Annie coaxed me back on to WordPress

I do have another topic to quickly ease me back into things and that’s the new toy: Google + / or plus however you type it. So I’ll begin post-haste.

1. Better integrated, real-time search

This is already happening through Google in a simple form. The search giant stream trend-topics from the latest news, blogs and twitter. Searching Arsenal (not a fan) at game time returns a series of cascaded blogs, news articles and tweets.

Scoopler Real-time search

Facebook has a live news feed and Twitter is the founder of the global real-time search engine, but what’s more interesting and more engaging is real time, all-in-one search. Scoopler have made a positive start at doing this. The look of the site needs a little polishing, but the functionality shows the way for social search in 2010. It constantly indexes live updates from services including Twitter, Flickr, Digg, Delicious as well as images, video, news and blog articles. So now you will be able to choose the image, video and tweet you want to see from Susan Boyle as she releases her new single.

2. More advertising

The cost of uploading your “Friday night drunken pics 9″ to Facebook via your new spangly Facebook app is increasing, as is the marketing departments need to increase reach through more targeted and lower cost advertising, by advertising either through a business page or on the ad network. Hmm.

Facebook Advert - Get more fans. Source: Facebook.com

Taking Facebook as a case study and as the subtitle suggests, advertising will be on the increase. Facebook may have broken even, but a little bird tells me that the other social networks may want a slice of our monthly payslip. They’ll have to be inventive though, distracting us from those attractive 3am photos will be difficult.

3. Aggregation and consolidation

For the time concious of us, which I’m pretty sure is 99% of the digital workforce, this is crucial.

Seesmic are certainly trying to make the impact of social media much more powerful from one click of the mouse. I’m intrigued to see where this leads, not least because it will make my life a hell of a lot easier. #Hashtag convergence has improved this, but hopefully teams like Seesmic will make this a cleaner experience.

4. Customising for the customer

Technology is furiously being created to do this in an increasingly complex way, so it’s no surprise that the emergence of several customised viral campaigns are creeping through.

The Swedish Tv licensing authority executed this in style recently, with a well-produced viral ad, allowing you to implant your friends’ face into a video story – It’s a difficult job for the UK government to encourage us to part with our cash to watch such great productions as “I Believe in Ghosts” by Joe Swash of ex-Eastenders fame so maybe this is exactly what they need.

Implant your face into this movie: http://en.tackfilm.se/

What it tells us is that, with improving social media and viral customisation, it seems like an opportunity for the masses to jump onboard.

5. Mobile Integration

Facebook’s iPhone app is certainly doing a good job keeping up its market share. I wrote an article, which seems like an age ago in the social world about the app. It’s since come on leaps and bounds, primarily with integration. Scanning through my iPhone contacts it has cleverly synced my friends and family with their Facebook profile, such was my addiction to this utility, it’s driven me to remove all contacts with nicknames and replace with them with full Facebook names to help ease the auto-sync situation. Facebook are now kindly pinging me my friends updates. Fantastic.

So it seems that Facebook are integrating, I’m now looking to Google to start really integrating social media into their mobile maps. I want to pick a restaurant, see the latest tweets with the restaurant name, read a review, get directions, read the menu on my way and update my status, all in a couple of clicks. Is this possible? Most likely and it’s something else we’ll see in 2010.

6. Increased Social media attacks but lower levels of Spam

With bigger money being pumped into social media advertising, social media sites should have a bit of cash to help them build a front-line against spammers. Facebook and twitter alike suffered in 2009 with profile hacking, spam links on twitter and attacks.

As i compile this blog, there are 45 spam comments awaiting my approval, so it seems that companies can win against the smaller, less organised pests of social media.

What I do see as the bigger concern are attacks such as the DoS attack on Twitter in 2009. While I do see this predominantly as the less wealthy Twitter.com’s concern this must be on the minds of all smaller providers. Please though Twitter, protect yourself, but don’t use more of these:

Twitter Captcha

7. Scheduling social media

It’s a key part of any blogging software, whether it be WordPress or another provider. It’s the reason you get an email from those companies at midnight.

Now Twuffer has created a service which does just that for twitter. Unless you’re a news provider as part of your contract, or you plan working weekends for the rest of your social media life,  this is a must-have tool. Expect to see more of this. Publishing your message at a particular time, like with any marketing, timing will have a huge impact on the reach and volume of clicks you will get, so think hard about when you send yours.

Facebook have yet to develop a tool, maybe due to more public facing priorities, but this would certainly be an attractive proposition for the businesses that it supports and I wouldn’t bet against a chargeable service for page owners.

8. Expensive viral campaigns

2009 brought us Susan Boyle, the lady from a village in Scotland who stole our hearts with her rendition of “I dreamed a dream”.   which travelled the globe twice round, then in reverse and possibly then some.

What it did was reinforce to the masses of marketing managers around the globe was that viral continues to exist where a freely available worldwide channel exists. You just need to get the right content. So the prediction for 2010, more of the same. Will there be another Susan Boyle? I hope not, but I’m sure with the £1000000′s that will be pumped into this unpredictable economy, something will click.

9. Youtube growth

Youtube claimed more than 100 million unique users in the last quarter of 2009 and the only way now for the channel seems upwards.

Fast upload times (in comparison to rival Facebook), a great amount of free storage, and prominence in google search, will make sure YouTube is in a strong place to continue its growth in 2010. Not forgetting the more accurate and easy-to-use video search within Google’s search options and increasing use of video in Google’s “Universal Search” will all bode well for the video giant.

Youtube, does however has its challenges. Facebook are attempting to increase their video share on the web, by ensuring it’s hard to embed your YouTube video into Facebook; Youtube links within Facebook look bare without the attractive-looking thumbnail image when sharing.

Another challenge is the moderation of the channel; there are a hardcore of content generators in YouTube, whom are respectful when posting on one anothers’ channels, though the majority of registered users aren’t posting a lot of content and their profiles seem more inclined to author abuse than produce video content. Worrying for advertisers and businesses alike, Youtube will always have this battle to fight.

10. Measuring social ROI [Increasingly with Twitter]

Inevitably, as the media are increasingly reporting the social world as a profitable industry, more businesses will back the channel with increased marketing pounds and dollars and in turn the need to justify that spending will increase.

Analyse your twitter URLs with bit.ly

Tracking is becoming more sophisticated; the majority of social hubs like Facebook and YouTube have built in analytics tools, but the notable exclusion is Twitter. This can currently be worked around with URL shorteners reporting on click data and traffic from the network and traffic totals can be tracked through link tagging and upstream traffic through analytics tools.

The key to persuading your management to take the plunge will still be a robust business case and some hard stats. Using even the most prevalent free tools, may help you do so and it’s low startup cost can be a winner. Just remember that you will have to maintain this level of reporting and prepare for future battles when you need an assistant to help you manage the workload social media commands.

So, in short, trends seem like growth in real-time, time-saving and increased marketing spend.

Here’s to a prosperous decade of social media.

So, with the stark reality of Twitter drumming up such an incredible rate of market share since it’s inception, admittedly through their own site as a ‘side project in March of 2006‘ it is really putting the pressure on Facebook to rethink their strategy and to their credit, that is just what they are doing.

Hitwise shows Myspace and Twitter market share

Not ones to rest on their comfortable market share, they are addressing the need [although only 5 years into business] to extrapolate and explore new markets for their social tools.

Although still at only about 13.3% worldwide, according to Gartner, up from 10.8% in Q1, this market of earlier adopters are heavy browsers and prominent content writers for the web. This not only addresses the need for Facebook to recruit and maintain share in a highly competitive market, but erects a new barrier for entry to a relatively open market and hits the press hard. Facebook for iPhone 3.0 may only be being used by a handful of the social hardcore, especially in the UK, only a few days into it’s launch, but it’s coverage throughout the web has been prominent. New ad opportunities present one avenue of exploration although it seemingly aims to temporarily satisfy our need for new tech and news story in the social world. Facebook’s scale and spend power over Twitter makes an official app a reality and potentially saves some share from the early adopters who may have otherwise began to stray.

An influx of silver surfers to Facebook, 41% of new visits to be precise,  seems to add to the difficulty of keeping the social network cool, though iPhone’s irrevocably ‘cool’ image offers a very welcome helping hand here. Playing off Apple’s image certainly isn’t a first, as many before have used it as a PR angle, where sometimes the return on investment has been minimal. TomTom have been amongst the latest to capitalise on the iPhone popularity with their new app, potentially showing a new direction for a business which has grown itself on standalone units. TomTom’s holding page looks web 2.0 and as expected, got some great coverage worldwide.

So, how long will the app rule? Can a business shift towards a cooler more web savvy audience through iPhone PR? If not, at least us cyber socialites can bask in our tech glory over our Grannies and Grandads for a little while longer.

Soci

al network traffic up 11.5 percent; MySpace still dominates

So when I stumbled across slideshare when playing around with Twitter [ yet another reason to use Twitter] I found a presentation which immediately stood out, apparently one which stood out to hundreds of others too. Before long, it was covered as a blog by our friends at Mashable and so it’s success spiralled.

“What the f**k is social is social media” answered the prayers of social media execs, community managers, new media managers and whatever titles people are being granted to manage the growing networks of cyber socialites that populate the vast internet world.

In essence the presentation looked good, some obvious influences from Seth Godin, but it had some cool facts and it said the F-word. It was a great 10-15 minute set of slides, but aside from breaking boundaries by mixing a swear word into an 80 page pictorial of why you should use social media, it didn’t talk about anything new or revolutionary. What it did well however, it presented a collection of thoughts and maybe even troubles into one neat and quite sexy powerpoint format. Very convenient for our fellow office workers, agencies who have all been worrying about a similar topic.

So, if you work with social it seems like there is a new gem to raise your profile above the thousands of heads that are tweeting day and night to get their follower numbers to the realms of AplusK. Take some time out, put together a personal presentation on something you feel passionate about in social and share it. If you work in a business to business [b2b] organisation this is well worthwhile. Not only will it raise your profile, it can be a resource to refer clients to for common areas of dispute or confusion. Slideshare is already being used by some savvy agencies [although predominantly in the states] but there is room for a lot more!

A certain benefit of the tool is it’s penetration, which kills hundreds of birds with one very small stone whether you be an agency, a field professional, lecturer or a speaker, slideshare may help with the networks you need to get yourself a gig or two.

1. You can link to it in Twitter and Facebook and it has a feed from the two fore mentioned on the Slideshare homepage.
2. Embed in you blog and link people through. Great, because people will read your blog and then the creator get’s credited with the views too.
3. It will get a very high ranking in google, if you get the views. [Cross promotion is the key!]
4. Prospective clients could be viewing your presentation

Oh, and in case you haven’t read it. Or you want to get some tips on creating a more appealing presentation,  take a look. It’s worth it, here is the presentation:

All in all what the f**k is social media [the original], at the time of writing has racked up 143,107 views, it has been favourited over a thousand times and embedded into people’s web pages 1134 times. It’s sequel taking it to nearly twice as many. All that and for the time it takes to put a presentation together. Now that’s pretty high-impact, that is the power of social media!

I’m off to start my own. What the f**k is twitter maybe?

Growing up in the era of forums and rich media, in my mind, the announcement of Google’s new show more function is a huge step for the social world and the biggest move for Google since street view. A step closer to into “show more”, reveals the huge potential of this tool.

Videos

Never has the creation of regular and positive video content been so necessary. Given top spot at the top of the show options section, likely due to Google’s ownership of the video powerhouse Youtube, it is a huge step forward from the odd video appearing in search listings and a more flexible addition to the link to videos at the top of the screen. It adds another layer of advertising for willing bidders also, maintaining the traditional PPC side panel whilst displaying the videos available.

Coca Cola search › Web›Videos › Past 24 hours

With the new show options… tool, comes new flexibility. Filtering by time allows new video into the usually impenetrable world of the Youtube top 10. This time typing in iPhone might show a more candid/amateur review instead of the big publisher video which traditionally dominate the ratings on site like Youtube and Google or Yahoo video.

this tool and the further advancement of Universal search.

Reviews

For industries such as the electronics industry, where consumers may research for up to 7 hours for more expensive items, the reviewing tool is indeed a potential marketing star and so far is one which hasn’t been fully exploited. Creating copy for this tool seems an essential next step for retailers dependant on affiliate reviews and forums.

Whilst this tool represents a huge opportunity for retailers, if ignored it could work out costly. In organic search, affiliates have capitalised on search friendly content in favour of shorter term paid search strategies. For an example of affiliate success, try typing “mobile broadband” into google, revealing one of the more expensive terms to buy on the web. Who is no.1 in the rankings, a broadband provider, retailer. No, an affiliate with a sound understanding of SEO. If you are one of the etailers paying £5-£10 a pop for this term, then consider some organic budget next financial year. Reviews, is a great way of bumping up your search friendliness with tonnes of keywords packed into a small space on your page. It will also get some traffic from like-minded consumers.

Forums

The increasing exposure of forums throughout the web and the influence on the decision making process is profound. Forums should however be treated with great caution if you are representing a plc with a decent level of exposure. Embracing forums is very much a part of becoming socially accepted within the online community, but with that comes the need for a more transparent approach. Or the increased scrutiny of your company through tools such as show options… will tear you and your business reputation to shreds.

Money Saving Expert - Consumer Revenge

Where there is opportunity for some real exposure, forums also present a difficult battle to fight. Traditionally forums have been linked with consumer revenge and in effect act as a megaphone for the voice of the public vs. the corporate machine. According to Hitwise, the UK’s biggest social forums in April 09 were BBC [0.7% market share] and Money Saving Expert [0.61%] promoting free and open discussion and seemingly a common theme. The public voice. This free and open discussion cannot be stifled, as cloaking identity, impersonation, over moderation and a lack of transparency can lead to a bitter aftertaste for big corporations attempting to be social.

In summary, if harnessed correctly this is a potentially great viral tool. It opens up web 2.0 and social media to the smaller players with the time selection functions and gives more prominence to the consumer voice. One which if embraced in a transparent manner will sort the men from the boys in the social world.

PR: wait… I: wait… L: wait… LD: wait… I: wait… wait… C: wait… SD: wait…

When first joining Facebook, admittedly not first in class in my final year of university, I embarked upon gaining as many friends as possible to fit in. Remember the school days, the cool kid on the playground was always the idol. Sociological patterns apply on the web too. To find all my school friends with no email addresses, I embarked upon seeking out the class of 2001 as fast as possible. After a week of trying I managed to seek out a couple of classmates and a few fellow “year bookers” who were barely even acquaintances, until 3 weeks in.

Perceived “coolness” has always attracted others to follow, so upon finding the so called “cool kid” of 2001 I proceeded to find another 25 classmates, and so my friends list began to grow. So it made me think, is the key to driving your brand perception in social media and web 2.0 coolness, or can you win any other way?

Big brands all tend to play on their positive perceptions and rightly so. So how can the blue chips address this in social media?

Cool

Everybody has their own definition of “cool”, though our internally programmed herd mentality and still relatively centralised media industry mean cool creates a majority following.

Brand ambassadors have been a key part of promoting the Apple Mac brand

Take Apple as an example. Their offline campaign attracted much acclaim and such was replicated online in the form of online only flash, unaired exclusives and video ads. Across campaigns Apple received millions of views internationally and drove the brand perception to an audience which may not previously have engaged. It’s attack on the techie Microsoft audience was one which Microsoft took particular offence and so produced it’s own celeb laden counter, but it’s success in terms of reach is undeniable with features on Apples website, Youtube, Facebook and Wiki amongst others. More importantly it showed Apple as a credible rival and so the enviable first blood was drawn.

Trust and Reputation

As recession hits and consumer confidence is shot to pieces, brand trust and reputation is core to some of the bigger names and has become increasingly predominant in the online scene, where a lack of confidence can be exacerbated. Display ads for Thomas cook reassuring customers of their ABTA protection and banks such as Nationwide exhibiting their trusted qualities both on and offline.

Some firms are using social media to ensure that customers feel safe in their purchases through the use of multiple social forms to promote transparency and trust in the ecommerce purchase cycle. This is particularly visible in the US with companies such as Dell, using communities and forums [such as http://en.community.dell.com/forums/] as an integral part of their aftersales service to the customer.

Area of Competence

Competence is something you will struggle to buy. Emphasising and marketing that expertise in a particular field is a priceless tool and the perception of being “best in class” brand is a powerful one.

Dyson affirm there innovative and quality positioning at dyson.co.uk/insidedyson

Core competence is something which is highlighted in Dyson’s latest online campaign. Famous for innovation and forward thinking quality household products and in typical fashion Dyson backup their image on the web with “Inside Dyson”, featuring articles on James Dyson’s tribulations as his innovations took him through over 5,127 prototypes. The feel of the site is one of cleanliness and the online game “the ball game” is yet another way in which Dyson engages the consumer with the new ranges and the Dyson story.

Tradition and Heritage

Tradition has traditionally never been the webs best friend. So many traditional products have merely been passed by the digital revolution, but tradition can be replicated online.

Diageo have worked this angle cleverly with the Guiness brand. Using it’s 250 year heritage to full effect, they have knocked up an inviting little online community labelled the 1759 society. The wording “Society” as opposed to club or similar. On the face of it, it pushes all the right buttons, with the offering of free vintage Guiness labels from over the years. A winner for any stout enthusiast. Upon entrance you are welcomed with a petition to make St. Patricks day a public holiday, a friendly Irish chap “Guiness Masterbrewer” named Fergus. The downside appears to be the final post for nearly a year, unsurprising when given the title “Get Your Freak On! Create Your Own Party Mixes” seemingly out of context with rest of the site. A good tool if well managed, regularly updated and with a consistent message, this is a lesson for any brands thinking of recreating something similar

Guiness 1759 society

Exclusivity

Forget a walk through the leafy suburbs of Chelsea and shopping in Knightsbridge, that is way to costly. Rue La La have hit upon a unique niche selling high-end clothing at internet prices. The secret for their success, both supplier buy in and an exclusive proposition.

The model works through an invitation only basis, so promoting this exclusivity within social media, seems like the perfect way to create a viral buzz. Small talk, fashion advice and discount prices on clothing. A girl’s dream.

Rue LaLa creating a social buzz

Using Social and Web 2.0 for your brand

The first question you should ask yourself is, “why would anybody follow me”? At first a difficult question, but usually if people want to do business with you, they see something in your offering that they don’t see in others. Look to exploit your brand USP, your unique quality to win business over your biggest opponents.

In recession period especially, people look to core values, so you should make this central to your strategy or at least discount it after some careful consideration.

At 11.00am, all was relatively quiet on the betting front. A few shouts of Butler’s Cabin and a handful of similarly touted favourites, so I held my cards close to my chest and decided to wait. Revisiting at 1.00pm was a completely different story, twitter was rife with speculation, tales of previous successes and contrary to the ongoing recession, the potential to land a sum of cash that would probably struggle to get you a 3 course meal in Manchester proved the perfect release for many.

Twitter search reveals many undecided bettors.

Back to my question and some numbers, the Tories recently claimed nearly a quarter of a million more people were gambling online last year, compared with 2007 when advertising was allowed for the first time. So with this extreme rise in traffic to these sites online, the big players should surely be all over the web on days like this. Surely.

In the aftermath of disappointment, [I picked 13^th place] I took a closer look into bookmaker presence on Twitter, to see the real winner from the biggest horse race of the year, to my puzzlement.

Bookies on twitter

Totesport: No sign of an account

Bet Fair: 4 followers [Seems like it has been setup and left dormant]

Ladbrokes: 14 followers

William Hill: 150 [News and radio accounts]

Paddy Power: 254 followers [Seems like the official site with logos and branding. There is also another spread betting traders following with 350+ followers]

An opportune affiliate capitilises on Grand National hype

With twitter, I am very much one for quality of updates, not quantity of fans, but looking at previous updates of the above accounts, it did not paint a picture of an industry targeting all the right channels.

So, would Twitter have been worth the gamble for 2009? Quite possibly and like the big race day, it seems the lesser known outfit capitalised. The affiliate market out there still had the dynamisms to make themselves some money from home, whilst sitting toasting their success with a John Smith’s or two.

Let’s see for 2010 whether the big names can emerge winners, unlike our friend Mr McCoy.