Daily Reading 08/25/2008

• Is your brand at social media's ground zero?

  Sound advice on how to prepare for and execute a social networking campaign. Analyzes interesting new Facebook promotion for "I Can't Believe It's Not Butter" for likely success.

  tags: social_networks, daily_reading

  ¶ 8:30 AM 0 Comments

  A Fast and Efficient Approach to Developing Content

From my weekly newsletter. Subscribe using the sign-up box to the right.

One of my clients has been experimenting with an innovative and efficient approach to content development and I want you to know about it.

The company is in a highly specialized and big-ticket b-to-b industry. Its executives are very busy and very well paid. The VP of marketing wanted to develop some thought leadership white papers, but the prospect of pinning down these executives for hours to develop the content wasn’t practical. Instead, the marketing departing is using podcasts to construct white papers from the ground up

Here's how it works: We schedule a 30- to 45- minute phone call with these busy executives to capture background information and hot topics in their areas of expertise. I then create a list of questions that are intended to draw out the executives’ thinking (journalists are pretty good at this!).

We record an interview of approximately 30 minutes’ duration. An edited version is posted as a podcast on the company's website, but the marketing group also has the full interview transcribed via a low-cost outside service. Marketing cleans up and reorganizes the transcript and posts the document as a position paper.

Over a series of interviews, an executive's observations and experiences can be rolled up in interesting ways. Multiple interviews with one executive can yield an in-depth white paper. Or point interviews with several executives can be combined into a corporate backgrounder. Customers and prospects can also subscribe to the podcast series. For the small transcription fee (services can be had for as little as a dollar a minute) and some inexpensive editing, the VP has a series of byline articles from the most visible people in his company.

Rethinking Research
I’ve recommended this approach to more and more clients lately. New online tools enable us to rethink our approach to assembling complex documents. It used to be the process demanded hours or days of research. Now we can take notes in real-time and assemble them later.

Blogs are ideally structured as collections of thoughts, observations and insights expressed in short bursts. It's fast and easy to capture these brainstorms online. Got an idea? Twitter it for prosperity. When you go back and look at information assembled in this way, you often see relationships that weren't obvious at the time. Between search, tags and bookmarks, it's possible to assemble these building blocks in different ways.

Some thought leaders take this to the limit. Marketing guru Seth Godin, for example, is known for writing entire books based on collections of interesting blog posts. The blog is his notepad for ideas that can be combined into coherent themes.

In some (though certainly not all) cases, this is a more efficient way to research a topic than spending hours mining the Web or library stacks. For my client, it's also a way to repurpose content across multiple media. Maybe it will work for you. What do you think? Twitter me @paulgillin.

Labels: contentmarketing btob podcast

  ¶ 6:15 AM 0 Comments

  Daily Reading 08/13/2008

• IPhone Software Sales Take Off: Apple's Jobs

  The new iPhone apps are moving very briskly, too, with Apple selling about $1 million a day in mobile software. Sega says its iPhone sales have been so strong that the iPhone could quickly emerge as a mainstream gaming platform.

  tags: daily_reading, mobile

• Why Twitter Hasn’t Failed: The Power Of Audience

  Gregor Hochmuth explains the enduring popularity of Twitter, despite its many service hiccups. If you want to understand why Twitter resonates so much with its audience and creates such a fanatical following, read this.

  tags: daily_reading, twitter

• Holy cow: Apple sells 3 million iPhone in debut month

  Capitalizing on the popularity of digital accessories as well as the iPhone's emerging status as a fashion statement, Apple's new iPhone 3G had a blowout first month. It took three days to sell 1 million of the new iPhones. For comparison, it took 74 days for the original iPhone to hit the one million sold mark. The new 3G iPhone has already sold nearly half as many as the original iPhones in total.

  tags: daily_reading, mobile

• Ben & Jerry's Jumps Into Social Media

  The ice cream maker is promoting its new "Imagine Whirled Peace" flavor with a John Lennon-themed social network at which visitors can post "messages of peace" and upload relevant images.

  tags: daily_reading, social_network, advertising

• Citi: Yep, The Kindle's A Huge Hit. $1 Billion For Amazon In 2010

  Kindle might be the iPhone of the book world. Wall Street analysts are euphoric about reports that Amazon may be on track to sell $1 billion worth of the handheld e-book in 2009 and could sell more than 375,000 units this year. That may make e-books a legitimate marketing channel in the not-too-distant future.

  tags: daily_reading

• Reaching Baby Boomers Online

  Rich Newman debunks the myth that baby boomers don't use social networks. While it may be true that they don't use Facebook, he says, they're just as active online as people 30 years younger than them. It's just that they go places that researchers don't measure.

  tags: daily_reading, research

• Social Networks Surge On Growing Global Audiences

  Did you know that Facebook is now larger than MySpace? A surge of international registrations is driving social network growth. That includes traffic growth of 66% in the Middle East and Africa to 30.2 million, Europe increasing 35% to 165 million and Latin America rising 33% to 53.2 million.

  tags: daily_reading, research, social_networks

  • traffic growth of 66% in the Middle East and Africa to 30.2 million, Europe increasing 35% to 165 million and Latin America rising 33% to 53.2 million.

• Excuse Me, Do You Work Here? No, I Just Need to Fold Clothes

  The Gap and its retail imitators have spawned a generation of Americans who are addicted to folding. And now that obsession is beginning to have unintended consequences, especially marital strain that results from one partner constantly refolding the other's clothing.

  tags: daily_reading, fun

• AOL Study Says We're Even More Addicted to Email

  AOL released the results of its annual e-mail addicition survey. Among the findings:
  *62% of people check work email on the weekends;
  *19% choose vacation spots with access to email;
  *59% check email from the bathroom
  
  (I just don't get that last one)
  
  More: 46% of email users said they're hooked on email (up from just 15% last year) and 51% check their email 4 or more times a day (up from 45% in 2007). New York, Houston and Chicago top the list of cites "most addicted" to email; 27% are so overwhelmed by their email that they've either declared "email bankruptcy," deleting all their email messages to start anew, or are seriously thinking about doing so. Twenty percent of users said they have over 300 emails in their inboxes.

  tags: daily_reading, email

  ¶ 8:30 AM 1 Comments

  Daily Reading 08/11/2008

• Ten years of email - David Strom

  Google's Gmail service just passed the 7G-byte threshold, meaning that's how much email storage users get for free (it's unlimited on Yahoo Mail). David Strom, once co-authored a book about e-mail, marvels at how far we've come in just 10 years. It wasn't that long ago that most e-mail packages were proprietary and the industry haggled over standards, he remembers. Today, it's accepted that all e-mail is Internet-based and this has helped embed this tool quickly into the fabric of our everydays lives. Now if only someone would do something about security.

  tags: daily_reading

  ¶ 8:30 AM 0 Comments

  Daily Reading 08/08/2008

• Influencer marketing: Effective or defective?

  Neil Davey at MyCustomer.com scrutinizes influencer marketing. Does it really work? Skeptics like Duncan Watts says it's an unproven theory that's convenient to believe while Keller Fay Group insists that influencers move markets. I'm somewhere in the middle. Good new insight from Watts in this piece.

  tags: daily_reading

  ¶ 8:30 AM 0 Comments

  Imitation is the Sincerest Form of Flattery
And to think I canceled my subscription...

Labels: NewInfluencers

  ¶ 3:19 PM 1 Comments

  Report Examines Changing Influence Patterns Created by Social Media The Society for New Communications Research (SNCR), a nonprofit organization dedicated to the understanding and application of new media research, has just released a report that I helped develop, and I hope you'll check it out. It's free.

“New Media, New Influencers and Implications for Public Relations” features detailed findings of a survey of communications and marketing professionals focused on changing patterns of influence that are resulting from social media and other new communications technologies. The survey is interesting, but I think you'll find the case studies of the American Red Cross, Blendtec, The Coca-Cola Company, Emerson Process Management, the Mayo Clinic, MARC Research, Quicken Loans, and the Seattle Union Gospel Mission particularly compelling. Each of these organizations is using different social media in different ways and each is achieving notable results.

I was personally lucky to interview George Wright, the marketer behind the Blendtec viral video phenomenon, and blogger Merrill Dubrow, CEO of MARC Research. Both were great interviews.

You can download a PDF for free or purchase a hard copy through the SNCR bookstore.

Labels: influence, influencermarketing, SNCR

  ¶ 4:23 PM 0 Comments

  Nominate Yourself and Your Clients for a Social Media Award Just three days left to take advantage of discount pricing to submit your entries for the Society of New Communications Research's (SNCR) Excellence in New Communications Awards.

Details are below, but this is basically a good way to get your new-media accomplishments in front of a group of thought leaders and to get an important third-party endorsement for your great work. Jen McClure continues to cultivate an organization that is committed to guiding and advocating for adoption of social media without becoming beholden to a lot of commercial interests. SNCR gets better every year.

By the way, its annual Symposium & Awards Gala is coming up Nov. 13 & 14 in Cambridge, MA. If you want to rub elbows with some of the top journalism, marketing and PR bloggers, this is the place to do it. At $395 for the symposium, it's a good deal.

Full disclosure: I'm a SNCR Research Fellow, which means I do volunteer work for and donate money to this fine organization.

Details from the awards page:

These awards honor corporations, governmental and nonprofit organizations, educational institutions, media outlets, and individuals who are innovating the use of social media, mobile media, online communities and virtual worlds and collaborative technologies in the areas of business, media, and professional communications, including advertising, marketing, public relations and corporate communications, as well as entertainment, education, politics, and social initiatives.

Awards are granted in six divisions:

• Corporate
• Government
• Media
• Nonprofit/NGO
• Academic
• Technology Innovation (for vendors)

There are seven categories:

• Online Reputation Management
• Behind the Firewall
• Blogger Relations
• External Communications & Communities
• New Media Creation
• Collaboration & Co-creation
• Mobile Media.

It costs $49 to submit. More details here.

Labels: awards, SNCR

  ¶ 6:00 AM 0 Comments

  Daily Reading 08/05/2008

• The worst SEO mistake you can make

  Brandt Dainow has some interesting insight on why search engines don't like dynamic content management systems (CMS). He says SEO consultants need to be brought in before a site is launched. Repairing the wreckage wrought by a bad CMS can be nearly impossible, he says.

  tags: Search, daily_reading

• Microsoft backs open source work

  Microsoft continues to extend a tentative olive branch to the open-source community, investing $100,000 to become a platinum sponsor of the Apache Software Foundation and promising to open some of its communications protocols to developer scrutiny.

  tags: daily_reading, open_source, Microsoft

• Top 10 social media misconceptions

  Noah Elkin offers some useful tips for creating and measuring social media campaigns.

  tags: daily_reading, metrics, social_media

• Microsoft sees end of Windows era

  Microsoft has launched a research project to develop a successor to Windows that isn't tied to a single machine. But whether Microsoft can make money from an operating system that isn't tied to a single computer is an open question. Microsoft may have no choice, though. Users of the future will increasingly be mobile and promiscuous about the hardware they use.

  tags: daily_reading

  ¶ 8:31 AM 0 Comments

  Gettysburg Tours Are a History Bargain About six years ago I stopped by Gettysburg, PA with my son for a half day while on a trip to nearby Baltimore. I've wanted to go back ever since. Gettysburg is like no other historical attraction I've ever visited. The National Park Service has maintained the site and battlefields in a condition that mirrors almost perfectly their state on July 1, 1863, when the pivotal battle of the Civil War began.

This week I got a chance to go back with the luxury of some time for exploration. A full day at Gettysburg still doesn't do the place justice, but I discovered the history bargain of a lifetime: the private guides provided by the Park Service.

For just $55, you can hire an expert to accompany you in your car for a two-hour tour of the battlefield. After that, you can return at your own pace, armed with the wisdom your guide has imparted. With group bus tours running $26/person, this service pays for itself quickly. Our guide was Mike (left, explaining cannon ballistics for my kids), one of about 150 contractors who work in this capacity, and his knowledge was voluminous. There was barely a question we could throw at him that he didn't answer.

The great thing about tour guides is that they're unique. You can take the same tour with two different guides and learn entirely different things. The last time I toured Gettysburg, we had a group tour guide who was an expert at describing the scene on the battlefield. Mike was great at defining military strategy, and we couldn't have had a better setting for his expertise.

Standing in a wooded area, looking across an open field, we could almost see the Confederate troops advancing on Cemetery Ridge for the fateful Pickett's Charge, the tactic that nearly turned the war in the south's favor but ultimately forced Lee into retreat. The great thing about Gettysburg is that the entire six-mile battlefield is spread before you. You can survey the scene almost exactly as the generals did before the battle.

Mike told us how authorized tour guides have to leap tall buildings to gain NPS approval. He said he had to finish in the top 10 of roughly 200 people who took a written exam, then submit to an oral test and finally a tour of the battlefield with experts who fired all sorts of trivia and trick questions at him. All this so he could earn $25/hour giving tours (I tipped him a well-deserved $20). That is dedication. And the Park Service has no shortage of applicants for these jobs.

I also recommend the Eisenhower house tour. My knowledge of our 34th President was minuscule, and the self-guided 90-minute tour of his final home in Gettysburg gave me new respect and admiration for him. The Park Service guides punctuated the visit with bits of wisdom and skillfully answered all questions without being intrusive.

Labels: civilwar, gettysburg, travel

  ¶ 6:06 AM 0 Comments

  Daily Reading 08/04/2008

• SEC To Recognize Corporate Blogs as Public Disclosure. Can We Now Kill the Press Release?

  Brian Solis analyzes the SEC's decision to give some social media-based corporate communications the same gravity as press releases. If the SEC is indeed shifting its stance, then companies may be able to reduce their use of expensive newswire services and disclose more information directly, with the benefits of reader feeback and SEO-optmized content.

  tags: pr, social_media, daily_reading

  ¶ 8:31 AM 0 Comments

  Help Us Eat Our Own Dog Food Many years ago in the days BI (before Internet), I worked at a publisher that was installing a new client/server-based publishing production system. Since the publication was all about information technology, we got the great idea to write about our own experiences moving to the new software. The first couple of published articles went well, but then problems began to occur.

It turned out that the reference customers the software vendor had give us weren't actual customers but rather test sites. We were, in fact, the only live customer. The software was riddled with bugs and the interface to our previous production system was atrocious. For months, reporters and editors worked with both a terminal and a PC on their desks because the new system was so unreliable. The project, which was originally scheduled to last six months, dragged on more than three times that long.

This presented an interesting problem for our little experiment in transparency. The project was a disaster and the vendor, which had initially been enthusiastic about the idea, was now pleading with us not to document the problems we were experiencing. We continued with the diary, but as internal political pressures mounted, we toned down our coverage considerably. The extent of the disaster was never fully revealed.

This time, we don't have that option.

Announcing Project Dogfood, an experiment in community website development. This is an innovative idea from a fast-moving company named CrossTech Media, which produces a new conference called New Marketing Summit. I'll be co-anchoring this event Oct. 14 and 15 at Gillette Stadium in Foxboro, MA along with bestselling author David Meerman Scott and social media superstar Chris Brogan.

The event's website is currently standard brochureware, but CrossTech isn't the kind of company to stick with the basic. The company got its start building conference registration systems and the technology-driven team had a brainstorm. Let's transform a series of flat HTML pages into a vibrant social media foundry. And let's ask the community for help.

Project Dogfood's name is a nod to that venerable tech industry phrase, "Eating our own dog food." It means companies should run themselves on the software they build for customers. As the site develops with input from the community, it will become the foundation for future New Marketing Summits. People who register for the events will be able to continue their conversations and relationships long after the curtain has rung down on the last speaker.

So go register! Tell us which topics you'd like to see and features you'd like us to include. And sign up for the New Marketing Summit while you're at it.

Unlike my previous experiment in transparency, this one doesn't have the option of backing out. You'll see a social network take shape before your eyes. And if we fall on our faces a couple of times, you'll see that, too. This is Web 2.0, after all!

Labels: event, iphone mobility socialnetwork, marketing, newmediasummit, projectdogfood

  ¶ 9:24 AM 1 Comments