Recently in Experiences Category
I was invited to keynote the Digital Book World Conference this week. Held in New York this conference was for book publishers large and small who are navigating the digital space.
I focused on social media and how social influence marketing is forcing these publishers is to rethink their value chain and their position as B2B companies. My hypothesis - they need to become B2C players as well.
Let me know what you think. The book publishing space is undergoing a sea changing (similar to the newspaper industry) and I feel my recommendations may help.
Here's my keynote presentation from the SeesmicLook product launch. I was invited to give the keynote at this launch event which had Microsoft and Advertising Age as its launch partners.
Social Influence Marketing Trends
The presentation got some coverage on Twitter and also on a few blogs including CenterNetworks (The Best Social Media Definition To-Date) and TechStartups (Shiv Singh Knocked It Out of the Park). Thank you for all the feedback both positive and negative (Apparently, I ended the presentation rather abruptly. Good to keep in mind for next time)
View more presentations from shivsingh.
I've got a few extra copies of my book Social Media Marketing for Dummies. Rather than give them to clients or friends, I've decided to give them away to you - but there's one condition. You have to donate the exact amount that the book costs ($16.49) to the Red Cross Haiti Relief and Development Fund. Send me your receipt and I'll send you a copy of the book. I can do this for the first five people to send me their receipts electronically. My email address is shivsingh at gmail.com. And if you've already donated, retweet this message and I'll enter you into a drawing for a free copy of the book. Photograph credit - The New York Times.
I was obviously barking up the wrong tree with social influence marketing. The future of marketing is all about Donut Marketing! More seriously speaking, there is no question that when crafting a web strategy you need to look at every dynamic online holistically - what's happening on your own website, off of it, with your owned, earned and paid media initiatives all harmoniously.
But what's often ignored is that you need to look at your audiences and customers holistically too - where are they, how many of them are viewing your ads, visiting your website, influencing each other and getting influenced and on what platforms. Strangely, that dimension is often left out of the equation. 
And I'd also argue that the age of the corporate website being the cornerstone "temple" of any digital strategy is passing. The website is simply not going to matter as much in the future unless of course the corporation evolves into a media company too - something that every company and every brand may need to. Don't ask me what this means for all the traditional publishers out there. Image courtesy Elliance Inc.
Yesterday Erik Qualman of Socialnomics fame included me in a ClickZ list of Social Media All-Stars. I joined Gary Vaynerchuk, Brian Solis, Mari Smith, Clay Shirky, Peter Shankman, David Meerman Scott, Jeremiah Owyang, Lee Odden and Dave Morin on the American League team. Thank you for including me in this great list. I'm also glad to be on the American League team considering that I'm a Red Sox fan. The National League would have been strange! Now of course there's no perfect list and there are other folks who could have just as easily made the list as me, but what I like about the people included is that they're all giving a lot back to the community and are furthering the discourse.
I love this print by Utagawa Hiroshige updated for our times and our social media context. Not surprisingly,of all those comments and tweets I can't help but wonder which have a higher influence score than others. Also, what about the wave that came before this one and the one that will follow next. And metaphorically speaking, does the boat represent a brand in today's world? Okay, maybe I'm over analyzing this one! Special thanks to Mickey Slater for pointing me to this.
OMMA Magazine discusses Social Influence Marketing and my new book in its latest issue. Here's an extract.
"Conversations about brands, products and services are increasingly woven into the interactions of social networks as a means to connect with others, and these conversations have great influence even though people aren't consciously asking about brand opinions," writes Singh.
"Furthermore, consumers do not always realize how much influencing they are doing, and how much they are being influenced, when they have conversations about brands across social platforms."
Social influence marketing is a subtle thing. It should be done with an especially light touch since it has become so influential. eMarketer found that for 18 to 34-year-olds, social media has become the second-most important marketing form, behind only recommendations from friends and family.
You can read the whole piece over at OMMA Magazine. Am I overselling Social Influence Marketing? I believe 2010 is going to be even bigger in the SIM world. Interestingly, 9 out of the 10 most successful ads in 2009 included consumer participation. One could argue its already larger than we could have imagined a few years ago.
This is another great comparison and too good to pass up. It comes to me via Gerald out of our Frankfurt office. Consider buying the book, Slightware from which this comes. I haven't seen it but based off of this visual, it seems it maybe a good one.
digiday:DAILY reviewed Social Media Marketing for Dummies. Here's the book review. They titled the post, "Shiv Singh Ain't No Dummy" which was a hilarious title. I'm told that the piece got much higher click thru rate than expected because of that title. Is it because everyone wasn't sure that I'm not a dummy and wanted to see the proof points? Who knows! Here's an excerpt.
Nothing breaks a topic down like the "For Dummies" series. All in it has sold more than 150 million books educating the world on the most basic elements of everything from The Internet to eBay to wine to divorce. It would stand to reason that the most recent in the series "Social Media Marketing For Dummies" holds no challenges for today's sophisticated marketer. But sophisticated the book is. It dispenses quickly with the basics of "social influence marketing" and immediately moves on to the most challenging issues on social media such as mobile, authenticity finding a social voice for your company, and even how to energize and manage a social media effort internally.The reason for the book's depth comes directly from its author. As the VP & Global Social Media Lead with Razorfish he has been on the social media beat for big clients, small clients, and marketers that need research to plan and measure the newest platform. Rather than tell his audience of marketers what they already know, Singh took the opportunity to write a book for "dummies" to set out a complete vision of how social media can be executed. It just went into its second printing last week, and we caught up with Singh on that occasion.
You can read the full book review over at digiday:Daily.
Like many others, I was a huge fan of Tiger Woods until recently. He epitomized perfection on and off the golf course. Something that has been shattered in the last few weeks. We all know that. A question that remains though - how is he trying to contain his damage and is he using social media helping or hurting him? (Also, read the MediaPost story that I was interviewed for)In a nutshell, the answer is no. He has over 1.3 million fans on his Facebook fan page and has locked them out (no one can comment). Woods hasn't posted to the fan page since November 6th himself. Instead he's made press statements via his own website. Here's a secret - the media will always be harsher on you than your fans. The fans are more likely to give you the benefit of the doubt (though here there doesn't seem to be much doubt). Don't ignore them - instead reach them directly.
Here's what I said Tiger Woods should do in the MediaPost story - use the website to talk to the press, speak directly to the fans through the Facebook page, open it up for comments even if it means getting slammed and be clear about how much you will respond. Don't delete anything published earlier (yes, that includes those family photographs) and tell us about your path to recovery as it progresses. Mr. Woods you owe that much to your fans including me.
This just isn't about trying to hold onto your brand for dear life, it is also about what you owe your fans. You betrayed them. Also read David Deal's perspective for another point of view.
Who'd have thought. Can't seem to access Twitter from my iPhone either. I wonder how long it will be down for. The social web comes to a standstill.
I just stumbled upon a nice framework for thinking about social influence marketing and how it impacts an organization in its many incarnations. This one comes from Ken Burbary who's doing some great thinking in the social media space. He's also one of the organizers behind the Module 2010 Digital Conference. Click the image to view a larger version of it.I like that it starts with the social web, includes analysis, data segmentation, strategy (which is missed too often) and then leads to execution through a department lens. Probably the only addition I would add is consumer and influencer insights as an input.
In my book Social Media Marketing for Dummies, I introduce the concept of SIM voices or Social Influence Marketing voices. These SIM voices are the voices through which you engage with consumers in the social web across any touch point or social platform. Twitter understands this and their new features that allow multiple authors to support a business account is spot on. Called Contributors, it lets a business account have multiple authors so that a specific user can be added to the byline of a business account. Read on for why you need to develop a program around SIM voices.
Continue reading Twitter Contributors enhances SIM Voices.
Don Norman argues that design research does not help with developing new breakthrough innovations. He concludes that the value of design research is only in incremental product improvements that provide a quick return. When it comes to innovations like airplanes, automobiles, indoor plumbing, electric lighting and the flush, design research had no role to play. Norman then says that using ethnographic observational studies to discover, unmet hidden needs is a myth.
Sorry, Don but I'm not sure if I agree with you completely having led hands on marketing, product and design teams for over a decade. If you're a designer and you look to draw a direct translation from design research to product design then maybe you're depending upon design research. However, if you're using it as one of many inputs (including your own imagination and common sense), you'll discover that design research can only help. Innovation is a complex, unscientific and imaginative process. To try to reduce it to a format (whether that be through design research or the opposite) is an over simplification.
