Social Media @ Work & Play » Social Networking

Social Media Success Story: Romeo the Cat

Gary Moneysmith — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 19:18:58 +0000

I was recently invited by the Columbus Chamber of Commerce to present a short Social Media success story. I featured my friend Caroline Golon’s hobby project titled Romeo: The Cat’s Meow of Social Media. Caroline combines her savvy media relations skills and creativity with her love for shelter animals. The resulting pet project (pun intended) has raised over $17,000 using Twitter, Facebook and a blog. Here’s a slideshow from the event:

Trip to the 2009 Webby Awards – Part 2

Gary Moneysmith — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 17:30:32 +0000

The Webby Awards gala was held at the swanky Wall Street Cipriani — a massive ballroom decorated in Greek revival style. Host Seth Myers quipped that “there was no better place to celebrate innovation and vision than Wall Street. What?! Were there no rooms available in Detroit?”

Unlike most awards shows, the Webbys limit acceptance speeches to 5-words. From a marriage proposal to comedienne Sarah Silverman’s “Holocaust. Did it happen? Yes…” the quips were as crazy as you’d expect from a ballroom of uber-creative people. They’re all available for viewing on YouTube so check them out.

Normally, I don’t really care about celebrities. Really. But when they’re in the same room celebrating internet oriented achievements, it’s pretty damn cool. Martha Stewart, Seth Myers, Cameron Diaz, Charlie Rose, Trent Reznor, Molly Sims, Jimmy Fallon and Isabella Rossellini all mingled with the crowd (sort’ve) throughout the night. Quite validating for me considering all those incredibly late nights I spent working in obscurity in the in mid-90’s when the Web was still the domain of socially inept geeks. Not that I was ever one of those. I’m just saying…

The biggest attraction for me was meeting the inventor of the World Wide Web – Tim Berners Lee. I brought along the book he wrote “Weaving the Web” and got it autographed. He was impressed I read it; the dogeared pages with scribbled notes from a decade ago proved my case proved that indeed I was nerdy enough to read a novel about his invention.

Here’s a photo of us walking on the red carpet. Note the book — oh yah!

Here’s a shot of Nicole (right) and our friends from Black Magic Marker (Holland). Both are gorgeous, the picture really doesn’t do them justice. And before you tease me, YES I KNOW I’m a lucky dude.

After the awards gala, we briefly met Seth Meyers and thanked him for emceeing the event. He’s amazingly quick witted, endearing and sincere. And he was cool enough to let us snap a quick photo:

In the end, it was a fantastic weeked. And my 5-word speech? “Geeks Will Inherit the Earth.”

Trip to the 2009 Webby Awards – Part 1

Gary Moneysmith — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 03:33:31 +0000

This definitely falls into the Social Media @ PLAY category. Back in March, a friend from RHI/The Creative Group encouraged me to enter their online essay contest asking about trends on the Internet. I wrote about the convergence of social media integrating with popular websites that were also streaming live television. Think back to the CurrentTV online broadcast of the Presidential debates that had live tweets streaming across the stream or TNT’s website that allowed users to select their camera angle during the NBA All-Star game and chat with their friends via Facebook Connect. I’m very intrigued on how these 3 areas are being homogenized into an entirely new, communal experience. Face it, American Idol is a lot more fun when simultaneously watching the show and chatting online about it with friends or family spread around the world.

Long story short, my entry was selected by the contest sponsor and the Webby executive director out of a couple hundred entries. So I got a free trip to NYC to watch the Webby’s in-person with my lovely wife Nicole. Mind you, we have 1-year old so this was our first Mommy-Daddy outing in 16-months. You could’ve given me a trip to see Muppets-on-Ice in Paducah, Kentucky and I would’ve been stoked. But to attend the Webby Awards in NYC was beyond awesome.

The Webby Awards are the Oscars for Internet projects. And while most self-respecting Web geeks scoff at awards, this event is to die for. Seriously. You have to win an award to attend — you can’t just buy a ticket. So for most people (including yours truly), it’s a once in a lifetime event.

The cocktail party the night before was the official ice-breaker. And like all good open bars, the ice was broken, crushed and served into free drinks. We met our super-fun hosts from RHI/The Creative Group – Jen and Megan – who couldn’t have been nicer or more helpful. We had fantastic conversations with designers from Weiden + Kennedy, Qik, the LA Times, the BBC Online and big Black Marker, a web development firm from Amsterdam. Amazing talent/people. We ended up befriending the Amsterdam group and sharing a wonderful dinner after the party. They won their Webby for their Tom Tom Secrets website which is super creative – you should check it out.

Here are a couple shots from the evening:

I’ll write about the big Webby Award gala in my next post — coming very soon!

Social Media Success Story: 31 Days of the Dragon

Gary Moneysmith — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 02:25:53 +0000

This is an oldie, but goodie from 2008. Computer manufacturer HP teamed up with word-of-mouth marketing specialists Buzz Corps to launch the 31 Days of the Dragon campaign. Per HP, they wanted to “deepen their commitment to the blogosphere and support new media initiatives that build strong relationships in a unique community of writers, reviewers, fans and enthusiasts.”

HP provided 31 “HDX Dragon” computer systems to 31 carefully selected bloggers/influencers to give away to lucky readers on their own sites over 31 days (one per blogger). A key success factor, HP/Buzz Corps really took the time to to know the bloggers. Each blogger was allowed to set their own contest/giveaway rules that were customized to the respective audience and goals.

The bloggers created their own custom marketing materials (microsites, graphics, logos, videos, RSS feeds) and shared/cross promoted with each other. The net relationship was more of a partnership with each other and HP vs. a traditional product giveaway program.

Impressive Takeaways
During the promotion, the 31 bloggers heavily promoted the contest, HP, the HDX Dragon and each other, demonstrating the collective power of the community banding together. Each participating blog site not only saw a 150% – 5,000% increase in traffic, but also sustained traffic levels for several months after campaign was finished.

Impossible to achieve with with traditional media, here are the results based HPShopping.com, month over month data:

84% increase in sales on the HDX Dragon System
14% increase in overall traffic
10% increase in overall consumer PC sales
50 million impressions (Alexa data)
Treasure trove of consumer feedback and traffic stats to be used in future planning and development
10,000 reader/entrant videos on YouTube.com and Blip.tv
380,000 links discussing the giveaways (per Google)
25,000 entries received by the 31 participating blogs

Costs
$250,000 for the 31 computer systems given away including shipping, software, etc. Zero dollars spent on media. While the costs for Buzz Corps aren’t available, they’re likely to be in the $75,000-100,000 range (my guess). Even if they were higher, they were worth every penny for the amount of exposure and good will created for HP. Mucho props to them for pulling off such a successful social media campaign.

Social Media Success Story: ClevelandIdeas.com

Gary Moneysmith — Thu, 28 May 2009 03:25:16 +0000

Starting today, I’m creating a new section on this blog to feature Social Media Success Stories. I know they’re out there — so I’m going to start collecting them for easy reference and to give them props for jobs well done. Please send me more ideas using my email address listed to the right.

First up is ClevelandIdeas.com — a social media project conceived, developed, self-financed, promoted and maintained by the good folks at DigiKnow, Inc.

Per the ClevelandIdeas.com website, DigiKnow is sick and tired of negativity. And they’re looking to use the “Wisdom of Crowds” to generate good ideas that might be used to make Cleveland and the region stronger in the future. I interviewed King Hill (President/Principal) and Scott Chapin (Director of Consulting Services) with the following questions:

1) How did you conceive of ClevelandIdeas.com and what inspired you to invest so much into the program?

We decided that in 2009 we needed to increase our awareness locally, so in March, we created an open contest to the staff to generate a campaign/marcom idea for DigiKnow in 2009. The results of this were several strong ideas that were integrated into our “We Know” tagline. Since our theme was centered around knowledge, we came up with the idea of using the wisdom of crowds to help Cleveland brainstorm ideas.

2) What’s the primary platform that powers ClevelandIdeas.com? What unique features does it allow?

The website is built on the open-source Pligg platform that functions much like Digg or the SalesForce application that Dell’s IdeaStorm and myStarbucksIdea.com are built on. The system allows users to register and submit ideas/comments and allows any visitors to vote, pushing them up/down the list accordingly.

3) What other social media channels are you using to support or supplement the program?

Twitter was our primary social media channel to drive awareness of our efforts. We built a script that identified all of the local twitterers in the Cleveland market and followed the top 1000 users. We tweeted any interesting activities on the site as well as general activities relevant to our Cleveland audience. Facebook and LinkedIn pages/groups were also setup but were not heavily promoted. Several lively discussions developed in LinkedIn surrounding our overall concept and the need to generate ideas for Cleveland.

4) What cross channel marketing support have you used to drive awareness and participation?

The website was promoted through traditional media including radio and outdoor, through PR in local newspapers, radio and TV in addition to the social media promotion via Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn.

5) What’s been the most surprising result or lesson learned thus far?

There have been several interesting results from this campaign. The most profound is the balance of traffic that was generated by social media, advertising and PR. Attributing website traffic as best as possible, there was a relatively even mix between these three marketing channels. The engagement of visitors was another surprise. The average time on site was 5 minutes, but more surprisingly, the average for visitors that submitted an idea was 25 minutes.

Results after 5-weeks:

293 ideas
1,885 votes
501 comments

6) What actionable results or intelligence have been discovered?

By controlling all of the pieces of this marketing puzzle and having full data on the site activities, we were able to see which activities we did triggered what level of response. Within this Petri dish, we were able to tweak relatively small activities and see the results. A good example of this was inviting people to follow us on Twitter. In each round of following, we got about a 50-60% follow back rate and an obvious spike in visitors to the website.

7) How will you measure the success of ClevelandIdeas.com – for the City of Cleveland and/or DigiKnow?

Our goal is not only to get the best ideas into the hands of local leaders, but to help push them to happen. Success in that sense will be to have an idea from the site become a reality and benefit the city. From DigiKnow’s standpoint, in addition to helping the city, the awareness created and the positive feedback we have already received makes this campaign a success for us.

5 Ways Social Media Reminds Me of 1995

Gary Moneysmith — Sat, 16 May 2009 16:08:30 +0000

The saying goes, “Those who don’t know history are doomed to repeat it.” I’m not sure about history repeating, but it sure does rhyme. I’ve had countless deja vu moments lately as I discuss social media co-workers and clients. I’m finding 2009 to be eerily reminiscent of 1995 when I began my career in web development and internet marketing.

Here are 5 THEN vs. NOW Observations

1 – Hesitation to Give Employees Access to Customers

(1995) “We can’t let our employees use email — it’s not considered official and we can’t control what they say. They’ll just gossip all day with their friends and relatives. Plus, our customers prefer telephone to email anyway.”
(2009) “We can’t control what people say about our company/brand in social media. We discourage our employees from talking about our company on Facebook and Twitter as they’re not part of our official communications department. Plus, our customers aren’t using social media anyway.”

2 – Only Young People Use It

(1995) “Email and the Web are only for academics, engineers and teenage boys searching for porn. Normal business people don’t use it, especially if they’re over 40 years old.”
(2009) “Social media is only for college kids and recent graduates. Normal business people don’t use it, especially if they’re over 40 years old.”

3 – I Don’t Have Enough Time
(1995) “People waste hours of time online talking to strangers they’ll never meet. They get addicted and ignore the real people in their life. I have real work to do and can’t be bothered.”
(2009) “I don’t care about what you had for lunch. Why should I Twitter with strangers and read blog comments? I don’t have enough time in the real world let alone the virtual one.”

4 – I Can’t Make Enough Money On It
(1995) “I’m not wasting my agency/organizations time learning about the Internet when there’s so little money to be made. I’m going to wait until a clear path to revenue has been established.”
(2009) “I can’t justify investing in a social media program unless you can prove an ROI. I’m going to wait until industry standard success metrics and money making formulas are established so I can sell this to my boss.”

5 – I Don’t Know How to Measure It
(1995) “I have no idea who is visiting my website and what they’re doing. Visits? Hits? Time on Site? And how does any of this help me improve my business?”
(2009) “Who is watching my YouTube videos? How can I get more Twitter followers? What’s the value of a view, comment, re-tweets and friend? And how does all this activity improve my business?”

Mind you, there’s a degree of truth to every comment – both then and now. My takeaway lesson is that when it comes to change, it’s good to not only reflect on where we’ve been, but also the vibe/climate that existed at that time. It might feel strangely familiar which gives you perspective on the challenges of today and the opportunities of tomorrow.

Setting Social Media Up for Failure – Don’t Advertise

Gary Moneysmith — Mon, 04 May 2009 14:53:55 +0000

Dear Marketers:

You can’t do it all with social media. There, I said it. I know marketing budgets have been slashed and management is clamoring to use those free, newfangled Web 2.0 tools. But you can’t turn to social media to save the day. It sucks, I know.

Social media is a slow build. Blog and Twitter page don’t just “go viral” before your eyes. It’s more like planting a seed, fertilizing it and tending to it carefully over time. The more you support it with complementary traditional advertising, the better the odds on it taking root and blossoming. Cross channel marketing of social media initiatives is extremely helpful, but easily overlooked, especially during tough economic times. Remember the Subservient Chicken campaign by Burger King? Yah, it was supported by a national television advertising campaign whose cost were certainly NOT chicken feed. They spent a few hundred grand on a cool Web site/social media initiative, but then invested several million dollars in advertising to support it. Very important point not to forget.

Or how about Barack Obama’s presidential campaign that set a new standard of excellence for grassroots, Internet marketing — seemingly deploying every social media channel available. According to BusinessInsider.com Obama’s spend on the internet was a surprisingly low $8 million. That’s just 3% compared to the $245 million he spent on television advertising. Clearly he wouldn’t have spent such a colossal some on television if it wasn’t necessary.

Change doesn’t have to be light-switch proposition. Start a social media initiative today, but be sure to make sure it’s “on brand” and supported by complementary advertising/public relations. Over time (months or years), transition money from the traditional media budget into the social media campaign itself, but only after it has sprouted and is displaying positive signs of growth. Abandoning a social media campaign to survive on its own does nothing more than waste your time/money and seal its fate as a failure.

Sincerely,

Gary

What Should I Tweet About?

Gary Moneysmith — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 18:25:56 +0000

These are the five words usually uttered Twitter by virgins who WANT to get started, but don’t know WHAT to say. The answer “you can say anything” is less than helpful. So here’s my advice: pretend you’re a radio deejay. Yep, go old school media to figure out what to say on new school Twitter.

Just imagine if you had control of a radio station microphone, what would you say? Most DJ’s fill the airwaves with a mix of relevant news, jokes, personal stories, event happenings, sports scores, listener calls, contests, trivia and commentary on current events. They don’t simply drone on about one thing all the time. They mix it up with some unique balance that their listeners enjoy and value.

Same goes for your Twitter channel — mix it up with some “inside scoop” comments on your business. Post a link to some interesting article that affects your industry/city. Add comments to the posts of other people just like you’d chat with them on the street. Joke around a bit and share some harmless, personal tidbits. Above all, be authentic and human. Seriously, no one wants to hang around with a robot who is obviously just trying to sell widgets.

It’s amazing how much you can convey and learn with 140-characters. So get started and HAVE FUN!

Best Buy: Brick & Mortar Meets Social Media

Gary Moneysmith — Sat, 21 Mar 2009 16:19:03 +0000

Big box retailer Best Buy has recently launched their “Remix” program which allows 3rd party sites to pull Best Buy products directly onto their sites via an open API.

Sidenote: An API stands for “application programming interface” which is basically a way for one website to automatically talk to another (exhange/pull info) behind the scenes.

Imagine this scenario: Say you run a kickass social network site that appeals to home theater buffs. You talk about new equipment such as HDTV’s, HDMI connectors, surround sound speakers, etc. Via this new open API, you can actually display & sell Best Buy products directly into your site by pulling all the official product information, including photos and pricing. You don’t have to merely provide hotlinks which lead people off your site. And of course when people purchase these products through your site, you make money.

This is similar to the Amazon affiliate program, but is (to the best of my knowledge) a first for a traditional big box retailer.

Best Buy is in effect “colonizing” the web by allowing their products to be sold by any website that works with their open API. The website provides the user community & Best Buy provides the products. Pretty ingenious. Could be a little worrisome for Best Buy brand keepers since their products/name are not being associated with 3rd party sites, but I suppose time will time.

Will definitely be keeping an eye on this…

TV & Social Media IntegrationNBA All-Star Game

Gary Moneysmith — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 03:02:14 +0000

During the 2009 NBA All-Star game, television station TNT offered basketball fans a treat with their online “TNT OT Extra” website that delivered multiple, simultaneous video streams alongside an integrated Facebook update feed. Visitors had the option to see updates from only their friends or from the general public.

I love the idea of making events (be they presidential debates, the inauguration or athletic events) a communal experience.

The only thing TNT could do better would to give people the option to select from a list of various audio commentaries: comedian (Chris Rock), coach (Bill Walton), legend (Kareem Abdul Jabbar), musician/actor (Jamie Foxx), international experts, etc. C’mon, this would be fun. Imagine a watching The Masters golf tournament with Triumph, the Insult Comic Dog doing the commentary. I’d pay for that!

Click Here For Demo Video