You have at least two tribes you can be a leader to RIGHT NOW: the tribe associated with your pain and the tribe associated with your joy. Both need you and social media IS one of the most powerful mediums to lead through. This is THE safest, fastest, most rewarding methods to find your inner leader: 30 second videos on a YouTube channel, an eBook of your thoughts, a blog re-purposing the thoughts in the eBook, tweets that condense these thoughts, an landing page announcing your vision/ideas, an aStore through Amazon where you make commissions on products aligned with your tribe, a NING social network where you invite your tribe to interact, a Second Life account where you dress yourself in the world you imagine and find others like you there. Study the Conversation Prism tonight and select the petals of the flower that you belong in and populate those social media properties with your gift to the world…NOW is the time! – Nathaniel Hansen
According to a second annual survey of companies conducted by Deloitte, Beeline Labs and the Society for New Communications Research, 94 percent of the respondents (major global companies) indicated that they plan to maintain or increase investment in their communities, while only six percent plan to decrease investment. …read more
If you are an advertiser who wants to drive large volumes of traffic to your site, there are two important things you are probably looking for: reach and ease of implementing your campaign. Facebook meets these qualifications. It is currently the third largest site online with 125MM visitors in September and it is quickly approaching parity with the #1 and #2 publishers, Google and Yahoo.
In terms of implementation, Facebook has made it very easy for anyone from a well known brand like Starbucks to a mom and pop shop to a student to create an ad campaign. Creating an ad campaign happens all on one page and takes just three steps including designing the ad (picture, title and description), selecting your targeting and setting a budget. This simple process makes it easy for companies to dip their toes and test advertising on social media sites. …read more
In the old days, before ubiquitous Internet connections and social networks, I always turned to TV Guide’s Fall Preview issue to get information about my favorite TV shows, find out what was going to make its debut and to find out when I could actually catch said shows. Today, technology and the web has made not only finding information, reviews and opinions of television shows easier and faster than ever before, the online video revolution means that we can actually watch most of those shows from the comfort of our laptops. …read more
With the popularity of social media ever on the rise, it’s no surprise that industry experts are weighing in on SM trends for 2010.
Things to look for: Increased popularity in mobile and sharing functionality, tighter workplace regulations on employee profiles and a continuation in companies looking for cost-effective ways to serve their customers through access to online support – further proof that companies are looking to social media for cost-savings and optimal monetization.
Read on for David Armano’s full article on the Harvard Business blog Six Social Media Trends for 2010.
Facebook is clearly on a roll and is knocking on Google’s door as the biggest site on the web. Will it continue to dominate or see its lead slip? Here are two potential outcomes. …read more
The BBC is attempting to embrace social media by appointing a social media editor in its newsroom and redesigning its website. As the September traffic figures for US political blogging site Huffington Post reveal, the strategy is clearly a wise one. In short: embracing social media boosts traffic.
The figures speak for themselves: after the Huffington Post launched a Social News site with Facebook Connect in the middle of August, comScore credited the site with 6,825,000 unique users in September. That is up impressive 50% year on year, and slightly overtaking the Washington Post website. According to the Nielsen’s September report, the Huffington Post is at 9.47 million unique users, compared with the BBC’s 7.2 million.
When Staci D Kramer from paidContent got a chance to interview the Huffington Post CEO, Eric Hippeau, he revealed some more details: Facebook referral traffic is up 48% since the launch and accounted for 3.5 million visits, so 15% of all the comments now come from Facebook. And according to the Huffington Post’s internal statistics, those numbers continue to build. … read more
Jane’s video below demonstrates some important possibilities in SMM:
1. If you have a niche, begin marketing to it via short, punchy, informative videos NOW.
2. Don’t wait to get it perfect. You are already an “expert” in something. Get yourself out there.
Seminal AR announced today that they are offering their new augmented reality app, Layar, for free on iTunes. There’s only one catch – users have to have a 3Gs iPhone.
Using the built-in location-based map, users choose a layer to overlay their “real time” view, allowing them to view varying data including nearby bars and restaurants, wikipedia entries about locations in close proximity and even nearby twitter users.
Using video to virally propel a message, idea or promotion isn’t anything new in the world of new media marketing. Here’s an insider secret: The idea is to create something good enough, creative enough and sticky enough that people want to talk about it and share it. And the best way to do that is to be loud, funny and outside of the box. Complex and expensive graphics, design and transitions aren’t always the key. Being memorable is.
Create something that you’d want to send to your friends because it made you think, or because it made you laugh. People love to talk, and that conversation can easily be about your brand IF you make the talk worth buzzing about.
Sometimes videos just go viral on their own because they are THAT good. Here’s one example of a video that very accidentally went viral:
Since July 19, this video has received close to 13 million hits, over 100 unique clips and 50,000 comments. The wedding party-including the bride and groom-were even invited to re-create the moment on the Today Show:
And, after being parodied on the most recent episode of The Office, hits for the same link have spiked yet again.
Like photos, videos can be an extremely effective tool in telling your story. Just remember to make it creative, fresh and most importantly, something you’d pass along to your friends.
Howard Brown of Circle Builders attended a presentation last evening from the Midwest director of ad-sales for Facbook – Tom Chisholm
He covers 5 Midwest states and accounts for advertising like 3 autos, PG, Kellogg’s, Compuware, Quicken Loans
Social graph (you at center then family, college, work) of connection, sharing and conversations:
•92% of ALL college students have a FB account
•1 million new registered user a DAY (1/3 US / 2/3rds International)
•74 languages (more native tongues on the way
•324 million total users up 100m this year (1/3 US / 2/3rds International) (intense infrastructure to handle this never been done before bandwidth, storage, processing power…)
•70 million photos posted a day (largest photo sharing site in the world – all others combined do not equal FB)
•4 times the amount of events than evite
•Avg stay time (stickiness) 19.6 minutes
•Analytics – 200 data points per user profile (data is Trojan horse to revenue with advertisers)
•40% of all user profiles public ally list cell phone #
•FB connect has been a game changer
•Best advertisers – Virgin, Addidas, Starbucks
•No plans to charge users – FB will monetize by acting as ad agency:
national accounts
regional / small biz
online
FB considers:
Web 1.0 = static
Web 2.0 = interactive
Web 3.0 = sharing
Just became cash flow positive last month
FB is content to become the worlds largest monopoly / utility
For us at Equilibrium Entertainment, Nathaniel Hansen is a symbol of the World. We do not know of anyone who can jump on the phone, Skype or a plane at a moment's notice and connect with the type of rolodex that he can. He IS one of the world's best and most highly connected networkers and has a truly formidable set of technical, social and intellectual/psychic tools as back up.
“Nathaniel and I have worked on joint client accounts for online marketing and web deployment. He has always been extremely responsive and constructive when working on ways to solve the needs of our clients. The marketing approach he used to create a website for the latest client markedly increased the stickiness of the website, doubling the amount of time visitors spent on the site.”
“Partnering with Nathaniel Hansen has been one of the most lucrative business decisions for my organization. Nathaniel understands the art and science of internet marketing, is a social media guru, and is a brilliant networker. His ability to connect professionals based on unique abilities and goals is powerful.”
