The Pew Internet and American Life Project released their report yesterday on The Internet and the 2008 Election. Not surprisingly, more Americans than ever — 46 percent — have used the Internet, email or text messaging to get information about the campaign and to share it with others. Are there ANY surprises? Actually, the big shock for me was that SO FEW Americans have made online political donations — 6 percent. Read it for yourself.
Still collecting content on Twitter to get ready for my upcoming training. Luckily, there's lots o' sh*t out there, probably written by Twitter junkies during the many occasions when the site is down.
Todd Mintz posted 101 Everyday Uses for Twitter on InsideCRM this past week. 101 sounds like a hell of a lot, but Mintz's point is that Twitter has "more possible uses than a Swiss Army knife." Not a great deal of analysis, but a good read nevertheless because he lets the Tweets speak for themselves, contributing an excellent structure to the content.
Lee Odden at Online Marketing Blog polled the blog's readers to gain some insight as to how THEY are using Twitter, with the majority of responses falling into the broad categories of sharing (and promoting) sh*t and schmoozing.
Jennifer Woodward Maderazo at PBS' MediaShift has her own take on the value of Twitter. She's a fan, with the site going "above and beyond (her) original expectations in terms of usefulness." She finds it to be particularly useful for her reporting. "If you put out a question to 800 people, someone's bound to have an answer."
Matt Dickman at Techno//Marketer believes Twitter is "the ultimate customer service tool." Joshua March doesn't agree. I fall somewhere in the middle. I think companies should have a presence on Twitter if their customers tend to be early adopters who are inclined to talk about customer service and have some reach or influence. I don't think Twitter should become a core part of your customer service strategy if they are not. Like March says, trying to teach the majority of your customers how to use it is not going to make it something that's well-received. Despite the fact that I agree with March, I wish he used the term "social media" and not "social marketing" to describe his site. (Oh well.)
Seattle is my second home these days, so I shared this post with my peeps in Seattle who I count among my "followers." It's the Most Famous Twitterpreneurs of Seattle, the kings of the 2.0 geeks in the land of the Space Needle. At least one of the comments on the post picked up on what I noticed: "What, no women entrepreneur-twitterers?"
According to Compete, traffic on Twitter doubled between February and April, when approximately 1.2 million people were using the site and the percentage of time spent on Twitter, relative to the overall time spent online, has quadruped in the past six months. Nearly a quarter of the users are "heavy users," which, I am embarrassed to say, means 6+ tweets per month (I average that per day, folks) and overall, users skew young (18-24) and male. (But the experience you have on the site is dependent on who you're following, so, if you're worried about spending too much time with little boys, don't fret.)
I posted about Noah Brier's brandtags, so I hope you've checked it out by now. Here's how folks are tagging the Twitter brand: annoying, pointless, stupid and useless? Who are these people? ;)
For you design lovers, Wallpaper Magazine is on Twitter now . . .
Finally, Palin Ningthoujam at Mashable posted 140+ More Tools to the Twitter Toolbox they created last September. I am officially completely overwhelmed.
I'm going to be doing a Twitter training at the agency late next month and I'm collecting great content in the meantime.
Here's some of the latest:
I have a couple of posts I've written on other sites that I wanted to share.
Today, I wrote my first guest post at PhilanTopic, the Foundation Center's blog , yesterday, after the Ca Supreme Court ruled in favor of gay marriage, I wrote a post for the agency blog.
Lazy blogger tactics.
Shoot me.
Noah Brier has launched brand tags, collecting tags to assess people's perceptions of a wide number of brands -- from Burt's Bees to Jamba Juice. You can request that additional brands be added, so if you're looking for a little insight on a client brand — or your own, you might be in luck. Noah might want to adjust the size of the tags (I'm guessing he had no idea how popular this would be) because "smoothie" and "beard" are going to grow bigger than the browser.
Dave Alston from Radian6 guest posts on the Online Marketing Blog with a list of the Top 10 Reasons for Monitoring Brands in Social Media. As a fan of Radian6 who is trying to bring the tool to more of our clients, I appreciate Alston's comment, "Choosing not to listen doesn't make those conversations go away."
Southwest has expanded upon its successful blog, Nuts about Southwest. The site now incorporates their Flickr group, video blog, aggregated news, polls (lame) and the brand's social network profiles, including Twitter.
As should be expected, women are using social networks differently — and more — than men. They have more "friends" on the sites, but they are less focused than men on "acquiring" friends and more on building relationships. The research comes from MarketingCharts.
Simmons has created social media consumer profiles, although a few of them sound a little pathetic, e.g. the "socially isolated" and "approval seekers." (via Ad Age)
WhoShouldIFollow.com will help you find the "right" people to follow on Twitter, presumably based on those you are already following. Like Robert Scoble says, your Twitter on experience is defined by the people you follow, so choose wisely.
Josh Bernoff at Groundswell recommends using tools like Tweetscan and Summize to track the conversation about your brand on Twitter. Smart companies are using these tools to step in when their customers have complaints or as a great way to gain insight on how customers feel about the brand or their ideas for how to improve a product or service.
I went on a rant this morning on a friend's blog. It had little to do with what she wrote, beyond it prompting me to think about my growing distaste for social media marketing tactics. In fact, I told her,
"Most of what agencies are doing in the space is a load of horsesh*t. Disclosure doesn't impress me anymore."
She works in an agency. The same agency I once worked in. I work in a new agency. This isn't about either of those agencies.
So, when is it not "horsesh*t"?
When you use social media as an, admittedly, unscientific "focus group": Screw the nonsense about "starting a conversation." Unless you're launching a new brand or product, there already is a conversation. Listen to what your customers are saying because they're telling you how you can be better or why they think you're great.
When it's an extension of your customer service department: While you're out there listening to what your customers have to say, offer to remedy the errors of your ways. Train your front line to know when and how — in a noninvasive way — to be responsive. Word of mouth about customer service is strong. Help to make yours positive.
When you use it as an opportunity to share your values: Are you innovative? Socially responsible? Global? Committed to your community? Transparent? Prove it. Tell us about it. And don't fake it because we know what fake looks like.
When you provide utility to a pre-existing community: If you've been listening, you'll know what to provide. The folks at Etsy.com listened and they gave the crafting community a store front to reach people, like Dooce, who will buy their beautiful wares. Elisa, Lisa and Jory listened and they created BlogHer to give women bloggers a community, conferences and the opportunity to be compensated for their writing. "Utility" takes on many forms. Figure out what it means to your customers and think -- think hard -- about how you can give it to them.
Everything else is horsesh*t.
As I told my friend, "This last one (utility) is the most interesting to me. What can you do to make things better for the people with whom you're trying to build a relationship?"
I am "following" anti-death penalty advocate Sister Helen Prejean (@helenprejean) — and she's "following" me.
Robert Scoble (@scobleizer) posted on Sunday — on his blog — about the fact that social networks suck unless you have the right friends. Not because of status, but because those friends are producing the "smartest, richest, coolest, funniest" content. I am sincerely mesmerized by the smart things people say and share and observe.
(Of course, I'm not a total junkie. Occasionally, when given 140 words, people say stupid things.)
By the way, Scoble's in Israel — I think he's still there — rooming with Craig Newmark (@craignewmark), founder of Craig's list. How do I know? I feel like I know everything the man is doing because he Twitters every minute of the day — from airports, overheated vans, hotel rooms and more — producing smart, rich, cool and funny content along the way.
There's been a huge jump in the use of social networks among the affluent: from 27 percent of affluent Internet users to 60 percent between January 2007 and January 2008 (via eMarketer, from The Luxury Institute).
40 percent of women Internet users are moms with kids under the age of 18 at home. Two-thirds of Internet users who are moms of young children use the Internet to research purchasing decisions (via eMarketer).
A survey of journalists conducted by Editor & Publisher found that 73 percent use blogs for their research, most often to "measure sentiment." On the flip side, 86 percent of bloggers say they are being contacted by PR folks (that number has GOT to be inflated). 24 percent of these bloggers say this outreach from PR folks never results in a post and 49 percent say this outreach results in a post 25 percent of less of the time. What are the percentages like for mainstream media pitches?
Pete Blackshaw writes a definitive post on the Ten Things Every Marketer Should Know about Wikipedia. In other words, please, dear G-d, stop thinking you can continue to ignore and even dismiss the impact that Wikpedia is having on your brand.
Tamera Kremer posts on 3i about how to use social bookmarking sites (like my beloved del.icio.us) to gain customer insight. Both the tags and notes chosen to describe your brands or products can reveal a great deal and help lead you in the direction of better product development or more effective marketing strategies.
Politics
I've heard a few Republicans smirk and make the comment that Democrats only stay Democrats until they grow up -- and become a Republican. Not so fast, kiddies. LiveScience reports (via The Huffington Post) that a new longitudinal study says that people become more liberal as they grow older.
Digital Advocacy
From late January, here's an article in The Chronicle of Philanthropy about how nonprofits are using social media to engage supporters, promote their issue and raise money to meet their mission. Gone are the days (hopefully) when these organizations need to build expensive -- or crappy -- web sites to achieve these goals OR try to figure out how the hell to drive traffic to these sites, adding one more unvisited destination on the "information highway." As should be expected, the success of these efforts can be attributed to word of mouth. Gather.com's Tom Gerace knows what he is talking about when he says, "If you get contacted by a friend or colleague who points out a group doing great work, that can be (IS, Tom, IS) much more effective than trying to reach people with a random mailer that doesn't have the same trust factor."
If you don't believe ME that the promise of the future is NOT building more web sites, listen to Steve Rubel at MicroPersuasion who proselytizes about "the promise of small content that can go anywhere."
Word of Mouth
Spike at Brains on Fire makes the argument that it's quality -- and not quantity -- that makes all the difference in word of mouth. Those few are willing to do some heavy lifting for your brand, your issue. Reward them, recognize them, help them to be the evangelists that will take the conversation -- and the love -- further.
In a post on TechPresident, Isaac Garcia has a great analysis about how Senator Obama's campaign is an illustration of how the Long Tail theory is coming to life in politics. Essentially, just as technology has provided the opportunity for marketers to reach the most narrow niches of consumers, it has also enabled candidates to tailor their messages and engage those who may have felt left out of the process in the past - as donors, as ambassadors and as voters.
The Kaiser Family Foundation's health08.org has pulled together an "issue spotlight" on global health and HIV/AIDS, providing an analysis of Clinton, Huckabee, McCain and Obama's positions on what they will do as President to wipe out poverty-related disease in the developing world. You may have made your decision or cast your vote already, but if this issue matters to you as much as it does to me, we still need to be prepared to hold the new administration accountable to their promises when the dust finally settles.
Update: Matthew Kavanaugh is asking a valid question at The Huffington Post about the current crop of candidates' commitment to the global HIV/AIDS pandemic. In the midst of reauthorization of the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), where are their voices?
Sure, the 2008 presidential campaign has been remarkable for the ever-increasing presence and effectiveness of social media in raising awareness, raising money and getting people to the polls.
But is this just a fling?
Mark Glaser at PBS' Media Shift hopes not. Just as Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick has managed to use social media to continue the conversation with his constituents long after the election, Glaser thinks the new President has an opportunity to "use technology and new media to be more responsive to us."
Most of the items on Glaser's list aim to increase transparency -- more information being put out -- although some also allow for at least some co-creation between policy makers and citizens. Ideally, I would like to see more of the latter, but I wonder about the infrastructure that needs to be in place to ensure that the contributions that ordinary Americans make are truly put to use and not just used as window dressing for a new era in government.
Glaser is looking for additional ideas, so drop by and share yours with him.
I remember trying fruitlessly to find data on Internet use among Asian Americans a year or so ago, so I was pretty thrilled to see this recent research from eMarketer. You only get a taste, unless you want to cough up $695.
The Center for Digital Future has put out their 2008 report. One of the highlights is that, while just 15 percent of people use social networks (that number seems low to me, what do you think?), 94 percent of those folks believe the Internet has helped them to understand more about social issues and 75 percent are members of communities that have come together around social causes.
According to Omnicom's Brodeur, more than 75 percent of American journalists look to blogs for story ideas, to get a new angle on an existing story or to gain a better understanding of a story's context. Just under 70 percent read blogs on a regular basis, with more than 20 percent spending more than an hour each day doing so. Nearly 28 percent have their own blogs.
Ben McConnell at Church of the Customer Blog has 10 marketing resolutions for 2008. It's impossible to disagree with any of them, but I'm particularly gungho for #9 ("Raise the ethics bar.") and #10 ("Do what you love.") I like to think that #9 was already my mantra in 2007, but can I make #10 a reality in 2008?
Dave Armano at Logic+Emotion is looking forward to 2008 as well and argues that microsites may not be the way to go for most brands. "If there isn't a steady supply of new, quality content -- then users really don't have a reason to come back and engage." Listen to him, folks. Save your money. Don't presume your customers will come to you. Be creative and go to them. Engage with them.
Marcia Conner urges us all to Create a Stronger, Smarter Organization at Fast Company and provides a Learning Culture audit tool to assess where you're starting from and where you need to go. Be brave and be honest.
There's a line in "Handmade 2.0," Rob Walker's excellent article in this Sunday's New York Times Magazine about the online craft business/community that hits the nail on the head for me, primarily because it gets at my frustration with what so many marketers are setting out to do within social media.
"I was (more) interested in what made Etsy seem different from so many current efforts to 'build community' online: the luck or genius of the site is that Kalin and the other founders encountered in the D.I.Y./craft scene something that was already social, community-minded, supportive and aggressively using the Web. It seemed to me that the company's future would depend not only on the success of its sellers but also on its reputation among them."
Find a community, provide a service to that community that actually creates added value, and listen to the community so that you are sure that the service remains valuable to them. Don't create community because you want to access a large pool of people who have no reason or desire to spend time with each other and are sure to see through your self interests. It may seem like a smart solution to your business objective, but you're destined to fail.
Update: Orli Sharaby at PSFK thought this section of the article was worth noting as well.
An old friend returns. Change.org tells you how to do it right. Greenpeace doesn't play games. Community is not one size fits all. Links abound for web designers. Japanese bloggers get covered in the Post. International Facebook users get covered by PBS, which also gives the 101 on hyper local blogs. And Steve Case gives away his money to determine how to get other people to do the same.
Digital Advocacy
Houtlust is back -- in the form of Osocio. All the best in advocacy campaigns from around the world. Inevitable jealousy for not having been the team that created the campaign is a side effect. Check out this great anti-drunk driving campaign. No subtle messages here, folks.
As the online community manager, Heather Mansfield at Change.org updates her Best Practices for Nonprofit Organizations on a monthly basis to ensure that users are getting the most out of the site.
Greenpeace, fresh off their triumph against Apple, turns its attention toward gaming consoles with Clash of the Consoles. Not as rad as Green My Apple (swoon), but they're using a similar strategy: ask fans to take pride in the objects of their affection and get them on your side. In other words, don't alienate those that you need most.
The Case Foundation is supporting efforts to determine how technology can best be used for philanthropy.
Word of Mouth
Ben McConnell at Church of the Customer breaks down what "community" means, suggesting that size and the level of devotion of the community members are the defining factors. As a Maker's Mark Ambassador, I am happy to inform you that I agree with his assessment that it is indeed a cult.
Around the World (and in the Neighborhood) in Social Media
Bloggers in Japan do it more often, quicker, on the run, under the covers and they do it politely. Blaine Harden at The Washington Post lets us know that not everyone has Technorati ranking envy and is trying to strengthen their personal brand.
Mark Glaser at PBS' Media Shift looks at how Facebook users from around the world are using the social network -- and why -- and talks about, while the site may have universal appeal, there is no question that it is American through and through. (Poke.)
Mark also provides an extensive overview of hyper-local news sites: defining what they are, demonstrating different ways they gather their news and talking about the different business models that these sites are following. Plus, best of all, he provides lots and lots of examples. Thanks, Mark.
Web Design
I tagged this -- 455 Helpful Links for Web Designers -- as a "tool," which it is, for someone. I sent it to Samantha, but I just realized her blog -- Bad Ass Ideas -- is listed as a resource, so I'm guessing she knows about it already. Who's stalking who now?
three billion is back with more on their "kids aren't cool" argument.
This time, and apparently based on the thinking of someone else (who?), they write about the "80:20 Rule of Youth Marketing." Essentially, the rule should be to spend 20 percent of your budget/effort on reaching the cool kids -- as an experiment -- and the other 80 percent on "tried and tested methods."
I like it.
Except I think that it might apply to more than just youth marketing. I feel like I have been in way too many brainstorms with colleagues in which we come up with ideas that sound flashy and fun, but essentially mean that we are going to take ten steps to get from A to B, when it would probably be more effective to take one solid step forward. And the "flashy and fun" ideas are usually anything but cool: they're condescending to the consumer.
I ALSO think it is important to point out that (and I don't think three billion thinks otherwise) the 80:20 rule should NOT be interpreted as a directive to spend 80 percent on old school tactics that use old school media and the other 20 percent on "new" media. To my colleagues in the communications industry who still think social media and is "new," catch up and watch out. You're about to go the way of the dinosaur.
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When you go to a new friend's house for a dinner party, you bring a bottle of wine, you don't bring a hammer and rebuild their house.
You provide that bottle of wine because you want to help the host to entertain their guests. Help them achieve their goal and they'll say thank you and maybe even kiss you on the cheek.
But don't expect them to ask you to move in with them. Just be a good guest and maybe they'll invite you to the next dinner party.