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I’m not a big fan of the majority of available widgets, apps, and games that bombard Facebook.  Most are garbage in my opinion, and do nothing other than clutter your profile or page.

The problem is many of these widgets were built with the old school marketing mentality of “if we build it, they will come.’”

The truth is, Facebook widgets fail for the following reasons: 

• They provide zero value, and do nothing but act as bulletin boards for a product or brand.
• There is no level of engagement  that relates to the user.
• They rely on a flashy gimmicky presence to create a viral whirlwind.
• The existing culture and loyalty of the brand was never taken into consideration.

So when I came across The Who’s Facebook game, Name That Riff, I was skeptical. Being a big Who fan, my concern was their game would fall into the above reasons of Facebook widget purgatory. That wouldn’t be the case.

Name That Riff works.

The game provides loyal fans an opportunity to show off their knowledge of The Who.  The design is strong and fits in the visual identity the band has built since the 60’s. Most importantly the game is simple and doesn’t take much time.

• You are given 17 music clips to listen to.
• You must choose from 3 answers and have 30 seconds per clip.
• Like the bar quiz games, the quicker you answer, the more points you rack up.
• You are allowed three chances to improve your score.

This game picks songs from the entire Who archive.  Also songs start at random places to throw you off.  I fancy myself as a knowledgeable Who fan, but I tripped up at some of their selections.  Once done you can publish your score on your profile and in your news feed.  You can also compare your score with your friends on Facebook or globally.

The word of mouth aspect is very clever.

Players are urged to challenge their friends. Doing so opens up bonus rounds that you can play to improve your score. And unlike other apps that rely on you spamming random friends, you’ll want to share it with other Who fans.

The Creative Corporation, who built this game, did their homework, and it shows. They took into account, what fans of The Who love, their music. By providing a simple but entertaining widget that people will want to use and share, they are successful.  It appears that Name That Riff was just released on TheWho.com, so it will be interesting to see how well it does.

Incidentally, if I happen to win the customized American Standard Stratocaster, I’ll let you know!

Through a very elegant blend of rental data from Netflix and Google Maps, the New York Times continues to improve on the infographic with a very interesting interactive feature called "A Peek Into Netflix Queues", which it published on January 10.

The Netflix maps drew me in for about 30 minutes, as I clicked from film to film, watching as the density of rentals for each was represented in shades of red within each zipcode in the Metro DC region.  For rental distributions that may confirm some common assumptions, look no further than "Frost/Nixon" and "Paul Blart: Mall Cop".

One commenter on Metafilter went so far as to say that the feature could be used by people (snobs?) as a tool for selecting neighborhoods in which to consider living.  ("Hm, the schools are good and the neighborhood is safe.  But do we really want to stand in line at the grocery store with a bunch of people who sat through ‘Bride Wars’?")

The Times has mapped 12 major metro regions.  Take a look at it here.

David Meerman Scott was one of the first names I came across when I started this whole social media adventure.

At the time I was writing white papers and press releases for the launch of a new web site. This was something I had never done before, and I found the whole experience rather boring. If I was bored, then what I was writing had to be even worse.

There had to be a better way of doing this.

So, doing a quick search on marketing and PR I came across something called The Gobbledygook Manifesto. Immediately the light bulb went on, and  I connected with what David was trying say  – that things had changed.

“The web has transformed the rules, and you must transform your marketing to make the most of the Web-enabled market place of ideas.”

Recently, I received a copy of David’s revised edition of, The New Rules of Marketing & PR. I don’t read a lot of books on marketing, but this is a must have.

David’s book does a great job describing the old school marketing mentality, and why it was forced to change.  He stresses that companies, organizations, and people need to become creators of content. More importantly, that the content must have value to  the audience who now have significant influence on the success of a marketing campaign.

Having read many of David’s publications, I was pleased to discover new information in this revised edition. The big value is the case studies. David provides real life examples that cover just about any facet of business and niche. Including:

• Why Zemoga gives flip cams to all their employees and customers.
• The importance of a company blog, and why companies need to interact within the blogging community.
• How CollectSPACE leveraged the importance of participating in community forums. (Notice I said participating, not promoting)
• Why Wikis shouldn’t be overlooked.
• What Conrete5 learned by providing their software for free.
• How Mignon Fogarty’s podcasts helped sell her book.
• Why groundbreaking, industry standard, and cutting-edge are words you should avoid in your press release.
• That Search Engine Optimization isn’t just about keywords.
• How the National Community Church has embraced the social web to reach thousands of people.
• The new rules for finding a job.

“You can trigger a World Wide Rave, too – just create something valuable that people want to share, and make it easy for them to do so.”

A big thank you to David Meerman Scott for sending me a copy of his book, and for including the story on how I found my job here with The Bivings Group.

The New Rules of Marketing & PR provides a solid foundation for people who are having difficulty getting their heads around the social web. From CEOs to the entrepreneurs, anyone reading this book will come away with something they didn’t know before. It’s a great read and I highly recommend snagging a copy.

The Bivings Group’s Director of Client Services Andrew MacDowell will be speaking at the Association of American Political Consultants conference Monday to address the success and strategy behind social action networks such as the one built around the Pickens Plan.

The conference, held in Washington, features industry leaders in political consulting who work to optimize political campaign power both on and offline.

TBG has worked since summer 2008 on the Pickens Plan and its social action network, Push, an online community of over 200,000 members. The Push “New Energy Army,” along with other active users on the Pickens Plan site, have sent over one million messages to legislators and media decision makers pushing energy independence. The Plan was also honored as AAPC’s Best Public Affairs Campaign of the year.

For those attending the conference, MacDowell will be featured in Monday’s 11:00 a.m. session on “Consultant Case Studies.”

Here at The Bivings Group, we’ve dealt with a myriad of requests for mass emailing services, tools and strategies to help our clients make the most of what is the most powerful weapon in online advocacy. Based on our research and testing, here are some best practice tips for making your email campaigns as effective as possible. Most of these items fit a general theme of narrowing the focus and increasing the personalization in email messaging.

Smaller targets

The smaller the target, the more successful the email open and click-through rate. Emails sent to specific states or even determined areas around specific cities get much more attention than those sent to the whole country. People are generally inclined to get personally involved in local issues rather than national campaigns.

Specific goals

Ask people to do one single, specific thing. Example: “Sign the petition to protect America’s indigenous forests.” When these requests are linked to a form where users could do exactly that, success rates are very high. General requests such as “Support the Environment” with a link to a main homepage result in less clicks and less direct action by email subscribers. Emails that link to multiple items or actions are less successful than those focused on promoting a single action.

Getting to the point

Keep it short and simple. Getting a subscriber to open an email is just the first step. You want them to read and understand your message. Put your message in plain, direct words at the very top. Use short, single sentence paragraphs whenever possible to make the email as easy as possible to get through.

Repetition, repetition, repetition

Once your simple, direct message is at the very top of your email, repeat it throughout the body of the text. Two or three repetitions of the same call to action and link is not too much. Repetition is the best way to drive home a particular point. Repetition is the best way to drive home a particular point.

The visuals

To keep messages from looking like advertisements, it’s best to keep graphics and imaging to a minimum in general. Messages should not look dramatically different from the messages people receive from their friends and family. Some light branding images should be used in the header of the email and to emphasize the actions the email asks people to take. Keep in mind a large percentage of subscribers will only see a text version of the email or will choose not to enable graphics, so make sure all pertinent information in graphics is repeated in email body text.

Special requests

Timing is everything, even email. Give subscribers something to do, the reason to do it, the tools to get it done, but don’t forget to let them know they need to do it NOW. Emails sent surrounding current legislation or events in the news, letting subscribers know about upcoming events, or asking people to help celebrate important milestones, convey more urgency than emails unrelated to a timeline. Time-sensitive emails should be used sparingly, however, because the more you send, the less important they’ll seem.

.. add variation to an even tempo

A successful email effort has to find the right balance between being a consistent, reliable source of campaign news and flooding subscribers’ inboxes. Never let more than a few weeks pass between emails, and we should avoid sending more than two to three emails in a week unless we are in a period of intense activity. Keep in touch with subscribers without overloading them.

While getting my much needed cup of coffee this morning, I overheard a lady behind me say something along the lines of, "What about this Twitter thing… how can we use it to market us?"

I didn’t listen to the rest of the conversation, as my focus was on coffee and waking up.  However, what was said struck a chord. Those of you who have been on twitter awhile, have noticed the influx of companies jumping on the bandwagon.  On my twitter profile the number of business accounts following me are starting to surpass actual people.

There are some fantastic examples of companies using Twitter to it’s full benefit.  However, many are not using it effectively. To be fair, they may not know how.

So, if your company is thinking about trying Twitter, here are some quick suggestions.

• Don’t use Twitter as simply just another billboard to sell or promote you or your services.
• Twitter is a digital handshake. The same principals and ethics the govern our offline relationships apply.
• Do research. If you you are thinking of setting up a profile for your restaurant, what other restaurants are using Twitter? How are they using it? What are they doing that works? What isn’t working?
• Target demographics do exist on Twitter, but that doesn’t mean you should treat your followers as such. Treat people as people, not demographics.
• Before you start "tweeting" consider searching keywords using tools like Twitter Search, and listen to what people in your target demographic are talking about.
• Step out from behind the curtain. Do your best to be personable. Respond and talk with your followers.
• If at all possible, avoid the auto Direct Message. Taking the time to say hello pays off.
• Build your content bubble. There is a wealth of information available on just about every niche. If your business is about photography, share what others are saying. Talk about the history of photography. Highlight local photographers. The point is, just don’t talk about you.
• Ultimately the goal of your twitter profile should be to help people.
• I repeat – help. Don’t sell or market. Help. Doing this will build trust and value which in turn can lead to customers.

Hopefully this helps and get’s you started in a good direction.

What did I miss? What advice would you add to this list?

I had five separate people email me this week about the launch of Facebook Fan Box, which is a widget that allows you to integrate your Facebook fan page into your website. The Fan Box shows the avatars of a select number of your fans as well as a news feed of your most recent page updates. Given the buzz about the tool, I spent some time playing with it. Below is the widget for the fan page of our blog, The Bivings Report.

Here are some quick thoughts on it:

• This is a great move for Facebook and a great way for marketers to promote their Facebook pages. I’ve always been a bit skeptical about the usefulness of Facebook Pages. On the projects I’ve worked on, I haven’t seen a lot of traffic driven by Facebook Pages and the level of engagement from fans has been pretty low. However, with this and the redesign of Pages a few months ago, Facebook has shown a real commitment to making Pages useful for marketers. They are clearly moving in the right direction, so I will be jumping on the bandwagon early.
• The launch of this widget is a big blow for similar tools like MyBlogLog and the Google followers widget. Why would I use tools like those that have never really gained traction when I can instead integrate with Facebook?
• This is another sign of Facebook opening up its site in reaction to Twitter. Tools like this and Facebook Connect show that Facebook is moving beyond the walled garden approach that dominated its early strategy.
• The tool is extremely easy to use, but I hope Facebook provides more ways for users to customize the widget. The widget must be a minimum of 200 pixels wide, and while you can customize parts of it you can’t really mess with the colors or design much. So if the widget doesn’t work with your site design, you are out of luck. I expect that to change with time.

I was checking out my Facebook news feed today at lunch, and noticed two very different levels of reaction to status updates from two of the pages I am fans of.  One of the pages belongs to San Antonio Spurs basketball hero Manu Ginobili and the other is for online retailer Zappos.com.  As you can see below, Ginobili’s update quickly generated 61 likes and 39 comments, while the Zappos update only got two likes and comments.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This despite the fact that Zappos has 16,745 fans as compared to Ginobili’s 11,663, and the fact that Ginobili’s update is in Spanish and probably can’t be read by many of his fans.  If you go through the fan pages of Ginobili and Zappos, you’ll see that Manu’s updates consistently produce significantly more activity than Zappos updates.  Why?

Manu is a living, breathing person, so his updates fit in seamlessly with the news feed items produced by my friends and family.  It is written in the first person, and publicizes an upcoming charity event he is putting on.  It is actually the kind of update I’ve seen my actual friends write.

Even though I have chosen to be a fan of Zappos, its updates feel a bit like advertising when I see them in my Facebook feed.  They seem out of place and I tune them out.  In Zappos’ case, I tune them out despite the fact the company is doing a great job of making their updates compelling and providing a behind the scenes look at their brand. 

As I’ve written before, Facebook is still primarily about friends.  In this example, Ginobili’s fan page looks and act a lot more like my friends do than Zappos does.  So it drives more activity, and Ginobili’s fans are more engaged with his page than fans of Zappos.  It will be interesting to see if this changes as Facebook continues to grow.