Birmingham City University, in Britain, is attracting attention and some skepticism with its announcement that it is starting a new master’s degree program in social media, with an emphasis on training people to work in marketing or consulting for those who want to better understand Twitter, Facebook and other popular online services.
From the programs’ site: “This MA programme will explore the techniques of social media, consider
the development and direction of social media as a creative industry,
and will contribute new research and knowledge to the field.”
It actually seems to be more like what I studied at the NYU ITP program, albiet the early-90s version with CD Roms and early web stuff. But the community discussions and the study of how people interact (online and off) still serves me today. Much of what I studied is still relevant. I hope Birmingham is thinking that way as wel.
The panel agreed that every marketer must define measure as Relationships, Analytics and Outcomes. Dr. Fou talked about the linguistics involved – that calling it “social media” sets an expectation that our investment can and should be measured like advertising, with a traceable ROI. Certainly the social networks like Facebook and MySpace are scrambling to improve how their reporting and analysis fits with media buyer expectations and needs. However, if we call it “social marketing” then we can start to measure things around impact and influence and engagement.
This article is really a must read regarding measurement and Social Media.
This morning’s piece is on Drop,io, at the Start Up Blog
So much of business is “getting everyone on the same page.” People are mobile, and teams do more virtually. That’s why a quick collaboration solution will be useful to many companies who want to simply share files, view them at the same time, chat about them, leave notes for each other about them, and, well, there’s a lot more… Read the rest at the Start Up Blog .
I’m proud to support Stand Up To Cancer in the Charity Smackdown 09 – a cause marketing event contest between teams lead by Celebrities with Social Media ‘notables’ on each team. Each of the Smackdown Teams has from March 16th at 11pm EST to March 26th to raise as much money as possible for the causes. Note: Most of the action will occur on HowardGreenstein.com, (UPDATE: See Post HERE) as the Harbrooke Group blog is really for professional activities – but this cause and the event really joins both the personal and professional, hence this post.
My cause, as it has been since last year, is Stand Up To Cancer. Cancer has touched my life in terrible ways through family and neighbors over the past few years, and this is my way to give back. (More stories as the week goes on).
One of the Charity Smackdown Robots
My team is “Team Corbin” led by musician (and High School Musical star) Corbin Bleu, and including Natali Del Conte (@NataliDelConte), Tech Reporter for CNET and CBS’ the Early Show, and Jared Eng of celeb blog JustJared.com (@jaredEng). My team is up against some stiff competition, from celeb power like Alec Baldwin and 2 of the stars of Heroes, and also from some top social media celebs like Mashable’s Pete Cashmore, WalMart’s 11 Moms, MCHammer and Chris Brogan.
Will You lend me your friends and your network to help promote this cause?
*****Call To Action******
Please help me to at least place respectfully in this competition by taking one or more of the following actions:
1. Look for the donation widget below (post will be updated when the widget goes live updated!) and please link to it. (A simple way to do this is to copy the Web Address of this page https://harbrooke.com/2009/03/smackdownsmackdown/ and make it a link via your Facebook Status message).
then:
2. Make your own post in support of my team and link to or embed our donation widget.
3. Donate. If you can spare the $5-10 you’d usually spend on Starbucks for the week or something, that’s great. It all helps. If I could get 100 friends to send $5 or $10 I’d be absolutely ecstatic. If Cancer has touched your life, consider doubling what you’re giving.
4. Add my team’s donation Widget to your blog, MySpace, or webpage. There’s going to be a separate thing for Facebook.
5. I’ll be Tweeting about #Smack09 – please follow me and my teammates on twitter (@howargr) and ReTweet my posts – or “like” them on FriendFeed. The hashtag is #smack09. Also, follow @smack_talk on Twitter.
6. Change your social network status or IM status to “Support Team Corbin and help @HowardGr to Stand Up To Cancer” http://tr.im/smackdown #smack09 please RT”
7. Send an email to friends: “Hi, my friend/colleague/this guy I know Howard Greenstein is part of an online event to raise money for Stand Up To Cancer. Please see https://harbrooke.com/2009/03/smackdownsmackdown/ for more details and to support his cause, donate at URL.”
8. Suggest something that I should do here that I haven’t thought of yet. Comments are open.
Anything you do (even donating to one of the other causes) is helpful to this event, and to me. This event goes for 9 days – so there will be more posts.
Finally, this event is called a “smackdown” because some of the fun is talking smack to the other teams. It is all in good fun, and no one (including me) should take offense. Thanks for reading this and for your support.
One of the hardest business problems to solve is “demand.” We know about demand from economics class as the “The willingness and ability to buy a range of quantities of a good at a range of prices, during a given time period.” It is a problem startups and growing businesses face all the time – how much should I make, or how much would people buy if I make it? But what if your customers could tell you how much they wanted in advance? What if they could tell their favorite band “Play this arena and you’ll sell out” or tell an author “200 of us will be at your book signing in Topeka, if you schedule one.”
Well, I don’t really want my google energy associated with “expensive marketing failures” but I did comment on the Motrin problem from late last year in this piece:
You’re probably familiar with the Motrin fiasco: An online video attempted to be humorous in pointing out that carrying a baby around can hurt your back. Mommy bloggers took offense and marshaled their minions to blast Motrin maker McNeil Consumer Healthcare. Motrin marketers had hoped the video would go viral as a kickoff to a new marketing campaign by Taxi. Instead, McNeil took down the video (useless) and abandoned the rest of the campaign
NEW YORK, Mar 06, 2009 (BUSINESS WIRE) — Acknowledged leaders in the viral marketing community – Peter Himler, Howard Greenstein, John C Havens and Steve Rubel – will be featured panelists at the Baruch College MarkLab’s conference – “Yes We Can: Going Viral in a Social Marketing World” – taking place on Monday, April 27, 2009.
So, in her note she described the need to bring someone in now to learn the employee’s role and transition her work. With so many people out of work in the event planning space, the email generated 300 leads for sales and relationship building. Actually it generated resumes, but Jennifer told me
“Each resume is an opportunity for us to reach out to a planner who is at a job that is being eliminated, a job they’re still in but looking to move from, or someone who will eventually land at a place where they’ll need my firm’s help.”
>There’s more at Inc. about how Jennifer’s firm did with this campaign.
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