Social media is what I would consider the antithesis of mainstream marketing. By no surprise, corporations have still managed to entwine themselves in the experience and are finding it quite effective. Suddenly social media is mainstream.

However, there is a recognized resistance to mass-publicized conferences in the world of social media. You may often hear of bloggers, podcasters and other social media-ers congregating and sharing their expertise. Much like the medium itself, these gatherings are informal and generally unplanned.

But, what if there was an organized event with social media companies sharing expertise and exchanging ideas? The opportunity to mix and mingle could yield big results for those looking to step up their game.

One such conference does exist in Atlanta. SoCon07 is appropriately dubbed “the UN-conference.” And it will be anything but mainstream. Held at Kennesaw State University, the conference will feature a keynote from Chris Klaus (founder of social entertainment world Kaneva). But, the remainder of the conference will be based on group discussions; with topics including Podcasting, Citizen Journalism, Reinventing Journalism, Online User Experience and more.

Attendees are encouraged to match their interests with the topics at the conference. Discussions will be divided based on interest, with “topic leaders” guiding the conversations in intimate groups. The idea of SoCon07 is to create social networking at a conference –there is even a pub-crawl at the end of the event.

Our very own Raghu Kakarala will be a topic leader for User Experience, and Spunlogic is a Sponsor of the event. Leave it to social media to redefine the way we experience a conference.

Being a marketer does have its benefits sometimes. There are so many industries that seem to be stuck in the past when it comes to driving new sales. What do giant inflatable gorillas, brightly colored balloons and dancing clowns with signs have in common? They are all old attempts to drive sales locally.

Now I know that not all car dealers, real-estate agents and clowns know the power of local search, much less the simplicity behind AdWords. But imagine if those balloons and inflatable gorillas could be strategically positioned all around their competitor’s lots and listings.  Local targeted ad buys have been a great way for many businesses to target regional buyers searching for product and services at very low costs. For $0.04, less the cost of any balloon, a highly targeted ad can yield great results.

Let’s look into an example of a campaign that I am currently running for my beautiful, fabulous, well-priced (obviously still trying to sell it) townhome. With a very competitive real-estate marketplace and many new condo and townhome communities going up, it seems almost necessary to shorten the sales time with other non-traditional mediums.

My current locally targeted AdWords campaign gets about 150 clicks per week and over 8,000 impressions (people that might have saw the balloons). At an average cost per click (CPC) of only $0.20, it is worth every penny to have them view my property without having to schedule a showing with my agent.

My keyword strategy is a simple one… be found when people are searching for new homes, researching new developments, finding lenders, finding tax information and even researching local neighborhoods. The costs and impressions greatly range, but considering the sale price and the value of a click, it was worth the couple extra minutes of setup.

So next time you are looking to drive more traffic, don’t just think a PPC campaign is only for big budgets. You will be surprised what $4 a day can get you and you might even save a few animals from those pesky balloons.

Helpful Links

Google AdWords - Learning Center

A Darn Nice Townhome For Sale

Well the race to the White House has truly begun with frontrunners from each party announcing their exploratory committees, a crucial first step in announcing proposed candidacy and allowing a candidate to collect contributions. Republican John McCain and Democrat Hillary Clinton are both “in” officially, as you can see by their gleaming new websites www.exploremccain.com and www.hillaryclinton.com.

Now without getting too into the marketing messages, such as how interesting it is that Senator McCain has branded himself as “McCAIN” in a site that is completely black & white while Senator Clinton branded herself as “Hillary” in a site reminiscent of an inviting home, I would like to look at the interactive marketing tactics their teams are using.

So let’s look at Senator McCain’s site. Senator McCain’s site begins in a very simple postcard style with a dominant image that rotates upon refreshing or reentry into the site. There is no left or right navigation, just “calls to action” along the bottom and right of the image. Users are prompted to “Donate,” “Join Our Team,” “Take Action” and learn “About John McCain,” and are given the ability to read and watch an assortment of speeches. Choosing any of these options brings the user into the microsite with the same options now located in tabs (which are actually simply horizontal navigation styled as tabs). A few features of note are the email marketing and e-commerce on the site.

The site allows you to sign up for email, make donations from the site, and even establish a profile as a “team member” (with login) thus creating a user’s version of the site to share with friends and family. Mine will be at www.patrickm.exploremccain.com once it’s reviewed and approved. Senator McCain hits all the high points of a campaign site, with a page discussing his story, the abilities to get emails and be a team member, and a place pass on some cash to help support the race. I’m not politically savvy enough to comment on McCain’s base, but I’d venture to guess the needs of many potential voters would be satiated by the offerings.

Now let’s look at Senator Clinton’s site. Senator Clinton does not have a microsite by any stretch of the word. It’s a fully functioning machine. As an interactive marketer, I can say that Senator Clinton’s team has gulped down the kool-aid. The site is chock-full of interactive goodies including a video message, upcoming webcasts, a blog, email marketing (that look as if they will be geo-coded, altered based on the users location/zip code, to be more relevant to the user), user profiles (including narrowing what issues are important to the user…which could lead to even more user-specific emails), an event planner and search, a customizable “send to a friend” email tool, a send a “message of support” tool, a video library, a 5 page “About Hillary” section with video clips from supporters, a newsroom, and of course a section to “Contribute”. I mean wow. That’s a lot of functionality and yet is surprisingly easy to navigate.

In the video introduction, Senator Clinton says “with a little help from modern technology” she’ll “start a conversation with America”. I’d say that it is a definite possibility. The site takes a “web 2.0” approach in a possible effort to draw in the user s that will use the medium as their key source of information. Again I fall back on not being politically savvy enough to make great base-related commentary, but I will say that I think Senator Clinton has used the medium very effectively in the onset of her campaign.

So there you have it, two different styles for two different user groups. I see both as having potential to be effective. However, in the end, a well-played e-race won’t win anything. Like a great email for a bad product, the real proof will be in the pudding.

A little while back I wrote a blog post entitled, “YouTube is like the bar that lets in underage kids”. It was a quote from Mark Cuban. In the post I was agreeing with Mark’s point that YouTube is successful because it has the eyeballs, not because its the best way to run a video website. Like many of the first sites to truly “get” social networking (like MySpace, Flickr, etc.), their success is founded on filling a hole in the market. The ones that will be successful in the end are the ones that will just do it better. The perfect example is Yahoo vs. Google. We all know which one was first and we all know which one ended up the winner in the end.

So who’s going to start the dismantling of YouTube atop the video world? My money is on Brightcove and Revver to really kick things off. Brightcove just got another round of funding to the tune of $59MM and Revver added another $8MM earlier last year. And Brightcove has some amazing companies backing it (see their corporate site for more). Oh, and Revver is also partnering with Verizon (much the same as YouTube). But, the real reason I think these two will start the process of unseating the king is that they are focusing on two different niches: Revver primarily on user videos and Brightcove primarily on marketing-based videos. Brightcove has a much more user-friendly interface and Revver provides an incentive for users to upload their videos (they split the ad revenue 50/50 with the user).

So keep an eye out for these two companies to start shaking things up. They’re still far behind YouTube, but my money is on them leveling the playing field sooner rather than later.

What’s the Internet? Ask a friend. Most people will have a hard time telling you. They can tell you what the Internet can do – or what they can do with the Internet, but that’s about it.

The Internet is the worldwide, publicly accessible network of interconnected computer networks that transmit data by packet switching using the standard Internet Protocol (IP). It is a network of networks that consists of millions of smaller domestic, academic, business, and government networks, which together carry various information and services (Wikipedia).

Ok, wait a minute. Back up. The Internet is what?!

The Internet can be difficult to describe – and even more difficult to comprehend. So how did it become so popular? How did it get so many users? Well-experienced designers helped out a lot with that. We knew that people didn’t have to really understand the Internet in order to use it. We knew that all we had to do was take what users already knew about the real world and leverage it – to use life as a metaphor for Internet design. And we did.

The Internet is rarely described as a network of interconnected data transmission networks. It’s more often described as the information superhighway. These words make the Internet sound easy to understand. Most people don’t understand data transmission and networks, but they do understand driving down a really big highway. Internet gaming companies like Second Life are using metaphors too. Second Life is calling their customers Residents. It’s easier for gamers to think of themselves as residents in an online world when compared to paying customers. But it’s not just the Internet that benefits from metaphors, it’s applications too. Consider MS Office. In Office, you have “files” and “folders” that you can put on your “desktop.” You have a “notepad.” You have an “inbox” and an “outbox.” Coincidence? I think not.

Metaphors can benefit design when they make sense. But sometimes they get confusing. Take the Apple trash can. It’s the only way to get your disk out of an Apple computer – short of using a modified paperclip. You have to drag the disk icon with important files that you want to save to the very place that you would never put them in the real world – a trashcan. This goes against the grain. And speaking of paper clips, take Microsoft’s Clippie, MS agent of irritation. Think about the way you feel when he appears, asking you if you need help with what could be the most basic office task – writing a letter. Some of us have used some choice words in situations like these, others have been caught banging on our keyboards - as if Clippie will hear us, as if he will keep himself in check next time. We would fire an office assistant like this in the real world. In a real world office, Clippie wouldn’t last a day.

There are some things that technology can do that I can’t do in life. And it leaves me wishing for things that can never be. Sometimes I make mistakes in the real world…like dropping my lunch on the break room floor…or accidentally saying ‘Hi’ to someone who I don’t know…or deleting a TV show that my husband TiVo’d before he watches it. In times like these, I often catch myself searching for the undo button. But there’s no undo button for life. And that’s a shame. With the Internet, you have the metaphors of Life + so much more. In the real world, you just have Life.

Netflix took the next step to living up to its name by starting to allow select customers to download movies online rather than receive them via mail - net flix indeed. Netflix innovated the movie rental space when it began operations in 1997 with its service that allowed subscribers to select movies online and receive them by mail with an indefinate return date. Like any innovator it has faced the classic problem of being copied and sometimes bettered by well financed rivals such as WalMart and Blockbuster.

It’s the innovators dilemma that has seen two waves transpire in the last decade since Netflix debuted. Netflix’s service disrupted the business model of Blockbuster, and now the coming of on-demand digital downloads available by Apple’s iTV, Microsoft’s XBox 360, and the delivery networks such as Comcast has disrupted the mail only portion of Netflix’s core business. Netflix is going it alone at this point and is investing $40 million to get the service off the ground. If any aspect of this move is bold, that is the one that should stand out. There are several key components to the much anticipated ability to view the movie you want to watch when you want to watch it.

- The front end interface to select the movie needs to be enticing - a check in Netflix’s column, their queue and recommendation interface is good and always attempting to get better.

- The ease of getting the movie off the computer and onto the tv - a big check in the column for the XBOX and the cable companies with their ubiquitous set top boxes.

- The network needs to be robust - an advantage for the cable companies with their closed systems but broadband speeds continue to increase which will shrink this advantage over time.

- The selection of movies needs to be vast - an interesting note in Netflix’s gradual rollout of this new service is that only 1000 of the 70,000+ movies Netflix offers today will be available for download - a function of the complicated technology behind on demand downloads.

So they have a tough road ahead of them, but a fighters chance to be successful. You always know a good fighter has a few more punches left in them regardless of the challenger they are facing. Perhaps the toughest dilemma they face is that after spending $40 million dollars to rollout their new service they will have the same revenue from existing customers as they had before. They will need to find a way to get the cost of a digital download below the price of the US Postal Service. That will be a fun fight to watch - on demand that is.

A picture is worth a thousand words, right? It’s why we use emoticons and avatars in our social media endeavors. These graphical representations help us define aspects of our communication intent that might have been lost, or at the very least saves us from writing a ton of text that it might take to clarify our attitude, meaning, tone, etc..

And I really hate typing

So things like Second Life that have the highest form of graphical representation are increasing in popularity, but there is a lot of middle ground to cover. That’s where Meez fits in the picture. Meez is sort of a more evolved, shared source avatar. They allow you to build and animate a representation of yourself and host that representation to be used across multiple social-networking sites. Here is a link to a press release from a few days ago that talks a bit about where they are going with this business, and below is a best attempt to create my Meez, although it is severely misleading. I’m not really a golfer but it was a close as I could get to the digital me… till they upgrade with the father-of-two, comic/computer nerd skins (I don’t think I’m the target demographic).

While I am not typically one to fall into the whole New Year’s resolution “thing” (yes, air quotes would have been appropriate here Britney); I actually have TWO of them this year. I won’t get into too much detail on the first one, except to say it’s fairly standard and involves a battle with myself to exercise a little self control when it comes to all things sweet and calorie-laden. The second, however, I feel is fit to share in this most public of forums.

Those of you managing email programs, it’s time you finally do something about all of the issues that we’ve been reading and talking about for oh-so-long now. How many more conferences and summits do we need to attend to know it’s time? What am I talking about? As technology advances, our emails are starting to look WORSE!

The following have an impact on your email’s performance:

- Widespread adoption of Outlook 2003 with preview pane enabled
- Web based email clients (e.g. Yahoo!) are now using preview panes
- Images not loading by default in many email clients
- People receiving email on mobile devices

What can you do about it? Well, you have to start by wiping-clean the chalkboard board of your mind - no more of the “same old same old” email look. You know what I’m talking about, the old “banner at the top of the email, with the logo on the left, and the offer on the right”. First of all, it’s boring. More importantly, when that banner doesn’t load, no one sees your logo. And, if your offer is part of the graphic, there is a good chance no one can read it. Expecting readers to download images just to get the gist of your email is asking for more effort than most people have the time to output.

I’ve been saying it for a while, but people rarely listen or are afraid to stray from the norm. You don’t NEED a logo on the top left. People should see who sent the email in the FROM field. That’s what they look at to decide if they even want to open your email. But now that Email Labs is saying it, maybe I will be more credible.

Now, I’m not saying to avoid the use of pretty pictures altogether. Just don’t make your email reliant on them to deliver the message. Use a combination of web text and colored background cells for navigational and promotional information. Once the reader is engaged and decides to check out the entire email, you can wow them with great creative that adds to the experience and strengthens your brand.

So back to resolution two … I won’t take “no” for answer when I tell my clients this is how they need to be doing email. Even if I have to do it without the extra energy from a pre-meeting sugar binge.

First let me say that I am by no means a Second Life junky, many would be surprised at how little I log on for someone who seems to only post blog entries about virtual worlds. It’s not that I’m obsessed with Second Life, it’s just the only thing I have found interesting of late. There are a lot of things popping up here and there, but Second Life is holding my attention for now… at least till Google launches GoogleOS next year.

I got the phrase “Incubator for the Future” from Warren Ellis, a well-known comic book author, who often writes about his discoveries, experiences and the social aspects of Second Life on his blog. His blog is actually a good source for those wanting to get up to speed on Second Life as he often posts of new finds or events he discovers. His social commentary on Second Life is so colorful that he has been hired to do a weekly commentary for Reuters (It just started last week). For those of you that don’t know, the international news giant, Reuters, has an entire sub-site devoted to Second Life.

Warren Ellis often points out the way in which people are using Second Life as a testing ground (consciously or unconsciously) for what the internet may become. He is looking at how people behave and interact (with each other and the environment) and what that will mean as technology progresses. I continue to watch Second Life to see how all of this will unfold as well and wonder what you think. Leave a comment if you have some thoughts on what might be the next step in this “Incubator for the Future.”

People can’t always accurately report on their behavior — even if they have the best of intentions. Take the guy who tells you he’ll never date a smoker. What does he end up doing? Marrying one. Take the girl who says she’ll leave her guy in a heartbeat if he cheats. He cheats, she stays. If we can’t trust people to accurately report on what they’d do in their significant lifetime partnerships, how can we trust them to accurately report on whether they’d buy a Coke or a Pepsi?

In Marketing, you have a real advantage if you can assess and predict human behavior. But this can be hard. Researchers in user experience sometimes say that direct observation is the only method that really works. But observing users can take so much time and so much money.

I’m of the opinion that survey methods can be used to assess and predict human behavior, at least in some cases. But you have to really work hard to ask the right questions and provide the right response sets. That’s the key.

Say someone is on trial and claims insanity. How do you determine whether they’re truly insane or whether they’re trying to get out of a conviction? What kinds of questions would you ask if you could only administer a survey? This is a difficult question. If you write a question that asks, Are you insane? and the defendant responds Yes, where does that really get you?

Some people believe that survey methods can’t be used to assess things like insanity. I disagree. I believe that if you are thoughtful, you can come up with questions that will work.

Consider this question. True or False: Demons visit me on Tuesday afternoons. Now if you were pretending to be insane, how would you answer this question? Well as a former Professor of Psychology, I’ve asked hundreds of students this question. What answer would they be looking for to determine whether someone was truly insane? Most students say True because they think that indicates you’re insane. But that’s too easy. How do we know they aren’t just saying True because that’s what they think we want to hear? A few students say False because the True response sounds like a trick. But if you answer False, you’re saying you’re not insane and that doesn’t seem to work either. So which response best identifies insanity?

Truth is, neither response identifies insanity. Instead, the response that I’d be looking for goes something like this. The defendant raises their hand and says … I’m confused. Demons do visit me but they typically come on Mondays and Fridays… and in the mornings. I don’t know how to answer this question.

And with that, you have your answer.

This is an extreme example but hopefully you see the point. Using surveys to assess and predict human behavior isn’t always easy. But if we are thoughtful, we can devise question and response sets that work. Over the years, I’ve come to believe that survey writing is not just a science — it’s an art.