From the monthly archives:

January 2010

Who Is Watching Our Waggle?

by Jason Falls · January 29, 2010

Karl von Frisch spent years studying honey bees. He was fascinated with how bees found sources of pollen and communicated that back to their fellow hive mates. As he studied, he discovered the bees that actually find the pollen do not return to lead others to it. Instead, they perform intricate dances within the hive that vary depending upon a variety of factors.

When food is within a certain distance of the hive, the dance is circular. When food is farther, the dance is a sort of figure eight with what he called a “waggle” in the middle. The speed of the dance, he discovered, had to do with a more specific distance to the food source. The dance included a straight movement to indicate direction of the food as well.

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42 comments

How Well Do You Know Your Audience?

by Jason Falls · January 27, 2010

I worked with a major consumer product goods company once that insisted that a particular product it offered was to be marketed to men. New to the fold and not afraid to ask the obvious question, I said, “Why not women?”

All the market research in the world told them women didn’t like their product. All my personal experience told me they never asked an important audience: women.

Live Earth 2007, Wembley Stadium
Image by GlowPlug via Flickr

It’s easy to assume we know our audiences. It’s easy to take the charts and graphs the big research companies give us and say, “Okay, we know who to target. We know what they want.”

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37 comments

BuzzVoice Makes Blogs Accessible, Portable

by Jason Falls · January 23, 2010

I sat in the audience at SOBCon last May astonished at the presentation given by Glenda Watson Hyatt on accessibility and social media. Glenda, who has cerebral palsy — and I say “has” instead of “suffers from” because if you’ve ever met her, you know damn well she doesn’t suffer from anything — is probably the leading authority on technology and accessibility. I learned that day that for all the people Social Media Explorer serves, it doesn’t serve everyone well. Today, it takes a step closer to doing so thanks to BuzzVoice.

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39 comments

The Personal Power Of Social Media

by Jason Falls · January 22, 2010

Monday was my birthday. I normally ignore it. After 25, there’s not much to look forward to. A few years ago, my parents would call, a few other relatives would send emails and maybe a co-worker or two would remember and wish me happy birthday. The world of social media changes all that.

From Sunday through Tuesday morning, 172 people posted public messages on my Facebook wall wishing me Happy Birthday. Another 10 or so emailed me on Facebook privately. Another 79 people Tweeted birthday wishes. Almost 20 people sent me private Twitter messages with birthday nods. Add that to the 12 emails, two text messages and one phone call from someone other than my family members and Monday was a pretty awesome experience for one of the world’s newest 37-year-olds.

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28 comments

Apparently, It Was All About The Conversation

by Jason Falls · January 20, 2010

Forrester Research’s Social Technographics Ladder has been the cornerstone of many social media marketing efforts constructed in the last few years. The inactives-to-creators rating of how people use social media essentially shows that most people are either inactive or watch the social web; a few join networks; some collect content; a few (about the same number who join) play critic, commenting on other’s works; and a small number actually create content.

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34 comments

Four Styles Of Marketing On Twitter

by Jason Falls · January 18, 2010

Marketing on Twitter continues to be one of the most talked about subjects in social media today. The social media purists still sing campfire songs about how you can’t do it. Dell is up to $6.5 million dollars in sales there. While I strongly believe there is no right or wrong way to use Twitter — you can find an audience for anything on any medium with a certain level of critical mass — I believe Twitter to be a mainly conversational platform.

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176 comments

Join Me In Dallas For The 2010 Optimization Summits

by Jason Falls · January 15, 2010

One of my strategies for evangelizing social media in 2010 is to speak at events outside the social media bubble. My hope is to help educate business people on the world of social media marketing and social business to widen the appeal and acceptance of what we do and help people become more efficient and effective in their jobs leveraging social tools.

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15 comments

Postrank Makes Online Media Relations Easier With Top Blogs Lists

by Jason Falls · January 14, 2010

One of the most tedious and frustrating facets of public relations in the new media era is identifying the best blogs to add to an outreach list. Postrank made that task a bit easier when they unveiled Postrank Topics in 2009. Now you could at least get a current snapshot of the top blogs in a given category, though the data considered was limited to a week’s worth of engagement.

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