Essential Buzz Monitoring – For Buzz Monitoring Companies

It’s funny – or rather quite appalling – when experts fail at their chosen discipline. You see, I am in search of a social media / buzz monitoring type of platform for Boden. I called a few of the names I’d heard before and read the relevant blogs and eConsultancy guides. But I thought the best place to find such a solution provider would naturally be Twitter. So last week I posted the message below.

And guess how many of the big solution providers replied to me? You’ve guessed it – zero. I may have only a few followers and not be the biggest name on Twitter (soon to change!), but in the age of Google Alerts and numerous Twitter search engines this is inexcusable. I did get replies – from bloggers and a small German start-up – but none of the big names have bothered to do what they preach and use their own tools effectively. Tsk tsk!

Retro Digital

I’m loving these retro social media posters! Made by Brazilian agencies MaxiMídia and Moma Propaganda, they look cool and quirky. I imagine there’s also the message about how mind-bogglingly fast times change and the need to have a top notch agency to stay on top of things. There are 4 posters – about Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Skype – that are all downloadable via a dedicated campaign site.

This is a nice little agency viral that people can share online and possibly offline too, in Brazil, with real posters and postcards. It shows a bit of character and must be a good conversation starter at client meetings. I think it’s also not a bad link bait idea either, although in fact the micro site has only just over 100 backlinks. I still think it’s an excellent idea for all the above reasons, maybe it just needed a harder push at launch.

Google also had a couple of retro posters made to celebrate Google Chrome’s second birthday. It comes alongside themes for both the browser and Orkut, all done by designer Mike Lemanski. I like them too – I like work that is commissioned with no ROI in mind, just a bit of fun. Mike’s website is full of such project, do have a browse.

Clever Social Media

When it comes to promoting brand awareness, reputation, customer engagement and other tough-to-crack areas of fluffy marketing, more and more often the weapon of choice is social media. Any excuse to spend more time on Facebook, right? Now, some marketeers are just tipping their toes in these uncharted waters while others are going for the big splash  - check out Ford’s Fiesta Movement for a properly large campaign. I’ve been interested in the middle ground to see what brands are doing on a budget yet using brains and creativity. Here are just a couple of campaigns that stood out for me recently and deserve a pat on the back.

Tweet The Parcel

Tweet The Parcel is a cunning little Twitter campaign by Comet. Visitors are urged to tweet about their most desired Christmas present and to include Comet’s hashtag. The twitterer’s avatar and tweet then appear on Comet’s page only to be replaced by the next entrant. At some random point in time every day “the music stops” and the lucky person whose tweet is live gets to win the daily prize. A very simple and eye-catching concept – hats down to Comet or whoever came up with it.

Facebook Showroom

Equally clever is a Facebook campaign for Ikea by Swedish agency Forsman & Bodenfors. You can watch their promo video showing off the idea on YouTube, but in short it makes a dozen or so showroom photographs available on Facebook and lets visitors tag a product on them for a chance to win  it. Again, a very simple bite-size campaign that gains additional exposure through propagating material on participants’ profile pages and newsfeeds.

Is This It For Twitter?

What a year it has been for Twitter and what stunning charts it has let us produce every step of the way! Growth was nothing short of explosive at the start of 2009, then boiling steadily throughout the year, but now it seems to have evaporated. Promptly, Hitwise produced some usage graphs and asked if it has twittered out? I wonder too, has it all gone twits up?

Well, there’s a debate. Some people say Hitwise graphs are misleading as going on Twitter.com itself is so January, now that we have TweetDecks and the like. Maybe, but the Google Insights graph above shows a decline in search volume that correlates strongly with Hitwise’s visitor stats. There is less interest in Twitter now, there’s no doubt about that.

I reckon it’s success that causes the failure. Twitter had so much buzz earlier in the year that most people that joined didn’t realise why. Now we’re at a stage when only users that genuinely see the platform as fun, cool or useful keep using it. The rest, not tempted by any new interesting developments, are leaving. And I imagine that this is the key for Twitter – if they produce something sexy with that $100m investment they have secured then they may take to the skies again. Whether that will happen we’re yet to see. Google Insights itself shows a pop up “Forecast is unavailable” and that is that.