Social Games: How The Big Three Make Millions So much for the first generation of big Facebook/MySpace social application startups. Slide and RockYou both got huge valuations in venture rounds. But a new generation of application developers has taken center stage and are racking up big revenues and their own eye popping valuations: Zynga, Playfish and Playdom. All three own popular social games on Facebook and MySpace. Zynga’s Farmville has 61 million monthly users. All three companies are getting a ton of press and investor attention. These three companies may be generating as much as $300 million annually on sales of virtual goods. The goal of all of these games is to get to a higher level, and generally have more fun growing things or killing things faster than your friends. Except Business Week didn’t mention the dark side of the business at all. All three companies are willing to give game currency in exchange for offers. The cycle of all of these games is pretty standard.
Social Media Search Tool | WhosTalkin? Luxury Brands Using Social Media Marketing Online «FMM Louis Vuitton - Ad Campaign How Should Luxury Brands Engage in Social Media? This past week, Women’s Wear Daily released an extensive recap of the WWD Luxury Forum. The consensus among luxury professionals is that luxury brands and retailers need to build solid marketing foundations online and those foundations (based off of social media) should focus on building communities and keeping audiences engaged. Ogilvy Digital 360′s Rohit Bhargava and Forrester Research Analyst Jeremiah Owyang recently compiled better practice recommendations for luxury brands venturing into the social media arena. Bhargava’s and Owyang’s practices are starting points for luxury retailers who are contemplating a venture into social marketing. Can luxury retailers venture into social marketing without losing their prestige, aspirational values and sophistication? In order for luxury brands to distinguish themselves diluting their brand, Owyang suggests that luxury brands: 1. 2. 3. Fashism.com 4. 5.
Four Steps to Social Media Marketing Success - Search Engine Wat Whether you're a business or an individual, you must wrestle with many complex issues for social media. These can often be overwhelming. Where to even begin? Rather than be paralyzed, it's often best to understand that there are four simple, yet critical, steps to social media: It's easiest to think of it as a stairway, and the diagram is laid out as such. Listen to your customer and conversations around your brand. Companies often enter the social media fray and jump straight to step four, selling. You need to start with step one, which is listening. Notice in the diagram that the steps for the customer than happen in the reverse order of the company. If it makes it easier to grasp, you can consider these steps 5, 6, 7, 8. Listen: The customer buys the product service from the selling company. That's the beauty of social media. Some of the best strategies in social media are often the simplest.
HOW TO: Measure Social Media ROI Olivier Blanchard Basics Of Social Media Roi Defining Clear Goals As a standard formula, ROI is pretty basic, ROI = (X - Y) / Y, where X is your final value and Y is your starting value. Having concrete goals and concrete baselines is crucial to calculating your return on investment. Once you have your goals defined, you need to gauge the baseline for your levels before starting or changing your social media strategy. Metrics Tools Although ROI ≠ metrics, traditional web metrics like traffic counts, number of comments, Twitter followers, Facebook fans, etc. are an important component when calculating your ROI. The trick is to not rely solely on the numbers, but on what the numbers end up leading to. Back in January, we did a round-up of 50+ Tools for Measuring Web Traffic. Google Analytics — It's free and it can provide a really powerful baseline for a variety of different factors. Sentiment Analysis Social Media Product Suites Making the Data Usable This is the hard part. What do you think?
Green Eggs & Facebook: 15 Social Media Tips from Dr. Seuss The older I get the more I realize how smart my mother & Dr. Suess are. Yes, Dr. Seuss may have some crazy rhymes and guys drawn in his books. However, if you look at the core of his thoughts and words, the man was brilliant. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. And I will close with my all time favorite Dr. “You’re off to Great Places! Go get-r-done peeps! *Important Note: The above quotes are either from Dr. Connect: Authored by: Pam Moore Half marketing, half geek, social media addict, CEO & Founder of Marketing Nutz @MktgNutz, entrepreneur, speaker, trainer, coach. See complete profile
BoxRockit | A simple way to sell your digital products on Twitter BuzzStream Crowdsourcing via the Smartphone Lock Screen Rather than swiping the screen or entering a passcode to unlock the smartphone in my hand, I have to tell it how energetic the people around me are feeling by tapping one of four icons. I’m the only one here, and the one that best fits my actual energy level, to be honest, is a figure lying down and emitting a trail of z’s. I’m trying out an Android app called Twitch. Created by Stanford researchers, it asks you to complete a few simple tasks—contributing information, as with the reported energy levels, or performing simple tasks like ranking images or structuring data extracted from Wikipedia pages—each time you unlock your phone. Twitch is one of several projects exploring crowdsourcing via the lock screen. There are certainly enough smartphones with lock screens ready to be harnessed. In a study conducted by the Stanford researchers, 82 Twitch users completed 19 tasks per day over a three-week period.