Tag Archives: social media

Social Media Magazine App- Flipboard Launches

23 Jul

FlipBoard is very buzzworthy at the moment- it’s a really well-funded startup with an application for the iPad that aggregates all of your social media streams into an easy-on-the-eyes magazine layout.

All you have to do is ‘flip’ through the pages. Content has a byline, “shared by” and the handle of whomever posted that link, story, video or piece of user-generated content online.

This is a pretty elegant solution for those social media users flipping between accounts, blogs, rss feeds and bookmarking sites.  I currently use Hootsuite to manage my Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn profiles, but find the interface difficult to use. For example, I have a half a dozen different Twitter lists lined up next to one another and need to scroll all the way across the screen to view them all.

I just wonder what kind of algorithm or user-preferences FlipBoard employs to know which content is preferred? I am trying to visualize a magazine made out of my contacts’ updates and I am balking at the idea of random musings, links to funny videos and other people’s’ vacation pictures comparing to a real magazine like Vanity Fair. We’ll see how this application does!

You can read more about FlipBoard and see screen shots at mashable.com.
Read about potential legal/copyright issues already threatening FlipBoard at BoingBoing.net.

image via flipboard.com

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Clout with a “K” … Do you have it?

15 Jun

We’re always looking for new metrics and an engagement metric is the holy grail of online marketing and social media marketing.

I was using Hootsuite to reply directly to new followers on Twitter. I usually say something like, “Thanks for the follow! I also blog here:” and provide a shortened link to my blog. I noticed the little Klout button next to each person’s name, and navigated over to Klout.com.

Klout.com is a site that provides a free index to measure engagement on Twitter. If you go to Klout.com and sign up for the service, it will take a beginning “baseline” measurement of your twitter influence or clout.

The Klout Score is the measurement of your overall online influence. The scores range from 0 to 100 with higher scores representing a wider and stronger sphere of influence. Klout uses over 25 variables to measure True Reach, Amplification Probability, and Network Score. The size of the sphere is calculated by measuring True Reach (engaged followers and friends vs. spam bots, dead accounts, etc.). Amplification Probability is the likelihood that messages will generate retweets or spark a conversation. If the user’s engaged followers are highly influential, they’ll have a high Network Score.

Is Klout.com a good way to measure engagement? Or just another empty social media number (clicks, followers) we’re meant to chase online? What do you think?

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The Conversation Prism

11 Jun

This graphic illustrates all of the places online that you can “enter the conversation.” Via theconversationprism.com.

The Conversation Prism by Brian Solis and Jesse Thomas

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Self-Publishing

2 Feb

I spent much of the Fall and busy holiday season assisting local Philadelphia legend Steve Poses with marketing and selling his self-published cookbook and website, At Home.

Steve had sold more than 100,000 copies of his first publication, The Frog Commissary Cookbook, which has been in print for 25 years, through a local publisher. Steve is also a renowned restaurateur and caterer in the Philadelphia area. So there is already a group of loyal fans ready and waiting to read At Home.

With the help of a local public relations guru, Steve was successful in landing several high-profile publicity opportunities including radio, TV, newspaper and magazine spots. He also did a ton of blogging, built up an e-mail newsletter list of hundreds of subscribers and did e-mail marketing, direct mail and search optimization for his website.

But the sticking-points in making book sales were the low return on e-mail marketing (a 1 percent return is stellar) and the decision to use an online-only distribution channel.  The original At Home marketing plan relied heavily on e-mail marketing, but the channel delivered very little return.  Steve also wanted to sell the books via his online store only, to provide a direct, no-middleman transaction for customers. The problem is, that folks still want to touch and flip-through a book before making a purchase. Especially if it’s a new publication and they’ve never seen a copy before.

In the end we got through the holiday rush by partnering with several independent businesses including food co-ops, markets and an exclusive independent bookstore to provide some brick and mortar retail opportunities. We also used these retail locations as venues for book-signings, which gave customers a chance to meet Steve, get a signed copy of the book and hear about the publication directly from the author.

Marketing a self-published book is an uphill battle. There’s a related article in the Denver Post that really hits on the difficulty that authors face when they decide to self-publish. It sounds like these authors found that face-to-face events like readings and book signings, as well as building an online presence in a blog format, or e-mail newsletter, are two key strategies to self-publishing success.

It will be interesting to see how Steve alters his strategy in 2010 and how all kinds of authors, fiction, non-fiction, self-help, cookbook, etc. tackle self-published projects in the future.

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