.

Future Now Inc.

This one shows the differences between men and women. Men spend more time looking at the woman, while women read the rest of the ad.

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Notice how the men are not looking at the shoes at all.

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Men focus on baseball players' torso more than women, who look only at the face.

Cory Grimes

Viewers of both genders are more likely to look at the woman's face. On the guy's profile, they're reading the text.

Tobii Technology

Despite the really long beard, people still focus on the face in this one.

Sticky Inc.

Place a product slightly left of center in a store display to get it the most attention.

Tobii Technology

There's a lot going on on this version of the New York Times' homepage. Images and special text boxes won out.

Tobii Technology

This Smartwater ad does a pretty good job of getting people to notice the bottle of water. But they're also checking out the model's shoulder.

Sticky.ad

These Sunsilk ads show that just putting a pretty face on a copy isn't enough. It matters where she's looking.

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This Pepsi can is just as eye-catching as the woman's face.

Sticky.ad

Notice how much people focus on the jewelry.

Jonteaches.com

This image shows "banner blindness," revealing a potential problem with banner ads.

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On Google, the top five listings on the page get the majority of eyeballs. Everything else can be considered below the fold.

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On Facebook, photos catch the most eyes.

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Here's what people look at during a soccer match. They're focused on the player throwing in the ball and the area he's facing

Sportundmarkt

Even though there's a large picture of a man's face on this billboard, more people were looking at the words on the left.

Reports Research Blog

Women tend to focus on the face and the torso...

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While men focus more on the groin ...

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What do people look at when they see the Vegas strip? The eye looks straight ahead and then veers back to the left.

Vesterli

In the six seconds they spend on a resume, recruiters focus on name, current and past position titles and dates, and education.

The Ladders

A few of these images were contributions from Sticky. Sticky lets companies to conduct their own biometric online eye-tracking.

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Cómo iniciar un negocio en 10 días

Cómo iniciar un nuevo negocio en 10 días 
NINA ZIPKIN, ENTREPRENEUR

Las decisiones que tomas en una fracción de segundo puede ser tan valioso como los que pasan días, semanas o meses dándole vueltas. Si usted ha decidido que usted desea iniciar su propia empresa, aprovechar el día y ponerse en marcha.
El proceso puede ser desalentador, pero hemos roto abajo en 10 pasos - un plan de 10 días para hacer su negocio en una realidad.



Día 1: Escribir un plan de negocios. Este es un paso crítico en su éxito. Es posible que desee evitar la servilleta para algo un poco más fácil para copiar y distribuir a los inversionistas potenciales y colegas.

Día 2: Estudiar el mercado. Averiguar donde sus productos y servicios se apilan en comparación con sus competidores. Averigüe quiénes son sus clientes objetivo son y cuáles son las normas y los reglamentos son exclusivas de su industria. Pero recuerde, no hay tal cosa como la exageración de ella.

Día 3: Crear su marca. Para construir su identidad que necesita un nombre, un logotipo, un sitio web y una presencia en medios sociales para ponerse en marcha.

Día 4: Obtener sus asuntos legales en orden. Contratar a un abogado para incorporar y elaborar documentos para los acuerdos legales y las ideas que desea marca.

Día 5: Mantenga bajo costo operativo. Mantener los costos de inicio a un nivel que le da margen de maniobra. Si usted tiene que trabajar desde casa, o en un espacio de oficinas sin muebles por un tiempo, encontrar una cafetería o restaurante a frecuentar para sus reuniones.

Día 6: Red, red, red. Haga correr la voz acerca de su negocio de todos modos se puede, a partir de los medios de comunicación social a una empresa evento de lanzamiento. Encuentra las conferencias y eventos que necesite estar en satisfacer pares de la industria compañeros.

Día 7: Exposición a los medios. Encontrar los puntos de venta y escritores cuyos lectores estarán interesados ​​en sus productos y servicios, y el tono de ellos de una manera atractiva y dinámica.

Día 8: Sea su propia profecía autocumplida. Si crees que puedes hacerlo, lo harás.

Día 9: Enfoque en la generación de ingresos. Si es posible, encontrar una manera de hacer algunas contrataciones para ayudar con las tareas del día a día para que pueda centrarse en el cuadro grande.

Día 10: Celebrar. Obtener información y estar orgulloso de ti mismo.

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Lenguaje corporal en los encuentros comerciales

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