Social Media is free:

No it’s not. While it’s free to start a Facebook, Twitter, Myspace account, if you plan on starting a corporate social media campaign/program then you should know you can’t expect your CEO to just start tweeting. You need a web designer to work on applying your brand to each of these profiles. You’ll need to have your marketing professionals outline an “Online Brand Strategy” that includes voice and tone. You may even want to consider hiring a copywriter or marketing professional to do your updates for you. Updating all of your accounts is a full-time job and don’t expect to squeeze that responsibility into your CEO or Marketing Director’s position and get good results. It takes a certain prowess to blog, even microblog and it’s worth paying for that service.

Social Media is for Everyone:

Everyone, yes… every business, no.  Certain businesses don’t belong on social media, while it’s rare, cases do exist.  Ask yourself “what am I marketing?” and then “Will my clients want to associate with my product online?”. If you’re selling hemorrhoid cream or you run a nursing home, the answer will probably be no. Another thing to take into account is that not all social networks may be right for you. Some networks cater to certain demographics and others require specific actions. While Facebook canvases most target audiences, Myspace does not. Know your audience, know where they live and stay away from places they don’t. The mere presence of your brand where it doesn’t belong can be detrimental.

Social Media is a Great Marketing Tool:

Yes it is, but tread lightly. People friend/follow/join you company or product’s profiles because they like (or hate) your brand. Don’t push too hard on them to buy your product. They are already inclined to do so and users are more savy about marketing then you think they are. If you spend 100% of your time posting marketing material, users will stop seeing the value in the connection they’ve made with you. Remember to start conversations about your product, engage your audience and most importantly… listen and respond. It’s not all sell, sell, sell with social media, there’s a social element to it.

Transparency:

It’s ok to give your company/product a voice. Make sure that voice fit’s your brand as well as your audience. The majority of brand’s voices sound like Ben Stein and are not attractive to users. A good example of voice is Apple’s use of “I’m a Mac, I’m a PC” and it’s reflective in their sales. While many brands will need to adopt a more-or-less generic voice, that voice can still reflect positive qualities like Justin Long’s Mac character portrays. Letting your audience see that you’re human is the main objective of transparency. Transparency take one step further when applied to social media. You now have the ability to engage your current and potential consumers in meaningful conversation. You will see that some people use this opportunity to complain about your product. Many companies remove this content from their profiles while others take a better approach and address each complaint and attempt to remedy them. Social media is a great place to get feedback about new or preexisting products. It’s a great place to do i/0 testing, user groups, etc. and can save your many dollars in your testing budget if done right.

ROI and Analytics:

So you want to know what kind of return you can expect from a social media campaign? Don’t expect too much. If’ you’ve hired a social media consultant this will probably be the first question you ask them. Make sure to listen closely for the bullshit. Some consultants aren’t worth the spit they throw at you. Social media is new and hard to track for. Make sure you have the appropriate analytics set up before you launch a social media campaign. Hire an SEO/SEM professional to help target this new traffic. This will be very important in finding out what kind of return you’re getting. Your ROI might not be what you expect. Don’t expect a giant spike in sales. Your return might be from customer feedback or networking. Social media can be a bit of a gamble. It’s a gamble you want to take now, before it’s passe.

An Additional Piece of Advice:

Many companies are hiring “Social Media Consultants”. It’s important to hire the right one. Make sure that you research their background. Not everyone with 3,000 Twitter followers is qualified to consult you. Look for someone with history in the web/interactive industry specifically. Ask for references that aren’t from the last six months, those companies have not seen enough results yet. While some individuals are great consultants, look for interactive marketing companies that have good track records. Too many “mavericks” are out there preying on corporate ignorance. Don’t be ignorant, do your homework.

Got some other tips? Questions? Let me know via comment.

Pros:
- Consumers only pay for what they use.
- Computers only need enough to run internet connection and memory.
- Updates to software or hardware are preformed solely by the vendor.
- Issues will be fixed faster as bugs will be more trackable.
- Scalable to usage almost immediately.
- Business’ who are contributing to the cloud have lower overhead.
- Support will most likely be live or forum oriented.

Cons:
- Heavy use could cost more that actual product.
- Updates to software or hardware are preformed solely by the vendor.
- Security will need to be sure-compliant for large companies to be on board.
- Some entities may want to have software when it’s no longer available.
- Less face-to-face business interaction.
- Plugin and modifications will need to be regulated.

How this will effect blogging:
Unless you use text editing software such as Microsoft Office to write all your blog posts, there wont be a big change with blogging in a cloud environment. Blog designers, such as myself will see some tangible changes though, some from the open source sector of the internet. Sites such Aviary.com provide web applications based off of Adobe products (Photoshop and Illustrator mainly) that are free to use, however still in beta release. Sites like Kompozer offer an open source WYSIWYG editor that’s more user friendly than Dreamweaver. It’s not a far cry to predict that a Code/WYSIWYG Editor will show up as a web app. It could actually work more seamlessly that current software and tie directly into server space, eliminating upload and download time. There’s a lot to be said about open source by itself and I see it playing into cloud computing more and more. WordPress has educated a lot of people in the online community about how open source can be very profitable. Rolling that type of thinking into a cloud environment is a half step in a similar direction.

How will this effect Web 2.0
Web 2.0 will soon be Web 3.0 and cloud computing will be a big part of that transition. We’ll be bringing a lot of what we learned with us of course. We’ve refined the peer-to-peer connection with things like facebook, twitter, and linkedin. What we will see is privatizing and better content quality. Social networks that work more as country clubs could be very benefitial to professionals. Like minded groups that essentially work as industry related thinktanks could change a lot of the stodgy thinking that come to light in the recent recession. Realize with me that cloud computing wont be restricted to “computing” it could easily translate into a pletheora of different industries (ie. staffing… check out Scriptlance). Essentaill,y cloud computing can and should be cloud thinking, where a person reaches into the cloud and pull out what they need without effort. This is what I see Web 3.0 being.

Sworray is a way for people to create any type of party they can think of. If they can’t think one up, we’ll give them ideas. When they’re done thinking one up they’ll be able to create a custom invitation and then send them to all their friends on nearly every network you could think of. You can even send invites through the mail for a fee.

Sworray wouldn’t be possible without the OpenSource movement. Sworray is an amalgamation of different OpenSource code. Thje infrastructure is comprized of a WordPress MU installed with BuddyPress. This is the framework and the majority of the functionality. There’s also a number of plugins that help keep things running and add functionality. I found a super cool app called firef.ly that adds a totally awesome chat. I’m currently working on polishing up a number of things that will add even more functionality.

ArtPrize is the worlds first public juried art contest that will turn Grand Rapids, Michigan into the largest gallery ever. Anyone from anywhere can submit nearly anything and ArtPrize will help you find a venue to place it.  Think of it like a SXSW for artwork. All the works will be voted on by the people (viva la revolution) via SMS messaging and here’s the kicked… the purse is $400,000 that pays to the top ten finishers. First place wins a quarter of a mil, that’s $250,000, the largest prize for an art contest ever.  Of course as a painter and a lover of Grand Rapids I had to enter immediately, even tried to with my phone as they were making the official announcment. I’ll be haking a push via internet for people to vote for my work so keep an eye out for my plugs. Watch the embedded video below and visit the site for more information. and Take a look at my submission below that. Any questions or comments are, as always, welcomed.

Chimie de l'Hiver

Plancher de Forêt

Le-Feu-et-Soufre

I have never been really good at keeping a music library. I have a broad pallet for music and I will get in certain moods that requires certain genres. I hate iTunes, I hate Windows Media Player, other than the actual radio, I have little options. There are a number of options on the web for radio. I’ve tried a number of them. I can give you a run down of them and write a mini review but honestly, Pandora blows them all out of the water.

What is Pandora? “Pandora is an automated music recommendation and Internet radio service created by the Music Genome Project. Users enter a song or artist that they enjoy, and the service responds by playing selections that are musically similar. Users provide feedback on approval or disapproval of individual songs, which Pandora takes into account for future selections”.  – Wikipedia. In short Pandora is a customizable, intuitive radio station. It’s free and has very limited ads.  It gets smarter as you use it and will introduce you to new artists and one’s you’ve forgotten about. I use it every day for every mood, and I am a moody little boy.

If you go to my profile you’ll see a station called “Disc Golf Radio”, When I go out for a round I fire up Pandora on my phone and never have to touch it again till I’m climbing back in the car. Obviously this service if far beyond what radio has to offer. Think about how it’s pulled music out of a drought. Since the inception of radio have had to deal with the unfortunate consequence of advertisement. Pandora’s is minimal on their free subscription. If you buy the $32 annual subscription, you’ll never see an ad, not even when you’re using a mobile app. The quality of the music is very good, no it’s not studio quality, but it’s better than typical streaming audio, even when you’re using a mobile app.  This site is smart. They’ve paid attention to most, if not all, of the details.  The user interface is clean and fairly easy to use (this could use some attention), their mobile strategy has been thought out completely, they blog and travel to different music festivals to soft promote.

I went to a WordCamp in New Orleans (great city, great people) and since I had lost my voice I was relinquished to spreading my dribble on twitter. I didn’t use it as a chat so much as I used it to suppliment what the speakers were discussing with links and advice. I also made sure I threw in humor as often as anything else. In no time at all I had everyone following me, literally. I thought to myself “Wow, now this is how to twitter”. Everyone of them are quality followers which is key.

I was also asked “what is twitter and how do I use it”? Twitter is a free social messaging utility for staying connected in real-time. It’s also called a micro-blogging platform but in layamn’s terms it’s 140 characters of whatever you want, made semi-public. The best way to learn about it is to ask someone to show you. In the WWW, people are not used to such simplicity and I think that’s why it’s so difficult to wrap your head around it. Granted people have found endless ways of making it complicated but the core principle has remained… 140 characters of whatever you want, made semi-public. There is no official handbook that outlines ettiquet but standard are in place and you pick up on them. This leads me to the point of this post (sweet lord, about time).

If you use Twitter correctly, you will see results. Twitter is not a chat. Twitter is not a market place. Twitter IS a great way for you to let people know about you, what you do, why you do it and how much you hate you’re neighbor’s dog. Here are some suggestions for non-marketing on Twitter.

• If you’re constantly messaging you’re followers via @’s you will alienate you’re other followers.
• If you spend all day sending out tweets like… Spacely Sprockets has just released the SuperSprocket Glide edition click here to see the specs you’re not offering you followers anything interesting.  Try saying… We just released our new sproket and we couldn’t be more pumped. Well worth all the headaches. You’re followers will know what you’re talking about and you’re keeping your personality. It’s no longer a marketing ploy, it’s a tweet.
• Don’t tweet too often. I know it’s only 140 characters but that’s not a reason for you to take a press release and cut it up into 15 tweets and post them in serial. Nothing makes me unfollow someone faster.
• Break it up. Don’t always post about your products or services. Try telling people about the awesome event you plan to attend or tell a joke.

Let me know if this helps you out. Hollar at me if you think I’m wrong, or right, or make a suggestion.