Archive for “February, 2010”

Social Media Roundup for February 26, 2010

Does Yelp put Skeletons Back in Closet for Advertisers?

An interesting lawsuit is being reported by MediaPost about a veterinary clinic in California suing the popular ratings site Yelp over an alleged offer to bury bad reviews of the clinic in exchange for an advetising contract. If  true, it would appear in some cases that the wisdom of crowds is for sale.

English losing ground to other languages on Twitter

While most tweets don’t exactly adhere to the Queen’s English, English is still the dominant langauge of Twitter. According to a TechCrunch post (based on a report by Paris-based Semiocast), English is down 25% from last year with Japanese, Portuguese, Malay and Spanish all gaining ground in the approximately 50 million tweets per day.

Broadcasting for Burglars

There has been a fair bit of discussion lately about the site Please Rob Me, which aggregates public data from location-based services (i.e. Foursquare when linked to Twitter) and reports when people check in and are thus not home and available for burglary. The purpose being to raise awareness about privacy concerns from these types of services.

Chatroulette: The Girls, The Boys and the Perverts

Played with chatroulette yet? Well, you might want to be careful about doing it at work. Mashable provides us with a funny video of how the popular video-chat site breaks down into 71% Male, 15% Female and 14% Perverts.

Warning: There is nothing graphic in the video, but some language may be mildly offensive.

Social Media Group selected as social media partner for Beaujolais wines in U.S. market

Social Media Group is very pleased to announce that we will be providing social media marketing services for Inter Beaujolais, the official trade association for the wines of Beaujolais, in order to help them grow awareness, conversation and interest about wines from the Beaujolais region on the social web.

SMG, in partnership with Sopexa USA, an integrated marketing services and communications agency dedicated to the promotion of wine & spirits and gourmet food in the United States, will support an integrated marketing campaign that will take Beaujolais cross-country, making stops in New York, Chicago and California for media and trade events.

We’re honored to have been chosen as the social partner to help bring conversation about 3,000 dedicated producers, prestigious domaines and a number of châteaux in the Beaujolais region to new and interesting places online!

Social Media Roundup for February 19, 2010

Messing With the Wrong Twit

2.7 hours per day on mobile?

According to study released by PR firm Ruder Finn Americans spend an average 2.7 hours per day on the mobile internet and 91% of them use it for social purposes. Either almost everyone I know is way below average or those numbers are a bit high.

Something Social In Vancouver

InventorSpot has a great rundown of Social Media efforts related to Vancouver 2010. Ranging from official channels, sponsor efforts and mobile apps. I particularly enjoyed the verified Tweeting Olympians link.

“Your eyes can deceive you. Don’t trust them.”

Green screening (or Chroma Key) has come a long way since it was invented and based on the video below is in use far more often that we realize (via BoingBoing). Just remember what the TV studios are using today, will likely come standard on your laptop next year.

Social Media Roundup for February 12, 2010

Google’s Latest Buzz

Sure, you update your status on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and every other social network, but sometimes that just isn’t enough for you – thank goodness for Google Buzz. Buzz is integrated into your GMail account, which may prove to be annoying when your inbox is updated with everything happening on Buzz. The public versus private posting settings and control over geo-tagging your posts can teach some of the other presence apps a thing or two. Speaking of our Internet Overlord, Google is also running a test on offering ultra-fast broadband in US cities.

Unhappy Sixth Birthday Facebook

No one has learned the downside of making “improvements” to a community site more than Facebook. Last year’s interface changes got a whopping 94% disapproval rating. And this year it leaves me feeling that an uninvited guest just re-organized my closet (and tossed most of my stuff). The re-design may also be targeted at increasing on-site search traffic and attention paid to display ads. The 400 million strong social network is also getting slapped with lawsuits for its changes to privacy settings a few months ago.

In MySpace No One Can Hear You Scream

GigaOm has declared MySpace among “the living dead” after CEO Owen Van Natta steps down. Anyone else wondering just what Rupert Murdoch got for his $580 million purchase of the former king of social networks?

Social Media Roundup for February 5, 2010

First off, thanks to everyone who came out to our Social Media Week Toronto event last night on the Social Media RFP. I need to call our the excellent work on Social Media Week Toronto by Eli Singer and the organizing team.  If you’ve enjoyed Social Media Week events, please consider a donation to SickKids Foundation, the official charity of Social Media Week Toronto.

The Social Media Week Toronto team goal is to raise a final $10,000 to renovate the Critical Care Unit waiting room at the hospital. Donate online or through your mobile at SickKidsCCU.ca.

SMG is just warming up for the busy conference and events season. Maggie is giving the keynote at Social Fresh in Tampa on Monday morning (Feb. 8). She’s going to talk about The Art and Science of Scaling Social Media. Don’t miss it.

After Social Fresh, next up is PodCamp Toronto 2010. It is shaping up incredible event again this year. All of us at SMG are proud to be a sponsor.

A National debate on Facebook about the merits of an Onion Ring over Canada’s elected Prime Minister aside, Charlie Brooker’s (of Newswipe on BBC4) How To Report The News has our vote for viral video of the week.

In other news:

Facebook turned six this week and reached 400 million users. According to a blog post by Mark Zuckerberg:

Facebook began six years ago today as a product that my roommates and I built to help people around us connect easily, share information and understand one another better. We hoped Facebook would improve people’s lives in important ways. So it’s rewarding to see that as Facebook has grown, people around the world are using the service to share information about events big and small and to stay connected to everyone they care about.

For all you wannabe Jacques Costeau types, this week Google released new data for the ocean in Google Earth. Called Google Ocean Showcase it lets you: “Dive into the ocean and discover who lives there — from a deep sea octopus to humpback whales. Explore lost shipwrecks, dive and surf spots, the ocean’s deepest trench, and the latest discoveries of the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI).” A little closer to our day-to-day, our very own Kyle McKeown alerts us that Google rolled an update to Google News this week which provides more options for users following stories in using the Custom Sections Directory feature.

That’s about all I’ve got here at the end of an incredible week. What rocked your socks in social media this week?

SMG is Hiring – A LOT

Social Media Group is one of the world’s largest independent social media agencies, and we are growing, growing, growing! As a result we’re looking to add more awesomeness to our team, in a variety of different roles.

BUT – before we get into the nitty gritty, I think it’s really important that we share some of our cultural values and the kinds of things we look for in every role, because fit is far more important than skills are. Skills we can teach you, but personality type and perspective and attitude are what will make your career with us.

Are you:

  • Competitive and driven to win by providing excellent results and constantly improving your own skillset?
  • Determined and committed to success? When life gives you lemons, you made lemonade – instinctively – and it’s really good lemonade, at that!
  • Inspired by challenge? You’re not exactly an adrenaline junkie, but you love the prospect of a challenge, and rise to it on every occasion. A job that doesn’t ask you to stretch strikes you as boring.
  • A team player? It’s not about you – it’s about the team, and, ultimately, the client. Inspiring and motivating your team to deliver incredible results by providing constructive feedback and holding yourself and everyone else accountable for quality and success.
  • Entrepreneurial? In a startup, there isn’t always a clear roadmap. One of your most valuable contributions will be your ability to take ownership for projects and prospects and turn them into roaring successes with the support of the team and bolstered by your own desire to get it right using all tools available to you.
  • A lover of learning? Are you possessed by compulsive need to understand and master things you don’t know? If you don’t understand it, you use your considerable critical thinking skills to figure it out, master it and move on to the next challenge.

If you answered “yes” to every one of these questions, have a love of digital and social media and are looking for exciting work in a startup environment, blazing trails with some of the biggest and well-known brands in the world, then please have a look at some of the positions we have open (list below). Our compensation packages are very competitive and include a significant annual education/conference budget, a well-stocked fridge, the computing platform of your choice and a great environment filled with some seriously big brains.

As Doug Walker, our Director of Strategy put it:

“There are very few opportunities to trailblaze with clients, trailblazing with blue chip clients, once maybe twice in a career opportunity.”

At SMG we trailblaze with our blue chip client list EVERY DAY.

Here are some of the positions we’re looking to fill, please send your CV, a note that tells us why you’d like to work at SMG and the the position you’re after in the subject line of your email to: Elaine Dean elaine [dot] dean [at] socialmediagroup [dot] com

Senior Project Manager

Intermediate Project Manager

Social Media Analyst – Community

Social Media Analyst – Metrics and Measurement

Business Development Lead

Business Development Co-ordinator

Interns (paid)

Location is mostly not an issue, though for Project Management roles, we generally prefer that they be on-site in Toronto.

We look forward to hearing from you!

Warm up with SocialFresh Tampa!

social media conferenceWhat could possibly be better than a trip to Tampa in February? How about a trip to Tampa in February to listen and learn from some of the leading thinkers and (perhaps more importantly) doers on the social web?

SocialFresh Tampa takes place on February 8th, and amazing, top-notch speakers like Best Buy’s John Bernier, Spike Jones from Brains on Fire, AdRants publisher Steve Hall, Amber Naslund from Radian6, Shashi Bellamkonda of Network Solutions, NBC’s “New Media” Jim Long, Josh Hallett from Voce Communications, Marc Meyer and GM’s Chris Barger will be on deck to deliver insights and intelligence generated from feet-on-the-ground actual execution of social media programs for some of the biggest brands in the world.

I’ll also be there – and am honoured to have been asked to deliver the keynote, “The Art and Science of Scaling Social Media”, during which I will blather about:

Bringing together earned social media and paid media, when done correctly, can generate a perfect storm of credibility and reach – in many ways, the Holy Grail of the social web. Earned media is incredibly expensive to generate, and it’s difficult to get it to a mass audience, regardless of how credible it is. Paid media reaches tons of eyeballs, but does it really win hearts and minds? SMG has worked with clients on a number of very successful programs to marry the two using social ad platforms. Results include average click-through rates of over .8% and as high as 4.11% and re-ignition of conversations around important brand issues. While we can’t completely open the kimono on this innovative new approach, I’ll share high-level insights and intelligence about how some of the biggest brands in the world have cracked a new form of dialogue with consumers.

I’m very much looking forward to sharing our insights with attendees, and would also like to remind you that tickets are going fast for this event; you can register online here.

I hope to see you there!