microsoft – Page 3 – Bredemarket

Divide and Conquer When Providing Deliverables to Clients

(Delivery van image by Unisouth at English Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=3897499)

All of my Bredemarket work involves providing deliverables to clients in some way:

Text for blog posts, case studies, or white papers.
Text for proposals.
Market/competitive analyses.
Other stuff.

By AlexanderVanLoon – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=24261584.

For all but one Bredemarket client, I provide my deliverables via email. The deliverables usually consist of items such as Microsoft Word documents, Microsoft Excel workbooks, and Portable Document Files.

Easy to email.

Except in one case.

The work

Not real Bredemarket research and analysis. By Calvinius – Own work : http://www.martingrandjean.ch/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/HumanitesNumeriques.jpg, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=29275453.

As I mentioned above, Bredemarket often performs market/competitive analyses. In fact, one of my clients likes my analyses so much that they keep on coming back for more analyses to cover different markets.

For the last three analyses for this particular client, my deliverables have consisted of the following:

An overall report, in PDF format.
The raw data, in XLSX format.
Extracts from the raw data, in PDF format.
The raw text of the report, in DOCX format.

Not a real Bredemarket report. By National Highway Traffic Safety Administration – National Highway Traffic Safety Administration Publication Number: NHTSA-DOT-HS-5-01160, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=6709383.

In my analyses I referred to the companies’ publicly available websites to gather information on the competitor products, as well as the markets they address. (Using a made-up example, if my client provided its products to convenience stores, and a particular competitor ALSO targeted convenience stores, my client would obviously want to know this.)

The opportunity

But for this third analysis I didn’t just look at the websites. I also looked at the product brochures that I could download from these websites.

Not the tangible collateral I collected for my client. From https://bredemarket.com/2021/07/12/my-prediction-of-the-dea t h-of-tangible-collateral-was-premature/.

This gave me an idea.

Since I was downloading all the publicly available brochures from the various competitors, why not provide all of these brochures to my client?

It seemed like a great idea. Since I had gone through all the work to collect the brochures, might as well let my client make future use of them.

The problem

So as I wrapped up the project and prepared the deliverables for my client, I discovered that I had amassed over 100 megabytes of brochures. (That’s what happens when you analyze over 100 competitor products.)

Not how zip files are compressed. By Only in Oregon – https://www.flickr.com/photos/46052415@N08/38372168986/, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=115966874.

So my idea of zipping all the brochures into a single file wouldn’t work. Even the zip file exceeded the attachment sending limits of Bredemarket’s email service provider, Google. (And probably exceeded the attachment receiving limits of my client’s email service provider.)

And if you’ve already figured out the obvious solution to my problem, bear with me. It took me several days to realize the obvious solution myself.

Anyway, I hit upon a great solution to my problem…or so I thought.

The solution, first attempt

But that wasn’t a problem for me. Along with my email account, Google also provides Bredemarket with Google Drive. While the contents of my Google Drive are private to the employees of Bredemarket (all 1 of us), I can designate individual files and folders for access by selected people.

So I set up a designated folder for my client’s access only, uploaded all the deliverables including the 100+ MB zip file to the designated folder, and provided my client’s contact with access.

I then told my client that all the deliverables were in the Google Drive folder and asked the client to let me know when they were downloaded.

Which is when I encountered my second problem.

For security reasons, the client’s IT department forbids employees from accessing unauthorized Google Drives.

So I jumped back to Plan A and emailed all the files to my client except for the one 100+ MB zip file.

Now I just had to get that zip file to the client.

The solution, second attempt

That’s when I recalled the Dropbox account I set up for Bredemarket some time ago.

It was a quick process to upload the single 100+ MB zip file to a designated folder in Dropbox and give my client access.

But the client isn’t allowed to access Dropbox from work either.

The solution, third attempt

By the time that my client was contacting his IT department for a possible fix, I realized the solution that you the reader probably realized several paragraphs ago.

By FranHogan – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=92636750.

Instead of emailing one zip file, why not email multiple zip files in multiple emails, with each zip file under Google’s 25 MB limit?

So I sent six emails to my client.

This FINALLY worked.

I should have divided and conquered in the first place.

Can you use Bredemarket’s deliverables?

Do you want Bredemarket to send you 100 megabytes of brochures, now that I know how to do it?

More importantly, do you want Bredemarket to send you a market/competitor analysis to your specifications?

Talk to Bredemarket and discuss your needs. Book a meeting with me at calendly.com/bredemarket. Be sure to fill out the information form so I can best help you.

If You’re Using ChatGPT Commercially, Are You Violating Reddit’s Terms?

How to give a privacy advocate a coronary? Have OpenAI and Reddit reach an agreement.

Keeping the internet open is crucial, and part of being open means Reddit content needs to be accessible to those fostering human learning and researching ways to build community, belonging, and empowerment online. Reddit is a uniquely large and vibrant community that has long been an important space for conversation on the internet. Additionally, using LLMs, ML, and AI allow Reddit to improve the user experience for everyone.

In line with this, Reddit and OpenAI today announced a partnership to benefit both the Reddit and OpenAI user communities…

Perhaps some members of the Reddit user community may not feel the benefits when OpenAI is training on their data.

Kinda like how people who chose DuckDuckGo to not be tracked subsequently discovered that DuckDuckGo allowed Microsoft-owned tracking scripts on third-party websites until the practice was stopped in August 2022.
And there’s the whole issue about where Clearview AI gets its data.

While people who joined Reddit presumably understood that anyone could view their data, they never imagined that a third party would then process its data for its own purposes.

Oh, but wait a minute. Reddit clarifies things:

This partnership…does not change Reddit’s Data API Terms or Developer Terms, which state content accessed through Reddit’s Data API cannot be used for commercial purposes without Reddit’s approval. API access remains free for non-commercial usage under our published threshold.

And, of course, OpenAI’s “primary fiduciary duty is to humanity,” so of course it is NOT using the Reddit data for commercial purposes.

And EVERY ONE of the people who accesses Reddit data through OpenAI’s offerings would NEVER use the data for commercial…

Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=36441320.

…um…

…we’ll get back to you on that.

How Bredemarket Helps in Early Proposal Engagement

Man, I’ve been negative lately.

I figure that it is time to become more positive.

I’m going to describe one example of how Bredemarket has helped its customers, based upon one of my client projects from several years ago.

Stupid Word Tricks. Tell your brother, your sister and your mama too. See below.

I’ve told this story before, but I wanted to take a fresh look at the problem the firm had, and the solution Bredemarket provided. I’m not identifying the firm, but perhaps YOUR firm has a similar problem that I can solve for you. And your firm is the one that matters.

The problem

This happened several years ago, but was one of Bredemarket’s first successes.

From Sandeep Kumar, A. Sony, Rahul Hooda, Yashpal Singh, in Journal of Advances and Scholarly Researches in Allied Education | Multidisciplinary Academic Research, “*Multimodal Biometric Authentication System for Automatic Certificate Generation*.”

I should preface this by noting that there are a lot of different biometric modalities, including some that aren’t even listed in the image above.

The firm that asked for my help is one that focuses on one particular biometric modality, and provides a high-end solution for biometric identification.

In addition, the firm’s solution has multiple applications, crime solving and disaster victim identification being two of them.

By FBI – http://www.fbi.gov/news/photos, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=18500900

The firm needed a way to perform initial prospect outreach via budgetary quotations, targeted to the application that mattered to the prospect. A simple proposal problem to be solved…or so it seemed.

Why the obvious proposal solution didn’t work

I had encountered similar problems while employed at Printrak and MorphoTrak and while consulting here at Bredemarket, so the solution was painfully obvious.

Qvidian, one proposal automation software package that I have used. But there are a LOT of proposal automation software packages out there, including some new ones that incorporate artificial intelligence. From https://uplandsoftware.com/qvidian/.

Have your proposal writers create relevant material in their proposal automation software that could target each of the audiences.

So when your salesperson wants to approach a medical examiner involved in disaster victim identification, the proposal writer could just run the proposal automation software, create the targeted budgetary quotation, populate it with the prospect’s contact information, and give the completed quotation to the salesperson.

Unfortuntely for the firm, the painfully obvious solution was truly painful, for two reasons:

This firm had no proposal automation software. Well, maybe some other division of the firm had such software, but this division didn’t have access to it. So the whole idea of adding proposal text to an existing software solution, and programming the solution to generate the appropriate budgetary quotation, wasn’t going to fly.
In addition, this firm had no proposal writers. The salespeople were doing this on their own. The only proposal writer they had was the contractor from Bredemarket. And they weren’t going to want to pay for me to generate every budgetary quotation they needed.

In this case, the firm needed a way for the salespeople to generate the necessary budgetary quotations as easily as possible, WITHOUT relying on proposal automation software or proposal writers.

Bredemarket’s solution

To solve the firm’s problem, I resorted to Stupid Word Tricks.

(Microsoft Word, not Cameo.)

I created two similar budgetary quotation templates: one for crime solving, and one for disaster victim identification. (Actually I created more than two.) That way the salesperson could simply choose the budgetary quotation they wanted.

The letters were similar in format, but had little tweaks depending upon the audience.

Using document properties to create easy-to-use budgetary quotations.

The Stupid Word Tricks came into play when I used Word document property features to allow the salesperson to enter the specific information for each prospect, which then rippled throughout the document, providing a customized budgetary quotation to the prospect.

The result

The firms’ salespeople used Bredemarket’s templates to generate initial outreach budgetary quotations to their clients.

And the salespeople were happy.

I’ve used this testimonial quote before, but it doesn’t hurt to use it again.

“I just wanted to truly say thank you for putting these templates together. I worked on this…last week and it was extremely simple to use and I thought really provided a professional advantage and tool to give the customer….TRULY THANK YOU!”

Comment from one of the client’s employees who used the standard proposal text

While I actively consulted for the firm I maintained the templates, updating as needed as the firm achieved additional certifications.

Why am I telling this story again?

I just want to remind people that Bredemarket doesn’t just write posts, articles, and other collateral. I can also create collateral such as these proposal templates that you can re-use.

So if you have a need that can’t be met by the painfully obvious solutions, talk to me. Perhaps we can develop our own solution.

Drive content results with Bredemarket Identity Firm Services.

What You Don’t Know (About Your Identity/Biometric Company Website) Can Hurt You

The identity/biometric company (not named here) never formally learned why prospects shunned the outdated information on its website.

This is NOT the website I’m discussing in this post. The referenced identity company is not named here. This is the website of some other company, taken from https://www.webdesignmuseum.org/gallery/microsoft-1996.

The identity/biometric company never formally learned how its references to renamed companies and non-existent companies were repelling those very companies…and the prospects who knew the website information was inaccurate.

April 11, 2023: “It’s unclear what the change means for Twitter.” From https://www.seattletimes.com/business/twitter-company-no-longer-exists-is-now-part-of-musks-x/.

With those types of mistakes, the entire company’s positioning became suspect.

From https://www.theverge.com/2017/7/13/15966094/30-rock-buscemi-how-do-you-do-fellow-kids-meme-kill-it-please.

It could have learned…if it had met with me. But it chose not to do so.

NOTE TO SELF: INSERT STRONG FEAR UNCERTAINTY AND DOUBT PARAGRAPH HERE. TAKE OUT THESE TWO SENTENCES BEFORE POSTING THE FINAL VERSION!!!

(By the way…while the identity/biometric company never received this information formally, it did receive it informally…because such information is presumably critically important to the company.)

How many other companies are in the same situation, with:

Outdated information?

(T)here are clues within the content itself as to its age, such as “Our product is now supported on Windows 7.”

Stale information (or lack of information)?

My mini-survey shows that of the 40+ identity firms with blogs, about one-third of them HAVEN’T SAID A SINGLE THING to their prospects and customers in the last two months.

Is there a 29-year veteran of the identity industry, an identity content marketing expert who can help the companies fix these gaps?

Let’s talk.

And yes, the ALL CAPS paragraph was a setup. But I’m sure you can compose a FUD paragraph on your own without my help.

A Few Thoughts on FedRAMP

The 438 U.S. federal agencies (as of today) probably have over 439 different security requirements. When you add state and local agencies to the list, security compliance becomes a mind-numbing exercise.

For example, the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation has its Criminal Justice Information Systems Security Policy (version 5.9 is here). This not only applies to the FBI, but to any government agency or private organization that interfaces to the relevant FBI systems.
Similarly, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has its Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) Security Rule. Again, this also applies to private organizations.

But I don’t care about those. (Actually I do, but for the next few minutes I don’t.) Instead, let’s talk FedRAMP.

Why do we have FedRAMP?

The two standards that I mentioned above apply to particular government agencies. Sometimes, however, the federal government attempts to create a standard that applies to ALL federal agencies (and other relevant bodies). You can say that Login.gov is an example of this, although a certain company (I won’t name the company, but it likes to ID me) repeatedly emphasizes that Login.gov is not IAL2 compliant.

But forget about that. Let’s concentrate on FedRAMP.

From https://www.informationweek.com/machine-learning-ai/how-fedramp-can-accelerate-cloud-adoption.

Why do we have FedRAMP?

The Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program (FedRAMP^®) was established in 2011 to provide a cost-effective, risk-based approach for the adoption and use of cloud services by the federal government. FedRAMP empowers agencies to use modern cloud technologies, with an emphasis on security and protection of federal information. In December 2022, the FedRAMP Authorization Act was signed as part of the FY23 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). The Act codifies the FedRAMP program as the authoritative standardized approach to security assessment and authorization for cloud computing products and services that process unclassified federal information.
From https://www.fedramp.gov/program-basics/.

Note the critical word “unclassified.” So FedRAMP doesn’t cover EVERYTHING. But it does cover enough to allow federal agencies to move away from huge on-premise server rooms and enjoy the same SaaS advantages that private entities enjoy.

From https://marketplace.fedramp.gov/products.

Today, government agencies can now consult a FedRAMP Marketplace that lists FedRAMP offerings the agencies can use for their cloud implementations.

A FedRAMP authorized product example

When I helped MorphoTrak propose its first cloud-based automated biometric identification solutions, our first customers were state and local agencies. To propose those first solutions, MorphoTrak partnered with Microsoft and used its Azure Government cloud. While those first implementations were not federal and did not require FedRAMP authorization, MorphoTrak’s successor IDEMIA clearly has an interest in providing federal non-classified cloud solutions.

When IDEMIA proposes federal solutions that require cloud storage, it can choose to use Microsoft Azure Government, which is now FedRAMP authorized.

From https://marketplace.fedramp.gov/products/F1603087869.

It turns out that a number of other FedRAMP-authorized products are partially dependent upon Microsoft Azure Government’s FedRAMP authorization, so continued maintenance of this authorization is essential to Microsoft, a number of other vendors, and all the agencies that require secure cloud solutions.

They can only hope that the GSA Inspector General doesn’t find fault with THEM.

Is FedRAMP compliance worth it?

But assuming that doesn’t happen, is it worthwhile for vendors to pursue FedRAMP compliance?

If you are a company with a cloud service, there are likely quite a few questions you are asking yourself about your pursuits in the Federal market. When will the upward trajectory of cloud adoption begin? What agency will be the next to migrate to the cloud? What technologies will be migrated? As you move forward with your business development strategy you will also question whether FedRAMP compliance is something you should pursue?

The answer to the last question is simple: Yes. If you want the Federal Government to purchase your cloud service offering you will, sooner or later, have to successfully navigate the FedRAMP process.
From https://www.mindpointgroup.com/blog/fedramp-compliance-is-it-worth-it.

And a lot of companies are doing just that. But with less than 400 FedRAMP authorized services, there’s obviously room for growth.

Ofcom and the Digital Trust & Safety Partnership

The Digital Trust & Safety Partnership (DTSP) consists of “leading technology companies,” including Apple, Google, Meta (parent of Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp), Microsoft (and its LinkedIn subsidiary), TikTok, and others.

The DTSP obviously has its views on Ofcom’s enforcement of the UK Online Safety Act.

Which, as Biometric Update notes, boils down to “the industry can regulate itself.”

Here’s how the DTSP stated this in its submission to Ofcom:

DTSP appreciates and shares Ofcom’s view that there is no one-size-fits-all approach to trust and safety and to protecting people online. We agree that size is not the only factor that should be considered, and our assessment methodology, the Safe Framework, uses a tailoring framework that combines objective measures of organizational size and scale for the product or service in scope of assessment, as well as risk factors.
From https://dtspartnership.org/press-releases/dtsp-submission-to-the-uk-ofcom-consultation-on-illegal-harms-online/.

We’ll get to the “Safe Framework” later. DTSP continues:

Overly prescriptive codes may have unintended effects: Although there is significant overlap between the content of the DTSP Best Practices Framework and the proposed Illegal Content Codes of Practice, the level of prescription in the codes, their status as a safe harbor, and the burden of documenting alternative approaches will discourage services from using other measures that might be more effective. Our framework allows companies to use whatever combination of practices most effectively fulfills their overarching commitments to product development, governance, enforcement, improvement, and transparency. This helps ensure that our practices can evolve in the face of new risks and new technologies.
From https://dtspartnership.org/press-releases/dtsp-submission-to-the-uk-ofcom-consultation-on-illegal-harms-online/.

But remember that the UK’s neighbors in the EU recently prescribed that USB-3 cables are the way to go. This not only forced DTSP member Apple to abandon the Lightning cable worldwide, but it affects Google and others because there will be no efforts to come up with better cables. Who wants to fight the bureaucratic battle with Brussels? Or alternatively we will have the advanced “world” versions of cables and the deprecated “EU” standards-compliant cables.

So forget Ofcom’s so-called overbearing approach and just adopt the Safe Framework. Big tech will take care of everything, including all those age assurance issues.

From https://dtspartnership.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/DTSP_Age-Assurance-Best-Practices.pdf.

DTSP’s September 2023 paper on age assurance documents a “not overly prescriptive” approach, with a lot of “it depends” discussion.

Incorporating each characteristic comes with trade-offs, and there is no one-size-fits-all solution. Highly accurate age assurance methods may depend on collection of new personal data such as facial imagery or government-issued ID. Some methods that may be economical may have the consequence of creating inequities among the user base. And each service and even feature may present a different risk profile for younger users; for example, features that are designed to facilitate users meeting in real life pose a very different set of risks than services that provide access to different types of content….

Instead of a single approach, we acknowledge that appropriate age assurance will vary among services, based on an assessment of the risks and benefits of a given context. A single service may also use different
approaches for different aspects or features of the service, taking a multi-layered approach.
From https://dtspartnership.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/DTSP_Age-Assurance-Best-Practices.pdf.

So will Ofcom heed the DTSP’s advice and say “Never mind. You figure it out”?

Um, maybe not.

The Bredemarket Rule of Corporate Tool Adoption

(12/7: Thanks for catching the typo, Orlando!)

Whoops, I forgot something.

Bredemarket hasn’t proposed any rules.

This may not seem to be a significant gap to you, but it is to me.

I’ve proposed rules on my prior platforms, but haven’t proposed one from Bredemarket. Here’s a list of some of the “Empoprises Rules” I’ve proposed in the past. My favorite:

The Phineas-Hirshfield score measures, on a scale of 0 to 100, the probability that someone will ask exactly what the Phineas-Hirshfield score is.
From https://empoprise-bi.blogspot.com/2012/12/what-is-your-phineas-hirshfield-score.html. The Phineas-Hirshfield score is copyright 2012 by John E. Bredehoft.

Phineas T. Barnum. By unattributed – Harvard Library, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=47588191

Time for me to make a cryptic LinkedIn post. Although now that I’m sharing the secret here, I’ll have to lower the score to 89.

Bredemarket’s first rule

In any organization, the number of adopted tools that perform the exact same function is always in excess of one.

In other words, if there’s someone in your organization who is using an iPhone, there is someone else in your organization who is using an Android phone.

Phone wars circa 2011. From https://semiwiki.com/general/868-who-is-winning-the-cell-phone-wars/

Or someone has a Mac, and another person has a Windows computer.

Or someone has one brand of software, while someone else has the competitior brand.

Even if an organization dictates that everyone will use a single tool, there will be someone somewhere who will rebel against the organization and use a different tool.

By Alberto Korda – Museo Che Guevara, Havana Cuba, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=6816940

Three reasons why the Bredemarket Rule of Corporate Tool Adoption is true

Here is why this rule is true:

Except in very rare circumstances, there are always multiple tools that perform the exact same function.
Except in very rare circumstances (Bredemarket being a counter-example), organizations are made up of multiple people.
In all circumstances, different people have experienced different realities and therefore like different things.

For example, on Wednesday morning I attended a Pro d uct Marketing Alliance-sponsored panel discussion in which one of the panelists mentioned that Asana was a valuable tool that helps product marketers get work done.

Another panelist was a Monday user.

Presumably the first panelist was exposed to Asana at one point and liked it, while the second panelist was exposed to Monday and liked it.

Or, since the panelists were from two different companies, maybe each company standardized on one or the other. Or maybe the departments within their companies standardized on a particular tool, but if you poll the entire company, you’ll find some Monday departments and some Asana departments.

Multiple tools in a single department

Even in the same department you may find multiple tools. Let me cite an example.

Several of the people who were in the Marketing department of Incode Technologies have since left the company, and I’m working with one of them on a project this week.
I had to send a PDF to him, and was also going to also send him the source Microsoft Word document…until I remembered from our days at Incode that he was (and I guess still is) a Google Docs guy.
(As I’ve shared previously, I’m not a Google Docs guy except when a client requires it.)

Even brute force will not invalidate the Rule

Of course, there are times in which an entire organization agrees on a single tool, but those times never last.

My mid-1990s employer, Printrak International, was preparing to go public. The head of Printrak determined that the company needed some help in this, and brought several staffers on board who were expert in Initial Public Offerings (IPOs).

One of these people took the role of Chief Financial Officer, preparing Printrak for its IPO and for two post-IPO acquisitions, one of which profoundly and positively impacted the future of the firm.

Along the way, he established the rule that Printrak would become a Lotus Notes shop.

By Ndamanakis – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=126610779

For those who don’t remember Lotus Notes, it was one of those Lotus-like products that could do multiple things out of the box. And because the CFO was the CFO, he could enforce Lotus Notes usage.

Until the CFO left a couple of years later to assist another company, and the impetus to use Lotus Notes dropped off significantly.

And that, my friends, is why my former colleagues in IDEMIA aren’t using HCL Notes (the successor to Lotus Notes and IBM Notes) today.

So how do you settle the Tool Wars?

Do you know how you settle the Tool Wars?

You don’t. It’s an eternal battle.

In the case of Bredemarket, I can dictate which tools I use…unless my clients tell me otherwise. Then the client’s word is law…unless there’s a compelling reason why my tool should be used instead of the client’s tool. In Bredemarket’s 3+ years of existence, I haven’t encountered such a compelling reason…yet.

Just be flexible enough to use whatever tool you need to use, and you’ll be fine.

Does Your Identity/Biometric Research Project Need Excel…or Bredemarket?

Does your identity/biometric firm require research?

Here’s one way for your researcher to organize the research data.
And if you need a researcher, I’ll address that also.

Introduction

When talking about marketing tools, two words that don’t seem to go together are “marketing” and “Excel” (the Microsoft spreadsheet product). Because I’m in marketing, I encounter images like this all the time.

From Daniel Murray, https://www.linkedin.com/posts/daniel-murray-marketing_you-never-realize-how-much-math-marketing-activity-7071849222035177472-Pp_-/

Daniel Murrary (of Marketing Millennials fame), who used the image above in a LinkedIn post, noted that the statement is incorrect.

You never realize how much math marketing has, but excel is an underrated marketing skill.
From https://www.linkedin.com/posts/daniel-murray-marketing_you-never-realize-how-much-math-marketing-activity-7071849222035177472-Pp_-/

It’s true that marketing analytics requires a ton of Excel work. I’m not going to talk about marketing analytics here, but if you have an interest in using Excel for marketing analytics, you may want to investigate HubSpot Academy’s free Excel crash course.

From HubSpot, https://academy.hubspot.com/courses/excel-training-crash-course

But even if you DON’T pursue the analytic route, Excel can be an excellent ORGANIZATIONAL tool. As you read the description below, ask yourself whether my Bredemarket consultancy can perform similar organization for YOU.

Excel as an organizational tool

As I write this, Bredemarket is neck-deep in a research project for a client. A SECRET research project.

By Unnamed photographer for Office of War Information. – U.S. Office of War Information photo, via Library of Congress website [1], converted from TIFF to .jpg and border cropped before upload to Wikimedia Commons., Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=8989847

While I won’t reveal the name of the client or the specifics about the research project, I can say that the project requires me to track the following information:

Organization name.
Organization type (based upon fairly common classifications).
Organization geographic location.
Vendor providing services to the organization.
Information about the contract between the vendor and the organization.
A multitude of information sources about the organization, the vendor, and the relationship between the two.

To attack the data capture for this project, I did what I’ve done for a number of similar projects for Bredemarket, Incode, IDEMIA, MorphoTrak, et al.

I threw all the data into a worksheet in an Excel workbook.

By Microsoft Corporation – Screenshot created and uploaded by Paowee., https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=58004382

I can then sort and filter it to my heart’s content. Ror example, if I want to just view the rows for which I have contract information, I can just look at that.

Bredemarket as an identity/biometric research service

And sometimes I get even fancier.

From Spreadsheet Web, “How to combine data from multiple sheets.” https://www.spreadsheetweb.com/how-to-combine-data-from-multiple-sheets/

For one organization I created a number of different worksheets within a single workbook, in which the worksheet data all fed into a summary worksheet. This allowed my clients to view data either at the detailed level or at the summary level.

From Microsoft, “Report a Table Like Excel Pivot Table,” https://community.fabric.microsoft.com/t5/Desktop/Report-a-Table-like-Excel-Pivot-Table/m-p/565724

For another organization I collected the data from an external source, opened it in Excel, performed some massaging, and then pivoted the data into a new view so that it could then be exported out of Excel and into a super-secret document that I cannot discuss here.

Now none of this (well, except maybe for the pivot) is fancy stuff, and most of it (except for the formulas linking the summary and detailed worksheets) is all that hard to do. But it turns out that Excel is an excellent tool to deal with this data in certain cases.

Which brings me to YOUR research needs.

After all, Bredemarket doesn’t just write stuff.

Sometimes it researches stuff, especially in the core area of biometrics and identity.

After all, I offer 29 years of experience in this area, and I draw on that experience to get answers to your questions.

Unlike the better-bounded projects that require only a single blog post or a single white paper, I quote research projects at an hourly rate or on retainer (where I’m embedded with you).

By Staff Sgt. Michael L. Casteel – [1], Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=2407244

So if you have a research project that you haven’t been able to get going, contact Bredemarket to get it unstuck and to move forward.

Ranking on Google is Not Enough. What About Ranking on Generative AI?

The vast majority of people who visit the Bredemarket website arrive via Google. Others arrive via Bing, DuckDuckGo, Facebook, Feedspot, Instagram, LinkedIn, Meltwater, Twitter (WordPress’ Stats page didn’t get the memo from Elon), WordPress itself, and other sites.

Not on the list yet: TikTok, the search engine that is reputed to rival Google. I need to work on optimizing my TikTok content to drive viewers to the website. (And yes, TikTok is relevant, since there are Gen Z marketers who need services from a B2B content marketing expert.)

But TikTok is not the only site that is missing in Bredemarket’s list of visitor sources. Let’s look at an example.

Who is recommending Neil Patel Digital?
How do you increase brand mentions?
How can you increase YOUR brand mentions?

Who is recommending Neil Patel Digital?

Neil Patel just shared a post in which he talked about a prospect who approached him. The prospect already knew about Patel, but added this comment:

(interestingly, I asked ChatGPT to search for good DM agencies for me and your agency is on the list haha)
From https://neilpatel.com/blog/how-to-rank-your-website-on-chatgpt/

Yes, people are using ChatGPT and other generative AI tools as search engines.

Patel was curious about why ChatGPT recommended Neil Patel Digital, and he started to investigate. The details are in his post, but here are the two main takeaways that I found:

I hope you’re not shocked by this statement, but sometimes ChatGPT yields inaccurate results. One example: Patel asked ChatGPT to recommend ad agencies who could provide SEO help, and received two inaccurate recommendations. “2 of the top 4 results… Moz and HubSpot are software companies and not ad agencies. They don’t really offer services.”
After a lot of experimentation and number-crunching, Patel identified six specific factors that correlated with ChatGPT’s recommendation of a particular brand: brand mentions, reviews, relevancy, age, recommendations, and authority.

From https://neilpatel.com/blog/how-to-rank-your-website-on-chatgpt/

For a detailed discussion of these six factors, see Patel’s post. Let’s look at one of those factors, brand mentions, that has a relatively high (0.87) correlation.

How do you increase brand mentions?

So, how do you increase brand mentions across the web to rank higher on ChatGPT, other generative AI platforms, and more traditional search engines like TikTok?

By mentioning your brand. (And getting relevant authorities to mention your brand also.)

Yes, this is a Captain Obvious statement, but it’s important. There are at least ten places where you can mention your brand.

Articles
Blog Posts
Briefs/Data/Literature Sheets
Case Studies
Proposals
Scientific Book Chapters
Smartphone Application Content
Social Media (Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Threads, TikTok, Twitter)
Web Page Content
White Papers and E-Books

If this list appears familiar to some of you, that’s intentional. It’s a list of the 10 types of external content that I have created for others, and can create for you. See my post “The 22 (or more) Types of Content That Product Marketers Create” for more information on both external and internal content types that I can create.

Because the more you look at my brand content, the more my brand will be recognized by generative AI.

I was curious myself, so I tested this. ChatGPT was at capacity when I wrote this post, so I asked Bard “Who is the biometric content marketing expert?”

John Bredehoft, of the company Bredemarket, is a biometric content marketing expert. He has over 25 years of experience in biometrics and other identity modalities, including friction ridge, face, iris, voice, and DNA. He has created content for Bredemarket clients and his previous employers, including case studies, white papers, and blog posts, that have positioned his firms as biometric authorities.

Bredehoft’s expertise in biometrics and content marketing allows him to create content that is both informative and engaging for his target audience. He understands the issues behind biometric technologies and can explain them in a clear and concise way. He also knows how to write content that is optimized for search engines and social media.

If you are looking for a biometric content marketing expert, John Bredehoft is a great choice. He has the knowledge and experience to create content that will help you achieve your marketing goals.
From Google Bard, September 26, 2023.

Now I don’t know yet if ChatGPT will yield a similar response, and if not I have some more work to do.

But enough about me.

How can you increase YOUR brand mentions?

Let’s talk about you, your content marketing needs, and your need for prospects and customers to know about your brand.

Whether you want to rank in a traditional search engine or generative AI, the key is the creation of content. When you work with Bredemarket as your content creation partner, we start by discussing your goals and other critical information that is important to you. We do this before I start writing your blog post, social media post, case study, white paper, or other piece of content (car show posters, anyone?).

Let’s hold that (complimentary) discussion to see if Bredemarket’s services are a fit for your needs. Book a meeting with me at calendly.com/bredemarket. Be sure to fill out the information form so I can best help you.

Alternatively:

Email me at john.bredehoft@bredemarket.com.
Contact me at bredemarket.com/contact/.
Subscribe to my mailing list at http://eepurl.com/hdHIaT.

Stupid tech tricks: no permission to respond to calendar invites? (The UID:X trick)

I use two separate Google calendars: one for Bredemarket, and one for personal non-Bredemarket meetings. I receive meeting invitations on both of these calendars. This usually isn’t a problem.

Usually.

Over the last year, I have accepted a variety of calendar invites from external inviters, including invites to Zoom meetings, invites to Microsoft Teams meetings, invites to Google Meet meetings, and even old-fashioned invites for Plain Old Telephone Service (POTS) calls. (Yes, these still exist.) These have originated from Google-managed domains, Microsoft-managed domains, and other domains.

When you accept a calendar invite, you send a message to the inviter that contains your acceptance of the message, and this acceptance is recorded both on your calendar and on the inviter’s calendar.

Except for the invite that I received yesterday evening.

I was reading email on my mobile phone and received a calendar invite. When Gmail displays calendar invites, it displays them with “Yes,” “Maybe,” and “No” buttons.

Calendar invite, the expurgated version.

So I clicked “Yes” on the invite…and received a message that I didn’t have permission to access to the target calendar.

That seemed odd, but I noticed that there was an “invite.ics” file attached to the invitation. While ics files are designed for Microsoft calendars, they can be imported into Google calendars, so I figured that I’d just import the invite.ics file when I had access to my computer the following morning.

So this morning I imported the invite.ics file…and got the same error stating that I didn’t have permission to access the target calendar.

Curious, I researched and found a solution:

“The solution for this is to manually edit the .ics file prior to importing it and replace all occurrences of “UID:” with “UID:X” (without the quotes). After doing this and saving the file, proceed with the import and all should be fine.”

So I opened up the invite.ics file in Notepad, performed the manual edit, and successfully imported the calendar entry.

As it turns out, the inviter doesn’t usually schedule meetings with people outside of the inviter’s domain, which explains why I was the first person to mention the issue.

While the problem was solved, I had no idea WHY the UID:X trick worked. And I’m not the only one asking this question.

Most of the time when I receive a meeting request in my gmail account, Google Calendar understands exactly what is going on and handles the request pleasantly.
But for some zoom meeting requests originating from one particular client, Google Calendar refuses to admit that it’s a meeting request until I edit the ICS file and insert an “X” after the “UID:” prefix per the suggestion here.
Looking at RFC 5545, it doesn’t look like the “X” is required but it’s not terribly clear.
Does RFC 5545 in any way require that “X” to be there?

As of this morning, no one has answered the question, but I found a comment in a separate thread that appeared to be relevant.

After investigating for a while, it seems adding the “X” is not a permanent solution. The UID is a global identifier, if two events have the same UID in the same calendar there’s a collision. Some calendar services like Outlook (which I use) seem to handle this, while Google and probably many others don’t.

So the mystery continues.

P.S. If you happen across this post and find it helpful, also see my 2009 tip about the spurious “remove probe” error for KitchenAid ovens. (TL;DR: use a blow dryer to remove moisture from the probe hole where the temperature probe is inserted.)