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Posted June 17th, 2008 by Char Lyn
Last month I posted about the Burma: It Can’t Wait campaign and was touched by all those who left comments. Due to people being in and out of the office, it’s taken longer than expected to post about the results of our comment campaign, but with good results. We will be donating the full $5000 we had offered to the U.S. Campaign for Burma, making each comment worth just over $40. Thank you to all those who commented!
The news out of Burma continues to prove the country’s need for responsible leadership and humanitarian aid, and many thousands of Burmese citizens are still in need. There are those who may question a donation to a political campaign in this time of human need, but until we can change the Burmese leadership into the hands of those elected by the people, the current government will continue to block the aid from making it to those who need it most.
For those who would like to donate directly to the relief effort, we also wanted to provide a quick list of humanitarian agencies that are already on the ground in Burma, making it slightly easier for them to get contributions to those who are in desperate need.
http://www.foundationburma.org/may-cyclone-message.pr3.5.7.08.php
http://hope-international.com/appeals/08_myanmar.html
http://www.ideorg.org/work/myanmar.php
http://www.psi.org/news/0508c.html
http://www.metta-myanmar.org/
http://www.cwasiafund.org/projects.php
http://www.worldconcern.org/NETCOMMUNITY/Page.aspx?&pid=397
http://www.opusa.org/whoweare/pressreleases/myanmarcyclone2.html
http://www.justgiving.com/burmarelief
Thanks to Hella Delicious for the link list and the moving video clip you left in your comment!
To read the original post, and all the comments, click here.
Posted May 15th, 2008 by Char Lyn
Read the update to this post here.
We’ve been busy here at DIG and haven’t had as much time to post as we’d like. We love this blog, but our client work comes first. While we don’t normally talk about our client work here, this month we have a rare exception. Occasionally we have a project that touches our hearts in a way that changes our lives and our attitudes. Burma: It Can’t Wait is one of those projects, and with the recent cyclone and the need to get aid to the citizens of Burma (also reported as Myanmar in the news), this campaign is even more important. If you want to learn more about the campaign, please take a look at the site or add the application to your Facebook profile and help us raise one million voices of support for Burma.
As part of our commitment to the people of Burma, Digital Influence Group will contribute $10 to the U.S. Campaign for Burma for each unique, non-spam comment or trackback to this post, up to $5,000 total. The deadline for commenting is May 31, 2008, because for Burma: It Can’t Wait.
Posted March 28th, 2008 by Char Lyn
In the world of social media, we often hear of the wisdom of the crowds—present a problem to the masses and they are likely to find the best solution. Today, Justin Wolfers suggests that rather than supplying wisdom, the masses may be crowding out the true wisdom of the experts in his Freakonomics post on the lack of academic commentary on the current state of the economy.
Crowding out: The wisdom of crowds is at its heyday and experts have lost market share in the public square. Everyone with a blog and ten minutes to spare is offering a view (including yours truly), and this is crowding out thoughtful discussion.
It seems everyone is talking about the current economic situation in the US and the world. And when everyone is talking, how do you as an individual identify the truly relevant information? Do you rely on the masses by getting your news from DIGG, Reddit or another aggregator with user rankings? Do you rely on some secret sauce coded algorithm such as Google’s page rank or Technorati’s blog rank that balances the crowds voice with hidden metrics? Or, do you rely on an influencer to tell you what is really happening?
The truth is, it’s easy for your message to get “crowded out” without the right influencers behind you. At DIG we emphasize a marriage of marketing and outreach to get a message to the masses so they can share it with the crowd. Then the crowd gets the chance to see the wisdom you share.
Posted January 10th, 2008 by Char Lyn
Last night at about 9 pm the Facebook app SuperWall had 3,090,929 “daily active users.” As I write this post, it has 3,551,493. That’s an increase of almost half a million users in less than 24 hours.
Why?
Some time in the last week or so, the SuperWall developers added a new feature: Forward (fast). Clicking this link at the bottom of a SuperWall post automatically posts the wall message onto the SuperWall of all of your friends.
A picture of a husky puppy dog has shown up on my SuperWall three times with the exact same message, “click forward….to see what happens!” Fortunately, I was warned by an office mate before clicking forward.
While this is will likely be a very successful campaign for increasing SuperWall installation and usage, it feels a little like a con. It’s to close to that bad type of virus that proliferates without the infector’s knowledge. The good viral campaigns are only passed with the infector’s full knowledge.
Posted January 10th, 2008 by Char Lyn
Mack over at the Viral Garden had a post yesterday that gave a great tip for using Google to monitor your brand in the blogosphere. He also underlined the importance of corporations leveraging the free market research available through blogs. However, I disagreed with the underlying message of his post, which implied that corporations don’t monitor the blogs and should always respond to blog posts about them.
Good marketers know when no response is the best course of action. Here are some examples:
- A truthful, transparent response will incite more negative posts.
- Responding may expose the company to legal action or increased regulatory oversight.
- Entering the conversation opens a floodgate that requires continued involvement beyond the resources of the company.
Still don’t believe me? Then you probably also think the customer is ALWAYS right. Now I do believe that you should do everything within your power to make a customer happy, but there are some customers whose happiness would drive you out of business. When those customers blog, no response is the best route.
Do you have other scenarios when a corporation shouldn’t respond? I’d love to hear them. Also feel free to comment about your vehement opposition to the content of my post. Just be aware that I may not respond.
@Jennifer Laycock Please don’t misconstrue my post in any way. I loved your post and subsequent comments. In your specific case, Panera’s best response may be to allow each franchise location to determine the log in time interval, in which case you could get the local manager to give you unlimited access.
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 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.
Posted August 24th, 2007 by Char Lyn
Have you noticed the new features on YouTube? I love the new beta page—it’s cleaner and just feels better in my browser. Today I noticed that they’ve also added forward and back navigation buttons to the recommended videos at the end of each clip. The forward button also has a timer feature that lets you know when the presented clips will change. I’m thrilled about these nav buttons since I can never mange to click on an interesting video before it is replaced by a new one. They’ve also added thumbs up/down buttons to the comments to help filter out the drivel, which I greatly appreciate.
Successful Web services like YouTube have learned that they have to continuously improve in order to stay relevant. But, they also have to earn revenue. In addition to other improvements this week, YouTube has rolled out a new advertising format that overlays the videos like a news ticker at the bottom of the video. Its use is very limited right now, and I had to watch a number of videos before I found one with the new ads. The blogosphere is voicing its opinions about these ads in posts like these on Profy, CyberNet News, and Jaffe Juice.
According to Mashable, Google is making the ads optional for the content owners. If these ads survive the current maelstrom of mostly negative reaction, Google could potentially use the format to make revenue from the extremely popular embed feature, which currently allows people to put ad-free clips directly on their blogs and Web pages.
Corporate America has capitalized on the platform by sponsoring vloggers, posting their commercials, and buying banner ads. The new ad format may increase commercial use of YouTube and water-down the user generated content, but as the largest video community on the Web, it will continue to get the eyeballs marketers covet.
Posted August 8th, 2007 by Char Lyn
Today Freakonomics, one of my favorite blogs, “moved” to the New York Times. Though I will no longer be able to read the full posts in my feed, the move proves there is economic value to blogging. In addition to Dubner’s post announcing the move, Levitt posted a brief video clip on the value he finds in blogging, which is to see how people react to his ideas.
We all blog for different reasons, but a blog must have supporting economics to last. Whether the value to the reader supports ad revenue for the writer, or the thought leadership established by the blog brings a company new or more loyal customers, a blog has economic value. Even personal blogs in which every post is a venomous rant have economic value to the blogger, because blogging is a lot cheaper than therapy.
So, why read DIGtrends? Our hope is that you read it to get insight on what is happening in the world of social media and that you are able to occasionally apply that insight to improve your business. And if it happens to throw some business our way, we won’t complain.
Posted July 30th, 2007 by Char Lyn
Tell me your problems and I’ll tell you mine—at least that is what a new social network called PrayAbout.com feels like. The site bills itself as a “prayer service ministry that welcomes people of all faiths,” and gives them an online medium for requesting the prayers of others. The site is carefully constructed to be inviting and reassuring, providing people with a sense of doing good, but the requests for prayers are, as one would expect, stories fraught with medical woes, depression, family troubles, and unemployment. To make it a community, PrayAbout employees lighting candles the way digg.com uses member voting to “illuminate” prayer requests supposedly deserving of more community recognition.
In concept, the site is filling a social need, but to me it feels like a wolf in sheep’s clothing. While each member gets one candle for free, other candles are earned through 1) writing a popular prayer request, 2) lighting a candle for prayers that become popular, 3) getting other people to join the network. If you can’t/don’t want to earn your candles, you can purchase them with a real money “donation” (which the Boston Globe indicates are $5 per 20 candles). The money helps support the site, which is owned by Notati, a for-profit company that admits to using PrayAbout to experiment with “predictive market techniques, virtual goods, and community spam filtering.”
As a religious individual, I am frustrated that a company would seek to make a profit from people’s prayers, even if the profit comes later through re-use of the technology developed by donations toward site improvement. As a social marketer I am fascinated by the use of a social cause to improve a networking platform. What do you think?
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