The company I work for, Abraham Harrison llc, is helping to promote Motionbox, and I’m actually pretty excited about it.

You see, Motionbox is giving away brand new Roku players to 3 of the people who sign up for a free account during the month of November as a way to celebrate Motionbox’s upcoming featured channel on the Roku digital video player.

Tekzilla created a really great review video of the Roku:

Motionbox is the perfect way to share your videos with only the people that you choose. Motionbox is a video hosting service for people who want their friends, family, and clients to see videos in high quality, but don’t necessarily want the entire world involved.

As you can see here, Motionbox video quality really out performs Youtube:

Motionbox also recently added a new PRO service which includes storage, web-based editing, streaming, and embedding, all in up to 1080p HD quality. There’s also the free Basic service for those who don’t need as many bells and whistles.

Check out Motionbox and let me know what you think

As social media marketers, and digital PR agents, we should look to these projects as sign posts pointing towards what we can accomplish. If we can find or build the community of interest around the brands of our clients, the community will become something strong and lasting, as will the brand.

1. Design in a vacuum
2. Add every gadget you can think of
3. Drag every warm body you can in
4. Resist engaging with participants
5. Think size not quality
6. Think money not quality
7. Think noise not quality
8. Think pages not access choices
9. Think pontificating not listening
10. Think statistics not value

She goes into a lot of detail in this video:

You of course would never willingly kill your community. With the social media age upon us, all businesses need to keep in mind that the customer base is now community and think about whether they are cultivating or killing that community.

There is a service called twitter
A place to shine and to glitter
And in one forty letters
Prove that you’re better
To all of the bloggers so bitter

Well. . . I’m not completely sure that twitter is “better” than blogging, but brevity certainly reaches more people. Very few are willing to take the time to read an entire article, but 140 characters here and there is just the thing. I think that in 5 years there will be more minimalistic post sites built on software like StatusNet (formerly laconica) than there are blogging sites now.

What do you think? (Limericks of your own are welcome)

That could not be further from the truth as 2009 comes to a close.   Now according to Inside Facebook, the ads featured on Facebook are actually pulling in money—a lot of money.

In Depth: Discussing Facebook’s Advertising Future with VP of Global Sales Mike Murphy:

“Facebook has grown total revenues to around $550 million this year, with about 90% of its revenues in our estimation coming from advertising.”

It took some time for Facebook ads to prove their value to the social network.  This is due to the perfect combination of smart marketing from the Facebook company and the shift in user demographic.

The kind of advertisements that CNN cited and that I wrote about are those annoying banners and brand graphics that can clutter your page.  Although these still exist on the right side of your Facebook profile (that often ask me if I need to lose stubborn belly fat—hm a sign?) the banner-type ads are slowly diminishing.  The way the Facebook crew made this happen is actually pretty clever and also pretty obvious.

Vice President of Global Sales for Facebook Mike Murphy explainedthe simple solution to making ads more welcome to social networkers: “We realized quickly that the better we did to display advertising as part of our product, the better we delivered value to our users and advertisers. So we’ve been really focused on developing ad units that include social context so that they feel more like the rest of the content on Facebook.”

This “developing of ad units that include social context” is simply Facebook Pages. I’m sure we have all been ‘fans’ at one time or another.  Murphy also said, “what has become Pages today was actually originally sponsored groups.”

The concept of Facebook–creating a profile to connect with others–was applied to the way the site displays its sponsored brands.  The Pages allow brands to interact with customers in the massive Facebook community.

Another reason for the increase in ad revenue is because Facebook isn’t just for kids.  Inside Facebook cites that 48% of Facebook users are over the age of 35, which is pretty impressive for a social network synonymous with college life.  In this tough economy not many of us have much money in the first place, but if I were to look for someone with money I definitely would not begin with my 21-year-old peers.  Facebook now hosts a high percentage of people (age 35+) who are likely to have an established career with steady income.  The social site is therefore becoming a hot spot for big brands to push products and market services using a friendly approach via Pages.

Of course we at Abraham Harrison are cool enough to have a Facebook page, become a fan!

So next time you log in, check out your favorite brand-Pages and know that they contribute a hefty amount to the maintenance of the site that has become an addiction for so many .

Before I get much more entrenched in this terrible cheerleading metaphor, let me introduce myself.  My name is Ellie Brown and I am a graduate student at American University getting a master’s degree in Public Communication.

I am very excited to begin working with Abraham Harrison since I am quickly learning that knowledge of social media is an important skill for any communication career I pursue after graduating.  My social media use currently includes sharing my pictures from the weekend with my friends on Facebook and, I admit, the dreaded “what I ate” tweet (@elliebrown1).  But I’m beginning to see the vast possibilities for social media – especially how I can explore my interest in Africa and the application of social media and mobile technology there.

Before returning to grad school at American I worked for three years at a research and consulting firm called Abt Associates, Inc. in the international health division.  I worked closely with Ministries of Health in Kenya, Uganda and Namibia to improve the transparency and reliability of health financing policy. I was so lucky to have the opportunity to do something I loved for work…see the world.  I’ll never forget the times I was “working” among the elephants, lions and baboons in Kenya.

Although I miss my trips to Africa, I’m looking forward to learning more about social media and in the process, embracing my inner geek.

Listen to this article:

Google Wave is just a glorified threaded message board. Okay, so it’s a threaded message board with “real time” and widgets. . . ooooo. . .

Threaded message boards have been around forever, adding a couple bells and whistles doesn’t make them suddenly new and fantastic. In fact my first experience online back in the 90s involved the use of a class held on a threaded message board called Caucus. It’s nothing new. Though, I admit, threaded message boards are nice.

It’s nice to have a hosted conversation. A place where everyone meets, either at the same time or asynchronously, but that’s not the one size fits all solution to messaging. Sometimes an inbox and a conversation that can reach out to wherever you happen to be, whatever level of device you happen to be using, is the right solution. Email reaches more devices, because email is light and malleable. Email displays on simple monochrome phones to giant graphics editing ready computers.

“But wait,” you say, “It’s got this cool feature, and that cool feature, and you can start your own wave server, and your waves on your wave server can be shared with people on other wave servers and and and. . .”

That’s all well and neat, and more than likely useful, but the fact is, Google Wave is heavier than email. Light weight and malleable will always be needed. Email will always be around. Google wave will be a nice service, that some people use, just like some people use message boards now. It’ll be nice, it’ll be around, it’ll be as cool as any message board, but it’s not really a big deal.

Threaded message boards have never been a contender to email. The glorified threaded message board that is Google Wave will not replace email.

If I’m wrong here, just let me know, but be sure to give me a convincing reason or three. If you agree with me, I’d love to hear from you as well, just a leave a note in the comments.

That’s the question that plagues every social media marketing beginner, but the answer is a lot easier that you’d think.

When reaching out to people on social media channels you have every chance to learn a great deal about them ahead of time. These people spend a great deal of time and energy writing, podcasting, and making videos about the things they are interested in. Do a little research and you can find the keys to their hearts.

Look around on their blogs, listen to their podcasts, and read their tweets. When you introduce yourself you can come bearing information they are ready to receive. Bring them something that they love (information for the infophiles) and they will associate that love with you.

Social media marketing, digital PR, and the entire new media marketing world is about getting to know people and reaching out in a personal way. Work at making that connection. Show that the context of who they are matters to you, and that what you want to talk to them about matters to them. If you can manage that, then the good feelings you inspire will earn press that is real, hard won, and respected. Press earned in this way will resonate as honest (since it is) and will garner you more support in your brand, cause, or any other marketing venture.

The impersonal world has become personal. It’s time for you to become personal as well:

Go to where they are

They are on facebook, twitter, youtube, vimeo, blogger, wordpress, myspace, livejournal, personal blogs. . . Go to these places. Read, listen, watch, interact. Be as much a part of these communities as possible. Be real. Be you.

Listen to what they say

The people that you want to reach out to have put a lot of work into showing the world just what they are interested in. Make sure that before you reach out to them you do the research. Find out what they wat to know about. When you have something in that area to talk about, you’ll know who to bring it to. (helpful tip: blog directories are great for finding people http://blogcatalog.com)

Bring them your message

Once you’ve found the right people to bring your message to, bring your message to them. Make sure to bring that message to them on the mediums they use, email, blogs, twitter, youtube, etcetera. Go to them with your message, but be sure you’re bringing the message to the right people.

If you spend some time getting to know your audience, then starting a conversation with them won’t be hard at all. It’ll be like speaking to an old friend.

Abraham Harrison llc