What do you think? Is Facebook enough of a distraction to affect student grades?

Via: OnlineEducation.net

Twitter, I love you… but if you can’t work out all the kinks in your reliability, I don’t see you moving past 10%-15% usage for the adult Internet population in the US.

CMOs need to discover new ways to do the old things that still matter: Offer products and services that someone truly needs, admitting that you want to sell stuff to them, and then properly serving them after they’ve given you their business. Sounds so easy as I type it but doing so has gotten so incomprehensibly complicated. Maybe the news coming out of Pepsi and Burger King is a wakeup call that we need to make all of this simpler, not harder. I think it starts with quitting the glib new rationales for avoiding these traditional and difficult challenges.

May silly social media R.I.P., and may smart social live to serve businesses better in the future.

~ Jonathan Salem Baskin

As I work with clients on developing their digital marketing plans, one of the most common questions I receive is “how many ‘likes’ should I have on my Facebook page?” I always find this question a good opportunity to take clients through the importance of targeting in social media. It isn’t the number of fans, likes, or followers you have, it’s where they are and what you’re doing with them.

Setting expectations

On Facebook, there are some great companies to look at and follow especially when a business is looking to get started. The problem, though, is I think sometimes examples like Ford, Oreos, Skittles, and Coke, builds delusions of grandeur or unrealistic expectations for businesses. Let’s face it, unless you have a multi-million dollar marketing budget and a nationally recognized brand, you are probably not going to have hundreds of thousands of Facebook Likes. To help put numbers into perspective a bit, here are some stats from a study the Sysomos did in November 2009:

• 4% of pages have more than 10,000 fans
• 0.76% of pages have more than 100,000 fans
• 77% of pages have less than 1,000 fans
• 35% of pages have less than 100 fans

You wouldn’t purchase a TV ad in another state…

After setting some expectations for total likes on Facebook based on research into the client’s customers and Internet users around their target sales areas and demographics, I am sometimes presented with examples from the client’s competitors who use some other services available who have thousands or sometimes tens of thousands of likes on Facebook. While initially this seems like a great thing, I typically start digging a bit to show them where these likes come from. Many times a significant amount of the likes are from users in different states or countries.

An example of this comes from a client’s competitor that is using a service that uses various social games and giveaways to increase the number of likes to the page. When looking at their latest contest, the top three players were from Malaysia, Florida, and Minnesota. The client is a local car dealer in Connecticut! Granted, having a large number of fans might make a page more appealing to gain future fans, how is having users to communicate with all over the country going to help the local dealer sell more product? The dealer would never pay for a television or newspaper ad in another country, so why market to them on Facebook?

When 5 Facebook Likes are Better Than 5,000

So when does having 5 Facebook likes matter more than 5,000 likes? It is when those 5 users are part of your target demographic. Is it hard to get those targeted fans? It can be but if you have proper listening as part of your digital marketing strategy, you’ll be able to find these customers and successfully reach them without worrying about the other semi-irrelevant 4,995.

When I first heard about RockMelt, the “social browser”, I was intrigued. When I found out that I could test a beta copy of it, overly excited would probably be a good measure of my reaction. For those of you who may not be familiar with RockMelt, basically it is a new web browser still in beta, that adds social media like Facebook directly to the sidebars of the window to make it easier to share web items through a user’s social media accounts. Overall, I think it is heading in the right direction, but not quite a tool for professionals who need the ability to use extensions as part of their browser.

You can read my full review on RockMelt over at the Social Media Group blog.

Have you used it yet? What do you think?

The small Sony HD camera I used for the @Ford website while I was at Ford. It's not the size that counts!

It seems as time goes on, as well, that these small and good quality video cameras are also being placed into almost every consumer’s hand by being in highly portable devices like small digital still cameras, FlipCams, mobile phones, and even iPods. Some of these device makers, such as with the Kodak Zi8, create their software with the ability to upload directly to Facebook and YouTube. To take it even further some devices, such as the new iPhone 4 or Ion Audio’s Twin Video, are equipped with cameras on both sides of the devices that allow for recording video of both the user and their surroundings at the same time. This, coupled with editing software built in directly, as with the new iPhone 4, means that consumers have the ability to create engaging video content for the web at almost anytime.

Ion Audio's Twin Video has the ability to record video on both side of the camera at the same time.

So the question then becomes what are you doing with consumers’ ability to create, edit, and upload video at almost any point during their day? According to YouTube, every minute, 24 hours of video are uploaded to it’s site. How much of that video is talking about your products? Reviews about their experience in your store or restaurant? Impromptu commercials for a special contest you’re running? Stories about how they are using your product or service to better their lives?

What are you doing to turn these consumers with access to amazing video technology into your brand advocates?

I’d love to hear about how you are using this evolving technology in your Internet marketing. Comment below!

Facebook, as most people are aware, has become an Internet power house. The weekend of March 13, 2010, Facebook once again overtook Google as the most visited website for the week as it also did on Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, and New Year’s Day 2010. It is estimated that its 465,562,160 users also give Facebook about 41% of all social media web traffic. Looking at the usage numbers can also be quite staggering. According to a website-monitoring.com study completed in mid-March, it was reported that:

• 50% of active users log on to Facebook in any given day
• More than 35 million users update their status each day
• More than 3 billion photos are uploaded to the site each month
• More than 5 billion pieces of content are shared each week
• The average users spends more than 55 minutes each day on Facebook

Of course, as Facebook has grown and changed over time, it seems that some of the magic has been wearing off. Common complaints that have faced Facebook over the past few years seem to mostly center on people being fed up with having the layout change to a format that they didn’t like. As of recent, though, the complaints coming from everyone (from users to congressmen) have focused on Facebook’s usage of user data and privacy.

In case you have been hiding in a cave for the past month or so, the big problem that people have with Facebook currently is their new Open Graph API. This basically allows websites to pull in a user’s Facebook friends and other information to help connect them to other sites and services like Pandora and CNN.com. While the idea behind this is great, in my opinion, Facebook made all the sharing preferences set as ‘on’ by default without much explanation on how to turn it off. This, obviously, upset a lot of people. In the midst of it all, Mashable.com ran a survey for people we were planning on deleting their Facebook accounts to hear what their reason behind leaving was. According to the survey, two of the top responses were, “I don’t trust it with my personal data” and “It sells my data to advertisers”.

Why Facebook Users Are Considering Leaving - Mashable.com | Brenna Ehrlich

Recently, Facebook has made an effort into creating a solution to users’ privacy concerns by doing a total privacy overhaul that should make it easier for users to customize their privacy settings clearly and easily. It remains to be seen, though, if this move will lessen people’s growing anger and mistrust of the site.

What is your take on all of this, though? Is it too little too late?  Are you fed up with Facebook, all the games, and what they are doing with your data? Could you not be part of the more than 60 million status updates each day and delete your Facebook account?

Please feel free to comment below as I’d love to hear your thoughts!

References

http://www.website-monitoring.com/blog/2010/03/17/facebook-facts-and-figures-history-statistics/

http://theeword.co.uk/seo-manchester/facebook_dominates_social_media_traffic.html

http://mashable.com/2010/05/25/facebook-quit-survey-results/

http://www.checkfacebook.com/

http://weblogs.hitwise.com/heather-dougherty/2010/03/facebook_reaches_top_ranking_i.html

Some marketers know that one component to add into a mobile marketing plan is the creation of a mobile app to run on devices like iPhones, Blackberrys, Palm phones, or Android equipped phones. Having an app is just one way to give a consumer increased access to a company’s services as well as increase a company’s brand recognition. According to studies, apps are also in high demand by consumers. Nielson reported that in the second quarter of 2009, there were 40 million app downloads and the industry as a whole has had approximately 3 billion downloads altogether. Looking at this surge of use, where is the app for your company?

MyFord Touch

After asking that, my next question is what happens to your app and mobile marketing plan when technology shakes things up again? Ford did this earlier this week at the 2010 CES. They announced that the next generation of SYNC and their new MyFord  Touch or MyLincoln Touch technology would allow mobile apps running the new SYNC API to be used by the system. As a quick backgrounder, SYNC allows drivers to use voice control access different services and features such as navigation, traffic, and hands-free calling by the system tapping into driver’s smartphone. With the upgrade of SYNC and the addition of MyFord Touch and MyLincoln Touch, a driver’s favorite apps that are equipped with the SYNC API are now able to enjoy the same hands-free control. The first apps to take advantage of this are Pandora, Stitcher, and OpenBeak. That’s right, Internet radio and Twitter right in your car via voice-control while you’re driving.

MyFord Touch and Pandora

So now I ask, how does this change your app strategy? Knowing that a mobile user would be able to use your app safely while driving around, would you create something for this? As a grocery store, would you create a SYNC enabled app that allows a customer to create a shopping list while they drove to your store? As an electronics store, would you create an app that allowed them to compare the different specs on TVs while they headed over to get one? For language training software, would you create an app that allows a customer to access all of their lessons during their morning commute? The possibilities are literally limitless for application of this technology. The question, though, is what are you going to do with it and your mobile marketing campaign?

In case you would like to view more information about the new SYNC API, the video below is a portion of the 2010 CES Keynote presentation where Ford introduces it.

Full disclosure: While Internet marketing and social media are his hobbies and potential future career field, Brad currently works for Ford as the Video Coordinator for Employee Communications, Broadcast Operations, and Public Affairs.

“Marc Ostrick and Michael Sean Wright set out to document a day at Blog World Expo in Las Vegas. Ostrick, Co-Founder of eGuiders teamed up with fellow documentarian Wright, founder of nicefishfilms, to take the pulse of what some are calling the new media ‘revolution’. The gathering of bloggers, lifestreamers and seasoned journalists provided an opportunity to dialog with media producers from around the world. Ostrick and Wright attempted to push the limits of the current technology, shooting with Kodak Zi8 and Flip Ultra HD cameras. The short doc is part of the conversation focused on the shifting landscape of media. The new dial tone is a dialog among media producers, technologists and bloggers who are looking to express their ideas into the stream of the real-time web. The filmmakers shadowed Robert Scoble, early technology blogger-evangelist as he interacted with the influencers in social media. “Social media… is the new dial tone,” according to author Chris Brogan.”

One of the best things about this video, I think, is towards the end where Michael Sean Wright talks about how CNN doesn’t send a huge crew anymore to events but someone with a small format camera. I see this every day at Ford as, with my position, we shoot a lot of interviews and events using a small handheld HD camera and edit using Final Cut Pro on a laptop. Sure, for major events things were a nicer camera/lens would be required, we hire out professional camera crews and edit on high end gear. But for the everyday communication from Ford to its employees and customers, the format has changed a lot. An example of this is the interview I taped with Mark Fields talking about establishing trust with employees and customers through communication.

In the end, great job to these guys on putting this together!