Now that’s your future challenge. That’s the problem that defines the requirements for digital brands.

In the real world you’ve got great locations and shitty locations. Let’s say you wanna open a coffee shop. If you place it on the High Street you’ll be sure to have clients dropping by. As long as you do an ok job of keeping your products in shape you’ll do good. There’s of course one problem – not many people can afford to open a coffee shop on the High Street.

There’s no Times Square online. Photo cred: Jo Quint

Just outside the town however, there you’ll find space more or less for free. Your problem however is that you won’t have anyone dropping by unless you’ve got a killer product or a killer service. Suddenly kick ass budgets come into play again, this time for marketing activities and product development. Online however you’re competing with every other shop in your country…or even worse, you might even be competing with every other shop in the world.

This is exactly what the internet is all about. No one will buy something from you unless you’ve got killer products, a killer website and provide people with great value. And you can be sure that if you don’t, they’ll never come back. There’s one more challenge of course – In the real world you are only competing with other shops in the same city. There are no High Streets on the internet. There’s only fantastic products and services…and great marketing activities…over and over and over and over again! There are no shortcuts!

There is a fantastic opportunity here. Traditional brands haven’t really figured it out yet. As I’ve written about before they’re stuck in the past. This is your opportunity!

Go rule the world!

Today is a great day.

Over at JAJDO we’re releasing our third app. Buildo Museum is aimed to get kids all over the world interested in culture. Get your free copy in the appstore before the 6th of febrary!

One day left. What’s up with this time thing. It felt like we passed midsummer only days ago. Scary!

I want to wish you all a Merry Christmas and a Happy New year. I’ll also take the opportunity to tell you that over at my other company JAJDO we’re giving away our apps for free as a christmas gift to children all over the world. So if you’ve got access to an iPhone or iPad. Head over to JAJDO and grab your gift!

Earlier today we (my other company JAJDO), launched our second iPad and iPhone app. This one is called Buildo History or as in the picture below if you’re Russian. (we’ve translated it into 18 languages)

Buildo History. This one translated into Russian.

This is the second app in the Buildo Series. Our idea has been to create a simple yet creative app that allows for kids to create their own stories with as little guidance as possible. True creativity isn’t about us grown-ups creating rules that they need to follow. Our children will have plenty of that when they grow older. The Buildo series is more about playing around, having a good time and creating stories.

It’s kinda funny cause when grown-ups look at the Buildo apps they tend to say “Hmm, it looks a little simple”. When kids play with it they tend to say nothing but instead play with it for hours..or actually first play and then tell stories. My daughters Ebba and Linn often ask me to go away for half an hour and then come back. When I’m back in the room the show and tell me the story. It’s often a great laugh!

If you’ve got kids you should check it out. I think they’ll like it!

(This is a Swedish post covering the 24 Hours Live event in May earlier this year)

Tidigare i år, närmare bestämt i början av Maj, genomförde jag tillsammans med Göran Adlén årets kanske mest korkade eller geniala idé. Ett enkelt koncept. Vi skulle spendera 24 timmar non-stop i hotelbaren, något slags världsrekord?, på ett av sveriges coolaste hotel, Clarion Sign Hotel, och föreläsa om framtidens kommunikations och affärslandskap samt hur det kommer påverka vårt samhälle och oss människor. Vi kallade konceptet för 24 Hours Live.

Therese Reuterswärd fångar oss med sin’telefon’ någonstans från baren.

Som om det inte var nog övertalade vi vår gode vän och ‘thincasting’ expert Robin Danehav att sända hela eventet live över nätet vilket skulle ge oss möjlighet att interagera inte bara med publiken på plats utan också de som följde oss via nätet. Sagt och gjort. Robin riggade tillsammans med Petter Karlsson och satte sig bakom kamerorna.

Klockan 12:00 den 6:e maj slog vi på (live) strömmen för att sedan hålla låda 24 timmar i sträck. Utan att Sova. Utan att ta pauser. Bara tala oavbrutet.

När klockan ett helt dygn senare åter slog 12:00 kunde vi blicka tillbaka på 24 fantastiska timmar där mer än 3000 personer på olika sätt följt livesändningen som inte marknadsförts mer än via några blogginlägg samt någon enstaka Tweet dagarna innan. Vi var helt enkelt osäkra på om vi skulle orka prata oavbrutet i 24 timmar och vågade därför inte göra för stor sak av det hela.24 timmar efter att sändningen gick igång så kunde vi dock konstatera – vi höll oss vakna, enligt tittarna lyckades vi i stort sätt leverera intressant innehåll 24 timmar i sträck (nåja, det var kanske lite djupt där runt 5-tiden på morgonen) och Robin behöll skärpan och levererade sveriges, om inte världens längsta non-stop livesändning via Internet utan att byta personal.

Alla 24 timmarna finns nu upplagda som enskilda entimmes program på Blip. Hoppa gärna in där och titta. Jag själv vill här i blogposten särskilt lyfta fram några favoriter.

24 Hours 12:00-13:00 – Vad är 24 Hours och framtida möten.

Den första timmen – i vilken Göran Adlén och Johan Ronnestam efter visst teknikstrul som löstes på sekunder av Robin Danehav och Petter finner trygghet i formatet, talar om ångestdockor och Thailändska humöransikten, presenterar hur 24 Hours kom till, det framtida mötet och slutligen om att våga misslyckas.

24 Hours – 16:00 -17:00 – Framtidens skola.

När klockan slår 16 börjar diskussionen om de viktigaste människorna i världen – våra barn. Efter att Johan Ronnestam leder tittarna igenom sin bloggpost ‘Tänk om’ så förgyller Rickard Gatarski timmen med sin närvaro och sina tankar och Mattias Östmar förklarar vad som behöver ske för att skolan ska förändras. Det handlar om avskolning, skattebortfall, teknologi, kreativitet och barnarbete.

24 Hours 04:00 – 04:30 – Intervju med Jerry Silfwer

Timmen mitt i natten i vilken vi har äran att bjuda in och få samtala med Jerry Silfwer om framtidens PR och kommunikation. Jerry är Executive Digital Strategist på Whispr Group, Inc. New York samt superbloggare på Doktor Spinn.

Stort tack till dig Jerry för att du ställde up helt spontant efter vår inbjudan via Skype.

24 Hours 10:00 – 11:00 – Robin Danehav om Thincasting samt vi dissar etablerade branchmedia.

24 Hours börjar närma sig sitt slut. Vad vore bättre än att då gå igenom hur vi faktiskt lyckats öppna en temporär TV kanal och sända live 24 timmar i sträck med bara internetuppkoppling och digitalkameror. Robin Danehav intervjuas av Göran och Johan. Du som är sugen på att testa det här själv – missa inte det här avsnittet. Bruttolistan över vad som behövs hittar du här.

24 Hours 11:00 – 12:00 – Sammanfattning av 24 timmars livesändning också spontana presenter.

Sista timmen är kommen. Vi inleder med en mastodontsammanfattning av hela dygnet. Otroligt många lärdomar, fantastiskt engagemang, spännande diskussioner och några misslyckanden. Vi tar också 5 minuter var och reflekterar över vad vi individuellt tyckt om dygnet. När det så blir dags att gå av scen får vi celebert besök av Brit Stakston och Rickard Gatarski som har med sig spontana presenter och blommor. Otroligt rörande. Alla listorna som skrevs under dygnet hittar du här.

Resten av timmarna hittar du här på vår Blip kanal eller så slår du dig ner och tittar igenom alla 24 timmarna på en gång.

En snabb sammanfattning av saker som hände lite här och var.

Vi lade ut punkter på vår Posterous blogg efter varje timme eller ‘åsiktsblock’. Riktigt kul att se hur vi lärde oss saker under resans gång samt att vi blev bättre och bättre på att interagera med publiken.

Johan Lange bloggade både här och där. Malin Ströman tyckte vi såg fräscha ut efter en lång natt. Mera Business skrev en härlig blänkare. Och precis när nästan allt var slut, då dök även IDG upp. De traditionella aktörerna är inte helt insomnade

Slutligen så vill jag rikta ett stort tack till Ludvig Lindblom (aka @internuts ) som tog det fantastiska initiativet att samla alla 3190! mentions på #24live som Twittrades under de 24 timmarna som vi höll på. Som om inte det vore nog så sammanställde han också statistik över Twittrandet. 3190 Tweets. 1467 stycken via Tweetdeck. Flest mentions mellan 20:00 och 21:00 på torsdagskvällen. @KarinTyden var flitigast med 111 stycken hashtags. Härlig konversation att titta tillbaka på.

Som RichardGatarski Twittrade ut. “#24live hade aldrig funkat utan en socialt medietränad (vad vi förr kallade) publik.”

(ps. Vi fick faktiskt klagomål. En gäst påpekade att om man satt och talade för människor skulle man inte hålla på och pilla med datorn samtidigt

Tack för allt stöd! Tack Göran. Tack Robin. Tack Petter. Tack Clarion Sign Hotel som lät oss sitta där och babbla.

Leading a brand? Thinking about how to create a long term integrated communication platform? Think no more cause I’ll share the model I’ve been using for the last three years when leading brands into the future of advertising, communication and advertising.

Normally I’d work a company or brand through a series of workshops. We would then slowly start to follow this model over time. Changing how you, your brand and marketing organisation work with advertising and communication is not something you do over night. I would recommend brands to keep on doing what they do best – shoot fireworks -while slowly start to change their way of communicating their products and services from ground up.

Moving your communication into the future is also tough on your organisation as your moving from campaign based communication activities to instead building long term equity that will generate results over time. Send your entire marketing organization as well as your IT department and management team on several digital communication crash courses cause your CEO better understand what you talk about when you’re talking conversion, SEM, SEO, AdWords, H1, Keywords, Stats and shit.

Have a read. If you like what you read – get going. Change!

Here we go – The Key To Future Integrated Communication by Johan Ronnestam

The basis of your online communication platform

The first thing we’ve gotta agree upon before moving further into the model is the following: Your brand consist out of two things. The product/services you offer and the content you’ve created to explain what your product/service does. In the worst cases companies have more or less done nothing beyond publishing images of their products with accompanied product name. In the best cases they’ve done tons more. We’ll go in to this bellow. This is the essence of your communication presence online. Hopefully you’ve got this wired, however, you might actually have this presence online without owning it your selves.

Value and conversion leads to traffic and sales. Your objective and key performance indicators.

People don’t have time to read your shit. You’ve gotta provide them with a true value. After all, your products and services are nothing without the problem they solve. This is what you’ve gotta base all your hosted communication activities on.

Value first

The more value you provide your target group with, the more traffic you’ll gain. This is based on the simple principle of the link. If you keep bragging about your products without truly do something good for people you won’t earn any links. If you on the other hand share ideas, knowledge and solutions that helps your target group to be better you’ll see that people will come. Once you’ve opened up that stream of people you’ll have the opportunity to point the towards the products and services you market, the same product and services that of course can be used to do whatever you tought people to do.

Let me share one example – Michelle Phan. I started to follow this girl online already two years ago. Back then she was an independent girl who just liked to share her thoughts on how to wear make up. In November 2010, Phan became “the No. 1 most subscribed female on YouTube and the first female to reach 1 million subscribers. Michelle Phan joined Youtube on July 18, 2006, and as of November 2010, she has created 100 videos that have been viewed over 260,000,000 times. The one where she does a Lady Gaga makeup has a stunning 23,457,472 views.

Michelle Phan sharing the value people want

Michelle does what the traditional make up brand don’t. She shares value. While Michelle teaches young women all over the world how to do their make up, brands like Chanel, Biotherm, Clinique, Loreal and Lancome does one thing – sell sell sell. Michelle shares knowledge while these brands just throws a pretty girl in your face saying “you can look like me”. No wonder Lancome suddenly this year in February turned Michelle into their spokesperson. Today Michelle even got her own make up brand.

So, value first. Before selling. Make sure you think about your reason for being. Do you sell football shoes, teach people how to score, do you sell wine, teach people how to buy the right wine (like Gary Vaynerchuck does), do you sell cars, teach them about how to drive better and more cost effective, do you sell clothes, teach them how to style themselves.

The content you create should of course go social

Once you’ve decided how to provide your potential visitor with a true value. Make sure you spread that value across the net whereever possible and relevant.

Your Potential Customer Is Out There – So Your Content Should Be Too

If you produce videos send them to YouTube, Vimeo, Viddler, Blip and tons more. Use TubeMogul to handle the process. Your images on Flickr and others. Documents on Slideshare and Scribd. If you go live, use Livestream or Bambuser. Heck, head over to Brians and Jess3 Conversation prism and do the homework.

Once you got that value right – focus on conversion

So, this is the next step where tons of brands go wrong (as I’ve written about before). They simply haven’t got their conversion wired. In order for you to really know what you’re doing you’ve gotta set your targets right. Do you want people to buy online, should they download your product sheets, contact you or maybe just spend five minutes with your products online? Anything is right as long as it suits your needs. Once you’ve got that wired, set up your funnels right in your stat tools and start working those A/B tests. Everything, and I mean EVERYTHING should serve a purpose if you’re looking to convert those visitors of yours to clients.

The funny thing is that once you start eyeing those performance metrics of yours you’ll end up getting insights about your traffic that you can never learn from anyone else. Business online is all about knowing your own audience and constantly improving your site. After all, a banner or button in the wrong place might kill your conversion or increase it by 400%.

5 things you can never forget when converting your site visitors into buyers

1. Usability is key

Usability is by far the most important thing to think about when you’re looking to convert your visitors into buyers. This means no funky animations, links should be easy to click on, preferably underlined, less is more, guide your visitors etc etc.

There’s tons that has been written about this area. Whatever you do, don’t buy any bullshit that people click thru a site if it’s cool. Ask anyone who’s been working with e-commerce and they’ll tell you. Why do you think Amazon looks the way it does? Go ahead and follow some blogs and you’ll be up and running in no time. Start with The UX Booth.

2. Product presentation

I don’t know if you read my post about the car brand SAAB the other day. Well, this recording below (excuse my bad english in this one) was actually done for this post. It got me worked up though and that’s why I posted that other thing the before this one.

We’re alone when surfing the web – compare that to the real world where a sales man is following us around in the store, always ready to answer any questions we might have, we’re all alone on the web. This means information, information, information, information and more information. If I’m looking to be convinced to buy a car online I’ll tell you right away – I wont be pleased with a freakin flash site that sings a song and let me rotate the car once. I want at least forty-five 60-second movies showcasing everything there is to know about your car. I want photos, not 5 wonderful photos taken by Europes most expensive photographer. I want 100+ photos that are showing that car from every angle. Of course you should package it all beautiful, but don’t have me loading any animations and shit.

Then, only then might I go to that buy button. Remember, your competitors are one click away!

3. Copy
Copy actually do matter. Write it good, write it well, but remember what I talked about in nr 2. I’m alone, so don’t go wasting to much of my time! I was planning to write a longer piece about this, but Smashing Magazine has done a great job already. Go there ›› (thanks Per for the tip)

4. Feeling secure
Logos from payment providers and other things like awards and shit. That’ll do the trick. After all. We’ve been monkeys in an earlier lifetime.

5. Faces
This might sound funny. But a face looking straight at you actually has proven to do good. Make sure you online presence contain humas, preferably not from actors, but instead from humans that you might actually meet in your office. Hire a great photographer and do them good!

So where does the traffic come from?

I have focused here on writing about prospects and not existing customers. Given that I’ve listed 4 traffic sources that more or less are the same for any company with an online presence. Above and below the line advertising, search engine marketing, search engine optimization and finally social media.

Above and below the line advertising

Here’s the good news. If you know branding, advertising and all that good stuff we’ve been doing for years. You’re in for a ride. Brands will realize that TV, Print, Outdoor, Banners – all those yummy above the line things – will rule the next 10 years. There’s simply now way to grab peoples attention but to shake them around in a medium where you cannot miss them. Of course, people say young kids does not watch TV, but the still do if it’s relevant. After all we’re pretty alone behind that screen when it’s time to click something. Being friend with a brand will help!

Search and The Social Internet – They go together like birds, bees, the flowers and the trees.

There’s two ways to pull traffic through search.

1. Adwords, at first glance it’s easy. However, if you’re running a business with mature competitors, say for example online travel it will be everything from easy. You’ve gotta get down with how to get your brand visible in the paid search areas. Either you know how or you start to study hard. Read books, books and more books. Then start to follow some of the high profile SEO bloggers in the world. Why not start with Seomoz, Searchengineland and Greywolfs SEO blog. Some Swedes I’d ad to the list are Jesper Åström, Nikke Lindqvist and Simon.

2. Search. The second way to get yourselves visible in the search engines is of course the SEO side of it. I don’t know how many times I’ve heard people go on about their blog and the fact that it doesn’t drive traffic. But hey, it’s not that simple. If you’ve got a blog present, the chance is that other bloggers or maybe even a newspaper links to that blog. In the long run this will do good for your presence in search engines.

(I know I know I know…affiliates, banners, bought links etc etc. I just don’t have time to go into all of that now. This post is a top level post)

Conclusion.

Future communication is all about relevance. Relevant product, relevant services, relevant content and advertising that support those things. If you’re creating brand communication offline – fine, your only objective should be awareness and making sure people understand what your brand stands for. But when you’re communicating products and service – make sure the actual products and services are top notch and then create relevant communication that makes people search for them. If they do you’re home free! (that is if you’ve made sure to be seen everywhere online).

But worth repeating. Create advertising that make people search for your product or service category. Then by making sure your digital activities are focused on value, spread over a vast number of social networks, your AdWord campaigns and earned search positions in place you’ll make sure to get people hooked.

A qoute from Jeff Jarvis, the writer of ‘What Would Google Do‘, is in order here: “Construct information (on your website) so it can be understood by machine and man. In a word, be clear. If you’re a dentist, say you’re a dentist, not a smile doctor. Use the word “dentist” in the title of the page, the headline, and the beginning of what you write – make it so obvious even a computer couldn’t be confused. This also means that when human beings come to the page, they’ll know what you do. Clarity is always beneficial.”

So how do you get going. How do you make sure your brand platform is ‘future proof’?

Move your media budgets!

Most brands today seem to think change can be achieved within the production budgets. This is wrong. There’s just not enough money in that pot. There is only one way to make this happen. You’ve gotta take money from that eyeball highjacking fund called media and instead spend more on earned eyeballs.

Move 10% of your allocated media budget in order to gain a long term digital effect

Of course you shouldn’t move it all today. Start small but start. The next time you’re campaigning. Cut the media with 10% and start focusing on value as I wrote about earlier. Do the Michele Phan thing, whatever that means to your brand, products and services. Boom – now you’ve entered the long term value creation communication process. Keep doing it for another 6 to 12 month and make sure you track what you’re doing. You’ll see change coming your way!

Come on! You can do it!

We’re four days into 2011 and I’m in Tandådalen, a Swedish ski resort, skiing. Before heading out to rips some snow I thought I’d update the blog with my latest venture. 6 days from now I’m kick-starting my latest company – JAJDO.

Sometime last summer after having seen my two daughters rock the iPad an idea started to take shape inside my head – what If I could make a living doing things my daughters and other kids around the world would love. What If I could make a living doing that while teaching kids things that helped them get through life? I have to do this!

Said and done. I immediately called good friend and ‘out of this world’ developer Andreas Wålm. Seconds into the call Andreas answered – I’m in! Then I thought – “who would be the best designer?” – the first name that came to mind was Jonas Theder, digital design guru, illustrator and also a good friend. We met for lunch a sunny day in Stockholm – Jonas smiled widely and said – I’ll do it! JAJDO was born.

JAJDO will be based in Sweden but will launch apps globally. We’ll aim to create, develop and launch the worlds best teaching games aimed at kids 0-7 years old. We’ll translate and localize em’ for all open app markets in the world. During the year you can follow JAJDO on the JAJDO website or on Twitter.

Except for taking on speaking assignments I’ll focus on building JAJDO during first quarter of 2011. Then from the end of April I’ll start taking on selected branding and communication assignments again.

2011 will be a blast!

Usually when I don’t like something I try to give constructive feedback. But in this case there’s just to much of a history involved. About 9 years ago I tried to pitch ideas on Saab. Partly because I really wanted to work with a car brand and partly because they were Swedes. Already back then were the account managed by Lowe Brindfors. I thought Lowe did a shitty job then and obviously they do a shitty job now. Will they never learn? (That goes for both SAAB and Lowe)

Today, as was writing a blog post about integrated communication (soon to be published) I decided to do a quick video analysis of the current SAAB presence online. And let me tell you…it sucks big time. Sorry for the shitty English. But it serves the purpose.

I don’t get it. Aren’t car brands supposed to senior managers employeed that knows their shit? These guys sell products that costs a fortune and they can’t even product a simple site that will convert people into buyers. It scares me.

The first thought that comes to mind is that the marketing department don’t know what they’re doing to the brand, and that’s of course true, but then I think about it a little bit more. This is not a marketing department problem. This is a management problem.

Jan Åke Jonsson and the rest of you ‘silverbacks’ way up in the hierarchy! SAAB is not an industrial company – it’s a B2C product oriented and brand driven car company backed by great technology but emotions and brand comes first. And Jan, don’t come telling me this is a thing for the marketing department. Branding and marketing should be your, the management group and the board of directors first priority. It’s what your future is all about!

So. Jan Åke and the rest of you managers at SAAB.
You’ve sold SAAB to another company outside Sweden, but the a large majority of the cars are still being built in Sweden and lots of peoples incomes rely on you and your management team taking the right decisions. In the long run even I will be affected if you close down. And trust me, if you don’t stop acting like fools when it comes to branding issues (cause personally I think there are more problems than the site) you’ll close down anytime soon. It’s time to stop loving your history and focus on the future!

About two years ago I frantically started writing on this blog post. Then the sheer length of it got the best of me and since then it’s been stuck in my unpublished library. Now I thought it’s time to give birth to this baby even though most of it was written about two years ago, before Facebook got big, the iPad and more.

When you read it – remember I pushed publish to share the love, not the excellent writing.

This post covers how you start and run a company practically for free.

The post will guide you all the way from day one until you’re up and running and need to consider things like sales, advertising, process support, crm, intranets, extranets etc etc.

I spend about 1-2 hours a day reading about communication, advertising, social media and innovations through my Netvibes account. What’s truly amazing is the fact that almost every day a new service is launched somewhere in the world (mostly in the US) that replaces the old way to advertise, communicate with clients, run projects, process customer data, run your IT systems, keep track of your finances etc etc. And what’s even more amazing is that all these new services are practically always available free of charge or at least only for a small fee.

So I thought why not spread this knowledge to my blog readers and especially you out there who are running a company or thinking of starting one. Here are some ideas on how to think when setting up a future brand.

So, here we go – How to run your small business without loosing your pants (or the money in your pants that is)

The development within the ‘so-called’ web 2.0 services has now gone so far so it’s possible to run your company practically without any in-house IT systems. Even a larger company could without problems move everything they do online at practically no costs at all.

When you sum it all up it’s time for companies to reevaluate how to do business. Social networking and long tail services are taking over.

So, what if you were to run a company today? What’s the formula? How can you run a business without paying a dime for technology and getting social attention at the same time. Once you got that business idea of yours ready to go. Then it’s time to tell the world. And don’t worry, if you haven’t got one, there’s even resources online that give away business ideas for free.

0.9 Before you start

First thing. In terms of costs, there are two things you should prioritize over everything else and that is: 1. Broadband – get the fastest connection possible. And make sure it’s down and upstream. 2. Get a really good computer. Choose a Mac. Not because I’m against PC but because it’ll support your creativity and once it’s up and running, you’ll never have to restart it again. It just keeps running and running.

A good friend of mine told me “We’re changing our tag line. But in order to know which one to use we’re putting out Google Adwords campaigns for 10 of our finalists. The one that generates the most traffic, that will be our choice”

1. Business plan, marketing plan and a key note presentation.

Whatever you do. Make sure you put it on paper. Putting things on paper forces you to choose carefully. Put whatever you’ve written into the hands of friends and you’ll get great feedback on what you need to fine tune. Do you need inspiration? Visit slideshare.net or Scribd and then get going.

2. Register a domain.

IMPORTANT: Register your domain with the company where you intend to host your website.

IMPORTANT 2: Unless your fancy with code – don’t register with a hosting company that doesn’t have support for auto installers. I personally recommend Bluehost.com. But if you’re a Swede you might wanna check Binero out.

There are of course some other alterantives like Active 24, Bust A Name, Miss Domain and SEDO.

3. Forget expensive software.

Don’t buy software. They’re expensive. You’ll have to buy updates once a year. Instead use online softwares. Most companies need Email, Word, Excel and Powerpoint. For that I recommend Google Apps instead. Some companies may need graphical design tools. Well, then use Gimp or something like Splashup for graphical design.

Inside Google Apps you’ll provide your employees with Gmail, Google Talk, Google Calendar, Google Docs and Google Sites. On top of that Google Apps is integrated with Salesforce, something I’ll explain more about under CRM.

Gmail — Offer custom email addresses to your organization with up to 25 gigabytes of storage for each account, search tools to help people find information fast, plus instant messaging and calendar tools built right into the email interface.

Google Talk — Your users can call or send instant messages to their contacts for free — anytime, anywhere in the world. File sharing and voicemail is included, too.

Google Calendar — Your users can organize their schedules and share events, meetings and entire calendars with others. Your organization can also publish calendars and events on the web.

Google Docs — Co-workers can create documents, spreadsheets and presentations and share online files without having to keep track of multiple versions of the same attachment. And it’s all compatible with Microsoft Word.

Splashup is a powerful editing tool and photo manager. With all the features professionals use and novices want, it’s easy to use, works in real-time and allows you to edit many images at once. Splashup runs in all browsers, integrates seamlessly with top photosharing sites like Flickr, Picasa & Facebook, and even has its own file format so you can save your work in progress.

Forget expensive phonecalls.
When it comes to calling, you should of course make sure you have a regular phone number. But when you do, consider IP telephony. Messenger, Rebtel & Skype

Forget conference call systems
Campfirenow and since some time back Skype allows you to hook up 5 screens at the same time.

Forget finance systems
Blinksale, Freshbooks and Billings.

Many of the other sites I’ve written about can be used dependably of where in the world your company resides. But when it comes to financial applications, you really have to find and use a local products.

Blinksale is perfect for anyone in the US who needs to invoice clients for services or products sold. Basically, if you need to send invoices, Blinksale can work for you. What’s really cool also is the fact that if you’re using some of the other online products like Basecamp and Highrise (that I’m writing about below) the Blinksale also makes it easy to import and invoice your clients and customers without having to re-enter their data into Blinksale. Finally, is also has a fine API if you wanna integrate it into your own cloud.

4. Intranet and internal processes

Once your team (or you) are set to go, you may wanna set up the processes that you need in order to run your business. Let’s start with the internal stuff.

Intranet (or actually Intranet 2.0)
Let’s make sure you get an intranet that is alive and kicking. There are a couple of ways you can solve this by putting it all online. Here are three suggestions:

Use a wiki. Wetpaint is an online community where anyone can start their own wiki. Choose from a set of templates and you’re set to go. Of course you can make sure all your content is private. Another alternative is PBWIKI, used by Citigroup and at&t among others.

Use Facebook. Ah, I know what you’re saying. Stupid. But actually not. Facebook with all it’s application makes up the perfect intranet. Just make sure all your employees are set up with a Facebook account and then start a group. Make sure the invites are personal and the group private. Then your’re off. Chattsupport, documents, videos, forums, etc etc etc. Perfect.

Use your own Facebook – Ning. This place was founded in October 2004 to give everyone the opportunity to create their own social networks for absolutely anything. Today Ning powers the largest number of social networks on the Internet.

Finally. My own favorite. Use Yammer. Yammer is like Facebook and Twitter combined and it’s set up in seconds. This is the shit if you wanna create an Intranet 2.0 for your company.

Now when you’re done with the internal stuff, obviously you can use all those three examples to create an extranet towards your best B2B clients.

5. Project management.

Forget Microsoft Project Manager. What you need is a great group collaboration software. And Basecamp is exactly that. As they say themselves: “Basecamp takes a fresh, novel approach to project collaboration. Projects don’t fail from a lack of charts, graphs, stats, or reports, they fail from a lack of clear communication. Basecamp solves this problem by providing tools tailored to improve the communication between people working together on a project.” I’ve been using Basecamp in tons of projects and it’s a killer. Not for free, but not far from it.

6. Sale support & CRM

Many companies spend millions on getting their CRM and customer support systems in place. Stupid.

First. Let’s get a little bit 2008 when it comes to customer support. Don’t believe your IT department when they wanna throw a heavyweight system that makes your budgets explode. Instead, use something that is free, something that positions your company as new thinkers and at the same time caring. Use Get Satisfaction for example. Get Satisfaction is a direct connection between people and companies that fosters problem-solving, promotes sharing, and builds up relationships. Thousands of companies use this neutral space to support customers, exchange ideas, and get feedback about their products and services. Get Satisfaction is open, transparent, and FREE. Head in there and register your company. Who knows, maybe it’s even up there and people care about it…or the other way around. In that case, make sure you claim it fast and start supporting your customers.

What about CRM? Yep – no need to buy expensive software here either. Two places where you can get exactly what you need: Highrise and Salesforce. These two online CRM platforms provide Easy-to-use Web-based CRM solutions for sales, service, marketing, and call center operations that streamlines customer relationship management and boosts customer satisfaction. Salesforce is probably my number one recommendation as it is seamlessly integrated with Google Apps. On top of that they’ve already created a slick integration into the iPhone that let’s your salesforce access critical customer information instantly through the iPhone’s familiar touch screen format.

Lately however I’ve gotten more and more fond of Bantam Live that combines the power of Yammer with a typical CRM thinking.

7. Your website

So, the time has come to become public and show your ideas online. If you’ve done what I told you too and gotten yourselves a domain at Bluehost.com. Then it’s easy as one, two, three. There is a beautiful thing called Simple Scripts. It provides you with auto installations of the most common open source content management systems out there. WordPress, Drupal, Joomla, Geeklog, Mambo, Xoops…the list goes on.

My recommendation is WordPress. WordPress is originally a blog system that lately is being used more and more as a web content management system. Developers all over the world are adding drag and drop plugins that enable most things you would want on your website. And when it comes to designs, you have about 5000 free templates to choose from. The last couple of month more advanced templates such as Thesis and stuff Woothemes and has been released for a very small price. By using Bluehost auto installer you don’t have to care for anything in terms of configuring databases and emails on forms etc. It just works. All for the price of $6.95 a month…including hosting. Practically FREE.

If you feel you wanna get moving with WordPress. Here’s a guide I wrote some time ago on how to create a WordPress blog that rocks the world.

Once you’re done with the website and your posts and articles pile up, it’s time to burn your feed. Make sure you register your blog/site with Feedburner.

Why a Burned feed is better than a not-burned feed?

• Publicize your content and make it easy for people to subscribe.
• Optimize distribution so that your content is properly formatted for all of the major directories and can be consumed by subscribers wherever they are.
• It allows you to analyze your traffic to learn how many subscribers you have, where they’re coming from and what they like best.

If you’re planning to sell your products online.
Not to worry. Let PayPal handle the payments. If you are planning to sell tons of products, then let Amazon Webstore handle the whole thing. Cost? $59.99 per month. Ok, maybe not free, but a whole lot cheaper than a multimillion dollar system. And I assure you, the Amazon Webstore will work like a charm. If you’re Swedish, then head over to ebutik.se and you’ll be up and running before you know it. Costs for ebutiken? Practically the same as Amazon Webstore.

Oh, and if you’ve set your site up in WordPress you could actually build your site on Thematic and then use the child theme Simple Cart powered by the great plugin WP E-commerce and start selling your gadgets for even less.

You might wanna consider checking who’s the visitor to your site.
Then time has come for another FREE product. Google Analytics. Log on, register and implement on your WordPress driven site. Google Analytics will ask you to submit a site map that makes it easier for them to crawl your site, but not to worry, there is a FREE plugin for that as well. An alternative to Google Analytics is MINT. However, that requires a little bit of technical skills, but it might be worth it.

If you’re this far into the post and have gotten your website up and running. Make sure also to check out Google Webmaster Tools. There’s a lot of goodies there.

8. Company videos and photos?

Maybe you should pay for an expensive solution to make sure there’s now glitches when your clients visits your website. NOOO, open a Flickr account, place all your videos and photography there. This way you’ll make sure you pay nothing for a fantastic streaming and storing solution. Something you normally pay at least a couple of hundred thousand dollars for normally. Cost? $24.95 a year! And oh, I forgot. If you got a hacker in your organization, you can easily use the Flickr API and create your own video and photo applications. Finally the beauty of this is that you can use a simple drag’N’drop plugin to showcase both the photos and the videos on your site and at the same time everyone who think your company is the shit, they can send these things further. By using Flickr you also make sure you have a presence in more than one place. Social networking! Obviously you can also do exactly the same with your videos on YouTube, but maybe it’s easier to place them all in one place.

There is however a new Danish player in town since a couple of weeks back. They’re called 23Video. Their business idea is pretty simple. Build your own video portal, host as many videos as you want and pay no more than 675$ a month. Splendid idea for you who wanna host your own stuff.

Whatever you do, you should make sure that you spread those videos outside your own or the network you choosed. An excellent product that I’ve written about long time ago and was reminded about in the comment field of this post is TubeMogul. TubeMogul lets you spread your content over tons of video sites and you’ll get a great overview of how it’s performing.

Let’s move on. It’s time to put that business presentation of yours into action.

9. Creating banners and TV commercials?

Of course you should run banners and TV commercials. But SEO, affiliate programs and Adwords is the shit.

Hiring an agency will of course give you the best results. But, let’s say you’ve just started, since you already spent about $10 on Flickr your pockets are empty. No worries. Now that Google features TV ads on their websites it’s easy to head over to Jivox or Spotmixer and start putting that wonderful piece of your together. Once you have created that wonder ful piece of your’s head over to Videoegg or Google TV ads and start spreading the words.

When it comes to creating your own campaigns and banners you should also consider placing competitions on sites like 99 designs. You’ll get great stuff while paying close to nothing. Look, Robyn does it.

10. Search Engine Marketing – SEO/SEM

Oh, this is probably the most complex thing you can put your mind to. First of all, before you even start you gotta get a shitload of traffic in order to experiment with it. And once you got that valuable traffic you are probably to afraid to try and you won’t make use of your SEO knowledge anyway. But luckily there’s people who can point you in the right direction – Aaron Wall, the founder of SEO Book.com. Of all the books and all the sites I’ve read on SEO marketing when I started writing this post, SEO Book.com was one of the best. Some time ago though Google published their version of a SEO book, and that one is of course free so I’d recommend you try that one first.

Apart from reading up on SEO at home I do recommend you to start following Nikke Lindqvist, Jesper Åström and Simon Sundén. Three friends of mine who shares their ideas through their blogs. Nikke and Simon in Swedish and Jesper in English.

11. Marketing

When I say marketing most people start thinking about sales people, advertising, events and getting articles about your product into newspapers and TV channel. Well, you can do without all of these channels. Think about it – ever seen an ad that sells Google?

What you’ve gotta do is get into Google Adwords, learn about affiliate marketing and get down with Facebook ads. There are of course tons of services out there. But if you become good at these three you’re almost there. If you then on top learn to master social media you’ll end up in those traditional newspapers and TV channels sooner or later anyway. Once you’ve got a database with clients you should get going with MyEmma or the better one – MailChimp. Two great email marketing services that will kick but.

12. You know what….I don’t have any energy left to finalize this post.

I just thought it was important to get it out there. So in order for you to get hold of nr 12 you’ve gotta learn how to do it by yourselves

Go get em!

ps. Feel free to share more ideas and tricks in the comments of this post!

Today there was an article in the newspaper Svenska Dagbladet where I together with another six people ranked how Swedish politicians behaved in social media. Here is a short post to let my Swedish readers in on the background.

Idag hade Svenska Dagbladet en text om politiker och sociala media. Jag tillsammans med Joakim Jardenberg, Björn Falkevik, Marie Demker, Therese Göterheim, Sofia Mirjamsdotter och Brit Stakston uttalade oss.

Både Joakim och Brit har publicerat sina svar till Svenska Dagbladet så jag tänkte göra detsamma. Jag hade däremot lite svårt att överhuvudtaget lista några politiker (ni som följer mig har säkert läst min åsikt om politikerna och sociala media tidigare ) därför skickade jag följande svar till journalisten Tobias Brandel som stod bakom artikeln:

Hej Tobias! Nu har jag kollat igenom hela den här listan och kan bara konstatera att samtliga politiska bloggare borde gå följande grundkurser:

1. Kommunikation.

Hur får man människor att intressera sig för något som man inte redan har en relation till. Alla bloggar (utom möjligen Philip Wendahl) saknar totalt unikitet och intresseväckande text, bild eller filmer på första sidan som gör att man söker sig neråt. Självklart lägger man några extra sekunder på bloggar där bloggaren är en stor profil redan från början (Läs Carl Bildt, Maria Wetterstrand osv) men så är ju inte fallet i 95% av alla bloggar.

2. Photoshop eller annat motsvarande bildbehandlingsprogram.
Att enkelt kunna beskära bilder och se till att innehållet går att ta till sig på ett smakfullt sätt borde alla som har en blogg lära sig.

3. Fotografi
Att själva dokumentera saker som i mina (och säkert dina) ögon blir unikt och därmed intressanta indragare till artiklar borde alla kunna. Detta borde såklart ligga under Creative Commons så att det i vissa fall också hamnar i tidningarna med referens till bloggaren som fotograf. (Johan Büser utgör ett litet litet undantag. Kursen i fotografi och sociala media skulle han ändå behöva gå men han fotograferar åtminstone.)

4. HDKamera
Att i princip all utom någon enstaka ( exempelvis Magnus Andersson som helt saknar kvalité ur ett produktionsperspektiv) person helt avstått att använda sig av en kamera är helt otroligt. Istället skriver man sida efter sida med text som ingen utom de närmaste och de mest initierade orkar sig igenom. Jag har själv sedan länge talat om Gary Vaynerchuck och hans arbete med WineLibraryTV

Varför har ingen av politikerna en egen jingel. Varför har ingen av politikerna en kvalitativ video kanal. Varför använder sig ingen av politikerna av video för att kommentera andras bloginlägg.

5. Sociala media
Visst. Flera av politikerna har öppnat en Facebook Fan page där man kan “följa” dem. Exempelvis Maria Wetterstrand hänvisar i sin sista blogpost till sin Facebook Fan Page där sista inlägget just nu är från en Salmonsson Ann-Kathrine som frågar “Varför svarar du inte på frågor här på loggen????” (jag tyckte hela den grejen var så lustig så jag bifogade en skärmdump av den delen)

Maria Wetterstrand talar tyst på Facebook. (Uppdaterat: Marias medarbetar har kort besvarat frågan. Men det är ju i sig ett smått tragiskt sätt att hantera sina ‘fans’. Särskilt när det gäller just en sån fråga)

Jag saknar fortfarande helt en närvaro på Bambuser, Slideshare, Delicious, Livestream, Flickr, Vimeo, Viddler, osv osv osv. Det vill säga alla andra kanaler där människor finns.

Min slutsats är helt enkelt följande. som en god förebild hur någon gör video av sin passion.

De flesta politiker, helt säkert med några undantag jag missat, ser sociala media och digitala kanaler som ännu ett medium där de kan skrika ut sin information till andra och där syftet inte alls är att komma någon närmre. Visst. Man svarar ofta på kommentarer i sina bloggar. Men det är väldigt få kommentarer som kommer från människor utanför den politiska bloggkretsen utom i de fall där dessa är hatkommentarer. Man lyckas inte beröra oss vanliga människor och det är nog inte bara jag som aldrig fått ett tips i hela mitt liv om en politikers intressanta blogg.

Jag känner att jag inte kan ge dig en lista på 10 eller ens 5 intressanta politiker ur ett digitalt perspektiv. Det döljer sig helt säkert några där inne men de kräver att jag sätter mig och läser deras innehåll. Och chansen för det är lika stor som att jag lusläser riksdagens motioner för att se om något intressant poppar upp. Det är helt enkelt för svårt att sätta in sig i så mycket textmassa när inget sticker ut vid första ögonkastet. Troligen känner jag precis samma som övriga väljare.

Ja, där slutar mitt svar till Tobias. Själv tyckte jag det var riktigt intressant att se vad som kom ur det. Som vanligt blir ju saker och ting tagna ur sitt sammanhang, men den här gången blev åtminstone det mesta (det lilla som valdes ut) intakt.

Intressant är dock att artikeln verkar ha väckt känslor på alla möjliga sätt. Tokmoderaten, Jonas Sjöstedt, Arkelsten, Thomas Bohlmark, Johan Westerholm, Mina Moderata Karameller, Mina Tre Kronor och Niclas Strandh tycker alla till. Uppdaterat - Magnus Blogg hänger på tåget. Och så även Peter Andersson. Också opassande.

Uppdaterat: Tobias Brandel följer upp med Twitter intervju av Fredrik Federley och Göran Hägglund i dagens SVD. Strålande!

Just when I thought I was done renovating our home I ran into this control system that enables regulation and control of our complete building with the touch of a finger.

The Gira Control 19 Client is a PC-based control and regulation unit with a touch screen. It becomes a home station for door communication in combination with the Gira DCS-IP-gateway. The Gira Interface makes all functions easily accessible.

The company behind this is called Gira and they offer a broad range of intelligent building technology for convenience and security. They provide us with devices for networking home technology, music control for all rooms and comprehensive switch ranges, plus numerous functions for door communication, energy and light outdoors – and it all fits together.

Connect whatever you want to your control devices

What I truly love about this system is the fact that you can build whatever you want on this platform And just recently they also released an iPhone app that lets you control your house while you’re on the road.

Control your house with your iPhone, iPod touch or iPad…

…or why not answer a video call via your light switch

As soon as I’ve got this system Installed I’ll follow Jesse Rosten’s example below and buy a couple of iPads and iTouches to be attached to my wall with some velcro. And then the control of my house (and the rest of my life) will be completely mobile.

ps. These Giro guys truly need some guidance when it comes to digital marketing. Low res photos and YouTube videos only in German makes it pretty hard to spread the news.

Challenge the establishment. That’s what you should do if you’re young and don’t really have to care about being fired. (Actually that’s what you always should do!) That’s exactly what the students over at Berghs School of Communication have done this year once again.

Their contribution to an often shallow advertising world is driving sustainability. They’ve decided to make their entire final exhibition about sustainability, they’ve established a prize that award sustainable communication and they’ve also just launched their campaign site that promotes their final exhibition – A Sustainable Plan.

About a month ago I got the question if I could share my point of view on sustainability on their site. Their question really got me thinking but then last week I came back with my answer. Read it there or here:

Sustainability and brands – my point of view

A choice between choosing and not to choose

It’s not up to me to define what sustainability is all about. It’s up to each and one. You and me need to decide for ourselves. What are we prepared to do to save the world and maybe even more importantly – what are we not prepared to do. After all sustainability goes both ways. A choice between choosing and choosing not to choose. But it’s our choice.

The problem today is: What are we choosing?

The future ecosystem of consumption it built upon trust between brands and consumers. Responsible brands, they provide us people with guidance. Through their communication brands lead us into a sustainable future. The products and services they offer us are the tools we need to lead the life we choose while helping this planet to endure.

This ecosystem is a fragile one. After all, how can we as individuals really know if a pair of jeans are made out of ecological fabrics. How can we know that a chair produced in the third world hasn’t been put together by kids. What says your favorite brand aren’t lying when their telling us that they are giving back to society?

Let’s be honest, very few brands have even started their journey to become truly sustainable and it’s because most brands still run their business with one goal – make money. Behind that thick door that leads to the board room you’ll find a bunch of people that have been around for ages. Most successful brands today are very good at two things – making money while staying ahead of competition. In order to do that they’ve built up walls of secrecy. For these brands transparency is a bad thing. Yet transparency is exactly what we consumers need to be able to separate the green-washers from the true heroes. So, for now we’re left with trust. Trust what brands are telling us about their sustainable plans but not truly knowing the real ruth.

Governments all over the world are shaping new laws and regulations that will lead both brands and consumers towards a sustainable future. Until they’ve done with their work we as consumers write the laws that drive change. Our money is our pen and the lifestyle we lead is our paper. Award brands that are acting sustainable and transparent while punishing the greenwashers. It’s our only option.

So, let’s end this where we opened. It’s a choice between choosing and not to choose. And if your brand is not part of the sustainable ecosystem for real – I’ll choose not to choose.