1. What are some lessons learned by other startups when it comes to lead generation that would be useful to someone coming out of the gate?
2. While social media and community building are all the rage, what are the actual results companies are seeing in conversion compared to time spent?
3. How do you balance SEO and creating content that is really engaging when you’re really trying to sell something? 

To me, the third question is the hardest. Everyone knows that the key to driving quality traffic to a site is to create useful, compelling content that speaks to what customers want. But in the end, the goal is to make a sale, so finding the balance between “hey, we have something to sell you if you’re interested” and the Billy Mays style of in your face, aggressive sales pitches is a difficult one. So with those questions in mind, I hit the sessions. I. Day One Session 1: Bringing SEO In-House Without Missing a BeatThe description:

Many companies are considering bringing SEO in-house to save money, but doing so is challenging. It’s usually done with a lot of trial and error and often has a detrimental impact on the program. In this session, we’ll show you how companies are bringing their SEO programs in-house wihtout missing a beat. You’ll discover real-life examples about how companies are implementing SEO in-house across the globe. 

At a startup, bringing SEO under the marketing umbrella is a necessity. With constraints in both time and budget, it’s just not feasible to work with an outside agency to handle the SEO tasks. Since I’m planning the PPC campaigns, developing the link building strategy and creating all the content, it just makes sense that SEO would fall into my bucket. So despite the description, it seemed like this session might be perfect for me. The speakers were Jessica Bowman of SEOinhouse.com and Bill Scully, the Director of E-Marketing, Siemens Water Technologies. Though Jessica was supposed to go first, she wasn’t there, so Bill jumped forward and gave his half of the presentation, which focused on the daily, weekly, and monthly SEM tasks that he employs:Daily SEM tasks:

• Listen to SEO and Online Marketing Podcasts- Downloading and listening to them going to and from work.
• Reading SEO/SEM Newsletters and Blogs
• Check Twitter Account for breaking news
• Keep  a journal- Keeping a log of tests and changes
• Check Analytics

Weekly SEM tasks:Analyze web logs and reports for:

• Key campaign traffic changes
• Goal changes
• Overall Traffic Changes
•  404 errors
•  Linking Generation Reports

Monthly SEM tasks:

• Attend WebEx
• Audit site/templates
• Check all no-follows are still in place
•  Make sure robots.txt file is still correct
• Check custom 404 Page is still working
• Check redirects are 301 and go to the proper pages
• Update XML site map

Yearly:

• Put together a 1 and 3 year SEO strategic Plan
• Budget
• Review staffing, service, training needs

To me, the session was just okay. The only reason I say that is that it was the wrong presentation for me, as the target audience really was the marketing rep from a big corporation looking to take more control of their SEO efforts. So, if I were from a large company looking for advice into how to get more $$ for an in-house PPC campaign, this might be a really informative session for me. I’m definitely not knocking it; I’m just not the right audience. Session Two: Developing Robust Online Content to Keep Prospects and Customers Engaged I was really excited about this one, as I love Christopher S. Penn’s presentation style. He always gives usable, actionable tactics that can be tried immediately. That’s a rarity in a lot of conferences I go to. There’s a lot of high-level social media kumbaya, “join the conversation” talk, and things like that, but Christopher does an awesome job of giving real-world takeaways.This session had 5 panelists: Philip Juliano VP, Global Brand Management & Corporate Communications, NovellValeria Maltoni Director, Marketing Communications, SunGard Availability ServicesChris Penn CTO, Student Loan NetworkMike O’Toole President and Partner, PJA Advertising and MarketingMatthew T. Grant Moderator, Doctor of Philosophy, Thought Ronin  As the panel started, the moderator seemed to really have a problem with people typing during a presentation. He asked that everyone close their laptops and refrain from blogging, using twitter, etc. Of course, no one complied, and the twitter stream that ensued was very funny.  Being the rebel that I am, I took a few notes from the session: 

MG: How do you manage the conversation so the message stays consistent on different platforms?PO: At some level you can’t, when people are creating their own content about you, that’s somewhat out of your control. It’s important to be consistent, but not lock-step. You have to let people say their own things and let the personality come through. I’ve always been impressed with AutoDesk which has over 100 employee blogs. They do it well.

CP: Take a list of the top 100 customers you have, and go to twitter, facebook, blogger, etc and find out how many of them are there. If it’s a high percentage, you want to spend some time there. If they’re not, you’re probably going to waste your time. Another example: go to those same 100 customers and ask them where they spend time online. Great example: I was sitting next to an 80-year old grandmother on a plane, and she was stereotypical to a T except she had a kindle. I asked why, and she said that everyone at the senior center has one and loves it because you can change the text size to make it as big as they way. I asked “do you read blogs on that?” she said “what’s that?” I then took a look and she’d subscribed to a dozen blogs. I asked “what’s that?” and she said “oh, that’s the news.” The takeaway: People are talking about you and your industry/products, but they may be doing it in different places using different  

 Though the presentation wasn’t focused on giving any new information, it was an excellent way to reinforce the ideas that I think most marketers are familiar with, but don’t always do. It’s difficult to have a strict process to come up with relevant keywords, create content to go after those keywords, measure how the content is doing, etc. It’s a hell of a lot easier to blog your ass off and hope good things are going to happen (ahem, what I’ve been guilty of a LOT), but I think the results prove otherwise. Session 3: Website Development & Analytics: Building the Optimal Website That Delivers Business Results  The description:

B2B Companies need their websites to be their first sales call and their lead nurturing system. In part one of this two-part session, we will show you how to get your brand positioning front and center on your site, while also creating a navigation and content structure that moves buyers and influencers through their decision process and become qualified leads. We’ll show you examples of several website renovation projects with different challenges where all necessary components of a new web site were built in from the beginning- SEO, analytics, and set up to guide continuous improvement of customer experience and engagement.  

 Talk about a session custom-made for my current situation, right? Well, that’s what I thought. Unfortunately, the presentation just felt wrong. Now, I’ve already admitted that I come from the B-to-C side, and my BS detector is cranked way up. Because of that, I felt like the presentation was just an hour long commercial for the agency putting on the show. With a bunch of slides showing logos of their customers, case studies that talked about the services they provided, etc., I felt like I was sitting in the audience of an infomercial.  I completely understand that there’s a balance, and that the speakers are there to give their business a plug. I get it. But the only real advice I derived from the session was: Just call us and pay us. We’ll take care of everything for you. Again, I’m new here. Maybe this is the norm in B-to-B conferences, and I’m wrong for calling these guys out. I just hope not. II. Day Two I didn’t attend the sessions on Tuesday, but have been following the twitter stream. It seems like everyone in attendance is live-tweeting from the sessions, and nearly every presentation is available on the marketingprofs site.   Looking through the twitter stream, Tuesday’s focus was on the big question: “Sure, we understand social media is great and that it can increase traffic, sales, etc……but how do we measure it?” Ah, measurement. We marketers sure do like our stats, don’t we? And though on some level we just want to have mountains of data just because, there are reasons for our affinity for numbers. First, we’re often called upon to justify our existence by proving that our programs are actually adding value to the business. Additionally, we need metrics to show us which programs are working and which are sad old dogs. And when something like social media enters the picture and we can’t add our tracking code to things like facebook, twitter, and linkedin, the tendency is to panic. Well, Katie Paine came in to talk the b-to-b marketers off the ledge. First off, she said something that was retweeted many times:  

HITS stands for How Idiots Track Success 

I think that makes a lot of sense. When trying to understand the ROI of social media, things like mentions, referrals, and impressions are nice, but they don’t really tell you anything about the success of your campaign. When your end goal is to make a sale (or register users), you need to find out which campaigns are bringing in the conversions. I think that Chris Penn said it best in his presentation: 

If you’re selling a gulfstream jet that costs $94 million and you have a podcast with 100,000 listeners, but no one is buying, you’re wasting your time. If you have a podcast with 3 listeners and 2 buy the planes, you’re going to Maui for the next 2 years. 

  Forum Takeaways 

1.  B-to-B marketing is completely different from B-to-C. Things like blogging, using twitter, and participating in all forms of social media are all brand new to B-t0-B marketers, as they just haven’t had the ability to test them out. In the startups I’ve worked for, I’ve always had the ability to try something out and see what sticks. In bigger companies, that’s just not possible.
2. Social media scares big b-to-b companies- The marketers at this conference seemed to have a sense of anxiety about understanding the emerging social technologies. They don’t know how to feel about not having control of their message. They dread seeing negative comments about their brand on blogs. 

Now, before this starts sounding like I’m bashing b-to-b folks, I want to make something abundantly clear: these aren’t value judgements. Instead, they are the natural emotions associated with an ENORMOUS change in the way business has been done in the past. What I saw during this conference was the acceptance of the fact that social media is something B-to-B marketers can no longer ignore. It was the admission that blogging and other social technologies are no longer to be considered kid stuff. The days where a company can set itself apart from the competitors by simply having a blog, a twitter account, and a facebook page are gone. This conference proved to me that being involved with social media isn’t something that will put you ahead of the curve as a b-to-b company. Instead, it’s going to be the price of admission. Nathan Burke is the marketing manager at Aprigo, a Waltham, MA based company developing a suite of SaaS Data Management Applications.  You can read his blogs at Blogstring.com and MarketingStartups.com

What is plinky?

Well, let’s first look at what the company says on its website:

Plinky makes it easy for you to create inspired content. Every day we provide a prompt (i.e. a question or challenge) and you answer. We make it simple to add rich media and share your answers on Facebook, Twitter and blogs.

So, if you’re a blogger that has no idea what to talk about, plinky gives you questions to get you going. The interface is slick:

Now, when I add my answer "The Big Lebowski", I get the following:

And once you answer the question, you can compare your answer with what other bloggers have said, and you can add video, images, etc. Then, you can send your answer to your blog, twitter or facebook:

Clicking "Share with This Blog" will post the image, the title, and your comments directly to your blog:

You get the idea. For the end user, it’s a service that inspires post ideas and makes it easy to integrate answers into a blog. But that’s not what really makes plinky a really interesting service. We’ll get there. Trust me.

Who’s Behind Plinky?

Here’s where the buzz comes in. Way back in June of 2008, MG Siegler at VentureBeat wrote about the then stealth mode service because of the team. CEO Jason Shellen worked at Pyra Labs, which turned into Blogger. When Google bought blogger in 2003, Shellen was part of the acquisition, and during his time at Google, he became the founding manager of Google Reader. Ryan Freitas is the Director of Product Design. He came from Adaptive Path, and was responsible for building Plazes and led the redesign of MySpace. The other co-founder is Simeon Simeonov, who was formerly the chief architect of Macromedia. Biz Stone of Twitter fame is one of the company’s advisors. Not a bunch of lightweights here.

How’s It Going To Make Money?

Well, right now the service is entirely free and looks to be google ad-supported, but I doubt that will last. Why? Well, let’s think about it. Plinky is compiling a huge database full of preference data, all from people that are looking to spread the word about what they like. The service is not only one giant focus group, but a focus group full of people that are begging for things to talk about.

There are currently 12502 members using plinky, but hey, it’s early. Imagine when 500,000 bloggers are using the service. Now imagine you’re the brand manager for a company about to launch a new prouct. How much would you be willing to pay plinky to ask 500,000 bloggers to write about what you’re selling? Or, instead of doing a shotgun blast to every member, maybe you only want to have the prompt sent to males between 18 and 35 living in the Northeast United States who have indicated a strong preference for consumer electronics and have written blog posts about them.

Whoa.

When I first heard about the service, my initial reaction was "Great. Now everyone is going to be writing about the same thing. This is basically a meme generator." My eyes then lit up, and I said "Wait. If everyone is going to be writing about the same thing, that means brands are going to want in, and this will shift from generation of memes to the generation of marketing buzz via distributed product reviews on blogs."

Genius.

Think about this: How open would you be to answering a phone survey about a brand? Or how about a paper survey? It’s a chore and you’d probably avoid it at all cost. But transform that survey into a social content encouragement tool and it is a different animal.

Now, I have to take a step back and admit that this whole scenario is complete speculation. Looking through the current prompts, there is nothing brand-specific, and nothing on the site tells me that brands can pay to be included in prompts. But if plinky isn’t going to go that route, I’d imagine someone will very soon, and it will be big. Controversial and maybe even blasphemy to the social media purists, but big nonetheless.

I’d likely be seen as a lunatic if I failed to add something like "in this economic climate, advertisers are cautious in spending money on online ads without some kind of behavioral or preference-based targeting. Plinky could serve as the perfect platform for brands looking to target both those with indicated interest as well as those with influence and reach via blogs." I could say that. I did say that. But that’s just obvious. Honestly, regardless of the "economic climate", marketers have been begging for something like this for years. Whether it is plinky that delivers the buzz creation or it is another service, this will happen.

Right now I’m writing this article at Betahouse, a two-floor apartment turned coworking space in Cambridge, MA.  Founded in April 2007 by Jon Pierce, Greg Gibson, and other founding residents, Betahouse is billed as an “informal, collaborative environment for early stage entrepreneurs, technologists and designers working on web and mobile applications.”

Though rent includes wifi internet, printers, conference rooms and plenty of caffeinated beverages (including a really nice espresso machine), being in the presence of like-minded entrepreneurs is the biggest draw. “BetaHouse is as much about making connections, sharing ideas and building community as it is about providing cheap, flexible work space, so we prefer people who share these values,” says Pierce.

There are currently 18 residents at betahouse, working on projects like iPhone applications, new search engine technologies, bio-hacking, and independent video games. Nate Aune, a web developer turned business owner founded Jazkarta as a one-man web shop in 2004. The company now has 3 employees and 10 contractors in Canada, Mexico, Paris and California. In 2007, Aune started at betahouse when “my one employee and I needed office space, and coworking seemed like a cool way to get out of the apartment and the coffeehouses, and meet other like-minded folks.” When asked about the challenges and benefits of coworking, Aune said “It’s challenging to make a phone call sometimes because of the background noise. The benefits are meeting lots of cool people and working somewhere that doesn’t feel like an office.”

The coworking environment was just the right formula for Boston-area virtual goods startup Viximo. The company that started as a small team of 5 at betahouse has grown into a 20+ employee business funded by Sigma Partners and North Bridge Venture Partners. Brian Balfour, Founder at Viximo recalls the early days at Betahouse “Absolutely a positive experience.  You are in a very colloborative, tech enthusiast, creative, and motivating environment.  That support and environment is key in the early stages of the company to plow through the challenges in getting started.”

The benefits of coworking go beyond the connections between residents. In an effort to reach out to the greater Boston-area tech community, Betahouse hosts events including an open house each Tuesday night. Recently, BetaHouse hosted a Pink Slip Party, which encouraged recently unemployed tech workers to meet to work on resumes, exchange job leads, and hear from recruiting and placement experts.

With a shortage of early stage capital mixed with the desire of entrepreneurs to retain maximum control over their companies, many founders are foregoing funding and taking a DIY approach. It is this type of entrepreneur that can benefit the most from the collaborative nature and networking opportunities in a coworking environment.

Over 700 people attended the 20th Web Innovators Group in Cambridge last night to see nine early stage companies and to network with the Boston tech and startup communities. Like other WebInno events, the format included 5 minute presentations from three “main dish” startups followed by 30 second pitches from “side dish” companies. After the presentations, attendees could find out more about each presenting company at demonstration booths set up in another room.

Main Dish Presenters

TripChill is a “mobile travel assistant” available on any mobile device. The presentation was focused on the TripChill iPhone application which will be available for $10 in the iPhone Application Store later this month, and the app looked incredibly useful for frequent business travelers. Simply forward your itinerary to travel@tripchill.com, and the service will let you know if there are any delays, cancellations, etc. Some interesting features:

• Entering your parking location when you arrive will be stored in TripChill, and you’ll get an email reminder once you arrive
• TripChill will let you know when there are delays and cancellations, and will send hotel reservation information if you need to stay another night, and a list of other available flights if you need to book another one
• Notification options let you select people that should receive emails or text messages when you arrive at your destination or if you are stranded

The Verdict: I was incredbily impressed by TripChill, and would absolutely suggest it to anyone who is a frequent traveler. The service is free to users (aside from the initial $10 download fee), and is funded through partnerships with hotels.com and other partnership deals. Additionally, TripChill will be announcing a concierge service that will cost around $10 per month.

LocalMotors- When I took a look at the presenting startups before the event, I thought that LocalMotors was going to be the most interesting, and they did not disappoint. They had the most ambitious and bold claim: “Local Motors is a next generation American car company. It is the first disruptive entrant in the US automotive industry in decades and it is the first of its kind.”

At a time when the big 3 American car companies are begging for a bailout, LocalMotors is starting a new American car company, and plan to change the rules of designing, prototyping, building and selling cars. Through their site, LocalMotors holds contests to find the best and most popular designs, then they pay the winning designer and actually build the car. Where it would cost GM $50 million in design and prototyping costs, LocalMotors can do the same for less than $10,000.

The Verdict: LocalMotors won the audience award for best presentation, and rightfully so. Their presentation was crystal clear and absolutely confident. Despite the incredible demonstration, many questions still exist: how much will the cars actually cost? How many can they produce? What’s the sale process?

I can’t wait to see what LocalMotors does in the very near future. If they’re able to actually pull off what they promise, this will be a great company to watch.

Crimson Hexagon- Crimson Hexagon is a brand monitoring service for medium to large companies who don’t have the time to manually monitor buzz and sentiment. The company produces software as a service to automatically parse through blogs, forums, twitter feeds and other sources of online content. Their software then categorizes and scores each mention and places it on a negative/neutral/positive continuum. Additionally, the software clusters mentions by category and can follow trends over time. The example used onstage was “Why Do People Drink Gatorade”? Looking through blog mentions, Crimson Hexagon noticed a trend where 14% of people reported drinking Gatorade in order to cue hangovers.

The Verdict: Buzz monitoring is a tough one when it comes to trying to automatically score sentiment. Crimson Hexagon seems to be going after businesses that get at least a few dozen blog mentions every day, without having the resources to manually track and monitor the mentions.

I tried unsuccessfully to get a price for the service, as it won’t be launched as saas until April. I spoke to a company representative who let me know that right now they’re pricing their opinion offering solely as professional service engagements on a per monitor basis for a few thousand dollars at a minimum, dependent on volume.

Side Dish Presenters

Pixability- Pixability edits videos. If you have a camcorder video, you can pay pixability $139 to professionally edit your footage and send you two copies.

The Verdict- While shooting high-quality video is becoming cheap and easy, the learning curve for using anything above the most basic editing software is steep. At an affordable price point, pixability seems like an attractive offering.

Tipjoy- Tipjoy bills itself as “the easiest way to give and make money online.” Tipjoy is basically a tipping service for content producers. If you own a blog, you can add a tipjoy link, and your readers can leave you money. Tipjoy also has a twitter integration, allowing people to make micropayments and small monetary gifts via twitter.

The Verdict- The micropayment problem has yet to be solved, and the ease of use and simplicity of tipjoy is definitely a step in the right direction.

HelpGuest- HelpGuest is a marketplace for experts. As an “expert”, you set your own rate to answer questions, and users of the service can search for a subject matter expert to help them with any question they may have.

The Verdict- I’ve yet to see a human-powered web service work to scale. This seems a lot like Yahoo Answers, with HelpGuest being an intermediary that does not vet the experts.

infoMED- Through a series of medical questions called infoMeds, the service checks a patient’s symptoms and provides them with personalized healthcare info specific to both the patient’s symptoms and medical history.

The Verdict- When it comes to dispensing medical advice, the site says the following on every page “InfoMedMD does not provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. If you think you may have a medical emergency, call your doctor or 911 immediately.” However, for $25 you can have a “personal consultation” with the doctor behind the site.

Though the site itself has a nice, easy-to-use design, I’m not sure there’s enough content and usable information to make the site more than a lead generation tool for a single doctor.

genotrope- Genotrope is taking a different angle in the job search space. Rather than listing specific jobs. genotrope is all about matching job seekers to specific companies. Their tool is meant to match people with the right workplace culture rather than just finding them a job.

The Verdict- Like all other job-related sites, the site is only successful if its good at helping people find the right job. The site is very startup-heavy, listing 1717 posted jobs within 50 miles of Boston today.

photrade- Photrade is a marketplace helping photographers decide where, when, and at what cost their photos will be used online.

The Verdict- If you’re someone trying to make a living by selling photos online, I’m sure that it’s very important to be sure your photos aren’t being used freely. But I’m not sure how much of a problem this is, and if there’s enough demand to support a service like photrade.

Summary

Like any demonstration event, there were some excellent presentations, and some that didn’t convince me. With exciting presentations from TripChill and LocalMotors to promising and useful demonstrations from tipjoy and pixability, the startups that demonstrated at webinno 20 really showed promise.

What’s a springpad?

So, here’s the short description:

Springpads are free online notebooks that help you manage your life. Use your springpad to keep track of notes, photos, maps, to-do’s, contacts, appointments & more.

As someone that makes lists of everything (seriously, I have a list on my refrigerator right now with the first item “Find Full Time Gig” followed by “Get Oil Change”) a web based application that can manage all the lists I make and can tie-in to other web APIs makes all the sense in the world. So let’s take a look:That’s the springpad homepage. You’ll notice that they’re focused on holiday and seasonally themed lists right now like:

• Weekly Meal Planner
• Thanksgiving Menu Planner
• Gift Planner
• Trip Planner
• Job Planner

There are dozens of possible springpads:Here’s a video that explains how to use springpad:

What’s Different

On the surface, an online notebook isn’t all that sexy, but springpad has several underlying features that sets it apart from competitors that simply stop at creating a list-based application.1. Bloggers as experts- To help users get started and to help them make lists, springpad is looking to bloggers as experts. For instance, let’s pretend for a second that I’m an expert chef (I said let’s pretend, ok??). If I have a blog with a great recipe, people might want to be able to import my recipe into a springpad. Right now, this is a manual process, but down the line, there will be automatic springpad integration in blogs. With one click, a springpad user can “spring it”, which will copy the recipe using standard microformats into a springpad. Here’s what that will look like:Clicking “Spring The Task List” will copy the list and will redirect me to:Then:2. Traffic to Blogs- Again, if I were a subject matter expert, I’d love to get new traffic from springpad instead of just sending my traffic there. Well, they’ve got that. In its current incarnation, spring pad’s SpringAdvice is a site that scours the internet for smes (subject matter experts), and links to their content:Of course, this is a win-win. Bloggers are able to get new traffic and are seen as experts in a topic, and springpad users are able to easily import lists. And springpartners (the company behind springpad) is able to increase their visibility by having multiple links to the service from blogs across the web.One of the other things I like about the springpartners strategy is their focus on end users. While most web notebooks are focused on the technology and turn to early adopters for user acquisition, springpartners has made the decision to go after specific user groups. Because there are so many uses for springpads, the company is able to target usergroups based on the problems they’re solving. For instance, there’s a springpad for Pregnancy Health Notes and Nursery Planning. This allows springpartners to approach bloggers writing about pregnancy, helping them reach out to expectant moms looking to organize information in one place. In addition, springpartners can approach mainstream media sources on a topic-level basis. It’s a great strategy.The best part of springpartners in my not-so-humble opinion is that they’re actually solving a problem that people have, and their solution is based on an approach everyone is familiar with: making lists.Keep an eye on this one, as there’s a lot still to come. They just opened their beta, but in the coming months, you’ll really start to see how the list-making component can play with existing APIs. Sure, it integrates with Yelp and Google Maps now, but with the APIs now available, you’ll see topic-level integration with relevant web services. Write a shopping list? Maybe it can integrate with an API that will look at the items on your list and give discounts or price comparisons. The opportunities here are massive.

The Contest

As one of several user acquisition campaigns, my employer, matchmine, launched a weekly sweepstakes. A little background: the company is a media discovery network, helping partners recommend better content to their users based on the users’ media preferences. The contest was created to satisfy two goals: get users to register and send traffic to partner sites.

The Prize: The winner of each week’s sweepstakes is given the choice of either

• Two tickets to the next New England Patriots home game
• A football signed by any New England Patriots player
• A $100 New England Patriots Pro Shop gift certificate

Promotion

After launching the contest on patriots.com, we identified several promotional opportunities to maximize our visibility and conversion rate.

1. Video- We shot a video that summarizes the contest, including how to create accounts on our partner sites. The video not only gave us an opportunity to succinctly explain a complex contest, it was also a great off site marketing tactic. We hosted the video on blip.tv, which is both a destination site and a publishing tool. End users go to to blip.tv to watch video, and publishers get free hosting from blip. Having the video hosted at blip gave us both a free place to host the video and a new audience that would not have been able to see the video if it was hosted in-house.

In the video, the presenter mentions the URL of the contest, and it appears on screen. This way, no matter where the video is viewed, viewers know where to go to sign up for the weekly sweepstakes.

Here’s the video:

2. Refer-A-Friend- Whenever possible, it makes sense to let the community itself expand your user base. In the context of a social network or messaging system, it makes sense for users to want to invite their friends, as they get more out of the service when people they know are there. But in a contest, inviting friends seems counterproductive: why ask your friends to sign up when each friend registration reduces your chance of winning?

We solved that problem with additional entries. Let’s use an example here. We’ll say that Frank signed up for the contest. Wanting to have the best shot at winning, he decided to invite 5 of his friends to sign up. When all 5 signed up, Frank got an additional 5 more entries. By shifting the incentive to invite more people to sign up, we gave all users motivation to promote the contest.

A great example of a social service that does this well is thesixtyone.com, a music discovery site. The site gives users points for actions like listening and rating music, and also gives incentives to invite friends to join.

3. email- Ah yes, email. When a user signs up for the contest, we immediately send a confirmation email, telling them how they can earn additional entry in the contest. Each week, we also send an email announcing the winner and reminding users how to gain additional entries.

4. Friends and Family- Once the contest was launched, the first promotional activity was what we called a “friends and family” round. We encouraged all employees to send a message to their contacts to tell them about the contest. This served dual purposes: First, it gave us a chance to receive feedback from people we know personally. Second, it helped us identify any glitches before promoting to the masses.

5. Twitter- Once we felt comfortable with the way the program was working, we encouraged employees to mention it on twitter, using a shortened URL from bit.ly. Using the bit.ly url, we were able to measure clicks from twitter, along with metrics on retweets and other twitter users using the same link.

6. Facebook- Our company set up a facebook page and group specifically for this purpose. We linked to the contest on both, and encouraged friends of the company to sign up and spread the word.

7. Company Blog- As soon as the contest was launched, I posted on the company blog, giving details on how to win. I also included the embedded video.

8. Bloggers- Finally, given the fact that we’d instituted a refer-a-friend feature, we decided to extend referrals to bloggers. We compiled a list of bloggers focused on the New England Patriots, and sent them a note about the promotion. If they were interested in posting about the contest, we would create a special URL for the blogger. That way, any reader that signed up for the contest as a result of clicking the link in their blog post would give the blogger an additional entry. 

All of these promotional techniques can be utilized in any user acquisition program. Whether you have great prizes to attract the masses, or simply have a great product in need of a user base, using these social media tools is a great first step in driving user signups.

What was it? And what did it have to do with “social media”? Well, I’ll tell you.

I watched a cartoonist argue about social media with a fictional character on twitter.

Once I realized the absurd and surreal nature of what I was witnessing, the term “social media” popped into my head, and I started to think about what it actually means. It certainly has all the feel of a buzzword without meaning, but who am I to judge? So, I did what anyone would do: I asked the googles.

After a barrage of ads from “accredited social media experts”, “social media success coaches” and companies wanting to perform a social media audit, I still had no answer. People wanted to charge me money for their expertise in something I have yet to get a definition for. My head spins.

So I turn to wikipedia. You know what they say: if it’s on the internet, it has to be true.

Social media is an umbrella term that defines the various activities that integrate technology, social interaction, and the construction of words, pictures, videos and audio. This interaction, and the manner in which information is presented, depends on the varied perspectives and “building” of shared meaning among communities, as people share their stories, and understandings.

Right…..I am now less intelligent for reading that. So basically “social media” is any activity that results in anything, anywhere, as long as people are around and technology is involved somewhere. If that’s the case:

• If I’m riding on a subway with an ’80s style boombox blaring, and people are around, that’s social media.
• If I bring a fishing pole into Petco and have a friend record the reactions of people who think I’m a lunatic while I try to catch a beta fish, well, that’s social media.

Well, if that’s true, being a social media expert sounds like a pretty sweet gig. How’s that for a segue…..?

This morning I saw an article on mashable entitled “Are Social Media Jobs Here to Stay?” by Ben Parr. In it, Mr. Parr says:

Let’s face it: Social media has become one of the hot buzzwords in tech circles. It used to be Web 2.0 and social networking, but now we have moved on to a broader term that encompasses not only social networking, but blogs, podcasts, user-generated content, social bookmarking, microblogging, and lifestreams. The rise of all these forms of new media has also created demand for people who can help companies position and market themselves within this new realm.

So, why do we talk about “social media” as an area of expertise? Aren’t we really talking about promotion? We’re now defining a role based on the tools used to achieve goals. We’re not interested in hiring a painter, instead we’re looking for a paint roller guru. Who wants a lion tamer when you can get a whip expert?

Am I just worrying about semantics? Maybe. But maybe not. Here’s my theory:

When you use a vague term like “social media”, you sound mysterious. Saying “I’m a social media expert” is a lot like saying “I am an alchemist. You wouldn’t understand.” The mention of the term suggests a closely guarded set of skills used to achieve an unmeasurable goal resulting in instant riches. And there’s always someone that will say “here’s my money. Do your thing” rather than “I don’t understand what you’re selling. Please explain it to me.”

Am I bashing the slick tools that comprise “social media?” Not at all. I love things like twitter, blogs, video, podcasts, the whole thing. If it’s shiny and has a beta invite available, I’m all over it. But in the end, they’re just tools. Means to an end.

A ladder isn’t very useful when you’re not trying to get to an elevated position. But if you need to clear the roof, it’s the best.

Have a great weekend. This is Nathan Burke, keyboard pressing expert, and mouse click guru.

Yesterday Cuil, a brand new search engine, launched and boy did bloggers notice. Look at any tech blog and you’ll find an opinion of cuil. Either it’s a google killer or a failure.

Regardless of the fact that cuil is a day old, the comparisons to google are widespread, and it’s hard to write an article without doing the cuil vs. google dance. Why? Because cuil is begging people to make that comparison. Here’s how:

The People- Cuil is staffed by ex-googlers, all with search backgrounds. And when a bunch of ex-google folks get together and launch a company based on search, well, you compare them to google.

The Size- Cuil’s press release is entitled “Cuil Launches Biggest Search Engine on the Web” and they have claimed to have “indexed 120 billion Web pages, three times more than any other search engine.” By “any other search engine”, they mean google. Let’s be honest: Google is the only other horse in the race.

Privacy Concerns- Cuil announced that they do not collect any personally identifiable information and they do not keep users’ IP addresses. That statement is a thinly veiled shot at Google’s recent privacy troubles.

The Design- In stark contrast to google’s all white home page, cuil’s home is all-black. Sure, this is pretty much meaningless, but it’s not a coincidence.

Well, How Does It Compare?

I guess it all depends who you ask.

A survey of the top tech blogs seems to show a consensus that it’s certainly interesting, but not as good as google in the most basic use: search relevance. Sure, cuil may have a cool design, they may offer different navigation options and some semantic coolness under the hood- all of that is great. But if a company is to compete with the mighty google, those features are all but worthless if they cannot perform better in the single most basic search engine function: finding and presenting the best results for a query.

The other big question here is: how do you convince people to leave google and use your new shiny search engine (minus many of the features google has been giving away for years)? Google’s biggest asset is in its ubiquity: it’s EVERYWHERE, and everyone uses it all the time. If any search engine is going to compete with google, they’ll have to be better by an order of magnitude. It can’t just be a little bit better. And for now, cuil isn’t in the same league.

But hey, it’s day two and I remember thinking “why would I ever need another search engine when AltaVista is so good?” I could very well look back and laugh when I think back to using google all the time. It happens.

What’s Available?

After using oAuth to authenticate a user and retrieve an authorized Access Token and Token Secret, the API allows third party developers access to the following myspace data:

In addition, the API allows developers access to the user’s friends through a simple GET request:

http://api.myspace.com/people/@me/@friends

The response will only return the ID of the user’s friends.

In Use

After announcing MySpace Data Availability, the good people at TechCrunch threw an application together to demonstrate how it works:

Step One: Go to the app and click a link to install the application in myspace.

Step Two: On myspace, confirm that you’d like to give the application access to your MySpace data.

Step Three: You’re now redirected back to the TechCrunch app, which can now display your myspace profile data information.

The Catch

Even though developers can now display users’ myspace data on their sites, that doesn’t mean they can actually do anything with the data. In fact, myspace forbids storing or caching any of the user information. So aside from displaying what’s already at myspace, Data Availability isn’t particularly useful unless the developer can do on-the-fly data analysis in order to present something based on what they’ve learned from the user data. Which is, you know, not easy.

What Does This Mean To DataPortability?

Data Availability sure sounds like Data Portability, doesn’t it? And it’s certainly allowing data to leave the silo that is MySpace. Due to the fact that 3rd party developers cannot store or save data, each page load synchs with the mothership, guaranteeing up-to-date information.

But then again, it’s just a display. A one way road from myspace to display somewhere else. Users can’t edit their myspace information on another site, and nothing about it is bidirectional.

So is Data Availability a step forward for the Data Portability movement? Is it a step backward? To me, it’s a step. When it comes to true data portability, it helps to be patient. Until recently the thought of allowing another site to access your profile data was absurd. Back in the walled-garden days, independent silos with redundant profile data were the rule. With Data Availability, a giant in social networking has decided to open the gate a little bit. That’s a very good thing.

Talking this over with Trent Adams, the founder of matchmine and an active contributor to the DataPortability Project, he pointed out what might be helpful as next steps:

“The move by MySpace into the world of data portability with their Data Availability initiative is a great baby step.  Without something like what Drummond Reed and his XDI compatriots are cooking up, though, it’s going to be hard to take bigger steps.  Specifically, the concepts of identity, data, and control cry out for what’re termed link contracts.”

Trent recently interviewed Drummond for his DataPortability In-Motion podcast, where they talk about XDI, XRI, and link contracts in detail.

It’s impossible for me to believe that we’re going to go from nothing to everything. I don’t think facebook will put out a press release tomorrow announcing an API to let any developer create apps to both read, store, and write to any part of a facebook profile. It’s just not going to happen. When it comes to data portability, iteration is the name of the game. Give developers a little bit of access and see what happens. Then, little by little, give more access.

That brings me to the main idea of this post: the guilty pleasure. Ah yes, that which you absolutely love, though you’d never admit it to your friends. We’ve all got that song on our iPod that would make us turn bright red if our friends found out. The movie that you can’t turn off…..unless someone else is in the room. You get the picture.

In November of 2004, [my favorite author] Chuck Klosterman wrote an article deconstructing the notion of the guilty pleasure for Esquire magazine. In his article, Klosterman brings up the following points on guilty pleasures:

People who use this term are usually talking about why they like Joan of Arcadia, or the music of Nelly, or Patrick Swayze’s Road House. This troubles me for two reasons: Labeling things like Patrick Swayze movies a guilty pleasure implies that

a) people should feel bad for liking things they sincerely enjoy, and

b) if these same people were not somehow coerced into watching Road House every time it’s on TBS, they’d probably be reading A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.

He gives a great example:

Let’s assume that I was somehow humiliated by the fact that I watched The Ashlee Simpson Show, which is something I did almost every week for two months. I think it’s a fascinating illustration of what’s wrong with young people, how the music industry operates, and how modern celebrities aspire to view themselves. But let’s pretend this wasn’t the case. Let’s say I considered this program a guilty pleasure, and let’s say my desire to watch Ashlee explain how her boyfriend ruined Valentine’s Day was something I needed to apologize for. Wouldn’t this imply that The Ashlee Simpson Show was my conscious alternative to something better? Wouldn’t this suggest that—were I not watching The Ashlee Simpson Show—I would be working on logarithms, or studying the liner notes of out-of-print jazz records, or searching for factual errors in The Economist? Because these are not things I do, and I don’t think many of the other 2.9 million people watching Ashlee Simpson every Wednesday do these things, either. We’re not losing the battle against cancer because of Ashlee Simpson. If we weren’t watching her pretend to be sexy, we’d probably just be going to the bar earlier.

It’s become clear to me that the embarrassment of having a guilty pleasure is strictly a social construct. The only reason we feel a twinge of guilt when listening to a Billy Joel song is that we’re afraid of how our friends will think of us. It’s not even that we fear they’ll make fun of us (which, in my circle of friends is granted); instead, we don’t want anyone to think we have bad taste.

Well, I’m with Chuck on this one. He says “These things that give us pleasure, they are guilty of nothing. And neither are we,” and I agree with him. We shouldn’t feel guilty of liking the things we like.

And I’ll prove it.