Web Strategy by Jeremiah

Many brands are considering it, some have done it. Done what? Marketed on social networks (Facebook, Myspace, or private label social networks).

Why? Social Networks are attractive because consumers are connecting with other consumers and the trust tends to be higher. Secondly, there’s a tremendous amount of buzz from the media for this newest form of marketing. Lastly, there’s lots of folks using social networks (about 2/3rds of all North American youth use it daily, and about 1/3rd of NA adults use it as least once a month –data From Forrester Research, Q4, 2007)

Sadly, many brand are going to do it wrong, by wasting resources, or embarrassing their brand with a campaign that doesn’t fit the needs of a community. To help marketers do it right, and to save users from dealing with more bad campaigns, I’m going to do some research on the topic.

I’m a laaaazy (or is it efficient?) analyst, I use social media (what I cover) to help me with my research. Besides, the social collective is far smarter than some big headed analyst.

The following attributes are what I think are often found in successful social networking campaigns, but don’t let me be the judge, I want your input.

Meets a business objective: First and foremost, any marketing campaign or activity should match with a business objective, regardless of the tools being used.

Encourage Member Interaction: The most successful social networking campaigns and efforts involve the audience.

Quickly scale: Social networks are designed for information to quickly move from member to member, so campaigns that lean on these capabilities perform the best. These attributes known as Velocity, Viralness, and Spread are key.

Utilize Media: In some campaigns, the best way to get members to return is to offer them media. Depending on demographics and community needs, this could be audio, videos, or demos

Foster self-expression or communication: Members in social networks like to communicate with each other, or self-express. As a result, campaigns should satisfy these needs with the appropriate tools

Offer an satisfying User Experience: This encompasses the overall experience of the campaign, the content and navigation items should be where expected, the language familiar to the audience, and overall look and feel of the site appeasing.

Provide longer term utility: Successful campaigns have a longer term value, rather than a short term ‘disposble campaign”. These campaigns add value by being a useful application to the members, rather than just quick dose of entertainment.

Enhance Value as Community participants: As more people contribute or interact with the campaign, the value is increased. This can be in the form of content that is created by the community, contests, voting, or games.

Supports Community Goals: Every community is different, and each has unique goals (from supporting products, to each other, or to just be entertained) the campaign focus should therefore meet the needs of the community, before the needs of the marketer.

You add your attribute: Please leave a comment below, I welcome and respect your opinion. If you’re from a vendor in this space, feel free to leave your company name or email so I can properly credit you.

If you contribute something that I end up using the report, I’ll cite you in the research report as a source (and you’ll get a copy), so leave your name and company in the comments, besides this is a great way to demonstrate you ability –with real practical knowledge. In a recent report I referenced Shel Israel on my recent report on online communities, who helped me sort out a definition of online communities)

Paris Hilton doesn’t have anything on Edison Chen.

Like fire, the internet is both a powerful energy force, as well as a dangerous destructor. For Hong Kong movie and popstar Edison Chen, he now knows this all too well. Vancouver born, Edison, who resembles the star power of a younger Leonardo DiCaprio, is known in Asia for his many Hong Kong movie roles, music performances, started a fashion line, and was to appear in the upcoming US Batman movie. His star power great, yet mastery over his own personal data, not the savviest. The Wall Street Journal reports in on the details.

Like many celebrities, a life of debauchery is common in nearly every culture, and for Edison, he taped his conquests with many of the movie industry’s stars and saved to his PC. Sadly, many of these other pop celebrities had bubble-gum reputations, (like Hannah Montana to other Disney Kid stars) were featured in this raunchy tapes. Here’s where Edison could have learned some skills in IT, to be specific, data protection, a service offered by many data storage companies. Edison took his broken computer to a PC repair shop, the videos were discovered and apparently leaked to the internet.

Damage Control: Hong Kong police try to stop the hosting of images, but it’s too late, they’ve already spread internationally. One of the men who uploaded was held for a ‘obsenity law’ and Hong Kong bloggers have been protesting. Recently, Edison released an apology and plea for the destruction of the videos from his personal blog using a YouTube video.

A few lessons to be learned:
This isn’t a blog about morality, so I’ll avoid all the ethical implications and focus on what I know best:

1) Control your personal and private information, don’t let your computer out of your sight, and find a trusted repairman.
2) The internet fuels growth, governments and officials who try to control it actually will fuel it further.
3) The web is a tool for great communication opportunities, but can also be used for ill-intentions, beware.

For many of those involved, their lives, careers, and families (Family reputation is often far more important than anything else) are ruined, damaged, and in one case, one of those celebrity women apparently tried to commit suicide. Be careful out there friends, information spreads fast and far.

I blog. In fact, this is a nearly daily ritual where I research my space, collect my thoughts, and respond using this cheap but time-consuming tool. According to Technobabble’s list of analyst bloggers, it’s done well for me, but despite the rankings, what are the tangible benefits?

1) It helps me learn: every topic I post on, someone will add additional thoughts in the comments, so more is gleaned than just me mouthing off. In fact, I get over 7 comments per post on average, so that’s at least a few more perspectives that just mine.
2) I’m still a social media practitioner: In some cases, when folks become analysts, they stop practicing and may suffer from challenges in understanding the nitty gritty. I still lead events, experiment and review tools, to me, this is a core part of what I’m about, so I won’t stop this.
3) It saves me time: I spend about 2 hours every morning with this ritual, but how does it save me time? This blog is actually an archive and reference point for me, I send links to clients, I’ve lists of the industry, and I can quickly find links, stats, and case studies.
4) It gets me business: My last two jobs, I was primarily found through my blog, and to a great degree it helped me to get my job. Charlene told me that as she often did online research, links continued to point back to me, and eventually it made sense to have a conversation.
5) It brings business: At my previous role, I brought hundreds of qualified prospects to my employer, and it’s only increased at this current company. I get a ton of emails asking for social media help, and I’m known for sending them links to existing posts, or if they need further help, I’ll ask if they want to learn more about being a client.

To me this is a career blog, a blog that will move with me from job to job. I don’t get directly paid to blog, in fact, if I stopped, I’d still get the same size paycheck. I’ll have to be honest however, a great deal of energy and effort goes into maintaining this blog at the current frequency, and it’s not easy. Like a financial plan, you’ll have to budget out time every day/week to do it, and soon it becomes a major part of your lifestyle as I constantly have a filter on when I’m consuming information to see what could be published.