What Sort of Social Media Services Should An Online Marketer Offer Clients?
Monday, March 03, 2008
Here are the services an online marketing company can (or should) offer clients:
- Blogging: Providing blog content, including content that has a "real" voice and is calculated to drive traffic/comments/interaction. Metrics to measure the effectiveness of this include # of comments, traffic, link-tos, and Technorati ratings.
- Blogger Outreach: This involves first creating contact lists carefully targeted to the client in question – and having the ability to identify the influential bloggers within a particular niche. Then the bloggers are contacted regarding the client story in question. This is similar to traditional PR, but involves a far more personal hand, and the ability to network and create relationships online. Traditional press releases do not work in this outreach – they must be short, friendly letters. Metrics for this include hits and link-backs to your site.
- Forum Outreach: Similar to blogger outreach. Part of this is identifying in advance what forums might be useful to the client and developing a relationship with them BEFORE making the "pitch" on the site (or else you are labeled a spammer).
- Social Networking Sites: The creating/maintenance of MySpace and/or Facebook accounts for the client, including the creation of Groups, Friending, sending out bulletins, etc. In addition to Facebook & MySpace there are many other social networking sites to focus on, both broad-based (like Bebo) or specialized (depending on client’s needs). Part of offering this service is the ability to tell clients what specific sites will be best for them demographically, and keeping up with trends. Metrics for this would be page hits, increase of hits on referenced URL, number of "friends" and comments.
- Podcast & YouTube: Some clients will be particularly suited for these forms of viral marketing. Marketers should offer very basic services in making simple podcasts & videos with the goal of going "viral" within the social networks. There is also a social networking component to these podcast and YouTube communities that have to be maintained and "worked." Metrics for this would be hits, # of downloads, link-tos from other sites, and increase of hits on referenced URL.
- Social Bookmarking: Interfacing between client blogger and bookmarker to shape content most likely to be bookmarked. Metrics include # of "Diggs" or "stumbles" a bookmarked story gets, and corresponding hit spike on referenced URL.
Within all of this is the need to provide the client a list of metrics to demonstrate that the social networking is creating a result. Companies are more likely, even in the case of budget cuts to their overall online marketing plan, to keep a budget for social networking because it is relatively inexpensive – but because the technology is so new, they want to see tangible results. It will be necessary, then, for a shop to create their own methodology and protocol for collecting data for metrics and presenting them in a convenient and comprehensive manner for the client.Labels: blogger, buzz, Facebook, Myspace, new media, social media, social networking, Stumbleupon, video, Web 2.0, Youtube
posted by Valerie D'Orazio
0 comments
Social Networking & Decision ’08 Take 2
Friday, November 30, 2007
This week, the Republican version of the YouTube debate aired on CNN. Compared to the Democratic debate, which aired several months ago, the conservative bunch did seem a bit more uncomfortable, which made it all the more interesting to watch.
If you recall, when the Democratic debate aired, there were rumors that the Republicans would not participate. I believe Mitt Romney said explicitly that he did not want to disgrace the sacredness that is political debate by allowing YouTube to lead it. Looks like technology won this round, and it is in the running for the next.
On Monday, news of Facebook and ABC’s partnership emerged, signaling another revolutionary step in our approach to elections and garnering news. ABC developed an application for Facebook called “US Politics,” which users can add to their profile. The application presents news on the election, and allows Facebookers to voice their opinions on certain topics, participate in polls and, most importantly, communicate directly with reporters!
How? The ABC reporters, whose articles are fed through the application, have Facebook profiles. As a Facebook user, you are invited to send them private questions and comments on their articles. Within this exchange, you can feel free to pose questions and issues that they can then raise with the candidates or investigate on their own.
Sure. This may not seem so profound to us, as in our profession, we engage the media on a regular basis. But the rest of the public does not. Actually, it is not far fetched to say that the majority of people are not even aware of how news comes about. Think about it…. How often have you been asked something as nonsensical as, “Can’t you just write a story and get it published?”
And while the ABC/Facebook partnership will be focusing on the presidential race, its success will determine how reporters interact with the general public in the future. Pretty soon, we might all find ourselves in the driver’s seat.Labels: media, new media, politics, Public Relations, Web 2.0, Youtube
posted by Gina Bolotinsky
0 comments
Web 2.0 in Full Bloom
Friday, July 27, 2007
This past Monday, history was made as CNN hosted the first ever presidential debate with questions posed by ordinary people via YouTube. The consensus on the debate's success was unanimous, leaving YouTubers along with the rest of us marveling at the prospect of us, the people, finally having direct conversations with our leaders. Declan McCullagh of CNET reflected, The video questions posed in Monday's Democratic debate were more personal and more direct than the circumlocutions that political journalists tend to prefer, which I admit may not be a compliment to our profession. Don't worry, Declan. Journalists still have an important role, but now we also have a voice. The complaint that our current technology is grossly underused in the realm of communicating meaningfully with our government has been around for years. Some might even say that low voter turnout amongst the younger generations reflects this disconnect. How refreshing to see that steps are being taken to reconnect. As I write this, however, I find news that a GOP version of the debate, slated for Sept. 17th, might not happen as Republican candidates are feeling squeamish. "The presidency ought to be held at a higher level than having to answer questions from a snowman," said Rep. presidential candidate, Mitt Romney, referring to a question on global warming posed at the last debate by an animated snowman. I suppose this backlash is to be expected. Old habits die hard. But I am fairly confident that this is not the last debate of its kind. Web 2.0 is permeating into every crevice of our society, and this latest infiltration essentially cements the relevance of social networking. On another note, this Tuesday, the results of an analysis conducted by Neilson/NetRatings for the Newspaper Association of America came out indicating that online newspaper readership is up 7.7% from last year. So while print is on the decline, it seems that we still crave reliable news from familiar sources. When piecing together these two tidbits, we begin to foresee what lies ahead. Social networking creates new communication channels through which new influencers emerge. Yet, news from established authoritative voices for the masses remains significant. Labels: new media, Web 2.0, Youtube
posted by Gina Bolotinsky
0 comments
YouTube Embedded Video Forces a Site Visit
Thursday, June 07, 2007
Something just changed at YouTube, and let me explain how significant it is. When you embed video using THEIR video embedding techniques, or if you use a Widget, then you're giving up a lot of control over your page, and perhaps even your entire site.
Just yesterday, I was explaining to a friend, and creator of ChangingThePresent.org how Widgets, the type that get embedded into Web pages, are incredibly powerful. No one would do it, but technically the person controlling the Widget (the publisher of the Widget) has the power to do anything they want with the entire page, including stealing data from other Widgets, or even blanking the whole page and replacing it with another.
It's with this coincidental timing of me just explaining this that YouTube decides to go and make its move. Now HitTail, like so many others was leaching off of YouTube's bandwidth to show our own demo. As of today, they started running Previous/Next arrows to step through (seemingly) related video. Also, they're showing a row of postage-stamp video icons that zoom up at you as you mouseover, much like the Macintosh launch pad.
Now I won't describe every nuance I noticed, but the system is rigged to make you end up on the YouTube site, where a little bit of banner advertising is being run. What YouTube has avoided was embedding advertisements INTO the videostream itself--something that could have resulted in users screaming bloody murder. As it turns out, YouTube has experimentally struck a delicate balance between "evil" behavior that pulls you back into their site to show advertising, and leaving the embedded videos intact in a way that the individual site publishers will not pull YouTube video off their sites. The new features arguably enhance the embedded video experience.
One annoying nuance is that even if an embedded video is running, if you click the next arrows repeatedly, it will pop open a new window of the YouTube site, playing the same video. And what you have then is the same video playing twice in two different windows, with the double narration track and all--very disconcerting. But I'm sure YouTube will work out these problems.
They're finally making their move, and thankfully for all of us, it didn't involve embedding ads into the video stream. But still, it makes you wonder what's next.Labels: advertising, Google, video, Widgets, Youtube
posted by Mike Levin
0 comments
The Mixing of Old and New Media
Friday, May 11, 2007
This week the topic of new media infringing on the old was brought up at the 56th annual National Cable & Telecommunications Association conference. Reuters reported that executives from the industry “said talk of the demise of traditional media in the digital age was overblown.” Elaborating that television still has a firm place in the homes of media consumers and that the “new” technologies have actually resparked interest for some. This type of talk is to be expected from media moguls, and there is also truth in their claims. YouTube, for example, drove thousands to Saturday Night Live after million watched Justin Timberlake perform with Andy Samburg that hilarious Christmas song Andy wrote. Of course, such admitted claims beg the question of why Viacom would be suing YouTube if there is such potential to gain viewership. Regardless, Internet has yet to conquer the complete entertainment spectrum. After all, is there any substitute to sitting in front of the television and being amused so effortlessly? In my opinion, clicking around on the computer screen is not an equivalent… yet. However, what clearly is in peril is the news business. Because while I enjoy watching my favorite TV shows the old fashioned way, I prefer reading my news online. As PR people, we are keenly aware of this phenomenon. We have discussed it at length on this very blog. This week, I ran across another example of how print media can perhaps salvage itself by changing with the times. A new free Boston weekly print publication, BostonNow, has started printing commentary submitted by local bloggers to its website. Editor, John Wilpers, felt this unique inclusion would spike interest in the newspaper by adding a distinct community feel. In a CNET article, Wilpers explained, “It doesn't take a whole lot of smarts to look out at the Internet and see thousands writing on their communities, whether they be geographic or thematic." So why not include their thoughts in print? In this exchange, Wilpers also hopes to generate fans for the bloggers as the bloggers are not paid for their submissions. Instead, it’s a form of free advertising. And with a circulation of 85,000, it’s not a terrible waste of time on the blogger’s behalf. Another point worth noting is that the bloggers’ posts will be scanned by an editor so as to ensure similar standards that we have come to expect from news sources. This notion is certainly interesting and we will have to see whether others adopt the convergence of blogs into the print world in quite this same way. Perhaps this trend will spark interest with the older generation to be more blogger-friendly and for the younger generation to be more newspaper-friendly. For those of you who are wondering why anyone would even bother to create a new print publication, it is safe to say that print still has a pretty healthy pulse. As e-books are still in their infancy and Internet is inaccessible underground, for us urban commuters, print media is actually still very relevant. Labels: blog, new media, pr, Youtube
posted by Gina Bolotinsky
1 comments
Building Brands Online: The Power of the Internet
Friday, March 16, 2007
The Viacom lawsuit against Google's YouTube will perhaps bring us closer to identifying the influencing role the Internet plays in our lives today. With Viacom's main concern being that its clips are generating an obscene amount of advertising revenue for Google, it seems that Viacom is naively wondering: What is this "internet"? Surely, when the case begins to get under way, an examination into the benefits of these MTV, Comedy Central, and Nickelodeon clips (reported in the New York Times to be seen an estimated 1.5 billion times) will reveal that this exposure is actually increasing these channels' viewership. Furthermore, in a recent Online Media Daily article, Gavin O'Malley quotes Eileen Naughton, Google's New York regional sales director, commenting on YouTube's revenue. Naughton explains that "the ad effect has not even begun to be felt. There is no well-built-out [business] model for YouTube right now." Perhaps the real issue being put to the test here is the power of persuasion over the Internet. The media is only recently getting the message. USA Today revamping its website to allow users to comment on articles is a clear indication that this thing called the "internet" is forcing all forms of business to do an about face. So is Viacom just scared of change and is this lawsuit a last attempt to shoo this big bad Internet away? Maybe. But maybe this is Viacom's attempt to get a good deal out of Google. Their way of haggling, if you will. Because, even the Viacom executives, who might not scout YouTube on a regular basis, have to understand that having their material absent from YouTube will only reduce their viewership as our generation has entertainment options that extend far beyond MTV, Comedy Central, and Nickelodeon. Labels: Google, Internet, media, Viacom, Youtube
posted by Gina Bolotinsky
1 comments
Lawrence Lessig and Chris Anderson an NYPL
Friday, September 29, 2006
So yesterday I had an opportunity to sit and listen to Wired magazine editor, Chris Anderson, and Creative Commons founder, Lawrence Lessig, talk at the New York Public Library. It was the now very familiar long tail subject matter, and I was hoping to hear more about the brewing DRM culture war that Lawrence as the creator of Creative Commons, is at the center of. In fact, there's a DRM protest demonstration being held at the Apple store this weekend. But alas, it was mostly about the long tail.
It's the first time I heard Lawrence speak, and this blog post is mostly about his style. Chris' long tail ideas evolved around a PowerPoint demo and charts and graphs, as he readily states, and when Lawrence got up to run his demo, you could see the glowing Apple logo on the top of his PowerBook, which led into a decidedly non-PowerPoint demo, which I recognized from the text transitions as Apple Keynote software. So, the Wired publisher had the charts and graphs, and the lawyer had the lively humorous videos.
But by far the most noteworthy part of Lawrence's demo was how he slickly "framed" the rest of the discussion. The demo talked about the read-only culture (RO) of mass consumption, and the read-write (RW) culture of neo-creative's who remix popular culture into their own art. And the last slide was an entirely black screen with the words "RO vs RW" big and centered in a way that RO ended up over Chris' chair and RW ended up over Lawrences.' And it just sort of stayed there for the rest of the discussion.
It worked at a very subconscious level, and I was looking around to see if anyone else appreciated the irony. No one mentioned it throughout the rest of the talk, which lasted over an hour. The discussion could have gone in almost any direction, but you could just feel from the nature of the questions that the conversation was "framed" as the read-only long tail consuming culture of Amazon and iTunes users vs. the re-mixing, copyright violating consume-and-resume anti-commercial culture of YouTube.
They seemed to agree on many point, and searched out where their points of contention were in order to make the discussion most interesting. And while they varied on some small points, they agreed on most, like the future of microtransactions. They both felt it was generally community-poisoning bad thing, whereas I [gasp] agree with Jason Calcanis in that quality creativity and a time commitment should be able to be directly rewarded. In fact, I fell that "being creative" should be a viable alternative to state lotteries, able to turn the creators into overnight millionaires.
But aside from the actual subject-matter of the talk, the most interesting thing I came away with was the contrast between Lawrence and Chris, and the very slick presentation style Lawrence used to "frame" the discussion. It was evidence of the power of an emotive presentation style over figures and statistics.Labels: Amazon, blog, The Long Tail, Youtube
posted by Mike Levin
0 comments
Stumble Upon Channel Surfing
Tuesday, August 08, 2006
Recently, I've been able to add Stumble Upon to my Internet Explorer 7 beta. I think when I started using Stumble Upon, it was FireFox only, which was a major boon to FireFox, but probably quite a large detriment to Stumble Upon, for limiting its reach. But now that Stumble Upon is available for Explorer, I find that it plus Google Bookmarks is about the ultimate combo for channel-surfing and favoriting goodness.
The irony here is that with broadband access, the modern equivalent of channel surfing has become fun, fast, addictive and visual on the Web. And simultaneously, it has become slow, boring and totally text-based on TV. This is another case of mainstream media just not getting it. Where did channel surfing go?
I made a post about this awhile back on my personal blog, but this is more of a Connors media topic. I made the observation that the only people I've seen cognizant of this problem is ATi, which is now purchased by and part of AMD. The ATi HDTV Wonder card, which is essentially a $100 over-the-air HDTV tuner/PVR card, was going to scan all the HDTV channels and make a thumnail preview of what's on now available in their channel guide. This would have appealed to visual learners, as opposed to the classic TV Guide grid (interactive program guides), which frankly is more auditory in nature than visual. One may argue that text is a visual way of absorbing information, but for most, pictures are much more instantaneous, and text must often be sub-vocalized and funneled through the voice box or bronchial tubes--quite literally a bottleneck.
I mentioned in my previous post, the days of rapid-fire channel surfing ala Toy Story 2, where the pig is looking for the toy store commercial, passes it, and has to go around the dial again because it's faster. That perfectly epitomized the days of analog cable, and taps into a part of the human brain discussed in Malcolm Gladwell's book, Blink. Well, those days are over (for now), replaced by more cerebral channel guide, that makes you sit back and intellectually pursue what's on before making your choice. Any attempt to channel surf is met by really long, annoying time-delays that makes going around a 500-channel dial completely unrealistic. I could easily blink my way through 500 channels... if the technology (which is supposed to be following Moore's Law) could keep up.
So, it is ironic that Stumble Upon has come onto the scene, literally adding the channel surfing model to the Web--in an even purer sense than surfing links, because no thought is necessary. A thoughtless, click, click, click to see what's interesting has come to the Web, but it has been removed from digital television! How ironic. The TV broadcast industry just can't afford to let nails be so thoughtlessly driven into the coffin. They should be jealously defending the characteristics of old-school broadcast television that people loved.
Whose at fault? The MPAA for creating digital channel formats that are processor-intensive and only have full picture data every 10-or-so frames? The set-top box people, like Motorola and Scientific Atlanta who leave out circuitry for instant channel-changing (a THIRD tuner)? Is it the component manufactures that make the decoder chips used by the set-top boxes, such as Broadcom? Somewhere in this chain, engineers forgot that people like to channel surf, and by forgetting, thereby shifted away a major usability advantage that was previously held by traditional media, towards the new media competition.
I notice that YouTube is sensitive to this issue, and added a "Next" link in the lower-right of their video. Watch out, television media. Even YouTube is getting it. I guess the big saving grace is that Stumble Upon is still a well kept secret, and is not a default feature in Web browsers (yet). But for those who are not exposed to Stumble Upon, it's like taking the Yahoo Cool Site of the Day from ages ago, combining it with an inexhaustible set of cool pages, adding social aspects that make the coolest things come up most frequently, and taking away all navigation except for a browser button that says "Stumble!" Brilliant.Labels: Firefox, Google, Stumbleupon, Yahoo, Youtube
posted by Mike Levin
0 comments
PR Isn't Adapting, It's Leading
Sunday, July 02, 2006
Where does Public Relations' ability to embrace new technologies and business models come from, where traditional advertising channels are struggling to hold onto their piece of the global marketing budget pie? I think the ability to adapt and jump on unorthodox approaches to generating publicity is just part of the DNA of public relations. Let me explain.
The notion that a company can announce its own activities as newsworthy is in itself a radical and relatively new notion. It brings up church and state issues in journalism. None-the-less, there is no denying that the activities of companies impact society, current events, and even our personal wealth with how more people are invested in stocks. And where high-tech is concerned, it is all the more so, because it reflects upon the overall human condition. The constant flow of nanotube news comes to mind, and how we're inching ever-towards manufacturing on the molecular level. Pure science and industry have never been so closely coupled.
And it is this technology itself that is disrupting traditional media businesses. As data flows more freely, and distribution barriers fall, special interest channels rise, and reaching your audience becomes simultaneously cheaper and more challenging. It's cheaper, because your information is just bits that fly over the ether at virtually no cost. It's more challenging, because anyone can do this, and audiences are organizing and reorganizing themselves into ever-shifting ad hoc communities. Targeting them is more like programming an intelligent missile rather than aiming an arrow.
It is in this environment that public relations shines, and the "old formulas" of press releases and pitching transform into new formulas of blogging, email and social networking. The three big networks of ABC, CBS and NBC are forced to co-exist with countless cable networks, and now even user contributed content over sites like YouTube. Print has undergone similar fragmentation, and additionally has to compete with free RSS feeds that are readable now on the average mobile phone. There is no equivalent today of the ABC, CBC and NBC... well, almost no equivalent.
Search has elevated itself into a mainstream media, and today's giants are Yahoo, Google and MSN, constituting an eerily similar "big 3" resemblance to TV networks. In the runners up, you've even got the media mavens of QVC fame in Barry Diller of Interactive Corp and Ask, and Rupert Murdoch of Fox and MySpace. While you can't achieve similar saturation with a simple media buy as you could on the big TV networks 15 years ago, you can be sure that virtually your entire audience will be visiting Yahoo, Google or MSN some time soon. And you can "rig" the system to deliver your message at exactly the right moment... when... they... search!
It's like today's equivalent of the big-3 networks have an ultra-efficient method of delivering advertising, where you the advertiser never has to pay until the moment you know your intended audience is actually interested and predisposed to your message. And this form of media is competing for the same global marketing budget as TV and print. It is more like a redistribution of these fixed marketing dollars than it is growing or shrinking of advertising budgets. And public relations is uniquely suited to deal with these shifts.
While public relations does have a "formula" per se, involving press releases and pitching, it has always had a more versatile word-of-mouth and publicity aspect that revels in unorthodoxy. It is the unexpected or the extreme that can make a grab for the "free" editorial space that exists in all media. On TV, it's the equivalent of news spots and guest appearances. In print, it's usually the subject-matter of the main articles. And on the Internet, it is both the viral word-of-mouth thing, AND the "natural" results in search.
This is contrary to much of the message that the "inner circles" of the public relations industry are repeating these days. Much of the talk centers around how the traditional formula involving press releases is changing, or how blogging is such a powerful method of engaging in the public dialogue. While I wholeheartedly agree with these notions, I also think that they are missing the big picture by such a broad mark that I had to develop a product by way of responding.
And the HitTail product is Connors Communications way of throwing its hat into the ring. The field of public relations is not merely adapting to these media changes; it is leading. Public relations is not merely keeping itself relevant, it is educating the rest of the world on what it means to be relevant in the new media landscape. Public relations is not merely struggling to reproduce the big viral marketing wins of years past, it is creating brand new methods of virally disseminating a message.
Indeed, HitTailing is like solving simultaneous equations in a way that produces results already described by detractors as "too good to be true." It provides your corporate blogging strategy and your free search hit strategy in one master stroke. "Too good to be true" is quickly becoming the strongest argument among HitTailing naysayers. Think about that. The only things standing between us moving forward the entire state of Marketing are keeping pace with demand, and convincing users that "too good to be true" sometimes IS true.
This is an admirable accomplishment indeed, both for Connors Communications and the field of public relations as a whole. The very companies that stood by and watched as new businesses incubated from operations like Idealab are now able to become their own incubators, their own Angels, and their own Venture Capitalists. For Connors, it was the culmination of about two years of providing these services as a public relations value-add, realizing they had something that could only achieve its fullest potential if let lose in the Web 2.0 ecosystem, and so it has.
So, where multimillion dollar media buys can still allow you to achieve saturation of a sort on today's equivalent of the big-3 networks (PPC campaigns on Yahoo, Google and MSN), the equivalent of getting onto the Ed Sullivan Show or American Idol is HitTailing. It costs you nothing more than the work of putting yourself in the right place at the right time to be discovered, doing it by piecing together the minute clues left for you by your past website visitors.
This unorthodox thinking is something that has always been characteristic of the public relations industry. Sometimes it has taken the form of glitzy stunts that capture the news cameras. Other times, it takes the form of stunning acts of generosity and altruism by PR clients. Very often, it takes no form at all, merely being an invisible influence over what companies and stories are favorably covered. When PR is at its finest, you don't know it is there at all. And so it is that the free and practical alternative to paying for search hits was born in the offices of a New York PR firm, and is now suitable for use by every marketing department in every company in the world.Labels: blog, Connors Communications, Google, HitTail, HitTail Plus, MSN, Myspace, pr, Yahoo, Youtube
posted by Mike Levin
1 comments
 |
