by JimRaffel on May 2, 2010
Tomorrow morning I board a plane for the Info*Flex trade show. Time for a social media test of the strategies I have utilized over the past six months.
My social media test parameters
will be to keep track of the number of comments I get about blog posts, Facebook and Twitter activity. My intention is to count and categorize the comments. The idea for this test came from a conversation last night with my new friend @dwilde about quantifying B2B results of all my social media activities.
As a small business owner I follow my gut and know these strategies are working. As a blogger I never stop looking for the why and the how. It’s time to pick my head up look around and understand the results of all the hard work. Make no mistake about it social media is hard work when done correctly for business purposes as @imlucid pointed out in this post about advertising during difficult times.
I’m still working out how to track the results but I have a little over 24 hours left to figure that out. My thoughts are to track comments in three basic categories.
- Comments about blog posts (or the newsletter I send subscribers)
- Comments about Tweets
- Comments about Facebook
Also, for those who initiate a conversation I am considering asking them about the value of LinkedIn status updates and the new blog that is part of the ColorMetrix web-site as compared to this standalone product.
The KISS(Keep It Simple Stupid) principle will rule my decisions on a tracking methodology. The social media test must be easy to tally on the fly while working a trade show floor. If I make the measurement too complex I will either not do it, forget answers or incorrectly categorize results. I want results. I want good solid results of the social media test to come back and share with you guys.
If you have done something like this or just have good ideas please jump in the comments and share. I promise to do a blog post as soon after the show as I can to report what I learn.
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by JimRaffel on April 17, 2008
I believe virtual proofing is at the same cross roads ink jet proofing was around 2001. I am both hearing and observing information that provides growing support in my own mind for this position. First, I am not going to name any names in this post. Why? Because gut feelings and intuition are not fact.
Think back to 2001 and earlier as it relates to ink jet proofing. For a frame of reference think Print ’01 in Chicago, just try not to remember that 9/11 fell right in the middle of the show
We finally had a good stable pigment based printer. We had a few good RIPs emerging from the pack, but you still really needed 3rd party color management software to make the whole thing work. Of course there was the nightmare of the day which was trying to find a suitable media for Graphic Arts proofing purposes.
The reality was if you understood all the steps involved (or hired a good color management consultant) you could make decent ink jet proofs that rivaled the standard analog and digital proofs of the day.
Now think about virtual proofing today. While I believe there are at least two (and quite likely more) solid products capable of producing virtual proofs rivaling the ink jet proofs now carrying the standards flag; getting even those two systems to work in multiple locations can and does prove tricky at best. This is no knock on the virtual proofing software vendors, but instead really an issue of hardware.
Putting together a solid ink jet proofing system requires an end-user to source a printer, media, a RIP, a computer to run the RIP, and probably a good color management consultant as well. Putting together a solid virtual proofing system requires sourcing a display…let’s stop right there. There is more to it, but the display is proving (at least my gut tells me this) to be a huge thorn in the side of virtual proofing working in multiple locations.
I am hearing some crazy numbers like less than 1 in 10 “qualified” displays can be used in a 2 or more location virtual proofing set-up. If this is true (and I am starting to think it is), than it is no wonder virtual proofing is being used more and more for intermediate color (as I predicted in a previous post) and good old reliable ink jet proofs are still being produced as a final contract proof.
I still believe virtual proofing will continue to make gains over hard copy proofing. I just think it may be a little slower than we thought until this display issues gets worked out. Part of the problem is that measuring displays is not the easiest thing in the world to do….but that could be a whole post or even a complete white paper.
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