Facebook vs Myspace

Facebook is a fast growing social networking site that has its competitor, Myspace, sweating bullets. Myspace has been sitting comfortably on top of the world for years, when it comes to social networking. The other day News Corp.’s Myspace CEO Rupert Murdoch spoke out about Facebook’s recent success, “They’ve not monetized as well as us. They’ve done a great job of being the flavor of the month the last six months of last year.” “Flavor of the month?” In the past year, Facebook has grown a steady 89% with no sign of slowing down while Myspace has grown less than 10%. Myspace does acknowledge that Facebook is a credible competitor so Myspace has been making changes to their site. This week, they revamped their homepage with new advertising options and there will be more improvements to come.

Even though Myspace has more than double the amount of Facebook users, I think the changes that Myspace is making may be a little too late. Facebook took advantage of this slack and is on the fast train of being ahead. If Myspace wants to stay in their cozy number one spot, they will have to stay one step ahead of their competitor. I predict that Facebook will become the number one social networking site one day, soon. It seems that Facebook is making moves to be on top while Myspace is slow to do so. Time will tell!

Making Online Videos Easier To Watch

Time Warner Cable (TWC) is planning to bring online video to your TV sets an easier way. Apple’s Apple TV and other systems already offer the feature to download Internet content to a TV, but only the “enthusiast”, or their friends, has this hooked up. If you want this feature now, you have to purchase the equipment then set it up yourself. Even through it has been made easy, the average person does not want to go through the hassle of it. TWC plans to make a wireless cable modem where you just pay the cable bill and you’re off downloading online videos instantly. They predict that this could become popular in the next year or two.


What does this mean to marketers? Does it open a door to a new market? I think so. Companies could use this in a sense of viral marketing, through websites such as youtube.com and other video online sites. Create a video that is funny and advertising the company, then download it on youtube.com and let it circle through the Internet. If it is as funny as your favorite youtube video (My New Haircut or Unforgivable for example), then you’ll hear your target market and other people repeating the lines from it. “Jagerbombs” “Go get me a chicken sandwich and some waffle fries…fo free” It would save the company money because downloading videos online is free on most video websites. Verses having the video on a TV network that cost money for a time slot.

Make it easy to find a Newsletter

Today I have been searching different websites to join their newsletters, but theres a problem with some of these sites. It is taking longer than I predicted. I have been searching and browsing all throughout the whole websites just to find a way to sign up for a newsletter. I have been going through about eight diffrent sites and should only take me roughly 10 mintues. There are some sites that make it simple, fast and effective, because they have a link at the top right of the page that says, "Sign up for our Newsletter". Our website has done this very well.


These websites are all marketing sites. At first, I thought this was terrible marketing, but after I thought about it - is it genius marketing? Think about it, I am searching through the whole website and I find myself reading some of the articles and learning about the different companies...

GoDaddy, Go! : Super Bowl Ad Teamed with Online Strategy Make a Run for ROI Touchdown

The big game is over but the advertising showdown has just begun. Despite the fact that the return on advertising during Super Bowl is difficult to measure, companies paid an estimated $2.7 million per 30-second spot on the theory that viewers pay as much attention to the commercials as they do to end zone antics. With over 90 million viewers tuned in and 37 brands competing, whose ads will translate into ROI? My bet is on GoDaddy.

GoDaddy.com scored big with Two million hits to the site on Super Bowl Sunday. "Up by a factor of 3.5 times compared to normal," reported GoDaddy founder and CEO Bob Parsons. What did they do right? Maintaining its risque' advertising style, the ads made a clear call to action. After Fox rejected GoDaddy's ad "Exposure," they instead created an ad that told Super Bowl viewers how to see "Exposure" online. Only 6% of companies included a call to action in their commercial, reported Reprise Media, Inc. in its Search Marketing Scorecard (Jan 2008).

In addition, GoDaddy ran full speed in optimizing their online exposure. ComScore, a leader in measuring the digital world, conducted a pre-game survey that revealed 75% of respondents planned to go online on game day. GoDaddy took action and maximized awareness by using search engines, sending out press releases about rejected ads, adding interactive features on the website and later posting blogs and distributing the ads to a wider Internet audience through YouTube, and other social media outlets. "Marketers that overlook search and social media are potentially missing out on a huge opportunity to engage with interested consumers during the game," said Peter Hershberg of Reprise Media.

Advertisers have learned that the Super Bowl is more than a one-shot deal. If the ads drive Web traffic, then it gives a longer return on investment than short-term sales. "For us, because we're an internet company and we sell domain names, there's no way we can really explain what we do in a commercial. We had to get people to our website," said Parsons. Among GoDaddy, other advertisers who connected their ads with online strategies include Pepsi, Cars.com, T-Mobile, Tide and CareerBuilder.

GoDaddy set foot in the Super Bowl arena in 2005 with no previous experience in advertising and paid nearly 5 million for two spots that dared to poke fun of the previous year's half time "wardrobe malfunction" that sparked a crackdown on broadcast indecency. The humor didn't go over well finishing 28 out of 55 ranked in USA Today's Ad Meter, however, the commercial grew its industry market share from 16 percent to 25 percent. The following year, the market share rose to 32 percent and 2007's Super Bowl commercial helped GoDaddy boost to its current 42 percent mark (Cheap Web Hosting Directory, Jan 2008). I look forward to seeing the 2008 results.

Incorporating UGC and Bottom Up Content Strategy into Your Thought Leadership Marketing Programs - Part 2

The first question Doug White asked to the panel of social media experts that initiated a lengthy discussion was, “What was your Ah-ha moment when you realized that your brand needed to have a social media strategy/presence?”

• Lee Aase (Mayo Clinic) mentioned that the Mayo Clinic was already providing syndicated content for broadcast and 60 second radio segments. He went on to say, “A light bulb went on with web video and podcasting... you can let users access the content directly and let them find exactly what they want.” It also helped that the brand has built its reputation primarily by word of mouth over the last 100+ years.

• Rick Short (Indium) took a more philosophical top-line route with his response, “We all naturally generate content. We like to talk and type about things; it costs practically nothing to produce content - blog software, cell phone, digital camera.” He realized four years ago that, “this tidal wave was coming at me...”

• Kevin Hoffberg (Decision Street) was in the middle of writing a book on customer service in 2001 and saw the UGC-developed PowerPoint deck defaming the Doubletree hotel brand. “It got really interesting when the CEO of Hilton saw it and had to start over with customer service training.” He went on to say that consumers are afraid of making ‘wrong’ decisions and that people are desperate to be connected to professional expertise. He left the group with another question, “How do people judge credibility online? We rely on both pure conversations and brand messaging.”

• Chris Curtin (Disney) has the fortunate experience to be tied to a brand that’s been around for 5 decades and is an incredibly viral brand naturally. He mentioned that, “every mechanism associated with UGC is well underway without proactive involvement from the brand,” and moved on to another point, “the better question is how do we interact with it [UGC]?”

Kevin threw out a question to the attendees of the session asking if anyone has been burned by their involvement with UGC and social media.

• Mike Murphy (EarthLink) was quick to respond, “[EarthLink] had to pull back from leveraging UGC. The most enthusiastic customers generally are the participants. We were hoping to have customers help each other resolve issues. There aren’t a lot of enthusiastic customers about internet service providers, because it is a utility. We had concern about negative user feedback, so we didn’t see it as a benefit to the brand.”

• Leisa Glispy (Armstrong) had a great point about the difference between UGC utilization for products v. services, “It’s rare to have a user rave about service, unless it’s truly exceptional. In the case of products, you can change or fix [the product] based on the user feedback.”

White changed the direction by asking about how to overcome obstacles with teaching your internal team or executive board about the importance of UGC tactics.

• Lee, “When I signed up for Facebook and found out I already had 11,000 members in my Mayo Clinic network - that was my real Ah-ha; why not trust people to publicly communicate? It can help improve the reach of your brand when you trust that your people are doing the right thing.”

• Barb Murphy (Weyforth-Haas), “It’s been easier to introduce the customer insight piece as a point of entry to help broaden the vision; for BtoB customers you have to start with the business decision and then translate the leadership team to understand the customer perception.”

• Kevin went on to say, “From an objective standpoint, it’s not hard based on stats. At the end of the day, we are all anecdotal thinkers and influenced by stories. Show them [your executive team] the Facebook page or take them somewhere to see it first hand.” He also mentioned it is a good idea to leverage personal experiences to craft your story.
  

• Leisa had a couple of additional food for thought points, “The technology will make it a part of daily life; authenticity is one of the biggest game changers.” She also brought up an interesting idea of syndication across multiple community sites, relating it to the disconnect that can sometimes happen between your identity on Facebook v. LinkedIn v. MySpace, etc.

Best Practices/Take Aways

• Lee, “Join the Frost group on Facebook as part of your homework from this event.”

• Kevin - “Get Flock, the uber cool social media web browser, layered on the Firefox backend.” (As a side note, I’ve been using this browser since it launched - I highly recommend it to anyone reading this).

• Chris, “Make sure you fully understand your brand. Don’t chase trends. Figure out what your [brand] voice should be and bring it to all spaces.”

• Rick, “Begin at the end. Don’t jump it because it’s the topic of the day - begin with your goal.”

Incorporating UGC and Bottom Up Content Strategy into Your Thought Leadership Marketing Programs

My colleague, Doug White, recently hosted a panel at Frost & Sullivan's Executive MindXChange in Phoenix. The prestigious, UGC experts leading the conversation included:

Kevin Hoffberg of Decision Street, Kevin's blog
Lee Aase of Mayo Clinic, Lee's Blog
Christopher Curtin of The Walt Disney Company
Richard Short of Indium Corporation, Rick's blog

To establish the context for the very engaging conversation that ensued, the following stats were shared:

• Technorati tracks 112.8 million blogs and over 250 million pieces of tagged social media. – Technorati website 11/15/2007


• 175,000 new blogs created each day. - That’s over 2 new blogs per second created each day! . – Technorati website 11/15/2007


• Bloggers update their blogs regularly to the tune of over 1.6 million posts per day, or over 18 updates a second. . – Technorati website 11/15/2007


• 61% of Internet searchers think that SEO listings are more relevant – iProspect


• As of December 18, 2007 There were estimated to be over 200 million MySpace profiles - Wikipedia


• At peak, MySpace had over 230,000 new registrations added each day - Wikipedia


• 25% of users reported online video as one of the top 3 activities performed online – Forrester 2006


• Broadband Content and Services 2007, six out of ten high speed Internet users watch/download online video content at least once a week compared to 45% in 2006 - Center for Media Research – 01.09.2008
  


• Penetration of video-enabled handheld (portable) devices is on the rise as is viewing of video content on these devices. 27% of Internet users have a cell, iPod/MP3 player, or PDA with video capability, and an additional 23% do not have this capability but are interested in getting it. - Oct. 2007 - Horowitz Associates Report

Stay tuned for Part 2, summarizing the panel discussion.

Top Tips for Creating Hot Podcasts

In a recent meeting of the minds Paul Dunay, Director of Global Field Marketing for Bearing Point discloses the top 11 tips for podcasting. The following are the pointers I found most valuable.

1. Make sure to do a killer intro for your podcast.
2. Always remember that the primary goal of the podcast, to establish yourself and your organization as a thought leader.
3. Make good use of audience feedback and apply it to make improvements.
4. Remember trust is key when developing a relationship with your audience.
5. Elaborate on the content of your podcast with supporting materials on your website.
6. Absolutely NO selling in podcasts.
7. Be thought provoking and proactive.
8. Keep podcasts conversational and engaging.

Dunay concluded with the idea that "If you're going to commit to doing podcasts, then keep that commitment and don't give up. Keep them going." Wise words that will help you maintain credibility.