Using Facebook to Connect with your customers online
Monday, November 09, 2009We have just had our article "Using Facebook to "Connect" with your customers online" published on the Digital Ministry Web site.
Follow the link now and have a read, please feel free to comment.
Here is a short extract:
"Facebook has been around for a long while now as a social networking site, but how can companies make it work for them as a tangible marketing tool? Isn't it just the forum for connecting with old and new friends, family and colleagues? Facebook is now really coming into its own. But it's important that you don't just introduce a social media initiative because you think you should have one, you need to make sure it has an objective and is appropriate for your customers."
Tim O'Neill, Joint MD
Labels: Facebook, Social media
Parity not Charity - Benevolent and beneficial uses for social media and social networking
Thursday, October 15, 2009
Often the methods available to us of ‘helping’ those in the developing world is limited to donating to charities, often large organisations where it is difficult to feel that our contributions are making a difference at a grass roots level.
But there are organisations out there who are harnessing the power of social media, social networking, and crowd sourcing to make a real difference to people’s lives in the developing world, while enabling us in the developed world to really see the difference we can make by ‘giving’ in a non-traditional sense.
Give Now
A new iphone app was released this morning which allows users to help refugees get paid for completing small pieces of work.
The app has been developed bySamasource , an organisation which aims to empower people in developing nations by providing access to paid (often digital-based) work, and CrowdFlower , which connects companies to a crowd sourced workforce. The system benefits workers who are paid for completing small ad hoc tasks, and organisations who can outsource tasks to an unlimited workforce as needs arise.
The Give Work app works on the principle that a few minutes of your time, and a few minutes of time spent by a refugee in a camp in Dadaab, Kenya, means that the refugee is paid for that work. The Give Work app supports these refugees by asking you to complete some short on-screen tasks on the iPhone, which refugees in Kenya are also being trained to complete. This ensures quality assurance for the companies paying for the tasks to be completed, and thus payment for the workers in Kenya. Although the payment amount is small to the western world, to refugees who receive the payment it is a vital source of income.
The app is available to download from the iTunes store right now –it would be great if after you read this you go and get the app and let us know what you think. Its free and wont take more than a few minutes, so do it!
Kiva
Kiva is effectively a crowd sourced micro-financed organisation that supports entrepreneurs in the developing world – lenders are individuals who provide a small loan of about $25 US which you can choose to lend to a goat farmer in Turkmenistan or a fruit-seller in Peru.
The amount of money an entrepreneur needs to borrow is gradually provided by a number of lenders, and the loan is always repaid, and the lender then has the choice of withdrawing the loan or re-investing in another entrepreneur.
Most lenders choose to re-invest the loan, so the initial gift just keeps on giving!
Jolkona
Jolkona aims to address the need for individuals to feel connected to those that their donations will be helping – it allows donors to select small projects individually, and to track the impact their donation is having by directly connecting them to organisations on the ground who make use of the donation.
For example, $100 US can rescue a young girl in Nepal from slavery – Jolkona has partnered with a grass roots organisation in Nepal who use the donation to rescue a child, and then send the donor a picture of the child who has been rescued so the donor feels the direct impact of their action. It is hugely motivating for many people to see the huge impact on real lives of even small amounts of donated money.
It is amazing that small actions taken by individuals can have such a large impact on those who most need the support. And when the power of digital and social media is used by innovators who see the potential to do great things with the technology, amazing things can happen!
If there are any other such initiatives that you know of, we’d love to hear your comments below.
Related links:
http://mashable.com/2009/10/13/give-work-iphone/
http://www.samasource.org/iphone/
http://crowdflower.com/
http://www.kiva.org/
http://www.jolkona.org/
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But there are organisations out there who are harnessing the power of social media, social networking, and crowd sourcing to make a real difference to people’s lives in the developing world, while enabling us in the developed world to really see the difference we can make by ‘giving’ in a non-traditional sense.
A new iphone app was released this morning which allows users to help refugees get paid for completing small pieces of work.
The app has been developed by
The Give Work app works on the principle that a few minutes of your time, and a few minutes of time spent by a refugee in a camp in Dadaab, Kenya, means that the refugee is paid for that work. The Give Work app supports these refugees by asking you to complete some short on-screen tasks on the iPhone, which refugees in Kenya are also being trained to complete. This ensures quality assurance for the companies paying for the tasks to be completed, and thus payment for the workers in Kenya. Although the payment amount is small to the western world, to refugees who receive the payment it is a vital source of income.
The app is available to download from the iTunes store right now –it would be great if after you read this you go and get the app and let us know what you think. Its free and wont take more than a few minutes, so do it!
Kiva
Kiva is effectively a crowd sourced micro-financed organisation that supports entrepreneurs in the developing world – lenders are individuals who provide a small loan of about $25 US which you can choose to lend to a goat farmer in Turkmenistan or a fruit-seller in Peru.
The amount of money an entrepreneur needs to borrow is gradually provided by a number of lenders, and the loan is always repaid, and the lender then has the choice of withdrawing the loan or re-investing in another entrepreneur.
Most lenders choose to re-invest the loan, so the initial gift just keeps on giving!
Jolkona
Jolkona aims to address the need for individuals to feel connected to those that their donations will be helping – it allows donors to select small projects individually, and to track the impact their donation is having by directly connecting them to organisations on the ground who make use of the donation.
For example, $100 US can rescue a young girl in Nepal from slavery – Jolkona has partnered with a grass roots organisation in Nepal who use the donation to rescue a child, and then send the donor a picture of the child who has been rescued so the donor feels the direct impact of their action. It is hugely motivating for many people to see the huge impact on real lives of even small amounts of donated money.
It is amazing that small actions taken by individuals can have such a large impact on those who most need the support. And when the power of digital and social media is used by innovators who see the potential to do great things with the technology, amazing things can happen!
If there are any other such initiatives that you know of, we’d love to hear your comments below.
Related links:
Su Debnath, Account Director
Labels: iPhone, Social media
Google & Microsoft battle for headlines
Friday, May 29, 2009
So the two big news items this Friday are Google Wave and Microsoft Bing. Here’s the low down.
Google Wave
Looks very cool. An über-communication and collaboration platform, integrating a bunch of functionality to create a rich mosaic of threads and conversations, or a 'wave'.
The screenshots look like Gmail on steroids but it’s not email, it’s not chat. It’s something totally new. The key takeout is that it’s collaborative, live and concurrent, more like a real conversation. The underlying principle behind the new service is something called 'operational transformation', which you can find out more about in this video (Warning! Very techy content):
Here’s the full Google Wave developer preview video which tells you everything you need to know and more (it's quite long):
Overall, I'd say Google Wave looks really innovative, and definitely 'new'. Especially because a wave is a stream of content about a subject or topic, and the content contributed to a wave is recorded over time; so it’s as much about the evolution or creation of the wave as it is about the ultimate result of that wave.
This also has implications for search because this will allow for the search of a wave, or stream, of content, rather than the search of a static result. So it’s like searching for a story about something rather than a static page of information.
So Google are again putting the focus on individuals and personal communication and experience. Giving the users the tools to make their own stuff.
If it works and isn’t as confusing as it sounds (the timeline stuff sounds like it could be 'Back to the Future' complex), then it will be awesome.
Microsoft Bing
So the other big news this Friday is MS’s new search engine called 'Bing', which is replacing Live Search (which no one uses). They’re pitching it as a ‘decision engine’ and have integrated categories of search, like shopping and travel. Not sure what else to say here except that it sounds interesting but we’ll wait and see how good it really is, the proof is in the pudding.
I’m a little skeptical though, simply because it sounds like they’ve gone down the portal model, which doesn’t really sound like a new concept, in fact portals are something which represents the legacy Web, and I can’t think of a good example of a portal that survives today which is very successful.
Maybe MS have developed a super smart Bing 'brain' which will know more than people know themselves about what they're searching for...but I'm finding it hard to see the innovation in this new search engine.
Whilst competition is a good thing, we're not sure how this changes the game nor really delivers on the promise of a 'decision engine'.
Google killer? Doubtful.
Here’s the promotional video:
Carl Panczak, General Manager Sydney
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Google Wave
Looks very cool. An über-communication and collaboration platform, integrating a bunch of functionality to create a rich mosaic of threads and conversations, or a 'wave'.
The screenshots look like Gmail on steroids but it’s not email, it’s not chat. It’s something totally new. The key takeout is that it’s collaborative, live and concurrent, more like a real conversation. The underlying principle behind the new service is something called 'operational transformation', which you can find out more about in this video (Warning! Very techy content):
Here’s the full Google Wave developer preview video which tells you everything you need to know and more (it's quite long):
Overall, I'd say Google Wave looks really innovative, and definitely 'new'. Especially because a wave is a stream of content about a subject or topic, and the content contributed to a wave is recorded over time; so it’s as much about the evolution or creation of the wave as it is about the ultimate result of that wave.
This also has implications for search because this will allow for the search of a wave, or stream, of content, rather than the search of a static result. So it’s like searching for a story about something rather than a static page of information.
So Google are again putting the focus on individuals and personal communication and experience. Giving the users the tools to make their own stuff.
If it works and isn’t as confusing as it sounds (the timeline stuff sounds like it could be 'Back to the Future' complex), then it will be awesome.
Microsoft Bing
So the other big news this Friday is MS’s new search engine called 'Bing', which is replacing Live Search (which no one uses). They’re pitching it as a ‘decision engine’ and have integrated categories of search, like shopping and travel. Not sure what else to say here except that it sounds interesting but we’ll wait and see how good it really is, the proof is in the pudding.
I’m a little skeptical though, simply because it sounds like they’ve gone down the portal model, which doesn’t really sound like a new concept, in fact portals are something which represents the legacy Web, and I can’t think of a good example of a portal that survives today which is very successful.
Maybe MS have developed a super smart Bing 'brain' which will know more than people know themselves about what they're searching for...but I'm finding it hard to see the innovation in this new search engine.
Whilst competition is a good thing, we're not sure how this changes the game nor really delivers on the promise of a 'decision engine'.
Google killer? Doubtful.
Here’s the promotional video:
Carl Panczak, General Manager Sydney
Labels: Search Engine Marketing, Social media, Technology, Web Culture and Trends
Twitter. Huh?
Monday, November 17, 2008
So you’ve heard about this new micro-blogging service called Twitter? Or may be you haven’t. Well here’s a brief 101 which might help you understand how you can leverage the power of Twitter for your business.
Professionally
Carl, our Sydney GM, uses Twitter to keep in touch with industry colleagues who often post useful information and links. It’s also a great way of seeking help or advice, by posting a question on Twitter, your followers can respond and offer ideas.
Marketing
Businesses can post news and announcements via Twitter, new products, sales, promotions etc.
Customer service
Companies can use it as a way to build relationships with their customers, receive feedback and ideas and suggestions.
Here’s a great example of how Twitter was used in the recent US election countdown by Tropicana: http://anorangeamerica.com/ the idea here was to track keywords related to either candidate and to display them using info-graphics, whilst linking it cleverly to the brand message ‘Freshly Squeezed Election Tweets: We’re not red. We’re not blue. We’re 100% orange.’
More about Twitter here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twitter
Update: Annemarie Hunter from Reseo has written a much better blog post about Twitter over here.
Carl Panczak, General Manager Sydney
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Professionally
Carl, our Sydney GM, uses Twitter to keep in touch with industry colleagues who often post useful information and links. It’s also a great way of seeking help or advice, by posting a question on Twitter, your followers can respond and offer ideas.
Marketing
Businesses can post news and announcements via Twitter, new products, sales, promotions etc.
Customer service
Companies can use it as a way to build relationships with their customers, receive feedback and ideas and suggestions.
Here’s a great example of how Twitter was used in the recent US election countdown by Tropicana: http://anorangeamerica.com/ the idea here was to track keywords related to either candidate and to display them using info-graphics, whilst linking it cleverly to the brand message ‘Freshly Squeezed Election Tweets: We’re not red. We’re not blue. We’re 100% orange.’
More about Twitter here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twitter
Update: Annemarie Hunter from Reseo has written a much better blog post about Twitter over here.
Carl Panczak, General Manager Sydney
Labels: Social media, Twitter, Web 2.0, Web marketing
