Found Results
October 2008 Archive
The following posts were made in October 2008. You may subscribe to the RSS feed for this archive if you would like to take your time reading through our posts.
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Posted on October 27, 2008
WSJ Says Twitter Goes Mainstream
BY JASON CORMIER
"What are you doing?" If the answer has anything to do with attempting to improve your online marketing or customer service, then Twitter better be a part of it.
Ok, I can almost hear it now. "This again? Please Jason, not more fanfare about this geeky tool. Why must I broadcast my thoughts in 140 characters or less? Are companies really using this? Really?"
Yes. Still don't believe me? Then wake up and smell today's Wall Street Journal article, Twitter Goes Mainstream. Companies called out specifically in the article include Dell, Zappos and Comcast.
I'll be the first to admit that using Twitter has a set of issues that deserves mentioning in a separate post. From a business perspective, we at Room 214 approach it like any other social media tool. We start by listening (see Brogan's How to Listen for Opportunities on Twitter).
When considering most of my colleagues, I'm a newborn baby on Twitter (find me at JasonCormier). Still, I find the rate at which I'm adding followers to be ever increasing. I'd love to believe it's because I'm becoming more well known, but the reality is it's just more people getting on board.
Oh, just saw Brogan's latest tweet on the Brian Solis post on Twitter tools. How are you using Twitter for your business?
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Posted on October 23, 2008
7 Tactics for Successful Online Events
BY JAMES CLARK
A good partner of Room 214's recently asked if we have any good learnings about how to run successful online events. Come to find out - we sure do.
Following is the email I sent (sans the names and companies, plus some spelling fixes).
Wanted to give you a brief recap of what we have seen to be successful with running events online.
1. Find Your Audience Online
This is basic and practical I know, but many companies don't really get a good lay of the land far enough in front of the event to be successful. The idea is NOT to be a total new comer to the conversation and expect people to ride in and support the effort.
Part of this effort should be around ad support and potential sponsorships in those key communities months before the event.
As part of monitoring the online audience, look for themes that arise as part of the conversation. This gives you content fodder for mini-events (#3 below).
So getting some brand visibility is key. The visibility needs to be focused on the influencers.
2. Set Up Your Online Presence
Social media is fueled by reciprocation, be it tagging, friending, commenting or viral applications. But, there's got to be some place for people to see who you are what you're doing. Options (among others) could be a blog or microsite, Facebook group or page. Somewhere that gives you the ability to post content, notices and updates about upcoming events.
3. Create Mini-Events
Trying to get large audiences online is dependent on either: (a) celebrity draw, or (b) unique, interesting and relevant content. In front of the event itself create mini-events such as online chats using UStream or Kyte player. So you can take some people involved with the main show and start creating content and events that would be of interest to your crowd. During these mini-events your always throwing messaging forward to the main event.
4. Cause Marketing
This one has potential to work extremely well. Through cause marketing you can tie the event to a charitable cause. You can leverage the non-profit network to promote the event, and you can do something around say attendance numbers. So for each online viewer we will donate $1 up to 100,000 dollars. Obviously this costs money, and we only recommend this strategy if the organization itself is building a sustainable online community. With cause marketing you're driving lots of visibility and traffic and if the idea is to sustain a community beyond the event then it's an effective and comparatively inexpesnive way of doing it.
5. Main Event
In the online world, we have found promoting an event by communications outreach too far in advance is a waste of time. For exposure use brand advertising or site sponsorships as mentioned in point #1 above. For the event itself use the mini-events as a way to keep people interested then do your outreach online max four days in advance. Have something interesting and exciting to talk about for the outreach (see point #6 below) is critical.
6. Post Main Event
Another great tactic we have used is a post-event community program. That is a live call or online chat after the event where people who just watched the telecast can then get on and talk about it. This gives great reason to do outreach: "Don't forget to tune into the Telecast at 9 p.m., and then join in the Live Chat/Audioconference/Blog Radio Show with XXX immediately after."
7. Create Calendar Items that Can Go Viral
Calendaring for events is one of the main reasons we like Facebook. Events are one of the most viral applications in Facebook. So if I'm interested in the event, I'll click on attending the event, and all of my contacts will see: "James is attending the XXX event at 9 p.m. on Thursday". So if my circle of friends on Facebook are also passionate about the topic, they now see it.
Now, one point not raised is e-mail. This discussion was based on the assumption the client didn't have an active email list.
BTW, most people stumble and fail miserably at Step 1, never giving the following six steps a chance.
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Posted on October 23, 2008
Leveraging Virtual Communities
BY JASON CORMIER
One of our readers just asked me what "virtual community" refers to regarding point 3 in my post about the top 5 things Chief Marketing Officers want.
Although virtual communities can be defined within a broad range of social media properties (like Facebook) - CMO's are saying, I wish to leverage them so I can better "understand my target audience."
This discussion can quickly get more involved than how a company might use Facebook, because now we are talking about the use of intentional business tools. One local company and customer of ours that provides the kind of tools I'm referring to is HiveLive.
With the goal of better understanding a target audience, one of the advantages of using a virtual (online) community platform comes in leveraging multiple audiences. The audiences I'm referring to specifically are employees, customers and partners.
If you can effectively create the space through which these audiences can participate - you are fostering a new means of sharing, exploring and learning. The results? Better communication, marketing, innovation and loyalty.
If you would like to dig into this deeper, Jeremiah Owyang did a comprehensive report on community platforms for Forrester only a couple of months ago.
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Posted on October 22, 2008
Social Media Monitoring Podcast with Collective Intellect
BY JASON CORMIER
Listen to our Podcast:
Show Notes:
Room 214 Co-founder, Jason Cormier, interviews Co-founder and CTO of Collective Intellect, Tim Wolters.
In this podcast, we discuss:
1. The value of Collective Intellect for social media monitoring
2. The specific values of online conversational monitoring in terms of base-lining share of voice among competitive brands, identification of themes, identification of influencers and what the sentiment is around a brand.
3. The maturity and differentiation of Collective Intellect's ability to track online sentiment, and approach online monitoring from a "topic net" approach as opposed to a simple keyword approach.
4. Tim's reaction to Google's potential patent-pending technology for identifying key influencers in Facebook, MySpace and others.
5. Tim's advice for getting started in social media (start monitoring with free tools).
Note: This subject matter has become extremely relevant to Room 214's social media agency services over the last two years. On that note, let us know if you are interested in hearing more about strategy, planning and/or tactical outreach efforts used in conjunction with these kinds of tools and data.
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