Our Rock Starts Aren’t Like Your Rock Stars!
I love this ad - Ajay Bhatt is my hero! 
Funny Video, RE: Vendor Client Relationship
Very funny video about vendor-client relationships.
Hat-tip: Pharma Marketing Blog
Be Careful What You Tweet About
Local Mesa, AZ couple Isreal and Noell Hymann talk to Fox and Friends about a possible Twitter connection to a recent break in at their home.
Click on the image above to watch the segment on Fox and Friends
New Media as Vast Wasteland
Yesterday NPR’s All Things Considered included a rather humorous segment by Andrei Codrescu. He had a rather amuzing and yet philosophical take on Google, Facebook and all this new media stuff. You can listen to it on NPR’s website, but here is a section that I found rather funny and interesting:
My regular e-mail now tells me I have Facebook messages, forcing me to go to Facebook, which is slow on account of the jillion egos battling for verbal-audio-visual attention. And when I get there I find some cute thing that it’s taken me years to ignore in real life, and I start wandering involuntarily among postings in the hope of something to get that sickly saccharine taste out of my mouth, and I find more cute - a real sugarplum tree made by millions of bored people. After that honey bath, I’m ready to Twitter in rude Anglo-Saxon.
The new media’s given me several new insights:
1. Most people have too much time on their hands;
2. Most people are passive receptacles for whatever goes by;
3. Most people are not bothered by redundancy - they can do the same thing three or four times in a row without feeling defrauded; and
4. Most people want to be recognized for something, even if it’s just dumb repetition.
Andrei Codrescu is a the editor and founder of the online journal Exquisite Corpse, a journal of “books and ideas.”
Twitter Connection to Home Robbery
Last week there was a break in at a Mesa, Arizona home. The twist to the story is that there is a possible Twitter connection. The owners left town for a vacation and tweeted about their journey and plans. A few days later there was a break in. Coincidence? I think not. Watch the local ABC 15 News video for background:
There are a few things to learn from this unfortunate incident as more and more jump on Twitter. I guess the main thing to learn is that you should not disclose your location and exact whereabouts. Here is a link to a great list of some additional Twitter do’s and dont’s.
A Memorable Social Media Carnival
The Social Media blog carnival rolled into Phoenix, Arizona this week and its been a week of great entertainment. Who want’s to be in Phoenix at the start summer you might ask - but hey why not? It’s a dry heat :-). Plus it’s online - and it’s not like you had to endure the heat with me. There were lots of interesting submissions and I had a great time reviewing and getting to know a wide rang of bloggers. All I can say is blog on guys! Blog on.
Being Memorial Day in the USA, I thought I’d choose two that were particularly memorable for some of their insights on relevant topics within Social Media. In no particular order here they are:
Jay Deragon over at the Relationship Economy blog wrote a great summary of his thoughts based on the book “The Cluetrain Manifesto”. His post titled Social Media Transformation Cycles, discusses the value of social media relative to the cycle of social media transformation and how it is vetted through the marketplace. It’s a fascinating read and I certainly will make it a priority to read the books he references.
Steven Leung at IntegratedROI, shares three reasons on why companies should consider a blog as part of their Internet marketing strategy. The three reasons he mentions in his post “Using Your Blog to Broaden the Exposure for Your Business” are: larger search engine presence; fast and convenient way of publishing ad-hoc information and; equal footing with larger companies/larger budgets. All very legitimate for any company regardless of industry, size and scope.
Here are the other notable entries :
- Twitterads presents Get Targeted Traffic To Blog With Twitter | How to Use Twitter and Get Money | Make People Follow You On Twitter
- Srinivas Rao presents 7 Simple Traffic Tips for Beginning Bloggers
- Angel Taylor presents Top 5 Twitter Do’s and Don’t for Internet Marketers
- Jeremy Smith presents Best in Social Media - May 18, 2009
- Blog SEO Expert presents 7 ways to implement internal linking of your posts for better SEO
- Anna Farmery presents 3 Social Media Tools for Brand or Community Building
- Anna Farmery presents Start Your Own Blog Community
- Danny Brown presents Virtual Stalking - A Real World Problem for Social Media
Next week’s carnival will be hosted by Michelle DeRepentigny on June 1st . See you then.
The Coming Social Media Bust?
Something has been sitting in the back of my mind lately. It largely concerns when the social media party will come to an end. I sincerely believe things will be radically different in three years. From a strictly business perspective none of the major social media players (excluding MySpace) are making money: Facebook, Twitter etc. They’re only accumulating more cost in the form of user registarations. Their income stream is close to non existent considering the hype surrounding their recent performance.
Don’t get me wrong, these are cool tools. I use them every day for business connections, personal learning and professional growth. However we all lived through the dot-com bust - and know that companies that don’t make money don’t survive. Simple as that. If I may take you back to 1999, webvan was supposed to make going to the grocery store a thing of caveman past!
I ask these fundamental questions because I am starting to think 2010 will be a make or break year for these companies. Just thinking out loud here but quite frankly I’m not the only one thinking along these lines. Here is something Doug deGrood wrote on AdAge recently:
I’m no economist, but my understanding is, in order for a medium to have commercial value, it needs to be, well, commercial. Hey, this is America, baby, that’s how the game is played.
Who knows, maybe some really smart person will figure out how to open the revenue floodgates for Facebook, et al. Currently, the only thing they’re generating is more users, which requires more bandwidth, which requires more capital, which, at some point (soon?) will require a boatload of ad revenue to satisfy the VC folks who ponied up the money for this worldwide digital kegger in the first place.
I am not trying to suggest that social media itself will go away. I am confident that the social web is here to stay. What I am wondering about though is the viability of the current business model of the companies providing social media services. In the end the failure of their business model will fundamentally alter the social media landscape. New companies will certainly appear but the environment will be completely different.
Only time will tell I guess. Until then follow me on Twitter!
Image source: stuant63 (Flickr) shared under creative commons.
BBB of Greater Arizona Gets Social
Today I had the opportunity to speak to accredited businesses of BBB Arizona (Central-Northern-Western) as part of a brown bag lunch seminar. It was an introductory presentation on social media marketing and how it can yield tremendous benefit to any business. Here is the slideshow if you are interested in reviewing the slides. I hope to post the audio file as soon as I am able to strip it from the DVD.
Christina from the BBB also happened to capture some shots on the Flip Cam. Here we are as we are getting ready for the presentation.
That’s Christina talking and me interrupting!
The audience was quite varied take a look:
I’ll be doing some more of these types of presentations. The next one is scheduled for Thursday August 13. Only BBB accredited business are allowed to attend - so if you’re a business owner and want to attend what are you waiting for - get accredited.
The Long Haul - Cool Video
Stop Motion | The Long Haul from DUMAIS on Vimeo.
Google’s Content Network Delivers
When you’re setting up a pay-per-click campaign you have many choices on where and how you’d like your ads to appear. Many people (due to budget limitations) opt-out of Google’s content network (these are sites which have agreed to display Google Ads). However, research is showing that this could be a mistake. The numbers are in and apparently the content network tends to deliver better results than the search results. Take a look a this article from AdAge:
In a study Google conducted last year, ads in its content network, which reaches about 80% of internet users in the U.S., was more cost-effective for advertisers than search. Among advertisers that use both, the cost of reaching a consumer who ultimately clicks on an ad cost 2.6% less on Google’s content network than in Google’s search results.
Google came up with the data by following 25,000 advertisers representing 1 billion clicks and 70 million click-through conversions for 12 months ending in November 2008. In total, 51.6% of Google advertisers got better returns from the content network than search. Search still drove the majority of total clicks, but nearly 20% of all clicks came from ads on the content network among advertisers included in Google’s study, proving that it too can be an important driver of leads and sales for marketers. (Of course, a click is just a click and doesn’t necessarily mean a consumer took the action an advertiser wanted, be it to fill out a survey or buy a product.)
The AdWords blog has the full white paper for download.
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