We’ve seen quite a few examples of corporate sites mashing up social media content and presenting it on a single page. Jeep is one of the earliest examples I can remember (they seem to have some special right now, called „urban ranger“).
Now, since June there is Fiat on the web. A wordpress powered site – actually a blog – with all the ingredients: a facebook widget, a youtube gallery, same with flickr, friendfeed is integrated, delicious links accessible, latest twitter updates: every „mandatory“ item seems to be present.
I am not mentioning that because it appears so fantastically special. Instead, I am slowly getting the perception that these kind of social brand presence aggregator sites are become „business as usual“. Or rather: should be considered by brand marketers as a mandatory online marketing component. Yet: how many of those sites have we really seen? How many brands actually have sufficient social media presences in order to justify such a site?
Nope, this is not about their current struggle with the rights of music videos in several countries (including Germany and the UK). It’s about their „new“ design, which they introduced today!
Click here to see a larger Version. In case of problems, they give you the following tipps (in German, I am afraid, but the cartoons are explicit enough…):
Obama’s social and online media campaign were exemplary, indeed. Now we would obviously like to see the stats and results. Here is a short list of the first sites listing results or impressions of the Obama campaign:
A simple Google count showing that Obama’s campaign achieved to a lot more Google links in the last few years, than George Bush in his 9 years of term.
Obama published a photo set of the night of the election on flickr. Somewhere I even read, that he will, in future, publish quite a lot of his life in the white house. (Unfortunately, I don’t remember where I read about that…)
75 percent of Fortune 1000 companies are eager to get involved in social-networking initiatives for marketing or customer relations purposes, but 50 percent of those campaigns will be classified as failures
The main problem is (oh wonder) the differing expectations about what will happen during those marketing efforts:
The quirkiest and most addictive campaigns often provide little value for the company and turn out to be fads, whereas marketing efforts on the Web often don’t go over as well with the public.
In addition, the report points out that online usage during the purchasing process of all products and services will increase:
Gartner’s research shows that by 2012 fully half of all purchases will have some online component. That could mean searching for product reviews, reading about a new product on a blog, or comparing prices even if the purchase is ultimately made in a store.
So the need to figure out win-win situations for brands and the community are ever more important.
And furthermore, a „heads up“ for online marketers for the financially difficult times ahead:
Businesses will turn to the Web to stay in touch with consumers during a difficult financial climate. “This is going to be a lifeline,†he said. “Your spirit of customers is probably the only thing you have.â€
Wo ich sonst so bin...