Posts Tagged ‘solis’

Hack 100: Brian Solis – 7 Scientific Ways to Promote Sharing on Facebook

May 11th, 2010 by Daniel Young | No Comments | Filed in Blogging, Social media

The second installment in the Hack100 series.  My interpretation of the latest Brian Solis post in less than 100 words:

Content that is short, simple, yet emotive and compelling, works best in social media. Within Twitter shareability is determined by words used and timing.  In Facebook simple language is more likely to be shared.  Content performs better when it contains digits.  Sharing is endorsing.  Content relating to news, personal experiences and video is more likely to be shared.  Certain words and negativity inhibit sharing.  What and how you share says a lot about you.  Use verbs, as these encourage others to share.  Apply these rules and you will benefit.

(89 words) Main message underlined.

Some interesting stats and data in the full version of this post. I’m not sure that there is a specific single take-away from this post, as there are in fact seven.

Some good advice for individuals, businesses hoping to benefit from social sharing in new media.  Many of the ’scientific ways’ are scientific because they are proven by the test of time and reinforced by recent studies in social media but these aren’t laws unto themselves for the social sphere, they apply equally in old media, all forms of communication and marketing.

Solis claims that negative updates are ‘among the least shared objects’ but that’s kinda subjective and doesn’t account for content relating to video of exploding laptop batteries (as an example), which could be construed as negative and is highly shareable.

For the original full version of this post, visit the Brian Solis blog here.

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Hack 100: Brian Solis – With social media comes great responsibility

May 9th, 2010 by Daniel Young | No Comments | Filed in Blogging, Social media

Hacksaw

Gosh, there’s a lot to read on the World Wide Web.

Trying to keep up with the rapidly changing world of new media is a full-time job.  The long posts take even longer to read, and sometimes you wonder why you bothered.  It’s increasingly hard for the ‘Social Media Experts’ (so called) and industry thought leaders, to find things that are genuinely new and different to say.  That doesn’t always stop them posting though.

So I am launching a new series of posts (which may go nowhere) entitled ‘Hack 100′.  I will condense recent and landmark blog posts down to less than 100 words.  I will identify the point that I feel lays at the core of the posting by underlining it.  I think this will usefully provide you, dear reader, with the gist of what is being said and give you the option to click through to the full-length post if you so wish.  Hopefully, you’ll find the ‘Hack 100′ version sufficient and will be inspired or in agreement with my brief thought or question posed at the end of the hacked post.

The inaugural ‘Hack 100′ post looks at a recent contribution from the wordy Brian Solis.  I regularly read the Brian Solis blog and  find it useful from time to time.  I have also spent time, which I’ll never get back, sorting through the flowery  Brian Solis language to get the nub of the matter, sometimes without success (maybe it’s me).

So here goes (fanfare please)…

Hack 100’s intepretation of… Brian Solis: With Social Media Comes Great Responsibility

Social media is a revolution for business. With it, brands become media and form communities.  External forces pique interest in social media.  Like email, it has no single owner.  Ultimately, social media  should permeate core business, with each department maintaining a social presence.  Looking ahead, companies will use social media in new ways.  This is necessary as sound relationships are earned, not acquired.  Aligning departments and conversations is good planning process. Social media can improve culture and competitiveness, when supported.  Social media challenges us but those that rise to the challenge will benefit.

Thanks to Brian Solis for this contribution (original post).

I agree with the sentiment of the post but I don’t feel that its saying anything new.  The emphasis on the impact of social media is over stated but I agree with the general point that social media becomes more powerful when the conversation is hosted by the relevant department or expert.  I also agree that a flat comms structure within a business represents mature social media strategy but its not as easy and evolutionary as Mr. Solis might have us believe.

So what do you think, dear reader?

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My highlights from today’s Future of Influence Summit #foi09

September 1st, 2009 by Daniel Young | 4 Comments | Filed in Public Relations, Social media, Technology

The ability to effectively filter information is a new ‘literacy’ that our society requires in order to sort the valuable information online from the crap.  This Crap Detection was one of the opening gambits provided by Howard Rheingold during today’s The Future of Influence Summit 2009.

Future of Influence

My firm – Burson-Marsteller – sponsored the Summit, which took place today in Sydney and San Francisco. The event is produced by The Insight Exchange and was chaired by Ross Dawson.

The Summit covered a wide range of topics relating to the somewhat nebulous concept of Influence.  It’s really hard to summarise the findings or conclusions from the event so I thought I would summarise my most interesting statements and perspectives.

The speaker list including Brian Solis, Richard Bell, Tim Burrowes and Duncan Riley:

  • There is a whole industry dedicated to ‘gaming Google’
  • We may trust people in one sphere but its hard to transfer that sense of reliability if them from one field to another
  • New tools are emerging that allow us to accurately measure Influence
  • A currency of influence is/ will emerge
  • Dell and Starbucks are two companies that have successfully listened to the feedback provided by their community and implemented it (i.e. made a change). One example of this in the context of Starbucks is the Raspberry Muffin, which was dropped but then brought back as a result of feedback provided by customers
  • Advertising and marketing industries are moving from audience measurement (readership, circulation) to influence measurement
  • We live in a confetti economy – high fragmentation of media and proliferation and distribution of source of information
  • Burson-Marsteller research with PR Week: 78% of American consumers say that advertising does not provide enough information for them to make a purchase. Approx. 60% of American consumer say that the media does not provide enough information…
  • Brian Solis categorised the social media community as an ‘ego-system’
  • Lessons are learnt in failure. Google refers to this as ‘failing wisely’
  • The Dell @DellOutlet Twitter concept succeeded partly as a result of very cheap products
  • The number of active Twitter uses is staggeringly low
  • Intel: Marketing industries should stop referring to ‘target audiences’ and start thinking about them as people
  • CBS: Economics dictate a high degree of consolidation in online media. Today’s tier one bloggers will become the trust agents of the future. We are in the adolescence of the new media industry. Power will return to marketers, as a result
  • 80% of online news content is consumer online via Fairfax properties in Australia. New media lacks credibility in this market.
  • Joe Talcott: The message is the message. Technology is the focus for communications today but technology will gradually retreat into the background and content will assume its rightful position as the most important aspect of communication
  • 80% of communication is non-verbal and 90% of conversations about brands still takes place offline

Lots of interesting thoughts and conversations here. No firm answers for a definition of influence or for a criteria or standard for measuring it.

There’s no doubt that this area of digital marketing will grow into the future, with organisations launching methods for measuring influence. I think there is a risk in using the degree to which people are inter-connected as a measure of influence.  There is also a danger in placing higher value on quant. measures of influence such as delicious tags because it assumes that the community that either has access to that content or access to the Web is somehow representative of the total, when this is not necesarily the case.

At the end of the day its very easy to ‘game the system’ and today’s Summit is yet more evidence that big business will invest heavily to excert influence online – at the cost of authenticity, trust and truthfulness in some cases. I believe that we place too much faith in the Web at our peril.

Trust in institutions has eroded; we need to protect and foster the trust that we have in each other.

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