Just Heather

Live Blogging Session #3

Brad Ward, Blue Fuego
Based on The Long Tail by Chris Anderson

Oh, boy. I’m not sure I can do this one justice. Lots of graphs & charts. Taking notes probably won’t help me grasp it all in an hour. Clearly, I should have read the book first. Maybe if I understood The Long Tail, I could better learn how it relates to the Social Web. We shall see.


Not everyone tweets, but that won’t matter if you use Twitter API. They don’t have to find you and follow you to see the content on your page.

Even if you aren’t serving a large audience with some of your pages, it is important to get content to the people when they need it.

User Generated Content
Conversation is in the Long Tail—conversation is user generated. Comments give people a reason to come back and participate. As participation increases, so does content and engagement.

90% of the people who read your content are just lurkers. 9% will participate occasionally. 1% is brand loyal and engaged.

1% is the Gold Standard—if 1% of your fans comment/like your content, you are doing an amazing job.

Brand Generated Content
Build the Foundation—Your Website (navigation, content, etc)

“It’s not about what you think the customers want or want the customers to want. It’s about creating anassembing a collection of tools that captures the attention of people who truly care” ~Seth Godin

Choose your weapons—collection of tools: email, YouTube, forums, blog, Facebook
Facebook:
Watch backend analytics for unsubscribed fans as well as interactions
58.4% of pages open to a tab other than the wall; pages that open to the wall averaged 57.63% growth vs 23.78% growth.

Drawing in user generated content to use as on-site content (YouTube, tweet streams, etc)

Social Web Callouts: Digg, Twitter, StumbleUpon, etc buttons

Secrets of the Long Tail
PHCC: Patience (it takes time to build your brand/niche), Hustle (get involved in commenting), Content, lose Control (you don’t own the content)

Think and, not or—Facebook and MySpace, not either or

Listen to the conversation; participate in the conversation; host the conversation

Be prepared for what’s coming.

Own it. Own your presence. Watch what’s being said about you and your competitors.

Have a ‘Max Strategy’ (Take whatever you are doing and do it to the max; “…since the marginal cost of distribution is free, you might as well put things everywhere.” ~Erich Schmidt

Research and Repeat. Make sure the things you are doing are effective and that you’re serving the user in the right way.


Disclaimer: Today is my first attempt at live blogging. I needed to take notes and this seemed like the best idea, given the topic. These are my raw notes as they happen. I’ll come back later to fix obvious typos and errors, but if I decide to expand on anything I heard, it would be in a separate post. To quote my girls, “You get what you get, and you don’t throw a fit.”