Social media blah blah

Much chatter in the blogosphere of late about Nestle and their use of social media.

I joined their Facebook group and was shocked to see a post threatening to delete any posts made by peope with versions of the Nestle logo as their avatar pic.

Me thinks the Nestle people (and anyone else who wants to dabble in social media) should watch this very helpful little preso by Dave Birrs of OgilvyOne in London.

Social media overload?

Despite what the people I work with might think I'm often a bit of a late adopter when it comes to new types of social media.

I avoided MySpace mainly because most of the pages I saw were so damn messy.

I resisted Facebook and Twitter for sometime before falling for their charms.

And even LinkedIn didn't appeal to me when I first discovered it.

So there's every possibility that this time next year I'll be addicted to Blippy.

But somehow I doubt it.

I mean really. Who cares what you're spending your money on?

Or how much or how often you're spending for that matter.

Certainly not me that's for sure.

Well not at the moment anyway! ;-)

Propaganda with a twist

Love these social media meets WW2 propaganda posters by Brian Moore. You can even get one for your home or office. Click here for more info.

We're becoming more social

That graph comes from a recent survey by The Neilsen Company.

As you can see we are spending more and more time on social networks.

So much time in fact it makes me wonder what the future holds for corporate websites.

It looks to me like social networks are about to become a channel unto themselves.

Making it harder and harder for advertisers and brands to attract people away from their socialising and onto their website.

Are there any big thinkers or agencies out there pondering this situation?

I certainly hope so.

Earned Media

Seems like every week someone coins a new buzzword.

One term that's been a round for a while that I'm seeing/hearing a lot more of lately is 'earned media'.

Once upon a time we used to called that press coverage. But there's so much more to coverage in the media these days.

There's chatter on Twitter, Facebook groups, Fan pages, blogs and all the other channels we now call social media.

So what's the difference between social media and earned media?

After all it's hard to generate earned media without using social media.

And if a social media campaign doesn't generate enough buzz is it a failure or has it simply not earned enough media to be considered a success?

What next?

Well here we are in 2010. In just a couple of months BrandDNA will be four years old.

When I started doing this there were really only a handful of advertising blogs and social media had yet to become a buzz term.

YouTube was less than a year old and I'd never heard of Facebook or Twitter.

Truth be told the blogosphere has changed completely in just a few short years.

As have my online habits.

Which makes me wonder whether or not I should continue BrandDNA or knock it on the head.

Guess we'll have to see what happens.

Social Penguins

Penguin's status as a design icon has been overwhelmingly reinforced this year with the publication of the $9.99 Penguin Classics range. I see people reading them all the time.

This year we've also seen a number of Penguin homages. This latest one featuring social media is particularly good.

Click here to see more.

Fans of Facebook fan pages

I’ve been on Facebook for quite some time now and I often find myself wondering which brands are getting results out of.

I can”t recollect ever seeing an ad worth clicking on. Yet they’re supposed to be very highly targeted.

Facebook is, I think, a seriously missed opportunity for brands.

Sure there are plenty of ads, groups and fan pages. But really is there anything on Facebook (outside of the Burger King sacrifice) that you’d consider a major success?

Nope. Didn’t think so.

One area where many brands dabble is the fan page.

And why wouldn’t they be? They really easy to set up. In fact a child could do it in about a minute I reckon.

But are fan pages actually delivering any kind of value to brands?

I thought they were but it seems I might be mistaken. According to recent research by Sysomos fan pages are not always as popular as some brands might expect.

Their research looked at 600,000 Facebook fan pages and uncovered the following:

95% of pages have more than 10 fans
65% of pages have more than 100 fans
23% of pages have more than 1,000 fans
4% of pages have more than 10,000 fans

I’m not completely sure what to make of those numbers to be honest. But I’m sure you’d agree that 10,000 or more fans for a major brand is a good number.

The fact that only 4% of fan pages have that many fans is very disappointing though.

Not waving, drowning

Well folks it had to happen eventually. I'm surfing the Google Wave.

At least I would be if I knew what the hell to do with it.

I feel a bit like a pommy backpacker at a surf school in Bondi staring at the Wave but with no idea how to ride it.

If you're already on the Wave get it touch. My username is branddna.johnson

Everyone's an expert

I think it was Kate who pointed out that most of the top marketing blogs were written by people in who don't work in marketing.

Similarly all the people saying print is dead have probably never been involved in the print medium.

And all those experts that proclaim no-one watches TV anymore seem to be the exact same people who spent a large part of last night tweeting about the return of HeyHey on Channel Nine.

As for social media - well you're damned if you do and you're damned if you don't.

People who are active online are way too quick to put down any tentative attempt at a social media campaign.

Which makes it harder and harder to get clients to dip a toe in the water.

So maybe it's time all those self proclaimed experts took some time out from being negative and instead started focussing on something positive for a change.

Show me the money

It's been reported on TechCrunch that Twitter is seeking investment funds from venture capital firms.

No surprise really given Twitter doesn't appear to have any obvious or substantial revenue stream.

What did surprise me though was the valuation put on the company. One billion US dollars!

Obviously a large perecentage of that billion is the brand that has been built.

But how did they determine a valuation of that magnitude? Especially given it could be years before Twitter turns a profit.

If it ever does.

Just think about how quickly Facebook outgrew MySpace then imagine what would happen if a better cooler Twitter alternative came along.

Of course I could be completely wrong.

But having lived through the dotcom bust I can't help having a slight feeling of deja vu.

Twitter spam?

Spam is starting to become a real problem on Twitter.

So many brands have jumped onboard and set up automated replies to tweets that contain references to the brand.

I find this highly annoying. I suspect I'm not alone in this.

Today's piece of Twitter spam is particularly weird.

I posted that I was culling a few live tracks by the Rolling Stones from my iTunes.

Moments later I had a reply from someone purporting to be a Stones fan.

Like most people sucked in by spam I clicked on a link.

My clever Macbook told me it wasn't such a good idea to have clicked on the link.

As you can see from the pic above I wasn't the only person to get this piece of spam.

Which as I said before is becoming a real problem. But what can we do about it?

And more importantly what are Twitter doing about it?

Who loves Honda love?

This Honda Love idea on Facebook looks really interesting.

It was developed by an agency called RPA in California.

Click the pic to get a better look.

I'd really like to know more about it. So if you know anything please leave a comment.

Lovemarks or friendship?

This very insightful quote comes from Mike Arauz. He has recently written a series of great posts on spreadable media. I suggest you go read them asap.

Twits wanted

Eaon Pritchard alerted me to this must read book.

Can't wait to get my hands on a copy so I can find out exactly what I need to know to go out and totally dominate my market.

One tweet at a time of course!

The Blogosphere and Twitter

This week's issue of Marketing Magazine is out now. It's a special digitally focused issue and well worth getting hold of a copy.

In my Around the Blogosphere column I take a look at what has become the most talked about interenet phenomenon of recent times - Twitter.

Click here to see what I had to say. Be sure to join the conversation by leaving a comment.

Social turns anti social

Seems there are a few people out there who are currently thinking about the same sort of stuff that I am.

Yesterday I posted Kevin Rothermel's thoughts on how self proclaimed gurus are impacting on Twitter.

Today I read a piece by Naked's Adam Ferrier on another subject I've been pondering recently - How social media types are becoming anti social.

Here's a snippet from Adam:

"Some of the online social networkers I've met online appear to be extremely opinionated, hostile, judgemental, and very black and white. If they displayed such characteristics in the offline world they would find it very difficult to form long term stable relationships with others."

I think Adam was talking more about people active in the blogosphere rather than people who use Facebook etc. He does make some very good points though.

Click here to see what he had to say.

Turning social into broadcast

I've been thinking about writing something about the gurus who are turning Twitter from a social media into a broadcast one for quite some time.

But I held off because I didn't want DNA to become overly Twitter centric.

Luckily Kevin Rothermel has done the job for me. Here's a snippet of what he had to say:

"They collect followers on Twitter as proof of how brilliant they are at social media marketing, without realising the irony that they are just turning their Twitter feed into a broadcast medium that reaches more people than they could possibly hope to have a 'relationship' with."

For more by Kevin click here.

Anti social media

Last week I went to a conference call The Digital Tipping Point.

I learnt about the conference on Twitter. Clicked on the link in a tweet and signed up.

Can't complain, because the conference was free, but...

Billed as 'The future of branding and social media' I expected it to be about that very topic. It wasn't.

The first couple of presenters focussed mainly on advertising and advertising units.

They showed vox pop videos of idiots talking about how much they loved the ads that appeared on their Facebook. Ads like these.

So I decided to share my displeasure with my friends and followers on Twitter.

Minutes later I recieved a tweet from one of the conference speakers asking me where I was!

When she got up to speak she acknowledged me by name and stated that she wouldn't be talking about advertising.

Had I inadvertantly invented virtual heckling?

Probably not, but I did prove my theory that social media has to feature voices of dissent as well as support.

Twits or Twats?

There has been much written about Twitter of late. Way too much if truth be told.

Regular DNA visitors would know I resisted it for a very long time. Now of course I'm hooked.

What I love about it is the fun and interaction that Twitter provides. Unlike some people who see it as a place to simply stroke their egos.

To be frank I've been very disappointed by the behavior of the so called 'A-List' on Twitter. They seem obsessed with nothing other than influence and ego.

Luckily we have my old friend Marcus Brown to bring the whole Twitter circus back to earth.

For more in the Marcus reads Twitter series click here