Daily reading 02/27/2008

How Lego Caught the Cluetrain - There's a New Conversation, Feb. 26, 2008

tags: social_media_useful

• In this video, former Lego executive Jake McKee, who now heads social media consultancy
  Ant's Eye View, talks about his experiences building community at Lego.  McKee was designated to serve the tiny adult market for Lego toys. At the time he was appointed, Lego had a policy of refusing to even look at suggestions from customers. The insights the company gained from its adult customers changed its culture and made Lego a case study in customer innovation. (44 minutes)
   - post by pgillin

  ¶ 8:30 AM 1 Comments

  Tech PR War Stories podcast offers new social media advice Over at the Tech PR War Stories podcast, David Strom and I have been busy interviewing some fascinating people about social media marketing. Here’s a roundup of recent activity. You can subscribe to the podcast feed on the site or by clicking here.

44: Internet Marketing Superlist Author Shares Secrets
At the end of 2007, Tamar Weinberg assembled an amazing assortment of blog entries about everything from headline writing to linkbaiting to becoming a Digg.com power user. Tamar will give you a twentysomething’s perspective on social media. If you’re trying to really understand this phenomenon, listen to what she has to say.

Four great trade show tips

Evan Schuman (TPRWS 39) of StorefrontBacktalk.com has spent a lot of time at trade shows lately and he sent us these four tips for getting the most out of media contacts.

45: The social media skeptic

Jennifer Mattern calls herself the “social media Grinch.” But that doesn’t mean she’s down on social media. It’s just that she thinks the focus on social media can distract PR people from their real work, In this interview, she outlines her cautionary advice about social media and stresses the fundamentals that PR people still need to employ.

46: How to find influencers

I’m writing a how-to book about social media marketing and one chapter is devoted to hands-on techniques for finding influencers online. It isn’t as simple as it sounds. In this episode, I talk about what I learned conducting influencer searches on behalf of a mythical Quebec resort. Step one: master advanced search.

47: Twitter magic

Many people’s first reaction to Twitter.com is that they just don’t get it. It looks like barely controlled chaos. But Twitter has inspired a passionate following. Laura Fitton is a poster child for a service that is revolutionizing the way people interact with their social networks. In this interview, she describes what’s unique about Twitter and how it can be useful even to people who don’t use it that often.

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Labels: blogculture, podcast, PR, social_media, social_media influence, social_networks, socialnetworks, twitter

  ¶ 3:28 PM 0 Comments

  Come meet me in Worcester, Mass. this Saturday What better to do on a cold winter weekend than bundle up the kids, truck them off to the bookstore and listen to a lecture on how to use blogging to help your small business?

Okay, there are actually a lot of better things you can do, but I'd still be delighted if you'd join me this Saturday, Feb. 23 at 2:00 p.m. at the Barnes & Noble in Worcester, Mass., where I'll give a talk on that subject, sign some books and meet some interesting people. Like you! Come and say hi.

Here's where to go:
Barnes & Noble
Lincoln Plaza
541 D Lincoln Street
Worcester, MA 01605
508-853-2236

And here's a map.

Labels: NewInfluencers, worcester

  ¶ 4:55 PM 0 Comments

  Nothing ivy-covered about these students This morning, I had the chance to speak to a group of students in Susan Dobscha’s class at Bentley College. All I can say is: marketers, you’d better get ready for some big changes.

These students don't have to be taught concepts like conversation marketing, customer engagement and the value of social media. They live it every day. They throw around words like "transparency" as easily as their predecessors used “CPM.” They understand intuitively that marketing is about relationships and what they termed "deep branding." That means embedding a brand on a customer's mind through a long-term series of interactions that stress value for both parties.

The topic turned to Facebook for a while, and it's clear that the students regard it as a tool to facilitate relationships. They maintain very large networks of casual acquaintances -- one student described them as the people you say “hi” to in the hallway but don't stop to talk to -- and social networks are a means to accomplish this. I asked a class of about 25 students if any of them had formed meaningful relationships online and only one hand went up. Despite what the older generation may think, these kids value personal relationships as much as anybody else, it's just that they expect to maintain friends networks that are five or six times as large as those of their parents. Imagine how business will be done differently when millions of these people hit the workforce.

One innovative project that this class is pursuing is maintaining a blog. Each student is required to follow a single blogger and to comment upon his or her writings during the course of the semester. These real-time observations are incorporated into the curriculum, making the classroom conversation about as current as any I have ever seen. The instructor told me that this is Bentley's first social media marketing course and that enrollment filled up in 20 minutes. You can see why: these kids understand where the future lies and they're not weighted down by assumptions about how marketing should be done. Beginning next year, some of them will be working for you. I would advise you to listen carefully to what they have to say. And Bentley should take those enrollment numbers as a message.

I had lunch with a small group of Bentley marketing faculty, several of whom specialize in marketing analytics. One professor asked me, somewhat ruefully, if marketers have wasted the last 20 years perfecting their analytical skills. I'm afraid I only gave half an answer. I said that the focus on analytics was a function of the limitations of media at the time. In other words, it was impossible to have meaningful conversations with customers until a few years ago, so marketers focused on measuring the limited contact they had.

What I should have said was that analytics will be even more important in the coming era. The Internet is the most measurable medium ever invented, and the challenge for marketers will be to develop useful metrics from a vast menu of options. The marketing analytics discipline should only grow in importance as people sort through all the choices. While it's true that relationship marketing demands different skills that analytical marketing, that doesn’t make analytical skills any less important. Quite the contrary.

Labels: analytics, Bentley, education, influence, marketing, social_networks, socialmedia, transparency

  ¶ 8:00 PM 2 Comments

  Daily reading 02/18/2008

ReGeneration - Dell's green blog

tags: social_media_useful

• In case you missed this one (I certainly did), Dell's got a blog devoted to its conservation efforts. Public policy issues are great topics for corporations to blog about. The topics inspire passion and cast the company in a positive light. There's a very neat graffiti idea at the top of this blog.
   - post by pgillin

Shel Israel Interviews Michael Dell about social media - Society for New Communications Research, Feb. 12, 2008

tags: social_media_useful

• You've got to hand it to Dell. It's been the victim of a couple of notable blog swarms, but rather than getting defensive and resentful it has embraced criticism as a challenge to do better. I was surprised to learn that Dell made 35 changes/improvements to its products last year as a result of IdeaStorm.
   - post by pgillin

Universal Wrecking Corporation Announces New Corporate Blog - Newswire, Feb. 17, 2008

tags: social_media_useful

  ¶ 8:30 AM 0 Comments

  Gag me with a Constitution This post originally appeared on my Newspaper Death Watch blog, but I wanted to share:

I got a call today from a journalist who’s doing a story on the future of newspapers and he shared an interesting tidbit. He said he had contacted a prominent thought leader in the journalism field, whom I won’t name. This thought leader had said that the impending collapse of the newspaper industry was “a threat to democracy.”

Excuse me, but what? A threat to democracy? Newspapers are dying, in large part, because of democracy. The rise of citizen publishing has made it possible, for the first time, for large numbers of ordinary citizens to publish to a global audience without the intercession of media institutions. What could be more democratic than that? If Thomas Jefferson was alive today, he’d be an active blogger. Social media is the most democratic process to hit the publishing industry in 500 years.

I’m going to give the thought leader the benefit of the doubt and assume that he was referring to the decline of investigative journalism as practiced by newspapers. On that point, I’ll defer to journalism professor Steve Boriss, who argues that a lot of what passes for investigative journalism today is simply reporters acting as conduits for whistle-blowers. Those malcontents will find other outlets for their gripes, whether it be Consumerist.com or something else. I’m quite confident that the market will take care of filling the need for advocacy reporting.

I think the threat-to-democracy statement is more a function of the arrogance of traditional news journalists, who believe that a system in which a few thousand editors decide what people should know is superior to one in which many millions of citizens make those same judgments. If citizen media is a threat to democracy, I shudder to think of the alternative.

Labels: journalism, newspapers

  ¶ 6:19 AM 3 Comments

  Daily reading 02/12/2008

50 Social Sites That Every Business Needs a Presence on - Inside CRM, Jan. 28, 2008

tags: social_media_useful

• Inside CRM has a list of the top 50 social media sites you should be aware of. The list includes big traffic drivers like Reddit.com, but also a number of niche communities, wikis and career-related networks that can be used for personal advancement.
   - post by pgillin

  ¶ 8:30 AM 0 Comments

  Daily reading 02/10/2008

15 Fundamental Truths About Social Media Marketing

tags: social_media_marketing, social_media_useful

• These are solid tips for managing social media expectations from a practitioner.
   - post by pgillin

  ¶ 8:30 AM 0 Comments

  Daily reading 02/08/2008

Social Media Could Thrive In a Recession Says Forrester Research - Feb. 6, 2008

tags: social_media_useful

  ¶ 8:30 AM 0 Comments

  A personal finance how-to book with a bilingual twist Years ago, when I was an editor at Computerworld, I got to know Lynn Jimenez at KGO radio in San Francisco. She would often call me when there was breaking tech news and she needed some quick perspective. Over dozens of interviews, she proved to be a more valuable media trainer than any high-priced consultant I've ever worked with.

Lynn works at warp speed. She's the morning business reporter on the top AM station in the Bay Area and she usually broadcasts from the frantic floor of the Pacific Stock Exchange. You can be having a perfectly normal conversation with Lynn and she will suddenly excuse herself, turn away and deliver a perfectly timed one-minute market update to 100,000 drive-time listeners as casually as if she were answering the phone. Then she'll turn back and pick up the conversation in mid-stream. I don't know how she does it.

Somehow, she's found time to write a book about personal finance, and it's got an interesting twist. ¿Se Habla Dinero? is written in Spanish and English. The Spanish pages are on the left and the English pages are on the right. So the book is both a guide to personal finance and a translation guide. This is important to Spanish-speaking immigrants, who are easily intimidated by the jargon and pressure involved in high-stakes financial decisions. They can take this book with them and easily find the English words they need.

As a practical guide, ¿Se Habla Dinero? is a plain-talk tutorial that's accessible and understandable. Lynn Jimenez isn't a specialist in personal finance, but she knows plenty of people who are. She's taken a journalist's approach by interviewing the experts in all areas and boiling down their advice into plain English - and Spanish. The book is comprehensive and easy to read, and the bilingual format is a bonus for readers who are still climbing the language curve.  ¶ 5:44 AM 0 Comments

  Daily reading 02/07/2008

Marriott - Marriott in the Kitchen - Brad Nelson's Blog

tags: corporate_blog_examples, social_media_useful

• Building on the apparent success of the blog by Bill Marriott, Chairman & CEO of the big hotel chain, Marriott has launched a culinary blog written by its corporate chef. This is a low-impact, non-controversial way to extend the blogging metaphor to an area in which Marriott evidently wants to highlight its capabilities. The company has not historically been known for its food, and this is an effort to build awareness around that competency. It's nicely done.
   - post by pgillin

  ¶ 8:30 AM 0 Comments

  Daily reading 02/06/2008

Icahn to start blog on corporate governance ideas - Reuters, Feb. 5, 2008

Will this make Carl Icahn the richest blogger? I guess Mark Cuban would still enjoy that title. Still, for anyone who has lingering doubts that blogs are mainstream business tools, this news should help expel those.

  ¶ 8:30 AM 0 Comments

  The TSA's bold move I sometimes tell people, "If your products suck and your customers hate you, don't start a blog."

Well, the Transportation Security Administration has gone against that advice. More power to them.

The TSA blog mostly does it right. The branding is subtle; the TSA logo appears only at the bottom of the page. The slogan - "Terrorists Evolve. Threats Evolve. Security Must Stay Ahead. You Play A Part" - is meant to invite the public into a discussion about security. I think that's a great marketing statement. The traveling public feels that security has been shoved down their throats, which is one of the reasons they hate TSA.

And they took the opportunity to express their emotions; more than 700 comments on the welcome post, according to the blog. There's lots of anger, negativity and obscenity, but also a lot of good ideas and observations from people who clearly know something about security. Give TSA credit. They knew there'd be a firestorm of negativity, they were prepared for it and they responded calmly and constructively.

The blog is written by five people: four mid-level employees and a PR guy. Strangely, there are no photos of the bloggers, but maybe that's a security measure. :-)

As a government agency, TSA could afford to ignore the opinions of travelers if it wanted. Launching the blog is a gutsy move my hat's off to them for it.

And can you believe it? They're hosting the whole thing on Blogger!

Thanks to Daily Dish for the tip via Alex Howard.

Labels: blogculture, blogging, corporate

  ¶ 7:28 AM 0 Comments