LinkedIn’s Organic Social Medium

There’s an appropriate time and place for everything, and LinkedIn has found its niche, leading the way as the primary business platform of Social Media and keeping it as just that: for professional use only. A well-developed site, with millions of users, LinkedIn’s lesser-known reputation has somehow resisted the spamming and chatter of other social networking sites. While Facebook was concerned with tagging photos of last weekend’s BBQ, LinkedIn laid the groundwork to help professionals to develop a business strategy that fully avoids mixing business with leisure. Read the rest of this entry »

Moving Forward With Social Media

Social Media is imperative to competitive marketing and is an easy way to promote your business with minimal setup required. With the growing number of Social Media users today, having your business on a diverse number of readily available platforms will heighten the chance of your site being found in search engines that extend further than simply Google. And, the best part of it all? It’s free. A golden ticket to connect your inbound marketing strategy to real life people. Read the rest of this entry »

Our 6 Degrees of Separation Has Officially Dropped to 4.

Using data based on the links among 721 million Facebook users, recent information has presented that the once perceived “six degrees of separation” back in 1967–aka the average number of acquaintances separating any two people in the United States– now actually weighs in today at 4.37.  On the global scale, that number is only slightly higher at 4.74. No one can deny that Social Media is to thank for making the world even smaller while simultaneously expanding social connections and widening educational opportunities. Maybe you think Social Media is annoying and redundant,  but we think that the science behind it is pretty cool. Online social behaviors say a lot about who we are as a species, and who knows, maybe in 2012 that 4.37 will be an even smaller number. We dare you to re-post and share this. Let’s see how far it goes.

source: holykaw.alltop.com

Who’s that guy that just liked my brand?

So yeah, you have a pretty well-fanned Facebook page but you may don’t really know how they interact with your brand nor how you interact with them, how strong is that engagement.

Moontoast has created this infographic explaining how the different ways of “liking” affect the communication with your audience and their friends, the data you get from this “likers”, and it also shows the different fan profiles you can find on Facebook.

See the infographic after the jump.

Read the rest of this entry »

The Story of Aaron the Barber

It looks like the internet sites such as Reddit have something else to offer besides LOLCats, memes, quirky news and trolling. They also can spin acts like the one that happened during the London riots.

Seven days ago, Reddit was the one to first raise concern about the looting 89-year-old London barber Aaron Biber suffered at his shop. Aaron had run that barbershop for 41 years and now he was forced to shutter because he didn’t have insurance and couldn’t afford the repairs.

This story seemed to connect with several redditors — reddit.com users — who found in Aaron the tale of an all-timer middle-low class man with an iconic business. A barbershop that would be sad to see disappear  just because some rioters thought it was fun to trash and loot.

Right after the post being upvoted, redditors started looking for ways of sending Aaron some money to help him straighten out the situation.

This action was picked up by three interns at London ad agency BBH Barn and, through a blog and a more than decent social media response, they managed to raise £35,000 ($57,000) in only  three days. After that period of time they closed the fund said Aaron had “more than enough to get himself back up and running”, states the blog. The rest of the fund left after fixing the barbershop will be distributed to help the businesses near Aaron’s that were also affected by the riots.

Of course, Aaron Biber’s barbershop wasn’t the only one affected by London riots and it won’t be the last disgrace to happen. But this is just one of those nice stories where a simple spark on the internet lights a fire.

The Industry Formerly Known as Advertising.

The advertising industry is changing. This is a fact everyone in the industry is aware of. The change has been caused by the internet, computer and mobile technologies which have fragmented the media and shifted power from the advertisers to the people. The dominance of traditional interruption advertising is over and the new dynamics of search, engagement and sharing have taken over. And, truth to be told, this change excites us at Hero because it broadens the landscape of tactics, opens up opportunities for smaller players and makes human ideas, not media scale, the most powerful force in the market. Another powerful force which has contributed to this change is social media.

Social media is becoming more important with every passing day and everyone wants to be a part of it. Even though it’s not a suitable medium for every business. This change in the industry’s landscape isn’t just because of social media, of course, but it’s safe to say that social networking has modified the dynamics when communicating with the consumer and public opinion.

At Hero Design Studio, we’ve been following, for some time now, the opinions of a few of our industry’s favorite sharp thinkers about this shift advertising is taking. And now it has come the time to share them with you, fellow subscriber/follower/random passerby, because they are interesting. Read the rest of this entry »

Twitter Job Hustle

Bas van de Poel and Daan van Dam, a creative team from Amsterdam, came up with the idea of hustling themselves a job at an advertising agency using Twitter. Check out the following video to discover how the experiment turned out.

France Bans Facebook and Twitter Mentions on TV and Radio.

A couple days ago the French government banned the words ‘Facebook’ and ‘Twitter’ from being said on radio and TV. This ban originates on a 1992 decree which considers mentioning services by the name as a form of advertising.

Christine Kelly, spokeswoman for the Conseil Supérieur de l’Audiovisuel (CSA), the government broadcasting authority, stated: “Why give preference to Facebook, which is worth billions of dollars, when there are many other social networks that are struggling for recognition? This would be a distortion of competition. If we allow Facebook and Twitter to be cited on air, it’s opening a Pandora’s Box. Other social networks will complain to us, saying ‘Why not us?’”.

So now news anchors have to go with “Follow me on… social networks” which seems kind of a really odd thing to say.

What do you think?

Does a “Follow me us Twitter.” at the end of a media spot constitute advertising?

Extracted from an article on ZdNet.com

To Be or Not to Be…On Facebook

Christoph Kappes, former Pixelpark CEO, who now is holding this position at Fructus, deals with this conundrum on an article for German online publication W&V.

Kappes stands on his ground when he says that “Not every brand has to have a Facebook FanPage. Facebook is not as helpful to brands as one believes”.

He boldly points out that, no matter how many Facebook users ‘liked’ your page, results do not always follow. “There are brands that don’t need to keep in touch with the client. Some of these survive because they’re distant, like upper-class brands.”

Brands who have outstanding client following and fidelity, like Apple, don’t need to use social media to connect with their clients “their raison d’être is to be exclusive and have a mystic halo”. The Facebook FanPage model is more about trying to get more clicks and fans, not about coming up with new and efficient ways of communicating with the consumer.

The bottom line is: you don’t have to be on Facebook just because all the cool kids are in there, sometimes it’s good to be asocial.

Read it all here.

Social Media, a Force for Good.

The evolution of social media is always an fascinating subject for me. Something that started out–for the most part –with people sharing casual, unimportant information such as the ham sandwich I’m having for lunch, has evolved so much further in the last six years.

The most amazing thing though is how social media has turned into such a prominent way for us to share valuable information. One can use Twitter solely to follow news on just one topic and see more tweets in a day than can be red. This is probably where you’re thinking, “This isn’t a new idea; blogs have been discussing this for a while now,” and yes that’s true. However, I recently read an interesting Fast Company article stemming off the disasters of Japan, about how social media is used in a crisis, and its potential for good or bad. We’ve seen recently in Indonesia, where earthquakes, a tsunami, and volcanic eruptions destroyed a significant part of the area’s infrastructure, how locals are using Twitter to coordinate relief effort. Tweets go out saying help is needed to deliver a food drop, and within minutes there is a caravan of volunteers. While it’s still too early to say  what role if any social media will have in Japan’s disaster relief, we are seeing high usage since the moment the earth began to shake. It is understandably the easiest way to alert your family and friends that you are safe, but even the prime minister, himself, gives updates using Twitter. We see statements of encouragement, warnings from those far away, but also rumors. David Zax, the article’s author, references a map of how radiation could spread throughout China that has gone viral. No one is sure if it is real, but that it is out there makes it something of concern. Zax therefore raises the question, “What happens to truth when filtered through social media in a time of crisis?”

Similarly, to the Indonesian crisis, citizens of the Middle East are using Twitter and Facebook to arrange their large protests. Both systems were significant in the uprising that lead to the resignation of Egypt’s despot, and social media has long played a role in the underground opposition movement in Iran. It’s obvious how social media has been useful in these cases, because it is so hard to prevent the public’s involvement in it. While these are great examples of how social media allows good to overcome, there is nothing that preventist from being used to shape our perception in the opposite direction. Since companies are finding their new media campaigns so successful, what would prevent someone from creating an elaborate campaign that could be used for something bad? Zax therefore asks the question, “Are social media sites inherently a force for good?”

In the end, of course, the medium cannot be accountable for the user. The best thing we can do is  just continue doing what we’ve been doing since the emergence of social media and the internet as a whole for that matter–digging through the unnecessary and fake information.