Two weeks ago, Gunn/Jerkens, a Marketing Communications company I do social media consulting for, hosted it’s first-ever Social Media Mingle event. Clients and associates joined us for a day-long seminar that started out with a 4 hour presentation, co-delivered by myself and Katie Wynne (I am the one excitedly waving my arms around in the beginning of the video below). At the event, we covered the trends, benefits and best practices of some of the most widely used social platforms. It was a fun, engaging experience and I was delighted at how much the attendees participated and how vibrant and deep the conversations in the seminar were. Here’s a little taste of the event…
If you would like to view the presentation, a trimmed-down SlideShare version has been posted below for your convenience. If you have any questions about any of the content, please feel free to discuss in the comments here, or on the Gunn/Jerkens post.
I came across this video demo of a digital magazine prototype on Popular Science and was ultra impressed. Hat tip to the developers in Bonnier’s R&D group and BERG Design for their work on this. This year we’ve seen escalating hype around ebook readers like Amazon’s Kindle, as well as a lot of speculation about the looming death of print media, so it’s great to get a sneak peak at what designers are coming up with in the digital realm. The team responsible for this prototype has obviously put a lot of thought into what creates successful digital reading experiences and the demo of what they’ve produced clearly shows that converting a magazine to a screen won’t necessarily rob us of what we love most about magazines. Most importantly, perhaps, is that you can see how much space for innovation and creativity there is in the magazine space. This should give magazine lovers an industrial strength shot of optimism in the arm…
This slide deck by Oliver Blanchard on Social Media ROI is a hoot. It provides a witty introduction to measuring social media campaign ROI. Importantly, it highlights the fact that social media is an investment that requires people, time and resources, and if you’re not measuring impact in terms of things that matter to your business, you’re going to crash land. If you’re confused about how to measure ROI in your social media campaigns check out his presentation. It’s a good primer.
Five years ago, if someone from your marketing department said “Let’s market to our existing customers!” they would have risked losing their job. Why would any organization spend time or effort on customers who’ve already bought the product? Backwards you say? Not anymore. This is a winning strategy on the social web.
Social media changes the game by giving brands and organizations an unprecedented ability to target and energize their existing fans. 5 to 10 years ago, brands didn’t know who their biggest fans were or where to find and engage them. Now individuals come to you and they bring their entire social graph of trusted relationships with them. When the stars align and they start to come in droves, it’s word of mouth on fire – that’s the real power of the social web. Recognizing that, smart organizations that have a connected fan base shift their spending away from recruiting and start focusing on their existing community’s happiness and let the fans do the marketing for them.
BMW has had amazing success with it’s strategy of targeting existing Mini Cooper Owners because they understand how critical their passionate customers are for spreading ideas that promote the brand. Mini Ownership for many isn’t just about the car – it’s about being part of a subculture that has it’s own fashion, events and lifestyle. BMW made a smart move by focusing on treating their best customers as special insiders who love to be in the know and talk about the product. There’s a key lesson here for any brand with an existing community. People haven’t fundamentally changed, but the technology does change their ability to market for you so significantly that it changes where the dollars should be spent.
A social media project I’ve been working on this month went live today, and I’m proud to finally be able to share the final product. Second Chance is a non-profit organization based out of San Diego, CA. The organization focuses on breaking cycles of unemployment, poverty, homelessness, substance abuse and incarceration through social entrepreneurship. Over the past 15 years they’ve developed an innovative support system for people in need that has an unprecedented track record for producing positive results – largely due to the unique approach they take to solving tough problems. The founder, Scott H Silverman was named a CNN hero of the week this year for his work in the space.
Over the past few months, I’ve had the pleasure of getting to know Scott, who gave me the opportunity to visit the facility and see for myself what the organization does and how it transforms people. A few months ago I spent a day sitting in on one of their classes and the experience was eye-opening and profoundly affecting. When you see the system working for yourself first hand, you get the message loud and clear. Not only is what they do great for local communities, it’s great for society overall. When they contacted me a few weeks ago about getting them into social media, I was happy to join on. Here’s a quick video that we launched the project with that gives you a snapshot of what Second Chance is all about:
Designing A Social Media Presence For Second Chance
Scott’s a forward thinking, energetic guy and he recognized early that getting in to social media makes a lot of sense for his organization. From a cost perspective, social media for a non-profit is a no brainer, but Second Chance was also generating a lot of buzz after Scott was awarded the CNN hero award and released his new book. For a non profit they had a huge amount of content distributed around the web. Before I came along, they were already into email marketing and facebook as well as posting YouTube videos and getting a ton of positive press – they just needed a way to pull it all together, brand it consistently and create a place that they owned where the community could interact and share content, resources and stories with one another. We knew when we first talked about the project that we wanted consistent branding that matched their 2010 annual report across Facebook, Twitter and a customized blog, and the project evolved from there. The final product, I think, looks pretty slick and ties each social media outlet to all the others in a clear and coherent way. Here are some screenshots of what we did. Each screenshot links to a Second Chance site, so please explore and feel free to give feedback. We’re all excited about the new direction and we hope the Second Chance community is too….
Today there’s a big push to make Internet Access a basic human right. In the US, the majority of us take freedom of speech (online and offline) for granted and we tune out the debates on heavy censorship that is commonplace in other countries. If you’re not aware of the kind of control and manipulation that’s happening in other places in the world, these two video interviews (back to back in the same video) will help bring you up to speed quickly. The first interview is with Rebecca MacKinnon, who is a former CNN journalist who headed the CNN bureaus in Beijing and later in Tokyo. Before leaving television to become a blogger and co-founder of Global Voices Online. She is now an Assistant Professor at the University of Hong Kong’s Journalism and Media Studies Center and lives in Hong Kong. The second interview is with Evgeny Morozov, who is currently a fellow at the Open Society Institute in New York. Previously, he was Director of New Media at the Prague-based NGO Transitions Online (TOL) and a columnist for the Russian newspaper Akzia (2003-2008).
Here’s a summary of the content that’s covered in the interviews. Enjoy.
Internal Web Censorship In China & The Great Firewall of China
Blogging In China
Chinese Internet Police
How Humor Slips Through The Cracks of Censorship
Russian Internet Censorship
Russian New Media and Government Manipulation
In Depth on Hidden Censorship in Russia
Economic Crisis’ Impact on China and Russia
The Global Network Initiative
Moving to Other Blogging Platforms, How Informed Citizens Are
It takes about 30 seconds to realize that this product is a perfect marriage between digital and analog. The interface is simple, and the story telling is rich and engaging. What a fantastic way to bring together parents and children. Not only does it encourage reading, it also inspires creativity.
This video was originally posted on Alex Rainert‘s blog EverydayUX – one of the best blogs on the web for user experience design lovers. Hat tip to Alex for the find. Head over there for more info and links about the product.
Five years ago, if someone from your marketing department said “Let’s market to our existing customers!” they would have risked losing their job. Why would any organization spend time or effort on customers who’ve already bought the product? Backwards you say? Not anymore. This is a winning strategy on the social web.
