Nearly All Young Europeans Use Text Messages
November 30, 2007 | 1 Comment
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E-marketer delivered a Forester study today that showed that 92% of young mobile users in certain European countries report sending SMS text messages on their phone. 62% report sending MMS (multi-media) messages on their phone. But only 21% report using their phone to send or receive email.
What’s this have to do with social media marketing and why is a social media agency sharing the information?
While we’re all working to figure out social media marketing and how it’s going to work, there’s a pretty big platform change racing toward us. With PC sales declining in Japan already (and the rest of the world ahead of the U.S. in mobile technology), we need to keep in the back of our mind that much of this is going to port to the small screen, potentially fairly soon.
And as ad models evolve, fitting meaningful (to both the consumer and the marketer) ads on the small screen is a challenge that needs to be solved. More likely, in my view, is that someone smart will find a way to give away packages of SMS messages in exchange for sponsorships.
But, social media marketers, let’s keep the cell phone future in your thoughts as we move forward. Facebook has going mobile web (picture below from this article on CrunchGear). Everyone will eventually go mobile. How does that impact your social media marketing plans?
Using Social Media to Build Brands
October 30, 2007 | 1 Comment
There are a lot of different social media executions that we’ve covered here. We’ve shown “what not to do” so we can learn from other’s social media missteps - but we’ve also tried to cover social media executions that are worthwhile, mainly to show that social media when executed properly can build brands.
That’s why I wanted to share the latest company that I’ve seen using social media to build their brand - Hewlett Packard. While they have executed blogs, podcasts, and have overall embraced social media - I’ve been impressed with their branded widget - because I truly feel it gives us a lesson in how to build effective brands in the space of social
media.
Now you may be thinking - how can a widget build a brand? Usually widgets are just one tool in the social media toolbox. However, in this case it serves a powerful use that demands review and reflection. Below are some lessons that we can learn from this:
1. Social Media can be branded, but must encourage adoption - While social media isn’t usually the place to whip out your 30 sec. TV spot, practice your sales pitch, or bombard your audience with your message - it is okay for it to be branded. As you see, HP doesn’t hide that it is offering the widget, but it tastefully places its logo to inform its users it is the source. At the same time, the adoption of the widget is increased because its brand is neutral enough to not overtake the user’s own website.
2. Social Media Must Answer a Need - I don’t know how many times I’ve spoken about the value proposition - but this widget clearly answers a need of its audience. Yes, it may be more cost effective for HP’s customers to print more, but at the end of the day it has fulfilled a need, and introduced its brand to a larger audience.
3. Social Media Must Inspire Frequency of Use - I can’t count how many times I print posts from other blogs or websites that I want to bring to a meeting, pass around the office, or keep on hand for later. Imagine the free exposure that HP’s brand gains each time this happens? Effective social media should leave your audience coming back for more.
The above jpg shows how the widget enables its users to select and print multiple posts efficiently and effectively. If you are interested in using it for your own site, you can get it here.
Shoutlet Is Well-Worth Checking Out
October 16, 2007 | 2 Comments
In my earlier post, “Is Shoutlet Overselling Itself,” I took a look at the Shoutlet website after their product launch announcement and
wondered aloud, basically, “What is this thing? Does it work? Or is it hype?”
Jason Weaver, CEO of Sway, the company that developed Shoutlet, was listening and last week offered a couple of us from the Ignite Social Media team a demo of the technology conducted by him and Jason Konz.
Here’s what I thought after that demo:
Shoutlet is an evolving product that has good features today and a well-thought out plan for additional features going forward. The Sway/Shoutlet team understands the space, is realistic and are putting together a product that will save social media agencies and social media practitioners a lot of time. It may not allow you to do anything that you couldn’t do before, but it does seem like it will allow you to do much more of it, much more easily, more quickly, and with one place to go to measure your efforts.
Basically, what it does is helps you distribute your content more easily, via email, via podcast, via RSS, across multiple social networks and multiple content distribution platforms and more. Here’s one easy example: You’ve got a video you’d like to have on 5 different sites. Upload it each time and your done. Or upload it once via Shoutlet and your done faster and you can track it in one place. Which one is easier?
They also have pretty easy widget creation tools that can work either embedded on websites or on a desktop. You can then send updated content to these widgets as you wish. Simple. Cool.
What I like about it too is a coming feature that will allow you to take a campaign of a lot of different pieces and shout them out simultaneously across email, podcast, RSS, video, widget updates, etc. etc.
So, Jason/Jason, and the rest of the Shoutlet team, I said in the first post that: “I may yet be their biggest fan and biggest client.” We’ll work on the last part, but I can say at this point that I think you’re on to something that may well end up as an essential tool for a social media agency like Ignite.
Is "Shoutlet" Overselling Itself?
September 28, 2007 | 5 Comments
UPDATE: After a product demo, I’ve posted an update to this post, focusing on Shoutlet’s product. This post is more about their launch marketing. You can read the update here.
Shoutlet is a new product that was announced at the DEMOfall 2007 conference in San Diego this week. In what seems to me to be more than a little hyperbole, the company has declared it: “the world’s first Web 2.0 marketing tool built for companies to use the latest social media technology to communicate to their core audience.”
Really, the world’s first web 2.0 marketing tool built for companies? That’s news, um, I guess. Not sure it’s true, though. iContact does a lot (but not all) of the same stuff and has 14,000 clients using it. But ok, I work for a social media agency, I’m interested. So I checked out their website and went to the big promo video. You can watch it here, but I warn you, it’s Shakespearean. (Ya know: “Full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”)
(Kudos to Shoutlet for including the video embed code, though…)
15 minutes into the website, I’m still not sure exactly what this revolutionary product does. After a few visits to some independent blog posts, it seems that it’s a way to use existing content distribution tools (RSS, SMS, e-newsletters, widgets) more easily and in a more trackable way. I guess the hype made me come to the website thinking it was more than that. But ok, having that tool could be cool.
So how come this blog says what it does more quickly and compelling than the entire Shoutlet website? I have info I want to send out in multiple formats and track: bam. This does it. Ok, thanks. Didn’t need the hyperbole.
I love what Read/WriteWeb has to say about Shoutlet:
Shoutlet is a front end for widget and feed publishing and management for marketers. Apparently general consensus is that marketers aren’t as smart as other people and need dumbed-down tools to perform basic web 2.0 activities. If that’s true, and it may well be, Shoutlet could be perfect.
Very funny. Is Shoutlet good? I have no idea yet. I’m really just commenting on how they are marketing it. Very Web 1.0. Hyperbole. Marketing buzz language. Just say what it does in two sentences. Then give me details. Save the fancy video with the cheezy voiceover and do a screencast instead. Do that well and if I need what you’re selling, I’m in…
If you’ve tried Shoutlet, let me know what you think. I may yet be their biggest fan and biggest client. Who knows? If you work for Shoutlet (I know you’re reading this), and want to chime in on the old school marketing strategies, that’s cool, too.
FeedXI Manages, Organizes, Custom Publishes RSS Feeds
September 21, 2007 | 2 Comments
RSS Feeds are a great way to keep up with the websites you like, but choosing your favorites from those pages and sharing them with others easily hasn’t been so easy. That’s the problem that the folks at FeedXI have been working to solve.
If you’re an Ignite fan, you can see one of their “feedlets” in action to the left hand side of the screen under the title: “Our picks for Best SMM News.” Currently in beta and evolving fairly quickly, FeedXI allows you to create a custom feed from multiple sources. That alone is sort of cool. But then it allows you to publish a “feedlet” in a number of fashions on your site and then, if you wish, handpick the news you want to highlight and comment on it.
Since we’re working with them on the beta, Scott England and Ken Romley of FeedXI stopped by the Ignite offices earlier this week, so we decided to do a quick podcast on what they’re up to, where they got the idea, and what’s coming next from FeedXI. Have a listen:
FeedXI is pretty cool. Check it out, and be sure to leave comments about how it works for you.
Quick social media marketing technique
August 23, 2007 | 1 Comment
If you haven’t tried Twitter, it will probably confuse you at first. Using 140 characters or less, you update on what you’re doing at that moment. You’ll immediately wonder why anyone would care, but it’s surprisingly addictive. People choose to follow you on Twitter, and they get your updates and many others.
So how is this a marketing opportunity? I saw a neat idea last night on a blog (can’t remember where, but it wasn’t my idea) that restaurants should Twitter about their daily specials. Fans of that restaurant could follow those “tweets” as their called.
Total cost to the restaurant = $0.00. Total time to update daily: 1-2 minutes.
Part of what you need for social media marketing is a mindset change, from “This is dumb, what’s wrong with 16-year-olds,” to “Lots of people are using this stuff, much of it is free, how can Iuse it?”
There’s one idea…
How Pandora Changed My Life
July 31, 2007 | Leave a Comment
When I come across something that I really believe in - I become a brand advocate really fast. I haven’t really noticed this about myself until I realized I told probably the tenth person about a new social media site I discovered and practically got an adrenaline rush off of telling them about it. I’m literally a walking infomercial.
And since I’ve run out of people to tell - I thought I’d share.
To put it simply, this week my life has been transformed by a free internet radio service, Pandora. It is a simple concept: you go to the website, type in a particular song or artist you like and the station matches a playlist according to the style and rhythm.
But that’s not all.
As you listen, you can tell the site what you think about it. If it matches you with a song you never want to hear again - you tell it. It adjusts. It slowly fades out the song and matches you with another, more fitting song. As a result, you slowly build a radio station that fits you. Not only can you rock out to every song, but you can discover new artists that match your musical taste.
But wait- there’s more.
You can save a station you’ve created with any name you would like, share it with friends, blog about it, listen to podcasts, connect with other listener’s, the list goes on.
I encourage you to check it out. It is a great example of how effective social media provides highly applicable and relevant content to its users.
Building Brands with PageCasts
July 23, 2007 | Leave a Comment
Yet again another social media term has been created by a company titled, Pageflakes.The term? PageCasts. The definition? A personalized page anyone can create at “Pageflakes” by using widgets for news, RSS feeds, blogs, photos, video, podcasts and more”
While customizing pages with widgets is not a new concept - Pageflakes has both termed PageCasts and created a user community to share customized templates with content based around a topic or genre. While anyone can create a customized PageCast, the company is now marketing to major media brands as another way to reach their consumers.
By partnering with Pageflakes, these companies can combine video, music, photos, and news in a branded PageCast, that is then shared and adopted by specific audiences. Currently, CBS is using Pageflakes to create personalized pages to promote television programs such as Entertainment Tonight and The Insider. Entertainment Tonight fans can download a PageCast equipped with RSS feeds for You Tube, related photos, and the latest hollywood news.
This is a prime example of how social media can work to build a brand. Want users to interact with your brand? Provide relevant and highly customized content. Users will take it and run with it.
Wired Let’s 5,000 Subscribers Appear on Custom Covers
June 28, 2007 | Leave a Comment
Did you ever go to the amusement park when you were a kid and pose for those phony magazine covers, like National Lampoon or Sports Illustrated. Great fun at the time.
Now Wired magazine has taken it a step forward. They invited the first 5,000 subscribers to sign up at their website to get their copy of the magazine delivered to them with their picture on it. Very cool mashup of personalized marketing, digital work flow and the use of a digital production press. An example is to the right.
So, of course, I’m flipping through Wired tonight and see it, and I’m bummed that I missed out on the invite. But to bring the point home, and leverage their brand positioning from this offline effort in the online world so it can live longer, they have a website where you can play too.
Not as cool, but fun nevertheless. Create and share your own wired cover. Here’s mine. And if you’re wondering if I know I’m a dork…yeah, I know. But hey, I feel a bit like I’m back at the amusement park…
Go ahead, play with it. You know you want to… You don’t have to share it, but you know you sort of want to try it… Or maybe that’s just me…