Going Social Now

SxSWi 2010 in Quotes, What's yours?

Tue, 16 Mar 2010 13:49:20 +0000

Great slideshare from Valeria of some awesome quotes at South by Southwest Interactive. What's your most important takeaway from SXSWi? Which of these do you like the most?

2010 SxSWi in Quotes

Does the NYT iPhone App live upto its promise?

Mon, 15 Mar 2010 03:04:31 +0000

I really like The New York Times. Visiting its website for the latest news and commentary is a part of my daily morning ritual. It has been for a while and will probably be for a long time. However, when it comes to the NYT iPhone application, I'm left a little disappointed with the revenue model and functionality. Here's why.

Being able to access the news on my iPhone anywhere is powerful. In fact, it is so valuable that I'd be willing to pay for it (especially if I don't have to see those pesky advertisements that take up precious real estate). I cannot understand why the NYT never considered charging for access to its content via the iPhone. I'd have more than happily paid a small subscription fee. Or at the very least they could have charged a few dollars for the application. The content is totally worth it and I'm confident a lot of people would happily pay for the application. Charge $2 for the application and the NYT would make at least $2 million.

Our digital lives are becoming hyper personalized. Any digital product experience has to compete with the hyper-personalization of Facebook's newsfeed. With that in mind, I cannot understand why the NYT iPhone application does not include location aware capability. Maybe it is coming in a future release? Please let me automatically scan local news by recognizing where I am. With the local news market getting more competitive by the day (especially in New York), this feature is of paramount importance.

Sharing does not equal to social media. The NYT iPhone application lets me email, text, tweet and publish articles to Facebook. That's great but it isn't enough for me. Why can't I read the comments published at the end of the story? Why can't I respond to the stories via comments of my own. The New York Times is valuable not just for its stellar editorial but also for the vibrant conversations that surround the stories. The iPhone application is sorely lacking by not letting me view the comments published at the end of the stories and by prohibiting me from commenting myself.

Social filters. This one is a gripe with both the iPhone application and the website. Increasingly, I use my friends (as do many others) as filters for what I should read. The stories that interest them typically are of interest to me as well. Why can't I see what stories are popular with my own social graph? On the road, with even less time to read than while at a desktop computer, having social filters are all the more important. The Huffington Post Social News website does this well.

That's it - four reasons why I'm not a fan of the NYT iPhone application. I'm a loyal reader of The New York Times but wish the application would offer more and have a revenue model so that I don't have to see those ads. Unlike most other applications, the NYT does not have a content problem and it is free to focus on making the experience rich and dynamic. Please do so. I'm even willing to pay for that experience. Special thanks to Ana Andjelic as conversations with her inspired this post.

Digital Media takes over Print. What this means

Mon, 08 Mar 2010 05:48:32 +0000

This was a long time coming and now the moment has arrived. Spending on digital media has taken over print advertising for the first time. A study by Outsell as reported in Forbes reveals that U.S. advertisers are spending more this year on digital media than on print. This is largely thanks to a 9.6% boom in digital advertising in 2010. Of the $368 billion marketers plan to spend this year, 32.5% will go toward digital; 30.3% to print. Digital spending includes e-mail, video advertising, display ads and search marketing.

Now it is hard not to share these statistics without at least commenting on the challenges that traditional publishers face. I like to believe that this shift does not mean that print is dead by any means. Rather the measurability of online media and the maturing of it as an advertising medium is driving the increased spending. Furthermore, the interactivity that comes with social media and the ability to build deeper relationships with customers (beyond the actual ad unit) is heavily influencing how marketers allocate their budgets. Not to mention that some advertisers may feel they are getting better value for money too.

I believe print will always have an important place. We do still like magazines even if we don't like paying for them. After all, it is the print publications that do a lot to build their digital brands too. Nevertheless, it is a watershed moment. I do wonder how much money has moved away from traditional publishers to new digital only publishers. It is one thing if the $$ is going from Wired Magazine's print edition to its online version. It is something else if a lot of that money is going to the likes of Gizmodo who don't have any print equivalents.

Digital Agencies get back to Business

Mon, 08 Mar 2010 01:21:15 +0000

Few people know that I spent a lot of time last year working with a client to help launch a new business, develop its first product and market it. That business was Bundle Corporation and their first product launched at the end of January. So much time on it that for a while I worried my son's first word would be "Bundle"!

It has been an exhilarating experience working in a semi-startup environment (the company was incubated within Razorfish with the idea originating out of Citibank) and running the product and marketing functions while the company extended its management team. Being deeply involved in all parts of the business from concept to testing working with some incredibly talented leaders both on the Bundle Corporation and the Razorfish side made it very special.

With the first product out (not surprisingly it is social to the core embodying many of the core principles that I advocate everyday) and a story in Adweek that talks of the Razorfish relationship, I can discuss this work more now. Watch the space as I peal the onion and discuss the fascinating social product that Bundle is. I'll also discuss how agencies like Razorfish are providing digital business transformation services with Chief Innovation Officers and Chief Executive Officers as our core clients. More to come. And in the meantime, read the Fast Company coverage of Bundle and watch Robert Scoble's interview with the CEO of Bundle.

How to Bring Social Influence Marketing to Life

Mon, 01 Mar 2010 01:44:55 +0000

Social influence marketing (SIM) campaigns achieve success in the long term. Here are some tips that will help your SIM campaign flourish during its lifespan:

Participate where your customers want to participate and be active in the customer communities you create. Remember that your customers are your equals.

Architect your SIM efforts so that customers are motivated and encouraged to form tribes, bringing others into the fold and engaging with one another.

When planning outreach programs, recognize that the "A" list influencers may not be as helpful as the long tail of the other influencers. These other influencers are more likely to listen to your point of view and act on your behalf.

Design your programs so that they are extremely easy for your customers and prospects to share with others on the social platforms of their choice. Also be there for the journey with them.

Carry your new brand advocates (the long tail of influencers) from one campaign to another. Focus on their life time value to you and provide strong commiserate value in return to them.

For lots more ideas on practicing social influence marketing from identifying the right influencers to building and launching campaigns and changing your own organization, read my book Social Media Marketing for Dummies.

Could the Toyota Recall Crisis Help the Brand?

Tue, 23 Feb 2010 03:22:14 +0000

There's no question that Toyota is in deep trouble with its current recall crisis. But could these issues actually be helping its brand? Shockingly, an analysis of Toyota shows that its Social Influence Marketing (SIM) Score shows this. Who'd have thought that a crisis of such significant magnitude could actually help a brand's perception? This seems to be true, at least in the short term, even though sales may be dropping. Let me explain how.

The SIM Score incorporates reach and like-ability using conversation data sourced from the major conversation monitoring vendors (in this case Radian6). In the month of January, Toyota saw an uptick in its SIM Score relative to its direct competitors. Counter intuitive? Yes, most certainly. And there are two explanations for this. Read my Mashable guest post that explains the SIM Score formula and why the graph looks the way it does.

5 Technologies That Will Change Your Business

Mon, 22 Feb 2010 22:19:48 +0000

Last week Razorfish launched the Razorfish 5: Five Technologies That Will Change Your Business. This is an exciting report as it explains the underlying engine that drives a lot of social media today - cloud computing and other related technologies that are going to drive digital marketing in the future.

I truly believe that every chief marketing officer is going to need to become more of a chief technology officer in tomorrow's world. Those that don't will struggle (as my CEO once said). Here's a deck created using Prezi (a novel cloud computing based presentation solution) highlighting some of the key take aways.

You can also view the report in its entirety. I co-authored the first piece titled, "Social Brands are Enabled through Cloud Services and Distributed Application Technologies" with the Razorfish CTO, Ray Velez.

OnMedia 2010: Adopting Innovation Ad Tech

Sat, 20 Feb 2010 00:17:04 +0000

Two weeks ago I was on a panel at Tony Perkin's AlwaysOn OnMedia 2010 summit held at the Mandarin Oriental Hotel in NYC. Below is the clip. I was invited to sit on my panel given my focus on social media and broad digital strategy.

Social Influence Marketing Game Plans

Thu, 18 Feb 2010 16:35:31 +0000

Marketing via social media means marketing directly to influencers -- rather than just consumers. And social influence marketing (SIM) requires a whole new game plan. Establish your SIM campaign with these tips in mind:

Develop social influence marketing (SIM) guidelines for your organization. It provides critical guidance for your employees as they practice social influence marketing.

Establish clear objectives for your social influence marketing efforts. Don't experiment for the sake of experimenting. Make sure objectives are aligned with broader marketing and business ones.

Create a roadmap for your social influence marketing efforts to help you plan resources, conduct research, coordinate marketing programs, and deploy new tactics. Don't try to do everything at once. You probably don't have the resources.

Define your metrics for success up front before you execute your roadmap. And make sure that the metrics are also aligned with broader marketing and business metrics. These SIM metrics should neatly roll up into those.

Recognize that SIM programs don't have neat end dates. Plan your resources and budget carefully to allow for continuous nurturing. This is the hardest and requires the most expectation setting.

Make sure you understand your customer base -- who talks to each other and who influences who -- before launching any program. And also understand where they're talking and whether you have permission to participate there.

Others that you'd suggest? The complete game plan is explained in my book.

Social Media Marketing Rules of the Road

Wed, 17 Feb 2010 21:16:44 +0000

Marketing through social media platforms isn't quite the same as traditional marketing. Here are some golden rules from my book's cheat sheet that can help you conduct a successful social media marketing campaign:

Make sure you give your customers something valuable because they'd much rather spend the time talking to each other about their passions than engaging with you.

Recognize that different types of influencers play varying roles at different points in the marketing funnel. Do the research to know who is influencing your customers and where.

Tie together all your strategies across the social media platforms. Think about how all your social programs can work together harmoniously.

Make your customers brand advocates and partners in your business. Give them the opportunity to impact not just marketing but product development, customer service, and innovations, too.

Develop your authentic social voice for the social media platforms. And make your brand a social brand.

Do you agree with these. Are there others that you'd like to add? The complete explanations along with the strategies and tactics for executing against these are explained in the book.

10 Most Tweeted Brands of the Week. Love it

Fri, 12 Feb 2010 21:07:10 +0000

I absolutely love the new Ad Age 10 Most Tweeted Brands of the Week list. Now of course, there are risks that some brands may try to game the system but I think that's unlikely. They're so focused on getting tweeted among their consumers that they probably won't try too hard to game the rankings itself. This week the Super Bowl and Google Buzz led the pack though I'm certain next week it'll be someone else. What's nice about this list is it not only tells us which brands are talked about the most but gives us a pop culture snapshot too in a similar fashion to Twitter Trends.

The list uses a loose definition of brand to include Valentine's Day and movies like "MNIK" which stands for "My Name is Khan" (who knew!). For me most interesting would be the brands that do well even if they're not being launched that week whether as movies or products (Apple's iPad ranks high up there). Those are the brands that are succeeding on an ongoing basis. I suppose for them a deeper metric is the SIM Score which is the relative health of the brand versus its closest competitors across the social web.

Is this the future of our cities? I hope not

Thu, 11 Feb 2010 15:14:15 +0000

I truly believe that we have social media and the emergence of social brands to thank for saving us from this scary future where every image in our towns and cities is a logo.

What do you think? Do you think this is a bad thing and do you feel that social media is saving us from it?

Special thanks to Jose Martinez for pointing me to this video clip.

Consumers Trust Friends Less? I don't agree

Mon, 08 Feb 2010 18:07:33 +0000

With all due respect to Ad Age and Edelman, I feel the analysis of the Edelman Trust Barometer 2010 maybe a little misleading. The headline "In Age of Friending, Consumers Trust Their Friends Less" obviously implies that people are trusting their friends less when making decisions. While that makes great copy, when you click on the chart what you really see is that trust in all forms of media (the alternatives were TV News, Radio News, Newspapers and Friends/Peers) has dropped dramatically by approximately the same percentages. Trust in Friends/Peers hasn't dropped considerably more versus those other categories.

As we debate (again and again) the value of influence from friends and peers, lets keep two extremely important factors in mind.

The subject being discussed makes a big difference. For example, I'm not going to trust my friends very much when I'm deciding whether to get open heart surgery. However, if I'm buying running shoes (as I did yesterday), advice from my friends will make all the difference. I'll of course be asking the friends who are runners for advice and not the ones who don't.

And secondly, lets not confuse trust in companies with trust in products and services. They are two separate categories (with of course connections to one another). This research was about trust in companies versus trust in products. As we talk about friending and trusting peers, it matters most with products that people have experienced and less so with the companies behind them.

This is the paragraph that I'm struggling with the most -

If consumers stop believing what their friends and the "average Joes" appearing in testimonials say about a product or company, the implications could be significant not just for marketers but for the social networks and word-of-mouth platforms selling themselves as solutions to communicating in a jaded world. The influence of peers has been considered the leading rationale for brands' shifting marketing dollars to social media.

If the coverage focused just on information about the company, then that would be fine. But generalizing to products doesn't seem fair.

Disclaimers - I work for Razorfish and my company research shows that trust in peer recommendations around purchasing decisions is not dropping but rising. My analysis is also based on reading the Ad Age piece and the Edelman executive summary only. I do not have access to the whole research report

Facebook growing up. Advertisers to fall in love

Fri, 05 Feb 2010 19:47:27 +0000

For a long time I believed that Facebook was moving too slowly in addressing the needs of marketers. The pages for brands was but a rudimentary step in the right direction and the analytics behind the pages were simplistic at best. I'm excited to see that it is changing now and I believe that marketers are going to flock to Facebook (and with their dollars) and not just because of the huge user base but increasingly because of the specific advertising products and analytics that the platform is offering. In a sense Facebook is truly entering the marketing world now.

One small example, of this is how they're testing the ability to show case impressions and clicks. This is hugely valuable for both marketers and individuals alike. Big brand and personal brands (meaning you as an individual) care about this and I believe it'll spur even greater use of the Facebook fan pages and the newsfeed. What is especially interesting is if this information is made completely transparent as the image above seems to imply. The next step to telling you the number of impressions and clicks that a post has gotten is to tell you the number of people that have purchased the product. As e-commerce rolls out across the Facebook landscape, I can see that being a metric included as well. And knowing the number of people who have purchased a product (as a percentage of impressions and clicks about it), will be a huge influencer for purchases. Photograph and inspiration for this post is courtesy Loic Le Meur.

Engaging Readers in the Digital Age. Keynote

Thu, 28 Jan 2010 22:15:21 +0000

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.

Engaging Readers in the Digital Age

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.