Posts Tagged ‘myspace’

This month’s AiMA event was a good one (and not just because I got a cool social media t-shirt). The topic covered the social media initiatives of 3 big brands (Red Cross, AT&T, & Comcast). Below is a recap of what I learned from each speaker:

Wendy Harman (@wharman), Social Media Manager at Red Cross

• Using social media tools to execute Red Cross mission – to prevent, prepare, & respond to emergencies
• Listening to the conversations is key – uses tools to listen (Google, Technorati, Radian6, etc.)
• Emails internal stakeholders 15-20 social conversations each day to keep them in the loop
• Social interaction must meet at least 1 of their 3 Rules of Engagement (Incite discussion about organization’s relevant issues, Provide mission-critical information, Prompt immediate action)

Mimi Chan, Director of National Segment Marketing at AT&T Mobility

• Focused on Youth Marketing – ages 13-24
• AT&T sees that 95% of youth age 18-24 have mobile phones
• Go where your target audience goes  – started in MySpace, went to Facebook, & now considering going back to MySpace
• Realized they could get more traffic on Facebook, AT&T moved youth website entirely to Facebook last year (AT&T Share)
• Using Facebook as a hub for activation, engagement, promotions, feedback, & insights

Frank Eliason (@comcastcares), Director of Digital Care, Comcast

• Marketing, PR, & Customer Service are coming together – whether you like it or not
• People recognize passion – that’s the Social Media strategy
• Users don’t want to have conversations with a logo – be personable with your customers in social interactions
• Next big thing for companies will be to aggregate other forums & blog communities to provide helpful service to customers
• Control factor is not with the brand – the conversations are going to happen, it’s your choice to engage
• Your employees are in social media – give them the tools & policies to succeed in the social space

At the conclusion of the event, the speakers provided key takeaways for the group regarding social media:

• “Let go“
• “Take a risk“
• “Let your employees be your brand ambassadors“

If you want to check out some of the great social conversations that were happening during the event, checkout the hashtag #aima in Twitter.

According to research conducted by ShesConnected, a female-oriented social networking site, women are heavy users of social networking sites with over half (59%) logging into social networks multiple times per day. What social networking sites are women using exactly? Facebook was the most popular with 83% of women having a profile; 73% had a profile on LinkedIn, 55% were on Twitter, and just 41% belonged to MySpace. Almost half of the women surveyed belong to 4 or more social networks.

What’s interesting to me are the reasons why women are visiting social networking sites. Networking and staying up-to-date were the most popular reasons (obviously), but several of the women surveyed indicated they are researching products and services and finding deals and discounts.

Women appear to be comfortable with social networks displaying advertising, however, they are not comfortable with social sites selling their personal data to advertisers. Is anyone?

Would love to hear some thoughts around these research findings, and specifically, how can these findings impact how we market to women in social networking sites going forward?

Sometimes I have email conversations (or IM or text or, GASP, live conversations) with people and I think afterwards, “now THAT should be a blog post.” So here is a recent chat about Twitter and what it should and shouldn’t be, and whether or not it should be worrying about marketing to Millennials. Only change I made was the email addresses for Twitter ID’s

The conversation

@shabernator: http://news.cnet.com/8301-17939_109-10265060-2.html?tag=mncol;title

@thejdrewfeldman: Thanks! Cool article, but I think that people who take the viewpoint that Twitter is solely a constant-status-updating attention-starved craze are missing some of the major benefits and uses of Twitter. And they probably didn’t use it for too long before coming to a conclusion

@jeffhilimire: My correlation is in 1995, most people thought email was about sending jokes around.

@shabernator: I think its interesting to think of it from the Gen Y perspective… how can twitter make them feel unique?

“For the Millennials to make the move, Twitter will have to find a way to integrate the self-branding features MySpace gave birth to and Facebook nurtured. Even if they’re packaged in 140 characters or less.”

@jeffhilimire: I think its interesting, but Twitter just isn’t about that for me. It’s completely different in almost every way than Facebook and MySpace.

My opinion is, people who don’t understand Twitter feel like it has to copy those social networks to be successful. I’m more of the viewpoint that Twitter isn’t supposed to be the size of Facebook or MySpace, its not your social world all wrapped up in a nice package like Facebook. It’s a new way to communicate, not a new social network.

If Twitter wants mass adoption and global domination, perhaps it needs to shift what its doing. But just the same way that we’d never sit here and say “for wiki’s to reach Millennials they need to be more like full functioning intranets,” we shouldn’t do the same thing to Twitter. Wiki’s have their place and I think Twitter has its place too, though it might not be what we all think it should be.

Also, I’m about to blog this conversation

By Chad Israel

Recently, Sally Hearn, MySpace’s Southeast regional manager, joined me in the Engauge Digital offices in Atlanta. Sally shared the current offerings from MySpace Mobile, as well as where she thinks mobile marketing is going in 2009. 

Check out the video from this discussion (run time is 9min 34 sec):