Relevancy is Key

Conversations don't often start because one person wants to talk about something differently than the person they are with.

To start a conversation, as so many brands and companies want to do nowadays online in social media, you must be relevant to the conversation(s) that's already begun. Or if you wish to initiate one, realize that people socialize for the following reasons:

1. They want to discuss similar interests
2. They have important information to share
3. They are extremely generous and want to add value to another person's life. This can take the form of praise and compliments.

So when trying to engage and converse with fans in social media, think of the reason you are socializing what you are and question whether or not it is relevant to your current or potential conversation partner.

We Love to Share

Mashable posted an article on Monday that has been resonating in my head for the past 2 days.

What is the best part about watching television? Personally, it's going straight to my Facebook or Twitter afterwards (or even during), posting a status about it, and then checking it constantly for replies so I can start a conversation about whatever I just watched. There is nothing we human beings love more than sharing, so an app dedicated to this experience just seems... right.

So instead of checking-in at a location with a smartphone, new apps like Philo and GetGlue allow users to check-in when they're watching a television show (or in GetGlue's case, while watching a movie, reading a book, thinking about a topic, or drinking wine). While the idea of an entertainment check-in was completely foreign to me before I read the article, now I'm concerned as to why it didn't occur to me before. It not only is another way of connecting, but it's waaay less creepy than FourSquare (which I love t00).

~ alicia

Social Media 101

I love love love this presentation on social media.

Whether you consider yourself an expert or a newbie on social networking, Paul Adams put together this awesome slide deck on how it is translating into our daily lives. It also outlines the history and psychology of human relationships, which I'm now obsessed with. Ignore the length, you'll speed right through it.

~ alicia

the 4 S's of viral

"A viral won't go viral just because it's a viral." I said this in a meeting the other day and as clumsily syntaxed as it is, I want to develop what I meant.

The client says: we want a viral.

The creative team: creates a viral.

But what IS a viral? And what makes something GO viral?

Let's find out.

"A viral is something worth sharing," says Rob Birgfeld on SmartBlogs.

Dominque Hind says there are 3 things to remember about a viral:

• Must be a great idea
• Viral doesn’t necessarily mean free
• Nurture the campaign to get it out there.

And we learn from Karl Long that a viral isn't a strategy but a tactic within the more holistic term of co-creative marketing.

In the post from Karl, I especially like what he says about tactics, such as virals, building social equity with your brand. He described social equity in October 2007 as “built by aggregating, connecting, reflecting and amplifying all of the small user contributions over time so the whole is worth much more than the sum of its parts.”

You see, everything used to be about brand equity - where brands were one of the most valuable assets a company could have. But in the age of social media, we need different terms. And borrowing the term from Karl, social equity - where social networks are one of the most valuable assets a brand can have - is where we need to focus now. In creating social equity you need to take into consideration what starts a conversation and what begs to be shared - is it creativity? is it a thought? is it a point?

Anyway, back to viral. In this post, we learn that viral is a tactic used by brands to create Social equity. To do this, they need to

Simple - be birthed from an uncomplicated idea
Sharable - have all the necessary social media tools attached
Supported - be nurtured by various brand ambassadors - bloggers/influencers online, PR people at the agency, or synced up with traditional creative in an innovatively creative way

So next time someone says "let's do a viral," make sure you've got the 4 S's in place so that you're not just creating more digital crap to take up cyberspace.

writing a social media plan

I am one part of a small team helping a local film festival get off the ground here in Dallas. As a faithful participant in various social media (Twitter, Yelp, Facebook, Blogger), I have volunteered to take a stab at a social media plan for the brand. Of course, I have all of this information in my head, and I put it to use on a daily basis, easy cheesy. But thinking about doing it for a "formal" brand, supported by a corporation, I need a formal plan. So here are some tools I'm finding along the way:

5 Steps to developing a Social Media Plan from Mashable

Obama's Social Media Plan from The Conversation Agent

22 Tools to Consider from Mashable (thank you guys!)

Best Buy Connect's Tips & Expectations

List of 40 Social Media Staff Policies

Hope this helps you write your own.

levels of connectivity

Everyone wants to know how to get involved with social media. What BIG IDEA do I need to come up with? Is it an advertising space? How do I do it.

Funjet Vacations (via one of Gmail's ads) has got it right. They are connected. They understand that I might want to share some of the information I see on their site with other people I know. So they have put information on social media sites that enable that sharing to happen.

Another useful way to use these same sites is to provide options to share the information you're currently reading on X site ON Facebook, Myspace, Twitter, via email, etc.

I do like how Funjet provide a myriad of ways in which you can receive information from them, depending on your level of connectivity.

I expect to see more sites integrating with the main three (Myspace really seems to be going the music route): Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter.

With so much on the web, having these ubiquitous tools helps us all streamline communications and the information that's relevant to us. Instead of creating something new (unless it's better), just sync up with these already existing, popular social media sites. Your fans will thank you.

my mission

WOW. Even though I've changed the header several times since I started this blog, my mission is still the same idea:

One of the most motivating words to me is connectivity: the value of being connected in order to grow. This blog should be a center for a learning, a place to share experiences and knowledge, and a social media outlet for junior planners who read blogs.

Funny that I probably wrote this in early 2008, and we couldn't be more connected to each other as we are today, and social media has taken off like wild fire.

I need to pay tribute to Piers for teaching me how to spot trends. :)

Twitter stats

Oh you, blog, every time I find you and come back to post something, I feel like I'm re-discovering you all over again. I'm glad I have you. :)

My post: Twitter stats.

Currently I am following 150 people, some of these people include: @herdmeister (Mark Earls), @Kotaku, @kylecameron (Kyle Studstill), @iconoculture, and @chr1sa (Chris Anderson)

222 people have decided to follow me. This feels good. To have a community 222 strong means I bring "value" to a large group of people on a pretty regular basis, and this number is only going to grow.

I have almost updated my Twitter feed 400 times (currently at 390). Wow. This feels like a ridiculous amount of Tweets, and to the people who don't get this service at all, it would seem uber ridiculous. But I think these numbers are all good ones.

I feel like I've made some new friends on Twitter. Again, the people who don't get Twitter would be laughing their a**es off if they read this. They don't get it, this Twitter gig; and honestly, after reading about the guys who started it, I think they're a bit surprised themselves, but I think only good will come of it.

What do you think?

conversations to listen for

Stumbled on this today: Ten conversations to listen for in social media; they are:

• The complaint
• The compliment
• The problem
• The question or inquiry
• The campaign impact
• The crisis
• The competitor
• The crowd
• The influencer
• The point of need

For clients wondering how to use social media, this is a great primer list. Now you just have to be sure and have the right research company lined up to monitor the conversation.

doing some reading

just a small round-up of "news" from Mediaweek:

Addictinggames.com, which targets males 12-24, is now MTV Networks' largest online property with over 11 million monthly uniques.

Could the next evolution of MTV being a gaming space?

Entertainment brands like movie studios and game publishers seek higher impact ad placements, which casual games can offer better than most content sites.

Is this saying that doing advertising in the form of games is high-impact placement or that placing ads on casual gaming sites is high-impact? not very good writing.

New Character Project by usanetwork.com celebrates interesting, dazzling, and distinctive people from all walks of life, who make this country extraordinary.

Sounds cool, but this sounds like it could be a great TV show - maybe one of the only good TV shows on TV these days (do people seriously watch good TV somewhere? let me know). Anyway, I checked out the website and this also seems like it would be a good project to benefit a nonprofit, but...again, doesn't look like USA is coming through on this. Hmmm. I bet they aren't even on Twitter. OH, I was wrong; check this out! :P

Peter Daboll says: "Smart marketers will use this economic lull as an opportunity to stop, listen and learn how to communicate with consumers instead of spinning their wheels."

You should read this awesome case study about Bank of America and their Twitter account; it's about how brands can be providing exceptionally personal customer-service for FREE using Twitter. Yes, really.

47% of U.S. homes upgraded to HDTVs, up from 34% in 2007 but...why? "TV" isn't getting any better.

>>>>
Ok, done reading now. Thanks for letting me share.

What is Twitter?

I was asked this today by a creative. Instead of acting smugly "in the know," I tried to explain Tweets, Tweeps, and the service in general. Here's what came out:

It's considered a microblogging service, but you don't have to put up a whole post or anything, just a short message with 140 characters or less.

So, it's like a blog?

No, it's more of a feed. You have followers and you follow people, and depending the content of your Tweets and vice versa, it's a news feed more or less of cool stuff you might be into.

So, what do I write about?

Anything you want, it's mostly about what's going to be of most interest to your followers and what you like to read. There are many types of "feeds." Mine is about cool advertising, thinking news because those are the kind of people I follow. But if you wanted to know about mundane time at which someone's getting their coffee in the morning or hitting their afternoon slump, those kinds of Tweets are out there to know about.

I do Facebook, that's about it.

Well, Facebook - and its new "facelift" - is a lot like Twitter, where you see other people's updates in real time...

The conversation changed turns and we were then setting up a context mapping session in which I will reference Twitter and Facebook and review sites. At least he won't be blindsighted when I bring up Tweets, but the issue (and game for planners) will come when we bring to life how social media is changing people's consumption of media in general.

I think it's a matter of asking the right questions so that we include social media in the conversation. This was in fact the very topic of a planner I feel privileged to work with, Planning for conversations by Christopher Owens at the AAAA Planning Conference 2008. Conversations are powerful, conversations can happen anywhere, and brands, products and companies must be conversational. Ok. But how do we make this happen?

The standard questions on a brief don't take into account the interaction that can happen with a brand. Should this piece of paper be changing to include a social space? If we were to answer the question "what's my brand's share factor?" What would we say? If were to "guide" the conversation, where would we take it? What do we want people to talk about? Or rather, what are they talking about and how can we participate?

things to think about.

hats off to Skittles

I am dazzled (If Skittled were an adjective, I'd use it) by the new Skittles site, yesterday and today. Yesterday it was skittles.com - the Twitter page; today it's skittles.com - the Facebook page. The change has been credited to spam/vulgarity (one and the same in my marketing book), and I think this says more about us as humans than it does about the brand.

I think people will take advantage of any chance to publicize themselves; "oh what? Skittles.com is publishing anything related to skittles in real time? Oh shit, I better type something so I get my 5 seconds of fame." - seriously? Oh yeah, it's America, the country of democracy and 15 minutes of fame. What happens when we place control in the hands of media hungry, socially-active consumers? Not decency in this time of good, but foul language and foul play. Gross.

I commend Skittles for going out on a limb, where most clients are scared to not have a TV ad, Skittles said we're doing social media all the way. They took a risk, and we've made them pay. As a young advertiser and social media advocate, I'm not happy with my fellow Twitterers. We abused the medium and teased a brand for having some balls.

Like this post says:

No one knows all the rules apart from the fact that the rules change every time you want to play. Trying to play it safe is the riskiest play of all right now.

So here's to Skittles, my hat's off to you for taking a risk; you've been the bravest, aside from Modernista (but they're an agency so they don't count), in terms of thinking outside the box when it comes to marketing yourself and interacting with your customers. High five!

Not to mention, that Farmers came to our agency the other day and left bags of Skittles on all of the tables, little did they know that just days later, I would be eating them still (they were huge bags) and happy to be part of a very brand-worthy social conversation. pretty cool.

Push vs. Pull

I've heard a lot about these two words in regards to the evolution of marketing and advertising.

In an Ad Age interview with Brad Jakeman, the new marketing manager for Activision (Guitar Hero publisher), he talks about his goals for marketing:

I cam here to make our marketing at least as engaging, innovative and exciting as our games.

That sounds pretty cool when you think about it. A video game is a very interactive experience, just think if advertising was a game you could engage with? And really, he says, that's where the industry should be going:

The step before consumer action, which we all hope to get, is consumer engagement.
We are living in an age of content, and if advertisers and marketers start thinking of themselves as content producers that are tasked with engaging consumers around their brand, that is a much more enlightened view than people who think of themselves as disseminators of the information that the company wants consumers to learn about their brand.
If you're creating amazing content, consumers will find you and they will engage with you.

But then someone has to take that leap, an if we build it, will they come? sort of deal. What Jakeman is talking about is the "pull" of engaging content, content that will draw consumers toward your brand. Tools to use that would pull consumers in; if you make yourself useful, people will naturally engage with you more frequently because you provide a service they need.

...as opposed to crappy content that you push out and impose on broad-scale media.

So, I know we all feel overwhelmed sometimes by the amount of information available - cool websites to check out, applications to download, Facebook groups to join - but the influx of content is not going to stop; it's only going to flow faster, so jump in brands! Here's to learning how to swim.

"25 things"

I got tagged the other day for the cyclical "25 things" meme, and you know what? It made me happy. It made me feel included. The rules were you had to get tagged to do it. You weren't supposed to just download the app and post it to your profile but rather wait until you were tagged; then pay it forward. So Mark Lewis paid it forward to me. I thought it was so cool! I felt like I was in; finally!

I had read other people's comments on the exercise. I think one person had written that it was hard to come up with 25 things to describe themselves...I thought I was in for a challenge, but really, 25 things isn't hard. Just sit in one place and look at all the stuff you have around you, each object is a story, each thought a potential one. You can do it. :)

I decided to write a post about this because my friend Paul twittered about "25 things," saying it was the first sign of Facebook's demise, down the path of Myspace, which he thinks is littered with these sorts of quizzes/postings/etc. I would agree that Myspace is a bit more adolescent, but come on, "25 things" has a viral quality about it. I wanted to be a part of it.

Maybe I'm just gullible (which is entirely possible) but I think we'll see more things like this; hopefully not as extensive; but more "viral" social networking fads. Or maybe I'm clueless and they've been happening before my active Twittering or Facebooking lately. If so, disregard this post.

Thanks for stopping by.

likemind was in the news

Just reminded of this article that the NYTimes wrote last year. And you might recognize the name in the first line...

For the sake of getting people interested in coming to the next one, likemind made the news in October of 2008: That Business Card Won't Fly Here covers what this once monthly, social (networking) group is all about:

Participants exchange ideas, job tips and useful contacts, while also batting around ideas about technology, art, business and culture.

It's a great way to get a Friday started. Check out the website to find one happening near you.

a digital mindset

Just saw this from Mark Earls on Twitter:

absolutely convinced that there's a digital mindset; one of sharing and altruism.. staggered by how few people have it

The capabilities of the web enable us to share a lot more; and one the one hand, it puts us all on the same page, while on the other: it helps us to see who's not. Or maybe it comes back to the simple awesomeness of the phrase two heads are better than one and the individuals in the group collective know that the possibilities are endless. Or we could look at Mark's more scientific reasoning behind social media:

it connects people to each other and that allows us to see each other (which you will hopefully remember allows us to emulate and thus drives the spread of behaviours and ideas)

what do you think? And how will we see this "digital mindset" evolve in 2009?

at likemind this AM, we discussed the topic of transparency and social media/networking with these conclusions: there needs to be a parallel category of "virtual life management" tools that become available, helping people translate their offline behaviors into an online on-all-the-time identity. I don't know if Mark's point of being "good" is inherent moreso than it's a by-product of transparency.

Hmmm...

changing the rules

It just occurred to me that the trend of transparency is upon us all on Facebook, Myspace, Twitter, Yelp, and LinkedIn (somewhat), among others. Two weeks ago I separated my "personal" from my "professional" on Facebook, thinking this separation would allow me to use the service a bit better. Plannersphere always wanted to be like a Facebook/LinkedIn child...and so I thought that I could make a Facebook account act like the Plannersphere only with the updates like Twitter - I'm thinking all-in-one baby!

But now that I think about the trend of transparency hitting the social sphere, maybe I shouldn't have done this. Maybe my professional network wants to see my personal life...wait, no, that doesn't sound right. Right? So how are we supposed to function on Facebook when my Director at work can see that I'm "recovering from a hard night out" or that my relationship status went from "in a relationship" to "single?"

This all seems to be about protecting the sancitity of our workplace, but maybe Gen Y is redefining the rules. Everything feels like it's in a state of flux: we're all figuring out how to co-exist with so much information available all the time and we're hitting bumps in the road, trying new things, working it out - but it's thrown us into a completely new area of communication. When I was at MAS, Catrina McAuliffe said that our generation was going to be the one that redefines how we use communication. Wow. She should get a noble prize for forecasting the future....

Here's to hoping that we know what we're doing; and that there's a little bit of strategy and planning along the way to guide us in solving the problems.