Archive for the ‘Social Media’ Category
Nascar and Social Media – My Favorite Intersection Entity
With a break in the racing this past weekend and my mind still on Nascar, I decided to do a little investigation and analysis on how all of the drivers in the Sprint Cup Series handle their social media images. Almost every driver has a website so I didn’t spend much time investigating this established channel. What I wanted to see in more detail was how the drivers are using Facebook and/or Twitter AND to see if they had any strategy to cross promote. Here are my findings and conclusions:
+ Every driver except for a handful have a strong Facebook presence. I’ll get into those details in a bit. Most drivers have at least a Fan Page on Facebook and some even have personal accounts that fans can friend. There is no question that the drivers see the value of Facebook and use this to both connect to their fans and hear from them. Many are also using this as a channel for additional eCommerce activities which makes sense.
- As of this date, the drivers that either have a weak or non-existent Facebook presence are: Elliot Sadler, Clint Bowyer, Travis Kvapil, Mike Bliss, Regan Smith, Paul Menard and Marcos Ambrose. Sorry to call you out on it but you really need to get in gear here. Although I fail to see why anyone would NOT have at least a fan page on Facebook, I do excuse Marcos Ambrose given his nationality (maybe it’s an American thing?). The rest of the drivers without any Facebook presence really are a bit of a mystery. You cannot blame age (heck even Mark Martin and Jeff Gordon have pages), you cannot blame nationality (all are americans), you cannot blame experience (they span from new to well seasoned) so who is dropping the ball (tire?) here. My guess is their PR people either haven’t seen the light or maybe, just maybe are working so hard at a super strategy that they yet to “go public” with it. If I have to put money on this, I’m going with the former.
+ Not surprising is most drivers have a Twitter presence although, as a rule, these accounts definitely lagged behind their Facebook presence in maturity, coverage and use. Unfortunately, this group does have some repeat offenders with the Facebook miss-list above AND it includes a few drivers that make you go hum….. It was no surprise that the activity (posts and followers) and maturity of their Twitter accounts were clearly below that of their Facebook accounts – these guys are drivers not marketers. Some accounts were the bare bones while some had a bit more style applied to them – do a search on them and you’ll see what I mean. One thing to be aware of is the number of fake accounts out there. Some are well named while others require a review of the post to determine they are just some well meaning fan or two.
So now into the meat of this post. Who are the key winners from Nascar and how they are using Social Media. Here goes:
For Facebook, these drivers get it and have a active following:
Ryan Newman – over 20,000 fans
Mark Martin – over 22,000 fans
Brian Vickers – over 30,000 fans
Kasey Kahne – over 35,000 fans (wonder why?)
Jeff Gordon – over 60,000 fans
Tony Stewart – over 82,000 fans
Carl Edwards – over 90,000 fans
Dale Earnhardt Jr – over 135,000 fans
However the clear winner in the Facebook Fan Contest is none other than Jimmie Johnson with OVER 459,000 FANS!!! Yes, that’s right 459,000+ fans!!!
Moving over to Twitter, as stated above this was much less represented however there are some drivers who clearly “get it”:
David Ragan – over 4,500 followers however only 80 Tweets
Dale Earnhardt Jr – over 16,500 followers
Jamie McMurry – over 17,000 followers and 500+ Tweets
Tony Stewart – over 21,000 followers however ONLY 12 Tweets!!?!?!?
Kasey Kahne – over 28,000 followers with a reasonable 300+ Tweets
The clear winner at this point is: Kevin Harvick – over 34,000 followers and OVER 1,000 Tweets!!
The above have been the single platform winners but this story would be remiss if I didn’t point out the cross platform winner who is Kyle Busch. No other social media presence showed any real cross marketing activity or strategy EXCEPT for Kyles. There are multiple cross references between his accounts that promote this activity on Twitter from his Facebook Fan Page and vice versa. He has over 13,500 fans on Facebook and over 17,000 followers on Twitter with a respectable 890+ Tweets. Well done Kyle!!! Way to embrace technology to connect to your fan base.
I might, just might be warming up to you now!!!!
Smart Home (Home Automation)
How many fans of Smart Home Technology are out there? My assumption is you found this page which probably makes you a fan however what about your friends or family? Any of them using Smart Home Technology? My guess is probably very few. For the record, I have been an avid fan for over 10 years now and have automated many of the basic functions around our home. If you’re like me, most of my friends and family just smile when I bring this up and hope the pain and suffering is not too long!!!
Smart Home Technology allows you to automate many of the functions that you typically do manually around your home. Turning lights on at dusk and turning them off at dawn or before are some of the basic functions you can perform with this. Turning on your alarm or being called by your home if the alarm is tripped are other basic examples of Smart Home Technology. You can take this up quite a bit in both service value and/or complexity. It doesn’t have to be both however many times it does include both increased value and complexity. You can start to link events and actions but before we go there, back to my story.
My experience started while we were building our latest home which featured an option for Smart Home Technology. Given everything that was going on at the time (new home, another baby and general chaos at work) I had little time to really investigate all the capabilities of this technology. I knew, as a techno-geek, that it sounded very helpful (and cool) so I installed an Omni Pro package to get started. I quickly found Smarthome and became one of their most frequent online customers. Things started off with the basics – mainly automating lighting both inside and out using Switchlinc products.
I was given a copy of HAI software to control my system which at the time was clearly dated. It reminded me of a Windows 3.1 program and this was in the late 1990’s. As a former programmer I was expecting quite a bit more from the program and it’s capabilities. Either way, I jumped in and started to figure out some complex scenarios like:
If night time and the fire or security alarm is actived – turn all lights on
If dark and garage door is opened – turn on kitchen lights
If dark and backdoor is opened – turn on basement lights
Strange noise at night – turn all the lights on from the console
I won’t bore you with all the other permutations but you get the drift. This was interesting for a while however I was looking for much more. I then added a pair of OnmiStats (we have 2 zones) for thermostat controls. These gave us the option to control at the thermostat and also from the OmniPro controller. In addition, we also could call into our home if we forgot to raise or lower the temps plus allowed us to turn on our systems while we were away for extended periods. Good stuff!!!
Over the years, we continued to add devices and to increase the complexity of the programming enjoying the various products and enhancements in the market. Fast forward to the end of the year 2009 and we’re now using the our iPhones to interface with our home and all things are good.
I can’t wait to see what happens over the next 10 years in this space!!! How are you using Smart Home Technology? Any Insteon users out there? Hope you enjoyed the article.
My journey to Social Media Enlightenment
Like many of you, I too, am working my way through this new rich playground called Social Media. This quest allows me to combine my love of technology and my passion for always learning new things by applying them to situations in my life. So here I am. What have I done to date? I have the required accounts at:
I have spent many hours to build these out to reflect my experience, skills, personality, etc and have acquired quite a few friends and/or followers however still do not feel like it’s all coming together hence why I started this blog. Over the past few weeks, I have started a new project for a non-profit that I donate my time to with the expressed purpose to drive their membership up using Social Media. For now, the name of this non-profit is not important. What is important is how to harness the power of social media to achieve the goals that you set out to do. Being a technology professional I quickly realized that I needed help so I started to surf the web to find those more knowledgeable in this area. I quickly found several people that I’d like to recommend to you. The first is Jeff Bullas who hails from down under (Sydney):
This guy is a Social Media ANIMAL!!! Check out his twitter page and also his blog. You will spend hours here learning new tips and tricks. I’ve been following and reading him for the past few weeks!!! I’ve also found some local people that are much more advanced than I on their Social Media Scale such as:
Between the two of these guys, you will greatly increase your Social Media knowledge. I know I have.