• We should think about the implications for brands and help arm your clients and teams with the knowledge to understand.

1. Social Media will be supersized
2. Companies will integrate social feedback into their decision making process
3. Mobile will become our gateway to the world
4. Video will be everywhere
5. The next big Online Social Network will not be a network at all
6. ROI will be redefined
7. Psychology is shifting
8. Citizen activism brings back purpose and power
9. Social business intelligence will heat up and so will privacy
   

10. The role of the social media strategist will be changing

Implications:

• Social Media is real and it is maturing. It will require more rigor and strategic approach to integrate effectively into results-driven models.
• Opportunity to capitalize or threat of being cannibalized by those who capitalize (think competitors looking to take your lunch or vice/vs.)

II. Generational Update:

• There are still notable differences by generation in online activities, but the dominance of the Millennial generation that Pew documented in their first “Generations” report in 2009 has slipped in many activities.
• Millennial, those ages 18-33, remain more likely to access the internet wirelessly with a laptop or mobile phone. In addition, they still clearly surpass their elders online.
• However, internet users in Gen X (those ages 34-45) and older cohorts are more likely than Millennial to engage in several online activities, including visiting government websites and getting financial information online.
• Finally, the biggest online trend: While the youngest and oldest cohorts may differ, certain key internet activities are becoming more uniformly popular across all age groups.
  

Implications:

• Millennials are no longer the only ones doing it.  That means the numbers will only continue to grow.
• News ways of using online will develop and change how people behave – as more people begin to experience and do it.  Marketers will have to jump fully into it at the consumer level to truly understand it – across the board.
  

III. For fun:

• Case examples like this are floating around the web – waiting for brand managers to find them.  Agencies can provide this type or value by bundling in with strategic offerings.  For example, simply by search trends, low level reconnaissance can yield insights – that when vetted through sales data could highlight opportunities or at least provide value of the affinity building efforts beyond just a tracker study.
  

The truth is, sometimes it’s a challenge to do either. Usually when we focus on the now, it’s the later that we forget. And when we focus on the later, it’s the now that we don’t live.

Success is a balance. Living in the now, and knowing what we need to do to get to the tomorrow. Either way, at times we are our own biggest detractor. While focusing on the now or the later, be sure to focus on what you have, and not that which you don’t.

Because when we focus on that which we don’t have, we loose focus on that which matters the most. And that’s when the now or later no longer matters.

But that’s just my own pov.

“If you address either boyfriends or money.. Then I’m not coming home for thanksgiving!”

Were the words echoing in the the hall from my friend shouting at her mother through the phone.

“We are 21, 23 and 24..If we come home with a friend, and introduce him as a friend, then he is a friend.  If we come home with the same friend again, and say he is just a friend.  He is just a friend. There is nothing wrong with being single. Ugh!!”

No doubt facebook and the internet have changed the way we have been taught to think and “typically” think about friends.  All in the past 10 years.

So what does the word “friend” mean these days?

Assumption #1: we are starting to define new levels of friendship. The number of touch points (m, em, sms, 1on1, fb, etc..) in a friendship correlates with the degree of friendship.

Assumption #2: at a certain lifestages, the desire to acquire new friends change.

I wonder.. What are the thresholds, and why does quantity matter to some and not others?  Is this because people require different levels of attention/needs, and have different levels of satisfaction?  And do thes levels of engagement dictate their expectation of how much a brand should engage with them..?

Pretty fucking amazing huh..? Yeah, sure.. But what does that mean? Well let’s see..

• Facebook is the largest ad delivery system In the world.
• They now have 200M mobile users.
• They are amassing the largest database of true psychographic and behavioral information ever.
• They established a geo-location based mechanism.
• They established a new form of messaging.
• They created new evolutionary way for humans to communicate.
• Oh, and they did this in six years. Imagine what the future holds..

But in the meantime.. Think about Facebook like a country. The third largest country in the world. Then think about a brand’s pages in other countries as flagship outposts in different states. Each state or territory has it’s own dialect and social conduct. In that place, the people and the culture dictates the rules. The rules are a combination of offline social norms and law as well as the provisions, oversight and enablement of the country’s existence by the governing body of Facebook corporation, led by president/CEO Mark Zuckerberg.

Remember this platform is young, on loan and has not even begun to hit puberty yet. Yet, the relationships developed within are real. Pretty dangerous combo if you ask me. Not necessarily too risky, but plenty of risk nonetheless. The future is unknown, and the implications are far from understood let alone just barely observed.

Broadcast is about reach & frequency. The internet is about targetability and measurability. It also is a great medium for human connectivity. The internet makes the world smaller and helps bring people together, through social networking. So when operating in a social setting, try to be human, authentic and real.. Think like a person and not marketer. This is how brands can crack the code in the great FaceRace.

Social Marketing Plan | Draft V.2 | 10/04/10

Challenge: RE:FORMSCHOOL is a really cool project, but most people don’t get it until they are here..and see how crazy an idea this is..

Question: How can we explain what it is we are doing in a way that people care?

Answer: Capture, create and distribute small bites of content so that people can follow the breadcrumbs, pick up the pieces and build a narrative based on their own experiences, which will lead them to the exhibition.

Social Goals:

1. Create awareness of the RE:FORMSCHOOL event
2. Simply communicate our value proposition
3. Ask people to join the conversation online and in person
4. Enable engagement with RE:FORMSCHOOL through technology
5. Educate people about the installations and their artists
6. Utilize technology to further facilitate conversation through social media

Social Mission: Call to action (our people) to join and engage in the RE:FORMSCHOOL conversation by listening, learning and educating on and offline.

Reason to Believe:

Arts and music funding is cut year after year, by mobilizing the creative community in NYC to listen, learn and engage in the growing reformation, we can keep the importance of arts and culture top of mind through a collective voice and participation.

I. Our People: (targets)

There are three groups of people we need to talk to.  Each group has a different level of interest and willingness to participate.  It’s safe to assume that typically 20% of each group will produce 80% of the actions.  People use technology and social media for different purposes to satisfy different needs.

OPEN People:

• These people are the general public who like art and may be open to the idea of education and reformation.  They seek to feel apart of something bigger and are open to another point of view, hoping to define their own and find a meaningful way to output support.
• Objective: Get inspired, Get informed
• Visual: Shepard – Hope poster

INTERESTED People:

• These are the general public who have a passion for art, education, reformation and making something happen of which they believe in, but aren’t fully sure how to tap their talents.   The flame is lit, the fire needs stoking, they need direction.
• Objective: Get involved, Get thinking
• Visual: Shepard – OBEY

COMMITTED People:

• These are the general public who are actively involved in the creative, technology and education communities either through profession or self driven action.  These are the artists, the volunteers, and those who have ownership of the idea and are already taking action.
• Objective: Educate, Inspire, Evolve
• Visual: Shepard – Himself

II. Social Tactics:

Utilize multiple technological and social tactics to reach our people in the best way that inspires them to inspire others to join the conversation.

Awareness tactics:

• Maintain initial online push tweeting, retweeting, following, friending, connecting, posting, etc..
• Create a twit list of everyone who is volunteering so that we can quickly communicate
• Clarify Internal #hashtags and definitions of what to use when
• Contact artists and inform them of the onsite engagement tactics
• Create a master map of what each of the galleries are and the challenges that will need to be associated with each for the SCVNGR trek.
• Better leverage facebook – update page info to be more human and exciting.. let the blog be formal and rigid.
• Upload photos from the blog, link to artists and partners
• Ask artists to join that page
• Ask volunteers to upload pictures from through out the day along with quick little vids and comments.
• Utilize Facebook ads to niche target individuals and drive FB likes / interactions:
• The Shepard Fairey promo
• Work with Shepard Fairey to create a simple promotion with his followers to give away tickets to Friday night’s opening party.  Use this promotion to target the Open and Interested people who follow him.
• The Event itself – Ask people to pledge to join the conversation by either liking on fb, following on tt or showing up this weekend.

Engagement tactics:

SVCNGR is simple.  It’s a game. Through the element of play, we can motivate people to trek about the space and drive them to each of the “exhibits” in search of information.   At each “exhibit” we ask people to focus on something specific, and challenge them to respond.

• There are four types of challenges: Photo challenge, Open response, Trivia, QR Codes
• After completing all of the challenges, people are awarded badges or rewards. So for instance, everyone who completes the entire trek on Saturday and Sunday will be entered into a drawing for a pair of tickets to Monday’s closing party.
• Considerations: It will take at least 8 hours to set clear gaming goals, build, test, edit and test again.  Will need five people who don’t know the space, to test prior to release.
• This tactic utilizes the committed to educate those who are open and interested.

Do You speak my language?

• Each exhibition features small plaque which visually articulates what “languages” that artist speaks along with appropriate hash tags
• E.g. I would be: FB, TT, FSQ, YT, #MAKECOOLSHIT #HAVEFUN

USTREAM | Universal broadcast:

• Broadcast 3 times each day on USTREAM beginning today..
• Set up account and begin streaming.
• Remember Channel One tv, when we used to sit in class and get a live broadcast form the channel one network.. Well this is Channelone2.0.
• UStream is a great way for schools to created projects and broadcast them to other schools.

Hopefully what we accomplish will either inspire, inform or educate others out there who need a quick resource of how to make some shit happen really fast.  Ultimately this is a priority / largest impact / feasibility game.. And, at the end of the day, success lies not only in peoples abilities to lead and inspire, but also in the efforts of everyone who follow and pitch in.  The end product may not be perfect but the experience alone is worth every minute of it.  Enjoy..

DAY 1..

Social Marketing Plan | Draft V.1 | 09/30/10

Challenge: RE:FORMSCHOOL is a really cool project, but most people don’t get it until they are here..and see how crazy an idea this is..

Question: How can we explain what it is we are doing in a way that people care?

Strategy: Leverage everybody involved to drop little pieces of content that relate to their role within this project.  This means everyone involved from the inside of the project.

Idea: Capture, create and distribute small bites of content so that people can follow the bread crumbs, pick up the pieces and build a narrative based on their own experiences, which will lead them to the exhibition.

Rationale: Greater is the sum of all the parts, as no single separate effort is greater than the sum of a 1000 tiny efforts.  In return people will pick up the pieces that appeal to them and share with their followers what’s relevant.   This is a ground up approach.  PR will need to support by driving top down awareness through mainstream media articles and subsequent earned impressions.

Tactics:  (initial thought starters)

PR:

• Drive hard to get local, regional and national press.  Icon just ran a promotion tonight for the media at the Morrison Hotel Gallery for Cannon promoting their new camera – it was an invite only affair.  Lets reach out to Icon an see if they can help with the press.
• Draft a sick release and reach out to thrillist, onion, VF, etc.. every art and culture online pub..

Tumbler:

• Create a content aggregator to archive assets into a single stream so that artists can pull from

Facebook:

• Create a RE:FORMSCHOOL place
• Utilize the notes section to post assets

Twitter:

• Talk to as many people as possible
• Use Oct. 1 as #FollowFriday to increase the @REformschool followers, leverage personal networks
• Have artists start dropping clues about what their installation is going to be like, have them tweet through the process, progress
• Over the weekend ramp up anticipation and intrigue by dropping pics showing people and work in progress
• Determine a final list of #hashtags and define their purpose – keep it simple (e.g. #REDU = actions, #RETHINK = Stats, facts, figures..) #hashtag everything
• Think through contest ideas: Name this piece, respond by posting, recount your highschool experience by..

Foursquare:

• Create a check-in location for each gallery
• Create a “hall-pass” award
• Map the desired user flow by creating tips at each gallery
• These tips can provide a brief tid bit of information about the installation and also drive people to the next room.
• Partner with bakeries to give a discount to anyone who checks into their store in the future.

QR codes:

• Generate free tags that drive people to the reform webpage, fb page or other page… May be able to get donation of tag from JagTag  to be able to send multimedia content to any phone in form of video..
• Provide access to all digital assets – handouts, pamphlets, etc..
• Create a map and stat sheet that is smartphone optimized so that people can get a lay of the land and event space
• Codes on the map would trigger additional information about the installations and spaces

iPhone / Justin.tv / ustream:

• broadcast daily clips that talk about what’s going on and how cool this thing is going to be.  Give sneak previews, capture drama, in small 30 sec sound bites..

Next steps:

• team review individually and build on tactics – 9/30-10/01
• regroup on Sunday evening to align, finalize, divide and conqueror – 10/03
• get topline description on each of the galleries – 10/03

At #Influencer10 last week there was a bit of healthy conversation around geo-location type platforms –and the question was posed- looking ahead at SCVNGR, places, foursquare, within music, marketing and art– what is the role of geolocation applications?

Or in other words, what is the value of geolocation?

Generally speaking, the value lies in the following: incenting, tracking, locating, finding, searching, playing, sharing, knowing.

But, starting with what we know- there are roughly just under 5M users of geolocation platforms or services. This is less than 1% of the internet user population. 80% of this one percent are males 18-34.

Foursquare (#4SQ, @Foursquare), the most well known application has over 3 millions users. Foursquare solved the problem of having to sms people where you are (hence the flood of creppy guys who want to be your friend)..

The power foursquare has for bars and restaurants are providing them the ability to communicate with consumers. Educational Institutions have leveraged the utilitarian qualities of the technology with applications like Harvard tips, which walk around with you to give you guidance and “tips” around campus. A well known city app called Scoop helps people around the city – find just that – the scoop. These are just a couple uses, as the panel felt strongly that we are just scratching the surface with the potential uses of location-based applications.

But hold on, I though location based applications were for broadcasting where I am located so the world can see?  Kinda, sortof.. “Its about you!” If you want.. Here you go..

But its also about building up social capital and using it not just as a tool to broadcast a self serving message- about your personal focus, where you are and are going. Rather the utilitarian application is worth far more. “Information makes location textually relevant,” rattled off one of the panelist.

Utility vs. self promotion.

“Use location features to bring content to me.” It’s also about empowering people to make better decisions. This isn’t about being social and broadcasting. Location based (or geo-location) applications can be very functional. But now with the introduction of SCVNGR – there is a way to add some emotion into the mixed beyond just playing for points and badges. The concept is simple – Yo go places. Participate in challenges. Gain points and rewards.

This approach capitalizes on the utilitarian function, but provides rewards and incentive to motivate people to act. This platform ties directly into the other social platforms such as Facebook and Twitter by allowing people to broadcast the action or results of their action after facing a challenge. Educational institutions have quickly hopped on board with this platform and are developing all sorts of programs.

A current example is a local New York City program called RE:FORMSCHOOL – a high profile pop-up art installation designed to mobilize the creative community in NYC to engage in the education reformation conversation. SCVNGR will help us create an engaging experience within the pop-up art installation by educating people throughout their trek through the experience.

Essentially, there are four types of challenges that we ask people to perform using SCVNGR. But first they have to download the app. Fortunately here in the city we see slightly higher penetration than the average 26% of mobile phone users, which remains to be a concern for a reach standpoint when dealing with clients. Fortunately, being a pro bono gig results are less important than the implementation and execution of the idea.

After completing all of the challenges, people are awarded points and badges some with additional earned incentive. So for instance, everyone who completes the entire trek on Saturday and Sunday will be entered into a drawing for a pair of tickets to Monday’s closing party. Along the way they might received digital pieces of art from the artist, for completing challenges relevant to each gallery.

The use of geo-location applications does not come without negative issues, most specifically those around privacy. Privacy and publicity are going to be issues going forward. We’re all going to make some mistakes.

Let’s forget the technology for a second. Twitter is roughly 4 years, Facebook is 6 years old; and six years from now who knows. The point is, we must use commonsense and step back with technology. Be smart and use it wisely.

Transparency is a growing trend going forward.

It’s all about how much you want to push out there. Its all about balancing with your personal life that what you to push. Its all about educating our youth about having a personal profile, a public profile, and what it means to publish content about oneself. Your personality online doesn’t always reflect what you are doing. There is no “control z” on the web.

In conclusion, technology affords us a way to learn through actually engaging with the information. The relevancy of that information within the context of our location is what makes geo-location a powerful tool. So use it well, wisely and widely, but be careful and always urge people to use control.

Cheers!

RE:FORM SCHOOL is a high profile group art exhibition, event series and public awareness campaign taking place in New York City, that brings together the creative community in a call for the reform of the American Public Education System.

http://reformschool.letsredu.com

This is a pro bono project with a bunch of talented individuals and artists including Shepard Fairey and Lupe Fiasco to name just twp.. All coming together to create a one-of-a-kind, experiential pop-up art exhibit from Oct. 9- Oct. 11.  Help support the cause and come out to play.. Make cool shit, have fun and do good!

Deep downtown on the crossroad of noho and soho, a small group of influencers gathered in the basement of 45 Bleaker st.. The conversation was set around influencers and innovators, separating and defining the two..

Consensus was that the two are not mutually exclusive, one can be the other but both are not each other.

Influencer: when you tell someone something about something you think is cool and why, people let you know you are an influencer, it’s a group thing. An influencer is not always an innovator.

Innovator: when you come up with something new and cool, we push to be innovators, it a solo mission type thing. An innovator is not always an influencer.

The by-product is helping people make decisions, even if its not the goal.  Whether an influencer or innovator, either way the common characteristics include:

• Personality: integrating personality into communication is key these days.  Individuals use their abilities to sell.  They take an idea of concept, and position is a way that their followers understand.  This requires the original owner to give-up control and trust the personality of the influencer.  This transfer of ownership and control enables the influencer to to do that, influence their followers.
• Authenticity: knowing who you are and when to say n0 – is this going to alienate my core following?  This notion applies to individual personal brands and commercial brands alike.  Its not so much about infleuncers influencing everyone.  It depends on what you are trying to influence people to do.  Those seeking influencers need to find the right influencer influencing the right people for the right need, at the right time.

These two characteristics highlight the dichotomy between influencers and innovators.  Ian Schafer, CEO of DeepFocus hit the nail on the head in speaking about the needs of those influenced, “One thing you want because everyone has it and you feel left out.  Othertimes, you want to be the only one to have it.”

But when everyone does the some thing, its no longer cool, hip and innovative.  So is it about the process then?  Meaning, its all about weaving a story in an innovative way and enabling influencers to tell it in a compelling way to their followers.  Its about taking a risk.  Influencers are modern day story-tellers, which is why people follow them.  They know what works for their crowd, because they test things out- much similar to a crowd sourcing type way.  Good old fashion Grandma Testing, within their network to vet out and get an idea of potential feedback.

Plain and simple – people can smell fraud a mile away. For instance, brands that combine to co-promote something that has nothing to do with what their core products or values are, lack purpose or real meaning.  If it’s not smart or doesn’t make sense, then it will fail the authenticity test.  This failure will reflect on the perception of that person or brands personality.  This negative perception will perpetuate in the same manner a positive one would through an influencer’s circle.

In conclusion, its safe to say that it safe to say that just like people integrating their personalities in terms of influencing and innovating, brands need to do the same thing, that’s how you keep it real and remain authentic.

Voice:
$1.69/min with World Traveler add on for $5.99

SMS:
$.50 to send a txt
free to recieve

MMS:
$1.30 to send a mms

DATA:
.02/kb
or pay $60 for 50% less – .01/kb

These are the best you can get through AT&T – don’t really have time to comment beyond are you serious?? WTF!!! So beware – below are a couple tips thy can help you save some serious Dow and damage:

- Only use features on wifi.
- Turn off data roaming and fetch new data
- Do not answer the phone unless you have to
- Put in sleep when not planning to answer the phone ao you dot get charged for incoming voice mails

To call from SA back to the US:
- dial 001 areacode phone number

To call me from US:
- dial 1 + ten digit number

Tollfree AT&T from SA:
001-916-843-4685

Tollfree AT&T from us: 800-331-0500

cheers!

di