So, what did I miss?

After 3 weeks of vacation, I am slowly digging through my RSS Feeds to catch up with whatever happened during my absence. Here are a few links of stuff I dugg up:

  • A new study with 1,500 consumers shows the influence of social media participation on buying intent: „over 50% of Facebook fans and Twitter followers say they are more likely to buy, recommend than before they were engaged.“
  • Will it blend? Of course the iPad also blends: http://bit.ly/9lXbOB (and you can fold it, too, apparently). Tom Dickson of BlendTec is at it again. It hurts, to watch that!
  • John Bell offers an interesting definition of community manager vs conversations manager.
  • Google goes from „fan“ to „like“. I don’t like this. The reasoning: users click on „i like“ more often than „become a fan“. Of course they do. My opinion: once Facebook changes that, users will click on „i like“ less often, because of the fear of too strong committment.
  • Trying to plan the next social media campaign? Let the social media planner help you.

I am sure that there is lots more, the arrival of the iPad and all the craze about it, for example. Or the hundreds of other news items about facebook, twitter and/or foursquare, that are surely still waiting for me in my RSS reader, but I am very much tempted to just press „mark all read“…

Paid word of mouth by taxi drivers

Whenever I take a taxi, I am in no mood for a conversation. It’s either too early in the morning when I am on my to the airport, or it is late in the evening after a party… You know the deal. So I was a bit shocked, when I read about taxi drivers in London now being paid to start a conversation in which they try to explain the benefits of a certain product or service… Hope this doesn’t start in Germany. Don’t want a conversation in a cab and I certainly don’t want a sales pitch during a taxi ride…

The trick is organised by Taxi Promotions UK, who are apparently doing that kind of thing since 10 years, believe it or not!

A taxi ride gives marketers something they find increasingly elusive – a captive audience – at a time when consumers are bombarded with commercial messages and when digital technology gives them the power to skip TV ads.

The average London taxi ride lasts 16 minutes, said Asher Moses, managing director of Taxi Promotions. In a normal working day, a driver picks up 40 to 60 fares; multiply that by 10 drivers, for the 888 campaign, and the audience that can be reached in a campaign that lasts several months is sizable.

Scary? You bet. Who’s next, trying to sell us something, while we think we simply pay them for their services? Our hairdresser, our doctor, etc.?

The top 25 Marketing Blogs according to Technorati

Here is a list of the top 25 marketing blogs according to technorati.com:

1 – Seth’s Blog – 9,034 (-68)(LW – 1)
2 – Duct Tape Marketing – 1,841 (-198)(LW – 2)
3 – Search Engine Guide – 1,679 (-23)(LW – 3)
4 – Logic + Emotion – 1,169 (-4)(LW – 4)
5 – Daily Fix – 1,081 (-29)(LW – 5)
6 – Brand Autopsy – 742 (-21)(LW – 6)
7 – The Engaging Brand – 717 (-31)(LW – 7)
8 – Influential Marketing – 709 (-18)(LW – 8)
9 – Drew’s Marketing Minute – 704 (-16)(LW – 9)
10 – Church of the Customer – 661 (No Change)(LW – 10)
11 – What’s Next – 645 (-5)(LW – 12)
12 – Conversation Agent – 639 (-17)(LW – 11)
13 – Diva Marketing – 629 (-14)(LW – 13)
14 – Jaffe Juice – 611 (-29)(LW – 14)
15 – The Viral Garden – 560 (-26)(LW – 15)
16 – Six Pixels of Separation – 505 (LW – UR)
17 – Converstations – 495 (-14)(LW – 16)
18 – Branding and Marketing – 464 (-5)(LW – 18)
19 – CK’s Blog – 462 (+1)(LW – 19)
20 – Servant of Chaos – 441 (-19)(LW – 20)
20 – Customers Rock! – 441 (+1)(LW – 21)
22 – Every Dot Connects – 393 (+2)(LW – 23)
23 – Greg Verdino’s Marketing Blog – 390 (-28)(LW – 22)
24 – Chaos Scenario – 384 (-5)(LW – 24)
25 – Experience Curve – 378 (-95)(LW – 17)

A short description from the viralgarden blog, where I found this list:

The number you see after the blog name is how many sites/blogs Technorati claims have linked to the blog in the last 6 months. After that number is a positive or negative number, and this represents how many links the blog gained or lost from last week’s Top 25. The final stat tells you what position the blog held in the Top 25 Last Week (LW).

I have to admit that I am not subscribed to all of them. Some I even deleted from my reading list again. Links from Technorati might be a good indicator for influence, but that of course still doesn’t implicate relevance…

5 links for viral and word of mouth marketing

Doing some research regarding viral marketing, I stumbled upon the following 5 posts, here is a summary of each:

  1. 4 myths of viral marketing: it is a replacement for television (most videos won’t get millions of viewers), a viral video is a digital strategy (what happens after the video has been watched?), putting a video on YouTube is a digital strategy (most videos don’t really go viral without some help or trigger), bloggers are just waiting for videos they can write about (because there is so little other information around in this world).
  2. 7 deadly sins of advertising via viral video: Make a white and brown cow (instead of a purple, remarkable cow), pretend you’re not advertising (hoping it doesn’t backfire or gets ignored), spend a fortune on production (instead of a good idea), tell consumer instead of engage them (it’s not an adaptation of a 30 sec. spot), do a video contest because everyone else does (soon enough, it will get ever more difficult to activate consumers to the umpteenth contest), set unrealistic conversion measures (it’s not about conversion anyway, in most cases), throw in the towel and decide to just advertise around viral videos (at least to both in partnership).
  3. Why everyone wants viral video: 57 million Americans watch online video content every day. That’s 19% of the online population. 13% of American adults report they have downloaded or watched video ads! Two out of three viewers ages 18-29 send links to video files, compared with half of Americans age 30 and older. Forty-two percent of the 18-29 year-olds send video links a few times per month or more
  4. Is mass marketing important for viral success: Duncan Watts has modeled the viral phenomenon stating that it is not as contagious as we would like it to be. The circle of influence of superspreaders is far smaller than we thought, which this paper is about, and campaigns are subject to complete randomness, which makes this a channel in need of support of planned (i.e. media supported) advertising. Not true writes Nigel Hollis, saying that the stickiniess factor of the creative is not subject to randomness, as it can be pre-tested in focus groups.
  5. Is word of mouth a discipline or a channel: Discipline: Word of mouth marketing takes belief (based on understanding and knowledge) and discipline. Channel: The media buying companies and some advertising agencies want to see WOM as a channel. Discipline: To deliver on the promise of social media, word of mouth marketing, influencer marketing, conversation marketing – whatever part of WOM you want to emphasize – we need a simple, shared approach to measurement that compares well to what brand managers are used to. Channel: Many ad-based marketers see viral video as the answer to their WOM aspirations. And the conclusion: Word of mouth is a broad discipline like advertising or public relations. It requires technique and methodologies that are particularly relevant to do it well. It is possible to treat it like a channel by tacking on some WOM tactic to a larger advertising program, but it may not pay off in comparison to those more traditional marketing tactics.

Conversational Marketing might outpace traditional marketing (sometime)

Interesting. There is a post at the „social media today“ blog that states that conversational marketing will outpace traditional marketing by the year 2012. The main obstacles at the moment seem to be:

“Manpower restraints” – 51.1%

“Fear of loss of control” – 46.9%

“Inadequate metrics” – 45.4%

“Culture of their organizations” – 43.5%

“Difficulty with internal sell-through” – 35.8%

The second point should be easier to manage, once the first point has been solved. But that needs success on point 5, which depends on point 3, because point 4 necessitates success on point 3. Confusing? Yes. But doable. And very necessary.