If you’ve never heard of Klout, they’re a social media analytics company that measures your “influence” on Twitter. Now they’re looking to start doing the same thing on Facebook. As far as I know, they’re one of the top sites that measure Social Media influence and reach. Mashable published the story about Klout moving on to measuring your Facebook activity but I haven’t been able to find that service yet.
In any case, I checked my Twitter Influence on the site and they tell me I’m an “Explorer: You actively engage in the social web, constantly trying out new ways to interact and network. You’re exploring the ecosystem and making it work for you. Your level of activity and engagement shows that you “get it”, we predict you’ll be moving up.”
Pretty interesting and to be honest, I think it’s a pretty accurate claim as far as my tweeting activity is concerned. So if you have a twitter account (and if you don’t…REALLY??), try out Klout and see what it comes up with and you can judge for yourself if their conclusions are accurate.
As most people may know, Conan O’ Brien, after being let go from the NBC late night line up earlier this year, has been signed to TBS, and will be premiering a new show on Novemeber 8th. To promote his new show, Conan has been taking full advantage of Youtube (in the Old Spice Guy style) and begun releasing promo videos and answering questions in Youtube video form.
I’ve been a Coco fan for many years now and I was pretty upset when NBC let Conan go (personally I find him a lot funnier than Leno) and I was able to catch his “Legally Prohibited” Tour over the summer. As part of his deal when he left NBC, Conan could not be on TV for a few months and so he decided to go on a tour and perform live shows. He had many special guests appear on his tour including Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert among others.
Now that Novemeber 8th is drawing near Team Coco hopes to generate buzz and interest through the use of Social Media.. Youtube, Facebook and Twitter are all being utilized to promote his upcoming premier even though it’s still more than a month away. I can only imagine that promotions will intensify as the show draws closer.
Many companies today want social media initiatives “like Twitter, Facebook and Myspace”. However this attitude will simply help a company “catch up” to the digital age. But by the time these companies “catch up”, the digital age has already moved on. Being successful in the digital era isn’t about catching up to your competition, it’s about finding the next big market, the next big platform.
Today, successful companies have to be on top of the game by being early adopters, by being trendsetters. Those that unfortunately fall into a Late Majority category or are considered Laggards simply won’t be able to compete.
Trying to catch up by utilizing these huge networks is a start, but companies are now targeting smaller, niche networks that provide the company with better feedback and the consumer with more precise advertising.
Many companies don’t understand how to use social media properly and think that a Twitter account or Facebook page is the key to the future. This is a pure myth and can lead to a lot of time wasted. Social media at its core is all about INTERACTION. It has revolutionized the way humans interact with each other. Interacting with people that are interested in a product or service is probably one of the best and most pure forms of market research and customer retention available.
I saw this great article and video on Mashable yesterday and I just had to write something about this. Pretty much this video interviews the owners of some mobile food trucks in New York City and how they use social media to keep in touch with their customers. Going to school in Philadelphia, food trucks were definitely a staple of campus eating and probably the preferred choice vs the school cafeteria for the majority of the student body.
These guys use social media to interact directly with their end consumer by tweeting and updating Facebook about daily specials, their location for that day (very important if your storefront is on wheels) and other updates about their business throughout the day. Not only that they have the opportunity to get feedback directly from the customer about their views on pricing, taste, quality, etc. There’s no better marketing research than free marketing research and this type of research is about as accurate as it gets.
Its great to see business using social media to positively impact their day to day business. Social Media definitely isn’t the perfect solution for everyone, but when implemented correctly, it can make a huge difference.
So to promote the upcoming Madmen season, AMC designed this cool, interactive “interview” with some of the characters at Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce (which is definitely too long of a name. SCDP sounds better.) I took the interview and was “offered” a job as a media buyer. This is cool because I’ve happened to be applying to Media positions recently, plus Joan the office manager is pretty attractive if you ask me.
This is another example of cool, new age, interactive marketing. Now, I’m not sure how effective it’ll be since I haven’t really seen or heard too much buzz about this. I just happen to spot this on the Razorfish twitter feed. But this type of interactive promotion is definitely exciting stuff (and kind of fun and interesting) that we’ll definitely be seeing more of in the future.
If pulled off correctly, this type of marketing campaign will definitely engage much more users (and ultimately viewers) than a 15 or 30 second spot on TV.
One of the latest and most successful marketing campaigns lately has to be the Old Spice Guy (Look at your man. Now back at me. Now back your man. Now back at me). Old Spice commissioned a new marketing campaign that takes place over Twitter and Youtube, where the guy from the new Old Spice commercials (Isaiah Mustafa) tweets and makes video responses to different people. He made numerous videos directed at everyone from celebrities to everyday people.
This marketing campaign was a raging success not in the sense that Old Spice sales skyrocketed (I have no idea if they did or did not) but the campaign got rave reviews from all over. The viral execution of this marketing campaign shot Old Spice followership (is that a word?) through the roof and each Youtube video got hundreds of thousands of views while the actual commercial videos reached millions (as I’m writing this they’re at about 6.5M Channel views and 61M total upload views). Consequently, pretty much ALL of the Old Spice videos views jumped, most into the millions.
There are many factors that went into the success of this campaign.
1. Mustafa spoke directly to individuals. He would pick out certain tweets or comments and respond to them, directly speaking to the original commenter. This ads a whole new level of interactivity with Old Spice consumers.
2. I think this is one of the most important factors; Old Spice wasn’t a 30 second ad before the video, there weren’t Old Spice products littering the scene, if you had no idea what the video was about, you wouldn’t have any idea that it was an Old Spice campaign. But everyone knew it anyways.
3. They were funny! Mustafa’s lines and the things that happened in the video were hilarious. They made the videos very enjoyable so that people would want to spend their Youtube time watching these ads, as they would any other video on Youtube. It wasn’t designed as a traditional ad or commercial, but just another video to waste time watching (Lets be honest, we’ve all wasted time just watching pointless Youtube videos)
All these factors (and I’m sure others) are what made this campaign so successful. No Banner ads, no keyword mumbojumbo, no annoying pop up spam mail in my inbox. This is what the future of internet marketing will eventually be, and Old Spice pulled it off spectacularly.
Heres the last video they posted as this campaign wraps up. At the end of the video they’ll link to the other videos he did as well.
If you guys have heard or seen the Legion (formerly League) of Extraordinary Dancers, you’ll know the guys in the group are pretty crazy and incredibly talented. They create very tasteful and artistic style of hip hop dance.
Writer/director Jon M. Chu has recently begun releasing a web series on Hulu entitled LXD, which tells a story of these incredible dancers. Heres the trailer:
Now, while these guys are a group of dancers, this web series is much more than just a bunch of choreographed dance pieces. They tell a story through great cinematography and a great story line about growing up, brotherhood and love (thus far). The dancers in the group make up the cast and incorporate a lot of dance elements to the story. They range from like, 8-15min but they definitely tell an interesting story with some great dance moves. You can check out the first three episodes here:
I hope everyone has a fun and safe July 4th weekend. While most people were out by the shore or grilling at the park, I spent my holiday weekend painting my sister’s new house in Boston. Not exactly how I hope to spend the biggest BBQ day of the year, but whatever. I spotted this incredible sunset on the way home (closest thing to fireworks I can get this year)
Aside from that I guess the big news today was the Youtube hacking that went on. I’ve heard various types of videos being hacked from American teen sensation Justin Bieber to South Korean pop sensation Super Junior. I don’t really know what to say. I guess some people just really don’t like Justin Bieber (or Super Junior). But cmon guys. All he needs is someone to love.
Also, I guess Microsoft pulled the plug on the Kin, its social media smartphone the other day and there’s a memorial page dedicated to it (her?). I can’t say I’m not relieved. I also can’t say I don’t feel like I played a part in its demise via Twitter. I mean, honestly I don’t know one person that was remotely interested in the Kin, or even payed any attention to it’s marketing campaign. I don’t think many people even knew what it was. I felt like precious media was being wasted on the Kin that could have been used on something people actually want (iPhone4 or Droid). By the way, I’m all for the Android phones. HTC Evo makes my mouth water. Honestly the iPhone might have been revolutionary when it came out (I still think the 1st gen with the aluminum casing was the coolest), but the iPhone 4 was already outdated when it was released. In the end I feel like Android will win the mobile phone race (and Google will eventually take over the world) and Apple will eventually take 2nd place (much like it did in the PC vs Mac war).
Ninja Plug 