The Idea Center (platform created by Neighborhood America) at the Kodak Gallery deserves my mentioning.

Kodak understands how to make online networks work and their numbers are in representation of that.  Within the first six weeks of the Idea Center:  25% of the sites registered members purchased Kodak products directly through the site (the Kodak Gallery reaches over 55 million people).  I would like to highlight two things I believe led to the Idea Center’s success.  If you would like to add more reasons this network is successful, please comment.

The right components - They carefully thought out what social components were going to drive value.  Kodak also figured out which ones to leave out, so they don’t diminish or distract from the overall experience.

Adoption of “Social Commerce” - The online network gives consumers the ability to share ideas on how to use Kodak products using their digital photos (which also can be purchased online).  Members are called to upload their ideas, share them, and comment/rank ideas created by others.  These experiences created lead to increased ecommerce revenue, as members make Kodak purchases based on peer recommendations.

“Social Commerce” could also be known to you as “user generated content” (UGC).  See Wikipedia’s definition of “social commerce.”

Last week the Children’s Museum of Naples released their new and highly engaging website: Cmon.org.  Trust me, it’s a truly terrific site and will be extremely helpful with many of their upcoming plans.  I couldn’t be any happier about how all teams pulled together to achieve this awesome community website.  As of right now, it is the first and best example of how museums can leverage the power of social media to accomplish their goals.

As part of an overall strategy to engage through multiple channels, Cmon.org will serve as the end point.  They plan on using the site to help drive tourism to the Naples area, additional funding to the museum and its programs and an overall awareness to the community.

Really, I can’t say enough about the possibilities this website holds.  You just have to check it out yourself.

My colleague, Jason Breed is among one handful of people in our space that I would feel comfortable in calling a “Social Media Expert.”  Today, it seems everyone is an “expert.”  Makes me giggle sometimes :) …  Here Jason answers “you are clearly developing social media to generate revenue, so how do you pull that off?”

This was taken October 23, 2008 and the original can be found on The Circuit.

This is really what we preach at Neighborhood America (see Jason Breeds latest blog post) and it REALLY feels good to hear another industry leader who “gets it!” Let’s recap, I can have a million page views and five thousand comments, but if it doesn’t generate: 1) Sales 2) Equity 3) Savings - SO WHAT!

Video provided by Ripple6: See Original Post

Well, I love to answer social media questions and if you are also a member of ‘Social Media Marketing’ (chances are “yes” if you work at Neighborhood America) you have the privilege of seeing my face everywhere! This reminds me, I need to get myself a glamour shot next time I’m at the mall. C’mon everybody’s doing it! Anyways, I’m getting off track, back to my answer on marketing through Facebook. I responded, “Facebook is best used as an intermediary site to invite your audience. Not sure of your objective, but most commonly the goal would be to pull those people on Facebook back into your environment.” It was a short answer and to a very open question. But that’s how I view it, would you disagree?

My comment was immediately condemned by a fellow respondent saying that, “You should not use a Facebook page with the goal of driving traffic back into your ‘own environment.’ Facebook users are skeptical of anybody who’s trying to lure them away from the environment they trust, and your goal should rather be to generate as much engagement as you can within the Facebook environment.”  Then he went on to point out all the great things you can do on a Facebook page, even offered a power point on it. I agree with some of his statements above and I will highlight why.

Agree:

1.  “Facebook users are skeptical of people/applications that try to “lure” them off Facebook, an “environment they trust.”  True, some people are skeptical of this unfortunately because of the huge amount of crap that’s on the internet. This is unfortunate for those companies/organizations that actually have something valuable to offer or share.
2.  “Your goal should rather be to generate as much engagement as you can.”   True, it’s obviously smart to engage with your audience, that’s where good value takes place.  From a PR perspective it’s a dream to find a large pool of audience members that can move your messages.

But let me point out before Facebook, organizations/companies were already leveraging meaningful conversations through their personal ‘networks’ using social applications. This was all done before anyone put up a Facebook page for their company.

Facebook is an environment with anything and almost everything going on.  Ask yourself why do you go to Facebook?  Your answer is probably for many reasons - there are multiple ways of answering that question.  It’s very unpredictable. Facebook = Social, that’s it. It’s one big party.

So, am I wrong to think:

1.  Most companies/organizations should spend more time leveraging their already existing networks using their own environment?

2.  Use Facebook as an intermediary site to invite your audience, much like Obama did during the election?

How would you best leverage Facebook or any third party social site with marketing?