Was just reading Facebook Marketing Opportunities over at Digital Podcast.
I am currently playing around with several strategies for marketing our companies products on Facebook.
His statement about 8 ways to market on Facebook really stood out, and I have seen reciprocated on several other core marketing blogs:
Was just watching a great video on Jeremiah Owyang's blog about a Social Media Case Study from Jake McKee who used to work at Lego.
It was very interesting to see how entrenched and distance from customers a company can be. Also how resistant to change a company can be when it comes to opening up to new ideas, change and ultimately their customers.
Of course Lego is a very large company and has a unique product line, but it really shows an interested way of embracing the smaller more passionate segment of your audience and leveraging them to reach the larger portion of our customer base.
Give it a watch, it is called: The Tenacity of Jake McKee: A Social Media Case Study at Lego.
Was just reading a post on ReadWriteWeb about Olympic Committe Rules Revealed: No Posting of Media Allowed.
They say they are embracing blogging because it is a form of personal expression and not a form of journalism.
However they are prohibiting the usage of pictures, sound or moving images in any blog or other method.
It is amazing that there are still major groups that do not understand the value of social media and want to control and license everything that happens.
I am working in social media more and more in the outdoor space with Altrec.com and GreatOutdoors.com and I am realizing the huge value of social media to sporting and outdoor events.
It is sad to see the Olympic committee feel this way.
Just read a great post over at Ignite Social Media about How Will a Social Media Agency Work With My Current Agency?
It has some great suggestions on ways a social media consultant can provide services for your social media marketing campaign:
I was reading, Quantifying the Impact of Social Media: Where the Edelman White Paper Got it Right, Got it Wrong and What We Should Do Next, by Jim Tobin today.
I have been reading all the same white papers and following all the same discussion of Quantifying the Impact of a Social Media Campaign as well as experiencing it real time with social media campaigns I am part of.
As a social media consultant you need to be able to convince your clients that you'll deliver, and you need some way to measure success and failure.
Also establishing the influence of individuals and groups is a huge part of deciding where to spend resources during a social media campaign.
I like Jim's approach to the discussion. He picks apart several prominent opinions on the subject, but doesn't leave it there. He provides solutions, one of which that really caught my attention:
To move the social media index forward, we’ll need a system that serves as the white pages of social media with RSS.
So I thought about my situation and how I would like to define my social media index and what my reach is.
As a social media professional I prefer my presence be high profile and this part of my online activity I am not concerned with privacy.
So I am going to start tracking my social media index and recording all my activities on the net and record this analyzing.
So I started up a simple study today using Google Docs as the tracking mechanism. You can check it out more at: QISM. I look forward to any involvement and comments from you folks.
I monitor my reputation basically on a daily basis as part of my routine. I Google myself and see how things are stacked and if there is anything new.
I have a pretty unique name so I pretty much dominate all the listings.
Today a new profile site showed up on my first page called Disqus. Just pretty much a social network profile and it aggregates comments from me around the Internet.
Will evaluate the tool more later.
Not sure if it was a conscious effort on their part or it just happened, but it occurred to me that you could target prominent Internet users in this way, but publishing a page or starter profile for them and show up in their rankings and spike their interest a little more. Enough to maybe get them to signup?
This page on Disqus had a big "Claim this Profile" button that lured me in, I am a sucker for social networks and big sign me up buttons.
I was reading a blog entry by Lisa McNeil called The Marketer’s Foray Into Social Media, where she talks about her experiences with clients and the top questions they ask.
Anyways, the post was great. I noticed a comment at the bottom by Geoff Livngston the author of Now is Gone. His comment asked the question:
Shouldn’t a social media agency ultimately enable to company, not stay on? But the monitoring and coaching component seems to be necessary for the long-term.
This is such an important questions. I've talked about my frustrations regarding building web sites and applications for clients being very tough because of the lack of involvement on their part. The standard response is, "just build it I really don't understand this stuff".
I keep saying how critical it is for the site owner to be part of the development and understand their site and make it reflect them.
This is only getting more and more critical with the need to develop social media marketing strategies. Your social media marketing voice has to reflect your company and it takes key decision makers being involved in daily decisions and activities.
As a social media professional it is your responsibility to train your clients and get them intimately involved with their campaign and the decision making process. Train them to execute in house and not use you as a crutch just because your an "employee'.
I just finished reading Now is Gone last night by Geoff Livingston. If you are thinking about getting involved in Social Media Marketing from a professional standpoint this is the book to read.
It is tailored as a primer for the executive or marketing professional that is looking get more aware of social media and the conversation that is occurring out there.
Here is a video interview with Geoff Livingston, author of Now is Gone. Check it out.
Everyone is a little intimidated and overwhelmed about where to start with your social media marketing campaign. There are so many sites and so few metrics for evaluating your success.
You really can't ignore social media for your company anymore, if you do your competitors are going to eat your lunch. So where do you start?
InsideCRM just released a great list of 50 social media sites that every business needs a presence on.
It is a pretty comprehensive list with a great introduction to each. They cover the following types of Social Network Sites:
Great article in the Sunday Times Online called Learn to love social network sites, it is about the widespread perspective of social networks and how allowing them to be used at work will contribute to employees wasting time and losing money for companies.
It talks about how many companies have banned social networks all together for their workers, and how this can back-fire for many companies.
It moves into talking about what benefit allowing employees to use social networks can bring for both internal and external operations.
They even start diving a little into some Wikinomics and talk about crowdsourcing and other 2.0 concepts.
Check it out, it is a good read.
Was just reading some of Now is Gone by Geoff Livingston. There is a great paragraph I just came across that really sums up a lot for me:
Companies and organizations should look at social networks as a way to engage potential community members outside of the confines of a corporate URL. By participating intelligently and building value, a company can create a great conversation with its constituents as well as future customers. Further, they can encourage them to take actions and engage them within the confines of the company's own social media initiative.
This really covers the essence of where a social media campaign should operate; outside the corporate URL.
Its not just directly with your customers, but with your future customers.
Some of these concepts are very tough for traditional PPC marketers to grasp and directly measure the ROI.
Was listening to NPR today and a podcast on Choosing a Doctor in the Digital Age. It was great about how to use online review sites to find out what people are saying about doctors.
Health consumers are increasingly shopping online for doctors through peer-based sites like FindADoc.com, DoctorScorecard.com, and even local city search sites.
Great example of how grassroots growth in online usage is influencing how business is conducted. More evidence on how businesses should be paying attention to social media and how it influences their business.
Review sites and Question and Answer sites are becoming more and more important for consumers.
I was just listening to an NPR story about how senior Al-Qaida press department has asked supporters to submit questions on a message boards.
Supposively they are to be answered by Osama bin Laden's deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri.
Many jihadist and terrorists posted questions about he organization and what they should do?
Seems everyone is seeing value in social media.
Some very interesting stuff in two-dimensional camera phone barcodes out there on the Internet.
Was reading the NY Times Articles on Mobile Phone Barcodes and it referenced a couple of technologies like Semacode, QR Code and Qode, and barcode technology maker Nextcode.
Here is an introduction to Two-Dimensional Camera Phone Barcodes that explained the technology to me.
There are plenty of big players in the game trying to push camera phone and other cell phone bar code technologies in the is country such as Microsoft Launches Windows Live Barcode Beta.
What is Windows Live Barcode?
Windows Live Barcode is a set of services that transfer information between various media (PCs, billboards, magazines etc.) and handsets via Quick Response Code (QR Code), a two-dimensional barcode. It provides a new method for people to exchange information and enjoy various online services on handsets. Windows Live Barcode aims to enhance handset utility and provide you with more convenience and flexibility.
The technology is big in Japan and is used in many daily activities. Here is a definition of QR code:
What is a QR Code for Mobile Devices? - A QR Code is a two-dimensional bar code introduced by the Japanese company Denso-Wave in 1994. QR stands for “Quick Response”. QR Codes are most common in Japan, and are the most popular type of two-dimensional code in Japan.
These two-dimensional images are truly the missing link in taking your social media campaign off line or bringing your off line campaign online.
I am stilling sifting through all the blogs I read and information I gather on a clear definition in my mind of what describes all the content I generate around the Internet.
My social graph is a definition of my relationships and my communication with these people.
I have been reading more on the social media index and how you can rate someone using this methodology based upon several key areas:
I keep talking about what my single social interface, which I have been wrestling with as part of my social graph. Figured I better clarify for some of you what the social graph is?
A social graph consists of who an individual is connected to based on the type of connections, such as work, friendship, interests, and location.
I am still grasping the definition of my social graph as I participate more and more on social networks and in the social media space.
In my single social interface definition I try to define communication with my social graph in another perspective based upon Individuals, Network, and Public.
That could be a mix of many different people across my social graph.
I am also still fumbling with how all my content and information fits into this picture and where does it show on my social graph as I create, share and collaborate within my social graph?
It is great to see different people perspectives on the social graph how they work to define it as well.
Just saw a commercial from Mountain Dew about their new soda creation web site, www.dewmocracy.com.
It was another interesting usage of Social Media Marketing that utilizes its pro-users or audience to facilitate research and development (R&D). They are encouraging customers to go to the web site and help decide certain characteristics of a new Mountain Dew soda.
It is a pretty simple web site surrounding a kind of game / soda creation application. The site is built in .NET, the application looks like Silverlight, but I am not sure.
Not really impressed with the campaign overall but it is an interesting usage of these new methods.
Shows that the big co's are embracing these principles, now we need to see more of it in the smaller business arena.
I have been spending a great deal of time learning about "learning objects" from a site called Merlot.
Wikepedia defines a learning object as:
That is awesome that there are social media sites and networks starting to share the revenue with their top content generators.
Let's go a step further. How about you pay me for all valid, professional interaction I have.
I should be able to generate video, audio, files, pictures, etc and post them places and share in the revenue from these either being sold or ad revenue from eyeballs.
I want to be able to take part in networks and spread the word through linking, commenting, and other forms and for every action I take it works towards and overall return in cash or other compensation.
If I generate content and you make money, kick me a piece of the action.
Ok. Now that I have been blogging somewhat successfully (what is successfully), I am starting to develop a rhythm. It is pretty erratic, but it is starting to flow and develop a voice. Well at least to me.
So if you wish to read this blog it is more for my head to keep track and formulate some of the thoughts I am having about my evolution in the Social Media Space.
This blog is based upon a mind map I am creating in MindMeister, and will be publishing it to my Kin Lane web site as soon as it matures a little bit.
So these are going to be pretty random, as I can I will link off the mind map as I publish it and / or I will try to outline off my site and link to each blog in some organized fashion, as I make sense of it.
