Blog of Ronnestam » Research

Stay Ahead Of The Competition – Here’s How I Do It.

ronnestam — Fri, 11 Mar 2011 20:36:17 +0000

Back in 1980, Michael Porter (most famous of creating Porter’s Five Forces) published the study Competitive-Strategy: Techniques for Analyzing Industries and Competitors. It was more or less the beginning of what you today would call Competitive Intelligence - the action of defining, gathering, analyzing, and distributing intelligence about products, customers, competitors and any aspect of the environment needed to support executives and managers in making strategic decisions for an organization.

Be Curious. Wonderfully photographed by Patricia Glogowski.

Personally I think that time has come for change. Organisation and brands today tend to believe managers are supposed to create business development departments that make sure the company stays ahead of competition. I don’t agree. In the complex world we live in it’s time to make each and every employee a part of that competitive intelligence process. In other words it’s up to you. You are the ones that can make it happen.

A constant flow of information.

The world is becoming smaller and smaller. The Internet has erased borders and will sooner or later erase even language barriers. As a result your company isn’t fighting the local competitor around the corner any more. Your brand and even you are going global. When you apply for your next job you’ll find yourself beat by someone who doesn’t even speak your language. On top of this the things you know might not even be worth knowing tomorrow. In fact, the half-life of your knowledge has gone from a lifetimes worth to three years according to research Fredrik Svensson referred to (YouTube in Swedish) as we (and my speech in Swedish) both spoke at Digdel some time ago.

As a result of all this we all have to listen, read and learn more about everything, every day, and every hour. It’ll be what your success depends on in the future.

Here’s Johan Ronnestam’s formula for keeping track of the world.

Back in 1996 I started to gather information online with different tools. It’s funny cause I’ve never enjoyed reading books on trends but online reading never seems to kill my curiosity. I guess it’s the fact that online information often is as fresh as it can come. It’s real time. So, here we go:

Netvibes – My hub of inspiration

My first and foremost tool is my Netvibes reader account that I’ve written about before. It’s filled with all kinds of things and to make sure I read the feeds I’ve entered the Netvibes site as my home page which means that every time I open my browser I’m being fed good things from all around the world – every day, every hour and every minute.

Netvibes – The source of my inspiration

Netvibes is simply an RSS reader that I’ve filled with about 350 blogs and websites that I think is necessary to keep track of. The content is a mix of both things I do have to read and other stuff that surprises me every day. When you’re looking to keep track of the outside world – make sure you’re constantly surprised by things you didn’t know you wanted to know about.

On top of that I’ve also filled it with filtered feeds. As an example I’ve gathered about 70 design blogs that are being pulled into one feed with the help of Yahoo Pipes. Another example is reading the top most saved bookmarks on Delicious. This way you’ll make sure that you read stuff you never dreamed of reading.

Netvibes is also the ultimate tool when it comes to creating dashboards in order to keep track of both your own brand and potentially your competitors. Head over to my other post on that subject.

Sharing is caring
Since I believe in sharing I also decided to post my Netvibes file here (right click to download) so that you can get going faster than you ever thought was possible. Then head over to my guide on how to install it here.

Twitter – Real time social P2P information distribution

Writing about things like this and not mentioning Twitter (here’s my Twitter account by the way) would be a crime. For many people Twitter seems like that stupid 140 character social network where people tell the world (that doesn’t listen) that they just brewed a cup of coffee. Nothing could be more wrong. Twitter, to me, is the ultimate combination of knowing what’s up in the world, keeping in touch with friends and other people who you don’t really know but might be interested what you’re up to.

Once you’ve registered an account you should of course start to follow a bunch of people. On Twitter there’s this thing called ‘follow friday’ where you more or less recommend your followers who to follow. Other people on Twitter tend to follow everyone back that follows them. In my case I actually try to read most tweets through out the day and given the fact that I’ve got more than 4000 followers it would be impossible to do just that. So in my case I’d say that my #FF are the 429 people I follow today.

In Twitter you can create your own lists (here are some I’m listed in) or follow other peoples lists. This is also unmatched. If you quickly wanna get updated (in real time) on a specific subject. Just go ahead and search for some authorities and then have a look at which lists these people are placed in. Follow one of those lists and you’ll be amazed how many great things you’ll learn in no time.

Don’t get stuck with the Twitter site. Use Tweetdeck or something similar.

When you start your Twitter venture. Don’t forget to download some kind of Twitter reader to your desktop. Using Twitter via their webpage just wont work over time. There are tons of different tools you can use. Personally I use Tweetdeck for my computer and an app called Osfoora for the iPad and iPhone. As with everything else – keep experimenting and try different tools as you get more used to this social network.

Finally, using Flipboard as stated below, in combination with Twitter and Twitter lists is the ultimate laid back ‘keeping up to date’ tool.

Flipboard – Social Reading.

This app for my iPad is the most wonderful tool in the world. Not only does it let me read my Facebook accounts and my Twitter feeds as a book. On top of that I can enter other Twitter lists, searches, Flickr accounts and most importantly Google reader accounts.

Flipboard lets you read feeds relaxed and focused

What I’ve done here is analyzed my Netbives reading behavior and then collected the 50 most important ones. I’ve then imported these into my Google reader account that I personally don’t use in my computer since I think the presentation mode stresses the hell out of me and makes it impossible for me to stay on top of my content. But with the help of Flipboard that problems is solved.

By downsizing my Netvibes feeds into the most important feeds and reading these on my iPad I’ve got the perfect tool to keep track of the world when I’m on a plane, a bus, a train or just wanna lay down on the couch and consume inspiration.

Delicious – Social Bookmarking

Another tool of mine is Delicious. It’s more or less a social replacement of your bookmark manager that you’ve got in your browser. The difference is that it’s cloud based and therefor always accessible. Comment your bookmarks and tag them with keywords and slowly but surely you’ll turn your bookmark history into a searchable history. Personally I like to tag things with both keywords, client names that they might be important for and finally cases that I often use when I speak in public.

(Note. Yahoo has signaled that they might shut Delicious down. But it seems it wont happen any time soon)

Instapaper – Turning Internet Pages Into ‘Books’

Then of course there are always resource that might seem to long to read of the screen. The computer screen that is. The Instapaper combined with your iPad or iPhone is the ultimate tool.

Instapaper turns ugly websites into a beautiful read

When you end up finding yourselves short of time, simply save the link to Delicious and then click ‘read later’ that you’ve place on your bookmark bar once you’ve created an account over at Instapaper. Boom – now that site of yours is transformed into book-look-alike that you can open on your mobile device. Once there you can favorite, archive or delete the text.

Ouora – Ask And You’ll Be Answered

Got a question. Quora probably got the answer. Otherwise just go ahead and ask. It’s as simply as that.

LinkedIn groups – Social professionals

LinkedIn hasn’t really turned in to my favorite tool just yet. But I do like the groups in there. The best part of that are usually the summaries that are being sent to me via email. I’m a member of some 40+ groups at the moment and even though lots of them are filled with spam – every now and then a pile of diamonds pour out of that network.

Facebook – Reach more than 600 million people!

Last but not least. Let’s not forget Facebook in this post. Finally, tons of good things come to me via Facebook. Both from the people I’m connected with, but also through the groups and pages I’ve liked. Use the search in Facebook and find the groups and pages that match your interests.

So. That’s how I do it. Of course I could go on about podcasts, Slideshare, YouTube, Flickr tons of other sites. But the stuff mention above is what I constantly come back to every day.

Feel free to leave your own tips in the comment field!

Social Media And Our Beloved Europe? The Truth Or At Least Part Of It.

ronnestam — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 06:02:24 +0000

Students over at the Berghs School of Communication asked for some advice on research about social networking behaviours in Europe.

As I gathered my links and sources from my Delicious account I ran into this wonderful presentation below by Tom Smith from Trendstream. The presentation was given by Tom to the IAB Europe Social Media Research Showcase, sharing insights from Wave 1 of the Global Web Index. It’s well composed and extremely valuable if you’re into branding, communication, advertising, business development and social media. So I thought I should share it with you too!

Tom lists three big trends that will impact your brand in 2010 based on Social Media involvement across Europe.

The passive impact of social media is bigger than the active one
We increasingly consume content and information based on the consumer network
Digital networks are much now bigger than our face to face ones

So there you go. Nothing to blame on now. Just get going!

A Book, MashUp, PDF or Whatever You Wanna Call It By Johan Ronnestam

ronnestam — Wed, 30 Dec 2009 10:27:37 +0000

I’ve always wanted to write a book. This is NOT it!
So far this year my blog have had more than 115 000 unique visitors and just over 240 000 visits. I’ve written more than 500 blog posts covering everything from design, gadgets, trends, technology, advertising, innovations, personal things, branding and more.

About 28% of the visitors during this last year have ended up reading a post that was tagged with branding. That’s probably not a coincidence since besides trends and creativity I’d say branding is the subject that is the most dearest to me.

When I’ve been looking deeper down into the stats I’ve seen that many of you visitors haven’t really explored my blog beyond the posts on the first page or the actual post you came to read. This is why I thought it made sense to gather them all like this – ‘Top 10 Blog Posts on Future Branding and Communication From Ronnestam.com’ - My first book.

A Book, MashUp, PDF or Whatever You Wanna Call It By Johan Ronnestam

Even though this isn’t actually what I would call a book it’s been the perfect opportunity for me to experiment with the production process of a book. I’ve put a big block in my calendar covering January, February and March and if everything goes right I will present my ‘real’ book sometime in April or May next year. It will be a book on how to integrate future communication with product and service development. One things for sure – I’m doing it on my own. But for now you have to do with this first book, mashup, pdf or whatever you wanna call it.

4 Ways to get your hands on Top 10 Blog Posts on Future Branding and Communication From Ronnestam.com With Love

1. Buy a signed copy of the printed book – 39€ including shipping world wide.

I’ve printed 150 books in Denmark at Norhaven. Out of those 150 I’m giving 50 signed copies away to the first 50 Twitter retweets of this post (if you live outside Sweden you have to pay for the shipping). If you wanna get your hand on one of the other 100 signed ones you either hope to get one at one of my speaking occasions during 2010 or you contact me to buy one for €39 including shipping costs.

2. Download the PDF for free (pay by linking or tweeting this blog post)

Here’s the PDF if you wanna download it and read it off your screen (lower resolution due to file size) or maybe print it yourselves. Like everything else on my blog it’s licensed under my Creative Commons license.

3. Read it on Slideshare or Scribd

Head over to Slideshare or Scribd, it’s your choice. But remember to spread the love and tweet the book.

View more documents from Johan Ronnestam.

4. Read each and every blog post here at Ronnestam.com

This is of course the simplest and fastest way. Get going below and if you like it tweet it!

Blog Post 1 – { Originally Posted October 7, 2009 }
All Your Brands Are Belong To Us

Blog Post 2 – { Originally Posted October 7, 2009 }
If you wanna get some brand love tomorrow you better get into the conversation today

Blog Post 3 – { Originally Posted September 26, 2009 }
Dear CEO’s, Board Members and Top Management – what’s more important? Wine or Change?

Blog Post 4 – { Originally Posted February 18, 2009 }
Let’s start a revolution – get of the boat and build yourselves a new brand transportation system.

Blog Post 5 – { Originally Posted February 1, 2009 }
Controlling your brand with creative excellence

Blog Post 6 – { Originally Posted August 25, 2009 }
Seduce us or excuse us – 11 ways to bring your brand up to date

Blog Post 7 – { Originally Posted January 2, 2009 }
Get your clown suit ready if you wanna reach out to consumers in 2009

Blog Post 8 – { Originally Posted March 4, 2009 }
WWRD – 36 things Ronnestam would do differently if he had control of brand that delivered broadband, telecom and television services

Blog Post 9 – { Originally Posted September 8, 2009 }
Why SAAB, Volvo, Ford, BMW, Volkswagen, Mercedes, Peugeot, AUDI, Chevrolet, Buick and the rest of the car industry should the adopt the iPhone model and develop the InCar OS

Blog Post 10 – { Originally Posted December 29, 2008 }
Brand and communication predictions for ?2009 by Johan Ronnestam

ps. At the moment I’m trying hard to finalise my predictions for 2010. Keep a look out for that.

Happy New Year!

Waving Good Bye To 2009 – Google Waving That Is!

ronnestam — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 09:08:10 +0000

Who said Google Wave couldn’t be made to good use. Hmm…I sort of did at this networking meeting the other day when we talked about the biggest fails of 2009. At least we haven’t seen that many good cases yet but of course they will follow.

Whirled Interactive (same guys who gave us Pulp Wave) use Google Wave as a tool for visualization and it’s is hilarious. This beats PowerPoint any day! Of course I’m not saying this is how you should use it but these guys sure sum up 2009 in the proper manor – use the ONE to that was supposed to do it all and turn it into a presentation video of what really did go down.

Thank’s MashUp!

The Future Is Not a Game. Or Actually It Is – The Superstruct.

ronnestam — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 21:48:14 +0000

The Institute for the Future in Palo Alto decided to give a go at the future. How? A game of course. Superstruct is the world’s first massive multiplayer forecasting game. The game, launched in october 2008, was constructed and launched by Jane McGonigal.

By playing the game, people help The Institute for Future chronicle the world of 2019 – and imagine how the human kind might solve the problems we’ll all face together. It’s obviously needed as the horizon for survival in the game right now is 2042 according to this special report.

Jane is a pretty cool chick and an expert on applying game design and game theory to real work and real business. Among other credits MIT Technology Review named her one of the top 35 innovators changing the world through technology, for her role in pioneering the field of alternate reality gaming.

Think about it! What good could a gaming scenario do for the future of your business? Maybe that’s where you should put your money?

If you think this post is a little bit over the nerd hurdle, then at least have a look at the wonderful visualization of this future world made by Density Design. Creative Director Donato Ricci, Concept developer Gaia Scagnetti, Visualizer Mario Porpora, Artist Michele Graffieti and Designer Luca Masud set out to solve the complex task of bringing the 2019 vision created in the game to life. Their result can be downloaded from Flickr. And it’s uploaded in a great quality, so any company with an office space big enough should get it and redecorate their walls asap.

ps. One last tip on how to keep up with the future. The Institute for the Future runs a pretty nice blog on the subject.

Mary Meeker Delivers the Hard Facts in Your Face

ronnestam — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 08:23:54 +0000

Last week I got hold of this presentation held by Mary Meeker, Managing Director Morgan Stanley at the Web 2.0 Summit San Francisco. It’s one of the more important time stamps I’ve seen the last couple of years. This one was created two days before Apple reported on their second quarter – beating the rest of the competitors with a 28 % better revenue.

It’s clear things are moving faster than ever. According to this presentation iPhone and iTouch is the “Fastest Hardware Usage Growth in History” (slide 38)

On slide 2 Mary outline important Internet trends. Ouf ot eight bullets three leave me (and they should leave you too) with somewhat of a nervous laughter.

1. Mobile usage is and will be bigger than most think.
3. Next generation platforms (social networking + mobile) driving unprecendeted change in communications and commerce
8. Mobile-related share shifts will create / destroy material shareholder wealth.

Conclusion: If you’re working at Nokia, SonyEricsson or another big as dinosaur – you’ve better start doing something creative to get away from that Meteor!
MS Economy Internet Trends 102009 FINAL

What are people doing online while you’re reading this post

ronnestam — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 05:33:35 +0000

A Tweet from Gary Hayes caught my eye this morning. I followed a link and found this wonderful social media counter. Gary has built and coded this app based on data collected from a range of social media sites.

Sit tight and watch the thing start counting. After a couple of seconds you’ll grasp the power of social media. But also note the stats that tells you how many SMS’s that has been sent globally. People pay for that stuff!!!

21 Steps on How to Monitor Your Brand Online and Keep Track of the Conversation

ronnestam — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 19:41:22 +0000

And now to a very sensitive issue – monitoring. As some of you know my profession is leading brands into the future of communication. One of the more important parts of this is teaching them how to keep track of their own brands in the jungle of conversation. What are people saying about my brand, where does the conversation take place and how can we respond to it – simple questions really.

However, quite many brands don’t have a clue on how to do this or even worse – they haven’t even started to think about tracking conversations related to their brands.

When I speak about this we often end up talking about me and how I track my own brand. I try to keep track of every conversation out there that in one way or another has my name or brand in it. As often as I can I also listen to, respond or in other ways take the conversation into account – just as any brand should.

One of my Netvibes dashboards that I use to monitor Ronnestam online

Since sharing is caring – here is how to track keywords online on a daily basis without paying for it. NOTE – this doesn’t give you a 100% guarantee and the more generic your brand is the harder it is to monitor it, then professional help might be your solution. It also applies better to smaller brands rather than large ones. But you will gain some control over what happens online in most open forums and it’s a start!

Follow these 21 steps to take gain some sort of control of where your brand might be mentioned online

First thing. Head over to Google Alerts and enter the keywords you want to monitor. This is the easy one.
Then do the same over at Socialmention Alerts. An easy one too. However, these first two ones are a little bit slow so continue reading.
Register an account on Netvibes.com and once your done keep that Internet browser window open.
Open one more window (press CTRL+N or CMD+N on a Mac)
In the new window, go to socialmention.com and perform a search on the keywords (for example the name of your brand) you want to track.
Once you have gotten your result. Look for the orange RSS icon in the top right corner.
Click the RSS Feed icon.
Now select the link in your web browser and copy (press CTRL+C or CMD+C on a mac).
Switch back to the window where you have your new Netvibes.com page.
In the top, press new Tab and name it with the keyword you searched for.
In the top left, click the green button ‘Ad Content’ and choose Ad a Feed in the drop down menu.
Place your marker in the field that says ‘Enter a feed address or website URL for auto detection’ and paste (CTRL+V or CMD+V on a mac).
Press the button Add Feed besides your pasted link.
Now press the little green button that says ‘add’ and you search result will be displayed in the bottom field below the Tab that you just named.
Switch windows and perform the same search in Socialmention but this time click the tab Microblogs above the search field
Redo the entire process and you have added your next search.
Once you are done you should have searches in each and every area from the web.
Now Switch window back to the one with Social Mention and go to Icerocket.com
On Icerocket you will find the RSS results to the left.
Now perform the same process except for creating new tabs in Netvibes.
Once done, go to Twingly.com and perform the same searches on both Blogs and Microblogs.
Last thing to do. Go to the preferences of your internet browser and change your startpage to netvibes.com

Now you will at least know if there’s any shit written about your brand and you have the possibility to act.

And of course I do know that some of you might think this sounds scary but this is the world we live in and you should act in accordance.

Google ads another weapon in the fight for change

ronnestam — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 20:26:36 +0000

Today Google launched their latest resource called the Google Internet Stats. It contains industry facts and insights from across five different areas – Macro Economic Trends, Technology, Consumer Trends, Media Consumption and Media Landscape. This is a great resource for us who are trying to make people understand what the future is all about.

I bet that we can expect more in the near future. Anyway it’s a great little tool for people like me who want more ammo in the fight for change. Here’s a little something that gives you an idea about what to expect:

5% of all time online is spent on Facebook.
By election day, fully 25% of people who pulled the lever for Obama were already connected to his campaign electronically
early three in five (57%) of youth consumers logged on to YouTube to watch a music video in the last 12 months, compared to 56% who watched a music TV channel
Social networks have a penetration of nearly 75% among European Internet users
According to Nielsen, 67% of the global online population visited a “member community” site in Dec 2008.
20 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every minute

Now go dig on your own.

Ah, by the way. Thanks @stefanronge for waving your flag about this!

I’m not your typical Swedish blogger

ronnestam — Sun, 17 May 2009 04:59:28 +0000

The other day Hans Kullin, writer of the excellent blog MediaCulpa, published BlogSweden 4 – his fourth annual blog survey.

According to the survey the typical Swedish blogger is a 16 to 20 year old female who reads about 6-10 blogs daily. Not me in other words.

Enjoy!

1.5 years has passed since I spoke about 10 trends 2012 at Daytona Sessions and in 1 hours its time again – this time without me speaking.

ronnestam — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 13:30:59 +0000

The 1st of November 2007 I was invited as one of the speakers at Daytona Sessions Vol 1.. Martin and Rasmus, the founders of Daytona wanted me to speak about digital communication in 2012. Said and done – I pinpointed 8 things that would happen and change digital communication in 2012.

My predictions and status today were and is the following:

A younger generation taking on management roles establish digital communication as marketing tool nr1.
We’re not quite there. But stats are telling us we’re not more than 1 or 2 years away from this one.

1. No communication without social communication.
Check. Barack Obama put the last nail in the coffin here. After his successful presidential campaign and looking at the top 100 brands in social communication I think we all can agree this one is a home run.

2. We will consume advertising in front of the TV again.
Sony and Windows went public with their cooperation around building windows into the next generation flat screens. Rumours around apple shows that they’re not far behind. We’re not consuming yet – but we will…soon.

3. We will consume [digital] advertising in our cars.
Not long ago Blaupunkt announced their latest stereo. It’s a grey little beauty (what else) that can play almost every format there is. But on top of that it’s got a 3G and Wireless connection. Didn’t I tell you!

4. No communication without innovation and interaction.
Have a look at communication from leading brands like Nike, adidas, Burger King, Volkswagen, Apple, Mc Donalds etc etc. We are there.

4. Three new market leaders on the mobile phone market
Apple had been on the market a couple of weeks when I spoke at the last Daytona Sessions. They’re now nr 3 in the worlds when it comes to business phones. Google announced Android only a month or so after. Not quiet there yet. Microsoft…hmm…still chasing. Palm has appeared from nowhere again. What about Nokia, Sony, Motorola? Still boring. This one is well on it’s way but it’s a tough one.

5. E commerce strikes with full force
This is the one I’m scared about. People seem stuck by the fact that you can buy things in a regular store. However, I did exemplify the drive behind this being the mobile applications that would make you the stronger buyer. Here we’ve already seen several examples of applications for the iPhone that lets you compare prices in real time. Getting the best price is easier than ever.

6. Open source will be the engine behind digital communication
Business week published a list of the most influential people this year. 3 of the top 10 were heading Open Source projects. I must say this is now a no brainer.

7. Google will be challenged by Microsoft.
About a year after the last Daytona Sessions Microsoft announced that they were to implement Windows Live Search into Facebook. That’s more or less the exact screenshot I had in my presentation in november 2007. Apart from that Microsoft are coming on strong from all directions when it comes to digital advertising. This is a race that will be extremely interesting to follow and it will end before 2012.

8. Development will go faster than we think.
And it does. Even though we’re witnessing the scariest financial crisis ever, development of digital platforms an new open source innovation is turbo charged. I’ve seen more things the last 6 month come out of the market when it comes to tech innovations than I’ve seen the last 2 years. Speed, speed, speed – if you don’t got it – get it!

To sum up. My mission was to give a prediction about what the next 5 years will bring. Most of the things I prediction has already come true and the rest will probably be in place before 2012. The one thing that amazes me is how wrong I was in terms of when since I personally thought most things would come true in 3-4 years. Now they came true in 1-2 year instead. Prediction nr 10 is obviously the one that was the most right.

Now I’m going to head into Rival and enjoy a fantastic evening.

Thank you Daytona for putting on a show!