Shaping your Social Networking life with SocialThing!

Alba Adrian Gibson passed along this article from the April 2009 issue of Shape Magazine about managing social networking for our class:

A Simpler Way to Keep in Touch

"Sure, social networking sites are a fun way of keeping up with your friends, but constantly refreshing your Facebook, Twitter, and Flickr pages can be a huge time suck. That’s where socialthing.com comes in. It brings together news from 14 different sites, including the three above, so you have to visit only one place to see what everyone is up to. And who knows – with all the time you’ll save, you may actually get some work done at the office!"

[Photo courtesy of Shape Magazine, April 2009]

It looks like SocialThing is in "private beta" right now, but it'll be interesting to see how helpful/beneficial it is for managing social networking time/connections once it's "live".

Twitter - Uses of Twitter and Successful uses of Twitter

In last week's New Media Marketing class there was a question about case studies showing "Successful" uses of Twitter. That's a great question, because there is a difference between using Twitter and using it successfully.

Tesco's Fresh and Easy use of Twitter - Successful or not?

Since I follow Hobson & Holtz's For Immediate Release podcast (see/hear: Podcast #415), I knew that Tesco's Fresh & Easy grocery store is now using Twitter.

There's an interesting post at LAist.com "Does Your Favorite Grocery Store Use Twitter? Should They?" which concluded with: "Do you follow any grocery stores on Twitter? Or should the whole idea just head for the checkout line?"


But perhaps the most interesting part was the comments section for the post: All of the comments appeared to be favorable (at this writing) to Fresh & Easy's use of Twitter. In fact, one person called one comment about attempting to use Twitter to ask F&E to locate a forgotten bag of groceries a "perfect example of a really positive use for Twitter!"


Customer Service - Is that all that's possible with Twitter?

Clearly customer service has been one of the most prevalent early uses of Twitter by companies trying to engage (not enrage) their customers. Answering customer complaint tweets of frustration with great solutions has been widely mentioned in blogs and podcasts.


Reputation Monitoring - Yikes!

It's also clear that any major business (or is it any business now?) should be using reputation monitoring to stay attuned to the needs, wants, desires, and flare-ups with their products, services, brand, etc.


Customer Service...and Beyond!

Perhaps the tougher question has been how to use Twitter beyond customer service.


Case Studies for Successful uses of Twitter

In any case, here's the Social Media Case Studies SUPERLIST- 20 Extensive Lists of Organizations Using Social Media (UPDATED).


- For Twitter in particular see: #5 Get Elastic’s “110 Ways Retailers are Using Social Media Marketing“ (scroll down to Twitter), #9 The Corporate Twitter Awards List, #13 The Twitter Brand Index, #20 40 of the Best Twitter Brands and the People Behind Them , not to mention some of the comments.


And if you thought, "Hey, those weren't all case studies!" then you can use this Super Secret Search Strategy/Technique (revealed in my presentation on "How to Know Anything at Anytime about Market Research" last week) to find many more on-point case studies for successful uses of Twitter.


For those who aren't in our class (or those in our class who want to know more), I'll be talking a lot more about this in the tutorials, articles, how-to videos, and action steps at the newly launched IncreaseOnlineProfits.com website in the near future.


Comments?

• Agree or disagree?
  
• Or have other great examples or case studies showing successful uses of Twitter for New Media Marketing?

Please leave a comment...

Measuring/Metrics for Social Media and Twitter Campaigns

Great blog post on "How Nonprofits Can Use Social Media - Creating Your Organization's Social Media Strategy Map": http://bit.ly/VYgua

Not only does Beth Kanter's post emphasize how important "Strategy" is in social media campaigns, but it also has a very short, but very potent, section on Measuring/Metrics with links (follow the links!):

--> See bullet point: "#7. Measurement":

"For social media, it is also important not to look at a single metric, you will have to evaluate your strategy performance from multiple dimensions.

Avi Kaplan and Stacey Monk - Examples of Metrics for Twitter Campaign (1 2 3)
Rachel Happe, Collecting All Social Media Metrics
Beth Kanter, Using Metrics to Harvest Insights About Your Social Media StrategySocial Media Metrics Wiki"


Also thanks to Social Media News ( @SocialMedia411 ) for tweeting about Beth Kanter's blog post.

Tag Crowd: Goals in Life/Work & Wants from Class

During our first class on January 19th students were asked what their Goals in Life are and what they want to learn from our New Media Marekting class.

1) Goals in Life/Work.

Not surprisingly both "Marketing" and "Media" were high on the list, mirroring our class description. Also "Happiness" and "Travel" ranked very highly. Perhaps more of a surprise, was the #1 goal: "Job". In fact, if Job was associated with "Work", then this was clearly the largest goal emerging from our class. Of course "Retiring Early", "Money" and "Prosperity" were also high on the list, as well as "Balance".

Here's the Tag Crowd representation, which is probably a lot easier "read" of our class's goals than what's mentioned above:

Tag Crowd: Goals in Life/Work

additional agency balance best brazil caffeine coffee consultant corporate courtside digital early equity friends fulfilling fun grow happily happiness health herbal-like income independent job la laker larger learn live marketing media money motorbike national peace potential program prosper retire satisfaction seats self sell service settle streams travel vacation website work

created at TagCrowd.com

Given this, if there are any Recruiters looking for a prospective employee or Intern who is learning the latest in cutting-edge New Media Marketing information and techniques, our class has a large number of students with diverse highly-skilled backgrounds (many of whom are multi-lingual) who would make great candidates. If interested, email me.

2) Wants from New Media Marketing Class

The huge winner in this category was "Marketing". "Online Marketing" and "Media" (Social, New, Digital, Mobile) were also high on the list. "E-marketing"/"eMarketing"/"Internet Marketing" also placed high and "Strategy" was also desired.

Tag Crowd: Wants from Class

5m agency analytics base better broadbasing broaden business client consulting digital ecommerce emarketing ezine facebook filtering general global groups horizons ideas industry information internet launching learn low-cost marketing media mix mobil movies networking online outlets outside program skills social space strategy tactics tools updated videos virtual website work world youtube

created at TagCrowd.com

New Media Marketing class Starts - 01/07/09

Welcome to the blog for our New Media Marketing (NMM) class at UCLA Extension. We'll be blogging our class for those who wish to follow the ever-changing topic of new media marketing.