App: Yo. User: Yo App: Yo User: Yo, sup? App: Yo User: Yo, you for real? App: Yo User: Yo, I’m out. A new app that lets you send “yo” to friends is real and its initial $1 million investment is also real. Merriam-Webster defines the word “yo” as an interjection used to grab someone’s attention. Yo certainly has done just that by grabbing everyone’s attention. Yo defines “yo” as “The simplest & most efficient communication tool in the world….
A Facebook Like Does Not Equal an Opt-in
I’m writing this post while visiting Antwerp, Belgium as part of the Social Business Sessions I’m hosting along with The Fusion Marketing Experience. While here, I had an opportunity to spend time with several Belgian journalists. One of the notable conversations was with Erik Verdonck of Pub, a local magazine focused on the advertising industry. The three themes we touched upon are not only timely, but representative of the challenges that face marketers and strategists around the globe. 1. A…
Engagement ain’t nothing but a number – why 1% isn’t good enough
The headline calls attention to everything that’s wrong with how businesses measure engagement in social media today. Businesses that invest any level of marketing resources in networks such as Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and the like (get it?) are being groomed to focus on soft metrics instead of the relevant activity that signals the strength and worth of a community. By weighing conversations, interactions, and views, businesses are fed raw numbers that demonstrate KPIs but they do not offer the insights…
I Like You, But Just Not in That Way
Part 7 in a series introducing my new book, The End of Business as Usual…this is not content from the book, this series serves as its prequel. You like me, you really like me! Not so fast. Businesses are using social media to earn Likes and Follows, engage with customers, and the more progressive brands, are extracting insights from social and interest graphs to improve and personalize experiences and products. The quest for a larger install base of social consumers…
Please Remind Me Why I Should Like, Follow, +1 You?
Like us on Facebook. Follow us on Twitter. +1 us on Google Plus. Sound familiar? It’s an all too familiar request that consumers face everyday. But what are businesses doing to help convince customers why they should do so? The answer is not as pervasive as you might imagine or hope to expect. In fact, I believe that “why?” is the least asked question by businesses in social media today. The questions businesses should be asking, even before they create…
You Can’t Measure What It Is You Do Not Value
ROI is as popular an acronym in social media as OMG or LOL are in TXTING. No matter how much you believe in social media, the reality is that management needs to know, what’s the ROI of Tweets in “the” Twitter or Likes in “that” Facebook thing that all the kids are talking about? Kidding aside, the future of social media within your organization and the value your customers experience in their networks of relevance is in your hands. No…
Why I Don’t Like Your Brand on Facebook
Guest post by Andrew Blakeley. Follow him on Twitter (for exclusive deals and offers!) I recently undertook a simple Facebook experiment, inspired by a brief Monday morning rant from my boss: “This morning my yoghurt told me to find it on Facebook. It didn’t tell me why, it just told me to find it. Why on Earth would I want to find a yoghurt on Facebook? It’s a yoghurt!” He was right, of course. As social networks slowly become the…
These are a Few of My Favorite Tweets
Source: Shutterstock I believe that part of the allure of the social web is the ability to not only publish content, but to also recognize the contributions of others. Twitter is one such forum where the public art of recognition and reciprocity is spoken through both actions and words and are usually done so through @’s, Retweets (RTs), Follow Fridays (FF), link sharing, et al. One of the biggest opportunities for paying it forward that is currently underutilized in Twitter…
In the Statusphere, A.D.D. Creates Opportunities for Collaboration and Education
Source It’s been an incredible week for stats, demographics, and authority trends related to Social Media this week. The Social Web is our Industrial Revolution and our Renaissance period. It is at the very least completely transforming how we communicate with each other and how we also discover and share content. Twitter, Facebook News Feeds, FriendFeed and other micro communities that define the Statusphere, are captivating and distracting our focus. But, while many argue that it’s decreasing productivity, I say…
Are Blogs Losing Their Authority To The Statusphere?
What follows is the unedited Director’s Cut of my latest post on TechCrunch, “Are Blogs Losing Their Authority To The Statusphere?” My definition of Statusphere. Source Depending on which numbers you source or believe, all reports agree that the blogosphere continues to expand globally. As the leading blog directory and search engine, Technorati maintains a coveted Authority Index which is considered amongst bloggers as the benchmark for measuring their rank and selling their position within the blogosphere. Authority is defined…
