About a month ago we blogged about the SNS’s (Scottish Newspaper Society) complaints against the BBC and one of those complaints, at that time,  had to do with the BBC not using its funds appropriately — so says the SNS.  (The BBC is a publicly funded initiative, originally created to to supplement news content that the commercial news groups could not provide).  Nonetheless, we, for the first time see some legitimacy in the SNS remarks.  It turns out that the BBC  has spent an incredible amount of time in legal battles with HarperCollins, as the publisher wants to release a book disclosing the identity of “The Stig”, a secretive test driver on the hugely popular BBC show TopGear.

From the BBC’s perspective, releasing the identity will take away from the very fundamentals of the TopGear show, as the enigma of  ’The Stig’ is now an integral part of the shows success.  Unfortunately for the BBC however, there is this little thing called ‘free speech’ and if ‘The Stig’ wants to release his identity, ‘The Stig’ can.

It boggles my mind why the BBC would not have made keeping the identity of ‘The Stig’ confidential, a clause in the drivers contract.  Wouldn’t that have made things a lot easier.

Oh, and by the way, ‘The Stig’s’ real name is Ben Collins.

We’ve said often that western companies and properties will find it difficult to exist on the other side of the pond, if those making the decisions were not willing to flex on their at home rules and regulations.  This is why eBay pulled out of the Japanese market in 2002 and instead formed an agreement with Yahoo! to have its users purchase eBay products through Yahoo! Japan.    This prophetic reality comes due again as we see that Yahoos! Overture has lost its contract with NHN, the operators of the largest search engine (Naver) in Korea.  “The search advertising business in Korea is changing fast,” said Kim Sang-hun, NHN’s chief executive officer. “[Unlike Overture], our search advertising service will allow advertisers more freedom in choosing how they want exposure, and that will let them enjoy the maximum advertising effects possible.”

NHN has decided to take their search marketing business in house and it will be handled by a sister division.  This move will undoubtedly help the search engine save a few dollars as the rev share agreements with Overture will be no longer.

What Yahoo! must be asking itself is; are the other two (Daum and SK Communications- [Nate]), large search engines in Korea, which Overture coincidentally currently serves, planning a similar exodus.

If you have ever had a hard time describing the benefits to social media integration to one of your business clients, the FlowTown concept and model may just be able to help you.  See, they’ve been in the news recently, given their recent injection of funds from investors and it was because of this that I decided to dig deeper into their core offerings.

While not being fond of the name FlowTown (it reminds me of the name of a dance group on Americas Got Talent), their suite of business tools are impressive.  FlowTown enables a business owner to take their client email list and search for matches on social media sites. Once the business owner has found their client(s) across the various mediums, they are able to communicate special interest, marketing, sales or product specific messages, using these social tools.  Business owners have the ability to choose between Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, LinkedIn, MySpace  (may not find too many of your clients there anymore), and StumbleUpon, thus taking the clients email campaign one step further.  In addition to the obvious of sending quick communications to clients via a ‘current’ platform, once businesses gain their clients as followers or fans, they will be able to gain additional insight on their customers — more than any blanket survey could ever do.

FlowTown also does enable for more than the simple targeted channel messaging, as business owners can also get information on their clients Klout or influence levels, further allowing them to see which of their clients have a higher propensity to elevate their business via social media.  It may sound overwhelming to a first-timer, but don’t worry, all of the above is made easier to decipher with FlowTown’s reporting suit

Many underestimate the power of being able to communicate on a personal, candid and informal way with clients via social media tools, but this is where trust is often gained, and truths about your band perception come out.   FlowTown’s application and tools undoubtedly place a lot of intelligence into a business owners hands, in an easy, tactile, fashion.  This is a must discover if you are a business owner.

FlowTown does have a free introductory offer that allows businesses to try their tool, at no charge, using 50 contacts – see more here.  Longer term packages do range in price from $17 per month to $197.

According to KingFishMedia, social media sites are becoming an ever important marketing tool for businesses, to the tune of mass adoption.

It is exciting to see the business adoption and transfer to using media that allows companies to express themselves, in a personalized manner, to their incumbent clients and potentials.  However, deeper analysis of the data provided by KingFish shows that the large majority of businesses are using social media platforms to provide brand related messages that unless you’ve made a believer of a user, brand motivated messaging really does you no good.  Instead we encourage businesses to:

• the areas of their business they wish to extend to social platforms
• Ensure the areas chosen have the appropriate fit and can encourage excitement and a sense of pushed voluntary consumption from online users
• Understand the social goals of each of the desired segments
• Have your goals drive your messaging strategy (yes you need one of those)
• Lastly, have clear guidelines of how your key employees represent your brand on social networks, if using their own handle and mentioning brand or brand related assets or initiatives.

Fascinating.  We just learned today that the Newspaper Association of America has to date spent over $800k in lobbying the US Senate on behalf of its members, related to ‘The Free Flow Information Act’.  The definition of the Act on government sites is as follows “A bill to maintain the free flow of information to the public by providing conditions for the federally compelled disclosure of information by certain persons connected with the news media.”.

Coming from the sales and new media side of a publishers business, the Act itself doesn’t fascinate me, but the representation that newspapers are receiving from the NAA does.

The NAA charges newspapers a decent sum in annual membership dues, which varies depending on newspaper circulation and size, so it’s good to see the dollars put forth to champion a newspaper publishers cause.

The NAA was formed on June 1, 1992, by the merger of seven newspaper associations. The associations included in the NAA merger were, the American Newspaper Publishers Association (founded in 1887), the Newspaper Advertising Bureau, the Association of Newspaper Classified Advertising Managers, the International Circulation Managers Association, the International Newspapers Advertising and Marketing Executives, the Newspaper Advertising Co-op Network, and the Newspaper Research Council.

If you have been following our posts, you will know by now that we are not huge fans of the Associated Press folk, but today, we do give them credit for at least attempting to think out of the box, no matter how failed the attempt may have been.

It turns out that the AP had been in lengthy talks with Pet Holdings Inc., an owner of several network blogs designed to allow cat lovers to post silly feline pictures, or dare devils to post silly and yet painful stunts that they’ve done.  The deal was to use Pet Holdings and its blogs to syndicate AP content.  Given the nature of the content on the Pet Holdings’ site, whose true company URL is cheezburger.com by the way,  the move seems a bit of desperation, unless, and this was very unlikely to happen, the AP created a new content stream that aligned itself with the themes of these sites – something the AP would think beneath them.  We obviously do not agree, what would have been so wrong with the AP creating a spin off division that focused on lighter-fare news content that could be used for this type of syndication partnership.  In our minds they would have opened up another revenue and audience stream. — Again not a bad thing.

See a sample video from the Fail Blog, one of the Pet Holdings properties:

In June, the University of Tennessee received $356k in grant money to work on digitizing Tennessee newspapers and the project is now full steam ahead.

The digitizing of newspapers now seen in Tennessee is not the first initiative of its kind.  Tennessee is actually the 15th  US state to undergo a newspaper digitizing project and is behind the British Library digital project that we reported on, back in May.

The project underway by UT is a part of the National Endowment for the Humanities “Chronicling America” Internet project and is available for viewing here.  The UT group is still actively chronicling newspaper content, but the data made public thus far is quite impressive.

Although there are times where individuals question the place of newspapers in our ever growing and demanding digital world, projects, such as this, remind Web aficionados of the wealth and depth of information that newspapers contain.  Historically, they are irreplaceable and today, their historical content provide even more clarity on past events and adventurous escape for it’s readers.

Well we’ve heard of particular publishers stifling digital and new media progress, but the most recent news out of Scotland’s, Scottish Newspaper Society president is just mind-boggling.

Michael Johnson and the SNS, have taken their complaints about the BBC to the media.  It seems the SNS is upset that the BBC is going down the path of creating smart phone apps.  ’Yes, you read right’.

Johnson holds the argument that the BBC was created to supplement news content that the commercial news groups could not provide.  Now this may have been the initial purpose of the BBC, but it cannot be disputed that today, the BBC is seen as a global news source, covering ground in multiple medias.  Lay users could care less about the original uses of the BBC, because all that matters now is how they fulfill the news consumption space.  With this being the mindset of its users, the BBC would be doing them (the users) and their internal journalists a disservice if they didn’t adopt current and forward-thinking mediums to keep their users engaged and loyal.

I think Johnson and the rest of the SNS are just a wee bit jealous, as the BBC has progressed into more of a news consumption competitor, as opposed to a complimentary partner.

Facebook’s Guide to Small Business Marketing Gives Opportunity to Marketers as a Whole

Posted by Beverly Crandon on 7/22/10 • Categorized as Advertising,Business,Social Media,Web 2.0

Wiley Publishing and Facebook are teaming up together to produce Facebook Guides.  Now normally this type of news is not something we would blog about, we may tweet about it, but not blog about it.  However, what sparked our interest is one of the book titles expected to be released later this year.

The three books planned for release are:

1. The Facebook Guide for People Over 50
2. The Facebook Guide to Small Business Marketing
3. The Facebook Guide for Parents

So, it’s the Facebook Guide to Small Business Marketing that interests us, because we see opportunity here.

Firstly, we’ll say, good on Facebook for using their popularity to get at SMB’s thinking about taking the social advertising plunge.  To a small business owner, Facebook has the three R’s they are looking for; Reach, Recognition, and Relevance.  If an advertising platform can deliver the above three in droves, SMB’s will usually come to the party, expecting their experience there to turn in to high level conversions.

Let’s take a minute to also talk about the level of conversion.  Social media marketing we know is best used to create brand recognition and a sense of buzz around a brands service or products. If a business owner is going into social media marketing thinking that it means immediate conversion to sales, they are going about it in the wrong way.  But it is in this way that Facebook’s small business guide can actually help advertisers who aid SMB’s in their social advertising footprints.   Regardless of who writes the book, real-world examples are needed and ‘coles note’s versions appreciated.  It will be our role to further educate the client on content strategies, branding strategies, bridging the gap between their online social advertising programs and their offline brick and mortar set up.  Having a recognized platform like Facebook write the book, just provides more relevance to the area of social media advertising for SMB’s.

The Social Convergence Cycle

In our minds there are three distinct steps in the customer life cycle, when exposed to a brands social media advertising initiatives.

Reach: a brand creates a wide sweeping campaign that introduces their target audience to who they are, related to a users day to day activity.  At this stage it is important to have laid out a clear content strategy.  Definitely one that does not spam others in the social space, discussing the companies bio.  Instead, the goal should be to communicate relevant interest points that others would find either useful or witty, given the tone of the world.  The key here is to keep what you socially share relevant to the brand, but yet applicable and relevant to the rest of the world.

Acquisition: from an upkeep of brand presence on social platforms, and using a clear content strategy as described above, a brand should start to gain followers who in essence become people who believe in the companies messaging, products and services, given the brands down to earth transparency in communication.  At this stage the brand has now acquired brand ambassadors or at least loyal followers.

Conversion: at some point in the brand followers life cycle, a need may come up that suits the companies product offerings and or services.  It is at this point of the social cycle that those the brand had first Reached, and then Acquired, convert into business.

Continued service of that client will then make them a repeat user (Retention); great service leaves little room for them to think about jumping ship (Loyalty; and as others, even if they haven’t been touched by the brand, are looking for similar services and or products, this users recommendation will be ring out like gold (Word of Mouth).

Zenith Optimedia has raised it’s 2010 advertising forecast,  for the second time this year and newspapers will be happy to know that they are predicted to show growth –  the first time in three years.

Zenith, which is now owned by Publicis, is a large media services group with locations in 72 countries, as a result, their pulse on the ad industry from a national perspective has usually been on the mark if not close to it.

“The largest revision [upward] we made to any media sector was to newspapers,” said Jonathan Barnard, head of publications at Zenith Optimedia. “The first five months have been pretty positive for print. Newspapers have spent a lot of time marketing themselves, such as the Sun during the World Cup, which has held up circulation. However, the second half of the year does not look as strong for the newspaper advertising sector.”

The greatest gain for newspapers during the first six months of 2010 was seen in North America and Western Europe, but developing countries are expected to produce growth rates that will far surpass developed nations in 2011 and onwards.