MindComet

MindComet launches Ride the Flying Ray

Are you headed to SeaWorld this summer? Want to know how to get some free stuff when your there? Keep reading…

MindComet recently launched Ride The Flying Ray, a social media promotional site for SeaWorld’s new flying coaster, Manta. To our knowledge, this is the first use of social media to launch a major attraction.

What does it entail?

There are a total of six activities centered around Manta.

Manta Quiz - This activity consists of five manta related questions. Users are encouraged to find the correct answers to all of them. Most of the answers are available by research through Google, however, to get all of the answers, users will need to follow the Twitter user @RealShamu.

Submit to Flickr - Users can complete this activity by taking a picture of themselves holding a “I Heart Manta” sign and submitting to Flickr.

Fill your row - Promotional sites are all about getting the word out. The Manta coaster has four seats to a row. Users can “fill their row” by inviting inviting friends to participate and converting at least three.

Submit To YouTube - Users create a video about Manta and post it to YouTube. Easy Cheesy!

Make a Manta Mask - We created a cut-out Manta Mask that users can download and wear, photograph themselves in and submit to Flickr.

Follow and Tweet - Users are encouraged to follow the @RealShamu user and send a tweet telling @RealShamu why their excited about Manta.

So, what’s at stake?

Successfully complete any two of the six activities, and users will receive a coupon for a free Manta photo.

Complete all six, and user will be awarded a front of the line pass for Manta! Woot!

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Posted by Jeremy Hilton on May. 01, 2009

Love by association

Forums are social media and should be part of your social media strategy. For example, Pitney Bowes leverages forums to allow their users to support each other during postage rate changes. This post however is focused on using forums as part of your social media outreach and presence strategy.

Forums are ubiquitous.

Just search out your interest, and you’re bound to find a forum with relevant discussions. Want to join a forum and talk to other poodle lovers? Here’s a forum you can call home.

The question is, as a marketer, how do you engage forums? What are some best practices? What are the benefits?

The best advice in engaging forums is to tread lightly. Forum based communities are often the target of spammers and as a result are very protective. They’ve been around for years and have built great communities. Their members aim to keep it that way. So what do I mean by tread lightly?

Be respectful.

If the community doesn’t want you there as a marketer, then leave. Don’t force yourself into the conversation. If the community has a Terms of Service, read it. Their TOS might explicitly tell you to stay away as a marketer. Get the hint without ruffling feathers.

Forums are notorious for flame wars. Avoid them at all costs. They’re toxic. Don’t ever let yourself get drawn in. And please please please, don’t start a flame war. Be respectful.

Contribute value to the community

Pretty self-explanatory. If you’re not contributing value, staying relevant to the conversation, and building relationships; logout; delete your profile; Stay far far away.

If you get stuck on this one, try the educational approach. Provide links to 3rd party sites that are relevant and position yourself and the educator. Make sure you have read the TOS though, some forums frown on posting links.

Full disclosure

If you’re there as a brand or a marketer, it’s very important that you disclose it. Be careful though, sometimes the disclosure can be confused with a marketing message, especially if you come on too strong with it. Don’t spend lots of time talking about yourself and who you are. Instead, try the subtle approach of weaving disclosure into a relevant conversation.

Example: Great points. I’ve worked with [put your affiliation here] for the past year, they’ve really helped me to learn a few things about [put your relevant and valuable knowledge here]

Your disclosure doesn’t have to be in every post, just make sure you drop it in (and do it intelligently!) from time to time.

Marketing through participation

This is where the previous three pieces of advice come together. You’ve done a great job of being a respectful human who, based on contribution, is seen as a valuable, if not integral member of the community. Hopefully, you’ve also made a clear connection, in a clever and non-intrusive way, between yourself and the brand you represent.

Are you seeing where I’m going here?

The end goal is for the community to make a connection between you (the person they really like) and the brand you represent. I like to call it “love by association”.

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Posted by Jeremy Hilton on Apr. 22, 2009

Facebook is a pond. Social Media is an ocean.

Sorry for not posting last week. I’ve been really good about regularly posting to either Social Enchilada or my food blog, Home Culinaire (which needs some love). However, this week, I failed and I’m kicking myself for not staying on top of it, although I do have an excuse…I was in NYC for the Mirren new business development conference!

Now, you might be thinking, “Jeremy, haven’t you read the 30+ blog posts from Chris Brogan where he explicitly tells you to be proactive and write your posts BEFORE you attend a conference?“. Honestly, I really thought I would get them done while I was there, but as you can see in the large gap in my posts, I didn’t.

Self-deprecation aside, the conference was insanely good. We came back with a bevy of insights into our business; what we’re doing wrong, what we’re doing right, and what we’re doing that no one else is! We also came back slightly irritated by the lack of understanding about what social media is in the digital/interactive agency world.

Many digital agencies are way behind in their understanding of social media. From what I gathered, in their world, social media is this very flat landscape that is comprised of Facebook and MySpace.

There was no mention of ratings and reviews sites like Yelp or social commerce sites like Amazon. When John Winsor from Crispin Porter + Bogusky asked if anyone had ever heard of the crowdsourcing platform, Crowdspring, I was one of a handful of people in a room of 100+ that raised their hand. There were less than 20 people Twittering from the event. I wouldn’t have even dared to mention BrightKite out of the fear of completely confusing everyone in the room.

This conference solidified my belief that consumers are now more digitally savvy than marketers. We’re constantly playing a game of catch-up. And the smart digital marketer, will closely follow emerging social media trends/platforms. If we’re going to fish where the fish are, we have to acknowledge that Facebook is a just a pond, and there’s a whole ocean full of fish yet to be discovered.

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Posted by Jeremy Hilton on Apr. 14, 2009

Are forums social media sites

While doing research on forum statistics for a strategy document I was authoring, I stumbled upon a discussion sparked by Tamar Weinberg. In her post, she asked the simple question -

“Are forums social media sites“

While there were good arguments in both the “for” and “opposing” camps, I felt that the views of a third camp required a response from me; the camp of “Who Cares and why does it matter?“

Before I respond to the “who cares” contingent, I’m going to weigh in with my answer. Based on the definition of social media being “platforms for social interaction and networking”, in my eyes, forums are definitely social media sites. They generally don’t have all the bells and whistles (APIs) as most social platforms. But at their core, they are a type of social media. Even Josh Bernoff and Charlene Li, in their seminal book Groundswell, acknowledge forums as a social media platform, and write in length about the successes of Dell’s user support community.

Now on to you Mr and Mrs. Who Cares…

So the question is who cares? Why should we try to define if forums are social media sites? The answer is plain and simple: goals and strategy.

If you accept forums as social media sites, then it seems natural that the same goals and strategies for leveraging social media sites would apply to forums…which they do (this further supports the notion that they are social media sites).

To support this, lets look at goals that are being achieved through engaging forums.

Listening to and engaging your customers in order to gather feedback

TweetDeck, the uber popular desktop client for Twitter, setup an account on UserVoice (along with a couple of other smaller companies like Sun Microsystems, Nokia, and MySpace). I’m guessing that this is an invaluable resource for defining new requirements for their product.

Facilitating engagement and relationship building between your customers

Microsoft offers a large number of forums available to the their users. Many are the purposes of supporting each other, but Windows Home Server community is geared towards allowing customers to talk to each other about ideas and education.

Providing online tools that allow your customers to support each other

The success of Dell using forums for support is fairly wide known. But did you know that Pitney Bowes leverages forums to allow their users to support each other during postage rate changes? They’ve saved money as a result!

What camp are you in? Are forums social media sites? Why?

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Posted by Jeremy Hilton on Apr. 01, 2009

Social media usage eclipses email. What should you do?

According to a recent study release by eMarketer, social media activity has eclipsed that of email.

This is an impressive milestone for social media, however this shouldn’t be your cue for abandoning or even reducing your email marketing budget and throwing all your direct response marketing eggs into the social media basket.

According to a study by IDC, 43% of social media users have never click on ads (this one included) and only 11% of those who did converted to a sale. Email is still driving more online purchases than other online media, so stick with it.

Use social media as a complement your email programs or to execute a whole host of other business tasks that email can’t accomplish. When it comes to direct response marketing, though, email is still king.

Read the article on EMarketer

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Posted by Jeremy Hilton on Mar. 28, 2009

The power of Twitter is in your imagination.

There’s a common sentiment about Twitter, and many social platforms for that matter - They are distractions. A waste of your time.

In fact, let me quote a recent post by Thomas Wailgum on CIO.com

It’s obvious that Thomas Wailgum is completely unaware of the potential of Twitter and other social platforms. He’s written them off as irrelevant and as a waste of time.

What he has failed to understand is that Twitter and other social platforms are tools, and just like most tools, can be re-purposed, to suit your needs. Thomas Wailgum sees Twitter as a waste of time, because when he uses it, he’s wasting time.

The power of Twitter is in your imagination.

Sure, there are people who consistently ramble about their plans for tonight. But there are also people who ramble on about brands, products, and customer service experiences.

So while Thomas Wailgum is wasting time on Twitter, savvy companies are listening their customers and building relationships 140 characters at a time.

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Posted by Jeremy Hilton on Mar. 21, 2009

Everyone must learn to walk differently

The Internet is everywhere.

Just 10 years ago, most Internet users logged in using a workstation or laptop from home or work. Our ability to access online data was constrained by location. You could carry around your laptop, but to access the web, you needed to be in the close proximity of a WiFi network.

Fast forward to today, and we’re accessing the web not just from workstation and laptops at our homes and work, but from integrated devices in our cars and small portable devices like mobile phones. These devices can connect to ubiquitous wireless networks, giving us access to the web virtually anywhere that we can make a cell phone call.

We are now able to pull content from the Internet without the constraint of location. Conversely, we’re able to push content to the Internet without the constraint of location, and do it VERY efficiently. For example, I can take a picture of myself in line at a store, post it to the Internet, and distribute the picture to my friends before I’ve even purchased the thing that I’m in line for. The technology behind this is very impressive. But, in my opinion, not because of what it allows you to do, rather, in how easily you can do it. 10 years ago, if I told you I could take that picture, and in a matter of seconds, distribute to my friends, you would have assumed that I was involved in cutting-edge technology. You would have been right! Today, this simply means that I own a commonly available tool and have signed up for some commonly available services.

The proliferation of access and sharing is a giant candy store in which I am a doughy-eyed kid. However there is an inherent danger to this technology. That danger comes in the form of reputation management.

As easily as I can take a picture of myself and distribute, I can take a picture of you and distribute. And what if you’re famous? What happens if that photo raises questions about your reputation?

Case in point, Bono from U2. He and a friend partied with some attractive younger women in St Tropez. The girls distributed to their friends by posting to their Facebook accounts and before you know it, the press and gossip hounds are having a field day by publishing the photos on their sites.

I’m sure that Bono, like many celebrities, has a team of people who are tasked with keeping him on firm ground by carefully managing his PR and reputation. However with technology and the proliferation of the Internet, the ground is shifting under his feet. In fact the ground is shifting under all of our feet. This isn’t limited to celebrities. Think of the stories you’ve heard of people not getting hired or even losing their jobs because of risque Facebook photos.

To adapt to this shift and not get tripped up, we all must to learn to walk differently. Always think about the photos and videos people are taking of you and where those images might end up .. Michael Phelps anyone? Be conscious of the things you post too. Maybe the photo of you hugging a toilet isn’t the best thing to share with the world.

I think that Seth Godin said it best with “... always act as if you’re on Candid Camera, because you are.“

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Posted by Jeremy Hilton on Mar. 18, 2009