June 22, 2009

Top 100 Social Media Websites

Filed under: "Best Of" Lists, Social Media, Top 10 Lists, Twitter — Tags: — Scott @ 11:53 am

We spent a little time over the past week compiling a list of the top 100 social media websites, as reported by Alexa. Most of what we found was expected, some was not. For example, www.Scribd.com was number 7 on the list. We knew the document sharing tool was getting more and more popular, but didn’t realize it has already ascended to a top 10 position that quickly. So, we thought we would use Scribd to post this full list. Enjoy! – Scott

June 17, 2009

Interactive Shop Sapient Acquires Ad Firm Nitro Group

Filed under: Mergers and Acquisitions — Tags: , — Scott @ 8:39 am

For years it seemed that every traditional advertising firm was acquiring a cool trendy digital shop to try and balance out their portfolio offering. The day has come where interactive agencies have started to acquire traditional ad firms. Perhaps this is the true “mainstreaming” of interactive that we’ve been waiting to see. 

Here’s a good Wall Street Journal article about Sapient’s Acquisition of Nitro Group.

Twitter Use During Iran Election

Filed under: Social Media, Twitter — Tags: , , — Scott @ 8:31 am

I never thought i’d see the day when the US State Department would ask Twitter to reschedule maintenance for the site until later, as it was determined to be important in the news coverage of the Iranian Election. I suppose there are other uses for the start-up Microbogging site than the usual updates letting me know my friends have gotten a $5 footlong, or that a relationship break-up is looming.

Here’s a good article about the Iranian Election usage of Twitter.

June 11, 2009

What’s the Tweet all about?

Filed under: Facebook, Social Media, Twitter — Tags: , , — Ken @ 10:35 am

It’s kind of ironic that I found this article today when I was catching up on my latest industry news. About a month ago myself and a few of the Lucid guys were talking about how social media seems to be the “cure-all” right now, and everybody wants it. Yet most people don’t know why they want it, or if it even makes sense for their business. Don’t get me wrong, I love facebook. Yet, social media marketing is tough, time consuming and really takes an understanding of the customer. It’s not just having a profile on Facebook, Myspace or Twitter, just to have one. We get clients coming to us all the time asking if we can setup a twitter or facebook campaign for them. Often, when we get down to brass tacks and figure out the business need, Twitter or Facebook isn’t the answer. 

When you look at Twitter, keep in mind that only 10% of the users on Twitter make 90% of the “tweets”. This means that there are die hard twitter users that have a ton of followers and probably get something from their tweets because they are reaching a massive critical audience. The rest of the users, just get a little fun or find it interesting to see what other people are up to in real time.

Derek Harding, one of the writers over at Clickz [a marketing news website] poses some questions about the long term validity of Twitter and whether it will “implode under the weight of it’s hype”. Keep in mind Twitter still hasn’t found a long term revenue model. Derek Harding’s article can be seen here: http://www.clickz.com/3634038

Let me know what you think!

Ken

June 3, 2009

The recession is helping online marketing?

Filed under: Online Marketing — Tags: , , — Ken @ 9:33 am

The marketing world has changed drastically in the past ten years. Today I was thinking about how this has impacted my life. I’m almost 30 and back in the 90’s, I routinely read the morning paper and used the yellow pages for business references what seemed like years ago. Pretty normal things to do. Most people got the news from the morning paper and when you needed a local plumber, you went to the yellow pages. Fast forward to 2009 and life is different. About a month ago the local phone book was sent to my house, I picked it up and put it right in the recycle bin. I also realized that I can’t remember the last time I subscribed to a newspaper. I Google everything from my news to services that I need, like a plumber or even house shopping. Even using the word “Google” as a verb. That’s new.

I had a discussion with one of the Lucid partners about 2 months ago and we both came to the same conclusion…the recession is forcing businesses to take a hard look at their marketing dollars. Many are realizing that they are not getting the return on investment from Radio, Print and TV. Internet marketing is often much more efficient, and is the preferred method of finding a business by most consumers and businesses. 

Having worked in print advertising in the past, I can tell you from personal experience that the newspaper industry has been a slowly dying industry for the past decade as they have searched for ways to prove their worth in a time when most people aren’t really interested in the products they provide. They have tried making up for their print ad rates by selling online ads but it seems as if they are suffering in this arena as well. The more businesses decide to online market them selves, control their own message and not get over charged and under delivered for a newspaper print ad the more this trend will continue.

Here is a quick link to an article with the current Q1 Online News Ad Revenues: http://www.clickz.com/3633951

Are you still wasting money in the Yellow Pages, Print, TV or Billboard advertising? You may want to take a serious look at how much return you are getting with these avenues and how much wasted money is spent on overhead like printing the paper or producing your TV commercial. Online marketing is an effective way to stay ahead of your competitors and make sure your business is running as smoothly as possible.

Let me know your thoughts!

Ken