Originally posted on my blog.

I was in Eugene, Oregon over Christmas. Eugene is a delightful town, it's beautiful, clean, bike-friendly, a community rather than a city, houses the University of Oregon, Lane Community College, Northwest Christian college, 2 large rival high schools, and a bike path that stretches along the Willamette for at least 10-15 miles. Most buildings in town are about 5-8 stories high, and the shopping belongs to 5th Street and Coburg Village. I said above that it's "delightful," well it's also darling.

It was in Eugene, that I picked up a card that had this awesome graphic on the front, simple BOLD copy to read, and tons of information on the back about what www.chooselocal.com is all about.

Choose Local is a community-minded initiative that was born and raised as an idea in Oregon (I love you). The card I picked up in the store says:

Sponsored by Coburg Station. Powered by MapClicks.com. Instant savings to shop, dine & unwind. Offers regularly updated. No points to collect. Helps the local economy. Valid for discounts at participating merchant members only. Merchants to determine their own discounts. AND, you can get the offers on your phone! at mobile.chooselocal.com

Sold. Awesome. Choose Local sounds like a program for me.

Let me know if you have Choose Local or a program like it in your area.

Super cool. :)

ps. if you're a journalist or in public relations and you'd like to reference this post, let me know by sharing Kudos below. Cheers.

How many of you are asking yourselves this very question? You want to know if you should recommend MySpace (as a social media) to a client or at least have back up support if you don't think it's where they should be spending there social media budget. Besides the obvious, that Facebook has clearly taken the lead in terms of SNS, is there a future of MySpace? Let's see.

Collecta - is the latest real-time search engine to come into existence, and what space can their algorthims search through? MySpace! This means we can now get real-time data on MySpace users - what they're sharing - their mood, photos, videos, blog posts, and status updates - all things that current social media services are trying to aggregate across a multitude of platforms, but that are hard to focus on a particular user group. So the second part of Collecta's success will be to give us MySpace user demographics so that brands can allocate their social media budgets efficiently.

MySpace vs. Twitter - An interesting article from VentureBeat talks about the differences in status updates on MySpace vs. Twitter. It's in these differences that may indicate who and what MySpace works for. So let's take a look:

• Twitter users exchange more interesting links with each other - this possibly signifies that Twitter users are higher income, better educated, have more technology (iPhone, iPod, laptop, etc.) in their lives, probably are on at least 5 different social networks, and can hold good conversations because they're opinionated. They are connectors - the people you want to reach early on the product adoption curve.
• MySpace users like to share more media - music, photos, videos - this could be huge support for their ambitious endeavor to become "a place for music."
• The conversations via "updates" (and Tweets) seem to contain a lot more contextual fodder on Twitter than they do on Myspace, where the updates are much more simplistic and topic focuses. This could possibly tell us that people on MySpace aren't that involved with other social media spaces, as much as they are with just MySpace, therefore their conversations aren't that in-depth (are they even conversations?)

MySpace fans consider the site their OWN PERSONAL WEBSITE - This from a Helium user (no date included): "MySpace is in effect YOUR space - you can change the background, add music to your profile which plays whenever someone opens your page, tweak the layout, and so on. With Facebook, all you get is a standard plain-background profile, some stats about yourself and the applications you've added... and it is the same for everyone. No fanfare when guests come in to view your page, no grand introduction, no uniqueness (besides yourself as a real person)... nothing fancy. I find that on MySpace, you can show off your personality as much as you are willing to. It is like having a free personal website."

And a couple more random notes:

• MySpace seems to be more for meeting people, where Facebook is for keeping in touch with people you may already know. (what do YOU think?)
• A friend of mine said that MySpace seems to be the SNS for more Hispanics and African-Americans...would YOU agree or disagree?
• If you Search Twitter for the word "MySpace" you'll get a good share of Tweets that are in a language other than English, could this mean that MySpace could have its future in another country than the Facebook-dominated U.S.?

So in conclusion, it's in-conclusive. Sorry! I will definitely be watching the space this year...so check back here or at my blog for more of the MySpace Case.

Happy New Year!

What's the benefit of adding social media to your marketing mix? Well...

I could tell you that the benefit <strong>of having people talk about your brand</strong> is what we've been trying to get people to do for almost a century with "traditional media." And now, they're finally doing it. Read Cluetrain Manifesto.

I could tell you that a person spreading a your brand <strong>"word-of-mouth"</strong> is considered to be not <em>one</em> of the most trustworthy forms of marketing but<em> the most</em> trustworthy form of advertising. Some good WOM tips at Professional Advertising.

I could tell you that social media <strong>gets people to change their behavior</strong>. Think you could go a night without checking your Facebook, Twitter, iPhone, or Xbox for some reason or another? Social media is something we love "checking in on" - we opt-in every time we<em> think</em> we might get an update, some news, a new follower, a new friend, a new message, and the list goes on - what can your brand do/give/provide on a regular basis to change a behavior? Check out this DailyFix from MarketingProfs.

I could tell you that <strong>numbers are dropping on money used for traditional advertising</strong>, where are they going? Online engagement tactics, mobile, social media... And I would suggest you get ahead of the trend, and do it ahead of the pack to <strong>differentiate yourself with media placement</strong>. Check out eMarketer Seven Predictions for 2010.

But you don't want to hear all of this. You want to know how social media affects the bottom line. What will <em>my ROI be</em> if I invest in this "new" media?  If it's not a direct sales channel, <em>wtf</em> should I give you more money to make it happen? I'm going to put my money into TV, print, (radio?) because...

Click here to download:

MYT 31.pdf (659 KB)

(download)

Click here to download:

MYT 31.pdf (659 KB)

Most of us have heard that “content is king”in terms of creativity and pulling consumers toward your brand this year. But how do you quickly create content that your users/consumers would be interested in? Wonder no longer. This week’s MYT talks about Lifestreaming, and as an example, we learn about a recent project the Austin American-Statesman developed that created entirely unique content for their brand.

And Steve Rubel, SVP and Director of Insights for Edelman Digital, recently wrote an article about Lifestreaming in AdAge that some of you might have seen; check it out on his blog here: http://www.steverubel.com/the-age-of-the-stream

Have a creative week!
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