Happy Tweetsgiving!

Tweetsgiving.org is a project organized by Epic Change to help raise money within a 48-hour period through the power of Social Media.

The objective of Tweetsgiving.org is two-fold. One objective is to spread a little thanks and gratitude (and what better time to do that than at Thanksgiving) and the second objective is to raise money for a school in Tanzania.

The project will run for 48 hours in an attempt to raise $10,000 to build a classroom in Tanzania. The project is already over the 24 hour mark and they have raised over 60% of their goal.

In theory, it would seem like they are on target to reach their objective, but there is a funny thing about the power of Social Media. Once it hits the viral stage, it can explode and turn into something bigger than anyone ever imagined. I have a feeling that we will see much more than $4000 pour in during the last 20+ hours as the news of this project spreads. I hope Epic Change is prepared to expand its project if an influx of cash floods into their coffers. It would be great if they could help in more than one way.

I think this is a great project and I am supporting it by sharing it with other Social Media users. (That’s what we do.) So visit Tweetsgiving.org for more info on how to offer up Thanks for everything you have and to share a bit with those less fortunate than you.

Happy Tweetsgiving!


UPDATE: Tweetsgiving.org surpassed their $10,000 goal by $591. It wasn't the huge surplus that I was expecting but it was still pretty damn good that they could raise over $10,000 in just 48 hours. Kudos to them and good luck to Epic Change on all future fund raising endeavors. Now that they have had success, I'm sure there will be more coming in the future using the power of Social Media.

Mad Mommies Give Motrin A Headache

For anyone who hasn’t been convinced that online marketing and social networks are important to offline businesses, we now have indisputable proof. Last week, there was literally an online explosion in response to a recent ad from Motrin. Here's the ad in case you missed it.

The ad for Motrin pain reliever was an attempt to reach out to moms by painting the picture of a selfless baby-wearing mother who is willing to suffer through back pain in order to better bond with her child. The idea is that Motrin looks after the mom while the mom looks after her baby.

Unfortunately for some, the ad’s tone and particular choice of words came off as offensive and although it had been in circulation since Sept 30, 2008, it caught the attention of some influential bloggers last week who did not appreciate the message Motrin was sending. They began blogging and tweeting (even making a video response) causing the offending ad to spread like wild fire across the Internet - from one tweeter to another, one blog to next. It wasn’t long before thousands were weighing in on the debacle and wondering what they could do. And it didn’t just stop at personal mom blogs. The story made headlines at Forbes, the New York Times and even social media sites like Digg.

Moms, Dads, even men and women who had no children began banding together, rallying for a boycott and sending emails to Motrin to let them know just how they felt about the ad. Their biggest beefs were the narrator’s snarky tone and how the ad seemed to degrade the idea of baby wearing by saying “Supposedly it’s a real bonding experience” and “It totally makes me look like an official mom”. Baby-wearing moms felt the ad made it sound as though there is no real evidence baby-wearing is beneficial and most do it because it’s fashionable. It mocked something mom's felt was important and ended up angering the very audience it was designed to target.

In just 24 hours, Motrin issued an official apology and pulled the ad from their website. Clearly, the backlash was felt and mommy bloggers’ voices were heard.

Of course, there were many people who didn’t understand what the fuss was about and chalked up the corporate mistake to just that, a mistake. The numbers aren’t in yet to determine if this marketing blunder has had any effect on sales, but one thing is for sure: Motrin will be paying a little more attention to their mommy audience and making sure to create advertising that is sensitive to their needs and beliefs.

But this isn’t the only lesson to be learned. The most disturbing part of the whole fiasco is that Motrin’s ad department had no idea about twitter or the online uproar until they were called directly. This goes to show that companies still aren’t realizing the importance of having an online social media presence. Although Motrin acted quickly (once aware of the problem), the situation could have been cooled a lot faster if Motrin paid more attention to their brand online.

When it comes to consumers, word of mouth is one of the most influential factors in deciding what to buy and that ‘word’ now comes in the form of social networking sites, media sites, and blogs. To think, if no one called Motrin directly to tell them about the ad’s negative impact they may have never known the bad reputation that was spreading and the consequences could have been much worse. Hopefully this is a lesson learned for everyone on how powerful the Internet can be.

UPDATE : As reported by Compete, Motrin.com had a 10x increase in their daily traffic as a result of the ad's coverage.

Top 3 Ways to Interact with Real People IRL

Thanksgiving is fast approaching and this holiday is about spending time with friends and family (as well as, eating too much turkey). Actually Christmas is a holiday much like that too. Now all of a sudden, the people that you have kept in contact with sporadically through some form of Social Networking may be showing up on your doorstep IRL. What are you going to do? Don’t panic. We have come up with the Top 3 Ways to interact with Real People IRL.

1. Imbibe in a little holiday cheer. Nothing makes people more talkative than having a little bit of alcohol flowing through their veins. Once everyone’s preferred method of lubrication kicks in you’ll never know what sordid bit of gossip will leak from Grandma’s lips.

2. For you tea-totallers out there, break out the board games. If you can’t come up with anything to talk about then distract everyone with an activity. No board games? Get creative and play charades or pictionary. Not creative? Where is your Wii? A rollicking game of bowling or Rock Band is sure to provide a little bit of entertainment for your guests. No Wii? Maybe you have a karaoke machine. I could go on but you get the picture.

3. If the first two don’t work then dig out the family albums. Everyone can reminisce about the last family gathering where Uncle Albert drank too much and fell down and then had to be taken to emergency for stitches or that catfight between cousin Sally and Aunt Beth over who made the best pumpkin pie. Ah memories, like the corner of my mind.

And if all else fails, don’t worry, they will all be gone soon and you can go back to your anti-social ways of only talking to people online. Happy Thanksgiving!

A Social Presidential Election

After almost two years of campaigning, 1 billion in advertising and a whole lot of mud slinging, the 2008 Presidential Election has finally come to a close and America has its 44th President. As many have commented, this year’s election seemed to be the most covered and talked about election in decades and rightly so - America ended up with its first African-American President and could have had its first female Vice President.

But another first for this election aside from the candidates was the amount of interest and engagement that came from online social sites. Records were broken on election day across sites like Twitter, YouTube, and Digg with users tweeting, uploading, and digging a mile a minute. Twitter crushed its usage records with messaging rates 2-3 times higher than the previous record and YouTube’s Video Your Vote project soared by previous community projects with 1,500 videos submitted - most in one day. And of course Digg, whose front-page headlines have included Obama, McCain or Palin for the past several months, reported its highest traffic day ever. Digg also gained its second most-Dugg post ever with over 33,000 Diggs for its ‘Digg this if you voted for Obama’ story.

There are plenty more sites reporting record high traffic and interest levels from users during the election and when you think about it, it’s not particularly surprising given the intense coverage, the current economic state and the growth in popularity of social sites. But the real question here is whether any of this record-breaking online behavior translated offline. It doesn’t require a lot of effort to click your mouse and support a political story on Digg, but it does take time and effort to actually get out to the polls and vote. So, did it?

The answer seems to be yes. This year, almost 65% of the voting age population turned out to vote, the highest turnout since 1908 (a whole century!). And even more exciting, this year’s election also garnered the largest number of votes in 20 years from one of the toughest crowds to win over, young Americans.

In the past, we’ve seen many examples of online hype that never reached across into the offline world. So, considering how important it is to vote, its great to see everyone supporting their candidate in record numbers online and at the poll booths.

3 Signs of the Upcoming Googocalypse

If you're watching the signs closely you'll see that the horsemen of the Googocalypse are saddling up. Recent signs:

1. Gambling ads. Google is allowing gambling ads in the UK again, for the first time since they banned them in 2004. The AdWords policies won't let you advertise academic aids, hard liquor, fireworks, or escort services. Gambling's just fine, though.

2. Banner ads. Yes, Google now has banner ads. I'm guessing not for escorts or fireworks, but perhaps for bingo if you live in the UK.

3. Direct begging. AdWords reps are now sending out unsolicited email asking for forecasts so their clients can "help [them] find the most effective solutions for [their clients] account based on [their clients] goals and current strategy." They want clients to give them info on the performance of their business, reasons for the increase or decline, and forecasts for the next quarter. This may not sound exciting until you realize that you can spend upwards of $1,000,000 annually with Google and never hear from a soul.

So why the sudden focus on profitability and increasing revenues? Well, Google's stock is at a real lull. It closed on October 27th at $329.49, its lowest point since October 21st 2005. That means if you sunk your life savings in Google stock 1,102 days ago you'd have pretty much exactly what you had before. If you had the guts to cash out.

Most Google employees have stock options costing more than $329.78, meaning that their options aren't worth anything. So, if you've worked for the big G for less than 3 years all you've got is your salary. All of a sudden working 12 hours a day for a company that makes billions isn't as thrilling without the promise of a big fat cash out in the future.

My prediction? Google is going to cut 15% of its workforce before year-end (2,500 of their 17,000 or so). They'll also start squeezing their AdSense publishers and paying out a smaller percentage of advertising dollars to them. Their stock will jump 10% after announcing the layoffs, ironically rewarding the very people they've just sent packing.

Social Media Trick or Treating

Halloween is quickly approaching and once you get down to the bare bones of the holiday you realize that Halloween is really all about the costume. Before people even consider how much candy they are going to scarf down or what kind of booze they are going to guzzle they have to first figure out what they are going to wear to the festivities. It doesn’t matter whether you are a child going trick-or-treating or if you are going to a more adult gathering, if nothing else, you want to look good while you are doing it.

Some people plan their costumes months in advance while others grab the first thing they can find and piece together some mis-matched, sad attempt at a costume at the last minute. For a quality costume you need to take some time to plan your outfit. First, you’ll need to decide the basic genre you want your costume to take. Do you want to be nasty or nice? Scary or saucy? Frightening or friendly? Once you answer these basic questions then you are ready to move onto the details of your finery.

• Which is more important to you? That your costume is unique or that your costume is easily purchased?
• How much $$ are you willing to spend?
• Are you going to make the costume yourself?
• Do you have time to make it yourself?
• Where are you going to get all of the pieces you need?
• Is there a place that where you can do one-stop shopping?

Whew! Planning a costume is a lot of hard work. Just like planning a good piece of content is a lot of hard work. (I knew you were waiting to see how this related to Social Media.) Preparing a piece of content is actually a lot like planning your Halloween costume. You can put a lot of effort into it or you can put a little effort into it. Everyone will be able to tell which one you chose.

When planning your content, first you need to come up with a good topic for your content or blog post or whatever it is. Sometimes you can come up with several different topics at once when letting your mind wander.

Once you choose your topic, you will be able to narrow your focus down.

• Are you on a deadline?
• How much research will you need to do?
• Will this content require input from others?
• Can you write your content off the top of your head?

A well-planned out piece of content can be the difference between a lot of exposure and a little. Now, not ever piece of content needs to be a Pulitzer Prize winner but you should be happy with the content you produce. Maybe if you determine that the objective of your content is just for fun than it doesn’t really matter, but if you have a more important objective in mind then you really need to put in a bit more effort.

When submitting content to Social Networking sites your content becomes your costume. Your content can fall into a variety of genres, it doesn’t need to be the same every time or follow a well-organized formula. But in the end everyone will be able to tell if you are you a planner or a last minute mis-match. The amount of treats you get will be a direct result of the amount of effort you invested. Sometimes you get lucky and people will love your thrown together content, but more often than not, in order to get the candy you need a good costume.

Twictionary - Twitter Basics

Here are the lingo basics for using Twitter. If you can get the hang of these you’ll be tweeting tweeple tweets like nobody’s business… if you know what I mean.

Twitter - A social networking site that allows you to keep in touch by sending out quick, frequent messages.

Tweet - A short (140 character) message.

Tweeple - People who use Twitter.

Mistweet - A tweet you didn’t mean to send or a tweet with a poor choice or misspelled words.

TweetUp - An ‘in person’ meeting between Twitter users.

Twoosh - A perfect 140 character tweet.

Followers - Tweeters who are following your tweets. Followers will see any updates you make on their homepage of Twitter.

Following - Tweeters you’re following. You will see any updates (tweets) on your homepage from anyone you’re following.

Direct Messages - You can send a direct message to another user by using the message link on their profile page, the reply icon from your own direct message, or using the command d + username + message. Only you and the person you are direct messaging will see the contents of the tweets.

Favorites - You can store any of your favorite tweets by clicking the star icon by the message. (You must hover over the message to see this icon).

@replies - By using the @ + username, you can direct a tweet at a specific user. This type of messaging is publicly visible.

ReTweet - To re-send a previous tweet or to resend someone else's tweet so it reaches a larger audience.

Since tweets are limited to 140 characters, acronyms and short hand run rampant all over the site. To help you understand what’s going on and write your own short and sweet tweets, check out this list of acronyms.