Marketing
The Whole Privacy Debacle
Jun 13th
So, tons of people have been all up in arms over privacy online. This is mainly headed by Facebook, but it comes up anytime information is shared, whether it is being shared with other people or with advertisers.
However, I have a huge problem with this. Like, boil my blood, go crazy frustrated. Users seem to miss a few MAJOR points when they get mad about this:
- Ultimately, it is the users fault. If they dont sign up, nothing is shared. If they dont share something, it doesn’t get out in public. If they dont read the notices on their accounts, its their fault.
- Sharing information is GOOD for the person. I prefer to share things like my location and information about my interests. Why? Google Latitude will tell me about my traveling. As will TripIt. Facebook will serve me more relevant ads, and Google will tailor my search results to my location. All networks, knowing my social graph, will allow me to leverage my friends even more.
- The downfalls of sharing have not shown themselves to me. If you are able to point them out, please post them in the comments.
Many people’s objections are not about the sharing itself, but how networks manage privacy. It more of a meta-getting pissed off about privacy. I cant describe how selfish and stupid that argument is. Facebook has 400 MILLION users. How is one, or even 30,000 (the number who participated in “Quit Facebook Day” ) user’s opinion enough to sway Facebook.
So people, figure out the settings. Look through the settings, play with them, and only share what you want. You are 100% in control of you, and your online persona.
Lacking Context
Mar 31st
The other day, while writing code to work with Viralheat (for an SMCpros client), it hit me. The flaw, the thing that I dislike about ANY social media monitoring tool (although, I do love ViralHeat, because their RESTful API kicks some serious tail).
Its a lack of context.
No tool out there (and I have demoed most of them) can give context to a tweet. They assign sentiment based on a database of wordlists of what is positive and what is negative. They have no way of telling if someone is just being snarky, if they are in a foul mood, or even if they use pronouns. If I tweet “Man, @twitter is the best company to work for” followed by “They really know their stuff, great job”, all tools will only grab the first one. Same goes if I am tweeting bad things. This issue is joined with the issue that there is not a ton of follow up-when a rep from a company responds to someone tweeting, not much is done to see how it changes the sentiment regarding that company. Mentions of a brand are treated like islands-concise, self-contained bubbles of information, not a chain of data.
Now, being someone who sits right at the intersection of Social street and Developer drive, I am going to fix this. I cant tell you too much about it (believe me, I will when I can), but know that we are making a solution. We want to provide context, and more layers and views of data, to the social sphere. More abilities for people to view data, more ways to use all the data that is being generated by everyone.
Location based apps and privacy
Feb 24th
Over the few months, I have been putting two of the top location-based mobile applications through their paces in our fair cities. The contestants were Foursquare, the location-based game from the creators of Dodgeball, and Gowalla, a startup that is new to the scene, but shows promise.
Before I get to the reviews of each, and how well they work in our cities, I want to write a quick word on the privacy issues that are coming up. Last week, people found out about PleaseRobMe.com, which aggregates all of the checkins from these location-based apps. The idea is that, if you are checked in somewhere else, you must not be at home, therefore making it a target. This also fits in with a story that I heard eariler on Twitter, about someone who was out to eat and received phone calls from “randoms” because they saw she was checked-in there.
As someone who has been using location-based games for longer than many, I can tell you that it can be dangerous, and it can be safe. Sure, boradcasting where you are can lead to your home being a target for theft, but so can having your answering machiene answer calls-its another signal you are not home. Same goes for putting wedding notices in the paper-it is a gaurentee that you will not be home. When it comes to getting phone calls, I would simply like to point out that no one can see your number unless 1) you are a friend of them or 2) you post it on Twitter/Facebook etc. If you use common sense when adding friends, you will have no privacy worries.
On the surface, Foursquare and Gowalla share many characteristics, namely the idea behind them-it is a good way to figure out where you friends are, what they are up to, and to join them in what they are doing. However, the similarities are only skin deep.
Foursquare is just under a year old, yet has gained a worldwide audiance, and plenty of media coverage. Despite not being the most-used location based network out there (that crown goes to MyTown), it is the one that has been getting the coverage. Foursquare is one of the few Web 2.0 companies that have a business plan, revenue, and are making money. They do this by making everyhing in the service into one big game-user compete to become mayor, get awarded badges for their work, and are ranked on a leaderboard. Sure, this leads to some gaming of the system, but it also paves the way for social media to get integrated offline into marketing plans: One of Foursquare’s best ideas is that of a “mayor special”, which rewards the user that has the most check-ins in the last 60 days with anything from a free drink to a free meal. This is a big shift for a few reasons:
- It moves loyalty programs from a punch card in your wallet to and online experience
- It turns a simple “Your 10th coffee is free” campaign into a game, which drives users to go to a location more often, in hope of either protecting or stealing the mayorship.
- It encourages more interaction, rather than just a one-to-one transaction: I know of several places that I frequent that I have gotten to know others based on their check-ins, and am trying to go there more often to hold on to my mayorship.
Gowalla, on the other hand, is all about the social aspect. There is no real business model yet, and their application focuses on dropping/picking up items at different location, and going on “trips” with your friends. These trips consist of a set of locations to visit and check-in at. The founders see Gowalla as a way to find and share locations in your city. Not as game-changing as Foursquare, but still a really good idea.
The startups also differ on their technology, and this is where Foursquare really begins to shine locally. Foursquare relies on users and Google Maps to provide their location information, and Skyhook for figuring out location. This leads to having most of the places you vist show up in the database, ready for you to check-in at without missing a stride. I have only needed to add 3 locations since I joined nearly a year ago, and have checked-in about 500 times. Foursquare also uses its users to maintain the location database-if you earn “super user” status, you can remove closed venues, or merge 2 listings into one. This allows them to operate with a staff in the single digits, while maintaining a robust POI database.
Foursquare also has applications for Android OS, iPhone OS, and Blackberry OS, a mobile website for non-smartphones, and also a check-in syntax for text messages. If you have a mobile phone, you can play Foursquare.
Gowalla currently has an app for the iPhone (none for the iPod touch), an early beta app for the Android platform, and a mobile website that only works on Webkit-based browsers (currently the iPhone and Android, although rumors out of the Mobile World Congress suggest that Blackberry is getting one in 2010). Using it on my new Motorola Droid was a decent experiance, but you can tell that it is an early version-it is buggy, and missing several key features. Using the mobile app was ok, but the location feature was off-Google Maps would have me at my exact location, and Gowalla would put me several blocks away.
I was also not able to check-in anywhere that I went without creating the spot. I am not sure if this is because of the location issue, or if their database is that much smaller. Adding a spot is not hard, it is just rather annoying considering the simplicity that Foursquare’s large database provides.
If someone asked me to recomend one, it is Foursquare, hands down. Better experience, more users, and a bigger database all give it the win. This goes doubly so if you are a business-the integration of businesses into Foursquare’s model is top-notch. I was recently at CES, and the minds at Intel and Foursquare created a bunch of badges specific to the event, which is a really fun way to get people to both use their service and get them to brag about their trip to their other geeks, thus creating buzz.
Get your skills
Feb 19th
In addition to getting out and networking with other verticals, anyone in social media needs to get more skills.
You need to know web, or ppc, or analytics, or something. My litmus test for people who talk about social media is to ask them what else they do-if they only do social, I am weary.
Personally, I know web. I do websites, I am working on webapps, I do analytics, and I am integrating all of them.
Others may do things like pr. While I may diss pr from time to time, if you really know it, you are solid.
Social media is not a hard skill. Get those skills, or you will fall behind.
All-in-One SEO is a lie (or, How To Fail at SEO)
Feb 2nd
All over the web, people are using WordPress. I use it here, and on the 5 other blogs I control.
Like many other people, I use All in One SEO pack. However, many people are ONLY using AIOSEO.
And that is how to fail at SEO.
Do not get me wrong, there is some value in AIOSEO. However, there is less value than you would like.
Most of what AIOSEO is about is the tags. They let you set meta tags from a nice GUI, which is all fine and good, except no search engine that matters cares about them.
And, while people are spending hours setting up their plugin, they are allowing their site to function without a sitemap, without a robots.txt, and with a horrible internal linking structure that is causing PageRank to dissipate before it has a chance to really help out.
SEO is not just stuffing meta-tags and checking the right boxes in a plugin. It is a strategy, an art, and a science. It involves planning, thinking, testing, and executing.
There is value in AIOSEO. You should still set it up. However, make that a small part of your SEO, and focus on what really matters.
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The two types of experts
Feb 1st
In this post, I am not talking about just online things. It applies all around.
There are two types of experts in the world-teaching experts and thinking experts.
Teaching experts are the ones that have a very good grasp on the field, but do not push the edges of it. They are renowned as educators, but when it comes to innovation, they tend to be lacking.They don’t tend to be kept up late at night thinking about their vocation, but rather they think about how to better deliver their message.
By comparision, thinking experts seldom make good teachers. They always tend to go to fast, be too abstract, and spend too much time on theory and the future. I tend to fall into this catagory-more often than not, the feedback I get when I present is that I need to slow down, because I take off developing a theory and forget what I am supposed to be teaching. These are the experts that stay awake all night just to work something out, or to go to bed a little smarter than they were when they woke up. (Thanks, Warren Buffet).
I am not saying that one is better than the other, or that they are mutually exclusive. This is one of those points to be cognitive of if you want to become an expert in your chosen field-are you going to be a teaching expert or a thinking expert.
The Social Media Tipping point
Jan 11th
I think that we are very close to the point when a majority of businesses “get” that they need social media. Which is HUGE. It moves social media firmly out of snake oil and into marketing/advertising/PR/whereveryouwanttoputit.
It means that social media agencies (like the one I am a part of) will keep growing, keep expanding, and keep building.
Why do I think we are so close? For one, look at how many malls/cafes/stores have accounts, and signs up promoting them. For instance, while at CES in Las Vegas, most of the casinos had a social media presence. Most used them fairly well, too. Nearly every company there had a twitter account, and the @intlCES account was very useful during the show.
However, there is still more to do. Even if companies get that they need it, and even those that try it themselves, companies still need help. They are not in the marketing business, they are in the widget cranking business.
A lot has been made about how social media doesn’t need experts, or comapnies can just do it themselves. I think that this is a VERY dangerous assumption. Do companies handle their own legal issues? Finance? Marketing? Usually, the answer is no. Why would they then jump into doing their own social media, which is just as complex and requires more innovation?
Neverless, the tipping point is arriving. Are you going to be creating good strategy to help companies with it, or are you still going to sell snake oil?
