SOCIAL IMPRESSIONS

During a panel at OMMA Social conference in New York, President of SocialVibe, Joe Marchese, asked a very important and relevant question to online marketers and Fortune 500 companies: Are impressions more important than relationships with social media users? Many of the branding and social media strategists raised their hands in agreement when asked if their motives were to build relationships.

Are online marketers really interested in relationships? Despite that response, Marchese calls “bullshit.” Online marketers want to have as many eyeballs as possible on a branded property. The number of impressions is a measure of success. Exposure to a branded campaign is a benefit to social media, but it shouldn’t be the only priority of a social media effort. Although brands want to have a high traffic rate to their Facebook profile, what’s the point if these users don’t convert?

Relationships are key for the development of a branded effort conducted online. Through establishing online relationships, a brand gains loyalty. Although impressions establish awareness, they don’t necessarily create a direct relationship with the brand. When expectations are set early, companies will know how to measure success for social media. The launch of a social media campaign might start slow, but if it gains traction it will establish more relationships.

During the panel, an important point was made about a need for a new measurement matrix. Some marketers and Fortune 500 companies rely on the traditional matrix, which simply does not work for social media. There is wider variety of considerations that need to be included when gauging the success of a social media campaign, like the context conversation and tone.

Marketers need to understand that users don’t want to be sold something. They are against branded messages being pushed on them. Users want to contribute and engage themselves in discussions about the brand. They want to invest in the development of products they are already passionate about. At the same time, impressions can help leverage key relationships that are necessary to build brand loyalty. This continues to prove the need for a new measurement and reporting method.

On June 4, I wrote a post about the five levels of voting and commenting behaviors online. During an IM conversation with Julie Lujan , she mentioned similar concerns.

This is a guest post by Julie Lujan (AKA Calinazaret). She is an active participant and contributor to Mixx and is a co-host on Saturday Night Monkey every Saturday at 10 p.m. PST. She is also a psychology student at a university in California.

I’ve always thought social media’s greatest strength is also its greatest weakness– people. People are caring, supportive, creative, funny and friendly, but people can also be immature as hell.

Recently in my online endeavors I fell into a nasty interaction with someone who could benefit from going back to kindergarten. This user submitted a story to Mixx which I felt was not entirely accurate and I down voted it. This user then visited my profile and down voted every story I’ve submitted to Mixx in the last month! Of course I respect a person’s right to disagree and down vote my submissions, but this was done out of the spirit of meanness which is untenable. I have to wonder how long it took him to go through it all, and why on earth anyone would take that much time out of their day to do something that makes so little difference.

It continually amazes me the ways which people find to express their emotions in virtual environments. It’s as if humanity must reinvent communication altogether for this new medium, and some who are barely able to communicate in real life revert back to childhood on the internet. Hence all these poopy-heads who are barely cognizant of their behavior.

Here are a few tips for dealing with internet asshats:

• Be an adult. People tend to mimic the behavior of those around them, so if you start flinging poo at an aggressor then prepare for a shit storm. If you can make yourself act calmly, rather than react angrily, most of the time it’s enough to get the situation under control.
• Kill them with kindness. Yeah, I don’t try this one very often because I hate those asshats and being nice to them is the last thing I want to do, but even if they don’t change you’ll feel better about yourself for doing the right thing.
• Gather evidence. On some social media sites (such as Mixx) you can gather evidence and the admins will ban them if their behavior is deplorable enough.
• Just walk away. This is the hardest one, but if nothing else works, it’s what you must do in order to maintain your dignity.

Always remember that there are some awesome people online that make the experience worth it. In the process of stewing over this situation and trying to vent without losing my cool I told a friend about what happened and he promptly voted up all the affected stories. How cool is that? The asshat’s efforts were totally thwarted and all was set right by the power of friendship.

Bloggers spend a lot of time coming up with ideas, authoring posts and contributing to the discussions that occur after publishing. Understandably, they are often disappointed to find their original content copied onto other blogs sans attribution or links. Their hard work and intellectual property has been ripped off by some random person attempting to make money from the advertising on their own site. Content theft can be hard to track, control or manage.

Finding Out I’d Been Jacked

This has actually happened to me many times. Each time I’ve found it was by pure coincidence. The latest incident was discovered yesterday. While checking my Google Analytics, I noticed that one of the popular keywords used was “Derek Onstott.” I decided to search for the keywords on Google to see if my post was visible in the results page. My blog was number 7 on Google for that keyword. I glance at the 8th result and what did I find? The first two lines in that description were a carbon copy of my own content.

What attracted my attention was that the URL to this blog was not mine. It was directed to Inter Alia. I open the link and realize that this individual scraped my post about the restaurant owner who threatened a Yelp reviewer. He did not even credit the scraped content to me. I found no link or mention of the original author of this specific post.

In the interest of comparing the content, the Yelp image in the scraped blog post was removed.

The Community Gets Out Their Pitchforks and Torches

I shared my frustrations with Joe Fowler. Within minutes, he wrote two comments on that blog encouraging the blogger to remove the post immediately. I later found that Joe launched a massive campaign against this blogger on my behalf. I looked at the comments and noticed 15 of them from the community. The following morning, he submitted the scraper’s info to Mixx and Digg encouraging the community to comment and flag the site. The comments that followed were extremely supportive.

This should be a lesson to all those who scrape content. Although there are bloggers who don’t have a strong community supporting them, some will report content thieves to the appropriate outlets. There are other bloggers who have a significant following. The mantra for those people is: “you mess with me, you mess with the community.” They will rally together and turn against content thieves. Although the scraper’s blog might get traffic, it won’t be the good kind. The community will work on blocking the site, writing evil comments, and getting scrapers banned in every social network in which they are active. In short, it is best to stick to original content.

Should you come across a compelling post written by someone else, and you simply must post on your own blog, you can do so while avoiding the content theft scenario. Credit the source through a link and an intro saying “This was written by <Name> on <Blog>.” It is also easy to e-mail the original content creator and let them know you enjoyed their post. You can request that you republish their post on your blog. Of course, you would need to include that you will add a link to their blog and credit them.

How to Protect Yourself

Great resources about what to do when someone steals your content:

10 Ways to Fight Content Thieves

Take it Back! 100 Tips to Defeat Content Thieves

What Do You Do When Someone Steals Your Content

In the comments section, please share your worst experiences with scraping and how you dealt with the situation.

Thanks to 2 Create a Website Blog and Honest_Ape for the images.

On social news and bookmarking sites, users have a variety of motivations for voting the way they do. Their voting and commenting behavior often reflects their personality and their relationship with the site and other users. As time has gone on, I’ve observed that people tend to fall, roughly, in specific behavioral “buckets” as they relate with their voting behavior. Below are five of the most popular habits and attitudes that I have found users to have during my experiences in social media.

These users will vote up the stories they enjoy and vote down the ones they don’t. It is nothing personal; it has to do with their perception of the story. They don’t feel the need to validate their voting choices. It also doesn’t involve the relationship you share online. It only has to do with the content you submitted. These people are straight shooters and simply don’t have time for games and explanations.

These users will upmod a story they don’t necessary agree with philosophically. Although they deem the post as weak on many fronts, they will vote it up regardless. Essentially, these voters are the type who will never say “no” to you. They will support you even when you mess up big time. These users will share their opinion as to why they don’t agree. Regardless of their opinion of the story, they think your submission story should be seen by the community.

These users will downmod a submission because they don’t philosophically agree with it. As aforementioned, the social media space includes people from different background and belief systems. When they are gathered in one space, they will often disagree on the premise of a story. These users in particular will express their thoughts through their voting behavior. These users will share their opinion by voting down a story they don’t agree with. If a submitter asks into why that particular user downmodded a story, they will explain it to them. However, they don’t want their decisions questioned or get reprimanded for downmodding. These voters don’t hold anything against the user for submitting that post.

These users will not vote on a story they don’t like or agree with. They don’t want to have an impact on the total number of votes you get in the end. At the same time, they don’t believe your story is worthy of being popular. These users will engage you in a discussion about the article you submitted by commenting. Although they rarely attack you personally, they do address the issues they have with the article.

There are users who will downmod a submission because it is inaccurate or considered as spam. If the story is not in conformity with facts, these users will often share an article showing the correct facts. These users aren’t blind voters, and will give their opinion based on their interpretation of the story. It is very apparent that they are invested in the growth of the site, and will not accept any submission that compromises the integrity of the community. Based on that, they will often comment stating their opinion regarding why the story is bias or untrue.

Thanks to Tanner Hobin for the images.