Merry Christmas everyone!

At this point, I'm probably drinking frothy eggnog (except I'm lactose intolerant), eating chestnuts (except I'm allergic to nuts), and singing Christmas carols (....) back in Michigan with my roots.

Anyhow, Qui Diaz wrote a great article on Mashable last week regarding using social media (and the internet at large) for social good. She called it, DIGITAL CHARITY TOOLBOX: 50+ Ways to Get Your “Give” On and I just wanted to pass it along. This holiday season, if you're looking for a few ways to support a charity using the interwebs, this post should get you started.

Cheers, and a very Merry Christmas.

If you have a blog, or if you have a client who has a blog, I'd like to offer some suggestions on how to measure that blog's success. As a disclaimer, much of this post (but not all of it) is about how to use Google Analytics to measure blogs. So if you don't use GA, I hope you still find value; but the last two paragraphs might not make sense. I've decided to include these suggestions in a seriees and I shall call it, "Figuring Out Your Traffic So You Can Blog to Your Audience So That You Can Garner More Traffic and Engagement And Feel Better About Yourself So You Can Go to Awkward Social Media Events and Talk About Your Blog In Real Life Because That's Really Cool."

Today is part 1 and I'll be covering: the basics, identifying goals, and new versus returning visitor segmentation.

Continue reading "Measuring Blogs Success - Part 1: The Basics, Goals & Visitors"

Looking for another new year prediction?  How about this - Facebook Connect is going to be big in 2009.

Maybe huge.

(If you don't yet already know what Facebook Connect is, VizEdu has a simple demo explaining the service.)

There are five big reasons why I'm excited about the potential for Facebook Connect:

Continue reading "Facebook Connect Gives Digital Marketers Huge Opportunity in 2009"

Like many of our peers in the media "middle," we've been doing a lot of thinking about 2009. So, we kicked off this month's Middle School Marketing meeting talking about our online marketing predictions for the new New Year. Rightfully so, this week there's been a lot of chatter about what's to come: Peter Kim's compilation of social media predictions, eMarketer's article of what lies ahead, and Clickz's What Next piece, to name a few.

Like many of our earlier MSM meetings, we talked about the utility, usage and future of Twitter. Lisa mentioned that she was surprised to learn over Thanksgiving that many of her high school and college-age relatives had never heard of Twitter. Dispite the 1.3 million users, how many of them are active, and what's the demographic breakdown? Even within our small group, there were various use cases: keeping up with current events, networking, RSS feed, following friends, following clients, and networking with other industry types. In the end, Twitter is simply another medium which can be used to broadcast message... in 140 characters or less, of course.

Continue reading "Middle School Marketing - Reflections & Predictions"

Last week, Viget hosted the December Social Media Club DC event at our Falls Church headquarters. Our good friend Justin Thorpe with Clearspring Technologies gave a presentation on How Sharing Can Help You Reach More Users Online. For those who couldn't make the event, I've provided a quick recap below:

People are spending more time in social networks and online communities. While this may seem obvious, Justin drew upon a relevant dinner party analogy to drive the point home. When spending time with friends, family and co-workers in social situations, we converse on an array of topics ranging from what we've been up to and what's interesting to us to current events and television shows. People love to share. Social media tools have made it easier to share online - and folks love it! Widgets make it easier for individuals and companies to "share"  - to take content from one place online and put it somewhere else (usually on facebook, iGoogle, or blogs). The succesful widgets tend to focus on simplcity. Justin gave a couple of great examples, many of which can be found on his Favorite Widgets blog.

Continue reading "Social Media Club DC Recap"

As digital marketers strive to deliver value and meaning for consumers, the widget is increasingly becoming an essential part of the overall marketing mix. Brands, content publishers and just about everyone in between are discovering entertaining or useful opportunities to launch branded applications for their customers. Nike, InStyle and UPS among others have all created widgets to connect with customers in a way that is direct, sharable and interactive. (We even relied heavily on a widget strategy for promoting singer songwriter Martin Sexton.)

Bob Garfield writes in AdAge that the widget fits nicely in the post-advertising age, and quotes Contagious Magazine's Jessica Greenwood who says that, "the widget's value is 'like a basic unit of utility. The marketing becomes part of the product."

But how does a brand figure out where to start with widgets? For that, I turned to Justin Thorp, Community Manager at Clearsping Technologies, whose widget platform earned 332 million unique visitors worldwide in October. Here is Justin's take on where to begin:

When should a company consider launching a widget strategy?
I think the question is, “When should a company consider widgets as part of their overall communications strategy?”  If you’re publishing any type of content online, you need to develop a strategy for how you’re going to get your content in the hands of existing and potential users.  Because they’re portable and can move all over the Web, widgets are a great mechanism for doing this.  We recommend widgets for content publishers who want to extend their reach beyond their domain and who hope to reach the hard-to-reach user on the Social Web.

Continue reading "Getting Started with Widgets"