Joseph Hsu

photo by Labzeus

I concluded my internship at Ruth Diamond Market Research, a company run by one of my professors Rhonda Ried, and thought I would share some lessons learned about administrating surveys.

Conducting the Survey

For general in-mall surveys, one of the hardest parts is getting people to stop for surveys, aka The Pitch. On location surveys are a lot easier to get response because you’re there as the person is interacting with the product/service.

In any situation, there is a process to the approach, the same one from advertising: AIDA

1. Attention - First, you need to be noticed
2. Interest - A product/service they are interested in, something they use
3. Desire - The preson needs to feel some sort of need (for a fix to a problem)
4. Action - Provide a solution for the problem

1. The Approach

Angle. Approach at a 45 degree angle, it’s less intimidating than straight and you don’t want to scare them from behind.

Simply smile. Put happy thoughts in their mind, make them feel good about the survey you want them to take.

Groups. Asking someone in a group is hard. Even if you are trying to directly ask one person, someone else may think you are asking the entire group and answer for everyone. This is why a directed opener can help.

2. Opening Your Mouth

Greet. First you need to get their attention, don’t simply ask if they could take the survey because their mind might be elsewhere and they’ll look at you with that ‘huh??’ face.

Be direct. Be direct in who you are asking. Make eye contact and

Ask for a favor. I found that a great way to ask someone to take a survey is to ask for help or a favor.

3. The Survey

• Short - If you need in-depth information, ask for a follow-up or maybe in-person cold-approach is not right for this survey.
• Consistent - keep the format consistent and readable throughout the survey. Learn from other surveys, maybe simply do some A/B testing on what’s best.

Observations

Make your scales decipherable, which number means what.

Make sure to…

• disclose payment
• termination questions early in the screener (don’t waste people’s time), independent market research groups need to maintain a brand also, don’t risk their relationship with people
• re-evaluate early
• be reachable in case of emergencies
• better online surveys (be able to handle errors or disconnects)

From left to right: Liz (@urbanhipster), Me (@jhsu), and Kevin (@brainiopera)

There were two great talks at the #PRSATalk Sunrise Seminar Session 3: Social Media Applications: Local Case Studies given by Heidi Ofinowicz (@RoswellPark), marketing communications manager at Roswell, and Mike Schuler (@schoebdoo), promotions manager at Darien Lake. It’s always good to see application of social media engagement strategies, especially locally. Since social media is relatively new in their organizations, they had to experiment and had some misses and some surprising hits. The following points are my takeaways that I interpreted from the two talks.

Some Key takeaways

Heidi Ofinowicz (@RoswellPark), Roswell Park

In use: Twitter, Facebook (along with Facebook Connect), Youtube and Ning (Ride Roswell). Some use cases include live twittering at the Ride for Roswell where people could tweet out their reason for riding at this event, many were cancer survivors or knew someone who has/had cancer which led to very touching stories that the community members could share with each other. They also video taped some of these people.

When Tweeting, Heidi uses a 25/25/40/10 rule (Roswell news / Roswell research news / engaging / retweeting).

• Multi-purpose content. The videos were not created specifically for Youtube, but were put together by the creative department for multiple uses and Youtube was a channel to share. This is a great way to share great stuff with content that is already being generated by the organization.
• Integrate. Add widgets to current site, link between sites, so that your current efforts aid each other and allow users to find where they’re comfortable.
• Set rules and policies. It’s social media, deleting commentary can have a negative impact, effecting a person’s freedom of speech, but also set rules (disclose them).

Mike Schuler (@schoebdoo), Darien Lake

Mike talked about his efforts using Facebook to promote and share news about Darien Lake. What he likes is the ability for people to ‘like’ a post and essentially share it with their network where it has potential to go viral (or atleast gain reach) and how people can leave comments and be notified of further comments thus sparking conversations.

Devotion. Mike takes an average about 1-1.5 hours throughout the day to mange various social media tools, while also wearing several different hats at Darien Lake.

• Research before diving in. Your brand may already be visible out there. Do a search, take some notes and see how users are interacting and using your brand. Mike found lots of interesting groups about Darien Lake.
• Develope a content schedule. This helps you be prepared and continuously broadcast content.
• Track and Analyze. Having a content schedule allows you to review analytics (in this case Facebook Insights) and compare with your schedule to see what may have led to increase in returns (whether it’s higher rebroadcasting/sharing, interacting or becoming a fan).
• Set rules and policies. Think of your organization (family business means family safe language). Dissenters are often quelled by devotees/supporters (once again, communities are self-regulated, given you have a developed & devoted community).
• Find what works. A early promotion for young teens at the start of their Facebook page creation which included Facebook Ads in the campaign tactics led to high number becoming fans, but would not have worked without a promotion or event.
• Be a person. Stay away from PR talk. Especially since Darien Lake’s audience (on Facebook) tends to be younger teen girls, he has to be down to Earth and talk like someone they can and should trust.
• Monitor, and take action. Being there in the conversation when it happens allows you to get your side in to prevent misinformation. This is the power of social media, everyone can be part of the conversation, even your organization.

Here are the tweets that were tweeted during the talks:

• @brainopera: Local social media stories: Heidi Ofinowicz at Roswell Park Cancer Institute + Mike Schuler (@schoebdoo) at Six Flags Darien Lake #PRSAtalk #
• @brainopera: Heidi responds to comments on their Roswell Park Cancer Institute Youtube channel - http://www.youtube.com/user/rpcicreative #PRSAtalk #
• @jhsu: Checking how Roswell Park in #Buffalo is using social media in different platforms. A lot of integration. #PRSAtalk #
• @brainopera: Cancer survivors gather at http://myroswellpark.com. Powered by WordPressMU and BuddyPress, integrates Facebook, Youtube efforts. #PRSAtalk #
• @jhsu: #PRSAtalk set your own rules based on your organization’s efforts, Roswell uses 40/25/25/10 engage, cancer info, research + news, and events #
• @brainopera: How @RoswellPark tweets = 25% cancer news/retweets, 25% Roswell-specific news, 40% engagement/DMs, 10% tweetcasts/Roswell events #PRSAtalk #
• @k3v2: Good presentation by Heidi Ofinowicz @RoswellPark about their social media efforts - much integration and good strategy #prsatalk #
• @k3v2: Up next, @schoebdoo discusses social media strategy for Darien Lake theme park. #prsatalk #
• @brainopera: RT @k3v2: Up next, @schoebdoo discusses social media strategy for Darien Lake theme park. {Mike focuses on their Facebook effort} #prsatalk #
• @jhsu: #PRSAtalk Mike Schuler @schoebdoo from Darien lake: have a content schedule plan to be prepared, ie countdown to Darien Lake opening #
• @k3v2: RT @jhsu #PRSAtalk Mike Schuler @schoebdoo from Darien lake: have a content schedule plan to be prepared, ie countdown to opening day #
• @jhsu: #PRSAtalk having a content schedule really helps when looking back for analytics ( @schoebdoo uses facebook insight for thei page ) #
• @BNPartnership: Check out how local organizations in #Buffalo have been using social media. Search Term #PRSAtalk #
• @schoebdoo: Thanks for all who attended the #PRSATalk at Daemen College today! Good to talk to everyone. #
• @jhsu: Hello from #PRSAtalk RT @brainopera: Quick picture of @urbanhipster @jhsu and me at #PRSA http://yfrog.com/0jey5dj #

So Delicious has had some pretty drastic changes. I’m a heavy user of Delicious so I thought I would comment on it.

I hope someone from Delicious reads this because I have a few suggestions.

You can read about the changes in the Delicious blog post, but here’s a quick rundown:

• Twitter integration
• Time filter
• Trends graph
• Tag filter
• Enhanced search results
• Search suggestions
• URL shortener? (maybe, seen in tweet by @delicious)

Search

Great job. The UI for search is great. I can easily select multiple tags (include tag in search or even exclude it from search, three states total) for the search. The recommendations are helpful to find more specifics like phrases the word was used in. Trends are nifty to see the change in popularity of a word in links that people have saved.

Twitter integration

Wow. This reminds me a lot of Breaking Tweets where some item is given and relevant tweets about it are shown. This is awesome to see what this link means to others. I really like this part of the Twitter integration.

Bookmark Sending/Sharing

Delicoius has always had the ability to send bookmarks through Delicious by putting a tag ‘for:username’. Now in addition, you can send through email or broadcast on your Twitter. This is nifty, but I think it’s more fluff. There needs to be more work on sharing inside Delicious, because by sharing out via the other methods the reciprocation isn’t really trackable.

Delicious founder Joshua Schachter commented on a tweet that he hates the twitter integration.

Some say Delicious is not about sharing but about “…information collection and quick reference.” I say Delicious is a social bookmarking site. It’s all about sharing, but Delicious’ archiving and referencing usage has been strong that this stands out the most.

How I’ve been using Delicious

I’ve been a fan since who knows when, well at least before Yahoo! bought Delicious and when the URL was still Del.icio.us) and found easy ways to find relevant bookmarks besides the search form.

There’s lots you can do besides the typical delicious.com page and delicious.com/popular pages.

Simple URL Manipulation

Finding popular bookmarks with a tag is easy:

http://delicoius.com/popular/gtd

You can easily search and filter by tags by using this URL and putting tags together using the ‘+’ sign. This gives you recent bookmarks with those tags (or use one tag):

http://delicious.com/tag/ruby+bdd

I’m sure there’s more out there like filter by dates and such (but would probably be through the API).

What I Would Like

1. Have a permalink to a single bookmark on delicious (similar to how on Twitter you can click the date to view one tweet). This is so I can share bookmarks on delicious so others can read my comments or save the bookmark right there.

2. Better view for network bookmarks. I actually use the Delicious network page as my homepage so I would like to be able to navigate my network’s bookmarks more easily and distinguish between users (besides just text). Maybe have a profile picture, except be unique and have users use a favicon, that would be sweet and relevant!

3. Commenting via Twitter integration. Show tweets about links, but only from people in my Delicious or Twitter networks! This could be the “commenting” feature that people have been asking for. Well, it wouldn’t be commenting with threading per say, but it would definitely be a conversation starter.

4. Outbox. The inbox parrallel to emails is great, work with it. Maybe have an outbox too? An outbox to view the links I’ve shared with my network and with whom I’ve shared them with.

Conclusion

I don’t think that Delicious is really deviating, I’d say the changes are exploring different ways to search. I just wish they would concentrate on sharing between users on delicious and making things more social within delicious.

Looking back, I’m amazed at how I’ve made it here and still alive.

I’ve changed my major twice, got dismissed, took courses at a community college and got re-accepted back to UB. My GPA has been terrible (on a comeback).

Academic tips:

go to class. Even if you think you can ace the class without being there, go. By being there, you can really absorb the course material and interesting tidbits from the professor and other students. Learn from others. The diversity of your class gives you the opportunity to hear what others are thinking and learn from them. You also get to meet really interesting people.

be open, talk. Put on a smile and at least say ‘hi’. When class gets hard, it’s always nice to have someone to work it out with.

take notes & learn to take notes. I find taking notes on paper better because you aren’t limited to the strict formatting of digital documents and you can position and align however you need to. Also, taking notes on paper allows for quick sketches and diagrams.

track progress & have goals. At UB, we have something called a DARS report. This report lets me know what the requirements are for my degree and gives the different courses I can take to fulfill the requirements. This report can be easily put together yourself if your college doesn’t have something like this. Don’t just depend on your advisers, they may only give you a suggested path instead of one you’d be most happy or successful with.

If you feel lost, make sure you keep doing things, don’t let your self stay idle or you’ll stay stuck, or do things that will lead to action like planning a project (with tasks broken down to smaller tasks).

some things that helped jump start my life

• reading good content ( via RSS reader )
• clean inbox
• GTD
  • Reading on GTD, Lifehacks and a bunch of DIY guides. These really put actions in your hands
  • segment time, break down tasks
• joining groups
• writing a blog (several xangas, blogger, custom blog, and a ton of other blogging platforms)
• find groups/clubs/meetups to join to help gain new experiences, both in and out of school:
• Performed in AASU night at UB (1, 2), won an advertising campaign proposal in class.
• I’ve attended Tweetups, Ruby meetups and BarCamp

I got tired of manually inputting my work schedule every week for work so I created this mini app that basically parses my work schedule and puts it into google calendar. It still needs some work, but it works for now.

HD Hours ( http://hdhours.heroku.com )

• Paste in your schedule and enter your initials along with google account information
• prevents duplication (by saving the last shift, probably should use a better method)

Awesome, just grabbed my Facebook username: http://facebook.com/josephhsu

FYI: just discovered that you can add/remove periods anywhere in the username so http://facebook.com/….joseph.hsu would work.

I just noticed that on Kevin Lim’s blog there is a tab that says ‘stats’ which links to a public Clicky page.

I never realized before that Clicky had a public stat page for every user! What this means is if you know a website’s site id, you can view their stat page.

How to find a sites Clicky ID

If the site has the GetClicky button

if the site has the button, it will usually have the image (like mine in the footer):

if they do, just copy the the url, extract the number (that’s the site_id) and append it to:

http://www.getclicky.com/stats/home?site_id=

If the site doesn’t have the image

A quick way to check if the site is even using get click is to view the page source (in Firefox, right-click, then select ‘view page source’), then do a search (ctrl + f in firefox) and search for ‘getclicky.com’. You will most likely see a line that looks like:

<script type="text/javascript" src="http://static.getclicky.com/site_id.js"></script>

‘site_id’ above will be a number. Take taht number and append it to

http://www.getclicky.com/stats/home?site_id=

and you’ll be able to view their stats page!

I hope this has been useful for you. Happy stats hunting!

Palm Pre, quick glimpse

So today I went to check out the Sprint Palm Pre at the Boulevard Mall here in Buffalo, NY. First off, I saw a glimpse inside their cabinet and they definitely have more than just three (don’t know exact number though). There was no line when I went and very few checking out the Palm Pre.

Observation: After checking Twitter, you see that ‘Palm Pre’ and ‘AT&T’ are in the list of trending topics. AT&T is on there because of an opera in SF. Though, no sign of ‘Sprint’.

Web OS

The web OS was amazing. Everything felt nice while using. The card system works amazing for switching apps.

My only gripe is viewing your different apps and navigating them felt weird, I think it’s because the ribbon menu at the bottom takes up a lot of space and look like they’re part of the apps listing. You can scroll up and down and swipe left and right (reall nice indicators of how many screens of apps you have to either side). The multi-directional navigation of apps kind of makes things confusing.

Performance

I was told there is a maximum of 15 cards that could be open at a time. That’s pretty decent compared to the iphone’s one (though I’m sure Apple will do something about multi-apps).

While playing around, switching cards was very smooth, though opening menus was delayed and gave no indication that it was loading the menu (this resulted in closing menus by accident).

Sharp Edge

You may have seen the video of the Pre cutting cheese. (see embed if you haven’t)

After playing with the Pre, it indeed has a sharp edge, but at most irritates the skin on your hand. Maybe take some sandpaper to it? I don’t see this as much of a big deal unless you have sensitive hands.

Keyboard Haptics

photo by whatleydude

Compared to other Palm phones, they keyboard buttons are flatter and bigger. Noticed that I mistyped very often and the small spell checker database. Words went uncorrected.

App Catalog (the app store)

The App Catalog is still in Beta, so stability is questionable. There a very few apps currently available. Tweed (by pivitollabs) twitter client is very nice.

Discounts

Sprint has some really awesome discounts off monthly bills. I found out since I go to UB, I get a discount of 10%, but then since I get paid by UB also (part-time at CIT Helpdesk) I get a total of 19%!

Here are some discounts I found out:

• 10% for students at UB
• 19% for working at UB
• 25% for Tops employees (insane!!)

Conclusion

I’m really tempted to get it, but I think I’ll wait for WWDC to see what Apple has to offer.

Awesome. Buffalo Police team up with CrimeReports.com. This partnership makes police reports transparent in order to get the data out there and hopefully result in residents providing information to solve crimes.

The city has hired CrimeReports.com, a company that uses computer technology to make law enforcement reports more transparent.
— via Buffalo News