6 Social Marketing, Nerdy, Tech, Idea's And A Laugh from Twitter This Week

Note not implying that this is all but I picked some of my fav.'s

Social Marketing:
5 ways to engage your Twitter followers - Summry is a common sense list of mindset / activities . In theory it is the same as if you were seeking to form a relationship either personal or professional. Engage in language that is relevant & useful to the situation be a 50/50 within those relationships (not a all about me communicator) share and help your friends (RT) give kudos for things that help you or find usefull (the equivalent of saying Thank You) ( via @ShermanHu)

King of Chocolate ~ chipping away @ success good Q&A on starting small & growing - also a lesson in enotional detachment from business to actually make it grow (Wall Street Journal)

Nerdy Tech
Wapple Architect Mobile Plugin for WordPress -
Allows you to mobilize your blog in minutes for mobile devise readers. Any theme you've installed and have styled for web will be carried across to mobile giving you a consistent look and feel for each and every one of your visitors. ( via: @mobilewebjunkie)

Screen Caster's
Ez on line screen casting  with either http://screenjelly.com (3min) http://screenr.com (5min) - I have played with screenr.com and I love it. It is very ez to use, plus you can auto tweet it, plus, after made you can also auto post it to your YouTube or get code to embed in a post. Plus, it has its own social component too and creates a volg channel for you. I have used this to give kudos to valued service provider as well as make brief tutorials for clients with it.  ( via @AlexKaris)

Twitter Archiving  Make tweets permanent with http://BackupMyTweets.com  I use-  Tweetake - lets you save by segment ie followers, favorites, etc.

Interesting Idea's

Definitive Guide to Backing Up and Ditching Your Discs (Lifehacker)
plenty of reasons to ditch your physical media. Hard drives are cheap; here are our recommended methods of saving, selling, and trading your CDs, DVDs, and video games. (via @MikeLizun)

Netvibes launches drag & drop widget website Designer | som big brands using for micro sites   http://ow.ly/lz4D

How the Synnd Community Works FOR you - Appears to be some sort of system similar to a torrid where they network subscribers computers in which the application runs to auto bookmark. Each member earns credit points to use within their own campaigns based on their participation within the network. Sounds interesting but, for me the problem is that network auto run tasks off of users computer not - confident about security- potential liability- tasking computer with unknown entities & performances.

Made me Laugh

How Facebook Can Ruin Your Relationships

What are your favorite things you learned this week within the spaces you travel?

Posted via email from Media Collective -Social Marketing, Advertising And Nerdy Things MindShare & Beyond

Do You Pass The Kiss Test or Are Your Customers Kissing Monkeys ?

A Funny virial video is a good example to think about transparency in your business and meeting your markets expectations.

For this example the annology correlates to:
Pranked = Your customer
Presenter = Business

1. Pranked (customer) had certain expectations right?
2. The presenter (business) led them to believe once set of circumstances correct?
3. Presenter blind folds Pranked = trust to meet expectations and what was told to the customer.
   
4. Bate and switch occurs. (via the business giving the customer false expectations)
   
5. Pranked (customer) engages with the presenter (business) 
6. Pranked realizes that presenter was not accurate nor truthful in their message or engagement and their expectations are dashed out the window
   

Note the expression, the same would be true for your community clients or customer base if you engaged in "Kissing Test" method of marketing or engagement.
What this means is within your media, how you engage with your clients and your product/service offering always,

1. Be accurate & truthful in what your offering,
   
2. Understand what your customers/market or community expectations are when engaging with your or your business.
   
3. Respect the trust that your customers are affording you, once lost it takes a long time to rebuild that trust if ever.
4. Deliver what is expected.
   

 Don't leave your customers Kissing Monkeys.

Posted via email from Media Collective -Social Marketing, Advertising And Nerdy Things MindShare & Beyond

5 Reading & Exploring To Do's - Swirling the Media Mind This Weekend

Turning Bad Buzz Around By Quick Thinking And Beyond The Expected  - Church of the Customer Blog

Public Relations Best Books, Websites & Trades List - Paroose the listed for new source finds - Examiner

5 Features Of Really Strong Communities You Can Embrace - FeverBee

Who Are Your Best Customers - - Groundswell

Watch Martin Lindstrom Interview 2 Seth Godin - Advertising Age - Are marketers' selfish?

Posted via email from Media Collective -Social Marketing, Advertising And Nerdy Things MindShare & Beyond

Testing out Screen Casting software Social Media Sharing Tip

Was testing out online screen casting application screenr.com pretty nifty screen capture with audio.

While recording I decided to make my first ever, yep I was a screen casting virgin so this was a terrific test. As I always say to myself, self, you have to be able to do the things you except others to do.

How To Become A Master Of Conversations

This is Day 8 of the 30 Days to 3,000 Fans program. You can learn more about the program here.
Want to have highly engaging conversations on your Facebook page? You better get good at mastering the art of the social media conversation. How is a conversation within social media any different than a normal conversation? It isn’t! If you are going to build a following on Facebook let alone any other site on the internet, you are going to need to put in the time necessary to build relationships with others. Whether it’s posting follow-up comments or reaching out to people that have asked valuable questions or have even posted criticism, it’s important that you build an ongoing dialogue with your fans.

The Personification Of The Brand

Want to really thrive in the world of social media? Imagine your brand as a person who has a life similar to its customers. Prior to the internet, brands were organizations which spoke directly at their customers. While there was a number on the back of a cereal box asking for your feedback, there really wasn’t a two-way conversation for the most part. Thanks to the internet and new social technologies, you have the opportunity to engage your existing and potential customers directly. So what types of conversations are most effective at building an engaged fan base?

Ask Questions

Any good conversation involves questions and answers. Facebook Pages present an amazing opportunity to learn about your existing customers and potential ones. Not until recently was it possible to directly interact with your customers on an ongoing basis, especially if you were representing a large brand. People love to talk about themselves so ask them questions that are also related to your company. I happen to write about Facebook so I tend to ask users about their experience with the site and what their favorite and least favorite aspects are. Additionally you can simply ask general questions such as “what are you doing over this summer weekend?”

Respond To Questions And Comments

As you build your fan base, fans will begin to regularly post comments as well as questions. Take the time to engage with them. Any time you take to interact with the fans is always time well spent. Many of the questions and comments will be extremely easy to respond to, only requiring a few seconds of your time. If you end up with an extremely popular brand however, selecting which questions to respond to will become important. That’s a great problem to have though! Make sure you take the time to reply to your customers and you can just about guarantee continued growth.

Be Supportive Of Your Biggest Fans

Are there fans that continuously post on your Facebook Page? Take the time to recognize them and continue to foster a relationship with them. Your biggest fans can become extremely valuable. These fans will take the time to promote your business for you. They’ll reply to other fan comments and do a lot of your work for you. Building relationships with these individuals is extremely important. One way to help build these types of relationships is to promote those that have helped you build your business. Give a quick shout out to the person as a comment and they’ll typically be extremely grateful. Support your biggest fans and they’ll help support you, helping you taking your business to the next level.

Daily Task

Post a conversational update to your Facebook Page. This should become a daily habit and not a one-time event however. Make sure that you remember to stop by your Facebook Page at least once a day (if not more) to post an update.

via allfacebook.com

Posted via web from Media Collective -Social Marketing, Advertising And Nerdy Things MindShare & Beyond

Bulldog Reporter - Daily Dog | Previous Stories | Is Pay-Per-Click the New Free? More Newspapers Shifting to Paid Web Models

When the Financial Times started charging readers for access to its website in 2002, the move was considered "freakish," said the paper's chief executive in a recent interview with the New York Times. And now, with visionaries like Wired's Chris Anderson still recruiting parishioners in hordes to the Church of Free, charging for content on the web is blasphemous. But that may all be changing—and fast. A number of other publishers are now joining the Financial Times in undertaking paid-content strategies. "It was pretty lonely out there for a while in paid land," quipped John Ridding, chief executive of the Financial Times, in an interview with the New York Times last week. "But it has become pretty clear that advertising alone is not going to sustain online business models. Quality journalism has to be paid for."

News Corps chief executive Rupert Murdoch said this month that the company intended to charge for all its news websites. That plan would have the company's major newspapers in the United States, Britain and Australia joining their sister newspaper, The Wall Street Journal, which already charges for access to most of its site.
Even executives of The New York Times have said they are re-considering ways to get readers to pay for online access. In 2007, the Times website abandoned a pay wall for some content, concluding that it was restricting the potential for online advertising, despite the site's having attracted 227,000 paying customers, the paper reported.
While it's still too early to call, the next big web battle cry you hear may be "pay," not "free." And it might just "pay" off: Ridding told the New York Times that revenue for subscriptions to FT.com have risen 30 percent.
Skeptics claim that while readers are willing to shell out dough for specialized financial news, they won't pay for general news. Ridding disagrees: "I sometimes think there's too much fatalism around—people throwing up their hands and saying it's not possible for general publishers to charge," Mr. Ridding said in an interview with the New York Times. "I think it is possible, and necessary, for them to charge."

via bulldogreporter.com

News and content portals considering a pay to read model might be good for specialized content access, as in training, ed and closed portals. This might not only damage their total reach but decrease the value within their advertising space because of less viewer exposure. So, are advertisers willing to pay for less impressions to a smaller audience and what increase in paid subscribers is necessary to make up for the loss in ad revenue.

Posted via web from Media Collective -Social Marketing, Advertising And Nerdy Things MindShare & Beyond

Bulldog Reporter - Daily Dog | Previous Stories | PR Should Put Down the Megaphone: Six Tips for Listening to Attract a Loyal Following

By Vicky Hastings, Managing Director, Maxwell PR

Rushing to have a presence on Facebook and Twitter, some communicators are surprised to find that instead of their organizations being popular at the social media party, they are either shunned or ignored. If that's happening to you, perhaps you're applying a traditional marketing mindset to interactive communications channels designed for two-way conversations—and damaging your PR career in the process.

Market or "sell" to members of social networks at your own peril. Instead of blasting self-serving messages, companies that listen and respond to fans' comments and questions, share inside scoops and perspectives and energize existing communities with relevant and useful content are experiencing increased consumer loyalty.

Yes, you can choose not to engage at all, but with minimal investment, social media is a powerful way to deepen consumer connections and prevent losing customers who won't tolerate not being heard.

If you've been puzzled by the lack of success of your social media program to date, take a step back and think through your objectives to determine why you've joined the conversation. Identify who else needs to be involved (customer service, marketing, leadership) to make your online presence authentic and engaging. 

And apply these tips for effectively building community:

1. Be a good conversationalist. While it may be tempting to constantly push out marketing messages, you'll be more effective at engaging consumers and inspiring loyalty if you foster dialog rather than monolog. It's what social media platforms are made for. Listen and respond to consumers' comments, and shaping perceptions of your organization while addressing their interests and concerns. Talk about what the community cares about.

2. Be committed. Social media marketing isn't an endeavor you turn on and turn off at will. Once you begin communication programs encouraging people to talk about, try, believe in and care about your products, services and causes, you need to invest in them continually. Make this ongoing commitment and you'll be rewarded by lifetime relationships with a loyal community of consumers who may be willing to pay price premiums, recommend your products and even defend the brand, if necessary.
Be transparent—if your company intern is tweeting, that's OK, just don't try to pass him or her off as the company president. Consumers want real conversation with a real person, no matter who it's with, so be honest.

3. Be a helpful resource. Provide information from a variety of sources that keeps consumers informed including meaningful news, comments and observations about other brands you enjoy as well as issues and nonprofits that matter to the organization.

4. Be patient. Building a community can take time but speeding the process can decrease a brand's ability to make a lasting impact.

5. Be human. Social media is not the place for marketing speak, so find your brand's voice and use it to show your personality.

6. Be flexible. Social media is always changing, so part of jumping in is preparing not to fight the current.

Right now these communities and conversations are living on Facebook and Twitter. Next year, the platform may be something entirely different. The important thing is to ride the wave and be ready to adapt when the tide turns. Stay engaged, assess shifts and be ready to adjust strategy and approach when needed.

Social networks enable you to find out what others are saying about your organization, keep an eye on positive and negative experiences and be alerted to potential red flags or hot topics—all tasks you as a PR professional should be performing every day. If you're not bringing that type of insight to your organization, start doing so immediately or run the risk of getting pushed aside in favor of someone else who does.

Remember, social media is part of integrated communications efforts, not a stand-alone initiative. Draw on your PR talents and skills to lead this effort for your organization—and for your career.

Vicky Hastings is managing director of Maxwell PR, a Portland, Ore., PR firm specializing in brand communications that strengthen consumer engagement and loyalty.

via bulldogreporter.com

Nice article on integrating PR and Social Media Mindset

Posted via web from Media Collective -Social Marketing, Advertising And Nerdy Things MindShare & Beyond

Posterous’ new iPhone app could make citizen journalism and lifestreaming the norm – The Next Web

Posterous’ new iPhone app could make citizen journalism and lifestreaming the norm

16 comments  

By Zee on 20th August 2009

Posterous, the blogging platform/lifestreaming service that really can be used for almost anything, has released an iPhone app.

The app, called PicPosterous, is focused primarily on media rather than blogging as such, but as you’ll soon discover, they’ve released some very clever features.

As Posterous describes, “PicPosterous is an entirely different way of posting photos and video to your Posterous site. Instead of posting photos from an event once, at the end, PicPosterous PicPosterous “>is designed to let you post photos live, as you take them. PicPosterous can replace the built in Camera app on your iPhone, and publish your photos and video online live.”

Lifestreaming done right.

So say you’re at a wedding party. With PicPosterous, you can take photos and video throughout the day and have them automatically uploaded – as you take them – for your friends who couldn’t make it, to see. You don’t have to stop and wait either, just carry on taking photos and video and PicPosterous will work in the background.

You don’t even need to login to get started, just start snapping/recording away and if you already have an account, Posterous will automatically transfer everything over whenever you login.

You can manage multiple sites, create private albums and auto-post to your Wordpress blog, Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, YouTube and FriendFeed stream.

Breaking News

What’s really exciting is the potential in news to break faster and with more information than every before. Sure, with Twitter, news has been known to break fast and with the odd image linked from within the Tweet too. With PicPosterous however, you’ve got video and images being immediately uploaded and shared across all the viral hubs (Twitter, Facebook, YouTube etc..).

The next step would obviously be to bring live video into the picture. Something which Apple seems to be preventing at the moment.

Limitations

As Robin Wauters on Techcrunch quite rightly points out, there are a number of limitations.

“First, when you send pictures or videos to your Posterous blog, it’s impossible to add any kind of text or link from within the app (something I was able to do when I simply e-mailed in photos I took with my iPhone camera using the mail application).

Second, when you add multiple pictures to one album you can’t delete individual pics afterwards, leaving you only the option to clear all your albums and start over.

Third, you need to use your iPhone camera in landscape mode when you want your pictures to come out right on your blog, something that’s not indicated anywhere and you need to find out yourself.”

and fourth, which wasn’t mentioned, video only works on iPhone 3GS.

Despite the Limitations

The ability to be able to relive precious (and the not so precious) events and share them immediately with others using photo and video brings a whole new dimension to the iPhone.

The immediate photo and video uploading, along with Posterous’ signature slick and easy autoposting functionality also means news could break and spread faster than ever before. Despite the simplicity and limitations, the potential here is big, trust me.

Try it out here (iTunes link), it’s Free.

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Written by Zee , Editor in Chief at The Next Web, Principal at WeDoCreative.
Based in London, Zee is Editor in Chief at The Next Web and Principal at online marketing and new media agency WeDoCreative . A prominent tech blogger, he is also a design & marketing connoisseur, social media devotee & web application fanatic.

via thenextweb.com

Posted via web from Media Collective -Social Marketing, Advertising And Nerdy Things MindShare & Beyond

ReTweet.com Launches, Sure Looks A Lot Like TweetMeme

via feedproxy.google.com

Posted via web from Media Collective -Social Marketing, Advertising And Nerdy Things MindShare & Beyond

Bing A Google?

Why you might want to pay attention to Bing
This is a dual treat post.

1. Google Reader amps up what your doing and sharing. This post is an example of a newly added feature, at the bottom of your reader posts called "Share to" this feature allows you to send what you find interesting, relevant to multiple social networks and services that you use.
You can send article links to twitter, your Facebook page or in this case your Blogger blog.
How cool is that?

2. For search or even if you are search marketing and looking for categories or vertical ideas, the Bing search engine might present you with a whole slew of keyword, category or related ideas that are searched for within your marketplace or niche.

This article share from DailySEOblog.com explains nicely through screen shots the relevancy of search on the Bing engine.

DailySEOblog.com

5 Humble Reasons why I think Bing is actually better than Google !: "

Okay, lets shake off Google from our “perception” that there could be nothing better than it. We love it, and we knew nothing can get better than Google. But, though its hard to digest, Bing is actually bringing cracks on the wall. Let me not go to the extent saying that Bing outdoes Google..no. Bing performs better than Google in some areas, and that’s a reality. Let’s check.

1. Bing’s Related Search gives you more insight about your original search, its very friendly.

Which is very smart. On Google, you have the related search popping up at the end of the page, but I rarely see them because I’m more focused on the information I’m looking for, so I stay on the top area, and I rarely go down to the end.

Where as in Bing, the related search (which by the way is very relevant) shows up right on the left hand side, unobtrusively, and readily serves my purpose.

Google Screenshot: Showing the related search towards the bottom, which are often not found.

2. Bing gives me more options to choose from when I search for a product, Google doesn’t even bother.

Most of the time, Bing is really good when I search for products. It somehow “detects” that I’m looking for a product. And we all love product comparisons, and Bing shows me all the possible options, saving me a few clicks and time.

Google, on the other hand fails to detect products that I’m searching for, and gives me less options when compared to Bing. It shows images only when it detects a familiar query related to images or when I use strings that relate to images in my original query.

3. Many a times, Bing is more intelligent than Google if not powerful.

Have you noticed it ? Even though I’ve found that Bing does not give you precisely relevant results, it understands your query better than Google. Look at the following screenshot, where it gives me relevant results based on my original query.

And now, see what Google gives me.

Wait..I know what you’re thinking. They are relevant indeed, but if you think of it from a end user perspective, I’d relate more with terms suggested by Bing, than Google when I’m searching for “Buy Nikon D 80” right ?

4. Bing has a cool advanced search menu, don’t even think of using the Google Advanced search !

If you’ve tried Bing you’ll know what I mean. First off, clicking on Bing’s advanced search menu won’t take me to another page with a huge form to fill up (I know it’s not a form but it looks like one, that’s enough to scare me). That itself is a big turn off for me, when using Google advanced search, so I don’t use it at all.

On the other hand Bing has this cute little advanced search menu tucked in at the top neatly, that its a pleasure using it. It doesn’t have anything too technical there, just asks for your search preferences. The site/domain is the only thing at least a little bit “technical” here.

Check out the Google advanced search “panel / page”

If I knew how all this advanced AND, OR thing worked, I would’ve found the site – bought the camera already. I’m trying a basic..simple search, this is too technical.

5. Bing saves me a lot of time and energy. Google is sluggish.

You know the crux of an efficient search engine would be to deliver the best result in the lest possible time, right ? In that case, Google is sluggish. Bing has this excellent site preview tool, that saves me loads of time, because I don’t have to actually visit the site and make another judgement about the site is trustworthy or not.

In Google, it only points me to the site / sites and leaves the rest to me. I have to visit each site, and find out if the guys is trust worthy or not. Takes away lots of my time.

Bing on the other hand is like this friendly guide who says – “Mani, here are these 3 sites which are about the thing you searched, and here’s a preview of them, don’t waste your time going through, I know that this guy on the top is really good – check him out! ”

And I gladly would go for his recommendation, saves a lot of time and energy (and clicks).

So, there you go. Five reasons why I think Bing could be a better search engine than Google. I agree that Google is bigger, better index, powerful and all that but sometimes, being big isn’t enough. There are these seemingly small things that might make a big difference.

P.S – I took my SEO hat off while writing this, if you know what I mean.

Bing appears to really be a "thinking engine" Interesting thought to consider for your websites and communication materials:

1. Could it be that if you rank in Bling that it is an indication to good content, search friendly but most importantly a Understanding of What your audience Wants?

2. From the above, is a top ranked Bling, interperated as high quality in google for the same terms? It appears that Bing does put slightly more weight on domains with keywords, and inbound link weight, (bigger commercial vs. small site) as well as frequency of term & variation in title.

3. For super sluths note when you roll over a result - to the right a line appears - rollover that. Its a nice freebie for checking out keyword frequency and related terms for top rankers within their on site metas and page discriptions.

3. If you own a website you might want to take the time to submitt your site to Bing if as reported more users find search results more relevant than in google (which is what made google popular in the first place) indexed early is a good thing rather than waiting for them to crawl your site.

So Do You Think Social Media is A Time Waster?

Going to save myself a ton of time explaining the value of social media when it is so well done in this YouTube Video