Social Media Posts That Are Igniting- 5/16
May 16, 2008 | Leave a Comment
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Here is some of the best stuff coming out of the social media scene this week. Enjoy!! 
Welcome to the club- now here’s the social media handshake.
At first I was skeptical to this post by Rick Mahn. In the second paragraph he says, “there are no social media experts”. Well, as an agency that promotes our “experts” I was taken aback by that statement. But after reading the whole post, I totally agree with Rick. The nature (and almost definition) of social media is that it is user generated media and therefore constantly changing and evolving. So how can there be experts? Instead, there are (as Rick states) “people who understand what’s going on and can help advise tools & techniques to use.”
Coming Soon: A Web-Wide Social Network?
This post by Abbey Klaassen discusses the recent announcements by Facebook, MySpace, and Google to become more social through connecting with third-party sites. It was only a matter of time before this happened, and most of us are thrilled to hear that more sites will be integrated with the “Big Three” networks through social tools. This could mean that people are one step closer to being able to have a unified web presence (although I’m sure that’s still far in the future).
A whine about wine and social media.
This post by Bob Benz about the spirits industry and their reluctance to participate in social media interested me because WineTV is one of Jim’s favorite case studies. As Benz points out, wine is not typically a brand driven industry. However, through social media techniques (like WineTV) branding can work.
Laurel Papworth says that she made this post a list because she didn’t have time to write a full blog post, but I actually think this post is best as a list. A list that people who may not be entirely sure what social media is, need to read! I especially like the comparison between New Media, Digital Media, and Social Media experts.
Is your brand health Wretched? - Real Time Twitter Sentiment
May 15, 2008 | 4 Comments
I have really been digging Summize.com as of late. I chatted with the guy who started it briefly and I am impressed with what they have going on over there. Their latest tool they released is a real time Twitter sentiment tool. 
I decided to run the top 30 brand names through it to see the “health” of each brand. The scoring system used by this tool is, great , swell, so-so, bad, and wretched. Keep in mind the findings below could very well change by the time you run the tool, hence the “realtime” aspect. I heard they are working on a plotting system so you can keep track of a terms “health” over time, keep an eye out for it.
List of 30 Brands and their associated “Health”
- Google - swell
- GE - so-so
- Microsoft- bad
- Coke - bad
- China Mobile - swell
- IBM - swell
- Apple - swell
- McDonalds - great
- Nokia - swell
- Marlboro - great
- Vodafone – so-so
- Toyota – so-so
- Wal Mart - bad
- Bank of America - bad
- Citi - swell
- HP - great
- BMW - great
- ICBC - swell
- Louis Vutton – n/a
- American Express - great
- Wells Fargo – so-so
- Cicso - swell
- Disney - great
- UPS - swell
- Tesco - bad
- Oracle - swell
- Intel - swell
- Porsche - great
- SAP – so-so
- Gilette – bad
Wanted to throw this in there since its fresh, and on everyone’s mind.
- Obama - great
- Clinton - swell
- McCain - great
Any of these findings strike you as odd? Some of them definitely line up with what I would have assumed, Wal Mart for example.
NOTE: Keep in mind Twitters target audience are mostly technical savvy folks with around 6 men to every 4 women using the service, according to MSN adlabs which predicts demographic information, thus skewing the sentiment a brand or keyphrase receives.
Developing a Social Network Engagement Strategy: Step 1
May 12, 2008 | 4 Comments
Hi all! I figured it was about time I emerged from my client work and share some lessons learned in the area of social network engagement, so I will attempt to chunk it up into sections…
I’d first like to start off by saying that for many marketers the concept of engagement within social networks is limited to starting a Facebook group or developing a profile page. I’m assuming this is due in part to instant gratification (after all, a quick group and profile can be developed in less than an hour), and in part to a misunderstanding of social networks themselves.
So, I’ll start with the first step to developing a social network engagement strategy: and that is a social network analysis. This should be tailored for each client, because it provides research and rationale that then determines the strategy for engagement. This analysis should answer the following main questions:
1) What networks are my target audiences interacting within?
2) What is the level of interaction my target audience is having within these networks?
3) What conversations already exist about our company? Within which networks?
4) What type of interactions do users have within each network?
5) What are other brands doing?
While these are just 5 of the many types of questions that should be answered in an engagement analysis, they are perhaps the most important ones because they rule out a cookie-cutter approach to social network engagement and will force you to think more strategic about the appropriate networks to choose for engagement.
For instance, for one client with a target audience of women, this type of analysis found a valuable, and very engaged audience within lesser-known niche networks. Even more interesting, was that our analysis revealed the interaction of our target audience within these networks was stronger than the interaction of our target audience within Facebook and MySpace; while the majority of this audience weren’t quite content creators in the blogosphere, they were within these networks by frequently writing articles, commenting in groups regularly, publishing polls, and even microblogging on a daily basis.
In my opinion, I would argue that this engagement strategy determines the success of your involvement within social networks by helping understand and determine the particular networks of the most value to your target audience and your company.
If you’ve conducted this type of research, what have you found? Were you surprised at the value of particular niche networks, or overwhelmed by the amount of networks to research? Feel free to share your thoughts , we can certainly learn from all of our experiences.
Social Media Posts That Are Igniting 5-9
May 9, 2008 | 4 Comments
I’ve been a bit busy over the past couple weeks, so today’s post is an assortment of the best social media articles from this week and the ones I’ve missed. Sorry if you’ve been sitting on the edge of your seat waiting for them 
Enjoy!
An Exercise in Social Media Optimization: The Obama Gun Mailer
As if this post needs more attention, but I can resist giving one more link to Andy’s post. Andy shows how a social media techie can get national attention by using a subject that is newsworthy, such as the Hilary Clinton/Barrack Obama runoff. The post says pretty much says it all and gives all of the case-study necessary details.
$500 Contest Post: Online Profiles That Offer Back Links
This site is offering $500 in cash for the person who lists the most social media sites that offer backlinks other than the ones they already have listed on the post. Good Luck!!!
Social Media Mafia- Get Involved
This post by Colin Walker promotes another social networking site for social media peeps such as ourselves, called the Social Media Mafia. (Oh metaphors. We use cocktail party, others use mafia.) There are so many social networking sites out there, but this one wins my award for the week due to Colin’s eerily true comments about the resemblance in social media marketing to the mafia. Too great. You gotta wonder if Colin had to promote this as part of his debt to “the family”….
Five New Twitter Tools You Should Know
This is probably an old post to some of you, but I just saw it this week. In my own opinion, Twitter in and of itself is really only an okay program. It’s really the tools like these five that make it useful to people.
Tools for Engaging in Social Media
Brent Csutoras gives some good reviews of the major social media “must-haves”. What I enjoyed more is that Brent listed great plug-ins, because we all know that knowing which plug-in to use is oh-so-important to our sanity and management of our days.
From Mining the Web to Inventing the New Sciences Underlying the Internet
This is a video lecture by Usama Fayyad of Yahoo! on data mining and how it’s beneficial to social media. Kinda long, but you can skip the 10 minute intro and then scroll and listen for what you want to know more about (Minute 10 to 20 is kind of background info. Brian’s opinion is that you can fast forward to minute 28 for the meat.)
Gaining Subscribers Through Social Media: Is It Possible?
Steven Snell gives some great tips on how to convince people to subscribe to your blog. (And by the way, it did convince me to subscribe to his :))
20 Take-Aways from SMX Social Media
Scott Clark gives a list of 20 points of interest from the SMX Social Media conference. Most of these are points to live by when dealing with clients. I especially like the “Advertising Agencies don’t get it, for the most part.”
April Social Media Club: Web 2.0 Content Promotion
April 25, 2008 | 7 Comments
This month’s Social media club will be led by yours truly. I am going to be discussing the different forms of promoting content on the web today, and the inherent impact that has on the search engines, as well your site. 
This is a very vast field so I will try and focus on the impact promoting content through different sources has on your site, what sort of traffic should you see, what happens in the search engines when you do so, where you should be promoting it, where you should not be promoting it and so on.
Typically when traditional SEO’s tell you they will engage your site in social media marketing, this is exactly what they are talking about (although I will admit there is so much more to it the simply promoting content). I aim to dispel a few things with regards to what sites you should be promoting your content on and what sort of effect each avenue might have.
Here are the crucial details:
Location: Edge office
400 Glenwood Avenue
Raleigh, NC 27603
( Click Here to View a Map)
(Click here to view a tour of Edge offices)
When: April 30th, Wednesday @ 6:30pm
What if your competitor blogs about you?
April 24, 2008 | 1 Comment
Great story in the Wall Street Journal yesterday. Turns out that Anheuser-Busch was planning to release a new beer, Budweiser American Ale. Of course, they wanted to make a big announcement about their new product.
Problem is, Brew Blog, which is owned and run by rival Miller Brewing Company learned of the story first, and ran with it. The St. Louis Post Dispatch then ran with the story, as did industry trades.
I bet that someone at Anheuser-Busch was waiting to get approval for the press release from the legal department when they got scooped.
Remember when PR teams thought CNN changed everything? Now we’ve got not just blogs, but competitor blogs, controlling the message. Hmm….
Think Before You Ning
April 21, 2008 | 11 Comments
I just finished the rather fawning Fast Company cover story on Ning, and I must agree their business model is impressive to say the least. In fact, I envy it.
If you’re not familiar with Ning, it’s an easy way to set up your own social network, and more than 230,000 of them exist right now. It’s very easy. And therein lies the problem–not for Ning, but for anyone trying to gain traction for their particular network.
Here’s the specific problem:
Nobody wants to join a social network–and they never have.
If that’s true, you say, then why have they been so wildly successful? More on that later, but it’s similar to this age-old marketing truism: “Nobody ever wanted to buy an 1/8th-inch drill bit. All they wanted to do was drill an 1/8th-inch hole.”
One Facebook, Lots of Niche Sites
Facebook serves its purpose by being the mass site, the one that everyone joins, but it’s really not good for other things. Niche social networks, on the other hand, are smaller, but can be more powerful, more active and more fun. (CafeMom, FitSugar and many more have much better conversations than most Facebook groups I’ve ever seen.) But 230,000 of them? What’s the differentiator?
Recently, I was invited by Chris Patterson to join InSocialMedia.com. I did, of course–it is, after all, what I do for a living. But other than that, I’m not sure why I joined or what I’ll get out of it. The site is built on Ning. When I was asked my “relationship status” when I joined the group, it got me to wonder how that was relevant to working in social media.
Form Must Follow Function
If nobody ever wanted to join a social network, why have they proliferated? Simple. What people have wanted to do is this:
- Communicate with their circle of friends easily (and they got Facebook)
- Use their business networks for professional gain (and they got LinkedIn)
- Keep up with their ever changing address book (and they got Plaxo)
- Share tips with other moms (and they got CafeMom)
- and the list goes on…
Yes, these ARE social networks, but that’s because that was the best answer for the function that was desired. Social networking is just a tool, and out-of-the-box solutions must be tailored to match the purpose that they are meant to serve.
Now let’s go back to InSocialMedia.com (and I’m not picking on it, it’s just a perfect example of my point). Here are the questions I have for Chris and the rest of the group on there:
- What is the basic point of InSocialMedia.com?
- How is my relationship status relevant to that point? (I’m married. It’s no secret, and I’m not offended by the question, but it’s an example that the site hasn’t been tailored for its purpose.)
- Are we meant to be sharing the best articles and insights on the profession of social media (and if, so, don’t we have that in Social Media Today and Sphinn)?
- How are the tools you’ve chosen for your social network (and how you’ve arranged those tools) aligned with the goals of the site? Why would people “in social media” be looking for a place to upload pictures and videos, for example? We have dozens.
These are the types of questions social networks going forward must ask. Do people want to join a community around this topic and, if so, what is the minimal amount of effort they should be required to take to begin to benefit from it and what will they get back?
If you want to bang out a quick social network with all the basics, by all means use Ning. But if you’re trying to build a social network that will rise above the other 230,000+ floating around there today, it’s no longer likely to be based on your topic. You’re going to have to do a bit more work, and success is more likely to be based on how you execute.
For that, I’d look at a more robust application, something like KickApps. Because the social networks that will thrive will be those that think it out before they launch. If you really customize your site with KickApps, and choose only those elements that support the goals of the site, then maybe you’ve got a chance to beat the social network fatigue that is starting to set in.
This Week’s Social Media Posts That Are Igniting- 4.18
April 18, 2008 | 1 Comment
Here are some of our favorite posts coming out of the social media world this week. Enjoy!
Don’t Think Traffic - Think Demographics
This post by SocialMediaTrader.com gives a very in-depth look at one of the first things we evaluate at Ignite- your audience. It is a waste of time and money to engage in a social media campaign without knowing who you’re campaigning to and whether they care. (It also speaks to Jim’s last post about Firefox users vs. Explorer users. Firefoxers are typically more tech-savvy.)
Is Social Media Marketing Really Important?
My BestRatedWebhosting.com gives some great insight into some social media terms and why it is imperative that people don’t ignore social media marketing.
Barack Obama is Rocking the Youth Vote
Liana Evans gives an AWESOME critique of the Democratic candidates’ attempts at Social Media and how it is influencing the youth vote. We keep hearing that Obama has captured the younger generation’s votes when compared with Clinton. Evans explains just how that may be happening through social media.
U.S. Lags in Social Media Creation, per Survey
Brian Morrissey reports for Adweek about a new study that says Americans love social media, but don’t necessarily participate as much as people do in Asian and South America.
Are We Just Jumping On The Social Media Bandwagon?
Colin Walker discounts those who think social media will not become a daily part of everyone’s lives. The only thing I might add to Colin’s post is that I think social media will continue to be a term all its own instead of eventually being lumped with print, tv, etc.
The Danger of Assuming We’re Normal
April 17, 2008 | Leave a Comment
We’re social media geeks. All of us who work at Ignite Social Media. Most of you who read this blog are, too. That means we’re not normal. I tell my clients all the time that nobody in the room is normal. They think about their product more than any normal person would, and I think about social media marketing more than any normal person would.
A post I read today brought that home in a compelling way. The writer noted that 60% of his visitors used Firefox, while only 23% used Internet Explorer. So I checked the stats for Ignite Social Media and found that 63% of our recent visitors used Firefox, about the same level it’s been for a long time.
Based on that, it’s easy to believe that Firefox is the #1 browser in the world. Not even close. In fact, Internet Explorer’s market share in March 2008 is reportedly 60%, while Firefox is 19.95%. Granted, IE share is down from 68.63% just one year ago. Here’s Microsoft’s market share (see the full report at e-janco.com here):
I checked the stats on one of my client’s sites. They target a very “corporate” type user. 80% of the visitors to that site use Internet Explorer.
So as we Twitter, check out different browsers like Flock, add extensions to Firefox to make it “ours”, and blog on the couch late at night, we need to remember that we’re not normal. That’s ok, until you choose a social media marketing strategy that’s based on people acting like us.
As you craft your social media marketing strategy, remember, you’re not normal.
J&J’s Camp Baby: A Social Media Mistake or Social Media Opportunity?
April 14, 2008 | 4 Comments
Today I ran across a Brandweek article that covered Johnson and Johnson’s latest social media attempt to reach and engage mom bloggers: a three day conference entitled “Camp Baby”. Now, I had been following this for quite some time, read interesting articles from Scoble and his wife, Maryam (who actually attended the event) - but hadn’t consolidated real value from the banter until now.
In case you are unfamiliar with this event, here’s the short end: J&J cre
ated a conference for 56 mom-bloggers, paid for them to attend, and had sessions ranging in topics from wine tasting to infant eye exams.
While this sounds like a great concept, Scoble quickly noted the following problems:
“1. You can’t bring your baby. Dumb.
2. They scheduled it at the same time as BlogHer. Double dumb.
3. They disinvited a couple of bloggers, one who had a baby, and another who was speaking at BlogHer. Triple dumb.”
While these all seem like costly mistakes at the detriment of J&J, I think these revealed a valuable lesson in social media, especially to a large brand like J&J.
What lesson does it present? The value of conversation, and the inability to define when it starts and when it ends. Put aside traditional marketing, PR, and even event planning practices. Put aside the notion that we ever understand our audiences completely. Instead, it reminds us (and big brands like J&J) that successful social media marketing engages and gains valuable input from its audience on an ongoing basis.
How could J&J have avoided these mistakes? By really connecting with these mom bloggers regularly instead of connecting at the conference, or in a few disconnected email invites. Or by allowing the community to help contribute and plan the details of the conference to increase the member buy-in (and therefore decreasing the amount of angry mom bloggers!).
At this point, I’m wondering what J&J is doing after the conference is finished. Will it remain a mistake, or will the company see it as an opportunity for beginning and continuing a relationship with these bloggers? I hope for the latter…