By Will McInnes

WTF is social media

I have just read the single best written blog post by one of our team.
Anna is one of our newest bods, but one of her greatest assets is her passion for and involvement in this new social web thing.

In the blog post 'WTF is social media?' Anna uses some very grounded and well-thought out contributions and challenges that came out of the Nixon McInnes guys session at BarCampBrighton. Geeks rock at this kind of thing - a sanity check, a voice of reason (sometimes!), an anti-vapourware, anti-'marketing' assessment.

A great blog post - if you have views, please contribute - some clever, opinionated people already have.

'Web 2.0' speaking at Siemens today

A small group of us spoke to a group of marketers at Siemens today in Milton Keynes about social media and the implications for brands, communications and so on.

Some interesting themes came up in the questions which I've heard enough times speaking to other groups that I now want to share, which I'll when I've got a few spare minutes - essentially these will be the classic challenges of in-house marketers living in the real world to social media agency enthusiasts.

But it was a good session, despite the 5.15 am start, and a good range of expertise involved - a podcaster, a Second Life expert, plus a few of us on the broader social media sphere.

Love Flickr, long may it reign

I love Flickr.
It really is a poster child for the new gen of community-wrapped-around-web-app services.
It's one of the main examples I look to whenever I work on a community project for clients - part of the best of, the benchmark set.

First and absolutely foremost, usability-wise, it conquers.
Functionality-wise, it does everything I want it to do, the basics first simply and intuitively, no manual required, and then cool extras - the Uploadr, the API and its fruits (Moo cards, we love you too)
Brand-wise, it's characterful,  and fun - people like me want and enjoying belonging and partcipating.
And the community...where to start? Incredible photos, incredible passion: check out Ricard's food pics; Clive Andrew's shots of mates mountain biking on the South Downs, the volume and quality of great images licensed under creative commons - true sharing, true community.

So it's heartening to see it take #2 slot due to yahoos phasing out of their photo service in favour of Flickr, as reported by Hitwise.

Yet still Photobucket rules.
For me, this is a clear cut example of popularity vs influence (see my notes from Whats new in Online MArketing show).
Photobucket is the volume player - the most popular, the photo hosting service (vs community / sharing), the myspace-feeding-gorilla. OK. Well done.

But Flickr is where the influencers hang out.
Who would you rather be?

Attention: James Wragg - lovin' your work

Dunno bout you, but having been passionately involved in the web for the last 6 years, it's probably about once a week where someone does something and I think 'GAAAAAH. Why didn't I think of that?'.

Because innovation is rarely a blindingly amazing and different idea.
And is often the application of something existing to something new.

Which is why I love what James Wragg, from Brighton players Madgex, has done with his Planet BNM website. A simple aggregator of content generated by the Brighton 'New Media' (hence BNM) community.

Loving your work James - if I may humbly say it's a lovely simple experiment and a good start to something potentially really useful.

The only immediate improvement I can see is either increasing the number of blogs aggregated, or reducing the amount of the post shown on the homepage or some other action to reduce the promimence of the few blogs on there. My huge and bristling ego aside I think there's too much prominence given to a few of us bloggers.

Good stuff tho. The rest of us didn't get off our arses - you did!
PS. I would've emailed all of this but I scoured your sites and couldn't find an address :)

Facebook app churn

Brian Oberkirch just nailed a point that's been washing around my empty skull for a few weeks but never quite made it to the right synapse, namely:

"Most of my friends burn through FB [Facebook] apps like bubblegum"

Same here...
Breezing through my facebook news feed is a whole heap of 'friends' adding and removing applications from their profiles with happy abandon: 'Darren Wheezletoft just removed the 'My pet cow has looser lips than a Wizard's Sleeve' application, and so on.

Brian's conclusion, and it's an important one:

"that these FB apps are creating a ton of ‘trial’ (and I use the scare quotes quite purposefully) but probably not many ongoing users."

This is important because like my other fellow social media commentators and passionistas, I'm referring to 'X many users added the iLike app within 1 day' or whatever other stat, all in giddy celebration of facebook's platform strategy (which I still support, btw), but in reality there's a whole loadda churn in there. It's the lies, damned lies and statistics thing again - much like Clay Shirky's forensic unravelling of Second Life user numbers.

So what are the implications for Facebook?
Well none bad for FB per se, I don't think.

I am still seeing Facebook exhibit the closest-to-vertical trajectory take up of any viral message or social network I've ever seen before. It has been shockingly rapid - whilst viral is an over used term for us online vets, Facebook has demonstrated the most toxic virulent infectiousness as it en-plagued my home city of Brighton, UK.

Really, the points to be mindful of are:

1. for online marketers to cautiously assess any hysterical user numbers or celebratory facts around the fb platform strategy,
2. and for the third party developers and fb to work hard at maturing their mini applications beyond what Brian accurately describes as: wonky, most are 1/2 ideas, and the experience is kind of crappy.

My notes / key points from What's New in Online Marketing, e-consultancy, 2007

These are my key points from the first 3 speakers at the Whats New in Online Marketing show, by e-consultancy in London, June 2007.

Please note - These aren't intended to be comprehensive or even comprehensible as they are mainly for my own ref, and for sharing with my team.

Flemming Madsen, Onalytica

Great talk full of proof, real-world research and examples. A good way to start the day and a great counter to any of those that say cutting-edge marketing is fluff.
These guys know their buzz monitoring onions.

• Crucial difference between popularity and influence online e.g. on the blogosphere. Influence behind online memes is often started by relatively un-popular websites of say government bodies, but then distributed afar by more popular websites.
• Key is to engage with the influencers, not necessarily the most obviously popular - popularity is democratic, each 'vote' is weighted equally whereas influence balances and weights the relative importance of each vote
• Example: for terms 'juvenile obesity' only the NHS has more citations than Jamie Oliver, yet Jamie Oliver is the 21st most influential voice on the topic after organisations like the BMA, National Obesity Forum, Sport England etc.
• Key tip: engage with those who are relatively influential but relatively unpopular as less people are clamouring for their attention, yet the influence and power they have is relatively high - more bang for your filthy marketing buck

Antony Mayfield, Spannerworks

Best talk of the day in terms of interestingness for the clients in the audience, for delivery and charisma. Not as educational for me, because we have very similar interests, but well delivered and received. Had fun with the 'laser' to point at slides.

• 70% of online content will be created by individuals by 2010 - IDC
• 5 fundamentals of the new online world: speed; scale (of available content); geography; interaction with content and authors; complexity
• New skill required is combination of "cartography & anthropology" - alberto bassi
• To clients: 'do you know what your neighbourhood looks like?'
• Don't forget forums as social media - not glamorous, but proven
• "google is a reputation management system" - clive thompson
• ASOS.com website is more compelling than TopShop and therefore kicks ass as measured by various social media yardsticks (e.g. links in delicious)
• LEGO community and Catster & Dogster as good examples

Brett Hurt, CEO, BazaarVoice

• 36% of adult americans consult wikipedia
• average rating across all bazaarvoice client websites is 4.3 stars out of 5!
• This holds true across different industry categories
• Ratings and reviews have significant positive impact on conversion but also returns (due to better setting prospective client's expectations of the item)
• Golfsmith, client, is now using user reviews in magazine advertising as credible personalities
• President's Choice, client, is using user reviews on in-store signs (supermarket)
• BazaarVoice uses 'stay at home moms' to moderate all reviews
• 6% of reviews are rejected for breaking policies, sometimes innocently
• Proven techniques to increase volume of ratings and reviews: splash page on website to consolidate ratings and reviews; home page real estate coverage; competitions for best review etc; email marketing driving reviews; featured products highlighting highly rated products to reinforce this feature
• Also, recommend an email to all recent customers signed from CEO, asking for their rating
• PetCo ran a competition on reviews - prize = 1 X $100 voucher (but massively worked)
• Average review length is 80 words
• They recommend picking the best (usually longest) reviews and marking them as 'featured' or 'spotlight' reviews and putting at top of list

LinkedIn prepares for IPO

LinkedIn, a web service I find very useful, is preparing for IPO apparently.
This is notable for being one of the first major post-dot-com bust IPOs.

[via Umair Haque]

Silicon Valley heads for bust again - Arrington calls it...

A fascinating, brutally honest and possibly epochal picture painted by Mike Arrington on Techcrunch:

Now, it’s just like the old days again, and Silicon Valley is no longer any fun. In fact, it’s turned downright nasty. It may be time for some of use to leave for a while and watch the craziness from the outside again. In a few years, things will be beautiful again.

It's sad reading this from Mike, whose blog Techcrunch has been a fantastic cheerleader and resource for the Web 2.0 tidal wave, but actually I love it because I like the black and whiteness of it, its contrarian tone and the fact that everything moves in cycles and boom times are so clearly upon us once more.

Check out the 116 plus comments too.

Tulip mania 2.0?

Case study: David Meerman Scott and the power of social media

David Meerman Scott first came to my attention by creating something very valuable - an increasingly effective way to gain attention.

And so his work, his online marketing efforts, and his very self are an example of the power of social media, and blogging in particular.

David wrote 'The New Rules of PR'.
It was really really useful and good, so I wrote about that not once but twice.

It's just a PDF, right?
Just a humble PDF...
Very well written.
Timely and very current at the time of publication.
And nicely designed too, but not at extraordinary expense, i wouldn't think. Just nicely typeset.

I can't even remember how I found it - but it was through the Internet for sure, probably via reading someone else's blog.

Not only did I write about the New Rules, I also started telling people about them through the training I do in cutting-edge online marketing, both at Nixon McInnes seminars and at The Oxford College of Marketing courses I teach.

So first I'm writing about this valuable piece of content.
Then I'm telling small hand-picked groups of the UK's most savvy forward-looking marketers.
For free.

I've never met David, prolly never will. But how powerful is this word of mouth marketing?

Anyway, the reason I'm writing this glowing (but grounded, I assure you) testimonial is because David's just proved his ability to positively harness the power of online social media once again.

To publicise his new book David wrote this blog post, 'Thank you for helping me write The New Rules of Marketing & PR - you are in the book!' and linked to 164 bloggers who he credits with helping influence him positively.

Bloggers tend to do what we call 'buzz monitoring' in the industry - that is they use simple tools as antennae to monitor what people are saying about topics they are interested. It is recommended that companies do this for their main products, services, name and obviously those of key individuals. Bloggers monitor buzz that includes their names to manage their reputations and track conversations that reference them.

So David effectively sent out 164 subtle but powerful wavelets across the blogosphere to a carefully identified list of relevant influencers and contributors to his area of interest - online communications and technology. (A plug for my ego: I know - he kindly included me). Whilst a lovely gesture let's keep our heads screwed on right - this is all about marketing

The hook beyond that? Email me and I'll send you a free copy of my new book - brilliant!
Check out the buzz here on BlogPulse - huge volumes of coverage across marketing, PR and SEO blogs across the world.

Incredibly good social media marketing? Rather, as we say here in the UK, sipping earl grey tea and talking about the Queen and watching the rain :)

'Edgework' - a new term to help understand Social Media

Somehow I found a really great new blog by a guy called Brian Oberkirch.

This post, 'Branding and Edgework' on his blog sums up a lot of the threads I follow, themes that I educate on and practices that I advise (or we deliver) to our clients, and pulls them together into an extremely insightful and interesting reminder of the new paradigm of communications between organisations and people.

Brian says:

Edgework is the process of interpreting, responding to and integrating the vast and varied feedback modern brands generate.

Edgework has a varied terrain including marketing communications, customer service, sales support, developer relations, PR, internal communications.

The edge offers us contact via emails, chat, SMS, widgets, embeddable videos, podcasts and other time-shifted content, blogs, wikis, feeds, streaming multimedia, location-aware services.

ABSOLUTELY! I absolutely agree with this multi-disciplinary, multi-dimensional mode.

The best equipped new operators for this new world that I know have backgrounds and so skillsets that span different fields - Jenni trained as a fine artist, moved through Interactive TV and now is an online marketing specialist; Antony has a very strong background in PR and now works for a leading search and social media agency.

I'm not sure that this topic Brian writes about is new territory per se - it's a new riff on the epochal Cluetrain Manifesto and writing by people like Seth Godin. But 'edgework' is for me  a particularly appropriate term to describe the activities / skills around contemporary online communications.

Looks like a great blog, I recommend you subscribe :)