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Sonic the Hedgehog and Adventures in Social Media

When I was thirteen I got into video games at my local arcade. Games like Centipede and Phoenix were amazing – different and fairly deep (yes, there were strategies, especially on Phoenix with the hidden 200,000 point bonus).

From there, I moved into home videogaming, particularly with the release of the Sega MegaDrive (the European version of the Genesis).

That started an obsession, as I wanted every new system that came out. And, thanks to a paper round and other part-time jobs, I was fortunate enough to get most – Super Nintendo; 3do; Neo-Geo; N64; Sega Saturn; Playstation and more were added to my collection as I turned a geeky obsession into a gaming reality.

Maybe it makes me a nerd (and it certainly shows my age!) but you know what? So be it.

I have no shame or regrets spending so much time collecting gold rings or rescuing princesses or enjoying so many other game cliches. And you know why? Because I firmly believe that video games were the original harbingers of what we view as social media.

Bold claims? False and rose-tinted spectacles at work? Maybe – maybe not. Think about it a little:

Video games encourage multiplayer. Getting like-minded people around the latest title and enjoying it together.
Video games also encourage you to use your mind and look for solutions to problems and share them with your friends that are stuck in the same section.
Videogames now have fantastic online communities where users meet up to share the latest news on their favourite product, set up challenges that make people better players and encourage others to offer their own take on these challenges.

Do any of these examples sound familiar?

Meeting like-minded people on Twitter and sharing/enjoying the experience? Check.
Have a problem that your social media friends can help with (and do)? Check.
Encouraging greatness through interaction and helping people improve? Check.

Today’s world is increasingly online, and video game consoles offer that in spades. Today’s social media world is about conversations and interaction – Xbox Live leads the way for this in the gaming world. Innovation and new approaches are the norm for social media – videogames that differ from the expected are often the most anticipated.

Perhaps just the fact that social media and videogames enjoy a small yet loyal following compared to the mainstream makes the two mediums such surprising bosom buddies?

Either way, the next time you sit down at a game, maybe you’ll compare it to what you’ve been doing in the social media space. After all, isn’t questioning and improving through action what social media is all about?

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The Best Way to Get Involved in Social Media

This is a guest post from social media consultant Jacob Morgan.

The best way to get involved in social media can be summed up in one word – act. Spending 6 months researching and planning your social media campaign is not the best thing to do. Now I?m not saying don?t have a plan – I?m saying have a plan that you can put together and act on quickly and effectively and make it actionable sooner rather than later.

It?s always a good idea to start listening and getting a feel for your landscape and surroundings, I consider this a part of acting as it involves engaging in the social media space. Every day you spend ?planning? is a day where you are potentially missing hundreds or thousands of conversations/relationships that you could be engaging in.

You have to remember that social media is very dynamic.

New tools emerge daily
Your competition isn?t going to sit still
Brand/company sentiments can change rapidly
You are going to miss out on the conversations that are going on now if you wait
Part of succeeding in social media is about trying new things, it won?t be ?perfect?
There is no formula for success

Your plan is most likely going to change once you actually engage in social media and begin interacting with your users and customers. In fact, your users and customers SHOULD dictate some of your plan; they will tell you what they want, how to build it, who they want to talk to, and what they expect (among other things).

The best thing to do is start small (even while you are still formulating and constructing your plan) because at least you can begin engaging in conversations and building relationships. For example, you may want to create a Twitter account for a customer service representative that can monitor conversations and engage in them. Maybe you want to create a customer facing blog that the company can use to provide some unique company or industry information.

While these conversations and relationships are building you can think of larger more strategic ways to engage with your users, i.e. building microsites, creating your own social network, promoting products/services via social media channels, etc.

Creating a plan is good – acting is better.

Jacob Morgan is a social media marketing consultant and runs a team of Technical SEO’s. Jacob has founded a start-up in the social media space and has worked with brands such as Adobe, Conde Nast, Sandisk and Salesforce. He is an avid and passionate blogger on all things social media and marketing related. He also loves meeting and building relationships with people so say hello and let him know if he can help you! You can connect with Jacob on:
Twitter
Facebook
LinkedIn

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How to Sell Twitter to a Client (Or Even Your Own Boss)

: Image via Wikipedia

It’s one of the current axioms doing the rounds online – “I love Twitter but how do I sell it to my client or boss?”.

You can see the benefits because you use it every day, but just how do you transfer that message to those who wonder where the benefit of 140-character conversations are found?

Perhaps that’s not the question to ask – instead, how about asking why you even have to justify it at all.

Think about it for just a moment – your client or your boss’s success has probably had a lot to do with business relationships built up over the years.

Additionally, being aware of the business market around their industry will also have played a large part in their success. And you can be pretty sure that both these reasons are continuously worked on and monitored to sustain that success.

Now think of why Twitter is so beneficial to you.

Are you building relationships with great contacts? Are you keeping abreast of the latest news in the industry because people are talking about it in their Twitter stream? Are you finding content and advice that helps you grow both personally and professionally because of the information you’re a part of through your Twitter contacts and the information from their contacts?

I’d hazard a guess that the answer to all of these questions is a fairly comprehensive “Yes.” So why should it be any different for your client, boss or anyone else you’re trying to extol the virtues of Twitter to?

The next time you want to get your client involved in Twitter, or your boss dismisses it as nothing more than a fad for people having banal conversations, ask them a couple of simple questions:

How do the majority of your customers find you?
How do they then communicate with you?

You’ll probably find that the majority of the answers to the first question are “Via Google” and the majority of the answers to the second question will be, “They’ll call us or email us an inquiry.”

In short, they’re looking for specific goods or services and want to open up a dialogue with the hope of fulfilling that need.

The next step is usually a customer service representative calling back, or perhaps even a member of the sales team calling to discuss the (potential) client’s needs. Then, with a bit of luck (and sometimes depending on the skills and motivation of the person calling them back), that potential client may turn into a physical one.

But that’s the NORMAL practice.

What if it wasn’t down to luck? What if it was down to the interaction and genuine interest you showed in conversing with that client? Instead of just seeing them as another dollar bill through the business doors, they actually felt important to your business? That’s what Twitter offers.

Finding a company on Google (or any other search engine) is no different from finding that same company using the search feature on Twitter. And the inward communication regarding their needs? Imagine if the (potential) client could open up a two-way dialogue that was instantaneous and could cover everything in one conversation?

Instead of the customer service representative putting the caller on hold to ask sales a question, or check marketing’s latest offer, that department could be instantly engaged in the conversation with a Twitter “@ message”. And with the functionality of Twitter, even getting hold of someone out of the office is easy enough with Twitter alerts by cellphone.

Of course, there might be an argument that this is too simple a suggestion – there would still be the problem of the caller in question not being on Twitter. If so, put yourself in their shoes for a moment.

If you were a potential customer of a company and you were faced with a customer service line that may be engaged or a Twitter stream that costs nothing and is always open, which would you prefer? I know which I’d go for.

Of course, this is for the future – the immediate need is to convince your client or boss of Twitter’s value. So just ask them what offers more value than knowing what your customer base is thinking. What offers more value than answering concerns or questions that their customer base may have?

And perhaps most importantly of all, what offers more value than being able to answer these questions before your competitors answer for you?

The answer(s) should be simple.

Paid Blogging and the Art of Transparency

kosmic blogging in samsara (redux) — Image by ~C4Chaos via Flickr

I couldn’t help but notice that there’s a little bit of a discussion going on at Twitter at the moment with regards paid blogging.

As with any discussion, there are two sides that are equally as vociferous when it comes to their views on the topic.

The reason a lot of the discussion started was due to leading social media blogger Chris Brogan writing a sponsored post for K-Mart.

The gist of the argument on Twitter is whether Chris has lost any “value” because he wrote a review that was paid for. K-Mart gave Chris a $500 gift voucher and asked him to figure out what was cool to buy with it at their store, and then write about it. Seems straightforward enough, particularly when Chris himself even mentioned on the blog itself that it was a sponsored post, although all the views were his own.

As I said, where it gets interesting on Twitter is that there have been a few people that feel let down by Chris, and have either stopped following him or made their feelings clear that they’re disappointed. So it got me thinking about paid blogging, and if it does actually lose the reviewer any authority or credence because they’re being paid for what they’re writing.

Honestly, I don’t see what the problem is.

I’m a blogger myself, and I write pretty regularly. But I don’t do it for the money (if I did I’d be bankrupt!) – I do it because I enjoy the conversations that can then take place afterward. I love to write and when someone joins in and adds to the conversation via the comments after each post, then that’s one of the most satisfying parts of blogging. After all, I’m just the conduit – many of the comments are even more interesting than the post itself. It’d be nice to get paid, but that’s not why I’m here.

So I can see why paid blogging could be so attractive. After all, you’re still doing the same thing you’re always doing – writing – with the only real difference being that you’re actually receiving some financial outlay for it. And with the economy like it is, isn’t the ability to make some more money for your family – or, in Chris’s case, buy some Christmas gifts – worth it?

As long as the blogger is upfront and transparent about the post being sponsored, then I don’t have an issue with paid blogging. The bloggers I read, I’ve read for a while – you get to know their writing style and I’d soon spot if Chris (or anyone else) was writing BS. And if I thought that was the case, I’d be the first to call him on it.

But the fact that it was called as sponsored and there was no heavy sales pitch in the post itself? If people can make money on their blogs by writing sponsored posts yet still keep it honest, more power to them.

And for anyone that feels let down by sponsored blogging? I liken it to the indie band syndrome – the band’s great while they’re your secret, but the moment success and money becomes involved, you don’t want to know. Which begs the question – were you really a fan in the first place?

The 12 for 12,000 Challenge in 2009

: Image by krystynana via Flickr

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the world around me, around us. When the economy is so bad and much of the future is uncertain, it’s easy to forget that as bad as we have it, there will always be someone worse off. Illness; poverty; hunger; abuse; these and more happen every day to people breathing the same air as us. Which is why I’m setting up the 12 for 12,000 Challenge in 2009.

There have been many examples of how social media can help charitable causes, and I’m hoping that that same power can make a difference in so many lives. The best part – it will take very little effort from you.

You’ll notice that I’ve called this the 12 for 12,000 Challenge in 2009, and with good reason. They’re easy numbers to remember, and with a little bit of luck and goodwill they’ll also be the numbers we meet in this challenge. So, how does it work?

In 2009, I will offer 12 different charities to support, one for each month of the year.

Everyone that signs up for the challenge donates $10 to the chosen charity.

Our aim: to involve 1200 people minimum (if there are more, even better).

If we reach our target number of 1200 people, and we each donate $10, that’s a figure of $12,000 to every single charity each month in 2009. You can imagine the difference this will make to these charities and the people they help.

The beauty of this challenge is that the decision is entirely down to you and how you participate. If you feel that a particular charity doesn’t fit you, simple – don’t donate that month. (If you wish to donate double to a preferred featured charity, that’s entirely up to you again).

I know that looking at the figures, it’s a high amount to aim for – raising $144,000 in the space of 12 months for 12 different charities. But is it really that difficult if we put social media to its most effective use? I think it’s doable.

For instance, if all the people or brands that followed me on Twitter donated $10 each month, that would be over $16,000 every month and almost $200,000 by the end of the year. That’s just one person. Imagine if we could encourage our followers to join us, as well as ask the help of some of the big guys on Twitter that have several thousand followers? Just one or two extra people each could make all the difference.

I’m currently in talks with various charities to arrange promotion as well as direct sponsorship and donation options. You can view some of the charities that might be chosen here. There’s still some groundwork to be done but I wanted to start the ball rolling now and see who’s interested in supporting this challenge.

If you’re interested, or you wish to suggest a charity, please feel free to leave your details in the comments section, or simply email me and put “Charity Project” in the header. I want to make this work, and I feel that if we have a collection of charities that everyone feels affinity to, we’ll raise even more money.

It’s a tough world, and it often gets a bad reputation as an uncaring one. Help me make it better. It won’t take much, but it will mean a lot. Are you with me?

Update. You can now join the 12 for 12,000 Challenge Facebook Group. Look forward to seeing you there. Additionally, if you are on Twitter, we will be using #12for12k to identify specific Challenge messages. Thanks guys!