Category Archives: Social media

A picture says a thousand retweets

Late last year twitter launched a service called twitter cards that enables a thumbnail image to appear alongside a standardised tweet from particular websites.

To enable this feature websites need to feature a wee snippet of code to the twitter link/icon on their site.

E-commerce services like Shopify are now offering it for sales items – which will be massive.

Another simple innovation that is likely to enable excellent qualified traffic generation and online sales leads.

Well worth checking out.

Social Media Snowballs in Sochi

Well before the Winter Olympics in Sochi began there’s been a broad range of bitterness towards the Russian hosts and particularly their President Vladimir Putin. Primarily Putin’s attitude, comments and actions around homosexuality are at the forefront on this resentment.

Putin’s views are ridiculous and from another era but I’ve been intrigued since the games started how social media actions and attitudes from the athletes are really started to seed wider news stories.

In the last few days we’ve watched Kiwi snowboarder Rebecca Torr follow up on a couple of cheeky tweets about meeting the Jamaican bobsled team and finding ‘friends’ on dating app Tinder in the Olympic Village.

Torr’s story (if that’s what you can call it) has been picked up by the UK’s Daily Mail and across multiple media channels. Now I’m sure it has nothing to do with her being very beautiful – but its kind of blown things a little off course when her job at the Games is to compete.

There’s also the story that’s followed US bobsledder Johnny Quinn who found himself locked in an Olympic village toilet when the lock jammed. His response to this situation was to kick and punch a hole in the door to get out, and then tweet a photo of it for us all to see.

Quinn’s motivation I guess was to prove how macho he is and highlight the failures of the Russian organisers who, it appears, can’t do a single thing right in these games. His story has gone completely global and it has nothing to do with his ability to bobsled.

Social media is once again highlighting the trivial elements of these Games and snowballing them into ‘real stories’. It’s also built up two profiles of athletes who are likely going to do very well out of potential sponsorship opportunities as a result of their 15 minutes of fame.

So perhaps, thanks to the snowball of social media, the winners of the Sochi games aren’t going to be fastest, highest or strongest rather just the loudest and goofiest.

Say it all it all in your URL

Sharing news and content on Facebook, Google+ and Twitter is something I do very rarely these days. Instead, I have a couple of friends who I share content, articles, videos etc with. Usually this is through Skype chat or Messages. They’re not professional contacts, just people who enjoy a bit of humour or a new POV.

Today I stumbled on a terrific bit of TV featuring Russell Brand promoting his live show on MSNBC’s Morning Joe show. (If you’ve got 8 minutes, I highly recommend viewing it!)

To share it I copied the link and flicked it on through Messages. In doing so I realised the URL does a great job of peaking curiosity.

http://gawker.com/russell-brand-destroys-msnbc-talk-show-host-for-treatin-513992493

“Russell Brand Destroys MSNBC Talk Show Host…” says it all.

This is a smart move by Gawker. It instantly simplifies what I need to do to share this content.

Youtube, who actually host the video, use http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=ADJhErmJuoQ.

If I were to share this URL, I’d have to do an intro to friends to get them to click and view it. Not really hard, but avoidable.

With the Gawker link I can just say “Read this  <insert link>” to my friends and they will be able to see precisely what the article is about and, if they’re like me, kind of want to see how Brand destroys a US talk show host.

These little details make all the difference when you’re trying to up page impressions and should be something the likes of the NZ Herald have on their to do list.

Pin the tail on a winner

Four years ago I remember talking with some friends about twitter. I was adamant that it was going to be a gamechanger. Oh they did laugh…I’m not getting high and mighty, I just want to present some context to social media’s new best friend…Pinterest.

Pinterest is an online pinboard where you can ‘pin’ images on any site you like and add them to your own personalised Pinterest page. Your pinboards are self-titled and other Pinterest users can follow them – just like you can follow any other member’s pinboards.

And oh, is it addictive. At the moment it’s really succeeding with design, fashion, architecture and the like but I think, when people start to really understand how it can be personalised to every individual’s taste, it’s going to take off.

They say a picture is worth a thousand words. I tend to agree.

Register now and start working it out for yourselves.

Twictionary

After many years on twitter I’m still surprised (and sometimes confused) by new twitter abbreviations and their meaning. To help simplify things I’ve decided to note a few common terms…

RT – Retweet. Used to share another person’s tweet with your followers. Can be done with a simple click of the ‘retweet’ link under each tweet.

Reply – Under each tweet you have the option to respond to a person’s tweet. To identify the person a “@” sign and the person’s address will appear at the beginning of your response.

Favourite – If you like a tweet you can ‘favourite’ that tweet. It won’t be shared directly with your followers but the person who posted the initial tweet will be advised of your action.

HT – Heard through. Requires the user to copy and paste another person’s tweet. Often used when additional context or opinion is required.

MT – Modified tweet. Used if someone has adjusted a person’s tweet but still needs the person’s twitter address included to provide context.

Via – Similar to HT. Again context or additional comment from the sender may be added.

@ – At. The prefix to a twitter address.

Twitpic – A comment photo sharing add-on for people wishing to share photos.

# – By placing a hashtag in front of a term eg #zumwohl people can create an indexable term that others can repeat to form a ‘trend’.

Trend – For various countries across the globe twitter categorises ‘top trends’. These vary with common terms eg John Key or Richie McCaw and various irreverent hashtag terms eg #ifyouwanttodateme

#lazyweb – If you are looking for a solution to a problem, by adding #lazyweb to a tweet, you are effectively asking the twittersphere for a solution. You may be surprised at how many people are happy to help.

bit.ly/ow.ly – These are URL shortening services that help you share news of the web with your followers. They also let you track the number of people who click on your tweeted message.

This list is evolving and I would offer folks the chance to comment on more twictionary definitions but my comment spam is out of control. If you do have more, why not put them on twitter with #twictionary so others can find them.

#Haschnapps…

Over the last month we’ve helped PR outfit Sputnik create the ‘Schnapp Election’ for their client, Zumwohl Schnapps.

The campaign encourages people to tweet amusing insights on the real election with the hashtag #zumwohl attached. Each day the funniest/cleverest tweet wins a bottle of said product (which is wicked btw).

The campaign was greatly assisted by using prominent tweeter and blogger Russell Brown at Publicaddress.net who hosted some simple display ads that we updated each week.

Russell also helped by being completely open about the commercial offer and advocating participation amongst his followers and readers. This subtle element made all the difference when it came to commercial businesses levering twitter as a promotional vehicle.

By being honest that this was nothing more than a promotion that “…earns Public Address a little money before Christmas…” the foundation was set for a new brand to build some exposure.

That’s a useful lesson for a new brand entering social media and one I guess Qantas wish they’d considered before today’s “hashjack”…

Where to swear

Last week a friend of mine tweeted that a large telecommunications company’s website was “f#&king” slow.

I didn’t think too much of it but later I went into LinkedIn and saw the tweet reappear in his updates. Suddenly swearing about a commercial entity didn’t seem so smart. LinkedIn is a professional networking service and swearing in this environment is akin to swearing in a job interview.

One click publishing is a useful advance in content management but it does pay to think about where that content will appear and what perception you’re passing on.

Sometimes it pays to come second

Be the first, be the best, be different is a catchy line that floated around a few years ago as a motivator for business success. When you think of some real world examples of this line Sony and Apple do a pretty good job. The Walkman, the iPod, the iPad have all ticked the boxes of being the first, the best and different.

By being at the forefront of innovation, Sony and Apple’s brands sit nicely with the desires and demands of people who consider themselves innovators and early adopters. These people are also at the heart of social media and popular trends so it’s no surprise that when Apple and Sony release their new products it creates such a remarkable buzz.

Problem is, there are only a small number of innovators and early adopters in the world and most of them get bored really quickly.

This is where we see ‘copycat’ manufacturers like Google and Dell waltz in, take the innovators ideas that society has liked, alter them slightly and mop up the remainder of the market with similar products sold at a considerably reduced price. That’s where the real money is made.

And this is what’s going to happen with Google’s Android. The iPhone 4 is having some speed wobbles and I just can’t help feeling that Google’s gradually building some momentum underneath the glamour and will be able to use all its arsenal of services to systematically swallow Apple’s profits.

If Google do this Apple will, of course, kick into the next big thing. I do wonder though if they’d make a better profit if they repackaged some of their products to compete with copycat brands after the buzz has settled.

Perhaps be second, learn from the best, be similar might be a better line for those that don’t mind missing out on the glamour, but in doing so minimise the risks and still make a very successful business. Just ask Trade me.

Bidding Bon Voyage to Bebo

This week’s announcement from AOL that they’re likely to sell or close Bebo after paying US$850 million for it early last year did not surprise me. AOL are legendary for muddling even the best of products and for the last 12 months I’ve seen Facebook really outperform Bebo on a number of levels. And for me, a core level is advertising.

In early 2007 I began running ads for some of my clients on Bebo. This new player on the local social media scene had quite simply exploded with Kiwis aged 12-24 and I was keen to get my clients’ sites noticed here.

The journey to get ads to air was very drawn out. At that stage Bebo didn’t have anyone on the ground in NZ so I had to go all the way to Jim Scheinman, the CEO in San Francisco, to get some sort of traction on who and how we could get our ads rolling.

In the end the solution was to use Google’s Placement Targeted Network. Now I was absolutely happy with that. Using Google I could easily optimise exposure and cost. After all, a site receiving hundreds of millions of page impressions was ripe for the picking and low cost high exposure advertising was underway.

Subsequently, we had a number of really successful months running ads for our clients on Bebo until it all went to pot when Bebo enlisted TVNZ’s help as their NZ media sales partner. All of sudden a complex middleman was here using a CPM model for buying ad placements on Bebo. It just didn’t work.

So we stopped advertising on Bebo. Our clients couldn’t afford it.

Fortunately at this time another social media site called Facebook was building real momentum in New Zealand.

Facebook had learnt a thing or two about surviving online and invested in creating an ad management console that enabled people to manage their own advertising just like Google. We tried it with a few of our clients and it worked. And it still works for us every month.

Now I know we’re only ‘little old New Zealand’, but I can’t help think that that very simple decision of keeping the ad logistics simple and enabling a long tail of advertisers to fill these vast voids of ad inventory was a pointer to why Bebo is melting and Facebook is solidifying its position as the global player in social media.

New Zealand’s piping up!

Basically every Tweet I’m following at the moment is about the announcement of Pacific Fibre. This new venture “aims to connect Australia and New Zealand to the USA with a high capacity low latency fibre cable.” And what a Twitter friendly story we’ve got here.

It’s being backed by Kiwi heavyweights Sir Stephen Tindall, Sam Morgan, Lance Wiggs, Mark Rushworth and Rod Drury and it appears they’ve timed their announcement just right to go gangbusters across a particularly useful crowd of thought leaders.

Pacific Fibre impact

Bernard Hickey from Interest.co.nz tweeted an hour ago and it’s just exploded. He just told me that his initial tweet has been retweeted over a dozen times in the last hour. Looking at Datascope I can see his name’s all over things. Chris Keall from NBR is doing nicely too.

The story has just been picked up as the lead on NZ Herald and Stuff too.

And this news is welcomed. Pacific Fibre could be something spectacular for New Zealand. As far back as I remember New Zealand’s Archilles heel with Internet business has always been our limited pipes. The opportunity is massive. It’s going to put the crawlers up Telecom – something I’m sure appeals to Sam Morgan!

I’m a little surprised that Peter Jackson and Richard Taylor aren’t in this uber-consortium too. I’d imagine large bandwidth for their large hard drives would be a real boost for their businesses.

Interesting news. And go Twitter for sharing the love so quickly.

Good luck to all involved.