Debt Collectors Using Cute Chicks On Facebook As Bait
posted by Laurenc on May 11th, 2009Campaign Strategy: Debt Collectors Using Cute Chicks On Facebook As Bait
Debt collectors are using cute chicks as bait on Facebook to track down and keep track of debtors. For some reason, someone at CBV collections decided to publish the truth behind the facebook persona “Jenny Anderson,” alerting all of her 658 friends that she was the tool of professional skiptracers.
Here is the story from Facebook user “Brian.”
About four months ago due to a forgotten bill I became a client of CBV Collections in Vancouver. I made my payments on time, and had no issues. A little bit afterward, “Jenny Anderson” added me as a friend on Facebook. As I did not want to be rude (and she was a cute girl), I accepted her as a friend. At the time no connection in my mind formed.
This morning, in my news feed, her status line was changed to:
“haha you guys i tricked you all my name is actually Emily and i work for cbv collections as a skip tracer i bet you guys got calls from them saying you owe money thats all my doing
you want to call and bitch? i dare you to call me 604-[redacted]!!! I wait to hear from you
Judging by the amount of friends she has (over 600), it looks like her ruse worked. Just another example of how sneaky collection agencies can get to keep track of their debtors. I am curious to see how few friends she has over the next few days.
Beware of random people adding you on Facebook…. it might be people (or companies) up to no good trying to keep tabs on you, or collecting information about you. From now on I’ll be a lot more careful about whom I accept as friends.
I’m also curious to know why she decided to blow her cover, especially in such an unprofessional way. Was she drunk? Did she feel the urge to brag? Was it a friend or colleague blowing her cover for her?
To gain more information, Brian asked “Jenny” for an interview, she acepted, and here is what transpired:
1:55 Bryan: May I have your full name, please
1:55pm Jenny: why?
1:56pm Bryan: Because I am filing a formal complaint
1:56pm Jenny:
1:56pm Bryan: And you are a Skip Tracer with CBV collections?
1:56pm Jenny: supervisor
1:56pm Bryan: Supervisor, sorry.
1:56pm Jenny: Skip trace supervisor hey no worries
1:57pm Bryan: Can I also have the name and contact information of your immediate supervisor, just for my records
1:57pmJenny: hmm andrew conely his number i dont know just good cbv collections you’ll find the website
1:57pmBryan: Okay cool, thanks… I appreciate your help
1:57pmJenny: no worries
2:00pmBryan: So you say you got approval from your company to use Facebook to track down clients, correct?
2:03pmJenny: uh yah well from hr
2:03pmBryan: Did she give you permission to let people know who you are, and approve the wording in your status line?
2:03pmJenny: of coarse not
2:03pmJenny: you got a call from us didnt you
2:04pmBryan: Can you explain what that means?
2:05pmJenny: i just know alot about that company ok no worries
2:05pmBryan: What does that mean?
2:05pmJenny: i gtg now if you see me on again you can msg me
2:05pmBryan: Please, I have a few more questions
2:05pmJenny: lol if you havent figured it out, i am not emily i am just a ltitle birdy i got in to this account through my sources
2:06pmBryan: So you are denying that you are Emily Scarfo, Skip Trace Supervisor for CBV collections?
2:06pmJenny: but i know about this account of coarse why would emily in her righ tmind do this? but you did get a call from cbv and this is how she found you?
2:06pmJenny: but im bored of all this i am gonna go
2:07pmBryan: Are tactics like this common place in your company?
2:07pmJenny: its not my company
2:07pmBryan: Please, I only have a few more questions, Emily
2:07pmJenny: I AM NOT EMILY goly
2:07pmBryan: I should tell you that I am a reporter, and I am doing a story about this, Emily. I am legally bound to tell you this
2:08pmJenny: really
2:08pmJenny:ok well i am not emily
2:08pmBryan: If you like, we can speak about this on the telephone
2:08pmJenny: i dont know f i trust anyone online
2:08pmJenny: and who i f i may ask do you report for?
2:09pmBryan: I am a freelance reporter, who writes for various publications, mainly for [redacted]
2:09pmJenny: your a photographer, not a reporter
2:09pmJenny:see you lie
2:09pmJenny: oh nvm
2:09pmBryan: I am also a freelance reporter
2:10pmJenny: so this is in alberta?
2:10pmJenny: or nation wide?
2:10pmBryan: Take a look at my profile, You will see that I have several stories and photographs printed newspapers and magazines around the world
2:10pmJenny: hmm ok
2:10pmJenny: i am not emly
2:10pmJenny: so please dont refer to me as such
2:10pmBryan: Why did you tell me you were Emily Scarfo, Skip Trace
Supervisor as CBV Collections?2:11pmJenny: i will help you but thats it
2:11pmJenny: because
2:11pmJenny: the person who made this account is emily scarfo
2:11pmJenny: well acctually
2:11pmBryan: Then who are you?
2:11pmJenny: she had someone do it for her
2:11pmBryan: And why are you impersonating Emily?
2:11pmJenny: but she is the one who uses it
2:11pmJenny: whyu is she impersonating jenny?
2:11pmBryan: That is between her and her company. The main concern of my article is the privacy concerns. I now have a list of over 600 people who are supposedly clients of a collection agency
2:13pmJenny: she is cruel i am sick of people getting tricked on this account
2:13pmJenny: no matter how much they owe
2:13pmJenny: no matter how much they owe
2:13pmJenny: my internet sucks though
2:13pmBryan: Okay, so who are you?
2:13pmBryan: Facebook chat is not the greatest
2:13pmJenny: so if ytou have no more questions
2:13pmJenny:i wont tell you who i am
2:13pmBryan: Oh, I have many questions
2:14pmJenny: i dont need to be famous
2:14pmBryan: So you are not Emily Scarfo, you are just someone who
hacked her account2:14pmJenny: her fake account
2:14pmJenny: but yes
2:14pmJenny: dont worry i dont acctually know how to hack
2:14pmBryan: Are you an associate of hers? Do you work for CBV Collections?
2:14pmJenny: i just knew the password to the fake e-mail attached to
this account2:14pmJenny: no
2:14pmJenny: hmm why does it matter who i am
2:15pmBryan: Are you a client of CBV?
2:15pmBryan:Because I am curious about why you did this
2:15pmBryan:About why you blew her cover
2:15pmJenny: the more i tell you the more she knows who i am
2:15pm Jenny: did you not get it
2:15pm Jenny: SHE IS TRICKING PEOPLE
2:16pm Bryan: And why you are suddenly claiming not to be Emily,
despite the fact a few moments ago you knew her Supervisor?2:17pm Jenny is offline.
So despite the time spent by Brian, there is now actuall conclusion. There seem to be two possible explanations:
- “Jenny” realized that Emily was working for a credit agency and decided to “out” her
- “Jenny” does not exist, and the answers in the interview were meant to try to throw the reporter, Brian, off track.
Either way you look at it it is a BAD situation. Unfortunately, people throw all sorts of personal information up on Facebook that can be very useful if you’re trying to get in touch with them, or hunt them down. Phone numbers, email addresses, web pages, messages that mention your whereabouts, all of this is potentially useful to a professional skiptracer. The trick is that some people set their profile pages as private and you have to be their friend to see it. So, as a debt collection agency, just make a profile with a cute chick in it, put a plausible amount of real content in it, and have her friend the people you want to keep tabs on.
What a dissapointing way to see companies using social media. Trickery will not work in this space – transparency is key and “fake” profiles can be easily seen through by users. Unfortunately in this instance, no one caught on to the problem until it was too late. 600+ “friends” too late.
Do you have an example of brands using Social Media in the WRONG way? I would love to hear it! Leave me a comment with your story.
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Why Your Market Research Budgets Should Increase, Not Decrease
posted by Laurenc on May 4th, 2009Campaign Strategies: Why Your Market Research Budgets Should Increase, Not Decrease
In a recent article from eMarketer, the Association of National Advertisers reported a drop in spending for overall media and advertising budgets. The ANA survey indicates that 77% of US advertisers are cutting their media spending this year. For many, those cuts will lead to a commensurate drop in market research funding, since the two items are usually found together under the same umbrella marketing budget. Here are some highlights from the article.
—David Jones, global CEO, Euro RSCG, in Advertising Age, February 16, 2009
According to a global study conducted by AdMedia Partners, only 27% of marketers planned to increase their spending on market research this year, while an almost equal 23% said they were expecting a decrease.
With another 50% of respondents in the study planning to hold the line on spending, the net gain comes to a scant 4% of marketers.
Even those specifically responsible for buying market research are looking at cuts during this troubled year.
In the “2009 Annual Survey of Market Research Professionals,” from MarketResearchCareers.com, buyers expected their research budgets to be cut by an average of 9.5%, reversing a 20-year trend of spending increases. They anticipated use of syndicated research to fall from 81% in 2008 to 75% in 2009.
So the results, in terms of budgets, are somewhat mixed. Some organizations are seeing this time as an opportunity to increase spending, while others are looking to cut.
Here are three reasons why you might want to put yourself in the “increase” (or at least “maintain”) market research camp:
- With the economy clouding the future, why throw away your flashlight when it could shine on intriguing consumer insights, hot technology trends and market opportunities?The market is bleak out there, yet there are always opportunities lurking—if you have the tools to find them. Market research can often help you uncover little gems of insight that, when acted on, can connect you more closely with your customer or reveal new markets entirely.As cited in the March 23 issue of BusinessWeek, MasterCard learned from market research that certain consumer technology adoption trends were occurring in emerging countries, and these were creating new and exciting growth opportunities for the industry—and for MasterCard in particular.Other marketers, somewhat surprisingly, are choosing this year to aggressively boost their spending in social media marketing—because a wealth of research data from numerous sources is making a very compelling business argument for them to do so.Besides, when you have to watch every dollar you spend on marketing, don’t you want to be fully informed as to how best to spend that dollar?
- Market research can help you preserve budgets, projects and even people.One of our clients in the pharmaceutical industry shared with me a fascinating story. When she and her team were threatened with nasty budget cuts that would decimate their spending on new media campaigns, as well as eliminate some of her core staff, she went straight to work. Using her subscription access to eMarketer, she was able to build a solid, data-supported case for upper management that ultimately convinced them to restore her budgets, including her staff.In tough times, you need all the data artillery you can get your hands on, whether you get it from us or from one of the many other solid, dependable research sources out there. Market research data and insights—when used properly—can grease the wheels of corporate acceptance for proposals, presentations, recommendations, new business pitches and even entire marketing budgets.
- Prepare for better times ahead.You are not alone if your media and marketing budgets have been hacked into unrecognizable shapes. But why not use this temporary cutback as an opportunity to invest in the future? By immersing yourself and your team in market research data, focusing on up-and-coming trends and emerging consumer insights, you will be at the ready with “go-to-market” action plans when the budget ax is finally lifted.That time may be coming sooner than you expect.
Here at eMarketer, we practice what we preach. We are actively reading, absorbing and applying data insights from our market reports, articles, interviews and videos to constantly improve the content and service we provide for our clients.
—Gian Fulgoni, Chairman, comScore
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“Dandy” Profile Management Tool
posted by Laurenc on May 1st, 2009Campaign Strategy: “Dandy” New Profile Management Tool
This morning I would like to take the time to introduce you to a new profile management tool that has successfully cut down the amount of time I have to spend jumping from social networking profile to profile online. It is an application called DandyID, and it has seriously helped me keep all of my social profiles organized and up to date. You can find my DandyID profile here.
DandyID is a service that allows users to collect, manage and share their online identities. DandyID provides a central access point for discovering and managing users’ identity data, and making it portable. Sara Czyzewicz co-founder of Olive Interactive LLC, the interactive group who developed DandyID, exponds “By identity data, we are referring to where else users exist online; we support 154 sites, and that number grows each month. For example, if site A, B and C were synced with DandyID, and a user provides their identity data to site A, that data is automatically sent to site B and C. Users can manage which sites are “synced” or not as well – perhaps she doesn’t want site C to receive data updates.”
Another great feature of DandyID is that it provides developers and site owners with their own an API, or application programming interface, in order to implement user data collection and syncing abilities with their data source. This video from DandyID explains their services further.
What excites me, however, is that this service provides complete organization of all of your social profiles, giving you ONE jumping off point to manage accounts. It also provides a great way to promoting your profiles. If you send people to your DandyID profile, they then have the ability to view all of your other profiles listed with DandyID.
DandyID currently supports over 250 services including:
- 12seconds
- ActiveRain
- AIM
- Amazon
- Amazon Wish List
- Bebo
- Blip.fm
- Blip.tv
- Blogger
- CafePress
- Delicious
- Digg
- Ebay
- Etsy
- Flickr
- FriendFeed
- Friendster
- Furl
- Google Reader
- Grabb.it
- Groovr
- Hulu
- Humble Voice
- identi.ca
- Jaiku
- last.fm
- LiveJournal
- Ma.gnolia
- My Mashable
- Meetup
- myOpenID
- MySpace
- Ning
- Pownce
- Propeller
- SlideShare
- SocialURL
- Squidoo
- Stumbleupon
- Technorati
- TripAdvisor
- Tripit
- TV.com
- Ustream.tv
- Wikipedia English
- Wikipedia Spanish
- WordPress.com
- Xanga
- Xbox LIVE
- YouTube
Spending Increases for Online Video Production
posted by Laurenc on April 27th, 2009Campaign Strategy: Spending Increases for Online Video Production
eMarketer recently released a study on online video spending, estimating that by 2012 the US audience alone will reach 190 million—88% of the Internet user population.
Here is an excerpt of the report:
Although online video ad spending has not grown as swiftly as originally predicted, looking beyond 2010 huge additional sums will be spent every year, reaching nearly $6 billion in 2013.
Two factors are driving the growth: more trusted video content to sustain advertising and more large advertisers (brand marketers, mainly) entering the market.
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Using Facebook & LinkedIn to Poll Potential Customers
posted by Laurenc on April 10th, 2009Campaign Strategy: Using Facebook & LinkedIn to Poll Potential Customers
One of the most valuable tools Facebook and LinkedIn offer to their users is the ability to send out polls on different topics. Social networks are filled with users who are screaming out to talk to companies and brands about their products/services. They all have opinions, and they can all help you objectively look at your products/services to discover room for improvement, changes that need to be made, or even offer up ides for new products…All you have to do is ask.
Ed Horrell, of the Memphis Business Journal expounds, “Regardless of the type of business you are in, getting input from your customers is critical to your success. I don’t care how long or how successful you as an individual may be, you will never cease to better your business my learning from your customers. This is one of the first steps to successful improvement of customer service.”
To help you start the conversation, Facebook offers a poll application, by Kresma Design, that you can place on your profile to reach out and gain valuable information on your friend’s opinions. The polling feature is design friendly and easy to use, making it an extremely valuable tool to include in your profile. LinkedIn Polls, see below for an example,offers a similar poll application, that allows you to upload polls to your profile and request your connections to vote for their opinion. The only limits I see to the functionality of these systems is the lack of ability to send out open ended questions (no feedback or other answers are allowed), and Facebook only allows you to send out your poll to a 25 people, limiting your reach. Despite these limitations, polls can still be an extremely beneficial tool to utilize in your campaign.
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Common Mistakes of Measuring Social Media Success
posted by Laurenc on April 6th, 2009Campaign Strategy: Common Mistakes of Measuring Social Media Success
One of the hardest things about designing and implementing a social media strategy can be learning how to effectively measure the success of your campaign. “It’s hard to get analysis right,” says Gary Angel in a post at the SemAngel blog. “[And] even when you do, it’s hard to get it consistently right.” My colleague JeanAnn wrote about the challenges of measuring success in one of her recent posts, Social Metrics: The Struggle Continues, writing “There are a couple of things that make tracking and quantifying social media campaigns a challenge. And it may be that until those factors change, the measurements will continue to be imperfect.”
One main reason why measuring social media metrics comes so hard to so many people is because they fail to establish measurements of success before the campaign begins. Gary Angel continues, “[I]t’s always possible to find some evidence of success when you are allowed to choose the measure of success after the fact,” he notes
Other common pitfalls include:
- Allowing vendors to measure their own performance. “It isn’t an issue of questioning a vendor’s honesty; rather, says Angel, any self-interested party is naturally inclined to read data in the most positive—and, likely, least helpful—light.” – Gary This is also an important subject to discuss when choosing the right agency for you and your business. Social American works with their customers to define campaign goals and sets up metrics to measure success before campaigns begin.
- Conducting analysis without the aid of a professional statistician. According to Angel, this doesn’t mean you need an entire team. “But if you have a team generating reporting and analysis on a regular basis,” he says, “you need at least one gate-keeper reviewing it and quashing the most abusive practices.”- Gary
- Neglecting to tell an analyst that something has changed. “If your technology and marketing managers don’t coordinate with those who study your data, critical insights might be lost.” – Gary
- Not defining what Success means. “We know that online marketing increases brand awareness and brings in new customers, but it isn’t a typical ROI marketing model. How do we quantify success and set benchmarks that are realistic and effective? Social Media Marketers are still creating common definitions and acceptable standards for our burgeoning profession.” – JeanAnn
The important thing to remember above all is that “good process is very much about protecting ourselves from the things that cause mistakes so that we have a chance to be consistently correct,” says Angel. Don’t be afraid to modify your metrics strategy if you need to, but make sure you have a solid measurement plan, complete with a list of tools to measure your campaigns success, set up before your strategy kicks off.
For additional information on this topic read:
Social Media Metrics: The Struggle Continues
How to Set Benchmarks for Online Marketing, Part I
Tools for Effective Social Media Measurement
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Twitter and Follower Spam
posted by Jeanannv on April 2nd, 2009It is no secret that I am a die-hard fan of Twitter. I think it has great potential as a channel in an online marketing campaign. But there are some aspects of it that drive me absolutely nuts. This particular rant (prepare yourselves) is about Twitter follower spam and the accompanying techniques. I send out random snarky comments about it on the site, but since I only have 140 characters, I haven’t been able to fully express my frustration. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is what a blog is all about…
Without further ado, here is my top “Twitter and Follower Spam” monologue:
- Stop using Twitter follow bots to follow thousands of people, then unfollow the ones that don’t follow you (thanks to Dharmesh Shah on Mashable for so succinctly summing that up).
- Enough of the following tons of people, then immediately dropping people after they return the favor. What is this all about? Seriously people.
- The thing where you follow me, I don’t follow you, then you unfollow and follow me again to somehow trick me into following? Yeah, not so much.
- And the other thing where I stop following your spammy profile, then you drop me and re-add with the hopes that I will re-add? Hate it.
- Please. Stop sending me auto-thanks when I follow you. Seriously, that is the first tip that you are a spammer. NOBODY LIKES IT!
- And if you are going to send me an auto-thanks, do not send me a link to your blog, free giveaway, whatever.
- There are people who use auto-follow scripts and will respond to your request, regardless. I am not one of them.
- If I come to your profile and you have 10,000 followers and 15 posts…not a chance that I am going to be a part of that mess.
- And, if you have thousands of followers and you have only a handful of people you follow, I probably won’t follow you either…unless you are #Oprah.
This is but a short list of the crazy things that spammers are doing to muck up our airwaves. And while we can’t control what they choose to do, we can control what we choose to do. Instead of tolerating it, stop following these people. In the end, it will make a better Twitter for all of us.
Engaging Moms With Social Media p.2
posted by Laurenc on April 1st, 2009Campaign Strategy: Engaging Moms With Social Media p.2
In yesterday’s post, I wrote about the prescence of Moms in the online space. “Moms make up one of the largest online groups emerging on social media sites, just their presence on Facebook alone has boomed over the past six months. This massive audience is vocal, eager to learn about and try new products, and eager to share that product’s review with all of their friends.”
“Social media and text messaging, instant messaging and gaming, now used by the majority of digital moms, are no longer niche activities,” says the report. “It will be necessary for marketers to embrace channels that engage more than 50 percent of all digital moms, particularly as mass marketing channels shrink.” Right now, today’s Mom Market holds the key to over $2.1 trillion dollars in annual US spending.
Connecting with Moms in the online space can be tricky. These women’s schedules are full, and their circles are tight, so to break in you must really prove your value to the group. MomWise, an marketing agency that specifically targets Moms expounds “Whether it’s about nutrition, starting school, or worrying about teenagers driving safely, Moms have a lot on their minds. Have you ever tried shopping with a long grocery list, an irritable 2-year-old and a need to be at kindergarten pick-up in an hour? We thought not. The way Moms shop is unique, both on-line and in-store.”
Here are some quick facts, from M2Moms and Marketing With Moms, about Moms to help you understand the way they think and shop:
- Moms buy for their children… they buy for the home…and they also buy for themselves.
- Moms buy everything from diapers to divans, lipstick to laptops, moisturizers to mini-vans, and soup to nuts…
- 60% of Moms feel that marketers are ignoring their needs.
- 73% of Moms feel that advertisers don’t really understand what its like to be a Mom.
- 80% of moms have watched an online video in the last week
- 87% of moms read blogs
- 90% of mothers use the same products at home and the office
- 5 million moms own their own business
- 88% of mothers refer to themselves as household CFO
- For the first time in history, four generations of mothers comprise the Mom Market
So how do you reach this busy audience?
- Determine your Mommy Target Market: For the first time in history, we are now seeing four generations of Moms in today’s market. Who are you looking to talk to? Is it Gen X moms with new babies or boomers with teens? Knowing how you need to deliver to your message will help you to shrink the universe of 83 million moms.
- Go where the Moms are. Look for social networks that specifically target Moms, such as CafeMom, ConnectingMoms, MothersClick, and Mayas Mom.
- Don’t be afraid of engaging using new technologies: Never before have so many moms researched a product or service online. Moms don’t have time to go to stores to shop around, nor do they want to bring their kids to the store if they don’t have to.
- Begin by developing a relationship with online Moms: Marketing with Moms continues: “Today more than ever, taking the time to establish meaningful relationships is imperative, particularly with mommy bloggers. The backlash that can occur when public relations and marketing agencies don’t take the time to get to know their target consumers has been well chronicled online in blog posts, tweets and social networks. Nothing can ignite the fuse between bloggers and marketers faster than an irrelevant press release or pitch sent blindly to a mom blogger.”
- Find your Mom Mavens: “You’ve heard about the power of word of mouth and you’ve read the headlines about Mom Influencers. Also known as the “Go-To” moms, these women share information on products, services and retailers regularly with other moms. As you might guess, Mom Mavens earn their spot at the top of the pyramid of peers from their extensive breath of knowledge. We have identified that Mom Mavens share common behaviors and traits that make them an influencer.”
- Lastly, teach them something new: Moms use the internet to educate themselves. Offer valuable content that moms can reference as a way to bring them to your site.
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Engaging Moms With Social Media
posted by Laurenc on March 31st, 2009Campaign Strategy: Engaging Moms With Social Media
Moms make up one of the largest online groups emerging on social media sites, just their presence on Facebook alone has boomed over the past six months. This massive audience is vocal, eager to learn about and try new products, and eager to share that product’s review with all of their friends.
According to comScore, year-over-year growth of women 25-54 with children in the household has gone up nearly 50 percent on Facebook since November of 2007. Café Mom, a social network specifically for moms, has seen equally impressive growth, albeit from a smaller base of 34 percent. Further, MySpace continues to gain strength among online moms, and while MySpace’s 4 percent growth was slower than rival Facebook’s, MySpace still attracts more moms on a monthly basis overall. There are also several smaller social nets dedicated to women and moms, like SisterWoman, that are likely to have experienced similar growth over the past year. A 2008 study from MindShare estimated the number of moms on social networks to be around 33 million, and that number has only gone up since then.
In another important fact, discovered by John Gray of iMedia, we learn that as the sheer number of moms on social nets climbs, so does the amount of time spent on these sites overall. The average MySpace mom spends more than 12 hours on the site per week, according to a recent MySpace study. Interestingly, the same medium that women are spending more time with is the one that 75 percent of moms voted saved them time, according to the same MindShare study. And beyond saving them time, moms selected the internet as their second favorite pastime behind reading.
In the “Digital Mom” report, co-written by Razorfish and CafeMom, purports to give marketers insights into the most effective ways to engage Web- and mobile-adept mothers. The first section of the report is based on surveys of 1,500 women with at least one child in their homes, who tried at least two “emerging technologies” and who researched or bought something online in the past 90 days. The second part focused on 1,740 active CafeMom members and included the site’s behavioral and usage data.
The study says women with children place high value on social media, mobile and other digital technologies “as a convenient means to stay connected, seek advice and information, shop and learn about products, meet others like themselves and simplify the many dimensions of their lives.” The researchers found that 47 percent of the moms with children 12 and older use social networks to monitor their children.
These mothers are much more likely to watch online video than mothers with kids under 12, says the study. It also says the age of the mothers plays a big part in the moms’ level of comfort with “newer communication platforms,” including social networks, SMS and mobile browsing, with those under 35 being significantly more likely to use the latest technologies. Older mothers, those 45 and beyond, more often use the Web to access informational tools and sites, such as news sites and online consumer reviews, says the report.
“Social media and text messaging, instant messaging and gaming, now used by the majority of digital moms, are no longer niche activities,” says the report. “It will be necessary for marketers to embrace channels that engage more than 50 percent of all digital moms, particularly as mass marketing channels shrink.”
Stay tuned for tomorrow’s post where I will show you where to find the Moms, and how to engage with them online!
7 Ways to Use Social Bookmarking Sites
posted by Jeanannv on March 25th, 2009It seems like we have relegated social bookmarking sites to one of two categories: 1) fill them with links to your blog for the small amount of link juice they offer and 2) use voting bookmarking sites to send tons of (usually non sticky) traffic to your blog. Both of which are fine as a part of an overall online marketing strategy, but there are other roles these sites can play. Here are a few I recommend:
- Build a resource-specific account and share the link with your customers. This is a huge value add for people
who aren’t web savvy or who don’t have the time to spend searching for tons of different sites. - Use sites like Delicious for market research. Find out what sites people are saving for what topics. You can also look up a url and find out how many people have bookmarked it. This is helpful in knowing what articles you have written that are most popular.
- Build a keyword list. Most people don’t think of searching tags on bookmarking sites as a tool for building their keyword list, but I love it as a secondary resource to tools like Adwords. This gives you two levels of information: the language people are using to find you and the language they are assigning to save your work.
- Identify trends via most commonly used or voted up features. These sites can tell you the hot topics, as well as the long, slow burn topics. Both of which are helpful in crafting marketing messages and blog posts.
- Connect with customers. By using a topical search, you can find people who are reading information about your field…talk about specific customer research.
- Follow other people’s bookmarks to broaden your knowledge about a subject without having to do the extra research.
- Build a collaborative account. Create a shared knowledge space where customers can contribute to the larger knowledge base. It is a great strategy for creating ownership in an unobtrusive way.
These are just 7 of the ways to use social bookmarking sites (aside from the traditional mark and move on methods. These platforms are treasure troves of information, give them a second look and see if they don’t have a role in your marketing strategy.
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