The Bing interface is clean and boasts new features such as categorized search and web groups which makes it easy to navigate. For example, in a search for mobile phones, Bing provided categories at the top left of the page (also known as the Explore Pane) for mobile brands, a buying guide, service providers etc. Once you click on a search category and hover over a listing, you’ll see a a short excerpt from that page. This quick preview can help you decide if that’s the right landing page that you’re looking for. Bing offers other features such as Related Searches, Search History, and Best Matches.

I’ll be trying Bing out for the rest of the week and see what other features will be rolled out by June 3, 2009. How about you? What are your thoughts on Microsoft’s new decision engine?

1. http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2009/may09/05-28NewSearchPR.mspx

With a Google profile you can help people find the right information when they search for you on Google. You can check out my Google profile here. There’s still a lot of work to be done in the photo and bio section but I’m happy so far with the progress.

Thanks to Google and iPrint for the awesome promotion, I can’t wait to hand these out at Interactive Day San Diego next month on June 18, 2009. Discounts are also available for Ad2 members and students. You can register for the event here.

If you’ve already created your Google profile, feel free to post a link in the comments. I’m looking for some inspiration.

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In fact, if you’re active within the Twitter community, you may have seen several of your followers with a 12for12k Challenge border surrounding their avatar. The 12for12k Challenge is the combination of social media and fund-raising.

The concept is simple:

• 12 months of the year
• 12 charities, a different charity each month
• $12,000 per charity

To learn more about the 12for12k Challenge, I reached out to founder, Danny Brown, for an informal interview.

1. Tell us about the concept behind “The 12for12K Challenge” (i.e. how you came up with the idea, what prompted you, etc.).

The idea was simply to try and help as many good causes as possible in 2009. For anyone that visits my blog, they’ll see a list of charities I support. I wanted to take this further and help organizations that are great causes but may be suffering from either awareness, support or funds.

The prompt was from reading newspapers and speaking to non-profit friends, about how traditional fund-raising is being hit hard by both the economy and the cost of getting your cause into the open. It’s clear that social media can offer solutions to both these issues, and that’s when the idea started taking shape.

We’ve used a variety of tools and mediums to raise awareness for what we’re trying to achieve, and the charities themselves. Twitter has been hugely effective for us, particularly with the use of the 12for12k Twitter avatar. This leads to people questioning Twitter users sporting the avatar what 12for12k is all about, and that leads to conversation. Which is still the best way to promote anything.

We also have a 12for12k Facebook group, the main 12for12k site with blog, the 12for12k promo video, and we’ve recently set up a blogger program for bloggers to get directly involved with 12for12k.

We’ve also held fun events like a Tweetathon, a virtual pajama party and live tweetups, and this month we’re looking at holding a virtual 12for12k karaoke – more details on that soon!

January was WarChild; February was Stop the Silence; March was Share Our Strength; April was Yehu.org; and this month is Hospice of Peel. As far as donations go, we have only broke the $12,000 barrier once (for the March charity) while the others we have raised on average around $5,000.

Obviously we’d love to hit the $12,000 and we will continue to look into ways to make this happen, but I think we’re hugely happy at the support we’re receiving so far. Plus, it’s been a matter of raising awareness about 12for12k, and I feel we’re reaching that now. We have a huge announcement to make for June and November should also be an exciting time as we combine with a great organization.

I know the charities we’ve supported so far have experienced a lot of new people visiting their sites and wanting to find out more, following our partnership. That’s all we ever wished for, so on that front, I think we can be really pleased.

The Hospice of Peel charity is a perfect example of the way the whole 12for12k thing works. We’ve never wanted to be in the mindset of, “Here are our 12 charities – give us your money!”. Instead, we want to involve our supporters as much as possible. So we ask for recommendations of charities we could possibly support.

This is what happened with this month’s charity. Daniel Patricio is a young guy in Toronto doing some amazing things through social media, and is an active supporter and volunteer for the hospice. We’re already connected on Twitter, and Daniel asked us if we could look at Hospice of Peel. It seemed a perfect fit for our ethos, and they do amazing work, so it made it an easy organization to support. 

There are a number of ways. Obviously the first is by donating to each month’s chosen charity – you can find out about Hospice of Peel and how to donate here.

We know times are tough, so if you can’t afford to donate, but you still wish to support and have a blog, you can  use our blog badges to display on your blog. These link directly to 12for12k and help raise more awareness.

And, of course, just let your friends, family and colleagues know about us and what we’re trying to do. The more we can make people aware, the more we can help a given month’s charity.

First, make sure you meet our criteria. We want to make sure we help each charity as much as possible, so we have four guidelines:

• No more than 10% admin cost
• Accounts must be available to public on request
• Need to have a plan for sustainable change in place, and not just offer a quick-fix solution through donations
• Need to accept Paypal

If that’s you, then we’d love to consider you. Just email charities@12for12k.org and let us know a bit about you, and we’ll definitely look.

More About Danny Brown
Danny Brown provides business branding and social media consultancy services to the consumer and commercial markets, from small start-ups to Fortune 500 businesses.

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Yehu’s mission is to enable these entreprenuers to save and earn interest while providing these entrepreneurs access to micro-loans which can help them start or expand their business.

To support Yehu.org, 12for12K and Mom It Forward teamed up and hosted special events throughout the month of April with 100 percent of the proftils going towards the cause.

The San Diego 12for12K charity event was held at the Hard Rock hotel’s newly relaunched rooftop bar and lounge, Float, where fellow San Diego tweeps met up to to help raise funds and awareness. It was great to see so much support and finally being able to meet tweeps in person. In fact, a big congratulations goes out to Rachel Kay Public Relations, Downtown Rob of WebWizards.net, Cinthya “Sugar” Jones, and promotions partner Rich and Creamy for hosting a wonderful event. I especially enjoyed the 12for12k-tini, the photo booth, and look forward to supporting next month’s charity. At the end of the night, the event raised $1500. Awesome work everyone!

To learn more about The 12for12K Challenge and support for Yehu.org, visit the official 12for12K blog.

Since the month of April isn’t over yet, you are more than welcome to chip in for the cause.

Credits: Photos courtesy of James Gose and template created by Leiko Beck Designs.

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Today we’ll review five types of social media campaigns that you can create to engage your consumers and promote your brand. We’ll also discuss the pros and cons of each campaign type so you can decide which type of campaign best suits your audience.

Before we begin, I’d like to clarify that the term, “social media campaign,” is used in this article to describe customized contests and promotions that companies launch to engage consumers in their advertising message.
Social media campaigns leverage user generated content (UGC) created by brand loyalists to promote a company’s brand, product, or advertising message on multiple social networks. UGC in general can be broken down to five categories: Photos, Blogs, Design, Videos, and Mixed Media which combines all types of UGC.

Photo Campaigns

Photo campaigns are easy for consumers to participate in. Majority of online users have photos stored on their desktop and are familiar with how to upload photos to websites (i.e. Flickr, Facebook, MySpace, etc.). As a result, the barrier to entry for photo campaigns is relatively low.

With photo campaigns, you decide what the theme of your campaign should be. One example of a photo campaign is Sugarloot’s Paparazzi Princess Contest. Sugarloot asks members to submit their ‘paparazzi-worthy’ pic to the to be eligible to win a designer handbag.

While photo campaigns are low barrier to entry, it’s important to keep your campaign theme simple. A theme such as, “Share a photo of you and your best friend,” may draw entries of two girls as best friends or a girl and her chihuahua. Be specific or you’ll be moderating irrelevant entries all day.

Blog Entries

Social media campaigns that ask participants to create a blog or submit a story are also low barrier to entry campaigns.  As the campaign sponsor, you create the theme and list the requirements that participants need to meet in order to be eligible to win a prize(s). DebtGoal, for example, is currently running a campaign on Facebook that asks participants to share their thrifty tips on how to save money.

The skill level required to post a blog is easy and you can expect to see a lot of entries. Unfortunately, what you might find in a blog campaign are entries  that  don’t relate to the prompt or entries with multiple grammatical errors. Furthermore, blog entries in a campaign are typically less engaging than photos. Visitors to the campaign will see lines of text and may become bored with the campaign and leave versus a photo campaign that’s more pleasing to the eye and drives more engagement.

Design Campaigns

Design campaigns are fun because the company is asking their consumers to be creative with the brand.  One of my favorite design campaigns was the Design a T-Shirt for Honest Foods campaign. Honest Foods and Brickfish provided the artwork and T-shirt template that participants could use in their designs. Over 2,000 original designs featuring the Honest Foods logo were submitted to the campaign and shared across the Internet.

For participants that aren’t familiar with Photoshop or other photo-editing software, they may find this type of campaign difficult and the number of creators in your campaign may be smaller than what you expected.  As a result, design campaigns are generally medium to high barrier to entry. A good rule of thumb is to provide the artwork that artists can build upon and be clear with how participants can and cannot use your logo.

Video Campaigns

Video campaigns are entertaining but just like design campaigns, they are also high barrier to entry campaigns as it requires basic video editing skills.

If your target audience isn’t experienced with video-editing, you may find yourself with only a handful of entries. However, if you do find the right audience, you can make the campaign easier by providing the creative assets .

Mixed Media

Mixed Media campaigns are perfect when you want a mix of UGC and want to open your social media campaign to a broad audience that way anyone can participate. You can even drive more engagement to a mixed media campaign if you offer a prize for each medium (i.e. best photo, blog, design, video, etc.).

Need Ideas?

Still not sure how to get started or which type suits your company? Below is a list of companies that sponsor social media campaigns:

• Brickfish.com
• Sugarloot.com
• Polyvore.com
• Votigo.com
• YouTube.com

[Image Sources: Xanetia, illuminator999, Striatic, Diego Cupolo]

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First, understand who is online and what they’re doing. Participation in social media can differ among men and women and every demographic you can think of. For example, teens and Gen Y are more open to seeking entertainment online through video-sharing websites such as YouTube than older generations and are more likely to download their favorite songs^[1].

With this information, how do you decide between launching a social network and adding a review system to your website? Which medium will your customers flock to?

To understand what your customers are ready for, I recommend using Forrester’s Social Technographics® Profile tool available here. Based on Forrester’s survey data, you can research how participation in the groundswell varies among different groups of consumers not only in North America but globally as well.

The next steps in planning your social media campaign are to define your objectives, create a strategy, and then identify the appropriate technology to launch your campaign. If this sounds familiar, that’s because it’s covered in Groundswell: Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technologies by Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff. This book is a definite must read before starting any social media campaign. In fact, if your CEO or VP of  Marketing hasn’t read it yet, grab a copy for them.

Create a Forrester’s Social Technographics Profile Tool

To create a Social Technographics Profile^[2], first access the tool here. Then select the appropriate age range, country, and gender and a profile will be created. Unfortunately, the tool doesn’t allow you to export your graph. If you’d like more information, you can contact their sales team.

Social Media Strategy: Incorporating Forrester’s Social Technographics Profile

You’ve recently launched a social media campaign that asks consumers to submit a video of why they would love to win a $5,000 shopping spree at your store. While the campaign is open to participants ages 18 and older, you’re curious as to why majority of the videos submitted are created by women ages 18 – 24 versus your actual target audience of women ages 35 – 44.

Using Forrester’s Social Technographics Profile we can compare how each demographic participates in the groundswell^[3] [Technically, you should have created your target audience profile before launching your campaign to decide which type of social media campaign you should use but just in case you haven’t, you can still leverage the tool.]

Fig. 1.1 Females Ages 18 – 24 in the US.

Fig. 1.2 Females Ages 35– 44 in the US.

Based on the profiles above, we see that females ages 18 – 24 are more likely to be Creators online versus their counterparts. So while the majority of the Creators in your social media campaign may be from a different demographic, your target audience can still participate in the campaign as Critics and Spectators. It’ll be a good idea to analyze the reviews and ratings in the campaign as this is where your target is most likely to participate.

So before you launch your next social media campaign, be sure to research what your customers are ready for. I hope you found this information useful when planning your next social media campaign. If you have other steps in your planning process, please feel free to share.

[Image: Who Participates and What People Are Doing Online]

[Slideshare: Social Technographics Explained]

1. http://www.marketingcharts.com/interactive/generations-online-use-internet-differently-8145/

2. Data comes from the following surveys:

   • US: Forrester’s North American Media & Marketing Online Survey, Q2 2008, 5,002 respondents.
   • Canada: Forrester’s North American Technographics Benchmark Survey, Q1, 2008, 61,033 respondents.
   • Europe: Forrester’s European Technographics Benchmark Survey, Q2 2008, 25,443 respondents.
   • Asia Pacific: Forrester’s Asia Pacific Technographics Survey, Q1 2008, 7,636 respondents.
   • Data from Forrester Research Technographics® surveys, 2008.

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Twickie is a free service that aggregates Twitter replies based on a specific tweet’s ID which is found at the end of the tweet’s permalink. This makes it easier for the original poster to follow the conversation thread.

When you go to Twickie, you’ll be prompted to enter your Twitter username and password. Once you log in, you’ll be able to see your 50 most recent tweets. Click  the “Get @s ?” button to see tweet replies in descending order and the “Get @s ?” to see tweet replies in ascending order.

If the thread you’re looking for is not on your Twickie homepage, click on “Search”. This page will let you search for threads by replies, hashtags, conversations, and person-to-person.

Here is a breakdown of each search function:

• Replies: Discover who has responded to any one of your tweets. Look for the number at the end of a tweet URL (example in blue): http://twitter.com/chrispirillo/status/1208363244
• Hashtag: People tag keywords in their tweets with “#” symbols. To see the latest 1 – 200 tweets that have been tagged, simply search for the keyword.
• 1208363244).
• Person-to-Person: To view a conversation between two people only, use the screen names of the two individuals seperated by a “-” (dash symbol): chrispirillo-whozman

You can then export the conversation thread three ways:

1. Copy Full (default option)
2. Copy CSS (advanced)
3. Copy HTML (advanced)

Select which option best suits your needs then paste into your blog. It’s that easy and it’s free.

Just recently, my husband and I celebrated our two-year wedding anniversary in San Francisco, CA. Before we headed out, I asked my followers if they had any suggestions for restaurants or places we should visit. By aggregating all of the responses into one single thread, it was easier to distinguish which replies were related to my San Francisco trip and those that were not.

For updated, news, and more information about Twickie, follow them on Twitter @twickie.

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Walter Higgins, founder and CEO of Sxoop Technologies, created the Twitter Mosaic tool which lets you create a mosaic of all your followers or friends on Twitter.

Simply enter your Twitter user name and choose what type of mosaic you’d like to create (followers or friends) and in seconds, you’ll receive an HTML code that you can add to your site or blog post to promote your tweeps. The Twitter Mosaic also gives you the ability to remove default Twitter avatars from your mosaic.

Now the fun part…

After you’ve created your Twitter mosaic, you can pimp your Top 100 Tweeps at Zazzle.com with Walter’s two products:

1. On a T-Shirt.

Choose a shirt design for men, women, kids and even babies (prices vary by color and shirt design). You can keep a T-shirt for yourself or if you have room in your marketing budget, you can take advantage of the bulk discounts and send a T-Shirt to all of your tweeps.

2. On a Coffee Mug.

Not in the mood to deal with shirt sizes? Not a problem. Choose a Twitter coffee mug, stein, or commuter mug for tweeps on the go.

And that’s it — pretty easy huh? Got any other idea on how to promote your tweeps?

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Now you can have iPhone coasters in your home thanks to the guys at Meninos. For $60, you get all sixteen standard apps that come with the Apple iPhone. Unfortunately,  that means no Twitter app coaster — sorry folks.

Personally, we don’t use coasters around our apartment but that doesn’t mean I don’t want these. Instead of using these as coasters, I’d rather turn them into magnets and have them posted on our refrigerator.

(Photo Credit: Junnn)

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Nervous about planning Valentine’s Day this year? Don’t worry. You can plan your romantic evening in six easy steps with Springpad’s Date Night Planner.

To get started, simply enter the date and city of where you’d like to have your date. Springpad will then present the following five categories to help you organize your date:

1. Go Out to Eat.
Type in what type of food you’d like to have at dinner and Springpad will locate nearby restaurants. Springpad even displays the restaurant’s ratings and reviews made by Yelp members.  Once you’ve decided which restaurant you’d like to dine at, simply click the “Add to Date” button. If you’re lucky, the restaurant you choose will use OpenTable and you can easily make your dinner reservations online at no extra cost. If they don’t, not a problem. Springpad also provides the number and address of the restaurant so you can contact them.

2. Dine In.
If you’re looking forward to showing off your culinary skills or need help finding recipes, Springpad can help you there as well. You can create a menu or choose from Springpad’s recipe ideas.

3. See a Show or Concert.
After dinner, check out what shows or concerts are nearby.

4. See a Movie.
Find a movie, check out movie reviews, listings, show times and buy tickets online.

5. Give a Gift.
Springpad also helps you find a gift online and as a bonus, you can store the tracking code or confirmation number in your planner.

6. Do Something Else.
And last but not least, if you want to do something more creative than dinner and a movie, you can create a new activity and store the address to save the details in your plans.

Whether you’re planning a romantic evening for Valentine’s Day or a get together with your friend, Springpad’s Date Night Planner makes planning a lot easier. However, there is one caveat — since the Date Night Planner is relatively new, some show times for movies don’t show up. If that happens to you, don’t forget there’s always MovieTickets.com.

Have a great Valentine’s Day!

(Video Credit: Springpad)

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