Communication Trends—How Google and Facebook Are Shaping Your View of Reality

In this TED Talk, Eli Pariser pulls back the curtain on the filtering techniques of Google and Facebook, reminding us that your news and information is now being filtered by someone else. Searches now bring up information tailored to you—so two people sitting next to each other and searching for the same thing will get entirely different results.

Pariser says the torch is being passed from human gatekeepers to algorithmic gatekeepers, which don’t have imbedded the ethics that humans are capable of. Right now these algorithms decide what we get to see—and what we don’t get to see—based on relevance to us. What they don’t show us are differing points of view, information that is important, uncomfortable and perhaps even challenging—creating a reality with us as the center.

Pariser suggests that these algorithms must be coded in a way that supports a sense of public life, a sense of civic responsibility—and that they are transparent enough so that we can both understand and have some control over the kinds of information we access.

This 8-minute video is a must-see.

Building Better Facebook Pages

Lauren Fisher advises those managing Facebook pages to write for the news feed, not your wall.

When you write an update for your Facebook page, the update will most likely appear on the page’s wall by default. It can be confusing however, to consider that the wall is not the place where 99 percent of your fans will see the update. Though a link or ad will lead some people straight to the wall, your existing fans will see the update in their news feed.

Remember to include links in your update if you want to drive the reader to a specific page—and don’t reference something that won’t appear in the news feed. For example, telling them to “Check out our tab on the side” is out of context for people seeing this update in their news feed.

To see all 8 of her tips, go to http://www.ragan.com/Main/Articles/43066.aspx.

What's the Deal with Google+ ?

You've probably been hearing about the new Google+, so for those of you still scratching your heads, this video provides a quick summary of what Google+ is about. 

Selling or Telling: Make Your Company an Information Destination

We’re not ready to suggest that selling isn’t still an important part of any business’s marketing efforts, but we also recognize that in the age of information, there’s untapped power in becoming a destination for trusted information.

Consumers are hungry for good information, and have the means to find it. Although we want coupons for free coffee and discounts from our favorite retailer—we are equally or more hungry for the most definitive, recent information on our topic of choice.

If you’re seeing social media as a way to “talk at” your consumers, you won’t likely build a robust following. But if you consistently deliver the trustworthy information they’re hungry for, they’ll be back for more. If they come to see you as a trusted source of information, this will develop a stronger bond than a sales message can.

According to a Constant Contact blog, roughly 78% of consumers prefer to get company information from helpful articles instead of an ad, and 61% of those are more likely to buy as a result of receiving this content.

Making content that benefits the consumer instead of selling yourself is a winning strategy. But don’t be discouraged by this. Take small steps towards this goal, and remember it takes time to move into an entirely new paradigm.

What are your most trusted sources for information?

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7 Things to Do Now to Increase the Effectiveness of Your Facebook Page

1. Publish status updates or major stories in the morning. If you publish between 11 am and 4 pm your content may go unnoticed due to the heavy traffic by other users.
2. Tag your friends when you post a note, so they see a message on their wall and are more likely to read it. Unfortunately you can only tag 30 people at a time. If you post multiple notes in order to tag more than 30 people, make sure to delete the duplicated posts in your news feed so you don't look like a spammer.
3. Encourage interaction from your fans. Invite conversation, create contests, post interesting status updates and encourage check-ins.
4. Share interesting links and encourage people to comment, but be sure to post the whole link instead of a short link because it's 300 percent more likely to get clicked on.
5. Thursday is the best day of the week to get the most visibility for a Facebook post.
6. Facebook may be the best platform for making a video go viral due to its ease of embedding media.
7. Remember AIDA—Attention, Interest, Desire, Action.

Visit Ragan.com for more social media tips.

Mayo Clinic Leads the Way with Social Media Marketing

Ed Bennet, author of the Web site Found in Cache: Social Media resources for health care professionals from Ed Bennet, advises health care organizations not to get into social media because you think you’re going to get more patients, but because you’re helping be responsive (not responsible) to people reaching out looking for answers.

The Mayo Clinic, a front-runner for using social media in the health care industry, uses it in a variety of ways:

Facebook:

• Patient questions and comments are monitored and responded to by their experts
• Video contests
• Informational videos on various topics
• Patient testimonies
• Automatic blog posts
• Visit the Mayo Clinic's Facebook Page

Blogs:

• newsblog.mayoclinic.org—Features news updates from the Mayo Clinic
• sharing.mayoclinic.org—Features stories from patients, family, friends, and staff of the Mayo clinic

Twitter:

• Tweets about health tips, news updates and patient stories
• See their Twitter page

YouTube:

• Videos feature physicians, patient stories and news stories
• Visit their YouTube Channel

Marketers Continue to Increase Use of Video

Onemarketmedia.com reports that video will be ubiquitous on the Web—and is a top priority for marketers.  Here’s what they say:

According to a survey by Marketing Sherpa, for the second year in a row video marketing is the top priority for marketers surveyed, ahead of SEO, PPC, social media, email marketing and all other online marketing tactics. Turnhere has also released a study in the fall which revealed the same results —“When asked to rank various online marketing priorities for 2010, video was ranked as the top priority.”

In a recent post conference interview Jeremey Allaire, CEO of Brightcove, summarized the outlook for Web-based video this way:

“Video will become as ubiquitous as text on the web.... What weʼve seen happening over the last year is this incredible growth in the number of organizations and corporations, of all types, of all industries, of all sectors of societies, embracing video to enhance what they are doing on the web.”

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7 Ways to Get Your Message Out Without Costly Media Buys

Using video in your marketing strategy is no longer a luxury—in many cases, it’s now considered an essential part of any messaging strategy.

Once you’ve developed the video, make sure you’re maximizing your investment by taking advantage of the many free distribution methods.

1. Company Web site. Increase traffic and interaction by including video on your Web page.
2. Company lobbies. Many companies are using HD video screens in high traffic areas, making it an ideal place for key messages.
3. Mobile. Mobile is the media of the future, so repurposing video with mobile in mind can be a great idea for the right message.
4. Post on your company Facebook page.
5. Share it with your circle of influence by posting it on other social media sites, like Linked In.
6. Post on your company You Tube channel.  If you don’t have one, now’s the time to set it up.
7. Send an email link. Depending on the message, this can go to employees (remember, they’re a sales force too), stakeholders, donors, board members, volunteers and customers.

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Consumers Look for Video Content on Web Sites

Visitors to Web sites are now looking for video content first. Smart businesses can no longer ignore video as part of their marketing and communication strategy. A report on comscore.com states that 174 million US internet users watched online video content in March of 2011—for an average of 14.8 hours per viewer.

The use of video often increases your marketing results. Here are some facts from slingshotseo.com:

1. Video increases engagement, causing visitors to stay longer on your site—and making them more likely to buy.
2. 65 percent of visitors will watch a video to completion—compared with only 10 percent who will read an entire Web site.
3. 12 percent of users coming from a video are ready to buy—compared to only 1 percent for text-only users.

You Tube is the second largest search engine next to Google, and last year alone You Tube reportedly exceeded 2 billion views per day.

Are you where people are looking for you?

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Client Showcase—North Ridge Medical Practice Steps Ahead of the Competition in their Promotion

This new campaign for North Ridge Medical Practice in Colorado combined direct mail with a mini-animation ad—
allowing for targeted advertising and putting them ahead of their competition by having a more Web-friendly, social media-friendly promotion. The presence of the mini-animation ad also delivers information in a format that consumers are showing preference for.

Physicians who can deliver strong, targeted messages using contemporary media will likely experience immediate growth in their practice if the message is right and the market has pent-up demand. You can see how they've used this on their  Web site—and how it not only brings the Web page to life but reinforces their key brand messages.

Have you seen other physician practices breaking out of the print ad-only approach to promotion?

Have you heard about Facebook's EdgeRank?

Have you noticed how only certain people's posts show up in your news feed? This is because Facebook uses something called EdgeRank to determine which status updates you will see in your top news feed. In order to do this, Facebook has developed an algorithm which takes into account affinity, weight and time decay.

• Affinity is determined by your interaction with another user or page. The more you view their page or content, the higher your affinity score will be for them.
• Weight is calculated by the ways you interact with other pages or users. For example, commenting on a picture will have a higher weight than simply liking it.
• Time is probably the easiest to understand, and simply means that the older a post, the lower a score it will have.

If you want to test your EdgeRank score, EdgeRankChecker.com  has developed an algorithm which allows you to do so. This score is closely related to how visible your status updates are on your fans' pages.

If you get a poor score, here are  some ways to improve it.

• Try to focus on posting content that encourages interaction such as photos, videos,  links or questions.  
• Ask for feedback from users. Encourage people to comment and to like your entries.
• Pose questions to your readers.
• Be a frequent user. The more you share, the higher your chance of interaction will be.

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Seven Ways to Use Video to Improve Your Marketing

The demand for receiving content by video continues to explode, making it by necessity an important part of your marketing mix. Video can be used in many ways for communicating the same things as traditional media has been used for, but its ability to convey through images, sound and motion makes it higher impact.

Here are some of the ways you can consider using video:

1. Communicate key messages. Putting a face to key company messages makes it more personal and memorable, and because it can be made available any time, any place, over time it allows you to reach a broader audience than live presentations can.
2. Recognize top employees or volunteers. Nothing inspires like hearing the story of another person who is passionate about his or her work. This kind of message helps to build a culture of excellence—reinforcing behaviors that fulfill your company’s goals.
3. Share news. When announcing a new product or service, video should be part of your roll-out campaign.
4. Offer testimonials. Feature clients talking about your brand to bring added credibility to your message.
5. Show—vs. tell. When you want to teach, use video. An ideal medium for orientation and training, it’s the next best thing to being there in person.
6. Go viral. Not every video is a candidate for going viral, but one that has entertainment value is more likely to do so. More and more companies are couching subtle product messages in viral-style videos to promote this kind of distribution.
7. Repurpose ads. By all means, make sure you’re posting TV ads—in addition to buying air time for them. It’s also possible to create a kinetic motion production (type animation) that restates a print ad—but adds the elements of sound and motion.
8. Communicate internally. Video can capture the soul of an organization, and fuel its core mission.

Once you’ve developed your video, make sure you’re maximizing your investment by taking advantage of every distribution method (many of which are free).

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Twitter Proves Ideal for Crises Communication

Twitter is proving itself more useful than founder Jack Dorsey ever could have anticipated.

After the earthquake in Japan, when local phone networks became overloaded, people turned to Twitter—and other social media sites—for their communication.

Twitter Japan used their page to send out helpful information to their followers in both English and Japanese, including several general hashtags for people to use (for those that are new to Twitter, hashtags allow people to easily search tweets for keywords that are proceeded by the # symbol). These tags for the Japanese earthquake included:

•   #Jishin—general earthquake information

•   #J_j_helpme—requests for rescue or other aid

•   #Hinan—evacuation information

On March 12, the most common hashtag—general earthquake information—was mentioned almost 400,000 times in tweets.

In the revolution in Tunisia, Twitter was also responsible for sending out warnings to people, for organizing protests and for making calls for help. Below are some of the tweets sent out during the revolution.

Then there is also the original Twitter story of James Karl Buck, a graduate student who was covering the protests in Egypt and was arrested. His one-word tweet "arrested" was sent to his Twitter followers and within moments they were working on getting him out of jail.

These stories hint at the power social media sites like Twitter and Facebook have—in the right application.

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Hospital Anniversary Campaign Uses Video to Tell the Story

We produced a series of mini-videos for St. Anthony North Hospital's 40-Year Anniversary campaign—all of which are posted on their Web site, their You Tube channel and their Facebook pages. Each of the personal interviews tells a piece of their story—what the hospital means to its community, its distinctive mission and its vision for the future.

Quality videos are getting more cost-effective to produce. This, coupled with the the pervasive consumer  appetite for video, should make it a part of any significant campaign.

What are your reactions to this campaign? Do you think St. Anthony North's message was effectively communicated to the community? Leave us a comment and let us know what you think.

Hospital Anniversary Campaign Incorporates Kinetic Typography

Kinetic typography is a new way of telling your story. It’s essentially a mini-ad that can be used in a variety of ways. Here’s how St. Anthony Hospital North used it as part of their 40-year anniversary campaign:

• Posted on their You Tube Channel
• Posting it on Facebook
• Posting it on their hospital Web site
• Sending links virally—to employees, physicians, donors and key stakeholders

Click the links below to see some of our other kinetic typography projects:

• Dimensions Pain Management 
• Independent Colleges of Washington

And check out some of the other ways that companies are using animation: 

• Good Magazine Infographics 
• (Starbucks)Red Campaign 
• Starbucks Tribute Days 

Check back tomorrow to see our outdoor advertising solutions for this campaign. 

The Power of a Story: Mayo Clinic Documents a Patient’s Journey Through Cancer to Hope

 
In the spirit of an on-going TV reality show, Mayo Clinic chronicles MaryEllen’s journey through cancer in a series of episodes posted on-line. With commentary by MaryEllen, the patient, as well as by her physician, the series gives perspectives from various vantage points. 

As the healthcare industry looks for ways to peel back the curtain on the patient experience, the power of personal stories—told in their own words—resonates with patients and their families.

While this application shows what can be done in healthcare, don’t dismiss its potential for other industries, as well.

A New Year's Prayer

We are grateful to you—our clients and our readers—for inspiring us, teaching us, and exploring the world of ideas with us on our blog.

In the spirit of the season, we offer you this New Year's Prayer for a more compassionate world—and our commitment to strive to do our part in making it such.

We wish each of you the joy of the season, and a new year marked by good health, hope and peace for you and yours.

Client Showcase—An E-card That Makes a Statement

A simple way to distinguish your company is to say farewell to those tedious pre-printed holiday cards and create something customized.This is the time for the little black dress, not the standard pantsuit, if you want people to see your firm as innovative and successful.

The law firm of Gresham Savage hired us to develop their annual holiday e-card, which gave us a great opportunity to tie their centennial year messages in to their holiday message.

While an e-card isn't the place for overt selling, it definitely leaves an impression about your company. In this case, we wanted to link the history of the firm to the history of the community—deepening their bonds and thanking the community for their role in this milestone.

People like to be thanked, and the holidays are a perfect time to not only do this, but create a classy, distinctive piece for your firm that sets it apart. Plan now to make an e-card part of your company's social media strategy next year.

Social Media—Can we make it easy, please?

Like most everyone else in this field, I’m still observing, analyzing and sorting through the ideas I read about how to use social media effectively.

One truth seems to be emerging, however. Social media is about creating relationships—not “talking to” or “talking at.” And there are no quick fixes for doing this.

Just like creating face-to-face relationships, these virtual relationships are built over time as two parties assess one another and decide if there’s a match. There’s no value in doing the peacock act—trying to look bigger or better than you are—because ultimately people get to the truth about us or our businesses by observing what we do—not just what we say. It calls us to pay as much attention to who we are becoming as people or as organizations as it does to crafting a message. And that's a tall order.

So the answer to my question—can we make social media easy—is no. We can’t. It’s even less about fluff and posturing and self-promotion than the more traditional forms of advertising or communication, because it opens the conversation up to the crowd, who is now able to collectively pool their observations about our company or product. And it's more like one-on-one relationship, that demands more than sanitized PR messages—and wants something of value.

There is no substitute for substance. Care about your work, your clients or customers, and then talk with and listen to them. Social media is a great tool—but it is only that, the tool. It is not the message, nor is it the deliverables. But it holds great promise for a new kind of truer, two-sided relationships and evaluation of our products and services. And I like that.

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Most Customers Impacted by Their On-Line Experience with a Brand

According to the 2009 Razorfish study, 65% of consumers report that a digital brand experience has changed their opinion—either positively or negatively—about a brand. Even more significant is the fact that 97% report that a digital brand experience has influenced their decision to buy, or not to buy.

Consumers can move from awareness to purchase to recommendation—in a very short time. Engagement creates customers not just through social media but across the entire digital channel. Instead of focusing on clicks and impressions, conversations and brand engagement should be the focus of your digital media strategies.

Even if you're in an industry that's still in its infancy when it comes to using digital media, consumers are apt to judge their experience based on their experiences with other industries. Which leads me to my question of the day: What kind of on-line experiences are your customers having with your brand?

Source: The Razorfish Digital Brand Experience Report 2009, page 38