Archive for the ‘Social Media News’ Category
Social Media Goes to Washington
Monday, June 14th, 2010
Wouldn’t it be cool to live in the times when government was simple? When you knew all the issues that were out there and you could put in your two cents. That was like 200 years ago but those were the days. Now, in these fast-paced modern times, I have no idea what my representatives are voting for in my name. But I can guarantee that politicians that I’ve helped put in office have voted for bills that would make me cringe. This isn’t something I’ll be able to control anytime soon (until I’m 35 and eligible to be the next Barack).
But there’s hope! The YouCut program was introduced a couple of weeks ago on Eric Cantor’s website. Each week the site gives you a choice of five porky government programs to cut and opens it up for voting by text or web. At the end of the week the votes are tallied and the winner is proposed to be cut before the House of Representatives. In its first week 280,000 Americans voted to cut an initiative that scales back welfare requirements that would have saved 2.5 billion dollars. The cut failed to pass with a vote of 177-240.
Regardless of your political persuasion you have to admit that this is pretty cool. I’d love it if more representatives gave their constituencies a say in the issues. Eric Cantor and his fiscally conservative posse are blazing trails and hopefully we’ll see more politicians jumping on social politics bandwagon soon.
http://www.republicanwhip.house.gov/YouCut/
Social Media Today: Facebook Quitters Quit Quitting, Popular Mechanics Shows You Do Have to be Pretty to be Popular, “Pilgrim” Trailer Debuts on Facebook
Tuesday, June 1st, 2010
It’s a new month and for some the coming of June means the arrival of summer. Here in the PNW, we know that our summer won’t really start until about July, but we’re a bit hopeful we may get some sun soon. Here are the stories we’re looking at today to keep our minds off our vitamin D deficiencies:
Facebook Quitters Count to Three, Only a Few Jump Ship
If you saw Mashable’s poll the other day asking if people really truly were going to ditch their Facebook accounts, you’d know the movement wasn’t really gaining much steam.
34,000 people actually committed to quitting Facebook the other day, but how many (if any) actually did remains a mystery. Will it be like people who say they supported Barack Obama, but didn’t actually vote for him?
Say those 34,000 people did actually quit, that’d be what, 0.0085 percent? Way to stick it to the man.
Popular Mechanics iPad Application Struts Its Stuff
While many have been touting the magazine experience on the iPad, there haven’t been that many great looking examples out there (until WIRED, which I’ll actually review here on the blog tomorrow). Then, Popular Mechanics unveiled their application and BAM… everything’s different.
Without going too deep, let me say that the full experience of magazines on the iPad is incredible. There, that’s all you get for now.
Check out Gizmodo’s piece on the latest PM for iPad.
“Scott Pilgrim vs. The World” Debuts Trailer on Facebook
Movie previews aren’t just for making you hate going to the movies, they’re also for Facebook. The new film Scott Pilgrim vs. The World trailer actually debuted on Facebook recently, bringing the social networking platform to a new level of cool – Michael Cera cool.
It’s still yet to be seen if the movie follows the Michael Cera movie formula… I’m guessing it does.
Starbucks Hearts Seattle
Thursday, May 20th, 2010Talk about giving back to the place from which you came. Starbucks is kicking off a little Seattle love with their Friday deals dedicated to showing the people on the Puget Sound just how much they appreciate their patronage with a little something they’re calling “We-Love -You Fridays”
Here’s the skinny from their site:
This week’s perk for Seattleites is the chance at a free ticket to see the Seattle Mariners (maybe) win.
Here’s the paid promotion I saw on Facebook that drove me to the site:
Looks like I need to build some time into my Friday morning routine to account for a Starbucks run.
A Social Media Feel Good Story
Wednesday, May 5th, 2010
Boeing’s recent situation regarding an ambitious 8 year old boy named Harry turned what could have been a typical corporate cold shoulder persona into a feel good made for TV storyline – with Social Media playing the main protagonist’s role.
Here’s the basic premise:
A young and avid airplane lover submits his aircraft design to Boeing – fully equipped with firefighting capabilities. In return, he receives a form letter pretty much rejecting his idea in a stiff, corporate template. His father, unsure of how to break a child’s creative spirits, turns to his blog and Twitter account for advice. . .
Let the power of social media (as well as essential social skills) take over from here. People appalled by the company’s response began voicing this disappointment in channels like Twitter. Luckily, Boeing got the message, as they had just begun tweeting a few weeks earlier. They actively responded to Harry supporters, thus halting the income of negative messages and instead ended up getting props for hearing and responding. “It was just so cool to see a company become kind of human,” Harry’s dad said.
Harry made out pretty well too. The Future of Flight museum called him about a kids’ drawing contest, the Museum of Flight offered him a tour, and Boeing is working on a more appropriate response to the child.
A good takeaway to remember is even if a situation occurs offline, be careful not to underestimate the possibility of social media outcomes. It could very well end up in an outpour of tweets, Facebook pages, blog posts and eventually hit major media outlets like the New York Times and Spring Creek Group blog, influencing a corporation to rethink how they connect with people in the first place.
Read the full article here: http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/05/03/boeings-social-media-lesson/?ref=technology
Chat Room-style Conversation Comes to Facebook: Brands Rejoice, Look Sort of Uncomfortable
Tuesday, May 4th, 2010
Remember the days of AOL when you’d hop on your family’s PC, wait for the modem to connect (I used to make up songs to go with the awful buzzing and bleep-blooping sounds), then immediately after hearing “You’ve Got Mail” dive straight into your favorite chat room? Clobby is just like that, only it’s 2010 and Clobby is offering this functionality on pages within the Facebook environment.
The Upside
Real-time communication. It’s just that simple. Where quick responses on Twitter were once the quickest way a user could get a response from a brand, users can now hop in a chat room on a branded Facebook page and get answers in real-time from ambassadors of the brand.
The (Potential) Downside
I say potential because things in the Facebook realm teeter on the edge of colossal awesomeness and detrimental failure all the time – it’s the nature of the beast. Opening up a chat room on a branded Facebook page might be a great idea if you’ve got an active community that loves to talk about just about anything having to do with your product. If you’re a brand that consistently is the butt of jokes, opening up a real-time arena for those jokes to be told and seen might prove to be a problem (or it could turn out to be great as people see you’re really interested in communicating with your publics).
What Does This Mean for Brands?
Chat within Facebook offers a new way for brands to interact with their fans and potential fans. Taking that step beyond the @reply on Twitter or the reply to a post on Facebook and moving into the realm of real-time communication furthers the goal of providing real community around a brand or product.
Twitter Q&As have become all the rage for socially connected brands, but with a tool like Clobby, brands can hold a virtual press conference right there on a tab, complete with moderation and the ability to link to content within the Facebook environments to illustrate points and guide further conversation.
In the End
Don’t be surprised if you see some of the already avant-garde brands dipping their toes into the Facebook chat room pool, if only for short periods of time around controlled events like launches and updates. We’ll be keeping an eye on this and suggest you do too.
Social Media Conference Northwest 2010 Wrap
Monday, March 29th, 2010
I’m fairly sure that most in attendance at last week’s Social Media Conference Northwest 2010 would agree that the event was a hit. Check out this article in the Herald which features our very own Clay McDaniel for a good overview of the content.
Also, check out the Social Media Conference Northwest 2010 site for great video interviews with attendees and presenters.
Here are a few of our favorites:
Turn the Nestlé Facebook FAIL into a WIN for Your Brand in Five Steps
Friday, March 19th, 2010
If you’ve been watching, well, pretty much anything that’s not basketball today, you’ve no doubt seen the debacle that’s unfolding over on the Nestlé Facebook page. If not, check out this AdAge article for an overview.
However, this could just have easily been a case study full of WIN instead of a case study ripe with FAIL that will no doubt be included in the “what not to do” section of decks for years to come. At the core, the mistake wasn’t necessarily made on the Facebook page, but in the communication layer that exists between Nestlé and their agency (or possibly agencies).
To make sure this never happens to you, here are our five steps for creating PR and SMM WIN:
- Have a Plan – Oftentimes the jump into social media is made with a sort of “well, everyone else is doing it, we might as well do it too” sort of thinking – bad idea. Have a plan for what you want to accomplish in the social media space. This will help you divide duties among your groups and agencies.
- Divide and Conquer – Overlap isn’t your friend. When overlap in responsibilities occurs, that’s when things fall through the cracks. Give distinct responsibilities to your teams/agencies and hold them accountable.
- Lay the Groundwork for Communication – Funnily enough, communications companies are notoriously bad at communicating. By creating a clear path for escalation of problems/questions, you can sidestep the bullets being slung at your brand and gracefully respond with the correct information.
- There’s no I in TEAM – If your agencies decide to go all-out in competing for themselves alone, your brand will be the one that suffers. Create a sense of team within your larger group and emphasize that wins for the brand outweigh an individual’s wins— despite the compartmentalized nature of the work.
- If You’re Not Early, You’re Late – The social media world moves at a breakneck pace. In order to be on time, you’ve got to be early in thinking about what the next issue you’ll be faced with will be. Then you can bring your agencies together and create a plan of attack.
*NOTE: The Nestle image above was not changed in any way.
Daily Recap: SCG at SxSWi
Tuesday, March 16th, 2010
For a shop that focuses on three key areas (analytics, engagement and campaigns) dividing and conquering the massive list of available panels at SxSWi becomes a somewhat easier task. However, even when you attack the festival with a team of eager attendees, you’re left with that nagging question: “What if I missed the single most-important panel of SxSWi?”
On that note, here are just a few of the things that caught our attention at SxSWi so far:
What Channel is Your Phone Turned To?
Tuesday, March 2nd, 2010There was a time when you used your remote to change the channel. Now more and more often, the remote and channel are the same device.
Pew Research released a report that claims 33 percent of cell phone owners now access news on their cell phones. So we’ve finally figured out what the people who aren’t Facebooking or texting are doing with their phones – they’re reading the New York Times or Perez Hilton.
The Pew report discusses, “two significant technological trends that have influenced news consumption behavior: First, the advent of social media like social networking sites and blogs has helped the news become a social experience in fresh ways for consumers. People use their social networks and social networking technology to filter, assess and react to news. Second, the ascent of mobile connectivity via smart phones has turned news gathering and news awareness into an anytime, anywhere affair for a segment of avid news watchers.”
Younger cell phone owners are more likely to look for news on their phones than from Katie Couric. In fact, according to the report, about 43 percent of those under 50 said they are mobile news consumers. And social media plays a big part, as more than 80 percent of respondents get or receive news via e-mailed links. But as Breitbart points out in their analysis of the report, the more things change, the more they stay the same. People’s #1 one concern is still the weather (72 percent), followed by current events (68 percent).
John Cook from Seattle’s own TechFlash found it worthwhile to mention that, “The authors of the study write that news has become omnipresent and people’s relationship to news is becoming portable, personalized and participatory.”
I think John is right when he focuses on the fact that news (and other information) is omnipresent. The “news cycle,” so to speak, is no longer valid. The classic product launch is a thing of the past. Making a big splash with a marketing or ad campaign is not effective unless there is credibility in the claim, and you can prove that the message is sustainable over time. There’s an effect in which every marketing action has an equal and opposite reaction. The more you promise, the more upset the crowd will be if you don’t deliver.
So how is this affecting the way news is being delivered?
“In one way it’s uplifting that over 60 percent of people using their phones for news are logging on to check current events. That goes against the passive news consumer we’ve heard about in TV for years,” says Cale Ramaker, an anchor at WOFL-TV in Orlando. “On the other hand it means all news outlets, in any median, need to refocus on not only delivering the news in multi-formats – but do it with an emphasis for the right now consumer.”
Cale’s point is valid. We now have more sources of information, more editors of the information, but also more opportunities to make critical decisions on whether the information is tainted. And seventy two percent of the survey’s respondents said that “most news sources today are biased in their coverage.” If the “objective” sources are biased, then the marketing sources are unbelievably easy to see through.
So at the end of the day, information continues to flow, and people can find it whenever and wherever they are. In fact, even if a marketing team lands an article with Kara Swisher, we may not read it there. We may get it via a friend’s Facebook post or Tweet while waiting for the bus.
Windows 7 Launch Rides the Wave of Social Engagement
Thursday, February 25th, 2010
When you’re Microsoft drumming up buzz about your biggest product launch in recent history isn’t all that hard. The challenge, even to one of the largest, most-known brands in the world comes when you look at that buzz and decide what to do with it. In this latest case, the Windows 7 OS launch, Microsoft and the Windows team linked their goals of creating awareness with new consumers, engaging existing consumers, and building advocacy and empowering champions by monitoring and engaging in the online communities where today’s consumers live out their lives: Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, blogs, and forums specifically.
Laying the Groundwork
While the excitement around the campaign drove large quantities of engagements, the Windows Team was out for months before launch, building support and creating lines of communication in the communities. The study lends weight to the practice by noting that the Windows Outreach Team was able to scale to fit needs during the natural product lifecycle.
Through the LookingGlass
With the addition of Microsoft’s own tool, LookingGlass, the group was able to not only monitor volume and sentiment around the launch, but also create an information loop as the chunks of info from Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Flickr, blogs, and forums were streamed to their tool for all to see on their Social Media Hub. For the first time during a major product launch, Microsoft fans and critics alike had a near real-time look at the information their fellow Web colleagues were discussing and were able to jump into the conversation themselves.
The Case Study
Wrapping Up
For more information, visit Marty Collins’ blog – Marketing Today.
*Full Disclosure: Microsoft Corporation is a client of Spring Creek Group
