Social Media Marketing and Optimization

I had the distinct pleasure of attending the first ever PRSA-NY Career, Internship & Continuing Education Forum this past Saturday. I was especially excited because the keynote speaker was going to be someone from Technorati. Derek Gordon, VP of Marketing at Technorati – to be exact. I confess I had a squee-moment.

Thankfully, he kept the speech short and to the point, since the event coordinators didn’t see it fit to give the attendees chairs (the exhibitors were supplied with chairs). It was a little unsettling, the lack of chairs, since we were instructed to dress in business attire. And to the young to mid-20-something, that means pointy toed heels.

Major physical discomfort aside, it was wonderful to hear him speak on the effects of social media on public relations… and marketing, to a degree, but as it was a PR event, he focused mainly on PR.

He started with a brief survey of the audience. Who uses a social network (MySpace, Facebook)? Who reads blogs? Who blogs? Who uses Twitter? Who is on Second Life? There were a few more questions that he presented, but I think those were the ones that I didn’t raise my hand for (maybe 2-3 total).

Next, he spoke of the current state of affairs. We’re swimming in an ocean of Web 2.0 buzzwords. Most of us know at least 50% of those terms (however, I do know people in the industry who still use Yahoo as their main search engine, rarely to never use Google, and had never heard of blogs or social media beyond MySpace and Facebook up till about 6 weeks ago). We are at the confluence of high speed/low cost/high quality internet service. It is incredibly easy to be your own publisher, your own distributor. It now takes a few clicks in under 5 minutes, not a large amount of effort over several weeks to see your product in others’ hands. Current events, creations, are now being shared in real time. As of April 28, 2007 – Technorati was indexing approximately 75 million blogs and 230 million tagged objects (videos, posts, pictures, and podcasts).

That’s a pretty large number. Two hundred and thirty million? People are talking. People are exchanging information. And we’re doing it all with a few mouse clicks. Who knew that we could have this level of integration 10 years ago?

He also outlined for us the two types of internet users. The first type is my group. The 15-30 yr olds. We grew up on, live with, and live on the web. We have multiple online profiles, and something he called ‘Continuous Partial Attention’. We can do 7 or more things at once, and be reasonably adept at all of them. Second type is the older generation. The late baby boomers, the early adopters, the blogger revolutionaries. Example: Perez Hilton. They can multitask, but to a far lesser degree.

The first hump exemplifies the power of WOM. Not only do we listen to our RL friends, we listen to our online peers too. If we see someone post/comment/IM about a great new service … we are more apt to listen to them, instead of the traditional marketing/advertising (which is still effective, but not to the degree it was in their heyday).

My experiences in PR have taught me to ask a few key questions before entering into a dialogue with anyone: 1) How do I get them to love me? 2) How do I sustain this dialogue (of love)? With all these social networks, these IMs – dialogues are inherent. Derek made it abundantly clear, that as an industry, PR needs to understand and be appealing enough to these social media users. They can’t just focus on the media – because the first type of internet users DOES NOT trust the [traditional] media as much as the generation before.

Communication is not one way. Communication is two way, we develop and sustain [loving] relationships. We have real voices, real personalities, we can differentiate between value and ‘talking points’. We have real feedback. We have real trust issues. Social media is bringing everyone closer together. We have more meaningful relationships (honestly, if anyone ever tells you that online relationships (I’m not talking creepy stalker type) aren’t real… they’re living in the Stone Age) worldwide than we ever had before.

Derek also had a cool anecdote about Germany and their PR agency… but I feel that I’ve been rambling for a bit too long.

Derek, I was so excited to speak with you on Saturday, I forgot to ask you a question that I had prepared: (if you could answer, that’d be great!)

What effect will social networks have on the ability to search? To what extent will Google and Yahoo’s control of information be moderated or reduced?

Public Relations

Social Media Marketing

Social Networks

technorati

Just a few months ago I was contemplating how I could utilize a speech to text program as a rapid way to generate unique content for the web. This would save the time it takes to write out my thoughts, and if I carried my recorder with me, I’d be able to capture thoughts as they arise, and later let a program translate the audio to text.

Talkr, is a company which does the reverse. Any blogger or writer who publishes via RSS feeds can submit their feed to Talkr, free of charge, and Talkr will convert their published text into an audio file. In essence, Talkr provides a free text to speech translation service.

After a simple account set-up (they don’t even require email verification to get started), you’re taken to a screen where you can submit RSS feeds you’d like to see translated into audio files. Next you have the option of adding a ‘chicklet’ to your web site, which I’ve done on the right hand side, just above the meta. This allows those, with pod catching programs to subscribe to your text to audio feed.

Two other options are available to promote your feed, one is shown at the end of each post on our blog now, thanks to Steve Stern For Creating this Talkr Wordpress Plug-on anyone can simply download the plug in for the wordpress codex, ftp it to their plug ins directory, input their Talkr ID number, under options navigate to the Talkr tab, and under each post there will be a link to an audio file. My install took about 10 minutes from Googling “Talkr Plugins”, to viewing the active file.

There is a tab in the “my account” area that lets you “optimize your podcast.” I’m under the impression that it’s now slotted for distribution on iTunes but I’ll have to wait and see if that does indeed materializes. Another tab, titled “make money” lets you opt into advertisements being included in your post or through your Talkr Audio RSS feed. Since there aren’t any payment options, I’m assuming they’ve not begun to monetize yet. Although I believe they are approaching 30,000 users and I just may use this service to rip articles and throw them onto my iPod for my morning jog.

We’ll be back before too long with further reviews of Talkr, and take a look at the prospects for audio RSS as a means to monetize audio. With click based, or impression based content, monetization is simpler with predefined metrics such as clicks, or CPM (cost per thousand impressions)…with this brand new form of content, we can only speculate for now. Next time, my best guess.

Podcast Monetization

podcast optimization

Social Media Marketing

Social Media Optimization

Talkr

First question: Why is VIRB so much cooler than MySpace? Or even that upcoming NBC social network I mentioned in my last post?

For one thing, it has a cool sounding name. viRb. Virrrrrb. Sounds like Verb, something you do.

Another thing is the visual. Clean. Modern. Easy to navigate. See below.

Yes, that’s my (currently) bare bones profile. I signed up a while ago, having found a mention of it on some other blog. Don’t really have a lot of friends on it yet, but I’ve been seeing a recent surge in buzz. Adding other bloggers now.

What else do I like? Customization. They have different modules that you can add/delete/move around. It looks like it’s geared more towards the tech-minded folk. There is a large variety of supported widgets (better than MySpace, which has been banning widgets left and right lately). Even with all this customization, it looks near impossible to make your profile page look like crap, pardon my language. Another great thing? There’s a little button at the top to add/remove customization when you’re viewing someone else’s profile. Meaning your browser doesn’t have a stroke trying to upload.

Ads. Yes, Virb’s got ads, but if you look at the first screenshot — the ads by Google are way at the bottom. No crazy banners messing up your layout. No annoying frogs with ringtones. No phishers.

Virb’s still in its infancy, but I sincerely believe it’s learning from MySpace’s and Facebook’s mistakes (crappy design and introducing new features without telling users) — and it really could be a great thing.

While you’re looking around — add me! I could always use a few more friends.

Do you VIRB? What are your thoughts?

Social Media Marketing

Social Networks

As seen on Random Culture, NBC will launch their own social network.

We already know that FOX owns MySpace. Let’s check out NBC’s social network’s features.

Personalized profiles - Even with the news that MySpace is disabling any non-MySpace approved enhancer… anyone can customize the color scheme of their profile.

Buddies are to NBC as friends are to Friendster, MySpace, Facebook,…etc…

Video galleries - A rather recent addition to MySpace, but you can view artist music videos, self-made videos, viral phenomena already.

Photo galleries -  Since the movie 300 came out, MySpace promoted the ability to add at least 300 pictures on your picture page (I got up to two pages of pictures, I don’t have 300 to post). Pictures have always been an integral part of customizing one’s profile.

Blogs -  I’ve always had something against MySpace blogs.

Groups -  Groups for similar interests, TV shows, movies, bands, cliques, you name it — they’ve got it.

Messageboards - Sites still have these things? There are messageboards on the group profile pages, people have been known to use the comments section of a profile as a makeshift messageboard — especially if you limit your friends list to your group of friends.

Widgets - MySpace has been restricting the use of widgets to those approved by MySpace now. Still, you can have widgets.

Essentially, what is NBC offering that MySpace doesn’t have? This is what will make or break NBC’s network. If you can offer something fun and innovative, people will flock to it. This is what MySpace did. It offered the freedom to customize your profile page — oftentimes, these customizations will crash whatever browser you’re using. This massive freedom to customize is what set it apart from existing networks (Friendster) at the time. Even though it appears that MySpace is cracking down on the freedom — the users don’t care. Why? Because there is always something new and cool to experience. Even though it seems that the usability of the site always leaves something to be desired.

Next review: VIRB

Social Media Marketing

Social Networks

Video Marketing Optimization

Social Media Marketing

video optimization

Social Media Maven has come to guide you through the complex and ever changing world of blogs, podcasts, vodcasts, social networks, viral marketing, social media optimization and getting yourself out there, without pushing. The world is about pull marketing with media becoming increasingly fragmented. Join us as we push “push” marketing away!

Social Media Marketing

Social Media Optimization