• "I've been amazed by the depth of insight PersonaScope provides, and I've gotten people across our organization, from Marketing to IT, hooked on it."
• "After studying the results of an A/B test, we couldn't come up with an actionable explanation of the extreme difference between A and B version conversions and bounce rates. A quick pass through the NextStage BlueSky meter made it clear - the B version was brimming with BlueSky. The B version failed because people didn't believe it! So much speculation time could have been saved if I had used NextStage BlueSky sooner!"
• "Thanks to NextStage's GenderPersuader Tool we know why our audience is so male dominated. Now we know what to do about it."

NextStage tools and technology are being used in some 50 countries worldwide and companies are continually approaching us to develop specialized tools for their purposes.

Join the LinkedIn Friends of NextStage group or befriend us on Facebook to find out what NextStage is all about.

• will be helpful in their job
• can work in or requires a group environment to be successful
• requires supervision
• is reliable
• is trustworthy
• is competent
• has confidence in their abilities
• HR Specific - Is Green Pile or Red Pile
• Applicant Specific - Whether or not the resume will get noticed

In addition, NextStage Resume Rater determines where the applicant's resume stands as far as the average resume rated thus far.

The NextStage Resume Rater Tool has been in use since 2001, was publicly demonstrated in 2005 and refined at the request of executives from a large job site that begins with "M". The current version is based on conversations with several hundred HR, headhunter, and job search professionals who described their ability to look at a resume and know intuitively whether or not the applicant was "going to work out or not". Analysis of these conversations isolated the seven factors currently determined by the tool.

And we are all aware that an education has nothing to do with ability, intelligence, knowledge, wisdom, ..., yes?

I recently heard "...that is supposed to be the purpose of a stimulus package, give a push in the back to those afraid to financially commit." and it tickled me in so many ways.

The Stimulus Package was targeted more towards male-dominated jobs (construction and manufacturing are the common examples) than to female-dominated jobs (education and health care are the common examples). There were reasons for this having to do with necessary upgrades to infrastructure, the fact that the recession hit male-dominated jobs in greater numbers than female-dominated jobs.

I almost sound like pundit, yes?

First, an agenda is a kind of contract without getting lawyers involved, what's known as a social contract. Social contracts have been around since cavepeople. The function of a social contract is quite simple; it establishes a mutual understanding for keeping things smooth and easy.

In this case, lessons learned from a long-ex girlfriend, Liz, hence The Liz Effect.

What We Do: NextStage has been studying how people respond to information -- be it online, mobile, print, small or bigvid, music, voice, banner or instore -- regardless of channel since the early 1990s. We've written and published business, scientific and consumer papers on the single versus multi-channel marketing, gender and cultural marketing, targeted communications, social, viral and WOM, along with business and science presentations on how and why people respond to creative the way they do.

Pricing/Rates: All research is priced on a per project basis. Project pricing includes final presentation by the research team and a multi-page report. Opinion pieces and projects involving data-mining the NextStage KnowledgeSystem generally cost US$1,000/diem plus t&e, including final report and presentation (if required). Contact NextStage directly (603 791 4925) for information on utilizing our Research Team and expertise.

Headlines that cause action make use of Push and Pull writing. Masters of the art know how to draw their audience into one topic ("Pull") and away from others ("Push"). Most often Push and Pull writing happens without people knowing it. They write some content or copy and their own thoughts color content, copy, headlines, teasers, ... instead of writing to pull readers and visitors in, they might be pushing them away. What's important is not that you Pull or Push, but that you know when to use either or both to achieve your goals. This class provides the tools to apply the science to the art you already have.

This full day class is effectively a training in the psychology of "Push/Pull" followed by rapid fire, RoundRobin sessions, first with the instructor (be ready to laugh) then class wide (be ready to work) with participants learning to think in push/pull terms. Elements of this class were the basis for Headlines that Attact Attention

NextStage is becoming known for its less than two day "request to implementation" tool modification turnaround.

Still waiting for your current tool provider to live up to their claims? Maybe it's time to work with tools that do what they claim and a provider that actually understands how their tools work.

Contact NextStage to learn what's in the queue and how you can take part.

The Confidence metric is the same as found in NextStage's Sentiment Analysis Tool. The BlueSky metric is from NextStage's BlueSky Meter.

Just an FYI, folks. Advanced Single Run costs US$39.99, Advanced Corporate Single Run costs US$499.99 and those prices will either stay the same or increase at the end of August 2010. Now's the time to use NextStage Sentiment Analysis Basic (US$9.99 for a single run) and Intermediate (US$19.99 for a single run) if you want a taste before they go away.

What I will demonstrate, though, is a recent use of it (and keeping everything anonymous, of course).

The response? "This is so accurate..."

Loving it!

NextStage's Evolution Technology calls for human help whenever it encounters something new, unique, or out of its normal experience. Reading Virtual Minds Vol. 1: Science and History readers know our technology does this because I've documented it in that book.

This time our system alerted me about a specific Confidence value (from the Intermediate Sentiment Analysis Report) that was a little askew compared to other values it had determined, so I sent an email to the user who'd run the report and offered to go over it with them so we both could learn what that Confidence value applied to.

That's all, really. Nothing much else to say about it. Just letting you know. YIPPEE!

Ah...you didn't count your enemies before they hatched.

If you've read any of the Reading Virtual Minds material, our blogs, the research papers, played with Evolution Technology in any of its forms, taken part in trainings or presentations, then you know enough to fasten your seatbelts before joining this group.

Kind of like Susan and my wedding vows, "...all I can promise is change..."

Here's where you find out. This full day seminar provides some basic tools for learning how people are thinking and how to make use of the way they think to achieve your goals. The seminar requires individual participation and all NextStage trainers ensure a safe environment for learning these techniques.

You can get a taste of this training by reading Reading Virtual Minds Volume I: Science and History.

There are reasons for this. People who've heard my presentations on male and female buying behaviors know that women are great strategic investors, men are better tactically.

I wrote a series (see links below) on some NextStage research regarding how people could use their email signatures for social media purposes.

I wrote that post because several times a month someone contacts me regarding something in my email signature -- and it's a long signature file -- to tell me they followed a link, need some help, would like to schedule a consultation, want to get involved in our programs, ...

Using your send glands really pays, if you know how to use them.

This post is going to be about things being not quite but close to and in a way will follow the tone of The High Cost of Cancelling WorkOutWorld Membership. It's going to be about the long loong loooooong road to NextStage's new interface, one that will be going across all our sites in the coming months.

And it begins better than a year ago. I think two years ago at this point... (just looked it up. Yep, two years ago at this point...)]]> http://www.bizmediascience.com/2010/06/a_sentiment_analysis_of_alex_t.html Tue, 15 Jun 2010 13:35:00 -0400 I read Alex Todd's The Trust Extender: Enlarge the circle of trust by empowering stakeholders to trust and reciprocate trust and was very impressed by it. My curiosity turned into my using some NextStage tools to analyze it so that I could get back to Alex with any suggestions for revising it or making future postings more actionable/readable/acceptable.

I shared the initial analysis with Alex and he asked me to share it, hence this comment/post/discussion thread.]]> http://knowledgeshop.nextstagevolution.com/papersconsumer.cfm#NSECRSRTMVAAB Mon, 14 Jun 2010 15:00:00 -0400 Overview: This paper deals with interface design issues in general and specifically with redesigning an interface such that both existing visitors and users and new visitors and users increase their loyalty to the brand. While some of the concepts demonstrated here can be applied to reBranding efforts, reBranding is not the focus of this paper.

ReDesign is not ReBranding. At best redesign is one step on the path towards successful reBranding and one that is usually overlooked due to many usability and design professionals being trained in "brick&mortar" mindsets. Even the most recent marketing classes overlook real-world learnings about online migration (between old and new interfaces).

This paper explains the concepts and provides some examples of redesign (web site interfaces) towards the goal of maximizing visitor acceptance and branding.

Naturally you want to provide value to your clients and you don't want to go broke doing it. Also, you're seeing how much is being spent on some sentiment analysis tools and are a little confused because most of them don't seem to offer very much or work that well. As one of our clients confided to me, a big vendor told them not to waste time on that vendor's sentiment analysis tool because it didn't work that well.

You can learn more about the NextStage BlueSky Meter in the NextStage KnowledgeShop.

NextStage PersonaScope is the NextStage Sentiment Analysis Advanced Author-Audience Report section on steroids. It provides a richly detailed analysis of the author-audience {C,B/e,M} matrix. (how they think, make decisions, what motivates them to act, etc.) and was created at the suggestion of NextStage Sentiment Analysis beta tester Jennifer Day and SaveTheChildren's Adam Laughlin.

You can learn more about the NextStage PersonaScope in the NextStage KnowledgeShop.