Vanessa Fox:

Why Get Involved with Social Media?
Deeper engagement with customers
Get insights not available any there way
Your customers are online already
Happier Customer > Provide Feedback > Create Better Products > Evangelize > More Customers

Social Networking is Anywhere People are Talking Online
YouTube, Yahoo Answers, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc.

Niche Forums
Verticals - social shopping, real estate, lawyers
No matter what you do - there’s likely a social media niche for you.

Social Media Submissions -
Mixx, Sphinn, Digg - this likely goes back to the keynote about social media being a fad.  These most people think about as a place for links. 

Rating & Reviews
Yelp, Epinions, Amazon - whether its negative or positive you want to know what’s going on

Twitter:
Technorati uses it to know about outages, Dell for it’s outlet promotions, NYTimes for Stories, Southwest Airlines for specials, Vanity searches on your name

Dell - Ideastorm
Helps with Dell’s customer research, the community decides what Dell should work on next

Facebook
Not a good place yet for advertising, but growing.  Mostly use it for brand awareness rather than paid advertising.

Evolve What You Do Already
Assess your customers
Who Are They
Where are they

Have a Plan
What are your goals
What are your guidelines
What will you measure

What Not To Do:
Flogs - Walmart RV Across America
Dell:  Told bloggers to take something down - only inflamed the situation

Social Media helps you improve your conversation audience

Per Jacobsson from Nimble.ie

Nimble is Ireland’s own social networking site
Re-launched in Sept. 07
109,00 members in Ireland
New , fun and exciting design and functionality
For Advertisers:  sponsor functions, corporate profiles, banner advertising
Nimble’s future:  several hundred thousand users in Ireland, adding more fun stuff to the website, looking for partners and advertisers

Social Networking in general
It’s local activity after all
Non-excluding
Future holds integration between sites - 3rd party developers are already doin this
Social networking websites are a new media
The m ore successful networks fully utilize the networks of friends

Search Marketing
Tested radio, college magazine some web pages
By far most effective:  viral networking; friends inviting friends
15% of users through search engines (Google) but search terms have not been interesting: “nimble” “nimble.ie” www.nimble.ie, etc.

Will McInnes from Nixon McInnes
5 facts
1.  We’re dealing in a networked world
2.  You are not in control
3.  If you are thinking about your website being a destination site, you’re dreaming  (think about the distributed world)
4.  Social Media isn’t just for kids anymore, 55% of users to YouTube is over 25 - it’s not about kids!
5.  Content is free, glitz and glamor (Craig’s lists) don’t matter

Opportunities
1.  idea storm from dell - the community promotes ideas.  from this dell has cut out focus group.  creates a buzz in the market before products even come to market
2.  ratings and reviews - huge opportunities.  own it and host it before someone else does  (negative reviews actually helps, people are cynical,  people set expectations and that helps with return rates dropping)
3.  start listening to the networks & conversations - use Google alerts.  know who the influencers are in your marketer
4.  widgets - helps to deliver your message out to a wider audience

Networked world, Not in control, Not big destinations, demographics are excitingly broad and dynamics.

Article source - http://www.searchmarketinggurus.com/search_marketing_gurus/2008/04/search-market-2.html

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