TwttrPoop and what you should already know about social media

I made a vow that I would avoid writing about twitter on this blog until there is actually something new to say.  Well, with the release of TwttrPoop, that day has arrived.

The creation of Josh Shabtai, TwttrPoop is pretty much what is sounds like -- it aggregates all tweets about going #2 and allows you to graph them in comparison to any other terms widely discussed on twitter.  It shouldn't come as a surprise that variations of "going #2" far outweigh most other terms.  Sure -- major topics like Michael Jackson, Iran and, of course, beer receive more tweets than bowel movements do, but most other brands don't fare so well.

Google, Facebook and Apple all receive more tweets than "people talking about pooping", which based on other comparisons, is pretty impressive.  These are three of the top brands in the online/technology space, and it's likely the people tweeting about them are using them at the same time they are on twitter.

When you take this comparison to a few offline brands, the results are very different.

Coke, IBM and Toyota are all included in BusinessWeek's Top Brands of 2008.  And they are all dwarfed on twitter by people taking a poop.  The latest buzz in "social media marketing" -- same deal.  Pooping dominates.

If you do a few of these graphs, it solidifies what you should already know -- twitter is more like texts from last night than a tool about conversing with customers and building brands.  Social media mimics real-life conversations.  And, like real life conversations, there are many topics more interesting to people than your new label or the contest you are running for people who become fans of your Facebook page.

Something often forgotten in marketing with social media: Just because you're interested in talking to your customers, doesn't mean they're interested in hearing from and talking about you.  And when there's nothing you can do about it, step away from tactics and build a reason for people to care about your brand.

Facebook Activism vs. Real World Action

Mary Joyce, co-founder of DigiActive.org, on tangible activities generated from Facebook social activism.

“Maybe a maximum of 5 percent are going to take action, and maybe it’s closer to 1 percent. . . . In most cases of Facebook groups, members do nothing. I haven’t yet seen a case where the Facebook group has led to a sustained movement.’’

Same goes for marketing via social channels.  It's one thing to have a lot of followers and friends.  It's another (much better) thing to have them engaging and activating your brand.

via The Pros and Cons of Digital Activism (The Boston Globe and The Washington Post)

Snuggie: Smart marketing and a little luck

After a bit of a layoff from posting, I'm easing back in with a topic close to my heart: sleeved blankets.

A few years ago, I stumbled across a revolutionary product: a fleece blanket with sleeves.  Living in an often-chilly apartment, this was the perfect product for someone that didn't wish to sacrifice their blanketed warmth to perform basic arm movements.  It was called The Slanket.

Most people would have probably assumed it was the Snuggie.  It wasn't.  The Slanket has been around for a while, but you would never know it.

So why has Snuggie wiped the floor with the Slanket so far?  The first, and very obvious reason, is price.  The Slanket was originally priced at $80 (they are now priced at $38).  The Snuggie -- $20.  That's pretty much a no brainer.

The second is advertising.  Snuggie had an enormous push this winter with cringe-inducing infomercial-style ads.  As PSFK points out, this may not have been such a bad idea.  The cost of a prime time TV spot has seen a big drop, and Snuggie took advantage of the discounted tv real estate to grab a firm hold of the competitive blanket-with-sleeves category.  Meanwhile, The Slanket relied on press coverage to get the word out.  This is not a bad strategy, especially given the state of the economy.  But with Snuggie on the offensive, what were they waiting for?

The third reason is that Snuggie was able to seize a prominent place in the conversation.  Snuggie emerged because of their quirky and hard-to-miss spots, but they became a pop culture mainstay with the emergence of the Snuggie Pub Crawl.

So here is where Snuggie got a bit lucky. People took the idea of the Snuggie Pub Crawl and ran with it, creating their own versions of Snuggie events. The founders of Snuggie Pub Crawl are not affiliated with Snuggie, so Snuggie didn't have to do a thing, except ship out their product to everyone buying it for an event.  With the help of Snuggie enthusiasts, Snuggie has managed to do something that every smart marketer out there is trying to do: get consumers involved with their brand and turn them into advocates.

So the question is -- would the Snuggie Pub Crawl ever have come about without a smart pricing strategy and some smarts ad placements?  My answer is no.

In Snuggie's case, they got lucky with the pub crawl.  If they had introduced the idea themselves, it wouldn't have worked.  It would have sounded ridiculous to consumers, and laced with marketing.  But Snuggie deserves a lot of credit for laying the groundwork with smart marketing that created the opportunity for the for the crawl idea to even emerge.  People can't talk about your product unless they know it's there.  Just ask The Slanket.

Update: A recent article from the San Francisco Chronicle talks more about the rise of the Snuggie (Warming to the Cult of Snuggie).

Facebook: One Social Network to Rule Them All

The social media community is constantly talking about what's next. Brian Solis wrote earlier this week about FriendFeed becoming the next great conversation platform. There are countless conversations about twitter as a must-have for marketers and businesses, and as Mashable points out, it has seen massive growth in the past year.

You know who else has seen massive growth? Facebook, which now has two times as many unique visitors as MySpace. At this point, I barely know anyone under the age of 35 not on Facebook, and I am regularly being added by friends' parents and relatives I haven't heard from in years.

Facebook still rules as the top conversation platform, and here's why.

People value their friends on Facebook more than on any other social network. And the reason is because it is more personal. Most Facebook users know every single one of the people they are friends with -- from high school, from college, from working together. And in that time they interacted, they shared enough personal interaction that they trust those friends to be in their network.

Facebook, not twitter, is the biggest microblogging platform in the world. It may not be the most active, but the Facebook news feed, then the brilliant addition of comments on that feed, makes every user a microblogger.

Facebook is more interesting. Most people would rather read and watch what their friends are posting on Facebook than digest a heavier conversation happening elsewhere. It's the same reason I read the Google Shared items from my friends before I read any other feeds. I want to know what my friends are up to before delving into the rest of the noise out there.

Almost everyone you know is on Facebook, and only a few of them are on twitter or FriendFeed. Try posting your twitter name in your Facebook status and invite people to follow you. Your friends that are on twitter are already following you, and the rest haven't figured out the point of twitter.

Conversations on Facebook are real and genuine. And it is because the real people-to-marketer ratio is still appropriately intact. The walls that Facebook has put up to protect their users, although often lamented by advocates for an open web, have gone a long way to protect users from the "look at me" marketers on twitter.

So what does this mean? Facebook may not be as sexy as it used to be and it may not be where the early adopters are playing. But it is where the most active and genuine conversations are occurring with people that the users trust most -- their friends. Marketing with social media is about trust and conversation, and Facebook still has the most of both.

Nickelodeon Launches "Big Green Help" Global Challenge; Kids Google it..a lot

In case you needed a reminder that kids are (1)digitally savvy, (2)gamers and (3)environmentally conscious, take a look at the top search results on Google following Nickelodeon's launch of the Big Green Help Global Challenge this morning.

Nickelodeon's Big Green Help Gets Interactive