Some obviously self promoting going on there but then there are indepth nuggets in there too. Like the below where Mint designer explains how they ramped up their business to 1.5 million in short order.

Amplify’d from www.quora.com

How did Mint acquire 1.5m+ users without a high viral coefficient, scalable SEO strategy, or paid customer acquisition channel?

The Product. Maybe we didn't have a high viral coefficient but we had a great net promoter score. People loved Mint, it solved a real problem for people, which is unlike most products with a high viral coefficient. The delight after a quick setup, and having all those graphs and balances was palpable and emotional. Blog / Original Content. Noah talks about the pre-launch days here (http://okdork.com/2008/06/03/sta...) but quite simply we focused on building out a unique personal finance blog, very content-rich, that spoke to a young professional crowd that we felt was being neglected. Eventually the blog became #1 in personal finance, and drove traffic to the app. Our app didn't have a high viral coefficient but we had content that was. Our infographics and popular articles became regular hits on Digg, Reddit, etc PR. Some entrepreneurs lately seem to be piling on against PR or saying that doing it in house is enough. Mint is an example where we (http://atomicpr.com) did extensive PR-backed positioning research, and went to town. PR was extremely high quality traffic for us, and the optics for the brand were undeniably good. We trounced all of our online competitors, including Quicken– who sent us legal threats (http://techcrunch.com/2009/02/19...). Patzer talked to every outlet from Entrepreneur to Essence. SEO. We had an extensive SEO strategy, and it scaled pretty well. We had a lot of landing pages, content on the blog and marketing sites, and had a very metrics driven approach to all of it. For every popular finance query on Google, we had a page and content for it, and iterated landing pages to optimize conversion. Content Partnerships. We were able to get our content syndicated out and did some co-brand deals with brands like Motley Fool. This wasn't huge, but it was something. Distribution Deals. The iPhone app store drove a lot of signups when we released our app. It quickly became #1 in finance and continued to hang around the top of the charts as we iterated. Less successful was a Yahoo! app, and a Motley Fool co-brand. Email. People loved the consumer advocacy of the email notifications (we told people when interest rates went up, etc.). Because we provided a lot of value with email, our opt-out rates were low, which enabled us to use it as a marketing channel. Facebook / Twitter. How can I forget. We leveraged viral social networks to create a conversation with our customers. The Facebook fan page especially has a lot going on from Mint haiku contests to customer tips, and incentives to suggest to friends. There's friction between that and signing up, but positive brand engagement obviously helps. Michael Arrington was also instrumental. This is part of PR, but the TechCrunch 50 win, and all the coverage over the following 2 years, was a major help to us. Read more at www.quora.com

Always enjoy Brian Solis's articles and incites. The piece below does a great job in visually explaining not only social but basically the guide to your online neighborhood. What sets this infographic apart is that he also includes within the article explanations of each tier or the compass. Article is long so navigate to his site to read the article. Also there he is also providing "compass image" for download if you would like

Amplify’d from www.briansolis.com

The Social Compass is the GPS for the Adaptive Business

Exploring The Social Compass

Center: The Brand

At the center of the compass is the brand; essentially, everything you do will revolve around it.

Halo 1: The Players

Halo 2: Platform

Every initiative, inclusive of those groups of individuals who define our markets and ensuing behavior, requires a platform upon which to connect, communicate, and congregate. These platforms represent existing and also emerging categories that are worthy of our attention today and tomorrow:

Halo 3: Channels

Halo 4: Emotions/Sentiment Read more at www.briansolis.com

We have seen a lot of innovation that has been great for small businesses and large brands alike where they can stand toe to toe in the "access" sand. Twitter, facebook pages, groupons and foursquares made promotion, brand awareness and advertising affordable and do-able. Many have realized great gains that they would not have otherwise.

Now with mobile smart phones, tablets and pads your community is on the go. Its an opportunity to be first in, early bird per-say before the "wait and see-ers" enter the picture. Mobile is especially great for LOCAL biz marketing as there are a lot of free or low cost "we're mobile" options to reach your community.

Amplify’d from product-arts.com

Location-based Services

One of the top applications on the new smartphones is location-based services, specifically Google Maps (now in 3D on Android). The integration of GPS in these units with location-aware apps has finally realized one of the unique benefits of mobile devices.    From maps and directions to navigation to real estate, finding information from where you are or where you want to be is spawning new uses.

Some current apps utilizing mapping include Zillow for house prices, foodspotting and urbanspoon for finding places to eat and yelp to finding general businesses.

Another emerging use of location is Social Media, where “check-in” services allow you to indicate where you currently are to your network, potentially creating a spontaneous get-together.    Services already providing this capability are Facebook Places, Foursquare, Loopt, Gowalla, and Whrrl.   Some of these services allow business proprietors to reward loyal users who check-in. Usage of these services is still very low and 2011 will likely be more exploratory than big bang.

One of the most interesting categories is called augmented reality and provides information through the combination of location and the camera. Apps can overlay data onto the actual view you see around you. This goes beyond info overlaid on a map. Some of these apps include GolfScape rangefinder that shows you distances to objects on a golf course, AR Compass that shows a compass and distance to nearby sites, Cyclopedia which shows you Wikipedia info about your location as you move the camera around, and Star Chart that tells you what stars you’re looking at through the camera.

Location will also become embedded in mobile advertising and m-commerce initiatives, as will be discussed below.    Location is one of the major applications to be leveraged for mobile initiatives in 2011.

Mobile Advertising

2010 laid some major groundwork for the future of mobile advertising.     First, Google acquired AdMob, the largest mobile advertising platform supporting multiple types of mobile ads. Then, Apple announced its plans to allow developer advertising within apps, calling it iAds.     At the end of 2010, Google announced $1B in revenue from mobile ads globally, and the US Mobile Advertising market is expected to be $1B in 2011. This is still quite small, though, and only an estimated 1% of US ad spending.

In 2010 mobile ad formats were dominated by messaging (44% of total ad spend), then display ads (27%) and search (25%), and lastly video (<5%).   In addition to AdMob and iAds, some companies to watch in this space in the US are inMobi, Mojiva, Millennial Media, and JumpTap.   Location will also become a major driver of ads – see xtify.

Advertising can also take multiple forms, and a survey of Fortune 50 companies indicated 43% have mobile-specific web sites or apps and 22% are using QR codes in printed ads to offer more content or information to mobile users.   QR codes (Quick Response) is the new 2D barcode that allows embedding text information or URIs that can be acted on by “scanning” the code using the device camera and a QR app on the phone.

2011 will see major retail brands expanding their mobile efforts, with some providing very innovative mash-ups driven from location, shopping and or social networking in conjunction with their primary web properties.   Speaking of web properties - is your main corporate or commerce site seeing increasing mobile browser traffic?   If the percentage of traffic is important, say 10% or more, it may be time to upgrade your main site to be more mobile-friendly. Navigating a standard complex site on a small screen can be quite taxing.

Mobile Commerce

Mobile commerce is expected be a huge deal globally, and indeed, sites like Amazon and Ebay are seeing significant purchases being made from mobile devices, though still a small percentage and mostly from overseas.    In the US, purchases from the phone are not really where the activity is at this point.    The largest m-commerce application is mobile banking and is more about convenience than revenue generation. For example, Chase allows depositing checks by taking a picture and submitting it from the device.

The phone for most is primarily a shopping companion, proving directions to the store, product research with reviews, pricing from nearby locations, etc. That’s not to say that some companies aren’t trying to move forward.   In order for product info to get into a searchable database, someone has to get it there, and companies such as Checkpoints and shopkick allow “checking-in” to a store on arrival and earning discount points for scanning the product info using their phones.    Location information is used to also give comparisons of price and availability at stores near the shopper.

And there’s Walgreens, which allows refilling prescriptions by taking a picture of the barcode on the bottle and getting a text message when it’s ready to pick up.    You can also order photo prints directly from the phone.    Or Pizza Hut, that allows you to create your pizza or order other items from a virtual refrigerator.

Mobile coupons are also already a reality from some of the mobile advertising companies listed above.   Target was just named 2010 Mobile Retailer of the Year and provides scannable coupons delivered as you walk into one of their stores via text message.   They also provide their weekly deal’s flyer directly to the phone app.

Mobile payments are probably still a ways off. While it’s possible to use your mobile phone today linked to an account with your credit card info or PayPal, this is not the same scenario as using your phone as the actual payment card.   This is the vision that will be enabled by embedding a NFC chip (Near Field Communication) into the phone that can be detected by a sensor and include encrypted account information, just like a debit card.   Phones with this capability are rumored to be coming in 2011 and Google and mobile operators are all looking to get a piece of the action.   However, the infrastructure required at retail to support this will take time well beyond 2011, so sit tight for a while unless you want to be part of the early adopter crowd.

Mobile Video

Despite the low penetration of advertising yet on mobile video, there is no doubt about its inevitable growth.   Larger phone screens and tablets coupled with 4G and WiFi connections will spur usage.    Already in 2010, more than 20M mobile users in the US (<10% of the total) watched mobile videos for an average of about 3.5 hours per month.   YouTube videos are the vast majority of this content, with news and broadcasters following.

Interestingly, the CEO of Netflix recently indicated that the demand for streaming mobile movies on iPhone and iPad was insignificant despite the large demand on larger display devices. His conclusion is that users are not interested in longer forms of video media on their mobile devices.    So while there is apparent demand for short clips (YouTube-like) longer streams have far less demand.   Could it be due to the low quality of 3G streams and the cost of the data plans to support them? These devices also operate on WiFi, so that’s a partial argument against that reason.

Another question is “where’s the money?”   The last thing a mobile operator wants is millions of users filling up their new 4G networks watching continuous videos or TV without paying some price premium for the large amount of data required.   The current trend for capped data plans with overage charges is really meant to keep things under control.

By the end of 2011, we may begin to see how this is shaping up with what content is really used on what devices and how both the operators and suppliers can make a business out of it.

So there you have it - our version of the coming year. It’s an exciting time in mobile and we’re finally seeing the culmination of data and location capabilities that have been envisioned for 10-15 years if you’re a veteran, with innovation far beyond even those thoughts.   2011 will mark a major turning point of mobile apps and web being used by a majority of major brands as part of their comprehensive marketing and commerce efforts.    Here’s “Cheers” to the mobile industry and all of those new innovators pushing it forward in 2011.

Global Mobile Statistics 2010

CTIA Quick Facts

comScore Smartphone Stats

Best of 2010: Mobile Commerce

Fortune 50 Use of Mobile Read more at product-arts.com

So much to measure!

Amplify’d from comblu.com

Measuring Social Media is dangerous.

This blog post is the first of a three part series in which I am going to attempt in deconstructing the hype of social measurement and give some guidance on what you may want to focus on and why if you wish to be successful in tracking your social engagement efforts.

That said, here we go with part one.

The more you want to measure and the more accurate you want to be, the harder it is.  That is a simple fact.  Why?  Interdependent variables.  Meaning one thing impacts another and you have to take into account the effect each part has on the others, as well as, the whole.

Think about it.  How long does it take you to drive 300 miles from point A to point B on I-75 driving at 70 mph?  Simple math, right?  Throw in a few variables like driving with two kids, one of which needs a bathroom every 150 miles or so and another that gets carsick and needs to stop once about every 200-300 miles depending on the day.  How many stops and for how long?  Not exactly sure, but based on past experience you might have an idea.  So your simple math just got a little more complex right?  Miss those variables, as well as, factoring in their likelihood of happening and your metric can be off by a country mile.  If your second number is 35% off from your first number, is this a lot?  If the expected results fall 35% short of expectation, is this a lot?

This is the point I want to make with this series.  Right now, my blog feed is full of pundits saying measure this, KPI and ROI that.  It’s gotten pretty noisy on that bandwagon.  Some really do get it, as well as, how to do it.  However, the majority only sort of get it and don’t get how to do it, which is really the issue.  Problem is, many of us are measuring the wrong stuff and many times, the reams of dashboards created mean very little in terms of delivering real insight and actionable business value to the business enterprise.

What this means is a number of decisions being made based on attempts to measure social media are wrong.  Money is being wasted.  Loyalty is evaporating.  Market share shifting.

Don’t believe me? Would you stake your job today on the sentiment score your listening engine provides you?

So why are your collecting all those metrics in the first place?  What’s the purpose in all those man-hours invested in creating dashboards?  Simple.  You want to increase your effectiveness.  You want to be more relevant.  Guess less be right more.  Right?  Likely, the way you are measuring today won’t get you there.

Generally, we as marketers look for the cause and effect that is the result of a set of similar data streams (such as web trend data).  Here’s the problem.  I don’t know any social activity in which outcomes can be tracked by looking at only one or two things, moreover,

I can’t think of any social scenario where you can look at where ‘motivation’ and ‘opportunity’ don’t play a huge role in the outcome.  Like tracking how long it takes from getting from point A to point B, unless you include the right (or even representative variables, you will be off by a mile).

Motivation defines why something may happen.  Opportunity is the key for motivation to move from intent to action.  If, in a community, I am designated as a SME and I have the tools to increase the scope and impact of my status within the community, if that is important to me and I have the opportunity to do so without unneeded hurdles, I am likely to do so.

Social engagement is complex.  We don’t need to start with traffic metrics or listening tools, we should use them as part of the feed to ensure we are on track, but they only provide a piece to the puzzle.

Instead, we need to start with why are we wanting to do something?  Then we look at who we want to do it for-the customer.  So who exactly are they?  What is engagement to them (hint:  it is not just one thing, it is a spectrum)? Then, what are the range of things (venues, tools, programs and content) that will drive and sustain this engagement?  Can we (as a brand) do it well and consistently?  Begin with your business objective.  Define your KPI’s here.  Build your social strategy from this.  Then, define the scope of your program’s operation & who the engaged and active team will be comprised of

Then you group and bundle.  Activities and metrics.  Activities ladder to your social strategy and metrics support your KPI’s and everything needs to be tied to the objective.

Yes, easier said than done, however, I will be a broken record.  Successful social engagement , or measuring it is not easy.  Anybody that tells you this doesn’t understand it or is not telling the truth.

So don’t just measure social media.  That is a small piece of a much larger puzzle. Focus on the puzzle’s picture and all the pieces, not just the one in your hand.  Only then, will your programs work the way they are supposed to.  Just like a pain pump that delivers medicine out of the box each and every time. Read more at comblu.com

[Source: OnlineMBA.com]

To tell you the truth, I would have taken that 6 Billion Google Offer payout and RAN all the way to the bank. How about you?

Amplify’d from www.emarketer.com

The Facebook/Goldman Deal: What Does It Mean For Marketers?

What does Goldman Sachs’ $450 million investment in Facebook mean for marketers? Put bluntly, it’s a wake-up call. If companies are not already marketing on Facebook, they’d better start.

The obvious reason that Facebook is so attractive to investors like Goldman (and DST, which invested $50 million) is the social network’s growth. Facebook had 620 million unique visitors worldwide in October 2010, according to comScore. In spite of the much-ballyhooed value of one-to-one marketing, what marketers want is mass reach, and Facebook offers that in spades.

More important than reach is targeting. With Facebook, marketers also get micro-level targeting. With Facebook’s self-service tool, a marketer can reach a million people—or even 10 people. I’ve heard of cases where a marketer has designed such finely crafted ads that they reach just a handful of people at a particular company.

Facebook has a traditional sales team that visits the big ad agencies and sells the ads that appear on the right side of a user’s home page. But ads on other internal pages are from the self-serve system, and this is where Facebook is concentrating its attention for future ad-revenue growth.

This targeting tool is already responsible for about half of Facebook’s advertising revenues, which eMarketer last August estimated would be $1.3 billion in 2010. (Our next social network ad spending report—with an updated Facebook forecast—will be out soon.)

Facebook’s self-serve tool and intelligent database are perfect reasons for Goldman’s investment. No other company has the amount of information on consumers that is willingly provided by Facebook users.

Anytime you click the “Like” button, that information is added to Facebook’s database.

Like Coke? Facebook would be happy to target soft drink and junk food ads to you. Like the Seattle Seahawks? Here’s some team gear you might want to buy. And ads are also apparently being targeted to what people post. Last week I posted a set of pictures from my Christmas vacation to Kauai and today, Facebook showed me an ad for a vacation rental on the island.

While this incredibly smart targeting tool only exists within Facebook right now, Mark Zuckerberg and company are putting all the pieces in place to push this ad system across the internet and create the web-wide ad network that’s been talked about for years. And that’s where the big money will be. As David Pakman, partner at VC firm Venrock in New York, wrote in a recent Ad Age column, the two things that will fuel quick growth at Facebook are “payments and off-site targeting.”

Facebook has not admitted to building an ad network, but it is already spreading its functionality in as many places as it can across the web. With features like Facebook Login, for example, publishers can add a little bit of code and enable users to sign on to their websites using their Facebook credentials. If I am on CNN, I can comment on or like an article and notify my friends through my Facebook newsfeed. Or, I can purchase a pair of jeans and show my friends how cool they look.

Facebook has conducted limited tests of banner ads carrying a Facebook “like” button; while the company has told me this isn’t a precursor to an ad network, it’s easy to see how such functionality might be tweaked to make it more ad network-like.

The bottom line: Imagine that rich database available to any advertiser anywhere on the web. This may well be the year that friendly, ever-present Facebook logo will be consumers’ constant companion and social conduit wherever they go online. And wherever they go, marketers will follow. Read more at www.emarketer.com

A good branding lesson to follow as this change progresses. Will it alienate its fans, diminish their identifying mark and open the door for "like looks". Is removing their name effective? How much is this going to cost the company ? In a publicly held company do monumental changes require a vote?

Amplify’d from thebrandbuilder.wordpress.com

Farewell to an old friend: The Starbucks cup of coffee.

Here we go again. This week, another major consumer brand unveiled a new logo. This time around, it’s my beloved Starbucks.

Now, don’t get me wrong: Some logos do need upgrades. The original can and sometimes should be improved upon. Belk’s latest logo change - while not necessary – wasn’t actually all that bad, for example. People are still going on about the Pepsi logo redesign, the Tropicana incident is still used as a cautionary tale in design and brand management circles, and of course, there is the king of the logo redesign debacles: Gap:

Pretty awful redesign.

See? Not bad - minus the tagline.

Seemingly undaunted by the prospect of having its own logo redesign firebombed across the Twitternets by masses of disappointed customers and fans, Starbucks moved ahead to mark its 40th birthday with such an exercise, and the result is displayed below. Gone are the words “starbucks” and “coffee.” Gone is the familiar ring of green. The siren has been… “liberated.”

First, from a brand management standpoint, I tend to look at rebranding projects like this one as exercises in futility: Starbucks didn’t need a new logo. Its current one isn’t hurting sales. It isn’t hurting the business. No one was complaining that it was ugly, old or ineffective. The Starbucks brand, in fact, relies on the familiarity and authenticity of its universally recognized logo to sell $5 cups of coffee. I would even venture to guess that the closer the logo brings a Starbucks customer to the original experience of being at Seattle’s Pike Street store, the more its perceived value will tend to increase. Changing the logo, making it more conceptual and less… rustic effectively increases the distance between the customer and Pike Street rather than shortening it. Thus, not only was the rebranding unnecessary in the sense that it will not increase sales or improve the business in any way, it also constitutes somewhat of a risk in that it effectively dilutes the brand for consumers. Not super clever when both McDonald’s and Dunkin Donuts are making a strong push in the coffee retail world with decent coffee and lower prices.

From a business standpoint, the expense of now having to replace every logo at every store and change the logo on every bag, box, cup and mug – all for the sake of… change –  can’t possibly be the smartest investment for Starbucks, considering that the impact on sales, on brand loyalty, and on business in general will be essentially zero.  Sure, it will get a nice spike in online mentions. But there are better and more cost-effective ways of doing that. (I just hope that this “project” wasn’t the reason why Starbucks prices jumped up this month. That would be a bit disappointing for loyal customers like me.)

Finally, from a design standpoint, I understand the tendency to want to simplify a logo, to strip it down to its essence… but there is a point where stripping down just makes a logo look bland. Not so much when it sits by itself on a sheet of paper (it actually looks fine on its own) but when printed on a cup, it looks unfinished. It just doesn’t pop anymore. It just kind of sits there, missing the rest of itself. The new design strips the cup of its appeal, of its energy, and this is a serious problem for a brand whose image is so dependent on the look of its packaging.

One of the rare branding icons of the 20th century – not the Starbucks logo itself but the Starbucks cup of coffee – is what Starbucks is effectively destroying with this decision. I don’t know the extent to which Starbucks’ management realizes that the cup itself has always been at least as important to brand loyalty as the contents of the cup – if not more so. Look at the image of the different logos on the cups (above). Doesn’t the new cup just look… like something is missing?

Ultimately though, none of this matters. If Starbucks wants to change its logo, it will. As bland and uninspired as it may be, it isn’t nearly as awful as The Gap’s redesign in 2010, nor is it the end of the world. So rather than ramble on about it, I thought I might suggest a little exercise in rebranding, à la Starbucks: What if we took other circular logos and… “freed the mermaid,” so to speak? What would happen to say… BMW, VW and other popular logos? Probably something like this:

BMW's Starbucks-style logo redesign

The Federal Reserve System's Starbucks-style seal redesign

See more at thebrandbuilder.wordpress.com

Love this list, taking it from defining your irresistible brand to translation of that into brand experience.

Amplify’d from www.copyblogger.com

To help walk you through the process of creating your brand, I’ve grouped this list into five categories: know yourself, know your audience, know your competition, building a brand experience, and implementation tips.

In order to build an irresistible brand, you need to take what you learn about yourself, your audience, and your competition and blend that research with your own personality to create a style that attracts your audience.

The first three sections ask you questions that help you pull together the information you need to create your style, while the rest of the list gives you specific steps you can take to turn that style into an irresistible brand.

See more at www.copyblogger.com

Interesting from a marketing and advertising prospective on what the social stratosphere shares. Is there a common thread? Can you take that an apply/adapt components that fit within your media?

Amplify’d from www.buzzfeed.com

Top 50 Most Viral Posts of 2010

With 2010 coming to an end, we're taking a look back on the top-performing, most shared, viral posts of the year. From obvious memes like Sad Keanu to the incredible plastic cutlery dragon, this year's Top 50 offers a surprising mix.

See more at www.buzzfeed.com

In beta: Scoop.it "tumblr without the blog" is the latest in curators. In Test: easy to set up topic lists to curate to. When setting up Topic Themes has a keyword component which creates recommendations in the "stream" (research & discovery benefit) 2. Browser tool for on fly clipping 3. Seems more about following topic, than P2P interaction

It posts to FB & Twitter

Nextweb has beta invites via: Scoop.it has set up 100 invites for The Next Web readers. Just click here to create an account, but be quick before they all go.> http://www.scoop.it/subscribe?token=TheNextWeb

Amplify’d from blog.scoop.it

Scoop.it as a collaborative tool

The main difference with the others social media is essential: Scoop.it lets users follow topics, not people. Scoop.it brings you content on topics you’ve decided to follow, shared by other people on these topics. People we meet are users who are willing to discuss about the same subjects. What gather people together are their passions! We don’t always share our passions with our friends: especially if they are unusual. Your interest about the Chinese culture may not be shared with your best friend! Read more at blog.scoop.it