Archive for April, 2007

Once again Charlene Li at Forrester hits the nail right on the head.

Many companies approach social computing as a list of technologies to be deployed as needed – a blog here, a podcast there – to achieve a marketing goal.  But a more coherent approach is to start with your target audience and determine what kind of relationship you want to build with them, based on what they are ready for.

How do you know what they are ready for? Forrester’s new report Social Technographics breaks the audience into a ‘ladder’ of social involvement.

• Creators – publish web content 13%
• Critics – comment on other’s content  19%
• Collectors – use RSS,social bookmarks and tags 15%
• Joiners – use social networking sites 19%
• Spectators – read blogs, listen to podcasts 33%
• Inactives – not involved in any social media 52%

The report also looks at how Social Technographics profiles differ by primary life motivation, site usage, and even PC ownership. 

What can you do with this research?

Do your own surveys and find out if your numbers agree with this report.  Forrester says 15% of your audience is using RSS feeds and tagging content.  It would pay to know which 15% – the opinion leaders and influencers, perhaps?

If you add the 15% who collect and the 33% who read blogs and listen to podcasts, you have a good case for generating good content, syndicating it in RSS Feeds and offering an easy way to bookmark, tag and share it.

Photo: Brenda Anderson

Coca-Cola announced its Virtual Thirst contest for Second Life residents and the general population with a social media press release.

The mission is to create a portable device for Second Life’s “in-world” digital society that unleashes a refreshing and attention-grabbing experience, on demand.

Their SMR has all the elements suggested for this format back in August 2006 – news facts in bullet points, quotes and multi media options (albeit these are only still images and the traditional release in a pdf.)

And it has the del.icio.us and digg links along with Technorati tags.

There have been a flurry of comments over at the Social Media Club SMR discussion group:

The background is too ethereal and the there are no graphics within
the “release” – too many words, font too small, no web-enabled copy –
but I like what they are doing.  

…saves so much time and so much frustration of having to “click” around and play
the “guessing” game of where the info. you need, will be located in that media/press room.

Can we write the same release for the consumer, the amateur press, and the professional press?  I think we are all struggling with that question.

Everyone made fun of PR Newswire when they announced integration with Technorati. People said that anyone can create a link, but you’ll notice that both the del.icio.us and digg links on this release don’t work properly.  The url and title should carry over and they don’t.  It’s a nit, but it might make the difference between getting a digg or not.

Now there’s a valid point. I happen to know that PR Newswire had to work at getting their tags properly integrated.  And for PR folk who do not have a technical bent, using a tool that can easily produce a social media press release with all the links, tags and bookmarking elements, makes a lot of sense. One you can look into is PRESSfeed

 What’s your take on this SMR?

 

If you started a blog months ago and it’s never quite got off the gorund, perhaps you need a shot in the social media arm.

Marketing Profs offer eight good ideas that could revitalize your blog:

• It’s not about you – Blogs are powerful communication tools, so the content you provide on your company’s blog should be engaging and should encourage feedback from visitors. Instead of endlessly blogging about your products and services, give readers information that helps them with satisfy their wants and needs.
• Invite comments  – Engaging content will lead to comments. And how your company handles these comments will go a long way toward keeping your blog healthy and vibrant.
• Post regularly – Readers expect to see new content almost every time they visit a blog. If they do not, they will either scale back the number of visits or stop visiting altogether.
• Add a relevant picture to every post – Visuals immediately capture the reader’s attention and give your post a fighting chance of being read. It’s OK to add pictures of your products, as long as you are careful not to go overboard.
• Add links in your posts to additional information on other sites and blogs - it might seem like a crazy idea but from the reader’s point of view they see your linking to another site as a way of helping them find helpful and relevant information.
• Reconsider your motivations – why are you blogging? Your job is to tailor your content so that it satisfies the wants and needs of your visitors and readers.
• Shift your mindset – from viewing it as a promotional device to seeing it as a powerful communication tool. When you do this, you will start to find ways to shape your blog’s content so that it appeals to your customers, and encourages feedback.
• It’s not a sales tool – consider it a communication tool that helps you better understand your customer. But remember that you cannot get a better understanding of your customers until they come to your blog, and they won’t come to unless you give them information they can use and a sense of being heard.

YouTube is now the 12th most visited Internet domain in the US. The sites that receive more traffic than YouTube are MySpace domains, Google, Yahoo domains, Hotmail, MSN, eBay, Live Search, and Facebook.

It may well become more important for your brand or company to be on YouTube than to be advertised on TV, says Marketing Profs. (Note: this link is to premium content)

With Google having acquired YouTube, it has a lot more resources at its disposal and you can expect YouTube to be one of the major players in consumer-generated media for years to come.  

So how do you market on YouTube successfully?

BlendTec got it right with their Will it Blend videos.

And as a result of their viral video sucess they scored mainstream media exposure too – the CBS News crew dropped by for a look behind the scenes at Blendtec for a segment on Internet Stars that aired March 25th and they were on the Jay Leno show on Friday March 27th.

Their advice? 

• Focus on something that is fun, with either the interviewer laughing or scratching his/her head, because only then will people want to pass it on. But don’t force it. It really should be something worth watching.  
• Clearly demonstrate the product. For Blendtec, initially it was 100% about branding. After the brand awareness has been established, there has to be a need, a problem in need of resolution.

The Result?

A dramatic increase in sales of at-home and commercial blenders (which are sold to restaurants and coffee shops, etc). The “Will It Blend?” campaign targeted the home market and online Web sales were more than four times greater than in the previous top-selling month. All other channels have seen big increases as well.

If you’re planning to be in DC for the Media Relations Summit and you want to learn more about social media marketing, I’ve had a few requests to do a half-day workshop on the day after the conference. If this is something you’d be interested in, email me at sallyf [at] expansionplus [dot] com

According to In-Stat’s “Social Networking: Finding Friends Online” membership and monetization are key issues for social networking sites.  In order to be successful they need to attain a critical mass and competition is fierce to attract new members.

Social sites have focused their attention on a younger demographic, which is finite, fickle and limited in expendable income, says Jill Meyers of In-Stat.

eMarketer estimates that 2007 ad spending on MySpace will outstrip spending on all other social networks combined, so competition will be fierce.

If you’re in the PR department of a consumer technology company – or an agency representing such a company – you know just how stiff the competition is for media coverage. It may seem like an impossible task to score space in the mainstream media, but this is not the case,  Five of the most influential bylines in consumer technology media spill the beans about what they’re covering now (and why), on a PR University audio conference Friday, April 27, 2007 at 1PM EDT (noon, CDT; 11AM MDT; 10AM PDT).

Panelists David Pogue, Personal Technology Columnist, The New York Times; Technology and Correspondent for CBS News, Mark McClusky, Senior Products Editor, Wired,Eric Butterfield, Senior Associate Editor, PC World, Kent German, Senior Editor, CNET.com, and Marsha Walton, Producer, Science and Technology, CNN reveal the gadgets, gear and trends they want to be pitched in the months ahead.  They share how PR and corporate communications can break through the clutter to earn their attention.

PR, marketing and Ad agencies are eyeing social media with more than a passing interest and as many traditional agencies don’t have the in house capacity to deliver new media programs they’ll have to bring in a new media partner.

Mike Manuel of Media Guerilla offers insights into the process of picking a new media partner.

You want to starting folding social media strategies, tactics and tools into your company’s PR program, but you’re not sure how exactly you want to approach things and because of that, you’re leaning toward bringing in some outside help. Maybe you’re thinking about a consultant or a small group of specialists or even a large services firm. 

The tough question says Manuel is: How do you pick a good partner?

These are some of the qualities he suggests you should consider

How are they using new media in their business?

How are they using new media with their clients?

Have they ever worked through an online crisis?

Who will do the work and what is their experience?

Are they leading or following the industry?

Can they offer measurement of the campaign?

Do they offer training and education capabilities?

Good advice.

If you’re looking for social media information and/or workshops Social Media Club is planning a series of workshops around the country.

Consumers plan to spend $15.73 billion on special treats like jewelry, flowers, clothing, and even trips to the spa this Mother’s Day says the National Retail Federation’s 2007 Mother’s Day Consumer Actions and Intentions survey, conducted by BIGresearch.

The average spend is expected to be up to $139.14 compared to last year’s $122.16.  And online shopping continues to grow as a favorite way to find these treats: 20.0 percent of consumers will shop for mom online, compared to only 16.9 percent who did so last year.

“Although it’s hard to measure our love for mom, consumers continue to spend on special, one-of-a-kind gifts for her,” stated Phil Rist, Vice President of Strategy at BIGresearch. “Luxury gifts such as jewelry and special services like a gift card to a spa allow mom to indulge on something she normally does not spend her own money on.”  

How can you reach this online market searching for luxury gifts for mom?

According to Keyword Discovery the search for Mother’s Day gifts starts at the beginning of April and increases until right before Mother’s Day.  The highest searched key phrases are Mothers Day gifts and Mother’s Day gift ideas.

Since it takes a while to get your web pages visible on a specific key phrase, the best way to reach this market  in the next few weeks is to use optimized press releases.  Done correctly a press release online can get you fast visibility in Yahoo News and Google News.

The Day 3 sessions on Social Media covered social search, social bookmarking and social media opiimization.

Speaking in the social bookmarking session Lee Odden made the point that social media consists of social news and social bookmarking. Here are some examples

Social News:
- Digg
- Netscape
- Reddit

Social Bookmarks:
- Del.icio.us
- Furl
- Google Bookmarks

Who are the major players in the field:
- Del.icio.us (high traffic, high syndication, social network that uses consumer generated tagging of content)

- FURL (medium traffic, med-low syndication site that caches content and offers searchable notes and export bookmarks)

- Blinklist (medium traffic, med to high syndication, JavaScript features)

- Magnolia (medium traffic, low syndication, rate bookmarks, group oriented)

- Google Bookmarks (med to low traffic, medium syndication, affects personalized results, multiple ways to add, access bookmarks via IE toolbar)

Lee’s Tips for social bookmarking:
- Become a user first
- Pick a tool
- Place buttons prominently on your content
- Dont overkill it
- Match bookmarks with your audience ( very important tip)
- Monitor traffic (use a web analytics tool that can tag visitors so you can see the value of this traffic)
- Social boookmarks are not limited to blogs.  You can use bookmarks on syndicated press releases and articles too.

Michael Gray, Owner, Atlas Web Service offered these tips:

Do your homework – research always pays off:
- Find out what’s working
- Find out what’s not working
- Discover trends
- Discover key players
- Identify any competitors
- Find out who’s talking about you and what they’re saying.

RSS feeds play a big role in content syndication and social news, said Gray.

In the Social Media Optimization session Rand Fishkin of SEO Moz hailed social media as a link building strategy.

His advice?  Look for photos on Flickr and comment on the popular ones. To create a successful profile you must be consistent, says Fishkin. Build out a robust profile, comment, contribute and share.

To find out more about Social Media Strategy read the article on their site.

A year ago hardly anyone in the room knew what RSS was.  Our session this year was one of the best attended.  We were in a room that seats 500 and there were people standing and sitting on the floor. I guess there were about 600 in the room. We are way past the point where feeds and blogs are a “techie only” thing. 

Stephan Spencer of Net Concepts spoke about how to use blogs and feeds to get better visibility online.  He showed how you could have mulitple feeds for different categories of content using WordPress. He showed a few very cool Word Press plug ins that make a big difference to your blog’s visibility.

I presented the Skin MD case study.  This company used content syndication as a part of their PR campaign to build awareness of the product prior to hard launch.  The site went from nowhere in the search engines to page one in Google on their major keywords in less than a year.  A year ago no-one was searching for shielding lotion.  Now it is a fast growing search category.  How did they do it?  Every week we added one informative article to the site and syndicated it in an RSS feed. 

Greg Jarboe of SEO-PR talked about the Stub Hub blogs – they launched 15 blogs to augment the site.  these are ‘fan’ blogs and news blogs.  The strategy is based around the research that the number one reason people read blogs and feeds is to find information and news they can’t get elsewhere.  The success of these blogs is due to the excellent content.  Greg made the point that feeds and blogs are not hard to set up.  Every blog by default has a feed.  It’s what you put in them that makes someone come back again and again.

Blogs and Feeds are obviously a very hot topic right now – and people want to know how to make the most of them.  You do need a strategy based on good keyword research.  When you know what people are looking for, you can provide it.