Close

Not a member yet? Register now and get started.

lock and key

Sign in to your account.

Account Login

Forgot your password?

Blog  //  latest news and updates

13 Apr Posted by Tobias in Small Business, Social Media | Comments

Will Location Based Social Networks Go Mainstream?

Social Media is a bit ironic. As usage of online social networks have skyrocketed in the ‘00s, people spend more and more time staring at their computer screens … some would argue that isn’t really all that social. Facebook is the perfect place to document your trip to the beach, but it’s also a great way to make sure you’ll stay in a dark room all day, bathing in the light of your laptop. I’m no betting man, but I’d put money on the fact that this will change in the future. Social media is still a tiny infant, and I foresee a future where social media technologies play a more active role in our offline lives.

Actually, it doesn’t take much foresight. A handful of hot new location based social networks (LBS) are already pushing the boundaries between social media and offline socializing. For the most part, LBS networks allow users to “check-in” to real life places using the GPS built into smart phones. Users are able to see where their friends are in real time, and most of these networks incorporate a gaming element that adds an incentive to get out more and to check-in to many places.
09 Apr Posted by Corianda in Social Media, Uncategorized | Comments

Facebook & Parenting Fails: Dumber Social Media

First this week, a son sues his mom for harassment after she logs into his Facebook, changes his password, and posted slanderous things on his wall. (Link)

Now, a 12-year-old kid spends $1400 of his savings and his mom’s credit card bill on Farmville. (Link)

Parenting and Facebook. Epic Fail.

Parents (hopefully) pretty clearly understand the dangers of online predators (See LA Times article of a recent horror story: Link). It’s an extension of the age-old “don’t talk to strangers” mantra, and something parents can handle. It may be the subtleties of Farmville, and the capacity for absolute embarrassment, however, that are over parents’ heads.

Hopefully these two stories aren’t the norm, but there will always be extreme cases of poor parenting. These stories are evidence of social media’s movement into the everyday sphere, and into a new, and sometimes less than honorable, realm of our everyday lives. It won’t be long before “My mom dated my Facebook Friend” is an episode on Jerry Springer, and “Berenstain Bears: No More Farmville Spending” hits kids’ bookshelves.

It’s hard to stay on the very top of the every-changing social media game, but that’s what makes it fun. Parenting, and the online powerhouse category of “Mommy Blogger,” is actually huge on the Internet. Any one who doubts it, head over to Google and see how many hits you get with just those two words.

Sure, Facebook may make it easier for you to catch your kid misbehaving. But that doesn’t give you a right to hack it. And leaving your credit card out, or for that matter, giving your child access to his own savings account, without instilling teachings of responsible spending, is a pretty common sense “No,” too.

It’s the old rules, with a new twist. And with social media here to stay, parents, kids, and everyone else better catch on and learn how to use it responsibly.

Are Friendships on Social Media Really Friendships?

Harvard Business Review blogger Umair Haque recently wrote a blog post arguing that relationships in social media are “thin relationships.” He writes,

“During the subprime bubble, banks and brokers sold one another bad debt — debt that couldn’t be made good on. Today, “social” media is trading in low-quality connections — linkages that are unlikely to yield meaningful, lasting relationships.”

The blogosphere tends to focus on the relationships that flourish on social media, so I appreciate that Haque chooses to focus on the flipside of the issue. I imagine he’s being purposely incendiary, and he’s right in some respects, but I think this line of thinking fundamentally misunderstands what social media is, and the role it plays in people’s lives. Social media’s greatest asset isn’t that it strengthens the core relationships in your life. It can, but it’s greatest contribution is that it makes it much, much easier to stay in contact with all those people/businesses/musicians/causes etc. in your life that you are interested in, but wouldn’t actively seek out on a frequent basis. More Information…

01 Apr Posted by Bryce Maddock in Small Business | Comments

Deal, or No Deal?

Local deal of the day websites are all the rage inside the social media bubble at the moment. GrouponLivingSocial and BuyWithMe are the biggest players in the space, and having raised over $80 million in venture capital (between these three players alone) they are beginning to dominate the online marketing landscape. From endless Facebook ads, to SEM and online PR these deal of the day sites are turning (almost exclusively) to social media to seed their client base. In fact, this may be the first example of an multi-million dollar industry built exclusively on the backbone of social media.

Local Deal of the Day websites generally list one deal per city, per day. The deal is generally for a restaurant, spa, event or service. The offer is always somewhere between 40% to 90% off the retail price. So what’s in it for the players?

The consumer gets a great deal cause. The Deal of the Day site makes an incredible CPA. They take 50% of all revenues generated, on some deals this is as much as $75 a sale. The biggest sites like Groupon are averaging thousands of deals a day in each of their two dozen cities. So it’s pretty easy to deduce their is big money in running a popular Deal of the Day site. But what about the merchants who are doing these deals?
More Information…

Freebies & Reviews: Giving online PR a bad rep

The Washington Post printed (or today, more relevantly, posted) an article this week discussing what they presented as the shady world of online PR and marketing. On the heels of a class action lawsuit against Yelp, it addressed a problem many are seeing online: how to know whether that review was an honest, unbiased opinion, or penned directly by an agent of a crafty company’s PR team. (Read the article here).

The Post article and the recent hubbub make it seem like there is a dark, new phenomena: online PR people working as devious underground double-agents.

But what about traditional journalism and reviews? The internet is all a tizzy about freebies given to bloggers and covert company reviewers, but old-school journalists aren’t exactly innocent. Free swag and special journalist rates have been a part, albeit maybe not the most upstanding part, of reporting since the glory days of print. And unlike bloggers, it’s up to the journalist’s ethical discretion rather than federal mandate to disclose the friends-with-benefits relationship. (See article on FTC disclosure rule here ).
More Information…

30 Mar Posted by Tobias in Advertising, Social Media | Comments

Die Antwoord and the Weird Web

The rise of the Internet and subsequent implosion of the media status quo has had many interesting side effects, but my favorite may be all the bizarre bits of culture that bubble up into millions of inboxes. This phenomenon is beautifully illustrated in the recent rise of Die Antwoord, a South African rap trio whose rise to Internet stardom was sparked by a February 1st post in the popular blog Boing Boing.

Upon first watching their videos, it’s hard not to notice that everything about this group is really, really weird. Die Antwoord (Afrikaans for “The Answer”) is made up of MC Ninja, Yo-Landi and Dj Hi-Tek. Gangly and covered in stupid tattoos, MC Ninja delivers spit-fire lyrics in a combination of Afrikaans and English while Yo-Landi sports a blonde mullet and sounds like a drugged up pixie. They claim to be “Zef” Afrikaans for “redneck” or “common” yet their style appropriates equally from black Capetown culture (or at least so I’ve read), American rap and European club music. The production values of their videos are extremely high, as is the quality of the website they’ve created (which had to change hosts after the onslaught of traffic crippled the site). More Information…

26 Mar Posted by Melissa in Long Title | 1 comment

Nestlé v. Facebook, or Why Underestimating Social Media is a Big Mistake

I’m beginning to think that the only surefire way to get attention is to try to censor something. Which is why by now you’ve probably already heard about the drama surrounding last week’s virtual smackdown between Nestlé and Greenpeace.

A quick recap for those who missed it: In the red corner, we have Greenpeace (you know, that loveable group of environmentalists that can sometimes come in just under PETA on the crazy scale), who began the media flame war with this little “commercial” for Kit Kat.

WARNING: The following video is pretty graphic.

Have a break? from Greenpeace UK on Vimeo.

The whole idea was that because Nestlé is ultimately getting its palm oil from Sinar Mars, a large company that doesn’t impose strict sourcing regulations, the nutrition giant was directly contributing to deforestation and (somewhat more indirectly) the deaths of orangutans that lived in the once arboreal areas. In response, Nestlé – in the blue corner, if you’re keeping track – couldn’t stand for any of this and before Greenpeace even had the chance to say “deforestation,” Nestlé swooped in and forced them to take down the video.

More Information…

17 Mar Posted by Bryce Maddock in Advertising | Comments

Of Advertisers & Advocates

In high school my SAT tutor nicked named me AutoMaddock. It didn’t stick but the name is useful for this post.
My friend Brendan Cooper ran a great article yesterday in which he discussed his frustrations attempting to navigate the web presence of major brands. In the post he briefly mentions two types of companies – those that have Advertising Influence with those that have Advocate Influence. I think this is a really good way to look at corporate marketing programs, so I’ll write about it today.
Companies with Advertising Influence push a message out to their customer relentlessly. They inundate the masses with billboards, radio ads, TV spots and online banners, all vying to hijack your attention, and ultimately influence you in their favor. Today I was at SM, the largest chain of malls in the Philippines. There are plenty of brands in SM with major Advertising Influence. But I came across one that really hit home – Whatchamacallit – a candy bar with peanuts and carmel. There was a small Whatchamacallit billboard advertisement in my elementary school. In first grade I walked past it everyday and slowly but surely I found myself really wanting to try a Whatchamacallit. This was my first conscious experience with Advertising Influence.
To find companies with Advertising Influence all you need to do is think of companies that you see everyday – Coca Cola, Verizon Wireless, Honda, Geico, McDonalds – the list goes on. The one thing all of these brands have in common is that they are fighting for your attention. They want to remind you that they exist. More important, they want to tell you over and over again who they are. Coca Cola will refresh you. Verizon has the best 3G coverage. Geico is insurance with a sense of humor. To accomplish their goal this they spend tens of millions of dollars every year and employ tens of thousands of people, to tirelessly hijack your attention.
In stark contrast, Advocate Influence is effortless. Company’s with Advocate Influence find their customers do all the work for them. They tell their friends, they write blogs, tweet and post updates on Facebook. This is the essence of word of mouth. Companies with Advocate Influence include In-&-Out Burger, iPhone (from Apple), and Emergen-C. All of these companies also pay for Advertising Influence. But the one thing that defines the companies with greatest Advocate Influence is that they do not need to spend money on advertising. In-&-Out could never run another radio ad again and they would stay enormously profitable. The iPhone could drop all of its commercials and still continue to sell millions of units. Emergen-C need not advertise in parenting magazines to retain its core group of users who also double as its best marketing force. And that’s the point really – Companies with Advocate Influence need not employ a marketing staff because their customers do all of work for them. What’s more, their customers market  the product better than a marketer ever could, because they do it authentically.In high school my SAT tutor nicked named me AutoMaddock. It didn’t stick but the name is useful for this post.

whatchamacallit2My friend Brendan Cooper ran a great article yesterday in which he discussed his frustrations attempting to navigate the web presence of major brands. In the post he briefly mentions two types of companies – those that have Advertising Influence with those that have Advocate Influence. I think this is a really good way to look at corporate marketing programs, so I’ll write about it today.

Companies with Advertising Influence push a message out to their customer relentlessly. They inundate the masses with billboards, radio ads, TV spots and online banners, all vying to hijack your attention, and ultimately influence you in their favor. Today I was at SM, the largest chain of malls in the Philippines. There are plenty of brands in SM with major Advertising Influence. But I came across one that really hit home – Whatchamacallit – a candy bar with peanuts and carmel. There was a small Whatchamacallit billboard advertisement in my elementary school. In first grade I walked past it everyday and slowly but surely I found myself really wanting to try a Whatchamacallit. This was my first conscious experience with Advertising Influence.

More Information…

11 Mar Posted by Corianda in Social Media | 1 comment

Bridging the Gap: Social Media and Business

connect

We’re to a point where even, some may say especially, small, independent business have figured out that this whole social media thing is something that’s needed. Social media for business: but the great divide is how to unite the two.

In many cases, there are two camps here: those who know business, and those who know social media. But very few understand the relationship between the two.

Ask any current college student to pop open their Mac, and odds are, the homepage will be Facebook. The most infamous bane of the GPA nowadays isn’t parties, but Facebook. It’s midterm season right now, and with everyone “studying,” Facebook has never been busier.

So yeah, college students get social media. Most people under the age of 30 do. But knowing how to post your sweet mardis gras photos isn’t really a marketable skill.

More Information…

Innovation Gets Sued

Over the past few months tons of innovative companies have been facing lawsuits and legal challenges: Google, Apple, Twitter, Facebook, and Yelp.
The Yelp cases offers the clearest example of the Law vs. Innovation. Over the past few weeks Yelp has been sued twice. Cats and Dogs Animal Hospital Inc. v. Yelp Inc. and D’ames Day Spa of San Diego County v. Yelp Inc. accuse Yelp of running an “extortion scheme,” that punishes businesses who do not pay Yelp’s $300/month advertising fees. Cats and Dogs accuses Yelp of offering to remove negative reviews of their business if they started paying $300 a month to advertise, while D’ames claims that Yelp removed 13 positive reviews that were posted about the business.
Both of these cases are fascinating examples of an antiquated legal system failing to understand innovation. I have managed dozens of our client’s Yelp presences. In some cases paying for advertising and in others using the free business owner tools the company makes available to everyone. To explain why both of these suits are misinformed let’s take them one at a time.
In the D’ames case the owner of the San Diego Day Spa was trying to run a promotion on GroupON – a popular deal of the day website. GroupON told D’ames that she needed more online reviews to be featured. So D’ames started asking her customers to write reviews of her spa on Yelp. Fourteen reviews were posted quickly and thirteen of them were removed. Why? You ask.
Innovation.
What separates Yelp from all other review portals is two things, really: community and authenticity (a product of innovation).  Yelp’s founders noticed that most local business, review sites were stuffed with glowingly positive reviews that the owners asked friends to write (and in some cases wrote themselves!) Dubbed, Citysearch syndrome, this rendered almost all of the digital directories of the late 90′s totally useless.
Yelp’s founders came out of Paypal where they cut their teeth smoking out the fraudsters and scammers that plagued the early consumer web. So when it came to restaurant reviews, they easily developed an algorithm to automatically remove all reviews that appeared to be fake. In practice, this means if you sign up for a Yelp account solely to rate your friend’s business with five stars, your review will be removed. Reviews that stick are active participants of the Yelp community. They seem to come from people who review multiple businesses and don’t simply lavish praise (or harshly criticize) every business they rate.
Though Yelp keeps most of the details of their secret sauce under wraps, Yelp is completely transparent about the practice of removing solicited reviews. The company offers education on its website and via one-one-one conference calls with Yelp Community Managers for free to all businesses listed on the site. In both cases Yelp says its algorithm aggressively removes reviews that appear fake or solicited.
The Cats and Dogs case at least accuses Yelp of doing something the company says it doesn’t. The veterinarian claims that Yelp offered to remove one bad review if they paid for advertising. Yelp does offer fringe benefits to advertisers, such as a cooler photo gallery and the ability to highlight one good review by posting it at the top of the business’s profile. However, Yelp does not allow business to pay to remove reviews. I know. I’ve tried!
In the past I have worked with the occasional business with really bad Yelp press. I have asked, even begged to make bad reviews disappear, but Yelp has a firm policy against removing any review unless it is done by the Review Filter algorithm.
Today 25 million people turn to Yelp for reviews every month. It is the most trusted source of local reviews online. This is all a product of a company innovating. These recent suits are the result of a legal system failing to do the same.

apple-iphone-lawsuitOver the past few months tons of innovative companies have been facing lawsuits and legal challenges: Google, Apple, Twitter, Facebook, and Yelp.

The Yelp cases offers the clearest example of the Law vs. Innovation. Over the past few weeks Yelp has been sued twice. Cats and Dogs Animal Hospital Inc. v. Yelp Inc. and D’ames Day Spa of San Diego County v. Yelp Inc. accuse Yelp of running an “extortion scheme,” that punishes businesses who do not pay Yelp’s $300/month advertising fees. Cats and Dogs accuses Yelp of offering to remove negative reviews of their business if they started paying $300 a month to advertise, while D’ames claims that Yelp removed 13 positive reviews that were posted about the business.

Both of these cases are fascinating examples of an antiquated legal system failing to understand innovation. I have managed dozens of our client’s Yelp presences. In some cases paying for advertising and in others using the free business owner tools the company makes available to everyone. To explain why both of these suits are misinformed let’s take them one at a time.

More Information…