Must See the Official Trailer for Diabetesville, USA Long Version (8:48)

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10.1.10 A New Standard in Disease Management

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On 10.1.2010, the launch of the VirtualHealthCheck.com and MyVirtualHealthCheck.com chronic disease management platforms will set a new standard in "between visit care." The strength of the VirtualHealthCheck.com system is our comprehensive approach designed to lower medical costs among chronic disease patients. the platform accomplishes this goal by creating an environment that finally makes true integrated care possible.

Twitter Quietly Rolling out Business Center

The "Twitter Business Center" has been quietly rolled out to a handful of accounts with a planned expansion to more and more business accounts. Screen shots obtained by Mashable show Twitter will allow businesses the following features:

1. Customized content on business profile page.

2. "Verified Account" badge added to profiles for enhanced credibility.

3. "Extra preferences to help you better reach your customers."

4. Add Contributors so multiple people can Tweet on the business account.

The most significant feature in this new service offering is the "Verified Account" badge allowing businesses to enhance their authenticity and get past much of the social media noise. Using the "Preferences" section allows you to quickly verify your account with Twitter proclaiming "Verified Account. Success! A verified account badge appears on your profile."

By giving businesses the ability to respond to direct messages from any of their followers obviously improves the Twitter customer service channel.  This improved responsiveness will bring more businesses closer to opening up Twitter as an effective customer service and support channel. No longer will businesses have to follow their customers to respond back to them.

Whether or not Twitter can successfully monetize the business vertical remains to be seen. While all of these features are surely worth paying for, business will only really pay if Twitter can help turn "followers" into customers.

Check out our new blog dedicated to chronic disease patient care

It is critical that we face rising healthcare costs with an understanding of what truly accounts for most of our nation's healthcare spending, chronic disease care. This blog from VirtualHealthCheck.com is focused on reducing healthcare costs while improving chronic patient care.

'What part of "Give us our damn data" Do You Not Understand?'

'What part of "Give us our damn data" Do You Not Understand?’ is the title of a revealing blog post from the co-chairman of the Society for Participatory Medicine where he outlines key hurdles facing patients looking to take control over their medical records. Chief among the problems is the reluctance of hospitals and doctors to give up medical records in a timely manner. Unfortunately, this paternal outlook only serves to isolated the best advocate and quality control agent, the patient themselves.

Follow-up on CNN Here

Marketing After the Lost Decade

As we enter 2010 one can only speculate over what marketing avenues will provide real value and improve ROI. By looking back over the last decade, however, it is clear that marketing as usual will not get the job done. The previous decade can largely be defined as lost. From the evaporation of household wealth, lost or downsized jobs and the failure of policy makers to meaningfully address issues that really matter to Americans, we are as a whole worse off than 10 years ago. Furthermore, the baby boomers are aging and living with fewer resources available than what they had anticipated. Against a back drop of exploding debts (personal and national), increase commodity prices and diminished earnings capacity, Americans are no likely to respond to traditional marketing efforts.
The marketing landscape changes often and with little notice. Whether change takes the form of new modes of communication or the government outlawing and entire form of marketing (telemarketing), the shifts that face marketers are often seismic.

Marketing after the lost decade is going to require many companies to act against their initial instincts and engage customers in an honest discussion over what really matters and a concise story that explains the real benefits of their product and/or service. Marketers also need to understand that consumers while losing many things have gained incredible power as they harness the power of social media and the Internet. Unlike the previous decade, customers will increasingly talk back and this can impact a company’s message in a serious way. United Airlines probably never imagined that by breaking a customer’s guitar they would end up as a YouTube hit with a creative negative message being seen by millions. So the question remains, how do you market to customers after the lost decade? They answer lies in honesty, integrity and vigilance.

The Google Profile Function: A Threat To Traditional Consumer Data Models

With little fanfare, the company that pledged to “Do No Evil,” has launched what could possibly be the largest and most successful consumer data mining project ever. Google, the organizers of the entire world’s information, is quietly building its profile feature allowing you to add to the narrative of the online you.

If every person who has ever “Googled” themselves were to sign-up, Google Profile would be the largest consumer database on earth. The main page for Google Profile sign-up asks the user “What do people see when they find you online?” and then inspires them to “control how you appear in Google by creating a personal profile...” This simple marketing message is brilliant. The mere thought of controlling some part of the online you is enough to create a massive consumer database. This Google consumer database will be far superior given the source of the data itself will assure accuracy and relevancy. Google as the source has the potential to dramatically alter the consumer information landscape by evolving into an organic database. Beyond relevancy, Google’s data seems to go much deeper in understanding consumers and provides many more answers for the questions most marketers are asking.

The traditional model of consumer data starts with generally a few sources of raw data that result from your credit score, the phone bill, financial services, your mail box and other assorted consumer events. A few major aggregators of this data dominate direct marketing, research/analytics and risk management engagements and make lots of money doing it. For Google, redefining the consumer data landscape is too big of an opportunity to ignore. For those few companies who dominate the consumer data market place the prospect of Google generated consumer data that offers a better alternative for direct marketing and consumer analytics enterprises should be a terrifying proposition.