Leona Hobbs | Maggie Fox

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How Content Marketing is Changing Everything – Free SMG Webinar March 22

March 14, 2012 / Comments Off / Posted in: Blog, Content Marketing

Content Marketing is the latest buzzword – but what does it mean for marketers?

On March 22^nd at 12pm ET, explore How Content is Changing Everything during a live webinar hosted by Leona Hobbs, VP of Social Media Group.

Webinar Overview – How Content is Changing Everything

Disruption. It’s one of the most common buzzwords used to describe the social web. But when we use it, we have largely been referring to technology and platforms – broadband web access, YouTube, Twitter, Facebook. But what about content? In some places, there’s too much, in others, not enough – causing major problems for established business models. In this presentation we’ll explore how content is emerging as a major challenge (and opportunity) for marketers, how progressive programs and partnerships are changing the way branded content moves across the web, and how it can effectively be used to earn attention and shift marketing from push to pull in a billion-channel universe.

Here’s what you’ll learn:

What is Content Marketing?
Why should I care?
What can I do with it?
How do I find my target audiences?
What kinds of results can I expect?
What do I need to get started?

REGISTER NOW

About the Presenter

Leona Hobbs, Vice President & Partner. With over a decade of experience in communications and marketing, Leona leads the SMG account teams and provides social media and digital communications counsel to SMG clients. A specialist in digital communications and social media marketing, Leona frequently speaks about Internet-powered communications to students and at conferences. She is an advisor to the Public Relations Program at Loyalist College and a volunteer organizer of the Toronto Girl Geek Dinners and PodCamp Toronto. In 2010, Leona received The International Alliance for Women World of Difference 100 award in the Community category.

linkedin.com/in/leonahobbs / @flackadelic

The Curator's Code honours attribution of discovery across the web

March 12, 2012 / Comments Off / Posted in: Blog

Leona Hobbs is Vice President & Partner at Social Media Group. Follow @flackadelic

Thrilled to introduce The Curator’s Code – a new standard for honoring attribution of discovery across the webj.mp/wxqinx

— Maria Popova (@brainpicker) March 9, 2012

Last week, Maria Popova introduced a new standard for honouring attribution of discovery across the web. As an avid curator, the lack of systems and standards to attribute discovery across social platforms has left me feeling downright uncomfortable at times. Platforms like Pinterest don’t prompt for or require an attribution for source (let alone the attribution of discovery). So what’s this “attribution for discovery” and why is it important? These days the role of curators is increasingly important – they are the people who plumb the depths of the ‘net to surface up the best content, they frequently add value to that content by framing it with a snappy title, context or adding some additional links. This act of curation, is, in of itself an art form. That’s the position of Maria Popova and her collaborators who introduced the Curator’s Code last week at SXSWi in Austin. ᔥ

One of the most magical things about the Internet is that it’s a whimsical rabbit hole of discovery — we start somewhere familiar and click our way to a wonderland of curiosity and fascination we never knew existed. What makes this contagion of semi-serendipity possible is an intricate ecosystem of “link love” — a via-chain of attribution that allows us to discover new wonderlands through those we already know and trust. The Curator’s Code is an effort to keep this whimsical rabbit hole open by honoring discovery through an actionable code of ethics — first, understanding why attribution matters, and then, implementing it across the web in a codified common standard, doing for attribution of discovery what Creative Commons has done for image attribution.

Curator's Code screenshot It boils down to two unicode text characters for Via = ᔥ (Indicates a link of direct discovery) and another for Hat Tip! = ↬ (Indicates a link of indirect discovery, story lead or inspiration). There is a handy browser Bookmarklet that automates the creation of the attribution symbols (as I have done here in this post). You may also simply cut and paste the symbol or spell out “via” and “ht”. ᔥ In reaction to the announcement, David Carr at The New York Times writes:

So where is the line between promoting the good work of others and simply lifting it? Naughty aggregation is analogous to pornography: You know it when you see it. As custody of content becomes more tenuous, there’s a risk that we may end up passing around and putting topspin on fewer and fewer original works. This has created a growing sense of unease among both digital immigrants and natives that the end of “ownership” could eventually diminish the Web’s value.

I’m calling all curators: Do you recognize the need to attribute discovery? Will you Reblog, Retweet, Pin and post with or without formal attribution of discovery? Is the Curator’s Code for you?

SMG Roundup for Feb. 17, 2012 – Social Media Week Edition

February 17, 2012 / Comments Off / Posted in: Blog

Follow @flackadelic

This week’s roundup is all about Social Media Week.

Social Media Week “offers a series of interconnected activities and conversations around the world on emerging trends in social and mobile media across all major industries. Annually, SMW attracts more than 60,000 attendees across thousands of individually organized events, with half a million connecting to the conference online and through mobile.”

With that in mind, I’m going round up some of the most buzzed about items from Social Media Week 2012.

#SMW2012 Halftime Report

On Wednesday, Synthesio published a half-time report infographic of Social Media Week awesomeness. It includes a look at top influencers, most buzzed about keynote speakers and trending topics. Speaking of infographics, Social Media Week, with the help of Nokia and The Guardian is publishing a real-time infographic on their homepage that tracks a real-time Twitter feed, FourSquare checkins and the answers to polls.

There is a tonne of great content created and shared at Social Media Week’s 1,040 events. Here are few items of interest.

Highlights from SMW San Francisco

Michael Procopio collected presentations from San Francisco social media week events and published them via storify. I love the range and variety of topics covered.

Creating Music Community in the Digital Age

From Social Media Week NYC comes this report on a keynote by Chris Kaskie, president of Pitchfork Media, a site established in 1995 and devoted to music with a healthy dose of indie rock.

If anything, Kaskie was grieving over the disappearance of the carefully curated, tangible collections of music recordings we used to own — like the LP collection he still looks forward to handing down to his children, rather than the password to a cloud full of digital playlists that seem likely to be more commonplace. “You don’t own anything anymore,” he said. “How do you get people excited about anything when it’s so fleeting?” Of course, Kaskie and his panelists had a ready answer to that: you get people excited about music by turning it from an industry into a community. In days of yore — Kaskie joined Pitchfork in 2004, when Friendster was still in ascendance — building a community meant launching a music festival where people could share the experience of music. (Indeed, Pitchfork’s festival has become a centerpiece of the summer festival schedule in its hometown of Chicago. Last October, the franchise expanded to Paris.) Today, community means Twitter, where Pitchfork readers endlessly debate the site’s notoriously polarizing reviews. Community also means Spotify, feeding a steady, frictionless stream of your music tastes to your Facebook friends.

SAP Conference for Social Media Week 2012

Maggie was in Palo Alto this week with our clients at SAP for their Social Media Week celebrations. SAP is one of the most progressive social enterprises on the planet with over two million members in the SAP Community Network. Their Social Media Week offerings did not disappoint. Check out the video replays on their site. The most popular video is CMO Jonathan Becher on the challenges of transforming his organization to embrace social media as part of their DNA and not treat it as a marketing megaphone. Check it out.

Presentations from SMG’s own Social Media Week Event

Never ones to back away from a challenge, today SMG delivered an Ignite-inspired event called Spark! for Social Media Week Toronto. Six members of the SMG team delivered 5-minute presentations on topics as diverse as Data Democracy, creating content to cut through the noise and Transmedia Storytelling. Check them out on SlideShare.

We’ll be back with videos of each of the talks in the next week or so.

Social Media Round Up for February 10

February 10, 2012 / Comments Off / Posted in: Blog, Social Media Roundup

Leona Hobbs is Vice President and Partner at Social Media Group she tweets @flackadelic.

Economist Debates Social Networking

The debate about social networks is underway over at the Economist. The assertion being debated, “this house believes that society benefits when we share personal information online.” Defending the motion is Jeff Jarvis and against the motion is Andrew Keen.

From Jarvis’s opening statement:

“For individuals, sharing is a choice; that is the essence of privacy. Today, we have the opportunity to create, share and connect, and 845m people choose to do so on Facebook alone.”

And from Keen’s opening statement:

“In today’s Web 3.0 world of real identities generating massive amounts of data, we are all living in the full digital glare of public opinion. In this world of Facebook’s Timeline and Open Graph, of millions and millions of daily tweets, Google+ circles and LinkedIn updates, “publicness” (to borrow a word from my friend Jeff Jarvis) replaces privacy as the core condition of life in our digital age.”

Vote, comment and weigh in through opening, rebuttal and closing as the debate continues over the next week.

Hmm…very Pinteresting

Our very own Kirsten McNeill blogged earlier this week about how Brands can use Pinterest, a social network designed to visually showcase interesting links. Pinterest has captured the attention of millions (over 10 million unique monthly users in the US in eight months according to ComScore, the fastest any social network has researched this milestone). This week, Pinterest was accused of replacing user affiliate links with their own. Pinterest did not disclose this policy to users, which has raised the eyebrows of social media types and made some users feel kind of icky.

TechCrunch: Pinterest Hits 10 Million U.S. Monthly Uniques Faster Than Any Standalone Site Ever – comScore

On the SMG blog: How Brands Can Get Involved on Pinterest

LLsocial.com: Pinterest is quietly generating revenue by modifying user submitted pins. And an update: What was learned from the Pinterest link modification story.

New Trends in Global Internet Behaviour

This week, GlobalWebIndex released new data about both new and continuing trends in the way consumers use all Internet platforms. On the benchmarks side, social networking is still the fastest growing social media behavior online, with 59% of global internet users managing their profile on a monthly basis. Turning to e-commerce, “just over 59% of global internet users had purchased a product online in the past month and 53% had reviewed a product.”

New trends identified in the research:

The rise of the Social Brand: nearly one-third of global internet consumers are engaging brands through social media
Death of digital: “digital can no longer be seen as a separate “media” as consumers globally are transitioning to media consumption across multiple internet platforms in record numbers”
Googopoly: “Google has evolved into the gatekeeper of the Internet, Google has massively improved its position as the world’s biggest controller of information and is starting to dominate all access points to the internet”

The report also details changes to existing trends — the Localised Web, the Post-PC era comes ever closer and Facebook Fatigue continues.

Social Media Roundup for October 14th

October 14, 2011 / Comments Off / Posted in: Blog, Social Media Roundup

Apple’s Releases

With the release of iOS 5 to the public on Wednesday and the iPhone 4S hitting stores today, there has definitely been some Apple buzz and excitement around the office. It’s been reported that pre-orders for the iPhone 4S have broken the company’s records from previous years, which I find quite interesting after all of the complaints and disappointment expressed last week when the iPhone 4S was unveiled instead of the iPhone 5. Check out this Funny or Die video taking a crack at all the disappointment.

But despite the lack of an iPhone 5, it seems people just cannot help themselves but to upgrade! I have to say, Siri sounds pretty cool and could definitely provide some amusement. Even just going through this blog is a good time-waster. What would you ask your iPhone?

And the phone can’t be too much of a let down if the Apple co-founder, Steve Wozniak was first in line at the Apple Store in Los Gatos, California! He tweeted, “The long wait begins. I’m first in line. The guy ahead was on the wrong side and he’s pissed.” He’s obviously a long-time Apple fan and I think its great that he wants to join in and stand in line with the rest of the fans!

RIM’s Outages

While things are all happy over at Apple, RIM has taken a hit this week due to their service disruptions and outages worldwide. Many Blackberry users took to their Facebook and Twitter accounts to complain and there was even talk about finally being fed up and switching to the iPhone or Android. (Maybe this contributed to Apple’s highest pre-orders record?) Both Maggie Fox and Leona Hobbs were quoted in the press this week, in The Star and Financial Post respectively, commenting about how RIM’s CEOs, Mike Lazaridis and Jim Balsillie handled the public relations fallout. See what Maggie had to say here and what Leona had to say here.

Wall Street Protests

Also in the news this week has been the Occupy Wall Street protests and the use of social media in its organization. There are many angry people and there are no signs of their confrontation going away, not when almost all of the protesters have a smartphone and are active on social media networks to regularly spread the word as far as they can. More people are engaging in social networks to get people to come out and join them. Some commented that they heard about it through a friend on Facebook or Twitter and that the turnout was so strong due to social media. We can really see the significance of social media and why engaging in it is so important to stay in the know and up-to-date. It really is the strongest tool today to bring people together and connect with others that are feeling the same way as yourself.

Best of 2010: Social Media Stats & Year in Review

December 31, 2010 / 2 Comments / Posted in: Blog, Social Media Roundup

Our SMG social media roundup this week is all about the year that was 2010. I hope you had an amazing year filled with much awesomeness and that you have a happy and healthy 2011.

Off the top, a hat tip to Steve Harris who helped out with the research for this post.

Sharing in 2010

Social sharing service AdThis shares some insights in this handy infographic about how, when and where we share. Facebook represented 44% of all sharing (up from 33% in 2009). Gmail and StumbleUpon had the greatest growth with increases of 394% and 254% respectively.

(via Web Analytics World Blog)

Bonus: Mashable’s 19 of the Best Infographics from 2010

Top Search Terms 2010

In the no-big-surprise department, Experian Hitwise’s analysis of the top 100 search terms for 2010 shows “Facebook” was the top-searched term overall accounting for 2.11 percent of all searches. When you factor in four variations of the term “facebook” also in the top 10 terms, Facebook accounted for 3.48 percent of searches overall. Compared to last year “Yahoo! Mail” and “google” are the two terms that fell out of the top 10 for 2010.

The top 10:

2011 Social Media Marketing Trends to Watch

The smart folks at trendwatching.com have identified 11 Crucial Consumer Trends for 2011. A number of them are directly applicable to social media marketing in 2011.

A few of the trends we’re watching out for in 2011 include Urbanomics, Pricing Pandemonium, Online Status Symbols, Social-lites and Twinsumers and Planned Spontaneity.

Leona Hobbs receives TIAW World of Difference 100 Award

August 25, 2010 / 1 Comment / Posted in: Blog, News

We’re incredibly honoured to announce that our very own Leona Hobbs, Vice President of Social Media Group, has been named a recipient of The International Alliance for Women (TIAW) World of Difference 100 award.

TIAW, an international umbrella organization of women’s networks representing more than 50,000 women worldwide, created the very special World of Difference 100 Award to honor up to 100 women from around the world who have contributed to the economic empowerment of women.

We’re incredibly proud of Leona for this wonderful accomplishment and wish her many, many congrats!

Social Media Group & Digg Co-Author whitepaper: Best Practices in Online Conversational Marketing

April 22, 2010 / 2 Comments / Posted in: Blog

At Social Media Group, we work with our clients to deploy programs to add scale to social media efforts. We’ve had some amazing results with DiggAds, so we teamed up with our friends at Digg to co-author a brand spanking new whitepaper: Best Practices in Online Conversational Marketing to share the core tactics for success in this emerging space.

From the whitepaper:

Even though media and communications technologies are changing quickly, smart marketing best practices still hold true. Great marketing has always been a conversation; a conversation that companies need to listen to so that they can learn how to join in the discussion appropriately. More and more, that dialogue directly involves brands, including yours and your competitors. Digg users are already bringing you into their conversations on their own. For example, 166,000 pieces of content about the iPhone, 10,000 about Nike and 19,000 about IBM have been submitted by users over the last three years.

The fact that people interact, share and create content with their families, friends and communities is a core foundation for social media-fueled digital communications. The Edelman Trust Barometer tells us that recommendations or content from “people like me” are trusted almost three times more than your marketing materials.

It is also true that generating earned media takes work, but is so worth the time and investment because earned media is such a credible social object and asset to the brand. Companies spend gazillions of dollars creating whiz-bang digital properties for marketing campaigns. All too frequently, these high-quality assets aren’t given the right kind of support from paid media to drive interaction and engagement with the customer.

Sixty-two percent of advertisers say their traditional ad channels are not working as well as they have in the past.

We need new approaches to drive intent and consideration and conversational marketing to add scale to our social media and digital marketing programs. And for the love of Pete, in doing conversational marketing we must remember what we know to be true about social media – we listen first, we enter conversations to add value and we participate respectfully in an honest and transparent manner.

Over the past while, our team here at Social Media Group has been experimenting with various approaches and platforms to add scale to social media campaigns. One of these experiments was with DiggAds, in their closed pilot phase last year. We learned a tonne and had a blast generating some pretty cool results. Chas Edwards, publisher and chief revenue officer at Digg, Maggie Fox, Michele Husak, Director of Communications at Digg, and I put our heads together, had great chats about insights and trends and wrote up “Best Practices in Online Conversational Marketing“, a whitepaper to share with you.

Please check it out and let us know what you think.

Digital Activism: SMG on The Agenda with Steve Paikin

October 15, 2009 / 1 Comment / Posted in: Blog

Tonight our very own Leona Hobbs will be on The Agenda with Steve Paikin on TVO, Channel 2, at 8pm EST. The topic? Digital Activism. Leona will be part of a panel discussing the limits of digital activism with three other experts; Andrew Rasiej, founder of Personal Democracy Forum, Evgeny Morozov, contributing editor to Foreign Policy and operator of Net Effect blog and Megan Boler, Professor and Associate Chair of the Department of Theory and Policy Studies, at the Ontario Institute of Studies in Education at the UofT.

The Agenda with Steve Paikin is current affairs program that engages with its audience. You can submit show ideas online, contribute to live discussions from home or comment on one of their regularly updated blogs or Facebook group. The program is available on demand for audio or video download in the podcast section of the TVO website. So, if you’re outside the broadcast area and can’t tune in live to see Leona in the hot seat, feel free to check the episode archive.