Making Marketing More Human Through

TechnologyKevin Lawver

Chief Architect, Music Intelligence SolutionsThe Future of Social Media, 2009/01/29

http://uplaya.com

Social• adjective - pertaining

to, or characterized by friendly companionship or relations.

• adjective - growing in patches or clumps

• noun - a social gathering or party, esp. of or as given by an organized group

Media

• noun - the means of communication as radio and television, newspapers, and magazines, that reach or influence people widely

• noun - the material or technique with which an artist works

“Social Media” is a Silly Term

• All media is social

• All media begs commentary

• The internet just makes soliciting, gathering and filtering commentary easier

But, that’s the name of the conference...

... so I’ll play along.

Hi... I’m from the internet.

I’m here to help.

I live on the internet

• I assume everything I create will be published and commented on.

• I actively seek out my real life friends online

• I expect my life to be public.

• While this isn’t the norm for my generation, it is for today’s kids.

I expect my brands to live on the internet

• But they don’t.

• They come visit sometimes, but they sound just like they do on TV. I fast forward through that stuff.

• If they talked to me like people, I might listen.

“But, you’re supposed to talk about technology!”

“You’re supposed to be the nerd (or boffin).

We’re the real people.”

But, you’re probably not internet people... I am.

“Markets are conversations.”

“Markets consist of human beings...”

“Conversations among human beings sound

human.”

The Cluetrain Manifesto was a

prophecy, not a manifesto

Social Media is all about conversations

Following them,

starting them,

and joining them.

Following the Conversation

Get a Feed Reader!

• The general public may not have grasped RSS, but you need it.

• NewsGator or Google Reader

• The only way to consume the flood of information the conversation generates every minute of every day.

Google Alerts

• Still the best way to track mentions of phrases or links across the web.

• To track links - “link:uplaya.com”

• To track phrases - “uplaya artists”

• Get the feed and add it to your feed reader

Twitter: The Web’s Dinner Party

Follow it Live

• Use search.twitter.com to search for mentions of your product or brand

• Add the feed to your feed reader

Get a client

• Tweetdeck has good reply support and can follow multiple conversations

• Twhirl is good for managing multiple twitter accounts and following FriendFeed as well

Starting a Conversation

Start At Home

Get a Blog

• Yes, they’re old school, but they’re a good place to aggregate everything.

• Use one of the big blog networks instead of rolling your own.

• Wordpress.com is a good place to start, but Typepad and Blogger will work as well.

See, here’s a blog

Be Conversational• Don’t just issue press releases

• Post about the company picnic,

• funny office pictures,

• success stories and reviews,

• and interesting stuff.

• Think of it as your company’s water cooler for the world, but more importantly, your users

Tumblr

• Attractive way to aggregate and syndicate all of your various content

• Extremely easy to use

• They really “get” the new activity stream

Facebook Pages

facebook.com/advertising/?pages

• They’re free

• They’re a good way to get in to facebook without investing in developing and hosting a facebook app

• A good way to get feedback on your prodct or service from highly connected users

Facebook Apps: Caution

• You may end up spending a lot of money for no reason

• Success may be more expensive than failure

Joining existing conversations

Twitter• Don’t just broadcast

• Don’t follow everyone

• Don’t be annoying

• Don’t post just links to your blog post or to your product

• Don’t worry about your following/er numbers

• Be useful

• Reply to those who talk about your product

• Offer support where you can

• Do follow those who talk about you

“Spamming Twitter does not make you a Premier Thought Leader. It makes you an Idiot. A paper millionaire with a fistful of Enron stock. The numbers are impressive, but

have no value outside of impressing people who don’t know any better.”

Jeremy Tanner

Good Twitter Examples

• @garyvee

• @zappos (more on them later)

• @twalk

• @railsmachine

• @halcyon

FriendFeed

• Another good way to aggregate all of your content in one place

• Allows people to follow everything you produce, and comment on it in one place

• A good set of widgets to re-purpose content

Facebook Groups

• Find groups that actually fit your topic

• Listen first, don’t just divebomb

• Comment on existing posts at first

• Become a part of the community. Be on the bridge, not under it.

Oh yeah, those rules apply to any community

Someone doing it right

• Zappos

• Their CEO uses twitter and responds to customer feedback

• They aggregate all their employee blog posts

• They have radical customer service and really do have a conversation with their customers

Conversing With The Future

The Future

• Reputation

• Aggregation and noise reducers to the rescue!

• API traps will be everywhere, and they all want to own your data

• If it’s not in the activity stream, it never happened

Reputation

• Spam and “fake” people will become a bigger and bigger problem

• There will be an impartial clearing house for reputation data

• Play nice now, because this data is already being collected and acted on

• It’s only a matter of time before the dots get connected

Aggregators

• FriendFeed, SocialThing or something like them will go mainstream and aggregate all your social data in one painless place

• Niche search engines, conversation trackers and smarter spiders will do a better job of linking conversations and personas across networks

API Traps

• Be careful what APIs you use in your products, because they will go away. Plan ahead and around failure

• Don’t let them lock your data up. Keep a local copy of everything

Activity Streams

• They started out annoying

• They’re now indispensable

• You’ll see them pop up all over

• And federated so not just one company owns the stream

• Keep your eye on Google

Conclusion

Be human

Listen...

then speak...

...

and have fun!

Thank you!

...and check out uplaya.com!

Questions?

Contact Info• kevin@uplaya.com

• my blog: http://lawver.net

• my company: http://uplaya.com

• twitter: http://twitter.com/kplawver

• flickr: http://flickr.com/photos/kplawver