Customer Magnetism is starting a new blog feature called Customer Magnetism Review. We have put together a series for you this week reviewing various events, websites and products that you might want to check out – or not. After this week, it will become a monthly feature.
Imagine sinking $2 million into your website and unveiling it with great fanfare, only to have it crash shortly after you bring it online. That’s what happened to France two days ago with www.France.fr. How embarrassing. An apology in 5 different languages still appears in place of its home page. An explanation in French blames the disaster on a server configuration problem and thanks would-be visitors for their patience.
France.fr was to have been a showpiece to attract businesses and vacationing visitors to the country and create positive publicity. It had been strongly promoted for quite some time. The unveiling of the website came on Bastille Day, July 14th, the ultimate French holiday.
Apparently, the publicity worked a little too well. Its meta description viewable on the search results page declares that France.fr was a “victim of its own success.” There is no official estimate for when the site will be back up.
France is one of the last European nations to create its own website, instead relying for years on private commerce and the French Tourist office for promotion. Many thought the much ballyhooed product would be an example of the brightest and the best of websites to bolster the country’s image as seen by the rest of the world – something worth waiting for. I guess we are going to have to wait a little longer to be wowed by their technology.
Customer Magnetism is starting a new blog feature called Customer Magnetism Review. We have put together a series for you this week reviewing various events, websites and products that you might want to check out – or not. After this week, it will become a monthly feature.
As we approach the end of our first week in the new Customer Magnetism office, it seems only appropriate to make it the latest subject of our Customer Magnetism Review. While some things have stayed the same, we made many changes for our new office. We are still based in Virginia Beach and are located in the same commerce park just a block away from our old building. We still offer search engine marketing services nationwide. Our new office is a little bit bigger and a little bit brighter, with fewer walls and more open space.
The move has been an exciting event for everyone that works here. An informal survey of CM staff brought up a few of the most popular changes.
Décor
The most obvious change has been an upgrade in décor. More modern furniture with larger desks and open workstations gives the whole office a more spacious look. Some of our old furniture did not come with us, and it gives a fresh new atmosphere.
Togetherness
Rather than being split into three separate office areas, the CM family is now in one suite. There is already a stronger feeling of collaboration and communication among the different departments, which will help us serve our clients even better.
Fish
The newest addition to the Customer Magnetism team is Edward Fireball, a dark red betta fish. He now lives at our reception desk and is the hottest topic of the day. A great conversation piece, he has spirit and seems to enjoy his new environment, just like the rest of us.
Customer Magnetism is starting a new blog feature called Customer Magnetism Review. We have put together a series for you this week reviewing various events, websites and products that you might want to check out – or not. After this week, it will become a monthly feature.
Viral marketing. We hear this phrase all the time. I’ll be honest – a lot of the time, I don’t know how viral a lot of marketing strategies really become, as much as just well-distributed. Truly viral videos aren’t selling anything, unless you’d say that “David after Dentist” was advertising say . . . laughing gas. However, every once in a while, those well-distributed marketing bits also become viral, or even meme worthy. And I think we’re looking at one this week.
If you’ve ever seen one of those Old Spice commercials on TV or in the movie theatre, you’ve probably laughed at the Old Spice Man (who is actually named Isaiah Mustafa). It’s hard not to when someone is so inexorably, straight-facedly masculine. Nevertheless, for me, that’s where it ended. I saw the commercial, laughed, and then went on to watch another half hour of commercials before the previews ever even started. Until yesterday.
Yesterday, Old Spice was a Promoted Trending Topic on Twitter, which if you haven’t noticed, such a thing exists now. I didn’t give it a second notice at that point because what do I care about Trending Topics that are paid and promoted to that status? I did start caring when I began to see people I was following RTing these video responses to tweets from @oldspice. People write to him on Facebook or Twitter, and he (or Old Spice, whichever) will respond to some by creating a very special, possibly awkward, definitely hilarious video specifically for them.
Today, everyone on Twitter seems to be trying to get a video from the Old Spice guy. In order to get one, they have to publicly write to him though, showing their friends that they’re writing to him, which shows everyone that they could try for one as well. The cycle continues.
Now I’m not promoting Old Spice, and I have no use for Old Spice, and I don’t even want “my man” to “smell like the Old Spice man” as the commercials say – but as an example of truly viral marketing: I approve.
Customer Magnetism is starting a new blog feature called Customer Magnetism Review. We have put together a series for you this week reviewing various events, websites and products that you might want to check out – or not. After this week, it will become a monthly feature.
The U.K.’s Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre (CEOP) has apparently been doing a victory dance since yesterday when Facebook agreed to work with CEOP by including their abuse reporting application into its system. Facebook will allegedly market the application to younger users (or users with younger birthdays listed – no help for the kids who sign up with a fake birth date), but it’s not something anyone will see as a default anywhere around the world anytime soon.
Originally, Facebook wasn’t interested in integrating anything of the sort, claiming that their privacy and security settings would be sufficient. And in the end, it seems that they still believe the same. While they agreed to launch CEOP’s “panic button,” Facebook doesn’t advertise as any sort of “panic button” really, but rather an optional application to help inform users about safety. Why would they want to promote the idea of necessary panic on their network anyway?
In response to the latest buzz about privacy issues, Facebook has updated their Safety Center in attempts to educate users on their safety with information targeted at both parents and teens. More than any real victory for internet safety advocates out there, this appears to be just another move by Facebook to settle people’s fears and lull them into a sense of internet security.
Do you think Facebook is responsible for the safety of its users, or should the users take their safety into their own hands? (Or are you unconcerned?)
Customer Magnetism is starting a new blog feature called Customer Magnetism Review. We have put together a series for you this week reviewing various events, websites and products that you might want to check out – or not. After this week, it will become a monthly feature.
Yesterday’s final game between Spain and the Netherlands brought the FIFA World Cup 2010 to a dramatic close, with Spain winning it all.
One of the most entertaining side stories that stemmed from this World Cup is the attention paid to Oracle Paul the Octopus, who correctly predicted the outcome for every match played by Germany in the FIFA World Cup 2010, plus the final match between Spain and the Netherlands.
Before each match, the 3-year-old octopus, who currently lives at Sea Life Centre in Oberhausen, Germany, was presented with two boxes in his water tank, each containing a mussel. One box was draped in the German flag; the other in the opposing country’s flag. To make his prediction, Paul the Octopus opened the box of his choice with his tentacles and devoured his snack.
This is nothing new for him, but it is for many fans worldwide. The eye-opening conclusion to his World Cup run came after Germany lost to Spain in the semi-finals. While many thought it would be a difficult choice for him to make without the familiar flag of Germany in the mix, he still chose the right team to win.
Paul the Octopus has long been touted by Germans to be an accurate predictor of German soccer games. It wasn’t until the World Cup that he became a worldwide sensation, taking over the Internet with great popularity. He is a regular trending topic on social media sites like Twitter. He has his own entry in Wikipedia and has been the topic of countless blogs, even those not usually related to sports.
The YouTube video of Paul’s final match choice received 1.3 million views in three days, despite the fact that the audio is in Spanish. Yahoo News yielded more than 2,000 comments to the article’s about his record in just a few hours. There are nearly 40,000 entries for him on the most popular search engine. He is an SEO magnet.
In fact, Paul the Octopus is now the center of worldwide attention in a variety of news stories, including the Italians’ claim that he was born in Italian waters, not in England, and the Netherlands’ fans comments that he may soon become an entrée on someone’s dinner table.
While we may never know what drives Paul the Octopus to make his game picks, I have to say he is by far the most entertaining Internet sensation of this World Cup.
All cultures have an origin story. Traditionally, these sorts of things were passed down through the oral tradition. Well, we’ve got smart phones now and all sorts of screens that do a lot of storytelling for us, and as a digital community, as a generation immersed in all that is online – here’s a new story for a new culture.
Did you laugh at the end? I did, and I’m not sure yet if that was the effect the trailer was going for. The comments on the YouTube video of this trailer are great, and probably cover at least some reaction you’re having right now, whether it’s “is this real life?” or “guess they ran out of Disney rides to make movies out of – coming soon. . .Wikipedia: The Movie.”
Either way, this movie is going to cause a lot of buzz. If you go to the movie’s website you’ll see a “Recommend” button fashioned as a Facebook “like” button, and like any like button, click that and it’ll automatically post that you recommend this movie on your Facebook wall. The implications for the social media marketing posibilities for the movie are a little crazy to think about. I just posted on Facebook that I recommend this movie about Facebook. Woah, right?
oh noes! i was on Facebook at work!
As faux-epic as the trailer might make it seem at the moment, the truth is that a ton of people are so curious about the rise of such a huge social network (and let’s face it, a huge part in the way we communicate these days) that the interest is already there. We’re all wondering at least a little bit about how Zuckerburg raised this empire from his dorm room with only the help of a few friends. Sure, investors joined pretty early on, but they didn’t even have their first office until the summer of 2004, a summer after I learned about the website from a friend at Duke, and the summer Facebook spread to Virginia Tech and countless other colleges. So however evil, useless, or time-wasting you think Facebook might be, the business aspect of it, and the mere fact that it has reached as many people as it has is a little epic.
And of course, this is great timing. With all the lawsuits and privacy issues and Facebook news daily, the social network is fresh in people’s minds even if they don’t use it, which is exactly what the makers of The Social Network are counting on.
The BP oil spill has spurred many advancements in new technology over the past few months. The latest comes in the form of near-real-time site mapping for those affected by the disaster in the Gulf of Mexico. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has launched GeoPlatform.gov to help people keep track of the current state of the spill.
Not only does it map the response of ships and researchers to the oil spill, it also shows current trajectories of the oil and which fishery areas are closed. One look at the map will tell nearby residents and those interested in the latest updates exactly what is happening.
NOAA has developed the website with help from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the US Coast Guard and the Department of the Interior in hopes that any information available can be quickly relayed to anyone who needs it. It even comes with a video tutorial to help people understand how to use the site and what the information means in the interactive map.
While there is no shortage of information available on the Internet regarding the oil spill, GeoPlatform.gov is using every available resource to compile near-real-time information in an effort to help people stay on top of the efforts and see how it affects their daily lives and the environment in general. It includes public safety infrastructure, response planning, current weather conditions and upcoming weather forecasts.
Imagine sinking $2 million into your website and unveiling it with great fanfare, only to have it crash shortly after you bring it online. That’s what happened to France two days ago with www.France.fr. How embarrassing. An apology in 5 different languages still appears in place of its home page. An explanation in French blames the disaster on a server configuration problem and thanks would-be visitors for their patience.
old furniture did not come with us, and it gives a fresh new atmosphere.
The BP oil spill has spurred many advancements in new technology over the past few months. The latest comes in the form of near-real-time site mapping for those affected by the disaster in the Gulf of Mexico. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has launched GeoPlatform.gov to help people keep track of the current state of the spill.