www.nickhodge.com

What is the Web 2.0 World Say­ing about you, now?

I strongly recom­mend any Marketing/PR per­son just start­ing out to down­load and install Particls: http://particls.com/. You can use Particls to watch the inter­net for you. Enter the phrases and words that are your products and brands, and watch the con­ver­sa­tion that ensues.

It is wise to start your online jour­ney by enga­ging the exist­ing con­ver­sa­tions and exist­ing com­munit­ies, rather than attempt­ing to start your own lonely blog and talk to noone.

Social Net­work­ing use by Marketing/PR

Social net­work using MySpace/Face­book/MSN Live/Linkedin/Bebo etc etc etc is a per­fect mech­an­ism for cre­at­ing a com­munity; and more import­antly: stay­ing connected.

Note that people are largely engaged in these com­munit­ies for per­sonal social reas­ons, not to have a product shoved down their throat. The rule of authen­tic voice applies.

Second­Life use by Marketing/PR:

Know who and where of your audi­ence. Des­pite heavy hype in the tra­di­tional media, the num­ber of people logged in to Second­Life always seems low. (25000 to 40000)

There is some­thing enti­cing about a com­pletely immers­ive 3D world, where in a dream-like state you can fly any­where and build any­thing. It demos well, and the allure of “instant mil­lions” attrac­ted a cer­tain “type” of ini­tial user.

The web was like this in 1994/5. Not much out there, much hype and a lim­ited few had the hard­ware and ‘band­width’ to par­ti­cip­ate. I would highly recom­mend doing deep research prior to sig­ni­fic­ant investment.

Fully immers­ive worlds such as World-of-Warcraft (note: you prob­ably can­not mar­ket here) are very suc­cess­ful; and the future of end-user gen­er­ated immers­ive worlds is large.

Twit­ter use by Marketing/PR:

http://gdayworld.thepodcastnetwork.com/2007/08/23/gday-world-281-melbourne-twitter-lunch/

@Froosh expressed it best: Twit­ter is micro-blogging: thoughts in 140 char­ac­ters. It is also more instant. What is hap­pen­ing now.  An organisation’s exist­ing blog strategy should also cover Twitter.

Run­ning 2 bots (http://twitter.com/NeilFinn and http://twitter.com/Elv15) and an event alias (http://twitter.com/auremix07) my assess­ment is that Twit­ter­ers are look­ing for real people, not chat bots at the other end of the line. Twit­ter­spam such as “go visit this link” and the like causes mass unsub­scribes. “Our product x is now ship­ping” the same.

What the Twitter-verse is look­ing for is the instant human reac­tion and feel­ing from events that pre­cedes the formal cycle.

So, just Twit­ter­ing to get a “mes­sage through” or hype a product/event does not work. What is needed is an authen­tic, hon­est voice of a real per­son. It is part of your Word-of-mouth, viral strategy.

In a Write/ReWrite/Read Web, People mat­ter. Not Messages