Daily Reading 06/30/2008

• Telling statistic of our times

  Jeff Jarvis is writing a piece on George Carlin and so looked up the frequency with which Carlin's famous seven words you can't say on TV show up in Google. He finds a striking equivalency. You have to click to see.

  tags: daily_reading

• Google Docs now appears to be an official Microsoft Office competitor

  Among an impressive list of recent enhancements is offline access. Google says you can now edit any word processing, spreadsheet or presentation document when disconnected from the Internet and then synch with your online account when you reconnect. At this point, what's the difference between Docs and Office?

  tags: daily_reading

  ¶ 8:30 AM 0 Comments

  Daily Reading 06/29/2008

• Is Google Making Us Stupid?

  A lot of people have been buzzing about Nicholas Carr's brief opinion piece in the Atlantic in which he argues that information overload is making us less able to think in any kind of depth. Are we becoming "pancake people?" I don't agree, but his views are worth considering.

  tags: daily_reading

• What it takes for an ad to go viral

  There's no secret formula for "going viral," but Tom Hespos draws some interesting conclusions about why some campaigns work.
  

  tags: daily_reading

  •  Humor in an ad needs to be comparable to that in other content you might find online. In other words, a funny commercial is still a commercial. If you're hoping humor value will spur a significant viral effect, the content better be funny. It's not just competing with other commercials
  • Someone high up at Apple understands the value exchange that occurs when a brand fan is among the first to find out about a new Apple product. 
  • This incentivizes the insider to tell everybody and their grandmother that they were among the first to see the new iPhone.

• This Ad Stinks: Let Readers Vote

  Advertisers increasingly are paying to have website visitors render judgments on their ads in public for all to see.

  tags: daily_reading

  ¶ 8:30 AM 0 Comments

  Daily Reading 06/27/2008

• Meet a blogger: Run up the Score | By Daniel Victor

  Run Up the Score is a successful football blog focused on Penn State. In this interview, the bloggers offers practical advice for positioning a blog as well as driving traffic. He also comments on some important tactics to avoid.

  tags: daily_reading

  ¶ 8:30 AM 0 Comments

  Daily Reading 06/25/2008

• Ongoing list of Social Media Efforts from Banks, Credit Card, Financial Institutions and Lenders

  Jeremiah Owyang has a nice list of the Web 2.0 activities being pursued by financial institutions in the name of serving existing customers and finding new ones.

  tags: daily_reading

  ¶ 8:32 AM 0 Comments

  Social Media Tools Don't Matter

From my weekly newsletter. Subscribe using the sign-up box to the right.

Here’s a question I hear from marketers all the time: “We want to launch a corporate blog, but we don’t know how to go about it. Where should we start?”

My answer is that you should start a couple of steps back from where you are. Social media tools – whether they’re blogs, online communities, instructional videos or something else - don’t solve anything unless they address a specific business need. Don’t use social media for its own sake. Use it to accomplish an objective.

Unfortunately, the temptation is difficult to resist. Lots of businesses are experimenting with social media tools these days. It’s natural to think that they know something the rest of us don’t, but the reality is that most people are still kicking tires right now. There are some very successful companies like Apple Computer that are doing nothing with social media because they don’t have to. If the tools aren’t right for your culture or your business, don’t use them.

Whatever you do, don’t start the decision process with technology. The choice of a social media tool is no more relevant to the success of a campaign than is the choice of paint to the structural integrity of a house. Many tools are flexible enough to be used for multiple purposes and some strategic goals require you to leverage many tools in concert.

Stop and consider the problem or opportunity you’re trying to address. Here are a few possible business objectives, with the best tool options listed in parentheses.

• Build customer community (blog, video, social network, private community, virtual world)
• Counter negative publicity (blog, podcast, video, customer reviews)
• Crisis management (blog, video, social network, virtual world)
• Customer conversation (blog, social network, private community, virtual world)
• Generate website traffic (blog, video, customer reviews)

Many more examples will be explored in my forthcoming book, Secrets of Social Media Marketing. It will be available this fall and you can pre-order it on Amazon right now. I also recommend reading Groundswell, the new book by Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff of Forrester Research. It has some excellent advice on how to take a disciplined approach to social media selection.

Note that blogs appear next to every bullet point listed above. That doesn’t mean blogs are a panacea. They are the easiest form of social media to implement, but far greater leverage may derive from more complex tools like customer communities. You should choose media based upon your budget, staff resources and commitment. It’s often best to start small and grow your social media footprint as you become more fluent with the tools. Blogs are a good starting point, but you may need stronger medicine after a while.

Keep in mind the importance of balancing between ease of use, simplicity of deployment and functionality. Many social media tools can be used for multiple purposes. You may be better off starting with a tool that you understand well rather than deploying a somewhat richer solution that carries a steep learning curve.

If you keep the tools secondary and work outward from the business goal, you’re far more likely to reap the rewards of your efforts.

Labels: blogging, social_media, social_media_tools

  ¶ 7:41 AM 1 Comments

  Daily Reading 06/17/2008

• 100 Personal Branding Tactics Using Social Media | chrisbrogan.com

  A very useful list of tactics you can use to brand yourself (and feed your ego!) using social media tools.

  tags: daily_reading

  ¶ 8:30 AM 0 Comments

  Daily Reading 06/06/2008

• IDS says Web advertising to 'defy' economic crisis

  Internet advertising will grow about eight times as fast as advertising at large between 2008 and 2012, according to IDC, doubling revenue to over $51 billion. The slow economy will only accelerate the move of advertising dollars online, with video leading the growth. Video advertising expected to grow almost 50% annually through 2012, reaching $3.8 billion.

  tags: daily_reading, advertising, research

  ¶ 8:30 AM 1 Comments

  Daily Reading 06/01/2008

• Social Media and E-Mail Spending to Rise

  Quoting:
  "More than three-quarters of marketers surveyed said they will increase their social media spending during the next three years, according to Eloqua's "State of the Marketer" report. A full 74% said they plan to increase their direct e-mail spending while about two-thirds will spend more on mobile texting and SMS.
  
  "Respondents were bullish on online ad spending overall, with nine out of 10 saying they would continue to increase their direct online ad budgets. The spending increases are likely to come at the expense of print ads, since 55% of respondents said they will probably decrease print ad spending in the next three years."

  tags: daily_reading, social_media_research, advertising

• Worried About Bloggers Dissing Your Company? Read This

  Marketers fret constantly about the risk of negativity in the blogosphere. Read this uplifting story of how one entrepreneur engaged with a critical blogger and turned her into a valuable alley.

  tags: daily_reading, blog_attack, blog_culture

• 'Personality Not Included': A Podcast with Rohit Bhargava

  In this podcast, Paul Dunay interviews Rohit Bhargava, whose book Personality not Included is about how to regain a brand personality.

  tags: daily_reading, marketing

• Carl's Jr., Hardee's Intros Avatar, Social Net Campaign

  Carl's Jr. and Hardee's restaurants will turn their social networking pages into virtual outposts. Myspace members will be able to download a branded application and create custom avatars that live in the virtual outlets or a burger-themed living room complete with mechanical bull.

  tags: daily_reading, virtual_worlds, viral_marketing

• Google CEO Eric Schmidt admits Web 2.0 advertising is small opportunity

  In an interview with a German newspaper, Google CEO Eric Schmidt admits that the company has not yet figured out a way to monetize Web 2.0 as an advertising vehicle and may never do so. Quoting:
  
  "MySpace did not monetize as well as we thought. We have a lot of traffic, a lot of page views, but it is harder than we thought to get our ad network to work with social networks. When you are in social network, it is not likely that you´ll buy a washing machine. It is not a long term problem but it is taking us longer than we thought. We are trying new ways, new approaches all the time." (via Media Post).

  tags: daily_reading, advertising, social_networks

• Hydrox Redux: Cookie Duels Oreo, Again

  Spurred by more than 1,300 phone inquiries and an online petition Kellogg Co. is bringing back the Hydrox cookie, if only temporarily. The company had killed the Hydrox five years ago, ceding the market to competitor Oreo. However, some people missed the Hydrox, and their online agitating convinced Kellogg to give it a try. The revival is only temporary for now, although Kellogg left the door open to a permanent reintroduction if demand is there. (via WOMMA blog).

  tags: daily_reading, viral_marketing

• For Coors Light, a Night Out That Begins on MySpace

  Coors has a new campaign called “Code blue” that's built on the new feature of Coors Light beer bottles that turns the color of the mountains pictured on the labels from white to blue when the beer gets cold enough to drink. Facebook users will soon be able to send friends “Code blue” alerts inviting them to meet up for a beer. They can even set a meeting point using Facebook maps. (via WOMMA blog).

  tags: daily_reading, facebook

• Branding In An Age Of Authenticity

  Dave Morgan says marketers are too focused on using social media as an advertising opportunity and disregarding the impact that blogs and social networks have on brand image. Today, almost nothing is secret, which means that efforts to deceive customers almost always backfire. In addition, a host of competitors are lurking out there, waiting to jump on every bad customer experience and make it into a public indictment of your company. In the new world, businesses need to focus on delivering outstanding experiences to all their customers.

  tags: daily_reading, marketing

  ¶ 8:30 AM 0 Comments