Can this man save Google's social strategy?
How important is social to Google's future?
It depends on who you ask. Some believe that if Google doesn't find a way to compete in the space, Facebook might eventually eat its lunch.
Those who are a tad more skeptical suggest that Google and its advertising money machine don't need social to thrive.
Time will tell which camp is right, but Google has already decided. With the launch of Google+ and Search, plus Your World, it's clear that the search giant is committed to giving its all in an effort to become a meaningful player in the social market.
StumbleUpon brings the iFrame back
You thought they were gone. Those pesky, annoying, experience-destroying things. Yes, I'm talking about iFrames.
Popular a decade ago, they've made a few appearances in the past several years. The once-popular Digg, for instance, turned to them to implement its DiggBar.
But now they're back.
Digg's demise: are VCs and founder cash-outs partly to blame?
Digg is dead. Sure, the company won't be disappearing today,
tomorrow or next week, but to anyone who lived through the first .com
bust, the writing is on the wall: the company's redesign woes and
yesterday's 37% staff reduction don't bode well for its future prospects.
For Digg to survive and thrive once again, it's going to have to beat the kind of odds that few companies do.
What do Social Media Managers do? Part 2
Following on from my previous post, it’s time to throw myself to the wolves and tell you exactly what it is I’m doing all day. Hopefully by outlining my regular daily routine you’ll begin to see how various platforms can be used by your social media staff to enhance your customer’s experience and generate revenue.
Where relevant I’ll try to post exact figures and ROI, and detail some of the new ideas that have come from our social outreach recently...
Building a great social media strategy
When I’m writing about social media, I always try to hammer home the importance of transparency: Clear and open communication with clients by members of staff at all levels.
Unfortunately there are times when this isn’t appropriate. There are hierarchies of information and responsibility in any company, which means social media expansion often requires a clear policy so that anyone with access to social media (which means everyone) stays on message and doesn’t accidentally destroy a lovingly crafted campaign with an ill-advised tweet.
In order to roll out a social program across an entire company, you need to train and educate across your organization, and a properly honed policy is a good way to begin.
Here area few quick points to consider when putting together a general use policy that will help you ensure maximum engagement and minimum risk.
Digg's painful lesson: take the money and run while you can
At one point in the no-so-distant past, Digg was one of the hottest startups on the internet. The Web 2.0 boom was in full swing, and Digg and its founder Kevin Rose were the poster children for the next generation of companies that would ride the wave to fame and fortune.
Digg, of course, rose to popularity by providing a platform that democratized the news. Why rely on editors to determine what's important and what's not?Let the wisdom of the crowd works its magic. It was a simple idea, but a powerful one.
Why social media needs to learn the marketing basics
Given that it pays my wages, I’m not supposed to let you know that
social media isn’t the be-all-and-end-all for marketers everywhere, but
try as I might I still can’t quite come up with enough reasons to ditch
your other streams and hand your marketing keys over to Zuckerberg just
yet.
While it can’t be all things to all people, there’s no denying that social media is still experiencing impressive growth and has great potential for innovation and engagement. Yet traditional media is still huge and it’s concerning that some of the hype surrounding social media could eventually be doing more harm than good for businesses.
One of the major problems is a lack of understanding.
Is 'mafia sourcing' really a bad thing?
Social media and Web 2.0 (a term that, incidentally, we don't hear much of anymore) were supposed to make the internet a more democratic place. On today's internet, just about everybody has a printing press, and the little guy has equal opportunity to distribute a message. The best, we're often told, will rise to the top.
Of course, anyone who is involved with user-generated content and the popular web services through which user-generated content is shared and promoted, eventually learns that the internet isn't as democratic as it's supposed to be.
Is Digg digging itself into a hole with its new design?
Digg may have been a Web 2.0 pioneer, but out of all the mature startups loosely grouped into the 'social media' category, it's one of the companies some might argue is well past its prime. While other upstarts born around mid-decade, such as Facebook and Twitter, continue to rise, Digg seems to be treading water.
That, of course, is not to say that Digg isn't very popular. It is. And that's not to say that it can't do wonderful things for publishers who hit the front page. It can.
But for both consumers and publishers alike, the Facebook and Twitters of the world have largely become more important when it comes to sharing and discovering interesting content on the web.
Don’t believe the hype: three ways social media figures lie
As more companies introduce social media campaigns, there’s often
a real lack of understanding when deciding which numbers really matter, so the default action is often to watch everything.
On the one hand, keeping track of every tweet, post and comment is good practice. However, when it comes to actually interpreting the piles of data, meaningful analysis is sometimes sorely absent.
Ideally you should be able to interpret the figures so that you can both hone your KPIs and make ongoing strategic decisions. By analysing figures in meaningful ways you’ll receive deeper, more useful insights.
Let’s consider a few ways you can sort figurative fact from fiction:
