Today is St Patrick’s day and I have Irished myself. Actually I have Irished my Nana Mouskouri self from my friend Andreas’ Eurovision Party last year. What do you think?

Tourism Ireland has released this great little Facebook app to celebrate St Patrick’s Day.

Log on to Facebook and head to the GoToIrelandOz Facebook page to Irish yourself.

Go on, Irish yourself!  You know you want to!

Tim picked up on my tweet from last week:

“Just noticed that Expedia.com.au has @wotif like display for New York Hotels. Not the “prettiest” but functional http://bit.ly/5Avcoy”

The Expedia.com.au blog has been surprisingly quiet recently. In fact the last post was over 7 months ago. Have they given up on the idea of the blog?

Expedia.com.au has been slow to embrace social media and their blog has been their only (correct me if I am wrong) foray into the social media world.

Judging by the number of comments it never really took off as a conversation starter, mainly a one way message.

Interstingly the blog is still linked to in the footer of the homepage, which, on a side note,  has had a great makeover recently which seems to have triumphantly conquered in their A|B testing and is now permanent.

“According to Nielsen NetView for October, Facebook’s “unique audience” was 8.1 million, followed by YouTube on 5.8 million and Wikipedia (5.2 million). MySpace was steady on 2.3 million users while Bebo lagged well behind on 358,000.”

According to the General Manager,  Francisco Cordero, Bebo focuses on the 13-24 market but Bebo struggled to get a foot hold here in Australia, and failed to really challenge either Facebook or Myspace.

Read the SMH article, Woe is Bebo: site to shut down in Australia by Paul McIntyre

Interesting Related Posts:

• Bebo may retreat form Australia

• Mayday, mayday – Bebo NZ is going down

Krustyfries, who created the original site design and development, were engaged to implement a simple cost effective e-commerce solution to sell the bands extensive back catalogue and tour merchandise.

The site utilises  FatFreeCart for the online shopping cart and Paypal to handle the payments.

Available on the site are 9 of the Bcaksliders full length CDs, posters and t-shirts.

The Backsliders latest mini album, Throwbacks is out on October 1 and is available for pre-order now at the Backsliders online store.

www.eesti.org.au

Krustyfries has launched the new website for the Estonian community in Australia, at www.eesti.org.au.

The aim of the new site was to create a destination to inform people on what is happening in the Estonian community in Australia. The site features information on the latest events, news, consular and passport information and Estonian language classes as well as articles from the community newspaper, Meie Kodu.

The key client functionality for the website was that it had to be easy to update the content.   Various stakeholders around Australia would be submitting their news and events.  This was achieved by utilising WordPress as a content management system.

As www.eesti.org.au is a community, non for profit website,  the site was developed using mostly free open source tools from WordPress for the site and CMS development, GIMP for the graphic design and Google for the maps.  The only additional expense was for a base theme from Theme Forest.

Joining me on the panel was  Christina Thurn, Senior Producer at Disney interactive and Ross Mcdonald, Industry Marketing Manager at Google.

The session was chaired by Academic Director and Professor of Marketing Murali Chandrashakaran and Marketing Club president Geoff Baker.

Some of the key questions asked included:
How do you stand out from the competition on the internet?;
This was a very easy one for both Google and Disney to answer, as they are both clear leaders in their field.  I spoke about how in many industries in Australia, companies still hadn’t embraced the internet as a serious marketing channel, and just by getting the basics right, they could gain a serious competitive advantage.

With the internet getting increasingly mobile, how are you adapting your strategy?;
It was declared that 2009 is “almost” the year of the mobile! The iPhone has done a fantastic job in putting mobile data services in the hands of the average consumer. Google’s new Android phone, with its open sourced operating system promises to bring a mobile revolution as new apps are constantly developed. Disney has alway been a leader in mobile content, often teaming up with telcos to help distribute their content, e.g. Bigpond and High School Musical 3.

How powerful is user-generated content in your business, and how do you use it?;
Disney has embraced user generated content by developing many online activities for kids, some paid and some free, for example Club Penguin (an online community for children).

I also spoke about the seemingly decentralisation of user generated content. Sites like TripAdvisor now appear to be the exception, rather than the rule. People are not restricted to just sharing their views on one designated site, consumers are now empowered to discuss companies using various means; on twitter, their own blogs, facebook, forums etc. etc.

What will the future of digital marketing look like in 5 years time?
Wow what a question, I don’t think any of us had a stand out answer for this one!

There was also a Q&A session with the class where some greate questions were asked.  Content rights, lack of true globalisation in the internet and social media were discussed in the context of business opportunity and competitive advantage.

It was  great to be back at the AGSM, this time not as a student but as a professional.  However, it reminded me how much fun I had during my MBA and how I miss being a student!

However the research used to come up with this statement is based on a Forrester research study where they asked around 1,600 people the following question:

“Please indicate to what extent each statement describes your attitudes: I pay more attention to online ads directly related to my online activity (contextual); I pay more attention to online ads that fit my specific interests (behavioral).”

I struggled to understand what was being asked and I work in marketing! I can’t imagine every respondent fully understood what this question was asking.  According to the survey

“65 % responding that they are more receptive to BT, and only 35% saying they paid more attention to contextual ads”

I look forward to a more robust study using real data based on customers actions following exposure to behavioural vs contextual advertising.  This will be much more valuable that simply asking consumers what they like!

Read the press release – Independent Study Finds that Online Shoppers are More Receptive to Behaviorally Targeted Ads than Contextual Ads

The audience was varied including ecommerce retailers, search companies, publishers and agencies. Most of the audience asked questions around whether big corporates were actually listening or even cared about their presence in Social Media, how the Buzznumbers technology worked and ways companies could get a head start on seeding influencers.  It’s clear that everyone is now jumping on the social media bandwagon (and rightly so) but many companies have not developed robust tools to measure their success or failure in this space.

Xpand Xpresso is to be a continuing gathering Digital Media types every so often to discuss various topics in the industry attended by leading people in the Online space across a range of sectors including Finance, Retail, Broadcasting, Agency and Publisher. I am looking forward to the next one!

You can see the Buzz numbers presentation below, and check out their blog at Buzznumbers.

Buzz Numbers Actionable Business Intelligence From Online Conversations

Yahoo (and Ninemsn’s market share) is barely 10% these days in Australia, however 10% is still a sizeable audience that you shouldn’t miss out on!

Yahoo is offering:

• A FREE Yahoo! Search Marketing campaign for 3 months*
• Campaign set up and optimisation handled by Yahoo! certified local specialists. This means that all the hard work is done for you!
• Your ads seen on Yahoo!7 and ninemsn.

Offer ends 31 July 2009.
Sign up for the Yahoo Big Bang.