General blog posts

LMC Donates Marketing Expertise: Now Meet Our Winner

The Envelope Please…

We like to give back to our community, so when we had the chance to donate something to a local charity auction, we decided to donate our time and our small business/strategic growth and marketing expertise. We were excited to help out a small, local company here in West Bend by offering a consultation. It was intriguing to us to see if they had done growth hacking and some of the guerrilla marketing techniques that we love.

Here’s the thing. You might think that we have a lot of preconceived notions when it comes to our clients. But we generally don’t. When you come to LMC, we don’t take anything for granted. We want to know who you are, what you’re selling and where you see your company going. We don’t decide that for you. We talk. We listen to what you have to say. Because in order to take you where you want to go, we have to meet you where you are and roadmap the journey together.

But we confess. We did carry some preconceived notions when we donated to this charity auction. We had no idea if we would be starting from scratch with the local business owner. We guessed that it might be a brand new seed start up that needed everything. We wondered if the company would have any marketing expertise, or a marketing budget, and what kind of education in strategic growth that the small organization would have. Frankly, we’d expected to provide the most basic support and infrastructure for starting up.

Boy were we wrong.

The winner was Dr. Krysti Wick, owner of River Shores Chiropractic. And the first thing we learned about Krysti is that she is not a stranger to marketing. Not at all. She has a detailed website. She’s active on Facebook, and she does sponsored posts. She strategically picks her targets.

And that’s interesting. When you pick your targets on Facebook, it means you already know who your target market is. And Krysti certainly does. When we asked her who she is trying to reach with her business, she knew. She knows what types of jobs they have, what they like to do in their spare time, and where they spend their money.

She also knows who her competitors are. And, she knows how she’s differentiating herself. She knows how she is targeting the market for chiropractic services differently, because she knows who she is, and who her audience is.

For example, she knows that her focus is on wellness and preventative health. Like her competitors she does pain management, but one of the things that makes her a little different is this wellness focus. And it’s reflected in her customers. While her customer base is diverse, on average they’re people who care about, and invest money in, good health. They’re folks who buy organic produce and local foods. They breastfeed their babies and use cloth diapers.

Because Krysti is already thinking about these things, it means that when we sit down for our marketing consultation, we can start much further down the marketing path. When we sit down with her this week to ask her where she wants to go with her business, she’ll get a lot from the meeting, because she already knows where she is. And she did it without a huge marketing budget.

Laura Mitchell Consulting is a strike team of marketing and growth strategy experts. If you’re ready to grow, contact us at info@lmcllc.us. We’d love to help.

 

The Battle Continues: Hootsuite vs. Buffer

What is a social media scheduling platform?

Screen Shot 2016-06-29 at 1.33.12 PMA scheduling platform provides marketers the opportunity to schedule posts ahead of time for most major social media sites. Photos, videos, links, and text posts can all be scheduled in advance for a number of popular social networking sites. Scheduling nearly eliminates the need to constantly post to and monitor social media sites. Just-in-time marketing is difficult, so scheduling platforms provide a way for business owners to keep organizational profiles from going dark when other priorities require attention.

Do I need a scheduling platform?

In an age where trending topics and news topics are constantly changing and authenticity is a goal, scheduling social media may feel wrong. However, with careful planning and strategic posting, scheduling platforms can be lifesaving for busy business owners and marketing teams.

 

Larger organizations with entire social media departments may use these platforms to manage multiple products and pages, assign tasks to team members, respond to mentions/complaints on the various social media sites, and measure analytics (how well their posts are doing and how audiences are responding).

 

Smaller organizations use these platforms to sort of “set it and forget it.” That is, they may schedule facebook, Linkedin and Twitter posts far in advance, do auto posting for blogs and web content, and primarily focus energy on running their business and driving sales.

 

Which sites should I post to?

Screen Shot 2016-06-29 at 1.33.23 PMIt really depends on your customer and where they are. How old are they? Are they female or male? Are you selling directly to the consumer or B2B?  LMC always recommends a blog with relevant, interesting and engaging topics that involve your ideal customers and product offering categories.

Direct to Consumer: Facebook Page, Twitter (for customer service), each employee should have a LinkedIn profile for networking. Instagram is a younger demographic, Snapchat even younger. Pinterest is typically 40+ women.

Business to Business: Facebook Page (mandatory for even B2B), LinkedIn profiles for each employee (networking) and a LinkedIn business page. Twitter can be great for networking at conferences and providing customer support. Twitter can be especially effective for conference chatting using the official conference hashtag (see #DigitalHealthCES for an example).

Use a scheduling platform like Hootsuite or Buffer to create a stream of content that will auto-publish to Facebook. However, Facebook doesn’t love third-party apps and have made that clear when you compare the reach from scheduling sites vs. native posting. Posts see better organic reach when they are natively created and scheduled on Facebook itself. Stay away from using anything external (whether that be Hootsuite or Buffer) to post to Facebook. Most other social media sites aren’t as picky, however. YouTube, LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram, for example, treat all content equally for the most part.

 

Hootsuite vs. Buffer: Similarities and Differences

Similarities: Both Hootsuite and Buffer offer relatively similar scheduling and publishing options, with mobile apps and browser plugins for easy sharing. Interestingly, both Buffer and Hootsuite offer RSS integration, which means it can auto post to other social networks sites and/or your website. So, whenever a new post is published from a source, that post could be pushed to all relevant social networking sites with one button.

Screen Shot 2016-06-29 at 1.33.32 PMHootsuite Benefits: Hootsuite is a more complete content management solution than Buffer. Whereas Buffer is strictly for capturing and scheduling content, Hootsuite is a complete social media management tool. Organizations can have teams, assign tasks to specific users, and publish content to a wider variety of sites (YouTube, Instagram, etc.). You can actually interact with all of your social media streams in one place, an option that Buffer doesn’t offer. This means that you can see who is commenting on your facebook, who retweeted your comment, like someone’s facebook post and see what’s happening on Linkedin, all in one place. Hootsuite offers analytics for social media platforms themselves, which are incredibly useful to see what’s working and what’s not. Reports can also be automatically generated for each social media site.

 

Buffer Benefits: Buffer has a close relationship with IFTTT (IF This Then That), which can be used to automate almost anything. Schedule posts more quickly, set reminders for your team, catalog your emails, create recurring tasks, sync items through the cloud, or track and time your digital habits. For example, you can use IFTTT to create a new row in a Google Sheets document each time one of your business profiles posts a tweet or status update. This is a useful way to keep a record of everything your organization posts, and it takes exactly zero effort.

 

In addition, Buffer appears to be much more Apple friendly. The Hootsuite app on iOS is often glitchy and ineffective. Buffer only offers analytics for the posts you schedule on the platform, not for the social media platforms themselves. This is an important distinction. Want to know what kind of impact your posts are having on your profile as a whole, even if you didn’t schedule them on Buffer? You’re out of luck.

 

Which tool is right for your organization? Need more help? Let Laura Mitchell Consulting help. Contact us at info@lmcllc.us or visit us at www.lmcllc.us. Find us on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, and Google+!

 

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I’ve Got the Conch

No one has never accused me of being shy. It’s true, I love to talk and socialize. I love networking, having conversations with smart people and, most of all, I love to speak in front of people about topics that I know well. (I’m even willing to speak on topics I know nothing about, but I wouldn’t advise engaging me on those.)  

I like helping people understand things like Disruptive Technologies and the Aging Tsunami, Guerrilla & Growth Marketing in the Digital World, Remote Patient Monitoring, Connected Health and a variety of other industry-related topics. But it’s not just about speaking in front of crowds that motivates me. It’s what happens after. These events become the start of a conversation, and often the start of a relationship. The same goes for participating on panel discussions.

I’m opening up the door to engagement and I want to talk with you. I have shared what I know, but I want you to share what you know, too. What happens next is up to you. I love taking questions afterward. And after that, things get even better when I have a chance to mingle with attendees one-on-one. Best of all? The people who are not shy about telling me I’ve missed something important. They don’t just keep me on my toes, they make me better.

If your organization is interested in having me start a conversation at your event, let me know. “Yes, I’d love to come and speak at your event” is one of my favorite things to say. And unless I’m otherwise engaged, I’d love to say yes to you. To see me in action at my various speaking gigs, check out the LMC YouTube channel. If you like what you see, drop me a line at info@lmcllc.us, or find me on Facebook and LinkedIn. #LMCMktg @laurahmitchell

Follow Laura Mitchell Consulting on LinkedIn.

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Laura Mitchell Chosen as Digital Health Expert for PricewaterhouseCoopers California HealthCare Workshop

Laura Mitchell has been selected for her digital health expertise to present at the USC Marshall School of Business and PricewaterhouseCoopers HealthCare event in southern California.  The California Healthcare Operations and Technology Leaders Workshop, held on June 16th, is an invitation-only experience and is limited to only 40 participants from healthcare organizations across Southern California.  

The workshop brings together a blue ribbon group of California healthcare professionals to focus on organizational responses to the healthcare disruptions that have been identified as key issues by the Health Research Institute. The mission is to identify and share operational tactics to manage these disrupters, which include the shifting of risk to providers, the shift toward retail health insurance, new payment models, and technology innovations at the point of care.

The participants in conjunction with the subject matter specialists will seek to connect organizational tactics and solutions in the new health economy to improve on three core topics, Digital Health, Clinical Big Data and Patient Experience.

Laura will be joined by fellow digital health experts, Andy Sofield and Rani Radhakrishnan for this engaging opportunity in healthcare and innovation.

You Punks…Get Off My Ellipses!

The rise of ellipses (…) in Internet-age communications is as fascinating as it is controversial. Some see it as a lazy stand-in for proper punctuation like periods and commas. Others see it as a way to make texts and emails more like speech in an age where what we write is more conversational and subject to immediate back and forth. I think it’s probably both. What I found really interesting, though, is the degree to which millennials reject them. I needed to know more, so I went directly to the source for intel.

“It just makes you sound middle aged,” said one quirky millennial. “Old people use them in weird ways that don’t make sense,” quipped another. “I can always tell someone’s age by their use of ellipses,” piped in a third. One righteous young punctuarian scolds us older folks for using ellipses–in Forbes, no less.

I personally know a teenage girl who always knows when her friend’s mother has been texting on her friend’s behalf: the presence of proper spelling…and the repeated use of ellipses. (Dead giveaway, Mrs. Miller!)

However, millennials feel about them, here’s my defense of our beloved ellipses: when used well, they can have an effect on how the reader hears the written content. It’s designed to be a “and then” or the thought of something leading somewhere, or… a dramatic pause.  We “old people” really care about how the content is received, in addition to how we present it.

I find myself utilizing ellipses in marketing communications such as splash emails, Facebook posts or blogs to direct the reader on how it’s meant to sound, in a very conversational manner. However, I also tend to market to an “older” demographic for my companies as well, so…there’s that…. (ok, fine, so that was a bit of an unnecessary and guilty ellipses usage).

But if it’s true that we oldsters began using our beloved three-dot mark out of a desire to mimic the spoken word, then wouldn’t the same pressures exert themselves on younger people as well? Why do they resist the siren song of the mighty ellipsis? Maybe there’s something else at work here. Maybe they simply say what they mean without dramatic pauses or ‘to be continued’ hesitations.

Here’s the part where I’m supposed to tell you why this age/ellipsis difference exists, or at least provide a plausible theory. But the truth is…I got nothing. At the time of this writing, I remain curious and puzzled.

Oh, mighty ellipsis, just…why…?

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Laura Mitchell Selected as Keynote Speaker for 26th Annual Aging Well Conference

Screen Shot 2016-05-17 at 12.32.10 PMI love speaking at trade shows and other events. I get to speak on a wide range of topics including enabling technologies, the aging population, connected health, guerrilla marketing, selling to the fragmented aging population, etc.  Not only do I get to share my experience and knowledge of the aging & tech industry, but I also get to meet tons of interesting and truly passionate people all over the country.

When the University of Wisconsin-Parkside’s Aging Well Conference asked me to be a keynote speaker for their conference, I was excited to accept.  Not only because the conference agenda looked fantastic, but also because it happens to be right here in my backyard in sunny Wisconsin.  In such a booming industry, it’s typical for me to jump on a plane and fly across the country to slumber and speak. This one is just a short car ride away in Kenosha, Wisconsin.

This is the 26th annual Aging Well Conference. For nearly three decades, this event has been bringing attention to the important issues surrounding gerontology and its best practices. And the event is not just for professional caregivers. It also offers information valuable to family caregivers and older adults themselves. It sounds like a well-rounded conference and I look forward to learning from it.

Case in point: the other featured speakers who will be joining me. Barbara Bendlin, an Associate Professor of Medicine at UW-Madison, and the Principal Investigator at the Wisconsin Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center, will be speaking about how to reduce the risk of Alzheimer’s. Jim Vanden Bosch is the founder and Executive Director of Terra Nova Films. He is the producer of several award-winning films on aging issues, and how to successfully communicate and work with people living with dementia. Plus there is an extensive list of breakout sessions and workshop speakers.

If you’re in the Great Lakes region, you should come! It’s happening Friday, June 3rd in Kenosha, WI. Here’s a link with all the details. Obviously, if you do go please stop me and say hi!  See you in Kenosha.

Weak Brand, Weak Sales

One of our favorite services that we provide as a marketing firm is branding. It’s not just creating a logo and establishing a company color palette. It’s also defining the company story. It’s why they make their products and who they’re for. It’s why you should do business with them and not someone else.

Getting to the bottom of all this takes effort. We do research on them, of course. But we also give them homework: questions about who they think their customers are, what their logo makes people feel when they see it, what makes them unique in the marketplace, who their direct and indirect competitors are, and many more. Armed with all of this input, we schedule a meeting—a very long meeting—to hash it all out. A meeting that challenges them to talk and brainstorm.

Sometimes these sessions can be difficult, such as when the company logo, beloved by some, is found to be unpopular with others. Part of our job is to facilitate these issues to resolution. You might be surprised at the degree of unity, among company personnel and consultants alike, by the time we’re done. The process often leaves everyone very excited and with a new clarity of purpose. I mean we’re not singing Kumbaya around the campfire or anything, but it’s close.

We leave these sessions with a lot of notes. We use those notes to write a brand report. It’s more or less a summary of what the team achieved during the long session together. The idea of the report is simple. It tells the story of the company. Everything from what motivates them to do what they do, ideas for strategic marketing campaigns, suggested verbiage, things they would like to change, to what messages will resonate with their target market. Armed with this report, they can go forth and create/redesign a logo, a web site, brochures, sales slide decks, entire marketing and social media campaigns, launch a new product and more. With a solid brand at the core, all of these subsequent efforts will be working in concert, singing the same song in the same key.

Occasionally there are some harsh truths in the report. These are usually just calling out something everyone already knows: your existing marketing collateral isn’t conveying the right message.

How’s your brand looking? You grab some firewood and we’ll bring the guitar.

Quality Content Is King In Latest Facebook Algorithm Change

Earlier last week, social marketeers heard those dreaded five words that invariably send them scurrying to their fainting couches: “Facebook changes news feed algorithm.” It’s true that multi-million dollar businesses live or die by the whims of Facebook (see Zynga and LiveSocial), but if you simply use the social aspects to market your business, there’s no need to hyperventilate. Understanding the secret algorithm sauce can empower you and ensure your marketing efforts won’t stumble after the latest Facebook algorithm change.

What is the the algorithm? And why does it keep changing?

When a user views their Facebook feed, they see a collection of recent posts from their friends, groups, and liked pages. For very active users, this can quickly become upwards of thousands of posts. Rather than simply display this massive list to the user (as Twitter does), Facebook applies it’s magic algorithm and shows the user only the top posts it thinks will be interesting to the user. It makes sense — Facebook wants you to like using Facebook. A rather large number of factors play into how the posts get ranked, including the actual content of the post, the number of engagements a post has, how often the user has engaged in posts like this one, who made the post, and more.

Here’s a great video directly from Facebook’s F8 conference on how the news feed works:

But what exactly are the factors used to determine if an article shows up? Well, no one really knows. The exact inner workings of Facebook’s algorithm is a closely guarded secret within the company. Since offering paid promotion into the top posts for users is the center of Facebook’s business model, it is not really in the company’s best interest to let marketers easily peek into the algorithm and game the system on the cheap. Facebook tweaks the algorithm every so often to either quash any gaming of the system or to promote a new feature. For example, when Facebook introduced and started heavily promoting native video, they tweaked the algorithm to strongly prefer this video over links to external sites like YouTube. Marketers who noticed that their video posts were reaching more users than other posts responded by promoting a ton of video content to provide awareness for their brands.

[pullquote align=”right” color=”#69AE22″]The exact inner workings of Facebook’s algorithm is a closely guarded secret within the company.[/pullquote]

As a marketer, why should I care?

In the eyes of the almighty algorithm, not all posts are created equal. And unless you are planning on sponsoring all your posts in Facebook, you need to know what will and won’t get past the Facebook filters to reach your potential market. In order to ensure your marketing efforts aren’t in vain, you need to keep the algorithm in mind as you are posting.  

What is in the latest Facebook algorithm change?

According to Facebook, the latest changes call out two specific topics: how long a user spends interacting with the topic of a post, and post diversity.

Did you notice how when you click a link within the Facebook on your mobile device that the article pops up in a “Facebook browser”, and not in your mobile device’s browser? This is Facebook’s way of measuring how long you spend interacting with the article. This amount of time will now be factored into where a post gets ranked.

The second change has to do with the diversity of posts. Facebook users complained that they don’t like seeing several posts in a row from the same source. So Facebook tweaked the news feed to introduce more “diversity”. This most likely means that frequency of posting may be marked against a post’s rank in a user’s news feed. Lots of posts don’t necessarily result in lots of views.

What does this mean for our social media strategy?

[pullquote align=”left” color=”#69AE22″]As a marketer, these changes mean you need to start thinking hard about quality instead of quantity.[/pullquote]

Ultimately these Facebook algorithm changes are a way of dealing with “clickbait” content — those gimmicky posts that lead to awful, ad-ridden sites that a user closes as quickly as they opened it. The company has spent significant time and resources courting quality content providers, and letting this content get buried beneath a mountain of spam would hurt these initiatives and kill the user experience. You can be sure that Facebook has a cautious eye on the slow collapse of Twitter as they make these changes.

As a marketer, these changes mean you need to start thinking hard about quality instead of quantity. If you are not creating compelling, interesting content (and instead posting BUY! BUY! BUY! 17 times a day) Facebook will simply ignore your posts. Good original content is favored for organic visibility over tons of little, uninteresting posts. There’s also an emphasis on variety — if you only post links to your own blog, for example, Facebook will penalize your posts for being too “samey”. Change the content of your posts frequently, switching between pictures, videos, links, and (as much as it may pain you) the occasional picture of kittens.

How can I tell what is working or not working for my audience?

Unfortunately, there is no quick and easy way to know.

At LMC, we do a weekly review of the organic reach of our posts using Facebook’s Insights feature. We check what has reached and engaged the most users and what has not. Based on those results, we adapt our strategy. If a certain type of post frequently receives poor marks, we give it a hard look, tweak it, and try something different. We also take a close look at the number of posts we have made versus their reach and engagement. There is a definite “over-posting” effect, and finding that golden number of posts per week can take some time.

Constantly evolving and refining your social media strategy is a surefire path to success and will insulate you future Facebook algorithm changes.

Great Scott! The LMC Insider Spotlight!

MEET LMC’s SCOTT FELDSTEIN315854566_c300611c4a_o

Scott is a writer, speaker, culinary junkie, musician and Jedi master.  As Brand Manager and Copywriter at Laura Mitchell Consulting, he uses his creativity to effectively communicate company values to just the right target demographic.  In addition to 15 years of experience in technology, Scott has studied psychology, religion, education and computing and holds a master’s degree from Marquette University.

Q: If you could vacation anywhere on the planet, where would you go?
A: Spain. I’m kind of a foodie and I hear that Spain is becoming the new food capital of the world. But Europe and Asia are both really calling to me.

Q: So you’re a foodie. Tell us what your favorite food is and why?
A: Hmm. My favorite food…SO hard to say. Thin crust pepperoni pizza? A well made cheese omelet? Excellent chili? No, I’m going to go with a really good Cuban sandwich.

Q: What one piece of advice would you give your younger self?
A: I would remind myself that things that seem permanent always change in time. When things seem awful, it’s important to remember this. But there’s the flip side: when things seem great, it’s just a matter of time…

Q: What food do you dislike?
A: Quinoa. It just doesn’t taste like food to me. Also, sweet bagels. They’re just wrong. They shouldn’t exist, period. 

Check out this gallery of Scott’s excellent creations:

In fact, Scott is so passionate about the notion of sweet bagels that he was compelled to write a short essay on the “wrongness” of sweet bagels. Read it here.

2342380616_f226f59be4_oQ: What do people not know about you?
A: I used to be a professional photographer. I was hired for weddings, sporting events, parties, and the like. In fact, my photography is still on Flikr. I loved it, but after my fair share of weddings, I decided to move on. I still like to do it for fun, but just not as a primary business.  It’s been very helpful for stock photography with LMC.

Q: What is something that you would like to learn to do?
A: Bake. I cook a lot, but don’t bake a lot except for the New York Times’ no-knead bread. The world of baking is mysterious. There are so many recipes that I would like to make, but I just don’t feel confident enough to try.

Meet the rest of the team here. Have a marketing question? Talk to us! Email us at info@lmcllc.us for more information.

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Dave Pedigo, CEDIA’s Senior Director of Emerging Technologies

Q&A With Leaders in Technology and Aging

Each week on Tech Tuesdays, we’ve been featuring innovators in the Technology and Aging industry. Today, we spoke with Dave Pedigo from CEDIA. Here some highlights from our conversation.

Q: Hi Dave. Good to talk with you. Can you tell us a little about yourself?

A: I’m the Senior Director of Emerging Technologies for CEDIA. Our focus is the custom electronic industry for the residential side, things like home automation, home theater systems, distributed audio, distributed video, home health, and so on. My job is helping to identify the emerging trends, opportunities, and threats to industry. And I also help manufacturers and integrators communicate back and forth, and to identify new channels of revenue.

[pullquote align=”left” cite=”” link=”” color=”” class=”” size=””]Things are happening so fast, we can’t humanly comprehend the rate of change. [/pullquote]

Q: How did you get into this industry?

A: Back in the early 2000s, I’d been working for a trade association for the satellite industry. Then I got recruited to work for CEDIA, and I’ve been here for the 12 years since.

Q: So, what is CEDIA? Can you tell me about it?

A: CEDIA is the trade association for the custom electronics industry. It’s an international association, with 3500 member companies world-wide, representing manufacturers and home technology professionals. We do so many things in addition to the trade show. We used to have the slogan, CEDIA: More than just a trade show. We’re involved with government affairs, lobbying, and watching for potentially harmful legislation. We also write industry standards, help develop best practices, and work with industry partners to try to create the industry. We help connect manufacturing with suppliers, and with home owners. In a short time, electronics have gone from “nice to have’s” to “must have’s” in the home

Q: Have you seen changes to CEDIA over the years?wTNNmrI6

A: (laughs) Yeah, that’s hysterical. I don’t think there are that many sectors that have changed as rapidly and dynamically as we have. The biggest change is the change from analog to digital. And we’ve gone from huge computers to pocket-sized computers. There’s HDTV, aging in place… Digital health is at such an amazing time right now. We have a whole council with various areas of expertise, trying to keep track of their own segments of interest, and even they can’t keep up with how fast things change. There are so many announcements coming out, just in the last week, so it’s almost impossible to keep up with and comprehend.

Q: You’ve seen a lot of what goes on in the industry. What do you think it’s doing right?

A: What’s happening is the democratization of intellectual property. Now everything is digital, everyone has a computer, with the ability to do tons of programming. There are so many people with so many ideas, and it’s theoretically simple to take an idea and convert it to reality. So, my formula for the next industrial revolution is: 3D printing, social media, and crowd funding. Take those three things, and someone who has an idea, and what would have been difficult to pull off a few years ago, is relatively easy.

There are so many people with so many great ideas, and so much change. The chief scientist at Google calls it the law of accelerating returns. Things are happening so fast, we can’t humanly comprehend the rate of change. The Apple watch, for example, some people may say it’s a novelty. I use it mostly as a heart rate monitor, and it’s really accurate. I’m using it to collect long-term data that I can take when I go to the doctor, and say, “This is happening.” It quantifies the information.

So, all these things, whether it’s a gigantic or a small company, it’s faster to market. We’re collecting so much more data than we used to. We’re on the edge of solving a lot of problems. Another example with the Apple watch, they’re trying to tackle five major types of health issues. There are tests you can do every day on the watch. You tap the watch, and it measures how you do. Apple aggregates that anonymous data, and is looking for triggers for events such as asthma attacks. The data in aggregate will help all for solutions to our biggest medical problems.

Q: And what would you change?

A: A lot could be done better. If we start with premise that anyone with a dream can create a product, that is also the exact problem. There’s a lot of stuff coming out that is half-baked, or doesn’t operate well with other products. So there’s also a lot of stuff that: A) doesn’t work very well, or B) doesn’t work very well when put in combination with a series of other products, which, in a home, happens every day. Also, almost all the products being developed today are trying to get to market as fast as possible with the easiest ease-of-use, and they don’t take privacy and security into consideration. As an example, take camera manufacturers. Security cameras are great, don’t get me wrong, but to make them easy to set up by a typical consumer on a smart phone, they use techniques that allow for easy backdoor networking entrance, that make it easy to watch what your camera is broadcasting. And I get it, I promise you. The general consumer these days is willing to risk a potential privacy incursion for convenience.

Q: Do you have any advice you would offer an entrepreneur?

A: My biggest advice is that, if you’re getting into this, create a business plan. That might sound like simple, easy advice. There are plenty of people who get into this industry, because they’re passionate, or hobbyists who think they can make a living. But you have to figure out how you’re going to make money at it. If you are providing a good or service and not running the business well enough, and you go out of business, that’s a disservice to the customer. Too many people assume the technology side is the more important, when in fact running the business is more important, and the tech side will come to you. The sky is the limit, especially in home health. Holy cow. But you have to be able to stay in business.

Q: You’re an expert in emerging technologies. What do you see coming up that’s exciting?

A:  We’re on the verge of some truly innovative solutions that will improve the quality of life. The biggest one for me is voice control. My father has some major health problems. He lives with me, on the main floor. When he gets up at night, he had been taking a flashlight to fumble around and find the keypad for the lights. But now he can say, “Alexa, turn on the kitchen lights 50 percent,” and the lights turn on. That’s not just a novelty when you’re in your late 70s and in ill health, it’s a necessity. You could say we could have done it with a motion detector, but I move around at night a lot and I don’t want the light to come on all the time. This is better. It’s just a simple example of what’s coming. 2016 will be an amazing year for voice control, for natural user interfaces, and also for virtual reality and augmented reality, which gets nerdy and sci-fi-ish, but it is here and really amazing.

Laura Mitchell Consulting is a strike team of experts in the aging and technology industry. Know someone that we should feature in our “Meet the Innovators” blog series? Contact us at info@lmcllc.us and let us know!