Yesterday, I had the opportunity to join a panel discussion on The Strategic Growth Concepts for Small Business, a blogtalkradio show discussing the basics of social media and how small business can leverage community activity to grow. For many small business owners and marketers, navigating social media can be a challenge due to lack of time and resources. As a result, many companies miss out on an opportunity to harvest customer insights and data through online relationships that could drastically impact their bottom lines.
Simply getting started can be daunting for many folks who haven’t grown up with the technology. The panel stressed that having a strategy and plan in place that details your goals and expectations is crucial before jumping headfirst into the social media conversation. This isn’t just good practice for small business, many large organizations should think long and hard about their current activities and how the disjointed efforts may impact future initiatives and segment their audience. All too often, many marketers fail to see the big picture, understand the extent of the commitment and know where to participate to obtain the greatest ROI. You don’t need to be everywhere and you don’t need to reach everyone - reach the right audience in the right place with the right information.
For more insights, listen to the panel discussion featured here and feel free to leave comments on the blog or direct message me on Twitter (http://twitter.com/KevinMGreen) if you’d like to discuss further.
The Future of Media Summit is being held this week in Sydney Australia with a live video link to Silicon Valley. Now in its third year, this ambitious event addresses the rapidly changing media landscape and offers a vision for the future of media strategies, journalism, privacy, TV and video.
The event is accompanied by a detailed report which is available for free on their site, but I’ll summarize it for you here.
The big idea is that we are now entering a new “media economy” where there are no walls between media and entertainment. More of our social interactions are occurring across multiple media channels and every organization is a media participant creating, aggregating and disseminating content for a business objective. In this environment people have an almost “insatiable desire for content and connection” creating a significant growth opportunity for media, entertainment and companies in related industries.
The report identifies seven forces shaping media:
1. Increased media consumption – The more media we can get, the more we want. As consumption continues to increase, so will clutter and noise causing ad effectiveness to decline
2. Fragmentation – More channels and media options will continue to fragment audiences dividing audiences into smaller and smaller segments.
3. Participation – We are in a content creation explosion. More non-professionals are creating content and more attention will be paid to participatory channels like social networks.
4. Personalization – Users will expect to have more control over how, when and where they consume content causing an increase in behavioral targeted advertising
5. New revenue models – Micropayment for content will remerge and media companies will unbundle ad sales and content creation
6 Generational change- Younger generations are far more internet focused so the average age of TV and radio audience will increase. Ad dollars will continue to shift towards new media outlets.
7. Increasing bandwidth – As broadband reaches more of the world and mobile broadband accelerates, content will be available on demand to anyone anywhere.
This is an interesting take on the future of media. There is nothing particularly new here, but this presents a very compelling story about the increasing power of the individual. All of these forces are evolving at the same time. Even if you don’t agree with how they will evolve, it is easy to see that there are substantial shifts occurring that will change the way companies approach marketing in the future. This vision is an exciting opportunity for marketer to improve their effectiveness by adopting the principles of social media marketing today.
There is a quote I love in this report from the author, he said “In uncertain times, don’t try to predict the future. Systematically explore possible futures.”
Several bloggers are providing summaries of the sessions in Sydney and the event host is microblogging the event with this CoverItLive stream.
There’s been a lot of talk in the blogosphere recently that we are risking an attention crash with all the demands and pressures of an always-on social media world.
“By 2009, the Radicati Group predicts that we’ll spend 41% of our time managing email. Now add to that the IMs, documents, Facebook pokes, RSS feeds, Twitter tweets and text messages coming at us and we’re officially way oversubscribed. Unfortunately, the problem will not abate. Human attention is finite. It doesn’t scale. Worse, the pace of change today is so rapid there’s a huge need to stay digitally savvy.”
He’s right. What balance I once had has now been ruined with my new found love for Twitter.
Clay Shirky, NYU professior and author of the new book “Here Comes Everybody” offers another perspective. In this presentation from last month’s Web 2.0 conference, Clay makes the case that Americans actually have a tremendous “cognitive surplus” from hours of TV viewing that can be applied to participation activities online.
To illustrate the scale of this surplus, Clay estimates that the entirety of Wikipedia represents about 100 million hours of human thought. That my sound staggering until you realize that Americans spend about that much time every weekend just watching TV ads. According to Clay, the 200 billion hours that Americans spend watching television each year represents about 2,000 Wikipedia projects. That is per year.
Nobody is implying that behavior will shift that dramatically, but just a 1% shift of American’s time from TV to participation online would amount to 100 Wikipedia projects per year worth of participation.
So while the social media savvy may feel over saturated with information, we have to remember that a majority of the population still haven’t joined the party.
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.
Wikipedia is the best thing ever. Anyone in the world can write anything they want about any subject. So you know you are getting the best possible information. – Michael Scott
This week one of the world’s most popular encyclopedias turned 7! It’s hard to believe that Wikipedia, which is often credited with jump starting the user-generated content revolution we all know as “Web 2.0,” went from a small experiment to one of the world’s most reliable resources covering a ridiculously wide array of subjects. As of January 14, 2008, the English Wikipedia had over 2,176,000 articles with over 946,000,000 words! That’s 371,271 new words added every day!
Now I wouldn’t recommend citing Wikipedia articles for your thesis or term papers, but if you wanted to find out who Chris Crocker is…… well that’s another story lol.
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.
The recent bridge collapse in Minneapolis showed the extent to which citizen journalism has been empowered by social media. The news quickly spread on Twitter, photos were uploaded on Flickr and videos were posted on YouTube and the whole world could Digg them.
News organizations recognize the power of citizen journalism. Sites like CNN’s iReport, MSNBC’s First Person or BBC’s Talking Point call readers to submit their own content. The BBC even offers courses in photography and reporting. Even Yahoo came up with its own version called You Witness News.
A recent trend is citizen journalism sites where anyone can post news stories they find on the web and can also submit their original reporting. Here are a few:
NowPublic is probably the most prominent. The posts are twitted on the home page as they arrive. The site is mostly people re-sending news from news wire services, but every once in a while there is some original reporting by subscribers. The site claims little over 125,450 subscribers in 4095 cities.
Wikinews says it is trying to do for journalism what Wikipedia has done for Encyclopedias. It is up to you how you want to interpret that.
GroundReport.com is a citizen news portal that enables anyone to instantly publish articles, photography and video. A story gets pushed up by voting and a reporter needs to establish trust within the site. The frequency of posting is not great, but it does require original reporting to get published and all contributors earn a share of revenues based on traffic to their stories.
Orato.com is a site where both citizens and journalists contribute.
Another trend is news sites dedicated to specific towns and cities like Bostonist of Boston, Newton’s Garden City, and my personal favorite H2Otown of Watertown. If you want to see if your town has a site, visit the Knight Citizen News Network which has a nice map.
While the debate goes on whether citizen journalism is a good thing or not, the world keeps reporting and it has never been easier to get published. It has only been two years since I got a degree in journalism and I’m already wondering if it will be worth much in the future. Lucky for me I double majored!
Last week, Digital Influence Group Chairman, Larry Weber, celebrated the release of his new book, Marketing to the Social Web: How Digital Customer Communities Build Your Business, with a launch party at the DeCordova Museum in Lincoln, Mass. Drawing on his three decades of experience, Larry provides a roadmap for all marketers looking to harness the power of the social web to enhance brand awareness and create effective customer communities. The early reviews are in and here is what people are saying about the book:
• “The Social Web is an intriguing but scary place for marketers,” said Josh Bernoff, Vice President at Forrester Research and co-author of Groundswell, an upcoming book on business strategy and social technologies. “Marketing to the Social Web is the guide you need to enter this world with confidence. Let Larry Weber take your hand and show you around – you’ll profit from it.”
• “Larry has brought pragmatic and useful recommendations to help brand builders manage the complexity of social interaction in a digital age. I was pleased to read a book that actually suggests how to do something with social networks, instead of just ponder them.” – David Kenny, Chairman and CEO, Digitas Inc.
• “Where’s the allure of social 2.0? Brands can talk…customers talk louder! Digital influence has arrived.” – Jeff Taylor, CEO, Eons and Founder of Monster.com.
• “Larry Weber provides a simple and effective roadmap of the new customer information highway. Marketing to the Social Web is a valuable tool that will give everyone the confidence and know-how to compete in this fast-growing marketplace of ideas.” – Steve Harris, Vice President, Global Communications, General Motors Corporation.
Of course, in the spirit of the social web, we want to hear reviews from some of the lucky few who were able to get their hands on a copy of the book already. We’re happy to answer questions and will keep you updated on the progress of the book as more news becomes available.
If you’re interested in learning more or purchasing a copy, please visit the books site here.
July 7, 2007, YouTubers and fans will converge upon Washington Square Park in NYC from 11am until 8pm for a gathering event. Why should marketers care? Popular YouTubers are the new influencers. Lonelygirl15 has 94,625 subscribers and her videos have over 11 million views. Smosh has 118,334 subscribers and their videos have over 6 million views. 777 is an excellent opportunity for marketers to begin cultivating a relationship with these influencers, not to mention spread around some swag to develop brand awareness. So will you be in New York City on 777?
Oh boy! Mitt Romney wants to know what you believe is America’s single greatest challenge in a video he posted on April 11 as part of the YouChoose ’08: Face the candidates on YouTube. So far he’s had almost 111,000 views, 600 comments and 27 video responses.
Let’s take a look at a representative sample of the comments so far:
I’m terribly sorry that you’re an idiot. Please don’t share it with me.
America was in NO WAY founded on religion or the bible. Where do you get your history? Many of the founding fathers were NOT Christian.
Skip the 10 commandments and let’s just go with “do unto others as you would have them do unto you”
Thou shall not kill that includes sending people to another country to do your dirty work all for oil. This country is being run by the mighty dollar and big corporations, and with the religious fanatics as cheer leaders.
Just Google this guy. He tries and come off like a good guy, but he’s just another shady politician.
Education. Especially when it comes to religion affecting schools/education/scientific progress.
He’s certainly engaged the community… which is a start. But I doubt these are the responses Romney was hoping for. What might’ve helped? Here are a couple of basics:
Lose the white dress shirt and tie. Look like one of “us”.
The background is way too staged. Living room couch, flagged by family photos. Ugh. Smarmy.
Drop the politician speak. If you’re gonna take a minute of our time, say something. Don’t pussy foot around. Tell us what you think is our single biggest challenge.