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Please be patient as we rework this site.
The new theme is ‘Massive News’ from Press75.
We’re making cunning plans for the direction this will all go in.
(Image by: docman)
From Wikipedia:
“Social media are primarily Internet-based tools for sharing and discussing information among human beings. The term most often refers to activities that integrate technology, social interaction, and the construction of words, pictures, videos and audio. This interaction, and the manner in which information is presented, depends on the varied perspectives and “building” of shared [...]
Many of the business people I talk to about using the internet always tend to have slightly nervous look in their faces.
They know something is happening but they’re not sure what.
They know their kids are involved and they are not.
They suspect there are opportunities but they’re not sure where.
The thing we reassure them of is [...]
Please be patient as we rework this site.
The new theme is ‘Massive News’ from Press75.
We’re making cunning plans for the direction this will all go in.
(Image by: docman)
Having a focus purely on numbers makes sense in broadcast, here Seth Godin talks about why it doesn’t make sense in Social Media.
As bandwith continues its inexorable downward cost video will become more and more predominant on websites, but is it as effective and engaging as people (such as myself) would have you believe?
According to Avelyn Austin at Search Marketing Sage it is.
They conducted a landing page test with Video and a White Paper and found that, “by offering searchers a free 3-minute video describing the company and its offerings in exchange for their contact information there were 373% more leads obtained than there were when we offered searchers a free whitepaper in exchange for their contact information”.
Avelyn also went on to report that, surprisingly to me, the “cost per conversion for each lead obtained from the video offer was 35% less expensive than the cost per conversion for each lead obtained from the whitepaper offer“.
The idea of video being highly engaging has been an intuitive call based on empirical observation of my own net use (how long I dawdle on videos versus read), so it was interesting to see someone do some more rigorous testing and put some numbers around it. I think over the next eighteen months there will be a greater move toward a larger range of organisations generating video content for on-line use, which will in turn increase the quality threshold, not in the videos themselves but in the standards of what is required to gain viewers. Quality content will rise to the top.
(Photo by: Steve Rhodes)
Met yesterday with the Marketing and Sales departments of a company looking for cost effective ways to market themselves. The members of the team were very keen to look at what social media could do for them but the entire conversation had a huge shadow lurking over it….a reluctant CEO. We ended up with a plan to present some small scale initiatives as test runs – a perfectly good result, however I do wish I had walked in with this post “5 ways to help your CEO embrace Social Media” by Mandi.
There’s also this excellent video from AdAge where Josh Bernoff of Forrester Reserach quotes P&G saying their SM campaign ‘Being Girl’ is four times as effective as traditional ad spend. P&G are notorious measurers of everything so if they say it, I believe it.
(pic by Sebastián-Dario)
So I have recently plunged into the all too common Cobblers Shoes scenario – i.e. the Cobbler is so busy making shoes he has not time to make any for himself or his family.
I’ve been working in the US on a job for Lonely Planet/Nokia which will on-line launch early Sept.
Since getting home I’ve been delivering talk after talk, and am in the middle of pre-production for a film to be shot next month.
And I fell in a posting hole!
And…the worst part is that as I thrashed around in there I felt worse and worse about the passing days – I mean it’s so stupid, I could have just banged out something instead of torturing myself. At least it has given me more appreciation for besieged clients and one thing I talk more and more about now is properly resourcing yourself form a staffing point of view to maintain the content output.
Tomorrow I am talking at ‘Stealing the Show’ – visitors from there please note, you have to be posting more than I have been of late!
I don’t make it easier by having another two blogs to post to.
Over the weekend I will trawl through the some 2000 unread feeds in my reader and pick out a juicy feast of best posts.
Look at this picture. It’s a wall of coffee cards at a cafe around the corner from us.
I was staring at it today and realised ‘this is social media’. It may look like a plain old loyalty program (buy 6 get one free) but what distinguishes this in my mind is a couple of things;
- everyone has their name on thier card, and can see everyone elses, and if you go there a few times you’d like to see your name up there also so you feel part of the group.
- the cards facilitate conversation between the cardholders.
- there is a triple value add, first: I’m hopeless with remembering to carry these cards when I need them, second: I get a free coffee, third: I get to feel like a part of this small community and given that we only moved down here six months ago this one is not inconsiderable.
So to me it looks like social media before we started calling it social media.
I’ve recently completed my minimum skills training with the CFA, and whilst my firefighting contributions so far have consisted of getting to the station first for a call and forgetting the entry code, I’ve also discovered that the CFA has a terrific social media presence. It’s called CFA Connect.
The CFA is one of the worlds largest volunteer based emergency services with 1288 Brigades and 58,000 volunteers, information dispersal and volunteer engagement are crucial. When I first joined the CFA I was thinking that there is a lot more they could be doing on-line to facilitate this, someone else was obviously way ahead of me.
CFA Connect has a clean simple interface – it encourages site members to not only view content but to add – video, photos and blog entries as well as forums. Registration is open to serving members and general public who are interested
None of the site is extraordinary in deploying new web technologies or with any startling new SM inisghts – it does the basics really well. I’m curious to see what kind of useage it is getting with such a large base of potential users and will see what I can find out from them. In the meantime though have a look at a great example of a large organisaiton utilising SM to connect it’s members with each other for the sharing of knowledge and the building of community,CFA Connect.
Do you use Skype?
When Skype first emerged many predicted the demise of crusty old telecommunications giants, and like most the breathless hyperbole around the web things have turned out a little differently than forecast. After initial forays into Skype my useage dropped back quite substantially because the people I wanted to connect with simply were not getting on-board. Given that I was doing a bit of work in Indonesia I’d have thought everyone would rush to Skype as a means to save substantial sums of money.
The barrier, as always, was the pipes.
Skype can be both the best ad worst of online communications – on a good connection day it is fantastic, being able to video chat with my wife daily made the longer overseas trips more bearable. On a bad connection day it is the sort of frustrating experience that has you wanting to throw your laptop through a window. Early on the quality of connection was just too unstable for many people to want to wholeheartedly embrace it.
Now that we have moved out of Melbourne I find that I have come back to Skype, and indeed iChat (I abandoned iChat a couple of years ago for Skype when the video chat simply never ever worked, things have changed in the interim). I have even put my skype ID (pabamedia) onto my business cards which for some would seem mundane but for a number of my clients is quite a novel idea – what’s even more novel is that they are slowly coming to the use of Skype.
If you have dabbled with Skype in the past have another look, if you’ve loaded into onto your computer but never really touched it open it up and get your organisation using it. In a time where we’re being told that the economic sky is falling Skype and iChat can now provide a reliable, easy, video chat and conferencing facility which beats the hell out of email and plain old voice calls.
This link takes you to a bunch of Skype propaganda videos showing how Rip Curl and others utilise Skype – it might give you some ideas.
A recent article in the Financial Times quotes findings from a report by phone operator O2 summed up in the title “Small Businesses find big value in Twitter”.
The part that stuck out for me;
According to O2’s survey, 16 per cent said they had saved more than £5,000 on marketing and recruitment costs, while almost a third had saved more than £1,000 since joining Twitter.
These are not unsubstantial sums for a small business. It will be interesting to see further reports that put a dollar value to Twitter activities, whilst this one refers to marketing and hiring costs I think a far larger figure would be that of referral value passed through Twitter. I have already passed three or four business referrals through Twitter that have converted into business for the parties involved and find giving referrals an easy way to add value to your network.
(NB – the full article is behind a free registration page)
Last week Apple announced the impending update of the iPhone operating system. Watching the Apple video outlining the changes I found myself picking my jaw up a few times. The iPhone may be the thing that makes Social Media a mainstream phenomenon.
13.7 million phones sold last year. 800 million downloads from the App Store in 8 months, and now the new Operating System.
The key elements of the new OS that I can see enhancing Social Media type applications are;
Peer to Peer connectivity - not just great for gaming but there’s a potential mountain of apps for all sorts of data sharing.
MMS – overdue, but with the addition of being able to send audio files this gets a little more interesting.
Custom applications for accessories – where do you start with this? As discussed in the video imagine your home blood pressure reader being able to update your medical files then make an appointment for you if you’re running a little high! Providing an interface between the web and currently disconnected devices should see the phone put to an amazing array of new uses.
Maps – allowing developers to place the maps within the app. Should take geocaching to a new level.
Push notification – auto-updates of kety data just quietly ‘happening. Again on the video the ESPN example was terrific, game score pops up, you click VIEW and the video starts. This would be great combined with location awareness.
Apple claims there are 1000 new API’s – toolkits for developers to add functionality to their apps, a lot of which could have a very Social Media feel to them.
Apple has again changed the game – this thing you think is a phone is a whole lot of other things.
Making these powerful tools available in a personal portable device suggests to me that Social Media will be untethered from the desktop and become far more a part of peoples everyday lives
