In the last 2 days there has been much chatter about the fact that Skittles made the mainpage of their  site a Twitter feed. The idea presumably being that it would pick up conversations about the sweets going on “out-there” in inter-web land.  And “be where the conversation is” in the most literal sense of the phrase.

But there is little actual chatter about Skittles out there and that was proved by the conversational activity this feed actually picked up on. Rather than great chat about the amazing colours (or playing skittles in english country pubs) the feed has picked up conversations about whether what Skittles were doing was actually going to bring value to the brand – that and some slightly malicious activity that was designed to publish complete rubbish on the Skittles homepage through tagging tweets with the skittles tag which had nothing to do with the brand or Twitter. So now everything has descended into a bizarre self-referential confusion of brand consideration, social media discussion and randomness.

What did they expect? The problem is that if you start a really bad conversation offline people will change the subject but online they will want to know why you started that bad discussion and they will rip it apart, because they don’t have to see you face to face – whether you are a brand or a person.

It was a brave action to take and no doubt has garnered the brand lots of publicity but only if you believe no publicity is bad publicity. When we recommend social media to our clients we have to think very carefully about the type of conversation that will ensue and how whether it’s actually relevant to our market. And be sure that we aren’t just jumping on the bandwagon.

Under each brand name it categorises what social media marketing they are using and links to their site(s). Handy!

There are mostly American brands on there but the things they are doing are not all off-the-scale for sophistication. Plenty of time to play catch-up. Many do blogs, micro blogs, social network membership, online video, wikis, podcasts, brand monitoring and widgets. Nothing we can’t all use / produce for our clients.

The list gave me some insights. Did you know that BA has a Twitter account? And IBM publishes its corporate strategy for social computing?

Peter Kim compiled the list with help from a lot of very influential friends. Last updated in October 2008.

Why do I ask? Well the reason is that I’m speaking at the Interactive Marketing Show in Manchester Nov 08 and will be talking about some of the best online campaigns and latest trends. So, if your agency or someone you admire in our wonderful industry has done something remarkable recently, then let me know and if it is truly outstanding then I’ll showcase it!

I look forward to hearing from you…

Mirage

For more info about the show: http://www.interactivemarketingshow.com/

It’s relevant to the BIMA community since the space is shaping up into a very interesting landscape from an advertising, monetisation and application development perspective, and BIMA members (likely to have some knowledge here) are well placed to benefit.

We make online advertising (in fact a lot of online advertising as Interpublic Group’s largest digital agency here in the UK, as I was reminded recently) in order to deliver as many messages as we can to targeted audiences to get them to remember the brand name or to click on to be more engaged and buy something.

We also develop communities, often by association with passions, football, tennis, online gaming, web developers, no less, and this is where the world of social computing is so challenging. Which is better – to run a campaign of x impressions that gets 0.02 click through (say 300 people) or to write a widget that is downloaded by 300 people. The answer is probably both are relevant, but do a different job. If the end game is engagement, time spent with the brand, or memorability, what’s your vote?

Think about it. Write about it. It’s a good debate.

Read the full post.

Apologies for cross-posting from my personal blog, fortunately there’s only a small overlap of readers on both. I wrote a post a few weeks ago, complaining about Yahoo!’s stupid integrated registration system. I was so pissed off with the login process I decided to can my use of MyBlogLog and Upcoming. Fortunately I’ve never had a problem with Flickr.

However, since removing the mugshots of my readers from my blogs, I’ve felt like something has been missing. So, I’ve managed to sort out my login details and Kamrul has reinstalled the MyBlogLog widget (Recent Readers).

What is MyBlogLog?

MyBlogLog provides a widget that you can place on your blog. MyBlogLog users who then visit your blog are automatically added to the “community” of visitors and you will usually see an image and/or text with the visitor’s user name. Only the most recent visitors MyBlogLog members, will show within the MyBlogLog widget (found on the sidebar to the right).

If you have a MyBlogLog account and remain logged in, your face will automatically appear in the widget on every blog you visit (assuming they have the widget installed – TechCrunch also has one). I didn’t really care for it that much until I had it removed from my blogs. For some strange reason I missed seeing (some) of the faces of my community. I say ’some’ because only a small fraction of people have an account – not because I don’t want to see some people

I’ve gone a step further than most blogs. MyBlogLog users who leave comments also get their mugshot displayed beside their comment. It would be fun to encourage more to join.

Setup an account now and join the community.

You’ve gotta embrace social media tools, techniques and importantly, communities, before you can even think about taking on BIMA’s public relations. So, please make sure you’re on Twitter and are a member of the BIMA Facebook group before getting in touch. Why? Well, if you need me to answer that question you’re not right for the job

I have quite a few PR people following me on twitter so this approach shouldn’t limit us to the extent that we don’t find anyone. Well, I hope not anyway.

Who we’re looking for

We’re looking for a freelancer or small agency to work on a contra basis. So, in return for your amazing craftsmanship with words and untouchable contacts within traditional media, we’ll help raise your own profile. You’ll also have the opportunity to educate industry via BIMA, with respect to the new PR world we live in today. You could even use your work with BIMA as a case study. That’s it. More defined requirements should actually come from you.

I’d like to take this opportunity to thank immediate future for its amazing contribution to BIMA over the years. Katy Howell in particular has been personally very helpful to me over the past couple of years. Thanks Katy. Katy is of course, on twitter. You’re probably wondering why we’re looking for someone else if immediate future did such a great job. The answer is simple, Katy did such a good job that her company has grown quickly, winning so many clients that they felt it was time to pass on the baton.

Please DM me to get the conversation going. I look forward to hearing from you soon. You’ll first need to follow me on twitter before being able to DM me.

I wrote a post a while back on my personal blog, highlighting the lack of journalists on Twitter. Today, thanks to Marie Boran (AKA PixieVonDust), I read with great interest that Charles Cooper from CNET is of the same opinion. Charles goes as far as to say

Out of curiosity, I drew up a list of 55 technology journalists to find out how many use Twitter, arguably one of the most important social-media technologies on the scene.

If you’re not familiar with Twitter, think of it as a conversational tool come micro blogging platform from a technology perspective. I also think of it as a community of early adopters, of whom, some are very influential with a passion for sharing. It’s a community you can communicate with via the Web site, desktop client or mobile phone (either by SMS or application). So, it’s very accessible. You can subscribe to alerts too, which means you get notified any time someone ‘tweets’ a message.

Twitter has almost replaced my RSS reader completely and to a degree, my reliance on Google to find stuff. If I want to find out the latest gossip, ask for advice on how to use something new, or find the latest world news, I head straight for Twitter.com and scroll through all the conversations for the past few hours.

I was in New York recently to take part in a panel discussion about Mobile TV. Whenever I wanted a recommendation for a restaurant within walking distance, or the address of a specific clothes shop, I turned to my Twitter community. Within minutes I had the answers to any question I asked. Some people went as far as to Google restaurants and read the reviews before making recommendations to me.

A couple of people actually few from California to New York to meet me after connecting on Twitter. It doesn’t get better than that.

So, if you’re not already on there, setup an account now and search for people you know. Check out who they follow as they’re likely to be connected to people you know. Don’t subscribe to too many people at once. Make sure some of them become a follower of you or you’ll end up looking like a stalker, and nobody will follow you. Don’t limit yourself to only people you know. It’s a fantastic way to get to know new people around the world too. Are you on Twitter already?

Read the full article on CNET.

Connect to me on Twitter let me know if you’ve followed me after reading this post so I know where you’ve come from.

See you at the Breakfast Bites on Tuesday.

The most interesting conversation to come out of SXSW for me was Sarah Lacy’s unfortunate interview with Mark Zuckerberg. Paul Carr (by the way, welcome to Twitter Paul!) captured the moment succinctly

Sarah Lacy (SL): “Thank you – thank you all so much. Now let’s hear it for this guy – Mark Zuckerberg everyone! So, I wanna start by asking – as I did in my book – why do you think Facebook… which I use like all the time – is so great?”

Mark Zuckerberg (MZ): “Well…”

SL: “What I mean is – what is it about Facebook that has attracted not just me but millions of other people like me to sign up?”

MZ: “Terrorism.”

SL: “I totally agree. Can you say more?”

MZ: “Sure…”

SL: “Can you believe this guy? Wow – I mean his answers are so short – seriously I think he’s the biggest loser I’ve ever interviewed. Hey Mark, can I tell the story about the first time I allowed you to be interviewed?”

MZ: “Sure… I guess.”

SL: “Ok, so, like, I’m interviewing Mark – and we’ve been talking for like twenty hours and Mark was like ‘I need to pee’ and I was like ‘that’s so interesting and sexy’, tell me more and he’s like ‘no I really need to pee’ and I’m like talking about my book and like the next thing I know he’s peed all over the floor and it’s like so cute and hilarious.”

MZ: “Thanks for sharing that.”

(Audience break into spontaneous standing ovation, in awe at Zuckerberg’s razor sharp retort. Fat guy at the front screams and faints. Twitter crashes.)

SL: “Ok, so getting back to Facebook, I wanna ask you about privacy and Facebook Beacon.”

MZ: “Ok, well, let me say that Beacon isn’t something we’re really focussed on as a company right now – I mean it’s like not something I’ve even really heard of. What people don’t understand is that it was developed by our platform team and not our advertising team – so really it’s not advertising at all. I mean, in the Lebanon, kids are actually using it to interact with Coca Cola which – and this is unbelievable – makes them realise what they’re missing by not being in America and that’s why there will never be another nine eleven. But we’re not the only company delivering world peace through invasive advertising, we’re just one of the people in the space. We want to focus on building the platform for world peace and let others build on that.”

SL: “Ok, stop talking now. Jeez! It seems to me anyway, that Beacon is not really the issue. In fact, I shouldn’t have even mentioned it. The big issue is the news feed, what can you say about that?”

MZ: “Well, it’s just something we’re not really focussed on having to explain right now.”

SL: “Ok, that’s fine. Now – last night you told me you were gay and like to fuck squirrels – can I tell that story?”

MZ: “Er…”

SL: “Ok, well, I guess I should have let you make that announcement, gosh darn I’m so ditzy (giggles). So what’s it like to be rich and to have journalists, like, really want to sleep with you?”

MZ: “It’s just not something I’m focussed on right now.”

SL: “How about if I do this?”

(Lacey begins to fellate Zuckerberg but, remarkably, is able to keep talking….)

SL: “Well, sure, that makes it so much easier.”

(Three rows of fat guys at the front of the room orgasm as one at the incredible comedic timing of Mark ‘Bill Hicks’ Zuckerberg as Lacey switches position for a reach around.)

SL: “Ok, well, that’s all we have time for – if you want to know more about how awesome – but dorky – this rich guy is, I guess you’ll all have to read my book. It also has the story about how I famously poured water into Serge Brin’s laptop on my show at Yahoo.com. That was sooo funny. And when I hyped Kevin Rose on the front cover of Business Week and then sold a book to Penguin on the back of it about overhyped web 2.0 companies. Don’t worry, Mark, I’ll give you a discount. And I’ll even throw in a copy for your girlfriend. What’s her name?”

MZ: “Uh…”

SL: “Ok, great! Well thank you very much Mark – it’s been a really insightful conversation on one point five billion levels. And, to the audience, I just wanna say thank you both for staying.”

Session ends.

Paul’s original post from which I stole all of his content can be found here. Please subscribe to his blog. He’s hilarious!

As a result of the poor interview, Mark called for a second interview which Jemima Kiss articulates very well.

To his credit. Mark Zuckerberg has acknowledged that a lot of people were frustrated by the wasted opportunity of yesterday’s keynote interview with Sarah Lacy. He did the interview on the condition that she was the interviewer, so whose to blame there?

In the rather more tropical surroundings of a safari-themed bar, Zuckerberg announces that he thought he’d drop by “because yesterday’s keynote just wasn’t enough fun”. That media training has really been paying off.

“One of the big pieces of feedback from yesterday was that people didn’t get a chance to ask enough questions. People were more interesting in product development and technical questions – I’m really interested in those issues like scalability but we thought we’d open up for another 20-30 minutes today.”

So in the midst of the developer garage, what did his home crowd really want to know?

Data portability is a big issue. Zuckerberg said that he wouldn’t necessarily commit to signing up to the same open standards as the other big social networks. “Beacon is a first iteration of that approach to help people share information. We are philosophically aligned with this openness and efficiency in the community but, at the same time, we don’t know what other people are doing and whether our policties are aligned.”

Robert Scoble got kicked off the site (albeit for just one day) because he appeared to be scraping data, rather than ’sharing it’.

Balancing the advantges of data portability with people’s privacy concerns is tricky: “We think sharing information is good, which is why we started this whole platform thing. But these are some of the questions that need to be worked out.”

Music: Is music a focus for the site? Not especially. The site didn’t predict how causal games like Scrabulous would take off (Zuckerberg plays it with this grandparents, aw). The great thing about having a platform is we don’t need to be editorial.

“We don’t need to say what will be the right applications because the market will sort that out for us, and the people that build the great products and applicatiosns will be able to build the great companies.”

It’s a very clever business model, because it lets the users determine the trends and leaves all the R&D to external companies. Nice.

Spam: Facebook will be cutting down on application spam, as he said yesterday: applications will be encouraged to focus on the level of proper engagement they have with their users rather than the number of installs, and the more popular apps will be able to send more invites.

China: He also said that he doesn’t look at time spent on the site as an important metric: Zuckerberg thinks that, like Google, the site should make communication more efficient and help people do what they need to do.

Facebook is looking at the issues of moving the business into China, said a very confident and relaxed Zuckerberg. He’s very open about it forom the start: “Making sure that people’s private information is private is a really important thing for us to do,” he said, explaining that there are only really two options in China; either have the government censor your site and impair the performance of traffic to it inside the country if it doesn’t like you, or have servers inside the country which will be shut down if you don’t follow their policies.

“There are ways to position these things make decisions and set them up to create minimal exposure,” he said. Now that China is on the verge of overtaking the US as the world’s biggest internet market, this strategy is increasingly important.

And has it been a strain for you, Mark, being under such scrutiny because of the success of Facebook? He’s now the world’s youngest billionaire, according to Forbes.

“That’s an interesting topic for a develop garage! I have a small group of really good friends and going through this whole experience of building the company has often been a strain but has helped build interesting friendships.”

Jemima’s original post from which I mercilessly stole her content can be found here. Jemima is also one of the few bloggers that I’m subscribed to, so make sure you’re tuned in. She has her finger well placed on the UK digital pulse.

I’m not sure I like either of Mark’s two options to expand into China. I don’t like the idea of filtering content on behalf of the government, full stop. But what’s the alternative?

Also, check out Rebecca Caroe‘s post on the BIMA blog about panel put together to discuss online advertising for newbies.

Oldtimers may remember Fray from very old web.  Derek started it in 1996 as a live story telling site.  Each story ended with the question “when has this happened to you?” .  This started his interest in community online and how to invite participation.  

“When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro” Hunter S Thompson

Today the web enables people to get exposure that used to the exclusive preserve of adults, authorities and experts.  So what can you do if you want crowds on your site?

Content owners have 3 lies they tell themselves when confronted with free content:

1.  Everyone on the net is an idiot. 

2 Good stuff is too hard to find

3. You can’t make any money.

1.     Everyone on the net is an idiot… for past 10 years the mainstream media only focused on this.  But refute it using Google – value based on number of links to pages… proxy for votes and voters are important. Kim Pedersen’s Backyard Monorail – 300 feet of track costing $4000.   He shares what he knows for free – created a community of shared interest.  Wikipedia because it was the first makes it a bad site to copy, now.  But the small community of editors who do the most (0.7% of users) are key to small edits/spell checkers (tend the  Drafted Postsgarden) and new users who post substantive new articles.  

2.    Good stuff is too hard to find. Traditional ways of finding good stuff is human editors (magazines / newspapers), non-traditional editors took this and applied to the web (Amazon where users were reviewers) and moderators.  Computers took on the task (text search), Google’s page rank (more sophisticated weighted by incoming link) and technorati.  But the middle path of hybrid using both human and computers is where most of the opportunity lies today (Flickr interestingness, community vote and best of both).  Flickr algorithm is voting by actions (going to look at photos).  Displayed by leader board by day. This created a competition and people trying to gain the system.  Later they made a 7 day version, recent randomised of 9 images. 

The Wisdom of crowds – the number 1 book to read.  It is about how people can use groups to be smart.  Summarised as selfish behaviour aggregated for a common good.  The interaction is simple – key.  Simple questions.  “did you like this?”.  You need diversity across the spectrum to make this work. But selfishness is important – design for selfishness [we think our products are awesome and anyone who disagrees is an idiot!]  High on our own supply.  If you can create a desire for the user to put their voice onto something you may succeed.  Rewards can be ego or money.

Assignment Zero using wiki software collaboration with Wired Magazine – crowdsouring stories. The crowd didn’t want to participate by writing stories.  So they changed to asking for research… asked people to sign up for interviews (instant response!).  Doing an interview was a simple task compared to writing something.  Read a list of people and decide to take action by asking a few questions… their editors condensed into print-worthy text.   Using crowdsourcing as a cost-saving measure doesn’t work.  Communities must be cultivated, respected and managed if they are to create economic value” Jeff Howe who coined the phrase crowdsourcing.

3.    You can’t make any money.  Threadless is a great example – t shirt store with no designers, just an interface.  The best get printed, bought. A trusted middle man.  Golden tag in 1 shirt per 1000 (Willy Wonker thing), member forum for people who’ve won in the past… cultivating a winner class.  Have a plan with good answers ready for when you get ‘busted’! 

Derek's new startup Pixish – bringing the threadless happiness to any image based contest.  Cautionary tales – Yahoo games Wii site…. create niche sites pulling stories, photos and stuff tagged Wii including a strip of photos from Flickr.  They didn't’ give the users any way of opting out… all sorts of things tagged Wii including Yahoo sucks, baby weeing etc…  It wasn’t a legal reason.  Because there was no clear way to opt out users rebelled.  Copious opt ins and opt outs are needed.  Need a group opt in.  GM Tahoe Apprentice Campaign.  User generated content to make an advert…. but users put their own captions on “Waaa? No iPod plug-in??” and you could only use their existing photos and videos… you could add text over the video.  “We paved the prairies” and “The ultimate padded cell!  “Global warming isn’t a pretty SUV ad”, “The Earth is now your bitch!”.  They designed for their own selfishness not the participant.  Narrow scope of creativity – text only.  Content was greedy – couldn’t export to any other place….YouTube or your site.  The audience was wrong – this should have been just GM owners not the entire internet!  Cf Saturn owners club.  But it worked.. really well. the microsite had 600k visitors in 3 weeks with an average 9 minutes online and many visited Chevvy.com too which was what they wanted.  

Community is Grown not built.  “building community” is for architects not online.  

How to do it.  5 steps

1. Give people tools they want
2. Trust them to do good
3. Reward good contributions
4. Punish bad contributions
5. Expect the unexpected

Punishment isn’t deleting swear words but limiting the effect of problematic users (timeouts, community boot outs for 1 hour voted by half the users).  Geotagging from Flickr – on day 1 Iceland people came together to spell the word “Fuck” on their photos….. a lot of photos were needed on the map.  A collaboration in real time. 

Weird things will happen.  Goal is to channel in the right areas and then respond appropriately. 

Slides on www.powazek.com

Questions

how to incentivise forums.  Offering swag etc.  This is valid but ego stroking can be more effective.  Look at whether it is solving a problem and do people want to talk to each other.  Member of the week programme.  Mail people t shirts and ask users what they really want.

What to do with non-winning entries on Pixish.  You can delete at any time.  You own it.

Mixing pro and amateur stuff in a mashup site – concerns about quality.  Not designed to replace pros but to bring opportunity to a wider scale – meritocracy if the system works well.  

Creative commons is a great idea but has ‘kinks’ one of the key issues are publishers who don’t understand it.  www.moveon.com online aggregator of angst!

Rewards that aren't bribes.  Start with payment in kind and then move onto cash when you can afford it.  Not offensively low e.g. $10.  

Does online trading work to encourage amateurs.  There is more talent out there then there is opportunity.  

Overview: Marketers can no longer interrupt users with advertisements and other materials thanks to technology advancements like TIVO. Now, we need to engage users.

Here are some helpful guidelines:

A. You have to be about ONE Thing. Currently, marketers create a list of features and benefits for a new product, which makes people research specs. Need to have 1 thing that you focus on that people can't research. Eg: Apple's one thing: STYLE. In a marketplace where style wasn't important, Apple made style a key factor. Style was a good choice in the 1 thing, because it's personal and emotional. B2B marketers need to capture people's hearts.

B. Once you have that 1 thing – Attract people by controversy, vision, interaction, and/or simple tools
1. Controversy. This starts the dialog. Eg: Bob Garfield at NPR — comcastmustdie.com — got a lot of attention for him and got comcast to take action.
2. Be the visionary in your business. Discuss future services, technologies, etc. Get users to keep coming back to you.
3. Interactions (polls, surveys, rank). Do anything to get your users to "push a button."
4. Have a simple tool. Eg: Hubspot.com — website grader — you vs. competitor. If you don't get a good grade, use hubspot for SEO. Eg: 4-hour work week –lifestyle design quota. If you don't get a good answer, you should buy the book.

C. Create Together
Use wikis as both a marketing and community tool. Have users help with marketing. Also, let users solve problems with the company. Users will get involved if end result will help them.

D. Build Street Cred
Eg: Yvon Chouinard – Patagonia (uses real customers in ads)
Eg: E-books. Give e-books away. Creative Commons is great because users will brand you for you.

E. Think User Experience
Nike Plus — tracks runs and uploads data to iPod and the Nike Community. Brings people back to Nike over and over. Consumers constantly create new data not Nike.

F. Spread Ideas
Word-of-Mouth is still young in marketing process. It's about being relative, creative, and humor. It must also provide info that people didn't have before.

G. Choose Strategic Path
Choose what media fits your value and customer base. If your client doesn't want to advertise on mobile phones, don't make them.

Indirectly – sell yourself as a consultant, book deal, selling a product, training, workshops, conference. 

What works – every blog is different.  Experiment.  Adsense is a good entry level way.  
WP – my business took over my blog!  She started how to document a start-up from home so blogged it.  Three months later the blog became the start-up and she scrapped the other idea!  The link from DR grew her stats.  She learnt how to make money off the blog via ProBlogger.  She is a trained life coach and sold herself as this online and this was the fastest way to get revenue off the blog but her goal was to make money off the traffic.  Last autumn she realised sehe needed help and so started a blog network to the site (7 new ones).  Each blog is growing differently – kids activities (search engines bring readers), dads blog (no search engine success).  Creating compelling sticky content people want to come ‘hang out’ but they don’t want to click on ads.  Creating OK content designed to make people to clieck on an ad is different.  Know your goals for the blog.

Experience working with the ad networks?  Experimented – some direct sales is a lot of work – need to be a true salesperson and set ratecard and have your own ad server.  This is the most profitable… big advertisers need 1m pages per month before they’ll look at you.  Ad network is bread and butter – real girls media.  They act a bit as a broker and represent the site in their proposals to pitch big brands.  You don’t know where the income levesl will be.  So I sell text links and affiliate advertising to fill the gaps.  Diversity is key – don’t rely on one means.  
JB – How do you work with newcomers?  When choosing an ad network what should you consider? Their role is to be a single point of contact for advertisers to represent sites.  Blog community and news sites have difft needs at different stages.  “your ad here” code which you could buy online with credit card and emailed the blogger to approve it.  That was how Adbrite started.
You need to decide if it is about money or control.  At the beginning control is imp;rotant – find the ad networks that give you the opportunity to choose and view the ads that will run on your stie.  Look for a network that will have transparency so the advertisers can see they are running on YOUR site.  They need to see that you are contributing to their programme.  They may pay more.  
The key to adbrite is segmenting – content, quality, original, design, user generated content, then segemented into elite, premium tiers. Some advertisers want quality sites and performance advertisers want volume.  
Online tools – service is the big differentiator between different ad networks.  Work with your account manager – what are tips for generating more revenue.  Placement is number one way to grow.  Internet is not about interruptive advertising and so different from other media.  Google heatmap for advertisers is worth reading.

RC – Affiliate marketing – where does it fit?  It is a revenue share arrangement where you get paid for referral traffic that converts – a % of the sale.  Two distinctions – appeals to the long term relationship between the two parties.  You know your community and purpose of your site and you know where the affiliate fits into your site.  Both parties have equal stakes.  It is a long term job.  Find a good relationship between what you want to do online and how it translfates into the world of e commerce.  You post whatever you want (banner, text, data feed, snippet generator) wherever you want to display it and for how long.  You control look and feel.  In direct media determine what I display where when I do my own adverts.  

Which programme to choose?  Each company has a different take on how they manage affiliates.  Some are restrictive as it’s a representation of our brand.  We see them as an outside salesforce like the pre-internet Tupperware programme!  Referrals – it needs to make ‘sense’ to both parties.

How do you choose who to work with?  The elective programmes are the best to be in.  They have to have a value ad to the audience for us comparison shopping has worked well.  Makes it easy to solve the customer’s need.  Reviews of product allows an affiliate to give their view.  Or content about where you use the gear e.g. route planning.  Find something you are passionate about and look at the merchants that represent that.  
Intenret sales spilling out into the real world?  We plan to use events offline to allow affiliates to take their tracking mechanism offline.  Athletes at the events whether competing or not, branded pre-printed post cards or business cards with a link to the tracking source or a specific landing page… unique to them and allows credit to referrals off that page.  
WP – you have to go to the affiliate manager and ask for this – custom coupons codes and special landing pages…..

What other things do you need to keep in mind to stay up to date?
Newbie picky about ads running on their sites.  We give you the choice but the flashy ads convert better than the big brand CPM.  CPA – cost per action/acquisition.  CPM- cost per thousand.  CPC = cost per click.
The ad networks give advertisers code that goes onto their website after a user has completed the action wanted e.g. sign up to brand.  We track that conversion using the code back to the original site where the user clicked / viewed.  This allows advertisers to manage their budgtets.  Being picky limits you.  We used to group by vertical sector – now more about user targeting – geographic / age / stage.  Some pay a premium for this.  
RC – affiliate managers want to engage with sites – work on the relationship.  Provide a resource for your readers through your content.  
DR – Do as much tracking as possible on ad conversions crazyegg free tooll creates a heat map from your site.  Know where ads convert and where not…. use as a negotiating tool when you know this information.  Do surveys of readerships, age, geographic, buyers / researching.
WP – it can be frustrating to gather this information when you are a new advertiser.  It takes time to learn this… it is valuable so spend the time on this.   Put a text ad from adsense for her services within the copy of the blog…. worked for her services not others.

Question:

What about Disclosure and affiliate links?
DR – it varies from site to site.  One gets a lot of search engine traffic – for digital cameras. I have a site-wide disclosure for this.  For Problogger I put “aff” to show it’s an affiliate so reader knows.  The links perform better when I do give disclosure because my readers like me.  
WP – I never used to do disclosure because I do everything for free.  But I realised that readers don’t assume that – they assume the worst.  I try to put more disclosure in place.  

How do the networks pick the affiliates?
disclosure is important for your readership.

PPV or pay per post?
DR – I don't write comment for payment.  I understand why some write a review and get paid for it.  it depends on your site.  For me people question your motives. Transparency is important.  I see anything on the site saying something about ME and I want people to come back for years to come.  if it is helpful and relevant to your audience.
WP – I separate reviews from comment content.  readers don't like these two things mixed up in one place on my blog.  People don't respond in the same way.
RC – GuruReview – encourage reviewers to tell it like it is.  Write it but say what is the alternative solution for it.  There are lots of alternatives.  You can turn this into a positive.

Tracking and measurement – how do you gauge success and improve the overall mix?
B – there are two types of measurement the performance of the ad – number of clicks and who signed up / purchased.  And a quality metric – think about the domain name used for your blog for big name advertisers ask  Can you show me a site list – names that are clean, professional looking but they never visit the sites!  Keep user generated content quality and looking good.  
WP – there is google analytics, hittail , crazyegg .  I found it effective Pro MyBlogLog to see what people clicked on.  You pay $3 per month to get this.  I learn a lot about what people click on.  I learnt a lot from this – what I am writing on.
How does it work when you join as an affiliate?  When you apply to join a network there is a list of all the merchants and you apply to each individually.  When accepted you get access to all their ads and codes.  Research Google for affilitate programmes in your topic.  And you can go direct.  Networks – commission junction, linkshare and performix, are the big ones.  Learn your niche when choosing.   ADify.com is a network of networks and you can go there to find your niches.  UI not so good – Martha Stewart runs through there.

WP – To sell ads directly you need about 500 viewers per day to get a smaller advertiser interested.  DR suggests putting ads on from day one so that users are used to it from the start.  When you go small target small advertisers.  It created the culture.
Local search is becoming very popular and so there are probably good local ad networks.  Cenveo is a local Chicago network. 
 

Five thousand four hundred people turn up, and I was lucky enough to share a ‘power session panel’ (try saying that with six San Miguels inside you) with blog Gods Shel Israel and Jeremiah Owyang training about 600 Intel people about new media marketing technique. Shel co-authored the book Naked Conversations with Robert Scoble and is good opinionated company, and Jeremiah is Forrester’s top commentator on social media. He’s also pretty handy with the cam as you can see here.

Enough name dropping already (there were plenty of other super people to meet and Paul of course twitters with Shel tous les temps) – the gist of the sessions was healthy debate about whether social media is relevant to a firm like Intel. My take on it is simple. Social media helps you do two very important things. 1. Listen to customers. Those that don’t are dying and those that won’t will die. And 2. Listen to yourselves. If it doesn’t sound credible to you, how can you expect them to believe it?

Luv

A

There are two points I’d like to comment on, both have been inspired by recent conversations on Twitter. I won’t name names because there are too many to list and I don’t have the time to do all the hyperlinking right now (sorry guys).

Conversations taking place on Twitter

1.

Facebook is dead. Twitter is the new Facebook. Facebook has had its day.

My response.

Facebook isn’t dead. It might have appeared to be dead to Twitter users because most of their friends on Facebook were quiet over the Christmas period. That’s because Twitter users are a minute fraction of Facebook users. Twitter is mostly made up of extremely early adopting geeks. Most Facebook users would have been on leave over the Christmas period and not sad enough (like me!) to sign on every ten minutes.

2.

I’m sick of Facebook spamming me. Facebook is full of SPAM. I hate the SPAM on Facebook.

My response.

Facebook does not SPAM you. Your ‘friends’ SPAM you. If you don’t want to receive updates, or requests to join events and groups, tell your friends to stop sending invites. If your friends don’t listen to you, remove them from your friends list.

If you don’t want people to write on your wall, remove it, or make it visible to a select few.

Facebook is nothing more than a technology/platform. Your friends are the ones you should look at, not Facebook

What do you think?

Feel free to connect to me on Twitter.

Feel free to connect to me on Facebook.

According to Technorati

Over the holiday break we found and fixed a bug that inflated authority counts for certain blogs. The blogs affected were those on domains that also have linked-to sub-domains. The links to the sub-domains were erroneously counting toward the blog authority of the blog on the parent domain. Since Technorati Authority is a calculation of how much attention is being paid to a blog and the posts beneath it, we do not include sub-domains. Sub-domains are treated as separate entitities and often are references to tools, utilities, features, and other non-blog resources.

Examples:

http://chinese.engadget.com

http://desktops.engadget.com

http://hdtv.engadget.com

http://storage.engadget.com

Well, we fixed the bug yesterday. The impact of this change is mostly limited to the Top 100 and the overwhelming majority of the blogosphere is unaffected. Thanks for bearing with us while the Top 100 experiences some turbulence.

We’re always thinking about how to improve and develop new meaningful metrics for the blogosphere and we welcome your feedback on these issues.

Read what TechCrunch has to say.

Technorati blog.

Thanks to Chris Brogan for the link via Twitter.

Apparently, Robert tried to run a script over Facebook to export all of his contacts in one go. Those of us who know Facebook rather well, know that this will break their terms of use. He would have known that this was likely to end in tears. That said, perhaps Robert was pulling a PR stunt knowing that everyone would end up not only talking about it, but rallying behind him.

I must point out that I like Robert, a lot. I think what he does is brilliant and his contribution to industry is nothing short of fantastic. So, my post isn’t directed at Robert, but the Facebook conversation that’s taking place in the social arena that is Twitter.

If you break the rules, you should expect to be treated like everyone else. Just because Robert has thousands of connections and is very well known to millions, it doesn’t mean he should be treated any differently to anyone else. I have a friend who sent me a text message whilst I was on holiday as her account had been disabled. I just happen to know the VP of PR & Marketing and the VP of Sales so she thought I could exercise my connections in her favour. Her account was probably canned due to the number of event requests she sent out each week – there was a lot, but people signed up to her notifications. I must add that they were very exclusive events too.

Everyone who considers themselves as a ’social media’ guru should know that Facebook is closed and that you’re not permitted to use scripts to remove contacts. So, you should either join the club and abide by the rules, or leave. Right?

Well, yes and no. You shouldn’t break the rules and not expect to be punished. But, we should try to persuade Facebook that being closed isn’t good for industry as a whole. We should be able to retain ownership of our data. If you’re still unsure about what I’m talking about, try to export your friends’ email addresses. You’ll notice that it’s impossible because email addresses are made up of images. To comply with basic industry best practices, email addresses like everything else, should at least be text. To take this a step further, they should come in the form of a Microformat. You’d then be able to download email addresses automatically to a client such as Outlook.

Oh wait, making it easy for people to export hundreds, possibly thousands of email addresses… wouldn’t that make it easy for unscrupulous companies to harvest and then SPAM? You could argue that Facebook is helping to protect the vast majority whilst upsetting the minority. Personally, I think it’s just a matter of time. Facebook only opened it’s doors to non-universities a year ago. The business community has only started to flirt with it since the summer with London boasting the largest geographical network in the world.

What Facebook does well, is very small iterative changes to improve the user experience. You’ll notice that it’s not inclined to make huge changes to the platform – that’s probably because they’ll upset a lot of people if they get it wrong. Given that it’s still early days, getting major changes wrong is more likely. So, perhaps opening up email addresses is on the long ‘to-do’ list and will only be executed when they’ve figured out how to protect users from themselves.

I was one of the first employed by AOL in Europe in 1995, when it was a small startup, so I get the whole ‘walled garden’ thing. I don’t think it’s healthy for industry in the long term. But it is a necessary evil at the beginning to ensure users have a positive user experience within an environment where they are protected.

However, there comes a point in time when you need to knock down the walls. I’m not sure when that time should be for Facebook but one thing is for sure, their decision is not going to be influenced by early adopters. They’ll most likely listen to audiences which include influencers with a lot of connections, who would follow them to a competitor.

I believe it’s a little harsh to automatically ban users from Facebook. This should be done manually after humans have first given a warning and second, made sure that they’re making the right decision. If AOL could do it more than 10 years ago with millions of users, I’m sure Facebook can today given the technology available to staff.

Read some interesting article on this topic

Hear what Robert Scoble has to say

Hear what CentreNetworks has to say

My source: TechCrunch

• New Flickr application that automates some of the tedious services, brought to you by Dave Winer.
• A great article about Twitter and how it can be used. Thanks to Dennis Howlett for the link via, er, Twitter of course. Do you follow me on Twitter? If not, why not connect now.
• I highly recommend you connect to Steve Clayton on Twitter also. Steve is one of my Executives at BIMA by night and a Microsoftian wizz by day. You should subscribe to Steve’s blog too.
• Damien Mulley, a guest speaker at two of BIMA’s events has just posted news about the Irish Blog Awards 2008. Should the UK have a Blog Awards gala?

I’m heading to Le Web 3 in Paris in the morning so I’ll try to catch up on some blog posts during my relaxing time on the train. Let me know if you’re going and would like to hook up.

So, here’s the breakdown…

Interview with Ofcom

• How are the quad play and triple play offerings affecting regulatory strategy?
• Managing spectrum: ensuring that auctions are fair and technology neutral
• Protecting the customer: does convergence mean more complexity?

Ed Richards, Chief Executive Officer, Ofcom
Andrew Edgecliffe-Johnson, Media Editor, Financial Times

Panel Discussion
What legislation and regulation is necessary as convergent services increase?

• What will be the impact of the spectrum auctions?
• Rights and content: how should content be protected?
• How should next generation networks be handled?
• Will competition issues arise as a result of M&A activity?
• Assessing the degree of competition: how will regulatory strategy develop as markets change?

Yvonne Fern, Regulatory Counsel, T-Mobile UK
Andy King, Director of Regulatory Policy and Compliance, Virgin Media

Understand the customer: The key to success
Communicating communications: how telecoms marketing must move with the times

• Challenges facing telcos in understanding customer needs
• Multi-channel marketing in the move to multi-play services
• Beyond churn – the pitfalls of a badly balanced campaign
• Winning new customers whilst growing existing relationships
• The winning formula: telecoms best practice

Clare Morgan, Director of Telecoms and High Tech, Acxiom UK

Panel Discussion
Reaping the rewards of convergence: exploring opportunities for advertising

• The power of the Internet: how has advertising changed?
• Is advertising effectiveness more measurable and consumer behaviour more measurable in the digital world?
• The red button: increasing the impact of interactive TV advertising
• What is the potential for advertising on mobile TV and IPTV?
• Will revenue splitting for user-generated content increase?
• Which services should be funded by advertising and which should be subscription based?

Tess Alps, Chief Executive Officer, Thinkbox
Jim Marshall, Chairman, Starcom MediaVest Group & Chairman, Media Futures Group, IPA
Jimmy Maymann, Chairman, GoViral
Clare Morgan, Director of Telecoms and High Tech, Acxiom UK

The next generation of communications

In this session, three panelists will give short presentations to explore the potential of next generation networks and assess what the communications landscape of the future will look like.

Exploring the potential of 3G
Professor Ed Candy, Chief Technology Officer, Hutchison ‘3’ Group

Understanding 21cn: how will Britain’s communications landscape change?
Cameron Rejali, Managing Director Products and Strategy, BT Wholesale

Exploring the potential of WiMax
Brendan O’Rourke, Chief Operating Officer, FREEDOM4

Questions and discussion forum

• What investments need to be made if media and communications services are to succeed?
• How is current infrastructure coping with delivering convergent services?
• Just the beginning: where next for 3G services?
• How will the growth of social information structures affect communications operators?
• What will be the impact of WiMax?

I’ll then bring the afternoon to a close with my enlightening overview of the day. I’m glad I didn’t have it as easy as Michael Nutley who Chaired today. Michael had straightforward presentations. Actually, I take that back. Talk about shuffling the pack on Walshie!

The event went very well last night. Mirage Islam was a good Chair and the speakers were very open and honest during the Q&A session, with some very good points for people to take away.

The main point to take away from the evening was that we’re not constrained by technology. We’re constrained only by our imagination. It’s the next generation that I think will help industry to realise the full potential of film and TV on the Web.

Kids today are growing up wanting to know why they can’t watch their favourite programme ‘right now’. Why do they have to wait until 11:15 to watch Thomas the Tank Engine? Sky + offers a good service when the defect-riddled box isn’t freezing, forcing you to clean the hard drive and start again. But why should we have to record stuff? Why can’t we just switch on the TV and watch whatever we want, whenever we want?

Mirage will fill you in with more detail about the discussion.

Guest speakers included

Mirage Islam (Digital Strategist Partner, Inclusive Futures Ltd)
Alexis d’Amecourt (Digital Strategy Manager, 19 Entertainment)
Justin Champney (Head of Brand Innovation, McCann-Erickson)
Simon Fell (Director of Technology, ITV Consumer)
Matt Locke (Commissioning Editor, Channel 4 Education)
Tim Morgan (Commercial Director, Mint Digital)
Roland Brown (President, BKSTS)

The next bite has not yet been scheduled but is likely to be in January.

Click To Play

Download the video now so you can view it on your iPod(9.0 MB)

Check out the benefits of becoming a member if you’re not already a member. Get involved to help make a difference whilst raising your company or personal profile.

The benefit of having your blog listed here is restricted to Freelancers, Institutional, Associate Commercial, Full Commercial and Patron Members. Unfortunately, students are not entitled to this benefit, although this may change.

Yesterday’s Breakfast Bite went very well, with over 40 people nibbling on sausage sandwiches and drinking smoothies whilst listening to Damien Mulley talk about how companies use social networks to raise their profile and make more money.

Damien, a very well respected influencer in Ireland, flew over especially for the event, for which I’m extremely thankful. He has kindly agreed to publish a summary of his talk on this blog, so I won’t go into any detail.

Below is a list of attendees who registered. It’s quite possible that one or two didn’t make it, but I’m confident we were lucky enough to have almost all of them in attendance.

If I’ve included your name when I shouldn’t have, or missed you altogether, please let me know and I’ll update the post accordingly.

- Juliet Blackburn, Head of Digital, AAR
- Merran Morton, Account Director, Agency.com
- Jez Jowett, Managaing Partner, Agency.com
- David King, Director, EMEA, APCO Online
- Paul Walsh, Chair, BIMA & CEO, Segala (host)
- Scott Gallacher, BSkyB
- Paul Glossop, Head of Digital, Cake Media
- Caroline Peach, HMV Buz Development Manager, Cake Media
- Syd Nadim, Clock
- Scott Rutherford, Technical Architect, Cominded
- Colm Brophy, User Experience Architect, Conchango
- David Armstrong, DCMS
- Ross Taylor, MD, DigitalTMW
- Ed Lamb, Digital Client Partner, DigitalTMW
- Edward Beard, Sr. Analyst, Account Planning, Digitas
- Victoria Ellis, Assoc Director, Account Planning, Digitas
- Chiara Sambonet, Analyst, Account Planning, Digitas
- Anthony Robb John, MD, EasyGroupIP, Easy Group IP
- Cara Mannion, EHSBrann
- Natasha Allen, EHSBrann
- Rachael Castell, Interactive Producer, English National Opera
- Eric Forward, Founder, Forward Training Ltd.
- Suzanne Linton, MD & Founder, Freestyle Interactive
- Julie Lane, Sales Director, LBi
- Will Rolt, Biz Dev Manager, LBi
- Hal Robinson, Director, Founder, Librios
- Mariam Cook, Project Manager, Mariam Cook
- Alastair Duncan, CEO, MRM Worldwide
- Damien Mulley, Publisher, mulley.net (Speaker)
- Anthony Cohen, CEO, Founder, MyGeni
- Mrs O.J.McGaw, Consultant, OJ McGaw
- Phil Whitehouse, Community Advocate, Osmosoft
- Brian Hoadley, MD, Founder, PhunQube.com
- Doha Marzouk, Head of Innovation, Reuters
- Charles Billot, Marketing Director, Soup
- Ellie Kaye, Marketing Manager, Soup
- Kate.Taylor, New Business Account Manager, Soup
- Rax Lakhani, Social Media Director, Splendid Communications
- Felix Velarde, MD, Founder, Underwired
- Ellie Beasley, Planner, Underwired
- Holly Scothern, Zubka

This blog post is a little late to say the least, but I wanted to show you some video coverage of the event. It’s not as if I could provide an impartial review given that I was the host anyway.

Thanks to newspepper.com for capturing the essence of the evening. BT had 5 cameras around the venue so I’m looking forward to their edited material.

Download the video now so you can view it on your iPod(19.6 MB)

Well, one thing is for sure, you should never tell bloggers that they should remove comments about your brand or you’ll take them to court. This will only encourage them and other bloggers to highlight your silliness on their blogs. This results in a pyramid marketing campaign of bad publicity which can easily spiral out of (your) control.

The only way to influence a conversation about your brand is to get involved in that conversation. You do this by listening to what others have to say and then do one of three things. Let’s call it AED for short.

1. Apologise and explain how you will make change
2. Explain your position and solicit their feedback on your explanation
3. Defend yourself, providing constructive feedback

Damien Mulley, who’s flying in from Ireland to speak at our next Breakfast Bite and who I’ve invited to be a guest writer on this blog, was on one end of this conversation today. Take a look at Damien’s natural reaction to a marketing agency ripping off his content and their reaction to his blog post.

You don’t learn when talking, you only learn when listening.

Hold on to your bacon sandwiches!

I met Mike Murphy, VP of Sales at Facebook, for dinner just before I went on holiday a couple of weeks ago, hence why I haven’t blogged about it until now. Whilst Mike was over from the Valley, I thought it was good timing to gather some likeminded friends together so Mike could get to meet some of London’s finest. I’ve since learned that at least 2 new projects have come out of that evening! It was very informal and everything was ‘off the record’, so, I’ve said enough already

This event is another example of how BIMA is stepping up a gear this year, after spending the guts of 2006 conducting research, implementing new tools/processes and striking up new collaborative relationships with other organisations.

BIMA is the placed industry association in the UK to help organisations better understand and appreciate new trends, tools and techniques that hit the market. This in turn, helps us to ensure the UK remains at the center of excellence for creativity. These new networking events aren’t just about learning new things though, they’re about bringing industry peers together with the ulterior motive of stimulating collaboration, partnership and increased sales.

I’ll publish another post as soon as I’ve received the biog from the last of our speakers.

324 – confirmed attendance via Facebook
186 – ‘maybe attending’ via Facebook
30 – guest passes already taken
90+ – tickets sold within 4 hours of emailing BIMA members
90+ – tickets sold within 8 hours of opening up registration
170 – venue capacity
50 – tickets left

• People are traveling thousands of miles just for this event
• Podcasters and TV interviewers coming from different countries
• Entire event will be captured on film, edited and distributed
• Possible live streaming of the entire event

No promotion has been done by our Media Partners yet. This will commence on August 21st (tomorrow!!), er, today.

This should be a fantastic networking opportunity and an opportunity to voice your opinion about Facebook. Is it a fantastic marketing platform, fun to use, or just a fad that’s closed and unsupportive of open standards?

Register now to guarantee your place

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Please get in touch if you’d like to become a sponsor.

Hope to see you there