A bit late to the party on this (I was flying yesterday)...but welcome to Voce Mr. Haslam.

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It's time for Part Three (see Parts 1 and 2 for reference): Scaling.

Here's the point I raised in Part 1: Building infrastructure to serve a large market is tough, just ask the telcos. The same goes for corporate interactions with customers.

This actually goes both ways. It's tough for social media to scale up or down. One of the core principles of a social media program is listening and responding (or 'conversation' as the kids call it). Conversation takes resources, people and time...and if you're a large brand using one of the monitoring tools it takes money. That's not to say people and time aren't money, they are.

For a corporation it's about scaling up, putting more people on the job. For the small business it's about scaling down, or carving out the time from your already busy day to spend time interacting online.

Let's go big first. It's simple math, the larger the corporation, the more time that needs to be spent if you're moving down that road. Yes, the monitoring tools can do a good job of aggregating and sorting the discussions, but it still takes people to review and respond.

An additional issue with large-scale corporate social media programs is internal comms getting in the way of 'conversation'. This builds upon the internal war problem I talked about before. Traversing internal business unit communications is tough, now try to go across business units.

There is the standard cliche that customers don't care about your internal org chart. Externally they see you has Brand X and they expect you to act like a single entity, but as those involved in large-scale corporate work know that's the furthest thing from the truth. Now some folks will get all preachy and say 'this has got to change' and pound their fists, but this is a reality and it's going to take a while to fix...a long while.

Internal social media leaders continue to work to break down those barriers, rooting out contacts at different divisions to help answer questions, but once again it's just something that will take a while to develop. As social media programs expand internally the external interactions will benefit, but head-count doesn't appear overnight, think more along the lines of fiscal-year.

With all these issues, comms, budget, head-count it's a slow process. What's funny though is that it may take a while to get there, but once it's there, folks seem to forget the past. Getting back to the telco analogy. I remember when Verizon put the first FiOS trunk in our neighborhood. It then seemed to take forever for the build out to complete. But eventually that build out was done and once the service started to flow, I forgot about the wait.

Now let's go small. How do you shoe-horn social media into a small business? In some ways this is tougher, especially if you're in a market that does not have a high adoption of social media/networks among users. Large brands benefit from their existing inertia. Social media can build upon audiences and communication channels already in place.

A local civic organization recently approached me and asked what they should be doing online. I provided some counsel, but considering all the factors involved: budget, market, target audience, etc, I had a tough time really justifying a significant use of social media.

What has worked for them has been offline social media....or in other words actual human interactions via community events like chamber of commerce meetings. I'm hard-pressed to say abandon that and move online.

With small staffs and small budgets, smaller organizations often can't provide the necessary planning and attention to run what could be a successful program.

The other major road block is measurement. They often don't have adequate measurement of their existing marketing and communication efforts. Without benchmarks it's difficult to say what is a better use or resources, attending a local civic function for one hour, or spending that hour interacting online.

Taking that a step further, if they have that one hour, how much of that time goes into measurement, probably not much? Measurement is always the first thing to get cut.

Succes stories with small businesses using social media usually involve an interesting product or novel idea (think Kogi). How do you bring that same excitement to fund-raising for a local medical clinic? It's tough.

Whether you're trying to scale up or down, there is no magic bullet or plan. It's always a unique process that needs to build upon the strengths and weaknesses of the organization (small or large). Having experience always helps. Of course you can't just replicate a plan from one org to another, but you can learn from what has worked and not worked in similar situations.

Next time you hear somebody say, "You should listen to your customers, and have conversations with them." at a conference, remember it's not as easy as it sounds.

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If you've known me for a while you'll have heard me say that 'transparency' is BS, a fallacy. Organizations and individuals will try to be transparent, but only up till a point. If you're all about transparency, come to Florida and work in local government for a year or two.

My feelings are influenced by the open records laws in Florida, aka the Sunshine Law. In basic form (yes I'm oversimplifying quite a bit), communications and meetings between public officials is public record. That's transparency.

Looking for an example of this? Look at today's news about Legoland in Florida. The news breaks because of an e-mail sent to the local county commission....and yep, you guessed it, that's public record. Cat's out of the bag.

You might say, keep it out of e-mail, and you're probably right. However, if you wanted to meet with a few of the commissioners and tell them the news in person, you'd have to file public notice of said meeting....to keep it in the Sunshine :-)

The Sunshine Law has been a long-running issue, especially when corporations are looking to expand to Florida and are interested in tax breaks or other incentives. These discussions need to involve public officials from time to time. The corporation may be 'thinking' of moving, but of course they don't want that news getting out as they explore their options.

Transparency or the 'effort' can cut both ways. Next time you think you're being transparent in your communications efforts, think...how about we release all our e-mails? Didn't think so.

Oh yeah, we're getting a Legoland in our hometwon...like 5 minutes from my house. Woot!

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In the first part of this thread I tried to set the stage and lay out some problems that arise with social media in organizations when it becomes that 'last mile'. Now, let's move on to those problems.

First up is the internal war. This is what I originally said: 1. Jealousy from the existing marketing teams towards the 'new' social media team. This results in internal political battles that cripple both sides.

In his recent WordCamp Atlanta talk, Dave Coustan had a slide that talked about the agency feeding frenzy associated with content-related programs. (It's slide 11 for those scoring at home).

You can take that same slide and replace the outer ring with internal divisions. In fact I just did that :-)

This is something that happens in organizations, the internal battle over who manages social media.

Well-run social media programs with good measurement quickly show their value, and with that value comes increased budget and internal power. It's a good place to be, if you're on the right team.

In most cases one division leads the charge and establishes the high ground (keeping with the 'war' metaphor). Sometimes the other divisions will work in partnership or relinquish control, which makes everything much smoother.

However, sometimes the battle rages on. If a truce is not reached the social media strategy becomes fragmented. Business units create their own plans and associated accounts on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube. Multiply this by a number of divisions and you have a number of things happening:

1. Duplication of Efforts: This is a duplication of budget, staff resources you name it. There is always some in-efficiency within large organizations, but this duplication starts to have a trickle-down effect....which leads to #2.

2. Confusion for the User: With a number of different channels on Twitter/Facebook/etc which one do they ask a question of? Guess what, without a clear definition of what and who the channels are for, they often ask all of them. Now you have three or four different teams interacting with one customer, that's not very efficient.

3. Mapping Back to Core Goals: Do all the different social media efforts map back to the core goals of the corporation? If not, why are you doing it? Yes community can be good, but it has to have a purpose.

4. Screw Ups: Are all the individuals managing these various programs adhering to best practices and ethical conduct? What may be a no-no for PR might be standard practice for the promotions department. As we know, social media communities have their own rules, and screw-ups tend to generate negative publicity (read: You had an intern doing what?). A mistake by one division will cast a shadow over an entire program.

5. Can You Support It?: Social media programs take a significant commitment, can every division do that? Often divisions that want a piece of the social media pie have an 'idea' or 'campaign' in mind. This may last for a few weeks or months, but after that where does it go? Why spend time building a community just to let it go?

6. How Do You Measure it?: With each different division doing different things on social networks is there a consistent measurement methodology in place? Can the measures be easily rolled-up into a overall program reach report? Measurement takes time and this goes back to #1, if you have five groups doing their own thing, then you have five staff members working on measurement in different ways. That's dumb.

All of this points to the need for internal governance and planning. Multiple presences on social networks is not a bad thing if it's planned and coordinated. In fact a distributed program can be very powerful. The ability to tailor content for specific channels while not overlapping is what social media is all about.

The internal battles will rage on, hopefully though the customer will no longer be collateral damage.

Part 3 coming in a bit.

(Cross posted to Voce Nation)

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If you've ever worked in or with the telco field you'll know what the last mile is. It's that final connection to the customer's home. For decades it was the crucial component in the telco business model, and it still is...it's just that there are now more options. You can draw a number of comparisons with social media. For many brands social media is now a 'last mile', that final connection with the customer.

Let's look back first though. Large monopolistic telecom providers built and controlled the last mile. The 'one' phone company and the 'one' cable company. However, these providers spent billions of dollars building out that infrastructure, in fact they had to in order to maintain their franchise rights. Then along come all the new providers, looking to piggy-back or build alternative last mile solutions. Except they don't have to serve everyone and don't have to build out vast/costly infrastructure. They can pass these cost savings along and provide lower costs and often better options to the consumer. No wonder telecoms are always in such a bitter mood :-)

Compare that with the traditional media, specifically print media. They spend decades developing infrastructure, reporting staff, delivery routes all to serve 'everyone' in a market. Now, new channels exist that bypass this and many times work to serve only a portion of the market. They can operate at lower cost and at lightning speed. No wonder newspapers are always in such a bitter mood :-)

Finally, let's look at a corporation. For decades they have built a marketing and sales infrastructure. These infrastructures slowly evolve over time, hopefully learning from their mistakes. Social media is changing that.

For consumer product manufacturers, often the 'last mile' is the retailer. Here you are as a business, building the best products you possibly can, and in the end you need to turn over the final customer interaction to a retailer. (insert joke about pimply 16-year-old salesperson here). Often that leaves the only customer interaction to be customer service. In other words, you'd only talk to the customer when your product wasn't working. That's not a healthy way to start any relationship.

Change has been happening slowly though. Remember the early e-commerce revolts when manufacturers had the gall to sell their products directly online, thus bypassing the retailer? It's a common occurrence now, but a decade ago it was a big deal...and still is as many media companies switch to digital delivery of content. Ah, digital content delivery, that brings us back to the last mile, literally.

The opportunity of social media to provide that 'last mile' connection is also the challenge. It upsets many of the existing infrastructures both internally and externally within a corporation and that has consequences. In the next part of this post I'm going to look at a few things based upon the 'last mile'.

1. Jealousy from the existing marketing teams towards the 'new' social media team. This results in internal political battles that cripple both sides.

2. Building infrastructure to serve a large market is tough, just ask the telcos. The same goes for corporate interactions with customers.

3. It does take integration. Social media is often able to capitalize on the groundwork set out from advertising, PR, etc.

4. ROI calculations get messy. Sure, that final click to buy may have come from a Tweet, but does social media deserve all the credit?

5. Customer service via Twitter is great, but are you providing a better class of service to online users?

6. Social media can't serve your entire customer base, is that a good or bad thing?

(Cross posted to Voce Nation)

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With any client account work there is a daily grind. It doesn't sound sexy, but it's the day-to-day things that need to get done. In addition to the daily tasks there are always new questions, new ideas and new discussions along with the occasional crisis.

The common thread through all of this is availability. You and your team need to be available to the client. Colleagues from different agencies who run programs all know about this. Client demands can come at any time...and often seem to come when you're not available. How many times have you stepped off an airplane and read 'that' e-mail?

I look at the 'social media experts' that seem to go from conference to conference, party to party and I think, "Sorry we work in different industries."

It's extremely difficult to provide a high level of service when you're all over the place. I can speak from experience on this. It's tough.

I used to speak a great deal but I don't that much anymore...why? Client service. With each speaking invitation I need to weigh travel time, how long will I be out? Will I be offline for extended periods of time?

In the end client responsibilities will always win out.

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Beware the social media expert selling a bag full of 'should'.

Everybody can tell you what you 'should' do and you can waste a great deal of time on it. The focus is what you 'can' do. We're moving beyond theory and putting effort behind strategies and tactics that achieve the goals we set.

I'm not saying that forward-thinking is not valuable, it is, as long as it has realistic expectations. Many things that sound good in a speech or on a tweet just don't scale well. You know a broad statement like:

Companies should talk to their customers.

Great, sounds good. But how exactly do you implement that? Which department(s) manages it? How do we measure it? The list of practical questions goes on and on.

Let's talk about scale. If you're a small business how do you scale that down? As in prioritizing online activities over other core business functions? Now let's go the other way, if you're an organization of 100,000+, how do you do it?

Then of course the 'should' factor gets compounded by shiny-new-objetcts. For example, "You should be on X" Where X equals...well, take your pick (Foursquare, Posterous, etc). Really? Beyond the initial statement how does that fit into our broader communications strategy?

I can't tell you how many times a 'social media expert' has said, "You should do this...." and they've only mapped out a strategy or content for a few weeks at most and given little thought to resources

Ok, rant over.

I'll take your bag of 'should' and show you where you 'can' put it. :-)

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I've been working on a revamp in the design and a switch from MT to WordPress.....so things are a bit behind here on 'The Hyku'. Stay tuned.

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Some recent tweets and comments from folks sparked my 'serial complainer' tweet a few weeks ago. You know the folks that are always putting 'fail' on tweets, complaining about how a company just doesn't get it, or they are tired of receiving poor customer service.

I think part of it is a shakedown racket (more on that in a second), but ultimately interactions with a person or a brand are a two way street. Maybe the reason you always receive poor service is because you're a jerk and love to complain first, ask questions later.

Ok, let's get to that shakedown thing. A 'social media expert' posts a tweet or a blog about how a company 'doesn't get it', this of course causes said company to genuflect and 'reach out' to the 'expert'. Low and behold the company becomes a client. Now I'm not saying I've seen it happen...ahem.

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We've all heard about these 'new influencers' you know the social media gurus that have 15,000, 30,000 followers. Or those big-boys with 100,000 followers. They supposedly have 'influence' - forgot old media, these are the new kids on the block.

However it's always good to keep things in perspective, old media still has tons of influence, and when you look at Twitter perhaps a bit more. When a TV personaity like Ellen can go from 0 to 100,000 subscribers in a few days just by talking about Twitter on her program it kinda makes those new media influencers look like the days of UHF.

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No, I'm not referring to an REM song. I'm talking about how for every brand detractor, there is usually an advocate, but the detractor is usually a bit louder.

Last week during his general session at FPRA's Annual Conference, Peter Shankman made a quick comment about his dislike for Delta. You know one of the standard, "I hate" rants. Sitting in the back of the room I yelled, "I love Delta." I don't think he heard me though.

Yep, I love Delta. I've flown them for years and never had a major issue. I always get great service. So remember that next time somebody complains about Delta, or any brand.

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Earlier this week in my post about equivalencies in social media measurement I mentioned some of the core data we collect for basic tactical elements of social media programs. What does that look like? Below is an example of basic data available for the following scenario: A corporate blog post is announcing an event, in the post there are some photos and a video. Once posted, a link is shared via Twitter.

As you can see it's quite a bit of data and it needs to be collected from a number of different services. Then you can compound this with trending, that is collecting the data at different intervals during the day.

Of course, that's just the raw data. As I said previously, the value is in the analysis. More on that in the coming weeks.

Cross posted to VoceNation

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At the recent PRSA T3 conference I sat on a panel discussing social media measurement and ROI with Shonali Burke. I presented some of the core things that Voce does for measurement as well as providing some real-world examples of what some of our clients look for in determining the success of a program.

One of the examples I gave was how we look at engagement with online video and compare that CPI with traditional media. During the Q&A I was asked if using the equivalency model to compare PR to advertising was the right model. Whether you like it or not you need to have some basis of comparison. With social media though, those comparisons are all over the place. You might compare elements of a program to advertising, or traditional PR, or even customer service. Going further down the rabbit hole, you look at things like: client acquisition, customer retention, employee retention, recruiting, to name just a few.

In any of the measures, the big focus is to determine which medium is performing more efficiently. It's also important to remember that all clients have different results that they value. Measurement is not a one-size-fits-all approach. However, the core data that you can track online is always the the same. It's how you analyze and compare that provides that measurement value.

Cross-posted to Voce Nation

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Last week my colleague, Mike Manuel, brought up the subject of On-Domain vs. Off Domain strategies for social media (and really for all online comms). It got me thinking of something Jakob Nielsen said back in 2000 with the release of Designing Web Usability. I'm paraphrasing, but basically the line is:

Web users spend the majority of their time online NOT on your web site.

From a usability standpoint the convention was, don't do anything too 'out' there. If you break too far from the standards that users are familiar with, then you might confuse them. This applied to things like navigation and search-box locations on the page, link highlighting, information design, etc.

Now, let's apply this to social media strategies. With more users turning to each other for information via the multitude of services out there (Facebook, Twitter, etc) then the statement is also true for comms. Web users spend the majority of their time online NOT on your web site.

The graphic above illustrates the various tools available online and how an organization's web presence sits in the middle, disconnected in many ways. Sure, there are ways to integrate the traditional corporate web site with social networks and other platforms, but that's not always easy.

While it's important to reach beyond the traditional web presence, I think it's still important to have that 'home'. There are a number of reasons, but I want to focus on two that are related to relationships.

1. I Need to See Stability: While my impression of a brand may be influenced by how savvy they are with social media, I still want to see that they have a home base. I want to see their web site, is it professional or some fly-by-night operation. Think about this in real-world relationship terms. You meet a great guy/girl and you've been dating for a few weeks. Each time you say, "Let's go to your place" they change the subject. It dawns on you that you've never seen their home....and you don't even know if they have one. That doesn't exactly instill confidence in your relationship.

2. You Need a Home: How would you like to live out of a suitcase for a year, moving from location to location? If your 'home' online consisted of presences only on social networks, you might feel a bit disconnected. There's the term 'spreading yourself too thin'. It's also impossible to be everywhere at once. If you focus all your efforts on Facebook, then you're ignoring the MySpace crowd, or anybody else for that matter. Yes, I know it's hard to believe, but there are people that are not on Facebook.

As Mike argued, it's important to find that balance between communication strategies on your site, as well as off your site. The goal is to integrate the strategies and give folks a reason to come to your site. After all, your 'friends' just might want to come to your house every so often.

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We're announcing some big things over at Voce today. First up is the news that we've hired the team from cnp_studio. Voce has been working with them for a while and they do some kick-ass work, so it's a no-brainer.

Second: The combined service team will be known as Voce Connect. Basically it's a team dedicated to building and running social media programs and web-based development.

Third: Over the past year, our social media team has been rocking. Today we can proudly say that we manage social media programs for clients such as Comcast, Disney, eBay, Fujitsu, Intel, Logitech, NetApp, PlayStation, VeriSign, Yahoo!, and many, many others.

Fourth: We've launched a new Voce Communications web site.

Fifth: Voce officially has a Florida office now! (I had been working out of cnp_studio's offices for the past year)

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As I get older, the more I realize the value of keeping your mouth shut. Yes, sometimes that helps you avoid putting your foot in it, but it also allows you to learn. Over at the Brains on Fire blog, Robbin has a slightly different take on the silence thing. My take is a bit more sinister.

The newbies to the social media world love to talk, even if they have nothing to talk about. They tweet all day, go to tweet-ups and then talk and tweet some more. They love to tell you all about what they're doing, and sometimes all the things they're doing for their clients or at work.

Recently I was at an event and ran into one of these folks. I knew they worked for a competitive interest, they didn't really know who I was, and never bothered to ask, they wanted to do all the talking. I asked, "So what are you working on that's interesting?" This person then spelled out in some detail exactly what they were working on, great intel for me.

Like I said, they really didn't care who I was and never asked who I worked for (or with). They were just happy to be able to talk and show off their 'social media savvy'.

I understand we're all proud about what we do, and sometimes we can't wait to tell the world, but remember folks sharing isn't always the best idea. Especially at events where you don't know the people.

We always talk about the value of listening, but it's just as important to know who is listening to us.

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A few large projects I've been working on recently have involved quite a bit of documentation and what's usually referred to as 'process'. A number of years ago when I was doing solo-consulting work on social media I'd look at process and say, ack....forget process, just do it. However, when working with large brands, process becomes part of the daily routine. I'm still a firm believer in learn-by-doing, but sometime process is necessary, and a good idea.

The documentation and process I'm referring to goes well beyond your standard strategy document. It's the strategy, the playbook, the scenarios and the rules all wrapped into one.

If you're a small company and you control the shots, then sure, go ahead and do what you want, when you want...and perhaps think about measurement later on. In large organizations when a social media program spans business units and countries you need to have process in place. Why? Well here are a few basic reasons:

Internal Education: Yep, it's the standard line of, 'making sure everybody's on the same page'. It seems that weekly a new division within an organization says they want to start up a social aspect to their pr/marketing/customer service, etc. They all want to know the same thing, "How are you currently doing it?" They want documentation, best practices, cheat sheets. By documenting all aspects of the existing programs it allows you to quickly hand that off. Otherwise you'll be on countless calls each week reviewing this information verbally, and losing focus on your current programs.

Management Education: This is related to the first one. Basically, one day management a few rungs above you calls down and says, "Hey, what are you doing?" Being able to quickly send off that detailed documentation lets management know you're on it, and once again allows you to quickly get back to work.

Internal Detractors: In any corporation there are always people that don't think the organization should be involved with social media. Typically they have one or two objections, it might be legal, it might be image, it could be cost. Having documentation on how you specifically plan to address these issues helps to diffuse those discussions.

Consistent Experience: As users visit the various forums and blogs run by your organization are things like the sign-in and account admin process uniform? Do they need a separate login or avatar for each site or can they use a single-sign-on? Are the moderation guidelines consistent? For example is one blog a bit more lax in banning certain language than another? If so, you'll find the trolls gravitating there.

Measurement: This is usually one of the first questions management that is outside your program will ask. Don't stumble on this answer, simply say you've thought that through and provide all the methodology on how you'll measure the program and provide some sample reports. You can also look to established processes for measurement to integrate into your program, or provide a baseline for comparison.

Enforcement: An employee is doing something improper on a social network. What? You name it: Tweeting sensitive information, pretending to be somebody else, etc. They need to be disciplined in some way, but why and how? Does the organization have a social networking policy for employees? Besides the piece of paper, have they been trained on what is right and what is wrong? In the majority of cases I've seen, employees aren't doing things out of malice, they simply didn't know that what they were doing was wrong. In any large organization if you mention discipline or termination to any HR department the first things they'll ask for is the rules or policies that have been broken and then documentation of the offenses. Do you have that?

These are just a few major reasons, but there are others.

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Six years ago, yesterday to be exact, I posted the first item on this blog, May 3, 2003. As I said in 2007, there were some lean times at the beginning (and recently). Mike Manuel and I have a close blog-birthday, his is May 1st. I'll spare any resolutions or promises, but of course I hope to be able to publish here more, work permitting.

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My colleague Mike Manuel is back in the blog posting groove, using something he's calling 'Middle Blogging'. It's longer than Twitter, but shorter than your standard thought-piece. He's got some good stuff.

I'll need to try that format.

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Ah yes, April Fools. The day that everybody tries to do something humorous online. The two key words in that sentence are 'everybody' and 'tries'.

It's gotten to be a bit of an overload though. With everybody doing something how can you stand out? It's like releasing some insignificant tech news during CES...you'll get lost in the shuffle.

Granted, some brands really do some creative things, but it's getting harder and harder to get noticed. Then there is the general burnout and apathy about the entire day. We could get geeky and try to determine the ROI of a good stunt to determine if they're worth it.....nah.

If you really wanted to break the mold, why not do a prank on another day? The Funded tried this and it backfired though. I still think it might be a good strategy, if you weren't a public company and didn't run the risk of having your stock tank from people that didn't realize it was a joke.

Doug Haslam had a good thought. What happens when we stumble upon this 'old news' a few years from now.

For now I'll pass on any April Fools projects, too much time for too little of a return. However this one was fun to do back in 2006.

Of course not all jokes are online, the photo above was my desk this morning....and well that was kinda funny.

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There were a few new comments that came into my post about social media speakers this past weekend. I wondered why...it turns out Spike Jones sent out a tweet. Following-up on that, Mack Collier posted some more thoughts on the 'expert' label. Here's what I posted as a comment:

Gotta disagree with you on some of this. I'll point to client success over personal success any day of the week. Like many folks that are working their ass off for clients, it's tough to maintain personal presence everywhere.

Of course there is a big difference from a list of clients and a list of client work. Many folks that list a bunch of clients are on a bunch of first dates. That is they've met with a client, done a one day boot-camp on social media....and that's about it.

What firms should be looking for is long-term, measurable programs...not one-off strategy sessions or quick flash-in-the-pan projects.

Is there a rift between those who do and those who talk? Yes there is. Here's a bit of a tip. Those of us that work on projects full time look at those that twitter all the time and say, "What do these people do all day? How are they billable?"

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Over on the Voce Nation blog, we've announced that Voce has hired Chris Thilk. As I say over there, we're fired up.

I first met Chris via Tom Biro back when both of them worked at MWW back in the day, as in 2 years ago. There are only a handful of folks that have a combination of (agency + leadership + brands + executing programs + measuring programs). Folks like Tom, Dave, Phil to name a few.

We're glad Chris is on our team, which now features eight amazing folks who all know their social-media-stuff.

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Way back in 2006 I posted about some strange comments I was receiving on a post about Katherine Harris and her Senate campaign. The comments that I received, as well as others who blogged about Katherine, originated in India.

I wondered if this was a new type of outsourcing? There were even some media stories about it. Now a few years later I receive this spam comment:

It's an Indian firm promoting their campaign outsourcing. Interesting.

BTW, I deleted the spam comment but kept a screenshot of the e-mail.

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Forrester is releasing a report today on how marketers plan to budget for social media programs. Looking at the data at first, it's a bit of a confirmation of our work since we've been seeing this trend for a while now at Voce.

Jeremiah Owyang is the lead on the report and states:

The recession has put more pressure on interactive marketers to deliver measurable results. While many marketing budgets are being cinched, more than 50% of interactive marketers say they will increase their spending on social marketing.

The report surveyed 145 companies with more than 250 employees and stated that spending remains relatively small at $100,000 or less on average. While that is small compared to traditional marketing spends, it is a still a good chunk of change for something that's still gaining acceptance in corporations. A few years ago that number was most likely $0.

Another finding of the report stated that social media is not a line item yet among the respondents. This is quite a bit different from the clients that we work with, but that's to be expected. The majority of our clients have dedicated budget and staff that are focused on social media.

The key though is measurable results if those programs are to grow. If you can't prove that you're spending that budget wisely why should you receive any budget?

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For the third year in a row, I'll be heading to Atlanta for SoCon09. This year's theme is "In Search of the Southeast’s Social Media Niche."

I'll be leading a session in the afternoon about measurement and ROI of social media programs. Look for a bit of this, this and this to be discussed :-)

Here are some photos from year's past.

Will you be there?

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Cross-posted on VoceNation.

There has been much discussion lately about the transition from listening to engagement when it comes to social media monitoring. Forrester recently posted a review of vendors (which of course started some discussion) and other firms are talking about their 'solutions'. At Voce we've been pushing this shift for some time now and would like to think we're a bit ahead of the curve.

While we use Radian6 and a number of other tools to 'discover' conversations the real value is what is done with that information. Sure the obvious hits are putting out the small fires, but what are the long term trends? How do those map back to a broader communications strategy?

Within large organizations the challenge is to sort through the thousands of conversations happening daily, distill what is valuable and then work with internal folks to make sure (one or all): A: the issue is acted upon B: the knowledge shared C: the value seen D: outcome measured. Back in August Mike Manuel outlined our social media monitoring and engagement strategy with our clients. Here's a quick chart.

For a broader look at our strategy see the diagram below. Voce works with a number of different tools to sift through the thousands of items in the conversational web. The items that make the cut, are then imported to Bridge, our custom client dashboard. Metaphorically, 'Bridge' is the link between the messy web of conversation and the client. Yes, it's true not every mention of your brand online is worth your time (gasp)!.

Our dashboard is something we've developed in house and is currently used by the majority of our social media clients. Bridge provides a one-stop look for clients to see discussions relevant to their specific needs and an archive of all past conversations. It also serves as a hub for assigning and tracking issues internally.

For example, as illustrated above, a blog post is found that raises a customer service question that needs to be addressed. We can flag that issue, give it a priority and due date, then assign it to an individual within the company. Clients can track all this via the site, RSS or e-mail. Once the assigned task is completed the issue is closed and archived. Our primary client contacts can also reference reporting on open tasks, time-to-close and other metrics.

Remember the post talking about a centralized or de-centralized approach to social media monitoring? This is our solution to that.

We also produce weekly and monthly roll-up reports that summarize key topics and actions taken along with measurements. Long term, tagging and additional data-mining allow us to identify trends and measure the impact of the issues flagged and knowledge gained.

A bit more on this soon....

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Building upon my earlier post about ROI discussions at BlogWell, here's a simple example of some metrics involving Twitter.

Many of the presentations at BlogWell touched on Twitter as a basic tool, but how does one measure? Obviously you need to start with an objective, or a series of objectives. Many of our clients use Twitter for a variety of reasons, but the objectives generally fall into three broad categories.

Audience/Reach
How many people are listening to what you have to say. In simple terms this is the number of Followers. Yes, you can argue that not everybody that follows an account reads each tweet, but it's the only benchmark we have that's consistent across all Twitter accounts. So while we look at it, it's often less important than the next two.

Engagement
How much of the discussion is two-way? The easy way to track this is to look at the number of @replies and DM's on the Twitter account. Also, if you are asking readers to click on a link, what was the click-thru percentage? This can be tracked via a tool like Tweetburner.

Influence
How are the tweets you're posting influencing/starting other discussions? Or how are the readers acting upon the discussions. This can be tracked via ReTweets, inbound links and URL click-thrus via Tweetburner

Also think about what you can track with your competition? For Twitter you can see followers, @replies and with other search tools you can dig up some other stats.

Now that we have those three basic objectives in place and baseline metrics, begin to track on a consistent basis, for example weekly.

What were the (+/-) changes in each of the key metrics from the previous week. Were there any special tweets or other promotions that caused those changes? For example last week, NetApp was named #1 in Fortune's Best Places to Work list. That day they saw a pretty good jump in Twitter followers.

If one of your primary objectives was engagement, how are you trending against that long term? Up or down? If, down, what should you do to course correct?

If you're dealing with a larger organization that has multiple employees Twittering, then look to collect these stats for all of them. Now you can slice and dice across business units or product lines.

Continually tracking and reporting will tell you if your effort is well spent, and when it does come time to report on your 'program' in 30 seconds you can quickly provide stats such as:

- We continue to show growth in our reach: In the past 30 days we've increased our audience by X% while our competition has grown Y%.

- We continue to build engagement with our customers: Over X% of our tweets receive a response from followers, and this continues to grow each week.

- We continue to influence discussions within our industry: X% of our tweets have been linked to or started relevant conversations or coverage.

That's much better than saying, "Yeah, Twitter is really cool, it helps us have conversations with our customers"

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First off, full credit to Dave Coustan for coming up with this concept, but I'll elaborate on it a bit more. In discussions about what direction BlogOrlando *might* take for 2009, we were discussing how some people seem to become serial conference-goers. You know the self-promoters that talk and talk and talk (see this post).

With the reverse honorarium* we would reach out to some of these 'social media leaders' and say:

"Hey, you're an influencer and a prolific writer on the subject of social media. Well, we're having an event, so here's $500 for you to NOT come. We feel that your lack of attendance will actually allow for deeper/richer discussions among the attendees because you won't try to dominate each conversation and make it all about you."

What do you think? Who would be on your list of non-attendees?

*Trademark pending

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Have you heard the page view is dead? In some circles people have moved on and it's very fashionable to make claims as such, but sadly much of the corporate world still sees it as an important number. Why? Benchmarking, specifically against other business units and various web properties within brands.

Don't get me wrong, we work with our clients to educate them that stats such as time on site, # of comments, # of inbound links, external media coverage are all major things to look at. But guess what, many times the sites they are benchmarked against internally don't have some of those metrics, that's where the page view becomes the lowest common denominator.

As measurement continues to evolve, specifically related to social media projects we focus on things like RSS subscribers, % of pass along and engagement to name a few. Another new focus is velocity. That is, how quickly is the information we're discussing being spread. Is it taking minutes, hours or days?

Then of course there are sales. What direct revenue is being generated from the site/blog? For some of our clients that's a key measure and we have to track that.

In the car world it's kind of like horsepower. How much you got? Yeah horsepower is nice, but then you start to think about torque, curb weight and other things that all contribute to the 0-60 time.

But it's always nice to throw out the big numbers, like a 451 horsepower AMG V8, or a corporate blog that's received 33 million page views and 100,000+ comments in the past twelve months.

In the next few weeks I plan to dive a bit deeper into the metrics we track and why.

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Building on the topic I started yesterday about social media monitoring and engagement, let's dig a bit deeper into engagement and response.

Heading into Mplanet 2009, the four major topics are: Brand Building in a digital world, Connecting with empowered consumers, Marketing mix in a fragmented world & Global marketing on a borderless planet.

Engagement at the organizational level bridges two of those topics....let's call it 'Connecting in a Fragmented World.' However, the fragmentation is internal.

It's always fun when a blogger says a company just doesn't get it because they won't respond to an issue or complaint. If they only knew what was going on internally.

Responding online gets really tricky when you deal with large organizations with a number of different business units. I know that customers don't care about internal organization charts, but they're still a reality in corporations.

From yesterday's post, it doesn't matter if there is a Centralized of De-Centralized approach to social media monitoring. An issue is flagged and somebody else has to respond, somebody in another business unit.

First off, there might not be open lines of communication between the units. If there are, it's often at a high level. I can just see one SVP asking another SVP at a direct reports meeting if somebody can respond to a blog post.

The task is now to track down the proper person and reach out to them...and just like you, they're very busy. Not only do you have to convince them to take the time to respond, you often have to counsel them on the why, what and how. That education process is often the major pain point.

Some organizations are taking a proactive approach and attempting to develop internal ambassadors within business units to lead the charge, but once again that take time...not to mention finding the right people for the job. Just because somebody is eager (and has a personal blog) doesn't mean they're the prime candidate.

Another side of this is the agency association factor. What I mean by this is those of us that work on high profile client projects are also associated with the brands.

In two cases last year issues came up online and I had people e-mail me directly, first off asking if we knew anything about the issue, secondly asking if we could help. In both cases, I had to say, that's two or three business units away. We can try to communicate with the right people, but it will be hard. Not really the best answer, but it's a reality you need to deal with.

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The American Marketing Association's Mplanet conference is coming up at the end of this month, January 26-28th, in my backyard (Orlando). I attended the first version in 2006, yes that's right three years ago.

It's actually an interesting concept, the three year gap ensures that the content is fresh and not simply a rehash of last year....after all much can happen in three years :-)

I'm honored once again to be one of the invited bloggers to help cover the event along with Toby Bloomberg and Peter Kim. Over the next few weeks I'll be posting a bit more about some of the trends/issues related to the event here, and on the Mplanet blog.

Will you be attending Mplanet?

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And I'm in the audience, expect the first two questions to be:

1. Do you have any recent examples of how you've executed a program for a client?

2. How are you measuring the output/outcomes of this program?

If you don't have valid answers to those questions, then why are we even listening to you?

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I want to revisit a topic that my colleague Mike Manuel brought up in August of last year: Social Media Monitoring and Engagement Strategy. As Mike pointed out, for many firms the strategy is rather shallow, that is, 'We listen and respond'...but as he asked, how? why? and the ever important question, how are you measuring the effectiveness of that engagement?

As more organizations pay attention to the social web and begin to engage what is the best structure for this?

What is the best model for online engagement? Centralized or De-Centralized?

Right now I see a mix of two models for companies doing a good job of social media monitoring and engagement:

1. De-centralized: A number of folks all have their own feedreaders and custom RSS searches. What they monitor and respond too is limited to what interests them, or the work they do. This may be aligned by business units or product groups. There is little or no oversight, coordination or measurement.

There are pros/cons to this structure. Obviously it's good that those who are passionate are getting engaged, but there are risks with this. Also, without any type of metrics there is no coordinated tracking of issues for trends or determination that the time being spent is justified.

I think this is what is happening in many large organizations. As internal social media teams develop to form strategy and support internal folks this may change.

--

2. Centralized: A person or department such as PR monitors conversations and then responds as needed. In some cases an internal team assists with responding, or best-case scenario the issues are flagged and sent to the appropriate person for response, i.e. customer service, product development, etc.

For large organizations the sheer conversational volume can be overwhelming for one person, or even a department. As we all know, not every conversation is important. How do you determine which issue require responses?

Tools have recently emerged that allow for proper tracking of 'issues' online and can assist with the internal assignment and follow-up. Radian6 has added this functionality, and we've developed our own tool for clients.

A centralized source can look at the whole picture and hopefully see trends and issue emerging, but that still doesn't stop employees or other business units from doing their own thing.

--

That leads to perhaps a third model, which is mixed. Some business units have a centralized approach, but that's only for their fiefdom.

If you work at an organization what is your strategy? Centralized or De-Centralized? Do you see yourself shifting in the future?

I have a few more thoughts on engagement.....more on that tomorrow though.

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One of the big hang-ups with social media implementation in organizations is the attempt to manage interactions between employees and customers via social media channels. What if they say something that is off-message (heh). The quick response to this is, "Those types of interactions are happening everyday in the real world."

Here's a great example. The last week of 08 we were in Atlanta and visited the World of Coke. While waiting in the lobby to enter the theater to see the Happiness Factory intro-film the guide opened up the floor to questions. The first three questions all related to the Coca-Cola/Cocaine connection.

To her credit the guide answered every question in what I would deem an appropriate way. I should have asked her about the New Coke/High Fructose Corn Syrup rumor :-)

The point is employees will be asked questions and most of the time they'll give answers, especially if the questions are being asked by friends. Beefing up internal comms helps keep folks informed about what's going on internally, so when they do talk, they're at least saying the right thing :-)

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New year, and so new resolutions....how cliche...but appropriate. Mike tweeted about this earlier, and it's been on my mind as well. How will I use (or more appropriately, re-use) the social media tools at my disposal.

This blog has been somewhat stale with the last post coming a over two months ago. And up till then, much of the posting had been about photography and travel. Two things that took up much of my time in 2008.

Like many other folks, I found the true dialogue going on over at Twitter.

Moving forward I plan to spend some more time here, mostly to share what I've seen and learned over the past year. Working at Voce, specifically developing and executing social media strategies for some large brands has been an amazing opportunity.

Mostly it's to rise above the chatter, too much of that going on. People talking and talking, but not really doing anything client-wise (and going into a company for a one-day seminar on 'what is social media' doesn't count in my book).

Everybody is a social media consultant these days :-)

Time to take it up a notch folks.

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"Does Design Matter?" That's the question I asked during my presentation with Matt Jones from Dopplr at the Sarasota International Design Summit this past Tuesday.

Before I was crucified by the audience, I quickly said it still does, but perhaps not as much.

Why? I threw out the concept last week, asking, "when so much of a brand's content is consumed via RSS, Facebook, Twitter...does design matter?"

Sure you can design a good looking blog, but if a large percentage of the readers use an RSS reader, does the design matter? Also, what is going to keep you coming back to a corporate blog? It's the content, not the design.

Many organizations are realizing the interactions they have with customers on sites like Twitter and Facebook are very rewarding, however you have very limited design flexibility on those sites. In the case of Twitter you can tweak some of the page settings, but your primary brand-design element is a 48 x 48 pixel avatar.

We recently dealt with a client that had a logo that didn't shrink well, that is when it was 48 x 48 you couldn't really tell what it was. It sounds funny, but things like that are now a design consideration. I remember a while back when a brand was always worried about how a color logo would transition to black & white for print purposes, now it's shrinkage :-)

In a post over on the Mplanet blog I touch on some of these same subjects. However one point I made was that perhaps in this new world of distributed content that small branding you can supply (even if it's 48 x 48) might help you stand out in the crowd. Those that are customers or evangelists can look for that 'official' seal.

As I said at the Design Summit, I don't have the easy answer. But, it's an interesting issue that I think that every organization that engages in social media will have to deal with.

Cross-posted to VoceNation

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The big 'idea' news last week was Oracle's launch of Oracle Listens. A campaign where they solicit ideas from end users. Charlene Li blogged about it and gave Oracle kudos for the effort. My big question is what does legal think of this? Oracle does things a bit differently than the other idea-submission sites like Dell's Ideastorm or My Starbucks Idea. We'll come back to that difference in a second.

Many corporations have a number of legal hang-ups when it comes to social media. Among entertainment and media organizations a special concern is idea submission. For example, I want to sue NBC, because six years ago at a conference reception I told an executive about my idea for a TV show based on regular folks who are superheroes. Just kidding, but you get the gist.

Enter the new concept in social media sites, the ideastorms. I name the genre after Dell's launch of the self-titled Ideastorm last year. Dell asked for your ideas and then allows the community to vote on them. The top vote recipients hopefully get the nod from Dell and enter production. But what about those lawyers and idea submission?

In Dell's case you need to register and agree to their terms of service before submitting an idea. In those terms are language that states you give all rights to the idea to Dell. Here's a snippet:

You grant to Dell and its designees a perpetual, irrevocable, non-exclusive fully-paid up and royalty free license to use any ideas, expression of ideas or other materials you submit (collectively, “Materials”) to IdeaStorm without restrictions of any kind and without any payment or other consideration of any kind, or permission or notification, to you or any third party. The license shall include, without limitation, the irrevocable right to reproduce, prepare derivative works, combine with other works, alter, translate, distribute copies, display, perform, license the Materials, and all rights therein, in the name of Dell, or its designees throughout the universe in perpetuity in any and all media now or hereafter known.

However they do offer $1000 to purchase some ideas or concepts:

Dell shall have the exclusive option to purchase from you and acquire all right, title and interest, including, without limitation, any copyrights and other intellectual property law in and to the Materials you submit, which rights shall include, without limitation, the irrevocable right to reproduce, prepare derivative works, combine with other works, alter, translate, distribute copies, display, perform, license and apply for copyright registration for any or all of the Materials, and all rights therein, in the name of Dell, or its designees throughout the universe in perpetuity in any and all media now or hereafter known. The option shall be exercisable by us from the date you submit the Materials until 1 year from that date. If we exercise the option, you agree to accept payment in the amount of $1000 USD or value in kind at Dell’s discretion, and you agree to execute, acknowledge and deliver such other instruments consistent with an assignment of the intellectual property as may be reasonably necessary to carry out or effectuate the purposes or intent of the assignment of the Materials.

Starbucks has a similar model. You need to create an account and agree to terms before submitting an idea.

A general counsel at one firm we met with recently said those terms would never hold up in court. Of course I will insert the standard IANAL (I Am Not A Lawyer) statement, but it did give me pause.

Ok, back to Oracle. With their implementation you can submit an idea, receive confirmation it's been received without agreeing to any terms. Entering something on the homepage and clicking submit you receive this screenshot which says, "Thank you! We received your feedback." At that point you can create an account and continue on, or just leave. If the legal counsel we talked to didn't like the terms of Dell or Starbuck's concepts, I wonder how they'd feel about Oracle's lack of terms (sorry that's a rhetorical question).

Ok, I do think that it's a bit of overacting. Yes, many of the people submitting ideas are genuinely interested in seeing the companies they support succeed. But what happens if that simple idea you submit does turn into let's say a 1% profit growth for Dell, Starbucks or Oracle. Mention that to any attorney and I think they might be willing to challenge those terms.

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This October I'll be speaking at the Sarasota International Design Summit. The speaker line-up is quite impressive, so I'm honored to be part of the mix. On Day 2 I'll be leading a session briefly titled, "Does Design Matter?" Following me will be Matt Jones from Dopplr, who will answer that question.

The gist is, in a social media world where a large percentage of your customers/fans consume your content via RSS, Twitter, Facebook, or some other third-party location how can you maintain a brand experience, if at all....and does it matter?

One unique thing the conference organizers have done is print Moo cards for the speakers. As you can see the cards promote the event. They also threw in one of the new Moo card holders. Nice touch.

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This week's edition of PRWeek features a story about the Sony PlayStation program that I am proud to be a part of. Mike has posted some thoughts over at VoceNation.

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I promised a bit more on this topic (and Rex asked for it) so here we go....

First off, read Rex Hammock's comment on that last post. Rex was referencing a project his firm did for a client.....a client, not his on firm. Yes there is a great deal of 'learn by doing' going on in agencies everywhere and it's something I've always advocated. Rex's team benefited from their knowledge of not only how to use the tools, but to 'use' them for a client.

That client experience now gives Rex a leg-up on competitors. For the next job that requires those services, Rex can say, "here's what we did for client x". Why is that important? Well first off somebody paid you to do it. Second, as we all know, things can sometimes get sticky in the heat of battle, and that experience always pays off.

Like I said before, referencing your own internal or personal blog is not the standard anymore. Sure it shows you can work with the medium....but can you use the medium to achieve objectives for a client? Can you measure those achievements and then build/evolve the program for the client?

It's a similar adoption/business curve to the early days of the web. At first the teams that could 'do' the work were getting the jobs (remember those awesome web designs from the IT guy). As more firms became savvy with the tools, the work began to go to those that could do the best work.

Got to catch a flight...still a bit more coming....

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At a PR conference a few weeks ago I think I heard the term 'Walking the Walk' a bit too many times. The reference is about PR firms and their social media chops. You know the drill, you have to use the tools yourself to know how to implement them for clients. Tom Foremski recently brought this subject up and there are some good comments on that post.

Let's talk about this a bit more.

Sure it's nice that some agencies and 'consultants' are 'walking the walk' but if your only example of social media experience is your own agency/personal blog, well then...er, sorry.

Let's try running instead of walking, as in what programs have you 'run' for clients?

As Annie pointed out in the comments of Tom's post, most smart folks I know have cut back on blogging, or talk more about personal interests. Longtime colleagues like Phil Gomes, Constantin Basturea and Tom Biro to name a few. My colleague Mike Manuel made a similar observation a few weeks ago. Hell, look at this blog...it's mostly pictures :-)

People can talk all they want at conferences and theorize and strategize, it's the real work that I'm looking for.

An old local friend that's a pretty well-known architect always laments about architecture professors, he says, 'They can talk all they want about theory and design, but most of them have never built anything in their lives....so I just can't trust what they're saying.'

More on this in a bit.

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Over at VoceNation I talk briefly about measurement. Like I said there, when an organization asks 'How will you measure?' I always ask right back 'How do you measure?'

What's amazing is the number of times a company doesn't have a perfect answer for how they measure things.....so why is a social media project being held to a higher standard?

A few friends in the newspaper industry have always said that the birth/death of online media was the page view. The page view (and related stats) allows online media to sell/display targeting advertising, i.e. monetize their product. The page view also shows them how little interest their is in some of their product.

The same goes for social media measurement, stats will quickly show you if you're doing a good job, or a very bad job.

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Mike's supposed to be on vacation, but I think he's doing one of those Bill Gate's-type retreats, i.e. spending some time away to get smarter :-)

During his vacation he posted this entry with two tips about 'corporate engagement' online. It's about finding purpose and relevance in what you do online.

As Mike points out, not every conversation is relevant. Think of the retail world, do you need to have your product in every single store? After all, there are probably plenty of places where your product is not a good fit.

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With the launch of the eBay Ink blog we (meaning Voce and cnp_studio) had a nice hat trick on the WordPress.org site. The screenshot below shows the 'Powered by WP' in the lower right. I'm proud to say that they're all ours :-)

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Jackie Huba finally wrote about something that's been bothering me for the past few weeks. Somehow, my name/e-mail ended up on a list at Vocus, so now 90% of all the unsolicited e-mail pitches I get are from Vocus clients. How do I know this? Well at the bottom of these e-mails is the standard 'unsubscribe' link. That link takes me back to a site run by Vocus.

Jakie took the time to contact Vocus and asked them some questions when they never responded via e-mail.

Four times in four months I used the contact info on the Vocus website (info@vocus.com) to ask for full removal. No reply to any email. Finally, I called Vocus' main number and asked to speak with someone. Julie returned my call 30 minutes later and promised to remove my name from their system. It seemed like a good time to ask Julie about Vocus' practices:

How do bloggers get added to the database? Vocus monitors top blogs in certain categories then adds their contact information to the database. Without permission, I asked? Yes, she said. Most bloggers are OK with that, she said. How does she know if they don't ask first?

Why couldn't I opt out entirely? We're working on that, she said, and promised to investigate why no one responded to my four emails.
Julie also said a client could have copied my email address from the system and might continue to send me emails. Lovely.

What's sad is that Vocus is a sponsor of NewComm Forum. Hopefully a number of attendees will stop by their booth and ask them to stop this practice. While you're at it, Vocus, please remove me from your list :-)

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One of the questions I am now often asked is, "So how are you liking agency life?" So far, I love it. Sure, I enjoyed the freedom and flexibility of being on my own, but there was one big drawback, I can't scale. Or perhaps to use the trendy term, limited personal bandwidth. You have to make a decision, do I want to continue working on small-to-medium sized projects, or go bigger?

I'm fortunate that at Voce I get to work with companies like Sony, Yahoo, eBay and another big name soon to be announced. The simple fact of the matter is a single, sole-practioner can't help a major organization run a large social media program on a day-to-day basis, we're talking 20-30 hours a week minumum. I guess you could, but it would be your only client, or would limit what else you can do on your own.

You need to have a team. We're fortunate to have a number of smart people on staff that can all work together.

A colleague that operates on their own recently asked me about a growth plan for their services. One of their goals was to work with enterprise firms on internal collaboration. I said I hated to be the bearer of bad news, but I just didn't see a firm with 10,000+ employees turning to a 1-person shop for a project of that nature.

There is plenty of room/business for internal education though. I spent plenty of time under the 'Hyku' banner conducting workshops for firms, but those engagements are often limited in time/scope.

I wanted more.

Yes it was a tough decision, but I'm glad I made it.

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In my screencasts for Radian6 the example I used was the current Presidential election. I created a basic topic profile to monitor all 'conversation' involving the four major candidates at that time, McCain, Romney, Clinton and Obama.

It's been interesting to watch the level of conversation related to select topics within the profile. Here are two trend graphs looking at the past 30 days. Looking at the first, guess when Romney dropped out :-)

Looking at the second, it's interesting to see how conversation involving states with primaries rises and falls in somewhat perfect time. At the far left, we were just coming off of the South Carolina and then Florida primaries. It's interesting to see the dip for Texas and Ohio come before the primary next week. Perhaps people are tired of talking about it :-)

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Over at work we've been using Radian6 for quite a while for a variety of clients. Yesterday we sent out one of those 'announcement' releases, but more importantly we put up some information on our approach to social media monitoring and measurement.

As part of the monitoring/Radian6 content, I created a series of screencasts on Radian6. You can check them all out here. The first one is shown below:

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Cross posted from Media Bullseye:

A number of social media/pr bloggers are slowly becoming avid photographers...toting their Nikon or Canon DSLRs around wherever they go. They're always snapping photos at events, at home, just about anywhere. However, there is a method to their madness though (I think).

We're all familiar with the phrase, 'A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words'. A picture is an easy way to tell a story, to set a scene. Sure you can do it with words, but as we all know, sometimes words can't quite capture the moment like a picture can. If a picture is worth a thousand words, is it also a substitute for a blog post or a good addition to one? Of course!

A photo can be a great compliment to a blog post, but it can also be a blog post...just a simple photo, with a sentence or two. In that way it's a very efficient way of blogging that involves less writing. The right picture can also be a great inspiration for a post. Many times when I'm stuck in a blog-rut, just looking at photos can inspire a number of different ideas. The downside is that I find myself writing less and posting more photos.

Ask any friend that is a photography buff, "Would you rather spend an hour writing a blog article, or taking photos outside?" I think you already know the answer.

Like many of my blogging friends I was recently bitten by the photography bug. My interest came from the conference circuit. I was attending a number of events in 2006 (NewComm Forum, BlogHer, Gnomedex) doing the live-blogging thing at most of them. At each event I was always impressed with the photos that people like Scott Beale and Kris Krug were taking and posting. I wanted to do the same. Great photos could enhance the blogging I was already doing.

My gateway drug was the tiny Nikon Coolpix I carried around. Sure it served its purpose, but I needed to upgrade. In September of 2006 I purchased a Nikon D80 and haven't looked back.

But let's be honest, many of us are gadget geeks, and nice cameras are a big gadget. It's also easier to 'sell' the purchase of a nice camera to the loved ones, "Honey, think of the great pictures I can take of the kids!"

I think for many of us photography is an evolution of the social media work we do in our everyday lives. Pictures allow us to communicate and convey messages in a different way. As I said earlier, photos can replace the written word, or enhance it.

It's another tool at our disposal, but it's also a gadget! (It's a floor wax and a dessert topping!)

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In preparing to write this article I began to think about the friends/colleagues that now carry around DSLR cameras. The list is long, and got longer after the holiday season...many friends found DSLRs under the tree :-)

Of course there is the eternal Nikon/Canon debate, but among my friends Nikon is the clear winner. In the Nikon camp there are: David Parmet (D80), Brian Oberkirch (D70s), Jake McKee (D50), Dave Coustan (D80), David Alston (D80), Tris Hussey (D80), Jeremy Pepper (D80), Chris Scott (D40), Judson Collier (D40), Chris Gent (D50), Erik Hersman (D40), Tom Biro (D80), Paul Stamatiou (D80), Mike Manuel (D80), Stephanie Roberts (D80) and Mario Sundar (D80).

In the Canon camp there are: Chris Heuer (XTI), Brian Solis (XTI), Chip Griffin (30D), Howard Greenstein (XTI) and Alex de Carvalho (XTI).

With all these friends, photography is another touchpoint. It's a frequent topic of conversation at dinners and conference meet-ups.

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People are always trying to create the next X, where X could be MySpace, Facebook, etc. When building a product you always look to improve on what somebody else is doing. But what about the worst traits of products? Is there a double-negative cancellation thing?

With that, I'm looking to build something that has:

- The teen-appeal of LinkedIn
- The reliability of Twitter
- The design quality of MySpace

All kidding aside, well not really....what's the worst mash-up you can think of with current products?

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The full title should probably be, "In our own minds, we all think what we blog is relevant to other people." That's one of the major appeals of blogging, it's self publishing. We get to say what we want and then other people read and respond (hopefully). There is a scary truth though and that is the 'importance' of what we say may not be that important.

As an experiment, a few months ago I unsubscribed from a number of 'influential' blogs....some might call them the dreaded A-list term, or in today's political climate 'agents of change'. Would I miss their commentary, would I miss out on the latest trends or topics?

Well a funny thing happened. Many of the folks I unsubscribed from were not missed at all. In fact I also never heard their names mentioned on other related blogs, or were directed there via links. Maybe this is a function of the blogging they're doing, less conversation, more talking at. Perhaps the real conversation has moved to Twitter?

The people I did miss though were what I would call friends or colleagues. I found myself missing their blogs not because of what they wrote about, I just missed them.

I'm still chewing through what this means in the evolution of social interactions online, but it does point back to the relationship aspect of things.

How many of the blogs you follow religiously are from 'industry leaders' and how many are from friends? In my experience my top folder in NetNewsWire is my friends folder.

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Jake has some good points and there of course is interesting discussion going on in the commentary in his post about 'expertise'. There are those that talk and those that do.

I think some of it has to do with the work/blogging balance that many professionals have to face. When you're not busy with 'work' you have plenty of time to blog and participate in conversations. When work gets busy, the extra stuff tends to drop off. But then again that's not following our own advice, we always tell clients to make time for blogging, so we should as well :-)

I think it was last year that Tom Biro said something to like, "the reason I'm not blogging is because I"m busy doing actual client work." I chuckled at that statement and now with the full-time gig I understand what he means.

Should people follow the example one leads on a blog, or the example they provide via the work they do with their clients?

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There has been quite a bit of discussion about the Blog Council, some positive, some moderate. David's initial thoughts were that it might not be a good idea and Geoff took issue with the 'closed door' approach. Here are some follow-up thoughts:

1. Like I said in the previous post, some groups like to meet among their peers and talk shop without outside influence/distractions. That can sometimes be good, or perhaps bad. One similar organization I have worked with is the Insurers Public Relations Council. It's a gathering of the top PR pros at the top insurance firms in the US. The meetings they have are part business, part fun. But ultimately they can get down to business fast since they all work in the same industry, all face the same issues, and all speak the same language. They still seek outside council though....but they're very clear, if you're speaking you're there to educate, not pitch.

2. Following-up on that last thought.....if you remember my rant from a few weeks ago about the standard presentation-as-pitch issue. If I could join a comms/professional group that promised to deliver good quality content that was pitch-free...sign me up.

3. Give them time. Hell the group was just announced. Ultimately the members will be able to see if there is any value in the organization. If it's good it will survive, it not it will die a slow death :-)

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What is ANTB? That stands for Andy's Next Big Thing. Who is Andy? Andy Sernovitz, he used to run the Word of Mouth Marketing Association and now he's launched the Blog Council.

Back in early October, Andy shared his plans for me, and it's great to see this finally launch (and stay true to the original vision he set out):

The Blog Council exists as a forum for executives to meet one another in a private, vendor-free environment and share tactics, offer advice based on past experience, and develop standards-based best practices as a model for other corporate blogs.

Representing thought leaders from corporate departments as diverse as corporate communications, global communities, marketing and customer service, the Blog Council's advocacy role functions as a collective voice in support of responsible, ethics-based corporate blogs. Other issues the Council will address include:

- How do global brands manage blogs in more than one language?
- What do you do when 2000 employees have personal blogs?
- What is the role of the corporate brand in a media landscape increasingly geared toward consumer-generated media?
- What is the correct way to engage and respond to bloggers who write about your company?

It's true that major brands have issues unique to them. They also like to interact/share with their peers, in confidence.

I was fortunate enough to present to the group earlier this week along with John Bell on the topic of blogger relations.

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Some companies are loved, others are hated. That general perception carries over to media coverage and public discussions of their mistakes. At the recent PRSA International Conference panel on ethics in Philly my colleague Rick Murray pointed out this double-standard when it comes to Wal-Mart and Target. People generally hate Wal-Mart and love Target.

Granted, Wal-Mart has made a few social media mistakes and has been raked over the coals for it, but how about Target?

Recently Kaye Sweetser posted about a situation with Target's Rounders program and one of her students. You can read the entire post to get all the details.

In short, Target instructed their Rounders to keep their relationship with Target a secret. When one of her students questioned this on Target's Facebook wall the thread was removed.

Was there a mass outcry over this? Not really. A front page article on the New York Times? Nope. Why? A double standard? What do you think?

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This post has been simmering for a while, but I just can't take it anymore. I was driven over the edge by a few things:

1. Todd's post of the state of 'practices' by some firms.
2. David's follow-up to that
3. Recent conference statements/events

Rant start//

Many times recently I've been sitting in conferences listening to 'experts' talk about various subjects. I've always said my definition of expert, especially when it comes to social media, is loosely defined as 'a few years ahead of you on the learning curve'. It's funny though that these experts were asking 'what is social media?' just a short time ago.

I sit in these conference session and I try not to be a Dave Winer and call out all the bullshit and look like an ass, but it has to stop. Some of us have been using Twitter to make our snarky comments, but the rest of the audience just sits and soaks up this knowledge. They don't know any better.

The other day at Executing Social Media conference in Atlanta, Paull Young reports that a speaker advocated that corporations edit their Wikipedia entries and insert links. Nice.

At the same conference a speaker used most of their time to pitch their product and subscriptions to their newsletter. Classy.

I've joked about making up simple little 'Bullshit' signs that we can hold up as a silent protest. Perhaps the speakers would see these and change course.

What to do? Ask your next social media 'expert' for some recent client projects they've developed. They don't have any? They've just been 'consulting' Nice.

Yes, you can still provide clients with a baseline of education without having much of a project base to draw from, but until you've actually run a social media campaign/project you just don't know it all. I'm not saying I know it all, it's a relative scale. If I say something you think is BS in a speech, call me on it, question it. Let's talk about it.

In the end the level of 'expert' and 'conference speaker/keynote' needs to be examined.

Rant over//

So what do we do? Start to publicly name the folks spewing BS and blatantly pitching audiences under the veil of an 'expert speaking'?

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(Cross posted from the VoceNation)

Social media strategy doesn't always involve blogging or launching a social network. I always say, why start your own, when you can join an existing one? Social media/commuity initiatives can start out small and focussed....and use existing networks. A great example is the recent Flickr photogroup created by the Georgia Aquarium.

The Georgia Aquarium is fortunate that their location is often photographed, and the results are usually quite stunning. A number of amateur photographers and just regular users upload their aquarium photos to Flickr....why not join the party? Or at least help cultivate the interest? That's what the Georgia Aquarium has done.

Back in October I received the following e-mail invite via Flickr. Of course I joined the group, and as of today there are 89 members with close to 400 photos. Why only 400? The aquarium has asked members to submit their best five photos. I don' agree with that entirely, but I can see their point.

The photo collection was part of their web site relaunch slated for November (which is now up). The plan is to feature the photography and stories of visitors from around the globe. Not a unique idea, but it still works well with destinations. Below is a screenshot of the new site featuring one of my photos.

The 'how-to' section instructs users to join Flickr, then join the Georgia Aquarium group...then upload their photos into the group. The description on the photo will be used as the 'story'. This use of Flickr is similar to what the University of Florida did with GoGatorNation.com. Rather than creating some proprietary and hard-to-use photo-upload system, why not just use something that everybody is using already? Smart.

Let's recap. Finding the photos is simple, just do a Flickr photo search for 'Georgia Aquarium'. As of this post there are 43,574 photos, not bad, but it pales to the 883,000+ you'll find for Disney. Once you've found the photos, create a group and begin to invite the users to the group. Of course you need a purpose or strategy for the group. In the aquarium's case it was to build out a sharing/story function on their web site.

What's next? You have a community, but you need to provide something of value to the community. I'm not sure what their plans are, but here are some ideas:

1. Host a private function at the Aquarium for the photogroup members and invite in a professional aquatic photographer to host an instructional seminar. Then give the photogroup access to the aquarium for a few hours all to themselves (before of after normal hours). I can't speak for everybody, but if they offered that, I'd fly to Atlanta on my own to take part

2. Provide photogroup members access to behind-the-scenes area for pictures.

3. Feature select photos on the primary home page of the Georgia Aquarium Site.

4. Take the best 12 shots (determined by a user vote) and produce a calendar.

What other innovative campaigns have you seen built upon user photos? For me the Nikon campaigns come to mind..how about you?

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During a recent presentation a few weeks ago I noticed a pretty big drop in the number of results Technorati was returning. A search that normally returned 15,000+ results, now only showed less than 2,000. The irony of course is that conducting a search right now, shows 0 results, a common occurrence on Technorati.

Heading over to Google Blog search, the same query returns almost 15,000 results. I talked about these anomalies with Peter Himler at PRSA and he blogged about it. Technorati soon responded, and now TechCrunch has posted a similar thread. The official Technorati response, one to Peter:

Hit counts are often dubious metrics. Index rebuilds, spam purges and other search engine management functions will always cause fluctuations. As part of Technorati's cost and performance management efforts, we've been running the service with the data sets of historic data scaled back. We may bring that data back online in the future but the days of monotonically ascending hit counts are currently suspended.

and a similar comment on TechCrunch:

We’re in the midst of some economization, performance fixes and retooling that have required taking some data offline. The data is not lost but our priorities are to prefer keeping recent data online. Most people don’t notice We’ll probably be bringing that data back online but I don’t have an ETA yet.

On TC, some of the comments have said, 'who looks beyond 36 hours,' or why do we even need the old data?

Here's the issue, the client. When you're dealing with a newbie client that is just learning the world of social media and you show them the search services and one shows a few thousand results and the other ten thousand or more the question will always come up, "Why is Google finding more?" or something similar. Now we can talk till we're blue in the face about relevance and community context, etc, but so many times it's just about raw numbers to a client.

With that, they prefer to use Google and Technorati moves even closer to.....(insert witty comment here).

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This will sound ironic from somebody that just took a job with a Silicon Valley PR firm, but there is life beyond the valley. That comment was inspired by a post from Dave Coustan analyzing Scoble's blogging is over meme. Here, here Dave. Good stuff.

When you get ingrained in a culture you do lose some relativity, especially the ability to see the world around you. At the recent PRSA International Conference, there are hundreds (and thousands) of folks that are just learning about blogging. It's all new to them. The excitement and discovery is there.

Robert's comment about TechMeme is also somewhat narrow, "We’ve gotten too caught up in the TechMeme games." What's funny is that I speak with PR groups all the time about blogging/social media....and I never mention TechMeme because it doesn't really matter to a large percentage of people/clients. As Jeremy might say, it's not sexy either :-)

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If you are my age, then you know where the last part of that title comes from (inconceivable!). If not, ask around :-)

What does the word conversation mean to you and to your company?

We say the word conversation quite a bit in the social media world. But like some words, when you say it over and over, it sometimes loses all meaning.....sort of like social media. When I started my breakout session at the PRSA International Conference last week I joked with the audience was probably sick and tired of the term 'social media'. They had to be, they had been in sessions for three days hearing it over and over again.

Back to the word conversation though. I think when I say it and hopefully when some of the organizations I work with say it, they mean they want a two way dialogue. Both sides learn something from each other. There is a give and take.

Unfortunately conversation is also becoming a strategy, a marketing plan.

Politicians also use the word conversation. They say, "We need to sit down and have a conversation about that issue." I don't know about you, but when I hear that from a politician I usually think, "I am going to speak with you to give you the appearance that I actually care what you have to say, but in reality I am just going to use this opportunity to force my ideas upon you." Not my idea of conversation.

Are politicians and corporations giving conversation a bad name?

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You remember the Spirit Airlines story I blogged about a few weeks ago. Well it just keeps getting better. Yet another paper has mentioned it, this time the Chicago Tribune. What is Spirit's response? I'll let them speak for themselves:

"We wouldn't respond to a blog post," said spokeswoman Alison Russell, who noted that their original tickets cost a little more than $35 each and they turned down the offer of $100 in travel vouchers. "This goes back to the larger question of the veracity of everything you read on Internet blogs. Our customer service is great."

Nice. Spirit says their customer service is great. Well Alex has about 400+ people who have commented that don't agree.

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Some friends have noticed some hints in my blog posts recently, something about a change. Well a change has been made. On October 1st I joined Voce Communications as a New Media Strategist. I'm really stoked to be joining a great group of friends, specifically the social media team of Mike Manuel, Andrea Weckerle and Scott Sigler. As part of this Voce expansion we're also launching the Voce Nation blog. The Voce Nation will be the collecting point for all the shared knowledge of the team.

This move has been in the works for some time, officially and un-officially. Officially in the sense that Mike Manuel and I really started talking about it in July of this year. Un-officially in the sense that I've been working with Voce for almost two years on projects.

What happens to Hyku? Well two things, first off Hyku has become my personal brand and will remain as such, but the focus will change. You may notice a slight design update to this blog, well that's part of the change. I'll still continue to post here on all types of subjects (plus photography), but I'll reserve much of my serious social media posts to Voce Nation.

Second, as a company Hyku will not being going away (just yet). I still have a number of clients that I will continue to serve. I will also continue many of my speaking engagements, I'll just be wearing a Voce hat during most of them.

Are you moving? Nope, I'm staying in Florida. What's been great about working with Voce over the past two years is that much of what I do can be done remotely. I will be taking more trips to San Francisco and Palo Alto though.

I'm excited that I'll be working more with great clients like Sony and Yahoo to name a few.

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In my previous post I put forth an analogy to illustrate a point. I do that quite a bit in training sessions. I'm constantly comparing online/social media situations to things we see in everyday life. Analogies help those just learning about social media find a relationship to what they're used to. (Big Social Media Consultant Secret: Many of rules you use in personal interaction offline, apply online :-) pass that along.)

Conversational monitoring, blog monitoring, persistent keyword searches...whatever you call them are a standard item in any social media toolkit, but what do you do with the results? As in what is actionable? What is important and needs immediate response, and what can wait? None of the paid services offer this function (that I've seen). You need to be involved with the community to know the impact.

Here's another analogy:

Imagine you're at a coffee shop and you overhear somebody talking about a subject/client in a positive/negative way. What are your options?

A. If it's your local coffee shop and you've lived in that community for a number of years chances are you might know the person or the subject very well. You would know that person's standing in the community. Are they like E.F. Hutton? When they talk do others listen? Or are they the village idiot? In this case you could start up a conversation in a natural manner, or introduce yourself. Chances are the other person knows you, or at least has 'seen you around'.

Once you start that conversation the discussion is wide open. Maybe you state your case, perhaps you change their mind, or at least get them to see your side of the issue. The point is you know all the social intricacies of the situation. You know that talking to one person will take care of the issue, and that person will talk to you.

or...

B. You're on a trip far from home and the 'local' coffee shop is somewhere you've never been before. You're the 'stranger' sitting by themselves in the corner, the locals are asking, "Who's that?" How did you get here? Some search dropped you here.

When that person across the room talks, you have no idea who they are and what their standing in the community is. You have no idea what the impact of their statements are. How do you approach them and introduce yourself? We've been in situations like this before. Introductions like that can be awkward to say the least.

Talking to that person might actually make the situation worse. You just don't know.

Spend a week in the coffee shop though, and your situation changes.

If you've been doing your homework and have built a presence in a particular community, we can add an Option C:

C. It's your local coffee shop and you've lived in that community for a number of years. Somebody has a problem/comment. Rather than saying something to a group of folks, they come directly to you first. Perhaps it's a genuine issue, or it's a simple misperception. However, a few quick, private words between friends takes care of everything.

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This post wraps-up to my series on the individuals involved with corporate social media programs. In the first part I looked at the downsides of an organization becoming too reliant upon an individual with a social media/community initiatives. The second post looked at the same issue from the standpoint of the individual who may become overshadowed by the brand they serve. I wish this third post could come under better circumstances, but in business things don't always turn out the way you want them to. What happens when you layoff the staff that runs your corporate blog?

Earthlink corporation has been undergoing some tough times recently that culminated with a number of staff being laid off last month. One of those was their official corporate blogger, Dave Coustan. Dave was hired in 2005, to be the first 'blogmaster' for Earthlink. Longtime readers of this blog may remember that Toby Bloomberg first spotted Earthlnk's ad for this position back in 2005.

If you have a corporate blog and you take away the blogger, well you guessed it, the blog probably goes away too. Dave talked recently about the changes going on at Earthlink and what it will mean for Earthling, the corporate blog.

While many corporate blogs are indeed that, a 'corporate' blog, the people reading them often follow the personalities that write them. This is very similar to how people follow columnists in the print media. While I read SI.com, I usually seek out the work of Peter King. If Peter ever left SI, I'd probably visit SI.com less frequently.

One of Dave's major responsibilities was writing the blog, in his absence what can/will Earthlink do? I don't think turning the blog over to a group of people that can't give it their full attention would be wise. Also, Earthlink says one of their goals is to concentrate on doing a better job for their existing customers. It's a bit ironic then that they'd take away a communication vehicle between company and customer.

Tying back to my first two posts on this subject: 1. What could/should happen to the blog and 2. What should Dave, the individual, or in this case the Earthling do?

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I've recently started to blog over at MarketingProfs DailyFix. This is the first post and is cross-posted. I am going to try to avoid cross-posting in the future though.

Seth Godin recently talked about a SEO firm that promises to move negative reviews down the page on Google. Rather than spending money to fix the original problem, firms will spend money on making the criticism go away. (sarcasm) Smart (/sarcasm)

Earlier this year I asked, are you willing to take from your pr/marketing budget to fix a problem in another department? A great case in point was the recent Spirit Airlines dust-up. For a quick refresher:

- Alex has customer service issue with Spirit Airlines
- Alex blogs about it
- Other people comment, sharing their customer service horror stories
- Google ranks post #3 for "Spirit Airlines" search
- Even more people comment, sharing more horror stories
- Aviation Week blogs about it
- Traditional media picks up the story
- Rinse & repeat

If you read through the blogs posts, Alex's issue revolves around the customer support line. From his experience it just doesn't work. Many of the people who commented on his post shared the same view.

When I was interviewed by the media for the story about Spirit Airlines I was asked, "What would be your counsel? How can they make peace with the bloggers?" My response:

Well there is what I would tell them they should do, and then there is what they will do, which are two entirely different things.

What they should do.....It seems that the majority of their issues are related to their customer support line, they should fix that problem first. Fix the customer support lines and then go back to the bloggers and say, 'We're sorry for the issues you encountered. It seems that we had some problems with our customer support lines and we heard that from you and the other commenters. We've fixed those issues by increasing our staff at our major call centers. We'd love to have you fly with us again and if you ever need to call our customer service line again the level of service will be much better.'

Of course they won't do that. Each time something like this comes up again their communications depart will apologize. But we all know that it's a hollow apology since they really don't plan on fixing the problem.

I know budgets are really tight at a low-cost airlines, but at what point does the time and effort spent dealing with PR issues related to this (not to mention the lost sales) outweigh the cost to fix it?

I often hear old-school PR practitioners complaining that all this 'blog stuff' is negative. It depends on where you're sitting of course. Social media is great for shining a light on the broken parts of your business. You can take the exposure of faults as a negative, or as an opportunity to fix things and make your products/services better. Which will you do?

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One of the elements crucial to corporate social media initiatives are the individuals who blog for organizations. Often these individuals become somewhat official spokespersons for the organization, but that's what they're supposed to be correct? It's the humanization thing. What are the downsides though?

Recently I was on a teleconference panel with a few organizations. One of the panelists talked about all the major social media initiatives that were handled by a member of their staff, let's call them John. John had become their spokesperson. Previously they never had one. The relationships that John built within communities online (and offline) were invaluable to the organization. During the Q&A, the questions mostly focussed on technology issues and we ran out of time before I could ask, "What happens when John leaves?" From the earlier discussion it would seem that if they left their entire community outreach efforts would vanish and so would a portion of sales.

Another issue related to business blogging is ego and internal politics. In some cases a junior staffer suddenly becomes an invaluable asset, sometimes that goes to your head. However, most of the corporate bloggers I know firmly have their egos in check, but it could be an issue. When Robert Scoble worked at Microsoft one of the questions that often came up was what do others in the company think of his profile? Here was a person that recently joined the company and suddenly is mentioned in the same breath as Gates and Ballmer. There were probably quite a few folks that said to themselves, who is this guy? I've been here a decade....etc.

Then of course Robert left Redmond and some folks foolishly asked, "What will Microsoft do?" I think Microsoft is doing just fine. Along the same lines, does anybody remember Cooper/Katz? (if you do, you somewhat date yourself in the PR blogging world.)

In Scoble's case, PodTech knew one of the things they were getting with Robert was his celebrity/followers. There is attention/publicity that comes with that, and to some degree that can be of value. You could compare this to pro sports before free agency. Often the star player would remain with one team for their entire careers, today that's a rarity. In the gadget blogging world the editors/writers seem to change teams quite a bit.

It will be interesting to see how situations like this play out in the coming years. Could you imagine a Ford press release: "Ford hires former GM Chairman Bob Lutz to launch new F-150 Fanatics blog!"

But let's go back to my initial example, if/when that person at a small operation leaves there would be huge consequences. That person is a communication channel and that suddenly disappears. It is possible to move on, but since much of the community is built upon relationships with an individual, you can't easily swap people out. That's been standard operating procedure for companies though. If it's a faceless corporation, then you can swap out the 'faces' as much as you want :-)

On the flip side, what about an individual that becomes associated with a brand. In some cases they're not an individual, they're the company's blogger. I've seen it happen at conferences, "Oh hey, John....you're X's blogger?" They're always introduced as John, X's Blogger, never just John. It's like without that qualifier at the end they wouldn't be anybody.

What happens when they want to move on but the corporate brand overshadows their own? Part two coming soon.

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This is a neat milestone. Marcomblog is a collaborative blog written by 'industry' folks for students at Auburn University. Yesterday one of the former students has joined the contributor list. Auburn professor Robert French introduces a post from Mary Metcalf, a recent Auburn grad who now works for Edelman in Chicago:

The first post in Marcomblog happened on Saturday, November 13, 2004. We’ll celebrate our third anniversary in just a few months. That’s a long time ago. Many students have passed through my classes and participated in our social media activities. So, I had this funny idea. Hundreds of those students have graduated and gone on to careers in public relations and marketing communications. Why not hear from one of them? I asked Mary Kneeland (MK) if she would write a post reflecting on the transition from student to practitioner. Here it is.

Yes it's been a bit too long since I posted something to Marcomblog, need to get back in that habit.

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In the past few days I have been receiving the following message when I visit Flickr. Needless to say it scares the shit out of me. I have close to 12,000 photos on Flickr, so when they say they don't have them....well it's not a good feeling.

A number of us use external services like Flickr or YouTube to store our content. Most of the time it's free and easy. In the case of Flickr it's not free, I pay the yearly subscription fee. In the end though, we're putting a tremendous amount of faith in their hands.

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Brandweek has published an interview with Brice Ertmann, Toyota's corporate manager of consumer-generated media (there is that phrase again):

When bloggers write smack about Toyota, Bruce Ertmann is there to read every word and, in some cases, respond. As corporate manager of consumer-generated media at the Torrance, Calif.-based automaker, Ertmann constantly trolls the Web to see what people are saying. This includes both the gray anonymity or the way-too-public blogger world, and not just the good and the bad, but also the ugly. Although other car companies also have people who track and write blogs, Ertmann's title is believed to be the first in the U.S. auto trade.

The interview is decent, and shows how often the 'voice' of a corporation online falls to one person.

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Recently Brian Oberkirch posted about the anonymous editing of corporate Wikipedia articles. There was some spirited discussion in the comments among some good friends. However, the major issue was anonymous edits. My general view is that if you're stupid enough to try something like that, then you're stupid enough not to cover your tracks...and will be caught.

But what about claimed edits? The Talk/Discussion channel is there for a reason, but what if there is no talk? Can a corporation start it?

There is of course a reason I am asking. I have a situation with a corporate client (who shall remain nameless for now). Their current entry has almost nothing on it. They want to edit it, but want to do it in the right way. But what is the right way?

Like I said before there is no discussion about this entry, so they can't really go to the 'community' and present their case.

Here is what I have proposed:

- I'll post something about the situation and see what some colleagues think (done)
- Post an item in the Discussion thread outlining who they are and the edits they propose
- Allow the discussion to take place for a set period of time, take in suggestions (if any)
- With community approval post their edit
- Welcome community edits of their entry

The sticking point is that third item...we don't expect their to be much discussion (might be wrong there). I want to be clear that during the entire process they'll be open about who they are and the edits they're making.

What are your thoughts?

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Mindy McAdams from the University of Florida blogs about some new classes she is teaching. They focus on new tools available to journalists.

The idea behind this class (and the follow-up, Journalists’ Toolkit 2) is that students will learn to use some of the common tools of today’s cross-platform reporting through assignments based in regular reporting practice. The primary tools in the first class are audio, audio slideshows and blogs. In the second class, the focus will be on video and other motion visuals.

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We've heard this story before....blogger has bad experience with company, blogs about it, then Google works its magic. In this case it's Alex Rudloff who had a problem with Spirit Airlines.

Alex's post is now #2 on Google for 'Spirit Airlines'. It's even ranked higher than Wikipedia. That has attracted a number of comments and e-mail from folks with the same experiences with Spirit. It's sort of a mini Dell-Hell.

The latest twist in the story involves Spirit CEO, Ben Baldanza who had a slight e-mail snafu. Fun stuff.

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My blogging-partner-in-crime Chris Gent has a wrap-up post for our conference blogging at the 2007 Florida Public Relations Association Annual Conference. We posted a total of 84 entries, 7 podcasts and almost 700 photos.

Like many conference blogging experiences, it was fun, but exhausting. We had a team of bloggers and we tried to closely follow the conference blogging guidelines I set out last year.

Chris and I handled most of the photography. You can find the FPRA Flickr stream here.

One of the highlights for me was Cynthia Gordon's session on how Universal has been using digital and social media. Many of her examples revolved around the recent announcement that Universal Studios Theme Park would be home to Harry Potter.

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Marijean has a good post-BlogHer item on blogger relations.

As BlogHer started I noted a marked increase in the number of PR folks in the audience. They were there no doubt to 'reach' this highly coveted 'segment'. However during many of the sessions the vibe was very clear, the majority of them resent PR/marketing folks and their intrusions. And they're just that, intrusions. Marijean talks about the relationship aspect necessary for anything to work.

I point back to my earlier post about my rule of blogger relations: Send Something of Interest to Somebody You Know. I also touched on this topic a bit in my 'jaded view' post.

The other thing is that a blogger relationship is based on more than a link or a basic piece of information. What I mean by this is sending a blogger a link to 'check out' or a press release is one of the worst things you can do. When I engage in blogger relations I rarely send anything, I ask. If the blogger has written about a subject or expressed interest in the topic I ask if there is anything else I can assist them with.

There is a big difference between saying, "Here is our latest press release." and "How can I help you?"

A number of other folks also blogged about the relationship with PR and the momosphere.

It's sad that so many PR people don't do things right. All we can hope is that more people in the profession realize that it's about relationships and not pitches or target audiences, etc.

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One of the best 'booths' at BlogHer this year was Scrapblog. Carlos, Alex, Cindy and the rest of the gang offered hands-on demo of their product and a great photo opp for BlogHer attendees. Bloghers had a number of props and costumes available to 'dress up' and have a Scrapblog made.

During the event I heard a number of women talking about the booth and organizing group shots.

From a social media standpoint, Scrapblog has been uploading all the images created to Flickr and will be doing some follow-up features after the event.

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It's interesting to watch the ongoing Twitter coverage of Elizabeth Edward's closing keynote at BlogHer '07. Almost all the tweets I see are micro-coverage of the Q&A. It's really cool to see the use of Twitter in this way.

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I'll be speaking at the ATDC in Atlanta next Wednesday. What is the ATDC? It's the Advanced Technology Development Center located at Georgia Tech.

What's interesting about this speaking engagement is how it came about. On Tuesday I was traveling to Atlanta and posted a quick update to Twitter. I mentioned that I was going to be in Atlanta next week as well. Lance Weatherby from the ATDC saw this and contacted me.

So, a booking via Twitter. I guess there is a business case :-)

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On June 11th, Sony Computer Entertainment America (SCEA) launched the official PlayStation.Blog. I'm proud to say we had a little bit of a hand in the development of this new corporate blog.

The blog is based upon the WordPress platform and features a number of modifications. I handled the design and some of the project management while the team (Nick, Pete, Sean and Mike) from cnp_studio handled CSS, WordPress customization and other tweaks.

Response to the blog was been somewhat amazing with over 500 comments coming in the first 24 hours. Technorati rank went from non-existent to 8,364 in less than two weeks. Not bad.

As with any project of this nature, it's only the beginning. Look for more to come.

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As a companion piece to my 'Jaded View of PR and the Blogosphere' here is something about journalists. Once again the caveat that I've been working with traditional media for a number of years on how they can adapt to the world of social media. Also, the vast number of journalists I work for are great people doing great work. It's just a few that spoil it for everybody else.

Generally when you get a group of journalists together on a panel the topic of blogs will come up. One of the often used responses about the blogosphere is, "Blogs are often inaccurate." Each time a journalist says that I will usually respond, "Really, can you give me a specific recent example." Guess what their response is?

Some journalists say that blogs don't check facts or are mostly opinion and as such not real news. It's ironic that when they make those statements it's often based upon generalities and opinion. In a sense, when some journalists speak about blogs they're committing the same sins they say bloggers commit.

Recently, Social Media Club Atlanta held a panel discussion featuring a number of traditional media folk. To say there were some tensions would be an understatement.

Amber Rhea a local Atlanta blogger e-mailed me after the session and conveyed a story similar to one I've experienced. A traditional journalist on a panel will say, "What you do is more......" Just insert your own ending there: 'entertainment', 'fun', 'opinion', 'of a dairy'. In Amber's case her response was, "What 'I' do? Have you ever read my blog? Do you even know what 'I' do?" Hmm, a journalist making a statement without looking at the original source material.

I write a hyperlocal blog and it's a mixture of news, links and opinion. In the year and a half I have run the blog I've only posted incorrect information once and it was more of a writing slip-up than a huge gaffe. I quickly updated the post and pointed out the correction. When a journalist says that blogs are often inaccurate I say, "Really have you looked at my blog or other hyperlocal blogs?"

Making general statements about blogs being this or that infuriates me. Likewise, most newspaper folks will bristle when somebody makes a similar blanket statement such as, "All newspapers have a liberal bias."

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I've been working with social media for almost four years. The majority of the time my work involves either pr practitioners or journalists. While I enjoy what I do and the interactions I have, in this time I have become a bit jaded with certain aspects of PR and media's view of blogging.

Today, Steve Rubel talks about the era of PR as participation and not pitching. I agree with this. It's about relationships and interactions. It's about knowing the people you're talking to and knowing what you're talking about. Two commodities that seem to be lacking in many interactions online.

Now on to my jaded view. A few weeks ago when Phil Gomes and I were on a panel at Media Relations Summit, he made a statement that I've been repeating quite a bit recently:

If you're a PR professional and you complain about blogs being inaccurate or wrong...and you're not doing anything to fix it, then you don't have the right to complain.

This topic came up again at the Airports Council International-North America's marketing and communications conference I spoke at on Monday. A few communicators complained about blogs in general. I asked if they had made any attempt to correct the information. They hadn't.

The other issue is blogger relations, or building relationships with blogs. Many PR folks act like it's something completely foreign to them, they have no idea how to do it. I always say, it's the same tactics and strategies they've used with building relationships with reporters/media. Unfortunately, for too many folks the extent of their relationship is looking up a name in Bacons.

To drive home this point I use this anecdote:

What you're saying is that you can't find sources and build relationships with them? So if you moved to a new town and started work for a new company, would you go to your boss and say, "Wow, I don't know any of the media here or have any idea what trade publications cover our industry. It's going to be impossible for me to build relationships and get your information out there."

The issue with blogger relations is finding the right blogs. Well if you're part of the community all you have to do is ask. If I was new to the triathlon scene, I would find somebody I knew that was a triathlete and say, "Hey what web sites, magazines, etc do you read?" Then I'd start from there.

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I'm still working on part two of my CVB post, but for now here is a tidbit I've been sharing with CVBs and other travel and tourism folks. In fact I talked about it on Monday to a group of airport communicators. Benet Wilson from Aviation Week also blogged about it.

Every day is a FAM Tour

For some background, many convention and visitors bureaus (CVBs), attractions, airports, etc. rely upon familiarization tours or FAM tours to promote their locations. FAM tours are designed for journalists. CVBs bring in travel journalists/writers and then wine and dine them while showing off the best that their location has to offer. Their hope of course is that the journalists will then write positive stories about their destinations.

There is one problem with that.

Today every visitor can be a journalist in some way. People are constantly blogging about their travel experiences. The good and the bad. Those posts might only be read by a few friends and relatives at first, but eventually they begin to appear in the all-important Google results. That's when the fun begins. Benet talks about a recent example:

In the past, complaints like this were either never seen, or if they were, they were tossed aside, with the thought that one person's opinion didn't make much of a difference. But TravelGolf.com specifically targets this community, and I suspect it's a large one.

Golf is an important tourism tool for the Miami region. And if Tim McDonald says MIA is "hell," some of his readers may read that and decide to move their golf outing to somewhere like Tucson, which also happens to have an airport that's easier to navigate.

The question then is: Why don't you treat every visitor like you treat a journalist on a FAM tour?

The long-term impact of a positive/negative blog post is probably greater than a one-time column in a local paper talking about a 'Weekend Trip to X'.

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Travel and tourism is a great example of an industry that has been impacted by social media. Not long ago online travel booking spelled doom for the travel agent. Will CVBs (Convention and Visitor's Bureaus) face the same fate?

Savvy travelers are very self-sufficient. They'll book they're own travel and research their own trips. Sure they may look at an 'official' site for a location or hotel, but more and more they'll use a site like TripAdvisor or another third-party site that is dedicated to their destination.

A great example is Disney. There are dozens of Disney-specific web sites such as The Disney Blog or Mouse Planet. These detailed fan-sites can give you tips galore, some of which Disney probably wishes they didn't.

One of the driving forces behind social media is the notion that we trust each other more than we trust media/business. We're looking for good, reliable information. If the CVBs aren't providing it, we'll look elsewhere. We want to know what's good and what's bad. We want honest opinions.

That's the crux of the CVBs though. You're never going to find a CVB web site say, "Don't stay at this hotel." Chances are, that hotel is a paying supporter of the CVB and they wouldn't like it too much if their 'marketing' organization was driving customers away. Perhaps that's why many CVB run social media sites are somewhat sterile.

Most CVBs are funded by tourism taxes (aka bed taxes) and are tasked with promoting their area to the rest of the world, i.e. 'Come Visit Beautiful X'. Swap out the X for your local city, county or state. Statewide CVBs often have huge budgets with large traditional media buys. In Florida, FLA-USA has a budget of $24.7 million and was asking for an additional $34.3 million this year.

CVBs realize that consumers are looking to social media for travel tips, they want to be part of that mix. However, is it even possible for CVBs to run a social media initiative?

Another issue is truth in advertising. CVBs often produce glossy 'Destination Guides' that showcase the beauty of a particular location. The problem is the real thing rarely ever looks as good as the picture. One CVB I know of features a picture of a private home's lakefront on their cover. In other words, the cover photo that represents their destination is somewhere you can't even go to.

Recently somebody created a web site that compares advertised food photos with the real thing. Some of the photos are quite funny. But what's sad is that it is a very similar situation with those guide photos. If you've seen the Dove Revolution video, you know what can be done with Photoshop. If we want to see the 'real' destination, we'll just search Flickr.

I've been thinking of creating a similar site that compares these guide photos with the real thing.

What can CVBs do in the social media world? How can they provide open conversation with potential visitors while not offending their supporting members?

In Part 2 I'll talk about some things that CVBs are doing right and some other options for them in the world of social media.

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Coming out of New Comm Forum there was a roaring debate over live-blogging. Since I do quite a bit of live-blogging for conferences, I figured I'd put in my two-cents (Another great live-blogger is Joe Thornley). For the background you can read the following posts:

- Steve Crescenzo's original post
- Shel Holtz responds to Steve
- Shel Israel responds to the response

From my perspective, Steve didn't like what Shel Israel wrote so he questions the validity of live-blogging. Is this one of those shoot the messenger not the message situations, or perhaps in Steve's case shoot the message, the messenger and the medium?

One way to get called out on the blogosphere is to make a broad generalization like 'live-blogging is useless' or 'all women who blog are mommy-bloggers'. Do you agree with either of those statements? Didn't think so.

Much of the debate seems to hinge on the word live-blogging, or as I define it, writing real-time notes of an event and posting them during the event. It's an interesting phenomena. Last year at Mplanet, Ann Handley commented on this real-time process:

Josh -- I think I'm having a meta experience. I'm in the back of the room while you are live-blogging this...seeing these guys on the stage at the same time I'm seeing the photo here. Cool...and only a little scary....

If you're questioning why somebody is doing something than the Cluetrain hasn't taught you anything. Bloggers and individuals do things for a number of reasons. Questioning their reasoning or saying it's not worth their time is very short-sighted and selfish. It's my time and energy, I'll do with it what I want thank you.

I recently spent quite a bit of time live-blogging the WOMBAT event and Forrester's Marketing Forum, was that useless and a waste of time or was the quality of the coverage lacking because I live-blogged it? I don't think so.

There are new wrinkles to the discussion. Jeremiah talks about people using his concepts/content in sessions and not crediting him. Chip Griffin also talks about live-blogging and about video blogging and conferences.

One of the benefits I see about conference blogging is that it's forcing organizers to get good speakers. If you have lousy speakers or people that use the time to pitch their own products/services the word gets out rather quickly and kills the vibe about your conference. The long term relevance of blog content via Google is becoming key to conferences. Google the name of a conference, the first result should be the official conference web site. More and more though the other results are blog posts from attendees.

I choose to attend conferences not based upon marketing materials I receive but the comments and feedback I get from friends that have attended the conference or blog posts from attendees. In other words, conference blogging is becoming an important part of the 'marketing' of conferences.

There are now organizations like WOMMA, FPRA and PRSA that actively seek out and support conference bloggers. This is a smart move since they have a hand in the blog coverage of their events. This is where thing can sometimes get sticky though.

I am often asked and compensated to live-blog a conference. This usually includes free conference registration and sometimes partial (or full) travel costs and in some rare cases I am paid for the service. In this role I disclose what I have been given. I am also there to document the sessions and not necessarily critique them. If you read through my live-blogs of events you will see they are more of a play-by-play than an analysis.

Yes there have been cases where I am sitting in a session saying to myself, "Boy this person is useless, or this is a pure sales-pitch." While I might not come out and say this directly, I usually find myself writing less about that session than others. On the flip side if I am at a conference on my own dime I might call out a speaker, but I usually don't.

Looping back to the recent New Comm Forum which started this whole debate, I can say that there were a few sessions I would probably call out, but I didn't blog much from NewComm....why? Sometimes it's good to step away from the laptop and enjoy the sessions rather than covering them. Plus I'm having more fun with photography at conferences anyway :-)

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B.L. Ochman blogs about receiving a Nikon D80 camera as part of a blogger relations program lead by MWW Group.

I had lunch with Tom Biro in New York last week and he clued me in on the program, very cool on Nikon's part. Quite a few friends and bloggers that I read will be getting a test-drive of the Nikon D80. Who? Gotta keep a secret :-)

Of course I am a Nikon fan for life since they helped me out in a pinch last year. I ended up purchasing a D80 last year and have loved the camera. It allows me to take shots like this:

Update: Gigglechick has also received a camera.

Update 2: Mike Manuel received one as well and has some photos of the packaging.

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The topic of sending bad pitches to bloggers is not new. There is a blog about it and even and handy-dandy button for it. However, Steven Noble brings up something I never thought of. If you're 'working' the blogs then you are probably monitoring and pitching them. This might cause an interesting situation:

That's right. You're own bad pitch will appear in the social media monitoring report that you will have to prepare for and deliver to your client. And then you have to explain it. Ouch.

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Tish Grier blogs about her new job with Assignment Zero.

Last Monday, I started my first day as Deputy Director of Participation for Assignment Zero

In case you don't know/haven't heard what Assignment Zero is, it's Jay Rosen's project that hopes to find a good working model for how to combine citizens and journalists to create a new paradigm for investigative journalism.

At the past few events I have been to that involve the traditional media I have become somewhat jaded. Basically there are those that talk about the problems and those that are working to fix them. Tish is part of the people wanting to try new things...good for her. New Assigment is something different. Will it work? Time will tell, but at least they are doing something.

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One of the comments to come out of the WeMedia Conference earlier this year was, "There is still this notion that we speak, then they converse." We, being media, they being the readers. It was said by Mike Orren of Pegasus News. For a great example of this, look at a recent post by Jim Johnson on Sticks of Fire.

Jim discusses how the Tampa Tribune is removing comments from their stories and blogs and 'directing' people to the forums of their site for discussion. The change represents a major disconnect from the notion of news as a conversation, back to more of news as a lecture. One of the major issues is general usability:

It’s about giving the readers as many options to communicate as possible. It’s far easier to comment at the bottom of the post than to find a link to the forum, register for the forum (or log in), find the thread on which they want to share their thoughts (or start a new post), and then comment. One step is replaced by four.

Yes we all know that things are changing in the newspaper world, but taking away a feature that readers want/use is not a smart business move.

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If you need to be reminded, April Fools Day is this Sunday. Last year I created the short-lived merger of Steve Rubel and Jeremy Pepper via PepperRubel PR. The pressure was on for this year though...what could I do as a follow-up?

Well I have had a number of ideas and was beaten to the punch on another....but ultimately I don't have the time to get something done by Sunday. With that said, here are some of the ideas I've been mulling over. Most of them are based upon available domains.

TNN: Twitter News Network (twitternewsnetwork.com)
Create a news site that gets all its news from Twitter. I don't mean real news though....the standard banal stuff that Twitter is famous for. We would also create a video news show with a real anchor reading Twitter headlines, i.e. "We're receiving breaking news out of San Francisco......Chris Messina is back from 45 minutes at the gym......Shocking news out of New York, Steve Rubel is considering not blogging for a day....emergency crews are responding now." The crawl at the bottom of the news show would be a continuous Twitter feed.

Caveman PR (cavemanpr.com)
Mashing up the Geico Cavemen and Un-Frozen Caveman Lawyer from SNL, we would create a PR firm by cavemen, for cavemen. If Phil Hartman were still alive I could see him saying, "You're attempts at controlling the message frighten me. Then these strange blogs and RSS....how do these messages arrive on my computer? Do tiny demons carry them?"

NoLifePR (nolifepr.com)
Forget Second Life and their few million residents, how about the after-life. Name a bigger target audience than the dead? They are also a somewhat captive audience :-) Better yet, every major city in the U.S. has a Bacon's for the dead, they're called obituaries. Seeing the opportunity, we'll create a PR/marketing firm for reaching that huge audience. I see product placements at graves as a huge opportunity.

PayPerMule (paypermule.com)
Building upon the controversy around PayPerPost, I am going to create PayPerMule. Need somebody to transport your drugs across the country or the world? Pay one of our mules as little as $5 and they'll transport it for you. Disclosure is not required and is not suggested.

PayPerPoop (payperpoop.com)
Extending the PPP theme once again. Medical research firms want to know what you're eating and what it's doing to your body, with PayPerPoop you get paid to do what you do every day...poop!

Yesterday afternoon in Orlando Alex Rudloff, Ryan Price and I brainstormed a few other ideas around the PayPer-X format. PayPerDate (aka prostitution), PayPerTweet (paying folks to Twitter), PayPerFriend (I think that exists already). You get the point.

Oh well, I think I have staked my claim to a few ideas. If you want to take any of these and run with them, feel free.

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In reality the title of this post is a misnomer. It's not hard to 'sell' Flickr at all. Why? Just about everybody I ever show Flickr to says, 'Wow, that's cool, where do I sign up?"

For organizations, especially non-profits, the big 'selling' point of Flickr is the photo resize function. If you're not familiar with it, when you upload a photo Flickr will automatically (or is it auto-magically) create up to six different sizes for you. You can then easily use any of these sizes on your web site or blog.

Above is a screenshot of the 'All Sizes' function. As you can see Flickr has created the following versions for me: Square 75x75, Thumbnail 67x100, Small 161x240, Medium 335x500, Large 687x1024 and Original 1074x1600. All I have to do is cut/paste the code into my page.

Once you get started Flickr also becomes somewhat addictive as Amber is finding out. I recently noted my 5000th photo, a few weeks later I'm now close to 7000.

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The latest issue of Wired has a cover story by Clive Thompson about the See-Through CEO, or how blogs are transforming how CEOs and businesses work. The one pull-quote that speaks volumes is this one:

Google is not a search engine. It's a reputation management system. By enhancing transparency, companies can manage their images as never before.

While a newspaper story or crisis might make a slight blip on the radar, it's the long-term search results that will always stay.

Recently a friend had some bad news written about his company in the newspaper. I suggested that they blog about the situation, provide their version of the story. Why? Because a few months or years from now somebody will say, "Hey you remember when X did Y back in Z?"

A quick Google search will help refresh everyone's memory. What will turn up? The original newspaper article? With many newspapers putting content behind pay walls it will probably be a blog talking about the story. If the company blogs the story, what will most likely show up first a few months/years from now will be their post.

In many ways you're writing your own history. Yes this can be abused, but the blogosphere has a great system of checks and balances. They're called comments and links. If you try to BS or 'cover' a story you'll be outed. Stick with the truth.

In the end, who is telling your story? Is it the media or a blogger. Why not tell it yourself?

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I spent the travel time I've had over the past few days to catch up on some podcasts and videoblogs I subscribe to. While watching Jason Calacanis interview Steve Rubel I noted this interesting line from Jason about those famous 'stakeholders'.

Stakeholders, defined as people that don't want you talking about their mistakes.

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Yes I am a bit late on this one....a week late actually, but like many others I wanted to share a few thoughts about New Comm Forum. From a conference blogging standpoint you can look at Joe Thornley and Chip Griffin who did the most comprehensive recaps. Heck, Nathan Gilliat wasn't even there and he has some comments. Nathan was able to follow along virtually.

Todd Defren wrote a comment that was often said among the usual gang.

Many of the veteran attendees noted that the crowds were more “corporate” than ever. This doesn’t mean that the suits want to mess things up; everyone I talked to from the corporate side seemed genuinely eager to learn; to be more open and candid.

However, I do learn a great deal. I pay attention to how the audience is receiving and perceiving the content, what questions are they asking, what keeps them up at night, is ROI the only measure in corporate-land, etc.

As an independent consultant I sometimes have experiences with corporations that make me glad I don't work for one, but the audience at New Comm showed that the corporate world is wanting to learn, for their benefit and for the benefit of their customers.

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Lee Hopkins asks if it's too lake to join the conversation. Never, but it also depends on your objectives. If you are just wanting to write a personal blog for friends and family it's never too late. If you're looking to use a blog for marketing purposes in a saturated market, it might be a long road ahead. I think this is what Lee is referring to.

When people say, "I'm too late" or "How can I build an audience..." I always point to Jeremiah Owyang. Jeremiah's been blogging a short time (relatively speaking) and has made quite a name for himself.

It seems like every week there is a new blogger that I add to my RSS list. Recently I've been getting some great nuggets from Dan Blank. It's not only the content a blogger creates, it's what they find. In the case of Dan, he recently pointed to a list of journalistic uses for blogs. Good stuff.

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One of the interesting points to come up during Jeffrey Treem's session on social media for employee engagement was that internal implementations of social media tools are great proving grounds.

Often corporate communicators fear the risks involved with social media, however internal instances can have a great deal of control. As the tools are adopted it also helps shift the culture internally. Organizations learn about conversation and interaction with groups outside their normal circles.

That's a good thing.

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During Paul Gillin's session...from Tom Foremski (paraphrasing):

What's kiiling the revenue stream for newspapers is search engine marketing and not really blogs or social media. It's easier to sell shampoo via a search result than an ad next to journalism.

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In the past few weeks I've had some interesting experiences with corporations talking about social media. Many realize that they need to be 'there'. There being defined as where people (and their customers) are. They say they want to 'join' the conversation.

However, their definition of conversation is not a two-way street. They want all the benefits of blogging but none of the negatives. Sorry folks, it's part of the process. If you want to benefit from social media you need to be willing to take the good and the bad.

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Shel Israel has slowly been working on his next book (and follow-up to Naked Conversations). Today he posted an overview of Global Neighbourhoods. Go check it out.

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I'm a bit late to this discussion, but here are my two cents.

Dee Rambeau ended his blogging adventure with a well thought-out and well written missive about the cons of the blogging world. I won't debate Dee on this issue, Allan Jenkins has already done a great job of this.

One of Dee's comments on Allan's post says:

I think if you read some of the students' comments, you'll find that they were aching for a contrary opinion. The koolaid was getting a little too sweet!

If you want to find a true debate about the issue (or any issue) for that matter you need to talk with both sides. In the blogosphere though, it's usually one side doing most of the talking.

I agree with some of Dee's points and always whole-hearted say, blogging is not for everyone, and dealing with many corporate clients tells me it's not right for many corporations. Would it be a benefit, perhaps, but going back to a post a wrote before, it's more of a culture shift than a communication tool.

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Alister Cameron posted a brief he had crafted for a client about the differences between traditional web content and relational web content:

One of the things I spend quite a bit of my time doing is helping clients and prospects understand the difference between a “regular” website and a social network. I spend a lot of my time arguing in favour of “social media”, in the belief that a social media approach is at the heart of what we call “Web 2.0″ and is closer to how humans naturally function in “real life”.

I wrote a version of what follows for a prospective client today, and I have reshaped it a little for my blog. Whether or not you’re considering building the next MySpace, YouTube or Flickr, I encourage you to “immerse” yourself for a few moments in what I describe below, so you can perhaps come to a deeper understanding of how the web’s move towards a more deeply immersive “social” experience is a reflection of our innate relationality, and therefore in keeping with how we naturally function, and therefore a good thing.

One of the underlying points Alister makes is that organizations should go out a learn first before embarking on a program of their own. Learn about the community and 'your' community. This is along the same lines as a post I wrote last year.

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In a great post, Mike Manuel provides the chronology of the 90-second news cycle we now live in:

+1 second to hit publish

+2 seconds for a blog to refresh

+3 seconds for feed readers to update

+4 seconds to email, link, tag, rank, or rate a blog post

+5 seconds for readers to form an opinion and/or leave a comment

+1 minute for Technorati to register a server ping, crawl and index a blog post

+8 seconds for alerts, watchlists and saved searches to propagate

+4 seconds for a blog post to plateau, amplify or disappear

+2 seconds for this cycle to repeat from the beginning

+1 second to realize the world's changing...

In a 24-hour news cycle there are total of 960 unique, 90-second news cycles.

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I wrote a few things about the WeMedia conference yesterday. Pondering them a bit more during my drive from Miami I wanted to post a follow-up. During the opening session on community there was a bit of soul-searching on the part of the traditional media. They know that the future for them is 'local' and 'community' and 'conversation' but do they really know how to do that?

When I deal with any media client that wants to 'embrace' social media and become more community oriented I always ask the same thing, "Do you know the names of your readers?" I know the answer to this before I ask it, but it's more of an exercise. Compare this to many individuals that run hyperlocal blogs, they know the names of their readers. They have a community.

One aspect of community is cooperation. During the community panel Jan Schaffer from J-Lab said she wanted to see more cooperation between traditional media on citizen's media. To paraphrase what she said, 'why is it that when a local paper looks at a new hyperlocal blog they say, "we need to do that to" and starts to compete, why not work together?'

Many times 'competition' in media is based upon ad sales. However many hyperlocal blogs don't accept advertising. The hyperlocal blogger isn't in it for money, they're just trying to provide the community information and discussion.

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Somebody sent me the URL for a new photo aggregator from the Atlanta Journal Constitution: http://i2i.ajc.com

More thoughts soon.....

Well I was going to say a bit more, but Rex wrapped things up nicely in his comment. Like he says, why create your own, when there are other solutions out there that the majority of people use.

A great example of this is GoGatorNation.com. When the site launched they used a proprietary photo upload tool. As Rex references, you'd have to upload your photos to Flickr then to their site. Duplicating work is something that not many people want to do. Now the site directs user to use Flickr.

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I'm in Miami for two days to meet up with David, Shel and Jeremiah among others. Today we're at the Scrapblog HQ. I just got a personal demo of the new version from Carlos Garcia, pretty slick app.

I see a really cool use for it beyond the traditional concept. What is it? I told the Scrapblog gang, we'll see if it makes it to the next rev. If it does I'll show you what it is.

Time to work, before the blogger dinner this evening.

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Often bloggers will think of themselves as an independent voice, and alternative to traditional media. Sometimes they'll make bold claims such as, 'TV is dead' or 'there is no more mass media.....we're all media', etc. Yet here we all are blogging and twittering away about the most mass media of media events, the Super Bowl.

Like the tragedies that all-to-often hit us, the Super Bowl unites many of us for a short period of time. We gather online to talk about the game and ponder whether Peyton will win the big one. Mostly though we talk about the commercials.

Wait, I'm a blogger, I'm supposed to be anti-commercial. After all, TV's dead :-)

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From Jeff Jarvis:

The newspaper industry is spending $75 million to argue that it’s not screwed. How much better it would be to spend $75 million on innovation so, indeed, it won’t be screwed.

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Toby Bloomberg wonders if social media is tipping in Atlanta? There are a number of events coming up in the next few weeks that deal with all things social. Is it tipping/growing? Toby, the majority of my time outside of Florida is spent in Atlanta :-)

Is it the mecca? Not sure. I think the folks from ConvergeSouth and Greensboro, NC might argue that. Or perhaps Rex Hammock and all the bloggers in Nashville.

One of the comments on Toby's post points out that Atlanta is 2-3 years late as usual. This isn't always a bad thing. It all depends on your audience. If I am a tech firm in Atlanta trying to reach a broader market then yes I might be late to the game, however for local audiences much of this is new. Should it surprise anybody that the biggest blogger in the area is the local media? At last count the Atlanta Journal Constitution has 59 blogs.

Still, social media has existed for some time in the area. I remember coming up for a Atlanta Media Bloggers meeting back in the summer of 2005. Who was the first blogger I knew from Atlanta? Toby, followed closely by Jeneane.

It has been interesting to watch the growth though.

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This is a tough call, because it depends on what you do for a living. The three best *paid* events I went to last year were:

- New Communications Forum
- Gnomedex
- BlogHer

I make the distinction of paid events since there is a bit more of an investment in going to a paid event rather than a local un-conference-type event.

For the past few months I have told anybody I work with in PR that they need to go to New Communications Forum this year. The event is being held March 7-9 in Las Vegas at the Venetian.

All the sessions are great and feature some of the most well-known folks in the PR/social media movement (including some guy named Josh). Like any conference though, the best interaction is during the breaks and dinners...with such a great line-up of folks on hand it's hard not to get something out of it.

The only downside? Deciding between some really great sessions that end up being scheduled opposite of each other.

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I drove from BlogSavannah to Atlanta to attend the kick-off meeting of Social Media Club Atlanta this evening (event details here). Looking over the RSVP list there are plenty of old friends and a few new ones.

Social Media Club was founded by Chris Heuer, Howard Greenstein and Kristie Wells:

...for the purpose of sharing best practices, establishing ethics and standards, and promoting media literacy around the emerging area of Social Media. This is the beginning of a global conversation about building an organization and a community where the many diverse groups of people who care about social media can come together to discover, connect, share, and learn.

The kick-off is being held in conjunction with the Social Media 2007 conference in Atlanta. I debated about registering, but decided against it. I think I get more out free events like BlogSavannah and Social Media Club than a paid event like SM2007. With that said though....read the next post.

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I think the first edition of BlogSavannah Un-Conference 07 was a great success. Congrats to Drew and the rest of the crew that put on the event. (Photos here)

The big issue with any un-conference is always managing the expectations of the attendees...many of whom have never been to an un-con. It was great to hear a number of folks say, "now that I've experienced this type of event, I really don't want to go back to the normal conference format."

Here are a few random notes:

- If you've been to a few local un-conferences you will see the discussions tend to repeat themselves, however you need to keep in mind that the majority of people in the audience are first-timers and all this is new to them.

- Just like BlogOrlando, some of the really good discussions were in the smaller room. Perhaps it's the confinement, or the smaller groups? What do you think?

- With a large percentage of users in the room you get a different perspective on topics.

- It's aggravating when the discussion turns into a debate about what a blog is and how to do it. It's especially frustrating when the people doing the preaching are not bloggers. It's like somebody telling you how to raise your children....and they don't have any of their own.

- A number of other bloggers have mentioned an individual that hijacked a number of the discussions. This is one of the issues with the format. Some of us tried to turn the discussion to other issues, but when you have discussion leaders that haven't facilitated sessions before it can be tough for them.

- Lisa has a great write-up from an un-conference first-timer. Go read it. The comments are good.

- Shawn thinks things were a bit too corporate...and I have to agree with her.

- The wifi was great!

- Chris Miller from the Creative Coast Initiative had a great session and really got the spirit of an un-con.

- Savannah is a unique and eclectic town. I spent most of the morning on Saturday walking around taking photos. However, move just a bit outside the historic downtown and there is poverty and decay.

- I met a bunch of new people. Chris, David, Lisa, Shawn, Betsy, Marjorie, Amber and her husband Rusty, the whole gang at Paragon (now blogging), Scott from Savannah Now, Angel and Alexandria to name just a few.

- I'll be back in Savannah on May 24/25/26th March 1st to do a seminar for Marjorie's clients so we'll need to organize a dinner/happy hour.

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I just led a quick impromptu session on blog basics for some of the BlogSavannah attendees. Drew, the event organizer quickly got feedback that some of the attendees were here to start their blog learning and wanted a basic overview, i.e. definition of terms, the culture, etc.

It was a great, quick session. With many questions. I always get amped by a group wanting to learn.

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I'll be blogging from the BlogSavannah Un-Conference 07 today. You can check out the entire schedule here. Photostream is here. I'll be leading one of the final sessions.

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Stowe Boyd sets forth his ideas for defining social media, social computing and all the related spheres.

I may seem to be splitting hairs, but my purpose here is to simply clarify things. The most general category is social tools, social software, or social applications. For all intents and purposes these are synonyms. These tools are characterized by a variety of features: reliance on social media principles and techniques, tags, an emphasis on the individual rather than membership in organizations or groups, and a sharing model derives from social networking principles.

So the topology of social computing — which is the best term to denote the activity of building and using these tools — is like a moebius strip: the applications are characterized by features which are themselves categories used to characterize the apps.

This is one of those exciting/frustrating things about this space, we're taking part in the creation/evolution of the terms, but to outsiders it's very confusing.

Of course the speed of discussion, adoption and abandonment in the social computer world far out-paces the real world. So perhaps by the we agree on something and the rest of the world begins to adopt it, we'll be revising things again.

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This is marketing 101 folks, but it seems that every so often somebody needs a reminder. Over the past few weeks I've talked with a few organizations that are developing web products. During the course of each of these conversations they say something like, "I'd love for you to help us get this in front of some of the leading tech/Web 2.0 bloggers." (Read: Mike, Richard or Om)

My response, "Are you sure about that?"

Why? Tech bloggers and bloggers in general can be somewhat critical (understatement of the year). I just see them reviewing the product and killing it. Here's why:

1. The product isn't that great, that doesn't mean that it's not a well executed plan, it's just nothing new and exciting. Much of this stems from location. Often when a company is based in the Southeast (i.e. outside the normal tech centers) they don't know what else is going on out there. What may seem like a revolutionary idea in Florida is old hat elsewhere. Sometimes isolation can be good for creative thinking, other times it can trick you into thinking you're the most ingenious person in the universe...a universe of one though.

2. Know your market! When I see a product I will usually ask, "How is this any different than...." and list about three other sites/products that do similar things. Often the answer I receive is a blank stare, they don't know about any of them. This is usually a very awkward moment since they take a look at the competing product and realize they don't have the most original idea in the world, and that somebody *gasp* might actually be doing it better.

With those two basic items, I can see the train wreck coming. A premature 'pitch' to a tech blogger will result in disaster. One of the first things they'll do is ask question #2 and when you don't have an answer it will tell them quite a bit about your product. Here is how the post might go:

This blogger was given a preview of the new Z service by X. Yawn! Nothing to see here folks, please move along. I mean no disrespect to the folks at X, but it's not really an original idea. A, B and C have had similar services for almost a year now and have a significant installed user base. Of course it's always possible to overcome that first-mover, but when your product doesn't offer any significant advantages over A, B or C it's a tough sell. In fact X hadn't even heard of A or B till we pointed them out to them.....

P.S. If you're trying to show something to Mike or Om make sure it works on a Mac, since that's what they use.

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BlogSavannah Un-Conference 07 is coming up at the end of this week. Andrew and the rest of the gang are making the final preparations. Andrew writes that they've exceeded their registration expectations and still have some additional press/promotion coming up. I had the same issues with BlogOrlando.

The week of the event we were basically full and the local press said they weren't going to do a full article on the event, but wanted to list it in the calendar. I said why bother, I'm full and a last minute item will only cause me some headache :-)

I'll be heading out on Thursday morning for the drive to Savannah. I'm looking forward to some photowalking around historic Savannah.

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Here are a few links of interest from some smart people:

- Brian Oberkirch gives the 411 to agencies about blogs.

- Nathan Gilliatt talks about employer brand and how blogs are causing a convergence of PR and HR.

- Shel Israel clues us in on the new way to pick talent.

- 37 Signals on the 'suit'.

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At the WOMMA DC Summit a number of the big analytical firms were there showing/talking about their social media tracking tools. Among the big corporations, the dashboard seems be de rigeur. A number of marketing honchos talked about the power of looking at their dashboard and knowing immediately how their product/service/brand is tracking on 'the blogs'.

While dashboards and other metrics for social media can be great tools, you're taking away the core focus of social media, people and their conversations. Knowing that X% of blog posts are negative about a product/service only scratches the surface.

Now when an executive says, "I monitor blogs." I respond, "Great, what's that last one you read? Who wrote it?"

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Yes blogs are great at doing certain things, but adding a blog to your communication's mix isn't a panacea, sometimes a blog can easily expose your lack of communication and customer relations skills.

Blogs and other social media tools need to be part of a culture shift within an organization. Perhaps to restate this in the form of a question, are you adding a blog to become more open in your communication, or because you are open in your communication?

Often with corporate blogs (or corporate associated blogs) it's one person making a difference. Yes it's great that a 'company' is 'listening' and 'joining the conversation' but it's not really the company it's a few people (if that). We all applaud when Dell or Southwest starts to blog, but how has that changed the other 99% of touch points we have with the company?

Shel Holtz really captures this with his recent post about Dominos Pizza.

Are companies that start to blog, but don't change their entire philosophy just setting themselves up for failure?

Hear me out on this. Company A (think cell phone company) has a really great, personable blogger that really connects with customers online. However Company A also has about 1000 call center reps and 20,000 associates in the field. The majority of them have the traditional corporate attitude, i.e. "Not my department" - "I can't help you, call customer support" etc...

Dealing with this great blogger has set my expectations high, dealing with anybody else in the corporation is just a nightmare. Inevitably the majority of the comments and issues the corporate blogger deals with are negative customer service experiences. Wow, sounds like a fund job...oh wait, that's not their department :-)

I can't tell you how many times I've had initial client meetings and told them there is now way they're ready to blog. Sometimes it's legal issues, but the majority of the time it's because they just don't have the right corporate culture.

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Last week Robert Niles posted a story about the silliness of arguing about the merits of 'citizen' versus 'mainstream' journalism. Robert asks that we move towards a middle ground resulting in the best of both worlds. In his post Robert provides and example of how a recent LA Times article could benefit from a blend of 'mainstream' and 'citizen' journalism. He wonders why the LA Times reporter couldn't supplement/enhance the story with data from readers.

Collaboration between mainstream/citizen journalists and enhancing stories with user-content are great ideas, but working with newspapers over the past two years has shown me that we're still far away from this ideal. Why? Here are a few basic issues:

Thinking: The majority of reporters I've dealt with just don't think this way. It's not a bloggers-as-enemies thing, it's just that they are stuck in the traditional print publication mode, i.e. the print-edition comes first, the web second. As the next-generation of reporters fill newsrooms across the country this will slowly change. Schools today are doing a great job emphasizing that newspaper journalism is becoming a multi-media experience and involves the citizen/reader.

Bad Apples: Luckily this is only something I have seen on a few occasions, but as the common saying goes, a few bad apples ruin it for everyone. Some reporters don't respect their readers. This goes back to the 'who are these people and why should I care' mentality. Other reporters view anything beyond the basic assignment as more work than they're getting paid for. I remember a year ago many reporters would say, "You want me to write my normal column and a blog?" Don't treat them as different things or assignments, it's all content, it's all reporting.

Training: The majority of reporters don't have the training to 'enhance' their stories on the web. Asking a reporter to do some basic HTML mark-up is sometimes a big stretch. Asking them to add some sort of interactive functionality is an even bigger stretch. However, like the first issue, as newly trained reporters filter in this will change.

Workflow: Most of the time the reporters are merely content producers, i.e. they enter their story into the content management system and their job is done. It is usually the job of the technical producer or web monkey to enhance stories online. Often though, the technical folks are too busy just making everything work to take on a number of extra projects, especially those that don't mesh with the CMS (see next item)

CMS Inflexibility: All major newspaper are run on complex content management systems (CMS). While CMS's are great and allow for some amazing automation of publishing newspapers online they usually don't react well to "Can we do this?" queries. You usually can't go to the internal web team and say, "Hey, at the end of this story I want people to be able to submit data in tabular format along with a picture." More newspapers are adding comments and blogs, but many of those solutions are simple and out-of-the-box relatively speaking.

The larger paper groups have the biggest problems since they have invested millions into their current CMS solutions and if it doesn't do something they can't just scrap it. New functions have to be develop from scratch or they need to out someway to integrate it into the current system. Example: The search system of one major CMS couldn't index blog content on other servers. Corporate response? We'll look at that for next quarter. Smaller papers with a good development team can be more nimble in this respect.

The 1% Rule: The standard line: 100% of us are readers, while only 1% are contributors. The newspaper business is just that, a business, and when a newspaper spends time and money on a project they want to maximize the return on that investment. A user-generated-content project which draws input from that 1% doesn't always impress the bean counters. However, you need to think about the economics in terms of that 1% helping create content (at no cost) for that 100%.

So how can we fix all this?

As I have said, as the new breed of reporters begin to take over things will change, but that generational shift will take some time. Current reporters need to learn new tricks, so-to-speak. Reporters that do a better job of enhancing/supplementing their stories on the web should (in theory) be rewarded with higher traffic to their stories online. Give those reporters the best assignments.

Newspapers also need to beef up their web support staff, but they shouldn't just hire people to 'run' the paper web site. A great solution would be to assign a single technical producer to a small team of reporters. Let this producer follow stories as they are developing to provide suggestions on how citizen/reader input could benefit a story. Some papers do this now, but the ratio of technical producers to reporters is so low that very little can be done.

If papers can't integrate new tools within their current CMS's look for them to build/partner-with other platforms to handle specific types of content uses. I'm not talking micro-sites, but something like integrating Flickr-like tools for photos, etc.

Overall, we've come a long way in 2006 and it will be interesting to watch how newspapers continue to evolve in 2007. I welcome any thoughts/comments you might have.

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Back in August of this year FLAUSA launched a Florida-resident specific web site at floridians.flausa.com. When the site went live I posted a review. One of the concerns I had was how the site would handle negative comments (if they received any). Back in November I e-mailed some questions (you can read my original e-mail at the bottom of this post) to Vanessa Welter, Director Public Relations. I never received a response and followed-up with her this morning. Below is her response:

With all due respect, we address these issues and matters with our industry board and committees and the very trusted vendors we work with whom have been vetted by our industry. Our evolving web site development is in very capable and educated hands and is guided by our industry's philosophy at the current time. If you did not see negative comments on the site, it is because we either did not get any, or they are not being posted. The reasons why should be obvious.

Here is my original e-mail/questions:

Vanessa:

When Visit Florida first launched the local resident themed site in August I posted a quick review online:

http://hyku.com/blog/archives/001231.html

One of the things I wondered about was the percentage of non-positive reviews and comments that might be generated by users and how Visit Florida would handle these. Looking over the site today it seems that almost all of the user submissions are positive. In my social media experience with consumer product companies and traditional media I know that there is always a percentage of negativity associated with any consumer-generated content. In the current state the site looks a bit sanitized since all the reviews are positive.

Has the site (and by extension the destinations/getaways listed) received any negative comments? If so what has been the policy in dealing with these comments?

I understand that the mission of Visit Florida is to promote the state and allowing negative comments might not be the most PC thing, but in CGM you need to take the good with the bad in order to have a trusted and valued resource.

Thanks in advance.

More thoughts on this later...but what do you think?

Update: Deleting or not posting comments that are negative has proven to be a very bad strategy for traditional corporations. Obviously corporations have the right to post what they want, but unless a comment contains profanity or libel you need to let it stand. When you open up things for user comment, attempting to jump on the user-generated-content bandwagon you need to take the good with the bad.

FLAUSA presents itself as a trusted source of tourism content about Florida, but if the commentary is sanitized the general reader will see thru this and turn to other sources like TripAdvisor or Tripmates to get the 'truth'.

Update 2: The Greater Philadelphia Tourism Marketing Corp has a blog: UWISHUNU that allows residents to post/comment about their favorite hang-outs/restaurants, etc. They don't delete negative comments...they only moderate if it contains profanity or libel.

Update 3: One friend IMs to say, "I guess they haven't heard the buzzword of 2006....transparency."

Update 4: Plenty of traffic to this post from Electronet.net the ISP in Tallahassee (home of FLA-USA/Visit Florida). Any response? Nope.

Update 5: I e-mailed Dale Brill from Visit Florida this morning about this issue and he has posted a great follow-up comment.

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You, me, us...we're all Time's Person of the Year. Well, technically speaking not all of us (more on that in a bit). Time has selected, 'You' as Person of the Year because of the revolution in user-generated-content that is increasingly influencing society.

The December 25th issue features a number of articles surrounding the selection. There is of course the cover story, as well as:

- The YouTube Gurus
- Essay: Andy Was Right
- Enough About You
- It's All About Us
- The Beast With a Billion Eyes
- Web Boom 2.0
- Making Mischief on the Web
- My So-Called Second Life

The question is, what about the people not taking part in creating/using any of this user-generated-content? Are they part of the 'You'? Perhaps they should have a different cover of Time that says, 'Them'.

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Pinny Gniwisch, Founder/EVP Marketing, Ice.com and Anil Dash, VP, Moveable Type Professional Network, Six Apart, led a breakout session to a packed room on how to create/use blogs for WOM. Lots of interest in this topic.

Pinny started the session with a humorous look back at the Internet past, from the early adopters to boo.com to the rise of blogs. Pinny highlighted the November Forbes article - Attach of the Blogs. Immediately after that article he created a blog. Of course there is a blog overload, but if you post consistently and honestly you will build an audience.

Flog: Pinny provided a quick review of the fake Wal-Mart blog scandal. You need to be honest with your audience.

At Diamond.com they created a blog called Sparkle Like the Stars. The blog discusses what jewelry the stars are wearing and shows comparable products they offer. Traffic has been great, around 6-7K uniques per day. Another blog they've created is JustAskLeslie.com which answers questions about jewelry.

You need to keep your blog fresh, post at least three times per week. Many of our fans follow us via RSS. The blog has also generated a number of press.

Next up was Anil, he decided to skip the slides and just spoke from the podium. Anil did a brief overview of how SixApart used blogs to build their business. Anil started his blog back in 1999, and thought he was late to the game, but then these other 50 million people show up and you realize you're ahead of the curve.

Until a year ago they had never purchased an advertisement. They built business by using the tools they create. They experimented on a number of different things, and screwed up a lot.

The power of self-expression is a powerful thing. There is sense of empowerment with self-publishing tools.

Anybody that says bloggers are (insert adjective), i.e. evil, have no life, etc...don't know what they're talking about. There are so many people blogging that it's impossible to segment or classify them.

More and more people are creating public blogs and personal blogs. Ultimately it's just a tool. There are a number of business cases that blogs can apply to. There are people building journalistic blogs and of course you might want to reach out to them, but the majority of blogs are personal. How do you reach out to them?

Working with General Motors it was amazing to see how a big company could work so quickly. Yes they are a large company and they have lots of red tape, so if you think you have problems launching a blog, it's not that hard. If the US Government can do it, so can you.

All that content you send out via e-mail newsletters disappears....it's gone once it's sent. Why not take that same content and put in on a blog? You now have the opportunity to build relationships and commentary around that content.

Think about a blog as a content repository. Often you have people creating content in your office now, why not publish it via a blog.

There are so many times that Anil will be writing an e-mail or some other content and he'll think, "Why not publish this to the blog?"

In Boeing's case, why create a blog for a plane? There is nobody reading this blog that will ever buy this plane. But what they found was the content that normally would be buried in press kits was now available online. Aviation enthusiasts and travelers visited the blog and saw the new interior of the Boeing 787 - Dreamliner. Carriers actually saw demand from passengers who wanted to fly in the plane. Carriers began to increase orders.

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The Atlanta social media conference now has a name: SoCon07.

Tagline: Connect Because You Can

Message: The Premiere Social Media Mashup in the South
Shape the future of social media in the south

Date and Time: February 10, 2007 8:30 am - 3:30 pm (with a little after conference get together)

I'll be there leading one of the sessions. I assume that more details and a specific web site will be coming soon.

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My blog reading habits, my blogging and my blog readers are primarily a mix of a social media & public relations slant, so it was fun to cross the aisle so-to-speak into the marketing world at Mplanet 2006.

Overall the Mplanet speaker line-up was impressive. When you have the marketing leaders from Sony, Nintendo and Nokia sitting on a panel together you're in for a treat. End the day by hearing from IBM CEO Sam Palmisano and it doesn't get much better. Seeing Chris Anderson share the Long Tail vibe with the marketing audience was also something special. It's really hard to pick a favorite session.

Social media is what I do, and with many of the sessions focusing on the new medium it was a bit of, "seen it/heard it". However, it was seeing the attendee's reaction to the speakers which really intrigued me. The audience was a mix of corporate and agency, many of which are still trying to come to grips with a loss of control.

If anything, social media, like WOM is a common ground for advertising and public relations. There are aspects of relationships, trust, influence, viral and marketing all wrapped up in one. A refreshing trend is to see that things can't be faked anymore. Over and over a CMO would say that if they ever tried to force something it just wouldn't work.

As with any conference experience I was able to meet a great bunch of folks face-to-face like, Ann, Garrett, Rob, Peter, Eric and many more. I've added a number of new people to the 'Friends' folder in my RSS reader.

Next week I'll be back in some familiar/middle ground at the WOMMA Summit 2006.

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I am pleased to announce that I am a new member of the Research Fellows & Advistory Board for the Society of New Communications Research. SNCR is a distinguished group of folks, many of which are my friends and colleagues, so it will be a great experience.

The big event for SNCR in 2007 will be New Communications Forum in Las Vegas on March 7-9th. I'll be there, will you?

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Mplanet 2006 featured a dozen spotlight sessions for the late afternoon slot. I attended the session on Social Computing which was lead by Brian Kardon of Forrester Research. Brian might be the lesser known partner-in-crime with Charlene Li who blogs quite frequently in the social media/computing space.

Brian started by talking about how technology changes everything, from health, education, etc. He talked briefly about the One Laptop Per Child initiative and how technology is/can changing the world. More important to this audience though, is how does technology changes business or marketing?

Brian reviewed some of the most recent examples of social computing and consumer generated content. First up was the famous Mentos/Diet Coke marriage. His next example was the Dell exploding battery and how Dell used their blog to respond to users directly, even over the objection of the legal department.

Things change fast though, there are already signs that MySpace is on the decline within early teen adopters. There is a large amount of transience going on within the medium.

Brian talked about the AOL canceling issue, and how a single person's bad experience with a brand can become a bigger issue. It's not what you might want to hear, but take your marketing dollars and invest that in better products and better services.

Social computing: A social structure in which technology puts power in communities and not corporations.

Why is this taking place? 1. Technology has lowered the cost. 2. People are more willing to trust non-traditional sources 3. PC usage is increasing. 4. In the future everybody will be famous for 15 people.

One of the questions Brian says he is often is asked is, "who are these people and do the have a life?" (sound familiar). As a great exercise Brian asked the audience, "How many of you have written a review or posted a comment about a product or service?" Quite a few of the people in the audience raised their hands. Brian's response, "Well, there are quite a few of you, and as far as I know, you all have lives." So they are real people.

One of the questions focused on the B2B aspect of of social computing. Brian commented that traditionally 100% of people are lookers or lurkers, but 1% are commenters, so in a small B2B space just one person commenting is a lone voice.

The theme is listening to, and nurturing individuals talking about your brand - even if you aren't in control.

User generated content is created by individuals/customers/consumers and viewed by them without being sanctioned by an organization.

Customers will learn about your brand from individuals outside your organization.

In summary:

- Social Computing is here to stay. Accept it.
- Focus on relationships, not the technologies.
- Get started using the tools.
- Embrace a culture of generosity in your Social Computing efforts.

A copy of Brian's presentation can be found here: www.forrester.com/mPlanet

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Jeremiah Owyang talks a bit about traditional corporations and media needing leadership in web strategy and social media. This is an interesting knowledge gap that I have seen as well. There are those that are savvy at social media and can counsel clients and then there are those that can build businesses/divisions around social media. However, there seem to be fewer of the latter.

I have been contacted by a few headhunters looking to fill some social media jobs at some large corporations. In each case they needed a person with a blend of social media know-how and corporate smarts. Specifically, they wanted people that could build an entire division or team and thus handle all the standard business stuff, i.e. budgets, personnel, etc.

In almost all the cases the headhunters said they were having a difficult time finding the right person. They were easily able to identify some strong players in the social media space, but none of them were interested (or qualified) in the corporate side of things. This really didn't surprise me. I told the headhunters that many of my peers are independents like myself, and we didn't really want to work full-time for a corporation. We enjoy our freedom too much.

It seems then that there might be a job market for a strong corporate types that understand social media. Perhaps I should build a job board, ala CrunchBoard :-)

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During my Hyku College Tour I had breakfast with Dan Rua in Gainesville, FL. For those of you that do not know, Dan is one of the VC's behind PayPerPost. I've been critical of PPP, so I wasn't sure what direction our talk was going to take. As always it's good to be able to meet with people in person, it adds a different level to the conversation.

Dan and I talked about a number of issues, but one topic that interested me was DisclosurePolicy.org. The site was created in response to the complaints that PPP was not forcing users to disclose any payments from advertisers for blog posts written. DisclosurePolicyl.org allows a user to create a policy based upon a few variables. The system is similar to Creative Commons in this way. Like PPP, there was quite a bit of discussion about the validity of DisclosurePolicy.org and perhaps a hidden agenda when it was launched.

Having talked in person with Dan I think I can say there is no hidden agenda, he just wanted to put a tool/service out there for people to use. Yes, the launch was somewhat of a band-aid for PPP's transparency issues, but the basics of the service should be evaluated independent of that. Dan's big question was, "If anybody but PayPerPost had released it, do you think it would have been accepted differently?"

I think there would not have as much skepticism surrounding DisclosurePolicy.org if PPP were not involved. That's for sure. Dan said he attempted to reach out to WOMMA, but WOMMA wasn't reaching back. This was most likely because of two things:

1. Obviously PayPerPost's involvement with the project caused WOMMA to back away. The last thing an organization like WOMMA wants to do is associate themselves with an organization that has become a big target for disclosure.

2. WOMMA was just about to launch their blogger relations initiative and follow that up with the Dell announcement so they probably weren't interested in diluting their efforts.

All this leads back to Dan's question. What if somebody else led the charge?

Of course we might end up with a number of solutions. Today blogs have numerous chicklets on their sidebar's promoting a variety of RSS feed options, i.e. Add to Blogline, Add to NewsGator, Add to MyYahoo!, etc.... Will we soon see blogs with buttons listing all their disclosure policies and ethical guidelines? How about a disclosure policy MicroFormat?

What are your thoughts on DisclosurePolicy.org and along the same lines the new WOMMA guidelines?

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I had a great day today speaking to a number of students at the University of Georgia - Grady College. I made appearances in a number of classes for Kaye Trammell and Karen Russell. I think I probably spoke to over 400 students in all. As I have found in many of my college appearances there is a huge interest in the topic since many of the traditional classes/programs don't teach social media.

After one of the sessions one of the students asked Kaye, "Do you think we'll get to have an actual class on this subject before I graduate?" As luck would have it Kaye will be teaching a course on the subject of social media next semester.

At the end of one of the large sessions with the students I thanked them for their time and told them the real reason I was speaking to them today...."You are the next generation of PR practitioners, and in five to ten years you'll be my boss, so I just wanted to introduce myself."

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That little equation is becoming rather powerful. If you don't get it, here is the explanation:

( Unhappy Customer + Blog ) x Google = Bad News for Company

Actually it was number three on Google within two days of my initial post, but it's stabilized at one for the past day or two.

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Shel, I feel your pain. Shel Holtz posts about hearing an 'expert' speak, but realizing the person was no expert. Stuart Bruce shares his experiences as well. I've been in a few similar situations recently. I mostly keep my mouth shut since I know the truth will come out in the long run (I hope). However it seems to be getting worse lately.

Like Shel, I don't want to sound too snarky, but there are plenty of people jumping into the world of consulting with little understanding of the medium. A while ago I had one 'consultant' tell me:

"This consulting is great, I just have to stay a week ahead of my client on the learning curve and I can keep billing them."

There is a learning curve, but I think being a week ahead is a bit short :-) Jeremy Pepper once said that nobody is an expert in social media, they're just a year ahead of everybody else on the learning curve.

Illustration by Hugh MacLeod.

While this is not a definitive list, here are a few things to look for when somebody says they are an expert in the 'blog' thing.

1. What's the address of their blog? If they don't have one, run. As my friend Toby likes to say, this is something you can't fake. You need to have hands-on experience.

2. What's the quality of their blog? I know this can be a bit subjective, but are they demonstrating any thought leadership on the issue or are they just running in place?

3. How long have they been blogging? Similar to the previous question, it can go either way. I dealt with a corporate VP that received a call from a 'consultant' inquiring about their social media strategy. While on the phone the VP looked up the blog of the 'consultant'. It was a few weeks old with nothing substantial and according to Technorati had no links. The VP quickly formed an opinion based upon their research :-)

4. Do they suggest a course of action the violates some basic blogging guidelines like WOMMA's or my simple rules? Run. You should be smarter than this, but unfortunately as we've seen recently, this isn't always the case.

5. Did you check references? Or in other words do they have a proven track record. Granted it might not be years of experience since the field is relatively new, but do they have some examples of programs they have implemented for clients?

Anybody have any other suggestions?

Like I have said before the great thing about social media is the that the truth always comes out in the end. However, in this situation the people being duped aren't part of the blogosphere so there will always be this issue.

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The Word of Mouth Marketing Association (WOMMA) is releasing a series of guidelines for interacting with bloggers. The guidelines are not 'official rules' by any stretch; they are merely meant to provide guidance for firms just learning about social media.

Of course firms are free to ignore them (and some will) but hopefully many will follow the guidelines since WOMMA reminds us: Consumers come first, honesty isn't optional, and deception is always exposed. The guidelines are listed below:

1. I will always be truthful and will never knowingly relay false information. I will never ask someone else to deceive bloggers for me.
2. I will fully disclose who I am and who I work for (my identity and affiliations) from the very first encounter when communicating with bloggers or commenting on blogs.
3. I will never take action contrary to the boundaries set by bloggers. I will respect all community guidelines regarding posting messages and comments.
4. I will never ask bloggers to lie for me.
5. I will use extreme care when communicating with minors or blogs intended to be read by minors.
6. I will not manipulate advertising or affiliate programs to impact blogger income.
7. I will not use automated systems for posting comments or distributing information.
8. I understand that compensating bloggers may give the appearance of a conflict of interest, and I will therefore fully disclose any and all compensation or incentives.
9. I understand that if I send bloggers products for review, they are not obligated to comment on them. Bloggers can return products at their own discretion.
10. If bloggers write about products I send them, I will proactively ask them to disclose the products’ source.

I like what I see so far. You can read all the details on the initiative at: http://www.womma.org/blogger/

While some argue that the markets and community will decide what is successful, i.e. PayPerPost, there are ethical issues at hand for PR professionals. Many of the colleagues that I work with are members of either FPRA, PRSA or IABC. Each of those associations strive to represent an industry which often is dragged down by less than ethical or professional behavior. It's that type of behavior that the professional associations are trying to stop.

When you join a professional association such as FPRA you pledge to adhere to a set of ethical guidelines. Those same guidelines apply to the blogosphere. As we've seen recently, if you don't follow the guidelines, chances are you'll be caught....rather quickly.

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The new 2G iPod Shuffle started arriving yesterday which means only one thing....unpacking photos. A quick search on Flickr for the tag 'shuffle' shows over 120 photos posted yesterday alone. There will probably be more today and an bunch over the weekend once the new iPods hit the retail shelves on Friday.

You have to hand it to Apple, they always benefit from the positive vibes generated by the design of their hardware and the packaging. If you were on the fence about buying one of the new shuffles, the onslaught of photos are probably pushing you over the edge. Apple has to love that.

You can check out some more unpacking pr0n at Unboxing.com. You'll notice that Apple products are often featured....wonder why?

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A college student sent me a series of questions for a project they're working on. I decided to post my answers online.

When a company comes to you with the idea of setting up a blog, what steps do you go through with them to get it set up?

First off I like to assess the level of knowledge within the organization. When they say they, 'want to blog' I want to know what they think that means. In a few cases I have had potential clients approach blogging from the wrong direction. They're thoughts were usually purely marketing driven, which isn't the best thing. I also need to know who will be the primary blogger(s). The best-case-scenarios are when an individual or small team within a company really wants to start blogging and they contact me to help out. In that situation there is an internal passion and drive to make the project succeed. This is a big contrast to a communications manager that calls and says, "Yeah, we need to get one of those blog things going." Real enthusiastic!

This also goes back to the overall mood of the company. Are we dealing with an organization that has an open live of communication with the outside world (customers, vendors, etc) or are they somewhat secretive. Obviously a blog is a natural extension for organizations with open communication channels.

The next step is defining the purpose and content. Often an initial idea for a corporate blog will be very narrow in scope. While the narrow scope helps define the content it often can't support itself beyond a few months. I usually advise them to take things up one level. Once we establish the based needs/purpose for the blog we then look at the technical issues.

There are a number of other steps that can get quite detailed depending on the project. A while back I posted some other tips and questions as well. Most of them are research oriented.

Continue reading "Answers for a College Project" »

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I am in Orlando for a social media conference and just about everybody else is in Seattle for Blog Business Summit. PR pro Joseph Thornley is in Seattle and I hope he will be doing some blog coverage.

You can watch the FPRAblog for posts from the Orlando event.

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Yes that title is a bit over the top, since I am not an official 'rule' maker, I'm just one person offering my opinion.

Much has been written about the role of PR in blogs in the wake of the Edel-Wal story. Recenty, Robert posted his notes and Shel says enough (with some great comments). The entire affair has brought forth a discussion on ethics, disclosure, transparency (the new buzzword) and if PR can truly co-exist with blogs.

When working with a client here are some basic rules for developing a blog that PR wants to be involved in. If you can't adhere to all of these, then you shouldn't even start. It will sound a bit like a cliche, but remember blogs are about conversation and building relationships. Just like any relationship, whether it be with a significant other, friends, family or customers there needs to be openness and honesty.

1. Don't Lie. The truth always comes out. And when the truth does come out, you've got some explaining to do. You don't lie to your friends or your family, so why do it with blog readers.

2. Don't Hide Important Facts. Similar to number one, but some people say that there is a difference between a lie and hiding the truth. If you want to get technical, yes there is a difference, but in the end, the result will be the same. You will have broken the fundamental trust with the other person, and that's hard to get back.

3. Don't Pretend to be Something or Somebody You're Not. This also goes back to the first one, the truth will always come out. Just think about anytime you told a potential girlfriend/boyfriend a small fib to impress them. How did that turn out when they discovered you didn't really know Brad Pitt, or had never really run the New York Marathon?

4. Be Yourself. Perhaps another way of saying number three, but it's worth repeating. As with relationships in real life, you want people to like and respect you for who you are, not what you 'appear' to be. By putting on a front, you might achieve a short period of happiness/success but ultimately you'll be unhappy and you'll strain the relationship. Write in a style and tone that you're comfortable with...that will help with burnout as well.

5. Improve Yourself. Improve the product not the pitch. Many times people don't follow the previous four rules because they are ashamed of something, or trying to hide something. So rather than fixing their own problem they'll lie, hide it, etc. The original problem is still there and will continue to cause issues. If you're blogging and have to lie or pretend to be somebody else, what does that say about you and your position?

To use that other standard cliche, treat your blog readers the same way you would like to be treated. Think about it, if you had a friend which didn't follow the rules above, they wouldn't be your friend for long. With a blog, if you're not following the rules above, you won't have readers for long, and if the transgression are serious enough, you'll impact your reputation in a big way.

I have had corporations approach me to assist with blog projects, and for some reason or another they couldn't follow the rules above, so I don't take on the project. As an independent consultant I have that luxury. Things are different when you're working for a large agency or internally for a corporation. That's the billion dollar question with the Edel-Wal issue. Was is really some account group working on their own and not realizing they were breaking the rules? Or did Edelman say, 'We can't do this' and the client saying, 'Yes you will, otherwise we'll take our huge account somewhere else'?

People often say that blogs can be used to 'humanize' a corporation, and this is true to some degree. The corporation isn't really humanized, but a blog exposes the actual 'humans' within the corporation. This exposure allows two humans to actually have a conversation, which if done right can be a rewarding experience and build an actual relationship between the company (via the blogger) and the customer. However, if you don't follow the rules you're ultimately setting yourself (and your company) up for failure.

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The man behind Brand Autopsy, John Moore, is coming to Orlando next week. John is the keynote speaker at an event sponsored by the Orlando Chapter of the Florida Public Relations Association. The 'Impact of Social Media' will be held Thursday, October 26th from 8:30 am till 1:30pm.

John will be speaking at lunch, but the morning is filled with quite a few other speakers who will talk about the various aspects of social media. I'll be attending and will post any items of interest.

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All around smart-guy-pr-blogger Joseph Thornley wisely notes that with the release of Internet Explorer 7 the majority of web users will now start to see that little RSS icon.

With tonight’s release of Internet Explorer 7 the other 85% of the world is about to see that orange icon appear on their browser toolbar. And when they see it change from grey to orange, the clicking will start. And no one will care what RSS means. They’ll just be subscribing.

However, it will be interesting to watch/compare RSS subscription rates with the adoption curve of IE7. FeedBurner, did you get that?

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Over at Sticks of Fire, Tommy talks about David Banghart moving from one neighborhood to another within Tampa and how he's leaving one blog for another. David ran the popular and informative Seminole Heights blog, but now he'll be posting at the Word from Lutz.

Somehow I missed the St. Pete Times article that profiled David and the Seminole Heights blog. Tommy quotes a bit of it, but I just want to highlight this part:

Before his blog, residents of Old Seminole Heights, South Seminole Heights and Southeast Seminole Heights communicated through e-mail and phone chains mostly within their neighborhoods. Now, attendance is higher at events because everyone in the area sees the same fliers posted on the blog. “You post it on the blog, you’re going to get a turnout,” said Old Seminole Heights Neighborhood Association president Randy Baron. “I think it’s an excellent place for people to find out about things. It’s a one-stop shop.” And readers aren’t just residents. The media and city officials regularly check blogs for neighborhood news.

Shannon Edge, the city’s director of neighborhood and community relations, is a regular blog visitor. It’s a great gauge for what residents care about and alerts her to neighborhood issues, she said. She often verifies information posted anonymously on the blog with association presidents in order to pass it along to city officials.

But those professionals will need to know where to turn to fill in their own knowledge gaps as well. That's because the citizenry, the ones who live in the communities or who have a niche interest, are going to be powerful within that niche. Mainstream media outlets simply don't have the resources to get as minutely specific as blogging allows for. So not only is Josh smart for knowing what he doesn't know and reaching out for input, so to should reporters learn to know what they don't know and search for those who do....

....But niche bloggers have the time and the passion to cover topics or angles that big news organizations just can't because the return on investment is too low or even non-existent.

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Companies often want to build online communities themselves rather the joining an established one (if one does exist). They think that by building their own community they will have some level of control. That's not a community, that's a cult.

Of course with some brands the loyalty their fans show is often compared to a cult. So perhaps a cult is the right type of society.

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Some companies get social media, others do not. The title of this post is a question I receive often while talking with corporations:

Do people actually get paid to monitor this stuff?

or on a similar thread

This is actually somebody's job to monitor this stuff?

There are two important things with that question that speak to corporations' thoughts on social media.

First is that fact that they're even asking it. Too often organizations see the world of social media as something that isn't worth their time. Or in this case paid time. Why would they pay somebody to do this? This speaks back to my 'Who are these people, and why should I care?' post. If they do have an interest in social media it's a viral thing. It's the, 'let's put out a crazy video and let the kids share it' thing that rarely works.

The second thing is a bit more subtle. It's the word 'monitor'. Using 'monitor' rather than 'participate' speaks volumes about their perception of the situation. It's hands-off. They recognize the fact that they have fans (or detractors) that are discussing their company, but they wouldn't dare talk to them (See: Corporations Visiting Blogs, but Not Commenting = Prank Calling?).

When I give corporations examples of other firms that are actually paying (GASP!) people to work as evangelists or community builders many still can't believe it. Perhaps it's the region of the country I work in, around here Community Relations is purely and offline thing.

One thing that Jackie Huba and other folks that deal with loyal customers will tell you is that a big fan can quickly become a big pain if they feel they aren't getting the attention they feel they deserve from the company. In many cases all they want is some basic acknowledgment for their loyalty. A simple e-mail or blog comment would work wonders in any situation.

Why aren't more companies climbing aboard the community express? Perhaps it's because many organizations neuter the social skills of the their employees via policies and legal barriers..."Don't ever talk to anybody about anything!"

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No need to go into too much detail on the recent Wal-Mart blog fiasco since Constantin does a great job recapping everything and giving advice. With Richard Edelman's recent apology post the issue will probably linger for a few more days. Of course what we'd all love to read is the backstory. How did it happen? Didn't somebody at some point internally say, "excuse me, I think we need to...." Perhaps one day that will come out.

For me the story was an interesting situation since I have a client that is considering a similar type of travel blog. From the start though we've always planned to disclose the relationship/sponsorship of the blog. In fact it's an integral part of the project. It would be hard to somebody to read the blog and not realize the relationship.

The question now is what would the blogosphere's reaction be in light of the recent Wal-Mart travel blog implosion? The other issue we might deal with post-Wal-Mart-blog-story is internal push-back.

From an external standpoint I think it all comes down to content and execution. An example I always point to is Vespaway. It's a blog that is sponsored by Vepsa, but the bloggers do a good job of not 'pitching' Vespa. Any corporate blog is going to be looked at very closely (and suspiciously) by the blogosphere, but if the content is good (and honest) it will work.

Internally it's about education. Showing and reassuring the client that this particular project will not be another 'Wal-Mart'.

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I run another blog that some might call hyperlocal. It deals specifically with Polk County, FL. Much of what I post are small items that would be overlooked by the traditional media in our area. But there will always be a need for journalists. Perhaps not in the current business model of newspapers, TV and radio, but the profession is needed.

While I try my best to 'report' on my other blog, many of the items are what I call 'lazy journalism'. Take a recent example. I posted about a local political issue that is going on. In typical blog style I summarized and linked-up all the relevant information and offered some opinion. At the end I posed a few questions. Now the power of blogs is that others can help contribute to the story and perhaps answer my questions (or maybe not).

As I mentioned in the post, I don't have the capabilities (and the time) to do an extensive investigative report, i.e. calling around to county and city offices to find out additional information. That's something that journalists do all the time and they have an extensive network of contacts and resources to get things like this done.

What will the future business model be? It's apparent that the traditional models need to change.

In the case of my 'lazy journalism' will something like Jay Rosen's NewAssignment.net be a solution?

At New Assignment, pros and amateurs cooperate to produce work that neither could manage alone. The site uses open source methods to develop good assignments and help bring them to completion. It pays professional journalists to carry the project home and set high standards; they work closely with users who have something to contribute. The betting is that (some) people will donate to stories they can see are going to be great because the open methods allow for that glimpse ahead.

With New Assignment I could post the question and then let a professional journalist take over, perhaps helping them in the process.

Will a collaborative newsroom like Media General runs in Tampa work? Over in Tampa the Tampa Tribune, TBO.com and WFLA Channel 8 all share the same space. I imagine there is a bit of redundancy in some of the positions so the staff could be reduced and still provide a good mix of coverage.

Will Reporter 2.0, i.e. the new breed of reporter that combines all the best traits of print journalism with a video/web skill-set take over?

In any case it's an exciting and painful time in the traditional newspaper business. I have a few young friends that are working during this time of change and I think they're generally excited about what is coming. Do their older editors share the same excitement? I don't think so.

With all the emphasis that is being placed upon new media and other types of collaborative journalism many old-gaurd editors are behind the learning curve. I always refer back to something I posted in 2005:

If these editors or publishers were interviewing for their jobs now, they would not be hired.

How is it they still have their jobs then?

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This morning Kevin O'Keefe of LexBlog and I were talking about legal blogs and the blog development world. (LexBlog is one of the leaders in legal blog development) During our conversation Kevin said something worth repeating:

In the past it used to be the large law firms with the biggest PR budgets that would get the work. Now with blogs, it's the smart folks who really know their stuff getting all the attention.

Of course this doesn't just apply to legal blogs. Just about any knowledge-based industry is seeing the same power shifts. If you're an expert, where is your blog?

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About a month ago I was at a school event and a local school board member talked about how they had completely blocked MySpace and other social networking sites. I asked why? Their stance was mostly based upon lack of knowledge (doesn't that sound better than ignorance). My first response was something like this:

In a simplistic view, your students are your customers (as well as their parents). Your job is to educate them. So you're telling me that there is a place where all your customers go, hang out, communicate and interact with each other and you don't want to be a part of that. In fact you want to ban it and discourage it. What does that say about you and your commitment to your customers (students)?

I told them I would be more than happy to speak with the school board or any other local officials to educate them on the world of social media and social networks. You would think they'd want to know. Alas nothing has come out of it yet.

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Stowe Boyd is doing what I figured would happen eventually with PayPerPost. He signed up for an account and has outed an advertiser and a blogger. You can read Stowe's whole post, but in a nutshell he quickly found a blogger that wrote about a service for payment and never disclosed the relationship.

How long before the entire list of advertisers is out? I'd give it a few weeks. Figuring out who is blogging for payment is very easy as Stowe discovered. Just Google the suggested copy and bingo. Or as a colleague pointed out, just visit the PPP blog and look at the comments. The majority of the people commenting are PPP users. Just visit their blogs and read away.

Like Scoble, I think the primary impetus for advertisers doing this is not wholly product mentions. It's Google juice. Advertisers are paying for links. Get 100+ bloggers to link to your site with a specific word and watch your Google position sky-rocket.

I've written some opinions before about PayPerPost which you can read, but the basic issue I have always had has been the disclosure thing. If bloggers were required to disclose the compensation for a post then I'd be all for it. As of now it's up to the blogger to decide if they want to disclose the payment/sponsorship. Some are doing it, others are not. That will always be the catch, and cause many people to deride the service.

Would making disclosure mandatory really hurt their business though? Probably not in the long run. Both parties involved would still benefit. Bloggers receive compensation and advertisers get links (and mentions).

Brian weighs in with his opinion about the funding of the venture, but I am closer to the issue here in Florida. I recently met Dan Rua who is one of the VCs involved with the deal. Dan's a nice guy and is doing good work funding start-ups in the Florida market (Lord knows we need that). Dan like many VCs sees an opportunity. Yes there are some issues with PPP, but if they would just handle that disclosure thing I think many people would drop many of their complaints.

Update: Jason Calacanis has some strong words.

Update 2: Here is a blogger that was rejected by PPP because they used 'rel=nofollow' in their links. In other words Google won't follow the link. So what matters more to advertisers on PPP, the blogger mentioning their product or the link?

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Evoca has launched a new service called EvocaMic in a limited test mode. The little Flash module below (must be on my web site and not using RSS) allows anybody to record a message via their browser and built-in microphone. It's voicemail for a blog.

Try it out and leave me a message.

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CVB's or convention and visitors bureaus are getting into social media in a big way. A few weeks ago I took part in a PRSA teleseminar for CVBs that was very well attended. There is a great deal on interest in the topic, specifically because so many people turn to each other (or total strangers) online for travel tips.

As a CVB you could teach yourself all this new stuff or just hire somebody. That's what the City of Philadelphia has done. They just snagged Annie Heckenberger.

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Dan Greenfield has a thought provoking post talking about bloggers as journalists. The opening sentences set the stage:

We have all experienced it – a news story runs about your company, but the reporter never contacted your company for a comment. Makes us mad and clients mad. Journalists should know better we say.

But how about when bloggers post a comment about your company or pull comments from a company blog without contacting the PR department? Are we still as angry? My guess is probably not.

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The Orlando Sentinel ran an article today about Facebook's new feature that allows members to list their preferred candidates in political races.

The popular online meeting place for college students recently unveiled a new feature that allows users to list the political candidates they support alongside their pet peeves, favorite quotes and goofy or inappropriate pictures of themselves and their friends. The site then takes users' political preferences, totals them and displays them in a poll that shows the support candidates are getting among Facebook users.

The new feature is the latest sign that everyone -- from corporations to universities to political candidates -- is tapping into social-networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace. And though it might not be popular enough yet to have a major impact on this election, one expert predicts it could become a crucial tool in future campaigns.

In Florida you can review who supports Jim Davis (D) or his opponent Charlie Crist (R) in the Governor's race

On Tuesday afternoon, Republican gubernatorial candidate Charlie Crist had 54 percent of the Facebook vote, while his Democratic opponent Davis had 46 percent of the vote. A little more than 3,000 Facebook users have listed their preference in the governor's race.

Now, who should do this? Well they shouldn't be over 30 to start with. The campaign outreach programs via social networks should be led by people in the same peer group as the users. Like any blogger relations program, the goal is to build a relationship and not to pitch news or events.

This new feature and story really highlight the research/listening power of social networks. Previously, to identify people interested in a particular topic you needed them to come to you, or spend some serious $'s on research. Now with a few minutes on Technorati you can find a few dozen or a few hundred people that share a common interest. Now all you have to do is connect with them.

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Community is the word this year. Organizations everywhere are trying to figure out how to build or become involved with communities surrounding their brands. The University of Florida it taking the 'build' approach.

This weekend UF will officially launch a community site for the Gator Nation at GoGatorNation.com. The site allows University of Florida alumni and friends from around the globe to upload photos and videos of themselves, sharing their Gator pride. There is also a discussion board for users to connect, see events, post jobs etc.

The site is currently in a soft launch now, so there are only a few photos and one video, but expect things to change over the next few days. The marketing campaign for the site begins with this weekend's football game versus Tennessee. I exchanged e-mails with Joe Hice, Associate Vice President, Public Relations & Marketing with UF earlier this week. Here's a quote from Joe:

The plan is pretty simple, our new :30 second television spot will air nationally during the Florida vs. Tennessee football game on CBS. The television spot encourages viewers "to continue the story, visit goGatorNation.com."

The new ad will also begin running on the Coach's Show, rebroadcasts of the game, Gator Beat and other athletic programming on Sunshine, Jefferson Pilot and other television affiliates. It will appear during every Florida football game this season as well as on televised basketball, baseball, softball, volleyball games and other UF sporting events. The university is not charged for the placements and we estimate the overall value of this program to be in excess of $4 million.

In addition, a new :30 and :60 second radio spot will begin airing during the game. The spot is designed to cut through the clutter of most of the other radio advertising during the game and it features a UF grad who is also an astronaut trying to paint the space station orange & blue, placing a Florida bumper sticker on the shuttle and playing the Gator Fight Song back to Mission Control. Like the television spot, we also receive radio time at no charge.

The Gator Nation campaign is part of a multi-year program to re-brand the university. Joe recently appeared at the FPRA Annual Conference and spoke about the UF/Gator Nation campaign.

At the University of Florida their focus is the 'Gator Nation'. All universities produce great research and great graduates, but the one thing that UF produces that nobody else does is Gators. The 'Gator Nation' has become the focal point for their branding efforts. Luckily, UF has a sports program that gets some national TV exposure. The university can use this free promotional airtime during games to air commercials to reinforce that brand.

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Over the past few months I have been at a few events where a speaker will say something and then quickly throw out a, "Is there anybody from the media here?" In other words, they just said something incredibly stupid and want to make sure it doesn't leave the room. In most cases there isn't a member of the media present, but as a blogger should I raise my hand?

For the most part I have no interest in exposing some local official's slight slip-up, but there are exceptions.

What officials and speakers need to realize is that we are all media. We might not all blog, but if something stupid/scandelous is said, it's going to get out.

This issue came up earlier this year when Sean Hannity spoke at a local university. The media was not allowed to attend the speech. My question back then was who is going to stop a student from blogging/writing about the speech on their MySpace page or Facebook account?

This isn't a 'blogger threat' it's just a reality. The ability for people to get away with (and say) stupid things is going away, which is a good thing.

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On Tuesday, September 26th I'll be moderating a panel at a joint meeting of Atlanta chapters of IABC and STC. The luncheon event will be held at Maggiano's in Buckhead from 11:30 am till 1:00 pm. It will be a discussion between corporate blogging pros from the Atlanta area.

On the panel are:

Toby Bloomberg - Bloomberg Marketing & Diva Marketing Blog
Dave Coustan - Earthlink's corporate blogger - blogs.earthlink.com
Mark Chernesky - Web Development Director for Turner Broadcasting

Click here for details or to register.

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I'll be taking part in a PRSA teleseminar next week on podcasting for the travel and tourism industry. The event is on Wednesday, Sept 13th from 2:00 - 3:30 PM EST. My role is mostly to introduce the concept of social media to the audience and provide a frame of reference for how all these new tools integrate with traditional public relations and marketing. The other panelists represent destinations that are currently using podcasting in their marketing/pr mix:

Katie Kasben, video programming and production coordinator for the Biltmore Company, operator of one of North Carolina’s largest attractions, The Biltmore Estate, which features the “Biltmore Insider” podcast on its Web site.

Bob Schultz, director of communications and public relations for the Indianapolis Convention & Visitors Association, one of the first CVBs in the country to incorporate podcasting with its “Doing Indy” podcast.

Check out PRSA's site for all the details.

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Update: If you've applied these tips to a conference blog, send me a link!

Having blogged a few conferences both on my own and with a team, I offer this quick 'how-to' for other groups looking to do the same. Feel free to use this to develop your conference blogging plan. Or you could just invite me to your conference :-)

At the most recent FPRA Annual Conference we had a team of four people blogging the event. Listed first are the tools we used. Following that, I'll talk some strategy.

The Tools

This is broken down into two major sections, hardware and software. As with everything, check to make sure all your tools are working ahead of time and that you know how to use them.

Hardware: Here is a list of the gear you'll need to lug around :-)

Laptop/PC/Mac - Obviously you'll need a way to post things online, laptops tend to work best at conferences :-) At this most recent event we had my PowerBook, two Dells and a ThinkPad.

Connectivity - You'll want some way to get online, either via wifi or a cellular technology such as Verizon EVDO. At the Ritz Carlton where the FPRA conference was held, there was not publicly available wifi in the conference rooms, but we had secured accounts in advance. As a back-up, one of the team had a Verizon EVDO card in his laptop.

Camera - Digital, point-and-shoot cameras work, but investing in a good DSLR will make a big difference. At FPRA I had a Nikon D70 and Chris had his Nikon D50. Make sure you have a way to easily transfer photos from the camera to your laptop.

Portable Audio Recorder - Some sort of device to record audio in digital format, MP3 is the best of course. I always carry an iRiver MP3 recorder. It features a built-in mic and a line-in jack to connect to external devices. A basic USB cable allows me to transfer the audio files.

Blog - Blogging a conference usually requires some sort of blog software :-) In some cases you can pick your platform, other times you'll need to work with the platform the conference is providing. For the FPRABlog we used MovableType.

Offline Blog Editor - Having an offline blog editor such as Ecto or Qumana can make a huge difference. Being able to compose your posts and then upload them in the proper format saves time. You might say, "I can use Word and then upload." Well sometimes that copy/paste from Word to the blog software can cause some formatting problems. An offline editor also helps when you have limited connectivity. At WOMMA this year we could not connect in the session rooms, but we could in the hallway. We would write our posts in Ecto, then step into the hallway to quickly post.

Flickr - If you're planning on taking more than a few pictures you'll want to use Flickr. The ability to upload, organize and include photos on your blog can't be beat.

Flickr Upload Tool - A dedicated Flickr upload tool can help speed things along. On the Mac I use the Flickr plugin for iPhoto from Connected Flow. I also have the standalone Flickr Uploadr tool installed. At the FPRA conference, our team installed the upload tool on their PCs as well.

Technorati - You'll want to use Technorati or some other blog search tool to track any conversation surrounding the conference.

Audio Editing Software - If you plan on doing any audio work you might need some tools to edit your audio files. In recent cases I have just posted the audio interviews as is without any editing. You learn to structure/format your interview in such a way that you can minimize or eliminate the need to edit your files.

FTP Software - Many blog tools have upload capabilities, but if you need to upload a large audio or video files FTP will work best. Like the Flickr Upload tools you can start a process and then move on to something else. Of course you'll need to have the proper username/password for FTP.

The Team:
Not every organization has the luxury of having a large blogging staff (whether paid or volunteers). You might be all on your own, but having some helpers makes a big difference. If you plan to cover everything, your lowest common denominator is the maximum number of breakout sessions. For example if at some point there are four concurrent breakout sessions you'll need at least four bloggers to get the job done. For a standard 2-3 day conference here is my dream team of 3-4 folks:

Blog/Tech Guru - This person is ultimately responsible for everything that gets posted. They also provide tech support to the other bloggers. In addition they can take photos/upload them and do audio interviews as needed. In a pinch they will also write-up sessions.

Bloggers (2-3) - These are folks that can write good reviews of sessions as well as recaps of other events. It's a bonus if they can do some outreach and find other blogs or references that pertain to the conference/topic.

Photographer (Optional) - If you can swing it I would suggest having a dedicated person to handle photography. Their job is to take photos and more photos then upload them. If only we could clone Scott Beale.

Continue reading "How to Blog a Conference" »

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Planning for BlogOrlando is coming along smoothly. In the past few days we've finalized the session schedule, dinner arrangements and theme park days.

As a quick refresher, BlogOrlando is an unconference I am organizing in Orlando (of course). The main event is Friday, September 22nd at Rollins College. The rest of the weekend will be spent at the Disney theme parks.

So far we have a great mix of local Florida bloggers and friends from around the country. Some of the folks flying in are:

Dave Coustan
Chris Heuer
Brian Oberkirch
David Parmet
Andrea Weckerle

Check out BlogOrlando.com for all the details or to register if you haven't done so already.

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Rob Safuto picked up on my post yesterday about corporations visiting blogs but not commenting. He disagreed with some of my points, which I addressed in his comments, but I wanted to play-off his final statement:

I do think that smart companies will monitor and get involved in blogs where their brand or products are mentioned. But I don’t think that those companies have a responsibility to respond to a channel created and maintained by someone else.

If offered the choice of dealing with a company that limits/restricts communication options to only those that they control or dealing with a company that is willing to communicate with you on your terms which one would you choose?

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A year ago today, in the wake of Katrina, I posted the following item: PIOs - Add Bloggers to Your Media Distribution List for Disasters & Emergencies

The same thing applies today. Why anybody would not want to use any and every available source to distribute their information in time of a crisis is a mystery to me.

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If you've ever written about a corporation and then watched your blog stats you'll know what I am talking about. You write a question or a comment about a company, we'll call it ACME Co., and then watch as during the day users from ACME visit your blog and check things out, never leaving a comment. (See Finding Hidden Gems in your Stats)

A friend relayed a similar story to me last week. They had asked a specific question about a service and then saw close to 30 unique visitors from the company read their blog. Any official contact from the company? Nope.

In some ways it's the equivalent of calling somebody and then hanging up. Hello....we have CallerID (they're called stats), we know it was you...how come you didn't want to talk?

It's a conundrum for many corporations, they'll look but won't touch. From my experience they just don't know what to do. Who is authorized to comment on behalf of the company? We're not allowed to visit blogs at work....Aren't all bloggers out for corporate destruction? etc.....

That poses the question. What's worse:

1. A company not tracking blogs that mention them
2. Repeatedly visiting a blog but never contacting the blogger

The quick answer is #1 since just listening to customers is a major step for many organizations. However, if a company keeps up the practice of visiting but not commenting it might cause the blogger to call them out. Last year the McDonald's fan blog McChonicles welcomed visitors from Burger King and McDonald's corporate. Basically he said, "We see you out there...."

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A few days before BlogHer I did a quick tag search for blogher on Flickr and ended up with around 1700 photos. As of 3:30 PM EST today there are now 3,900 photos. That's 2200 photos in the past four days or 550 photos per day or approx 23 photos per hour. If we figure 600 attendees then there are 3.67 photos per attendee.

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One of the cool people I have been able to meet at BlogHer is Amanda Lenhart from Pew Internet & American Life Project. Amanda is a Senior Research Specialist and was behind the most recent report on Bloggers: A potrait of the internet's new storytellers. Back in 2005 she also worked on a report about Teen Content Creators and Consumers.

I told her, "I cite your stuff all the time in presentations."

Amanda is coming off a whirlwind media tour with the recent release of the Bloggers report. Perhaps you read about it in the news or on the blogs :-)

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One of my hopes for blogging and social media as a whole is to change things that we've always put up with for no good reason. For example, waiting at the doctor's office. It happens to everybody. You have a 10:00 AM appointment, so you get there are 9:45 AM. 10:00 AM rolls by and pretty soon it's 10:30 or 10:45. Why do we all put up with it?

The opening session of Day 2 of BlogHer is titled: How are your blogs changing your world?

It will be interesting to hear how simple blog posts become something bigger.

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Andrea Weckerle tagged me as part of a new meme. Clicking on the link I also discovered that her blog has a new look.

Andrea asks what are the top five social media tools/sites that I use. These are in no particular order:

Flickr - photo sharing that is dead-easy to use. The majority of images I post to my blog are hosted via Flickr.

MySpace - A way to connect/interact with friends that don't blog.

YouTube - Like David, it allows me to get my fix for Joy Division and Ninjas

Technorati - I use it daily, almost hourly for searches, plus the watchlists make up a large portion of my RSS feeds.

Quimble - simple online polls that you can cut/paste into your blog.

This is the part where I am supposed to tag some other folks: David vs. Brian - blogger deathmatch.

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How many times have you heard the phrase 'Just Act Natural'? Usually the phrase is associated with you entering a situation that you:

a) aren't prepared for
b) aren't supposed to be in.

Now think about how this term applies to corporations and blogs. Many times, those of us in the social media space just say to a corporation; have a conversation with your customers, open up, or "just act natural". Easier said than done though.

The majority of social media gurus are independent and usually don't deal with the structure (read: restrictions) of the corporate world. We attempt to understand what it's like inside the crystal palaces but sometimes it's difficult. The thought of openly talking to their customers is as foreign to them as working 40 hours per week at a 9-to-5 job in an office is to me.

Some corporations have an established relationship with their loyal customers, take Southwest Airlines for example. Southwest blogging makes sense. Halliburton blogging does not.

I've had the opportunity to speak to a number of corporations recently and they're struggling with this topic. Can they act natural? Some just can't. The alternative is faking it, which never works out well in the blogosphere.

Where is this going? We'll see, I'm going to use a series of post to further flesh out this topic....

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Announcing BlogOrlando, an un-conference to be held in Orlando, Florida on Friday, September 22nd through Sunday, September 24th, 2006. What started off as an informal gathering of friends might just turn into something bigger.

Hyku, in partnership with Rollins College will host this FREE event that is open to bloggers and non-bloggers alike from Florida and anywhere else (so far we have one international attendee). We hope to bring together a good cross-section of folks to discuss blogging, podcasting, public relations, social media, citizen's journalism and other related topics. In addition to the Friday event we are planning some outings at the local theme parks over the weekend. This event is as much a social/family gathering as it is a 'work' gathering, so bring the family (kids included).

Shown below is a tentative schedule for the weekend:

Thursday (9/21): Travel day for most, perhaps an informal dinner that night
Friday - day (9/22): BlogOrlando un-conference at Rollins College
Friday - evening (9/22): Full-on geek dinner somewhere in Orlando
Saturday (9/23): Blogger day at one of the Disney parks
Sunday (9/24): Travel day, or stay an extra day at the Disney parks

As you can see the weekend will feature time at the Disney theme parks. We'll finalize what park we're going to do on which day. If we have a large contingent of families/kids coming in we can look to organize a Friday activity for those folks.

The original concept/title for this event was: Josh is Tired of Traveling Outside of Orlando so Everybody Come Here Con or JTTOOECH-Con. I wanted to get some friends to the area to meet, but more importantly spend some down-time at the theme parks with their families. Thinking about it more I also wanted to bring together some folks from the growing blog community in Florida that normally couldn't afford to travel out of state (and pay) for other events. I hope to achieve the best of both with this event. Of course having a draw like the Disney parks isn't a bad thing :-)

What will it cost? Nothing, well almost nothing. The un-coference will be free, but of course you need to get here and cover your hotel and theme park tickets. If you're from the area and only plan to attend on Friday, then all you're paying is gas and your lunch.

If you want to get a hotel reservation you can contact the EO Inn or the Embassy Suites in Downtown Orlando. Since this is an un-conference we don't have room blocks or special rates.

As more details become available I will post them here and over at BlogOrlando.com. I'll also have a registration form up shortly. For now if you intend on coming leave a comment below. Online registration is now available.

Update: upcoming.org link.

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Some of my clients are traditional media, i.e. newspapers and other publications. Within those industries there is a growing interest in citizen's journalism. What is it, how will it impact their business, how do they work with it, who are these people, why are they doing it, etc. Other major markets (California, New York, etc) have been discussing these issues for quite some time, often hearing from the true masters like Dan Gillmor and J.D. Lasica. Florida, however, is a bit behind the curve sometimes :-)

I often deal with traditional media that is just learning about the world of social media/CGM/citzen's journalism. When I discuss citizen's journalism I break it down into two segments: Active and Passive.

Active:
This segment is made up of individuals that are running hyperlocal blogs, contribute to local blogs or are participating in community publishing experiments such as BackFence or YourHub. The bloggers are actively seeking information and writing about a topic. They are also actively seeking readers that are interested in their topic.

Local Florida blogs such as Sticks of Fire and Urban Jackonville are constantly reporting/posting about news and issues within small markets. Are they actually reporting? That's up for debate, but the active participants have a true passion for local content. Many of the local blogs are updated on a daily basis providing stories and commentary on items that might never make the traditional media. As with most blogs, the comments of the visitors helps drive the conversation and spurs interest in stories.

Why do they do it? Mostly it's an interest in their local community. While some local blogs generate a small amount of revenue via advertising or Google AdSense, it's usually just enough to cover the bills. Some bloggers don't/won't even accept advertising.

What does traditional media do? Sometimes they try to court these bloggers to help provide content for community publishing systems they have implemented. However many of the local bloggers a fiercely independent and are not interested in working with the MSM. In some cases the local reporters will watch the local blogs for story ideas. Perhaps they'll credit the local blog with the tip, perhaps not :-)

Passive:
This segment is made up of the overwhelming population of regular bloggers. By regular I mean they just blog about their lives or a particular topic they are interested in. They might be on MySpace, Blogger or LiveJournal. They don't attempt to report or research and they aren't seeking local readers, they just blog.

So how do they become citizen's journalists? Well they don't don a 50's-era fedora and grab a notebook, they stumble into their role as a citizen's journalist. Or to be more accurate somebody else stumbles upon them.

Every once and a while your average blogger might write about an experience or event they witnessed. Perhaps a post about their recent vacation to Disney, seeing somebody famous, or a car shopping experience. These types of posts are then found by media or general readers via Technorati or Google. Something they wrote a few months or years ago suddenly becomes relevant.

Reporters are slowly becoming more savvy when it comes to using blog searches to find topics and leads. Searching blogs can open up an entire network of viewpoints and witnesses to a particular situation. So don't be surprised if one day you get a call or an e-mail from a reporter and they say, "I was reading your blog and....."

More Reporters:
Whether you want to call them reporters or not there is the reality that there are more eyes & ears on the ground. Yes there is some loss of privacy, but there is also a renewed interest in acting more responsibly because you never know who is watching (and blogging).

Take this recent example: The Future of Satellite Radio - According to Greg Wyatt.

I was at an event where Greg Wyatt proclaimed to an audience of PR folks that satellite radio was doomed and went on to discuss the future of radio. I thought Greg was a bit full of it so I blogged his quote. Somebody in the audience then told me I shouldn't quote Greg, my response, "maybe Greg shouldn't make statements like that in public." The blog post has pulled in a few interesting comments and is now on the front page of a Google search for Greg Wyatt.

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Congrats to Joey Marchy of nGenworks and Urban Jacksonville. The local paper in Jacksonville did a write-up on local bloggers and Joey was featured quite a bit.

In true blogger form, Joey has some comments/clarifications about the article on his blog.

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When Karen Russell from UGA saw this article in the AJC this week she immediately thought of the post I wrote about the use of blogs in 'writing' history years from now. The AJC article talks about the problems we're currently having the accessing old digital content:

"We need to preserve digital information in such a way that it will be intelligible in 100 years," says Abby Smith, a consultant with the Library of Congress' digital preservation program. But she and others say that when it comes to preserving digital records, a solution has yet to be found....

...At the National Archives, staffers are already experiencing such problems. The government began storing key military records, such as flight details, on computers as early as the Vietnam War era, says Kenneth Thibodeau, director of its Electronic Records Archives program. Today, those records of every flight in Vietnam "are sitting in obsolete tapes in an obsolete format," says Thibodeau.

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Some further thoughts on the relationship/battle between corporate media and personal media. The playing field is not level so it is difficult to accurately compare the two forms. Corporate media has research, staff, resources, etc, while a blogger may only have themselves, their readers and their passion for a subject. Each side attempts to hold the other to their own set of standards, which just doesn't work.

More and more media outlets are creating blogs. But going back to my post on blog misconceptions, are they adopting the tool or the style? Many are adopting the tool, i.e. the quick publishing of content with the ability to receive feedback from readers. But is the news still a lecture? Sure they have a blog, but if they're not linking, commenting and interacting with the readers then its not a conversation, it's a lecture.

The big question of course is will they be successful? Remember that in many cases their measure of success is revenue and page views. So we ask again, will they be successful? Looking at individual blogs there is a good chance they they might not. A blog does offer a beat reporter the ability to connect directly with those interested in their topic, but in many cases we're not talking about thousands of readers.

Taken in whole though, a blog network comprised of niche subjects and broader news and opinion based blogs can have a significant readership. This mirrors what is always been the case with the traditional newspaper, i.e. niche subject areas and the reporters that cover them are in a sense subsidized by the more popular content. That has always been the mission (or burden) of newspapers. If they just printed the popular news we'd have tabloids everywhere.

The newspapers that are learning (and doing it right) realize like many of us that blogs are a low cost way to publish. Suddenly content that could never find room in the print edition can be published online. At the Orlando Sentinel one of the popular blogs is Attention Must Be Paid by Elizabeth Maupin. Elizabeth blogs about theater in Central Florida and around the country. With her blog she has unlimited ink and paper to review and discuss the theatrical arts. But perhaps more importantly, Elizabeth can interact with readers that share her passion and interest. Is it a successful blog? In a passion/interaction sense it is, from a page view/revenue sense we'll have to wait and see.

In the next installment I will talk some more about the downfalls. What happens when they aren't successful? Will we see the traditional media say, 'Blogs don't work?' Those within the industry that never jumped on the blog bandwagon will say, 'told you so' while traditional bloggers will say, 'they weren't doing it right'. In my mind they'll both be right.

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There are some interesting discussions going on in the comments on a recent post I made about the relationship between social media and brands. John Wagner also weighs in on the issue, with some great comments from others as well.

Mike Driehorst thinks that I am oversimplifying some of my statements. I agree with him, but in my defense I use these general statements in the introductory remarks of my sessions with folks just learning about this brave new world. The statements are conversation starters, and they generally work well for that purpose. However when you read them on my blog, and not in the context of a longer conversation you might say "that guy is full of it!"

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Almost two weeks ago I posted: The Social Media Revolution v 0.8. Shortly afterward I attended Syndicate and a few other conferences which I blogged from, pushing the SMR post off the radar perhaps. That's why I am posting this little reminder.

I'll be taking a blog break over the weekend to catch-up on work, but if you have a chance re-read the post and comment if you like.

Have a great holiday weekend.

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Earthlink wants their users/fans to create some podcast ads for them. In the past they had used traditional radio spots in podcasts, but that doesn't go over so well. Hence the contest:

The EarthLink Make Advertising Better Challenge.

If you think the ads you've heard on podcasts are ungood, or if you'd just like to make an ad and have the chance at earning some prize money, you can create a jingle, spot, or testimonial and submit it at the URL above. Podshow.com will showcase our favorites as submissions come in, and we'll run the winners as EarthLink ads. The submission deadline is July 4th.

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Brian has posted the latest installment of what we're calling the PR 2.0 Gang podcast series. This latest conversation was recorded in New York during the Syndicate Conference. On the 'panel' are myself, David Parmet, Brian Oberkirch, Mike Manuel and Joel Richman.

You can catch up on previous editions here:

Episode 1: Live from New Communications Forum

Episode 2: The Social Media Services Gap

We plan to change the name a bit, develop a stand-along blog and launch this series as a regular thing in the next few weeks. More details as they come online.

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Over at the Technorati blog Peter Hirshberg writes about the partnership between Technorati and Edelman to develop localized language versions of Technorati. Richard Edelman briefly mentioned this on his panel at Syndicate last week.

Technorati is accelerating the development of fully localized versions of our service in Chinese, Korean, German, Italian and French. These will be moving through development and testing over the coming months and will be complete, public products in early 2007. (Technorati today can show posts in 20 languages, but so far we've only done completely localized versions in English and Japanese).

Edelman is providing support for this accelerated development effort and will have access to these new sites as they are in development and testing this year. They will be working with their international clients on how to listen to and engage the blogosphere.

Update: Richard Edelman posts about the announcement.

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During the Building a Business Case for Podcasting panel at Syndicate, Heather Green from BusinessWeek said this about reporters using new tools such as blogs and podcasting

"Reporters are becoming multimedia. They need to be able to do this."

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When asked to give a broad definition of social media in layman's terms to those involved in public relations/communication I say:

Social media encompasses everything that is written, spoken and shown about your organization that you have no control over.

Perhaps this analogy will help draw more firms into the landscape to rectify the social media services gap that Mike originally talked about.

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Here is the audio from the breakout session on Structured Blogging.

Syndicate-Structure.mp3

On the panel were:

Jen Consalvo - AOL
Eli Chapman - Mediatronica
Constantine Gus Spathis - PubSub
Chad Dickerson - Yahoo
Scott Abel - The Content Wrangler

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Here's the audio from the morning keynote by Steven Schwartz of Reuters.

Syndicate-Reuters.mp3

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Here is the audio from the Syndication and Community Development session.

Syndicate-Community.mp3

On the panel were:

Pete Blackshaw - Nielsen BuzzMetrics
Bill Schreiner - AOL - AIM
Jason Levitt -Yahoo

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Update: Turns out I do have the audio, here it is.

Syndicate-SMS.mp3

I jacked into the audio panel to record this session, but the line level was nill so I have no audio from this session. I didn't take any notes since I was intent on listening/participating.

On the panel were:

Dave Panos - Pluck
Peter Negulescu - San Francisco Chronicle
Peter Horam - AllBusiness.com

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Here is the audio from the final morning keynote from Syndicate. It was a spirited discussion about the future of RSS.

Syndicate-Grokking.mp3

On the panel were:

David Geller - WhatCounts
Mike Davidson - NewsVine
David Sifry - Technorati
Eric Ella - Brightcove

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Here is the audio from the keynote session on Building Brands Through Compelling Podcast Content:

Syndicate-Brands.mp3

I know quite a few of the people around me didn't agree with many of Scott Sigler's views, so let the discussion begin.

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Spurned on by Shel's comment on my last post about personal media vs. corporate media here are a few more thoughts about the impact of blogs on society (not just media). I put a version number on this post because I'm really not done with it yet, but I want to get feedback from others. Then perhaps we can get to v 0.9.

The Social Media Revolution v 0.8

During her keynote presentation at New Communications Forum in March, 2006, Rebecca Blood, discussed how the industrial revolution is remembered just as much if not more so for the social changes during that era than the mechanization of industry. Of course during that time in the early 1800's everyone was amazed at the 'new-fangled machines'. In the moment they couldn't see the far-reaching changes that the society was going thru. A hundred years removed it became easier to see.

Like Shel (and many others) I think that the current social media revolution and to some extent the 'blog bubble' we're in right now will be remembered more for the social changes than from a technological/tools aspect. When I speak to groups I always say that one of the higher goals of blogs and all citizen's media is for people and organizations to act more responsibly. Is that what this era will be remember for?

The Renaissance was characterized by the spread of knowledge that led Europe out of the dark ages. Today, the internet allows for an untold ability to share knowledge, but the new part of the equation in this social media revolution is voice. We can all contribute. In a hundred years will the the history books (or e-books) title a chapter: The Social Media Revolution?

They say history is made by those who write it, well the bloggers are the ones doing the majority of the writing now, 1.2 million posts per day at last count. To put things in perspective think about the Civil War for a moment. The letters written by soldiers and early photographs offer a glimpse into their lives as well as society in the mid-1800's. Historians told us what the major events were, and in most cases it was the winner of the war writing this 'history'. Those soldier's letters often let us know what 'real life' was like. Who the people were that participated in that history.

Now back to the present. Today, hundreds of thousands of people will blog about what happened to them and to others. They will upload thousands of photos and video to sites like Flickr and YouTube. The social lives of millions of teens will be chronicled on MySpace. Events, social issues, etc, can all be seen from different perspectives. We don't have to rely on one source for information.

Imagine what historians will be dealing with a century from now when they look to frame this era. Their job will be to sort through these millions of posts, photos, and videos to piece together not only what happened and why, but perhaps more importantly who we were and how the events we saw affected us.

Yes, the overwhelming majority of blogs posts are personal in nature and intended only for a small audience, but so were those soldier's letters.

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The past few times I have spoken as part of a panel or a program at a PR or media event a similar thing happens. Somebody speaking before me that represents what we can loosely term the 'old guard' complains about the current trends related to blogs, new media, citizen's journalism, etc.. The issues are (choose all that apply)

- The youth don't read/watch newspapers/traditional media
- Paid subscriptions are down
- Blog aren't credible
- There is no fact-checking
- We can't make money
- Only a few people read blogs
- (insert your own choice here)

Media worries about revenue, page views - PR worries that they can't just deal with the same contacts/journos they've always dealt with, plus how do they bill for this stuff?

What is my response to the 'old guard'? Depending on the audience I am speaking to it's either: a) Deal with it or b) Like it or not they're not going away. Of course that's not all I say. What I begin with is something like this:

As we've just heard from X, these are the major issues that face your industry. But guess what, these problems, (problem, being your word, not mine) are not going away. You need to learn to work in this new reality. I understand that identifying the problem and acknowledging it is the first step, but consistent complaining about how things are changing (for the worse in your minds) isn't solving anything. Let's start by learning about this new world and how you can live in it.

Will corporate media be able to adapt? Should they? When talking to groups here is an anecdote I always use:

In the early 1900's I used to make a ton of money delivering ice to homes in the city. People needed it for their ice boxes. Then one day some jerk invented the refrigerator and I'm out of business. What do I do?

Let me think. I have all these trucks driving all around the city. Maybe there is something else I can deliver? Like refrigerators!

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Mark Cuban breaks down the difference between traditional/corporate media and blogs. There are a number of great quotes in the post, but here is one:

Bloggers drive blogs, share price drives traditional media. Blogging is personal, traditional media is corporate.

Which is exactly why blog readership is going up, while traditional media is consolidating, if not contracting. Traditional media goes to work, bloggers live their work.

As Mark says, bloggers are not confined to a single role. We can report, opine, question, joke, switch subjects and take a few days off. Reporters often don't have that freedom and flexibility. The next few years will see some interesting changes. Good and bad things always happen when business models are changed drastically.

Will the blog bubble burst? Perhaps, but not in an economic way. Most likely in a hype way. Most bloggers don't do it for money, they do it for 100 other reasons, so an economic bust won't stop them.

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