If you subscribe to this blog in a feed reader, apologies. My feeds appear to have abruptly stopped around the middle of December and on January 1 the number of subscribers plummeted from 600 to zero. I have no idea why this is happening, although I suspect it has something to do with Feedburner’s transition to Google. I’m trying to troubleshoot via the Feedburner forums and will get things back online as soon as possible.
From my weekly newsletter. To subscribe, just fill out the short form to the right.
At this time of year, many publishers and bloggers do one of two things: look ahead at the future or back at the year just ending. Since Joe Pulizzi, Fast Company and iMedia Connection did a great job at social media predictions, I thought I’d rummage through my digital archives and offer my completely unscientific list of what made this year special for me.
Best Social Media Tool – That’s easy. It’s Twitter, the super-simple, deceptively powerful micro-blogging service that has people sharing their lives in 140-character increments. If you still don’t get Twitter, I feel your pain, but anyone who wants to practice marketing in the new media world needs to get with the program. If you need help, I’ll get on the phone with your people and tell them why it’s so important.
Best Social Media Disaster Story — Johnson & Johnson’s well-intentioned Motrin video turned into a PR nightmare thanks to — you guessed it — Twitter. To its credit, J&J earnestly listened, but the marketers’ failure to anticipate negativity and their eagerness to respond too hastily made this a bigger problem than it had to be.
Best New Face – Chris Brogan blew out of the pack to become one of the world’s top bloggers thanks to his prodigious output and shrewd self-promotion. He’ll soon hit 30,000 followers on Twitter and the 14,600 subscribers to his blog are a thing of wonder. I don’t know when the guy finds time to sleep. I’m fortunate to work with him on the New Marketing Summit conference and have a chance to learn from his success.
Best Book – Groundswell by Josh Bernoff and Charlene Li broke new ground by attempting to apply research and metrics to social media marketing. The book also told some great stories. Conflict of interest prevents me from choosing my own Secrets of Social Media Marketing, but that shouldn’t stop you from buying it!
Best New Software Application — In the ranks of software that tries to bring order to the barely contained chaos that is Twitter, TweetDeck does the best job I’ve seen.
Best Fall to Earth – Forrester reported that corporate enthusiasm for blogging was beginning to wane. That’s not surprising; most big companies do a lousy job of it. Expect retooling and new growth in the new year.
Best Viral Marketing Success – Cindy Gordon told just seven people about Universal Orlando’s plans to launch a Harry Potter theme park. Word of mouth spread the story to 350 million others in a matter of a couple of days. David Meerman Scott has the story.
Best New Product – The Apple iPhone 3G became the first true mobile Internet device and sold 3 million units in its first month. Expect plenty of new competition in 2009, which is only going to be good for consumers.Nokia has yet to play its cards.
Best Podcast – In the archives of the MediaBlather program that I do with David Strom, there were too many good interviews to choose just one. Among my favorites of 2008 were Mommycast, Brains on Fire/Fiskars, IDG’s Pat McGovern, Eric Schwartzman, Shel Israel and Brian Halligan of HubSpot. I think the most interesting podcast I listened to all year was Schwartzman’s interview with search-engine optimization expert Russell Wright.
Most Useful Blog Entry – Interactive Insights Group created a superlist of organizations using social media. You can find practically any case study on the Web by starting there. We have yet to hear what Tamar Weinberg has up her sleeve, though! Her 2007 superlist was a thing of beauty.
Best Article on the Media – The International Herald Tribune’s “Web Ushers in Age of Ambient Intimacy” explained the visceral appeal of Twitter and Facebook with admirable clarity. Eric Alterman’s epic examination of the collapse of the newspaper industry in The New Yorker was magnificent in its detail and insight.
Best Just For Fun – The most popular item in my newsletter is the squib about some crazy new Web resource we’ve found. Here are two of my favorites of 2008:
People always celebrate success, but they don’t give enough credit to really creative failure. Thank goodness, then, for The Fail Blog, a photographic tribute to failures big and small. Don’t look at this site in the office. Your colleagues will wonder why you’re laughing so hard. And don’t, under any circumstances, view it while you’re drinking milk, if you know what I mean…
Buddy Greene is the Yo-Yo Ma of the harmonica, and in this amazing clip from a Carnegie Hall concert, he will change forever your impressions of the capability and range of this tiny instrument.
My Interview with Todd Van Hoosear
In this unedited podcast, Todd Van Hoosear and I discuss the changing role of marketing organizations in the age of conversation, the difficulties that many marketers are having making the transition and how companies can step confidently into the new era. Todd promises he’s going to clean it up and post a tighter version later, but the conversation is interesting, anyway.
If Twitter’s appeal still eludes you, this article has some nice perspective in plain English. Quoting:
After a while, as a Twitterer, you start to feel like you are friends with the people you follow and those who follow you
Tweets like trivia questions and giveaways get great responses, especially impressive when that approach is more often than not frowned upon in the Twittersphere.
It is necessary to have the person in the Twitter role equipped to handle news management, customer communications, to be able to write compelling tweets and be willing to be engaged at all times.
From Southwest Airline’s chief Tweeter: “We had a customer back in March who direct-messaged us that the kiosks were down in Oakland and was frustrated. I called Oakland to find out exactly what was going on and sent him a reply that there was a power outage and it would be up soon.”
On the PR bonanza that Comcast has reaped from @ComcastCares: One of the outcomes of Comcast’s efforts is that folks are now defending them. “When you build a community, you may get some negative people, but others will come back and defend you,” Comcast’s Eliason said. “Our customers see what we’re doing and stand up for us. It’s like they’re saying ‘Hey, they are trying to help. Leave them alone’ whenever someone speaks out negatively about us.” And this is one of the most attacked companies in the blogosphere! Look at how quickly you can turn negativity around. –
On Twitter, you have to be yourself. The people that do it well aren’t hiding behind a fake persona. You can’t hide. You can’t create a persona and be someone that you aren’t.
There is no more powerful way to humanize your brand.
Services To Get More Out of Twitter
Here’s a nice roundup of Twitter-related services that can help you organize and filter conversations.
Forrester: Consumers Don’t Trust Corporate Blogs
Back in October, I looked at the 20 major corporate blogs to see what they were saying about the Wall Street meltdown and saw that they were nearly silent on the matter. Corporate America still just doesn’t get social media. Not surprisingly, Forrester finds that corporate blogs lack credibility. Josh Bernoff discusses the research and the implications. Quoting:
According to a new Forrester Research report, only 16% of people surveyed say they trust corporate blogs. That makes them the lowest-rated source of reliable information among 18 categories Forrester asked about including Web portals, print newspapers, radio and personal blogs.
Instead, companies should shift the focus back to consumers. That means using a blog to address customers’ problems, foster an online community, involve employees outside of corporate communications, and provide an authentic voice to discuss internal company tidbits and to respond to critics.
Since much of the outrage over the Motrin ads arose on Twitter, he added that companies should use the mini-blogging site to respond rapidly to spiraling publicity problems and to draw attention to relevant posts on the company’s main blog.
This set of Intel guidelines for social media usage could serve as a manual for any company that wants to get the most out of new media channels. It’s a quick, soup-to-nuts guide to best practices.
The Internet retailer has debuted a nifty iPhone application that makes it possible for people to place an Amazon order for products that they see in a retail store. Shoppers can snap a photo with their cell phone and upload it to Amazon where the image is matched with the corresponding product in Amazon’s inventory. The cell phone user is then offered an option to place an order in the online store. Currently, the service is backed by a low tech team of participants in Amazon’s Mechanical Turk program. In the future, Amazon hopes to apply image recognition technology to automate the process.
Car Makers Take Case to the Web – WSJ.com
Faced with an unprecedented financial crisis, automakers are taking to the Web. Embattled car c ompanies say word-of-mouth marketing and search performance are inexpensive ways to reach interested people and route their messages around the media that, they believe, doesn’t give them a fair shake. General Motors has GM Facts and Fiction and Ford has The Ford Story. Could crisis be a turning point in digital influence?
How to Get the Most Out of Google Maps
A great page about how to use Google Maps and the multitude of plug-ins that work with the service.
8 Essential Free Social Media Monitoring Tools
Great lineup of stuff I had never heard of before! More tools to monitor your brand/products/self in social media space.
Social Media Case Studies SUPERLIST- 17 Extensive Lists of Organizations Using Social Media
List of lists of social media case studies. Save time by starting here.
Power.com: One Ring to Rule All Social Networks?
The company is coming out of stealth mode with five million users and the promise of aggregating all your social networks into one. But can it navigate a maze of technical, privacy and competitive hurdles to become the uber-social network?
Not ye olde banners
The Economist boldly predicts that online advertising will fare much better in this recession than in the last one. One reason is that the ad landscape prior to 2001 was mostly banners, while today’s ad programs are more sophisticated. Another is that online advertising is erasing distinctions “above the line” (branding) and “below the line” (incentives & offers) spending. Finally, user traffic is moving to social media sites, which have low ad rates. This could present an opportunity for marketers, at least in the short term.
Parkay Could Have Used Social Media To, Well, Pass The Parkay
Parkay had a great opportunity to turn the revival of its “talking tub” campaign into a word-of-mouth phenomenon. So why didn’t it do more with the opportunity?
MicroPR
Writers looking resources or help with a story just send a tweet with their request to @micropr (twitter.com/micropr) · PR professionals following the MicroPR feed will see a writer’s request and respond directly via the writer’s preferred channel · The media is also able to block PR people who do not follow the preferred contact model, etc. Here is an article on Brian’s blog explaining the service in more detail.
WordPress Automatic upgrade
I run five different websites on WordPress, which makes upgrading to the latest version of the software an ordeal at times. WordPress’ frequent upgrades can also be a little scary. I’ve had several cases of upgrades going wrong and sites disappearing, which forced me to roll back. One of my sites hasn’t been upgraded in a year because of this problem. So I was delighted to find the WordPress Automatic upgrade plugin. It steps you through the process of making backups, deactivating plugins, installing the upgrade, reactivating plugins and cleaning up the database. You just click a link for each stage. I’ve upgraded four WordPress-based sites now without a hitch. Strongly recommended!
Google empowers users to edit search results
“Hoping to give its search engine a more personal touch, Google now lets users reshuffle results so their favorite Web sites get top billing and disliked destinations get discarded the next time they enter the same request.”
Commercial Break – Revisiting the Chevy Apprentice Campaign
GM’s famous 2006 Chevy Apprentice user-generated advertising campaign has long been regarded as a failure because of the disruptions caused by environmentalist critics. Now Wired challenges that conventional wisdom by documenting the big jump in Tahoe sales following the campaign. This experiment wasn’t a failure; it was a huge success. Which just goes to show that negativity isn’t always such a bad thing. Quoting:
Once Tahoe-bashers discovered that Chevy had handed them a bully pulpit, they quickly went to work, posting attack ads on the Chevy site and spreading them to YouTube and other outlets. It didn’t take long for bloggers and reporters to realize that something weird was going on over at Chevyapprentice.com. At first, everyone assumed it was just another case of a big corporation not “getting it” about the Internet. Then, when the ads weren’t yanked down immediately, they figured Chevy was too clueless even to notice what was happening on its own site. Only gradually did it dawn on people that Chevy had no intention of removing the attack ads.By any objective measure, the Tahoe Apprentice campaign has to be judged a success. The microsite attracted 629,000 visitors by the time the contest winner, Michael Thrams from nearby Ann Arbor, was announced at the end of April. On average, those visitors spent more than nine minutes on the site, and nearly two-thirds of them went on to visit Chevy.com; for three weeks running, Chevyapprentice.com funneled more people to the Chevy site than either Google or Yahoo did. Once there, many requested info or left a cookie trail to dealers’ sites.
Sales took off too, even though it was spring and SUV purchases generally peak in late fall. Since its introduction in January, the new Tahoe has accounted for more than a quarter of all full-size SUVs sold, outpacing its nearest competitor, the Ford Expedition, 2 to 1. In March, the month the campaign began, its market share hit nearly 30 percent. By April, according to auto-information service Edmonds, the average Tahoe was selling in only 46 days – quite a change from the year before, when models languished on dealers’ lots for close to four months
How word of mouth helped launch Kraft’s cream cheese
This 49-minute podcast from iMediaConnection’s Brand Summit interested me not so much for the marketing case study (although it’s a very good example of viral marketing) as for the honest description of the barriers these two Kraft brand managers confronted in selling their word-of-mouth marketing campaign. You won’t often hear corporate marketers speak so frankly about internal politics.
The groundswell gives Motrin a headache
Josh Bernoff has a nice wrap-up of the blog/Twitter/Facebook storm that erupted this past weekend over J&J’s ill-considered “Motrin Moms” ad. The company could have avoided the whole mess by testing the ad with a group of moms, who are some of the most active online networkers. Such a simple way to avoid embarrassment and the cost would have been minimal. Now J&J’s smarting from the whole experience. McNeiil’s VP of marketing has the mea culpa here.
Visa uses Facebook network to reach small businesses
The credit company is experimenting with a Facebook community that offers small business owners a way to connect with each other and to get business management advice from Visa. More than 21,000 members have joined and the repeat-visit rate is twice the industry norm.
Here’s a novel promotion for the forthcoming movie “The Day the Earth Stood Still.” 20th Century Fox is creating a global participation campaign that enables people to vote on what they would save if the earth truly stood still. From the press release:
Earth’s Vital List, which launches today, poses the question, If the earth was under attack what would you save? Consumers are asked to build a “Vital List” of 12 items (people, places or things) they would save on “the day the earth stands still.” Vital lists can be shared with friends encouraging feedback and votes on which items are truly vital. The world’s most vital items will be tabulated on a global microsite. The site also provides visitors with a view on how items are being ranked around the globe.
A countdown to the film’s US release (12/12/08) will coincide with a special reveal of the world’s 1,212 most prized possessions on MySpace.com/earthvitallist.com.
I recently criticized corporate bloggers for spewing happy talk while the financial world melted down. So it was nice to see this profile of Marcy Shinder, VP of brand marketing and stategy for American Express OPEN. Amex responded quickly to the Wall Street crisis with a series of articles and multimedia messages aimed at small-to-medium businesses and outlining what the crisis means to them as well as steps they can take to survive the downturn.
The Viral Video Marketing Dilemma
Metrics expert Mark Ghuneim suggests that we still have a long way to go in evolving our thinking about viral video metrics beyond view counts. Marketers are beginning to think more holistically about how to measure success. Quoting:
According to a recent FEED Company study, some 70% of ad-agency and media-buying executives plan to increase budgets for viral video marketing in 2009. In addition, 72% of ad-agency executives and media buyers say their clients are “interested” or “very interested” in using viral video as an integral part of their marketing campaigns….
“Favoriting,” commenting, linking to, embedding, social network amplification and other action all constitute a level of user attention that must somehow be accounted for and given appropriate value.
In addition, a marketing executive would also want to know how users were discovering their video, as well as how quickly the view counts were growing. The velocity of consumption and adoption is an important indicator as well as factors beyond the standard impression and stream data. For example, are bloggers talking about the video? Are users micro-blogging about the video?
LinkedIn cuts 10 percent of its workforce
With an average member earning about $110,000 a year and more than $100 million in investment capital in the bank, you’d think LinkedIn would be sitting pretty. Yet the company is laying off about 36 people. Smart move. Don’t let VC love make you fat and happy.
Yahoo’s Yang Has No Regrets — He Should
Om Malik has little nice to say about Jerry Yang’s stewardship of Yahoo. Yang now basically admits he should have sold to Microsoft when he had the chance and the collapse of a partnership with Google is particularly painful. With the economy now in the tank, what’s next?
The Vote: A Victory for Social Media, Too
BusinessWeek is all breathless about the energy that social networks brought to election day, and there are some good stories/examples here. However, listen to NPR’s story on turnout levels for a more sobering view. Turnout was good for the US, but we still lag far behind other democracies.
Google Aims To Predict Flu Outbreaks
Privacy advocates may blanch, but I think this is a totally cool way to mine patterns from search behavior that contributes to the common good. What an innovative idea!
It used to be that three mainstream media channels – newspapers, radio and magazines – reliably predicted the economy’s decline into a recession and its recovery. That all changed about three years ago. Newspapers and magazines fell while the economy was rising and show no sign of anticipating a recovery. The results, writes Erik Sass:
While softening ad revenue anticipated the two previous economic downturns by about a year, in the most recent case, the slowdown for magazines, newspapers and radio began about three years before. In addition, the declines have already proven to be steeper in this pre-recession period than at the height of the previous ones. This suggests that all three traditional media, suffering from both secular and macroeconomic trends, are poised to suffer unprecedented losses in the economic downturn that is now unfolding.
OMG, these numbers are terrible. At least we’re all in this together. Quoting:
On Oct. 28, the Conference Board announced that its consumer confidence index had plummeted to an all-time low of about 38 out of 100, a drop of over one-third from its level of 61.4 in September. The expectations index–which evaluates consumer sentiment about the future–went even lower, dropping from 61.5 to 35.5. Lynn Franco, director of the Conference Board’s research center, said the decline in the confidence index was “the lowest reading on record” since the index began tracking consumer attitudes in 1985
Macy’s said it will eliminate all magazine advertising in the first half of 2009, although its holiday marketing budget is still largely intact. Subsequently, The New York Times reported that Neiman’s specialty retail segment–including Neiman Marcus Stores and Bergdorf Goodman–saw sales tumble 27.6% in October, while Nordstrom is down 15.7%, and Target fell 4.8%.
Here’s one explanation for the story above. Quoting:
- In a Shop.org holiday survey, 30% of online retail marketers said they were trimming marketing budgets, while 16% said they were reducing promotional spending.
- 45% of retailers said their budgets for free-shipping promotions were either significantly or somewhat higher compared to last year.
- Forrester projects sales this holiday season will grow at the slowest rate ever, 12% vs. 21% a year ago.
- 45% of online consumers plan to buy less overall this holiday due to uncertainty about the economy, up from 20% in 2007.
- A full 21% of consumers plan to shop primarily or entirely online this season, up from 19% last year. And 24% of total dollars spent this season are expected to be spent online, compared with 22% last year.
A survey last month and found that 67% of respondents consider themselves beginners at using social media for marketing purposes. Additionally, more than 87% of respondents are not regularly measuring the ROI of their social media marketing efforts. “
Metrics expert Mark Ghuneim suggests that we still have a long way to go in evolving our thinking about viral video metrics beyond view counts. Marketers are beginning to think more holistically about how to measure success. Quoting:
According to a recent FEED Company study, some 70% of ad-agency and media-buying executives plan to increase budgets for viral video marketing in 2009. In addition, 72% of ad-agency executives and media buyers say their clients are “interested” or “very interested” in using viral video as an integral part of their marketing campaigns.“Favoriting,” commenting, linking to, embedding, social network amplification and other action all constitute a level of user attention that must somehow be accounted for and given appropriate value.
In addition, a marketing executive would also want to know how users were discovering their video, as well as how quickly the view counts were growing. The velocity of consumption and adoption is an important indicator as well as factors beyond the standard impression and stream data. For example, are bloggers talking about the video? Are users micro-blogging about the video?
BusinessWeek is all breathless about the energy that social networks brought to election day, and there are some good stories/examples here. However, also listen to NPR’s story on turnout levels for a more sobering view. Turnout was good for the US, but we still lag far behind other democracies.
With tongue only partly in cheek, Peter Shankman lists Stupid PR Mistakes that annoy bloggers. Most of these have been annoying reporters for years!
Privacy advocates may blanch, but I think this is a totally cool way to mine patterns from search behavior that contributes to the common good. What an innovative idea!
With an average member earning about $110,000 a year and more than $100 million in investment capital in the bank, you’d think LinkedIn would be sitting pretty. Yet the company is laying off about 36 people. Smart move. Don’t let VC love make you fat and happy.
Om Malik has little nice to say about Jerry Yang’s stewardship of Yahoo. Yang now basically admits he should have sold to Microsoft when he had the chance and the collapse of a partnership with Google is particularly painful. With the economy now in the tank, what’s next?
My book, The New Influencers, has been assigned as a textbook in a few classes around the country. It’s fun to read (and occasionally comment upon) the things people say. This spare photo essay came across by Google Alerts this morning. I’m not sure what motivated the Emerson College student to juxtapose social media marketing and ice cream, but I’m pleased that she chose such a good brand!
The nice folks at Communintelligence invite you to Spend an Hour in Paul Gillin’s Head Nov. 6, 2PM (EST). If the prospect of spending an hour in my head isn’t creepy enough, you can come and hear my latest presentation about HOW TO BECOME A THOUGHT LEADER FOR $0. This is the presentation that people are paying tens of thousand of dollars to hear (okay, maybe a few hundred, but the point is that you’ll get it for a lot less by signing up with Communintelligence). check out the link and come to the webcast.
…compare the technology policies of the two candidates. I did so this week for my Ziff-Davis blog. I was surprised to find that McCain is more activist in some areas than his opponent. They disagree totally on net neutrality.
In the first chapter of Secrets of Social Media Marketing, I write about Fiskars, the Finnish maker of fine cutting tools that uses a community of scrapbooking enthusiasts called Fiskateers to evangelize its products to specialty craft retailers. It’s a perfect example of how to use social media to create street-level awareness.
My wife, Dana, wasted no time in applying to become a Fiskateer, and last weekend she attended a gathering of her fellow crafters in central Massachusetts sponsored by Fiskars. What a bounty of gifts they received! Dana counted no less than 15 raffles for the 28 attendees. She won four of them and carted home about $500 worth of swag. To the left is a photo of the goodies.
Fiskars sent lead Fiskateer Kelly Jo as well as one of its “Fiskaneers,” which is what the company calls its engineers There was also a representative of Brains on Fire, the media agency that conceived of the community. Fiskaneer Doug chatted with the group about ideas for new products, yielding great insight from dedicated crafters. The attendees were treated to plenty of food and a trip to the nearby Yankee Candle superstore. The spent the rest of the afternoon crafting together.
Did Fiskars overdo it with the sheer quantity of stuff it gave away? I doubt it. These 28 women have already declared their allegiance to the brand, and giving them more incentive to promote Fiskars through their online and offline social networks can only help boost word-of-mouth marketing. The group has been designated “crafting ambassadors,” only it’s clear that the brand they favor is Fiskars. By harnessing their enthusiasm, Fiskars can extend the value of a few gifts to a much broader audience. The cost of goods for this exercise is cheap compared to the value of good cheer the participants will spread.