If you want to bring your “A” game to social media marketing (ie, if you have a product or service to move and need to show results), market research is critical. Having actual data can be quite a revelation, and applying it will lend direction to your social efforts if you’ve been flying sans strategie.
You might benefit from knowing:
What your competitors are talking about
Who’s interacting with them
Do you share any enthusiastic fans?
Where is your network from, who are they, and what gets a rise out them
What do they like, what do they share, & with whom?
Which tools can actually provide this kind of information, though? Which ones survived the boom of novelty Twitter development & aren’t languishing in a buggy perpetual beta twilight? Which ones deliver something more than a nebulous, inactionable percentage of supposed influence?
Here are the Twitter metrics tools I’m actually using that let you mine usernames for public data that, in aggregate, painstakingly copied into columns of a Google Doc (go on, click “graph”! It’s rewarding!), and scrutinized late into the night will yield a few nuggets of demographic gold.
Usefulness of data: Informative. Enlightening, almost.
Tells you what’s trending (being talked about the most) in your city. Good for identifying influencers (by username) and hot topics (by keyword or hashtag). If you chart this over time, patterns (genres) will emerge. This is 14 karat information if your market is 100% local.
Usefulness of data: Crucial if you need to export to Excel. Boolean search, OH YES.
I like the Archivist. It looks great and the development team reply PDQ to email & seem super cool. More importantly, you can do a boolean search (like “@username + special keywords”) and on the desktop app you can export the whole shebang to a spreadsheet (which sometimes, lets face it, you really need to do).
Update: As I wrote, the ability to export was being removed by the Archivists in order to comply with Twitter’s ToS . My copy of the desktop app continues to provide this functionality, but shhh. Note to @Twitter: Think of a way to make exporting ok. People need it to build their own spreadsheets for thorough metrics, and to track stuff like tweeted contest entries. Help us to help you.
Tells you exactly what tweets got you (or anyone else) followed or unfollowed, so it’s pretty darn helpful for tweaking your wording/subject matter on a minute level. May cause uncomfortable cringing as you reread your most boorish, follower-shedding tweets. Can lead to paralyzing narcissism.
A location search (“loc:yourcity”) will give you a ballpark of the size of your market. You can sort by follower size, if schmoozing the influential is your bag.
Good for identifying influencers and dominant subject matter (hashtags, topics). Track what’s being talked about most by specific people (influencers or comepetitors). If a user is in conversation with a few of your competitors, you’ve got yourself an industry mover & shaker with whom you might want to get friendly.
Have to log in? No. So you can see competitor‘s info?Yep.
Modern day marketers often find themselves capturing content at live events to feed their brand’s public’s insatiable appetite for news. At least if they’re good modern day marketers, they do.
But is it okto use all this glorious content? iPhone melting in one’s hand from the furious Twitpic and YouTube uploads, one suppresses fleeting concerns about posting images one didn’t exactly ask permission for, steeled by some aphorism about it being better to ask forgiveness, etc.
As this is part of my daily job, I figured I better get to the bottom of this. Surely there are laws, right?
Here’s what a number of Winnipeg video production houses & photographers think. Everyone seems to rely on people’s expectations of privacy (Are you in a public bathroom? You can reasonably expect not to be videotaped) to set the stage for general ok-ness, except for commercial purposes.
Every one commits an offence who, surreptitiously, observes – including by mechanical or electronic means – or makes a visual recording of a person who is in circumstances that give rise to a reasonable expectation of privacy.
As we understand it, in Canada, you can film anyone in public as long as you are on public property. One document that we found quite useful is the ‘Photographer’s Right‘ doc. It is made with the US in mind, but I assume the same info holds true for Canada.
To be truthful, we’ve never gone too far out of our way to find out the specific laws, as it has never really been an issue.
Most of it is pretty common sense. Public place: fair game. Private property: permission may be needed.
For a small shoot, our strategy is often shoot first, and be polite if anyone protests. Most people are quite reasonable and accommodating. It’s usually when a camera person adopts a ‘it’s my right to film wherever I want’ attitude that things get messy.
“We try to accomplish two things with our social media: 1) Raise awareness of the issues surrounding homelessness and domestic poverty, and 2) inform people about what exactly happens within our four walls.
To achieve the latter, we try to replicate everything that happens at Siloam Mission on our social media streams. There are many different programs and departments at Siloam which makes it a challenge to get info from all corners. I continually remind departments to get in touch with me if anything interesting, unusual or newsworthy happens.
We also start the day off with a short staff meeting to discuss what’s going on that day and encourage each other. It’s a huge help in picking up stories and other info to use on our social media platforms.
Not everyone attends these meetings, so most often I end up using the “journalistic” approach: running around the building asking people questions, taking pictures, shooting video, calling managers once a week to find out what’s going on in their departments, interviewing people who use our services just building relationships with people in each department. I am continually collecting content as fodder for future use.
It helps to volunteer a few hours in each department and befriend the people working and volunteering there – personal connections are still the best way to stay in tune with what happens in the organization.
Part of interactive marketing is the subtle influence of design cues that help people notice, click and share links.
When you post a link to Facebook—say, to your brand’s blog—it’s because you’ve worked hard to create some great content or curate something perfect for your fans. You’re also affecting the delicate “do we post too much?” balance. A lot rides on how fans perceive this link.
If Facebook drags in a weird thumbnail, a senseless page title (a great way to tell if your have sad SEO), and a page-long jumble of javascript where a jaunty blurb should be, you’re posting something that will get ignored at best, and could even get you unliked.
However! You don’t have to just sit back and let Facebook uglify your precious link! You can whip it into sexy, clickable shape by modifying most of it yourself. Thanks to the original Weekend Warrior and Fishmeister General Scott Sime for showing me this tip.
What you see is not what you have to get
So you’re about to use up some precious fan goodwill by intruding upon their news stream. You’ve pasted the link in, and it’ll work and everything, but it just doesn’t shout CLICK ME.
Write a nice lead-in where I’ve highlighted the green—a meta-comment in the voice of your brand that explains why the person would want to check out the link.
Supertip:Copying and pasting here will very often bring in some weird line breaks that you won’t see until you post. Don’t take the chance. Retype if you want to use someone else’s headline.
So far so good. Now, what about all that unmarketable stuff underneath?
Hover over the headline, and you’ll see your cursor turn into a hand—the telltale sign that you can modify a field!
Click and you’ll be able to type something wittier, more informative, or reinforcing your headline’s message.
Alright. Now what about that nonsense below taking up precious real estate? Sometimes you’ll find a repetitive synopsis or copy of the headline in this space. I smell a potential sales tool! Mouse over & it too will become clickable, just like the headline.
Write a secondary headline that adds something your original comment doesn’t. It can be more factual if your personal headline was a teaser, or vice versa.
Now, about that graphic. The visual can really sell the link. A boring, irrelevant, or absent image is a missed opportunity to convey the awesomeness that’s just a click away. Use the little arrows under the post to scroll through all the available images.
Supertip:occasionally no image at all will appear, despite there being a big fat glossy photo on the page you’re linking to. I don’t know why. But I do know that if you abandon the link (you’ve to to physically leave the page, by clicking the Facebook logo or otherwise refreshing and getting your cursor the heck out of that field) and paste the link in again, eventually the image will show up. It may take a few tries, but don’t let Facebook link weirdness strip you of your eyeball-attracting image!
And we’re done! You’ve marketed the link to the best of your ability, attending to every detail/opportunity to persuade. You’re spending your audience’s patience and your content creation efforts wisely by giving your link the best possible chance of being noticed, clicked, and shared.
Zeitgeist (German pronunciation: [ˈtsaɪtɡaɪst] is “the spirit of the times” or “the spirit of the age.” [1] Zeitgeist is the general cultural, intellectual, ethical, spiritual, and/or political climate within a nation, along with the general ambiance, morals, sociocultural direction or mood of an era. [Wikipedia]
Saw this terrorism home furnishings display in the Village. I’m not sure if it’s positive we’re laughing at this stuff, or scary that we’re absorbing it into our culture. I think the xray bag is pretty cool.
Hey, wait, where’s the interactive marketing in all this cultural examination? Where indeed.
Communications strategy for niche retailers
I’ve noticed recently that a number of the small Winnipeg stores, like this one, who carry hard-to-find products aren’t online. Wait, what? I know. We’re talking abandoned Twitter, tumbleweed groups on Facebook, no websites.
Floored by the seeming fact that a local business (quirky clothes, long term existence, tons of real fans) doesn’t seem to have a website.less than a minute ago via webErica Glasier EricaGlasier
This won’t do. It’s inconvenient for your customers, and there’s a certain suicidal tendency in leaving your brand in the hands of Yelp.
Here’s a brief new media strategy, gratis, to get you up and running. Thank me in teapots.
1. Get a one-page site up containing:
hours
phone number
Google map
Facebook and Twitter links
2. Train your staff to upload a photo a day to Twitpic and post it to your Facebook account. Said photos will illustrate:
new arrivals
sale items
hot customers
neighbourhood funkiness
3. Tweet only these photos, special discounts, and pertinent store info. This doesn’t take a communications genius. Answer questions. Offer customer service as required. This will add about 5 minutes to your staff’s day (especially shooting & uploading via mobile phone), until you get really popular.
This isn’t about having a web presence because it’s “cool” (I can’t believe I have to mention this in 2010, but apparently I do). Please tell me this whole no-website thing is an oversight & you don’t actually look at customer communications this way.
You’re missing a chance to build excitement, word-of-mouth buzz, and covetousness in your customer, for the cost of a photo a day. The “website” will at least put something you control at the top of Google. The real action takes place through social media, because you’ve got something simple & shareable: cool stuff people would like if they knew about it.
Retail sales will follow as the constant stream of great merchandise reminds shoppers how much they love your store. Throw in a few 10%’s off to reinforce social sharing, sit back and count the cha-ching.
And a warm welcome…
…to a Village retailer who is taking the social media plunge, Osborne Spectacle Centre. It’s scary that people might talk about your brand online, I know. But the value of showing off your products & services to an audience who loves to share information will be worth it.
Part three in the Social Silo Series (check out part one and part two) is designed to help new social media managers and other online communications staff figure out how the heck they’re supposed to become the information nexus of their organization.
Q: HOW (process, tactics) are you getting enough info from all corners of your org (breaking down silos) to feed your social media streams?
“We have a fairly small, close-knit office and we talk to one another.
Everyone knows about our online communications stuff because I regularly share information about it and try to educate my colleagues as much as possible.
We have team meetings once a week during which folks give updates on their work—so I’m all ears during the meeting listening for relevant stuff that I can use online.
I think it’s super important to make sure the rest of your team knows about and (to an extent) understands your online spaces so they can facilitate the information flow.
We also ask our alumni to share their success stories with us (which they do regularly) and we post those updates to our website, Twitter and Facebook. I make a point of following NSI alumni on our Twitter account.
Admittedly I’m never going to catch every piece of good news/information but for now things seem to be working well!
I read an insane amount of blogs related to the film, TV and tech industries. Often I use that information to write a new post on our website which in turn feeds our other online spaces.
I also encourage other members of the team to share ideas with me. That was how we came up with the concept of our Facebook clinics: live Q&A sessions between potential students and program managers. Ideas like that usually come out of discussions I have in the office.
I’m very fortunate to share office space with wonderfully creative people. It’s not unusual for me to have an impromptu brainstorm with my colleagues.”
Part two in the Social Silo Series (check out part one when you have a minute) wonders: How can social media professionals become the hub of information they need to be to really do their jobs?
Q: HOW (process, tactics) are you getting enough info from all corners of your org (breaking down silos) to feed your social media streams?
A: Matt Owen, Social Media Producer, eConsultancy Employees: 1600
Trick: Incentivize
“This can be a complicated process, and it’s one that sees a lot of larger companies stumble when they begin to adopt social channels. I’m sure you know that immediacy is often key to social media (there’s very little point answering CRM tweets four hours later, obviously), so making sure the social manager has all the required information (or access to it) is really, really important.
We like to practice what we preach. I advocate full cross-company adoption of social media, so we’ve made sure to incentivize social interaction by all of our team members. As an example we’re currently increasing our visibility on LinkedIn, answering questions and offering advice in groups (we also have a large forum on our own site). It may seem like a small thing, but offering any kind of incentive (say, Amazon vouchers or a bottle of wine at the end of the month for the person driving the most traffic) is a big plus; it makes a challenge out of the process.
Matt’s Tricks:
✩ Make sure staff are trained and given the correct information. If you have multiple campaigns running, make sure you’ve publicized them internally.
✩ Incentivize your staff, make sure they know which platforms you’re active on and invite them to join in—reward their efforts.
✩ Make interaction a job requirement, even if that only means answering emails quickly.
It’s also important that companies make sure staff know the value of personal branding. Obviously, if I’m consistently promoting helpful, relevant content on a site then I’m positioning myself as a useful contact, and building my own brand in the process—always useful when the time comes to move up the career ladder.
Companies need to train staff at all levels to be ‘on message’. A lot of managers seem to be afraid of giving access to social to their staff, but social isn’t about controlling messages or restricting access, it’s about making sure everyone is giving out the right message.
In order to get quick replies & help from the proper sources it’s important that social is driven from the top. If you hire a social media manager, contact all of your employees and ask them to help and respond quickly. If it’s required then you should make this a part of their job description, with social rules and guidelines written into contracts – carrot or stick!
I worked in a traditional marketing department a while ago and my biggest problem was getting answers to emails. We received a lot of questions via the company Facebook page and I had trouble responding to them because of the lag time this caused. In the end I gave the CEO a quick presentation showing the damage this was causing and he really supported future efforts with email updates and requests—it’s important to get senior management on side.”
Adding social media to the communication mix of any organization larger than a hot dog cart is going to present some inter-departmental challenges.
We call departments ‘silos’ in the business world, like grain silos: freestanding, vertical, self-contained, windowless. As you can imagine, having a job where you’re supposed to have x-ray vision into the other silos represents a real—gotta say that word again—challenge.
It’s hard—group hug—as a new social media manager, to create connections the people you work with aren’t used to. They don’t appreciate how interesting the minutiae of their day is to your newfound audience, nor are they necessarily paid to talk to you about it at the speed you now require. This study shows almost a third of orgs call siloing “the biggest barrier” to going digital.
So what’s a social media evangelist to do? How do you create a funnel for tasty tidbits, success stories & rockin’ special events to filter over to your desk & out into the Twitto/Blogo/Facebookoverse?
I asked some in-house social media folks, & the responses were so good we’ll do a little series, here.
Q: HOW (process, tactics) are you getting enough info from all corners of your org (breaking down silos) to feed your social media streams?
A: Michael Graef, Manager, Creative Services
San Antonio Water System Employees: 1600
Trick: 10 years of internal relationship building & organizational knowledge
“I’m the the in-house creative services manager for San Antonio’s city-owned water and wastewater utility. We are a 1600 employee quasi-governmental organization.
Basically I am the self-appointed “community manager” because I was the one with the vision and who kept pushing to make it happen.
It took me almost a year to navigate all of the HR, legal and IT concerns to even get permission to begin. We current have a presence on Facebook, Twitter and Vimeo. We also monitor influential local blogs and news sites and comment as warranted. In addition, we also publish several opt-in email newsletters.
Most of the in-house support has been grown organically rather than through a formal process. After 10 years of writing and producing various media for the organization, I’m pretty adept at ferreting out information through existing internal relationships. And while I’m not on the team that handles traditional PR and media relations, I work closely enough with them that I am usually up-to-date on the “hot” and “taboo” issues of the moment. Over time, many of those internal contacts have started to proactively feed me information. Some is useful and some is not. But either way, the barriers have begun to come down on their own without having to be torn down.
The hardest part has been conveying the sense of urgency that social channels demand. Fellow employees are pretty well used to 24 hour turnaround on email inquiries. But customers who use social channels —especially Twitter—are looking for a quick reply. So “I’ll get that to you tomorrow” is no longer soon enough. The pace is more like crisis PR than traditional customer relationship management.
We’ve already reached a point where having a single person handle social media responsibilities is insufficient. I suspect it won’t be long before we will need to explore some division of labor and “on call” scheduling among PR, customer service, and even emergency operations staffs. However, my goal is to establish social engagement as a “normal” part of our business first. Once that is done, I believe it will be much easier to pitch a more formal, cross-functional structure.”
I’ve designed billboards. Billboards have a few tricks to them that inexperienced designers and marketers don’t know, until they (cringe) see their work live and in person.
The creative paradigm shift for good billboards involves making something that will be legible, visible, interesting, understandable, memorable, and actionable during a 3 second look while the audience is super busy and probably very far away.
Chances are your up-close creative for any given campaign doesn’t hit all these notes, so some rethinking is order to execute an idea for this medium.
You’ll need:
Big stuff. The key elements, of which there better be few, need to be huge. I have to pick your message out of a lot of visual clutter at high speed. Make it easy to read.
Contrast. The visuals have to pop. They have to grab the eye (attention) and make sense immediately at a distance. Complex images or ideas that rely on figuring out a visual gag that’s anything more than totally obvious will fail. Note to designers: that subtle grey grunge texture you’re laying over black looks hot on your monitor, but will be completely invisible in print.
Simple message. While driving my screaming toddler somewhere I’m already late to and trying to eat a breakfast burrito while shifting gears, I only have room in my brain for maybe 1 more message. Don’t try to give me 2.
Short copy. Deliver that message in as few words as possible. I’m doing at least 60.
Big URL (or other call to action). What do you want me to do? Is there a website involved in all this? Tell it to me fast. Fast, in billboard language, equals big. I like to see the URL occupying the prime real estate at the top, which it rarely does. Initially URLs were tacked on, but more & more they’re the audience’s next step.
Big logo. Who ARE you? If I don’t know that right away from logo or brand colours, that won’t make it into my memory of the experience. I’ll be like, there’s a great sale…somewhere. And while it’s natural in print to put the logo at the bottom of the page, the bottom of a billboard is often obscured, so points if you can get it up high.
Let’s take a look at a few Winnipeg examples and see these principles at work. Or not. Heck, let’s score ‘em & declare a winner.
Lotto 649 / LOTTO MAX
Big stuff: Windows, numbers. Check. 5. Contrast: 0, but they were going for blending in, so 5. Simple message: “Lottery ticket gets you the hell out of here”. 5. Short copy: 5. Big URL: n/a, the logo tells you what to do, so 5. Big Logo: low, not huge, but uncluttered. 3.5. Bonus 5 for creative use of the medium. Score: 33.5/35.
Shaw Together is Amazing
I’m going to review this campaign in a bit of depth (yes, I have something mobile to say), but had to include the bb here because the trendy typography & palette made me feel good about Winnipeg. Big stuff: Headline city. 5. Contrast: Lotsa bright colour 5. Simple message: “Something good. Thank you. Shaw”. 4, point lost because it’s a teaser (so, not informative). Short copy: 5. Big URL: Small URL, BUT the copy is the address, so 4. Big Logo: 3. Low again. Bonus 5 for standing out by looking non-Peg. Score: 31/35.
BOB FM Win $10 Grand
Big stuff: Um, huge. 5. Contrast: Black on yellow is as high contrast as it gets. 5. Simple message: “Win 10 grand Thursdays at 8:15 on Bob”. Gotcha. 5. Short copy: 5. Big URL: Call to action is a radio station in this case. “BOB FM” is about 1/8th of the bb, but this branding has been used in the Peg for about 100 years so I totally know it’s Bob. 4.5. Big Logo: 4. Bonus 5 for straightforwardness. I almost wanna minus a point for obnoxious style, but bb design is no foe of loud and in yo face.Score: 33.5/35.
MTS Futuristic PVR
I don’t mean to rag on MTS, but ad-wise they’re no Shaw. Big stuff: Medium sized, but distinct due to simplicity. 4. Contrast: Blue-cast stuff on blue background. White type on white highlight. 0. Simple message: “A sentence so convoluted, you won’t finish rea…”. However, it is amusing. 4. Short copy: 3. Big URL: Figure it out for yourself. 1 . Big Logo: Small, and with Shaw dominating the PVR mindshare, I’d make this one EXTRA BIG. 1. Minus 1 point for having all the visual flair of an Auto Trader ad. Score: 12/35.
CyberTip: I Reported It
I’m judging these on overall effectiveness, but I have to say I’m very down with this campaign. This is social marketing—not social media marketing, but the traditional marketing of social ideas. The idea here is that it’s not only ok, it’s necessary to report child pornography you come across online. I didn’t know that we should do that, but now I will if I ever see any. Big stuff: Setup copy is kinda little. Don’t get me started on the URL or the logo indicating government support. 3.5. Contrast: Bold white text on black. 5. Simple message: I think this one has too much going on. It looks like a print ad embiggened. You don’t need to convince me with this lady’s opinion or reasoning for reporting…I just need to know I should report and how. 3. Short copy: 3. Big URL: This should be the main thing on the bb. Who the heck do I report it to? It’s there, but not big enough to catch in traffic—see distance test at left. 1 . Big Logo: 0. Bonus 5 for being a really important & thought-provoking message. Score: 20.5/35.
Rogers Unlimited Student Plan
Big stuff: This whole bb is big—3 times as big as some on this list. Unlimited, the message, is ginormous. 5. Contrast: Highly legible type. 5. Simple message “We’ve got the best unlimited student plan” 5. Short copy: They could have added ‘student’ to the main headline, knocked off ‘unlimited student plan’ below that, and made the phones, logo & URL bigger. That said, I can see this bb from so far away that I have time to absorb both (basically the same) messages. 4. Big URL: 0 . Big Logo: 1. Bonus 5 for a crinkly texture that comes off really 3D in person. Score: 25/35.
Booth University College
These were done by Winnipeg tweep Carson Samson, at Samson Design Studio & it was his big fat idea for me to review billboards! Big stuff: Logo takes up a good 2/5 of the design and isn’t at the bottom of the design. Big URL (low, unfortunately). Simple image. 4.5. Contrast: Despite being black on white, the lightenss of the logo’s text lowers contrast from a distance (see distance test at left). I’ve seen this one on Main in a traffic-level spot, though, & you can read it fine. 3. Simple message: “Salvation Army’s college has changed names to Booth”. I could almost infer that from the SA logo, if it were a little larger. Taking out the ‘We are now’ would let you make the logo & URL even bigger. 4. Short copy: The logo itself has 8 words, counting the tagline: quite a bit for a billboard. 3. Big URL: Biggest URL we’ve seen so far! 5 . Big Logo: 5. Bonus 3 attention points for featuring pretty girls. Score: 27.5/35.
Bodies, The Exhibition
Big stuff: Huge headline, big picture. 5 Contrast: Highly legible type. 5. Simple message “Come see the Bodies exhibit.” 5. Short copy: Name of event, key highlights. I’d argue ‘innovative’ and groundbreaking’ aren’t as big a draw a ‘real’, but this one’s politically sensitive (sadly), so maybe they can’t play up the cool awesome scientificness of it. 5. Big URL: There’s a trade-off here: big, memorable picture (generating enough interest that someone would google), or big URL? Gotta go for interest. 3 . Big Logo: Going by fast, I’d be excited this show was in town, but would probably have to google to find out it was at the exceptionally-staffed MTS Centre Exhibition Hall. 1. Bonus 5 for putting a corpse on a billboard. Score: 29.5/35.
HOT103 Ace Burpee “Twilight”
Big stuff: Big station logo, big show name, big pic. 5 Contrast: See distance test for Booth above—you can read that “HOT” from a mile away. Name of the show is slightly less legible due to font and background greyout on the right side, but I’m nitpicking. 4.5. Simple message “Ace is funny.” 5. Short copy: 5. Big URL: Call to action is the station logo. 5 . Big Logo: 5. Bonus 4 for how great Chrissy’s hair looks. Score: 33.5/35.
Big stuff: Big pic, big headline. 5 Contrast: White text on black, my favourite. 5. Simple message “You can stop hunger.” 5. Short copy: 5. Big URL: Small & low. 3 . Big Logo: I think they’re going for ‘teaser’ here, not wanting to identify the campaign with WorldVision right up front. So we’ll count the URL as the logo. 3. Bonus 2 for taking the emotional route. Minus 1 for the design not being quite as impactful as it could be—the copy could have a little more presence, the URL a little more prominence, the eyes fill more of the space. Score: 27/35.
So we have a tie! Lotteries, BOBFM and HOT103 all come out on top with 33.5/35. All three leverage a really simple message, the Holy Grail of billboard design.
Let me know what you think. What are your favourite Winnipeg billboards? Which ones really bug you?
Live-tweeting an event is like stating the obvious, caffeinated, to your best friend, while ziplining. It’s personal. It’s fast.
I did my first “social broadcast” live from a 1300-person event, and let me tell you, it’s a blast. You’re the news director, editor, on-air talent & film crew all rolled into one. You’re trying to tell the story as it happens with as much media as possible. A little too much media, it turned out. Here’s the scene:
That’s not exaggerated, either. I literally shot HD video with one hand while taking photos, uploading them and tweeting about it with my other hand. The dSLR was for can’t-miss Kodak moments, to be exploited later.
My plan for amping the day online included an early morning Facebook fan page post letting people know we’d be reporting live, photojournalizing and microblogging during the event on Twitter, and polishing off the day on Facebook with a big thank you & full photo gallery. That’s how it went down, too, with a bit of feedback on Twitter and many Facebook likes.
I did a few things I wish I didn’t, though, and here they are to make it easier on you when you try this.
Live-tweeting an event: what not to do
Don’t overmediate. Trying to capture video and photos at the same time will result in you missing one (usually the one you really want) in your live coverage. Be the “I need this now” guy and delegate a videographer or photgrapher to the “we’ll need this later” content.
Don’t tweet images constantly. Not because this is boring—au contraire, it made people say our event looked “awesome”—but because your mobile battery will self destruct. I was fully charged when we started and almost dead halfway through the event.
I switched to text tweets at that point, but should have interspersed text and photo from the beginning. Alternatively, have access to a second phone or invest in a solar charger (from the future).
Let your network know ahead of time. I told the event’s network we’d be broadcasting, but not my personal peoples. They probably don’t follow me at work, but might have, to see the event go down live. I actually wanted to do this on the spot, but the pace was so frantic that I couldn’t get a tweet out.
Dress for success. It was frickin’ freezing, and I was loaned a fabulous down vest with many a pocket. This allowed me to stash up to two cameras at once while operating the third. While I’m torn on facilitating overmediation with such a garment, storage space did allow capture of some video gold.
I bet you thought I’d mention heels at this point. Well, I carried off the day in dreggings (that’s dress-pant-leggings, unfashionistas, and they inconveniently sported no ass pockets) and a mid-heel boot, and was too busy to complain. My feet hurt now though, and I wish I wore jeans.
Power up. I skipped breakfast and ended up eating a donut, seriously jeopardized the fit of my dreggings. I also regret not bringing portable coffee.
Live-tweeting your next event: go for it!
If you’re super engaged in the total funness of throwing an event, your audience is going to respond.
If you have a hard time explaining what it is your organization does, this breaks it down and gets people involved.
You’ll learn how to tell a story.
You’ll get some great stuff, some intense, in-the-moment, brand expression stuff.
Your fans will feel like they’re at the event with you, and like you care enough to take them there.
Whether your goals are advertising, informing, galvanizing advocates or garnering Facebook ‘likes’, the QR code is ready to link up your audience to convenient, tailored, local, on-demand info, interactivity, and reasons to think you rule!
Artists
The crafty artist might link:
from your band’s gig poster to an mp3 of your best track, or a secret remix/accoustic jam
from your opening’s flyer to your portfolio
from your art’s title card to your online store
from your ad to your represenation
to tickets for your showto a behind-the-scenes video of your process or installation (visual artists), live show (bands), movie shoot (filmmakers)
to a trailer for your next film
to a map of your street art installations
from your poster to your eBay auction
from band t-shirts to your music on iTunes
from your band’s gig poster to your online t-shirt store, with 15% discount
from street art to your manifesto
from stickers to social critique
from show flyers to your work on Flickr
from posters to your Facebook fan page
Self-promotion/branding
The schmoozy future star might link:
from your business card to your Facebook profile
from your business card to your Twitter stream
from your business card to your Linkdin account
from your business card to your blog
to a video interview with you (talent show!)
from your avatar to your blog
from your power point to your preferred social profile
from your t-shirt to your blog’s RSS feed
Business advertising
The savvy business might link:
to a coupon for %10 off the first visit
to a contest
to a useful branded app
to your in-store card to allow payment at checkout
from a sign in your window to reviews of your establishment
to a video testimonial from a happy customer
from an ad to your 1-800 order hotline
to a Google map to your nearby locations
Products
The intriguing product might link:
to a coupon for a freebie/sample
to a video product demonstration
from product to a fabulous recipe, cooking demo, or glam serving photos
from ads to mobile shopping
to clues for a treasure hunt
to comparison shopping among major retailers
to a gallery of stars (or the not-so-famous) caught using your product in public
from your product to your customer service line
from properties/items ‘for sale’ sign to a sales agent
from product packaging to a mobile registration site
to read/write a review
to a mail-in rebate
to nutritional info, drug interactions, or material safety data sheet
to order refills online
link to a video of your product being destroyed in a hilarious manner
to a survey about your product (with a reward, natch)
to your inventory, so you, your staff or your customers knows what’s in stock
to a customer service or fan forum
Non-profits
The community-connected non-profit might link:
to a donation page
to an interactive map of your org’s work throughout your city
to an augmented reality view of your city’s issues
to sponsorship opportunities
to a video of a successful user of your org’s services saying thanks
from notable landmarks to informative videos of your city’s history
to mobile updates on disaster situations
to requests for supplies and volunteers
to a petition
to contact your government about an advocacy issue
Facebook. I used to love you, but I had to kill you.
Whether there’s a Facebook exodus come May 31 or not, I have really sobered up to the whole MySpace/Friendster/’it was the style at the time’ social network fad issue. I didn’t believe in it until now. I mean, I knew intellectually that once upon a time MySpace got cool and then uncool, but was sure that could never happen to Facebook. They have half a billion users, for pity’s sake. Like 1/16th of the earth. What could happen to bugger that up?
Facebook’s recent PR shitstorm has largely played out among the digerati, and my sense is that the Average User will continue tending their Farmville real estate come the end of May, oblivious to arcane issues of private data and opt-outs and personalization. That may come to pass, but my faith has been badly shaken.
Like a spooked investor, I see the danger of putting all your eggs in one basket. Building a large Facebook following—instead of a more robust social strategy—could be an unfortunate resource sinkhole, should the bubble burst and the massive social network hustle itself right out of business.
Let’s be proactive and pretend, for a minute, that Facebook is on its last legs as a home for brands.
What’s a marketer to do? Here are some ideas for staying afloat in an uncertain social future.
Diversify your assets
If your core contribution is viral content, spread it out. Use Facebook to point fans to content and foster discussion there, but use YouTube and your own blog/site to host the original stuff. If you’ve just been riding the wave so far and not really developing your own content to share, get busy.
Make real friends & find out where else they hang out
You should already be doing this, but be sure to engage your active Facebook commenters to the point where you feel you really know each other. Google ‘em and follow them on Twitter or on their own blogs. Make the relationship bigger than Facebook, which will help make it deeper anyway. Should a new network arise to take FB’s place, these will be the people you’ll refriend.
Host an IRL event pronto
Get your social scene out and mingling for real as soon as possible. If you’re a non-profit, stage a volunteer event. If you’re a small business, invite people over for a (insert product here) tasting or a workshop. Move the virtual to real life now. This capitalizes on the work you’ve done so far. The point of meeting these people online was to take them to the next level of interaction with your business anyway.
Insource the connections you’ve made
Got an email newsletter, a mailing list, an inhouse CRM strategy? Migrate your new bffs to your own platform. Bring them into the fold. Throw them a discount if you can, and try to attach them to your brand’s inner circle. If you’ve got your own communication strategy running parallel, now would be a good time to solidify subscribers drawn from your FB fans. Invite them personally.
Lucky you! You’re off to SXSW in sunny Austin in a few weeks, to meet other geeks, ogle the internet-famous, and generally get whipped into an interactive froth. Here’s your top 10 tips from a seasoned South By’er to make your webby whirlwind a little more user friendly.
Austin is in Texas. Texas is sweat-inducing even in March. You might still sport jeans and an evening cardi, but you’ll appreciate the built-in air conditioning that accompanies a bare foot. And get a pedi. You’re going to be walking a lot, so decallus and beautify in advance.
2. Pre-pimp your iPhone
Thanks to ubiquitous wifi, in ’08 I got away with carrying only my iPod Touch for internet access! You gotta have:
I’m not kidding, this lets you find where your friends are sitting at each panel. I haven’t used it, but this little piece of Star Trekkian-futurama sounds so useful.
It costs $2.99, but you’ll save at least that much, what with the free beer (see #9). And it’s worth it, because Tweetie 2 has the works: lists, retweets, multiple accounts.
If you ain’t iPhone-enabled, you’ll want a connected device, but for God’s sake bring a netbook. I wept at the weight of my server-sized laptop more than once. There’s beautiful wifi everywhere in the conference centre, but don’t sit outside in the hot Texas sun to blog (however tempting it might be). I did this in ’09. overheated my motherboard, and spent a fortune on a long distance, roaming-charges fraught tech support call that ultimately left me lugging a blue-screened brick. Because they hung up on me.
4. Don’t get the Big Bag
As a marketer I know this is poor sportsmanship, and I get that sponsorship keeps costs down, but you don’t need the Big Bag. It’s a canvas tote with a groovy Adobe logo on it (and makes a dope grocery bag later), but it’s jam-packed with flyers and weighs a ton. Whatever one good freebie it may or may not contain is not worth lugging that thing around the entire first day, or the environmental guilt you’ll suffer tossing all that paper.
5. Carry ye olde school paper business cards
There’s nothing like the personal touch of trading cards with new contacts, especially if you’re traveling solo and looking for some nerd love. Take this opportunity to spiff up your blog or anything else you’ll be herding people towards with said cards. And check out Bump, a cute iPhone app that lets you bump your phone into the phones of cute boys and exchange contact info.
6. Ditch the dSLR
Unless you work for the Big Picture and are really married to depth of field, use a point ‘n’ shoot or your iPhone. dSlrs have 3 strikes against them: they`re expensive if you break or lose them, they’re heavy, and you can never whip them out and focus when the action’s going down. I’ve lugged a full-size professional video camera around that damn conference, and, I mean, just don’t.
8. Travel toothbrush + Colgate = your purse’s new BFF
You’ll have serious coffee breath at some point. Carry a mini bottle of Scope, too.
9. Don’t go pregnant
Beer is a fundamental component of both Austin & SX, and having to pass it up (sometimes it’s FREE!) is a drag. On the flip side, you may find the prevalence of hops revolting. Blogger Dooce was 5 months pregnant at the ’09 extravaganza, & she said the beer stench that passes for air in Austin made her physically ill. So try not to be conferencing for two if you can help it.
10. Schedule your bliss
You can use the tools to build yourself a kick-ass schedule, but how do you know what, from the dizzying array of options, to attend? You don’t want to miss anything great!
Follow your gut and attend things that sound cool to you. Don’t bore yourself with technology or industry-specific talks, if your eyes light up when you see something about community-building. I’ll never regret deciding on the fly to go see something that sounded funny and getting to experience the madness that is Eric Nakagawa, original pre-Ben Huh creator of I Can Haz Cheezburger. Or attending a talk with Hugh MacLeod and having a genuine Gaping Void cartoon on the back of a business card thrown at me, now framed in my studio.
SXSW is about the culture of the web, so go to panels that define that for you. Trends and technology will leak into everything that happens, so focus on what gets you stoked. And have a blast for me
The below are generalizations intended to help small to medium business owners get their feet wet in social media. There are brilliant exceptions to every rule.
You’re convinced. You heard social media marketing will be a $3 billion industry in the next five years. This is where it’s at. You’re all set to jump into a new decade with a totally techno, super digitally online cyber social media strategy, on the internet and everything. You’re going to listen, make friends, strike up conversations, the whole bit.
You look around your organization and wonder “who the heck is going to do our social media”?
There’s no universal right answer, but there’s a right answer for your company, for sure. It depends what you’re going to use social media for, and the answer to that might make the choice of mediator obvious (see “Customer Service). But barring an “everybody lives the brand, tweet as you will” Zappos-style strategy, you’re probably going to have to pick somebody (and if you’re a Tony Hsieh level-thinker, you don’t need to read any farther. Go innovate!).
Let’s start with a job description. What’s this future socializer going to do? They’re going to socialize! Fundamentally they’re going to make friends with other people and seek to help them out with their troubles, sometimes brand-related, and sometimes hopefully not. Read the rest of this entry »
The spread of smartphones and location-aware mobile technology is opening up a (smaller) world of local marketing possibilities.
3 words: location, location, location. But we’ll get to that in a minute.
You’re the CEO, Senior VP of Marketing, and Chief Janitor of your very own local small business. You typically place an ad in the yellow pages, stuff a few dayglo flyers in mailboxes, and have a brochure website with an infrequently-updated ‘news’ section (because frankly, you can’t think of a whole lot of news with which to fascinate the public). You’ve heard of this new-fangled socialized media thing, but near as you can tell it’s all retired ladies stalking their in-laws and teenagers sending untoward photos to each other. But you also hear it costs less than fluorescent photocopies.
For the record, I like Speak Up Wpg’s use of social media. The opportunity it presents to speak to policymakers makes me feel like I come from a very with-it city. Their case study provides a jumping off point for talking about transparency. Go Peg.
Speak Up Winnipeg, a social media-driven public consultation city planning initiative here in the Peg, has just released its first report along with participation numbers. The blog/vlog-driven site boasts 535 registered users with over 1,600 posted comments. For a city of three quarters of a million, 535 users sounds low, but the quantity of comments of this vocal few speaks of passionate participation. The subject matter—the future of our city—is one of those contentious cans of worms that can make for great, if heated, public discourse, seemingly perfect for the social media milieu. More on that later.
On the participation side of things, I was dismayed initially that the the site required registration to comment, and indeed found login laziness to be an insurmountable barrier when I later lost my password. I’d recommend opening up comments; metrics could still be obtained from IP addresses. I realize misbehaviour rises in direct proportion with anonymity, but all conversational roadblocks should be removed if Speak Up is to “grow the number of people involved” as Mayor Sam Katz requests. Read the rest of this entry »
Mmmk, I don’t think I fully grasped what social search meant for brands when I first wrote about it. A recent Altimeter post by Charlene Li, who I had the pleasure of seeing at last year’s SXSWi, really broke it down for me. It’s ok to be confused about this, because it’s a big jui jitsu match right now between the web’s sweatiest heavyweights, and when the dust settles the web will be fundamentally different.
So, while the eventual goal will be search results that are local and profile-based to some extent (your friends talking about what you’re interested in), the first deals between Twitter, Facebook, Bing* and Google will focus on real time trending topics and authority, meaning someone with a lot of followers (or fans, or friends, presumably) will come in at the top of the results, and people’s interactions with brands (good and bad) will spread like so much melted Cheez Whiz**.
For brands, companies, and organizations, this means less direct control over messaging than ever. Your own site pages will not necessarily be the most important results when the real-time web is elevated to equal status with the “brochure web”. The opinions tweeted by your customers/users/whoever wants to say anything about you will be very visible when people search you. Customer service is your new brand experience and the resulting word-of-mouth is your new advertising.
A moment to ponder Heather Locklear, here.
So what’s a poor org to do? How do we “make sure” people are saying nice things about us? Read the rest of this entry »
If you want to bring your “A” game to social media marketing (ie, if you have a product or service to move and need to show results), market research is critical. Having actual data can be quite a revelation, and applying it will lend direction to your social efforts if you’ve been flying sans strategie.
