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10 Things to Inspire Your Digital Marketing in 2011

Dose of Digital Mini White Paper

I started off 2010 with this exact same post and  it quickly became one of the most read posts ever on this blog, so I figured we’d try it again. First, check out last years: 14 Things That Will Inspire Your Digital Marketing in 2010. Interesting how some of those things became pretty mainstream. So, let’s see if I can do it again. I hope this list  inspires you and gets you thinking a bit differently about what’s possible. Some of these things you’ll likely have seen, but I hope you’ll look at them a bit differently. Many you will not have seen and I hope these make you realize that anything is possible.

That’s the point. If you can think it, there’s probably a way to do it with digital technology. We’re not building a time machine just yet, but there’s probably quite a bit more that’s possible than you think. What you’ll also notice for this list is that I focused on simple solutions to seemingly difficult challenges. Why make it more complex when it doesn’t have to be?

1. Animoto and xtranormal

If you want to make a quality video these days, you need an expert. You need to spend hundreds of thousands on editing, graphics, and a million other things you haven’t thought of. Right?

Wrong.

We’re in the do-it-yourself era of video. Let’s be clear…you’re not going to shoot the next Iron Man sequel in your living room or a pixel perfect ready-for-TV commercial, but you can do some high quality work with tools that are out there and don’t require years of training AND cost nothing or next to nothing. Two of my favorites? Animoto and xtranormal.

First Animoto. Simple idea. You’ve got all these pictures and videos and you need to mix them into a single video that isn’t going to bore people to tears. Not an easy task, so you’d better hire an editor…and director…and some tech guys too just to be safe.

Or you could just import your pictures to Animoto, make about five clicks and come up with something like this. Here’s some photos from my personal (very amateur) photography portfolio. It took 45 seconds of work from me to create.

No excuses after your next vacation.

Now xtranormal, which is totally different. Here you can direct your own cast of virtual characters and make an entertaining video that gets a point across. This one took me about 5 minutes. After watching this, ask yourself why you continue to present things in flat, boring ways when there are so many different options out there that are dead simple.

My video is all about “social media gurus.”

Bottom line: if people know that they can produce something very quickly with a reasonably professional result, do you think they’re going to stand for anything from you that isn’t the absolute best quality? And if they can do it in minutes, do you think they’re going to wait months for you to create something?

If you’re going to sign up for xtranormal, feel free to use this link and you’ll get me some more points so I can make another lame video like the one above.

2. Fast Society

There are more than 200,000 text messages sent around the world every second (source). My point in sharing that fact is that text messaging is still quite relevant, so before you count it out and continue to think it’s not important unless it’s an app, think again. Of course, sometimes text messaging is a bit challenging. Ever try to conduct a three-way text message discussion? It’s impossible to make any sense of one. Enter Fast Society.

Their simple solution?

In their own words: “Pick a length of time, invite some friends, and chat live via text message. Anything you send to 32787 (FASTS) will go out to your entire team. Tired of texting? Just send “CALL” and link up in an instant conference call.”

No complex websites needed, no applications, no hassle, just an elegant solution to a problem. Another thought? Social networks pop up and disappear all the time all around us. Not everything is Facebook.

3. Klout

If you haven’t heard of Klout yet, you will. As we start to invest more and more in social media and begin to interact with people, we need to know a few things. Chief among them is who of all of these fans and followers, advocates and critics are most important. That is, who is most influential and what are they influential about. This is critical because you can’t (and shouldn’t) give the exact same time and credence to every single person online. It doesn’t make sense. You don’t do this offline. If someone walks into your store and announces that they have no money nor any intention of buying anything, you’ll probably pay less attention to them than the person filling their cart with items. Makes sense, right?

Well, you have to do the same thing online. Let’s say that 20 people respond to a tweet you sent about your brand. Which of these should you worry about? Which should get a lot of your attention and which can you safely ignore? With Klout, you know. Peter Shankman wrote a great blog post about why he thinks Klout is significant and I’ll use one of his lines to emphasize my point:

“If I can find out who you are and immediately find the five things you talk about the most, as a marketer, that’s pure, instant gold. If I own a wine store, and you walk in with a Klout score of 63 , and I immediately know the top five things you talk about include “Wine,” “Vintage,” “Cabernet,” etc., I’m going to kick your experience up a notch, and possibly gain a very lucrative (this is key) customer for life.” [note: a Klout score of 63 is quite high]

Don’t think Klout will amount to much? Well, the Las Vegas Palms hotel is using it to figure out who among its guests should get special attention. These have been offline examples, but the application online is even simpler and more instant. Need to know who the most influential people are for a topic you care about, then you can look it up quickly and reach out to those people with your latest initiative. Simple and free.

Do you know who your influencers are? Your competitors might already.

4. Recorded Future

I mentioned earlier that we weren’t building a time machine or anything, but with this one, maybe we are. Research is hard and it’s often difficult to predict the future (understatement of the year). Or is it?

Recorded Future calls itself a “Temporal Analytics Engine.” Nevermind what that is. Here’s what you need to know. Using this tool, you can see future events right now. It won’t tell you who’s going to win the World Series next year, but it can tell you many business events that are likely to happen. It’s probably best just to see it in action to understand it. Recorded Future conveniently has a pharma related example too. I wouldn’t have predicted that.

5. HTML5

Made sense to have this one as number five, so here goes.

You’ve probably heard of HTML5 by now and may have used it in a sentence whether you understood what it is or not. You’re in good company. HTML is obviously the language this is used to program most websites that you see. The 5 is because this is basically the 5th generation. What makes it so special? With HTML5 a big advantage is that you can eliminate the need for Flash. All those rich media websites you see out there are probably using Flash. The problem is that Flash doesn’t work in some mobile devices (you’ve probably heard of this thing called an iPhone) and that it’s generally not indexed by search engines. More importantly, with HTML5 everything is handled by your browser. No plugins are required. If you’ve ever had to download a plugin or update one or figured out that you couldn’t do something because of a missing plugin, you know why this is important.  Here’s a great wrap up about why you should care about HTML5 and what it is.

Now, for the inspiring, cool stuff. I’m going to give you a link for a website created for the band Arcade Fire. Keep in mind that everything you’re going to see is not Flash and it’s all being done without the need for additional plugins. For your average user, this might not matter, but consider that this page is very small in terms of what is downloaded and what resources on your computer are being used. If you find your computer choking up a lot when you get to video intensive pages, you shouldn’t have this problem with HTML5 websites. Of course, if you’re reading this at work and you’re using an ancient version of Internet Explorer (6 in particular), you can forget about watching this. You need a more modern browser. Try Chrome or Firefox instead.

Here’s the link to the Arcade Fire site. Watch the whole thing…trust me.

6. Quora

It’s been called the next Twitter among many other things. I’m assuming because some people think this will be the next “big thing.” Regardless, you should know about it, as it affects where people are getting information. It’s going to be yet another source for information about your brand and industry that isn’t you. Quora defines itself this way: “Quora is a continually improving collection of questions and answers created, edited, and organized by everyone who uses it.”

In simpler terms, think of it as a really powerful research tool. Instead of typing a question into Google and searching through thousands of pages (or more) hoping to find an answer, you can search Quora. Maybe someone has already asked the question and gotten some great answers. If not, then you can post your question and expect some quality responses. You never know who might answer your question and many times it’s someone really in the know. For example, I once had a question about the financial tool Mint. I search all around for answers until someone recommended checking Quora. I found this question, which was answered by one of the first employees of the company. Who better to answer than him? Not surprisingly, the answer was incredibly useful and insightful.

I don’t know if it’s the “next Twitter,” but I guarantee it will be significant and will change the way people look for information. The question for marketers is what you do about it? Should you be  monitoring Quora or answering questions or just ignoring it? Check it out and decide for yourself.

7. XBox Kinect Hacks

You’ve probably heard of the new Kinect system for Xbox, which lets you use your body as a controller. If not, check it out here.

Ordinarily, that should be inspiring enough. It’s a big breakthrough that will change the way we look at gaming. However, I’d like to take it one step further. It turns out that Kinect is actually a pretty sophisticated device, as it needs to know where different parts of your body are in 3D space, in real-time. Knowing that the device can do that inspired a bunch of people to find new applications for it (i.e., hacks). One of the coolest I’ve seen is this one.

Once again, this helps to emphasize my point that anything’s possible. This shows a great way that technology can be used to understand something in the real world. You can easily see the applications for even this very basic execution of the technology.

8. Goollery

Ah, the Goollery. If anything, it gets the prize for the coolest name of this list. The Goollery is a collection of projects that use Google’s various tools and applications in some way. I won’t spend too much time on this one except to emphasize the point that you can do a lot with existing (and free) tools if you’re willing to think about an innovative approach to using them. Google has a ton (some say too many)of  tools and applications that are almost all free. The question for you: why build it when it already exists? Why not leverage what’s already out there to deliver your big idea?

My favorites from the Goollery include Newsmap and  Translate Beat Box.

9. Word Lens

I think almost everyone has seen this by now, but it’s worth seeing again if you have and it’ll amaze you if you haven’t. Rather than try to explain what this is, you should just watch the demo video.

And yes, it actually does work as well as in the video. If you want to impress your friends with an app, this is the one. Beyond impressing your friends, there’s another lesson here…actually two. First, never underestimate the value of a simple demonstration of your product. There wasn’t a word spoken in that video. Not a single computer-generated effect, no fancy actors, no blaring, distracting music. It shows what the product does. No more, no less. Rather than explain your product in 1,000 words, try video instead. It’s what people are expecting after all. Of course, the best demo video are for products that actually work, so start there.

Learning number two: Anything is possible. Here’s the brainstorm for this app: When I travel to a foreign country, I can’t read any of the signs. I wish they were all just in English.

Tah da! That’s it. Sometimes a literal execution of a solution works even in digital. This app makes the signs all English. It does exactly what you wished for in your brainstorm. Don’t let the fact that you can’t think of a way to do something stop you from trying. There are brilliant people out there like those who created this app. Find them and use them if you have to.

10. Sarcasm Detector

And the most important innovation of the past year goes to the Sarcasm Detector (see what I did there? hilarious, right?). Those of you who know me also know that I use a fair amount of sarcasm. Unfortunately, some of this doesn’t translate well as written word online. That’s one issue. The second issue is more important. As more and more content is personalized online using recommendations of others, it’s important to know what’s sarcastic and what’s genuine. Here’s why that’s important (from PopSci):

“Computer programs that can recognize sarcastic statements could generate better personalized content and make better recommendations to human users by not mistaking a product review titled “keep your receipt” with a sound piece of online shopping advice. It could also benefit opinion-mining systems that troll the Web trying to measure public sentiment about a product or idea.”

As everything you view online starts to be personalized based on your preferences and the recommendations of others, you’ve got to know what’s a real recommendation what is a fancy play on words. Otherwise, the content you get will never be as meaningful as it could be. What can you do about this? I’m not sure, but it does point to the importance of personalized content and where we’re headed. You do offer personalized content, right?

That’s the list for this year. If you didn’t like this list, I’m sorry to hear that. Come back next year…I’ll try harder. <!!!!!!!->ALERT: SARCASM DETECTED<–!!!!!!!>

11 Reasons Why You Need to Get a LIKE (Button)

Dose of Digital Mini White Paper

It’s no mystery that I’m a big fan of enabling sharing on your websites and all of your other content. Let’s get that on the table right now. I’ve recently written about why sharing is a great “baby step” into the social media maelstrom. Our company even worked with ShareThis, one of the leading sharing platforms, to develop new functionality for their sharing tools that allows companies in regulated industries to better control what is shared from their sites.

So, today I want to show you why sharing, specifically sharing on Facebook, is so important and I’ll also show you the best ways to utilize the Facebook sharing tools on your site. They are simple to implement, but there some finer points that will make them work even harder for you. We’ll look at the reasons why you should be doing this, the reasons why you shouldn’t (along with my rebuttal), and finally, things you probably didn’t know (about the Like button). Here goes.

The Reasons Why

In summary:

  1. People expect to be able to share
  2. Exposure to potentially 500 million people (for free)
  3. A new way to connect with potential customers

There’s a good reason why I think you need to enable sharing…actually, there are a few reasons. First and foremost, people expect you to make sharing simple for them. And by simple, I mean including sharing buttons on your site. They shouldn’t have to rely on an extension in their browser or worse, copying and pasting your URL. Sharing buttons are very familiar to people now, they expect them to be there, and they know how to use them. ShareThis, for example, has its buttons placed on more than 900,000 sites, which are seen by 400 million people a month. Sharing is common practice, so get with it.

The next big reason is pretty obvious…exposure. It’s no secret that there are 500 million Facebook users out there (plenty more stats here). And, yes, you have the potential to reach every single one of them…for free. Of course, chances are that your content won’t get shared with everyone on Facebook (in fact I’ll guarantee it won’t), but you don’t need everyone. In fact, here’s a different way to look at it. By adding Facebook sharing tools to your site, it has cost you exactly $0. Even if only one person shares one thing, it’s probably still worth the effort. But likely many more than one will share something and a number of people will see what they share. Cost? Still $0.

But now you’re saying something like, “Yes. That’s wonderful, but I really am not trying to reach a bunch of teenage girls. Isn’t that who’s using Facebook?” I thought we moved past this, but apparently not because I still hear it. Again, your cost is $0 to do what I’m recommending, so it almost doesn’t matter how many of your target audience uses Facebook, but let’s play it out. Let’s focus on age for a second. Did you know that there are currently 18,560,740 women between the ages of 50-64 who live in the United States that use Facebook? Cool stat, eh? Pretty precise too. Well, go and see for yourself. Facebook has a handy tool that’s part of their ad creation platform that lets you target your ads and see how many people you’ll reach. You can find it here. So, enough about that. Your audience is on Facebook.

Finally, by using the Facebook Like button, you’re creating a new way to connect with some of the biggest advocates for your brand and content. Did you know that if someone Likes your page besides showing up on that person’s Wall and in their friends’ News Feeds, that you can publish updates to their Facebook News Feed? You probably didn’t…most people don’t. Good news, I’m going to show you how to do this in a minute. This becomes a way to send messages to people who are likely your biggest advocates. If they shared something of yours once, they might just do it again…and again. “Likers” turn out to be some of the most engaged people on Facebook. A recent study done by Facebook showed the following:

“People who click the Facebook Like button are more engaged, active and connected than the average Facebook user. The average “liker” has 2.4x the amount of friends than that of a typical Facebook user. They are also more interested in exploring content they discover on Facebook — they click on 5.3x more links to external sites than the typical Facebook user.”

And, adding the Like button seems to have a big impact on some sites. Facebook cited the following stats:

“Many publishers are reporting increases in traffic since adding social plugins, including ABC News (+190%), Gawker (+200%), TypePad (+200%), Sporting News (+500%), and  NBA.com (#2 referral source). Publishers have also told us that people on their sites are more engaged and stay longer when their real identity and real friends are driving the experience through social plugins. For example, on NHL.com, Facebook visitors are reading 92% more articles, spending 85% more time on-site, viewing 86% more videos, and generating 36% more visits than visitors other sites.”

I bet you’d like these kinds of numbers.

The Reasons Why Not

In summary:

  1. Regulatory concerns and issues
  2. A lack of shareable content
  3. No expertise to implement or manage

Let me start by saying that I don’t accept any of these reasons, so here’s why.

Okay, I’ll be the first to admit, it’s not all roses with this Facebook sharing. If done incorrectly, it can open you to legal and regulatory issues especially in regulated industries like healthcare and pharma. The simple rule to remember is that the content that you are enabling people to share must be compliant with regulatory rules if you also are providing the means for sharing. That is, if you put the sharing buttons on your site, then make sure what gets shared when someone pushes the button follows the rules. What’s legal depends on the industry, but for pharma, that means that you can’t have together the drug name and the indication (what it does) or any claims of how the product works. If you did, you would need to provide all that “mouse type” fair balance information, which you can’t fit into a piece of shared Facebook content.

With the Like button you can easily control this by using what are called Open Graph tags. These tags are added to the coding of your site and are specific to every piece of content that will have a button associated with it. You can set the title, URL, description, image, and many other parameters all to ensure that you’re in compliance with whatever rules you have to follow. You can download my white paper on sharing tools in regulated industries to read more about Open Graph tags and how they work. It’s in the context of ShareThis, but it’s the same idea for the Facebook Like button (Download here: Digital Alert-Bridge Worldwide-Social Sharing in Regulated Industries [PDF]).

Bottom line, since you can control what of your content is shared, you don’t have to worry about regulatory issues. And, no, you are not responsible for the comments people might add to the content that is shared. In summary:

The next issue you might have is worrying whether or not you have any content that is shareable. This is two different issues in my mind. First, you are correct. Some of the content you have isn’t going to be readily shared or Liked by people. For instance, as I’ve said many times, you’re going to have a problem if you’re asking people to have something like this show up on their Facebook Wall.

However, they might want to share a part of the page or maybe they do want to announce that they really like their erectile dysfunction medication. Don’t judge. In other words, let them decide if it’s shareable or not. Put the button there and let people figure it out for themselves. For the record, Viagra.com has been shared as a Wall post or status update on Facebook 779 times, plus 590 comments have been made on those shares  plus 199 Likes on these posts or updates. Grand total: 1,567.  Bet you didn’t know that one, Pfizer. Stay tuned for where I got those numbers.

You likely do have a lot of content that could be shared. Maybe a compelling video or a really good bit of informative text that educates people about a condition. Perhaps a really solid patient success story. If you look through your site and see nothing that is shareable, then you know your first job. Start making more and better content.

The last of the Why Not objections is all about not having the expertise to implement the Like button. Sure, the full implementation instructions look pretty complicated, but for anyone with even cursory programming knowledge, it’s extremely easy. It’s supposed to be. If you already have added a sharing platform like ShareThis to your site, then you have the capability to add the Like button as well. Your web developer (or you) should be able to do it in minutes. Just remember to add the Open Graph tags if you want to control what is shared. If you don’t, the buttons will still work, but Facebook will pick which content is shared from by using your page data. If you want to see what from a page will be shared, just try out this link.

Things You Probably Didn’t Know

There are quite a few things, so here’s a list of what you’ll find in this section. You can skim through to find the explanation for the particular “did you know” that you’re interested in.

Did you know…

  • …what happens when you press “Like”?
  • …what including a comment with a Like means?
  • …that there is an alternative for the word “Like”?
  • …there are three different types of Like buttons and that you can have multiple Like buttons on one page?
  • …every piece of content that is Liked has a Page on Facebook?
  • …that you can publish to the News Feeds of people who like your content?
  • …that the number shown next to the Like button isn’t actually the number of people who have liked that item?
  • …that you can create a Like button for a Facebook Page (like your brand Fan page) that you can use anywhere?

Okay, let’s get down to business. How do you use the Like button and what can it do for you? For starters, there are actually two different Facebook sharing buttons: Like and Share. Like is newer and is supposed to replace the Share button. They basically serve the same function, but have some slight differences that aren’t critical for the purpose of this post. The differences and how to use them could be a post in of itself, but I’m not going to go into that much detail. Let’s focus on the Like button as a great place to start.

What happens when you “Like” and why comments matter

The Like button allows people to “casually” show their affinity to something at different levels. That is, when you press the Like button on a site, you could simply leave it at that. However, you also have the option to add a comment. Try it out for yourself (this is to Like this post, which you can unlike right away and it won’t show up on Facebook if you don’t really Like this). [NOTE: If you don't see the button, you need to view the post in your browser. Click to do this.]

You’ll notice that after you press the Like button, after a second or so, another box pops up that allows you to leave a comment (or Unlike). Like this:

If someone only presses the Like button and doesn’t leave a comment, what shows up in their feed looks like this:

Chances are that this will go unnoticed if it finds its way into my friends’ New Feeds. However, if I leave a comment (look right next to my name), the content becomes much more prominent:

That will get noticed.

Facebook’s rationale for doing it this way is simple. By just clicking Like and doing nothing more, you’re simply indicating that you like/approve/have some interest in/connect with/enjoy/etc. the bit of content. It’s not really important to you, but of interest for sure, so it doesn’t get much prominence on Facebook. However, if you take the time to leave a comment, then that must mean that you are a bit more passionate about the item, so therefore, the prominence on Facebook matches this.

Pick your favorite button

For the record, there are three different versions of the Like button (click any of them to Like this post).

A few things you should notice. First, yes, you can have multiple Like buttons on a single page. And, yes, you can even have them for different pieces of content. For example, click the Like on this one to Like the Pharma and Healthcare Social Media Wiki.

Don’t like “Like”?

For those paying attention, you notice that in the above example “Like” has been replaced by “Recommend.” This is one of your options with the Like button. You can pick whichever verb works for you. Recommend might be more appropriate for some content (like healthcare), but it is less familar to people, which might make them less likely to click on it. The good news is that you can test it. You can add both or use Recommend one week and Like the following and see which did better. Alternatively, you can add a “ref” attribute to the code for the button so that you can track which works best it in your website analytics program (here’s how). For example, I added unique “ref” attributes to the three different versions of the Like button above to see which will perform the best (I’ll let you know).

The secret pages of Facebook

So, as you can see, you have a lot of different options for the Like button. You know what happens when someone does click it, but you might not know what you can do as the content owner. I mentioned earlier that you can publish updates to the News Feeds of anyone who has like a piece of your content. Theoretically, your update could be about anything and not necessarily about the content they liked. I wouldn’t recommend this. Stick with what the content was about. Perhaps share when you update the page or if you have other related content that these people might like. In other words, don’t abuse it. Here’s how it works:

Every piece of content that has even a single Like also has a page on Facebook. That’s right. There are hundreds of millions of pages out there that correspond to a single piece of content. For example, every blog post on this site has its own page on Facebook. These are created automatically when someone clicks your Like button for the first time. You can add some administrator information to the Open Graph tags for each piece of content with a Like button, so that you can be the admin of these pages in the same way that you admin any other page you create on Facebook.

Bet you didn’t know that. After you have the button installed, the admin needs to Like the page and then you’ll see something new next to the button.

If you click that Admin Page link, then you’ll be taken to the page that was created for the piece of content [click to enlarge].

You’ll notice the message on top:

“This is the administration interface for your webpage at http://www.doseofdigital.com/healthcare-pharma-social-media-wiki/. You can see Insights and publish to the users that have liked your webpage. Only the administrators of the webpage can view this interface, other users are sent to the webpage.”

In other words, no need to panic, this page doesn’t exist to the world. No one can see it except for the admin. Think of it like a backend publishing tool. What this allows me to do is publish an update that appears in the News Feeds of anyone who has Liked this page from my blog. You can see one of the updates I published that explained that I was updating the page soon and looking for more entries for the wiki. It’s completely relevant to the page that people Liked and makes sense as an update. Again, don’t take advantage of this by spamming people.

This works the same as if you published something to your brand’s Facebook Wall. It would also go to the News Feed of anyone who Liked your page (previously known as being a Fan). Whether or not your Fans see it in their feeds is another story (read about it here: “Why Your Facebook Page Doesn’t Exist“).

The Like count dirty little secret

A few more things about the Like button that you probably didn’t know. First, the number you see with the button, isn’t actually the number of people who have Liked that piece of content (even though that’s what it says next to the button). It’s actually a combination of the number of Likes, shares, and comments on those Likes and shares, and Likes of the Likes, shares or comments. In other words, any activity related to that piece of content. It inflates the number of Likes quite a bit. Earlier I mentioned, Viagra.com has been shared as a Wall post or status update on Facebook 779 times, plus 590 comments have been made on those shares  and 199 Likes on these posts or updates. Grand total: 1,567. Keep in mind, Viagra.com has never been “Liked” before since there’s no Like button their site. Of course, anyone could put a Like button for Viagra on their site, which is what this one is (CLICK AT YOUR OWN RISK…I’m not kidding. You will announce to the social media world that you like Viagra.com):

As you can see, the number of people who Like Viagra.com, which actually should be zero (unless some of you clicked this), is far from it because Facebook adds up all those interactions and comes up with 1,567. It makes your numbers look a bit higher than what they really are. How did I figure this out? Well, you can use the Facebook Insights API (if you’re really smart) or you can cheat (like I did) and use this handy tool from Inside Facebook that calculates it all for you.

Like my page too

Like buttons aren’t reserved only for pieces of content. Recent changes to Facebook allow you to create a like button for a Facebook Page (like your brand “Fan” page), which can be used anywhere.

Click away to Like the Dose of Digital Page on Facebook.

All you need is the right code. You can get it here. For the URL, just put in the URL for your Facebook page (in my example: http://www.facebook.com/doseofdigital). Again, your developer should know how to do this, but if you’re stuck, contact me and I’ll try to help you out. Of course, you can also contact me if you’d like our agency, Bridge Worldwide, to do it all for you. It’s what we do.

Now you know everything about making the Like button work for you. You probably really like Like right now, so go ahead and Like it officially:

Social Media Supplement, Issue 3 — Microsoft Making Plays

Some of the hot items in the news this week have been at Microsoft, with their new features in Bing and with their new mobile OS.  Check out articles below for this week’s round-up of social media and technology news. If you want to catch up on past issues, go here.

Did we miss something?  Feel free to DM me during the week and we’ll review submissions for the next post!  Now, let’s get to the good stuff…

Twitter About to Start Raking it in [Interview]

Twitter had a changing of the guard recently and Ad Age sat down with new CEO, Dick Costolo, to discuss some of their monetization efforts.

North Face Tests “Geo-Fencing” for Customers

Concept isn’t terribly new, but sending alerts to customers that are in the vicinity of a particular place does have some potential for cool programs.  The alerts are for those that opt-in only, so consumers have the power to control whether they are participating or not.  North Face is one of the first retailers to test this “auto check-in” feature across all of their stores at once.

Bing Adds Facebook Social Context to Searches

The Facebook Module was added to Bing this week.  This collaboration will bring social context to search for Bing.

One of the things this module will do is help for people/places finding.  4% of all searches are of people.  Only 20% of the time do people reach who they are looking for.  If you are looking for sushi in Cincinnati, you can enter Cincinnati sushi and the results will show which restaurants were “liked”.  The same thing happens with movie searches, on top of reviews, show times, etc. But this is about the Facebook module: “He or she knows if I’m going to like this movie.  Results will be ranked by relevancy.

Windows Phone 7 Debuted

SAI has a great collection of links surrounding features, reviews, distribution, and more of Window’s latest mobile OS.  Overall: People were pretty impressed.

URL Shortener Bit.ly Now Generates QR Codes

Users can automatically generate QR codes when shortening their links.  For those that missed it, Google launched their own shortener with QR codes earlier this month at goo.gl.

Skype X Facebook Screenshots

Skype 5.0 was released this week with a series of big improvements.  This article shows screenshots of the Facebook integration as well as group video chat.

The Average Teenager Sends 3,339 Texts Per Month

No typo here.

Twitter Influence Measurement Company, Klout, Now Measures on Facebook

This was long overdue.  Once connected to a Facebook account, Klout will pull in data such as likes, comments and your friendship network in order to determine your influence on Facebook. It can take up to 72 hours for the data to be processed and your Klout score to be updated.

Instead of representing Facebook and Twitter with different scores, Klout has decided to integrate them into a single Klout Score.

Social Media Supplement, Issue 2 — A Busy Week for Facebook

Since this is only the second issue of this feature here on Dose of Digital, here’s just a quick reminder of what it’s all about. If you know all of this, just skip down to the good stuff. You can find Issue 1 here.

This regular series will be a review of the biggest stories in social media and digital technology over the previous week. It’s not pharma or healthcare specific, so this should be helpful to keep you abreast of everything else out there if you don’t get the chance to look outside the healthcare industry very much.

These updates (including this one) are going to be authored by my colleague here at Bridge Worldwide, Tony Blankemeyer, one of our very capable Research Analysts. You can find Tony on Twitter and LinkedIn.

If you have any feedback or suggestions for the next issue of the supplement, send Tony a tweet or submit it on our contact page. Issue 1 was sent out on a Friday afternoon. We’re trying Issue 2 on Monday morning. Which works best for you?

What did you miss last week? Catch up now before your first meeting of the day…

Another jam-packed issue!  Is there a week that Facebook doesn’t roll out something new?  This week we saw a  number of big announcements around the Photos section, taking control of your data, and probably more notable, their new Groups features.  One interesting design change at Facebook that I’m afraid may fly under the radar is the Page stories getting Condensed.  I think this could have a HUGE impact on brands that have a thriving community.  This issue also has a couple new pieces about Amazon, and for all of our designers, what are your thoughts on this whole Gap logo fiasco?

Gap to Crowdsource Ideas After New Logo #FAIL

Gap brand unveiled a new logo on Monday and shortly after the people spoke: they hated it.  You can check it out at their website, but check Facebook and Twitter for what customers are saying.  The Gap quickly responded by fielding ideas from their fanbase for new designs.

Your Facebook Page Stories Get Condensed

Some of you may be saying, “so what?” but if your brand is working towards harvesting an engaging community, this could be a really big deal.  While this cleans up our Facebook Page’s Wall, there is now an added click just to view comments and likes.  We’ll have to keep an eye on our communities to see if our number of interactions decline as a result of this.

Yahoo Search Gets a Makeover [Video]

Yahoo released its new search experience today, making its web search more streamlined and visual, improving its mobile search and adding a list of hot search topics to its front page.

Now when you search for entertainment or news-related topics, instead of a long list of results, you’ll get a box with vertical tabs, which give you several different ways to examine the topic.

New Facebook Groups

Facebook Groups are a shared space where members can participate in communal activities like group chat, e-mail lists, document sharing and group photo-tagging. Groups are closed by default (but can be secret or open) and the most-viewed ones will automatically live in the left-hand navigation of the page for easier access.  This article does a nice job of breaking down what you need to know.  Some people think this may be the latest feature to stall Google’s continued attempts to be a player in social.  Other’s think they should have thought out the “opt-in” feature better.

This week’s announcement was mainly about:

  • privacy
  • giving you the power to control who sees what
  • where your data goes (with the ability to protect your information by keeping a copy of it) – See next article for more detail.

Facebook’s New Tools for Data Privacy & Portability

Another thing that came out of the new Groups announcement, was the ability to take more control of your Facebook presence.  You can now download a file that compiles all of your personal data: pictures, video, and everything else on Facebook.

There is also a new dashboard for seeing how apps use the data in your profile, etc.

Look out Flickr, Facebook upgrades their Photos section

Rolling out to all users soon, you will be able to upload and download hi-res photos up to 2048 pixels wide or high — that’s large enough for print-quality images.

These changes allow a whole new class of image-sharing, up to and including photography, modeling and graphic design portfolios.

Amazon is selling stuff through Facebook for the first time

First product?  Pampers.

Amazon prepping an App store, Starts with Android

In other Amazon news, this week they sent out “welcome packets” to developers.  It looks as if they are gearing up for a store launch by the holiday season.  Article makes note, that while app store segmentation could be an issue, it sounds to me like a win-win in terms of exposure for the developers, and a piece of the revenue for Amazon.

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