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.

Continuing the series, "26 Social Media Marketing Examples in Detail", I'll review SELF Magazine and their efforts within the social space.  Since I've been on a workout regime lately, I had actually come across several of these efforts organically, so I hope to share my thoughts below.  Here goes:

Facebook

SELF's Facebook Fan Page is currently being used as a way to share more of SELF content in another medium.  I tend to like SELF content, and I think judging from the activity on the page, its audiences are using its content posted to the Wall as a forum for discussions.  Overall, the look and feel of the fan page mirrors that of the magazine.   As you can see, the following shows how SELF has transformed the left side bar of their Facebook fan page with images and content that lead to their website.  This continues as a visual down the entire left side bar of the page.  In my opinion, this is a good usage of the real estate, and doesn't quite feel like an ad. 

Over the course of the last few years, YouTube has emerged as the undisputed king of video sharing.  Millions of clips have been uploaded to the site since its launch in 2005.  YouTube has become a major venue for mainstream artists and would-be Internet celebrities from around the globe to advertise their many “talents” to the masses.  Marketers have begun to use the site quite effectively as well.

YouTube is, in many cases, the first stop for marketers looking to launch viral campaigns.  Ray Ban, Nike, Dove, Ecko, and Burger King are just a few of the brands that have flocked to YouTube to launch big budget viral marketing campaigns.  However, the site can seem crowded, cluttered, and a bit overwhelming. In addition, YouTube is often criticized because of the low quality of the videos submitted; hence, the question beckons, is there an alternative to YouTube?   Ladies and gentlemen, meet Vimeo!

Vimeo was launched in 2004 as a video-centric social network site that has garnered a very artistic, high-brow following.  Artists from around the world who aspire to be serious filmmakers and future Pixar innovators upload videos to the site in droves to the tune of 13,000 clips a day in an attempt to have their work seen, heard, and noticed. 

So, how can Vimeo be used as a social media marketing tool?  The uploading guidelines for Vimeo explicitly state that there is “no commercial use” allowed on the site.  It would seem all hope is lost when it comes to using Vimeo as a marketing tool, but not so fast.  There are significant exceptions.

The race to be the social network seems like it's been over for at least 6 months. Facebook has trumped MySpace, and MySpace is busy (finally) trying to refocus both their business model and what they offer users and brands.

Beyond the race for number 1, dozens of smaller social networks (such as CafeMom, Gather, LinkedIn, TeamSugar and more) work to differentiate themselves by either focusing on a particular target audience (i.e., moms) or specific functionality (i.e., business networking). That's still just the tip of the iceberg. There are more than 1,000,000 social networks hosted on Ning alone—the majority of which are useless, abandoned, or should be abandoned.

Does this mean there's no more room for social networks in 2009 and beyond? Surprisingly, the answer may be "no" for those who focus on semantic social media.

It’s no secret that online communication is a huge aspect of our lives, whether it be via IM, email, Skype, or any of the plethora of digital communicative services available now. Without IM, how would I chat with Olivia - she sits on the complete opposite side of the office! In fact, it seems like someone is more likely to ask for my Twitter name or my email address than they are to ask for my phone number. Sure, the Baby Boomer generation might frown upon the decline of more personal forms of communication, but before telephones and postal mail, there were stone tablets and chisels. It’s all in the name of convenience and accessibility.

MySpace seems to have finally recognized this well-established method of exchanging messages quickly and easily, as they’ve completely revamped MySpace Mail to now offer users a sleek new interface with greatly improved usability. So what exactly has the former King of Social Networks done to update its mail service? Could these changes help assert MySpace as a worthwhile outlet for brands to utilize to engage with consumers? Here’s a breakdown of some of the new features and what they could mean for the user experience.

New MySpace Mail Interface

Logging into my profile on Thursday, sorting through my MySpace messages was still a complete disaster. It was slow, clunky, aesthetically unappealing, and so on. Fast forward to Friday afternoon, I log in expecting to endure the same painful process of the past 6 years. Much to my surprise, I was greeted with something quite different:

As most fellow geeks are aware of Facebook announced the purchase of real time microblogging platform Friendfeed yesterday. Without any delay they then announced later that night that users will now be able to search across peoples profiles and wall postings, something that has never been possible before. This opens up a whole new can of worms and it remains to be seen how well this search feature is adopted and what changes Facebook continues to make to the underlying platform that they have now integrated from Friendfeed.

Now that there is a new live search entity on the block, things are really starting to heat up. Below you will find screenshots of two different queries inside of both Twitter and Facebook.

Before I get into each snapshot I would like to point out a few things. First, by default, Facebook does not show your activity to the public without you going in and selecting that option in your privacy settings. This certainly plays to the affect of Twitter having much more coverage for most queries when compared to Facebook.