Trust Mitch Joel to cut to the chase, with his six points of separation –the six ways to jump start social media.
1. Reader
2. Blogrolls
3. Delicious
4. Google Alerts
5. Get an iPod
6. Comment
Search Engine usage results
Last Friday I took a snap survey about how readers of this blog and ValleyPRblog use search engines.
Interesting results, as always. Meaning, you get to know the different ways people use something we take for granted.
- 60 Percent use a search engine from a tool-bar they have installed on their browser.
- When using search, 75 Percent Always click on Natural Search results first (12 Percent said never!)
- Only 7 Percent first click on Paid results first (60 Percent never go there first)
- Interestingly, 57 Percent click on Natural and Paid results ‘Sometimes’ (of the choices Always, Sometimes, and never)
- 38 Percent Always scroll down to the bottom of the page to view the results (50 Percent do it Sometimes, 12 Percent Never go there; 50 Percent do it sometimes.
- 44 Percent are darn persistent, and Always click on the next page of results
What might this mean? Remember this was not a scientifically selected sample. But they were random, no doubt, and more importantly, people like you, probably.
I used to work at an interactive marketing agency, and the thinking at that time was that clients were putting way too much money on Paid Search, and neglecting finding ways to get high ranking on the Natural results. Natural (or ‘Organic‘ Search) is the industry term for getting the search engine web crawlers or ‘spiders’ to rank your web site on the left side of a results page.
Translated into marketing, this means spending a lot more time with optimizing those pages on your site so that they are Google and Yahoo friendly.
Speaking of Airliness in social media…
Just noticed another fact about Southwest’s blog, Nuts about Southwest.
Nuts is just one year old, and (says Brian Lusk, Corporate Comms manager, in an interview) has used the blog for discussting sticky issues such as assigned seating.
Delta Ailines, on the other hand, is using Twitter in for a variety of things. Posting tinyurl’s of Delta Ads on YouTube is just one of the more obvious ones. (Using new media to get more attention to old media, via new media!) But how about this clever way of getting the word out in the twittersphere (if that’s a word):
@SteveJobs – thanks for the iPod seat connectors. testing some out right now.
Or engaging Stve Rubel in a tweet…
Or apologizing to a customer for a bad United experience, because:
"The industry is broken. We’re working hard to fix it…"
And then there’s the Unofficial Richard Branson blog, that’s has plenty of plugs for the Virgin brand…
Blogging Phoenix-based pilot — Southwest airline’s new brand voice.
Who wouda thunk! Your captain, as he prepares for takeoff, is also making mental notes for his blog.
Not sure how many airlines are doing this, but it’s hardly a surprise from a company such as Southwest Airlines, that consistently allow their employees to impact their brand voice. Ray Stark, a phoenix-based captain is doing just that.
A great example for those who are in trepidation about alllowing
those without the title of communictaion or marketing in their titles
to actually have their say.
Would, say, a pizza company let it’s truck drivers comment on the
freshness of its toppings? I’ve heard many a marketing director think
only certain employees ought to be allowed to be spokespersons for the
organization. So back to Southwest. Would you allow a pilot to comment
about tornadoes he may be flying into? Ray Stark says things like this:
The moving weather depiction shows the weather just
west of MCI and heading toward the airport. Hopefully, we can arrive
(and depart) before the worst of it arrives.
But it lends a perspective that no communicator in a corporate
office would have a clue about, which is why employee blogs are so
valuable. We communicators may know a few things (or not) about split
infinitives or RSS feeds, but we could never come up with stuff like
this:
Due to the curvature of the earth, the cloud tops
were hiding out of sight over the horizon as we left PHX. We can now
start to see the mass of moisture in our path.
Which is another way of saying, kudos to Southwest Airlines! They
did break Stark’s long post into three, but they allowed him to be
himself! I used to like their cool ads.
But these are way more valuable. What do you think?
(Cross-posting this from ValleyPrBlog)
MyRagan set to be the Communicators’ MySpace
It’s barely 24 hours since I created an account with social media site, MyRagan, and the interest groups are swelling up at a fast clip.
Within a few hours of my post on ValleyPRBlog, I had people linking to me. The Ragan brand name certainly helps, because like IABC or PRSA, you know what to expect.
Many of us, who have ventured into MySpace have found out that’s while
there a lot of cool things going on there, it’s not exactly our space.
Ergo MyRagan, a service whose time has come, where people in PR,
marketing, media and communication feel more at home with the social
media architecture.
MyRagan’s architecture still needs some work. It’s more like scaffolding, but that’s Ok with me. Building this place must have taken a lot of planning, and as we all know, social media is a work in progress.
Some features are very good. The People Search feature brings up thumbnails of members, and tells you who’s online, so you could IM them, or send them a message from the site.
But competition will be nipping at their heels. I just heard Neville Hobson on FIR, mention that Melcrum, in the UK is set to launch it’s own social media portal. Melcrum has been watching this space carefully. In March this year, they conducted a social media survey that reported how among 2,100 executives, 55% were using blogs, and how RSS and social networks were very popular.
Friday Survey – Search Engine Usage
Pssst! Could you spare another 1.8 minutes?
This week, I would love to hear about your preferences when using Search.
We always wonder how we ever lived without Search. There are lots of
stats on browser usage, and debate about the 80/20 rule of Natural and
Paid search. But this week I like to get a snapshot of usage among PR,
Marketing, Journalism and Advertising people.
Results will be posted here on Wednesday, May 16th.
(Cross posting from ValleyPRBlog.com)
Community power –or revolt?
The wisdom of the crowds (WOTC) has a different connotation, depending on which side of the fence you are on. Consider the so-called Digg revolt, two days ago, as reported by TechCrunch.
Kevin Rose’s capitulation is telling, in that it’s coming from someone who’s whole business model is the WOTC.
Listening to articles –and I don’t mean podcasts!
Integrating audio into an online format is getting to be easier now, with text-to-speech, audio icons and their close cousins screen readers.
Check this article out. It’s the Associated Press story on ASU, featured in the International Herald Tribune, on March 25th. When you click on this link, to the right, is a small box with eight options, one of which is to ‘listen to this story.’ Clicking on it opens a proprietary audio player from the Tribune.
Why is this important to us? Consider this. The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) which is the web’s arbiter of standards, protocols and guidelines has been pushing the concept of ‘interoperability’ has been calling for better accessibility and navigation to all users, including those with disabilities. Voice browsers and something called VoiceXML is a part of it.
Who knows, there could come a day when someone may be able to subscribe to a page via RSS (say ASU News, or Knowledge@ W.P. Carey) and have the text feed translated into audio.
Sounds futuristic? It’s already being experimented with iNewscaster, from a company called Magnetic Time. (Thanks to For Immediate Release, for this cool tip).
Distribution? Access? On-demand information? It’s another channel that’s worth looking into. Now!
Check this cool demo of how text-to-speech works when mashed up with RFID, from Make Magazine.
Second Life for everyone?
Gartner, yesterday at its tech symposium made a prediction that’s going to set the clock ticking. It said that 80% of active Internet users will be involved in Sccond Life by 2011.
So it’s not surprising that coleges are rushing into SL.
Among them are a few expected names —Columbia, Harvard, Leeds Colege, and Stanford. University of Texas has four islands! The San Francisco museum of science, art and human perception has its Exploratium in SL. One university has held a 300 level writing seminar (on technology and society). Harvard had an ‘immersive’ seminar last year. The list goes on…
In one sense, Second Life is social media at its best –immersive,
interactive, dynamic, and a totally opt-in environment. But it’s the ability to
engage in content that truly attracts me. Reuters has video, a news
ticker, and downloadable documents in a rich multimedia experience you
just could not have, even via a web 2.0 web site.
From the perspective of lectures, and student interacton, this will
be where many other social media tools –video and movies, IM,
pictures, flash animation, blogs and wikis come together.
Wikipedia as ‘clearinghouse’
With so much questioning about how the media handle tragedy, there’s an interesting alternative —Wikipedia.
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