HoffSpace: Setting Examples for your social network

The conference producer of Community 2.0, Kristin Paulick, recently shared with me a new social network out there in the internet world. After pointing me in the direction of this post at Invstiledysfunction, I learned about the new social network created by David Hasselhoff. It is called HoffSpace and was created by Hasselhoff so his fans throughout the world would have a place to communicate. According to Anand Sanwal at Investiledysfunction, there were 14,217 members at HoffSpace when he wrote his blog post on August 21^st.

From a business point of view, we can take a lot from HoffSpace. This social community has 14,217 members who are passionate about something (in this case David Hasselhoff). If you have something worth gathering around, you’re social network can have the same success. So when you set out to create a social network, give your supporters something to care about.

Social Media Cure for Marketing Blues

In this post on socialmediatoday, the author raises a potentially controversial argument that “marketers cause unhappiness”. They go onto further state, that social media may “Open the door for ‘Happiness Marketing’”. These are the reasons the author feels that social media is the cure for unhappy marketing:

-Social media allows you to treat your customers as individual people whose problems and complaints merit at least a vaguely human response, if not a resolution.

-It allows you to speak honestly and imperfectly to people, instead of treating them like lab rats whose responses to your stimuli have been predicted, tracked, and already reported on the balance sheet.

-It allows you to hear their delight in your product and service more clearly, and it allows them to share that delight with their family and friends in a (mostly) non-Big Brother-y way.

-It allows you to tell the story of your company without it becoming “the Hollywood adaptation” where the soul has been sucked out in pursuit of demographically-targeted, homogenized perfection.

What are your thoughts on this topic? Do you agree with the first point that marketers cause unhappiness?

Pick and Choose Tweets That Appear on your Blog

I came across this post on Mashable today which reveals a new way to give bloggers more control over which tweets get published on their blogs. Tweet Remote recognizes hashtags like #text, #link, and #image, puts them in a separate RSS-style feed, and then formats them accordingly. The end result is a more aesthetically pleasing blog.

The only downside is the “tweet stream pollution” you might experience by sending nicely formatted hyperlinks to you blog via twitter. Many users on twitter do not like hashtags, and so you can potentially lose some followers.

Tweet Remote seems like a great application to clean up a lot of clutter in blogs but the question you might find yourself asking is what’s more important to you, your blog or who’s following you on twitter?

Negative Feedback can be positive

A recent article by Jacob Morgan at Social Media Today looked at the positive effects of negative feedback through social media. As opposed to cringing every time he receives it, Morgan looks at it as a good thing. He gave two main reasons why.

You can listen to what your users are saying, and make changes to improve your product as a result. It can be looked at as constructive criticism because you’re hearing how the consumers truly feel about your product and make your changes from there.

It’s also a lot like a giant focus group. These people are taking the time to tell you what they think of your product.

If negative feedback is what’s keeping your company from fully harnessing the power of social media, take a step back and see what it actually does. Jacob is right, negative feedback only makes you strive to improve your product.

Do you agree?

Business Models for Social Networking Sites

As blogged about in this post, Hitwise, stated in June that “MySpace and Facebook comprised almost 90% of the US visits to social networks”. This led the author to make the interesting point maybe this is the case not only because social networks are relatively new, but maybe because this genre of sites are still learning how to generate revenue. As the author states, “I blame it on not thinking of a better way to monetize social networks in general.” He goes on to mention that in his opinion LinkedIn is on the right path, especially since their average user age is 40, and they have a higher purchasing power. Since the age is younger for both MySpace and Facebook, and people are still unsure how to leverage them from a marketing standpoint, the author argues that “we're stuck with the traffic=advertising=revenue business model”

What are your thoughts on this? What do you think is the next step in the evolution of the business model for social networking sites?

What Would Happen if Social Networking was Banned?

Looking through my Google Reader today I came across this post U.S. Bans Social Networking from Ari Herzog on socialmediatoday. The title alone caught my attention and I had to read more. In this post, Ari lists three reasons why the US wants to ban social networking. Here’s the list:

1. Social networking enables sexual predators to stalk children

2. Social networking strains server bandwidth and presents operational risks.

3. Social networking on the job decreases workplace productivity

Online social interaction is an extremely important method of communication between business to business and business to consumers. What would happen though to communities if legislation passed banning the use of social media?

How to Drive Traffic to your blog

Jacob Morgan at Social Media Today recently wrote a list of how he thinks people can best drive traffic to their blog. What do you think? Would you add anything else?

1. Comment on other posts related to your industry
2. Try to get syndicated
3. Put your URL in email signatures and profiles
4. Use Digg and StumbleUpon
5. Share your posts around the web, for example: Facebook and Twitter
6. Write guest posts
7. Write quality and engaging content
8. Network on and offline
9. Write often
10. Respond to comments
11 .Make RSS feeds easily accessible to your site

Podcasting Relationship to Social Media

This blog post from Social Media Today, brought up an interesting topic: Is podcasting considered a part of social media? The authors response was no, and that the distinction for podcasting was that it is a form of new media and not social media. He cited his reasons as that this medium is considered to be a one way dialog and to qualify as social media there needs to be more than one person engaging in conversation. This then begs the question of what is social media then. According to Wikipedia the definition is:

“the use of electronic and Internet tools for the purpose of sharing and discussing information and experiences with other human beings.”

What do you consider to be social media? Do you disagree with the author on his stance on podcasting and its relationship to social media vs. new media?

B2B Advertising in Social Networks are Increasing

This article in eMarketer details that businesses will spend $40 million this year in advertising on online social networks this year alone, and according to projections the amount spent will increase to $210 million by 2012. The chart bellows highlights the expected growth over the next couple of years.

The need for B2B marketing has increased online because of the growing popularity of professional social networking sites like LinkedIn. Ms. Williamson mentions:

"Even Facebook has become a de facto B2B social network, simply because so many business executives have joined it in the past year."

Visa has already taken advantage of this growing business demographic on Facebook by launching the Visa Business Network for small business. It will be interesting to see the barrage of applications being built around the Facebook platform within the next couple of months.

Community 2.0 has a New Customer this Year

Much has been said in the media lately, about the impact that online communities are having in every part of our lives. Of late special emphasis has been placed on the political aspect with candidates having blogs, YouTube videos, and using other web 2.0 tools. In a latest update from the NY Times, Katie Couric announced that during the national political conventions, after her primetime broadcast has concluded, she will move to web casts. Is there any aspect of today that has not seen the impact of online social media?

The Olympics and Social Media

Have you noticed anything different about the Olympics this time around? Many are commenting on the abundance of social media being interjected into the games this summer, as this blog post mentions. On the NBC Olympics page, they have a section for mobile web, alerts, TV, and video. In addition they have a section for live video. When doing a search on YouTube, I came across thousands of Videos relating to the topic. Several companies have joined the fray as well, with McDonalds creating the viral game called “The Lost Ring” and Lenovo maintaining the blog titled “Voices of the Olympic Games” with posts from athletes at the games this year. It is interesting to see that organizations are recognizing the impact of online communities, and utilizing community 2.0 tools to interact. What are your experiences with this, and do you think that in the aftermath of the Olympic games, more organizations are going to realize the importance of utilizing social media?

Facebook: A Global Community

Even though MySpace remains the leading US social network, BusinessWeek reports that Facebook is now the top global social network with over 132 million users: 63% of these users are from outside of North America.

Facebook has become an even greater way to build communities and reach out to consumers since the site is now translated in major languages like French, Spanish, Mandarin, and 69 more languages. There is a lot of growth in international countries for Facebook, and this is an exciting time for marketers looking to reach a global audience.

What’s your experience on using social networks to reach a global audience?

Listening in social media is important, too

In a recent post by Adam Metz at Social Media Today, he discusses a part of social media many companies don’t think of too often, listening. It’s one of the most important social media web strategies. One of Metz’s clients was using Twitter as a part of their social media plan, and they started out by simply observing the conversations. It’s vital to start out with this step if you have: 1) Never participated in the world of the social web or 2) There is very little conversation going on about your project in the media place. One of the best ways to listen is to read what’s out there. Build up your feeds and read them daily. When you begin to participate in the conversation, you may be surprised to find willing conversations on the other side.

Number One Social Network for Online Music

As the San Francisco Chronicle reports after signing deals with four major labels, Imeem has become the number one streaming music site as reported by Compete, a web analytics company. ComScore also noted that they Imeem is the third largest social networking site behind Facebook, and Myspace, with more than 27 million unique visitors, and approximately 65,000 new users signing up everyday. The impressive list of companies that they have managed to strike deals with include: Universal Music Group, Sony BMG Music Entertainment, Warner Music Group, EMI Group, and Viacom's MTV Networks for videos from Comedy Central, MTV and VH1. Some are saying they have experienced so much success, by launching ahead of the much anticipated MySpace.

In reviews, ReadWriteWeb had this to say about Imeem and it’s competitor

You cannot of course count out MySpace Music, it is a joint venture after all with 3 of the 4 big record labels. But Imeem's growth rate and buzz is reminiscent of that of YouTube just before it got huge.

CNet had this to add about Imeems success:

It's not the social networking, it's not the ADD-inspired interface, it's not the wide range of opportunities for personal expression. It's simply that you can find almost any song on Imeem.

It will be interesting to see how this site fares in the long run since it is still relatively new. What are your impressions of Imeem’s viability?

New Tool for File Sharing For the Online Community

Drop.io is a new tool that allows for private file sharing. The unique selling proposition is that it “allows consumer to create their own private online spaces where they can easily and privately share photos, videos, documents, and other types of media” as reported here. Other benefits of Drop.io include:

- drops are "private" - consumers control how and with whom drops are shared

- Drop.io never requires any type of account registration, and all drops can be password-protected and set to expire after a period of time

- Drop.io provides multiple methods of sharing content

Click here to link to a podcast where Chad Stoller from Drop.io explains the usefulness this new addition to Community 2.0 has for marketers. What are your thoughts on this new tool?

Social Networking: Useful For Business?

Social Networking should not replace a business’s online presence; instead, it should be viewed as complementary. Karen E. Klein details in this post on Business Week how many businesses are trying to tap into the rapidly growing trend of social networking as a business opportunity, rather than a way to connect with people.

Karen quickly mentions that Greg Sterling of Sterling Market Intelligence believes social media should be used as a means of seeking advice, meeting people, and doing online marketing and marketing research. Here’s what Greg notes about different social media sites:

"Sites such as LinkedIn can be helpful in connecting with people you want to meet for one reason or another. Twitter and Facebook can be helpful when you're trying to notify a group of people about something you want to promote or about a happening of some kind."

Each social networking site has their own benefits, so how do you know which one is best for your business practices? Karen suggests doing some online research, about an hour or two a week, to find out what your networking niche is. Whether you are trying to reach a larger consumer base through Facebook or a more professional audience through LinkedIn, careful research will ensure that you use the most effective networking site for your particular business.

Integrating social media into your plans

In a recent article at Digital Influence Mapping Project, they give four ways for companies to focus in order to fully integrate social media into the way they present their business to the public. They start out by insisting that it’s very important to know how to operate in a constant state of change, as social media on the web is always doing that. These are four steps to initiate the new media plan into your business:

1. Invite lots of outsiders to visit your organization to spread new ideas

Bring in people who already have knowledge on the subject matter, and let them breathe air into your project. They’ll have fresh ideas that can help you get your project up and running.

2. Commit to trying new things all the time in your personal/professional life

Spend time getting used to the new tools. Take time during your week to look at blogs and read RSS feeds. Prepare for the material you’re working with.

3. Operationalize pilots, trials and proofs of concept

Find a way that you can measure your outcomes. We’ve written a post recently that give a few ways to do this. Also, reach out to other blog sites and see what they do.

4. Create an award for the best failure.

With all the fears that come with failing, it’s ok. People learn more when they fail at a project. Celebrate either outcome of the project.

Charities and Online Communities

No one is immune to the effects and changes on society that online communities are having. For an interesting tutorial on the subject of not-for-profit organizations and online communities see the presentation below by Steve Bridger on “Charities & the Social Web: . . . and does it mean we have to change our jobs.” It provides great insight into how online communities can benefit not-for-profit organizations. As one of the slides points out “The social web has changed charities from broadcasters pushing out messages and materials to aggregators who bring together content.” Enjoy!

Charities & The Social Web

view presentation (tags: groundswell agile communities storytelling)

Building a community in the publishing industry

This article here at Business Week shows the recent success Stephenie Meyer has seen with building a community around her vampire saga Twilight. With an estimated 1.3 copies of the latest book sold over the weekend, it’s hard not to take a look at the online community that the author has built for her books. The publishing industry, who has long suffered with adapting to the Web 2.0 world should look at the model Meyer built.

When the site provided by Little Brown was not sufficient, Meyer took to creating her own light hearted website at StephenieMeyer.com, where she would let readers know what was going on with the writing of the novels and about her family. She also took time to interact with her fans, answering questions about the books and letting them know about what was going on in her family. From there, it progressed to MySpace, online discussion groups and Amazon. Now it’s progressed to fan supported communities like Twilight Lexicon and Twilight Moms. Finding a way to connect with your customers, or your fan base, can propel your business into new areas.

With the publishing industry slowing, 247,777 books published in 2002 to 411,422 books published in 2007, with $41 billion in revenue that hasn’t grown significantly, they should find a way to bottle this success and spread it to other authors. Some are already taking the step, with sites popping up around Freakonomics, The Four Hour Work Week, and The Last Lecture. Will the publishing industry react and build up the community Meyer and others are beginning to build?

How do you measure the ROI of social media?

Measuring the impact of social media is a common topic throughout corporations that are trying to find out the importance of this trend, and the effects it’s having on their business. A recent blog post by Aaron Uhrmacher at Mashable took a look at how he best believes it can be done. He starts off by pointing out that every organization is going to measure their social media success differently because each company has different objectives for their ventures. He pointed out two ways to measure the media.

First, one can use qualitative measurement. In this step, you have to determine what you want to measure. Is it reputations or conversations or something else? Uhrmacher gave these examples:

- Are we currently part of conversations about our product/industry?

- How are we currently talked about versus our competitors?

Then to measure success, we ask whether we were able to:

- Build better relationships with our key audiences?

- Participate in conversations where we hadn’t previously had a voice?

- Move from a running monologue to a meaningful dialogue with customers?

You can also use quantative measurement. This uses tools to help track the traffic to your site and the activity that’s going on when users view your webpage. Sources for this could be: Aide RSS, Google Analytics, and Xinu.

However, the most important part of measuring your ROI from social media is to have in mind from the beginning what you want your media to do. It is vital that you choose what you want to measure so you can determine if you’re reaching those objectives.