Social Media for a noble cause

Tattoo-face

Blogging (and Social Media in general) can be used in lots of ways: a voice for the Senior Management Team, a different way to publicise new products and services, as an effective way of connecting better with consumers etc etc.

Ultimately, whether people profess so or not, these routes tend to lead to an end goal of generating extra revenue. This may well not be directly, like traditional marketing, but it’s more often than not the aim of the game. And if it’s not, then maybe you should re-evaluate your business goals.

Anyway, I don’t often see interesting charity ventures promoted via Social Media. One such example is @GeoffLiving who is raising money for cancer research with the Lance Armstrong Foundation. By getting ‘Livestrong’ tattooed on his body (TBC as to where exactly, but you would assume the wrist).

As he says, it’s not everyone’s cup of tea, but it’s a great idea if you ask me.

Will traditional websites become obsolete?

Posterous

Now that there are so many free and good quality blogging platforms out there, will traditional websites one day be a thing of the past?

Even traditional websites, where someone buys the domain name etc., tend to be increasingly simple in terms of layout. This follows a consumer trend for clear and easy-to-understand messaging and functionality on websites. Presumably this comes from the saturation of content we face on a daily basis and people needing to disseminate information quickly. The next step in the road to simplicity is surely blogging platforms being used more widely by big brands.

There are some things blogging platforms aren’t yet internally capable of doing; having a back-end e-commerce springs to mind. However, I wonder if one day e-commerce functionality will be properly integrated onto blogging platforms like Posterous or Tumblr. (Here is a head-to-head breakdown on Mashable between Posterous and Tumblr for those who are interested).

Using blogging platforms does raise certain issues over who ultimately ‘owns’ the site, but maybe this will become less of an issue over time. Maybe having the ‘.posterous’ or ‘.blogspot’ puts people off as they feel it dilutes their brand. You can remove this from the url, but it will always have reference to the blogging platform somewhere on the site. I personally don’t see that as an issue and, in time, I think the vast majority of consumers and brands will feel the same: what matters is the core content of the site and it’s functionality.

What do you think?

Social Media Periodic Table

 

Social Media is all about conversations, but can it be defined in a scientific way? 

This is what Rick Liebling, a U.S. Global Director for Taylor, a marketing communications agency, wondered and he created this periodic table, referencing all the different global influencers in Social Media on his personal website, 'eyecube' at RickLiebling.com.

Not only has he listed the different influencers, he has also tried to compartmentalise it by adding the primary area of Social Media that each person inhabits. 

Personally, I was initially a little confused as to how science and Social Media could merge into anything consumable, but it's fairly straightforward and it's also pretty useful. Those familiar with Social Media and the key people involved in stimulating progression in the space will see many figures they already know; however, it's useful for the Social Media beginner as a starting point. It's also useful for the more experienced people in terms of collecting all the different people in one place.

 

 

Social Media: Art? Or Science?