Twitter in the Office
September 29th, 2009. Published under Video. No Comments.
When 140 characters are not enough. Great video production about life in the office if our conversations would be limited to 140 characters like on Twitter. Thank you to @ericbaillargeon for the share. Very witty and very funny! Enjoy!
Twitter en entreprise from Florian KARMEN on Vimeo.
photo by: totalAldo
LikeHey! Thank you for visiting my blog again! I really appreciate it, do not hesitate to leave any comments or questions, I really want to hear what you have to say as well.
Thanks for coming back!
TweetStreet – Get your own Twitter Street Name
September 28th, 2009. Published under Thumbs Up. 1 Comment.
Who says you need to become a political icon in order to have a street named after you? http://www.jouwstraanaam.nl/, a Dutch website, came up with a creative effort to raise money for the Palestinian Children Care Society (PCCS) by allowing Tweeple to have their own Twitter handle as one of the 200 street names in Askar, a Palestinian refugee camp. The “@” mention in front of your Twitter name can now be used literally; as a location.
Arjan El Fassed, a Dutch-Palestinian Twitter user, is the first to have a a tweetstreet named after his username: @arjanelfassed. Wired.com reports:
“Since a refugee camp by definition should not remain permanent, selling street names of the camp is a creative way to connect people and support these children after school,” said Arjan El Fassed. “Naming the street to my Twitter account is a symbolic way to connect both online and offline with the children of Askar.”
The tweetstreet names are not reported to be permanent, however it is a great initiative that is bound to provide more visibility to the PCCS. The funds will be used to provide after-school activities for nearly 1,000 children of the refugee camp who currently have no place to go after school. If you want to support this charity or simply just want to have your own tweetstreet, all you need is a Twitter account, 146$ (USD) and go to http://www.jouwstraatnaam.nl/?beschikbaarheid (Website not in English unfortunately).
Have you heard of other creative charity initiatives using Twitter or social media? Perhaps neighbourhoods named after Facebook pages? It would be interesting to live in the Flipping the Pillow Over to Get to the Cold Side neighbourhood!
photo by: Gene Hunt
Successful Social Media Marketers Gain the Trust of Communities
September 23rd, 2009. Published under SEO, Social Media Marketing. No Comments.
Digg announced that they recently added nofollow to some of their links. This is a significant move because Digg is one of the only major/mainstream social media to strip the noffollow attributes to the links created by their users. In order to avoid spam, all major social media: YouTube, Facebook, MySpace, Flickr, Wikipedia, Delicious, LinkedIn etc. apply the rel=”nofollow” link attribute.
The most significant move is that Digg did not apply the nofollow link to all of their user generated links. Their popular content will still have “dofollow” links. Google is quite happy about this and is making a push so that Wikipedia remove some nofollow links, to quote Matt Cutts:
Google does something similar with Knol. Initially Knol authors received nofollow’ed links, but as we gain more trust in authors, we can remove those nofollows. As I recently said in another video, if a site like Wikipedia had good confidence in an editor, you could imagine links made by that editor not having the nofollow attribute. So if you have a way to determine which user-generated links are trustworthy, that could be a more nuanced measure of when to use the nofollow attribute. I discussed this subject a bit more in this video in case you’re interested. It’s about 1:24 into the video:
The reason nofollow links existed in the first place is because not all links can be trusted, especially with the rise of social media such as blogs and forums. However, Google’s algorythm is very dependant on links and accordingly, it is only to their advantage to trust links as much as possible.
In the example of Wikipedia, if a person is trusted by the community, Google can trust the links that person creates because it refers relevant content. Considering that Wikipedia have pages with a Page Rank as high as 7 (some times more), having a dofollow link to your client’s website is worth a lot!
In order to be trusted in these communities, you have to invest a lot of time and contribute a lot. Therefore, it is important for social media marketers to gain authority in communities because in the near future, I wouldn’t be surprised to see social media sites a la Wikipedia and YouTube to allow some dofollow links.
Trust is earned and is easy to lose.
I guess we will see a rise of white hat SMM and black hat SMM similar to the SEO community. Once an SMM gain trust of a community it will be very difficult for him to build links within that community if everybody knows that he is building links for a client or his company. The most succesful SMM will be the ones that are transparent enough and provide relevant content to their community, even if he is paid to do it.
It is important to note that link building is very complex and that there are more factors than the page rank of the page you built a link on. Moreover, nofollow links are not completely useless either because they have shown to help in link building. However, we can all agree that a dofollow link will always be better than a nofollow link on the same page and as social media marketers, if we have a chance to build an external dofollow link on the Wikipedia page of Search Engine Optimization or Social Media Marketing, we do it!
photo by: phauly
Lipdub – Kwad9
September 20th, 2009. Published under Thumbs Up. 2 Comments.
Lately, in Montreal, there has been a huge craze around Lip Dubs. Here is a really nice one that combines a song from 1966 with youths today: LipDub of Michèle Richard’s song “Boîtes à gogo”. For all my non French speaking readers, what do you think? 
(Click on the Video to watch it in better resolution in YouTube)
I really like the marketing in this video because KWAD9 is a French website that allows its visitors (even if you are not a member) to choose vote if a trend is hot or not. They chose a great time to shoot the video because there are so many Lip Dubs that came out in Montreal lately. Great example of combining the offline and online in your marketing mix!
A playlist of multiple LipDubs in Montreal:
PS: You can watch the YouTube version of the Lip Dub if you want to see it in higher resolution.
The Three Spheres of Web Strategy
September 15th, 2009. Published under 101. No Comments.
The Three Spheres of Web Strategy as discussed by Jeremiah Owyang on his Web Strategy blog.
The perfect Web Balance Strategy is a combination of Community + Technology + Business
- Community + Technology = monetization issues.
- Community + Business = Inneffeciency if you do not have the right tools.
- Busines + Technology = Frustrated users, retention problems, low fidelity.
Very hard to argue!
Gary Vaynerchuk’s NY Times Contest
September 10th, 2009. Published under Thumbs Up. No Comments.
CRUSH IT!
My picture entry to Gary Vaynerchuk’s NY Times Contest! He is flying someone to NYC.
SO I Tweeted this an hour ago! Tomorrow I have a big profile in the NY Times and I had this idea. Anyone who buys the Times tomorrow and takes the most creative picture with the actual article in the picture and leaves a link to it under here will win a dinner with me in NYC in 2010, I will fly you in and put you up, get creative and pass it on!
Having an airplane ticket to NYC paid and I get to talk about social media with Gary V? That’s a dream come true. There aren’t a lot of people that I read/watch on a daily basis. Gary is one of the two only person I take time out of my day for.
You wanted a creative picture Gary? You got it. I really believe I have a legit shot at this.
What do you think?
Obama: Be Careful on Facebook
September 10th, 2009. Published under Facebook, Thumbs Up, Video. 1 Comment.
President Barack Obama met with high school and advised them to “be careful what you post on Facebook. Whatever you do, it will be pulled up again later somewhere in your life.”
I like his message because he is not saying to shut down social media or any other fear based propaganda. Rather, Obama advices us to be smart about it.
photo by: Steve Rhodes
Bigger is (not) Better in Social Media
September 8th, 2009. Published under Twitter. 2 Comments.
I have a lof ot respect for the work of Michelle Blanc, a local web strategist. However, one blog post really got on my nerves. Stating how size matters in social media.
My opinion has always been quality trumps quantity and Gary Vaynerchuk says it best.
I thought penis size competition was just for pubescent teens with low self-esteem anyway?
I personally am much more interested in the number of ReTweets a person can score on Twitter per day or the percentage of people that actually clicks on the links you share than the number of followers.
If we really want to compare size, according to http://www.epenis.nl,
- I (@alphonseha) score 36.7cm vs
- @michelleblanc’s 16.6cm
(14.5 vs 6.5in for my American readers 
).
Michelle Blanc’s influence is much greater than mine and it frustrates me to see a person of such high authority in this industry blabber nonsense about social media. Especially in a time where corporations do not understand Social Media yet, the last thing we need is that they are having incorrect information fed to them.
It seems that everybody wants to go with the shotgun approach rather than the sniper approach. What the hell is target market? Segmentation? Those are all marketing 101. It still applies to Social Media. Hence the importance of having a social media marketing strategy that is based beyond x number of Facebook friends/fans or Twitter followers.
photo by: James Sarmiento
UPDATES (09-09-09): Michelle Blanc’s reply to my comment and my response to her (Apologies to my readers that do not read French).
Michelle Blanc:
@Alphonse, tu mêle les pommes et les oranges là. Il y a une différence entre 100 000 et 150 tout comme entre 300 et 3000. Le point du billet est que si tu as 150 Followers et que tu te présente comme gestionnaire médias sociaux pour une entreprise, il y a un problème. De même, si une entreprise est sur Twitter et qu’elle est suivie par 250 personnes, ça va être difficile de ne pas justifier la pub télé qui rejoint 1.5 millions de personnes. La grosseur n’est pas le seul critère il va de soi et Twitter est un outil pour rejoindre les influenceurs plutôt que les individus un à un. Mais il y a tout de même des chiffres qui se doivent d’y être et des résultats qui vont avec.
My Response:
Your post is not in a vacuum. I have enjoyed the quality of your blog posts, however with posts that boasts about “mensurations”, multiple times, your “subtlety” is quite questionable.
You said it yourself:
Vous me direz aussi que je prêche pour ma paroisse et que je profite encore une fois de l’opportunité de me vanter et de rappeler qu’Infopresse a déjà dit que j’avais les plus belles mensurations Web du Québec (et vous aurez raison).
I am simply pointing that out.
The position I take is that quality trumps quantity. Even if you have, as you state, 150 vs 100,000. It doesn’t matter. I still stand firm that quality trumps quantity and that is why I linked to Gary’s video.
You have discussed volume a lot here and I am talking about segmentation and target marketing. I am discussing that because you have not and I believe that is an important point to raise.
If you want to maintain your position that I posted BS I have no choice to believe that you are stating that my claims about the target market, market segmentation is BS as well.
I am raising the issues of the sniper approach as opposed to a blog post that blatantly glorifies volume (shotgun approach).
You can hint that I have personal phallic issues, that I cannot understand French properly, or that I just don’t “get” the subtleties of your blog post. If you do believe that we are talking about apples and oranges, which I do not, then I will say that in this case, you cannot glorify apples without raising the issue of oranges because it is misleading. One needs to be discussed with the other.
The power of social media is not in the volume or “mass reach” but in engagement and what I am saying is that blog posts such as this one contributes to the myth of the importance of volume in social media.
If you disagree then we shall have to agree to disagree.
Always a pleasure to have a conversation with you.
Have a nice day.
Twitter is Good for the NBA
September 4th, 2009. Published under Twitter. No Comments.
I have been following NBA star Kevin Durant’s Twitter for a while. I must say, I think it is a good thing he tweets. He tweets like he breathes and that can get a little annoying, not all his tweets are interesting to me. In fact, he Tweets so much that I saw him respond to people complaining that he tweets too much. However, Twitter is a great time filler. Now that it is the NBA offseason, he often lets out his boredom.
The guy is 20 years old, so he is technically not old enough to hit the clubs and party with the booze. Twitter allows him to stay connected with his fans. He often ustream live, ask questions on Twitter like what music are you listening right now, etc.
This is a great thing because it keeps him busy, it keeps him away from trouble, unlike J.R. Smith for example.
As much as I don’t find him very interesting, Kevin “the god of basketball” Durant is very authentic and very down to earth, unlike make NBA players who aren’t even as good as him *cough* JR Smith *cough*. He is showing his true self to the world. Love him or hate him. Your choice. He’ll be fine with either. He will continue to share his #musicmondays, continue to be bored, ask what’s up with his fans, respond to them and continue to ustream. I just hope he keeps it up when he’ll be 25.
photo by: tlianza
Google Quietly Bites Facebook’s Ass
August 28th, 2009. Published under Facebook. No Comments.
Facebook claim that they have 250 millions active users. I think Google has nearly a billion active users”. Their biggest challenge is to shift their users into members. I would be very interested to know how many people have Google as their homepage vs Facebook as their homepage. With iGoogle quietly making moves to connect people together I can see Facebook finally getting a worthy opponent. Perhaps it will be an ICQ vs MSN messenger part deux?
Google is launching their Chrome OS, an operating system for PCs. Google can cut Facebook off before the user even opens the browser. I am keeping a close eye on what Google is doing with their “social” campaign. I believe that Google has much better talent and engineers, thus they can deliver better products but Facebook is the expert on socializing on the web by a landslide.
photo by: Geek&Poke
