Social Media Marketing Blog

This is the best presentation I have ever read regarding social media and organisations.

Read it. Think about it. Take steps to implement what it says.

In Sydney last night, the 3rd monthly Social Media Club Sydney (SMCSYD) event was held. Unfortunately I was not able to attend it due to other commitments and I was disappointed. I have been to the previous two and found them extremely useful in relation to both the information presented as well as the people that attended. It is a great initiative and one that I will continue to support.

However last night there seemed to be more than the usual backlash in the social media space about the event. What concerned me the most was the fact that the information that was being presented was hard to follow - both audibly as well as visually. This is a key element that needs to be addressed. I primarily attend social events to learn more about the field and improve my skill set. Others seem to be going for other reasons, or worse, create a negative back channel of comments taking away the hard work of those presenting.

The holier than thou type attitude that is present in marketing unfortunately cannot work in social media. Social media first and foremost is a conversation. Between people, not egos. And I think the suggestions mentioned by the attendees that everyone should have a voice is a great idea. Sure it could turn into a school yard brawl, but that is what we have moderators for isn’t it?

Rather than people moan and pull out red pens whilst the blue one is left at home (corny analogy I know, forgive me…) I think open dialogue could remove a lot of that. The nature of the experts and champions of this new form of media are naturally extroverted, intelligent, witty, and business minded - they wouldn’t be in the game if they weren’t. I just think the mentality when we deal with our own should be one to make it better for everyone involved. Let’s create effective strategies together. Let’s bounce ideas off one another. Let’s share what we have learnt from our various campaigns.

Let’s talk about how we will show the corporate world that social media is the greatest form of marketing since word of mouth.

And friends, that how industry will be expected.

This is might appear to be a bizarre question about a social media campaign. Social media marketing isn’t about returns, its about “adding value”, contributing and other non-tangible results (so many experts say). And for the fast majority of campaigns that is exactly right, it would not be proper or even possible to attach a dollar value or achieve a tangible goal. I want to propose today however one possible social media strategy that you can easily evaluate the effectiveness of. (more…)

Much has been said about MySpace’s gradual decline in the social networking space. Sure we cannot deny that overall traffic is down, they have lost out on the Google advertising package that was their main source of revenue, but I think we are far from attending it’s funeral.

Its not so much that Facebook has taken away its traffic, I feel that Facebook was what people were looking for in a social network in the first place. MySpace was the first successful network and nothing will take that away from them. People were looking for a place to store and share elements of their life with friends and family no matter where they are. And MySpace provided that service. It even allowed users to add their own personal touch to the pages, no matter what design/HTML skills they possessed. (more…)

We have for a long time at our agency wanted to have as many of our clients advertising on Facebook, especially if their target market is spending the majority of their time inside the social network. However, due to the complications with invoicing and so forth, especially regarding the only billing in US dollars, we decided to wait.

News came through about a month or so ago that Facebook was setting up an Australian sales office and we started to get excited. Having a dedicated team focusing on the Australian market could really work in its favour, think of Google when they started with a sales team here. (more…)

How are you sharing YouTube videos you watch at the moment? Myself, I share via email, instant chat with whoever is online, or if its something my Twitter network would be interested in, I shorten the URL and away I go. TechCrunch reports that they have tried out a new feature being rolled out, that being to share videos in real time with other friends that are using YouTube. So no need to use external services, share YouTube within itself.

So the million dollar question is, will people use it? It often amazes me how active some comment on YouTube videos. There must be a specific niche or demographic of people that use it purely to interact with people. In my real life social circle, the sole reason it is used is to watch a specific video and resume whatever it was we were doing previously, or moving to a related video.

However, I cannot argue with the facts and the stats - people love interacting on Youtube. So for those that already power users, this could possibly be their dream come true. But as for the users such as myself, it probably won’t convert me, no matter how good the UI or experience would be.

One nice feature is the clear attempt at both replicating and tweaking Facebook’s chat and real time features to hopefully encourage people to share within YouTube itself rather than another service/network.

The final question remains however is what new data can YouTube mine from this feature? Can it draw a co-relation between teenager males and how much they share videos relating to cars, as opposed to teenage girls dancing in front of their webcam? Do people start to share a video halfway through because they enjoy it that much, or wait until the end before they share? How often does a shared video get viewed by the sharee? Or is it ignored and viewed at a later date?

We all know we can choose our friends, and we have been doing it as soon as we start interacting with people at a young age. As we grow and develop our own social skills, we refine our processes so that we are able to determine who we want to spend time with and who we don’t. Our parents taught us as well that we should look at the whole person and not base our judgements or assumptions with how people look or appear.

That is well and good though in the real world and creating real world friendships. The Internet, it seems however, almost forces us to judge someone off a two sentence bio and 75×75 avatar. I am not going to delve into the social ramifications of this scenario, but rather I want to focus on how to make sure you are represented properly on your various profile pages on your social networks. The reason being is that more and more employers and clients are searching your name, and making decisions about you as a person, based on your network profile.

If people are going to pass judgements, and lets face it, it’s going to happen, lets make sure its as close to the true representation of you as much as possible. Lets go through some basic tips. (more…)

Yesterday was an interesting day for Sydney. In the late afternoon, from about (4-5pm) my Twitter account started going crazy with updates. Unbeknownst to myself at the time, on the other side of the Harbour Bridge, a massive blackout had occured across some of Sydney’s CBD. Hash tags were in every second tweet from my Sydney followers updating me in real time of the situation. Reports of people trapped in lifts, the status of the Sydney CityRail train line, and most importantly, how the situation was being handled. (more…)

Its the same old story. Every second week, someone makes a comment how Twitter needs to make money to survive. And then every blogger and online marketer chimes in and gives his two cents worth.

Its mentioned that they should Twitter should charge for commercial accounts or maybe Twitter use affliate marketing or maybe anyone of these 7 Twitter monetisation strategies.

At the end of the day, Twitter continues to receive funding from various investors and is fast becoming one of the top 5 social networks on the Internet - no small feet in itself.

I like Twitter. I like the people use Twitter. I like what Twitter has done and how it treats its users. In fact, besides the fail whale, there is very little I do not like Twitter.

So I say lets just let Twitter be, and if they do start to charge users, it will just sort the wheat from the chaff.

What’s the biggest issue when dealing with social websites and networks?

Getting them to turn a profit.

So now Youtube has done some thinking and come up with a way to generate income without turning it into a mess of advertising banners. They go down the same road as other information sources have already tried and tested: is pay-per-download.

Authors can opt in and allow their videos to be downloaded for a particular fee, allowing them to store a copy of the video on their local machine. There will possibly be several licenses available, much like the system Flickr implements.

Of course this method is open for abuse and sharing, especially since it seems that initially the files won’t be DRM signed - which is fantastic for all you seeders out there.

Wired makes a good point though as the industry that seems to benefit the most from this setup are the music labels, as we all know that music videos are often in the most viewed/popular items in YouTube statistics. But if those labels choose to go their own way (a la Hulu) - what videos would actually be worth paying for and keeping would definitely reduce - think of all the rubbish that is stored on YouTube….

All that being said though, there are a few videos and such I would love to grab that cannot be found anywhere else besides video sharing websites, so I say bring it on!