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As ubiquitous a term Facebook has become, it’s hard to imagine it as a small company. But a recent infographic from JESS3 titled, “The Geosocial Universe” illustrates how large Facebook & other social network’s opportunity given a mobile market reaches nearly 5 billion people.
Will Facebook’s announcement of “Places” yesterday help boost these numbers quicker for the social giant?
When it comes to social media marketing, what isn’t hot these days…Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, MySpace…the list keeps going. And when considering using these social branding channels, these aren’t just another set of marketing toys to play with, remember, these are your brand’s identity. And with hundreds of millions of people scouring these sites for information daily, your connection with a potential customer needs to be seamless.
One aspect of any social media campaign that should be approached is to connect the dots within your marketing channel. There are a number of brands that dive into social media with a lack of experience in launching within the space.
So, let’s put on a little scenario. Brand A has product X and creates a Facebook, Twitter and YouTube page. They take the time to pamper the process and create lasting value behind these pages, through effective videos, messaging, images, and interactive content that brings value to the brand. Excellent!
Now, next question: How are you sharing this content with your users?
But, what haven’t you done yet?
Connect the Dots.
When building a social media strategy, it is crucial to connect a brand website with external social media properties. There are simple and advanced ways to do this:
1. Place simple calls-to-action on the homepage
This allows users to have a stronger connection to any social properties. A user’s relationship with your product hinges on these particular moments. We are opening a door here by allowing users to quickly share and disseminate content across their own personal networks.
Allowing this opportunity for a user sets a clear goal for them. First, they are not confused by the ‘impostors’ that may be lurking on the web. These are the unofficial channels of a product, many of which exist. These channels have unclear and more than often, incorrect information listed - which hurts the brand’s reputation in the end.
2. Build an Online Community Channel Within a Channel
This is a bit more work, as it requires building a channel on your website that captures the true meaning of all your social networks. This could include a live twitter feed, a Flickr gallery, calls-to-action that connect your Facebook, MySpace, Blog, etc. This builds a user’s confidence about the brand, and removes any falsehoods that might exist in the social space otherwise.
By building in this access to the social properties for users, we build the relationship from a more personal connection. We’ve eliminated the falsehoods that might live within a user’s mind, and connect users with accurate and efficient channel sharing capabilities.
This stems from an idea called relationship management. Companies often think of how to effectively build awareness to their social channels, grow their fans, followers, friends, etc. This is often part of what is coined a Phase I build-out for any social media program. Included in a Phase I build-out is an integration strategy, and connecting the dots between social properties and a brand website, often done during this phase - is a must-do.
I’ve seen the mistake more than often where brands build-out social channels, but fail to harness the conversation where they already receive the most traffic - their very own website.
Please feel free to contact us if you have any questions about social media or just online marketing general.
Inauguration & Facebook Connect.
As today marked the first day of what many people hope is a shift in direction for the United States, CNN also embraced the day with live video coverage tied into the Facebook Connect platform.
Inauguration Day, the day Sen. Barack Obama became the first African-American President of the United States. The day the 44th President of the United States expressed that although we are in a midst of crisis, and the challenges we face are real, they will be met. More importantly, President Obama expressed this thought through not only television and radio, but also through streaming online video on thousands of websites across the Internet. One of those websites who met this challenge and decided to integrate the most widely used social network with this online video component, was CNN. 
On CNN.com, video was integrated with the Facebook Connect platform to create a streaming conversation piece that utilized the Facebook message status capabilities along with live streaming video. This combination turned into a very successful technique that allowed users to connect with their friends during the Inauguration, and chat directly with them through the status update & comment capabilities.
This is a great example of allowing social media to connect with important, live events in today’s society. This is the kind of connection that we need to enhance in today’s web 2.0 world. Tired we are of the naysayers who express that social media is for those who have too much time or use it too frivolously. This allowed people to interact on a personal level with each other while watching a highly publicized event. Going one step further, it allowed users from across the world to access the event and make their points through conversation.
With just this example, a simple CNN.com live webcast - we see the powerful message not only in the direct message itself, but through the community we interact with daily. Your friends, friends of friends, everyone involved in the Facebook community, were able to see each other’s comments and create interaction on the platform - using a large, public event and tying it to Facebook.
Quick numbers just in courtesy of the CNN.com broadcast, during the speech, there were over 1 million people who updated their status messages, more than 85,000 updates just a minute before President Obama began to speak to the crowd. Numbers alone…wow! To say that is impressive is an understatement. The crew at Facebook said that this was the largest number of user status updates ever, in such a short period of time.
Web 2.0 - Time for “Change”.
It was not only a powerful speech, but a powerful move in a web 2.0 world. We all know that social media has had a very strong impact on this past year’s election, and something we should recognize is the fact that social media is being embraced by the current administration. Barack Obama utilizes Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, YouTube, Flickr and many more social networks to help connect with the users on a personal level, and realizes how important these social community networks have become in relation to his message.
Not only will President Obama’s message be relayed t
hrough these channels, but it will also help build grass-roots support for his agenda.
In a major move just done this morning, the official WhiteHouse.gov website was switched over from the old interface to the brand new ‘Obama’ look about an hour before his Inauguration. The new website looks very familiar when compared to his campaign websites. The most important aspect to recognize here, beyond the design, is the interactive features he offers on the platform. Tremendous calls-to-action that create a significant gateway to features such as his blog, videos, slideshows and much more!
Conclusion.
In the end, we have to examine the priority when confronting not only politics, but social media as well - to stand alone or stand together? When I see the new administration and analyze how they have reached where they are now - they did this with efforts that can be contributed greatly to social media and its external reach. And when we look at a president who can connect with us in these channels and not just speak to us, BUT WITH US - no matter what party affiliation you are - you have to respect that!
God Speed.
When approaching the subject of social bookmarks, (aka website chicklets), think about your strategy. I know it might seem easy enough to just place a ’share this’ or ‘add this’ widget to your website, but you need to consider the ‘little’ things about these valuable marketing assets.
I am not going to dive into the definition of what these devices are (as you should be aware) - you have seen these on hundreds of thousands of websites. These social bookmarks, also referred to as website chicklets, offer the ability to share content easily through social content network websites, such as Facebook, Digg, Delicious, Google, Windows Live, Yahoo Buzz, Stumbleupon, Twitter, Fark, Magnolia and many others. 
These sites might seem silly at first, but if you are a fellow blogger or social media enthusiasts; you know how valuable this social media strategy is for you. These websites allow access to an audience of hundreds of millions of people who converse inside these channels daily. I don’t know if I need to go into numbers, but why not…let’s do it.
During the time frame of December 2007 through December 2008, the following are the number of unique visitors to each respective social community network website: (Remember these are unique visitors to the website - NOT overall traffic for the year)
I think you see my point - these networks are growing on an exponential level. To think of the daily traffic numbers these websites receive every single day - it could make you shiver. Google Bookmarks alone probably sees close to 100 million visitors a day, if not more. And the numbers given above are just unique visitors to the website. Do you know how many more hundreds of millions of people come back daily to take part in what these websites offer?
These social networking channels are key components in driving not only traffic, but linkage to your website. Placing your website into these networks allows you to drive thousands of unique visitors based upon submission of your content through the social bookmark channels.
Sites.
Blogs, News sites, content networks, article banks, products of any kind online, almost anything with original content tied to it is attached to a social bookmarking tool. Some of the best and worst examples come with news websites.
The New York Times are one of those examples of great placement and overall use of website chicklet attachment. Placing this option on EVERY story on the website, as the NYT does - allows them to gain great traction on linkage and enhance their overall presence on the social network community websites.
An example of a misguided attempt at using website chicklets would be on Boston.com. I look at their placement and say OK, that is fine - but their call-outs are poorly designed, as this example blends in too much with the story overall. It is best to create a completely separate call-out-box, such as the NY Post and Philly.com does in their examples. Otherwise, look at the New York Times (above) and see how they separate it off strategically to the right side of the story - not in line with the copy. This is wonderful placement!
You need to think, when a reader is about to take hold of a story, they look at the picture and title initially, and then start reading down, looking for their CONTENT first, not a social bookmark chicklet they can pass to their friends. They have not even read the first couple paragraphs of the story yet. You have to allow the reader to get comfortable with the material before having them pass the story along to their chosen social network or email it to a friend option. In the Boston.com example, you don’t see any particular call-outs; you only see a ’share this’ application that does little for a user who is unfamiliar with the chicklet. In the NYT example, you see separate icons (calls-to-action) for Linked In, Facebook, Digg, and then you see a button to press for more options - much more effective! Do you see my point?
Conclusion.
Whether you are a website that offers products or content of ANY kind - consider using these social bookmarks to help grow your traffic. These websites offer the ability for people to easily ’share’ your content, as well as create a number of outbound links for your website. You might have a blog, or other types of content, a viral product, videos, pictures, etc…whatever it might be - you can attach these chicklets to your overall marketing strategy and allow users to push your content into these social community content websites.
Try it - and just see what happens!
Fin.
Social Media Map.
Late last week, our team at Overdrive Interactive released the first version of the Social Media Map. This map is designed to help marketers and random people alike view the components of the social media landscape and determine how it can be best leveraged for their marketing or personal branding needs.
“We know how complex and overwhelming the social media landscape can be,” said Harry Gold
, CEO of Overdrive Interactive. “We wanted to map it all out, so that marketing professionals can use it as a guide to what we believe are the most important social media tools out there. The power of social media is growing exponentially by the day, and now is the time to harness it.”
The map details the ‘key’ social media websites that Overdrive believes you should know about. As a key component in putting that list together - I can’t stress enough the importance of what we did with this social media map.
Our efforts to bring you the most up-to-date social media strategy for you company is key in our mission of social media branding. You have all heard me talk in the past about various websites that come and go, and the social media websites that seem to be flashes in the pan - but remember, they are all relevant in someway. They are helping us shape society on the Internet, and the way people, brands and identities communicate with each other.
Think about the various social engines that are present in the social community; micro-blogging, social bookmarking, groups, life-casting, travel, wikis, B2B social networks, blogs, and more! Many of these have become key points of interest in your daily Internet life, and many of you might still be wondering what certain websites do, and how you can utilize them. That is where this social media map comes into play - for you to see what type of ‘expressions’ on the web you might be curious about, and how you can get started involving yourself in them.
Soon, we will have an interactive version on the web - so stay tuned! Although for now, head to http://www.ovrdrv.com/social-media-map to download your copy today & take part in the revolution!
Fin.
I came across a viral branding website yesterday for a popular television show on HBO, Flight of the Conchords. The TV show is about two men that live in NYC doing sketch comedy and singing their comedic folk songs inside a once a week half-hour show that looks at the everyday happenings of the two main characters, Bret and Jemaine
The idea.
Take a concept of the brand and distinguish it as a ’sensation’. I know that might sound complicated - but it’s really so easy, and I don’t understand why other companies aren’t utilizing their ‘usable’ assets for something similar.
This is exactly what the Flight of the Conchords are doing with their new micro-site - “Lip Dub Video Fansterpiece.” The concept is to learn the lyrics of one of the songs the two main characters sing, and then you are supposed to videotape yourself lip-synching the song, and then upload it to the website - where you might be added to a final “Fansterpiece” that will air on HBO. This content is being advertised only on social channels, and is completely viral - meaning this is not having any media or TV dollars spent on the campaign.
The contest was launched in mid-November, and will last until the new season of the show starts in mid-January.
Simple. Simple. Simple.
I can’t get over how simple this is, but how effective it has become. They don’t give away any lavish prizes, you don’t win a trip to any special destination or big lump sum of money - just about 10 seconds of a small amount of fame.
At the same time, they do a great job of implementing bookmarks or sometimes referred to as chicklets. These are the type of calls-to-action that include the ability to post the “contest” to Facebook, Digg, Twitter, Delicious, and you can also email to a friend. These are all tactics in “spreading” the word-of-mouth further into the social networks.
The video service they are using is YouTube, making it ‘free’, as well as very viral! This allows HBO to spread their contest through the social channels with little to zero promotion on their part, which was their full intention.
Statistics.
Since the website launched in mid-November - the main website where they utilize the videos, the YouTube channel that was created for the contest - has seen nearly 8,000 views since the project launched on Nov. 13. I know those numbers are not monumental, but you have to think about the ‘trickle’ down effect from this contest alone.
On the microsite, you also are able to access the Flight of the Conchord’s Facebook and MySpace pages. Their current Facebook page has a more than 245,000 fans, and they have a little over 25,000 friends on MySpace. These channels were setup well before the contest started…but both channels have seen an increase in activity in fans/friends since the middle of last month.
So What?
Well, I tell you this information because it’s important to consider the outreach of a ‘viral’ campaign, such as this one, and what it can do for a brand. Chances are, many people are going to submit videos to try and appear on the channel, and many more people may just watch the videos other people create. Either way, their creating a ‘buzz’ about the show and the new season, interest of not only current fans, but new fans of the show are found through the ability of allowing others to easily spread the contest into the social content networks, such as Digg, Delicious, Twitter, and so on. They attach links to the show’s page on the HBO website, as well as create easy access to the show’s MySpace and Facebook pages.
Through a viral campaign like this, you should explore your brand further to see what kind of similar outreach you may be able to do. This is social media branding 101 friends - don’t take something as small and ‘funky’ as this to be something silly - when in all honesty, they spent next to nothing to engage new fans and current fans of the show - to stay tuned to the new season, maybe buy the DVD, purchase some apparel, or some other Flight of the Conchords related materials. It’s genius.
The point is - you need to think about social media branding if you have not already. Agreed, for some brands social media might not be the way to go - but as they say so often - “don’t knock it before you try it.”
Chances are, I think it will.
For more information, and if you have any questions on viral or social media branding - feel free to contact me @ nicholas.cifuentes@gmail.com
Porn. It is and always will be a key element of the Internet – with it accounting for almost 10 percent of all Web searches, according to Hitwise.
But at one point many, many years ago (exactly 10) – a massive 20 percent of all Internet Web searches accounted for porn. However, thanks to sites like Facebook, MySpace and other social networking sites, porn on the Internet is not as popular as it used to be – simply put.
Hitwise researchers said that surfing for porn had dropped to about 10 percent of searches from 20 percent a decade ago – the sites that grab all the searches now are the social networking sites.
The research said that visits to porn sites have decreased, and social networking traffic as increased.
Now, I don’t entirely believe this – to think people are so busy with MySpace that they don’t have time to look at porn. I believe that web growth ‘overall’ has lended mostly to this result, and other changes in the way people utitlize the Internet - that is the true difference.
Point is, the Internet is bigger then ever, and much more people are using it than ever before. And more kids then ever are involved online – so it makes sense that fewer users are looking at porn.
Another point – you can look at Facebook at work, more than you can look at porn. And if your working – chances are your using the web at work, more than you were 10 years ago – before social media websites existed.
In a recent survey done by Careerbuilder.com, an increasing number of employers are taking a look at staff’s social networking profiles before hiring a candidate.
The survey found that 20 percent of companies admitted to checking out the profile pages of potential employees on social-networking websites such as Facebook and MySpace before deciding to hire them. Another 9 percent said that they would begin to review potential employees social-networking websites in the future.
The research also revealed that while 24 percent of employers had hired a member of the staff based on their social-networking profile, 33 percent had decided NOT to make a job offer after reviewing certain content on a profile. Use of drugs, alcohol and posting of photographs that seemed ‘inappropriate’ or ‘provocative’ were identified as the most popular reasons why employers eliminated a candidate after reviewing their social-networking profile.
Should you be scared of this?
Yes. You absolutely should. If you dragged yourself out for a Saturday night pub crawl, blacked out at some point and the next day arrives with you not remembering what happened - be worried. In today’s world - transitioning from school to a professional career can be a lot of work, but just be careful with what you do on your social-networking profiles. You don’t want to have last week’s party to be the reason you don’t get hired for that job you’ve always you wanted. These pictures work great in college, and globally acceptable among that crowd - but the professional world is a much different story. Pictures and comments your friends might leave about you could become a liability in the workplace.
First, privacy settings are your friend - use them. You can set websites like Facebook and MySpace to allow only your friends to view pictures or profile specifics. Blogs can be a huge risk too - so unless you are blogging about things like what I am talking about - keep it clean and remember, people can find what you are reading easily - so use those privacy settings. And even if you do have a job - remember that people get fired for unauthorized blogging all the time now - so BE CAREFUL!
Are you that person that Google’s themselves all the time? You should be. You have to keep up with what people might be saying about you on Yahoo! and Google. Or, if you are really curious, give Pipl.com, a “people search engine” a try. What you see here is the same thing a possible hiring manager is seeing - be careful!
And another thing to be careful of - don’t befriend people who you don’t know. You just don’t know if it will come back to bite you later. Keep your friend list to ‘friends’ and associates in both personal and professional social networks.
Case Study.
A bank intern, in 2007, was caught through Facebook lying to his boss about a family emergency, when he actually just wanted to ‘party it up’ on Halloween instead.
Kevin Colvin (pictured below) was an intern at Anglo Irish Bank’s North American arm, was busted by his manager Paul Davis after Kevin told Paul that he had to miss work because of a family emergency. His boss then turned up this photo of Colvin on his Facebook profile from a Halloween party he apparently missed work to attend, and attached it to his reply, copying the rest of the office as he did it.
Below is the short email exchange and incriminating photo.
And there it goes! Facebook has finally done it - overtaking MySpace, in terms of users and signups with just a touch above 132 million people worldwide.
It is really amazing to think how quickly Facebook has overrun the social media websites - turning their aim and boosting profits by opening up their API to everyone - and for that, if you don’t know what that means, you can thank all those fun little, pointless, applications you attach to your profile…I do it too, so I am not hating.
However, in all honesty, MySpace still has the base audience for bands and music, allowing a great way to stream music easily, and have a website in a couple of minutes - and be able to network the hell out of it!
But, from what I hear, coming down the facebook trail - will be some powerful music applications that will allow bands, both starting off and established, do the same, plus more. They will be allowed to post, sell their own music and related items through their facebook page!
Your blog is like a baby, you nurture it, feed it daily, take care of it when it is sick and watch it go to sleep every single night…yes, my friend – blogs are addicting. It is 2008, time to build readership, and begin to grow your brand’s awareness through the social media channels. As popularity has grown in blogs, and blogging, there are some key steps you can take to market your blog and grow effective strategies to increase readership.
Here are some key strategies for growing your blog in 2008:
Bring your Blog Home: One tactic to consider when trying to harbor more traffic, that will almost always work, is to localize your blog. Targeting a specific market and reaching out to them, using their language, all is a great way to reach more outlets. Localization allows you to cover topics that competitors probably won’t take the time to cover…something that should be considered when considering new material to write about.
Have Others Write It: User generated content is a great way to expand your blog’s reach. You can ask the public to submit articles that you feel might benefit your blog’s purpose and publish them accordingly. This can be gained by seeking out online writers, using article PR services to get content, and affiliating with other blogs in your field.
Start A Forum: A forum is great way to let your users interact with each other. You want reasons for your audience to come back to your blog, socialize, and interact with each other online. A forum is a great tool that will encourage this. By creating this outlet, you create a magnet for your users, which encourage them to return to your brand daily.
Start a Newsletter: Newsletters are an excellent way to reach an audience with information that differs from your blog. Depending on your product, newsletters are almost necessary to keep your customers returning. Newsletters are an excellent way to send out narrow messages, or more concentrated, to your audience. Create a weekly, bi-weekly, or even monthly newsletter to connect to your followers. One of the great advantages a newsletter has is being able to monetize it in several ways (advertising, premium content), as well work them into effective methods for capturing leads.
Social Media Anyone: Social Media Optimization starts with social bookmarking. Creating an outlet for other readers to take your content and submit it, talk about it, or even blog about it in the social media channels will ultimately grow your traffic. Allowing applications like Twitter, Facebook, Digg and countless other social news websites, can help disseminate your information to a target user. Open up accounts in these channels and begin the process yourself, befriend the influencers in each channel and begin to watch your content wind its way through the Internet, and leads grow on your blog or website.
New Writers: New writers can be a great way to bring a new ‘voice’ to your blog. Otherwise, a change of pace. Just remember, when you pay someone per an article, make sure they are the best at what you need. Don’t bring in writers who are unsure and could question your blog’s voice, keep it lively, bring in TALENT, and then you can pay more attention to marketing the blog instead.
Premium Content: This is a great way to further monetize a blog. Premium content refers to exclusive content that is not made public to everyone and anyone who may fall upon your website. Create member only pages inside your blog that you can tie to subscriptions and promote alongside your free content. One suggestion I do have, when you do this, please make sure the content is original and most likely can’t be found anywhere else – it is what makes it PREMIUM!
Other Blogs Like You Too: Working with people in your industry can bring surprising results. Collaborating with other bloggers in your practice would be done to initiate some sort of social network possibly, large writing projects, online applications, awards, and contests. This helps build your brand and drive specific traffic to your website.
Videos & Podcasts: Consider video blogging, as a new tactic to your approach. Your content can reach an entire new audience through some major social video websites like YouTube, Metacafe, Dailymotion, and other high traffic video websites. Podcasting works the same way, obviously your hearing instead of visually applying yourself. Viral video marketing also falls into this category, and should not go overlooked. You will be surprised how much traffic and new conversions you see using this technique.
Overall, in 2008, be creative! High quality editorial content will keep audiences interested, however, building a supportive audience and broadening your distribution channels will only help the original cause. Expanding your blog through some of these channels will increase your user participation, create new delivery channels, grow your reputation and influence the audience around you.
Get Blogging!!
