Embedded Components and Tools forum: December 2011

The forum introduces real-time embedded systems technology designed, reviewed, or filmed by Ron Fredericks. Ron focuses on hardware, software, and cloud services for the embedded systems industry through the EmbeddedComponents.com platform and his Bay Area media lab located in Sunnyvale California called LectureMaker LLC.

Embedded Components and Tools forum: December 2011 Welcome to the Embedded Components and Tools forum. The forum introduces real-time embedded systems technology designed, reviewed, or filmed by Ron Fredericks. Ron focuses on hardware, software, and cloud services for the embedded systems industry through the EmbeddedComponents.com platform and his Bay Area media lab located in Sunnyvale California. IN THIS ISSUE NEWS LectureMaker offers video production services designed to promote the unique and often unseen aspects of embedded systems hardware, and software products. FEATURE Self-balancing Two-wheel Robot with Nucleus and TI’s Stellaris Development Kits FEATURE Nucleus ReadyStart on TI Integra OMAP L-138 SPONSOR Become a sponsor of the forum. Get an innovative technical marketing boost from the EmbeddedComponents.com publishing platform.   NEWS   Ron Fredericks offers high quality video integrated into his technical marketing service to the embedded systems business community. After Ron Fredericks launched the Embedded Components and Tools Marketplace™ in 2004, one of the most common suggestions was to include full featured video as a presentation format. Today Ron operates a complete line of video services to help companies leverage the latest new media technology for their sales, marketing, support, and training needs from his Sunnyvale California media lab called LectureMaker. Services include: In-studio and live event video recording and animation Public speech training and video script development Webinars with integrated video and dial-in phone conferencing Video hosting and publishing with source code highlighting and cross-domain hosting from your own website Video integrated blogging on popular social media platforms including wordpress, twitter, facebook, and linkedIn Today’s forum issue features two videos produced in LectureMaker’s video studio from Mentor Graphics Embedded Software Division. Here is what the director of the Nucleus product line had to say about the video projects… "Ron Fredericks produces high impact videos for the embedded systems industry. I met Ron while we both worked at Wind River. Even then Ron demonstrated his passion for integrated embedded systems marketing programs with video as he filmed and published events for reuse by partners and global employees. I have used Ron’s video studio at LectureMaker in Sunnyvale to produce two Nucleus RTOS videos with excellent results and quality. Ron is easy to work with and very knowledgeable in both the video and embedded systems industries." – Jan Klube, Nucleus Product Line Director, Mentor Graphics Embedded Software Division   FEATURE Self-balancing Two-wheel Robot with Nucleus and TI’s Stellaris Development Kits Introducing Stella – a remote controlled, self-balancing robot powered by Mentor Graphics Nucleus RTOS and developed with Sourcery CodeBench also from Mentor. Arvind Raghuram, a software engineer from Mentor Graphics Embedded Software Division, developed this demonstration using a stock TI Stellaris development board and TI’s ZigBee wireless kit. Stella showcases embedded system features such as connectivity, power management, and low footprint while maintaining real-time characteristics. Arvind flew into the Bay Area from his Atlanta Georgia office to develop a short video around his new robot at Ron’s Sunnyvale California media lab. The video and details on Arvind’s project are posted on Mentor’s web site here: Stella Self-Balancing Robot Technology Overview Page   FEATURE Nucleus ReadyStart on TI Integra OMAP L-138 Nucleus ReadyStart provides a single real-time embedded software development distribution that offers fast bring-up of a complete system starting with a rich selection of board support packages (BSPs) along with Mentor Embedded Sourcery Tools, integrated Inflexion UI, and power management services. James Parker, a field sales engineer from Mentor’s Atlanta Georgia office, came to Ron’s media lab in Sunnyvale California to film his Nucleus ReadyStart demonstration on a TI Integra OMAP L-138 hardware kit. The video and details on Jame’s project are posted on Mentor’s web site here: Nucleus ReadyStart on TI Integra   SPONSOR Become a sponsor of the forum. Get an innovative technical marketing boost from the EmbeddedComponents.com publishing platform in action. Contact Ron Fredericks or send email to the forum to participate in this newsletter.     Best regards,  Ron Fredericks, Embedded Systems Technical Marketer Send e-mail to: forum@embeddedcomponents.com Subscribe for free: www.embeddedcomponents.com/pubs/lists/?p=subscribe&id=1 Visit the Embedded Components Marketplace and Training Portal: www.embeddedcomponents.com/marketplace/ Popular Blog Posts   LTspice My First Simulation New Gate Design New Component for the LTspice Community Linear Technologies’ LTspice Landing Page   Popular Marketplace Presentation Ptolemy Project Simulating Predictable Real-time Software Design UC Berkeley’s Ptolemy Project Home Page   © Copyright 2011, LectureMaker LLC

Technorati Tags: Embedded Software, Inflexion UI, Integra, L-138, Mentor Graphics, Newsletter, Nucleus, OMAP, Power Management, ReadyStart, Robot, RTOS, Sourcery CodeBench, Sourcery Tools, Stellaris, ZigBee

Enjoy…

Technorati Tags: Ron Fredericks, google android, developer ecosystem, LectureMaker, Marko Gargenta, marakana, Software Developer Forum

The marketing bubble‘s effect on embedded device software developers

Introduction

Ron Fredericks writes: In yesterday’s marketing webinar: Beyond Monitoring: Managing Social Media Engagement by SocialRep‘s CEO, Chris Kenton, viewers were riveted by his inside knowledge on social media’s word-of-mouth marketing. Chris is well known for his combination of social media marketing knowledge as well as his ability to strip away the facts from the hype.

To set the stage, my own readers have found my marketing FAQ to be a very popular read for the embedded device software industry: Assessing marketing’s critical role in organizational performance. Read on to see if it will blend!

The Marking Bubble Defined

Chris introduced us to the “marketing bubble”, a marketing event in progress now. Chris may be the first to realize and share the underlying problem so clearly. Marketing has always been a word-of-mouth vehicle since the beginning of human conversations – we’re just not old enough to know it!

Check out the Word Of Mouth Marketing Association’s definition of word of mouth marketing. Chris made the case that professional marketers’ tools over the past 130 years have managed to bypass the value of word of mouth by blasting their messages into public and commercial communities to literally overpower the word-of-mouth model using Print, Radio, TV, Mass Markets, and the Internet. Yet the marketing bubble is now bursting as the Internet continues to host an exploding number of social media tools: – tools that extend word of mouth conversation through online social media platforms, popular content management sites, and even a new form of in-person meet up tool that can quickly assemble like-minded individuals into localized events.

Here is a short list of some of the more common word-of-mouth social media platforms that can be leveraged as microsites:

• LinkedIn: A how-to example
• Squidoo: A how-to example
• Facebook: A how-to example
• YouTube: A how-to example [will it blend]
• Ning: A how-to example
• Twitter: A how-to example
• Meetup: A how-to example

These platforms are also some of the leading causes for the marketing bubble. Check out http://www.alexa.com for further research into tools that specialize by industry and/or region.

These microsites often include application programmable interfaces (API’s), news feeds, user profiles, links to friends, groups, photos/videos, chat, and their own markup languages to build relationships and quickly share short conversations. These features are a little different than the more traditional social media platforms such as blogs, forums, wikis, chat, and idea managers.

Word-of-Mouth Customer Relationship Lifecycle

Chris presents an integrated marketing plan that starts with several forms of monitoring to measure influential conversations followed by use of a wide selection of social media tools.

Monitoring Social Networks: Metrics

Monitoring social media activity is one of the basic requirements to managing social media engagements. A company starting up with a social media marketing program nearly always intends to find and engage with their most influential online customers. But Chris goes on to point out that companies often fail in their use of social media marketing tools. The problem boils down to the fine art of adapting to the trends their team discovers after their initial engagements with social media. I call this the company’s analytics culture. There are thee areas that a company can monitor:

• Media: The web pages and web sites that customers use or visit [commonly monitored]
• Technology: The technology behind a company’s products [often ignored], and
• Finance: The financial goals surrounding a company’s sales activity [often ignored].

The problem stems from a company’s tendency to focus too much on web page tools that monitor media, and in so doing, fails to develop an adaptable action plan that includes the other two key domains of marketing operations: technology and finance. After Chris pointed this out in his webinar, it seems very clear to me that a company needs more than trends in page clicks or page visitors to build the business case for change within a company’s executive team decision-makers. Two solutions that have become popular by social marketers in bridging the gap between initial engagement, and adapting their business activities towards the needs of the community, are in the reuse of these two popular tools already in use by most companies:

• Integration of the company’s Goggle AdWords data, and the
• Integration of the company’s CRM – SalesForce.com in particular.

Using Monitored Results: Analytics

Chris and others point out that although the use of CRM tools are well intentioned – a large percentage of marketers do not get the needed monitoring data to successfully adapt to changes or to meet the changing needs within the company’s community. Chris describes how a company can use their CRM as part of an integrated analytics strategy:

• Use reports and analytics stored within the CRM
• Integration of a word-of-mouth program integrated with the CRM
• Creation of an advisory board from the most influential customers identified from CRM

Building a Program

Chris then presented a Word-of-Mouth program built around a Customer Relationship Lifecycle. He goes over some details, shows some steps to be taken, and highlights a case study. I summarize his program from a B2C perspective here:

1. Awareness:
   • Value: Branding
   • Tools: Web ads, Search engine optimization or marketing, Viral video, Targeted community sponsorship
   • Marketing framework: Conversation + Content
2. Knowledge:
   • Value: Branding and Marketing
   • Tools: Landing pages, Microsites, and Webinars
   • Marketing framework: Conversation + Content + Community
3. Consideration:
   • Value: Branding, Marketing, and Sales
   • Tools: Reviews & comparisons, Hosted chat, and Webinars
   • Marketing framework: Conversation + Content + Community
4. Selection (or when a customer takes the desired action like buys the product):
   • Value: Branding, Marketing, and Sales
   • Tools: Online discount offers, and Hosted chat
   • Marketing framework: Conversation + Content + Community + Customer advisory council
5. Satisfaction:
   • Value: Branding, Marketing, and Sales
   • Tools: Surveys, Support forum, Support chat, and Customer communities
   • Marketing framework: Conversation + Content + Community + Customer advisory council
6. Advocacy:
   • Value: Branding and Marketing
   • Tools: Referral offers, Peer forums, Product networks, and Consumer communities
   • Marketing framework: Conversation + Content + Community + Customer advisory council
7. Loyalty:
   • Value: Branding
   • Tools: Discounts, Insider forums, Product networks, and Customer communities
   • Marketing framework: Conversation + Content + Community + Customer advisory council

Some steps along the way in the execution of a word-of-mouth customer relationship lifecycle program:

• Engage in useful conversations:
  • Targeted monitoring and metrics,
  • Managed engagement,
  • Trend tracking,
  • Media, pundit, and influencer profiling.
• Create a cross-functional Social Media A-Team:

• Marketing,
• PR,
• Product marketing,
• Sales,
• Customer service,
• Engineering, and
• Legal.

• Assign a domain to each member:
  • Where are people talking about your domain,
  • What are people saying, topics, trends,
  • What opportunities are there to get involved,
  • What do we want to spend energy talking about.
• Create a place were you can profile these domains, aggregate, and share information:
  • Meet weekly
• Assign at least one “SocialRep” to manage the engagement process
• Buy a solution only when the process is well defined and in place
• Test and continually question monitoring metrics
• Hire a Marketing Engineer, to address data integration

Some Final Thoughts For Embedded Device Software Developers

Most of what I summarize above is focused on B2C relationships and comes out of my review of Chris Kenton’s great webinar: Beyond Monitoring: Managing Social Media Engagement. Of course I added my own knowledge and some additional references to help my readers get a fast overview of the landscape.

Building a social media marketing program would have some differences when it comes to software developers focused on embedded devices including:

• A smaller volume of activity
• A scarcity of good marketers and public communicators with a working knowledge of the deeply technical subject matter and its assocated value chain
• A larger barrier between the engineers who make and use software:
  • Those that build the software tools targeting a wide variety of programmers, engineers, and architects,
  • Those that create the run-time device optimized software platforms targeting embedded software engineers, and
  • Those that build the differentiating applications targeting the end user.
• A different marketing framework focused on the collective business and not the individual:
  • See Four Steps to Creating a Gorilla Partnership for some insight on building business-to-business frameworks
  • Perhaps the framework will have unique features for open-source vs. OEM software license models
• Look for social media marketing tools that integrate with software developer frameworks, perhaps as plugins
  • Basic collaboration for developers looks like code check-in and check-out for global teams, not like a tweet.
  • Maybe the next tweet will be a twitter plugin that adds another Eclipse perspective, for example.

Yet there can be no doubt that the short word-of-mouth conversations on microsites will burst the marketing bubble. This would be true for any marketer planning there next engagement, for businesses focused on building software for embedded devices, or for the device manufacturer trying to leverage software developers. Chris Kenton’s marketing webinar: Beyond Monitoring: Managing Social Media Engagement is a good place to start building a word-of-mouth marketing plan. His offering demonstrates the most integrated set of tools I’ve seen – to build a substantial word-of-mouth marketing program.

Thanks to Chis for making it very clear that social media word-of-mouth marketing is not a program to be considered independently of other marketing activities. Instead it’s just a mater of time before the bubble bursts in your market sector. The real question is more of when, than if, a company should add word-of-mouth social media tools to their integrated marketing strategy.

Technorati Tags: marketing bubble, software developer, Ron Fredericks, SocialRep, Chris Kenton, social media, marketing, embedded device, software, word-of-mouth, Print, Radio, TV, Mass Markets, Internet, social media, LinkedIn, Squidoo, Facebook, YouTube, Ning, Twitter, Meetup, microsites, blogs, forums, wikis, chat, idea managers, Customer Relationship Lifecycle, conversations, analytics, Media, Technology, Finance, Goggle, AdWords, CRM, SalesForce.com, Awareness, Knowledge, Consideration, Selection, Satisfaction, Advocacy, Loyalty, Social Media A-Team, Marketing Engineer, collaboration

Technorati Tags: Marketing, Marketing Bubble, Social Media, Word-of-Mouth

Ron Fredericks writes: In a previous post I talked about using a blog site as an influential place to communicate. Why is it influential? Primarily because an individual can self-publish their thoughts while linking to other posts and sites that are relevant. To take this concept one step further, the question comes up “How shall I motivate other bloggers to promote my story/initiative/whatever?” Clearly, if you can just get a whole bunch of influential bloggers to write about your story in a positive way, well then your message would be read and perhaps even accepted by many more people.

The problem is that individual bloggers don’t like to be told what to do with their blogging activity and time. I read an interesting post this morning on Stephen Walli‘s “Once More unto the Breach” blog titled Blogging and Traditional Marketing that describes the situation exactly.

There may not be a single way to use bloggers to generate influence and create improved marketing exposure. However, Steve Rubel‘s Micro Persuasion blog post titled How to Pitch Into the Long Tail News Curve describes how to work with bloggers more effectively:

• Identify Leading Blog Influencers
• Plant the Seed with the Bloggers
• Hit the Mainstream Press
• Regenerate the Story with Other Bloggers

But the answer was clearly explained by Stephen, take the time to build a relationship with a blogger before you ask them to help you create influence or build marketshare.

Reference:
Morgan Stanley: An Update from the Digital World: from Morse Code to blogs, 2004

Technorati Tags: Ron Fredericks, motivate, promote, Stephen Walli, Once More unto the Breach, Marketing, Steve Rubel, Micro Persuasion, Long Tail, Influence

Gain Impact,
Save Time

Ron Fredericks writes: Dr. Thomas Buckholtz offers his new book titled Gain Impact, Save Time (GIST) as a direct download from Embedded Components, Inc.’s web site. His public speeches are well regarded in Silicon Valley and around the world. A recent lecture titled Mentorship Unplugged: Innovate Incisively by Dr. Thomas J. Buckholtz was discussed on RainMakers LIVE!.

Technorati Tags: Ron Fredericks, Dr. Thomas Buckholtz, GIST, Embedded Components, Silicon Valley, Innovate, RainMakers LIVE!

What shoes do you wear? Business. Engineer. Something magical? It takes all three to develop a new embedded device… The dichotomy between the engineering community that builds product and management that funds production of product is where the magic lives. Ethical considerations seem to me to be the common ground between these two groups within the corporation. Build a good ethic within your organization so executives can fund the correct projects designed by professionals with the requirements clients genuinely desire using, safely.

One resource for learning how:
Rethinking Business Ethics
Rosenthal, Sandra B.; Buchholz, Rogene A.

- Ron Fredericks

Technorati Tags: Business, Engineer, embedded device, Ethical, corporation, executives, professionals, requirements

Are you interested in increasing your influence in the embedded system‘s marketplace? Are you looking for a place to self-publish your content and have it seen by lots of other professionals? Then this blog center may be just the place for you. Embedded Components, Inc. (ECI) recently integrated WordPress to drive this blog center. WordPress is full of features and offers a robust support community.

Do you know how to blog, pingback, digg, tag, link, feed, and reach into the “long tail of the curve”? No? No problem, we’ll teach and help you. Yes? Great, then you already know there is synergy in participation. That’s what our blog center is all about – increase your influence – lower your promotion and support costs. We’re already the experts in embedded blogging:

• for online Cycles of Efficiency™
• for the embedded tools community
• for the embedded components community

Now it’s our turn to help others!

If you are interested, then take the next steps: (1) comment on this initial post, and (2) as part of your comment, request a free author’s upgrade to be an active contributor.

This can be your team’s independent site to influence engineers, marketers, and enablers in the device manufacturing community. We offer this site as a free service to you, or you can sponsor a custom virtual community.

- Ron Fredericks

Technorati Tags: embedded system, Embedded Components, WordPress, long tail, promotion, device manufacturing, Influence