bwagy, the blog of Ben Young

Really enjoyed this talk from Benedict Evans.

It’s fast paced 🙂 but follow along. He speaks to where we’ve come from in the past 20 years and to where it’s going.

Well, as much as you can at this juncture.

Give it a watch, or do a walk and listen. It’s 23 minutes but well worth it.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RF5VIwDYIJk

The practical segway (i.e. how you can think about it). Is if you are in business today through this change – is attention rationalization.

For the past 20 years the amount of attention consumers have given digital screens has gone up year on year. With growing attention it was easy for us all to get more of it – as there was growing appetite.

However that will slow dramatically, for the sheer fact that there is only so much attention in a day.

Pair this, with at this point, most (if not all) of your customers are connected to the internet. And expect some or all of your service to be digitally enabled.

In that world, the amount of attention is a real currency.

The nearest proxy today is a CPC or CPV. Once you remove all the ‘fake attention’ from juiced metrics and bots. It really is a fixed currency, where everyone is competing against everyone else, all the time.

Seems silly but a Netflix show is competing with your reddit thread, is competing with the time you have to research a new doctor.

^ Someone right now is nodding as they read this.

Businesses which don’t adjust will simply evaporate. If they can’t earn digital attention, they are invisible to the market.

A blunt example is the rise of DTC brands, the brands flooding Instagram. Being top of mind drives sales – and if you can’t ‘earn’ attention in the feed. You lose out immediately. This small extrapolation can roll out to the entire digital mix.

As Ben alludes to, software eats attention.

This week in Auckland it’s:

• Privacy Week
• Fairtrade Fortnight
• World Rally Championship is in town
• Comedy Festival
• NZ Music Month

Each of which is competing for my attention.  To be honest that’s hard work (it’s hard for me to even pay attention and care about all these events).

If you’re running an event, have a think, who else is fighting for attention? Can you work together…

As that’s a better win.

The world is full of interruptions, facebook, email, twitter, mobile, mail, tv.

They all rely on one thing that we give them.  Attention.

We can also take that away.

Attention is at the consumers disposal.  It always has been.  In the 21st century our attention is becoming increasingly scarce.

So you need to get permission.  Permission to send us a txt, permission to be in my twitter network, permission to send me an email.  

Guess what? I will only give you long term permission if you send me personalised and relevant experiences.

Today I celebrate 9 months of blogging.

Yay! It’s another notch in the belt persay.

I like to celebrate the small wins, so thought I would update my Commanding Time post.

Since I’ve started the blog I have garnered 636,230 seconds of attention or 10,603 minutes or 177 hours of attention. Wow.

That is staggering, and guess what I’ve love every minute of input I’ve put into this, and I still get rewarded! Neat huh?

Again (like I asked 6 months ago) what would you pay for that kind of attention?

I have discussed somewhat about building a community to enhance customer engagement (amongst many other benefits).

Given recent conversations I’ve had there appears to be a bit of a stigma around the labour investment in building a community.

So I wanted to highlight a recent example from Vodafone New Zealand.

They launched an online forum at forum.vodafone.co.nz August 1st 2008.

Investment was:

• $150 for forum license
• 3 people engaged over a month, checking in every now and again to keep an eye on it
• Link under Help on Vodafone website and a mention on Geekzone

Results:

• 250,000 visits with an average time of just under 4 minutes.
• That’s a whooping 1 million minutes/ month.  Or the equivalent of 697 days (back to back) of attention.
• 356 registered members and ~3000 posts (till Sept 17th)

From other forum’s Vodafone has run, they have found only 1 out of 5 questions requires an official response.

Over time the forum will build a repository of information that will provide answers to users without ANY extra work by Vodafone.

Isn’t this brilliant? What a fantastic way to help your customers.  I hope this makes others stand up and give it another look.

Oh and….

If your trying to figure the ROI on that.  Compare the attention time on the forum vs the equivalent cost of having them dealing with front line staff OR cost of getting that amount of attention OR measure impact on brand loyalty OR measure the value of the feedback you receive.

You can see your return comes in many forms.  Measure what is important.

Great to see Vodafone trying new methods to help their customers, keep up the good work!

How much time do you command?

For example since launching this blog

I have garnered:

59,746 seconds of attention or 991 minutes or 16 and a half hours of focused attention.  Wow!

What would you pay for 16 hours of focused attention from the influencers in your industry.

I’ve paid:
1.5 hrs / week
a morning setting up this blog
a few hours preparation.
Maybe 20 hours all up.
Now imagine over the long run as my audience increases.  My investment remains relatively flat.

Look at that return on investment vs that fax flyer campaign you just paid for.

Oh, something else, Interaction! I have received 13 comments, 20 or so emails.  Compounds things a little.

What is that worth to you?