In recent weeks, I’ve found myself in a staggering number of conversations with family, friends and coworkers about social media. I attribute this not only to their recent adoption of new technologies, but also to the surprisingly ubiquitous presence of social media in our regular news stream. These days it seems as if the New York Times can’t grant enough front page real estate to stories about Facebook’s fabled founders or how Snickers is taking advantage of the social media revolution.
Running parallel to the coverage of social media has been analysis of the precipitous fall of the economy. Given the overlapping timing of these two sea-changing stories, I can’t help but think about the connection between them. Obviously both the global economic crisis and the ubiquity of social tools are complex phenomena with causes and effects too large to number on these pages, but at the same time, it’s clear that the faltering economy played no small part in the explosion of social media services. Continue reading »
Being able to call yourself a blogger is great. It does not matter whether you post many times each day like Chris Brogan or if you post every few months like the folks over at Where is Bob?
When you do post though, how do people find your posts? Even if you are a personal blogger like Paolo Jr, you at least have a small group of dedicated readers… be it your immediate family, circle of friends, or Second Life buddies. But, how do new people find your posts?
In your blog design, you need to make it very clear how people can subscribe. Look at the big RSS button with “subscribe” next to it there on the right. You could be doing that. I have to like your site a lot in order to check back frequently without simply using a subscription option to tell me when something new has been posted. If people are not subscribed to your blog, it is easy for them to forget about it and stop checking in. Continue reading »
Thanks to social media tools, marketers are finally learning the value of sharing the spotlight with their customers. In the old days, product information flowed directly from the brand to the customer. Marketers would put their heads together and develop the story they wanted to tell, the narrative that would (with any hope) stay in the mind of the customer when the purchase window moved from locked shut to wide open. Of course, branding in this sense still exists; we need only look at the most recent Super Bowl to see advertisers jockey for attention and spend exorbitant funds on commercials to sell pancakes and tax assistance. Continue reading »
If you’re reading this blog, chances are that you take more advantage of social media than your average internet user. You’re likely on Facebook and maybe even Twitter. You might have a blog or check out Reddit and Digg once a day.
Do you simply use those tools? Or, do you participate with their communities?
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The history of Internet memes is as old as the Internet itself. In fact, you could say that one of the major wonders of the Web is how it has scratched our human itch to share pointless twaddle with everyone we know. (As a disclaimer, I should point out that I mean, in no way, to ignore the Web as a revolutionizing and often positive force in our lives. I simply want to illuminate how it has also handed us a way to indulge our obsession with offbeat cultural phenomena.) To put it bluntly, we have never seen a cat in a onesie that we didn’t feel compelled to broadcast far and wide. Continue reading »
I once sat in on a presentation given by Andru Edwards of Gearlive.com. Someone asked about the value of Twitter, and he responded something to the effect of, “It’s here and people are using it. You’re gonna have to get used to that.”
If you are working as a marketer, PR person, advertiser, or any other related job-type, you might have a hard time making the case to your superiors that your company should create a Facebook fan page or its own Ning group. Why? It is so difficult to measure the effectiveness of social media campaigns, because while they have the ability to create better public perception or increase share of voice, they do a poor job creating sales when they are not managed correctly. And, your managers do not even know those things yet. They likely just have the impression that it is an untested medium largely populated by people talking about how drunk they got last weekend or why they hate Britney Spears. Continue reading »
I have always been a fan of the late Jim Henson, ever since I was a child. So I of course had to click on the YouTube link a friend of mine sent of Beaker singing Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy.” If you’ve seen this already, you know what I’m talking about; if you haven’t and are a Muppet fan, I won’t ruin it for you suffice it to say you need to see it; and if you aren’t a Muppet fan, shame on you. I played that clip a bunch of times for a good laugh, and I even got my six-year-old into it. So what does my fanboy Muppet status have to do with brand integrity and viral marketing?
Beaker singing “Ode to Joy” is not a redub or reedit of old episodes of “The Muppet Show.” It’s one part of original web content featuring various characters from “The Muppet Show” created and produced by the Henson Company. Some of them include “Classical Chicken” with Gonzo, and “Rolling with the Skateboarding Dog” with Rowlf the Dog. What I find unique about the clips is that they update the Muppets to the digital age while retaining the character of Muppets as they have been since the ‘70s. The “Rolling with the Skateboarding Dog” has Rowlf with the skateboarding viral video bulldog and trying to do his own trick. At the end of some of the Muppet clips, we see Waldorf and Stadler peering into their own “web cam” criticizing the clips (W: How many hits did that receive? S: Unfortunately not enough to kill it.). Much the same way “The Muppet Show” parodied, as well as celebrated, the form of the variety show, these web clips use the viral form for as much of the comedy as well as the delivery of the message. In that sense, it is self-referential and thus keeps the brand name and brand quality intact. Continue reading »
