6 Levels of The Social Media Users Ladder: Profile Your Audience FIRST
When I found this information on from Forrester Research , I immediately thought of “Social Climbers”. However, it’s not what you think 
What it tells you is “look before you leap” and find out HOW your audience uses social media. AKA “Social Technographics(r).
For example, say you wanted to create an online community or social network for your business. You need content, and you assume that if you build it, and give your audience the ability to create blogs, they will come, and blog, and create the content for you.
What if based on this cool tool, they aren’t Creators, they are instead Spectators? Then it’s pretty useless to create a community where they can blog, right? It would make more sense to find the bloggers they already read and are influenced by. Who also allow comments on blog posts.
You could then do a couple of things. You could invite those bloggers to blog on your community. (And offer them some sort of social currency or even hard currency to do so). Or you could hire your own bloggers to create content that is related AND goes deeper into the topic.
Then you could create a comment strategy and go start commenting on the blog your ideal users read. And link back to specific, relevant blog posts on your community.
Watch the slide show, then play with the Social Technology Profile Tool. Enjoy!
Social Technology Profile Tool
What are your thoughts?
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Social Media Marketing Live Lab: MBA in Social “Multi”Media Marketing:
Welcome to another edition of the Social Media Marketing Live Lab.
As you already know, I consider myself one big experiment in how social media is changing business – my new mantra is “Connectivity is the New Currency”. This time, it’s me who is the actual subject in the lab, I’m involved in an interesting experiment involving getting an MBA in Social Media Marketing.
MBA stands for Mastering Business Actions.
About 6 weeks ago, I met Ann DeVere, creator of the Marketing Blueprint and the MBA in Marketing. for the second time in as many years. The first time was over the phone, the second time in person with a group of highly motivated entrepreneurs at a Brian Tracy iLearningGlobal event. I’d been interested in learning more about her MBA so quickly went into interestED mode because I sensed there was some transferable application of her system to social marketing.
MBA in Marketing has 3 steps:
1. Identify Your Most PROFITABLE Customer
2. Create Your Marketing Message That Speaks Only to Them
3. Implementing Your Marketing Message using the Power of 3
While I was talking with Ann, I was also in the process of identifying the value to ME in her offer, because that is what we all think. Except, in my case I’m always ALSO thinking about the value of what someone has to my network (includes my clients).
So I was on multiple levels thinking of the ways in which to APPLY her system in my world, the brave new world of social media marketing.
Social “Multimedia” Marketing is the actual term that came up for me as she talked about her MBA (Mastering Business Actions) in Marketing. And I realized that multimedia is what people are actually talking about when they talk about the value of generating the content being used in social media marketing today:
- Video turns into content used in Social video-sharing sites: YouTube, Vimeo
- Slideshows turn into viral marketing pieces and can be uploaded to YouTube and others
- Audio turns into MP3 most popularly known as a Podcast, distributed online: iTunes,your blog.
- Images can be socially shared – Flickr, Picasa
- Powerpoint presentations – SlideShare
- White Papers/Special Reports – Scribd.com
When I really got the power in her 3 step system, I was hooked, and I shared my thoughts on how valuable I felt her information was applied to Mastering Business Actions social media marketing.
And so Ann also got the power of that and this social media Live Lab experiment was born – the MBA in Social “Multi”Media Marketing.
And you know every good experiment deserves it’s own blog, so we’ll be posting at www.MBAinSocialMarketing.com also.
Stay tuned for the next post – it will be about Step 1: Identifying Your Most Profitable Customer.
Your Teacher & Student,
Michelle P,
Social Media Marketing Live Lab: MBA in Social "Multi"Media Marketing:
Welcome to another edition of the Social Media Marketing Live Lab.
As you already know, I consider myself one big experiment in how social media is changing business – my new mantra is “Connectivity is the New Currency”. This time, it’s me who is the actual subject in the lab, I’m involved in an interesting experiment involving getting an MBA in Social Media Marketing.
MBA stands for Mastering Business Actions.
About 6 weeks ago, I met Ann DeVere, creator of the Marketing Blueprint and the MBA in Marketing. for the second time in as many years. The first time was over the phone, the second time in person with a group of highly motivated entrepreneurs at a Brian Tracy iLearningGlobal event. I’d been interested in learning more about her MBA so quickly went into interestED mode because I sensed there was some transferable application of her system to social marketing.
MBA in Marketing has 3 steps:
1. Identify Your Most PROFITABLE Customer
2. Create Your Marketing Message That Speaks Only to Them
3. Implementing Your Marketing Message using the Power of 3
While I was talking with Ann, I was also in the process of identifying the value to ME in her offer, because that is what we all think. Except, in my case I’m always ALSO thinking about the value of what someone has to my network (includes my clients).
So I was on multiple levels thinking of the ways in which to APPLY her system in my world, the brave new world of social media marketing.
Social “Multimedia” Marketing is the actual term that came up for me as she talked about her MBA (Mastering Business Actions) in Marketing. And I realized that multimedia is what people are actually talking about when they talk about the value of generating the content being used in social media marketing today:
- Video turns into content used in Social video-sharing sites: YouTube, Vimeo
- Slideshows turn into viral marketing pieces and can be uploaded to YouTube and others
- Audio turns into MP3 most popularly known as a Podcast, distributed online: iTunes,your blog.
- Images can be socially shared – Flickr, Picasa
- Powerpoint presentations – SlideShare
- White Papers/Special Reports – Scribd.com
When I really got the power in her 3 step system, I was hooked, and I shared my thoughts on how valuable I felt her information was applied to Mastering Business Actions social media marketing.
And so Ann also got the power of that and this social media Live Lab experiment was born – the MBA in Social “Multi”Media Marketing.
And you know every good experiment deserves it’s own blog, so we’ll be posting at www.MBAinSocialMarketing.com also.
Stay tuned for the next post – it will be about Step 1: Identifying Your Most Profitable Customer.
Your Teacher & Student,
Michelle P,
Social Media Trend Watch – Beyond Blogs
I admit it, I’m a die-hard trend watcher. It’s a bit frustrating at times being a woman who naturally does this (for any of you StrengthsFinder 2.0 fans, one of my themes is Futurist ) because I haven’t yet tapped into a network of women who get as excited as I do about what’s next.
Out of love, most of the women in my network get pulled along until they start to jog with me (just ask my best friend Michelle Anton about this – 4 years ago she could barely turn her new Mac on – last week she figured out how to map her new domain to her own social network that she set up after I told her about it!)
I’m a systems-thinker. Which means I look at things holistically first. Like “what is it?” – “it” being the role of whatever it is in whatever I’m trying to figure out. Once I figure THAT out, then it’s all smooth sailing. I have this burning curiosity about “things” and their role in the world.
So when I started to move from blogs to social networks to social media in my mind, I began that “systems-thinking” thing that I do to make it make sense, so I could help my women entrepreneur friends make sense so they could benefit from learning EARLY about it.
Blogs play a HUGE role in social media – and the real “killer app” of blogging (uh-oh, am I dating myself from before the “dot-bomb” of 2000 with that word ? ) is the RSS feed that is already BUILT IN.
In fact, in my book blogs are the “new little black dress” for women entrepreneurs, if they can get past their “technophobia” to realize it. I often wonder if they think they can “break” something and that’s why they are afraid to experiment. Some old psychology at work I guess.
But I digress.
I was tickled pink to see Business Week’s new issue “Beyond Blogs – What Business Needs to Know” because it validated the trend I saw coming over year ago with the rise of all of the social networking sites, and a new industry that is emerging called Social Media.
See, in a systems-thinking world, blogs are a piece of the overall social media picture.
Along with
- social networks (Facebook, Linkedin, Biznik)
- social news-sharing (digg, de.li.ci.ous, etc.)
- social surfing (my words, but think StumbleUpon, Sphere-it)
- social video (YouTube, Google Video, Veoh, Blip.tv, etc) and I recently discovered
- …social radio! (Pandora.com, and also internet talk radio re-framed as “social radio)
- And whatever else comes along to try to ride the trend
The reason I say blogs are the foundation for social media marketing, is due to another emerging trend called Social Media Optimization (SMO) (SEO, move over, SMO is in the house!)
With the strategic use of your blog’s RSS feeds, you can be everywhere your customers and prospective customers are and never leave home base. (your blog)
Without further adieu, I present you the video where BusinessWeek’s Stephen Baker discusses the Cover Story he co-wrote in May, 2008, on online social networks, an update of the May, 2005, Cover Story, “Blogs Will Change Your Business.”
In it, he talks about how IBM is using social media (Twitter) for market intelligence, and to connecting with consumers. And retracts his statement that blogging didn’t have a bubble that would burst, because there wasn’t any money in it (hey, tell that to Darren Rowse over at www.ProBlogger.com)
(I embedded below, so you don’t have to link over if you don’t feel like it.)
Take it away Stephen!
What do you think? Is he on target?
read moreSocial Media Watch: Google Friend Connect
Google’s been hot to really get in on the social media game and you know they don’t play around. They’ve been acquiring Web 2.0 social media sites (like YouTube for $1.6BILLION) for a while now.
This just in, and almost ready for prime time – Google Friend Connect.
According to Google, Google Friend Connect lets you grow traffic by easily adding social features to your website. I just watched the WHOLE video below…and it blew me away.
(and for those of you who know me, you know that’s NO mean feat – most folks can’t talk fast enough or get to the point fast enough for me to watch very long
I also think it might be a woman thing – any women out there who prefer to watch a looooong video online?
Anyway. Essentially, it would appear that Google Friend Connect provides you with a variety of tools that turn your static, boring, flat website into a full-blown social scene that lets your users interact with each other with ease.
Visitors will be able (should they be compelled by your content) to log-in and “be sociable” using accounts they already have with Google (of course!), AOL Screen Names, Yahoo! and OpenID (see mine at www.ClaimID.com/michelleprice )
Once they do, all their friends in their other networks will be able to see what they’ve found, and can follow them to a new resource (you!).
And this is just the tip of the iceberg, dear friends. We are on our way to a truly connected web – Global Mind – the question is, what are you going to do to make sure you are in the loop? Check it out:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BIEwUxMrJ4Y[/youtube]
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