Hey, Marketers, Here’s How To Stop Worrying And Love The Internet!

David Gillespie’s Digital Strangelove (Or How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love The Internet)

6 Ways To Integrate Twitter Into Your Site | Small Business Trends

6 Ways To Integrate Twitter Into Your Site | Small Business Trends

Hate Advertising? Get over it.

It’s not going away – much of the internet’s revenue is from Ads
As I understand it, 85% of Google’s revenue in the past has been from online advertising. Contextual Ad sense is Advertising, sure it’s not the annoying “punch a monkey” type of advertising, but it’s still advertising. I predict Google will start to do this with video in the near future, it’s certainly not going away.

We hate shotguns
Advertising is a shotgun approach, and sadly that means that innocents are subjected to the chaff. Advertising messages are often (or should be) targeted at a specific group or demographic, when we’re subjected to advertising that’s not aimed at us, we often don’t like it or try to screen it out.

We love lasers
When Advertising is focused and hits the right target, not unlike a laser, it hits home and resonates. Advertising becomes part of our culture, and people start to talk about (that’s a conversation) from Budd-wise-er, to Got Milk. We hate advertising when its not for us, but in the rare times that it’s on the mark, it resonates with us, and becomes part of us. This can apply for text ads, mobile, ads, and most importantly, contextual ads.

Even though we don’t like it, advertising works
Advertising works. In business school, you’re taught that 11-13 impressions of a brand (often advertising) will cause the prospect to be highly likely to try or purchase the product. This is a deep rooted human, psychological, and sociological instinct that’s difficult to ignore.

The Future
Is it possible for products to be adopted by people without word-of-mouth networks? Absolutely. Is it possible for both to co-exist? Advertising online will become more targated, the advanced media buyers will shift to sponosorships, and technology will allow us to triangulate data online, and using mobile devices like never seen before. If done right, there will be more lasers than shotguns.

Online Advertising will evolve, as will word of mouth, conversations, and communities too. Let’s evolve with it.

50 Ways to use Social Media, listed by Objective

Chris Brogan, who continues to dazzle us with his thoughtful and helpful social media blog posts (I recommend subscribing to him) lists out “50 Ways Marketers Can use Social Media to Improve Their Marketing“.

In twitter, Jon Burg suggests the lists could be segmented to further help understanding, I recommenced doing this by the 5 social computing objectives we’ve found at Forrester.

I’ve taken Chris’s exact list, but have segmented it into the five objectives. This way, you’re not randomly choosing tactics without first having a goal in mind. Of course, the first thing to do is to first understand how your community uses social technologies, start by using this free social technographics profile generator.

---

1) Listening: Gleaning market and customer insight and intelligence

10. Build sentiment measurements, and listen to the larger web for how people are talking about your customer.
11. Learn which bloggers might care about your customer. Learn how to measure their influence.
14. Build conversation maps for your customers using Technorati.com , Google Blogsearch, Summize, and FriendFeed.
21. Collect case studies of social media success. Tag them “socialmediacasestudy” in del.icio.us.
25. Search Summize.com for as much data as you can find in Twitter on your product, your competitors, your space.
32. Make WebsiteGrader.com your first stop for understanding the technical quality of a website.
33. Make Compete.com your next stop for understanding a site’s traffic. Then, mash it against competitors’ sites.
34. Learn how not to ask for 40 pieces of demographic data when giving something away for free. Instead, collect little bits over time. Gently.
38. Track your inbound links and when they come from blogs, be sure to comment on a few posts and build a relationship with the blogger.
39. Find a bunch of bloggers and podcasters whose work you admire, and ask them for opinions on your social media projects. See if you can give them a free sneak peek at something, or some other “you’re special” reward for their time and effort (if it’s material, ask them to disclose it).

2) Talking: Engaging in a two way discussion to get your message out (and get messages in)

2. Build blogs and teach conversational marketing and business relationship building techniques.
5. Create informational podcasts about a product’s overall space, not just the product.
8. Check out Twitter as a way to show a company’s personality. (Don’t fabricate this).
9. Couple your email newsletter content with additional website content on a blog for improved commenting.
13. Try out a short series of audio podcasts or video podcasts as content marketing and see how they draw.
19. Experiment with the value of live video like uStream.tv and Mogulus, or Qik on a cell phone.
23. Explore distribution. Can you reach more potential buyers/users/customers on social networks.
24. Don’t forget early social sites like Yahoogroups and Craigslist. They still work remarkably well.
26. Practice delivering quality content on your blogs, such that customers feel educated / equipped / informed.
28. Turn your blog into a mobile blog site with Mofuse. Free.
30. Ensure you offer the basics on your site, like an email alternative to an RSS subscription. In fact, the more ways you can spread and distribute your content, the better.
40. Learn all you can about how NOT to pitch bloggers. Excellent resource: Susan Getgood.
41. Try out shooting video interviews and video press releases and other bits of video to build more personable relationships. Don’t throw out text, but try adding video.
44. Experiment with different lengths and forms of video. Is entertaining and funny but brief better than longer but more informative? Don’t stop with one attempt. And try more than one hosting platform to test out features.

3) Energizing: Letting your customers tell your prospects on your behalf (viral, word of mouth)

1. Add social bookmark links to your most important web pages and/or blog posts to improve sharing.
3. For every video project purchased, ensure there’s an embeddable web version for improved sharing.
4. Learn how tagging and other metadata improve your ability to search and measure the spread of information.
12. Download the Social Media Press Release (pdf) and at least see what parts you want to take into your traditional press releases.
36. Help customers and prospects connect with you simply on your various networks. Consider a Lijit Wijit or other aggregator widget.
47. Spread good ideas far. Reblog them. Bookmark them. Vote them up at social sites. Be a good citizen.

4) Supporting: Getting your customers to self-support each other

6. Build community platforms around real communities of shared interest.
7. Help companies participate in existing social networks, and build relationships on their turf.
15. Experiment with Flickr and/or YouTube groups to build media for specific events. (Marvel Comics raised my impression of this with their Hulk statue Flickr group).
18. Start a community group on Facebook or Ning or MySpace or LinkedIn around the space where your customer does business. Example: what Jeremiah Owyang did for Hitachi Data Systems.
29. Learn what other free tools might work for community building, like MyBlogLog.
35. Remember that the people on social networks are all people, have likely been there a while, might know each other, and know that you’re new. Tread gently into new territories. Don’t NOT go. Just go gently.
37. Voting mechanisms like those used on Digg.com show your customers you care about which information is useful to them.

5) Embracing: Building better products and services through collaboration with clients

31. Investigate whether your product sells better by recommendation versus education, and use either wikis and widgets to help recommend, or videos and podcasts for education.
50. Use the same tools you’re trying out externally for internal uses, if that makes sense, and learn about how this technology empowers your business collaboration, too.

Strategy, Training, and Planning
While not one of the 5 objectives, many of these aren’t directly social media tactics, but they are great rules of thumb.

16. Recommend that your staff start personal blogs on their personal interests, and learn first hand what it feels like, including managing comments, wanting promotion, etc.
17. Map out an integrated project that incorporates a blog, use of commercial social networks, and a face-to-face event to build leads and drive awareness of a product.
20. Attend a conference dealing with social media like New Media Expo, BlogWorld Expo, New Marketing Summit (disclosure: I run this one with CrossTech), and dozens and dozens more. (Email Chris for a calendar).
22. Interview current social media practitioners. Look for bridges between your methods and theirs.
27. Consider the value of hiring a community manager. Could this role improve customer service? Improve customer retention? Promote through word of mouth?
42. Explore several viewpoints about social media marketing.
43. Women are adding lots of value to social media. Get to know the ones making a difference. (And check out BlogHer as an event to explore).
45. Work with practitioners and media makers to see how they can use their skills to solve your problems. Don’t be afraid to set up pilot programs, instead of diving in head first.
46. People power social media. Learn to believe in the value of people. Sounds hippie, but it’s the key.
48. Don’t be afraid to fail. Be ready to apologize. Admit when you’ve made a mistake.
49. Re-examine who in the organization might benefit from your social media efforts. Help equip them to learn from your project.

---

One of Chris’s recommendations was to check out Website Grader, I found that to be very interesting, try that free service.

If this were an official Forrester report, I’d segment even further by prioritizing by usage (polling marketers), cost, effectiveness, and then deliver specific recommendations. At some point in the future, I will probably get that chance to that research.

I could double this list with additional tactics, but I think it’s enough to get started, hopefully Chris’s initial list and my mind meld should help you to improve your objective based social media strategies.

Many Forms of Widget Monetization

Widget, Gadgets, Applications, Canvas Pages, Embeds, it goes on and one. One thing is clear, the rate of widgets continues to increase, take for example Facebook’s application platform has over 15,000, 20,000 applications in just about 9 months. Granted, many of those are slightly tweaked clones of each other, the top 100 widgets clearly has adoption.

In some cases, there are sophisticated companies developing widgets, the RockYou’s and Slides of the world can really zero in and focus, or take the garage developers such as the two Russian developers who created Scrabulouos, or lastly, the big corporations or interactive firms that are getting in on the action –often with limited success.

Yet, how do we monetize widgets? There’s only a few ways, some tied back to traditional methods, and some leaning on the new media.

---

Many Forms of Monetizing Widgets

Advertising/Sponsorship: CPM models sit nicely here, yet research indicates that users don’t go to social networks for finding products, CTRs are pretty damn low. Why? because people go there to socialize and self-exprsess, not find products, (that’s what Google, eBay, Craigslist is for). Banner ads count too, such as this case study with Vampires and Sony.

Interactive Marketing: Some widget developers are selling their already existing application space to large brands, who can insert this branded engagement into an existing community. Take for example Dell’s regeneration campaign case study.

Branded Entertainment: Somewhat different than advertising and interactive marketing, popular media or widgets can be put forth from funding from large companies, while we’ve yet to see this occur, Intel comes to mind: they sponsored a feature on Digg, and paid for the development, all in the context of their brand.

Cost Per Install: I personally think this is a dangerous way to monetize, although I realize the top widget networks are getting sizable revenues from selling the opportunity for other applications to piggy back off their success, and sell installations. If everyone does this, we’re going to end up with an excess of applications installed, based upon lower value. I somehow imagine successful widgets should grow naturally and organically, not sold from a mercenary application.

Acquisition: No brainer here, but folks like Scrabulous (if they weren’t shut down) could sell of their application to an interactive firm or widget network and all the community members that come with them.

eCommerce: Surprisingly, we’ve not seen any great applications spur forth with adoption in social networks, it just isn’t happening yet, expect to see an existing eCommerce site to create a successful widget by end of year, and likely a new form of social shopping to appear. Update: Rodney is watching this new type of ‘classified’ widget Radical Buy make some traction.

What makes a Successful Marketing Campaign on Social Networks?

Many brands are considering it, some have done it. Done what? Marketed on social networks (Facebook, Myspace, or private label social networks).

Why? Social Networks are attractive because consumers are connecting with other consumers and the trust tends to be higher. Secondly, there’s a tremendous amount of buzz from the media for this newest form of marketing. Lastly, there’s lots of folks using social networks (about 2/3rds of all North American youth use it daily, and about 1/3rd of NA adults use it as least once a month –data From Forrester Research, Q4, 2007)

[What “Makes or Breaks” a social networking campaign? Is there an attribute(s) that makes social networking marketing campaigns a success?]

Sadly, many brand are going to do it wrong, by wasting resources, or embarrassing their brand with a campaign that doesn’t fit the needs of a community. To help marketers do it right, and to save users from dealing with more bad campaigns, I’m going to do some research on the topic.

I’m a laaaazy (or is it efficient?) analyst, I use social media (what I cover) to help me with my research. Besides, the social collective is far smarter than some big headed analyst.

The following attributes are what I think are often found in successful social networking campaigns, but don’t let me be the judge, I want your input.

---

Marketing Campaigns on Social Networks share the following attributes:

Meets a business objective: First and foremost, any marketing campaign or activity should match with a business objective, regardless of the tools being used.

Supports Community Goals: Every community is different, and each has unique goals (from supporting products, to each other, or to just be entertained) the campaign focus should therefore meet the needs of the community, before the needs of the marketer. Effective campaigns will first understand the core drivers, interests, and rituals of the community and learn how to meet those desires. (Expanded by Laurel Papworth)

Encourage Member Interaction: The most successful social networking campaigns and efforts involve the audience.

Quickly scale: Social networks are designed for information to quickly move from member to member, so campaigns that lean on these capabilities perform the best. These attributes known as Velocity, Viralness, and Spread are key.

Utilize Media: In some campaigns, the best way to get members to return is to offer them media. Depending on demographics and community needs, this could be audio, videos, or demos

Foster self-expression or communication: Members in social networks like to communicate with each other, or self-express. As a result, campaigns should satisfy these needs with the appropriate tools

Offer a satisfying User Experience: This encompasses the overall experience of the campaign, the content and navigation items should be where expected, the language familiar to the audience, and overall look and feel of the site appeasing.

Provide longer term utility: Successful campaigns have a longer term value, rather than a short term ‘disposble campaign”. These campaigns add value by being a useful application to the members, rather than just quick dose of entertainment.

Enhance Value as Community participants: As more people contribute or interact with the campaign, the value is increased. This can be in the form of content that is created by the community, contests, voting, or games.

Integration with other marketing activities: Successful marketing campaigns aren’t single channel, in fact they utilizie multiple channels and mediums to enhance the overall activity. The same thing applies to marketing campaigns on social networks, those that are promoted from other locations such as (corporate websites, email newsletter, blogs, podcasts) outside fo the social network have a great chance for success.

Maintain agility during the campaign: Social networks are living, breathing organisms made up of real people connecting with each other. Marketing campaigns also should share these attributes and show be flexible to change in-flight, yield to legitimate requests or complaints of the community. Those campaigns that reflect the same dynamic behavior as human interaction have a higher chance to be interacted –and accepted –by the community. (Submitted by Graham)

Company Participation: In some cases, companies that participate in the discussions or conversations will yield to a more successful marketing campaign. Activities can range from recognition, company interaction, or attention to members perhaps from a community manager (Submitted by Whitney McNamara, Esther Lim, Crimson Consulting, Warren Sukernek)

You add your attribute: Please leave a comment below, I welcome and respect your opinion. If you’re from a vendor in this space, feel free to leave your company name or email so I can properly credit you.

10 Considerations for the Startup planning to offer to the Enterprise (and why many will fail)

Lately, I’ve been hearing from more startups that they want to get into the enterprise space. These consumer focused web startups are the ones we know and love with the clever non-sensical names, rounded corners, and domains missing the “e”.

For many startups, having enterprise customers is a great proposition, as it gives the opportunity for repeat revenue from a stable source, partnership opportunities, and maybe even chances for acquisition.

[While many startups are interested to offer their services to Enterprise companies, they underestimate the complexity. There are many overlooked requirements from culture to support that startups just don’t get]

Sadly, while we love these tools on the free open web for our personal uses, many of them aren’t ready for a smooth transition into an enterprise web teams and by serious business folks and executives. A new set of rigorous feature requirements need to be met, including disposing of the ‘fun brand’ and getting ready to support demanding corporate clients.

10 Considerations for the Startup planning to offer to the Enterprise

1) Most importantly, find a business opportunity or pain that you plan on fixing.

2) Re skinning: In many cases, offer a white label tool so it can be rebranded by the consumer.

3) Offer an ASP version as business units will want to adopt without the IT department. (Update: ASP as in Application Service Provider, so a web-version hosted on your servers, so they customer doesn’t have to download any software, or have to rely on IT to do this. Typepad, SalesForce, and SurveyMonkey are examples of this)

4) Later, evaluated offering a software version that IT and Engineering can download and use on internal or secured severs behind the firewall,

5) Build a robust system that won’t fail from heavy enterprise use, sadly, Twitter would never make it.

6) Develop login and permission systems that work with a variety of identity systems, ensure data can be easily transferred to clients, use industry standards.

7) Provide a healthy dashboard and metrics for the clients administrative team

8 ) Hire sales and account teams that have backgrounds in corporate. For initial sales with a business unit, expect to sail through, but expect rigorous testing, negotiations, and detailed contracts when dealing with corporate purchasing departments.

9) On demand support: Dealing with enterprise clients requires a higher degree of support, expect to jump, leap, and spring into action at the request of your corporate clients.

10) Get serious: consider rebranding and refocusing the tool. Refine or create a separate marketing effort to aim for the enterprise space, consider creating a sub-brand.

While it’s sure attractive for startups to want to offer their products to corporations, many have not thought through the implications and requirements to be enterprise class. Quite frankly, many won’t have the aptitude, resources, or time to do this right.

[Many startups will offer to the enterprise, but most will fail. Successful startups offering to the enterprise need to have maturity, and it’s not something that can be masked]

If I’ve missed any considerations, please extend the list, by leaving a comment or sharing from your own blog

A special note about terms: While it would have been so easy for me to use the term Enterprise 2.0 I used every precaution to actually describe and explain the concepts rather than just using that term. I hope that you too become mindful before using that term, as well as Web 2.0. Show your mastery: focus on descriptions and outcomes rather than buzzwords.