Posted on Wed, Oct 28, 2009
Today’s Daily Bytes looks at facts from Marketing Profs summary of its new Digital Marketing Factbook, stories from ClickZ on social media success stories that are thankfully not Comcast, Jet Blue or Dell and the issues companies and individuals face in social media from Web Strategy by Jeremiah Owyang.
Digital Marketing Factbook: A Glimpse Inside
We sometimes don’t realize how much our web usage can change in five years. This chart put together from a recent survey conducted by the Online Publishers Association and published in the Marketing Profs Factbook clearly illustrates the shift:
The post includes some other interesting data from The Factbook which collects data collected from marketers and consumers. The topics surveyed include which digital marketing tools are most effective, what consumer actions result from email marketing, what are the most important emal marketing initiatives in 2009, the value of different digital resources in influencing purchase decisions, and how firms are using social media for marketing purposes. The post is lengthy, rich with charts and obviously a promotion to get you to buy The Factbook for $ 199.
Social Media Is Tailor-Made for SMB’s
Dave Evans in ClickZ focuses on how SMB’s are leveraging their nimbleness and agility to succeed in social media. His three examples are companies that are far bigger than the average SMB, but great examples of how ingenuity, focus and an understanding of one’s consumer can be really helpful to building a business:
Benjamin Moore, the long-lived paints and coatings company owned by Berkshire Hathaway has developed an iPhone app – ColorCapture Ben - where if you see a color you like you can scan it in and match it to a Benjamin Moore paint color. This is so cool. I could have used this when I painted much of my house. I can’t tell you how many times I had issues going to the paint store as I didn’t have the paint swatch. I also did more investigating on this application online and found out that this application has already received awards and coverage in the New York Times.
Slingshot Sports, a leading producer of wakeboards, put together a program around the online wakeboard community and ProductPulse, a Facebook and MySpace product sharing and voting application. The result was getting product design ideas from the community as well as 350,000 views from enthusiasts on Facebook.
Skullcandy, a leading maker of cool headsets and earbutds, just enterest India and leveraged Twitter to secure a good market launch.
Your Company May Own Your Tweets, Pokes, and You Tube Videos
What if an employee opens up their Facebook account on your watch? What if they are creating and uploaind You Tube videos at work? Who owns the content? You or the employee. The entire playing field of social media is a hornet’s nest of issues. Jeremiah Owyang aptly points out many of the issues and the need for companies to establish firm policies in this realm. This is a great piece and a must read for business leaders.
Posted on Mon, Oct 26, 2009
Today’s Daily Bytes looks at the end of the static website, metrics for measuring the ROI of your search marketing efforts, and the evolution of Social Media over the last 40+ years.
Death watch: Static destination websites
The destination website, where companies pour all their digital resources into maintaining their websites, has come to an end with the rise of social media and distributed content throughout the web. In this post, Shel Holz, known digital communications expert, blogger and author, points out that the destination website is not dead. He points out that “the static company website has a new purpose.”
ROI is the New Ranking
In ClickZ, search engine marketing expert Julie Batten advises that businesses need to treat their SEO efforts like they would any marketing or promotional activity. In order to do that, businesses need to have a “strong measurement framework in place”. She argues that standard metrics like keyword rankings/positioning, number of pages indexed, number of inbound links and page rank are less important to developing that framework. In this very useful post, she provides insights as to which measures are now more important and how to calculate “Organic ROI”.
The History and Evolution of Social Media
This post from Webdesigner Depot is not a “byte”-sized piece! It covers the 40+ years of social media’s evolution. And to think that we often think of it as something that just emerged! I suggest reading the post in detail when you can. In the meantime, I have summarized the historical timeline below [much like I would have done preparing for a history exam in school!]:
Precursors to Social Media: 70’s, 80’s and 90’s:
- Usernets
- Bulletin Board Systems
- Online services, e.g. Prodigy and Compuserve
- IRC [Internet Relay Chat], ICQ and Instant Messaging
Early Social Networks – The Late 90’s:
- Dating Sites
- Forums
- Six Degrees
- Asian Avenue, MiGente, BlackPlanet
- LiveJournal
- World of Warcraft
Major Advances in Social Networking – Early to Mid 00’s:
- Friendster
- Hi5
- LinkedIn
- MySpace
- Facebook
Niche Social Networks: Mid 00’s:
- Ning
- Company-Sponsored Social Networks
- Media Sharing
- Photobucket
- Flickr
- You Tube
- Revver
Social News and Bookmarking: Mid-00’s:
Real Time Updates: Late 00’s:
- Twitter
- Posterous
- Tumblr
- iPhone’s Role in Real-Time Updates
Lifestreaming and Lifecasting: Late 00’s:
- Ustream.tv
- Justin.tv
- FriendFeed
The piece also goes into analysis of the trends, concerns and criticisms of social media as well as social media’s role in pop culture.
What are your thoughts about where it is evolving going forward?