Archive for the 'social media' Category

Social Media and Ad Spend’s shift to Digital.

Published on April 1, 2008 in ads, consumer insight, digital, engagement, marketing, social media, social networks and websites. 0 Comments

Yesterday eMarketer reported that online advertising spend is approaching 10% of all media spending and will be there by 2009. Considering the accountability, that digital commands and traffic quality it should come as no surprise that money is shifting to online at a quicker pace than other media. But what are some of the social media trends that this move will precipitate? Here are three that I think will be important part of my work here at Nielsen Online.

1 - Social Media become increasingly salient as connection hotspots - As trust continues to erode in traditional media, consumers will look increasingly to social media as a trusted opinion for all sorts of decisions, from which restaurant to eat at or what jeans to buy. Malcolm Gladwell describes, in his book The Tipping Point, “weak links” as influential to humans for making connections that make ideas tip. These individuals will become even more important as online migration triggers even more diverse and larger groups of connections who will exert overwhelming force over trends and ideas. (As I write this, I have over 100 twitter friends most I do not know but they shape many of my opinions on any number of things)

2- Brands continue to fortify their digital positions - With dollars shifting to the internet so quickly, brands will rush to keep up with the digital consumer migration. Brands will increasingly face the tough questions about social media and what they should do in this new platform based web. Corporate blogs are not for everyone but opening up the lines of communication can benefit brands. The question is, what is the best way to leverage social media, to empower your consumers and gain valuable insights.

3- Web trust factor becomes site currency - Inevitably, web sites will come that try to game the system and erode consumer trust in social media. From this, will arise a digital trust factor that will eventually become a web currency. It could come in an organized fashion or maybe it will just be semantic based - meaning you don’t travel far from home on the web. You have a few sites you visit and trust based on history, promotion and recommendations and only visit them frequently. This trend will hasten the move to platforms that portalize you to the web at large - Facebook applications are a good example of this in action.

As we see all media continue its move to digital, these three trends are one to watch. Any I missed?

Twitter me crazy - but I like what I see

Published on February 8, 2008 in consumer insight, engagement, social media, viral and websites. 2 Comments

Twitter

I have for awhile now been hearing various comments about the Twitter craze. Friends say its great and others say “pointless.” Love it or hate it, Twitter is here to stay. I have been using it for about 8 months now to varying degrees of success. Recently it has become much more than a microblog informing me of news and events in real-time.

A colleague unfamiliar with Twitter asked me what I thought about the platform as a vehicle for brand insight. The question was mind-blowing. The amount of valuable content available for spidering is beyond explanation. I directed him to run a search for any brand’s name and discover himself.

Distribution of content and reputation are important factors of Web 2.0 communities. Twitter incorporates both of these factors brilliantly. It can deliver you information to multiple touchpoints including mobile phones. Furthermore you can choose to follow people or have their information delivered to your stream.

The picture above shows Jeremiah Owyang’s highly creative and innovative way use of Twitter to rate Super Bowl ads. The ability to rate these ads in real-time with a mobile phone (RE: versatility) leaving short blurbs (RE: qualitative) is fascinating. If Twitter were to set this up so they could quickly compile data like this and make it available to brands the opportunities are endless.

One thing is for sure Twitter is definitely helping to redefine marketing tools.

Social-Network Funnel Effect

Published on January 28, 2008 in digital, reputation and social media. 0 Comments

The growth of the FB economy has created an unlikely division amongst my online social contacts. I see it is as an social-network funnel effect, where the top funnel represents opted-in spam (friends, emails and newsletters) and the bottom your your close friends (real-life contacts and favorite influencers). While the middle portion usually contains varying degrees of friends, all adding some measurable value.

While sorting through this social-network funnel has become an everyday battle to gleam useful content or information for me. Everyday it seems to get bigger and I am constantly looking to cut the time I spend searching for valuable information. This is where a funnel process helps.

If I could apply an overall funnel or class system to contacts based on their history of providing me with value it would help me to quickly indentify quality. How would this work? I am imagining an engine that aggregates all my social media into one spot.

From there an algorithm based on certain factors including history, real-life relation and inbound links would identify users, contributors, and influencers. These contacts would then be broken down into three buckets. For this blog lets call them levels one (most important) to three(least important). You could either sort these buckets individually or apply another set of algorithms to that content.

The next algorithm would then filter content by text-analysis for certain tags similar to Google Alerts. For instance, I would set socia-media as a tag and anytime a mention from a real friend or favorite blogger used social media online it would sort into a “social-media” bucket.

How are we to process all this content? As we progress into digital citizenry honing our filters to maximize utility across all platforms will become an overriding tool of workplace success. And quickly filtering content value will be the best weapon to have in your arsenal.

Facebook Notification Spam & The Emergence of a Model

Published on January 14, 2008 in digital, engagement, reputation, social media, social networks, viral and websites. 0 Comments

Why are my so-called friends spamming me? I open my notifications in Facebook to find this monstrosity and it is only a portion of the tower! The really amazing thing is that most of these notifications come from the same 2 or 3 people. As I think conscientiously about my social connections managing them will become ever more important as I seek to filter the best data from this spam.

Which part of the importance filter are you? Our reputation economy is eroding quickly and I suggest you stay on the side of value. Needless notifications will only serve to invalidate your reputation and further erode your social networks trust. Its the essential “boy who cried wolf” model.

Think about the content you choose to disperse and make it useful to your network. We are all dealing with so much information and your reputation will be the defining factor of whether you wind up being a digital loudmouth or important addition to a network.

Hyper-sensitive filters

Published on December 14, 2007 in branding, digital, engagement, globalism and social media. 0 Comments

I was riding the train today, when I saw a young man reading Wikipedia articles whilst studying his class work. It immediately started my brain to think about my time in College and the amount of information available back then. The Internet was in its infancy and things like Wikipedia were mere ripples on the horizon. The internet was a series of message boards loosely or not so loosely tied together. Collaborative learning meant organizing a study group and hoping everyone showed up.

All the information available to Kids today is amazing. They are constantly being bombarded by information and must learn to quickly process or dismiss it. Today’s youth must be eons smarter than past generations due to the resources available.

They have become hype-sensitve filters able to block-out advertising and absorb content they desire. This is bad news for brands who face a huge challenge in the coming years attempting to break through these hyper-sensitive filters and score a remarkable product.