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Digital Strategy

Digital Strategy Quick-Take: Quoted in today’s Chicago Tribune on Chevrolet Klout promotion

daniel honigman quoted in chicago tribune on chevrolet klout promotion

Chevrolet recently announced a Klout-based sampling program in which it would provide various prominent social media users the opportunity to test drive its new Volt.

As the first Klout-based car sampling program, many news sources covered the story, including the Chicago Tribune’s Robert Channick, who quoted me in his article. (Disclaimer: I worked at the Chicago Tribune/Tribune Interactive several years ago.) The story was also featured, in an altered version, as the front page item in today’s RedEye.

My point: social media promotions are evolving, and as new channels evolve, brands are looking to utilize them to reach new segments of their customer base. (One side benefit: newer platforms like Klout are often much less expensive as more mature channels, such as TV, but even older digital communities like Facebook.)

Please click the links above to read the articles!

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Categories
Digital Strategy

Digital Strategy Quick-Take: Quoted in Forbes article on Digg

Late last week, Forbes’ Jeff Bercovici reached out for my thoughts on Digg’s $500K sale. Digg, once valued at $164 million, was one of the social web’s early driving forces, but had fallen on some tough times in recent years. One of my quotes ended up being included in Jeff’s final article, which you can read here.

When I was in the news business, part of my role was to determine how to build community around – and drive traffic from – sites such as Facebook, Twitter, Digg and others. I had the pleasure of meeting some great people along the way, including some Digg “power users” that were also quoted in the story.

All types of businesses – digital or not – can take two lessons from Digg’s demise:

  • Don’t ignore your core customer (or user) base. Maintain an open dialogue with your customers, even if you’re riding high on your success. When you ask for their feedback, have every intention of utilizing it, or at the very least, listening to them.
  • Market to your customers that use the product most. As companies evolve, they try to reach new audiences and customers. This is fine, but don’t do it at the expense of the ones that have supported you in the past.
  • Don’t give your customers a reason to leave. If your company sells one product or service, make sure you’re the best. In the article, I made the point that Facebook can get away with many of its changes because so many people use it for different things: photo sharing, status updates, games and more. Digg did one thing, really, but ended up losing out to its competitors because it didn’t value its core community. Once Digg changed its core product, it just wasn’t as good as its competitors, who were more than happy to claim Digg’s customers.

What else can brands take away from Digg? Please leave your thoughts as comments below!

(NOTE: This post was originally published on the LoSasso blog.)

Daniel B. Honigman