11 October 2008

Sometimes it’s the small things that make a real difference. And I’m not even talking about the remarkable stuff. That small something could be enough to motivate you, or de motivate you if it doesn’t exist (see Herzberg’s Motivation-Hygiene Theory).

Can you imagine Google if you had to click on the text box every time you went to the homepage? Or the frustration someone has when they’re shopping online, the page times out and they have to start again? Or even getting my morning coffee and not seeing a smile from the girl behind the counter?

If you’re not going to be remarkable, at least get the small stuff right.

What small thing makes a difference to you? Good or bad, online or offline.

Posted by Zac Martin

09 October 2008

Gen Y just doesn’t care about their privacy.

Speaking as one of them, I am not worried about the information that goes up on my social networking profiles. I share personal information every day and tagged in photos every Monday morning after a big weekend. And there are some shocking ones.

The reason I bring this up is because Gen X’s are constantly telling me that this is going to affect my career with employers frowning upon such behaviour. But I disagree. Sooner or later employers are going to release that the high majority of Gen Y have at least one Facebook photo that shows them partying, drinking or worse. Interestingly, I don’t have a problem with complete transparency or the need to hide what I do in my own time.

What’s going to be really interesting is when Gen Y takes a majority in the workplace and they (we) become the employers of the next generation, what ever they’re called. Can you even imagine what the social norms will be then?

I actually have a link to my Facebook page in my email signature. And I send emails to potential future employers every day. I’m not worried about the photos they will see. Although sooner or later someone might realise I only have one suit and two shirts that I have to keep alternating.

Posted by Zac Martin

08 October 2008

Take a look at this video…

 

 

I wouldn’t say this is a perfect social media campaign, but it’s definitely a step in the right direction. No banner ads and no spam.

Instead they’ve developed something for free and provided value to a community.

The biggest problem is the microsite. It’s not up yet… fools.

Posted by Zac Martin

05 October 2008

Chris Anderson is pretty much a genius. His work on The Long Tail is pretty much amazing and his latest ideas about Free have really taken my interest.

A couple of weeks ago I posted some of my concepts for new media business models. A couple of days later David Armano posted this diagram which lead me to Chris’s work.

In a moment of the light bulb going off in my head I realised my models almost perfectly fit the first three of his Models of Free.

Read both my post and his for a deeper understand but basically…

Punchbowl Model = Free 1 (direct cross subsidy, get one thing and pay for another)
Ninja Model = Free 2 (Ad supported, third party subsides second party)
Gervais Model and Radiohead Model = Free 3 (“Freemium”, a few people subsidise everyone else)

I just thought it was really cool to see some of my ideas backed up by theory. Chris even blogged about it here.

Posted by Zac Martin

01 October 2008

We have a problem.

Its realisation comes after Telstra Bigpond raised a legal issue over their Twitter account.

They had worries about breaching the 2003 Spam Act. Currently, their legal department is trying to determine if their communications could be considered a commerical electronic message, in which case would be against the law.

The Australian Government Department of Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy has this to say about the issue…

The Spam Act 2003 prohibits the sending of spam, which is identified as a commercial electronic message sent without the consent of the addressee via email, short message service (SMS), multimedia message service (MMS) or instant messaging. The requirements under the Spam Act apply to all commercial electronic messages, including both bulk and individual messages.
Meanwhile the Australian Communications and Media Authority defines spam as…
Any message that doesn’t meet the following three conditions is defined as spam…

+ Consent – The message must be sent with consent of the consumer.
+ Identify – The message must contain accurate information about the person or organisation that authorised the sending of the message.
+ Unsubscribe – The message must contain a functional ‘unsubscribe’ facility to allow you to opt out of receiving messages from that source.
As social media marketers, we should be worried. And not just about Twitter. Any social media response unit could be breaching the Spam Act 2003. A comment on a blog post doesn’t have consent. Nor does a post on a YouTube video.

I don’t know much about this area of law, but this is definitely something we should be looking into.

Anyone with some more information is always welcome to comment.

Posted by Zac Martin

30 September 2008

In a great initiative by Telstra, Bigpond have set themselves up on Twitter. What a great way to connect to their customers.

But, like in so many cases, old practises don’t work with new media. They’ve almost applied the same rules you would to writing your customer a letter.

You’ll notice that nearly every one of their responses is the same spammed message on where to send an email. Instead of directly dealing with the issue at hand, they lead the customer to another place. And the tweets aren’t even unique, just copy paste jobs.

You’ll also notice the ® after every use of the term BigPond. Lame. And not very personal.

I think it’s great to see them jump on board. So so so much potential. But at the moment they’re not really Twittering, just using Twitter.

Hopefully their social media response team isn’t just on Twitter and will respond to this blog post too.

So what is a good example of a company using Twitter? Check out NASA, and even then they’re only using it as a broadcast.

Posted by Zac Martin

28 September 2008

I love when brands show a fun side. Google does it a lot. Not only does it humanise them, but I think it shows the people who work for them are passionate. Here’s one I recently discovered…

If you’re a Facebook user, go to Settings, Account Settings, Language and select English (Pirate).

Abandon Ship!

Posted by Zac Martin

24 September 2008

The front page of this week’s B&T says social media marketing is about to become massive. Of course some of us have known this for a long time.

Roy Morgan is moving into word of mouth and social media research. The Population has just launched, one of the first pure social media agencies. Neilsen Online is montioring conversation buzz in the blogosphere. And Nestle has just launched Australia’s biggest social media campaign costing around $1 million.

Except the campaign is shit. And not even a social media campaign.

In fact, I feel like I’m almost going to repeat myself word for word.

Once again we’re seeing traditional approaches towards new media. The Chunga Championship campaign is about a fake character who plays a fake game. He has a fake blog. And a fake Facebook page. And a YouTube channel. All of which will die in three months.

There is no integration of the brand. There is no content creation with consumers. In fact there is no engaging with consumers at all. No influential people or niche communities have even been asked to join their conversation.

But there are banner ads. Lots of banner ads. Oh dear.

John Broome, head of Nestle’s confectionery marketing responded to the $1 million cost and future campaigns saying, “I think we’ll see ourselves going above that… A lot will depend on the success of this particular campaign.”

In my eyes this campaign will not succeed (I wonder what metrics they will be using to measure its success anyway?).

Lets say, just hypothetically, this campaign flops. Nestle aren’t not going to run another social media campaign any time soon. Even though this isn’t really a social media campaign.

Surely there are better ways to spend $1 million?

Posted by Zac Martin

22 September 2008

My good friend Julian Cole loves to compare social media with the music industry. I certainly hope social media won’t collapse on itself like the music industry, but the analogy is a great one. And now I will attempt to further this analogy… somewhat loosely.

Every brand (band) has its evangelists (groupies or fans). And with social networking sites bringing in big numbers, brands are attempting to capitalise on this. It would appear there are two approaches when it comes to Facebook (if you were to ignore banner ads… which you should). The first being Groups and the second Fan Pages.

The question is… when should you use which (or at all)?

Facebook Group

Too often a marketing team will rush in to make a Facebook Group. And much like a blog, this should be a long term strategy, not a quick fix to make sure you’re part of this new Web 2.0 trend that happens on the Internets.

But many people find Groups somewhat useless after being established. A sudden rush of your evangelists will join but then the curve will start to flatten and eventually turn into a trickle.

That’s because there has been a change in Facebook behaviour with the introduction of Fan Pages. People no longer use Groups as a badge of honour to sit on their page. Given this change, Groups have become high involvement tools, for both the consumer and the marketer. People sign up to Groups wanting more than just the name, they want interaction and response. So when can you use a Facebook Group?

I’m currently the Marketing Officer for MONSU Caulfield, the Monash Student Union. I look after a lot of our promotional side of things as well as bit of branding and communication. Part of this role includes working with our Facebook Group. Over the past year we’ve seen the Group go from 300 to 900 members and only now am I realising how and what it can be effectively used for.

The Events feature has been implemented perfectly on Facebook. Through the group we run regular parties and other events that we invite people to. These have great responses and I know personally instead of checking my diary, I check my Events schedule to see what I’m doing each weekend.

Through the private messaging system we can send out notifications to up to 1,200 people. We are able to easily set up and build awareness for our events, communicate with people and it doesn’t even cost a cent.

Key Point
Set up a Facebook Group only when you have a really passionate following of consumers who want to engage and join the conversation.

Facebook Fan Page

Fan Pages are very different. Upon being introduced, they have changed the way people interact with Groups.

A Fan Page, for the most part, act as a badge of honour. On rare occasion will you actually have someone return to your page looking for information.

However, it does work well to build awareness by appearing in fans’ News Feeds. Particularly with those more influence members, a Fan Page can quickly spread and build even without an invite option.

These usually work well with products or brands that are iconic. Usually popular mainsteam icons tend to do well, such as Nutella with 561,000 fans (interestingly this page is very active, perhaps they’d have been better off with a Group?). Celebrities such as Jack Black do well with 186,000 fans and TV characters also stand out like Barney Stinson with 56,000.

However your icon doesn’t necessarily have to have mainstream popularity. Mi Goreng Instant Noodles has over 45,000 fans. For a brand that does no traditional advertising, not too bad at all.

Key Point
Set up a Fan Page if you have a strong icon, but not necessarily a mainstream one, that build awareness through peer influence. Low to no involvement needed once established.

So before you get the intern to create a Facebook Group or Fan Page because you want to be seen as more Web 2.0, consider what you’re trying to achieve as each does different things. Importantly, also consider if you even need one to begin with.

Posted by Zac Martin