Unified Studies - Portland Social Media, Web Design, and Web development

New survey from Razorfish - 40% of People "Friend" Brands on Facebook

40% of People "Friend" Brands on Facebook...that is one of the findings from a new survey from Razorfish who questioned 1000 "connected consumers". ReadWriteWeb does their usual excellent breakdown and analysis here.

Another crazy stat from the survey....33% of respondents report they get their news from Facebook. That is both amazing and....hard to believe...but there it is!

Simple takeaway...brands/businesses ignore the social web at their own peril...true this survey is "connected consumers" but...it won't be long before that category includes just about everyone.

Social Media - ROI

From Dag Homboe's blog, a spreadsheet to help you in calculating your ROI in regards to your Social Media plan.

Dag says" For this research, we identified 13 parameters that play a role in determining the ROI of Social Media.  It is not necessary to include all parameters in a ROI calculation – pick the parameters that make sense."

Dag also goes to the trouble of explaining thoroughly his reasoning in the build-out of the spreadsheet, and also how to best use it.

Social Media ROI spreadsheet

The Thought Bubble - 25 Must Read Social Media Marketing Tips

Most articles/blog posts on social media marketing are short churns of phrase. The motivation being..."Gotta post something today, keep the page views up, become a thought leader, add some followers, engage my hoped-for audience"....and 90% of the time the post is merely a regurgitation of the acknowledged fundamentals of social media marketing. The dearth of actual original thought in SMM "thought leaders" is...I would say "alarming" but it doesn't warrant the use of a word that should be used in conjunction with something far more serious.

I'd like to start a meme today about how so much of the writing today on SMM is based on nothing. The same people saying the same things to each other in....well, it's either an echo chamber or a vacuum. It's the same, conceptually, as the NASDAQ bubble, the housing bubble, etc., a whole lot of activity, word churn, energy and money swirling around a mountain of expectation and perceived (or imagined, or hoped for) value.

We shall henceforth call this "The Thought Bubble".

Sure, SMM, and social media and the conversation is all good stuff. And I love, and agree with Gary Vee-WineTV, yes, it's a revolution. But an economy cannot be built on a lot of experts singing to a bunch of other experts the same old song in the hopes that a few companies will hear the siren song and pay to hear it as well. There's a lot of back-slapping and McLovin' going around.

Now that I've said that...here's a great article on Social Media Marketing from a bunch of the usual suspects! Seriously though, it's a long, pretty in-depth read. A lot of it, of course, can be boiled down to "Learn to Listen", and many of these thought leaders lapse into agency-speak that is tortuous, and comic. Hey, expert, read your thing out loud. Does it sound smart, or like a load of crap-speak? OK...it sounds smart...still, does it mean anything other than learn to listen? If not, just say learn to listen  and leave the 10 dollar words in your novel.

One of the good points made in the article is from Geoff Livingston - Senior Vice President at CRT/tanaka.  He speaks to the importance of companies having a larger communications strategy that social media is a part of...he says, in part:

I think they should nail down a higher strategy first.  It’s a common error, and one I face often where I have to unify and re-activate littered social media properties that have been abandoned due to little interest. Going back to that core strategy, that core value an organization has to offer is the heart of where social media strategy begins.  Not playing with Twitter because it is hot.

The best stuff in this article is from actual companies talking about their challenges/successes i/r/t SMM, like HP...but it's all worth a read.

25 Must Read Social Media Marketing Tips

Advertising as Failure - Jeff Jarvis

Jarvis writes (and videos) on Buzzmachine of the notion of advertising as failure.

He says in part: "the ideal relationship a company should have with its customer is that it produces a great product the customer loves and talks about and thus sells; there is no need for advertising there."

True enough, and this is naturally where the concept of social media and listening come into play, as everyone knows now. Customer evangelists spreading the word, company listens and responds to concerns and problems, a two way conversation.

I think this begs one small question...isn't advertising sometimes used to get a product in front of some consumers, not always because the product is a failure that needs to be propped up by advertising?

New companies should consider the "too small to fail" approach when launching. Launch as small as you can, so you can be as nimble as possible, so you can change your strategy on the fly if need be...or change your PRODUCT on the fly if need be. It's the companies with giant burn rates that have to advertise their way into the consumer's heart. Combining the too small to fail approach, with the conversational tools available, and a targeted media and advertising spend to "grease the wheels" of beginning the conversation might be a good hybrid approach.

Non-profits, social media, and cause marketing.

Wow...here is a pretty comprehensive breakdown of a social media campaign, run by Scott Henderson of MediaSauce for Share Our Strength. The best part is the post-op he does, identifying where mistakes might have been made...no campaign is perfect.

Cause Marketing or Cause Me to Puke Marketing

Any non-profit looking to jump into the cause marketing pool, should read and learn. From Beth Kanter's excellent blog.

Enterprise Micro Sharing Tools Comparison

Enterprise Micro Sharing Tools Comparison 11032008

Publish at Scribd or explore others: School Work Research twitter status

Government 2.0 video from change.gov

A slick video from change.gov, extolling the virtues of social media in governing...not just campaigning.
New Media: Government 2.0 from America.Gov on Vimeo.

Social Media Marketing and Innovation round-up

Here's a few of the interesting posts on Social Media I've run across over the last week or so...

Fargo uses social networks to fight floodwaters

Social-networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter have become vital tools for volunteers as they wage a desperate, round-the-clock battle to protect Fargo from the river and spread the word about rising floodwaters.

Small businesses find big value in Twitter

PR 2.0: Twitter and Social Networks Usher in a New Era of Social CRM

Buzz alert: I'm definitely going to start saying ""Conversation Index" a lot now. Seriously though, an excellent (as always) post by Brian Solis.

10 MORE Examples of Creative Twitter Uses

And also:
A new tool I've just run across is Monitter

Real time streaming twitter search, by location (zip code) with an embeddable widget too.

Commercial Real Estate Values and B2B Social Media

1. I am an avid fan/follower of Stocktwits. It's a demonically clever service built on top of the Twitter platform. I get incredible insight and information on markets, economics  and politics every day there.

A favorite topic not too long ago in that community was real estate...the housing market has collapsed, what was next. Commercial real estate of course. Malls all over are emptying out (customers and tenants), as the economic contraction takes its toll on spending/consumption/jobs.

What are the malls doing to help themselves?

2. There has been a lot of blogging/twittering etc., lately, about how Small Business can use social media to help with their marketing and their bottom line. Well, what about the businesses that rely on small business as their customers?

The above two points make me wonder what use are marketing directors at malls making  of social media. Does your local mall have a social Media strategy? Maybe they do...I am just unable to find evidence of it where I am.

At a minimum...when I walk in the mall, and there is a HUGE sign that say something like "Welcome to this Mall, where it's super fun, etc!"  maybe that giant sign should have big black letters against a white background that says "twitter.com/thisMall". Right now, that sign is just wasted space.

And sales info could go out once a day to their twitter followers...maybe they pick one store a day to have a loss-leader type sale.

And furthermore...maybe the Mall ought to be providing seminars for their tenants....the "rising tide lifts all boats" approach....though I see that some tenants in the malls are using facebook, etc....surely there is more they could do, and for many shop owners this would all be brand new and useful information.

And. What other businesses rely on small businesses (in aggregate) for their business? Banks, credit unions, etc.?

Well...what is your local Community Credit Union's social media strategy? (Again, maybe they have a comprehensive one...I can't tell.)

Could they provide information (or a quick seminar) about some tools and strategies to their small business accounts? If nothing else, it would show that they are thinking hard about how to help their accounts with added value and attention.

Umpqua Bank is famous locally for their innovations in retail banking. They even have their own (I think) social network called Local Spaces. But...I believe that it's proprietary and closed? (see their response in the comments below).

And. What other institutions/organizations have small biz in the aggregate that they rely on?

Churches?  Business and trade associations? (i do note lots of how-to workshops in this sector)  City governments?

At any rate...the churn in tenants in shopping malls here is obvious...it I were in charge of keeping those store fronts occupied, I wouldn't dismiss the low cost/potential high value of using social media to generate a little bit of community, foot traffic, interest and good will among tenants and....value added for would-be tenants.