Advertising
Gettin’ Social in 2009
Charlotte, NC Social Media events coming in 2009
- BarCamp Charlotte (http://barcampcharlotte.com) January 23-24th – The first big event of 2009 will be BarCamp Charlotte. BarCamp is a user generated conference, find out more here. They are using a Google Group for some of the planning of the event and they just recently jumped onto Twitter, with their website coming soon.
- Social Fresh Social Media Conference Late August – As the first Social Media Conference in Charlotte, Social Fresh aims to bring big name speakers, already to include NPR Social Media Director Andy Carvin, big attendance, and a wide variety of quality content focused on how Social Media is changing the world. We are also playing with allowing everyone to vote on who the speakers are outside of the keynote speakers.
- Better Tweetups – Of course we hope the Twitter Meetups continue to grow in size and quality, but we also plan to build on the every-other-Friday success of #BtynBiz, holding more regular University Tweetups and quarterly City Wide Tweetups Uptwon.
- Possible PodCamp – This is in the brainstorming stage. If interested, let @Charlotte_SEO know.
- Startup Weekends – There are a few people talking about getting together early in the Spring and trying to kick off some entrepenureal projects over a weekend or two. If you are interested, attend the next Tweetup and ask around.
- What Happened In 2008? – Be sure to check out the year in review for what happened in 2008.
If you are interested in staying in the loop on the 3 events above, please let me know by filling out the below form:
[Form for this post has been removed]
Anything else happening on the 2009 Social Media Calendar? Enlighten me in the comments section.
Groundswell, Hit and Miss
5 page synopsis of the book, download my summary notes here. 
Groundswell is a how to guide for social media in business. The authors were analysts at Forrester research, Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff. Forrester reports a lot of the stats out there on social media, so they know the numbers and help big clients on these issues daily – the credibility is there.
My overall impression of Groundswell is very positive. They explore social media solutions for many aspects of business and do it in an easily digestible way. They also include great real world examples to cement the many lessons. Anyone using social media, or planning to, should read this book. I highly recommend it.
I will, however, add a few caveats to my endorsement. I understand that no book can squeeze in all the lessons of social media or please everyone. But here are some things to keep in mind when reading Groundswell:
- Groundswell is written to corporate America more than smaller businesses and entrepreneurs. It suggests some of the most expensive options out there to build social technology solutions and track your brand online. But there are tons of free, open source solutions that are much more realistic for most of the people that will read the book.
- The authors break down social technology users into 6 categories, The Social Technographics Ladder: who creates, who reacts, etc. This is a helpful guide, but a creator in one place is a spectator elsewhere and may not be either for your company. Understand your demographics, but at the same time, do not be afraid to follow your instincts. There are content creators in every demographic, after all. Groundswell is great for helping you generate a plan of action. But, I think one of the keys here is creativity and capturing the imagination and ownership of your audience. Experiment, test and do not be afraid to fail.
- Lastly, Groundswell alludes to this but it deserves more emphasis. Simply get out there a participate in social media. If you want your company to use social technologies to improve your business, you need to be out there experiencing it personally, asking questions, learning lessons, and creating. The experience is nothing without an overall plan, true, but the opposite is just as true. Creating a plan and goals without being involved in social media is also ill advised. This goes for the best and the brightest of everyone in your company.
Magpie Tweaks its Feathers
Magpie has jumped on the Twitter scene with a force and much of the more vocal initial reactions have been negative (check the 100+ comments on a Magpie post by @GeekMommy). However, with the amount of money they are paying out for occasional Tweets, I believe they are going to have a presence on Twitter for a little while, barring any declarations from Twitter to the contrary.
After receiving some initial feedback from their fast growing user base, (last reported to have over 500,00 combined followers) they have already made some significant changes to their service that should give them even more longevity.
- Old Feature – Tweet/Advertisement Ratio has 6 options from 1/1 to 1/20
- New Feature – Tweet/Advertisement Ratio has 11 options went from 1/1 to 1/200
- Old Feature – Each Magpie ad includes “#magpie” before the ad
- New Feature – Each Magpie ad can include “#magpie” or any text before or after the ad, or nothing at all
- Old Feature – Advertisements entered your stream when they saw appropriate keywords
- New Feature – Advertisements can be set to be pre-approved before entering your stream at all
I have used Magpie for 5 days now. I have had 3 advertisements so far worth a combined €18.33. To get any cash from Magpie you must reach a €50.00 minimum, which I could easily do earning over $5 a day, but for now I have turned off the ads.The original reason I signed up for Magpie was to review it as a new media technology. It is my industry and I need to know how these things work. I will not lie, when I saw I could earn over $2,000 in year with just 1 ad per tweet a day, I considered rolling with Magpie for the rest of the year. There are two issues I would have to see cleared up before I adopted Magpie as a regular service.
- Issue 1: Ad approval, which Magpie has already made a reality within the 5 days I have been testing the service. I think this will make Magpie much more appealing to most Twitter users as it allows you to control the content and retain the trust of your community. Blindly sending ads does comprehensive the ability of your community to trust your content.
- Issue 2: Flooding Twitter with duplicate content. If 100 ads are launched from 100 different Twitter accounts at the exact same time, the flooding of people’s timelines will become a huge issue. I had not thought of this when initially signing up until I read it as a possibility on @GeekMommy’s post, although I have yet to see a real example of it happening. This could be fixed by adopting some time delays or allowing Magpie users to choose 1 of several message options or custom times. But as of now, those options are not there.
Overall, I believe Magpie is a value add to the Twitter community. They will be forced by their advertisers to produce a product that is not ignored by everyone, so I believe a balance will be reached or Twitter users will reject and bankrupt Magpie as a company. The latter seems less likely to me considering the changes they have made thus far. If nothing else, Magpie is the first of many and might encourage Twitter itself to start trying to make some money and ensure the service is around for the long haul.
