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Fishkin's hard look at ROI of Twitter, social media

10 Mar

The Seattle Times - Business & Technology

I'm a little late writing about this, but I keep thinking about a blog entry that Seattle SEO guru Rand Fishkin posted a few days ago, analyzing the ROI on social media marketing.

Read more over at seattletimes.nwsource.com
Social-Media Cause Trouble

10 Mar

WSJ.com - Technology

Some employees are over-sharing on social-media sites, causing embarrassment and possible financial harm to small enterprises.

Read more over at online.wsj.com
SXSW 2010: The Complete Social Media Guide

10 Mar

Mashable!

This year’s South By Southwest (SXSW) festival is rapidly approaching. Beginning with the Interactive Media events on March 12th, Austin, Texas will be the place to connect with the brightest in tech and media and get the scoop on some exciting new ventures.
Whether you plan to physically attend or not, social media will be critical to how people connect and share ideas at this world-class event. If you want to keep in touch with all the goings-on, look no further than these tools that you can use on the web, your mobile device, and your favorite social networks.
For Those Headed to Austin
While in-person networking is the goal of many, social media will be key in bringing interested parties together across this vast festival that this year is spread across four separate campuses. If you’ll be in attendance, check out these resources for staying connected.
The Official SXSW First-Timers Guide
If you’re brand new to SXSW and feeling a bit overwhelmed at the scope, the first-timers guide has a wealth of resources to assist the uninitiated. These include links to online registration (if you still need to sign up), hotel booking, scheduling tools, maps, and this informative video.
my.SXSW and QR Coded Badges
The official social network of the festival is my.SXSW, and you are automatically invited to join upon registering. This closed network, just for attendees, allows users to build personalized conference schedules, join exclusive groups, and connect with others at the festival.
The addition of QR codes on registered badges gives attendees with smartphones an added way to solidify in-person connections. Simply scan a new friend’s personalized QR code and you’ll automatically be following him or her within the my.SXSW network.
For additional ways to utilize the my.SXSW network, check out the info on their tools page.
SXSW2010 Event Calendar on sched.org
Sched.org is an interactive calendar with social media integration that makes it ideal for festivals like SXSW. An “unofficial” but highly useful calendar has been created for SXSW that will give you an overview of each day’s events, talks and panels.
Sign in with Facebook Connect or Twitter and start compiling a list of the events you’ll be attending. By clicking on a particular event, you can also see who else is attending, and view real-time updates about the event from other attendees on social networks. With a bit of effort, this tool could become your go-to social dashboard and connection builder for the entire festival.
SitBy.Us
Social media aficionados will be converging on Austin from all over the U.S. and the world. It’s likely that some of your Twitter friends will be in attendance while you’re there.
Don’t let an opportunity for an in-person meeting slip by. SitBy.Us is a useful tool that lets you see which panels your Twitter friends will be attending, and even where in each room they will sit.
By logging in with your Twitter account (via OAuth), SitBy.Us provides a mobile-optimized web interface that allows you to plan and coordinate panel attendance with people you’re looking to connect with in person (and perhaps even avoid those you don’t!).
SXSW Badges for Foursquare
Foursquare has created 16 new SXSW-specific badges for those location-based networkers who are Austin bound. What’s more, if you do unlock a badge, you can track down a Foursquare team member at the festival and claim a temporary tattoo with the mark of honor.
Cliqset’s SXSW Map
Cliqset.com has created a real-time map that aggregates all of the geo-tagged activity in the festival area of Austin. Pulling in data from the major location-based social networks (Brightkite, Flickr, Foursquare, Gowalla, Qik, and Twitter), the map will give you a bird’s eye view of who is at SXSW, where they are, and what they’re doing.
Click a pinpoint on the map to expand the user’s status update. It should be interesting to see the map fill up with notes come festival time this Friday.
Disclosure: Cliqset is a Mashable sponsor
Mashable’s Austin Real-Time
Looking to connect with like-minded festival goers or other attendees from your hometown? Check out Mashable’s own Austin Real-Time Network. Sign in with your Twitter, Facebook, or Cliqset ID and browse or search for other festival patrons by common interest or location. By adding yourself to the network, you can also share what you’re doing and where you are via your favorite social networks.
For Those Who Will Watch from Afar
If you’re not able to make it to Austin this year, don’t fret. The magic of social media and the web can bring the festival within reach. While you may not be able to hob-knob with your favorite tech and music geeks in the warm Austin sun, you can still get your SXSW fix with these resources.
The Official SXSW Twitter and Facebook Accounts
Being the socially-savvy team that they are, the crew behind the festival does a good job keeping their fans and followers in the know. If you want to keep an eye on developments in Austin, be sure to add these official channels to your social feeds.
SXSW Videos
Though not officially connected to the festival, SXSW Videos is a user-generated destination for footage from the event.
Powered by Viddler, the site lets you browse videos that come out of SXSW (in various categories, including Interviews, Shows, Bands, etc.) as well as upload your own if you’re in attendance.
The content can be a bit of a grab-bag, but if you’re looking for some first-hand video accounts of what’s happening on the ground, check in there every once in a while.
SXSW Blogs
Searching for other ways to live vicariously through the SXSW attendees? Dedicated blogs are a good way to stay in the loop.
The Unofficial SXSW Insider’s Guide is a blog/community built with Ning where festival attendees (and interested parties who couldn’t make it) can blog, upload photos, and discuss events.
You can browse the site blog-style to see what people are up to, or connect with individual members to get a more social scoop.
SXSW Baby is another unofficial blog that will be covering the events throughout the festival.
Currently, they have quite a few tips for those who are enroute to Austin. But if you’ll be checking in from home, stay tuned for further updates as the festival kicks off this Friday.
Mashable’s SXSWi Channel
Of course you can always stay up to date on the latest news coming from Austin with Mashable’s own channel, dedicated to the Interactive Media portion of the festival. Members of our team will be on the ground in Austin to get you the social media and tech scoops that are sure to break in the days ahead.
More SXSW resources from Mashable:
- 3 Things to Do Before MashBash SXSWi This Sunday Night
- Coming to SXSW? Add Yourself to Austin Realtime!
Tags: BLOGS, cliqset, facebook, festival, foursquare, gowalla, location-based, networking, ning, social media, social networks, sxsw, sxsw2010, twitter

Read more over at mashable.com
Social-Media Updates Could Cause Trouble

10 Mar

WSJ.com - Technology

Some employees are over-sharing on social-media sites, causing embarrassment and possible financial harm to small enterprises.

Read more over at online.wsj.com
Blippy the latest social media entrant

9 Mar

New Zealand Herald - Technology

This is still Year One of the internet Age, and social media is an infant. We are in the midst of a great era of experimentation and unpredictability. At their first investor pitch meetings, the founders of Twitter - who seem...

Read more over at www.nzherald.co.nz
For SXSWi, Chevy plugs into social media

9 Mar

CNET News.com

An ambitious load of marketing initiatives from the General Motors division, which is getting ready to launch its Volt electric car, emphasize that brands increasingly see the digital-culture festival as a place to test out new campaigns that aren't yet r

Read more over at news.cnet.com
Social Media Dorks Get an Anthem [VIDEO]

8 Mar

Mashable!

Remember the Pantless Knights of “I’m on a Mac” fame? Well, they’re back today with a new vid titled “The New Dork,” a parody of Jay-Z and Alicia Keys’s “Empire State of Mind” that pays tribute to social media adherents and hipsters alike.

With shoutouts to Zuckerberg, Mashable, Valleywag, Gizmodo, LinkedIn, Twitter and tech nerds camped out in their mothers’ basements, this video is all about using your social media cache to attain new levels of irony-spun hipness.
According to these tech-savvy dudes, Internet denizens of today are raking in the cash and models whilst rocking skinny jeans and “steady Jerkin’” (it’s a dance craze, guys — get your mind outta the gutter). As the refrain goes: “Social networks what dream are made of.” Apparently, the “New Dork” is the next hot thing.
That’s cool and everything, but I’m more stoked that the video features a guy wearing jorts.
Check it out below. What do you think of the concept of the “New Dork”? Let us know in the comments.
Tags: humor, pop culture, social media, viral video

Read more over at mashable.com
The Trust Veneer Problem in Social Media

6 Mar

The Buzz Bin

Yet another trip. Yet another lost bag.
Finding Trust Amid the Crowd
I am increasingly aware of the challenges businesses face in earning real trust, and this week I was left (without a change of clothes) to ponder yet again just what is going wrong in this regard. My airline can’t get me and my luggage to the same place at the same time. My car has a mind of its own about braking and acceleration. My bank sees the issuance of credit cards as an opportunity to get in my pocket for more fees. Can the fall of capitalism be far behind?
I used to feed empowered by Tweeting about such things or writing a letter to the president of the offending company, but I’m just getting weary and resigned to a more old-Soviet-style capitalism (or is that socialism?). You know: learn your bag isn’t where you are; go find ”the line;” trudge up to a counter to be confronted by a disinterested clerk…things we used to poke fun at Eastern Bloc countries about.
So, in a triumph of form over substance via technology, I can now be told that my bag is resting comfortably in a plane’s belly in Chicago (when I am in Phoenix) and that the fix for my accelerator can be made in two months, but I’ll have to make a separate appointment for the fuel line problem that could cause a fire to occur at any time. And wait… the good news is that I can make the appointments online!
Trust is getting lost the deeper we move into the ersatz “connectedness” of the social media world. The importance of the things that can’t be seen from the ticket line when we are conducting our transactions — the intangibles – are even more key to differentiating these days, but peace of mind and confidence and trust and seem to slip farther away for many companies, even as they increase attempts to connect to their audiences.
Edelman’s research for the Trust Barometer seems to disagree with this on the surface, but amidst what the research touted as an increase in trust recently (who could forget 2009?), there was this killer point: 70 percent say that businesses will revert to old, bad habits once the crisis is over. As my grandfather used to say of a neighbor who betrayed trust between outpourings of neighborliness, “I trust that man about as far as I can throw him.”
Here’s the plea (and I’m looking in the mirror on this one). Let’s all of us who are involved in marketing soon get over the shiny object of social media. We have created a way to hear customer feedback, and we have used it to solve problems. We have created communities around products and services. These are only good things if they contribute to genuine, solid change instead of the veneer of change.
The trust veneer has developed some significant dings. People are thinking that we can’t solve the issues we face. They are marching in the streets to protest programs that deliver healthcare to uninsured fellow citizens. They are saying that government should take control of executive salaries. They are worried that their financial advisors are getting rich at their expense. Whether we work for Obama or for Ms. Smith on Main Street, the importance of building and maintaining trust has never been greater.
Matthew May, author of In Pursuit of Elegance – Why the Best Ideas Have Something Missing, wrote a good post on the subject recently, offering a roadmap for moving from the rational to the emotional in people with whom we are trying to engage beyond the veneer. He suggests zeroing in on several questions: “Will this waste my money?” (economic); “Will this work reliably well?” (functional); “What will others think of me?” (social); “Will this somehow be painful?” (physical), and ”Will I think poorly of myself?” (emotional).
Putting yourself into the minds of others with these questions (and keeping them in mind for yourself) will go a long way toward improving real trust by true engagement. These are the heartfelt questions not often articulated, but always in mind as people relate to one another. Make it your business to answer them for your customers and others with whom you want trusting relationships.

Read more over at www.livingstonbuzz.com
American Idol Strips Contestants of Social Media Accounts

4 Mar

Mashable!

This year American Idol made headlines for pushing out individual Twitter, Facebook, and MySpace accounts for each of its 24 finalists. However, the show made a drastic change in strategy last night by consolidating all of them under the AI9Contestants username across sites.
Twitter followers of each of the individual contestants were sent the following message, “Thanks so much for following me! All my updates from now on will be on our Official Ai9 Twitter Page, please follow me there @AI9Contestants.” Similar messages were posted to Facebook and MySpace as well.
The contestants individual social media identities were stripped by the show without rhyme or reason, but The Wall Street Journal and USA Today speculate that the move was likely made because of the propensity of social media site follower counts to reveal early favorites, influence voting, and possibly remove the veil of the mystery that clouds American Idol’s typically stealth results.
The logic is sound — a contestant with more Facebook fans, Twitter followers, and MySpace friends is likely to get more votes and thus would have a higher chance of winning the competition. But in making the decision, American Idol has also made it impossible for contestants to develop that now all-important connection with their fan base, which is becoming crucial to the business side of the industry.
We should also note that while Idol’s consolidation efforts may be designed to maintain the mystery of the show’s outcome, there’s no stopping the rest us from turning to social media analytics providers to try and predict the winners and losers based on overall buzz and sentiment breakdown. In fact, we know that Philip Kaplan of Blippy has plans to do just that, indicating that he may try to ruin American Idol with a custom program that will look at who people say they’re voting for in social media channels.
Tags: american idol, social media, tv

Read more over at mashable.com
Social Media Marketing – The New Trend

4 Mar

ArticlesBase

The SEO companies provide social media solutions that allow companies to use technology in innovative ways to ignite and cultivate conversations.

Read more over at www.articlesbase.com