Microsoft announced that the company would officially launch Facebook (and other social networks) into their Outlook product. Following the previous week’s announcement about Google Buzz, and rumors that Facebook would be launching their own email product, we found out details about Outlook’s new integration. The service will let you “view friends’ activities, photos, and status updates within Outlook—as well as grow your network by adding friends from the same view”.
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Microsoft announced that the company would officially launch Facebook (and other social networks) into their Outlook product. Following the previous week’s announcement about Google Buzz, and rumors that Facebook would be launching their own email product, we found out details about Outlook’s new integration. The service will let you “view friends’ activities, photos, and status updates within Outlook—as well as grow your network by adding friends from the same view”.
Yahoo for years was the world’s most popular website — its ubiquitous portal has dominated the web since the 90s. Two years ago however, Google vaulted past Yahoo and became the Internet’s most popular destination. Last month, it became Facebook’s turn to knock Yahoo down another peg.
In December 2009, Yahoo garnered 133.45 million visitors in the U.S. Facebook wasn’t far behind with 132.13 million uniques. In the first month of 2010 though, there was a role reversal: Facebook’s traffic rose to 133.62 million visitors, while Yahoo shrunk down to 132.00 million.
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In the few short years that social media has been a marketing vehicle, it has already had an enormous effect on the way companies do business. In the coming years there will be even more changes, as social media marketing extends from the marketing department to nearly every aspect of a company’s business.
In the Insight Brief “The Future of Social Media Marketing,” eMarketer senior analyst Debra Aho
“Advertising—which
Instead, the strongest business models in the future will incorporate analytics, as social media becomes truly integrated into all marketing efforts. In addition, TV will become more social, as will search.
Location will become more important to social media, and brand monitoring will increase in sophistication so that companies can begin to understand the “why” of consumer chatter as well as the who, what and when.
What will not change is the source of social media transformation today: the users.
“The voice of the consumer is only going to get louder and stronger,” said Ms. Williamson. “It will shape what social media is and what it will become. Not too long ago, a company might have made major changes to its products or services based on a few focus groups, some financial planning and a degree of gut instinct. Social media has already changed all that. And more changes will come.”
Sourcs: http://www.emarketer.com/Article.aspx?R=1007513
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The company’s Mountain Dew division is several stages into its DEWmocracy campaign — a plan to launch a new Mountain Dew flavor with the public’s involvement at all levels of the process, and PepsiCo also just launched the Pepsi Refresh Project on January 13th. Rather than spending money on Super Bowl television ads this year, the company is spending $20 million on a social media campaign.
Jay Baer, founder of the social media strategy company Convince & Convert, said brands are realizing they need to market for the long haul. “I do think it’s a good move for Pepsi. I don’t know if every brand can pull it off,” he said.
The Pepsi Refresh Project and the DEWmocracy campaigns are part of a crowdsourcing effort that’s part of the larger PepsiCo plan to more closely integrate consumers with the brand. “Driving consumer interest and engagement takes imagination and often a certain amount of reinvention, so it’s fair to say we’re rethinking everything we do from product development to marketing campaigns across our entire portfolio,” said Bart Casabona, a Mountain Dew spokesman.
The first DEWmocracy campaign launched in 2007. This inaugural DEWmocracy effort let consumers choose Dew’s new flavor, color, name and graphics, and resulted in more than 470,000 people voting and an overall 1 million people taking part in some phase of the process, according to the company’s DEWmocracy media site. The winning new flavor, Voltage, hit store shelves in January 2009.
Brett O’Brien, Mountain Dew’s marketing director, said that for the first campaign a site was built for people to interact with, which made sense at that time.
Fast forward to July 2009, when the second DEWmocracy campaign launched. The multi-stage effort tasks die-hard Mountain Dew fans to narrow seven sodas down to one final new flavor that will become a permanent part of the Mountain Dew family, using social media platforms 12seconds.tv, Twitter, Facebook and YouTube in the process.
O’Brien said that with the explosion of social networking, they felt it was best to interact with people where they are.
The second iteration of the Mountain Dew campaign is fueled by the 4,000-strong DEW Labs crew, an online community of die-hard fans. The DEW Labs are divided up into three Flavor Nations for the three Mountain Dew soda finalists: Typhoon, WhiteOut and Distortion. Once the three flavors debut in April, the Flavor Nations must talk up their flavor and get people to vote for it to become the permanent new Mountain Dew soda. That one winning new permanent soda flavor will debut on Labor Day, according to the company’s DEWmocracy media site.
O’Brien said the several stages involved are really part of the normal product innovation process. He said if they were going to be totally transparent the whole time in launching a new Mountain Dew flavor, they needed their customers to be there the whole time.
Every part of the campaign involves the fans and the public — from picking flavor names, to voting on the best user-submitted ad campaign.
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Stats published by Nielsen show that social media usage has increased by 82% in the last year, an astronomical rise. Facebook (), Twitter (), YouTube, blogs, and
We’re social creatures, so it was only
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Most of us have heard some version of "Social Media/Twitter is like a Cocktail Party" and while this is hardly a new meme, a party is not a party is not a party and social media is not community – even though it may share many of the same characteristics. To me it is like saying a cocktail party is not a dinner party – most people would agree. I like both as an individual but one represents my circle of acquaintances and the other represents people with whom I have more intimate relationships. For business, that is very similar to a marketing funnel – and depending on what type of business you are in, one may be more important than the other. In particular, if you are marketing to businesses rather than individuals, the deeper relationships engendered by "dinner parties" are critical to your marketing efforts. There are a few characteristics of a good dinner party that make it special and different:
Done well, the host of a dinner party makes their guests feel welcome, comfortable, interesting, and desirable. It is a pretty good 'tool' for establishing closer relationships with people and making them want to stay friends with you. What can businesses learn? Sure, throw a lot of cocktail parties (i.e. use social media tools), you have to get your name out and chat with the crowd… but make sure you also throw some fabulous dinner parties – or get invited to them – because those are the events that allow you to have a richer conversation. Niche communities are where people will trust each other, participate in deeper conversations about their needs, and really get to know you. Setting up a community to serve the same purpose as a dinner party requires:
You can throw the dinner party, which may cost more but you get to decide who gets invited, or you can work on being a sought-after guest – someone that helps hosts provide good content and/or energy. But beware: It is all to easy to provide an appealing location, invite people over and assume they will form a tight knit community. But think about throwing a dinner party, having people come over and then spending the evening in another room – maybe yelling out to them every once in a while. Awkward, no? People would chit chat a little but the conversation would be stilted because there they are, sitting in your living room… waiting for you and the food, eventually leaving in disappointment and annoyance. Communities are a phenomenal way of developing relationships with prospects and customers… but don't think they will effortlessly develop. Want to understand them a little better? Go home and plan a dinner party. About Rachel Rachel Happe (@rhappe) is a Co-Founder and Principal at The CommunityRoundtable and has over fifteen years of experience working with emerging technologies including enterprise social networking, ecommerce, and Bitpass, & IDe. In addition, as a technology analyst, Rachel initiated IDC's enterprise social software practice where she wrote groundbreaking research including The Power and Passion of Organic Communities: How Technology Can Be Used to Increase Discovery, Engagement, and Productivity; The Social Enterprise: How Social Networking Changes Everything; and U.S. Social Networking Application 2008-2012 Forecast: Enterprise Social Networking Takes Hold. Rachel started her business career at PRTM as a Business Analyst focused on helping technology companies understand and improve their product development operations. She writes at The Social Organization. |
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