This is a video filmed from a 2003 TED Conference, but as I was doing research today, I wanted to bring this back up to the surface as a good reminder of the core principles of how to effectively reach and connect with people/consumers today.
In a world of too many options and too little time, our obvious choice is to ignore the ordinary stuff. Marketing guru Seth Godin spells out why, when it comes getting our attention, bad or bizarre ideas are more successful than boring ones. And early adopters, not the mainstream's bell curve, are the new sweet spot of the market.
Lee White of Inside Conversation publishes helpful presentations on Slideshare for people in Marketing and Communications. This presentation Social Media Is... is intended to help you have a better understanding of Social Media and why Social Media is important and relevant to today's marketing and communications mix.
The key, the article clearly points to, is that these companies are "quietly building brands online on the strength of communities." While I would say there is nothing "quiet" about @Zappos interactive dialogue and "Tweet Evangelism" on Twitter or the "voice" of user-generated slogans and design and community ratings submitted for the latest and greatest Threadless T's slogans or the "raving fan base" of Etsy's marketplace, the article has a quote that is so worth stating over and over again...
"Community is not a tactic or marketing plan line item, but core to what [successful Web 2.0 brands] do. It means being hyper-responsive to customers, laser focused on usability, unapologetically human and OK with customers determining the course their businesses should take. The bonus: When they take off, these brands don't need to do much in the way of advertising, instead letting their customers spread the word."
This cannot be expressed enough in every aspect of your interactive/marketing plan. Community is so core to successful engagement today that it has got to be where your message becomes dialogue, your consumers become relationships and those relationships become inter-personal.
This weekend we headed to the movies. That should be a place where I turn off thoughts of interactive and social media opportunities, but no it often fuels the flame more. As we saw the movie trailers roll in, I was surprised to see that movie studios are no longer promoting their movie microsites by URL, but pointing movie-goers to the movie's Facebook Fan page directly -- marketing www.facebook.com/movietitle, for example.
Is this the death of the movie microsite? I wouldn't say that, you'll just see movie sites also include social media extensions, including Facebook Fan pages, like the upcoming comedy re-make Get Smart (microsite | Facebook Fan Page). Movie marketing is now "going where the conversations are happening" (@jowyang credit) and allowing fans to engage, interact and evangelize for the film. (There's a comment here on Snakes on a Plane, but that's a whole other blog post in retrospect.)
What happens when movie studios really get it? Dark Night takes connecting with fans to a level I feel is unparalleled. In this case, here is an example of movie marketing that understands the true power of every tool within the interactive toolbox.
In the case of Dark Night, for example, this Batman episodic blockbuster has created an amazing viral and community campaign, which IMHO is extraordinary. (Thanks to @melonhead for being an early fan on this one since 2007.) Through his tweets and emails, as an excited fan, he shared the story that unfolded for him as a registered fan. Dark Night used a microsite / online game interactive strategy to lure and feed fans with tidbits of information all along the way with a Scavenger Hunt , Top Secret Access, and live Gotham City sites, like the "ACME Security Systems" corporate site and character sites, like I Believe in Harvey Dent Too that all play in to interacting with registered fans well before it even hit the radar for most movie-going consumers.
Dark Night goes well beyond what "conventional" social media marketing is. This is interactive on hard core bat juice!
In an April report by eMarketer, User-Generated Content: In Pursuit of Ad Dollars, U.S. Internet users are creating
content in record numbers, and millions of other users are reading and
looking at it. eMarketer studies this surge in user-generated content creation and provides answers to key questions:
How many people are creating User-Generated Content in the US?
How many people are consuming User-Generated Content?
What are the demographics of content creators and consumers?
Is User-Generated Content a fad?
Can User-Generated Content be monetized?
The report also aggregates some interesting statistics on content creators and content consumers over the the next five years.
Twitter is still a big question mark in a lot of people's minds. How do I engage? Where do I jump in? How will it benefit me and my interests? Will anybody be interested? Why would I use this? What are the benefits? How do I measure its value?
Well, if you spend a couple minutes on Twistori, I think you'll begin to see very clearly what the voice of Twitter is capable of. I'll leave this post to Twistori to tell the Twitter story from here...
Twistori is...
is the first step in an ongoing social experiment, based on Twitter. inspired by wefeelfine and drawing data from summize, hand-crafted by amy hoy and thomas fuchs.
Google's User Experience (UX) Group—which does user interface design, visual design, user research, web development, and user interface writing—set out to articulate the principles that will guide Google designs worldwide.
What I love that Google has done here is to create a UX framework for how the Google UX Group creates experiences that are "useful, fast, simple, engaging, innovative, universal, profitable, beautiful, trustworthy, and personable." The Google UX Group aspires "to design products that satisfy and delight [Google] users."
Here's Google's user experience principles to satisfy this mission.
Focus on people—their lives, their work, their dreams.
Every millisecond counts.
Simplicity is powerful.
Engage beginners and attract experts.
Dare to innovate.
Design for the world.
Plan for today's and tomorrow's business.
Delight the eye without distracting the mind.
Be worthy of people's trust.
Add a human touch.
The Google UX Group has aligned these prinicples to Google's Philosophy, which strategically manifests the company mission in the experience created for Google users in the end.
Today, I found Kami Watson Huyse and Geoff Livingston's presentation, Building Brands with Social Media, was made available through Slideshare. It's a great presentation and I wanted in turn to extend its reach to Viaspire's audience as well. Using the <embed> link in Slideshare is so easy. It's remarkable. In less than 15 seconds, I was prompted to select which account I wanted to add this presentation to and then cued to log in to that selected account. Seamlessly, the presentation deck was embedded to my Viapire blog post below. The process was quick, easy and flawless. It saved me so much time, I had to write a blog post about it with the extra time saved! ;)
Thumbs Up to Innovation & User-Centered Thought Leadership
Kami and Geoff -- Thanks for publishing your presentation and choosing Slideshare to deliver your thought leadership on the Web.
Slideshare -- The little user features you have built in <embed> are awesomely delicious. Thank you!
Big gestures + little features make me a very happy blogger. :)
P.S. - At the time of this post, Slideshare is offline due to what may still be part of the massive distributed DDOS attack that crippled their online services earlier in the week. In the meantime, check out their blog and their Twitter feed to keep posted.
