Social Networking vs Email
As social media has risen the last 5 years, email has lost its leadership for online correspondence, both for overall usage as well as for time spent. Labels: email, Media Trend Watching, Morgan Stanley, social media, social networking, Usage
In the latest Morgan Stanley Internet trends report, it contained this eye-popping chart:
Social networking keeps growing and growing while time spent using email is flat. While email won't be going away anytime soon, more and more of it is getting repurposed just for heavier official or corporate/business documentation or simply just for spam.
Another way of looking at it is a division of "private sharing" vs "public sharing".
I encourage you to read the entire Morgan Stanley Internet trends report.
posted by Unknown @ Friday, May 07, 2010,
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What the F**k is Social Media (One Year Later)
Social media is no longer just a new marketing experiment. Nor is it just a hot fad. 3 out of 4 Americans and 2 out of 3 worldwide web users are on it. Yet, corporations still only think of it as a marketing tool. It is much more than that. It's a chance for business to communicate with its fans; to create, build and satisfy new audiences; it's a chance to brand. Yes, all those things. But that's just on the business side. It's also a chance for listening, sharing, exchanging with fans, who will in turn help promote you more. Labels: Customer satisfaction, Marketing, social media, social networking
So why the f**k is social media so important? This updated report from Marta Kagan really explains it well.
Get on it.
posted by Unknown @ Tuesday, August 11, 2009,
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What Is Twitter? A Quick How-To In Plain English
Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy Labels: community, Media Trend Watching, sharing, social media, social networking, Twitter
Did you know that of all adult Internet users in North America, one-in-three maintained a social networking profile last year (according to Nielsen Media Research? Despite its sudden rise in popularity, lots of people are still asking "What is Twitter?" (now the #3 social networking site on the web).
Twitter, as twitheads know it, is a micro-blogging website where ideas can be shared with friends (or "followers"), 140 characters at a time -- from your computer or smart phone. Some think of it as a tool that bridges the gap between your social profile (like UnHub, Facebook, MySpace or LinkedIn) and your blog. Others think of it as something that shares "behind-the-scenes" thoughts in real-time (where I'm at, what I'm doing right now).
So, what is twitter to me? I see it as the today's smarter form of old-school "water cooler talk".
It's collaboration and shared conversation, like seeing and participating in Seth Godin's "Tribes" concept as it happens.
And a great way for brands to take care of customers (by listening).
Additional media trend watchers even think Twitter could challenge Google in the search business, because Twittering is real-time search.
In business, it can be a great way to boost your company's online brand reputation, build your business and establish a closer interactive link with your customers.
However, advertisers still view social as an experimental business model, which means traditional media remains a little slow embracing it.
Twitter is whatever you want it to be. A public "instant message" forum, a professional marketing or PR tool, a job hunt assistant, or a buzz monitor on what's hot right now. It all depends on the network you build of people you follow and who follows you.
Most major news sources (both national and local) are there for breaking news and web updates (@CNN, @ABCnews, @CBSnews, @NBCnews, @CBCnews, as well as online sources like @DrudgeReport, @HuffingtonPost, @The Daily Show, @The Colbert Report, @The Onion, @Gawker, etc.).
Celebrities are doing it (@Aston Kutcher, @Demi Moore, @Jimmy Fallon). Celebrity impersonators are doing it (a sexy fake @Megan Fox or a drunk @Lindsay Lohan). @Paris Hilton doesn't use it as much lately; maybe that's because gossip blogger @Perez Hilton is now there (with 240,000 followers).
Marketing gurus (@Guy Kawasaki, @Chris Brogan) are doing it. AOL's founder and creator of the Instant Message is tweeting instead of IMing (@Steve Case). Major brands are doing (@Skittles). Even @Barack Obama was doing it on the campaign trail, helping him build up grass-roots support.
So what exactly is Twitter? View this simple explanation video below and get twittering:
Even NBC's The Today Show shows you how to do it:
posted by Unknown @ Thursday, March 19, 2009,
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Social Media: Something Positive Has To Happen
With all this blogging, twittering and online yelling at strangers, something positive has got to happen. Right? As this great social media graphic shows, it must be true. Yes...? Labels: blogging, Jobs, social media, social networking, Twitter, Web Trends
posted by Unknown @ Wednesday, March 04, 2009,
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Googling You and Me
Labels: brand building, Chris Kennedy, Findability, Google, micro-blogging, Reputation, results, social media, social networking, Twitter
With all the talk about social media and micro-blogging, Twitter is catching a serious amount of online buzz as being the new tool for the next level of search: "real-time, conversational search".
It's great to have those you follow help you scour the web for news that matters and is customized for your needs. Will it only get more important in the next stage of web search development. Absolutely yes, especially when it comes to super-serving your "audience" and for overall web brand reputation building.
That being said, findability is still the most important aspect of search and online brand building. If you can't get found, your fabulous content ain't going a whole lot of places.
Google remains the 800lb gorilla of search...and it has no plans of releasing its dominance.
For the Jointblog, we are #1, #4, #6, #9 and #10 out of 29,000 webpage Google results.
For Media Trend Watching, the Jointblog is #2, #7 and #9 on Google out of 56 million results...need to get it back up to #1!
What about Chris Kennedy radio trend? As the editor of the Jointblog covering radio trends as an important subject, I'm very happy having all Top 10 first-page results on Google out of 60,000 results -- including my Twitter @KennedyCS for following.
Or just Chris Kennedy radio? Google shows we have #1, #2, #7 and #10 -- all on the first page, among 513,000 results.
Even just Chris Kennedy trend works on Google, where I am #1, #2, #3, #5 and #7 on the first-page out of 214,000 Google search results (again, Twitter shows up).
But just Chris Kennedy? Only #2 on the second page of Google out of 12 million results for posted articles from me...and #39 (page 4) for my LinkedIn profile. Need to use social media more to build up organic search results.
Using other search engines for Chris Kennedy Radio, Clusty has me as #1, #4, #5 and #7 on first-page results. MSN's Live Search, meanwhile, lists me as #1, #3, #4 and #10.
Looking good!
Getting to the top of the first page of Google organic keyword search results still is essential in order to reach your target.
When you google yourself or your company or your targeted interested, what do you find? Have you googled yourself lately? If you're not get the SEO results you need, what are you doing to fix the result?
Interestingly, using those social media and Twitter micro-blogging can help boost you to the top of the page.
posted by Unknown @ Friday, February 27, 2009,
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aMap: Can Radio Get Better?
There are some great graphic visualization tools available on-line that give a whole new way to interpret comments, news, speeches and more. One great tool I found is from aMap. Using their free visualizer, you can ask any question you like, type in some logical answers with supporting comments. Then you can email your argument or position to your friends or blog readers to have them extend the argument and add in their own answers. Labels: aMap, blogging, community, sharing, social networking, tools, visualization, Web 3.0
It's a cool way for a social community to get in the conversation.
Here's an example. Click on it to add in your own comments or answers:
posted by Unknown @ Wednesday, February 04, 2009,
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A Different Look At Social Media and Important Changes Coming
Labels: Connecting, Convergence, innovation, Jobs, Marketing, New Media, noise, ReadWriteWeb, social media, social networking, trends
ReadWriteWeb is a fantastic blogsite...informative and broad-reaching in its coverage of new media. Great resource worth a bookmark. Yesterday, they posted an article with a bit of a contrarian point of view on social media.
"Making Money" is perhaps the biggest challenge social media must face.
Here were some of their posted thoughts:"Social media" was the term du jour in 2008. Consumers, companies, and marketers were all talking about it. We have social media gurus, social media startups, social media books, and social media firms. It is now common practice among corporations to hire social media strategists, assign community managers, and launch social media campaigns, all designed to tap into the power of social media.
With all the great excitement of social media lately, yes, they are right. It is noisy and messy, filled with an endless array of tools and gadgets.
But social media today is a pure mess: it has become a collection of countless features, tools, and applications fighting for a piece of the pie.
Facebook, a once groundbreaking online community, has become the ant colony of third-party applications. Twitter users now have a dozen or so additional applications they can use to overcome Twitter's ever-present shortcomings. People spread themselves across a number of tools and maintain different networks on each (large portions of which they don't even know), making it nearly impossible to decide what to share and with whom.
Users, marketers, and companies face an incredible amount of noise, too. For every new application that relies on a network, another crops up that helps users manage it. While "eyeballs" used to be the coveted metric, both ad publishers and investors now realize that having smaller well-targeted niches can lead to much better returns than marketing to one large undifferentiated mass of users.
Meaning and connection -- two key anchors of all things social media -- are corroding by the day as people's ability to organize their experiences and find the relevance of their networks declines. Social media, in essence, is bumping up against its own ceiling, no longer able to serve the needs of those living within its walls; and for these reasons, social media as we know it is changing course.
So what needs to change? Again, some of ReadWrite Web's top thoughts as social media continues to evolve:1) It's About People. We're moving away from "users," "customers," and "shoppers": social media is bringing back the human element to all digital interaction.
While this year be the year social media and "making money" converge successfully? Or is that still years away?
2) Creating Meaning and Value. Social media will no longer be about features and applications. These have become a dime a dozen. People will be looking to get tangible and relevant value out of their social experience; they'll be looking for meaning and for order.
3) Enabling Convergence. People are at a loss when it comes to pulling their conversations together from various sources and assigning meaning to them.
4) Building a Truly Cross-Platform Experience. In the new landscape of social media, people are seeking solutions that seamlessly cut across mobile, web, and live interaction.
5) Creating Relevant Social Networks. People will create, join, and seek social networks that enable them to have meaningful and relevant experiences with each other. They will measure their return on investment (time spent, level of disclosure, etc.) in replies, comments, their ability to influence, and the value of their learning.
6) Innovating in the Advertising Space. Ad publishers and the attached ecosystem will continue to lose revenue until they realign their understanding of what appeals to people who are conversing, connecting, and expressing. The next phase of social media is a gold mine of targeted niche demographics.
7) Helping People Organize Their "Old" Social Media Ecosystem. As aggregating platforms enter the field, people will seek to bring order to the endless bits of information available to them. Video tagging, conversation archiving, taking cloud computing to the next stage, and making search more relevant are some of the new baseline requirements. These represent a significant opportunity for companies willing to undertake this massive endeavor.
8) Connecting with the Rest of the US and the World. With some exceptions, today's active social media users are early adopters. In the next one to two years, the benefits of social media will cross the chasm and reach the mainstream.
9) Preparing for New Social Media Jobs. Social media's new job descriptions will call on subject-matter experts who can plan for relevant interaction within networks and aggregating platforms and bring together products, services, and people.
10) Making Money. The next phase of social media will bring plenty of lucrative opportunities. With the rise of aggregating platforms, social networks, and new mobile and location-based features, we're bound to see an increase in targeted and personalized ads, "freemium" packaging, revenue sharing between strategic partners, and a flow from the offline world to online social engagement (such as when real goods complement virtual ones).
posted by Unknown @ Wednesday, January 28, 2009,
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Social Media Tips: A Quick List of Helpful Links
Labels: Facebook, New Media, social media, social networking, tips, Twitter, Web 3.0
2008 was the year social media networking sites and micro-blogging tools exploded to near-mainstream usage. This year promises only more growth for social media.
In Canada, there are 8 million Facebook members...for a country with 24 million on the Internet. That's one-third of Canada found on just one site!
Just this month, Facebook became twice as large in usage than MySpace...with a total of 150 million active users.
Twitter was no longer just a tool to track celebrities on their rhinestone-encrusted smartphones; it became THE way to pre-promote for any savvy marketer.
Whether you are just now getting into social media or you are already in the know, these current articles should be great idea generator and navigators for you:
>> 50 Ideas on Using Twitter for Business
>> ...And here's a list of 42 quick and cool social media tips...
>> Understanding and Aligning the Value of Social media
>> Why You Should Be Looking at Twitter
>> How To Sell Social Media to Cynics, Skeptics and Luddites
>> Social Media Rule #1: Always Give 'Em Something To Talk About
>> A Guide to Media Tweeter Lists
>> Web 2.0 is So Over, Welcome to Web 3.0
>> Want to See Where The Media Is Going? Follow the Money
>> FlowingData -- one of the better tweeting social media leaders. FlowingData.com is the website...
>> ...Oh, and this guy is pretty good, too.
>> Track the top twitter elite users, get twitsnips, badges, button makers and search by region, topic and more at TwitterGrader
>> Create free customizable Twitter backgrounds
But...is Twitter killing blogs and blogging?
posted by Unknown @ Tuesday, January 27, 2009,
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Social Media and Traditional Media: Seize the Opportunity
Labels: New Media, social media, social networking, Twitter, Web Trends
Social media is all the rage online.
But do you know what it means or how it works? How much time have you spent "digging" in and learning from the latest tools? Webinars are available almost daily from hundreds of online businesses exploring the infant power of micro-blogging and interlacing all of a company's online and traditional media platforms.
And how exactly do you "sell" it...to your CFO or other financial decision makers, let alone to the marketplace for revenue?
Traditional media -- radio, TV and newspapers -- are far behind the curve here. And sadly, the good people still slugging it out in traditional media hardly have the time to learn on their own as they've been saddled with staff cuts and more than one-job-to-many to cover for the people let go.
For the past few weeks, I've been re-immersing myself in social media. Had to...I was a staff cut. It's fascinating and exciting. You can literally "see" the growth right there in front of you. Online. But what about with radio...any growth happening there?
Sure, in places, but it's not so easy to see it. While radio groups generally continue to record strong quarterly cash-flow/EBITA profits and are maintaining healthy revenues, all the weak economic forecasts for the entire advertising industry eclipse (at least for now) any good news stories about radio. While initiatives like Virgin Radio in Canada could bear positive fruit, it was immediately followed up with 23 job cuts for Astral. On the same day it was announced Clear Channel in the U.S. cut 1,850 jobs. After a year where CBS Radio has cut 750 cuts from their 140 station group.
The public knows -- and the market knows -- growth industries don't cut jobs. When industries are hiring -- when companies have a hard time filling their open slots for talent -- the public and the market gives that industry their confidence and can see the growth. They want to invest because they see the companies investing in themselves. Cutbacks only mean one thing -- growth is somewhere else.
You want to see growth? Just look at these stats.
So where can radio get growth again? Where can it invest?
Social media.
Right now.
Oh, and it might want to consider a few more things. Here's some suggestions:
• Treat your station like a social media website...a place that consistently refreshes and surprises with new content, supplied by the talent, programming and, most importantly, by the listeners (through twitter, IM, email comments, etc. and recorded and live messages). Let THEM contribute; tear down the wall between the station and the listener. Make sure your website includes all the tools for your talent AND your listeners to participate and contribute new ideas and general commentary on whatever THEY choose (of course, staying within community standards).
• Make sure your website is the center of multiple destinations all related and pointed to each other on the web, through fans and group profiles on Facebook and MySpace, etc, Twitter, blogs, and more.
• Be the most local media for your community and, specifically, your target audience.
• Pay attention to what your listeners need and make sure you remain flexible as an organization to give listeners what they need...not maybe sometime in the near future.
• Avoid template formatting. Keep every station locally-distinctive to that market, even if it voice-tracks or uses syndicated programming. Your sound and your unique content (even it is re-packaged) is your unique selling proposition.
• Stop sounding exactly the same every day with your announcers using nearly the same 180 words during their show as they used the day before, only in a slightly different order. Your listeners want to know "what's new", not "what's the same".
• Get away from auto pilot programming. Yes, it is cheaper to run in auto pilot and it does create short-term operating gains...but radio is reaching (or already has reached) the tipping point of being forever branded as stale -- to the public, to advertisers, and to investors -- as new media (and the universal praise for new media) constantly remains new -- and even more new tomorrow. Build more custom programming (even when pre-produced) and adapt operational structures to manage it.
• Encourage talent to do new things, to explore...even within mostly music/tight formats. Encourage them to try and to seek out...and allow them the room to apply that on-air. Nurture them more to grow, learn and apply in fresh ways.
• While we need brand consistency, that doesn't mean what we program on Tuesday should sound exactly like it did on Monday. Around the set playlist, the local, live and fresh content matters! The question talent needs to ask itself before every show is "What does my listener need to know about today?"
• If you choose to promote something, never do it halfway (or less). Promote it with all your muscle and creativity, with no excuses. And never water it down by trying to promote more than one major thing at a time. If it's important, it should become what all of your audience is talking about.
Radio is a healthier media platform than it realizes. It is still a heavyweight of the media class. But it needs a new training program that can help it keep up with the times. It needs the leadership and the courage to invest in the right areas for present and future growth. Where do you want to go today?
Here's some more suggestions...and a great primer to catch you up on the reasons why.
Hold on a second, I just got tweeted...
Chris Kennedy is a media trend watcher, radio program director, market researcher, change agent and strategist serving media companies throughout the U.S., Canada, Europe and South America. Look for him his at twitter.com/kennedycs, facebook.com, the Jointblog for media trend watching, email him at kennedycs@yahoo.com or call 514-826-9250.
posted by Unknown @ Friday, January 23, 2009,
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Toronto tops the Twittersphere
Labels: social networking, Texting, Toronto, Twitter
What are you doing?
If you are in Toronto, there's a good chance you're on Twitter.
According to the Globe and Mail, not just fans of Barack Obama are on Twitter. Torontonians are totally tethered to Twitter.
Canada's largest city is the Twitter capital of the Great White North and home to one of the largest collections of Twitter users in the world, according to a new report from market tracking firm HubSpot Inc.
In the company's quarterly “State of the Twittersphere” report, Toronto places eighth on a list of the Top 30 locations on Twitter, based on the supplied biographical information of Twitter users, while Canada ranks No. 13.
London tops the list, followed by the United States generally, then San Francisco, New York and Chicago.
The popularity of Twitter – a micro-blogging service which allows users to update their status, create friend lists and post mini messages limited to 140 characters or less using either a computer or a cellphone – has exploded in 2008, with the service's user base jumping 600 per cent this year.
There are now an estimated 5 million Twitter users around the world, 70 per cent of whom joined the service in the past 12 months, HubSpot said.
For more, click here.
posted by Unknown @ Friday, December 26, 2008,
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Radio Finally Realizes It Can Do Social Networking, Too
Labels: Clear Channel, community, Internet, Jointblog, MySpace, Online Marketing, Radio, social networking, website
The success of MySpace has spun off an emerging trend of new social networking startup site based on specific themes and custom labels. And now radio is joining the online marketing action.
Billboard.biz reports today that America's largest radio company Clear Channel is starting up its own radio-branded social networking websites, with plans to get them up and running throughout this summer.
The concept? "Mini-MySpace" sites associated with a major market's radio brand logo targeting that stations' local community audience, allowing users to create and customize their profiles, upload their user-generated content and viral video, form friendship links, post comments and generally connect with other like-minded people.
At the same time, the radio stations with have a new opportunity to promote its activities and contests as well as community events, gossip, new music releases and even on-air podcasts.
Finally.
It's only a decade late.
But at least it finally getting done.
How about the other radio groups?
Some Clear Channel example sites launched today: The Wild Space for Rhythmic CHR Wild FM in San Francisco; The Mob for Top 40 Kiss FM in Chicago; The Z-Zone for New York's Top 40 Z100; Kiss Nation for Top 40 Kiss FM in Dallas; and many more to come from stations across the country based on new music formats.
Will they just be LateSpace?
What took radio so long to wake up to the social networking phenomenon of the last decade? The Internet started as a community connector to share information (digitally) back when it was bulletin board Dos-based postings accessed via slow-baud dial-ups -- long before AOL IMs, or even chat rooms in CompuServe or Prodigy.
Radio could have -- and should have -- established online social networkings long before MySpace, Facebook, Friendster, Bebo, Zanga, Eons, UrbanBaby or any of the others popular places online today. Radio already had (and still has) established built-in interactive communities, including local fans as well as listeners who've relocated to other cities who remain fans.
Clear Channel's plans will "monetize the sites with targeted online spots from local advertisers" while helping people connect with others locally. Meanwhile, users will be able to click on the user profiles in the chat area to enter and explore the social network.
According to the news release:Each social network will have a user experience similar to that offered by MySpace, Facebook, Bebo and others. Users can create and customize profiles; upload photos, music and video; blog; and add friends. Users will also be able to enhance their profile pages with videos from Clear Channel's catalog of over 6,000 music videos licensed from major and independent labels.
Yes, social websites are one of Top 10 things teens love to do. The timing is good for radio to step in and offer something fresh, especially since MySpace is turning more and more into a junkyard mess.
But it's not just teens that want to socially network online.
It's grownups, too -- GenXers and Boomers alike. Adult Contemporary, Classic Rock, Oldies and other adult music formats should also be included.
There's lots of competition among the most active social networking websites. Breaking through will be tough. Corporate Radio is slow joining the bandwagon when it comes to online social networking...perhaps its expertise in formating and its built-in on-air audience can help radio stations get the word out while creating a unique online community destination.
Just help users cut through the clutter!
It does lead to an interesting modern-day question: How many online profiles can a person possibly have and keep up-to-date while still keeping up real-life responsibilities? Three? Five? A dozen? More? How many multiple personalities are we all living every day?
And another question: what will radio do about mobile social networking (like Twitter, etc.)?
posted by Unknown @ Monday, April 30, 2007,
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Connecting Radio To Digital Music Fans
Labels: buzz, community, Connect, Digital, Internet, Music fans, music sales, Radio, social networking, User-Generated, Web 2.0, webart
Music fans are passionate. They talk music. Download, upload, swap, and playlist music. Participate on and start their own fan sites, go to shows, create/buy custom cellphone ringtones and fan wallpaper, serve as street marketers building up the buzz, blog it, and more.
These are great days for interactive music fans ...radio, are you listening?
They live the music of their favorite bands everyday.
Remember those days, Gen Xer? Sound familiar, Boomers?
Despite all the doom and gloom of industry indicators (album sales, retail sales, ticket sales...all down 15-20% from a year ago; weak debuts on the charts that don't stick; weaker TV ratings for music programming; etc.), there never has been a better time to be a Music Fan.
Radio is still figuring out how to connect with them. Some in radio are getting it, many others aren't.
What do teens want?
Radio has to program better to young music fans.
Radio has to understand their language, their various cultures. Value them. Be a place to connect with other like-minded people.
Radio can still do it.
Radio has always been an important social gathering filter. The "secret language" of rock n' roll delivered through transistor radios creating generation gaps between teens and parents back in the '50s and '60s is exactly the same kind of social networking we see today. Only now, it's through digital communication using multiple gadgets and devices in more interactive ways.
How will radio deliver more interactive opportunities for its listeners to form fresh social networking communities?
I stumbled upon this digital artwork (above) from a music fan in Germany. It's a great way to express creativity and be a fan, sharing it with the world.
Music Radio Website Idea: Create a custom digital webart community for Music Fans to express their creativity...it's a great way to participate in youth culture, acknowledge their contributions and connect with their music passion...the very essence of your music format. Then, convert the listener graphic art into a station/artist music gateway, where users/listeners simply click on the artist name -- leading music fans deeper into the site, allowing the radio station to showcase the music.
And be a music fan, too.
posted by Unknown @ Wednesday, April 18, 2007,
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DJ Play This Social Radio Networking Site: Mercora
Labels: Digital, DJs, Jointblog, Media Trend Watching, Mercora, Online, profile, Radio, social networking, streaming
If you're into radio (as a music fan, talk fan or industry insider) and are tied of wading through junk social sites, you should check out a cool growing social networking site aimed at increasing DJ (and wannabe DJ) profiles. Music purists with a jones to get your DJ groove on will love it.
Mercora is a "social radio" network which enables users to become DJs and create their own user-programmed radio channel. A search function allows users to find specific songs, albums, artists, or genres of music.
It's MySpace or Last.fm without the BS junk.
"We're the largest social network you've never heard of," quipped Mercora's CEO Srivats Sampath to ClickZ.com's SearchEngineWatch. Sampath formerly was CEO of antivirus giant McAfee.
Sampath said he chose to get into radio because it was "ripe for rewriting the rules of the game." The site served more than 1.3 million DJs last year, with over 3.5 million tracks in its database. There were over 400 million searches during 300 million visits, which typically lasted 32 minutes.
Mercora offers a Web application for casual listeners, playlist software for DJs, and a mobile product to enable smartphones to become wireless radios.
The main monetization method for Mercora is its "MadWords" program, a tongue-in-cheek reference to Google's search ads. It will serve music-based ads, triggered by a keyword search.
Searches return links to all DJs on the network who are currently webcasting songs by that artist.
Mercora's mission? To catalog and organize the world's music and make it universally searchable and legally listenable. Quite simply, Mercora says "they've built the world's largest and legal music radio network composed almost entirely of music resident on people's computers."
Check it out and see what you think.
posted by Unknown @ Wednesday, February 28, 2007,
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