Check out what I found in Venice yesterday during the Carnival…yes, a Facebook costume!
When I saw it a thought crossed my mind: A few years ago, I was sending out invites to my friends to join and connect with me on Facebook. Initially, many of them didn’t even reply or check it out and today…well, we all know how things have changed. Facebook became one of the dominant platforms for social networking.
The ‘social’ aspect of the web reached its mature stage and placed a new brick in the building of our future life. The line that used to separate the digital world from our everyday life keeps blurring and it will keep fading away the more the Internet becomes a part of the lives of people in the most far and remote corners of our planet.
Now we got to a point at which people discovered that social interaction can take place online just as it does offline. How are things going to move forward from now on?
At least at this stage, Facebook’s role in how people socialize and communicate is fundamental. Facebook is not redefining social, it’s simply taking it to a new extent. However, it still has the reins of social data and social interaction. I’m wondering if and how things will change once people start feeling the need to be in control of the data they are sharing and using in their social ecosystem. Will Facebook change its nature from ‘social box’ to ‘social catalyst’? Will emerging projects like Diaspora become new fertile lands where people will be able to take care of their own data and social life?
Today’s social costume is a ‘Facebook wall’, what will it be in the future?
Check out what I found in Venice yesterday during the Carnival…yes, a Facebook costume!
When I saw it a thought crossed my mind: A few years ago, I was sending out invites to my friends to join and connect with me on Facebook. Initially, many of them didn’t even reply or check it out and today…well, we all know how things have changed. Facebook became one of the dominant platforms for social networking.
The ‘social’ aspect of the web reached its mature stage and placed a new brick in the building of our future life. The line that used to separate the digital world from our everyday life keeps blurring and it will keep fading away the more the Internet becomes a part of the lives of people in the most far and remote corners of our planet.
Now we got to a point at which people discovered that social interaction can take place online just as it does offline. How are things going to move forward from now on?
At least at this stage, Facebook’s role in how people socialize and communicate is fundamental. Facebook is not redefining social, it’s simply taking it to a new extent. However, it still has the reins of social data and social interaction. I’m wondering if and how things will change once people start feeling the need to be in control of the data they are sharing and using in their social ecosystem. Will Facebook change its nature from ‘social box’ to ‘social catalyst’? Will emerging projects like Diaspora become new fertile lands where people will be able to take care of their own data and social life?
Today’s social costume is a ‘Facebook wall’, what will it be in the future?
In Milan I wasn’t alone at the Forum della Comunicazione Digitale 2011, Leah D’Emilio (CCO, itive.net) delivered a really interesting presentation during the special “Ignite Italia” session arranged for the event. She discussed how successful online video marketing can be thought of as strategic storytelling and requires the same production process as filmmaking: development, pre-production, production, post-production, and distribution. By applying these 5 stages of production when creating an online video (whether for a single video or a series), a business or brand can unquestionably build a more solid structure for meeting their business and communication objectives.
Check out Leah’s presentation in the video and slides below!
My talked was about “digital evolution” and how “digital species” – in this case websites & web properties of brands and organizations – need to adapt to environmental changes (new technologies, etc…) or else they will be wiped off the face of the world wide web.
Here’s the video and slides from my presentation. Enjoy!
When you start thinking about how to use social media to market your organization, stop thinking about how you are going to find customers and start thinking about how to help them find you…
This video is about a nice story that Eric Schwartzman shared at Ignite this week in Rome (Italy) during Social Media Week. I’m sure you’ll find it interesting!
This week I’ll be in Rome for Social Media Week. Together with me from the itive.net team will be Leah D’Emilio (Chief Communications Officer).
Here’s where you can find me:
Wed. 9 Feb. – I will be a guest speaker during a special social media session for entrepreneurs alongside LA based Online Communications Strategist Eric Schwartzman.
Web. 9 Feb – On stage at Ignite Italia. Info & venue here. My presentation: Digital Brains! -I’m sure many of you will find it interesting 😉 Leah D’Emilio has a ‘bomb’ presentation on Social Video 101… I already got a preview, but I can’t wait to see it again live!
Aside from these official presentations, my agenda is already packed with meetings, etc. so stay tuned via twitter @vascellari and remember when in Rome…
What steps do you need to take to create a valuable online service or business
What’s the strategic approach that an individual can follow to create value, authority, credibility and the opportunity to make business online
Video highlights below. Enjoy it!
@Robin: Thanks for the great time, it was nice to see you again! 🙂
Andrea
Video highlights:
Anyone can do what she/he wants for a living
There is one thing that everybody should keep in mind. Nowadays, more than ever before, everyone has a chance of doing what he or she loves for a living.
Going Global
Why? Because we are going global. With a simple blog and few clicks you have the chance of connecting with the entire world. It’s definitely interesting period the one we are living in.
Being Passionate
At the base, before focusing on technology, it’s important to be really passionate about what you are doing. I see way too many people who are unsatisfied with their jobs, and I can’t stand that. Maybe it’s because I am an entrepreneur. I really do what I love. I love my job. That is what I am really passionate about in my life and I think everyone has some passions. I think they should go for it. Online you are instantly connected with the entire world. You will find other people that have your same passions becoming your target audience, whether you do it for business or not.
What you do doesn’t have to be necessarily related to business (it could non-profit etc.) but let’s say that you have the possibility of finding a place to express yourself. Usually, if something is done with passion, you have that drive to go on that usually other people do not have. It’s not going to be easy. Every time you do something, you will find roadblocks. Ultimately, passion is the drive that makes you go on. Nothing really starts or works in first place if you do not really want it badly.
Start By Listening
First thing you should do is to start by listening a little bit what’s going on and understanding who is already out there. Let’s say you want to start your own small business. You should carefully listen to which are the other players in your field and to understand in which environment you will have to move, because sometimes it will happen… you won’t be the first. You definitely have to pay attention to them, and then of course build a presence on the web that express your strategic communications plan. It doesn’t have to be just ‘a blog’, your online presence is going to be the gate between you and the world or your target audience, so it has to be done really carefully.
Jump Into The Conversation
After that, you can start to jump into the conversation that is happening out there – I do not want to say “join” the conversation, because I am sick of hearing it. Everyone is talking about “joining the conversation” and just few people actually do it. Anyway… you have to start to jump into that, where the conversation is already happening, with your audience, with people within your niche. After that, when you establish a basic connection with this environment that is out there, then you can start to be proactive.
Build Trust, Engage Deeper
Once the trust is built, then you can start to engage at a deeper level and eventually this will translate into business. It could also be just for a passion or for the organization you are working for. It just depends on which is your focus and what are your objectives.
When Does The Money Show Up?
The money comes after you establish a real connection with your audience, after your target audience trusts you. The money will come after, as a consequence.
I tell you an example.
Every time I go to Venice – I come from Venice region in Italy – I go to the market on Friday morning. I go there and buy some good fresh fish. There are tons of people that are selling fish, but I always go to the same lady. There is no way I can go and buy fish from anyone else, because I bought fish from her for years.
How she convinced me at first?
observing the crowd and stopping me when she noticed that I need some fish,
showing me the really good fish she had,
why would have been better to buy from her and not from others,
giving me good tips on how to cook fish, and so on.
She established a real emotional connection, so I trusted her and I became her client.
You can basically do the same online. At that point – after you have built all these connections – is where the money is going to come. It’s going to be a consequence.
Word of Mouth
Another important thing is what you call in Italian “il passaparola“, the power of word of mouth. Happy clients will talk to other potential clients and they will bring them to you. It’s going to be also your community that will help you and your business grow.
Last week I spoke at the Ignite in Rome (Italy). My presentation was in Italian but on this post you’ll find all the notes related to each slide (below) in English.
Learn how to use Google to take Twitter search to a whole new level. Enjoy!
Every time you go to an event it’s nice to take something back home. Something practical to play around with and experiment. So in my presentation I wanted to give more practical tips then just theory.
Passive VS Active use of social media. Many people use social media in a passive way. They just use the standard features but they don’t use the tools at full and they don’t even combine them with others to get the best out of them. In this presentation we’ll do exactly this: Combining twitter with Google to get the best out of it.
Challenge: Find stuff that matters. This is an open challenge for many communicators. When we are searching for something we look for information that can help us in better achieving our objectives. Searching junk that doesn’t apply to our aims.
So from where we can start our search? Well social media/networks are a good starting point. According to Nielsen consumers spent more than five and half hours on social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter in December 2009, an 82% increase from the same time last year. In this presentation we have a closer look at Twitter.
Let’s say that I have a client, a restaurant for which we are conducting a competitive analysis. Among other strategic moves & tactics we want to search on twitter for potential competitors that we can examine and study. So we are looking for other restaurants on twitter that are located nearby our client. By typing and searching for ‘restaurant’ we’ll get thousands of results of tweets that contain the word ‘restaurant’ but that are not necessarily tweeted by restaurants.
We need something more accurate. If we have a look at the advanced twitter search we can use multiple search terms, a specific location etc. but it’s still something that doesn’t help us much in narrowing down our results to only restaurants in that area.
What we noticed with my team at itive is that the best result we can get at this level are the one that contain links. In fact when people share valuable information online they usually do it with a link to add more value to what they are sharing.
What the advanced twitter search doesn’t offer (yet) is the possibility to search for multimedia content. For example videos and photos. This data can be really useful at times in our searches (keeping in mind that you might want to use these tips I’m giving also for other searches and not just for restaurants). Twitter is full of photos, but do we find them?
It’s simple. You’ll just need to add to your search term some of the services that people use to share photos on twitter (like twitpic, etc.). Here’s what you need to type: restaurant twitpic OR ow.ly.
But let’s try to use these channels in an active way. As you probably now recently Google started to index tweets in its search results. We can use this as an advantage that can help us achieve better results for what we are looking for. We’ll use Google to search Twitter.
We can start by searching twitter profiles that have in the name/title the word ‘restaurant’. We’ll do it by using intitle:”restaurant* on twitter” site:twitter.com in our search. Interesting isn’t it?! 😉
Yes but what is the this twitter profile (in my slide I used my own to not share the one of any restaurant -privacy) has the word ‘restaurant’ in their Bio instead of in their name/title. Example: The name could be ‘Delicious Food’ and the bio description could be ‘We are an Italian restaurant etc…’. How to we search our relevant info in the bio?
we’ll simply need to change the attribute in our search with this: intext:”bio * restaurant” site:twitter.com. Keep in mind that we would have found any of these restaurants by using the previous ‘title search’. At this point our research is starting to give us better results but we still need to focus on our location.
Location is very important. But once again the search we perform on the basic advanced search of twitter just gives us ‘general’ results. (to get these results we specified the location in from the advanced twitter search page). What we can do is something smarter…check the next point.
A this point we can combine the two previous searches (title, bio) and add on top of those a third attribute, the location. So we’ll search for twitter profiles of restaurants (whether is specified in their title or bio) that are in New York City (I chose NYC as an example you can enter any other location/area/state/city). Here’s what we’ll nee to type: (intitle:”restaurant * on twitter” OR intext:”bio * restaurant”) intext:”location * NYC” site:twitter.com. The results are exactly what we were looking for 🙂
Remember that this is nothing without a strategic communications plan. This tips are at tactical level, not strategic.
Tactics like this can help us in monitoring trends, analyzing competitors and of course in gaining a competitive advantage.
You can find more info related to similar topics on my blog andreavascellari.com. If you have any questions or you would like to talk more, drop you comments or get in touch via twitter @vascellari (please read my twitter policy if you start to follow me, thanks).
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The State of Social Marketing Integration – According to data from eROI and eMarketing & Commerce (eM+C), US marketers spent 13% of their online marketing time on social media in 2009, the second-largest share of any tactic.
Facebook | Intro to Facebook Search – Here’s the ‘what’ of Facebook search. Great post…it makes me think about Facebook VS Google…Who’s gonna win the search battle in future?
Facebook Reaches Top Ranking in US – The market share of visits to Facebook.com increased 185% last week as compared to the same week in 2009, while visits to Google.com increased 9% during the same time frame.
BBC News – The top 100 sites on the internet – The data used to generate the interactive treemap visualisation were collected by the Nielsen company and covers the UK, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Switzerland, Brazil, US and Australia. The figures represent unique users for the month of January 2010.
Social Fans More Likely to Buy – More than one-half of Facebook fans said they are more likely to make a purchase for at least a few brands, and 67% of Twitter followers reported the same.
Google – public data – The Google Public Data Explorer makes large datasets easy to explore, visualize and communicate.
New Startup Ideas – I’m always surprised in finding that many startups don’t think at all about certain key elements. This document gives a good structure that I wish more entrepreneurs would keep in mind.
10 Search Engines to Explore the Deep End of the Invisible Web – The Invisible Web refers to the part of the WWW that’s not indexed by the search engines. Most of us think that that search powerhouses like Google and Bing are like the Great Oracle…they see everything. Unfortunately, they can’t because they aren’t divine at all; they are just web spiders who index pages by following one hyperlink after the other.
Toyota Turns To Twitter To Repair Its Image – Toyota has been dealing with negative backlash from the massive safety recalls of its vehicles; and is even suffering in terms of sales. So what does the company do to repair its image? Turn to Twitter, of course!
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