HotHouse makes brands work for people online

The traffic numbers you see for social media sites can be staggering. But what do those numbers really mean? Besides getting into the conversion rates,  it’s crucial to ensure that your data is accurate and that you understand it in the way it was intended to be interpreted. CNET has recently reported on an apparent reporting gaffe involving YouTube and Warner Music Group. The surge in numbers reported by ComScore certainly suggest that the numbers are not as they appear.

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After all the fear mongering that’s been going around about the hazards of social media, this heartening article in smh points out how iPhone applications, Facebook, Twitter and Google have literally been saving lives in Haiti.

Read the article here.

There are always quick links and informal email conversations of new technology that get floated around the office. One that recently gained attention is the new HTML5 technology available on the iPhone and used by nextstop.

“Nextstop for the iPhone is a browser based application.”

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We recently had a lively discussion here at Hothouse that was sparked by the mention of Flash website indexing. HTML has traditionally claimed superiority when it comes to Google’s ranking, but now Flash is fighting back and is walking the walk in a number of cases. Here’s (roughly) how the discussion flowed: read more

Online brand communities take a lot of work and time to nurture and grow. How do you know they’re providing value for your company? Some recent work in this area includes:

Social Media Metrics Superlist – From the Interactive Insights Group, this is a constantly updated mega-list of measurement, ROI and key statistics resources. Bookmark this one and keep coming back to it.

The Five Ps of Social Media – Where do you Start? This is an excerpt from Lon Safko’s Social Media Bible, published on Fast Company. Check out the fifth P, Progress, for a brief discussion on measuring the value of your social media marketing.

LinkedIn – the Network Effect Revisited – From the IT World website. Quotable quote: “According to experts, Metcalfe’s Law of the network effect should not necessarily be employed by users in determining how many users to connect with on a service like LinkedIn.”

LinkedIn Superguide – Also from the Interactive Insights Group, this is a comprehensive list of links to help you understand and fully use all aspects of LinkedIn. Another one to bookmark.

It’s a grey line between your corporate presence and your personal brand when it comes to social media.

As the name implies, social media is about people – not just your customers, but also you and your colleagues. As such, it’s as much a personal branding tool as a corporate branding one.

When you set up a Twitter account to build relationships and (gently) talk about your company /product/service/event, you’re also building your own profile. If you’re writing for your corporate blog (like I am right now!), you and your company are in a symbiotic relationship that benefits both of you; if you broadcast your company connections on your Facebook account or are the admin for a Facebook fan page, you’re blending your corporate and personal image on several levels (which is why a lot of people choose not to do it).

The most obvious social media tool where this blending occurs is LinkedIn. LinkedIn has variously been dubbed an online resume, an online contact list and Facebook for business people. The idea of forming networks to advance business aims online is a powerful one, and more than 41 million people in 170 industries in more than 200 countries have bought into the concept.

Unlike most businesses, LinkedIn has experienced enormous growth during the global financial crisis as redundant or worried individuals join to extend their reach in the search for possible employment opportunities.

It’s also being used by more and more businesses as they encourage their senior employees to sign up (following the lead of junior employees who’ve already registered) and connect with potential customers (as well as potential future employers – such is the double-edged sword of social media).

Linking tips

The top social media experts use LinkedIn as a key component of building their personal/corporate brand online.

Chris Brogan who has built a vicarious interest into a career as a strategist and commentator on social media and whose blog is ranked in the top 10 of the AdvertisingAge Power 150, says that the most important thing to remember when putting together your LinkedIn profile is to think about who’s going to be reading your profile.

“The first horror show I see when reading other people’s LinkedIn profiles is that they’re written completely dry, as if robots are the only thing that will read them. Though one should write with (search) robots in mind, this is still a human network, so write as if you want someone to actually read your profile.”

He goes on to say that, “Make sure that when people read your job description, they are thinking about how to put you to work on their issues. I state my company’s primary functions in the first sentence of my current role, so that people can see what I’m bringing to the table alongside my own personal skills. Thus, my job description states what I’m doing, but also what I can do.” read more

Although the Internet is renown for embracing new ideas, chewing them up, spitting them out and moving on to the next one, a few concepts keep coming back, albeit in new forms.

The most resilient of these is the concept of communities.  They’re in vogue again, for exactly the same reasons they have been in vogue in the past – the concept of community aptly describes the nature and the potential of the online environment.

A couple of years ago, I was asked to write a piece for the “My Five” column in the Australian Literary Review, where people write about five books that have influenced them in their career.  The first book I listed was Net Gain: Expanding markets through virtual communities.

Net Gain was one of the first books that put Internet communities into a business context: not surprising, since authors John Hagel and Arthur Armstrong were both McKinsey&Company consultants. They argued that the web is used for three basic purposes – to find content, to interact and to complete transactions – and they correctly predicted online communities would grow around these purposes.

The book was strongly criticised by purists when it was published; they said that on the Internet there was commerce and there was community and never the twain shall meet. Not long after this, of course, eBay appeared. eBay is the textbook example of the type of virtual communities predicted by Hagel and Armstrong: a vibrant, self‐regulated community where people barter and sell, and make friends (and dollars) along the way.

They also forecast the disintermediation of industries such as travel, describing a future that looks a lot like travel sites such as Zuji, Wotif and TripAdvisor.

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Went to the Google Wave API Day at the Sydney Googleplex last Friday.

The developer preview from this years’ Google I/O is quite extensive in explaining the features and functionality of Google Wave. At one hour 20 minutes running time it may require a significant chunk of free time to sit down and watch it, but the presentation is thorough in its explanation of Google Wave and well worth a watch.

For those that -really- don’t have the time to sit down and watch a presentation on impressionable new technologies, there is a 10-minute ‘abbreviated’ version also available.

Finally, for those that don’t work in the IT industry, there is a ‘Made Simple‘ video made by a fan.

There is also a rather extensive background and explanation available on Wikipedia for both Google Wave and the Wave Federation Protocol.

Essentially, “Google Wave” comprises of two things; the front-end client “Google Wave” and the “Federation” protocol.

To grasp the concept of separating the two, think of how “Gmail” relates to Email as a whole.

i.e. Email has many providers, and for you to send an email from one provider to another, they must conform to a set of protocols. Otherwise you wouldn’t be able to send an email from your personal email account hosted with your ISP to all the various accounts of your friends and family (who may have accounts with Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, etc).

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Our Search Director forwarded us this piece of gold, courtesy of David Armano’s Logic & Emotion blog:

Recently there’s been a fair amount of chatter about Web 3.0. So I thought I’d start to put a little context around this.

It could be argued that in Web 1.0 users were consumers; in Web 2.0 producers; and in Web 3.0 optimisers.

What do we mean by “optimisers”? Think of it as being the difference between tweeting about the texture of a new type of Cornflakes you had for breakfast (as if the general population really cares) versus telling all of the Cornflakes aficionados in your local vacinity.

The Digital Inspiration tech a la carte blog sums up the differences between Web 1.0, Web 2.0 and Web 3.0 as:

Web 1.0 - That Geocities & Hotmail era was all about read-only content and static HTML websites. People preferred navigating the web through link directories of Yahoo! and dmoz.

Web 2.0 - This is about user-generated content and the read-write web. People are consuming as well as contributing information through blogs or sites like Flickr, YouTube, Digg, etc. The line dividing a consumer and content publisher is increasingly getting blurred in the Web 2.0 era.

Web 3.0 - This will be about semantic web (or the meaning of data), personalization (e.g. iGoogle), intelligent search and behavioral advertising among other things.

And they go on to provide a series of excellent slide show presentations from various authors who all seek to explain Web 3.0 from their own point of view. Well worth a look if you’re interested in demystifying Web 3.0.