The key social media moments of 2010
By Rob Hopwood,
Sunday, December 26, 2010 at 8:14 p.m.
Social Media Monday is a weekly feature that helps businesses and consumers understand how to use social media tools to their best advantage. This week, The San Diego Union-Tribune’s social media specialist Rob Hopwood (@sdutHopwood) looks at the evolution of the Internet in 2010.
Innovation and change on the Internet happens at a blistering speed. Remember GeoCities, Webvan or Kozmo.com? When online grocer Webvan went bankrupt in 2001, today’s biggest social media companies, Twitter and Facebook, didn’t exist.
The Internet continued its evolution in 2010. In this week’s column, we want to revisit some of this year’s social media developments.
Open Graph: Facebook released the Open Graph protocol. Soon, the Facebook “Like” button began appearing on news stories, blog posts and websites across the Internet. Content producers began to see referrals from Facebook grow as people clicked to read the content their friends liked.
Haiti earthquake: In January, a 7.0-magnitude earthquake hit Haiti. Not only did social media provide the world with news and information about the disaster, but the U.S. government also used it to help coordinate disaster relief.
IPad: Apple released its tablet computer in the spring. The iPad became a huge hit, and promised to help reinvigorate the publishing industry. Soon, apps like Flipboard, which facilitates news reading, began to appear, giving users new ways to view and interact with social networks.
Mark Zuckerberg: The movie “The Social Network” was based on Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and the beginnings of the social networking service. Later, Facebook’s CEO was named “Person of the Year” by Time magazine.
Facebook Places: Facebook joined the geolocation trend by releasing Facebook Places, which lets users “check in” at stores, restaurants, clubs or other locations. The company later added Deals to Places, which rewards users who check in at participating businesses with coupons, discounts or free merchandise.
Google Wave: Google released Wave to the public in the spring. The software combined e-mail, social networking, IMs and wikis, but it never caught on. Toward the end of summer, Google announced it had stopped development on the product. The Apache Software Foundation then agreed to take over Wave development.
Google TV: Sony and Logitech released products running Google TV software, which lets users view and update their social media profiles while watching TV. Google later asked television makers to delay making product announcements while it worked to improve its software, which was met with so-so reviews and consumer complaints.
Delicious: A leak from Yahoo indicated the company planned to shut down the social bookmarking site Delicious. The company said it wasn’t going to kill Delicious, but rather try to sell it. Speculation swirled that Yahoo was not likely to find a buyer.
Craigslist: Under pressure from attorneys general and law enforcement, the company Craigslist shut down its “Adult Services” section, which was formerly known as “Erotic Services.”
Miscellaneous: Digg.com, Twitter and MySpace redesigned their websites, while Facebook redesigned users’ profiles. The Digg.com redesign was unpopular and received a lot of criticism. As part of its plan to become profitable, Twitter began to sell promoted tweets to companies. And Apple entered the world of social media by unveiling Ping, a social network built around music and only available to those who use iTunes.
Join the conversation: Are you a social media professional in San Diego County? We’re looking for tips and advice. Contact Money Editor Diana McCabe on Twitter @mcdiana or the U-T’s social media specialist Rob Hopwood @sdutHopwood.
Monday, December 27, 2010
The key social media moments of 2010
Tuesday, December 21, 2010
Social media: Creating a blueprint for an effective blog
Social media: Creating a blueprint for an effective blog
By Callan Green/Special to the U-T
Sunday, December 12, 2010 at 8:26 p.m.
Social Media Monday is a weekly feature that helps businesses and consumers understand how to use social media tools to their best advantage. This week’s feature is by Callan Green (@CallanPaola), blog manager and social media account executive at Bailey Gardiner, a San Diego marketing agency.
Creating a company blog can be a huge asset to your business’s social media strategy. Blogs help with managing brand messages, positioning your company as a thought leader, improving search engine ranking and getting more visitors to your website. With all these benefits, it is no surprise that an estimated 34 percent of companies have blogs, a number that is expected to rise to 46 percent by 2012.
With so many blogs already in existence, your company will need to do more than just start writing. You need a strategy to cut through the clutter and ensure that blogging impacts your overall business goals. Below are the eight things to outline before you write your first post.
Choose your target audience
This is who you are creating your content for and will likely be the same people your business is targeting. Being extra-specific in this selection is helpful. If your target audience is too broad, your content will speak to no one.
Establish the blog’s tone
Depending on your target audience, create guidelines on the overall feeling of the blog’s content. Is it fun? Sympathetic? Knowledgeable? Educational? This will be especially important for company blogs with more than one blogger, so that all the voices remain consistent.
Set goals
A blog is useless without measurable goals. Select the blog’s main goal, often tied to the company’s financial goals, and then outline all of the subgoals. These can include anything from improved search engine ranking, to less-tangible goals like an increase in awareness or affinity for the brand.
Create a measurement system
To keep your goals in check, be sure to define how you will measure the blog’s success. Tools like Google Analytics will show you how much traffic your blog is getting, how much traffic the blog drives to the website pages, what content is the most interesting to the readers, and how people are finding your content. Tracking growth in these areas can help you analyze and shift strategy over time.
Pick your contributors
First, you should identify a blog manager who will be in charge of the editorial calendar and will manage all other contributors. Then you can identify potential bloggers, whether they are other employees or guest bloggers from outside the company.
Find your keywords
This is where it gets a little techy, but if you want your blog to be found via Google search, this step is a must. Researching keywords is a combination of looking at what words you want to be found under and what the competition is for these words. Once selected, these words will be used in everything from your programming to your category creation.
Establish your posting frequency
Consistency is imperative for growing readers’ trust. In order to ensure that your blog keeps a consistent posting schedule, establish what your target frequency will be per week. It is best to start with a lower frequency and increase it than to set an unachievable goal.
Create a commenting protocol
Commenting is one of the biggest concerns for most companies when beginning a blog. Many fear that their blog will receive negative comments, so it is best to have a strategy for handling those beforehand to avoid a blog crisis.
While outlining a blog strategy can seem like a daunting task in the beginning, it will aid in decision making for every aspect of the blog’s creation. The strategy will affect category creation, blog roll selection, and layout and design, not to mention the actual writing of blog posts. In the end, the time you take to define the strategy will be imperative to the blog’s success.
Join the conversation: Are you a social media professional in San Diego County? We’re looking for tips and advice. Contact Money Editor Diana McCabe on Twitter @mcdiana or the U-T’s social media specialist Rob Hopwood @sdutHopwood.
Social Media: Join brand-related conversations to woo customers
Social Media: Join brand-related conversations to woo customers
By Teresa Siles/Special to the U-T
Saturday, December 4, 2010 at 6 a.m.
Social Media Monday is a weekly feature that helps businesses and consumers understand how to use social media tools to their best advantage. This week, Teresa Siles (@tsiles), director of social media at Nuffer, Smith, Tucker — which represents clients including Chicken of the Sea, WD-40 Company, McDonald’s and The San Diego Union-Tribune, and is a key organizer of the annual San Diego Social Media Symposium — spotlights how social media can be a powerful aid to customer service.
Some believe there is an entire generation that has never dialed a 1-800 number. Where are these digital natives and other Web-savvy consumers going to air their grievances?
You guessed it: They are taking customer-service issues to Facebook, Twitter, blogs, forums and other social media channels, reflecting new challenges and opportunities for brands.
It’s important for companies to recognize that brand-related conversations (good and bad) are happening whether you like it or not — the question is whether to join the conversation. Consumers create 256 billion impressions on one another each year by talking about products and services within social networks, according to Josh Bernoff and Ted Schadler, co-authors of “Empowered,” and these conversations have influence.
So, when someone tweets a complaint or writes a negative review of a product on a blog, astute companies are recognizing the impact this can have on future purchase decisions not only for the individual making the complaint, but also for others within that person’s network who may be influenced. These forward-thinking companies recognize the need to take customer service online, which requires an understanding of the social media “rules of the road,” and often a change in customer-service philosophy and speed of response.
Historically, customer service and call centers are viewed as cost centers. Emphasis has been placed on “efficiency,” i.e. serving as many people as possible as quickly as possible. When you do speak with someone, extensive call-waiting times are often met with scripted responses. This doesn’t fly in social media.
In fact, social media is all about building relationships with consumers on a one-on-one level. This means earning their trust by providing valuable and credible information, and being a source for problem resolution. Customer service — both online and offline — should be viewed as a branding and relationship-building tool.
Consider these tips:
• Train your staff on tools and philosophy
Showing someone how to send a tweet is easy, but making sure they understand the nature of social media and the customer-centric philosophy behind it is far more important.
• Have a policy in place
Develop a social media policy that reflects your company’s code of ethics and brand promise and acts as a guide for employee engagement in social media, ensuring tools are used ethically and responsibly.
• Toss out the scripts
Authenticity is key. While employees should have a guide of common questions and answers, the guide should be just that — a guide, not a document from which to cut and paste. Each interaction should be tailored and unique, and the conversation should be organic.
• Don’t be afraid to say I’m sorry
Being humble within social media and owning up to mistakes will go a long way toward earning consumer trust.
• Thank your most loyal fans
While it can be easy to focus on the negative, don’t forget to thank your fans. A happy customer is your greatest endorsement.
• Empower your reps to make a difference
Actions speak louder than words. It’s critical that your reps can provide real resolutions to customer issues.
Join the conversation: Are you a social media professional in San Diego County? We’re looking for tips and advice. Contact Money Editor Diana McCabe on Twitter @mcdiana or the U-T’s social media specialist Rob Hopwood @sdutHopwood.
Monday, December 20, 2010
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Online Video In 2011: Connected TVs, Social Recommendations, And Standards Wars > Matt Dentler's Blog
Online Video In 2011: Connected TVs, Social Recommendations, And Standards Wars
Jeremy Allaire at TechCrunch maps out “the five biggest trends in online video that will play out in significant ways for end-users and publishers alike” to expect in 2011. According to Allaire, the trends to observe include: Connected TV Platform Wars, the influence of social media on recommendations, and the companies out there who will try to compete with Netflix:
In 2011, we’ll see the first wave of attempts to create more rich TV subscription bundles that are available over the Internet. Expect Netflix to start paying for more recent and popular TV shows, and for Apple to potentially offer a low-priced ($25/month) TV subscription product with a collection of recent hit TV shows. But most major broadcasters and studios won’t bite or participate in a meaningful way, leaving consumers still feeling like these products don’t offer enough. The absence of a broad offering of live sports will be a major factor keeping cords from being cut.
At the same time, your existing cable subscription will start to offer a greater range of content over the Web, and likely top-tier cable companies such as Comcast / Xfinity will make their online video products available through open devices and apps, blurring the lines even further.
We’ll have to wait until 2012 when the scale of Connected TV adoption is large enough that online TV subscription providers will be willing to write big enough checks to get the best available programming.
mattdentler posted at 6:47 pm on December 18, 2010 | Permalink | Comments (0)
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Tuesday, December 7, 2010
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