Articles in Word of Mouth
Twitter Co-founder Evan Williams talks about the ideas for driving twitter’s growth in the future.
Sweden is known for it’s innovation which not only expresses itself in design, but also in creative campaigns.
Agency Forsman and Bodenfors decided to use one of Facebook’s built in features of “Tagging” to get the word out about Ikea’s Malmo store opening. First, they created a Facebook profile for the store manager, Gordon Gustavsson. Then, over the next two weeks, uploaded images from of IKEA showrooms to his Facebook photo album.
Alan Long, Research Director for Hitwise reports that Social Media Traffic in Australia has nearly caught Search as depicted by the following chart.
Top 10 Social Networks in Australia are shown here, dominated by Facebook which boasts over 8 million Australians.
The net affect is that companies need more than ever to develop a strategy for Listening and Engaging with these networks so that they have the ability to influence consumers.
October 15th is Blog Action Day, where 10,000 bloggers around the world are writing about climate change.
Social Media certainly provides a platform to harness the “collective” due to the global accessibility of internet and the ease of content publication which has given consumers a voice. Cause marketing is certainly one of the early adopters of doing this, and I expect to see a continued growth in corporate sponsorship of these initiatives, demonstrating the merging of social media engagement and PR.
The Economist has published this video which contains a series of interesting statistics about the changing media landscape.
Whilst the stats are US focused, they are representative of the changes that are occuring across the globe.
There is still lots of debate surrounding digital piracy.
Matt Mason’s new book “The Pirate’s Dilemma” addresses the issue of piracy demonstrating how piracy helped to evolve Hollywood prior to the existance of the internet. His book describes how piracy is an important source of innovation, and he describes how piracy can be used to effectively spread ideas. In doing so, Matt suggests how piracy itself can be leveraged as a valid business model.
Here’s a video of Matt talking about how youth culture is reinventing capitalism.
Not all campaigns will be successful, but not having a brief, or having one that is “too brief” definitely increases the likelihood of failure.
The Brief is one of the most important stages of the marketing process, and yet many clients fail to see it’s importance, and either ignore it all together or pass this responsibility to the agency. Agency created briefs or “reverse briefs” can work well where the client / agency understand each other well, but there should still be some kind of approval step so that clarity of scope is understood.
Often one of the hardest challenge of engaging with Social Media is to find your voice.
It often involves trial and error as well as feedback from trusted friends.
This week I gave a presentation to the Future Leaders meeting in Sydney and as well as providing insight into what Social Media is, I talked through the process for getting engaged and identifying your niche.
I still recall presenting the Facebook Australian population at 4.3 million around the middle of 2008.
It’s now surpassed 5 million which means that more than 1 in 3 of Australia’s online population is on Facebook.
This is quite compelling, and its not wonder that brands and organisations are starting to allocate marketing spend to reaching this audience.
The challenge of course is that social networks don’t respond well to interruption marketing.
I’ve posted a version of a social media presentation that I have been delivering.
It runs through my definition of social media, why it matters, and then outlines the 3 step action plan that I have developed.
- Listen
- Engage
- Influence
Here’s a list of 10 Digital Marketing predictions for 2009.
1. Mobile apps
Goldman sachs estimates 210 million iphone apps will be dowloaded by 2010. Much of this will be monetized by the emerging mobile ad market, e.g. www.admob.com
2. Video streaming from mobile
e.g. www.qik.com www.kyte.com www.ustream.com
Soccer mums through to corporate presentations will be beamed from mobiles directly to the internet
I have posted an article in support of my Social Media action plan presentation.
Social Media – 3 step action plan (pdf file)
A new social network has launched in Australia which hopes to address some of the key insights from online social media research.
Vibe Village is a social network which is hoping to connect brands to social influencers, by targeting 3 needs.
Being First.
I still remember running home to tell my brothers that I had found a way to get through the lane way at the back of my house, only to be disappointed when it became apparent that the news wasn’t news to them.
Imagine you are in the delivery business, and want to show that you deliver anywhere in the world.
DHL, with the help of a swedish artist Erik Nordenankar, and a GPS device have managed to create what they describe as the biggest drawing in the world.
The website documents the creation, along with detailed instructions and delivery documents, and even contains video footage of the drawings journey.
When I was young, radio shows such as American Top 40, or Billboard were the established authorities on determining the most popular artist or album.
The internet has revolutionised the distribution of music and it’s no surprise that there is no shortage of innovation in the delivery of informational services.
Recognising that popularity includes discussions, consumption as well as purchase, the BBC has created an index of bands and tracks.
