“Unsure why Facebook is so confusing to get it doing what I want… I can barely make heads or tails of the various “streams”, news, profile, wall, photos … really IMO it should all be one stream.” Hmm, I agree. But then I’m a real less is more man when it comes to web 2.0. Hence also why that’s it to this post.
Quote from comment on how to get Facebook updated by Twitter.
The challenge of 2012? To creatively use social media to generate a people-led Olympics, rather than a government-sponsored games. London ain’t Beijing baby!
Here’s Alex Balfour’s presentation from the event:
Thought I’d share the benefit of my experience in the NHS/healthcare e-commerce & web 2.0 with the following quick & dirty guide to promoting your healthcare product using web 2.0 tools:
Say your product currently already has a product site which has tons of great information about the product. Without too much time/effort the information could be lifted for pages to sit on a new blog. Product information would included along with independent sources such as the Mayo Clinic to ensure all medical issues and good practice is covered to help establish the blog’s credibility.
The marketing aim of this customer-centric blog would be to engage customers into giving reviews of the product, a well-documented highly trusted source of product information for customers. Your existing product video on YouTube would be embedded on a blog post, with a link from the current YouTube comments section to the blog. The idea would be for the UK-centric blog to have a mixture of customer video testimonials, and expert content on the proper use of your product. The RSS feeds off this blog could then be syndicated to websites and blogs to help bring in traffic and raise page rank.
Key is the fact that customers can post questions and queries in the comments, and see them answered by a moderator. They would also be encourage to post their own testimonial videos, pending approval of course.
This blog would then include the clear opportunity to social bookmark pieces to Digg, Stumble, and Twitter from each post, which would help SMO for the site.
To track conversations use Twitter search engine and pick up the RSS feed, to keep an eye on relevant key word terms and collect these in your RSS aggregator. This would also collect Google blog/news/Technorati conversations. These would then feed blogs to target as appropriate for link swops/rss syndication/comments/forum discussion involvement. You might also establish a twitter account such as twitter.com/myproduct to also take part in discussions with customers too, and invite them to the blog and Facebook Group via this route.
More importantly there would be a clear banner link through to a Facebook Group branded as per the blog, which would also include much of the same content as the blog (you can use the api which allows blog post to be posted automatically into Facebook for example).
The Facebook Group would nicely serve as a parallel marketing arm, seeded with group members, who in turn on joining would auto-alert their friends to the group’s benefits. Initially this would involve a search for existing UK Facebook Groups currently focusing on your product, and an appeal to their members to join. The Facebook Group would also include a clear banner link back to the blog. Facebook works via linking through profiles to make network marketing success, blogs work through conversations. This neatly divides the two arms of the campaign, though obviously there is cross-over.
I would start looking to see what’s listed as links for your healthcare product on a key public site such as NHS Choices, and therefore likely to be gaining significant traffic. Clearly those sites with discussion forums are most useful.
As stated above very quickly other blog & sites would be identified for involvement in discussion.
Plus a PPC/online advertising strategy could be considered for Facebook and Google Adwords based on identified ‘hotspots’ for likely customers. To back this up there’s this remark from Headshift’s Cybersoc from the new media event in Dubai via Twitter: “The guy from Microsoft advertising seems to be recommending advertising on Facebook. Odd. Probably true though.” On the other side of the debate check this out, though it does say Facebook CPM is cheaper than Google, there’s a reason for that: essentially that Google users are on a specific search page for a search-related reason, whereas for Facebook the prime reason is visiting a friend:
“Facebook impressions run 13 to 16 cents CPM. For comparison, our clients in aggregate pay $10 eCPM on Google, and $6 eCPM on Yahoo. The fact FB can’t command higher CPMs speaks volumes to how advertisers value those impressions.” Also see Bryant Urstadt’s Tech Review piece (Social Networking Is Not a Business*) from which this insight is taken from on the challenge of turning a profit from social network sites.
In the longer term would look to contact patients support societies to ensure factual info on your product plus web links are included in their ‘patient pack’.
How important architectural choices are in creating viral applications? Very important in encouraging retweeting for example, from James Governor’s Monkchips blog:
Tim O’Reilly says:
As one of the most prolific retweeters around, I want to give a shout out to twhirl for encouraging retweet behavior by giving a simple button to do it. I don’t think I would ever have adopted retweeting with such gusto without that easy feature.
This example illustrates just how important architectural choices are in creating viral applications.
What’s so wonderful about twitter is that its minimal interface has led to an explosion of user and third-party application innovation. It’s a bit like what Alexander Pope said about writing in rhymed couplets: the limits of the form made his creativity shoot out, as water from a fountain.
“Many people with small networks have just as much influence as a few people with large networks,” says David Armano, VP at marketing firm Critical Mass (5,582 Twitter followers). Excellent blog you’ve got there David.
Funny, I said pretty much the same thing about the value of small networks in discussions about what makes an online community work best last week. Along the lines of instead of trying to make one big community to use microblogging within a site to allow many mini-communities to flourish. Then allow cross-over. After all you’ve got (as with all community development) to start off from where people are ‘at’.
“I do see opportunity for traditional online communities to take a new look at member profiles and how they can be used build identity. Participation in discussions should not be the only way to have an identity in an online community. ” (Commoncraft, 2004)
To summarise in my words: social networks = linking via people’s profile & their interests, so don’t need to post to be ‘active’. Online communities = linking around discussions.
“For anyone serious about spreading their creative content, getting on a popular list is an absolute requirement.” (Peter Rupert’s Blog, Entertainment Media Research)
During a recession social applications such as communities, social networking sites and word-of-mouth marketing will prove worthwhile because they depend not on a diminishing ad budget, but on an abundant resource: customers, so says the new Awareness report which in turn quotes Forrester Research:
“Conventional wisdom says that experimental media get cut in tough economic times. But social applications like communities, social networking sites, and word-of-mouth marketing are proving themselves, and they depend on an abundant resource — your customers — rather than a scarce one — advertising dollars. In a recession, social applications with measurable results will pay off.” (Forrester Research, Strategies for Interactive Marketing In A Recession, February 2008)
Note: it’s the measurable results that count!
It occurred to me that a basic effor/time saving principle of agile project management is that you don’t try to plan everything up front, because you don’t need to!
The fact that for example getting a site live ready by a certain date requires a change to the URL pointing means you only need to worry about it when you get close to the event, as each event is connected in reality to another (‘one thing leads to another’ to slice the folk wisdom). Call it ‘managing complexity’ if you like.
The internet is a “giant cocktail party”, according to business expert Seth Godin. Here, he gives his take on whether sites like Twitter and Facebook matter to your business (clue: a lot of networking on the web is low value; help yourself by helping others = good networking).