Actionable Social Media

by Angela Moore on December 5, 2007

Community-built web sites, the popular Wikipedia and new sites allowing content being shared through “tagging” can be a great way to tap into links and search-driven traffic. This session looks at some social media services and strategies to tap into them in an appropriate manner.

Moderator:

  • Anne Kennedy, Manager, Managing Partner, Beyond Ink

Speakers:

  • Todd Parsons, Co-Founder and CPO, BuzzLogic
  • Adam Lavelle, Chief Strategy Officer, iCrossing
  • Jennifer Laycock, Editor-in-Chief, Search Engine Guide
  • Steven E. Marder, CEO & Co-Founder, Eurekster, Inc.
  • Tamera Kremer, Founder, Wildfire Strategic Marketing

Yes, I know. All you die-hard agenda adherence types are saying “wait! This session is out of order.” Laptop battery died (not from lack of power, from “irreparable damage”) and I have no outlet anywhere near me. Bogey.

 

Anne opens the session to a rather large audience. Social media is definitely a very hot topic today as the room is packed to standing room only. She covers the basic housekeeping items and then tells the panelists that they each have 5 minutes to cover their presentations. Pressure’s on.

 

Todd from Buzz Logic opens up first. BuzzLogic has been up and running for about 3 ½ years and it’s described as an on-demand social media platform that finds the “influencers” for clients in certain types of communities to engage in conversations about the client’s products. Re-reading this, it doesn’t make any sense. But they find out who the big shots are on the Web in terms of bloggers and social networks, find out what they are talking about and then tell you where to find them. Make sense? Good.

 

Stats time:

  • There are 57 million Americans who read blogs (Todd says his slide is outdated, it’s up to 65 million now)
  • 60% of readers are going to blogs solely for opinions. I thought you guys just thought I was funny.
  • 65% of online power shoppers use reviews generated by users and spend 10 minutes looking these over (in case you don’t know, that’s an eternity in cyber space)
  • There are 3.5 million conversations happening online everyday. Todd also notes that these are spread pretty evenly across the demographics and that one age group or gender is not dominating this arena.

 

The big example that Todd brings up is the Georgia emissions test vs. the Toyota Prius hubbub that happened about a month ago. This began to drive simultaneous conversations online involving bloggers, social media venues like Facebook, MySpace, etc, consumers, and the brands. All these guys were sharing link love (Todd says linking is getting a bad wrap lately and it shouldn’t. Got that right. I heart linking) and the conversations were flowing.

 

He talks about the two types of links happening: acquired (or solicited/ requested) and editorial (organic/ natural). The editorial links are harder to control but they are rooted in trust and powerful for many reasons. The biggest thing about these conversations is that they are driving authentic engagement for a multitude of users so anything other than authenticity will do it. Pay Per Post is an example of the search engines getting pretty aggressive and sniffing out the less than genuine stuff going on out there.

 

Adam from iCrossing starts off by saying he has 35 slides and 5 minutes to cover it all. (I won’t keep you in suspense, he makes it with about 13 seconds to spare.) iCrossing is a do-it-all shop that has been around since ’98.

 

We’re social animals in general, so social media makes sense for us to use online. We crave connections and some times we do it in rather un-cool ways. We have more ways than ever to create, find, share, and distribute content across the Web. Content doesn’t make social networks. It’s the personal networks that do that within the context of the social media.

 

Adam predicts that 70% of all content on the Web will be user generated by 2010. The other 30% will be from the brands themselves. Additionally, the UGC out there is taking over the search results, so brands do not own the conversations that are happening in cyberspace.

 

Jennifer Laycock from Search Engine Guide hearts Flickr and she shares some of the fun stuff you can do with it. The benefits of Flickr are:

  1. You can do images searches
    1. It’s also a big source of images for Technorati and Flickr.
    2. You can (and should) use the tags for the long tail keywords you are targeting
  2. Sense of Community
    1. More highly engaged since pictures take more time to go out and take, upload, name, and share than just writing a blog.
    2. This is particularly great for brand evangelists and industry experts.
  3. Links (Here’s the money part)
    1. It drives traffic and it allows keyword-rich text links.
    2. Spammers beware: You can’t do this for every image. Add value first to the conversation, then plug a link later and sparingly.

Stuff you’re gonna need to know:

  • Tagging
  • Add notes to your pics
  • Find and join communities
  • Geotag your images
  • Subscribe to user feeds
  • Use flickr widgets
  • Creative commons license lets you identify exactly how people can use/ share your images.

Tamera from Wildfire (based in Toronto) is up to talk about del.icio.us.

 

Good stuff:

  • Over 2 million users
  • You can tag any page on the internet
  • Compatible with other platforms
  • Shareable with other users
  • You can view popularity of any page
  • Tag as individual page or as a group (like hit all my fave stores, tag them as wish list, then send the list to my BFFs for my Christmas shopping list)

Tamera also went on to explain a project she did with AIMS (Association of Internet Marketing and Sales) in Canada. It was really interesting. Go check it out.

 

Steven’s turn and he’s with Eurekster (love the name) who created Swicki, a social search tool. He says search and online media in general has gone from a one-to-many setup to a many-to-many type deal. There are user centered engagements that are not being brand-driven, but community powered. When you have this user participation and it’s being guided by a publisher what you usually wind up with is brand reinforcement.

 

Looking internally, ask: what do we already have that we can leverage for this social style of tools and push out a reinforcement message of our brand? The key is to provide a useful tool that will basically build brand with and through it.

 

Swicki is customized widget that lends itself to becoming vertical search engine for users. It’s community based, so your friends can add to it. Over 100,000 Swickis have been built and you can monetize it.

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