We’ve managed to obtain a sneak preview of the new Facebook Lite site. Here it is:
New variant of Facebook
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Social Media Marketing is taking off!
August 11, 2009 – 1:19 pm
Here’s today’s view from the Juice Digital office window. Yes, we’re having a blast.
Vive Le Social Media Networking
July 31, 2009 – 2:51 pm
Some of the most persistent reasons our fellow marketing communications professionals give for giving social media a low priority centre on relevance. “My organisation’s not ready for it. It’s not such a big deal in B2B. We haven’t established a Social Media Policy yet. Our clients are not open enough.”
Depiction of the tricolour in the hands of a sans-culotte during the French Revolution
The eighteenth century French aristocracy thought much the same thing but there simply wasn’t enough cake around to feed the peasants. Either that or they thought it would be a great subject for a musical. Anyway, Robespierre had the last laugh. Sacré bleu!
On this occasion, the heel-dragging, hard-drinking, curmudgeonly mainstream (analogue) media have already signed-up as sans-culottes. A significant majority are born-again bloggers, Facebook fanatics and Twittering twits.
A friend in traditional PR bought me a drink at the weekend. That was notable enough but she told a story about stalking the same set of journos, and more recently bloggers, for years. The relationship was very professional and buttoned-up, but ultimately professionally productive and mainly used email and texts.
In the last six months, she has become friends with/followers of most of them on a number of social media sites. The relationships have blossomed, stopping short of impropriety but intimate enough to allow them to socialise and become, in some cases, genuine friends.
They follow each others’ Tweets, ‘friend’ each other on FaceBook, exchange personal and business recommendations, show interest in each others’ spouses and children. And, she gets significantly more high-quality coverage for her clients.
This is social media networking at its best. It is, of course, a different subject entirely to Social Media Marketing. The latter is more about using social media to create and syndicate sympathetic corporate content, something the PR world is still struggling with.
However, it exploits the fact that this is how people now use the Web. Not so much from a search engine page but more from a social media homepage. It’s about making connections with people.
To drag your feet in exploiting this new phenomenon is to cede ground to a flexible and lively competitor. It is plannable, measurable and effective. Just get there before your competitors twig. Or is that Tweet?
Social media marketing checklist
July 20, 2009 – 3:09 pm
This is a useful list for managing social media accounts composed by Chris Brogan and enhanced by Nikki Pilkington.
Trust Agents, a forthcoming title from Chris Brogan and Julien Smith
Chris Brogan is President of New Marketing Labs, a new media marketing agency, and home of the Inbound Marketing Summit conferences and Inbound Marketing Bootcamp educational events. He is a co-author of Trust Agents.
It is primarily for use in a business-to-business environment but could be adapted to any social media arena.
I have re-formatted it in MS Word if you want a copy. Request one by commenting on this blog.
What’s your view?
July 13, 2009 – 2:43 pm
When we look out of our office window here at Juice we get the usual car park view.
What’s yours like?
Time for a change?
July 8, 2009 – 1:34 pm
When you get to a certain age you get all introspective and start to question the value of what you’ve done and are doing. But don’t worry, you’re not in for a heap of self-indulgent navel-gazing.
I just had a serious think about time-wasting (in a professional context) and how much I’ve done. So here’s a challenge. Look at the list below and do an honest assessment of how long you’ve spent in the last 2 years on the following activities.
- Making or receiving presentations (particularly PowerPoint) that no-one really wanted to see
- Preparing proposals for projects that were never going to happen
- Preparing new business pitches when there was never any new business there
- Attending meetings that had no action come from them
- Reading or writing reports of meetings that had no actions come from them
- Attending networking events where there’s no-one there you wish to meet (or them you!)
- Participating in organisational restructuring that doesn’t make anything more efficient
Now don’t misunderstand me. I’ve had inspirational meetings, attended enormously enjoyable events, pitched and won some great projects and, I hope, been involved in some really beneficial change. But I question how selective I’ve been with my time and I’m determined to do better.
Should you?
Juice Digital Segments : Monday 6th July
July 6, 2009 – 3:14 pm
Each day at Juice Digital our team immerse themselves in a multitude of blogs, news feeds and social networks, picking through the most read-worthy Digital PR, Social Media News and discussion…..so you don’t have to.
Here is our news round-up for Monday 6th July:
BT to ditch Phorm after public outcry, via the Guardian
Phorm’s digitally targeted advertising has won few fans since emerging in 2002 and BT today cancelled it’s contract with the American based company after complaints from customers. The firm tracks a users Internet habits, then unloads targeted personal advertising: methods which have led to accusations of online snooping by privacy campaigners. Phorm have declared BT’s decision as ‘not the end of the world’, but follows on from Amazon’s recent service opt out. After ISP’s, will Social Networks be next on Phorm’s user-advertising hit list?
Top 10 Twitter marketing blunders identified, via U Talk Marketing
With Twitter’s Marketing pull showing no signs of receding, it was only a matter of time before commercial marketers suffered from slack Social Media practise. A report by Computer Weekly highlights gaffes from multi-nationals Dominos Pizza and Habitat and (potentially as damaging regionally) Croydon Council. Unsurprisingly, the report claims that Twitter users seem to exist in one of two camps: “those who get it, and those who don’t”.
Manchester City relaunches website - with Social Media emphasis, via How-Do
Loads of dosh couldn’t buy Manchester City European football or Kaka but the richest club in the world now own a swish, Social Media-tuned website. The site is bright, brash and extremely easy on the eye: it’s great to see a football club fully engage with Flickr (surely a potential footy fan haven?) and Twitter. Brand Manchester City looks set to challenge their Red Devil neighbours both on and off the pitch next season.
Google Maps adds real estate option, via TechDigest
Google hit the headlines earlier in the year with it’s controversial unveiling of Street View, but there’s no doubting their capabilities as both a leading service and content provider. Using Street View technology, house hunters in Australia and New Zealand (soon to be global) can scan potential locations and pinpoint available properties. Is there anything Google can’t do?
If you do one thing this week … sort out your online presence: employers vetting job applicants, via the Guardian
So you’ve finished University, partied for 3 weeks in Ibiza and returned misty eyed to a pile of job applications: the only obstacle to employment being your debauched holiday snaps doing the rounds on Facebook. If a web-savvy employer does their homework, one comprising photo could be the difference between your own desk and the dole queue. Publicist Mark Borkowski advises: “Don’t blunder in because you feel you have to, or you’ll look like a dad dancing at a wedding”.
Juice Digital Segments : Friday 3rd July
July 3, 2009 – 2:46 pm
Each day at Juice Digital our team immerse themselves in a multitude of blogs, news feeds and social networks, picking through the most read-worthy Digital PR, Social Media News and discussion…..so you don’t have to.
Here is our top news round-up!
Expert advice for the Digital tsar, via The Guardian
The recent Digital Britain report was a vital political nod to the importance of a Digital future. But as the Guardian’s media blogger explains “the UK still maintains a narrow view of the digitally disadvantaged”, namely the millions that can’t get online or aren’t interested in using computers or the web. Is it just a generation gap or are there young people in the UK rebelling against Digital technology too?
Does Anybody Still Use Second Life? And If So, How Much Is It Worth Today? via TechCrunch
Was Second Life ahead of its time or simply a poorly executed online Social experiment? A couple of years ago, Second Life looked set to revolutionise online social communication and interaction. Nowadays, with more users actively sharing information and populating their own communities and networks, will Second Life be left as online scrap?
Magazine titles on Twitter, via Media UK
With print publications spreading their staff across Digital platforms, some commentators have bemoaned the impact of free content on traditional media outlets. Personally, I feel that interesting, self-sustaining publications can survive and grow with the help of well run Digital partner channels. British music magazine NME is top of the chart (with over 22k followers), a testament to their hard work developing a Digitally savvy brand.
How FriendFeed Could Become the Ultimate Social Media Tracking Service, via Read Write Web
Finding favour with heavy Social Media users, FriendFeed brings together conversation from 40 different social media sites and user RSS feeds. It’s user-friendly navigation and significant networking reach could make FriendFeed the next ‘must have’ Social Media tool in the coming months.
10 Ways to Find People on Twitter, via Mashable
Heavy Tweeters may have found Twitter’s ‘Find People’ search a fruitless and frustrating experience. Don’t fear - the ever reliable crew at Mashable have produced an essential People search guide. Juice heartily recommends search engine Tweepz and the more personable follower tool Mr Tweet.
Gravatars, or globally-recognised avatars
June 25, 2009 – 1:28 pm
A few contacts and clients have asked us recently how to get a gravatar, those images/pictures that appear identifying you when you comment on another blog, forum or website. So here’s a quick guide.
A gravatar, or globally recognized avatar, is quite simply an image that follows you from site to site appearing beside your name when you make a comment. Avatars help identify your posts on blogs and web forums, so why not on any site?
Go here to set up a gravatar.com account: it’s free and all that’s required is your email address. Once you’ve signed up, you can upload your avatar image and soon after you’ll start seeing it on gravatar-enabled sites.
Setting up gravatars on your own site is relatively staightforward. Plugins are available for leading blog software and content management systems and the Gravatar tutorials will have you running gravatars in no time.
Jeremy Dent's gravatar
To request your own gravatar facility from gravatar.com’s servers, you simply add an image to your users’ activity with an “src” attribute that points to our gravatar image generator and includes an MD5 hash of the user’s email address.
Since all gravatars are rated with an MPAA-style rating, you can restrict your site to show only gravatars whose content you are comfortable with.
Google making Waves
June 24, 2009 – 3:18 pm
Here’s how Google Wave works. You create a “wave” and add people to it. Everyone on your wave can use richly-formatted text, photos, gadgets and even feeds from other sources on the Web. They can insert a reply or edit the wave directly.
It’s concurrent rich-text editing where you see on your screen nearly instantly what your fellow collaborators are typing in your wave. That means Google Wave is just as well-suited for quick messages as for persistent content — it allows for both collaboration and communication. You can also use “playback” to rewind the wave and see how it evolved.
The Google Wave dashboard
Google Wave is a real-time communication platform. It combines aspects of email, instant messaging, wikis, Web chat, social networking, and project management to build one elegant, in-browser communication client. You can bring a group of friends or business partners together to discuss how your day has been or share files.
Google Wave actually has its own lingo – yes, you have to learn a few definitions if you’re going to really understand this new communication platform. Being aware of these terms will help you understand more about Google’s newest project.
Wave
A wave, specifically, refers to a specific threaded conversation. It can include just one person, or it can include a group of users or even robots (explained below). The best comparison I can make is that it’s like your entire instant messaging (IM) history with someone. Anything you’ve ever discussed in a single chat or conversation is a wave.
Wavelet
A wavelet is also a threaded conversation, but only a subset of a larger conversation (or a wave). It’s like a single IM conversation - a small part of a larger conversation and a larger history. Wavelets, though, can be created and managed separately from a wave.
Blip (BLIP reviews)
Even smaller than a Wavelet, a Blip is a single, individual message. It’s like a single line of an IM conversation. Blips can have other blips attached to them, called children. In addition, blips can either be published or unpublished (once again, it’s sort of like typing out an IM message but not yet sending it).
Wave, Wavelets and Blips
Document
A document actually refers to the content within a blip. This seems to refer to the actual characters, words, and files associated with a blip. Extension: An extension is a mini-application that works within a wave. So these are the apps you can play with while using Wave. There are two main types of extenisons: Gadgets and Robots
Gadgets
A gadget is an application users can participate with, many of which are built on Google’s OpenSocial platform. A good comparison would be iGoogle gadgets or Facebook applications.
Robots
Robots are an automated participant within a wave. They can talk with users and interact with waves. They can provide information from outside sources (i.e. Twitter (Twitter reviews)) or they can check content within a wave and perform actions based on them (i.e. provide you a stock quote if a stock name is mentioned).
Embedded Wave
An embedded wave is a way to take a Google Wave and the conversation within it and place it on your website. Users could use this as a chatroom, as a way to contact you, or for something more.