Archive for November, 2006

Virgin Fails At Social Marketing

You would think that companies would learn from the social media marketing mistakes that Wal-Mart and GMC have made. But obviously the marketing department at Virgin Money does not read this blog.

The PR Place points out that Virgin Money had approached the social network site b3ta.com about having its members come up with designs for a new marketing campaign. Conceptually this was not a bad idea, the problem is that b3ta.com is a social network known for its sick humor. Way to understand your target audience Virgin.

Filed under Brand Marketing, Social Media Marketing, Social Media Optimization : Comments (0) : Nov 9th, 2006

Metacafe CEO Interviewed

ZDNet recently sat down with Metacafe Co-founder and CEO Arik Czerniak. Metacafe, which bills itself now as the ““world’s largest independent video site” is the new YouTube. I am already on record as saying that Metacafe would be the perfect acquisition for Yahoo.

Here are some interesting excerpts from the interview with Arik Czerniak:

Metacafe is all about video quality, not video quantity, Metacafe is not a video sharing site, it is an online video destination,Metacafe surfaces and serves only “entertainment-grade” content.

Filed under Brand Marketing, Social Media Marketing, Social Media Optimization : Comments (0) : Nov 7th, 2006

CBS Wants Their Own YouTube

The Cincinnati Post today reported that CBS is interested in acquiring its own YouTube. The article reported that:

“We’re not going to buy YouTube,” CBS Corp. Chief Executive Leslie Moonves said, referring to the wildly popular video-sharing Web site that Google Inc. agreed to acquire last month for $1.65 billion, “but it’s not a bad idea to buy the next YouTube.”

Today, CBS is to announce that it has hired a 35-year-old investment banker, Quincy Smith, to find the “next YouTube.” The move demonstrates that CBS, which is sitting on a stockpile of $3 billion in cash, is eager to make acquisitions to better position itself in digital media.

Filed under Social Media Optimization : Comments (2) : Nov 7th, 2006

Social Networks and Global Marketing Campaigns

Social Media Sites are not just the domain of the US or UK, they are truly a worldwide phenomenal. According to Jacqui Boyd, media director at Acceleration in South Africa:

“Our research shows that these Web sites are attracting millions of page views from South African Internet users each month. MySpace and YouTube already rival the largest local portals for popularity among South African Internet users, with more users discovering them with each day that passes,”

“South African brands can target local users on international social networking portals with geo-targeting. Apart from traditional banner adverts, most social networking portals also allow advertisers to target registered users that fall within a specific demographic such as age group,”

Filed under Brand Marketing, Social Media Marketing, Social Media Optimization : Comments (0) : Nov 6th, 2006

Top 10 Social Network Sites

Can you name the top ten social network sites in the U.S. (as measured by page view)? Thanks to Techcrunch for publishing this data, which they got from Comscore.

Network

Monthly Uniques

Monthly Page Views

MySpace

56M

35B

Facebook

13M

7B

Bebo

2.4M

1.4B

Xanga

6.9M

255M

Orkut

351K

198M

Tagged

1.6M

167M

Friendster

1M

89M

Piczo

773K

40M

Tagworld

1M

19M

Tribe

560K

6M

Filed under Brand Marketing, Social Media Marketing, Social Media Optimization : Comments (5) : Nov 3rd, 2006

Blogging is not a complete SMO Strategy

Please excuse the rant but I am amazed at the people that I talk too who think that that social media optimization = blogging. It isn’t. Go back and look at Rohit’s original thoughts about social media optimization. Rohit said:

“The concept behind SMO is simple: implement changes to optimize a site so that it is more easily linked to, more highly visible in social media searches on custom search engines (such as Technorati), and more frequently included in relevant posts on blogs, podcasts and vlogs.”

Filed under Social Media Optimization : Comments (4) : Nov 1st, 2006