Last year during the holidays, social media sites like Facebook experienced huge bumps in traffic. People are off work, away from home, and are — sometimes — bored. So they head to social networks. According to Mashable, last year during Christmas, social networking sites saw huge surges in traffic. On Christmas Day 2008, Twitter saw 35 tweets per minute, You Tube saw 600,000 videos tagged “Christmas,” and (according to Google) over 60,000,000 blog posts mentioned Christmas.

So what’s a good social media plan to get in front of all those eyeballs? At Go East, we are looking at the three most obvious places to make your mark this holiday.

Social Media Holiday Plan, 2009

1. Get your hashtags ready and tweet this holiday season. It will be important to get your brand out there by offering holiday specials or expressions of good will. Twitter is great for trending what people will want for Christmas, as well as seeing who is already out there tweeting about their holiday offerings.

2. People will connect on Facebook over the holidays. That’s just a fact. Long-distance family and friends will go there first to find out who did what and who got what over Christmas break. It makes sense for brands to be there. How can brands successfully integrate on FB? Right now, it is up for grabs. A quick search shows 500 Christmas applications on FB, none of which are all that compelling. However, Coca Cola already has over 58,000 fans on its Christmas advert page. That’s a wide open field of opportunities for the next “elf yourself,” and FB is the place for people to have fun with your brand this holiday.

3. Flickr now offers sponsored groups. Some, like Kodak’s “What’s our story?” group, make an obvious photography connection. Others, like the “Western Union Yes!”, start to meld social sharing and cause marketing. Now things are starting to get interesting! Imagine the possibilities for images and brands that visually bring the holidays to life. Asking group members to show how they use a product during the holidays, with the most “favorited” photo winning, is an obvious way to connect with Flickr’s users.

A group of Boston geeks helped Barack Obama turn the Web into the ultimate political machine. A recent Boston Globe story discusses their cutting edge social network, which helped elect the new president. I think the astonishing results that can be achieved by a very small group of programmers and visionary developers highlights what a democracy is really all about. Making change — both socially and politically — can happen quickly and from a “grassroots up” foundation. It is exciting to see  the actual and real results of an effective social networking structure.

(See also MyBarackObama.com)

A recent Adweek article discusses how difficult it is to create social media applications — especially the corporate branded apps in Facebook. It underscores the essentially flighty and viral nature of social media; like pop music and reality TV stars, there is a limited appeal to many of these efforts.

Brands, in general, have found Facebook unforgiving terrain for marketing. It’s well known, for instance, that banner ads perform poorly on the site … But the Facebook Platform, launched 18 months ago — which lets developers create social applications for users — was thought to offer the perfect opportunity to move beyond banners to provide “branded utility.” So far, however, Facebook apps from brands like Coca-Cola, Champion, Ford and Microsoft are as popular as desolate Second Life islands.

Read the full article.

Spam was once a simple annoyance, but its exponential growth has led email users to mount intensive efforts to block unwanted messages and incited companies to circulate blacklists of alleged spammers. As he tries to comply with all the details of spam laws, newsletter publisher James Morris wonders if free speech might be an unlikely victim of the Internet age.

Here at Go East, we’ve been seeing very interesting results from our newsletters and email marketing efforts. Spam laws and compliance can change quickly, and an email that sailed through spam filters one month may be unexpectedly flagged the next. As Morris points out, the culprits can be an innocuous word or an innocent turn of phrase. Keeping a vigilant eye out for these items and vigorous testing can help mitigate these problems.

(If you’re interested, have look at our newsletter series.)

How does a person catch a break on cash these days? I would imagine we are all thinking about ways that we can make an extra buck, given our economic situation and the fast-approaching holiday.

Maybe you should set up a lemonade stand. Imagine the looks from coworkers passing by your desk as they notice your newly decorated office space with a wooden stand, a pitcher of lemonade and some plastic cups neatly stacked beside it. That would be kind of silly, wouldn’t it?

But seriously, there is a website called Lemonade.com, where you can set up your own “lemonade stand” and promote products that you like and make money when people buy those products. Crazy!

In essence, it is just like an old-fashioned lemonade stand; you can make money by selling products that someone else has made and you don’t have to spend a dime. Remember, your parents probably bought and made the lemonade that you gave away to people for a small fee that went directly into your savings account.

You get to name your stand and give it a custom look, choose products to recommend and an offer from your favorite retailer to put in your lemonade stand. Then put it on Facebook, your personal profile or blogs. When your friends visit your site they may purchase those items. If they do, then you make a commission.

E-commerce. It seems easy. Maybe I will give it a try.

Oh my. Sometimes I find it very funny when you get a request to use a “Real World” metaphor for a software application or website. Here’s a great interpretation of what Photoshop would look like if it really was made up of scissors, tape, paint brushes and rulers …

I am always torn between total fascination (tinged with a wee bit of envy) and complete irritation when I run across websites that have very unique or unusual navigation schemes. This website, from Normann Design in Copenhagen, skitters along that knife edge of wonderful/irritating. The glorious design and products tip me over into the happy side.

I couldn’t agree more with Karen Sams recent blog about online pressrooms. She essentially said that putting critical, time sensitive information online so that journalists, who depend on the information, can access it easily is crucial. A business doesn’t lose anything by creating a press room –it still controls the strategy and messaging of its news and information — but it gains a lot. The positives of online media sites are: repetitive visits from journalists and editors — which ensures how your message is delivered, since you are providing the content — from the perspective of online vs. print and mail, a cost savings.

According to a recent poll conducted by the Public Relations Society of America, the top 10 elements to include in your online pressroom are:

1. Searchable archives

2. PR contacts

3. Press releases

4. Background information

5. Photographs

6. Product information/press kits

7. Crisis communications

8. Executive biographies

9. Events calendar

10. Financial information

To these, I’d add this advice:

Keep them coming back for more. 

Once they know the site exists, editors will continue to check back to see what’s happening with your company. Staying on top of the news makes them look like rock stars, so even as they are submitting key messages to the public on your company’s behalf, they will be indebted to you for making their lives a little easier.

Also, you can post more than news on this site! Post contact information, boilerplate copy, company history, white papers, presentations and advertisements. Again, this is where you can shine! 

 Provide quality content.

Post all photographic images as high-resolution files. Don’t risk jeopardizing your brand by providing journalists with low quality imagery.  

Put the whole media kit online.

The internet can flawlessly deliver press materials and imagery to the media, and it comes with a less expensive price tag, when you consider the ongoing costs of providing and archiving all press releases, company information, photography and imagery. Printing and material costs alone can outweigh the price of maintaining a media site, especially since hosting fees have decreased. Your site can provide a wealth of information, but remain simple, organized and inspiring — and all the user has to retain is one simple URL. 

Twitter feeds from Fox 9 News and the Star Tribune are fully automatic streams of almost every news story they publish. I personally don’t think most people want that kind of a stream in Twitter, but it works for some. WCCO posts breaking news stories on Twitter almost exclusively, which is similar to CNN’s Twitter feed. Minnesota Independent, The UpTake and MinnPost post to their own stories, but also maintain a news dialog with others. The Saint Paul Pioneer Press’ feed is very conversational.

There are Twitter accounts for individual reporters, journalists and other media professionals as well. The advantage for the news consumer is being able to listen to what reporters are talking about before it’s reported, but the disadvantage is hearing everything else they may be doing or talking about that’s unrelated to the news. MinnPost’s David Brauer, Minnesota Independent’s Paul Schmelzer, Pioneer Press’ Julio Ojeda-Zapata, WCCO’s Jason DeRusha and MPR’s Bob Collins frequently converse about news as it happens and before their respective organizations publish about it. MPR has a number of Twitter users including Tim Post, Julia Schrenkler, Tom Scheck and Michael Caputo. WCCO’s Terri Gruca will sometimes poll Twitter for help on stories and American Public Media’s Jon Gordon uses Twitter to ask his followers for help on “Future Tense” segments.

The media’s Twitter use runs the gamut from straight news feeds to news conversation to stalking journalists, so it isn’t easy to figure out what’s the most effective to implement Twitter for your business or organization.

Do you want to communicate with a straight feed of your press releases or do you want to engage people with conversation? Do you want to respond to people that Twitter about you or do you think subscribers will be bothered by conversations involving your organization on their mobile phones? Does it make sense to have an individual representing you or an account named after your business?

Point being, figuring out if using Twitter is right for your business or organization isn’t as simple as signing up for an account and using it, it’s finding the right Twitter “voice” and usage that augments your brand. Either way, you’re no one if you’re not on Twitter:

Nielsen Table

So, how does this fit into the way we market? We’re all working hard to figure out how to expand our marketing reach into mobile and take advantage of its constancy.

According to a Nielsen mobile study, data subscribers are willing to accept advertising in exchange for lower costs or better content. In that same vein, 32 percent said they’re open to mobile advertising if it lowers their overall bill, while 13 percent will welcome it if it boosts the quality of their mobile media offerings. 

So does this mean that I can get $1 off of my Big Mac Value Meal and also pay less for my monthly AT&T bill? I’m up for that.

Every time you turn around, people are talking about how they reconnected with a high school classmate on Facebook or caught up with an old colleague on LinkedIn. 

I’ve often wondered if users are positively or negatively impacted by what they post on social networking sites, especially when they go to interview for a new job.

A recent study completed by CareerBuilder.com found that employers have started searching these sites before interviewing candidates. In fact, a recent study found that 20 percent of companies admitted to checking out candidate’s profiles on social-networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace, and that 24 percent of employers had hired an employee based on their social-networking profile. The most shocking finding, however, is that 33 percent of employers decided not to make a job offer after reviewing a profile, primarily due to  drug or alcohol use and photographs deemed “inappropriate” or “provocative.”

So now I’m left to ponder:  How else are social networks being used and by whom?

I recently had my first child enter kindergarten, which was a tear-jerker. Before signing him up for school, I struggled with where to send him. Public, private, charter — so many great options.

In my search, I found schooldigger.com, a great website that ranks over 120,000 U.S. elementary, middle, and high schools based on test scores, district boundaries, ethnic makeup and student/teacher ratios.

Check it out!

1. Thou shalt not abuse Flash.
2. Thou shalt not hide content.
3. Thou shalt not clutter.
4. Thou shalt not overuse glassy reflections.
5. Thou shalt not name your Web 2.0 company with an unnecessary surplus or dearth of vowels.
And 5 More >>

If you’ve ever dealt with lawyers you know how important it is to have all-encompassing disclaimers on everything. Make the world safer for everyone by using these disclaimers liberally in any project. Here is just a sample:

“Important Notice to Purchasers: The entire physical universe, including this product, may one day collapse back into an infinitesimally small space. Should another universe subsequently re-emerge, the existence of this product in that universe cannot be guaranteed.”

I never thought I would be a Twitter advocate, but in recent weeks I have become a true fan. The bare bones essence of tweets keeps me tapped in just enough to know when and where Gustav was hitting land or which vice presidential candidates was just announced, without having to slog through my normal channels of info. Since I was especially interested in the protests that happened in Saint Paul during the RNC, I followed most of the action in realtime on Twitter. It was the perfect feed of updates and links to make me feel like I was actually in the middle of the action. The raw energy was exciting. And when it was over, so were the tweets. 

Interestingly enough, it seems that big biz feels the same way. Business Week’s recent article, “How Companies Use Twitter” shows how effective a 140-character press release can be.

To make your iPhone life a bit easier, Telegraph.co.uk has published their top five keyboard shortcuts and iPhone tips and tricks, including how to type alternative characters with the keypad, type in multiple languages, and take a screen grab on your iPhone. Cool.

Writing My Twitter Etiquette Article: 14 Ways to Use Twitter Politely

Every form of communication deserves an etiquette manual, if only so we can treat our fellows better, even in 140-character bites. MARGARET MASON’S 14-point guide to improved tweets.

(via the Morning News)