Marketing Pilgrim Published: “Cup of Joe: The Tron Guy Teaches Us About ORM” plus 3 more

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Cup of Joe: The Tron Guy Teaches Us About ORM
Turning Social Media Followers into Brand Evangelists
American Idol Voters Are Not Fans of Facebook
Android OS Leads Market According to Nielsen

Cup of Joe: The Tron Guy Teaches Us About ORM

Posted: 04 Mar 2011 09:01 PM PST

I will never again be anonymous, there will always be pictures of me in this costume floating around the net for as long as there is a net. And one of these days somebody’s going to come up with a way to synthesize 3D images from pictures on the internet and 3D models of me are going to float around space until there isn’t anymore.

The Tron Guy is right. For as long as there is an internet, he will be a part of it. This fact in itself, highlights the sometimes insane nature of the web. But it doesn’t excuse the fact that even the most illogical, and sometimes embarrassing content is now a permanent fixture in our ever evolving record of human history.

So what’s this business of 3D models floating through space? To be honest, I am not sure what the heck the Tron Guy is talking about. However, he does touch on something that most in the Online Reputation Management industry have failed to grasp. You see, most if not all, social media monitoring tools are query based. Meaning they analyze text based content to identify matching strings of characters. This basic form of information retrieval has worked well so far, given that the vast majority of content on the web is text based. However, what about the ever expanding image and video web?

TinEye and others are making headway in reverse image search technology. But, who is doing the same for growing video and audio content? We might be years away from Tron Guy’s 3D models becoming a reality, but the potential is veryreal.

If you want to stay ahead of your competitors and continue to innovate, you have to constantly look towards the future to see where your industry and user base is headed. Sometimes, the best way to do that is to listen to the wisdom of grown men that wear homemade space suits. Because let’s face it, they are just as much a part of the internet as you or I are.

Turning Social Media Followers into Brand Evangelists

Posted: 04 Mar 2011 08:41 PM PST

Do you know VABeachKevin? He’s a guy on Twitter who might answer your question if you’re confused about a product from Omniture. Funny thing is, he doesn’t work for the company. He’s just a guy who likes the product and likes to share what he knows. He’s a brand evangelist and his word is worth more than ten tweets from a salesman on the company Twitter.

Brian Watkins of Adobe has an interesting new webcast available that talks about how you can get your own VaBeachKevin, because seriously, we all need at least one like him.

To begin with, you have to locate potential evangelists. You can use a variety of monitoring tools that will search and filter social media for keywords related to your brand, but for a quick look, Watkins suggests you simply search Twitter yourself. Once you have a list of people who have been known to promote your product, Watkins suggests a step that many marketers skip. He says you should get to the know that person by doing a little research. Take it out of Twitter and find out who they work for, what are their interests, why does your product resonate with them? This information is out there. Once you know how to work the Google magic you’ll be surprised, and probably a bit frightened, by what you can find.

The most important step is the next one; give that person what they need to be a star. When I heard Watkins say this I threw up my hands and said hallelujah, brother. This fits right in with the FanTrail app I mentioned the other day and KMart sending gamers to E3. If you give a fan something special, he’ll tell the world and if it’s special enough, he’ll be your brand evangelist for life.

Watkins says that instead of handing out logo t-shirts at a convention, they might invite social media influencers to present for a few minutes. He also talks about treating social media fans as if they’re the press. Offer them a scoop, a review product, a tour of the office. The last time I went on a TV series set visit, more than half of the invited guests were people running small fan sites. Publicists have learned that the New York Times may reach a wider audience, but the fan site is precisely targeted and they’ll give the scoop more page time than a bigger publication.

Finally, he makes a point that is going to be tough for some marketers to do. Point them in the right direction and then get out of their way. Instead of using social media to push traffic to your website, let the conversation unfold where it is. Go fishing where the fish are, says Watkins and that leads us back to the conversation we all had yesterday about why have a website when you have Facebook.

Imagine this. Stefano posts to his Facebook that he just had the most delicious cookie he’s ever eaten. His friends comment and say, really, where can we get them? Stefano is probably going to answer them, but you come in as a representative of the brand and say here’s a link to our website where you can find out all about our cookies, they’re great, here’s a coupon, yum, yum.

Now, there’s a good chance that the conversation is over because your response looks like spam and it feels a little like you were spying on their private chat. (Even though Facebook is far from private.) Using the Watkins method, you could email Stefano and offer him a free box of cookies for him and five friends. Now Stefano himself is going to mention your generosity and ask who wants free cookies? Me! Me! Me! That conversation is going to continue and when everyone gets the free cookies, they’re going to talk about it on their Facebook pages.

Yes, brand evangelists are a marketer’s best resource as long as you use them wisely, don’t abuse their kindness and reward them in meaningful ways that make them feel like a star.

If you’re got the time, click here to view the whole webcast. It’s free and it’s loaded with great information about how to make and measure a social media plan. It’s good stuff. Yum. Yum.

American Idol Voters Are Not Fans of Facebook

Posted: 04 Mar 2011 01:48 PM PST

“sick of everything coming dependent on FB trend…wouldn’t let me vote unless I registered with my FB….grrrr!”

That sentiment is begin repeated over and over again on America Idol’s official posting board in a thread called “The Online Voting Sucks.” So much for the show’s grand, new social media experiment.

For the first time in its history, Idol offered online voting and Ryan Seacrest pimped it regularly throughout the first two performance shows. But when people flocked to the website to actually cast their votes they ran into a number of problems. Some found a message saying the voting was already closed, some simply couldn’t access the site, likely due to traffic issues, but many were stopped cold by the Facebook requirement.

The fact that you need a Facebook account to vote was hidden in the smaller print at the bottom of the screen. Most people didn’t notice and went through the Idol registration process only to be sent to Facebook to connect. No account? No problem. Sign up for one and agree to allow the following (as per a commenter):

Access my basic information: Includes name, profile picture, gender, networks, user ID, list of friends, and any other information I’ve shared with everyone.
Send me email: AT&T American Idol Online Voting may email me directly at XXXXXX@xxx.com
Access my data any time: AT&T American Idol Online Voting may access my data when I’m not using the application

Many voters gave up there. Those that persisted then had to wait for a Facebook confirmation and an Idol registration confirmation then they could follow the Facebook login process and cast their vote. As long as they did all of that inside of the short voting window. Wow. That’s a lot of effort and trust just to get Paul McDonald in the Top 10.

It’s easy to see why many brands are using Facebook Connect for their sites. It works as an instant source of identity verification and it gives you access to a large pool of potential users. But it’s clear, at least in this case, that many people object to having to turn over so much of their perceived private information in order to do something as simple as vote for a singer on a TV show.

Looks like the team of American Idol and Facebook have succeeded in making people long for the days before we had all this newfangled technology!

To quote another eloquent poster:

“They never said you have to use facebook to vote. Not one mention of facebook. Why say go to americanidol.com when you have to use facebook. I went back to the old land line.”

Somewhere up there, Alexander Graham Bell is smiling.

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Android OS Leads Market According to Nielsen

Posted: 04 Mar 2011 12:25 PM PST

The Android OS has a slight lead over Apple and BlackBerry in smartphones through January 2011 according to Nielsen. Of course, this doesn’t take into account the supposed Verizon effect which some are wondering if that even happened (it has been awful quiet regarding the end of Android as of late hasn’t it?).

So here is the pretty picture from Nielsen showing the slimmest of margins for Android over Apple. What it doesn’t show is BlackBerry’s rapid descent from top of the heap to nearly south of second place in a relatively short period of time.

Honestly, I like my Android device a lot even with the malware problems recently reported regarding apps. Unfortunately it’s this concern that will make Android look the same in the mobile space as Microsoft does on the desktop because Apple suffers from so few issues in that area. In fact, because of this threat I just refuse to download an app that comes from Joe’s App House or something to that effect. Does that limit my mobile experience? Not really because what I really need Google and the major sites offer anyway so the rest are time wasters.

As we head into the weekend what’s your take on the Android, iOS and Blackberry wars? Will there be an ultimate victor or is there room for everyone?