How to change everything
Seth Godin, who came up with the concept of permission marketing, tells his theory on how to change the world. His quotes, choice of pictures and examples during the presentation are well placed and also funny. “What I want you to do will only take 24hrs…start a movement!”
Seth Godin argues the Internet has ended mass marketing and revived a human social unit from the distant past: tribes. Founded on shared ideas and values, tribes give ordinary people the power to lead and make big change. He urges us to do so. (via ted)
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Google Gives Free Nexus One to TED Attendees
February 12, 2010 - 14:46
Tags: android, free, General News, google, neXus, One, ted
Posted in Mobile | No comments
Google has been working hard to put the Nexus One in the hands of anyone they feel is important enough, even if that means giving thousands of them away! Yet again, Google has given away free Nexus One devices to all attendees at the TED conference.
Not a bad idea with the types of people I’m [...]
3 Things You Need to Know About Social Media Strategy
January 14, 2010 - 23:20
Tags: business, Business Lists, contributor, List, Lists, Marketing, Social, social media, Social Media Lists, social networking, strategy
Posted in Social | No comments
B.L. Ochman is a Managing Director of Proof Digital Media; publisher of What’s Next Blog, and co-founder of pet site Pawfun.com. Follower her on Twitter at @whatsnext.
Companies large and small are rushing to understand and get involved in social media. But most of the agencies and consultants who are being paid to establish social media campaigns for corporations are afraid to tell their clients three things they don’t want to hear.
1. Everyone Must Work Together
In most big companies, IT, digital, marketing and sales not only don’t work together, they compete with each other. Until they start collaborating as a team, you will not succeed in social media.
For example, I recently handled social media advertising for a major retail chain’s holiday microsite. The promotion was conceived by the digital department and involved augmented reality. But the IT department refused to allow a link from the homepage to the microsite because the microsite’s design was done by an external agency.
Further, the marketing department refused to allow a dedicated e-mail to go out to the company’s mailing list, and when placed in the company’s normal promotional e-mail, the link to the microsite was lost in a sea of weekly specials.
These hurdles made it very hard to drive traffic to the microsite.
But more than that, this lack of internal collaboration and contact makes any kind of social media involvement virtually impossible.
A company that hasn’t learned to listen to its own employees, and encourage them to collaborate internally, is not likely to succeed in integrating social media tools into its marketing mix, no matter what agency or consultant they hire.
2. Top Management Must Be On Board
If the direction doesn’t come from the very top, managers, who have myriad reasons to fear change, will hang on to the status quo.
Despite the best intentions of agencies and consultants, social media integration is bound to meet huge resistance until top management says it’s OK to spend time and money to integrate it into the company’s marketing and culture.
Example: The marketing team of an international manufacturer of electronics wanted to know how the company could begin to use social media and we discussed the many possibilities.
Listening and responding to what customers are saying about the brand in social media can supply good intelligence and give the company a chance to interact with customers.
“Our management doesn’t want to listen to customers,” the PR director said. “They want to talk to them.”
However, that doesn’t work anymore. The status quo is dead. Any company that isn’t willing to listen to customers and be nimble and quick enough to respond, and, when necessary, change, will soon be unable to compete with smart, tech-savvy companies that can turn on a dime.
Willingness to change is the new bottom line for every business today. But top management has to buy in before change can begin.
3. Don’t Expect Overnight Success
Sure there are videos that go viral, contests that attract a lot of buzz, and Facebook pages that get a lot of fans. But what comes after those efforts?
After the tools change (and they surely will) how will social media fit into the company’s overall strategy and help it reach long-term goals?
Example: Smart companies look at the long-term. The Fiskateers, now in its sixth year, is the brainchild of digital agency Brains on Fire, for their client Fiskars.
With the scissors brand losing market share to foreign knock-offs, the company enlisted several actual crafters to blog, attend events, and represent the brand to customers as part of a new community strategy.
“If you empower your customers to become your evangelists, you’d better be prepared to continue it,” says Brains on Fire’s Geno Church. “It’s permanent when you engage in this type of marketing.”
Once you have created the community, listen to it. Fiskars made several changes to its products based on what it discovered through its Fiskateers community. Doing so helped build customer trust and loyalty.
Where Should Your Company Start?
Realizing that employing social media in the marketing mix is a long-term commitment to change, the best way to start is to pick manageable, measurable goals.
Pick a small number of social media goals for the coming year. Some possibilities:
- Turn the company newsletter into an internal blog and give all employees the ability to contribute
- Establish a social media policy for employee participation in social media on company time and beyond
- Let employees vote on the best ideas suggested by other employees
- Resolve to respond to customer service issues within three hours, via social media
Don’t try to do all of these things at once. Pick the ones that are most likely to be possible for your company to start and sustain.
More business resources from Mashable:
- The 10 Stages of Social Media Business Integration
- 5 Tips for Creating a Successful Social Media Contest
- HOW TO: Measure Social Media ROI
- HOW TO: Implement a Social Media Business Strategy
- HOW TO: Use a Start Page to Stay Organized
Images courtesy of iStockphoto, cmcderm1, Yuri_Arcurs, endopack, hjalmeida
Reviews: Facebook, iStockphoto
Tags: business, List, Lists, MARKETING, social media, strategy
Want to Make Money on Twitter? Take a Look at How Dell Does It
January 14, 2010 - 22:08
Tags: business, Business Lists, dell, List, Lists, Marketing, Money, small business, Social, social media, Social Media Lists, social networking, strategy, twitter, Twitter Lists
Posted in Social | No comments
This post originally appeared on the American Express OPEN Forum, where Mashable regularly contributes articles about leveraging social media and technology in small business.
Dell is a shining example of a brand that has managed to turn their Twitter presence into both a customer service and sales outlet. Dell may be a big corporation, but the story behind the $6.5 million they’ve raised from their Twitter presence is one that shines a light on a road to success that any company, regardless of size, can learn from and emulate.
I asked Dell’s Senior Manager for Corporate Affairs, Richard Binhammer — otherwise known as RichardatDell — to elaborate on Dell’s Twitter success. The following are principles extracted from that email interview.
1. The Right Motivation is Key
If you’re simply motivated to make money from Twitter, your heart is in the wrong place. Dell’s strategy is to turn Twitter into an opportunity to build better relationships with customers, which ultimately leads to stronger sales.
According to Binhammer, Dell didn’t initially approach Twitter with dollar signs in their minds, but instead as a listening outpost. “Dell first heard about Twitter at SXSW a few years back and got excited about the listening aspect of Twitter,” he said.
The businesses side of listening was an unintended but welcome bonus to their effective presence on Twitter.
“Dell’s goal has always been to be an online leader and connect with customers wherever they are. It starts with listening and connecting with customers across the Web. This has proven to be invaluable to our business through the years. We see social media connections as a means to further strengthen those direct customer relationships. The added revenue has been a welcome addition to being where our customers are and connecting with them.”
2. Approach Twitter With a Multifaceted Strategy
Dell’s Twitter presence isn’t limited to a single account or purpose. Instead Dell takes a multifaceted approach to Twitter and attempts to serve niche customer communities and interests all over the world.
If you’re just looking for deals, they’ve got an account for that (@DellOutlet), if you just want breaking news there’s an account for that too (@Direct2Dell), and the list goes on.
In Binhammer’s own words, this is how Dell approaches Twitter:
- Direct connections between Dell and customers – listen, learn and engage in direct connections with customers (There are ~ 100 Dell employees using Twitter to connect with customers).
- Subscribe to Dell info – customers can subscribe and get Dell news from our blogs/Ideastorm Twitter.
- Dell offers from businesses – some of our businesses, notably Dell Outlet, publish their latest offers on Twitter.
- More about Dell businesses on Twitter: http://www.dell.com/twitter Here you will see various Dell business accounts such as: Small Business, Dell Canada, UK, Korea, Brazil, Mexico, Dell Home Sales, Australia, Japan, China, New Zealand, DellOutletIreland and UK and more
If anything, Dell’s all-hands-on-deck approach to Twitter, demonstrates that you need to serve your customers how they want to be served.
For small businesses in particular, Binhammer recommends that you “Make it easy for your customer to talk to you. Do simple things to thank your customers for their business. Ask them for suggestions. Go where your customers congregate, whether it be Facebook or Twitter or elsewhere, and participate in those conversations. Also, listen to your customers in the blogosphere. What they have to say is vitally important to your business.”
3. Don’t Be a Spammer
This may seem obvious, but you’d be surprised by how many small and big businesses alike use Twitter as a one-way marketing channel with overly promotional tweets.
Spamming your customers on Twitter is a surefire way to get unfollowed and immediately ignored. Of course promoting sales and products is encouraged, but do so in a way that your customers can be receptive to. If you need help defining what that looks like, just ask your followers on Twitter for input.
Dell’s approach, as iterated above, is to serve customers’ interests. The dedicated Twitter account for deals means that they can promote Dell deals to only those customers who have opted in to the purely promotional tweets.
Binhammer advises, “Be yourself and avoid spamming. Making genuine, direct connections with your customers in meaningful ways can only help you deliver what customers want at the end of the day.”
More business resources from Mashable:
- The 10 Stages of Social Media Business Integration
- 5 Tips for Creating a Successful Social Media Contest
- HOW TO: Measure Social Media ROI
- HOW TO: Use Social Media to Connect with Other Entrepreneurs
- HOW TO: Implement a Social Media Business Strategy
- HOW TO: Use a Start Page to Stay Organized
- HOW TO: Choose a News Reader for Keeping Tabs on Your Industry
Image courtesy of iStockphoto, NoDerog
Reviews: Australia, Facebook, Twitter, iStockphoto
Tags: business, dell, List, Lists, MARKETING, money, small business, social media, strategy, twitter
Twitter and Foursquare Become the New Loyalty Program at Tasti D-Lite
January 13, 2010 - 21:56
Tags: business, foursquare, Marketing, News, Social, social media, social networking, twitter
Posted in Social | No comments
Customer loyalty programs are stuck in the dark ages, especially as they pertain to social media. However, Tasti D-Lite, the frozen dessert chain popular in New York, is taking one step towards the light with its social media rewards program.
Today Tasti D-Lite has announced the rollout of TastiRewards, a rewards program that incentivizes customers to associate their Twitter and Foursquare accounts with their Tasti D-Lite membership cards.
TastiRewards: How it Works
Customers can use their TreatCards — which also double as gift cards — to earn points for purchases, but those that opt in to the social media bonuses will automatically earn additional points. They’ll also update their Twitter and Foursquare accounts each time the card is swiped and points are earned or redeemed.
The program is pretty self-explanatory. Once you register your TreatCard on the MyTasti website, you can optionally enable your Twitter and Foursquare accounts to send tweets or automatically check you in (shout included) on Foursquare respectively. Each purchase will net you an additional point for each social network connection. You’ll also earn one point for each dollar spent, before taxes, on Tasti D-Lite goods. For every 50 points you accrue, you can redeem a free medium cup or cone.
In case you’re wondering. The autotweet will look something like this:
And Foursquare check-ins will look like this:
Social Media as Currency
This marks the first time that a restaurant chain has tacked on social media rewards for social media exposure to their customer loyalty programs, and it’s been a long time coming. Finally, the connection between customers’ social media behavior and their in-store behavior is coming full circle.
Of course, we’re not exactly loving the idea of the autotweet message as it stands, but Tasti D-Lite is open to suggestions on how to the evolve the program. We’ve got one simple one: Let people customize what their tweet or check-in says in their online account profile.
As it pertains to the bigger picture, however, here are just a few reasons why this logical next step is pretty significant:
Social Media ROI: How do we measure social media initiatives? It’s a question of great significance to marketing teams across the world. While there’s many different approaches, this program is perhaps the most efficient way to tie social media to the bottom line. Imagine the data that Tasti D-Lite can now collect, analyze and apply to budget discussions around allocating resources to social media efforts. Will the company get accurate accounts on the quantity of tweets and checkins with card swipes? Absolutely. Can it quantify those social media updates with sales figures? Yes. Plus, it can track change over time, as well as the influence of these TastiRewards tweets and checkins as it pertains to growth of the program. It’s social and smart.
The Social Customer Wins: Tasti D-Lite may have launched first, but it certainly won’t be the last company to get social media savvy. Its efforts will motivate other stores and restaurants to adopt similar programs, which could even create a social media loyalty competition between businesses in the same market, with companies upping the social media rewards to beat their competition. All of sudden your online social value will be worth more than just a retweet. Doesn’t that sound sweet?
Location-Sharing More Commonplace: It won’t happen overnight, but you can expect that the TastiRewards program and others like it will make location-sharing more commonplace than it already is. The tie-in with Foursquare is quite genius, and one we expect to see repeated, which means that more and more customers will become acclimated to the notion of sharing their locations for additional rewards/points.
Reviews: Foursquare, Twitter
Tags: foursquare, MARKETING, social media, twitter
10 Musts for Marketing to Women on Facebook
January 13, 2010 - 19:16
Tags: brand, branding, business, Business Lists, contributor, facebook, facebook fan page, Facebook Lists, List, Lists, Marketing, small business, Social, social media, social networking, social networks
Posted in Social | No comments
Brette Borow is the President and Founder of Girls Guide To, the “ladies only” guide to life, and spends most of her days engaging with the community’s over 140,000 members.
There are over 56 million women using Facebook in the United States, and for marketers this means one very important thing –- if you have a brand, product or company that targets women, Facebook is the place to be.
Unfortunately, unless you’re a brand that every woman knows or loves, then just being on Facebook is not enough. Facebook has done a great job of giving marketers a powerful tool with its Pages product, but like most things in life, it comes down to execution. To help, here is a list of 10 tips for marketing to women on Facebook.
1. Quality Counts
The first thing I tell marketers, whether it’s a Fortune 500 company or a friend launching an online jewelry site, is to remember that women are bombarded by marketing messages all day, every day. On the surface, Facebook is no different than the “real world” –- constantly being pitched to and spammed is annoying. The main difference between Facebook and the “real world” is that on Facebook, fans can “hide” your marketing message much more easily than they can avoid the billboard on the way to work. As a result, you are going to have to try your best to connect with them. On Facebook, quality rises to the top more often than not.
2. Create an Emotional Connection
So quality rises to the top, but what does that mean? For starters lets take a look at what Dove has done on Facebook. Dove is one of the few brands that seems to grasp the fact that on Facebook, content really is queen and that brands must deliberately create an emotional connection with their fans. This is a great strategy to emulate because in order to reach women on Facebook, you are going to have to connect with them by providing content that women can relate to. Something that ignites a reaction like “Wow, that’s me!” will encourage women not only to respond to your messages, but actually remember them. Making an emotional connection is one of the best ways to motivate women to use your brand or service.
3. Provide Utility
Utility should be synonymous with your brand. It will allow you to create a relationship with your fans. Create a series of posts that your fans can look forward to on a daily or weekly basis — something they will feel a real connection to and will teach them something they can use. If you run a fashion web site, for example, provide a piece of advice from a designer every Friday –- it will make it much harder for your fans to block your updates if they have something to look forward to.
4. Give Fans a Voice
Women like to be heard. Stand out from the crowd and engage us. By creating a two-way conversation, you are personalizing your brand and making it one that can be trusted.
Your Facebook Page is also one of the best “focus groups” on the web. Not sure if you should add a product to your line? Trying to decide which functionality to add to your iPhone app? Just ask your fans. A great example of this type of interaction is H&M. They are constantly asking their fans what pieces they want to buy, what they would pay and what they want H&M to carry. This type of feedback is invaluable and brings the fan into the overall experience. Women can share their thoughts, and you can enjoy the free insight you’re receiving straight from your target consumer.
5. Listen!
Not only do we like to be heard, we also like to know we’re actually being listened to. If a fan posts a question on your page, answer it. If she compliments your brand, thank her. And if she complains about it, address her concerns and reassure her that you’re working on fixing it. This is a great way to build trust and showcase the great customer service and support your company offers.
6. Complement Her Life, Don’t Complicate It
If you’re doing a giveaway, running a great promotion or launching a new product, you need to keep the process simple. Cosmopolitan Magazine, for example, constantly offers giveaways and discounts, but always do it in a clear and simple way. The lesson here is not to overthink your promotions. Your fans will look forward to the next time your brand has something new and exciting to share, as long as taking advantage of the offer is relatively pain-free.
7. Don’t Be Redundant
Unlike Twitter, where most people are following a plethora of people and information is passing by at lightning speed, Facebook has a tendency to draw attention to “spammy posts.” Facebook users do not want to see the same message posted multiple times in their feed. So if you’re promoting something through your Fan Page be sure to reword it and provide additional value before you post it a second time.
8. Keep the Shopping Experience Seamless
You need to remember that women tend to be the CPOs (Chief Purchasing Officers) in their households, and that they tend to ask friends for advice about brands and products. Women are more than happy to share a good deal when they find one.
The Limited was one of the first brands to really grasp that Facebook represents a huge opportunity to reach their CPOs. They have started to embed actual retail offers into their newsfeed. But unlike other brands, they do not drive their traffic off of Facebook. Instead, their feed stories open up into widgets on Facebook that can handle the entire transaction right there. This clever use of technology is a prime example of ways that brands need to think outside of the box to reach their social shoppers.
9. Remember: She’s a Social Shopper
Women also tend not to be shy about sharing their distaste about a brand or product or talking about their poor experience, so never take advantage of your fans. The last thing you want is your target demographic badmouthing your brand on a viral platform like Facebook.
Keep your offers and processes clear and honest and always respond to feedback and criticism.
10. Keep Your Fans in the Loop
Fill your fans in on the positive but don’t be afraid to address the negative. As we all know, the web is transparent. Allow it to work in your favor. Just launched a new Android app? Let your fans be the first to know. Just got nominated for 6 Grammy Awards and want to share it with the world? Then do what Lady Gaga did and let your fans know the moment you find out. In a transparent world, you can share your news with your fans, and the sooner the better.
Last but not least, if your company is experiencing difficulties like supply shortage or a down web site, be the first to let your customers know. Be upfront and straightforward. Your honesty will speak volumes about your brand.
More Facebook resources from Mashable
- HOW TO: Build Your Personal Brand on Facebook
- Facebook Pages vs Facebook Groups: What’s the Difference?
- Why Facebook’s Privacy Changes are Detrimental to Users
- HOW TO: Integrate Facebook With Your Blog
- HOW TO: Manage a Facebook Group
Tags: brand, branding, business, facebook, facebook fan page, List, Lists, MARKETING, small business, social media, social networks
5 Tips for Creating a Successful Social Media Contest
January 13, 2010 - 00:11
Tags: bing, business, Business Lists, contest, Contests, contributor, facebook, Lists, Marketing, moonfruit, small business, Social, social media, Social Media Lists, social networking, social networks, twitter, youtube
Posted in Social | No comments
Clay McDaniel is the principal and co-founder of social media marketing agency, Spring Creek Group. Find him via @springcreekgrp on Twitter.
One of the best ways to drive engagement and build word of mouth traffic about your brand is to run a contest via social media channels. Not only does it engage consumers with your brand in a fun and exciting way, it results in a treasure-trove of customer information, preferences, and feedback you can then mine to improve your business. And, best of all, launching an online contest can be very inexpensive.
However, there is a subtle art to social contests. Your brand needs to appear neither too “cheesy” nor too “salesy,” and you must deliver a prize that people really want. This can be a standard product or gift card, or a “notoriety” prize, such as publishing a winner’s video. What’s more, the contest itself has to be fun and easy to participate in. Few prizes are worth doing something extremely boring, monotonous, or complicated.
Here are five specific strategies you can follow to launch and manage a social contest, and leverage it to deliver real business value.
1. Define Your Marketing Goal
Every contest you launch should meet a specific marketing goal. Do you want to drive awareness of a new product or service? Collect a list of customers interested in a specific product segment? Encourage new participants to use your company’s social networking channels? There are many valid reasons to launch a contest, but it’s important to know ahead of time what you’re trying to accomplish. This goal will set the tone for your contest strategy.
2. Get Creative
Here’s the fun part: Creating your contest. The sky’s the limit when it comes to the type of contests you can launch. Here are a few ideas:
- A video contest inviting users to create a new commercial for one of your products
- A user-generated content contest that awards the best ‘personal experience stories’
- A photo contest related to your product or service
- A product invention contest with a large cash prize
Of course, your contest can be short and offer a small prize, or longer and more involved. Check out the Startup Nation Home Based 100 business creation competition that received thousands of entries and high-profile sponsors for an idea of just how big a contest can become.
3. Leverage Social Channels
The best part about online contests is how easy it is to take them viral, encourage participation, and link them into your social marketing activities. Promote your contest via Facebook, Twitter, your company blog, and all other social channels, as well as via traditional marketing channels such as print, e-mail, and in-store signage.
Just search the word contest on Twitter to see hundreds of contests going on right now. The best contests are intensely social by nature, because people like to play games and contests together, and most people love to share the chance to win a cool prize with friends and family. Ensure your contest is easily sharable by embedding “share this” links on the contest site, on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and everywhere else people will come across it.
Use a social media tracking tool like Meteor Solutions to see which people and sites are sharing your contest, then promote your contest more heavily to those communities. Make sure your contest spreads like wildfire by encouraging easy “copy/paste” sharing using the Bit.ly URL shortener for the links to your contest location online. Most importantly, allow the contest participants to vote to choose the winner, which keeps the audience interacting with one another and engaged long after each person has submitted their entry.
4. Finish the Contest
Everyone loves a winner, so make sure you don’t let your contest drag on too long. A typical social contest runs about four weeks –- longer, of course, if it’s more complex (e.g. programming a software algorithm or inventing a new product). When the winner is chosen, do a PR push to publicize their win. Of course, use Facebook and Twitter to promote the winner like mad. Go back to your social media tracking software and find out which people and social sites are talking most about the winner, then post comments on those networks to drive even more interest in the winner.
5. Measure the Contest
Of course launching a contest wasn’t just for fun, it was to achieve a specific marketing goal. So after the contest is done, you need to measure the impact it had on brand engagement, clickthrough to your site, conversion, and bottom-line sales. Again, you can use your social media tracking tool to measure all of these success metrics. Find out whether your contest drove as much traffic to your site as you had hoped, and whether this traffic resulted in conversion, however you may measure that (e.g. purchases, newsletter subscriptions, Twitter followers, etc.).
Many brands have done a great job with social contests. Spring Creek Group, for example, created a social media contest to drive interest and traffic during the launch of the Microsoft Bing search engine last summer. Bing launched The Bing Jingle Contest, and invited people to upload user-generated video “jingles” about Bing to their official YouTube channel. Bing then promoted the videos via its Facebook Page, Twitter updates, and other social channels. The video with the most views and highest ratings would be crowned the winner, with the creator receiving a $500 gift card.
Overall, the contest garnered 27 video entries, over 238,000 views, 550 comments on the videos, and 2,200 tweets. The word of mouth generated by the contest was phenomenal, and was covered by many top blogs. The contest took on a life of its own, generating both defenders and detractors over the winning video.
More Great Contest Examples
Marin Software’s Biggest Search Geek Contest: This is a fun and very popular contest, now in its second year, that pits smart search marketers against one another for a free pass to SMX West — double points for creating a cool B2B social contest.
#TriviaTues: Fancast, Comcast’s competitor to Hulu, promotes #TriviaTues, a weekly trivia event where Twitter users who follow @FancastTrivia and answer twenty trivia questions can win free DVDs, movie tickets, and t-shirts.
Moonfruit’s Win a Macbook Pro Everyday for 7 Days: Moonfruit, provider of do-it-yourself web site building tools for small businesses, recently completed this hugely successful contest. You can see results and entries on their web site.
More business resources from Mashable:
- The 10 Stages of Social Media Business Integration
- HOW TO: Measure Social Media ROI
- HOW TO: Use Social Media to Connect with Other Entrepreneurs
- HOW TO: Implement a Social Media Business Strategy
- HOW TO: Use a Start Page to Stay Organized
- HOW TO: Choose a News Reader for Keeping Tabs on Your Industry
- 5 Advanced Social Media Marketing Strategies for Small Businesses
Images courtesy of iStockphoto, adventtr, WendellFranks
Reviews: Bing, Facebook, Hulu, Twitter, YouTube, bit.ly, iStockphoto
Tags: bing, business, contest, Contests, facebook, MARKETING, moonfruit, small business, social media, social networks, twitter, youtube
Starbucks Most Popular U.S. Chain According to Mobile Check-In Data
January 12, 2010 - 20:56
Tags: business, Food, Loopt, Marketing, Mobile 2.0, News, Social, social networking, Starbucks
Posted in Social | No comments
Loopt, the location-based mobile application that was a precursor to Foursquare, reports that Starbucks is sitting pretty at the top of the checkin food chain in 2010.
Loopt did some creative manipulation of its wealth of place data and put together a list of the 75 most popular chains based on checkin volume over the past few weeks.
Starbucks is far and away the most popular chain with a checkin volume that is nearly 32 times that of In-N-Out Burger (which ranks 54th on the list).
It also looks as if New Year’s resolutions are inspiring people to either hit the gym more frequently or at least publicly assert that they are doing so, as 24-Hour Fitness is burning the rest of the competition in the number five spot. On that same note, Subway ranks pretty high up on the list, but its checkin share is dwarfed by McDonald’s. Clearly you want to have your cake and to eat it, too.
According to Loopt CEO Sam Altman, to come up with this data set, the company “normalize(s) the number of checkins per chain by dividing all of them by a chosen reference (In-N-Out, which is approximately representative of the average). The thought here is that, for example, 8,739 checkins doesn’t mean much to anyone, but 2.45 is a good indicator of relative popularity.”
Slicing checkins to determine relative chain popularity is certainly a very interesting way to look at the Loopt data, whether or not it’s 100 percent reflective of societal shopping and eating trends. The fact that people are willing to publicly share what they’re doing and where they’re doing it en masse means that the most popular places are the places at which people want to be seen. Making that extra checkin effort is a net positive for the business, and clearly Starbucks is riding high on the checkin wave.
We’ve published the full list below, so take a look at the results and let us know what you think of the results.
[img credit: dianaschnuth]
Tags: Food, loopt, MARKETING, Mobile 2.0, starbucks
The 10 Stages of Social Media Business Integration
January 11, 2010 - 23:28
Tags: business, Business Lists, contributor, List, Lists, Marketing, Social, social media, social networking, social networks, trending
Posted in Social | No comments
Brian Solis is a principal at new media agency FutureWorks. You can connect with him on Twitter or Facebook.
An overnight success ten years in the making, social media is as transformative as it is evolutionary. At last, 2010 is expected to be the year that social media goes mainstream for business. In speaking with many executives and entrepreneurs, I’ve noticed that the path towards new media enlightenment often hinges on corporate culture and specific marketplace conditions. Full social media integration often happens in stages — it’s an evolutionary process for companies and consumers alike.
Here are the ten most common stages that businesses experience as they travel the road to full social media integration.
Stage 1: Observe and Report
This is the entry point for businesses to better understand the behavior of an interactive marketplace.
Listening: Employ listening devices such as Google Alerts, Twitter Search, Radian6, and PR Newswire’s Social Media Metrics to track conversations and instances associated with key words.
Reporting: Distill existing social media conversations into an executive report. This early form of reporting is merely designed to provide decision makers with the information they’ll need for continued exploration of social media and its potential impact on business.
Stage 2: Setting the Stage + Dress Rehearsal
Once the initial intelligence is gathered, businesses will set the stage for social media participation. This is an interesting phase, as it often joins Stage 1 as a more comprehensive first step. Instead of researching the best ways to engage, many businesses create accounts across multiple social networks and publish content without a plan or purpose.
However, those businesses that conduct research will find a rewarding array of options and opportunities to target.
Presence: Create official presences across one or more social networks, usually Twitter and possibly Facebook (Fan Pages), YouTube, and Flickr. Early on, this is often experimental, and less about strategic engagement.
Analysis: Review activity for frequency (the rate of mentions), the state of sentiment allocation, traffic, as well as the size of connections (friends, followers, fans, etc.). Provide managers with a limited glimpse into the effects of presence and participation.
Stage 3: Socializing Media
The next stage in the evolution of a new media business is the proverbial step towards “joining the conversation.”
As companies take the stage, they will eventually pay attention to the reaction of the audience in order to respond and improve content, define future engagements, and humanize communication.
Conversation: Representative of an early form of participation, this stage usually evokes reactive engagement based on the nature of existing dialogue or mentions and also incorporates the proactive broadcasting of activity, events and announcements.
Rapid Response: Listen for potentially heated, viral, and emotional activity in order to extinguish a potential crisis or fan the flames of positive support.
Metrics: Document the aforementioned activity in order to demonstrate momentum. This is usually captured in the form of friends, fans, followers, conversations, sentiment, mentions, traffic, and reach.
Stage 4: Finding a Voice and a Sense of Purpose
This is a powerful milestone in the maturation of new media and business. By not only listening, but hearing and observing the responses and mannerisms of those who define our markets, we can surface pain points, source ideas, foster innovation, earn inspiration, learn, and feel a little empathy in order to integrate a sense of purpose into our socialized media programs.
Research: Review activity for public sentiment, including negative and neutral commentary. Observe trends in responses and ultimately behavior. This allows for a poignant understanding of where to concentrate activity, at what level, and with what voice across marketing, sales, service, and PR.
Strategic Visibility: Introduce relevance and focus. You don’t have to be everywhere in order to create presence, just in the places where you would be missed. Understanding that the social web is far more extensive than Twitter, blogs, and Facebook, brand managers search across the entire web to locate where influential dialogue transpires.
Relevance: “Chatter” or aimless broadcasting is not as effective as strategic communications and engagement. This stage reflects the exploration of goals, objectives, and value implementation. Companies begin to learn that exchange is based on trust and loyalty.
Stage 5: Turning Words Into Actions
Actions speak louder than words. Businesses must act. Once the door to social consciousness is opened, bring the spirit of your company through it to affect change.
Empathy: Social media personifies companies. It allows us to see who it is we’re hoping to reach, and what motivates them. Listening and observing is not enough. The ability to truly understand someone, their challenges, objectives, options, and experiences allows us to better connect with them.
Purpose: The shift from simple response to purposeful, strategic communication will be mutually beneficial. It is in this stage that we can truly produce captivating content and messages. In order to hold it, we have to give the audience something to believe in — something that moves them.
Stage 6: Humanizing the Brand and Defining the Experience
As Doc Searls says, “There is no market for messages.” Indeed. Through the internalization of sentiment, brands will relearn how to speak. No longer will we focus on controlling the message from conception to documentation to distribution. We lose control as our messages are introduced into the real world. Our story migrates from consumer to consumer. This chain forms a powerful connection that reveals true reactions, perception, and perspectives.
The conversations that bind us form a human algorithm that serves as the pulse of awareness, trustworthiness, and emotion.
The Humanization of the Brand: Once we truly understand the people who influence our markets, we need to establish a persona worthy of attention and affinity. A socialized version of a branding style guide is necessary.
Experience: Our experience in dynamic social ecosystems teaches us that online activity must not only maintain a sense of purpose, it must also direct traffic and shape perceptions. We question our current online properties, landing pages, processes, and messages. We usually find that the existing architecture leads people from a very vibrant and interactive experience (social networks) to a static dead end (our web sites). As we attempt to redefine the experience of new customers, prospects and influencers, we essentially induce a brand makeover.
Stage 7: Community
Community is an investment in the cultivation and fusion of affinity, interaction, advocacy and loyalty. Learned earlier in the stages of new media adoption, community isn’t established with the creation of a social profile. Community is earned and fortified through shared experiences. It takes commitment. As Kathy Sierra once said, “Trying to replace ‘brand’ with ‘conversation’ does a disservice to both brands & conversations.”
Community Building/Recruitment: While we are building community through engagement in each of the previous stages, we will proactively reach out to ideal participants and potential ambassadors. We become social architects, and build the roads necessary to lead customers to a rich and rewarding network, full of valuable information and connections.
Stage 8: Social Darwinism
Listening and responding is only as effective as its ability to inspire transformation, improvement, and adaptation from the inside out. Survival does not hinge solely on a company’s social media strategy. The social element is but one part of an overall integrated strategy. It’s how we learn and adapt that ensures our place within the evolution of our markets.
Social Media as embraced in the earlier stages is not scalable. The introduction of new roles will beget the restructuring of teams and workflow, which will ultimately necessitate organizational transformation to support effective engagement, production, and the ongoing evolution towards ensuring brand and product relevance.
Adaptation: In order to truly compete for the future, artful listening, community building, and advocacy must align with an organization’s ability to adapt and improve its products, services, and policies. In order for any team to collaborate well externally, it must first foster collaboration within. It is this interdepartmental cooperative exchange that provides a means for which to pursue sincere engagement over time.
Organizational Transformation: The internal reorganization of teams and processes to support a formal Social Customer Relationship Management (sCRM) program will become imperative. As social media chases ubiquity, we learn that influence isn’t relegated to one department or function within an organization. Any department affected by external activity will eventually socialize. Therefore, an integrated and interconnected network of brand ambassadors must work internally to ensure that the brand is responding to constructive instances, by department. However, at the departmental and brand level, successful social media marketing will require governance and accountability. Organizational transformation will gravitate towards a top-down hierarchy of policy, education, and empowerment across the entire organization.
Stage 9: The Socialization of Business Processes
Multiple disciplines and departments will socialize, and the assembly or adaptation of infrastructure is required to streamline and manage social workflow.
Social CRM (sCRM): Scalability, resources, and efficiencies will require support, resulting in a modified or completely new infrastructure that either augments or resembles a CRM-like workflow. Combining technology, principles, philosophies and processes, sCRM establishes a value chain that fosters relationships within traditional business dynamics. As an organization evolves through engagement, sCRM will transform into SRM — the recognition that all people, not just customers, are equal. It represents a wider scope of active listening and participation across the full spectrum of influence.
Stage 10: Business Performance Metrics
Inevitably, we report to executives who may be uninterested in transparency or authenticity. Their goal, and job, is to steer the company toward greater profits. In order to measure the true effects of social media, we need the numbers behind the activity –- at every level.
While many experts argue that there is no need to measure social engagement (much the way that some companies don’t explicitly define the ROI of Superbowl ads or billboards), make no mistake: Social is measurable, and the process of mining data tied to our activity is extremely empowering. Our ambition to excel should be driven through the inclusion of business performance metrics, with or without an executive asking us to do so. It’s the difference between visibility and presence. And in the attention economy, presence is felt.
ROI: Without an understanding of the volume, locations, and nature of online interaction, the true impact of our digital footprint and its relationship to the bottom line of any business is impossible to assess. An immerssive view of our social media goals and objectives allows us to truly measure ROI. Stage 10 reveals the meaning and opportunity behind the numbers and allows us to identify opportunities for interaction, direction, and action.
Conclusion
There is a great distance between where we are today, and where we need to be. Our work in 2010 will be dedicated to narrowing the social chasm.
The thing about social media is that it’s always new, and as such, these stages represent a moment in time. They will continue to evolve and expand with new technologies and experiences.
In the end, social media is a privilege and a tool — one more opportunity to run a more meaningful and relevant business.
More business resources from Mashable:
- HOW TO: Use Social Media to Connect with Other Entrepreneurs
- HOW TO: Implement a Social Media Business Strategy
- 9 Great Document Collaboration Tools for Teams
- 5 New Year’s Resolutions for SMBs
- HOW TO: Choose a News Reader for Keeping Tabs on Your Industry
- 5 Advanced Social Media Marketing Strategies for Small Businesses
Images courtesy of iStockphoto, alexsl, jpsdk, mgkaya, BartCo, photosbyjim, 3DStock, mattjeacock
Reviews: Facebook, Flickr, Radian6, Twitter, YouTube, eXperience, iStockphoto
Tags: business, List, Lists, MARKETING, social media, social networks, trending
How Social Media and the Web Helped Avatar Make $1 Billion
January 8, 2010 - 18:34
Tags: 3D, Adobe Air, avatar, facebook, features, Film, films, james cameron, Marketing, mtv, MySpace, Social, social media, social networking, Top Stories, trailer, trending, twitter, ustream, video, web
Posted in Social | No comments
The Simulcam and Fusion 3D camera inventions were not the only technologies that made James Cameron’s Sci-Fi epic Avatar a massive box office success. While smaller films have used social media to spread the word guerrilla-style, no other major blockbuster has employed a full-on social web marketing assault quite like Avatar.
The results in its case were a $232 million opening weekend, a total of one billion dollars in revenue by year’s end, and the rank of #2 highest grossing film of all time. Cameron’s $500 million act of hubris has paid off. Here’s an outline of the social media moves Avatar’s team made to achieve success.
The Basics: Facebook, Twitter, MySpace
Avatar has its own Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter pages. That’s getting to be standard these days. The 18,000-follower Twitter account has tellingly not been updated since a few days after the film’s theatrical release; once the word was out, the job was done. While it was active, though, its followers would retweet updates to their followers, who (if interested) would do the same, spreading the word all over the web. The Facebook Page is even more impressive, with over 700,000 fans.
Facebook’s updated Page features make it the place to be for brands seeking exposure. The site allows brands to push updates to fans. Those fans see the updates in their personal news feeds, and they can then share them with others, just like on Twitter. Avatar’s Facebook Page is also where the MTV-hosted live webcast was hosted — more on that later.
Reinventing the Movie Trailer Online
Granted, Avatar wasn’t the first film to take its trailer in a new direction for the web. It actually wasn’t first at any of these things, but an expansive strategy combining many of the best existing ideas was what made the film’s social media campaign a success.
It started out with something a lot of movies do now: an Apple trailer debut, announced on Twitter. Anticipation was high enough that the servers struggled to get the video out to everyone who wanted it. A second trailer rolled out a month later. The web trailers gained additional buzz when fans remixed them and mashed them up with other movies, something that the folks behind the Avatar marketing machine smartly didn’t interfere with.
It was yet another trailer that impressed us the most, though. An interactive trailer was presented as an Adobe Air application. It required a download, but it was worth it for Avatar fans. They could see featured content and they could read the latest social media updates about the movie from within the trailer. The stunt got press coverage and word-of-mouth buzz.
The Facebook and MTV Webcast
On December 3, MTV.com put together an Facebook-hosted, LG-sponsored webcast called “Avatar Live.” Director James Cameron, producer Jon Landau, and stars Sam Worthington and Zoe Saldana were interviewed by MTV News’ Josh Horowitz, but the questions were submitted by fans in the days leading up to the event.
The 30-minute interview might have been the most glamorous webcast to date; you just don’t see that many huge Hollywood names sit down to take questions from Internet fans all at once. Though community engagement from a director at that level is quite rare, we were reminded of Peter Jackson’s almost-daily video updates from the sets of The Lord of the Rings.
In both cases, people who didn’t know much about the films tuned in and were sold on them. Existing fans became more passionate about spreading the word and showing up on opening night.
Broadcasting the Premiere Live On Ustream
The red carpet premiere of Avatar was broadcast live to web audiences on video streaming web site Ustream. Apart from the tech media coverage this got, we’re not sure how much this helped put bums in the seats, and the Twilight saga’s New Moon had already done the same thing, but it was neat. Any way you can expose audiences to your film certainly helps.
The broadcast’s sponsor was MySpace, so it reached an audience that might have been missed on Facebook. Fans could watch the video on the film’s MySpace page in addition to the Ustream website. The red carpet premiere came a week before the film hit theaters, so this was just one more way to generate buzz and get press in the final days leading up to the movie’s release.
Do you have any insights about promoting films and other media on the web? What are the best practices? Let us know in the comments.
Reviews: Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, adobe AIR, twilight, ustream
Tags: 3D, Adobe Air, avatar, facebook, Film, films, james cameron, MARKETING, mtv, myspace, social media, trailer, trending, twitter, ustream
How Data Will Impact the Way We Do Business
January 6, 2010 - 23:36
Tags: business, Business Lists, contributor, data, List, Lists, Marketing, Social, social networking
Posted in Social | No comments
Josh Jones-Dilworth is the Founder and CEO of Jones-Dilworth, Inc. a PR consultancy focused on bringing early-stage technologies to market. He blogs at joshdilworth.com
Outliers like Factual, WolframAlpha, Daytum, FlowingData, and InfoChimps have proven that painting our world in data (and metadata) is a rather valuable endeavor for any business.
In a previous post I wrote about key concepts in data marketing. There has been some great discussion along those lines, and some understandable apprehension. I wanted to follow-up and discuss how the proliferation of data will impact more than just marketing.
Data Democratization
Conducting business at the data level is not a practice for the future. It is a core competency, today. I am reminded very much of what it felt like 5 years ago to transition what had until that point been a hobby (blogging) into a full-blown part of my work life.
Social media, at its inception, was all about the democratization of publishing and the conversations surrounding it. Today, frictionless interaction is arguably ubiquitous, and a higher-order discipline is emerging — that of data mining, and data analysis. The democratization of data is the natural next step.
Data cuts not just vertically or horizontally, but in every direction. Marketer Scott Brinker wrote about such a concept over a year ago:
“[We become] the champion of the underlying data — good, accurate, detailed content and the processes by which to keep it up to date. This isn’t just old-school “marketing” data, i.e., the stuff of brochures and the visual corporate web site, but rich, detailed information that has historically been trapped much deeper in the organization — information that can create value by its wide dissemination…”
Much of this work is, of course, in uncovering existing data and making it available and digestible — essentially, the curation task, which is no small thing, particularly in enterprise environments. This is an organizational competence that touches every role and every department, and further opportunities lie in framing, publishing and visualizing that data.
It’s Everywhere
This trend didn’t exactly come out of nowhere.
We’ve had heart rate monitors for some time now. We have scales in the bathroom, speedometers (and more recently fuel efficiency measures) in the car, and all manner of time sheets in the workplace. Every day, we gather vast amounts of data about ourselves, and vast amounts of data are gathered for us (and about us). Kevin Kelly refers to this as the quantified self.
We are in many respects surrounded by gauges and dashboards, tachometers and GPS devices, calorie counters and performance metrics. Data mining and data journalism and data-driven application development, and now, data marketing and data-based business practices, are logical extensions.
More generally, the fields of biology, nanotechnology, and medicine have long chronicled the goings-on of our daily lives in the most literal sense, and recent advances have extended these capabilities by an order of magnitude.
Tim Ferris is becoming superhuman by calculatedly measuring and extending his body’s capabilities beyond what is considered normal, much less possible. Companies like 23andMe (despite their recent woes) have come a long way in helping reveal what our DNA may or may not have in store for us, and startups like Fitbit and Zeo are merging gadgeteering with health data and the web to create a new kind of personal data stream.
Only the Beginning
As streams on the web (both personal and private, public and corporate) proliferate, gathering, analyzing, visualizing and publishing data become increasingly important to businesses of any kind. Data is the best way to understand an opportunity, design an approach to it, and differentiate. Data is how we know we’re doing well, or faring poorly. Data is how we make decisions, at every level.
Is our data obsession unnatural? Have we taken all the fun out of the game? Is there no room left for art, nuance, or gut instincts? Certainly there are — and some things will remain immeasurable. But there is less and less wiggle room, and less and less room for error.
This new reality is the natural extension of where we are and where we have been headed since the beginning. Our collective data is the byproduct and the artifact of digital life and web living. It is increasingly rich and it is precisely the inner logic according to which we make decisions to buy and sell, act and react. We have, consciously or unconsciously, made data the bonfire, the totem, and the town square.
Full Disclosure: WolframAlpha and Infochimps are clients of Josh Jones-Dilworth, and are either referenced above or referenced in pages linked to above. He is good friends with people at the Dachis Group.
More business resources from Mashable:
- Mashable’s Social Media Guide for Small Businesses
- 9 Great Document Collaboration Tools for Teams
- HOW TO: Use Social Media to Retain Customers
- Top Mobile Productivity Tools for the Small Business
- 5 Advanced Social Media Marketing Strategies for Small Businesses
- 4 Ways Social Media is Changing Business
- 6 Must-Follow Steps for Selling in Any Economy
- 5 Easy Social Media Wins for Your Small Business
Image courtesy of iStockphoto, DamirK, enot-poloskun, Rellas
Reviews: Daytum, iStockphoto
Tags: business, data, List, Lists, MARKETING
