strategy
3 Reasons Why You’ll Give Up Ownership of Your Content
Recently I was asked about who owns the content posted on a social networking platform – not the first time though. The question came up after my friend had heard that the platform took ownership of the content after the member posted it and that they could do anything they wanted with it! I suggested first that the initial comment might have come from a person that was repeating what they had heard, wanting to appear well-informed, but may not have actually read the Term of Service (TOS) for the platform as most people never look at the TOS when they create an account anyway.
Wanting to reply in-fact and not heresay in my response, I linked to the TOS of one of my favorite platforms, LinkedIn (TOS link), and singled out the first paragraph to draw attention to how they dealt with the issue.
Complexity Models in Social Marketing (Part deux)
“Social media is maturing and being widely adopted by companies everywhere – many are still not prepared for it.”
In the last post, the aspects that create complexity in social marketing were presented and in this post we look at how to evaluate them.
Aside from the mis-steps in content itself (witness the faux pas of many major brands, ranging from JetBlue, Wal-Mart and GMC and countless smaller organizations) there is, to me, an obvious challenge in identifying the layers of complexity. This post will explore the complexity relating to organizational readiness and how to understand what you’re up against before you even begin.
Scariest Blog Post You’ll Ever Read (as a Marketer)
The ghost of John Wanamaker, shimmers into view before you and says “in my day I knew half my marketing investment was wasted but did not know which half – today you have a hundred more options in which to invest… and now 90% of your marketing investment is wasted.”
The image shimmers out of focus and disappears – an image of your accountant materializes and tells you that you’re a business burning through a million a month and when you get visitor to your site, there is nothing more than a form to fill-out for a call back. The phone number on the ‘Contact Us’ page leads to a ‘Dell Hell’ kind of experience and no human being can be reached from outside. Zombies? Yeah – they get through, but only because they’re brain-eating, persistent monsters randomly pushing buttons on their Zombie-phones.
The Vampire of Social Media Purity Deserves to Die
“And I will have Carfax Abbey torn down stone by stone, excavated a mile around. I will find your earth box and drive that stake through your heart.” ~ Edward van Sloan as Van Helsing / Dracula 1931
Working at the intersection of ROI, marketing and social media in particular has been a topic that has drawn my interest since the early development of social media as a connecting consumer technology.
As social media came onto the scene, a debate cropped up that social media was a ‘tool of the people’ and that to propose its use as a business tactic was heretical. We still see vestiges of that debate now and then, but by and large, we do not see much of it I think because the flood of early practitioners has subsided and the bar for entry as a social marketer has been raised past the point that creating a Facebook page and opening a Twitter account suddenly launched a new consultancy. The discussions by marketers has risen to a point that business people recognize that marketing has an ROI that can be associated with it and that social media marketing can have a VERY high ROI indeed.
The Top 3 Key Apps for Driving Social Media Marketing Traffic – Updating the Trinity
I’m exploring CoursePark.com as a site to host educational content and I recently received a request from Tim Margolis, their social guy and a new online acquaintance over there asking “What are the top 3 applications do you think or believe are critical to driving good website traffic?”
I was not sure if his question was for a survey, if he was looking for engagement or if it was a professional question he is trying to answer for CoursePark, but his question made me think for a moment to a blog post series from July 2009 on ‘The Trinity of Social Media” that suggested the trinity should be a blog, a micro-blog and a social network. I have thought of the post often and continue to wonder if the trinity might need an update eventually. The 2011 edition of the Trinity I think does warrant a refresh and this will be the first in the series.
Let’s put the construct of the Trinity in context here for a moment; we’re talking about a business presence, not personal and we’re talking about spanning two of the relevant media networks; Owned & Operated (O&O) media and Earned media, which relies heavily on social media. There is no distinction at this level of a B2B company presence or a B2C.
What’s changed for 2011 and beyond?
The objective has not changed – we want to drive traffic to the O&O site or network of sites. Eyeballs on pages, not revenue at this point, but traffic – which is a proxy for awareness of our product, service or brand. What has changed is the social technology and the features and capabilities of the various platforms.
Do any of the changes warrant a change in the model?
Yes – in one particular area: the social network component. When the original Trinity model was introduced, Facebook Groups were supported and Business Pages were not yet introduced. Are there be other changes? Yes – but not in the tool selection I do not think. The fundamentals are holding and IMHO the foundational tools and technology for an effective social presence are still a blog, micro-blog and social network. The tactics we deploy however are different today than they were in 2009 and as we cover the new state of the Trinity, we’ll discuss the changes.
Audience Participation Notice
I’ll write the articles, but I’d like to include your comments. Whose comments – you, the person reading this right now. If I could reach through the screen and point at you I would. Comment below on what you think the changes might be for you or send me an email with whatever your thoughts are.
ROI of Social Media in Nonprofits–What’s it all about?
I just reviewed a post at The Nonprofit Times that came across my Twitter stream via @AshtonGilliard (looks like her first tweet too! Welcome to the Twitter-sphere Ashton!.) With the online version of the NPT column not accepting comments, I felt compelled to make my voice heard here at my blog. To be fair, my interest is almost academic, though not uninformed. While not currently in service to the community on any NPO board, I have started nonprofits, led them and helped manage them by having been on several NPO boards, I think I have a leg to stand on here.
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