Top 20 Social Media Influencers and Beyond…

Kristi Hines (@kikolani) published a nice list of “The 20 most influential people in social media” and Simon Kemp (@eskimon) did a good job in this thread reminding us all that since more than 80% of the world’s social media users live outside of the US it would be a good idea to add some other influential names beyond America’s shores to the list.

Brava Kristi and bravo Simon. So far so good.

Krishna De is an outstanding communicator and a long time digital-friend. She suggested that I could be considered as an influencer in Finland. First of all, I’d like to thank Krishna for mentioning me as an influencer. I tend to work with my “head down”, putting all the passion and commitment I have into everything I do in this industry. Ultimately, my greatest reward is to see a satisfied smile on the face of whoever I’m working with because what we did together meant something to them and made a difference. So, when someone points me out for any reason related to what I do, I feel honored.

Secondly, though, after reading the following comment I felt that I should probably clarify my position a bit and give out a little bit more information about what I do since I have been – and still am – very involved in the Finnish social media and technology space…

Jaana Nyström - Not wanting to promote myself but I'm the "Google+ envoy in Finland", according to the local Google Industry Manager... At least I'm diligent! :D

If you can’t see/load the picture above:

Jaana Nyström – +Krishna De New York in Finland now? 🙂 +Andrea Vascellari has nothing to do with Finland, I think? Must be an error this…

Not wanting to promote myself but I’m the “Google+ envoy in Finland”, according to the local Google Industry Manager… At least I’m diligent! 😀

For those of you who have been connected with me for a while now, you are probably aware that my company and I work on international projects, but for the sake of this thread on G+, here’s my reply which just focuses on some of the ways I’ve been “influential” in Finland.

Hi Everyone,

Hi Jaana,

Jaana I’ve been living and working in Finland since 2005 and I’ve been researching and studying the Finnish information society cluster since 2002.

In Finland, I’m currently running several projects for national and local governments, regional development, B2B, B2C, pharma and education. If you have a look at the people/connections we commonly share here on Google+ you’ll notice that I’m well-networked with the Finnish social media sphere 😉

I’m often a contributor to various international podcasts sharing my point of view from the Finnish perspective (but not only, since I have Italian-Canadian roots) specifically in the fields of PR, marketing and communications. In addition to that, since public speaking is part of what I do, I’ve been invited to speak at some of the largest conferences in Finland i.e. Mindtrek, ITK, etc. If you quickly browse through my Linkedin profile you’ll notice that I’ve been invited as an official blogger to many industry conferences, such as the LeWeb, Web 2.0 Expo, etc. and I’ve also represented Finland at two editions of the Bloggers World Forum respectively in Bucharest and Vienna. So these are most likely some of the reasons why you’ll find a fairly large group of people worldwide referring to me when they think of Finland – it’s the same for me when I think of Ireland and 2 names immediately come to mind Krishna De (@krishnade) and Bernie Goldbach (@topgold).

On the other hand, leading an international digital strategy agency requires me to travel quite often, but my home is currently in Finland. My team and I work across 4 continents and we recently opened a new office in New York (NYC) so the information you see on my Twitter profile refers to that. I hope this explains and clarifies everything.

Andrea @vascellari

– Good to meet you, Jaana. Andrea

Need help with your B2B Marketing? B2B Marketing Europe is the answer

Need help with your B2B markting? I’m sure that by attending this event organized by KGS Global [client] all your questions will find an answer. [post released via itive.net]

B2B Marketing Europe - KGS global

If you are a VP or Director of Marketing, Marketing Manager, Channel Marketing Executive or if you are a President/CEO/Managing Director interested in find out more on the new frontier of B2B Marketing, this is the event you are looking for: European B2B Marketing Conference, 1st 2nd Dec. in Berlin (Germany).

A unique networking opportunity and an amazing speakers lineup that includes also our friend Chris Brogan. In addition to that during the second day of conference you’ll have the chance of attending a workshop to learn how you can use Facebook, Twitter and other social media tools in your B2B marketing strategies hosted by Nicole Simon (Social Media Strategist – Itive). You’ll learn:

  • What B2B can learn from successful B2C companies
  • How to build a relevant, exciting and interactive Facebook page for your company (and why that includes Twitter)
  • Facilitate interaction between your company and ‘fans’ / ‘friends’ / ‘followers’
  • Maximize your content online through social media tools
  • How to be remarkable online
  • And of course you’ll be able to share your experiences with other attendees!

Follow the official hashtag #b2beu for more information!

Together with Mashable, Read Write Web, media.net and GyroHSR Itive.net is official partner of the event. We are supporting Irina Kremin and her KGS Global team to get the best out of the event. Hope to see you there!

[Communications Report] for September 17th 2010 – AndreaVascellari.com

Do you want to get these report-updates in real time? Subscribe to the live-report RSS feed! This feed includes only report related items. It’s not a substitute but a complement to my main RSS feed which still remains the official one that brings you all my blog posts.

  • Seven ways social nets like Facebook and LinkedIn are ‘truly evil’ – Something to keep in mind…
  • How to Unleash Your Human Potential | Fast Company – Allow your workers to experiment, and make their goal to please the customer–not the boss.
  • The Science of Retweets on Twitter – One of the most actively discussed aspects of Twitter is the art and science of retweets. Retweets, in my opinion, are one of the most sincere forms of recognition and validation, empowering users to pay it forward through the recognition of noteworthy content
  • American Express launches interactive campaign with Mark Ronson – The interactive campaign will be hosted at www.channel4.com/mylivestory, and will encourage consumers to celebrate their most memorable live music moments by submitting photos or videos of their favourite gig online.
  • Crowdmap – Collect news, aggregate and visualize on a map. Crowdmap is designed and built by the people behind Ushahidi, a platform that was originally built to crowdsource crisis information. As the platform has evolved, so have its uses. Crowdmap allows you to set up your own deployment of Ushahidi without having to install it on your own web server.
  • Developer Release – This is now a community project and development is open to anyone with the technical expertise who shares the vision of a social network that puts users in control.
  • Don’t Think of It As Piracy, Think of It As Marketing – Most video-game developers — along with most musicians, writers, movie producers and virtually every other kind of content creator — see digital piracy as an enemy to be fought with every weapon at their disposal. Not Markus Persson. While the Swedish developer of the indie game Minecraft says he isn’t happy about people copying his game illegally, he sees it as a necessary part of doing business in a digital world
  • Facebook Creates Multiple Account Dashboard for Advertisers – As Facebook becomes more of a force in the online advertising space, it has to also step up to the plate with analytics and reporting.
  • “The Social Network” Interactive Trailer Is All Up in Your Facebook – Anticipation is rising for the October 1 debut of The Social Network, the film that explores the history of Facebook and how it was founded. With just two weeks left before its debut in theaters, the film is launching its interactive trailer, chock-full of Facebook-y goodness.
  • Google’s troubles recruiting and retaining | Econsultancy – Recruiting and retaining ‘the best and brightest’ is the goal of most companies, and that explains why, for most companies, doing so is a tough job.
  • The Colors of the Web’s Superbrands [INFOGRAPHIC] – What colors do the web’s most powerful brands use to distinguish themselves from others? The folks from COLOURlovers decided to find out…
  • Levi’s launches online fitting service for women – Brand Republic News – The new digital offering is based on the figures of 60,000 women worldwide, and is meant to be a step towards ending the frustrations in the “search for a perfect fit”, according to Levi’s.
  • Top 3 Reasons Traditional Marketing Will Fail – Traditional marketing methods and overall approach will undoubtedly fail in today’s communications climate.
  • Twittelp.com | Help in the blink of a tweet. – Twittelp is a mobile application that provides to its users a quick way to ask help on the twittersphere. Every of your follower will be able to see that you need them, moreover you can define up to 5 follower (suggest your best friends or familiar) that will be mentioned inside the help request. (Thanks to Giuliano Iacobelli)
  • BBC News – What your social network profile picture really says – Nina started a Facebook page for her experiment, gathering over 3,500 members, who shared their reasons for choosing their profile pictures…
  • The Desert of Community Building | Geoff Livingston’s Blog – It’s important not to deceive one’s self about the significant effort and time one will invest to build a community, and then continue to invest in order to sustain it. The Fifth Estate requires continued interactions…The time and human resource commitments are real and significant. Have the patience to see it through, from start to finish, and the deserts that lie between moments of great interaction. Knowing this from the start helps.
  • 5 Compelling Reasons to Readjust Your Information Diet, and How to Do It – “One of the effects of living with electric information is that we live habitually in a state of information overload. There’s always more than you can cope with.” Marshall McLuhan
  • The Implications of Consumers Spending More Time with Facebook Than Google | Forrester Blogs – The difference between the two companies is that Facebook has a unified offering that people find compelling, while Google has a collection of sites that people find very useful–Google search, Gmail, YouTube, Google News and the other Google destinations are largely separate consumer experiences. This is a problem, and the solution may be Google Me, the rumored and expected social offering from Google.
  • Q2 2010 State of Social Meda Sponsorships – Good stats.
  • Seven Important Social Media Trends For The Next Year – Social media changes from month to month. Trends come and go quicker than the seasons change. Having said that…it should be an exiting year ahead in social media and these should be seven of the main trends…
  • YouTube Starts Testing New Live Streaming Platform – YouTube has announced it will start a two-day trial of their new streaming platform, which enables broadcasters to stream live video directly into YouTube channels.
  • How Newspapers Should Embrace Social Media – Some of the opportunities for socialised news or newspapers.
  • 30 Awesome B2B Social Media Resources – Marketers are currently in a state of transition. As social media and online marketing are integrated with traditional marketing channels, marketing teams need to learn more about the nuts and bolts of B2B social media. This list is designed to help marketers fill in the gap as well as provide resources for those in all phases of the B2B social media adoption process.
  • TubeMogul: People Watch Facebook Videos Longer, And Click On More Ads – On average, people who click on a video from Facebook are more engaged. They tend to watch longer than viewers who arrive from other sources— 1:45 minutes per view versus !:32 for Google (Twitter users are almost the same with 1:44 minutes per view). Roughly 40 percent of Facebook video ads, give or take, are watched all the way through across different video ad types. On the Web in general, video ad completion rates hover around 25 percent.

[Communications Report] for September 9th 2010 – AndreaVascellari.com

Do you want to get these report-updates in real time? Subscribe to the live-report RSS feed! This feed includes only report related items. It’s not a substitute but a complement to my main RSS feed which still remains the official one that brings you all my blog posts.

  • B2B Ads: Women click, men act | Econsultancy – Women deliver a 23% higher clickthrough rate than men, but men are 53% more likely to buy, start a free trial, download or complete a desired action than their female counterparts.
  • B2C Outpacing B2B in Social Measurement [stats] – B2Bs focus less on hits and followers, more on sales.
  • 5 Educational Email Marketing Infographics – Despite being the elder statesman of online marketing tools, email is still growing in adoption as a marketing channel.
  • AP Stops Fighting Bloggers, Plans To Credit Them As News Source – Only two years ago, the Associated Press tried to stop bloggers from using their content. Threatening to charge sites that used their content and demaned that The Drudge Reports pull headlines and story briefs from their site. But now AP is singing a different song – saying this week that they will credit bloggers for any stories they break.
  • Google Instant – The most obvious change is that you get to the right content much faster than before because you don’t have to finish typing your full search term, or even press “search.” Another shift is that seeing results as you type helps you formulate a better search term by providing instant feedback. You can now adapt your search on the fly until the results match exactly what you want. In time, we may wonder how search ever worked in any other way.
  • Skype Introduces 10-Way Video Calling – Skype 5.0 beta two is already available for download; it includes 10-way video calls, automatic call recovery and a cleaner user interface. The update is also said to improve call quality and includes a number of bug fixes to make the overall experience much smoother.
  • frankencamera: open source digital camera on [technabob] – Here’s another example that make you understand that the future is not just about tech but especially about consumer empowerment to end users self customize their products/services. Apps are indeed playing a fundamental role.
  • TPB AFK | The Pirate Bay – Away From Keyboard – TPB AFK is a documentary about three computer addicts who redefined the world of media distribution with their hobby homepage The Pirate Bay.
  • The Pirate Bay Documentary Maker Fetches $34,000 To Bring Us TPB Story | Startup Meme – Unofficial Facebook Guide – Simon Klose headed over to Kickstarter, a startup which people can use to generate funds for their projects from the community. The intention was to raise $25,000 in a month to hire the services of an editing studio to turn his plans to reality. However Klose got luckier than he must have anticipated, raising a healthy $34,000 from numerous backers.
  • Kickstarter – This is a funding platform for creative projects. Projects, funded by the community, must reach or exceed their funding goal or no money changes hands. Creators keep 100% ownership. Love it.

[Communications Report] for June 28th 2010 – AndreaVascellari.com

Do you want to get these report-updates in real time? Subscribe to the live-report RSS feed! This feed includes only report related items. It’s not a substitute but a complement to my main RSS feed which still remains the official one that brings you all my blog posts.

  • 5 Tools to Track Twitter Trends – On any given day there are over 600 tweets per second on Twitter for a total of over 50 million tweets per day. With an overload of tweets daily it can be difficult to grasp what is really trending at any given moment. Use the tools below to quickly find current Twitter trends and trending conversations.
  • Social Media Measurement Should Focus on Outcomes, Not Output – It’s not about simply looking for opportunities to drop messaging into ordinary conversation, but about finding shared interests, shared benefits and shared rewards for others in the communities where your brand interacts.
  • 8 Steps to Creating a Brand Persona – In social networks, the brand and how it’s perceived, is open to public interpretation and potential misconception now more than ever. Without a deliberate separation between the brand voice and personality and that of the person representing it, we are instantly at odds with our goals, purpose, and potential stature.
  • Top 10 Clever Google Voice Tricks – The phone management app is great, but even cooler hacks exist just under the hood.
  • How I Use Gmail Multiple-Inboxes Lab Feature to Manage E-mail Overload – Useful productivity tips.
  • 15 more awesome social media infographics – Infographics that demonstrate a mixture of both hard data and strategy practices. Hopefully, they’ll also provide some inspiration or can be useful in helping you with presentations or pitches. As before, links to the actual graphics are in the headline titles.
  • 6 ways to find value in Twitter’s noise – A great example that shows how we can get insights from analyzing Twitter data.
  • Social Media is the 3rd Era of the Web [graph] – A search that compares the world wide search volume on Google for new media, web 2.0, and social media. What the graph shows is that we’re at an inflection point in the language we use to describe the macro trends of innovation on the web…it’s the indicator that we’re in the 3rd Era of the Web and it’s The Era of Social Media.
  • How The World Spends Its Time Online [infographic] – Millions of people across the world are constantly connected by the internet. Here’s a look at what everybody’s doing when they’re in front of their computer screen.
  • Is Social a Source for B2B Leads? – Terrific insights about B2B site visitors referred from social media.
  • Diesel Cam – Interactive installation at Diesel Stores in Spain, being the first store that allows users to share the moment of buying and trying garments on their Facebook profiles from the store. Consumers are able to make pictures, publish them and boast their new acquisitions with their Facebook friends.
  • The Fun Theory – A great Volkswagen initiative. #engagement
  • Teens and Their Mobile Phones / Flowtown – Have you ever wondered what teens were really using their mobile phones for? A recent study released by Pew Internet Research has shed light on average mobile
  • Public Media Joins Forces for One Big Platform – The country’s five silos of public radio and television are spilling into each other with a joint program that will allow them – and eventually the public itself — to build apps, stations, websites and other media services combining audio, text and video content from every public radio and television outlet in the country.