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 »

The economy has impacted every single industry. In recent weeks, I have heard of layoffs at a local rehab hospital. Even the “untouchable” healthcare industry is being affected. The only booming job sector is for the people that actually do the laying off. Speaking of which, what exactly are the qualifications for that job? A sub-zero heart temperature?

When the economy first began to slide into the deep and ugly spiral that we have found ourselves in, rumors spread through the social media sphere about how corporate America would drop the bomb on traditional advertising and marketing budgets with shady ROI in favor of social media marketing in hopes of much smaller budgets with much larger brand impact.

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In an information-saturated online marketing world, it can be challenging to find relevant content on a regular basis without committing valuable time. Using feed readers can cut through the clutter by customizing your view of the Web.

Feed readers aggregate new content from multiple sources— blogs, news sites, and multimedia— using RSS (Really Simple Syndication) technology, allowing you to quench your thirst for a particular field without visiting individual websites. Given its utter simplicity and its extreme utility, it astonishes me that I still have friends who haven’t yet set up a feed reader. Continue reading »

You lost your job? You have some experience marketing? Thinking about becoming a new media marketing consultant? You have a Twitter or Facebook account? Social media is big right now, is it not? You could be a social media consultant! Continue reading »

The first time one of my Facebook friends posted a note listing “25 random things” about her offline self, I was slightly embarrassed for her. Was she lonely? Should I call her? What would compel her to draft a note to 25 of her online friends with a list of facts that ran from highly confessional to simply idiosyncratic?

The “25 random things” list has embodied the social media zeitgeist of late, which is to say, for the past week or so. Like most online cultural phenomena, reactions to the exercise run from disgusted eye rolls to exuberant participation. One friend posted Facebook status updates throughout the week stating defiantly that he would not, under any circumstances, be compiling a list of his own random facts. Roughly four days later, he changed his status to, “I gave in,” and sure enough, he had written a list of his own that was at turns illuminating and captivatingly mundane. It didn’t take me long to join him in posting my own list.

Inevitably, we will all forget the “25 things” list phenomenon by next week. We’ll be back to creating our own Shepard Fairey images on Obamicon or sending breakdance e-cards. Before the moment passes, however, it seems worthwhile to look at the exercise as a salient example of both social and viral media.

Can we pinpoint where the social part ends and the viral part begins? That is to say, at what moment does the exercise move from one that is shared among members of a group to one that carries its own momentum to self-perpetuate and even influence people outside of the immediate group?

If we examine the “25 things” list, we see that built into its structure is a method to turn the list from merely social to significantly viral:  tagging.  At the top of each “25 things” list is a set of rules:

“Once you have been tagged you are supposed to write a note with 25 random things, facts, habits, or goals about you. At the end choose 25 people to be tagged. You have to tag the person who tagged you because they want to know more about you.”

The instructions then tell the user exactly which buttons to use to find and tag people and then publish the new list. Tagging becomes a vehicle to viral because it disseminates content extremely rapidly among a group of 25 people who are all connected to hundreds more online friends beyond the intended audience of the note. While tagging does not guarantee viral success, it does increase the odds. Imagine if 25 people compiled individual lists and then tagged 25 unique friends, and then those 25 friends tagged 25 more? Within minutes, 15,625 people could potentially be exposed to the “25 things” virus.

Regardless of their personal feelings about the general usefulness or value of “25 things” (or even Facebook, for that matter), marketers can learn lessons from this phenomenon. Why did “25 things” become a viral sensation?

1. It was simple.
   Participants in the “25 things” challenge were handed nothing but a blank canvas and straightforward directions for how to get started.
2. It “sold” compelling content.
   Online readers are consumers. No, they’re not necessarily clicking on ads or filling shopping carts, but they are consuming information and ideas with alacrity.
3. It took advantage of network effects.
   As exemplified by my friend who finally “gave in,” the power of the network is in its insidious ability to convince you that you’re missing out on a global activity. “25 things” spread rapidly because its influence grew beyond the individual nodes; it began to affect enough people that it felt somehow rude to shun the invitations to participate.

Of course, it’s difficult to predict the effects of any virus. Some lie dormant for years. Others flare up and then quickly die. While no one can estimate exactly how long or far the “25 things” virus will travel before it runs its course, we can be sure it will leave its mark on the Facebook community

About a year or so back, I wondered what happened to all my friends on MySpace. I knew a lot of them from another social network site that was dwindling, but I could always find them updating their pages on MySpace. They were soon MIA from there as well. I emailed a friend of mine and asked her what was going on. She simply said that everyone was basically migrating to Facebook.

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.