A big apology to the 12,000 socially engaged moms subjected to an April fool’s joke in poor taste
My name is John Cataldi, I am considered by many to me an authority on social media targeting, engagement, privacy, and on occasion social media edicate. I could blame my lapse of good judgment on a 16 hour work day, my belief that everyone shared my “office space” like humor, or a suggestion by a coworker on themes for a quick and funny April fool’s joke, fueled by social media. Though in hindsight, I can give no excuse for my lack of common sense for socially sending, by my estimate, 12,000 moms into a potential panic that nose picking or ingesting mucus could be linked to brain damage.
At approximately 3am EST, on April 1st, I had the epiphany to create a social media joke in about an hour. My caffeinated brain researched the subject of top April fools jokes, and I discovered that women were more susceptible to than their male counterparts. Looking at social trends and influencers within the female gender in association with lifestyle, first time to 30 something moms seemed to be the best grouping with viral potential. So I entitled a press release, completely as a farce, with no malice or intent whatsoever to do harm to anyone, “Child Nose Picking Linked to Brain Damage”, supported by such medical authorities as:
1.Dr. Derek Zoolander, Author of Bad Habits Make Bad Children and founder of the Center of Kids Who Can't Read Good
2.Dr. Carnero Attero – Latin for Cow Poop
3.The National Center of Scientific Data, Surveillance, Health Statistics (NCSDSHS) – Completely made that agency up
4.And a scary disease name, Early Onset Pediatric Rhinotillexomania Psychosis (EOPRP)
Using a home grown social media targeting engine and a semi-automated social engagement process, I targeted over 12,000 moms on 12 mommy based blogs, 210 mommy influencers, across 5 social networks. A random message generator engaged the moms as individuals and gave the appearance, and re-syndicated content from mom influencers increased target moms into engaged followers.
Regardless of the gaping holes within the content at face value, I mixed a lot of medical fact with fiction. So, the concept, unless you tried the validate any of the subject matter, was real enough to many to cause a mommy panic, and call the toll free 800 Nose Picking Hotline. Now moms, that were once panicked have, now becomeperturbed after hearing a prerecorded message the this is a April Fool’s joke, followed by the history of nose picking.
The net result, I have over 11,984 visited the article content, 45 moms called our pre-recorded hotline, and 12 moms referencing that I was a very bad man, though I am paraphrasing, 2 moms going into more detail while crying, all between the hours of 4-7am EST when the campaign began to pick up followers. I spent the better part of April fools morning, deleting the pranks social efectiness, recalling press releases, re-search engine optimizing bad content links, so that there is very little if any trace of this very bad prank left on the internet other than my own admittance that it occurred, with the exception of those that it may have affected.
For all moms affected by my stupidity:
1)I am truly sorry, I am a donkey ass.
2)As a father of two, I should have known better, if my wife had read the article, I am almost certain she would have called in, discovered it was a prank, and then hunted me down.
3)Please refer to point 1 again.
For social media marketers:
1)Don’t be a donkey ass
2)Think before you push a joke, taunt, or statement into the social space, because it could come back and haunt you.
3)Think, plan, bounce off social campaigns off of your target audience to see if your messaging has the desired effect.
I learned a valuable lesson from this experience and hopefully providing a good example to others of what not to do in social media. Take heed, not even witness protection could help you if you socially insult an army of moms.
Money can’t buy love, but it can buy you millions of guaranteed friends to support your politics, purchases, or personal pursuits.
I just generated over 100,000 friends, followers, and fans for 4 separate clients over the past 96 hours! The catch phrase immortalized by the Beatles “Money can’t buy me love”, has been repeated as the golden rule of relationships for decades by hopeful hearts and probably poor romantic novelists has now been proven a farce. What seemly separates social friend fishing as opposed to true personal interaction is the message relevance and method of continual, hierarchical engagement. The expected end result is not to collect friends, followers, and fans, but to create an army of like minded individuals that can be lead to a specific action. Whether that action is one of capitalism or cause, integrated socialization into any media campaign can create exponential results.
The idea of pay-per-friend came from my initial pay-per-call platform I built years ago, in which you only paid for qualified client calls generated from our advertising. Unlike pay-per-friend, pay per call is a one shot, one kill deal, when a call comes in the advertiser answers, the interaction is now over. Referral potential from a call in client is low. In a pay-per-friend model, targeted friend is engaged, we continue to feed the target client relevant interaction, which create additional interaction with the target friends circle of influence, thus semi-viral fellowship begins to grow exponentially.
Pay-Per-Friend campaign basic steps – minus social technology details
Step 0: Start with the end in mind – simply put, in a perfect world what is the end result? Do you want 10,000 calls into the governor’s office? Change the perception of consumer confidence in a specific product or brand? Or promote your stock to those most likely to buy? All is possible, but the goals need to be set ahead of time.
Step 1: Set the stage / Client targeting via digital listening – this means selectively harvesting followership by listening to the interactions within the social sphere and create immediate engagement based upon the relevance of the conversation which compliments a per determined position.
Step 2: Socially class engaged as a leader or lemming – simply stated, does the engaged follower have their own following. Dependent upon the influence of the engaged participant, semi-automated to personal social interaction may be the best course of action, as opposed to the lemmings that will follow and syndicate a social conversation just to be a part of the group, cause, or conversation.
Step 3: Cross connect social, mobile, and traditional media platforms – Create tasks that help identify your social army, and allow you as the brand, advertiser, or agency to connect those identified as influencers to cross pollinate to other social mediums. The easiest way this can be achieved is to give influencers access to social, mobile, and ad mob tools to elevate their influence status.
Step 4: Seed social action and let leadership take form – plant a single seed in the mind of an individual, and potentially change the world. Carefully crafted and timely interactions will yield a predictive result. Those of social influence will lead an army of followers to an end action. Dependent upon the levels of influence of your social sphere, interactions can range from syndicated to highly personal.
Step 5: Create a rewards system – rewards can be a powerful motional tool, but like any compensation, the expectation must meet reality. Doesn’t promise and not deliver, or you will create a viral Acoup d'état.
Step 6: Measure the social success, optimize and repeat– from step 0 to now, friends were engaged, mobilization occurred, and most likely new opportunities emerged.
Step 7: RECYCLE– Just because you won the war, does not mean you throw your army away!
Hot off the press October 8, 2010, I read an article recently by a fellow tech evangelist Nick 0'Neil. What he lacks in words Nick makes up for in graphics… LOL.
While Facebook may have a fraction of the employees that Google does, the company is gaining increasing attention a potential rival to Google as it’s valuation has skyrocketed beyond $30 billion and it appears to be organizing (and making accessible via search) the semantic web. While there are numerous articles published comparing the two companies, we thought it would be fun to create a graphic depicting the growing tension between the two internet giants.
Middlemen and The Social Network, 2 Movies, 2 Eras Intertwined
Two movies have recently come to theaters, The Social Network and Middlemen. Both films depict, with a slight bit of Hollywood embellishments the rise, fall, and rise again of two businesses: internet porn and social networking.
For acting and overall entertainment, I would have to give my vote to “The Social Network”. However, for the importance of making the internet profitable for all “Christopher Mallick”, portrayed by Luke Wilson in the Movie Middle Men, connected the two most important dots in making the internet a profitable medium, ecommerce. He was one of the first innovators to combine engaging content and commerce on the internet. This single act, of making content profitable, gave birth not only to the world of online pornography, but more importantly it acted as a catalyst for the proliferation of internet technologies such as Affiliate Networks, Online Advertising, Video Chat, Virtual Worlds, Digital Rights Management, Content Management, Cascade Billing, Mobile Billing, Mobile Content Delivery, and yes even Social Networks.
Do I believe that porn created or began many of these technologies that later became commercialized? Actually I do, because once mainstream companies commercialized on their success, they had a much broader appeal to a global audience, investors, and media outlets. This adult to mainstream paradigm shift has made the internet not only profitable, but socially acceptable. I know this for a fact when I say Mark Zuckerberg, founder of Facebook was not the creator of social media, just as Steven Chen, co-founder of YouTube, did not create video sharing. Their profitable, but not social accepted predecessors could be tracked back to adult innovators such as Andrew Conru, Friend Finder 1997, and Co-Founders Rick Latonia and Mark Womack, Consumption Junction in 1999. Thus from the loins of adult media, mainstream has flourished.
Today, over 30% of the US population is connected through social media sites such as FaceBook, Twitter, YouTube, with currently thousands of social networks to choose from, with dozens surfacing daily. So take some time and give thanks or curse the adult industry and its supporting internet culture for its influence and catalyst that have exponentially grew internet and electronic commerce to what we know today.
In the end, social media, built on a somewhat seedy past of Middlemen, has given a new gold rush to electronic media. Capitalistically, social media has opened a free flow of ideas into commercial ventures that redefines how we as a global civilization engage and interact. Moralistically, our definition of decency as the conforming to the standards of today’s newly socialized culture is subjective at best. Thus, our personal views have now become fluid and malleable based upon the external influences social consensus, pop culture trends, and even mainstream media.
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