Science Communication Conference in UK

The British Science Association is a registered charity that exists to advance the public understanding, accessibility and accountability of the sciences and engineering in the UK.  This year there was a special focus on science communications using new technologies for public engagement.

See more: http://www.britishscienceassociation.org/web/ScienceinSociety/ScienceCommunicationConference/Science+Communication+Conference+2011+Reports.htm

The Latino Digital Divide: The Native Born versus The Foreign Born

By Gretchen Livingston, Senior Researcher, Pew Hispanic Center

 

 

Technology use among foreign-born Latinos continues to lag significantly behind that of their U.S.-born counterparts. The nativity differences are especially pronounced when it comes to internet use. While 85% of native-born Latinos ages 16 and older go online, only about half (51%) of foreign-born Latinos do so. When it comes to cell phones, 80% of native-born Latinos use one, compared with 72% of the foreign born.

Read more: http://bit.ly/97fp3z

LinkedIn Courts Brands

LinkedIn’s latest feature, Company Pages, encourages the social network’s 80 million-plus members to become brand ambassadors, posting product reviews and services on their profiles. It seems like such an obvious utility for LinkedIn members, it’s surprising the site hasn’t launched the feature before now.

Simply put, it lets companies showcase their products, services and associated recommendations on the site. As LinkedIn’s announcement notes, “Company Pages will enable companies to build their brand through network-aware recommendations, giving members rich, credible insights into how any given product (or service) is perceived by their fellow professionals.”

It’s launching with 40 companies (including Microsoft, Dell, Liberty Mutual Insurance, and JetBlue) that have now added a “Products and Services” tab on their Company page, and it will be rolling out to all companies and small businesses this week.

“For companies, both large brands as well as small businesses, Company pages now allows you to showcase recommendations from your customers and helps build your brand virally and credibly on LinkedIn,” the announcement continues. “Each time a LinkedIn member endorses your products or services, their recommendation becomes visible to all of their connections and could spread virally. When you promote and curate these recommendations, you have some of the most credible, authentic endorsements of your products on your Company Page’s Product tab.”

“A big part of what we’re working to do is becoming the essential source of information for our membership,” said Jeff Weiner, CEO, to the Wall Street Journal.

Making LinkedIn members brand ambassadors will inevitably beneft the site and help boost its member companies by elevating word-of-mouth.

“Company Pages take product and service recommendations to another level, allowing professionals to benefit from the considered perspectives of those whom they trust and relate to the most — the people they know,” said Weiner. “By displaying their strongest recommendations to prospective customers and employees on LinkedIn, businesses can use Company Pages to accelerate growth and trust in their brands.”

LinkedIn’s recommendations service puts the professional social network in direct competition with scores of sites that already use reviews and ratings – but management believes the association with real-world professionals adds a distinctive gravitas…Facebook’s brand fan pages included.

“As opposed to an anonymous review, here we have the advantage of not only having the reviewer identified, but you’re going to be able to find people in your network whom you would have reason to trust even more,” said David Yoffie, senior associate dean at Harvard Business School.

Company Pages is free and supports product and service endorsements, videos, product information and targeted ads. Powered by LinkedIn’s new InPages platform, businesses can spotlight star employees on LinkedIn Careers tabs.

Charter customers of Company Pages include:

•    AT&T Business Solutions
•    AdMeld
•    Avaya
•    Citibank India
•    Dell
•    Deloitte
•    E*TRADE
•    Eastman Kodak Company
•    Exact Software
•    FreshBooks
•    FT Press, a division of Pearson
•    Harvard Business School Executive Education
•    HP
•    JetBlue
•    Juniper Networks
•    Liberty Mutual Insurance
•    Michael Saunders & Company
•    Microsoft Corporation
•    MoreVisibility
•    The Open University
•    OpenX
•    Philips
•    Rypple
•    Samsung Electronics America
•    Sequentia Environics
•    Squarespace
•    StrongMail
•    TargetCast TCM
•    uTest
•    Volkswagen India
•    Widgetbox
•    Zoocasa

Source: Brand Channel

Education 3.0

Did you Know?

Writing for the web

By Raúl Morales

In most online efforts the message and the medium are intertwined.

In Fact the content produced is worthless if it´s never read or found. Therefore we, online writers have to begin writing with the technology of search ranking, social, viral and linkeach in mind.  Online copywriters need to be proficient in organic search SEO and SEM so that the content or message become relevant to the willing audience according to the search engine algorythims.

Also the message as in tradicional mass media should be more like content. In other words, the web offers a great medium to deliver useful information in progressive bites that are not overwelming like a white paper, but that provide information in incrementral depth from basic to technical, from image to features and benefits all the way up the confort level of the reader.

In direct mail we used to say that real estate is valuable and limited referring to the piece of paper where you communicate, so there was only room to highlight the most relevant benefits and features and the mandatories.  But in the Internet we always have hyperlinks, a website to visit, or another page. Moreover, we can talk, persuade and convert (sell) from diferent points of view (POV) i.e. think of a product or information that is used in two different ways by different audiences like pro and amateur, like an anatomically correct doll that is used for forensic interviews by professionals at child protection agencies vs. the same anatomically correct dolls used by parents and educators in child sex education, or explaining and manage the expectation of a young child when a sibling will be arriving. Here the relevant features, the language and POV will be different and the two audiences probable deserve to be talked to in different ways and the marketer can afford to do so online.
Two well marketed and optimizad landing pages tailored for that audience and those keywords will do a better job at relevancy and persuasiveness even though they could boiled down to one common feature page or shopping cart than trying a “one size fits all” approach like in direct mail where production costs would force us to talk to all with one letter or a limited cell matrix.

This is perhaps the main difference with direct mail: the fact that we don´t know who´s reading or under what search or link is going to be found and the fact that we have this endless inexpensive paper to write as much as is needed.