facebook Archives - The Pulse Network

3 Ways the PRISM Program May Affect Your Privacy

June 12, 2013 by Jennifer Videtta

Last week, a former security contractor exposed the elaborate details of a clandestine national security and electronic surveillance program that has been operated by the United States National Security Agency since 2007. PRISM enabled in-depth surveillance on live communications which has allowed the NSA to collect emails, videos, photos, file transfers, login information and detailed data stemming from the social networks of private citizens.

According to government officials, PRISM can NOT be used to collect information on American citizens or those residing within the United States. While the US government recent acknowledged the existence of PRISM, the companies being fingered as the major data providers are vehemently denying any previous knowledge of the program and its existence before the information became public knowledge.

Some of the companies who are being accused as being data providers for this covert operation include Microsoft, Apple, Google and Facebook – companies that have the highest number of regular users and who are sitting on top of databases with information about hundreds of millions of people.

Here are three ways that you may be affected by PRISM:

1. Data logging: There is a decent chance that your information has been logged by the government. While you may Google “Ryan Gosling Memes” or “Evil Goat Videos”, those probably aren’t the types of behaviors the government is mining this data for. Email conversations, text messages, voice mails, videos, and photos all belonging to you may very well big sitting in a database along with billions of other pieces of information from people around the world. Usernames and passwords, stored on the servers of the companies being named, could also be logged by the government.

2. Hacker Issues: Just imagine what the results would be if a hacker group was able to access the extensive information collected by the government. Identities could be stolen, overall fraud would increase and national security would be at a very high risk.

3. You Probably Won’t: Well, the chances of the government mining this seemingly endless collection of data on Internet users to find specific information on an individual who is not deemed a threat to others are pretty slim. The fact that the government actually has that information is really a violation of privacy, but the PRISM program will most likely not have a significant impact on you as an individual.

While your privacy may have been violated, your personal information most likely has not been made public to the masses. It is concerning to know that the government and potentially hackers can use this data as leverage against people, but you can rest assured – at least for tonight.

We will update this post as the story develops.

Filed Under: Communication Tagged With: apple, big data, facebook, google, NSA, PRISM

Media Use and Marketing Strategies-Growth of Social Networking Sites

May 8, 2012 by Allen Bonde

When we talk about the second screen, we can not forget that a good amount of it can come from social media. Consumers like to have conversations about what they are watching and a great tool that tracks internet trends is comScore. In terms of overall audience, Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn are the big 3. However, in terms of engagment with channels, two out of the top three may surprise you. Facebook is still dominant throughout most channels, but Tumblr and Pintrest are a close second and third. Users are not necessarily going to Twitter.com but are accessing it through other channels and devices.

The most recent social network that has taken the world by storm is Pinterest. It is a rich, fun, and attractive place to hang out. Similar to the Pulse Network, they follow the motto that if you want to create engagement, you need good content. Having good content creates community.

In the video below, I discuss further the growth of social networking sites.

Watch the rest of my series on media use and marketing strategies. Also feel free to reach out to me with any additional questions, Tweet or email abonde@thepulsenetwork.com.

Filed Under: Content Marketing 360, The Pulse on Marketing Tagged With: Allen Bonde, content creation, content marketing strategy, facebook, social media, social media marketing, Tyler Pyburn

The State of Social CRM – Mapping the Vendor Landscape

October 6, 2011 by Allen Bonde

This is part one of a five part series between Tyler Pyburn, host at The Pulse Network, and Allen Bonde, Chief Marketing Officer at The Pulse Network, as they break down the who, the what and the how of Social CRM.

If you ask 10 people ‘what is Social CRM?’ you are likely to get 10 different answers. Industry watchers like Esteban Kolsky and Mitch Lieberman have certainly helped to frame the discussion. And in dealing with customer interactions and all the related front-office processes, many people already know the basic concepts of CRM. But how does the addition of social channels, analytics, campaign tools and even customer-to-customer interactions change what we know about CRM?

In this series I’ll aim to break it down, and provide some perspectives on the various aspects of Social CRM based on what I’ve been seeing over the past few years, as well as my background covering the CRM space dating way back to the mid-90′s at Yankee Group and Extraprise (early Siebel partner) and perspectives as a marketer. Yes, my CMO role may color how I see things, but hopefully the way I look at things is relevant to other marketers and at least a useful starting point for others.

In general, Social CRM combines the traditional roles of the call center, the marketing programs, and the support systems (and of course sales, but not as much as the other areas) with the social channels and social data to put a more personal, social spin on the role of CRM. In a way we are also combining the business side (traditional process-centric CRM) with the consumer side (social interactions and connections). With this in mind, when mapping the Social CRM landscape, it’s helpful to think of four main functions or categories:

Listening,
Support Communities,
Fan Marketing, and
Sales Automation.

Check out the video below to see how these parts fit together and what vendors have emerged as early leaders in each category. And next time we’ll start to drill-down into each category, starting with social monitoring and listening tools.

Filed Under: The Pulse on Marketing, The Pulse on Tech Tagged With: Allen Bonde, business strategy, CRM, facebook, social media

Social Media Contests – Quizzes & Polls

September 12, 2011 by Allen Bonde

This is part four of a five part series between Tyler Pyburn, host at The Pulse Network, and Allen Bonde, Chief Marketing Officer at The Pulse Network, as they break down social media contest models and how they compare.

In the first three parts of our discussion, we’ve looked at the various types of social media contests and promotions, running sweepstakes and most recently social deals. This time we’ll look at Quizzes and Polls, one of the easiest – and most effective ways – to drive engagement on your Twitter feed or Facebook page.

Types of Social Media Contests

Quizzes and polls are an easy way to get people to participate with your organization via Facebook and Twitter. For example, we post simple polls on our various ‘PulseOn’ community pages that pertain to topics or content featured in recent shows. Polls can also be a great way to gage the temperature of your fan base, where participation (and seeing what others think) is basically the prize.

Quizzes and Polls on Facebook

When I looked at the use of polls and quizzes on Facebook earlier this year for an article I did for Social Times, I found that half of the top 25 brands on Facebook have some sort of poll or two-way contest on their Facebook page. Smart brands use polls or quizzes as a simple way to engage – and also start going down the path to qualifying prospects and even spotlighting related products on the way to social commerce.

Fan feedback can also be valuable to brands, especially for product planning in advance of rolling out a new product line, for example. Feedback from social channels is not only authentic, but potentially in context, if it is captured directly in the stream of conversations that are going on within a community. It’s also easy to embed polls right on your Facebook wall so visitors can vote on and add either a Like or a comment directly beneath it.

On Twitter, the model is more oriented to quizzes. For example, you can send out a tweet saying that the first (or tenth or 100th) follower to tweet out the right answer to a linked quiz wins a prize.

Learn more about all of these models by watching the segment below. And next time we’ll look at one of the most popular contest models on Facebook – the Photo Contest.

Allen Bonde is the CMO of The Pulse Network and can be found on Twitter or email,abonde@thepulsenetwork.com.

Tyler Pyburn is a host at The Pulse Network and can be reached on his twitter or e-mail, tpyburn@thepulsenetwork.com

Filed Under: General Tagged With: Allen Bonde, facebook, marketing, social media contests, twitter

Social Media Contests – Social Deals

September 7, 2011 by Allen Bonde

This is part three of a five part series between Tyler Pyburn, host at The Pulse Network, and Allen Bonde, Chief Marketing Officer at The Pulse Network, as they discuss social media contests and how they’re effective as a marketing tool.

Getting access to special deals and offers is one of the main reasons consumers follow a brand on Facebook or Twitter. For marketers, social deals are a great way to reward followers and also test out social commerce – where social networking shifts from conversations to experiences, offers and ultimately conversions. Back at Offerpop we thought of this in terms of a Social Marketing Maturity Model, which you can sample here.

In comparison to a sweepstakes style contest, which drives participation by offering a chance to win, a social deal can be structured so everybody wins – in terms of a group deal, or simply by being a fan you get an exclusive offer or access to a private sale.

Types of Social Media Contests and Deals (TPN)

How you deliver the offer is also part of structuring your social deal. In old school coupons, consumers clipped the coupon and redeemed their discount or offer at their favorite store. With social deals we can extend this to coupon codes that are redeemable online, and even unique codes that help to control distribution (one per customer).

Of course we can also add in game dynamics too – such as requiring a certain number of consumers to participate like the example below, or tie in an email list, which is basically what Groupon does.

Viral Offer Example (Offerpop)

Making social deals part of your overall social marketing programming is key. A great example is American Eagle Outfitters which does social deals both on Facebook and Twitter, and provides a ‘membership’ experience when customers Like or follow their brand. In this case, the online social media world meets the offline retail world, driving engagement, word of mouth – and traffic to their physical stores.

For more perspectives on social deals, the merging of online and offline offers, and how they fit into the overall spectrum of social contests, check out my discussion with Tyler below.

And in case you missed the first part of this series, you can see it here.

Allen Bonde is the CMO of The Pulse Network and can be found on Twitter or email,abonde@thepulsenetwork.com.

Tyler Pyburn is a host at The Pulse Network and can be reached on his twitter or e-mail, tpyburn@thepulsenetwork.com

Filed Under: The Pulse on Marketing Tagged With: Allen Bonde, content creation, contests, facebook, social media

Social Media Contests – 4 Popular Models

August 23, 2011 by Allen Bonde

This is part one of a five part series between Tyler Pyburn, host at The Pulse Network, and Allen Bonde, Chief Marketing Officer at The Pulse Network, as they discuss social media contests and how they’re effective as a marketing tool.

One of the most effective ways to engage with fans and followers on social media channels is with interactive contests, games and promotions. In fact I saw this potential first hand as a co-founder of fan marketing platform Offerpop. In this series we’ll take a look at 4 of the most popular contest models, and how they can be deployed on both Twitter and Facebook to not only create engagement, but also generate word of mouth so you can reach new audiences. Here’s a quick breakdown of some of the most popular models:

Types of Social Media Contests

Depending on your business goals (attract fans vs. provide fan benefits), different models may make sense. For example, sweepstakes are great for building awareness and growing followers, while quizzes and polls provide a simple way to entertain and engage with an existing audience.

Also, while Twitter is more of an open environment with less restrictions when it comes to running contests, Facebook has set rules that brands must follow (there’s actually a set of promotions guidelines that Facebook has published and periodically updates). One of these rules is that you need to build and manage your promotion using a third party tool or promotion builder, likeOfferpop, Wildfire, or Buddy Media. Check out our discussion to learn more – and in the next segments we’ll dig into each of the specific contest models and explore some successful campaigns and approaches.

Allen Bonde is the CMO of The Pulse Network and can be found on Twitter or email,abonde@thepulsenetwork.com.

Tyler Pyburn is a host at The Pulse Network and can be reached on his twitter or e-mail, tpyburn@thepulsenetwork.com

Filed Under: The Pulse on Marketing, The Pulse on Tech Tagged With: Allen Bonde, contest, facebook, photo contests, polls, quizzes, social deals, social media, social media contests, sweepstakes, twitter, Tyler Pyburn

The Pulse Network Solutions – Twitter Promotions

August 15, 2011 by Allen Bonde

This is part four of a five part series between Butch Stearns, host at The Pulse Network, and Allen Bonde, Chief Marketing Officer at The Pulse Network, as they explore the lifecycle of digital marketing and the new solutions offered by The Pulse Network.

In this episode Butch and I look at Twitter and how this social channel has emerged as a key communication tool, listening platform and even an efficient ‘list builder’ for digital marketing campaigns.

From a marketers’ standpoint, Twitter is deceptively simple. Find some folks to follow, reply to a few tweets, push out updates, and repeat. Yet, when you think of Twitter as a campaign platform with some similarities to both Facebook, in terms of running promotions, and email marketing – but with a self-building list – its potential gets pretty interesting.

And if you are focused on reaching influencers as part of a B2B marketing campaign, Twitter become even more attractive. Especially when you consider that the profile of many early (and heavy) Twitter users is concentrated around analysts, marketers, media types, and technology buyers.

Functionally, Twitter also plays a distinct role vs. Facebook and LinkedIn. If Facebook and LinkedIn are all about a ‘place’ (for your content and discussions), Twitter is more of a ‘time’ – where you interact, and sample what’s hot, and link your friends to what’s interesting. But in many cases that content lives elsewhere – like on your blog or Facebook page.

Successful social marketing is about programming, and aligning with the language and social gestures of each channel. At a high level, there are three steps we follow at TPN when building your presence on Twitter and launching a campaign: an assessment of your goals, content mix and audience; development of a campaign calendar; and promotion building – think contests and fun ideas that promote engagement within your community (using a tool like Offerpop). For example, we promote our Inbound Marketing Summit event through different social media by creating promotions on both our Facebook and Twitter page, and amplifing these programs via special hashtags and our website and email newsletters. Remember – even while you focus on one channel like Twitter, it’s all about engaging everywhere!

I’d love to hear what you think. How are you using Twitter as part of your marketing mix? And in case you missed Part 3, I explained how our Executive Briefing 3.0 helps to break the bottleneck in getting executives to blog and post on social channels like Twitter.

Allen Bonde is the CMO of The Pulse Network and can be found on Twitter or email, abonde@thepulsenetwork.com.

Butch Stearns is the COO of The Pulse Network and can be found on his Blog, Twitter, and LinkedIn.

Filed Under: The Pulse on Marketing, The Pulse on Tech Tagged With: Allen Bonde, business, business mind, business of twitter, butch stearns, facebook, hashtag, hashtag promotions, how to make money, IMS, inbound marketing summit, making money, money, promoting, social business, social media, social media marketing, twitter

The Pulse Network Solutions – Executive Brief 3.0

August 12, 2011 by Allen Bonde

This is part three of a five part series between Butch Stearns, host at The Pulse Network, and Allen Bonde, Chief Marketing Officer at The Pulse Network, as they explore the lifecycle of digital marketing and the new solutions offered by The Pulse Network.

At the Pulse Network we’ve developed a solution that is designed to capture, produce, and deliver a months worth of proactive, C-Level content with just one hour of your executive’s time. As someone who struggles to find time to do all my writing, it’s a pretty cool idea. And it’s the idea behind our new Executive Brief 3.0.

It seems like just yesterday that marketers were struggling to convince our CEOs that we needed to expose our business to social media. Now that everyone understands the concept of social media, and knows it’s essential to be engaging on social channels to reach customers where they congregate, we face a different challenge: getting these same executives to make the time to blog, and tweet and create posts so they can stay in touch and (especially in B2B) reach influencers. The irony of course is that the people who are most equipped to tell the company’s story, and represent the brand on social channels, have the least amount of time to do so! This is where Executive 3.0 steps in and provides a practical solution.

As I’ve discussed, effective social marketing starts with a good story. And blogging is a core way that executives can tell stories, start discussions and articulate a point of view. Your corporate blog is the voice of the company, and needs to be authentic, informed and informative! Yet, it takes a good half a day to write a good post, when you include the time to read, research, get links, and distribute it. Multiply this by 4 or 5 – since it’s good practice to have each contributor doing at least one new post per week, and we are talking 2+ days a month just for blogging!

Executive Brief 3.0 breaks this bottleneck by building an outline/rundown for a blog ‘series,’ capturing the executive’s perspectives, thoughts and examples in one 30-minute video interview, creating 5 segments of content, post producing the output, and creating video blog posts, vignettes, transcripts, and even sound bites that can be easily cleaned up by your PR or marketing folks and turned into a month’s worth of social content. What’s it look like? This is how I created this post!

Using TPN’s video engine and production capabilities, our social media know-how, and managing the process end-to-end makes it all work. It’s a great way to tap your best storytellers, and create valuable, repurpose-able content assets.

Also, in case you missed Part 2 of this segment, I talked about virtual event marketing and how our Webinar 3.0 can benefit your business as well. Thanks for reading!

Allen Bonde is the CMO of The Pulse Network and can be found on Twitter or email,abonde@thepulsenetwork.com.

Butch Stearns is the COO of The Pulse Network and can be found on his Blog, Twitter, and LinkedIn.

Filed Under: CEO Corner, The Pulse on Marketing Tagged With: Allen Bonde, blog, business, business concepts, butch stearns, company, content, content creation, executive, executive briefings 3.0, facebook, how to write a blog, marketing, Skype, spreading knowledge, time, time consuming, twitter, writing a blog

Storytelling Drives Social Media Marketing: Conversations Lead to Conversations

August 5, 2011 by Allen Bonde

This is part four of a five part series between Tyler Pyburn, host at The Pulse Network, and Allen Bonde, Chief Marketing Officer at The Pulse Network, as they determine how storytelling drives social media marketing.
It’s every marketer’s goal to get people to go from casual conversations about your brand, to having conversations about your products, to having them consider buying the product – and buying it, and then telling everyone about it!

In referring back to our formula for social marketing, if you create shared experiences and make it easy to spread the word, it’s exponentially easier to provide in-context offers or sign-ups that takes you down the path to social commerce. This is really about in-context marketing, and at it’s extreme we are talking about bringing the ‘store’ right into the channel like JC Penny’s facebook page – and early example of “F-Commerce.”

Shopping right from your favorite merchant’s Facebook page may be a stretch for a lot of companies, but delivering deals, creating a way to share offers with friends, and building fun ways to talk about your products and spread the word to their friends is key to creating more educated – and motivated buyers.

In case you’ve missed Part 3 of this series, in that post we talked about curation, one of the hotter topics in social media today.

In part 5 of this series, we will talk B2B conversations and social marketing, and the best ways to engage in these types of communities.

Allen Bonde is the CMO of The Pulse Network and can be found on Twitter or email, abonde@thepulsenetwork.com.

Tyler Pyburn is a host at The Pulse Network and can be reached on his twitter or e-mail, tpyburn@thepulsenetwork.com

Filed Under: The Pulse on Marketing Tagged With: Allen Bonde, clothes, content, content pyramid, context marketing, conversational content, creating content, events, facebook, formula, JC Penny, products, sign ups, social media, social media marketing, the pulse network, Tyler Pyburn

3 Ways the PRISM Program May Affect Your Privacy

The Pulse Network Solutions – Executive Brief 3.0

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