Forrester Groundswell Awards 2009

In occasione del Forrester Consumer Forum 2009 sono stati annunciati i vincitori dei Groundswell Awards 2009, i premi assegnati alle applicazioni tecnologiche più efficaci in ambito “social”, divise secondo queste categorie:

LISTENING. Find out what customers are really saying in order to understand them better.
TALKING. Spread messages about a company.
ENERGIZING. Get a company’s best customers to evangelize its products.
SPREADING. Get customers or users within a company to encourage others to adopt a product or service. (B2B only.)
SUPPORTING. Help customers support each other to solve each other’s problems.
EMBRACING. Integrate customers into the way a business works, including using their help to design products and improve processes.
MANAGING. Empower employees and managers within an organization.
SOCIAL IMPACT. Improve society with non-commercial applications.

Age of Conversation 3 – Chiamata alle armi

Gavin Heaton rilancia la sfida per il 3° volume di Age of Conversation, serie multi-autore che nasce come esperimento di scrittura collaborativa e di raccolta fondi a scopo benefico.

Each author will be able to submit one 400 word article. To make sure the content is varied and to avoid repetition, we’ve created 10 section topics. Each author will select one topic and then direct the content of their submission accordingly. There will be a maximum of 30 authors per section.

The sections you can write for are:

1. Conversational Branding
2. Influence
3. Getting to Work
4. Corporate Conversations
5. Measurement
6. In the Boardroom
7. Pitching Social Media
8. Innovation and Execution
9. Identities, Friends and Trusted Strangers
10. Conversation at the Coalface (If you work at the coalface, you deal with the real problems and issues, rather than sitting in a office discussing things in a detached way.)

Uno studio sul search marketing e i social media

Da ComScore.com:

A study announced today by GroupM Search, comScore and M80, exploring the interplay of search marketing and social media, reveals the dramatic correlation influenced discovery of brands through social media has with search behavior, including more lower-funnel searches and increased paid search click-through-rates (CTR).
The study,“The Influenced: Social Media, Search and the Interplay of Consideration and Consumption,” explored the correlation between social media exposure and search behavior across different verticals, including automotive, consumer packaged goods and telecommunications.

View this document on Scribd

Il “vero” social network ?

Danah Boyd, ispirata da un confronto con Bernie Hogan, parte da questi punti

1. Not all social networks are the same.
2. You cannot assume network transitivity.
3. You cannot assume that properties that hold for one network apply to other networks.

e riflette sulle tipologie di SN.

“The truth of the matter is that there is no “real” social network. It all depends on what you’re trying to measure, what you’re trying to do with those measurements. [...]
I think that we often talk past one another because we’re all talking about social networks but we’re talking about different social networks. In accounting for three types of social networks here, I’m not trying to be all-inclusive, but I am trying to point out that there are differences and that we cannot assume transitivity either in terms of structure or theory. If we can find a way to better identify what kinds of social networks we’re talking about and when and where what theories apply, I think that we’ll go a long way in bridging different intellectual discourses.”

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Alla faccia del ritardo

All’estero molti siti di fiere e di riviste di settore hanno forum di discussione, feed RSS, blog, form per commenti, sezioni news aggiornate e pulsantini come questo

In Italia manco uno.

Ma cosa aspettano?

Understanding and Applying Web 2.0 Definitions to Organization Websites (tradeshowweek.com)
Super-Charged Virtual Trade Shows: Utilizing Social Networking Services (meetingtechonline.com)

Utenti di Facebook, MySpace e Twitter: le differenze

Di Max Freiert su Compete.com

Social Addicts: How do Hardcore Facebook, MySpace and Twitter users differ?
“[...] This analysis is designed to help with media buying, but in the case of social networks it can also help define the psychographic makeup of the group, and how “addicts” generally use their favorite social site. …>>“

Digital Entertainment Survey 2008 (UK)

Via Marc Bresseel

“[...] a very complete and enlightening survey ‘investigating behavior, trends, preferences and attitudes across all forms of entertainment activity’ among a representative national demographic sample of UK consumers that is a thousand of male and female between 15 and 54 years old (with the 24 to 54 group weighting for 76% of results).
The 2008 Digital Entertainment Survey commissioned by Wiggin and done by Entertainement MediaResearch covers a wide range of activities from traditional to digital topics. …>>“

Summary report (30 pagine) .pdf
Full report (250 pagine) .pdf

I Pennywise e l’album gratis su MySpace

I Pennywise, storica band punk-hardcore californiana (molto amata dal sottoscritto), ha stipulato un accordo con MySpace Records e Textango, società specializzata in servizi per telefonini, per permettere il download gratuito del nuovo CD “Reason To Believe” tramite il famoso social network . Il tutto finanziato da Texango.

Come funziona:
dopo aver aggiunto ai propri amici il profilo textango si riceverà un messaggio con il link per scaricare un file zippato contenente le canzoni in formato mp3 a 320kbps, un .pdf con il booklet completo e … un invito a scaricare una bonus track tramite invio di SMS:

Dal 25 marzo l’album è disponibile nei negozi su etichetta Epitaph con un bonus DVD, 2 bonus track e su vinile in edizione limitata.

[Anche su AdWeek, La Stampa e Marketing Vox]

Mi sembra che questa iniziativa dei PW si differenzi dai casi già noti, es:

Radiohead: bassa qualità audio (160kbps) e niente grafica

Nine Inch Nails: “Ghost I-IV”, pur essendo a pieno diritto nella discografia NIN è un “esperimento” (36 tracce strumentali – 1° volume di 4) la cui uscita è fortemente legata alle possibilità offerte dal web come mezzo di dis-intermediazione, di cui lo stesso Trent Reznor dice:

“I’ve been considering and wanting to make this kind of record for years, but by its very nature it wouldn’t have made sense until this point. [...] I’m very pleased with the result and the ability to present it directly to you without interference.”

Forse un caso simile ai Pennywise è quello dei Charlatans, ma in generale mi pare che la strategia adottata dai PW riesca ad unire ( e migliorare) elementi presenti negli esempi citati prima in modo più efficace: pieno coinvolgimento della casa discografica, alta qualità audio, uso dei social networks e un prodotto non “sperimentale”.

Poi magari mi sbaglio.

ps: per approfondire l’argomento musica&marketing consiglio l’ottimo Rockonomics

Usare i social media nel B2B è più difficile?

Paul Dunay su Buzz Marketing for Technology si chiede Is Social Media more difficult in B2B than B2C?

” … My point is that out in social media land if you know exact who your audience is, what will resonate with them and how to tap into it, you are home free. B2B audiences are more fragmented, with internal employees, external partners, channel partners, third party vendors, and, oh yeah, customers and prospects …>> “

Io sono d’accordo con Andy Sernovitz di damniwish.com :

With BtoB you know your audience, you know what they care about, and it’s easier to connect them.
You’re dealing with an existing community instead of unknown masses.

Aziende e conversazioni: “purists and corporatists”

“Corporate social technology strategy, Purists, and Corporatists — why companies CAN participate” di Josh Bernoff

“It’s time for me to weigh in on the question: can companies be part of the social world?

This is in part a reaction to Shel Israel’s comments of a few months back and my colleague Jeremiah’s Owyang’s responses. But it’s an ongoing issue that comes up often in the blogosphere in my conversations with corporate clients.

On the one side are the folks who say, “The social world is an emergent phenomenon generated by people connecting.” The original Cluetrain Manifesto rails against many aspects of the corporate world and basically posits that the right way for companies to get involved is for people inside those companies to connect to their customers. Based on my recent participation at a Cluetrain event, Cluetrain author Doc Searls still harbors a lot of skepticism toward corporations pursuing goals in the social world. For shorthand, let’s call these folks the Purists.

On the other side are companies who are looking at the social Internet and saying “how can we exploit this to do what we already do — PR and advertising, for example?” PR and advertising are mostly one-way, broadcast type communications, and these folks continue to try to adapt those one-way modes of thinking in the two-way, read-write world of social computing. I’ll caricature these folks as the Corporatists. …>> “

Ripreso da Israel (anche qui tempo fa), Searls e nuovamente da Bernoff