17 posts tagged “facebook”
Nate Cochrane pens his rules for social media etiquette on iTNews. And in a style true to the very fundamentals of social media which encourage active sharing and participation, he has made a point to list the rules he outlines as a work in progress and has opened it up for discussion on the site.
One of the rules that he points out is one that we tend to forget: ‘Quality NOT quantity’. Too often PRs get flack for doing a last minute dash to sign up as many people in their network to become friends/ fans on their clients’ Facebook groups and pages or on their Twitter handles.
As PRs, we need to continue to educate our clients that the real value does not lie in the sheer volume of people we sign up but rather in the quality of the people we engage (even if it’s only a handful!).
Consider who your target audience is, where do they frequent and how to reach them. Who is in your fans/ friends extended networks. Are they the right audience to target?
Using Twitter as an example, it’s important to do the analysis and drill down into who the person is that you want to connect with, get to know them, follow them for a while and find out what they write about. Also have a look into who follows that person, are they the appropriate person for your client to be reaching out to or is there someone in their Twitter network that is better?
The following tool can help you determine the most appropriate people to follow:
http://flowingdata.com/2008/03/12/17-ways-to-visualize-the-twitter-universe/
If we want to get some real and long lasting results for our clients, the key is to make sure that we’re speaking to the right audiences!
Ouch! Electronics company Belkin has received a huge lashing as a company employee gets caught out for offering to pay for positive product reviews online. This news has spread like wildfire on blogs and news sites since being exclusively uncovered on The Daily Background.
It was revealed that a 'Mike Bayard' submitted a request on Amazon for Belkin products to be favourably reviewed. I have pointed out some of the specifications around his request below:
- Always give a 100% rating (as high as possible)
- Write as if you own the product and are using it
- Mark any other negative reviews as "not helpful" once your post yours
It was then discovered that Mike Bayard is none other than Michael Bayard, Business Development Representative at Belkin!
I would be astonished if Michael Bayard did not anticipate getting caught out. This act seems too far-fetched to even believe. If it is true, as a company, Belkin is about to go through serious damage control. Although i'd almost be inclined to believe that this is some sort of crazy, whacky publicity stunt to generate news when there is no company news. :)
Surely he would have ATLEAST considered changing his name :) tut tut - especially given the pervasiveness that is the Internet. It would never take long to get called out - a look on the Belkin website, professional networking site - LinkedIN, Facebook etc... If your name is on a press release, on a website somewhere, on a document that has been uploaded to the World Wide Web, you will be found!
This example just reiterates the importance of transparency and accountability today. The very nature of the online medium is about networking, community building and trust. When one does something to break the trust there is very little that can be done to salvage it. This is a word of caution.
I'd love to hear your thoughts on this.
I’m curious to explore whether it is possible that social media and new technologies can be directly linked to today’s growing emo culture. Before I get into this, let’s first take a look at the latest statistics from eMarketer regarding teens and their online consumption.
Although these statistics are based on research with U.S teens, I am highly inclined to say it’s indicative of what we are seeing in this part of the world.
- 19% of active Internet users in July this year (32.4 million people) were under 18
- 82% of US teens (12-17 years old) will use Internet monthly next year
- Nearly 2/3 of all teens have a mobile phone
- They navigate between different options for communication (text messaging, IM, social networking, email) – and expect the transition between these options to be seamless
- Teens DO NOT care about nor distinguish between ‘online’, ‘offline’ and ‘mobile’ communications – it’s purely about ‘COMMUNICATION’
- The tools they use to interact with one another are less important than how simple the actual interaction is, how seamlessly they can move across devices and how engaging the actual experience is
These teens don’t care about the mobile devices they use nor do they consider how it is made possible that they can jump online from anywhere. They are only actively thinking about the conversations they are having with their friends online – I can chat with my friends via IM, email, we can connect on Facebook and MySpace, we can text message, we can even catch up in cool virtual worlds. Today’s 'digital natives' expect to be able to communicate online from anywhere and at anytime.
I have plenty of questions. Will there be dire implications with the fact that teens make no distinction between ‘online’ and ‘offline’ communication? Is social media creating the Great Social Divide? Is this audience highly sociable online but less attentive in real life? Will we see a growing number of social media junkies turn real life recluse?
As Jack Sargeant put it in The Australian last year: “Youth subcultures emerge, vanish and mutate continually. Often this happens beneath the radar of the news media and is of interest only to the adherents of the trend and perhaps their peers. When these subcultures do enter the spotlight it is almost invariably because of a perceived crisis; traditionally, narcotic and sexual abandon, crime and suicide.”
This is indicative of what we have seen with the rise of the emo on the likes of MySpace. Is social media responsible for the emo-generation? I had never even heard of the term ‘emo’ until social networking site, MySpace, was launched.
Last year, two girls committed a double suicide. Unfortunately, this is a tragedy that could have been avoided. A message was even posted on their MySpace profiles - "RIP Jodie and Steph" - a day before the girls went missing.
Are teens breeding unhealthy habits online? When I was a kid, my parents told me to play outside and get some sunshine. There’s something to be said about the amount of time teens spend online today.
Really interested to hear your thoughts? Is social media playing a part in the growing emo subculture? Should we be monitoring the online activities and rituals of those that are under 18? Penny for your thoughts!
Hopefully I have not fallen too far behind with the latest and greatest tools and developments occuring online during my holiday leave over the past two weeks.
Things that hit my inbox in my absence: more work colleagues are now on Twitter, more random people are following me on Twitter, I received more random friend requests on Facebook, more invites to sign up to obscure social networkings sites which I instantly deleted (as it is, there are too many to keep up with), junk mail filled my inbox along with plenty of client emails requesting actions and so forth. The usual really!
To get back in to the swing of things with my blog I wanted to share something that I stumbled across. An exciting new feature that tracks the success of YouTube videos has launched. The tool for YouTube Insight is called 'Hot Spots'.
Hot Spots is basically a feature that plays your video next to a graph that allows you to track your viewership at different stages of the video. As Google Blog describes, "We determine "hot" and "cold" spots by comparing your video's abandonment rate at that moment to other videos on YouTube of the same length, incorporating data about rewinds and fast-forwards."
The cool thing is that you can see how people are actually reacting to your videos. Previously, we have been tracking the success of videos on aggregator sites such as YouTube via the number of views or favourites each video has. This tool now allows you to also track what parts of a video that viewers like and which parts they don't based on the peaks and troughs that are represented in the graph.
Check it out!
I've been curious to get a better understanding of companies in Australia that are using social media in some way, shape or form as part of an overarching business strategy. I'm not really seeing too many brands using consistent and long-term social media as a vehicle for communication with their audiences.
This is not to say that there aren't companies operating in this space. However, I am finding that companies in Oz are mainly using social or new media in short-term campaigns to meet short-term objectives. For example, there are companies using social networking sites such as Facebook or MySpace to launch products or make announcements. What we need to keep in mind here is that once we create a network such as this, it really needs to be maintained. You need to be in it for the long haul.
This thinking sparked after a conversation I had with a journalist earlier this week. I think [and emphasis on 'think'] we both came to the conclusion that there is more that we can be doing in this space in Australia. We need to see more companies here using long-term social media activities such as corporate blogging for long-term gain.
Social media can be a successful tool when it is used as a long-term vehicle. Most importantly, it lets you listen to what conversations are happening online around your brand. Once you have a listening strategy in place it provides you with an opportunity to build relationships with those influencers that are having those conversations - and finally, it provides you with the platform to directly engage with them.
And in the wise words of The Cluetrain Manifesto - "markets are conversations". Today is about building and maintaining relationships with your audiences and the best method to do this is by engaging in direct and ongoing conversations with them.
An excellent example is Telstra's nowwearetalking. The site is a platform for open and direct dialogue between Telstra and its audiences. It lets the public have its say and voice any concerns on issues affecting Australians and the telecommunications industry. This site is a long-term tool that has been implemented to increase Telstra's transparency, ultimately enhancing its public perception, reputability and credibility in Australia.
The other great aspect of this site that seems to be working in Telstra's favour is that it provides a vehicle for Telstra to tell its own stories and announce its own news first. Thanks to this site, Telstra is able bypass the gatekeepers and rather than relying on the media to communicate the news, Telstra is able to do this itself. In fact I think Australian journalists' even regularly frequent the nowwearetalking site to collect research for their own stories.
I also recently read about what Nestle is doing with social media in Australia. Nestle will be solely relying on social media advertising to launch a new character for the Kit Kat Chunky. According to Lara Sinclair, "Nestle confectionary will not use any traditional media to promote the brand."
The reason for this - social and new media allows you generate fast word of mouth and peer-to-peer recommendation. Furthermore, it allows you to act local and reach global! And as we know, statistics these days tend to be tipping in favour of peer-to-peer recommendations as trust in traditional advertising and corporations is on the decline.
I'll be tuned in to this space. If you have any case studies that you can share with me of Aussie companies using social media for long-term benefits - please let me know. Also - are there any tangible results that you can share? Examples of companies that have used social media and it has positively impacted on the bottom line?
So I've been toying around with Twitter a lot more these days. So much so, I have been abandoning my blog. I think more and more we will start to see the quality of blog posts decline with the emergence of microblogging - thanks to Web 2.0 tools such as Twitter. Twitter gives you the option to update your network/ neighbourhood on what you are doing in a mere 140 characters.
The instantaneous nature of this means that you can easily update those that are following you on what you are up to and track what others are up to as well. I was originally critical of Twitter but I am starting to find it more useful in a professional work sense. In fact, in my perception it is taking over Facebook as one of the most valuable social networking sites.
The interesting thing here for me is that you can apply it to every day work. My Twitter neighbourhood, albeit small, is a circle of PR people and journalists. The aim = to expand my small neighbourhood! Anyway, I digress...
Although many of the posts that we upload don't necessarily provide too much insight - I find out when people need to go to the bathroom, what they had for breakfast and when they are on the train but on several occasions it can really useful. You can pick up a lead on a story that a journalist is working on, what topics he/ she covers, when he/ she is going overseas, find out what they think of products they are reviewing and reporting on, what topics light a fire under them and so forth. It's a great way to keep your finger on the pulse and stay in contact. Now that I think about it more, I would actually compare this to LinkedIn - it seems to be quite valuable as a professional networking tool.
I'd be surprised if blog subscriptions weren't in decline due to the rise in Twitter feeds. This has strong implications for mobiles as well. These days, new and emerging technologies are mirroring the lifestyle trends of today's consumers'. As people want to access to real-time information from friends, access to news, entertainment, and be able to communicate from anywhere at anytime - we are finding that today's technologies such as mobile phones and web 2.0 tools such as Twitter are accommodating these needs.
Feel free to pipe up if you have some answers because I haven't done all my homework in this area. Are we seeing a trend now - as people become more time poor are we seeing blog posts getting shorter? Rather than well-researched, quality blog posts - are these increasingly becoming short excerpts and randon bursts of one's thoughts?
I'd love to hear your thoughts on this...
Are social networks such as Facebook and MySpace over-valued today? The price tags we put on them are steep in my opinion - in the billions of dollars! Although, are these sites and other online communities just a fad that will be replaced by the next big 'It' technology shortly down the line, or will they all see a long and prosperous future?
MySpace was a huge success in its early days and managed to stay on top for a good while. However, many people today consider that MySpace, as a brand, has lost its champion title to Facebook.
I slightly digress from my original thoughts but want to put this perception to the test and undergo a couple of benchmarking tests.
Step One - The Site Traffic Test
I got some interesting results whilst conducting a traffic rank comparison between Facebook and MySpace on traffic ranking site, Alexa. For your reference, all the following figures are based on a snapshot of a three month average.
MySpace receives a traffic rank of 6 [this traffic rank is based on a combined measure of page views and users (reach)]. The number of unique pages viewed per user per day on MySpace is 34.52.
Facebook comes in just behind MySpace with a traffic rank of 7. The number of unique pages viewed per user per day on Facebook is 21.26.
The graph above, however, shows us that the traffic rank of MySpace has dipped over the past two months. Over this same two month period, Facebook has grown considerably.
To be completely honest, i'm a little surprised with these figures. I definitely thought that Facebook would have had a bigger lead on MySpace.
Step Two - The Member Test
This next step isn't really a fair test but I thought I would throw it in to add a new dimension into the mix.
An interesting sociology study was posted on Mashable about one year ago now addressing the difference between Facebook and MySpace users. According to the study 'jocks', 'athletes' and 'goodie two shoes' are the types that frequent Facebook whereas MySpace is the hang out for the 'alternative' crowd, 'punks', 'emos' and other kids who didn't play into the dominant high school popularity paradigm!
Based on the vast differences between the member bases of these sites, I am starting to feel a little guilty for comparing the two. Apples with oranges? :)
After completely digressing from my first questions in this post, I want to go back to my original question on the longevity of these online sites. And are we or are we not over-valuing them?
LinkedIn recently valued itself at $1 billion. Similarly, according to Computerworld, Facebook received a market valuation of around US$15 billion after Microsoft bought 1.6% of the site for US$240 million last year. Other networking sites have had valuations between US$200 million and US$560 million, based on transactions from this year. In the same vain, Facebook received a market valuation of approximately "...US$15 billion after Microsoft bought 1.6% of the site for US$240 million last year..."
I'll leave this one with you to ponder on. Will this bubble burst?
I read an interesting post on Marketing Pilgrim today about how clients are wanting advertising agencies to be able to provide non traditional methods of advertising in order to reach customers. This requirement is an obvious one.
In the past 12 months alone, we have seen a huge shift online with online video and social networking sites, and more consumers are frequenting these types of sites (example, Facebook, MySpace, YouTube, Go Fish, Revver etc...). It is therefore understandable that marketers want their advertising agencies to focus in this space and on traditional advertising such as print, radio and televisions advertising.
Online advertising is typically cheaper than the cost of traditional advertising and methods for evaluation and measurement of internet advertising campaigns is easier thanks to today's tools that measure eyeballs, daily reach, traffic reach and so forth. It is also the home to social networking sites, forums and discussion rooms where we are today about to conduct and gather research about our clients target markets.
But just like all comms campaigns, an integrated approach is needed in order to ensure effectiveness and an increased likelihood of campaign success. For example, a PR campaign today for a client should naturally have both offline (traditional PR) and online strategies and go hand in hand. Without this online element, we are shutting out a global pool of potential customers. We need to make sure that we are present wherever consumers are, and more than ever, the statistics are pointing to them being online.
A moron of a teenage high school student from Penn State decided to dress up as a Virginia Tech shooting victim this Halloween. The costumes reflected the tragic event.
As you can imagine, the photos sparked total outrage and controversy. Much of the outrage has spread like wildfire online. Firstly, images were posted to Facebook and then a video on YouTube. Check out the video below:
As for the student's response:
“I personally don’t care if it hurt other people’s feelings…if I wanted to hurt people, trust me, I could come up with the greatest campaign to hurt everyone. I would photograph myself as a Virginia Tech student and write I Hate Virginia Tech on my shirt and Kill Them All and send photos to everyone in the school.”
A Facebook group has been created criticising the boy's offensive behavour and he has become a villain overnight.
The real-time nature of online means that a local issue can easily become international news instantaneously. A small scale prank won't necessarily remain just that these days, as was the case with this not so clever teenager.
As usual, would love to hear what you think about this clown?
Steve Rubel raise a very interesting point in his latest blog post, which basically concludes that the portals such as Google, AOL, Yahoo and so forth will win the social netoworking battle. The winners. The losers. Who will reap the benefits/ money? I find this particularly interesting and would have to agree with Rubel's portal argument - it's based on sound judgement given the trends we have seen in this space over the past couple of years.
We are currently being bombarded with all things 'social media' and more and more social networking sites are launching each day. You have online networking groups for cats, dogs, the elite, movie lovers, music lovers, wine appreciaters and the list goes on. Some hit a lucky streak and experience huge spikes in popularity and others are only given 15 seconds of stardom.
How many people were obsessed with MySpace when it first launched but then ditched it when the cooler, more user-friendly Facebook launched? This is just one exaple of what we are seeing and what is to come. I'll allude the social networking war to that of a loan so each and every one of you understand it. Social networking sites such as the ones I have mentioned are the variable interests in this battle and the portals are the fixed interests. It is in fact the portals, that Rubel describes as owning the 'glue', that holds these networks together. We may not necessarily be loyal to only one social networking site, and there are certainly a few of us that are not monogamous, but the fixed interest is the portal/ the tools that will always allow you to manage/share/distribute content no matter where your interests are. This includes web-based email, RSS, IM and mobile tools. We are using these daily to communicate more effectively with one another on social networking sites of our preference. This remains our true constant.
There are likely to be more applications such as these that supercede or enhance the current qualities of even tools like IM and email - and each and everyone of us are generating income for these portals in our daily romps with these social sites. These interactions equite to $$$.
Rubel sums it up nicely, so i'll leave you with this: "...more social networking translates into more bacn, emails and IMs from contacts you want to follow, RSS feeds, voicemails, etc. This cascades into more ad clicks, searches and banner/rich media ad views. The result? Free money for the portals..."
Just another side of the coin folks! Feel free to add your 2 cents.
