Archive of thenextweb.com
Written on 18th September 2008
3 COMMENTS 
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
When I visited Next08 in Hamburg earlier this year, I went to see Nate Elliot from JupiterResearch talking about social media marketing. He wasn’t too optimistic. There are two major problems in this field. The first one is clear, marketers just don’t get the new technologies and the fundamental changes in the way people interact with brands. Although they spend 30,000 dollars on a campaign, half of the branded social network pages only have 1,000 friends or less. Secondly, more than 75 percent of the marketers doesn’t measure whether their campaigns were successfully engaging the audience. And only 15 percent measures brand metrics like ‘awareness’ and ‘attention’.
To solve problems like these, people like Michael Lazerow from BuddyMedia come in. His company helps companies to connect with users of social media. “Every brand needs a friend”, is his mantra. Lazerow shared his knowledge during a rather interesting session at Web 2.0 Expo NY. I’ve summarized some of his lessons in four successful social media campaigns he helped set up. Read between the lines and go find some friends for your brand!
1. FedEx Customize Package campaign
It’s not possible to send attachments on Facebook. Lazerow saw an opportunity here for FedEx and developed an app with which Facebook users could send photos, links, and videos in a customizable FedEx package. This showed up in the newsfeed and users could check their package in the inox. Lazerow purposefully kept the app that simple as he has seen that the most expensive and complicated apps don’t become a success.
- 100,000 installs in 72 hours
- More than 300000 active users in six days
- Most active Facebook app for three days
- The uninstall rate was less than 10 percent
- People from over 200 different countries have sent a package.
2. NewBalance RUN-dezvous
When NewBalance wanted to promote a new line of shoes, Lazerow developed a game that revolved around challenges. Users could play the simple running game (avoid obstacles and stuff like that) and earn Aceback points. These Acebacks could be redeemed for actual shoes. The idea behind the campaign was: “spend some time with us, have fun, and get the product for free.
Lazerow socialized the campaign by making challenges an important part of the game. Which Facebook friend is the best runner?
- 250,000 active users
- 86% came back at least once
- 57% came back nine times or more
- Over 1 million Acebacks earned by consumers playing the game
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Written on 17th September 2008
1 COMMENT
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
Amazee, the Switzerland-based collaboration service, has launched today. Co-founder Dania Gerhardt gave me a demo under a cup of coffee at the Web 2.0 Expo yesterday morning. Ever since then I’ve been suffering under an embargo, but now the time is here to get the word out.
Swiss conference tigers
Dania Gerhardt
Every conference I’ve attended since the last Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco has been enriched with the pleasure of meeting the Amazee power couple Gregory and Dania Gerhardt. Somehow, they manage to win tickets for gigs like Supernova, Next08, and both Web 2.0 Expo editions. Maybe it’s because they’re great company, good on stage, and real connectors.
Chihuahua owners for Tibet
Anyhow, between all the conferences, they’ve managed to build quite an interesting start-up. Dania and Gregory have created a platform for people to achieve goals and project together. Subjects can be “Lose fifty pounds in two months” or “Chihuahua owners for Tibet”. You meet people on Amazee not because you already know them or love the same band, no, you meet them because you have the same plans in life. That alone is a challenging starting point for a start-up. But wait, there’s more.
Drupal and Ajax
Drupal-based Amazee is a rather sophisticated site. Personal and project profiles, todo’s, schedule’s, a project magazine – all can be easily edited with the Ajax-based control panels. Although I can imagine that the control panel can be quite overwhelming for first time users. Especially the ones that are less web-savvy. And that’s exactly Amazee’s target group.
Cold hard cash
“We’re not aiming for the geeks”, Dania told me. She rather attracts “ordinary people”. Anybody who has a certain ideal can find co-workers on her community. Or sponsors. Although Amazee has a bit of sixties flavor surrounding it, the service can also help you to get some cold hard case to make your dreams come true. Dania showed me tree ways:
- Financial Sponsorship – Projects can request and accept direct donations via PayPal.
- Non-Financial Sponsoring – Projects can request help in the form of physical activities and supplies.
- Banner Advertising – Projects can sell banner ad space on their home pages and the revenues are shared between the project and Amazee. Sponsors can instantly upload their banner.
That’s what I love about this service. Dania and Gregory have created a world for Internet users to help each other making their dreams and ideals come true. Not just with moral support, but also with some euros. A good combination, if you’d ask me. The city of Chicago agrees with me, as Amazee has been signed up to provide the social platform which will back Chicago’s attempt to get the 2016 Olympic games to the Windy city.
Respect the web presence
The only thing I’m missing on Amazee so far is the integration with other services. I can’t import my project calendars in iCal, can’t automatically load my Flickr photos into the photo gallery, and can’t add any events to Upcoming, to name a few. When I talked to Gregory about this, he assured me they’re working on that, but that it’s also very hard for them to provide it. Sounds like this Swiss start-up needs another funding round for some extra developers. It will definitely be worth the investment.
Written on 17th September 2008
6 COMMENTS
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
“If there is one problem that plagues all web applications, it’s the problem of getting people to sign-up.” If a Web 2.0 Expo NYC seminar is introduced with such a sentence, a blogger should know its place. Maybe he thinks other things are more interesting, like hanging around with start-ups. But when he reads about a problem the whole entrepreneurial part of his readership faces, he knows what to do. Go to the seminar, listen to user interface designer Joshua Porter how to fix it, and write about it on your blog.
It’s not (all) about filling in forms
Porter kicked off with discussing some sign-up forms and shared some lessons on how to improve them. Like explaining why people should fill in specific text-fields and resisting the temptation of gaining info that’s only relevant for advertisers. He also addressed a problem you might recognize: the captcha’s which keep becoming increasingly difficult. Porter: “In a few months, it will be a square box with just colors and you’ll have to make the letters up”.
But then Porter quickly switched to the REAL problem. As it’s not about the simplicity of signing up, because – Porter quoted the inventor of the mouse – “if ease of use were the only requirement, we would all be riding tricycles.”.
Are people motivated enough to care?
The real problem is best explained as a hurdle between “interested” and “signing up”. Porter: “You need to convince people your start-up is worth their time, energy, and change of their behavior”. That requires another way of thinking. Porter addressed an article by John T. Goodville, which states that people tend to overvalue the software they’re currently using, software makers tend to overvalue the software they offer. “Why would I use a better calendar tool if I’m already happy with iCal?”, Porter said. People tend to love stuff they already own more.
Three types of visitors
Therefore, start-ups should adopt another mindset, namely the good old “what’s in it for the customer”. If you want people to sign up, design your page for three different visitor types:
- I know I want to sign-up – You don’t have to convince these visitors anymore, so focus on usability
- I want to make sure this is for me – Offer these visitors a very simple explanation of your tool
- I’m skeptical – Watch out for this one, he or she will need more and deeper information
Strategies to design the perfect sign-up page
Porter continued with elaborating on three strategies that will help you to design the best sign-up page possible.
1. Immediate engagement!
Show visitors the experience before they sign up. Fine examples of this are Geni and Netvibes. Signing up on Geni equals filling in the first branch of your family tree and when visiting Netvibes for the first time, you can immediately start building your start page. Want to save it for later? Sign up please.
2. Provide levels of description
To address the needs of the tree different types of visitors, build a start page that contains different levels of information. Like Freshbooks did on their “almost perfect” welcoming page.
- Short description
- Bam! Sign up instantly
- A somehwat more elaborate description
- Dig in even deeper
3. Leverage social influence
Show your first-time visitors that other people love you. So put up some testimonials and press reviews and, when possible, show a graph of user activity. If it works for other people, the service might also work for themselves.
Basecamp has around 90 testimonials on their site, some of which are depicted on the frontpage. Porter: “After reading the fifteenth testimonial it’s really hard to get away with not being positive about it”.
Jaiku shows a cool graph of their users all around the world. When you visit this page for the first time, you instantly get an idea of how active the community is:
Twitter has a cool way of showing press reviews. They depict them as if they were written as tweets:
Do it Dr. Phil style
The inspiration for Porter’s presentation came from his book Designing for the Social Web. So you might want to buy that if you liked this post.
The Next Web Blog is closely associated with The Next Web Conference which is held annually in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. At this event speakers from all over the world come together to talk about, and show off, the future of the Web. (More info 
