Recession resistant: 95% of social media marketers will maintain by Josh Bernoff Last year, we surveyed interactive marketers and found a strong desire to continue investing in social applications, even with a recession looming. Now the recession is here. What are they saying now? Based on a more recent survey from December of 2008, they still will maintain or increase their social media investments. 1. 2. 3. This has reinforced what I'm hearing out there anecdotally, which is an awful lot of marketers asking for (and paying for) advice on this topic. What's driving this? These inexpensive tools can quickly get marketing messages out through interactive discussion and rapid word of mouth, and properly managed, can deliver measurable results. The report includes recommendations for marketers. If you are a marketer interested in social media, use these stats to get a realistic budget, then concentrate on measuring the results of your efforts to prove they work. Got it?
How to Launch Your Community Website with a Bang « ShoutEm Whether you’re starting a forum, web group or launching a microblogging network on Shout’Em, the launch can make or break it. While working hard on getting your community a success is a continuous effort, why not get your launch right? Here are a couple of ways to do so… Pick the right domain name Your domain name is your brand on the web. Test the site With dozens of different web browsers (Firefox, Internet explorer, …) testing your website on the most popular ones is really important. Get your team ready for launch When you launch your community, be sure to give yourself enough time to dedicate to it. Launch early in the week, early in the morning Why? Introduce yourself People want the backstory, they want to know who’s behind it all. Aim, Fire, Launch! Get ready for the press Journalists and bloggers love new stuff. Be available – have a contact page! Bloggers aren’t the only ones who would like to contact you. Get the conversation started Help them participate Community 2 community
The Top 10 Social Networks for Generation-Y Dan Schawbel is the author of Me 2.0: Build a Powerful Brand to Achieve Career Success, and owner of the award winning Personal Branding Blog. With thousands of social networks globally, only a handful of them cater specifically to a special group of individuals, known as Generation-Y. Also known as Gen-Y or millennials, Generation-Y are individuals born between 1980 and 1995, at a volume of 80 million strong. Gen-Y was raised on technology, so much so that our cell phones are extensions of our hands and text messaging, instant messaging and Facebooking are how we interact with others, even different generations. While Facebook is our home sweet home, there are various other social networks out there that cater to this demographic and are worth looking at. If you're in Gen-Y, then the following social networks will help you connect with other Gen-Y'ers in new and exciting ways. 1. 2. 20 Somethings on Ning 3. 4. myYearbook.com 5. thequad.com 6. 7. 8. 9. iMantri 10.
Web Strategy by Jeremiah Owyang | Social Media, Web Marketing By Jeremiah Owyang, from Silicon Valley In many respects, Silicon Valley sits atop the world. Its growth and influence has made it the globe’s top location for innovation, STEM jobs, IT patents, venture capital funding, and Internet and software growth, and Unicorn startups galore. And yet there’s also been a shift in the Valley’s culture. Growing social and economic rifts have bred fraud, anger and protests. One could argue that there’s an emergence of signs that strikingly resemble Detroit in the glory days of the age of transportation. In Detroit’s case, where I visited earlier this week, the Motor City reveled in its dominance in the 1950s, but growing social unrest soon culminated in a massive riot in the late 1960s. Here are four threats, aside from natural disaster, or whole scale physical attack for Silicon Valley today, along with a futuristic probing of their possible conclusions in the coming decades:
How To Kick Start A Community –an Ongoing List « Web Strategy by One of the top 10 questions in social media marketing asked is “How do we kick start our community?” This post aims at providing some resources for brands that are preparing their community strategy. The old adage of the field of dreams isn’t true -if you build it–they won’t neccesarily come. Brands must have a kick start plan to be successful with their community. Below, I’ll list out some practices I’ve heard from companies that have had successful communities, and I’d ask you chime in and add more ways, let’s get started, I’ll be as specific and actionable as possible. How to Kick Start A Community Create compelling content on a recurring basis. I’ve also signaled to some of the vendors in the community platform space to chime in –giving them the chance to strut their knowledge.
Marketers Moving to Social Media It took a while. Even though tens of millions of users were flocking to social media sites every day, most marketers stayed away. They either didn’t understand how to join the conversations—without sounding like shills—or they were frightened away by the prospect of associating their brands with questionable content. But things are changing. Companies are learning how to leverage social media and tap into the rising tide of consumers participating in social network sites, blogs, wikis and Twitter. According to the “The ROI on Social Media Marketing” report from the Aberdeen Group, sponsored by Visible Technologies, marketers have developed the tools and methodologies to drive marketing ROI by listening to and learning from customers and prospects. The money is following the methods. Aberdeen found that 63% of the companies in their survey (defined as best-in-class) planned to increase their social media marketing budgets this year.
Ten Ways to Kick-Start a User Community – how ActiveGrid boosted Every software vendor dreams of having a vibrant user community to provide input, buzz and maybe even someday help make money! When I joined ActiveGrid six months ago, the user community on SourceForge was dead, with one to two posting per day. Now the community has over 15 posts a day, a more than ten-fold increase in less than six months. This describes the steps we took to go from zero to somebody in the enterprise tools forum world. 1. Taking care of the community had been an ad hoc activity at ActiveGrid. The most important step we took to kick-start our community was to assign a full-time employee to manage the health and well-being of the community. 2. For historical reasons, ActiveGrid had several different forums. 3. We found that the ActiveGrid SourceForge forums were hard to navigate and didn’t allow attachments. 4. 5. At the risk of sounding cluetrain manifesto-ish, we made an early decision to err on the side of transparency in communicating with our community. 6. 7. 8. 9.
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