Good Morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to a new feature I’m starting right here on this blog to help you, the reader, understand how to use social media the “not wrong” way. I say “not wrong” because the “right” way isn’t always clear, as the book is still being written, best practices are still being developed, and we might not know the extent to which social media is effective until much later. There are, however, plenty of ways to misuse social media tools. Think of how you might use a table saw, for instance. A table saw is used to cut things, mostly wood, but what you build is your prerogative. There are precautions and measures you can take to make sure you’re going to make the best outcome possible, but everyone produces unique results. But use a table saw the wrong way and you’ll end up in the emergency room with a few less fingers. 

Hey, Genius…

Now, I’m not saying you will lose any digits if you mess up using social media, but I hope I can at least help you prevent a disaster to your brand or your online reputation. Before I dole out any advice, however, let’s get something straight: I am not a Social Media Expert, nor do I claim to be. Anyone who tells you they are is full of turkey, in my opinion. Because social media is based on the technology and tools that are available at any given time, social media is really nothing new. It’s just that now there are new platforms that allow you to listen and directly respond to the people interested in what you do and how you do it.

The social media case I'm writing about today, UK-sponsored 10 Downing Street, is unique among the others in our series of 26 Social Media Marketing Examples In Detail.  Unlike the other list-members who use social media as a means to convince people to buy/utilize a separate product or service, the sole purpose of the UK Government's social media efforts is to promote use of the UK Government's social media efforts.
Already 60 million citizens strong, the United Kingdom does not seem to be recruiting too many new faces. Instead, 10 Downing Street's social media efforts are designed to allow better and clearer access to the government. So instead of selling widgets or promoting a service, 10 Downing Street is sponsoring the development of civic-minded citizens by making the government seem more accessible via its use. It also makes Prime Minister Gordon Brown (aka "the PM") look pretty tech-savvy.

So let's jump in and see what the UK's been up to.

The UK Government on Facebook

So it turns out that the official UK Government Facebook page, Number 10 Downing Street, is actually a Facebook application page rather than your typical fan page. Considering the 60+ million residents the UK boasts, the current total of 335 fans and 583 active monthly users makes me think this isn't the best way to activate your Facebook audience. The application page lacks any content under the Info tab on the app page, the administrators of the page have not posted any content, and very few users have posted on the wall. Rather than having the entire Facebook presence exist within a single application, Number 10 Downing Street could greatly benefit from creating a fan page on which the application could live and serve its purpose while also providing administrators, leaders, fans, and users a more interactive channel to access and share information.

With that said, it seems that they're at least off to a decent start with the application. It's actually pretty cool and useful (and even though I'm located in the US, I added it to my profile so I can get daily updates of the British government in a cute box on my profile). The app is pretty well-organized and is jam-packed with news updates, photos, videos and articles.

 

These days, I don’t spend my money anywhere until I’ve read customer reviews. From a new apartment to skincare products, if I have a choice between my total lack of knowledge and someone else’s experience, I’m going to take their opinion into heavy consideration.

Online customer reviews are plentiful, and, according to Adweek, we care more about those reviews than what our friends say when it comes to making purchase decisions. Fortunately, there are plenty of people out there who love giving their opinions, present company included. Jeremy’s recent blog post on Yelp highlighted an entire community of people reviewing for no other reason than because they wanted to. The only motivation for those of us who love to review is our desire to showoff. And nothing is more gratifying for us showoffs than to be able to plaster our opinions all over our social networks, which brings me to the whole idea of “social commerce.” In future tense, any business selling products that doesn’t utilize some customer review functionality is absolutely going to see it hurt their bottom line. Customer reviews encourage purchases, without a doubt.

Get your tablets plugged in and your creative juices flowing, because we’re helping to launch a new contest today for our client Intel, to promote the release of the mobile edition of the Core i7 processor. The “Extreme Photoshop” contest is taking place entirely on Twitter, with help from our friends over at Twitpic.

Here's the Deal

Basically the idea is that you show off your Photoshop* skills by manipulating an image with the theme of “extreme.” Upload your masterpiece to Twitpic (be sure to use the tag “intelcore” on Twitpic, and the hashtag #intelcore in your Tweet) then get your friends and contacts to leave comments. Every comment counts as a vote, so the sooner you get started, the longer you’ll have to grab votes.

“Glee,” a new comedy series on FOX premiered on Wednesday, and with it came a slew of social media marketing tactics.  If you didn’t catch the premiere, you’re definitely missing out.

The show is about a high school teacher who takes over the school’s Glee Club and is determined to turn it into something great. The premiere caught a lot of attention as approximately 7.5 million viewers tuned in. And with all of the new social media techniques FOX is using in lieu of traditional advertising to promote “Glee”, I think the show will generate an even larger fan base by the end of the season.

Are you the biggest GLEEK?

This is what FOX is asking its viewers to keep the buzz surrounding the new series alive on the web. They have created the “Biggest Gleek Social Media Game” where users can earn points from activity across Twitter, Facebook and MySpace when they mention the words “glee,” “the biggest gleek game,” or any of the cast. On Twitter, fans can also use the hashtag #glee to gain points. You can also receive points when friends reply or re-tweet your Twitter updates, for linking to “Glee” with a personalized URL, by inviting friends to join, and by uploading “Glee” photos to Facebook. Fans can climb up the leader board in hopes of gaining the grand prize of a trip to LA to meet the cast. The contest ends on September 23rd, so it should be interesting to see the results.

I’m on to my second post in my social media nonprofit series and I decided to check out the American Cancer Society (ACS).  As a side note, I will soon venture outside of the cancer world in this series but I couldn’t resist this one.

I saw the ACS “More Birthdays” television spot awhile back and I thought they did a great job.  Maybe it’s because I’m a cancer survivor and I agree that another birthday is a big celebration, but I wanted to check out what else they were doing around this campaign.

I started at Morebirthdays.com.  

Back in July, I predicted that Facebook would eventually kill Twitter. The argument I was making was that Facebook was taking steps to make itself capable of doing everything Twitter does, plus much, much more. When you add in the fact that their user base is roughly 25x Twitters (about 250m to 10m), it becomes hard to see a compelling strategy for growth for Twitter.

To clarify, I'm talking about the long term. Even if Facebook is wildly successful, Twitter will likely continue to grow for the next 6-8 months at least before leveling off or beginning to dip (like MySpace is now).

Recently, I went to a new restaurant with my friend, in hopes that our experience would be one I could enjoy and talk about later. As it turned out, I did talk about my experience later, but I certainly not because I enjoyed it. (I won’t name the restaurant here, but if you are savvy, I’m sure you can find my review if you really want to.) Anyway, here are a few things I learned from my experience, and what local businesses can learn from consumer review sites like Yelp.

Today I would like to take some time to continue the 26 Social Media Marketing Examples and examine Taco Bell. As a fellow “offbeat” connoisseur and fellow funny man I can definitely relate to Taco Bell and the approach they have taken over the years. Humor has typically been at the forefront of many of their traditional campaigns.

Without much surprise they have transitioned well into the social sphere, although, could use some fine tuning and focus with their social assets.  Below I will highlight some of their efforts.

Taco Bell Facebook Page

In his eternal campaign to impart his SEO wisdom upon us copywriters here at Ignite, Brian Chappell is forever introducing us to tools that can help make us writers more proficient and productive. A big part of getting us aesthetically sensitive artsy types to use something is that it has to feel right as well as be unassuming enough to incorporate itself into whatever wacked-out creative process we’ve already established. 

Enter the Wordtracker SEO Blogger plug-in for Firefox. It’s the newest SEO blogging tool that I’ve been introduced to, and I love it. After you download it, it drops a tiny icon into the bottom right side of your Firefox browser window. When you click on it, a frame pops up on the left side of your window, cleanly designed and easy to read.