After 5 months, 5 (and ½?) assignments, live classes, inspirational talks, tons of interesting and insightful material and a lot of food for digital, innovative and revolutionary thought, the Squared Online journey for the class of Jan ‘14 is now coming to an end. But an “end” is definitely what this isn’t - and I am sure all of my fellow Squares would agree with that

Revolutionary from start to finish

The 5th and last Squared module was called The Ongoing Revolution. Marketing, Communication & Sales, the whole process of reaching out to a brand’s audience, are undergoing major changes fuelled by tech & digital. Digital is no longer a type of marketing. It is rather a bridge between all the different strategies we design to engage with the customer/user in multiple ways, platforms and media. This is the era of i-Marketing: intelligent, insightful, interesting (from the point of the...

Change it just a bit or turn it upside down

Experiment, go crazy, be unorthodox, follow your instincts (or not).

Succeed or fail big time.

Mistakes can only be extremely harmful when they linger. So don’t let them.

Test. Analyse. Optimise. And test again. Regularly.

Squared Online Module 4 is called Think Optimised. A way to do that? Data collection, analysis & reporting, understanding what your data has to say. Focussing on the important things, not the noise. And taking action. Running tests. A/B or multivariate (with a clear preference towards the latter).

Let’s google-analyse it

I was introduced to [Google Analytics](www.google.com/analytics/) a few years ago and was immediately amazed at how powerful it is. The number of things you can measure, the insight it gives you and its importance in making decisions to better distribute your advertising budget among different...

Well, I guess I’m back! Blogging from a new flat with new flatmates and new thoughts and ideas. It’s been a while since I last posted on here - honestly, when I logged in just now, my laptop made a “look who’s back”-ish noise. Or I am just getting crazy. A bit

So today’s post is dedicated to the Customer Journey as we experienced it during Module 3 at Squared Online. Relationships between brands and customers have changed dramatically (not exactly a revelation, I know, but I had to have an opening statement!). Brands can no longer afford to be mere broadcasters of sales messages and approach customers when they are ready to reach for their wallets - they need to be there all the way, with a more conversational mood, knowing how to tell great stories and create value for the customer throughout a convergent marketing funnel. We interact with brands and their products in multiple...

So you got to know me as an “Eleanna”. But now I would like to introduce myself as a proud member of Green Group 21. The 1st part of our journey on Squared just reached its destination a couple of days ago, with us submitting our pitch for a super-amazing & ultra-exciting new online business idea (totally objective opinion guys). This post won’t be focussing on our idea though - it will be focussing on the overall experience, what it felt like to work as a group and get together only virtually on Google Hangouts, exchange ideas and information via shared Google Docs and collaborate to create our final piece online

I want to start by saying that the whole process flowed way better than I had imagined. To be honest, the first hangout was a bit awkward - a bunch of people participating in a video call, talking at the same time, some couldn’t be heard loud enough, others had no sound -...

The definition of productivity is changing. In a world where machines grow smarter and smarter, capable of storing more and more information in the form of data, retrieving it upon request, combining and recombining it and producing tangible results, services or physical products, humans need to redefine their scope of work. The era where people excelled through memorising huge chunks of accumulated information, spending an extensive amount of time studying and delving deeper and deeper in specific subjects, is reaching its end. The process of producing creative solutions is also changing shape. We now more than ever need to start acting like “cureators”: creators driven by curation

But can our lifestyles support this?

I recently read an article by Greg Satell on Forbes that concluded by saying:

While the past favored those who could retain and process information efficiently, the...

This goes out to all of you having this Squared feeling deep inside for the last couple of weeks: So, are you ready for Round 2?

It’s been less than a month but I already feel I’ve learnt quite a lot. Squared Online is not only a course on digital marketing, but also a platform for interaction, sharing experiences and information, exchanging knowledge and expertise on various business fields. So many people coming from so many different backgrounds, but having in common their passion for digital, the Social Web, the Internet of Things and this new, tech-disrupted, marketing era we live in. I feel very lucky to be part of the Squared Community: there’s so much useful information posted everyday on Google+, LinkedIn and of course our forums (in fact too much, more than I can handle on a daily basis).

So, what did Module 1 do to my life?

1. Squared made me create a blog and actually write

We have a saying in Greek: Nothing is hidden under the sun. Inspired by yesterday’s class with Mike Berry on Squared Online, I would say that for the brands of today, the “sun” is the Social Media.

The relationship between brands and their audience has turned into an eternal conversation. It is no longer a monologue- it’s an exchange. An exchange of information, feelings, experiences, thoughts and opinions. Brands are now more than ever vulnerable to the sunshine of the social web: they can no longer get away with pretending, lying, not caring about customer satisfaction, not being authentic, responsive and truly engaging with their audience.

From yesterday’s poll it turned out that most of us interact with brand content when it involves images, videos and infographics, not necessarily to promote specific products our to “shout” for exclusive offers and discounts. Original content...

(Introduction for everyone who decides to spend 2 or 3 minutes to read my Monday evening thoughts) The number of blog posts and articles on content creation is vast: both B2B and B2C companies are listing content creation in the top 3 priorities for their future marketing strategies. Brands have finally understood that publishing/sharing bits and pieces of information with little relevance to their audience just to keep blogs and social media accounts frequently updated, does not achieve much in terms of building brand awareness and engagement.

(Introduction for fellow Squares) Class finished an hour ago- greatly enjoyed it, thank you Mike! However, dear reader, this post has nothing to do with the 3 questions we were left with- I will have to revisit those at a later time. It ‘s about creating the kind of content that has the right to claim to be king.

Personally, prior to creating...

How long is 10 minutes? Let me rephrase: How long is 10 online minutes?

You scroll down the Twitter timeline and by the time you read the 30 most recent tweets (filtering out the ones that don’t interest you of course), another 30 are already piling up.

You go through the news items on Feedly (needless to say you only manage to check 1 category, 2 is superhero-reader or weekend-only activity), the articles you have gathered since last night are never-ending and new, hot-off-the-digital-press are arriving all the time at the top.

You spend 10 minutes to read a report on digital marketing and 3 newer ones are already published, people have already liked them-shared them- commented on them. And you have no idea what they are talking about.

Facebook? Oh trust me, you don’t wanna go there. It’s hopeless.

But wait, there is a way to fix this: Have multiple screens, read on your...