Friday Roundup – Influence Influence Influence

What's influence? How is it achieved? Who's got it?

Regular readers of my posts will know that I have a penchant for labelling all the combined disciplines of marketing and PR as simply "Influence". (Hey, the word even appears in the name of my consultancy.) And the combination or convergence of these skills under one unifying term helps erode the noun orientation of our profession and assists in constructing a verb oriented approach. What are we really trying to do?

I've been pulling my thoughts together for a presentation about influence for this coming week's Monitoring Social Media Bootcamp in London (about half a dozen tickets remaining I believe), and I'll be posting my presentation to my blog on the day. But perhaps I can leave you with something to think about until then, particularly as I'm hoping that this will spark violent disagreement all the better for getting the matter resolved as soon as possible.

Here it is. Influence scoring services like Klout and Social Mention are utterly useless. At best such services are harmless fun, and at worst they are a costly and wasteful distraction from doing the right thing the right way for yourselves or your client.

Until Wednesday ;-)

Best regards, Philip and the MarCom Professional team.

Is your Twitter Home Page your biggest SEO asset?

by Andrew Smith of escherman

Do you know the Page Rank of your Twitter Home Page? You may be surprised to find it is a lot higher than you think it is – and you probably achieved it without even thinking about it. For example, the Page Rank for my blog home page is 5 – and that’s taken a little while to get to, not withstanding the blood, sweat and tears of creating and maintaining content. In the course of some client work recently, I happened to plug in some Twitter Home Pages to check Page Rank – given they were created relatively recently, I was surprised by how high the Page Rank values were. More...

Why are we so quick to criticise? (Nestle Facebook page may be fake)

by Stephen Waddington of Speed Communications

The Twitter mob jumped on Nestle yesterday after it was allegedly heavy handed in a comment stream on a Facebook fan page. Week in week out the social media mob passes judgement on brands that cock-up online. The speaker circuit is littered with case studies of #failed companies such as Eurostar, Paperchase, Habitat and Vodafone.

Here’s the issue: the instantaneous nature of communication in a network means that we no longer stop and think and everyone has an audience. Speculation is shared and the mob quickly turns it into fact. More...

Twitter Turns Four - How's It Been For You?

by Trevor Young PR Warrior of Parkyoung

On the eve of Twitter's fourth birthday, I thought it apt to reflect a little on the micro-blogging platform and how it's affected me personally, the PR/media/marketing industry specifically, as well as broader populace generally.

In true Twitter form, I've kept my snippets to 140 characters. A hard call, I know, but my sweat is your gain! (Inspired by @AdamVincenzini)

But firstly, how's Twitter been for you?

I would love to hear from you - in 140 character bursts if possible More...

Behaviorgraphics Humanize the Social Web

by Brian Solis of PR 2.0

In 2007 Charlene Li, then at Forrester Research, now running the Altimeter Group, along with Forrester ’s Josh Bernoff, Remy Fiorentino, and Sarah Glass released a report that introduced us to Social Technographics.  Forrester’s research segmented participation behavior on the social web into six categories, visualized through a ladder metaphor with the rungs at the high end of the ladder indicating a greater level of participation.

Social Technographics were designed to help businesses engage in social media with a more human approach, catering to individuals where, when, and how they are participating and contributing to the social Web. More...

Learn SEO with this Crash Course

by Katy Barrilleaux of Lead Maverick, Inc.

Title tags, canonicalization, ALT text, long-tail keywords.  Search engine optimization may seem confusing and overly technical for the average marketer. The fact is, it can be quite technical, requiring specific knowledge and training. However, there are also many aspects to SEO that are not difficult to understand, nor difficult to do.

There are numerous resources available to learn SEO techniques. One of the best ones I’ve seen is this video presentation by Lee Odden with Top Rank Online Marketing. More...

A case for rethinking product and brand

by Andrew Swenson of wordpost

image credit: jhritz

Rethinking Product and Brand

Product has historically been branded as a combination of physical properties, supporting service, and symbolic value: the Lexus has leather seats, is covered by a substantial warranty, and perhaps above all else, is a symbol of status.

The commerce that’s followed has been built on quid pro quo transaction—a product made up of attributes, service, and symbol in exchange for capital. But in social business structures, it’s my prediction that this type of mechanistic exchange will no longer be the primary goal of business operation, but instead one intersection of shared time and meaning. More...

The Role Of Social Engineering In Social Media

by Vanessa DiMauro of Leader Networks

What does Disney World and social media have in common?  The answer to the question is social engineering.  I recently gave a talk at LexisNexis about this topic and it was initially met with resistance... community and social media is all about collaboration and sharing, right?  Right.  But there are methods to achieving, designing, the experience for users to get what they need out of the engagement. Social engineering, though it sounds evil, can really serve your members well by providing them with the assistance to make the most out of their experience on your site.  More...

Calvin Klein Runs First Augmented Reality Underwear Campaign In GQ Magazine

by Michael Litman of Dare Digital

via seda.posterous.com  The print ads will run in the May issue in the UK, France, Germany, Spain and Italy, and in the April issue of the Condé Nast men’s title in the US, China, Korea, Australia, Mexico, Taiwan and India. Consumers with webcams can view the campaign on the brand’s dedicated microsite at xmarkyourspot.com, by holding up either the ad from the magazine, or a print-out of the AR code in front of their webcam. A 3D box then appears that allows visitors to select from four short films created for the augmented reality initiative. More...

Football mobile marketing comes of age

by Rebecca Caroe of Creative Agency Secrets

Image by coda via Flickr The Football World Cup will be the first big test of mass mobile marketing for brands. Going mobile is a hot topic of conversation within marketing circles. But it takes a big event for a lot of large brands to start using the medium and to inspire others to jump in and try it out.

Last month, a conference about mobile marketing for Football – including the World Cup – was hosted by Camerjam.

They have kindly published the keynote speaker, Tomi Ahonen’s speech and slide deck online as well as several other presentations. More...

Q&A: Culture Shock, How Social Media is Changing the Culture of Business

by Brian Solis of PR 2.0

Good friend JD Lasica asked me to share answers to some fantastic questions for a blog post he published in celebration of the new book, Engage. I poured so much of myself into the responses, that I felt it was worth sharing here with you as well.

#Engage

Your new book Engage may turn out to be the definitive work on how social media is transforming business. Looking at the big picture, how is it changing the balance of power between customers and companies?

I invested an incredible amount of passion and also vision into this book as I believe that the time is now to lead a media revolution based on insight, intelligence and experience. More...