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Make Your Brand More Social in 2010

Wondering how socially successful your company is?  Believe it or not, there is a way to measure the amount of sociability your brand has.   One company, Virtue, has created an algorithm called the Social Media Index™ (SMI) that provides a visually depicted measurement of your brand’s online conversations, including status updates, videos, photos and blog posts.

If you are a brand that offers an interactive service or product that is relevant to a target demographic of social media fans and fanatics, you might want to consider taking a moment to reevaluate your current online presence in order to move forward in 2010.  How can you do this?  Well, first let’s take a look at a few of the top social brands of 2009 and see what they are doing right.  According to Virtue’s SMI, iPhone, Disney, CNN, MTV, NBA, iTunes, Wii, Apple, Xbox and Nike rounded out the top 10 social brands in 2009, respectively.

Obviously there is something to be said about large brands like iPhone, MTV and Disney, whose massive online presence will dominate conversations on sites like Twitter and Facebook easily and without much promotion or buzz.  People are already following these brands and wondering what they’re up to, so it’s only natural that they would measure highly on a social media scale of measurable conversation.  This is not to say that all is lost for a smaller, less renowned brand as long as it already has an established presence on the web.  The key to success in moving forward with brand socialization is changing faster than you can say “let’s chat!” and now is the time to reevaulate your brand’s social outreach for the coming year.

There are a few crucial steps you can take to make your brand more social in 2010.  Many of these include solutions that adapt to the ever-changing method of how we access information on the web, mobile and world wide.  Facebook fan pages are becoming dynamic rather than just a place to update real-time status with simple news and information.  The key to socialization here is interactivity and we believe that this list of straightforward suggestions will help keep your brand moving in a social direction for the new year.

Offer a Free iPhone Application

Develop a fun, engaging and branded iPhone application that can be given out as an incentive for signing up for a company mailing list.

Make the Mailing List Extremely Accessible

Enable users to opt in to receive your marketing offers & news directly from your Facebook page or Website.

Create Polls

Let users interact with simple, fun, multiple choice questions and see results in real-time

Offer Surveys

Give users the chance to weigh in on various topics for brand insights

Utilize Slide Shows

Create a photo slide show of customized content, complete with variable speed, transitions, background music and full branding

Offer a Built-In Twitter–Chat Application

Incorporate a branded Twitter-Chat application directly on your website or blog that allows other Twitter users to chat in real time.

Offer Games and Trivia

Offer branded games and trivia that lets users compete for status, leader board rankings or just for fun

Branded HD Video Player & Playlist

Add high-definition videos to your website or blog, complete with branded video player watermarking

Sweepstakes

Run a contest on Facebook with in-page registration that will make it easier for users to participate and recommend entry to their Facebook friends.  Promote on Twitter as well as other social networks.

Couponing

Reward users for taking actions like answering a survey, uploading media or sending a gift and add extra incentives for every Facebook fan or Twitter follower that also signs up.

End US Hunger NOW: The Campaign and My Personal Video

On Friday, May 29th 2009, Ashton Kutcher sent out a tweet to his list of Twitter followers (just shy of 2 million) asking everyone to create a video that will become part of a viral video campaign for US Hunger.  Ashton announced that a large US corporation would be willing to donate 10 million US dollars worth of products in US food aid but without the help of able and willing Americans everywhere, the donation may not happen.

The action alert was simply this (from HungerLimit.com):

1. Record a video of you or your friends saying “Are you hungry?”, “Hungry?”, “You look hungry”, etc… then looking at the camera and saying “Eat!” or “Go Eat!” also saying “Some people Can’t!” and finally a video of you or your friends eating something.

2.  Upload your videos to YouTube and tag them with “endhungernow” or send them over to endushunger [at] gmail.com until Tuesday, June 2nd 2009.. All videos will be cut into a single viral video clip and posted online.

3.  Follow @aplusk, @mrskutcher and @FeedingAmerica on Twitter to get the latest updates about the campaign.

4.  Tweet about #HungerLimit, #Hunger and #USHunger to raise hunger awareness of your friends, colleagues and family members.

5.  Visit FeedingAmerica.org online and contribute with a donation or become an advocate for the cause.

I decided to take action for once, hopped on my webcam and made my own little action alert.  Here it is, I hope you like it.

An Idiot’s Guide to Twitter Plus The Twitter Song

If you know me, than you know I’m a huge fan of Twitter. Twitter, although hard to explain to your average web 2.0-illiterate person, is really quite simple. I thought, ok, if I had to explain Twitter to my Mom and she could understand it, than anyone could. I have yet to successfully explain gmail to my Mom so you can see what I’m working with here.

To define Twitter in the most simplistic way is easy: twitter is 140-characters-or-less-microblogging.  For each “blog” posted, you have 140 characters (not words) to get your message across.  Across to who?  Well, whoever thinks your interesting enough to follow.  Twitter is also social messaging.  Twitter is also news reporting.  It is anything you want it to be, without having to type a lot and these days, who has time to do that?

So who follows you and who do you follow?  That is a good question and one that I will answer shortly. First, I ask you to stop reading and go join Twitter.  Once you’ve joined, come back here and read this super awesome tutorial that explains everything you may (or may not) have wanted to know about Twitter. But first, follow me. There’s my shameless self-indulgent plug.  Now that I’ve gotten that out of the way, you may read on.
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FREE Animated Follow Me on Twitter Badges

I am always grateful to the people who put their designs on the web as freebies to others. Not only is it generous but it’s incredibly helpful. I also believe in paying it forward. Since I’ve been such a Twitter junkie lately, I decided to design a playful animated Twitter badge in various sizes that shows a bit of my personality (it’s overt and that’s the way, uh huh, uh huh, I like it).   Download the zip file and post them on your blog, website, myspace, etc. If you use a badge, a link-back is always appreciated.   Not sure how to post an image?  Here’s a helpful article on simple HTML tags. As always, feedback is welcomed and appreciated. Enjoy!