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Blogging, Photography, Travel

As we kick off the New Year, social media has become an integral part of marketing (see my previous post Social Media Trends for 2011), yet so much more than just another tool used to increase awareness, drive conversion and impact brand equity. Through some research and a lot of introspection about what will be important to social media marketing professionals like myself in the year to come, here are the top 5 trends sure to feature prominently in 2012:

1. Influence Recognized & Rewarded

The hunt for influencers who can impact a brand’s metrics positively is on! The great thing about social media is that it is no longer just celebrities whose voice counts, in fact companies are becoming more cognizant of influencers who can speak to their target market demographic (see my previous post about social proof in marketing). Back in marketing class in college, we talked a lot about segmentation, however the conversation back then was about groups of people, not individuals. Case in point: I recently received a perk from Swaylo in the form of two free tickets to the exclusive preview screening of Albert Nobbs due to my perceived “influence”. Does Swaylo know I was a marketing executive for the largest movie theater chain in Slovenia? Could be… My friend alivea meanwhile raves about her free MOO cards, which she receives due to her high ranking on Klout. Just a few examples of how smart brands are starting to influence influencers to influence others!

2. Content Marketing Becomes a Necessity

With Google’s recent changes to its search algorithm, it will be harder than ever to “game” the system. As a consequence, from now on out, clever SEO strategies will play much less of a role, with truly great content that is shared AND talked about becoming the deciding factor. The challenge for brands will be to put out content that isn’t just good enough to find, but great enough to be shared via multiple social media platforms and discussed fervently.

3. Social Media IS the New Branding

Social media is becoming way more than just another “tool”. Through the transformation and fragmentation of consumer habits, it is slowly becoming the new branding. Consumers have come to expect a lot more from social media, and we can expect interaction and even customer service via social media to become the new standard. The days of planning obtuse communications for a large predictable audience is over; consumers will come to expect transparency, instant feedback and 24/7 availability. Smart companies will take advantage of this trend in 2012 to engage customers, innovate their service offerings and satisfy previously unaddressed needs.

4. Blogging Gains Momentum

Closely related to trend 2. above, blogging is becoming more, not less important to corporate marketing strategy. MarketingProfs just recently published their 2nd annual survey of B2B marketers, which shows that 90% of B2B marketers use blogging to support their content marketing goals. Compared to 2010, when 51% of B2B marketers reported utilizing blogging in support of their content marketing goals, in 2011 a whopping 65% of marketers used the tactic to educate, entertain and inform consumers. According to this article, companies that blog enjoy 55% more website visitors and a 62% cheaper cost per lead. Furthermore, there is now strong evidence that consumers trust blogs more than many other sources.

5. Internationalization

As this great post from the Global Business Hub points out, while in theory the internet has no borders, few companies know how to effectively garner and cultivate an international audience effectively. This last trend is probably the most futuristic of those identified in this post, yet represents one of the biggest long term challenges in social media marketing. That said, many brands are now global, even if they had perhaps not intended to be initially. Did you know that 88% of internet users reside outside of the US?

Tags

Blogging, Business, Global trends, Marketing, Social Media

Top 5 Most Popular Posts

1. Top 5 Social Media Trends for 2011 (Social Media/Global Trends)

2. Best of Slovenia Photo Collage (Photography/Travel)

3. Guest Blogger Jared Dillian on Greed (Business/Guest Bloggers)

4. 3 Things I Will Miss Most and Least About Europe (Society/Travel)

5. Savski Blok Party 2 (PR/in Slovene)

Realizing how popular photography content could be was as one of the big surprises for me. What didn’t surprise me was that the post with the most uniques was on the topic of Social Media. Of the Guest Bloggers on TTH this year, Jared Dillian received the most attention, aided by the publicity for his new book Street Freak, lauded by Bloomberg as one of the best business books in 2011.

Top 7 Countries for Traffic

1. United States (36%) 2. Slovenia (21%) 3. United Kingdom (5%) 4. Canada (5%) 5. India (3%) 6. Australia (2%) 7. Philippines (2%)

The site has been viewed in 118 countries of the world, with the English speaking countries of the West predominating. Visitors from the US, UK and Canada alone were half of the blog’s readership in 2011. That said, the Asia Pacific countries are slowly (but surely!) trending upwards. After Slovenia, Germany was the top source of hits from Europe.

Top 7 Sites Driving Traffic

1. Google 2. StumbleUpon 3. Facebook 4. Expat-blog 4. Reddit 5. Twitter  6. LinkedIn 7. Yahoo

StumbleUpon has performed admirably for the Two Halves, becoming the second most important referring site. Facebook has been less useful this year at generating traffic, while Twitter has increased in importance and Reddit is just blowing up! All this likely only mirrors the wider shift in social media consumption overall.

Top 7 Keywords Searched

1. Jared Dillian 2. Daily Dirtnap 3. Microlocation 4. Trends in society 5. Social media trends 6. Ambasada Gavioli 7. Blok party

Tags

Blogging, Global trends, Social Media

If you have been following the latest trends in social media, you have probably noticed that sites attempting to measure online influence have been popping up like mushrooms after a rainstorm. With the mass of content available online, the marketers behind it certainly all have a vested interest in jockeying furiously for position. For a great rundown of the phenomenon, go to this TechCrunch article on social proof. As I cannot possibly review all of the social influence sites out there, I will only take a stab at those I know and use currently making waves and which appear to be best-in-class.

1. Klout: certainly the most popular and well known social influence measurement site out there, with a VC firm recently investing $10M in the concept. Spotify took advantage of Klout to launch by invite only, while artists like Will Ferrell and Stephen King are using it for their product launches, giving early adopters the chance to preview their content exclusively. I like how it rates users on the types of topics they are influential about; here’s mine. Without a doubt this is THE site to beat as 2011 draws to a close. That said, there are considerable drawbacks to the way the site, currently still in Beta version operates. While it purports to score your online influence on three factors (true reach, amplification and network), its scoring model leaves a lot to be desired (see: Klout is broken). I have been on for months circling a respectable 53 score and have yet to see my FB activity stats updated, which makes me wonder if they’re even counted. Looks like Klout has its work cut out for it; that said, I think it deserves credit for its ambition. You might also be interested in 7 surefire ways to increase your Klout score from Mashable.

2. Twenity: this brand new, cheeky entrant to the social influence measurement contest from Europe has a lot of style. The site’s tagline “Vanity is the spice of life” pokes fun at how seriously social media marketers are taking ourselves, all the while delivering a rich and engaging user experience.  The concept is much truer to gamification than Klout as you directly compete with peers in your timezone or industry, and in fact the site advertises its ability to identify the Top 20 people or brands with the most influence. I  like the quirky badges the site gives you when you reach certain milestones. Twenity currently only measures your influence on Twitter on the basis of three factors: your followers, your tweets and your lists to come up with a total score. Check it out, the service doesn’t officially launch in the US until January 20 of next year.

3. Others: one of the better rated new social media influence measurement sites which I have not had a chance to try out yet is Peerindex. It uses a ”Topic Fingerprint” to score you on 8 categories. Another one that sounds really cool is Empire Avenue, which bills itself as the Social Stock Market. Then there are many, many others, including PostRank, TwentyFeet, Sprout Social, Twylah and Traackr, each with their own unique or not-so-unique claim to fame. Please comment on this post if you have utilized any of these and tell us what you liked or didn’t like about them.

For more posts about social media on the #TwoHalves click here. For the best rated post about social media on the #TwoHalves EVER go here.

Tags

Global trends, Marketing, Social Media

Tags

Photography, Travel

The situation isn’t peachy. The global economic system is collapsing, the middle class is disappearing, and financial institutions have taken control of the fate of many countries and corporations. People are frustrated and want something else, they want a predictable and stable future. Hence the global Occupy Wall Street movement has been born, supported by various public figures and activist groups such as The Anonymous. Fueled by the success of the Arab Spring, these people are demonstrating against the domination of the rich 1% (or the ultra rich 0.1%), hoping to achieve a better world built on equality, opportunity and optimism.

When history looks upon the events that unfolded in 2011, it will probably view them similarly to 1848, when the Spring of Nations took place in Europe. But this time it’s a bit different, it’s a bit more theatrical. We’re watching it live, and participating in it real-time. Everybody is in it, one way or another, the technology allows it, the people and the media amplify it. Even if you are just an observer, you pretty much know what’s going on. People are squatting the streets, the police are trying to prevent it (violently), the corporations and political elites ignore it, some people support it, others don’t.

These days, everyone can be a reporter. And most activists are. Equipped with laptops, tablets and smart phones, backed up by social media, thousands of tweets, blogs, pictures and videos are broadcast to the Web each minute. Uncountable number of actors, cameras and commentators make this event bigger than Big Brother, even bigger than The Truman Show. Occupy has become the ultimate global crowdsourced reality show happening non-stop, every minute, every hour, for days, even months.

The fascinating fact about this story is that you can choose the channel you want to watch. You can go directly to the source, to the people who are living it. You can consume it on the secondary level, where television and print media report their own, perhaps biased versions of what’s happening. You can study the higher level interdisciplinary implications, such as these great Twitter visualizations of Occupy Wall Street or the Egyptian revolution. The Web is the playground with infinite toys.

But it’s up to you if you want to get involved and contribute to the critical mass of this movement. Everybody can be a part of it, even if you’re just watching or sharing information from the coziness of your living room. Perhaps you’ve finally been awarded with the opportunity to change the world. Probably not, but there’s always a chance. And if the world won’t change, you can at least participate in the show that will go down as one of the greatest reality shows of our time. Are you the 99%?

Grega Stritar is an entrepreneur, software architect, blogger and geek based in Ljubljana, Slovenia. He shares his thoughts on stritar.net.

Tags

Blogging, Global trends, Guest Bloggers, Marketing, Politics, Social Media, Society

Arriving in Philadelphia, I had exactly two hours to make the flight to Phoenix. Plenty of time, right? Rushing to Immigration, 600 American citizens were forced into a snake like convoy that can only be described as chaotic. There were an entire 5 counters open for us. In the other line, the 400 or so foreigners had 11 counters at their disposal and made their way through in no time. Fair? I think not.  Another recently returned expat and I made no bones about voicing our complaints, attracting the attention of a ”handler”, while most of our fellow citizens sheepishly waited their turn. ”Are we even IN the United States?”, I quipped? This kind of lollygagging was more like something I would expect to experience in a third world country (and I’ve been to a few!).

After a grueling an hour and a half wait, we were finally allowed to proceed to Customs, where luckily I was not stopped. Considering all of us had to go through intense scrutiny to board the flight to the US in the first place, you would think that we might have been allowed to go straight to our flights from here. But nooooo… We STILL had to go through airport security! Long story short, I barely made the last flight to Phoenix with no time to spare (14 minutes before flight time, to be exact). If I hadn’t sprinted like a madman through the airport I would have missed it. In fact, the gate agent made a point of telling us that he could have refused boarding. Is this what air travel has come to? No wonder Pan Am, the hit new TV series about air travel back in the seventies, when it was something glamorous is so popular now… But is that all we have to comfort us people, make believe? Honest to God, I’ve had more fun (and felt safer) traveling from Phnom Penh, Cambodia to Saigon, Vietnam on a VIP bus that cost me all of $10. Not almost a grand! Seriously, America. You might think I’m just bitchin’, but if this is any indication of where our country is going, we’re all in deep doo doo. America’s airlines, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Homeland Security, consider this your wake up call to get your act together!

Tags

Global trends, Marketing, Society, Travel

Top 3 Things I Will Miss the Most:

1. Country Gourmet – there’s just so much good food here. And I’m talking flavorful, vibrant, nutritious, delicious Grade A+ food. In fact, I’d be willing to bet a commoner in Slovenia eats better than many a wealthy person back in the States.

2. Saunas - like this one with a view over Lake Bled that I can personally recommend (Wellness Živa). Say what you will, but the Euros know how to relax.

3: NCP – Nice, Cute, Practical. Yup, that about sums it up. Goes for most of the people you’ll meet, as well as places and physical objects. I love that you can get along with almost anyone here, crime is a non-issue and Slovenia is about as safe as it gets.

Top 3 Things I Will Miss the Least:

1: Bureaucracy – You know, like when you have to run around like a dumbass to five different places just to take care of one minor detail. Slovenia’s probably even worse when it comes to this than most EU states, I swear the bureaucrats here make up rules on top of rules solely to justify their own existence. Barf.

2: Moralizing – It’s a sport on this continent. Everyone knows best about everything, from nuclear power, the death penalty to American international economic policies. It’s just that well, I would believe you more if you had more than one suspiciously cliche perspective to offer. Who defends Europe? Oh that’s right, NATO does.

3: Defenders of the Social State – sorry for speaking out of turn, but if you ask me, socialism is dead. Things are not the way they used to be and they never will be again. Get used to it. You can’t rely on the government to provide for you any longer. Do something progressive instead of whining and pining. Start a Social Business instead!

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Blogging, Society, Travel

Tags

Photography, Travel

1. China: the world’s number one site for social networking QQ rules the roost here and though you’ve probably never heard of this website, it has MORE registered accounts just inside China (650 million) than Facebook has worldwide!

2. India: a site called Orkut got beaten at its own game by Facebook, which achieved an impressive 179% growth rate last year, signing up 21 million users to date.

3. Brazil: Orkut managed to stand its ground and remains the most popular social network. The real story in Latin America, particularly in Brazil is the success of Twitter, which has managed to bridge the divide between the haves and the have nots in a way that no other technology has ever been able to achieve. Slum dwellers can now for example  message celebrities and football stars directly.

That’s the macro or global view. But this is where I throw a curve ball at you, because I see a parallel trend developing on the micro or country level in the States, where a not-so-well known site called Topix makes inroads into rural America, penetrating the demographic in a way that no other site conceivably ever has. In a recent headline article which focused on the slander aspects of the site, professor Christian Sandvig notes: ”Something about rural culture seems to make people want to have conversations in public”. The site receives virtually no attention in the big cities, however has been developing a giant following in smaller cities and towns in the Ozarks, Appalachia and much of the South (poorer areas of the US, for my international readers).

Bottom line: social media’s explosive growth has the potential to transform social ties, with the most potential in poorer countries  and regions, which is exactly where it can make the most difference in the lives of its residents. With an ever increasing share of advertising dollars worldwide being spent on digital marketing and social media, the business potential related to this social trend is only just beginning to surface. However, I am for one am firmly convinced that social media is no longer some new ”fad”, but here to stay! Take note…

Tags

Global trends, Marketing, PR, Social Media, Society