We've all heard the predictions and discussions from those in the blogosphere around MySpace.  However, whether or not you believe that Facebook is going to overthrow MySpace, and Twitter is going to rule over all isn't really important.  What is crucial for a marketer to understand is the internal movements of these networks and the slight changes they undergo in their lifetime.  Successful communities will tailor to an audience need - and while MySpace may end up losing the masses to Facebook, it is clearly making movements within niche areas within the music and entertainment space from its introduction of "MySpace Music" in September 2008.

There comes a point in every blogger’s life when, despite their best efforts, they find themselves scraping the bottom of the barrel. Maybe it’s the heat in the dead of summer, the fact that everyone is on vacation while you toil away at the old keyboard, or just a bit of old-fashioned burnout.

Regardless of the cause of your blogger’s angst, if you blog for a living, you’ve got to find a way to push through it, Rocky! In general, I find that the bloggers who write the most compelling content are the ones with well-rounded interests, which helps to keep them from regurgitating the same content in different flavors.

Here are a couple of suggestions that I personally find helpful, but I’m interested to hear what you other bloggers do to help shake and bake on your slow days. 

Listen to better music –

If you walk around the Ignite office, you will find each of us with earbuds firmly in place, mainly because if we didn’t respect each other’s musical choices by doing so, then we’d all be subjected to the throbbing beats of Brian Chappell’s house music. If you’re feeling a little uninspired, you should probably start by getting better tunes.

The Hype Machine is a site that aggregates content from hand-picked music blogs, giving you the ability to listen right on the site. An interesting feature they just added is the Twitter Music Chart, which lists songs in order of popularity based on tweets. It’s a convenient way to find new music and see what others are currently loving (the past few weeks, it’s been a lot of inspiring Michael Jackson remixes).

There are only a few channels I actually subscribe to on YouTube. I would even say that I would call myself a rather active viewer of the site, checking out several videos a day. Though there are plenty of opportunities for brands to utilize the services that YouTube provides, the videos that get the most exposure are the ones from individuals. Here are the top 10 most subscribed YouTube channels out there. Maybe you can help me figure out why.

Periodically, I try to lay out my predictions on the future of social media, particularly as it relates to social media marketing. Half-way through calendar year 2009 seems like a good time for a social media agency to talk about the latest, particularly as two recent moves by major web properties haven't gotten the mainstream attention they will soon deserve. So while I only have two predictions today, they are significant. 

1. Facebook's recent adjustment to their privacy settings spell the beginning of the end for Twitter; and
2. Google Wave will turn social media into a true two-way conversation for the first time (if it's widely adopted).

Happy birthday to us! 

We launched this blog on July 2, 2007 as the first public face of our new company. One visitor showed up. Not sure how s/he found us. Two years and a couple hundred thousand visitors later, we're having a lot of fun.

Two of the most commonly confused concepts in social media are the idea of “social” versus “interactive.” Simply put, interactive means that there is stuff for people to do on your website beyond just reading. There are levels of interactivity, and for today’s post, I’m going to use Kashi’s highly interactive website as an example. Making something social implies that there is a heavy emphasis on the actual sharability ( I think I just made that word up, so don’t forget to give me some backlinks for it) of the content. The two concepts are not interchangeable, and you can have interactivity without the social component. 

Enter the Kashi website. Kashi is one of those niche brands that has a solid base of true lovers. If you’ve ever been on a road trip and rescued from fast food damnation by one of their GoLean! Roll Bars, then you understand what I mean.

Their website, aside from being informative, also doubles as an interactive community. You sign up, sign in, and you have access to coupons, tips, recipes, and blog posts about wellness and healthy living. You can comment, participate in health challenges, and leave mini-status updates about your daily accomplishments.

Over the course of the last decade, an array of viral marketing examples have come and gone with varying degrees of success.  Though the term "viral" infers that the campaign is organic and self-replicating, marketers and big-name brands have begun to attempt manufacturing viral content in the hopes of increasing their brand awareness or product sales.  Some feel that viral content cannot be manufactured and is only the product of organic and unpredictable forces, while a growing number of others feel that they can predict what people will be interested in, how they will share that content, and ultimately what will become viral.  Though the debate rages on, the fact remains that viral marketing has evolved over the course of the last decade from a rather obscure Internet phenomenon to a massive, multi-million dollar marketing tool employed by agencies and brands the world over.  With that said, let's explore some of the better examples of viral marketing in the last decade. 

Number 18 on our list of 26 Social Media Marketing Examples is Rubbermaid. I was pretty excited about researching Rubbermaid because I'm secretly an organization freak! I love buying new organizational supplies and finding ways to organize anything and everything. An organized house makes for an organized life- too bad I don't use that same motto with my car or desk at work.

Back to our social media example. Let's jump right into my observations and recommendations, shall we? The Rubbermaid site is primarily focused on ecommerce. Each individual link either: provides a way to purchase products, provides full details about a specific product and/or provides tips and tricks on how to use the product. While I understand an ecommerce section to the site is pertinent, as that's how they garner online sales, it is my humble opinion that Rubbermaid can better drive traffic to the site by dedicating a single section to ecommerce and then by dedicating the remainder of the site to building a more interactive atmosphere.

However, I got excited when I saw the "Tips & Solutions" section. I thought "oh-they're going to show me how to get organized- YES!" Unfortunately, that was not the case. Again, just more detailed content about the productds and their uses- read like a big sales pitch to me. There was one cool thing to note about this section, however, and that is that there is actually a RSS feed and a sharing option. This is a very important social element and if the content were more beneficial to the consumer, I would definitely utilize those social options to share the tips with others.

Starting today, our client Windows is rolling out a new program as a way to debut their new MySpace presence. In a nutshell, Windows is subsidizing your downloading of over 1,000 songs from a selection of bands featured on ReverbNation.com.

It's an interesting marketing program, but it also helps the artists get paid in a new way for their work. Windows gets some visibility in terms of ads, and the fan gets lots of free music, legally, thereby discovering talented new bands they might not otherwise know about.

At Ignite Social Media, we developed the concept with ReverbNation (who invented the sponsored songs concept) and brought it to Windows. We've been working on it for the last couple of months, and thought sharing a little of the behind the scenes thinking that went on might help as an interesting case study in social media marketing for big brands.

Philosophy

Our client at Microsoft, Marty Collins, very much has the philosophy that you need to participate in conversations that are relevant to your target audiences and do so, to a degree, on their terms. She also believes that the communities she's building (on Facebook, on Twitter, on YouTube, in their own Clubhouse) are long-term investments and that good "behavior" in these communities can add value to the usage of a product and can deepen the connection, and sentiment, toward those products. I couldn't agree more.

We know from a detailed Community Analysis a lot about one of our key target audiences. Among other things, we found that, where 100 is average, this audience:

• Indexes 114 for visiting MySpace;
• Indexes 192 for visiting ReverbNation.com;
• Indexes 168 for "download/purchase music"; and
• Indexes 163 for "buy an mp3 player in the last year."

So clearly this is a group with an affinity for MySpace. Even more so, they have a strong affinity for music, and Windows has long been about supporting creative experiences. The ads in the songs work to convey that as well.

Everybody loves social media, right? Now is your chance to get in the game and show all those other brands just how things are done in the social sphere when it comes to marketing. Here are a few tips to make sure you get the most for your money, because after all, social media is a cheap add on to any existing campaign, and you probably don't need to put much thought into it.

Make a Viral Video 

This one is EASY. Just make something funny and put it on the YouTubes. Tell a few of your friends about it and they are sure to pass it around. It doesn't matter if your video does anything for your brand, just so long as it is FUNNY! Can't think of anything good? NO PROBLEM! Just take something already popular from the Internet and replicate it with your own product! Simple right? If you don't believe me, just look at this amazing video for Quizno's that recalls that famous video circulating the net a few months ago. Remember the one that made people sick to watch because of how disgusting it was? Take a cue from Quizno's and associate your product with something everyone loves: poop.