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Archive for December, 2009

2009 Pulled The Teeth Out of the Free Web

Posted by marymcknight On December - 31 - 2009

EMI, Warner Music Group, Universal Music Group and Sony pull YouTube’s Teeth Out by Deindexing Their Video Content and Placing it on Their Own Proprietary Networks, Hulu and Vevo.

As music labels, film studios, newspapers and other traditional publishers struggle to survive in the ever changing landscape of the Internet and it’s “free content” model, 2009 ushered in the world wide war against free content. Most pundits initially looked upon Ruppert Murdoch’s “Crazy Eddie” strategy of de-indexing all News Corporation content, including both the New York Times and The New York Post as a bullying tax collector strategy of old that would not suit the new media model. But, as it turns out, it worked! That content has value. Google and Bing wanted it badly enough to pay for it. And over the past few months, as the model has shown increasing promise, most major publishing houses including those in film, television and music have taken note and found ways to work similar deals. While Sony, Universal and EMI have launched Vevo a video music network with the help of their YouTube/Google partnership, Warner Music Group joined it’s mother company, Warner Bros in the long list of music, film and television companies embarking on deals with Hulu. The end game solution for publishers is to de-index their existing video and textual content from major hubs including search engines like Google, Yahoo, Bing and YouTube, publish it exclusively on their own networks and charge the engines for access to index that content and push traffic back to their own networks. The value for the publishing houses is that now they have a central and controlled domain where they can aggregate all their copyrighted content. This means that publishers are now generating income for the indexation of content and pushing traffic in bulk back to their proprietary sites where they can sell advertising. It allows they greater control over their copyright information and, overtime, will help them to build large scale branded networks to feature their data on. Essentially, these publishers are building their own on demand TV, Radio and News networks where they not only generate revenue from advertising but also from the indexing of their content. This should be both a boon for publishers and content producers.

Resource: Hulu Tops 1 Billion Streams per Month!

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The $10K Tweet

Posted by marymcknight On December - 30 - 2009

kim-kardashian-playboy-december-2007When it’s simply not enough to release a raunchy sex tape, try becoming a true Twitter Whore and selling out for 10,000 per tweet to advertisers like Bumpit and Shoedazzle. So, not only does this girl act like a shameless whore in real life selling out her family to reality TV, her body to Golden Shower Sex Tapes but now, even her Twitter page to sponsored tweets. What concerns me most is that she is clearly skirting the FTC laws that require bloggers to clearly label sponsored posts and endorsements.

Personally, I really can’t respect any advertiser that thinks the credibility and trust value of someone like Kim Kardashian warrants $10K per tweet.

Resource: Twitter stunned Kim Kardashian earns $10k a tweet

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I Am a Recovering Twitter Purist

Posted by admin On December - 30 - 2009

BM1398So, Paul Chaney and I were having a discussion about, well, everything and then we started talking about social media pet peeves and things you can and can’t do and we discovered there are no hard fast rules or absolutes, it’s all in the way you do things that separate the fail from the un-fail. So, in honor of our conversation, we are starting an AA meeting meme for recovering social media purists. So, here goes…

The first step in any recovery program is to admit you have a problem…

All The Twucked Up Twit in Social Media!

My Name is Mary and I am a Social Media Purist. It all began when I created my first Twitter account. It started off slowly by just broadcasting some blog posts then I started interacting with my friends, next I knew I was engaging with everyone and anyone, retweeting posts in my stream like a crack head on a bender and even getting snarky with the industry insiders on the “conversation proposition.” I became an “engagement junkie.” It was bad… I was the first to shout from the rooftops how Twitter was all about engagement and conversation and if you had a brand or were building one you MUST interact. I poo pooed on “broadcast only” accounts saying there was no place for them and how they “missed the boat.” I’m not gonna lie, I’d hit rock bottom. I was basically mainlining the industry jargon and social media propaganda…

aalogo_chipBut then, it happened… I found no engagement accounts that worked. They served a purpose, created a follower base and converted followers to leads, referrers and even sales effectively. They were gems among the coal mines of accounts, they were shining little points of light that made me rethink the whole idea of broadcast only accounts.

So what makes a successful broadcast only Twitter account? Most the successful broadcast only accounts have a proven format for tweets they stick to – see Fmylife. They provide humor, news, tutorials, tips, quotes, etc. They serve to collect large user bases and seek to drive traffic either back to their site for conversion there or build enough social equity and content to entice publishers to offer them book or editorial deals. These types of accounts have reformed my perception of broadcasting instead of socializing on Twitter. They have helped me to understand that there are no absolutes when using Twitter. If you have a goal and a strategy, you can bend Twitter to your will and do what others say cannot be done or should not be done. But, here’s the clincher, if you are going to go against the glut of social media “gurus” and use a broadcast only account, you just have to do it well. You have to offer something valuable in the content and push your visitors to a place where they can convert to customers. Below are a few broadcast only accounts that do it very very well that helped me realize I needed a 12 step social media program to cure my purist thought ways!

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Versace Marketing in a Gap World

Posted by marymcknight On December - 28 - 2009

Versace Fall 2006 Ad Campaign.preview

How to build a brand online with social networks

There is a school of thought on the Internet that says if you want to build a community for yourself –go out and find the fringers and give them a place to connect to you and each other through your brand. Find the outcasts and unite them. I say NO! No. It’s simple. The popular kids never give tutorials on how to become popular. And they never go out and sit down at the loser nose pickers lunch table and make them their tribe. If you want to be a prom king brand or product on the internet you need to build your clique from the top down with two distinct types of users.

Read also: You Are Not My Friend: Why consumers only want to hang with the prom king

1. The celebrities/influencers

These are people that everybody already knows and respepcts. These are celebrities’ in their industry. The household names. They have the ability by simply mentioning your product/brand/website once in a blog post or using it to influence a large number of people.

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Merry Christmas 2009

Posted by marymcknight On December - 24 - 2009

Have a cold blooded Christmas

And Merry Christmas, Bitch! A special gift for Christmas Bitches.

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10 Ways to Improve Online Reputation

Posted by admin On December - 19 - 2009

Top 10 things you can do to improve your online reputation:

Online Reputation Monitoring1. Monitor your online reputation with Trackur. Trackur is an online reputation management tool that monitors your entire online presence for you. Where Google Alerts fail, Trackur picks up. An easy to use AJAX dashboard allows you to monitor all forms of media for you and your brand, receive RSS and email alerts of new mentions and even share, bookmark, filter and sort content. Sign up for the 14 day free trial and I guarantee you will be hooked.

2. Build more positive information about yourself, product and brands by creating profiles on various social networks like MyBlogLog, LinkedIn, Facebook, MySpace, Digg, etc. The more profiles you have online with positive information on them the more opportunities you give people searching on the web to find good information about you out there.

3. Contribute regularly to article syndication sites like Buzzle and EZineArticles,etc.

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How Not To Fail on Twitter

Posted by marymcknight On December - 19 - 2009

What’s that saying, “if you fail to plan, you plan to fail?” Well, just like any marketing strategy, social media needs planning. You cannot just jump on Twitter or Facebook and expect to make sales or generate a lead database without some planning. The fact is, most small businesses fail at Facebook and Twitter because they fail to plan strategies that convert followers and fans to leads and customers. However, when implemented properly, a customized Facebook fan page and a Twitter account can directly increase your ability to collect and message leads and boost sales. Take Papa John’s Facebook Page: it is responsible for improving sales by more than 28% for the pizza chain and their incentive initiatives like free pizza’s for friends helped them double their fan base in a single month. Conversely, check out Jet Blue’s Twitter Page: by tweeting their deal of day, they have directly improved sales and been able to prove ROI on Twitter. But neither of these companies jumped into social media without a game plan and nor should you.

Resources:

Incentivizing Facebook Fans: Papa John’s Doubles Fans with Free Pizza

Case Study: Papa John’s Finds New Facebook Fans

JetBlue Launches Twitter Deals – SmarterTravel.com

Build a Social Media Game Plan

Set a Goal

The very first thing you need to determine is what your goal is. Set a clear goal. For example – set a goal like “I want to exceed 10K fans on my Facebook page.” “I want to generate a database of over 25K subscribers I can remarket later. Or “I want to directly sell my products or services to increase revenues by 10%.” Like I said, be specific in your goal, so you can measure results based on expectation.

Allocate Your Resources

Lead SourcesBe aware that social media is not some silver bullet that will save your business. It is one element of a successful online marketing plan and realistically accounts for 8% of all online leads according to a recent Hubspot study. So, figure out how much time and money you want to spend on getting this result. Quantify it and know the metrics of existing sales, leads or subscribers generated each month on your website or Facebook Fan page. The next step is to find the mechanism that will generate that result for you. For example – recently Shakira debuted her latest music video exclusively on her Facebook fan page. The goal? To build fan base in a single place online that allowed for easy messaging of fans. To drive fans in volume and within a limited time to that page by providing debut access to content irresistible to her audience. The result? 1.7 million fans visited and fanned that page.

I am not suggesting you are a pop star in need of fans – but what I am saying is find the irresistible offer that your market is looking for. If you are a web services company to small businesses, offer a limited time discount on services or a free eBook on conversion page design and marketing or even a white paper on social media – each requiring registration. My point is, set a clear goal for yourself.

Resources:

Twucked Up Twit in Social Media

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How To Be an Online Rockstar

Posted by marymcknight On December - 18 - 2009

Aerosmith Body Paint Marissa Miller

Truth be told, your social networking started back in kindergarten. You know how you are supposed to learn all kinds of crap in kindergarten that will serve you later (All I Really Need To Know I Learned In Kindergarten). Well, making friends, sharing, keeping in touch, those are valuable skills you learn way back when. They are also the key components of social networking! So, the very skills you would use to make and keep friends offline are the very same ones you need to use online.

I want to make this clear, the Prom Queens among the glut of geeks in social media are people who are unafraid to network up and be as hated by some as they are loved by others. We win the social media lottery every time because we are social people- we are fun, witty, wise and know how to make real friends and keep them and know when to let some go. We know to use our real offline network of friends to help build a whole new network of online friends. But there are rules to this process…

Rule 1: Collect Fascinating Friends Offline and Connect With Them Online

I learned a long time ago to collect fascinating friends. Friends that have never been beaten down by life and always maintain a lust for experience! It makes for wonderfully irreverent stories and the most satisfying friendships and networking experiences. Now, I don’t know about you but I still have friends from first grade. In fact, one of my dearest and oldest friends , Bernadett Vajda (yeah yeah- the face, the legend, the model, the macaroon maker and Hungarian Princess (she also grew up next to Jay Leno’s mother)) is one such friend that I have known for so many years we can say a single word or phrase and burst out laughing. We have the kind of legendary stories that we can’t get through without busting out into incoherent laughter. Then, there are all the wonderful ladies from my Girls night Out Club in Orlando which includes Courtney Neitzl (Playboy Golf Model) and the ever wild and crazy mommy extraordinaire, Rachel Lovely… And, of course, there are all the wonderful rockstars I know like Bahnz Selby and the boys of The Enemy Lovers. The people you collect in your life should be diverse and interesting and allow you to expand your personal Dunbar Number so you can network most effectively.

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Twitter Profile Best Practices

Posted by admin On December - 17 - 2009

twitter2

Personal Accounts

•    Select a user name that identifies you as a person not a brand. Ideally, you want to select your actual name. This helps you create a personal brand for yourself.
•    Use an actual picture of yourself for your avatar. People connect best with other people not with your dog, not with Bart Simpson and not with your company logo.
•    Fully fill out your profile. Be sure to include your location so geo-location and mapping applications for Twitter can list you and be sure to add a bio line (Hubspot indicates that Twitter profiles with a bio line are 8 times more likely to be followed than those without)
•    Can Having a Twitter Bio Get You 8 Times as Many Followers?
•    Bio Characteristics of Twitter Power Users
•    Customize your profile by adding a custom background that identifies you. If you are not graphically inclined, try creating one on Twitbacks.com, MyTweetSpace.com, and FreeTwitterDesigner.com.  These services allow you to create numerous templates that you can download for free.
•    This account is where you share information you find across the net, reply to people, make personal insights and stream events in your life.

Hubspot recommends the optimal number of tweets a user should tweet per day is 23 – during the peak hours of the customers you are targeting

Brand and Corporate Accounts

•    Select a user name that identifies your brand or company. Ideally, you want to select the name of your company or brand.
•    Use your logo as your avatar
•    Fully fill out your profile. Be sure to include your location so geo-location and mapping applications for Twitter can list you and be sure to add a bio line about your company or brand (Hubspot indicates that Twitter profiles with a bio line are 8 times more likely to be followed than those without)
•    Customize your profile by adding a custom background that identifies you. If you are not graphically inclined, try creating one on Twitbacks.com, MyTweetSpace.com, and FreeTwitterDesigner.com.  These services allow you to create numerous templates that you can download for free.
•    This account is where you can post corporate blog posts, company press releases, information about your products, services, brands or industry and offer deals and coupons.  Much of what happens on this account can be automated and scheduled through services like www.tweetlater.com and www.rss2twitter.com.

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How to Break Up with Me on Twitter

Posted by marymcknight On December - 17 - 2009

How to Break Up

This is a repost by popular demand. So, last year I wrote a really scathing post about Trulia blackhatting SEO and getting banned.  It was, shall we say, riddled with sarcasm and I may or may not have used the term “flock taco” to describe their SEO. Hint, I definitely did. In any case, it resulted in about 200 direct messages, emails and IMs that could only be described as “break ups.” I personally found them hilarious and had to repost them with my own commentary. When I decided to restart this blog, it was a post that people kept begging me repost – so without further preamble…

So, the great Trulia post of 2009 made such a hit on Twitter and AR, I received over 100 “break up” tweets, emails, comments and messages. Who knew so many people felt like they were basically dating me? I was also told by Rich Jacobson of Active Rain that I need to get God/Jesus/Restoration in my life. Seriously, even God got dragged into the conversation! God, really? I need God cuz I use the F word? That has an awesome factor not even I could have seen coming and I know awesomeness. OK, I need to pull in an outside opinion on this one – Winston Churchill said “Profanity is only a crime against polite society not God.” And I think Winston told Hitler, Himmler, Lady Astor, all of India and a whole slew of other peeps and countries to “flock off” and he totally saved England, so I’m gonna go with that as sage advice. Although, I do apologize for ignoring the AR TOS, but hey- I break rules, it’s what I do. I promise to not break it again in the same way.

Now, since I am actually a connoisseur of hate mail – I have a special folder for it and I love to read it over and over because it makes me laugh that someone who doesn’t know me at all would spend so much time telling me all the ways in which I am a complete douche bag, why they hate me and why they will never listen to anything I ever say again even though I keep seeing their mug on MyBlogLog widget. I kind of look at hate mail to people you don’t know as the equivalent of sending a Porn Star fan mail with the request for a date and glorious professions of love. You know, pathetic. So, without further ado – my top 5 tweets from people that “broke up” with me yesterday and today.

1. TWEET – You’ve changed, unfollowed

WHAT POPS INTO MARY’S MIND WHEN SHE READS THAT TWEET? – Who the flock is this person? How do you know me – I don’t know you and if you don’t know me how do you know I changed? I am so bloody confused, my mind can’t even handle the circular loop it has found itself in after reading this.

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About Mary McKnight

I am the only bimbo Harvard ever graduated and I teach cool. No, seriously, I have worked with Warner Bros. Feature Films, an EMI Distributed Record label and premier luxury magazine publisher, Haute Living. I love working with personalities and consumer brands and always challenge myself to think outside the box and bring unique marketing campaign strategies to the table.

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