Taste of Technology Wrap-up: Social Media Marketing

Thanks to everyone who attended Taste of Technology at the Time Warner Center tonight.

Let’s take a moment to recognize all the contributors: our organizer Ramon Ray of SmallBizTechnology.com, our moderator Stephen Wellman of Ziff Davis Enterprise, and our other panelists:

And, of course, you the attendees. Thanks for providing compelling questions, and bringing so much energy to the evening.

Below are some of the products and trends, either mentioned in discussion or otherwise relevant:

  • General facts and figures
    • Number of U.S. adults using social media at least once a month in 2008: 69 million. (source: eMarketer)
    • Social network ad spending: $920 million in 2007, $1.43 billion in 2008, $2.6 billion by 2012. Compound annual growth of 19%. (source: eMarketer)
    • Social media’s share of total online ad spend in the U.S. was 4.4% in 2007, 5.5% in 2008, will grow to 6.3% by 2012 (source: eMarketer).
  • B2B marketing on social media
    • B2B ad spending on social networks is still a drop in the bucket… just $15 million in 2007, and will grow to $40 million in 2008 (source: eMarketer). B2B’s share of total social network ad spend is currently just 1.6%, but will grow to 8.0% by 2012.
    • LinkedIn is strong in the B2B segment, especially to establish your company as an authority on a particular topic by using the Q&A functions.
    • If your business caters to a local clientele, Briz.com offers its users a platform to consolidate marketing communications, perfect for event marketing and other promotional marketing. This site also can be leveraged for customer relationship management (CRM) applications.
  • Twitter
  • Blogging: the article about Procter & Gamble recruiting all the “mommy bloggers.
  • Video - Stephanie mentioned TubeMogul, which is a fantastic resource for syndicating video content. This product was featured in a recent white paper entitled “Small Business Guide To Web-Based Video Marketing.
  • Website Analytics. Stephanie also mentioned Google Analytics as a “must have” resource for business owners to track the efficacy of all marketing efforts. This product is available to the public, and featured in a recent Clicksharp video, “Google Analytics for Business Intelligence.
  • Non-profit organizations and social media marketing:
    • We discussed Jones Soda, the Seattle-based beverage manufacturer which has been putting the Causes feature of Facebook to good use. (Here’s a link — see slide 35.)
    • Here’s another interesting tactic to consider. We know how difficult it can be to ask for money. What if you host your content on a website showing ads with Google AdSense, and when you communicate directly with your audience, tell them “we won’t ask you for a donation — but every single visit to our site generates revenue which we will donate to the cause. So every single person you forward this to, it’s like making a small donation.”
  • Wikipedia: the next time around, we hope we’ll get a chance to look at this medium, often criticized for its quality control and overlooked for its social potential. There’s more to Wikipedia than you might have first guessed: “Wikipedia: a marketing channel as powerful as it is free
  • RSS (really simple syndication). (Video: What is RSS?) Jennifer mentioned AideRSS; I’d never heard of this until tonight, but at first glance it seems like an invaluable tool for market research and competitive analysis.

And for one more treat… here’s a pretty strong list of large well-known corporations and their brands appearing in popular social media campaigns: Social Media Marketing Examples (thanks to Peter Kim).

See you next time.



Paul Burani
Clicksharp Marketing
New York, NY

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    3 Comments


    1. Hi, I found your blog on this new directory of WordPress Blogs at blackhatbootcamp.com/listofwordpressblogs. I dont know how your blog came up, must have been a typo, i duno. Anyways, I just clicked it and here I am. Your blog looks good. Have a nice day. James.

      Quote | Posted September 17, 2008, 11:13 pm

    2. Just to set the record straight — the Clicksharp blog is nowhere to be found on the aforementioned site. We do not practice black-hat SEO, nor do we associate with purveyors of those tactics.

      Quote | Posted September 18, 2008, 5:34 am

    3. Hi Paul — If you have any questions about who we are or what we do, feel free to give me a holler.

      It’s been really cool hearing from the user community about how they implement our functionality. The Thematic PostRank functionality that we implemented in July does, indeed, help our with research and analysis. It shows in the folder view of Google Reader (with our extension) and compares each of the feeds tagged under a given topic against each other’s past performance, so you can see how players in a given industry, or a company’s competitors, for example, stack up. (As opposed to Feed-based PostRank, which appears in individual feed view, and ranks based on a feed’s items’ own past performance.

      Quote | Posted September 19, 2008, 10:37 am

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