I have a social network management system that is somewhat well thought out and which I exercise diligently. You could call it discerning. On the big four it goes something like this:
Join the professional networks of people I have conducted business with on LinkedIn
Follow people on Twitter that I find interesting
Friend people on Facebook in which I have had a meaningful social encounter
Friend people on Foursquare where I would value a serendipitous encounter
This has led to what I consider to be a somewhat manageable social network structure for me. And for Lent I am going to throw it all out the window. During Lent I am going to take all comers and clean out the backlog on my social network invites. They currently look like this:
LinkedIn 892 contacts, 363 requests
Twitter 2,774 followers, 331 following
Facebook 386 friends, 83 requests
Foursquare 88 followers, 120 requests
During Lent I am giving up my social network follower discretion. Accepting outstanding requests and taking all comers. Not sure it it going to stick come Easter but it will be an interesting experiment.
About a year ago I postulated that social media marketing was going to become a much more direct response medium. That social would only grow to become as large a part of the marketing mix if CMOs could get the same type of performance that they could get from interactive in general. Social needs to be measurable, less expensive, and generate revenue.
While it does not immediately jump out, the big big difference is both conversion and revenue are becoming more important metrics. Conversion jumps from being the 8th most important metric being looked at to measure social media to the 2nd most important and revenue from 9th to 6th. Conversion is ahead of fans and followers as a metric.
Social media marketing measurement is moving toward the bottom line. It is a trend that will continue beyond 2011.
2010 is the year of Facebook and BLiNQ Media has been on fire drafting off their platform. In the video below Dave Williams and Charles Lumpkin discuss some of the contrasts between search and Facebook that marketers should consider when using the different mediums.
Today I attended and participated in an excellent Social Media Atlanta session entitled Gen Y and Social Media. The event was put together by my friend Olivia Patrick whom has also created the Georgia Tech Social Media Special Interest Group. Joining Olivia on the panel were Ajai Karthikeyan, Sam Lawrence, and Matt Smith. Stephen Fleming moderated. And moderation was needed for a quite spirited discussion both on and off line.
At some point I made the comment "Great panel but boy do they say "we" a lot." It was a great panel. But the latter half of the sentence seems to be misinterpreted. The point of the comment was that the panel was taking their personal experiences and extrapolating them to their generation as a whole. It's most interesting that this type of generalization is something that Gen Y, which has also been referred to as Generation Me, seems to abhor.
Brandon Sheets rightly and quickly pointed out the diversity of Gen Y. But the conversation got a little intense. Those from a more communications oriented education and social media practitioner background demanded to be heard. And it was great to see Kate Clark, Kaitlyn Dennihy, Katherine Melick and Caitlin Peterson voice their differing opinions on the gen y and social media both during the panel discussions and in one on one conversations afterward.
My takeaways from the session are threefold. Don't treat your cohorts in a manner you don't want to be treated. Gen Y is diverse. And most importantly, Gen Y is mature and talented. As Stephen commented in his closing remarks, there is no way that he could have assembled such a smart and well spoken group of students to sit on a panel when he was in college. Same holds for me.
Social Media Atlanta is a week-long series of events which celebrates the technology and social media marketing achievements of Atlanta. It is kicking off today. For five days, all across Atlanta, participants will have the opportunity to attend events designed for Atlanta's thriving social media community. So thriving that most of the events are sold out and have been for weeks. The ATDC and I are super excited to be playing a role in making it a great week of content and networking after things kick off Monday at the opening night celebration at The Fox Theatre.
On Tuesday at 10:00 am Laura Nolte of Green Theory has assembled a panel to discuss "Social Media for Startups" in the ATDC's Hodges Room. The panel includes Adam Rice of Looxii, Dave Williams of BLiNQ Media, Jeremy Porter, of Journalistics, and Nicole Jayne of Scoutmob. I know a little about the subject myself and am honored to have a seat on the panel. We are going to discuss how to effectively develop and deploy social media strategies in a startup environment.
"Is the Web Dead?" I don't think so. But on Thursday at 11:30 am my former colleague and current leader of PR+MKTG Camp Dan Greenfield will lead a spirited discussion on measurement, messaging & engagement in the age of apps. Peter Fasano of Dachis Group, Scott Lockhart of Regator, Jennifer Jones of Porter Novelli, and Jerry Rocha of The Nielsen Company comprise an astute panel of experts. This ATDC hosted event is catered and sold out.
Later that day at 4:30 pm, once again in the Hodges Room, Olivia Patrick has put together a panel on "GenY and Social Media". Kids these days know nothing about listing panelists. They do know social and I am eager to hear what they have to say.
While either sold out or on waiting list these three events are just a small part of an ambitious calendar of 40 events that are planned for the week. There is something for everyone and if we don't meet in person at ATDC our social streams are sure to cross online.
A mistake that many people make about Facebook is that they believe it is a merely a social network and they want to go build one. What Facebook is really building is a marketing platform. A broad horizontal marketing platform that will be as much a part of the marketing mix as Google is today. Perhaps more so because due to network effects.
This week Facebook held a mobile event. The company announced that more than 200 million people are using Facebook mobile apps and use is growing very fast. They also announced their intention to make Facebook a cross platform mobile application. They broadened access to Facebook Places with write and search APIs. They announced Single Sign-On and Facebook Deals.
Not quite as interesting as the LinkedIn graph of yesterday. My Facebook network is purposely more limted than that of LinkedIn. On the lower left are my high school friends and my family is right above them. The little cluster at the top is the Kelly School. The big cluster in the middle is MindSpring with the rest of my Atlanta connections clumped off to the right. Notable are the relative lack of connections between clusters and the number of folks within the network that are only connected to me.
So my friend Russell Jurney, who is an analytics architect at LinkedIn, sent me my LinkedIn social graph. It's pretty cool.
According to Russell the colors represent clusters of well-connected people. Moving from lower left to upper right the clusters go something like this:
Dark blue: Established Atlanta technology community
Bondi blue: CipherTrust
Green: Up and coming social/startup crowd
Light orange: Kelley School of Business
Baby blue: Indiana University
Orange: EarthLink/MindSpring
It is interesting that there is no clear ATDC/Georgia Tech cluster.
The people between two of the various colors are the bridges between clusters. The up and coming startup gang is much more tightly networked with the established techies than one might expect. For the most part the MindSpring team is less connected and those closer to the other clusters seem to be more entrepreneurial.
If you double click you will get a full size image with all 800 or so of my LinkedIn connections named. The size of a person's circle reflects many people they are are connected to within my network. It's fun to play with. Would love to hear thoughts on your graph location as well as those you are connected with on LinkedIn.
Last night I ventured out with the BLiNQ Media team to see The Social Network. Good movie. Not sure where I read it but one critic called it the "Wall Street" for this time. I agree.
If you happen to hang out in the Internet, social media, or startup worlds you need to go see this movie. It shows the dedication, ruthlessness, and struggles it takes to be a successful entrepreneur. It worships the creative hacker class. It depicts the characteristics of a company when it raises F&F and seed rounds. It shows how ideas get morphed and co-founders get pushed out. It's just a darn good movie that is likely to inspire a new generation of entrepreneurs.
While only loosely based in fact it also changed my perception of Mark Zuckerberg. While I still find Facebook's privacy polices to be aggressive, after viewing The Social Network I have nothing but admiration for Zuck and Facebook.
The Social Network made me realize how quickly Mark Zuckerburg has matured. It made me realize that somewhere underneath all that brashness is a coachable young man who listens to people he trusts when he gets a little hot under the collar about such things as privacy. Perhaps it is a result of the movie itself but he recently showed up in public portraying a very non hoodie image to donate $100 million to the Newark public school system and put the shots on his public Facebook profile. A 26 year old guy with more than a billion who listens. He is going to be in the game for awhile.
So go see the movie. It has the perfect ending with the perfect closing credit song which inspired the title of this post. And after you do that go take a gander at The Harvard Crimson's A Look at Mark Zuckerberg Through the Years. A fascinating set of contemporaneous links. As Erica Albright, the girl whose rejection sent Zuck on a programming binge that resulted in Facemash said, "if you put it on the Internet, it never really goes away."
The Lift Summit is returning to Atlanta next week with a program chock full of presentations and panels focused on using social marketing strategies to drive business results. I am really interested and eager to see the panels on social commerce and measuring ROI as well as Erik Qualman of Socialnomics who made those social media revolution vids that have been viewed like 3 million times.
The show is once again being put together by Robert Ball of OfficeArrow, which has made a little pivot into business flash marketing. It's on Thursday September 23 from 7:30 to 7:00 at the swanky new Loews Midtown Atlanta. The price is a reasonable $199. Friends of FoG can get a little love by entering promo code OA2010. You can register here.
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The opinions expressed here are mine and mine alone (with the exception of comments by others of course). They do not represent the opinion or position of any other person or entity. All postings adhere to my personal values.
