With the sheer number of platforms alone, it can be difficult to keep track of your social media campaign. Throw in funky new apps, 1,001 Thought-Guru-Ninja’s, and a near excruciating among of Internet noise, and its way too easy to make a simple mistake. To prevent miscommunication and errors before they occur, you’ll need to keep a tight ship when it comes to your social campaign management.

Jump-start your organizational habits by creating a document of accounts. Try excel, or some other very simple list tool and map out account, URL, username and password, who is running it (if applicable), and space for any notes such as personnel changes, creation date, etc. It’s all too common for a switch of account manager to result in lost passwords, or inability to even get into an account. Plus, it’s a good idea to use a general company email address as username or entry point for these accounts- including a personal Facebook account for everyone to access. This lessens the chances of admin turnover error.

Some managers are adept at the quick browser/window switcheroo; some are not. If you fit into the latter category, desktop managers can be your best friend. Seesmic Desktop, or the Chrome browser extension put your web accounts on your desktop- no window surfing required. Or, status management tools like HootSuite can place all your searches, tweets, and links in one place. CoTweet is another do-it-all, with metrics, link shortening through bit.ly, and group management tools. Plus, with their recent acquisition by email marketing guru’s ExactTarget, they have a lot more social integration and management planned.

It may seem like a no-brainer but tasks lists are an absolute necessity when you’re working in 2, 3, or 4 campaigns. Start off a daily to-do list with the same check-off: A count of fans or followers or engagements, replying to questions, and catching up on lost tasks from the days before. Task managers like 5pm and Action Method can help you create and share lists of items to get done, let you assign them, make notes, and even perform a glorious check-off when they are completed. Whether you work with a team or by yourself, setting goals is imperative when your playing field is the vast Internet.

No man is an island- and none can manage the Internet by himself. Sometimes it may be essential to delegate tasks, and when it is, it’s super important to go by your team’s strong suits. If you’re using all your management tools and metrics, you’ll know who supercharges enthusiasts, and who is a numbers whiz. You’ll also know when to step-in and get things done your way.

Probably the most important tool for the management of your social media campaigns is communication. Communication with your client or brand, communication with your fans and followers, and communication with the team you work closest with. Always be aware of what’s posted, who’s talking, what’s going on. There are just too many opportunities for error if there isn’t a clear message sent across all team members; particularly ones who work on the same accounts. And the greatest asset from clear communication is the extra brainstorming and input you’ll get from having an open floor policy.

 

Last week, Flightpath hosted the New York Social Media Roundtable event "Social Media and the Travel Industry." In front of an audience of 200+, four panelists who excel in their own corner of hospitality, from blogger to hotelier, public relations maven to travel agent, detailed their social networking plans and how it has driven them to success. 

Top takeaways from the event include:

1. TweetDeck is the simple Twitter client that is rated tops from panelists, unanimously. It's quick, painless platform makes for easy posting and reporting. Foursquare, however, is a new fav and being adopted by the travel elite ast hey city hop. Custom profiles are worth looking into.

2. The guests and visitors of a hotel are the story it should be promoting. The building is nothing without the heart and story of each guest that walk through the door. By promoting the user experience and each guest, you create a community ofboth locals and visitors.

3. Using a dash of personal voice can spice up the tone of your accounts. Instead of taking cues from press releases, personify your venue account. Pulling back the curtain to ocassionally reveal the source is okay, as well. People expect a knowledgeable base behind their favorite establishments.

4. Brush up on your regulations. As a blogger you might feel the need to cash-in on every free trip and stick up a posting, but the FTC is regulating your ability to do so. Keep an eye on what you legaly can and can't do. And as a venue, be selective in your search for press. To ignore your standards not only cheapens the reviews of great journalists but weakens the experience of the "average joe" who pays his bill and also has a voice.

5.Find the method that works for you and beware of spreading across too many channels. Be resourceful in one station- the platform that best shows off your prowess. A blogger might have great insight on video with a simple iPhone camera, while a hotel blog best showcases the talented staff within it's walls. When you findthe channel that highlights your assetts, you don't need to attach more than one networking site, becausey our information will spread for you.

To view more takeaways, follow the event Twitter stream #nysmrt. For more information on the event, to view photos, and find links based on tips shared, visit nysocialmediaroundtable.com or facebook.com/nysmrt. 

The folks at Mediapost were kind enough to publish a commentary I wrote called Social Media And Today's 'Marketing Athletes'.  Part of the story outlined "The Common Rings of Social Media and the Olympics."  Namely:

1. Measurability matters -- you don't podium if you don't medal. Facebook (Twitter and others -- more all the time) has incredibly compelling numbers to back up even more compelling stories for brands. Numbers can lie, but they don't here.

2. The Olympics are extraordinary because they always bring out the best athletes on a global basis. Social media is now attracting a similar elite talent pool because technology, consumer strategy and creativity all are leveraged for the "greater good"... like the Olympic spirit!

3. Change is what's normal. At the Winter Olympics, look at how snowboarding, ice dancing, etc. looks compared to just the last Games in 2006. Social media is the most dynamic media platform any of us have ever experienced. Technologists can't keep up with brand desires and vice-versa.

4. Three common "linked" words: Stretch body and mind as to what's possible today and in the foreseeable future. Test new approaches and equipment. Finding harmony can be hard, but it's worth finding. Be Nimble to capitalize on both of the above.

Even though the Olympics ended last night, I hope you'll read the full piece here.

    

Last week, Google’s newest venture, Google Buzz, went live for just about all Gmail users. This lovechild of FriendFeed, Twitter, and AIM gives users the ability to start an open chat with any email contact, and include photos, and links. It also incorporates your GChat status updates and away messages as “buzzes,” and posts all of the above to your very public Google profile.
 
Immediately, the masses began critiquing this new tool, particularly since its release lied so close on the heels of Google Wave, the last misunderstood, under-utilized venture from the search giant.  After all, isn’t Buzz just expanded GChat? And who wants all of this information on their public profiles? And why wouldn’t you just email the person instead? And honestly, there are some people you just want to email and not chat with. All very valid points. But is all the Google Buzz criticism really about technical capabilities and privacy, or is it more about social backlash?
 
Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, YouTube, Vimeo, UStream, Google, LinkedIn… throughout the day there are endless possibilities for one of your friends to interrupt all of your strategizing mojo with a video clip of cats playing poker. And that Aunt whose calls you’ve been avoiding? If you’ve ever sent her an email in your life, she can now find you and buzz you. Comments you make on Twitter, even in the deluded privacy of a reply, show up as a search result. And even if you try to keep a low profile, Google will shout your email address from the rooftops so that anyone with even brief search skills can find a way to contact you.
 
And whether or not you’re sharing information, everyone in your circle is sharing it to you -- or actually, “at” you. Why?
 
Recently, the New York Times published an article debating the reasons why we feel the need to share so much information on the web.  Author John Tierney tells us that people enjoy sharing “awe” inducing stories for two basic reasons:  ” I give you something of practical value in the hope that you’ll someday return the favor.” And “I get to show off how well informed I am by sending news that will shock you.” But above this reasoning, Dr. Jonah Berger of Penn’s Wharton School tells Tuerney that there’s another need to share hysterical, crazy, frightening information.  The people who share this with you are “seeking emotional communion.”
 
So, if you’ve had enough of random links ending up every way you turn, yet are ready to embrace the emotional communion, try these four ways to reduce the noise in your life:  

1. Keep track of all your social profiles and go ahead and take the plunge: delete the ones you never use. If you’ve got a reputation to maintain, there’s no need to clutter it by keeping around profiles you haven’t updated in years.


2. Maintain your privacy settings. Have you checked out Facebook’s edit options? You can control how many friends updates you see, and unless you want to, you never have to look at another Farmville score again. If you’re on Buzz, make sure you’re aware that all your GChat status updates will be posted as a Buzz, making for more communication fodder. Also, all Buzzes show up on your live Google profile. You can change both of these options by clicking the “Connected Sites” link and unconnecting everything you’ve got.


3. Take a day off. Every week, try to do something drastic: turn your phone off for a day (gasp. I know, I know. But let’s be realistic, if you’ve got a day off, you should be celebrating the fresh air and sunshine, or catching up on sleep). And a funny thing happens when you take a digital break and come back -- all those messages are still there waiting for you!


4. Meet your friends and family. Instead of carrying on real relationships over the WWW, try moving the WWW into the real space.  Pick up the phone when you receive an email, or walk over to a desk if you can. Plan to have family members over to share photo albums instead of posting them to a Facebook wall. Say hello to friends visiting the same establishment as you instead of greeting their Foursquare check-in with badge brags. In order to keep your relationships solid, it’s important to spend a little IRL quality time and really get to know people in more than 140 characters.

Brands usually do everything to not act or talk stupid, in public or anywhere their consumers may see them. You could also say it’s usually not smart to act stupid, to share your inner stupidness in social situations, included social media. But Diesel shows just how compelling, how insightful from a brand positioning, messaging and target demo perspective a “little stupid” can be!

Diesel’s recent campaign “Be Stupid” is a total deep integrated marketing dive -- digitally/socially, store level, traditional media -- into creating a counter cultural POV. A total “We”, not “Them” state of mind. Simply, “Be Stupid” is the ideological twin of Apple’s historic “Think Different” campaign.  It took an Einstein to bring Apple’s effort to life.  The face of a genius was not needed here, just the face of a bold brand to drive real relevance for a consumer looking for the "it" to put down real dough in order to be part of something real…stupid!

The “Be Stupid” campaign featured an extremely engaging, very elegantly simple word based video that told the stupid story on their site, via YouTube, Facebook and other places-http://www.diesel.com/be-stupid/. It tells how easy it is to be smart, how expected it is to do the “smart thing” and how being stupid (aka a “contrarian”) takes the stuff of real stuff…another aka -- “balls”! The video is one great piece of communication, but not the only one. The outdoor posters riff off the same song sheet and the sentiment on the retail windows are real world “social media” looking to literally bring you in.

Eye candy today is everywhere. It’s the reality of our rich graphical playing field. But, Diesel’s “Be Stupid” effort shows why a really well thought out marketing idea that makes people think beyond the brand, will always be the smartest way to elevate a brand.

This stupid post was written by Cliff Medney and designed by Ryan Kitson!

 

It looks so easy: you pull out a camera, live your life, and stick it up on YouTube for everyone to see. But if only it was that easy. In actuality, creating good online video that will reach an audience and interest people is much more complicated than simply uploading it. As a video creator you need to know how to best capture your subject, the best route of channel, and how to get the absolute most out of your energy. Here are five simple but effective rules to remember as you start on your journey to video bliss.

1. Your equipment is important. Lots of books will tell you that it doesn’t matter what kind of camera you use, or how clean your edit is- and they're lying to you. Of course you can grab the video setting on your digicam and try the whole thing in just one take. Maybe if you’re Gary Vee you can actually get a great piece of footage from that, too. But, if you’re a company trying to produce quality content the first time around, and clocks and wallets are ticking, you should probably put in a little more work. Flip Cam’s are absolutely fantastic for raw, on the go footage. For everything and anything else, reach out to a trusted production co.  Not only will your video look less grainy but the sound quality will be out of this world compared to anything you would have achieved on a pocket cam.

2. There’s more than just YouTube… but use YouTube. Blip.tv, UStream, Vimeo… there are plenty of websites to choose from when it’s time to upload your videos to the Internet; and they all have benefits. Some can be viewed in countries where others cannot. Some have better picture quality. However, in Social Media, when the aim of the game is to go where the people go, you cannot (at least right now) beat YouTube. And remember, with YouTube’s embed codes, you can feel free to plaster that video in lots of other spaces-  try a myriad of websites, bloggers, communities, emails- and still get all your analytics in one place.

3. Remember your  ABC’s of tags and titles. Be as simple yet descriptive as possible when you fill in that “title” field during the YouTube upload. A video about Washington DC travel in March, for example, could be titled “March DC Trip” but how much better would a title like “Washington DC Cherry Blossom Festival Getaway” be? Plenty helpful, since many people would be searching for “Cherry blossom” or “festival” and not specifically the month. This also applies for the tags you include during your upload. And don’t forget to include tags that hit on your research and are selected based on volume and competition.

4. Call on all of your promotional super powers. Video does not work alone. The biggest mistake some creators make is to spend time and money working on this fantastic movie, uploading it, and then sitting back and watching. What a waste of the resources at your fingertips! Chances are you’ve got a Facebook fan page and a Twitter account. You might even have a community or website, or even an email list. Go ahead and stick a call-to-action all over these properties. Link to the video in your emails and on Twitter. Embed the video in your website and Facebook page or community. Just because your video “lives” on one website doesn’t mean it can’t travel to others, and sometimes reaching out to the people is more cost effective than waiting for them to reach you. During editing of your video, you can also put in some URL’s you want people to go back and visit, giving the link backs a circle effect.

5. If at first you don’t success… then dig into your wallet.  If view numbers right off the bat are important to you, or you have zero time or resources to put into growing a following, remember that videos can pay to become a “YouTube Promoted Video.” Promoted Videos appear higher on search results, show up in the sidebar of YouTube homepages and channel pages, and appear higher on Google Search. This pay-per-click system encourages you to pay whenever you receive a new view, making it imperative that you also exhaust every other resource you can as well. Paid partnerships are also available. Finally, by keeping an eye on the YouTube blog, you can submit applicable videos for the Spotlight of the Month, cherry picked videos that include a theme YouTube is promoting for the month.  Of course, price should be analyzed on whether or not this is an effective means, based on results of other methods.

 

 

 

Nearly 70% of young people believe corporations can make a bigger difference in the world than governments.

This eye-opening statistic was quoted by Chrysi Philalithes, director of digital strategy and marketing for Product (RED), at last week’s Social Media Week panel on Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR).   Buyers are demanding that brands be more responsible, and that most sacred of relationships – consumer loyalty – is at stake.  This creates a huge opportunity for corporations that perform with purpose.

Consumer loyalty is very personal, and how we differentiate between our increasing options is changing.  Purchasing a product is also making a value judgment on the corporate values behind it.  Beyond altruistic goals like saving the world, CSR is a mechanism for brands to align themselves with consumers in a highly relevant space: The support of ideas and values that impact them.  

At the opening of the CSR panel, which also included executives from Justmeans, Pepsi and Ogilvy, moderator Jamie Daves of ThinkSocial offered three significant traits of CSR:

• CSR spreads a powerful message and ideas
• CSR is essential to do
• CSR is highly personal and resonate

Throughout the discussion, a set of emerging best practices came into focus:

1.  Social media is a mechanism for corporate values to transform a brand.  It allows companies to close the gap between a consumer’s instinct to buy responsibly and the lack of awareness that may prevent that.  Demand is growing from consumers, activist groups and the media for corporate transparency.  They’re talking about you on Twitter, Facebook and blogs already, so be a part of that conversation – even the negative – and help shift it towards social values.

2.  It’s a movement, not a moment.  Start with people who are passionate about an idea, and help them bring it to their community.  The days of, “Buy this and we’ll donate 10 cents!” are giving way to companies providing information and leadership beyond hard dollars.  It’s not only about what brands do themselves, but what they facilitate consumers to do, creating far deeper impact.  How does a brand become relevant to a new generation?  By helping them bring their ideas to life.

3.  Take an existing program, add social media and create incentive to spread it.  One Justmeans client put $150,000 towards issues that were relevant to their employees, who nominated and voted on the causes.  In year two, they brought it online.  The 27 nominated organizations provided blurbs about why they deserved a grant, which the client posted through Justmeans and employees began to spread.  This transformed the client into an ambassador for each initiative, giving a social media platform and exposure to all of them, not just the ultimate winners. 

4.  Embed the message in communications that people already use.  Last World AIDS Day, Product (RED) partnered with Twitter to let users post their Tweets in red.  The message truly resonated, giving users the ability to show awareness and support through Tweets they’d be sending already.  A recent breast cancer awareness campaign had women mysteriously posting their bra color as a Facebook status.  While money raised may be one metric, the generation of awareness is equally important.  Harnessing communication methods that people already use can create significant impact.

5.  The right platform is where the people you want to reach are.  Who’s likely to care about your message and what are they doing?  Social media strategy needs to be about arming the people who will become your strongest advocates.  CSR campaigns should be developed around the platforms those individuals most actively use.  You have to know who you’re trying to engage and where to find them.

6. Social platforms are being mapped to social change.  As a global society, there is a fundamental shift towards the realization that we want to bring change and have to do it together.  Society is being transformed by how we engage on social platforms, not just for personal connection but for how we connect with the world.  Ideas can spread like never before, and a strong CSR strategy gives brands the opportunity to take a leadership role in that conversation. 

 

It’s Social Media Week in New York City, and the digital scene is buzzing with conferences and brimming with ideas and insights about a culture that’s constantly in flux.  Yesterday, I attended the Advertising Research Foundation's event dedicated to 'The Science of Social Media' (#ARFSMC), and found myself particularly engaged by a presentation given by Jeff Doak, Chief Technology Officer of Converseon, called Social Media Mentoring Metrics.  Jeff’s presentation revealed some staggering insights into the analysis of social media metrics that confront the challenges of analyzing metrics via the confines of automated tools that are still in the infant stages of their technical evolution.

The first monitoring metrics that came under the lens were metric returns for “volume”—which is basically to say how many times a brand is mentioned, period.  The context for which a brand was mentioned in is, of course, up for grabs, and that is one of the biggest problems.  Volume without context is really pretty useless, and it’s really up to humans to decide how that volume aligns with overarching business objectives.  One trip to Twitter shows you that your friend Bill did, in fact, wake up this morning with his usual glass of Uncle Matt’s and drove to work in his Prius—and not much else. There’s your volume.

Well, what about influence?  Maybe Bill’s got the hottest blog right now on a low-emission lifestyle and over a hundred-thousand devoted readers who are hanging on his every tweet.  That’s not something your influence metrics are going tell you at face value, and those metrics are never going to provide perspective for the way your brand fits into Bill’s sphere of influence.  That’s the kind of pithy insight that only comes with human analysis.

Lastly, we really can’t forget about sentiment metrics, which is to say how people are talking about your brand.  Current social media monitoring tools measure something called “automated sentiment” which is basically an algorithm that searches for “sentiment words” and their proximity to your brand or product name.  Huh?  This analysis seems logical in a mathematical way, but we’re talking about words and that arbitrary phonetic symbolism that begets meaning.  Human beings can also be pretty witty, and as Jeff so bluntly puts it, “machines don’t get sarcasm or slang.” 

Enter the hammer and the scalpel.  Jeff prescribes the use of one these tools, metaphorically of course, to analyze your social media monitoring metrics.  The hammer is most appropriate for those analysts looking to smash into that data and create some cool charts that’ll impress the boss.  For the rest of us, it’s really the scalpel that going to come in handy.  The scalpel is best suited for that kind of detailed analysis that requires a surgeon’s precision and a human being’s understanding.  Scalpels let you bisect tiny segments of consumer data to bring under the lens and expertly carve around other irrelevant brand chatter.  It’s the scalpel that’s going to help you understand if it’s Bill’s preference for your organic orange juice that’s driving sales, and how you might leverage that affinity to connect with your consumers.

Right now, we’re working with social media metrics that have been around for as little as eighteen months.  The measurements are bound to get better over time, and it’s nice to imagine having tools that create easily accessible and understandable data.  But that’s just not where we’re at right now.  I have faith in the human ingenuity that will eventually lead to greener pastures, but until then, I’m keeping my scalpel on hand.   Kudos to Jeff from Converseon for an enlightening presentation.

 

Using text messages to make donations isn’t a new concept, but few could have predicted the way this simple, innovative use of technology would explode in response to the earthquake in Haiti.

An historic $27 million had already been raised for disaster relief via text as of Monday (1/18), six days after the earthquake. Compare that to less than $500,000 total in the wake of Hurricane Katrina in 2005, or $190,000 raised by the American Red Cross Text 2HELP campaign from September to December, 2008.

The contrast with Katrina is even more startling when considering that total Katrina donations were more than double total Haiti donations over the first six days for each. Texting has accounted for more than 10% of Haiti donations. The American Red Cross has been the biggest recipient; of $112 million total raised through Monday, a staggering 15-20% came via text, with two-thirds donated online.

The effectiveness of the text campaign when combined with major media outreach was proven on a stunning level last weekend during the NFL playoffs. Frequent PSAs aired throughout all four games. The result: text donations poured in at a rate of $500,000 an hour during that time.

While the sheer amount of money raised may be a surprise, text donations reaching its tipping point is not. Consider the factors:

• A disaster of tremendous proportions commanding the world’s attention
• The ever-increasing use of texts not only for communication, but for companies to offer services
• Ease of use: Anytime, anywhere, text a short code to add the donation to your bill, no sign-in, forms or credit cards required
• Social media like Twitter and Facebook spreading the word to the same demographic most likely to adopt this technology in the first place

As with any new technology, expanding so quickly has not been without growing pains. News broke that donations could experience delays of 60-90 days in reaching its destination, as mobile carriers waited for donors to pay their bills. Almost immediately, providers announced they would fast-track the money, pledging to advance 80-100% right away.

As Haiti earthquake relief brings text donations to the mainstream, it will be exciting to see how organizations and grassroots campaigns harness this new power in the very immediate future. Also fascinating to track: How this may empower the demographic most likely to use it – the young generation who knows texting as a way of life, but may never have participated in a campaign like this before.

There’s a large, new generation ready to step up, and a whole new way for them to do so in the most simple, effective way possible.

Last Monday night, Mike Mitchell, a 27-year-old freelance artist living in Los Angeles, tweeted a link to a poster he created in support of Conan O’Brien. The poster—which has become the official face of “I’m with COCO,” the quasi-official campaign in support of Conan O’Brien against NBC’s decision to restore Jay Leno to the nightly 11:35 slot—bears more than a passing resemblance to Shepard Fairey’s iconic image of Barack Obama.

I recently spoke with Mitchell about the viral image that he created. “I woke up the next day and it was crazy,” Mitchell said, “I was getting contacted by all of these media outlets and being flooded.” In a matter of days, countless people, including Conan’s staff, started using the image as their avatars. Mitchell doesn’t know how it spread so fast.

As it turns out, the “I’m with COCO” image was promptly picked up by another Conan supporter who created the “I’m with COCO” fan page on Facebook. (Mitchell was then added as an admin.) The “I’m with COCO” page—which facetiously, albeit plausibly, describes itself as a “Religious Organization”—has garnered over 250,000 supporters in the past week, far outpacing anything in the Leno camp. If you were to hit “Refresh” on your browser any night last week, you’d likely see the number of COCO fans increasing by 20-30 in a matter of seconds. Over on Twitter, the web’s other bellwether of now, data compiled by Trendrr and featured in Advertising Age showed that chatter and sentiment on the site leaned heavily in favor of Conan from January 9th to January 16th.

That Conan would appear to be more popular on social media sites is not surprising given that these sites are more popular with young people and Leno’s audience tends to be older. What is surprising, if not perplexing, is that NBC has chosen the older demographic over the one traditionally favored by advertisers. (That’s still how television networks are supposed to make money, right?) Fox, which employed Conan O’Brien as a writer for “The Simpsons” and may be courting him again, must be toasting right now to the NBC debacle.

History repeats itself, sort of. Back in 1992, NBC’s decision to tap Jay Leno, and not David Letterman, to fill Johnny Carson’s coveted chair reminds us that the network is no stranger to “Tonight Show” drama. The difference between then and now, however, is that the audience is not a faceless Nielsen rating: it’s connected, vocal, and in typical web fashion, very opinionated.

The online campaign for Conan will not reverse the decision of NBC executives. Still, moving forward, it will probably cause the big networks to think more carefully about how their audiences might respond—especially when that audience is armed with social media—before making big decisions. I asked Mike Mitchell what he saw as the goal of the “I’m with COCO” movement, which has moved from the internet to staging ‘rallies’ in various cities, and he offered a humble response, “I’d like NBC to look at it and maybe think that they’ve made a mistake.”