by Allie Herzog

With the recent success of big brands using the “tug on your heart strings” approach in their TV ads, Nike has unveiled what many are calling its best work yet.  The Write the Future Campaign, which will air for the first time during the European Club Final on May 22^nd, is a three-minute film that takes people on an emotional and vivid journey through the moments that truly capture the spirit of winning, losing and what it takes to become a national hero.  The spot will  air across 32 countries, sharing the campaign with millions of fans around the world.

Utilizing the power of social media , Nike ran teaser ads on You Tube and around the web and has since released  the film on its Nike Football fan page, only after clicking the Like button.  It is  also available to  fans around the world online at nikefootball.com.  On May 22^nd it will roll out its global partnerships with You Tube, QQ.com and Facebook,  including a way for users  to take their personalized content and build their own Facebook campaign in an attempt to get noticed and be selected for “The Chance”, which is an elite Nike Academy football camp that is scouted by the English Premier League.

Many say that Nike is vying for the top spot in “soccer supremacy” with the current leader, Adidas.  What do you think? And what do you think of this innovative use of video and social media? Watch the film here and let us know!

Write The Future from Nalden on Vimeo.

by Devin Sugameli

Today, leading business analytics software and services company SAS released its brand new Social Media Analytics tool. The software promises to make it easier for marketers to not only process a higher volume of data from social networks but also analyze this information more thoroughly. According to SAS, it can measure individual sentiment, identify key influencers, show how these social media conversations affect business results, and offer predictive analysis to forecast the future spread of conversation, effectiveness of web-based campaigns, and likely impact on business as a result.

Its automated sentiment analysis capabilities alone are a big deal, as earlier systems of its kind came nowhere near the accuracy of a human reader scanning through and sorting individual comments (tweets, posts on Facebook, YouTube comments, etc.) as positive, negative, or neutral sentiment. But now, according to the New York Times, Katie Delahaye Paine of a communications measurement and research firm found the automated sentiment measurement function of the software to be 92 percent accurate when compared with human readers. SAS Social Media Analytics can additionally archive and analyze more than two years’ worth of conversation data from Facebook, Twitter, and other social media sites, with future conversations set to build on top of this record.

If it’s as good as it sounds, SAS Social Media Analytics represents a huge step forward in social media reporting, and a boon for the marketing industry as a whole. Now that social media is booming, larger companies are especially overwhelmed by the sheer volume of data found on social networking sites with no proper way to sort through and analyze it without dedicating a lot of time and/or money to support extra staff. I expect software like this and future developments to additionally go further in quantifying the value of social media campaigns for a brand over time, perhaps by tracking individual Facebook fans’ or Twitter followers’ changing sentiments over time. I’m excited to hear more about this technology in action. Do you currently use any conversation analysis tools to measure social media’s impact on your business? Share with us in the comments!

by Devin Sugameli

Google’s release of Buzz earlier this year prompted waves of criticism from users, including a class action complaint questioning Google’s use and sharing of gmail users’ private data when automatically creating Buzz accounts for them. The greatest complaint many users had was Google’s use of e-mail exchange data to determine other accounts for users to follow without any sort of confirmation required, essentially publicizing a list of your most frequently e-mailed contacts.

In response, Google will be rolling out a privacy settings confirmation page for all users today. Mashable reports the confirmation page as being very similar if not identical to the current “settings” page available to users, except that it will appear the first time a user clicks over to “Buzz” after the rollout (see image from Mashable below). While significant changes to Buzz’s privacy settings were already made, early Buzz adopters weren’t necessarily made aware of the updates. Today’s privacy reset confirmation page is designed to ensure that every user is absolutely aware of his or her settings, regardless of how they choose to use them.

Whether or not you support Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s contention that privacy is no longer the “social norm”, the resultant uproar following Buzz clearly demonstrated that at the least, many internet users still prefer to be asked before sharing previously private information. We hope Google’s experience with Buzz serves as a valuable lesson in transparency and respect for users’ privacy concerns not only for Google and other internet juggernauts, but for all businesses.

Calling all Facebook Fan Page experts and wanna-be experts!

This is your final reminder of 2 key events:
Top 40 Facebook Fan Pages as picked by theKbuzz

We’ve already received hundreds of nominations and reviewed hundreds more that we’ve found on our own. But with over 3 million active Fan Pages, we can’t possible find them all. That’s why we need your help! Please review the following criteria and process and let us know your favorite Fan Page(s)!  We’ll be announcing the Top 40 via a live webcast on Facebook on Wednesday, April 14th. Hope you can join us!

Top 40 Facebook Fan Pages as selected by theKbuzz: Criteria:

1) Brand Responsiveness: Look at your wall and ask yourself if your fans have anything to gain from interacting with your page. Does your wall have a good mix of posts from you/the page versus the fans, or is it just a wall of information and advertising from you? Do you respond to your fans when they ask a question, or even post a complaint? Social media is about interaction and building communities, so for your page to make our Top 40, you’ll have to employ this basic concept.
2) Interactivity: On that same note, are you actively encouraging your fans to participate? Examples of interactive pages include those that make use of fan polls, use their pages to run contests, or even that just provide incentives for customer feedback.
3) Creativity: Tell us what’s cool and unique about your page in particular! How do you use it to run contests and Facebook-specific promotions? What’s the coolest thing you’ve done using Static FBML?
4) Overall Design/Graphics: Let’s be honest – your page could be totally rocking out in terms of all of the above, but if it still looks like something you just threw up on a whim or looks exactly like your own personal profile for lack of customization, it’s just not as appealing as those with a lot of thought put into the design.

**Fan Count** While we are in no way obsessed with fan numbers, it would be remiss of us to pretend that they don’t matter at all. If you have a lot of fans, you’re probably doing something right, whether it’s a great page or just a great product! That being said, we will only take fan number counts into consideration in so much as they are proportionate to the reach of your business. In other words, we will not expect a small, local boutique to have anywhere near as many fans as a national brand – a few hundred fans for your neighborhood dentist is likely a great number! But we do expect well-known chains, franchises, and brand names alike to have an appropriately large fan base if we are to include them in our Top 40.

Here’s a link to download last year’s top 40 AND our best practices for a great Facebook Fan Page.

Interested in nominating a business? Email dave@thekbuzz.com or, better yet, post on our Facebook page or comment here to nominate! (Note: clients of theKbuzz are not eligible for inclusion, sorry guys!)

Free Webinar: Manage the Stream: Advanced Facebook Fan Pages for Business

We’re thrilled to bring back our Wednesday free webinar series, beginning with tomorrow, Wednesday, March 31st, at 3pm eastern time. Join theKbuzz as we walk you through top Facebook Fan Pages, and teach guests how to optimize your Facebook presence for your business or organization.

You’ll learn how to:

*Optimize your Profile Picture

*Create a Powerful Landing Tab

*Set up a Content Calendar

*Effectively Engage your Fans With 5 Great Tips

*Use Virtual Gifts, Polls and Quizzes to Your Advantage

*Hypertarget Your Perfect Customers using Facebook Ads

To register for this free webinar, click here.

To view any of our previous 18 webinars, check out our “For Fans Only” tab on our Facebook Fan Pages here. (Hehe, you’ll have to become a fan first to see the webinars of course).

Thanks and look forward to “seeing” you at our webinar and live facebook-cast April 14th. If you have any questions, comments or nominations, feel free to leave a commnet on this blog post!

by Devin Sugameli

Update: Yelp’s Business Outreach Manager Luther Lowe linked us to a full response by Yelp CEO Jeremy Stoppelman that does a very good job of addressing the claims discussed below. Thanks for the link, Luther!

Last week, a veterinary clinic called Cats and Dogs in Long Beach, CA filed a class action lawsuit against popular social networking and review website Yelp, alleging that Yelp acted in violation of California’s business code. According to Cats and Dogs Animal Hospital owner Gregory Perrault, it was immediately after two particularly unsavory reviews had been posted about the clinic that Yelp sales representatives began contacting him with “frequent, high-pressure calls…[promising] to manipulate Cats and Dogs’ Yelp.com listing page in exchange for Cats and Dogs purchasing an advertising subscription.” His claims are in essence the same as those presented in Kathleen Richards’s infamous East Bay Express article posted around the same time last year, which accused Yelp sales representatives of partaking in an extortion scheme aimed at procuring advertising dollars in exchange for burying poor reviews on the business’s Yelp page.

In response to these allegations, a Yelp representative gave the following statement:

Yelp provides a valuable service to millions of consumers and businesses based on our trusted content. The allegations are demonstrably false, since many businesses that advertise on Yelp have both negative and positive reviews. These businesses realize that both kinds of feedback provide authenticity and value. Running a good business is hard; filing a lawsuit is easy. While we haven’t seen the suit in question, we will dispute it aggressively.

At the least, this response is a bit more on point than the fairly weak defense Yelp’s CEO posted on the company’s blog last year, which denies any truth to these allegations in one sentence and then dedicates many more to discrediting the author and her sources. But this defense fails to acknowledge the crux of Perrault’s accusation: that a Yelp sales representative offered not to remove, but bury negative reviews so that they appear lower on the business’s page. Yelp already offers advertising businesses to highlight their favorite review at the top of their profile, and these reviews are clearly marked as “sponsor favorites” – so what’s so different about moving their least favorite review to the bottom?

The biggest difference is that numerous accounts have accused Yelp of doing just this – and if they are, then they’re lying about it. It may be true that Yelp representatives are not offering to delete negative reviews outright. To be completely fair, if Yelp representatives have been offering to simply alter the physical placement of negative reviews on a business profile, we can assume that the business’s overall star rating as well as its ratings trends and distribution charts would be entirely unaffected. All this being said, as a frequent Yelp user myself, I know that no matter a business’s overall rating I will always look carefully through the first full page of reviews and pay special attention to poor ratings. Two “A-OK” 3-star ratings plus one terrible 1-star ratings on the front page makes a much bigger impact than just two mediocre 3-star ratings alone.

Were Yelp not presented as a network essentially by and for the customers, it might not be very alarming to hear that a local business could chose to manipulate the order of review postings to its advantage. But a motto like “Real people. Real reviews.” doesn’t imply any participation on the proprietor’s part. Whether or not the alleged practice is actually in violation of California’s business code, if proven true, Yelp’s activities are deceptive at the least. What are your thoughts? If true, would this practice be easier to swallow were its existence made explicit to Yelp users, or should it be banned outright? Tell us what you think in the comments!

Today’s post is written by guest blogger and friend of theKbuzz, Ben Hovaness. We loved his take on Google Buzz’s advertising potential and so asked him to share with our readers. Let us know what you think in the comments!

Google’s launch of Buzz, a social networking service integrated into Gmail, prompted a firestorm of criticism. Some observers focused on Buzz’s insufficient privacy measures; primarily the fact that Google originally established Buzz relationships automatically, based on your e-mail history.  Others, including theKbuzz’s own Dave Kerpen, suggested that Google was late to the party, and that Facebook was going to eat its lunch via a full webmail client.

The story lost amidst these near-term positioning narratives is how Buzz is poised to change the nature of online advertising.  Let’s start by looking at Google’s revenue model.  As a Mashable post succinctly put it last year: for Google, Revenue=Amount of Time on the Web.  That describes the volume portion of Google’s ad business; maximizing the number of ads that are fed to you by hosting a variety of extremely useful web apps like Google Docs, Google Finance, and Gmail.  But ads are useless if they don’t ultimately connect buyers and sellers.

This is where quality comes in.  Google is obsessed with ad quality.  It holds AdWords optimization seminars all over the world dozens of times per month to ensure that the quality of AdWords campaigns is high.  Until now, however, there have been hard limits on the level of ad quality – that is, Google’s ability to match you with an advertiser selling something you want. In fact, up until recently, Gmail ads were informed by nothing more than the contents of the message you were currently viewing!  Ergo, the ads you see in your Gmail inbox are not informed by your past purchase history, where you like to eat, what’s on your mind, or what your friends are interested in.  These holes in Google’s knowledge make ads annoying.

Buzz is intended to plug these holes.  With its location-based features, which tie Buzz updates to a physical location, Google knows where you like to spend your time and money in the real world.  Through your stream of Buzz updates, Google knows what’s on your mind.  And the social map you’ve constructed on Buzz allows Google to see what your friends are interested in.  By providing all this data, you’re helping Google sell you ads.  But not just any ads.

At a certain point, ads stop being ads as we currently conceive of them. Imagine getting an ad that said “It’s dinner time. There’s great, cheap sushi just a few blocks away. Tomoe Sushi has 4 stars on Yelp, and Ben went there a year ago and loved it.” At something like that level of precision targeting and personalization (and it’s a fuzzy threshold, granted) ads stop being obnoxious and start being truly helpful. It’s sort of an advertising nirvana.

That is what Buzz means.  It’s not just another vector for ad revenue, or another also-ran social network. It has the potential to make a qualitative change in what online advertising is, transforming it from a spottily-informed pusher into a trusted advisor.

Ben Hovaness works for Pica9, a group of brand logistics experts specializing in marketing automation. His opinions and good looks are his own.

By Shannon Aronin

Nonprofits have been hit hard by the recession. Now many nonprofits also face the typical “donor fatigue” fundraising challenges that follow any major natural disaster such as the recent earthquakes in Haiti. All of the traditional funding streams have been hurt, and nonprofits, by and large, keep plugging along – doing more with less, to hang on till better times when they can again focus on their mission with vigor. It’s hard when you are short-staffed and under funded to consider jumping into anything new, but for nonprofits your very survival depends upon committing to building and maintaining a strong social media presence. Here’s why:

1. ALL of your donors are online. The stereotype that social media is for kids is simply false. Study after study proves it. The largest growing demographic on Facebook is women over 55. More interesting, there has recently been a big jump in social media users age 63-75! Individual micro-donations can be difficult to solicit because it takes so many more of them to make a dent in your organization’s budget, but remember, this strategy won Obama the White House. Social media can also support fundraising event participant growth (from galas to individual pledge events like walks) through the sharing of invitations or requests to friends.

Even traditional foundations’ program officers can be reached and moved by your relationship, something that can get a lot stronger when you are Facebook friends or even connected on LinkedIn. You already know that your Millennial supporters are on Facebook and Twitter, but so is everyone else and their grandmother.

2. Corporate giving is changing. More and more corporate grants are crowdsourced through competitions, like the Pepsi Refresh Project. Online cause marketing simply reaches a bigger audience than an offline event sponsorship or gift. As best practices are identified the popularity of this method of corporate philanthropy will only increase. Other brands are simply giving away money to a charity they choose as a quid pro quo for your attention to their message, for example Coke’s Live Positively Campaign rewards users for sending a Coke to their friends with a $1 donation to the Boys and Girls Clubs of America. These are only two out of many examples of this growing trend.

Look at your grant application. See where it asks what percentage of your board is giving? That is because if your own leaders don’t care enough to give, why should your donors? Competing in an online funding competition driven by social media requires good online presences to succeed for the same reason. It looks like a lack of effort and doesn’t engage your audience if you don’t include pictures, videos, links to blog posts or reviews by a client who has benefitted from your services (equivalent to letter of support), links to current research, and customized profiles. You also need to develop a community of online supporters to act as your ambassadors and mobilize their friends to vote for you. This is a unique opportunity to tell your story and back up your case for support. If you don’t care enough to showcase your good work, why should they?

3. While traditional fundraising has been down, online fundraising is up. For example, 2009 was a record breaking year for Network For Good – they processed over $100 million. The popular Facebook application Causes also reports huge growth; in 2009 they reached $20 million in donations to date. $14 million of that was given in the last 12 months, and year over year giving quadrupled. This trend is not going away. You can’t ignore it.

The field of fundraising is in a period of transition. If you have been in the third sector long enough, do you remember when all your foundation grants started moving to online applications? It was an adjustment. Remember before that when the concept of evaluation became increasingly important, particularly qualitative outcome-based over quantitative results? It was an adjustment. Now every single funding stream you have ever had is going to or already has transformed because of social media. Direct mail; events; foundation grants; corporate giving; individual gifts; memberships; government affairs and advocacy for funds; and even major gifts will never be the same again. If you aren’t doing the best job you can with social media, you aren’t doing the best job you can in fundraising. It’s time to adjust.

Does your board and staff leadership understand that social media is not just important but essential to your survival and growth? What are the biggest challenges your organization has faced in implementing social media strategies?

by Devin Sugameli

If you were watching the Grammys last night, you may have noticed a pretty heavy integration with digital media, including some of your favorite social networking sites. The “The Grammys” iPhone app gave users the chance to guess this year’s Grammy Award recipients and access trivia, fun facts, and photos from previous Grammy Awards shows while offering direct links to purchase the artists’ albums on iTunes. Meanwhile, celebrities present at the show like @kelly_clarkson kept busy tweeting from the event while The Recording Academy offered their own live updates throughout the show via both their Facebook fan page and Twitter feeds. For most of the evening, the Grammys consumed Twitter’s trending topics, with the worldwide TT being entirely Grammy-related by the end of the show.

The Recoding Academy’s work to generate non-stop buzz for this year’s awards show really impressed me. Here are my top 3 favorite steps they took to really involve the fans:

1. We’re All Fans (dot com) – The motto this year’s Grammy Awards was “We’re All Fans”, and the associated website demonstrates that by celebrating those actively professing their love for their favorite musicians and artists on social media sites. The “We’re All Fans” website pulls YouTube videos and tweets referencing one of 16 featured artists from fans all over the world to paint a mosaic of the particular celebrity in question. You additionally have the option to create your own portrait showing your “musical DNA” by uploading a picture of yourself for the mosaic and selecting your favorite artists.

2. The Bon Jovi vote – While the majority fans watching at home will never participate in the Recording Academy’s panel to determine actual Grammy award winners, this year’s Grammy Awards did give fans a chance to contribute to the show. Up to just minutes before the performance, fans were able to cast their vote for one of three Bon Jovi hit songs on CBS.com to determine which one they would play at their first ever Grammy performance. The fans of course selected the ultimate Bon Jovi classic, Livin’ On A Prayer.

3. Grammy Live! – Perhaps the coolest thing the Recording Academy provided this year was its 72-hour live broadcast featuring videos, photos, news reports, artist interviews, and updates from a few select Grammy vloggers. Grammy Live allowed fans a new insider’s look at Grammy events and backstage footage not typically shown on the television broadcast, bringing the fans even closer to the show.

But that’s not all! I also have to give celebrity props to Imogen Heap for #Twitdress. Though not provided by CBS or the Recording Academy, Imogen Heap deserves an extra special shoutout for her own efforts to bring the fans to the red carpet with her custom engineered “#twitdress”. The dress included a small screen which displayed pictures uploaded by fans while she accepted her own Grammy Award for Best Engineered Album, Non-Classical before the televised broadcast.

And finally, the biggest social media-related disappointment: despite the massive amount of iTunes and Target promotion over the course of the show, neither iTunes nor Target made any significant effort to take advantage of the real-time buzz online. @TaRgeT only tweeted a single reminder to followers to pick up their free 3-D glasses for the Michael Jackson tribute the night before, and @iTunesMusic similarly posted just one reference to the show the night before asking for fans’ predictions. Why wasn’t @iTunesMusic reminding followers about their special Grammy album during the show, or providing links to music downloads for each of the winners? Why wasn’t Target offering any specials on music CDs? It seems like a bit of a wasted opportunity to me. So congratulations to the Recording Academy! Here’s hoping future awards shows (Oscars anyone?) learn from the unique experience you’ve provided.

By Jenna Lebel

The connectivity of social media has opened the door for companies in their efforts to engage their customers, solve their problems and build overall brand favorability. Aside from reaching fans of your brand, you can use the micro-blogging site to better serve them and improve your customer relations. The benefits of using Twitter as a customer service tool are unparalleled. Through Twitter, you can resolve problems for your customers, portray your brand in a positive way and set the record straight when it’s portrayed in a negative way. Arguably the most important benefit is that it can reduce costs since customer service via Twitter likely takes less time and money than a dedicated call center does. Here are examples of 6 companies who are very effective in using Twitter for customer service. Can you think of others? Share in the comments section below.

Whole Foods (@WholeFoods)

Followers: 1,755,414

Whole Foods uses Twitter to build relationships with their customers by not only having a corporate Twitter account, but also having a Twitter account for each Whole Foods location. Through the corporate Twitter account, Whole Foods effectively addresses customer concerns by directly tweeting at the customer with the response to all problems. Whole Foods answers customer service questions and takes actions to solve customer problems. For example, in response to one customer, Whole Foods tweeted “I just called P Street for you. The chicken breasts are fresh, but you can find frozen chicken strips in the store as well.” Whole Foods encourages customer feedback and as an added bonus, they offer a $25 gift card for the tweet of the day!

JetBlue (@jetblue)

Followers: 1,612,373

JetBlue uses Twitter to promote sales and provide information about flights and additional services. That’s only one way that JetBlue uses the micro-blogging platform. They also frequently use Twitter to respond to customers’ concerns and issues. JetBlue tweets use a light and friendly in order to keep unhappy customers somewhat calmer. For example, in response to a tweet concerning a 3-hour delay, JetBlue responded “JFK is on an air traffic control ground delay program due to gusting winds. We’re working to push flights safely asap!”

Zappos (@Zappos_Service)

Followers: 3,565

Zappos uses twitter for customer service by having a separate Twitter account that directly addresses customer concerns and enables customers to communicate with employees of Zappos. There are actually more than 400 Zappos employees tweeting! Sometimes an employee will introduce himself by name so that customers know that they are communicating with a real person (example from yesterday, “Good Wednesday morning! Stephanie here if you need any assistance!”) The employees who tweet for Zappos not only answer questions posed by customers, but also actively respond to compliments and other comments

Comcast (@comcastcares)

Followers: 37,613

Comcast has a separate Twitter account run by Frank Eliason, Senior Director of Comcast National Customer Service, that directly addresses customer service. Frank includes a complete bio as well as his blog URL and email addresses to encourage customer feedback and service assitance. In response to one customer’s concern about not receiving channels, Frank responds, “Not connecting to any channel? Any error message? Have you unplugged it and plugged it back in?” Frank’s identity behind the Twitter account gives a true sense of customer care because it lets customers know that they are directly communicating with an informed Comcast employee who will address their questions.

Microsoft (@MicrosoftHelps)

Followers: 4,693

Microsoft also has a separate Twitter account dedicated to customer service. This Twitter account has four customer service employees who tweet: Andrea, Andrew, Brian, and Zahn. Monday through Friday from 7:30am to 5:30pm, these Microsoft employees tweet to customers and answer questions and concerns. In response to a question about Windows Explorer crashes, Brian responded, “Since it’s happening on 2 different Windows 7 machines, I created an MS Answers post for you. http://bit.ly/b6NWwh –BK.”

Starbucks (@starbucks)

Followers: 756,106

Starbucks’ Twitter account aims at being very interactive with its followers. The bio reads “Freshly brewed tweets from Brad at Starbucks in Seattle, WA.” Brad works to address any customer concerns, comments and compliments. When responding to a complaint about a bad cup of coffee, Brad tweets, “@FaythMichelle Sorry about that. If it isn’t perfect, we’ll remake (repour/rebrew) it.” While the Twitter account is not dedicated primarily to customer service, Brad makes it a large part of his daily tweets.