Richard's Blog

 Archive for the ‘Time Efficiency’ Category

Yesterday I attended a conference on social media.

There were a few interesting things I found out – such as that Allstate insurance has a site called vehiclevibes which has everything from tips on getting out of a seatbelt jam to avoiding deer to suduko games.

Many of the other speakers discussed how they were working to engage their customers on their websites through games, giveaways, discussions and information.

Speakers mentioned how many people were following them on twitter or facebook.

Not one speaker discussed a concern of what else people would be doing with their time if they weren’t on their website. Speakers were not concerned that people might not be getting work done.

At Therap – we spend a tremendous amount of timing focused on getting people back to their jobs as quickly as possible. We have come up with a number of training games and exercises which would arguably be fun or interesting – but the feeling was that they would take direct support professionals away from being with the people they support for longer than was appropriate or needed.

There are times I feel like we are in some sort of alternate internet universe in terms of how we are managing and what our goals are. Minimize time on the website instead of maximize time. No advertising or other links that people might click to get elsewhere on the internet. And watch information for whether it has PHI or not.

It would be interesting if there were rankings for websites based on most efficient use of people’s time – rather than just most time. This does not mean that there is not a place on the internet for a Farmville or youtube – but there are days where that all seems so easy – put up a fun product and don’t worry about how much time people spend, what else they would do with their time and don’t worry about PHI or other personal information which might be collected.

I realize some of this is just my personality – as I prefer going to social functions and discussing PHI rather than the latest movie (which I most likely haven’t seen). And I really do enjoy creating a useful documentation product and website under all these constraints. But it is still interesting to me when I step out into mainstream internet and marketing discussions and are reminded of the issues and priorities of many others.