Recently in Social Networking Category
By Mark Macias
How much did you spend on your last political mailer? Does the thought of someone tossing that pamphlet in the trash still disturb you?
I’m still amazed with the number of political candidates who continue to use the postal service as part of their main communications strategy. We aren’t sending birthday and holiday cards in the mail. We don’t fax letters to constituents anymore. So why are we paying thousands of dollars to mail pamphlets that nearly every voting household will label as junk?
The worst part of this communications strategy is that you can never accurately measure its success. Regardless of the research, no one can tell you which voters took the time to read your mailer and which voters threw it away.
What if I told you your campaign could reach thousands of more voters with video and for only a fraction of that mailer budget. Your video would introduce you to voters in a personal way, give them a glimpse of how you speak and what you believe. Your video would be more entertaining and compelling with its natural sound, music and moving parts. And with the power of peer groups, there is a statistically higher chance that your video would be forwarded to undecided voters.
One of the biggest misconceptions about Twitter I think is that it is a social network like Facebook. The founders have indicated Twitter is not a social network, and is in fact geared toward real-time search. The fact is , Twitter and Facebook are completely different in my mind. Twitter has turned “Search” (and the RSS feed) into a human generated activity with sharing information. More importantly, using Twitter applications like Hoot Suite or Tweet Deck we can search on Twitter on any topic-- even ourselves. From there, we can find valuable links to information that people are tweeting about topics we are interested in.
What will get me a bit fired up is when I read
Google should buy Twitter because of the amount of money being poured into Facebook. These two platforms are completely different and do not compete against each other -- because Twitter is not a social network. So that logic makes no sense. Now if an analyst wrote Google should buy Twitter to extend its Search services I would see a bit more of the logic, than just the arms race mentality that is now going on between Google and Facebook, along with reading the ramblings of an analyst that is just getting upset that Google is not buying Twitter to jack up its stock price.
However, Google has already started to bake in real-time relevant Tweets into its search stream (its good to see the Internet is still “open” in that regard). The challenge for Twitter I think will be how it can generate revenue as it costs continue to rise to support this service. Both Google and Facebook receive most (if not all) of their income on targeted ads that appear on the side of the screen. Much of the discussion around Twitter involves the same thought process, which is why you are starting to see “sponsored tweets”.
I know it has been a long hiatus since the last post. Rather than say I have been busy, I will just say I have been really busy.
Lately what I have been thinking about is what most people think about in this industry -- what are the latest trends, where is this all going? You would not think that New York City is the epicenter for tech or for creating new concepts, but it has always been the media capital of the world. To say that digital media is not important for any company is an understatement, which is why we are seeing so much activity from start-ups in New York. And I suspect this will grow even larger in the next 24 months as the adjustment to the economy set in.
Engagement is a popular word when talking about websites. There are many goals when you launch a website, but a key goal is to engage visitors to drive conversions (leads, purchases, comments). However isn’t this stating the obvious?
I bring this up because I was recently asked what my favorite websites were. When I gave this some thought I realized it was not websites that were visually stunning (which is what this person wanted me to say), but it was the sites I was able to find the information I needed or the ones where I was able to interact with others by providing comments because we shared a common interest. It other words I like sites that have substance -- which I think most people do as well. So I would argue even finding the information/community you are looking for is a conversion. Actually a very important one because your site is then viewed as a resource, which the search engines like a lot and it keeps people coming back for more.
Taking this one step further the rise of social networking sites have exploded because they allow us to communicate with our friends and share information from what we deem as a trusted sources. Rather then turning to Google, you can use Twitter to find information as you follow people that share your interests or you can go to a blog to obtain that information and see what your peers are working on and thinking. The important point though is social networking sites are about engagement.
« Search Engine Marketing |
Home |
Archives
