Stand up, Youse, and be counted

This blog posting is about how to create successful interactivity. The answer lies in The Three Us.

Interactivity is not just about the web. But that’s a good place to start. We are all aware that the web is one of the most powerful media available. Marketers know that to create websites that work for consumers is not simply a creative process – it requires an understanding of the brand, how consumers use websites as well as how they search for information online. Indeed there are many tenets of successful new media marketing.

But right now, let’s discuss Usefulness, Ubiquity, Usability. These three “Us” (pronounced ‘youse’, of course) are key to all marketing communications in this exciting, evolving world. So, as depicted here, our country needs U. Or rather, our country needs the three Us.

In the years since Sir Tim Berners-Lee furnished us with the World Wide Web, we have learned to communicate differently, with each other and eventually from a B2C and B2B perspective too. Landlines at home are being used less and less frequently, we learn; personal email is starting to flag, some say; social networks spawn new communities who communicate from homepage-to-homepage, as new examples testify.

Case in point: as you read this, Facebook, the ever-growing, global, social networking website, is creating groups and networks which didn’t exist a moment ago. MySpace paved the way and it has now gone way beyond the early adopters. Indeed, Facebook is so simple to use that it may surpass the popularity of YouTube.

Which brings us back to the three Us: Usefulness; Ubiquity; Usability – and two themes consistently re-occur. First, is going beyond the norm: let’s raise the bar. The second, with frequency comes experience; with experience comes expertise. Expertise is something we all love to share. Sharing denotes collaboration. In short, to achieve the three Us – we must collaborate. Let’s form together a New Media Army and make Us all stand tall.

[Except from an article the author of this blog wrote in 2007. (It still holds true, though, right?) For full transcript please contact me.]


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