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Archive for the ‘Digital Media’ Category

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The Social Nature of Human Beings + Sharing 2.0

In Digital Media, Social Media on 09/10/2011 at 5:37 pm

Social context shapes the human behavior and sharing information is innate to who we are.  We’ve been sharing information for centuries as a means to communicate, entertain, and pass on our cultural values from generation to generation. Today, as we are no longer bound by the physical realm (pencil and paper), the Information Age allows us to share more content, more often with more people, and more quickly.

In order to understand and take advantage of the two-way dialogue between brands and consumers today’s social media technologies enable, it is crucial to understand why people share, the different personas of online sharing, and most importantly, how we, marketers, can influence this sharing of information and generate earned media about our brands and products.

A recent three-phase study, titled “The Psychology of Sharing,” published by The New York Times Customer Insights Group explores the answers to these very questions.

Why do people share?

  • to bring valuable and entertaining content to others
  • to define ourselves to others
  • to grow and nourish relationships
  • for self-fulfillment
  • to market causes or brands

Six personas of online sharing: 

Altruists are helpful, reliable, and thoughtful.  Many altruists stay connected with email and pass along information in attachments and links. 

Careerists are intelligent web users who have been quick to see the immense value of social networking.  Careerists use websites like LinkedIn and FaceBook to build professional profiles and relationships. 

Hipsters are young, popular, creative, and prefer the cutting edge of technology.  They’re less likely to email, opting for newer, quicker methods of communication, like text, Twitter or Skype message.

Boomerangs share content for validation and reaction.  Empowered with information, Boomerangs use social websites like Twitter and Facebook to post thoughtful questions and comments to engage other users.

Connectors are creative, thoughtful, and relaxed.  They are likely to make plans via email and Facebook, hook up online discounts, and take advantage of freebies and promotions. 

Selectives are resourceful, thoughtful, and careful about the information they share.  Someone who is a Selective sharer may prefer to send an email or private message to communicate, rather than a social update or post.  These intelligent sharers understand the permanence of everything posted to the web, knowing that every message is indexed, even if you delete it or move it to your desktop trash bin.

Key factors to influence sharing:

If you appeal to the motivation to connect with each other — not with just your brand — you will encourage sharing.  Here are some tips to remember when soliciting replies, posts, or other online content. 

  • keep it simple
  • have a sense of humor
  • create a sense of urgency

Once you determine what online sharer persona your target audience is and understand what and why they share information, you can create more relevant and appealing content that will inspire ongoing sharing and word-of-mouth buzz.

Download the complete study here.

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12 Creative QR codes

In Digital Media on 06/17/2011 at 11:52 pm

QR codes are becoming more and more mainstream now although more brands integrate them than people scan them.  Although Americans have been slow to adopt  these compared to the Japanese, we’ve definitely seen QR codes integrated across many innovative campaigns.  I’ve compiled a list of my favorite word wide uses of QR codes. Which one is your favorite?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

squid ink edible qr code tantara

 

Successfull QR Tortilla scan

 

Successful waffle QR

 

 

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iPhone Helps “Atomic Tom” Transform NYC Subway Into a Rock Concert

In Digital Media on 10/16/2010 at 2:26 pm

New York, a city that never sleeps, is a continuous cycle of haste, clamor, and laughter or melancholy. It resembles a rushing train with an inconsistent daily schedule and destination.  Occasionally, the trains may be delayed and are forced to change their route. Carrying hundreds of passengers, all with different backgrounds, cultures and interests, they all have their own way to keep themselves occupied. Some either sleep, read, play video games, listen to music or gaze around. Others make a living in the trains by either dancing, singing, selling electronics or simply flipping over their Yankee hats and begging for money.

After New York based rockers ”Atomic Tom” supposedly became victims of theft that left the band without instruments, they turned to using musical instrument iPhone applications. Last week, the Brooklyn-based band performed in the NYC Subway using the Pocket Guitar, Drum Meister and the Virtuoso Piano apps to transform the B train into a rock concert.

This was caught on camera and the video clip is already number one on today’s top 20 viral video chart.  Of course this is not the first video showcasing musicians leveraging the iPhone apps to play songs.  We all remember the viral video that had garnered almost four million views on YouTube of a young girl who played Lady Gaga’s “Pocker Face” using the musical instrument iPhone Apps.  But the video clip of the rock band, “Atomic Tom” is the first one to take it to the subways of the Big Apple.

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Three Riveting Startups You Should Know About

In Digital Media, Social Media on 05/21/2010 at 4:09 am

Ah, home, sweet home! It’s been a long and tiresome day, but very rewarding.  After work, I headed over to a Digital Flash NYC event that featured two Mashable panelists, a diverse set of questions from the audience, and an open bar. Hopefully, the open bar liquor had something to do with the ditzy question from the back of the room–“Why would I read Mashable? I’m interested in fashion; who is wearing what”–asked by a former teacher.  Either way, I met some amazing, new start-ups that I just couldn’t wait to write about. So here it goes…

  1. Catchafire.org connects volunteers within the areas of design, social media, advertising, legal, public relations, marketing, and others, with non-profit organizations. If you are a volunteer, you simply select your skill areas and the social cause you’d like to support, integrate your LinkedIn profile, and select a project of your choice. If you are a non-profit organization, pick a project from the project menu, and wait to see who your match is.
  2. Pixable aggregates your and your friends’ photos from multiple Web sites, including Facebook, Picasa, Flickr, SmugMug, and Photobucket into one central site and allows you to create and print photo books.
  3. EZTexting, founded in 2006, provides a simple, affordable text messaging platform for small to medium-sized businesses. The company allows businesses within the education, hospitality, religion, politics, non-profits, and technology industries to develop and execute a text messaging campaign within minutes.

What are some of the newly launched startups you’ve stumbled upon? Let me know.

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Google plunges knee-deep into social media with a UGC search stories video creator

In Digital Media, Social Media on 04/13/2010 at 9:42 pm

Internet search can give a lot of insight into someone’s life. It can reveal our personality, desires, needs, behaviors, and passions. Remember the Google television spot that aired during the Saints-Colts Super Bowl game this year? “Parisian Love,” Google’s very first Super Bowl commercial, and one of the most-talked-about 2010 Super Bowl ads, shows how the internet and search engines are integrated into everyday life. As part of its search stories campaign that launched in November 2009, “Parisian Love” tells a story of a young man who studies abroad in France and along the way uses Google to find the girl of his dreams. Now, Google is inviting users to create their own version of the “Parisian Love” search story with their new Google Search Stories Video Creator tool located at youtube.com/searchstories.

In today’s consumer-focused world, every successful brand is shifting towards consumer-centric advertising that combines more granular targeting and measurement with cross-platform integration in order to satisfy the digital demands of today’s digitally savvy customers. After dipping its toes in the Super Bowl television advertising, and testing the social media waters with Google Buzz in recent months, the internet search giant is embracing user-generated content, allowing anyone, regardless of their video production skills, to create their own Google search stories and share the videos through their extended social networks, including Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, just to name a few.

Three simple steps in creating a search story:

  1. Enter a sequence of 7 search queries (words or phrases) into the Google Search Stories Video Creator Tool. The new UGC functionality tells a story when the search results are revealed and automatically formatted into a Search Story video
  2. Select the music that is most-appropriate to the topic of your search story from the soundtrack library and add it to your video
  3. Preview your video. Here you will have one more chance to edit your search queries or simply change the music. If you are satisfied with the story created, you will write in the title and description of your search story as well as select the genre of your story, which can match the genre of the soundtrack music. Once your video is complete, you can upload it to YouTube (assuming you have a YouTube or Gmail account) and share it across the interwebs.

Google will post some of the most creative and fun user-created stories to the official YouTube Search Stories Channel.

Here is a sample search story. Now, go make your own and share it with the world!

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Five cost-effective new media technologies for small business owners

In Digital Media, How-to's, Social Media on 04/10/2010 at 7:50 pm

New media is evolving at the speed of light. Small business owners want to embrace it and all of the advantages it offers, but are often afraid to break away from the norm and use new media technologies in new and innovative ways. Many business owners believe that establishing a branded online presence across social media platforms and optimizing the business Web site to show up in search results is highly technical and complicated. Although learning about these affordable and interactive Web 2.0 technologies and how to use them effectively requires a bit of time investment, the outcomes of effectively promoting products and services to a targeted audience will pay off tremendously. Get started with these five innovative, multi-channel (audio, video, events, and mobile) new media technologies and strategies.

  1. Build your credibility with podcasting – create podcasts on iTunes or have your own radio show on www.BlogTalkRadio.com while interviewing experts in the field and establishing your credibility. Customers can download the podcasts into their MP3 player and hear your message on-the go, while driving to work or running on a treadmill.
  2. Foster customer-relationships with video – Create your own channel on a live streaming video channel such as Ustream and invite your Facebook fans, Twitter followers, blog readers, or email subscribers to meet you there. You can use video capture tools such as theflip.com, logitech.com, or jingproject.com to create video product demonstrations, Webinars, how-tos, and allow your audience to ask you questions, while you learn about their needs and challenges. This is also a great way to get instant real-time feedback on any new products and/or services.
  3. Increase natural search traffic to your Web site with offline activations - host an event and invite bloggers, where they will write about it and shoot YouTube videos, helping you spread word about your business. Leverage offline meetup.com and/or tweetup groups in order to generate online buzz about your events to people who may have common interests. Meeting with people offline is the best way to develop meaningful relationships.
  4. Drive sales and repeat business with mobile SMS - leverage text messaging to announce store events and on-the-go discount coupons. The use of text messaging allows the business owner to instantly communicate information of value to those you wish to engage, and learn more about your customers. It also builds up the business’s CRM database, allowing for lead generation and repeat business. People love discounts, and in turn, businesses must offer them an incentive to give up their information. A free service like www.Jott.com allows business owners to create and send text messages via a voice message, which the Web site will then translate into text and send out on their behalf.
  5. Transform customer service with iPhone apps – Square iPhone application allows any merchant, from store retailer to a concert ticket seller, to accept credit/debit card payment using the Signature Swiper. Developed by the creator of Twitter, Jack Dorsey, the Square iPhone app costs only $1 and includes the card swiper. The person paying for the transaction can then sign for the items right on the iPhone screen, and choose whether or not to receive the receipt via email or SMS message. When you receive the receipt, it will show you the GPS location of where the transaction is made. This is very helpful for fraud prevention.

Do you have success story examples of small businesses that drove sales, increase brand awareness and loyalty with new media technologies? We want to hear from you!

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Reporting In 140 characters In The Time of Disaster

In Digital Media, Human Rights, Social Media on 02/02/2010 at 5:13 am

By Irina Skaya

“Twitter saves lives,” – said Ann Curry, news anchor on NBC’s Today morning program.

In my last blog, I discussed how critical social media has been in gathering news information about the Haiti disaster, and how it has changed the way we learn and consume information.  Today, the first day of Social Media Week, I attended a “Social Media and Haiti Disaster” panel discussion at The New York Times, made up of Ann Curry (@anncurry), Robert Mackey, NYTimes Reporter (@robertmackey), Erik Parker, Journalist (@theparkerreport), Andrew Rasiej, Political and Social Entrepreneur (@rasiej), and Jason Cone, Communications Director at Doctors Without Borders. As a follow up to my last blog, I’d like to discuss how microblogging has revolutionized the way journalists report stories during a catastrophe, and how Twitter has played a crucial role in the Haiti relief efforts, and influenced others to aid this poverty-stricken country during the recession in our own country.

Key Takeways

  • Twitter is the best way to update information on-the-go when electricity is limited and the Internet connection is weak – Contrary to his counterparts, Erik Parker used Twitter to inform the rest of the world of the devastation in Haiti.  Other reporters on the ground were filing stories on their laptops, only to later to find out that the Internet was down. Moreover, when Erik’s professional camera ran out of battery, he used his iPhone to record video footage of the immediate consequences following the 7.0 earthquake.
  • Twitter teaches people the power of information – Microbloggers are empowered to share information, but sometimes they can cross the line by publishing graphic images of the devastation that editors of professional publications would never chose to run.
  • In the rise of online citizen journalism, verification of shared information is more important than ever – Journalists used geo-targeting Twitter tools to verify the people who said were in Haiti were really there.
  • “It’s a no brainer that Twitter is a way to help people and positively influence others” – said Ann Curry.  Thousands of people used Twitter to communicate information about the disaster and help Haiti in form of tweeting about the much-needed medical supplies, raising money, and finding the missing loved ones.
  • Social media is a great way to keep the Haitian people’s story alive even after the media coverage dies down.

For full coverage of the event, search hashtag #smwnythaiti.

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How Is Social Media Helping Haiti After the Earthquake

In Digital Media, Human Rights, Social Media on 01/14/2010 at 7:38 pm

By Irina Skaya

In the early 1900s, we relied on radio to transmit news such as the Titanic catastrophe; in the 1930s, we tuned into CBS to watch TV’s first coverage of a presidential election, and in the 1990s, we began to consume media more rapidly and more globally via the Internet. Last year, millions witnessed the presidential election of President Barack Obama, the nation’s first African-American president via live streams on social networks sites such as Facebook. Despite how our media consumption has vastly changed, it was the media networks that disseminated the news to the people. The earthquake in Haiti, with the exception of the Iranian and Moldavian Twitter revolutions is the first global catastrophic event that has truly shifted the way we consume news, placing citizen journalists in the epicenter of the journalism.

With many of the major communication lines down, media outlets, from television to newspapers, relied on user-generated content, including blogs, tweets, Facebook status updates, and YouTube videos to inform the public of the tragic event, emphasizing the importance and the power of social media today. According to Facebook, there have been 1,500 status updates per minute containing the word “Haiti” since the earthquake, with many desperately searching for relatives, uploading their photos on Facebook.  The Facebook group called “EARTHQUAKE HAITI” has drawn more than 100,000 members since going up on Wednesday and dozens are being added by the second. The group’s Wall is acting as a real-time wire service with messages that range from cries for help from within Haiti to donation offers and information gathering websites.

Twazzup.com reports that there have been 5,176 tweets containing words, “Help Haiti” and hashtags “#Haiti” on Twitter. Yesterday evening, 218 quake iReports from Haiti were sent to CNN. As a result, CNN’s iReport had 1.4 million page views, a 240% increase over an September-October benchmark; the usual traffic is between 200,000 and 400,000 page views per day.  Mobile has also played a key role in the Haiti quake, raising $3 million just for Red Cross alone via text messages.

For real-time Haiti coverage from citizen journalists follow the following tweeps:

http://twitter.com/fredodupoux
http://twitter.com/RAMhaiti
http://twitter.com/yatalley
http://twitter.com/zabelbok

To donate $10 to the Red Cross for Earthquake relief in Haiti, text Haiti to 90999. I just did!

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The Bottom Line on Facebook and Twitter

In Digital Media, Social Media on 12/14/2009 at 4:54 am

By Irina Skaya

Last week, I wrote a blog on 10 best practices for managing branded Facebook fan pages.  Since, I also wrote Twitter do’s and don’ts that include crisis and time management tips. I’ve written both for a presentation for my social media team at Horizon Media, which was extremely well-received.  In fact, the feedback I’ve received has inspired me to share this presentation on Slideshare.net.  The same day I posted it to Twitter, the Slideshare team has featured it on their homepage.  Take a look at it yourself, and if you like it as well, nominate it for the Slideshare Zeitgeist 2009!

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