Trendcatching

Promoting yourself on myspace pt 1017878676

We've covered loads of different ways to promote yourself on myspace in the past but i think this one is the best yet.  MC Keyes raps and hypes the crowd at hardcore raves up and down the country and does a zeitgeisty lyric called "The Plug" all about his myspace page:

"I need to be noticed
Yo I need to be seen
Now everyone's at it
Come on you know what I mean
I got to get to the top
And I ain't got time to waste
So I logged on to the internet
Signed up to myspace
Jumping on the bandwagon
So you can hear what I do
Making tunes and lyrics
Rocking all of you
So check out my page
Remember its Keyes with two E's
Myspace dot com forwardslash MC KEYES"

You can listen to it here:

Here's what MC Keyes says about how he uses myspace:

"I use it for self promotion for everything 'MC Keyes' related e.g. All my upcoming event's I'm booked at are listed, latest tunes I've done are put up, cd albums I'm featured on etc are listed, I also use the blog quite a bit for posting up lyrics, bits and general rambles for those that want to know.  I've been heard by people all over the world because of it, I frequently get messages of support from people in America, Australia, Canada and even Japan all loving what I'm doing. I even got my first international booking this year in Germany, booked through myspace."

It's easy to forget what an amazing platform for talent myspace and other social media sites are - back in the day the only way to get people to hear your MCing was to hang around the stage and try and grab the mic for a bit.  Thanks to MC Keyes for the clip and the interview.   

 

Promoting yourself on Dontstayin pt1

Just like with myspace, we are starting to see clubs promoting their dontstayin pages on their posters.  Here's one below for Turnmills DSI group found on Old St, London.  For UK clubs getting people on your dontstayin group is probably more important than having them as friends on myspace, and advertising the fact you are on the site no doubt helps. 

This is a great example of viral promotion and distribution leverage - DSI's customers are promoting the site for them!  They could do with creating cleaner URL's for these pages though...  no doubt it's on the "to do" list.

Club promotors branding their posters with myspace

One aspect of flyers and posters for clubs is that they often feature a roster of logos at the bottom from record labels, co-promotors and so on that are supporting the night.  This provides some co-branding which helps give the night credibility.  Anyway, it's interesting to see that myspace has started appearing as a co-brand at the bottom of some of the club posters out and about in London - see below.  The photos are geotagged if you want to try and spot them yourself in East London. 

The conclusion - Tila Tequila may be pissed off with myspace, but club promotors still see it as a valuable brand they want to be associated with.

Marketing TV shows using social media

So Channel 4 in the UK have a new TV show out called Skins which is about a group of teenagers.  The show has been heavily promoted through the usual channels - loads of trailors, print advertising and outdoor media (there's a massive backlit billboard on Old St).  However, they've also done a bit of social media marketing.

First up there's a myspace profile - which is actually hidden behind a splash screen warning you of adult content.  The splash screen doesn't have the usual myspace navigation, ads and so-on on it - so either they've done some serious hacking to the template or they've made special arrangements with myspace UK.  The profile has been customised nicely and has plenty of embedded myspace videos, a slide show, links to the e4 download site and background images to customise your own profile.  One clever thing they've done is to create profiles for all the characters in the show and put them at the top of their friends list.  The show has 18000 friends already so either they've been using a bot or the profile has got pretty good traction.  Apparently they used people recruited on myspace to film the risque party trailor and they also link to the skins myspace from the main Channel 4 microsite so it's quite possible they've been building friends up organically. 

Secondly, the show has a profile on youtube with some video clips up there.  At the moment the number of views (1225) and subscribers (31) is pretty low - maybe because they've been using myspace video instead of youtube to embed content in their myspace profile.  It would be good if they uploaded previews and episode highlights or something rather than just a single collection of random clips.

The final thing they've done is built a flickr profile for Tony which doesn't work all that well as it mixes a set of photos of the launch party, with a set of photos from the fictional party shown in the trailor which kind of breaks down the logic of this being the character's photos.

It seems like people are pretty clued up about myspace marketing these days but the way the likes of flickr and youtube can be effectively used is less well developed.  Building community and buzz around a TV show using social media is surely going to be standard practice going forward and this is a great early example so props to whoever put this together. 

Big media companies are employing full-time "professional Diggers"

Went to this thing called the Social Media club last night where a group of us discussed social media marketing.  Lots of different people in the group including from startups, PR agencies, journalism and research.

One interesting fact that emerged was that a well-known media company is paying people to act as "professional Diggers".  They basically pay people to spend the day building up digg accounts with friends, comments etc, and submitting stories from their publications in order to drive traffic and in-bound links.  The person who came up with this information claimed a friend of his was being paid to do this but he wouldn't reveal which company it was (unfortunately he was doing a January detox so there was no way of loosening his tongue).

Anyone got any ideas which company this is?

How to make your website cool pt3 - Get a personality

One thing that a lot of successful social sites seem to have in common is that they have a personality - a real person who represents the site to users a.k.a "the Dude" (thanks Bubblegen).  This was also true in the last dot com boom - in the UK Martha Lane Fox and Brent Hoberman at lastminute.com, Toby Rowland at Clickmango, Ernst Malmsen at Boo.com and so on all helped to provide a human face which could generate publicity for their websites.  However, the social and community nature of many of the new wave of web 2.0 sites seems to make this even more important.

Having a human being manifested in a social media site helps in a number of ways.  It helps to "make meaning" - the site becomes more than just a load of code on a server designed to make money for VCs.  It's easier to create "social value" when there's a real person involved, not just a shadowy bunch of employees.  There's also practical value in providing a focal point of the site in an individual node in the social network.  Finally, the PR value of a human story continues to endure - journalists like writing about people, not technology.

However, there's a number of different ways a personality can work - here's a few examples:

First, there's the original internet rockstar Tom at myspace. Tom plays a very practical role on the site, he's the node that connects everyone together and allows people to browse strangers profiles and send friend requests to randoms.  He's also updates people on new features on his myspace blog and you can send him customer support questions.  However, what Tom has given myspace is the x-factor and the social juice that makes the site cool today, even when it's owned by Rupert.  It's notable that Tom doesn't do a lot of public PR - ever seen him speak at a conference or on TV?  The mystery seems to be a big part of his appeal - a bit like her.

The dude on Digg is Kevin Rose. Kevin isn't core to the sites functionality in the same way as Tom, but he's equally important.  Internally, he plays a big role in building community through co-hosting the weekly podcast Diggnation, and writing blog posts communicating feature updates and so on. More importantly though, Kevin Rose makes a geeky technology site seem socially acceptable, and not just some kind of wierd fetish.  Again, he makes the site human. Unlike Tom, Kevin also represents the site at conferences, does interviews and gets publicity.  Would Digg have got on the cover of Business Week without him?

Turning to the UK, Dontstayin has the brothers John-B and Dave-B whose presence seemed to make all the difference in the early days of the site.  They made the site feel like a group of friends you wanted to be a part of.  A lot of the first users of the site actually met them out at clubs - I remember my girlfriend getting bought a drink by one of them.  What DSI have done now which is really interesting and clever is to proliferate personalities - all the moderators, admins, and staff of the website are listed on the contact page so you've always got a way of connecting with a real human being if you've got a question or want to do business with them.

Similar to this is Yelp which has Jeremy Stoppleman and Russel Simmons who also help to make the community feel like the "in-crowd".  They play on this by hosting the Yelp Elite nights where they play host to a selected bunch of power-users.  Again, like Kevin Rose, they make the site seem cool and get good press from Business Week.  Their opposite number at competitor Insider Pages is ashamed to show his face on his profile on the site.  Guess which company is going bust?

Having bigged up the idea of personality it's important to note that doing this badly is worse than not doing it at all.  Myspace widget company Abazab initially tried to launch with a blatantly fake character called Rick but wisely dropped him once it became clear that people were seeing through it.  Judging by the video message Chad and Steve of youtube made once they cashed out they were wise to stay in the background.  The tagworld founders got busted recently, when it was discovered that they'd not logged onto their profiles on their own service for over a month.  Myyearbook has some seriously weird page about the founders that just seems kind of creepy.

So having a personality is more complex than it seems - maybe internet entrepreneurs are going to have to start employing image consultants? Anyone got any other examples - good or bad - of personalities on websites?

How to advertise effectively on Facebook

Boso is a fantastic UK startup that acts as an auction site for university students - it's like a hybrid of Facebook and eBay.  If you trade with people within your university there's a number of advantages over conventional auctions, including greater trust, the ability to exchange the goods in person, as well as more relevant items for sale e.g. text books from the same course or whatever. 

The co-founders of Boso, Kulveer and Harj, are both recent Oxford grads, and, given the target market for their site, they have built up some great experience of advertising on Facebook.  Kulveer was good enough to share some of their know-how and reveal some of their Social Media Marketing methods.

"We mainly use Facebook flyers, and have a group on there to give us some added visibility.  We try to tap in to what's hot at the moment, and consequently, get loads of click-throughs, and manage to generate a bit of buzz."

The day after this happened during the World Cup final...

They ran this ad on facebook...

They ran this one after a BBC documentary about bribery in the FA Premier League.

The most successful Facebook ad run by Boso really taps into the way pop cultural memes are amplified in the campus environment - check it:

"We ran this one 2 weeks ago, linking directly to http://www.boso.com/item/3492/My_Wife/ and it became our top viewed item within a day (and most commented!)."

So if you are looking to target students and are planning some Facebook marketing or advertising the advice from Boso crew is as follows:

"After experimenting a bit with the format of the flyers, we've found them to be very successful. Including images help, short snappy messages are important and tapping into something that is hot at the moment will also provide extra attention. We've had very high click-through ratios which have helped spread our message to students."

It's not just about creativity though, Boso also follow the McKinsey way - "What you can measure you can manage":

"Be prepared to experiment with the format of your flyers and use Google Analytics to track the results. We've gathered information on where people go to on our site after clicking the flyer and therefore can optimise the first impressions visitors get. The Google Conversion University is excellent."

The Boso crew are off to the Startup School at the US incubator YCombinator early next year so we'll see if they pick up any new Social Media Optimization tricks out in Silicon Valley.  In my experience of hanging out with the Xuqa crew, the kids in the US really know how to work Facebook - so hopefully Boso will bring back some of these techniques with them... Good luck guys!  Props due to Anjool of Alpha Parties for hooking us up and a hat-tip to Peter Nixey at WebKitchen. 

Social Media Marketing pt1

Advertising and promoting using facebook

As social media services have got more and more and more popular, they are increasingly been used as a channel for promoting and advertising things. This is nothing new really, for example, posting on forums is a well established online marketing tactic. However, with the rise of mass market communities like myspace, social media marketing has hit the mainstream, with all kinds of brands, products and services pimping and friend-whoring themselves out there.

Anyway, here’s an interesting example of a party promotions company using Facebook to promote themselves. Alpha Parties runs nights in upscale London clubs targeting IB interns, new graduates and so on and they use Facebook to promote the service through a group on the site (you need a facebook account to view it)

 

Basically, it works like this, the group has over 200 members, who can all be contacted through the site, which is better than email for most facebook users:

The group is promoted on the Alpha Promotions website using a facebook badge:

 
Here’s a few words from Anjool Malde, co-founder of Alpha Parties,

"Facebook has proven to be incredibly useful for the growth of Alpha Parties since it's inception this summer. In particular the 'Facebook Flyers' paid advertisements work a treat - for around £5/week the site's traffic increases tenfold on days when we have flyers running, and subsequently Facebook provides a sizeable chunk of our guestlist - online advertising can be significantly more cost-effective than paper flyering. Furthermore we've had great brand recognition by setting up a Facebook group and uploading photos from the nights - aided by the Mini-Feed and photo tagging, Alpha Parties has rapidly become well-known within several social circles."

This kind of marketing is going to be really disruptive in the world of club promotions - watch this space for more coverage. 

How to make your website cool - pt2

No 2 - Put on real world events

One thing that can really help to build community and social value around a digital media service is real world events.  Apparently myspace really took off after they began sponsoring local gigs and even today, marketing efforts are being driven by the myspace Secret Shows events.  Building offline community makes your site cool. 

Another site that is using events very effectively is Yelp, a local reviews site.  Yelp holds regular "Yelp Elite" piss-ups for the Power Users that Yelp want to keep on the site because they post a lot or write good reviews or whatever. 

In the words of the CEO of Yelp, Jeremy Stoppelman:

"...we actually hold local events for our hardcore users, we call them the Yelp Elite Squad. When someone gets really involved with the site we try to identify that, and bring them into the Yelp Elite Squad. Then once a month we do events where everyone can get together. It's a way of getting to know those folks and thank them too. There are about 200 of them so far."

These events really provide a lot of social value to Yelp.  Firstly, they are building community and good vibes in the site as a whole, and adding to the all-important "cool-factor".  Secondly, the events are helping to develop strong offline micro-communities through building connections between individual Power Users in a specific location.  Thirdly, the events also provide users with an incentive to post and be active on the site, so that they can join the Elite.  Finally, the events provide Yelp with a great marketing tool, they can talk about the events on their blog, post up photos on flickr, and gain total notoriety from explicit photos taken at the Yelp Elite Mixers.

So, if you want your site to be cool, think about running events. 

How to make your website cool - pt1

The key to success for social media sites is the "X-factor".  Do people want to hang out there?  Do people want to submit content or whatever that they've created? All this depends on whether the site is cool.  Myspace is the King of Social Networks because it's got the LA, emo, tattoos, rock music, girls in bikinis vibe, and Tom, who's also cool.   This is something competitors like Tagworld just dont have, although they try.  So how do you make a website cool? 

Here's one way - you do a podcast every week showcasing the contributions on your site, like Digg does with Diggnation, and you make it cool with beer and swearing and things.  To make it even cooler, you have a wicked video intro like this:

As if by magic, Digg is so much more than a geeky site for nerds.  Every social media site should be looking to do something like this.