Infographics - Servant of Chaos

Hi, I’m Gavin – How Do You Tell Your Personal Story?

Infographics, Innovation, Jobs, Personal Branding

What do you say when you introduce yourself to someone? How do you speak and how do you make eye contact. How firmly do you shake hands?

When you meet face-to-face there thousands of data points and impressions being captured by the people you are meeting. Some are visual. Some are tonal. And yes, some are olfactory.

But what do you do online? How do you tell your story? For example, you can find out about me at:

But, for me, the sum always feels greater than the parts.

To be honest, telling your own story is extremely difficult. In my opinion, it’s why we have agencies and consultants … because they can view your achievements, strengths and qualities with an outsider’s perspective. But tools like LinkedIn and blogs can definitely help. And in this age of infographics, sometimes you just need a visual snapshot – which is why I quite like Visualize.me. It connects to your LinkedIn profile and turns the underlying data into a visual CV. Here is mine – and while it could do with some additional elements – it does seem to get the point across. What do you think?

Email: The Offer They Can’t Refuse

Customer Experience, Infographics

I must admit that there is something immensely satisfying about email campaigns. These days, you can build a pretty creative campaign using free or open source tools like my current favourite, MailChimp, launch, send, measure and report on it’s effectiveness and then turn around and do it all again … with a great deal of ease.

And the nice thing is that the reporting is pretty much real time.

There are many similarities with blogging – the tracking and measurement, the control over content and messaging and even an understanding of user experience, pathing and conversion rates.

But where the consumption of blog content is relatively anonymous (unless you want to get very tricky), email surfaces a lot of interesting information about WHO reads your emails, WHAT they like and sometimes even WHY. And understanding this data, using it to deliver insight into your products, offerings, services or even the way you carry on the business of being social, will increasingly become a competitive advantage.

But before you get to data, you have to have something to send. And you want to maximise the effectiveness of every pixel on offer, right? This awesome infographic from the folks at Litmus provides all the right tips and tricks – and the shares the secret – a powerful call to action incorporating visual and text based cues. Check it out.

And don’t forget, you can subscribe to Servant of Chaos via RSS – or get the latest social business insight via the –> Social Way newsletter (see my use of arrows there!).

Infographic: Pin It to Win It

Infographics

Just when you think there can’t possibly be ANOTHER social network to add to the crowded list – along comes Pinterest. Not only has Pinterest been able to garner an audience – it’s one of the fastest growing social networking sites in history, generating 11.7 million visits in the month of January.

My view is that this growth has been spurred on largely through integration with the Facebook Open Graph (Pinterest was one of the first 60 partners). The strategic alignment of platforms like this will see new entrants having to take sides in what will become a war of ecosystems – Google v Facebook. It will make for interesting times – and certainly lead to consolidation over the coming year.

But coming back to Pinterest – we can certainly expect to see an increasing use by brands hoping to share in the massive volume of click through traffic that the site generates. The cool thing for brands and for businesses is that they will need to focus on topics not products or risk having their pinboards deleted. That means that – perhaps – brands will start to understand the nature of “adjacent conversations” and the power that they lend to your social media marketing efforts.

Note: Before you get too excited about Pinterest, take a quick look at an alternative view – the RISKS of using Pinterest.

MDG Advertising has created this neat infographic to highlight some of the more salient facts and figures.

Best. Generation. Ever.

Facts & Figures, FutureVisions, Infographics

Often when we talk about the big, world changing trends that will shape our future, we focus only on technology. But, for me, the single biggest challenge facing us all in the next ten years is the retirement of the generation known as Baby Boomers.

It was previously expected that 2011 would mark a turning point in global demographics with Baby Boomers reaching retirement age. This has partly been ameliorated due to the global financial crisis which saw retirement savings slashed. But time waits for no man (or woman) – and the coming years will see drastic changes in our workplaces. Not only will we begin to lose corporate knowledge, business experience and capabilities – it will be replaced by a younger generation – the millennials (or Gen Y/Z) – with vastly different priorities and expectations.

The shock waves that radiate from this change will impact almost every aspect of our lives. This infographic from OnlineGraduatePrograms.com sums up some of these impacts nicely (with thanks to R Ray Wang). But think beyond the figures – think also of the behaviours – for that’s where the real change will hit us full force. Get ready.

The Wrath of Angry Birds

Games, Infographics

According to Gizmowatch, it seems that Angry Birds really did change the world – “if we rewind the total Angry Bird playtime, we will go back to the time when humans evolved”. That’s 200,000 years of game time. Seems the birds won.