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Posts Tagged ‘project’

Pepsi Refresh Project: Social Media Marketing Success or Public Relations Mess? Jazzou (blog) Is the Pepsi Refresh Project a text book Social Media marketing success or is it becoming a public relations mess? Maybe the answer lies somewhere in … and more

mediabistro.com (blog) Social Media Overload in Marketing Your Business or Project Black Web 2.0 The new social media networking frontier has revolutionized marketing and advertising. As a result, even if you're a novice at “getting … How to Get a Job in Social Media : R/GA mediabistro.com (blog) Social media 'is in it for the long-haul' Equimedia Marketing News Social Media Is Here To Stay Fresh Business Thinking all 4 news articles

There are certain things that anyone can hear and automatically say “I don’t think that’ll work very well” without doing any real research. You hear something and you have a visceral reaction that just makes you go with your gut because it makes sense. Even in those kind of no-brainer situations it helps when your “gut” is validated by a reputable source who actually did a little research. The latest case of this occurrence comes from the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism. As reported over at ars technica the prestigious group has done the research to help us all say that our collective gut is right on the money when it comes to paywalls for news: the idea pretty well sucks. Advertising remains the primary means of support for online news outlets, and there’s a long uphill battle facing anyone trying to forge new business models, at least according to a report produced by the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism. The extensive report on the State of the Media examines numerous aspects of the media world, but emphasizes that, when it comes to online news, getting people to pay for content they otherwise value is “like trying to force butterflies back into their cocoons.” Ouch. Last I heard, butterflies never go back into their cocoons. Boy it would be just like some mean old news guy like Rupert Murdoch to force a butterfly to do something so unnatural. Some of the numbers that support this claim are that 81 percent of Internet users say they are fine with online ads of it keeps the content free. A surprising number of people click on these ads as well with 21 percent saying they do and the numbers going up to 39 percent when the level of someone’s Internet usage is high. On the downside, however, is the admission by these folks that they actually like ads because they “find them easy to ignore”. Ouch again. The combined effect of lower ad impact and revenue has led many news sites to look for new ways to make some money, but the Pew report is not very optimistic on the prospects for other business models. Only seven percent of Americans said they would consider paying for news content and most said they would simply look for content elsewhere if their favorite site put up a pay wall. The likelihood of hybrid offerings is increasing because the first company of any relevance that fails while trying a paywall only approach rather than the traditional free approach will get beat up pretty bad. Although the pressure for revenue is severe the downside of actually acting on all this paywall talk could be keeping folks away from it. With only 7% of Americans saying that they would pay for content is seems hard to believe that there is any room for this model moving forward. What’s your take? Please be sure to comment in our new “pay per comment” section. You’d pay for that opportunity wouldn’t you?

Excerpt from:
Pew Study Affirms Paywalls a Bad Move

Facebook is going to be joining the frenzy to help everyone not only know what people are thinking but also where they are thinking it. As we move more toward a world of this total view of another’s life you can be sure that Facebook wants to be involved. With the rising popularity of Foursquare, Gowalla and other location based “services” it makes sense that Facebook be here. In the bigger picture, however, this is likely to be more about taking on Google for local advertising dollars. After all, money has to be made correct? The New York Times Bits section reports Starting next month, the more than 400 million Facebook users could begin seeing a new kind of status update flow through their news feed: the current locations of their friends. Facebook plans to take the wraps off a new location-based feature in late April at f8, the company’s yearly developer conference, according to several people briefed on the project, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss unannounced services. In preparation for the introduction, Facebook updated its privacy policy last November. The new policy states: “When you share your location with others or add a location to something you post, we treat that like any other content you post.” On reports like this where there is the “unauthorized” source that is talking about unannounced services I always have the picture of a clandestine meeting under a gas lamp picture. Two shadowy figures exchange a note and keep walking on a lonely street in the fog kinda thing. Then I wonder who these “sources” are, if they are really unauthorized or are they part of the new age of PR which is more about leaking information than announcing it. Officially Facebook is staying mum. Meredith Chin, a Facebook spokeswoman, said Tuesday that the company wasn’t ready to discuss any possible location-based features. “We’re constantly experimenting with new things around here, but we don’t have any details to share right now,” she said in an e-mail message. It appears as if Facebook will remain friendly to the developer community on this one as well according to these “sources”. With estimates that 100 million users access Facebook daily via a mobile device (which represents 1 in 4 total Facebook users) this service is primed for quick adoption for those who like this kind of thing. As a result there is money to be made and allowing a business as usual attitude with the Facebook development community only makes sense. Of course there will be plenty of concern about security and privacy because Facebook has turned itself into the poster child for how not to do new things and thus open the door to criticism. Maybe this information “leak” is designed to let the air out of any arguments that this new offering will face. I admit, my inner ‘conspiracy theorist’ is strong today. So what do you think about this new, soon to be (we think), offering by Facebook? Of course, the details are sketchy but you must have an opinion on the general idea, right? Chime in. We’re listening but we’re not telling you from where .

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Facebook Readying To Allow Users To Say Where Their Face Is

We all know that news is changing. How we get news, where we get news, how we react to news, what we do with news when we get it and on and on. It’s one of those factors that are known to all but hard to quantify as to the true impact of our news habit both for now and into the future. The Pew Internet and American Life Project has published a report that takes a look at this rapidly changing area of our lives and the impact it has. As we always do here at Marketing Pilgrim we always want to see the marketing side of issues and this particular paradigm shift is making marketers move like never before. So what is it about Americans and the news? Pew sums up the gist of this subject with In the digital era, news has become omnipresent. Americans access it in multiple formats on multiple platforms on myriad devices. The days of loyalty to a particular news organization on a particular piece of technology in a particular form are gone. The overwhelming majority of Americans (92%) use multiple platforms to get news on a typical day, including national TV, local TV, the internet, local newspapers, radio, and national newspapers. Some 46% of Americans say they get news from four to six media platforms on a typical day. Just 7% get their news from a single media platform on a typical day. We know the plight of newspapers but this phenomenon is much bigger than that. While everyone in the online space cries victory over traditional media the fight ahead for the online news gatherer, participator and disseminator will be intense and difficult. Becoming one of the several sources used by someone online will not be easy and not all will survive by just “being there”. Here are a few pieces of data to consider about news: Portable : 33% of cell phone owners now access news on their cell phones. Personalized : 28% of internet users have customized their home page to include news from sources and on topics that particularly interest them. Participatory : 37% of internet users have contributed to the creation of news, commented about it, or disseminated it via postings on social media sites like Facebook or Twitter. What kind of news would people like to see more of online? 44% said scientific news and discoveries 41% said religion and spirituality 39% said health and medicine 39% said their state government 38% said their neighborhood or local community. News now is a social thing as well. We get first hand reports from disasters when possible and these bits of information are spread rapidly through the Internet. The truth is most peple want something to talk about Getting news is often an important social act. Some 72% of American news consumers say they follow the news because they enjoy talking with others about what is happening in the world and 69% say keeping up with the news is a social or civic obligation. And 50% of American news consumers say they rely to some degree on people around them to tell them the news they need to know. Online, the social experience is widespread: 75% of online news consumers say they get news forwarded through email or posts on social networking sites and 52% say they share links to news with others via those means. 51% of social networking site (e.g. Facebook) users who are also online news consumers say that on a typical day they get news items from people they follow. Another 23% of this cohort follow news organizations or individual journalists on social networking sites. So as marketers how so you corral this dissemination of the news? How do you make sure your message is getting in front of the right people at the right time? Will there come a time where there may be too much choice? For marketers that may be true because this moving target of where people get their information is not going to be easy to track or contain. We as marketers welcome greater segmentation in theory but when it comes to actually seeing which segments are where in an ever expanding group of content deliverers one has to wonder if marketers should have been careful what they were asking for. Join the Marketing Pilgrim Facebook Community

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News in the Age of Participation