360DigitalInfluence

We’ve been watching social media chatter around the “big game” intensify over the past week – especially if you live in Indianapolis. But since Volkswagen first teased its teaser ad with the barking dogs (and garnered over 11 million views along with way), the ad community has slowly followed suit and rolled out their wares.

Consumers that wanted to gain clout (and Klout) passed it along as quickly as possible. But will two weeks of conversation or two minutes of 1.5 million tweets (like those amassed around Tim Tebow’s heroics this season) sway opinion, increase favorability or drive sales? Or are brands just trying to be “part of the conversation”? The answer to both is yes. continue reading

TIME Magazine’s person of the year in 2006 was “you,” paying tribute to the hundred millions of social media users who framed the information age with user-generated content. Conceived in 2006, Twitter, along with other “emerging platforms,” was evolving and looking for better ways to enable users to share content. Five years later, Twitter includes brand pages in efforts to expand its 100 million user base.

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While the majority of the social media world was getting excited a few weeks ago about the launch of brand pages on Google+ and the timeline feature rolling out on Facebook, last Thursday that other platform of the “Big Three,” aka Twitter, decided it would not be upstaged by the whales in the social ocean. In what’s being seen as a play to fend off Facebook and Google+, Twitter has given itself some new bells and whistles in a major reboot.

Twitter’s revamp comes at a time when they want to prevent their current user base at 100 million from eroding. The reboot consists of a major user experience overhaul of Twitter.com, updates to their mobile application (Twitter has had an explosive increase of 25% in new registrants in 2011 based solely on mobile usage) and an unveiling of two very large new features to help marketers. These include the debut of brand pages and embeddable tweets.

Some of the key takeaways on this revision are the following: continue reading

On October 27, I joined communications pros on Bulldog Reporter’s webinar “An Advance Look at Hot, New Google+: How It Will Impact PR Pros, Social Media Strategy and Your Customers.” Co-panelists were Jennifer Lashua, Global Social Media Strategist from Intel; Vidar Brekke, Chief Product Officer from Converseon; and Mark Traphagen, Internet Marketing Manager from Virante.

A lot of our value-add from Ogilvy comes from helping clients anticipate which platforms will win.  There are a million ways to optimize your social media presence, and spending more time on yet another social network is something many social media pros are not wont to do.  That said, despite social media fatigue, and despite the enhancements on Facebook released in the last few months, I’ve become more convinced that time spent on G+ is well spent.  The panelist laid out a compelling case.

“My friends aren’t in G+” is no excuse. We should never forget that Zuckerberg made a decision in establishing the “real identity” and “know in real life” folkways of Facebook.  Google+ doesn’t share these; in fact, panelists said that much of the value of Google+ comes from meeting new people around interests in the platform and having meaningful, thoughtful conversations.

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Search Engine Strategies Conference returns to Chicago November 14 – 18. Marketers and SEO professionals will gather to discuss all topics related to search, social media and more. Interested in checking out the conference? Use priority code “OGV20” at registration for a special discount.

I recently had the privilege to interview Eric Ward, president, EricWard.com. Eric is an expert on content linking strategies and has been involved in online marketing since 1993. Eric has helped a countless number of companies create and execute linking strategies to increase the awareness of their web content.

Eric is on a panel at SES Chicago, “Social Media Linking and Promotion,” where he’ll discuss how social media usage has created opportunities (and frenzy) among link building and promotion. Here is an excerpt of what Eric had to say about social media linking and promotion:





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Now that we’re four weeks into the new fall television schedule and the hype has died down (and baseball is getting in the way of Glee), it would be interesting to know how much attention network executives are paying to Trending Topics on Twitter compared to Nielsen ratings. My guess is that one is becoming as important as the other.

People do all sorts of things when they watch TV, according to a recent report from Ericsson, like eat, talk to people in the room, and work. Rarely is television the only screen in the room.

Despite all the DVRs and Hulus and time shifting, Americans still have favorite television shows and wouldn’t dare miss them. It used to be imperative otherwise someone would spoil the surprises at the proverbial water cooler the next morning. But now, it can be spoiled in real time on social networks. In fact, some programs actually prompt viewers to tweet both subtly by showing small hashtags in the corner of the screen and obtrusively with live hosts begging “tweet me.” Twitter actually reported in May that “across networks and genres, when TV shows bring Twitter elements into the broadcast, there’s a direct and immediate increase in engagement on Twitter: anywhere from two to ten times more Tweets created while the shows air.” Ask and you shall receive.

And it’s not just Twitter driving the television viewers to talk. There are two fairly well known apps that try to make television more social by enabling you to share what you’re watching (both with horrible names). GetGlue is an app that basically serves as FourSquare for television shows. IntoNow from Yahoo! (which just launched a partnership with Facebook) has much fancier technology that uses your phone to listen to your television and then reports what you are watching. Like GetGlue, it has a check in feature but it also makes recommendations for similar shows that you might like based on what you’re watching. That’s cool, but it still requires me to go looking rather than disrupting what I’m doing like most social media platforms in general.

So does television need to become more disruptive? Not for me. Does it need to be more social? Maybe. Secretly, I would like to know what my friends are watching. That’s a connection and something to talk about. It’s fun to say: “I love that show too!” The Media Lab at MIT has been working on a cool remote control that could show that. If a brand could bring it to me, I’d take it too. In the meantime I’m fine using Twitter to find out what Snooki is doing. I should be working anyway.

Multimedia: the foundation of social media. When Mark Zuckerberg created Facebook, the emphasis was on the “face” -  the actual image behind the profile. Since the conception of social networking, photo sharing has been the foundation. People have continued to  illustrate their Facebook profile with an array of photos detailing their lives and brands have learned that multimedia is more valuable to their constituents than ever.

But what about Twitter? I’ve been thinking a lot recently about Twitter’s stake in the photo game. Within the many changes that Twitter has rolled out in the past few months (the acquisition of Tweetdeck, the new interface, the “who to follow” functionality), we’ve definitely seen an emphasis being placed on photos.

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Remember the excitement you felt when your website finally went live? All the design, development, revisions, and debugging were finally completed. And with a click of a button, you launched your brand presence.

Getting a brand.com or corporate.com website off the ground can require a massive team effort. It can be so challenging that the mantra becomes, “Let’s just get through Phase 1.” For the moment, that makes sense.

However, content (and keeping it up to date) is as critical to the life of your website as the launch that excited you so much.

But when was the last time you reviewed and updated the content on your website? If you haven’t touched your site since the “let’s get through Phase 1” launch, you’re not alone. And if it has been more than six months, you may want to surf to the dot.com featured in your email signature and check things out.
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I’ve noticed something lately I can only describe as the Personality Paradox (mostly because I’m a big fan of alliteration).

It’s simple:  When it comes to engaging in social media, bigger brands (alliteration! OK, I’ll stop pointing it out.) tend to have smaller personalities.  This shouldn’t come as a huge surprise.

In the case of a big brand there are myriad factors that can cause this Paradox.  First off, having a big personality takes a ton of effort and focus.  Add to that regulatory/compliance issues, organizational challenges, multiple marcom agencies, new management and a million other things, big and small.  Or worse, simply losing sight of the customers who got you there in the first place.

The perfect parallel is a rock band.  The unsigned band playing half-filled clubs is going to cherish every fan – no autograph unsigned, no photo request denied, no interview not granted, no Tweet unanswered.  But as that band gains a following and eventually breaks, the demands on their time and attention increase, forcing them to (1) triage inbound requests and (2) start speaking to their fanbase as a whole, rather than as individuals.  Oh, and as their egos inflate, they often quickly forget their most loyal base.

(photo courtesy of Arne Hendriks)
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With all the talk of Google+ over the past few weeks, one bit of news from another social platform managed to grab some headlines. Twitter formally announced a “Promoted Tweet” ad program. This allows brands you already follow to be at the top of your feed on Twitter.com (surprisingly 78% of users access the platform through the site) instead of in the stream. It’s like getting a fast pass at Disneyworld or maybe the first spot in a television pod. Two thoughts came to mind immediately: 1. I thought that already existed and 2. How do you buy that?

Yes, this did exist. Twitter tried “Promoted Tweets” in a beta form with HootSuite last October though under a slightly different model. The first foray allowed brands to target anyone rather than just their current followers as in the new program. That move was smart because it allows Twitter to sell more ads using their “Promoted Account” option which helps brands find consumers to follow them, then they can send them more messages [preferably at the top of the feed for a fee].

Not many people in the business were very surprised by the announcement, but the media loved it. In fact, although Twitter isn’t the largest social network, hardly has any money, and has lost its founders to other ventures [though both remain marginally involved], it clearly is a media darling. It was Twitter, not Facebook, that got credit for helping achieve a debt ceiling agreement this weekend (although news of President Obama losing 38K followers was also noted). Twitter was also the main means of communication in Egypt when the Internet was shut down (via mobile phone text updates) during the crisis in January. And it is Twitter that gets credit for influencing the stock market.

So with all that attention, a growing usage base (over 200MM now), and now an ad platform, why is Google+ being viewed as competition more for Facebook instead of Twitter? I actually think the media is driving that more than Google. In fact, I’m sure Google would love to supplant both of them.

Twitter’s differentiation is the real time delivery and access to people and companies you don’t really know. Although Facebook updates in real time, the amount of updates per minute is much lower than that of Twitter. And Google+ just doesn’t have the user base to have that effect yet. Ultimately, Google+, like Facebook can bring together everyone you know - though notably in a much easier to use, segmented manner. But it’s going to be hard to provide access to all those that you want to know (or want to watch). We’ll all just have to wait for Justin Bieber to start a circle to find out what the possibilities are.

Now that Twitter appears to have a revenue plan in place with their new and existing ad features (the going rate for a Promoted Trend is reported to be over $100K/day), a plan that Facebook started strongly utilizing a few years ago, Google+ is under even more pressure to showcase how brands can get involved. They will surely use their Adwords technology to deliver text ads just like they do in Gmail (hopefully with more relevance), but the rest of their plan is likely still being developed. In the meantime, Twitter will hopefully open access to Promoted Tweets, mobilize their new sales staff and take marketer’s budgets off their hands. One thing I think we can count on from Twitter is better analytics than Facebook has ever offered, although nothing close to what Google+ surely will offer.

So how can you buy those “Promoted Tweets”? Well you can’t – yet. The official Twitter statement is that they are currently partnering with several charter advertisers and will notify me when it is available which is estimated at “about two months”. “Promoted Trends” is also only listed as a beta opportunity not currently available. You can, however, secure a “Promoted Account” today – and as mentioned before, that’s a great place to start if building your follower base is the goal.