Your Digital Marketing ExpertsYour Digital Marketing ExpertsDate posted: July 3, 2009 with Comments
MediaPost recently summarized some Neilsen data and I’m relaying it to you. For the original link, click here.
| Top 10 Social Networking and Blog Sites (April 2009 U.S. Home and Work) | |||
| Site | Apr-08 Total Minutes (000) | Apr-09 Total Minutes (000) | Year-over-Year Percent Growth |
|
1,735,698 |
13,872,640 |
699% |
|
| Myspace.com |
7,254,645 |
4,973,919 |
-31 |
| Blogger |
448,710 |
582,683 |
30 |
| Tagged.com |
29,858 |
327,871 |
998 |
| Twitter.com |
7,865 |
299,836 |
3712 |
| MyYearbook |
131,105 |
268,565 |
105 |
| LiveJournal |
54,671 |
204,121 |
273 |
|
119,636 |
202,407 |
69 |
|
| SlashKey |
N/A |
187,687 |
N/A |
| Gaia Online |
173,115 |
143,909 |
-17 |
| Source: Nielsen NetView | |||
What seems astounding is that MySpace still dominates the social environment in terms of video streams and time spent viewing video online compared to its competitors. Of course, I don’t really think of Facebook as being a source for video info, but I’m sure that will change, much like the total user minutes (above) did over the course of the last year.
| Top 5 Social Networking and Blog Sites Ranked (April 2009, U.S. Home and Work) | ||
| Site | Total Video Streams (000) | Time Spent Viewing (Minutes x 000) |
| Myspace.com |
120,793 |
384,030 |
|
41,537 |
113,502 |
|
| Stickam |
19,617 |
54,522 |
| FunniestStuff.net |
10,206 |
34,456 |
| Funny or Die |
6,503 |
17,725 |
| Source: Nielsen VideoCensus, June 2009 | ||
Take care,
Bill.
Bill Wittur
Bottree Digital Services
Date posted: July 2, 2009 with Comments
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Date posted: July 1, 2009 with Comments
I’m amazed at how well the “Amazing Tree Quest” is doing.
We’re getting stories about the “Best Stand of Trees“, “Greatest Survivors” (with an awesome picture) and even a story about an “Underground Railroad Meeting Tree“.
This project was a volunteer effort for myself and Bottree Digital Services. I remember last fall going to the Executive Director suggesting that we need to do something a little more ‘interactive’ and getting polite, but questioning looks in return.
In time, we agreed to move ahead with some changes and had the opportunity to work with a local partner (rtraction) that helped us build a new site based on Drupal, the popular and powerful open-source program designed specifically for managing content, stories and other applications. The guys at rtraction were very humble about the process, mainly because I’m sure they threw in a few of their own custom applications. Suffice to say, they built a wicked new site for ReForest London.
Anyways, the contest is barely a month in (but we’ve only got a few weeks left to go) and we’ve received a substantial volume of interest. The local media has been all over it, we’ve done a little advertising with analog media and we’re generating some new traffic using Google PPC marketing.
The list of stories continues to grow, the voting has yet to subside and the page views / unique registrations are beyond what we expected as we planned this out. To date, we’ve seen a 5-fold jump in traffic (both for page views and unique visitors) and we’re seeing tangential benefits related to the site, including more donations and newsletter subscriptions than we saw during similar periods in the past.
What blows me away about this project is the trust that people put in me and rtraction to create a social site, but more importantly, how this organization is now leading the way with such a basic social application. I had no idea that we’d see so much positive response from the community and we’re now getting close to what I’d call the ‘tipping point’ (a la Malcolm Gladwell).
Which is …?
At a certain point, I expect people to start really taking ownership of this project and promoting their story to their family members and friends. When they do, ‘motivated self-interest’ will take over and I expect to see a new surge in web traffic, voting and new registrations/stories.
Promotion is actually quite easy. Taking the Underground Railroad Tree story as an example, you can see that every single story has an SEO-friendly URL that’s instantly created when someone submits a story:
http://reforestlondon.ca/amazingtreequest/underground-railroad-meeting-tree
People can simply copy and paste their own story (or their favourite story) and use it in very innocuous things like signature files with email messages, tweets and Facebook updates. They can add the story to their own blog (like I have) and share it with their audience.
We’ve also been encouraing local organizations to get their employees to post favourite stories. Admittedly, the response has been slow in this department, but I remain hopeful that folks at the LEDC or City Hall will start posting their own favourite stories. Not because they hope to win some of the prizes, but more because they want to up the stakes with a sense of civic pride. This is the “Forest City” after all!
So here’s the catch: I’m becoming a little obsessed with pushing the ‘Tipping Point’ closer to now and I’m getting impatient. I’d like to see people really take ownership and leverage this thing the way it should be, but I’m open to new advice about how we can do that.
In particular, I’d like to remind my audience that anyone can register (you don’t have to be a Londoner to register), anyone can vote and if you know London, you can post a tree even if you don’t live here.
You also don’t need a picture - although one would be preferred - and you can copy a link to any story and share it with your audience.
Finally, I’m hoping that people might be able to share some suggestions with respect to easy ways to integrate cool applications, including the following:
Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments below.
Thanks!
Bill Wittur
Bottree Digital Services
Date posted: June 30, 2009 with Comments
Back in April, I had the honour of speaking at the Social Media Summit in Toronto. I developed a ‘Social 101′ presentation which you can view at Slideshare.
Out of that, I received a call from Profit Magazine, a Canadian magazine that focuses on small and medium-sized businesses. Again, it was an honour to do an interview for them, but they only published one quote.
In preparation for the interview, I was given 5 questions, all of which I’ve developed into this article (Social Tactics for Small Businesses). Enjoy!
Social Tactics For Small Businesses
For starters, it was suggested that I was a “Social Media Expert”. Fair enough, given the context, but I’ll remind everyone that it’s impossible to be a social media expert because I agree with Augustine Fou of ClickZ when he says there is no such thing as social media.
So what am I? I consider myself to be a ‘coach’. I help other people find ways to exhibit their natural talents. I help organizations understand tactics related to social networking sites and applications. I teach people within organizations how to use the applications. I also help organizations develop content that will improve the visibility of their blogs and news releases.
But this is semantics. What’s important here is that small businesses understand that there are a number of tools they can use to gain visibility in the Internet space. And most of it is gratis and just takes a little focused effort and time.
Most small business owners like where they are because they can control their day-to-day lives and activities. For those interested in diving into the waters of social, you need to immediately admit to one extremely important rule:
You Are No Longer In Control.
In fact, ‘control’ is a bit of a misnomer, because most organizations haven’t been in the driver’s seat for years. To add to that, the traditional model of ‘pitching’ your product or creating what I (and many others) call ‘The Monologue’ where it’s all about you and nothing about the person who you’d like to buy your product or make a donation.
That said, let’s explore a few questions that might be on the minds of small and medium-sized business owners or other organizations that might be interested in testing the social waters.
How can entrepreneurs use social media to grow during the downturn?
Social applications and networks allow SMBs and other organizations to create and nurture relationships. They allow you to generate an instant presence and force you to become a good listener. For all of those people who say ‘I want to limit the bad comments’, you have to appreciate that at least someone is taking a few moments to provide feedback and to be engaged with your product.
In many cases, your absence can also be deafening. Many organizations are paralyzed with fear about joining the conversation only because they’ve been doing all of the talking to this point.
Shut up and listen. You’d be amazed what people will tell you. Or what they’ll tell others about you.
Is a recession a good time for companies to invest in social media?
Absolutely. If Obama can do it, everyone else can.
Many people are not recognizing that a lot of what’s happening is related. The prolonged recession has materialized not because people are closing their wallets, but because they’re spending their hard-earned money on companies and services that may not be considered ‘traditional’. They’re buying locally through small shops and are spending their money on their neighbour’s businesses instead of big boxes.
With that in mind, now is the best time to be creating a presence in the online space. Identifying your organization as one of those companies that actually care about the future of this planet will help you differentiate yourself from those that don’t (or who are trying to pretend they care and really don’t. We know who you are).
In addition to these more esoteric thoughts, there are the practical applications. Research has shown that companies that maintain ‘mindshare’ during recessions do even better when the economy picks up again. The confidence of marketing during tough times extends through to the good times.
But let me repeat: we are living during exciting times because the basic business model hasn’t experienced this kind of upheaval for the last 100 years. Marketing tools such as Google AdWords or Compete.com are free to use (or cost very little) and can be set up within minutes. The only cost is one that you can control on a daily, weekly or monthly basis. You no longer have to pay excessive media fees or creative costs in order to get your communications into the Internet space.
If you don’t know how to use these tools, that’s OK. Hire a good coach or a team of coaches like you’d get with Bottree Digital Services. There are lots of others out there, but be sure to act on referrals and ask lots of questions because the industry is still largely unregulated. There’s also an enormous volume of ’self-help’ articles and newsletters that provide regular updates to tools and applications that might be useful in creating a conversation with potential consumers.
Internalize the Process
While we’re more than happy to act on the behalf of any organization, eventually we can’t. We don’t know your clients as well as you do (or should) and we can’t pretend that we do. It borders on unethical.
Only you can talk about your product with a sense of pride and excitement that will capture the attention of consumers. Consider Newfoundland and Labrador Tourism. They have a Facebook page that they update often. They have a YouTube channel. And a Travel Blog where people can post comments. And even a Twitter feed. They also have their site in French, German, Dutch and Japanese.
As I’ve mentioned before, these links and tactics don’t cost anything except time and effort.
Admittedly, they might be working with an agency to help them with some aspects of their campaign (particularly the branding and media components), but we’re entering an age when DIY is taking over this model.
If you want to talk about control, what better way to control than to take matters into your own hands?
Summary: it’s inevitable that every organization will have a very important position that I call the “Digital Strategist”. This person will be the central ‘brain’ behind all things related to online, social, search and so on. They will be aware of where they are at all times.
What’s the one social media tool every business should be adopting?
Ultimately, I’d respond to this question with another question: why limit yourself to one application when there are so many valuable options to choose from?
Of course, there is a simple answer: blogging. Every organization should have a corporate blog as well as a ‘blog-central’ that allows other employees to post stories and information about aspects of their jobs that they want to talk about.
But make sure that the application for blogging that you choose is powerful enough to support this kind of option or capable of being hosted on your servers and not that of someone else. Wordpress is probably the best tool you can get and you could hire a professional programmer to install it for you for as little as a few hundred bucks. Larger organizations take not: integrating a blog will prove to be a lot more awkward and will cost several thousand for a custom blog that appears seamless with the rest of your site.
Once it’s up and running, the blog become a very powerful tool for the following reasons:
What’s your view of Twitter as a business tool, given the hype surrounding it?
Like all tactics, Twitter has a time and a place. It works really well for people who are on the road and for folks at conferences. I was Tweeting a lot for a while (@bottree), but I have to admit that I’ve faded a little with my Tweeting because I like to talk and I rarely have thoughts that come in 140 character soundbites.
That said, what a lot of people don’t appreciate about Twitter is that the search capabilities are more immediate than Google. Twitter will replace the ‘breaking story’.
I’m amazed that more media organizations aren’t making full use of Twitter given the power to instantly convey a message to a broad audience.
This year will be the deciding moment for Twitter. Earlier in the year, I was suggesting that Twitter accounts will reach the 50 million mark by the end of 2009, but I’m less optimistic now because other larger media organizations (Facebook, Google) are doing a much better job of integrating instant messaging (which is really all Twitter is) within their products. In this circumstance, the fewer products people have to use, the better.
How should small businesses measure and monitor the social media they use?
This is a tricky question because everyone has different goals or objectives.
When you start out with social tactics, it’s important to define clear objectives. One of the best social commentators / bloggers that I’ve been reading lately is Beth Kanter of Beth’s Blog fame.
Almost every other day, she’ll have a blog (or a guest blog) that focuses on the metrics associated with social tactics and here’s a quick summary of some of the things I’ve seen on her blog (I’ll try to expand on these elements with future blog articles):
Additional tools for tracking:
Paid: http://semplanning.com/social-media-analysis-tools/
Free: http://www.marketingpilgrim.com/2007/08/26-free-tools-for-buzz-monitoring.html
Other advice includes the following:
o Nurture the relationship
o Don’t overdo it
o Don’t Astroturf or buy off opinions
o Don’t jump into the deep-end
o For charities and non-profits, consider a concept I developed called P4P (Peer 4 Peer). I’ll write more about this in the coming weeks.
What are the Limitations to Future Growth?
I’ll cover this issue in greater detail in a future blog, but for the moment, there are a number of factors at play in Canada that will have an impact on the viability of social applications and the Internet in general over the coming years. Some of the more obvious ones include the following:
Summary
I admit that there’s a lot to grasp, particularly if you’re new to the game and more importantly if you see social tactics as an extension to marketing and think it’s something that someone else should be doing for you.
The best way to think of social marketing and the tactics available: if you’re at a party, don’t be the drunk that stumbles in and causes a roucous. There’s a huge party going on within the social framework, but barging your way in will not be well received.
Thanks for reading and, as always, post comments that you think will benefit our readers!
Bill Wittur
Bottree Digital Services
Date posted: June 27, 2009 with Comments
A number of folks are suggesting that ‘news’ can and should be copyrighted, and therefore, controlled by the ‘owners’ of that content. US Judge Richard Posner made this suggestion with this blog article as he described ways in which the newspaper industry could save itself. Other sources are cited in this article.
This is an awkward issue for a number of reasons, least of all that I want to dispute a US Judge and a number of other members of the legal community, but I do have some thoughts related to my experience in the industry.
Let’s start with this: I think we may have heard this before, haven’t we? How many of you have massively expanded your array of music options with the advent of P2P networks, despite threats of being sued by the RIAA? How many of you are downloading new content that you may not have found (or been able to see) on some of the ‘mainstream’ TV networks or shows just a few years ago?
Let’s face it: the threat of using copyrighted material hasn’t slowed the desire on the part of most people in North America and abroad to obtain that content without proper payment to the creator of that content. While I’m not advocating theft, the actions of these people seem to indicate a notion that ‘content’ is something that should be free, and not for ‘fee’.
With this in mind, we’re faced with what I’d call the ‘copyright paradox’. This occurs when ‘content’ is locked up and kept from everyone. People will commit resources to making it available to the general public again. The potential ‘cost’ of getting caught is outweighed by the benefit of enjoying free entertainment.
The music industry had the option (and still does) to let people have more access to content and chose to clamp down instead. The ill-will created by going after grandmothers and young teens like they were kingpins in an ecstasy sales racket has generated a permanent black eye for the RIAA and other organizations and it’s unlikely that they’ll ever have much street cred again.
If the newspapers choose to go this route, they’ll face the same fate as the music industry, most TV networks, movie producers and others who insist on generating pablum for the masses in exchange for a payment for entry. More money will be wasted on lawsuits that will be earned by producers of content, sending the entire media industry into a massive tailspin of finger-pointing and malicious grabs at who the original owner of a story was.
The central argument behind all of this debate about content is the question of ‘quality’. Who will do the investigative journalism if no one is paid? I’d counter by asking who was doing it before? I know it’s an insulting jab, but the vast majority of news that I see on national networks is repeated, recopied, translated and rephrased from press releases, media ‘war’ rooms and other creators of content that have ’suspicious’ intent in the first place.
In the world of post-corporate, tightly controlled messaging, creators of spin aren’t wanted. Creators of value and knowledge are.
Let’s face it folks: the cat’s out of the bag, Pandora’s Box is open and we are all in this together now. Adding a price tag to online content will be no more efficient or effective than chasing after someone that reads a copy of the newspaper that was left on a park bench for someone else to read.
Date posted: June 19, 2009 with Comments
Blog note: I try to refrain from talking about politics, but Net Neutrality is something I’m very passionate about. Without a neutral network in Canada, we put innovation at risk, limit digital marketing opportunities and suppress other economic benefits associated with being the best digital economy on the planet (which we’ve surrendered to other countries that see the Internet as an opportunity, not as a threat).
Regardless of your political stripes, please encourage your favourite politician to support Net Neutrality and make it a non-partisan issue.
For more about Net Neutrality, visit SaveOurNet.ca, the leading non-profit that is leading a grassroots campaign to help educate and inform people about the importance of a neutral net. While you’re there, consider making a donation 
That said, for a long time, it has only been the NDP in Canada that have supported Net Neutrality, but recently, the Liberals of Canada have finally thrown their support behind Net Neutrality:
Is it possible that Net Neutrality will become an election issue? It may be, given that the Conservative government has recently submitted two separate bills in Parliament that would require ISPs to monitor everything that we do on the Internet.
These measures will also affect the economic future of a wide array of Internet Service Providers that simply can’t afford to implement wire-tapping capabilities for their subscribers. Even Bell Canada expressed concerns about these proposed regulations:
Spokeswoman Jacqueline Michelis said in an email that the company “has long been committed to working with law enforcement agencies to find effective and efficient solutions for their legitimate surveillance needs,” but policing costs shouldn’t be downloaded to one particular industry.
“Other funding mechanisms must be found,” Michelis said.
More about these bills can be found here.
One step forward, two steps back, I’m afraid.
Date posted: June 15, 2009 with Comments
“Mad Avenue Blues” is a great video using Don McLean’s classic “American Pie“.
Enjoy it! Of course, for those with limited time (that would be all of us, right?), you should get the idea within the first verse or two.
Date posted: with Comments
Facebook announced that starting June 12, users will be able to reserve their own vanity pages.
I booked two so that you can see what I’m talking about:
As a user or an institution (company, non-profit, etc), it is very important to claim your space before someone else does. This is your moment to make sure that no one else swoops in and takes specific and simple names that you should be claiming.
While this didn’t seem to happen with Twitter or LinkedIn, it’s still possible that within the next 6 months (or even weeks) a number of issues arising from ’squatters’ on names like ‘MacDonalds’. Of course, this might simply represent a reunion page for the MacDonald clan and not the famous hamburger chain, but you get the idea.
Why Facebook didn’t charge for these pages, especially the corporate ones, I do not understand. Could it be because you can create the exact same type of page with other social networks like Twitter and LinkedIn? If they charged, would they wind up breaking the model that everyone has come to love (ie. get stuff, including vanity URLs, for free)?
Date posted: June 12, 2009 with Comments
This video is from the PodCamp London event that took place earlier in April 2009. It was a last-minute effort, but the audience seemed very receptive to me presenting some of the basics about social networking & marketing opportunities and how they’re a true evolution from analog media.
This next video was even more on the impulsive side, with me offering some opinions about the limitations to future growth with respect to the Canadian Internet and social media ‘industries’. The quick summary is as follows:
Here’s the video:
What are your thoughts about either video? Do you have questions that we can help you with when it comes to understanding social networks and the opportunities they may present with marketing and creating a dialogue?
How about limitations? Do you think I’m full of it or are these legitimate concerns? In particular, I’m looking for data on the wireless & mobile component. Many people have referred to these numbers, but I’ve never actually seen them.
Date posted: June 11, 2009 with Comments
The IAB in the US has launched an ad campaign geared toward generating awareness related to the volume of people that live off the ad-supported internet. This campaign seems to be in advance of a number of sessions in the US focusing on privacy issues in the online environment.
Who will win? Stay tuned.
In the meantime, some people are looking at how the web world might look without ads.
Gasp! No ads? What will we do? Ask Craigslist. And about a thousand other sites.
What we might discover with this new level of activity and efforts to build awareness is that the entire ad-supported is drifting away from the consumer that doesn’t really want to have people ’shout’ at them, whether it’s from 15 second ad breaks before or after online TV, random display ads that come up through ad networks and so on.
Instead, it will reinforce a notion I’ve had for some time that the time is now for organizations and companies to consider having a permanent position known as the ‘digital strategist’. This role would bridge a lot of gaps that exist within organizations and would start to really put the ownership of digital marketing within the organization rather than have it be outsourced to a third party (myself included). Exceptionally daring institutions might even create the “Chief Digital Strategist” position that will oversee all things digital within an organization and might even go so far as to give such a person the power to override/oversee the activities of both the Chief Tech Officer and Chief Marketing Officer because of the range of responsibilities. OK … I admit to being a little ambitious with that suggestion but it might be worth trying if you’re a new organization.
What interests me is that many companies and organizations have already made the leap to make sure that they have an in-house social media expert, but they’ve missed the opportunity to bring in an SEO / SEM expert, designer, part-time programmer and media buyer (ie. a ‘jack of all trades’) to manage all of their promotional affairs.
Ultimately, there’s a bigger question here: if digital marketing activities are brought in-house or the occasional specialist is hired to manage custom work on an ad-hoc basis, what does this spell for the future of the agency?
