Ms. Adverthinker

This fictional Internet-Age Writing Syllabus and Course Overview had me laughing out loud.  A highlight:

“Students will learn time-saving tricks, like how to construct an 800-word blog entry in 30 seconds using a simple news article and copy-and-paste. And, as an exercise in the first-person narrative form, students will blog intimate details about their lives, their studies, and their sexual histories (with pictures), with the intent of being linked to by gossip sites and/or discovered by future employers.”

Enjoy.

We are launching a new program over here at Stone Ward: Stone Ward Interactive Meetings, or SWIM.  We saw a need for education among college students in the area of online communications and decided to create this eight week course.  Anyone can attend the sessions live, but they can also be viewed online through live, streaming video.  The first one will be May 1st at 5 PM at U.S. Pizza in Hillcrest, Little Rock, Arkansas.  We hope you will participate.

Check out the 99 Things You Should Have Already Experienced on the Internet.  Seriously funny.  And seriously time-consuming.

On Friday morning, I had the opportunity to listen to Blake Mycoskie, founder of TOMS Shoes, talk about his company and the shoes it gives to children in need.  Blake spoke at the Clinton School of Public Service as part of the Clinton School Speaker Series.  TOMS Shoes started in May 2006 and has since given over 130,00 pairs of shoes to children in need around the world.  The company is able to do this by selling shoes to consumers under the agreement that for every pair of shoes purchased, one pair of shoes will be given away.  Through this model, TOMS Shoes has become a sustainable company that is both profitable and philanthropic.  The story of TOMS Shoes success is fascinating and inspiring, but the thing that interested me the most was that–according to Blake in his presentation on Friday–they have never spent a single dollar on advertising.  The company grew solely on word-of-mouth.  Granted, fashion publication editors became enamored with the TOMS Shoes story (rightfully so) and took it upon themselves to get the word out to those they influence.  Without that help, would the company be as successful now?

Many philanthropic start-ups struggle to get the funding they need to do the giving they set out to do.  The TOMS Shoes story is the exception rather than the rule.  In 2006 when TOMS Shoes was founded, social media was prevalent, but not to the extent we are seeing it used today.  The next “TOMS Shoes” will need to leverage the online social media space in much the same way the Obama campaign did to see a similar success.

How does a fledgling organization present itself as legitimate and use the online space to generate interest and raise money?

1. Establish a professional-looking website.  This will take a considerable investment, but the payoff is enormous: a website is a first impression.
2. Create a voice for the “brand.”  People interact with brands just like they are people online.  In the social media arena, the brand will need to speak through blog posts, Twitter posts, online video, social network fan pages, and whatever the next new channel that pops up.  Someone will have to manage all of these communications in a consistent and timely manner.
3. Be everywhere online with the official brand voice.  Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, Twitter, blog, YouTube channel, Flickr, etc.  And have links to all these online spaces on your website.
4. Offer interesting information on a regular basis.  And deliver it to your priority participants first: those that sign up for email or text message updates.  Use this data to build your database, then use it to make requests.  Remember when Obama announced his running mate?  The announcement was sent to those who had signed up for text message announcements first.  He later used this database of mobile phone numbers to ask for $5 donations to the Red Cross.
5. Allow donations to be given online in small increments of the donor’s choosing.  This is a duh, but with some many young people interested in participating, you must allow for as little as $5 donations at a time.  As they grow, so will their donations if they have already established a relationship with your organization.

While I am not the expert on this topic, I have an interest in helping organizations that give back, so I am trying learning more.  They are several books on the market now that I will be checking out.  The two I am looking to read next are People to People Fundraising: Social Networking and Web 2.0 for Charities and Digital Giving: How Technology is Changing Charity.  In Blake Mycoskie’s presentation, he specifically mentioned Bill Clinton’s Giving as a starting place for those that want to contribute.  I am ashamed to admit that I bought Giving a year and a half ago, yet neglected to read it until today.  Even more shameful is that I gave this book as gifts to all my friends two Christmases ago, without having read it myself. The combination of hearing the TOMS Shoes story and reading Giving have inspired me to give more and I hope to use this space to help those that want to change the world for the better.

For the people that use Twitter is an interesting way, thank you.  I am active on Twitter and I follow people that share information that I find relevant.  I don’t use it perfectly, but I don’t over use it either.  The tool and the possibilities for sharing information that it open up for us are infinite.

Don’t tell me what you are doing.  I don’t care.  Tell me something you have learned, tell me breaking news, educate me.

Twitter feels dirty and overused; I just want it off me.

My first tweet was on November 15, 2007.  I thought Twitter was great: I linked it to my Facebook status and updated frequently.  All those “in the know” on technology and social media were using it.  It wasn’t overused, people were sharing information and gathering information.  Fantastic.  I had big dreams about how Twitter could be used for online focus groups and research: instant feedback from people that were plugged in and engaged.  I even blogged about Twitter last October and was excited about it momentum.

Today, I officially came down with Twitter-fatigue.  If I hear one more news “personality,” government official or agency old fart talk about Twitter I might officially turn my Twhirl feed off.  Watching MSNBC this morning, an anchor signed off with: follow me on Twitter @whatever.  I rolled my eyes and might have even yelled at the TV.  I got to work this morning and it seemed like every article that was sent to me and every blog topic on my favorite blogs was about Twitter.  Now even the government is doing it, because government is always on the forefront of new technologies!

Here is what Twitter should NOT be used for:

• A way to text message with your friends in a public forum.
• A way to promote yourself constantly.
• A way to promote your friends constantly.

Here is what I appreciate about Twitter:

• The passing along of interesting information.
• The sharing of “what are you doing?” for those people that really care about what you are doing throughout your day.
• Breaking news.

I follow 82 people and have 59 people that follow me.  I don’t know most of the people that follow me, so I have no idea as to why they think my tweets are interesting, or if they even follow me for that reason.  I have experimented with the different ways I use Twitter over the past year and half, and yes, I have broken some of the rules I list above.

I tend to be somewhat of an early adopter of technology (Twitter had been out over a year and half–March 2006–when I signed on, so not even that early in this case) and usually by the time it becomes mainstream, I am over it.  I will keep using Twitter for now, but will be much more selective in who I follow.  And, I will be on the lookout for that next thing to replace it.

Until I sign off completely, you can follow me @Reeves501.

Courtesy of Eyecube, find the original post here, that includes the key.

According to an Ad Age article today, “Digital Divas” is a term coined by Microsoft and WPP Group’s Mindshare and Ogilvy & Mather based on a recent study.  The study was all about packaged goods buying habits.  While women hate buying the products (convenience, frequency, etc.), they love talking about them online.  Once again, we are shown the importance of online communications and social media.

What I really learned from the article, however, was that you can buy toilet paper, laundry detergent and paper towels from Amazon.com.  Seriously.  How did I not know this?  I am considering putting myself on a regular delivery of these items to avoid weekly trips to Target where I buy much more than I need.

Slate has an interesting article summing up how we read online.

At the first of May, Levi’s released the first of 10 viral videos to kick off its global brand campaign for its 501 jeans. Two videos have been released so far, and they have been so popular that Levi’s is looking to integrate the viral campaign into the larger brand campaign. It is about time that online started influencing offline media. Check out the videos here:

Jumpin’ In

“Hollywood Jungle”

BMW, already known for being on the forefront of new media opportunities–evident by their introduction of BMW Films several years ago–is again proving itself to be a brand that can differentiate itself through digital media, with the launch of a campaign for the new 1-Series. Because the new vehicle is targeted at younger audience, BMW smartly chose to spend almost half their marketing budget online.

Reported in the NY Times:

“Almost half the spending for the campaign, estimated at $15 million to $25 million, is being devoted to online media. By comparison, executives at BMW of North America say, Internet ad spending for other models ranges from 1 percent to 15 percent of the total ad budgets.

“The online elements of the 1-Series campaign include letting members of Facebook…design virtual cars and send them to Facebook friends; buying dominant positions, known as take-overs, on the home pages of msn.com and yahoo.com; posting video clips on YouTube; and developing a microsite devoted to the 1-Series (bmwusa.com/new1).

“The campaign is indicative of efforts by mainstream marketers to alter their media mixes as consumers change their media habits. A recent survey by PQ Media projected that by 2012, advertisers will increase spending by 82 percent from 2008 in areas like search-engine marketing, online video and e-mail messages.”

However, while it seems like I would be in the target market (identified as 20-somethings and 30-somethings) for this new car, I can’t find the Facebook app or the YouTube videos. And, the microsite is hardly a microsite. It looks like any other car website where you can customize and price your vehicle. Am I missing something here? Someone, please tell me.

Well, maybe I will be able to find the traditional ads, which seem pretty cool too:

“There are some unconventional approaches for the traditional media, too. Three magazines — City, Dwell and Paste — are printing pure-white covers that are glued over the actual front covers of the issues; there are ads for the 1-Series on the other sides of the extra covers.

“And magazines like City and AutoWeek are running tiny ads for the 1-Series with numerical themes at the bottom of editorial pages, which double as page-number identifications.

“For example, there is an itsy-bitsy white car on page 26 of the April issue of the magazine City next to this sentence: ’26: number of bones in right foot you’ll use to crush the gas pedal on the all-new BMW 1-Series.’

“At the bottom of page 60, there is a miniature red car and this sentence: ’60: m.p.h. you can reach in 5.1 seconds with the all-new BMW 135i coupe.’

Supposedly, once you start surfing, you can’t stop.  We are all information junkies and just can’t seem to get enough of it.  Reported in the Wall Street Journal:

“What is it about a Web site that might make it literally irresistible? Clues are offered by research conducted by Irving Biederman, a neuroscientist at the University of Southern California, who is interested in the evolutionary and biological basis of the human need for information.

“Dr. Biederman first showed a collection of photographs to volunteer test subjects, and found they said they preferred certain kinds of pictures (monkeys in a tree or a group of houses along a river) over others (an empty parking lot or a pile of old paint cans).

“The preferred pictures had certain common features, including a good vantage on a landscape and an element of mystery. In one way or another, said Dr. Biederman, they all presented new information that somehow needed to be interpreted.

“When he hooked up volunteers to a brain-scanning machine, the preferred pictures were shown to generate much more brain activity than the unpreferred shots. While researchers don’t yet know what exactly these brain scans signify, a likely possibility involves increased production of the brain’s pleasure-enhancing neurotransmitters called opioids.

“In other words, coming across what Dr. Biederman calls new and richly interpretable information triggers a chemical reaction that makes us feel good, which in turn causes us to seek out even more of it. The reverse is true as well: We want to avoid not getting those hits because, for one, we are so averse to boredom.

“It is something we seem hard-wired to do, says Dr. Biederman. When you find new information, you get an opioid hit, and we are junkies for those. You might call us ‘infovores.’

“For most of human history, there was little chance of overdosing on information, because any one day in the Olduvai Gorge was a lot like any other. Today, though, we can find in the course of a few hours online more information than our ancient ancestors could in their whole lives.

“…technology is playing a trick on us. We are programmed for scarcity and can’t dial back when something is abundant.”

“Text Analytics–a general term for the mining and interpretation of written words–has been used for more than two decades, most notably by the defense industry as far back as the Cold War to read into the word choices and text of, say, a speech written by Russian leader Mikhail Gorbachev.” — according to a recent article in Ad Age.

The article goes on to say that marketers are increasingly using text analytics to mine information from customer service surveys, e-mails, online forums, and blogs.  “…while the blogosphere and social networks have so far not proved great advertising media, text analytics offers the potential to make them stronger marketing vehicles.”

Dove used the tool to not only understand reactions to their campaign, but to gain an understanding of what motivates people, which issues are most important to women in their target group, and how to create better products and messaging for them.  All by using text analytics from content on its own message boards.

What a fantastic way to leverage social media tools with a quantitative analysis!