July – 2009 – Steffan Antonas

Actions Speak Louder Than Advertising

Razorfish released a report this month that’s worth spending some time with. The report has some valuable insights on how social influence marketing is shifting the advertising game on the web. A survey with 1,000 consumers plus six months worth of conversational data serve as the backbone of the findings. The sections are digestible, easy to scan and each contain an “implications for brands” bulleted summary that contain quite a few noteworthy nuggets. Many thanks to my friend Vada for seeing the value in this and and sending it along…

What The Fluent Report Covers:

The importance of social media in making purchasing decisions, and how brands need to develop a credible voice, socialize with customers and provide a return on emotion (ROE?) to their customers.
How traditional top-down branding will become increasingly impotent as social media grows
How (and what types of) Influencers Drive brand affinity
How influencers impact the marketing funnel, and what type of influencers matter most at different stages
How “herding” around top social networks and the emerging choices of people to focus on a few social networks (instead of spreading themselves thin on many networks) is leading to consolidation and heavy clustering around “winning” social media hubs
How social features are becoming integrated into online display advertising.
How social media is becoming both a paid and unpaid distribution mechanism for advertising content
How tools like Facebook Connect are moving the social graph out onto the Web
10 Ways to Make Twitter Work For Your Brand

Fluent: The Razorfish Social Influence Marketing Report

Download A Copy Of The Full Report Here

This report touches on how Social Influence Marketing encompasses every part of marketing and every dimension of an organization. A survey with 1,000 consumers plus six months worth of conversational data serve as the backbone of the findings in this report. We also introduce the SIM score, a simple but groundbreaking index for the social web.

5 Unmissable TED Talks On The Future Of Technology And The Web

#1 Tim Berners-Lee On The Next Web of Open, Linked Data

20 years ago, Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web. For his next project, he’s building a web for open, linked data that could do for numbers what the Web did for words, pictures, video: Unlock our data and reframe the way we use it together. (Recorded at TED2009, February 2009)

#2 Jeff Bezos On The Next Web Innovation

As founder and CEO of Amazon.com, Jeff Bezos defined online shopping and rewrote the rules of commerce, ushering in a new era in business. Time magazine named him Man of the Year in 1999. The dot-com boom and bust Bezos led is often compared to the Gold Rush. But Jeff says it’s more like the early days of the electric industry.

#3 Kevin Kelly on the next 5,000 days of the web

Kevin Kelly, exec editor at WIRED and founder of visionary nonprofits, shares a fun stat: The World Wide Web, as we know it, is only 5,000 days old. Now, Kelly asks, how can we predict what’s coming in the next 5,000 days?

#4 Yochai Benkler On Open-source economics

Law professor Yochai Benkler explains how collaborative projects like Wikipedia and Linux represent the next stage of human organization. By disrupting traditional economic production, copyright law and established competition, they’re paving the way for a new set of economic laws, where empowered individuals are put on a level playing field with industry giants.

#5 Ray Kurzweil On How Technology Will Transform Us

Inventor, entrepreneur and visionary Ray Kurzweil explains in abundant, grounded detail why, by the 2020s, we will have reverse-engineered the human brain and nanobots will be operating your consciousness.

Blogging For Humility, Perspective and Growth

I’m not a top blogger, a thought leader or industry expert, and probably won’t be any time soon. No big deal. I’m not out to take the internet by storm. I don’t worry about my daily traffic stats, I don’t stress out about posting every day and I don’t blog for money (although I do make money doing it that supports the habit). I originally started blogging just to become a better writer. I’ve been blogging consistently now for over 2 years and I’ve learned that blogging itself is not a means to any end. The real value is in the process – it’s about continuous learning, connecting, collaborating, and growing as a person. In many ways, it’s a lifestyle choice rather than an activity or a hobby, and the people who are doing it for the right reasons are generally in it for the long haul.

Seth Godin and Tom Peters recently weighed in on why they blog at an AMEX OPEN forum. There were some great points made by both on the value of blogging that really resonated with me — I particularly appreciated Seth’s comment on developing humility, and Tom’s on how it changes your emotional and intellectual outlook. These are two of the most successful bloggers on the web and even after years of blogging and thousands of posts they still site growth, dialogue and openness to change as the top reasons they’re still writing. I find a lot of comfort in that. I’ve included some video highlights from the forum below…

Do LinkedIn Recommendations Matter In the Reputation Economy?

There is an interesting conversation going on this week between some of the web’s heavy hitters on the subject of the actual value of LinkedIn recommendations in the reputation economy.

Here’s the time line of the conversation so far…

July 17th – Jeremiah Owyang (Forrester Research) posts a thought provoking and well-written piece on his blog that sparks the debate titled Requested Recommendations on Social Networks: Why I Won’t Do It
July 17th, later that day – Russ Somers (Egghead Marketing) posts an extended the conversation on his blog about the Evaluating LinkedIn Reccomendations that references Jeremiah’s article and the resulting Twitter chatter.
July 18th – Kay Luo, Sr. Director of Corporate Communications at LinkedIn, contacts Jeremiah and writes him a LinkedIn recommendation that he accepts on his profile.
July 24th, LinkedIn responds to Jeremiah’s post on their blog, discussing the benefits of recommendations and the social economy.

Sticky Just Got Stickier

Along with a tune up and a face lift, the latest release of Glue boasts some new features that heavy social media users are really going to find useful.

If you haven’t heard of Glue, it’s a browser add-on that allows you to carry your social network with you as you browse around the web and do a whole host of really cool things with social platforms like Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, Digg etc. Like Firebug or del.icio.us, it’s become an indispensable part of my browsing toolkit. I use it multiple times a day to quickly share articles and books I read, music I’m listening to, restaurant reviews I write etc. to Twitter and Facebook as I’m browsing. There’s a lot of power packed into this little add-on and, because it allows you to do so many things on so many platforms, it’s replaced quite a few of my single purpose add-ons. For it’s integration with Twitter and Facebook alone it’s worth installing, but the new social features they’ve added today are worthy of applause. Read More

Alan Greenspan On Self Esteem, Our Nature and Our Need For Connectedness

greenspan It’s been almost a year since I read The Age Of Turbulence, but I find myself repeatedly returning to a few of Alan’s thoughts on human nature and self esteem that resonated with me. Despite being discussed in the context of human factors in economics, the following passage in my eyes stands easily on its own and speaks volumes of truth about what drives us all and why we have a strong, fundamental need for connectedness. Any time I find myself in a discussion about community, authenticity, accountability, open source or the economics and culture of “free” on the web, I come back to this. Does this speak to you?

As I’ve traveled across the globe for nearly six decades, I have found that people exhibit remarkable similarities that by no stretch of the imagination can be construed as resulting from culture, history, language, or chance. All people appear motivated by an inbred striving for self-esteem that is in large part fostered by the approval of others … People have an inbred need to interact with other people. It is essential if we are to receive their approval, which we all seek. The true hermit is a rare aberration. What contributes to self-esteem depends on the broad range of learned or consciously chosen values that people believe, correctly or mistakenly, enhance their lives. We cannot function without some set of values to guide the multitude of choices we make every day. The need for values is inbred. Their content is not. That need is driven by an innate moral sense in all of us, the basis upon which a majority have sought the guidance of the numerous religions that humans have embraced over the millennia. Part of that innate moral code is a sense of what is just and proper. We all have different views of what is just, but none can avoid the built-in necessity of making such judgments. This build-in necessity is the basis of the laws that govern every society. It is the basis on which we hold people responsible for their actions.

Being A Local In Virtual Space

Let’s say you’ve recently moved to a new city. You’ve got a brand new apartment in an unfamiliar neighborhood and your friends and family are now hundreds of miles away.

A few weeks in, the rush of everything being new subsides and you start to feel lonely. No problem, you think. You make friends easily. It’s only a matter of time before you’ve got a bunch of great folks actively calling you to join them to hang out, right? All you have to do is muster the courage to get out of the house and meet people. The only question is, where do you go?

Assuming your goal is to meet people you’d actually want to get to know and build lasting relationships with, would you start by heading straight to the biggest, loudest night club in the city? Or would you head down to the neighborhood bar, cafe or coffee shop, where your neighbors were all hanging out after work? Given the choice between the two, my bet is that you’d chose the latter. So would I.

Starting a blog and being social online for the first time can feel a lot like a move to a new city. It’s lonely at the beginning and it takes a while to build a reputation and develop relationships with people who you like and respect, and who are genuinely interested in you and your content.

How you go about developing relationships online should closely mirror the way that you do it offline. You’ve got to go to a place where people share your passions and interests, introduce yourself and start a discussion. When deciding where to go, try to pick places the same way that you’d pick a place to hang out offline. Virtual spaces have distinct personalities and atmospheres all their own that reflect the collection of personalities of the community. Huge blogs like TechCrunch and Gizmodo will be just like a massive nightclub – tons of noise and lots of superficial interaction. On the other hand, smaller communities and personal blogs will feel more like a local watering hole – and with fewer people and less noise, you’re more likely to engage in higher quality discussions and build meaningful relationships quickly. If you find one of these spots where you meet people you like that feels like it’s got your kindof vibe, devote some time to visiting frequently and sticking around and interacting a lot when you do. You’ll find you have a lot more fun, build better relationships, and before long, it’ll be a spot where everybody knows your name.

How To Say Thank You On The Social Web

Whether or not you chose to acknowledge it, your ability to sink or swim on the social web depends on how you participate, engage others and embrace the customs of the virtual gift economy – this is as true for individuals as it is for big brands who have a web presence.

The concepts of “FREE as a business model” and sustainable gift culture generally makes sense to people in the context of products, services, brands and community building, but the understanding sometimes breaks down when it’s mentioned in the context of individual relationships and social media. Seasoned vets know that there are a host of unwritten rules and customs for reciprocating that we should follow when we benefit from free content and receive help and advice from others on the web. I’ll discuss some of those rules, explain why they’re important and offer some ways to act on them below. Read More

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Month July 2009