The Second Cup: State of the Internet

Posted by Meghann Olshefski
Wed, 2010-03-03 11:00

Data Shows that Facebook is Better for Video Marketing that Twitter

Continuing my series of Facebook sharing data (if you’re curious about my methodology, read the first post), I looked at articles that had the word “video” in their titles.

It turns out that those stories that indicated they contained videos were shared more than the average story on Facebook, while they were actually shared less than the average story on Twitter. This is likely because the Facebook platform makes it easy to embed multimedia content into updates while Twitter does not.

Social Campaigning: Tips + Ideas for Twitter

Here are some tips and ideas for campaigns or causes that will help keep you out of trouble and help you maximize your Twitter usage.

State of the Internet

Very cool video from the folks at Jess3, featuring tons of great stats on Internet usage around the world.

What's Social Campaigning Got to Do With It?

In 1984, singer-songwriter Tina Turner asked “What’s Love Got to Do with It” in her breakthrough solo album. This year, political observers find themselves asking the same thing about the massive infiltration of social media into political campaigns—“What’s Social Campaigning Got to Do with It?” As we see it, the answer is pretty simple for candidates running for the U.S. Senate: the difference between winning and losing.

 

 

 

The Second Cup: McCain's Online Surge?

Posted by Meghann Olshefski
Tue, 2010-03-02 13:09

Republicans have a 'Twitter' Day

The Republican Study Committee (RSC) declared Monday a "Twitter Day," encouraging its members to tweet about their "commitment," or favorite issue in Congress.

50 members of the group of conservative House Republicans [put up] Twitter messages with the theme until around 3 p.m. according to William Allison, a spokesman for the group. They [used] the hashtag #rsc to mark the tweets. 

Will John McCain's Surge Into Online Video Result in Victory?

Today I review (I know, it’s a really long post) Senator John McCain’s new user-generated video strategy on his website – the “Video Supporter Wall” – which is being touted by his campaign as a key feature to winning re-election in the contested and heated Arizona Senate race. What lessons have been learned since their 2008 online video trouncing from team Obama?

Here's the latest on social network policy and the DOD since Sergio's post several months ago...

U.S. Department of Defense Goes Social...Yes, Really

On Friday, the U.S. Department of Defense announced a new policy which allows all users of unclassified computers in the .mil domain access to popular social networking sites including Facebook, Twitter, Flickr and YouTube among others. This change in policy effectively reverses the previous ban on accessing these types of sites - a ban that had been in place for nearly three years. In embracing the new policy, the department also launched its own social media hub, a blog-like site complete with live Twitter feeds, Tweetmeme buttons and "share on Facebook" links.

Facebook Drives 3X Traffic to Broadcast than Google News

We've spent some time recently looking at how Facebook has become a bigger driver of traffic to online news than news portals like MyYahoo or Google News, and our initial suspicions were confirmed with some data by the folks at HitWise.  

And this change at Google is bound to change the way voters search for information on local and regional political campaigns...

Refine Your Searches By Location

Location has become an important part of the way we search. If you're a foodie looking for restaurant details, food blogs or the closest farmer's market, location can be vital to helping you find the right information. Starting today, we've added the ability to refine your searches with the "Nearby" tool in the Search Options panel. One of the really helpful things about this tool is that it works geographically — not just with keywords — so you don't have to worry about adding "Minneapolis" to your query and missing webpages that only say "St. Paul" or "Twin Cities." Check it out by doing a search, clicking on "show options" and selecting "Nearby."

 

 

My Friends Killed the Newspaper Editor

Posted by Jordan Raynor
Mon, 2010-03-01 10:07

The latest report from Pew Internet confirms what many of us have known for a while now – our friends and socialgraphs are slowly diminishing the influence of the once all-powerful newspaper editors. In the study, Pew found that 75% of Americans who consume news online discover their news through social networking sites or through forwarded e-mail, and 52% of them share news with others through these channels.

This study confirms suspicions we have had for some time – our Facebook news streams and Twitter feeds are becoming our “homepage” for news consumption. NYTimes.com or CNN.com are no longer our browser’s homepage; and if they are, they are not likely the central hub for where we consume our news. The same Pew study found that only 7% of those surveyed are receiving information and news from a single media platform. Our news sources are more diversified than ever, but what’s more important is how we are being driven to this news content.

Before mass online news consumption, we were forced to consume whatever newspaper editors and TV producers decided we should read and watch. In the early years of online news consumption, news aggregation was not a necessity, as our sources for quality online news were slim. In these days, we could set our browser’s homepage to NYTimes.com and be satisfied with the flow of information we were receiving from the newspaper’s site editors. Today, we have the ability to create our own personalized news aggregation services from the news sources we trust most – our ‘friends’ and socialgraphs.

Gone are the days when a single newspaper’s website was the hub for all of one person’s news consumption, linking to various stories within that single hub of news. Today’s news consumption follows a hub-n-spoke model in which social networks are the hub that direct us out to the spokes of various news sources linked to by our friends and trusted news aggregation ‘editors’.

As more Americans rely on social networks as their primary source of news consumption, it will be increasingly important for news organizations, political campaigns and brands to find creative ways to convince individuals to spread news on their behalf. Newspaper editors will continue to have nearly exclusive influence over what is printed by their publications, but their power over driving eyeballs to this content is now in the hands of the masses. Every one of our friends is now a news aggregation ‘editor’ with the power to drive us from our social news hub to the various spokes of trusted news content.

The Second Cup: Drinking the Facebook Koolaid

Posted by Meghann Olshefski
Tue, 2010-02-23 11:09

Sneak Peek:  Erick Erickson speaks to a stand-only crowd at the first annual TechRepublican Digital Bootcamp, powered by Google.

5 Buzz Tips

Now that people have been playing with Google Buzz in Gmail for a week and we've rolled out the improvements we announced here over the weekend, we wanted to let you know about some tips and tricks to help you get the most out of Buzz. Here are five tips to get you started.

Once Skeptics, Brands Drink the Facebook Koolaid

Just 15 months ago, Procter & Gamble Co.'s top digital-advertising executive had some serious reservations about Facebook as a marketing tool.

Now, the world's biggest marketer wants all of its brands to get a presence on Facebook this year and has recently opened a research-and-development office in Palo Alto, Calif., not far from Facebook's headquarters, in an effort to co-develop capabilities in digital and social media.

An Early Peek at the Politics Online Conference

RootsCamp’s surely gonna rock this weekend, but it’s not the only great online politics event sitting on the horizon: be sure to head over to the all-new Politics Online Conference site (big improvement over the old layout, y’all) and check out the initial agenda. Lots o’ great topics, and a clear departure from some of the stuffier panel titles of past years. Nice work, guys! See you April 19th.

Modern Ettiquette: How to Decline Facebook Friends Without Offence

A colleague I just met at work has invited me to be their friend on Facebook. I don't want to offend them, but nor do I want to share my candid photos and lousy Scrabble scores with someone I hardly know.

Can I ignore their invite?

Measuring Tweets

As a member of the Twitter analytics team, part of my job is to measure and understand growth. The graph above tells a story of how we've grown over the past three years in terms of number of tweets created per day. Please note that tweets from accounts identified as spam have been removed so the counts in this chart do not include spam.

 

The Second Cup: Post #CPAC10 Edition

Posted by Meghann Olshefski
Mon, 2010-02-22 10:22

Thanks to everyone that participated in TechRepublican's Inaugural Digital Bootcamp at #CPAC10.  Big thanks to Google for making the event possible. We had a standing-room-only crowd!

Look forward to a recap of the event this evening. In the meantime, here's your Monday morning Second Cup.

Social Campaigning: Tips + Ideas for Facebook

Here are some tips for campaigns or causes that will help keep you out of trouble and help you maximize your Facebook usage...

The Internet in 2020: What the Experts Predict

Most experts agree that Google won't make us stupid. Indeed, 76% of technology stakeholders and critics interviewed by the Pew Research Center's Internet & American Life Project and the Imagining the Internet Center at Elon University believe that the Internet and search engines will enhance human intelligence by 2020.

For this new report, the Pew Research Center conducted in-depth interviews with over 800 experts about what they think the Internet will look like in 2020. 

Google Voice, Explained

Google Voice is about giving you more control over your communications, through dozens of features — ranging from call screening to voicemail transcription to the ability to send and receive SMS by email.

While we've heard from users that they love our growing list of features, we're conscious of the fact that Google Voice can seem overwhelming to people trying it for the first time.

So we've created a short video that gives an overview of what Google Voice can do.

And last, but not least -

Top 5 Ways to Market Your Business with LinkedIn

LinkedIn is the most powerful social networking site to help you grow your business.  It makes Twitter, Facebook and YouTube seem like social networking sites for kids.

If you want to hang with the big players—a place where connections are made, leads are generated, and deals go down—then you need to spend more of your time on LinkedIn.

Although other sites have their purpose in the business world and many people utilize multiple social networking sites, LinkedIn is still the number-one place to market your business.  Here are ways to use LinkedIn and get results...

 

 

An Alternative Facebook Friend Diet

Posted by Jordan Raynor
Tue, 2010-02-16 12:52

The Heritage Foundation's Director of Online Strategy, Robert Bluey, published a piece a few weeks ago calling for a Facebook Diet of sorts.  Bluey cites a recent tweet from David All in which All claimed he was "going on a Facebook Friend diet for 2010" with a goal of being "under 1,500 by July 4th."

I share Bluey and All's concern and desire to make their Facebook networks more personal and to rid their Facebook news feeds of Blingee Book and Mafia Wars.  After all, the social network was built be a place where you could connect with your "friends".  But with all due respect to these two online strategists far more brilliant than me, I would argue that eliminating your current Facebook friends or refusing to accept friend requests that come in the future is not the best solution to this problem.

In his blog post, Bluey says that his wife will ask "why a total stranger is remarking about a personal item" such as a picture of their son.  A good question indeed.  I ran into similar annoyances when friends of my parents started joining Facebook 3-4 years after I had been on the
network.  My parents and their friends suddenly had access to everything I was doing with my life online, and people who I had not seen in a decade were suddenly giving me life advice via my Facebook status.  Talk about obnoxious.  But un-friending these people or not accepting their friend requests was not the answer.  There were times when I had information that I wanted to share with these people, whether it was news of my engagement, wedding plans, or career moves I was making.  If I had made the decision to deny their friend requests or un-friend them, I would have lost the ability to communicate with them via Facebook.

Over the past week, I have received an average of 6 friend requests per day.  Almost all of these people I have never heard of before, but upon inspecting our "mutual friends" it is clear that these people want to connect with me professionally (or, perhaps more likely, simply increase their Facebook friend count for reasons beyond my understanding).  While I do not want to give these people access to everything I post on Facebook (especially personal status updates), why would I turn down someone who has initiated a relationship that could be beneficial to me professionally?  More than 15% of the traffic to my blog comes directly from Facebook, and increasing my footprint on Facebook will allow me to drive more traffic to that content and make connections that could be mutually beneficial to me and my "friends" in the future.

So how can I keep these two worlds of Facebook "friends" separate?  The rarely-talked-about, yet incredibly effective Facebook Lists tool.

Facebook Lists - 1

Every time I receive a friend request on Facebook from someone I do not recognize, I check to see what friends I have in common with the requester ("mutual friends").  99 times out of 100, the "mutual friends" will be politicians, journalists and other "professional" connections I have made on Facebook.  By simply clicking the "Add to List" drop down menu underneath the name of the friend requester, I can choose what previously created list I want to add this new friend to.  If they are someone I think will be interested in the political content I post to Facebook, I add them to my "Professional" list.  If the person is someone I know in the offline world that has no interest in politics, I place them in the "Personal" list.

Once these lists are set up, I can determine which lists see which status updates and links I post to Facebook.  For example, this blog post would not interest my personal friends on Facebook, but if I wanted to drive my professional network on Facebook to this post, I could because I have a created a list of my professional friends.  By clicking the drop-down menu to the left of the "Share" button, I can manually select exactly who I want to see my Facebook status update or link. 

Facebook Lists - 2

In this example, I want my entire professional list to see my link, so I select "Professional" and save my setting.  Once I click "Share" only my professional contacts will be able to see my link, sparing my personal friends from my political ramblings.

Facebook Lists - 3

Facebook Lists can also be incredibly effective for political campaigns at the local and congressional level.  If a candidate is using a Facebook profile instead of a Facebook page, they have the ability to segment their friends into many different messaging niches.  Let's say Candidate X for State House posts a Facebook status update regarding their position on property taxes.  If 35 people "like" that Facebook status, Candidate X can be relatively certain that those 35 people agree with their stance on that issue.  If property taxes are an important issue to Candidate X's campaign, why not segment those 35 people into a separate Facebook List and target future messages regarding property taxes (especially fundraising pleas) to those people? 

This principle of segmenting your message is a timeless one that has been made simple in other online mediums such as e-mail.  But it admittedly requires much more effort on Facebook.

Facebook has evolved a great deal since its launch six years ago, and those of us that have been a member of the network for a number of years have seen our network of friends evolve with it.  For those of us who continue to use Facebook and other forms of social media to promote our candidates and causes, we will always be confronted with the challenge of keeping our personal and professional lives separate online.  This alternative Facebook Friend Diet, though tedious, has immensely helped me segment my Facebook network instead of purge it.  I hope it will do the same for you.

The Second Cup: Getting Jiggy By the Numbers

Posted by Meghann Olshefski
Tue, 2010-02-16 10:23

The Five Elements of Viral Calls to Action

Most marketers know that to get someone to do what you want, you have to ask them to do it, you have to have a call-to-action (CTA) that persuades them to buy your product. With social media marketing, the action we’re aiming for is to get our readers to share our content with their friends and networks, so our CTAs must entice them to do just that. Here’s the 5 most important concepts to think about when you’re constructing your viral calls to action.

Social Action Networks Defined -- Doing Your Homework

When we last talked about Social Action Networks,  we identified the specific characteristics that define a SAN and what how they differ from an online community.  Today we are going to share the steps you should take before you even start planning what you SAN will look like and what it will do.

So grab a note pad, roll up your sleeves, and get ready to work...

5 Tips for Creating Non-Profit Online Communities

So much conversation about social networking revolves around Twitter and Facebook, but in actuality these networks are just the tip of the iceberg. From general networks like Wiser Earth and Care2, to cause specific networks like PickensPlan and the Sierra Club’s Activist Network, there’s a hotbed of social activity occurring in private communities. Non-profit oriented networks use a wide variety of social tools to foster community, including their own white label communities.

Facebook Now Drives More Traffic to Websites than Google

Momentous news this morning for the future of social media and search.  From Steve Rubel from Edelman PR's blog:

We're at the beginning of a major shift in how we find, consume and interact with information. If the 2000s was the Google decade, then the 2010s will be the Facebook decade. Already, you can see the writing on the wall - pun intended. Case in point: a search for "google decade danny sullivan" pulls up his Facebook note higher than a blog post (an item I wanted to include here for context). But that's nothing. Look at the data.

According to new stats from compete.com Facebook is becoming the web's top source of traffic

On Twitter, Should Politicians Follow their Adversaries?

A friend of mine posed this question to me and I think many politicians wonder the same thing.  Yes, politicians, you should follow your opponents and those who are outspoken against you and/or your candidacy for three reasons

7 Tips for Driving Targeted Traffic with Twitter

Social media has many uses—from making contacts to performing customer service—but driving quality traffic to your site is Twitter’s secret weapon.  The big question is this: How can we get more of that lovely attention we crave?

Viral Growth Trumps Lots of Faux Followers

Many brands and idea promoters are in a hurry to rack up as many Facebook fans and Twitter followers as they possibly can. Hundreds of thousands if possible.

A lot of these fans and followers are faux.

And now for your post-President's Day dose of humor -

Republican Rappers Get Jiggy next to cutout of Ronald Reagan

This is pretty good. A couple of guys calling themselves the Young Cons are taking to YouTube with their Republican raps. A little weird that they dance around a cut-out of Ronald Reagan, but dropping a remix of Reagan quotes into their track makes for a nice touch.

The Second Cup: Stop the Negativity

Posted by Meghann Olshefski
Fri, 2010-02-12 14:56

The Roles of Facebook and Twitter in Social Media Marketing

Social Media marketing is rapidly earning a role in the integrated marketing mix of small and enterprise businesses and as such, it’s transforming every division from the inside out. What starts with one champion in any given division, be it customer service, marketing, public relations, advertising, interactive, et al, eventually inspires an entire organization to socialize. What starts with one, a domino effect usually ensues toppling each department, gaining momentum, and triggering a sense of urgency through its path. And, it also marks the beginning of our journey through the ten stages of social media integration.

Understanding the Buzz For Your Business

Google’s Tuesday release of Buzz, a new social networking component to its ever-growing suite of web tools, has kept the internet busy with debate over how Buzz will compete with major social network players Twitter and Facebook for users’ correspondence with friends and contacts.

Data Shows that Negative Remarks Lead to Fewer Followers

Continuing my series of TweetPsych based data points, this is based on analysis of over 100,000 accounts and looks at the “Negative Remarks” category. Negative remarks include things like sadness, aggression, negative emotions and feelings, and morbid comments.

The Second Cup: Happy Birthday Flickr

Posted by Meghann Olshefski
Thu, 2010-02-11 10:54

The Secrets of YouTube Marketing Revealed

I bet you only use YouTube when your 10-year-old daughter wants you to watch some cute pet videos, right?

But you would never think of using it to market your business.

If I told you that YouTube has a ‘Science & Technology’ category, a ‘How To’ category, and an ‘Education’ category, can you begin to see the possibilities?

Facebook Wants to Be Your One True Log-In

Facebook and AOL announced last night a partnership that will integrate a user's Facebook friends into their AOL Instant Messenger. The announcement came on a day when Google announced its new attempt at capturing your social attention with Google Buzz and Yahoo! reminded us from the outskirts that they've been at this game for a year now.
According to Mercury News, about 70% of AOL users also use Facebook and the move is a sign of where AOL is heading, but we wonder if it isn't more a sign of where Facebook is heading and has been all along. 

Happy Birthday Flickr

Popular photo sharing social network Flickr has been launched back in February 2004 by a Vancouver-based company Ludicorp. It took one year for Yahoo to acquire Flickr, and among the company’s many acquisitions, Flickr definitely stands as one of the most successful.

4 Elements of Successful Business Web Presence

What’s the most important piece of your business’s web presence? Your website, of course.

Creating a website requires a good deal of thought; it’s important to plan what information you want on the site, what the layout will look like, and how you’ll connect each piece together.

Think of your website as your hub; it’s what people will see when they look for you. Here are four elements of a successful business web presence that can help ensure that your first impression is a good one.

 

State Party to Host YouTube/Facebook Forum

Posted by Meghann Olshefski
Thu, 2010-02-11 10:24

Yesterday, I got an email from the Pennsylvania Republican Party asking me to participate in an online forum to ask state-wide primary candidates key questions.

It's encouraging to see a state political party hosting an interactive forum for Pennsylvania constituents. Is this the first of its kind? I'm not sure - but it's a step in the right direction and a sign that the urgency to get top political leaders to utilize modern and direct media is working.

Would you like to ask your 2010 GOP statewide candidates a question?

If so, then we have the contest for you!

From now until Thursday at 7:00 p.m., the Republican Party of Pennsylvania will be accepting Youtube videos and question postings. The videos will be of you asking the candidates a question. The questions must be addressed to the candidates running for: U.S. Senate, Governor or Lt. Governor. (ex. Hello, my name is ______ and I have a question for the candidates running for U.S. Senate.)

You may submit your videos by posting them on our facebook fan page: www.facebook.com/republicanpartyofpennsylvania.

If you have a question, but don’t want to submit a video, that’s fine too!  Just post your question to our Facebook wall or email it to questions@pagop.org!

Just ask your question, record it and post your video. We will review each of the submissions and select one to ask the candidates for each particular office at our upcoming meeting this weekend in Harrisburg, which you can view live on PCN!