Social Cache.
A Nemo blog. Dealing with uncommon cents.

GROUP Y PARTNERS WITH NEMO ON ACTION SPORTS ONLINE MARKETING AND THE SOCIAL WEB EVENT
“Who Killed Social Media?”—A Panel Discussion On Social Media Vs. The Social Web

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: Carlsbad, CA. – May 19th, 2009 – Portland, Oregon-based integrated marketing agency Nemo today announced their partnership with group Y of Carlsbad, California, to host a panel discussion in Portland on the evening of June 4th, 2009. The discussion will focus on incorporating and effectively implementing social web strategies in the marketing mix.

The June 4th panel marks the first nationally-produced event for group Y. Co-Founder and CEO at group Y, Elizabeth Randall commented, “We are very much looking forward to holding our first national group Y event at Nemo HQ. They are a perfect partner for group Y—not only as a result of our long-standing relationship with them, but because they truly understand the action sports and youth markets, and are constantly pushing the boundaries of creative marketing and online strategies. Nemo’s headquarters will be the ideal gathering place to tackle the ins and outs of social media as well as do some group Y style-socializing.”

Nemo’s Founder and GM, Trevor Graves added, “We’re excited to have the action sports industry at Nemo to learn about the Social Web. Our friends at group Y have helped set up an expert panel to explain what all the fuss is about. Using the Social Web to communicate one-on-one with our customers can help achieve the holy grail of brand loyalty.”

Included on the panel are Tony Welch, Web, Community and Social Media strategist from Hewlett Packard; action sports industry veteran Lee Crane, James Todd of Twine, Lead Information Architect at K2 Sports and creator of Ridertech, Matt Savarino, and Nemo’s own Dave Allen, founder of the music site Pampelmoose.com, Director of Insights and Digital Media and Community Director at Nemo and founding member of the band Gang of Four. The moderator Marshall Kirkpatrick, Vice President of Content Development, and lead writer for ReadWriteWeb, will navigate the panelists through the world of the Social Web as it is today, and where it will lead in the near future.

To register for the event, please click here.

About group Y
group Y is the original collective of professionals focused on Action Sports, Youth Marketing and Entertainment. Based in Southern California with a growing national reach, group Y boasts an active membership of the best and brightest these industries have to offer. Sharing insights from key decision makers at key brands, past speakers have included experts from companies such as Quiksilver, Burton, Oakley, MySpace, and ESPN. Through our events, outreach and on-line presence, group Y takes the work out of strategic networking and strengthens our entire industry in the process. Please visit us at www.groupYnetwork.com

About Nemo
Nemo means Nobody. Highly collaborative, integrated marketing that is media agnostic. The biggest ideas, the best context, and the deepest impact are all we’re concerned about as we build visionary brands. We use (or invent) whatever media and tools will resonate within a culture. “Does it change the game?” is our collective mission as we evolve interactive design, social networks, PR, environmental design, print design, photography, entertainment and original content.
For more information on Nemo click here.

For more information please contact:
Becky Singh
Communications
503-734-5094
becky@nemohq.com

Q. How do we reach these young people? A. You don’t, you wait for them to invite you

The social media folks and their blogs have been buzzing lately over a story that seems to have come from Deloitte but perhaps was more widely circulated by the WSJ. Josh Catone at Sitepoint drilled down further into the story from where it got picked up by Marshall Kirkpatrick on ReadWriteWeb.

Both Josh and Marshall have great points and their posts are a good read. Marshall’s post had the most provocative headline – Corporate Social Networks Are A Waste of Money, Study Finds. I thought I’d pick up the story there – A Waste of Money. Companies have a bad habit of throwing money at everything that moves, especially if it looks like “something we should be doing.”

Here are my thoughts distilled from my own writings on the subject and insights borrowed from Josh and Marshall’s posts:

Here’s an extract from my essay ‘On Social Media, Blogs and Advertising.’ – To understand and embrace social networking is to place the idea that says “technology makes this possible” to one side and embrace the idea of the basic human need to stay in touch with other like-minded people at all times. As Clay Shirky says “The desire to be part of a group that shares, cooperates, or acts in concert is a basic human instinct.” Read the rest of this post here.

With that thought what follows is:

Businesses can not “build a community” however much money they throw at the idea. They merely need to look outside of their own walls, find the influencers who are already championing their products and join the communities that already exist.

Businesses can not attract “visitors” as measured in traffic to their sites. People who enjoy their products will be talking about them elsewhere in other communities. See above.

Businesses have to realize that having a Facebook page for their products makes them look ridiculous and could actually harm the brand. See my post about Spraychel and “her” Facebook page brought to us by the folks behind I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter®

It is the way of businesses to make predictions about their market. They should not invest in software that makes predictions, or even social-networking technology, unless they have discovered a clear market need.

Positive word of mouth marketing by online communities that enjoy a businesses’ product is a far better metric than the ratio of visits to the corporate web site or its community.

Online communities led by influencers that champion a businesses’ products are doing just that, championing the products not the corporation that brought them to market.

So what should businesses do? Here’s a list that I have reworked to address businesses as it was originally written with rock bands in mind.

They should:
01. Run a blog to which actual company members post regular updates.
02. Ensure that the blogosphere is alerted to any new and breaking news or important posts.
03. Offer early access to special offers and discounts for their customers loyalty.
04. Give away free samples of their product.
05. Be active in their customers online communities.
06. Never push unwanted messages to their customers.
07. Ask their customers to interact directly with their product, for example through competitions and giveaways.
08. Allow the sharing of their products amongst a community.
09. Work closely with influencers.
10. Embrace radical transparency. Openly discuss their problems with their customers and allow negative comments to remain on their blogs.

That’s the top ten; number 11 in my list would include – have dedicated staff working on your company’s online communication 24/7.

Read more of our thoughts on Social Media here.

Once the mainstream media and the more hysterical tech blogs have got over the fact that the success of the iPhone 3G launch caused Apple’s servers to be overloaded, we can sit back and take stock.

I own the iPhone v.1 and I’m currently happy without 3G access so I remain content with my device. One reason for staying put with the original model is that the new software update from Apple brings some rather cool new applications [or Apps in the vernacular,] that improve the original phone’s productivity.

I chose a couple of productivity apps, Zenbe, a list sharing tool and Jott, a voice to text tool. I got AirMe for uploading my iPhone pictures up to my Flickr account and added MPG and Spend [no link available, tsk, tsk] so if I care I can track my miles per gallon in the Element and set budgets for my gourmand extravaganzas. These apps all perform well without G3 and most were free. One app that fell into the epic fail bucket was Reqall. Couldn’t sign up on the iPhone and couldn’t load the web site either. Fail! Turns out that Jott does the same stuff anyway.

The most interesting app of all is Loopt which enables users to broadcast their whereabouts and send a status of a broad set of services and find interesting locations and reviews nearby. This could be the next breakout social networking platform as it works best from the phone [mobiles, not just the iPhone] and is simple to update ala Twitter. In fact it has a Twitter plug-in so you can post once and hit Twitter too. Follow me on Twitter here.

One problem though – Loopt could be a predators dream. In fact Loopt’s Be Safe page spells out in no uncertain terms that you need to control who has access to your location.

Anyway, here’s my thinking behind the title of this post. David Griner wrote a post entitled Are Blogs Still Good Places for Conversation? which at first glance I took as simply a Google bait tactic. The answer would seem to be “of course they are.” He raises a good point but I still believe a good, well written blog is the place for conversation. Twitter, a micro-blog, is not. I use my Twitter account to drive traffic back to my blog where the conversation can really open up. After all Twitter only allows 140 characters so truncated updates are the norm, which is fine. If I follow Marshall Kirkpatrick on Twitter I get up-to-the-minute breaking tech news from him but I prefer to read his blog at Read Write Web for a more in-depth review. On both my blogs, the other being Pampelmoose, I enjoy reading comments that can often be longer than the original post – something that is impossible with Twitter.

Joining the conversation and being invited in are two things I have stressed when it comes to advising our clients on their forays into social media advertising. A blog is the right venue for extending conversations, not a micro-blog. By all means post links to your original content stories to Twitter so that interested followers can link to your blog. Be sure to use FriendFeed to share your blog posts with others, use Tumblr too for the same reason, but understand that many of the social networking arenas, Twitter, Loopt even Facebook, are way ahead of the general online populations’ capacity to juggle all of them, and those folks not partaking in every widget, bell and whistle are your customers too.

Run a blog, embrace radical transparency, get invited in to communities that might enjoy your products and join the conversation. But whatever you decide to do, don’t do this – OHSU Director’s Blog. If you don’t immediately see why feel free to ask me.