Paul Gillin's Blog - Social Media and the Open Enterprise

Daily Reading 09/22/2008

2008-09-22T08:30:00.001-05:00

How agencies tackle social media
iMediaConnection has video clips from over a dozen professional marketers and agency professionals discussing the future of social media. One message is clear: this is a sea change in marketing.
tags: daily_reading, advertising, marketing, social_media
FT.com / Companies / Media & internet - Google still struggling to conquer outposts
Google may rule the roost in the US, but not overseas. For example, Yandex, which handles 46 per cent of search queries in Russia, has been preparing since the spring for a listing on the US stock market. Seznam, which controls 63 per cent of Czech searches, has been the subject of a number of buy-out approaches. Google is trying to build its online reputation, but the task is difficult against entrenched rivals.
tags: search, daily_reading
Porn passed over as Web users become social: author | Technology | Internet | Reuters
Social networking sites are the hottest attraction on the Internet, dethroning pornography and highlighting a major change in how people communicate, according to a web guru.
tags: daily_reading

Study Finds Rapid Enterprise Adoption of Social Networks

2008-09-12T15:19:00.003-05:00

New research funded by Awareness finds that Web 2.0 technologies are gaining rapid acceptance in enterprises and being combined with internal systems. I haven't had a chance to read the full report yet, but you can download it here after filling out a short registration form (note, you may get a call from a sales rep later).

Here are highlights from a press release distributed today:

Employers are starting to allow social media participation more freely in their organizations: The number of organizations that allow social networking for business purposes has increased dramatically to 69 percent in 2008, up from 37 percent last year;
Employers are finding the benefits of using social media: 63 percent are using social media to build and promote their brand, 61 percent are using it to improve communication and collaboration, and 58 percent re using it to increase consumer engagement;
75 percent of employees are already using social networking sites such as Facebook, MySpace and LinkedIn for business purposes, up 15 percent from 2007;
Use of internal-facing communities is on the rise with 6 percent of organization already reporting they deployed internal-facing communities, while 33 percent indicate their organization plans to implement internal-facing social media initiatives;
External-facing communities are increasing: 27 percent of respondents said their companies are planning to deploy external-facing communities while only 13 percent indicated their organizations already have external-facing communities;
Online communities directed at specific interests and groups of people allow for more targeted marketing techniques and better results so for this reason 37 percent of organizations have specific areas of focus for their communities;

Twittering T3PR

2008-09-11T13:30:00.001-05:00

I'm one of several people Twittering the PRSA's T3PR conference. Great speakers. Here's the stream.

While I Talked, People Twittered

2008-09-11T12:56:00.002-05:00

Have you ever had an audience comment loudly on what you were speaking about while you were actually speaking? I did this week, and I found the experience to be weird, invigorating and a little bit
The scene was the New Marketing Boot Camp, a seminar I conducted with Chris Brogan and CrossTech Media. The group was the most tech-savvy I have addressed in some time. About a half-dozen of the members were using Twitter, the short-message microblogging service that inspires a fanatical following.

Sitting down after my presentation, I was able to call up search.twitter.com and read what people had been saying while I talked. Most of them simply summarized points I made, but a few added their opinions, and not all of those opinions were complimentary.

I can tell you that the act of presenting to a group that is actively talking about you requires new skills. Simply knowing that thoughts are being exchanged can be flustering; the tendency is to speak to the people in the room who you know are documenting your talk, hoping to get an inkling of what they’ll say. There's also a certain ego-drive voyeurism that comes from this kind of instant feedback. I found myself wanting to hustle back to my computer to get the online evaluations of what I had just said!

There was a famous story at the South by Southwest Conference last March in which a keynote session was disrupted by negative Twitter messages from some members of the audience. In that case, the speakers were in the difficult position of having those comments actually scroll across a public screen while they were on stage. That was an extreme case, but an increasing number of events are incorporating Twitter conversations into the experience by encouraging attendees to share messages with each other using specific tags or keywords.

Like most new technology developments, there are both good and bad sides to this new form of instant feedback. On the positive side, speakers and conference organizers need as much audience reaction as they can get, and the sooner the better. Having recently waited six months to get audience evaluations from one presentation, I can tell you that the immediacy of the tweeted feedback was wonderful. I was able to use it to get a read quickly on the tech-saviness of the audience and adjust accordingly for the rest of the day. Hopefully, that was a good thing for everyone.

The major downside of this trend that I see is that real-time feedback from a small number of people can force a speaker to unintentionally focus on trying to please that vocal few. This is dangerous if the small but loud group isn’t representative of the majority of listeners. It's human nature to fixate on criticism, and focusing on the comments of a few audience members can throw a presenter off track. The feedback is great, but keep it in perspective.

I’m telling you this because many of you work in the technology industry. You will soon find (if you haven’t already) that attendees to your meetings and events will use tools like Twitter to share their observations. Encourage this. Ask attendees to use Twitter’s hash function (#) to label their messages for your event. Use search.twitter.com to filter their comments and save the search query as an RSS feed so you can collect all this feedback in one stream or even display it on a public screen.

However, Twitter feeds aren’t a replacement for the tried-and-true tactics of feedback forms and post-conference surveys. Real-time impressions can be incomplete and misleading, so take them with a grain of salt. But seek all the feedback you can. Your presentation or event will only be better for it.

Update: on Twitter told me about RateMyTalk.com, a "service that allows conference attendees to provide immediate feedback on a conference via Twitter or through our web site." I haven't tried it yet, but it's a very timely idea.

How NOT to Cope With Bloggers

2008-09-09T22:02:00.001-05:00

My passion for journalism keeps me in close touch with the newspaper industry, a business whose perilous decline I've documented through my Newspaper Death Watch blog. A trend has been playing out there recently that is relevant to anyone who is trying to cope with the new influence of citizen publishers on their market.

Nearly every major newspaper company has recently seen blogs spring up that speak to their problems and future. Among them are TellZell (Tribune Co.), McClatchy Watch (The McClatchy Co.) and The Gannett Blog(Gannett Co., Inc.) It's the Gannett example that intrigues me most.

The independent Gannett Blog is written by Jim Hopkins, a former Gannett editor and reporter. It covers all kinds of topics related to Gannett's business and its future. These days, that content includes a lot of speculation about layoffs and cutbacks at a company that recently announced it will cut 1,000 jobs, or about 3% of its workforce.

The Gannett Blog has gone viral in its quest to become a sounding board and information source for employees. Jim Hopkins recently revealed some traffic statistics: 91,000 visits and 189,000 page views in the last 30 days. That's serious blog traffic, and much of it comes from Gannett employees who feel they can't get a straight story from their employer. Gannett Blog has become the virtual watercooler for a company of 46,000 people.

The conundrum for Gannett is what to do about Hopkins. So far, it's chosen a strategy of benign neglect. Tara Connell, Gannett's chief spokesman (and interestingly, a former managing editor at USA Today) has gone almost silent recently as rumors have swirled about layoffs and cutbacks, Hopkins says. Meanwhile, traffic has grown. This recent post has drawn more than 160 comments, many of them from people who identify themselves as Gannett employees. People are now actively trading rumors about layoffs at their individual newspapers, with Gannett blog functioning as the gathering point.

Gannett's strategy is worse than "No comment." Not only has the company not contributed its perspective to the flood of comments, it now barely even responds to Hopkins' requests for information, he says. As the chorus of pleas for guidance from the company grows in volume, Gannett becomes more closed and insular. Gannett didn't respond to my own requests for comment.

Gannett is approaching this problem in the worst way possible. Regardless of its opinion of bloggers and citizen journalists, the fact is that The Gannett Blog is drawing huge attention among the company's own employees, who are the most valuable spokespeople it has. Gannett's failure to respond to the speculation and allegations of this critical constituency has become almost as big a story as the company's business problems.

In the new world of citizen-powered publishing, institutions have fewer places to hide than ever. Silence is an invitation to speculation, and individuals now have the means to state their opinions in a very public way. A better course of action for Gannett would be to respond to the comments posted by Jim Hopkins and his readers. Even if that response is a "no comment," it's at least an acknowledgement that their concerns are being noted.

You might argue that an engagement strategy is risky for a publicly traded company. That's just wrong. Public companies live under all kinds of regulations, but there is nothing to prevent them from acknowledging that they care about and listen to the concerns of their stakeholders. Any comment is better than silence.

One of the great ironies of watching the newspaper industry collapse has been to see the same media icons that have long scolded institutions for their insularity become reclusive and inwardly focused when the spotlight is turned on them. Gannett Blog is exhibit A in how not to handle new influencers.

Daily Reading 09/08/2008

2008-09-08T08:30:00.001-05:00

Study: 58% Aren't Familiar With Social Networking
More than half the people surveyed by Synovate said they don't know what social networking is. Perhaps more interesting that a third said they're getting tired of the networks they belong to.

Synovate says it "spoke to" more than 13,000 people globally (we doubt that; this was probably an online survey). While the results aren't statistically valid, there are some interesting international comparisons. The Dutch and Canadians are more active social network users, although the Canadians are losting interest faster. They prefer MySpace to Facebook. The Japanese are losing interest the fastest.
tags: daily_reading, social_network, research
destinationCRM.com: A Company Like Me | Diigo
Paul Greenberg believes that businesses have to develop the same kinds of relationships with customers that customers develop with their friends. This is difficult to do, but in the new customer-empowered world, it's the only way to gain a sustainable edge. Do your customers trust you as much as they trust each other? Is there something you can do to earn that level of trust? Read this thought-provoking article for a very lucid perspective on the changes being brought about by social media.
tags: daily_reading, crm

Daily Reading 09/07/2008

2008-09-07T08:30:00.001-05:00

Events Industry: Robust Growth Through 2011
Events are emerging as the brighit spot of an otherwise dismal media industry. A new white paper sees growth of 5.5 percent annually through 2011, with biggest opportunities overseas.
tags: daily_reading, events
Gap Widens in Online Advertising
Online advertising continues to grow at a 20% annual clip but search is pulling away as the vehicle of choice. Search ads are forecast to represent 42% of overall U.S. online ad spending in 2008, according to eMarketer, up from 40% in 2007.
tags: daily_reading, google, search, advertising
Google Chrome is fastest browser
A variety of independent tests have established that Google's new Chrome browser is the fastest on the market, particularly when running javascript applications.
tags: daily_reading, google
Facebook micro-payments total $35 million, VC says
Facebook may book $35 million in small-dollar virtual gifts this year, or about 10% of its total revenue, estimates venture capitalist Jeremy Liew. This indicates that people are willing to pay good money for items that have no practical value, as long as the sentiment is there. Facebook could be an innovator in creating the kind of micro-payments system that has been unsuccessful in other markets.
tags: daily_reading, facebook

Daily Reading 09/05/2008

2008-09-05T08:30:00.001-05:00

50 Ideas on Using Twitter for Business
Chris Brogan is THE MAN on Twitter and this list of 50 tips on how to apply Twitter to business will demonstrate why.
tags: daily_reading, twitter
A List of Social Media Marketing Examples
Peter Kim has gathered together the social media activities of nearly 160 brands. You'll find all kinds of great ideas here, and very few of these examples are tech companies. Equally impressive is how many are big brands.
tags: daily_reading, reference

Let a Thousand Networks Bloom

2008-09-04T16:45:00.004-05:00

News that the American Bowling Congress will launch a social network arrived last week, raising the question of whether this social networking thing has gone just a little too far. There are, after all, nearly 2,700 social networks on the Internet according to Go2Web20.net. Facebook and MySpace together command over 85% of social networking traffic, so what’s the point of starting another?

This is just the beginning, folks. The boring job of picking the social network winners is already done, and now the action shifts to the small communities where innovation can really flourish.

I'll give you one example. About two years ago, my wife Dana and I took up geocaching. It’s a global game that uses global positioning satellites (GPS) technology to create a worldwide treasure hunt. Players use handheld GPS receivers to find containers full of trinkets placed by other enthusiasts in locations ranging from city street corners to remote mountaintops. People log their finds on a website and try to make up elaborate clues for others to unravel.

Dana and I became so captivated by this game and the culture that has grown up around it that we decided to write a book about it. In the process of interviewing some of the most active and successful geocachers in the world, we've come upon some remarkable stories.

Geocache hidden in a hollowed-out rock

People have told us that geocaching has brought their families together, introduced them to new friends and reinvigorated their lives. One man credited the game with helping him shed 150 pounds and give up smoking. Several have said it saved their marriages. One disabled war veteran even told me geocaching gave him a reason to live at a time when he was contemplating suicide.

The online street corner for caching enthusiasts is a website called geocaching.com. This is where people can log their discoveries and share their stories. People go there to seek out others and start relationships that may develop online or in one of more than 100 local geocaching clubs around the U.S.

There are probably a couple of million people who love to geocache. That number is a rounding error on MySpace’s member list, but for active geocachers, it’s a lifeline so strong that enthusiasts often put their personal safety in the hands of other geocachers they’ve never even met. It’s a perfect example of a micro community.

There are two points to this story. The first is that small communities tend to be more engaged than large ones. The more time and effort someone has invested in learning a craft, skill or sport, the more passionate he or she is likely to be about it. People at Communispace, a company that manages private communities for corporate customers, tell me that they advise their clients to break up communities into smaller subgroups once their membership surpasses a few hundred. Think of it: No one is particularly passionate about Facebook, but they may be very engaged with communities within Facebook. Small is beautiful.

Secondly, the folks at Geocaching.com didn’t set out to organize an existing community. They created the community. It was almost impossible for people to play the game until a resource existed to coordinate their efforts. This is a great example of the Internet actually enabling special interests to flourish.

Have social networks gone too far? On the contrary, they haven’t gone nearly far enough.

Cast a Vote for "Down the Avenue"

2008-09-03T16:02:00.003-05:00

My good friend and PR pro Renee Blodgett is in the finals of the PR Week Blog Competition. The winner is chosen by popular vote and Renee’s creativity and impressive contact list have enabled her to overcome some very large agencies to get this far. Please do her a favor: go to the voting page and click on “Down the Avenue” where it says “Vote Here.” It takes two seconds. Hurry, because the competition ends Friday. And then check out Down the Avenue, because we could all learn a few tricks from it.

Daily Reading 09/03/2008

2008-09-03T08:30:00.001-05:00

TV's Future Looks Like Web's Present
Forrester Research says that in the future, TV will look increasingly like the Internet. Most programs will be "delivered on-demand with targeted ad messages based on location and behavior, along with community functions."
tags: daily_reading, television

Daily Reading 08/25/2008

2008-08-25T08:30:00.001-05:00

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

A Fast and Efficient Approach to Developing Content

2008-08-21T06:15:00.002-05:00

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.

Daily Reading 08/13/2008

2008-08-13T08:30:00.001-05:00

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

Daily Reading 08/11/2008

2008-08-11T08:30:00.001-05:00

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

Daily Reading 08/08/2008

2008-08-08T08:30:00.001-05:00

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

Imitation is the Sincerest Form of Flattery

2008-08-07T15:19:00.003-05:00

And to think I canceled my subscription...

Report Examines Changing Influence Patterns Created by Social Media

2008-08-06T16:23:00.003-05:00

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.

Nominate Yourself and Your Clients for a Social Media Award

2008-08-06T06:00:00.003-05:00

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.

Daily Reading 08/05/2008

2008-08-05T08:31:00.001-05:00

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

Gettysburg Tours Are a History Bargain

2008-08-05T06:06:00.003-05:00

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.

Daily Reading 08/04/2008

2008-08-04T08:31:00.001-05:00

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

Help Us Eat Our Own Dog Food

2008-08-02T09:24:00.006-05:00

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!

A Mobile Game-Changer

2008-07-28T22:28:00.002-05:00

Apple unveiled the iPhone Application List and boasted that it sold one million of the new 3G (third generation) devices in the product's first weekend on the market. More important than the sales figures is the coup that Apple has pulled off: The iPhone 3G looks to be the first mobile device to make the leap from telecommunications to data. That makes it the first mobile platform to merit serious attention from marketers.

The iPhone inspires a passion among its users that few technology products have ever achieved. Ask an iPhone user to tell you what he or she likes and you’ll get a 20-minute sermon, complete with demos. What strikes me is that most people tell me they use the iPhone more for data than for telephony. This is where the product is a game-changer.

The mobile Internet has been an unholy mess for several years. Each handset maker, network operator and service provider uses a slightly different technology. This pointless incompatibility has frustrated application developers so much that many have decided simply to wait out the market until consensus is reached. About the only standard anyone has been able to agree upon is Mobile Web, a hobbled subset of the World Wide Web standards that doesn't do anything particularly well.

Apple is bidding to change all that. The two big innovations in the iPhone are a usable http Web browser and sufficient local memory and storage to run applications on the device. This second feature is critical. Few people will choose to interact with their iPhone primarily through the browser, although they will browse to retrieve information. The beauty of native applications is that they can take full advantage of the iPhone’s speed and interface. When combined with a robust Internet back end, some truly interesting uses will develop.

In industry lingo, this setup is called client/server. Millions of people already take advantage of a mobile client/server architecture every day when they use their BlackBerries from Research in Motion. The BlackBerry’s e-mail interface is second to none, but an equally important usability factor is the device’s rapid performance. That’s because the BlackBerry downloads messages continually and displays them locally for rapid access. If the Blackberry’s performance was as slow as a Web e-mail program like Yahoo! Mail or Gmail, I suspect few people would bother with it.

Apple’s applications initiative is meant to give developers the means to build client/server applications on the iPhone. This can give users a fast, pleasant experience that’s optimized for the platform. Mobile Web doesn’t come close.

With an impressive list of more than 500 out-of-the-box iPhone applications and the capacity for developers to create really functional client/server programs, the iPhone stands to be the first truly mobile data device.

No cell phone maker I've seen has yet produced a meaningful competitor. Their origins are in voice, and most still don't get the data thing. Apple's early lead with mobile applications makes it the front runner in his new field.

Here's the opportunity for marketers. Facebook pioneered the idea of using applications as a means to sell products, but there are so many Facebook applications right now that it's almost impossible to break through the noise. The iPhone is currently an open field, and since people spend a lot more time away from their computers than in front of them, there's more potential for audience engagement. The audience may be smaller, but the prospect of getting them to actually use your service is greater.

The applications that succeed on a mobile device will undoubtedly be different than those that work on a social network. Location awareness will be critical. Think in terms of what people want to do and know when they’re standing on a street corner or waiting in an airport. Give them services that help pass the time or entertain them. Better move quickly, though. I suspect the iPhone Application List won’t be a short one for very much longer.

Daily Reading 07/26/2008

2008-07-26T08:30:00.001-05:00

Complaining Bloggers Have a Cable Company’s Ear
Comcast, which owns one of the worst reputations of any US company, is finally listening. The cable firm has deployed a team of people to listen in on and respond to customer complaints at a speed that is almost creepily fast. Customers are noticing and the tide of negativity is turning.
tags: daily_reading, twitter

I'm Going Viral: 250 Free Galleys of My Next Book Available

2008-07-24T10:37:00.004-05:00

In the spirit of viral marketing, and with my publisher's enthusiastic consent, I'm giving away 250 copies of my new book, Secrets Of Social Media Marketing, to anyone who fills out this form on my website. I’m betting that if people start talking about the book before it reaches the shelves, it will be good for sales.

I'd like to take credit for the idea, but it was actually proposed me by my friend and colleague David Meerman Scott, who co-authored Tuned In, a business book that has been number one on Amazon several times in the last few weeks. Scott’s New Rules of Marketing and PR was the number one marketing book of 2007 on Amazon, so if it's good enough for him..

Creating Content From the Ground Up

2008-07-24T10:34:00.000-05:00

Daily Reading 07/20/2008

2008-07-20T08:30:00.001-05:00

WordPress 2.6 Adds Some Great New Features
They include wiki-like functionality for shared authoring, the ability to add other sites to your blog through a pop-up window and image captions. If there was any doubt about what is the best open-source blogging software, this release should dispel them. Have a look at the video.
tags: daily_reading

Daily Reading 07/16/2008

2008-07-16T08:30:00.001-05:00

36 Credit union social media do’s
Here's a useful list of actions you can take to make your social media programs more effective.
tags: daily_reading

Daily Reading 07/14/2008

2008-07-14T08:32:00.001-05:00

Scrabble Comes To Facebook, Way, Way Too Late
Hasbro badly fumbled the opportunity to profit from the popularity of Scrabulous, a knock-off version of Scrabble that is a megahit on Facebook. Instead of partnering with or buying the developers of Scrabulous, Hasbro sued them instead. Now it is bringing an officially sanctioned version of Scrabble to Facebook - a year late. Expect audience indifference.
tags: daily_reading, facebook
Practical Search Engine Optimization Advice
An SEO pro looks at three business websites and offers practical advice to improve their search performance. There is good meat-and-potatoes wisdom in this article. Any company could benefit from these tips.
tags: daily_reading, search

Daily Reading 07/12/2008

2008-07-12T08:30:00.001-05:00

The Social Web Analytics eBook
Philip Sheldrake of Racepoint Group sums up a variety of tools - both free and paid - that marketers can use to tap in to online conversations. There are some in here that I had never heard of.
tags: daily_reading, conversation_monitoring

Be Careful About Pinning Your Hope on "Communities"

2008-07-12T07:12:00.003-05:00

I was a guest on a webcast about social software this week (you can watch it here; it’s free) and the question came up about what publications can do to build community. I responded that they can’t do much and they shouldn’t even try because, with few exceptions, readers aren’t a community.

Then I checked my RSS reader the next morning and noticed this item from Content Ninja that makes the very same point: “You cannot build a community around content.”

“Community” is a poorly understood term (just look at the variety of definitions in online reference sources) and, like many buzzwords, it is being overused right now. Mainstream publishers trying to escape their sinking businesses are clinging to the community life raft, hoping that it offers hope for a future. For some it does, but for many general-interest publications, it's a waste of time.

Newspapers, for example, have historically defined their communities geographically because that’s the business model that worked. While people who share a common space on the planet are technically a community, they’re the least cohesive kind of community. Outside of a shared interest in certain issues like public safety or schools, residents of a city or town have little in common. They may occasionally form strong communities around common interests like a school bond or tax increase, but those groups invariably dissolve as the issue goes away.

There are readership communities that work. Subscribers to a special interest magazine about needlepoint or scuba diving are a type of community. Those people have intense shared interests and they are much more likely to bond together in an online forum that serves those interests. Publishers of special-interest magazines have the best chance of turning their readership into self-sustaining online communities.

General-interest publishers serving broad audiences don't. Their strength is creating content and their best chance of building community involves giving people a chance to discuss, comment upon and contribute to their content. USA Today does about the best of any major newspaper at encouraging this kind of reader participation. It encourages readers to comment upon and discuss its stories within the the limited confines of non-threaded discussion, but the readers themselves have no means to create groups, initiate their own discussions or contact each other. There’s nothing wrong with that. USA Today doesn't have the illusion that two million readers are a community. It's comfortable with its place in the world.

Daily Reading 07/11/2008

2008-07-11T08:30:00.001-05:00

Are virtual worlds old news? TechCrunch begs to differ
A lot of people have been dissing virtual worlds lately, but that hasn't stopped the inflow of investment. TechCrunch surveys the scene and says that $345 million have been invested in new virtual properties this year - a record. The blog has a list of who's getting funded and with how much. There are also links to a few of the players.
tags: daily_reading, virtual_worlds
Has social media lost its luster?
The inevitable disillusionment is setting in with social networks, which has proven to be poor outlets for banner advertising. But anyone who is relying on these outlets to deliver banners is missing the point. As this story states, "The premium inventory on social networks isn't a highly trafficked page, it's an individual user."
tags: daily_reading, social_networks, advertising
Did the “Enron of Norway” Pull a Fast One On Microsoft? More Details About the Mess at Fast Search & Transfer
I used to share a building with this company. How "fast" the mighty can fall.
tags: daily_reading

Daily Reading 07/09/2008

2008-07-09T08:30:00.001-05:00

MediaPost Publications - Forrester: B2B Blogging Takes Nose Dive - 07/07/2008
Surprise! Corporate b-to-b blogs aren't a cure-all. Forrester examined 36 companies that touted blogs a year ago and found that only half of them were sustaining the commitment. The problem: topics are boring, the voice is institutional and uninspiring and the authors don't invite conversation. There are tricks to blogging right, but just yammering about your products and company isn't going to stimulate conversation.
tags: daily_reading, corporate_blog

Daily Reading 07/08/2008

2008-07-08T08:31:00.001-05:00

Fair Use and Online Video
The Center for Social Media at American University has come up with some fair use guidelines that attempt to preserve copyright-holder rights without infringing on people's ability to mash up content.
tags: daily_reading

Daily Reading 07/07/2008

2008-07-07T08:30:00.001-05:00

Some coffee fans get grim delight in Starbucks woes | U.S. | Reuters
Over-expansion and high prices are no doubt a big part of the coffee shop's woes, but the persistent tide of negative customer sentiment can't be ignored. Bloggers have trashed Starbucks for its packaged coolness and its insincere corporate responsibility.The current political incorectness of coffee is probably a factor, too.
tags: daily_reading
The easiest blogging platform in the world?
Online Journalism blog writes about a new service that makes it possible to launch and maintain a blog with just an e-mail message. The downside: limited flexibility.
tags: daily_reading

Daily Reading 07/03/2008

2008-07-03T08:30:00.001-05:00

LoyaltyMatch - Rewarding Yourself
Cool new service that lets frequent travelers barter their loyalty points for goods and services. This may be especially timely as airlines cut back further on reward options and increase fees.
tags: daily_reading, tools

Lessons From the Campaign Trail

2008-07-02T19:57:00.004-05:00

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

Businessweek’s Catherine Holahan writes this week about the big lead Barack Obama has built against John McCain in online visibility. While I’m not going to declare a preference for either candidate, I do think it’s worth noting the lessons marketers can learn from the Obama campaign’s success.

Political campaigns have long been about the 30-second television spot. Candidates staked their reputations and their success on a series of carefully crafted (and very expensive) image ads that ran in key markets. The high cost of this approach forced campaigns to bet everything on strategic media buys.

The Obama campaign has challenged this conventional wisdom. While the 30-second spot still has its place, it isn't with the emerging population of young voters. When young people do watch TV, it's rarely in prime time and they are usually fast-forwarding through the commercials. Perhaps one reason this group has become so politically disenfranchised in recent elections is that no one is reaching them on their terms.

The Obama campaign, however, has figured it out. Its innovation has been in understanding that mainstream media is no longer the bottleneck of communication. When candidates -- or marketers -- use all the media channels available, they can create significant impact without relying on traditional media or advertising at all.

The numbers cited by BusinessWeek are impressive. The Obama campaign decided at the outset to leverage every possible channel to reach its audience and to take every possible opportunity to drive home its message. The candidate is essentially broadcasting every waking minute. When Obama gives a speech, a staffer videotapes it and uploads it to YouTube. When the candidate is in the car, aides are delivering messages on Twitter. Between campaign stops, the candidate conducts chats on MySpace or distributes position papers on his own social network.

The cost of these activities is next to nothing and the young audience they reach has been almost completely ignored by other campaigns. Perhaps more importantly, the Obama strategy has centered on frequent repetition, which is a classic marketing best practice. Instead of waiting for the media gods to bestow attention upon the candidate, the candidate chooses to become the media.

What can marketers learn from this? For one thing, you are no longer a prisoner of the media. You can become the media. Secondly, if you choose a strategic combination of channels and then deliver messages consistently and frequently, you can get better results than by renting a half minute on TV once a week.

Finally, the Obama campaign has demonstrated the beauty of small markets. When you aggregate the candidate’s 43,000 Twitter followers, 60,000 YouTube subscribers, 1.1 million Facebook friends, 21,000 MySpace friends and 850,000 members of MyBarackObama.com, you're quickly over 2 million followers, each of whom has volunteered for that status. If you can convince each one of those people to spread the word to three others, well, you do the math.

Four years ago, the Howard Dean campaign tried to leverage the Internet to run a grass-roots campaign and fell short. There were several reasons for that, but lack of tools was one of them. Today, the problem is how to choose from the bounty of tools that are available. The Obama campaign demonstrates that word-of-mouth campaigns can open a whole new world of possibilities.

Groundswell is an Intelligent Approach to Social Media Marketing

2008-07-02T06:12:00.003-05:00

Some of the books that have been published about social media over the last couple of years have undermined their own message by yelling at their audience.The authors believe that Web 2.0 is a hammer and every marketing problem is a nail. Marketers who aren't getting on board with social media are either in denial or stupid.

This attitude ultimately works against these enthusiasts. Social media isn't a panacea for anything and it isn't even appropriate for some companies and markets. The challenge for marketers is to figure out what makes sense and how to build social campaigns into broader marketing programs.

Groundswell takes a constructive approach to the task. Written by Forrester Research analysts Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff, it's the first social media book I've read that attempts to define an analytical and quantitative approach to evaluating and applying social media . While the authors' bias is clear, their approach is dispassionate enough to make their message all the more persuasive. In that respect, this is a breakthrough book.

You would expect nothing less than a quality job from two Forrester analysts. Li and Bernoff propose an innovative model for online adult behavior at the outset and apply it consistently throughout. Their "Social Technographics Profile" is a breakdown of US adults into six categories spanning the spectrum of online participation ranging from uninvolved to active creator. The authors apply the profile to a variety of audience segments, demonstrating that not all markets adopt Web 2.0 the same way. They've also made a limited version of the profiling tool available on the book's website.

Importantly, Groundswell takes pains to point out that social media isn't for everyone. Companies with undifferentiated or commodity products that don't inspire customer enthusiasm are going to be hard pressed to build word-of-mouth momentum or brand advocacy. For them, a support forum or thought-leadership blog may be the best value they'll get. It's all about matching the customer base to the appropriate online behavior profile, and the authors drive home that message again and again. This book is all about understanding Social Technographics.

Groundswell is rich in case studies, many of which were evidently gleaned from client interactions and reflect solid understanding of the business issues at hand. The book also takes the best shot I've seen at defining an ROI model for blogs and social networks. The story of how one customre enthusiast has saved Dell more than $1 million in customer support costs is particularly compelling.

I was somewhat chagrined to find that some of the case studies I write about in my forthcoming book, Secrets of Social Media Marketing, are also covered in Groundswell. Fortunately, the two books have very different objectives. Secrets is applied practice while Groundswell is more strategic. The fact that we both landed on so many of the same examples is perhaps proof that this market still has a lot of growing up to do.

Lessons From the Campaign Trail

2008-07-01T22:26:00.002-05:00

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

Businessweek’s Catherine Holahan writes this week about the big lead Barack Obama has built against John McCain in online visibility. While I’m not going to declare a preference for either candidate, I do think it’s worth noting the lessons marketers can learn from the Obama campaign’s success.

Political campaigns have long been about the 30-second television spot. Candidates staked their reputations and their success on a series of carefully crafted (and very expensive) image ads that ran in key markets. The high cost of this approach forced campaigns to bet everything on strategic media buys.

The Obama campaign has challenged this conventional wisdom. While the 30-second spot still has its place, it isn't with the emerging population of young voters. When young people do watch TV, it's rarely in prime time and they are usually fast-forwarding through the commercials. Perhaps one reason this group has become so politically disenfranchised in recent elections is that no one is reaching them on their terms.

The Obama campaign, however, has figured it out. Its innovation has been in understanding that mainstream media is no longer the bottleneck of communication. When candidates -- or marketers -- use all the media channels available, they can create significant impact without relying on traditional media or advertising at all.

The numbers cited by BusinessWeek are impressive. The Obama campaign decided at the outset to leverage every possible channel to reach its audience and to take every possible opportunity to drive home its message. The candidate is essentially broadcasting every waking minute. When Obama gives a speech, a staffer videotapes it and uploads it to YouTube. When the candidate is in the car, aides are delivering messages on Twitter. Between campaign stops, the candidate conducts chats on MySpace or distributes position papers on his own social network.

The cost of these activities is next to nothing and the young audience they reach has been almost completely ignored by other campaigns. Perhaps more importantly, the Obama strategy has centered on frequent repetition, which is a classic marketing best practice. Instead of waiting for the media gods to bestow attention upon the candidate, the candidate chooses to become the media.

What can marketers learn from this? For one thing, you are no longer a prisoner of the media. You can become the media. Secondly, if you choose a strategic combination of channels and then deliver messages consistently and frequently, you can get better results than by renting a half minute on TV once a week.

Finally, the Obama campaign has demonstrated the beauty of small markets. When you aggregate the candidate’s 43,000 Twitter followers, 60,000 YouTube subscribers, 1.1 million Facebook friends, 21,000 MySpace friends and 850,000 members of MyBarackObama.com, you're quickly over 2 million followers, each of whom has volunteered for that status. If you can convince each one of those people to spread the word to three others, well, you do the math.

Four years ago, the Howard Dean campaign tried to leverage the Internet to run a grass-roots campaign and fell short. There were several reasons for that, but lack of tools was one of them. Today, the problem is how to choose from the bounty of tools that are available. The Obama campaign demonstrates that word-of-mouth campaigns can open a whole new world of possibilities.

Daily Reading 06/30/2008

2008-06-30T08:30:00.001-05:00

Telling statistic of our times
Jeff Jarvis is writing a piece on George Carlin and so looked up the frequency with which Carlin's famous seven words you can't say on TV show up in Google. He finds a striking equivalency. You have to click to see.
tags: daily_reading
Google Docs now appears to be an official Microsoft Office competitor
Among an impressive list of recent enhancements is offline access. Google says you can now edit any word processing, spreadsheet or presentation document when disconnected from the Internet and then synch with your online account when you reconnect. At this point, what's the difference between Docs and Office?
tags: daily_reading

Daily Reading 06/29/2008

2008-06-29T08:30:00.001-05:00

Is Google Making Us Stupid?
A lot of people have been buzzing about Nicholas Carr's brief opinion piece in the Atlantic in which he argues that information overload is making us less able to think in any kind of depth. Are we becoming "pancake people?" I don't agree, but his views are worth considering.
tags: daily_reading
What it takes for an ad to go viral
There's no secret formula for "going viral," but Tom Hespos draws some interesting conclusions about why some campaigns work.
tags: daily_reading
- Humor in an ad needs to be comparable to that in other content you might find online. In other words, a funny commercial is still a commercial. If you're hoping humor value will spur a significant viral effect, the content better be funny. It's not just competing with other commercials
- Someone high up at Apple understands the value exchange that occurs when a brand fan is among the first to find out about a new Apple product.
- This incentivizes the insider to tell everybody and their grandmother that they were among the first to see the new iPhone.
This Ad Stinks: Let Readers Vote
Advertisers increasingly are paying to have website visitors render judgments on their ads in public for all to see.
tags: daily_reading

Daily Reading 06/27/2008

2008-06-27T08:30:00.001-05:00

Meet a blogger: Run up the Score | By Daniel Victor
Run Up the Score is a successful football blog focused on Penn State. In this interview, the bloggers offers practical advice for positioning a blog as well as driving traffic. He also comments on some important tactics to avoid.
tags: daily_reading

Daily Reading 06/25/2008

2008-06-25T08:32:00.001-05:00

Ongoing list of Social Media Efforts from Banks, Credit Card, Financial Institutions and Lenders
Jeremiah Owyang has a nice list of the Web 2.0 activities being pursued by financial institutions in the name of serving existing customers and finding new ones.
tags: daily_reading

Social Media Tools Don't Matter

2008-06-23T07:41:00.001-05:00

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

Here’s a question I hear from marketers all the time: “We want to launch a corporate blog, but we don’t know how to go about it. Where should we start?”

My answer is that you should start a couple of steps back from where you are. Social media tools – whether they’re blogs, online communities, instructional videos or something else - don’t solve anything unless they address a specific business need. Don’t use social media for its own sake. Use it to accomplish an objective.

Unfortunately, the temptation is difficult to resist. Lots of businesses are experimenting with social media tools these days. It’s natural to think that they know something the rest of us don’t, but the reality is that most people are still kicking tires right now. There are some very successful companies like Apple Computer that are doing nothing with social media because they don’t have to. If the tools aren’t right for your culture or your business, don’t use them.

Whatever you do, don’t start the decision process with technology. The choice of a social media tool is no more relevant to the success of a campaign than is the choice of paint to the structural integrity of a house. Many tools are flexible enough to be used for multiple purposes and some strategic goals require you to leverage many tools in concert.

Stop and consider the problem or opportunity you’re trying to address. Here are a few possible business objectives, with the best tool options listed in parentheses.

Build customer community (blog, video, social network, private community, virtual world)
Counter negative publicity (blog, podcast, video, customer reviews)
Crisis management (blog, video, social network, virtual world)
Customer conversation (blog, social network, private community, virtual world)
Generate website traffic (blog, video, customer reviews)

Many more examples will be explored in my forthcoming book, Secrets of Social Media Marketing. It will be available this fall and you can pre-order it on Amazon right now. I also recommend reading Groundswell, the new book by Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff of Forrester Research. It has some excellent advice on how to take a disciplined approach to social media selection.

Note that blogs appear next to every bullet point listed above. That doesn’t mean blogs are a panacea. They are the easiest form of social media to implement, but far greater leverage may derive from more complex tools like customer communities. You should choose media based upon your budget, staff resources and commitment. It’s often best to start small and grow your social media footprint as you become more fluent with the tools. Blogs are a good starting point, but you may need stronger medicine after a while.

Keep in mind the importance of balancing between ease of use, simplicity of deployment and functionality. Many social media tools can be used for multiple purposes. You may be better off starting with a tool that you understand well rather than deploying a somewhat richer solution that carries a steep learning curve.

If you keep the tools secondary and work outward from the business goal, you’re far more likely to reap the rewards of your efforts.

Daily Reading 06/17/2008

2008-06-17T08:30:00.001-05:00

100 Personal Branding Tactics Using Social Media | chrisbrogan.com
A very useful list of tactics you can use to brand yourself (and feed your ego!) using social media tools.
tags: daily_reading

Daily Reading 06/06/2008

2008-06-06T08:30:00.001-05:00

IDS says Web advertising to 'defy' economic crisis
Internet advertising will grow about eight times as fast as advertising at large between 2008 and 2012, according to IDC, doubling revenue to over $51 billion. The slow economy will only accelerate the move of advertising dollars online, with video leading the growth. Video advertising expected to grow almost 50% annually through 2012, reaching $3.8 billion.
tags: daily_reading, advertising, research

Daily Reading 06/01/2008

2008-06-01T08:30:00.002-05:00

Social Media and E-Mail Spending to Rise
Quoting:
"More than three-quarters of marketers surveyed said they will increase their social media spending during the next three years, according to Eloqua's "State of the Marketer" report. A full 74% said they plan to increase their direct e-mail spending while about two-thirds will spend more on mobile texting and SMS.

"Respondents were bullish on online ad spending overall, with nine out of 10 saying they would continue to increase their direct online ad budgets. The spending increases are likely to come at the expense of print ads, since 55% of respondents said they will probably decrease print ad spending in the next three years."
tags: daily_reading, social_media_research, advertising
Worried About Bloggers Dissing Your Company? Read This
Marketers fret constantly about the risk of negativity in the blogosphere. Read this uplifting story of how one entrepreneur engaged with a critical blogger and turned her into a valuable alley.
tags: daily_reading, blog_attack, blog_culture
'Personality Not Included': A Podcast with Rohit Bhargava
In this podcast, Paul Dunay interviews Rohit Bhargava, whose book Personality not Included is about how to regain a brand personality.
tags: daily_reading, marketing
Carl's Jr., Hardee's Intros Avatar, Social Net Campaign
Carl's Jr. and Hardee's restaurants will turn their social networking pages into virtual outposts. Myspace members will be able to download a branded application and create custom avatars that live in the virtual outlets or a burger-themed living room complete with mechanical bull.
tags: daily_reading, virtual_worlds, viral_marketing
Google CEO Eric Schmidt admits Web 2.0 advertising is small opportunity
In an interview with a German newspaper, Google CEO Eric Schmidt admits that the company has not yet figured out a way to monetize Web 2.0 as an advertising vehicle and may never do so. Quoting:

"MySpace did not monetize as well as we thought. We have a lot of traffic, a lot of page views, but it is harder than we thought to get our ad network to work with social networks. When you are in social network, it is not likely that you´ll buy a washing machine. It is not a long term problem but it is taking us longer than we thought. We are trying new ways, new approaches all the time." (via Media Post).
tags: daily_reading, advertising, social_networks
Hydrox Redux: Cookie Duels Oreo, Again
Spurred by more than 1,300 phone inquiries and an online petition Kellogg Co. is bringing back the Hydrox cookie, if only temporarily. The company had killed the Hydrox five years ago, ceding the market to competitor Oreo. However, some people missed the Hydrox, and their online agitating convinced Kellogg to give it a try. The revival is only temporary for now, although Kellogg left the door open to a permanent reintroduction if demand is there. (via WOMMA blog).
tags: daily_reading, viral_marketing
For Coors Light, a Night Out That Begins on MySpace
Coors has a new campaign called “Code blue” that's built on the new feature of Coors Light beer bottles that turns the color of the mountains pictured on the labels from white to blue when the beer gets cold enough to drink. Facebook users will soon be able to send friends “Code blue” alerts inviting them to meet up for a beer. They can even set a meeting point using Facebook maps. (via WOMMA blog).
tags: daily_reading, facebook
Branding In An Age Of Authenticity
Dave Morgan says marketers are too focused on using social media as an advertising opportunity and disregarding the impact that blogs and social networks have on brand image. Today, almost nothing is secret, which means that efforts to deceive customers almost always backfire. In addition, a host of competitors are lurking out there, waiting to jump on every bad customer experience and make it into a public indictment of your company. In the new world, businesses need to focus on delivering outstanding experiences to all their customers.
tags: daily_reading, marketing

Daily Reading 05/30/2008

2008-05-30T08:31:00.001-05:00

Time Inc. Tries Hand at Reader-Generated Issue
Another publisher - this time a unit of venerable Time, Inc. - tries its hand at a print publication composed entirely of user-generated content. 8020 Publishing and the Hartford Courant are doing the same thing. Editors say the quality of ideas contributed by readers is remarkably good, although the copy needs a lot of work. They all plan to keep the conversation going.
tags: daily_reading, citizen_journalism
This Blog Post Is Available At No Charge!
Tim Lee writes in the Atlantic about the creeping economy of free. Content providers will increasingly find themselves under pressure from competitors who offer similar information at little or no cost. The challenge is to develop new business models around ancillary services. Chris Anderson is big on this topic right now. He notes that the value of commodities falls quickly to the cost of production and in the content world, that's zero.
tags: daily_reading

Daily Reading 05/29/2008

2008-05-29T08:30:00.001-05:00

Open Source Evolution podcast: The Changing Landscape
Tom Hanrahan, Director of Linux Interoperability at Microsoft, speaks with Wharton Legal Studies and Business Ethics Professor Kevin Werbach about the value of open source development in today’s marketplace. It's interesting how the mindset is changing at Microsoft.
tags: daily_reading, open_source

Daily Reading 05/28/2008

2008-05-28T08:30:00.001-05:00

Everywhere, JPG - magazines for the future
8020 Publishing has a strong ownership pedigree (Halsey Minor and ex-Conde Nast execs) and a fascinating model. Each bi-monthly issue of its two magazines is composed entirely of content submitted by readers. It takes a staff of only 19 people to produce the two titles and they'll be profitable by next year.
tags: daily_reading, citizen_journalism

Daily Reading 05/26/2008

2008-05-26T08:30:00.001-05:00

French skydiver plans 130,000-foot free fall
I am so happy there are people in the world who will do this kind of thing willingly so the rest of us don't have to.
tags: daily_reading

An Online Video Strategy That Hits The Mark

2008-05-23T05:37:00.003-05:00

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

I just returned from my second trip to Toronto in the last two months and was again impressed with the Web-savviness of the Canadian audience. Did you know, for example,that Canadians are the world's most active users of Facebook? Or that Canadians spend, on average, two morehours per week viewing online video than their counterparts south of the border?

And don't give me that "Of course! It's cold up there!" cliché. Canadian homes are wired and its businesses are doing some very innovative things to reach those web-savvy customers.

Take FutureShop. Canada's largest consumer electronics retailer is using online community not only to learn more about its customers, but to help sell products and support customers. It has built an online advisory and customer support service that is like nothing I've ever seen.

"Ask an Expert" is formulated on a high-touch model in which sales associates are taught to be valued customeradvisers. The company has come up with a strategy to duplicate that real-world experience online. The screen shot shows "Aaron," one of the video avatars who guides customers.

Since mid-2007, visitors to Future Shop's website have been greeted by a video image of a sales associate who offers to help guide their experience. Customers can ask any question of the avatar (he'll even dance for you) and get results from a growing database of advice contributed by sales associates and customers. Future Shop created the video front-end itself and bound it to a community portal from Lithium Technologies.

"We're trying to blur the lines between the offline and online experience," says Robert Pearson, Future Shop's director of e-commerce. "Our goal is to become the largest technology community in Canada."

Future Shop is well on its way to that objective. In less than a year, the site has signed up 50,000 members, which would be equivalent to about 450,000 members in the much larger U.S. market. But the community isn't just a discussion forum. Future Shop co-developed a ranking system with Lithium that lets customers provide feedback on each other and on the quality of information offered up by sales associates. Customer contributors can earn discounts and status in the community. The most helpful sales associates can earn cash.

Next up: Facebook-like functionality that gives contributors their own personal spaces and ties sales associate profiles to store locations. Success is measured by a survey of customer affinity with the brand. It's still too early to draw measurable conclusions, but all the trends are pointing in the right direction. "We're getting about 250,000 visitors a day out of a population of 33 million," Pearson says. "That's many more than come into a store. We actually see people walking in with printouts and asking for specific experts they've met online."

Future Shop isn't using video to be cool. It's using video to reinforce an in-store experience that is essential to its business strategy. It has also bound its customers to the company in a way that is rewarding for both parties. The company is now owned by Best Buy, so I wouldn't be surprised to see a similar capability showing up on a retail website near you.

Daily Reading 05/17/2008

2008-05-17T08:31:00.001-05:00

Web start-up unveils semantic Wikipedia search tool
Powerset searches Wikipedia using conversational phrasing instead of keywords. It's one of a new breed of search engines that tries to get at the underlying questions that Web searchers are trying to answer.
tags: daily_reading, search_engines
EMarketer cuts social media ad spend forecast
Social networks are still having trouble coming up with compelling ad models. EMarketer predicts ad spending on those networks will be just $2.6 billion by 2012, about five percent of the overall market. MySpace and Facebook collectively command 72% of social network ad spending.
tags: daily_reading, research
Facebook backlash develops
It was inevitable that Facebook growth would slow and critics would turn out to start talking about all that's wrong with the social network. This CNet blog points to a developer's observation that fewer people are developing Facebook apps than a year ago and extrapolates that Facebook may be in crisis. What's really happening is that the market is becoming more mature and competitive.
tags: daily_reading
Why Twitter Matters
BusinessWeek's Stephen Baker updates the Twitter phenomenon, explaining why microblogging is becoming an intrinsic part of people's lives and how businesses are tapping in to the conversation.
tags: daily_reading, twitter
Blogs Blossom into a Big Business
"By 2012, more than 145 million people—67% of the US Internet population—will be reading blogs at least once a month. That is up from a readership of 94 million in 2007, or 50% of Internet users." Ad spending is forecast to grow to about $750 million by 2012, which is nearly triple today's total but still a small number overall.
tags: daily_reading, research

Daily Reading 05/16/2008

2008-05-16T08:30:00.001-05:00

Online Ad Spend Surpasses $21B
Although the growth rate of online ad spending has slowed, it's easily outpacing growth in all other media categories.
tags: daily_reading, research

Daily Reading 05/14/2008

2008-05-14T08:30:00.001-05:00

Remarks on Clay Shirky's essays on group think
This post summarizes and links to Clay Shirky's 2003 essay "A Group is its Own Worst Enemy." Shirky's work on group dynamics is important to understanding how social networks govern themselves.
tags: daily_reading

IDG Reinvents Itself Online

2008-05-14T05:08:00.003-05:00

Last week, The New York Times wrote about International Data Group’s (IDG) successful transition from a print to an online model. I was intrgued to read about IDG Chairman Patrick McGovern’s enthusiasm for the economics of new media. Having gotten to know McGovern a bit during my 15-year career at IDG, I asked him to appear on the weekly MediaBlather podcast that I co-host with David Strom. He immediately agreed. That's the kind of person McGovern is. With all of the weighty issues that he must deal with every day, he is never too busy to chat with a colleague, whether current or past. In fact, McGovern still visits every IDG operation in the U.S. each December to distribute bonuses individually to every employee.

Our interview was about the business issues of IDG’s transition from a print powerhouse to an online specialty publisher. McGovern’s perspective is be inspiring. While the print industry collectively moans about the pain of transitioning from print to online, IDG has quietly taken its medicine and reinvented itself. Today, the company derives less than half its revenue from print titles, and McGovern expects online business to make up 70% of sales by 2012.

At InfoWorld, which was spotlighted in the Times article, the closure of the print edition and shift to a wholly online model actually increased margins from a small net loss to a 37% net profit. “Not only is there survival after going online, but it’s a much better environment,” McGovern told us.

IDG’s strategy is now to launch all new titles online first, build an audience and then take the business to print if the market demands it. “That way, we already have the audience and we can show the advertisers who’s asking for [the print title] and who’s going to read it,” McGovern said. “It takes away the risk.”

What works in the U.S. doesn’t work the same way globally, of course. Scandinavia and Korea are among the regions of the world that are innovating most successfully in online publishing, McGovern told us. In contrast, India is still a healthy print market but with a budding cell phone culture that may make it the first major economy to jump from paper to mobile devices without an intermediate PC stage.

There are some other gems in this interview. One is about IDG’s flirtation with a public offering through its books division a decade ago. McGovern, who has always taken a dim view of the public markets, relates how the experience distracted the group from its traditional market into ancillary businesses where it had no expertise. “If they had stayed private, I think they’d be a larger and more successful company today,” he commented.

We also talked about IDG’s phenomenal success in China, where it publishes a host of consumer titles in addition to its big technology brands. IDG’s venture capital arm now makes more money for the company from investing in Chinese businesses than the rest of the company does from publishing.

If you want to hear an optimistic perspective on the future of media from someone who is leading the charge, listen to this podcast (right click and choose “Save As…” to download to your computer). I think you’ll find it to be 25 minutes well spent.

Daily Reading 05/13/2008

2008-05-13T08:30:00.001-05:00

New Google Service Makes Web Pages Social
Someone was going to figure this out sooner or later. Social networks should be part of the broader Web, not a walled garden. Google is on to something here.
tags: daily_reading, social_networks, google

Daily Reading 05/11/2008

2008-05-11T08:30:00.001-05:00

If pigs could fly
Jeff Jarvis tells an incredible story of airline cluelessness, illustrating why that industry's focus on wringing every last dollar out of the customer is repelling the people it most needs to attract.
tags: daily_reading

Daily Reading 05/09/2008

2008-05-09T08:30:00.001-05:00

Army reacts to shoddy barracks
A video posted on YouTube spurs the US Army to award $250 million to clean up the filthy barracks. Citizen journalism in action?
tags: daily_reading, ndw, citizen_journalism, video
Forrester: B-to-b marketers fail community marketing test
Companies that delegate community engagement to their marketing and PR departments are setting themselves up for failure. They need to involve people at all levels of the organization. Unfortunately, the recipe-for-failure model appears to be the more popular one at the moment.
tags: daily_reading, research, social_media

Secrets of Blogger Relations

2008-05-08T21:53:00.003-05:00

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

Since embracing social media two years ago, Dell Computer has learned a few lessons. One of its key blogger relations people shared some secrets last week in a keynote interview at the New Communications Forum in Santa Rosa, Calif.

Richard Binhammer is charged with monitoring and engaging with the active ecosystem of people who blog about Dell. In a keynote interview with John Cass, Binhammer talked about negativity, a concern often voiced by PR people. Dell has had its share of blogger criticism, going back to the famous Dell Hell incident of three years ago. But by methodically reaching out to complainers, the company reduced negativity from nearly half of all online posts to about 20% in a little less than a year. The secret? "Just talk to people," Binhammer said. Most of the time, all they want is to be heard. Demonstrate that you're listening and you can resolve most complaints.

But here’s an interesting fact: After reducing that negativity factor to 20%, the Dell team has been unable to bring it consistently below that level. Binhammer, whose background is in politics, theorizes that 20% is a natural floor, in the same way that 20% of the population always votes for the same political party, regardless of who runs.

This is worth remembering. Even the best businesses have a few unhappy customers. Your mileage may vary, but you should never expect to achieve 100% satisfaction. It’s more likely that your blogger relations program will get you to a manageable yet stubborn base level. That's your floor, and you probably can't do much to break through it.

Finding Resources
Binhammer also shed some light on how Dell allocates its communications resources. With so many tech bloggers out there, you'd think the company would have a small army of communications folks monitoring and responding to conversations. In fact, it has just two people sharing the job. The reason? Dell is lining up the whole company behind the effort to get more engaged with customers. PR monitors the airwaves, but doesn’t try to resolve every issue. Most comments are forwarded to the appropriate group for response.

I wish more companies would do this. Bloggers tend to be well-informed and passionate, which means that their inquiries and comments demand knowledgeable responses. Companies that simply delegate the response to PR are failing to benefit from the really rich conversations they can have with their most informed customers. Everyone from sales to engineering should want to speak to customers whenever possible. Why let marketing have all the fun?

Daily Reading 05/08/2008

2008-05-08T08:30:00.001-05:00

Gartner Says Social Networks Are Attracting Too Much Traffic for Retailers to Ignore
But don't just dive in. The research organization has a list of 10 factors retailers should consider before leveraging social networks. The opportunities are too good to overlook.
tags: daily_reading, social_networks, vertical
Twitter Apps and Tools Becoming More Plentiful
Bloggers Blog has a whole bunch of new Twitter tools.
tags: daily_reading, twitter
Southwest Airlines' Blog Re-launches
...and it's a big improvement, says corporate blogging expert Debbie Weil.
tags: daily_reading, corporate_blog
Measuring a blog's success
Online Journalism Blog gathers up a variety of online measurement metrics and applies them to a set of top UK journalism blogs. There are some tools listed here that I wasn't aware of. This is well worth reading if you want a holistic view of your blog's popularity
tags: daily_reading, metrics, blog

Daily Reading 05/06/2008

2008-05-06T08:30:00.001-05:00

28 Tips To Make You a StumbleUpon Superstar
The more I use StumbleUpon, the better I like it. This post goes into some of the finer points of the SU culture, particuarly how to manage the limited friends network.
tags: daily_reading

Daily Reading 04/27/2008

2008-04-27T08:30:00.001-05:00

Marketing to Bloggers
Influencer marketing is moving into the mainstream, with seven of 10 respondents to a recent study indicating that they'll target influentials in the coming year. The trend is most pronounced among marketers the researchers classified as "leaders," of those who use the most sophisticated tactics and tools.
tags: influencers, marketing, daily_reading, social_media_research
20 (Rare) Questions for Google Search Guru Udi Manber
Google's vice president of search quality gives rare insight into how the top-secret search algorithm works in an interview with Popular Mechanics. of all things.
tags: daily_reading
U.S. Lags in Social Media Creation
The US is a nation of online voyeurs, according to the author of a study on international online usage. A little over 60 percent of Internet users in the U.S. said they read blogs, but just 26 percent had created one, compared to over 70 percent of Internet users who blog in South Korea and China. There are more good stats in the article
tags: daily_reading
Shopping 3.0 In A Web 2.0 World
The CEO of ThisNext describes the concept of the "product graph," in which influential early adopters help other people discover products they didn't previously know existed.
tags: daily_reading

Daily Reading 04/25/2008

2008-04-25T08:30:00.001-05:00

Segway Gets Social
What impressed me about this story was the tactic that agency used to get Segway's business. Read at the very end.
tags: daily_reading

Daily Reading 4/24/08

2008-04-24T08:36:00.001-05:00

Making Money, the How-To Way
How-to videos are becoming a huge new Web 2.0 category, with lots of start-up activity and millions of views for top productions. Some instructors are making good money, too.
tags: daily_reading, video
A Look at Friendfeed
A new class of social media aggregation tools is enabling people to tie together their activities in blogs, social networks, Twitter and other forums. The resulting feed is called a "lifestream." Dosh Dosh digs into FriendFeed, which is the current market leader.
tags: daily_reading, social_networks
Facebook vs. Twitter and Communities in General - Direct2Dell
Dell's chief blogger compares Twitter to Facebook and tells why he likes Twitter better. Lionel Menchaca's bulleted list of the pros and cons of each service will have a lot of people nodding in agreement. The comments are useful, too.
tags: daily_reading
Twitter in Plain English
Menchaca points to this instructive video that explains the appeal of Twitter in 2 1/2 minutes. I think there's a lot more to Twitter than this, but for those people who just don't get the appeal, this video is a nice summary.
tags: daily_reading, twitter
Can User-Generated Content Generate Revenue?
EMarketer says user-generated content isn't a fad any more: "The number of user-generated content creators will rise from 77 million in 2007 to 108 million in 2012. The number of consumers of user-generated content will increase from 94 million in 2007 to 130 million in 2012." The similarity of these numbers would indicate that the majority of people who are consuming user-generated content are the ones creating it. Still, eMarketer sees ad revenues for the category exceeding $800 million by 2012.
tags: daily_reading, consumer_generated_media
Consumers in Chrysler’s Boardroom?
Ted Mininni comments on Chrysler's new Customer Advisory Board, which aims to bring 2,000 customers and prospects into a dialog about the company's products. He asks what took Chrysler so long.
tags: daily_reading

Not Optimizing For Search? Shame On You!

2008-04-22T23:50:00.002-05:00

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

I meet with corporate marketers and their agencies these days, I'm frequently surprised to learn how little they think about search engine optimization. This is despite the fact that Google alone processes an estimated 750 million queries daily, and that IT professionals are some of the most active and advanced users of search engines.

One reason for this, I suspect, is that marketers are trained to be good at "push" marketing. Their craft has traditionally involved intercepting customers with messages that grab their attention and inspire action. Customers, however, are becoming more resistant to these tactics. Increasingly, they engage with companies and products on their terms when they're ready to make a buying decision. That's a much better time to reach them. The trick is to show up on their radar when they're in this "pull" mode.

Google is now the universal homepage. Look at your traffic logs and you'll probably see that search engines vastly outperform any other referral source. Yet many marketers devote lots of time and money to creating beautiful homepage designs that are rich in animation and graphics. Not only are these pages rarely seen by today's web site visitors, but images and Flash animations are almost useless at attracting search engine traffic.

Successful IT marketers are learning to reverse the push model. They know that buyers start the research process in a search query box and that the sites that make the first page of results get 10 times the click-throughs of anything else.

The Great Equalizer
You might think search engines favor the big brands, but that's not the case. Try this: Type "router" into Google and look at the results. Note that only four of the top 25 results are vendor sites. Now type "PC." Note that the only vendor in the top 10 results -- Apple -- doesn't even market its products as PCs! In fact, neither of the top two PC makers in the US market even makes the top 100 results on Google.

Now look at what dominates search results for both terms: sites that provide definitions and helpful how-to advice. This should tell you something. Your search engine performance will be greatest when you deliver content that helps customers make good decisions through practical, impartial guidance from knowledgeable sources.

Search is the great equalizer. The leading engines' proprietary algorithms are designed to screen out material that their developers consider uninteresting. Your challenge is to match your content to their preferences.

Start by choosing the search terms that really matter. Be specific. Get general agreement that these are the terms you want to dominate in search performance. Marshall all of your internal web site contributors to reinforce those terms every time they write.

Discard terms like "industry-leading" and "innovative." No one searches for those words. Start a blog or discussion forum. Both are search engine magnets. Pick up a copy of Search Engine Marketing, Inc. by Mike Moran and Bill Hunt. It'll tell you a lot of the ins and outs. Make SEO a basic consideration in every marketing campaign. Then let those buyers reel you in.

This article originally appeared in Network World's ITiki newsletter.

How New Influencers are Reinventing Journalism

2008-04-17T09:04:00.004-05:00

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

Meet Ben Popken. You've probably never heard of him, but I recommend you learn what he's all about. He and others like him are rewriting the rules of journalism and, with it, the practice of media relations.

Ben sits atop the editorial pyramid at the blog The Consumerist. In conventional media terms, that pyramid isn't very big – only seven people – but Consumerist's reach far outweighs its small staff. The site gets 15 million unique visitors per month, a number that has roughly doubled in the past year. Perhaps more importantly, it's closely watched by mainstream media outlets. For example, The New York Times has referenced Consumerist 381 times, The Wall Street Journal 114 times and BusinessWeek 37 times. Consumerist gets picked up on the popular social bookmarking site Digg.com constantly -- 34,000 citations and counting. Popken was recently featured in a cover story in BusinessWeek and just wrote a 2,300-word article for Reader's Digest. All without a day of formal journalism training.

That's right, no journalism background; at least not as that concept is traditionally defined. Prior to joining Consumerist two years ago, Popken's professional career had consisted of a variety of entrepreneurial sales ventures and odd jobs. He worked as a delivery man not long before joining Consumerist. He only got the job because the previous editor's mother read his blog.

What's even more interesting than his background is the way his staff reports the news. Consumerist gets about 100 e-mails a day from consumers talking about their horrible encounters with businesses of all kinds. Big box retailers, banks, cell phone providers, cable companies and airlines are popular targets. Editors read and respond to each and every e-mail and write up about 30 of those submissions each day for the site. They also monitor a variety of news services looking for important stories that affect consumers.

The New Journalism?
Consumerist editors do little fact-checking. They don't have time with the volume of material they process. If something is wrong, they expect readers to quickly correct it. This direct reader input is the heart and soul of the Consumerist model, which Popken describes as "to empower consumers by informing and entertaining them about the top consumer issues of the day. We give them a voice by directly publishing their tips and e-mails and then following up on them as warranted."

A lot of journalists shudder when they read words like these. No editorial oversight? No verification of facts? It sounds like an invitation to disaster. But so far it's worked. Consumerist gets the occasional legal threat, but it's never amounted to much. And its laser focus on reader interests has won it a fanatical following. Have you ever sent a letter to a newspaper about a story you read and failed to get a response? At The Consumerist, you are the story.

With his site having already passed the venerable Consumer Reports in traffic, by some accounts, you'd think marketers would be beating down the door trying to get Popken's opinion. Yet surprisingly, he told me he gets few invitations to speak or consult. Some companies that the blog has repeatedly spotlighted have taken proactive measures. Sprint, for example, set up a dedicated support line for Consumerist readers, but only after the site published direct phone numbers for many of its executives.

With no formal journalism training, no editorial oversight and none of the trappings of conventional media, Ben Popken is becoming one of the most powerful voices in consumer journalism. And what's funny is that if you ask him about the secret of Consumerist's success, he uses the same words that any good editor uses: "The secret is to be reader-centric in a fundamental way. The content is driven by the readers and reacted to by the readers. We're really just a curator of consumer-generated content."

Get used to this. It's the online journalism model of the future.

Bookmarking Enhances Personal Productivity

2008-04-17T08:54:00.002-05:00

From my weekly newsletter. Subscribe by filling in the box to the right.

Here are a couple of tricks I use to shave hours each month off the process of organizing information and publishing it on blogs and websites. Publishing features are some of the least understood and most useful services that bookmarking sites offer.

There are more than 50 social bookmarking sites on the Internet, including such popular brands as Feed Me Links, Linkroll, Ma.gnolia and Clipmarks. A good list is here. Most share a common set of features: You can quickly save and annotate Web pages, share them with others and subscribe to new entries. Most offer some added value on top of those basic functions, such as page previews, e-mail and ratings. All the services that I've found are free.

I use two sites that each excel at different things. For basic bookmarking and sharing, del.icio.us has the largest audience and the best browser integration. I can bookmark any page to del.icio.us by hitting a control key combination, entering tags (the autocomplete feature is a nice touch here) and then hitting enter. There are no mouse movements required (I'm a keyboard junkie) and the process is fast and simple.

What I don't like about del.icio.us is its 255-character limit on annotations. That's because I like to attach comments about the articles I read and upload them to my blog. There isn't much you can say in 255 characters. Diigo plugs that gap. It's a bit clumsier to use, but I can annotate to my heart's content. Any annotations that I choose to make public are shared with other Diigo users who visit that page. I can also highlight passages and attach sticky notes to sections of the page that others can see.

The real value that I get out of both of these tools, though, is in publishing. I maintain three blogs and two Web sites, so I'm posting new material all the time. Web-based content management systems are slow and awkward to use, so I like to prepare and pre-format as much content as possible before logging on to the server.

Del.icio.us has a delightful feature called "link rolls" that enable you to automatically group bookmarks according to tags that you specify and feed them into a Web page. All you need to do is plug a little piece of JavaScript code into your website. Every time you add a bookmark, it's dynamically displayed on the Web page.

For example, on my site's speaking page, the list of recent appearances is nothing more than a bookmark list from del.icio.us. So are the "Latest News" and "Recent Articles" sections in the two sidebars. All I have to do to update those lists is to add or modify my del.icio.us tags. My site simply grabs the latest feed and displays those entries.

Diigo has cool tools for posting to a blog. When I read something interesting online, I bookmark it with Diigo and write my description and commentary in the annotation box. I attach the appropriate tags and save. When I'm ready to post to my blog, I simply check the boxes next to the relevant bookmarks and Diigo automatically produces a page consisting of every bookmark I've selected, along with my annotations. I can edit the entries in the site's simple editor and then copy and paste the whole thing into my content management system. Here's an example of what the final output looks like.

Both del.icio.us and Diigo also offer you the option to tell them to post certain bookmarks and annotations automatically to your blog on a daily schedule. There's no logging in to your content management system and the whole process is transparent. You can read instructions on how to do this on Diigo's tools page or del.icio.us' settings page. Here's an example of what the finished product looks like.

I personally think del.icio.us does a better job of auto-posting, but I still can't get around that 255-character limit. Given a choice between writing more briefly or settling for a little less than the optimum format, I'll stick with Diigo.

American Airlines Quietly Launches the World's Worst Corporate Blog

2008-04-17T07:05:00.000-05:00

You can spend months analyzing, planning and choreographing your company's entry into the blogosphere - or you can do it because there's a gun to your head. Looks like American Airlines is taking the latter approach. Under pressure because of massive flight delays and cancellations due to equipment problems, the carrier has launched a simple Blogger blog to tell its side of the story. The lack of comments indicates that it hasn't told anyone about it. Given how bad it is, that's probably a good thing. Thanks to Shel Holtz for the heads-up.

The AAConversation blog does nearly everything wrong. See my next post for a list. It's a revealing look at how buttoned-down corporations can stumble and fumble when seized by naked panic. This is AA unplugged and very unpackaged.

Daily reading 04/10/2008

2008-04-10T08:30:00.002-05:00

Kodak Hires Chief Blogger

Who wouldn't want to have a job like this? Oh, wait, bloggers are dying from the stress. Maybe not such a great job after all.

Daily reading 04/09/2008

2008-04-09T08:30:00.001-05:00

Study: 'Influencers' Possess Less Clout
New research calls into question the importance of anonymous influencers, but further validates the fact that people like to turn to their freinds and peers for buying advice.
tags: daily_reading, research, influence

Daily reading 04/08/2008

2008-04-08T08:30:00.001-05:00

7 Brand Name Social Networks

tags: daily_reading, social_networks

Interesting look at what seven big brands are doing with branded social networks.

TripIt Travel Management Service is a Winner

2008-04-07T20:36:00.003-05:00

For the past couple of months I've been using a travel management service that has some nice features to make life easier for the frequent traveler. It's called TripIt, and if you travel a lot, I recommend you give it a look.

TripIt aggregates all information about your travel in a single place and allows you to share itineraries with anyone you choose. It uses that most prosaic form of communication - e-mail - to update information. When you make a flight, hotel or car rental reservation, you forward the confirmation e-mail to TripIt, which automatically adds the information to your itinerary. The service is very good at parsing e-mail confirmations from most major airlines and hotel chains.

It doesn't get everything right - it couldn't figure out a message from JetBlue in my case - but the service is new and developers are constantly updating it. In nearly every case I encountered, TripIt was able to seamlessly integrate messages from a variety of travel providers into a single itinerary. It's then easy to share that information with anyone via e-mail. You can also integrate your itinerary into popular calendar programs and have updates sent to you via SMS.

TripIt adds information you don't request but which is nevertheless useful. For example, if you're flying into SFO and staying at the Hotel Palomar, it will include Google Maps directions to your destination. It also has nice touches like weather forecasts that are built right into the itinerary.

TripIt is trying to build social networking features into the service, though I'm not sure that's a winning strategy. I don't see much value in sharing my travel plans with people who don't care about them, but if the service can figure out how to integrate recommendations via third-party services like Yelp, it could have a winner. In short, there are a lot of promising directions the company could follow if it builds a critical mass of users. I, for one, am sold. I expect I'll be using TripIt for a long time to come. The service adds real value and efficiency to my busy schedule.

Daily reading 04/06/2008

2008-04-06T08:30:00.001-05:00

Who Do You Love? How Some Brands Achieve True Authenticity

tags: daily_reading, advertising, marketing

It's ease to praise the value of authenticity but a lot harder to achieve it. Many companies have stumbled badly in marketing campaigns because their efforts to sound genuine didn't jive with the public's perception of the brand. This Fast Company article from December looks at authenticity, insincerity and how even some big and successful brands manage to cultivate a distinct image.

Getting Engaged: Advertisers Search for Their Voices on YouTube Annotated

tags: daily_reading, youtube, advertising

Advertisers are already showing lack of creativity on YouTube, defaulting to the "safe" choice of pre-roll ads and sponsored contests. As this article notes, many of those campaigns underperform. To be successful on YouTube, you need to step outside your comfort zone and design content for the young audience.

Century 21 Real Estate, based in Parsippany, N.J., launched a video-contest channel on YouTube in mid-March. The idea is for home-sellers and their agents to collaborate on a video tour of the for-sale property "using humor and creativity." The winner, to be announced in May, will take home $21,000 and an HDTV. Although the company raised expectations by touting the contest as the "Housing Industry's First Branded YouTube Channel," its introductory video hasn't seemed to inspire much reaction: The contest channel currently features only four submissions. A viewer's comment on one sample video posted by Century 21 itself stated: "This [video] is an excellent way not to sell this home."

When Bell's firm launched a new anti-aging lotion for Johnson & Johnson's Aveeno brand, it built on the work of 3-D British chalk artist Julian Beever. A time-lapse video of Beever creating one of his trademark trompe-l'oeil drawings in New York's Union Square, which included the Aveeno logo, has resulted in more than 1.2 million views on multiple video channels, says Bell. "We listened to an existing conversation among fans of the artists and gave them something of value. That's what got them talking and sharing."

17 SEO Experts Debate the Details

tags: daily_reading, search_engines

The author polled 17 search engine optimization experts about the factors that count most in search rankings. The experts discuss 39 issues ranging from anchor text to page relevance to the age of inbound links. While they disagree in a lot of areas, some clear consensus does come through. The author has done a nice job of representing this consensus visually. His English isn't great, but you can make out what he's saying. This long document is a must-read if you're interested in SEO.

Daily reading 04/05/2008

2008-04-05T08:30:00.001-05:00

What's the real value of Craigslist?

tags: daily_reading, craigslist

Silicon Valley Insider estimates it's $5 billion, or about twice the value of the New York Times Co. Craigslist does an estimated nine billion monthly page views and 30 million ad listings. It has 25 employees.

Tickets to Five Red Sox Games Available

2008-04-05T07:37:00.003-05:00

If you live near Boston and you're as big a Red Sox fan as I am, read this.

This is my fifth year as a Red Sox season ticket holder. I typically attend 18-20 games a year and sell the rest of the tickets at cost to friends and colleagues. The photo at right is a view from the seats, which are in section 7. The yellow pole at the right of the photo is the famous Pesky Pole in right field.

I still have tickets for the following games at Fenway Park:

Date	Time	Opponent
4/10/2008	7:05 PM	Tigers
4/30/2008	7:05 PM	Blue Jays
5/21/2008	7:05 PM	Royals
9/8/2008	7:05 PM	Rays
9/9/2008	7:05 PM	Rays

If you want them, the cost is $94/pair (which is six bucks less than you'd pay at the Sox ticket office). Thanks to a new Red Sox program, I can now e-mail tickets, so even the April 10 game is in play. First come, first served, so e-mail me ASAP.

Draft Chapters of My Next Book Available For Review

2008-04-05T07:07:00.004-05:00

If I've been kind of quiet on this blog lately, it's because I've been devoting most of my writing time to Secrets of Social Media Marketing, a new book to be published by Quill Driver Books this fall. At roughly 73,000 words, my work is nearly complete now and I'd like your opinion.

I've posted chapters 1-8 on a wiki at www.ssmmbook.com. Another four chapters and a few sidebars have yet to be posted. You're welcome to make any changes you wish and I'll consider them all. Please sign up for a WetPaint account and log in before editing. It's a lot easier to contact you if I know who you are!

You can also download the entire manuscript to date. Here's a version in Word format.

I welcome all comments and suggestions. It was comments from people who read the draft chapters of The New Influencers that convinced me to completely reorganize the front of that book. I'm hoping to tap the wisdom of crowds again.

Daily reading 04/01/2008

2008-04-01T08:30:00.001-05:00

Gmail Custom Time

tags: daily_reading

Have you ever wished you could back-date an e-mail so it looks like you responded to something faster than you really did? Google says now you can - but only 10 times a year. Um, remember what day it is.

SNCR Vocus 2008

tags: daily_reading

The Society for New Communications Research is launching a new research study entitled “Exploring the ROI of Online Press Releases.” It will will explore "how the value of press releases has traditionally been measured, and how that is changing as a result of how press releases are being used by the PR/marketing profession today. It will address the question: What are appropriate measurements of value today? And it will explore the larger question of how the PR profession is evolving."

If you're a PR or marketing professional, please contribute to the research by filling out the survey.

Dr. Pepper's Word-of-Mouth Brainstorm: 300 million free cans

tags: daily_reading

The soft drink company says it'll give every person in the U.S. a free can of soda if Guns N' Roses finishes its next album this year. Fizz blog thinks this is a perfect WOM campaign.

Twitter: Making Sure You Don't Miss the Conversation | Marketing Profs Daily Fix Blog

tags: daily_reading

Feel overwhelmed by Twitter? Marketing Profs' Matt Dickman has tactics and a couple of cool tools for organizing the chaos.

Five steps to managing a blog writer’s workflow

tags: daily_reading

Daniel Pataki has some good advice for using Google Readers and Windows Live Writer to make sense out of a flood of RSS feeds. I'm increasingly addicted to RSS but the sheer volume is overwhelming. Some of these tactics might help.

Daily reading 03/31/2008

2008-03-31T08:30:00.001-05:00

Social Media Case Study: Blatantly Advertising … And Getting Away With It

tags: daily_reading

H&R Block has figured out a way to openly market itself using social media and to make it work. Its strategy combines an absurd but funny pitchman with videos that poke fun at the stress of tax time.

10 Downing Street is Twittering

tags: daily_reading

The Prime Minister of Great Britain is now on Twitter. He could be the first head of state to embrace the service. Or maybe not. We believe that Stuart Bruce first reported this, but it may have been Dave Briggs. Oh, what the hell. Give them both links. Sometimes blogger courtesy gets confusing.

20 Types of Pages that Every Blogger Should Consider

tags: daily_reading

Here are some great ideas for leveraging WordPress's "page" function to create static blog pages that aggregate, promote, redirect and solicit.

Daily reading 03/29/2008

2008-03-29T08:30:00.001-05:00

Ewww…What’s That Smell? It’s MyStarbucksIdea.com

tags: daily_reading

Starbucks is positioning its new MyStarbucksIdea.com site as a social network, but critics say it's nothing more than a fancy online suggestion box. A real community, they argue, would encourage interaction between members. This one simply helps Starbucks to run its business better. That's not bad, but it isn't a community.
- post by pgillin

Just An Online Minute » Blog Archive » Just An Online Minute… Video Action = Candidate Traction?

tags: daily_reading

The political candidates (Hillary Clinton in particular) are discovering that their campaign-trail statements are subject to scrutiny by skeptics and foes who are digging up old TV news clips and using them to counter claims made by the candidates.

Daily reading 03/28/2008

2008-03-28T08:30:00.001-05:00

Got a beef? Your blog can make a company tremble

tags: social_media_useful

The Haimlton Spectator has a nice writeup of my presentation to a group of local businesses earlier this week.

Daily reading 03/26/2008

2008-03-26T08:30:00.001-05:00

How del.icio.us is changing academic research

tags: social_media_useful

A Ph.D. student and political activist talks about how she uses social bookmarking services to easily organize her voluminous clip files and to engage in conversations with other people with similar academic interests.

Sears lets Facebook members share dress designs

tags: social_media_useful

Sears may have hit on a good idea for marketing on Facebook: post popular prom dress designs online so girls can solicit feedback from the friends before making a purchase. What I like about this idea is that it leverages the personal relationships that are so important to social networks, adds value to an important decision that members are about to make and doesn't get the marketer in the middle of a personal conversation.

Reference Pages: How You Can Use Them to Attract Links and Traffic

tags: social_media_useful

DoshDosh has advice on how to reuse content by creating reference pages targeted a specific groups and then promoting those as you would promote new original material. On the Web, remember, publishing is just the beginning. The real fun is mashing up and repackaging what you've published to create opportunities for additional promotion.

The WOMMA Word

tags: social_media_useful

This is the single best resource I've seen on what's going on in the world of social media marketing. I get WOMMA's daily newsletter, and there are always at least two or three items that I want to read in-depth, include the two articles I referenced today. Highly recommended.

Tips on effective blogging

tags: social_media_useful

This New York Times piece addresses some of the most frequently asked questions about blogging, including how to choose a topic, how often to post and how to promote a blog. Concise, sensible advice.

Do-It-Yourself Logos for Proud Scion Owners - New York Times

tags: social_media_useful

Toyota will let owners of its Scion cars choose and design their own window sticker logos, based on a palette created by a graffiti artist. I guess this means graffiti has gone mainstream. It's certainly an innovative use of social networks.

Good quote from the executive creative director of the agency that dreamed up the idea: The 'wrong way' to engage in social marketing is to “create an artificial social network and try to draw people to it. You have to walk into the conversation, and if they’re talking about Britney Spears, you can’t say, ‘By the way, do you want to hear about my new car?’ ”

How StumbleUpon Makes Sharing Easy and Fun

2008-03-26T07:16:00.003-05:00

From my weekly newsletter. Subscribe by filling in the box to the right.

According to my e-mail service provider's reports, a lot of subscribers to my newsletter skip my opening essay each week and going directly to a little item called "Just for Fun" that I include in every newsletter. Just For Fun is a link to a funny, offbeat or just plain bizarre item that I find on the Web.

It may look like I spend hours each week looking for source material, but my real secret is StumbleUpon, which is a popular example of the new breed of social bookmarking sites.
Social bookmarking is one of the hottest group activities on the Internet, and it's capable of driving enormous amounts of traffic if your site is lucky enough to be selected. Over the next couple of issues of my newsletter, I'll look at some of the more popular bookmarking sites and explain how they work. Although I caution against relying on raw traffic stats as an indicator of success, I recommend you make social bookmarking a staple of your promotion efforts.

Bookmarks have been around since the early stays of the Internet, having been included in the earliest browsers. Bookmarks are an easy way to keep track of information you've seen and want to return to, but as a standalone tool, they're not very interesting.

Where they do get interesting is when you share your bookmarks with others. As I pointed out in an earlier newsletter, social bookmarking is kind of a human-powered search engine. As more and more people bookmark and comment upon the same content, a richer description of the content emerges. Also, web pages with a lot of votes can rise up the popularity stack, making them more prominent and more useful to interested people. Social bookmarking sites aren't nearly as exhaustive as search engine indexes, but every single entry has been vetted by a person.

StumbleUpon is one of my favorite examples of this genre. Once you become a member, you can install the StumbleUpon toolbar and immediately begin flagging interesting sites. Your selections and descriptions go into a common area where others can see what you chose and why. As others vote for the same sites, those selections rise in the StumbleUpon hierarchy.As a user, you can subscribe to stumbled sites by category. When you click the "Stumble!" button in the toolbar, you automatically go to a random site that has been selected by other members. Sites that have been favorably reviewed more often are more likely to turn up in your random "stumblings."

It's perfectly OK to stumble upon your own site. This isn't gaming the system, because your selection only becomes important if other people vote for you as well. If nobody else finds your page interesting, nothing much will happen, but if you attract enough interest you can draw an astonishing amount of traffic.

I found this out myself recently when I stumbled upon an entry in a blog I maintain called Newspaper Death Watch. Apparently some other people liked my selection. That blog, which normally gets about 100 visitors a day, received more than 1,200 visitors in one day, nearly all of them from StumbleUpon.

Not surprisingly, most of those visitors came and left in just a few seconds. But a few of them did stick around and the site's average traffic levels increased about 20% after that one incident. This was hardly a make-or-break event, but it's one indication of how social bookmarking can quickly generate a lot of visibility for your website.

Daily reading 03/24/2008

2008-03-24T08:30:00.001-05:00

Dove Onslaught Exposed

tags: social_media_useful

This video, which is cited in John Conroy's iMediaConnection piece, shows the risks of viral video campaign. The producer points out that the same company that brought you the Dove Evolution campaign promoting girls' self-esteem also produces the sexist campaign for Axe deodorant. You just can't get away with being a giant corporate conglomerate these days!

Online social networks | Everywhere and nowhere

tags: social_media_useful

The Economist looks at the user-hostile limitations of today's social networks and concludes that they can't survive in this form. Having to log on to each service separately and being unable to communicate across them is an unnatural act. The article draws a parallel between Facebook/MySpace/Twitter and Compuserve/Prodigy/AOL. Ultimately, the "walled garden" model fails.

Keep viral video from coming back to haunt you

tags: social_media_useful

Viral campaigns can blow up in unexpected ways. In this example-packed opinion piece, John Conroy talks about how easy it is for companies to become vulnerabile to charges of insincerity and hypocrisy if they don't consider all dimensions of their public perception before embarking on a viral campaign.

Daily reading 03/23/2008

2008-03-23T08:30:00.001-05:00

Shot heard 'round the auto world

tags: advertising, social_media_useful

General Motors will shift half its $3 billion annual advertising budget to digital and one-to-one channels during the next three years. That's a huge jump from the $197 million it spent online last year. Other auto makers are likely to follow. Hyundai has said it plans to double its online spending. More ominous for traditional media is that a GM executive recently told Ad Age that told Ad Age that the company will try to persuade its regional dealer ad groups to shift their dollars to digital advertising and away from spot TV.

The Experts vs. the Amateurs: A Tug of War over the Future of Media - Knowledge@Wharton

tags: social_media_useful

What's the difference between user-generated and professional content? It's becoming harder and harder to tell as bloggers become more professional and some professional publishers put out amateurish bloggers. Experts agree that the business models that have long supported traditional media are decaying, but there is no consensus on what will replace them. In the meantimg, the user-generated content phenomenon is booming, putting more pressure than ever on readers to apply their own filters.

Companies Court Convenience-Food Blogs

tags: social_media_useful

Even though food bloggers don't get huge traffic, food makers are discovering that their influence can help make or break a new product. Many are reacing out to bloggers as a standard part of their new product evaluation programs.

The Future Will Be Twittered

2008-03-22T08:36:00.002-05:00

From my weekly newsletter. Subscribe by filling in the box to the right.

The annual South by Southwest (SXSW) Conference in Austin, Texas is a showcase for geeks and their new toys, but the event held earlier this month broke new ground in another way. Anyone who runs corporate events or works in a time-dependent business should be fascinated -- and maybe a little scared -- by what transpired there.

The highlight was the keynote interview with Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg by BusinessWeek's Sarah Lacy. Evidently, a lot of people in the audience didn't much care for Lacy’s rather interruptive questioning style or her cozy familiarity with the subject. They were also put off by her failure to involve the audience more directly in the line of questioning.

So they started Twitteringabout it. And as the interview went on, the comments passed between attendees took on a life of their own. By the 50-minute mark, the emboldened audience was actively heckling the moderator. Lacy was a bit flustered, but she finished the interview. When she walked out of the auditorium a short time later, bloggers armed with a video cameras were there to record her reaction to the audience's behavior. Here’s a video of the entire interview, annotated with audience tweets.

Sarah Lacy is a professional, and she will be just fine. She posted a response on her BusinessWeek blog and noted that the incident was actually good for pre-sales of her forthcoming book. What struck me about this incident is how it portends change in the speed of customer feedback.

The Feedback Conundrum
Veteran conference organizers know that getting audience feedback is like pulling teeth. They're lucky if 20% of the attendees at an event even fill out evaluation forms, and it can take months to tabulate those results. Events are intimidating to audience members; they don't control the microphone and they can't communicate with each other very well. Services like Twitter change that equation.

The reason events at SXSW unfolded as they did is because audience members were able to communicate with each other. That's the scary part. No speaker likes to think of a scenario in which his or her performance is judged in real-time, although I can certainly think of times when I wished I could pull a speaker off the stage.

The potential upside of this trend, however, is enormous. Imagine if you could stage an event -- whether a conference, media campaign, product demo or something else -- and get real-time feedback from the people watching. Or what if you could tie promotions to timely responses: "Text this number now in order to receive a 20% discount." The technology to enable this interaction is here right now. I'm sure I’m only scratching the surface of the possibilities. Twittervision, Tweet Scan to tap into these conversations or to initiate new conversations themselves. All it takes is familiarity and imagination. An excellent list of third-party Twitter applications is available at the Twitter Fan Wiki.

Daily reading 03/20/2008

2008-03-20T08:30:00.001-05:00

Eric Schmidt Thinks Microhoo Could "Break the Internet"

tags: social_media_useful

In this Conde Nast interview, The Google CEO also explains why it's unlikely Google would buy The New York Times, how it manages to hire 100 people a week and why he's concerned about the mobile market.

Online Advertisers To Spend Through Turbulence

tags: social_media_useful

As bad as the dot-com bust was, the industry that emerged from it was a more potent advertising force. The same effect could happen in this recession. EMarketer sees online ad spending continuing to grow as the economy slows, with online video leading the way.

The Social Shopping Craze

tags: social_media_useful, social_shopping

One of the hottest new categories of social media is social shopping, a peer-to-peer experience in which buyers exchange information about their favorite products and brands. This piece looks at why social shopping is so popular and what the big sites are doing to monetize their traffic.

Social Network Users Becoming More Affluent Annotated

tags: social_media_useful

The rate of affluent US Internet user participation in online social networks increased dramatically to 60% in January 2008, from 27% in January 2007, according to The Luxury Institute's latest WealthSurvey "The Wealthy and Web 2.0."

Further Evidence That Crime Really Does Pay

tags: social_media_useful

The owner of Georgi vodka said he is in talks to put the derriere of former New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer's call girl on the backside of every bus in New York.

Draft Chapters of My New Book Now Available

2008-03-19T20:45:00.003-05:00

It wouldn't be fitting to attempt to write a book about social media without seeking feedback from readers, so I've started posting the draft chapters from my forthcoming book, Secrets of Social Media Marketing, online for your review and comment. The introduction and first four chapters are available at www.ssmmbook.com and I would be pleased to have your input! The entire book - consisting of 10 to 11 chapters and about a half-dozen "vignettes," will be posted during the next three weeks.

I posted drafts of my first book as blog entries, but this time I've selected a wiki from Wetpaint.com. With the wiki approach, you can actually edit the text and make changes as you see fit. I'll consider all contributions for inclusion in the final manuscript, which is due to the publisher on May 1. If you care to make significant contributions, you'll be credited with a byline or credit line.

The blog approach worked wonders with New Influencers. While I didn't get a lot of changes, I got plenty of positive feedback that gave me encouragement to forge ahead. Please be brutally honest in your edits. This book will work best if it reflects the wisdom of all of you, which most certainly dwarfs my own.

Daily reading 03/18/2008

2008-03-18T08:30:00.001-05:00

Why direct marketing and social media don't click

tags: social_media_useful

A post on Emerson Direct's blog suggests that direct marketers are too focused on short-term results to realize the true benefits of social media marketing, which are improved customer relationships. The article suggests that direct marketers should be looking to YouTube to accomplish virally what their direct mail campaigns attempt to accomplish. You can get quick response and a multiplier effect as interested people forward links to interesting content to their friends.

Daily reading 03/17/2008

2008-03-17T08:30:00.001-05:00

The Wall Street Journal signs the praises of blogging for small businesses

tags: social_media_useful

There are several very good anecdotes here of small business-owners who have used blogs to gain an international audience and score impressive sales wins.
- post by pgillin

The New Influencers is in The Wall Street Journal - Again!

2008-03-17T07:28:00.000-05:00

Last July, The Wall Street Journal published a positive review of my book, The New Influencers. That was good, but I didn't expect a second mention! Today, the Journal's small business section has an interview with Scott Monty, whose Social Media Marketing Blog is one of the livelier and more readable efforts of its kind. Scott recommends New Influencers in addition to a couple of other books and several excellent blogs.

Daily reading 03/15/2008

2008-03-15T08:30:00.002-05:00

Is MySpace Good for Society?

A New York Times columnist asks six thought leaders a simple question: "Has social networking technology made us better or worse off as a society?" Their consensus: both.

Comparing Six Ways to Identify Top Blogs in Any Niche
ReadWriteWeb has a useful review of free tools that help you search the blogosphere and assess the influence of the bloggers you find.

Elliot Spitzer's call girl has a MySpace page

The Inconvenient Truth About Social Media Marketing
Aaron wall offers a succinct and persuasive argument against link-baiting. We need more of this rational thinking. Link-baiting is a waste of time.

Corporate Blogging - How the Pros Do It
Scott Monty provides thorough coverage of an SXSW panel on corporate blogging. Includes some nice nuggets, such as Dell's customer relations philosophy: "they've empowered every employee to apologize."

Jeff Jarvis tells why you should reach out to the customers who say they hate you

What happens when 207 people freeze simultaneously for five minutes in Grand Central Station? Watch this...

Take this survey to help understand online community value

2008-03-14T07:17:00.003-05:00

The Society for New Communications Research needs help with a survey. The results should be pretty interesting. Go take it, please. Here's the description:

If you're involved in managing online communities for your organization, we invite you to participate in the 2008 Online Community Effectiveness Study, sponsored by Deloitte, the Society for New Communications Research and Beeline Labs. To take the online survey, go to: http://www.communityeffectiveness.com.

The survey takes only about six minutes. The purpose of the study is to assess the effectiveness of online communities and learn how organizations are measuring the success and progress of their online communities.

All participants who complete the survey will receive a copy of the executive summary of the study's findings and a special discount to attend the Society's annual conference, New Communications Forum, where the findings will be shared in a special presentation.

Social Network Wars are Over; Now the Fun Begins

2008-03-13T13:09:00.003-05:00

If you’re sitting on the sidelines waiting for the market to pick winners in the social network race, you can stand up now. Hitwise data for 2007 shows that MySpace and Facebook together accounted for 88% of all visits to social network sites. The next closest competitor, Bebo , got a little more than 1% of the traffic.

There simply is no more competition in the general-purpose social network market. Other social media winners include LinkedIn (which wasn’t included in the Hitwise data), YouTube and Flickr. If you're a big brand pursuing a broad strategy, you can safely place your bets on these services. For the next year or two, the also-rans will be busy finding buyers and merger partners.

Now is when it really gets interesting, because now the action shifts to vertical market sites. For many marketers, this is where the more interesting opportunity lies. For example, in the area of health, there’s CarePages.com, Wellsphere, Patientslikeme, RevolutionHealth.com and iMedix. Seniors can choose from Elder Wisdom Circle, Grandparents.com, Eons, TeeBeeDee and Multiply. Mothers can sign up for Cafemom, MothersGroups.com, MomJunction and MothersClick, among others.

And the action isn’t limited to consumer markets. Sermo is a social network for physicians, which now boasts more than 50,000 members. Doctors exchange information about serious medical issues and review cases in real time. Pairup connects business travelers for peer advice, networking and assistance. There’s a list of more than 350 social networks here.

Don’t let small membership numbers fool you. Many of these sites may be attractive marketing venues. Scan the groups, discussion topics and participants and look for content profiles that match your market. Prices are generally lower than those of the big social networks and the audience is far more targeted.

Marketing to vertical communities is very different from mass marketing, of course. If you're interested in building a campaign on Facebook, have a look at what Southwest Airlines and Victoria’s Secret are doing, or the group started by Starbucks fans that has over 60,000 members. There's nothing particularly high tech about their presence. They mainly provide a place where customers can keep in touch with the brand and have access to special offers and downloads.

When marketing to vertical communities, you need to dig deeply into the expertise in your organization. Members of a health-oriented network, for example, want to speak to people who have lots of expertise in nutrition and treatment. Discounts and promotions won’t work nearly as well in narrow markets as they do in broad ones. If you have articulate, interesting domain experts in your organization, now's the time to pull them out of the shadows and engage them with knowledgeable communities. Live chats, webcasts and Q&A forums are particularly effective.

Much of the media attention in the last year has focused on the battle for social network supremacy. With that competition now over, the market will subdivide itself in interesting ways. This process will continue for years, presenting an ever-shifting landscape of new marketing opportunities.

Bloggers Get Social April 4-6

2008-03-11T19:09:00.003-05:00

Now here's a classic Web 2.0-style event! Come and meet other marketing bloggers in NYC for a weekend of fun and socializing April 4-6. In the organizers' words: "Neither summit nor seminar, Blogger Social is "a first-ever, one-of-a-kind event held by the online marketing community for the marketing community, completely funded and coordinated by community members. Neither summit nor seminar, nowhere near a trade show or conference, the intent is a social event...[It's] founded upon the idea of time together to better get to know one another." And no blogging all weekend, they say. You do enough of that, for goodness sake!

It's co-organized by Christina Kerley, an early social media marketing adopter who gets it as well as any marketer I've met. I have to be on the west coast at that time and can't attend, but for $350 (this is New York City, remember!) it looks well worth the cost.

Don't Let Tools Distract You

2008-03-11T07:56:00.002-05:00

I was presenting a social media seminar to a public-relations agency recently when the talk turned to uses of blogs. The people in the room were excited about blogging's potential and were eager to apply the technology to new tasks.

I cautioned them that they were asking the wrong question. The issue isn’t what tool to use, but what problem to solve. Tool selection is secondary.

There's nothing unusual about their attitude. People often start by choosing tools and work backwards to solve problems. Maybe management has just issued an order to start blogging, or the tool is seen as a tactic to improve search performance or it just seems like the thing to do.

But that’s like starting with a hammer and then figuring out what to build with it. If your objective is to make a house, then you’re off to a pretty good start. But if you want to craft a pearl necklace, you've got the wrong tool for the job.

I recently consulted with a client who wanted to build a social network for a defined customer group. It was an ambitious idea, but as we talked through it, we both realized that the process of getting it through internal and regulatory approvals could take a year or more. We finally settled on a more modest idea: Launch a relevant blog, try to build customer interest quickly and then take the results to management in hopes of getting fast-track approval for the social network.

Choose tools wisely
The building blocks of social media are simply tools and they're not well-suited for every task. For example, if your objective is to alert visitors to a new category of products and provide detailed information on the specifics, a catalog page would be more effective than any interactive tool.

But it’s human nature for people to use the technologies they understand and figure out the application after the fact. Unfortunately, that can waste a lot of time and effort. E-mail is terrible for communicating between groups of more than about five recipients, yet people routinely organize massive projects with dozens of participants by e-mail. Even if the tool is poorly suited for the task, they reason, at least people know how to use it.

A better approach is to define business objectives and then search for tools that support them. For customer feedback, for example, blogs and social networks are a good choice. However, podcasts and video won’t do the trick. So if your objective is to improve customer relations, a podcast may not be a good place to start.

Technology vendors encourage the tool focus. Many of those firms are run by engineers who love to create cool new stuff. They’d much rather talk about features and functions than how to solve business problems. You need to block that tactic. Any vendor that won’t give you references to customers who are solving problems that are similar to yours is blowing smoke.

Social media tools are cool, but they’re always irrelevant if they don’t solve problems. Don’t let technology distract you.

Daily reading 03/09/2008

2008-03-09T08:30:00.001-05:00

Memo to Hillary and Barack: YouTube Is a Two-Headed Beast : StraightUpSearch, March 7, 2008

tags: social_media_useful

OneUpWeb says it's amazing that the political candidates aren't optimizing their Web presences for search. It also includes a link to Hillary's perfectly-timed answer to Jon Stewart's opening question in her March 3 Daily Show appearance.
- post by pgillin

Daily reading 03/08/2008

2008-03-08T08:30:00.001-05:00

Lip Dub - Flagpole Sitta by Harvey Danger on Vimeo

tags: social_media_useful

Here's a great viral video that has the dual effect of promoting both the service that hosts it and the ad agency that created it. The lip-synch involves dozens of agency employees, some of whom are clearly drinking beer, and shows the agency to be a fun a free-wheeling place to work. It's scored almost 1.5 million views since launching last April.

'Infuencer Marketing' challenges assumptions

2008-03-06T19:45:00.003-05:00

When my copy of Duncan Brown's and Nick Hayes’ Influencer Marketing arrived in the mail, I looked at it a little bit like a trip to the dentist. I knew it was going to be good for me, but I didn't expect to enjoy it.

What a pleasure, then, to find that this engaging and provocative book not only challenged many of my assumptions about markets and influence, but did so in a readable and persuasive manner.

The authors are co-managers of Influencer50, a consulting firm that specializes in helping companies identify the key influencers in their markets. Like many authors of their kind, they think a lot of marketing today is badly broken. Unlike many authors, though, they have concrete advice on how to fix it.

The central premise of this book is that the people who influence markets are largely unknown to most marketers. In fact, the authors’ firm offer clients a 50% discount if they can name even 20 of the top 50 influencers in their sphere. They've never had to pay up. Most marketers, they assert, consider influencers to be mainly press and analysts. In fact, they suggest that the list is far larger and more diverse than that, encompassing more than 20 categories ranging from channel players to venture capitalist to government agencies and systems integrators. They argue that many of these influencers are far more important than the media because they speak directly to a company's customers. They pay particular attention, for example to second-tier consultancies, systems integrators and buyers groups. These people are whispering in the year of customers every day, yet most marketers aren't even aware that they're talking, the authors assert.

This book defends its case pretty well, using logic and ample case studies. It's also written in a disarmingly down-to-earth and at times tongue-in-cheek style. Hayes and Brown aren’t stingy with their opinions. Bloggers, for example, get far more attention than they deserve, they suggest, and many bloggers are simply people who are awkward in social situations. Referencing Twitter, they say simply, “How anyone can maintain a proper job and use Twitter is beyond us." You may not agree with their opinions, but you have to respect them for the directness with which they are stated.

They hate awards programs, believing them to be valuable only to the organizations bestowing the awards. Partnerships are meaningless in most cases because companies have far too many partners to manage effectively. They believe that brand equity is overstated and that celebrity endorsers play mostly to the egos of the marketers who recruit them. That's just a sampling of the often counterintuitive assertions in his book.

I did have some nits to pick with Influencer Marketing. The case studies lack much in the way of hard ROI and are limited mostly to Influencer50 clients. I thought the rather critical chapter on bloggers underestimated the influence that those influencers have on mainstream media. The authors are also big fans of using consultants to identify influencers, a position that obviously favors their company.

Nevertheless, if the greatest value of a business book is to challenge assumptions, as I believe it is, then Influencer Marketing succeeds admirably. It's one of the best marketing books I've read in a long time. For a commitment of five or six hours, it is well worth the time spent reading it.