The Podcaster

Archive for February, 2009

Recent
research shows that 1/3rd of kids have a mobile phone by an average
age of 8.

That level of adoption together with increased use of social media fill feed
through to the need for more sophisticated, personalised, mobile based communications
in the future. Marketing people as well as local/central Government should take note.

The US
Government has been using a variety of social media networking
tools to ensure the message about the recent Salmonella outbreak in peanut butter
is communicated widely.

“….Officials with Health and Human Services Department and the Centers for Disease
Control and Prevention said social media helped them spread the word that peanut butter
recall. The agencies used widgets, blogs, Twitter, podcasts, mobile alerts and online
videos to warn the public that peanut butter manufactured by Peanut Corp. of America
for institutional use and for additives in other products such as snacks may be tainted
with salmonella. Eight people died and 500 were sickened by the infected peanut butter….”

Until now the US Government has not been able officially to use YouTube as part of
any social media campaign. Reports state that an agreement is
now close.

The active use of YouTube and other video ‘narrowcast’ sites provide a powerful extra
tool for public information and advice.

The US Government is
using social media pro-actively to engage with citizens following the recent Salmonella
scare.

With increasing usage by people of social networking it becomes a very useful tool
to get messages into the public domain.

Media can now track local or other geographic specific twitterers using a new
application called twitterlocal.

New
data from research by Pew/Internet in
the

USA

shows that over one-third of adults there have an online social networking profile,
an increase of 400 percent since 2005.

What
is most interesting is the increasing uptake of social media in older adults.

*
75% of online adults aged 18-24

* 57% of online adults aged 25-34

* 30% of online adults aged 35-44

* 19% of online adults aged 45-54

* 10% of online adults aged 55-64
* 7% of online adults aged 65+

Source: WOMMA

Went for a great lunch at Ayoush in
Bourne End, Bucks on Saturday. It calls itself North African. We decided to have
the three course set menu. To maximise our choices we went with the Egyptian and the
Moroccan choices. The decor was fun. Part Eqyptian and part Moroccan. It was a bit
cold to try the outside tented area but it looked nice for BBQ’s in the summer.

The picture above does not do justice to what the Moroccan main course was. The menu
said ‘Lamb Tagine – tender chunks of lamb with traditional Moroccan sauce, sweetened
with prunes & apricots, topped with almonds and sesame seeds’. It was all of that.
Hard to see in the picture but it was in a bowl so was very filling. The mixed grill
from the Eqyptian menu (see top of the picture) were two big skewers of pork and chicken.
Wonderfully marinated with rice and grilled vegetables and flat bread. A warm
bread basked of seeded bread was tempting too especially as it was re-filled between
courses.

The starters (choice from the set menu) were nice. Of the two puddings we found the
couscous one from the Moroccan menu rather boring. That was no fault of the restaurant.
We just did not like it – but you never know till you try! 

At just over £20 for two it was great value.

On a Saturday evening and on some weekdays they even have belly dancers. We had to
make do with the guy below dancing with the tea pot on the table.

Latest research published in the Harvard
Business Review shows influence is greatest through ‘closer matched’
people and once past the 3rd degree that influence levels off.

Rather than the concept of the long-tail of influence it seems to support the notion
that closer people in a network influence the most.

What is interesting though is to look at the ‘ripple effect of numbers. Take a retail
client I worked with a year ago. They now have almost 1000 Facebook ‘friends’. We
know that over the last 12 months that the average number of ‘friends’ each person
had rose from just over 100 to over 110. What that means is that a WOM has a 1st level
potential impact on 1k, a second level of 100k and a third level 10m (1000 people
each with 100 friends who in turn each have 100 friends).

Even allowing for significant failure to pass any promotional information on at each
level the potential for free WOM marketing is huge.

 Tatworth
Primary School, Somerset

It is really nice when you hear teachers are actively encouraging Primary
school kids to use social media to share their activities and projects with parents
and the wider community. (Source: Somerset
Online)

The Tatworth School website and podcast is here.

India is
banning officials using social media due to security fears. G-mail and other web based
applications also banned.