Network Based Papers

paper.li

The use of social media aggregation to publication has been around for some time.  One such example is the Swiss company Small River, whose Paper.Li  which takes your daily tweets and creates an online publication from them.

I have used this platform to segment thedigitalconsultant tweets into three distinct publications.  Paper.li also has edition control - daily, weekly or morning & evening.. With the rapid growth in tablets such as the iPAD, this format has many attractions for spreading your content still further.

There are four types of Twitter account based papers a user can create, and one Facebook account based:

1. Account Based Paper - a paper created on your Twitter account
2. Hashtag based Paper - a paper based on a #tag you want to follow
3. User List Paper - a paper based from a twitter user list
4. Create a Custom Newspaper - advanced options for customized Twitter newspapers
5. Facebook based papers - giving you the ability to create a paper based on simple search terms. These papers are created on public posts.

All of the above offer ample opportunities for event marketing and target segmentation.

LinkedIn Today

News today that another social network, LinkedIn, is taking this 'entry to journal' principal a step further. As it prepares to list publically, the company has upgraded its web site with a new feature, LinkedIn Today.

With more than 90 million professionals using its network it is certainly time to try and broaden the companies public appeal and try and boost user activity.

LinkedIn Today allows the user to tap into articles that are being shared by their connections or by people in their industries.

According to the company's media release LinkedIn Today informs you of the following:
1. What your connections and coworkers – people you know – are sharing.
2. What your industry peers are sharing
3. What stories are interesting to a wider audience, outside of your industry

Offering users a personalised news stream is seen as a way of encouraging users to spend more time on the site. Only time will tell if this is so.

Being able to see who followed a topic headline provides insight into LinkedIn users who share a link publicly.

This content distribution also points to the advantage of having your content propagated and shared, as opposed to spending money on online advertising.  Your messaging is not diluted and the reach potential is as great, or greater, for less cost.




So will LinkedIn Today prompt me to use the social network more often?  To be honest, I doubt it. I find Paper.li's functionality far more engaging with greater editorial control over what I wish to publish or view.

LinkedIn's niche is professional networking and while job seekers make full use of it, most of them will still get their news from other media sources, Facebook and the more immediate source Twitter.

Related articles

• LinkedIn launches social news product (reuters.com)
• LinkedIn launches personal news service (news.cnet.com)

Not Wanted On Digital Voyage?

Is the company web site a digital appendage that is fast becoming obsolete?

If you listen to the pronouncements of Stephen Haines, commercial director of Facebook's U.K. operation you would have to thing so.

Putting aside the vested interest, he certainly has a point that for many companies social media is becoming more important in engaging with their customers than the traditional, 20th century web site.

It is delusional to believe that building a web site will guarantee an audience and that this audience will be prepared to make repeat visits to get to news and offers.

In this day and age customers and site visitors expect incentives and they expect these inducements to come to them, rather than the other way around.

According to Haines statistical analysis of Facebook likes on  company FB sites are well ahead of those people who visited that company's Web site.

For Starbucks the ratio was 21.1 million likes to 1.8 million site visitors. For Coca-Cola, it's 20.5 million compared with 270,000; for Oreo, 10.1 million compared with 290,000; and for Dr. Pepper, it's 4.1 million compared with 325,000.

Haines summarised some of the functional advantages of Facebook for marketers:

• Ways to offer free samples to customers
• The ability to attract the attention of smartphone users making local check-ins.
• The ability to build e-commerce sites into Facebook pages.
• "Reach block" ads that change as many as five times in a 24-hour period to send a sequence of ad messages to Facebook users.
• Surveys that let companies try to engage customers in company decisions.
• Applications built atop Facebook's interface that let companies create custom-made interactive programs

Despite this companies would be very unwise to abandon their web sites and rely solely on Facebook.  The problem being that Facebook is a 'walled society' unlike the Web, which is open.

You limit your options for customer search and discovery of your online brand if you rely totally on social media.

Related articles

• Facebook Offers Commenting Plug-In To Other Sites (informationweek.com)
• Will Facebook replace company Web sites? (news.cnet.com)

Eggs In Social Media Baskets

Is Social Media worth the cost?  Social media is a two-way communication medium and use it effectively businesses need to invest in listening capabilities that capture the activities of their existing or potential customers online.

This more often than not means a subscribing to a specialist engagement dashboard / console, such as Radian6 ($US600 per month - video below), and employing dedicated staff to monitor the Buzz and respond.



Radian6 Promo

Recent research of 10,000 online shoppers by ForeSee Results suggests that the ROI (Return On Investment) for more traditional forms of advertising is better than social media.

As the methodology of this survey is not fully explained it would wise not to take these results at face value.  They do however provide a contrary view to the usual social media argument. Not everyone has achieved success through their social media strategies and some of these results could help explain why.

Forsee results found that more visits to retail / ecommerce websites are influenced by more traditional marketing tactics than social media. Promotional emails (19%), search engine results (8%), and Internet advertising (7%), all had more influence.

UK Respondents

US Respondents

In an earlier post I talked about the importance of email - "email remains a potent weapon in the digital marketing arsenal".  This study would seem to bear this out.

Customers and prospects prefer to receive email communications and according to the study, a very small  8% of online shoppers responded that social media was their preferred way to interact with a retailer.

 Even though just 8% said social media was their preferred method, more than half of all respondents indicated that they would be willing to connect using some form of social media.

Facebook was a clear winner (40%) while Twitter registered only a 4% preference

The other thing to remember  is that many businesses still don't know how to use social media effectively to promote their brand or online offering.  Social media awareness varies greatly between countries.

If customers are not used to finding social media options embedded in a web site and/or used by a company, then it is hardly surprising that they show a preference towards the tried and true email, website and snail mail.

I certainly would not right off social media on the strength of this study but it is a reality check.

At a recent roundtable conducted by a UK agency, MyClicks.org.uk,

"the majority of the participants, around 75%, were satisfied with their use of social media tools, including social networks, online video, blogs and podcasts. Around 30% stated that social media would be a key element in their communication strategy when preparing 2011 budgets, with the remainder preparing to continuing to ramp-up their presence using these channels to a greater or lesser extent."

Related articles

• Study Shows Social Media Impact Lags Search and Email (marketingpilgrim.com)
• Social media drives 3% of traffic to e-commerce sites: survey (econsultancy.com)

Is There Still A Place For Email In 2011?

As this presentation shows, email is predicted to grow from 2.9 billion accounts to 3.8 billion by 2014.

So although social networks are clearly the fastest growing communication technology, email remains a potent weapon in the digital marketing arsenal.

Business receive twice as much email as they send in a day and spam remains a constant problem. 

The rule of thumb is to try and send out 70% of  useful or fun information and 30% which could be termed hard-sell.

All email 'blasts' should integrate social media tools such as Facebook 'Like' buttons, tweet, or Stumbleupon options to push content beyond the original recipient.

Email should have click through options to build engagement and do send a welcome message or series of messages to engage new email subscribers.  It is surprising how few businesses (1%) do this at present.

A prime motivation for people to give their email address to a company is to receive discounts and promotions. More than half expect to  get a "freebie" in exchange for their address.

Old habits die hard and 58% of consumers still start their day by reading their email.  So time your email releases to hit them fresh each morning, before the drudgery of the day dilutes the effectiveness of the message.

Related articles

• Email Marketing Is Changing - Don't Get Left Behind (fathomseo.com)
• Email's Demise Has Been Greatly Exaggerated ... Again (blogs.constantcontact.com)
• 2011 PR Trends: Email and Social Engagement (proactivereport.com)
• Email, Social Media To See More Marketing Dollars In 2011 (webguild.org)

Death Of A Postman

In our neighbourhood one can still see the posties cycling around making snail mail deliveries; sadly they are a dying breed.

A couple of decades ago it was possible to set the time by the regular nature of their beat but no more.

In Singapore weekend deliveries have now completely ceased as the volumes of traditional mail have dropped dramatically.

Recently release figures from the States show that at th end of June, year-to-date total mail volume was down 4.9% from 2009 to nearly 129 billion pieces.  This represents a drop of 700 million pieces in the last quarter which in the long term is simply not sustainable.  The US Postal service lost $2.5 billion in June and the revenue trends show the situation worsening.

While it may be comforting to blame this on the recession, the real reason is that one form of communication has replaced another.

I recall stock market advice given more than a decade ago to invest in courier firms.  At first glance this may seem to be going against the global trend of less snail mail volume.  The rationale is the the growth of e-commerce would see an increased need for home deliveries and so it has proved to be.

Though email has supplanted the written letter there are still quite distinct usage patterns  vary widely as this analysis from Rackspace shows.

The prevailing advice is not to send out marketing email at these peak times as the "delete" button is likely to be fully operational.  Better to time the delivery for the start of the working when the volume is less and recipient is more receptive. 

Related articles by Zemanta

• US postman hoarded 20,000 letters (news.bbc.co.uk)

A Lot Of Old Soap

Omo is not a new product.  It has been hawked around households for generations but now comes a digital marketing development that positions it (literally) in a totally different sphere.

From  next week comes the reality that your soap powder can stalk you.

According to the Advertising Age, Unilever's Omo detergent is adding an unusual ingredient to its two-pound detergent box in Brazil: a GPS device that allows its promotions agency Bullet to track shoppers and follow them to their front doors.

Starting next week, consumers who buy one of the GPS-implanted detergent boxes will be surprised at home, given a pocket video camera as a prize and invited to bring their families to enjoy a day of Unilever-sponsored outdoor fun.

The promotion, called Try Something New With Omo, is in keeping with the brand's international "Dirt is Good" positioning that encourages parents to let their kids have a good time even if they get dirty.

It will be interesting to follow the campaign on the web site as this is the case of the a prize finding a consumer rather than the other way around.

Because of the high crime rate in Brazil the promoters are concerned that the lucky prize winner may not open his of her door to the team who are tasked to deliver the prize.

To avoid such an eventuality they "can remotely activate a buzzer in the detergent box so that it starts beeping. And if the team takes too long to arrive, and the consumer has already opened the box to see if she's a winner or just do laundry, she'll find, along with the GPS device and less detergent than expected, a note explaining the promotion and a phone number to call."

It begs the question though, will this lead to increased sales?  Omo's brand recognition is already high within the country where is has 80% of the detergent market

In some countries issues of privacy might prevent such an initiative, but seemingly not in Brazil. being tracked from the store to your home might not be everyone's cup of tea, or in this case, box of soap.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Advertising Age: Omo Detergent Uses GPS to Follow Consumers (boxofmeat.net)
• Brazilian Detergent Follows Consumers Home Thanks to GPS (triplepundit.com)

On Target With Blog-vertising

Image by Mexicanwave via Flickr

Blogs are meant to be pure streams of consciousness, unsullied by the taint of commercialism - right?

When you are reading a blog you are getting personal opinion free from the undue influence of third parties is a commonly held belief.

Unfortunately this is increasingly not the case. The reality is somewhat different, with a growing legion of "professional bloggers"

Blog-vertising (a terrible term) is increasingly becoming part of the mainstream as companies scrabble for market share inthe brave new world of social media.

As Steve Green reports "As an advertising channel,  the blogosphere makes total sense. Certain blogs not only boast a valuable and rich list of subscribers, but have also developed a highly evolved authority, making bloggers a sought after commodity for advertisers "

The recently launched ebuzzing matches bloggers with advertisers and bloggers only survive if their content remains relevant to the audience that they serve.

The company's stated ain is to "be a platform for bringing bloggers and advertisers together. It is based on a simple principle: Like. Recommend. Earn. 

It allows bloggers to monetise their blog, earning money by creating posts about things they genuinely like and want to recommend, whilst advertisers can create buzz for themselves in the communities that are most likely to be interested in them."

The strength of blog-vertising is that it is a highly targeted channel providing a greater return on investment.  Advertisers need to be where their market is and companies such as the Euro-centric ebuzzing are building "the buzz", which is so essential to build online reputation and drive sales.

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• Ebuzzing, the sponsored content platform for bloggers, launches in the UK (eu.techcrunch.com)
• In the Blogosphere, Credibility Hinges on Giving Up Some Message Control (bulletproofblog.com)

The Opera Browser versus The Potato Speed Test

A very effective example of online viral marketing

BRICS, CIVETS And Emerging Market Opportunities

Image via Wikipedia

The Nielsen’s Consumer 360 conference revealed some interesting trends and oppportunities.  One presentation of particular interest was that given by Consumer Insights' Hany Mwafy and James Russo (video below).

The digital centre of gravity (as they expressed it) is moving more towards emerging economies and away from the traditional hubs of Europe and the USA.

Growth and profit will happen in  countries such as Brazil, Russia, India and China, often referred to as the BRIC grouping.  It is estimated that by 2014 growth in BRIC will be 61.3% from 2008 baseline.  This needs to be compared with the G7 (U.S., U.K, France, Italy, Germany, Canada and Japan) projected growth of just 12.8%.

Some trends to watch:

• By 2030, the developing world’s middle class will be larger than the total populations of Europe, Japan and the United States combined.
• The female economy.Women now control almost $12 trillion of the $18 trillion in global consumer spending.
• Mobile phones are bringing the Internet to previously unconnected consumers.
• Average daily TV viewing worldwide in 2009 was a record 192 minutes
• The Middle East, in particular, is experiencing phenomenal growth and Egypt’s middle class is growing and is increasingly connected
• Fifty-eight-million Egyptians are mobile subscribers

And while we are at it, let's not forget the CIVETS as other pundits are already predicting that Colombia, Indonesia, Vietnam, Egypt, Turkey and South Africa will take over as the new BRICs.

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• After BRICs, look to CIVETS for growth - HSBC CEO (reuters.com)
• Facebook COO Sandberg says e-mail may become obsolete (social.venturebeat.com)

The Science of Social Media Marketing

Dan Zarrella, social media and viral marketing scientist and author explains what drives people to share information and opinions online. He details scientifically proven best practices for spreading content virally using social media.

Basic human evolutionary principles put our social media practiced into context. For example, "social proof" and following others are powerful motivators.

Rumours spread in an information void, so when information does exist it is very valuable. One of Dan's key suggestions is that you ensure voids don't develop around your brand. But if there is a void and you can fill it with your information you become the definitive source and this is a powerful position to be in.

"Combined relevance" is another concept that can drive viral success.  Combining "zombies" with "marketing" may seem a little weird but see how it worked for Dan.




Source: ViralNetworkers

Recent articles by Dan Zarrella:

• Data Shows: On Facebook, Sex Sells
• Simple Language Gets Shared More on Facebook

Putting The Boot In - But Which Boot?

Image via Wikipedia

The world is buzzing about the World Football Cup being held in South Africa and mega events such as this present global opportunities for digital marketers.

Neilsen details how the shoe giant Nike has undertaken a very effective piece of ambush marketing, no doubt to the chagrin of the major event sponsors.

By monitoring the social media buzz they had noted that it was their brand that were most associated with the World Cup, even more than the official partners and sponsors.

Nike's "Write The Future" campaign neatly gazumped that of Adidas by capturing 30+% of the Buzz while the official sponsor has thus far only registered a little over 14%.

Carlsberg Beer have done something similar, bettering the official sponsor, Budweiser.

According to Alex Burmaster, vice president of communications for Nielsen. "Social media has made ambush marketing easier, simply because of the virality of it. Some people call it an echo chamber."

FIFA is not taking this lying down and at last count their lawyers have filed 2,519 cases globally against parties it accuses of ambush marketing.

Some social media platforms themselves are suffering as a result of the World Cup.  Twitter appearing to be feeling the strain.  Track activity by topic, players, or team using CNN's Twitter Buzz.  There are reportedly 150,000 tweets per hour per game;  no wonder Twitter is creaking.

Neilsen has also used Brand Association Mapping to identify the differing perspectives of the Cup between countries.  Note the UK example below.  The words "winning" and "championship" reveal high expectations of their team. Click on the chart to enlarge it.

Trendrr provides a good overview of social media activity associated with World Cup 2010

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• How Nike and Pepsi Hijacked the World Cup (adage.com)
• FIFA Battles 'Ambush Marketers' Targeting World Cup (Update1) (businessweek.com)
• Nike ad beats official World Cup sponsors for online buzz (guardian.co.uk)
• Ambush Marketers Tackle World Cup Organizers, Sponsors (time.com)

Augmented Reality

Buying a pair of sunglasses will never be the same now that we have the Rayban Virtual Mirror to try them on before we hit the store.


This webcam application rather neatly demonstrates the commercial potential of Augmented Reality.

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• Layar's New Augmented Reality Browser Makes For A Strong Location Play (techcrunch.com)
• Zooburst ! (digital-teacher.co.uk)
• How Augmented Reality Helps Doctors Save Lives (readwriteweb.com)
• How augmented reality could change the way you watch football (telegraph.co.uk)

Consider Social Media as Word Of Mouth Marketing

"I love the companies that have created a position called “Head of Social Media” or similar"
Antonio Batanero, Sr Director Distribution & Digital Marketing, Sol Meliá - The Americas.

In this interview with Ritesh Gupta, Batareno states that the establishment of a corporate social media committee might be the best way to release its full potential.

If as he suggests we view social media as a mix between "word of mouth, customer satisfaction, email marketing, CRM, and loyalty" then it is really no surprise that the responsibility for this important marketing tool is often poorly defined within an enterprise.

This is precisely why building, maintaining and monitoring online reputation are such important strategies and the corporate structure for managing this needs to be clearly thought through.

Friends telling friends reveals the good, the bad and the downright ugly about an enterprise.

BP who are currently battling with a growing ecological disaster are using social media as a key part of its PR strategy.

In this way they can counteract some of the negative and satirical PR that is being generated on the Net.  They are using the hashtag #oilspill on Twitter and judging from current trend mapping they seem to be maintaining the highest profile in the area most affected.

I suspect that there is a 'corporate committee' handling this and all of the emergency PR associated with the oil spill.

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• A Fascinating Look At The Numbers Behind Social Media (e1evation.com)
• Don't make social media another silo (freshnetworks.com)
• From Social Media to Social Business: The Missing 'Social' Link (socialmediatoday.com)