Archive for September, 2007
Posted September 20th, 2007 by Char Lyn
I just read a great article in a paper I’ve never read before thanks to the Freakonomics blog. It was an inspirational story about a professor at Carnegie Mellon University who has pancreatic cancer and is unlikely to live more than a year. In the article, he quoted something the assistant football coach told him in high school when the head coach kept yelling at him for his mistakes:
“When you’re screwing up and nobody’s saying anything to you anymore, that means they’ve given up on you.”
While the article touched me, that one quote stuck. I started to think about the work we do at DIG and the number of companies afraid to engage with their customers through social media. Businesses are so often afraid of their customers “yelling at them,” but they forget that people only yell because they are engaged—they haven’t given up hope that the company will give them what they want. If they want something within your power to give, then you can gain loyal followers by giving it to them. If customers want something they aren’t getting from you, their lack of yelling means they are getting it somewhere else.
Freakonomics’ recent move to the New York Times blog is a perfect example of this idea. When they moved to the NYT, they lost the full-post RSS feed. The readers, 90% of whom were reading through RSS readers, revolted in the comments of every post for at least the first week. The authors were open in their communications about the reduced feed through three posts on the topic here, here, and here. They were not able to make everyone happy and lost some readers (customers), but the NYT readership should compensate for the loss.
So, where is your company at? Are you on the field getting yelled at, and getting the cheers when you make the touchdown? Or are you still sitting on the sidelines of the real game and only playing in the safety of the friendly flag football game at the company outing?
Posted September 14th, 2007 by Andre
Here’s a quick new app. that I just finished for the F8 platform:
It’s called SoDex, short for Social Index.
It’s quite easy to use: all it does is allow you to list links to your profiles in other social networks. Simple, isn’t it? Interestingly, one of my colleagues asked me if there was such a thing and I hadn’t seen it implemented previously. So here it is, SoDex!
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The concept was to create an application to test out the F8 platform and what it can do to help us as web marketers. The result was about 400 lines of code that created an incredibly simple yet useful application.
Facebook allows developers to build upon their existing platform and to create applications complete with ready-to-use forms, buttons, and even tabs; all of which use Facebook’s signature blues to blend perfectly with the rest of the site.
I’ll admit, their documentation for the platform leaves quite a bit to be desired. But, if you are proficient with PHP, or another supported client library, you just might want to look into it.
If you feel so inclined, check out this page for a quick step-by-step guide to getting an app up and running.
And for more information check out their developer resources page.
From time to time, I’ll post updates on how we integrate the F8 platform into our digital marketing and how you could leverage this new platform for your own uses.
Posted September 12th, 2007 by Char Lyn
The NY Times Bits blog outing of John Ordover’s Marry Our Daughter prank site made me recall the hour I spent at work horrifically fascinated by the male pregnancy site. In both cases I was relieved when they were confirmed hoaxes. From a social media perspective, sites like these are the accidents on the side of the road during rush hour traffic. One can’t help but slow down to gawk, then talk about what was seen around the water cooler. Unfortunately the Britney debacle wasn’t a hoax, but it received the same type of viral reaction.
As a group here at DIG brainstormed campaign ideas for a current client after having seen the Marry Our Daughter site, I was once again reminded of what makes media viral. Like the virulent germs they are named after, explosive campaigns need a little bit of shock to create a pandemic. The shock can take many forms: disbelief that requires verification from all your friends (Marry Our Daughter), unexpected craziness (Carlsberg beer and Will It Blend?), remarkable/silly but useless talent (Stride gum), and yes, sexy still sells (do you really need links to prove that?).
Fortunately, campaigns don’t have to be virulent to work, and going viral doesn’t guarantee revenue. There are many campaigns which promote steady growth over time without shocking or offending potential customers such as the Coke Zero campaign, Cisco’s Human Network and Visa’s Fan with a Plan. They provide reliable information to quality customers and still provide entertainment.
What people often forget is that the product or service being sold must have customer value. If the product doesn’t live up to the value proposition, the most viral campaign in the world can’t guarantee product success.
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