(* Source: Susan Payton *)

She is the blogger behind The Marketing Eggspert. Download her free white paper, The Importance of Connecting Brands with Bloggers.

Susan says...

With so many different marketing, advertising and PR channels out there, it’s hard to be heard above the din. One relatively new approach is blogger outreach. The opinions of bloggers are heard and respected by thousands, but many companies still ignore their reach. It’s new, unknown, and they don’t understand how to track ROI. Essentially, it’s not like “old school” marketing, so they don’t like it.

That’s a shame, because while those companies are clinging to print ads and TV commercials, other brands like Cover Girl and UbiSoft are building lasting relationships with bloggers that are getting some serious attention.

By targeting and building relationships with bloggers that address your audience, you can garner effective, unbiased reviews of your products. Their readers will be introduced to your brand, get interested in it, visit your site, and hopefully buy.

Why Blogger Outreach?

If it’s not reason enough that your competitors are already doing it, here are some other benefits of blogger outreach:

• People trust consumers (i.e. bloggers) more than they trust advertising (Nielsen Global Online Consumer Survey 2009).
• It’s cost effective.
• ROI is measurable if you know what to look for (more on this below).
• It has the potential to go viral. People tweet and share good blog posts, and may do that with a blog review of your brand.

The old methods of marketing simply aren’t cutting it anymore. The landscape is changing. With sharing, community and conversation being today’s keywords, shoving a television commercial down consumers’ throats isn’t the way to create brand evangelists anymore.

How it Works

There’s not a lot of instruction out there on how to do blogger outreach (we PR types like to closely guard our secrets), but Monica O’Brien notes that you should be looking for bloggers who reach the same audience you do with your products.

Start out by doing some research. Search Google (), check out Alltop, and browse blog directories. Search for keywords to find blogs that discuss the area you’re looking for. If you sell onesies, mom blogs (but only those with babies) are a good fit. If you have a social media book, look for marketing or entrepreneur bloggers who reach the readers you’re looking for.

Make a spreadsheet of all the blogs you find. I suggest having some criteria, such as a decent PageRank (I use three as my cutoff) or good web traffic. If they don’t make the grade, skip them. I also pay attention to whether a blogger has posted lately. If they haven’t posted in over a year, don’t waste your time reaching out. Also, be sure to actually read the blog. Doing so may reveal that the blogger isn’t a good fit at all.

Next, it’s important to make an initial connection on the blogger’s own turf. The more you can interact with the blog and blogger, the better your subsequent pitch will be received. Leave comments (relevant ones only) and connect with them on Facebook (), Twitter (), etc.

Once you have enough blogs on your list (I tend to do batches of 15 or 30 a month, depending on how many bloggers there are in a particular niche), move on to your pitch. I know to many, “pitch” is a bad word, but let’s be honest; that’s what it is.

Keep it short, sweet, and customized. You can include some of the basics (what your product/service is), but the rest should be tailored to the recipient. You want to show you’ve paid attention to their work. I like to refer back to a particular post that caught my eye. You need to explain why they and their readers will care about your brand. It’s the “what’s in it for me” thing. They will not waste their time writing a blog post about your brand unless they find it compelling.

If you can offer something, such as a sneak peek at a new product, or free membership, do so. The more exclusive the offer, the better. I was part of a group of mom bloggers in Orlando who were invited to go to Sea World and just experience the park. We were all so pleased to have been noticed, we wrote great reviews of our experience. Giving bloggers access to something they wouldn’t normally have is a great way to get them writing about your brand.

Do not:

• Copy and paste a press release with no intro or other customized information.
• Send a press release at all. You can offer that if they are interested or link to it.
• Send attachments. They won’t be opened.
• Address e-mail to “Dear blogger.” They hate that.
• Send without proofing or making sure you spelled the name and blog correctly.
• Demand or ask for only positive coverage.

Follow up a week later to make sure they got your e-mail and to see if they’re interested. I get far more replies to my second e-mail than my first. If they’re not interested, thank them for their time, and make a note in your spreadsheet of why they weren’t interested. They might be better for a different product down the road, or maybe they don’t want to be pitched at all.

What to Know

Product Types: I find that physical products do best with bloggers. They want something tangible they can touch and use. Services are a harder sell. But it really depends on the blogger and the niche — your mileage may vary.

Measuring ROI: People have been arguing for years that you simply can’t measure ROI on social media. I like Brian Solis’ idea that maybe we’re not looking for return on investment so much as return on engagement, attention, participation or involvement.  Here are a few tips in that department:

Before you begin contacting bloggers, decide what your goals are.

• How many blog posts are you aiming for?
• How many readers in total would you like to read these posts?
• How much interaction do you want (comments on blog, retweets, social bookmarking, etc.)?

On the other end, see where your results stand compared to your goals. If you had posts on 10 sites, with traffic totaling 70,000, that’s great. If you had posts on 100 smaller sites with the same traffic, that could be good too, depending on what your goals are. Many companies, like POM Wonderful for example, aim to develop close relationships with a few key bloggers at a time.

Tie it Together

Like all social media, blogger outreach can be interwoven with your wider marketing strategy. Any time you have a new post on someone’s blog, tweet it, put it on your Facebook Page, share it on bookmarking sites and link to it on your company blog.  That will solidify the relationship for further partnerships.

It may be a hard sell to your boss, but tell him that with 126 million blogs and growing, blogger outreach is something he simply can’t afford to ignore any longer.

Posted by brian tiong at 08:56 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

(* Source: Amy-Mae Elliott *)

1. Leveraging Cell Phone Sensor Data

Your cell phone is constantly sending geodata back to its carrier base, but that’s not all most handsets are capable of recording. The iPhone alone boasts not only a location sensor, but also a light sensor, proximity sensor, compass and accelerometer. Take into account there are over 50 million of these devices around the planet; the potential amount of data that could be captured with them is immense. While there’s potential in improved leveraging of real-time location data from phones now, what’s even more exciting is the increasingly sophisticated sensors coming to future phones, such as temperature meters.

2. More Location Tagging

As a memory trigger, location can be as powerful as smell, says Stump. Geo-tagging items such as e-mails or business meeting notes would be a clever way to remind users about events or conversations. For example, you may not remember meeting Bob Smith and discussing his start-up (and almost certainly did not if it happened very late at a The Next Web party after a few Dutch beers!) but if the method of communication was tagged with a visual reminder of the bar you stood in when the conversation took place, you’re going to have a better chance at recalling it.

3. Platforms Merging

Stump does not suggest that Gowalla and Foursquare are about to become FourWalla, but we may well see social gaming platforms merge with location-based services. For example, two games or a game and a service could live in the same virtual world if the team-up was mutually beneficial and added value for the user. For example, love-it-or-hate-it Facebook game Farmville could see players check in to a local farmer’s market to sell their produce. These kind of cross-platform mergers would increase a game’s long-term interest and stickiness.

4. Games Going Beyond the Checkin

So you’re mayor of Bob’s Coffee Shop, woo-hoo. Although the relative freshness of location-based social games is keeping folks interested now — and is in fact attracting new players by the droves (Stump says that Foursquare sees 100,000 new users every 10 days while MyTown sees 100,000 new users every day) — this won’t always be the case. The games are going to have to go beyond checkins to increase interest. A current example of this is stickybits’s integration with Foursquare. Stickybits lets you tag an object with a QR code and then map it with an image that goes with you around the world. Expect to see more developments like this soon.

5. Making Sense of Location Data

As it’s a new area, not all companies are being an intelligent about location data — especially real-time examples — as they could be. We will soon see more connections made from the information and more graphing done to understand it. We will begin to ask not only where people are going but also why they are going to certain places. As interest in a fellow user’s location declines the further you are from it, and interest in an event likewise declines the further in the past it was, a way of capturing and using real-time location data is needed to best leverage the potentially powerful information.

Posted by brian tiong at 09:23 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Catherine says...

There was a time when YouTube  was considered a wild-wild west of content — a place where marketers shied away from uploading their commercials, let alone building a branded channel. But these days, YouTube has become more mini-van than stagecoach. From Toyota Sienna’s high-profile television commercials urging consumers to visit their YouTube channel, to (what might be considered the anti-minivan) Harley Davidson’s fan-centric YouTube universe, there has been a noticeable shift in corporate adoption of the platform.

There are many companies now that are hopping on the bandwagon. Just about every corporation and small business is creating a branded channel on YouTube, but there are still relatively few marketers who have managed to harvest the full potential of the platform.

Whether your brand already has a YouTube channel that’s in need of a facelift, or if you’re interested in developing one from scratch, this article will provide some practical tips and valuable tricks to help you kick-start the process.

1. The Test Tube on YouTube

Look at your YouTube channel as a new, exciting learning lab. Be malleable in your approach to both the content and design of the channel. Don’t be concerned with acquiring thousands of friends and subscribers right away. Use this time to test, gather insights, and see what works for your brand and what doesn’t. Unlike your company’s website and traditional marketing collateral, the look and feel of the channel can be changed, tweaked and optimized without a huge investment of time and money.

2. Plotting Global Domination? Check Your Swagger

Ideally, you’ll want to be goal-oriented during the launch (or re-launch) of your channel. Before your itchy little finger goes to hit that “upload” button, consider the needs and goals of your various target audiences, and keep reminding yourself that web video is distinct medium.

Next, think about your marketing objectives and overall brand strategy. Are you using the channel to attract prospects, provide customer support, or build a list of subscribers? Understand that there might not be “one size fits all” content if you are trying to accomplish all three.

Let your strategic goals drive the tactics you use to create and promote videos, and consider whether a paid sponsorship would offer an advantage. If you check out YouTube’s advertising channel, you can get a basic overview of what brands can do with the platform, but be forewarned — the information is a bit heavy-handed on the sales side.

The United States Navy Channel has a wide variety of videos aimed to attract potential recruits. The Navy’s recruitment-focused channel is organized into playlists that target specific groups of recruits with military precision.

3. Avoid Over-commitment Issues

Strongly consider outsourcing. I’ve never met a marketer who wasn’t time-starved. Let’s face it: You probably don’t have time to be uploading content, let alone coming up with titles, descriptions and tags, friending, rating, commenting and optimizing. And I’m giving you fair warning: Entrust this project to a summer intern at your own peril.

While you should allow yourself the flexibility to experiment, YouTube can be a high-profile place to make gaffes, so don’t say I didn’t warn you. If you’re going to outsource, you might consider looking for a specialist who is already set up and can implement your strategy. Creating web videos and knowing how to market them on YouTube requires a whole different skill set than web development — just because it’s online doesn’t mean that it’s a job for the company that builds your website.

4. Be a Social Media Butterfly

Think of your YouTube channel as an extension of your brand that lives and breathes. You’ll need someone who is dedicated to tending to that page, building your audience by reaching out to fans, and managing your profile online.

Start by searching your brand on YouTube and see what the existing conversation looks like. Then try reaching out to people who already have an affinity for your product or service by commenting on their videos and/or “friending” them. Remember that YouTube is an online community, and if you’re not participating in the dialogue, then you are missing the opportunity for true engagement.

5. Don’t Just Re-purpose Old Content

You should post your television commercials online, but don’t let that be the only content on the channel. Remember that television commercials are designed for a one-way medium, and that while audiences may want the ability to see your commercials on-demand, if that’s all you have to offer, they will never visit your channel again.

And don’t just post your commercial and 15 derivative videos about the making of it, or “director’s cuts” of the same, unless they have legitimate value as content in their own right. YouTube is an opportunity for your brand to go beyond traditional “push” marketing tactics and to create videos that address multiple audiences and a variety of consumer needs.

Intel uses their popular television campaigns as the feature reel on their channel, but they also offer a wide variety of other content, including a look at what it’s like to work at Intel, and video from a game developers conference.

6. Broadcast Your Best Self

Make the feature reel on the channel the most entertaining or best piece of content that you have. If that means that it’s a cleverly written and witty commercial that was originally destined for TV, so be it. If a viewer visits your channel, you’ll only have one chance to impress them with your content, so if you don’t entertain them or offer some overwhelmingly valuable information, you’ll lose an opportunity.

7. Make a Menu of Content to Feed Everyone

Understand that YouTube is a search engine for video. Create tailored content that considers what consumers are searching for or need to know about your products and services. If you play your cards right, when consumers are searching for information about your competitor, they’ll come to your videos first. Instructional and how-to videos that show consumers how to use your product are always a good place to start, but also consider the value of integrating your product into existing YouTube shows and then favoriting those videos on your channel.

8. Juice Your Marketing: Extract Extra Value

YouTube does not exist in a vacuum. Try to integrate your YouTube channel into the rest of your marketing programs and cross reference/promote your content. You can extract more value out of your event marketing if you think about ways to co-produce video content. Remember, integrating marketing channels and initiatives is well known for producing a campaign “multiplier effect.” Whether it’s video shot at a trade show or a promo for an upcoming event, just make sure that the video is well produced and edited for length.

Harley-Davidson took advantage of it’s photo shoot with popular model Marisa Miller for the V-Rod Muscle as an opportunity to get some behind the scenes footage and put together a video for YouTube. Harley definitely got extra value from the photo shoot as the video is one of the most-watched on their YouTube channel.

9. Be Homegrown

Grow your channel instead of “launching” it. If there is any medium that pays attention to grassroots movement, web video is it. And be patient — it takes time to spread the word about your channel, and it takes care and nurturing for it to catch on. Keep releasing content on a regular basis, integrate your YouTube channel into your other marketing efforts, bring your customers extra value, and your presence will grow.

10. Keep the Future in Mind

YouTube was started in early 2005 — look how much has changed in a five-year time span, and how fast web video has progressed. As new technology and distribution channels emerge (like the iPad), try to think about how you can create web video content that will serve your brand into the future. During the production process, you should keep user-experience in mind and plan for the audience to be watching your videos on screens the size of a TV, as well as on their mobile phones.

Posted by brian tiong at 10:06 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

(* Source: Jacob Gube *)

Jason says...

With so much content on the web, it’s nice to be able to rely on the wisdom of the crowds to help us discover noteworthy links and weed through all the stuff (and fluff) out there.

For designers who enjoy social media — or anyone interested in design news and resources — there are a number of sites and services for you to check out and participate in. Here are nine noteworthy social news and bookmarking sites aimed at designers and design enthusiasts.

1. DesignBump

This social news site’s interface will be familiar to those who use Digg (), Reddit (), or Mixx (). The concept is simple: Get enough votes on your links and it will be promoted to the front page.

DesignBump currently has over 16,000 users, with some famous design bloggers among their active participants.

2. Image Spark

This free social bookmarking service puts a unique twist on the format: Instead of bookmarking web pages that you find, you bookmark images. Popular bookmarked images are displayed in a gallery-style format so that site users can see them for visual inspiration on their own projects.

3. design:related

design:related is a community site that seeks to bring together designers from many disciplines. You can set up a portfolio on their site, share what’s inspiring you creatively, and submit news that members can vote on.

The site is a perfect spot for inspiration-seekers, and those looking to stay up to speed on important industry news in a single location.

4. DesignFloat

Established in 2007, DesignFloat is one of the first vote-to-promote social news-sharing sites dedicated specifically to designers.

The site has a broad range of categories for users to submit links to, including Graphic Design, Interactive Design, Industrial Design, as well as design-related topics like Photography. Each category has an RSS feed that you can subscribe to in case you’re only interested in specific topics.

5. Graphic Design Links

Graphic Design Links is another destination for creatives looking for socially promoted info. To help users see the most popular topics being submitted to the site, they have a Tag Cloud page.

Among the site’s submission categories are Illustration, 3D, Typography, and Web Design ().

6. The Web Blend

The Web Blend only has about 1,500 members, making it a comparatively small community — but smaller isn’t necessarily a bad thing.

Some of its top users are popular design bloggers, such as Jad Limcaco of Designer Informer and Sneh Roy of Little Box Of Ideas. This smaller community gives members a chance to interact directly with some of their favorite content creators.

7. zaBox

zaBox covers a wide range of design industry news, resources, and tutorials. Like most social news sites, a story’s popularity is determined by the number of people voting for it.

It also offers bloggers the ability to integrate zaBox into their site, including a button for voting and submitting their stories to the web service.

8. FFFFOUND!

Visual bookmarking is a popular activity among designers. Collecting images for reference and inspiration later on can get you out of a creative funk in a jiffy.

FFFFOUND! is a web service where users can post and share images they’ve discovered on the web. The website is intelligent: It recommends images you might also like based on your bookmarking history.

9. Pixel Groovy

The amount of graphic design tutorials on the web is overwhelming. Pixel Groovy helps point you to ones that its community members like.

The community-driven site gives editorial control to their users, empowering them with the ability to vote on tutorials that they deem worthwhile to be published and indexed on the site.

Posted by brian tiong at 09:53 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

(* Source: Jennifer Van Grove *)

It has become standard practice for big brands and businesses to setup shop on Twitter and Facebook and use the social mediums to connect with customers.

That’s all yesterday’s news now. But the early adopter brands who paved the way for the rest to follow suit have become the success stories that the media, the public and the web companies in the limelight turn to first.

Zappos, Ford, Starbucks, Bravo, Tasti D-Lite and Best Buy are all names that come to mind. There’s no real secret to their success. Each did something innovative and identified a future trend just as the press cycle was heating up. Now they’re all riding the wave of rewards earned from their original risk.

In some ways, though, we’re still in the early days of understanding the relationship between businesses and social media. It’s now more crucial than ever to understand why it’s important to be an early adopter brand.

Good Press That Lasts

Early last year we profiled 40 of the best brands on Twitter and some of those brands have gone on to become media darlings continually featured in press coverage on the web/tech space. It was each company’s individual savvy or willingness to experiment that originally caught our eye, but it’s their ongoing tenacity that kept them front-and-center in the public’s mind.

Those brands with a genuine interest in customer engagement and a commitment to push beyond the expected have maintained a high profile social media presence that continually nets them advantages the rest don’t get.

One key advantage is that they’ve developed important media relationships. These relationships open doors for both parties. The press have immediate access to standby contacts anytime they need an extra quote or example for their upcoming piece. In return, the brands get an instant audience responsive to pitches on innovative social media use cases or quirky marketing campaigns. The cycle repeats itself until a particular story becomes saturated or eclipsed by a newer trend.

Right now there’s no brand mastering the press better than Starbucks. Their relationship with Twitter in the initial rollout of Promoted Tweets has ensured that Starbucks gets a major mention in every mainstream and new media article on Promoted Tweets. It is especially fortuitous for them that their sample Promoted Tweets screenshot served as the only visual representation of the official Twitter ad format when the news first broke. The company has managed to maintain this social media favor with the press for years now, also recently making a huge splash with their loyalty program partnership with Foursquare ().

Case Study Standbys

Ever sit through a conference session or keynote on social media where the presenter or panel did not use brand case studies to supplement their talk? Probably not.

The unwritten rule of public speaking is to always back up points with case studies as proof. For example, a few years ago Zappos’ approach to Twitter was so fresh that the company’s story became the case study on everybody lips. You may also recall that Ford’s social presence during the American car company’s financial struggles was also headliner material.

While Zappos and Ford are still no stranger to the social media limelight — their original successes will always guarantee consideration — the new names cropping up in case studies are the brands experimenting with trends happening right now. Take location-sharing services like Foursquare.

The fact of the matter is that Foursquare is still foreign to most, which means the Foursquare brand marketing from Starbucks, Lucky Magazine and the City of Chicago make for interesting material. Each case study can demonstrate the business potential of Foursquare’s experimental platform. It’s this cutting edge material that piques our curiosity and makes for a captive audience.

Now, should Travelocity find a way to translate their mascot’s Chatroulette activities into business sense, we could see a whole new crop of case-study worthy business uses emerge.

Favor From the Flavor of the Week

Brands open to social media innovation have found favor in the eyes of the most influential people on the web: The minds behind today’s hot startups.

Brand partnerships are crucial for these fledgling startups to maintain their edge over competitors, but it’s much safer for them to favor the friends they’ve made on their way up the ladder. Twitter (with Square by association), Facebook, Foursquare and even Chatroulette are all on fire right now. Each of them — with the exception of Chatroulette — have managed to find brand buddies they trust enough to include in their new feature testing phases. These brands get invited into a private fold that then translates into press coverage on launch and introductions to more people in the circle. Rinse, repeat.

Brands that are in Twitter’s good graces have been grandfathered in to Foursquare’s elite fold of trusted businesses. Just look at Starbucks, a Twitter-forward company now trying Foursquare, as a perfect an example. Another example is Bravo. The cable network has consistently taken an avant-garde approach to television and social media, but it wasn’t until their media deal with Foursquare that the network found its way into Twitter’s public graces. Now they’re a launch partner for Twitter’s long-anticipated ad platform.

This isn’t a coincidence or the result of one serendipitous moment. In fact, many of the top startups share the same investors, the same friends and the same brand relationships. Ultimately the inner circle at the top of the startup food chain has become a safe haven for sharing brands and ideas. Find yourself in this circle and you’ll find yourself amongst the elite of early adopter brands.

Posted by brian tiong at 10:20 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

At any given time, there are thousands of conversations happening on Twitter. I’m not referring to the back-and-forth banter between two or three people — I’m talking about the real-time discussions around particular topics, often denoted by a hashtag (such as #sxsw). Joining conversations that are relevant to your company or your personal interests can be a great way to gain awareness for your brand, add new followers, and network with people who share similar tastes.

But as hashtags have become more popular, they’ve also become a vehicle for spam. Most savvy Twitter business users already know not to use a hashtag on an unrelated tweet, or append popular hashtags to a tweet with the sole purpose of appearing in Twitter search results. Beyond being poor etiquette, it simply turns people off.

So what’s the best — and most authentic — way to participate in a trending Twitter conversation to build awareness, connect with influencers and grow your follower count? Here are four tips for tapping into the real-time stream.

1. Anticipate Conversations

The first step in participating in Twitter conversations is to anticipate which ones are coming down the pike. While it’s impossible to predict that something like #youevernotice will become a trending topic, it’s a pretty safe bet that #NCAAfinals or #adtechsf will have a large group of people following the hashtag before, during, and shortly after each event.

Consider what kinds of content you could build around relevant conversations that take advantage of current events. For example, indie fashion site Moxsie.com timed a Twitter-based “Fashion Police” contest around the #Oscars conversation. Thomson Reuters’ peHUB times its VC roundtable series around relevant industry event conversations such as #CTIA.

Think about which events, pop culture happenings or news are coming up that have a relevant tie-in to your interests, and be ready to participate.

2. Don’t Just Post – Engage

You can certainly drop your tweet into the fray and hope people will retweet it, but to truly participate in the conversation, you should actively engage — retweeting good content, following interesting people, replying to questions and posting more than just links to your brand content — so the community recognizes you and values your contribution.

For example, social media marketing consultant Amber Osborne (aka @MissDestructo) tapped the conversation around #fakesxsw, a good-natured send-up of the SXSW conference, to network with other people who couldn’t make it to Austin this year. Starting off as just a few funny posts, #fakesxsw spiraled into a full-blown phenomenon that even spawned its own website and Twitter fan page and generated more than 3,300 tweets.

Amber truly engaged in the conversation — posting clever fake panel topics, fake after-party announcements and other funny tweets. She also followed other participants, retweeted their posts, and got into numerous side conversations. In fact, she was the most active tweeter in the conversation. After five days of activity, she’d added over 200 new followers, made several new business contacts, and connected with a good number of influential professionals.

Because Amber had taken the time to become a trusted member of the #fakesxsw conversation, she also felt comfortable dropping in a few tweets about her client, Bruce’s Yams. The oddity of the product fit well with the parody theme of #fakesxsw, and very quickly Amber’s yam tweets were picked up by the other #fakesxsw participants. To her surprise, she didn’t have to say “Go and buy yams!” Because of her natural engagement, people were telling her that they were going out to buy yams — one even commented they would be filling a bathtub with them!

3. Move Fast

You can prep all you want for upcoming events, but to take advantage of unexpected conversations such as #fakesxsw or breaking news, you have to move quickly — the conversation might not last more than a day or two. Be ready to generate content that will give you entry into the discussion, whether it’s a blog post, a video or even a relevant contest.

A good example of being able to move fast comes from online video ad platform Jivox. The marketing director at Jivox watches relevant trade publications to see when large brands are changing agencies, knowing there will be a short burst of Twitter conversation around a big account win, and thus, an opportunity to engage with agencies and brands. He then uses Jivox’s DIY ad builder to convert one of the brand’s recent TV commercials into an interactive video ad to showcase Jivox’s features. When the ad transformation is done, he posts it to the Jivox blog and tweets it out.

For example: “Congrats to #Carat on the Smucker account win! Here’s an idea for turning their TV spots into interactive video ads: www.jivox.com/blog.”

Although it can be tricky to catch breaking news or a viral hit on the rise, once you do, be prepared to move!

4. Be Relevant

Going back to the point about not spamming the hashtag, the most important thing to remember is that your contribution should always be relevant to the conversation.

For example, Twitter app developer Tweetshare recently took advantage of the huge #sxsw following to showcase its Twitter fan page capabilities during the SXSW Interactive conference. Rather than getting an expensive booth at the show and limiting itself to on-site SXSW foot traffic, the company took its message to the huge audience following the #sxsw play-by-play on Twitter.

The company created a SXSW Twitter fan page using the newly-launched Tweetshare application and engaged with professional video blogger David Spark to film, post and tweet out more than 50 short video interviews from the conference. These videos were highly relevant to the SXSW audience — Spark interviewed conference speakers such as Randi Zuckerberg and Jeff Pulver, Twitter celebs like Gary Vaynerchuk and Sarah Evans, and well-known CEOs such as Jay Adelson of Digg and David Hyman of MOG to get their take on a variety of topics related to the interactive theme of the conference. The content was promoted exclusively on Twitter using the hashtag #sxsw, generating more than 20,000 views and hundreds of mentions and retweets.

And one final piece of advice from Amber Osborne: Don’t just be relevant — be yourself.

“Be passionate about people and people will be passionate about your product,” she says. “Engage and make yourself interesting (before your product), and people will be interested in those interesting little things about you — whether it be a product, your hair color or a tuberous canned vegetable.”

Posted by brian tiong at 08:44 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

(* Source: Barb Dybwad *)

Barb says...

In a session yesterday at Forrester’s Marketing Forum, Forrester analysts Josh Bernoff and Augie Ray presented research findings on peer influence and word of mouth marketing. Some of the statistics were surprising, and the presentation was rife with practical tips for marketers we thought worth sharing.

Influencers are Diverse

Ray said that when marketers think about targeting influencers, they tend to think of them “like a stew”: tasty, but undefined. He advises thinking about them instead as a “delicious 3-course meal” in which it’s important to savor the flavors of each. He outlined a Peer Influence Pyramid that breaks down influencers into three types: Social Broadcasters (at the top), Mass Influencers (middle), and Potential Influencers (bottom of the pyramid).

Social Broadcasters are few in number but great in scale — they are the top bloggers, most well-connected individuals, and have a lot of followers looking to them for news and advice on the latest and greatest. They have scale but lack trust, in the sense that their followers will click on the links and recommendations they share but still perform their own evaluation of the data — this makes Social Broadcasters better suited for awareness than preference.

At the bottom of the pyramid are the Potential Influencers — this is where the trust really is. These are the proverbial “average consumer” who have primarily networks of people they actually know in an offline context (friends, family, peers). These networks are rich with trust, and make up 84% of the total population of the pyramid.

In the middle are the Mass Influencers, who make up only 16% of the pyramid but account for 80% of the influence impressions about products and services. Ray says of this group, “you can’t ignore the minority that creates the majority of the influence.” You also need different strategies to reach the different types of influencers.

Tips for Reaching the 3 Types of Influencers

Social Broadcasters tend to hate traditional PR and press releases, so according to Ray the secret to dealing with them is to build relationships. This group doesn’t want to hear from you only when you need something, and they want to be respected for their audience. Develop customized offers for them that they can’t refuse, that reflect your understanding of their uniqueness and their point of view. In doing so you may cross over into the rules of endorsements, so be sure to be very familiar with the FTC guidelines regarding this.

To reach Potential Influencers, you need to make things drop-dead easy. This group is not as motivated nor is it as technically savvy as the people higher on the pyramid. Tell your marketing teams to come up with ideas that are so drop-dead great and so relevant to your defined audience that they can’t help but spread. You also want to keep people engaged over time by reaching out and addressing them between major campaigns.

Reaching Mass Influencers in the middle involves giving them something to talk about. Understand their characteristics and give them more content they can’t resist sharing. This part of the pyramid includes the people their friends and family turn to frequently before making important purchases, so don’t forget their significant offline influence and tailor your campaigns accordingly.

Influence Impression Data: 500 Billion Per Year

Bernoff presented a number of research findings around influence impressions, defining two key buckets where people are sharing information about products and services online:

1. Influence impressions: these happen on social media and networking sites: Twitter, Facebook, MySpace (), LinkedIn (), and others. The people who make them know generally who they’re connecting with and who will read them (people they know).
2. Influence posts: these are more permanent data points in blog posts, ratings and reviews sites, and in discussion forums. These tend to be less directed, in that when putting a post online it’s not usually known how many or who will be reading it.

In the first category, the research study found 256 billion influence impressions occurring per year. Influence posts were numbered at 1.64 billion per year, which accounted for generating another 250 billion impressions. In other words, people are making 500 billion influence impressions on one another about products and services every year.

The research also looked at where those influence impressions are happening. The following graph captures the results of where people are sharing influence online in both of the above categories:

Bernoff and Ray shared a case study of analyzing the three types of influencers in the consumer electronics sector and how to approach them, and stressed that it’s possible (and indeed, necessary) for marketers to be doing this type of analysis in any industry, any product category, and for any age or demographic.

In summary, Bernoff and Ray’s advice to marketers includes:

• Build a strategy for reaching all three types of influencers.
• Allocate your budget in light of a potential 500 billion impressions of peer influence.
• Analyze and reach out to your mass influencers specifically for maximum reach.

Posted by brian tiong at 07:57 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

(* Source: Stan Schroeder *)

Stan says...

For years, we’ve heard the music industry talk about declining sales and profits — often unconvincingly tying these numbers to piracy) — but what about the artists? How much do they earn when their music is distributed online, compared to selling CDs?

It’s a very hard question to answer because much of this data is kept secret and it varies from country to country. Still, David McCandless, author of the book “Information Is Beautiful,” rolled up his sleeves, researched the available data and created this beautiful infographic that shows how hard life is these days for most music artists (unless they’re Lady Gaga).

McCandless discloses that the data was very hard to research and that it may not, therefore, be 100% accurate. He also warns that “these figures do not include publishing royalties (paid to composers of songs).” However, you can check out the full spreadsheet of data, that does include royalties, here.

Check out the infographic below (beware, it’s a big one).

Posted by brian tiong at 08:56 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

(* Source: Ben Straley *)

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Ben says...

Your brand has 10,000 Twitter followers and 2,000 fans on Facebook. Does that mean your social media marketing efforts are paying off? Maybe not. As the old adage goes, it’s quality, not quantity, that counts.

Recent data that Meteor Solutions collected from across more than 20 brand marketer clients shows that the type of friends, fans and followers a brand amasses on social media sites matters more than the number. On average, approximately 1% of a site’s audience generates 20% of all its traffic through sharing of the brand’s content or site links with others. And these “influencers” drive an even higher share of conversion. These very important Internet users can directly influence 30% or more of overall end actions on brand websites by recommending the brand’s site, products or promotions to friends.

As this data shows, successful social media marketing isn’t simply about amassing thousands of followers, but instead precisely identifying the most influential members of your audience and recognizing them for their value. By directly engaging one influencer with exclusive opportunities, special offers, and unique content, you are indirectly engaging thousands of other people who are part of this influencer’s social sphere.

Sounds pretty enticing, right? But the challenge in crafting a successful marketing program that activates influencers is two-fold. First, you have to use the right data and traffic analysis tools to find out who your most influential followers are. Second, you have to connect with these people in an authentic, “non-salesy” way, and truly build a relationship with them –- because if you overly “sell” to your influencers, you’ll burn a bridge and potentially turn your biggest fans into your worst detractors.

Here are a few concrete tips brands can use to get started marketing with influencers.

Find Out Who Is In Your 1%

The first step in creating a marketing program that activates influencers is to find out who these passionate people are and where they hang out online. To find out, you need to use a social media analytics tracking and measurement tool that goes beyond “listening to the conversation,” measuring website traffic, clicks on campaign links, or conversions. There are new social media analytics platforms, such as Radian6 and ObjectiveMarketer, that allow you to pinpoint with precision which individuals are most actively sharing your brand’s links.

Find Out What Your 1% Likes to Share

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After you’ve identified these individuals, use your social media analytics platform to dig down into the content they like to share most often. Do they tend to share deals and discounts? Or do they prefer to share links to your branded entertainment content, like YouTube videos, social games and contests, or informational articles? At this stage, you can separate your 1% into groups, such as “shopping mavens” who love to pass along deals and discounts; “experts” who love to share new research, top-10 lists, how-to articles, and other educational content; “gaming gurus” who like to share information about contests and games; or “entertainers” who like to share movie trailers, YouTube clips, and social media apps.

Find Out Where Your 1% Goes to Connect and Share

Now you need to identify which social networks, blogs, forums, and websites your 1% hangs out on, and which methods they use to share your content (e-mail, social updates, tweets, etc.). One thing you’re likely to find out is that while Facebook and Twitter undoubtedly play major roles in the spread of your brand’s content, major social networking sites are not where you’re likely to find and reach your 1%.

Think about it — if you are someone extremely passionate about cars, are you really going to bore and alienate your family and friends on Facebook? Some of them might (and lose friends and followers in the process), but for the rest, they have a blog, post comments on other blogs, and interact with niche communities of like-minded influencers, advocates, and fans.

Finding these sites and communities on the web requires some sleuthing. Aside from digging deep into the traffic data provided by your social media analytics platform, another way to find these niche sites is to follow a number of active “experts” on Twitter in your topic of choice. Ask them where they go to learn about and share the content that matters most to them.

Find Out What Motivates Your 1%

Do your influencers share content about your brand in pursuit of fame, fortune, or a bit of both? Understanding what motivates your 1% to share is key to finding out what makes them tick, and what types of content they will respond to favorably.

For most people that spend time creating and sharing content, it’s not about fortune, it’s about fame. They share links with friends and their wider social network because it makes them feel important, special, and useful. That doesn’t mean influential people don’t like deals as a rule — they’re just like the rest of us in that regard. But they respond most positively to the attention and recognition they get from sharing useful content and valuable information with others.

For example, we’ve seen on several marketing programs that the percent of incremental unique visitors to a site from shared links more than doubled when the names of the top sharers where posted on an online leader board, and top-sharers were given access to exclusive content.

Make ‘Em Famous

If your data does indeed show that your influentials are more motivated by fame rather than fortune, then it’s time to recognize and reward them with incentives that are aligned with this motivation.

Use your company’s Twitter and Facebook pages to call out public achievements, like funny or useful YouTube videos on relevant topics posted by your top 1%. Blog about an interesting article, post, or tweet an influential member of your customer base has written, and let them know what you’ve done. And make sure to extend special offers or direct access to top company executives to your influential users. A big part of making these people feel special involves granting insider access to people, deals, or information that is limited to a select few.

Conclusion

By finding and reaching out to your brand’s biggest fans, you’ll get access to thousands of customers for the price of engaging a few. But remember that it’s a two-way street. Early on, engage these folks in a dialog around what they like about your brand and products, why they like it, what they’d like to see improved, and what types of opportunities and offers they’d be most interested in receiving. Give, and you shall receive.

Posted by brian tiong at 08:49 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

(* Source: Waggener Edstrom Worldwide *)

Waggener says...

Community managers, feel free to chime in with your own best practices, oddball stories and lessons learned and words of wisdom for the newer folks in your ranks.

1. Get Zen

Community managers have to have the unflappable calm so often seen in the mothers of multiple young children. Let the juice spill, the finger paints fly, the toddler scream. All is well. Develop your sense of humor and realize that 1) very few things that happen online are ever a big deal and 2) everything on the Internet is eclipsed by something else within a few minutes. Be sure to explain these concepts to your supervisors and reports, as well.

2. Leave Users Alone

So often, we jump in too quickly when a conversation we’ve started might actually need to simmer for a few hours without our intervention. People need to go off topic, trolls need to be smacked down by power users, sidebar chats need to occur, often without direct comment from within the organization. No one likes the idea that they’re being monitored all the time. Besides, if you’re like most community managers, you could use a break from the 24/7 social media addiction you’ve been nursing for the past couple years.

3. Stop the Marketing

You’re here to serve and support, not sell. You do represent the brand, but you’re not a promotional vehicle — and neither are your forums, comment threads, Facebook Wall, BBS, Twitter stream, email lists or other channels of communication you control. If someone in your organization thinks otherwise, correct them immediately; doing so will protect the integrity, trust, openness and fun in your community.

4. Be Yourself

An online community manager is so much a human extension of a URL that any clash between personality and brand image is not only a challenge — it’s an insurmountable obstacle. Once you know you are a fit for your community, that you represent its mores and aesthetics, be as comfortable in your own skin as you can possibly be. Don’t lapse into corporate-speak, and don’t be overly concerned about professionalism. Leave that part to the Poindexters who don’t have to herd cats in the wild.

5. Listen Less

It’s counterintuitive, but when we get so many channels for communication and each channel is filled to overflowing with user-generated signal, it stands to reason that we won’t be able to “listen” to all the feedback we’re getting from users, let alone respond to it all. Pick and choose what you listen to and whether you need to respond. Ignore those five tweets complaining about a small feature change. When users really start screaming and you actually need to make changes, you’ll know.

6. Show Your Face

As the designated “face” of your brand and community, you should be engaging in a text-based context with your users, absolutely. But if you’re working in the world of social media, you also have a responsibility to show up physically in certain contexts. Whether you’re staging a live meetup or an MMO video chat, you and other brand ambassadors should be literally visible. It’s not 1994; you can’t hide behind a screen name.

7. Level the Playing Field

Power users can be amazing resources; they can also be intimidating, arrogant and overly entitled. Make sure your big-deal users know that their contributions are valuable, but also be sure to treat quieter users with the same respect, even encouraging them to come out of the woodwork when it’s warranted. You should be using your influence to get the same amount and quality of interaction from all your users, not just pandering to the ones who make your job easy.

8. Be a Delegation Ninja

Who’s your best commenter, the guy who’s always online, always appropriate, always on-target? Make him your comment moderator. Is a power user in your community continually reaching out to welcome new members? Make her the Noob Ambassador. Find someone who really loves the brand to run a contest. Give your biggest advocates training, guidelines, responsibilities and perks; the extra time will allow you to find other ways to grow your community.

9. Stop Inviting People

Community isn’t a game of numbers. New user registrations can be great to show off to your execs, but be sure you’re getting the right kinds of users. You want to find people who are truly passionate about your community’s focus and who want to contribute interesting, unique content. New users who don’t care about that focus will quickly fall off, and attrition is a numbers game you definitely don’t want to play. Instead, focus on slow and steady growth among those who are most likely to be true fans.

10. Get Offline-Friendly Tools

Just because your sites are optimized for uptime doesn’t mean you should be. Test any tool you can find that will allow you to do your job while offline. Whether it’s scheduling tweets to go out in a few hours (or days) so you can take a nap (or a vacation), automating certain kinds of email responses or getting some new mobile apps to check your stats while on-the-go, most community managers need better tools for getting away from the desktop. If you’re a community manager and you’ve found great ways to take your work offline or automate your processes, we’d love to read your recommendations in the comments.

Posted by brian tiong at 08:40 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

(* Source: Jason Kincaid *)

Jason says...

What do you get when you combine music with frantic, all night hour coding sessions?  An event called Music Hack Day, where developers have 24 hours to hack together a new music-related app, which they then show off to their peers at event’s conclusion. Music Hack Day has previously been held in London, Berlin, Amsterdam, Boston, and Stockhold; this is the first time it’s coming to the Bay Area. The event runs May 15-16, and is being held at the Automattic offices at Pier 38 in San Francisco.

The main goal Music Hack Day, according to its homepage, is “to explore and build the next generation of music applications”. Aside from that, anything goes — it just has to do with music. Space is limited, so you’ll want to register here (it’s based on a first-come first-served basis, and the organizers will also be looking to ensure the people attending are planning to actually help make something).

Music Hack Day is run by an interesting group of guys with experience in both music and tech: Dave Haynes (of SoundCloud), Paul Lamere (of Echonest) and Daniel Raffel (Senior Product Manager at Yahoo!, used to run some record labels). Also attending the event will be representatives from music companies like SongKick, Pandora, SonicLiving, Songbird, and Last.fm.

The timing is also good for developers: Muisc Hack Day is taking place the weekend before Google I/O and the SF MusicTech summit, so developers from out of the town can hit up multiple events on the same trip. So rock on. And try not to think too hard about the pain some earlier music startups have suffered through — things are finally looking up for a few of them.

Posted by brian tiong at 09:53 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)