A Nielsen study recently came out about teens and media usage. Pretty interesting stuff, somewhat contradictory to studies that are already out there. Basically the study dispells many of the myths about Teens. I will highlight the myths and also, further in this post, discuss what mobile is for teens (according to the study).

Teen Media Myths

Myth: Teens use media - 10 screens at a time. Reality: Teens are more likely than adults to use their media one at a time. In a study researchers found that 23% of the media time among observed teens was concurrent media exposure, where two or more media were in simultaneous use. That being said, 77% of the time, teens were consuming media one at a time. The concurrent media usage was actually lower among teens vs. adults (23% to 31%).

Myth: Teens are abandoning TV for new media. Reality: Teens are watching more TV than ever. Teens watch over 100 bours of TV per month. This eclipses the estimates for teen Internet use of 11 hours per month. Additionally, teens are more affected by TV advertisements.

Myth: Teens are driving the growth of online video. Reality: They watch less online video than their elders. Teens in the 12-17 age bracket watch about 3 hours of online video per month, then the 35-44 age group with 3.5 hours/mo, then the 25-34 age group with 4.75 hours/mo, and then the 18-24 age group with 5.5 hours per month. (as of May 2009)

Myth: Teens are the most avid users of the Internet. Reality: Teens browse less than half as much as the typical user. Even though teens of today grew up with the internet in their laps, the study shows that the typical teen spends 11.5 hrs/mo. on the Web and the average person in the US is 29 hrs.

So there are some of the overall media myths about teens. But what about mobile??

Mobile Myths

Myth: The only way to reach teens over their phone is through text. Reality: Teens text at incredible rates but are early adopters of all mobile media. 77% of teens own their own mobile phone. More than 66% say they actually prefer text-messaging to calling. 34% say texting is the reason they got their phone. Ha. 83% of mobile teens use text and 56% use MMS/picture mesaging. While these numbers are staggering, below you will see what teens else teens are doing with their phone.

I just read an article from the New Yorker which was written by Malcolm Gladwell. The article was entitled, “Priced to Sell, is free the future?” Gladwell discusses the trend for service and product pricing to be steadily moving toward free.

An experiment was conducted by an M.I.T. behavioral economist Dan Ariely, the author of “Predictably Irrational.” Ariely offered a group of subjects a choice between two kinds of chocolate—Hershey’s Kisses, for one cent, and Lindt truffles, for fifteen cents. Three-quarters of the subjects chose the truffles. Then he redid the experiment, reducing the price of both chocolates by one cent. The Kisses were now free. What happened? The order of preference was reversed. Sixty-nine per cent of the subjects chose the Kisses. The price difference between the two chocolates was exactly the same, but that magic word “free” has the power to create a consumer stampede.

Currently the business model of the internet has been revolving around the idea of free content. With companies like Google, Facebook, Youtube, Craigslist, etc, services or access to information are provided for “free” and revenue is created through advertising. Is this really working? Take for example, as Gladwell details, the YouTube example. Everyone can say that it is a viral marketing phenom. But let’s take a closer look at the numbers. “Distribution is now close enough to free to round down. Today, it costs about $0.25 to stream one hour of video to one person. Next year, it will be $0.15. A year later it will be less than a dime. This is why YouTube’s founders decided to give it away. The result is both messy and runs counter to every instinct of a television professional, but this is what abundance both requires and demands.”

Furthermore, “…an estimated seventy-five billion videos will be served up by YouTube this year. Although the magic of Free technology means that the cost of serving up each video is “close enough to free to round down,” “close enough to free” multiplied by seventy-five billion is still a very large number. A recent report by Credit Suisse estimates that YouTube’s bandwidth costs in 2009 will be three hundred and sixty million dollars…YouTube has had to buy the rights to professionally produced content, such as television shows and movies. Credit Suisse put the cost of those licenses in 2009 at roughly two hundred and sixty million dollars…Credit Suisse estimates that YouTube will lose close to half a billion dollars this year.”

My point here is that YouTube is able to amass a large user base, millions upon millions, however, what does it cost to bring those users in? Free is great for the users but in the case of YouTube, half a billion will be taken as a loss. As a consumer we all want things to be free. We are lazy, we want stuff instantaneously, and we want the newest and coolest. However, as a business, unless you love the world so much as to take you out of business, free is unrealistic. Revenue has to be made. However, it makes sense that YouTube consistently takes the hit here because as the operational costs go down (cost for bandwidth and storage space, in 1961,  a single transistor was ten dollars. In 1963, it was five dollars. By 1968, it was one dollar. Today, Intel will sell you two billion transistors for eleven hundred dollars—meaning that the cost of a single transistor is now about .000055 cents.

How are you pricing your technological services and products?

Check out a video about the Free business model.

Abstract: Dilly dallying sucks. Make a decision and go with it. Right or wrong.

Earlier today Matt Linderman wrote this (full blog entry) on the 37signals.com blog. Basically he wrote about keeping your day job while you start something on the side and to let it naturally evolve organically.

Undoubtedly this is a smart move when taking into account cash flow considerations. If your day job is allowing you “X” amount of dollars every two weeks which equates to “Y” dollars an hour, then in order for you to quit your day job you better have two different things. 1.) Your side job pays more per hour than your day job does and 2.) you better be working the same if not more hours than your day job.

This would be the smartest move when considering cash flow.

Well what about investment?

Well, NOW, you are operating as a business owner and entrepreneur. The previous example, you are still thinking with an employee mentality saying to yourself, “well I want to be paid what I am worth.”

Let’s consider the entrepreneur route.

A couple of basic considerations: 1.) Due diligence has been done on your competition, niche, and target market. 2.) You have a thorough marketing plan that you believe will bring you returns. 3.) You have some business capital to take you through your initial start-up phase.

If I were to go right now and tell my boss, “Hey you suck as a boss!” and just got up and left (a move reminscent of the movie WANTED with Angelina Jolie), well then now I’m up a creek without a paddle. This is not a smart move.

However, if I were to quit my job after taking into account the basic considerations, then I would have a paddle … notice however I am still going upstream. This I feel is a better than sitting at your job, uninspired, while you day dream of the day you get out of there. My suggestion is quit. However, quit with a plan in place. If you haven’t done that yet, then you are taking a look solely at a hobby. People make money from their hobbies all the time, but if you want your hobby to be a bread winner, then you need to create a business … a business with structure. That is a whole new conversation, but one that is solved by the book The E-Myth Revisited by Micheal Gerber.

With the onset of GM and Chrysler going down, the car dealerships are taking major hits. With these two companies going down, a mandatory shutdown of 1,889 auto dealers is going to happen in mid June. In 2008, there were about 20,000 dealerships in the US and last year, about 900 of them went down due to the economy. As a result, money spent on advertising with US media companies, will see a steep decrease because of all the companies that are out of commission. Not only are auto dealers going out of business, but now GM and Chrysler are forcing some profitable dealerships to shut down??

Here are some of the numbers about the money auto dealers acutally spend:

- Across all ad categories, newspaper revenues fell 16.6% in 2008 to $37.8 billlion, local TV dropped 6.5% to $20.1 billion and radio fell 8.6% to $19.5 billion, according to statistics obtained respectively from the Newspaper Association of America, BIA Advisory Services and the Radio Advertising Bureau.

- Auto classified advertising in newspapers fell 29% in 2008 to a 25-year low of $2.3 billion, representing less than half of the $5 billion in car ads sold by publishers as recently as 2004.

- As of 2007, newspapers garnered 27% of the advertising dollars spent by auto dealers across the country, according to the NADA. This is down by almost half from the 52% of dealer dollars that newspapers controlled in 1997.

- The NADA reports that TV and radio broadcasters each sell about 17% of the auto advertising sold in the nation, which made their respective shares of the market worth about $1.5 billion apiece in 2008.

With all of the decreased advertising budgets, how will the remaining auto dealers get the word out?

A means of more efficient means of advertising is required. By extending the effectiveness of their marketing dollars, car dealerships can compensate for smaller budgets.

Enter mobile advertising.

Customer service is key to retention. Long wait times and long call back periods are definitely add to your customer’s dissatisfaction. I’m sure you have been in my position . . . you dial into (insert name of any service company here) and there is an automated voice telling you all of these options. If you were to go through it all then you would have to press (in this order): 1, 2, 5, 3, 2, 1, 1, 8, 2, 3, 1, 4, 5, 2 and 1. In the end, the whole process takes you to a human being. Or if you are like me, you probably have found yourself pressing the “0″ button every time you are given a chance so that it will take you to the operator.

Just remember that although you do want to decrease expenses for your business by going automated, people just want to be heard.

Here is a cool site I found that lists many major customer service numbers. For all of you I-phone people out there, there is even an application.

www.gethuman.com

What do you do when a 150 year old paper decides to call it quits? Is that a sign of the dying newspaper industry? According to the Rosen Group, a PR firm specializing in Print Media, the money is still in the paper and will continue to be for years to come.

Stats from the study:

-  two-thirds of Americans now use Web sites “devoted to news” as a daily source

- a third consider them to be their No. 1 source of news and information

- When asked if newspapers and magazines will exist in 10 years, nearly half of those surveyed (45%) said yes, while 40% remained uncertain.

Check out the link to the full article.

In the latest issue of Press Time, the magazine for the Newspaper Association of America, Jim Conaghan makes a statistical argument that teens really do read the paper.

Conaghan is the NAA’s chief economist and vice president of research and in the article he reviews the findings of the latest data on teen newspaper usage. The data provided by TRU (www.tru-insight.com) reports that out of 2,000 teenagers surveyed, 73 percent of them read the newspaper and 69 percent visit newspaper websites. Also, noted was that about 25 percent of the teens surveyed read the paper two to three times weekly and 38 percent visited online websites that frequently.

Conaghan makes an argument that teen usage is definitely a market that cannot be overlooked and I would have to agree. It is ultimately the young users that determine the future of the newspaper’s products. By cultivating a culture of young readers, how can the newspaper ever go away?

Newspapers know this already. An example is the development of Newspapers In Education (NIE). This program gives the paper to primary and secondary schools for various programs to get kids accustomed to the paper.

Another example of behavioral marketing is when Nestle introduced coffee to Japan. Years ago Japan was known for its dependence to tea. Initial attempts to introduce coffee to the Japanese market failed miserably, so in order to penetrate into the market Nestle created a more subtle introduction. Instead of the coffee drink, Nestle pushed coffee flavored products like candies to get people “hooked” to the taste. Over the years, the coffee taste became more and more accepted as a flavor and when Nestle introduced coffee for the last time, it was a success.

Let’s take it back to newspapers. What is the future of the newspaper as a media entity? More and more the newspaper is being read for leisure and news is being accessed on the Internet. How do newspapers take advantage of this movement?

The key is to embrace the movement and run with it. The physical paper is not going anywhere anytime soon. However, in order to leverage the newspaper as a brand, every delivery medium has to be leveraged. This means print, net, and mobile.

To reach the younger customers, newspapers have to focus more on local news that pertain to them since getting your national news has so many competitors. The newspaper’s website has to focus on creating a social presence. The websites should stop focusing on just providing information, but instead, be able to really connect stories to real people.

Lastly newspapers need to leverage mobile phones to interact with the previous two mediums. Look at the popularity of twitter. People like being updated on what’s going on with other people, groups, and anything that pertains to them. However, note that too much info is not an update. What used to be a quick two paragraphed email to someone is now perceived as an epic novel. Twitter is the perfect example of the success quick updates because they limit updates to 140 characters. It’s time to leverage mobile to provide these quick updates to your users. Does age matter? No. The Nielsen Company did a survey and found that, out of those surveyed, the cell phone users 65 and above received on average 14 texts per month. So yes, even grandma get texted.

How are you implementing mobile to leverage your brand?

Wanna have some fun? Check out these articles from 2004. They discussed how teens read the paper.

So last Thursday I went to my little cousin’s band concert. She plays the flute and I decided that, despite all of the work I had to do that night, it was good to go and show support for her passion. However, I will say that I did not go to the concert with the intent to actually go to the concert. I was there more for her and just to watch her portion of the concert.

The funny thing is that her portion of the 3 hour concert ended up being at the end of the night. Ouch. I thought I could just go and watch the first 15 minutes and then dip off to go to Starbucks to read up on blogs and then come back at the end to be with my family. Go figure.

Before beginning the concert, the band had to warm up. This was interesting because each part of the band started warming up at different times. First it was the clarinets, the trumpets, the saxophones, the flutes, and then the percussion. Even though they started at different times at the end of the warm up period they were all playing together and it sounded amazing. Mind you this was just the warm up part and I was ready to stand up and start clapping for an encore.

As the concert continued, they played song after song in unison. However it was not until about the seventh piece that I was really able to appreciate it. When the band played this song, something different was obvious. The band seemed “off” and as a result, in mid-song, the conductor had to stop the band and start again.

It was bad. You could see the frustration in the eyes of the conductor. So what exactly was wrong with the seventh piece?

Well speaking from a musical standpoint, there should have been no reason why this occurred. Let’s take a closer look at the song itself. The song has an overall composition (collection and sequence of notes on a page). The overall composition is then broken down into individual compositions for every type of instrument so that they all harmonize. Then there is the beat measure which tells you how long to hold notes and how often the beats repeat. Finally there is a conductor that signals how fast to play the piece and is a reminder who should play when and how loud.

So with all of these things in place why the blunder?

Expectations.

Whether it is a symphonic band, small business team, or a large 60,000 employee organization, expectations are set for each member in the organization and failure to operate at these expectations ultimtely leads to unfulfilled goals, loss revenue, or an even worse an angry conductor who stops the whole band in the middle of a concert to start over.

The expectation game is not an amazingly fun game, but it is a game that needs to be played nonetheless. Famed author Michael Gerber speaks about this in his book The E-myth Revisited. In the book he talks about setting up your organizational structure so that everyone that is employed by the company knows exactly what their role is. However, that is just one side of the game. The other side, and equally as important, is the confirmation of the expectation.

In the expectation game there are two sides, the declaration and the confirmation. An expectation needs to both be declared and confirmed if success is to be attained in the expectation game. Let’s take the analogy of the symphonic band as an example. The declaration is the overall composition and the confirmation comes individually from each member of the band since each one looks at one part of the overall piece. The combination of the two set the expectation of a classical piece performed in total unison.

What would happen if the musicians did not have any arrangement to read from (no declaration)? Would the band be able to play a classical piece performed in total unison? Probably not. Therefore this was not a successful expectation. What if conductor did not agree with the tempo of the piece played. Then from his end of it he did not confirm the declared tempo. What happens then? Well, at that point, different sections will be playing different tempos and yet again, a successful expectation is not set.

Now relating this to a business . . .

In my previous start-ups I have had a lot of problems with this. My partners and I would be running around trying to accomplish everything whiteboard-style. The object? Just get it done. However, it was like playing a piece with no individual composition. What ended up happening? People started to cross over on individual projects and sales territories. At other times, the team would focus on just one aspect of the business and not the other.

Then there was the problem of confirmation. Sometimes I would give out tasks, setting an expectation from my side however if the other partner/employee thought it might be better done another way, then they would do it that way resulting in an unfulfilled expectation from my end.

It was not until we all sat down together and laid out an organizational structure that we started seeing some actual progress. We laid out all of the positions in the company and assigned tasks to each position (DECLARATION). Then after listing out all of the positions, we started taking roles (CONFIRMATION). We all ended up taking many hats within the organization, however now, we could see where specific boundaries where. Thus, a uniform expectation was set . . . FROM BOTH SIDES!

This is crucial in the game of setting expectations. Gerber suggests that you write out each positions’ expectations and make it an agreement. If I am the employee, I would sign the agreement saying that I understand the objectives and tasks I take on and that I intend to accomplish them. There is a lot of power in the confirmation and ownership of your responsibility.

On a side note, notice that the building blocks of the game of expectations is communication. However, we will reserve that for another blog entry. Also reserved is what to do with that expectation. Just because you have an expectation does it always get done? No. Why is that? Execution.

But for now, ask yourself, in the expectations that you have set at the workplace . . . have they been declared . . . AND  . . . confirmed?

What would happen to your organization if for one day everyone was actually on the same page?

Ok, it really isn’t that bad however it does go without saying that the internet is a very powerful tool. And thus, with it being so powerful, it can also make and break businesses. With the onset of social networking as a marketing tool, many business owners or business minds in general are looking into blogging as a form of  connecting with others and sharing the skills that they have. Many, in fact, are able to monetize their blogging skills by creating a large reader base and running ads on their sites.

As I started to do some research on blogging in general I found out that there is also a dark side to this form of communication. Often times people don’t think about the possible repercussions of blogging. In fact, when posting anything on the web, did you know that upon clicking on that “Post” or “Publish” button, the words that you write are copyrighted right then and there? Also, another question to ask yourself is, what is your responsibility to the people you write for and about?

Say I had a blog site that had one million readers (wouldn’t that be great??!?). Now with those one million readers I have direct access to their thoughts and impressions. If I were to say that McDonalds uses rat meat in their burgers (which they absolutely do not), imagine the amount of people out of the million that would believe me. Then add on the viral impression that that has on the people the so-called believers tell.

Here is a good example of what could happen (as written in Inc. Magazine):

The article written in the Nov. 08 edition of Inc Magazine is entitled, “A Cold Call, a Blog, and a $20 Million Lawsuit”.

Basically, a small business owner was contacted by a media company wanting to use her and her company in a documentary concerning her niche, eco-friendly clothing. She was excited. However, as talks progressed, the owner became skeptical of the media company. At one point, an employee from the media company told her that she would be charged close to $26,000. “Feeling creeped out”, the owner wrote to the better business bureau and posted a blog about the company on her company website.

That action ultimately put her business at risk. Even though her intent was to protect other businesses out there from the company, the company did have a seemingly reputable business. Anyway,  the media company caught wind of her post and asked her to remove it from the site, an action that she refused to do. Upon the refusal, she was smacked with a $20 million lawsuit which included $5 million in lost business by the media company and $15 million in punitive damages. Ouch.

The result? A nine month litigation process and a settlement.

From the small business owner side, she felt that the presentation made to her (the initial call) was not clear. From the media company’s stand point, it was.

Lesson? Anything posted on a CEO’s blog - including reader comments - can be constured as carrying the weithgt of a company’s endorsement. - Mark Zwillinger, atorney

Ultimate Lesson? The things you publish on the internet have a direct reflection on you and others. All published work has the ability to influence others so do it in the right way.

To help everyone out I found a good blog article about the rules of blogging. Check it out.

Lastly, check out the links below. They contain some mistakes made by others when posting on the web.

Other Internet blunders:

Speaker makes a mistake by writing on Twitter

People get fired for convo on Facebook

Today I opened up the morning newspaper (yes, I still read the physical paper), the Orlando Sentinel, and there is an article in the Central Florida Business section that talked specifically to the small business owner. I liked the article because of ten specific words in it.

“Evolve. Take care of your customers. And don’t cut corners.”

In this article, written by staff writer Sara Clarke, it talks about the fact that in this economy, keeping your customers is key. With the economy on the downturn and nothing on the horizon coming; it is especially important to keep your loyal customers loyal since money to attract new customers is now as easy to find as a teenager that is not on facebook or myspace.

In all reality, taking care of your current customers is the best thing a small business could do since that would lead to the best form of advertising, word of mouth. The rate of return on this form of advertising is amazing however, it is often one of the harder things to set up.

Additionally, you have to note the fact that consumers are being barraged with advertisements all over the place. Go to the local mall and you will find stores with window displays announcing 70% off their merchandise. Hell, I’m surprised they have not gone to 100% off yet. Even restaurants are pulling in the buy one get one free entree deals and just recently Denny’s had the FREE GRAND SLAM promotion that sent Americans flocking to the restaurant chain.

So make sure that you are listening to your current customers. They are there because you probably did something right in the past. Cut one corner and BAM! they will be gone faster than you can say “But wait!”  Do not just listen to your customers. Make sure you go over and above what they need. Further that relationship with that business owner you support. Have your employees converse more with incoming patrons. Take things to the next level. If you do, then so will they and your business will grow instead of recede in these trying times.

What are some things that you are doing to take your business relationships to the next level?