Gene found this site, which was a hilarious view of Facebook in 30 years. Since it made its way around the office, I thought it was worth sharing.

My personal favorite is the “Meals on Wheels” application.

On Monday, we at Ignite Social Media launched a new social media website for one of our clients, the United Auto Workers—the international labor union.  The site supports (and extends) a larger advertising campaign that is running in Detroit, Indianapolis, Jackson (MS), Louisville, and Nashville.

The campaign’s gotten some really good coverage around the world (Link 1, Link 2, Link 3), but it’s also a good example of how advertising can support social media and social media can support advertising. That’s interesting to me with my advertising background and now building a social media agency.

The advertising is clearly driving traffic to the site (in fact, we had to increase the allocated bandwidth yesterday because we had too much traffic).  The social media is supporting the advertising too, because now the campaign expands from five TV spots (you should watch them, they’re quite good) to hundreds of stories from members all over the place, added to the site over time.

The membership is responding well.  Since the site launched, their stories have been pouring in.  We’ll be busy putting them up over the next couple of weeks.

A lot of social media enthusiasts say that social media marketing will kill advertising.  I don’t think so.  I think social media marketing is a new and different skill set that offers all sorts of different benefits.  As this campaign shows, the two can work together really well.

So, we’re pleased.  And we’re using a few social media components, mostly consumer generated content, but certainly not every possible SM component.  We want to hear from you, our readers who are deep into social media…  Thoughts on the site?  Ideas for how to make it better?  Let us know.

~Jim

We’re staying quite busy over here at Ignite as our client base is expanding rapidly. Because of this, we are keeping our eye out for qualified candidates that enjoy/understand social media and would be interested in joining us in our craziness.

While we have a lot of needs (ex. Jim’s need for more Facebook friends) – the following are our current highest areas of need:

1) Content Developers: In social media, frequent, valuable content is king. That’s why we are looking for strong writers in variety of styles and voices who could apply this talent to blogging, twittering – and many other social media applications that we may apply for our clients.

On the production side of content development, we also are looking for audio/visual producers who have talent in the filming, recording, and editing of videos and podcasts.

2) SEO/SMO Gurus - We need social media gurus who have a solid understanding of both SEO and SMO. Do you know how to leverage organic links and how to promote and optimize social media efforts to increase search results? If so, we’d like to speak.

Hey, we know job descriptions are vague – especially in the newly evolving space of social media, so if you are interested in the above possibilities please send an email cover letter and resume to jim at ignitesocialmedia.com and we’ll go from there. While a lack of formal education in social media isn’t a problem (because, really, who has it?), a lack of experience in the area either professionally or as a hobby/passion is.

(UPDATE (3/08): We’ve now defined all of these buzzwords in a new post. Read it here.)

In the 2008 Crain’s Book of Lists, Ignite contributed to an ad placed by its associated agency, Brogan and Partners. This particular ad included a list of “Social media buzzwords to make you sound really, really smart”, which was quite a fun list for us to compile.

While the ad covered the first ten, we’ve listed the complete list of 25 Social Media Buzzwords below (in no particular order).

Enjoy – and as always feel free to add some of your own :-)

1. “Social Graph”
2. Twitter
3. LinkedIn
4. Semantic Web
5. Wiki
6. Widget
7. KickApps
8. Tumblr
9. del.icio.us
10. Enterprise 2.0
11. Social Media Optimization
12. Meme
13. Mash-Up
14. Social Media Monitoring
15. User-Generated Content
16. Web 2.0
17. Social Networks
18. “Blogosphere”
19. Viral Marketing
20. Ruby on Rails
21. Social Media Press Release
22. Vlogging
23. Micro-Blogging
24. Transparency and Authenticity
25. “White Label”

For those of you who don’t know, I’m getting married this June on Flag Day (that’s June 14 for those who don’t keep up with random holidays).

So in the pursuit of getting all of my to-do’s crossed off, I’ve recently been on a hunt for a honeymoon location with the following criteria:

• Out West
• A cabin
• As close to mountains and lakes as possible
• Far away from human civilization but close enough to things to get a hamburger and some fries.

As you can imagine, this isn’t your typical honeymoon criteria. It’s not to an all-inclusive resort, I’m not looking for a champagne glass hot-tub (although those are pretty sweet), and I don’t want to stay in a cheesy honeymoon suite in a hotel.

I guess I had always imagined that when the time came to look for a honeymoon location, I would simply type in “honeymoon out west” and there would appear every related search at my fingertips. Instead, I’ve experienced HOURS of painstaking searches on the internet in which I find myself hunched over my computer at 12:00 at night thinking, “why is this so hard?”.

However, by luck I eventually found this cabin in Tetonia Idaho, which from the website photos appears to be a dream. But before I was willing to confirm the first thing that I wanted to know was “What is this going to be like?”, and “What’s nearby”, and “What activities can we do?” and so forth.

That’s when I visited Flickr, which had pictures geotagged with “Tetonia Idaho”. While I was there, I actually could see pictures taken from other honeymooners and some of the activities they did while they were there. After seeing the beautiful mountains, the plane ride they took over the range, and some of the sunsets – I was immediately hooked. My fiancee and I sent the deposit the very next day.

While there are many lessons for the travel industry in this story, and many applications for social media (which I will cover this week), this for me, has revealed the true value of user-generated content. While a traditional website sparked my interest, it was the social media that closed the deal.

Hi all you Triangle social media clubbers!

A couple weeks ago I reached out through email to all of you and have heard mixed responses regarding whether or not to have a December meeting. Sorry for the delay in announcement – lately things are “heating up” over here at Ignite :-)

So in light of the mixed reactions, I wanted to throw a date and time for some of us who can meet to have a little breakfast, and talk a little social media. After all, lets save our families by getting “social media talk” out of our systems before the holidays…

So here’s the details:

Date: This Thursday, December 20th (yes, that soon)

Time: 7:30 am (ouch that’s early!)

Where: Cafe Carolina in Cary (off Harrison Ave.)

If you can’t make it to this meeting, we WILL be having a social media club event in January, which will be a Podcasting discussion led by Kipp Bodnar. Should be a great discussion.

I’ve officially decided that I’m voting for Ed in 2008. And yes, I admit that this decision is primarily on the premises of the campaign’s marketing and social media efforts. But let me explain….

My exposure to the Ed in 08’ campaign began when one of my teacher friend’s proudly presented her Ed in 08’ “toolkit” in which she had ordered. I must say, the kit itself came shipped in a very well designed box (which she still refuses to throw away), and came equipped with a T-shirt, campaign information, and a specific call to action to take a picture with the T-shirt and submit it to the site.As I found myself visiting the site, I quickly noticed that Ed in 08’ was immediately proof that traditional marketing can successfully work hand in hand with social media. After all, the design and strategy of the direct mail piece and the collateral materials had successfully sparked my interest enough to drive me to visit the campaign website. The website then used social media aspects to convince me to stay for a while.

The strong calls to action of the website itself led me to an Ed in 08’ Flickr page with pictures of both the common folk and celebrities with their “Ed in 08’ shirts”, then to check out a “community” section for members to openly discuss the campaign, then to a news feed pulling the newest developments of the campaign across the US, then to an “issues” page with embedded videos, and then to web badges and buttons to be shared on advocate blogs, social network profiles, and websites.So because of these social media components being integrated into the campaign, the site was undeniably sticky. And the longer I was there, the more it made me feel as me and many other like me were involved.

So with this being said, I encourage you to check it out and see a great example of a campaign that merged social media marketing tactics with traditional marketing tactics. And if you visit the site my teacher friend advises you to order a kit – if nothing else for the “sturdy and reliable” box.

When you do social media marketing, and when you’re building a social media agency using the tools that you preach about, you spend an awful lot of time checking the analytics, looking at the growth in subscribers, checking inbound links to you, etc. We regularly shout these things around the office at one another.

For a while, we’ve been watching our Technorati authority numbers to see how many people are linking to us and how we rank against other blogs. Today we broke into the top 100,000 blogs in the world when our authority hit 72.

Now, being ranked 99,658th in something is usually not much of a milestone, but we were just realizing that when there are over 112,800,000 blogs being tracked by Technorati, that means that the Ignite Social Media blog ranks ahead of 99.91% of all the blogs in the world.

I guess that’s something to be proud of, particularly for a site that went live only 5 months ago.

It also makes me want to bow down to higher ranked sites that link to us like TopRankBlog (authority 3,195. Lee, are you KIDDING me? You’re the man.), WebProNews (582), PRSquared (396), and many more. While we’re proud of the start we’ve got here, we learn a LOT from you guys (and the whole social media marketing community) every day. We recognize that there’s a long way to go for this little company.

So thanks for reading, thanks for honoring us with your links. The social media marketing community is such a great, open group of people sharing. We all have lots of work left to do as we re-invent corporate communications with these tools! Onward.

(P.S. If you’re wondering, Engadget is currently the blog with the highest authority-with 31,314 inbound links-because it’s a great source for tech info.)

Yesterday I discovered an excellent (and rather humorous) post by B.L Ochman discussing the “Blog Council”. What is the Blog Council you may ask? The site describes it as the following:

“The Blog Council is where the people who run large companies’ blogs share best practices and new ideas.”

Upon reviewing the site – there is so much to say. Below are the three things that I just can’t help but notice. These things really make me wonder if this so called “Blog Council” really understands blogging:

1) The “Blog Council” ironically does not have a blog anywhere on it’s site. And if you want to give feedback? Well you better either write it on your own blog or send an email.

2) The Blog council is all about the “sharing” of information, but only with those involved in corporate blogs. Seems like these companies could also use the help of those who have specific expertise and solid understanding of social media, but perhaps I’m biased.

“By joining this movement, you share ideas, opportunities, and energy with a peer group that understands exactly what you are going through. You meet great people. You do big things. You make a difference.”

3) Finally, the council states that it does not, “represent vendors, agencies or individual/small business blogs. We also don’t represent big businesses that aren’t blogging yet.” So basically the council is after large corporations with large budgets. Sounds like a good business opportunity for somebody involved….

Any Blog Council members out there who would like to shed some light? I’d love to hear your point of view.

Since we launched here at Ignite, we’ve been inundated with prospects that are looking for a social media agency. As you can imagine, one of the most common requests that we get from these prospects is always “Can you draft us a proposal?”.

And so a few weeks ago when Glen Allsopp over at ViperChill suggested that I cover some steps to writing a social media proposal, I thought this would be a great way to share some of our strategies that we have learned along the way – for both the social media marketer and potential prospects alike.

1. Don’t give it all away. Some “potential clients” will be looking for a proposal to be a comprehensive social media strategy with specific ideas and tactics outlined. Beware of giving too much proprietary information away – many of these prospects will have no intention of hiring an agency, but are seeking high level strategy or ideas to guide their efforts. Be modest – don’t give it all away on the first date.

2. Evaluate the Business. Before drafting the proposal – take a good hard look at the business and its current business model. Often times we have been approached by internet companies who are simply wanting to spam and sell links. Be sure to remember that even the best social media campaign cannot help a bad product or sleezy business model – use a level of discernment in choosing your clients. Ask the following questions: - Is the product or service offering quality? - How does the client make their money?

3. Ask Questions. Many potential clients have come to us and said, “We’d like a social media proposal for our company”. Before running to write, the following are some examples of the questions you need to ask: - What is the benefit you wish to gain from social media marketing? - What are the current external and internal communication needs within your business? - What type of internal resources do you have available? (content creators, technologists, etc?)

Finally, if an opportunity arises to ask about the allocated budget, ask. There is literally no end to what can be done for a client in social media. The budget can help determine how many hours should be allocated for content development can have a huge determinant on the tactics and strategies that are suggested in your proposal.

Additionally, no budget and just wondering “how much this is all going to cost me” likely means they aren’t very serious about making an investment. It’s not that you can’t start with some things and ramp up, but not even being willing to react to a range of costs (or react to a specific list of services) may send red flags up for you.

4. Tailor. Yes, it is tempting to shoot a list of your services and call it a proposal, but social media is not one size fits all and your services will not be the right fit for every client. A good rule of thumb we’ve used in tailoring our proposals is to outline 3-5 services we provide that “make sense” for the client and the client’s needs. We don’t put everything and the kitchen sink – but show select services that take into account the social media readiness of the company, internal resources, and company objectives.

5. Client Goals. Ask the client what they expect from a social media investment and, importantly, how quickly they want it. Good social media marketing is patient. You give things away (information, games, whatever) and build a following with it. It’s not a banner ad campaign that starts on date certain and should be generate X clicks 2 days later. It could take 90 – 180 days to gain traction (depending, of course, on which tactics you’ve chosen and how they are otherwise supported). Does the client understand that?

Finally – this list is intended to be dynamic.  If you are a social media marketer please offer your expertise, and if you are more of a potential client then we’d also be curious to hear your candid feedback.