Okay, it’s not really a map.  In this post  I’ve attempted to give a birds eye view of the social media landscape. You’ll find listed social media categories and corresponding tools.  We’ll explore these individually in upcoming posts.

Social Networking
A social network service focuses on building and reflecting of social networks or social relations among people, e.g., who share interests and/or activities.

• Facebook — The 800 pound gorilla of Social networking with over 350 million users
• LinkedIn —  LinkedIn is the world’s largest professional network with over 70 million members and growing rapidly.
• MySpace — It was once king, now in steady decline since 2009.

Social Content Publishing
Tools to help you share your content

• WordPress, Blogger —  Blogtools
• Twitter, Friendfeed, Plurk — Microblogs
• Slideshare — Slide presentations
• YouTube, Viddler — Video sharing and management
• Flikr, Photobucket, Picasa — Photo sharing and management

RSS  Readers and Aggregators
RSS is an acronymn for Rich Site Summary or Really Simple Syndication. Here is wonderfully simple video explanation of how it works: Video: RSS in Plain English

• Attensa — Windows, Microsoft Outlook-based; trial available
• Amphetadesk — Windows, Mac, Linux (open source); freeware
• Bloglines — Web-based news aggregator; free
• FeedDemon — Windows; commercial software, trial available
• Feedreader — Windows (open source); freeware
• Google Reader — Web-based news aggregator; free
• My Yahoo! — Web-based news aggregator; free
• NewsFire — Mac OS X; commercial software, trial available
• Rocket RSS Reader — Web-based RSS reader; free
• RSS Reader — Windows; freeware

Social Bookmarking and Recommendation
Social bookmarking sites provide methods  for internet users to share, organize, search,  and recommend web resources.

• Delicious — Delicious is a Social Bookmarking service, which means you can save all your bookmarks online & share them
• FriendFeed — “FriendFeed enables you to discover and discuss the interesting stuff your friends find on the web.”
• Yahoo Buzz — ”The best of the web chosen by you”
• Digg — “Digg is a place for people to discover and share content from anywhere on the web.”
• Reddit — “Reddit is a source for what’s new and popular online.”
• Yelp — “Yelp is the fun and easy way to find, review and talk about what’s great – and not so great, in your area.”
• Stumbleupon — “Personalized Recommendations to Help You Discover the Best of the Web”

You do this by having a great product and monitoring it through all its iterations to make sure it remains a great product. AND by pushing the right buzz button(s).

In his book BUZZMARKETING, Mark Hughs cites Six Buttons of Buzz that will give people the currency to start a conversation:
- The taboo (sex, lies, bathroom humor)
- The unusual
- The outrageous
- The remarkable
- The secrets (both kept and revealed)

Other ingredients that help the buzz are controversy, riding a hot media topic and a David vs Goliath scenario, as illustrated in the “United Breaks Guitars” story & song.

- Mark Wise
Imagewise Interactive

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8,483,507 YouTube views and 300 interviews (including CNN, Good Morning America, and CBS’s “The view”) are testimonies to why companies should pay close attention to customer relations and social media.

While this video was a social media nightmare for United, the David vs Goliath narrative pushed the buzz marketing button and gave (pardon me) flight to Dave Carroll’s music career.

Here’s Dave Carroll’s Story from his website: On March 31, 2008 Sons of Maxwell began our week-long-tour of Nebraska by flying United Airlines from Halifax to Omaha, by way of Chicago.   On that first leg of the flight we were seated at the rear of the aircraft and upon landing and waiting to deplane in order to make our connection a woman sitting behind me, not aware that we were musicians cried out: “My god they’re throwing guitars out there.” Our bass player Mike looked out the window in time to see his bass being heaved without regard by the United baggage handlers. My $3500 710 Taylor had been thrown before his.   More

- Mark Wise
Imagewise Interactive

For a B2C message, the best days have generally been Friday, Saturday and Sunday late afternoon-early evening.

The provisos being these time choices do not take into account the particulars of your target audience  and message. What if you have multiple audiences with different time zones? What type of message are you sending? If the missive is a newsletter or regular communication then being consistent in delivery matters more than which day/time you initially choose.

How to Buzz Wiser:

Look at your website stats and schedule your emails at times when your audience tends to visit your site. Your marketing missives will hit their mailbox while they are online.

Set-up tests by dividing your audience database of recipients that have opened mail into A/B lists and sending your message to A at different day than B. Only test one variable (either hour or day) at a time and compare results to see what works best. You can also test by asking a sample of clients and contacts which day they would prefer to receive the email – as well as what information they would like to receive.

A common mistake made in email marketing is sending out either TOO many emails or sending messages that have little or no relevance for the recipient.

In a McLuhan twist, (I’m showing my age) the message trumps the mechanics of the medium. If your subject line and message engage, educate or enlighten you are likely to have an effective call to action and a successful campaign.

Mark Wise
Imagewise Interactive

When I registered Imagewise.com in 1995 there were 16,000 domains worldwide. According to VeriSign’s Domain Industry Brief there were 184 million domain name registrations across all top-level domains at the end of the second quarter 2009. But the number of domains does not reflect the monumental impact of the myriad of social media channels– blogs, tweets, wikis, Facebook, YouTube and Linkedin pages…

Econsultancy.com states that “Facebook currently has in excess of 350 million active users on global basis. Six months ago, this was 250m… meaning around a 40% increase of users in less than half a year.”

The growing social media landscape presents challenges as well as wonderful opportunities to be heard.

I hope you’ll  join us here to discuss and explore tools, tactics and strategies to buzz wiser.

Mark Wise
Imagewise Interactive