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How Lady Gaga Moves More than Just her BodyPop sensation Lady Gaga has managed to sell 8 million albums since 2008, in a time when no one is buying CDs. How did she do it? By leveraging social media and developing creative partnerships to sell product, albums and singles. She is the first artist to score four consecutive number one singles from a debut album and the video premiere of her “Bad Romance” video lead to a Universal Music server crash and over 110 million views on YouTube. Not only is Lady Gaga scoring in the singles and album sales department she is also reaping the benefits of creative partnerships. With the success of Lady Gaga’s career, big brands are reaching out to Lady Gaga for her help in selling their products. She has been named creative director for Polaroid in the hopes of reigniting the brand and the Estee Lauder Group is seeing record sales of Lady Gaga’s and Cyndi Lauper’s Mac Viva Glam lipstick. Lady Gaga boosts 2.8 million Twitter followers and over 5.2 million Facebook fans that are more than eager to hear the latest Gaga news. This army of followers is gaga, well, over Gaga. In the February 22 Ad Age issue, Steve Berman, Universal Music’s president of sales and marketing states in the article “GAGA, OOH LA LA: Why The Lady is the Ultimate Social Climber”, “Gaga has worked tirelessly in keeping up daily if not hourly communications with her fans and growing fanbase through all the technology that exists.”  Her Facebook page features a merchandise store, events calendar, and gift shop of Lady Gaga images to send friends. Her Twitter page is filled with tweets which encourage users to watch videos and tweet with the singer. “Check me out on the Today Show with Cyndi” and “Any scousers gotta video if “the living dress” so happy I could die? Tweet me!” However, for someone not down with the lingo (as in me), more than 140 characters would help translate her tweets.  Labels: Brand Awareness, Facebook, Social Media, Twitter, twitter social media, Video, Viral Marketing Social Media Privacy - Does it Really Exist?I know where you are, I know where you could be, I know pretty much everything about you. And I’m not even your friend – at least (REAL) friend. It’s no surprise that social networking allows me to know this about you. I can see what you just ate, because you tweeted it, what you just got for Christmas, because you put it on Facebook. And now I can even see where you are all the time, because you went ahead and checked-in on Foursquare, or you Google Buzz-ed a random thought, and oh yea, you forgot to shut off that geo-location feature that is set to be on automatically when you activate your Google Buzz account…doh! Sure, these publicly announced check-ins, random personal thoughts, and location-sharing networks might get you a cool new pseudo badge and allow you to  become the Mayor of your workplace or the supermarket next door, maybe even the Target down the street – but one key thought that revolves around all of this – I know what you are doing, I know where you are, I know pretty much everything about you.Social Networks & Privacy? Privacy seems to be the 800-pound gorilla in the room that everyone notices is a big problem, large enough to be spoken about daily, but we more or less undermine it and sweep it under the rug and think it will clean itself up later somehow – aka….someone else will deal with it… or even worse – maybe nobody cares? In the past, we’ve gone through the trials and tribulations of privacy wars on Facebook, and after that battle, their new policy now allows for more individual control and openness at the same time. That battle has slowed, and has now turned into the discussions around the new dangers of location-sharing networks such as Foursquare, Google Buzz, Loopt, even Yelp’s new check-in feature, maybe even clever Twitter or Facebook searches will yield some good results as to where you might be. As each of us get caught up in the novelty and bonuses associated with our behavior – what dangerous doors are we opening by taking part in this? This leads into a larger discussion around the privacy associated with social networks, but to be honest, if we are taking part in this phenomenon daily – do we care about privacy? Sure there are certain Facebook pictures you want to keep targeted to just a select group of friends, and on Twitter you want to grant permission to a select group of people to see your tweets; privacy exists – but what is privacy if we are taking part in social reality anyways? The 24/7 personal openness we display as social media users ties to our inherent behavior to play to our strengths. Social media has changed the way we live on and offline and has us living in much more “open” environments, compared to our parents and other Generation X’ers who lived in “closed” worlds and had “separate” behaviors. Social reality now combines all of that for us! All of this sharing allows people to play to their virtues, even more in a social media world. People find their triumphs in social media accomplishing and well deserved from a societal standpoint, as well as a boost in their own individual behavior (aka EGO). If I tweeted from the top of mountain and said “About to hang-glide from 4,000 feet in Peru, what a life!”, compared to “Watching ‘Charles in Charge’ reruns on Mondayz…”; clearly it’s cooler I am doing the first rather than latter, but social media, despite its privacy concerns, allows us to live that behavior and feel accomplished for letting the world know what WE are doing. Does it matter that it related to hang-gliding or watching mundane television – no… I am letting the world know because I feel that I need to, to maybe feel that accomplishment in society. I am not going to break this down from a psychological level, but I am sure there is some reality to this opinion in how people perceive themselves and why they take part – not caring about the privacy concerns we always feel so bullied with. In a recent study from the Future of Privacy Forum, 42% of Internet users are concerned that websites are collecting too much information about them, but then again with Facebook recently overtaking Yahoo! for the #2 top spot on the entire Internet - I don't know if that reflects privacy as much of a concern anymore?  And as we go forward into the future, there is no doubt that Privacy will become more of an issue, especially as more and more individuals begin to feel violated, whether in an emotional online attack or a physical attacks, such as when video podcaster Israel Hyman was robbed after we tweeted that he was out of town, and the fact that studies have already been done to show how social networks are being used as tools to further provoke attacks on a person – in the next two years, privacy and further security will certainly come to a boiling point, it will be interesting to see what happens at that point. What are your thoughts around privacy and social networking – does it really matter and is there anything we can do about it? Labels: Facebook, Foursquare, Google Buzz, privacy, security, Twitter Social Networking Site Use Up 82% in December 2009 According to statistics just released by Nielsen, we are spending more time than ever on social media sites. The average social-networking user increased their time on sites like Twitter and Facebook to five and half hours per month this past December. One year ago, the average time spent on social media sites was around three hours per month. To no one's surprise, Facebook was the top social networking site with 67% of the social networking users throughout the world. Time spent on Facebook in the US increased by 200% over the same month in 2008 while Twitter posted a 368% increase for the same time period. But we weren't the only ones spending lots of time on social-networking sites - the Australians spent nearly seven hours per month on Twitter and Facebook during the same time period. Labels: Facebook, Social Media, social media measurement, social media monitoring, Twitter, twitter social media What’s Your Social Media Engagement Strategy?Best Practices of Social Media Engagement Many companies are replacing traditional methods of direct marketing with social media. The companies with successful social media campaigns thus far have focused on designing the channels, monitoring the conversation, developing content, and measuring ROI. However, engagement with the audience is one of the most overlooked components of a social media strategy.One key benefit of social media is the two-way conversation brands can have with their audiences. They mistake their “content strategy” as an “engagement strategy.” But developing content without an engagement strategy is like talking to your audience and completely ignoring what they say back to you. What is an engagement strategy?Simply stated an engagement strategy is all about communication and interaction. While a content strategy is based on what you’re going to say, an engagement strategy is based on how you’re going to say it, and how you respond to what your fans say. You company will need to develop a plan for actually interacting with your audience, not just throwing content at them and hoping they catch. This is the most challenging part of developing a social media campaign, and as such many companies of shied away from developing a concrete engagement strategy. Through this article, I will outline the following engagement fundamentals that you can in turn use do develop your own strategy:
ToneMost people will come back to your fan page if they feel a sense of community, so it’s important to be open, friendly, inviting, and personable.Have a conversational tone: Social media is casual by nature. Sites like Facebook and Twitter were developed so that people could connect with their friends. Although companies should maintain a professional presence online, it’s important to exude a personal, conversational tone on these sites. Be open and friendly: Be fun, friendly, and enthusiastic about your product or service without being overly promotional or corporate-sounding. Be unique: Avoid imitating the tone of your fans. Although you want to cater to your target audience, you do not need to force your tone to sound like your community. Be unique, so that your fans are interested enough to follow your presence online. Level of EngagementEncourage fan participation: The role of your company’s updates should be to encourage fan participation. Avoid posting only about what you want to promote, and take an interest in your audience’s opinion. Ask questions at the end of your status updates, or ask fans to upload their own content.Maintain a dialogue: Don’t let your status updates be a monologue of self-promotion. Spark conversation by posing questions to the community and posting content that will encourage participation. Share fan content: Share content that your fans have posted to your social channels by re-Sharing on Facebook or re-tweeting on Twitter; they’ll feel even more connected to your brand. VoiceAs a company, there are several options for what the voice of the brand should be. Remember, on Facebook all updates will be prefaced by the name of the fan page (in the examples below, “The Candy Company”):
Posting FrequencyThere is a correlation between the frequency of posts and the number of fans or followers a brand has. There’s a fine balance though; you don’t want to overwhelm your fans. According to a recent study by Sysomos, 77% of Facebook fan pages have fewer than 1,000 fans, and fan pages tend to be updated only once every 16 days. It’s a good practice to update your fan page at least once every day, at least Monday through Friday. This should yield comments and engagement with your brand each day, which will in turn lead to friends of your fans also discovering your page and becoming fans.What to PostMany brands on the social channels are purely self-promotional, only updating their social sites with updates on their own products, deals, discounts, or news. While it’s important to stay relevant to your brand, mix it up with different types of content. There are several different ways to post content on Facebook, including:
Here are some ideas for what you can post besides self-promotional updates, which can all be tweaked to fit the character limits on the various social channels:
Sharing or retweeting fan’s content is a great strategy to make your page feel like a real community. The Coca-Cola Facebook fan page is an excellent example of this. They often share photos their fans post to their walls using the Share button.  Dealing with NegativityAlthough most people seeking out brands in social media are fans of the brand and are coming to show support, there will be individuals who come to complain. Comcast is a great example of a company who uses their social media presence primarily for customer support. But if this isn’t your company’s goal, how should you deal with the negative feedback? Fan to fan interaction: If fans on your page are having a debate, there’s no reason to get involved unless you feel that someone is arguing over a blatantly inaccurate fact. Then it’s fine to jump in and clarify, then remove the brand from the discussion. Otherwise, it’s best to stay out of it. If fans start posting derogatory messages, you can delete the offensive messages and block fans when necessary. Social Media Gives Your Brand VisibilityCompelling and active social channels should be an integral part of your online marketing campaign. These channels provide an exceptional opportunity for brand visibility, but you need to make sure that your fans will have content to comment on and engage with. The more comments you have, the more viral your campaign will become!In the end, an engagement strategy will make your social media campaign a much more compelling and high-impact aspect of your overall marketing efforts and truly enable you to harness all that it has to offer. When you think about it, social media is all about socializing, and an engagement strategy will ensure that how you socialize with your fan base is not only strategically sound, but effective. Not only will this help you to leverage social media to build stronger customer relations, it will enable your organization to guide and actively participate in the growth of what is only going to be a more important marketing channel for years to come. Labels: Facebook, Social Media, Social Media Marketing, Twitter Leaving Your Fate with FacebookThis Sunday, football fans will be glued to their TVs for the Superbowl, while we in the advertising industry will be glued to our TVs for the... Superbowl. Let's face it, some people watch the Superbowl just for the ads, and through the years I've seen some great TV spots debut on the big game day. This year, 30-second ad spots reportedly cost $2.5 million and up - that's A LOT of money so advertisers often spend months (even years) in advanced preparing for those Superbowl ads. However, Budweiser - a huge Superbowl advertiser - decided to take a leap of faith on deciding which ad to play and leave its fate with Facebook. Yes, Facebook, particularly Budweiser Fans on Facebook. Budweiser proudly declares as its status: Budweiser wants our fans to help us decide which commercial makes it to the Big Game. Click on the "Game Day Pick" tab for an exclusive preview of three new spots and vote for your favorite! This "promo" first caught my eye when I saw a Facebook homepage engagement ad:  It was a basic "Become a Fan" ad unit and it actually made me wonder why Budweiser is targeting me - is it because of my age group/gender/location? Or is it because I have "advertising" in my profile? I'm not a big fan of beer but I am a big fan of (most) TV commercials so I still clicked the ad and became a fan. I landed on the custom tab for "Game Day Pick:  And proceeded to watch all three clips. My personal opinion: they were all... blah. I was not impressed by any but did end up voting for the "Payment" one (the only one that's slightly funny and more interesting than the others, I think).But if I didn't like with the Budweiser ads, why am I using up precious blog space and brain energy to write about Budweiser on Facebook? Because while I wasn't impressed with the ads, I was impressed with their strategy. This is one of the most well-known brands in the world, undoubtedly with millions of dollars invested in marketing and advertising, and it is wholly embracing the power of social media. I'm impressed that they are leveraging the power of Facebook to hype up their Superbowl ads, and are letting their fans become part of this big decision (what ad to run), encouraging user engagement and brand affinity. And I'm impressed that they got me - a non-beer drinker, non-Budweiser aficionado - to actually become a fan, and watch their ads, and vote! And even more impressive? Budweiser is smart enough to encourage viral propagation not just by giving the user the option to post it on their feed:  But also asking them to comment on the "what do you think" area:  This is just basic social media strategy, but it is genius in its simplicity. The key here is user engagement and Budweiser is doing a really good job at it.I'm definitely watching out for the Budweiser ad this Sunday to see if the one I voted for actually "won", and hey, I might even drink a bottle of Budweiser (just maybe)... Whether you're tuning in for the football or the ads, I hope you have a great time! Labels: Advertising, Facebook, Industry, Online Media, POV, Social Media Social Media comes to the Age of Aquarius Hair - "The American Tribal Love Rock Musical" - is going to try a new way of reaching out to its audience. Starting tomorrow, the show's finale number where the cast and audience mix and mingle and dance to "The Age of Aquarius" will be recorded in high definition video and posted to the show's web page. The camera, controlled from the show's light booth, will follow a pre-programmed path to pan across the stage and zoom in on cast and audience members. Anyone visiting the site can then download the video, post it to their Facebook page, or send out a tweet to all their friends. Make no mistake - this is a first for the relatively stodgy Broadway theatre scene. Every new show these days has a web page, and some have videos of scenes or musical numbers from the show but Hair is about the only show where cast and audience actually interact during the show. What's in it for Hair? The best possible publicity for a show heading into its second year on the great white way - favorable word of mouth. Being able to spread the word about the show through social networks will probably give the box office a significant boost and keep the show running (and profitable) for many months. Here's link to a story in today's New York Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/02/theater/02hair.html?hpw Labels: Advertising, Facebook, online marketing, Online Media, Social Media Marketing, Viral Marketing, web 2.0 The ConversationalistsRecently released data from Forrester Research has coined the term "The Conversationalists" for people that post a status update on a social networking or microblogging website at least once a week. The Forrester data was analyzed and published in this article from ReadWriteWeb. So, who are the Conversationalists? More than half of The Conversationalists are female, and more than 70% are 30 years and older. This group of people contributes mainly to online discussions with their friends on social networking sites. This group of internet users is the fastest growing group of adults online, and based on their usage patterns, may be more focused on maintaining current relationships rather than developing new ones. Although The Conversationalists are rapidly increasing, the number of Creators (those who publish their own content) has remained quite steady. As the aforementioned ReadWriteWeb article proposed, this is most likely due to the fact that it is relatively easy to join a social network, but much more difficult to consistently create and maintain internet content.  Labels: Facebook, Forrester Report, Social Media, Twitter New "Per-Post Insights" Provide More Insights for Fan PagesFacebook has rolled out a new insights feature called Per-Post Insights that will help admins of Fan Pages measure the effectiveness of content posted on the Facebook page. The insights are applied to status updates, shared videos, shared photos; anything page admins posts on the page's wall. All admins of Fan Pages should see this feature. This new feature will allow admins to see which type of content is more effective at garnering interactions, and will provide insights on how to structure the publishing schedule. Key features of the Per-Post Insights:
 Labels: Facebook A Social Media Scorecard – 2010 US Senate Special Election in MA Click above image to enlarge The recent special election to fill the vacated US Senate seat of the late Ted Kennedy in Massachusetts was certainly one of the most highly charged and closely followed statewide elections in recent history, both on state and national level. Not only was the Democrats filibuster-proof 60 vote majority at stake, the fact that a Republican was threatening to take the seat, in what many consider the bluest of blue states, made this an election for the ages. Labels: Facebook, POV, Social Media, Social Media Marketing, Twitter, twitter social media, web 2.0, YouTube An Alternative Approach To Social Media Marketing - Your Social Brand“Your Brand is what identifies your business to consumers. If you were to ask most people about ‘branding” as it applies to their business they will most likely respond with an answer rooted in a company’s products and services. Sure, they will speak to the importance of emotionally connecting with their target audience, but at the heart of it all it still boils down to what you do or the products you produce. In short, for your brand to be effective it needs to sell and move product or services.
Social media is definitely changing how we market and connect with consumers. Therefore as marketers, we need to also think differently about how we approach our business and look to connect with consumers. In the end traditional branding models will not always work, because they were not constructed to deal with a high degree of social interaction and input from consumers. Therefore, we need to look at branding as a form of subsets, including how we will and want to socialize with our target. Labels: Advertising, Brand Awareness, Facebook, Integration, POV, Social Media, Social Media Marketing, Twitter, twitter social media Rage Against the Machine Saves Christmas - Facebook Campaign Leads to Surprise Viral Victory The ageless metal-rap rockers, Rage Against the Machine, are making noise again, and this time it's by pure accident. The political-driven rock group hasn't released an album since retiring back in 2000, however, they surfaced last week on the UK's biggest radio station, BBC Radio One, to talk about how they suddenly emerged on the UK pop music charts for the much fought over "Christmas Number One" title for 2009.The UK "Christmas Number One" title has normally been held by the UK series, X Factor, winner - a version of American Idol produced in the UK. For four straight years, the "Christmas Number One" winner has been held by the X Factor winner, and this year it was Joe Mcelderry, who was expected to win the title for singing the Miley Cyrus song "The Climb." However, a Facebook inspired campaign that was launched by UK resident Jon Morter as an entertaining (joke) protest against the mainstream pop that in most ways does dominate music charts across the globe these days. Morter's Facebook group "Rage Against the Machine for Christmas Number 1" quickly grew to 800,000 fans, and was overspread with users who pledged to buy the track to help push the band to the top of the charts. The Facebook Group currently has more than 970,000 members as of Dec. 20. The mainstream news picked up the story after the first two weeks of December when the Facebook group, which launched in the beginning of December began to grow quickly, and while going offline many times during the beginning days of December, prompted some to make several claims of foul play - however it didn't slow the Rage Against the Machine victory. And once Joe McElderry's track was released in a hard copy on CD, unlike Rage Against the Machine, the X Factor winner from the UK began to close the gap on the suddenly popular American rock band and their 1992 produced single "Killing in the Name Of." On December 20, BBC Radio One announced the final winner, and thanks to a surge of downloads via blog posts, Facebook comments, and Twitter tweets - the infectious campaign influenced social media channels and led to a Rage Against the Machine victory. As announced in an interview with BBC Radio One before being announced winners, the band said if they did end up winning, they would play a free concert in the UK in early 2010. Analysis Breakdown Starting in the beginning of December, from Dec. 1 - Dec. 11; while the Facebook Group was going on and offline sporadically, the number of social media mentions among Twitter, Blogs and Facebook were small in numbers of original posts to users' profiles. However, after December 11 when the group went back up live, it kicked over dominoes that sent tweets, blog posts and Facebook updates soaring in numbers. The mainstream news did not pick up the story until December 14; with social media leading the majority of the charge based on the following data: (In the following charts, only the keywords "RATM" & "Rage Against the Machine" & "Christmas Number One" & "Joe McElderry" were used in this analysis. All data was taken from the social media monitoring tool Radian6. The dates of Dec. 1 - Dec. 20 were used in this analysis.) Twitter, Blogs, & Facebook (46,337 posts):  Mainstream News Posts (3,565 Posts):  Twitter Posts (26,664 Posts):  Blog Posts (18,129 Posts):  **The charts above include only a limited set of data, due to a number of other keywords that could have been used in Twitter, Facebook Updates and Blogs; keywords like "Rage"; which were too broad to analyze more specifically at the time of this posting. The above posts do however represent the trending to their exact details.Social Media Extras: The campaign also led to the creation of a separate mini-site that housed the interview with RATM and BBC last week, a separate Twitter account and an already established YouTube channel that held the video seen above where the band performed their smash hit, "Killing in the Name Of" live Thursday, Dec. 17, 2009 on BBC Radio One. Microsite: RATM/BBC Interview Twitter Account: @RATM4Xmas; 2,698 followers YouTube Channel: A user-created channel that garnered two YouTube awards during the week of Dec. 14 -20; #61 Most Viewed Channel in the UK & #14 Most Viewed Directors Channel in the UK Conclusion It is really nice to see the effect a viral marketing campaign that had no direction, but was more led by a crowdsourcing effort to push a final result -putting RATM at the top of the charts. It normally takes many dollars to create such a buzz in the matter of a few weeks, and this was done with nothing but spirit and passion for the push to the top - led by users with little outside influence, and all with the help of social media! Labels: Facebook, Rage Against the Machine, Social Media Marketing, Twitter, Viral Marketing Hypertargeting Registered UsersHypertargeting, a term coined by MySpace, describes the social network's ability, as it puts it, to, "tap into self-expressed user information" and "reach the consumers most likely to be receptive to your brand." Basically, MySpace is saying that you can target consumers by the information they post in their registration information and profiles. The team at MySpace adds, "Thanks to the unsurpassed reach of MySpace, you can target highly specific user interests while still reaching a significant audience." This is basically saying that even though you are getting super specific about the consumers you are trying to target, there are so many people on MySpace who have registered and populated their profiles that you can still reach tons of people. While MySpace hasn't been the top dog for some time, let's give credit where credit is due. Its term, hypertargeting, perfectly describes what social networking, dating sites, and other sites that require registration can offer to marketers. They can enable marketers to target consumers with unbelievable accuracy and efficiency. As consumers we get a great deal as well. We get a huge variety of free and low cost Web services for simply letting companies advertise to us in a more relevant and targeted way. Typically, there are three main buckets of information that enable the "hypertargeting" of consumers, based on registration information a person reveals when joining a site or making a purchase. The buckets include:
"We allow advertisers to choose the characteristics of users who will see their advertisements and we may use any of the non-personally identifiable attributes we have collected (including information you may have decided not to show to other users, such as your birth year or other sensitive personal information or preferences) to select the appropriate audience for those advertisements. For example, we might use your interest in soccer to show you ads for soccer equipment, but we do not tell the soccer equipment company who you are." So if I wanted to, I could reach males ages 18 to 26 in New England who are interested in soccer. And because Facebook has 350 million registered users, chances are that even with that narrowly defined selects I will still reach a pretty good size audience. Note that this technology is typically used in a very ethical way. All of this stuff is no more intrusive or dangerous than credit card companies targeting people with offers from partners and vendors via direct mail. As Facebook puts it in its privacy policy: "We don't share your information with advertisers without your consent...For example, we might use your interest in soccer to show you ads for soccer equipment, but we do not tell the soccer equipment company who you are." Now, the ability to target consumers based on registration information is nothing new. Sites and services like Hotmail, Yahoo Mail, Gmail, and gated publications like the Wall Street Journal have been able to do it for a long time. But now that you have behemoth social networking and user-generated content sites like Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace, YouTube, and even Match.com with hundreds of millions of users, the universe of hypertargeting opportunities is bigger than ever and promises to continue to grow. And, the addition of "self expressed" information that people post to their profiles combined with behavioral data makes for an even richer spectrum of targeting options. In many ways, this type of targeting is the future of advertising. Furthermore, companies like IAC own an entire network of sites including Match.com, Ask, Evite, Citysearch, and Shoebuy. Reading excerpts from Match.com's privacy policy is very revealing. (See below.) Basically, it shows that IAC is combining registration information from different sites to formulate some pretty amazing targeting options for marketers -- all on an anonymous basis of course. "We may collect information that can identify you ("personal information"), such as your name and email address, (i) when you (or other users) provide it to us when using our website or in some other manner, or (ii) from other IAC businesses, from our business partners, and from other third parties. We may combine the personal information that we receive from different sources." It goes on to explain how this combined information may be used: "We may use information to:
The purpose of this column is not to whip up a whole needless privacy debate. All people need to do is not use these primarily free sites, clear their cookies, or opt out of ad targeting by all member companies at the Network Advertising Initiative. Instead, my goal is to share the huge opportunity that we, as online marketers, have to hypertarget consumers more efficiently than ever dreamed possible in numbers that will soon make for viable advertising campaigns using exclusively hypertargeted media. This is huge and represents the future of advertising! Labels: ClickZ, Facebook, online marketing, Social Media, Social Media Marketing FarmVille More Popular Than TwitterAs Facebook hits 350 million users around the globe, one of its most popular applications, FarmVille, is rivaling another popular social media site, Twitter. In a meeting with TechRadar, Facebook revealed that its website garnered about 200 billion page views per month, with 1.6 billion messages sent daily and 2.5 billion photos uploaded per month. FarmVille is an addicting game that allows players to develop their own farm from scratch by plowing land, harvesting crops and trees and raising cows, chickens and other various animals. Players can also decorate their farm with buildings, scarecrows, hay bales and other farm accessories. According to Facebook, the application (just one of the 90,000 available on Facebook) has 69 million users - more than Twitter's user base.  Facebook also released other statistics related its user demographics. The social networking site's average user base is getting older, as the 35+ category is the fastest growing. Furthermore, at least 53% of Facebook users visit the site on a daily basis, demonstrating how integrated the site is in the lives of its users. To read the article on TechRadar, click here. Labels: Facebook, Social Media, Twitter Facebook Releases New Contest, Sweepstakes Promotion Guidelines Running contests or promotions on Facebook have become one of the most effective ways in building high-level engagement with your brand. Numerous companies have come up with a variety of strategies to link external social networks into their contest campaigns, and a large target in that funnel - FACEBOOK.The new rules that Facebook released ealier this month have now set specific guidelines for any company or individual looking to run any kind of promotion or contest within Facebook. These new guidelines now require anyone to request permission from Facebook before being allowed to launch any Facebook related contest or sweepstakes. All promotions that run on Facebook must be fully located on either the canvas page of an application, or in an application box or tab on a Facebook Page. Section 3. Administering a Promotion through the Facebook Platform Basically, these new rules will now clear out the 'spam' like contest entries that you see float through your friend's newsfeeds, often in status updates through Facebook. To clear up any confusion, Facebook has given users a few examples of how to apply Section 3 of the Promotion Guidelines to actual situations: You cannot: Condition entry in the promotion upon a user providing content on Facebook, such as making a post on a profile or Page, status comment or photo upload. You can: Use a third party application to condition entry to the promotion upon a user providing content. For example, you may administer a photo contest whereby a user uploads a photo through a third-party application to enter the contest. You cannot: Administer a promotion that users automatically enter by becoming a fan of your Page. You can: Only allow fans of your Page to access the tab that contains the third-party application for the promotion. You cannot: Notify winners through Facebook, such as through Facebook messages, chat, or posts on profiles or Pages. You can: Collect an address or email through the third-party application for the promotion in order to contact the winner by email or standard mail. You cannot: Instruct people (in the rules or elsewhere) to sign up for a Facebook account before they enter the promotion. You can: Instruct users to visit the third-party application to enter the promotion (as described in Section 3.4(i)). Since users must have a Facebook account in order to access an application on the Facebook Platform, if you give this instruction, they will be prompted to sign up for a Facebook account if they do not already have one. Labels: Facebook, Social Media Marketing Facebook Creates A Better Experience Between Pages & FansTwo big changes have just been announced for Facebook Pages and Profiles that will help increase user experience, as well as create more valuable interactions between users and brands. The first very exciting update gives administrators of Pages the option to customize their status updates to Fans in the News Feed. These custom updates include the feature to target by geography and language. This is HUGE news for national or international brands who are trying to figure out how to manage their Facebook presence in the world of social media marketing.   How this option could help you: - Ability to target promotions/contests to a specific country or state. - Ability to target job listing to a specific country or state. - Ability to target a specific language or run multi-lingual campaigns. - Ability to gain valuable market research through comparing comments and results when asking the same question (or different question) targeted to specific regions. - Ability to gain a better understanding of local or regional consumer opinions and values. The next big change in the works for December 2009/January 2010 is the modification of Facebook Pages and Profiles. In order to help brands emphasize their identity and customized content, the following changes will be made: - Tab width changing from 760 to 520 pixels. - Boxes tab will be removed as the focus has switched to custom tabs. - Application tabs will be the exclusive integration point for applications on Facebook Pages and Profiles. I never was a believer in the Boxes Tab so this is a very exciting change to me. The more Facebook can help support brands create custom tabs within their Facebook Page, the greater the interaction these brands will have with their Fans. There’s already brands doing a great job of this like Liberty Medical and Harley-Davidson, but it can only get better from here! Labels: Brand Awareness, Facebook, Social Media, Social Media Marketing Facebook Now Rated the No. 3 Video SiteWhen it comes to online video, Facebook always seemed to be one step behind the usual online video giants...not anymore! According to Nielsen's latest VideoCensus numbers, Facebook has rose to No. 3 behind online video giants Hulu and YouTube in terms of total streams. Facebook jumped from No. 10 last month - leap-frogging the likes of MSN, ABC Television, Fox Interactive Media, and Yahoo! The report said Facebook generated more than 217 million streams in October to more than 31.5 million unique viewers - this is up from 110 million streams to 23 million viewers in September.  As fast as Facebook has grown in the past year, the online video viewing aspect was never something brands, nor advertisers really drove too much interest to. However, this could open up a door to change. Facebook actually had more than double the number of unique viewers Hulu had for October - but do remember, Facebook caters to the shorter and more personal videos, as compared to TV show length videos that flood Hulu. Facebook began their venture into large-scale video streaming when they partnered with CNN to present the President Inauguration in January, then opened up another live streaming event with the NBA All-Star Game in February - both events drew a high level of engagement across Facebook. More recently, the Foo Fighters in October, held a live concert that was streamed across Facebook, Livestream and the iPhone, and delivered 2 hours and 45 minutes of their greatest hits to more than 150,000 viewers around the world. The video drew 440,000 total live streams, with a max of 20,000 at any one time. Watch live streaming video from foofighters at livestream.com Clearly Facebook is making their platform more friendly from a video streaming perspective, think what could of been from an advertisers' standpoint if the Foo Fighters' record label was to try and monetize that almost 3 hour long show...exactly. On top of that, the concert trended on Twitter at #2, (#1 was Halloween) and it was also #1 on Digg. Music has not been the only source of featured video for Facebook, the early premier of the NBC (and Hulu owner) show Community was debuted through Facebook on the NBC Fan Page. Overall, the number of total U.S. video watchers dipped to 138.6 million unique viewers from 139.3 million in September. However, the number of total streams rose to 11.2 billion in October vs. 11.02 billion in September. And the number of streams per person was up to 81 in October, compared to 79.1 in September, and the time spent per viewer was up to 212.5 minutes in October, compared to 195.2 in September.  Labels: Facebook, hulu, online video, Social Media, Video, YouTube Facebook Launches 'Friends of Connection' TargetingLast week, Facebook added another targeting opportunity for its advertisers: Friends of Connection. According the Facebook Ads: “Friends of connection” targeting is now available for Facebook Ads. Expand your audience reach by delivering your ads to the friends of people already connected with your Page, Application, Group or Event. In addition to harnessing the social graph by targeting your connections’ friends, every “Friends of connection” targeted ad promoting a Page or Event includes social content about a friend’s interaction with your business, amplifying the relevancy of your ad. This means that advertisers can reach potential customers or highly relevant users (since birds of the same feather flock together, and it is likely that you and your friends have similar interests) and gain free impressions/brand presence through viral propagation. For the advertiser: this option is only available though if you are the admin of a Facebook Page. So for instance, I am an admin of the Overdrive Facebook Page. When I create a Facebook ad (ASU = ad space unit) using the self-serve platform/ad interface, I can target users whose friends are already connected to Overdrive Interactive:  For the Facebook user: Facebook will then show those ads to the appropriate users and include a blurb about their friends. So for instance, Harry is a Fan of Overdrive and he is friends with with Barb. Facebook will show an Overdrive ad to Barb with the sentence "Harry Gold is a fan of this Page." Now the Facebook ad is more relevant to Barb; it has more "pull" because her friend Harry's connection/interaction with Overdrive is directly showcased. And remember that there are other brilliant ways that Facebook lets advertisers target. Here's a quick list:
Labels: Facebook, Industry, Online Media, POV Facebook, Twitter, Last.fm Land on Xbox 360They always said games would be more fun when you play them with friends, which is why the Xbox 360 just finalized their Xbox Live software to sync with your Facebook and Twitter accounts. Users will now be able to wrap themselves entirely in a "social-enabled" game experience and connect and play with their friends on Facebook & Twitter.  With the integration, you can now use your Facebook account through your Xbox 360, and update your status, browse updates from your friends and view photos on the big screen. You will also be able to link your Xbox Gamertag to find your Facebook friends who also play on Xbox Live and connect with them directly within your gaming experience. Facebook goes one step further and utilizes the fairly new interface of the Xbox 360 dashboard, and allows a variety of sorting and slick panel movement, all with the touch of your controller. Your photo albums will also load pretty quickly and look impressive on a high-definition TV - much better looking then on your computer screen.  Twitter also will now sync with your account, and you will be able to tweet through your Xbox 360 anytime during your Xbox Live experience, as well as view profiles, trends and conversations - even search to see who is tweeting about your favorite game. Although it is not much different than tweeting from a computer or your phone, the Xbox 360 interface takes tweeting to an entirely new level with just the design of it alone.  And for you PS3 fans, I know you are asking - where is our update? It is coming! The company just announced on its official PlayStation blog that upcoming firmware update v3.10 will add Facebook and Twitter functionality to the PS3 interface. And for music fans, Last.fm, a streaming music application that allows you to set a channel and listen for as long as you'd like, also will now sync with the Xbox 360. As does the new Microsoft Zune player, Microsoft's version of the iPod, where users can now watch videos in 1080p and 5.1 channel surround sound - all through their game system. In addition to all the new social features, Xbox Live also will be debuting the "News and More" section, transforming Xbox Live into a full-on media portal that will regularly update streaming content from MSNBC, The New Yorker, and Dilbert, just to name a few. Happy Gaming! Labels: Facebook, last.fm, Social Media, Twitter If You Build It, They Will ComeAdvertisers, that is. The 'IT' in this case being social media. The popularity of social media has finally reached the point where marketers believe they can profit from it, and it seems that everybody wants in on the game. For businesses & advertisers, social media is quickly becoming more of a Need To Have than a Nice To Have. However, this is a path that must be traveled carefully. Social media has the power to connect people to their friends and the world around them. Many people have a very personal connection to their Facebook profiles and Twitter accounts. With this level of personal investment, marketers plastering these sites with ads could run the risk of alienating their customer base. For example, the recent changes to Facebook allow for ads to be more prevalent and expand their reach, much to the chagrin of users. Less than a week after these changes were implemented, a Facebook group called "Change Facebook To Normal" has garnered over 1.2 million members. Personally, I'm torn over the issue. As a person I tend to feel ads invading my online life somehow cheapens the experience and reduce my individuality - "Bill Holmes is brought to you by Jeep" just doesn't have that ring to it. As a marketer however, of course I want my ads to show up everywhere I can get them, with an unlimited budget and millions of impressions. The inevitability of this argument is that people will eventually accept ads prevailing in social media. Until that time comes though, marketers will have to walk the line between getting their message out while not interrupting user experience. Absolutely there are many ways to do this. Jeep in fact has a great game 'Boostin Nuts' along with forums for Jeep enthusiasts (myself included) to post pics and brag about their rigs. Other applications such as the Celtics 3-Point-Play are a great way to be involved with the team (brand) while still maintaining a good social media experience. I think overall advertising will always be part of just about everything we do, but the most successful marketers will be those who can promote their products while still maintaining the personal user experience that social media provides. Labels: Advertising, Brand Awareness, Facebook, Industry, POV, Social Media, Social Media Marketing, Twitter New Movie Releases Generate Big Buzz Using Social MediaTwo recent and upcoming movie releases have used the social media web in innovative ways to stir up interest and mystique surrounding the films. One in particular, “Paranormal Activity”, the horror film created on a reported $15,000 budget, has managed to become a run-away success this past weekend. Between October 9th and 11th, “Paranormal Activity” raked in an impressive $44,163 per screen average, totaling $7.9 million and is currently ranked #4 in the box office charts – and that’s with a limited release of only 160 theaters! The people behind “Paranormal Activity” generated buzz surrounding the movie by creating its own Eventful page in an effort to stir up one million user generated votes for a nationwide release of the film. According to Paramount Pictures, the strategy worked, “Over 1,000,000 people from around the country demanded the film play in their city by logging on to ParanormalMovie.com. In response, Paramount Pictures will release the film nationwide beginning Friday, October 16th.” “Paranormal Activity’s” initial release was limited to late-night showings in college towns, generating an intense buzz surrounding the movie on social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter. A second movie, “The Fourth Kind”, scheduled to be released in November, is just starting to generate a buzz online. The movie, centered on mysterious disappearances in the village of Nome, Alaska, portrays itself in trailers as using actual archived footage of real events as it follows Dr. Abigail Tyler’s inquiry to the strange events. “The Fourth Kind”, which derives its name from a “close encounter of the Fourth kind” with an Alien, aka an abduction experience, is using the internet and social networking sites in a unique way to stir up curiosity surrounding the release. One Local Alaskan Newspaper, the Anchorage Daily News, has done some investigative reporting into the film. The paper dug up a Twitter account, a Facebook page, and interestingly, discovered several websites, authentic in appearance, with news articles and biographies relating to the film. The websites, (both of which have domains that were registered in the last month according to a quick WHOIS check), highlight information about the main character of the film, Dr. Abigail Tyler. However, some of the articles appear to have been forged, the websites are extremely new and suspicious in appearance, and Ron Adler CEO of the Alaska Psychiatric Institute and Denise Dillard, President of the Alaska Psychological Association say “they’ve never heard of the Alaska Psychiatry Journal, or of Abigail Tyler.” And, suspiciously, although “The Fourth Kind” is purported to be filmed in the small coastal village of Nome, Alaska, the film was actually shot in the lush mountains of Bulgaria:  A screen grab from "The Fourth Kind" trailer shows the "Nome" Alaska used in the movie.Have you seen “Paranormal Activity?” Do you plan to see “The Fourth Kind?” Do you believe marketing films using social media will be a trend that continues well into the future? It’s hard to argue against the success of “Paranormal Activity”, but some have criticized “The Fourth Kind” for being too vague about the movie and blurring the line between fact and fiction. Let us know your thoughts in the comments! Labels: Campus Life, Facebook, online marketing, Social Media, Social Media Marketing, Twitter Social News bit: Facebook Expands "Connect" appOctober 2 Facebook announced expansions to its Facebook Connect application this week, introducing the Facebook Connect Wizard, which will make it simpler for non-developers to add the service to their sites. Additionally, it announced Translations for Facebook Connect, a language translation service capable of working in 65 different languages, and Playground for Facebook Connect, which provides code samples with which site owners can experiment with Connect's integration capabilities. Facebook continues its march towards total Web takeover (positioning its Translations as a competitor to the Google language tool), and making Facebook Connect more accessible to companies and websites that don't employ large developer teams will allow smaller businesses to increase their social media presence by building communities of Facebook users and helping them interact with the company and with one another. Labels: Facebook, Social Media Social Media Weekly BuzzTwitter and Myspace have teamed up to beat Facebook to two-way Twitter sync, this coming shortly after Facebook rolled-out a feature for page admins to post page status updates simultaneously to their Twitter feeds. The micro-blogging service will soon also be launching a location platform that will be integrated within the API, and will allow users to opt-in at choice. Also, beware of hacked accounts and unusual direct messages, as a recent worm has been quickly infiltrating the Twitterverse. Also this week, the FCC pushed for net neutrality with the launch of OpenInternet.gov on Monday, while Nielson and Facebook have joined teams to help businesses better measure ROI from ads featured on the social networking service. A recent survey finds social media is most accessed while at work and while in the restroom, and will we soon be seeing a harmonization of social media and phone calls?
Facebook, which seemed to be ahead of the game with its integration of Twitter support, has just been jumped over by Myspace, a social networking service that until recently had been making very little noise. The two-way synchronization will allow users to update their Myspace status from Twitter, and vice-versa. Not only is this a way for current Twitter users to revitalize their deserted Myspace accounts (if they ever had one in the first place), but it may also encourage current Myspace users to make the jump to Twitter, or at least test the waters. Either way it’s a win-win situation for both services, and leaves Facebook in the dust. The survey conducted by Crowd Science leaves us with some interesting, and scary findings on the usage patterns of social media users in general, and Twitter advocates in particular. In terms of location, Twitter users are more apt to access the service in all categories except during a class or lecture. The frightening statistic is that many Twitter users post updates while driving in the car. With all the recent news about texting and driving, it’s hard to believe usage levels are still this high. On the other hand, tweeting in the bathroom is also quite popular, and one that might make you think twice before using a friend’s phone. One notable find is the fact that many Twitter users have only been on the service for less than 6 months, most likely due to the micro-blogging service’s significant growth as of late. Labels: Advertising, Facebook, LinkedIn, online marketing, Social Media, Social Media Marketing, Twitter |
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