Wednesday, September 24, 2008

Social Media Marketing in Australia

There is much buzz about social media marketing in Australia at the moment, which is great news for us. We have been delivering social media marketing to our customers for around 2 years and have a few stories to share.

One of the interesting things is oldskool advertising agencies trying to setup Social Media Marketing divisions without much experience in delivering real results. At the end of the day, they are all experimenting with their clients budgets.

At shifted pixels, we have been pulled into failed Social Media Marketing campaigns for a number of large marketing and advertising agencies to help them recover their positions and not look like complete jackasses to their fortune 500 clients.

So what can we share with you about Social Media Marketing? Well here are the tips of what not to do.

1. Social Media Marketing is not about spreading old creative in new ways

2. Social Media Marketing is not about shouting your traditional media marketing message in new channels

3. Social Media Marketing is a dangerous space. Your audience can revolt and take your message and use it against you

4. Bloggers are smarter and more influential in their networks than you are. Don't abuse them, dont spam them.

5. You need to approach social media - relationship first.

6. If you are interesting enough to create an environment in which social media groups care about you, you might then earn the opportunity to talk about your product.

7. You can't "polish a turd". If your product stinks - Social media marketing can't help you.

We will share more Social Media Marketing case studies in upcoming posts. Make sure you subscribe via email in the sidebar.

If you are interested here are some older / related posts in this space

If you have any questions or feedback, be sure to leave a comment.

Labels: communities, consumer, marketing 2.0, social media, Social Media Marketing, social media optimisation, Sydney Marketing Agency

Posted by Nick HaC @ 10:23 PM

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Thursday, June 5, 2008

How to choose a Social Media Agency

There has been much discussion within the fast growing social media engagement / online PR space about how to be effective and actually deliver great results. So we put together a hit list of selection criteria for engaging a Social Media or Online PR agency.

1. Do they walk the talk?

Does your social media agency actively engage is social media themselves? For example you could look and see if they are active participants in social networks (FaceBook, LinkedIn, MySpace), Social News (Digg, Reddit, NewsVine), Social Bookmarking (Del.icio.us, furl) and Social Micro Communities (Twitter, Pownce etc).

2. Can they demonstrate measurable success from past Social Media Marketing campaigns?

Just like web marketing, social media marketing and online pr is 100% measurable and trackable. As a result any quality social media agency should be able to clearly demonstrate measurable success for their past clients as well as show you campaigns that are in action today.

3. Are they engaging in User Generated Content as an agency?

Does your social media agency produce and participate in User Generated Content? For example they should probably by default have a business blog, but do their staff have blogs? Do they have a Podcast? Do they create video content for a Web TV show or on youtube/vimeo/viddler? Your agency and its staff should ideally be active participants in creating user generated content.

4. Your agency should be aware of the changes in social media?

As quickly as social media has become a viable business opportunity for marketing and communications - it is changing. Emerging Social Media influences and Social Media Channels are happening everyday. Social Media isnt just digg, youtube and facebook. Sites like uStream, Pownce and Tumblr as well as niche channels like GreyDoorBooks.com are emerging everyday - and these sites matter!

5. Which social media channels will be engaged?

There are more than 240 major social media sites and growing fast. Your agency should have a statistically sound mechanism for identifying which Social Media sites will have the most effective impact for your customers and sales demographics. With out a clear methodology for evaluating, reporting and engaging the different Social Media channels you may be blowing marketing and PR dollars into the wind.

6. How will Social Media Campaigns be reported?

How will your agency track and report Social Media successes and failures? If Social Media marketing is about engaging in consumer conversations to gain influence, then which conversations where engaged in, and how much influence was or wasn't gained? This needs to be collected, analysed and reported.

It's also important to understand that Social Media metrics also are entirely distinct from traditional web metrics. Your offsite consumer engagement is not measured by your unique homepage views or other traditional web statistics package. What metrics will your agency use to measure success?

There is as much to learn from Social Media as a market research and brand insights channel as much as there is for quick wins on the marketing and PR front. How does your agency ensure their reporting reflects that? The model of "trust us we're the experts" doesn't cut it in an age of transparency, measurability and accountability in social media marketing and online PR.

7. What is your Social Media Agency's point of difference?

Many digital marketing and traditional PR agencies are quickly rebranding their existing services as Social Media Optimisation or Social Media Marketing etc etc, but are these agencies just putting new words on old techniques?

It is fairly clear that old methodologies for consumer engagement dont really work online. Transparency and Authenticity are key. So, why is your agency different to all the other marketing noise on social media?

8. Social Media Marketing isn't an external event, it's an ongoing part of your company communications

Make sure that the agency you engage isn't selling a one off campaign package. Social Media engagement from an agency is as an ongoing process that leverages your internal people and processes and makes a path of change internally. Your company requires social media ambassadors ongoingly. A one time touring circus in social media is just as funny and equally forgettable.

9. Whats the ROI?

If your agency cant clearly demonstrate how Social Media Marketing will directly return value, and have a positive (or at least measurable) effect on the bottom line - you should find someone who will :)

It has been argued in recent harvard business school research(PDF) that the quantity and quality of Online word of mouth (conversations in Social Media) has a direct effect on the future value of a brand or business. Interesting further reading.

Comments, questions, thoughts, feedback? Leave a comment

Labels: Online PR, Online PR Sydney, social media, social media optimisation, Sydney Digital Marketing, Sydney Online PR

Posted by Nick HaC @ 9:09 AM

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Tuesday, March 11, 2008

The most popular viral video of all time (to date)

98 Million YouTube Views in 9 months and 80 million of them in 2 months...

Its interesting, This Video has 98 million views but only 7k ratings and 4k comments.

On youtube, the next most popular videos are:

Evolution of Dance - 77Mil Views / 275k Ratings / 123k comments

Avril Girlfriend - 75Mill Views / 180k ratings / 182k comments

So why so few comments and ratings?

There is some speculation on the web, that someone has used a botnet or other kind of distributed clicking system to fake the popularity of this video.

I think this in indicative of the future of media popularity... in the past journalists, editors and media owners controled what people paid attention too... the future of attention may ultimately be controlled by hackers and social media optimisers...

Shameless Plug

At Shifted Pixels, we work with a number of online content producers to dramatically improve the popularity and visibility of their content online, ensuring lots of viewers and pageloads (and no funny bizness with botnets, unless your really desperate)

Labels: social media, social media optimisation, viral video

Posted by Nick HaC @ 2:30 AM

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Shameless Plug
At Shifted Pixels, we deliver services that leverage the measurable business benefits of the online engagement.
Give us a buzz! We want to talk to you!!!

ShiftedPixels

Wednesday, September 24, 2008

Social Media Marketing in Australia

Thursday, June 5, 2008

How to choose a Social Media Agency

Tuesday, March 11, 2008

The most popular viral video of all time (to date)

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