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The State of Social Media and Social Media Marketing in 2012

Esteban Contreras — Sat, 31 Dec 2011 22:54:46 +0000

Social networking is the #1 activity online. Even though Google gets the most visitors, Facebook is where most of us are spending our time. And it’s not just about Facebook anymore. We are spending a lot of time on LinkedIn, YouTube, Tumblr and Twitter. While there are some clear major players in the social space, the social media universe continues to expand and 2011 was a banner year for the idea of an “Interest Graph.”

In 2011, we saw Google launching Google+ and Pinterest grewing at an astounding rate. Facebook launched “Timeline” and “frictionless sharing” with partners like the much anticipated Spotify. Facebook also acquired design companies and the team behind Gowalla, showing the company’s intent to provide a consistent experience across devices and becoming a more prominent player in the mobile space.

2011 was also a big year for social IPOs: From LinkedIn to Groupon and Zynga, small tech startups are becoming public companies. There is much speculation around the existence of a bubble, and some say growth cannot continue because social networks are running out of users. However, Facebook is not yet public and we still don’t see a clear exit for Twitter.

There might be saturation, but social media has changed the way we live. And this means social media is no longer a question for marketers. Companies of all sizes have accepted and even embraced the importance of social media. Investments are starting to increase and companies are now building teams to tackle the new risks and opportunities that social media has created. While Facebook and Twitter ad spending is expected to grow only at a decreasing rate, advanced brands are leveraging more digital dollars for their social media marketing strategies and tactics. “Social” has been an afterthought for many years, but marketing campaigns and programs are finally starting to feel inherently social.

This presentation is about the state of social media and social media marketing on January 1st, 2012:

The State of Social Media and Social Media Marketing in 2012

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Spotify, Pandora, Grooveshark, Napster, and Why Streaming Music is about Freedom

Esteban Contreras — Thu, 14 Jul 2011 04:08:03 +0000

When I was in High School, Napster was the coolest “computer application” on Earth. Sharing and downloading music, for free, had changed the world. From pillow fights with Metallica to the rise and fall of copycats like Limewire, Napster disrupted the web, the music industry, and the tech industry. Today, the Napster logo still represents music, but it doesn’t represent what it used to represent back then: Freedom.

Fast forward to today.

Spotify, the mythological creature of music streaming, is allegedly coming to the U.S. tomorrow, and rumor is it will be integrated into Facebook soon after.

Pandora, a public company (let me repeat: a public company) birthed out of the “Music Genome Project,” just recently redesigned its site to allow you to go “back” on your browser and provide a deeper social experience inspired by good ol’ photo social network Instagram, among other changes.

(And in related news, I haven’t bought a CD in three years. If I’ve paid for any songs online, it can’t be more than a dozen or two.)

So what does this mean? Spotify coming to the U.S. after what seemed like decades of waiting and Pandora going public and adding a social layer of its own are clear signs that the days of music ownership, at least in the traditional way, are numbered. Music streaming means you can’t download, but it also means you no longer have to.

Of course, many are skeptic.

Some say that only the giants (Google Music, Amazon Music, iTunes) have a seat at the exclusive musical table in the cloud and that streaming music will be costly, squashing the little guys in the process. Others complain about functionality and details and privacy and control and lack of subway access. And while geeks discuss the cloud, the masses show that AM/FM/?M is just fine and that $2 downloads is more than fine in 2011.

But all I can think of is this: Freedom.

I don’t really care about showing off CDs and LPs in my living room, and I don’t really want to “own” music that’s just taking space in my hard drive. I don’t ever care about high quality that much.

Music is to be listened to, not to waste physical and digital space! What I care about is freedom to listen to what I want, whenever and wherever I want at the lowest possible cost. And the best solution to this is streaming online music.

If Spotify gives me 20 hours, I’ll take those, thank you very much. Pandora offers a few more hours and throws some social recommendations? Sounds great. I will take those too. Last.fm and Turntable.fm want to offer me a few more songs for free? Sure, why not. And for the rest of the time (or maybe most of the time), I will keep using my beloved Grooveshark, which I use almost every day even though it has “social” features that I could not care less about.

If the past couple of years are an indication of the future of online music streaming, then we can be sure that there will be more options; differentiated and free options. And with multiple options I can assure you that I, like many others, will switch from Napster to Limewire to Last.fm to Pandora to Google Music to Grooveshark to whatever service offers me this: Freedom.

Simon Mainwaring talks We First & the Future of Capitalism Through the Lens of Social Tech

Esteban Contreras — Tue, 28 Jun 2011 07:13:57 +0000

Simon Mainwaring is founder of We First, a social branding consulting firm that helps companies use social media to build communities, profits and positive social impact. Simon is also the author of the book by the same name. Read my interview with Simon below, and make sure to follow him on Twitter @SimonMainwaring and find out more about the book at www.wefirstbook.com.

1. What led you to write “We First?”

I wrote “We First” for both personal and professional reasons. I was fortunate enough to have a long advertising career but still felt unfulfilled. I didn’t feel like there was an alignment between who I am as a person and what I did on a daily basis. With that in mind, I read the transcript for Bill Gates’ Creative Capitalism speech he gave at the World Economic Forum in which he said that government and philanthropy can’t fix the world on their own, they need the private sector to get involved. I saw this as an opportunity for me to find more fulfillment by becoming more purposefully engaged and also to use my skill sets to make a contribution. That was the genesis of writing the book.

2. What makes this book unique and why do people need to read it?

The book is unique for a couple of reasons. It does an effective job of consolidating a lot of different discussions going on right now, whether they’re about the future of capitalism, philosophical debates about self-interest, globalization, emerging technologies, the future of the developing world, and the impact of social technology. Specifically, the book is unique because it looks at an issue that many people have discussed: the future of capitalism through the lens of social technology. Mass adoption of social media has only occurred in the last three or four years, so what makes the book unique is that it looks at these questions through the lens of this new technology and provides three fundamental new solutions. First is a new partnership between brands and consumers connected by social technology and aligned around shared values that creates a third pillar of social change in addition to government and philanthropy. The second is the concept of contributory consumption, which builds on precursors like ‘1% for the Planet’ but extends to include not only retail, credit card, online, and mobile transactions, but also virtual goods when applying the concept of contributing a small portion of the sale of every good or service to a cause. Thirdly, the book proposes the formation of the Global Brand Initiative, which is a federation of brands that would combine their efforts and expertise to bring the best of the private sector into the social change space. So the book is unique because it lays out these three concepts.

3. It seems like people tend to come together in the midst of trials. What does that mean in a socially connected world?

Perhaps the most powerful impact of social media is its ability to connect people around what they care about. In times of trials, there are many pressing issues that motivate people to hope and work for change. In the last few years this has included everything from addressing persistent crises like hunger, disease and child mortality, through to unforeseen emergencies like the earthquake in Haiti, through to challenges the developing world faces such as the persistent recession after the global economic meltdown. Whatever the issue, social media allows people to connect around these shared concerns and to take action together, which is the most effective way to scale our response to these crises.

4. What do you think about companies generating awareness for causes they support by adding a dollar value donation to social media actions?

This is a critical, new dynamic that needs to be embraced by the private sector if we are going to meet the challenges we face with equal force. Now, realistically, you’ll never get the entire private sector to commit, but if we only see a five-to-ten percent shift in engagement by large corporations, and if they only donate a fraction on the dollar towards causes that are in alignment with their core values, we can systemically scale the contributions that are raised towards addressing pressing social issues. As such, the private sector and its untapped potential represent an enormous opportunity to create a third pillar of change in addition to government and philanthropy.

5. What are some of the main things that brands can do today to enhance the overall customer experience using social media?

Oddly enough, the most unnecessary mistake a brand can make is to see social media as an end in itself. This technology is just another platform that allows people to connect emotionally. By doing so, brands can build loyal customers that generate word-of-mouth advertising that ultimately impacts their bottom line. With that in mind, the most effective thing a brand can do is define what it stands for, articulate its core values and act on the basis of those values and then communicate such efforts consistently.

6. Some technologies are truly disruptive. What are some of the emerging trends we see today that you think will disrupt markets and our thinking?

I believe that in the space of a few short years, we’ll find it hard to imagine a time when customers didn’t have multiple platforms and channels through which to talk about brands with their friends and community. It will seem almost absurd to people that citizens and consumers were largely told what to think, do or buy using print, television or radio alone, and there was really no channel for them to have a dialogue with those institutions. So I think this is perhaps the most important, disruptive element in social media in that it has shifted the dynamic between institutions, whether it’s the government or corporation, from a broadcast/ monologue approach to a dialogue between customers and brands, or citizens and institutions. This has enormous implications for leadership, organizational structure, customer service and, obviously, advertising. As such, social media will transform the business marketplace as radically as the digital revolution did in the early ‘90’s.

7. Live streaming video has been around for some time but it’s still not widely used. Do you think we’ll eventually find ourselves in a world where everybody streams their life in real-time?

I don’t see the live-streaming of our lives as the most obvious or natural consequence of the new connections between people brought about through social media. My sense of it is that social media facilitates the building of communities around what people care about, so it’s a shared or ‘we’ experience, rather than simply being another tool to demonstrate a ‘me’ mentality, which is obviously what informs live-streaming your life to others at all times. In a sense, what people are looking for is human connection, meaning and hope for the future rather than simply a media outlet through which to promote themselves to others. Naturally, there will be exceptions to that rule, but by and large, my sense is that live-streaming video will just be another way of distributing content that has to be meaningful and impactful to people for people to watch it.

8. Anything that goes up online eventually comes to light. If somebody were to look at a feed of content about your life 50 years from now, what kind of story do you hope the feed will tell?

My hope would be that the story shows an alignment between who I am as a person and what I did in my daily life and career, and that my efforts would combine with others to help shift the conversation in the private sector towards more consistent, purposeful engagement that improves the lives of others.

9. What’s the process of writing a book like? Any advice for first-time authors?

Writing a book was something I had no understanding of when I went into it, and only on the other side of it did I realize how little I knew. Someone said to me recently that writing a book is not about the finished book in your hand, but what you learn about yourself along the way. I can tell you now that is absolutely true. It tests your finances, it tests your energy, it tests your intellect, and, like any large commitment, it forces you to grow. If I was to give any advice to a first time author, it would be that, like any brand, we need to recognize that we must now all be community architects. Even if you’re writing a book, you need to consider all the different channels that you can use to build a community that will eventually be the marketplace for your book. This involves blogging, tweeting, using Facebook, creating content on YouTube, and basically bringing to life the intellectual property of your book through different channels in a way that will stimulate people’s interest, engage their feedback, and create a sizeable marketplace for the launch of your book.

Steve Rosenbaum talks about Human, Accidental and Social Curation at SXSWi 2011

Esteban Contreras — Tue, 12 Apr 2011 05:21:25 +0000

As you might have noticed by now, curation is one of those topics that I get excited about. That’s why I was very glad to meet and chat with Steve Rosenbaum, CEO of Magnify and author of the book Curation Nation, in the Samsung Blogger Lounge at SXSW Interactive 2011. We talked about the difference between human and manual curation, as well as the idea of becoming an accidental curator and a few other things.

Check out the video and some photos below.

Storify Co-Founder Burt Herman talks about Stories, Curation and Facebook

Esteban Contreras — Sat, 09 Apr 2011 05:22:52 +0000

Burt Herman is a co-founder of real-time curation service Storify. I first heard about Storify on this Scobleizer post, and I’ve tested it for Samsung USA at SXSW and for myself at M2C (you can see an embeded example at the bottom of this post). I met with Burt at the Samsung Blogger Lounge at SXSWi and he was kind enough to answer my questions. You can follow Burt @burtherman

1. What’s the story of Storify?

Storify is founded by Burt Herman, a former Associated Press bureau chief and correspondent, and Xavier Damman, a Belgian engineer who was publisher of a crowdsourced student magazine. Both share a passion for media and technology, and about how to reinvent online publishing to embrace the social Web. They met early last year and joined together to launch Storify in private beta in September 2010. Storify is about enabling storytellers to find the best of social media to tell elegant stories that resonate and enlighten. We want to empower storytellers with simple tools that help them find the media that matters amid the flood of media.

2. Journalists have always been storytellers but they haven’t always been “curators” of social content. What does social curation mean for the future of journalism?

Curation is a buzzword that represents what journalists have always done: Finding sources for information and synthesizing it into concise stories that a general audience can understand. We now have more sources than ever due to social media empowering people to create content, so journalists now have a much richer pool of information to choose from. This is an opportunity and the start of a new golden age for journalism.

3. There are some people that have been “curating” since the beginning of the web. Are you targeting such curators or do you believe Storify is for the masses?

Storify is about empowering users to easily tell stories using social media, and it can be used by anyone — journalists, bloggers, companies or just regular people. Everyone has a story to tell, from serious news like the Japan tsunami to a personal story about a wedding or child’s birthday.

4. It seems like Facebook is always adding features that were pioneered by companies like Twitter, Flickr, Foursquare, Groupon, and Disqus. Are you concerned about Facebook or other giants adding features similar to Storify’s?

We are at the intersection of other social networks and are agnostic about the sources for stories. We view companies like Facebook as potential partners.

5. What separates Storify from services like Curated.by and Keepstream?

We are about storytelling and helping our users find memorable and meaningful posts from social networks to tell stories.

6. What advice would you give to future tech startup CEOs?

Follow your passion!

NOTE: Below is an embedded Storify story made up of tweets about M2C.

Jascha Kaykas-Wolff explains Involver’s New Social Markup Language SML

Esteban Contreras — Fri, 10 Dec 2010 07:27:58 +0000

Jascha Kaykas-Wolff is the VP of Marketing at Involver, a company and platform that provides solutions for Facebook and social engagement. Involver recently announced the release of SML, a programming language for the social web.

I asked Jascha a few questions and here’s what he had to say.

1. What is SML?

Involver’s SML (Social Markup Language) is server side scripting language for front-end developers with knowledge of HTML, CSS, Javascript. SML offers the ability to utilize Involver’s application gallery to design and quickly create fully customized social applications. Those applications are hosted on our infrastructure (the same that supported the launch of Facebook Stories and Facebook’s Election Polling finder as examples) and can be deployed across social networks like Facebook and the open web. Once an application has been created and deployed, marketing teams can monitor their performance using Involver’s Audience Management Platform, which offers a full social marketing dashboard, powerful analytics, alerting, and multi-platform publishing tools.

2. Why should developers use SML?

It was designed by developers for developers with the objective to help them:

Do more:

They are able to create and deploy custom social marketing applications quickly reducing the cost of development and empowering the marketing team’s to experiment more. SML has been tested by over 100,000 customers; scale will never be an issue for the apps they build.

Deliver more:

SML automatically instruments tracking into the code that is available to the marketing team via the Audience Management Platform’s analytics interface. The connection of SML to the Involver Audience Management Platform helps developers give marketers the tools to manage the application’s configuration, making their lives easier post deploy.

Be Creative:

SML Caches and resizes images, stores data, insulates developers from changes to social network APIs, and optimizes performance via Involver’s infrastructure so Developers can focus on making great design come-to-life.

3. What about FBML?

As FBML is degraded from its use on fan pages; SML developed applications will be insulated from any changes.

4. What impact do you think Facebook will have on the web in 2011?

With amazing growth on and off facebook.com the continued prevalence of the Facebook identity will push the limits of what web developers have known to be possible. I expect to see much greater transparency across the web with regards to whom is actually interacting with each other and brands. I’m particularly interested in seeing how political/social activists, like those involved with the WikiLeaks DOS activities as an example, interact with the rise of actual identities being more common on the web. The social and political ramifications of the popularity of the Facebook profile/identity might be a true pivot point in the history of the internet. It’s a very cool time to be working in the middle of this industry.

5. What is your take on Diaspora and the potential Google Me aka +1?

In my view critical mass is everything. I believe that Diaspora, +1 (or whatever Google Me will be called), will all push forward with similar user models to Facebook. Unless they serve a vastly different need (analogous to when Google indexing more content than Yahoo’s directory could scale too helped them supplant the then internet giant) I don’t expect them to materially impact Facebook’s velocity. Don’t get me wrong, i want to see innovation… I’m just not convinced it’s going to come from the most likely sources.

6. Do you think we will ever see “tabs” like the ones on Facebook within Twitter?

I’m interested to see what continues to evolve on the ‘right pane’ within Twitter. I think it’s a natural area to allow a brand to flex some of it’s creative muscle. I also expect LinkedIn and other networks will follow-suit. It’s a proven metaphor for a brand extension now and it’s only logical to see more like minded offerings.

Buddy Media’s Michael Jaindl Lists the Top 5 Things Brands Should Do on Facebook

Esteban Contreras — Wed, 03 Nov 2010 13:00:50 +0000

Michael Jaindl is the VP of Client Services for Buddy Media, a Facebook management system that has been making a lot of news lately. The Buddy Media Platform allows brands, including Samsung (check out our Samsung USA page), to create engaging Facebook tabs, monitor the wall, schedule posts, and more.

1. What are the top 5 things brands should be doing on Facebook?

This list will differ depending on the brand and audience, but here are 5 things all brands should be thinking about…

a) Use conversations to amplify campaigns:

The average user spends more then 55 minutes per day on Facebook and most of that time is spent on their News Feed. It’s important for brands to create conversations in the News Feed and direct fans to their tabs where they can have a richer experience and are motivated to share content. Most brands are used to creating fairly static promotional campaigns. They create TV spots, print ads, a Facebook tab, etc and start rolling out the campaign. It lasts for a few months and they take it down. Conversations, on the other hand, only last a few hours, are more dynamic, and should happen more frequently. Brands need to have conversations with their customers and fans everyday.

b) Motivate your fans to share content:
Brands and agencies need to create interesting content that fans are motivated to share. Facebook users have become very savvy and they realize that there is a negative impact to spamming their network. They can receive a negative comment, be hidden, or worst yet defriended. Just as people understand that forwarding on an email chain letter is spammy they get that sharing boring content can hurt their social cred. Just because there is a share button on a piece of content doesn’t mean that anyone will actually share it. It’s important to create compelling content that your fans are motivated to share.

c) Keep tabs simple and focused:
Most tabs have too much content. When designing a tab it’s important to have a clear goal in mind about what you want fans to interact with and share. Limit the focus on the page to one or two actions that you want your fans to take and design accordingly. The Buddy Media Platform is a great tool for managing content because it allows the page administrator to hide or show tab content in order to keep the tab focused.

d) Leverage owed, earned and paid media:

It’s important to leverage owned, earned, and paid media to promote your Facebook page. Make sure that your Facebook URL is everywhere. Create captivating or provocative ads and ask your prospective fans to “continue the conversation on Facebook”. The Field of Dreams model typically doesn’t work well on Facebook so if you aren’t promoting your page don’t expect to dramatically increase your fan base or engagement.

e) Create content specifically for Facebook:

Offering Facebook exclusive content gives fans a reason to pay attention and come back to your page. As you are designing a marketing campaign make sure that you are creating Facebook only content and a conversation calendar around that content. After you’ve created Facebook specific content use the Buddy Media Platform to “fan gate” your tabs so potential fans need to like the page before they get access to that content.

2. Companies like Zynga and Buddy Media have become an important part of the Facebook ecosystem. How is BuddyMedia enhancing Facebook and the overall social experience?

Imagine that you’re on a NASCAR pit crew and you need to use a standard monkey wrench to change your car’s tires instead of a power gun. The pit crews using the power gun will have changed all four tires by the time you’ve loosed your first lug nut. NASCAR races are very competitive and won by fractions of a second. A pit crew that uses the wrong tools has no chance of winning the race. Buddy Media offers “power tools” for Facebook through our Buddy Media Platform. The Buddy Media Platform helps brands and agencies amplify word-of-mouth marketing, monitor & moderate conversations, quickly launch/manage shareable content, and track performance through a comprehensive analytics suite. 2011 is going to be an interesting year because a lot of ground, in terms of brand equity, is going to be won and lost based on how effectively brands leverage social media to connect with their customers. If a brand or agency isn’t using the right tools they are going to lose ground.

3. The new Facebook Groups has once again brought up the topic of privacy. What are your thoughts about the new Groups and Facebook’s overall approach to new features?

I love the new Groups feature. We use it at Buddy Media to share everything from interesting articles to party invites. It’s a smart longer-term play for Facebook that will undoubtedly facilitate more sharing.

4. Facebook has become the most important online social network in the world. Why do you think Facebook continues to succeed where so many others have failed?

For one, I think Mark Zuckerberg’s intense focus on product in lieu of profits has been a big factor. It’s why Facebook is more reliable than Friendster was and more engaging than Myspace. Facebook makes a lot of revenue now, but they are still a breakeven company and Zuckerberg is ok with that because his focus is adding users, increasing engagement, and improving the user experience. This focus allows Facebook to think long term without having to worry about short term reaction to product releases. A lot of users didn’t like the News Feed or photo tagging when they were released. Over the long term those features became cornerstones of Facebook and the catalyst for it’s rapid growth.

5. What’s next for BuddyMedia?

We have a lot of exciting Buddy Media Platform feature launches coming up. Ensuring that our clients have the best tools to manage their social campaigns effectively is paramount. Stay tuned…