Mixing up the hot stuff.
All things Digital Marketing, Social Media, Web Development, SEO and Domaining
Weekly Digital Trends
This week in hot digital trends…
LIFX – A WiFi Enabled, Multi-Color LED Light Bulb That You Control With Your iPhone http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/limemouse/lifx-the-light-bulb-reinvented
Elektrobiblioteka - Revenge of the Book http://tmblr.co/Z8k03xT9f2Lj
Celebrating 500 Google Chrome Experiments http://500.chromeexperiments.com/
Experience Virgin America (Immersive, Impressive website) http://experience.virginamerica.com/
How Online Behavioural Advertising Works
What is Dead May Never Die
Want!
A recent article in Gizmodo reports that Facebook looks like it is discreetly testing out a “want” button on its site. If this turns out to be a reality, it’ll add a Pinterest-like dimension to this behemoth of a social media site.
However, with “like” buttons already so hard to figure out how monetise, how much worth will a “want” button really have for brands or people? With Pinterest the concept of “want” is, put in a simple form, a collection of pictures.
With Facebook, if someone were to “want” something, what are the next steps? Some areas of potential include having “want” buttons act as a registry for life. People could get some great gift ideas for friends. Those who share the same “wants” perhaps rally together and meet their “want” goal.
Implications: Digital behaviour does not always follow through to actual behaviour and is tricky to measure. Brands and companies should consider harnessing the motivation behind “likes” and “wants” into more specific areas that make it easier to take action.
Getting Lost
Infographic essay on the meaning of life.
My Advice to a Student
The other day I recieved a message via Linkedin:
Hi Tim. Last year i attended a presentation you gave at Manukau Institute of Technology about yourself and digital marketing. I found it very informative and as a result was inspired to pursue a career in your field. I’m currently studying towards a Bachelor of Applied Communication, majoring in marketing communications. What would you recommend i do to standout and become attractive to those seeking people in your position? Any advice would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.
I responded.
Hi ……,
I’m so pleased to hear that my talk inspired you in your studies.
My advice to you is to learn how to code websites,
Natcol have some really good short courses:
http://www.natcoll.ac.nz/short-courses/auckland/html/xhtml/css-introduction/
This will stand you in good stead for the future.
Complete the Google AdWords Professional course:
http://www.google.com/adwords/professionals/individual.html
Get yourself on Twitter, follow me http://www.twitter.com/timothynewman and the people I follow.
Read widely, read outside of the ‘Kiwi bubble’
Read the online tech and business sections of the LA Times, NY Times, The Gaurdian and The BBC.
Blog, Tumblr is a good platform, blog about your interests, your study and most importantly your take on your profession.
Really internalise everything you learn, know it, question it. Too many people these days know a little about a lot, and that lot isn’t worth knowing.
And know that a wise man knows nothing.
Keep a level head, be humble, treat EVERYONE with respect and dignity.
Work hard, save for your retirement and love your family.
Do all this and you’ll be right.
Kindest Regards,
Tim
LEGO Turing Machine
This is a short documentary about the LEGO Turing Machine built by Jeroen van den Bos and Davy Landman at Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica (CWI), Amsterdam (Netherlands). They built it for CWI’s exposition “Turings Erfenis” in honor of the centenary of Alan Turing’s birth on 23 June 1912.
(Source: vimeo.com)
My example of Community Management
Damage limitation mode for my representation of a New Zealand ISP:
http://tvnz.co.nz/fair-go/nice-one-telstra-clear-video-4939457
I like this quote from Fair Go’s presenter Gordon Harcourt
Understanding Facebook’s EdgeRank
Facebook now has over 800 million active users
It also has some pretty amazing technology that helps supply information to all of it’s users. One of the most important parts of Facebook technology is its EdgeRank Algorithm. Quite simply EdgeRank determines which items appears in their users news feed.
Facebook.com describes EdgeRank as “The News Feed algorithm bases this on a few factors: how many friends are commenting on a certain piece of content, who posted the content, and what type of content it is (e.g. photo, video, or status update).”
In the picture above there are three components to the Facebook EdgeRank algorithm: Affinity, weight, and time decay.
“Affinity” refers to the user’s relationship with the item’s creator. For example, if you have an old acquaintance whose Facebook profile you haven’t visited in two years, they would have a very low affinity ranking. If you have a significant other whose profile you visit every day, they would have a very high affinity ranking. This is good for Facebook EdgeRank.
“Weight” combines what the item is and how it’s being interacted with. As for the “what,” videos, photos, and links are generally considered to have the highest weight. In other words, if a fan views a video on your page, this will score far more points in Facebook EdgeRank than if they simply visit your page.
The other component to Facebook EdgeRank is how the item is being interacted with. A “Like,” for example, gets less weight than a comment.
“Time decay” refers to how recent the item is. Old news drops out of the news feed, so newer items are more likely to appear on a feed than older items. Understanding this, to increase your Facebook EdgeRank, post your links, comments, and photos at times when your users are most likely to be logged in to Facebook.
EdgeRank means that it is important to do the little things like having a Facebook “Like” Button on your website or blog. It also means that you want your fans to interact and share, so ask questions, post interesting articles, create contests and giveaways.
My overall advice - concentrate on posting interesting content, specifically designed for your audience and your EdgeRank will follow.
Social Media Marketing & The Art of War.
“So it is said that if you know your enemies and know yourself, you can win a hundred battles without a single loss.
If you only know yourself, but not your opponent, you may win or may lose.
If you know neither yourself nor your enemy, you will always endanger yourself.” Sun Tzu
The battle is on. The war is for clicks, Social Media Marketing is the new battlefield. Are you ready to take on your competitors?
Social Media Marketing within Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn have been going through a heavy growth phases in past year, with the recent introduction of new systems and indeed new Social Media Channels. The real game changer is managing this growth to get the clicks.
What does that mean, exactly? It means that the social media users who are on those sites will be more savvy and sophisticated than the users of the past few years. They will be more discerning users and less likely to click a link out of curiosity. You’ll have to work harder to get that click - you need to think of ways and means to engage and convert.
When it comes to social media marketing, there are several components that are necessary to run a successful and engaging war. Here’s what you need to do:
- Competitive Intelligence – Who is your competition and what are they up to? Follow their Social Media efforts, take snapshots of their campaigns that have proven sucessful. “Know thy enemy” Get to know the managers of these channels, attend conferences that they go to and speak in these same conferences, ask what they’re working on, be personable. Above all become a consumate professional at gathering the intelligence, but know how to use the data, as follows.
- Market Research – Know who your target market is, when are they online, which social media sites do they use, and when do they use those sites? What makes them tick, what are they sharing and why. Again like competitive intelligence, you need consumer intelligence.
- Strategic Planning – Which social media sites are a best fit for your company/brand, what times of day should you be posting, do you have a calender in place and what messages should you be promoting and in what tone?
- Positioning think about the three general areas of resistance (distance, dangers, and barriers) Distance - if you overcome the distance barrier and work to a local market or have international systems in place, good, but also think about how you position your brand/company to the consumer are you close to their heart, top of mind? Know the dangers of Social Media, don’t get drawn into contrevesy, it’ll kill your image, keep it clean. Simply understand the barriers to success, document them and work out ways to overcome them.
Gone are the days when you can just log in and start tweeting. You need a social media marketing strategy and your plan should begin with research, only begin the first salvo when your ammunition stocks are high and you’re ready to fight the good fight.
Reach, Clout and Impact - Twitter not Boxing.
Sounds like a boxing match! Clout reach and impact (resonance) is a social media metric that I use to determine how effective I am at reaching my audience. There are various ways to determine reach, but one way that I use is to measure my most loyal followers and the level of influence and interaction they have among their followers.
Let’s say for example that your new brand has 100 followers on Twitter and you interact with 10 of those on a regular basis and those 10 followers each have an average of 100 followers, your potential Twitter reach is 1000 (10 X 100). Social Media is a complex beast and we exist on different channels. Let’s expand the numbers a bit: Let’s say your brand has 1,000 followers on Twitter and another 2,000 on Facebook. Let’s throw in another 2,000 on LinkedIn for a total of 5,000 connections. If you have a network of 20 people across all three social channels who are influenced by your content and those 20 people have an aggregate of 250 followers and fans among them, then your reach is 270.Remember people will mention you and your brand, Re-tweet, share your links and talk about you, their audience will also see this conversation and perhaps comment, so on and so forth. So how do you know if your reach is high or low? You can only measure it against your potential reach (your total number of followers plus their total number). With 5,000 social media connections who among them have a total of 250 connections, your potential reach is 5,250. Your reach should be somewhere in the range of 25%-45% of your own total follower count. This isn’t the be all and end all of Social Media measurement, understand that the reach metric is simply one of many social media measurements to watch.
Do you have clout? Reach is one thing but are you an authority in your field? Do you have influence in an area of your expertise? A couple of great analytical tools for measuring this is Klout and PeerIndex both will give you great insights into your authority, audience and how you influence your audience. It is a great way to also measure your brand and how it stacks up against your competitors and peers. To make this work you need to have a measurement tactic:
1. Personal brand strategy – Basic stuff really, represent your brand to the highest level. Post interesting information, let your audience know that you know your beans, respond to mentions, post and messages in a timely manner and interact with your audience. This will give your network influence and a good bed of measurement and analysis.
2. Social Media Metrics – Include Klout or Peerindex into your social media metrics reporting. Cross reference these figures with the Google Analytics statistics of the traffic that Social Media channels bring to your landing page. These SMM’s will give you ammunition to convince others the power of Social Media marketing and that it is a serious above the line form of marketing.
3. Identifying and rewarding influencers - Pick-out those that you interact with regularly and perform a Klout/Peerindex scan on them. If they are influencial in their fields and are active in talking with you engage them more and even reward them with spot prizes and giveaways (this will attract their influencers and audience too).
Having reach and impact is great for your brand but the real acid test is understanding that your links (to your promotions or sales landing page) are being clicked. A great tool to measure this is Visibli. Visibli is great as it allows you to cross-pollinate your social channels with their link bar. Best of all it allows you to see in real-time which links are being clicked. Again ideal for your SMM’s.
To understand your resonance a bit further, If you are using a Twitter client like Hootsuite or Tweetdeck sometimes your tweets aren’t shown so it is prudent to log-in to your core account and enter this url http://twitter.com/#!/retweeted_of_mine to allow you to examine your tweets re-tweeted by others.
So digital marketing is sometimes a dirty fight, my advice is play hard, play fair, keep a close eye on yours and your competitors statistics and you’ll come out winning.
