I'm trying to make the 'weird web stuff' (that's what most of my friends call it) easier to understand....online marketing, web 2.0, WebPR, social media, blogging, wikis...it's all here.
Ok I’ve been slack – I’ve been tweeting a lot – I have no excuses.
Here’s a list of cool stuff I’ve found online recently.
DustyTunes – Very simple and oddly satisfying, you upload the xml file of your iTunes library and then it displays your library as a cataloged list online. Here’s my personal iTunes library.
Songza - – really simple and basic music search engine. Sources tunes from all over so it spits out a lot of results that you can listen on the spot.
BugMeNot - I just want to read the article, I don’t want to register. Use BugMeNot to bypass those password protected sites that you sometimes encounter when you’re researching.
Zinepal – Free ebook creator that lets you make your own PDF magazines and ebooks using web content (Atom/RSS feeds and websites) of your choice. I reckon with a bit of effort you could produce something impressive.
I did a presentation today at the Social Media for Marketing conference run by Classic Events at The Wanderers Club (which is looking superb by the way – very cool venue.)
I chatted about Social Media and focused on some tips that I’ve found to be effective when finding, engaging with and managing online communities around your brand. Here’s the preso – as always, comments and questions are welcome
I think Classic Events are going to be putting up all the presentations here at some stage.
The Nokia N97 is probably one of the most anticipated handsets of the year….I know I’ve been drooling over the online demos and pictures for sometime now.
Paul Jacobson, Chris (iMod), Simon Dingle and Nafisa are partners in the ‘Search for N’ competition – clues will be given each day and each of the bloggers has THREE gorgeous Nokia N97’s to give away. The competition kicks off at 1pm today… it’s nice to see Nokia choosing to launch new handsets via a captive online market.
I’m working with some agencies on a project with adidas – to support their adidas Originals campaign; ‘60 years of soles and stripes.’ adidas is obviously an iconic, recognisable brand with a large troop of followers, so the idea is to support the offline adidas Originals 60 years of soles and stripes campaign by adding lifestyle commentary that celebrates history and builds an online community.
As the main dynamic online point of contact we’ve started the ‘Soles and Stripes’ blog. Our 3 stripe slave author adigurl writes about art, culture, fashion and entertainment happenings over the past 60 years – and her witty commentary is proving to be pretty popular.
The brand thinking is to not just provide constant product info but rather to use the blog as a springboard off which to underpin the adidas brand and lifestyle and manage the adidas fanbase. The blog also obviously features the main adidas house party competition and is linked to the main campaign website which is supported by the Facebook and Flickr platforms.
(This post is not as intriguing as the title may suggest.)
Don’t get me wrong, I think it’s great that people are getting involved in social media marketing.
BUT….make it part of your strategy, have a plan, make it your business to KNOW the channels, KNOW the key customers / opinion leaders.
In my opinion it is not a nice-to-have add-on because the boss thought it would be cool “just do something on Facebook”
- A Facebook page does NOT equal a social media strategy – if you build it they will NOT come.
- Get involved, take the time.
- DO NOT force stuff down people’s throats you end up diluting your brand message…..balance is key.
- Broaden your online footprint using specific pre-defined channels.
- If your content is good and well focused it will travel…..travelling content is the key to a good online / social media strategy.
I chatted to a couple of PR, marketing and online industry people last night at the Heavy Chefsession in Johannesburg. Thanks so much to Fred and Louis for the invitation – hopefully I managed to impart some small bits of social media wisdom or at least share my experiences.
Thanks to Lisa Clark from Sentient Communications we were also prompted to have an interesting debate about traditional PR measurement vs the new Social Media ‘measurement’ theories of community building and customer connections. It’s a topic that will be discussed for a long time to come I’m sure.
If you want to be informed about upcoming Heavy Chef events then email heavychef AT worldwidecreative.co.za to get on the mailing list.
Although I consult primarily in the social media space at the moment I was originally a ‘traditional’ marketer and have been privileged to work on some high profile brands over the past 10 years.
I was lucky enough to attend Martin Lindstrom’s recent ‘Buy-ology’ lecture in Johannesburg. I have written two articles for Bizcommunity specifically on the section where he discussed how the foundations of religion are similar to branding foundations and guidelines. I think it’s an interesting theory which has some merit and could assist many marketers with their efforts.
It’s back! My collection of cool links I’ve found this week. I tweet quite a few links each day to random and interesting things I find online – follow me on twitter here.
last.fm – most of the online peeps know about this one – if you’re a music fanatic then you need to get onto last.fm – listen to music and discover music, it’s awesome. You can see what an odd collection of tunes I’m listening to here.
My Social Buttons is a cool collection of social media icons for your blog or website – saves you trawling the web.
Twimailer – Are you tired of the basic, boring emails you get from twitter when someone follows you. Sign up for twimailer and you’ll get a lot more info on your new follower – useful stuff.
Tribute to Tony Hart and Morph – this was the coolest thing I’ve seen all week, a plasticine flash mob tribute to Tony Hart the creator of Morph – genius.
TED Talk – a different way to think about creative genius. Author of Eat, Pray, Love, Elizabeth Gilbert muses on the impossible things we expect from artists and geniuses – and shares the radical idea that, instead of the rare person “being” a genius, all of us “have” a genius. If you have 20 minutes watch it, I think it’s awesome.
I chatted about Online / Social Media PR and highlighted some of the points I had covered in my talk. Although I’m super-passionate about new media and digital marketing, on the recording I seem to sound a bit boring at times….I do have people that will vouch that I’m much more interesting in ‘real-life Perhaps I was just weirded out by Saul’s ‘milking chickens’ comment – where does that come from? lol – have a listen to the special Nomadic Marketing episode here.
My original presentation slides are here – they probably won’t make complete sense in a standalone form but may contain some interesting points.
More news is that TODAY is the 1 year anniversary of the start of this blog *applause* – so there is no better time for a complete redesign and graduation to ‘big school’ – wordpress.org – watch this space…
