You’ve just closed the elevator door, and the CMO asks you “What’s so great about this blogging thing?” Obviously, it’s a pretty broad topic — but you only have 10 floors to the lobby.
What do you want him to remember when the door opens?
Lee Odden over at TopRank sent me some future of marketing and PR questions, and I answered the heck out of them, including comments on online reputation management, social media measurement, tips for getting started with listening/ engagement strategies and more.
73 percent of Fortune 100 companies registered a total of 540 Twitter accounts.
76 percent of those accounts did not post tweets very often
53 percent of the accounts did not display personality, or a consistent tone/voice
52 percent were not actively engaged
50 percent of the Fortune 100 accounts had fewer than 500 followers
15 percent were inactive; of those, 11 percent were merely placeholder accounts
4 percent were abandoned after being used for a specific event.
Weber Shandwick prescribes five basic, but essential steps for Fortune 100 companies to start to create true engagement and market interaction on Twitter:
Listen to conversations.
Participate in conversations.
Update frequently with valuable information.
Reply to people who talk about issues that are important to your company.
My new post on Social Studies today…5 New Social Media Things I’m Excited About
1. Foursquare
It’s like Twitter, except not only do you care where your friends are AT THIS VERY MINUTE, you all earn points for going to those places. I signed up for Foursquare long ago, but just like Twitter, it takes a good base of friends actively using it be fun. Local businesses would be smart to set up Foursquare nights/tours for their early adopter patrons. Are you the mayor of anything yet?
2. Google Voice
I finally got my beta invitation and locked in my Google Voice number with a personalized XXX-XXX-GREG, which I’m very excited about. You can set it up to forward all calls to cell, home and work phones or filter some folks to one or the other. Online voicemail with transcripts is fun, and I was able to install an app on my smart phone to make calls without using minutes and send SMS without using my plan’s allotted texts. The set up was very intuitive, and I’m excited about the future of this technology and integration with the Google cloud suite.
3. Stuff in 3D
I’ve seen some microsites and business cards utilize Web cam to 3D technology, but last week I discovered Best Buy (client) using the advancement in human brainpower to put graphics on their ads that turn into 3D images when placed before your Web cam. The technology is here, and it’s time to experiment. Can you imagine a tiny Trent Reznor playing a 3D show on your laptop?
4. TweetYourSenator
President O’s PAC is still spending all of those tiny donations leftover from the election, and this time he’s made it simple to “Tweet Your Senator” about healthcare reform. As if our elected representatives’ aides didn’t already have their hands full sending form reply letters and deleting voicemails from constituents, now they have incoming tweets to ignore. But wait! There are a surprisingly large number of congressional members on Twitter, and I’m excited to see ways to harness the burgeoning interest in tweeting.
5. Twibbon
If you were an avid Twitter user in the summer of 2008, you’ll remember Ze Frank’s Color Wars, where users chose a team, tweaked their avatar to show their team spirit and participated in challenges just like summer camp. I was on the red team and remember agonizing over my avatar in Windows Paint trying to get it just right. These days people pimp their avatars for more genuine reasons (green avatars for Iran, Stellan, etc.). And thanks to Twibbon, it’s easier than ever to tweak your avatar with a cause or image overlay. Don’t see a cause that resonates with you? Make your own. Very cool.
My new post on Social Studies: “What does an abundance of information create? A scarcity of attention basically, right?” — Herbert Simon in 1971
The South by Southwest (SXSW) Interactive Conference is this week in Austin, TX. It’s the annual sharing and learning event for interactive professionals around the world.
This morning I hit the “Emerging From a Recession with Emerging Media” panel, featuring Patrick Moorhead of Razorfish and David Polinchock of the Brand Experience Lab.
The premise: The economy has tanked. Slides showing an entire foreclosed block of houses for sale, charts of stock prices and crying children quickly made their point for attendees. However, panelists argue, a poor economy is not a reason for marketers and brands to sit on their tried-and-true laurels.
More than 50 widely-successful companies were started during the Great Depression and/or 1970s Recession, including CNN, QuickTrip and Buffalo Wild Wings.
Polinchock made frequent reference to Encyclopedia Britannica sticking to their business model of selling information a letter book at a time for decades, ignoring that consumers were changing their consuption habits. Wikipedia may not be as trustworthy, but it’s instant and intuitive.
This is why it’s imperative for companies to reevaluate their approach to ROI, instead focusing on Return On Innovation as they weigh marketing strategies and tactics for the short and long term.
Technology You Won’t Be Able to Live Without 10 Years From Now
QR codes: tiny graphics that can be photographed/scanned to pull data or direct to a Web site
Real-time video: Companies like Qik already allow consumers to stream to the Web live from their phones. Can you imagine the implications of going to a concert where people are streaming the show live? It’s coming. (NOTE: This is one of my big concepts I’ve been talking about for a few years, actually. I want to go to YouTube Live and see 2,000 live feeds from fans at a Radiohead concert in Madrid by 2012. We’ll see…)
Ordering a Big Mac using RFID: The concept of ordering food by pointing your phone to the food you want, getting txt updates when it’s ready, billing it to your cell phone bill and your food knowing where you’re sitting in the restaurant. RFID has huge potential.
Visual search: the concept of typing “lime green shoelaces” into Google and getting 18,000 text results will seem archaic. We process visual information faster (don’t have to read). Like.com already lets you shop visually for shoes and handbags.
Takeaways:
Don’t take technology for granted
Consumers get spoiled easily – expectations are high
Innovation happens – what are you going to do?
Evolve or die
Suspend disbelief in order to get smart
No “no risk”
Create customer engagements that are:
As intuitive as play
and are as emotional as film.
The panel ended with Polinchock showcasing this awesome interactive program for MSNBC NewsBreaker that allows cinema audiences to control the game. I took some video of the panel audience controlling the game:
Lee Odden over at TopRank sent me some future of marketing and PR questions, and I answered the heck out of them, including comments on online reputation management, social media measurement, tips for getting started with listening/ engagement strategies and more. 
Digital and social marketing strategist, music blogger, citizen journalist, recovering egoist, apostle
