Inside the Marketers Studio - David Berkowitz's Marketing Blog

Links for 2009-11-20 [del.icio.us]

2009-11-21T00:00:00-08:00

How to measure Social Media using Key Conversation Indicators - RAMA - Rochester, NY Chapter of the American Marketing Assiciation
kind review from RAMA's blog (Rochester Chapter - American Marketing Association)
Donna's Promo Talk: Ways to measure social media from David Berkowitz, 360i's Director of Emerging Media
Another kind review of the talk at RAMA (Rochester Chapter of the American Marketing Association)
LeapFish – Living the Web

Links for 2009-11-19 [del.icio.us]

2009-11-20T00:00:00-08:00

Dorthy.com Alpha - Do Your Dreams™
Everyone has dreams. Stuff we wanna learn. Things we want to do. People we wanna become. We spend a lot of time thinking about this but often don't know where to start. Dorthy.com is a new way to discover and achieve - whatever you dream.

Links for 2009-11-18 [del.icio.us]

2009-11-19T00:00:00-08:00

Academic software for research papers | Mendeley
Like iTunes™ for research papers. Mendeley is a free research management tool for desktop & web
Google Translate
A site I use all the time - should have bookmarked earlier
Spot.us - Home
We are an open source project, to pioneer “community funded reporting.” Through Spot.Us the public can commission journalists to do reporting on important and perhaps overlooked topics. Contributions are tax deductible and if a news organization buys exclusive rights to the content, your donation will be reimbursed. Otherwise, all content is made available through a Creative Commons license. It’s a marketplace where independent reporters, community members and news organizations can come together and collaborate.
Deal of the Day from LivingSocial

100 Ways to Measure Social Media

2009-11-17T15:24:25-05:00

Originally published in MediaPost's Social Media Insider

If there's anyone out there left who says you can't measure social media, here are a hundred answers.

At most of the events I've been to lately, measurement continues to be a hot topic. The first question that comes up is, "What can I measure?" That's where this cheat sheet can come in handy: a list of 100 thought-starters.

Some entries here can be interpreted several ways. Depending on how you define them, some of these metrics may seem redundant, while others may seem so broad that they can be broken out further. Many of these can be combined with each other to create new metrics that can then be tracked over time. It's a start, though, so dive in and consider which ones may apply to programs you're working on.

1. Volume of consumer-created buzz for a brand based on number of posts

2. Amount of buzz based on number of impressions

3. Shift in buzz over time

4. Buzz by time of day / daypart

5. Seasonality of buzz

6. Competitive buzz

7. Buzz by category / topic

8. Buzz by social channel (forums, social networks, blogs, Twitter, etc)

9. Buzz by stage in purchase funnel (e.g., researching vs. completing transaction vs. post-purchase)

10. Asset popularity (e.g., if several videos are available to embed, which is used more)

11. Mainstream media mentions

12. Fans

13. Followers

14. Friends

15. Growth rate of fans, followers, and friends

16. Rate of virality / pass-along

17. Change in virality rates over time

18. Second-degree reach (connections to fans, followers, and friends exposed - by people or impressions)

19. Embeds / Installs

20. Downloads

21. Uploads

22. User-initiated views (e.g., for videos)

23. Ratio of embeds or favoriting to views

24. Likes / favorites

25. Comments

26. Ratings

27. Social bookmarks

28. Subscriptions (RSS, podcasts, video series)

29. Pageviews (for blogs, microsites, etc)

30. Effective CPM based on spend per impressions received

31. Change in search engine rankings for the site linked to through social media

32. Change in search engine share of voice for all social sites promoting the brand

33. Increase in searches due to social activity

34. Percentage of buzz containing links

35. Links ranked by influence of publishers

36. Percentage of buzz containing multimedia (images, video, audio)

37. Share of voice on social sites when running earned and paid media in same environment

38. Influence of consumers reached

39. Influence of publishers reached (e.g., blogs)

40. Influence of brands participating in social channels

41. Demographics of target audience engaged with social channels

42. Demographics of audience reached through social media

43. Social media habits/interests of target audience

44. Geography of participating consumers

45. Sentiment by volume of posts

46. Sentiment by volume of impressions

47. Shift in sentiment before, during, and after social marketing programs

48. Languages spoken by participating consumers

49. Time spent with distributed content

50. Time spent on site through social media referrals

51. Method of content discovery (search, pass-along, discovery engines, etc)

52. Clicks

53. Percentage of traffic generated from earned media

54. View-throughs

55. Number of interactions

56. Interaction/engagement rate

57. Frequency of social interactions per consumer

58. Percentage of videos viewed

59. Polls taken / votes received

60. Brand association

61. Purchase consideration

62. Number of user-generated submissions received

63. Exposures of virtual gifts

64. Number of virtual gifts given

65. Relative popularity of content

66. Tags added

67. Attributes of tags (e.g., how well they match the brand's perception of itself)

68. Registrations from third-party social logins (e.g., Facebook Connect, Twitter OAuth)

69. Registrations by channel (e.g., Web, desktop application, mobile application, SMS, etc)

70. Contest entries

71. Number of chat room participants

72. Wiki contributors

73. Impact of offline marketing/events on social marketing programs or buzz

74. User-generated content created that can be used by the marketer in other channels

75. Customers assisted

76. Savings per customer assisted through direct social media interactions compared to other channels (e.g., call centers, in-store)

77. Savings generated by enabling customers to connect with each other

78. Impact on first contact resolution (FCR) (hat tip to Forrester Research for that one)

79. Customer satisfaction

80. Volume of customer feedback generated

81. Research & development time saved based on feedback from social media

82. Suggestions implemented from social feedback

83. Costs saved from not spending on traditional research

84. Impact on online sales

85. Impact on offline sales

86. Discount redemption rate

87. Impact on other offline behavior (e.g., TV tune-in)

88. Leads generated

89. Products sampled

90. Visits to store locator pages

91. Conversion change due to user ratings, reviews

92. Rate of customer/visitor retention

93. Impact on customer lifetime value

94. Customer acquisition / retention costs through social media

95. Change in market share

96. Earned media's impact on results from paid media

97. Responses to socially posted events

98. Attendance generated at in-person events

99. Employees reached (for internal programs)

100. Job applications received

There you go. I welcome other entries in the comments. It's also just the start of the answer to the broader question: "How do I measure it?" Ultimately, you need to start with figuring out your business objectives and then apply these metrics accordingly.

Links for 2009-11-14 [del.icio.us]

2009-11-15T00:00:00-08:00

NY Post: YouTube to offer users option to skip past advertisments before videos
"Pre-roll has always been that form of advertising more akin to traditional media, yet being able to skip over it is something fairly unusual online," said David Berkowitz, a senior director at digital marketing agency 360i.

Links for 2009-11-13 [del.icio.us]

2009-11-14T00:00:00-08:00

be hangoutable | Sponty
Plan events with friends - still figuring out how this works
TweetLevel
A unique tool created by Edelman - measures an individual's importance on Twitter. what are the numbers? Each score is rated out of 100 – in other words, the higher your score, the more important you are. There are four result metrics: * Influence - what you say is interesting and many people listen to it. This is the primary ranking metric. * Popularity - how many people follow you * Engagement - you actively participate within your community * Trust - people believe what you say

Allstate Insurances Social Media Case Study at BDI Event

2009-11-12T11:44:29-05:00

Continuing the coverage of BDI’s Social Consumer: B2C Case Studies, Allstate Insurance’s Marcia Hansen, responsible for direct marketing, talked about Allstate’s social media program. More at @marciahansen and @allstate, (For more coverage, see the tweet recap from the McDonald’s case study)

Approach:

Provide educational and entertaining content, largely focused on Vehicle Vibes

Video series: Vehicle Vibes - http://www.vehiclevibes.com/car-maintenance-video-series/
- 5 month period: syndicated videos. 6.4 million impressions, 4.9% of people who viewed the video clicked.
- Car Smarts Challenge Videos – www.youtube.com/vehiclevibes
Allstate games on Vehicle Vibes – reskins popular games
Friender Benders – choose a character, play a game where you try to avoid bad video habits
Blog Talk Radio – Vehicle Vibes weekly radio show focusing on women

Summary of Approach: Give People a Reason to Talk

Write entertaining, educational content
Take informal video and post widely
Make content easy to share by people and search engines
Sponsor conferences and give away promotional items

Content Tips

Shoot for remarkable Content
Define categories, tips for SEO
Add popular topics to your content mix
When it comes to videos, new tools make it easy… but a professional touch helps polish it

Tweet Highlights

prnewswire: Marcia, @Allstate , says she's not allowed to talk about insurance online (bc of dif laws in def states). Interesting! #bdi

FlightpathNY: #bdi @allstate: repackage same content in various mediums. Video, games, blogs, podcasts. Making it easier to access.

sparklingruby: Write remarkable content, but don't underestimate the amount of time it takes to get one piece of regular content published @allstate #bdi

theonswitch: Who knew insurance marketing could be so much fun? Thanks Marci Hansen @Allstate #BDI

sirmichael: Who knew?! RT @thenotoriousmeg: It is illegal to push a moose out of your car in Alaska, sez @Allstate (I Googled it #bdi peeps)

Spitting Twitting plus more on WineTwits in Social Media Insider

2009-11-12T10:27:14-05:00

Originally published in MediaPost’s Social Media Insider

It's tempting to say the best thing about the wine-tasting event Spit & Twit was the name, and maybe it was, but what made an even bigger impression was how social media is changing the nature of real-world events. It also showed the limitations of being digitally and physically social at once.

At City Winery in Manhattan, WineTwits and others hosted Spit & Twit with a few dozen wineries and importers sharing over 100 wines. Attendees were encouraged to tweet, and a good number did, with the #sptw hashtag racking up about 275 tweets during the event, plus other tweets without the tag and many more before and ever. The printed program, which I neglected to read until Nelly Yusupova (@DigitalWoman) showed it to me, listed hashtags for each wine, and WineTwits created an iPhone-optimized site making it easy to tweet about and rate each wine.

The tweets during Spit & Twit included the usual shout-outs and snarkiness, with a healthy mix of wine snobbery. Here's a sampling:

WasitRodge: Ok. WineBerry is the sexiest boxed wines ever. #sptw
leighleighsf: fave red, #ESRIOPST01/@blameitonrioja. awesome! fave white, #WIEWC07VO (harvested during full moon) #sptw
castlebuilder: #sptw Served French wine by Kentucky gal. Je t'aime #frbxscbb05y'all!
sarahmcsimmons: Dear girl in the plaid shirt, you are in our way. Could you please spit, twit, and move? #sptw

It was also a great event for taking photos. When I captured the Jam Jar and Dead Arm shiraz, the wine importer thought I was being so smart to keep a record of the wines I had, when all I was trying to do was get a good picture to tweet. As for the image's flipped orientation, I'm still figuring out how to tweet photos from the new Motorola Droid phone.

Spit & Twit felt like one of those events that's a sign of the times today but will soon feel archaic. It's as if a restaurant opened called Order and Be Served, or a musician went on the Watch Me Play Live Music and You'll Pay Another $40 for a T-Shirt Tour. Wine drinkers of a certain generation at larger tasting events will soon expect that sharing these experiences through social media is part of the event.

Right now, the process is still a bit clunky. Most people weren't tweeting, and for good reason. Imagine tasting a dozen wines (for starters), then taking a picture, crafting a message, and using the appropriate hashtags, all while finding a place to put down your wine and getting out of the way of the people on line behind you. The tweets did add some value though: attendees could look at the screen for recommendations, wine lovers not there could get some dirt (or terroir) on good wines, and the wineries could benefit from the broader buzz. Another potential add-on for future events, which WineTwits could probably build in a matter of hours if they don't do it already, is a list of the ratings, showing live rankings of the top-rated wines there.

I asked WineTwits founder Stephen Gilberg for his thoughts on the event. He said, "The level of interactivity I saw [there] was amazing and unprecedented. People were following other people's notes in real time (both via their handheld devices and onscreen) and you could see traffic flow to certain tables as the wines at those tables were being talked about."

He then elaborated more on where social media fits in with the buildup and aftermath of the event. He said, "It's definitely a learning process, and it's going to change as the market develops, but utilizing Twitter and Facebook [was] central to the event's success. You still need to reach out to traditional media to attract consumers. Email blasts are important as well. The next day the event lives on as people are still tweeting about it, and it's now a resource on WineTwits.com that will continue to grow."

You can find more of the interview on my blog, and you'll find Gilberg at many other social media-infused happy hours to come. Should you attend one, though, I'd recommend against spitting and twitting at the same time. Better still, go with a group and name a designated tweeter who can keep churning out 140 characters even after you've sampled 140 wines.

McDonalds Social Media Case Study Presented at BDI Tweet Roundup

2009-11-12T09:24:05-05:00

I didn’t get to blog the McDonald’s case study from today’s Business Development Institute (BDI) The Social Consumer: B2C Case Studies and Roundtables event. Instead, I’ve curated the best tweets (plus a few of my own, since it’s my blog, so there). The speaker here is Heather Oldani, Director, Communications, McDonald's U.S.A., L.L.C..

mpranikoff: Attending the #BDI conference in NYC this morning. Lots of great peeps here - like @prnewswire ! Shld b good.

kaplowpr: Wow! Protestor takes the stage as @mcdonalds starts keynote case study - drama! #bdi

dberkowitz: At #bdi heckler takes stage and shouts at mcdonalds speaker and plugged mccruelty.com. heather from mcd was unfazed

mcdpartners: Attempted heckler here vs. McDonald's speaker was kind of pathetic - mumbling a paragraph makes you sound drunk. #bdi

KennethEd: I totally thought chicken girl was some sort of educational skit #bdi (I did too, but then the skit went on too long)

PR_ShopTalk: McDonald’s ranks 32 out of the top 100 “most social” brands according to McD's Social Media Guru, EATHER OLDANI #bdi

dberkowitz: Mcdonalds mentioned every 5 to 10 seconds online, every 10 to 20 seconds on twitter #bdi

RobLongert: #bdi Per @heather04 - Who owns social media? Customer owns comms channels and companies have the privilege to participate in them

wisepr: Not one dept owns SM says mcdonalds. Cust srvc, media, comm, etc. Don't see HR in there though. ? #bdi

SiobhanDullea: #bdi McD's has "conversation agents" to drive social media convos

RobLongert: Mickey Ds digital strategy per @heather04 - Go to them, be multidimensional, continue engagements, be transparent #bdi

chris_robison: Heather from mcdonalds. Go to your customers. Don't build microsites time and again and hope they come to you. #bdi

sandrafathi: McDonalds using Radian6 to monitor SM and using a scorecard to measure conversations. We do too! #bdi

SiobhanDullea: #bdi McDk's looking at bebo but outside US. US mainly FB and twitter

dberkowitz: marketing strategy for McDonald's includes Second Life... Grimace would get along SO well with the furries #bdi

prnewswire: #Twitter is a hub for conversation with customers, says @McDonalds #bdi

BrentLeary: @mcdonalds is uses localized twitter handles like @mcdonaldsatl for the folks in th atl. #bdi

megabucks11: wow- mcdonalds only has been on twitter for 5 months... Although trying to get localized content #bdi

thenotoriousmeg: wow even mcdonalds had to engage with customers on existing soc media, when they built their own, no one came. #bdi

jmp48: McDonalds says they have 6 to 8 Customer Service reps monitoring their Tweets around Customer Satisfaction. #bdi

BrentLeary: @Mcdonalds is also put this site together - StationM.comhttp://bit.ly/11Bgxa. #bdi (site is designed as a network and resource for employees – www.stationm.com )

sparklingruby: Ask yourself "how can we effectively engage" vs "should we engage" mcdonalds #bdi

dberkowitz: mcdonald's says myspace is important more as a "music portal" and ceded social networking to facebook #bdi (checking other tweets, it may have been “music entertainment portal” – I stand corrected)

PR_ShopTalk: Key takeaways from McDonald's Social Media strategy: Be flexible/nimble to new trends & open to feedback, be open and willing to listen #bdi

An aside: What I didn’t see in the tweets, oddly enough, was a mention of Voice of McDonald’s, the company’s American Idol-style competition with 12 finalists from 9 countries. http://vom.mcdonalds.com/

Links for 2009-11-11 [del.icio.us]

2009-11-12T00:00:00-08:00

Create and share micro podcasts, images and text updates with CinchCast

Links for 2009-11-10 [del.icio.us]

2009-11-11T00:00:00-08:00

Your Egypt Reading List

2009-11-11T11:21:00-05:00

Recently, I went on vacation throughout the Middle East, first in Egypt, then a quick stop in Jordan to see Petra, and ultimately spending the most time in Egypt. Gearing up for the trip, I read quite a bit to give me a taste of the history, culture, and people, and it was great exposure to some non-fiction and literature I may not have read otherwise.

If the subject interests you now or later, or you know someone going there, here are some recommendations from among my favorites that I read. I found them from a range of sources - Lonely Planet, friends, browsing bookstores, online recommendations. An authoritative list would include other works, like the Cairo trilogy by Naguib Mahfouz, but I tried reading the first (Palace Walk) and couldn't get into it. I also found modern fictional work Zaat's mixture of headlines and storyline creative but laborious, and Fight Club-esque Being Abbas El Abd way too weird while mercifully short.

Here are my favorite books that I read relating to Egypt and its environs. After adding so many - more than I anticipated - I broke them up into time periods.

Ancient Egypt

There are two great ancient history books by Barbara Mertz, a novelist and Egyptologist who has a knack for bringing mummies back to life (I'd have read more if only she had written others):

Temples, Tombs, and Hieroglyphs: A Popular History of Ancient Egypt (Amazon, Borders)

Red Land, Black Land: Daily Life in Ancient Egypt (Amazon, Borders)

It's hard to find a more fun read about Egypt than Agatha Christie's Death on the Nile. It is absolutely dated, but immensely entertaining, and it captures a lot of the beauty of the country. (Amazon, Borders)

Folklore

I have two recommendations for folklore, both of which written relatively recently but chronicling a history much older with stories that evolved over time, so they don't fit in neatly to one time period:

A new translation and compilation of the tales of Kalila and Dimna by Ramsay Wood (introduced by Doris Lessing) is purely brilliant storytelling, as fables unfold within fables. I can't wait to read this one again. As Lessing introduces it, it's one of the great world classics that the Western world largely forgot about; you'll want to thank Wood for bringing it back. (Amazon, Borders)
A more academic approach on the history of Arabian folklore comes from Hasan M. El-Shamy's Folktalkes of Egypt. He traveled the country recording a wide range of storytellers and captured some of the land's oral history, as well as its humor. (Amazon, BN.com)

Modern Egyptology and Anthropology (1800s-1950)

I read two books that focused on Howard Carter, the brash Egyptologist who discovered King Tut's tomb, but never could enjoy the glory he spent his life hoping to achieve:

Daniel Meyerson's In the Valley of the Kings is a page-turning biography of Carter that also spends ample time bringing to life the partners and rivals he faced. For straight history, read this one. (Amazon, Borders)
The Murder of King Tut is a new work by novelist James Patterson, written with Martin Dugard. Patterson can't resist making himself a main character of the story, which is one weakness. The other is that he spends much of the book in a flashback to Tut's life with little material to go on, so much of it seems like fiction. My final gripe is that his conclusion on why Tut was murdered, which is why he said he wrote the book, unravels with no particular support, and no attempt to see how that theory compares with other possibilities, even if it is plausible. Despite all of that, if you can suspend disbelief, it's a good deal of fun, and it does paint a picture of both ancient Egypt and the time of Howard Carter. (Amazon, Borders)

While really about Saudi Arabia and not Egypt, I checked out Wilfred Thesiger's classic Arabian Sands about the five years he spent largely living with the Bedu (or Bedouins) in the late 1940s, exploring parts of the desert no Westerner had seen and meeting them largely before Western society impacted their lives. It's one of those travelogues that makes you wish you could see it firsthand, and simultaneously make you thankful for your comforts of home. (Amazon, Borders)

Pre- and Post-Revolutionary (1940s-50s)

Not surprisingly, Col. Nasser's coup that overthrew King Farouk in 1952 was a focal point both for literature and memoirs.

Beer in the Snooker Club is a decent look at Egyptian high society in the 1950s - not an amazing read, but an Egyptian classic from what I found, and memorable. Very quick read, and it does capture the period, both as perceived in Egypt and in England. (Amazon, Borders)

The Man in the White Sharkskin Suit is a wonderful, poignant memoir by Lucette Lagnado who grew up in Egypt in the mid 20th century. (Amazon, Borders)

Out of Egypt by Andre Aciman is also about a family's departure from Egypt, especially sad at times but full of great characters - though some of his best appear too sparingly. If you read just one memoir about growing up in and departing 20th century Egypt, read Sharkskin. (Amazon, Borders)

1990s-Present

If you're into politics and current events, read Dreams and Shadows: The Future of the Middle East by Robin Wright, covering Egypt and a number of other countries, reviewing how they fare with democratic institutions and a free press, and what obstacles are in their way. (Amazon, Borders)

The one must-read for modern fiction is The Yacoubian Building, a very progressive and risque look at a couple generations of Egyptians in a building in 1990s Cairo. It's just great storytelling. (Amazon, Borders)

To get a taste of modern Cairo, read Taxi by Khaled Al Khamissi. He interviewed dozens of cab drivers a few years ago, and it's great local color, covering everything from their personal lives to government gripes. (Amazon, Borders)

There you go. I welcome other suggestions in the comments and hope you'll come back to this list if the occasion strikes you.

Cover of Taxi

Exclusive Interview with WineTwits Founder Stephen Gilberg on Spit and Twit

2009-11-09T17:56:30-05:00

I had the pleasure of attending the Spit & Twit wine tasting yesterday hosted by City Winery and WineTwits. A column on the event will be running in MediaPost's Social Media Insider, which includes a bit of the interview with WineTwits founder Stephen Gilberg. The full interview runs exclusively here:

David Berkowitz: What exactly makes Spit & Twit different from other wine & spirits events you’ve been a part of?

Stephen Gilberg: The level of interactivity I saw at the event was amazing and unprecedented. People were following other people's notes in real time (both via their hand held devices and onscreen) and you could see traffic flow to certain tables as the wines at those tables were being talked about.

Now, searching through WineTwits.com after the event, all of this interaction and information lives on as a resource for both those attending and not attending. A typical event provides no means of openly sharing your notes both online and onscreen, in real time. Check out all of these notes entered by @HDL: http://www.winetwits.com/tweets?user_id=34451

Here is the Spit & Twit page: http://www.winetwits.com/events/1311

Ultimately what made this event different, IMHO, was the tasting platform powered by both WineTwits LIVE and WineTwits MOBILE.

DB: Did you find the crowd there was more interested in spitting or twitting?

SG: Definitely a mix. I found that the crowd was very interactive and open to talking, chatting, twitting and tasting. The event logged nearly 400 tweets and growing!

DB: For these kinds of gatherings, do you find Twitter to be especially important during the initial promotion and buildup, during the event itself, or afterwards?

SG: It's definitely a learning process and its going to change as the market develops, but utilizing Twitter & Facebook are central to the event's success. You still need to reach out to traditional media to attract consumers. Email blasts are important as well. The next day the event lives on as people are still tweeting about it, and it's now a resource on WineTwits.com that will continue to grow.

DB: Are these kinds of events just for active tweeters? Or do you find that they pull in new people to participate with Twitter or other social channels that might be involved?

SG: These events are definitely not just for active tweeters. I do know the event definitely helped to drive home adoption of twitter use and really got people talking about Twitter and how they use it for business and personal.

Thanks Steve for the wine and event and social media insights. You can find him on Twitter at @winetwits.

First Thoughts on Motorola's Droid on Verizon

2009-11-09T11:30:00-05:00

Droids attack! by Stéfan via Flickr

On Friday, I went to get a Droid, the new Motorola phone on Verizon running Google's Android operating system. Here are some initial reactions.

It's my first Android phone. It replaces the Samsung Omnia I had running Windows Mobile, a touchscreen-only phone with too many design flaws to name. I still have my iPhone for work, which I love as an email and gaming device but never used as a phone.

As for the Droid...

Google services: I'm an avid user of many things Google, from Gmail to Picasa to Maps. For me that's a huge plus to access these personal accounts. I easily went to Picasa, picked a recent photo from my trip to Egypt, and made it my phone's background.

Writing email: The option of a keyboard's great, though I found the touch screen easy to use, rivaling the iPhone, and perhaps even easier, though I'm not sure why as the keyboard's no bigger. It was very easy to set up.my work account too.

Interface: I really like the four default buttons of Back, Menu, Home, and Search. I had no clue how often I'd use the back button until I tried it here.

Screen: The size is similar to the iPhone, but the picture's especially beautiful. Transitions and animations add some X factor of elegance to the device.

Battery life: Nothing special here. But it is removable so you can get a spare or replacement if it totally fails you.

Maps: I haven't yet explored all of the features here, but the basic directions - for me, via public transport in NYC - are easy. I know there are major competitive advantages over the iPhone here, but I'll get to those later.

Sound quality: Maybe there's some halo effect and this is imagined, but I'm convinced the sound is clearer on this device than any other I owned. When I called grandmom (and of course I call grandmom), it sounded like she was right next to me. Just great, I'll get Androidish guilt.

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

Applications: A lot of my favorites from the iPhone app store seem to be available, and I'm learning (often via Twitter) about comparable ones, like Twidroid for Twitter. The app store's easy to use, but some of the paid apps are in foreign currency like British pounds and I wish it all defaulted to dollars (or your local currency of choice). Many apps, like Twitter and Google Talk, can run in the background without slowing down the phone. Payments are synced to Google Accounts; updating Google Checkout information can be done on the phone but is especially easy from the Web.

Room for Improvement:

I haven't figured out copy and paste yet. I even watched a video demo (videos are easy to view on the phone), but it seemed to pull up different menus than my phone did.
Multi-touch is missing. The zooming in is easy though.
A longer lasting battery would be nice. But wouldn't it always?
Is there even desktop software to manage my phone? Could come in handy.
Can I take screenshots on the phone as easily as on the iPhone? That's been very helpful for client presentations for the iPhone. There are lots of things I just don't know if I can do yet.

I welcome hearing about your favorite features and apps as I learn what it can do.

Social Consumer B2C Case Studies & Roundtables Event Nov 12 NYC (Partner Plug)

2009-11-05T21:42:00-05:00

I posted about this before, but I'll give one more heads up as the event's now next week:

I'm helping promote an upcoming event from BDI. What's in it for you? Well, awareness of it, a discount code, and some coverage when it happens (I'll be there, and hosting a roundtable). As per my media sponsorship policy, I only promote events I believe in, and I'm happy to do so. You can read coverage of a spring event I attended here (Coke) and here (Tyson).

For more information, including registration, please click here to visit the event website. Use promo code MSS for a discounted rate of $155.

Date: Thursday, November 12, 2009
Time: 8:00 a.m. - 1:00 p.m.
Location: The Graduate Center / CUNY; 365 Fifth Avenue; New York, NY 10016
Registration Fee: $195
Website: http://www.bdionline.com/socialconsumer.html

About the Event:
It is no secret that social communications' impact on consumers is growing. It is now commonplace for both large and small B2C organizations to embrace social media and social networking to connect with consumers, strengthen brands, provide service, sell products, generate insights, and receive feedback from customers, partners, and employees. Social communications is now part of an integrated marketing and communications platform for most leading organizations. This conference will showcase the best case studies that demonstrate how leading brands use social communications to achieve tangible business goals.

We will cover the following questions:

What are the best examples of how brands integrate social communications into their marketing/communications platforms?
Why is the customer service function becoming social and how do you provide innovative customer service socially?
How do you make e-commerce social to increase sales?
What are the key success factors for building new communities with customers?
What are the best practices for partnering and leveraging established social networking sites such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and others?
How do leading brands measure and monitor their social communications channels?
What are the best technologies and products for measuring and monitoring social communications?
What are the best examples of how organizations capture, analyze and act on consumer insights derived from social communications channels?
How has social communications changed media relations and how do you provide content directly to communities of customers, partners and employees?

We have a very limited amount of sponsorship/speaking opportunities available. BDI also produces customized webinars for sponsors who want to engage communications and marketing leaders. For more information please contact Steve Etzler at setzler@bdionline.com or 212-765-8045. Follow us on twitter at www.twitter.com/bdionline.

Keynote Case Study:

McDonald's Serves Up Social Media
Presented by: Heather Oldani, Director, Communications, McDonald's U.S.A., L.L.C.
Heather will share how the leading global foodservice retailer with more than 31,000 local restaurants serving more than 58 million people in 118 countries each day incorporates social communications into an integrated marketing and communications platform. From their Facebook presence with over 1,200,000 fans to the social media enabled, "Voice of McDonald's" campaign which celebrates McDonald's 14 million staff members, to engaging consumers in conversations daily through Twitter, the golden arches features social media and social networking on their communications menu every day. Heather will discuss the challenges associated with giving up control to the consumer as well as integrating social into traditional marketing and communications channels from organizational and operational perspectives.

Case Studies:

Case Study: Intuit's Quicken iPhone Application Connects With 25-35 Year Olds
Presented by: Scott Gulbransen, Senior Manager, Corporate Communications, Intuit Inc.
Scott will share how Quicken, the leading financial software company with over 15 million users, connected with young consumers by launching their iPhone application using social media. Quicken Online Mobile immediately became the number two finance application in the iTunes application store.

Case Study: Allstate Insurance's Use of Social Media
Presented by: Marcia Hansen, Marketing Manager, Direct Marketing, Allstate
Marcia will share how Allstate Insurance, the nation's largest publicly held personal insurance company with more than 70,000 employees, provides entertaining and educational social media content for marketing purposes, including video, Internet radio, social networking, blogs, micro-blogs, games, and user-generated content.

Case Study: JetBlue Soars with Social Customer Service
Presented by: Morgan Johnston, Manager Corporate Communications, JetBlue Airways
JetBlue, the New York based airline, serves 57 cities with 650 daily flights, has been ranked highest in customer satisfaction among low cost carriers for five years in a row by JD Power and Associates. Morgan will share how the leading carrier innovates their service function by incorporating social media and social networking to connect and respond to customers every day. Morgan will cover how JetBlue embraces social technologies while dealing with the many operational and cultural challenges that come along with it.

Case Study: Roger Smith Hotel Increases Occupancy & Builds its Brand Via Social Media
Presented by: Adam Wallace, New Media Manager, The Roger Smith Hotel & Brian Simpson, Assistant Food & Beverage Director, The Roger Smith Hotel
Adam and Brian will discuss how the family-owned midtown hotel achieves sales objectives and community building goals though social communications channels. Known as what "may be the most social media savvy hotel in New York if not the world" by Econsultancy, the Roger Smith social media story is certainly buzzing loud. However, this case study will demonstrate how it's not all about buzz but rather a razor sharp focus on delivering ROI to the bottom line by harnessing the hotel's creative approach to integrating online and face-to-face communities. Follow them at www.twitter.com/rshotel.

Roundtable Moderators:
David Berkowitz, Director of Emerging Media and Client Strategy, 360i

Christina Blodgett, Director Customer Relations and Operations, BlogTalkRadio

Jarvis Cromwell, Managing Principal, Reputation Garage
Matt DeLoca, Senior Vice President, Sales and Marketing, The FeedRoom
Scott Gulbransen, Senior Manager, Corporate Communications, Intuit Inc.
Marcia Hansen, Marketing Manager, Direct Marketing, Allstate
Morgan Johnston, Manager Corporate Communications, JetBlue Airways
Heather Oldani, Director, Communications, McDonald's U.S.A., L.L.C.
Brian Simpson, Assistant Food & Beverage Director, The Roger Smith Hotel
Adam Wallace, New Media Manager, The Roger Smith Hotel

Sponsors:
PR Newswire / MultiVu; KickApps; The FeedRoom; The Roger Smith Hotel; BlogTalkRadio; International Association of Business Communicators – New Jersey; LatinVision; MarketersStudio.com; Mashable; New York Enterprise Report; New York University; Reputation Garage; SmallBizTechnology.com

Hotel Reservations
As the official hotel sponsor of The Social Consumer, The Roger Smith Hotel is happy to offer a 10% discounted rate to all attendees by clicking here.

For more information, including registration, please click here to visit the event website. Use promo code MSS for a discounted rate of $155.

Real Takes on Real-Time Search

2009-11-04T22:21:54-05:00

Image by Evan Hamilton via Flickr

Okay, not the best blog post title, but it was a big day, being featured in both The Wall Street Journal and USA Today on the same topic: real-time search. For newcomers to the field, it's the very hot field where Google, Microsoft's Bing, and a range of startups are trying to best index all of the rapidly updated statuses across Facebook, Twitter, and other social media sites.

The WSJ's Jessica Vascellaro reported on real-time search in the context of a new Yahoo deal with One Riot and included my take at the end (note: subscription required to read the whole story):

David Berkowitz, senior director of emerging media and innovation at digital marketing agency 360i, said he believes the value of real-time search data for businesses is greater than the appeal of data to advertisers. He predicts that one of the biggest uses of "real-time search engines" that produce results based on what's popular on the Web right now, will be for queries related to breaking news. But reaching users searching for news is far less interesting to advertisers than reaching searchers who are looking to buy something, he said.

Jon Swartz in USA Today took a broader approach on the subject, in what was a front page story in their Money section. I also got to close out the article:

The new services are confident that the market can support them. Search "is a huge driver of online traffic, shopping, content discovery," says David Berkowitz, senior director of emerging media and innovation at digital-marketing agency 360i.

The topic is still fairly new as far as the media and public consciousness goes (even if technologists and academics have followed it for longer), and I had fun addressing it recently at an OMMA panel, so I'm sure I'll have more to say about it, and I definitely have a lot more to learn.

Make a Twitter List and Check It Twice

2009-11-03T14:35:08-05:00

From today's MediaPost Social Media Insider. One addendum: you can also turn Twitter Lists into widgets. Brilliant.

Make a Twitter List and Check It Twice

Twitter just introduced Twitter Lists, the biggest change to its service that ever came from the top down, rather than from users or third parties. The best way to understand the feature is to try it out yourself, as it's rapidly rolling out if you check twitter.com. But I'll give you a taste of what it means for your day job, as well as your day-to-day Twitter usage.

With Twitter Lists, any Twitter user can create a list of other users and make the list public or private. You can follow others' lists and see what lists you're on (assuming the feature's live for you) by going to http://twitter.com/[username]/lists/memberships (mine are here).

I wrote on 360i's blog about how Twitter Lists are the "Web's newest popularity contest." The next day, Mashable titled one of its posts, "Twitter Lists: Only You Can Help Mashable Beat Barack Obama :)". This is bound to happen, but Lists are easily gamed. Say you're a large company, or a smaller but tech-savvy one, with 100 people on Twitter, and these employees all add your main corporate account to 10 different lists. You're instantly on 1,000 Twitter Lists, which for now will probably put you well in the top 1% of the most popular listed brands on Twitter. Meanwhile, if I'm on 100 lists through 50 people each adding me to two lists, and you're on 75 lists but added by 75 different people, who's more popular? The allure of gamesmanship over this will be short-lived. I hope.

The utility, however, will be far more appealing. The list creation feature has been around in other Twitter applications like Tweetdeck and Seesmic, but this is the first time lists have been available from Twitter itself. It's one of the biggest reasons I haven't spent much time making lists in other Twitter clients; I figured if and when Twitter built in that functionality, such lists would be more portable. That's what's happening now, as Twitter opened its API, and Seesmic already incorporated the feature.

Any Twitter user should find lists worthwhile. I was showing my wife how to make lists of family members, while my mother-in-law may make a list of businesses near her home in Dallas. Marketers should find even more value. Here are five ways marketers can use lists:

1) Aggregate multiple professional accounts if you have several faces of your business on Twitter. It's a natural for businesses like Comcast, which has a number of customer service representatives on Twitter, or Zappos, which has hundreds of employees tweeting. This can also work well for a company like Walmart that has a section on its site with all of its Twitter handles. A newspaper can bring together all of its reporters, or a packaged goods conglomerate can compile all of its brands in lists. Even if these lists don't bring in millions of new consumers or clients as followers, they may be useful for important constituents such as reporters, investors, or employees.

2) Aggregate passionate consumers. If you run a TV show, make a list of tweeters who love talking about every last plot twist. If you're a travel company, consider making lists of some of the most vocal Twitter users in each city where you have a presence. If you're a product manager for a technology brand, pull together all your die-hard fans. At the very least, you'll make it easier for all of these influencers to find each other to expand the noise in your echo chamber. But packaged right, it could be a way to pull in new fans and show others how much passion there is for your brand beyond those on its payroll.

3) Be a resource. Make lists of the most knowledgeable people in your industry, whether they're colleagues, reporters, consumers, or even competitors. While my lists are a work in progress, I've added many friends and people I respect from other agencies to lists. Mostly this will be convenient for me, but I'm more than happy to make these lists public in case they're useful to others.

4) Monitor what lists you're on and what lists include your competitors and peers. It's a way to gauge anecdotal brand perception. You can also find new people to follow this way.

5) Share lists beyond Twitter. It's going to take a while for lists to catch on beyond early adopters; this highly anticipated feature for die-hard tweeters may just be one more thing to learn for casual users. If you cater to early adopters, though, creating useful lists and sharing them in other channels like your site, email newsletters, or Facebook page should resonate.

I'm convinced Twitter Lists will change Twitter, and entirely for the better. I'm very curious what it will do to follower counts, though. When you create a list, you don't need to follow the people on it, even if you're likely to. I might create a list of brands on Twitter without following them and use it as a reference. Additionally, when you follow someone else's list, that probably includes many people you're not following. To counter that though, you may wind up discovering great people to follow.

I also wonder if people will be more likely to increase the number of Twitter users they follow. Now that you can isolate the handful of people you most want to follow and group them in a list, it's easier to run up the count of people you're following without worrying about the glut.

These effects, if they show up at all, won't be noticeable right away. But when you try Twitter Lists, I'd wager it will immediately impact how you use and think about Twitter. And as the feature appears in other Twitter clients over the coming months, lists will be as much a part of the Twitter lexicon as @-replies and direct messages.