Archive for October, 2008
Five on Friday – five fabulous Web 2.0 tools and sites of the week (31-10-08)
October 31st, 2008
Back again with my usual weekly round-up of the best Web 2.0 sites and tools.
1, Sendo is the first Web 2.0 tool of the day. Sendo allows you to store all types of media and share them simply and easily with people you choose privately or publicly via a URL.
2, Scene Caster is next up, which allows you to build your own 3D scene using various objects and then add your own photos, music and video. After you have made your scene you can share it on your blog or social networking application.
3, This has to be my favourite site of the week by a mile. It’s yet another Twitter spin-off called Twitter Tickets. Simply follow the Twitter accounts for your chosen geographic area to receive upcoming ticket announcements – nice!
4, App Appeal is a Web 2.0 review site. The applications are categorised with extensive user reviews.
5, Finally we have the Social media business list wiki. This is something Liberate Media has produced from a well-read Peter Kim post. The post was entitled ‘A List of Social Media Marketing Examples’, and the post looked at businesses using social media. Liberate Media has turned this post into an editable wiki for other businesses to add their own social media offerings to the list.
Below is a screen shot from the social media business list wiki:
More of the same next week!
Wall Street Journal: “Twitter goes mainstream”
October 27th, 2008
At Liberate Media we are continually telling our clients and brands we meet with that they should not be ignoring Twitter. The micro-blogging tool is still seem by many as the domain of the geeks and early adopters, but this is a false perception – it is now crossing into many mainstream sectors and communities.
Today’s article in the Wall Street Journal entitled “Twitter goes mainstream” nicely supports this point. The article reads: “When the service first appeared a couple of years ago, its appeal seemed largely limited to narcissists who wanted to let everybody know what they were doing in real time. But, like blogs and social-networking sites, Twitter is starting to cross into the mainstream, as a wide range of people find interesting uses for the brief notes.”
By way of example, I follow an ambulance driver, Working Lunch, Dell, BBC News etc… The potential for all businesses should not be underestimated. For example, I’m sure Twitter would be great for estate agents wanting to let buyers know about houses that have just been reduced, or for car manufacturers to let customers know about new upgrades that they have coming out, or for restaurants to let residents know about daily specials etc. The opportunities are endless.
Unfortunately, Twitter does not disclose user data, and so historically it’s been difficult to offer clients demographic statistics about the platform. The company has said to the Wall Street Journal that the number of active users rose sevenfold in the past year. The article quantifies it in this way: “Twitter.com had more than a million unique visitors from the U.S. in August 2008, up from just 282,000 in August 2007, according to research firm comScore Inc. Those numbers are likely to underestimate overall usage, much of which happens on mobile phones.”
Digging a little deeper, a fairly recent article by US Hitwise analyst Bill Tancer for Time magazine claimed that:
- Males make up 63% of Twitterers, specifically males from California
- Today the site’s largest age demographic is 35-to-44-year-olds, who make up 25.9% of its users
- The first group of users, type H03 (14.7% of Twitter visitors), a.k.a the “Stable Career,” comprises a “collection of young and ethnically diverse singles living in big-city metros like Los Angeles, Philadelphia and Miami.”
- The second largest type of Twitterer is H01 (12.3% of the site’s visitors) — or, the “Young Cosmopolitan.” These are the 40-somethings. They’re likely to drive a hybrid car such as the Toyota Prius, earn household incomes over $250,000 per year and also identify with very liberal politics.
These demographics are not conclusive though, and have an obvious US bias.
If anyone has any more Twitter stats to share, please let me know as we’d love to see them.
Virgin Atlantic staff criticism: opportunity or threat?
October 27th, 2008
As you may have heard, Virgin’s Facebook group; Virgin Atlantic airline one, received some rather interesting input late last week, apparently from Virgin staff who openly criticised safety and passengers. The BBC carried the story on Friday.
I’m sure this caused a few shock waves at Virgin, and as a result the company may well be reconsidering its policy on staff commenting on social networks as well as its approach to social media as a whole. However, although this sort of comment is never nice for a brand, the subsequent handling of the situation can cause more problems if it isn’t handled correctly.
The obvious reaction, and one that Virgin seem to have followed to some extent, is to take the comments down, defend themselves and launch a manhunt to publically chastise these individuals and scare anyone else into never following their audacious and damaging example.
But, in reality, how does that help the brand and halt any fears that Virgin passengers may have? Doesn’t it actually leave the subject open? Sure, the public statement confirmed that Virgin takes these matters very seriously and has industry-leading safety standards, etc, etc, exactly what you would expect. But wouldn’t it have been more interesting, and potentially rewarding to join in the conversation in the Facebook group and offer reassurances directly to the group as a whole? Or, assuming the comments weren’t against the group’s posting guidelines, even engage with those that posted to discuss the issue?
Don’t get me wrong, if, as some reports have suggested, the comments weren’t publically acceptable they shouldn’t be entertained, but if Virgin is confident that these points are completely incorrect, why not enter the conversation and show how seriously Virgin takes these issues and is willing to stand by its record by engaging directly?
As it is, the comment included in the BBC piece, confirms:”Virgin Atlantic does not tolerate any criticism of its passengers or industry-leading safety standards, and is taking the matter very seriously.” Not accepting criticism seems like an odd response!
Five on Friday – five fabulous web 2.0 tools and sites of the week (24-10-08)
October 24th, 2008
Here is my usual weekly round up of web 2.0 tools and sites.
1, Shopnics.com: Visual Comparison is a neat little web 2.0 site that gives you a graph of all the best products in a certain category in order of price. You can refine your search with sliders on the left hand side of the screen to really drill down to the correct item. – Great site!
2, explash.com is a simple to use social web 2.0 directory. It gives you news about new Web 2.0 websites, services and applications, you can also vote for your favourite sites via its community.
3, Next up is Screen Toaster a free simple to use web based screen recorder. The best thing about screen reader is that you can very easily Share videos by emailing them or embedding them on blogs, and the quality looks pretty decent too.
4, This next one is for all your travellers out their. The site is called TV Trip – The Hotel Video Guide. The aim of the site is to give video representation of hotels, so you get an idea of the hotel before your stay. The videos are shot by TVtrip professionals rather than by the hoteliers themselves, which ensures that you will receive an impartial demonstration of the place.
5, Say Tweet is my final web 2.0 site/tool of the week. Upload a photo of yourself, or you and a friend, tag each Twitter user in the photo, and each Tweet sent lands on the photo next to the correct person – a kind of image Twitter mash up!
Kerry Katona: When a PR relationship is tested to the Max
October 24th, 2008
Showbiz-holics out there will have been following the PR backlash around the chaotic live interview that Kerry Katona gave to This Morning on Wednesday.
For those who missed it, the 28-year-old mum slurred her way through an interview with hosts Phillip Schofield and Fern Britton. Her strange behaviour caused a series of viewers to phone in, raising concerns over her welfare. A repeat of the interview can be viewed here on the MailOnline website.
The PR sadist in me has been keenly watching the aftermath, to see how Kerry and her publicist Max Clifford would respond.
First off, Kerry spoke out the next day claiming she had been “stitched up” by This Morning. In an interview with Heatworld, she said: “I’ll never go on that programme again, I’m extremely annoyed at how they made me look. They’re meant to be nice people and I’ve been interviewed by them many times before.”
From someone who I suspect has received plenty of media training, I’m sure Kerry was not advised to fight back in this way. Not only were her PR advisors absent prior to her stepping onto the This Morning set in an unfit condition for interview, but similarly where were they in advising her how to limit the damage done?
Today on Sky Showbiz, top story is an exclusive interview given by Kerry’s rep Max Clifford, and what’s interesting is that he doesn’t defend his client. Instead he takes the side of Phillip and Fern, denying Kerry’s claims that they made her look bad.
He says: “Kerry turned up late to the interview, she didn’t have time to be briefed, and then she was slurring. It’s understandable (Fern and Phil questioned her) – any good journalist would do.”
Max Clifford has a reputation of his own to protect, and unlike most PRs, enjoys a similar public profile to that of his celebrity clients. Rarely is a PR forced to protect their own profile over their client’s, but in my view Max’s response is questionable from a professional standpoint.
Kerry’s interview was car-crash TV, and embarrassment to any PR, but it begs the question at what point can a PR be justified in abandoning their client, particularly in a time of crisis? Arguably that’s what Max Clifford has done here. It will be interesting to see whether Kerry keeps him as her publicist.
October 23rd, 2008
Three things your agency should not be doing as part of your client’s social media strategy:
Do so and your IP address might just be tracked leaving you and your client one hell of a PR mess to clean up!
1.Spam commenting – posting random comments or promoting commercial services to blogs and other online services.
Adding links that point to the spammer’s website artificially increases the site’s search engine ranking. An increased ranking often results in the spammer’s commercial site being listed ahead of other sites for certain searches, increasing the number of potential visitors and paying customers. – source wikipedia
2.Astroturfing – Astroturfing is a form of propaganda whose techniques usually consist of a few people attempting to give the impression that mass numbers of enthusiasts advocate some specific cause – source wikepdia
3.Stealth link building – Creating a short-list of websites within your clients niche that you’d like a link from. – Black hat link building and if you can trace it – Google can ban it!
One company that might be in hot water for doing the above is Nokia – read more below:
Is Nokia guilty of SEO PR astroturfing / comment spamming?
Social media business marketing examples resource wiki list
October 22nd, 2008
After reading a fantastic post by Peter Kim titled A List of Social Media Marketing Examples it was clear from the number of comments left on the blog post that people wanted to be added to the List.
Liberate Media has made that possible by taking the original list and making an editable wiki out of it. The wiki is called the social media business list.
Please feel free to add to the list with your business social media assets/activities.
The list contains some huge brands such as Adidas, Nike, Nokia and many other household names.
A special thanks to Peter Kim and all the other people that helped with the original post, we hope you don’t mind us re-purposing your fantastic list for everyone else to edit and add to.
Enjoy!
Five on Friday – five fabulous web 2.0 tools and sites of the week (17-10-08)
October 17th, 2008
My top Five web 2.0 tools, sites and applications of the week:
1, First off is Do You Feed which turns your own rss feeds into a iPhone friendly site. – Neat!
2, Like Umm is a ratings directory. So for example if your looking for top rated technology sites, click on the technology tab and you will be given a list of rated technology sites.
3, Here is this weeks Twitter offering: Friend or Follow. Submit your Twitter screen name to find out who you’re following that’s not following you back, and who’s following you that you’re not following back. – Watch out for the rabbit being stroked!
4, Top of the Blogs is the next up, does what it says on the tin, rates your blog! – Blogs are ranked on various criteria allowing visitors to search the best blogs by category, tag, country, or language.
5, Bandcamp is the final web 2.0 application for this week.
Bandcamp isn’t Yet Another Place to Put Your Music. We power a site that’s yours. So instead of our logo plastered between banner ads for Sexy Singles Chat, your fans see your design, your music, your name, your URL. You retain all ownership rights, and we just hang out in the background handling the tech stuff.
One great feature of Bandcamp is the analytics’s which show you where your fans are coming from, what they’re listening to and when, even which tracks they’re obsessed with versus which ones they’re skipping over.
Bandcamp Screencast from Ethan Diamond on Vimeo.
Five on Friday – five fabulous web 2.0 tools of the week (10-10-08)
October 10th, 2008
Back again with this week’s round-up of my top weekly web 2.0 tools and applications.
1, First off is shrink to one. The purpose of this is to convert multiple links into one small link, which can then be shared across several Instant Messengers applications such as Yahoo Messenger, gTalk, jabber, AIM etc, email or even via mobile phone SMS.
2, Nice little Twitter directory in the same vein as Twellow – Just Tweet it offers the same directory approach but has an added bonus section on Twitter tools.
3, Last week we had Flickr battles, this week we have Yahoo battle. See which which word is the strongest, simple as that!
4, The name of this next web 2.0 tool caught my eye -it’s called Chipwrapper – a collection of resources for searching UK newspapers on the Internet.
5, Finely after a hard week here is a bit of fun for you – it’s a car racing game based on Google maps and it’s called Real word racer! – Love the idea!
More of the same next week!
Five on Friday – five fabulous web 2.0 tools of the week (03-10-08)
October 3rd, 2008
My top web 2.0 tools and applications of the week:
1. This web 2.0 tool is set to be massive as all you need is a web cam and a Twitter account – it’s called Moba Talk. You create a video via web cam ad the link then gets forwarded on via your Twitter account – the quality of the video is amazingly high.
2. PopGist is a very nice discussion tool. Enter your discussion keywords and then a list of related discussion posts will appear, very much in the style of the new Google blog search.
3. Iterend is a blog search engine currently in beta. It claims to actively discover the most recent, most discussed and most important articles of the blogosphere.
4. The next web 2.0 tool is all about Flickr. It’s called Flickr fight. Input two key words: e.g. Napster, iTunes and then see which is most popular.
5. Last but not least is a URL shortening service with a twist. The site is called Cligs – short URLs with analytics. The short URL you create above will be public and everyone will be able to see the traffic statistics it gets.
More of the same next week.