Posts Tagged ‘social network’
100 Million People Taking Facebook on the Road
Wednesday, February 24th, 2010
We’ve all seen the stats that texting while driving has similar effects to your vehicular dexterity as downing a case of Kokanee (a nod to our Canadian friends up the road). But maybe we’re not actually texting. Is it possible we’re all Facebooking?
A few weeks ago, Facebook announced the following:
“Today, we hit another milestone…with more than 100 million people actively using Facebook from their mobile devices every month. This usage happens on almost every carrier in the world and comes less than six months after we announced 65 million people on Facebook Mobile.”
Some marketing teams still have giant whiteboards with doodles, where they are “strategizing” a Facebook road map for the next 12 months. But, isn’t it high time marketers stop thinking about Facebook as a Web site, and instead focus on how it will follow you around everywhere you go? I agree with Mediapost’s David Berkowitz, who says the following:
“The safe bet is in time that the mobile user base will nearly mirror the overall user base, and that most of its usage will derive from mobile users. Facebook is in an especially strong position to benefit from the mobile boom, as mobile measurement firm Ground Truth noted this month that 61% of mobile Web pageviews are served by social networking sites.”
So here’s the question for the marketer who still has a 2008 Social Media Strategy in 2010: Do I need to catch up, or can I just jump ahead to mobile? Starbucks and their 5 gabillion Facebook fans may be an inspiration to Fortune 500′s across the nation, but maybe the smarter move for large laggards is to skip the whole catch-up game and join the mobile party. Meanwhile, SMBs may want to investigate hyper-local, location-based mobile social media strategies.
It won’t be about ads popping up on your mobile Facebook page, but a tighter integration with PayPal and potentially some partnerships with folks like Whrrl, Foursquare, and Gowalla, could allow you to buy a beer for your friend at a bar, while you sit in a movie theater across town. Or, you could order a Sounders jersey while your friend is at the game, and have him pick it up at the souvenir stand.
So, fear not brave marketer. If you missed the original social media wave in 2007, look at the 100 Million Facebook users on mobile devices, and realize you get a second shot at the growth curve.
Facebook’s Legitimacy Problems: Are You Who We Thought You Were?
Thursday, October 15th, 2009
A recent post outlined steps Facebook is taking in requiring page owners to prove their connections with the brands they represent on the ever-growing social networking site. What does this mean for agencies? What are the short-term and long-term impacts? How will this affect your brand? Let’s take a look.
Prove It
Facebook essentially is providing page owners three ways to verify that they in fact have rights to develop and maintain a brand page and they can be found here:
- Add a badge or Fan Box widget to your Website – This is simple, really and can be done by sending a bit of code to whoever is code monkeying your site. It also provides a great focal point for driving traffic to your Fan Page.
- Add an official e-mail address to your personal Facebook account that can be used to verify your affiliation with the brand (this can also be that of an authorized outside entity like PR, marketing, advertising agency, etc.) – This is easy if you’re a recognized agency, but a little harder if your roles are mostly behind the scenes.
- Add another admin who has a legit e-mail address – This is probably the easiest thing to do. Simply add your client contact to the admins of the page, giving you instant legitimacy.
The Agency
For agencies that are building and maintaining Fan Pages for brands in the Facebook environment, this could be a bit of a sticking point as they have to work out, with their client, the level of visibility they want to have as to who is actually doing the legwork. However, in most cases, a client contact is already (or should be) and admin of the page so they can not only lend their legitimate e-mail address, but also their watchful eye to the account.
The Short Term
In the short term, proving the authenticity of these pages is going to create a bit of extra work, but the short-term rewards greatly outweigh the time needed to get your stamp of approval (is there actually a stamp of approval?). Like with Twitter, brands have always been able to make a case for deleting unauthorized accounts based on copyright law, but now Facebook is taking that a step further and actually making it easier to drive out those pages which might be representing brands in a less-than-authentic fashion.
By simply claiming your brand pages and legitimizing them, you’re essentially eliminating those other pages and, in some cases, Facebook may fold those pages’ fans into your fan base, giving them a legitimate source of interaction on Facebook— and you a broader fan base— in one fell swoop.
The Long Term
Long term, this seems like a strategy by Facebook to not only cut down on clutter and misinformation within the Facebook environment, but also a move toward offering brands added benefits for operating within Facebook. Don’t be surprised if these Facebook Fan Pages start developing multiple levels of functionality and complexity based on dollars spent on Facebook Advertising and direct buys. The team at Facebook is smart enough to make a move when they see an opportunity like this.
Unanswered Questions
While this is still a new(ish) issue, Facebook needs to provide a bit more information around the topic of what this actually means for brands. Will verified pages show up higher in search results, regardless of fan base and searchability? What’s the lag time between reporting a brand page and action being taken to remove that page? What are the criteria for moving fans from a page that might not be verified to the verified Fan Page?
Hopefully we’ll have answers to those, as well as the mounting pile of questions that will undoubtedly come out of this shift.
It’s a Love/Hate Relationship
Thursday, March 26th, 2009For as much heat and complaining that Facebook has been receiving lately from its users, they are still as dedicated and committed to their precious social networking site as ever. With the number of users nearing 200 million, Facebook is taking all necessary steps to keep its people happy – though they tend to be what caused the upset in the first place.
A few weeks ago it was the Terms of Service Policy scandal upsetting the Facebook public, this week the new homepage updates have caused some uproar. And in both cases, Facebook has not only given in to the pressure, but opened the doors (or online forum) for users to express their opinions and give feedback.
Apparently users were especially unhappy regarding the lack of filtering tools the new homepage offers. Recently, Facebook announced that they plan to change the current design to give users greater control over what updates appear in the main stream as well as make improvements to the Highlights section and overall design.
So what do you think about the new homepage? Better yet, what do you think about Facebook’s reaction to its users’ disapproval?
Is this a thoughtful, democratic approach to managing a social networking site? Or do Facebook’s users have its designers and decision-makers a bit whipped?
The Rise of the Facebook Democracy
Friday, February 27th, 2009In an effort to smooth over the terms of service policy chaos that went down earlier this month, the social networking site Facebook has adopted a new and rather democratic user voting process.
The swell of negative responses Facebook received regarding the change of its policy which stated that it had ownership of all users’ content eventually pushed the social networking site to revert back to the original version.
Then yesterday the company announced the “Facebook Principles,” which are, “a set of values that will guide the development of the service, and Statement of Rights and Responsibilities that make clear Facebook’s and users’ commitments related to the service.”
In short, Facebook will now notify users prior to making major changes in its policy among a long list of other things. Facebook is also inviting the community to review, comment and vote on the proposed Principles. You can read it all here and leave your two cents if you’d like.
Just one day into the public announcement of these new Principles and the Facebook discussion board has already been flooded with hundreds of contradicting opinions and concerned comments as well as a group membership nearing 10,000 people. Best yet, the company stated that they are going to let this online town hall forum continue for an entire thirty days.
After the thirty days, Facebook will review all comments, take them into consideration and then republish the Principles with added changes. To get an idea of posts to come, and perhaps a good warning, one Facebook user states, “…..Having people ‘vote’ on terms can only lead to havoc.”
I guess we’ll just have to wait and see if all Facebook hell breaks loose or if indeed the people speak and are heard. In the meantime, wait a few more weeks before posting your Mardi Gras pics.
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Thursday, February 19th, 2009Happy Birthday, Facebook… Now, Change the World
Tuesday, February 10th, 2009
Happy birthday, Facebook.
If you were a human you’d be in half-day kindergarten, still taking scheduled naps. You’d have 5 friends who consist of your two neighbors, a weird kid that you met on the bus your first day and your two older brothers who made you eat dirt. The only thing expected of you would be that you tie you shoes (sometimes) and can go to the restroom by yourself at the supermarket. You’d be blowing out the candles on a huge cake with your friend and family around, wishing for that Nintendo DS.
But you’re not a human; you’re a super-charged juggernaut of a social networking site born from the womb of an Ivy League institution. Your friends number in the millions, or 150 million active users to be almost exact. Every day more and more is expected of you as those millions of friends share their life stories on your pages (but still expect increasing security). So, instead of blowing out five glowing candles, you get to listen to every self-proclaimed social media expert pick apart the last five years of your existence and plot your eventual demise.
Look how cute you were: http://web.archive.org/web/20040212031928/http://www.thefacebook.com/.
What will we ask of you next? I’m sure we’ll think of something.
SCG Was There: OMMA Social
Wednesday, January 28th, 2009Recently, some members of our Spring Creek Group team went down to San Francisco to mix and mingle with other like-minded social media pros, gain some insight into emerging social media trends, and learn more about what the future of this industry entails.
OMMA Social, a one day conference designed to help guide marketing and media professionals through the social media field, had an attendance of roughly 300 people. In a time when budgets tend to be tight, this impressive turnout shows the huge interest businesses and clients are taking in social media tools and new media channels.
The conference was emceed by Cathy Taylor from MediaPost, and included top name speakers in the online advertising and social media industry such as keynotes Angela Courtin, SVP Marketing, Entertainment & Content, MySpace and Chris Curtin, Vice President, Digital Strategy, Corporate Marketing, Hewlett-Packard Company.
Visible Technologies and Spring Creek Group Partner to Deliver Robust Social Media Management and Engagement Solutions to Fortune 100 Clients
Wednesday, January 14th, 2009By BusinessWire
SEATTLE, BUSINESS WIRE –
Visible Technologies:
- Visible Technologies, an industry-leading provider of social media monitoring and engagement solutions, today announced a partnership with Spring Creek Group, an innovative online marketing agency. Spring Creek will offer its customers Visible Technologies’ social media analysis and engagement software platform, TruCast.
- The strategic alliance allows Spring Creek to extend the capabilities of its social media management (SMM) services by enabling clients to more accurately measure their online brand awareness and the effectiveness of their social media marketing programs.
- By deploying proven SMM methodologies and leveraging robust technology tools like TruCast, Spring Creek gives clients such as Microsoft the ability to track relevant brand conversations online, gain actionable marketing intelligence and engage with the social media communities that matter most to their brand.
- Spring Creek Group is an innovative online marketing agency that helps companies of all sizes improve brand awareness and increase site traffic through social media-based online marketing methods. Spring Creek helps brands connect with their customers via innovative social media marketing programs such as branded online communities, blogs and social networks that result in higher brand awareness, increased sales and deeper customer loyalty.
- Visible Technologies provides brands, including Microsoft, Panasonic and Hormel, the ability to bolster brand reputation, build revenue and measure the success of social media engagement. The company’s TruCast2.0 social media monitoring and engagement platform launched in May 2008.
QUOTES
- ‘Engaging with social media is not an option for marketers today ‘ it’s an imperative. Consumers are using social media like blogs, consumer-generated reviews and social networks to compare our products and determine what other people are saying about them. Working with Spring Creek Group and using Visible Technologies’ TruCast platform, we’re able to create social media marketing programs that actively engage customers in a dialogue with one another, and then track and measure the effectiveness of these programs to drive sales and build brand value.’ – Marty Collins, Microsoft Group Marketing Manager, Windows Interactive and Digital Marketing
- ‘Over the past 18 months we have been building our relationship with Spring Creek Group, working in concert with them to help industry-leading clients like Microsoft achieve their marketing objectives through effective social media monitoring, measurement and engagement.We look forward to replicating this success with current and future clients.’ ‘ Blake Cahill, senior vice president of marketing, Visible Technologies
- ‘Our partnership with Visible Technologies has proven to be a huge success helping companies like Microsoft launch, measure and optimize social marketing programs to achieve real business results. The TruCast software platform strengthens our established social media management methodology by allowing brands to easily monitor and track millions of simultaneous online conversations, articles and posts.’ ‘ Clay McDaniel, co-founder and principal of Spring Creek Group
SUPPORTING RESOURCES
- Listen to Marty Collins, Microsoft Group Marketing Manager, comment on TruCast
- Spring Creek Group
- Spring Creek Group Blog
- Visible Technologies
- TruCast
- VisInsightsBlog
About Visible Technologies
Visible Technologies helps companies listen and learn what consumers are saying about them online, and it enables brands to participate in the right conversations with the right influencers at the right time. With this real-time business insight and response, companies build relationships with customers, bolster their brands and grow revenue. Its innovative TruCast platform is the industry’s first complete solution for social media analysis and participation. Visible Technologies also helps brands and individuals manage and protect their online reputations with the powerful TruView’ search engine solution. For more information, go to http://www.visibletechnologies.com, or follow the blog at http://www.visinsights.com.
About Spring Creek Group
Spring Creek Group is an innovative online marketing agency that helps companies of all sizes improve brand awareness, increase sales, and drive site traffic through social media-based online marketing. Spring Creek Group is made up of experienced, skilled, and results-oriented online marketers with a passion for using the most innovative marketing tactics ‘ including branded communities, interactive content, and next-generation social networking’ to drive measurable business results. Members of Spring Creek Group draw on deep e-commerce and online marketing experience at companies such as RealNetworks, Microsoft, Amazon, Judy’s Book.com, Salton, and Disney Internet Group. The company’s clients include both local growing companies and nationally established industry leaders like Microsoft, Corbis and Paramount Farms. For more information, visit www.springcreekgroup.com www.springcreekgroup.com.
A Case Study About Social Media and Controversial Uses of the Word “All”
Monday, November 10th, 2008At Spring Creek Group, we love case studies. They are the easiest way to explain to clients (and future clients) why social media is important and such an influential way to start actual online conversations. So imagine our pleasure when we were able to turn the case study microscope upon ourselves, after an unexpected opportunity was thrust upon us by someone we have never met.
The situation: As a leading Social Media agency, Spring Creek Group is sometimes asked to comment on industry events or trends. Our CEO, Clay McDaniel, is our appointed spokesperson. It’s usually a good opportunity for him to comment in an established media publication, part of the “mainstream media” if you will.
Clay’s recent post at DMNews included the phrase, “We’re all spending plenty of time in our social network accounts,” a fairly innocuous phrase that nevertheless set the social media wildfires ablaze. Over at Bly.com, professional copywriter Bob Bly took particular offense with the word “all” and provided the following response,
“I for one spend NO time on the social network sites — Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, and LinkedIn — where I have accounts. So Clay is wrong….There are very few instances where “all” — which in Clay’s statement is synonymous with “everyone” — can be safely used.”
Now Bob Bly is an established copywriter, and technically he is right. In a strictly literal sense, the use of extreme words such as “all,” “never,” or “no time” should rarely be used. But instead of arguing semantics, let’s follow the social media train, which is far much more interesting.
Unlike a read-only advertisement, this conversation doesn’t end with Bly’s criticism on his blog. And if there’s any form of online media more conversational than the actual blog post, it’s the post’s comment thread, where Clay gets criticized once again, from a poster named Brian who complains,
“That’s the general problem with the Social Networking crowd. They surround themselves with each other, so it appears to them that everyone is doing it. And once you think that everyone is doing something that thing suddenly seems to be really important.”
The complainer has taken Bly’s specific technical argument and taken a broader brush to slam social media professionals in general. This is the fear of big corporations, who are scared of social media because of what a random blogger or commenter might say about their product. Advertising is positive, while social media invites criticism. And that rightly frightens people who are managing marketing campaigns for lousy products. But marketers sometimes forget that when someone who doesn’t fully understand your product criticizes it, you are just as likely to have an evangelist come to defend you with a much stronger and relevant argument.
Such is the case here, where a champion of Social Media pops up and politely criticizes Bob Bly for being out of touch with today’s environment. Michael Foreman writes on his blog (which includes a trackback to Bly.com),
…If you follow (Bly’s) blog, you know he hails from a time before web 2.0. He’s skeptical of social media trends…So why have accounts on Twitter, MySpace, Facebook and LinkedIn if you never check them?… I think a little old school bias shows through his statement. Even big business and law enforcement are turning to sites like Twitter for feedback and communications. And the last election demonstrates the raw power of social networking. (See MoveOn.org, and more recently Change.gov, Obama’s new transition site.) No, you don’t need to be plugged-in 24/7, or get a Facebook account because it’s ‘cool’ as one comment on the post suggested. But we live in an age of paperless newspapers, iPhone apps, viral marketing, cloud computing and an increasingly mobile workforce. It’s good to log in every now and then.”
So let’s track this:
- Clay McDaniel contributes to an article on DMNews.com.
- Bob Bly criticizes the article and writes disparagingly about Clay Daniel (sic).
- Clay is then both attacked and defended by Bly.com readers.
- A thoughtful response is posted at ByMichaelForeman.com, who judging by his blog, may be the most interesting read out of all of us.
- And then of course the story comes full circle back to the Spring Creek Group blog.
The Conclusion: We think this is a pretty interesting example of how social media really is a conversation that leads to other conversations, and much more powerful than a “read-only” piece that you view once and then forget. We can’t put an ROI number on it, but at least eight people engaged in the conversation, across at least four pieces of online real estate, and many more people had opinions that they didn’t bother to write down. Can you say the same thing about a brochure?
Epilogue: For the record, Clay McDaniel apologizes for his use of the word “ALL,” and to prove his apology is genuine, refuses to say it will “NEVER” happen again.
Will Social Networks Replace Email?
Thursday, November 6th, 2008Technology continually changes our means of communication. There was actually a time when mail was written on paper and men delivered these messages by foot, horseback or even train. Then email came, and in less than 15 years, was transformed from something you did on AOL to a vital and necessary business communications tool.
Now, will social networks supplant email? Spring Creek Group’s Clay McDaniel debates Sean O’Neill on this subject at DMNews.com.
