News Update – Best of the Day

The YouTube day!

YouTube is on the rise and growing very fast. One reason why I have chosen this platform for today’s spot on. Find inspiration of what is possible with the leading video platform..

YouTube & The past – The question that probably most of us business marketers and sales people want to have answered is: What were the most successful videos on YouTube? ReadWriteWeb’s author Richard MacManus has the answer and comes to the conclusion that music reigns. No surprise the best video of all times is the ‘Evolution of Dance’…

YouTube & The present – HP uses YouTube for a promotion to create a new community around video production. The competition page is for everyone who wants to ‘declare yourself in a video’. By offering a price draw of 300.000 US dollars they have generated more than 4500 subscribers and a lot of friends. And you can see great productions like this one…

YouTube & The future – An interesting project by Simyo and Ahead of Time gives us some outlook on ‘The future of mobile media and communication’… seeing the comments, it seems that not everybody shares this vision.

PS: If you are on a social media hype, then you live your life quite fast sometimes. In my view, this fast consumption of life is mirrored in a banned commercial for Microsoft XBox…

Spot On!
Leave us your ideas, competitions and productions in a comment…! We will write a post about the best video idea and it’s producer that we will find in our comments…

Holiday season: ‘Out of the office’ replies not trendy anymore?

In our times of social networking, there is an experience that I make which is in some way amusing. In some way it is quite difficult to understand why people do what they do.

Fact is, people tell their contacts via social networks that they will be going on holidays… and don’t send as many ‘Out of the office’ replies in a reactive way as they used to do anymore. The proactive communication approach via social networks seems to be the future.

Years ago, especially in the holiday season, there was an increase in incoming mails with ‘Out of the office’ replies. No matter if you sent an email, or not. Those automated (response) mails did not surprise anyone anymore. We all got used ti it.

Today these automated mails seem to be decreasing, if not vanishing completely. And there is a reason for it: The digital business world is changing. Why is this happening? Social Networks have taken over the sovereignty of the ‘Out of the office’ reply. And the question that I raised some months ago, if business 3.0 will be nearly without emails, seems to show the first signs of ´modern impact.

If someone is on holiday, we get the notice via social networks… and we receive it already some days before people change their desk chair for a beach bar stool at the pool. People tell us in their status updates when and how long they will be going on holidays. And they do tell us at least some days in advance. If this is clever or not, I have not figured out yet.

The reason behind this preventive behavior seems to be quite obvious because it might also be unnecessary. No ‘Out of the office’ reply means ‘No automated mails’ for business partners, clients or people that did not really think of contacting me while I am sitting in the sand at some beach hundred miles away from work.

It is definitely a good service for a promising partnership. People can plan in advance if they need something from the contact that will be going on holidays.

Nevertheless, some business people -or shall I say social networker- should also think about the possible aftermath as the web is public, others might be listening carefully and messages might get into the wrong hands of burglars or thieves who can also plan in advance where and how to get rich the next day. Although status updates can only be seen by your clients, partners or friends, we all know that we don’t really know everyone in depth as we would love to.

As you see in the picture here, some people also wrote it on Twitter, and I don’t know if this is a safe way…

But letting your contacts know about your holidays via social networks is definitely a business trend and a service that is coming up.

Spot on!
Curious to see if you see this trend as well? How do handle this topic yourself? Do you use status update in order to tell your business partners or friends that you will be going on holidays?

Looking forward to your comments…

PS: Sometimes our German’s offline reputation scares me a bit…

News Update – Best of the Day

Who said, online advertising is not effective? A new comScore study proofs that web advertising is even as effective as TV advertising…

According to comScore’s report, over a 12-week span, online campaigns involving consumer packaged goods (CPGs) with a 40% reach of their target segment were responsible for lifting retail sales of the product 9%, compared to an average lift of 8% for TV advertising.

Intimacy in personal communication in the era of social networks like Twitter and Facebook is becoming complex these days. The question is if the people who use it are really to be segmented in the way Ji Lee outlined in this graphic. What’s your take on this intimacy concept…?
Credits to Klaus Eck

Augmented Reality seems to be the next big thing. See this video on Touchable Holography and be surprised what is possible with two Wii motes…

PS: If you need a new avatar… try these options here.

Social Media Monitoring: Still a difficult topic for companies…

Reading the latest posts on social media and social networking, should make social media monitoring companies really happy.

A recent informal, small poll by MarketingProfs shows that companies are not measuring their social media ROI in an adequate way. Plus: The fourth “Power to the People: Social Media Tracker” study by UniversalMcCann shows that more and more internet users worldwide are engaged in social networks. For companies this makes it even more difficult to monitor the activities of their employees – if at all possible for big companies…

The MarketingProfs poll states that 80% of respondents replied that social measurement was either “important” or “somewhat important” to their business. But 70% admitted that their companies are not doing enough to track their social media activities – if it was blogs, Twitter, Facebook, content-sharing sites. So the final conclusion is that ROI results are not promising business success. Herein lies the future of social media monitoring companies.

The reason for this discrepancy between success and measurement ROI results is not the lack of resources only. The main leading problems are…
30% lack of resources
25% “don’t know what to measure”
20% “social media isn’t primarily about ROI”
14% lack of tools

“While social media marketing remains hugely popular, it’s clear from these results that few have confidence in their ability to track and measure it from an ROI perspective,” said Ann Handley, Chief Content Officer for MarketingProfs. “Until marketers figure out the measurement game, brands may resist increasing their social media investments.”

Taking this from a user perspective, the UniversalMcCann study shows that 62,5% of active worldwide internet users ages 16 to 54 have a social network profile. Thus, companies are in need of evaluating and listening to their employee’s activities on these social networks – especially to their top manager’s words. At some of these networks it is easy as these platforms can be monitored quite easily but others have ‘closed front-doors’ which makes it easy to monitor the words being chatted on these platforms.

Spot On!
To have a social media monitoring strategy in place becomes more and more important for companies. Although there is a decline, consolidation or stagnation in the growth of social networks and social media activities as of the impossibility to be everywhere… – the challenge for companies to know how their employees are talking about brands, products or the company is still an important part of the modern web strategy, and their brand and product reputation. Web-strategist Jon Samsel just published which social media monitoring tools are being used by the top agencies and brands at the moment. Some good orientation for companies and some interesting reference for social media monitoring companies…

PS: Some days ago, I found this presentation on social media monitoring which gives some kind of overview on some of the well-known players and what social media monitoring is all about. A good point to start thinking about your company, right?

News Update – Best of the Day

If a study says that 40% of Twitter is babble, then the study is in some points definitely reflecting the truth. Nevertheless, it is more interesting to see what people that have not taken part in the study are saying. So, read the comments underneath the text and here, and make up your own mind.

Productivity in business based on modern web strategy can be tackled and seen from different angles. So here are two examples on how your traffic can profit and how your employees can can optimize their social media behavior.

When a CEO is taking questions on Twitter as part of his job, it shows how serious social media is for the company. Watch Alan Mulally and experience how Ford is challenging of social media…

News Update – Best of the Day

One of the early adapters in terms of company experts for social media is definitely Coca-Cola. Robin Grant has summarized their efforts, linked to relevant posts and just given companies some ‘guideline’ for a successful social media strategy.

And another case study on social media … but for non-profits: Tamar Weinberg refers to the interesting achievement of Epic Change – a small charity company with only 3 people.

Funny: Are you a business Tweeter? Just tell us which bird you are…

Best feature of social networks? The Pick-a-boo effect…

Don’t we love to play this game with kids because we know how happy it makes them… Pick-a-boo. But as adults using social networks: What is it that makes us happy? Some weeks ago, I asked some friends of mine who in turn asked friends of theirs as well as their colleagues: What is the main benefitial feature of social networks? The most frequent answer that came up was the ‘Who has been on your profile lately’ feature which goes along the lines of ‘The Pick-a-boo’ effect.

Now, what does that mean ‘The Pick-a-boo’ effect’? Well, people register in social networks in order to get in contact or connected with peers, (old) friends or humans that are (or might be) interested in them or/and their work. The tricky point is that there are people in the world of social networks we don’t want to contact any longer, in the future or in general. Nevertheless, we still love to take a peek as we wonder if they are still interested in us, what they are up to and what impact is driving their lives. It’s kind of human vanity and curiosity thing. We want to compare ourselves with them, want to check out how ‘sexy’ our online (and offline) reputation is – not only in terms of business life. We want to play Pick-a-boo. We are there and everybody in social networks knows that, but we are not visible all the time. And, we would love not to be visible for everybody when we are looking at people’s profiles who appear not to be relevant for our life. But we’ll pop-up from time to time to stay ‘up to date’.

So, we make us accessible and available in social networks for those who are also users of these networks. As we don’t know the size of the target group of people who is interested in us, we want to find out about it. By this we are making the ‘ego-community’ transparent for ourselves. And most of us ‘social medians’ are eager and would love to know that, wouldn’t we? Some networks have acknowledged this desire of being famous and our nasty habit of being vain. And they satisfy our need and desire for that with great application features supporting this pick a boo effect: status updates, birthday calender or ‘contacts of your contacts’.

No matter if you are a sales person, a recruiter or a consultant. We all want to know how a person looks like after making a call, or attending a meeting or a conference. And we all want to know more about them, either because it facilitates a second conversation or because we would like to recruit someone or sell something. The more we know, the easier the effort. Playing Pick-a-boo has become standard.

The active Pick-a-boo
Let’s identify the active pick a boo effect in social networks. We try to find the person or/and go to a profile page, x-ray the contact or find out details on his mentality, personality or hobbies. So, we take a quick look at the profile and then we are off again. Sometimes, we might be going there for a second or a third time before getting in touch with that person. And the funny thing is: We know that the other person knows that we have been visiting their profile page. Is it because we want them to do the first step. Or we ‘pick-a-boo’ just to let them know, someone is interested.

The passive Pick-a-boo
The passive benefit of the pick a boo effect lies in the feature ‘Who has been to your profile’ application or widget. Although a paid service feature on some social networks (XING and LinkedIn), it is probably the most viewed or reloaded feature of active social ‘medians’, those users who have access to it. Why is this ‘pick a boo’ application so attractive for us? We can…
… receive transparency on the ego-community
… monitor the quantity and quality of visitors to our profiles
… identify our ‘personal branding target group’
… evaluate our job market options
… see how often Google is used for ‘Recruit-Googling’
… see who ‘delivers’ good contacts to us
and finally the best of all parts: Via the passive pick a boo effect, we can contact people and definitely have a starting point for a business and/or private conversation.

Spot On!
Seeing all these benefits of the Pick-a-boo application ‘Who has seen to your profile lately’, it surprises me that the biggest network of all, Facebook, still doesn’t have this application feature. Or will it be coming with the announcement of becoming a paid service platform? We will see…

Curious to hear your view and experience on the Pick-a-boo effect in social networks?

News Update – Best of the Day

As short as possible… after a long week… TGIF.

Web strategy effort – Comparison of the MLB.com and the Premier League: What the MLB did well, the Premier League fails, says Mike Masnick.

Social Media effort – In a case study, we learn how Lancome optimizes interactive engagement with their social media campaign.

Web optimization effort – Although social media is still about to conquer the business arena and SEO still rocks the advertising industry, Maurilio Amorim is already seeing a new trend called SMO: social media optimization.

Wie mit Twitter monetarisiert wird…

Darf man seinen Twitter Stream mit Werbetweets monetarisieren? Sich Follower kaufen? Falls nein, wieso eigentlich nicht? Falls ja, welche Möglichkeiten bietet der Social Media Markt derzeit? Fragen, die mich in den letzten Wochen beschäftigt haben.

Während die ersten Fragen ethische oder moralische Standpunkte erwarten lassen, ist die Monetarisierungsfrage eine pragmatische. Man schaue sich einfach an, wie derzeit über oder mit Twitter Geld von Hand zu Hand wechselt.

Eine Übersicht derzeitiger Business-Modelle, wie mit Twitter Geld verdient wird…

Be a magpie
Magpie bietet Werbekunden die Option, Kampagnen zu erstellen und findet die einflussreichsten Magpie Twitterati für die Kampagne. Die Basis liefert eine Auswahl von Keywords. Die Kampagnenmodell kann eine Anzeigen Botschaft oder Anzeigen Keyword Kampagne sein bis hin zu Cost-per-… Click, Follower, Lead oder View sein. Die Twitterati monetarisieren somit ihre Gefolgschaft. Magpie -zumindest sagt man das- ‘identifiziert’ die Anzeigen einer Kampagne mit dem, worüber man generell tweetet und spielt die relevante Werbetweets ein.

BeTweeted
Das Ad Network BeTweeted ermöglicht Werbekunden die Netzwerke der Twitterati zu adressieren. Das Monetarisierungsmodell erfolgt auf CPC (cost-per-click) Basis. Der Anbieter behält 25% der Einnahmen für sich.

FeaturedUsers
FeaturedUsers ist ein Twitter Applikationen Ad Network. Werbekunden kaufen Banner, die wiederum auf ‘Recommended User’ Bereichen der Twitter Applikationen laufen, welche zum FeaturedUser Netzwerk gehören. Der Dienst fokussiert Entwickler von Twitter Applikationen und ist weniger für Werbekunden geeignet.

Million Dollar Follow
Was die Million Dollar Page nicht alles bewirkt… Als Netzwerk ermöglicht Million Dollar Follow dem Twitterati mehr Follower zu verdienen. Man investiert ab 1 US Dollar, kauft eine Anzeige, kommt in einen Lostopf, in dem man neue Follower gewinnen kann. Der Clou: Von dem Moment an, wo man sich als Werbekunde registriert, wird man bei 150 Accounts (z.B. Werbekunden) eingecshrieben und das System wählt nach Verkauf der 1 Millionen Werbeplätze dem Zufallsprinzip einen Werbekunden, der eine Millionen Follower erhält.

PaymeTweets
Paymetweet ist eine einfaches ‘Pay per RT’-System: Man loggt sich mit seinem Twitter Account ein und folgt @paymetweets. Sieht man einen Tweet auf der @paymetweets Account-Seite, der zu dem was man selbst tweetet paßt, klickt man den rtee.me Link am Ende des Tweets. Nur eingeloggt, kann man den gesamten Tweet sehen, wie dieser sich bei Twitter darstellt. Der RT beginnt mit PRT (für Paid Retweet), gefolgt vom @User, von der Person oder Marke, die den Tweet gesponsert hat. Man kann bis zu 18 US Dollar pro Tweet bekommen, heißt es auf der Seite (…aber nur, wenn man die Gefolgschaft von GuyKawasaki oder Chris Brogan hat – ließt man in Tweets).

Twittad
Das Ad Network Twittad funktioniert nach dem Targeting-Prinzip. Twitterati können ihr Profil monetarisieren, in dem sie dem Ad Network demografische, geografische, örtliche und themenspezifische Daten liefern. Wer sich dort registriert, bekommt ein “Dollarwert”, der aus einer speziellen Rechnung nach Followern und anderen Parametern erstellt wird. Werbekunden bieten ähnlich dem Google-Adwords System für eine Platzierung auf der Profilseite des Twitterati. Via API werden vom twitterati akzeptierte Anzeigen auf den Profilstream hochgeladen.

Twivert
Mit Twivert können Werbekunden Werbe-Botschaften erstellen und zeitlich festlegen, wann die Ads erscheinen sollen. Die Micro-Blogger registrieren sich für die Anzeigen und veröffentlichen die Paid Tweets gegen Bezahlung.

uSocial
Inzwischen gibt es aber auch Dienstleister wie die australische Social Media Marketing Agentur uSocial, die wie bereits vor Wochen beschrieben Twitter Follower zum Kauf anbieten. 10.000 Follower gibt es dort schon ab unter 400 US Dollar.

Spot On!
Die einen bieten die Erweiterung der Follower-Base. Die anderen wiederum ermöglichen Werbungtreibenden den Zugang zu neuen Zielgruppen innerhalb der Twittersphäre. Grundsätzlich stellt man sich jedoch die Frage, warum eigentlich nicht Twitter selbst mit einem Monetarisierungsmodell aufwartet, welches die stark wachsende Gemeinde der Twitterati auch in bares Geld für das Team um Twitter Gründer Evan Williams ( hier im Interview) werden läßt. Mehr als Ankündigungen findet man nicht.

Bis das Monetarisierungsmodell von Twitter kommt, machen sich manche lustig über Twitter, finden Shortcomings oder diskutieren Monetarisierungs-Ideen und die Folgen für das Folgen … von Twitterstreams.

Und was sagt Ihr zu Werbung auf dem Twitterstream oder das Kaufen von Followern?

News Update – Best of the Day

Today, the focus is on personal branding and your career…

Are you a top executive? The so called C-level manager? And you want to understand what you resume needs in order to be interesting for recruiters. Meg Guiseppi has 10 top secrets for a great senior-level executive resume.

In our online social networks the term ‘friend’ has a complete different meaning than in our offline world. Getting this straight in terms of a strategy becomes even more complicated. Chris Brogan writes an interesting summary on friends, reputation and endorsement. And he makes us think how we handle this topic.

One thing is for sure… In order to be successful in business we all need a good contact network. Now, in the era of social networks the question rises what is more important: quantity or quality? Thomas Power gives an answer… (although there is no proof it sounds quite realistic).

Interested to hear about your view and how do you handle your friend, colleague, partner or customer relationships… – Tell us about it!

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