SmartSymbols^tm

Matt Fellows from BostInnovation wrote a great article about SmartSymbols.

It really is a nice summary about SmartSymbols (thank you Matt), but what is interesting is that it is nice summary from a different perspective.

Take the article’s tag line for example: “Finally, all of your product research in one place”. Well, yes, thank you! That is exactly the problem SmartSymbols was designed to solve for the shopper.
From the “sales guy” perspective, Matt points out that “the sales team gets to cram all of the positive content about your product in one easy-to-digest place, complete with a “buy” button for instant conversion. ” The is also, as they say, gets straight to the crux of the issue.


Of course, it is great to have a positive review written by someone who grasps the magnitude of the problem and the importance of the solution. The side benefit, however, is another perspective that may make us look at our own product from a different angle. Perhaps a clearer one.

Tweet This Post

What are the most efficient ways of improving the impact of your SmartSymbols? Here are 5 fundamental ways of SmartSymbols work for you more efficiently and give you the information about what people are really interested in, directly from their behavior while they look at your product.

Next >>

Tweet This Post

1. Put SmartSymbols into all your online properties
It’s very easy to do (click “Share”, select the format you want, then copy & paste the snippet on the right) and there are two reasons for that: buzz and analytics.
Buzz: every time a symbol set is added to a web property (a web page or a blog) it generates more buzz: people will explore the symbol set and will share it with others.
Analytics: every instance of SmartSymbols will produce a set of analytics (see more here). By comparing traffic from different installations of SmartSymbols sets you will be able to create your next step in the marketing campaign.

Aggregate and Distribute - Click to Enlarge

Next >>

Tweet This Post

3. Use SmartSymbols Analytics
Analytics will tell you (more here) what people are actually interested in a straight-forward and blunt way : what readers actually spend time on - what they read, which video clips they watch (you have video clips, right?) and so on. This is more than just analytics - this is marketing data that can be used in many ways, such as creating campaigns.

Icon Usage Chart - Click to Enlarge

Next >>

Tweet This Post

2. Share symbol sets consistently with others
Let people - blogger, journalists, your fans and followers - embed your SmartSymbols into their web pages and blog entries. This will benefit them as well - readers and visitors are more likely to explore something interactive and visual, which is a clear advantage of plain text. Every time you talk to a blogger or a reporter - offer your symbol set. It’s very easy to do - just copy & paste a code snippet under the “Share” button.
Click on the diagram below to see code snippet locations.

Sharing SmartSymbols - Click to Enlarge

Tweet This Post

5. Use icons creatively
Sky is the limit here - you will run out of content before SmartSymbols runs out of space. Things you did not have space to tell before - you can now. And it will not take much space! For example - show pictures of places where your book is taking place, show some illustrations that a book has, or show a map of where your product is being used. (See more here: Secret of the Compass Icon)

Show Where Product is Used - Click to Enlarge

Tweet This Post

4. Try different campaigns
For example - put “Social Networking” icon in the first place, then a week later swap places with “Reviews” icon, or try different content within the icons. Also, consider what other icons you would like to try - maybe different aspects of the product connect with your customers better than others. All these combinations will help you figure what works best.

Different Icon Combinations - Click to Enlarge

Next >>

Tweet This Post

NYC BigApps - SmartSymbols

This morning we have submitted our entry for the NYC BigApps Competition; you can also get to the entry directly here.

The premise of the competition is simple: use data provided by NYC DataMine (government data feeds) and use it the best way you can.  Naturally, we felt that SmartSymbols would be a good fit.

We used a DataMine data sets to for 3 examples:

1.  The NYC Public Library

2.  Department of Transportation

3.  Map demo with a  Library symbol set

It was somewhat surprising how much interesting data produced by the City of NY produces which is essentially hidden from the locals and the visitors: from tree locations to exhibitions at the library to traffic reports, to low bridge information.  Hopefully we will be able to bring this information out in a visible and easy-to-access way.

In addition, we combined a number of data feeds from the city with the usual set of web buzz - Twitter, blogs, etc. - the usual set of information we add to the symbol set.

There is a number of interesting apps participating in the contest, take a look when you get a chance.

Tweet This Post

We have officially released a symbol set for books: “SmartSymbols Offers Advanced Marketing Solution for Book Publishers and Authors“. It looks like this:






Here is the excerpt from the press release:

“This new industry-focused symbol set organizes real time social network and social media content, book reviews, interactive maps of the story’s geographic locations, calendar of events, video based author bios and both written and audio book excerpts for display across any number of Web-based environments including: ecommerce sites, publisher and author Web sites, blogs and mobile devices.


SmartSymbols™ social media marketing support includes real time feed capabilities from Twitter, Facebook and blog/RSS. SmartSymbols™ is the only author and book publishing marketing tool to combine traditional internal marketing material with external social media marketing strategies, bringing the total book community experience to all points of distribution.”

You can see a full demo here: http://www.smartsymbols.com/demo.html

Tweet This Post

“Design is not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works.” -Steve Jobs


Boris Evelson from Forrester Research wrote a great summary on “How to differentiate advanced data visualisation solutions“. It’s clear, specific and to the point - great resource and a check list.

Also, I recently saw a great presentation by Stephen Anderson, “Eye Candy IS A Critical Business Requirement“. It explains, very convincingly, why design details are so critical not only to how the product looks, but how it functions.

These articles, combined with Steve Job’s famous quote and the teachings of Edward Tufte always make me stop and think every time I create any kind of chart, picture, or any type of data visualization.

Source: Edward Tufte’s Website

All this reminds me that it is so critical to have our diagrams, icons and fonts created in such way that they are just fun to look at and explore. This is critical - they have to be fun to explore. If they are not - it does not matter how efficiently we compress data into the diagrams, charts and dashboards: if people don’t explore our visualizations, they will not find that data, thus rendering our efforts useless.

Do our data visuazations convey a simple message or are they just fancy-looking but useless? In other words: “what would Tufte say?”. Although he probably won’t say anything good, I found this exercise useful. It makes me do three things. First, it makes me ask other people to review my visualizations. Second, it makes me do more research on how a particular problem has been solved before. And third, it forces me take another look, and try to simplify or even re-work the diagrams again and again.

I think this is one of the rare cases when doubt is good, it makes you better while pursuing simplicity and clarity.

Tweet This Post