Social Media Boot Camp

Facebook is doomed

2010-01-13T05:39:00.000-08:00

I decided this morning that Facebook is doomed...seriously, throw it in the pile with your Ed-Hardy sunglasses (now available at Costco.) The reason...simple overload!

Do the math: I have 447 'friends' which is not that many considering how I use FB and considering the fact that I am a pretty active networker in general.

I also go to bed late and wake up early and these are the times I usually 'check-in' with my various social networking channels. On average there are...

more than 200 'updates' waiting for me.

Assuming I don't check in throughout the day (some of us actually work) there are between 300 and 500 updates.

Are you kidding me?

'Horoscopes, Mafia Wars, more event invites than I could ever attend, and don't get me started on that G-DAMN FARMVILLE thing. I swear...as soon as someone writes an application to block that nonsense I will gladly pay! Someone fertilized your crops? You found a stray goat? Who gives a cow-patty?

Recently, I have switched to facebook Lite which cuts down a lot of the noise (friend notifications, event attendees, silly apps and such.) Ironically, when you strip away all the games - there is not much going on.

My point is that your 'window' holds 5-7 updates. There are 15 or so to a page when you scroll down. Assuming the average person has the patience to look through three pages (which is a lot if you ask me) and they have an average 'check-in' volume of 100 (half of mine) there is less than a 50% chance someone will even read my update. In reality, I suspect these numbers are over-ambitious and the real probability is closer too 10%.

Since I use social media primarily for business/promotion purposes, I have considered hiring someone to re-post for me every six minutes (thus improving my chances.) I am also pretty sure I could get Rent-A-Coder to whip something up for me.

But how long would that last? Pretty soon, everyone who wanted their message seen would do this and volume would go through the roof. It's kind of like what happens at a party or in a restaurant...the volume keeps creeping up because everyone wants to be heard. Eventually, it's so loud you can't hear anything.

So what's next? Wish I could say... actually I wouldn't say because I would get to work on the solution and try to make a buck off of this problem. All I know is that this phenomena has played itself out many times...we call them fads and they all implode eventually,

I'd be really interested in hearing your thoughts on how facebook could re-invent itself. That is, of course , if you can tear yourself away from Mafia Wars!

8 Secrets to Writing Killer Post Titles

2009-12-05T13:16:00.000-08:00

Another great piece from @adamsconsulting

adamsconsulting

8 Secrets to Writing Killer Post Titles

How to Start a Twitter Trend!

2009-12-05T12:36:00.000-08:00

Want to learn how to use Hashtags? Baratunde Thurston is the web editor for The Onion and has some great thoughts on this!

An Allocation Based Marketing Framework

2009-12-05T11:21:00.000-08:00

Executives tend to speak about 'Marketing' in sweeping generalities. Or worse...they get stuck in the quagmire of debating the merits of traditional marketing versus social marketing versus internet marketing, etc.

Newsflash: Marketing is the same as every other function in an organization: The primary objective is to...

contribute to revenue generation revenue and deliver a return for the shareholders/stakeholders.

Generally, marketers have a difficult time accepting the reality that every dollar spent must deliver to a return on that investment. Similarly, marketer tend to resist direct accountability for that return on marketing investment dollars choosing instead to hide behind 'fluffy' terms like 'branding' and 'awareness.'

This is unfortunate but creates an opportunity for those that do.

If the goal of marketing is to generate a return on investment, then it makes sense to categorize marketing according to the nature of the investment. Stated simply, executives need to organize their thinking (and marketing spend) based on how that investment will contribute to revenue generation.

The following visual provides a framework for thinking about where your marketing dollars are currently allocated as well as how you can align this spend across the sales cycle.

This 'internet' thing is a fad!

2009-12-04T17:07:00.000-08:00

Act One: The year was 1997 (plus or minus) and I had just landed a job with AT&T as a 'middle markets' account executive.

My clients were companies that spent lots of money each month on toll free and long distance.

We are talking $.28 per MINUTE baby!

AT&T rolled out one of the first commercial/corporate website development and hosting offerings. For a meager $5k per month we would build you a five (count 'em 5) page site!

Here are some actual quotes from prospects I pitched this to:

- I am confident sure this 'internet' thing is a fad!
- our customers want to talk to us not a - what do you call it? - oh yeah...a website!
- this business will NEVER go 'on the web!'

Act Two: The year was 2000 (I think the world was supposed to end...)

I worked for Lucent as a 'call center specialist' selling $1m+ phone systems.

My clients were companies with hundreds (and sometimes thousands) of agents that talked to people all day long.

Lucent was one if the first to launch 'text chat' for customer service reps. Our technology enabled reps to chat with up to four customers at once!

Here are some actual quotes from prospects I pitched this to:
- our customers will only talk to people...they don't want any part of this 'chat' nonsense.
- I am confident sure this'chat' thing is a fad!
- We will NEVER chat with our customers

I could go on but I am pretty sure you get the point....

Chicago Tribune Article on Foursquare

2009-12-04T10:02:00.001-08:00

Foursquare Fun: Newest Social Media Site Is Complement to Twitter

By JULIE WERNAU / CHICAGO TRIBUNE / Published: Wednesday, December 2, 2009

CHICAGO | David Kadavy steps into a local coffee and tea shop and clicks "check in" on his iPhone's Foursquare application.

His phone tells him six other people have also checked in, and it provides tiny pictures of them. The Foursquare application automatically updates his Twitter account - his 1,035 followers now know where to find him along with those half-dozen others.

The bearded 30-year-old Kadavy, a freelance Web designer and foodie (he has a "tweet what you eat" site) is playing an increasingly popular game that experts believe has a shot at turning social media into a money-making enterprise.

Playing Foursquare involves exploring restaurants, pubs and coffee shops in major metro areas. The payoff for playing can range from special deals or freebies at eating and drinking establishments to scoring points, Boy Scout-like badges and "mayorships," essentially bragging rights for hanging out at particular locations.

"Foursquare, the thing that's unique about it is that it has the opportunity to monetize restaurants, locations and activities that people would do - a little bit better than Facebook or Twitter does," said Michael J. Lis, owner of Speck Media, a Chicago marketing firm.

Foursquare's users have been increasing by 45 to 50 percent each month, according to the New York-based company. It boasts 100,000 users internationally.

Foursquare is among a handful of upstart companies that have tapped into the combination of social media and a user's geographic location along with the fact that mobile phone game players seem increasingly open to meeting up with people they get to know online. Some tech bloggers call Foursquare the next Twitter, but Foursquare bills itself as a complement to Twitter - a way to take the connections and personas people create online and move those experiences into the real world.

Keeping users entertained will be its ongoing challenge, according to Flurry, a mobile applications analytics company in San Francisco. It classifies Foursquare in its "location based social network" category.

"To keep users engaged, the company running the service has to frequently add new features, devising new ways to allow users to interact and remain entertained," said Peter Farago, Flurry's vice president of marketing.

Flurry estimates that out of every 100 new users, fewer than 10 will remain active on these systems two months later. The reason: There are fewer opportunities to launch the application than say, Facebook, because users have to actually be somewhere in real life in order to have a reason to use it.

A year ago Foursquare, which 33-year-old co-founder Dennis Crowley named after the classic playground game, was little more than an idea sketched out on his table.

But it has emerged in only eight months as the hottest of its kind, surpassing competitors Gowalla.com (stamp your digital passport and earn rewards at the places that you visit), Brightkite.com (discover what's happening in your neighborhood) and Loopt.com (pinch, tap and drag an interactive map to find your friends and what they're doing), according to Compete.com, which estimates site traffic based on the daily browsing activity of over 2 million U.S. Internet users.

Crowley co-founded Foursquare in March with Naveen Selvadurai, the developer of such iPhone apps as WWJD, a sort of magic 8 ball where users ask Jesus what he would do, and Drunk Dialer, which challenges users to dial when the numbers move around.

EARNING BADGES

Foursquare users can earn badges for accomplishing different "feats." Each time they do, users unlock a badge. Users also compete to have more points than their friends: 5 points for the first time a user checks in somewhere new, zero points for a duplicate check-in within the same week and travel bonus points for each subsequent check-in after 4 p.m. to reward bar-hopping.

Here is a sampling of badges that can be earned.

Newbie: First check-in

Bender: Checking in four nights in a row

Crunked: Checking in to four or more venues in one night

Local: Checking in at the same venue three times in one week

Super User: Checking in 30 times in one month

Social Media without Compelling Content = BS!

2009-11-26T07:06:00.001-08:00

10+ Social Media Tips - Social Media Starts with a Content Strategy

View more presentations from Joe Pulizzi.

Don't Ruin Your Twitter Reputation!

2009-11-24T05:11:00.001-08:00

A nice piece from the Bit Rebels!

Guy Kawasaki on "How to get Found"

2009-11-23T06:01:00.000-08:00

How to Get Found

Guy Kawasaki (Alltop)

Oct 27, 2009

Brian Halligan is the founder and CEO of HubSpot, an Internet marketing software company that helps small and medium-sized businesses get found on the Internet and converts website visitors into leads and customers. He is also the author of Inbound Marketing: Get Found In Google, Blogs, and Social Media.

It used to be that you could efficiently grow your businesses by interrupting potential customers with outbound marketing methods like cold calls, email spam, and advertising. Today... people and businesses are tired of being the targets of so much outbound marketing and they're getting better and better in blocking it out.

At the same time...

people and businesses have fundamentally changed the way they shop and learn, turning more and more to Google, social media sites and blogs to find what they want. Inbound marketing helps companies take advantage of these shifts by helping them get found by customers in the natural way in which they shop and learn. The following are Brian’s five steps to help you get “get found.”

1)   Be remarkable. Ten years ago you needed to spend gobs of money on PR and advertising to spread the word about your idea. Today the friction that marketing must overcome is very low for remarkable ideas such that they can spread on their own. Unremarkable ideas languish unfound regardless of how much PR and advertising you do. So make sure you have a unique, remarkable offering as it will spread like wildfire on the Internet if it's truly different.     

2)  Create content. Once you have your remarkable product or service, start creating lots of content about it—including blog articles, videos, podcasts, and tweets. Remarkable content about your remarkable product gets hyperlinked from other websites. Those links send you traffic, and they also tell Google that you should be higher in the rankings.     

3)  Optimize content. Before publishing your content, you need to “optimize” it for Google and for the people on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn, etc who will spread it. For Google, you should include some of your “keywords” in the title of your content piece so it will be easier for Google to find it. For readers, you should make your titles as irresistible as possible. A good model for this is this blog that uses titles like “The Art of Schmoozing,” “MBA In A Page,” and “The Top 10 Lies of Venture Capitalists.”     

4) Promote content. Once you have a remarkable piece of content that is optimized, start spreading it. Post it on your blog, email it to your newsletter subscribers, tweet it, update your Facebook fan page and LinkedIn profile with it. If the content is remarkable, others will spread it for you. As that content spreads, you will have more people follow you or subscribe to you, so that the next piece of content you publish will have a wider audience in the future.

5)  Measure results. You need to measure your results for each channel. For example, you should compare your results for Google organic branded search, Google organic non-branded search, Google paid, blog, email, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn group, and tradeshow campaigns to each other. For each campaign, you need to track visitors, leads, opportunities, and customers over time. Then double down on the campaigns that are working and kill the ones that aren’t.

The fundamental way in which humans shop and learn has changed dramatically the last five years because of the increased power of word-of-mouth and search. Therefore, you need to change the way you market your products to match the way people learn and find out about them. 

Link to the Article Here 

Monetizing Your Online Business

2009-11-20T12:13:00.001-08:00

Tips on How to Monetize an Online Business Directory

By: Adriana Noton

There is more to establishing an online business directory than just improving your search engine rankings. When implemented properly, you can actually generate a substantial income. There are a number of tools you can use to effectively monetize your directory. Using the methods listed below, you can create an effective and profitable online business directory....

Join Affiliate Programs: Affiliate Programs, also known as Associate Programs, are programs where one online merchant will pay other websites a commission fee to direct traffic to their website. The websites will post links to that merchants sites and will paid according to a particular agreement, such as if someone clicks on the link to the site and makes a purchase of a product or service. Links can be in the form of banners and text links. An affiliate program is an excellent way to bring in money. It will not cost you anything to join and the affiliate code is a matter of copy and pasting the merchant's code. For instance, if your directory is a business directory,
Costs-Per-Click (CPC) is an effective advertising tool that can be a money generator. Google AdSense is an example of a very popular CPC. All that you have to do is sign up with a network such as Google AdSense and paste some code on your directory page. The network will then serve text or images ads that are relevant to your directory pages, and you will earn a certain amount of money for every click. How much you make depends on where you place the Ads on your page, how the Ads relate to the content of your pages, and the number of people clicking through. Amazon.com has a popular CPC program. As well, other popular programs are Yahoo! Publisher Network (YPN), Chitika, BidVertiser, and Clicksor.
CPM (Cost-Per-Mille) Advertising Networks: These networks are another method of generating income in your online business directory. They operate much like Pay-Per-Click except the ads displayed on the site will generate the income. CPM refers to the cost for 1,000 impressions. You can receive as low as $0.10 and as much as $10 per 1,000 impressions. Popular CPM networks include: Right Media, Casale Media, Value Click, Advertising.com, Burst Media, and Tribal Fusion.
Sell Advertising Space: You can also sell your own advertising space in your business directory. Generally, people will sell text ads and banner ad formats. The most popular banner formats on the web are the 72890 leader board, the 120600 skyscraper, 125125 button, and the 300250 rectangle. This is an effective and non intrusive method of using ads to generate income.
Paid Polls and Surveys: There are companies that will compensate people to run small polls and surveys on their web pages. You just have to sign up with the company and select the type of surveys and polls you want to include on your directory pages.

There are many ways to effectively monetize your Business Directory. The methods you choose should be relevant to your directory in order to maximize your income potential.

Author Resource:-> When searching for local businesses in Victoria cities such as arragul Business Directory, Frankston and Seaford, be sure to visit your local Business Directory Victoria and browse by city level or specific categories including health professionals, restaurants and even florists.

Article From ARTICLE GALLERY

HBR on SMM

2009-11-20T08:01:00.000-08:00

READ THE FULL ARTICLE

WWID? (What would Iggy Do?)

2009-11-20T07:16:00.000-08:00

This is a GREAT article about one of the 25 most connected business networkers (in Australia.)

Read about Iggy Pintado

Get on Board with FourSquare

2009-11-17T15:40:00.001-08:00

Here is a recent New York Times article on the latest social media application Foursquare

I think it holds great potential for retailers in particular!

Great tips for using LinkedIn

2009-11-17T14:29:00.000-08:00

Very basic but a good primer for LI newbies!

7 Ways to Get More Out of LinkedIn

A great report

2009-11-15T07:07:00.000-08:00

Here is a great report ranking the world's most valuable brands and outlining best practices used by companies like Dell, Starbucks, Toyota, and SAP