marketing in traffic by brian branca » Misc. http://brianbranca.com Interactive Marketing & Ecommerce Strategy Sat, 28 Mar 2009 20:11:32 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.9.2 en hourly 1 Seven Things About Brian Branca http://brianbranca.com/2008/12/seven-things-about-brian-branca/ http://brianbranca.com/2008/12/seven-things-about-brian-branca/#comments Tue, 16 Dec 2008 18:18:21 +0000 brian http://brianbranca.com/?p=226 Meme.  Such a funny word (rhymes with seem).  Do you know what it is?  Wikipedia defines meme as a unit or element of cultural ideas, symbols or practices that transmit from one mind to another through speech, gestures, rituals, or other imitable phenomenon. The term is derived from the Greek word mimema for mimic.  Memes are cultural analogues to genes in that they self-replicate and are subject to selective pressures.

Yesterday I was tagged by Indra Gardiner on a meme making its way through the interwebs that asks you to post seven things about yourself that others might not know.  So, without further ado, here are mine.

  1. I am either graciously patient or horrendously impatient.  There is no in-between.
  2. Back when Return of the Jedi was HUGE, EVERYONE wore something related to Star Wars for Halloween.  Girls were mostly Princess Leia & boys were either Luke Skywalker or Han Solo.  I was Admiral FREAKING Ackbar.  Worst. Costume. Ever.  I guess I’m just glad I wasn’t an Ewok. This image should be centered…stupid WordPress.

  3. If I had to do the whole education & career path thing over again, I would have gotten into astrophysics.  When I was a kid, I wanted to be an astronomer & aced physics in high school.  Nowadays I spend a lot of time watching things like The Universe.  If you want to know what happened, refer to number one; the thought of all that schooling kinda freaked me out back in the day.
  4. Sometimes I wish I just did things rather than over-thinking things.
  5. I want to learn to play the piano…like Elton John, or Alicia Keys, or Mike Oldfield…honestly, I’d take Axl Rose or Chris Martin’s skills at this point.
  6. There are times when I look up to my two brothers (who are six & eight years younger than me).
  7. I was probably the only kid who ever wanted braces.  Yeah, I got them in my late twenties & provided a ton of entertainment for friends throughout the two years they were glued to my teeth.

Part of this meme is to tag seven other people; here is my list of people’s memes I’d like to read.  I’m tagging however many I choose & you probably can, too.  Who said seven was the key number here anyway?

Here are the rules…

  • Link your original tagger(s) and list these rules in your post.
  • Share seven facts about yourself in the post.
  • Tag seven people at the end of your post by leaving their names and the links to their blogs.
  • Let them know they’ve been tagged.

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]]> http://brianbranca.com/2008/12/seven-things-about-brian-branca/feed/ 10 Looking Ahead – Future Media Consumption http://brianbranca.com/2008/06/looking-ahead-future-media-consumption/ http://brianbranca.com/2008/06/looking-ahead-future-media-consumption/#comments Wed, 11 Jun 2008 01:04:00 +0000 brian http://brianbranca.com/?p=108 On this day in 1847, the Chicago Tribune began publication. With the decline in newspaper circulation & change in people’s media consumption habits; take a few minutes to imagine what they’ll be saying about the internet in 161 years. The manner in which we access & interact with it currently will be so foreign by 2169; people will have a difficult time comprehending how what we do now was the norm. They won’t have to access anything because it will just be there; on demand & ready to fly. Who knows, it might not even be called the internet by that time.

Your work space & internet activity will be more Minority Report than contracts, notes, laptops, & smartphones. Astronauts will have already traveled to & from Mars, hopefully our dependence on oil will be minimal, the city of Philadelphia may have won a championship (editorial addition – the Philadelphia Phillies won the World Series in 2008)…let your mind wander for a bit. How do you think people will be interacting with each other & information more than half way through the twenty second century?

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]]> http://brianbranca.com/2008/06/looking-ahead-future-media-consumption/feed/ 0 Beautifully Articulated http://brianbranca.com/2008/05/beautifully-articulated/ http://brianbranca.com/2008/05/beautifully-articulated/#comments Tue, 06 May 2008 03:26:34 +0000 brian http://brianbranca.com/?p=89 It’s not often I’m at a loss for words, but I have been struggling for a better way to convey something I think & use to guide me every day.  If you’re going to be something, be it.  If you’re going to do something, do it.  Not very profound; I know this.  I feel like it belongs up there with, “We know the knowns, but we don’t know the unknowns.”  Someone actually said that in a meeting a couple years ago (I’ve definitely heard it many times from others since) & I think I almost flew out of my chair.  

Seth Godin’s post Avoiding the Passion Pop Gulf could not have illustrated my thoughts any better.  All too often, I see businesses getting stuck in the middle.  They seem paralyzed by indecision, as if all available options are the best.  Without capable decision makers providing clear direction you end up settling.  By chance, you may end up achieving a modicum of success, but you will just be another consideration among a plethora of options.

When you compromise your goals, you end up with an incoherent plan & many confused people executing it.  There is no strategy or your strategy is not sound; that is no way to compete.  Don’t make me quote Sun Tzu again!

If you want to be all things to all people, you run the risk of being nothing to no one.

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]]> http://brianbranca.com/2008/05/beautifully-articulated/feed/ 2 Creadibility http://brianbranca.com/2008/04/creadibility/ http://brianbranca.com/2008/04/creadibility/#comments Mon, 07 Apr 2008 00:57:34 +0000 brian http://brianbranca.com/?p=71 Or should I call it creditivity? Unsure what I’m talking about? I am merely combining credibility & creativity for the purpose of this discussion & certainly not trying to invent any kind of catchy jargon.

Matt McDonald published a quick & thought-provoking post last week. There is no shortage of voiced opinion within the digital realm. Combined with the numerous methods available to aggregate, view & share content, you basically get a lot of words thrown in your general direction all day, every day. It’s a challenge to digest everything let alone decipher it. Depending on your tolerance level, it can be quite difficult to accomplish either.

Let’s take a look at the definitions of both. As you can see, the two are certainly not co-dependent.

  • Creativity: the ability to transcend traditional ideas, rules, patterns, relationships, or the like, and to create meaningful new ideas, forms, methods, interpretations, etc.; originality, progressiveness, or imagination.
  • Credibility: the quality, capability, or power to elicit belief.

If you are to believe that no ideas are truly original, potentially skewing one’s perception of creativity, then the argument can be made that more emphasis should be placed on credibility. When applied to business, leaders are looking for ideas that can make a positive impact with measured results. What is the likeliness an idea morphs into a tangible & valuable product or service?

This type of approach can handcuff the decision-making process. If you are not willing to take risks with creativity, is it possible to be innovative? How, then, would you achieve credible creativity?

Both have their own mutual exclusivity, but combined are more powerful. It’s a dizzying, circular argument; I am merely expressing my opinion. What’s yours?

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]]> http://brianbranca.com/2008/04/creadibility/feed/ 2 I Was Bored http://brianbranca.com/2008/03/i-was-bored-and-only-pfluger-was-awake/ http://brianbranca.com/2008/03/i-was-bored-and-only-pfluger-was-awake/#comments Sat, 29 Mar 2008 16:20:41 +0000 brian http://brianbranca.com/2008/03/i-was-bored-and-only-pfluger-was-awake/ Last night, I decided I was not going to wake up until, at the very least, noon today. That was shot when I couldn’t fall back asleep and it was 8:30 am. Horrible. Since then, I’ve accomplished the following…

  • Freshly grounded and brewed a cup of coffee
  • Drank it – Trader Joe’s Volcano; recommended although it’s not in my top 10
  • Exchanged a few texts with Pfluger, confirming that skipping an alumni golf outing was wise (temperature at 7:30 am tee time was below freezing) – no chalepa ta kala today
  • Flipped my iPod on shuffle
  • Received an entirely too positive-sounding text from Hammer, who went
  • Adjusted the size of my new RSS button
  • Ate the last of the taco pizza
  • Discovered the fancy AJAX thinger that enabled in-page navigation and live search for this site did weird things in Firefox. And by weird things I mean no page resolved and it looped endlessly.
    • 79% of my traffic uses Firefox (thank you, Google Analytics), but view fully 1.5 and 2 pages less per visit than Internet Explorer and Safari users respectively.
    • IE users spend a minute and a half longer on this site than Firefox users.
    • I’ve removed this functionality, replaced it with the standard archivery (yes, I just made up a word) and am now curious to see if Firefox users begin to view more pages per visit and spend more time.

Makes sense to try and improve the experience for my largest audience, wouldn’t you say? Big ups to my usability, analytics, development, & QA teams.

Opportunities for improvement are everywhere. Identify, act/change, measure, record, repeat…agility is the key. But first, you must do something.

It’s now 12:34 pm and time for me to do something else…

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