…It’s not about conversations, it’s about meaningful conversations.
I feel lately like a 98 years old. That is far away from my age I can assure you.
This weird feeling originates in my recurrent inkling that Linkedin and twitter, the social networks which I use the most are not as they used to be. Which is true, but it is also completely acceptable as everything evolves with time.
98 years old people tend to classify everything as ‘not as it used to be’.
Although, where I find myself at ease is Meetup.com.
Major social networks out there do have an events section aka a listing/RSVP service. This is not to be confounded with an event focus.
I told you recently I was about to launch SocialCoup, a network of strong new media and events professionals to attack the status quo of ineffectiveness.
In the past month I have been working hard to put together strong new media profiles, talented events professionals and effective developers to finally bring online and offline together.
The model is that we have no model. Or at least no boring one.
We work as a crowdsourced initiative. We work as a community to make it short.
I feel comfortable in saying that whatever Social Media Agency that does not act as a community will be ineffective in talking to other communities. If you want to challenge that, bring it on, I am waiting for your comment.
In addition we also rely on the fact that we won’t charge the client for electricity or receptionists. So next time you step in a fancy agency make sure you realize you are actually paying for the fanciness.
For the time being we are focusing on iPhone apps, event planning/amplification and small social media campaigns.
We made a nice little video using kinetic typography (I do walk the walk guys) to explain the process.
The different aspect for other crowdsourced initiatives is that we emphasize on quality. There are tons of freelancers conglomerates out there but how do you make sure you will get a quality output? We are working on being the best in ensuring quality output at substantially lower prices.
I spent hours to catch the most succulent fishes and they feel they want to rock the World as a team now.
We will meet up for a small chat with entrepreneurs, digital crowds and startup owners next week. If you are one of the above, make sure to come over.
We are experiencing the garage project that become mainstream feeling and it is amazing.
Last month has been pretty hectic and I wanted to share some of the most interesting stuff I have been up to:
- .Net Magazine released an article about boosting your career with social media. I was happy to be quoted. I also noted how fast numbers are changing. In the interview (which I released two months ago) my network was of 9500 people and the Events Group I manage on LinkedIn had 5300 member. My network is almost 11K people now (I closed it for connection browsing, no worries) and the group now counts 7700 members.
- I was invited by John Welsh, who is an inspiring leader and talented blogger, to participate in a seminar greatly put together by the equally talented, Rob Eslin at UBM. I was expecting an informal chat with 10 people, but the room was packed with more than 30 top class Marketing Managers, Sales Managers, Editors and Media people. I presented about managing Online Communities and I definitely had a blast.
- I unofficially put together Social Coup, a virtual agency made of outstanding, talented individuals committed in bringing online and offline together. The first person we worked with was Jackson Bond from the really cool Xing.
- I was selected to live tweet from the Kiss the Cup VIP event, sponsored by Sony Ericsson, and be the twitter Journalist for the night. I will be updating from the party the evening (GMT) of the 1st of April (no joke).
- Together with a team of talented individuals we put together Aperitweat, an Aperitivo with our twitter pals. Well, it’s a bit more than that since more than 140 people RSVP’d in a week on different platforms and there are 3 weeks to go. Power of Italian food I guess, or twitter, or the people organizing it, or all of the above.
I guess that is enough for my ego, but aren’t personal blogs just made for that?
Micropayments have been around forever. While researching the topic I bumped into this report from 2000 by O’Reilly Media. In January 2009 the iPhone App Store passed the 500 million downloads mark . Microsoft and RIM (Blackberry manufacturer) announced they are following along the way.
Digital Goods & The Long Tail
Selling digital goods at small prices appears to be the waive of the future. As Seth Godin pointed out in his London Sessions, the long tail is where struggling industries such as Music or Print Media need to market their future.
Selling to the long tail means having a flexible product, which can be customized to the needs of very small groups of customers. Digital goods are the means to achieve such a tough end.
Some may argue that only certain products can be sold through these means. This is partially true as the the Facebook and iPhone applications phenomena have displayed how powerful applications could be to promote whatever product.
What does it mean for your community?
If you are bombarding users with intrusive advertising, you are out of the game. If you are charging Premium, you are gonna be out in few months.
Digital goods such as applications are revolutionary because they can be sold at a very low amount of money and are great advertising vehicles. In this instance advertising will be agreed with the person purchasing the app and it can be a great excuse to keep the costs to the end consumer low.
If you are starting now
Whether you already have a community in place or you are starting a new one, make sure you actually think about selling digital goods with micropayments as your prioritized monetization plan.
It may seem absurd now and if it does, the only relief will be the above O’Reilly article from 2000.
Blogs, twitter, Facebook. It’s the Social Media Mantra (SMM).
99% of the buzz out there is about SMM. It will be very tough to find any information about other forms of communication, which are social but don’t involve the popular SMM.
There has been a lot of shaking lately on how to choose your Social Media consultant. Have a look at some links below:
Although some contributions you will Google are more valuable than others (specially those coming from ex-biologists turned marketing experts), I agree on the fact that the approach is flat.
You will likely get advice on the SMM, partly because clients expect that (10%), mostly because when you have no clue, you play safe (90%).
Truth is that there are other forms of social communication you and your consultant are actively ignoring. Let’s have a look.
Have you set up your blog? Not enough right? Possibly you are looking at adding a community to it.
Community marketing is indeed the latest trend in social media and huge communities are asking themselves (and around) how to monetize large as well as smaller numbers.
Placing ads within online spaces is definitely the most adopted tactic, but increasingly criticized as it reduces quality of customer experience.
Fact is that there are outstanding examples of monetizing social networking and online communities, which do not necessarily result in users being bombarded with banners and Adsense.
Fon is capitalizing on the fact that we don’t use all the wifi bandwidth we are given. So why not reselling it? “Foneros” can resell wifi access to fellow members and make little money out of it. It’s a great way to pay a smaller Internet bill. The community is growing and at the last count it reached 350,000 people.
