5 Key Skills For Agency Planners

The Rockstar Planner video series explores the world of exceptional account planners, highlighting key skills of the profession.

via psfk

The Do's and Don'ts of Using Social Media for Business

Social Media Applications are transforming the way people communication.

Whether you are already using social media for business or just starting out these Do’s and Don’ts will serve you well in helping you build your Social Media Empire.

via thesteelmethod.com

"The Impulse Shopping Fact Sheet" Infographic

Have you ever added a pack of gum to your cart while waiting to check out at the grocery store? If so, you've made an impulse purchase!

Unplanned purchases not only help drive the economy, but also put shoppers in a better mood by relieving negative emotions such as stress and anger. So, who shops on impulse and what do they usually buy?

This graphic helps illuminate some interesting traits of a typical impulse shopper on the prowl.

http://milo.com/blog/the-impulse-shopping-fact-sheet/?display=wide

How are Mobile Phones Changing Social Media?

(via @kullin)

Best Online Planning Tools

IPA Desk Research 2010

View more presentations from Nick Emmel.

Best Resources for Desk Research using online sites, tools and applications:

Professional Insight - the big "traditional" resources that cost a lot of money

• Mintel - Big, hefty market intelligence reports
• TGI - Market Research surveys and analysis
• Forrester - More editorial reports on specific pertinent topics
• WARC - the bible of marketing and advertising specific insight
• Datamonitor - business specific insight and intelligence
• LexisNexis - news aggregation service
• Nielsen - the mecca of insight. Tools, papers, resources, everything
• eConsultancy - digital marketing specific insight

If your agency does not have access to these expensive resources, you can access them via:

• RoyalMail Infobank - A great resource in Holborn where you can use these resources for FREE
• IPA Information Centre - the lovely people here can do searches for you if you are an IPA affiliated agency

Industry Information - the "obvious" trade rags and blogs and their wealth of news, articles and commentary

• BrandRepublic - Central news resource for advertising and media
• AdAge - Global news resource
• Creativity - creative led news and opinion
• Adverblog - great aggregator of great ads
• Adrants - more advertising stuff from around the World
• This is an ad - blatant plug for mine and Toby's "alternative" advertising aggregator
• Planners Blogs - the Plannersphere wiki of all the planner's blogs (not all are active anymore)

Ideas Conferences - source of inspirational presentations

• TED - the ultimate video resource of truly inspirational speakers
• GEL Conference - more brilliant presentations from the Good Experience Live Conferences
• Interesting - Tons of stuff from Russell's Interesting conferences from around the world is online
  

Business Insight - the kind of planning resource that makes you credible to the big cheeses

• Economist - don't underestimate the amount of cleverness hidden here. CEO's and Marketing Directors adore it when planners quote economist articles.

Digital Marketing Insight - for when you have to justify that increasing digital spend

• IAB - Brilliant resource for internet stats and case studies

User Experience Insight - understanding the experience of your brand as well as the message

• Boxes and Arrows - great Information Architecture insight
• Good Experience - Mark Hurst's brilliant user experience resources

Marketing Trends - seeing where the market, consumer and brands are heading

• Springwise - new business ideas from around the world
• Trendwatching - consumer trends, with brilliant monthly trend briefings
• PSFK - daily news, ideas and trends aggregator from the lovely Piers Fawkes
• Contagious - Quarterly intelligence briefing

Advertising resources - when you need to look at what the competitors are up to

• Visit4info - quite cheap and thorough resource for ATL ads
• Lurzer's Archive - global ad resource
• Nielsen AdRelevance - advertising aggregator and analyser
• Xtreme Information - competitor media monitoring

Web trends - getting a wider view of activity on the web

• Google Trends - track any online trends you fancy and plot them on pretty graphs
• Google Alerts - push delivery via email of every new piece of content around a specified keyword
• Alexa - slightly flaky competitor website traffic monitoring

Professional Buzz tracking - the essential paid-for tools for any social activity

• Buzzmetrics - The daddy of buzz metrics tools from Neilsen
• Onalytica - a tasty alternative
• Integrasco - more "grown up" tracker

Free Buzz tracking - the free but slightly dodgy suite of buzz trackers. Good for indicative measures.

• Trendrr - comprehensive real-time buzz tracking tools
• Serph - realtime buzz tracking
• Omgili - Find out what people are saying
• Trendpedia - buzz tracking powered by Attentio
• How Sociable? - understanding how well a brand fares in social media
• Addict-o-matic - brilliant visual social buzz aggregator, using an automated NetVibes-type interface

Search Insight - researching keywords to see what people are searching for

• Google AdWords - understand search terms around your product and brand

Social Bookmarks research - see what people think is important content around a brand or product as opposed to an "engine"

• Del.icio.us - The daddy of social bookmarks
• StumbleUpon - recommendation driven bookmarking
• Digg - news and content with a tech leaning

Facebook analysis - Seeing how people act on Facebook

• Adonomics - bespoke Facebook application tracking (see how crap most of them are)

Blog research - for understanding what real people are saying specifically on their blogs

• Technorati - the Google of Blogs

Board Trackers - see what the topics for discussion on forums is around key words

• BoardReader - Message Board and Forum reader
• Board Tracker - and another one
• Google Groups - searching groups with Google

Twitter Research - getting under the skin of what's happening on Twitter

• Twitter Analyzer - A bunch of insightful ways to look at a Twitter account
• Tweitgeist - Twitter Zeitgeist
• #hashtags - real time monitoring and analysis of topics on Twitter
• Twitt(url)y - tracking URLs inserted into Tweets
• Twitrratr - automated Twitter analysis tool that sorts Tweets around a term into positive, negative and neutral
• Twilert - Like Google Alerts, but for Twitter...
• Tweetbeep - ... as is this
• Xefer - Pretty way to represent Twitter account usage stats

Researching Video content - understanding what people are watching online

• Truveo - online video content aggregator (with great top 10's)
• Viral Video Chart - keeping track of what's hot, with great trend graphs and tools

BEYOND THE INFORMATION DEPARTMENT: Planning is about INSIGHT, not just information.

As he says in the presentation, it is easy to get carried away with all of these resources in your hands and start churning out reams of deckage on any topic. Good planning is not about gathering every last shred of information. It is about selectively searching for the interesting bits and then turning that from information into insight. That's the magic of planning.

via 25 lttrs n th alphbt