Imagine if your marketing campaigns were this agile?

Reading: The Information: A History, A Theory by James Gleick

Reviewed on Manzon

Amazon Best Books of the Month, March 2011: In a sense, The Information is a book about everything, from words themselves to talking drums, writing and lexicography, early attempts at an analytical engine, the telegraph and telephone, ENIAC, and the ubiquitous computers that followed. But that’s just the “History.” The “Theory” focuses on such 20th-century notables as Claude Shannon, Norbert Wiener, Alan Turing, and others who worked on coding, decoding, and re-coding both the meaning and the myriad messages transmitted via the media of their times. In the “Flood,” Gleick explains genetics as biology’s mechanism for informational exchange–Is a chicken just an egg’s way of making another egg?–and discusses self-replicating memes (ideas as different as earworms and racism) as information’s own evolving meta-life forms. Along the way, readers learn about music and quantum mechanics, why forgetting takes work, the meaning of an “interesting number,” and why “[t]he bit is the ultimate unsplittable particle.” What results is a visceral sense of information’s contemporary precedence as a way of understanding the world, a physical/symbolic palimpsest of self-propelled exchange, the universe itself as the ultimate analytical engine. If Borges’s “Library of Babel” is literature’s iconic cautionary tale about the extreme of informational overload, Gleick sees the opposite, the world as an endlessly unfolding opportunity in which “creatures of the information” may just recognize themselves. –Jason Kirk

The 4C’s

Social media efforts should be developed in the context of the 4C’s:
Connections
Creation
Consumption
Control

All 4 underlie consumer motivations to participate and will lead to higher ROI because the company’s marketing investments can better leverage the active “investments” its customers will make as they engage with the company’s brands.

Read more: http://sloanreview.mit.edu/smr

Steve Martin Plays “The Crow”

Should trade show budgets have a strong social media component?

The Social Media Marketing Campaign News
By Howard Oliver, CEO, What If What Next, whatifwhatnext@on.aibn.com

I started this discussion in the Enterprise Software Community group on LinkedIn:

Should trade show budgets have a strong social media component?

If you are attending a big fall technology show are you allocating funds to reach out via social media to prospects and customers? Are you going to use internal resources or outsource the task to your social media agency?

Here is an excellent reply that was added:
Social media is a great marketing tool and should be worked into your overall marketing strategy. Tradeshows are part of your marketing campaign, and should be integrated with your social media campaigns as well. Its all interconnected. You use your email campaign to reach out to customers about your tradeshow. You use direct mail to notifiy your prospects and customers about your tradeshow (on the direct mail, you will refer them to your twitter and FB as well). You reach out to your twitter and facebook followers/fans to tell them about your tradeshow. Post something about it to your Linkedin contacts, and in your Linkedin groups. You should use all of the media you have at your disposal…social media being an important link in that chain.

Thanks Marilou and Mel Cades!

We can continue the discussion here. Any suggestions?

Facebook Grows

Facebook becomes world’s 4th largest website: report

Social networking Facebook has already become the fourth largest website in the world, technology blog TechCrunch reported on Tuesday. In June this year, Facebook attracted a total of 340 million unique visitors globally, trailing only Google, Microsoft and Yahoo sites, the report said, citing latest results from market research firm comScore. According to the report, Facebook grew 157 percent in the past year alone, gaining 208 million visitors.

Facebook still has some way to go before it catches up to Google, Microsoft and Yahoo, each of which has between 240 million and 500 million more monthly global unique visitors. Facebook itself officially acknowledged in July that it now has 250 million active registered users worldwide.

Interesting reports from the past 90 days:

Here’s a look at just a few interesting reports from the past 90 days:

-CSI, Simpsons, are for the first time commanding higher advertising rates at Web sites than on prime-time TV

-YouTube’s new news service poses a threat to TV

-A growing number of recession-conscious Americans are using Web as a cable-TV substitute

-Xbox to add Twitter, facebook, Last.fm; positioning to lead digital TV space

-Facebook and Twitter now available on TV via Verizon service

-From February 2003 to February 2009, there was a 1,905 percent increase in time spent in online video

Reach Your Customers ……..At Work……

According to HRtools.com, 9-percent of employees have a blog and nearly a quarter of them will blog while they’re at work. Meanwhile, 41-percent of workers surveyed by HRtools.com revealed that they had a Facebook, Myspace, or other social networking page, and more than 30-percent spent time on their page during the workday. Conclusion: Your can reach your customers AT WORK with local, topical, consistent messaging, over a variety of social media.

Note the following New York Times Article:
Managing an Online Reputation
By KERMIT PATTISON
Published: July 29, 2009
Your customers are talking about you — and the whole world is listening. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/30/business/smallbusiness/30reputation.html

Notes Social Media and ROI

ROI implies investing time to receive value. If that value has not shown up on the ledger as of yet, it doesn’t mean it is imaginary. While the dollar payoff of a tactic can be in doubt primarily because the tools for measuring the value return are not yet available; from a ‘logic’ perspective the value obviously exists.

The key thing in communicating ROI is to consider both the measurable ROI equation as well as the difficult-to-measure ROI story.

ROI is difficult to measure when presenting the value of a tactic measured against the strategic goals of the company. In terms of social media – if a company believes in the value of relationship entanglement with their customers, then it will strategically value investments in the new tools to create those relationships – even if the financial payoff is difficult to predict or measure.

The equation is easier to present when social media are used to enhance a particular marketing initiative: an event, conference, trade show more traveling road show.

Advanced programs using social media integrated with the actual service or product can have particularly strong demonstratable ROI.

Notes Social Media and ROI

Social media provide the investment, insight, information, influence, interaction, and implementation that is tied to ROI outcomes

Measures of Engagement and Effectiveness:
Engagement: Usability, Extend of Engagement
Effectiveness: Objectives, Benchmarks

Metrics:Numbers of visitors, Numbers of Links,
Number of comments, Increase of Solutions, Increase in collaboration

Tools:Feedburner, Google Analytics, Technorati

Strategies:
Meet customers and stakeholders where they are
Provide interactive content
Allow for the increase in intermediaries
Rethink content and service design
Measure initiatives

Recommendations:
Just do it
Inventory Web 2.0 issues
Build component-based info services in social networks
Build authenticity into information and services
Learn and keep an open mind
Look for connectivity, transactions and interactivity
Increasing the ability to engage and connect with content increases the sense of ownership and respect the people feel for the content