With engagement the new name in the metric game for marketers, brands are rabidly trying all that they can to build sites that foster any level of engagement with their customers.

Some are well-suited to creating their own community, while others would be wise to invest in leveraging pre-existing social networks like MySpace or Facebook. (Mashable has a post up listing several recent initiatives, including social networks from Reebok and Disney.) Recently, even musicians like 50 Cent and Kylie Minogue have begun focusing their efforts beyond MySpace to create their social networking platforms.

Coca-Cola is one brand that has been throwing a fistful of darts on the social media wall - hoping for something to stick. After failing to see the value in last year’s viral sensation “Diet Coke and Mentos,” and somewhat lackluster experiments in Second Life among others, they’re gaining some traction in their latest blog. What Coca-Cola is learning, as are other brands that are joining the conversation with their customers, is that it requires a longterm commitment to nurturing those relationships. Relationships, that quite frankly, need to built on their customer’s terms.

Continue reading "Getting Social With Big Brands"

Social media influencers may not have the sway they once thought they had over their digital fans.

A study this week reported that “self-described social media users put far more trust in friends and family online than in popular bloggers, or strangers with 10,000 MySpace “friends.” In other words, while some pseudo-online celebrity bloggers may have earned a respectable legion of followers and have further earned the right to carry the mantle of being a full-blown media outlet; their influence doesn’t equal that of your good friend dropping a solid recommendation on Twitter. 

Continue reading "Social Influencers Can Be Anyone, Anywhere"

For social media marketers, one of the challenges has always been metrics. How do you measure success? While we at Viget have a secret sauce of our own for such things; the social media industry is still not as data driven as some would like.

Recognizing this criticism of social media and all things viral, YouTube has just unveiled YouTube Insight.

In their own words:

Finally, we have some answers. Today we’re releasing YouTube Insight, a free tool that enables anyone with a YouTube account to view detailed statistics about the videos that they upload to the site. For example, uploaders can see how often their videos are viewed in different geographic regions, as well as how popular they are relative to all videos in that market over a given period of time. You can also delve deeper into the lifecycle of your videos, like how long it takes for a video to become popular, and what happens to video views as popularity peaks.

In the same way Feedburner’s internal analytics have made it an invaluable for anyone with an RSS feed and essentially crushed the competition; YouTube Insight will further distance YouTube from their online video competitors.

Check out a screenshot of the interface.

Well done YouTube. Well done Google Analytics.

Listening as marketing - it’s becoming a weekly theme around here.

Yet another big brand is exploring new ways to leverage social media tools to better listen to their customers: Intel is launching ITopia next week. ITopia is designed to enable IT professionals to talk directly with Intel engineers and will also include community sites for IT pros to connect directly with each other.

Continue reading "Intel Gets Social with ITopia"

David Pogue of The New York Times wrote about a recent conference where attendees were asked why they weren’t taking advantage of Web 2.0. The responses were not out of the ordinary:

The audience loved that one; within seconds, there were 132 responses on the screen in a huge, scrolling list. “Not enough money.” “Don’t understand it.” “No technical resources.” “Not enough manpower.” “No visible return on investment.” “Fear of ridicule.” “Fear of slander.” “Fear of permanence.” “Fear of the public running amok.”

Continue reading "Get Over Your Fear"