Mr. SOCIAL

Game Theory - When Gaming meets Marketing, Fun happens!

2012-01-06T18:28:00.000-08:00

Word-Cloud created using Wordle - a cool data viz. tool*

Gaming is fun. Gaming is big business. Gaming is the marketing buzzword du jour. Gaming is red hot right now!

Proof:- Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 (or MW3) made the biggest entertainment launch of all time in Nov 2011. Alec Baldwin created a tweetstorm when his addiction to Zynga's social game "Words with Friends" famously got him deplaned. (see pic below) Even The Economist has run a Special Report on gaming (The Importance of Fun). And, perhaps, as the greatest testament to the rising phenomenon, there's already a Hollywood cult flick out there on the racy life of a fully grown-up gamer - Grandma's Boy

But seriously, as the popularity of games grows worldwide, companies are increasingly looking at gaming (in its multifarious forms - gamification, social gaming, advergaming etc.) as a strategic brand marketing channel.

Here's my article on gaming (in NZ Marketing Magazine, Jan/ Feb 2012 issue) which came as a result of a Social Media Club Auckland event I ran in October 2011 on Social Gaming & Gamification.

Game Theory - Marketing meets Social Gaming and Gamification

For optimal reading, view in FullScreen
[ Zoom IN (+), Zoom OUT (-) to adjust ]

Addendum

Although I omitted them for lack of space, no article on gaming could becomplete without mentioning:

Nintendo - with cult-hits like theMario Games (and Donkey Kong), and more recently, Wii and Wii Sport, and thatgreat hope of handhelds, Nintendo 3DS.

SonyPlaystation - with its game-changingPS1, PS2 and PS3 (Blu-Ray) series of consoles, and the ubiquitous Sony PSP, which took the gaming world by storm a while ago.

With Gratitude

Many Thanks to Stephen Knightly of InGame, without whose valuable contribution, neither the article nor the SMCakl October event would have happened.

Big Thanks also to Ben Fahy and Vernene Medcalf of NZ Marketing Magazine for their creative input and support.

A special mention to Tim Train of Zynga & Vishal Gondal of IndiaGames for the inspiration behind this piece.

Social Scrabble

Zynga's rapid-fire tongue-in-cheek response to the Alec Baldwin - American Airlines incident.

A Baldwin - 1, American Air - 0. (Let Alec Play... he's got a hard case of social gaming :-)

Click here to jump straight to the article

* Wordle is the creation of Jonathan Feinberg - ex-IBM Researcher, now S/W Engineer with Google

The World of Social Media in 2011 (VideoGraphic)

2011-12-06T11:48:00.001-08:00

What do you call an infographic with audio and video? A VideoGraphic. Well, erm..., maybe! Anyway...

Here's a clip - The World of Social Media in 2011 - loaded with stats sure to make you look like a brainy egghead at the Office Christmas party.

One viewing and you'll start mouthing off social gems that'll make your workmates go hmmm.... (Career Tip: Best done when the CEO/ CMO is within earshot!)

Ignore the typos, enjoy the info. Pure eye-candy for the anal-attentive = analysts who pay acute attention to and enjoy up-to-date details presented in an easy-to-digest format.

If you liked this, you'll love Erik Qualman's Social Revolution series of videographics. Click here to view the 3 viral super-hits.

7 Verticals of Social Media. 1 Orgasm.

2011-11-24T13:13:00.001-08:00

7 Verticals of Social Media - each showcasing Line-of-Business Expertise.

There you have it. My views on social media captured in the Nov 2011 issue of AdMedia.

I wrote the article on the back of a talk I gave at The Auckland BarCamp Un-Conference #bca5 in July.

I'd love to hear your thoughts on the article. Have a read and let me know what you feel coming on...

What NZ Needs is an ORGASM *

For optimal reading, view it in Fullscreen

I'd like to offer Many Thanks to Chris Grimstone, Designer, for his support on the article.
And David Gapes, Editor, AdMedia, for making it happen.

Social Gaming and Gamification – a huge success!

2011-10-20T17:03:00.000-07:00

Social Gaming and Gamification in New Zealand

#SMCakl

What a night it was… the Social Media Club Auckland meet up on Tuesday 18 Oct was a fun night - a roaring success!

The theme for the evening was Social Gaming and Gamification in New Zealand and we had the Who’s Who of NZ gaming in attendance at the flash new YooBee Flagship Store in Britomart Central.

Truly, it was an evening when geek went chic. Where hardcore gamers got social with fashion stylistas. Above all, it showed the NZ gaming industry is in good shape and on the path to a bright future. Watch this space!

Attendees were "awesome-ized" by excellent presentations by our panel of speakers, exploring the hottest concepts in gamespace. From social games and gamification of business to mobile apps, game design, F1 simulators and a cool live display of AR (augmented reality) and VR (voice recognition) on the Xbox 360 Kinect.

Mitch Olson, Co-Founder, SmallWorlds.com

Stephen Knightly, MD, inGame.co.nz

Jonathan Rogers & Chris Wilson, GrindingGear.com

Kevin Andreassend, ICE AV Tech

Rowan Wernham, Co-Founder, Sna.pr

Nigel Parker, Development Advisor, Microsoft NZ

Nigel hit a high note during his presentation with his voice activated "flame-on" balls of fire,

red laser light-sabres and 3-D models (if that sounds like gibberish to you, see demo video here.)

Happily, the Social Media Club Auckland event received unprecedented media support:

AdMedia & Fastline - What's got the games biz buzzing and SMC Dates

Idealog - Win tickets to Social Media Club and StopPress - To sell, you must compel

Tech Day - YooBee to Host Social Gaming social

Base FM / Juice TV / Radio Ponsonby

PIC Courtesy: SnapStar Here are some snazzy pics from the night taken by Charlie Kim.

Also published on the YooBee Newsletter - Are You Game?

Huge Thanks to all above, and in equal measure to our...

* Venue Sponsors - YooBee
* Prize Sponsors - BurgerFuel, YooBee and Microsoft
* F&B Suppliers - People’s Wines, Quintessential Food (Tnk yoo, Tara)
* Team YooBee: Kate Johnston, Emma Henaghan, MonaLisa Codling, Clare Coulson, DJ Phoebe Falconer, Ryan Watson, Arama Cookson, Jamie Yang, Brandon Black, Michael, the 2 girls in-store and... Richard Webb.

Highlights from the Awesome Evening

The tweetstream off our official event hashtag (#SMCakl) was flowing fast and thick and it was trending in Auckland before the event started.

The entire event was livestreamed via SMCakl's U-Stream channel (click here to view). And there were quite a few who couldn’t turn up to Britomart but tuned in live - from the north shore to San Francisco (Well done, Brandon Black.)

Plus, we even had a QR code for the event. How cool is that - if it is!

5 Cool Prizes - Haunani Pao, Camellia Yang and a lucky lad won $50 Burger Fuel Vouchers + a YooBee NoteBook, while Anika Nafis and a lucky gent won Microsoft Xbox 360 games.

For prize distribution, we used a fun ploy (invented by Vaughn Davis) called Spin That Tweet – where we used Simon Young’s iPad to give the #SMCakl tweet-wall a whirl and touched the screen at random to draw the lucky winner!

And the venue, man! The chic, new YooBee Flagship Store in sexycool all black. With large Apple screens rolling tweets off #SMCakl, Macs loaded with apps for all to game on and play, music playing, wine flowing…

AND... I was the MC for the night. Seriously now... what more can one ask for :-)

Yup! It was a fun night alright. Cheers and thanks again to all who helped piece the event together. Special Thanks to Kate Johnston, Emma Henaghan & Richard Webb of YooBee and Stephen Knightly of inGame.co.nz - they made it happen. (ps: Thanks also to Katie Heenan for all her support.)

Steve Jobs (1955 - 2011) - Today, genius died.

2011-10-05T20:02:00.000-07:00

RIP Steve Jobs

(1955 - 2011)

This says it all.

Steve Jobs didn't show the way. He created it.

People followed him, connected with him, and liked him much before it was socially cool to do so. And you don't have to be an Apple fan to recognize his creative, branding, mktg, tech genius. Just look around and you'll see how he's changed the world. The Steve Jobs effect on the world will be felt for many years to come!

Rest In Peace Steve Jobs... you will be missed.

Apple Product history upto 2007 - double-click to enlarge image

The landmark TV commercial that spawned a super-brand... The Apple Mac

Social Media Marketing in 7 days (Book Review)

2011-10-04T01:52:00.000-07:00

To connect with the author, Linda Coles... click here!

"Learn Marketing with Social Media - in 7 days" - a new book by Linda Coles is out now. You can find it in on the shelves in all leading bookstores in Australia and New Zealand and on the world's largest e-bookstore: Amazon.com. You can buy the book here from late Oct 2011.

I know Linda for over a year now. She isthe Founder/ Director of New Zealand’s foremost social media consultancies - Blue Banana, aregular contributor to Michael Stelzner's popular business blog - Social Media Examiner, a sought after speaker at conferences worldwide, and now, an international author.

Julian Waters, Linda Coles, me and Justin Flitter - Good times at SMCakl !!!

My first meeting with Linda was when she spoke at ourSocial Media Club Auckland (SMCakl) event in October 2010. Which for some reason (I still don’t know why), was a beachy,summer event - in biting cold weather J

See Blog + Pics here > One helluva chilled out summer social

Just about a month ago, I was happy (and pretty awed) tolearn from Linda she was releasing her own ‘Learn in 7 days’ book on socialmedia – probably NZ’s first hard copy to be published on the subject!

Fortunately, I ran into Linda recently at a breakfast seminar(Business Intelligence Series) where she invited me to write a book review.

‘Learn marketing with Social Media in 7 days’ by Linda Colesreleased in the first week of September 2011. Right as rain, I received mycrisp copy home delivered via courier (thankyou!) about the same time. It is my privilege and pleasure to write thisreview:

"Surely you know someone who wants to get started with SocialMedia, or could benefit from knowing more.

‘Learn marketing with Social Media in 7 days’ is a handy, ready-referenceguidebook. A helpful companion to any social media user, it is written inan easy-to-follow, friendly manner. And the live examples (written byNZ’s best-known social media practitioners) make learning a lot simpler.

With 4 main chapters dedicated to - FaceBook, LinkedIN,Twitter and YouTube - the book is acoherent, sequential learning guide to the most popular social mediaplatforms of today.

Social media is all about learning by doing. Linda’sbook is the essential reading that goes along with the doing. It's thetheory of social media.

Generously sprinkled with tips and to-dos,‘Learn marketing with...’ is a must-have forthose venturing out into the wide world of social media.

At $34 NZD, it makes an excellent (Birthday/ Christmas/ New Year) gift. One they’ll keep & use (and remember & thank you) for a long time."

USAGE TIP: Keep this handbook close to your computer. Pick it up as often as you can - and yes, please DO try everything at home - and the best part, you can do so in your pyjamas :)"

To sign-off, here's the amazing Linda Coles, in her own words:

President Obama at LinkedIN's Town Hall

2011-09-26T23:16:00.000-07:00

Jeff Weiner, CEO, LinkedIN & The President of United States

Putting America Back to Work - President of USA, Barack Obama and Linkedin CEO, Jeff Weiner address the state of America's economy.

Video streaming by Ustream

An enjoyable 1 hour Q&A session with President Obama at LinkedIN's Town Hall Meeting held at Li's HQ in Mountain View, CA.

President Obama answered questions from LinkedIN members (in the audience and via Groups) on jobs, the US economy, taxes, Jobs Act, healthcare & Medicare, professional training, education and what America and the people of America need to do for a better, secure future. An excellent session. Some great thoughts. Good intellectual stimulation.

What's the ROI on Social Media

2011-09-19T02:32:00.000-07:00

The one most Frequently Asked Question in social media circles is...

Q: What's the ROI on Social Media?
Here's an article I posted to my LinkedIN which fetched a few comments.

3 steps to measuring social media ROI

ROI = (gain – cost) / cost People who work in social media often face this problem: Budget. ROI is a business measurement. It doesn’t care whether you’re investing in SM or pumpkin farms. ROI has non-variable values and a concrete formula.

Luigi Cappel Metrics are really important to help justify the investment. Time is just as important as marketing spend. What is your worth to the company over a year? Not what you are paid, but what revenue comes from your efforts. Divide that by 2,000 hours for a year to get an hourly rate. Of course who of us only works 2,000 hours, but effectlvely, thats the official measure.

Of course we need to start with a marketing plan and KPI's and a way of isolating what came from the social media and what didn't. How many of us ask how a new client found out about us?

Is social media just online, or is what we did last night also social media. Glad I finally got there Amar:)
____________________________________________________

Amar Trivedi - Keeping Madness Alive Nice one Luigi. I heard this at a seminar recently... Q - How does one measure ROI of Social Media A - The same way you measure the ROI on your phone. I think it made sense. After all, it enables you to make connections faster & further than ever before. Keyphrase: Take it offline... - that's where SMCakl plays a part. Putting a face to the Twitter handle. Exchange cards or QR codes. Have a chat. From there... take it from conversation to conversion, coffee to champagne :)
____________________________________________________
Michael Q Todd Followed the event last night on Twitter. Great stuff guys!
The ROI on Social Media for a business is that they will still be in business in 2 years____________________________________________________
Amar Trivedi - Keeping Madness Alive Thanks Michael. Glad you enjoyed the event out there in Japan. And that's a seriously cool comment on the ROI of social media. Hope to meet you at SMCakl. Let us know when you're in Akl next. Cheers!
____________________________________________________

And here's another good article via emarketer.com...

As Social Spending rises, which metrics are CMOs focusing on?

And... here's the answer to that most FAQ...

Infographic by MDG AdvertisingClick on image for enlarged view

Many thanks to Camellia Yang for finding this lovely infographic.
Q: What is an Infographic? A: A flowchart on steroids.

LinkedIN-telligence via LinkedIN-fographics

2011-08-28T18:08:00.000-07:00

Latest Update: LinkedIN adds 2 new members every second !!

Via: Online MBA

The LinkedIN Profile

Via Lab 42

Here's an article via TechCrunch with the latest stats (Aug 2011), and here's the complete lowdown on Li via Crunch Base (Jul 2011).

To sign-off, another cool LinkedINfographic by Vincenzo Consenza (via Erik Qualman of Socialnomics) Click here to view.

Nothing like some good Social Media humour

2011-08-17T01:17:00.000-07:00

1st friend: "I have FB, Tw, Google+, Li, YouTube, Skype.."
2nd friend: "Dude, do you have a life?"
1st friend: "OMG! No! Send me the link." :)

Tweet it out. After all, you are what you tweet! Or share it with your FB friends for a chuckle. Nothing like some good social media humour.

Thanks for a good laugh! Cheers @amysticgirl :D)

Social Media - Class of 2011 [InfoGraphic]

2011-08-05T01:12:00.000-07:00

Imagine Social Media as a High School Year Book with...

Facebook, Twitter, Google+, LinkedIN in the Class of 2011.

(Wonder why YouTube didn't make the class!)

What would such a Year Book look like?

Double click on the InfoGraphic to find out.

Image Courtesy Class Finders

And another one on the same - in greater detail. I caught it on LinkedIN thanks to Anna Gervai of Orchid Web Design.

Image Courtesy FlowTown

Here's an informative infographic I saw on The Next Web (thanks to the prolific Lee Odden). Created by Italian digital strategist, Vincenzo Cosenza, it maps the Adoption Life Cycle of Social Networks.

Logos (L-R): FriendFeed, FourSquare, Google+, Viadeo (French), LinkedIN, Bebo, Orkut, Badoo (not to be confused with Baidu), MySpace, Vkontakte (Russian), RenRen, Twitter, QQ (logo = penguin in scarf), FaceBook

Double-click to enlarge image. Click here to read the full article.

What is Google+ and why you should get on it?

2011-07-24T01:35:00.000-07:00

This goofish stick-figure cartoon hit the web in the early days of Google+. And here's a cool video with a real good reason why you should get G+.

Plus one this... I mean... +1 this

Google+ me here - add me to your circles.

20 million people signed up for Google+ in 21 days! If you'd like an invite to jump in and try it, leave your gmail address in the comments (or send it to trivediamar@gmail.com with "Google+ Invite" as the subject).

And while I'm at it, check out these 10 Google+ tips & tricks for new users - Time to get on Google+ and use it like a pro. Happy Googling!

So you've got an awesome idea for a website!

2011-07-21T02:03:00.000-07:00

This has got to be the Boss of all Flow-Charts. Look at it carefully and you'll see it is actually 5 InfoGraphics stitched into one.

An amusing read... an enjoyable story in there.

Esp. if you think you've got an awesome idea for a website!

Double-click to enlarge. Viewed best in full-screen.

Mr. Madness would like to thank Timothy Newman for the above find.

Social Media Glossary: 48 Terms You Should Know

2011-07-15T02:53:00.000-07:00

This is the first foray in my attempt to compile a Social Media Dictionary. Huge thanks for @amysticgirl for pointing me to the blogpost below, and to @CathyRoselli for the inspiration. Listed below are 48 Terms You Should Know via 60 Second Marketer.

As the vocabulary of voguewords/ buzzwords is constantly growing on a regularly basis, I'll be posting them on here as they hit the cool circuit.

Okay, friends. Here are 48 social media terms making their way across the web as we speak. Our list started out as 45, but several members of the 60 Second Marketer community have already suggested additions, so we’re up to 48.

Please feel free to add your own suggestion in the comments section below. Be sure to include a definition. If you include the definition, I’ll update the post with a link back to your website.
Enjoy!

App – An application that performs a specific task on your smart phone or your computer. The term “app” was popularized by Steve Jobs and Apple.
Alerts – Daily email notifications (usually sent by Google Alerts) that let you know when a keyword or keyword phrase that you’ve selected is mentioned on the web. Perfect for people trying to stay abreast of certain topics or online brand mentions.
BKV Digital and Direct Response – A marketing communications firm that sponsors the 60 Second Marketer. BKV’s clients include AT&T, John Deere, The Home Depot, Daimler, Equifax and the American Red Cross.Blog – A tool used by content-providers around the globe to connect with readers. The most popular blogging platforms include WordPress, Typepad and Google’s Blogger.
Chat – One-to-one communication through a text-based chat application commonly referred to as instant messaging.
Compete – A web-based application that allows people to compare and contrast statistics for different websites over time. Totally worth checking out.
Delicious – A free online bookmarking service owned by Yahoo! When someone tags an article, video or blog post with a Delicious bookmark, it’s the equivalent of getting a “vote.”
Digg – This platform is similar to Delicious in that people vote for articles, videos and blog posts. If your content gets enough Diggs, it’s promoted to the front page for millions of visitors to see.
Disqus – A comment system and moderation tool for your website or blog. This service lets you add social web integration to any site on any platform.
Drupal – Interested in starting a blog? Then Drupal may be for you. More intuitive than WordPress and more robust than Blogger.
Facebook – A social network that connects people with friends, family and business associates. Facebook is the largest social network in the world with more than 500 million users.
Flickr – A social network that allows users to store photos online and then share them with others through profiles, groups, sets and other methods.
Foursquare — Foursquare is a mobile check-in service that allows regular customers to get points every time they visit their favorite restaurant, bar, coffee shop or whatever. The more points you get, the more likely you’ll be the recipient of special offers from that establishment.
Google Documents – Web-based office applications that include tools for word processing, presentations and spreadsheet analysis. All documents are stored and edited online and allow multiple people to collaborate on a document in real-time.
Gowalla- A social network where friends share their locations and connect with others in proximity to each other.
HootSuite – HootSuite allows you to manage multiple Twitter profiles, pre-schedule tweets and view metrics.
Joomla — An alternative to WordPress, Drupal or Blogger. This blogging platform is used by gazillions, although WordPress is used by gazillions upon gazillions.
Like – Instead of writing a comment for a message or a status update, a Facebook user can click the “Like” button as a quick way to show approval and share the message.
LinkedIn – LinkedIn is a business-oriented social networking site that is mainly used for professional networking.
MySpace – MySpace became the most popular social networking site in the United States in June 2006 and was overtaken internationally by its main competitor, Facebook, in April 2008.
Opera – Opera is an open-source web browser. While not as popular as Firefox, Opera is used as the default browser on some gaming systems and mobile devices.
Pandora – Pandora is a social online radio station that allows users to create stations based on their favorite artists and types of music.
Posterous — This is a very easy tool to create blogs for your family, your business associates or just about any other constituents. Worth checking out.
Qik - Qik is an online video streaming service that gives users the ability to stream video live from their mobile phones to the web.
Quantcast – Quantcast provides website traffic and demographics for websites.
Reddit – Reddit is similar to Digg and Delicious. It is a social news site that is built upon a community of users who share and comment on stories.
Search Engine Optimization – The process of improving the volume or quality of traffic to a website from search engines via unpaid or organic search traffic.
SlideShare – An online social network for sharing presentations and documents. Users can favorite and embed presentations as well as share them on other social networks such as Twitter and Facebook.
Skype – Skype is a free program that allows for text, audio and video chats between users.
Social Media – Media designed to be disseminated through social interaction, created using highly-accessible and scalable publishing techniques.
Social Media Monitoring – The process of monitoring and responding to mentions related to a business that occur in social media.
StumbleUpon – A platform that’s similar to Digg, Delicious and Reddit. When you rate a website that you like using StumbleUpon, you automatically share it with like-minded people around the globe.
Tag Cloud – A tag cloud is a visual depiction of user-generated tags, or simply the word content of a site, typically used to describe the content of web sites.
Technorati – A popular blog search engine that also provides categories and authority rankings for blogs.
TweetDeck – An application that connects users with contacts across Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn and more.
Tweetup – A Tweetup is an organized or impromptu gathering of people who use Twitter.
Twitter – Twitter is a platform that allows users to share 140-character-long messages publicly. User can “follow” each other as a way of subscribing to each others’ messages. Additionally, users can use the @username command to direct a message towards another Twitter user.
Twitter Search – Twitter Search is a search engine operated by Twitter to search for Twitter messages and users in real-time.
TypePad – TypePad is a free and paid blogging platform similar to Blogger. It allows users to host and publish their own blogs.
Video Blog – A blog that produces regular video content often around the same theme on a daily or weekly basis.
Viddler – Viddler is a popular video sharing site similar to YouTube and Vimeo in which users can upload videos to be hosted online and shared and watched by others.
Vimeo – Vimeo is a popular video sharing service in which users can upload videos to be hosted online and shared and watched by others. Vimeo user videos are often more artistic and the service does not allow commercial video content.
Viral Marketing – Viral marketing refers to marketing techniques that use pre-existing social networks to produce increases in brand awareness or to achieve other marketing objectives through self-replicating viral processes.Webinar – A webinar is used to conduct live meetings, training, or presentations via the Internet.
Widget – A widget is an element of a graphical user interface that displays an information arrangement changeable by the user, such as a window or text box.
Wiki – A wiki is a website that allows the easy creation and editing of any number of interlinked web pages via a web browser, allowing for collaboration between users.
WordPress – WordPress is a content management system and contains blog publishing tools that allow users to host and publish blogs.
Yelp – A website that provides users with a platform to review, rate and discuss local businesses. Over 31 million people access Yelp’s website each month, putting it in the top 150 U.S. Internet websites.
YouTube – If you haven't heard of YouTube, welcome to Planet Earth ;-)

A. Social. Media. Revolution. Is. On. Right. Now!

2011-07-07T02:33:00.000-07:00

Don't beat me up for mentioning the most beaten cliche going around but: "There's a social media revolution going on out there." And I mean it... It. Truly. Is. On. Right. Now!

It's changing more than just media, marketing, advertising, retail. It is changing the basics of communications. Of how we interact with one another. Changing how we do business. Changing what we do everyday. Changing how we consume information. It's changing how we live.

Day by day, IT IS CHANGING WHO WE ARE. A revolution leading to evolution. But that's not necessarily a bad thing. With initiatives such as The Social Good Summit 2011, there's every hope there's a greater plan for global good... making the Web a better place to log in!

With the pace of technological change so blisteringly fast right now, there's no saying where it'll take us in the next few years. Our entire time dynamic has changed... 12 months in today's tech times are an eternity!

Speaking of Revolution, on a different note...

Here's the hugely popular Social Media Revolution video series (created by Erik Qualman, Author & Founder of Socialnomics). Mind-boggling statistics set to a catchy song - kinda like an infographic on steroids! Easy to see why the videos went famously viral (and into countless presentations).

The videos capture the growth of the revolution and the updated versions 1, 2, 3 offer a good look at the evolution of Social Media over the years.

Let's look at India's Social Media Landscape

2011-06-28T01:50:00.000-07:00

A good video by Nielsen India with mind-boggling stats on the evolving social media landscape in India, and the fast developing economy.

Time to rethink the Indian Consumer!

Here's the accompanying article from The Next Web. Interesting read.

Social Media Musical - you gonna love this!

2011-05-26T02:19:00.000-07:00

Social Media events are FUN esp. when infused with CREATIVITY and a dash of SURPRISE! Here's a cool idea via good man Faisal Jabbar.

Let's call it "Social Media Surprise." Have fun watching. Like. Tweet. Share.

While the flash-mob is coolly choreographed, the lyrics are pure gold. Enjoy!
social media, musical, viral, youtube, flashmob, gotta share, fun, event, video, funny

How to Reach Mums via Technology #SMCakl

2011-05-16T18:29:00.000-07:00

social media club, smcakl, social media, new zealand, nz, social

Multi-tasker. Super-Manager. Natural-born motivator. Decision-maker. Sound familiar? No, we're not talking about your Boss. We're talking about Dad's Boss :-) We're talking about Mommy dearest!

A mother will do anything for her children. Purely on instinct. If there's one thing that binds Mums across the world over time, it's their quest for... MOMMY EXCELLENCE.

A key difference between Mum's of today and of the past is the availability of technology. And if it allows today's Mum to provide better childcare, bring more security to baby, comfort for her kids - simply by saving time & effort in her busy life, and providing her information when she needs it - she's happy to use it! Having said that...

Here's looking at 'Mum' from a marketer's pov: How do we reach this tech-savvy, influential person? What is the best way to communicate to her?

How to reach Mums via Technology

View more presentations from SMC Auckland

Scroll down for your free download.

The above in-depth Research Study was presented by Peeyoosh Chandra, Director of Digital Planning & Strategy, Saatchi & Saatchi at Social Media Club - Auckland (SMCakl) on Tue 10 May 2011 at Telecom NZ.

The study shows how Mums in NZ are embracing technology and social networking as part of their everyday busy lives. The insights are especially powerful since Mums control the lion's share of household spending.

A well-attended event, the topic for the evening was Marketing to the Domestic Decision-Maker - Engaging Mums via Social Technology.

SMCakl featured a robust panel discussion exploring questions like: Where do Mums spend their time online? What do they buy? How do they manage their time? What platforms and activities do they engage with online... ?

Our star-studded speaker panel included:

1) Rochelle Gillespie – Editor, OHbaby!
2) Peeyoosh Chandra – Digital Planning Director, Saatchi & Saatchi NZ
3) Rachel Goodchild – Writer, Counselor, Blogger at AskRachel
4) Richard Shirtcliffe - Global Marketing Manager, Phil & Teds

Our generous Sponsors for the event: Telecom NZ, Pacific MicroMarketing, Melba Cafe and Twinings NZ Breakfast Tea. Thank you all for coming to the party and enabling another exciting SMCakl. Special Thanks to Richard for flying up from Wgtn, just for the event.

Social Media Club Auckland would like to thank Peeyoosh Chandra (aka PC) for the official release of the Research Study via SMCakl, for sharing it and making it available as a free download for all.

Click here for your Free Download of the Research Study.

Some pics from the evening:

Rochelle Gillespie

Rochelle Gillespie, Richard Shirtcliffe

Amar Trivedi, Rachel Goodchild, Peeyoosh Chandra

Chris MacDonald, Saatchi & Saatchi

Tony Bozzard, Pacific Micromarketing

Amar Trivedi aka Mr. Social

Rachel Goodchild, Peeyoosh Chandra

Amar Trivedi aka Mr. Social - MC for the evening!

Cute Bubba Luke Martin - Our Chief Guest for the night :-)

Take a look at the pics below of the tweetstream that flew fast & thick off the official hashtag #SMCAKL on the evening, and you'll agree...

it was a social night extraordinaire!

Thank You All

for coming along, participating and tweeting,

and for making it a night to remember.

Happy (belated) Mother's Day everyone!

Give your Mum a digital hug from me :-)

ps: Huge Thanks to @amysticgirl for clicking the pics!

The 7 Human Qualities of Social Media

2011-05-09T01:58:00.000-07:00

29 years ago, in his international best-selling tome on modern marketing "In Search of Excellence" Tom Peters (with Robert H. Waterman) coined the memorable phrase "Hard is soft. Soft is hard."

"Hard is soft. Soft is hard." is a business paradox which I reckon is as relevant today and applies just as much in the realm of social media. Tom explains the phrase again in his new book "The Little BIG Things".

It essentially means: In business, often what seems more important i.e. the hard stuff (the numbers, cold statistics, hard facts, ROI figures) is actually the softer (less important) stuff. More so, in the long term, when it is weighed against the seemingly less important aspects i.e. soft stuff (such as people qualities, the cultural fit, the attitude, the mindset etc.)... turns out, it is the soft stuff which is of paramount importance to the running, survival and growth of an organisation.

Leaping off that intelligent observation, I've listed the 7 top "human" qualities required to be a successful Social Media practitioner:

Humility

Kindness

Patience

Curiosity

Creativity

Openness aka Transparency
and most importantly,

Honesty... i.e. being yourself

Get the mindframe right... and you're on the right path to getting social media. Because all the rest really is hands-on experimentation, first-hand exploration, real-time learning and online application.

The greatest inventions of the world came to be via repeated "Trial and Error." It seems that's become the norm today. It's just the way social media works and that's the long and short of it. Or the hard and soft!

The human face of the Web

My post originally ended above. But I came across something related on a more IMP topic, which I had to add. Made me stop and think!

As technology deepens its involvement with humans, issues such as Web Psychology, Humanisation of Tech, People Qualities of Social Media, and Netiquette will take centrestage. But with no guidebook to refer to, what is emerging is "crowdsourced" knowledge, some of which has evolved into the Cardinal Rules of the Internet:

There is no Net police. The Web governs itself.

Don't publish anything online you wouldn't want your Mum to read

What happens in Webspace, stays in Webspace

Don't just do social media, be social

Think before you click. Once you click, you lose control.

On that last point, full respect! to the initiative Jess & James of charitable trust Sweet as Social have put into their Be Nice Online viral campaign. A spirited drive to spread awareness about and curb cyberbullying.

Give it a thought. Spread the word.
It's clearly the better side (human face) of the Web.

Many Thanks in advance... for being a good, thinking Netizen.

Social Influencers (2006 - 2011) - cool cartoons!

2011-04-13T00:21:00.000-07:00

This is brilliant !
Here's a clever slideshow I had to share.
It informs as well as it amuses. Enjoy!
(ps - Love the cartoon illustration style)

PeopleBrowsr's Brief Cartoon Study Of Social Influencers

View more presentations from PeopleBrowsr

What happens when good people get together?

2011-03-02T16:49:00.000-08:00

Great things happen when good people get together.

That's my business mantra, model, mission and motto.

Great new things happen when good people get together.

I go 'YESSS' each time I say it.

Great cool things happen when good people get together.

Go on... say it aloud.

Great big things happen when good people get together.

One more time. Louder!

Great game-changing things happen when...

And then, suddenly... eureka strikes. Genius happens!

Great things happen when good people get together!

Call it my business belief, marketing maxim, professional paradigm, personal principle, creative credo, executive ethos or in today's techy times, you could even call it my social strategy or simply, my life line.

Genius happens on the journey to greatness.

The first step is meeting good people.

On that positive note, it's time we connected.

I am a LION (LinkedIN Open Networker). Are you?

Click on the pic to connect with me. Or by clicking here.

To find out more about LinkedIN LIONs, read this.

Collaboration is the way forward.
Happy Networking and best wishes for the journey ahead.

Love Info-graphics? Get some handy eye-candy!

2011-02-03T21:21:00.000-08:00

Call me a sucker for info-graphics but there's something cool about them. Of course, I'm referring to the ones done well i.e. InfoGfx that convey all the data without sacrificing on design; ones that are aesthically and smartly presented without clipping content or scrimping message.

In a world of information overload, info-graphics achieve amazing cut-through. It's a classic union of words and design, art and copy. I'm convinced "InfoGraphy" is the next big thing - a specialised stream of the future, one where typographic design & quality content give birth to a meaningful, beautiful new entity.

Link of Interest: 5 Top FREE Tools > to create slick infographics
Here's a cool one from HolyKaw!... both, interesting and informative.

Many thanks Tim Berners-Lee... for giving us the Internet!

~ Click on the image (or here) to read the text ~

And like me, if you love InfoGrfx, click on this link to check out 40 super-cool info-graphics - quirky, inspirational, useful, funny "stories in pictures" - all loaded with info.

Here's the much-viewed TED talk by David McCandless - the one that made InfoGfx famous - a must-watch if you haven't seen it.

Meanwhile, back in bee-yoo-ti-ful NZ, there's an interesting, challenging (and brilliant) design project on the same lines. Undertaken by Gareth Parry and his wife, it's called 52 infographics in 52 weeks!

So the next time someone asks you "What is an InfoGraphic...?"

tell them it's like a QR (quick response) code for the human brain.

This is the QR code to my Twitter profile

Generated via (Disclosure of Interest): http://goqr.me/

And, if they ask you "What is a QR code...?"
Ask them to click here or read up here.

Inside the mind of a Community Manager

2011-01-27T21:24:00.000-08:00

Just what's going on inside the complex mind of that multi-skilled creature called Online Community Manager? No one knew for sure until this pictorial gem from GetSatisfaction.com came along!

Double-click on info-graphic to enlarge and read.

Online Community or Social Media management is a full on role and calls for more than one skillset - often all at once. The above rings true and connects with a great piece I read in the Harvard Business Review titled "Why you need a New-Media Ringmaster" by Patrick Spenner.

The above info-graphic also resonates with a piece I wrote for AdMedia Jan 2011 titled... Holistic is the new black!

Best Buy's CEO learns to love social media

2011-01-26T00:05:00.000-08:00

Here's another good one from the Harvard Business Review.

Brian J Dunn at a press conference in New York

It features Brian J Dunn, CEO of Best Buy (@BBYCEO) sharing his 'How I Did It' experience with social media in general incl. the practical (and successful) use of Twitter. Of how they transformed their customer support team (Geek Squad in blue shirts) into @TwelpForce - a 24/7 hotline of technical experts via Twitter, which increased sales and brand value!

What I found interesting is... here's the CEO of Best Buy, one of USA's largest consumer electronics giants, and the title modestly goes "Brian J Dunn... Learning to love social media". (learning to love?)

The article could easily have been titled "Best Buy shows the way forward!" Their landmark Twitter effort (best use of social media in retail customer service) won the Cannes Lions 2010's Titanium & Integrated Grand Prix - the pinnacle of advertising & marketing creativity in the world. It's like winning Best Picture at the Oscars! Watch the Cannes Lions TwelpForce video here.

Here's the link to the article on HBR.org (but that's only a sample.) Read the full article below:

How I Did It: Best Buy’s CEO on Learning to Love Social Media
by Brian J. Dunn, CEO Best Buy

I was on an overseas business trip early this year when my phone began ringing at 4 AM. The first person to reach me was Best Buy’s VP of operations, but she wasn’t the last—I received a quick series of panicked calls. The “crisis” we needed to manage involved my Twitter account. Ordinarily, I tweet on a variety of subjects—my experiences in Best Buy stores, my kids, even my thoughts on the Minnesota Twins. But this morning my coworkers back in the U.S.—and my 5,000 or so Twitter followers—had read a rather unusual tweet from me: “I’VE BEEN HAVING A LOT OF GREAT SEX LATELY, AND HERE’S WHY.” It was followed by a link to a website, presumably one offering male enhancement pills. Obviously, I’d been hacked.

It was embarrassing and irritating. I felt violated. Like many people, I’d been using a password that was easy to remember because it was based on something in my life. We never figured out who got into my account, but it shouldn’t happen again: Having received help from my IT team, I now use well-constructed, tortured passwords, and I change them every three weeks. Nobody likes being this security-minded, but it allows me to stay out there online.

Getting hacked wasn’t the only negative experience I’ve had with social media, but I’ve never considered pulling back from using them. That’s the key point: You can’t just dabble in social media. You can’t use them only when things are good. You have to deal with rain as well as sunshine. And I’m convinced that the upside outweighs the downside. I’m a heavy user of Twitter and Facebook, and I learn a lot from the time I spend on those platforms. I interact directly with customers and employees. I watch trends and see news I’d miss otherwise. Ultimately, I believe that Best Buy’s message has to be where people are. Today, that means being on social networks.

Many CEOs disagree. You’d be amazed at the number of people I talk to—people who run big businesses around the world—who think social networking is just a fad, or that what you see on Twitter and Facebook is simply clutter. It’s not. If a company, or even its chief executive, doesn’t have a presence on social networks today, that company risks not being in the conversation at all. Over time, I believe, that can be fatal to a business.

Late-Night Tutorials

Social networking is merely the latest technology trend that I’ve seen take hold during my time at Best Buy. I started working at the company in 1985, when it had only nine stores. Back then, the business was all about console televisions, VCRs, and CD players. Camcorders were just beginning to come on the scene. The business had nothing to do with computers—Best Buy didn’t start selling PCs until the early 1990s. By the middle of that decade, however, we could see that the internet was gaining traction, and we began to think about e-commerce.

At the time, I’d recently been promoted to regional manager. I’d relocated to Columbus, Ohio, and I was running our stores in the Rust Belt—Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania. That was the era in which I became utterly fascinated with the internet. We now had access to all these data—even if they weren’t yet packaged in a readily usable form. I spent a lot of time cruising Prodigy. Best Buy sold a service called Onramp that provided access to the internet, and I used that, too. I’m an autodidactic internet guy—I taught myself a lot about it, surfing at night. The next thing I’d know, it would be two or three o’clock in the morning. Time would fly by, because I had all this new stuff at my fingertips.

Some pundits were saying that the internet would kill off brick-and-mortar retailers like Best Buy, but our thinking early on was that e-commerce would complement stores and shopping would become a multichannel process, because the products we sell really need to be experienced. That turned out to be correct: Today our website influences more than 50% of our in-store sales, and about 30% of customers who order online opt to pick up their purchases in a store.

* Best Buy Vital Statistics *

Founded: 1996

Retail Locations: 4027

Current Employees: 180,000

HQ: Richfield, Minnesota

Fiscal 2010 Revenue: $49.7 Billion (as on 27 Feb 2010)

Fiscal 2010 Net Earnings: $1.3 Billion

It’s striking how central the internet has become in our lives since those days. People want the information; they want the services; they want the entertainment and the connection. Even during the worst part of the recession, customers were buying digital devices at Best Buy—that business continued to grow at a double-digit rate. Since 1995 the internet has become a utility, much like electricity. People no longer view it as a discretionary expense, even in tough times: It’s essential.

I became interested in social networking four or five years ago. Back then it was a personal interest, not a strategy. I joined Facebook and found it interesting on a number of levels. One of the things that grabbed my attention when I joined was how quickly many of our employees “friended” me. Facebook turns out to be a very relevant way of connecting with our employees, given the company’s demographics. Today I’m maxed out at 5,000 Facebook friends, most of whom I’ve never met. And I’m still astonished at the things that people reveal about themselves. A couple of days ago, one of these friends posted a status update that he couldn’t believe how much he’d had to drink the previous night and he hoped not to do it again—at least not until the coming weekend. This is what you want to say about yourself in public? Still, it’s fascinating.

Twitter took longer to get used to. In the beginning I was terribly self-conscious about tweeting. I’d read so many banal tweets about everyday activities—“I’m having a taco”—that no one cares about. I had to get comfortable with the idea that Twitter is a way to let people know what’s on my mind and that tweets could be genuine extensions of my thinking. When I tweet, I know I’m communicating with my employees. I pass along the good things that I see in a store or hear about a customer’s experience, and people are thrilled to know that I’m hearing good things about them. I like the immediacy of talking to folks. I like that it’s sometimes mundane—not everything I do is necessarily deep or earth-shattering. I’m interested in baseball and basketball and my kids. I like how posting about these things allows us all to be humanized a little bit.

Sometimes people ask me if I have an intern or a staff member handling my Twitter account. I don’t. I do get help in writing posts for my Best Buy blog, but on Facebook and Twitter, it’s all me.

Moments of Serendipity

These sites have changed the way I consume media. On Sunday mornings at home, my wife reads the newspaper, but I open up my iGoogle page, which has RSS feeds of everything I’m interested in. My news is totally customized. I check Twitter trends every day to see what people are talking about. And I routinely click on links posted by people I follow. Twitter takes me to new places and to publications I’d normally miss or not read because there are only so many hours in the day. Newspapers are still good partners for Best Buy, but I don’t have to read them anymore.

These platforms also let people get in touch with me directly, which can provide moments of serendipity. Here’s one example: On Memorial Day, I tweeted a simple thank-you to U.S. service members for all they do, and particularly thanked Best Buy employees who are making sacrifices to serve in the military reserves. A few minutes later I received a note from Jen Whitacre, a product specialist in one of our stores in Missouri. Over the next hour we e-mailed back and forth through Twitter. She told me that her fellow employees in the store had put together a technology system—using a laptop, a webcam, and Skype—that lets her and her three young children talk with their father, a soldier in Iraq, every night. It’s a vivid example of how the connectivity that Best Buy employees help facilitate really can improve people’s lives. I ended up sending our film crew down to Missouri to capture Jen’s magnificent story, to illustrate to our employees the importance of their work. Without Twitter, I never would have connected with Jen.

I don't care... I need an iPhone 4! (contains rude language but is hilarious!)

A very different sort of connection occurred last summer, when one of my Twitter followers sent me a link to a YouTube video that featured animated characters talking in funny voices. One character was a salesperson at “Phone Mart,” and the other was a customer who absolutely had to have an iPhone. The video made the customer look stupid. I thought it was very amusing satire. It was edgy, and I can see why the language might have offended people, but it tapped into the fact that we’re all very aware of what badge we’re displaying when we carry our smartphones. The brands really matter to people. By the time I saw it, the video had been viewed 1.5 million times. Today it’s been viewed more than 9 million times!

Blogosphere Drama

That Twitter link to YouTube indirectly alerted me to a problem. The video didn’t mention Best Buy, but it was created by a Best Buy associate. I soon learned that he had posted several other videos in which Best Buy was specifically mentioned—in ways that weren’t flattering to our customers. Those videos were taken down, but the issue quickly became a big blogosphere drama about whether Best Buy was going to terminate the employee who created them. We did suspend him for several days while we looked into the details. Ultimately, we invited him back to work, but in the meantime he’d decided to pursue a career in filmmaking.

The whole experience was awkward. A lot of people said negative things about a company I love, and I wish it hadn’t played out on such a public stage. My reaction to the incident was similar to how I felt when I got hacked: You don’t enjoy it, but you have to be out there online, and there’s no way to put this genie back in the bottle. What you can do is try to educate employees about what’s appropriate to post and what’s not, what’s intellectual property and what’s not.

Last year we put out a social media policy that applies to all employees. It requires them to disclose that they’re Best Buy employees if they’re discussing the company online. It requires them to keep nonpublic financial or operational data private. “Basically,” it says, “if you find yourself wondering if you can talk about something you learned at work—don’t.”

Really, a lot of the guidelines are just common sense. For instance, manufacturers like Hewlett-Packard and Samsung regularly show our employees prototype devices that aren’t public yet, and it’s wrong to post pictures of them—it violates the arrangements we make with our suppliers. When I post things, I always remember that I have a responsibility to 180,000 folks who work in our stores. I don’t say or do anything that I wouldn’t want to see published in a newspaper.

A Virtuous Circle

Mostly, though, I tend to focus on the positive aspects of social networking. I get asked all the time, “How are you going to monetize this?” I think that’s the wrong question. The right question is “How am I going to deepen my relationship with customers and employees and deepen the conversation that goes on where they are?” Right now social networks are an important part of the answer. Today when people buy a new device, they often “crowdsource” advice by asking for recommendations on Twitter or Facebook. That practice will become more and more influential over time.

As an electronics retailer, we know that there’s a virtuous circle here: The more people become involved in social media, the greater the demand for connectivity and the PCs and mobile devices that deliver it. So social media are absolutely core to our strategy. I believe that our company is best positioned to give consumers these latest and greatest technologies, and our Geek Squad and our men and women in blue shirts are there to put solutions together for people.

In fact, we’re even using social media to help provide those solutions. On Twitter we have a feed called Twelpforce. Customers can post about their tech problems, and Best Buy associates—or other Twitter users—can post solutions. By monitoring the feed, we’re able to learn a lot about what our customers are doing and to help them with problems in real time. We’re providing advice to the public at no charge, and some people think that’s a mistake, since we also operate Geek Squad for a fee. But I reject that notion: Twelpforce makes us more valuable and connected to our customers, and that’s the only sustainable way of building customer loyalty over time. People are going to shop with companies they think really care about what it is they’re trying to do. Twitter lets us demonstrate that we’re one of those companies.

“Be Smart. Be Respectful. Be Human.” (edited excerpts from Best Buy's social media policy)

Guidelines for functioning in an electronic world are the same as the values, ethics and confidentiality policies employees are expected to live every day, whether you're Twittering, talking with customers, or chatting over the neighbor's fence. Remember, your responsibility to Best Buy doesn't end when you are off the clock.

Disclose your affiliation: If you talk about work-related matters that are within your area of job responsibility, you must disclose your affiliation with Best Buy.

Honor our differences: Live the values. Best Buy will not tolerate discrimination.

Never disclose nonpublic, financial or operational information, internal communication regarding promotional activities or inventory, or personal information about customers.

Basically, if you find yourself wondering if you can talk about something you learned at work - don't. Just in case you are forgetful, here's what could happen. You could get fired, get Best Buy in legal trouble with customers or investors, or cost us customers.

Remember: Protect the brand, protect yourself.

So as the holiday season approaches, I’ll be tweeting frequently. I’ll be talking about how pleased I am with the job our folks are doing. I’ll be talking about the hot products I’m most excited about. I’ll be sharing my impressions as I visit stores. And I’ll probably wax poetic about family and friends and other things I care about. The reality is that social media are where the national conversation is taking place today—and either you’re part of that conversation or you’re not.

To read the latest thoughts from Brian Dunn on Twitter, go to www.twitter.com/bbyceo.

--- Brian J Dunn has been Best Buy's CEO since June 2009 ---

Are you a Data Freak or Info-graphic Geek?

2011-01-25T21:50:00.000-08:00

If data visualization is your thing and if smart, easy-to-grasp, creative representation of data gets your juices flowing... this one's for you!

Here's the link to 10 free data visualization tools by Ben Cotton on his blog, Social Web Thing.

With info-graphics clearly poised to be one among the many "next big things", I found Ben's post interesting... The 10 free data tools are certainly worth sharing here:

1. Gary Hayes’ Social Media counter (here's the Jan 2011 update)

This is a fantastic real time counter which documents the exponential growth of social media. It is regularly updated by Gary Hayes and is great for initiating conversation about why brands should use social media.

2. Google Insights

Google Insights remains a mainstay tool that allows you to discover the volume of Google search terms around an issue, then plots the data into a graph and provides links to relevant news stories which may explain search spikes. The tool allows you to enter up to five keywords, locations or time ranges and provides a visual representation of regional interest on a country’s map. It also displays top searches and rising searches that may help with keyword research.

3. Global Web Index

In similar vein to Forrester’s Social Technographic Tool, the Global Web Index brought to us by Trend Stream is one of the new generation data visualization tools that allows user to have personalised data put into a graphic and embedded elsewhere. This tool enables users to look at the social media profiles of various online users by country, gender, age and attitude – allowing you to discover their motivations online. Essentially, it’s an interactive infographic and well worth checking out.

4. Forrester’s Consumer Profile Tool

Forrester’s Social Technographic classifies consumers into six overlapping levels of social media participation. Based on Forrester survey data you can see how participation varies among different groups of consumers. The great thing about this tool is that it allows you to enter the basic details of your target audience — age, gender, country — and within seconds it enables you to find out whether those people tend to be social media creators, critics, collectors, joiners, spectators, or inactives.

5. Google Public Data Explorer

The Google Public Data Explorer makes large datasets easy to explore, visualise and communicate. As the charts and maps animate over time, the changes in the world become easier to understand. Google Public Data Explorer is still very much in beta testing and in the future I expect to see more data sets included. Nonetheless, it remains a good tool with vast potential.

6. Wordle (I used this in my previous post - it's a cool tool!)

Wordle is a pet project of Jonathan Feinberg, a computer whizz at IBM. This tool is a tag cloud generator, which is basically a visual representation of the frequency of words appearing in a passage of text, URL, RSS or Delicious feed. It perhaps sounds more complicated than it actually is. Either way, it is well worth playing around with Wordle – it is ideal for showing a lot not of non-numerical data to a client in an easily digestible format.

7. Social Collider

I’ve had mixed experiences with Social Collider. When it works, it is simply brilliant, but there have been some computer-crashingly bad moments. Nonetheless, when it’s functioning the software reveals cross-connections between conversations on Twitter – which is ideal for monitoring potential viral activity, issues and launches. The beauty of Social Collider is that you are able to identify connections between networks of people – a valuable component of the social media planning stage.

8. Open Heat Map

This is a fantastic open-source tool by former Apple employee, Pete Warden. Open Heat Map combines the inputs of numerical data, location and changes over time into a brilliant graphical visualization. The Guardian frequently use this tool and maps are a wonderfully simple way to tell a complex and evolving story. In addition, Open Heat Map enables you to drill down into quite granular detail by looking at countries, states, counties, post codes and IP addresses. Check out Pete’s ‘How to’ vid for more information.

9. Micrsoft Pivot Viewer

Microsoft Pivot Viewer has the potential to be an amazing tool. It displays massive amounts of visual data into ‘Collections’ that users can easily interact with. The rationale is that by visualizing thousands of related items at once, people will be able to identify trends, patterns and relationships that would otherwise be hidden. Pivot Viewer is still very much in development, but it could make a huge impact on how data is visually represented in the future.

Update: Sadly Microsoft Pivot Viewer has been retired from service. Nonetheless, I’m sure Microsoft will be able to use this astounding technology in future projects.

10. Twitscoop

Twitscoop is best employed as a real-time trend tracker to monitor what themes are emerging on Twitter. Its algorithm identifies tags and keywords and then ranks the words by how frequently they appear in comparison to regular usage. Not only is Twitscoop great for monitoring, but it provides useful data, such as graphs depicting Tweet volume over time.

Holistic is the new black

2010-12-18T03:53:00.000-08:00

social media, social media club, social media junction. social media club auckland

Word cloud created using Wordle.net Click image to enlarge.

AdMedia Dec 2010/ Jan 2011 cover feat. ASB's Xmas tree

social media new zealand, nz, smj, smj2, smcakl, admedia, creative, digital

I recently covered Social Media Junction 2 for AdMedia. Here's my report in the Dec 2010/ Jan 2011 issue.

Holistic is the new black - Amar Trivedi

To read, click fullscreen & zoom in. To download the PDF, click here.

To view the detailed #SMJ2 post with all the links + pics, scroll below.

~ Merry Christmas & Happy New Year ~
Best Wishes for a joyful, peaceful & super-successful 2011.
Enjoy your break with friends & family.
Go along now... get social with it!
~ In my best social Santa voice: HO-HO-HOlistic is the new black ~

Social Media Junction 2 - Hey Social, meet Digital

2010-11-18T00:57:00.000-08:00

SMJ's back - Bigger, Better, Stronger & Longer than before!

Social Media Junction 2 - a meeting of the best social media and digital marketing minds in NZ - was a packed-out event. Featuring 6 top international speakers and Kiwi marketing stars (in the audience as well), SM Junction is among the largest events of its kind in Asia Pacific!

Among several things of significance, Social Media Junction 2 (#SMJ2) confirmed one thing: The blurry lines between Social Media Marketing, Digital Marketing and Marketing Communications have officially dissolved.

While at the solutions provider/ agency level, they remain separate bastions (requiring disparate skills and expertise), at the corporate/ client level, strategies need to be interwoven and resources integrated for best results. Key Learning: Don't just work hard. Work holistic!

Held over three days, #SMJ2 included a:

Public Sector Social Media Workshop (Prgm Details)
'Securing RoI in SM Marketing' Conference, (Prgm Details)
Social Media Content Strategy MasterClass (Prgm Details)

I was commissioned by David Gapes, Editor, to cover the event for AdMedia & Fastline. Met lots of interesting, talented people. Learnt a whole lot. Here are my daily reports with pics from the event:

Alex Erasmus, Monique Hewitt

Alex Erasmus, Nicholas O'Flaherty

Alex Erasmus, Louise Rice, Nicholas O'Flaherty, Laura Hughes

Amar Trivedi, Simon Wakeman

Clare Dill, zestcomms.co.nz

She just won a bottle of fine French bubbly!

Jennifer Duval-Smith smiles as Alex types away

Nicholas wrapping up Day 1

Robyn Ellson (Bullet PR), Rory Tyler (Digital Masters), Owen Todd (SpyGlass)

Simon Wakeman, Public Sector SM Workshop

Tony Gardner, GM, Ogilvy Wellington

Mon 15 Nov - Day 1 at #SMJ2 got off to a cracking start with the Public Sector Social Media Workshop with Simon Wakeman, Head of Marketing & Communications, Medway Council, Greater London, UK. Simon is an authority in social media & online communications within the public sector.

While the workshop was structured in an easy-to-follow format pitched at beginners as well as the advanced, the SM content was geared specifically for an audience comprising members from NZ’s largest public sector organisations.

During his presentation, Simon gave heaps of real-world examples of UK’s Councils with a clear explanation of what works, what doesn’t and why. He spoke in detail about the importance of social media strategy, putting policy in place, online engagement, response, monitoring & auditing.

The module on risk assessment & crisis management was aided with videos and an interactive “How would you avert a PR crisis?” role-play of a recent SM nightmare that hit TfL’s London Underground.

The session ended on Simon debunking some common SM myths and driving home basic SM truths.

Aden Bushell (Media Monitors), Nicholas O'Flaherty (Bullet PR),
Simone McCallum (ASB Bank)

Alex Erasmus, Me

Alex Erasmus, Justin Flitter

Me, Cliff Rosenberg

Cassandra Crowley, Darren Whitelaw

Catherine George, Robyn Ellson

Vincent Heeringa chairs Int'l Speakers Panel Discussion

A well-attended Conference - over 200 executives

International Speakers Panel Discussion

Justin Flitter, Tom Bates, Nicholas O'Flaherty

Kiwi Speakers Panel Discussion

Michael Carney chairs Kiwi Speakers Panel Discussion

Lee Odden, Me

Louise Denver

Michael Fox and attendees

Michael Fox (Shoes of Prey), Ron Murray (Siemens NZ)

Natalie Robinson (Telecom NZ), Claire Bonham Holden (Rapp Tribal),
Richard Irvine (Telecom NZ), Louis van Wyk (Gen-i)

Olivia Bruce (NZ Retailers Assctn), Greer McDonald (SM Editor, Fairfax)

Richard Long, Matthew Haigh, attendees, Louise Denver (Deloitte)

Robyn Ellson (Bullet PR), Alistair Helm (RealEstate.co.nz),
Antonia Baker (The Property Market)

Sandra King (Fairfax Media), Vaughn Davis (The Goat Farm)

Simon Wakeman

Tee Twyford (nzgirl), Jennifer Duval-Smith (Bullet PR)

SMJ2 Crew - Annelies Kuiper, Louise Rice, Laura Douglas, Laura Hughes

Team Bullet PR - Robyn Ellson, Jennifer Duval-Smith,
Louise Rice, Alex Erasmus, Nicholas O'Flaherty

Vaughn Davis (iPad-enabled Head Goat, The Goat Farm)

Cocktails @ Beer o'clock sharp!

John Lai, Ajay Murthy, Dave Sakey, Rory Tyler, Alex Erasmus

Open Audience Q&A during Int'l Speakers Panel Discussion

Tue 16 Nov - Day 2 was full-on. Over 200 executives turned up at Sky City Convention Centre to attend the star-studded 'Securing RoI in SM Marketing' Conference featuring:

Lee Odden, CEO, TopRank Online Marketing, USA

Louise Denver, Director of Media & Communications, Deloitte Australia

Simon Wakeman, Head of Marketing & Communications, Medway Council, Greater London, UK

Michael Fox, Director of Operations and Founder, Shoes of Prey, and Blogger (22 Michaels)

Darren Whitelaw, General Manager - Corporate Communication, Dept. of Justice, Govt. of Victoria),

Cliff Rosenberg (Managing Director, LinkedIN Australia & NZ)

Click here to read Speaker Bios and here to read Alex Erasmus' informative piece on what each speaker had to say on the day. And here's a neat summary of the event by Michael Fox on his blog.

From the outset, what stood out was the panel of speakers - each one at the top of their game - came from diverse corporate backgrounds. They brought with them a fresh mix of stories on the successful use of SM overseas, and shared their unique perspective on RoI metrics & measurement.

Apart from popular case studies, the speakers spoke on how they built their brand from the ground up; what internal SM policies worked best; SM models perfected via experimentation, content strategies for business blogging. They also shared what specific benefit their organisation derived, and how they were getting better at SM usage - on an on-going basis.

To add local flavour, #SMJ2 hosted a panel discussion with speakers from some of the best known Kiwi brands - active digital players all with a visible social media profile. As expected, it led to a lively chat on the use of social media in NZ, the challenges of SM resource creation and of course, how they went about achieving RoI. The panel included:

Richard Irvine, Head of Online Communities, Telecom NZ
Stuart McMullin, Managing Director, Hell Pizza
Simone McCallum, Head of Internet Communities Support & Operations, ASB Bank
Alex Erasmus, Digital Strategist, Bullet PR
Jarrod Bear, Head of Marketing, Tui Beer
Panel Discussion hosted by Michael Carney, CEO, NetMarketing Services

In the closing session of the day, the international panel (hosted by Vincent Heeringa, Director, Tangible Media) discussed best practice in SM listening, engagement & response via an open audience Q&A. Followed by cocktails at beer o’clock sharp!

Jennifer Duval-Smith, Lee Odden, Nicholas O'Flaherty

Lee Odden, Grant Osborne (FirstRate.co.nz)

Lee Odden, SM Content Strategy MasterClass

Nicholas O'Flaherty wrapping up Day 3

Nicholas O'Flaherty thanking Lee Odden

Paul Sutherland (Panasonic NZ), Alex Erasmus (Bullet PR),
James Smith (Panasonic NZ), Tracey Reed (Tower Insurance)

Tee Twyford (nzgirl), Belinda Nash (AUT)

Lee Odden, SM Content Strategy MasterClass

Jennifer Duval-Smith, Lee Odden, Nicholas O'Flaherty, Amar Trivedi

Wed 17 Nov - Day 3 at #SMJ2 was a deep dive into the vastness of Social Media. It featured a day-long Social Media Content Strategy MasterClass with Lee Odden, CEO, TopRank Online Marketing, USA. Lee advises Fortune 500 companies on social media content strategies. He is the Founder of TopRank Blog, Number Eight on Ad Age’s Power 150 Blogs. Here's a blog posted by Lee outlining his talk at #SMJ2.

Lee kicked off the session with a 6-point roadmap for social content marketing citing illustrations from the US, Kiwi and international markets. Then he turned the intensity up a notch with the Cycle of SM and SEO - Create > Optimize > Promote > Analyse – where he elucidated the benefits of using keywords in social content.

Lee’s presentation was liberally sprinkled with brilliant advice (Don’t just do social, be social; Good SEO is invisible; Connect with other bloggers, comment often on posts but add value - remember that blogs are social) and one-line gems (If a picture is worth a 1000 words, a YouTube video must be worth millions; People live to make money they die for recognition; For some reason, in the US, people are insanely comfortable with complaining :-)

Post-lunch, Lee took the packed-to-capacity audience into the deep end of business blogging - talking at length about search-optimizing blogs, tips & tricks on content-sharing, best practice for blog marketing, and how to use blogs as hubs while integrating with other SM channels.

And he covered all of that before delving into Digital Asset Optimization, Essentials of Social SEO, SM Measurement & RoI. All in all, an intensive MasterClass where all present left wiser than they came.

Word of praise for SKYCITY: The catering service was top quality and the F&B were superb - over all 3 days. Once again, the Auckland Convention Centre proved the perfect venue. The #SMJ2 TweetWall seen above was such a hit, it capped the Wi-Fi limit thrice. Pat on the back for Rory Tyler (Digital Masters) for the camera & editing, and Owen Todd (SpyGlass) for glitch-less work on the audio-visual console!

Hats off to Bullet PR and kudos to the dynamic team for another professionally organised business event, another well-deserved medal in their tally of successful events, another feather in their substantial fascinator!

For more info, visit the Social Media Junction website. Check out SMJ's Flickr photostream for some cool pics by Johanna MacDonald.

I was lucky enough to attend and cover the first #SMJ for AdMedia & Fastline, held in May 2010. Here's my report "Social Media Junction - Getting world-class in New Zealand" and the pics.

Before I sign off, here's a gem I picked up at Lee's MasterClass: Comment (on blogs, FB, websites) more often... Add value. Well... you could begin by adding some below.

SMCakl9: one helluva chilled-out summer social

2010-10-21T15:32:00.000-07:00

Social Media Club Auckland NZ #SMCakl Social Media New Zealand SMC akl

Just as spring peeped around the corner, Auckland was hit by a chilly weather-bomb! But that didn't stop us hardy folks from having a summer (yep... summer) party!

The topic for SMCakl9 was Social Media for Professional Networking - Finding Employers, Collaborators and Clients. Our speakers for the night:

Jane Kennelly, Alex Erasmus, Linda Coles

Linda Coles

Blue Banana @bluebanana20
Trainer and speaker on building and maintaining relationships online

Networking Online using Linkedin

Linda shared a beautiful thought "It's not the small that get eaten, it's the slow that get beaten" which holds true in social media as well as other areas of life. To drive home the point, she played this humorous ad during her talk. (Slide 8 of her presentation).

Blue Banana's 5 tips for your brands online success!

Jane Kennelly
Frog Recruitment @frogrecruitment
Company Director of Frog Recruitment, industry veteran and innovator

Social Media & Recruitment

Jane's presentation included a YouTube video which gave a fine example of how even a public trust (MOTAT - Museum of Transport & Technology) can leverage social media to benefit.

Jane also showed a popular video based on Erik Qualman's Socialnomics.

Alex Erasmus
Bullet PR @alexerasmus
Digital Strategist, co-founder, Media Mingle & Social Media Club Auckland

Social Media for Professional Networking

View / Download/ Share more presentations from SMC Auckland.

All three speakers blogged their views of the event separately. Read

Linda's post here

Jane's post here

Alex's post here

From virtual hello... to digital handshake.

My take on using SM for professional networking:

Be it professional (employers, clients, talent) or personal (friends, family, partners), forming connections is the very essence of social media.

Social media forums are often referred to as virtual water-coolers or online pubs - places to make connections and start conversations (casual or formal) with people for the first time; meeting with industry peers (senior/ junior) in an informal one-on-one setting.

But to make sense of it all, you need to take the conversation offline - be it to put a face to a twitter handle or avatar you've been chatting with; to prospect a business deal; have coffee with a potential recruit or just to mingle and make new friends the good ol' way.

Social Media Club Auckland in itself, is a prime example of how social media networking works - both at intra- and inter-community levels. Arising from 25 people in a room on February 9, 2010, it has now grown to a 1000+ strong community, with attendees & organisers as also supporters & sponsors from all walks of life. While we've been fortunate to have renown industry speakers among us, it is in the meeting & mingling / tweeting & retweeting / tagging & hash-tagging... where social media club actually happens!

@Neatyka & Louisa Redshaw, Urban Fox - host of SMCakl 10

Gareth Poley, Sherene Marais & Sally Turier

David MacGregor, Clodagh (Sydney), Jayson Bryant

A word of praise for Alex Erasmus: Along with managing his day job as Digital Strategist at Bullet PR, in just 9 months, Alex has co-founded (and actively manages) two of Auckland's most popular monthly events - SMCakl & Media Mingle (held on the 2nd & 4th Tues of every month respectively). Add to that, he currently organises Twitter chats every Thursday which livestreams on the #markchat hashtag. And...

As if that's not enough action already, nowadays, he's busy organising the second Social Media Junction (#SMJ) - Securing ROI in Social Media Marketing to be held at the SkyCity Convention Centre on Nov 16-17. SMJ is arguably NZ's biggest social media/ digital marketing event with a stellar line-up of international speakers!

A special mention for Julian Waters of communico website design & development. While he did a splendid job as MC & event organiser, few know that Julian is the man behind the audio equipment & set-up @SaatchiNZ. Check out the cool web construct he created for SMCakl.

All in all, it was a fun, chilled-out evening. Here's a round of thunderous thanks to all our amazing Sponsors & Supporters. Drum roll please...

* Catherine George - Urgent Couriers
* Neil Forster, Richard Irvine, Carmen Nesfield - Telecom NZ
* Peter Mangin, Chris Macdonald, Peeyoosh Chandra - Saatchi & Saatchi
* Russell Browne, Alex - Monteith's
* Johann du Plessis - YelloDuck
and
* Hell's Pizza - who saved the day (Hell yeah... they did!) by making an appearance. Hat-tip to Simon who got so excited when the pizza arrived, he quickly clicked a pic!

Once again, the talks were followed by an intense Q&A + We also had the Great TweetWall of #SMCakl where Tania Howard of TalentSeed won Best Tweet of the Day (Monteith's Summer Ale was the first beer she ever had - she had the whole 330ml:). Not only did #smcakl become a TT on Twitter, but even our food sponsor for the night - @HellPizza666 achieved twitter star status on the trendsmap! (as tweeted by @SimoneMcCallum).

Mark Spencer - Winner of Monteith's Summer Ale Best Summer-Dressed

For the first time, thanks to our beverage sponsor Monteith's, SMCakl had a Summer Sizzle fuelled by their Summer Ale. The best summer dressed person - Mark Spencer, who arrived on his surfboard - won a cool summer Tee + a case of Summer Ale - with best compliments from Monteith's.

(PS: As a fellow summer-sizzler, I doff my beach hat in deference to all those who braved the chill & dressed in summer wear - @VaughnDavis, @JakeDavy, @SpDalton & all esp. the funky bunch of summer girls;-)

To sign-off, here's a rib-tickling spoof of the Facebook-based 'The Social Network' movie. Julian played it on the evening. Everyone went Like...

View more photos of the Oct event on Scene at SMCakl (Pic Courtesy: Johann du Plessis).

The next SMCakl will be on Nov 9, 2010. For details & updates, join the gang on www.facebook.com/smcakl. See you there!

Social Media Club Auckland NZ #SMCakl Social Media New Zealand SMC akl

SMCakl8: The Great Debate - a great one indeed!

2010-10-04T20:35:00.000-07:00

Social Media Club Auckland NZ #SMCakl Social Media New Zealand SMC akl

The Great Social Media Debate @ SMCakl 8

SMCakl 8 was The Great Debate - a showdown between social media evangelists and skeptics. And a great debate it was... and as some said, the best SMCakl ever!

As always, the hashtag for the event was #SMCakl and it quickly became trending topic on Twitter as posted (by @DesignPimp) in this trendsmap.

Held on Sep 14 at Saatchi NZ, the moot for The Great Debate was "Social Media is bad for me, for business, and the world." The stage was divided into two sides - those for and against social media.

In the right corner were those arguing for the moot = skeptics = the dark forces against social media:)

Professor Joseph Peart, communications lecturer, AUT University

Thomas Scovell, digital strategist at Doubleclique

Luke Pierson, Creative Director, Doubleclique

V/S

In the left corner were those arguing against the moot = evangelists = the sweet angels of social media:)

Belinda Nash - does comms for AUT University, and is Twitter famous in her own right!

Rebecca Smith - former head of communications at Telecom Business

Tara Sutherland - twitterer @TelecomNZ, plus scuba diving social media evangelist.

With MC Simon Young smack bang in the centre (er... left of centre actually!) doing a fine job of conducting the debate and keeping impassioned debaters in check!

It was a very involved, most entertaining and thought-provoking battle of wits. Some great points raised by all the speakers and some really pointed and sharp questions during the Q&A from a very engaged and enlightened audience. Both sides fought well but in the end, the evangelists won (by a whisker) proving "Social Media is NOT such a bad thing after all."

Here's my take on the moot point:

Do you blame the road for every thing that happens on it?
Do you blame your TV set for the content you watch on it?
Do you blame the cinema hall for the kind of movies shown?
Do you blame the airplane for every hard or soft landing?
Do you blame the train for every late and on-time arrival?
Do you blame the plate for the taste of the food you eat on it?
Do you blame the glass for the quality of the wine you drink in it?

Social Media is only a channel, a vehicle, an instrument, a tool, a means to an end. It is just a medium of communication. What you do with it depends on YOU. (There's a good reason why it's called YouTube!)

Social media is in fact a reflection of society. It holds a mirror to our psyche. There is so much to learn out there. Going one-up on Google (which gives us factual data), social media adds personal opinions, voices, views, expressions - there's a very good reason Google included Twitter & Facebook in its search algo. Sure it's good for me, business & the world!

Here's Tara Sutherland's blog and speaker notes; and Simon Young's neat summary of the event.

On a related note, here's some more good stuff:

Social Media is the Future of business - Incidentally, the Auckland Chamber of Commerce held a social media debate too which I attended. Here's an excellent summary of the event on The Unconditional Blog.

Being anti-Social is short-sighted - an interesting and engaging piece on CAANZ's Digital Leadership Group Blog.

Confessions via a blog post - Thomas Scovell aka "Another Anon" comes out in the open!

Some awesome shots from the night:

As they say at Nando's... the early worm gets the bird!

The Great Debate was a success. Here's a big Thanks going out from Social Media Club Auckland to all those who made it happen. In particular, our gracious Sponsors & Supporters:

Catherine George - Urgent Couriers
Neil Forster & Carmen Nesfield - Telecom NZ
Mel & Avi - Mel's Gourmet Indian
Courtney Bennett - Heritage Hotels
Brooke Bayliss, Aisha Daji-Punga - Frucor
Shailen, Erwin, Sherwin, Ivashan - Nando's NZ
Chris Macdonald, Peter Mangin, Matthew Marsh - Saatchi & Saatchi
Monteith's Beer & Cider
Johann du Plessis - YelloDuck
Julian Waters - communico
Tom Reidy - Tweet4yourTee

To end on a bit of social media humour...

Q- What would you get if Facebook, Twitter & YouTube merged into one?

A- You-Twit-Face

Now...

Q- What'd happen if LinkedIN, FourSquare & MySpace joined the race?

A - Answer... and heaps more hoo-haa on > 100% pure Social Madness

The next Social Media Club Auckland event is on Tue 12 October 2010. For event updates & details, add yourself on www.facebook.com/smcakl Looking forward to seeing you all there!

You can view more photos on Johann's Flickr stream > Click here!

Social Media Club Auckland NZ #SMCakl Social Media New Zealand SMC akl

What does Social Media mean NOW?

2010-09-05T18:55:00.000-07:00

An informative Slideshow on what SM means in today's context.

WTF is Social Media NOW?

SMCakl 7 - Analytics Tools & Tactics - #EpicWin

2010-08-30T15:10:00.000-07:00

Social Media Club Auckland NZ #SMCakl Social Media New Zealand SMC akl

Social Media Club Auckland (SMCakl 7) was a super-success or in the clipped, hashtagged vocab of the twitterati, was an #EpicWin !!!

Held on Tue 10-Aug-10 at the uber-CBD bar, Bluestone Room, the topic for the night was a hot one: SM Analytics - Tools & Tactics.

As expected, the evening was chocker with talent on both sides of the podium. While we had some informative talks from the speakers, it was also a very interactive (aka social) evening with lots of questions from the audience, which our distinguished panel fielded with ease.

Giapo & Jayson - NZ's very own 'SM for SMEs' success stories - were there!

Highlights of the evening:

Insightful presentations loaded with facts & figures, graphs & graphics by the speakers
Crowd favourites Giapo & Jayson Bryant almost stole the show when they strode onstage
An endless supply of Whittakers Chocolates on every table
Generous snack platters with compliments from the bar
Prizes handed out for every Q in the Q&A. Robyn Ellson of Bullet PR took home the top one!

Justin Flitter, host, co-organiser and speaker on the night blogged about the event providing comprehensive coverage - complete with speaker bios, downloadable presentations and live links. You can read all about what happened on the night here.

Speakers in action at SMCakl 7:

Justin Flitter from Zendesk

Louisa Jones, PR Consultant from Eleven PR

James Townsend, Digital Communications Manager for ASB Bank

Adam Good, Exec Director of Digital Innovation, Clemenger BBDO

Three SM monitoring tactics in a cross channel marketing program

Tony Boyte, Research Director, Nielsen

Preview of Nielsen's latest Social Media NZ Report 2010

The high quality pictures you see above are courtesy of my good friend, Johann du Plessis. An accomplished lensman (and all-round good bloke), Jo (pronounced Yo) has a highly specialised niche - pet portraits! Which only makes it easier for him to shoot two-legged creatures. Click here to check out his website and portfolio. Thanks to his voluntary offer...

We're starting a Seen at SMCakl photo section on the Facebook profile! So prepare to get "papped" by Yo at the next meet-up. Call Johann on 0211131444 or yelloducksearch@gmail.com for any photo-shoot or hi-res copies of your pics. But for that, you'll have to be... seen at SMCakl.

Coming up next: Social Media Debate: Evangelists v/s Sceptics on Tue 14 Sep at Saatchi & Saatchi NZ. It's going to be a noisy one. See you there!
Social Media Club Auckland NZ #SMCakl Social Media New Zealand SMC akl

The 4 Cs of Social Media

2010-07-26T22:27:00.000-07:00

Social Media, Auckland, New Zealand. Social Media NZ, Social Media Club
Be it New York or New Zealand, digital or direct, hand-held or ambient, traditional or social... primarily, all media are means of communication.

What's different about social media is owing to its speed & size, it's not as easy to define its basic framework. To understand SM at a glance, I've drawn a simple sketch to illustrate what lies at its core.

4 Cs of Social Media - the basic framework

Collaboration

Collaboration is the spirit of social media. Call it participation, sharing or engagement, it's what puts the "social" in social media. Without sounding too psycho-babble, it's the behavioural glue that builds & binds online networks. It actually works on the oldest of truisms - Man is a social animal... and modern man, an attention-loving beast!

Content

Content is King. And quality content is organic ranking (even without those SEOs!) Clearly, we're living in an Information Age, where everything is media and everyone is a media channel. As a result, user-generated content is popping up everywhere at never-before rates - created by people like you & me. Consume it. Create it. Share it. Love it. Hate it. Enjoy it. Just don't try keeping pace with it.

Sample this UGC nugget - 24 hours of video is uploaded to YouTube every 60 seconds - that's 1 day of content for every 1 minute!

Conversation

Conversation is social media in action. Without it, social media wouldn't be. Content (good or bad) leads to an opinion and when two or more opinions concur (or collide), it strikes (or sparks) a conversation.

What's more, opinions are like arseholes. Everyone's got at least one:) (anyway, back to work!) Feeds, updates, tweets, retweets, comments, likes, share bars, embed codes, reviews, ratings, links - are the lifeblood of conversation.

And the truth is, people share things they like with their family, friends, fans, followers - at different places, at different times, in different ways. The true test of good content lies in its talkability = the ability to generate WOM by jumping across social networks and even, media platforms. That in a nutshell, is how content goes viral and it's truly social art when it does.

Community

Community creation is the whole point of social media. A direct consequence of collaboration, communities form when people with a common point of interest come together on social networks. It is the interaction within & across communities that creates connections, and it is here the SM strategy comes into effect.

The Quality of the Connection is where it's at.

The end goal of all business is profit creation via customer generation.

For most companies, CRM, corporate communications/ PR, advertising & marketing and direct sales is where social media comes in. SM allows a forum to connect with existing customers (and reach out to potential ones) - closer, faster and easier than ever before.

Marketers considering social media in the mix may ask "What separates one SM initiative from the other?" Answer: The quality of the connection with the community = volume, frequency and depth of interaction. Before setting up a corporate feed, decision-makers and stakeholders need to devise a carefully thought out SM strategy factoring in things like:

Could it result in better customer service?
Could it result in better brand equity?
Could it lead to a better end experience for the consumer?
Could it increase customer satisfaction?
How open and transparent should we be?
What's our contingency plan in case shit hits the fan?
Who looks after SM - who takes the calls & who mans the decks?
Which are the right SM tools for our business?
Do we have the systems to channel feedback into the product?
What other media should we integrate with for best results?
How do we measure ROI?

Social Media is for doers. It is on-going.

The trick is to never stop asking questions and the answers can only be found by doing. While Just Do It, Listen & Learn, Keep it Real, Explore & Experiment, Measure & Monitor, Filter and Integrate are handy mantras, here are 3 things to remember:

You don't control the conversation, you facilitate it
Your community is your brand (and key business driver)
On-going community management is the way to success

Social Media's star on the rise in NZ

A recent study of Kiwis participating in social networks drew up encouraging statistics. Here's a snapshot of Nielsen's 2010 Social Media Report.

With Facebook crossing the 500 million user milestone (that's one in 14 humans) last week, SM has only just begun. Might as well get social with it.
Social Media, Auckland, New Zealand. Social Media NZ, Social Media Club

#SMCakl 6... they're still talking about it!

2010-07-20T18:23:00.000-07:00

Social Media Club Auckland NZ #SMCakl Social Media New Zealand

Social Media Club Auckland (13Jul10) what a night - one to remember!

Social Media Club Auckland (#SMCakl 6) was a hoot with over 150 SMperor penguins huddled inside the Saatchi atrium braving the chill.

With a topic like ‘Social Media for Social Good’ we knew we were onto a good one. But the zealous response it fetched was unforeseen. And boy, did things heat up during the Q&A!

Featuring prominent names from NZ’s leading charities and NGOs, the speakers treated the audience to insightful presentations and shared how they leverage social media for ROI, sustenance and growth.

L-R: Me, Stuart Young, Lee Hales, Suzanne Kendrick, Nick Young

Kick-off... with both feet-in-the-mouth!

Our Keynote Speakers for the evening

Suzanne Kendrick

Online Marketing and Community Management, Grey Lynn 2030

Simon Coley

Founder, All Good Bananas

Lee Hales

Marketing Manager, Give a Little NZ

Stuart Young

Online Communications Manager, Oxfam NZ

Nick Young

Web Manager, Greenpeace New Zealand

The heated Q&A session... the conversation is still going on!

Unprecedented

#SMCakl6 was a night to remember not only because it featured many firsts, but because it created quite a stir at the event and unprecedented buzz afterwards. The event led to a barrage of blog posts (incl this one!) and triggered a deluge of conversations. In particular:

Vaughn Davis - Hatred: it keeps you warm at night and doesn't hurt your campaign results either Vaughn's post is the hottest social object to emerge from SMCakl. An honest and outspoken opinion, it's a true thought-starter. See how many sharp, loaded and passionate comments it attracted!
Simon Young - Lessons fom a hashtag (or, why #sy is now sy)
Justin Flitter - Hashtag your way to tweet success
Saquib ‘Sim’ Ahmed - Live blog from #SMCakl 13/07/10 - definitely the freshest event coverage - can't get fresher than real-time now, can you?
Simone McCallum - she created an #SMCakl newspaper using an online aggregator app (paper.li) that lays out all the event coverage (tweets and blogs) in broadsheet format - cool idea!
AdMedia & Fastline’s coverage of SMCakl - Before & After the event

Also, here's a good article on the local social media scene by Kelly Gregor (of NZ Herald) featuring quite a few SMCakl speakers.

SM Whiz Quiz Prizes - Rebecca Smith draws the winners...

And the lucky winners are... on the comments wall (login required to view)

Prizes Galore

For the first time, SMCakl had an SM Whiz Quiz where lucky winners took home a Motorola Milestone & T-sticks from Telecom NZ; T-shirts from Oxfam, All Good Bananas & Greenpeace; Tickets from WordCamp NZ.

The twitterrific #SMCakl tweetwall - thank God it didn't break Twitter:)

tweet as

Another cool first at #SMCakl was the live Tweetwall (set up by Peter Mangin, CIO, Saatchi & Saatchi NZ) which displayed all tweets with the hashtag #SMCakl as a real-time feed on a jellyscreen - a ‘tweet as’ success. End result - #SMCakl became a top trending topic in Auckland.

AdMedia & Fastline gave prizes to the top 3 Qs at the Q&A, and top 3 tweets. Check out the Events page to see all the winners, prizes...

Vote of Thanks

Organising events is not easy - esp. with audience numbers of 150+. #SMCakl 6 was a resonating success thanks to our Speakers, Sponsors & Supporters: Peter Mangin, Chris Macdonald, Nicholas O’Flaherty, Alex Erasmus, Vaughn Davis, Simon Young, Justin Flitter, Julian Waters, Rebecca Smith, Tara Sutherland (Telecom NZ), David Gapes, Jason Kemp (WordCampNZ), Marty (Milk Cafe) and all those who participated in it - online and offline.

I ate that banana right after that talk. Suddenly, I felt all good!

That's me (hashtag #makingahashofitall:)

The famous S&S logo on lift, me, the tweetwall & the latest handbags:)

My tee was eyeballed (in a good way) by many. Idea courtesy amysticgirl

Might as well add, it was my honour to organise the event, MC the evening, host the Q&A and quiz-master the SM Whiz Quiz. A great experience, both a pleasure and a privilege indeed.

All in all, a great networking event with Monteith’s beer + cider flowing all night, nibbles from Milk Cafe and fair trade bananas for everyone.

Next meet on Tuesday 10 August. Topic: SM Analytics & Listening. Add yourself on Social Media Club Auckland's Facebook profile to keep up with the latest updates. See you all soon.

Till then, keep the madness alive and get social with it.

Mr. Social would like to thank amysticgirl for the photos & videos.

On a lighter note, here's a Supercop gone All Good Bananas - full story in pictures!

#SMCAkl 5 - Jam-packed and Facebooked

2010-06-09T02:28:00.000-07:00

Social Media Club Auckland NZ #SMCakl Social Media New Zealand

Social Media Club Auckland (#SMCakl 5) was packed to capacity... and with 150 attendees, was the biggest meet so far. Just goes to show, awareness as also interest in social media is growing with each session.

Featuring some big names in Social Media, including the biggest of them all, the topic for the evening was Marketing through Facebook: an opportune one to discuss as the number of advertisers on Facebook today has quadrupled since 2009!

Keynote speakers at the event and the main points they made were:

Rowan Schaaf, Ogilvy; Paul Webster, Facebook

Rowan Schaaf, Ogilvy

We want to achieve a general collaboration in thinking wrt media campaigns and sourcing the right media and tech talents.
No platform or methodology is foolproof' - make sure you've got the right message going to the right person at the right time.
"I get laughed at for not having a TV, I can get away with that. I can't get away with not having a Facebook"

Paul Webster, Facebook

Paul Webster, Facebook

1.67 million active users of Facebook in NZ
Average no. of friends for every FB user = 130 (potential number of people you reach everytime you connect with someone on FB)
75% of Kiwis aged 15-39 are active Facebook users
Brands build connections through Facebook using 2 way dialogue
FB case studies in NZ - 100% Pure Tourism NZ; 2degrees; Holden

Tom Osborne, Wag the Dog

Tom Osborne, Wag The Dog

You don't own your brand, nor does your marketing dept. Customers do.
Social Media is just a channel, not a magic bullet
Combining SM with above the line helps
Social Media is not a campaign medium, it's a 5-10 year medium
Good reads: Social Object Theory & Conversational Capital

Piero Liguori, 2degrees

Piero Liguori, 2degrees

Facebook is about linear not sporadic campaigning
Being active on social media doesn't mean you have to lose control. 2degrees deletes people who are consistently offensive (= trolls)
2degrees has full time front line customer service staff working on social media platforms

Q...

...& A

The talks were followed by a Q&A session where Piero gave away 2degrees starter packs to audience members who participated.

Social Media Club offers great networking opportunities with people from all walks of life, with a keen interest in new media. A few attendees I met:

David MacGregor, Idealog/ BrandWorld

Toni Knowles, 3D Interactive; Julian Waters, Communico

David Sakey, Colmar-Brunton; Ghanum Taylor, Below the Line

Debbie-Mayo Smith, NZ Herald; Piero Liguori, 2degrees

Justin Flitter, FlitterMedia; Tom Osborne, Wag the Dog

James Townend (ASB Bank), Nicholas O'Flaherty & Kevin Ptak (Bullet PR)

And a few more pics from the event:

Tip to put Twitter to better use
If you're looking for info on something popular (aka a trending topic in Twitter lingo) - be it breaking news, a major incident, celebrity goss or a public event (eg. Social Media Club Auckland), the first thing is to identify the assigned hashtag - protocol sign-off used by all tweeting on the topic (#SMCakl, in this case) - via Twitter feeds or Google.

Now, for all those who cannot make it to the event (and this to my mind, is the true beauty of collaboration), just Twitter Search the hashtag and all the tweets related to SMCakl appear. You could follow the feed in real time and thus 'attend the event' remotely; engage directly with attendees via tweets/ RTs; or tune in for a listen later.

Huge thanks going out to: Ogilvy NZ for playing gracious hosts and for plying the venue, beer and vino; to Bullet PR for organising the event, and Nick O'Flaherty (above pic) for emceeing the proceedings.

Social Media Club meets on the second Tuesday of every month. The next one will be on July 13, 2010. Check out the Facebook profile for updates and event details. Feel free to jump in anytime and join the conversation.

Welcome to the Conversation Economy

2010-06-09T02:27:00.000-07:00

Aisha Hillary, Senior Marketing & New Media Specialist, SBS; me

Last month, I attended Social Media Junction - NZ's biggest event on the topic du jour. One of the keynote speakers, Aisha Hillary of SBS.com.au played a video loaded with factoids and trivia... which stuck in my mind.

Social Media is all about conversations and Socialnomics is the new economy. See the clip and you'll know what got millions of them started.

Is Social Media a fad... or a phenomenon?

For the skeptics out there, the above compilation is credited to Erik Qualman, who offers data sources in his book and website... SocialNomics.

If, like me, you enjoy UGC (user-generated content) without getting too caught up in it, you must check out the fascinating Did You Know videos. Pure brain-candy!

Mr. Madness would like to thank Geeta SK for the pic above.

A Special Feature on Social Media

2010-05-23T20:09:00.000-07:00

I'm happy to share an article I co-wrote with
Simon Hendery, NZ's top business writer -

SOCIAL STUDIES: A Special Feature on Social Media

(click to view/ download PDF)
has been published in AdMedia, May 2010 and is... on shelves now!

Cover

Pg1

Pg2

Pg3

Pg4

Pg5

Pg6

The double-whammy features an analysis of SM & its role in business; followed by first-person views & reviews from NZ's SM-savvy Social-ati.

I enjoyed putting the piece together. Hope you enjoy reading it as much.

Talking Social Media: with Tony Gardner #1

2010-05-20T01:38:00.000-07:00

As a happy consequence of the article

Social Studies - a Special Feature on Social Media

in AdMedia, May 2010...

New Online Chat Show on the Mr. Madness Channel

...I got a call from David Gapes, Editor, AdMedia & Fastline to kick off Talking Social Media - an Online Chat Show. My dream brief: shoot members of NZ's Advertising & MarComms industry as they talk SM.

Tony Gardner

General Manager, Saatchi & Saatchi | DGS

Chair, CAANZ Digital Leadership Group

As Part #1 of TSM, I recently caught up with Tony and Q&A'ed him. Here are the best bits from our session, cut up into easy-to-swallow capsules:

Q - How has SM changed your personal and professional life?

Q - Clearly then, Social Media is here to stay...

Q - At SMBizForumNZ, you said SM leads to humanisation of technology...

Q - So then, what is Social Media?

Q - Sharing is key to Social Media...

Q - Is SM more suited to certain industries or demographics?

Q - SM is different feeds for different folks. Any NZ success stories that...

Q - Where to from here for SM? What does the road ahead look like?

Q - Any words of advice to corporates using or planning on SM...

Q - Whose role is it to look after SM? Should companies just do it in-house

Q - SM tools are free to use. Why should companies pay their ad agency...

Q - Social Media v/s Traditional media. What's the key difference?

Q - What role do Transparency & Honesty play in Social Media?

Q - What are your views on SM in business? Do you recommend SM strategies to your clients?

Q - What governs the proportion of SM that should go into the communication strategy?

Q - All media enables us to share information..

Q - What is Saatchi & Saatchi | DGS' approach to Social Media?

Answers to the above questions on my YouTube Channel.

Mr. Social would like to extend a special thanks to Matthew Marsh, IT Ninja, Saatchi & Saatchi for creating the awesome Talking Social Media title ident (see above) and for chopping up the video interview with amazing speed, precision and discipline - like only a true-blue Ninja can!

If you would like to be on "Talking Social Media" or know someone who should, email trivediamar@gmail.com or david@admedia.co.nz with "Please shoot me while I TSM" as the subject line.

Social Media Junction - getting world-class in NZ

2010-05-19T00:33:00.000-07:00

Social Media Junction (#SMJ) – NZ’s biggest Social Media Marketing event to date - went off like clockwork on 17 - 18 May, 2010.

The two-day event held at SkyCity Convention Centre, Auckland, @SMJunction attracted a large turnout of senior, mid-level and junior executives from various industries, from Auckland as well as Wellington.

Social Media Junction featured a star-studded Marketing Conference (Day 1 Programme) and a ‘Masterclass’ Workshop (Day 2 Programme) - both covering significant trends & topics that are all the buzz in the SM & digital space right now.

A veritable meeting of the best minds in the business, the SMJ conference brought together a group of leading international speakers from USA, Canada, Australia:

L-R: Josie Campbell, Belinda Nash and Julien Smith

Julien Smith, Canada

Co-Author (with Chris Brogan) of New York Times bestseller ‘Trust Agents: Using the Web to Build Influence, Improve Reputation and Earn Trust’

L-R: Mr. Social, Andy Beal

Andy Beal, USA

Founder of MarketingPilgrim.com; Author of ‘Radically Transparent’

Mike Hickinbotham
Senior Adviser Social Media, Telstra, Australia

Click here to view the Speaker Bios

L-R: Aisha Hillary, Mr. Social

Aisha Hillary

Senior Marketing & New Media Specialist, SBS – Special Broadcasting Service, Australia

Andrew Cordwell
MySpace, Fox Interactive Media, Australia

...and some of NZ’s best known SM practitioners:

Grant Osborne, Director, First Rate

Tom Bates, Social Media & Viral Marketing, Air New Zealand

L-R: Jennifer Duval-Smith, Bullet PR; Greer McDonald, Stuff.co.nz

L-R: Mauricio Freitas, Founder, GeekZone.co.nz; Justin Flitter, FlitterMedia

Andrew Ferguson, MD, Gravitate.co.nz

and

Paul Brislen, Vodafone Duncan Blair, Orcon Russell Brown, Media7

Bryony Hilless, 2 Degrees Alistair Helm, Unconditional.co.nz
Bernard Hickey Interest.co.nz...

Simon Young, Director, #sy

The conference included 3 interactive panel discussions chaired by Justin Flitter, Vincent Heeringa and Simon Young. The “real-time” Q&A sessions led to some interesting anecdotes as well as some lighter moments.

Day 2 was a full-on Social Media Masterclass which was a day-long Online Reputation Management Workshop conducted by Andy Beal. He shed light on valuable tools, tips & tricks and SM and ORM best practices. A well-attended class, Andy managed to keep it light yet loaded, cracking a few good jokes as the day went along - maybe that's why they call him the Indiana Jones of Reputation Management!

L-R: Mr. Social with Andy Beal

Andy Beal is founder and editor of MarketingPilgrim.com, USA; author of ‘Radically Transparent: Monitoring and Managing Reputations Online’; Creator of Trackur.com - a SM Monitoring Tool; Internet Marketing Consultant to leading companies in USA.

Topics Andy covered during his in-depth Workshop:

• The Art of generating buzz around your brand

• Fight a reputation attack

• Achieve 5 stars at customer review sites

• Pimp your blog for brand control

• Own the first ten links in Google

• Find your customers through social networking

• Build a reputation monitoring safety net

ending with a 6-Step Action Plan for a successful online reputation management campaign.

L-R: Belinda Nash, Paul Matthews, Jennifer D-S, Bryony Hilless, Alex Erasmus

L-R: Nicholas O'Flaherty, Bullet PR; Andrew Cordwell, MySpace

Nicholas O’Flaherty, Managing Director, Bullet PR was the MC at SMJ.

All in all, a top-notch event, Social Media Junction was organised by the team at Bullet PR - hats off to Jennifer, Nicholas, Paul, Alex and Kevin.

I attended SMJ all thanks to the good folks at Bullet PR and the generosity of David Gapes, Editor, AdMedia & Fastline. A big thanks to all involved. As Nicholas said, SMJ promises to return next year. Till then... bon soir!

Social Media Club Auckland 4 - awesome evening

2010-05-12T14:50:00.000-07:00

The 4th session of Social Media Club Auckland (#SMCakl) on Tuesday 11 May, was an awesome evening. Great speaker line-up + Juicy topic + Ideal venue + Large turnout + Cool folks + Chilled beer = SUCCESS!

L-R: Rebecca Smith, David Farrier, Vaughn Davis

"Brand Voice: balancing personal and corporate tone in Social Media" was the topic for the evening. The speakers shared their views in an informal atmosphere at the Saatchi & Saatchi atrium, where over a 100 people (largest so far) met to imbibe learnings over a chilled Monteith's.

Rebecca Smith, MarComms Manager, Telecom
She spoke of the need to find the right people for social media and said "corporates need to be naturally honest, naturally online and naturally knowledgeable". Even individuals must have a digital content strategy and listening and observing were important aspects of social media."

David Farrier, TV3
As expected, David was hilarious. He came in armed with a mindmap and in his own inimitable "3 Nuuus" style, spoke on exotic topics ranging from a Human Centipede to The Cryptid Factor to Justin Bieber. A huge fan of online forums, SM allows him "to stay close to his viewers and receive instant feedback which he finds invaluable".

Before wardrobe change...

...and after!

Vaughn Davis, Creative Director, Y&R
Vaughn's speech included a wardrobe change where he quickly donned a Hurricanes t-shirt and did a live impersonation of Ma'a Nonu's F-Bomb laden outburst on live radio! Vaughn also drew up an original analogy: If advertising is a brand wall, social media is the window. Go to Vaughn's posterous for more.

For more on the evening, check out Alex Erasmus' posterous blog post. Not only is Alex the co-founder of SMCakl, he's also a fine (precise & concise) writer. Here are the pics from the evening. You in there?

L-R: Alex, Tara, Rebecca, Hayden, Vaughn, Chris

L-R: Jamie, David, Duncan (could they be long-lost bros?)

Thanks to Chris Macdonald for the venue & Monteith's beer. (ps - He hates noise:)

I'm no SM Guru... just a Light Bulb

2010-05-10T19:07:00.000-07:00

OK... so you've heard. Social Media is here, here to stay and it's about time to get your apples on that cart. And it's not just hearsay. Research data supports the contention. Bite this:

Corporate Australia has taken to Social Media in a big way in 2010. So much so, most big companies plan to spend a fifth (20%) of their marketing budget on it. Here's a recent study with eye-opening facts and ground-breaking figures to go with it. (READ IT HERE.)

But with so much noise about it lately, and all these Social Media Gurus (u talking to me?) and self-appointed Geeks floating around, what exactly goes into Social Media and what do you call those lucky gonzos who do it for a living and... call it work!

SM Strategist/ Planner - charts out the action plan, allocates resources, chalks up the numbers and envisages how they'll add up. They plot the points A & B, figure out the route to get there, organize the vehicles (SM tools) required, prepare for pitstops (they're bound to be a few on the way). Safe to call them the company's Social Media GPSes, they are the go-to guys when your CEO hollers gentle queries like: Will it monetize? What's the ROI? Why bother? (Caution - Never pressure planners for answers. They'll resign or punch you in the face. Or probably... both!)

SM Content Creator (Moderator/ Blogger) - these are the guys who make SM buzz. The worker bees who get down & dirty, toolkit in tow. They create the SM infrastructure (user-end, not back-end) and the content to populate the billions of pages, websites, blogs and communities on the World Wide Web - and it could be you! Moderation or filtering is the hard work that goes behind the scenes (hours of exploring, experimenting) before all the content comes together and looks kosher.

SM Advocate / Evangelist - somewhere between the HR and PR departments of an organisation lie a bunch of people who advocate Social Media. They're web-savvy, openly embrace new media and usually know their apps from their elbows. Not a full-time job in itself, SM evangelism is more a part of the movement to usher in the winds of socio-change esp. in fuddy-duddy offices who just don't see the point of this whole SM thing.

SM Manager/ Director/ Driver - The thinkers of the SM initiatives, more often than not, they are also the hands-on doers, but helpers are handy depending on volume of output and immediacy of response. In fact, to maintain synergy and unified tone of social voice, it's always better if the head that thinks it also executes and directs it. (Hey CEO... here's where empowerment comes in.) Since SM calls for consistent work over long time periods, it would be ideal to deploy a cross-functional team to drive the company's SM initiatives, and to funnel (and filter) the entire organization's social output via them.

SM Consultant/ Expert/ Guru/ Specialist - Nowadays, anyone with a Facebook & Twitter profile claims to be a Social Media Guru (u talking to me?). Sure they are a bit of all of the above, but what separates Guru-bees from the wannabes is experience. The experts know enough about SM (or more than most in the room) to talk about it off a stage, off the cuff (eg. GaryVee). Most likely, they are early adopters who've hung in long (and hustled hard) enough to create their own SM success story. Now when they talk, you listen... and you should because it's not easy! Besides being good speakers, SM Gurus are great at being themselves. After all, SM is only an extension of who you are.

Then of course, there are SM executives and exponents at various levels, but the title everyone's donning is 'Social Media Guru'. For the record, Guru comes from a Sanskrit word where 'Gu' means darkness and 'Ru' means to remove. So a Guru is one who dispels darkness. Just like a human light bulb (u talking to me?)

What is Social Media? Here's the definition...

2010-05-05T00:24:00.000-07:00

Call it the world’s water-cooler, social web aka Web 3.0 or the great online democracy, Social Media is a phenomenon that has completely and rapidly changed the way people interact in their personal and professional lives.

Strangely enough, although millions of users (incl. prolific ones) are adept with the tools and terminology, most of them draw a blank when asked "What is Social Media?" Well, here’s the definition:

Social Media is

the entire ecosystem of collaborative communication technologies

online networks, live messaging, mobile web…

where users can generate, update, consume and share information

audio, video, pictures, profiles, tweets, text…

across multi-user platforms

real-time feeds, live streams, blogs, member websites, chats…

within interacting communities.

fans, followers, friends, groups, connections, contacts…

We live in an age of collaboration, where people can easily and quickly share information through conversations over social networks. In a sense, Social Media does make the web a better place to log in. Agree/ disagree?

Thou shalt own the Social Media Bible

2010-04-26T17:29:00.000-07:00

So you're already into Social Media and want to goo deeper OR let's say you're on the brink and thinking of jumping into Social Media OR you're already neck-deep and want to get immersed into Social Media...

Here's a book to answer all your questions on Social Media. It's a business guide, a text book, a bible indeed... with commandments and all. In fact, it's 3 books rolled into one and a great place to start your journey into SM or to venture further. I found the Expert Insights particularly enriching.

Wholeheartedly, I recommend this book to anyone with any interest in SM, no matter where on the knowledge continuum you are. Don't just read it. Own it. This one's a keeper. Visit the TSMB website here.

It's official. Privacy is dead. User beware!

2010-04-21T23:50:00.000-07:00

Social Media is a powerful branding toolkit. Used correctly, it can create considerable social influence.

But there is another side to it - the naked side. Here's a lighter look at the phenomenon of Twitter and how it sounds the death knell for privacy.

I came across this Venn Diagram while wandering the web one idle browse. Immediately, my mind raced to wonder where I'd seen the Social Venn before? After a quick mental jog, the answer popped into my head.

L-R: Vaughn Davis, Adam Good, Chris Chambers

Take a look at Vaughn's tee. A cool find. Very relevant too. What better to wear to a Social Media in Business Forum? Good call... @vaughndavis.

Gary Vaynerchuk a.k.a. Gary Vee - man on fire

2010-04-20T20:08:00.000-07:00

Gary Vaynerchuk is a social media brand and Twitter phenom. A self-made wine mogul, he videoblogged his way to fame via Wine Library TV.

Popularly known as Gary Vee, he's not only one of USA's top wine experts, he has carved a niche for himself as a SM pro and business coach.

Here's Gary killing it at the Web 2.0 Expo. A galvanizing talk, it is loaded with incisive insights. Plenty of brain food. Feel free to make mental notes.

Here he is dripping passion on CNN or as Gary would say, crushing it live.

To learn more about Gary, visit his website or follow him on Twitter here.

#SMCakl 3 - Social Media in Journalism

2010-04-20T19:34:00.000-07:00

On Tuesday 13 April, Social Media Club - Auckland had its third catch-up.

The theme for the evening was 'Social Media in Journalism' with 4 keynote speakers quite well-known within media circles and very well-informed:

Glenn Williams, an Radio Disc Jockey at Kiwi FM
While its still early days, and we are all learning more about it everyday, Social Media has helped me build a community and get closer to my listeners. As you know, radio is all about audience feedback.

Ben Gracewood, Software Developer/ Gadget Reviewer, TVNZ
Social Media is all about the people. It's about doing what we normally do as humans. Used correctly, it can be a powerful tool but at the end of the day, it's just that... another tool. And yes, be honest!

Chris Keall, Head of Technology and Digital Editor at NBR
Nowadays, it's always a race against time about who's breaking the news first. While Social Media cannot replace quality journalism, it's sped things up a bit. Keeps us on our toes. Much busier too!

Nigel Horrocks, Radio NZ Tech Speaker/ Consultant, AikenStix
Social Media is evolving and as yet does not offer a tried, tested revenue model. Transparency is double-edged. Corporates need to strategise and be prepared for negative response.

The evening was hosted by Simon Young

The talks were followed by an interactive Q&A round where audience members shot back some loaded counterpoints. Click here to watch more videos on Justin Flitter's blog.

While the evening went off very well, it raised an interesting point:

Is Social Media too vast, undefined and amorphous to be discussed under one theme? Is SM too thinly spread to be discussed under one specific industry, in this case journalism? SMC Auckland's founder, Alex Erasmus has neatly blogged it up here.

Fast forward to Monday 19 April, the SMC committee met to discuss topics, venues and to work out the admin & logistics for upcoming events. A productive one hour, the brainstorm included Vaughn Davis, Nigel Horrocks, Alex Erasmus, Nicholas O' Flaherty and yours truly.

As an avid blogger, ardent advocate and keen observer of Social Media, I'm happy to note that attendance to the Auckland chapter of the Social Media Club is steadily growing. So is the community.

The next catch-up (#SMCakl 4) is on May 11 (always the second Tuesday of the month). Visit the Facebook profile here to join in. Keep an eye out for updates on future events.

Old Spice TVC - I'm on a horse

2010-04-20T16:30:00.000-07:00

Q - First of all, what is an ad for Old Spice doing on a Social Media blog?
A - It could well be the most viral (blogged, shared, YouTubed) ad of 2010.

Simply because it's a wickedly awesome TV commercial that makes you fall for it the first time you watch it. (*Love at first frame.) Not only does it keep you rivetted from start to finish, it has you laughing out loud.

It uses a powerful film technique where the protagonist speaks to the viewer in first person - taking full charge of the narrative by talking directly into the camera. Opens on this rock-solid dude (more on him later) talking product benefit as scenarios morph seamlessly and props drop in suddenly - without digressing or diluting the humour.

Indeed, a rare ad that combines expert story-telling and crafty film-making. The true genius of this flick is in its taut, quick-paced edit.

Once you've got a good thing going, recreate the magic in half the time...

For more dope on the ad, check out the interview with Craig Allen & Eric Kallman of Wieden+Kennedy, Portland, the guys behind this gem of an ad.

I guess a lot of the credit for this ad goes to the flawless timing and delivery of its main man. He is Isaiah Mustafa, a former NFL footballer (that explains the godly bod). Since appearing in the Old Spice ad (Feb 2010), Isaiah's become a Twitter phenom, made it on The Ellen Show and even has his own page on Wikipedia. Indeed, he's on a horse!

*Love at first frame - Now I know I've used that phrase before. That was for the Sony GT4 ad which once again, is a rare blend of fine story-telling and killer film-making. (Click here to view the ad)

Q - Why do ads go viral? A - Ask Evian.

2010-04-19T22:42:00.001-07:00

Viral marketing is the cheapest and probably most effective form of marketing today. It involves content so contagious, it catches on and gets shared rapidly across online communities. Call it a social ripple effect.

Q - So why does some content (be it an ad, movie clip, song video, news story) go viral while some does not? That's a biggie and if you find the answer, let me know. Here's my A - If content is king, data is king-maker.

Media experts go to great lengths to ensure the ads go viral, at times adopting techniques like seeding. To seed an ad is to strategically plant content when & where the target prospect (a person most likely to spread the virus, pass it on, infect others) will receive it.

Q - But how does one identify a target prospect?
A - Relevant, accurate and scientifically sorted data.

Q - And just how does one acquire such quality data?
A - Ask Google Analytics, Dataminers, Media Researchers. Or Evian:)

The highly contagious Evian Waterboy

The very infectious Evian Roller-babies

Here's a list of the Top 10 viral ads (all 10 are winners!) from back in 2007, when viral marketing was just about taking off. Although the list is dated, it's enjoyable all the same & even has all the YouTube links. Enjoy!