CD Blog Reviews

Above: A photo I took on a recent trip to North Shore Oahu, inline with my plans to fulfill operation bluewater . Recent data around interactive marketing spend indicates that the hospitality industry was ripe for spending on social marketing above all other industries.  Why?  This form of consumer marketing could be dependent on the human emotion and story telling between individuals, or through compelling word of mouth marketing campaigns. As a result, Christine Tran , Altimeter Researcher and myself are kicking off this list, and encourage you to add  examples by leaving a comment.  The scope for this is list is a tourist destination –not a hotel, airline, or specific restaurant. Bahamas Island Film Challenge, The Bahamas Tourist Office UK This video contest campaign encouraged filmmakers in the UK to submit videos with voting encouraged from the crowd. Caribbean, Caribbean Travel Organization(and islands) YouTube, Facebook, Twitter are present on the main site, but yet each of their other travel, blog, and other sites.  See Carribean Travel , OneCarribean lists out various social properties, Antigua’s forums , and Aruba’s Facebook integration . Visit Dublin, Dublin Tourism Site has flickr, YouTube, podcasts and Twitter integration.  They also sport a Facebook page. Hawaii’s GoHawaii, Stories of Hawaii Hawaii has used a variety of assets such as Facebook pages, Twitter, and even created a Pandora station, in the past, Hawaii has catered to a group of bloggers who spread the word to their readers on a blogger tour. Memphis Travel I recently met the wonderful head of social media, Kerry, at Memphis’s travel bureau on my travels, they have Facebook, Twitter, and Flickr account links on their site but haven’t yet integrated with their site. uwishuknew, Philadelphia Tourism Marketing An online source for an insider’s view of Philadelphia .” It’s a blog written by staff and local bloggers who are “in-the-know.” Here’s an example of their blog on dining . The Best Job in the World, Tourism Queensland You may have heard of the Best Job in the World campaign , a popular campaign garnering international media attention, and over 35,000 entries worldwide on youtube. The winner blogged about his entire experience . Ultimate Thailand Explorers, Tourism Authority of Thailand On the heels of the Best Job in the World, Thailand launched its own campaign. Contestants produced a 60-second YouTube video , and rallied for votes from their own existing social networks, effectively becoming destination ambassadors and spreading engagement.   Do see the related blog . If you’ve got examples, please leave a comment below, with a description and URL, we’ll add.

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Ongoing List of Social Marketing Efforts from Vacation Destinations, Convention, and Tourism Bureaus

In order to better secure its users, Facebook needs to stop them from making novice security mistakes in the first place. We need a board of security educators across all social networks.

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Facebook / McAfee deal provides security software but little education

Guest writer Rich Harris explores the tightrope walk of social media and B2B

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Social media & B2B: Interactions are opportunities

It was hard coming back after a two-week break, but somehow Aaron and I pulled off a great show. At least we think so.

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Getting Quick’n'Dirty with Hootsuite

News hit this Monday that Powered has acquired three social media agencies: crayon , Drillteam and StepChange . I just had a skype video conversation with Aaron Strout and Joseph Jaffe to learn more, here’s my take.  You can read crayon founder Joseph’s take and Aaron Strout the CMO of Powered and a quick mention in NYT . A Solution Set of Services Bolsters a Marketing Platform I’ve heard of crayon, and have many conversations and even podcasts with founder Joseph Jaffe, I’ve also spent time with the Powered executive team last year.  Stepchange is a 13 person team out of Portland focused on Facebook Apps and mobile, and Drillteam, from NY, has been around for 10 years and focuses on experitntial and advocacy marketing, such as connecting events to online like street teams, guerrilla, and ambassador programs. Powered isn’t just a community platform, I learned they have other marketing features that really intent to provide a suite of offerings. Natural Evolution Of A Growing Market: Consolidation happens in downturned markets. As the recession starts to show signs of it lifting, now’s a great time for companies to come together and create a greater value.  We saw this type of acquisition behavior from agencies during the first boom, and we should expect similar patterns here. Acquisition provides key services software platforms can’t fill. It makes sense for Powered platform to partner up with a service(s) teams that have already been successful for some time, this improves the time to market to deployment.  In addition to coming with a book of business, they can quickly deploy the Powered platform, expanding the software footprint.  Joseph Jaffe has strong thought leadership, an existing marketing brand, and reach needed to the group. Yet, brings risk for Powered and new partners. First of all, there are some big names coming together,  the real stress will be can these cultures, and their strong willed leaders, be able to jive together.  Secondly, it’ll be interseting to see if Crayon and services teams forces stragies on their clients that involve the Powered platform.  I asked if there are any layoffs coming from consolidation, they haven’t made any plans, but when you have 4 companies coming together expect redundancy. Impacts To Customers, Partners and Competitors: Social Agencies should rekindle and bolster relationships . This impacts other social agencies like Stage 2, Social Media Today, AdHoc, Ant’s Eye View, ForumOne, Community Roundtable, Shift Communications, Dachis, FutureWorks who may be at medium and small tier, they should quickly partner up with other firms to increase their value. Customers of crayon, Drillteam, and Stepchange should request agnostic recommendations. Any client of these three agencies should make sure that the strategy they are being offered includes other vendors and platforms –not just the Powered platform and Facebook platform.  Remember, first find out where your customers are online before choosing the tools to use. This is competition for larger agencies –yet savvy agencies will partner. This is a threat to large agencies like Organic, Razorfish, Ogilvy, and Edelman.  Yet the smart agencies won’t get defensive, they should partner with this team, and figure out what offerings they can offer that they don’t have in their portfolio. Congrats to the Powered, crayon, Drilldteam and Stepchange team for this merger, I’m excited to see the industry emerge from small disparate startups to a larger entity going forward.

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Quicktake: Powered, A Social Marketing Suite, Acquires Crayon and Social Media Agencies

Simply put, if firms or consultants cannot complete this RFP, they probably shouldn’t be considered for hire

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Social media RFP template, aka ‘snake oil detector’, separates strong from the weak

Web Marketing Services: Strategy, Management, Marketing, Consulting, Design, Development, Content Creation, Content Marketing, Search and Social Media Marketing.

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