Community Mobilization

The Anantomy of Virality or How StopKony Spread

This post on Social Flow's website does a great job of creating a visual representation of the network that drove the Stop Kony message into a viral tizzie over the course of the last week. Moreover the article does a great job of pinpointing the underlying mechanisims and prerequisites that enabled the video to take off and go viral so quickly.

First Invisible Children had a pre exiting network to seed and spread the video.

Secont they had a preexiwting network of Celebrities associated with their cause.

Third they activated their network all at once, and drive them to not only share their own message but also pressure the celebrity base.

The net effect is a verry fast and furrious publicity spike that creates ripples and aftershock spikes over the course of a week. Like a pebble landin in a pond or an earthquake there is an initial surge of traffic and then subsequent smaller rushes of eneregy. The real question posed is if this is a sustainable model for garnering attention or not.

Walmart and Facebook

Walmart is making a move to create a unique places page for each and every Walmart store. The good news is that they plan on making the shopping experience more local with targeted deals and targeted market research. Great move on their part to create a test bed for electronic A/B engagements. Bad news is that fans tend express their negative experiences at Walmart on their facebook page. Don't believe me? Check it out.

So while Walmart sees the opportunity to locally market  I see local store accountability and I am not sure they are set up to scale for that or accept that level of direct criticism. When a few thousand of the 9.45 million Walmart fans complains about a customer service issue or a store experience there is no real accountability. The posts cycle through the wall since they have a short 1/2 life with the sheer volume of posts that come in with that many fans. Soon you will be 'the local store' so someone has to address all of the complaints.

Ann Lilly Maze

Dear Walmart, why do you run sales and never have the product? Totally frustratig 3 minutes ago via mobile

WHO IS GOING TO ADDRESS THEM? Store elvel managers? When the complaints went to the corporate page there was a minimal chance that I would see one from my local store. When I join and review my local Walmart page EVERY complaint will pertain to my local store. If they are not prepared to manage their communities they are going to create 1,000 local, relevant, public relation challenges. I applaud the tactical change and think there is a lot of great stuff that can come out of this effort. I hope they have a plan to improve the participation on their local store level pages once they are up and running.

Back in the Classroom

It looks like  iwill have the opportunity to review some student projects from marketing students at the University of Dayton. I am very pumped to be sitting next to David E Bowman and collaborating with him on this engagement. I have seen him speak and enjoyed his presentations and now we may get to do some work together. Cool opportunity.

 

Flusquare

I love the Flusquare application becuase it is such a compelling mashup that delivers real meaningful data in a fun and interesting way. Leveraging your personal movements and the fact that you have flu-like-sypmtoms Flusquare is a reat overlay on an already popular program. Moreover the app give healthy people insights into where there are flu outbreaks and hotspots based on the check-ins of other people.

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/hGHIEzfVvAk" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

The next question is who is going to buy and monetize this? I have a number of people and companies in mind that would love to send targeted coupons to folks who have flu-like-symptoms to drive sales. You can bet hey already have gotten an e-mail from me about this!

Creating Compelling Content on Tumblr

Mashable just had a great article on creating compelling Nonprofit content on Tumblr. Funny thing is that once I began to read it I realized that this is not just for Nonprofits, and certainly not just for Tumblr. These are guidelines for great content creation no matter the industry or the channel.

1. Draw in Outsiders
2. Have Some Personality
3. Use Cool Visuals
4. Show Off Success
5. Tell Video Stories

I could go into a long winded expose on each item but at this point in the game there should be no need for additional justification on following these basic rules. The basic premise is that you have to have great and compelling content that catches the eye of the outsider and gives both a written and visual story for them to quickly digest and align with. I would say that any message put out by anyone on social media has to aspire to be:

1. Personal with mass appeal
2. Engaging but not overbearing
3. Entertaining without offense
4. Informing but not pandering

 

Real Name Policies, and the socail power structure

I just read a great article on Boing Boing regarding 'Real Name' policies and how Google Plus and Facebook address them. Most interesting to me was the quoted post from friend and personal hero danah boyd. 

Her position of how real names and psudonames are percieved by different socioeconomic groups is enlightneing. What she points our, and what I never considered, was that psudonyms were critical to certain socio economic groups as part of thier culture. What she did set forth is that the name choice is more of a personal reflection and in some cultures it is more 'right' to use your real name and in others it is more important to use a psudoname.

Real names are by no means universal on Facebook, but it’s the importance of real names is a myth that Facebook likes to shill out. And, for the most part, privileged white Americans use their real name on Facebook. So it “looks” right.

The Wrong 'R'

I after attending Blogwell last week I have been thinking about the R in ROI. I think that it is imperative to measure the right R when making an ROI calculation. Just today I sat in a meeting and was question about how to measure a SM campaign and responded with a list of ways that you can measure social media.

What is difficult is that many managers and directors are used to sales, dollars, and other business metrics that may or may not be DIRECTLY tied to a social media campaign. As the medium evolves we are seeing new ways to tie SM campaigns to business metrics like sales and what is encouraging is that at the same time senior managers are beginning to understand the different ways that SM could be measured and tying campaign performance to the appropriate metrics.

What Teens Want LA - Recap Part 1.

October 27th -28th I attended the What Teens Want Conference in LA presented by W. The conference brought together industry professionals and real live teen marketers and teens for presentations and some discussion on what teens want in their lives and in their marketing. The general thread was authenticity and in some cases I found that a tough pill to swallow. I can understand that the authenticity of the message being key but it seems that the messenger still needs to be highly curated, groomed, and overseen.

Gaming:

Leverage real world purchases to drive in-game rewards.

Non-disruptive relevant content that works with the game experience. Drive the interaction to the experience the teen is expecting not what you want it to be.

TeenTrends:

Extreme over-exposure to marketing messages. So get teens to co-own and personally invest in the brand via experiences. <Mt. Dew, Glee, Mac, MTV, ForumSpring>

Be relevant and local with content and use on-line as a listening platform and build community. Teens LOVE being used as product advisers - their opinion matters.

Teens want content creation in a channel agnostic setting. Talk with them the same way they talk with each other. ** Lady GaGa.

New Media Channels:

Real time reflex delivers real time feedback. That leads to situational hyper awareness and frankly that removes life's surprises.

Teen choices should inform interaction dynamics and that should come from authentic interactions. Try to create a self-curate experience where they can create and share. Let the,m define their 'cool'.

Embrace competition because it drives interaction. Contest allows egos to flex. Teens get bored and competition can generate new content and keep things new.

Balance crowdsourced ideas with the business needs that are measurable. Be sure to avoid narrow casting echo-chambers.

Internet will not replace TV, but the experience is going to evolve to on demand on device. The key is storytelling has to remain strong with great characters and great story lines. For web series use full or more than 1/2 views to judge ROI not auto views and abandons.

Sports and Teen Marketing

Action sports are unique because they are really individual effort sports and have  defined lifestyle / character element.

Good case examples are FIFA World Cup face painting application by BUDWIESER, Mt. Dew new flavor design, Warner Bros. Girl Power Campaign, Gymkanah- DC Shoes

Philantrhropy

Teens have a sense of communal and global responsiblety. There is opportunity to link the two via cause marketing.

Clean & Clear executed a promotion with Demi Lovato and used the AOL Cambia network to energize, and activate tenn volunteers. Campaign goal was to link the new product with the Dosomething.org community action group. Success measured by the level of teen interaction and sales of new product.

Summitup Conference part 2

After the initial keynotes I went into the two breakouts with Kendra Ramirez and Kevin Dugan.

Kendra Ramirez

Kendra was presenting on using SM for development of sales leads. She discussed needing to ID event triggers such as times of year, life changes and so forth. Use those event triggers to initiate cold and warm calls to receptive ears. A big point Kendra made was defining success beyond simple online metrics such as visits and traffic. Look at sales and quality interactions that will grow real fans and revenue streams.  She emphasized creating conversations online to get people involved and engaged. Pontification is boring. Use twitter to listen in and go after people expressing a need for your product by searching and following keywords. Find a soft spot and promote within it to own it.

 

Kevin Dugan

Kevin Dugan did an outstanding presentation starting by setting up the differentiation of Owned, Paid, and and Earned media. Kevin explains that owned media is where the brand owns the space, paid is...well ... paid advertisements, and earned is anything that the brand is not paying for and is off their site.Funny thing is that Digital media is a thread that runs through all of those. You can own a website, pay for banners, and get blog reviews. Digital is tricky.

He explains how the use of all three is what makes a great campaign. Oldspice Paid for TV adds for a  few months and then they did the owned media on their site, and their YouTube videos. The earned media is the attention and viral share that occurred when the videos were passed around the web.

 

he also went into the case study of Meijer and their launch of their premium private label foods. Regional mom blogs, reviews, and Facebook conversations all with the intent of driving organic traffic. Really Dugan wants to make sure that outreach campaigns are authentic and based in developing conversations and relationships and not PR Pushes. Use quality content, show good transparency and monitor against industry metrics. He uses Radian6 for tracking impact and says to keep a good list of the great bloggers you work with to come back to in a conversation / relationship marketing.

Summitup Conference volume 1.

I attended the Summitup conference earlier this week. For a regional conference it was exceptional! For a national conference it was quite good and that says a lot about the effort put in by David Bowman and his team. Here are my notes from the event in a series of posts that group the event together section by section.

John Moore

Opening Keynote was delivered by John Moore who was exactly what an opening speaker should be. Energetic and engaging to wake folks up. John presented the idea of a talkable brand - a brand with social currency. He threw a lot of stats out (78% trust friends, 24% trust advertising). What hit home was that brands are mentioned 93% in face to face conversations, 45% on phone, and 25% in on-line conversations. 

John hates the word and idea of BUZZ and stumped that product evangelists create Buzz - Buzz does not create product evangelists! Create a great customer experience, great customer service, and great advertising and win advocates who will buzz about you. In terms of mistakes he quoted Coletrain as saying 'When you hit a wrong note it is the next note that makes it good or bad.' 

He finished off by hitting home three ideas for success in marketing: Be Unique in your brand. Be Obvious in your communication with a great personality. Be Affected by your consumers and respond.

 

Pete Blackshaw

Pete Blackshaw from Nielsen presented next about the major over-aching trend in digital communication as it relates to brands and what brands can do to take advantage of the shift in communications. ID talk drivers, partners, and talkers with a system such as Planetfeedback, Radian6, or another scanning tool. It should be easy to share from any talkable piece of content. Encourage and make it simple to get results. He talked about the 3rd moment of truth as the moment you go to share and express about the product - so capture that 3rd moment sentiment and amplify if it is good and address it if it is bad.

A few insights Pete shared were really interesting. Things I know I knew but hear them from Pete really solidified it. The first review, or reviews are really the drivers of every subsequent review. It is comment inertia. Social Media impacts purchase decisions across all 3 stages of purchase at varying levels. Brands have to actively build brand trust through authentic conversations. That trust is what will help move the brand forward. Loose trust and loose sales.