Auto sales decline blame

A recent article of Alison Linn blames Generation Y for the decline in Auto sales. I really do not agree with article at all, first because the way the economy is at the moment there is no need to blame anyone for sale decline of any kind, people just can't afford to buy new and expensive car period. Second I think it also depends the city you live in, if you live in Miami you have no option than to buy a car, even if it is an old one. Miami transportation system is one of the worse in the united states, so if transportation does not help you have to make the sacrifice of having a car. There are cities like New York and many cities in Europe where the transportation system work so well that there is no need for a car, a part that having a car can become a nightmare because there is not place to park.

I admit that people on generation usually have not money since most of them are going through school and can't afford many things for that reason, but there is no sense on blaming this generation for the auto sales loses. There are many factor that comes to play when buying a car and belonging to a certain generation I believe is not one of them.

Government and the Online Era

In the digital era that we are living in Internet has overcome people in general. Everything you need is usually online, and I think as far as government getting involve in this online system is great because there are not lines to make on government agencies any more, at least for most of the things. However, I do believe that government can't go completely digital there should be a way to speak to a person if necessary.

Some times Computers can't answer to all the questions you might have, and it can become very overwhelming when a web page is not well optimized, which they usually aren't. I would say that government at least should have a working 1800 number to offer further assistant.

ONLINE services are great for us that know how to use them, yet we should not forget that there is still a generation out (like our grandfathers) that do not get along with the internet, so we should have options available for them...

Being Online efficient...

How organizations organize in order to make money is very important for its development, this is called Business model. We are living in a very competitive world, which means that we have to do everything in our power to bring our companies up. Nowadays, marketing your product online has become necessary in in order to succeed.

Here is when the e commerce comes to play, companies need to become expert on online marketing and promotion since that is the direction everyone is taking. E commerce offers you many ways to be efficient by building a good website. The most important part is to make it easy to navigate, so that you can keep the customers as long as possible looking around, and of course make it look very professional. A good way to keep your web page appearing up on the search engines without having to spend a lot of money, is by updating the content all the time.

There is also something called Pay Per Click here you do have to spend money, yet you will appear at the top of the search most of the time, which means that you will direct many consumers to your page and therefore, get some sales.

Social Media is another options these days to build an online reputation and make some money without spending a lot, just by opening a facebook, twitter and linkedin account you can promote your company all the time.

Email marketing is another good option for being efficient, this way you are able to reach a big amount of people not only nationally, but also internationally.

There are many ways a company can be online efficient we just need to move onto this technological generation and learn how to apply it to our business model.

Choose your favorite pirate

By now we all know that stats and data driven marketing is probably the best option to generate marketing campaigns with positive return on investment, that same reason is why behavioral marketing is a growing practice in most US based companies.

In the past Internet users have taken privacy violations very serious such as Google's Buzz privacy lawsuit settlement or Facebook's exponential growth on sharing information.

It's impressive that even though everyone talks and writes about privacy issues with social media, no one seems to concern too much around a even bigger issue: Consumer tracking and behind the scenes privacy policy violations. A few months ago I read an article about Sears having a lawsuit for privacy policy management and just by reading the first paragraph I got concerned about how much online marketers knows about my personal life.

Now There's this new concept from the "SELF-REGULATORY PRINCIPLES FOR ONLINE BEHAVIORAL ADVERTISING" which kindly suggest that if you click their icon, you will op out of any behavioral tracking. Now how many regular internet users have an idea of what behavioral marketing is, how many users know that there are little pieces of software (cookies) that were first designed to help websites load faster and now are used to retrieve a lot of metrics from web users? As far as I know my grand mother still thinks that computers can get the flu by a virus, now do you think she'll believe me that a cookie is a piece of software?

I think that www.aboutads.info has a good concept behind, also we need to remember that this concept was created by groups of companies that benefit from user data which makes me think, is this an approach to prevent more legislation to the industry? or is this a new way to track user information to make available for members of the organization and any other company that wants to purchase their data?

Thinking on what I just described I asked my tech source about this new concept and his point of view was: "Basically this solution will work if it's available as a browser plug in that prevents that personal information being passed to cookies, otherwise if a there's any kind of collection of information is also a type of tracking".

My takeouts of this intricate topic is: This opt-out concept will really work if the general market gets educated about online tracking and behavioral marketing (remember my loved grandma) - good luck with that. Also this initiative must regulated by an entity different than the ones involved in this practice.

In any case if you happen to find the icon below somewhere on a website, you already know what it means, now it's up to you which pirate you want to choose.

Peek-a-boo

It seems that internet privacy has become a "well debated" topic for the web industry, but not too much for final internet users. Facebook, has become one of the most important marketing channels by having really doubtful practices for internet privacy, still 500 million users seems to care less about the use of their private information.

Nowadays technology companies are trying to close a multichannel gap by bringing internet and other media close together, and for the first time I'll say that I applaud the effort of Internet Eyes, a British company that by using web users as sentinels is helping brick and mortar stores keep additional eyes on shoplifting.

Scary? Yes!, Powerful? Yes!, I would say that a little unorthodox for store managers not to use their own security personnel, but having an additional thousand pair of eyes to alert authorities of suspicious activities within a store should improve their loss prevention goals. Having someone looking over stores for them without the huge overhead of security teams doesn't seem to be such a bad idea, I can think of it as "commission based store security officer".

Could this solution help retailers and governments reduce the amount of shoplifting? ... If it's a collaborative effort I would say yes, otherwise it won't make a difference. Now the question is: How Internet Eyes can make their service a collaborative effort?

1. Internet Eyes shoplifters database: Can you image your name being recorded and shared to different stores? I imagine you'd think twice before trying to take a souvenir from a store.
   
   
2. Social Media integration: Some stores used to take the shoplifter in handcuffs and make him walk the store accompanied by an officer and the items they shoplifted - The Walk of Shame - Could you imagine if on the store's social media profiles the shoplifter's name, picture and recovered items make the headlines of their Facebook page and distributed on their Twitter account?
   
   
3. Internet Eyes name search: One of the main goals for the company is to reduce theft by employees, therefore, having the name search feature will allow employers to research your "shoplifting background", I'm pretty sure this will keep employees away from trying to get an unauthorized salary increase, and teenagers avoiding the "I shoplifted, I'm cool" factor.
   

I agree with the privacy agreement that the "sentinel" needs to comply, however, if the information they provided helped the store, I feel that the shoplifter's interaction with the store should be publicly available for the best of all of us.

Old Rock kicks Internet's behind

One of the biggest Internet phenomenon is the peer to peer sharing of files, which allows internet users to exchange digital files. Digital files can contain pictures, word documents, PDF files, as well as music and movies. The big controversy started when the group Metallica sued Napster for copyright infringement that ended up fueling a new industry headed by apple with its itunes and ipod combination.

The itunes store became a good solution to stop piracy because users could purchase one song at a time or a full album, and artists being able to sell their productions again. However there are artist like Prince that don't like to sell their music over the internet.

Prince decided to give away his last album for free to fight the online music industry giving the the Mail on Sunday exclusive rights to distribute his new album as a freebie, and this way he modified the distribution channel allowing his fans to have his latest creation for free and possibly adding more fans to his already long list.

What the music industry and other artist can learn from prince, is that it should be more important as an artist to interact with their fans and make them aware of new projects than just selling their albums this way making it easy to obtain more concert tickets that may generate better returns.

Artist don't necessarily need to block Internet out of their way to make the interaction mentioned above possible. Instead they can use Internet tools to their advantage not only to sell their albums, but also to reach their fan base and humanize the relationship.

What's the real value of Social Media followers?

One of the best ways to make yourself, a brand or a product known nowadays is by the great influence of Social Media networks. If there were ever any doubts on the reach of Social Media, the case of JC Hutchins and his 7th son novel can prove you wrong.

When JC Hutchins wrote his novel mentioned above, and was ready to publish, it was hard for him to find an agent to publish it, Therefore, he decided to self-publish as a podcast. This way of promoting his book help him gain success as a podcast author and as a modern story-teller. With the support from thousands of fans and followers finally was able to gain a publishing deal and a possible movie option for his work.

When the printed version of his novel finally came out on the market, the success it had was no near to the one it had as a free podcast, which for bottom-line marketers will be considered the bad side of having had his work completely available for free over the internet. Social Media Helped him get his creative mind recognized, yet there were little monetary rewards, which for JC Hutchins was not the most important goal of his project. For him as storyteller, the most important aspect is to tell a story to an audience that recognizes and admires his talent.

Even though he didn’t had very much success with his 7th Son printed copy, The recognition he gained with his first book through Social Media Networks will definitely help the way of being considered for other creative projects.