My March Social Media Reading List

 

I’ve been contemplating the possible role of Facebook Public Profile pages as the primary hub for all consumer-facing social media efforts. Since Facebook can handle all media types used in social communication, and now has micro-blogging as well, it seems realistic.

 

Best Article on New Profile Pages – Mashable: New Facebook Pages: A Guide for Social Media Marketers

Facebook Resources

• How to Promote your Profile Page outside of Facebook.
• Profile Page Best Practice Guides:
• Public Figures (Celebrities / Athletes / Politicians / etc.)
• Music & Bands (Musicians / Songwriters / Bands / etc.)
• Communities (Non-Profits / Universities / Religion Organizations / etc.)
• Facebook Ad Guide (this information gets out of date quickly, but the basics are all correct in here.)

Relevant Research

• Nielsen  Global Faces and Networked Places report on the global impact of social networking on marketing.
• Mashable Coverage: Social Networking More Popular than Email
• Mashable:  10 Smartest Brands on Social Media

Discussions of Brands on Facebook

• Measuring: Facebook Profile Page Statistics
• Replacing branded social networks: Mashable – Is a Facebook Page a Complete Social Media Strategy?
• Vanity URLs:  Facebook Getting Serious About Vanity URLs (Michael Arrington)
• Community Guidelines: Facebook Group and Brand Page Best Practices (old, but useful information on guidelines)

Example Facebook Public Profile Pages

• An example of how different geographies can confuse a search, and how a small market can dominate by having more fans (Finland): MTV
• An example of a Page using the Graffiti app to let people draw on their page: MTV Boxes Tab
• Simple, global, infrequent but universal updates: Starbucks
• Retail – prominent coupon offer and Fan-only content: Sears
• Extensively re-creating an online service on Facebook and advertising it heavily: CareerBuilder
• Multi-page Strategy – Dell: Main Page (conversation), Dell Deals (promotion), Dell Social Media for Small Business (community), Dell Lounge (Entertainment)

Twitter

Twitter Usage/Growth	Twitter for Brands
TechCrunch – Twitter Mania	Custom backgrounds
McCain on Twitter	Best Twitter brands
Compete.com – Twitter Search	Twitter / Dell
	Twitter brand sponsors (Advertising)

Random Notes for my OMMA Social Panel

 

I’m on a panel at OMMA Social today to talk about the use of applications as marketing on social and mobile platforms. These are the notes I put together ahead of time to guide the conversation.

Social Marketing at Scale – Barak Obama

The recent recap of Obama’s strategy is a great rundown of what a major brand campaign on social media would look like. Here are facts and observations I culled from it.

• 60% – 70% of social networking fans were on Facebook
• Were seeking a “social majority” on issues which seems like a great opportunity for brands during this time when brand presence on social networks does not match overall brand awareness.
• Their basic approach was to do everything incrementally better, not on extensive innovation
• They had a 10-1 advantage in online staff with 11 senior staff members and a full staff of 30.
• Their social media director reported to the campaign director.
• 5-1 advantage in total friends acquired
• Administration is adding a 5-day comment period on all new legislation – talk about social getting mainstream.
• Focused on only 15 top social networking sites
• 2,000 official YouTube videos with 90M views
• 440K user created videos based. Official videos key seeding component for UG.
• Made sure to provide opportunities for the most casual to stay involved. (Facebook Fan’ing great example of this.)
• Used tools that people were familiar with
• 90% of Americans have their cell phone (I don’t believe this.)
• 90% of text messages are opened (I do believe this.)
• Text messaging reminders bumped turnout by 4% and cost $1.56 per vote versus $20-$30 per vote for phone calls.
• Major announcements drove rhythm of text messaging
• Spent $2M in hardware and software before the campaign kicked off.

Thoughts on Mobile as a platform for Marketing applications.

• Apple app store has 15,000 apps, and adding more at a steady rate and 500M downloads.
• There are 17M iPhones being used, and an additional 10M-15M app-ready iPods
• Gartner predicts 190M smartphones this year – 32% growth. It’s not all about the iPhone
• Even with all these apps, it’s still easier to get noticed here than online.
• 40% of Pandora subscribers now come from the iPhone app and they cite being in the app store from day one as the key
• If it’s too late for the iPhone, what about other platforms?
• Android has only 800 apps now
• Blackberry is launching their “Application Storefront” this year
• Microsoft launching “SkyMarket” app store in Feb for Windows Mobile
• Palm is opening an app platform for the new Pre in the first half of 2009.

Miscellaneous thoughts on using applications as marketing

• Facebook – 52K official apps, 80K-90K total.
• The definition of an application, I believe, is a continuum. In all cases, you’re delivering value to consumers, but the amount of professionally produced content versus the amount of energy users need to do to create content can tell you how much of an “app” you’re dealing with.
• An application is most valuable if it contains very little professional content and gets users to do the work to create incremental value. This is how applications scale.
• Apps can help but they can hurt as well. Scrabble on Facebook is the focus of rage for many – 600 reviews and 2,900 wall posts – the vast majority of which are emphatically negative.
• Dynamics of content creation are anathema to those of app development.
• Developers value every pixel of screen real estate to give users interactive value. Content creators and brands want space for visuals and copy.
• What’s working?
• Applications can generate new buzz and consumer PR.
• TripAdvisor – Cities I’ve Visited 1.8M MAU on Facebook
• Warning – three other apps with basically mo MAU
• Yearbook Yourself – 1.8M users in 4 months (US) and more than 4M users worldwide in that time. (comScore)
• No code connection to Facebook, but Facebook was top source and loss destination in the first month
• Got buzz on Facebook at the same level as Britney Spears and Zac Ephron for about a month. (Facebook Lexicon)
• Beware the Doghouse – 3M users in December (month 1) and great Facebook Connect integration.
• Kidnap! 2.6M MAU and natural tie-in to the travel channel.
• Lessons learned from application start-ups
• Fail fast. Few things work, so make sure you know what failure looks like and move on quickly. (Make failure the default.)
• If an application is not growing organically or showing an organic after-effect from promotion.
• Good News: Developers want apps to be used. As a brand, you can make that happen. It’s a trade-off developers like.
• Applications atrophy and need ongoing maintenance.
• Signs of life: comments, reviews, growth noticeable above the promotion rate (no straight lines), buzz/PR, suggestions for improvement.
• Other thoughts
• Biggest challenge: Your building and promoting a whole new thing to promote something you already have. Should you?
• App development has dynamics like both online and offline.
• Offline: Subject to great creative risk and can’t be readily optimized.
• Online: Everything can be measured.
• App ROI gets compared to highly optimized ROI for banner media – tough comparison.
• Big agencies have smart people who understand social media and speak at conferences, but the odds are slim that they are impacting your program.
• Biggest Opportunity for Brands
• Take the monetization pressure of new types of apps early with natural and non-invasive sponsorships.
• Examples
• TripIt with Hertz
• Jackson Fish Market – building apps on spec.

Obama Viral Campaign – Over 9M Users

 

MoveOn.org put together a great viral campaign to drive home the need for people to vote (for Obama) lest McCain win due to apathy. You forward this site to a friend, and it presents a series of stories featuring your friend’s name as the person responsible for Obama falling one vote short. The site uses some neat technology to insert your friend’s name into existing video clips. (An agency I worked with recently, Mekanism, did something similar for the Toyota Matrix launch a couple years ago.)

Here are a couple snippets from a short MediaPost article on the piece:

According to a tally at the group’s Web site, the latest MoveOn viral effort had moved an astounding 9.258 million people to pass it on as of 1:15 p.m. on Thursday.

It works so well, says brand guru Laura Reis, president of Ries & Ries Focusing Consultants, because "Obama is such a strong and powerful brand, consumers are proud to advertise for him and receive ads from him. Passing along a pure Obama advertisement is something (especially right before Election Day) consumers are happy to do and happy to receive.

While this is great success for a viral campaign, the second quote gets at the real point which is that viral transmission is a lot easier when there is already some brand passion. For an insurgent brand, generating this can be difficult and will usually come down to creating something outrageous. Of course the Obama video had some of that as well with the woman pictured above going into a profanity-laden (bleeped, but recognizable) scolding directed at you by name.

 

 

Is painfully slow driving worth the hassle, Washington State?

 

It seems the answer to that is, no. Since moving to the Seattle area in 2006, I’ve been dismayed by the number of people that drive *exactly* 60 miles an hour on the highway, regardless of what lane they’re in. When I discuss this with other people from out of state, I get knowing nods, but when I bring this up to natives, they get smug about it and point out that Massachusetts drivers are crazy and here in Washington, we’re sensible and safe. The problem with this argument is that the numbers don’t bear it out. While it is true that Washington is near the top in fewest fatalities per 100 million miles driven, Massachusetts is even higher on that list. Here’s an excerpt of the table.

State	Fatality Rate	Rank
Montana	2.41	1 (most dangerous)
Washington	1.09	45
Massachusetts	.89	49
Vermont	.83	50 (safest)

Source: U.S. National Highway Safety Traffic Administration. See Table 1087, Statistical Abstract of the United States, 2006.

Lesson: You don’t have to drive maddeningly slow on the highway to be safe. I’m all for driving slowly in neighborhoods (I’m usually going slower than everyone around me) but let’s keep the highways moving please. For those who agree, feel free to join this Facebook group: Hey Washington State… the left lane is the PASSING lane.

Trip Advisor – Somewhat creepy cause marketing

I got an email from Trip Advisor this morning asking me to vote some percentage of $1M to one of five charities they’ve chose. They seem to have done a good job matching a basket of charities to their target audience, but there is something off putting about the “voting them off the island” aspect of this. Once you vote, they show you which charities are winning also a bit creepy.

 

Trip Advisor email

Here are the results of the voting so far. The hard-core push to stuff the ballot box on this page also rubbed me the wrong way a bit. I’m probably overreacting, but it points out an issue I’ve struggled with in cause marketing which is integrating a cause promotion without making it seem overtly exploitative.

Very funny viral site – NOLAF.org

Check out NOLAF.org, a very funny viral site by Mekanism. It’s clearly a promotion for Tostitos, but the content is hilarious. At one point the guy harangues a goth girl for not looking dead enough and says, “I want it to look like you’ve never been alive.” Great stuff.

Why people stop blogging for long periods of time

Here is some fun reading. It’s a random selection of mea culpa’s for blogging gaps.

 

Some Kind of Wonderful: Rockin’ Through Life in Orange County

Sorry it’s been so long since my last post. Pretty busy around here–not a ton going on, per se, but I’m now making law school decisions, doing that whole …

How to build a community portal – Page 2 – Growing an Online Community

Originally Posted by sesom. so what happened…did u build yr community? it’s been so long since my last post..to busy. No. Could not install mambo …

Riawan’s Page: it’s been so long since my last post

it’s been so long since my last post . i think bono understand me , check this out: I have climbed the highest mountains I have run through the fields …

Rooting for Penn State’s blog | community.centredaily.com

Sorry it’s been so long since my last post. It’s been really busy at the office. Today (Saturday 6/21/2008) I start a week’s vacation with my family at the …

Nick Bradbury: April 2004

Sorry it’s been so long since my last post, but I’ve been working hard at not working. For those that would like an update on my injury, a recent MRI shows …

Pat & Nicola run the london marathon: www.justgiving.com …

Sorry it’s been so long since my last post! My training has been going really well. Since my last post I’ve been staying at the same level of my training …

Addicted to something from Columbia

 

No, not that…. music. I’m loving Bomba Estereo at the moment. I can only find two songs in the Zune music service, and a few on their Myspace site. Check out the song Fuego. I’m not exactly Mr. World Music, but this hit a nerve. Also, I’ve become interested in Colombia since meeting a colleague from there who opened my eyes to many cool things about the country. 

My favorite magazine cover of late

 

I laughed like a fool when I saw this while waiting in line to check out at the grocery store. I think people were worried about me.

Cover
The End of a Revolution (Nation)
Sex, lies and power games are just the latest symptoms of a Republican Party that has strayed from its ideals

Source: TIME.com: TIME Magazine — October 16, 2006 Vol. 168 No. 16

Local Search Experiencing Strong Growth

I love a study with good stats, and this one definitely counts. I was at the SES Local show in Denver yesterday talking to SEOs and SEMs about our tasty Live Local product, and could have used this information a day earlier. 

The study found that the 63 percent of Internet users in the United States executed local search online in July, up a whopping 43 percent from the same time last year. Source: Local Search Experiencing Strong Growth, with Google in the Lead

For me, using a mapping service is less about getting explicit directions from one place to another and more about exploring the world around me to find businesses, check traffic, learn about how to get around by car or by foot, etc. The Bird’s Eye views in Live Local are a great way to see what an area really looks like before you get there by showing you actual aerial photography of the location taken from a low-flying airplane, and the overlays of businesses can help you plan an afternoon or evening out really well. One of the things I would love to see improved, though, is the quantity and quality of business listings that we use. They are good, but could be a lot better.