If you have teenage children, chances are you learn most of what you know about technology from them. So maybe you have heard of Facebook or MySpace? They are two of many social networking platforms, a place where all ages can open a profile page and instantly communicate with friends and others with similar interests.

In very basic terms, a social network is really an Internet inside the Internet. If the Internet is this sea of people with varying interests, then a social network is really a smaller pool of people consisting of fragments or niches based on interest.

These social networks provide platforms for communication that are instant. Imagine having all of your friends linked to your profile, and when you post a message, you have immediately notified all of your friends. No phone, no e-mail; just instant notification through a single platform. Think of social networks as communication within the Internet. E-mail is communication outside of the Internet - it just uses the Internet - while a social network or “social community” is a platform inside the Internet where people spend their time. E-mail requires you to click back and forth between separate applications while you are online. With Facebook or MySpace, no other application has to be open; you communicate right there where people “hang out” online. Facebook, or whatever technology platform you prefer, is simply a platform for communications. And, as a result, another marketing environment is created–an environment for social marketing.

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Intellagirl here with notes and links from my presentation at the AFA conference in Cincinnati. Even if you didn’t attend the event you may still find these notes useful so be sure to check them out. I’ve organized them according to the slides from the presentation.  You can view and download the whole slideshow here.

Grow and Engage: Web 2.0 technologies such as blogs and social networks can be used to 1) attract new audiences and 2) engage existing audiences in new material, new people, and new causes.

Know Your Audience: Before you can select a technology with which to reach or engage an audience you have t do a bit of digging to find out who they are, what their lives are like, and what technology they have access to.

Technology Use: Are you trying to reach a group who are avid mobile users? Computer users? Are they techno savvy or techno hesitant? Understanding their current technology use will help you choose a media to reach and engage them that will easy and interesting without being intimidating.

Lifestyle: Beyond technology use, it’s important to understand a bit about the audience’s lifestyle as well. Perhaps they work in offices with easy and constant access to internet applications, perhaps they are busy new parents who are more easily accessed through mobile technologies…how does your audience live?

Catching your audience: Knowing your audience will help you decide how best to get their attention to drive them to your social network. Do they already subscribe to a newsletter? A magazine? Do they attend a meeting? Buy a similar product?

Keeping your audience: It’s not enough to create a space online for your community. You should also leverage what you know about them to inform how you can keep their attention.

Motivating your audience: Social networks are great for motivating and organizing groups by facilitating collaboration, constant contact, and resource sharing.

Social Networks: Introducing existing social networks you may want to use if your audience already uses them.

Existing Crowds: Tapping into existing social networks may be easier than creating your own. For example, if you’d like to reach college students Facebook is the ideal place to start.

Facebook.com: A great social network used especially by college students but accessible to everyone.

Myspace.com : The ever popular, ever insane original large-scale social network.

Creating Your Own Space: existing social networks may not appeal to you. Don’t fret! There are easy ways to create your own.

False: If you build it, they will come: Creating a social network isn’t enough. You have to populate it, drive folks to it, and make it a useful resource to keep people coming back.

Ning.com: create your own custom, open or closed, social network for free!

Second Life: a virtual world with an embedded social network

New Group Communication: Beyond, or in addition to social networks, there are other exciting new ways to stay in touch with a group of people.

RSS: Use a RSS (Really Simple Sindication) Reader to organize all of your information feeds and stay on top of blogs and news sources.

Twitter: a microblog accessible by computer and mobile

Jaiku: another microblog

Pownce: another microblog

Del.icio.us: social bookmarking to share resources

Which is right for you?:  How do you decide which technology, or combination, will be best to reach and engage your target audience?

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Web 2.0 for Business: Driving Traffic to Your Website
December 14, 8:30-11:30 a.m.
IUPUI’s Informatics & Communications Technology Complex, room IT152, 535 West Michigan Street, Indianapolis

MediaSauce’s Director of Emerging Technologies, Sarah Robbins, will provide an engaging overview of search engine optimization (SEO), web analytics, Google spidering, link sharing, Pay Per Click (PPC) and other forms of Internet terminology. What’s the difference between a page view and a page hit? Where is your web traffic coming from? How do customers find your page? Are you attracting the right audience? Is your website sending the right message or is it a parking lot for your print brochures?

Find out these answers and more at the complimentary MediaSauce seminar, held in conjunction with the IUPUI School of Informatics. Please RSVP to Nicole Bickett, director of marketing, nicole.bickett@mediasauce.com.

Waking Up in a World of Screens
December 20, 7:30-9:00 a.m.
Junior Achievement, 7435 N. Keystone Ave., Indianapolis

Join MediaSauce for our monthly informational breakfast and networking event to find out who we are and how we can help your business grow. This is your chance to openly ask questions about emerging technologies and new media! Meet CEO, Bryan Gray, and Director of Emerging Technologies, Sarah “Intellagirl” Robbins, along with our MediaSauce Consultants for this informative, fun and enlightening event. Please RSVP to Nicole Bickett, director of marketing, nicole.bickett@mediasauce.com.

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How do you define success? Just like professional golfers visualize the shot before they start the swing, when it comes to marketing, you need to define the ideal outcome or success before you start. As it relates to Internet-based marketing or advertising, success can come in many shapes and sizes. How are most Internet-based strategies measured? Which metric is most relevant? Should you measure hits, sessions, page views, unique visitors, session times or conversions? The answers are founded in the reason for the effort. If you are interested in building the market awareness of a company, then unique visitors might be the appropriate measurement. If you are selling a product or seeking contributions, then conversion would likely be your metric. What about a site where the content is video that features product placement? In that case, measurement might be session time - how long someone spent at the site watching that video.

What about other methods of measurement, like “hits” to a site? Hits represent the
number of times an object or element of the site was requested. One unique visitor to a site could trigger multiple “hits” just by visiting. That same user refreshing their screen triggers even more hits. Hits will represent the largest total when compared to visitors, sessions, page views, and most other Web metrics.
Therefore, it is not surprising that most like to boast a high number of “hits” because it makes the project appear successful. Even so, the number of “hits” is irrelevant and doesn’t measure success. You could have one million “hits” and only 100 unique visitors to a site. What is important is that before you spend money, time and effort on a Web-based solution, be sure you have spent time defining the ideal outcome. If you don’t know where you are going, how will you know if you got there? This is an important thing to remember when setting out to do anything in life: define where you’re going.

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Communication in the digital world requires new rules and a new mentality. This new world mentality is necessary to message effectively and drive results or actions for your business. Consider the following eight rules if you are a decision maker for your company’s digital messaging.

1. Always tell a story. Story is the sweet spot. It’s what resonates with people. You can share information with people, but stories make connections. Data doesn’t inspire people, but a story does. When you tell a story, you have to be authentic. Authenticity is about being real and telling the truth. It’s about being you and comfortable sharing that. To make a connection and truly inspire, you need to tell a good story.

2. Always be relevant. I want to receive messages when the content is relevant to me. If I am in the market for a computer, I want to receive information about computers. Once I have purchased, I don’t want to hear from you anymore. Make sure your messages are relevant to your audience.

3. Always ask permission. If you don’t get permission chances are you are sending out spam. If you have a digital database, make sure you have specifically asked each person in it for permission to send them messages. Sending a message to a database and expecting them to opt out if they don’t want the message is not getting permission - it is spamming. You need to make sure that anyone you send a message to electronically have given you or a third party permission to do so.

4. Tell the world - in all directions. A viral message - one that can be shared easily - is the best message. To be viral, what you send has to be worth sharing. If it is viral, you can reach people you otherwise wouldn’t reach. Remember the political piece “This Land” from a company called JibJab? It debuted in 2004 and featured a parody of Woody Guthrie’s “This Land is Your Land” where animations of John Kerry and George Bush sang the song. It has now been viewed by nearly 80 million people. And the distribution cost: zero. With the right content, the message gets shared in all directions.

5. Always make it simple. Communication must be simple and easy. The person who receives your message doesn’t want more work - they seek simplicity. Simplicity also includes speaking the same language. Be sure any content you send to people is easy to open and doesn’t make you download anything.

6. Give up control. Your potential customers will believe another customer over you any day. Don’t always think you have to control the message. Let the user or customer shape the message. That creates interaction. The future of sales and marketing will be allowing your brand (and its reputation) to be vulnerable. You don’t have to control everything, give up a little and you will find that it pays off.

7. Make it convenient. Action or the next step has got to be easy for the user. Have you ever been to a Web site where the only way to get in touch with the company was to call them? How inconvenient is that? You are online and ready to take action, but there is no convenient way to make contact, share or buy. You always have to make it convenient for the user. If you are using digital or electronic means to contact customers, let them respond or interact with you the same way. It only makes sense.

8. Create an audience. Communications in a digital world requires you to think “audience.” The people you communicate with are your audience. Always remember you have no right to bore your audience. If your companywere a sports team and you continually disappointed, soon your audience would disappear. The same thing applies to your communications. Make it two-way. One-way communications are boring. Make it two-way and you develop relationships. How strongly would you feel connected to a person or company that never asked for your opinion or let you talk? You wouldn’t feel connected at all. Let people connect with your company, it’s for the best. Armed with these eight rules, your company can create electronic communications that are effective and cause results. After all, that’s the point, right - results? Help create those results with your new world mentality approach to your communications.

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I follow one television program – meaning simply I watch it every week. “30 Rock” on NBC appears Thursday nights at 9 p.m. I look forward to that time slot like it was 1980 and I was waiting on “Three’s Company.” There are two or three people at the office who also like “30 Rock.” Friday morning bright and early I met one of my fellow fans in the hall. My first remarks were, “I was kind of disappointed last night; really wasn’t their best show.” And her response was, “What are you talking about?” Further discussion let me know that she didn’t watch the show when I did. “Oh, I watch that on Saturday.” Brought about by video on demand (VOD) and digital video recorders (DVRs), this phenomenon is known as time shifting.

Time shifting occurs when someone records a program for later viewing or listening. Technically, time shifting has been going on since the videocassette recorder made mass market success in the late 1970s. Even so, VOD and DVRs are creating a situation where time shifting is even easier. And let’s not forget the personal computer and the iPod. With portable devices, not only can you time shift but you can place shift. You can watch the program wherever you want. Now the experience of the show is portable and there is no need to be available at that time, sit through the commercials or even watch it on the television. The traditional advertising model using television was content, content, advertisement, content, content, advertisement and then another show and repeat the same. DVRs and VOD are taking the advertisement out of the content. So why does a sitcom have to be 30 minutes long and only available Thursday night? It doesn’t - check out NBC.com; most of them are there for anytime viewing. Beyond time shifting and place shifting, there is perhaps the most intriguing shift of all - authority shifting. Consumer-generated media, Web logs (blog), social communities, and user or customer feedback mechanisms are taking authority away from the networks and publishers and putting it in the hands of the consumer. It all may sound a little scary, but it is just part of the disruptive shifts in behavior that signal an end to television and advertising as we know it.

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