Period Three Blog » Social Web

Aug202009

Game changer on Facebook

Posted by Gene in Social Web

Gary Vaynerchuck gives us a sneak peek at some Facebook functionality that they are testing that big users like him get to preview before the rest of us. By the way, if you don’t know who Gary is yet, check him out, a lot of what he says is simple stuff but it’s really good to hear.

Looks like Facebook is going to make the social timeline more public, allowing you to interact with other users who you may not be friends with. Not sure how that’ll work, most likely it’ll get released for groups and pages first - where it makes the most sense. The ability to look at other people (who you don’t follow) and review their posts and comments then choose to follow/engage with them has long been Twitter’s advantage over Facebook. It’ll be really interesting to see how all this actually comes out.

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Jun112009

Tumblr

Posted by Gene in Social Web, Blogging

We have several clients that we have setup blogs for over the past few months and we normally (almost always) use Wordpress. We’ll setup an installed version of Wordpress next to their website and pull in their post feed onto their main homepage or some sub section via RSS. We’ve done this with Twitter RSS feeds as well. I don’t really want to get into a Tumblr vs. Wordpress discussion, i’ve read them and honestly it’s not really comparing apples to apples.

Tumblr is possibly one of the easiest ways you can run your own blog on the internet, and it’s FREE. In their own words:

Tumblr lets you effortlessly share anything. Post text, photos, quotes, links, music, and videos, from your browser, phone, desktop, email, or wherever you happen to be. You can customize everything, from colors, to your theme’s HTML. Even use your own domain name.

Tumblr really is a blogging engine at heart, but it’s more like a purist cross between a blog and Twitter. It really shines if you are looking to make short/quick posts, post pictures or video files. The thing is it’s not as intimidating as a full featured blog, the system gets out of the way because it’s so simple and you don’t have to worry about all the moving parts. You can just focus on what you’re posting and get on with your life.
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May042009

What is a friend online?

Posted by Gene in Social Web

This info-graphic from Mike Aruaz is very enlightening. He has written about the differences between the friends you have in person and the ones you maintain online. You know, like in Facebook:

…online friendships are different from what we’ve traditionally called friendships. Digital technology has affected the number of relationships you can maintain, and the intimacy of those relationships, effectively enabling us to create fans who feel like friends… www.mikearauz.com

It’s increasingly important to consider the different levels of visitors your website or web application enjoys. If you know who’s visiting you and why they are coming then you can begin to create content or make changes to your app that’s specifically geared toward their interests and needs. This isn’t always easy to figure out, but this graphic is a really great representation of an accurate model you can use to map them out, or at least get you thinking about them to start.

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Apr162009

The TRUTH will always win in social media

Posted by Gene in Business, Marketing, Branding, Social Web

The thing about social media is that it will expose you. If you are an awesome person who truly wants to help people or run a really great business it will show through. On the other hand if you are not so good at what you do, are unethical or make some mistakes you get exposed just the same. We have to take the good with the bad and learn to deal with it. Here are a couple of really recent examples of how this all works:

Amazon.com fails in customer communication
A seemingly harmless change to Amazon.com’s cataloging software caused “gay and lesbian themed books” to be lowered in ranking relevancy thus causing them to disappear from the website - which of course cries of censorship ensued. Instead of taking the problem in hand, responding clearly and concisely online. Amazon only offered “there was a glitch in our systems” as a response and then a full day later announced in a statement that it planned “to implement new measures to make this kind of accident less likely to occur in the future.” That’s pretty much all we get on this from Amazon… It is amazing to me that Amazon would not take this opportunity to control the conversation online, they are leaders on the web after all. See #amazonfail for more on how this is progressing.

Even after it explained the scope of the problem, Amazon continued to face criticism for its slow and limited response to the online blowup, particularly at a time when sites like Twitter can so easily accelerate and amplify a public outcry.

“Frankly, it’s surprising to hear that Amazon, which was a pioneer in the digital space, would miss this opportunity to react in real time and to manage this crisis better than they did,” said Gene Grabowski, chairman of the crisis and litigation practice at Levick Strategic Communications in Washington.

Read the full NY Times article where I get most of this from.

The DiggBar Hullaballoo
Digg.com recently released their DiggBar, I wrote a quick post about it on the P3 Blog here.

The DiggBar enables you to Digg, read comments, find related content, and share stuff from any page on the Web. And it’s presented in a short URL format, making it easy to share in emails, on Twitter, and via other services. - from Digg.com

It seems like a good idea to me. Though there have been very loud cries of outrage at the Diggbar and how to kill it. Digg has largely been forced to make changes that effect the way DiggBar works and i’m sure goes against their original strategy for it. This one is still playing out, people will not relent on this one, especially when there is a perceived danger to harming their website’s link authority in search engines. I know i’ll be waiting to see how Digg handles themselves and recovers from it.

Domino’s gets punk’d
Domino’s was blindsided by “Two idiots with a webcam and an internet connection” just a couple days ago (even though they said it wasn’t real). The two perpetrators have been fired and criminal charges have been filed. But like some have called for Domino’s needed to get active outside of just dealing the the “crime” itself. It looks as if they have posted a video from the CEO and in the past 24 hours have signed up for a twitter account @dpzinfo.

According to an article in AdAge when talking to Domino’s there’s “only so much a marketer can do” here was the prevailing attitude at first.

He [Dominos spokesman Tim McIntyre] said the company decided not to issue a press release or post a statement online. After all, he said, the company can deal with tens of thousands of impressions, but a strong response from Domino’s would alert more consumers to the embarrassment.

Mr. McIntyre, however, said the company decided that such a response would be akin to “putting out a candle with a fire hose.”

We’ve seen Domino’s turn around on this and start getting involved in consumer conversation on the web. Using Twitter is a great start, but the issue is cultural to big business (yes in IMHO any Domino’s chain is a part of a very big business…) Why should you be invulnerable to a customer not being happy just because you have hundreds of thousands of them. Does my opinion not matter to you? Thanks to social networking apps like twitter and facebook my singular opinion can now effect you - get ready big business!

The point is that as a business you have to be where your customers are, you have to listen to them in the way they want to talk to you. It’s hard to do that, but you have to do that. The bigger your business is the more you have to listen. The internet will only expose you for the truth of how your business operates, it can’t do anything otherwise because even more so today than ever the internet is powered by consumers - and it is only going to grow more in that direction.

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Apr092009

The DiggBar

Posted by Gene in Social Web

Digg’s recent launch of their DiggBar service could be one of the best things they’ve done since they started.

Primarily the DiggBar is a short url service like Bitly or tinyurl, but at the same time will submit your site to Digg.com. The “bar” itself is pretty unobtrusive and actually looks good. You simply add digg.com/ before your url and blam it makes the short url and positions your site for submission. You can also share it across several other social network sites like facebook, etc… This is all a reaction to twitter, which Kevin Rose is one of the top power tweeters there is @kevinrose. In fact most of the top guys at Digg have fairly large amounts of followers, see: @joestump & @dburka.

DiggBar from Kevin Rose on Vimeo.

The short URL marketing is pretty hot right now and is highly contested (bitly is reportedly worth $8 million), there are quite a few different services you can choose from but what makes Digg’s offering so nice is the Digg.com site behind it, something the other services lack. So think about it if you are choosing which short URL service to use when sharing a link on twitter which one will you pick? I’m going with the one that lets me submit or Digg the site i’m linking.

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Mar242009

Twitter growth being driven by unexpected uses

Posted by Gene in Social Web, Twitter

Twitter has exploded in use the latter part of 2008, I’ve often written about twitter and how simply and beautiful it is. Here’s a great talk from the TED series by Twitter founder Evan Williams.

In the year leading up to this talk, the web tool Twitter exploded in size (up 10x during 2008 alone). Co-founder Evan Williams reveals that many of the ideas driving that growth came from unexpected uses invented by the users themselves.

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Mar172009

Jimmy Fallon - I think he may understand…

Posted by Gene in Business, Branding, Social Web, Twitter

I wasn’t too excited about Jimmy Fallon’s late night helmsmanship when it was announced a few months ago. I thought he was a bad choice to take over Conan’s old show. However the more I learn about the man the more I start to like him and am beginning to dig on his show. See, I think he may just “get it” after all:

I know I talk about Gary Vaynerchuck a lot. The reason I follow him is because he understands social media/networking, he talks about it, he’s done it, he’s worked the trenches to build his empire fan by fan, the hard way. Jimmy Fallon is considerably more well known than Gary Vaynerchuck, by far, but he still works hard to reach each fan and follower. I’m sure he’s gotten a leg up by being on Saturday Night Live, but he had to work to get there too. My point is that he could easily just sit back, work the show and let it go where it takes him. Instead he works the social networks, he’s frigging huge on twitter: @jimmyfallon where he’s one of the most powerful twitterers ever. It’s really him twittering too, not some marketing agency, he messages plenty of people back, legend has it he’ll even respond to your emails when he can.

I don’t think the above clip is a photo-op, I think it’s really his personality to do stuff like this. If he keeps this up, he’ll build a fan base that will last him forever across any medium he lands in.

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Mar022009

90-9-1 Rule

Posted by Gene in Social Web

Here’s a different way to look at social media participation in your online community or marketing plan, the 90-9-1 Rule… My two cents, make sure and create a dynamic “discussion” between the creators and editors for your audience to watch. That’s where the magic is.

90% of users are the “audience”, or lurkers. The people tend to read or observe, but don’t actively contribute.
9% of users are “editors”, sometimes modifying content or adding to an existing thread, but rarely create content from scratch.
1% of users are “creators”, driving large amounts of the social group’s activity. More often than not, these people are driving a vast percentage of the site’s new content, threads, and activity.

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Feb192009

Small Biz online marketing plans for 2009

Posted by Gene in Business, Email Marketing, Social Web

According to a new emarketer.com survey, small business will generally not cut spending on their online advertising and based on the research a higher percentage said they plan to increase in the areas of social networking and email marketing.

Small businesses in the US will not cut spending on most forms of online advertising in 2009, judging by a survey conducted in December 2008 by Ad-ology Research. A higher percentage of respondents said they planned to spend “about the same” in 2009 than planned to change their spending.

More small businesses said they would increase their spending on social networking than on any other format. And respondents were more likely to say they would increase spending in 2009 on e-mail and their company Websites than make cuts on those formats.

We’ve been getting more and more into social networking for our clients over the past year, the results can be huge if managed correctly…

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Jan302009

Building Personal Brand Within the Social Media Landscape

Posted by Gene in Business, Marketing, Branding, Social Web

More Gary Vaynerchuk @Web 2.0 Expo NY this past year, I can’t get enough of what he’s selling (not the wine) but the message.

Gary really hits it home here for me. Your product/service is YOU, you have to be honest and work hard and just make sure you like and respect the people your working for or with.

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