SocialTimes.com

MySpace Now Pronounces You Man and Wife Posted: 25 Mar 2009 01:16 PM PDT Married on MySpace. It’s got alliteration, but does it have your vote of confidence? In partnership with Endemol, the production company behind a number of reality shows made for television and the web, MySpace is taking vows to give users the wedding of their dreams. The new interactive online series is set to air in May, with 13 episodes and a live wedding ceremony concluding the show in August, but submissions for the show open up today. The deadline is April 17th and the finalists for Married on MySpace will be announced on April 24th. Similar to wedding shows seen on morning news programs or the Lifetime Network, its the viewers (in this case, MySpace users) that determine which lucky couple will get an all-expenses-paid wedding. And it’s not just the couple that MySpace users get to choose. The attire, bachelor and bachelorette parties and wedding location will also be selected by MySpace users, making this a truely interactive series made for an online community. Voting will take place for two wedding elements each week leading up to the nuptials. Talk about crowd sourcing. In addition to having MySpace users picking some of the major wedding-related events, the whole thing will be chronicled and featured on MySpace, with its very own video channel. A series profile page will also give spotlights to exclusive content like profiles of the wedding party, behind the scenes footage and blogs from the couple. So has the wedding reality phenomonon gotten out of hand when we turn to MySpace for entertainment? A number of cross-promotional partners and sponsors don’t seem to think so. The Knot is an editorial content sponsor and will be providing wedding and style experts to help plan the wedding. Additional content from The Knot’s application, My Inner Bride, will also allow MySpace users to create bride avatars and further engage themselves in this unique online event. Another sponsor, Touchstone Pictures’ “The Proposal,” makes the Married on MySpace series look like a well integrated marketing ploy, but I don’t think that will matter much once the entertainment value of a social network’s users deciding the fate of one couple’s wedded bliss. It looks like this is the next step in content distribution and marketing on MySpace, merely emphasizing MySpace’s larger initiatives to diversify the very meaning of a social network as the company becomes more media-centric from a creation standpoint.

Do Branded Communities Really Work? Posted: 25 Mar 2009 11:25 AM PDT You hear all the time that brands leveraging communities online are great ways to increase brand recognition. A new report from Powered, a social marketing company, has released its findings that support these claims. Conducted along with Next Century Media Global, the annual report shows that the return on investment for social marketing online delivers an average of $60 for every $1 invested. That’s a 10% increase from 2006. The ROI Report and Benchmark for Social Marketing is specific to companies backed by Powered, so the findings are very narrow and can’t be fully applied across the board. But the report iself does bring up some interesting points to consider as marketers and online communities look to better engage users, especially for branding purposes. Powered questioned social network users and found that about 66% of respondents sated they were more likely to purchase products and/or services as a direct result of the learning process offered in a branded community, as well as stating that their overall perception of the brand improved based on the community. As far as brand loyalty goes, about 63% of respondents stated that they had a more ongoing positive opinion of the brand after interacting with the community. What’s that mean for brands? Creating branded online environments can pay off. While a correlation has been proven by Powered as a result of its own marketing offerings, the causal relationship of brand recognition and consumer interaction could be left to a great many factors. The very act of seeing a brand reach out to consumers online could help improve the perception of that brand. The ability to interact with other consumers, even in a branded community environment, still takes advantage of an open forum approach that enhances any material a brand may be pushing out to consumers. The common thread here is still the fact that much of the power lays in the hands of the consumers. As long as the consumers feel as though they are in control of the content and the online experience, brands have a better opportunity of engaging these consumers and disseminating information. The concepts brought to light through Powered’s study can be applied to stand-alone communities or even applications that operate within the realms of a larger social network such as Facebook. As we saw yesterday with BLiNQ’s study, the ability to engage consumers in such online environments is a necessary and useful step that brands and marketers can take for moving their brand forward.

You are subscribed to email updates from The Social Times To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now.	Email delivery powered by Google
Inbox too full? Subscribe to the feed version of The Social Times in a feed reader.
If you prefer to unsubscribe via postal mail, write to: The Social Times, c/o Google, 20 W Kinzie, Chicago IL USA 60610