3 posts tagged “pr”

For those of you interested in using Social Media as a way to communicate to your customers, partners, etc., I recommend reading the following blog post by Rohit Bhargava, VP of Interactive Marketing for Ogilvy Public Relations.  Back in August, Rohit started an interesting conversation about Social Media Optimization (SMO), summarizing a series of rules for implementing a successful SMO strategy:

1. Increase your linkability
2. Make tagging and bookmarking easy
3. Reward inbound link
4. Help your content travel
5. Encourage the mashup

In time, Rohit linked to a few additional “rules,” for SMO, as offered by other bloggers.  Including:

6. Be a User Resource, even if it doesn’t help you (Jeremiah Owyang)
7. Reward helpful and valuable users (Jeremiah Owyang)
8. Participate (Cameron Olthius)
9. Know how to target your audience: "If you don't even know your target audience you are in trouble. I would love to have everyone using my product too, but you need to be realistic. There is always going to be a certain audience you can appeal to and others that you can't. So know your appeal and who it is appealing to." (Cameron Olthius)
10. Create content (Cameron Olthius)
11. Be real (Cameron Olthius)
12. Don’t forget your roots, be humble (Loren Baker)
13. Don’t be afraid to try new things, stay fresh (Loren Baker)
14. Develop a SMO strategy (Lee Odden)
15. Choose your SMO tactics wisely (Lee Odden)
16. Make SMO part of your process and best practices (Lee Odden)

A couple of weeks after publishing his original post, he wrote:

At this point, I think it's safe to say the term has grown beyond a point when I feel like I can (or should) be the gatekeeper to decide what the 17th rule should be or how this area evolves.  So, to that end, for those interesting in continuing the discussion and helping SMO to grow - here is my quick list of things you can do to help spread the word about SMO:

• Post your thoughts on your own blog
• Add a comment to the original SMO post on this blog
• Add a comment to a relevant blog post about SMO (whether they mention it or not)
• Tag any blog posts or online content about SMO with the tag "socialmediaoptimization"
• Update the Social Media Optimization page at the New PR Wiki
• Translate the rules into more languages (apart from those already done)
• Tell your colleagues (especially those outside online marketing) about SMO

I agree that SMO is an important topic of conversation, and while I don’t want to “own” the conversation either, I would like to add a new rule to the list - building a bit on rule 9:

17. Make your Social Media Optimization strategy targeted and multi-pronged.  Know your audience and customize marketing messages, making them relevant and compelling to the core groups of people you're targeting (e.g. YouTube users, bloggers, social networkers, people interested in specific topics, etc).

In my view, one of the most important parts of implementing a successful social media optimization strategy is not just knowing your target audience but making marketing messages to your different target audiences relevant.  I advocate using social media to articulate marketing messages in a slightly different way to different target groups – ensuring that the message a prospective customer received is tailored to their specific needs/interests.  From a customer’s perspective the best “sell” is a “soft sell” – one that makes them excited to buy a particular product/service rather than one that makes them feel “forced” to buy it.  In other words, people want to buy products because they actually want them, not because they’re told they want them.  

The companies who participate in Second Life (as discussed in my blog on December 7, 2006) are doing something right.  They’re making their message relevant to a specific group of people with a particular interest.  These advertisers are offering Second Lifers something that is relevant to/ enhances one's “second life”.  I recommend that companies take a similar approach to other marketing via other social media avenues.  So, for example, if you’re trying to attract YouTube users to purchase your product, talk about why your product is relevant to YouTube… If you make a mobile phone, place a targeted ad on the site that emphasizes about how easy and fun it is to watch YouTube using X, Y, or Z model of phone.  If you’re selling Mentos or Diet Coke, plug the YouTube videos that feature your product. 

When you're building an SMO strategy, take a more targeted approach by:

• Customizing your ads, making them relevant to different target groups
• Writing blogs and posting relevant track backs / comments in high-traffic blogs that point out the positive aspects of your products
• Participating in popular social networking sites and “making friends”, etc.  

In other words, don't just know who your target audience is, but make your messages more relevant to each of the target audiences that you expect will read/watch/hear them.  Because product evangelism through social media can be done inexpensively (or, in some cases, for free), it is possible to execute a multi-pronged approach that is more relevant to target prospective customers than more conventional forms of advertising.  The goal should be to develop a multi-pronged SMO strategy that is more relevant/ compelling/ convincing to groups of target customers with different interest, with the aim of increasing the probability that marketing messages "speak to" different groups in different ways and therefore improve customer acquisition and result in increased sales. 

• Are you looking for a thrill and hoping to strike it filthy stinking rich? 
  
• Are you a risk taker with disposable income and time on your hands?
• Want to own a huge house in a great location?
• Want to make friends on-line?

If you’ve answered “YES” to all of these questions, forget about buying lottery tickets or founding a start-up, why not invest in real estate…VIRTUAL REAL ESTATE?*.  Never before has property in California and New York been so affordable.  Since launching on September 26, Weblo.com has managed to flog the entire (virtual) state of California on its site for $53,000 USD.  New York State sold for $18,433 and the Canadian province of Ontario sold for $16,900. Weblo is a virtual world – the first one to virtually duplicate the real world of properties, cities, states, and Internet domains – on-line.  According to Weblo:

The virtual mayor of Washington D.C. sold his city for a 300 percent profit. The virtual Empire State Building, originally purchased for one dollar, recently sold for $250. Members flip virtual properties for profit just like in the real world.

Weblo is a one of several emerging web-based social networking sites that revolves around a “Metaverse”.  In his 1992 sci-fi novel Snow Crash, Neal Stephenson coined the term “Metaverse” to refer to the virtual reality-based Internet world, which might evolve in the future.

Weblo is unique because it is the first on-line virtual world/ “metaverse” that virtualizes “real cities in the real world.”  However, Weblo is by no means the first or biggest “virtual world” out there.  From what I can tell, that accolade goes to Second Life from Linden Lab of San Francisco.

Second Life launched three years ago and has quickly become one of the most interesting social experiments on-line. The virtual “World” of Second Life is currently “inhabited” by 1,855,135 members - Avatars, who are imagined and controlled by real people from all over the world.  Unlike Weblo, the “World” (metaverse) of Second Life does not mimic property and countries in the real world – the topography is wholly imagined and developed by its inhabitants.  

There is a “Marketplace,” which uses its own currency (Linden Dollars) to buy and sell virtual products and real estate inside the Second Life metaverse.  Second Life’s “inhabitants” interact with each other within this metaverse – just as real people interact in the real world.  Members create “virtual” products (3-D digital representations of real-life products or imaginary inventions), which they buy and sell inside the metaverse.  Linden Lab sells (and rents) virtual real estate to its inhabitants, which those inhabitants can then buy and sell themselves.  Second Life is free to join, but members pay $9.95 US a month to own land, and they pay a Land Use Fee proportional to the amount of land they own.

The Second Life Marketplace is thriving, and Linden Lab and the avatars aren’t the only ones benefiting financially… The real people controlling the avatars are trading in Linden Dollars for real ones – lots of them. According to Linden Labs, the Second Life “Marketplace” generates “millions of US dollars in monthly transactions.” Linden Dollars are being exchanged for US Dollars on several on-line currency exchanges (including LindenX) in record numbers.  In the last 24 hours alone, the equivalent of over $655,000 US Dollars has been spent inside the metaverse of Second Life, and the LindenX traded nearly $107,000 US Dollars.

Last week, Ailin Graef, the real-life person behind Second Life Avatar, Anshe Chung, announced that over the last two years, she has amassed the equivalent of $1 million US dollars of assets within Second Life’s metaverse, largely by buying and selling real estate.  Graef and her husband, Guni Graef, live between China and Germany and own their own real-life business focused on the “metaverse” (on-line virtual worlds), which includes perpetuating Anshe Chung’s real estate assets within Second Life.

Graef isn’t the only one making substantial money through Second Life.  The Times Online reports that real-life software developer, Gareth Lancaster, 33, from Derbyshire, England, makes a second income of between $20,000 and $30,000 US Dollars a year by selling virtual roller skates and vending machines in Second Life.  Over the last two years, Lancaster, operating as his Second Life avatar, “Moopf Murray,” has sold 60,000 pairs of virtual skates (for $60 each) to other avatars in Second Life.

Second Life has managed to grow virally very quickly– initially by appealing to highly technical users and expanding its user base to non-technical people from there.  Users don’t need to be technical to participate in Second Life. Linden Labs offers users tools that make building an avatar and participating in Second Life possible for anyone who knows how to use a computer.  Second Life gives its users an opportunity to be creative/build things, work with technology, play a game (of sorts), make money, and more – all from their computer. 

Second Life is one of the greatest success stories in social media to date. With a growing subscription base of over 1.5 million users (nearly 700,000 of which have logged in within the last 60 days) and a thriving economy that is worth real world money, Second Life is attracting lots of attention – from marketers, press, and prospective users.  It is a virtuous circle that looks set to continue.  Second Life is much like a more elaborate version of top selling video game Sim City (which has sold millions of copies over the years), except that it is much more interactive and entirely built by its inhabitants and evolves in relevancy to the real world over time. 

Marketers are seeing this potential.  This phenomenon is well documented.  Earlier this year, in the Harvard Business Review, Senior Editor, Paul Hemp wrote about the benefit of marketing real products to Avatars.  Hemp believes that metaverses like Second Life are fertile marketing ground because, "marketers [in Second Life] have the opportunity to interact with engaged minds.”  Plenty of real life companies agree.  In June 206, American Apparel was the first store to open up a store inside Second Life.  In September 2006, Starwood Hotels opened up a preview version of their forthcoming real-life hotels in Second Life. was the first real life company to open a hotel in Second Life.  Reuters has assigned a reporter to Second Life whose avatar reports on the goings on inside the metaverse of Second Life.  The list of companies that are involved in Second Life is impressive and growing.

Despite all of the press, plenty of members of the public haven’t heard of Second Life.  Of those people who have heard of Second Life, plenty of them don’t “get it” or understand why it is a compelling marketing tool.  Case in point, when I told some of my friends, family, and former colleagues who read this blog that I’d be writing about the successes and future potential of Second Life, I was met with blank stares and looks of confusion.  For those who don’t understand it, Second Life can seem more than a little bit bizarre, and it’s easy to see why.  As 35-year-old Second Life member, Mitch Joel writes in his blog:

As I get more involved in Second Life, I am starting to realize how psychotic I must sound when I talk about it in real life (or First Life).

 
Trying to explain the benefits getting a “Second Life” to people who already have a full “First Life”, will be one of Linden Lab’s greatest challenges.  In an interview published yesterday,  journalist Stephen Hutcheon asked Ailin Graef something a lot of people are wondering:

Why [do] otherwise intelligent people would spend real money on virtual assets, none of which could ever be seen as necessities and all of which can only ever be used inside the Second Life community?” 

Graef’s response was priceless:

This question is closely related to another question: Why do otherwise intelligent people spend real money on so many things in the real world that are not necessities? I mean, what do we really need to survive and to stay healthy? How much of our spending, even in real life, is driven by the desire for individualisation, self-expression, entertainment or communication?

I’ll be the first to admit that I haven’t spent time Second Life or purchased virtual real estate (there or anywhere else). It’s not that I’m opposed to trying it.  At the risk of sounding geeky, I find the possibilities of Second Life fascinating.  The trouble is that I have my hands full with a very busy “First Life” of my own – a large percentage of which is already spent on-line emailing, blogging, researching, and social networking.  At this point in my life, it’s tough enough to make time for a First Life being myself – never mind paying for a “second life” acting as a fictitional avatar.

*Note on the first paragraph– I’m not being serious.  If you’re looking for an investment strategy, talk to a licensed investment advisor (I’m not one). 

Last week, San Francisco-based start-up Activeweave launched an exciting new product called Stickis.  At first glance, Stickis looks like any other web overlay and annotation tool (i.e. Google Notebook, Trailfire, Fleck, Diigo, etc.), but dig a little deeper and you’ll see that Stickis does more.  If it reaches critical mass, Stickis could revolutionize the way that people interact with the web and each other.  Unlike popular social networking sites like MySpace, Friendster, Facebook, LinkedIn, Cyworld, etc., which require users to interact with each other within the confines of a specific website, Stickis allows users to interact with people in their network anytime and anywhere on the web.

For those of you who aren’t familiar with web overlay, traditional annotation tools have been around for a while.  These tools are browser plug-ins that let you stick virtual Post-It-esque “notes” on websites.  One of the first and most notorious of these web overlay services was the now defunct “Third Voice,” which many likened to “web graffiti”.  One of the problems with Third Voice was that it lacked privacy features, which critics argued, exposed everyone with Third Voice’s plug-in to potentially lewd and libelous commentary. In 2001, reporting on the backlash to this criticism, Wired reported:

Third Voice couldn't generate enough advertising revenue to raise consumers' awareness of its free service, and it couldn't generate enough consumer awareness to raise the advertising revenue it needed to stay in business.

Web overlay/annotation tools have come a long way since the missteps of Third Voice.  Since then, the web has seen significant technological advances – especially in the areas of privacy management, web search/organizing content, and social networking.   Stickis incorporates several advanced features in these areas into a product that not only free but highly functional, innovative, and easy to use.

One thing that makes Stickis different than its competitors is the way that the service is structured.  Stickis is organized around “channels,” which are groups of Stickis notes published by a particular user.  Anyone can set up a channel – a private individual, a blogger, an organization, a website, or a company.  (Yelp and OpenTable San Francisco are two of the first companies  to have Stickis channels.)  Users can subscribe to new channels or unsubscribe from their existing channels at any time.  Similarly, “channel” owners control the privacy of their content and are able to ensure which of their Stickis notes are shared with which of their subscribers.

Here’s how Stickis works today:

• Register at Stickis.com.
•  Pick a nickname/ username
  
•  Enter your email address
•  Select the channels you’d like to subscribe to
•  If you'd like to publish a channel, pick a name (mine is Socialmedia.vox.com)
  
•  Set-up your privacy settings
• You choose whether you want to make your Stickis channel public or private.  If you decide to make your channel public, you have control over which of your subscribers can see specific posts.  You can organize your subscribers into groups- limiting which of your Stickis are seen by which of your subscribers.  This is done by creating what Stickis calls “antisocial tags” http://www.stickis.com/settings/tags/
• Upon signing up, a small plug-in is downloaded to your computer and installed when you re-start your browser.  This plug-in does NOT contain spy ware and can be turned on or off anytime with the touch of a button, which appears in your browser’s toolbar.
• When Stickis is “on”, anytime you go to new web page, a small, unobtrusive icon appears in the bottom right hand corner of your browser window.  This button displays the number of Stickis notes that your subscribed “channels” have written about that web page.
  

  Corner-button

• Unlike other annotation programs, Stickis notes are easily ignored if you don’t want to see them. 
• If you want to open the Stickis notes on a page, simply click on the button in the lower right side of your browser, and a “tray” containing a summary of each Stickis note appears (listed in reverse chronological order).

• To get a closer look at a specific Stickis note, click on its summary in the “tray” and voila- the entire Stickis note appears as an overlay over the page you’re on.
•  If you want to add to a Stickis note or reply to someone else’s Stickis note, just press the compose button on the “tray” or in your browser’s toolbar, and start writing.
  

  Compose
• You can drag or drop URLs, Pictures, Icons, etc. into your Stickis notes.You can add ‘tags’ to each of your Stickis notes, facilitating easy searching. Similarly, you can add ‘antisocial tags’ to specific posts to ensure that only certain people see those posts.
• You can also customize the look and feel of your Stickis notes so that they reflect your personal style.
•  You can set up alerts that notify you when:
• Your favorite channel posts a new Stickis note.  
• Someone writes a Stickis note on a topic that interests you (e.g. notification when specific ‘tags’ are used).
• To see step-by-step instructions of how to work with Stickis, click here.
  

It’s easy to imagine the different ways Stickis could be marketed…

• Individuals: Share your most / least favorite sites with your friends, family, the public, etc.
• Fans: Talk with fellow fans about all of the latest on-line gossip.  Meet friends who are going to up-coming shows.
• Bloggers: Enhance your reader’s experience by cross-referencing websites that you’ve commented on.
• Blog readers: See what your favorite bloggers are saying about the sites you’ve visited.
• Marketers/ PR people (for products, bands, actors, etc.): Stickis is a great way to engage with the users who want to hear from you.  Create your own channel and share exclusive information with your prospective and existing customers.  Host contests, on-line scavenger hunts, and more.
• Teachers: Create different channels for each of the classes that you teach.  Share relevant websites / on-line content with your students and encourage them to engage in discussions with each other about what they see on-line.
• Politicians:  Reach out to your constituents and tell them what you think about what’s happening on-line.  Engage your staff in a confidential discussion about how to address leaks, negative comments/ allegations that appear on the web.
  

Stickis has the potential to become a leading social networking tool.  To succeed in this capacity, it must continue to evolve.  Activeweave’s CEO, Marc Meyer, agrees:

Today we’re very much emphasizing the annotation features and the ability to discover stuff. In the near future, we’ll be improving  people’s ability to connect more closely to their communities.

To read my blog anywhere on the web, add this blog to your Stickis Network.

To read another review on Stickis, check out TechCrunch.