Techno//Marketer - Matt Dickman on Digital Marketing and Social Technology

Don't forget the rest of the digital puzzle

With all of the buzz around social media it's easy to overlook the rest of the digital marketing puzzle. Yes, it's fun to talk about Twitter and Facebook and the other new bright shiny objects, but they're just one component of a balanced online marketing strategy.

Take a look at the following chart from e-Marketer that shows how US adults prefer to have companies communicate with them. Note that email is still almost twice as requested as web sites.

That being said, social media has the opportunity to help drive business, create valuable content and serve as a landing point for various customer segments. Content is the foundation of any quality experience online, just ask anyone who's run a website.

Email - Social media (from Twitter to blogs) is centered around constant content updates. It's also a rule that very few people actually participate by commenting or adding content. Most people participate by reading and clicking (which is just as valuable in my opinion). Email is a perfect way, however, to summarize the best, most relevant conversations that are taking place.

Search - Search engines absolutely love social media content. It's categorized, updated frequently and is full of metadata. Results from blogs and other social media outlets are showing up in search result pages alongside corporate websites and official releases. The more relevant, popular, trusted sources will rise to the top...many times they'll be blogs.

Advertising - Sites like Facebook are full of user data that is being leveraged by marketers to create timely, relevant, targeted ads. Facebook made poor decisions early on with their Beacon program, but smart marketers are using the targeting to eliminate waste and only pay for the qualified clicks.

With social media as one component of digital marketing mix, keep thinking about how it can integrate with other tactics. How can you use the content generated in emails, ads, mobile messaging, search targeting, etc.? How can you extend it offline into physical items for marketing. Look at examples like Moo.com that allow you to create social artifacts that lead people back to your space online.

Social media is not an island,
it's a high-power engine on the larger marketing ship.

Social media isn't the end-all-be-all, but it offers marketers unparalleled opportunity to participate in relevant ways. It also provides a launchpad for other marketing tactics. Social media is not an island, it's a high-power engine on the larger marketing ship.

Technorati Tags:
digital, marketing, Matt Dickman, social media, Techno//Marketer

The influence of digital

As a rule, I only talk about my work and my company when I know it will add value to what you do. That's certainly the case today as Fleishman-Hillard (my company) and Harris Interactive release our Digital Influence Index Study. This study was conducted in Europe (using the UK, France and Germany as the initial round of countries), but you can see trends emerge that I think are global in nature.

(You can download the key findings, the whitepaper and the FAQ for the study.)

The study looks to really dig in to the role that the internet plays in the lives of consumers. It answers the following questions:

• Influence: What is the influence of the internet compared to other media?
• Behavior: What online behaviors are consumers adopting?
• Impact on decisions: What is the impact of the internet on specific consumer decisions?
• Attitudes: What are consumer attitudes towards the internet?
• Geography: What are the differences by country?

The actual Digital Influence Index number shown below in the pie charts is compiled like this:

The chart to the right compares the influence of different forms of media on decision making. As you can see the internet is more influential in each country than any other type of media. It's nearly twice as influential as TV and eight times more influential than traditional print media. Interestingly, consumers spend a marginal amount more time on TV than the Internet, but it's not effecting their decisions proportionally.

The study found that consumer behavior falls into one of five categories. They are research, commerce, communication, mobility and publishing. While you can read more detail in the full report, some highlights are:

• 80% of online consumers use the net to comparison shop
  
• 3 out of 4 use the net to manage bank accounts
  
• 30% post a comment to an online newsgroup or website during a typical week
  

Here is how these behaviors relate adoption levels and influence

Though the study found the internet influential, it showed that there are still trust issues that have to be overcome for it to continue to grow. Trust of information from other users, trust of government information and information provided by companies were all relatively low. Trust in commerce was a little better and trust of the security of communications channels was pretty high as well.

Key Findings:

• Across all three countries addressed by the study, the Internet has roughly double the influence of the second strongest medium — television — and roughly eight times the influence of traditional print media. This indicates a need and an opportunity for companies to reprioritise their communications to address the media shift in consumer influence.
  
• Consumers use the Internet in different ways to make different decisions. For example, consumers are more likely to seek opinions of others through social media and product-rating sites when it comes to making decisions that involve choices that have a great deal of personal impact (e.g., healthcare options or major electronics purchases), but use company-controlled sources when making transactional decisions on commoditised items like utilities or airline tickets.
  
• While consumers see the clear benefits of the Internet on their lives, they continue to have concerns about Internet safety and the trustworthiness of some of the information they find online. In the UK, for example, 66 percent of online consumers state that the Internet helps them make better decisions, but just 28 percent trust the information on the Internet provided by companies.
  

I think this quote from Dave Senay (our CEO) addresses the key point from my perspective:

"The research shows that the Internet stands out as the most important medium in the lives of European consumers today, but there's a mismatch between the impact of the digital channel across a wide range of consumer behaviours and decisions and the proportion of resources organisations generally are allocating to it relative to other media.

Insights provided by this study will help communicators be more strategic in their marketing mix. At the same time, we need to be mindful about the concerns expressed about safety and trust, which underscores the need for digital engagement with consumers based on open and honest representation."

So what should companies and marketers do with this knowledge?

• Given the influence of the Internet, audit your current marketing spend and see how it aligns with reality and the influence of the medium
  
• Make sure information that is provided is done so in a transparent, honest manner with full representation
  
• SEM/SEO are crucial as search drives the way people find information
  
• Join the conversation online, support the community and engage in a transparent manner
  
• Keep an eye on mobile trends and poll consumers to gauge demand for such an offering
  

So, what do you think about the information? This is based in Europe, but do you see correlations with the US? You can download the entire white paper here, which includes all of the information above with more charts and graphs.

Technorati Tags:
branding, marketing, Matt Dickman, mobile, PR, search, social media, strategy, Techno//Marketer, technology, Fleishman-Hillard

Social reputation patterns

I found a very interesting post on the Yahoo User Interface blog today discussing social reputation patterns. Reputation is a way to create engagement inside a community and plays an important part in many social networks and other action-driven sites.

Some quick examples of reputation systems are LinkedIn's profile completeness and eBay seller ratings. Having these levels of reputation in the system give interactions an added value. In eBay, sellers are given the incentive to deliver what they say they will, because they know they'll be rated afterward. LinkedIn's profile completeness level is dependent on helping others in the system and encourages more interaction.

Here are the patterns that Yahoo mentions:

These patterns can also be used in different types of community environments. They range from altruistic, nurturing communities to combative, winner-takes-all environments. Certain brands can use each to deliver value to their community.

Take a minute now and think about the communities that you participate in where users are given an incentive for taking action. Where does it fit in these patterns? Most sites use multiple patterns to engage different groups of users and it's a very powerful technique to engage users online and drive repeat visits and extended loyalty.

Technorati Tags:
conversations, marketing, Matt Dickman, social networks, strategy, Techno//Marketer, Yahoo, reputation

Developing personas for marketing strategy

Personas are an extremely valuable tool for marketers in any field. If you're not familiar with the term, personas are representations of your target audience based on research and interviews. From PR to digital to advertising, any marketing team or agency can benefit from developing client- and/or brand-specific personas.

As an example, let's say one of your target audience types is a 18-21 year old male who likes emo music, skateboarding and high-end electronics. You would come up with a name for this person along the lines of "Nate" and you would find an image of him to use in your planning. When you start making decisions about marketing strategies, you would check back to "Nate" and ask if it would reach him. What would reach him more effectively? What message does he need to hear. That is a basic model of persona development. Here is some more information to guide you through the process.

Why personas are important:

• Personas put a face on the customer. Some persona programs give people names so you can refer to them and see them in a physical representation. The agency Organic creates persona rooms where their people live so the project team can become fully immersed.
  
• Personas remove the tendency to think of yourself as the customer. You have to step back and this gives you the structure to do so.
  
• Act as a guide throughout the process of developing marketing communications programs, cross mediums (print, digital, outdoor, TV, etc.).
  
• Keeps designers, copywriters, programmers on track and avoids waste by remaining focused on the customer.
  

How people screw them up:

• Personas take time and research to get right.
  
• This includes some time in the field and meeting face-to-face with the customer.
  
• People think they know their customer without looking at data.
  
• Personas are often used up front in the marketing strategy process and don't carry through the process.
  

How you can avoid screwing them up:

• Get data. Collect it from the web and third party sources. Analyze web traffic. Do in-person interviews and ethnography. Get a big picture view and then analyze it objectively.
  
• Talk to your customers. Videotape them. Record the audio. Take notes. Come back with a real feeling for who you are trying to reach.
  
• Compare what you saw to the data and look for the insights.
  
• Evolve the personas over time. Adapt them as your product lines change or the economy changes. These should be living, breathing entities.
  

A great sample model.
I found this great model on Idris Mootee's site in a post where he compared the problems that MBAs and MFAs have in the workplace. It's a great start to being able to wrap your head around these ideas.

1. Finding the users
Questions asked: Who are the users? How many are there? What do they do with the system/brand?
Methods used: Quantitative data analysis.
Documents produced: Reports.

2. Building a hypothesis
Questions asked: What are the differences between the users?
Methods used: Looking at the material. Labeling the groups of people.
Documents produced: Draft a description of the target groups.

3. Verifications
Questions asked: Data for personas (likes/dislikes, inner needs, values). Data for situations (area of work, work conditions). Data for scenarios (work strategies and goals, information strategies and goals).
Methods used: Quantitative data collection.
Documents produced: Reports.

4. Finding patterns
Questions asked: Does the initial labeling hold? Are there more groups to consider? Are all equally important?
Methods used: Categorization.
Documents produced: Descriptions of categories.

5. Constructing personas
Questions asked: Body (name, age picture). Psyche (extrovert/introvert). Background (occupation). Emotions and attitude towards technology, the company (sender) or the information that they need. Personal traits.
Methods used: Categorization.
Documents produced: Descriptions of categories.

6. Defining situations
Questions asked: What is the need of this persona?
Methods used: Looking for situations and needs in the data.
Documents produced: Categorization of needs and situations.

7. Validation and buy-in
Questions asked: Do you know someone like this?
Methods used: People who know (of) the personas read and comment on the persona descriptions

8. Dissemination of knowledge
Questions asked: How can we share the personas with the organization?
Methods used: Fosters meetings, emails, campaigns of every sort, events.

9. Creating scenarios
Questions asked: In a given situation, with a given goal, what happens when the persona uses the technology/engages with the brand?
Methods used: The narrative scenario - using personas descriptions and situations to form scenarios.
Documents produced: Scenarios, use cases, requirement specifications.

10. On-going development
Questions asked: Does the new information alter the personas?
Methods used: Usability tests, new data
Documents produced: A person responsible for the persona input from everybody who meet the users.

*Diagram developed by Lene Nielsen of Snitker & Co.

More quality persona resources:

• Usability.gov
  
• Cooper on the origin of personas
  
• Persona ecosystems - David Armano
  
• "Creating and using personas and scenarios to guide site design" - Razorfish
  
• Customer Storytelling at the heart of business success - boxes and arrows
  
• Personas, goals and emotional design - UXmatters
  
• Three important benefits of personas - Jared Spool
  
• Practical persona creation - evolt.org
  
• Yahoo's approach to keeping personas alive - Jared Spool
  

So what else do you do when planning personas? How do you develop them? How do you adapt them? What's the balance between qualitative and quantitative feedback?

 

Technorati Tags:
David Armano, marketing, Matt Dickman, Techno//Marketer, usability, user experience design, UXD, Jared Spool

Twitter, the ultimate customer service tool

Tuesday I wrote about why I think some marketers aren't jumping in to social media faster. In part, I think the feedback is too honest, some marketers don't want to listen and the last thing they want to do is create two-way conversations. Overall though, customer service is one of the best uses of social media and can have a major impact on corporate brand and reputation.

Twitter has been around (as far as we're concerned) for about a year. It's often misunderstood and frequently maligned by journalists and traditional marketers. Part of the issue is, in my opinion, the name of the thing. Twitter? Tweets? Twitterers? I feel dumb for saying these things and I always get the same reaction from people who I am guiding through the landscape.

However, to see the real value of Twitter you have to look past the name to the underlying potential. The underlying technology and architecture is the future of communication. It's a seamless publishing tool that you can use from web, mobile web, mobile app, desktop app, IM, widget, etc. and consume the content using the same methods. (You can check out my full presentation on Micromedia here.)

Here is a visual representation of Twitter's publishing and consumption model. The key is choice and flexibility on both sides.

Customer Service

Twitter is the ultimate customer service tool. It's live, instantaneous, community driven, open, two-way and multi-way, unfiltered and predictive. This is, however, only for the most advanced, customer-forward companies to attempt to use. You definitely need a black belt in customer service ninja techniques to do this well.

The first step is a piece of cake. Go to www.twitter.com and register an account. Point a designer at the page and have them outfit it with a branded background and custom style sheet so it looks like your brand. The account can be protected while you are doing the legwork to set it up and train employees.

Now comes the hard part. Twitter is live and 24x7. Staffing needs to be done accordingly and it's not something that can be started and stopped. Would you abandon a call center or an 800 number? Absolutely not and Twitter is the same thing.

So how does it work?

Once you have the account ready and have the staffing in place you can start promoting it. Be sure to give an overview of how to use it, make signup easy, create a video that walks people through the system. Most people will just use the web version. You can use Twitter's API to basically re-skin the system on your site so people don't know they're using Twitter. Create shortcuts for them to make interacting easier (like adding the @ sign for them when communicating directly.

Once the messages come in, you have to be monitoring. If nobody is available, set up a responder that kicks them back a message and tells them when you will respond. The key is to be fast in response, be honest in what you tell them and allow the entire community to see the conversation. Get Satisfaction is doing this with crowdsourced service, but isn't using Twitter.

Seems pretty easy right? It's not, but the power of listening, responding to issues in real time, letting your customers see this and get a feel for the level of care that you're providing is priceless. The reps that handle this communication need to be specifically trained on the medium and the "rules".

I'm going to break out each of these steps in posts next week and show how the system could integrate into an existing customer service plan.

What do you think? Is this doable? What companies could pull this off and thrive? Some are doing it one-way (service alerts, etc.), but nobody is doing live, open customer service like this.

[Update: Make sure you read Joshua March's great counterpoint post. Weigh in on this from your point of view.]

Technorati Tags:
customer service, marketing, Matt Dickman, service, Techno//Marketer, trends, Twitter

Five ways to stop doing stupid things in digital marketing

In this fast-paced, wild west world of Web2.0 and social networking, too many marketers are making dumb moves online. These decisions are being rushed into the community without thinking about what the social ramifications are. You know who they are so I won't call them out again. It does make you wonder though, who is the voice of reason/community in these companies? I think it's vital to have a community advocate(s) inside the agencies and company marketing group to ask some pretty simple, but very crucial questions.

Here are five ways companies and agencies can stop doing stupid things in digital marketing. Some of these may seem very obvious, but ask yourself if you're actually doing them all.

1. Engage internal, non-marketing folks in the process. This is a good idea and pretty cost-effective as well. Invite Jim from accounting or Julie from operations and see what they think of new initiatives. Address concerns directly and get their two cents on what you're trying to accomplish. Their personal interactions online will give you a window into how your customers may engage and react.
2. Get young professionals involved in all aspects of your marketing planning. This is huge. Undoubtedly, you have young people working in your company. Get these people involved in all stages of your planning. Not only will this give them great experience, but they're much more intimately connected to the pulse of social networks. They can tell you if your thinking is lame and will create backlash or if it has a chance to be embraced. Check out the posts on Valeria's blog by young bloggers for some great insights.
3. Remember, "your brand is not my friend". This is Tangerine Toad's battle cry and it is something every marketer needs to keep in mind. Despite how much we think people love us, friendships are person-to-person. Toad's anthem will will keep you at the right distance and in the right mindset.
4. Ask your customers. This one seems obvious, but even the most pro-community sites are skipping this one and creating a lot of trouble for themselves. Had Facebook asked a user panel what they thought about Beacon or social ads, they may have been able to avoid some pretty major PR trouble. CK and Doug have already cancelled their accounts on Facebook and I'm sure others have as well. With the switching cost so low, nobody can afford to take advantage of or take for granted the community of current users.
5. Learn from the past. You'd think more and more companies would at least look at the mistakes that have taken place. From flogs to Wikipedia editing, companies have pushed the envelope and experienced the backlash. Sadly, other companies either don't look or don't care and line up to do the same things. In this digital age, it's nearly impossible to get away with something like this. The trail is there and there are people who love for nothing more than to expose companies trying to pull a fast one on their customers.

This is a start, but there are definitely other ways to avoid looking like a bozo and run successful marketing programs. What do you do when planning your ideas? What would you add to this list?

Technorati Tags:
Christina Kerley, Doug Meacham, Ethics, Facebook, marketing, Matt Dickman, social media, social networks, Techno//Marketer, Valeria Maltoni

Are you social media fading? Dealing with dead apps and inactive users (part 1)

Time and attention are both finite and extremely valuable. I think we all can agree on that. In this world of BSOS (bright shiny object syndrome) there is a constant desire to check out the next new thing. However, there is a limit to the number of social networks and applications we can use before we start seeing overlap or clutter. At that point we have a decision to make. Cut and run, or stick it out.

If you're anythings like me, you have probably signed up for your fair share of social networks and new media apps with best intentions of using them to their potential. Service to remind me to wake up you say? Great. A social network for dead poet aficionados? I'll take two!

Sadly, it's just not possible to give every community the time it needs due to a lack of relevance or time. So when you let one of these apps sit for a while, do you think about it again? The popular term for this is fading. Simply add the network-du-jour in front the the word 'fade' and you've got it nailed. Twitter-fade, Face-fade, Space-fade, etc.

This is a natural occurrence in the web world and it's been happening since birth. 10 years ago people signed up for chat rooms and message boards only to abandon them or move on to the next best thing. Today it's social networks and micro-media apps which are being orphaned.

In the first part of this 2 part series, I want to look at what site owners can do when people fade and I want your input too.

Identify and classify your faders
Every social network or community site needs to have a plan in place for their members to identify the overall health of the community. There is no right or wrong way to do this either. Simply identify the actions that a user takes which add value and track how your members stack up in a given time period.

Here is an example:

User tracking for month ending 12/31/07:

Action	Desired step	% completed
Login	Log in in to site 15 times	10%	Engagers
	Log in 6 times	15%	Underachievers
	Log in 2 times	35%	Nomads
	Log in 0 times	40%	Slackers

Create a re-engagement plan for each segment
You'll find that each segment has its own set of challenges and opportunities and each will respond to different tactics and messaging. Fortunately the web affords us an easy way to test messages and deliver the right one to the right group. For example:

• Engagers: People who are engaged in a community are often your strongest allies. These are your evangelists in the making and are usually receptive to you reaching out to them to see what their interests are and to thank them for participating. Virtual rewards (status on the site, moderation of message boards, etc.) could be a powerful, cost-effective way to reach this group.
  
• Underachievers: This group is active, but something is keeping them from coming back more often. There is a possibility that you could make an impact here and have them move up to the engager group (which is the goal for all of these groups).
  
• Nomads: This group is coming to the site at a sporadic pace. Make note of visiting trends to see what content brings them in. It could be promotions, stories in a specific category or simply be the day of the month they remember. The goal in this group is to increase awareness, show the value you add, make it easy to get them the content (RSS/email newsletter/etc.). These nomads wander the web without a home. Your job is to make them feel at home and not want to leave.
  
• Slackers: This is the group with the largest number and least activity. All things equal, this group represents the largest opportunity to move members up a level. Email notices with offers or valuable content could be ways to reach this group and get them in the mix. They've most likely forgotten about you entirely so make sure that when you communicate you put your best foot forward, make them see the value and make it easy for them to get out completely. There is no sense in emailing a person who doesn't care about you or your offer.
  

Create a way to purge your list
This goes along with what I just said. If people are inactive and you can't seem to get them back, set them free. Not only will this make your list look better, but it will make your community stronger. Set up a rule along the lines of 2 stikes via email and you're out. It's fair, calculated and will benefit everyone.

So, you community managers out there, how do you deal with users that have slacked off or camp out every now and then? How do you re-engage people and create better relationships? Please do share!

Part 2 of this series will focus on the user-side. What should you do if things go inactive, what rules should you set and how can you keep track of everything you sign up for. That'll be tomorrow.

Technorati Tags:
marketing, Matt Dickman, social media, social networks, Techno//Marketer

Buzz Friday for December 14, 2007

Here is a look at what is happening across social media and new marketing this week. If there is anything that you would like to see in this post or if you have something you think is Buzz-worthy please drop me an email or leave a comment on this post. I want to make this as beneficial for you as I can.

Buzz Friday is also available as part of the Techno//Marketer Podcast on iTunes. Click here to subscribe and take the Buzz to go.

[Feed readers please click through to the post if you cannot see the video.]

Inside the video:

• Google is going to start including blogs in their universal search in a few weeks which will give even more value to blog content in the index. Jim Kukral has a post on this too.
  
• Steve Rubel thinks that Google's new Knol wiki service will kill Wikipedia. With Google's might behind it, it just may.
  
• In the battle for social network platform suppremacy, chalk one up for Facebook this week. They've opened their platform to other networks to allow them to hook into Facebook functionality. This competes directly with Open Social. Bebo made the first move, but we'll have to see who else jumps on.
  

And in other news:

• Doug Meacham no habla Espanol. Too bad Enterprise didn't know that.
  
• Seniors are flocking to the Nintendo Wii as a great way to stay engaged with grandchildren and stay active.
  
• Burger King's new Whopper Freakout video has gone viral. Great concept really let people sell the product for them.
  
• A job description at Apple (one way people figure out what the secretive company will do next) is looking for a Microsoft Exchange sync expert supposedly to bring more support to the iPhone. Could make the iPhone a real corporate contender if it happens.
  
• Mark Goren has a nice post on the great agency debate.
  
• Very nice to see Dell offering, and posting about, hardware recycling. This post covers a Seattle pickup of 275 tons of equipment.
  
• Johnny Vulkan from Anamoly has a nice write-up in BusinessWeek on the year of advertising in review.
  
• Reports are still coming in that T-Mobile has cut off access to Twitter from its devices. Will keep an eye on this.
  
• Webkinz came under attack from watch groups when it tried to run an ad for Alvin and Chipmunks. It took the ad down and apologized.
  
• Andy Beal's 10 questions to ask before starting a social media marketing campaign is a must read for any marketer.
  
• Chris Brogan tells us why marketing is not social media and social media is not marketing. He makes some good, compelling points.
  
• Blogger opens access to OpenID. Could be a banner day to push adoption of the misunderstood service.
  
• Lewis Green poses the risk/reward question for companies looking to dip their toes into social media.
  
• Opera, the biggest browser you never heard of, brought anti-trust claims against Microsoft. Microsoft has now responded.
  
• And the word of the year is....w00t! Not sure this was worthy, but if you don't know this is usually an exclamation of excitement in the gaming community.
  
• Paul Herring points out the new, animated Apple ads for Christmas.
  
• Amazon released their new SimpleDB service to take on Microsoft SQL, Oracle and MySQL on the database front. This hosted service could simplify and speed up database queries around the net.
  
• If you're new to blogging, or even if you're not, this post from Darren Rowse gives a great plan to organizing and creating content.
  
• Are you bored at work? Want to rant about it in an anonymous environment? Check out BoredAt.
  
• Desktop RSS reader NewsGator received $12 million in funding.
  
• Microsoft launched mobile ads for their MSN Mobile network. Look for a lot more moves like this by major players in the coming months.
  
• 50 Cent wants you to steal his music. He definitely gets it.
  
• As Twitter's popularity picks up, it's a lot more distracting as some people are noting. Groups are long overdue on the service.
  
• Speaking of Bebo, it's not in the top 10 social networks. Check out this chart to see who is.
  
• Karl Long pointed out a very interesting fact from a recent MPD report that 63% of Americans play video games. Think about the implications here.
  
• Google Maps is adding comments and ratings to get more social.
  
• Scoble is leaving PodTech for a yet-to-be-determined company. Fast Company is named as one contender. I wish him luck.
  
• Ike Pogott asks if astroturfing is in our DNA. What do you think?
  
• David Armano looks at why Twitter is picking up steam. Jeremiah Owyang is driving quite a bit of this growth himself.
  
• Mack Collier has a nice post about how Facebook may have lost its way.
  
• MySpace and Skype have officially partnered. This has been a long-rumored deal.
  
• David Reich looks at the NYTimes.com's 64% readership growth.
  
• Another RSS reader has received funding. Look for Fav.or.it to launch soon.
  
• Why don't you put your fire extinguisher on your kitchen counters? Probably because it's ugly eh? No more. Take a look at this.
  
• Greg Verdino penned his seven trends that defined 2007 and he left the last one open for us to decide.
  
• Jeremiah looks at LinkedIn's new open API and what it means for the industry.
  
• Valeria Maltoni explains why the agency model is due for a revamp and how to help.
  
• Facebook now has 10,000 applications built on their platform. Some are hot, some are duds.
  
• Justin Smith at Inside Facebook looks at 24 ways to market your brand inside Facebook.
  
• One of the best posts I've read in a while came from David Armano on the Critical Mass blog. Check out his look at how digital agencies can get in on higher level brand messaging.
  
• ESPNU is empowering college sports fans to connect and share info.
  
• Erick at TechCrunch looks at Google's OpenSocial and why it's not yet really taking off.
  
• Verizon has announced that it will support Google's Android platform.
  
• Text messaging turned 15 last week. The first message was sent on the Vodafone network and said "Merry Christmas"
  

Top Five Web2.0 Movers of the Week (using Alexa data)

1. Zippy video
   
2. Flixster
   
3. Oodle
   
4. Woot!
   
5. Upcoming
   

More

Top Ten Marketing Blogs from Viral Garden

1. Seth's blog
   
2. Duct Tape Marketing
   
3. Search Engine Guide
   
4. Daily Fix
   
5. Logic + Emotion
   
6. Brand Autopsy
   
7. The Engaging Brand
   
8. Influential Marketing
   
9. Drew's Marketing Minute
   
10. Diva Marketing
    

View the top full top 25

Top 5 "Viral" Videos This Week

1. Here comes another bubble
   
2. Sex and the City Trailer
   
3. Straight No Chaser - 12 days
   
4. Lost Season four trailer
   
5. Led Zepplin O2 Arena
   

Honrable mention: Tay Zonday (the "Chocolate Rain" guy, has this new Dr. Pepper commercial. Added to YouTube on November 28, 2007 and has nearly 1.3 million views. His original video is nearing 12 million views. Here is the commercial.

More

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Technorati Tags:
trends, buzz, buzzfriday, matt dickman, Techno//Marketer

Facebook Beacon, one month later

When I posted my original Inside//Out video on Beacon, I couldn't have known how vehemently anti-Beacon people in this social media space would react. Well, Facebook took notice of the opposition and Zuckerburg himself apologized to users on the matter asking for patience and thanking users for their support.

When I asked people outside of this microcosm if they knew about Beacon, I couldn't find one who did. They all had Facebook profiles and most thought it was an interesting idea to share activities in one network. We're all in the echo chamber and have to remember that a) we're the first line of defense/adoption and b) we're *way* ahead of the normal John and Jane consumer out there. We're all working in unchartered territory, Facebook needs to beta these things better in the future with some community participation instead of unleashing them. Facebook messed up, acknowledged it, made changes to respond and have a pretty good solution in place on their end (minus a few caveats).

On the marketer side, however, we need to make sure we ALWAYS allow people to opt-in to services like this from now on. If we use an opt-in, confirm it with people and let them opt-out, we're giving people full control of what's transmitted to third-parties. These are basic email marketing practices and can be adopted for situations like this.

So what's changed? Check out this video which gives a look at what changes are in place as well as their progression to get where we are today.

[Feed readers, please click through to the post if you cannot see the video.]

Here is a re-post of my diagram explaining how Beacon works:

Click to Enlarge

Marketers apply for and install the beacon code on their site Marketers then set up actions on their site to send information with Beacon Beacon looks on the user's local machine to see if they have a valid Facebook cookie, if it finds one, it sends the data to Facebook When users log in to Facebook, they are presented with a message asking to allow the data to be pulled in Users can automatically allow all, request to authorize each or deny all on a site-by-site basis Update: Facebook now allows you to opt-out of all beacon messages (data is still transferred to Facebook if the marketer sends it) If approved, the message is added to the users timeline (mini-feed) and is presented to their friends on the main landing page

Guidelines for marketers:

1. Make sure that you are allowing people to opt-in to use Beacon to push information to their profile. This is permission marketing 101.
   
2. Allow them to opt in to each action you hook Beacon up to (if there are three places you are using it, that's three opt ins).
   
3. Add some explanatory information every time information is sent, as you saw in the video the notification Facebook uses is seen only briefly. Give people a short reminder and allow them to opt out quickly.
   
4. Only use beacon for things that will add value to the user on Facebook. Hold off on the mundane things and focus on items that add value, reduce the time spent re-typing it on Facebook or hook into an application the user already has installed.
   

All of that said, would you recommend a client use it? If you are a marketer, would you implement this right now? Are you waiting for something more from Facebook before you step in? What is your most important takeaway from this experience?

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advertising, Facebook, Inside//Out, interactive marketing, marketing, Matt Dickman, social media, social networks, Techno//Marketer, beacon, privacy

Are more ads on social networks inevitable?

One of the biggest questions on my mind with all of the hype surrounding Facebook (and the ramp up by marketers) is how they plan on making money. There are some ads on the site now (the lack of ads is one of its redeeming points) and Beacon seems to have loads of potential even though it was poorly launched.

Facebook seems to be leading the way among competitors in opening up the platform for developers and that's a key to growth and future revenue. But they're still not making any money outside of investments. Most of the other networks, however, are still more closed and are heavily advertising dependent. Just take a look at these examples of Facebook vs. MySpace. I've removed the portion of the page that I control and left in the ads and other default pieces.

Facebook without my content	MySpace without my content

Given that example and the obvious focus that MySpace places on ad space, take a look at this chart from eMarketer showing the share of traffic and ad impressions for MySpace and Facebook. Note that MySpace has twice the traffic and 6.5 times the ad revenue of Facebook.

Now, let's look at how eMarketer expects ad spending on social networks to progress. Though the anticipated growth is leveling out, it is gaining attention from marketers as a viable outlet.

Taking all of that into account, is throwing more ads on a page the answer? It seems to get more revenue in the door, but it's far from adding value to the users. Click through rates are also notoriously low, so the value isn't really there for the advertisers either. So what's the solution? Here are some options that we're already seeing, but are sure to see more of:

• Creating rich, branded applications
• Helping users centralize data into one place
• Connecting people from multiple networks around a passion
• Localization and hyper-targeting

What have you seen that gets you engaged with a brand?

Technorati Tags:
advertising, Facebook, marketing, Matt Dickman, MySpace, social media, social networks, Techno//Marketer