Talk About Making The Listeners Feel Loved And In Control

Props to national talk host Rusty Humphries for an excellent invite he posted to his friends on Facebook not long ago.
This is a terriffic example of how to engage with your listeners. Bravo!

Click on the picture to check out Rusty's site.

How Social Is Your Brand?

There's a company called Vitrue . They have products that help brands become more "social" -- more on that in part 2 of this post.

Upon reading a PR story on this company I was intrigued enough to go to their web site to learn more. I guess their PR worked--at least on me! Once at the site they had a tool called the "social media index" that allows you to compare two brands and see who is more social. They explained how it works this way:

The Vitrue SMI report is an easy to understand measurement of your brand's online conversations. Based on our patent-pending technology, index scores are comprised of various online conversations from status updates to multi-dimensional video sites. The Vitrue SMI score provides a snapshot in time to help make sense of the overwhelming amount of measurable data.

We derive the Vitrue SMI by reviewing popular social media sites. We update the Vitrue SMI once daily. Our sample set represents different dimensions of social interactivity:

• Social Networking - general sharing
• Video Sharing - high engagement of viewing time and authenticity of dimension
• Status Updates - aka Micro-Blogs; key influencers who chatter and actively push content
• Photo Sharing - social meta data
• Blogs - general blogsphere, commentary mentions

The index numbers are not intended to be used in absolute terms; rather, they provide a numerical basis to compare the social media prominence of two or more terms. We frequently update the algorithm based on changes in usage patterns, overall traffic and social network results.

I gave it test run--thought it would be fun to test two sets of rivals...Bill O'Reilly vs. Keith Olbermann and the NY Yankees vs. the Boston Red Sox. Here's how they did:

































Interesting snapshot. It would be fascinating to track over time.

Part 2:

So here's the scoop on this companies new product as outlined on Media Bistro's WebNewser this morning:

Vitrue SRM Debuts

Social-marketing company Vitrue debuted its Vitrue SRM (Social Relationship Manager), which it describes as a Web-based application suite that enables brands to manage, schedule and automatically publish across Facebook and Twitter. The Vitrue SRM also offers measurement and real-time analytics.

Vitrue said Vitrue SRM consists of three components: Social Publisher, which lets marketers fully customize and format their wall posts, including images, branded URLs and additional content blocks; Social Planner, enabling marketers to plan, create and execute customer communications months in advance; and Social Insights, which delivers real-time, rich analytics to monitor brand communication.

Seems like a reasonably useful product. I particularly like the real-time analytic capabilities. A suite like this might very well be an answer for making our social networking activities less tactical and more strategic.