September 28th 2010
The core of digital strategy is finding your firm’s unfair advantage. This means disrupting symmetrical thinking (large goals need large solutions) with asymmetrical solutions (large results can come from tiny, smart changes.) Here are examples of ways to beat competitors and gain new traffic using domain strategy. Think of Your Domains as a Team of […]
September 25th 2010
Scott Brinker and I want to thank everyone who brought their ideas and interest in to this morning’s discussion on Web3.0: The Wave the Follows Social Media. Its a pleasure to have a community where you can discuss emerging topics, and get group brain power to make sense of new topics. Our slide deck is […]
September 24th 2010
No, not that kind of engagement! Miko is the person I turn to for all things WordPress. She’s a first rate photog & designer (note the BFA), and she’s a genius with WordPress themes. Remember last year, when UsefulArts slowed down and I needed to improve website performance? She was the friend in London who […]
September 22nd 2010
Close on the heels of its Unica purchase, Big Blue is moving to acquire another Massachusetts data company, Netezza, for $1.7 billion. IBM has made 23 acquisitions totaling $12 billion over the past four years in the area of analytics. It has estimated the size of the market at $100 billion and has predicted the […]
September 21st 2010
This Saturday at 10AM Scott Brinker and I are hosting a discussion at Podcamp Boston on Web 3.0: The Wave that Follows Social. Scott hosts the Chief Marketing Technologist Blog, and is founder and CTO of ION Interactive. His firm provides a suite of services that helps optimize search and Web experiences, which benefits both […]
September 16th 2010
Amanda Palmer discusses how she’s managing her entire music career through the Internet. The event is the #140 conference in Boston. The best of artistry is a “self-making” activity which also creates a new audience. Original acts that move audiences, and creative community, are two things that define her work. To be smart but still […]
September 14th 2010
I love this cartoon. It reminds me that there is nothing inherently social about social media tools. It’s probably easier to use video, podcasts, blogging and Twitter in solitary, asocial ways. The enabler of social media isn’t RSS feeds or Open Source — it’s open culture. And that’s what brings me to the #140Conf today. […]
September 13th 2010
Its rare to get something valuable for nothing. But this October, there’s a week of more than 40 events featuring top-flight views of marketing by some of the best in the industry. And since they’re free, the best sessions will fill quickly. There’s simply no substitute for the energy and relationships you get at a […]
September 3rd 2010
Last fall I started to worry about this site’s performance. The process of posting and viewing pages was becoming alarmingly slow. Everyone who works on the site noticed it, and I started to wonder if sometime soon I’d sign on to find a major server crash, and potentially tons of lost data to restore. So […]
August 31st 2010
Your site visitor’s experience starts with waiting for that first page to load. Does the speed of a website really influence visitors buying decisions on it? You bet it does. New research from e-commerce websites backs this perception up with lots of hard data. Improving pageload speed helps: Increases conversion rates, page views, and time […]
The future of digital experiences will be built by strategists who grasp the full array of emerging business, social, and technical models. Specialties in user experience, branding, application design, and data science are laying the foundation for richer user experiences and business models breakthrough products and revenue based marketing.
UsefulArts is a soapbox to discuss the front line of digital experience, and the agencies and platforms that enable it. Digital business needs a cadre of leaders who can connect c-level enterprise thinking with the ways these new interaction models can help organizations to matter more to their most important stakeholders.