360DigitalInfluence

This past winter was one the snowiest on record in the Lake Tahoe region of California, which was great for skiing but horrible for keeping cars on the road. I skied 28 days in a four months with a full time job in San Francisco — basically, every Friday night I was driving up to Tahoe in a blizzard.  And every Friday night I was glued to Google Buzz for real time updates about accidents and road closures — the results came in about a half hour to an hour before California Highways did. I also was checking for backroads ways around these road closures. Google Buzz saved anywhere from 2 to 12 hours of time each weekend; that’s a lot of precious hours on the snow when you add that up across a ski season.

Each time I used the mobile app portion of Google Buzz on Google Maps, I shared an experience with people normally separated by their cars. Google Buzz, to be just a bit sentimental, brought us together. And we weren’t talking about what we ate for lunch or some random Internet meme but about something actually — sorry Triffle — useful.

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Outside of the Yankees during playoff season,  I find nothing incites my competitive juices like reality television. I’ve been in an American Idol fantasy draft, I’m on the edge of my seat for The Amazing Race, and I’m still bitter over Boston Rob’s early exit on the most recent season of Survivor.  However, minute for minute, no program compares to So You Think You Can Dance simply for the way it combines artistry, entertainment, athleticism, public judging, and public voting.

This season’s So You Think You Can Dance introduced a number of changes in format including: the return of past contestants as partners, a reduction in the number of contestants, and the elimination of the loudest (but most joyful) judge, Mary Murphy.  On top of all of the changes, Alex Wong, arguably the most talented contestant to ever appear on the show, sustained an injury and was eliminated early — arguably the greatest tragedy to ever occur in reality television history.  My own dejection over Alex’s injury was briefly alleviated when I saw Ellen DeGeneres tweet that she was going to “do something special for Alex.”  Unfortunately, Ellen’s gift was not a miracle that would heal Alex so he could dance again as I’d hoped, but it did, however, make me think about social media’s effect on SYTYCD this season and how it’s changed the viewing experience.

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Photo courtesy of lululemon athletica via Creative Commons.

For those of you into healthy living, you have likely witnessed the merger of your fitness and digital worlds. I am no exception.

On my Facebook newsfeed, my spin instructor friend has announced an open spot in her 6:30pm spin class. When I check Foursquare, I can see that my friend Mike just checked into the Whole Foods, and is still the mayor of the organic restaurant across the street.  And even though I want to make an excuse to skip a yoga class, the Mind Body yoga app on my i-Phone shows me that there are still 74 yoga classes happening before the day is done. And not to mention the various Facebook posts from friends who are “hitting up the gym” or “out on a long run.”

In my digital world, signs of healthy living are inescapable.

Hence, the fitness and wellness crowd is a great example of using social media to communicate, collaborate, motivate, and create community in a landscape that might otherwise be occupied by silos.

But what does this mean for brands? The adoption of social media by the fitness and wellness worlds benefits businesses in at least four ways: continue reading

Between The World Cup and LeBronapalooza I’ve had sports on the brain for the last few weeks.

As I followed the media coverage I thought I might be able to take some of the tired clichés and re-fashion them into lessons for social media practitioners.

My original plan was to post 10 items, but I could only muster up nine.  Anyone care to help with the 10th?

1. Singles and doubles start rallies. Not every social media program has to be a round-tripper.  In fact starting small - listen, test and learn - can lead to bigger and better things down the road.  The groundwork gives you permission to swing for the fences.
2. The “12th man” is your greatest advantage. Give your fans something to cheer about - something exclusive, entertaining, educational or utilitarian.
3. Don’t hold your stars down.Let your most popular personalities represent you in social media.  Do you have a rockstar product manager?  A charismatic executive?  Give them the tools, forum and role to be a voice of your organization. continue reading
   

For PR Week Labs a few weeks ago I recorded a 15 minute presentation on 5 Steps to Conversation Management. Conversation Management is an 360 Digital Influence program for helping our clients establish or manage social network presence with the dual goals of grassroots engagement and business impact. Based on a dual theory of influence, our team uses Conversation Management to promote advocacy on social networks like Facebook and Twitter. The steps are included below and you can watch the video here (for more videos check out our YouTube channel- this one was too long to be included).

360 Digital Influence- PR Week Labs- Conversation Management from Ogilvy 360DI on Vimeo.

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The 2010 FIFA World Cup kicks off this afternoon, but you don’t have to be in South Africa to be a part of the crowd.

Emirates, a sponsor of the FIFA World Cup 2010 started the Twexican Waveto get rabid football (soccer) fans amped for their favorite teams within the context of the Emirates brand. Users go to www.twexicanwave.com and register their “wave” profile picture (a pic of themselves with their arms in the air) then tweet using #twexicanwave. If #twexicanwave is tweeted without a registered picture, the wave breaks and a new one begins. So why participate? If you are part of the longest wave you’ll be entered for a chance to win Emirates FIFA World Cup packages…so it might just be worth uploading a ridiculous picture of yourself to your Twitter profile, and getting all of your followers to to join the wave.  

As of today, the longest wave is 125 people. We’ll be watching this one closely to see if the virtual wave makes it around the digital stadium.

Besides its relevance to World Cup kick off we like this initiative because it reminds us to think about simple ways to build brand awareness by connecting fun and familiar behaviors with established social media platforms.

* Special thanks to my colleague Annabel Brown in Sydney for bring this fresh thought to the table.

This week, Internet Week is taking place in New York, bringing the city’s bright young things out and about for a “festival in celebration of NYC’s thriving Internet industry and community.”

This is the third time the festival has taken place in the city, and this year occurs at a time of great optimism and digital innovation in and around the Big Apple. The exciting thing for us living and working here is that the energy of the city that never sleeps, is driving technology innovation, the new social movement and a feeling of optimism – certainly demonstrated by the festival line up this week.

The jam-packed schedule includes events from product launches to panels, demos, art shows, and a first time official HQ hosted by Yahoo! and other brands, showing their support for the event. All the big - and little, we are not size-ist - names from across the social web are here taking part in the ongoing conversation.

And the truth be known, it’s not all taking place during these seven days in June. Every single week, there are meet ups, tweet ups, breakfasts for Women in New Media, late night co-working sessions for developers, live and web streamed forums, education sessions, tech discussions and more; something for anyone working with and around the Internet at any time of any given day in New York City.

Entrepreneurs are thriving on this buzz and bringing to market social tools and companies at an amazing rate. Foursquare might have been launched at SXSW but it was born and now is the new poster child for East Coast social innovation. The city itself is looking for a new chief digital officer. The world famous secretive social scene in New York, has opened up with the Twitterati as the people to know about town rather than the secret restaurant concierges.

I hope to see you out and about at the remaining IWNY# events this year, and look forward to what the year ahead will bring. Here’s to Internet Week 2011.

The World Cup, the biggest sporting event in the world, is quickly approaching. Starting June 11^th, 32 teams representing different countries from around the world will compete for the soccer title that has been given every four years since 1930 (with an exception of 1942 and 1946 due to WWII). But 2010 is a particularly special and relevant year. Why, you ask? Because of social media!

Social Media as we know it did not exist during the 2006 World Cup in Germany. Twitter did not launch until July 2006. Facebook didn’t become public until September 2006. YouTube existed but videos looked like this #6 most popular YouTube video of 2006. Now, only 4 years later, Facebook has over 400 million members and more than 50 million tweets are sent each day. These platforms, which were infants during the last World Cup, are now globally available and hugely popular.

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I recently came across an interesting study that declared mobile web will be the leading trend in 2015. This is a pretty bold statement but believe it or not there is truth to it. This year we’ve witnessed an explosion in mobile and location based content with cool location based social applications like Foursquare, Gowalla, and BrightKite. Location based services are one of the most powerful ways to personalize one’s mobile experience which can be even more amplified with the integration of social networks such as Facebook and Twitter.  An increasing number of brands are experimenting and trying out mobile marketing strategies as a result. Last month, Gowalla partnered with Travel Channel to integrate some of its dining content from the show Food Wars.  When Gowalla users check in to venues visited in Food Wars, they will be able to read show-related information about the restaurant and collect passport-stamp rewards. This is a great way to engage fans and build strong brand awareness and loyalty. Gowalla says users have checked in at 600,000 locations in more than 165 countries to-date.

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This weekend saw the New York Knicks host what they billed as the first ever fan #tweetup, at their home court, the legendary Madison Square Garden here in New York City. They put together a very impressive panel to chat social media and catch a game, and really pulled out all the stops: three big screens broadcasting tweets, official #tweetup t-shirts and those cute little tweetup nametag stickers.  The event was sponsored by Discount Tire: definitely a little different than your run of the mill ‘few folks in a bar’ #tweetup.

The panel featured Amy Jo Martin, head honcho of @digitalroyalty (the folks who did, among other things Random Acts of Shaqness),  Peter Robert Casey ( the first ever media accredited micro-blogger, he covers St John’s basketball here: @Peter_R_Casey), Jim DeLorenzo (a VP at Octagon, the guys who have developed Twackle, a sports tweet aggregator), and Jack Dorsey* (founder of Twitter and Square).  Three sports/marketing folks, and one guy who hand in inventing (or popularizing, depending on how you look at it) micro-blogging. A serious panel indeed.

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