Web Strategy Blog

The Social Web, Taking it Personally

As we rapidly approach 2010, it's hard not to consider the implications of social media's banner year: 2009. Brands continue to adopt social media marketing practices just as fast as populations join social networks and utilizes social media sites. It has become fairly clear that the rapid adoption of this technology over the last year will certainly give rise to a number of trends in the coming years.  Recently, David Armano wrote a very interesting blog post on the Harvard Business Blog outlining six social media trends for 2010. Here is a quick snapshot of the trends:

1.  Social media begins to looks less social

2.  Corporations look to scale

3.  Social business becomes serious play 

4.  Your company will have a social media policy (and it might actually be enforced

5.  Mobile becomes a social media lifeline

6.  Sharing no longer means e-mail

Already we can see many of these trends taking shape from the number of sites incorporating sharing tools into their web pages to the rise of mobile applications. One trend, which I hope will result in more discussion, is the idea of social media becoming less social.  David argues that with the advent of Twitter lists, the rise of niche social networks, and the clutter of web communication, people will begin to block out a majority of the social communication on the web.  While in some ways this may be true, I believe that the social web will in fact be more personal (and therefore more relevant) rather than less social.   For example, Twitter lists function on the same social principle as the platform yet they allow users to break groups of people into lists with a focus on relevant and valuable information.   Niche social networks function on the same principle: a strong focus on relevant information for a certain type of contacts. Individuals are now taking on personal branding, and as every digital marketer knows - your customers are now their own publishers, and they have their own personal networks - and they are syndicated. 

The important thing to focus on is the personalized nature of each of these components of the social web. People continue to find value in the web as a social communication platform, but users continually looking for a much more personalized experience. The implication of this trend is huge for marketers.  In the past traditional marketing methods have generally been based around the one-to-many principle. Marketers worked hard to create a message that would have universal appeal to a mass target audience. This type of marketing worked well when the media was in fact one-to-many i.e. television, outdoor, print etc.  Today, individuals use the web as an information source to research and maybe even connect with relevant products and services.   Therefore, marketers must keep in mind that the browser is also a very one-to-one medium, capable of delivering a highly personalized experience for the user. Online audiences are already seeking out personalization with customized home-pages, Twitter lists, bookmarked and tagged websites, RSS readers etc. to filter out the clutter of the web.   The social web will continue it's trend to becoming a more open communication platform,  but tandem communications will need to become more personalized so that users will continue to see value in leveraging it.  I predict in 2010 we will see more groundbreaking approaches with organizations utilizing social media to establish a valuable personalized relationship with the individual - on a mass scale. 

CEO's Who Twitter

Interesting story today in BusinessWeek on heads of companies and their take on Twitter. Given the amount of information overload and the pressure on CEO's to be efficient with time, use of Twitter makes a lot of sense given its 140 character limit and ability to give/ get instant feedback.

My favorite CEO to follow onTwitter is hands-down Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos.com if you haven't seen his Beginners Quick Start Guide and Tutorial to Using Twitter its worth a read. I also love the Tweets of Tara Hunt of Citizen Agency and Jeremiah Owyang, senior analyst at Forrester Research.

Benefits to CEO's to use Twitter:

- Feed reader: I monitor Twitter several times/ day to see whats happening. I know many people who no longer read news sites and gain most of their daily information from Twitter alone!

- Brand Building: abilty to communicate your company culture, brand and personality. Ability to raise visibility of the CEO and your brand.

- Focus Group: quickly reach people with news or questions - get instant feedback - 24 hrs/ day open feedback without filters. I frequently put questions out to my Twitter network and am always amazed at the generous response I get on everything from requests for stats to opinions on issues.

- Networking Tool: connect directly with others in a effective way. I have personally connected with journalists and executives on Twitter that way that would have been difficult to do otherwise. I frequently see CEO's Twittering about where they are and inviting people to join them for coffee or discussion.

- Monitoring: spot trending or buzz around a topic or technology - FAST! If I want to know where the buzz is on a specific topic, I usually turn to Twitter first. Many social analytics tools now include Twitter in their monitoring of conversations.

- Drive traffic: to your website - Twitter community is ACTIVE! Post a popular post on Twitter with a link to your website and you will see a huge spike in traffic and usually an increase in your network of followers.

- Humanizing your communications: there are some who don't like mixing the personal chatter with business on Twitter - while others believe that some element of this contributes to us seeing the human side of a business or CEO.

Over the past year I have been following the number of large enterprises and media companies that are using Twitter in their communications as well as advising several of Crimson's clients in their use of Twitter as an effective social media marketing tool.  I hope to see more CEO's embracing Twitter and I personally welcome more of the human element as I find the most compelling posts from CEO's to be those that expose their everyday activities as people. 

You can find me on Twitter: bondjanebond

Events, Social Media and Chocolate

Today I spent the morning attending an amazing event in San Francisco: The Chocolate Salon at Fort Mason and it got me thinking about how dramatically the promotion of local events has changed in the past few years with the prevalence of social media and Web 2.0 technologies. Its a topic that appeals to both the chocoholic and web strategist in me.

The event itself was fantastic - a chocolatey, gooey and somewhat indulgent day for people who love everything chocolate. I checked out the Chocolate Salon site and hit cacao nirvana when I discovered TasteTV's "Chocolate TV" video segments!!! On it you can see every imaginable story around chocolate and the event: some examples of chocolate couture, chocolate hairstyles, stories about some of the fantastic chocolate manufacturers and retailers that we have right here in San Francisco.

How does social media play into it? For starters, like a lot of things I go to these days I learned about the event from both upcoming.org and meetup.com from my friends listing it as something that they were going to.

Here is a list of basic social tools that likely will (or should be used) to promote and report on the event before, during and after:

- Blogging - I'm blogging about it and so are others

- Comments on the event sites, blogs, etc.

- Twitter - attendees were twittering about the event

- Flickr - I uploaded photos to Flickr from the event and many others did too

- Groups , reviews, ratings and forums were formed in sites such as Yelp

- Video's and podcasts were created around the event

- E-Commerce - of course a lot of the local manufacturers and vendors have websites with e-commerce

and then there is the use of so many "sharing" tools that are inherent in many of the above that create a viral effect: "send to a friend", tagging, send a message, get link, get code.

What else could have been done? Social bookmarking on sites like Delicio.us or Ma.gnolia, recipe sharing, links to food or chocolate blogs, a wiki on chocolate related topics, mobile alerts, FaceBook groups ...the list goes on and on. What social tools do you use for events?

I LOVE Utterz! Twitter Competitor

The First Blog from Outer Space!

Last year when a friend was involved in the X-Prize (private space travel) I thought the idea was a bit far-fetched - would they actually be able to create a rocket capable of taking regular people into outerspace? Well - one small step forward... they really did pull it off! Now private citizens are lining up to become one of the first to experience going where few men have gone before.

Last week, Anousheh Ansari became the first female space tourist - AND - also the first person to blog about her travel from outer space. She chronicles her training, blast off into space and what its like to visit the International Space Station. When reading her blog we find out that space smells like "burnt almond cookies" and that from the lack of gravity you are actually taller from your spine being stretched out.