IanSchafer.com

Social Media for Social Good at the Ad Council.

I spoke today at the Ad Council's Partner Conference, where many of the causes the Ad Council supports get together to discuss the burning issues around raising awareness of their very important initiatives.

At this event, the focus was squarely, 100% on social media, and understandably so.

In doing my part to set the table for the day's discussion, I gave the following presentation where I talked about some significant research findings, best practices, and case studies including our recent major effort with the Ad Council, SHARE YOUR VOICE.

Enjoy!

Social Media for Social Good

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: social media)

Watch My Panel on The Self-Serve Revolution @ MIXX.

Curious as to what I said on my panel on the future of self-service and automation in online media?

Consider your curiosity a think of the past. This is actually an interesting topic, that could make for an interesting debate -- not just a panel.

Here's the panel, in it's entirety. Agree with my points? Disagree? Let me know in the comments...

iMedia Connection on Me on Deep Focus on Social Media.

Take a moment to read an interview I did with iMedia Connection on Deep Focus, social media, innovation, and killer creative.

Here's a brief excerpt:

Harris: Building a community of fans is an important step for these entertainment campaigns, and is gaining ground in other business sectors. It's a natural fit to leverage existing communities that support a particular brand, but what suggestions do you have for starting from scratch?

Schafer: When building a community from scratch, perhaps the most important thing you can do involves asking "why." For example, you should be able to answer the basic question of "why are you building this community in the first place?" You should have a clear understanding of the goals you aim to achieve by connecting to your consumers -- and connecting them to each other. These could very well be different than your typical business goals. Rather, they may be goals that don't result directly in attributable sales but, rather, in the alignment of a brand with, and focus of a community on, a particular cause or lifestyle inherent to the brand.

The other "why" question that should be asked is "why would I join this community?" What does the consumer stand to gain by being an active (or even a passive) member of this community? What appropriate incentives exist for participants? You can prepare for this question by doing the appropriate market research before embarking on a social media "hunch."

From a technology and strategy perspective, it is also important to embark upon a discovery process to identify your development and distribution partners, who may very well be one in the same. Should you roll-your-own social network? Should you build on a modular platform? Should you build a community within an already existing social networking property? An understanding of your goals, your consumers and their behaviors and of your brand's personality will make finding the answers to these questions an easier task.

Read the whole shabang by clicking here.

Video of My Panel at the Conversational Marketing Summit.

Missed me at Federated Media's Conversational Marketing Summit?

Check out video of my panel here.

Video of the rest of the panels can be seen here.

Engage & Entertain: The Deep Focus/Yahoo! Study.

You asked for it, you got it.

As Multichannel News put it:

Viewers who go online to find out about new TV shows before they premiere are more likely to watch them regularly, and to even convince their friends to watch those programs, according to a study by Yahoo and Deep Focus.

The “Engage and Entertain” study also found that there’s a direct correlation between advertising for a show–whether on TV, through a portal or billboards–and online searches regarding a program. When asked what prompted respondents to go online to learn more about a TV show, 55% said because they “saw or heard an advertisement,” according to the study.

The research was conducted by Yahoo and Deep Focus to help TV studios figure out the best way to engage consumers online, even during the traditionally slow summer TV season.

The takeaway is that TV studios should use the Internet early on to build loyalty to new shows.

And, according to the study, TV studios should be engaging with consumers even before the new TV season begins. For example, viewers who seek out information on a show online before its actual TV premiere convince an average of 5.1 of their friends to watch that show, the survey found. The study also determined that people who seek information online about new shows before they debut are 46% more likely to watch the show regularly.

Below are the viewable, zoomable, printable, and shareable topline findings of The Deep Focus/Yahoo! Study, Engage & Entertain.

Turn TV Shows Into Brands - Upload a Document to Scribd

Read this document on Scribd: Turn TV Shows Into Brands

Online Engagement For TV Shows By Genre - Upload a Document to Scribd

Read this document on Scribd: Online Engagement For TV Shows By Genre

If you've got questions, let me have it.

Twitter This: Me @ OMMA Social on Monday, June 23rd.

I'll be performing live at OMMA Social at 4:15pm on Monday, June 23rd at the Yale Club (getting back at them for not accepting my application), speaking on a panel devoted to social media metrics.

I've sat on the sidelines for this discussion way too long. Seen too many panels on social media metrics that didn't address them at all. I'm hoping to do all I can to change that with this panel.

Here are the lascivious details:

4:15pm: Valuable by Any Measure: Metrics that Mean Something in Social Media

A soft drink advertiser boasts about the brand’s thousands of Facebook fans; a car advertiser is thrilled that its new car model is the talk of the blogosphere. Certainly this interest in their brands is better than the alternative, but what does it all mean? The search for metrics that mean something in social media.


Moderator: Jodi McDermott, Director of Product Management for Widgets, Clearspring Technologies

Heidi Browning, SVP, Client Solutions, MySpace

Blake Cahill, SVP Marketing, Visible Technologies

Ian Schafer, CEO, Deep Focus

Adam Weinroth, Director of Product Marketing, Pluck Corp

Stephanie Pike, Strategic Program Manager for Digital Marketing, Circuitcity.com

Be there, and be part of the solution.

And take the discussion to Twitter, people.

Reminder: Live @ WidgetWebExpo on Monday 6/16.

I'll be on what looks to be a great panel @ WidgetWebExpo on Monday, 6/16 in my old stomping grounds of Brooklyn, NY.

Here's the info:

3.15 - 3.45:

Micro Interactions: Can portable experiences go mainstream? (Panel)

Whether we call them widgets, modules, desktop applications or something else, we are increasingly seeing more interactions happen that are distributed, portable and yes—small. From rich interactive banners, to do-it-yourself Web widgets—the internet is more fragmented than ever before. Thanks to search engines, we know that your home page is less relevant than it used to be. And advanced interactions in small places like Apple’s iPhone have shown us that meaningful interactions can happen in small, portable chunks. The question is—will this all go mainstream? Join our panel of experts as we discuss how micro interactions may or may not change our digital behavior.

Chair: David Armano, VP, Critical Mass

David Malouf, Interaction Designer, Motorola Enterprise Mobility

Matt Dickman, Vice President, Digital Marketing, Fleishman-Hillard

Steve Rubel, SVP, Director of Insights, Edelman Digital

Ian Schafer, CEO and Founder, Deep Focus

Stephanie Agresta, InternetGeekGirl.com

I plan on sharing some fairly strong opinions. See you there!

Thoughts on Twitter/FriendFeed/Plurk/Etc. Business Models.

I trust that Ev & Biz are well on their way towards taking Twitter to an even higher level. And I'm sure they don't need my help in getting it there.

But I was just thinking about this last night, and figured I'd just put it out there.

What if Twitter, or any other messaging service, remained free for personal use, but charged for professional use? And by professional use, I mean customer service, messaging, product or news updates, or anything else.

What if in order for a company to use Twitter, Plurk, Pownce, FriendFeed, for any of the above purposes, they needed to pay a monthly access fee?

That fee would include:

** Unlimited messgaing (of course).


** More robust and customizable profile pages.


** A dashboard to manage followers and those the company follows.


** A tweet trend tracker that does an enterprise-level job of identifying, well, trends.


** An analysis tool that can call attention to customer service-related issues (flagging them as more urgent).


** A database that facilitates CRM with followers.


** Tech support for plugging its API into its already-existing CRM and marketing initiatives (for example, I'd love to get my Amex updates like 'payment due' via direct messages on Twitter).

I'm sure there are a whole bunch of ways to bring benefits to using these messaging services worth paying for -- especially for corporations searching for a bit of humanity in dealing with their consumers.

Charging individual power users is interesting, but you really don't want to dissuade them from becoming power users. Power users are integral for making these services get bigger.

Obviously, the only way this would work is if the service had some sort of critical mass, or at least one amongst consumers that these companies would find 'influential'.

But again, this is all just food for thought...do you have any?

Was Anyone Thinking Ahead About the 2008 NBA Draft Lottery?

I was engulfed in work tonight, and realized that I missed a night I've been waiting for for a while -- the 2008 NBA Draft Lottery. As a Knicks fan, it's all I had to look forward to this season.

11:43pm: Where did I go first? ESPN.com. And no list of the lottery results on the homepage. Ah, but there was a small link to the story about the draft. But no list of the results. Argh!

Google Search on 'nba draft lottery results'? Turned up nothing. Nothing!

So then I go to NBA.com.

A link to a video recapping the top three picks. But I WANT A LIST! It was only until I got down to near the bottom of the site (which I only realized existed by doing a Firefox 'find text' function) that there was a link to the results.

11:51pm: Going back to those Google results made me realize that I missed the fact that Yahoo's coverage of the results were, in fact, indexed -- but it was the very last result on the first page of results.

This was way too hard to find. So maybe I can help everyone by just posting the list here. Maybe I'll linkbait have better luck getting indexed by Google than NBA.com did:

Results of the 2008 NBA Draft Lottery

SECAUCUS, NJ, May 20 – Following are the results from the 2008 NBA Draft Lottery, which was conducted Tuesday at NBA TV’s studio in Secaucus, New Jersey. The Chicago Bulls, who had a 1.7 percent chance of obtaining the first selection, will have the first overall pick in the 2008 NBA Draft, which will be held in New York City at The WaMu Theater at Madison Square Garden on Thursday, June 26, 2008.

1. Chicago

2. Miami

3. Minnesota

4. Seattle

5. Memphis

6. New York

7. LA Clippers

8. Milwaukee

9. Charlotte

10. New Jersey

11. Indiana

12. Sacramento

13. Portland

14. Golden State

Following is the order for the remainder of the 2008 NBA Draft:

15. Atlanta (To Phoenix)

16. Philadelphia

17. Toronto

18. Washington

19. Cleveland

20. Denver

21. Dallas (To New Jersey)

22. Orlando

23. Utah

24. Phoenix (To Seattle)

25. Houston

26. San Antonio

27. New Orleans

28. LA Lakers (To Memphis)

29. Detroit

30. Boston

2008 Second Round Draft Choice Order:

31. Miami (To Minnesota via Boston)

32. Seattle

33. Memphis (To Portland)

34. Minnesota*

35. LA Clippers

36. New York (To Portland)

37. Milwaukee

38. Charlotte

39. Chicago

40. New Jersey

41. Indiana

42. Atlanta (To Sacramento)

43. Sacramento

44. Philadelphia (To Utah)

45. Toronto (To San Antonio)

46. Portland (To Seattle via Boston)

47. Washington

48. Cleveland (To Phoenix)

49. Golden State

50. Denver (To Seattle)

51. Dallas

52. Orlando (To Miami)

53. Utah

54. Houston

55. Phoenix (To Portland via Indiana)

56. New Orleans (To Seattle via Houston)

57. San Antonio

58. LA Lakers

59. Detroit

60. Boston

* Pick may be conveyed to Detroit.

Twitter Continues to Break News and Sue Simmons WTF Moments.

Twitter seems to be a pretty good source of unverified citizen journalism.

First it was the earthquake in China (beating the USGS by about 3 minutes, so that's debatable).

And now it's Sue Simmons on WNBC's nightly local NY newscast dropping the F-Bomb on live television, as reported by @tombiro.

Publishing has never been so instant.

Here's Sue's WTF moment: