Answers.com’s answers on Twitter are powered by ObjectiveMarketer

Did you know what DIDASKALEINPHOBIA is? In fact, you might have had one … Not me It is the fear of going to school .. the belly aches and the usual fever right before the school bus honks. I came to know of it here: http://om.ly/VPWz.

Also, I remember birthday of many who I have not really met. But, did not realize it was Internet’s 40th until I read this – http://om.ly/VTRw And, honestly, this is one birthday we should all remember, and celebrate.

If you are wondering, whether you are in a pop quiz today, well that is true. With Answers.com, it is a fun way to ask questions, and wonder if the answer exists, and sometimes to think, is that really a valid question. Like, Happy Oatmeal day (http://om.ly/VQOT) made me ask, “Really? There is one such day?”.

I believe, Answers.com is an excellent site with some of the best contents. And, Twitter could be an excellent source of sharing this information – entertaining, educating, reminding us of things we take for granted… And, it feels proud to see @answersdotcom powered by ObjectiveMarketer.

Influencers and Amplifiers

Do you know who your Influencers and Amplifiers are?

In ObjectiveMarketer, we provide you with insights into who your influencers and amplifiers are. First, what are these measures? and Second, why are they important.

Defining Influencers and Amplifiers

We aggregate all Retweets by users. Every 1st level follower who retweets your message is an Influencer. The number suggests, how many times she has tried to influence.

When your influencer gets retweeted by her followers, then your message gets amplified. We promote that user to an Amplifier.

In the above example, you can see User 1 is your strongest Influencer. But, user 1 could never be promoted to an Amplifier (as none of her followers Retweeted these messages from her). On the other hand, though User 3 had  influenced only 4 times, she got 51 Retweets on them (avg of 17 per retweet). She is promoted to an Amplifier.

A business can use this information to acknowledge, and provide incentives to their amplifiers. Or with this information, can reach out to them, whenever there is an important campaign.  Consider, if User 3 Retweeted 10 times, possible number of Retweets could have been 170. And, if the number of followers for User 3 is significantly large, the exposure your tweets would have received will be very high.  From Strategy point of view, it would be worthwhile, to identify ways to promote Followers -> Influencers -> Amplifiers.

Why is this information important

One of the key metrics for measuring the success of a campaign on Twitter is the “reach” of your message. In this regard, a tactic very commonly being used is getting your message endorsed. This endorsement could be paid or unpaid, from a “twitter celebrity” or  “social media guru”, from a community or network of sorts, where there is, often, an unsaid pact that the users will retweet each other’s tweets no matter what the content is. Some, companies do this strategically – where, they engage with their followers (with the hope that these followers will carry their important messages forward).

A great example is from top blogger Jeremy Shoemaker, who has been running sponsored tweets for more than a year, being paid $200-500 per tweet from large big brand advertisers like Blockbuster, Seaworld. An unnamed search engine paid him $280 per tweet for up to four tweets a day every 4 hours ($1120.00/day). Source: Via Google Search.

However, there is a question of credibility when you pay someone to tweet on your behalf. Adam Ostrow from Mashable was once quoted to say  “Personally, I think any review – on a blog or on Twitter – is immediately de-valued if the author is being paid to write it, because the objectivity is lost.” Having said that, there is no doubt, a good practice of transparency (#tags, Disclaimers) etc can potentially increase the reach of your message by multiple times if it was tweeted by someone who has an authority on the subject.

But, no matter who you choose and what method you use to spread the word – how do you measure the impact? How do you know, it is worthwhile engaging with a user with the goal of increasing reach? These two measures of Inflencers and Amplifiers, are your answers. May be, your loyal followers would be enough, and you do not need any celebrity endorsements.

ObjectiveMarketer and NGO Ashoka’s Changemaker Partner

Ashoka's Changemaker

We are proud to welcome Ashoka’s Changemaker onboard as our customers.  We also announce with this, a discount package for NGOs and Small Businesses. To know more about this offer, please email us at info@objectivemarketer.com

Ashoka.org brings together and invests in individuals who have innovative solutions to society’s most pressing problems. These individuals are Social Entrepreneurs, who, instead of blaming the government for every problem in society, take it on them to find a solution and help government in making the society a better place to live. Ashoka.org provides a platform to these social entrepreneurs help with practical implementation of their vision of social uplift. We are a long term admirer of Ashoka.org and are very pleased to be a part of their social media campaign execution.

Press release

Social Media helps accelerate the growth of global online community of action: Ashoka’s Changemakers and Objective Marketer partner.

ObjectiveMarketer’s social media marketing platform helps Changemakers, an online community of the highly acclaimed citizen sector organization Ashoka, find, fund, and spread innovative solutions to the world’s most pressing social problems.

Redwood City, Calif., October 26, 2009 – ObjectiveMarketer, leading provider of social marketing platform, today announced addition of Ashoka’s Changemakers, the hugely influential citizen sector organization for social entrepreneurs, to their list of customers.

Ashoka’s Changemakers engages corporate and foundation partners to source innovative ideas from throughout the world. As early adopters of social media channels and with 56,000 (and growing) followers, Ashoka’s Changemakers is in Twitter’s coveted Suggested Users list. With ObjectiveMarketer, they get comprehensive analytics and user engagement platform to increase their reach by leveraging the power of social networks.

“ObjectiveMarketer’s metric system is the tool that enables us to innovate in the social media sphere,” said Noelle Chun, social media coordinator of Ashoka’s Changemakers. “Without such feedback, we’re strategizing blind.”

“We are particularly excited in joining hands with Ashoka. With ObjectiveMarketer, we believe Ashoka will find the perfect technology platform to implement their social media strategies” says Amita Paul, founder, ObjectiveMarketer.

To demonstrate support towards social causes, ObjectiveMarketer, today, announced a special discount package to NGOs and companies that are working for social uplift. For more information on ObjectiveMarketer, visit http://objectivemarketer.com/

About ObjectiveMarketer
ObjectiveMarketer’s SAAS based marketing solutions for social media enables enterprises to reach, engage and influence their target audience using the most powerful channels available to marketers today. ObjectiveMarketer provides direct marketers the technology and support they need to continuously improve their campaign performance, lower costs and realize ROI from leveraging the power of social. Headquartered in Redwood City, CA, ObjectiveMarketer’s clients include 500 companies, NGOs and several public relations and advertizing agencies. To learn more about ObjectiveMarketer, please visit www.objectivemarketer.com or follow us online at www.twitter.com/objmarketer or www.facebook.com/Objectivemarketer .

About Ashoka
Founded in 1980, Ashoka is the world’s working community of approximately 2,000 leading social entrepreneurs. It champions the most important new social change ideas and supports the entrepreneurs behind them to start, grow, succeed, and collaborate on their ventures. As Ashoka expands its capacity to integrate and connect social and business entrepreneurs around the world, it builds an entrepreneurial infrastructure comprised of global initiatives that supports the fast-growing needs of the citizen sector. Ashoka is creating change today, for an Everyone a Changemaker™ society to become the reality of tomorrow. For more information, visit www.ashoka.org.

About Ashoka’s Changemakers
Changemakers is an initiative of Ashoka, an organization with over three decades of finding, funding, and expanding the work of social entrepreneurs across the globe. It is a global online community of action that connects people to share ideas, inspire and mentor each other, and find and support the best ideas in social innovation. The Changemakers online community builds on this history and expands the Ashoka vision by creating an “Everyone a Changemaker” world through networking, relationship-building, and the sourcing of funding opportunities.

Through its collaborative competitions and open-source process, Changemakers’ has created one of the world’s most robust laboratories for launching, refining, and scaling ideas for solving the world’s most pressing social problems. For more information, visit www.changemakers.com

MEDIA CONTACTS
Amita Paul
Email: amita@objectivemarketer.com

Demo of ObectiveMarketer to Institution of European Union

Yesterday, I presented ObjectiveMarketer to a delegate of CIOs from European Union . This group of high profile IT executives from the European Union was visiting the silicon valley to study trends of emerging technologies. They are scheduled to meet with industry spearheaders like Cisco, Oracle, Microsoft and very few startups.

It was an honor to get invited to present to this team. Thanks to the organizers at Cisco Anne Lange and Simon Willis, and my advisor Marylene-Delbourg Delphis in making this happen.  The feedback  from the team was very encouraging. In their words “ObjectiveMarketer was a very clever concept and ‘bound to succeed” product. They went on to mention that ObjectiveMarketer was the best presentation of the day. They had been to the Facebook Office before the ObjectiveMarketer presentation.

I believe, this is a great testimony from a very aware group of people. We spent the evening over a sumptuous dinner at Zizzibo in Palo Alto and discussions on politics, european markets and trends, and of course ObectiveMarketer. Some pictures from the evening -

Drafts and Notes make teamwork more efficient

The new Drafts and Notes feature of ObjectiveMarketer is poised to make it more efficient for teams to collaborate and be effective with social media campaigns. With this feature, a draft of the message to be published can be saved for review and worked upon by a team working on a campaign.

Drafts and Notes feature in ObjectiveMarketer

To use this feature, do the following:

1. Click on POST MESSAGE button in the application UI
2. OR
3. Click on the POST2OM Bookmark in your browser window
4. In the POST MESSAGE UI, select the Campaign, and in the PUBLISH WHEN section, select “Draft for Review” Option
5. To Review the draft,  go to CAMPAIGNS -> CAMPAIGN NAME -> POSTS for REVIEW
6. To Edit, click on EDIT next to the message.
7. To add a note, click on NOTE next to the message.

There are several use cases for the Drafts and Notes, some are listed below:

1. Identify few topics that you want to share. Save the draft of messages, and publish them when you have identified good articles related to the topic.
2. One team member is assigned the task to drafts all messages, and second team member reviews it before publishing
3. Collaborate and work as a team, before picking the final list to be publish
4. While, you are identifying the right channel, park the message as draft

These are just a few use cases. Possibilities are immense. If you can think of a use case, please share.

Pictures from Techcrunch50 2009

ObjectiveMarketer Logo

Amita standing in front of OM demo pit

Marylene and Amita in Icon Ultra Lounge, after party hosted by TC50

ObjectiveMarketer Booth in Demo Pit @TC50 2009

Discussing after a Photo Shoot with press

Marylene and Amita standing in front of the Booth

Demonstrating ObjectiveMarketer

After Party at Icon Ultra Lounge …

Mint, 2007 TC50 alumni, sold to Intuit for $170mn. Who cares to be present at the booth.

Winning DEMO pass from Ubergizmo!

Ok, this makes me a life long fan of Ubergizmo. San Diego, here I come … DEMO, won’t be complete without ObjectiveMarketer!

Winning DEMO pass from Ubergizmo

Ubergizmo.com

We have selected the best 3 comments for our DEMOFall 09 Free Pass Giveaway. The selection was done without seeing the names and the photos, there was no favoritism here, only the comment quality and trip’s purpose were considered. Recipients are selected at our discretion and the choice was based on the idea that the recipients would make the best out of DEMO.Here are the recipients and their comments:

Amita Paul:
1. I am a woman entrepreneur, like Eliane Fiolet
2. I am working on an awesome product (ObjectiveMarketer) for social media marketing space – that will help, above all, increase adoption of Social Media Channels for business use.
3. I have dared to dream, and am bootstrapping to make my dreams come true.

Deirdre Gibson:
I should win the pass because I’m the founder of a startup. I have not given any pitches yet and would love to see how it’s done. Plus, I’d be coming all the way from Florida so it shows how committed I am. I just can’t afford the flight AND the ticket. Last, but certainly not least, I love karaoke. I am a fierce Tina Turner or Beyonce. Here’s a picture from a karaoke night in New Orleans. I got my whole team to get on stage with me. http://tinyurl.com/kr84ww

Stephane Delbecque:
First, I’m the co-founder of a startup that doesn’t have any external funding yet and can’t afford to pay the ticket to attend DEMO.
Second, DEMO is considered by many as the most important startup event to attend. Following it with the live feed is great, but being there and mingling with other entrepreneurs is priceless.
Third, I went to San Diego for the first time last week and really loved it. OK, it was for some family vacation, but still.
Four, if I’m picked for this free pass, I promise to take a picture of each and every demoing company (with a quick comment) so it’s published live on Ubergizmo.
So, do we have a deal?

Follow our live of DEMO at live.ubergizmo.com starting on Tuesday September 22nd at 8.30 am PT.

Thanks to all the participants!
Best
The Ubergizmo Team

Isn’t this awesome?

Techcrunch Demopit

We are participating in Techcrunch DemoPit.

ObjectiveMarketer is participating in Techcrunch 2009 Demo Pit

What it means, is that we did not make it to the top 50 of Techcrunch to launch the product in their annual event. But, we did make it to the top 150. This is huge for us. When we had submitted our application we were just 4 months young, very much in private beta. As my research indicates, getting into Tech50 involves several aspects, not all are related to the usefulness and uniqueness of the product. I am convinced that while, we did not meet some of the criterion that could have put us in top 50, but, our approach to provide solutions for emerging media, gave us a cut in the top 150.

We continue to focus on building the product. While, PR is important, we do believe that word of mouth and recommendations from our existing customers are more important.  And so, we are dedicated in making our product more valuable for our customers, in our every revisions.

So, why are we attending the Demo Pit? First and foremost, to accept with gratitude the recognition we have received, at such an early stage. And second, to share the vision we have for ObjectiveMarketer with all present at Techcrunch. It is one of the most globally recognized platform for entrepreneurs to showcase their products. And, it is an honor for us to be a part of this mega event.

We would benefit a lot, if anyone who has attended this event earlier could share some experience and give us more insights into what we could expect from the event. We will be very grateful. Finally, keep rooting for ObjectiveMarketer!

New Feature Updates from ObjectiveMarketer

Fast growth that shows!

Our product is evolving, growing fast. It shows!

We keep making improvements in our product such that you deliver much more than a string of text and a URL, in 140 characters.  We provide you with ways to cover every touch point of your audience, with message and experience that is interesting, engaging and rewarding.

The three new feature that we have added, work behind the scenes to help you be effective in delivering the right message, at the right time – most importantly, making it easy such that you don’t miss a single opportunity to connect with your audience.

1. Schedule Calendar

All your scheduled posts in a Calendar View

In social media channels, being regular is key. You set a pattern, and any change in the pattern has consequences. One of the strategies to manage a regular stream is by scheduling your content with intervals/frequency that works best for you. While, we have one of the most robust scheduling functionality, our Schedule Calendar makes it even more charged up. With Schedule calendar now, you can toggle between different views (date, week , one time, recurring etc ) and space out your messages. In words of one of the most active users of ObjectiveMarketer, “the schedule calendar is the starting point of all my messages now. I look at the calendar, and if I have sufficient number of messages scheduled for the day, I can take some break.”  It is particularly useful, when you have a team working on a single account. This way you do not cut each others messages by posting them at the same time, and/ or not posting at all for a longer interval. In all, the schedule calendar makes you efficient, and productive by taking care of the routine task, so that you can spend your time to think and act in finding and generating meaningful contents.

2. Preference Settings

ObjectiveMarketer is feature rich. So, for the un-initiated, the product might get a little complex in the beginning. We understand this – and so, we have made it easier and less overwhelming by allowing you to create your preference settings. The preference settings are user login dependents. So, you can login and set your own defaults (campaign, page, twitter account, Facebook page etc).

Whenever, you publish, your defaults are pre-selected.  If your default view is Basic, you will see all pre-selected options. To publish, you are only required to type in the content and publish. However, if you wish to edit the preselected options, you can move  to the Advanced Tab.

3. ObjectiveMarketer “POST2OM” Bookmarklet

With this, you can create a Bookmarklet icon of ObjectiveMarketer in your browser window. Whenever, you see an interesting content, you can post it to your favorite channel (Twitter, Facebook, Pages etc) by just clicking on the Post2OM icon in your browsers bookmark menu bar.

We are working hard in making enterprises, and agencies that manage enterprise accounts use Social Media Channels as a strategic mode of communication. Every feature that we add is built in helping meet the goals of businesses active on social media channels. We welcome all feedback, suggestions and support in our cause.

Getting Re-united with Camaro

Camero - from $2800 to $250000

Yet another example where customers, fans and business owners work together on a mission – this time, of somewhat different kind. Papa John, the Pizza restaurant chain, celebrated 25th year anniversary – and the mission was to find back the car, owner (John Schnatter) had sold in 1983, to start the business. Lost love, you see! This car, the Camaro, was worth falling in love for, lets say, a collector’s dream. Why not? For the car that was sold for $2800 in 1983, was bought back at $250,000 – you calculate the appreciation.

What is interesting is the role, media and social sourcing played in the hunt, giving back Schnatter, not just the car, but, also a massive positive brand publicity. To thank, PapaJohn is offering “free pizza” to all Camaro owners at the restaurant.

By the way, I have an old Mustang Convertible  – just in case someone wanted to get reunited with?