Shīrvān 
In the world of social media, Mashable is king. Our entire office (and the rest of the social media world) consumes Mashable.com content on a daily basis. So, you can imagine our excitement when an article on New Belgium Brewing and their social media efforts was posted today. The article talks about how NBB is the only craft beer with over 100K Facebook fans and mentions the recent “Bike Yourself” and “Beer Ranger” applications. We’ve worked with NBB on its social media engagement strategy for two years now, developing and launching these applications and several other social media initiatives. It’s awesome to see NBB recognized alongside behemoths like Budweiser and MillerCoors. Check out the article here.
Planz 2 Domin8 the Online
Seth Godin on Driveby Culture and the Search for Wow
Seth Godin, my guru of social analysis and social web analysis has a great post this morning about Driveby Culture and our waning attention spans. The fight for brand attention on the TV, on the web and in print has become staggeringly competitive of late, a mix of niche communities and large-scale flash promotions, all targeted to increase a fanbase, engage a demographic or increase brand awareness. A glorified net thrown from an airplane as he sees it. Seth brings the old fight between quantity and quality back to the floor, citing the “demise of thoughtful inquiry and deep experience,” and begging marketers to forget the masses that will race on, unchanged by shallow attempts to engage. Check it out.
http://neilfeather.com/wp-json/oembed/1.0/embed?url=http://neilfeather.com/welcome-under-construction/ Driveby culture and the endless search for wow
The net has spawned two new ways to create and consume culture.
The first is the wide-open door for amateurs to create. This is blogging and online art, wikipedia and the maker movement. These guys get a lot of press, and deservedly so, because they’re changing everything.
The second, though, is distracting and ultimately a waste. We’re creating a culture of clickers, stumblers and jaded spectators who decide in the space of a moment whether to watch and participate (or not).
Imagine if people went to the theatre or the movies and stood up and walked out after the first six seconds. Imagine if people went to the senior prom and bailed on their date three seconds after the car pulled away from the curb.
The majority of people who sign up for a new online service rarely or never use it. The majority of YouTube videos are watched for just a few seconds. Chatroulette institutionalizes the glance and click mentality. I’m guessing that more than half the people who started reading this post never finished it.
This is all easy to measure. And it drives people with something to accomplish crazy, because they want visits to go up, clicks to go up, eyeballs to go up.
Should I write blog posts that increase my traffic or that help change the way (a few) people think? Continue Reading →
New Belgium Brewing Social Media Efforts
New Belgium has been participating in social media via blogging, twitter, youtube and facebook and the engagement has been tremendous. It is clear the New Belgium community is passionate about the brand and the beer they produce. A recent facebook update garnered 74 responses within a couple of hours. Today they were featured in the Fort Collins Coloradoan and tonight will featured on News 4.
“New Belgium — which has a four-person team working on the company’s Twitter page linked to its Web site — became aware of Twitter through the Carbondale-based Backbone Media, which helped guide them through the process of creating and implementing their own Twitter account.”
To read the full article – http://www.coloradoan.com
The economy, innovation and social media
The economy is grim and the government is sticking us (taxpayers) with the bill for their mismanagement.
So what is the answer?
Business Week thinks it is innovation – in their recent top story “Can America Invent Its Way Back?.”
As a growing PR firm that makes its living by finding great brand stories and telling them, innovation is clearly continuing to thrive. Add to that the two way conversations that social media provides between manufacturers and consumers as described in case studies such as this one on Kodak, and there is reason to be modestly optimistic – or at the very least not totally pessimistic…