Archives for 2010

Ucubd Offers Cool Mashup Options for Bloggers

I love hearing about cool new start-ups, and Ucubd might be one of my favourites, at least as much as fun factor goes.

Standing for “you cubed”, Ucubd is (in their own words) “a mashup platform that allows bloggers and other web publishers to combine popular social media content from YouTube, Twitter, Amazon and others and embed these mashups on their sites or link to them on our site.”

So, basically, Ucubd creates a fun info box based on the information you give it.

How It Works

Ucubd is based around embed codes (like those found on YouTube and Hulu), which you would normally use to embed your favourite video on your blog, website or anywhere that accepts HTML code.

The platform then looks at the video and produces relevant content to it. This could be tweets based around a keyword, or products on Amazon using the same formula.

Ucubd then places a box next to the video with that information. So, for example, you get the latest trailer for The Expendables movie, and you’ll have tweets about all the buzz surrounding this cool-looking guy flick.

Or, you get a video about the World Cup winners history, and you see products like books, tee shirts, footballs and more on sale at Amazon.

There are also templates for Hulu and Flickr, and the option to use Flash and Silverlight in your mash-ups (depending on the template used).

Once you create your mash-up, you can then customize the theme to suit your blog or site; get embed codes or links for blogs, websites or forums; and share via your social networks.

Ucubd and the Semantic Web

One of the cool features about Ucubd is its tie-in to the semantic web.

By tying relevant products and platforms together, Ucubd is part of the growing number of technologies that doesn’t just want to rely on simple keyword searches, but how these keywords are being used by communities and socially connected profiles.

So, in essence, you could make a mash-up, and if you’re logged in via the upcoming Facebook Connect option, similar mash-ups by your friends might pop up on your radar.

You could then feasibly find partners to work with on a collaborated project; or find like-minded people that you could exchange ideas with; or simply find new mash-ups and use them to expand your own.

The technology isn’t perfect. When I tried to make some mash-ups, Ucubd simply used the first word of the YouTube video I selected, and as you can imagine, the results were pretty funky! But, you can define what keywords are used, so this isn’t too much of an issue.

Additionally, the website embed code seems to open up your mash-up on the Ucubd website – it’d be much better to keep on your own site, for obvious reasons (the HTML-only code is ideal for blog sidebars).

The templates are also a little limited at the minute, being restricted to tweets and Amazon products that tie-in with your embed code.

However, these are minor quibbles on a new platform. The idea behind it is fun and solid, and as much as you could make countless fun mash-ups, there could also be a great business use for something like Ucubd (think presentations or after-show events).

Here’s a mash-up of my TEDx talk. What do you think – something that bloggers could find useful?

How to Use Blog Lists for Your Social Media Strategy

My recent post 52 Cool Facts About Social Media seems to have been a bit popular.

Hopefully it helped show some of the reasons why social media is a platform that all businesses should take seriously, and at the very least investigate whether they should be active or not.

One of the things I saw as a result of the post were a few emails that said, “Great stats, but how would you use information like that for your business?”

Now, it’d be tempting to say, “Easy – hire my company!” but instead here are a few ways on how you could use a stat from each platform.

Facebook

– Stat: The average Facebook user is connected to 60 Pages, Groups and Events.

– Strategy: It’s clear that Facebook Pages or Groups offer a great opportunity for your business, either by having one or targeting those where you could both benefit. So build a Page and then offer a clear call-to-action on why folks should connect with your page.

Or use Facebook Search to find Groups or Events that your business can help, and get to know the folks involved. Can you sponsor an event and give special offers to attendees? Can you offer your expertise to groups that have questions about your industry, and then offer free or discounted samples/reports/service to Group members?

Think of what you can offer to receive.

Twitter

– Stat: Over 60% of Twitter use is outside of the U.S.

– Strategy: Where are your customers from? Have you carried out an audit recently to see where your main market is today? If it’s outside the U.S., how are you using Twitter to be more specific to that audience?

thank you note for every language

Consider hiring a multi-lingual team to connect in the native language of your audience on Twitter. Look at cultural holidays in these countries and see if you can offer a promotion that ties in with it. Have dedicated landing pages on your website for your different audience, and tweet direct links to it in the language needed. Once there, have a call-to-action purely for that nationality.

– Stat: Recruiters account for 1-in-20 LinkedIn profiles.

– Strategy: How does your business recruit? Does HR use an outside agency or is it via newspaper ads? What’s the cost involved here? Think of how much you’re spending on recruitment and then check on the recruiters that are on LinkedIn.

Taking away heavy ad costs or agency costs when you can utilize a recruiter connection (paid, of course) could save you tons in the long run.

They’re also better-suited to your recruitment needs as they’re monitoring folks themselves on LinkedIn, saving you potential employee searches. And the savings made can be re-invested in other parts of your business.

YouTube

– Stat: Over half of YouTube’s users are under 20 years old.

– Strategy: When you consider that could equate to around 1 billion Gen Y views per day, that’s a shitload of potential eyeballs. So why not utilize them? If your business is for Gen Y’s and you’ve got a product to launch, what better way than actually being able to see it and get the lowdown from trusted sources?

Use a social search platform to find who the key Gen Y users are on YouTube and then approach them to see if they’d be interested in taking part. Note the “taking part” description – don’t try and force them to be who they’re not. Keep it honest and real.

Offer a vanity URL that viewers of a particular YouTube channel can click through on to buy the product at a special launch rate. You could then give that YouTube channel owner an extra thank you “reward”, as well as make them part of your trusted promotional team for future launches.

Blogging

– Stat: More than half of all bloggers are married and/or parents.

– Strategy: Ever carried out a blogger outreach program? If not, you might want to start considering it. If you take the stats that there are more than 133 million blogs out there, then it’s more than likely your audience is reading some of them.

If you don’t have a blog yourself (and if not, why not?) then use the existing bloggers in your industry. If you provide diapers, search for the parent bloggers and offer free samples to try and give their readers too. Same goes with kiddie toys or books.

Or if you’re in the wedding industry, offer tickets to an upcoming wedding show in a blogger’s city and have the “winners” as guests of honour. All the blogger has to do is write about the experience – you use it to improve for the next show.

There are a ton of things you can do with statistics and information like the 52 cool social media stats list I put together. All you have to do is think how they affect your business.

How about you? How are you using statistics for your social media strategies, and what successes are you seeing?

photo credit: Eric Fischer
photo credit: woodleywonderworks

Poster Child

Businesses spend small fortunes on making their brands presentable.?

They polish their message; media train the CEO; and give their website a shiny new look and feel.

Everything’s very nice; very safe; very presentable. Ready to be the poster child for Industry X.

And then they open their mouths.

Polishing is great; training is great; shiny is great. But culture is where the real beauty lies.

How beautiful is yours?

52 Cool Facts About Social Media

As social media continues to gain acceptance as a bona-fide communications platform, I thought it might be fun to have a cool fact about it for every week of the year.

So, here are ten facts about the five most well-known social media outlets – Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube and blogging – with two more bonus facts thrown in just for fun. (And to get to the figure of a fact a week for a year).

Enjoy!

Facebook

1. The average Facebook user has 130 friends.
2. More than 25 billion pieces of content (web links, news stories, blog posts, notes, photo albums, etc.) is shared each month.
3. Over 300,000 users helped translate the site through the translations application.
4. More than 150 million people engage with Facebook on external websites every month.
5. Two-thirds of comScore?s U.S. Top 100 websites and half of comScore?s Global Top 100 websites have integrated with Facebook.
6. There are more than 100 million active users currently accessing Facebook through their mobile devices.
7. People that access Facebook via mobile are twice as active than non-mobile users (think about that when designing your Facebook page).
8. The average Facebook user is connected to 60 pages, groups and events.
9. People spend over 500 billion minutes per month on Facebook.
10. There are more than 1 million entrepreneurs and developers from 180 countries on Facebook.

Statistics from Facebook press office.

Twitter

11. Twitter’s web platform only accounts for a quarter of its users – 75% use third-party apps.
12. Twitter gets more than 300,000 new users every day.
13. There are currently 110 million users of Twitter’s services.
14. Twitter receives 180 million unique visits each month.
15. There are more than 600 million searches on Twitter every day.
16. Twitter started as a simple SMS-text service.
17. Over 60% of Twitter use is outside the U.S.
18. There are more than 50,000 third-party apps for Twitter.
19. Twitter has donated access to all of its tweets to the Library of Congress for research and preservation.
20. More than a third of users access Twitter via their mobile phone.

Statistics from Twitter and the Chirp Conference.

21. LinkedIn is the oldest of the four sites in this post, having been created on May 5 2003.
22. There are more than 70 million users worldwide.
23. Members of LinkedIn come from more than 200 countries from every continent.
24. LinkedIn is available in six native languages – English, French, German, Italian, Portuguese and Spanish.
25. Oracle’s Chief Financial Officer, Jeff Epstein, was headhunted for the position via his LinkedIn profile.
26. 80% of companies use LinkedIn as a recruitment tool.
27. A new member joins LinkedIn every second.
28. LinkedIn receives almost 12 million unique visitors per day.
29. Executives from all Fortune 500 companies are on LinkedIn.
30. Recruiters account for 1-in-20 LinkedIn profiles.

Statistics from LinkedIn press centre and SysComm International.

YouTube

31. The very first video uploaded was called “Me at the Zoo”, on 23rd April 2005.
32. By June 2006, more than 65,000 videos were being uploaded every day.
33. YouTube receives more than 2 billion viewers per day.
34. Every minute, 24 hours of video is uploaded to YouTube.
35. The U.S. accounts for 70% of YouTube users.
36. Over half of YouTube’s users are under 20 years old.
37. You would need to live for around 1,000 years to watch all the videos currently on YouTube.
38. YouTube is available in 19 countries and 12 languages.
39. Music videos account for 20% of uploads.
40. YouTube uses the same amount of bandwidth as the entire Internet used in 2000.

Statistics from YouTube press centre.

Blogging

41. 77% of Internet users read blogs.
42. There are currently 133 million blogs listed on leading blog directory Technorati.
43. 60% of bloggers are between the ages 18-44.
44. One in five bloggers update their blogs daily.
45. Two thirds of bloggers are male.
46. Corporate blogging accounts for 14% of blogs.
47. 15% of bloggers spend 10 hours a week blogging.
48. More than half of all bloggers are married and/or parents.
49. More than 50% of bloggers have more than one blog.
50. Bloggers use an average of five different social sites to drive traffic to their blog.

Statistics from Technorati’s State of the Blogosphere 2009.

Bonus Facts

51. 90% of Internet users know at least one social network.
52. The average social user has 195 friends.

Statistics from Online Media Gazette.

So there you have it – a fact for every week of the year, just in case you need it for your next presentation or tweet-up, and want to let folks know why social media isn’t so dorky after all. And as an added bonus, here are some ways you can use these stats for your business’s strategy.

Cheers!