social strategy for new media marketing
Just two quick updates for the week of June 7-11, 2010:
- This weekend I will be on WERS 88.9 FM “You Are Here”. This a weekly public affairs show. I will be speaking on using social networking to brand yourself and business.
-June 4, 2010 9: CST I will be a guest on Business Insanity Talk Radio with Barry J. Moltz. Call in with your questions at 347-426-3202
So you want to get traffic to your website you say? You want to be an online rockstar? You want to build your brand online? You want to be the next Ijustine or Chris Brogan?
Well let me tell you a secret.. its easy. You just need to use the right tools and tricks. Let me share with you some of the free, simple and easy ways to do it. These are things I try to do whenever possible. I will do this in list form, as people like lists!
-Setup a Flick Account and post photos of things your doing.
-Post to your Youtube account
-Setup a Linkedin account and write a bio about who you are and what you are doing.
-Setup a Twitter Account and network with people in your industry/field, as well as those looking for information on it.
-Use Google Reader and share items
-Leave comments on others blogs. How else are you going to become part of a community?
-Create a personal website to be your single point of resource. Have all these are social networking sites link to it.
-Be Honest when your wrong. Trust me, I make mistakes a lot, when they are pointed out to me, I share this on my networks
-Thank people in your community when they Retweet, Share, Repost, Pass on, Plurk, etc something you have said or created
-Make your personal website easy to use and easy to pass the information on.. i.e install widgets like Tweetmeme, Facebook Like, and Sharethis
-Do you know who your competition is? What they are doing? Go check them out
-Have a Facebook Fanpage
-Use the same username/handle everywhere you can. Grab it whenever a new social networking site comes up
-Have a web presence everywhere you can.
-Use a site like Ping.fm to post to multiple sites
-Yes you should have a page on MySpace.. it can not hurt.
-Have you looked at FourSquare and Gowalla to find a way to use them? Geolocation is hot right now!
-Make sure to add your website to Google, Yahoo and Bing. It makes it easier for people to find you.
-Install Google Analytics.
-Use Google Analytics…see how people are finding your site. What are the keywords they are using?
-Write updates/posts that are relevant to your brand, using the keywords you to associate with your brand.
-Google yourself..see what comes up in search. An ego search can be a good thing sometimes.
-Submit your site to Technorati
-Submit your posts to Stumbleupon
-Yes people still use Digg.. again it can not hurt
-Customize your Twitter background to stand out
-Do not always “Shout Out” what you are doing. It is called “Social Networking” be social. Interact with others, ask questions, and comment back. Do not just talk about yourself.. you will fail.
-Go to Meetups, Tweetups, conferences, mixers..whatever you want to call them. All of the above is great, but you can not beat real life face time! Check out sites like Meetup and Upcoming for events
These are just some off the top of my head.. what are some of your tips and tricks?
May 31st was “Quit Facebook Day” and it was not even:
-A blip on the radar
-A hiccup
-Bump in the road
-etc
-etc
I could go on but you get the idea. It just did not make a different. Did anyone really think people would mass exodus Facebook over the privacy control issues?
People are not going to give up
-seeing pictures of their friends,
-party invites
-reconnecting with people they have not spoken with since 2nd grade.
-Hearing about how wonderful life is for other people.
-Getting Birthday wishes from people they barely know
Bottom line this should not come as a shock to anyone that nothing happened. Facebook, is here to stay. Heck if 10 million people had left yesterday it would still have over 390 millions users! Sure it will morph and change like anything else, but unlike MySpace, it seems to be here for the long haul.
Heck take a look at the facts of Facebook:
Dear CNN,
I have a good friend, who for some reason about 10 years ago decided to leave lovely California and move to, Nashville. Yes, he did it for a woman. No, they are no longer together. Today, he is happily married with kids, and owns a Smoothie King.
He has been updating his Facebook status with info on the flooding in his area. I had heard in passing about the flooding but did not really pay attention. That was until he started updating his Facebook status with links to videos and websites.
I thought, I should go check what was happening and get more info. I went to CNN.com and saw this:
Where were the amazing links that my friend had? Where was info on the flooding? I could find info on:
-Porn Director Seeks Office
-3-D Gaming
-Photographer Captures Arctic
..and then yes I saw it small references to the flooding in Nashville. With boring articles.
Here is my point, wouldn’t the page have more impact, more information and be more informative if they used things like YouTube and Twitter? Things my friend had been posting?
Here let me list some of them for you, people like lists:
Amazing right? Wouldn’t these videos grab you more and heck, be more informative? More “WOW” factor! More “POP”
Then you have Twitter, where there are real time updates and comments by people. Why is there no feed up? Here is a sample..
Again, comments from real people being shared by real people. I know you have that Ireport thing and your trying, but well.. try a little harder. Okay?
Seems to me your missing the mark here.
Gee, I cant imagine why traditional media is having problems… 
What are your thoughts?
Sincerely,
Dave Peck
I’m a bad blogger
There I said it, I will say it again. I am a bad blogger.
It has been several weeks since I have posted a new update. Excuses? Sure I have lots. I have been working on several projects like:
This amazing movie based on the true story of Logan & Noah Miller, staring Ed Harris opens this Friday!
Yes, I just did a plug. I am allowed to do that once in a while.
Im going to get back on track and post weekly. I can do it.. right? What should I be blogging about?
All kinds of things. Lets see there is..hold on. Better yet, let me share it with you in a list. People like lists.
1. How to engage your community
2.Using Geolocation in your business
3. Do you need a blog anymore?
4. My favorite non-social media blogs
5. How to covert your online community into brand advocates
6. Do you need a Facebook Fanpage?
7. Why schools should use school media
8. Online communities: Your probably part of one and don’t even know it
9. How MySpace went wrong
10. Is Podcasting over?
11. Do you really need to be on Twitter?
Okay the list can go on and on.. what would you like to see a blog post on?
Is there something in particular?
Help a guy out.
Okay..okay.. that is a bad title for a blog. It was way to easy to come up with, but I had to go for it.
Today, right now, check your watch, if you still wear one, March 30, 2010.. there is nothing hotter then geolocation. You know its hot when Facebook & Twitter step into the game.
What is Geolocation? Well, thanks to a GPS-enabled smartphone such as the Apple iPhone, Google Nexus One, or RIM BlackBerry, you can use it to let your friends know where you are, or to find places recommended by people you know, or to check in remotely at clubs, bars, and restaurants. Regardless of privacy concerns, it looks like it is here to stay. There are apps like:
Enough to make your head spin right? Good thing Brightkite came out with Check.in. It updates all of the geolocation sites, sort of like a Ping.fm
So, why should businesses care? Big or small there is a wealth of information for a business to get. Think about it:
-You will know who your best customers are
-How often people are coming to your business location
-You can offer them instant discounts via their handheld
-Know where your clients are coming from and where they are going
Is your business using geolocation?
Blog? What blog?
I’m lagging updating my blog. The quilt is as bad as when I do not go to the gym in the morning. (No, I am not being sarcastic.)
So do I have a fantastic, earth shattering, way deep and insightful like Chris Brogan post for you? Nope…
Im just going to share with you all the things I have going on in the next 30 days. Yep, Plugs. Hey you were warned, it was in the blog title! (sorta)
-March 12, 2010 SXSW: I will be speaking with Sarah White on “Using Social Media to Score.. a Job (Obviously)“ Come join us for this core conversation. Very happy to have it covered by Austion360 as one of its panel previews!
-March 13, 2010 SXSW: I was honored to be asked to be on the Community Innovation Summit which is sponsored by PayPal. This panel is the first Community Innovation Summit of leaders of Developer Networks. It is a lively discussion about fostering innovation in online communities. I will speaking with Dave Mcclure of Founders Fund, Wayne Sutton (Twine Interactive), Naveed Anwar(PaypalX) and Evans Cohen (FourSquare)
-March 23, 2010 I will be doing a webinar with David Rodniski for Zubernace. Info on the webinar can be found here
-March 24, 2010 I will be doing a webinar for AARP with Susan Joyce of job-hunt.org. You can sign up for it here
So these events plus my normal daily work for my clients at LSF Interactive is keeping me busy. That being said I am always easy to find on Twitter.
Okay now I need to come up with a real blog post..
I feel like a lot of people think Social Media is, well over rated. Is it? It could be. Maybe it is not.
You hear a lot of Social Media this. Social Networking that. New Media..Old Media…blah blah blah. All these terms being thrown around to describe this new way of marketing, bonding, selling and such. It makes you wonder is it a fad? Will it go the way of the pet rock and Crocs?
I reached out to my network and asked a simple question: “Is Social Media A Fad?” I got a lot of responses on this, alot! I thought I would share some of them with you in list form. People like lists.
-Donny Rhoades, Internet marketing Coordinator for the Law Offices of James Scott Farrin:
Not at all, simple communication en masse or privately among people has almost been adopted by everyone. Social media is a better tool with which we communicate our personal message or our company’s value. Perhaps the fads are the platforms and the applications themselves. It seems like the popularity in each of them quickly spikes and then levels out. Much of the buzz continues to brew because social media continues to evolve other forms of media (i.e. the news is generated and spread much quicker as a result of the widespread adoption of social media).
-Paul Charlebois, Chief Experience Officer at Phresh Communications:
NO!!! A resounding NO! A thousand, nay million, nay hundred million NOs! As it stands, Facebook is the fourth largest nation in the world. Social media is much like the markets of old where people would gather and sell their wares, enjoy conversation, share stories and get news. Social media combines many of the best aspects of newspaper, radio, television and more with the added value of having connectivity to your colleagues and friends. Perhaps some of the tools we consider to be social media such as facebook, twitter and dare i say it, linkedin, will change or even fall to the wayside, much like myspace did a few years ago. But the theory of social media is founded on the basis that people want to connect with other people. This will never change – we have a basic human need to feel connected and have community in our lives. Viva la society!
-Steve Cunningham, CEO of digital marketing agency. Social media book reviewer for @mashable. Write for @bizmore:
I think Clay Shirky said it best in his TED talk ( and probably the most insightful 15 minutes ever spent on the topic): “The choice we face, anybody who wants to have a message heard anywhere in the world, isn’t whether or not that’s the media environment we want to operate in, that’s the media environment we’ve got. The question we all face now is how can we all make best use of this medium.”
-Ryan Helmstetler, Account Executive
No, social media has been around for years. The general public is now embracing social media as part of their lives. The biggest question for most client’s is ROI, effect campaigns produce results. Don’t believe me about ROI, I was given a project to sell modular homes through my client’s FB page, and just today we sold a home by lead generation though the FB page.
-Jayne Cravens, International Development Management Coyote Communications
The term, yes, most definitely. No one is doing things online that wasn’t being done back in even the late 1980s via USENET. So much of the breathless rhetoric now about what’s supposedly happening online is EXACTLY the same as what was said about, say, The Well (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_WELL) and various First Class Client communities set up for cities throughout Silicon Valley. That said, when the Web came along, a lot of newcomers to the Internet used it only as an online brochure, and they didn’t think of the Internet as Interactive beyond email. The “older” people all over so-called “social media” were people who loved IM in the early part of the last decade — remember when everyone was breathless about that? But it was Friendster, then MySpace, then Facebook, etc., that got more of the general public focused on more dynamic content and quickie interactions. I have yet to see any real rule changes as far as online communications — I’ve been reading things written back in the 1990s, and have laughed out loud — it’s all the same thing! So, what fad term will be used to rebrand the Internet next?
What are your thoughts on the subject?
Another year down.. it seems to me as we get older the years just move faster. I swear I was 16 years old just last week. Well, I know I act like I am a kid still. I will grow up soon, I promise.
I want to take a moment to look back at some of the top Social Media moments for this past year. Instead of you reading what I think, let us take a look at what you guys think are the top moments. I reached out to my community for their opinions. Let me share their responses and thoughts in list form. As well, people like lists.
-Lisa Whelan, Business development, strategy & marketing consultant: It’s been a great year in social media. These are a few of my favorite moments… The results of the 3rd annual research study conducted by UMASS Dartmouth researchers on the use of Social Media within the Inc. 500. They found “social media matters and is here to stay,” with 91% of respondents using at least one social media tool (versus 77% of respondents in 2008 and 43% saying that social media was a “very important” part of their marketing/business strategy. Dell announcing that directly attributed $3 Million in revenue generation to its use of Twitter between June 07 and June 09. Motorola’s release of the CLIQ with MOTOBLUR was interesting. It highlighted the growing convergence between Mobile and social media and provided a new way for consumers to easily access their social networks from a mobile device straight out of the box.
-Tamela Coval, SR Vp Business Development at Rentwiki.com: For those of us who never cease to be amazed by the “truth is stranger than fiction” idiom, it’s a toss-up between…
When Ashton Kutcher became the first ever to roll over the “1 Million Twitter Follower”mark. OR When John Mayer and Jennifer Aniston broke up because he was addicted to Twitter.You can ROTFL or roll your eyes over these stories, but they made history, social statements regarding our culture (or lack of it) and influence how we all live work and play.
-Spencer Helm, SEM Specialist at Amplify Interactive: The Iranian elections proved Twitter and Social Media could be a force for change and valuable information aside from what your favorite celebrity is doing, or suggestions from your friends.
-Kevin Lockett, Founder at HireJam: Key moment of the year, bar none was Michael Jackson’s death on Twitter. I’m a MJ fan and I was saddened that he died, but to me, that was the day Twitter (and TMZ) became a force for not just social media types, but non social media types worldwide. Information was coming so fast and furious that people on Twitter were dispensing the news faster than professional news outlet. I was able o send my MJ Tiwitter info to non social media friends MJ info via text, emails, and my Web.20 friends on Facebook and MySpace. That day in June is one that I will never forget, but it is also a day that I realized the true power of social media.
-Lous D. LoPresti ll, Strategic Consulting: The utilization of twitter’s platform by the Iranian protestors was and is PARAMOUNT to everything else. Coverage of a pop-star’s death pales in comparison.
-Margie Clayman, Director of Development at Clayman Advertising: I agree, the use of Twitter during the Iranian protests was really an astounding preview of what the world could be like perhaps a mere few months or years from now.
-Adam Metz, Principal Metz Consulting: The ROI moment: When Salesforce launched the Chatter program, which allows brands to discretely track outcomes on a customer-to-customer level for large scale-social customer management implementations.
What do you think the top moment for Social Media was in 2009?
