Visually Exploring Your Network

LinkedIn have a impressive feature that allows you to visualise your professional network to help you see the relationships between you and your connections. Check out LinkedIn Maps to create your own.

Here’s how it works: your map is color-coded to cluster groups from your professional career, such as your previous employer, school mates, or networking groups you’ve been part of. In my map, my Sputnik Agency collegues are blue, while my friends connected through the Social Melbourne network are orange and another employer Revium are green.

It's evident that people who work together are all inter-related and interesting to see how a few people I know also seem to know others in seperate network groups, this can be explained by the fact Ive worked in Melbourne most of my life within the technology industry.


What does your own map look like?

Foursquare helps you search for stuff your friends like

In January 2012, Foursquare announced the Explore feature, which leveraged its 1.5 billion checkins into personalised recommendations for users. By collating millions of tips,  Foursquare now allows you to search for places you’ve and for your friends have visited, but also placed you haven’t been or that have a foursquare special deal.

Here’s what Foursquare had to say about Explore:

"The vision for foursquare is much much bigger – it’s about adding an ‘interesting’ layer to the whole world, tailored just for you...Whether you’re planning a night out in your neighborhood or a vacation in Europe, what should you do? Which of your friends should you ask about things? How can you save money? Where can you easily find great places you’ve never been to? How do you search for personalized recommendations in the real world."

When you visit Explore and login to your account, you see a Google map and various search options.

The results then display all of the data you and your friends have given over the years you have been checking-in to locations. If you’re looking for a beer in your area, you’ll be shown a map of all of the local bars and pubs, along with user generated content about them including tips, photos and visitor comments.

It looks like Foursquare has finally worked out a highly valuable way of using all the data it has been collecting from us for years. It’s also in a great position to monetise the killer app by replicating Google’s search and selling busineses a pay-per-click paid listing that would show at the top of the search results.

Evolving into Immersive Consumerism

People are facinated about knowing what the future holds. This infographic video, “Digital Life: Today and Tomorrow" projects what life will be like in 4 years from now in 2015. It makes some interesting points about our daily lives being immersed with technology such as social media and mobile computing.


Digital Life: Today & Tomorrow from Neo Labels on Vimeo.
This made me think of how marketing will evolve in its application of geo-targeting of the publically available information we post up about ourselves on Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter. How will this effect the everyday lives of people when exposed to omnipresent branding? The video below explores coruption of the technology like we have already seen with Spam email and viruses.


Augmented (hyper)Reality: Domestic Robocop from Keiichi Matsuda on Vimeo.

Then there's the scientific side of enabling technology and how we would go about if we could evolve to develop a Sixth Sense to access the meta data without using a smart phone. The next video is of Pattie Maes talking at Ted about SixthSense. Is this part of Homo Evolutis? as Juan Enriquez puts it that humanity is on the verge of becoming a new and utterly unique species.

Using LinkedIn to promote your personal brand

With the number of Australians now using LinkedIn surpassing 2 million this year, the social platform LinkedIn has become more than just networking for professionals, it’s become the business to business (b2b) marketplace for many Australian companies and the recruitment ground for both HR agencies and companies head hunting talent.

Last week at the Social Media Club Melbourne, Cliff Rosenberg the Managing Director of LinkedIn Australia & New Zealand gave a presentation to a very packed room on the new LinkedIn Signal tool which works a little like twitter in the sense of being your very own personalised news service. Signal aggregates comments from everyone on LinkedIn who's in your professional network, the companies you follow and industry groups you have joined.



Described as your personal business intelligence dashboard, Signal allows you to access the most relevant insights from the constant stream of status updates and news from your connections. Conversely, it can also be used to put your business at the centre of conversation with your customer and promote your products and services informally using a viral word of mouth approach.

LinkedIn Signal offers 8 filters to modify your stream. To see what people are tweeting or sharing on a particular topic you can narrow or expand your view of the stream based on the following filters: Network, Industry, Company, Time published, Geo / Region, School or keywords and hash tags such as #SMCMelb.

As a way to get your business into your customer’s Signal stream you should actively participate in LinkedIn groups and respond to relevant requests for LinkedIn Answers. Additionally you should also regularly update your LinkedIn status. This activity will also increase your visibility on LinkedIn by ensuring you appear more often on your connections’ home page feeds and Linkedin Signal.

Like any social network, you need to be proactive and consistent in your efforts to make LinkedIn work for your business and personal brand. Some tips to help nurture your business relationships include: sharing relevant content via status updates and sending contacts individual messages when appropriate. Note: By integrating your Twitter account with LinkedIn, Tweets that contain #in will automatically be posted to your LinkedIn account.

This blog orginally appeared on Revium's blog

Number of Australians on Facebook

Research by Social Bakers  indicates 9.2 Million Australians are on Facebook with 44.33% penetration of the population. Although if you go to the Facebook site itself the estimated reach for adverts is 9.4 million.

Crowd Sourcing using Foursquare

Foursquare is a location-based social networking website that allows registered users to connect with friends to share their location. It's a closed network like Facebook, meaning a friend will request to see your news feed. It has game aspect, as points are awarded for "checking in" at venues creating a scoreboard over the period of a week. You can also connect your Twitter and Facebook accounts which are then update your stream or news feed when you check in using Foursquare.

Another addictive quality of the game which makes it great for business is when you check-in to a venue more than anyone else, on separate days you are declared as the "Mayor" of that venue, until someone else earns the title by checking in more times than you. Being demoted from being the mayor of your favourite cafe or restaurant can be frustrating feeling and you may find yourself increasing vists to the location in order to reclaim your title back.  Other social aspects of Foursquare include allowing users to add "Tips" to venues so that other users can read as suggestions for things to do, see or eat at the location..

Some tech savvy businesses are already using the Foursquare as a way to promote their venue. Examples include offering the mayor free drinks or introducing a "Newbie" user to a venue and getting a complimentary muffin with a purchase. Offically, April 16 is declared as "Foursquare Day, and last week a South Melbourne cafe named ST Ali decided to make the most of the day by organising a Foursquare "swam". The idea was to use Twitter, Facebook and Foursquare to virally promote the cafe. If 50 or more people turned up as part of the swarm then the cafe owners would give away free coffee to the people atending.

The crowd sourcing effort resulted in 31 visitors that morning, it may have fell well short of the target by 19 people, but the event wasnt a failure by any means. Firstly the lucky the cafe owners attracted over 30 new customers that would have been elsewhere that morning and were also spared the cost of giving away 50 plus free cofees. I also see the ongoing value in the Foursquare swarm experiment exists in the spreading the word about the venue and the positive brand image created by an innovative small business using social media to promote their business.

Brand research on Twitter

TweetCloud is a tweet and user analytics tool that shows you a tag cloud of tweets around a specific keyword, or a specific user. It could be used by brands to identify what is being said about them. For example the screen below shows the results for the socialmelb hashtag.

According to the About page Tweetcloud was born out of a project to synthesize meaning from a high volume of short messages. The goal of Tweetcloud is to quickly show users "what's being said" across the Twittersphere or from a specific Twitter user through an intuitive interface (a cloud).

Below is the Tweetcloud for @portz which is my Twitter account.

Social Tourism by NSW

Daemon Group is the agency behind a social media tourism campaign called "7 Days in Sydney". Their client Tourism New South Wales paid for Dearbhla and Chris (aka Dervs and Cuzzy) to spend 7 days in Sydney guided by a local.

The two students (Dervs from Dublin Ireland and Cuzzy's from Leeds in England) got an all expenses paid trip to Sydney. In return they had to share their experiences using numerous blogs, videos and pics generating content for the most popular Social Media networks.

Below is the content output from the 7 days campaign

twitter: @7daysinsydney
blog: 7daysinsydney.wordpress.com/
YouTube: www.youtube.com/seesydney
faceboook: www.facebook.com/seesydney
Flickr: www.flickr.com/photos/7daysinsydney
Email: sevensinsydney@yahoo.com.au

On the back of 7 days in Sydney, Tourism NSW also ran a twitter campaign with Virgin Airlines aimed at young travellers from Los Angeles. Jade Broadus, 25, Bobby Christian, 24 and Rob Blasko, 26, were challenged to tweet 4320 times during a 72-hour stay in Sydney. This was for every minute they were there.

NSW tourism minister Jodi McKay said the campaign had already been a huge success, with its website clocking up 7 million hits in one month as a result of the competition to find the trio.

"We've had a positive response to the competition with young Americans lining up for the challenge to put their tweeting skills to the test and experience the best of what Sydney has to offer," said the tourism minister.

Brand tags - what the community thinks

Use brand tags to check what's going on with brands. The website www.brandtags.net is social media collective experiment in brand perception.

All keyword tags are generated by people and do not reflect the opinions of the site owner or the brand itself. The website interface displays a logo and you type the first word or phrase that comes into your head when you see it.

For a bit of fun I looked up QANTAS to learn what the web thought of the brand and I was surprised to see some of the results. Some of the brand tags featured "Australia, Gay Stewards, Kangaroo, John Travolta, Safe and of course rain man"

The site provides marketers with the ability to listen into the conversation about how their brand may be identified by consumers in the marketplace.

social media revolution

The social media revolution clip is not the most original of videos, but it presents the did you know theme in the context of social media.

Using Viral Media to promote your brand

Just spent the past couple of days at the Social Media Summit 2009. It was jam packed with interesting speakers, workshops and other like minded delegates who were interested in learning more about Social Media and how it can assist their business.

One of highlight speakers was Dan Illic who gave an insight into the business of creating a viral video.

According to Dan Illic the person behind Downwind Media a company specialising in producing videos, a viral video is a nano story that should be designed to have a lifespan of about six hours. Downwind Media have been successfully making comments on Australian society for a number of years since Dan left his post as Associate Producer of Chanel Nine’s Australia’s Funnies Home Video.



Downwind Media has produced some edgy work including a parody of terror suspect David Hicks in a Guantanamo Bay cell and the Australia (Anti) Tourism video which poked fun at the tourism campaign by looking at some of Australia’s social problems pertaining to racial violence and mandatory detention of asylum seekers by integrating the issues into the theme of the tourism TVC. Some of the statistics for the viral were 42,000 hits in two days, 700,000 hits in 1 week and 1,5 million hits within months of the upload to YouTube. Eventually his account was unfairly suspended by You Tube for supposedly breaching Tourism Australia’s copyright on the soundtrack. In fact Dan had commissioned multiple sound tracks that sounded similar but were actually original recordings.



Once you were onto a good idea, you should also have business plans to enter the hybrid economy. This actually means you sell something physical to support the digital. Dan Illic compares viral video for a brand as non linear TV. At the last federal election, he was commissioned by Fairfax to produce a number of videos for their business website. The amusing rap video of Howard and Rudd slugging it out in a rhyme was a great example of his ability to produce content that was viral by nature. He recommends for a video to go viral it needs to use celebrity, parody and controversy, be unique, funny and edgy.

To read about the tweets search the tag #smmelb09

Social Media Breakfast Club

This morning I attended a free Social Media networking club in Melbourne. It was the first time I had attended the breakfast get together and I had a inspirational time. It was great to see so many passionate people of all ages willing to share ideas and chat about all things to do with social technology.

As a newcomer to the club which I fortuitously discovered via #socialmelb on Twitter, the club is friendly and relaxed. I made some time to chat with the organiser Kate Kendal who is the online editor of Marketingmag.com.au and she said the idea behind the meet was for an information conversation for like minded individuals. The club's website reads;

"Tweeters, bloggers, social commentators – come one, come all.
Every Friday morning at 8am Melbourne Social Media experts, newbies and everyone in between is invited to join us at our weekly social media coffee morning.
We enjoy idle chit chat, serious sharing of thoughts and information, a laugh and a smile, and of course, a good brew of coffee"

It was well worth braving the cold early winter morning. I’m so looking forward to the next meet.

Social Networking and your brand

Last week I attended a social media event in Melbourne called the digital tipping point - The future of branding and social media. It was organised by Adknowledge and Digital Media (DM) magazine with the aim of giving marketing professionals an insight into building your brand through social media.

The event was promoted totally via viral marketing techniques whereby it featured on blogs and on the DM and Adknowledge websites. Over 200 people registered to hear from a social media speakers featuring Brett Brewer a co-founder of MySpace.

The host for the afternoon was Markus von der Luehe who is managing director of Adknowledge Australia. Markus has 12 years of experience covering online media and advertising gained from working for Sensis Interactive, Ninemsn, Nielsen//Netratings, PwC Consulting and OgilvyOne in Germany.

Brett Brewer gave the first presentation on "Who killed traditional media" outlining macro trends in the changes in share of voice. The decline of newspapers such as the once mighty San Francisco Times, The rise of social media which the included the habits of the gen Y demographic and provided a case study on video application.

Brett is a leading internet pioneer and executive who has built, operated and sold internet media companies. Brett co-founded his first internet company, Intermix Media two years after finishing University. From 1998 through to 2005, Intermix Media launched several different businesses including Skilljam.com, ecommerce site Alena, and the popular Myspace which was sold to News Corporation for $673 million. Brett was the only senior executive and board member to remain and lead the company from inception through sale to News Corporation.

MySpace was founded in 2003. In 12 months membership increased from 60 to 220 million users. In 2006 Facebook opened up to anyone aged 13 and over, 4,000 members increased to 37,000 in just 6 months. There are an estimated 57,000 developers working on Facebook applications. MySpace and Facebook are often compared however Brett observed there is a significant difference between the two. MySpace is about finding something in an open network whereas Facebook is about connecting with friends and family in a closed network.



Brett gave a social media example of the Burger King Whopper Sacrifice campaign. A Facebook application could be added to your page which allowed you to de-friend 10 people in return for a free burger. It proved highly popular with Facebook turning off the application as it breached their conditions of use. You can read more about the application on the NY times website.
In his current position as president and director of Adknowledge Inc, Brett is again building another successful online company. This advertising technology company has had strong growth in both revenues and profits last year making million dollars

The next speaker was Alistair Henderson the director OMD Fuse. His presentation was called “I Kissed Social Network Marketing, and I Liked It.” which featured a mash-up of amateur Kate Perry covers sourced from You Tube.



Alistair delivered a case study on V-Raw for V Energy Drink. Their client wanted to differentiate V from its competitors, ignite the brand’s personality, and give Gen Y an authentic reason for V to exist in the 18 to 24 year olds world. V identified the biggest fear for Gen Y was getting stuck in a mundane job. They want to work to live and not live to work. They were also highly motivated in getting a job they loved especially in the creative fields of music, fashion and design. As a result OMD created V-Raw on a MySpace profile which is a careers website featuring over 60 exclusive jobs in not advertised to the general public. Other marketing activity included Paper Tiger Media Groups key titles (Yen and Dazed & Confused), Chanel [V], Rolling Stone, mX and Avant Card. University campus activity and art, fashion and design events rounded out the program, with all communication leading back to the V-Raw MySpace profile.

The campaign resulted in a true connection for the brand with the target audience, the V-Raw profile has 13,491 friends and 563 comments and received more than 4,000 job applications. Eight months after launch, 25% of V’s target audience in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane were aware of V-Raw and one in 10 had visited the website.



Data showed that V-Raw significantly added to V’s sales growth. V-Raw has been credited with contributing to strong brand awareness and overall sales. Research indicated that V drinkers who were aware of V-Raw responded more positively to key brand statements and 30% more likely to buy V next time they purchased an energy drink. Those engaged with the V-Raw were 56% and highly interactive friends of V-Raw were 65% more likely to purchase V Energy drink.



Wisewindow provides a timely and accurate method for discovery of the most relevant issues on the minds of customers in market(s). EssenceWise provides brands with the most accurate and relevant information in the business, with a full suite of tools and full transparency of sources. It allows brands to build a custom application that taps into the value of user generated content. EssenceApps is an open-access platform that lets you quickly build your own tools using the power of the WiseWindow engine.



Loopd is an online community network for extreme action sports. Brian gave an example of Monster Army (an energy drink in the USA) who uses Loopd as their portal to talk to their consumers,



FlipGloss is an interactive photo experience that lets you flip, hover and discover. FlipGloss offers a fun way to browse photo content with visual links to inspiring objects, places and people across fashion, living, travel, culture and other categories.



The SocialVibe badge: bringing members together with their favorite brand and charity. Members make the badge their own by choosing design elements from every angle and once placed in the social wild, counts your points it earns along the way.

Fi Bendall the Director Bendalls Group delivered a talk on “How Social Media Translates into Social Commerce” Fi is a leading interactive and digital media specialist. With more than 20 years experience in the digital sector, she has developed key ISP strategies for the BBC, and has developed digital strategies for Australian clients such as Microsoft, News Interactive, Tourism Tasmania, RaboPlus, Amnesty International, and Earth Hour.

Fi explained only a small percentage of people contribute and are then followed by the ‘collective intelligence’. She then gave an example of You Tube where on 3% of the users upload the content. Fi described this group as the ‘collaborative intelligence group’

Fi recommended brands should know what consumers are saying about them and where they are saying it. She recommended organizations look at numerous analytic tools to gain volumes of research and understanding into perceptions of an organisation and their competitors. She recommended analysing data from Digg, redit, Google Alerts, del.icio.us, Serph, Gnoos, brandwatch co.mments.

The final speaker for the event was Laurel Papworth who is a Social Networking Strategist. Her speech was called “The Business of Being Social: Monetisation Models in Social Media.” (The truth about monetization models for online communities).

Laurel observed if you don't monetise your content, someone else will. She gave an example of the Techcrunch blog which makes $12,000 per month from advertising, Mobwars which is an application on Facebook makes $22,000 per day and Cyworld $100,000,000 per year from pixel products.

Tasmania the Movie

Tourism Tasmania has used Leo Burnett to produce a tongue-in-cheek website, tasmaniathemovie.com. The website was intended as a spoof on the movie Australia, which used promotional material featuring a map that initially omitted Tasmania.

From December 4 until Christmas 2008, a spoof movie trailer boasting Tasmania's natural wonders screened in Australia at selected cinemas in Sydney and Melbourne. “Our intention was to take advantage of the excitement created by the movie with humour and cheeky Aussie wit said Tasmanian Minister for Tourism, Michelle O’Byrne.“

We also wanted to remind the world that Tasmania is still part of Australia and one of the country’s most appealing tourism destinations." Ms O’Byrne said.

Tasmania, the Movie campaign generated all the publicity normally seen for a new film, with press ads in entertainment pages, outdoor advertising, a special FaceBook page as a viral social networking campaign, with a total budget of $100,000. According to Nielsen Media Research, Tourism Tasmania spent $2m in main media between November 2007 and December 2008, which was down from $4.6m the previous year.

Below is an image of the Tasmania the Movie Facebook Page.



Here is also a link to the story in the newspaper Sydney Morning Herald

The siteless website

Web 2.0 in action by Modernista



Modernista! is a advertising company in Boston USA. Last year it redesigned its website to prove its understanding of social media and appear a a listing in whatever channel you used to look up the URL i.e. it appears as a Google search results page, Wikipedia entry, Facebook page, Flicker and You Tube etc , with a small navigation menu overlaid in the upper left corner which reads "You are viewing Modernista! through the eyes of the Web. The menu on the left is our homepage. Everything behind it is beyond our control." On that menu are links to in effect the web presence is "Siteless"



Navigation of the site

ab.ou.t - Modernista is not for everyone, links to Wikipedia, Facebook and Bookmark us
wrk - Print (comes up in Flicker), TV (uses You Tube), Web (uses Delicious).
n3ws - Google News and Google Blog News
cont@ct - USA & Europe (uses Google Maps), Jobs (uses Taleo.com)



Visit the site here or type Modernista into Google, facebook or Wikipedia