Cellphones today are a far cry from the chunky brick-like handsets we used to lug around back in the 90’s. Somewhat ironically, the smaller they get, the greater their feature sets seem to grow. Many of these mobile features are somewhat inane (remember Sprint’s completely un-annoying Push-to-Talk phones?), however it seems we’ve reached the tipping point at which things are getting very interesting. I talk specifically about mobile video.

UStream.tv and Qik (pronounced “quick”) have both caught my attention as heralds of a new age of video-on-the-go. Both are free services that allow you to capture mobile video via your smartphone camera, and broadcast it live to the internet for the consumption of the masses.

Not only can you capture and share your every waking moment with a single button press, but you can invite your viewers to comment on what they see via real-time text chat, that shows up right on your phone’s screen, as you’re broadcasting. And to think that Justin, (of Justin.tv fame), required all kinds of headgear for the same effect, just 2 years ago…

The possibilities of these mobile video services are, to me, endless, including:

• The song and movie parodies that we all know and love can be posted and shared in real time
• Some enterprising soul will generate thousands of views (not to mention rack up an impressive data usage bill) with their own mobile video equivalent of a Choose Your Own Adventure video series, with viewers calling the shots
• Breaking news reports end up hitting the internet faster than reporters can actually get there – leading the networks to consider crowdsourcing their on-the-ground news coverage

All of these possibilities are fun to consider, but in particular, I feel mobile video services such as these are like a PR and event marketer’s nirvana. Why post an edited video after the fact, when viewers can tune in from anywhere on Earth, and watch events unfold with a mere 5-second delay?

The only thing I think is missing is the ability to have these videos broadcast to viewers’ smartphones – at which point, we’re truly at the beginning of the golden age of mobile video, and the whole idea of Citizen Journalism will just have gone to the next level.

Being the go-getters that we are at BG, we never shy away from a challenge. So when San Diego Hospice and the Institute for Palliative Medicine (SDHIPM for short) approached us to help them with an integrated local outreach campaign, we jumped at the chance not only to help an incredible organization, but also to learn about an industry that none of us had much experience with.

Despite being far and away the leader in non-profit hospice care and palliative medicine in CA, SDH faced numerous challenges in attracting people to its service:

• Public sensitivity about the very topic of hospice
• Widespread misconceptions (that even we ourselves held) of hospices as somber places where terminally-ill people go to give up and die
• Increasingly aggressive competition from for-profit hospice providers in the local market
• Niche target audience

Our reeducation began almost from day 1, when we paid a site visit to SDHIPM’s Hillcrest care facility. With Melissa De La Calzada, Associate Director of Marketing and Communications, as our capable guide, we learned so much about the benefits of what SDH actually provides, and the truly inspiring stories that result. We came to understand that far from being the “death-house” that people tend to imagine, hospice is not a place, but a philosophy that focuses on alleviating physical, spiritual and mental pain, to allow people to live life to the fullest.

With this fundamental understanding, we set to work developing a strategy for reaching our target audience of both the terminally-ill and the people (typically family and friends) who are caring for them. Recognizing the sensitivity of our topic, BG’s creative team came through beautifully, with the simple, yet warm “It’s Time” campaign, that conveyed the compassion, understanding and most importantly, support that SDHIPM offers to caregivers as well as those in need of care. The message played out over an integrated, locally-focused media plan encompassing behaviorally-targeted online advertising, email outreach, custom landing pages, and even Twitter, Facebook and their very own blog, that would maximize coverage, but also minimize the exposure of our message to people outside of our target market. Below are some examples of the creative:

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Thus, the end result of countless hours of research, consideration and careful honing of creative is a campaign that is making a tangible impact on SDHIPM’s patient intake, not to mention a powerful learning experience for all of us in a new industry that few advertisers would think to take on.

Crowdsourcing is finding increasingly interesting applications these days, and it seems brands are catching on. A prime example is Mtn Dew’s fascinating marketing-campaign-meets-social-experiment, Dewmocracy. Thus far, Mtn Dew has given its fans a say in the creation of new flavors, allowed them to design the new packaging, and now in the latest iteration of its Dewmocracy promo, we the people get to create its advertising.

Mtn Dew issued a public challenge to create its next 12-second TV spot, so we, being the adventurous souls we are, decided to enter – behold our Dew-fueled brainchild, which we like to call “Greater than Great”.

6 finalists will be picked based on votes from you, the public. So check out our entry, and be sure to login and vote for us every day through Sunday December 13th!

As we round the corner into the home stretch of this year, I thought it might be interesting to take a look at which vaunted predictions of internet marketing’s up and coming trends came true in 2009, and which failed to materialize. Kudos to those who called it, and to those who didn’t, well, there’s always next year!

1.    “Social Media Advertising Will Come of Age” – eMarketer

A spot-on prediction, eMarketer! With the explosive growth of Twitter, Facebook, etc. making major headlines, advertisers were bound to take notice. Example: Facebook is on track to surpass a 70% increase in ad revenue over 2008. Anecdotally, I’ve never sat in so many meetings with so many different clients, where people are openly discussing advertising opportunities in social media – it makes my heart sing with joy!

2.    “Microsoft will change MSN/Live/or whatever it’s called to something else that nobody can remember” – Mediapost

Half-congrats to MediaPost on this 2009 prediction. While they nailed it on the name change, who could forget Bing’s first take on its launch campaign? Or Microsoft’s latest effort, “Bing: Vampire Decision Engine”?

3.    “Exclusivity trumps accessibility. Having thousands of friends becomes ’so 2008′ and defriending becomes the hot new trend, driven by overwhelming rivers of newsfeeds.” – Charlene Li, of Altimeter group

Nice one, Charlene! Some of you may ask how this predicted trend relates to internet marketing? Well, it seems Burger King was listening when Charlene dropped this gem, and responded with their infamous “Whopper Sacrifice” campaign. Facebook is unamused.

4.    “Mobile search will increase massively.” – Mark Johnson, Latitude

A tip of the hat to Mark Johnson at Latitude. While mobile search may not be on the tips of tongues right now, consider the reflex action that occurs whenever you ask an iPhone owner a question they can’t answer – “One sec, let me check Wikipedia”. With smartphones becoming increasingly common, can mobile search’s time in the spotlight be too far behind?

5.    “The Internet Assistant will be born. Think of this as your own personal technological concierge that can integrate all your disparate data and put it to work, probably via your phone.” – Mark Anderson, Strategic News Service

Last year, Mark scored a whopping 96% hit rate on his predictions, so we can probably give him a pass for this one. He might not be too far off, though, and as far as excitement factor, for me personally, this one’s off the charts.

What do you think? Did you make any marketing predictions that either came true or failed to materialize in 2009 (c’mon, be honest)? Let us know in the comments!

Pop-quiz, hotshot: how long does it take to develop and execute an engaging, multifaceted interactive strategy that keeps your fans engaged, is fully integrated with multiple social media platforms, and gives you the ability to communicate on every level, ranging from individual messages up to mass announcements?

If you replied 3 weeks, you must work here. That’s right – just over 3 weeks ago, San Diego’s preeminent morning drive time radio show, Jeff & Jer, approached Bailey Gardiner with a problem – how could they keep their fans engaged with the show while they were off the air and looking for a new radio station to call home? The urgency of their need was driven by the fact that the show was only as valuable as the size of their audience – which would rapidly decline without constant updates and the ability to engage with the show outside of its primary vehicle, the radio.

That Jeff & Jer had a sizeable fanbase was obvious – their sudden departure from Star 94.1 around the end of August made headlines in the morning news and was the dominant topic of conversation around many a watercooler. The question on everyone’s mind was “What now?” Well, the folks here at BG burned a lot of brain cycles and came up with the answer: get Jeff & Jer “in the cloud” before they get back on the air. If we could establish a big enough and responsive enough online presence for the show, we could keep their fanbase ticking over and perhaps even grow it while they looked for a new station.

Thus, our work began (if this was a movie, the training montage scene would begin right about now).

• We trained them how to use Facebook, Twitter, Flickr and good blogging techniques
• We rebuilt their website, JeffAndJer.com as a flexible, fully multimedia-enabled blog that not only keeps their fans up-to-date, but also gives visitors plenty of ways to get their daily fix of the Jeff & Jer team’s antics
• And for that something extra, we remade the format of their show into something not seen since Wayne’s World: we swapped a cushy radio station studio for a garage, turning the show into “Live From Jerry’s Garage” – a weekly, half-hour show streamed live via webcam directly to their website. The show debuted Friday, October 2, to a live audience of hundreds, and so far has racked up over 2,000 post-broadcast views!

Despite all this, the question still remains: what now, for Jeff & Jer? We can’t say, but we did notice that they seemed to perform even better in front of a camera than they ever did with a microphone!

Ok, you get it. Social Media is the way things are headed, and you’ve gotten top brass to sign off on an initial strategy to get your brand out there as part of the conversation. You’re feeling good and excited to get started.

I hate to be the wet towel, but there’s a big difference between willingness and preparedness, when it comes to getting social. So many brands are taking tentative steps into the world of social media marketing, but many are scalding their feet when they realize that they aren’t staffed or prepared to cope with the inevitable influx of responses to their opening gambits.

The following are a few tips to make sure you have a good foundation in place to set your social media strategy up for success:

Take a good, hard look at your website
Any social media strategy worth its salt will generate a lot of interest around your brand, and therefore drive visits to your company’s website. But guess what? If your website isn’t up to scratch, you’re not only disappointing the people who took the time to engage with you, but missing out on the huge boost in traffic that can be generated via these channels. Specific things to look out for:

• Is it easy to subscribe via email?
• Do you have robust web analytics in place to track where people go in your site, after arriving from a social media platform?
• Are you collecting actionable data from these visitors, and are you prepared to incorporate observations from these visitors’ interactions in the social space into what you already know about them?
• Can people interact with you on your website as much as they can on social media platforms?

Make sure your infrastructure is in place
Ok, great, you’ve gotten your Facebook page up, and your Twitter account is spitting out tweets like there’s no tomorrow. Who is responding to your followers’ DMs? Who is responsible for keeping the Flickr stream updated? Who’s going to watch the Fan page for negative comments? Please don’t say your intern…

• Are you staffed for a responsive and regularly updated social media presence?
• Have you clearly outlined internal responsibilities and expectations for managing your brand’s social media presence across all platforms?
• Have you established a process for maintaining a consistent brand experience across multiple social media platforms, to prevent your Twitter guy saying something different from your Facebook gal?
• What’s your crisis plan for when one of your employees sticks a customer’s cheese pizza up their nose, and posts the video to YouTube?

Get ready for the long haul
We’ve already talked about there being no turning back once you open up your brand to the conversation, but this has huge ramifications for your marketing operations in the long run.
•    Are you writing social media maintenance responsibilities into your job descriptions for hiring purposes?
•    Are you offering training resources to employees who are now taking on these additional responsibilities?
•    How are you monitoring, tracking and evaluating your employees’ work-related social media interactions?
•    If you’re using a spokesperson as the frontman for your brand, think long and hard about this one: what happens when/if they leave the company? Have a plan in your back pocket for this scenario.
•    As an alternate take to the spokesperson situation, how can you help this person cope with the sheer volume of customer questions and interactions that can be generated by putting them out there as the face of your brand?

What do you think? Are there any other items that should be in place as the foundation of your social media strategy? Let us know in the comments!

History is littered with examples of convergence for convenience. It’s what we do, right? We take two or more things, duct tape ‘em together, and (theoretically) make a better, more versatile thing as a result. I don’t think it’s too crazy to say that our tolerance for single-function tools is bookended by all the combo-inventions in our past, from the spork to the clock radio – and that tolerance is shrinking as the pace of technological progress has quickened.

Nowhere is this more evident than with our media and methods of communication, which are converging in geometrically accelerating cycles. A quick review of history shows us a pattern of each advance serving as an integral steppingstone to the birth of the next generation of communication tools. Allow me to elaborate:

First Cycle

• The printed newspaper, invented 1436
• The ‘Silent Pictures,’ invented 1888
• Radio, invented 1896

» Coexisted for 29 years before converging into the Television, invented 1925

Second Cycle

• Telephone, invented 1876
• Radio, invented 1896
• Silicon Chip, invented 1958

» Coexisted for 15 years before converging into the Cellphone, invented 1973

Third Cycle

• Cellphone, invented 1973
• Digital Camera, invented 1981
• PDA, invented 1983
• The Internet, invented 1983

» Coexisted for 10 years before converging into the Smartphone, invented 1993

Can you see where this is going yet? Well, hold on to your propeller hats, this is where it gets interesting.

It was in the late ’90s that the Internet really began to serve as a major communications vehicle, enabling people to share ideas and collaborate in ways that only spurred on these cycles of innovation and convergence:

Fourth Cycle

• IM, invented mid-1960s
• Email, invented 1965
• Search engines, invented 1991
• Blogs, invented 1994
• Web-based Forums, invented 1996
• RSS, invented 2002

» Coexisted for 4 years before converging into Twitter, invented 2006

Which brings us to today. Within a month or so, Google is poised to release what many are calling the next iteration of communications technology, named Google Wave. Concise definitions of what it actually is are hard to come by, which makes sense, because I think it’s basically the culmination of 573 years of media convergence (there, was that concise enough for you?):

Fifth Cycle

• IM, invented mid-1960s
• Web-based Email, invented 1995
• Wikis, invented 1995
• Facebook, invented 2004
• Twitter, invented 2006

» Coexisted for 3 years before converging into Google Wave, invented 2009

So where is this all heading? As with any trend, there’s always uncertainty just beyond the horizon. That said, it’s possible that each of these previous cycles have been building to one grand cycle that we can see happening right now:

Grand Cycle

• Written (Offline) information, invented 4th millennium, BC
• Digital (Online) information, invented 1937

» Coexisted for 62 years before converging into Augmented Reality, invented 1999

My advice? Don’t blink, because the next decade is going to be one hell of a ride.

What do you think? Any ideas as to what will be the result of the next media convergence cycle? Make yourself heard in the comments!

Having done my fair share of interviewing in the relatively short time since I graduated, I was blown away by the number of options available to reach out and touch someone, as I searched for a job ahead of my impending relocation to San Diego this past May. The advent of the Social Web has fundamentally changed the way people connect, communicate, and get introduced. In fact, I wouldn’t be writing this post, if social media hadn’t come through for me, (you can see how it all started by scanning the comments right here…), so with this in mind, here are some useful tips for job hunters across some of the major social media destinations:

LINKEDIN

Fill out your profile
Research cuts both ways – you can be sure that while you’re using LinkedIn to find out more about that dream job, some interviewers are likely looking you up also, so give them something to work with, and get a better sense of who you are, and what you’re like.

Get introduced
Know somebody who knows somebody? Request an introduction through that contact. You’d be surprised at how easily you can get your foot in the door at a company you want to work for. Kevin Bacon would be proud.

Talk about achievements, not responsibilities
This is an evergreen tip that still holds true for traditional job-hunting as well as in social media. Interviewers often want to know how you did, not what you did at your previous jobs. Stats are your friend here – did you make or save the company money? Did you reduce turnaround time, or help them win an award? Quantifying your performance makes it real for your interviewer

Write recommendations
Harness some social media karma, and say nice (true) things about others in your network – they’ll likely return the favor, which will only give you bonus points when interviewers look you up

Get a vanity URL
Which would you remember better: http://www.linkedin.com/in/jasonamunwa, or http://www.linkedin.com/pub/jason-amunwa/1/4/a6?

LinkedIn is an incredible networking tool, with tons of functionality – check out this great article on Mashable to dive even deeper.

COMPANY BLOGS/TWITTER
Follow the latest news
Many companies have been blogging for a while, and others are using Twitter too – some are even using these channels to announce new hires, rather than go the Monster/HotJobs/CareerBuilder route – subscribe to/follow them, and watch them for any new openings. In some cases, you may even get advance notice over the traditional listings sites, helping you get your application to the top of the pile. Thanks to this tweet from @BGIndra, I managed to get my resume towards the front of the queue referenced in this tweet!

Be social!
Engage in a dialogue with the author, retweet them, ask them questions, and follow other people from the same company to get a clearer picture of day-to-day life there. People notice this, and pretty soon, your name will become familiar around the office, before you’ve even dealt an introductory handshake.

FACEBOOK
Keep your private life private
Facebook offers its robust privacy settings for good reason. Hide any content you wouldn’t share with interviewers before you start your search. With that said, leave your profile open to be found in searches – you want interviewers to know you exist, but not what happened when your buddies challenged you to drink a quart of milk in an hour.

Join relevant groups, fan relevant pages
As with blogs and Twitter, groups and fan pages give you another opportunity to get your name known in the right circles, and raise your profile among companies who may be looking for someone just like you.

GOOGLE TOOLS
Get a Google Profile
Google’s recent response to the now widely-known phenomenon of googling people’s names was to allow you to create your own ‘official’ profile. This is powerful in that it allows you to take control of your online reputation, rather than whatever results pop up. It also means that you’re less likely to be confused with the frat boy who shares your name, and insists on regularly posting outrageous drunken party pictures to Flickr.

Put your resume online
There are a number of ways to do this, including using an online resume service, or simply adding a page to your personal website. For ease and speed, I imported my resume into Google Docs, and made it publicly viewable.
Bonus: use TinyURL & you can reference it in your cover letters, biz cards, etc. with a vanity URL, e.g. http://www.tinyurl.com/yoursmarttaglinehere

Use an RSS reader
Many of the larger job listings sites allow you to create a custom RSS feed for the types of jobs you’re looking for. Use an RSS reader and subscribe to these feeds, as well as industry/company blogs, to consolidate all this info into one place – you’ll greatly expand your ability to monitor the new jobs being posted in your area.

OTHER TIPS
Comment, tweet and post on industry blogs
Not only does this get the attention of people who read/follow these streams of content, it makes you more likely to appear in related search results. Sharing your opinions on relevant industry topics helps establish you as an expert and leader in your field

Turn on your email/sms notifications
These days, time is of the essence, so make sure you have your finger on the pulse of all fronts of your online presence, and are ready to respond at the drop of a hat no matter where you are.

Be genuine & make it fun
Nobody likes a poseur, so just be human and let your personality come through online

Most importantly
Don’t forget that all of the above should be employed in addition to traditional jobseeker methods. It’s a new reality we’re living in, folks, and job opportunities can come from anywhere, so take steps to be prepared. The multitudes of outlets for your online presence is a way to extend your traditional search, not replace it.

Do you have any social-media job-hunting tips or anecdotes of your own? Let us know in the comments!

There has been a lot of talk about how to track the success of marketing activity on Twitter, with a focus on the number of followers that an individual is able to collect. On the surface, this seems to make sense – after all, this is the yardstick we typically use to measure reach and success in many general advertising channels, including magazine circulation, TV viewers, online banner impressions, list size, etc. I would venture that this is perhaps an overly simplistic view of the channel (yes, folks, I do believe it is a channel), and that a deeper analysis of the way people are interacting with your tweets can yield a clearer insight as to how much value is derived by both parties.

As with other one-to-one channels, especially email, the most important metrics to pay attention to depend on the ultimate goal of your message. Do you want them to click, to reply, to take action? Much like Twitter as a whole, what you get out of it depends on what you put in, and what your goals are. With this in mind, I propose a few common-sense, non-scientific metrics to get the conversation started:

Wanna get retweeted? According to a new study, TinyURL and multisyllabic words are your friends.

To measure engagement:
The Retweet Ratio

# of Retweets/Total # of Tweets

The Retweet Ratio can give you a simple view of how compelling or useful your followers perceive your content to be, i.e. whether it is ‘RT-worthy’ – 1 being super-useful, and 0 meaning it’s not interesting enough to pass along. Such a metric could be a simple measure of content quality, as well as follower engagement. A recent study has shown there are ways to improve this ratio, by simply adjusting the content, or wording of your tweets.

Reply Ratio

# of Replies/Total # of Tweets

How often does an individual’s content provoke a response? While the actual content of these replies is likely a better indicator of true engagement, this metric could be useful for identifying the best people to reach out to, in order to conduct, say, qualitative consumer research on Twitter.

Twinfluence compares your reach, quality of followers, and other stats against other Twitterers. Think you can take on @aplusk, or @barackobama?

To measure reach:

Effective Reach

# of Followers x (1 + Retweet Ratio)           

Retweeting has the effect of amplifying the number of people you can reach on Twitter – think ripples extending from a pebble dropped in a pond. Therefore, the higher your Retweet Ratio, the greater your effective reach will be, especially if your followers have sizeable audiences of their own. Twinfluence has a robust tool that takes this approach above and beyond, to serve as a great measure of an individual’s influence on Twitter.

Bonus measurement idea:

Tagging URLs

Think about putting some kind of identifying clicktags (e.g. DoubleClick) on any URLs that drive to pages/sites under your control prior to shrinking them. Although it’ll slow down the amount of tweets you’re able to put out, you’ll at least know (by looking in your analytics package of choice) which particular messages are generating traffic more than others, and use those learnings to refine your style and drive more traffic.

What do you think? Do you have an ideas of how to measure Twitter activity in a meaningful way for marketers? Let us know in the comments!