The Future is Bright

Did you know your brain is wired to remember stories more than facts? Amanda Coolong dropped this little bit of knowledge on us during the undeniably cool MLOVE Confestival held in Monterey week before last. (Their next event is in a castle in Berlin, btw.)

Did you know kids are generating new neural pathways we never did and never will because of technology?  Peter Biddle shared this plus about 1000 more bits of brilliance during the recent Gov 2.0 conference held by Gov Tech pioneer Alan W. Silberberg. (You can watch the entire thing here, Peter's part begins at the 50 min mark.)

Did you know there is a secret door in the back of your heart? Inner space Explorers can discover this yourself by downloading ($3) and following the mind-blowing meditation.

These are just a few of the discoveries I have made in the almost three weeks since I last wrote a post.

I also saw futurists show cars that can drive themselves, augmented reality glasses beyond Google Glass, and predictions for computers that will be ownerless, changing to the needs of whomever walks by.

While these are all amazing discoveries, the ones that are the most evoking to me are the ones where a path was created, a path connecting the mind to the emotional being.

These are the discoveries with unmatched potential. This is the bleeding-edge I live and die by -- the place where technology and humanity meet. This is the play space where we have only scratched the surface. This is the place "social" is destined to grow up and evolve.

We have been creating communities -- some of us have even managed to bridge online and offline. We have created second screen experiences where audiences watch and engage -- some of them actually work. We have even created amazing interactive environments both online and offline.  This is just the beginning.

It's time to breathe life and human connection into our efforts. It's time businesses take full advantage of their new abilities to virtually walk, and talk, and connect with customers in real-time. It's time to develop real and interactive online presences for the characters of the entertainment properties we know and love. It's time we create stories our users can explore on any device and any platform, each giving a unique experience and value. It's time we project fully immersive in-home 3D digital experiences into living rooms around the world.  

What I have (affectionately) dubbed the "Web of Tears" is over -- we have the technology and we have the know-how. We have finally arrived and the rodeo has begun -- which is why, today, we are launching a Zine -- to do our part and share the brilliant work we uncover during our own exploration with the businesses, brands and bands we work with at grtchnfx.

This week, Zine #1: we bring you photos from the magical STEAM Carnival, Shout Outs to good Samaritans, amazing interactive campaigns, and much, much more!  

 You can get these regular roundups delivered directly to your inbox by subscribing here. And you are invited to contribute as little or as much as your heart desires, just email me here.

As always, we'd love to get your thoughts and feedback.

Forward Ho!

By Gretchen Fox, Social Architect at grtchnfx

#BostonBombings -- The Role of Citizens, Government, and Tech

This is not another post about the pros and cons of citizen journalism or about the shocking terror being experienced by the citizens of Boston, and gripping the world.

This is an invitation to participate in a dialogue with leaders who are coming together TOMORROW to discuss the role of technology in creating a more connected citizenry -- notably during an emergency. This is an area that the people this newsletter reaches can offer a lot of value.

Just as brands need to become social businesses to become the businesses of the future, our government and its citizens must also become a society adept at handling emergencies in the increasingly connected world of the future.

If you were on Twitter or Reddit last night, you were privy to information before anyone watching television. Citizen journalists captured photos and videos live during the shootout, Twitter users aggregated reputable sources into a feed, and the Boston PD sent out warnings to different groups using different hashtags like #MediaAlert and #CommunityAlert. There was some great work happening. But then there was a boy wrongly accused as a suspect on Reddit and a family terrorized for hours.

Socially savvy people understand how to identify reputable sources on Twitter and the importance of cross-checking information before syndicating to their network. But as more and more new people jump into the feed to participate – the bad information is no longer filtered and even worse -- as in the Iran Revolution, dangerous people use the medium to insert misinformation and cause mass confusion.

This is not a topic we can afford to only think about while an emergency is happening -- a lot of infrastructure, process, and knowledge needs to be developed for us to be able to organize in a way that is streamlined and helpful.

This is a real-time world we live in and we need to work together to figure out how to leverage technology to serve society as a whole – not just our clients and our brands.

 Gov 2.0 is tackling these questions with leaders at the intersection of both government and technology. This is why I am attending, and this is why I am a sponsor.

Please, join us tomorrow: Live From Gov 2.0 LA | April 20th http://bit.ly/Z5KZOZ 

By Gretchen Fox, Social Architect at grtchnfx 

A Framework for Social Advertising

I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about Social Advertising in preparation for my “Social Ad Crash Course” panel next week at Ad:Tech SF. At the end of the day, everyone wants to know how to use social advertising to drive business objectives -- and anyone working in the space knows there are an awful lot of opinions out there on the topic, and not enough clear data in one place.

I mean, it wasn’t that long ago that social advertising didn’t even exist. And since it has existed, it’s been a pretty bumpy ride. We all felt the ripple of uncertainty when GM publicly announced that Facebook ads don’t pay off.  And very recently, Econsultancy published an article saying social media and advertising are like “oil and water."

As someone who has been working across earned, owned and paid social media for years, I don’t agree … but I get it -- many companies are struggling to find success. The questions become, how do you create engagement through advertisement on platforms where consumers are there to consume content? And then, how do you move people up the slow and windy conversion funnel that is social marketing?

As I kept diving deeper and deeper into these questions, I started trying to boil down a framework that all businesses could use to create great social advertising campaigns that drive business objectives. So far, I’ve come up with three steps that, when done well, lead to success. Those are: Target, Connect, and then Convert.

I created a V1 graphic to represent the three steps for, “A Framework for Social Advertising.” The steps look simple enough, but there are a lot of aspects to consider in each step, and as always, the devil is in the details. For example, targeting has become much more technical and complex.  Ad-serving platform, CitizenNet, now leverages conversation tracking to identify brand new audience targets for brands beyond their core audience, and the company says they have even seen affinity targeting outperform core audience targeting(!). And then very recently, Facebook rolled out new "Lookalike" audiences to allow brands to find audiences on Facebook that are similar to their customer database.

During the panel, we will be looking at examples of Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn campaigns against this framework; learn about social advertising data and trends from Nielsen’s EVP of Product Leadership, Dan Beltramo; and do a deep-dive into some of the best social ad targeting around via Facebook Exchange with Adam Berke, the President of AdRoll, and VP of Digital Strategy at Alex and Ani, Ryan Bonifacino.

If you would like to join the discussion, our session is next Wednesday, April 4^th at 1:15PM in Room 3022/3024 (use discount code SF13SPEAK64 to get 25% off of your ticket). If you are unable to attend, you will be able to follow the conversation by using a combo of #socialad and #adtechsf hashtags.

Hope to see you there and looking forward to your feedback on the graphic!

By Gretchen Fox, Social Architect at grtchnfx