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May 27, 2009
The Post-Processing Technique
By Lyndsay Hoban
Groundswell author Josh Bernoff gave the keynote speech at the IAB Marketplace: Social Media last Monday, emphasizing the need to look at social media as a long-term trend.
Bernoff outlined the Groundswell P-O-S-T process (People, Objectives, Strategy, Technology) and highlighted successful examples of P-O-S-T in practice, including Tampax’s BeingGirl community and Hershey’s use of Houseparty.com for the launch of the Bliss line of chocolates.
He concluded his address with a focus on measurement, stating that successful use of social media must have meaningful metrics and clear objectives. “When it comes to social media, people really need to hear this,” he said.
Read his measuring sticks and the full article here.
Posted by staff at 01:42 PM
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May 25, 2009
Name Squatting
Did someone take your client’s Twitter name? Perhaps these WSJ tips can help straighten things out.
Posted by staff at 02:25 PM
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Cyberlife After Death
By Eden Litt
It’s a morbid topic, but an important one nonetheless. Given the boom in social media in recent years, think about all the accounts you’ve established: Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, LinkedIn, Flickr, eBay and so on. What happens to your digital life after you die?
Companies have already started projects to address this quandary, from virtual graveyards and memorial pages to cyber lockers used to store digital assets. CNN investigates several posthumous Web 2.0 services here.
Posted by staff at 02:21 PM
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May 21, 2009
Got Questions?
By Don Martelli
Ever wanted to know the population of Wales, Wisconsin? What plant family a pea is from? How many single-spaced pages 35,000 words in Finnish equate to? How about the heart disease risk of 50-year-old men?
Ask no more, Wolfram|Alpha is here (from the Web site):
Wolfram|Alpha’s long-term goal is to make all systematic knowledge immediately computable and accessible to everyone. We aim to collect and curate all objective data; implement every known model, method, and algorithm; and make it possible to compute whatever can be computed about anything. Our goal is to build on the achievements of science and other systematizations of knowledge to provide a single source that can be relied on by everyone for definitive answers to factual queries.
Wolfram|Alpha is a computational knowledge engine (read: not Google) that provides answers with real supporting data and facts. On the surface it sounds like a great concept, but the jury is still out on its use and whether or not it is a true Google (or Wikipedia for that matter) competitor.
One simple thing Wolfram|Alpha can help our teams with is answering those pesky (yet extremely important) metric questions. For example, what is the daily visitor total of Mashable.com? What about the circulation of Readers Digest vs. People Magazine?
Wolfram|Alpha is a good example of technological innovation colliding with discovery. It will be interesting to see how this service evolves and whether it will compete with (or as act as a supplement to) Google and Wikipedia as key information sources.
Posted by staff at 01:12 PM
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May 19, 2009
How Celebs Do Facebook
Mashable has put together “5 Lessons Celebrities Can Teach Us About Facebook Pages.” From Vin Diesel to Lenny Kravitz, Britney Spears to Michael Phelps, check out their Facebook tips here.
Posted by staff at 04:33 PM
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May 16, 2009
iPhone’s Appealing, Inexpensive Apps Driving Mobile Ad Growth
By Marian Short
Mobile ad spending could nearly double this year to $200 million, due largely to the iPhone’s runaway success, according to The Wall Street Journal.
Companies are keen to access the iPhone’s desirable owner base: young, well paid, highly engaged with mobile tech and currently over 20 million strong. While numerous advertisers offer streaming video ads to smart phones, an increasing number are creating—or redesigning—downloadable apps to lure in a demographic that is minimally responsive to TV advertising. Not only do iPhone apps tend to be cheap, they also capture higher levels of engagement. For example, a recent and successful hamburger app for California-based CKE Restaurants Inc. cost $12,000, while a Burger King app launched for Valentine’s Day was downloaded by 14 percent of its mobile audience. Compare those with a less-than-one-percent interaction rate for online banner ads.
For more details you can read the full article from the Wall Street Journal (subscription required).
Fast Company’s blog also posted on the WSJ article and pointed out that companies have yet to really incorporate other iPhone. Medialets, however, has become the first company to roll out a “shakeable” ad for its Levi’s Dockers campaign, which takes advantage of the motion sensor.
Posted by staff at 04:26 PM
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May 14, 2009
Ever Wonder What Your Mom is Doing Online?
By Nicole Burguess
A recent study by the Marketing to Moms Coalition identified the top activities for moms online by surveying 1,033 English-speaking moms.
It’s no surprise that e-mail is a very popular activity for moms online, even topping out TV as the most popular media habit in two of the three age groups. When it comes to spreading the word via e-mail, moms are most likely to share jokes and information about upcoming events. They also frequently share news clips and inspirational phrases. However, they are somewhat less likely to share videos and images. Young moms frequently share blog posts, whereas moms in the 25-44 and 45+ age ranges do not.
Overall, moms spend an average of three hours online each day. Aside from checking/sending e-mail, the other top online activities for moms include:
* Online banking
* Reading news
* Checking weather
* Product research and price comparisons
* Gaming
* Shopping for children and for themselves
* Planning travel
* Researching healthcare information
Sixteen percent of moms surveyed use formal networks for blogging, but mom bloggers skew young overall, with 22 percent of moms aged 18-24 years old blogging.
Click here for the MarketingCharts.com recap of the mom survey, or download the report from Marketing to Moms Coalition.
Posted by staff at 05:19 PM
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May 13, 2009
Traditional Media’s Increasing Presence in the Digital Space
By Nichole Mrasek
There has been a surge in traditional media adapting to social media trends, and Mashable’s Woody Lewis shares his thoughts on the ‘5 Ways Traditional Media is Going Social.’
Topics include:
* Widget TV: Verizon FiOS customers will soon be able to connect set-top boxes to the Web. Verizon is building widgets that integrate Facebook and Twitter. Lewis writes, “These are base cases, where the viewer can send messages from her set-top box to her social network while she watches programs. Verizon will offer the SDK to third-party developers.”
* Pitch the Editor-in-Chief: BusinessWeek’s Editor-In-Chief John Byrne has taken to Twitter. You can submit “What’s Your News Story Idea,” a link on his profile, where pitches are reviewed by Bryne, and at least one pitch is assigned to a BusinessWeek journalist.
* Newspapers on YouTube: With the increasing decline in subscriptions, newspapers are turning to online efforts to help promote stories and features. Newspapers like The New York Times want to feature more special-interest stories.
* Bookstore Trailers: Publishers are featuring trailers for books on YouTube. Check out Random House author Annie Burrows talking about her novel, The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society.
* Literati as Twitterati: Publishing icon Harper Collins is experimenting in the social media landscape with a well-received HarperStudio presence on Twitter.
Read more from the Mashable feature.
Posted by staff at 10:03 AM
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May 08, 2009
McSmart Wedding Site from ‘Grey’s Anatomy’
By Nichole Mrasek
ABC has given fans a new way to celebrate the on-screen romance of Meredith Grey and Derek Shepherd. In case you aren’t a fan of the show, Grey and Shepherd are main characters on the drama, and after years of viewers waiting for them to get serious, they are getting married. To promote their engagement, the show has created a wedding site for the couple via The Knot.
They aren’t registered at Macy’s for the gift registry; instead fans can donate to charities.
Boston.com reported: “A website with details about their nuptials and an invitation to RSVP for the event drew some 1,400 replies in the first 24 hours. "We love to create other experiences that relate to the show and that don’t break the fourth wall," (Benson executive vice president of marketing for ABC Entertainment) said. Within the first day, without promotion, the page had more than 42,000 unique views.”
More from Boston.com on the Grey’s wedding site.
Posted by staff at 05:27 PM
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May 07, 2009
$ocial Network$
Has Microsoft uncovered a way to monetize social networks? Just maybe. CNN Money’s got the details here.
Posted by staff at 05:25 PM
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May 06, 2009
This Could Be Your Big Cyber Break
By Eden Litt
A few years ago, Justin Kan attached a webcam to his hat, recorded his every move and then streamed it live to a Web site. The site, Justin.tv is now one of the largest online networks for users to broadcast and watch live videos.
Looking for your big break? Chris Pirillo, self-proclaimed geek and president of blogging network LockerGnome.com, offers tips to starting your own live stream on CNN.com/technology.
Posted by staff at 04:56 PM
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May 05, 2009
Note to Facebook: Don’t Be Distracted by Twitter Envy
By Marian Short
A recent ReadWriteWeb post accusing Facebook of having “Twitter envy” said: “Facebook blew past MySpace and managed to keep Google at bay. It firmly won the race for the social web. But now it has begun a brand new race, this one against Twitter.” RWW cautioned Facebook from trying to adopt Twitteresque approaches, noting that: “Facebook at its core is about friends, not news.”
Posted by staff at 05:19 PM
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Twazzup Launches
By Alicia Dorset
Twazzup is the latest in Twitter search engine options. Launched last week, Twazzup tries to “tries to bridge the gap between Twitter’s real-time search and a more traditional search engine.” Twazzup reports on real-time Tweets in addition to the top Tweets of the day.
Other noteworthy features include assigning authority rankings to users and the ability to define search terms. There are a lot of search engines to choose from when it comes to Twitter, so Twazzup might be the next best bet.
Learn more about Twazzup here.
Posted by staff at 05:10 PM
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May 04, 2009
Mashable’s Weekly Events
Looking for the latest social media event to attend? Make sure you’re paying attention to Mashable’s “Weekly Social Media and Marketing Event Guide.” Check it out here.
Posted by staff at 05:22 PM
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MLB’s Foul Play with MLBtv Blog
By Nichole Mrasek
Major League Baseball is fielding some tough questions from the media and consumers after unexpectedly pulling their month-old MLBtv blog from MLB.com. The blog discussed MLB’s progress with a new online media player they were launching for MLB.tv.
An MLB.com spokesperson said the blog was to serve as a placeholder during the beta development of the online media player and that the blog was taken down because it became irrelevant when the live product was launched.
Now when you visit the MLBtv blog, you are automatically redirected to the MLB Support Forum.
MS&L Digital’s own Jud Branam weighed in on the topic in PRWeek: "When you start blogging as a company, you’ve got to set the rules of the road. If you don’t set any rules and you just start taking people’s issues, you’re implying that it is an ongoing conversation, where people can turn back to it. We live in long-term, online archive kind of environment."
The MLB is currently dealing with customers and visitors upset that the blog was pulled hastily, and complaints that the MLB.tv streaming video service features choppy audio and video. I would definitely call MLB’s attempt to drum-up publicity for a new service a downgrade.
Read the full PRWeek feature here.
Posted by staff at 05:02 PM
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May 01, 2009
Trouble Finding Work? Join the Blogger Workforce
According to an article in this morning’s Wall Street Journal, nearly 2 million Americans get paid for blogging. About 2 percent of all bloggers are making a living this way, some of them through advertising revenue and others paid directly for posts.
The article, America’s Newest Profession: Bloggers for Hire, details what its author calls “the fifth estate” – bloggers in all fields generating revenue for their opinions, and supplanting journalists on the way.
“It is hard to think of another job category that has grown so quickly and become such a force in society without having any tests, degrees, or regulation of virtually any kind. Courses on blogging are now cropping up, and we can’t be far away from the Columbia School of Bloggerism… Not since eBay opened its doors have so many been able to sit at their computer screens and make some money, or even make a whole living.”
Bloggers now outnumber firefighters, CEOs, computer programmers and even bartenders, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The majority of them are well-educated white males who report above-average incomes. Bloggers with 100,000 unique monthly visitors can generate $75,000 per year in income.
Read the full article for more details on the ups and downs of this burgeoning profession.
Posted by staff at 04:55 PM
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