I’ve participated in a few “Ask The Experts” panels in the past few months and couldn’t help but notice that Social Media is quite the hot topic right now. People are very keen in learning how to use Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin, etc… Most attendees are curious about how it works, why anyone would invest the time and energy, what’s the ROI and if it’s the right avenue for their business. These are all good questions and there are simply no easy answer. It really depends on who your audience is and where they are.
A funny thing happened to me last Friday which demonstrates how complicated and unpredictable it is to explain the power of Social Media.
I have a Twitter account and follow mostly designers and WordPress developers. This allows me to find out about latest tips, tutorials and website development news. Cameron Moll posted a tweet to a “mesmerizing” YouTube video which caught my attention. I clicked the link and watched a video taken at Kuroshio Sea which is the 2nd largest aquarium in the world.
The video is indeed breathtaking, but I was curious about the music. I watched and listened to the video a couple of times and wanted to find out who was singing. Using my iPhone, I Shazammed it and got the name of the song, band and album. A quick search on YouTube led me to a video of Barcelona singing live in San Diego. I watched a few more videos and decided to visit Barcelona’s page on MySpace. Listened to a few more clips and then I was off to iTunes and bought the album.
I’m not sure that a marketer could have predicted this, but I’m convinced that Social Media is worth investing in.
As social bookmarking sites such as Twitter, Facebook and Linked in become more and more popular, these days, I find myself being asked to make adjustments to several WordPress websites by adding social bookmarking links and icons to the sidebar. After 2 such web updates this week, I was asked by a friend to send me the code so that they could add it to their site. So instead of doing the work and sending it to him, I thought I would share it with you all.
The following examples are just code snippets that you can add to your sidebar.php template file. These snippets will not work if your website use sidebar widgets. (That’s not exactly true, but it’s a bit more complicated.)
The first example is very simple and can be seen live on the kitsilano.ca website.
First you’ll need to edit your sidebar.php template and add the following lines of code:
<h2>Follow Us</h2>
<ul>
<li class="rss">
<a href="[insert your rss link here]">Get our Feed</a>
</li>
<li class="twitter">
<a href="[insert your twitter link here]">On Twitter</a>
</li>
</ul>
Next you can adjust the styling by adding this piece of code to your style.css
#sidebar li.rss {background:url(images/rss.gif) 0 50% no-repeat;}
#sidebar li.twitter {background:url(images/twitter.gif) 0 50% no-repeat;}
#sidebar li.rss a, #sidebar li.twitter a {padding-left:20px;}
The icons will also have to be uploaded in your templates’ images folder. You can use your own icons or grab the ones that I’ve used by downloading the zip file.
The second example may look a bit more complex, but is just as easy and can be seen on the mudcreative.com sidebar.
First insert these lines of code in your sidebar.php:
<div id="social_media">
<h2>Follow Us</h2>
<ul>
<li><a href="[insert your link to linked in here]"><img src="<?php bloginfo('template_directory'); ?>/images/linkedin.png" alt="View our linked in profile" width="32" height="32" border="0" /></a></li>
<li><a href="[insert your link to twitter here]"><img src="<?php bloginfo('template_directory'); ?>/images/twitter.png" alt="On Twitter" width="32" height="32" border="0"></a></li>
<li><a href="[insert your link to rss feed here]"><img src="<?php bloginfo('template_directory'); ?>/images/rss.png" alt="Via our RSS feed" width="32" height="32" border="0" /></a></li>
<li><a href="[insert your link to facebook here]"><img src="<?php bloginfo('template_directory'); ?>/images/facebook.png" alt="On Facebook" width="32" height="32" border="0"></a></li>
</ul>
</div>
Depending on what your stylesheet already contains, you may need to make a few tweaks, but it should be pretty straightforward. Here is zip file with the code snippets and icons. Have fun.
At a new media session at CES that I attended last week the panelists cautioned companies to ignore new media (especially blogs and social networks) at their peril. If companies insist on being ostriches with their corporate heads in the sand, they risk losing control of their brand.
Last weeks furore over Tim Horton’s employees and their Facebook antics is a case in point. With over 3,400 members, the “Rules of Ordering and More” group lists 80 or so tips that customers should take to heart if they want good service. Apparently the group is administered by Timmy’s employees unbeknownst to their employer. Its actually quite funny – you should take a read.
Had Tim Hortons (the famous Canadian Donut franchise owned by Pepsico) been monitoring the Internet effectively, the company would have been aware of groups like this much sooner and could have put contingencies in place to protect its brand or HR policies to outline appropriate employee conduct on the Internet. Had it been more proactive it could have channeled the publicity it received last week to its benefit rather than detriment.
Companies cannot ignore web 2.0 technologies any longer. They must, at the very least, be listening to what is being said about them even if they are not ready to be contributing to the conversation: in that way they have a chance at least of maintaining some control over their brand.
Recently a friend of mine sent me an invitation to join her network on Facebook. I ignored it at first, thinking back to my first experience with the social networking site; I had seen how my college-aged step-daughter uses it. She and her friends post tons of photos and notes for each other, mainly centering around recent parties etc. Theirs is a socially active world with time to spare, compared to mine. So Facebook didn’t seem like it was a place for me.
But recently the site has broken past it’s college bounds and people from all walks of life are signing up. I was convinced to try it out after reading reviews by Alexandra Samuel and Rob Cottingham.
