Melissa Lion: Will Condé Nast be able to pull up out of print media’s death spiral with a new revenue model? The New York Times article, Condé Nast Is Changing Its Blueprint, explores the possibility.

Sarah Biedak: Facebook has launched Facebook Questions, a Yahoo! Questions-esque service. This could be useful for seeking community feedback and research.

Darcie Meihoff: I have two favorites this week. Have you considered inviting a guest blogger to your blog? Get some helpful tips from HubsSpot’s recent post. I credit @DaveAtNorth for this one: a 14-page article from The New York Times, The Web Means The End of Forgetting, explores how your digital past is never forgotten and can haunt, or help you. Enlightening and a little frightening.

Erik Sebellin-Ross: New Forrester research shows that Foursquare doesn’t have a big enough user base to warrant its use in marketing efforts. Outside of major cities, sure . . .

Stefanie Week: Content is king, but only if it’s free. A new USC survey shows that zero percent of those polled would pay for Twitter. I think I’d have to agree.

Julie Yamamoto: Mashable reveals how to send an audio tweet.

Julie Ma: Having a case of writer’s block? Clarabela Media’s post, Nine Sites Every Freelance Writer Should Bookmark, will get anyone’s creative writing juices flowing.

Think again. There are more things you can do to optimize your content for the social web. One of the more interesting speakers at Web 2.0 in San Francisco this year was Paul Yiu of Bing. He talked about how to rethink SEO strategies to rise above the noise of social search.

Why is optimizing for social search different than the SEO strategies that have been drilled into us thus far? Well, as we all know from swimming in the social web, everything moves faster now. The popularity, and hence the ranking, of your content may depend not only on regular, old-school content updates, but also on how many people Tweet links to your content within the first *few hours* of posting.

Catch that? Hours. Indeed, Bing’s algorithms measure social references to your content as it takes its first feeble breaths on the Web.

Yiu says that in the past, we planned for useful content. That seems so simplistic in today’s environment. Now we need to plan and create share-friendly content. It’s important to seek out links from trustworthy sites, but add to that seeking links from trustworthy individuals who are influential voices in the social stream. Whereas regular updates were a popular SEO strategy in the past, today’s content managers need to be prepared to turn on a dime, especially to respond if a “mob” (positive or negative) arises.

Some food for thought the next time you’re prepping a piece of content. Before you hit the “upload” button, check out Paul Yiu’s Web 2.0 presentation on Slideshare (posted below).

Do you have a social SEO success to share?

Meet DeHood. Like its location-based relatives, DeHood encourages users to check in at places around town and offers rewards for reaching certain milestones. Where DeHood sets itself apart from the rest of the pack, however, is with one valuable feature: “reporting news.” This feature allows users to share hyper-local information—you can even include photos—that is served up to other users based on their proximity to the location where the information originated (think Twitter’s “Nearby Tweets” feature, but better organized and easier to consume).

This is a major step forward for location-based services that are constantly under fire for lacking value and substance. Sure you can use Foursquare to share where you’re heading for dinner, but as many social media critics will reply, “Who really cares?”. Now users are able to go beyond checking in at brick-and-mortar storefronts to share diverse and impactful information with others nearby. I predict Foursquare and its close competitors will integrate this feature into their products, or be lost in the dust to those that do.

So what does the reporting news feature mean for marketers and local businesses? As an example, here’s a day in the life of Pete, a local social media-savvy baker:

• At 8 a.m., Pete puts the finishing touches on a fresh batch of sticky buns. He snaps a quick photo and posts that they are ready for pickup. Julie and her mom happen to be in the neighborhood running errands two blocks away. They’ve never heard of Pete’s bakery, but see his news alert and stop by for a morning treat.
• Around noon a construction crew arrives in front of Pete’s bakery to do some street repair. The construction blocks the main street in front of Pete’s business, so he sends a news update to alert people in the neighborhood to avoid the traffic and take a side street. Sharing news like that is certainly good karma for Pete and increases engagement and goodwill with other users.
• An hour before the bakery closes, Pete posts that he has a surplus of dinner rolls and is selling them at 75% off. As his neighbors return from work, they stop by Pete’s bakery to take advantage of the great deal. Way to go, Pete!

How else do you see the reporting news feature revolutionizing location-based services? And now that there’s a location-based service that lets you report news to your neighborhood, will you be checking in?

On the other hand, the latest round of Facebook privacy concerns has led to a diaspora among tech-savvy folks. As a social media lover and an admirer and follower of many early adopters, I’m paying attention to where they’re going. What I’ve seen so far—they’re taking it to Twitter and to their own blogs. What? No new social network someone has uncovered from Canada?

So what’s next? I mentioned a diaspora, right? Well, some tech-savvy college students have gotten together and started Diaspora. It’s an open-source social network that has yet to be built, but is already funded to the tune of $173,000 through Kickstarter. (Their goal was $10,000.) I have my five bucks on this—the tech-savvy people love open-source and hey, it’s college students! Just like Facebook!

Until those guys get their Facebook-crusher built and I hear a liftoff from my Twitter feed, I’m waiting for someone to take me up on my offer to bring back Friendster. C’mon. You know you miss getting email in your Hotmail about the birthday of that college friend whose name you can’t remember five years later. Who’s with me? … Hello?

Well, that’s the only way I love it. I have a hobby of glancing at the clicks supremely influential users get, and I long ago came to see how important having a strategic growth strategy really is. After all, Twitter success isn’t about the number of followers you have, it’s how many of them interact with you. I’m shocked to see how some users, with follower counts in the hundreds of thousands or millions, get clicks in the hundreds, or low thousands. Their followers aren’t invested! What a waste of everyone’s time.
The shining paragon

On the other hand, here’s an example of an account with overwhelming influence—@cwgabriel, one of the daring duo from Penny-Arcade. Gabe announced on his website that he had created a Twitter account in February and hit 40,000 followers instantly. His bit.ly clicks routinely see tens of thousands of clicks (here’s just one example) and he is awash in @ replies. His audience adores him, and you can bet he isn’t wasting his time when he fires up Tweetdeck.

What’s heavier, a ton of bricks or a ton of feathers?

I’ve managed quite a few Twitter accounts in the past couple of years and I’m really starting to appreciate the value of an organically grown and cultivated account. The followers are genuinely interested in what you are sharing, and that makes chatting with them a pleasure. But for every account I’ve helped to carefully grow, there are many I’ve inherited that were built with an emphasis on growing followers, and damn the torpedoes. If you’re working this way…

1. Follow hundreds of people.
2. Wait a few days for them to follow you back, then un-follow everyone and start over.
3. ???
4. Profit!

…you’re doing it wrong.

OH MY GOD I DID IT WRONG! What do I do now?

Writers have a saying: “Sometimes you have to kill your babies.” I know you’ve spent a lot of time building up your following, but I’m afraid the only thing left to do is prune it back and do things properly. It will hurt…but we can make it through this! Follow these steps and you’ll be set straight:

1. Make a list of your followers who you’re certain are valid targets.
2. Go to Twitter Karma and log in with your Twitter credentials.
3. Wait for Twitter Karma to do its job. Yes, it takes a long time, depending on your number of followers, the time of day, and the whims of the gods. If it fails, start from scratch.
4. Checkmark the boxes of all the people you are sure aren’t valid targets, then DOUBLE-CHECK YOUR WORK.
5. Purge the list.

Aargh, okay I’m done—what now?

There are a ton of ways to grow your following legitimately. My favorite? Go to WeFollow, search for a tag that coincides with what you are trying to promote, and start following everyone on the list. The beauty of WeFollow is that people list themselves voluntarily—so you can bet, for example, anyone you find under Chefs cares about chefs, cooking, and food.

What about you?

What’s your preferred method of growing a legit Twitter following? Sound off in the comments!

While this marketing tactic can be a strategic, cost-effective and engaging way for brands to connect with key audiences, with so much noise and so many opportunities to win, it can be challenging to make a major impact. So how do brands break through the clutter and get noticed?

Based on our experience planning and implementing a variety of social media contests for clients, here are a few helpful tips to get you on the right path to success:

1. Decide between sweepstakes and competitions. There are pros and cons to both wide-reaching sweepstakes and narrower, skills-based competitions. When you’re deciding between the two, take a look at your goals and determine which format will best reach your objectives. Random-drawing sweepstakes, like giving away gift cards or trips, will likely result in more entry submissions, but you’ll have a more challenging time ensuring you’re reaching your target audience. Competitions that require a skills-based entry, like a video or essay, will usually result in fewer submissions but they are likely to come from your target audience because they have invested their time to participate.

2. Generate word-of-mouth. Utilizing social media tools to help your audience easily engage with you and their friends is a must. But more importantly, develop a contest theme that your audience wants to share. Think about it from the perspective of a user: Do I want to associate myself with what the contest is promoting? Including a vote, or people’s choice element, is a good way to encourage sharing and active participation from the audience.

3. Provide milestones. Create momentum and enthusiasm by implementing public stages for the contest, such as nomination periods, finalist selection and winner announcements. Not only does this cycle get people talking and taking action, it also gives you multiple touch points with your key audiences.

4. Form partnerships. When appropriate, it helps to have the support of recognizable associations because it lends a sense of credibility to your promotion. Depending on the contest structure, consider partnering with trade organizations, nonprofit associations, community groups or activists. Partnerships are also key in helping you connect with new audiences.

5. Link to a cause. In social media, we know it’s not all about you. To be authentic and genuine, make a connection between your promotion and a supportive cause. Cause-related efforts can be key in generating word-of-mouth. People like to be good scouts and they’re more than happy to share and spread the word about an effort to help their local school, nonprofit or other worthy causes.

For more tips, check out the SlideShare presentation below that we presented to our local PRSA chapter last year.

But can it really be done in today’s online culture?

To find out, I recently had the opportunity to sit down with Pat Carew, CMD’s social media video expert and a member of the agency’s film and video department, and ask some questions about what viral video means and how achievable it is as part of a larger campaign. The big question, however, was can you plan a viral video?

“By definition, something viral happens on its own,” said Carew. “The bottom line is you just don’t know if your plans will succeed. They are incredibly hard to do. While you can say you want to produce a viral video, ultimately it’s up to the audience to decide if you have succeeded.”

If you do attempt to make a go at producing a viral video to reach your audience on YouTube or Facebook, Carew suggests a few tips to include in your strategic planning:

Go with humor: Most popular videos contain sex, violence or humor. Since brands tend to stay away from the first two, humor is left as the most-used theme. But, according to Carew, humor is the most difficult to pull off. The most popular videos on YouTube, like this one, simply make people laugh. Be sure to work with professionals on this task to represent your brand well and be tasteful.

Ditch the call to action: A viral video must have a cool factor; it should not be an advertisement. That means no call to action, such as a phone number or email address. This can be the most difficult thing for marketers to pull away from, since it’s a traditional part of video advertising, but remember the goal is entertainment and eyeballs, not direct leads. This Old Spice video is a good example. Notice there’s no call to action. It just entertains while delivering its message in a humorous way.

Monitor for production trends: Stay on top of production trends by researching top videos. Whether they’re stop-frame animation, tilt photography or auto-tuning vocals, there are always interesting production trends that sweep though social media videos that can make them more eye-catching. Don’t worry about the technique being a fad, either. Your goal is to get as many positive impressions as fast as you can. As you can see from this search, auto-tuning is particularly popular right now.

Provide the unexpected: Like the Old Spice commercial, and this video that was produced for Microsoft, the best chance of a video becoming viral is when you provide something unexpected. The viewer doesn’t really know what’s going to happen next in the Old Spice commercial, and although the stunt in the Microsoft video is not real, it provides a “no way” response when viewed. Making the impossible seem real is a big trend now in the most popular online videos.

Be transparent: Above all, be honest in your video distribution. Refrain from posting a video from a personal account or trying to promote it without identifying yourself. This is risky in today’s social media world and can potentially be a big problem.

Finally, remember a video can be successful without being labeled as viral. A video with the right message, like this one produced by CMD, seen by the right people, might be more effective than a wide-reaching clip viewed by the masses.

What are your favorite online videos? Would you label them as viral? Share your thoughts and links with us, and we’ll revisit viral videos in future posts. If you have any questions about video best practices, contact Pat Carew at pcarew@cmdagency.com.

Now with more than 400 million users and 500,000 active applications that users can connect with, it’s obvious that most of us are jumping on Facebook for reasons other than finding out what our best friend from 8th grade did this past weekend.

For many companies, having a simple fan/company page is no longer enough to communicate with its target audience about client information or recent news. Such interactive entertainment applications like Farmville, Birthday Cards, iLike, Top Friends, and Mafia Wars demonstrate that millions of consumers on this social platform are interested in playing games, interacting with their friends, sharing personal interests and forming teams for a great cause—key traits that any marketer can and should easily incorporate into real-life interactive campaigns.

With 70 percent of Facebook users engaging with some of these interactive applications every month, it’s time to find out more about this strategy. Consider the following for effective application implementation:

1. Allow team building to be a factor for success: participants enjoy coming together for a greater cause and making a large difference all together. On Facebook, sharing is very much caring. Example: Best Buy has online “Best Buy Communities” that help answer customer questions and assist in finding the best price possible for products.

2. Make it easy to interact with your company: one-click downloads, photo uploads, donations, and “forward to a friend” buttons will help spread your message quickly. Example: T-Mobile Blackberry has simple “download now” buttons for wallpapers, applications, and tips of the week.

3. Have a variety of communication tools available for use: Captivate people’s attention by offering videos, photos, music, ability to make wall posts, and direct chat. Example: American Red Cross posts live video updates from natural disasters.

4. Make your page visually appealing: Colors, shapes, fonts, and placement of accomplishments on personal profiles will spark the interests of consumers. Example: Target allows fans to flip through an online magazine and mix and match new product lines.

5. Offer a “game mentality”: It always feels good to reach a set goal. Set goals for participants and they will thrive on the instant gratification. Example: Chase Community Giving encourages its Facebook fans to vote for their favorite charity to receive money, then Chase makes the donation on their behalf.

Are you a fan of any interactive applications? If so, are they missing from my list? We want to hear about what you do on Facebook and what makes you choose to participate.

I quizzed a few tech-forward CMDers to find out what’s in their bags and on their minds, especially when it comes to tech trends. The results yielded some popular apps and devices you might want to bag for yourself.

Dean McBeth, power user

It has to be good to go on two wheels in order to make it into Dean’s Chrome bike bag. Here’s the tale of the tech tape for this digital strategist. Watch out Sun Tzu.

ASUS Eee PC netbook (We hear Dean’s been doing a lot of cloud computing lately.)
HP Elite laptop
Sony camera
Microsoft wireless mouse
iPhone
Clear WiMAX dongle
Moleskine (“The original PDA”)
Iron Maiden Blu-ray Flight 666 DVD (on loan from Patrick Anderson)

If you were trapped on a desert island, what could you not live without?
A solar-powered laptop

What was the biggest trend in mobile Internet devices in 2009?
One word – DROID

What is your prediction for the mobile technology space in 2010?
It’s all about the iPad this year.

What do you wish you had in your bag?
I can’t tell you my first answer on the company blog, so how about a solar charger.

Whose bag would you like to peek in and why?
Lance Armstrong’s – he always has the latest cycling gadget.

What feature should all the folks out there be sure to get in their next mobile device purchase?
4G

What is the best app you’ve downloaded in the last 30 days?
Foursquare

Erik Sebellin-Ross, multimedia maestro

Erik’s flair for online trendspotting comes across in his social media consulting, and his Timbuk2 commuter bag holds multiple options for staying connected and storing media.

HTC TouchPro2 Windows phone
iPod Touch
Nintendo DS Lite with ScribbleNauts and Gunstar Superheroes
Microsoft Bluetooth Notebook Mouse 5000
Monster Cable Beats by Dr. Dre (translation: expensive earbuds)
SD card adapter
Moleskine
Stabilo left-handed pen
Handfuls of USB drives and game cartridges

If you were trapped on a desert island, what could you not live without?
My iPod touch

What was the biggest trend in mobile Internet devices in 2009?
Proliferation of social networking apps

What is your prediction for the mobile technology space in 2010?
Bigger screens and longer battery life – the iPad will set a new standard for interactivity on the go.

What do you wish you had in your bag?
No surprises there – an iPad

Whose bag would you like to peek in and why?
George Clooney’s – “Up in the Air” got me thinking about what people like him carry around.

What feature should all the folks out there be sure to get in their next mobile device purchase this year?
The ability to install apps – feature phones are so 1990s.

What is the best app you’ve downloaded in the last 30 days?
Eucalyptus, the e-book reader that connects to the Project Gutenberg database

Tracy Johnson, the minimalist

Associate Creative Director Tracy makes it a three-fer for Moleskine journals – the only common element that runs through all three bags in our straw poll. Count on Tracy to have insightful recommendations up her sleeve, if not in her teeny Overland bag.

iPhone
Earbuds
USB drive
Moleskine and colored pens

If you were trapped on a desert island, what could you not live without?
My iPhone

What was the biggest trend in mobile Internet devices in 2009?
More apps than ever before

What is your prediction for the mobile technology space in 2010?
More quality, less quantity – we’re past the stage of gimmicks and the next cool thing. We’re all waiting for the devices that actually make our lives easier.

What do you wish you had in your bag?
Unlimited battery supply – I have every gizmo I could want and I upgrade eagerly, but when it comes to battery life, I have to plan my use. I hate that.

Whose bag would you like to peek in and why?
The guy who writes the Museum of Modern Betas blog – he’s searching the globe for new apps, so I want to know if he actually embraces them.

What feature should all the folks out there be sure to get in their next mobile device purchase this year?
Touch-screen capability

What is the best app you’ve downloaded in the last 30 days?
Momento – it aggregates your social media posts into a daily journal you can add content to.

So, what’s in your bag?