When Negative Feedback is Good Feedback

One look at the amount of free gifts that bloggers are receiving lately shows that product companies are willing to do almost anything to stay in the good graces of these writers. The combo that occurs in social media of user generated reviews and the voracity with which the public is reading them means one thing: that people are extremely interested in a transparency of sorts when it comes to their products. Have we outgrown the simple days of "the commercial says it works, so it works"?
With reviews online of everything from diapers to tractors, there is no shortage of opinion out there and this scares a lot of our agency friends. In traditional media, the message that the company is sending can be tightly controlled by the people who created it. With social media, that's only the beginning. Social media publishes the message and then dares to ask "what do you think?" and braces for the flood of feedback.
In Hollywood people say that any press is good press and I am inclined to agree with that in the social media sphere. Feedback is a good thing. For example, Geico advertising tops the charts for both best and worst advertising. This valuable feedback can help their teams create their next wave of commercials based on what people liked.
For agencies worried about negative blog or profile feedback, don't worry so much. People are generally liking the companies that are putting themselves out there for critique at all.

Recession and Social Media

Over the last few weeks, it seems like I have heard a lot of "R" words being thrown around. Recession looms large over the heads of consumers switching from steak to spaghetti, companies cutting back on pricey TV ads, and agencies working with dwindling budgets. That means for us in the social media world, we hear the other "R" word, ROI, a lot these days.
Companies lured by the idea of millions of views for free have suddenly taken an interest in the now wildly popular marketing tactic and video sites, blogs, and forums have the traffic to prove it. But can social media be the "spaghetti" of marketing?
I think it can. With all of this collective belt tightening comes the space for innovation. Two years ago, a company might have come up with an ad, produced it, and sent it to the masses without much thought but now companies are really scratching their heads over content and distribution so as not to waste millions of views on irrelevant videos. Contests are popping up all over in search of new ideas and solutions (there's a great article on them in this month's issue of INC. Magazine) instead of a small board of executives deciding what comes next.
In terms of ROI and social media, relevance is money. The way I see it, spending $100,000 on television ads that reach maybe 10,000 interested people is a mighty big steak when you could spend $10,000 on a targeted video online and reach 10,000 interested people. Social media has targeting methods that other marketing avenues don't and while some companies are still nervous about ROI, it doesn't take long to see that in the targeting and niche communities comes the money savings.

From the Ear to Eye: Word of Mouth Drives Video Views

There's no question lots of people are watching video. But how are they finding these snippets of funny/interesting/educational/jaw-dropping clips?

A new study by video search provider ClipBlast suggests that it's a mix of finding video randomly or hearing about it from friends.

From MediaPost:

• 28% find videos through "discovery" (browsing)
  
• 27% rely on friends' recommendations
• 22% use search engines
• 10% get them from people they've met in social networks or online communities

If the habits of the 1,000 people surveyed are representative, video's primary mode of transportation is word-of-mouth. This could be even more true if you assume that browsing steers people toward the most popular videos -- those that might have become so popular through friends' recommendations.

ClipBlast's CEO and founder Gary Baker says that the study "indicates that habits surrounding online video have not yet fully formed." Fully formed or not, video views right now seem to be gained more organically rather than URLs in TV spots or other traditional ads.

What's Going On With Twitter?

Twitter has been gaining stride for months so it's relatively safe to say that most of the tech world knows about them and the consensus seems to be that Twitter is great. Lately though, Twitter has been trying new applications almost daily on their users and not all of them have been so well received. The latest occurrence is the "Beacon-esque" glitch that made some people's private messages public.
The issue that I take here with this kind of product is that it gives very little value to it's users privacy. People sign up for these sites (Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter) thinking that what you see is what you get. The nature of the web itself is that it is in constant flux so sites change, evolve, get easier to use, etc. and these kinds of changes are great for users. Adding chat and sharing icons can make sites surge with popularity. Yet when new features allow others a glimpse into messages, purchases, and other private information. Is a simple "oopsie" from the site good enough?

Bloggers: Who are they?

BIGresearch’s Simultaneous Media Survey of 15,727 people found that 26% of the adults surveyed say they regularly or occasionally blog.

So, what do these 4,089 bloggers look like?
53.7% are male.
44.7% are married.
28.4% hold a professional or managerial position.
10.4% are students.
69.7% are White/Caucasian.
12.2% are African American/Black.
20% are Hispanic.
3.7% are Asian.

The average age of the bloggers in BIGresearch’s study was 37.6 years of age. The average income of a blogger was $55,819, and their average years of education was 14.3 years.

Another key finding from the BIGresearch is that bloggers are using most forms of new media significantly more than the average person. Specifically, 65.5% of bloggers text message, 75.3% use instant messaging, 93% use cell phones, 72.2% download/access video/TV content, and 66.9% participate in video gaming. For the average adult, 45.2% text message, 49.3% use instant messaging, 87.5% use cell phones, 45% download/access video/TV content, and 47.5% participate in video gaming.

Bloggers are also more likely to regularly give advice about products/services they have purchased. The research also found that more conventional forms of media trigger a blogger’s Internet searches: 51.6% magazines, 48.8% articles, 46.1% broadcast TV, 44.5% cable TV, 42.5% face-to-face communication, and 39.7% newspaper.

Can James Farley and Social Media Save Ford?

It seems like a ridiculous idea.... that a web site or an online campaign can save anything. Yet, Ford's hopeful hiring of James Farley isn't so far off. Farley, after being lured away from Toyota, has set the wheels in motion to change the course of a company that has lost over 15.3 billion dollars over the last 2 years.
Looking at Farley's accomplishments at Toyota make the halo over social media glow just a little brighter though. A sparky website, street type brand awareness, young models, video. Now I'm not trying to say that those alone are the key to Toyota's success over Ford, but it certainly didn't hurt. It's also exiting to think that after TV commercials, direct mail, and radio ads that result in little or no response despite certain measurement companies claiming that people are listening, something is working. And it's online.
Fortunately for those creative types, bannering people to death isn't gaining quite the attention that campaigns with a level of moxie to them. It's the elusive innovation that social media seems to hold that's the darling of advertising these days. Keep your eye out for Ford in the future to see what James Farley comes up with.

Still waiting to use Social Media?

I saw this clip and thought it was really funny. So many companies are still waiting to embrace Social Media. Nearly half (48%) of brand marketers used social media marketing tactics in 2007, according to Jupiter Research. What are you waiting for?

Overstock.com and Verisign Try a Little Subtlety

A few weeks ago, I stumbled across a great new site. It was witty, well designed, and filled with hilarious videos. Another week went by before I realized it was created by Overstock.com and Verisign.
The site is called NoMoreAbandonedShoppingcarts.com and it's well worth a look. The entire site is based upon a cleverly created "Shopping cart whisperer" and users are encouraged to send in pictures of shopping carts where they don't belong. The shopping cart whisperer laments that "perfectly good shopping carts" seem to be everywhere and coaxes them back to their respective cart corrals. It takes some digging to find out who is behind the site and it is so subtly branded that it hardly seems "ad-like".
the ad, however, is there. One page on the site talks about all of the extra carts found on the streets now that people can comfortably purchase things online securely with Verisign.
Since then, I have noticed several other companies trying this approach and it's actually quite genius. For example, would you join a Facebook page for Verisign? Well, Mr. Cart Whisperer has plenty of friends on Myspace and Facebook and 65 people have sent in pictures. Verisign has effectively engaged with it's audience using social media and believe me, if a secure signature company like Verisign can use it, anyone can.

Online Retailers Branch Out

While the "R" word looms over retailers' heads and worried whispers about the economy are heard more and more often, online shopping is predicted to grow this year. It's good news for online retailers, who are branching out of their email marketing/paid search groove.

From MarketingVox: According to Forrester, 65 percent of retailers will look into placing ads on social networks in 2008.

Bravo, online retailers! This is a smart move. Although email and paid search are the traditional cash cows, there's a lot to be said for promoting directly to your target, rather than advertising to everyone and hoping your customers will float to the top. Social networks can be a goldmine -- there's lots of people who are passionate about a subject, reading and conversing in one location online.

No matter what you're selling, there's bound to be a social network filled with folks who are always interested in what you sell - not just those who happen to be on Google searching for a product at that moment in time. Why wouldn't you take advantage of these hot spots on the web?

So while your brick-and-mortar friends bite their nails, you'll be welcoming new customers - fresh from the social networks...

Hulu and Flickr and Youtube, Oh My!

This post could otherwise be titled: How come so many sites are offering video without doing anything different?
Now that video has made it's grand entrance and even 12 year olds (you know who you are) can upload videos to Youtube, the question remains as to whether the rest of the adults will figure out what to do with it. Hulu, for example, has decided to take the thing that people hate the most about TV (commercials) and add that element online. Brilliant. Is it just me or are commercials somehow even more annoying on the internet than they are on TV?
Perhaps our attention spans are shortening when it comes to different types of media. With TV, I can withstand maybe 2 commercials but when I watch The Office online, I have patience for maybe 5 seconds of commercial material.
Of course, that's all hypothetical because I got DVR right when it came out and our CEO swears by Tivo.
What's been catching my eye are the sites that are integrating niche video with the content on the site. Shoetube has lots of shoe related video as well as blogs about shoes, forums, on shoes, and shopping for shoes. It takes away the part where you dig for an hour to find one good video on a site that hosts millions of totally unrelated videos.
Instead of becoming a site that hosts as many videos as possible and sells ad space to annoy the viewers, why not just launch smaller targeted sites that don't involve so much searching?

Death By Blogging

The New York Times brought up an especially interesting concept over the weekend - Bloggers are stressed out! This is a pretty heady claim since most of the working United States works well over 40 hours and the constant stress of those of us in online marketing and social media positions has been well documented. Bloggers now being marred by the latest online side effect are joining the ranks of the sleepless on account of the 24-7 nature of the web.
Even Micheal Arrington of Techcrunch says "this is not sustainable".
Anyone who has checked their e-mail at midnight can attest to the fact that it's both addicting and completely current. That means that while you sleep, your work is piling up. CEO's can reach their employees at dinner, in meetings, and yes, on vacation. Almost every hotel out there from Florida to Fiji boasts free wifi so that we can check our e-mails and news feeds anytime we want, and removes our excuse to not check them.
Though most of this technology is seen as a plus, people working in the trenches of the internet are clearly wondering where the line is between work and the rest of their lives.
I suspect that the rest of the world is just a few e-mails away from the same stress that the bloggers are under. Timothy Ferris' Four Hour Workweek details some great ways to stay productive if you are one of those people whose e-mail box has thousands of e-mails. It seems that we must learn a new way to filter our information process in ways that we have not before.
To relate this stress to online marketing, advertisers are going to have to create far more pointed messages and reach niche crowds. Online audiences have even less time for an irrelevant message. It might even be possible that bombarding them with such messages stresses your demographic out. Not the idea that you want people taking away from your campaign. Remember that targeted content is easier to find and relevant messaging is far more welcome. Oh, and if you're looking to open a hotel, consider one without wifi and don't be surprised when it fills up with exhausted Bloggers.

How Americans Use Mobile Devices

Nearly two-thirds of Americans are using mobile devices for activities other than talking, according to a recently released study by the Pew Internet Project. In December 2007, Pew surveyed 2,054 Americans 18 years and over, including 500 respondents who were contacted on their cell phones.

Young people and Hispanics were the most active mobile data users.

So what are Americans doing on their mobile devices?

Pew found 58% of U.S. adults have used a cell phone or PDA for text-messaging, taking pictures, looking for directions or surfing the Internet. Other activities cell phones or PDAs have been used for include playing games (27%), sending e-mail (19%), and accessing the Internet for news, weather, and other information (19%).

When they looked at people under 30, they found 60% use their cell phones to text message on an average day, and approximately 60% send or receive e-mail daily on their phone.

Another key finding from the Pew research was that the cell phone would be the hardest communications technology for people to give up. 51% of the respondents said it would be very hard for them to give up their cell phone, compared to only 38% in 2002. The cell phone also is more important to users than the Internet, TV, e-mail, and the Blackberry or wireless e-mail device.