Hey

Hey
How is going now !
It is amazed.I got a great website,that guys sell electronics,the price is cheapest and quality is nice.Fast service to receive the products from them.
Go and check it :   www.yesbestbuy.com
Email:service@yesbestbuy.com          
MSN:  yesbestbuy0005@hotmail.com

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RE:T

Hello!
My friend,are you busy recently?I found a nice website,I think you will be interested in the products in it.So I am writing this letter to introduce it to you.This is a website about electronical products,and it has many kinds of products,such as laptops,cellphones,MP3,GPS,TV,camera and so on.The most important thing is that their price are so low,it is so economical.Please take some time to have a check ,there must be something you 'd like to purchase :    www.e-infall.com.
Their contact email: service@e-infall.com MSN: e-infall@hotmail.com   Hope you will have a good time in this website.
Regards

 

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the thames from key bridge towards brentford

I have been trying to get this shot for months as u can only get it if the train stops on the bridge for a while which is quite unusual

Case study: Getting 10,000 people to download an unknown product with no budget using only social media.

Introduction

This latest social media marketing task has been one of my biggest challenges to date but I’ve really enjoyed testing my abilities to their very edge. How do you launch a product with no budget? I could have some answers for you below.

The Challenge:

Launch a new, unknown product into an over-crowded global market place with a marketing budget shrunk to pretty much zero by the recession.

The Strategy:

Drop all costly, untrackable offline marketing and go online, which was later refined to drop all costly traditional online marketing (PPC, banner ads etc) and concentrate on social media.

The Social Media Strategy:

Create numerous online properties to engage with a wide audience and give them the opportunity to interact with the product and other users creating a community and positioning the images created with Play With Pictures as social objects.

These properties include:

• An email list – not social media but you know what I mean!
  

• a blog

• a Facebook group

• a Flickr group

• a website

• a Twitter Feed
  

Social Media Tactics:

• Leverage valentine’s Day to give away 10,000 copies of Play With Pictures using funny pictures of Steve Jobs and Bill Gates to help spread the message virally.
  

• Launch give away on the blog.

• Encourage viral spread of the post across stumbleUpon, Digg, Twitter and Facebook by tapping into my established networks.

• Encourage downloaders to try out the product and post to the Facebook Page, spreading the word of Play With Pictures to their friends across their Facebook profiles.

• Comment and encourage across all our platforms.

• Active blogging and commenting across blogs carrying posts about Play With Pictures and blogs within our target niches.

Results

• 10,000 download mark achieved on the last day of the promotion. Phew!

• 55k+ page views on the website in one week.

• 12k + highly targeted email addresses.

• 110 fans on the Facebook group after only a few days.

• Close to 100 followers on Twitter and growing rapidly.

• Active, growing online community using the product.

• Plenty friendly comments and buzz.

• 1 potential PR disaster (a small bug in the product) which was quickly averted!

• £0 spent, excluding of course salaries and PR agency retainers.

Car 2.0

We all know by now that Google ads are very smart. They relate the ads to the content in the blog alongside it to make for more relative advertising and more click throughs and more money made for all the happy clients out there!

It doesn't always work though. As smart as Google ads are, they need to get smarter. I just saw this on one of the posts on my social media cartoon blog with the headline 'Rejection 2.0'.

Now Google ads obviously thought the 2.0 was referring to a car engine! Just look at the ads on the side.


No wonder I make such a little amount of money from my adsense campaigns!

Your customer has evolved into a community. Have you joined it?

Yes that is correct. Your customer stopped being your customer a few years ago when they realised that they truly do have the power, thanks to the advent of social media and price comparison sites and the like. So in order to reach them you had to entertain them, turning your customer into your audience (which I spoke about in my New Media Conference presentation). Now it turns out that your customers have meeting points online where they can discuss your brand/products, essentially turning your customers into a community.

Think about it. Only a few years ago, there were only a few very cumbersome ways of discussing a product in public, the most popular being letters to a newspaper / magazine or getting your case featured on a television watchdog-style program. Ever tried getting your case heard on a TV show? Not an easy thing to do and certainly not a great form of constant communication flow.

So what happened to change this?

Well, constant communication flow happened in the form of social media. Social networks, niche networks, micro-blogging (twitter etc), forums and new era consumer sites such as getclosure.co.za all make it extremely easy for people to talk about anything online with a potential audience of millions. It's like your average dinner party amplified to the power of a 1000, except for one key difference: ultra-niching.

Ultra-niching

Ultra-niching is another new term born out of the social media revolution that talks to the natural drifting of people towards people of similar interests and in social media you can find people with exact matches to your interests. So imagine online 'dinner parties' where everyone is there primarily to talk about one very specific thing (it could very well be the good and bad points of your product/brand!) and imagine how dangerous it is for these conversations to be ignored by your company.

An example of breaking down an ultra-niche*:

Demographic breakdown	How many people in the world
I am a male	3 billion approx. males in the world.
I live in London	3 or 4 million males living in London maybe?
I love paragliding	Maybe 50 000 males living in London love paragliding. this is a niche
I only enjoy alpine flying	Maybe only 500 males in London love paragliding but only enjoy alpine flying. This is an ultra-niche.

* Numbers are a serious thumb suck.

So the first thing I am going to do is go find a group on Facebook in the London network that talks about flying the alps. this way, I find a community that shares my passions so I can talk about it with someone that doesn't think I'm nuts like my wife or friends. I'll also check out the paragliding forums, Flickr groups about Alpine flying picture and follow anyone on Twitter talking about Alpine flying.

Managing your community and the advent of the Community Manager.

Now if you're a London-based paragliding tour operator to the Alps, you should be paying serious attention to this group. That way, you'll be in the know about what they are looking for, what they love and what they hate. Ultra-niches tend to be extremely passionate and opinionated about their given subject so it would be good to know what these opinions are. That way, you can offer products that cater to your community's needs (and you get some quality, free market research!). So step one is to listen.

What if it were an ultra-niche about your brand eg male - London - Ford - Ford Mustang - Ford mustang 56 models. should you be listening to these niches?

But how do I listen to all this chatter?

If you're a decent sized brand and or you have a few products in the market, there is chatter going on about them at this very moment.

So in order to keep up with the chatter, you could employ 5 full time 'researchers' who can surf the entire Internet all day, probably spending most of their time on Facebook and Youtube. A more sensible strategy would be to start using Google Alerts. You type in the words/brands/phrases you want to monitor and alerts will pop up in your inbox whenever those phrases appear on the Internet for you to click on and do whatever you like from there.

An even better option is to try a buzz monitoring tool like Radian6 or BrandsEye. The first part of the tool is pretty much like Google Alerts, bringing in alerts when your phrases are mentioned, however, you can be a lot more specific about what you are looking for with these buzz tools as you can configure a lot more options. The real magic kicks in when these tools aggregate the information into trends and reports making them great for measuring general sentiment as well as market reaction to new products, campaigns, price changes etc. And because people will talk about what they see offline on the Internet, you can even measure response and sentiment to offline campaigns. The funky graphs and stats also make it great for high level reporting to you bosses.

I am currently trying out BrandsEye and, as a Community Manager, I must say that it is one of the most useful tools I have used to date. I liken it to my window into the online world or the online world speaking about my brands and that of my competitors to be more accurate.

once you see chatter going on about your brand, don't ignore them, respond!

That's right! Respond, whether the comments are good or bad. If they are Twittering, reply to them, if its in a forum, add your two cents to the thread, if it's a blog, comment. Also remember to comment in your own style as the online community will sniff out PR talk like a rat that died two weeks ago! If the comments are negative or abusive, try not to get into a public shouting match as you may just create a blog swarm, which will just blow the issue out of proportion, triple it's speed around the Internet, and have most people siding with the individual rather than you, the company, regardless of who is wrong or right. Rather try and pull the debate to private channels such as email, DM on Twitter or even a phone call.

Lastly, don't just respond to comments or threads, start some of your own. Get involved. Ask your community questions about your brand and about their needs. Make them feel like the most important people on earth. offer them discounts, give them the lowdown on new products first. Say happy birthday to them on Twitter, whatever it takes to make you an accepted member of the community.

Do I need a Community Manager

If all I of this sounds daunting to you and you're dealing with a decent sized brand then yes, you probably do. The advent of the Community Manager as a career is another result of the surge forward of social media. Basically, a Community Manager is a friendly, chatty person that is highly clued up on all things social and online and is well wired into all communities and channels that may be talking about their brands and are usually the first point of contact for the community. So essentially positioning themselves as the online brand custodian. Community Managers also analyse and feed back information into the business about what the customers needs are etc. and ensure their voices are heard. They tend to be a savvy mix of social media tech, PR guru, brand genius and excessive, coffee induced, chatterbox.

Good examples of community managers are James Whatley for Spinvox and Scott Monty for Ford.

5 things you can do when you are booted off someone's Twitter list

Qwitter has opened up a whole new can of etiquette worms [trying not to distract myself too much on what an etiquette worm would look like] on Twitter.

If you've not heard of Qwitter before, basically once installed, it sends you an email whenever someone unfollows you on Twitter. Of course, anyone blogging and using Twitter to grow a base of followers is stroking their on ego to a certain degree (many rubbing it vigorously). So it's no surprise that Qwitter has enjoyed rapid uptake as your ego needs to know who doesn't like you and it also creates the opportunity for you to exclaim "How very dare they!" hopefully in your thoughts and not out loud as that would be kinda weird.

What's interesting, is that it raises a debate about what the appropriate action you should take after getting an I-think-your-tweets-are-rubbish email. Do you:

• Unfollow them back 'cause their tweets are just as rubbish anyway
• Politely ignore it and pretend that popularity isn't based on quantity but quality of contacts
• Spam them until the end of days
• Remove them from all your social networks and declare them online outcasts
• Cry for 15 minutes at your lost 'friend' only to realise that if you go and follow 10 more people, at least 7 of those will follow you back making you a tidy profit. How fickle friendship is on Twitter!

My friend Jason (oh how tempted I am to link to his twitter profile, but he knows who he is) has a policy of unfollowing qwitters back and then deleting them off Facebook as well. My argument to this is that people may have decided that they don't feel Twitter is the right channel to communicate with them and might rather do that on Facebook. He, of course disagrees.

Personally, I generally don't unfollow them back, karma will deal with them, although I do have a policy of purging my list based more on quality of tweets than whether they follow me or not. That being said, I haven't done a purge since the advent of Qwitter for fear of offending people!

What do you do?

del.icio.us Tags: Qwitter,twitter

Examples of a crap blog post. My Friday rant!

Man this person has ruined my Friday. I was taking it easy sifting through my feeds until I some how came across this idiotic article. (Or just read it below).

I cannot believe that some moron would write such an irresponsible, ill-researched attach on Obama's broadband penetration plan. My comment response was so long and thought out that I thought it was worthy of a post, hence this post!

Read the article, read my comment and join in the debate if you like. even if you think I am wrong!

THE GUILTY ARTICLE:

Keen on new media: Who would be Obama's CTO?

Now comes the fine print of an Obama Presidency. Apparently, he is thinking of appointing a Chief Technology Officer (CTO) in his administration, somebody who, according to BusinessWeek magazine, would be "one of Obama's most important advisors." The piece quotes a DC lawyer and telecommunications apartchik, Andrew Lipman, who sees this new CTO as the executor of Obama's Four Year Digital Plan:

"Obama sees greater broadband penetration as an enormous economic engine, much like the railroads were a century ago. That is why the CTO will play such a critical role in any recovery plan."

Universal broadband as the American railroads 2.0? I'm far from convinced. The railroads provided transportation to settle the West and to both build and link up new communities. In contrast, broadband provides a very different kind of transportation -- one that allows individuals to escape their physical communities, to create virtual loyalties, to lose their identities in the narcissistic chaos of cyberspace.

Broadband penetration throughout America will actually kill most local retail stores, it will fatally undermine local newspapers, it will destroy local television and radio stations. No, rather than the railroads, broadband is more akin to the triumph of automotive culture in the first half of the 20th century, a development which destroyed the railroads and undermined the economic and cultural viability of small town America.

So who should be America's new czar of technology? BusinessWeek suggests Google evangelist Vint Cerf, the mad father of the Internet. While one of Silicon Valley's most viral thinkers, ex Microsoft blogger Robert Scoble, suggests my old friend Dr Larry Lessig:

"Overall, though, I still like the idea of Lessig in the White House....Oh, and wait until you hear what he says about how he’d retard corruption in the Capitol."

Retarding corruption in the Capitol....Talk about history repeating itself. As American CTO, the all-too-virtuous Dr Lessig, the author of a new anti Hollywood rant called Remix, is actually a personal remix of Maximilien Roberspierre, another skilled practitioner in the art of retarding corruption. And with universal broadband penetration and thus two way live video connectivity in every American home, the eagle-eyed Dr Lessig might even get to retard corruption in all of our living rooms too.

MY RESPONSE:

I find this article to be a rather surprise attack on a noble quest to maximise broadband penetration throughout America. Your points are ill researched and full of assumptions based on your own (obviously overinflated) opinion.

Some bones of contention:
"narcissistic chaos of cyberspace." What a load of nonsense. The internet is a mere reflection of reality. Just like in real life there are 'good neighbourhoods' and bad neighbourhoods' but the good and the positive potential far outweigh the bad.

"Broadband penetration will kill local shops". So where on the internet am I going to pick up my daily milk and bread? Or my petrol or my medicines, or my dry-cleaning? How does one submit their dry-cleaning online, I can't seem to fit my jacket into my CD-Rom drive?

The reality is that internet, and particularly social media, has actually given birth to ultra-niches and hyper-localism which are cheap, targeted platforms for small businesses to target their local audience, BOOSTING their profitability, not killing them. They have also boosted the influence of local media by being able to target more, smaller niches. This fact alone makes your accusations completely wild, unfounded and seriously irresponsible.

What about the small businesses that have gone online (E-Bay for example) and boosted their sales beyond their wildest dreams?

If Obama wanted to increase broadband penetration in, say, Ethiopia, we wouldn’t even having this discussion because you would be writing about his shining vision, humanitarianism and economic sense for thinking of ways to boost Africa’s standing in the world. So why the double standards when it comes to America? Should they not be competitive with the rest of the world?

If America stopped it’s broadband expansion plans today, it would immediately create a massive gaps between the haves and have-nots leaving the ‘nots’ with the impossible task of catching up with the ever evolving ‘haves’. I have seen this with my own eyes, working online in Africa most of life. It is quite simply impossible for countries, businesses and individuals to remain competitive without access to broadband and the internet.

I strongly suggest, going forward, that you research your subject matter properly and know what you are talking about when you start shooting your mouth off, making you look like a complete idiot. Unless, of course, you believe America should go back to horse carts because all infrastructural advancements are evil and will destroy everything local. In that case you shouldn’t be writing on the internet anyway.

(Might I also suggest that you actually publish your name alongside your posts so I know which lazy, over presumptuous writer I am speaking to).

The Lunatic Fringe Model and the Shifting Influence of Web 2.0

There is a shift happening out there. It’s happening quicker than you think, it’s happening right now and it’s happening to your audience.

The shift I am referring to, is the way in which the general public consume their media. The traditional model (figure 1 below) is a centralised model where all content consumed by audiences is controlled by a small minority and a few platforms i.e. radio, TV, newspapers, magazine and the old style web (1.0). This also meant that they controlled the direction of influence which is represented by the arrows below.

Click here to enlarge

Figure 2 is the content model after the advent of Web 2.0 that I have called the ‘Lunatic Fringe Model', mainly to grab attention but also to draw to the fact that content movement now sits on the fringes of the model, within your audience, being passed from one friend to another and bypassing the traditional media that you are spending so much money on.

"62% of the content consumed by people born after 1980 is created by someone they know"

This also turns the ‘influence arrows’ around placing it squarely on the shoulders of the consumers as they decide where, how and from whom they get their information. In fact Shel Holtz, a respected new media practitioner, states that 62% of the content consumed by people born after 1980 is created by someone they know [and therefore not necessarily where you are currently focussing your efforts], for example, reading friend's profiles on Facebook or reading a blog of someone they met online.

Click to enlarge

So what’s changing because of this then?

· Advertising is heading for an identity crisis. Because the user now controls the influence more than ever and they don’t want to see adverts, pain and simple!

· Online reputation management is a must.

· Ultra-niches, means that your audience is split up into much smaller groups so you need to figure out different ways to reach them.

· There is an over supply of information online, therefore your brand needs to know how to cut through the noise.

· Journalists now spend a lot of time in this space picking up stories so they need to be approached in this space as well.

· Remember that the influence has shifted to the consumer so tread lightly. Don’t force your brand on your consumers, don’t lie, be aggressive, dictate or patronise. If you do, they will tear you to pieces online.

How does this affect your business?

There are going to be companies out there that ignore this shifting paradigm and don’t believe that their business will be affected, partly because of ignorance and partly because of fear of the unknown, but as more evidence surfaces, the argument becomes stronger to focus on this changing realm. Don’t be this company, don’t be caught with your pants down.

Here are some of the things you can do to engage this new audience:

· Start with a bit of buzz monitoring, we use Radian 6 and see what and how much is being spoken about your brand online.

· Seriously think about starting a blog to add to your website. This can become the launch platform for your online reputation management.

· Start using Social Media Press Releases immediately. You’re sending out press releases at the moment anyway so why not upgrade them and send them through the same, and many more, channels naturally increasing the reach of your press release.

· Definitely speak to a specialist in the industry before trying your hand at it as there are many unwritten rules you need to know about.

Don’t underestimate a freebie when marketing online

I run an ongoing viral email campaign for a fish restaurant in South Africa. I love marketing at this level, it is the basics of service marketing, where it all began.

The first thing I told the owner, my client, is that we need to give something away to get a bit of viral going and to grow the database. From there we can launch all sorts of advertising campaigns at a substantial targeted list. Of course, being an entrepreneur, he would have nothing to do with giving something away for free and I would have probably been disappointed if he did! So we launched a campaign focusing on the fact that is it under new management and all about his pedigree in the fish restaurant industry. The response was gentle to say the least and viral referrals were non-existent.

I got to the point where I gave him a choice: I felt that we were putting a lot of effort into an online campaign that wasn’t producing results so he either gave me some specials, on my terms, to work with or we just forgot the whole thing. My bluntness either frightened or angered him into action and I got a 2 for 1 sushi deal to market to our audience. Within two weeks, 2 for 1 Wednesdays was the busiest day at the restaurant (from being the quietest) and viral activity was large, especially after we started a group on Facebook to promote it. Best part is that the profitability of the evening is still quite high as people spend more on other courses and drinks. He’s so happy that we are now starting more specials with substantial give-aways. And needless to say that the contact database has grown significantly with targeted subscribers.

Lessons Learnt

I always knew this but I’m glad I got the opportunity to prove it in practice: In the online space, the consumer holds the influence and you need to approach them with something that they are interested in and they are always interested in freebies and good specials. It also shows that people really like to pass on useful information to their friends and family as the viral activity went through the roof as soon as there was a good special to talk about.

Tips on running an effective email freebie campaign:

• Use a good email system. It’s just not going to work without one. Here are 15 reasons why you should use a good email service
• Make it easy to share by using share buttons to all the usual web 2.0 viral services. This will help aid the viral process.
• Make the terms and conditions of the competition simple or else the back lash could be more detrimental than the special. Don’t dangle a big juicy carrot in front of your audience and then all they get is a bean sprout, this will make you seem like a greedy capitalist.
• The special must be valuable to you audience. 10% off is just not going to cut it unless it’s a car!
• Don’t even flirt with anti-spam laws and best practices; few things damage a brand online more.