When Blonde 2.0 began to assist HP Israel’s Personal Systems Group with their social media marketing efforts, we found they had no representation in the social media world. A community had not yet been built for the group and their customer base did not have a proper network to turn to for questions and answers. Over the course of a few months’ time, Blonde 2.0 and HP quickly exposed HP Israel’s PSG group to the social media world and began engaging with customers and potential customers in order to increase the group’s brand awareness in the community.
When you build a community from scratch, the target audience you primarily want to attract are community leaders, early adapters and other “movers & shakers” in your industry in order to gain some momentum. Blonde 2.0 launched HP Israel’s Facebook Fan Page in September and started with 0 lonely fans. Since close to a third of Israel’s population has a Facebook profile – 2.5 Million Israelis and the demographic groups we wanted to target were found on Facebook, this social network was a great place to start building a community around HP. We also turned to twitter to reach out to HP’s community, as no other network allows for real-time message updates nor engagement with Israeli industry leaders from the high-tech and digital marketing worlds as Twitter does.
By the end of first month, HP’s fan base on Facebook grew to 150 fans and we noticed an exponential growth each week. By the end of October, HP had 619 fans and by November we reached 810 fans. This quick growth was based on the interesting content we uploaded and our engagement with the fans on the page. We discussed computers, laptops and provided assistance with HP products. We also created all types of interesting activities and contests for the fans to take part in.

Providing incentives for fans and followers to take part in the community is a must when brands take a part in the social media world. A brand should be ready to compensate fans who promote its name both by social incentives as discussed in this post and also by giving fans prizes. In the end of November, early December, we unleashed HP Israel’s first giveaway campaign, asking our fan base to participate in a creative contest that would offer them a chance to win a new HP Mini laptop (the Mini 110c). We wanted to emphasize the product’s easiness of mobility and asked our fans to tell us where they would take their laptop if they won it. We encouraged fans to be as creative as possible, giving them the option to upload videos, sound clips, photos and graphic materials to the fan wall as their contest submission. The response rate was overwhelming and we were amazed at how much fans invested in their creations in order to win. We received over 630 entries within 3 weeks time. The winner of our competition was a creative song writer Nadav Harel who wrote an enthusiastic song about HP: HP song: Cute Little Computer. Nadav received recognition and praise from the community (social incentive) and a new laptop. The HP laptop contest did wonders for our activity and growth of the HP Facebook Fan Page. Our community grew to over 2,580 fans.

Campaigns held on twitter also encouraged HP fans to become more involved in our community. We asked our followers to tweet us a personal experience they had with an HP product. The creators of the three most creative tweets of personal experiences they had with HP products were awarded a bluetooth mouse known as “The Dragon.” During the two weeks of our twitter campaign, HP Israel’s twitter community grew by more than 140 followers.
With twitter, we continually monitor what people say about HP PSG’s products and provide assistance in real time. Below, a user complained that he had not received his computer from the service lab on time. HP Israel quickly intervened to fix the problem and everyone came out of this story happy.

It is always exciting to build a brand’s community from the ground up and watch our marketing efforts and activity grow within the social sphere.

We have learned a few lessons along the way and continue to learn daily from our valued community members.

A few tips for the newbies who haven’t yet led any social media campaigns:

1) Listen to what people have to say about your brand and be responsive to their needs. Don’t be defensive. Be attentive.

2) Always remember to be transparent and honest with the members of your community. Make sure that if you promise something, you make it happen. Don’t be afraid to admit when you’re wrong – people appreciate that from a brand.

3) When creating contests, make sure the rules are loud and clear. There’s nothing worse than bitter fans angry after a contest’s rules weren’t made clear in advance.

4) Remember that building a community takes time. Rome wasn’t built in a day and neither is an online community. Enjoy each one of the phases you go through when building your community and learn from them.

We live in a wonderful age today where brands can interact and have an open communication channel with customers and potential customers. I am happy to share our experiences with the building of one such community. An online community just like an offline community needs to be nurtured with delicate care and fed with content, activity and live discussion at all times in order to keep it buzzing and this is what we aim to achieve above all.

(Guest Post by Dorine Sinigaglia)

For years, I have been using social networks like Facebook & Myspace to reconnect with old friends and make new ones. As much as I love my social networking time and devote hours of my day to it, I have become an even bigger advocate of LinkedIn – a social network that I consider covers my “professional side” – and feel that it doesn’t get as much recognition as it should in the social media world. My friend and I recently got into a brief debate about the effectiveness of LinkedIn, where I stated my strong views about this site being a great source for job hunting, and his response was: “LinkedIn? That’s not a fun website!” I disagreed immediately, for expanding my professional network is genuinely fun for me! This network has made such an impact on my professional career that I felt the need to share how much I value my LinkedIn profile.

Earlier this year, I moved to Israel after growing up in the US and obtaining my Bachelor’s degree. Arriving in a new city, new country, leaving all my former connections behind, I was a bit worried about ways of connecting with potential employers for employment opportunities and establishing myself again. I signed up with a few employment agencies and job hunting websites, and even got a few callbacks and interview requests to the hundreds of resumes I sent out. But I must say, the biggest influence on my professional network and what has helped me the most with my job search prior to getting an offer was my dedicated involvement with LinkedIn.

LinkedIn has helped me connect and reconnect with so many people on so many levels. From former employers and clients to colleagues and classmates from college, my professional social network began to grow exponentially and my job search soon became fun and productive. Rather than simply sending employers standard emails with a simple cover letter, my resume and sign my name with my phone number (as if they would really call me, right?) I started including a link to my LinkedIn profile as part of my email signature. The added benefit of adding a link to your profile “enables people to see all your credentials, which would be awkward if not downright strange, as an attachment,” according to Guy Kawasaki‘s blog post in Ten Ways to Use LinkedIn.

But before sending my resume to any employer that somewhat appealed to me, I did the proper research about the company on LinkedIn to see if they had a presence. By checking on the company and by screening through their list of employees and who may possibly be holding a position I am applying for, I could get the inside scoop on the company, my potential future colleagues and managers and my growth potential within the company. According to Guy, the LinkedIn network consists of “more than 8.5 million experienced professionals from around the world representing 130 industries.” How cool is that?! Still, it was surprising to me as to how many companies I searched for that did not have a company profile on LinkedIn, and this factor sometimes made it easier for me to pass judgment on the credibility of the company and of their growth potential in their industry.

When it comes to connections – the more the merrier, as the more connections you have the more opportunities you are exposed to. Your contacts have the potential to help you grow your career, find a job opportunity, be a source for referrals and reference checks and expand your professional network. According to Guy’s blog post, “people with more than twenty connections are thirty-four times more likely to be approached with a job opportunity than people with less than five.” The format to adding connections on LinkedIn (when compared to Facebook, for example) is a little more reserved, as it asks you to state where you may know this potential connection from. I found that by joining relevant groups or networks within the career field I was interested in, I could participate in forums and offer my opinions about topics within the industry, and this actually made it easier for me to connect to others within that group. Joining groups within the industry I was interested in pursuing – such Marketing & PR Innovators - opened many doors for me in terms of making new connections and expanding my knowledge about the industry.

Another way that I was able to connect to someone that I didn’t know personally was by turning to a current connection of mine to “introduce” me to their connection. This was a great way for me to express my interest in the connection’s industry, let them know I am interested in learning more about their company, inquire about potential job openings that I might be suited for – all while a formal introduction was sent through my trusted connection. I was amazed as to how many people accepted the introduction and were so helpful with my job search.

As I write this post and sigh with relief that my job search is over and am happily employed at Blonde 2.0, I know that I am where I am today because of the help of my professional network and can thank LinkedIn for providing me with that outlet. Since resumes can be long and tedious to read at times – and never simple to fit all of your accomplishments on one page – as employers suggest, having a LinkedIn profile is a direct and effective way to show people who you are professionally without confining yourself to a conventional resume. Feel free to connect with me on LinkedIn.

Dorine Sinigaglia is the Account & Content Manager for Blonde 2.0

Dorine is a dedicated individual with experience in account management, sales and business development for large corporations. She gets to know all the ins and outs of each account she handles and gets up close and personal with everyone she works with.

Guest Post written by Ilan Peer

I never get deeply upset or let emotions get the better of me when it comes to dealing with web services.

I mean I do expect them to deliver and  fulfill their added value but if the service doesn’t deliver, i don’t take it personally nor get angry (..at least I don’t get angry for longer than 2 minutes).  I remind you we are talking about web services and most of them do not cost us money.

So what about a web service where i am a paying customer? Should i take it to heart when the web service “hurts me” personally? Do I feel bad after I terminate our relationship?

Flickr is a web service where I am a paying costumer and I was a happy customer until a few months ago. I used Flickr for a few years and right from the start I knew I want to ‘store’ my photos there (rather than just share them). In a sense it was a storage room for my pics.

Flickr has a great community, lots of social and sharing features and they had a great team leading their services .. they were on the golden path to becoming the nicest brand on the web. So what happened?

I can only tell you my personal opinion, but lately I’ve read some blog posts from mighty users such as Thomas Hawk, Yaniv Golan.  Thomas Hawk and Yaniv Golan are known figures in both the tech/internet world and the photography one. Thomas Hawk, who writes almost daily about Flickr and other photography related issues attempted to overthrow the flickr empire with zooomr (’nuff respect for him) I appreciate the way he uses the site – see what i mean?

Whether it’s Flickr’s censorship policy or technical hiccups, the service is not running smoothly. The site is not respecting the users feelings nor how they are behaving on the site.  Seeing new features is quite rare these days on Flickr. I remember when Flickr add the flic.kr service which allowed you to post photos directly to your twitter stream (check the short url service that came along – http://flic.kr) it was great news but apparently the hype faded real quick.

I knew Caterina Fake was one of the founders of Flickr. I used to follow her photo stream. I enjoyed seeing some Flickr HQ pics and all, but ever since she left for her new start-up called Hunch , I personally feel a little abandoned

I don’t consider myself a photographer. Most of the pictures I take and upload come from my cell phone camera (I use the Nokia N95) and in essence show my life stream.  I love to share my photos with outsiders and not only with the photography freaks on flickr (hence the flic.kr service).  I really can’t put the finger on what’s bothering me right now, yet coming across other blog posts and status updates of  how others feel exactly the same way I do about Flickr only solidifies the feeling. Perhaps Flickr will wake up soon and change things?

This is not a threat post, ‘Satisfy-me-before-I-am-leaving’ kinda post. I still have a pro account till October 21st, 2010 which I intend to use fully.  If you own a Flickr pro account – i’d love to hear your thoughts.

The lovely picture comes from: Peter Renshaw a.k.a. bootload

Guest Post by Ahuvah Berger

I am a website collector. I don’t buy domain names; I save websites links. You could even call me a “website pack rat”. Every website I come across that has somewhat relevant information in my life is saved in my Delicious account and tagged with personalized keywords. I sleep better at night knowing that I have a personal database with all kinds of relevant information just ready for me when I need it. Or even better, ready for me to share with others.

I am the kind of website pack rat that likes to share useful links with others but I do not like leaving my personal “database of links” open to the general public. I keep most of my links private and share them only when I see a request be it on Twitter, Facebook, email or even (gasp) offline.

On the flip side I love sharing blogs and other sites that I save in my RSS reader. If a site is not in Delicious then it is in my Google Reader. I feel quite strongly that if I come across content that is relative to a specific online community of mine it is my responsibility to share it with the appropriate community. There is just so much new content published daily and not enough hours in the day to find it all.

I depend on my communities sharing relevant content with me and I like reciprocating. In my mind, sharing means caring. And I care.

Follow me on Twitter @ahoova

Guest Post written by Ahuvah Berger

Guest Post written by Ahuvah Berger

Everywhere you turn you hear the words social media, user generated content, Twitter, Facebook, Digg, etc but the real question remains – what is the purpose of social media? How can companies leverage these tools to engage and monitor their brands online?

We have watched an evolution occur on the internet- from a period of time when there was a distinctive line between the content creators and the content consumers. Now almost everyone who uses the internet is considered a content creator and can harness the power of user generated content.

Content creators wield significant influence over their individual communities i.e. blog readers, Facebook friends, Twitter followers, etc. Each platform enables a community or sub community to emerge from the interaction between the publisher and the readers and readers can republish the relevant information on their own communities. Both positive and negative viral marketing takes place when individuals within communities add their personal perspective on a message and republish it within their communities.

Companies no longer have the luxury of publishing their content on the internet and ignoring the reaction and feedback from the content consumers. Internet users wield incredible viral power when sharing their opinion with their respective online communities. It is no longer sharing one message to the collective mass but the mass sharing individual messages to their masses.

Engaging the Masses

There is a huge shift now from the company deciding on its brand and the consumer market re-defining the brand message within their communities. Corporations need to expand their marketing and branding teams to include someone who is responsible for listening and engaging the masses using the tools of social media. Not all tools are applicable for every company but at the same time the company cannot stand on its soapbox screaming its message without letting the market respond.

Start with listening to what others are saying about your company. Listen and hear what your customers say about you – for if you do not listen, you cannot change the customer’s opinion. There are many different internet platforms enabling corporations to keep a finger on the pulse of their brand.

Gather feedback from the market – from the large web influencers to the smaller influencers, as both groups are part of the collective viral force. Once armed with market feedback corporations can then engage online with its fans and detractors.

Bottom line, corporations must pay attention to the power of the masses in order to tap into the viral aspect of the web and maintain better control over the brand’s online image.

Launched in 2006 in the basement of a small house in Malal village, Yedda is a knowledge community whose mission is to connect people who are looking for knowledge with the people who have the knowledge. The company was acquired by AOL in 2007, but has stuck to its basement in Malal, renovating the space to accommodate the company’s growth.

On Yedda, all questions and users are organized by tags, so if you’re looking for a specific answer or someone who’s knowledgeable in a particular field, you can easily find either. The service is completely free of charge and is all about users helping fellow users. By specifying their tags of interest, users only receive questions that are based on their interests and are not bothered with questions about topics that don’t really relate to them. Answers themselves are ranked and each user receives an overall ranking based on the quality of his or her responses. In this manner, each user can demonstrate their level of knowledge to peers.

As part of their mission, Yedda also helps promote knowledge communities throughout the net and has partnered up with services such as ePals, the Los Angeles Newspaper Group, and ArticlesBase. Each of these sites has Yedda widgets integrated into them and thus enables the services to tap into the global Yedda community and benefit from the accumulated content in the Yedda network. The company also offers several very useful widgets for site owners, such as the Ask & Answer Widget.

Yedda is proactive in getting users’ questions answered, either through emails sent to users who mention they are interested in a question topic or by allowing anyone to subscribe to an RSS feed. In addition, Yedda has integrated its service with Twitter and created a Facebook application.

Yedda is expanding rapidly with a recently launched Partnership Program, announcing their first 100 partners worldwide. In the future you will also see Yedda integration within AOL properties.

See my interview with Yedda below.

This post was originally posted June 17th on Mashable.com

If you, like many others, have moved most of your social and professional connections to Facebook, you’ll find Socialistics to be a very useful tool. Socialistics is a social insight tool. It provides you with integrated data analysis of your friends and networks and allows you to understand more about them and about who you are within the network you operate. You can slice and dice the data in many interesting ways.

Here are some of the things you can do with Socialistics:

1) My Clouds – create detailed tag clouds that are a reflection of you and your relationships with people in your networks.

The Popularity Cloud for example shows the most popular and relevant people in my network. The bigger the name, the more popular.

You can also create birth year or cities clouds which show which people share location or age characteristics with you.

2) The PictureWall  – shows the most popular people within my network, but represents this data through the use of their profile picture. The larger their picture, the more popular they are within my network.

3) My stats  – show me statistics regarding my network’s: Gender split, political views, religious beliefs, country, education, companies, etc.

4) Basic Groups – allows you to type in the name of a friend and see what friends you have in common:

When you add the application you’ll see that there are still a few features that haven’t been integrated yet but are coming soon. Another important point I’d like to add: When you add the application, make sure you let all the modules load before you start using it. Otherwise it won’t work properly.

As Rodney Rumford from FaceReviews.com writes:

“I really like that this application helps me to visualize data and connections about my friends network. Oh yea… Imagine how well you could serve me data (ads, news, content, etc.). Social Graph in action baby. Are the readers of this blog waking up to the potential long term value of facebook and applications? Facebook knows more about me than Google does. Can you say marketers dream here?”

I highly recommend this application to anyone who cares to know more details about his connections on Facebook and his place within his network. 

Good news! Gilad, MeeMix’s CEO has given me 4 more invites for their private beta and of course I’d like to give it to you guys. First 4 people who comment back and say they want one, will receive them.

MeeMix, a new Israeli startup, has launched its beta program yesterday. MeeMix can best be described as a personalized internet radio community. It aims at identifying individual taste and taste prediction in media using its own behavioral-based algorithm and additional methodologies, created in-house.

MeeMix’s idea is similar to Pandora or Last.fm but it uses a different (and better) prediction method in identifying the user’s taste. As my friend Roi writes in his post on TechCrunch:

“Typically, there are two ways to perform such predictions:

1. “Nature” (Pandora) – Decision making is based upon the compatibility between one song and another—personal taste not being part of the equation.
2. “Nurture” (Last.fm) – Decision making is based upon environmental factors—song compatibility not being part of the equation”

Gilad Shlang, CEO of MeeMix tells me: “We see personal preference as the right balance between NATURE and NURTURE. MeeMix believes that your genetic disposition, combined with your present and past experience, defines who you are today. By heeding to both nature and nurture, we are able to offer accurate and better results. For clarification, Nature is based solely on song classification – prepared by our top group of musicologists who analyzed hundreds of musical values- and Nurture is an individual’s own characteristics, combined with his or her interactions in our virtual surroundings. The MeeMix algorithm is a taste prediction tool that not only points out similar songs but also takes geographical, sociological, behavioral and physiological characteristics into account.”

MeeMix is also a social network allowing members to connect based on similar musical tastes, shared passions, or even by reading each other thoughts, journals, reviews, dreams, and secrets (the last available for their Mee friends only). A MeeMix member can broadcast his personal radio station to other members and share his tastes with the entire community. The broadcaster (or Mee’J) can always see his audience and communicate with them. The more listeners you have, the more popular you are, and the more prominent you will be on the site. For those of you who are really into self branding, you can even print out t-shirts with your channel name and number of subscribers.

The first page you will see in MeeMix is the MeePlayer which is, you guessed it, their player. This page is the entertainment system of the site; allowing the member to create multiple (personalized) stations, change the present “mood” of every station (its average beat rate,
level of surprise), and control the interactive features related to the currently playing track, such as adding to favorites, commenting, song rating, and more. The right hand side of the MeePlayer, named “YOU” or “Meet People”, is a living, talking and moving line of communication with other members. You will see YOU throughout the site, in the same place, ready for action.

The MeeMix world includes 4 main content sections:
1. Mee Style – the member’s personal corner in MeeMix. In Mee Style you can:
a. Check who is listening to your stations and contact your fans
b. Get updated on invitations you sent to friends
c. Update or edit your own profile
d. Receive messages from other members

2. Mee People – the MeeMix community. This will be your main meeting place, where you can:
a. Browse through other members’ thoughts
b. Search for people by:
i. Their personal musical style
ii. Member characteristics such as: age, location, sex and more
c. Check out who is listening to whom in MeeMix

3. Music – a section all about music, both in and out of the MeeMix world. If you are looking to browse through members’ stations or check out who is listening to whom, this is the place. In Music, you’ll find:
a. Radio station search by genre
b. Rising Star stations, which are stations with the highest fan growth
c. Most popular stations
d. The newest stations in MeeMix
e. Top 100 Songs in MeeMix
f. New Releases

4. The Source – Website owners and bloggers, this is the place you will find MeeMix widgets and other goodies that you can add to your site. Choose from widgets that present your favorite artists, Music style, Mee friends, and more.

I received an invite from Gilad for the MeeMix private beta and have been playing around with the application in the last two days. Apart from it being an amazing and unique product, MeeMix has one of the nicest and most user-friendly interfaces that I have ever seen. 

Gilad was nice enough to give me 4 more invites. The first 4 people who comment back and say they want one, will get them.