Firstly, here’s an interview with Adam Brown, Head of Social Media @ Coca-Cola.
About that social media policy, it’s only 3 pages. It doesn’t have to be 100 pages long and cover every last point under the sun. It should be an addition to existing company policy–you don’t need to start from scratch.
As Coca-Cola introduce their Social Media Policy:
Every day, people discuss, debate and embrace The Coca‐Cola Company and their brands in thousands of online conversations. Coca-Cola recognizes the vital importance of participating in these online conversations and are committed to ensuring that they participate in online social media the right way. These Online Social Media Principles have been developed to help empower the Coca-Cola associates to participate in this new frontier of marketing and communications, represent our Company, and share the optimistic and positive spirits of our brands.
Interesting to see are the 10 “Principles for Online Spokespeople” Coca-Cola has created:
Be Certified in the Social Media Certification Program.
Follow our Code of Business Conduct and all other Company policies.
Be mindful that you are representing the Company.
Fully disclose your affiliation with the Company.
Keep records.
When in doubt, do not post.
Give credit where credit is due and don’t violate others’ rights.
Be responsible to your work.
Remember that your local posts can have global significance.
Know that the Internet is permanent.
All in all Adam Brown has set a nice standard within one of the most loved companies in the world
Evian’sRoller Babies is the runaway commercially branded hit having been watched (at latest count) over 30 million times, making it the 5th most popular YouTube video of 2009, and the most watched commercial/ad/whatever you want to call it.
I forget where it was now but one person made a comment that went something like this..
“Beyond measuring the cute factor, can the client actually measure and attribute a boost in product sales to this effort? If so, I’d love to know how they’re measuring it.”
I liked their thinking. But at the same time I think that’s discounting a lot of the great work that has evidently been put in. So let us postulate a bit more about what made it so successful after you’ve had a look at it yourself if you haven’t already.
If we were to deconstruct the commercial, why has this become the most watched branded ad of 2009 and what is it about it that could be then replicated to anywhere near similar success levels?
Well, it’s a bit of fun isn’t it. You watch it and get that cutesy, fun, smiley and warm feeling. It has a backing track that lends to the fun, remember it did pretty well for Honda aswell in the Cog. (Reacquainted myself with the ‘making of’ here.) But then, in this case, you could just as easily have the backing track with nothing compelling in the forefront so credit where credit is due. I just don’t make enough of a link to Evian from the ad. It doesn’t make me want to go out and buy water, Evian water. Much like I’m not going to go out and buy a Honda tomorrow in fact, even though the financial investment and level of decision making associated to the two are complete polar opposites thus there being more chance of me buying Evian.. (Ok, bad comparison.)
I like the ad purely on the merit of the ad, in fact, I don’t think it sells enough what it is actually linked to. But maybe that was part of the trick. Maybe that’s why it did so well. People will share it as a piece of content because it is so subtly branded more than if Evian was plugged all over the place from start to finish. It loses its value as a piece of content if overly branded.
So the question that is left hanging over my head after thinking about and writing this is should brands now be concentrating less on what they are actually trying to sell and from an online perspective at least, be creating content that is watchable, entertaining and shareable in order to sell more of X. Again I think of the Cog ad. And which brings me back to what the commenter asked at the start of this post. Did Evian sell more water? Did Honda sell more cars? Did this achieve the goals set out from the off? What were the goals? I don’t know actually. On any of the above but it’d be good to find out more though to quench my curiosity.
The online integration is however, pretty fantastic and extends the life far further, another contributing factor to its success. Evidently, this was all very cleverly planned and executed.
It isn’t simply a video that has been put up on YouTube and forgotten about. There’s tonnes of content around the video. Some really brilliant stuff like teasers, interviews, wallpapers, where to listen to and download the music and of course, the obligatory Facebook fan page. This isn’t one of those all too familiar cases when a client thinks that by doing some kind of online video to promote something that it is going to automatically go viral. Yes, the dreaded v word. A sterling effort then.
What do you *feel* when you watch the ad? A compelling urge to buy Evian? An enjoyable feeling of escapism for a few minutes? I think i’m with the latter camp. Share the love.
Feast your eyes. At least this one doesn’t have that Fatboy Slim backing track.
“You can’t buy attention anymore. Having a huge budget doesn’t mean anything in social media…The old media paradigm was PAY to play. Now you get back what you authentically put in. You’ve got to be willing to PLAY to play.”
– Alex Bogusky, Co-Chairman of Crispin Porter + Bogusky
A few key messages:
1. Over 300,000 businesses have a presence on Facebook and roughly a 1/3 of these are small businesses.
2. Gary Vaynerchuk grew his family business from $4 million to $50 million using social media.
3. Lenovo was able to achieve cost savings by a 20% reduction in call center activity as customers go to community website for answers.
4. BlendTec increased its sales 5x by running the often humorous “Will it Blend” Videos on YouTube.
5. Dell sold $3,000,000 worth of computers on Twitter
6. Obama Social Media Marketing resulted in three million online donors contributing $500 million in fundraising.
7. 71% of companies plan to increase investments in social media by an average of 40% because: a) Low Cost Marketing b) Getting Traction c) We Have To Do It
I was asked to provide comment on the above article and only noticed that it had gone live after seeing traffic arrive from the post and subsequent PDF of the article (below). The PDF is something quite beautiful, i’m not just saying that. You should check out the recently released final version here..
I’ve omitted the word ‘influencers’ from the original headline because it still bugs me a bit but nonetheless this is a brilliant compilation of so many varying predictions on 2010 in the one place from some of the biggest movers and shakers. I’m merely there to fill up the numbers obviously and being next to Seth Godin has provided many with much amusement. But I’m all for a bit of self-deprecation every now and then. Hat tip to @tim_whirledge for the original heads up.
Everyone that is featured in the presentation is listed below with their @names, making it easy for you to follow as many as you wish.
Major trends that came to the fore out of all the predictions were:
Mobile, Location, Transparency, Measurement, ROI and Privacy.
Not much new there then for 2010. Mobile, Location and Privacy would be my three to watch in 2010. Transparency shouldn’t even be there because it should happen without a second thought. But in 2009 we have seen and still in 2010 we’ll continue to see ideas, campaigns and executions which will pretend to be something they’re not / mislead consumers in some way or fake its roots and originality. Sometimes it is purely for the sake of controversy and to get people talking about it but other times you wonder who initially thought it would be a good idea and then how it ever made it in to the public spheres.
It was concluded that 2009 did not meet expectations. What should we expect in 2010?
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In this report, the 2010 Social Media trends are foretasted by:
@petecashmore PETE CASHMORE Founder, CEO Mashable
@armano DAVID ARMANO Senior Partner, Dachis Group Author, Logic and Emotion
@chrisbrogan CHRIS BROGAN President, New Marketing Labs
@peterkim PETER KIM Managing Director, N.America Dachis Group
@seth SETH GODIN, Bestselling Author, Entrepreneur & Agent of change
@litmanlive MICHAEL LITMAN Social Media Strategist Consolidated PR
@tamar TAMAR WEINBERG, Community & Marketing Manager, Mashable
@johnbattelle JOHN BATTELLE Founder & Chairman Federated Media
@mariansalzman MARIAN SALZMAN President, N.America Euro PR, Trend Spotter & Author
@mzkagan MARTA KAGAN Managing Director, US Espresso- Brand Infiltration
@danzarrella DAN ZARRELLA Social & Viral Marketing Scientist HubSpot
@emarketer eMARKETER Digital Intelligence
@drewmclellan DREW McLELLAN Founder and Author The Marketing Minute
@idc CAROLINE DANGSON Digital Marketplace Research Analyst IDC
@jasonfalls JASON FALLS Social Media Strategist Social Media Explorer
@charleneli CHARLENE LI Founder Altimeter Group
@gauravonomics GAURAV MISHRA CEO 2020 Social Online
@marc_meyer MARC MEYER Principal Digital Marketing Response Group
@emarketer JEFFREY GARU Senior Analyst eMarketer 2010
@jimmy_wales JIMMY WALES Founder Wikipedia
@alecjross ALEC ROSS Sr Advisor -Innovation State Department
@CraigNewmark CRAIG NEWMARK Founder of Craiglist
@scobleizer ROBERT SCOBLE Technical Evangelist Rackspace
@dmscott DAVID MEERMAN SCOTT Marketing Strategist & Author World Wide Rave
@roncallari RON CALLARI Social Media
@ravit_ustrategy RAVIT LICHTENBERG Founder & Chief Strategist Ustrategy.com
@equalman ERIK QUALMAN Author Socialnomics
@pgillin PAUL GILLIN Writer, Author & Social Media Consultant Principal
@adambroitman ADAM BROITMAN Partner & Ringleader Circ.us
@cbensen CONNIE BENSEN Director of Social Media & Community Strategy Alterian
@mikearauz MIKE ARAUZ Strategist Undercurrent
@nenshad Nenshad Badoliwalla Co-author Driven to Performance
@adamcohen ADAM COHEN Partner Rosetta
@danielwaisberg DANIEL WAISBERG Head of Web Analytics Easynet
@communitygirl ANGELA CONNOR Journalist & Community Strategist
@trendsspotting TALY WEISS CEO and Head of Research TrendsSpotting.com
Just what happens to all this endless ‘stuff’ that we produce online after we’re no longer around to enjoy it? It was one of the topics of conversation recently when @faris was over in London and held an impromptu Beersphere. Which got me thinking, what if there was a way to pre-emptively update our Facebook page, our Twitter page, our blog and all the other online destinations we produce content for with a message. What would that message be and would we use it?
A new service which caught my eye is Webwill which prefaces with asking the question “How do you want to live your life online after death?” In one sentence it describes what it sets out to do, I like that. It’s not an easy thing to do. Ironically, it’s in Beta at the moment and on an invite only basis.
A couple of the facts they give in the video is that 1 in every 3 women in Sweden has their own blog and 850m photos are uploaded to Facebook every month. Over 10billion photos a year. What will happen to those photos in 10 years? Will they be as relevant?
It seems to have all come to the fore recently with Facebook recommending you to people you know who have passed away. Then ask the question, how would Facebook have known? These kinda measures need to be put in to place and I think something like Webwill could help to moving in the right direction to do that. It must be harrowing for someone to be recommended to reconnect with a friend or loved one no longer around. Check these posts out, first from Mashable not so long ago documenting ‘How to eliminate “dead friend” suggestions’ and second from Consumerist where Facebook were embroiled in a lengthy battle for this very reason and performed a u-turn on their own policy which states that “it was their policy to keep dead members profile’s in a “memorialized” state.”
Back to this whole notion of why we even have a desire to keep all these different profiles updated. We’re living for the era of now, so consumed in what we’re doing this minute and maybe not taking the time to enjoy the here and now because we’re too busy documenting it. (For when and for who?) Putting up pictures on Flickr, tweeting about it, writing a Facebook status update, telling people we don’t know on a chat room or forum what we’re doing. This is important but all those little artefacts you put up online, stay online, indefinitely. It’s always something people seem to forget about when they engage in sometimes hugely libellous slanging matches online where an apology has to be made public or when emails containing conversations which shouldn’t have happened in print are written. Once it’s down on the online notepad, it’s permanent.
So with that morbidly futuristic post in mind check out the video below, pretty fascinating stuff.
I found out about this via @BBHLabs and it’s just one of a whole host of sites that are going to make Lists even more useful. We’ve barely scratched the surface I feel so watch this space.
Here you can build up a picture about someone and their interests just by the lists they’ve been added to on Twitter! Also quite handy is the similar lists that have been created by others on the right hand side.
To see what yours looks like add your twitter name to the end of this link.
So here’s what mine looks like:
It’s similar to Twittersheep which builds up a picture of the people who follow you. The above is simply a natural extension and an evolution in how people are using Twitter. The difference with MustExist is that it displays info about you, compared to Twittersheep which shows information about your followers. All still quite useful to build up a richer picture of a) how people perceive you and b) who is following you.
I love presentations like this. An absolute breath of fresh air. Gone are your typical bullet points and times new roman font and here you have a brilliant case in point that hammers the message home, less is more. The words are touchpoints, they aren’t everything, you still want to find out more instead of being bored to tears.
Someone said elsewhere that “Every interaction with the consumer is essential and can make a difference. Brands need to fit into the life of people.”
The idea is that in a world with an unlimited amount of brand touchpoints, some in a brands control and many not, and the fact that consumers can interact with a brand whenever and wherever they want to, every touch matters. I credit the birth of this idea to David Armano and his Micro-Interactions presentation.
I’ve spoken at length about measuring social media but this is one of the funniest presentations I’ve read, yet still full of interesting and useful info.
Media 140 is fast approaching, taking place on Monday 26th October 2009 at the Royal Institute of British Architects. If you haven’t got a ticket already then bag yourself one here and save £40 off the ticket price with the discount code‘litman140′.Your ticket will then be £95 instead of the asking price of £135. Don’t say i’m not good to you.
Today’s consumer has a newfound power with the rise of social media tools such as Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube, forcing brands and marketers around the world to find new ways to engage with their consumer. Brand profiles and reputations are no longer dictated to the consumer but on the contrary they are shaped and driven by consumer demand, which makes for exciting and challenging times for advertisers and marketers.
Attendees will hear ‘warts and all’ (although i’m not really a fan of warts) stories directly from the brands who are out there engaging with their consumers through social media platforms. The event brings together experts and practitioners including; Tom Bedecarre, CEO AKQA, Paul Hoskins Head of Customer Experience EasyJet and Ted Hunt Digital Communications Manager from Innocent drinks, to share and debate with an audience of leading advertising, PR, brand and marketing executives.
I’ll be going so gimme a shout if you are too, put some names to faces and all..
Finally, here’s a few names that are confirmed to be speaking;
John Beasley, Head of Brand, Red Bull
Mel Exon, Managing Partner BBH Labs
Amelia Torode, from the award winning ‘Compare the Meerkat’ campaign
James Hart, Director at leading fashion retailer ASOS.com
Robin Grant, MD of some agency (It wouldn’t be an event without Robin speaking!)
I started this post a few weeks back with just the video. After a bit of research, I found the below slide deck also. Personally, very useful stuff chock full of insight from a behemoth of a company embracing the social web with both hands. Who says big companies can’t get involved.
I’ve been reading and re-reading this article over the past few days and trying to fully understand Amy Kean of the IAB’s point of view who argues the ‘Yes’ side of the debate that social media measurement is indeed meaningless. I can understand her point of view but I’m of the ilk that believe in a different kind of measurement and that adopting the traditional ideologies of past successes is akin to putting a square peg in a round hole. I’ve said before that although ROI will always have its place (everyone will always wants to get the most bang from their buck), ROA (Return on Attention) will grow in importance in social media. You’re still getting a return on investment but in a different way.
Back to the article, the busker analogy doesn’t really work for me when comparing thumbs up to positive buzz and great reviews for a company. They aren’t directly comparable. For someone to go out of their way to generate positive buzz on a brands behalf or give a product a great review, there is value in that. Time spent plus insights provided, that’s definite value. Research also states that their message often has more impact than paid for marketing and communications.
It may not be in the traditional marketing sense of what ‘value’ is but for me, social media requires new metrics and benchmarks than to what has been tried and tested in years previous. Success now looks different. Instead of looking purely from a numbers perspective and at additional sales, is there value in increased levels of brand perception and awareness, along with the conversations and connections made because of the company activity? It’s intangible yet it’s still valuable.
Amy says that most senior management simply don’t understand it. While this may be a sweeping generalization across the board, there is some truth in it. This for me is where the paradigm of business control is changing. This won’t be for everyone, only the ones who are open to change, evolution and welcome new blood taking their company forward and in a new direction. The MD’s, the board members, all the ladies and gents high up who have been used to knowing everything they need to in order to take their business forward, are now bringing in new talent to change the culture, operations and future of the company. The MD will still be the MD but he/she has realised that a new set of skills is required for the ever changing business environment. Edit – I had previously mentioned about Jean Wyllie leaving PN but as Kerry notes in the comments below this was out of context, my apologies.
Back to the article again, social media isn’t about directly increasing sales over a finite period. It’s more longer term than that, investing in and developing relationships. Potentially fruitful relationships that are seen to have a direct effect maybe not in sales but in other benchmarks like buzz / word of mouth. Let’s take the recent collaboration between BitchBuzz and Magners UK.
If you hadn’t heard about it, Magners UK decided to give away a case of its pear cider every day for a week on BitchBuzz. The target audience and the product was a perfect fit. The competition was cleverly integrated with Facebook Connect and as a result of the week long campaign, delivered approx 100 new fans to the Magners UK Facebook page every day for the duration of the campaign. They achieved over 8 times the fan conversion they had when supporting the giveaways based on engagement on Twitter and Facebook alone. Their objectives were simple, to build the community. The competition accounted for almost 40% of total Facebook fans.
Can you put a traditional value on that? No. What was the ROI on that? I don’t know. Is it important? Yes.
Amy also says that part of the role of the IAB’s social media council is to educate the industry about the opportunities in this space. Yet she’s declaring measurement meaningless? Sounds more like discounting a discipline rather than educating about it.
Will, Robin, Stephen, David and Drew what do you think? Is social media measurement meaningless? They are all much more knowledgable and experienced in this world than I am, so would be great to get their take on it all. Oh and feel free to disagree entirely if you think otherwise, interested to hear from other perspectives.
Your phone is going, you’ve got a direct message from someone on Twitter, and a new Facebook message also. Which do you look at first? Never fear! The above will take you through the hierarchy of digital distractions.
Some of you may have heard of Danah Boyd before, she’s a fairly well known researcher in all this new media malarky. When I was doing my dissertation a few years back now on social networking and it’s value to business, I got in touch and asked her a few questions. This was before that thing called Twitter, which everyone talks about now. My research focussed partly on how people and brands were using Facebook and considering it was for an academic piece of research for University, it was something I actually quite enjoyed doing.
Now, I’m living and breathing it all daily and Danah is part of the research team in New England at Microsoft and has written a hugely scientific yet interesting and informative paper on the conversational aspects of retweeting. It’s currently in draft form with the finished copy to be published in January 2010, yet still already spans 11 pages. The other researchers involved are Scott Golder and Gilad Lotan.
The report is based on analysis of over over 700,000 tweets (440,000 or so users), taken in samples of five minute chunks between January and June 2006. This, I feel is a problem when undertaking such research. Because of the enormity of the numbers, it is expected that this kinda thing isn’t conducted and written over night. However, samples taken in 2006 will have only been focussing on the VERY early adopters. Usage patterns will have changed since then. Although I signed up on Twitter in April 2007, it wasn’t until mid to late 2008 that I really started using and understanding the service. My uses, habits and processes for using Twitter have changed since then. It’s impossible to be able to follow everyone back now for starters and I now use services like Twitterfeed which pushes new posts out that I publish here on to Twitter. It’s a lot deeper than a simple Facebook status update (which is what most compare it to who haven’t tried it out).
If ever you wondered why people retweet and what they do it for, wonder no longer!
Highly recommend checking out the rest of it here and also follow Danah on Twitter here. Scott is @redlog and Gilad is @gilgul.
3% of tweets are likely to be retweets in that they contain ‘RT’, ‘retweet’ and/or ‘via’
9% of retweets include the users own handle – dubbed “ego retweets” (though as Antony notes, the paper acknowledges sometimes this can be “a way of giving credit” or saying thank you.)
‘RT’ is very much the predominant form, with 88% of the retweets using this (Tweetie please take note and change your app’s retweet function).
I noticed this rather bullish full page advert from Microsoft in a recent issue of MCV and it struck me that we’re now entering in to a new era of social gaming. The potential is limitless.
Before it’s even available for gamers to try out today, the functionality with Twitter and Facebook on the 360 is being talked up, and talked up it should. This cannot be underestimated. It’s bringing social networking in to your living room and on your TV. It’s also a huge USP for the Xbox 360 in it’s ongoing and bloody battle against the Playstation 3. The launch of the PS3 Slim was timely met by Microsoft with a price cut of their own and puts the ball back in Sony’s court.
For social networking to now be a selling point on a games console shows how far it’s come. This is great news for Facebook and Twitter (perhaps more so for Twitter) because it takes it to another level, that bit more mainstream. Everyone uses Facebook, Twitter is still a nice communications tool. It might help more people understand it and ‘get’ it.
Little is known how they are going to look on your TV screen and how they are going to connect to your gaming experience and whilst I hope my feeds are not going to be spammed by friends who have just gained achievement X on game X, it shows that gaming is no longer something that’s done by a stereotypically aged male in a darkened room. They are now the entertainment hubs, in your living room and providing fun for all the family.
Here’s a presentation from a while back now that looks over some of the recent crop of social engagement sites. It looks at the increasing trend for websites to be socially based. This was particularly interesting coming from Dirk as Cow have made the transition from a site which was originally based on Flash to one based on WordPress.
I was a fan of their previous site because it stood out from the rest of the pack but I can entirely understand why they made the change as sites based on Flash invariably are much more of a static, portfolio type showpiece and can sometimes be a case of form over functionality. WordPress is easy to keep current and up to date, loading times are cut to a minimum and SEO’ing is much more useful. Flash is static and needs specialised expertise to keep it up to date, which invariably takes a bit of a back seat to the day to day work.
What’s your website good for? Feast the eyes and the mind.
Great presentation from Simon Cross and Ben Smith at the BBC which goes in to pretty technical and extensive detail about what the BBC as a corporation does with the masses of content it has, how people find it and ending with ’6 steps to heaven if you too want to work this way’
I liked the point they made that the best recommendation engine on the planet isn’t Bing, Google or Yahoo, it’s people. It’s all about the social discovery of content (slide 20).
It’s a very technical slide deck for the most part but it’s interesting how they talk about the social discovery of content without building yet another social network. It’s about linking users to content through activity (slide 47).
Pitching to bloggers, it’s a necessary evil and probably loathed more than it’s loved. I find it fascinating being in the lucky (?) position to be able to experience both sides of the coin. I enjoy the therapeutic hobby of writing down my thoughts, yet at the same time, in my day job I also pitch to bloggers. I really quite enjoy receiving pitches myself because I’m always keen to see how others do it. At the same time, I always try to highlight the pitches that really took the time to research my blog, finding that little bit of information about me to show that it’s not just a blind email sent out to many others.
I thought starting off the email with Hello and their name was pretty much standard, common practice. It shows from the off that the email before them was specifically meant for them. If there was a mental tick box when I receive a pitch, that gets the first tick.
What riled me to write this post was receiving what I think is an awful attempt at ‘engagement’. That’s really what you’re looking for when pitching right? A reply gives you validation, maybe a celebratory fist punch in the air.
This isn’t however going to be a naming and shaming exercise. That’s not the point. We’re all still learning right? I’ve made mistakes along the way and will still continue to do so but seeing as we’re all in this together I’d like to address a few parts of the pitch that particularly bothered me. I also don’t wish to draw attention to the agency, client who they are contacting on behalf of or the individual making contact so I’ll use excerpts from the pitch but not explicit detail.
Here’s the first paragraph..
“I’m getting in touch with you on behalf of (removed) as I thought you would appreciate an advance look at its new UK advertising campaign. As Lit Man Live is influential within the Media sector, we’d like to take this opportunity to provide some insight into why (removed) is pursuing a new brand strategy, beginning with this (removed) (but it was a YouTube video)”
First thing: Address the recipient. Say hello and if their first name is on site somewhere, use that. Then there’s a chance that you’ll have me at hello.. It’s such a simple first step that really needs to be there, always. In this instance being addressed as Lit Man Live shows that categorically no research has been carried out, not a jot and I was actually a bit embarassed myself to receive it. I’ve been called a lot of things but that was the first time I’ve been called Lit Man Live. Personalisation is indeed key but when you get the basic fundamentals wrong, it’s shocking, not a great place to start.
“Any pitch that doesn’t refer to me by my correct name is deleted immediately without being read.”
The whole debate about influence comes to fruition here also. Being perceived to be influential in the Media sector is complimentary but verging on laughable. Keep that in your internal notes but to me it’s signalling in the first paragraph what you want to get out of this before you’ve even asked.
Three overly long paragraphs about the history of the campaign, how it came about, who created it, who directed it and what they’ve directed before is not opt in. I didn’t read them, they’d lost me by that point. Instead of writing endless paragraphs of background info, make the email a bit more punchy and succinct and summarise the key messages in one short paragraph with an opt in at the end, something like would you like to find out more? It provides the recipient with the option and instead of metaphorically meeting them in the street and shouting your sales pitch at them, you’re going to talk with them on their level and see if they talk back.
Read the blog before you pitch to it. Show that extra level of research and mention a post that I’ve written and give me your opinion on it. Do you agree or disagree? What did you like about it and why do you think it’s relevant to what you’re pitching me with? Hint: It should be relevant.
You’ll probably be familiar with this, you can apply it to pitching too..
Final paragraph:
“The link enclosed is to an advance version of the video which we are specially making available to you. (If it was made available just to me, why does the video have 300 views?) We will be ‘killing’ this link at midnight GMT and making the video publicly available on (removed). If you would like to write about the ad and embed any video on your blog I would be grateful if you could link to the video on (removed’s) YouTube channel”.
I received the email at 4pm. They were giving me 8 hours to view the video before it was being ‘killed’. This pitch should have finished with the opt in, which requires more forward planning but may result in a more positive response. Asking me to write about it, embed the video on my blog and which link I should link to was too much. I wasn’t going to jump through hoops to write about a YouTube video.
The next time you decide to solicit a blogger with the pitch of a client, imagine we are both meeting at a cocktail party. Imagine I don’t know you and we are meeting for the first time. What is the first thing you would say to me? I don’t think it would be the same words that you would have otherwise used when doing your “pray and spray” email solicitations about your client’s shiny new product or service. No, I think you would first introduce yourself and look for something in common between us. And then only if you were feeling comfortable would you try to pitch me on behalf of your client.
Finally, again, do your research. Tell me why you think what you’re pitching me is relevant. Customise each pitch. Why should I be interested? Seriously, all of the above, coupled together is the difference between talking favourably about it and highlighting it in more of a how not to pitch light.
Well worth your time because it takes you on a journey with the audio backdrop guiding you through from start to finish. This is brilliant and brings further to life an already visual and interesting presentation. You can follow the narrative of the presentation and how it’s all interlinked, better I find when you’re hearing Faris talking about the slides too!
The BBC have implemented some pretty cool stuff on site along with providing the usual brilliant Glastonbury coverage. It’s almost as if I’m there! Without getting muddy or wet. Last year they got 600,000 visitors in the week of Glastonbury to their page and I firmly believe with the harnessing of the social web they can double that.
Along with using wireless video cameras which overlook different parts of the festival site to give us, the people who aren’t there, a taste of the atmosphere, the site also includes an aggregation of Twitter feeds from various BBC presenters and journalists and will also be experimenting with Audioboo, the audio blogging service.
It looks to have everything you could possibly need to know about Glastonbury, all in one place and all integrated very nicely. You’ve got the weather forecast, BBC blogs, radio and TV listings, some stunning photography, videos of performances, webcams, a dedicated page for each artist and the ability for fans to comment on their performances on site. All relevant, useful and social.
They have a presence also on Flickr allowing you to comment on each individual image and share further. It will be interesting to see if it’s updated with the best of this years imagery as currently the images shown are from 2008.
What I probably found most interesting was almost an active encouragement to share the site content on your site, blog or social networking profile so you can embed the content with ease by simply copying the embed code and adding it to a post. They have a page on site listing all the embeddable content available here. I only chose not embed in this instance because it’s fairly image heavy already.
Similarly you can add a widget to see some live webcam footage, the weather etc. The red button plays a much more prominent role this year also, providing the user the opportunity to watch exactly what they want to, personalised TV.
Another nice little feature I thought was seeing who were the most popular artist pages on site. In a sense this could be seen as a barometer of how successful their performances have been in the real world, at Glastonbury. I’ve watched some of the footage from Lady Gaga’s performance and am not surprised it’s the most viewed, such an eccentric and entertaining performer.
Mobile also seems to be something that’s not been forgotten with the site being optimised to work on your iPhone’s and N97′s with a more limited service also on basic web enabled mobiles.
“We’re seeing a big difference in the number of people web browsing on phones this year. Call it the ‘iPhone effect’ or just cheap data tariffs, but there was no way we could let people have a poor experience on our festival sites,” Tim Clarke, a senior content producer for BBC Audio and Music online said.
To conclude, here are just a few ways the BBC have fully embraced old and new methods to reach out to a greater audience on a much more interactive level.
This is an example of how you can best capture the essence of what is typically a very real world physical event, online.
#2 Starbucks
