The ideas, trends and innovations behind the world's most revolutionary marketing strategies in 2011

Once a year the team at Contagious Magazine rounds up the highlights, tell you what's important and why, and push it out to the world, for free.

The Most Contagious in 2011. The team at Contagious Magazine spends their days finding, filtering and reviewing the most innovative exercises in branding, technology, and popular culture, and delivering their collective wisdom to their subscribers.  http://www.mostcontagious.com

The social media challenge for consumer packaged goods brands

by Martin Bishop

Director, Brand Strategy, Landor

The brands generally acknowledged as social media stars—Starbucks, Nike, Zappos, and the like—have something most CPG brands don’t: deep and engaging relationships with consumers.

This allows them to take advantage of social media opportunities: creating strong communities, setting up Facebook pages people will “like,” and having content generated by an avid tribe of followers. When a brand reaches a certain level of consumer engagement, it can spend its time nurturing supporters, nudging and channeling their social media activity.

Though every CPG brand might wish to be loved so intensely, few reach the top of the relationship ladder. When you come right down to it, who wants a relationship with a bar of soap? Or as one commenter put it, responding to a blog post on the death of branding: “They buy something to drink because they’re thirsty. Not because they f****ng LOVE Coke!”

Simply mimicking the behavior of brands that have highly engaged audiences doesn’t work; social media applications have to be aligned with the strength of a brand’s consumer relationships. There are too many examples right now of brands assuming that their customers care about them when the reality is that most customers couldn’t care less. Read Martin's full article...

How to Succeed On Social Media

For the next 14 business days, beginning Monday, October 3, 2011, we will provide you with best practices to help you succeed with social media.

Best Practise #1 - Mission and Purpose: Know your existing audience and those you’re trying to reach, then design a mission and purpose for each social network. What works with facebook may not work with twitter. Remember those fans you have on facebook may not be your followers on twitter. Create a mission and purpose for each network. This should be no more than three sentences!

Facebook to be reborn TODAY… Facebook once again will change the world of social media!

Ok, so now you must know that Facebook’s goal is not to have more users – it’s now over a whopping 750 million! But instead their main goal is to become the social entity that supports, powers and connects all and everything on the web. No matter who, what, why, where. Facebook will move forward in achieving that goal this Thursday (September 22, 2011 at its f8 conference in San Francisco.

In recent times Facebook launched three defining changes: they revamped Friend Lists, a real-time new ticker, and the subscribe button. Friend Lists lets you share content with only your closest friends, and the ticker lets you have real-time conversations with your friends. Subscribe lets you fill your News Feed with people you admire and respect.

On Thursday, Facebook will be reborn. Prepare yourselves for the evolution of social networking as Facebook roll out a new phase designed to enhance the emotional connection its users have to each other through Facebook.

Tell me what you think of the new changes.

Rob Janoff, the Apple logo designer speaks out about the logo

The Apple logo is one of the most famous logos in the world. People tattoo themselves with this logo and have serious relationships with it. It has not changed in 30 years and may go on for another 30 with no drastic changes. Read the interview with Rob Janoff and share your comments. Read more...

Keeping it social: A 10-step guide to developing a social media process that can be applied to any organization.

Over the past couple of years, social media has emerged as a marketing game changer that puts customers back at the centre of the organisation and provides marketers with a new set of tools to listen to and converse with these consumers and to encourage them to engage with their brands.

In their recently published book,Marketing Communications - Integrating Offline and Online With Social Media Today (Kogan Page, 2011), PR Smith and Ze Zook point out that social media is not just a marketing tool, it's a new way of running a business that requires a new company culture.

The following is a 10-step guide to help marketers get to grips with developing a social media process is reproduced from the book.

Step 1: Start monitoring and listening
A social media audit establishes an organization’s reputation (and your competitors' reputations). Develop a comprehensive monitoring strategy to discover the issues: what can have an impact on your brand?; the influencers in your marketplace; the platforms or places where your customers (and influencers) congregate (the influential networks, including blogs, discussion groups and other social networks); and, the opinions customers have about your product, your company and the competition. If your brand or industry discussions are focused on one or two platforms, this makes it easier to concentrate your efforts.

Step 2: Set priorities and goals, and don't try to cover all social media outlets
It is not possible to engage in all conversations everywhere. Pick the more important ones initially. Not all online conversations have the same impact. Identify the more important ones. Learn when and when not to engage. Have clearly defined objectives and know exactly what you are trying to achieve with social media (ie, reposition the company, develop relationships, establish the brand as credible, grow awareness, etc).

Step 3: Agree key messages
Have crystal-clear messages. Be ready to engage with the target audience in a meaningful way (give them what's relevant and important to them). What topics and key phrases does the organization want to be associated with? Prepare canned messages for a range of issues or situations so they can be tailored easily. Show the team how to create links, back links and retweets. Share guidelines for what is and isn't appropriate.

Step 4: Develop good content - help and share
Your content has to be valuable; otherwise you're just shouting or 'making noise'. You have to be prepared to help and share good content. Do not sell primarily. Sales may follow good content. Social media is not a direct marketing tool. Share articles, presentations and videos that are relevant - these can be yours or someone else's (as long you credit them and link to them). Only add comments to other discussions if you are being helpful and relevant.

Step 5: Recruit and train the team of spokespeople
Whether it's a blog, a Twitter account or a YouTube channel, you need to identify who is in the team, ie, who has permission to write a blog post or a tweet or upload a video. Who handles responses? Is it certain people for certain issues? Is it one spokesperson or several? Equally, who monitors what? Who reports to whom? Once you have your team trained, brief the rest of the organization. Share the strategy with the whole organization.

Step 6: Commit time and resources
You need a consistent stream of useful content. Don't just dabble. This requires clear briefings, training and motivation, which in turn requires resources. Monitoring requires resources also, whether you use an outside agency or do it in-house. Once you start proving the value of social media, you should find it easier to allocate resources to it.

Step 7: Constantly promote social media
Just as all organizations now promote their websites in everything they do, so, too, should social media be promoted. Announce your Twitter handle (name), Facebook page or LinkedIn profile at every opportunity. Add it to all the company's email signatures and collateral. Announce it at conferences and news releases. Add the details to slides, news releases and the letterhead. List it on your website. Post all presentations on your social media sites. In fact, all offline communications should be integrated with social media, ie, Twitter, blogs and Facebook announcements about an upcoming conference. Videos and photos of the event and speeches can be uploaded to YouTube and Flickr respectively.

Step 8: Integrate online and offline events
The online social media team or consultancy needs to work more closely with the offline team, as it needs to know what marketing events are happening in advance. As the website is a conduit, it can get more bang for its buck if it is integrated, ie, brief video production companies and photographers as to what formats and style are needed for web use. A shared schedule of events or an outline plan to allow the integration and leverage of various marketing assets onto social media platforms (like ads, promotions, videos, etc) is essential.

Step 9: Plan for success
Although it may take some time to build up your networks and followers, be prepared for a sudden influx of comments, visitors and enquiries. This is a nice problem to have. However, if the organisation cannot handle the incoming web traffic with its comments and enquiries, it could end up generating a lot of negative PR. Develop credibility before raising visibility.

Step 10: Measure, measure, measure
Don't play Russian roulette by (up)loading your message, pushing or spinning it out and then closing your eyes and hoping for the best. Watch the analytics. See if traffic has spikes as a result of any particular posting. What posts generate a buzz? One new discussion on an e-marketing group in LinkedIn generated more than 2,000 responses. It was called 'Social media is crap', and had a detailed post of why the person felt it didn't work. Watch what generates visitors, conversions and good comments (as opposed to negative comments).

This article originally appeared in Marketing Age, Volume 5, Issue 2, 2011

Clash of the Titans-The Social Network Wars

By Parashar Bhatt

Just a couple of weeks ago, Google launched its 4th attempt to enter the social networking space with Google Plus. Do you Remember Orkut, Wave, and Buzz? Not surprised you don’t because Google failed to grab a successful stake on the social network platform with these first 3 attempts. But this is the first social launch since Larry Page took over as CEO and declared that social was a major battleground.

Google+ is based around the idea of circles. A circle is group of friends. Circles can upload and share content, update each other, even participate in a little group texting. On Google Plus, you can engage in spontaneous video chat by announcing to your circle of friends, acquaintances and followers that you are virtually hanging out. This "hangout" feature gives Google a crucial early advantage over Facebook, where video calling is a one-on-one, PC-to-PC affair.

So just when you think that Google+ has an advantage offering features that Facebook lacks, the world’s largest social network introduces video calling made possible through a partnership with Skype. Not even ten days have lapsed since Google announced its social networking product, and Facebook's CEO Mark Zuckerberg played the master strategy of killing two birds with one stone by announcing the Facebook Skype tie-up. The first one is pretty obvious, which is getting close to Google's worst enemy Microsoft. How you ask? Microsoft bought Skype last month for $8.5 Billion! *insert dramatic music* The second is for Facebook, who is not to be underestimated, to play the role of the kingmaker in the clash of the titans.

Let's face it. Facebook can never really be what Microsoft or Google really is. Social networking has its limitations and a peak beyond which it just cannot go. But in this battle, the Yahoos, Twitters and Facebooks of the world play a very crucial role, that of deciding who wins and who loses or who gets on top and who remains the underdog.

Google versus Microsoft is a saga that can be compared to none in the history of enterprise. While in the earlier times corporate battles were fought over years or even decades, this is probably the first time a startup, Google, challenged the then mightiest company on earth, Microsoft and in less than 5 years of its launch Google became enemy no. 1 for Microsoft. Not many companies have enjoyed the success Google got so easily. It wasn't competing just on products, Google shook the very foundation on which the software enterprise model was based on. It changed the rules of the game. Facebook did the same for social networking, something Google and Microsoft tried many times but couldn't succeed.

Facebook holds power for its mass appeal and is the real thorn for Google. No one even came close to Google in terms of advertising. Google has literally become an advertising mogul. Google's growth is fueled by advertising. Its war ammunition is supplied by the advertisers to fight Microsoft. Problem now is that Facebook is a far superior platform for advertising. Reason for this is the profiling of users. Based on Geography, Interests, Demographics and the minutest detail no one comes even close to Facebook. They have the masses and the absolutely stunning profiling of its users.

In simple words, Facebook has the masses and the stickiness to attract the advertisers. What can hurt Google the most is the advertisers leaving Google for Facebook. The Facebook and Skype association is probably the best missile Microsoft has so far. It's time Google did some overhauling and rewired its thinking, which did work at one time, if its wants to survive. For now Facebook and Microsoft have the lead and a huge one at that. Touché, Zuckerberg, touché.

What do you think of the Google Plus? Who will come out on top? Share your thoughts.

The Sunday Times Launches the Social List The List Will Unveil the World's Most Influential Social Networkers

This week, The Sunday Times launched The Sunday Times Social List at http://www.the-social-list.com, an ever evolving list of who's who in the world of social networking.
The information will be drawn from the biggest social networks - Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook and Foursquare, - The Sunday Times Social List system adds up your social networking activity and measures how much interest it generates amongst your friends and colleagues in order to work out how well you score.
It’s free to join, participants need to simply link up with the social networks they use and want to be included. Every morning The Sunday Times Social List will make its calculations.
People's results will change daily as new people join and scores are updated.
On the results page you can see a list of the top 2000 most socially wealthy people at any given time. You can also see how you compare with friends and colleagues who have also signed up.
To help people see where they are in the grand scheme of things, they are allocated a rank when they join and a badge that goes with it.
May the best tweeter win!

More than 30 Social Media Stats on Video - Transformed All our Lives

From Erik Qualman's Blog

I AM AN EARLY LINKEDIN ADOPTER

I earned my bragging rights today for being an early adopter to LinkedIn. After announcing earlier this week that it passed the 100 million user mark, professional networking site LinkedIn sent emails to its early users on Saturday, March 26, 2011 thanking them and telling them exactly when they joined.

I received my e-mail from LinkedIn Co-Founder and Chairman, Reid Hoffman on Saturday and although I was one of 1 million recipients I realized once again how dead on I was in predicting the social media phenomena. I happened to be member number 530915 in fact!* The email, signed by LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman himself says “In any technology adoption lifecycle, there are the innovators, those who help lead the way. That was you.” This email also served as a reminder of how quickly social media spreads – in just a few years you can go from 1,000,000 followers to more than 100,000,000.

Four Ways To Get Your Legal Department On Your Side When Implementing Social Media Strategies

1. It always helps to approach your legal department with a written document that outlines a social media plan that will already have accounted for any concerns they might have as to the risk of being active in the social media space.
2. Even slow industries are getting their feet wet in the social media space. Subtle remind your legal department that being slow to adopt gives your competitors the edge – but DO NOT forget that once you turn on the social media facet you can’t just turn off the tap!
3. Work with your legal department to come up with a plan for dealing with the risks that might come to pass. Don’t just avoid social media – having a plan always works.
4. Help your legal team understand that using social media can help protect your company in many ways, from the risk of your brand eroding in the public’s eyes as well as being misunderstood.

Old Spice Social Campaign Case Study

Old Spice Social Case Study from Digital Buzz on Vimeo.

How did they ever make a Facebook movie?

Here are the links to the four parts of the behind the scenes documentary:

• Part One – Commencement
• Part Two – Boston
• Part Three – Los Angeles
• Part Four – The Lot