TAG | Twitter
Everywhere we turn, we hear how businesses are hurting. Ad budgets are shrinking, fast. People are worrying if they can make payroll and keep locations open, yet everybody has money to promote facebook and Twitter.
What gives?
Last I heard, facebook and Twitter were doing okay. They have billions of dollars. They are working to take over the world. And guess what? They don’t run ads. They know that social media works organically. They also are enjoying the fact that companies, large and small, promote them for nothing, giving their logos all kinds of real estate not only on their online properties, but on their traditional print and TV ads.
Sure, you want people to know you’re “with it…” “Visit us on facebook! Follow us on Twitter!” Sure, if you’re online you can include a link, but anywhere else, print, radio, TV, let’s take a breath and reconsider. While it’s nice to make things as easy as possible for the consumer, people who are really using social media will know to look for you there.
If your brand has something to say, people will listen. The problem is, having something to say is a lot harder than putting a facebook logo on an ad. Of course facebook and Twitter are powerful tools, but we don’t need to sell the category. People are really into this stuff. It has become the fabric of their lives. And they know when you are just pretending to be in the space and when you are really utilizing it. The challenge is understanding how to spend the time, energy and resources to do something meaningful on facebook and Twitter.
Social media is affecting the world in big ways, both good and bad. Just a few years ago, news didn’t travel as quickly as it now does through Twitter, Facebook, news aggregators, etc. Positively, this means we have access to world news in a matter of seconds, and we no longer have to wait for the evening news to catch up on daily occurrences (see: social media’s role in Egypt’s 2011 Revolution). Negatively, especially for those in the public eye, this means that nothing goes unreported, even private pictures sent through a site like Twitter (see: Anthony Weiner). We take a look at some ways social media is affecting the way we look at religion, sports and politics:
Religion: The Catholic Church has joined Facebook and Twitter. In June, The Vatican announced the launch of a social media-integrated official news website, news.va, that will make heavy use of social networks. Pope Benedict XVI himself sent out the first papal tweet. News.va will function essentially as a Vatican and Catholic Church-related news aggregator, republishing stories from L’Osservatore Romano, Vatican Radio, Vatican Television, the Fides news agency and from Vatican media relations. Livestreaming of Papal events will also be featured, along with links to homilies, statements, and speeches. Spanish, French, German, and Portuguese-language versions of the site will be launched over the next few months. Users will also be able to post links on Twitter and share stories on their Facebook walls.
Sports: The International Olympic Committee has issued rules for athletes using social media at the 2012 London Games. The athletes are encouraged to “post, blog and tweet their experiences,” but forbidden from using Twitter, Facebook or personal blogs for commercial or advertising purposes or to share videos filmed at Olympics venues. If the rules are broken, athletes are warned that it can withdraw accreditation, shut down online operations and start legal action for damages. These new social media rules come after some controversy at the 2010 Vancouver games, where US skier Julia Mancuso was asked to stop online merchandise sales after her silver medal-winning performances generated interest in her official website. Some of the other social media stipulations for London? Posts, blogs, etc. should be in first-person, should not contain vulgar or obscene words or images, and should not reveal confidential information. “Unlike in Vancouver, where the rules were adapted to fit changed circumstances, the rules in force in London have been properly codified,” the IOC said.
Politics: In mid-June, Rep. Anthony Weiner, D-N.Y., resigned from Congress in the wake of a sexting scandal. The move, which abruptly put an end to Weiner’s on-the-rise political career, serves as a warning to politicians and lawmakers about dealing with the social media world. To recap: Reports indicated that a college student had received a sexually suggestive photo from Weiner’s Twitter account. Weiner denied sending it, saying the account had been hacked, but as more texts and photos of the congressman surfaced, Weiner finally admitted that he’d sent the photo. The story picked up and more revelations surfaced, including messages to a 17-year-old Delaware girl. Ultimately, Weiner sought a leave of absence and said he’d seek treatment. While Weiner isn’t the first politician to deal with a sex scandal, the incident reverberates as politicians grapple with the new world of social media. It should serve as a “serious warning sign to politicians,” said Steven Schier, a professor of political science at Carleton College in Minnesota, that that they need to be careful. “They send out this stuff unfiltered, so the risk is increased considerably,” Schier said.
In what other ways is social media changing the world? Tell us in the comments!
Social Media moves at a remarkably fast pace, meaning that just one month in social media time can lead to stunning new developments, including new tools that allow you to save both time and money. Let’s take a look at some of this month and last month’s newest tools:
Panabee: This site is truly a one-stop shop; search for available web domains by desired address or via associated keywords, browse related terms, the Google definition, and more. A simple entry like “safety pin” in the search box immediately yielded suggestions for available domains (safetypinn.com and gosafetypin.com) since our first choice (safetypin.com) was already taken. Panabee also pulled up to-the-minute twitter feeds relating to safety pins, as well as the top Google searches related to the product. Consider us hooked.
AppMakr: This free ‘drag and drop’ tool allows you to create your own mobile apps on iPhone, Windows and Android. It might signal the full arrival of mass mobile media and allows you to see the thousands of apps that have already been created using the site, by people just like you!
IconSeeker: This site solves the difficult problem of finding social media icons to suit your site. While Google Image search can leave you with hundreds of options as far as site icons, IconSeeker narrows the results down to only the best. Example: We searched “fire” on both IconSeeker and Google Images. The results speak for themselves: and
Facebook Vanity: Check out the availability of Facebook URLs in a matter of seconds, and grab yours if its available- it makes for a professional addition to your business card to have your profile listed as facebook.com/john.smith, versus facebook.com/skjdwi13.
PeerIndex: Use it to get an initial feel of key conversation drivers in a particular field.
What social media tools do you use on a daily basis? Tell us some of your new favorites in the comments.
Since we’ve recently highlighted a few of our favorite social media case studies, this week we thought we’d bring attention to some top social media agencies and what they are doing. These are the agencies that are setting the bar high and implementing innovative social media marketing.
There are many types of social media companies; some are research focused, some feature a team of app developers, some are extending and developing upon tradition PR. The best social media agencies combine these skills and help companies extend their brands through training, long term strategy, and execution.
Mullen is a full-service modern advertising agency, with clients ranging from Fage Greek yogurt to the Department of Defense. National brands like Zappos, Olympus and Jet Blue have turned to Mullen for campaigns; last year, the social-media savvy JetBlue chose Mullen as its lead advertising and marketing agency. The You Above All campaign featured a full mix of media including online, social media, in-flight, print, and out-of-home components. For the social media portion of their campaign, the agency created a series of hidden camera scenarios called Ground Rules. The unscripted videos poke fun at other airlines’ service policies by featuring real people in being deprived of things they’ve come to expect, such as legroom in a taxi and a full can of soda from a street vendor. The videos were primarily shown through a YouTube homepage takeover.
Ignite is a social media agency completely and exclusively focused on social media marketing. As opposed to PR and marketing firms that offer elements of social media marketing (like Mullen), Ignite’s team of tech, creative, account, and strategy professionals form a complete social media company, solely dedicated to the interactive and social media markets. Their work for Bing is one example of their success in the social media market. Bing wanted a tab on their Facebook Page that would showcase the variety of what Bing Travel has to offer its fans. Ignite created a tab with a standardized background to tie all of the individual pieces together; each individual section engages the fan in a different aspect of Bing Travel. Fans can also share Bing Travel elements on other social networks, by retweeting Did You Know facts on Twitter, for example.
Crispin Porter & Bogusky, an advertising agency based out of Miami, is known mostly for viral marketing techniques. Their Subservient Chicken campaign for Burger King was created to promote the chain’s TenderCrisp chicken sandwich and the “Have it Your Way” campaign. Crispin created the “The Subservient Chicken” web page, on which a “chicken” performs actions based on user input, showing pre-recorded footage and appearing like an interactive webcam. The site is meant to capitalize on the slogan: “Get chicken just the way you like it”.
Have you come across any social media agencies doing some truly innovative work? Let us know in the comments!
This week, we take a look at a few more cool social media case studies and the success certain brands have seen from their efforts. While in the past, social media campaigns were best used by marketing giants like Coca-Cola and Burberry, today social media is present in many industries, including healthcare, real estate and even credit card companies. Here are a few of our favorites unexpected uses of social media:
Mall of America: Lisa Grimm, digital public relations specialist for the Mall of America in Minnesota, recently shared the success of one of the Mall’s most triumphant campaigns. Since the most difficult time to park at the mall is during Christmas week, the Mall of America team decided to take advantage of this increase in activity to boost their social media following. The team decided to actually auction off parking spaces in the front row of the mall’s lot, but only to their social media followers. By using the parking event’s hashtag on Twitter, followers were entered into the auction. The campaign was a success: The Mall’s Twitter following increased by 11% and the campaign was covered by Forbes, among other news outlets. This campaign is just one example of the far-reaching grasp of social media.
Century 21 Real Estate: Century 21, a leader in real estate, recently revealed that QR codes will be available on Century 21 signs. These custom bar codes can be scanned on a smartphone and will direct you to specific information, such as a real estate listing.
American Express: American Express has been heavily targeting small business in the US for the past few months. One feature of their campaign is the American Express OPEN and Facebook collaboration called Big Break for Small Business. The national contest was designed to help transform the way small businesses use Facebook, and of course, to publicize American Express as the leader for small business use. Business owners could enter to win an all-expense paid trip to Facebook headquarters for a two-day “boot camp” and a US $20,000 cash prize by submitting responses to a short questionnaire. Over 10,000 businesses entered to win their “big break,” and on July 5th the five finalists will be subject to a public vote. Read an interview with Rosa Alfonso of of the American Express Open program here.
The No Kids Hungry Pledge: Share our Strength, a non-profit organization, is working through their Facebook page to help end childhood hunger. On their custom welcome page, they ask you to take a pledge and help end childhood hunger by 2015. Once you sign up by providing your email and zip code, you receive an email asking you to help spread the word by way of social status updates (templated Facebook and Twitter posts) or via email. Note, they don’t ask for money or for you to volunteer your time. In doing so, Share our Strength is building their email database while gaining trust from their new fans.
Have you seen any cool uses of social media in the past few months? Share with us in the comments section!
Social Media moves quickly. While the time lag between communications produced by more traditional media, like newspapers and television, can be long, taking anywhere from days to weeks to months, social media is virtually instantaneous. In fact, social media users can dissect and comment on an event as it is taking place.
Social Media makes the news just as quickly as it reports on it. On a week-to-week basis, the industry can rapidly shift gears, with new developments, mergers and innovation that define it.
Here’s what’s new this week:
YouTube now offers live video: Welcome to YouTube Live, which integrates live streaming capabilities and discovery tools directly into the YouTube platform for the first time. Users can search for the most compelling live events happening on YouTube and add these events to their personalized calendars, and customized homepages will notify customers of upcoming live streams. As of April 8, YouTube started gradually rolling out the live streaming beta platform, which allowed certain YouTube partners with “accounts in good standing” to stream live content on YouTube.
Walmart ventures into social media: Walmart announced this week that it is buying Mountain View-based Kosmix, a social media technology provider that has built a platform that “enables users to filter and organize content in social networks, in order to connect people with information that matters to them, in realtime.” The platform powers TweetBeat, a social media filter for live events. Walmart expects Kosmix, whose founders and team will now operate as @WalmartLabs, to create technologies and businesses around social and mobile commerce that will support its multi-channel strategy. Interesting fact: Kosmix’ founders Venky Harinarayan and Anand Rajaraman also created crowdsourcing Internet marketplace Amazon Mechanical Turk.
A tech boom is on the way: Seattle-based real estate mapper Zillow has become the latest Internet company to put an IPO into the pipeline. (An initial public offering, or IPO, is when a company issues common stock or shares to the public for the first time.) Zillow filed a statement with the SEC that will let it sell more than $50 million of stock. The company follows in the footsteps of Demand Media, LinkedIn and Pandora, all of which filed for an IPO within the last year. Facebook and Groupon are also expected to join the public market soon. With insiders debating the proximity of the next tech bubble, these IPOs could signify that we should expect it soon.
Twitter in talks to buy TweetDeck: Twitter is in talks to purchase TweetDeck Inc. for $50 million, according to the Wall Street Journal. TweetDeck is a hot commodity, as earlier this year, TechCrunch reported that UberMedia was in talks to purchase TweetDeck for $30 million. As one of the most popular third-party Twitter clients, TweetDeck displays your Twitter news feed, direct messages, etc. along with your Facebook feeds — all on the same screen, updating in real time.
Got any interesting social media news to share with us from the past few days? Please let us know in the comments!
*This is the first of a two-part series on social media platforms.
The key to navigating the ever-growing world of social media is to divide and conquer. With three main types of social media platforms- those that help you network, the ones that help you promote, and those that help you share- ease of navigation is a necessity.
A platform that allows you to network, like Facebook or LinkedIn, is the most commonly used. Whether you’re interested in getting back in touch with an old flame or making new contacts in the business world, using a social networking site is the easiest way to do so.
Promoting platforms, like YouTube or personal blogs, allow you to do just that: promote. Oftentimes, it isn’t even clear what someone is promoting; personal-style blogs, for example, seem to be promoting nothing more than daily outfits. Upon closer look, however, many of these blogs feature the latest fashions, both in clothing form and through ads, and bloggers can be compensated, whether with money or gifts of clothing, etc.
Lastly, we have platforms that allow you to share, like Digg and Delicious. These platforms operate through closely-knit communities that are not easy to infiltrate. Try to get voted up on Digg and you’ll realize instantly that it takes months of interaction with other users to build up the trust needed to share within the community
If you’re a networker and you like sites like Twitter and LinkedIn, check out Quora. This platform is a sort of best-of the Q&A platform format; a combination of LinkedIn Answers or Yahoo Answers with the look, feel and simplicity of Twitter.
Also check out Color. The platform uses location-based services like GPS to allow users to share the photos on their handsets with people—both strangers and friends—nearby (within a 150-foot radius of a user). Users can also create albums and social groups for photos from a specific event, and can also comment on photos and shoot video.
If you like YouTube and WordPress, try Instagram. This is heaven for tech-junkies and social networking addicts. Snap a photo with your iPhone and then edit the photo as you like, choosing a filter to transform the look and feel. Then, send to Facebook, Twitter or Flickr – it’s photo sharing, reinvented.
If you like sites like Delicious because you enjoy the thrill of sharing sites with like-minded web users, try a social shopping experience in 2011. Sites like Svpply and Polyvore allow users to create inspiration boards, generate user feedback, and ultimately, mimic a real-time shopping experience, minus the long lines and annoying interactions.
Next week, we’ll discuss some more business-oriented social platforms, like Wildfire and Buddy Media.
The most successful social media campaigns have had certain characteristics in common. Whether the campaign has been centered on the launch of a big brand’s newest product, or simply consists of the revival of a decades-old favorite, success cannot be attained if all the brand has to offer is… its product. Durability comes from other factors, including personalization, discussion, novelty and buzz.
Personalization: Facebook capitalizes on the fact that its users are impulsive and restless. It’s just as easy to click on a link, a page, or a group as it is to close out of that tab and move on the next one. Therefore, in order for a brand to capture the attention of these most fickle of internet users, it must offer a personalized experience. The main difference between a traditional campaign and a social media campaign is the level of interaction the latter can offer users. Take, for example, IKEA’s wildly successful Facebook campaign in 2009. The campaign used one of Facebook’s most popular features, tagging, to encourage people to tag themselves in photos of IKEA showrooms. The company offered users the chance to win tagged items for free, and as word of the campaign spread, photos were tagged within seconds of being uploaded. Without the store rolling out a costly campaign, their products were personally promoted by their audience. People also felt a personal connection to the brand, picking and choosing pieces of furniture they would want in their own homes.
Discussion: Encouraging discussion on Facebook, or any other social network, is tricky, especially when the discussion is initially based on a single product. For the Wrigley’s Extra Facebook campaign, the Wrigley’s team took a different approach. Instead of focusing solely on the product at hand (gum), the page capitalized on the current “foodie” trend and prompted discussions about good food and eating. The page was created with the premise that strongly flavored food and drink, while one of life’s pleasures, are not necessarily things we wish to carry with us for the rest of the day on our breath. The message, then, doesn’t directly rely on the product itself, and is designed to continue conversation for as long as people eat and drink. Discussions on the Facebook page, which has more than 150,000 “Likes,” range from favorite Valentine’s Day food to the best pie flavor. Asking questions like, “Do real men eat quiche?” and “What do you reckon’s your CPM (chews per minute) rate?” provoke interesting, lively and continuous conversation that shouldn’t die down when buzz about the new gum does.
Novelty: Creating a social media campaign that draws a broad audience is tough when your product is a standard household item, like the toothbrush. It becomes even tougher when you’re trying to generate buzz for a new mini disposable toothbrush called The Wisp. In designing their social media campaign for this product, Colgate knew they’d have to think out of the box to generate any kind of attention. Hence, the brand took a fresh approach and came up with the “Be More Kissable” creative platform, which rerouted the issue at hand from dental hygiene to a topic that was more fun, social and sexy. At the heart of the campaign strategy were online videos, and a series of online videos were released that cinched into the comedy and how-to market. The brand also ran a photo contest, looking for “The Most Kissable Person in America,” and created a Facebook app called Spin the Wisp. Once the app was installed, it had the names of the consumer’s Facebook friends and provided them with an experience similar to Spin the Bottle. Ultimately, there were more than 100,000 engagements and 40,000 + installations of the widget and more than 1 million unique impressions of the widget. Overall, as of May, 2010, Big Fuel reported 6 million+ total engagements with the Wisp campaign (widget installs, video views, game plays, pass-alongs). The campaign succeeded not because it was led by a big brand, but because it took a fresh and new approach to something as stale as toothbrushes.
Buzz: Even with all of the components above, a social media campaign cannot be successful without buzz. Word-of-mouth gears social media; as an example, let’s discuss the buzz that the Red Cross accidentally generated a few weeks ago with an unintentional tweet. An employee with access to the @RedCross Twitter account had accidentally posted about their night of drinking Dogfish Head Midas Touch and tagged the message #gettngslizzerd. Within moments of the tweet going out, it was like a social media avalanche. While The Red Cross has about 270,000 followers subscribing to that account, hundreds of re-tweets and tweets about the post put that number well into the millions. Although the Red Cross later deleted the tweet and replaced it with one that read,“We’ve deleted the rogue tweet but rest assured the Red Cross is sober and we’ve confiscated the keys,” it didn’t stop this non-campaign from generating buzz. In fact, the Red Cross reports that the incident actually resulted in slight raise in donations and interest in giving blood. Everyone, including Beer brand Dogfish, has now blogged about the incident and it just goes to show- if an accidental tweet can generate this much buzz, how much attention can an intentional, well-played tweet get?
Ultimately, social media case studies allow us to look back and move forward more successfully. We can see the numbers and the views and decide for ourselves which brands were triumphant in what they did.
Although it has only been 7 years since the beginning of Facebook and 5 years since the first tweet, “social media” and “social networking” has become part of our daily vocabulary. Companies and organizations are gradually starting to see their importance as they continue to creatively experiment with its abilities. Social media is a community builder – it allows us to easily communicate with those with similar backgrounds, interests, and even tighten the bond of our neighborhood!
This month’s social media spotlight shines on Nic Alder, the son of Lou Alder who produced bands such as “The Mamas and the Papas” and was the creator of the music venue, The Roxy Theater. Now in its 37th year, The Roxy was starting to see a decline in popularity as the younger crowd migrated towards larger clubs in other parts of Hollywood. Lou had successfully operated the venue with traditional marketing and promotion but this no longer seemed relevant to modern music fans. A venue with a legendary history also had very little meaning to anyone. With this challenging dilemma, Nic turned to social media for guidance.
Although it was once a one-stop destination for fans during its early years, what The Roxy was crucially lacking was a community. So with the help of social media expert Kyra Reed, co-founder of Markyr Media, they created Twitter and Facebook accounts where they started to communicate with fans by listening, replying, and paying attention to their needs. “Many believe that social media is an outward expression but for us it was more like a mirror,” Alder explains in a recent interview “we were able to see what people thought about us.” This quickly gained The Roxy praise and managed to build a 10,000 Twitter following by the first year.
The venue took a new turn when competitors The Viper Room and The Comedy Store started Twitter accounts. Instead of ignoring their new appearance, The Roxy welcomed their neighbors with open arms and asked their Twitter community to follow them. This act of online courtesy was acknowledged by The Viper Room and The Comedy Store and the three venues began helping each other out in times of need. Thus the online community of the “Social Strip” was born.
Now in its third year, the “Social Strip” has already organized a Tweet Crawl where venues promote free entertainment and food for their online community. But their most rewarding success was the production of the Sunset Music Festival hosted by Ozzy Osbourne when the street was closed to accommodate 10,000 music fans. To further boost publicity of the “Social Strip” and The Roxy Theater, Nic created a Facebook fan page that gained 65,000 “likes” in the first three months. Today, more than 126,000 have become fans on Facebook as they continue to send status updates, comment replies and maintain engagement with their online community.
The Sunset Strip nearly died, but now fans from all across town and different cities around the world travel to the Strip for a night (or two) of lively entertainment. Social media was able to revive a piece of history that otherwise would have been forgotten.
Also read The World of Social Media which explores the current state of our digital era and user statistics and And Your Bird Can Sing – the power of Twitter and its capabilities.
With 2011 fast approaching, it is time for a social media recap of 2010, global-style. This was the year that Facebook took over the globe, and we end the year with almost 600 million users around the world. While Facebook might be the most popular social network, however, it certainly isn’t the only one with worldwide appeal.
Italian blogger Vincenzo Cosenza has, for the second time, published a visual map that portrays the most popular social networks around the world. The map is based on the most recent traffic data (December 2010) as measured by Alexa & Google Trends for Websites.
According to Cosenza, since June of this year, Facebook has “stolen” important nations from previously strong competitors, so much so that 115 out of 132 countries analyzed name Facebook as their market leader. Notably, Hungary, Poland, and even Mongolia have switched over from local strongholds to the global site.
We’re also seeing a rise of interest in Twitter and not surprisingly, in LinkedIn. While Facebook spans generations, however, Twitter has previously been identified as a “younger” social networking tool. Its growth against MySpace in Australia, Germany, Italy and Canada, then, doesn’t do much to prove that Twitter has gained the all-ages following it needs to compete with Facebook in global market domination.
Twitter’s appeal is undeniable: The visibility of its most frequent users, celebrities, excites “normal” users. Then, even for non-celebrity tweeters, a sense of voyeurism continues to remain with the site. The site is more energetic and fast-paced than MySpace, and while “tweets” can give away crucial information about participants, the site isn’t as sleazy as Myspace was in its heyday.
LinkedIn’s rise was inevitable. Why wouldn’t other countries jump to embrace a site that provides free networking in a career-oriented atmosphere? LinkedIn gives employers the benefit of screening employees before they even request an interview and in this way, it tightens up the hiring process. It also gives employees the chance to present themselves in a professional manner online, and countries like Australia, Canada, and the UK have embraced this.
Ultimately, while Facebook, Twitter and MySpace continue to dominate most of the world’s social networking market, there is tremendous room for growth in the new media sector.
New Media expert Brian Solis breaks down social web involvement by country, and the results prove that each country has a unique dynamic within their social networks.
17.6 million Americans blog, compared to the Netherlands 1.3 million and China’s 89.7 million. Are these numbers surprising to you?
