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It’s All About ShareabilityDecember 26 2008

The biggest difference between a traditional media campaign and a social media campaign comes down to Shareability. What’s shareability? Shareability is the degree to which your message will be passed on by the people who receive it. Pretty straight forward, I know, but no at the top of the minds of marketers accustomed to broadcasting to a Nielsen household. A lack of understanding shareability is also at the heart of failures for app and advertising campaigns within social media.

Shareability is really compried of two parts, the message and the technology encapsulating that message. Imagine a YouTube video. The video is the message, while the player is the technology. The YouTube player has a balance between the two pieces, while an application invite weighs more heavily on technology and a funny photo passed over email weighs more heavily on message.

Here’s the checklist:

Message

Will sharing add value? - People want to share because it adds value to their relationships with other people. Sharing something funny, intelligent, or symbolic with our friends or followers builds goodwill in our relationships. Ideally your message would add more value as more people share it, i.e. getting points for inviting your friends, or s

Is Apple Losing It’s Social Media Mojo?December 23 2008

When it comes to cultivating a thriving culture of fanatics about your brand, Apple is the poster boy. The brand has inspired countless books, blogs, long lines, and even shaved heads. The only question is, can Apple still stay cool even as it goes mainstream. But with PC market share at over 20%, the most popular smart phone, Jobs’ future leadership in question, and skipping out on Macworld, it looks like the company may lose the culture that defined it.

“Think Different” used to resonate with users becau

The 17 Things People Are Also Doing While Surfing The WebDecember 22 2008

If you thought that social networks and the like were sucking up all our time, it appears some real world activities continue to distract. Here’s the run-down from an emarketer study.

I still don’t know how someone can exercise or play a board game while they surf the net.

Publisher’s Anti-Recession Tool - Create New Marketing OpportunitiesDecember 22 2008

It’s been made official, we’re in a recession. As publishers know, the easy ad dollars are scaling back as companies move toward product discounts and more measurable ad efforts. However, publishers can stave off an exodus if they focus on giving added value to their advertising partners.

What does added value look like? They come mainly in the form of non-standard advertising, like page sponsorships, sweepstakes, and yes, larger ad units.

The NY Times rolled out some new extra-large ad units for a Citibank campaign a couple weeks ago. Blogger Robert Scoble has been sponsored by Seagate all of 2008. Now tech blog TechCrunch has launched a new contest with Symantec, promising to send two lucky readers into zero G on February 21, 2009. The theme is meant to push the ease and speed of Norton Anti-Virus. And regardless of whether Symantec is paying for the campaign, both companies are driving value. TC gets more reader interest, and Symantec exposure. You can see the details here.

The bottom line is that if advertisers are pulling ads off your site citing ambiguous returns, give them a clear reason to stay. Perhaps a non standard campaign will work for you.

Who Owns Your Social Media Accounts?December 19 2008

I remember when I got my first cell phone. I’d just entered college. It quickly became an essential way to communicate. Along with that phone came the address book, the “hash table” connecting cryptic phone numbers to real names. The phone turned 845-2345 into Jessica or 357-4857 into my best friend. Friends became phone numbers and phone numbers became friends.

I now realize that my phone number became part of my identity in the same way my name is. I didn’t realize this before because the arrangement was never challenged. The phone company had a contractual obligation to ensure my phone number was mine and only mine.

However, for the flurry of new social media identities this isn’t always the case. Often the social media identities we invest our time in building can be taken away in a heartbeat.

Such has been the experience of Steve Poland, who recently found numerous Twitter accounts he created taken back by Twitter. Other users have experienced frustration with disabled accounts on Facebook.

These experiences highlight the core problem, that unlike phone numbers or even domain names you have no guarantees tied to the identities you build within these forums. My hope is that social media publishers realize that the space is maturing, and st