Conservative Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty has announced that he will be hosting a Town Hall this evening via his Facebook Page, which currently has over 33,000 fans. This is part of a continued wave of “Facebook Politics” in which politicians use the massively popular site as a platform for engaging with constituents. While some more innovative political candidates, such as 27-year-old Patrick Kennedy, are turning to all social media platforms (including Foursquare), Facebook is becoming a central player in the future of digital politics.

While there won’t be any massive announcements during today’s Town Hall (such as the Governor’s announcement to run for President or Congress), the Governor will announce support for other Congressional candidates. Facebook played a major role in the Obama 2008 campaign and Politicans from both sides of the aisle have increasingly turned to the site following Obama’s massive grass roots success.

While a Facebook Town Hall is not exactly a new concept, Tim Pawlenty told Fox News correspondent Greta Van Sursteren that he would be taking all questions from the audience (as long as there are no curse words). While political movements have been started on Facebook for years now, conservatives have been behind the trend until recently.

Sarah Palin however is one other conservative politician who has bucked the trend and has received an incredible amount of coverage for many of her public statements via Facebook Page. If you happen to live in Minnesota, you can participate in tonight’s Town Hall at 6:15 Central via Pawlenty’s Facebook page.

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Attacks perpetrated by cyber criminals are exploiting the growing reliance on social media by Internet users, according to a report released today by Blue Coat. As more Internet users shift to social media, the bad guys have moved along with them, seeking to leverage the new technologies to conduct malware attacks.

Blue Coat has extensive cloud systems offerings and has put together the “Blue Coat Web Security Report for 2009” which focuses not on anti-virus effectiveness but rather examines web behavior. Blue Coat provides URL monitoring, which Bob Hansmann, senior product marketing manager at Blue Coat Systems, says can help to protect customers from zero day exploits often missed by traditional anti-virus software.

“We’re securing those customers when a zero day [exploit] comes out,” he said.

The report found that social networking sites accounted for one quarter of all Web access activity in 2009. Over the previous year, social networking use skyrocketed 500 percent, according to the report.

The major driver behind cyber crime was possible financial gain, with attacks being “more adaptive to where and how users were using the Web at any given moment.”

According to Hansmann, a number of new technologies appeared in 2009. “Cyber criminals were the first to start using it,” he said.

Fake anti-virus programs topped the list of successful malware campaigns. Recently, Facebook experienced a fake anti-virus program that spreads itself by tagging “Friends” in a photo of the product.

Throughout 2009, social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter and MySpace experienced cyber attack campaigns, commonly using phishing tactics. One of the principle problems with social networking sites is that typical “indicators” of a phishing attack do not apply. It is common to see misspellings and other grammatical errors on social networking sites that are not tolerated in emails.

The method to combat the growing attempts by criminals to leverage social media is education. People are the first line of defense against malware attacks, and following simple practices such as “be careful what you click on” can make a world of difference, according to Hansmann.

In 2010, Blue Coat predicts that Web threats will continue to increase, social media technologies will be more vulnerable to attacks, email will not be used as often to distribute malware, malware distributors will continue to utilize hot topics to point unsuspecting users to infected websites and remote workers will be the most exposed to threats.

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Disclaimer: I’m annoyed. This post is probably crabby. Not my usual fare. Skip it if you like.

If you’re still here, can we, pretty please, talk to the people around us and do something to prevent these tragic conversations? Consider this a public service announcement or a rant, however you choose. But enough is enough.
1. Getting More Followers and Fans

Unless you can tell me what the hell they’re going to do for you, how you’re going to mobilize them, and what you’re going to give back to them that makes it worth their while to grant you their attention and continue to give it, who cares? People aren’t marbles, and you don’t get any points for collecting a bunch of staring eyeballs that are waiting for you to do something significant. Attention only matters if can move people beyond noticing, and into investing their time and energy.
2. Misdefined ROI

Google it. If you know what ROI really is, you’ll eventually figure how to do the work and connect the dots between your social media endeavors and your finances, your brand, or a combination of the two. You’ll find other metrics, too, that point toward success or lack of it.

If you don’t, quit bastardizing the term ROI and using cryptic, fluffy interpretations of it in order to avoid admitting that you don’t understand it, or to dodge the whole measurement and accountability issue altogether. If you’re using vague ROI arguments to stand in for what’s really a lack of a business case, you have work to do on explaining why you care about social media in the first place.
3. Entitlement to Free Stuff

The people on the web with knowledge, expertise, and information owe you none of it. Some will put it out there for free because they believe there’s value in contributing to the whole. But they don’t owe you a thing, and they can take it away or change the game anytime they want.

Whether they’ll be successful or not is for their potential customers to decide. But you are not entitled to a bit of it. Pay or don’t pay for what’s valuable to you personally, but quit with the naive notion that social media and money don’t or can’t go together, and that content creators are morally or ethically corrupt because they’re asking for compensation in return for making their knowledge and experience available.
4. Joining the Conversation

This was probably a great phrase at the emergence of all of this, but it’s become so diluted that it means little anymore. Join which conversation? For what purpose? With whom? And what then? Let’s start talking about the INTENT behind the conversation in the first place, and the underlying value of being present and engaged with the right people who give a rip what you have to say, not just anyone with a frontal lobe and an internet connection.
5. What’s The Next Whatever

We have all of the “new” we could possibly want, but we’re distinctly lacking in execution with what we have. Clamoring for the next big thing is looking for permission to be messy. It’s easier to latch on to something new and unproven, because then you’re not accountable. Instead, man (or woman) up, and get busy wrangling the things you already have at your disposal to do something worthwhile.
6. Content is King.

Like hell. Creating content is not what wins you the prize. It’s not enough to write something, or populate a blog, or create a video. Content is worth precisely ZERO until it’s being found, consumed, and then used to do something. It needs to drive people to action – sharing, buying, building, interacting.

And guess what, stargazers? If your content isn’t propelling people to act on something that eventually delivers something of value back to your business (provided you’re talking content marketing and not outright contribution for charitable purpose), it’s a time sink. That makes it decidedly less than king.
7. The Quest for Universal Constants

How many people do I need to manage social media? How many hours a day? How much budget? What should I put on my Facebook page? Do we need a LinkedIn Group? Where’s the case study?

Stop. There’s more than enough information out there to guide you toward the big picture constants. The rest you’re going to have to find out for yourself by actually doing something, and putting it all in context of your own situation. This is no different than anything else, ever. You still have to build your own sales strategy, HR plan, CRM approach irrespective of what’s been done before, no matter how long those concepts have been around. If you’re spending all your time building your cloned safety net based on other people’s situations, you’re already behind the game, and not focused on what your business needs.
8. Social Media Experts and Proverbial Snake Oil

Who cares? If you’re a business, do your due diligence the way you would with any other adviser you hire. Do some research. Ask hard questions about results, accountability, and strategies that can survive a shift in technology. Read the countless blog posts out there – like this awesome one by Jason Falls -  about how to find a professional that knows what they’re doing.

If you’re a fellow contender in the space that’s crabby because other people are stealing your thunder or making a mockery of the profession you hold so dear, suck it up. Go work hard. Prove your substance through what you do. Let the idiots hang themselves on the empty, shoddy frameworks of “strategy” that they’re peddling to those that are so desperate for a social media success story that they’ll buy anything. Sympathy time is over for the gullible, and it’s time for you over there to run your own damn race.
9. Social Media Is Hype, Stale, Old, Whatever.

If you think it has potential but you think we could be doing more, put your money where your mouth is. Don’t just brag about unfollowing someone who didn’t meet your standards as some self-righteous stunt. Offer something constructive of your own. Do it better. If it has practical uses but there are misconceptions, correct them through illustrating the alternatives, teaching, doing.

Think it’s lame altogether? Tired of hearing about it? Convinced it’s hype and bunk? That’s fine. Then close your Twitter account, get off Facebook, stop blogging, and go do something else. It’s all optional. We’ll be fine without you.

There. I said my piece on those for now. That feels better. What about you? I know this isn’t particularly useful  as a how-to, but sometimes even the most of constructive of us need to stomp and holler before we can get back to business.

Back to work, now.  I’ll be bringing you more positive solutions and ideas upcoming. Feel free to add yours the comments, too. We’re all in this together. Maybe we’ll even learn a thing or two.

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Social media websites, like Twitter and Facebook, are now seen as crucial battlegrounds, as well as potential forums for political gaffes. The influence of bloggers too, free as they are to support or attack the various parties, also seems to be growing by the day.

Now one company, Yomego, says it can put some numbers on the effect of all this – with what it calls “social media reputation scores” (SMRs) for the parties and their leaders.

These give a rating for someone’s online popularity by looking at both the “noise” surrounding them – just how much are they being talked about online – and “sentiment” – whether the talk is positive or negative. The higher your sentiment score, the nicer the things people are saying about you.

Out of the 100, Gordon Brown’s popularity score is 68.20, David Cameron’s is 58.98 and Nick Clegg’s is the highest at 68.49.

Within that, Mr Brown’s noise component is up at 87, but his sentiment is just 47 and slipping. A lot of people seem to be talking about him, but not very favourably.

Mr Cameron’s sentiment score is better, about 58, but people seem to be talking about him much less – with noise down to 48.

Of the three, Mr Clegg appears to be talked about in the most positive terms, with a sentiment rating of 62.

‘Air-brushed’ poster

Steve Richards, managing director of Yomego, says: “The trend has been that Nick Clegg has been steadily rising, without doing anything particularly spectacular.

“David Cameron’s personal score has gone down recently. He took a big knock around the whole airbrushed poster campaign. There were a lot of spoofs, particularly from influential bloggers, and that really seemed to hurt him.

“Finally, Gordon Brown’s score has risen recently, but largely due to noise, not because of any growth in positive sentiment.”

LEADERS’ SOCIAL MEDIA SCORES
Gordon Brown – 68.20 (out of 100)
David Cameron – 58.98
Nick Clegg – 68.49
Source: Yomego

Looking at the parties as a whole, however, the picture is quite different. Labour’s score is 63.56, the Tories’ is 73.12 and the Lib Dems’ is 62.04.

The Tories are miles ahead in terms of noise, with a figure in the nineties, but are also doing better than the government in terms of sentiment.

The Lib Dems have the best sentiment but not much overall noise – according to Yomego, the main talking point is whether Vince Cable could become chancellor in a coalition government.

PARTIES’ SOCIAL MEDIA SCORES
Labour – 63.56 (out of 100)
Conservatives – 73.12
Lib Dems – 62.04

“The Tories have made more effort so far than the other parties to use social media and that shows. Things like their iphone app have gone down well,” Mr Richards says.

Comments, good or bad, that are being made by so-called “influencers” – in the political context that tends to be certain bloggers, columnists or correspondents – have a bigger weighting than an average person.

“If someone with a million followers on Twitter is saying something negative then that could potentially have a big influence,” he adds.

Younger voters

But does any of this really matter? Should the party leaders actually take it seriously ahead of the election?

“Well, Obama certainly did,” says Mr Richards. “A huge part of his campaign was directed towards social media and influencing younger voters who might well take a steer from their peers rather than traditional media outlets.

“And it’s very immediate. Just last week Labour took a hit over the lobbying stuff and David Cameron saw his sentiment ratings improve because of his wife’s pregnancy.”

Yomego also works with corporate clients – recently Mr Richards says he has seen the social media reputation of big brands like Toyota and Eurostar “fall off a cliff” thanks to a product recall and tunnel breakdowns respectively.

It’s a sort of early warning system for negative sentiment.”
Steve Richards, Yomego

“If you look at Eurostar, they were getting a huge amount of negative chatter, but in the crucial first 48 hours of that there was nothing from them. There’s a lesson there for politicians.

“If there’s a particular detractor out there who is running a story and is generating a lot of traffic then it would be worth their while reacting to that.”

This sort of cyber-space reaction could provide almost instant feedback to the leaders’ performances during the televised head-to-head debates scheduled to take place during the campaign.

“They’ll be able to see exactly how people are reacting. It’s a sort of early warning system for negative sentiment.”

Tories ‘on message’

Other groups are using social media in other ways to test the political waters.

Mr Cameron might have made it clear last year that he is no fan of Twitter but nevertheless, a group of computer science students at Cambridge University has developed a programme that analyses the tweets of individual politicians.

It compares them with a 250,000-word database of material from their party’s manifestos, speeches, and so on and can work out how on or off message any one person is.

All that is displayed on a website, tweetgov.co.uk, and one of its founder’s, Oliver Lech, said: “The Conservatives have consistently come out a lot higher in terms of allegiance, with Labour quite a way behind and the Lib Dems even further.”

He says about one politician a day is signing up to Twitter and the allegiance between them and the party line does seem to be affected by wider goings on.

“The Tories had a bit of dip earlier this month when their polls ratings started to drop, but they seem to be back on message now, particularly around the Budget.”

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Sounds scary doesn’t it? Well, apparently behavioral targeting is music to advertisers ears because the technique works. Of course, this very same practice is what makes the hairs on the back of the neck of government regulators stand on end. The controversial and growing practice is going to be around though until it is asked to leave the building. Why? It converts.

cnet tells us some more

Want to get digital-policy regulator types fired up? Start talking about behavioral ad targeting, the business of serving up digital ads that are fine-tuned to a user’s Web surfing habits, and you’re sure to get all kinds of wildly varied opinions about privacy and sensitive data.

But a new study from a group called the Network Advertising Initiative, or NAI, claims that behavioral targeting is more than twice as effective as non-targeted ads, and the inventory from behavioral ads is worth double that of their non-targeted brethren. The study found that 6.8 percent of people who click on behaviorally targeted ads turn into buyers, versus 2.8 percent of those who click on non-targeted ads.

Ok, so let’s review. Companies will pay top dollar for this kind of advertising and it converts at a much higher rate to boot? Many advertisers are starting to say “Sign me up!”.

Let’s also look at the source of these numbers as we try to always do here at Marketing Pilgrim. The National Advertising Initiative’s About Us page tells us that

The NAI (Network Advertising Initiative) is a cooperative of online marketing and analytics companies committed to building consumer awareness and establishing responsible business and data management practices and standards. As increasingly sophisticated online advertising technologies evolve, consumer concerns about their impact on online privacy mount. The NAI is prepared to meet these concerns with both effective industry self-regulation and sensible protections for online consumers.

Gee, a rosy picture of an online advertising technique from a group that is made up of online marketing and analytics companies. Hmmmm. The group has also been around since 1999. That’s ten years and more questions than answers thus far.

Since 1999, the NAI has been working with the online advertising industry to provide consumers with clear explanations about data collection, data usage, and choice. Central to our standards are the privacy concepts of notice, consent, control, and dispute resolution.

Looks like industry folks must be missing some of these meetings considering the high degree of government and consumer concern about just how vague most online privacy policies are and the trouble that is created by these less than clear policies.

Once again we are faced with the interesting dilemma of an industry where everything is supposedly tracked to the nth degree. This tracking and gathering of boat-loads (hat tip to Carol Bartz!) of data creates the classic double edged sword that cuts in both directions. In addition, statistics were made to be manipulated just as much as records were made to be broken. this has resulted in many more questions than answers over the years and that is not likely to change anytime soon.

So if you are using behavioral targeting in your marketing efforts the NAI is just the organization for you. As for the future of this practice? That’s anyone’s guess because it’s effectiveness is based on knowing so much about a person that you can predict with greater accuracy their propensity to buy a particular product or service. While this may sound incredible to a marketer it may sound scary to others. It’s the others that marketers should pay very close attention to.

Any thoughts on behavioral targeting and the ‘too much information’ possibilities?

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To taste success in this endeavour, however, you’re going to have to figure out how to make your mark online with sites like Twitter and Facebook, which is definitely not an easy task.  Fortunately, social media marketing experts uSocial.net have solved that problem for you.

The company, a forerunner in the social media scene, has created a roster of services that are expressly designed to assist companies like yours with the task of turning a profit online.  These services have received very high acclaim from people who should know:  They’ve got several Fortune 500 investors and their client list includes massive organizations like the Mormon Church.

Leon Hill, the company’s CEO, explains the appeal of their services:

“Clients have the ability to buy everything from Facebook fans to genuine YouTube views with us, as well as several other services which are unique, to say the very least,” says uSocial CEO Leon Hill. “In short, we’ve made online advertising not only more effective than traditional means, but also much more cost-effective.”

With uSocial.net’s social media marketing services in your back pocket, there’s no telling what heights your business could reach!

“By far the most popular of our services are our Facebook-related offerings and although they’re massively powerful, clients can invest in them for less than $200,” notes Hill. “And as the return on investment is fantastic, clients will get their money back almost immediately.”

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Most B2B marketing campaigns don’t utilize automatic solutions for sales reporting, spending analysis and cash flow forecasting, according to a recent study by Forrester Consulting.

The Forrester survey found that out of 300 respondents in the IT field, 95 percent still use spreadsheets to track their B2B transactions. Many companies use Microsoft Excel for their invoices, purchase orders and shipping documents, while many do not take advantage of automation software offered by some vendors to use with Excel, the report says.

Karl Salnoske, an executive vice president at GXS, a B2B marketing outsourcing provider that comissioned the study, says that the continued use of spreadsheets for B2B marketing campaigns makes sense because of its simplicity but can be improved through online automation.

“It is not surprising to see so many participants in supply chains using spreadsheets as a primary vehicle for exchanging information,” says Salnoske. “The good news is that there are many options to integrate these trading partners in an automated fashion that do not require significant investments in back-office systems or the deployment of complex integration software.”

Another type of automated service for B2B marketing that recently was in the news is Genius.com, for creating its billionth shortened URL. The shortened URLs are used for automated B2B online marketing campaigns through social media websites like Facebook.

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BROOKLYN CENTER, Minn. – Social media sites certainly have helped all of us be more, cyber social. Keeping up with everyone you have ever known, posting a song, it’s been fun.

But for those who want to speak to their customers, or find some new ones, social media has also become a great tool.

Surly Beer was founded in 2006 by Omar Ansari.

The start up brewer in Brooklyn Center didn’t, and doesn’t, have an advertising budget, so, he opted for the next best things and signed up for accounts on Twitter and Facebook.

“I never knew that would happen that people would start drinking our beer because they saw it on Facebook,” Ansari said.

And so the marketing department of Surly beer was born.

“The start was just to connect with the fans because we have a really rabid fan base,” Ansari said of his Tweets and Facebook page.

And it’s not traditional. The whole idea of connecting in this way is that it works as somewhat of a dialog. It can be between Surly and its customers, or just like-minded Surly customers who then talk to one another on the brewery’s site.

“They can talk to their customers and also talk to a specific subset of their customers,” media analyst Michael Griffin of Macalester College said.

That is invaluable to a company like Surly.

It needs to make connections since it can’t afford advertising and with social media it’s makes those connections for free.

But it does come at a price in terms of time.

“If you are going to do it you have to commit time and effort to stay with it, otherwise it doesn’t do any good.” Griffin said.

One reason people flock to these social media sites is because they are constant. Updates come every second, and if you want to be a player whose network keeps tabs on you, you MUST update often, with good content. Ansari does that. He updates two or three times a day.

Another Twin Cities customer favorite, is in on the game too. CEO of Punch Pizza, John Puckett.

It’s instant and it enables a small company like us to reach people quickly,” Puckett said.

Puckett started using social media, after he learned his pizza joints weren’t exactly social-media friendly.

“We got blasted by a blogger because we never allowed anyone to take pictures of our food, and he was right to blast us, so we decided to do a 180 and ask our customers to take pictures,” Puckett added.

Last year Punch Pizza created a contest on the photo sharing site, Flickr. Post pizza pictures and keep coming back to the site to see them go live. It was a huge success, and Puckett was hooked on using the site to generate traffic in his restaurants.

“All of a sudden the restaurants are full of people and they are taking pictures of food and posting it online and our eyes were opened, something big is going on,” Puckett said.

Punch then began using social media to draw in the crowds.

On a rainy weekday, management wanted to get a specific demographic in it’s new East Bank restaurant so it offered free pizza to any U of M faculty/staff member following Punch on Flickr in the area. Within an hour the place was packed.

The idea being for every free pizza Punch gave out, a new customer was made.

“We found that if we let people try it in a fun way we are going to retain a lot of customers,” Puckett said.

Punch learned this “new way” to get deals to customers earlier this year.

On that night we all would like to forget, the night of the Vikings/Saints game in January, when the ball sailed through the uprights and the Saints went marching into the Super Bowl, Punch declared the next day free pizza on Flicker.

“I think we gave out something like 15,000 pizzas,” Puckett said.

The lines snaked all over the cities. We mourned, but we did it with good food. They tweet, we eat. They post, we drink.

Modern day advertising.

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While B2B marketing will experience only a small increase in overall spending in 2010, funds devoted to marketing on social networks will increase by more than 43.3 percent, according to a recent study released by Outsell.

The reason the marketing research firm found for heightened spending on social networking-based B2B marketing is its effectiveness, according to study participants.

Of the 1,000 U.S. advertisers that participated in the Outsell study, 35 percent believed Twitter was an effective B2B marketing tool. Facebook, on the other hand, garnered positive responses from 51 percent of participants that said the website is extremely or somewhat effective.

Vice president of Outsell Chuck Richard said B2B marketing success through untraditional avenues like social networking websites were achieved because of bold moves by marketers to invest in them during a time of economic uncertainty.

“As they emerge from the recession, they’re spreading their spending over a widening set of options,” says Richard. “Advertisers are directing dollars toward the channels which generate the most effective branding.”

LinkedIn, a social networking site that helps users gain professional contacts, also received a high rating with 45 percent saying it was effective. MySpace, however, only received 25 percent of responses confirming that it is effective for B2B marketing.?

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Yahoo has just rolled out a pretty useful feature of  its Yahoo! Contacts service. This feature, if you’re willing to share information with your friends and business contacts will ensure that your friends always gets your latest contact details and information without making them do anything. But that is if you allow them to.

The cool thing is that if you share your personal information with them, the next time you change your Yahoo contacts details, you no longer have to inform them one by one. Yahoo Contacts will automatically update the information your shared with them previously.

The same thing happens with your friends’ details on your Address Book but only if they opted to share their Yahoo Contact Details’ auto-updating features with their contacts including you.

Setting this up is pretty simple. Just go to  Yahoo Contacts and click on “Share my Info” link which you can find under the Popular Tools option. This will display your current Yahoo Contact Info.  Then click on the Start Sharing button. Yahoo Contacts will then give a notification to your friends and business contacts that you have changed your contact info. And they don’t have to do anything as it will be automatically updated in their Address Book.

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