Birthday girl

It was back to Times Square today for the DigiDay Social event and thanks to some video being available it will be able to bring you some information.

In a session “Publishing for Social Media” Jim Bankoff, Chairman & CEO of SB Nation, discussed using social media to drive traffic to generate revenue. It could have been 2005 at AOL where Jim’s content team passed that same message to those of us on the search team. The goal then was to use search to drive traffic to higher CPM pages. Now just change “search” to “mobile” and the story is the same

The first of the two videos is from Rishad Tobaccowala, Chief Strategy & Innovation Officer, VivaKi. He spoke about The People Network and the top piece of advice from him when it comes to working with new technologies is to use them.

The other video is along the same path — it’s not a case study, but it goes more to approach. This is from Adam Kmiec, Director of Social Media at Walgreen’s. He discusses choosing partnerships, asking your agency “explain”, and look for a wow factor that can separate your program from your competitors. He cited Walgreen’s program to donate a flu shot for every Foursquare check-in and how that beat CVS to the punch.

Video:
Rishad Tobaccowala, Chief Strategy & Innovation Officer at VivaKi
Adam Kmiec, Director of Social Media at Walgreens

Related articles

• Walgreens Donates Flu Shots Via Foursquare, Facebook (clickz.com)
• What Does It Take To Be a Social Strategist? [INFOGRAPHIC] (mashable.com)

This is a big week since I attended the DigiDay Mobile event earlier today, and tomorrow I will be attending the DigiDay Social event.  Both are being held at the Marriott Marquis in Times Square.

Today’s Mobile event was split into two sections.  The morning focused more on using mobile as a platform to build brand and the afternoon’s program was called “Mobile Apps.”  It focused more on the business of building apps and using them in your online model.

The one lesson that came out of the afternoon apps session is that the most important thing an app developer can do to get in the top 10 is to be in the top 10.  Because Apple promotes the top 10 in each category the most important move to make is to get into the top 10 because it is so difficult to dislodge an app from the list.

Related articles

• Mobile Apps Economy [Infographic] (trak.in)

It was a great, eye-opening, day at the Silicon Alley Talent Fair.  My orginal list of companies printed from the event’s website on Tuesday had about 125 company names listed.  In itself that would be impressive, but the reality was that there were at least 150 after you included late additions and sponsors.  It was a great representation of the start-up activity happening in the NYC area.

Even with some major heat inside the 69th Regiment Armory, the event seemed like a big success.  I was lucky to meet with some good people from groups like Proclivity Systems, Figment.com, 33across, and EveryDay Health, and hope to have some future follow-up.

I posted the answer below on LinkedIn in a thread called: Social Commerce the next big thing?.

ROI is always important, but I think the issue at this stage of the social commerce experience the difficulties is in identifying the ROI + vs -.

It’s straight forward to do the simple math of how much you took in vs how much you gave away, but there are other numbersthat need to factored in, but they may be tough to qualify.

Off the top of my head, so please add others:
Some positives:
1) After the buyer gets the $X of product for the $Y they spent, did they by more?
2) Did they come back again?
3) How about the publicity of being promoted to all the subscribers and then virally to the friends of the buyer

Some negatives:
1) Need to generate more margin to make up for discount
2) discounts bought by clients who would have paid full price anyway (make it sound like a ‘treat’ for them in the copy)
3) Does discount hurt the brand? Could it turn people into ‘waiters’? That wait until deals come out before they come back?

Related articles

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"Yes, you can go to the zoo tomorrow"

This weekend we headed down to NoVA — Northern Virginia for those of you not from NoVA — to celebrate the little one’s third birthday.

So far we have taken the opportunity to go somewhere unique for each birthday. Her first birthday was at the top of the Empire State Building.  Birthday #2 was at Niagara Falls (mom’s choice) and the Anchor Bar (dad’s choice), so she could say that her first ever chicken wing was at the Anchor Bar. I know that should have been enough for Father of the Year, but that greatness doesn’t hit until she goes on her first business trip and needs to make idle table chatter over appetizers.

ROAR!!!

The catch on this trip was that we weren’t sure the National Zoo would be open when we got there because of the failure up to that point to agree to a national budget.  Fortunately, by midnight Friday, a baby-steps version of a budget was agreed to so we could go to the zoo — and save us from having to tell a three year old why some people she never met were keeping her from hearing a lion roar.

Top Tactic in Social Media

Today is the day. The tactic used in social media to stir up interest: The Countdown.  Just like I did to get you here.

First my apologies for using a self-serving trick, but I did so to make a point.  And that is — it works.  Even with nothing really to offer I added 14 new followers in the last 3 days.

The best thing about the Countdown tactic is that it’s really easy. The only challenge is the planning because you have to get out in front of it to give you the lead time.  What should you do:

1. Find a reason — a new product launch; the anniversary of an event in your industry; anything with some relevance and value to your intended audience.
2. Layout your announcements.  I think it’s best to write them up in one sitting, so when it comes time to execute it’s just a matter of paste and schedule.  Remember that these are just teases, so they shouldn’t be too long, so writing up a bunch isn’t that difficult.  I advocate this, rather than write as you go, because it’s tough to stay on topic and on schedule if you write as you go over multiple days.
3. Plan your Twitter posts to hit different parts of the day. Not everyone reads Twitter at 8am, so spread them out at different times to hit different users.

Coming Next Week — Just 4 days until I give you the next most popular tip: What do you think it is?

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