The statistical data shows that MySpace is still the largest and most active social networking site. Hitwise.com has MySpace at number three on their top 20 Website list with a 3.71% market share of internet traffic; Facebook is number six with a 1.65% market share. While MySpace is still number one by clear margins, Facebook has been creeping up over the last 18 months. The anecdotal information seems to bear this out as well. I have been friend requested more and more by friends on Facebook whom I first met on MySpace in the last few months than ever before. I know that my personal perceptions are trumped by data from Hitwise, and this is a debate that’s been going on for at least a year and is still raging, so don’t expect me to definitively settle this at all. However what this really comes down to is the basic marketing maxim of knowing your audience and using the best site for what you need.

If you’re a comedian, an artist, in a band, or made a film, you need a MySpace page. The ability to design your own page template, post your own videos, songs, photos, etc. makes this the ideal site to market your art—whatever that may be. While getting friend requested by people you’ve never heard of can be annoying, for the artist trying to gain an audience it is one of the most beneficial word of mouth methodologies you can use. When I was creating my web series, I used MySpace to put out the casting notices as well as track down a couple of actors that were otherwise unreachable. I was able to gain a specific fan base and even hire a makeup artist for the show as time went on. For all the friending of strippers and bands you have to go through on MySpace, if you are in any kind of artistic field you are going to need this site.

The use of Facebook is different. If you want to track down old high school friends, college friends, business acquaintances, favorite hot dog vendors, you’ll be able to find each other on Facebook. Where you may not realize the page for “~I AM DA BOMB FO’SHO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!~” on MySpace is an old college bud, Facebook makes it easier to figure that out. Plus asking “are you such-and-such” in the friend request seems to cut through the confusion. Marketing yourself here is trickier in that you are among friends, not an expanding audience. If you’re planning a big get together for friends, it’s great; if you want to hype a new product, not so much. However, empirical data shows that the ads posted on Facebooks get more productive cost-per-click ads than on MySpace, and the crowd on Facebook tends to be more affluent.

However there are definite times when being among friends works for you. If you’re looking for work you want to ask people you know—four out of five jobs are found this way. The various groups on Facebook are much more straightforward, easy to join and start posting for things. The community is also great moral support. In these tough times, when I was going through my job malaise, the simple status message of “David is DESPERATELY LOOKING FOR A NEW JOB!” was enough to get my Facebook friends to lend a good ear. One of them told me to send my resume to a recruiting friend of theirs. Different social networks, different purposes, different results.

Whether MySpace is adding the application ability that Facebook has had on for the last year is eventually irrelevant. What’s important is knowing your product and who to speak to. If you know your product, you know the audience you need to reach; knowing that can help you figure out which social network to be on. It’s good to be on both sites but for different reasons on being on either.

First, PodCamp is YOUR conference. There’s plenty of open space and plenty of open times on the schedule. The best experience you have might be in a casual hallway conversation. Take charge of your PodCamp experience by deciding what you want to get out of the event, and get it. If you want to grab some old or new friends and have an impromptu session, go for it. More importantly, help out your community. If someone needs help with their laptop, volunteer. If someone can’t find the restroom, show them. See some trash on the ground? Pick it up. Need help? Ask, ask loudly, ask often.”

Both Brennan White and I attended the last PodCamp and this time we are very excited to be leading a session entitled, “Social Media Marketing is Not Evil.” Shameless plug: our session is on Sunday at 4:00 PM.

In many ways, our session has its genesis in the last PodCamp (a story you will hear in the talk), and has been growing and evolving since then. In particular our session will center around three idealogical concepts that have been fundamental to our company since day 1. In preparation for Sunday we have decided to briefly present these core concepts here for review and discussion. We would very much enjoy hearing peoples thoughts on our ideas and other concepts which people consider fundemental to their own new media marketing tactics.

1: “Mutual Value Proposition”

More so than almost any other idea, this concept was fundamental to why we founded Pandemic Labs. Our term for it has undergone some evolution, but lately we have found ourselves telling clients that social media marketing has to be a mutual value proposition. What do we mean by that? We mean that a properly done and successful social media marketing effort must provide genuine value to both the company AND the consumer.

This may not sound all that strange to you, but think about it. The ads that make your favorite magazine twice as thick as it needs to be don’t add any value to you. They benefit the advertiser and the magazine…they do not benefit you. Television commercials just interrupt what you are watching. I bet only a handful of commercials in your entire life have been so entertaining that you wouldn’t have rather been watching the program they interrupted. But many new media methods allow for the marketing effort to provide mutual value. As an example, look at the myUsearch.com blog. This blog doesn’t have company news and thinly veiled attempts to convince you how great they are. It provides genuine information that is useful to college-seekers (consumer value), and therefore drives consumers to myUsearch (company value).

2: “Consumer Primacy”

An offshoot of our concept of a mutual value proposition is the idea of consumer primacy. To get right down to it, “consumer primacy” is just a fancy way of saying, “put the consumer first.” This is a very difficult thing for many companies and brands to grasp. Even many people who have genuinely embraced the idea of mutual value still plan social media marketing efforts based on how those efforts will help their company. When approaching things from this side, you will invariably make a campaign that is more valuable to you than it is to the consumer. It is just human nature…we naturally think of ourselves first.

To remedy this, do and exercise and only think of things that are valuable to the consumer. Make a list…don’t be afraid to list things that would cost your company a lot of money and have absolutely no apparent marketing ROI. Now that you have a list of things that are genuinely valuable to the consumer (informative blog, educational videos, entertaining website, etc…) look at the ideas from your side. Now you can be selfish. Find the one where you can also make it a valuable marketing tool for the company. Approaching things like this will ensure consumer primacy and, in turn, ensure that you marketing initiative is a true mutual value propisition.

3: “Collateral Benefit”

The final concept in the trio is the idea of “collateral benefit.” This is something which can be easily seen in the world of social media. At it’s basic level, it refers to the ability to benefit multiple people by publically interacting with one. We see this all the time on forums. One person asks a question about how to do X with Y. Another person answers. That is a one-to-one interaction…the answerer only had to exert effort to benefit one person. But because the interaction took place in a public forum, everyone else reading that question also benefited from the answer. This is the inverse to the military idea of collateral damage. It is more efficient and preferable to use one bomb to destroy 10 buildings than it is to use 10 bombs to destroy one building each. In our forum example, there might be 100s of people who benefited from the answer, but the answer only had to be given once. It is a clear case of collateral benefit.

With this in mind, we can begin to theorize how marketers can apply the concept of collateral benefit. What if I could could have a positive effect on 10 consumers by interacting with only one? That would save money and time. Ways of doing this are a big part of many of our newest social media campaigns and, as much as I would like to, I can’t go giving away all the details here.

Conclusion

If you are in Boston, you should come to PodCamp3 this weekend. If you can’t make it, make sure to check back here next week for all sorts of good updates and ideas from the conference. I hope you all have a great weekend.

]]> http://www.pandemiclabs.com/blog/company-news/social-media-marketing-session-at-podcamp-3/feed/ 0 http://www.pandemiclabs.com/blog/company-news/pandemic-blog-welcomes-a-new-contributor/ http://www.pandemiclabs.com/blog/company-news/pandemic-blog-welcomes-a-new-contributor/#comments Wed, 02 Apr 2008 15:06:44 +0000 Matt Peters http://pandemiclabs.com/blog/2008/04/pandemic-blog-welcomes-a-new-contributor/ Pandemic Labs is pleased to announce a new contributor to the writing staff here at PandemicBlog. Many of you might now him by this avatar, but for those of you who don’t, let me be the first to introduce you to Jiannis Sotiropoulos.

Jiannis Sotiropoulos is currently living and working in Berlin. He specializes in online media, approaching it from a theoretical and aesthetic perspective. His studies in sociology and media sciences are his foundation in understanding the functions of the web and how its users interact. With his Masters Thesis on the attention economy of the social web, he scientifically decoded the marketing rules of social networks in the online universe. He continues studying social networks and waits to see how (and if) the future semantic applications will change the current laws of networking. His personal blog, Changemod, is a fantastic resource and has long been a favorite of the editors here at PandemicBlog. Without a doubt, Jiannis will bring a much needed scientific perspective to our discussions and we will all benefit.

Our Ongoing Mission

As our readers know, PandemicBlog aims to be a resource for insight into Social Media Marketing, Viral Marketing, and other forms of new media marketing that haven’t yet been discovered. We have tried to deal intelligently with topics ranging from the paradox of self-promotion with social media, and the power of viral marketing for small business. Up until now, this task has been shouldered almost completely by the editors, Matthew Peters and Brennan White. But…

We strive to be more.

From the conception of this blog our goal has been to bring together a group of thinkers and writers who can contribute their insight, expertise, and opinions on the sometimes nebulous world of Social Media Marketing. Jiannis is the first of our new group of contributors and we hope that a proper writing staff will have a synergistic effect, raising the value of this blog above the sum of its parts.

If you are new to this blog, please subscribe to our RSS feed so that you’ll receive all PandemicBlog articles and be updated on the other exciting new additions to the PandemicBlog team that will be coming in the near future. As always, please feel free to contact us with questions, comments, or topic suggestions. We want PandemicBlog to be a resource to all concerned with these forms of New Media Marketing, and the more we know about our readers, the better we can do.

The scores will be presented as follows:

1. Value to Consumer: 1-100
2. Engagement: 1-100
3. Viralness: 1-100
4. Ease of Use: 1-100
5. Creativity: 1-100
6. Forwards: 0-Infinite

Composite Score: Calculated by adding the scores of sections 1-6 and dividing by 5.

Category explanations:

Value to Consumer: This category represents our belief that a successful viral or social media marketing efforts should bring actual value to the consumers that experience them. This value, as I’m defining it, is pretty open and can be anything from entertainment and interesting discussions, to information and helpful resources. Since an online consumer is not captive to the marketer in any way, the marketing effort needs to bring real value to the consumer’s life if the marketing effort has any hope of being watched, engaged with or passed along. This category’s score ranges from 1-100 (100 being the best possible score).

Engagement: This category represents the ability of the marketing piece to engage the consumer with the brand. More than just “time spent on site”, this metric takes into account how much the consumer actually gets to “play” with the brand behind the marketing effort. A video can be very engaging, but destination sites, games, and blogs have even more potential for drawing the users into the “world” of the brand. Campaigns that combine multiple “new media” elements can be more engaging still. This category’s score ranges from 1-100.

Viralness: This category measures the ease by which someone can share the marketing effort with their network and any incentives that they have to do so. Are consumers prompted to share the marketing piece via social networks, email or embed tags? Is it even possible for them to do so? An important factor when discussing the ROI of an online marketing effort will be the ability of the effort to disperse easily on its own and reach a significant number of consumers. This category’s score ranges from 1-100.

Ease of Use: This category represents the ease of use or user-friendliness of the marketing piece. Can people see/play/download/upload/etc what is necessary to make this piece engaging in a quick and effortless way? Marketing efforts that are too involved and require much work on the part of the consumer will not spread optimally. The more time or tech savvy required to successfully experience the marketing message, the smaller the group of consumers using it will be. This category’s score ranges from 1-100.

Creativity: This category is relatively self explanatory. Something has to earn the consumer’s attention and the more interesting and different the marketing effort, the more easily that attention can be earned. This category’s score ranges from 1-100.

Forwards: This is a more concrete, “the proof is in the pudding”, category that simply reports the number of times I, personally, forwarded the marketing piece before sitting down to write a blog post about it. I figured, rather than trying to come up with a more subjective measure, why not simply record the number of times I ACTUALLY forward the piece and weight that number significantly less in the overall calculation. This category, barely affecting the Composite Score, almost amounts to a “bonus” category and can only shade the final score slightly in one direction or another. This category’s score range begins at zero and could theoretically be as large as the amount of connections I have in my network at any given time.

Composite Score: This number represents the overall assigned score to the marketing effort as a whole. With the first five categories equally weighted and the final category (Forwards) weighted significantly less, the composite score provides an easy way to compare otherwise disparate marketing campaigns. The range of the composite score is theoretically infinite, but the score of the campaign should be considered as if it were on a 1-100 scale.

Our Reviews series will hopefully provide a platform for discussion about actual viral and social media efforts that are currently online. Acting as a bare-bones case study, our readers will be able to see not only how each marketing effort stacks up against other efforts, but also what factors go into creating a successful viral and social media campaign. After reviewing multiple campaigns, important trends, strategies and techniques will be discussed.

As always, email us directly or comment if you have questions, improvements or social media marketing campaigns that you’d like to see reviewed.

Pandemic Labs co-founder, Matthew Peters, was quoted extensively in an article in the January Issue of the Industrial Fabrics Association Review magazine (page 42, titled “Catch the Fever”). The article, offering a high-level view of Viral Marketing, is filled with helpful quotes from social media thought leader Beth Kanter and Blendtec Director of Marketing, George Wright. The piece provides a brief history of viral marketing along with some valuable commentary and is a great read for anyone looking to catch up with the past few years of viral marketing news.

It’s interesting to see how each industry individually takes to Viral Marketing. It’s particularly interesting that, if this article is anything to go by, the industrial fabric industry seems to be very open to this new form of advertising. In fact, this article makes obvious to me a ridiculous assumption I was secretly harboring about “older” industries. Having worked in tech companies throughout my career, I had unconsciously assumed that non-tech industries were colder to these new technologies. Specifically, I had assumed that the earlier adopters of these types of marketing would come from the tech sector. Clearly this is faulty logic once I actually spend two braincells on it, and this article serves me a slice of humble pie.

The article embraces not only the history of viral marketing success (all the way back to the original BMWFilms), it embraces that history without the usual push-back from more traditional marketing thinkers that demand traditional marketing ideas and metrics. This excites me personally as, something I view as, an “old industry” is embracing a new technology better than most tech companies I’m working with!

In a similar, ‘tech isn’t as forward thinking as you’d assume’, vein Matt and I attended a tech industry panel event the other night that had a relatively high-profile group of panelists. In the Q&A, someone from the crowd asked a question that caused, in my mind, a very telling and depressing series of events. The question was, “What is the future of pre-roll video advertising?”. The panel took turns attempting to answer this question and it was painful! The comments ranged from, how ‘a study’ showed that pre-roll ads longer than 15 seconds actually “did better” than shorter pre-roll ads, to, how companies are now able to target pre-roll ads “better”. The small knot of social media folks I was sitting with started muttering unhappily. Did NO one see that pre-roll ads are demanding something that can no longer be demanded online? Do any of the CEOs of these extremely successful tech companies see that consumers will NOT put up with pre-roll ads since the exact video they hoping to watch is probably available in 10 other places online with no ads at all? Finally, after much floundering from the rest of the panel, Mike from Polaris Venture Partners saved the day with his dead-on, one-sentence answer “Pre-roll is dead!”. To me, the success of online, interruption-based advertising isn’t even a question. Its days are already numbered.

To sit and watch powerful tech people, who theoretically have some power over the future of my technological experience, not grasp the engagement marketing/interruption marketing difference, is unsettling. Couple that experience with the full-on embracing of viral marketing by an industrial fabric industry trade publication and companies like ours suddenly feel like they might be barking up the wrong industry tree when offering our services heavily to the tech industry.

Whatever the implications to the industry as a whole, the Industrial Fabric Association’s viral marketing article is a great read for someone looking to catch up with some of high level points on viral marketing.

• The Viral Dictionary- An attempt to aggregate terms and definitions used in viral and social media.

• The Library- A gathering of valuable articles, reports and studies containing important viral and social media marketing data and statistics.

• Useful White Papers- Including “How Does Viral Marketing Work?”, “Viral Marketing Terminology…” and more. These were compiled and written by Pandemic Labs to clarify what we’ve learned in this revealing first year.

We’ve put a lot of time and resources into making our Research page and white papers useful to both the marketing community and every day enthusiasts. Any feedback you have on the look, feel and usability of our site, our content or our blog is welcome.

This year, I decided to keep track of what advertisers were doing with their $100,000 seconds. This is not a complete breakdown of what the ads said/did/accomplished (there are far better sources for that), but instead a look at the ways in which the ads directed consumers to online destinations. Before I give you the results, let me just clarify a few things:

1. I begin keeping track at the singing of the National Anthem and I stopped at the end of the game.
2. I did not count and ads where Fox was promoting its own stuff (i.e. American Idol, House, and the Sarah Conner Chronicles).
3. There are certain elements in this which are judgment calls on my part. You’ll just have to accept a bit of subjectivity.

So here it is.

There were 70 ads shown during the Super Bowl. Of those ads:

1. 25 ads (35%) referenced a company or brand website (i.e. Hyundai.com, Underarmor.com, etc…) Note: this excludes the ads for companies who are online companies, such as SalesGenie.com and CareerBuilder.com whose ads obviously pointed to a website.
2. 4 ads (5%) referenced a destination website. These are sites such as pepsistuff.com and thrillicious.com that are specialized digital destinations, separate from the company’s main site, which are built around consumer engagement.
3. 4 ads (5%) existed primarily to get people to go to a destination website. The ads themselves had no real content, and would not have even been ads at all, had it not been for the digital destination they told people to go to. They were more like road signs pointing to the marketing, rather than the marketing itself. Examples of this were the GoDaddy commercial and the Audi commercial leading to truthinengineering.com.

Are these numbers staggering? It depends how you view them. But the fact that nearly half of all the ads shown last night pointed in some way to a digital destination might say a lot about where marketing is moving.

Merrily,
Brennan & Matt

One point which find particularly poignant is from an April 2006 blog post of Charlene Li, vice president and principal analyst at Forrester Research:

“If you’re going to participate as a marketer in the social computing arena, you’ve got to have thick skin and be ready to engage in the messy world of your customers’ opinions. Marketers that have the guts to turn over their brand to the public will in the end win over their customers.”

We have all seen and read about the trepidation felt by marketers at that thought of losing some control over their own brand message. However, as we mentioned in our December 12, 2007 blog post, Are DVRs killing the commercial?, “Advertisers need to move away from a theory of interruption and embrace a theory of facilitation in order to remain successful.” The architecture of the internet has empowered customers with methods of product research and communication, and consumers are becoming decreasingly receptive to the old ways of advertising. Customer loyalty and respect will vastly increase for companies who facilitate the buying experience, rather than just “shouting” their message at as many people as possible. Marketers need to realize that the world where they control absolutely everything just isn’t going to work as well any more.

The article continues by discussing the importance of metrics and trackabilty in the social marketing industry. As Paula Amunátegui Perelló, project manager for new media at Switzerland-based General Motors Europe, says, “traditional metrics won’t do.” Pandemic Labs co-founder, Matthew Peters, is then quoted raising a point about the incorrect way many marketers are viewing social media possibilities.

“People come to us saying, ‘I hear viral video is cool. How do we do it?’ That’s funny, because if a company wanted to do a TV campaign, they wouldn’t walk into [advertising agency] Ogilvy and say, ‘TV is cool. How do we do it?’” The first question companies should ask themselves, says Peters, is, “‘What do I want to accomplish from this form of marketing?’ If you’re a non-profit who wants to drive an unprecedented number of people to a website to raise awareness and money for a cause, then you have a very different goal than a company that wants to strengthen its brand image. The metrics for both would be different.”

Again, we hope that you read the article in its entirety. Pandemic Labs is happy to have been a part of the article and we whole-heartedly agree with GM’s Amunátegui Perelló, when she says, “…social media is no longer a fad. It is a larger evolution of society.”

Pandemic Labs has been using our proprietary tracking service, PandemicMetrics, to track the spread and success of the video since its release. At this time, the video can be found on over 50 video websites and links to it can be found throughout the blogosphere.

Although we are now focusing on other projects, we will continue to track the success of “Webcam Break Up” and use the data gathered by PandemicMetrics to refine our seeding mechanics and help us provide even better services to our clients.