Matt Kelly on Digital Strategy

Quality is key!

Fri, 30 Jul 2010 22:43:00 +1000

When it comes to social media integration, always consider your customers. Are you bringing value to their online experience, or are you spamming them to oblivion with the equivalent of ‘junk mail’? Its time to think outside of the square.

Find that amazing, differential or innovative aspect of your product or marketing campaign and develop your sharable content around this key point!

Simplified, you should;

Develop the concept.

Research relevant social delivery portals.

Communicate as appropriate.

'Facebook Ads Guide' Review

Thu, 29 Jul 2010 13:31:00 +1000

Jonathan Volk has written an eBook entitled the ‘Facebook Ads Guide’ which ultimately focuses on how to drive traffic and in turn, make money by selling products using Facebook as an advertising platform.

We continue to identify time and time again that the absolute key to success online is through increasing traffic and I found that Volk has illustrated this in a particularly clear and concise way. Jonathan has documented all of the points he found that were required to run a successful and profitable campaign using Facebook.

I found Jonathan’s view of Google particularly interesting, as Volk clearly isn’t impressed at how Google works with marketers through their affiliate system and adwords campaigns. I’d recommend even just checking out the video on Jonathan’s sales page which outlines his views and why he found himself pulling away from Google and towards Facebook. To see the video: click here.

A few points Volk quotes which I found particularly interesting include:

Facebook now receives more traffic in the US, UK and a number of other countries then Google.
Traffic is more targeted on Facebook then Google.
Facebook advertising is easier to set up and monitor then Google’s campaigns.
There is far less competition on Facebook then there is on Google, therefore you are not competing to get your message ‘out there’.
Facebook allows you to target particular types of people, which means that you aren’t paying for every click, but you are rather qualifying the user as a potential purchaser before they hit the page.

This particular eBook is a great read and could virtually be used as a campaign development guide from start to finish including; how to choose the right affiliates, who to target, how to build the most suitable ad and finally, how to scale the campaign based on traffic.

My only recommendation is that you shouldn’t expect to make $3000+ a day, but rather let the techniques that Jonathan used to build his success impact your future promotional activities.

At just US$79.00 or AU$92.28 this is a valuable resource to learn the techniques that have proven to provide Jonathan Volk great success.

To check out the book CLICK HERE.

This is why Old Spice's marketing is genius...

Tue, 20 Jul 2010 19:13:14 +1000

Old Spice has been on a video recording rampage, recording personalised video responses from the ‘Old Spice Guy’ to almost 200 people who’ve posed questions on Twitter, Facebook and YouTube.

The ‘Old Spice Guy’, a cult hero, has been known widely since he first recorded a television advertisement for the brand in early 2 010.

The company has gone on to leverage their campaign by using the same legendary character to reach out to dozens of online celebs and in turn, created a huge buzz around the Old Spice brand.

A successful campaign on the outside, let’s see just how far the message reached…

Ashton Kutcher, celebrity and actor (twitter.com/aplusk), tweeted to Kevin Rose, Digg.com CEO (twitter.com/kevinrose) about the video the Old Spice Guy (twitter.com/oldspice) recorded for Kevin.

So lets do some math…

Ashton Kutcher has 5,280,576 twitter followers.
Kevin Rose has 1,170,008 twitter followers.
Old Spice has 85,927 twitter followers.

This single tweet could have potentially been witnessed by over 6.5 million people. These are people who potentially wouldn’t have stumbled upon the video and certainly wouldn’t have searched for it without reason. Over 6.5 million people who now have an increased brand recognition for Old Spice.

But wait, this doesn’t even consider the viral nature of social media. What about the number of people who retweeted Ashton? Ashton and Kevin are both very influential on twitter, so a tweet from either or both could have easily been retweeted hundreds of times, to hundreds of additional networks.

Is it starting to sink in?

It all started with compelling content to engage consumers… Getting the right content, to the right people. Old Spice have developed a genius campaign which gives consumers an urge to share their brand. Another company, with a fantastic approach to social media.

Check out Old Spice’s YouTube channel here.

The figures stated are current as at 20^th July, 2010.

"Social media is not about online at all. It’s about the same human interactions and collaborations..."

Sat, 10 Jul 2010 22:13:07 +1000

“

Social media is not about online at all. It’s about the same human interactions and collaborations that we have enjoyed offline for many many years. In fact for as long as human beings have been social animals.

Technology just lets us do more of these things, in different ways and, perhaps critically, with people we don’t know, that we are not near and at different times to them. Social media just lets us do things we have always done offline in bigger and better ways.

So it should be natural that we consider it as having offline implications as well as online ones. But too often we don’t.

”

- Futurelab (via digital-media-diva, infoneer-pulse)

The 2 people you will probably ask to help you with social media but shouldn't!

Thu, 24 Jun 2010 08:46:00 +1000

Your web designer

Whilst he/she might be great at HTML, Java and CSS, it’s unlikely that your code monkey really knows how you can creatively implement social media strategies. Many designers and developers are now adding social media into their service offering out of fear of losing clients to social media firms. If this is you, you are doing a great injustice to your clients! Why not try to set up referral arrangements with other service offering firms rather the trying to ‘do it yourself’, the inflow future business could be far more significant and you are providing quality services to your clients.

Your 16 year old cousin, nephew, niece, neighbour, friend, etc.

Your teen friend might know how to create a facebook, twitter and YouTube account to communicate with their friends, but would you trust them to call your clients to discuss a new product? How about write your next blanket email? Social media should be another portal to market your business, and should be an extremely effective method for initiating 2 way communication with stakeholders. The tools you choose to implement are just the facilitators for the conversation.

After being asked about the same topic consistently, I decided...

Mon, 14 Jun 2010 17:36:20 +1000

After being asked about the same topic consistently, I decided it was time to make a video which i could use to trigger thought processes in order to help change the way people think about new marketing.

I might well make more of these short videos in the future as I see them as another opportunity or avenue to get the social media message in front of people.

Any questions at all, feel free to contact me.

Pizza Hut in the UK introduce a fascinating social media...

Tue, 08 Jun 2010 19:35:00 +1000

Pizza Hut in the UK introduce a fascinating social media strategy.

Pizza Hut have decided that they will give you a free pizza for every goal that any team scores against France in the World Cup. Now obviously this has to be capped at some point and the terms and conditions state that they are giving away up to 350 pizza’s per goal and the prize must be redeemed the day of the goal, but this is a fascinating strategy.

At this stage, it seems this is targeted predominantly towards Facebook users, which is possibly the perfect platform. The campaign targets an extremely broad target market (ie: Pizza eaters) and has an opportunity to spread with an intense viral nature (However at this stage the Facebook group has under 12,000 group members).

Its likely that the only market this campaign doesn’t appeal to is the French!

I find it very encouraging to see an ‘older’ company introducing new and unique strategies.

WWDC Round-up! iPhone 4 (iOS4) and more!

Tue, 08 Jun 2010 05:43:00 +1000

Steve Jobs opened WWDC 2010 with his usual hour and a half keynote address to media and developers and today’s exciting session didn’t disappoint.

Steve first touched on the iPad, announcing that 5 of the 6 biggest book publishers in the USA will be distributing books for the iBook store for iPad. In addition to this, he announced that PDF support has been added for both iPad and iPhone, which is a big win for iPad users.

Next Jobs discussed the relevance of the app store introducing a Netflix rep, who announced that their free app is coming to the iPhone. Mark Pincus, CEO of Zynga then took to the stage and announced that Farmville is coming to the iPhone and iPad. Clearly not based on the flash platform, this could clearly disrupt Facebook’s lead over social gaming. Say goodbye to productivity.

Now onto the iPhone 4 (iOS4).

Design:

The design overall is much the same as what we saw leaked on Gizmodo a month or two ago although what we didn’t know is that the back panel is actually also glass.

Features:

Many of the features which have been announced are not a big surprise, however there are a few nice additions. These include:

Front facing camera for the purpose of video calling, this is entitled ‘Facetime’. This is no big surprise, and reviewers at WWDC have acknowledged that this feature works very well.

Built in receivers around the phone distribute the signal. One can only assume that this feature will provide better mobile reception.

Retina display. This is a new Apple technology which is quoted as having 4 times as many pixels for a much higher resolution screen (960x640 pixels). Steve was quoted as saying that this is significantly better then OLED and it will be the future.

Powered by the A4 processor. This isn’t a great surprise, the A4 processor is Apple’s own technology and will continue to make an impact in Apple’s mobile devices.

Folders to make navigating your home screens simpler. We’ve known this is coming as part of the OS release, and it couldn’t be more timely. The changes look nice and usable, a simple but very worthwhile addition.

5 megapixel camera. A camera upgrade was inevitable in this revision of the iPhone. We’ve seen HTC and other devices released with 7+ megapixel cameras, so whilst 5 still isn’t impressive, if there is a high quality lense, there shouldn’t be much to complain about.

LED camera flash. Again, LED flashes are now included on the majority of smart phones, so it was just a matter of time before this was announced.

Three-axis gyroscope. We don’t know an significant amount about this as yet, but Steve promoted this feature as an additional sensor to make using the iPhone more accurate. He demo’d this feature with a Jenga style game, which seemed to work very well and smoothly.

HD video recording (720pm @ 30 frames/second). An increase in the quality of the video recording capability is very nice. The 3GS managed video recording - Barely. Whilst we can’t assume this will be ‘true HD’, innovation is always good.

iMovie for iPhone. Steve announced a dedicated version of iMovie which retails at $4.99 right now in the app store. Attendees stated that this is a very well developed app and that it wouldn’t be unrealistic to see social video editing taking place in the very near future.

Multitasking has finally been implemented, however, just how far has it gone? It was demo’d with Pandora running in the background, can we be sure that this will work with any app or just ‘multitasking approved’ apps? Time will tell.

Unified inbox and threaded emails. This feature was a bit of a surprise and seemed to be unexpected, however a welcome addition. Much like Gmail or Microsoft Outlook 2010, the trend seems to be threaded emails.

Finally, Steve outlined some new statistics relating to the iAds platform, however this is seemingly dedicated to pursuading developers to ‘stick with Steve’.

Price:

iPhone 3GS - $99*
iPhone 4 - $199*

*These prices are based on being locked to an AT&T contract.

Release date:

June 24th for the USA, Japan, UK, Germany and France. However Steve committed to a July release in Australia.

The iPhone 4 is aimed to reach 88 countries by September 2010.

More info on Apple’s newly updated iPhone website: www.apple.com/iphone

Earth Justice Implementing Location Based Donations This is...

Sun, 06 Jun 2010 11:47:00 +1000

Earth Justice Implementing Location Based Donations

This is quite amazing. We are starting to gradually see companies with real incentives for checking in using location based services (eg: Foursquare or Goalla). These methods of promotion encourage some pretty intense brand loyalty.

There has never been a more interesting time to be a consumer.

Facebook... The ongoing saga...

Mon, 31 May 2010 14:17:00 +1000

The bashing of Facebook continues amidst a series of privacy changes. Today, being the official ‘Quit Facebook Day’ reached only 25,000 like minded people, representing just 0.006% of their estimated 400 million users. Whilst this number isn’t necessarily representative of the actual number of people who will leave the site today, it is unrealistic to believe that this will create even a bump in Zuckerberg’s pocket.

Whilst we’ve seen major tech players make a stand and move away from the site, it seems this hasn’t truly hit the mainstream public. The average user still has an open profile and has even less of an idea as to why they should deactivate their account. At the end of the day, if a user doesn’t care enough about maintaining their privacy and chooses to post their information online, it shouldn’t be a surprise that this information is accessible to all and furthermore, potentially sold to advertisers. Whilst arguably unethical, perhaps it is a price to pay for the use of this free service and an inability to censor yourself online.

My personal view is that Facebook should follow an opt-out approach. All users should be listed as private. If a particular user wishes to unlock their account to the public, they should have the ability to opt-out.

Facebook Privacy – The Last Crusade The everyday Australian’s...

Mon, 24 May 2010 08:52:00 +1000

Facebook Privacy – The Last Crusade

The everyday Australian’s voted over the last day or two and the results are impressive to say the least. Over 72,000 Australians stated that they DON’T believe that Facebook is doing enough to keep their information private.

We’ve known Facebook’s privacy settings have been weak (to say the least) over the past few years, but this view has stuck amongst the tech pundits. Mainstream media’s gradual but increasing publicity seems to have finally hit and it seems that Facebook are rapidly losing rapport with their faithful users.

Over the past week we’ve seen some huge web figures, including Leo Laporte and Jason Calacanis deactivate their accounts in order to be part of the revolution. To show the general public that we don’t NEED Facebook to communicate with friends and share content.

Mark Zuckerberg has proven time and time again that he shouldn’t be trusted as a CEO, his ongoing disregard of his loyal users is astonishing. The hoops that you go through to deactivate and ultimately delete your Facebook page alone is disgraceful and displays Mark’s unwillingness to adapt, implement new strategies and respond to consumer needs.

I’ll keep my Facebook for now. The usefulness for me outweighs their faults, however as with any online product, you shouldn’t post anything that you wouldn’t want displayed on a billboard on the street. We know that the information isn’t necessarily private or confidential and more so, could be sold to advertisers at any time. Do the right thing, protect your data, and yourself.

Google continues to innovate! Massive social media...

Sat, 22 May 2010 11:46:00 +1000

Google continues to innovate! Massive social media integration!

Twitter went crazy this morning because for the first time, Google’s standard (and sometimes creative) header turned interactive! The page contained a fully functioning java based version of Pacman with a flash overlay featuring the original audio.

Classic game, classic move from google, classic use of Social Media and VIRAL marketing.

Happy 30th Birthday Pacman

Facebook.. A horrible and painful death..

Thu, 13 May 2010 00:46:18 +1000

So in a period of just a few weeks facebook has gone from being one of the greatest, best, most popular social networking websites to one of the more infamous..

See, Mark Zuckerberg is NOT a good CEO. He is a great visionary, perhaps an even better developer, but when it comes to guiding staff and providing products to consumers, he makes excruciatingly poor decisions.

No one knows what’s going to happen next, but we are starting to see some fairly influential figures leaving the popular site in search of open alternatives.

The (potential) loss of Zynga is also significant for Facebook. Social gaming is huge, and Zynga building their own platform for Farmville, Texas Hold’em and Mafia Wars could create huge drops in numbers for FB.

Time will tell, and all we can do at this stage is wait.. However, in the mean time, check your privacy settings.. Seems they have a way of ‘undoing’ themselves..

Marketing Google Chrome Google released a brand new lightening...

Thu, 06 May 2010 18:48:00 +1000

Marketing Google Chrome

Google released a brand new lightening (no pun intended) campaign this week outlining just how fast the Chrome browser is.

The actual accuracy of the speed tests in the video seems a little flawed and if the pages were not stored locally the outcome would be very different. However it is particularly nice to see a video promoting a browser which isn’t dominated by ‘company wars’ or a ‘critical security threat’.

Its nice to see a company the size of Google (one of the biggest players in history) playing nice and developing an extremely innovate and unique new campaign which beats out everything we’ve seen in the past. Whilst this isn’t quite enough to persuade me to drift away from Firefox (for the Mac), I love what Google are doing here and can only hope and pray that Microsoft follow the innovation of Google and think a little outside the square (or window) themselves. They can only get it wrong so many times… Can’t they?

The Facebook Mission – A Social Experiment

Wed, 28 Apr 2010 17:39:00 +1000

Time and time again articles are published whereby the results of social media integration prove significant gains for companies who implement a new online strategy WELL. Time and time again, companies still manage to ‘do it wrong’.

I find that I am continually telling people/consultants/companies that there are better ways of ‘doing it’ ie: marketing, ie: spreading the word, ie: using social media. I decided that its time that I was able to prove it. Prove it in a way that shows how a ‘situation’ starts and how the viral nature of social media takes action.

So here it is, my own personal little game, my own personal little challenge, perhaps the most daring and ‘out there’ thing I’ve ever done.

See, I don’t have a great deal of facebook friends, 287 at the time of writing. This group consist of roughly 30% work friends, 40% school friends and 30% university/friends from other places. I wanted to be able to prove that you don’t need to have a big following to be able to ‘put yourself out there’, to ‘reach the masses’ and to ‘make an impact’.

So my friends set up a challenge. The challenge is that “If 1000 people join this group, Matt Kelly will eat…”. The description contains; “4 cheeseburgers, 4 medium fries, 4 medium cokes and 2 large chocolate sundaes in a period of 40 minutes.”

Is this a challenge that I can complete if we achieved 1000 followers? Of course it is, in fact it isn’t quite as extreme as first anticipated. Sure, I’m positive I won’t be feeling too well after the event, however the potential gain in being able to illustrate how social media works justifies the ‘physical and emotional’ strain of the challenge.

See, there was a reason as to why I needed the title and description to be so ridiculous. It had to be compelling. As an individual, I don’t have a product or service I’m trying to sell. I simply wanted to prove the fact that with compelling content, through the right avenues, the ‘followers’ will come, and they will share the content they deem worth sharing.

So what was the result…?

Well after one day, there was already an interesting skew of results. It turns out that only 46% of the group members were existing friends of mine. What is more interesting however is that 54% of group members, I had never heard of.

The results skewed even further from there showing an even more significant sway to ‘randoms’ rather than people I knew.

By day 14, the results were clearly skewed to the point where the reason for the challenge has been proven.

The interesting thing here is that as time went on, the results continued to skew. This is because as people joined, their personal networks became further removed from mine. This proves that if you have something compelling to share, unlike TV or ‘old media’, it can be recycled and redistributed by others. In other words, you create the viral effect with quality content and without the need for a big budget or a team of people.

I’ve outlined a visual example of exactly how this works on Facebook. See, the average Facebook user has approximately 130 friends (according to Facebook statistics). If one user shares a message which is compelling to their 130 friends, there is a chance that at least 3 of these will pick up the message and re-share it, and so on. After 3 trenches of communication, 13 people have shared the message, but approximately 1690 people have seen your message. If this sequence follows two more times, you have had 120 people share your message and 15600 have seen it! Beyond this point, the story only continues to magnify.

Or in more visual terms..

The best part about social media marketing is that there is no limit to the number of times something can be shared, which is why we see ‘viral’ YouTube videos with in excess of 20 million views. Companies currently spend millions of dollars per year on television commercial budgets and publication of articles however this content rarely lasts longer then a number of days at best. In a television commercial’s case, it is literally lucky to last beyond 35 seconds.

If your organisation has an opportunity to identify your target market online, viral marketing is increasingly becoming a necessity. If you would like to contact me, feel free at any time using the email link to the right of this column.

For more information about the challenge or to join the group, click here.

UPDATE - 10th July, 2010.

The challenge finished several weeks ago and the video has finally made it to youtube.

Check it out.

The Apple iPad.. An Updated Thought Process

Fri, 16 Apr 2010 23:03:00 +1000

I was quick to jump on the iPad bandwagon when it was first announced and have been pleasently surprised as the hype of the release has begun to slow down.

Given I don’t have access to one personally, I am unable to provide my thoughts on the actual product, but the marketing and PR around the device has been pretty amazing.

Apple stood by their guns and released the product they planned. Whilst there has been MANY questions as to how relevant the product is by various parties, it has sold many more units than analysts expected just two weeks in.

Apple have proven once again that they are able to innovate beyond the belief of consumers at each opportunity. My prediction is that the iPad will eventually join the consumer device hall of fame in the next few years, with potentially tens of millions of units sold as consumers begin to understand their own use case.

leo: OK Go - This Too Shall Pass Amazing Rube Goldberg video...

Fri, 16 Apr 2010 22:57:13 +1000

leo:

OK Go - This Too Shall Pass Amazing Rube Goldberg video (via OkGo)

If you like this, go to the itunes store, and under podcasts, search ‘twit specials’. Leo Laporte interviews the designers of this INCREDIBLE machine..

Viral Marketing at its Finest! Martin Sargent posted a video on...

Sun, 14 Mar 2010 20:57:00 +1000

Viral Marketing at its Finest!

Martin Sargent posted a video on his Twitter last week, which is truly one of the most amazing methods of viral video marketing I’ve witnessed online in a long time.

Anyone with experience in online video production and promotion, has witnessed various shameless attempt by many at creating the next iconic viral video by doing something ‘different’. I think the element of this advertisement which makes it so appealing is the fact that you literally sit back and wonder how this was even possible. How did the advertising agency make the Vimeo page completely disappear to have the cartoon salsa dancer take over your screen? Or even more so, how is it that the agency made the actual product (salsa) so appealing?

Keeping consumers compelled is key when it comes to online marketing. If you are able to keep consumers interested in your brands development, the ability to reach a significant target market is greatly enhanced.

The actual advertisement is embedded above, however you MUST view the full page version here: http://vimeo.com/9194146. The way the video absorbs the complete Vimeo page is quite amazing, so click that link!

The Day Console Gaming went ONLINE!

Thu, 18 Feb 2010 09:42:58 +1000

I picked up a copy of FIFA 10 for Xbox 360 to check out the online content/play ability, and have been pleasantly surprised.

EA Games have really pulled together to develop a game which allows true online, social gaming.

Log in to LIVE on a Wednesday and all of your game specs are updated based on the latest round of games from the weekend prior.

All EA need to do now is establish multi-cross platform gaming to enhance that ‘social experience’ and they will own the market. Not that they don’t already.

Graphic Quality – 9/10

Game Selection – 8/10

LIVE Experience – 9.5/10

Overall – 8.8/10

"You know how I know the recession is over..? I just saw a new porche drive past with an oily..."

Wed, 10 Feb 2010 08:03:06 +1000

“You know how I know the recession is over..? I just saw a new porche drive past with an oily high-vis shirt on the back window..”

- Me