Erik Qualman's Blog, page 665

Kony 2012 Director Jason Russell Arrested…Naked

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Kony 2012 director and co-founder of Invisible Children Inc., Jason Russell, was arrested for public masturbation, vandalizing cars, and possible being under the influence. Social media can make you and can certainly break you as this Kony 2012 story clearly shows both the highs and the lows. If the movement is strong enough than it is bigger than one person – time will tell  if the Kony 2012 movement can keep its social media momentum.

Authorities aren't certain of what caused Jason's naked meltdown on a public street … pounding his fists in anger and screaming wildly. Russell can be heard ranting to himself, dropping F-bombs, clapping to no one in particular, and shouting about the devil.

The CEO of Invisible Children, Ben Keesey, told TMZ …"Jason Russell was unfortunately hospitalized yesterday suffering from exhaustion, dehydration, and malnutrition."

There are no plans to charge Russell with a crime for the incident. Russell is being hospitalized on a 5150 psychiatric hold so authorities can assess his mental state. The 5150 hold allows authorities to keep Russell for up to 3 days to determine if he represents a threat to either himself or others.

Keesey further went on to add "He (Jason Russell) is now receiving medical care and is focused on getting better. The past two weeks have taken a severe emotional toll on all of us, Jason especially, and that toll manifested itself in an unfortunate incident yesterday."

"Jason's passion and his work have done so much to help so many, and we are devastated to see him dealing with this personal health issue. We will always love and support Jason, and we ask that you give his entire family privacy during this difficult time."

Kony 2012 Director Jason Russell arrested (source: TMZ)

Russell was dancing around the Intersection of Ingraham and Riviera wearing "speedo-like underwear" … and eventually removed the underwear and began to make sexual gestures.

Parents must feel for Russel's son, Gavin, who is prominently featured in the Kony 2012 video (below). 92% of children under the age of two already have a digital footprint. This is part of Gavin's digital shadow whether he knows it or not. I wrote Digital Leader in 2012 to help people try and understand this important shift in the world and the concepts of Digital Footprints & Digital Shadows. By all accounts Russel could be an amazing father, the point is not that, the point is that his son Gavin has a digital shadow without knowing it.

Russell is the father of two, and says he wants to have 9 more kids.

The Kony 2012 video (below) went massively viral with over 80 million views.

Related: Joseph Kony 2012 | Kony 2012 Posters

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Free Pinterest Tool tracks what's being pinned on your site

[image error]This Free Pinterest Tool tracks what's being pinned on your site. A common question is "How can I see what is being pinned from my website or blog?"

Simply type in the Pinterest URL below, replace 'yourdomain.com' with your site:

www.pinterest.com/source/yourdomain.com

This free Pinterest tool is the first step in helping to:

Determine what items get pinned the most and "do more" of this
Follow some of your most avid "pinners" on Pinterest
Analyze if your Pinterest pins are driving revenue

Some sources are indicating that Pinterest is driving more traffic to websites/blogs than Twitter. I know we have seen a large spike here at Socialnomics without doing much effort at all on Pinterest. Best of luck!

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Does New Ad Agency Wi-Fi Campaign Exploit Homeless?

[image error]A recent promotional campaign by a Manhattan ad agency at the South by Southwest (SXSW) Arts and Tech Festival in Austin, Texas that merges marketing and technology is drawing more than a tad of criticism.

For those not up to speed on the story, 13 homeless individuals in Austin were essentially transformed into walking Wi-Fi aerials after being given free MiFi gadgets and T-shirts with their names on them, along with the saying "I'm a 4G hotspot." The company paid the individuals $20 up front and at least $50 a day for approximately six hours of their time.

Needless to say, some people have not found the campaign by Bartle, Bogle and Hegarty (BBH) to be in good taste.

According to the agency, it plans to promote the idea throughout homeless shelters in New York City and in other areas should the response be positive. The company said the idea is to increase Internet connectedness for SXSW Interactive and also offer a community service to those in Austin that are homeless.

As the company's Web site points out, "These are homeless individuals. They're carrying MiFi devices. Introduce yourself, then log on to their 4G network via your phone or tablet for a quick, high-quality connection."

While some have viewed this move as a means to exploit the homeless, a spokesperson for BBH counters, noting that this project allows the homeless an opportunity to make some money off of today's technology, even pointing out that homelessness was a subject being talked about at SXSW.

The project involves the homeless to stand in a pre-set location and allow "customers" to come their way. Users are asked (not required) to compensate their human service providers $2 per 15 minutes, although any donation will be accepted. In order to receive the service, customers are required to be within 30 feet of the homeless individual.

While a number of homeless that were interviewed were open to serving as walking Wi-Fi hotspots, especially looking at it as a business opportunity, others said that they could make more money in an hour by panhandling.

In the end, many conference participants report that the festival and this particular campaign have led to more discussions regarding homelessness, affordable housing, employment options and shelters in a long time.

So, is this a good marketing idea or exploitation in your opinion?

Photo credit: news.discovery.com

Editor's note: The person's full image in the photo was purposefully not shown.

 

 

 

 

 

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4 Important Tips About Facebook Timeline for Brands

The long-awaited Facebook Timeline for brands is finally here and some of Facebook's biggest kept secrets are out of the bag! This sudden overhaul of our favorite social network has left many brands in a frenzy: How can we leverage this new format? What should we put in our cover photo? What is "pinning?" Luckily, Facebook gave us a month to preview our pages, test them out, and figure out how we can utilize this most effectively and make sure that we are featuring our brands in the best light possible. Here's what we've found so far:

1) Cover Photos should be visually compelling, but simple. Since profile pictures are now a lot smaller than they used to be, it is especially important that your cover photo resonates with your fans and you use this new space to effectively communicate your brand message. If your cover photo is too cluttered, you are giving off the impression that your brand is disorganized. Fans connect best when the brand's message is clear and concise.

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2) Although cover photos allow for more customization, Facebook's guidelines for branded cover photos prohibit brands from featuring contact information, prices, or calls to action in this section of the page. If you can't feature this information in your cover photo, how are you supposed to promote your brand's initiatives? Pin your posts! Facebook now allows brands to "pin" posts to the top of the page so it's the first piece of content fans see when they land on the page. Once you pin a post, it will remain pinned for 7 days. If you have a sale, contest, or other initiative occurring, post a status update about it and pin your post!

3) One of the best features of Facebook Timeline is its increased connection to storytelling. Using the new "milestones" feature, brands can feature important moments and events in the brands' history. Just as we ask our fans to tell their stories, now brands can tell theirs! Setting up milestones on your brand's Facebook page provides fans with background information and allows them to connect with the brand on a more personal level. This can be especially beneficial for fast-growing, family-owned businesses who have relevant, relatable stories to tell. This feature makes storytelling for brands easier than it ever was before!

4) We've been able to see the "People Talking About This" metric for quite some time now. However, the "Likes" app provides fans with a graph that displays how this number has fluctuated over the last month. Now, fans can see if the number of people creating a story (liking the page, commenting on a post, liking a post, tagging pictures, etc.) about your brand has increased or decreased over time. What does this mean? It's becoming increasingly important to engage your fans! In order to keep this number up, brands need to make sure that their content is engaging and they are actively acquiring new likes to the page (which means lots of consistent advertising!).

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Now that we've had some time to play around with the new Facebook Timeline for brands… what have you learned?

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46% of Facebookers are over 45 & other surprising facts

Via: Online MBA Resource

The above social media demographics were supplied by OnlineMBA.com

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Social Action: Joseph Kony 2012

Joseph Kony is the most wanted criminal in the world today. One reason why the video below has been viewed over 77 million times. He is abducting children in Africa to either serve in his army or to become sex slaves. He forces these children to kill their own parents. The goal of Invisible Children is to capture Joseph Kony by 12/31/2012. Let's achieve this goal and make the invisible children, visible. Below is an emotional video that details the story.

 Social Action:

Sign the petition in support here
Forward this info/video to Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, etc.
Order the Joseph Kony Kit here; note Kit comes free if you donate $15 or more per month – however kit supplies are limited right now
Contact your senator letting him/her know you care
Hit the streets on 4/20
Donate to Invisible Children fund
Pray


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Joseph Kony 2012 Poster is part of the Joseph Kony 2012 Action Kit

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The ROI of Higher Education

It's arguable that nothing will change more in the coming years than the face of education. The question today is does higher education still return a reasonable return on a student's, or parent's, investment? The below infographic from OnlineUniversities.com provides some helpful insight:

Via: Online Universities Resource

Social Good Action: Surprise a student you know in college/university by paying for one of their books (easy to do via Amazon Kindle as well)

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How to Crack the Code on Social Engagement

We all know it – social engagement gives meaning and value to social media marketing efforts, boosting brand affinity and growing revenue and profit. More than half of people who have engaged with a brand or company in social channels say they are more likely to buy (51 percent of Facebook fans and 67 percent of Twitter followers) and recommend (60 percent of Facebook fans and 79 percent of Twitter followers) than they were before they became a fan/follower, according to Chadwick Martin Bailey and iModerate Research.

Posts gain credibility and expand reach with each share, like or retweet. The effect on revenue and profit is profound. The 2009 Wetpaint/Altimeter Group "ENGAGEMENTdb Report" found, "companies that are both deeply and widely engaged in social media surpass their peers in terms of both revenue and profit performance by a significant difference." The most socially engaged companies — brands engaged in seven or more channels with an above-average engagement score — grew revenue by 18 percent from July 2008 to July 2009. At the other end of the spectrum, revenue declined by 6 percent for brands engaged in six or fewer channels with below-average engagement scores. Similarly, the most-engaged companies posted net margin growth of 4 percent while net margin declined by 11 percent for the least-engaged.

Further, customers now expect to engage via social channels with the brands and companies with which they do business. "Your customers don't merely want you to understand their needs or pain points," observed Charlene Li, founder of Altimeter Group, in her predictions for 2012. "They want you to know them as individuals anywhere and anytime they engage with you.

The bottom-line is that social engagement has many variables that impact its effectiveness. Knowing when to post so you can reach the most followers or fans, knowing what day of the week to share content so you can get the highest interaction rate, are just among some of these. And the way to know for sure is to apply some science to the social media publishing effort. This is what we at Awareness, Inc. set out to do in our latest white paper, "Social Engagement: How to Crack the Code of Social Interaction". The paper cites research and comments by social media marketing thought leaders and draws upon a recently completed analysis of aggregate data collected across all Awareness clients, including more than 250,000 posts published to Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Slideshare, Flickr and WordPress, and the 31+ million interactions on those posts over the course of 2011.

The result is an insightful view of how content performs in the social sphere and how marketers can get the most from each post. Here's one tip – the best time of the day to post for maximum interaction is between 1 pm and 4 pm EST.  Learn more tips and tricks on the time and day of the week to post (some of our findings may surprise you), how to make your tweets travel further, how often to post on Facebook, and how you can use YouTube and SlideShare to keep the life of a post longer. Get free access to our white paper, "Social Engagement: How to Crack the Code of Social Interaction".

Don't by shy. Let us know what has worked for you. What days and times have been most successful for your team? What posts tend to travel the furthest? Share your insights, experiences and questions on this blog, Twitter: Facebook at Awareness, Inc., Social Media Marketing Best Practices and Social Media Marketing Mavens pages, and in our LinkedIn Social Media Marketing Mavens Group.

 

Mike Lewis

@bostonmike

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Helpful Tools to track your Digital Footprints & Shadows

I'm speaking at SXSW today about Digital Footprints & Digital Shadows. Whether you are an individual, small business, corporation or non-profit, the below are helpful tools to ensure your best life, leadership and ultimate digital legacy.

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Social Analytics Meets Social Intelligence, Facebook Premium Offers

Social marketers are always on the lookout for solid ways to measure and analyze performance.  When it comes to content effectiveness, the more experienced marketers are moving away from asking "What happened?" to "Why did it happen?". In their quest to understand what content works, they are starting to seek answers to what their most successful social activity was today, yesterday, last week or last month.

It all depends on how you define success and what activities matter to your program. Perhaps you define activity as a campaign that crosses multiple social channels. Or you might define it in terms of a specific channel such as one Facebook account or multiple Twitter profiles.  Perhaps you want to compare how one specific piece of content performs across multiple platforms, such as Facebook, Twitter, your blog, Flickr or YouTube.  Regardless of the lens you put on your efforts, you want to know when you are successful and why.  You also want to know what didn't go as well. And you want to know how to best replicate what worked and avoid repeating mistakes.

These are the question we set out to answer for social marketers with our new Social Analytics offering.  We wanted to offer marketers the capability to drill down into daily social interactions and identify their most effective content, channels and contributors. Equipped with that intelligence, we knew marketers would then have the means to replicate success.

Working with our customers, we determined that what social marketing teams need is to easily conduct comparative analysis within and across social platforms.  This gets to the cause and effect of social marketing efforts; if marketers know what worked, they can analyze what drove that success. For example, they can examine variables, such as specific wording, the time of publishing, and the use of hashtags. So, in effect, marketers need a new methodology to identify trends for a specific piece of content.  Once they know how a specific post performed, they want to manipulate the variables, drill down into the specifics, and customize their reporting – all from one convenient platform.

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It turns out we were on the right track with our Social Analytics approach for more reasons than one.  Last week, Facebook announced a number of new ad units for their platform, including Facebook's new Premium Offers and Reach Generator.  Similar to Twitter's Sponsored Tweets, Facebook Premium Offers allows marketers to promote their most successful Facebook posts as sponsored advertising, reported to provide 3X ROI for brands. This is why marketers need to quickly identify which Facebook posts to promote using Sponsored Stories, and Social Analytics can help. Join our free Social Analytics webinar on March 8 at 2 pm EST for more information.

We welcome your thoughts and feedback. What ways have you used to analyze the effectiveness of specific posts?  What are your tips and tricks for creating viral content? Let's continue the discussion in the comments below, on Twitter at hashtag #AwarenessSMM, Facebook at Social Media Marketing Best Practices, LinkedIn at the Social Media Marketing Mavens Group.

Mike Lewis

@BostonMike

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