Magic MarketBuying and selling in the marketplace of ideas

A few months back, I was going to attend a seminar called “Building Brands on Social Networks” … but I got a cold and couldn’t make it. Sad trombone.

Fortunately, a lot of the conference is up on SlideShare, and I’ve been working my way through the various presentations, chomping on the useful bits. For example! The presentation that Roland Smart at Sprout, which helps big brands like Disney to approach consumers on social media networks.

I’ve embedded the presentation at the end of the post, but here’s all of what I thought were the Interesting Bits in case you don’t want to watch the whole thing:

3:30 – We’re seeing a shift from growth to engagement: user growth is slowing down; twitter users now spending more time developing their profiles. “Early adopters are maturing … they have greater expectations. … It is now possible to meet those expectations” due to data portability with APIs.

5:00 – Marketers are prioritizing Facebook applications

5:15 – FB apps are most effective tool for driving engagement, but underutilized. “This is a big opportunity.”

6:50 – Integrated approach is crucial: Fan pages to engagement apps to display ads.

6:15 – The Integrated Engagement Machine ™ is as follows: Brands + Sprout = Strategy & Creative. The Strategy & Creative is turned into display ads that attract users (hopefully virally, which extends the ad buy), then funnel them to fan pages to identify product, then to apps that engage people with little value-ads, which then generates more attraction through peoples’ networks. Meanwhile it’s all measured and analyzed.

8:05 – Fan pages are “relationship management hubs.” “It’s where you deliver value.” Examples of value: coupons/deals, twitter feeds, contests, video feeds.

8:50 – Fan page best-practices: always make the fan page the default tab, rather than the wall. Incorporate social hooks like twitter & video. Make it consistent with larger strategy. Deliver on clear value proposition.

9:45 – Greater interaction leads to greater in-stream presence. Facebook rewards brands that engage well: you’ll be prioritized in feeds.

10:40 – Best practices: Always include links to your apps. Highlight user-generated content. Have a regular schedule. Don’t oversaturate the stream.

15:10 – Intel gave users a reason to get their friends to join — lower prices as more members join.

16:10 – Dos: start with value, “why are your fans going to be interested?” … include content strategy and user experience up front … make your app viral-ready with social hooks like sharing … aim for the activity stream, since it offers a rate of interaction which exceeds any other opportunity.

17:50 – Don’ts: Contests with network actions, since FB will shut it down … too much moderation … too much complexity (short experiences are OK) … avoid arduous pre-roll and barriers to entry

20:20 – Use metrics!

20:40 – Things to track: unique visitors, visits, page views; time in campaign; actions; posts to wall; shares from stream; total # of referrals to external pages

21:40 – Create engagement funnels

22:00 – Predictions for 2010: Branded content will be more integrated with user-gen content in activity stream. Social networks will create new rules to reward value. There will be innovation with social targeting integrated with social graph data. Increased connectivity with social graph data — porting social data to other apps and sites.

I’m going to try using the “What Would Seth Godin Do” Wordpess plugin: it greets brand-new users with a special message. In this case, it’ll be an introduction and a reminder to subscribe. Currently, readership of the site is pretty low, including RSS, so I’ll be interested to see if this has an impact. Couldn’t hurt, right?

Right?

Well isn’t that helpful!Just the other day I was wondering about how bloggers make money on the strength on personality, and then conveniently enough Darren Rowse wrote a post with a few hints in that direction.

While his post “How to be a More Relational Blogger” doesn’t spell out exactly how I can make cash off of my blog-punditry, it does address the importance of having a personality when you write.

The highlights:

• Build a core group of loyal readers
• Respond on your blog and participate on other blogs
• Creating great content is your primary concern. (It is a relief to read this! Because it is my favorite part.)

I like what he has to say because it calls to mind a helpful formula: Connect with Fans + Reason to Buy = $$$$.” Okay obvs it’s a little more complicated than that to make $$$$ but the point is well-taken. So much of the markety-businessy advice that I read can be distilled down to that formula.

Here’s Mike Masnick from Techdirt, helpfully expanding on the concept:

I really want to believe that this works, because it sounds both ethical and accurate. But I worry that CwF+RtB might just be a really nice dream that works now and then in anecdotes but not on a large scale.

Richard Wong asks, “Is Social Media a Waste of Time for Photographers?”

Kind of a leading question, obviously it can be a waste of time, just as easily as it can be absolutely vital. It all depends on your strategy and execution.

A commenter on the article makes a good point: the best way to use social networks is the same as the best way to network in person. Build relationships, gain trust, get referrals. Karma, basically.

The point in Richard’s article that most caught my eye was a criticism of social networks: it’s hard to be heard over all that noise. Oh goodness YES. All this connection is great, but it’s a bit of an overload sometimes, isn’t it? And by sometimes I mean always.

Richard’s response to this criticism is basically, “don’t worry, the good stuff will get eyeballs and the bad stuff will disappear.” And boy oh boy I really want to believe that, but I don’t know if I do.

There’s lots of fabulous photographers (and fabulous bakers, actors, tennis players, osteopaths, etc) toiling in undeserved obscurity. Some cream rises to the top; some cream settles to the bottom. Why? What’s the difference? Is it purely a matter of “right place right time?”

Lindsay Patterson has a marvelous post about how to do PR in a way that bloggers will respond to.

As a blogger, I can easily agree with everything she says. But there’s an interesting insight from a successful PR person in there: cultivate relationships with a smallish (like, 8) number of bloggers and target releases for them. They don’t have to be big names; let the interesting stuff trickle up.

I’ve seen this at work many times: the small guys get something good, and after a day or two the bigger sites pick it up. (This is extremely irritating for the small blogs when they don’t get credit.)

But the idea of PR people cultivating a small number of relationships is not something that had occurred to me, and it sounds very smart. To really be close to a blog, to know what it likes to write about and to keep current with its coverage, you’d would have to limit your focus to only a couple of sites.

So, how do you pick the sites to focus on? I don’t know! It probably takes a while to develop a sense of which sites should get the most attention. But here’s what I would guess are signs to look for:

• Coverage often gets picked up by other sites — in other words, people link to them a lot
• Prompt and personal response
• Selective — they don’t publish just anything that comes along

As a blogger, I’ve been approached by a lot of PR people. The approaches that work best are the ones that offer me something that I need, rather than that ask me the favor of publishing their content.

Oh, what a coincidence: I just got a press release about some guy who has something to do with American Idol and released a song or something and who calls himself Mars Music. What? I have no idea who this is or what this story is about — mostly because this is a subject I don’t ever touch. Why did they write to me? I’ve certainly learned to ignore this person now.