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Marissa Mayer – The before and after becoming a CEO

Marissa Mayer seems to be everywhere at the moment. Whenever I am on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, I’m seeing news in all my feeds at the moment. Obviously since taking the CEO and President of Yahoo roles her profile while already large when at Google, seems to have increased exponentially.

One of the things that I realised was that I had never actually seen a video of her speaking. All I ever really saw was a similar shot taken of her smiling when on a forum or during a presentation – much like the image above. So I thought I would search on YouTube for some videos and I stumbled across this relatively short video interview of Marissa Mayer with Charlie Rose for the IAB.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6zP1p8ZTCio

Mayer on The Importance of Listening

In the video, Marissa Mayer discusses what its like to be a CEO and her early successes. One of the main things that she said that resonated with me was this:

I think the most important thing I have learned about being a CEO is the importance of listening. People talk about what changes as you grow in your career. Someone pointed out to me which I think is really true is that early in your career you get ahead by following the rules perfectly. Like getting things done on time, like following the rules and meeting expectations.

Mayer on Breaking the Rules

Another pertinent point that Marissa Mayer went on to say was that its important to understand when to break the rules and when the rules do not apply.

When you become an executive it becomes knowing when to break the rules or knowing when the rules do not apply.

I must say that I have been impressed with Marissa Mayer and her leadership of Yahoo. They have seen traffic increase, been building new products and innovating.

I believe that to grow in the digital space, you need to be doing all of those things. Without building new products, innovating and focus, you will be left behind. Big businesses are competing against small start ups who are amassing large groups of users without worrying about how to monetise this audience until much later.

Too often I see big companies shooting great ideas down because of lack of investment or lack of resource. While I understand how traditional businesses work, this is not how the company with grow. They need to take more risks. They need to start pushing the boundaries.

When faced with a new platform, they tend to just try to repurpose their existing products on to it, rather than taking advantage of the technology and trying something new.

I’ll be keeping a close eye on Marissa Mayer and Yahoo as I think that they are on course to grow further and surprise a lot of people on the way.

Mobile Native Browsers vs In-App Browsers

I was surprised to find that Adobe Analytics (Adobe SiteCatalyst or Omniture, depending on how far back you go) doesn’t allow you to report on mobile browsers. Even though, I’ve been using Adobe SiteCatalyst for many years and I had always assumed that the ability was there. I am actually a little ashamed that I hadn’t noticed this before.

SiteCatalyst Device Type with Browser Breakdown
SiteCatalyst Device Type with Browser Breakdown

The main reason for me to look at this was that a colleague sent me a link about Embedded Mobile Browser Usage on http://www.lukew.com. While the blog post is more to do with how developers should be testing on in-app versions of mobile browsers as well as native browsers. This is mainly due to the in-app versions of Safari and the native Android browsers having less functionality and lower rendering powers. Luke explains that the in-app version of Safari for example does not include the Nero Javascript engine, certain Safari caches, or the “asynchronous” rendering mode. Meaning that web sites could appear to load more slowly, contain errors etc that would normally not be detected if testing on the native versions.

As Facebook and Twitter app usage continues to grow, its going to become more and more important to understand the differences between these different browser types and how users browse your sites when using these apps. In addition, when users click on your content from apps such as Facebook and Twitter, they appear as either Direct or Typed/Bookmarked depending on which analytics package you use and whether you are using any form of campaign tracking or not.

When I realised that Adobe Analytics does not track mobile device browsers, I turned to our implementation of Google Analytics. Fortunately, GA does track in-app browsers on iOS – so you can see data for Safari and Safari (in-app).

What I have found in my initial dive into this is that users browsing our sites using an in-app verison of the native browser consume less content (in terms of pages per visit), has a higher bounce rate and are on the site for about half the time than the native version.

In-app browsers vs native mobile browsers
In-app browsers vs native mobile browsers

What is going to be hard to work out is whether this is due to a behavioural or technical motivation.

If the site renders slowly, contains certain errors, or is not fully optimsied for the in-app experience, you could attribute some of the reduction of usage to this rationale.

In terms of behavioural, you need to consider what users are doing. If I am on my Facebook app on my phone, its probably while I am in the middle of doing something else. Potentially on the toilet, in a meeting (hopefully my boss is not reading this) or in transit therefore I have limited time to view.

Also, to move this point further, if I am in my Facebook app, I’m also interested in seeing what other content my friends have posted. So I might just read the article that a friend posted, then click back in the app so I go back to my feed and continue my Facebook journey.

One of the main things that I tell colleagues at my job is that Analytics is great at telling you what happened. Trying to find the reasons behind a person’s behaviour is not generally achievable. You can find commonalities between certain types of users, segment them and try to implement changes to convert users to behave in the same way. But in terms of understanding the drivers for users to act in a particlular way is not something that I believe Analytics will answer.

You need to be talking to your users and understanding why they are doing what they are doing – whether it be done through social media, email or surveys. You really need to have all the information to make decisions and I believe that Analytics is only one part of it in this case.

Using Twitter well?

I came across this post just now on Mashable: http://mashable.com/2011/06/09/brands-twitter-success/

In it, Dave Kerpen – the CEO of Likeable – highlights 9 US based companies that use Twitter really well and I have to agree with his observations.

He points out that tweets need to stand out and have a personality behind them.

JetBlue has 14 people tweeting on their official twitter account and use it as a customer service channel – answering questions, apologising for poor service or delays, sharing special deals and more. They have over 1.6m followers so this is no mean feat.

Vevo engages with both their own followers and followers of the musicians that they feature, often generating debate. By engaging with followers of other tweeters, you can really start to increase your followers and increase your brand awareness.

I believe that Twitter should be used in this way. Not simply as an RSS reader where web sites auto post their articles, but to probe, ask questions, get involved.

Twitter offers real-time one to one to many conversations and can have such a huge impact on a brand’s presence online. Those that get involved and use it to communicate will reap the rewards.

Closing the Viral Loop – Beyond the Facebook Like Button

Most web pages that you visit nowadays contain a version of the Facebook Like Button.

Most web site owners assume that users know exactly what the like button is for, but what is it for? What exactly can be done with it?

In its most basic form, when a user likes a piece of content it appears on their Facebook Wall for all of their friends to see.

I suppose that the hope of web site owners is that the user’s friends will see this and then send users back to this piece of content. This concept is known as ‘Social Proof’ – where you are more likely to do something if one of your friends deems it ok to do so.

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_proof for more information on this.

So I can see why those who like to show off what they like to their friends would want to do this, but what about those users who are more passive in their consumption of media.

There is a rule that states that, with social media, 90% of passively consume media, 9% interact with content and 1% create the content. If we use YouTube as an example, that means that 90% of users watch videos, 9% comment on those videos and 1% actually upload the content.

If this is the case for the like button, only 9% or 10% of users actually use the like button. How do we engage with that 90% of passive internet users?

My suggestion would be looking to close the viral loop.

Closing the Viral Loop

I believe that users would be more likely to click the Facebook Like button if they knew what was going to happen and that they were going to get something in return from it.

Web site owners are asking users to be active on their pages, to help promote that content to users without asking for anything in return. This is a very lazy way to try to grow traffic.

What steps could be used to make the clicking of the Like button more attractive to users?

Firstly, box out the like button and tell them what it will do. ‘Do you like this story? if so, click the like button.’

If users are liking your site versus a piece of content and if they click like, they will receive updates straight to their Facebook news feed – tell them!  This would appeal to their passive consumption.

‘By clicking the like button, you will receive content updates to your Facebook wall so you don’t need to keep checking back on our site.’

The Open Graph – closing the viral loop

This is where the most interesting bit comes into play.

If a site has been more sophisticated with their integration and also integrated the Open Graph at the article level, users could actually be liking a product, an actor, a musician etc.

If this is the case, then I believe that closing the viral loop becomes extremely important.

If a user is on a music news web site, such as www.nme.com, and they are on the Black Eyed Peas artist page – http://www.nme.com/artists/the-black-eyed-peas – and they click like, they should receive updates from NME every time that there is new content posted up about the Black Eyed Peas.

At the moment, there is no incentive to Like the Black Eyed Peas – not unless the user is just that passionate about the band.

There is also no call to action. Just a plain old tiny Like button.

If the like button had a call to action and had its content feed for Black Eyed Peas set up correctly, it would be much more appealing for users to click.

‘Click like to get updates from NME every time we post new content on the Black Eyed Peas’

This would be the same on all sites across the Internet and I would argue that this would result in many more users engaging with the Like button.