Ithaca Tech Talk

He's not rich Enough, ALREADY?

Fri, 04 May 2012 02:20:39 -0400

Read it and weep. Or not weep. Honestly, you could’ve seen this coming.

Case Study: Social Media Marketing

Fri, 04 May 2012 02:15:00 -0400

For this case, I found it extremely relevant for me to talk about my experiences as a Social Marketing Intern at Live Nation.

Live Nation, a national concert promoter based in Hollywood, California, has an extremely wide fan base. Since the company doesn’t promote shows for any one genre of music, they can sell tickets for everything from a Louis Black comedy show, to a Britney Spears tour to a Metallica concert. With over 800 million users on Facebook, it behooves Live Nation to use this service for marketing in a smart and efficient manner. For one, Facebook is completely free. Granted, Live Nation pays third party developers to create apps for particular use by a fan, but the cost is well worth the benefit. Having seen some of the statistics while developing weekly metrics reports as an intern, I can speak to how heavily-used the Facebook apps are. Although most of the apps being implemented during my internship have since been removed, Live Nation does a great job at keeping material fresh and most importantly, keeping the fans involved. After all, Facebook is all about community building and management.

For specific marketing purposes, Live Nation uses Facebook in the two-fold model which is pretty common when it comes to community management. When leading a community of people united through a common interest, it’s important to keep them engaged. In addition to Live Nation posting about ticket sales, concert tour announcements and other promotions, they also make sure to pose questions to the community, starting a discussion. That’s part one. I also just mentioned part two. Of course, Live Nation brings in revenue through ticket sales. So if they’re not selling tickets, there goes the main revenue stream. For straight promotional posts, be it for a specific show or an entire tour, it was always stressed to me the importance of including a link to the ticket sales page on the Live Nation website. While many services can run their business out of Facebook, it’s more difficult for Live Nation to do so because there’s financial and personal information involved in a ticket purchase.

I think Live Nation does a good job at implementing social media, particularly Facebook into their overall marketing strategy. As an intern, I didn’t work just with Facebook, but with Twitter and YouTube, too. So I can speak to the level of professionalism that goes into responding to fan questions, posting content on the front end and developing new content and brainstorming ideas on the back end. With that said, social media marketing plays a huge role, from what I can tell. Unfortunately, I don’t see too much other marketing from Live Nation. I think it’s because they don’t have to. Nowadays, to buy tickets to an event, you really only have two options: Ticketmaster or Live Nation, and since both are now owned by Live Nation Entertainment, so it all comes out in the wash. As for their social media presence? For a brand as large as Live Nation, it would be silly to not use a team and resources in order to work it for to your advantage.

As a marketing channel, Facebook is next to none. It used to be “oh, of course that company has a website.” Nowadays, it’s “oh, of course that company has a Facebook page.” Granted, the goal of many brands that bring in revenue is to direct traffic back to the website via Facebook, but either way, it really is, along with Twitter, a great way for a brand to connect with its community. I can speak to my personal experience in helping manage the Live Nation Facebook page and say that for a profile that had over 200,000 “likes” at the time of my internship, the space and its different tabs and features were definitely being utilized. Literally every couple of minutes, we would visit the page to find another question posted on the discussion board. I do wish that I got to see the implementation of the new timeline feature into their overall social marketing strategy, because I feel that in terms of marketing on Facebook, timeline is the best creation since Facebook itself. In managing the WICB Facebook page, I can speak to how cool it was to go back through the history of our brand, and then post things to remind the community of what we’ve done. Again, keeping the community engaged, that’s a huge and essential part of social media marketing.

My friend shared this video with me the other day. As a DJ, I...

Fri, 04 May 2012 01:17:35 -0400

My friend shared this video with me the other day. As a DJ, I can’t begin to tell you how awesome this is.

I really dig infographics. Honestly, some of them are hit and...

Fri, 27 Apr 2012 10:10:22 -0400

I really dig infographics. Honestly, some of them are hit and miss. But, this one really explains the situation pretty well.

WWDC 2012

Wed, 25 Apr 2012 10:21:20 -0400

WWDC 2012:

What do you think will be the big news from this year’s WWDC?

Case Study #6: Email Marketing

Fri, 20 Apr 2012 01:41:01 -0400

It irks me when people say “email is going downhill” or “who uses email anymore, anyway?” Unfortunately, I know some of these people, who so happen to refer to themselves as being proficient in technology and recent news surrounding the industry. While I haven’t voiced my opinion directly to them, this is an outlet for me to get out my frustration.

Every morning, I wake up to at least a dozen emails and proceed to reply to most of them. (The others are usually spam, so I just delete them). As the day goes on, I’ll get another blast in the late morning/early afternoon, and then it usually slows down. I’m not saying this to brag in any way, shape or form, I’m just trying to make the point that event as a college student organizing course work, producing a television show and managing a radio station, I wouldn’t be able to function without email. Again, I’m not a working professional. I’m not even out of college yet and will go to the length of saying that my functionality is centered around my access to two things: my email accounts and my iCal.

Clearly, email is still a relevant form of communication, even for marketers. Yes, you can have certain things marked as spam, but for the most part, you’re at least forced to read the subject of a message as it sits in your inbox. While I haven’t experienced any incredible email marketing methods firsthand, I did stumble upon a cool campaign from Dairy Queen.

Let me preface this by saying: I WISH I LIVED NEAR A DAIRY QUEEN! I’m fairly certain not a single one of these establishments exists on Long Island, so throughout my entire life, dining at Dairy Queen has always gone hand-in-hand with vacation.

As is expected of most brands nowadays, Dairy Queen does a pretty solid job of managing its Facebook page. Overall the presence is kept up, but I want to focus on the use of one of the tabs, the one for the Blizzard Fan Club. Essentially, this DQ’s loyalty program (something that I will probably never experience unless I move to a DQ-saturated market). Since Blizzard Fan Club members weren’t going the extra mile to print out coupons and other promotions that were sent to them, DQ wanted to change this. More so, they decided to kill two birds with one stone. The company wanted to launch a promotion during the month of January because it is generally a slow month. Additionally, they wanted to increase the number of prints on coupons sent via email.

To tackle these goals, DQ implemented a Customer Appreciation Day tactic. During January, members were encouraged to sign up to become a member of the Blizzard Fan Club because they would receive an email from DQ with a coupon for the store closest to them. In evaluating the campaign, DQ found that these emails had a 37 percent open rate and a 87 percent click-through rate. As for driving more members to actually join the fan club, when someone was recruited, they were encouraged to ask their friend to join. Initially, DQ wanted to see an increase of 300,000 fan club members. At the end of the campaign nine months later, the Blizzard Fan Club had one million new members.

“We are very happy with the results of our recent campaigns,” said Jamie Guse, Senior Manager, Digital Marketing at Dairy Queen. “It’s clear that targeting and relevant offers are key factors in the 30 percent growth of our Blizzard Fan Club in less than nine months.”

Although this campaign was super simple, DQ followed all the steps of the email campaign process. Since I was easily able to find results, I feel that this campaign was particularly strong in the last step: monitor measure and modify. They knew that their target audience was current customers who are fairly tech savvy and they had their goals clearly laid out. I don’t think this campaign would have been nearly as effective if Dairy Queen didn’t integrate the promotion with their Facebook page. For the most part, I believe that the DQ target market is fairly young, so naturally, they will be more active on Facebook than older customers.

In terms of content strategies from this campaign, I came across a few case studies, but other than that, I wasn’t able to find any stories, testimonials (except that of Guse) or multimedia resources.

Has Instagram Jumped the Shark?

Fri, 20 Apr 2012 00:41:08 -0400

Has Instagram Jumped the Shark?:

I’m usually in agreement with what Apple has to say about tech news, but I have to disagree with this.

Case Study #5: Pricing Strategies

Fri, 30 Mar 2012 04:16:00 -0400

We all know money doesn’t grow on trees. As much as we would all love dollar bills to fall from the sky instead of snow (especially in Ithaca), it’s comforting to know that we can still be entertained FO’ FREE!

Ah, “free.” What a glorious word, huh? Free wi-fi in the mall, free bobble head doll during “Fan Appreciation Day,” free cookie day at Subway .. I could go on and on …

Let’s take a step back from all that awesomeness from a second so that I can make my first point: humans have an inherent need to be entertained. I’ve written two or three different papers on this idea throughout my college years and each time around, I’ve been amazed at all the different examples I’ve been able to use. To put it simply, as technology evolves, it becomes much easier for people to find cheap entertainment to satisfy that human need. Because while I argued “humans need to be entertained,” I never argued how much they needed to pay in order to do so.

Looking at this situation from a very ideological perspective, it’s almost sad to see how much the value of first person entertainment has gone down since the arrival of the Internet. However, some may argue that there is a saving grace in vacations and other destinations that simply cannot be experience on a screen. If I had a nickel for every time somebody has told me “a picture of the Grand Canyon doesn’t do it justice …” I totally understand this idea, but in the midst of a struggling economy, some people can do without an expensive vacation when they are JUST AS entertained by watching a video … online … for free. My second point: YouTube is a double-edged sword, and a sharp one at that.

I can’t tell you how many hours I’ve spent procrastinating on YouTube. Some say it’s even had a drug-like effect on them before. You go on the website to watch a two-minute clip on something to help you with your research paper and before you know it, you’re sitting there an hour later with a bag of Cheetos, watching old music videos of songs you always heard at your high school dance. Oh, those damn recommended videos.

In a nutshell, that’s the secret to YouTube’s success: an extremely wide variety of entertainment, FO’ FREE. Especially in this day and age, with people’s need to be on-the-go at an all time high, YouTube is a quick fix. You get in on your computer or phone, watch that random video you thought about, and get out. Hopefully you don’t get lured into that treacherous “recommended videos” section.

I’ll admit, my parents don’t get it. They don’t grasp the concept of staring at a screen for hours on end, watching viral videos about babies biting fingers. Honestly, it’s a generation thing, and that’s a topic for another blog post. My point is this: over hundreds of millions of people have found entertainment in a video that’s 56 seconds long. Before the introduction of YouTube, this idea would be unfathomable.

YouTube was founded on February 14, 2005 by three college studnets who having difficulty sharing videos. Cue the proverbial lightbulb. With an $11.5 million startup investment from Sequoia Capital under their belt, the trio set off on a journey which would eventually result in a $1.65 billion acquisition deal from Google. The first video was uploaded on April 23, 2005.

In the months leading up to the deal, YouTube was averaging 100 million video views and 65,000 uploads per day. According to 2010 statistics, those numbers jumped drastically, with the site averaging over 2 billion video views per day and 24 hours of video uploaded per minute.

Nevertheless, YouTube has not rested on its laurels, continuing to provide its users with new and innovative ways to be entertained. Their next endeavor? Live streaming.

With sites like Vevo attempting to threaten YouTube’s monopoly over music videos, YouTube saw it fitting to dive into uncharted territory. In October, 2009, the site live streamed a U2 concert, followed by an interview with President Obama in February, 2010. From there, live viewing opportunities have only increased for users, with YouTube providing the stream for everything from wrestling matches to interactive State of the Union addresses.

Fortunately, since its inception, visiting YouTube was hassle-free for users. However, over the past year or two, the prevalence of ads on the site has skyrocketed, resulting in many users to become frustrated and question the site’s intentions. (In YouTube’s defense, this is still a FREE service and surely they can’t live off the Google sale forever). Simply put, a brand has to survive and if that airing an ad before most official videos, then so be it. According to a 2010 infographic, partner ad revenue more than tripled in 2009 and 94 out of Ad Age’s top 100 advertisers, have run campaigns on the site. Talk about media buying becoming that much easier. A marketer now has the choice to select which video the ad runs before and not have to worry about it becoming lost in over-saturated commercial blocks.

YouTube is a form of serviomy pricing strategy. ce with a Gift Economy pricing strategy. All the user has to do to view a video is type in the URL. That’s it. Of course, they probably have to now sit through an ad, but in terms of giving anything, all it is is an extra 30 seconds. No big deal, especially when the reward is that concert you’ve dying to relive.

I think it really benefits YouTube to keep their content free and open to the public, because in all honesty, they have their s**t together. Their copyright team is, for the most part, on the ball and works quickly to take down videos that infringe on some sort of copyright. In addition to that, inappropriate and highly sexual content is virtually nonexistent. In my eyes, YouTube has been and will continue to be family friendly.

YouTube has found its market, so why change? Many argue that other video streaming sites like Hulu and Netflix are competitors. In some ways, yes, in other ways, no. Like i said at the beginning of this post, YouTube prides itself on having an extremely wide variety of content. (“I can’t find it.” “Go YouTube it, then.”) Hulu has television, Netflix has television and movies, so in my eyes, YouTube is playing the right card by leaving them be. After all, it’s hours upon hours of entertainment on one web … oh, sorry. I clicked on a recommended video again.

Watch: Hardwell’s full set from Ultra Music Festival 2012 - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5SWb2tcE3iU

Sim City is Back! (With Shades of Instagram and Occupy Wall Street)

Wed, 28 Mar 2012 10:31:06 -0400

Sim City is Back! (With Shades of Instagram and Occupy Wall Street):

My high school nerdy/gamer self is going to go out on a limb and say that this is huge! Geeks and avid gamers around the world must be uber excited.

By the way ... I'm on Twitter!

Thu, 22 Mar 2012 11:34:53 -0400

By the way ... I'm on Twitter!:

You should follow me. I tweet interesting things. Seriously.

Ed Tech Day is an awesome event! I had the great opportunity to...

Thu, 22 Mar 2012 11:33:34 -0400

Ed Tech Day is an awesome event! I had the great opportunity to meet and get to know David Weil, Director of Enterprise Advancement Services at Ithaca College. His office, Information Technology Services sought out WICB to help at this year’s event. We were actually able to arrange a giveaway for a Kindle Fire, which we’ll have a drawing for later today.

While I wish, I could go around and “geek out” at all the different vendors, work before play and I do love working for the radio station. So all-in-all it’s a winning situation.

The Best Instagram Photos Ever Taken

Mon, 05 Mar 2012 00:42:20 -0500

The Best Instagram Photos Ever Taken:

As of August, 2011, 150 million photos have been “Instagrammed” by roughly 13 million users. I use the term “Instagrammed” in all seriousness for two reasons. One, I’ve heard it be used in conversations and two, I’m even guilty of saying it.

For me, to have a service that becomes SO popular SO quickly is a rare feat, even in this day and age, with technology thriving off of Web 2.0 and other ideas. Essentially, Twitter and Facebook are obviously the two front runners of social networking, but Instagram is quickly gaining on them. What I think makes the app so unique is that it has reached such milestones in only a matter of 16 months. Facebook and Twitter took longer to gain speed and thus, users.

I think Instagram did a great job in realizing that EVERYBODY thinks they’re a photographer, even when they’re clearly not. We can get into a separate discussion regarding the actual users of Instagram, but for now, let’s just say that they did what any good brand does: they realized an inherent societal trait and rain with it. Well done, Instagram

P.S. Stay tuned for another post in which I will break down “Instagrammers” (from my perspective as a user).

iPad 3 Event: Seven Clues You Might Have Missed

Fri, 02 Mar 2012 02:28:10 -0500

iPad 3 Event: Seven Clues You Might Have Missed:

In true Apple fashion, they’re being really vague about the details surrounding the iPad 3. But you know what? It’s compelling. I’m intrigued and I know all the other tech nerds out there are, too.

Case Study #4: Going Crazy for Coco

Fri, 02 Mar 2012 02:18:00 -0500

Anybody who knows me knows that I am very much Team Coco. After interning with “CONAN” in Los Angeles and New York, I have developed an even greater fondness for the show than I had before. While I have always admired Conan’s personality and his ability to interview guests and entertain an audience, it’s only until recently that I’ve started to analyze the many facets incorporated in the production.

In this day and age, airing a TV show to hoards of fans around the country doesn’t suffice in terms of engagement. Yes, some argue that it’s sad TV is no longer “traditional” TV, but that’s the way of the world. In order to stay afloat in the industry, it behooves productions to be on the cutting edge of community engagement.

Fortunately for “CONAN”, it comes easily to them. Team Coco, the show’s digital subsidiary, has been around since Conan’s sudden and sad departure from “The Tonight Show.” Originally, Team Coco started as a website and movement in support of Conan as he went through a transition period from leaving NBC, going on tour, and then joining TBS. When the TBS program first aired in November, 2010, Team Coco became the show’s official website. Since Conan’s audience is so young, Team Coco has had a field day in developing digital media ideas. In addition to your run-of-the-mill photos and videos from the show, Team Coco has played off the show’s self-deprecating style of humor and has introduced bits such as the Live Coco Cam. Believe me, it’s hard to explain EXACTLY what it is, so just check it out yourself. Seriously. You NEVER know what’s going to happen. So, hopefully you get the idea. The CONAN audience is young and curious. They very much want to be engaged, and Team Coco definitely delivers.

Just when I thought the website was great at engagement, Team Coco released their smart phone app. In my eyes, nothing was too groundbreaking through the app, but just the fact that they had it spoke wonders. Now, Conan’s fans (who are always on the go), can relive funny moments and get other information without having to open their laptop. Here are some details of the app.

As a fan, I am more than thrilled to see that this app is in existence. In all honesty, in formal Nielsen television ratings, “CONAN”, is not performing too well. However, since TBS has just recently renewed the show through April, 2014, I think they realize that there’s more to this production than formal ratings. Ratings are old-school. Team Coco is far from that. They’re innovative and like to push the envelope. And most of all, they LOVE their fans. That’s why I think getting a mobile app was such a smart move on their part. Interestingly enough, the only late night shows that have mobile apps, are the shows with similar audiences. “Late Night with Jimmy Fallon” also has a smart phone app, because many viewers of CONAN and LNJF cross paths in terms of general demographics, lifestyle, etc.

However, Team Coco didn’t stop with just a traditional app. This week, they released a mobile app specifically designed for the iPad and Android tablet devices. At first glance, nothing stands out, but this app is much more integrated than the normal smart phone app. In a demonstration on Thursday night’s show, Conan and Andy Richter explained how the big USP for the app is its ability to give fans to have the CONAN experience on two separate screens. While you’re watching the show on your TV or laptop, you can view behind the scenes features that are exclusive to the tablet app. TIME TO RAISE THE COOLNESS FACTOR. Seriously, I’m pretty up-to-date on the latest tech news and even I thought this was awesome. Through the tablet’s microphone, the app listens to the show’s audio, determines the part of the show you’re viewing and then subsequently brings you to the part of the app with all relevant photos, videos and out takes from that segment. Wow.

Team Coco saw a need. And boy, have they addressed it. That’s what marketing is all about, isn’t it? Giving the consumer what they want? While a digital outlet of a television show is not responsible for traditional marketing, it does, in fact, play a crucial role. With Conan’s target audience sitting in the 18-45 range, word-of-mouth is huge. This generation is on the go. They’re active and they’re ALWAYS communicating. So if you’re out to dinner with a friend and conversation turns to last night’s episode of CONAN, whoops … you’re not by a laptop but showing your friend that comedy bit on your phone will more than suffice. Effective? Yeah, I’d say so.

Team Coco is really on top of their game. I’m more than excited to see what they will come up with next.