“This is my blog, and I am going to give you an insight into social networking, entertainment, the music industry and my life.

It’s about acknowledging that the world is developing and we are in a digital age. I know it and you know it. Doors are opening and we now all have the opportunity to make something of ourselves, just by taking note of what avenues are available.
 With these avenues I have found myself understanding what the public demand is and why others fail. Does it mean I am successful? No. But I am a step further on my path to achieving success than I was yesterday.”

That was what I wrote in my first post on my first blog back in March 2009.

Fast forward three years and my how the spectrum has changed. I didn’t really have a plan back then but my vision was to share content ‘that I considered to be entertaining’. I was a final year Music Technology student also running an Events Management business spawned having felt that there was a gap in the local entertainment scene. Therefore by getting into the world of blogging I felt I could share the music that needed to be heard, events that needed to be promoted and connect talented people together.

Ambition is a funny thing

The shear drive of wanting to achieve so badly can take you on a variety of journeys that you never thought you would be on. Just so happens that with all the stress of pursuing a career in the music industry, I found myself eventually taking a different route to what I had known altogether.

The thing is, music was my life. Studying, performing, composing, showcasing and discussing all things music. It was my dream to grow a career in the music industry. Unfortunately that dream was halted as I couldn’t get that break I was looking for. Too competitive, lack of opportunities or too much bullshit, I managed to find a variety of excuses and such my frustration took me on a different path.

Make your passions your career

It’s taken until now to realise that leaving music behind to take a different path would eventually leave me with a hole filled with emptiness and uncertainty. I don’t regret any decisions that I made, because I managed to build something substantial that has got me to where I am, but if I knew what I do now, I would’ve no doubt made some different decisions. However, in times of reflection like these, I am able to understand and be grateful for what I have achieved and acknowledge that although I may have taken a side step in my journey, I am still able to find the correct path in the end.

I’m a pretty deep thinker (like you hadn’t realised) and my own progress got me wondering how many other people plough through life, always so focused on driving forward without a thought to wonder where they are going.

I urge you to take a moment and think about your journey, because realising how you got to where you are, will allow you to maybe acknowledge what drives you; and ultimately, help you visualise where you need to get to to find self fulfilment.

We are driven by our dreams, our aspirations and our passions. It’s the idealistic visions of what we yearn to achieve that excite us. It’s no coincidence that the happiest people I know are the ones that are living their lives doing what they love. You can read motivational books, watch incredible TED videos and surround yourself with brilliant people, but you’re only going to be truly happy doing something you are passionate about.

2012 and beyond

The obvious from this post ends in where this post began. That opening quote was no more real then than it is now.

I believe by incorporating the learnings and the contacts from my time working in Sport, the excitement I have for Movies and Video Games and the love and passion I have for Music, I can adapt my focus and my professional offering to something that I really believe in.

And it just so happens I’ve been given the professional opportunity to bring this all to the table. Im not in the game of blowing smoke without fire so no more on this just yet, but you can follow me on Twitter where all will be revealed soon.

Final thought

Although I enjoy writing these posts so that I can archive my progress, the main reason I write them is to share my journey with hope that it resonates with someone else out there. Hopefully from reading this post you may be thinking one of these two points:

a) What am I passionate about?
b) How can I incorporate what I am passionate about into my career?

Now all you need to do is take action. It’s time to Get off the Bench and into the Game. Time waits around for no man, yet ironically we all live our lives as if we have plenty of time to do everything we aspire to achieve. As morbid as it may sound, we are all on death row.

Isn’t it time you decided that there really may not be a tomorrow; so what are you waiting for?

Life is too short to settle – that goes for anything. Don’t settle because it’s easier. Don’t hide indoors when it’s raining – it’s always raining. Feel the rain on your face and stick your tongue out. Start saying yes more. Don’t wait. Don’t be patient. If you want to go somewhere – plot a course and don’t be afraid to leave behind those that don’t want to come with you; it’s their choice not yours. You have to spend time in the darkness to be able see through it. Rhys Howell

I have written posts previously on similar subjects so feel free to click one of the links below if you enjoyed this one. As always, thank you for reading. Luca

1). What is your Legacy?
An inspirational post into the topic of legacy and the pressure of creating one to leave behind.

2). Are you a Sheep or a Wolf?
Are you going to join the herd and watch the world go by, or do you have something to offer that sets you apart from the rest?

3). Get off the Bench and into the Game
It’s come back season… apparently, and while ive been away for a bit, this blog post is a re-introduction to the life of Luca.

Some time ago I wrote a post about the importance of analysts for online businesses. At that point I was moving into a new role where I was given the opportunity to build an offering of my own and I knew that I would make analytics the core.

After meeting Neeraj Sharma who works with Badgeville I realised I wasn’t alone in my understanding that behaviour is the key to understanding user engagement and holds the answers to hitting key business objectives.

This is a joint post we’ve curated in response to an article that went up on the We Are Social blog following a survey run by McKinsey Global. The results are quite alarming. You would ‘assume’ in a world where digital technology is at the forefront of all marketing activity, that brands and their employees would be actively embracing the opportunity to get a deeper understanding of their consumers and really work out what makes them tick. You know what they say about assumption though. Let me breakdown some of the excerpts in said article.

“less than a quarter of those surveyed are using analytical tools to refine their decision-making processes, even though 39% have increased access to data and insights. This reflects an important imbalance: while companies believe that social media are valuable to their brands, their ability to use analytics to better understand their ‘digital customers’ is hindering their ability to use online channels as effectively as they’d like.”

So even though 39% have ‘increased access to data and insights’, less than a quater (that’s less than 25% to those with no Mathematical ability or 1/4 for those who remember fractions in school) are using readily available concrete user data and customer insights to assist their decisions.

“32% of marketers agree that being able to generate and leverage deep customer insights is central to effective marketing, but they also say that this poses the greatest challenge to them. Interestingly, 11% of marketers stated that they face difficulty in assessing the effectiveness of their digital marketing because of the difference between traditional and online metrics.”

Why does being able to leverage deep customer insights pose the greatest challenge? Is it lack of training? Is it bad hiring? Are you not good enough for the job? Have these simple insights not yet been aired in the office? Or are people just lazy? Does your employer not care about their KPIs? Do they even have KPIs? Do they not know how to make any ROI? Is there to much focus on vanity metrics like Facebook likes? Or is it as simple as they just don’t care about the customer?

The post continued…

“Marketers are struggling to assess the impact of digital marketing because of their inability to translate analytic results into insight, or identify the right metrics in the first place. 31% of marketers feel that online metrics do not adequately quantify the financial impact digital marketing has generated for their companies. Alarmingly, 24% can’t even understand what these metrics actually measure.”

24% can’t even understand what these metrics actually measure. Does anyone else know how stupid that sounds?

Lack of leadership

“27% of respondents said they feel that they lack internal leadership on analytics. Meanwhile, one-quarter face difficulty in finding internal talent, and one in ten thinks that their HR department is ill-equipped to identify candidates with analytic skills. The greatest challenge, unsurprisingly, lies in funding. As a result of all these issues, only 4% of McKinsey’s respondents believe that they possess the necessary capabilities to effectively manage their business.”

The last quote in this post and probably the most important. 27% feel there is a lack of leadership. 10% think that the HR department can’t find adequate candidates. Numbers and analysis are for nerds right? The majority of you don’t need to know numbers because you can get by creating mildly engaging campaigns and pumping thousands into Facebook advertising. After all, Facebook is a business metric right?

Stop assuming and guessing

Lots of behavioral data surrounding the actions of your audience and your customers is right there in your analytics system screaming at you to use it. This would clearly allow you to deliver far more engaging and rewarding contextual content. If you are not using these insights to influence your marketing activity then you are just assuming the information, products and messages that you are serving are what your audience are looking for. How can brands keep making assumptions when all this incredibly valuable data is available and they have commercial business objectives to meet?

Lead don’t follow

All of this lack of understanding tends to lead brands to focus less on their website and business objectives and more on the social web. However, Facebook and the social web are actually causing brands more problems that acting as any form of solution. The social web is confusing. It’s more work. It needs far more resources than brands think. It’s unknown and it is always moving. On your website, the content and the data on it is owned by you, whereas on sites like Facebook you have the complete opposite, but nonetheless brands assume it is the answer to all their commercial problems and flock for a number of reasons;

a) Everyone else is on Facebook so we have to be there
b) There is 900 million users, jeez
c) You believe it will assist your brand reputation by being ‘transparent’
d) Your intern said it was where all the cool kids are
e) You read too much Mashable

or most likely,
f) Because you just don’t know enough about your customers and Facebook allows you to gain that level of insight you crave.

Let’s keep this simple; how many brands have made money from Facebook that they can measure? And if Facebook is used as a loyalty and influence tool, how many people know how to migrate the engagement within Facebook back to their own websites?

Unless you are a HUGE brand, it’s unlikely the referral traffic from Facebook to your online shop will make any real impact on your sales figures. Social media is; the stories that you create, leading to conversations and ultimately, transactions. Those who understand their data, know their customers and in return create the best stories (content).

A wake up call

“The time is coming when employers are going to be forced to walk around their offices and fire the people or their agencies who are not quantifying and providing real results.” (Neeraj Sharma – Badgeville) If you don’t understand your data, you don’t understand your customer. You can create as many engaging campaigns as you like but they will always lack the buy in that leads to advocacy, loyalty and long term engagement.

It’s time to stop assuming, making broad assumptions and estimating everything and time to learn the principles of data analysis and understand your users. Keep things simple, focus on the key business objectives and the behaviours you are trying to drive. Use this framework to to make a real difference rather than spending clients media budgets. If you don’t have the knowledge or tools, which is understandable as it takes time to both understand and apply the right principles – find the right experts who can, before you pay the price for your ignorance and are deemed to be arrogant by your users for not listening!

With Social Media being the over exaggerated terminology this millennium, most companies have looked to Social Media for a remedy by which they will create new and formidable revenue streams.

For some, this has been successful, and businesses have tapped into relationships and built engagement with their consumers. However for most Social Media is still a confusing area and businesses are constantly asking questions to their staff or their agencies as to how they can utilise their Social audience for monetary value.

For me; if you want to create new revenue streams using social media, you need to ask questions. The first being: ‘how much do we know about our customers?’

When our customers interact with our product online, they leave a trail of clues as to who they are. The more we understand about these clues, the more we can learn about our customers.

The reality

Businesses appear to be diving into projects with no clear understanding of who their customer is and thus are not developing products, or campaigns, that suit their target audience.

You know you want to create vibrant engaging campaigns that raise the awareness of your brand, and ideally you want to build new revenue streams and conversions too. But before you achieve all this, you need to attend to some simple fundamentals about your customers.

Ask the following questions about your customers and see what you come out with:

1. Who are they?
2. Where are they?
3. How did they find out about us?
4. Who are their friends?
5. Why are they interested?
6. Do they spend with us?
7. How often do they spend with us?
8. What have they bought?
9. What do they say about us?
10. How did they find the whole experience?

If you managed to answer all of these questions effectively; then great. Now go and develop what your customers really want, not what YOU THINK they want.

If not, then you clearly need to do your research into your customers.

Don’t worry, you’re not alone

Within Social Media particularly, plenty of companies will avoid research and detailed audits and focus on the bright and shiny development work that makes the most profit. Clients generally don’t demand said research and in some cases don’t even require mid-campaign/post-campaign reporting. (Insert blank stare).

I wouldn’t see it as a negative that as a brand you don’t know much about your online customer base, generally because the way in which your business operated for the last 10-20 years has done you very well. But take note, your consumers are online and their expectations have changed.

What consumers wanted from brands over the past century was based primarily around what they were told was the only option available from traditional media outlets.

Unfortunately for brands and advertisers, there are now multiple options for everything they could ever want. Mix this with the fact that these options are easier than ever to find, you now have a highly demanding, impatient customer who doesn’t have the time to listen to your waffle if you don’t know what their needs actually are.

What is expected from you as a Brand?

As a brand you need to work out what it is that you can offer as a reason (a why) into what your product can do that others cannot. You need to be able to tell a story into what your brand believes, because consumers are seeking trust and relationships, loyalty and rewards. You have to be able to give consumers not only what they want, but also what they need (or in most cases, what they think they need).

The only way you can do all this, is by understanding the trail of data clues your consumers leave behind, of which you can find out if you can effectively answer the questions above.

What is expected from you as an Agency

As an agency, you need to develop new products for your clients. You are expected as an agency to not only develop brilliant products, but also to be able to develop a clear rationale as to why you created it, who the core customer is, how you expect to grow traction and how you expect to gain conversions.

Yes we expect the client to provide some data into their consumer audience to us an agency beforehand, but I’d also do my own research and audit into the brand, their audience and their current range of products.

It baffles me how commissioned development projects can go ahead without deep and clear insight into the clients target audience. Yes, it takes time, and time is money, but if you expect to deliver results, you need to have a clear strategy; a strategy made up of rationale, data and analysis.

Sign off

Having worked both client and agency side, I’m able to work in a way knowing what a client expects from an agency, and also what an agency expects from a client.

Now working in an agency that has this same formula for progress is a breath of fresh air. From the first point of contact, to client brief, to pitch and then campaign development; we’re fully able to work knowing what the clients issues are and how we can address them, who their customer is and how we can converse with them and, ultimately, what their objectives are… and how we can meet them.

For some good information on running a Social Media audit of your brand or a client that will allow you to really gain some insight into your customer, check out this post by SEOptimise.

Feel free to contact me on Twitter directly for a natter.

Yesterday Tech Crunch’s Alexia posted an article entitled ‘I’d Rather Watch Instagram Than A Movie.‘ Highlighting how Hollywood is no doubt competing with what she described as ‘kill time’ startups. Fair point.

The post sparked a variety of interesting comments, some agreeing with Alexia’s argument and some against. I’m not going to debate the difference between Instagram or movies, because a person can spend their free time doing whatever they please. But from a society perspective, the mere fact that this kind of argument has legs is alarming.

The drugs don’t work, they just make you worse

Two years ago I wrote a post about how spoiled by technology we all are, with one excerpt being; “Technology can be just like a drug… Give someone a little taster and if they like it, they will want a little more.
Give them a lot more and they get addicted, they forget how they lived without it and begin to lose control.”

That was then, and this was one woman’s comment under the Tech Crunch article reaffirming my excerpt:

Hollywood aside, this fragmented behavior and loss of attention concerns me. I agree that the tech universe has found a way to entertain the masses. That said, social media can resolve to be a simple addiction rather than a habit with benefit.

Take heroin for example. It feels good…it numbs your serotonin receptors into submission. Without our understanding of heroin’s affect on the brain, we would all probably assume heroin was a great idea. But what about social media’s affect on the brain? What about the fact that most people can’t wait in line, have dinner, watch their wife give birth, etc without re-directing their attention to a group of mostly strangers?

Long term thinking is being affected by our constant diversions and short attention spans. So…go kill Hollywood if that’s your intention but try not killing your brain in the process. Do you think Plato could have written The Republic if he was constantly hounded by Twitter notifications? Social media has an amazing benefit but have we all forgotten the simple benefit of thinking in our own heads? If you can’t last 24 hours without your phone and social media, you’re an addict and as funny as that sounds, it’s not.

She’s right isn’t she? That comment was by Caroline Giegerich,a Huffington Post Blogger and Social Media Consultant.

A world in denial

So where does this all end up? In a world where residents of cities like London already live in fear of communication with strangers, afraid to make conversation while we commute and generally get extremely anxious about the unknown; how are we really moving into a better connected world? A world where we attend concerts, momentous events and amazing festivals only to experience them through the 4.5 inches held in our hands, exchanging the emotional excitement so that we can garner the attention from people we don’t even know. For what reason? Because we ‘crave’ the buzz and egotistical thrill of being in the spotlight. Still not addicted?

A moment of clarity

In the same comment thread, another user posted a link to a video of a poet known as Marshall ‘Soulful’ Jones performing a piece titled ‘Touchscreen’. Powerful, entertaining and though provoking. I have transcribed the video into words for all of you 140 character quoting whores.

Listen. Appreciate. Acknowledge. Think.

Introducing the new Apple iPerson complete with multi touch and volume control, doesn’t it feel good to touch, doesn’t it feel good to touch, doesn’t it feel good to touch.

My world is so digital, I have forgotten what that feels like.
It used to be hard to connect when friends formed cliques, but now it’s even more difficult to connect now that clicks form friends.

But who am I to judge…

I face Facebook more than books face me hoping to book face to faces, I update my status 420 space to prove Im still breathing; failure.
To do this daily means my whole web wide world would forget that I exist. But with 3000 friends online only 5 I can count in real life, why wouldn’t I spend more time in the world where there are more people that LIKE me. Wouldn’t you?

Here it doesn’t matter if I am an amateur person, as long as I have a pro-file, my smile is 50% genuine and 50% genuine-HD, you will need blu-rays to read the whites of my teeth, but im not that focused.

Ten tabs open, hoping, my problems can be resolved with a 1600 x 1700 revolution, this is a problem with this evolution, doubled over, we used to sit in tree tops, till we swung down and stand up right, then someone slipped a disc, now we’re doubled over at desktops.

From the Garden of Eden, to the branches of Macintosh, Apple picking has always come at a great cost.
iPod, iMac, iPhone, iChat, I can do all of these things without making iContact.

We used to sprint to pick and store Blackberries, now we run to the Sprint store to pick Blackberrys, it’s scary.
I can’t hear the sound of mother nature speaking, over all that Tweeting, and along with it is our ability to feel as it’s fleeting.

You would think these headphone jacks inject in the flesh the way we connect, the disconnect, power ON. So we are powerless, they got us love drugged. Like e-pills, so we e-trade, e-mail, e-motion like e-commerce because now money can buy love, for 9.95 a month – click!

To proceed to checkout – click! To X out where our hearts once were – click!
I’ve uploaded this hug, I hope she gets it – click!
I’m making love to wife, I hope she’s logged in – click!
I’m holding my daughter over a Skype conference call while shes crying in the crib in the next room – click!

So when my phone goes off in my hip, I touch and I touch and I touch, because in a world where there are voices that are only read and laughter is never heard or I’m so desperate to feel that I hope the technologic in reverse the universes so the screen can touch me back, and maybe it will, when our technology is advance enough to make us human again.