Social Media Will be ‘Part of Virtually Everything’ - Audience Development @ FolioMag.com

http://www.foliomag.com/2010/social-media-will-be-part-virtually-everything

I agree. The article notes that " Social Media will essentially fade into the background, in that it will be a part of virtually everything in the next few years."

Essentially Web 2.0 is really all about Social Media. It's the new means of communication, and it is just as organic and pervasive as email has become in our everyday lives.

While I don't think traditional media will altogether disappear, I do believe that the vast amount of communication that occurs between markets and consumers will occur via social media platforms. Particularly, in the case of the millennial generation. For instance, in the Forrester Social Technographics study, Internet or online users are segmented into six major groups-consisting of Critics, Creators, Joiners, Consumers, Collectors, Spectators and Inactives, the majority of the population tend to be spectators. http://www.forrester.com/empowered/tool_consumer.html
This article suggests that we are moving away from being spectators, but actually Joiners and Creators.

In this new Social Media era, the preferred means of communication will be primarily by dialog and content that is created by consumers for consumers.

Gatorade Mission Control & its use of Social Media

http://link.brightcove.com/services/player/bcpid1543292789?bctid=619312676001

This is a great example of how a PepsiCo brand-Gatorade is using Twitter and Facebook to increase engagement for their Mission Control and G-Series brands. What is interesting to me is the concept of being engaged 24 hours both from an internal standpoint and the use of their agency partners to help with continuous monitoring as well. This reinforces the position that Social Media within companies has to be a total division all on its own and must utilize staffers to be dedicated to engaging & monitoring consumers' and their conversations about the brand. What I don't understand is what their real objectives are? Is this a pure PR push? Is it branding awareness? What are they really offering to their customers? Also, it still seems as if engagement measurement has no real standard, and it is totally arbitrary based on how the brand perceives the interaction with consumers is increasing.

However, as a media sales professional, it is refreshing to see that the pure metrics of CPM, CPA, CTR, Impressions etc., are not as important considering how consumers are interacting with brands in the digital space due to the advent of social media. In particular, for a niche brand that has not had the scale to compete purely based on delivering volume, we have always sold the uniqueness of our content and how it relates to our audience and how they consume the content.

The manner in which brands are evaluating engagement now, substantiates the point we have been making to agencies all along-its engagement with the brand that matters, and high engagement drives purchase.

Twitter to Facebook: 5 Ways to Post to Both

Twitter to Facebook: 5 Ways to Post to Both

I'm a bit of a Twitter newbie so I found this information. I still don' think I have the hang of it yet; however, I don't know if I feel the need to update my status as often as Twitter updates. It would be great if the tweets maybe just posted to the wall instead.

My Meet-up.com Experience.

On 9/30 I attended the Social Media, Publicity & Marketing Networking Reception -Meet-up hosted by Christan. It hardly lived up to its name. After a full day of Ad Week events and networking functions...this event was completely lackluster in comparison. There were basically a lot of unemployed people looking for jobs. It really wasn't very beneficial at all.

Advertising Week Events

ally, last week was a dizzying blur of social media/digital/networking events that kept me busy and on serious brain overload. Thank God I was able to 1) register as an NYU Student for Advertising Week and 2) Justify all my time as work because I am quickly being regarded as the one to ask regarding digital advertising, tactics and social media strategies at the office.
This degree is definitely going to pay off! With all the above said, I attended roughly 4 different panels/events all regarding digital advertising/strategy and social media tactics. Undoubtedly, the best event was the Location Based Services Panel that was sponsored by AWNY-the material was so in-depth and interesting, that it deserved a sole blog post and please read it if you haven't already! So -here's a list of some of the other events that I attended which were interesting-some more than others:
Thursday 9/30/10Advertising Week Events:

1) A Conversation About Music and Marketing, Presented by Superfly Marketing Group. Panelist-Fiona Morrison, Director of Brand Advertising , JET Blue
This was a great case study on how JET Blue has used Music Marketing to engender fans through its "Live from Terminal 5 Series." This didn't have much to do with Social Media, although this gives JET Blue great content for Twitter to make announcements to their followers to inspire them to fly on certain days and gives great content for FB. I attended because I'm a fan of JET Blue and their Marketing Tactics seem to be very cool and help to create brand loyalty and awareness. The brand continues to use "out-of-the box" thinking and with the exception of Virgin America, has really distinguished itself in the marketplace. It's really "cool" to fly JET Blue.
2) Digital Influencers: The New Media Network

Moderator, Jason Harris, President Mekanism

Panelists: iJustine, Digital Influencer/Web Celeb

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L1OBwaBLGqU ; Mystery Guitar Man, Joe Penna; Ivy Ross, Chief Marketing Officer, Gap and Jill Fletcher, Social Media Manager, Virgin America

Some of the most salient points in this panel was from the influencers themselves -they said they work with brands they trust and they don't feel pressure to gain more fans/followers. Gap noted that they also pay attention to the influencer fan bases-numbers matter. Gap also understands that budgets are shifting $ to Social Media and they will have to adapt to less control. To that point, Virgin America gave away 120 free flights to bloggers with clout and told them they could say what they wanted -realizing they cant' control everything.

3) AT&T connects-Ad Week Networking Mixer

I met some interesting people from digital agencies. I can honestly say that this week's conference had more digital reps than any other medium

5 Elements of a Successful Facebook Fan Page

5 Elements of a Successful Facebook Fan Page

1) Networking with other platforms

2) Creating a resource

3) Creating contests that include participation

4) Empowering Pre-existing pages

5) Targeting the Proper Demographic

I think this was a great article with relevant tips. Not to be confused with strategy, the article lists tactics to make your Fan Page successful. These tactics should align with the overall business strategy, of which the communications strategy is included as noted in another article that was assigned to us about what is missing in social media strategy. · http://veryofficialblog.com/2010/02/14/the-missing-ingredient-in-most-social-media-strategies/#comment-3786

So apparently there is no secret sauce for creating a FB page, but the above tactics seem to be pretty basic rules that brands can live by.

What’s Facebook Announcing on Wednesday? [OPEN THREAD]

What’s Facebook Announcing on Wednesday? [OPEN THREAD]

Facebook is announcing something significant tomorrow morning. I think it may have something to do with Places as well.

Based on this week's assignment, here are some of my thoughts.

1) What are the main challenges for marketers on Facebook today? I think the main challenge is how do Marketers monetize engagement. The Fan pages are great, but what significance does user "likes" mean for the brands. I think incorporating location based services as mentioned in my previous post, can somehow drive purchase and help reward loyal consumers. I also think that Marketers do need to be careful about being too intrusive. FB is entertainment for most of us, and Brands participation in a manner that is visibly about selling product while we are in our "downtime" so to speak-can be an annoyance. Measurement also continues to be the main challenge, without purchase data-how does a brand determine its ROI or Return on Marketing and Advertising spend?

2) What is working well? I think sweepstakes, promotions and humor as a tactical approach are working well. When brands such as M&M's use their page to reinforce the brand's identity, I think "fans" appreciate the authenticity. They utilize their fan page in an engaging and fun way that keeps the brand personas alive by creating a fun, engaging user experience and this seems to be what works best. I also think the liquor brands really bring to life their offline experiences by showcasing them on their social networks, i.e Belvedere and Heineken -which tweet about their live events and posts pictures and films of the events on FB. This creates a "how can I be there" feeling in users and for those that attended, they feel as if they have had a VIP experience as they were "in the know" and part of the in-crowd. In effect, the brands create brand evangelists from regular users. Again, this begs the question, how do brands measures the impact-is it simply awareness that this most important and is gaining mindspace or keeping the brand forefront in the minds of the consumers the way to win?

3) As a customer/consumer - how do you feel about being a "fan" of a company or brand? How does this inform your thoughts about using such a page as part of a campaign strategy?

I actually am okay with being a fan. I consider myself an influencer in my social network and in my offline social circles. Being a fan does acknowledge my endorsement of a brand. I'm a True Blood fan for instance and I believe it's an awesome show. I like spreading the word about what I think is hot, what's next and new and by sharing my like's with my "social network" I actually am able to educate and inform them and as a result, they often seek my opinion. As a music lover for instance, I can be a fan on Maxwell and Sade's page and because I did respond to the 25 random things you don't know about me-most of my friends in my social graph know that Music is my passion. As such, I often use FB to inform and educate my friends on new bands and new music that I think is hot...I enjoy being able to be a brand evangelist and help expose new artists and their music. The same holds true for brands that I endorse such as Jet Blue-my good opinions or not so good -are 'heard" by my friends.