All Posts Tagged 'Facebookpage2'
Originally published on
Just like you, I get hordes of messaging on social media. And this is in addition to all the other work you might be doing in the area — conferences, summits, your own personal social media activities. The list goes on. When I was asked to write this article, the focus was on how to make these social activities digestible, actionable, and relevant to marketers, media, and those who work with them. And even while writing this piece, news of evolving trends was pouring out at a dizzying rate.
To give this article more long-term relevancy, I’ve categorized the trends I will discuss into interconnecting “ubertrends” — the trends that will directly impact the emergence and growth of supporting micro-trends and how they might relate to your business. Make no mistake about it, there will be more progression as we move into the new Yyear and beyond — and there is a vast beyond. Read the rest of this entry »
Originally published on
Yesterday, a good site offered compelling, relevant, and fresh content, an intuitive navigation perhaps supported by an internal search, and fast downloads. It was optimized for relevant searches and delivered an excellent user experience that occurred within the confines of the site. Early social programs were often developed with the goal of driving audience from social communities to the brand or e-commerce site or sometimes to a microsite.
Today, the paradigm has flipped. No longer is the marketer’s site the only destination and often it is not even the primary one. Site content and traffic are used to multiply traffic and expand potential customer base through a host of powerful social tools to encourage sharing and other “social” behaviors that build audience, sales, brand equity, and loyalty. While there are clearly powerful strategies, tools, and programs to engage with your customers socially, “socializing” your site is a critical component of an overall social marketing strategy. Read the rest of this entry »
Amid growing concerns over employee privacy, the German government is considering a law which would make it illegal to check prospective employees’ Facebook accounts. The proposed law will make it illegal to become a Facebook friend with a prospective employee. However, employers will be allowed to run a Web search on their applicants. Anything out in public is fair game, including networks specifically created for business contacts, such as LinkedIn.
A rejected employee, who proves that he or she was not offered the job because of Facebook postings, will be able to sue the employer.
Originally published on
Good blogger relationships are critical to the success of many integrated social media campaigns, but finding the right blogging partner or partners can be a brand’s worse nightmare. There are millions of blogs out there ranging from the new class of professional bloggers to the occasional posters on sub domain sites. How do you find the right partner, lay out expectations, negotiate the right deal, and create a mutually beneficial relationship?
As an agency, we face this challenge daily. This spring we completed a very successful social media campaign with ConAgra Foods’ brand Ro*tel that was a textbook case of how this can work beautifully. I asked both client and blogger to give a bit of their perspective on the elements that made this relationship smooth and successful. Read the rest of this entry »
I couldn’t help but use the tagline for the upcoming movie, “The Social Network” as the title for this post. It’s attention grabbing.
In theaters October 1st, 2010, The Social Network will tell the story of how Mark Zuckerberg launched a revolution in communication and became the youngest billionaire in history. Success didn’t come without hurdles and the film will also reveal both personal and legal complications that challenged Mark and tested his mettle.
I’m looking forward to giving it a watch this fall and getting to know the Facebook empire better. Digital communities and user behavior is fascinating to study, especially when going from 1 to 500 million members in 6 short years. Countless blog posts and articles have been written about Facebook, but this will be the first feature length film. Should be a fun ride.
Watch the trailer here:
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=53OUHupfqws
Originally published on
The Internet is no longer new. Conversely, it’s always new, which raises technical, ethical, practical, financial, and other issues that we’re facing for the first time, as novel channels and new opportunities arise on a regular and accelerating basis. We’re figuring this out together – consumers, providers, marketers, technologists, government leaders, business leaders, and investors – as fast as we can, and that can make for some healthy debate and controversy but also some legitimate pain in the process.
It creates pain that some people with longstanding careers have to reinvent themselves and may have lost a good chunk of the equity they have built over time in their experience as new skills rise in importance. It creates pain that the Internet has such a long memory in search engines that any corporate or personal lapse stays with you forever like a brand. There are no do-overs, as The New York Times recently pointed out, for example, for the teens who may have committed petty crimes or misdemeanors – even if their “legal” records were expunged. It creates pain that some youngsters are using technology to wield a powerful new weapon against their peers in cyber bullying. It creates pain that new technologies and the education to use them are available to users in an uneven manner. It stresses families that younger generations choose different modes and styles of communication than their parents or grandparents. (Hint, text your kids if you want to reach them.) The list of new problems wrought by the Internet is probably as long as the benefits we enjoy. Change is never easy. Constant, unrelenting change at the speed we have been experiencing it for the last decade or so is especially difficult.
The flip side of this pain is opportunity. No one would be building new and inventive technologies, taking risks, or creating new business models if there weren’t a significant upside possible. Neither would individuals choose to participate if they didn’t find a significant enough benefit. Those benefits accrue to consumers, businesses, and all participants. So, how do we establish a dialogue that supports the beneficial pushing of boundaries and minimizes the discomfort created in the process? Read the rest of this entry »
Originally published on
One of the fundamental, disorienting shifts we have been feeling since the advent of a commercial Internet is that businesses and organizations that have no experience or inclination to be content producers…suddenly are. The Web is a content-hungry monster and we have fed it with varying degrees of success. Great content is relevant and timely and meets a need. That need can be as diverse as information, entertainment, community, or a host of other objectives. What separates the successful content from the unsuccessful is often a strategic approach to define and plan the content needs of that particular project, based on the site goals, audience, and ability to support that content.
A content strategist is not a glorified copy writer. That person is responsible for a comprehensive strategy that requires an intimate understanding of business requirements. Their work will greatly influence timelines and budgets. They will have to factor in implications and impacts as varied as IA/UX, SEO (define), project flow, audience feedback and participation, marketing goals, and messaging, plus keep up with the pace of change unique to each project.
Too often this critical component of a Web development or design project is overlooked or undervalued. If you surveyed agencies, Web development firms, and even clients you would find that the content piece is almost always the delaying factor in any engagement. For many, the definition of content is oversimplified to a project plan line item described as delivering the copy (and maybe the meta data) for key Web pages usually to be inserted just before launch. This is a mistake on at least four fronts.
Mistake No. 1 – Putting the Cart Before the Horse
The content strategy should inform the site-build itself, which means it has to come before the architecture is developed. The nomenclature used for navigational elements, the priority, emphasis, and order of included content, the rate of change built into site maintenance plans, and the source of new content should be built on audience research that is a key part of a content strategy.
Typical early stage content engagements include that audience research and translate the research into a message architecture that lays out brand attributes and language that is foundational to the later work and creates a beneficial consistency in the site. An audit of current content, an analysis of missed opportunities, a review of content types available, and resources both internal and external to maintain the program are all laid out against client and audience requirements. This upfront work allows for improved project flows and deadline adherence, greatly reduced iterations in wire framing and design, and a site that is tightly aligned with business goals.
Mistake No. 2 – Reducing Content Strategy to Copy Writing
Content is more than words. A broad definition is required to encompass audio, video, images – a million different formats on a zillion different platforms from primary or aggregated sources (brand or user-generated).
Mistake No. 3 – Neglecting to Factor in the Various Distribution Channels
It’s not just a website after all. It might also include one or several microsites or social media sites like Facebook. It might be a stream of tweets or a channel on YouTube. It might include portions of your content lifted from one or many sources. Is it still in context? Does it tell the story on its own? Does it have the right voice for this audience?
Mistake No. 4 – Considering Content Strategy a One-Time, Upfront Endeavor
Your business evolves, your audience evolves, the competition evolves, Web and technology opportunities evolve – if your content strategy does not you will be quickly out of sync, regardless of how smart and thorough you were at the onset.
Time is quirky and can play tricks with your carefully conceived narrative. Will users view it in order, all at once, and in the preferred format? No. You have no control over the users’ preferences and little ability to understand the context of their experience. Where they came from just before consuming your content matters as does a host of other factors you can’t control. Will it be filtered through an aggregator, truncated, and juxtaposed with other content that colors it? You can pretty much guarantee it. There is so much that you can’t control that you should do your best to control those things you can. Start by respecting your content – not the package you wrap it in – as what delivers true value to your audience
Originally published on 5/7/2010 in eMarketer
A 25-year marketing veteran, Denise Zimmerman has spent the past 18 years focusing on the digital landscape and best-practice applications in marketing, advertising and communications. She spoke with eMarketer Senior Analyst Jeffrey Grau about the options retailers have in responding to negative buzz on social media sites.
eMarketer: When I mention negative buzz, what comes to mind?
Denise Zimmerman: A number of things. I recall retailers really being frightened about Amazon offering reviews. It was probably one of the first and certainly one of the best at it. That became a major asset in their business. People looked to those reviews in their determination for a purchase. Amazon proved that it was a positive business driver.
So, reviews became the first step in an area that is probably fair to call social media. I had a number of conversations even back then with retailers who were really afraid to do that. What if somebody says something bad? Not everybody is going to be happy all the time.
eMarketer: What was the lesson learned?
“Reviews were positive for the business. If you had a good product and you were a good company, the positive reviews far outweighed the negative ones. You also got valuable feedback.”
Ms. Zimmerman: That reviews were positive for the business. If you had a good product and you were a good company, the positive reviews far outweighed the negative ones. You also got valuable feedback about potential issues or problems with a product that you might not have gotten before. But the challenge for retailers was, what do you then do about it? And a lot of this is relevant to the larger social media picture.
A lot of companies and retailers werent necessarily set up then to address these issues in terms of responding, and if something came to light that they needed to address from a product perspective, the organization dynamics were really not in place. And theyre still challenged in this way today with social media. Some have made more progress than others, but the implementation remains a challenge.
eMarketer: So how do the new social media differ from customer reviews?
Ms. Zimmerman: Most retailers have bitten the bullet on the review issue. But then youve got Twitter and Facebook. They have grown exponentially in scope and in speed. The additional element is that there is an expectation from the customer that youre going to respond. Reviews were still a little bit more controlled. There was some level of expectation, but I dont think to the extent that there is today.
“If we put this into context, people talking about you is not new. … You just didnt know it. The feedback of how well you were doing was reflected in sales, success of the business and the number of customer-service calls. But now you do know it, and maybe you really didnt want to.”
If we put this into context, people talking about you is not new. For the most part, you just didnt know it. The feedback of how well you were doing was reflected in sales, success of the business and the number of customer-service calls. But now you do know it, and maybe you really didnt want to.
eMarketer: How should retailers deal with negative buzz on social media sites?
Ms. Zimmerman: Youve got three top-level options. The first is to ignore it. This is interesting because if I got up in front of a crowd of people, retailers or nonretailers, who wanted to know about social media and I told them that a viable option was to ignore it, they would probably look at me and say, Thats so antisocial. But it is a very clear option, and there are times when thats appropriate.
The other obvious option is to respond, but then the questions are, how to respond and in what way? There are other things to consider in making that decision. Then, the third option, which also seems incredibly antisocial, is to take the negative comments down.
eMarketer: When should a retailer ignore negative buzz?
Ms. Zimmerman: You need to make the determination based on a couple of variables. One, is it really a company issue? Or was it an isolated situation particular to that individual and not something that is omnipresent or persistent? There are a couple of ways to know that. One is, youve got to know your own business and your own company, and you should look into what the issue is and find out what the facts are. Two, you also may want to look at the individual who has posted that and what their influence is, meaning how many Twitter followers or how many Facebook fans they might have.
eMarketer: Arent there also some people who just like to complain or may even be abusive in their remarks?
Ms. Zimmerman: Exactly. You have to bucket it. And by the way, you have to plan for all this. This is not a reactive thing.
Some people do things like that because theyre just trying to get a reaction. Part of the challenge is that not everybody has the experience to make good calls on this. Its a real challenge and its new to companies, which is why it needs to be, at some level, a team effort and why you need to plan and understand what the options are and how to evaluate these situations. What you really need to have is an evaluation escalation plan.
“You need to ask, who is this person? How influential is the person? Is he addressing and illuminating a real issue? Is this all about him, or is it really about my business or product or whatever? … Youre not going to be right all the time, and youve just got to accept that.”
You need to ask, who is this person? How influential is the person? Is he addressing and illuminating a real issue or not? Is this all about him or is it really about my business or product or whatever? And then you make the determination. And by the way, youre not going to be right all the time, and youve just got to accept that.
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