Ya gotta love it when local governments ride the new media wave. (I'm using the term "new media" intentionally because, well, can it really be "social," if there are no built in sharing features?)
While I usually like flying above the radar... this web video is one that I wish I could've avoided with a stealth mode feature in my car. (Well, I guess I was wearing sun glasses, eh?)
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In this last post of my little three-part series explaining the "long tail" concept, I'm looping a bit back to my hypothesis in the first of the series. That is, some of us hear someone obliquely reference "long tail" and get the gist that it's a way to reach a lot of people using the internet. And while there's truth to that, that thought alone risks biting on the idea that long tail is all about leveraging a phenomenon to sell large volumes of things. That's where I differ.
Rather than saying it helps us sell--or bring attention to--large volumes of things, I'd say it's really more about selling (or communicating? transacting?) in small quantities. More to the point: quantities of niche items. With long tail, rather than trying to bag big transactions, we have the opportunity to complete smaller/less popular niche transactions--only more of them.
Having spent time in the last post explaining why the long tail graph looks the way it does, I feel better now about making references to the "head of the tail" (the taller part on the left) vs. "long tail" (the part made up of the approximately 80% on the right side of the graph ).
The Problem Of Limited Shelf Space
If you and I owned a retail store, it is at the head of the tail where we would tend to solve the problem of stocking our shelves. Brick and mortar establishments have this challenge. Think: Barnes and Noble, Albertsons, or a Hallmark store. We're talking here about the physical/brick-and-mortar establishments. Because there's only so much room in the entire store, you and I would be wise to focus on items with highest popularity--the stuff at the head of the tail.
Meanwhile, all other managers who manage similar stores in our area would be stocking their shelves with the same stuff. Many of us would make sure Harry Potter books were represented somewhere on our bookstore shelves, for example. Hence, competition and regionalization ensues. For example, each retail Starbucks location or Border's bookstore would really only hope to capture sales from those in the community who live within say, 3-5 miles of that retail location. That's because at some distance away from the store, customers aren't going to want to make the drive. They'd just as soon go to a Peet's coffee store that's around the corner than to make the drive to a Starbucks that's 10 miles away. You get my meaning?
Pretending Infinity (again)
But, now, what if we momentarily pretend that shelf space and regionalization have no (or little) bearing? That is, suppose we can stock as many items as we want without having to increase the size of our physical store. Further, let's pretend for a moment that the customer who buys from us and who lives 100 miles away (or 1000 miles away for that matter) from our physical store is no more inconvenienced than the customer who lives 5 miles away (or 1 mile away).
In that scenario (unlimited shelf space), as the theory goes, you can now afford to make some of the "other stuff" available. That is, in addition to stocking up on the most popular items, you can now also afford to stock up on things that are less popular--that is, the stuff that shows up in the long part of the tail. This would be like saying in addition to stocking Harry Potter books, we might just as well make available the book about the mating habits of the red-toed Amazonian tree frog. Why not? Someone in the world is bound to be interested in that subject. And if it doesn't cost us anymore bucks to stock it, why not offer it for sale?
So goes the long tail theory.
With the advent of the internet you now have the ability to make available the items that have less popularity. Of course, this doesn't come without its own challenges. With such a huge stock of inventory, you'll need some capacity for would-be consumers to search or filter your inventory. Or... (and?) if you're a small business, you can also do some of that filtering up front by focusing your inventory of products or services on specific niches.
A real estate agent who works out of Orange County, CA, for example, might set up keywords in the long part of the tail that are designed to capture anybody in the world who might have an interest not in just "Orange County real estate", but perhaps, too, in "Orange County feng shui properties". Similarly, a non-profit organization seeking to capture the attention of donors for, say, a cause related to "human trafficking" or "hunger" related issues, would do well to set up niche sites and keywords with more specificity than "human trafficking", "hunger" or "poverty". Try, for example, "human trafficking in orange county" and/or "hunger in santa ana" (with Santa Ana being a city in Orange County, CA).
I could ramble on. But, the gist of this series is that whenever you hear someone referencing "long tail" in your next meetup or conference, you now know that what they're referring to is the idea of capturing mindshare of a wide, geographically diverse audience in topics or keywords having very specific scope.
Your turn. What do you think? Do you believe that audiences generally understand "long tail" when it's mentioned by a speaker at a conference or a meeting?
If
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My friend Jay (owner of REDesignations.com) and I had a great discussion yesterday about my blog post on long tail. He offered a working definition; in a nut: appealing to niches. The nichier the better. I like Jay's nut-shelling of it, and is where I'll be heading in my continued exploration tomorrow about this curious term.
But, in this post I'm addressing the question, "why 'long tail'"? How do you get "long tail" out of niche marketing? Why not call it, oh I don't know, "niche marketing"?
Well, "long tail" is a term used to describe a type of statistical distribution--a bar graph. I guess technically it speaks to a trend line that describes the information in that bar graph. The term itself was popularized in October 2004 when Chris Anderson wrote an essay in Wired magazine about the effects of this concept on current and future business models. And, though the term itself has been widely ascribed to Anderson's popularization of it, there is earlier reference to it in a February 2003 essay titled, "Power Laws, Web Laws and Inequality," written by Clay Shirky.
But why does a long tail graph look the way it does? I mean, what's the concept behind it? Why is it tall on the left and then really tiny on the right?
For an answer that even approaches addressing that question, indulge me a bit in a few visuals.
Visualizing A Long Tail
Imagine a speaker standing at the front of a room full of, say 300 people. She takes an informal poll by asking a show of hands from everybody who is wearing the color yellow; 53 people raise their hand. How many are wearing the color red? One hundred and twenty five hands go up. And then imagine she goes on like this through a list of, say, 25 different colors.
Now, if an assistant were to put all these responses on a bar graph, she might end up with a ragged bar graph that looks like this.
The picture above may not look very long taily at the moment. But, fact is, there's a long tail in it. The trick is you have to rejigger the graph. If you re-order all the bars and their associated data so that the biggest ones (most popular) are on the left and the smallest ones are on the right, then you'll see a decreasing series that looks like this.
And then to make it a little more prominent, let's sort of connect the dots between the high point of one bar graph to that of the next. (We're starting to create something here which statisticians call a trend line.)
Are you starting to see it? The red line is the "long tail" taking shape. It's a line that statisticians and mathematicians like to call a trend line. Right now it has a ragged look to it. But that's only because we're dealing with a finite data set. That is, 25 colors.
But, if we could somehow extend that data set to, oh I don't know, say an infinite number of colors, then the line would take on a smoother look. But since that wouldn't be at all practical, we turn to the mathematical toolbox of statisticians.
Pretending Infinity
Statisticians are great because they have many many math models that help them pretend to have an infinite data set by starting with our list of 25 colors. They can then create smooth trend lines--or curves--to match that pretend set. One such formula is something called a Power Law. Which, if I apply that using my trusty formula functions in my quick and dirty Excel spreadsheet, we end up with a curve that looks like the red line below. (Note: I'm clearly over-simplifying things here. But that's the whole point of this post! That said, it's still worth noting in the back of your head that there are
reasons for choosing to apply one formula versus another. Again, another reason why statisticians are as smart as they are.)
Now take the bars away entirely and just focus on the trend line. And you end up with something looks like a... (dare I say it?).
...Do you see the resemblance to a long tail? But, as they say, "wait, there's more." As Anderson and Shirky point out, there are business/marketing insights to be gleaned from all this. I'll try to lay out some of those insights in similar plain english fashion in my next post.
In the meantime, if this helps in any way, let me know. If you have additional insights to help explain this further (in practical, down-to-earth terms please) then please do share. I'll chat more tomorrow.
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A couple of weeks ago I sat at a meeting with about 30-40 people talking about, among other things, social media. Through the course of that meeting, a couple of us bantered pretty animatedly with occasional off-cuff references to "long tail." At one point I asked the person sitting next to me if she knew what we meant by "long tail." Other than some general reference to "reaching a lot of people by using the internet," the answer really boiled down to "I get the gist, but I can't really explain it." I made it a point to take some informal polls at other meetings. I found interestingly similar results.
Many people hear "long tail" and get the gist at some subconscious level that it's about "a way" to reach a lot of people by using the internet. And while that seems well enough, I also can't help but feel that on another level, some of us might be missing the point. I say that because when I poke and prod a little more, I get the sense that some of us understand it to mean that you can sell large volumes of things by leveraging long tail. Therein lies the rub for me.
From my perspective, long tail isn't about selling large volumes. It's actually more about selling things in small volumes.
I'll finish this up in a follow-on post. But, in the meantime, if you have a practical/working definition you use to explain "long tail" to the guy (or gal) sitting next to you, I'd love for you to share it.
For the rest of us, try this at the next meeting you attend where the speaker says "...'long tail'...": Ask the person next to you, "Do you know that 'long tail' means?"
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I'm writing this post to answer a question my friend, Jennifer, asked about how I formatted a custom signature on my Mac (via Mac's native email client called Mail). And to be able to do it in such a way that doesn't distort or otherwise get discombobulated on the receiving end. The snapshot below is what we're shooting for.
The snapshot below is what we hope to mitigate as much as possible on the receiving end of your email.
Rather than keeping the process a secret between Jennifer and me, I figured some of you might have the same question. So, I thought I'd share it with the rest of ya'll, as well. To make it easy, I included both a video (below) and then also summarized the steps in a procedure list (further below). By the way, you can also watch the video in HD directly on the YouTube server. (Just double-click the video.) That'll give you a bigger video to see all the details. Let me know if you find it helpful.
First things first.
The steps to follow presupposes the following:
A. You have access to a web or FTP site to which you can upload your images and reference them over the web.
B. You have the basic skills to create a simple html page. (Or, at the very least, you have access to such knowledge via the skills of a friend.) It will help to have a software package like Dreamweaver or Microsoft Frontpage.
C. You are trying to create your custom signature for Mac Mail.
D. You have the Safari web browser installed on your Mac.
(Double-click it to watch it in HD.)
Steps to follow.
Assuming you have the above three conditions locked, here are the steps I follow to create a signature like the one at the top of this post such that it shows up in your Mac/Mail email signature:
The Preamble. (Do this in your html software package.)
1. Take all the graphics you intend to use in your signature and ftp them to a folder on your website.
2. Use an html software package like Dreamweaver or MS Frontpage to create the look and feel of the email signature you want to have. Use the software's features to display the email graphics via "IMG" references to the file on your web host.
3. Save your email signature design as an html file. (For purposes of this exercise, I've given my signature design the name "myemailsig.html"
The Crux of the Matter. (Do this in the Safari web browser.)
4. Now launch the Safari web browser. From Safari, select File/Open File from the menu bar.
5. Navigate to the location on your computer where you saved the html file for your email signature. Select the Open button. Your email signature will appear as a web page in your Safari browser.
6. Now, save your email signature as a webarchive file. To do this, select File/Save As... on the menu bar of your Safari web browser. Make sure to select "Web Archive" in the Format picklist of the Save As... window. (For my example, I've assigned the name "myemailsig.webarchive")
Make a "placeholder" email signature in Mac Mail.
Summary: In the next steps, we're going to use Mac Mail to create a new "placeholder" for your email signature within the Mac Mail file structure. We'll then copy the system-generated filename for this placeholder and then use it to rename the webarchive file you created in Step 6 above. As a final step, we'll copy the renamed webarchive and replace the system-generated signature file in Mac Mail. (Got it?)
7. Open Mac Mail.
8. Create a new "placeholder" signature. To do this, select Mail/Preferences... from the Mac Mail menu bar. The Preferences window will appear.
9. In the Preferences window, select Signatures from the list of menu icons. The Signatures list window will appear.
10. From the Signatures list column, select the email for which you want to create a new signature.
11. Beneath the second column, select the "+" button to add a new signature. Enter a name where prompted.
12. Now close the Signatures (Preferences) window and Quit out of the Mail program. (Mac Mail needs to restart as you complete the final steps.)
The End Game. (Do this in Finder.)
13. Using the Finder (file browser) application, navigate to the following folder:/Library/Mail/Signatures
14. Inspect the "Date Created" column for the files in the Signatures folder. (Notice these signature files are webarchive files!)
15. Find the webarchive (signature file) with the most recent date under "Date Created". (This will be the signature file you created as a placeholder in Step 11 above.)
16. Select the webarchive file with the most recent creation date and then copy the filename. (Note: This step requires you to copy the name of the file; not the file itself.)
17. Now, find the signature file you created earlier in Step 6. (i.e., myemailsig.webarchive) and replace its filename with the filename copied from Step 16.
18. As a final step, copy the file from Step 17 and replace the "placeholder" file in the folder under /Library/Mail/Signatures.
Your custom email signature will appear as a selectable item the next time you try creating an email message.
I hope this and the video helps!
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