I had the pleasure of attending the Mobile Me & You 2 Conference in Chicago, IL this weekend, learning about the latest innovations in mobile media. Several graduate students from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln were able to attend, as UNL was a sponsor of the conference.
Andy Boyle, of NBC Digital, and Kurt Gessler, Deputy Editor
of Digital News at Chicago Tribune, presented at the conference at the Medill School of Journalism, Media and Integrated Marketing
Communications in Chicago, IL on October 29, 2016.
Boyle and Gessler presented about how to evaluate your new
mobile app or product. “You need to have a plan. What is success? What is
failure? How do you define success? Is it traffic? Impact? Money? Ads served?
Downloads? Subscriptions?” asked Boyle. He explained that you generally need to
know your metric for evaluation first before proceeding. Boyle stated that the
ultimate goal for most project-level work, though, has to be impact.
“Don’t assume you know who the audience is or what type of
mobile device they are using,” emphasized Boyle. He gave an example of this
when the Chicago Tribune thought they knew their audience didn’t use tablets, only
to find out 50% of the app’s use was on tablets.
Boyle and Gessler also offered more advice to the audience
about mobile apps, such as the importance of giving fewer decision options to
your audience, and updating your applications and website because the digital
space changes so quickly.
They also talked about how crucial it is to offer your
craziest ideas first, they don’t need to be grounded in reality. Pitch the
ideas and other team members will think how they can build on it. Don’t be
afraid to fail due to the risk that management could say “no” to an idea. To
avoid rejection, getting buy-in from executives early on can help garner that support
in advance.
Boyle closed the presentation with a quote from Bob Woodward
on the timely topic of working with management to move ideas forward: “All good
work is done in deviance of management.”
I really enjoyed this post, especially the part where Boyle said, “Don’t assume you know who the audience is or what type of mobile device they are using.” I recently attended a meeting on campus where I learned that this is a serious issue for many of my colleagues. Apparently, it's pretty typical for groups to think they are addressing students using phones but through analytics they learn that they are actually addressing alumni on computers. It just showcases the need for proper analytics! Thanks for sharing what you learned at this conference.
ReplyDelete