What is frugalnomics?

This is an interesting term I just discovered today. In a recent PR Newswire article, Tom Pisello, Chairman of the company Alinean, defines it in this way: "In today's 'age of austerity' every significant investment requires proof of bottom-line impact – a condition called Frugalnomics." According to Mr. Pisello, this is why "a focus on austerity via business and IT cost savings, remains strong."

This need for measuring results in an 'age of austerity' has pushed Alinean, creator of sales and marketing tools for B2B clients, to develop a social media ROI claculator which will allow businesses to measure the impact of their social media strategies.

In a world where social media investment is expected to move from its current 6% of marketing budgets level to 18% over the next five years, these kinds of tools are being developed to meet the frugalnomics age. I think we will see lots of these tools coming in the future.

Free stuff about Web Marketing and Social Media

Today, I discovered and interesting site which offers hundreds of free reports and documents about various subjects. One of those is web marketing and there are several documents dealing with this hot topic.

The site is called TradePub.com. Click HERE to go to the site and enjoy your research.

Writing the most effective message online

A post by Roger Rae on B2C Marketing Insider, remind us of 5 basic things you should always keep in mind when dealing with social media communication:

1. Keep your message simple.
2. Customize your message (every site is different).
3. Make your message about the people not you.
4. Know where to promote your message.
5. Be in the right place at the right time.

Read the full post HERE.

Social media charts

Today, I read a post with some interesting charts about the popularity of some social media sites. Click HERE to read the full article.

Can Facebook ads take on Google Adwords?

According to Inside Facebook, the social media giant could reach this year the billion point mark in terms of revenues. Half of that comes from ads.

Keeping on mind this, do you think that Facebook ad platform represents a serious threat to Google Adwords?

This is a sentence I read from an article on Daily India:

"Much of Facebook’s revenues comes from advertising with half of that coming from their ad platform. Facebook ads are still in its infancy when compared to Google Adwords and it pales in usability and efficiency to Google’s. But if improvements continue it may challenge Google down the road as the top ad platform on the net."

A powerful move: Yahoo and Twitter together

The interaction between different players within the social media world is starting to look like a war. Google gets Buzz and now Yahoo partners with Twitter. The latter represents a powerful alliance that could benefit both parts in significant ways.

To read more about the implications of this alliance, take a look at THIS ARTICLE from Channel Web.

82% increase in social media use!!!

According to a Nielsen report, social media use has increased 82% during the last year! This is thanks to the fact that the average time spent on social media per month has moved from 3 hours to 5.5 hours. Amazing stuff, ah?

Read this quote from a CNN Money article regarding this:

"This Nielsen report establishes social media as a trend that is not only here to stay, but one that is growing at a mind-boggling magnitude," stated Bloggerwave Director Ulrik Thomsen. "The findings more than validate Bloggerwave's business model of leveraging social media for marketing opportunities -- a business model I am proud to admit we developed years ahead of the trend."

Ladies and gentlemen: Social media is the future!

It's Facebook time

These are good days for Facebook. The social media giant is near to reach 400 millions users around the world and the promising future of social media gives Facebook a lot of good reasons to smile today.

The new trend in terms of optimization seems to be oriented towards the SMO (Social Media Optimization) and it's going to be interesting to see how SMO will play along the lines of SEO (Search Engine Optimization).

Take the following note from this article I read today in Min Online:
"Just as “SEO” became the key to publishers riding the search engine ecosystem, “Social Media Optimization" may be the buzzword for the next few years as more and more of us discover news and information through friends on Facebook and Twitter."

In addition to this trend, Facebook is now generating more online traffic than Yahoo and Google' Buzz is just a response to accomodate the company to the impact social media is generating on the Internet.

Keeping on mind all this, Facebook is starting to set up the pace on the Web and when a company does that, there are many reasons to be happy and confident about the future.

The YouTube Scholarship

YouTube is one of the most useful tools of social media. Today, I came accross a pretty cool project promoted by the Nyenrode Business University in the Netherlands that gives scholarships to the best videos produced by prospective students.

This is a very interesting project that provides prospective students with an innovative opportunity to demonstrates their creativity and potential.

Read the full post from BusinessWeek HERE.

How social media is affecting online traffic

According to an analysis carried out by the Palo Alto firm Gigya, "Facebook has passed search-engine giant Google to become the top source for traffic to major portals like Yahoo and MSN, and is among the leaders for other types of sites."

This interesting note appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle website.

Another part of the article I found interesting was this:

"...David Berkowitz, director of emerging media and client strategy for the digital marketing firm 360i of New York, said the importance of search engines isn't going away.

"But there's always been one downside to search," he said. "Consumers only spend about 5 percent of their time online searching and the other 95 percent of the time at the destination. Social media is quickly accounting for a large percentage of that 95 percent. Google's biggest acquisitions, DoubleClick and YouTube, have been all about playing a big role in the rest of consumers' Web usage."..."

It's going to be interesting to see the evolution of this trend.

8 ways to use social media

I just watched a very nice video made by Lewis Howes that summarizes the best 8 practices for using social media. Very clear and to the point. He also provides suggestions for books related to social media.

I highly recommend it if you are interested in developing a good social media strategy.

To watch the video, click HERE.

The mobile and integration dilemma

There are many predictions out there for social media in 2010. I just came accross an article written by Mike Koehler ("Key Trends in Social Media for 2010") that talks about some of the things will happen this year.

According to Koehler, "The two key words for 2010 will be mobile and integration." This statement made wonder about my own place in this new world of social networks. I mean, I don't browse the Web with my mobile (I actually find it irritating), I don't have an iPhone and I can't even think about getting my hands on the latest Google's Nexus One.

Considering that, am I going to be really behind if I can't accommodate myself to the experience of using the Web with my mobile?

I'm just wondering...

Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn numbers

I took the following information from the post "The Big Three Social Networks Have Emerged as Professional Networks: LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter" written by Don Bulmer:

- LinkedIn: LinkedIn has approximately 50 million users worldwide in 200 countries. The membership on LinkedIn is growing at roughly one new member per second. When LinkedIn launched in 2003, it took 477 days, almost a year and four months to reach the first million members. The last million took only 12 days. Executives from all Fortune 500 companies are LinkedIn members.

- Facebook: Facebook has over 300 million members with 150 million that log in at least once per day. The fastest growing demographic on Facebook are 35 years and older and according to Facebook more than 2 billion pieces of content (web links, news stories, blog posts, notes, photos, etc.) are shared across the network, each week.

- Twitter: Twitter has more than 32 million members with the segment of 45-54 year olds being the top demographic and 25-34 year olds following closely behind at second. It has been found in other studies that baby boomers and senior citizens are more likely to join Twitter than their grandchildren.

I thought this was something interesting to share to get a picture of how social networks are doing today. If you want to read the full article, click HERE.

How to screw up your social media

Today, I read a very interesting article that talks about different ways to ruin your social media efforts.

Catharine Taylor, the author of the article "Eight Ways to Ruin Your Social-Media Strategy" points out eight common mistakes that occurred when managers deal with social media strategies. This is the list:

1. Pretend you can do without it
2. Play down the costs
3. Act like you own the conversation
4. Fear empowering your employees
5. Assume you have little to learn
6. Take negative feedback personally
7. Fret about return on investment
8. Understimate the power of seemingly small efforts

After reading this article, I couldn't stop thinking about the way my previous company managed its Facebook campaign. Taking into consideration the author's list, this is my personal reflection of the mistakes my company did:

1. Pretend you can do without it
My manager always thought social media was useless.
2. Play down the costs
He set up a campaign with the conviction that the only thing he needed to do in order to succeed was creating a company page on Facebook.
3. Act like you own the conversation
The language on the page was everything about "we are the best", "come and play", etc...
4. Fear empowering your employees
My manager was scared to death with the idea of people devoting time to Facebook during working hours. For him that stuff wasn't real work.
5. Assume you have little to learn
He didn't care about social media, he didn't believe in the fact that maybe user engagement could bring new ideas to the table affecting site improvement.
6. Take negative feedback personally
After we created the page, there were three groups on Facebook talking very bad about a pop-up campaign that we were using with an affiliate partner. My manager thought it was useless to interact with these angry users and try to deal with the problem.
7. Fret about return on investment
We placed some ads on Facebook with zero results in terms of ROI. After one week, he decided to abandon forever social media strategies.
8. Understimate the power of seemingly small efforts
He thought social media was useless... he didn't even know what Twitter was.

To that list, I would like to add one more thing:
Our site was oriented towards the Spanish market yet the page we created on Facebook was in English language!

What I saw on my previous company was probably one of the worst social media campaigns ever built. I blamed my manager for the failure of this campaign which unfortunately was one of the numerous problems he created with his management style... no wonder why the company eventually closed down.

Twitter Analytics

What is the best tool to measure your success with Twitter?

I came across a very interestting article (read full post HERE) that talks about a new tool (Tweet Level) developed by Edelman which allows you to measure your Twitter performance.

There was a comment made to that post that mentioned another tool called twendz which seems to be a good one too.

Now, I am wondering what could be the best tool I can use to measure my Twitter presence...

Social Media Manager

One of the nicest things about innovation is that it creates new job opportunities. The boom of social media confirms that trend. Social media has opened the doors to a new full range of job opportunities. One of them, is the Social Media Manager.

I read an article that highlights five essential skills a Social Media Manager should have:

1. You understand technology, but you love people.
2. You possess intellectual and emotional curiousity.
3. You're thoughtful, not impulsive or reactive.
4. You think strategically (and communicate the strategy).
5. You are an ensemble player, not a diva.

If you want to read the full post, click HERE.

Do you unfriend a lot?

And the word of the year according to the New Oxford American Dictionary is.... unfriend!

What does unfriend mean?... this is the official defintion:
Unfriend - verb - To remove someone as a "friend" on a social networking site such as Facebook.

Example: "I decided to unfriend my roommate on Facebook after we had a fight."

So, do you unfriend a lot?

To read full post click HERE.

Top 5 social media books

The other day, I came across a post on the website Mashable that mentions the top 5 must-read social media publications. The names are:

- Trust Agents by Chris Brogan and Julien Smith
- The Whuffie Factor by Tara Hunt
- Six Pixels of Separation by Mitch Joel
- Crush It! by Gary Vaynerchuck
- The New Community Rules by Tamar Weinberg

Has anyone read any of these books? which of these books would you suggest to read?

To read the full post click HERE.

Traditional search and social media

BusinessWeek published an interesting article about the way Google and Bing are thinking to incorporate social media information into their search results. This new interest relies on the potential economic dividends the two giants can get from placing their ads in the most appropiate places.

To read the full article click HERE.

The client is still right

Freedom is probably one of the reasons why Internet is so fascinating to all of us. We are free to search, access, share and generate content and information in an incredible variety of ways. When it comes to the Web, however, freedom has been constantly challenged by economic interests, legal norms, conventionalism, moral principles, and plain fear. From the music industry freaking out about Napster to the Iranian government freaking out about tweets, it seems that someone will always worry about the form freedom adopts in the cyberspace.

Online freedom has come in different flavors. The latest and tastiest one being social media. The Web 2.0 revolution has empowered people in such a way that individuals have now in their hands a perfect tool to make a significant impact on practically anything. Word of mouth has proven to be an effective instrument to generate action and companies are increasingly following online conversations to improve their business strategies.

Not everyone is happy about that in the corporate world though. For many CEOs and top level executives, reaching out to social media in order to promote their products and brands has been dominated by fear and skepticism. At the center of that attitude lives the perception that regular, normal people are unable to produce high-quality branding. For the first time in many years, the client apparently is not always right.

Fortunately, the last statement may be valid only for some businesses. More than ever before, the client is still right and social media is here to challenge corporate conventionalism. Visionary businesses will take advantage of the infinite possibilities that social media offers. Conventional ones, out of fear of losing control of "something," will keep doing business as usual. That, of course, does not mean that traditional businesses are doomed to fail and visionary businesses are supposed to make profits every time they venture into social media.

The truth is that social media, as an expression of online freedom, offers the potential to shape the world from the bottom. We, the people, are finally able to challenge everything and there is nothing conventionalism can do about it. A wise business should try to remember that the client is still right.