Digitalia | Indianapolis Social Media Marketing

Social Networking Meets Game Consoles

There used to be a time where you could play video games for video games and use the computer for computer related things. These days it is all different. Microsoft's game console, the Xbox 360, has announced that it will be officially rolling out its latest Dashboard update, which includes Facebook, Twitter, and Last.fm. The PS3 has also announced it will be officially rolling out its latest Dashboard update, which includes Facebook. Social networking… Welcome to the new and highly integrated gaming world.

This is something very new and very exciting for many console users.  This will allow you to play some of your favorite video games and have the ability to check Facebook, Twitter, and Last.fm all through your console.

Here is an excerpt about the integration with Facebook and the PS3:

“By linking your PlayStation Network account to your Facebook account, you will have the option for the PS3 to automatically update your Facebook News Feed with Trophy and PlayStation Store activity," writes PSN director Eric Lempel. "This update also enables developers to set specific criteria in their titles to publish additional game information to your News Feed. You can then check out your updates, and those of your friends, on Facebook, Twitter, and other social media favorites through the PS3’s built-in web browser.” Availability? “Soon.” @game_on

One downside of the integration is unless you have a USB keyboard, or an Xbox 360 keypad, you'll have to input text by tapping buttons and pulling triggers with your gamepad.

With social networking now leaving the computer and moving to mobile and game consoles, where does this put us? Will people adjust and use game consoles more for their social networking or will they stick to the traditional mobile/computer devices. What do you think?

Article by: Zach Reed // Firebelly Designer (Follow me @bluetidepro)

Social Media Marketing

Stop tweeting about your emotional break throughs

I'm sorry to say but 140 characters doesn't do your self actualization justice, and frankly no one gives a shit (on twitter anyway). Go to facebook or find some friends. If that doesn't work, try commiserating with the world on fmylife. Of course a shrink can help too. But aren't you tired of people that talk about all kinds of emotional progress. I am. 

So get over yourself, and give us all a break. Or we WILL unfollow you. I'm not just sayin' coz we know thats just plain passive aggression. I mean it. We're over the hype. And, thanks to the dynamic Matthew Inman from The Oatmeal for designing these. 

 

We'd love you to call out tweets that fit this category! If you're a deep diver and want to see the full top 10 list - click here

Duncan Alney Facebook | Twitter | Naymz | Blip.fm | Social Media Marketing

facebook acquires friendfeed: Some thoughts.

Facebook’s mission is to give people the power to share and make the world more open and connected. So, it makes sense that they'd buy Friendfeed and use it to make people able to share more and be more connected.

“Facebook and FriendFeed share a common vision of giving people tools to share and connect with their friends,” said Bret Taylor, a FriendFeed co-founder and, previously, the group product manager who launched Google Maps. “We can’t wait to join the team and bring many of the innovations we’ve developed at FriendFeed to Facebook’s 250 million users around the world.”

Some thoughts:

• Clearly real time search is the future.
• Will people resist bringing all their content - professional and personal - into one place? I predict that there will be a high rate of integration and lots of fall out as well. Twitter might be a better option for staying connected with shallower information. 
• Friendfeed has never really been adopted by the mainstream but it does have some cool features. Being shut down will piss some people off. Who cares I guess.
• Its cool that the founders are cashing out.
• What will this mean for twitter? Is this a #fail for twitter long term? What will twitter do?

Thoughts?

Duncan Alney Facebook | Twitter | Naymz | Blip.fm

Image of the day: How to get fired with a facebook post!

What demographic do you think this is?

I wrote a post about online "social" etiquette a few days ago - seem even more relevant now. Regardless of whether this is embellished or not - the point is clear. Be careful of what you post in the public areas of Facebook. I have to be honest - its pretty damn funny!

Duncan Alney Facebook | Twitter | Naymz | Blip.fm

Client bendin' you over?

Indianapolis' Scofield Editorial captures vendor client relationship dark side

If you live in the marketing, PR, social media, website, or any related field - you can feel this Youtube video. The metaphors are spot on. The virality was presumably driven purely by word of mouth - I'd say email, facebook, and twitter. Its very clever. Here's a quick look at some of the results:

• Comments: 1,079
• Favourites: 7718
• Ratings: 3.053
• Average rating: 4.91

Consider that this video is B to B, and the 1,013,255 views are more impressive. Also interesting is that the most popular demographic is male 35-64 broadly. Nice job, Scofield Editorial - I'd say they deserve an award for great Indianapolis social media usage! Content is king! I'd be interested to see how they've used the virality to generate additional business.

Duncan Alney Facebook | Twitter | Naymz | Blip.fm

Are Facebook Vanity URL's pointless?

After the buzz - what is it worth?

We’ve all noticed the similarities between Facebook  and Twitter lately. Since trying to purchase Twitter earlier this year, Facebook has faced a sort of identity crisis, adopting the question-based status updates, revamped news feed and, most recently, the vanity URL.

Now, people say the vanity URLs add a personal touch to social media and allow users to jump directly to specific pages, rather than searching through hundreds of fans. Seems useful and efficient — exactly what people want and need…in theory.

Clicking through a random sample of every 10 of my 620 friends, 18 had vanity URLs registered. That’s 29% of my profile’s friends, which actually surprised me considering how little I hear Facebook vanity URLs discussed. In the entire Facebook population, the personalized Web addresses are even more popular than among my personal population. Within the first three minutes of the feature’s inception, 200,000 people had registered a custom name. Three days later, nearly 6 million users had jumped on the bandwagon, according to a survey conducted in June.

Despite its quick rise to fame, it seems the feature has flatlined since it was introduced in mid-June. Are vanity URLs on Facebook pointless? On Twitter, they make perfect sense. Tweeple use Twitter for information more so than pictures, videos and other personal information many seek on Facebook. Facebook is about relationships, while Twitter is about networking.

Therefore, it makes sense that if a Twit wants the latest updates from CNN, they will go directly to @cnnbrk. No muss. No fuss. The information you want, and only the information you want. That’s what Twitter is all about.

Facebook…not so much. I guess it might be useful for individual public figures and larger corporations with Fan Pages, who use Facebook in much the same way they use Twitter. But for individual profiles, I don’t see the need for a vanity URL.

Final rant: Where do you find a Facebook profile’s vanity URL? It’s not listed anywhere on the page. It’s not listed when you search a user. You can only make use of the shortcut if the user informs you, and who really remembers to do that? Again, pointless.  Rant over.

Alyson (Follow me! @AlyandtheCity)

Social security

Are you getting burned out? Feeling anxious?

* this was written and posted to my friend Bruce's company's blog. It seems more and more relevant so I'm posting it for you'll to read!

As the leader of a company, and a self-confessed extrovert, I’m constantly communicating: phone calls, e-mails, IMs, Facebook and Twitter messages, blog posts and comments, presentations and panels. It’s a pretty exhausting list, and each has its own unique set of protocols and time commitment.

I’ve noticed that while new avenues for interaction increase communication opportunities, my ability to effectively use these various tools is diminished a little each time I add a new one. Not to mention that adding too many social media tools decreases my ability to spend time hanging out in real life, where, let’s face it, the majority of business and real conversation happens.

Social media conversations have their place—to create and maintain connections based on shared values. They allow us to connect in a deeper, ongoing sense with people without a lot of effort, and that’s a plus.

And yet, there is a growing sense of anxiety that we can’t keep up with it all. While I’m committed to a few online communities and platforms, I will not sacrifice my face-to-face connections. Nor do I want to transition all my online connections into the face-to-face environment. At the same time, I will never shut myself off from connecting with more people. Social media conversation for sure, but face-to-face conversations as well! Consistently and with passion!

But that’s sometimes easier said than done. Are you feeling this same anxiety? And how are you handling it?

Duncan Alney Facebook | Twitter | Naymz

The time has come

Yes, everyone. It's time. Time for this little intern to spread her wings and fly from Firebelly (or be pushed out of the next unexpectedly by Duncan. You choose the visual you prefer!) and venture back into the world where commoners don't understand social media and all of the opportunities it presents; back into the world where aren't thinking about what they need to Tweet or how they can update their status every second of every day; back to a world where I must defend my social media obsession and repeatedly explain why it's so important to thrive as a functioning human being in this computer-driven day-in-age. I have been so spoiled here at Firebelly and learned so much. 

What have I learned? Can I write a novel to answer this question? No? Well, then I'll summarize a few of the major things:

Social media is a conversation, not a lecture: As I've written in a previous blog, social media can't work as a marketing tool if there's no response. You can tweet or update your status all you want about what's coming up next or something new going on at your company, but if you don't respond to comments/advice/feedback from your followers/friends, they'll lose interest. They won't feel connected to you or your company, which is a major purpose of social media marketing. So respond. Be interactive. Take the time to reply to at least one response each day. It will pay off in loyal followers and more personal communication between producer and consumer.

Video is an extremely effective marketing tool: People read and comprehend. They see and comprehend. If they can do both at one time, that's most effective for the company marketing to people. Studies show that people remember 10 percent of what they see, 20 percent of what they hear and 50 percent of what they see and hear. Utilize that statistic by registering for a Youtube page and updating it frequently. Furthermore, people recall 80 percent of what they see, hear and do. So if you can make your videos interactive (i.e. instructing them to click links, get up and do this, anything at all interactive), your videos will be the most effective they can be towards your marketing goal.

Twitter is a legit obsession: Yeah, yeah, I know everyone said this about Facebook, Myspace and every other social media networking Web site that's out there and will be out there in the future. However, Twitter is a rare breed. When you learn how to use it properly, you can't live without it. My TweetDeck is my best friend. As a news junkie, I visit at least 10 news-based Web sites daily. Because I follow them on Twitter, TweetDeck allows me to collect all of those sites' updates in one place and have them fed to me as they are updated. It's pure heaven! I also RT people consistently as a way of giving mad props to someone's thought or Internet find. On the marketing side, #hashtags make searching for what your customers are talking about extremely simple. Learn how to use Twitter to your marketing advantage. You won't regret the time (and/or money, since time is money, as smart business people say) spent on the effort.

Lastly, and most importantly, I learned I love social media and wish to continue working with it in the future. Based on how popular it is now, I don't think that wish will be difficult to grant. I will be continuing my interning life in New York City this summer at an organization that is in the rookie stages of incorporating social media into its marketing strategy. I know I will take the lessons I learned at Firebelly to help that currently small component of the organization to grow into a driving force (like a heard of cattle, right Duncan?)

I send so many thanks to Duncan and the rest of the Firebelly team for allowing me so many opportunities and being so willing to teach me everything they know in the short time I was here. I hope to continue writing/editing/blogging/social media'ing for them in the future.

Alyson (@ Twitter)

Social media is a conversation, not a lecture

During my last couple months at Firebelly, one of the major things Duncan has taught me about social media marketing is that it is a conversation. No matter what network you’re using, if someone responds to a tweet, writes on your wall or sends you a message, the key to gaining loyal followers is to respond.

Social media is a conversation, not a lecture.

Because I am in my early 20s, I’m going to use Jimmy Fallon as support for my point. On his new talk show on NBC, Fallon is all about using social media to connect to fans (See my past post on his social networking chops for more details). 

Although Fallon uses Facebook, vlogs, blogs and everything in between, Twitter is definitely his most popular social media site.  On the day this blog was written, Fallon had around 598,000 followers. (I’m estimating the number because during the 30 minutes it took me to write this blog, his followers jumped by 500). Comparatively, NBC’s “The Office” Rainn Wilson, who has the same target market of 18 to 25-year-olds as Fallon, has roughly 398,700 followers.

Although their follower numbers aren’t too far apart, the activity of both gentleman is vastly different. Both men @ reply. Both men retweet (@RT). Both of these activities make conversation with fans, so both men are doing as Duncan instructs. They help fans feel engaged. Knowing your favorite celebrity is reading your comments and taking the time to respond builds loyalty unlike simply tweeting without responding (aka using your Twitter as a diary rather than an instant messaging system) ever could or will.

But Wilson could kick it up a notch. Let’s take a look at the numbers on Tweetstats.com for both gentlemen’s Twitters to demonstrate why in facts and figures.

Jimmy Fallon

Tweets last month (March): 349

Tweets per day last month (March): 7.5

Replies To: 58.23% of total tweets (more than half of his tweeting is @s!)

Rainn Wilson

Tweets last month (March): 179

Tweets per day last month (March): 4.8

Replies To: 14.12% of total tweets

See the difference? It can be inferred from this information that if Wilson stepped up the tweeting, @s and @RTs, he could also increase his followers to hit Fallon’s following number in no time.

So if you’re trying to market yourself or your business, get @ing to your followers! Answer their questions, respond to their direct messages, be engaged. Your fans will feel connected to you and, therefore, be loyal. And loyalty is the key to any good marketing strategy, whether personal or for your company.

~ Alyson ~ @ Twitter

Time to call it quits?

Earlier this week, Facebook CFO Gideon Yu parted ways with the popular online networking Web site. Why? Facebook headquarters claimed it was because the company needed someone with more public-company experience (Keep in mind this is the man who previously held the CFO spot at Youtube and negotiated the video sharing Web site’s $1.65 billion acquisition with Google). But that must only be part of the reason. A later memo Facebook CEO and founder Mark Zuckerberg sent out says the reason involved family: “Gideon’s family is his highest priority and it’s certainly not the usual cliché to say that he plans to take some time off to be with his wife and son.”

Yu’s not the only one who has jumped ship since the company’s beginnings. It started with five founders. Now Zuckerberg’s flying solo.

The question is, what’s going wrong? What is so bad at Facebook that money-minded business moguls are leaving one of the most potentially profitable companies in the world.

Many blogs blame it on Zuckerberg himself. Gawker was so bold to suggest Zuckerberg should resign (or at least back off the leading role for a while) and let someone else take the reins to bring the company back on track and train Zuckerberg to get back in the saddle.

 In case you’ve been out of the social media network, here are some slipups Zuckerberg has made recently:

The Terms of Service Debacle: The Terms of Service was changed to suggest Facebook would keep users’ information forever, even after they’ve deactivated their account. Facebookers were not cool with this. It resulted in Zuckerberg instituting a policy where users can have a say in future changes execution.

The Recent Redesign: Facebook is a following Twitter…literally. The company that had always been praised for being unique and visionary instituted a message delivery system freakishly similar to Twitter’s tweet stream. Facebook asks the question, “What’s on your mind?” rather than “What are you doing?” Again, users were outraged. But did Zuckerberg listen to user feedback as promised after the Terms of Service catastrophe? Just the opposite, actually. He told his staff to ignore user feedback, and Zuckerberg personally deleted any employee concerns from his news feed. And that brings us to...

The Executive Exodus: They’re all jumping ship, as we mentioned earlier. It’s apparently because Zuckerberg is becoming a total tyrant. According to sources quoted in a recent “The Business Insider” article, the Harvard dropout no longer allows open disagreement or discussion of his ideas in meetings. But that was a major contributor to his success in the first place. Now, employees say the company is completely image-focused.. And apparently so is Zuckerberg. The article quotes a source saying he’s “unbearable,” letting all the media hype about his technology genius go to his head.

What do you think? Is it time for Zuckerberg to call it quits for a while so he doesn’t run his business empire into the ground before its even reached its full potential?

~ Alyson ~ @ Twitter

Jimmy Fallon boosts TV audience engagement with social media

SNL-star-turned-late-night host Jimmy Fallon is a new kid on the block in the talk show community, but he’s already using the latest and greatest in online, interactive media to gather a loyal audience.

Fallon began using video blogs to build hype for “Late Night with Jimmy Fallon” long before the show’s debut Monday, March 2. Fans could go to his NBC page and watch his preparation process for his late-night debut. He was also in the social media world but wasn’t using it for marketing potential (His Twitter account gave endorsements for Waffle House and requests for tech support).

Now that the show has aired, Fallon has spread his digital wings further into the social media world and is using outlets like Twitter and Facebook to start a real conversation with his audience and get tech savvy with the show’s segments.

For example, with one of his first guests, Cameron Diaz, Fallon Tweeted his followers, asking them to submit questions for Diaz. The questions weren’t hard-hitting journalism, but they did create instant audience engagement by helping audience members feel like a part of the process using social media.

Yes, this could always be done with e-mail, but using Twitter is a way to focus in on the hottest trends in his strongest demographic of college-aged viewers in less than 140 characters.

And so far, it seems to be working. 

At the end of January, Fallon had a mere 25,000 followers and now has more than 250,000.

Fallon also invited Facebook to the game, having fun with the always-interesting Facebook statuses. A camera scanned the audience with a digital screenshot of Facebook, giving names and statuses to random audience members.

Fallon hasn’t incorporate Twitter and Facebook since, but it’s only the second week of his show. He is, however, constantly updating his accounts, replying directly to fan Tweets and adding videos of backstage footage.

What are your thoughts? Is the use of social media in Fallon’s style a smart way for TV shows to boost viewership by softening the barrier of the TV screen? 

Alyson (@ Twitter)

Social Networking Sites Surpass Email In Popularity and Facebook Continues Its Wildfire Growth

A new study by Nielsen Online revealed that 66.8% of global Internet users accessed social networking sites in 2008, compared to 65.1% for email. Users also spent 63% more time on online social communities in 2008 than they did in 2007. 

Facebook, the top social network in all countries except Brazil, Germany and Japan, saw growth of 566% in time users spent on it. Facebook also saw 12.4 million users aged 35-49 join in 2008 - making "older" users their fastest growing demographic.

Myspace is still in the game, however, and remains the most profitable social network. It generated an estimated $1 billion in revenue last year - compared to Facebook's $300 million.

- Chad Richards facebook | twitter | linkedin

The evolution of black hat tactics and the skinny of twitter

Interview with Dave Naylor and Todd Friesen

I've had some interesting interviews - educational, academic, and oh-so-polite. This is a different interview. It's sort of exhilarating to listen to these two big dogs' almost stream of consciousness dialogue on what black hat was, and how its white hat now.

The activities discussed ranged from buying links, hacking .edu sites and placing links, 301 redirects from expired domains, resurrecting old sites with key word relevant content translated from English to German and back to English add some ad-sense blocks and more, DNS poisoning, spreading rumors about the competition, and much more. No question that what was black before is grey now, if not white; and that the eastern bloc and India are the churners and burners in 2009. I agree completely, by the way, with the declaration on full client disclosure. The take away point is clearly that smart marketers are here for the long term and don't engage in dangerous tactics that can get a site banned and even result in jail time.

Anyway, here's the background on these fellows:

David Naylor (DaveN) is a Search Engine Optimization and Search Marketing bad ass. He's led huge campaigns for all kinds of companies. He leads Bronco Internet. And he's an engaging guy - in a presentation or one-on-one.

Todd Friesen, Position Technologies, is considered by many to be an SEO pioneer. He's worked with top-name clients and is co-host of the popular SEO Rockstars on WebmasterRadio.FM, as well as a regular speaker at Search Engine Strategies, WebmasterWorld Pubcon, SMX and other conferences.

And, by the way, the video is mis-labeled. David is labeled as Todd and vice versa. Whatever. The content is what matters.

On a lighter note, Dave and Todd both "blame Google for everything",  theorize that "Twitter's in bed with Google" and agree that Twitter is the new instant messenger. Neither care to be assailed by rubbish third-party applications on Facebook.

Enjoy!

Duncan Alney Facebook | Twitter | Naymz