How social media brings back humanity in digital life

These two presentations seem to contradict each other, but if you read carefully you will see how both elaborate on how technology can change people's daily lives.

Social media is a logical extension of what we've been doing for centuries. The technoly and the medium has changed, but the same driving need to connect, learn, express, share and interact has not.

Social media is redefining virtually f**king everything, including (but not limited to)...  
•  how we work.  
•  how we play.
•  how we learn.  
•  how we share.  
•  how we discover.
•  how we create.
•  how we complain.
•  how we celebrate.
•  how we mourn.
•  how we applaud.
•  how we influence.  
•  how we collaborate.
•  how we investigate.
•  how we evaluate.

Vitalicious: great example of email marketing, social plugins and coupons combined

Vitalicious Inc. describes itself as "the [U.S.] market leader of innovative "vital and delicious" baked goods that promote a healthy lifestyle, without sacrificing taste."
But they also know how to integrate email marketing and the power of Facebook. Have a look:

Key elements:

1. They offer a "hack" of their own product (muffins) by creating a recipe to turn it into a milkshake.
2. This recipe was shared first with Vitalicious' Facebook audience.
3. Attention-grabbing headline: New Frozen Chocolate VitaShake Recipe – Plus 2 Coupons!
4. Social plugins ("See what other Facebook fans are saying" integrated into an emailing.
5. Conversion is tracked by the unique coupon code.

Found at

• blog.bronto.com: Vitalicious’ tasty social integration

How do big brands engage their audience on Facebook?

How the Big Brands do Facebook Marketing by Webtrends offers a pretty good overview of all available tools for brand owners to interact with their audience.

The overview on slide 22 ("Facebook Campaigns") is particularly interesting:

• Contests
• Sweepstakes
• Virtual Gifts
• Polls
• Coupons
• Quizzes
• Product Samples

With the exception of Virtual Gifts, which will be discontinued by Facebook by August 1st.

Further reading:

• RIP Facebook Gifts @ Mashable
• Facebook To Close Its Virtual Giftshop August 1st @ TechCrunch
• Saying Goodbye To The Facebook Gift Shop @ TheNextWeb.com

How people influence each other

The Real Life Social Network v2

We often look to others when making decisions
People try to behave rationally, they try to make objective decisions, but other factors mean that they can't. The problem is that we all have limited access to information, and limited memory. Because of this, we have learned to rely on others to help us make decisions. We assume that other people know things we don't. In fact, we do this so often, that we automatically look to the actions of others, even when the answer is obvious.

Increasing our reliance on social networks to make decisions
The web is increasing the volume of information available to us, but our capacity for memory isn't changing. So it's likely that we'll increasingly turn to others to make decisions. There was once a time when we picked what restaurant to eat in by looking in the window. But now, we often can't decide without pulling out our phones and searching the web for reviews from people who have eaten there before.

How people influence each other is complex, and the role of "influentials" in society is over- estimated.
There may be some individuals who have great influence, but it is without doubt that how people influence each other has many other factors. A key insight is that when we study how people influence each other, it's important to focus on the person being influenced as well as the person doing the influencing.

“Social commerce is the concept of word of mouth applied to e-commerce”