Media Bullseye

Red, White, and Blue edition

2009-07-02T20:18:32Z

Radio Roundtable
Red, White, and Blue edition
Katie Harbath Joins the Roundtable
by Media Bullseye Staff

This week Roundtable host Jen Zingsheim and co-host Chip Griffin, founder and CEO of CustomScoop, were joined by Katie Harbath. Katie is the director of Online Services at Washington-based DCI Group, and was recently named one of 2009's Rising Stars by Campaigns & Elections Politics Magazine.

Click here to listen to the 28-minute discussion.

First topic for the day was an upcoming issue of Vanity Fair magazine that profiles Politico. The article is a great read and provides some interesting insight, but what the Roundtable focused most on was the appeal of niches, the limitations of niches, and what other news producers can learn from Politico's success.

Next, the group returns to the familiar topic of whether content wants to be free. Malcolm Gladwell recently reviewed Chris Anderson's new book "Free: The Future of a Radical Price," in the New Yorker. Anderson responded on his blog, and the Roundtable discusses what the definition of "free" is, and how compensation for content can be defined.

Finally, Todd Defren's recent post asking what "social media evangelists are looking to accomplish," specifically with respect to the enterprise, spurred some discussion, with the Roundtable participants concluding that the individualized nature of social media makes it hard to pinpoint exactly what could be the end answer to this question.

Click here to listen to the 28-minute discussion.

Motivated by Mobility

2009-07-02T18:05:23Z

Motivated by Mobility
by Wayne Kurtzman

Small changes in technology can have huge impacts. Back in the late 1980's Americans were spending 24 percent more minutes on the telephone. The root cause to the Pew Internet and American Life Project was the introduction of the answering machine. Although less than three in 10 homes had one of those big boxes in 1987, they were responsible for the increase call-backs and additional calls.

If the answering machine can do that, what does the mobile Internet do to and for us today? Fortunately, the Pew Internet Project also released a study on their findings. I've tried to share enough information so you can identify business segments and perhaps gain insight on how to work with these segments, be it for sales, or just working with people who fall within each category.

I've been vocal in my belief that mobile devices are a significant game changer. It is a fast-growing access method for Facebook and Twitter. Even Flickr now supports photo upload with mobile devices. That people are motivated into the digital world by mobile devices is now the cornerstone of the Pew Internet Project's second typology of information and communication technology (ICT) users.

Thirty-nine percent of adults have seen their online use grow as their mobile device dependence increases. While I am going to focus on this group, it bears noting that the report shows 61 percent of adults "... do not feel the pull of mobility - or anything else - [leading them] further into the digital world." It is this number that I find staggering, as they keep emerging technology, entertainment, and communications at a distance.

Mobile devices afford a great number of platforms to their users. Collaboration, social networking, texting and other forms of communication make each device almost as unique as the needs of the person with the device. Not surprisingly, the study revealed a wide variation in attitudes and opinions of what the mobile technology means to them, and it wasn't always positive.

You probably know people in each of the five groups that the report identified:

Digital Collaborators use information gadgets to collaborate with others and share their creativity with the world. Making up eight percent of the adult the general population, this group had the widest scope of online activities, greatest collaborative efforts and to quote the report, "the greatest number of information gadgets of any group." They have a voice and are most likely to share that voice on their own blogs and commenting on others. They prefer to watch TV programs on non-TV devices, and 82 percent of this group frequently gets news and music from online sources. They appear as the early adopters who are at the forefront of both the technology and behavioral changes. While not in the report, advertising to this group is a bear, but they are loyal when you get them. Other research shows they want the one-on-one communication with a company through social media networks.

Ambivalent Networkers, and you have to love the name, are heavy users of mobile devices to connect with others and entertain themselves. With seven percent of the adult general population, this group doesn't always like it when their cell phone rings. This is the "on the go" crowd, text heavily, been online for nine years and own an above-average number of communications tools, and almost all for portable use. While 91 percent of this group makes most of their calls on their mobile devices, they do not associate those devices with either personal or professional productivity.

Media Movers use their online access to seek out and share information nuggets. These nuggets make their way through these users' social networks via desktop and mobile access. This group, seven percent of the adult general population, views mobile connectivity as a way to keep in touch with family and friends, rather than a productivity tool. They are more likely to welcome a call than most groups, especially to discuss an information nugget that they shared.

Roving Nodes users, nine percent of the adult general population, are similar in number and some characteristics to Media Movers, but they are much more mobile. They use their mobile devices to connect with others and share information and e-mail is their central tool. They are not particularly comfortable in sharing content, using social networks or taking traditional media in new directions. They are comfortable purchasing in cyberspace with 83 percent having done so.

Mobile Newbies lack robust access to the Internet, but they like their cell phones. Eight percent of the adult general population, only 39 percent of the group has Internet access on their phone. Most have not ventured further than dialing the phone and really border on the group that does not feel the need to be involved in collaboration, information finding nor sharing.

Our customers and employees come from each of these groups. The question becomes how you bridge communicating with these diverse groups. Specifically, how do you get them talking to each other.

As more people continue to get motivated by mobility, late adopters will join the party and the bridge building will be easier. For now, training, sharing and collaboration with a good dose of fun is always a good place to start.

Four Reasons to Get Back to Blogging

2009-06-30T17:45:27Z

New Comm Roadmap
Four Reasons to Get Back to Blogging
by Bryan Person

Twitter has killed my blogging output, and I'm not proud of it.

Like many of my colleagues whose jobs include regular communication and interaction across social media channels, I've been lured into a format that makes content creation a snap (hey, only 140 characters!) and that features near-instant feedback to just about any query, thanks to a plugged-in network of followers. Once you get over the do-I-really-need-to-know-what-my-friends-are-eating-for-breakfast? phase, there are more than enough reasons to get hooked on Twitter.

But when all that Twittering comes at the expense of blogging, it's worth asking whether you're making the best use of your time. Because even though blogging isn't as immediate or trendy as its microblogging counterpart, it has never really stopped being a valuable communications channel for businesses, media outlets, and other content creators.

There are plenty of reasons why a serious return to your more prolific blogging ways of yesteryear still makes sense. Here are four of them:

1. Control of your content

Know what happens if Twitter and its single-point-of-failure setup collapses under the weight of an #IranElection deluge or otherwise goes poof in the middle of the night? All your tweets are gone, and you have nothing on the web to show for it.

But if you publish a blog on your domain, you own the content.

2. The power of search

Twitter isn't bad for real-time search on in-the-moment topics, but it's unlikely that your brilliant tweet from two months ago will show up in the search engines. In fact, even hashtagged posts disappear from Twitter search after just a few weeks. Your Twitter account is really only as valuable as what you put into it today.

Conversely, on a blog, the long tail rules. As you publish regularly and attract a steady stream of incoming links over time, your blog becomes more attractive to search engines. The seminal post you crafted two years ago about the top 10 microphones to use for a recording a podcast? It will continue to garner traffic from the search engines.

Blogs are a natural fit for search, too. The keywords in your titles, the permalinks for each individual post, the alt tags you use to label your photos, and the linkable nature of the medium are all music to Google's ears!

3. A digital home

Chris Brogan often writes and talks about a home base and outposts. Your Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, and YouTube accounts are your outposts-content locations and points of interaction on external sites and social networks-but your blog can serve as your home base, that digital landing spot of authority for your online work.

As you create media at your outposts, find opportunities to drive readers, followers, and friends back to your blog. Treat your home base as the place for producing media that, as Brogan writes, matches your personality and business goals.

4. Depth

Let's face it: While you can get mighty creative inside 140 characters, a tweet just won't cut it when you want to go into any real detail on a subject.

A blog affords you a larger canvas on which to produce a well-thought-out essay or analytical piece (or the occasional off-the-cuff rant); mix media, including images and video; and demonstrate your enthusiasm and/or expertise in your subject area.

Plus, as an unintended bonus, you could discover the antidote you've been seeking for your incredibly shrinking attention span!

Bryan Person is the social media evangelist at LiveWorld. Connect with him at his home base-BryanPerson.com-and at his @BryanPerson Twitter outpost.

Crisis Prevention Red Flags

2009-06-29T20:00:00Z

Reputation Management On the Line
Crisis Prevention Red Flags
by Jonathan Bernstein

In my opinion and experience, 95 percent of crises are preventable.

That's right, when I've "reverse-engineered" crises that have occurred to my clients over the past 25+ years, crises about which I have sufficient information to reach truly educated conclusions, pre-crisis red flags were usually present - and ignored.

Over time, I've seen significant commonality in those red flags, so let me give you a quick list that you might be able to apply to other organizations with the goal of preventing crises.

Information choke points. Too much critical information and/or decisions go through a single person or very small group of people. When that flow gets heavy, the information clogs that choke point the same way the flow of too much material, too fast, can clog a drain - at which the backup starts increasing exponentially. Some of that information may be critical to preventing a crisis - and it's just sitting there, useless, at the choke point.

Irreplaceable people. It's good to have people so good that you consider them to be irreplaceable, right? Well, not necessarily. If a certain person - and it could be a very competent admin assistant as easily as it could be your CEO - is the only person who knows how to or is authorized to perform a certain task, what do you do when they aren't available? When they are out of town and unreachable? When they have stepped in front the proverbial truck? No one should be that irreplaceable; any of their functions that may be critical to crisis prevention or response need to be learned by one or more backups.

Human arrogance. I conducted a recent survey at LinkedIn regarding the primary cause of crises. The top answer was "human arrogance." Followed closely by "playing ostrich/denial." The two are closely related and often take the form of "it can't happen here" syndrome. Which is not unlike realizing you're about to go to hell and saying to yourself, over and over again, "It's not hot and I'm not here."

Lack of policies critical to crisis prevention. Certain policies are more critical to crisis prevention that others, such as those regarding:

o Information security.

o Who speaks for the organization.

o Email protocols on-site and off-site.

o Safety

Lack of training to go along with policies. Any policy without initial and refresher training is meaningless. In the morass of policies employees at most organizations have to read from point of hire onwards, the ones they remember most are (a) the ones most important them personally, such as pay-related policies and (b) those that they are reminded about, over and over.

Omniscient decision-makers. Some organizations have key decision-makers who, in practice, act as if they are omniscient. They are highly capable in certain fields, and surround themselves with staff and/or consultants who are equally capable in their respective fields - but then they don't listen to the latter. Only to their own "inner God." With predictable results.

For organizations that want to prevent crises, there's a process I've created called a "vulnerability audit," about which you can read more here. That process ferrets out these hidden flags, after which an organization can decide how to reduce or eliminate its specific vulnerabilities.

Sadly, some of the omniscient decision-makers, after paying for such work to be performed, decide they don't need to do anything with the results. They forget that there is no such thing as inaction and that they are--de facto--deciding to have future crises which could have been prevented.

About the Author: Jonathan Bernstein is president of Bernstein Crisis Management, Inc., an international consultancy and author of "Keeping the Wolves at Bay: A Media Training Manual." Contact jonathan@bernsteincrisismanagement.com.

The Misanthrope Edition

2009-06-26T19:37:10Z

Radio Roundtable
The Misanthrope Edition
Donna Papacosta Joins the Roundtable
by Media Bullseye Staff

The Radio Roundtable is back this week, and host Jen Zingsheim welcomed co-host Chip Griffin, founder and CEO of CustomScoop, and special guest Donna Papacosta of Trafcom News. Topics covered this week included a critical analysis of the role of Twitter in the Iranian election aftermath, the growing problem of spam on Twitter, and question whether early adoption of social media has led to social media fatigue.

Click here to listen to the 26-minute discussion.

With the luxury of a look back and with a little time for reflection, how big of a role has Twitter really played during the Iranian election aftermath? The group discusses Todd Defren's strongly felt post on the topic, but is it possible that communicators (and the media) are overstating the impact Twitter has had?

Next, Habitat, a higher-end retailer, faced some backlash by using hashtags such as #Iran and #Mousavi to drive sales via Twitter. And Connie Reece recently did the unthinkable considering her views on Twitter--she locked her Twitter updates, due to spam, porn, and other problems with newcomers trying to game the service...and Guy Kawasaki's account got hacked. What do all of these problems mean for Twitter in the long run?

Finally, is social media fatigue making us grumpy? Geoff Livingston has stated that social media is dead, Beth Harte doesn't care for social media leeches, and Doug Haslam is getting impatient. Have we spent too much time contemplating, discussing, attending conferences, and writing about social media?

Click here to listen to the 26-minute discussion.

Crowdsourcing Salespeople

2009-06-25T17:32:35Z

Crowdsourcing Salespeople
by Wayne Kurtzman

Once upon a time, people would buy what they needed at stores. These were buildings where helpful salespeople would match a customer's needs to the products the store carried. Later upon a time, people would pick up a telephone, which is something like a cell phone connected with copper-wire. They would talk with well-spoken, knowledgeable salespeople that would help guide their purchases. Now upon a time, the salespeople are being replaced - by us.

Frequently, we need help with a purchase. We need guidance, information and frequently reassurance that we are making the right buying decision. When we call a company to help us with a purchase, it may be to get the "fuzzies" of hearing a human voice. It may also be because we can't find the content we need on their web site.

Selling has always been about relationship building. As the web started to grow selling sites, the relationship part was missing. Amazon was one of the earliest adopters of using the voice, if not the wisdom of the crowds who came to their web site.

This "crowdsourcing," the use of the online crowd to replace a function (in this case salespeople) is effective and its use is growing. eCommerce web sites without online communities will have a hard time catching up with the amount of content that their competitors have generated. And it is the content that draws people to eCommerce sites like flies to sugar. We want diverse opinions to help us reach a buying decision.

From Best Buy to Zappos and CDW to PC Connection, there are customers asking for the guidance that you and I can share. After all, they would rather take the advice of a stranger over a salesperson. And so would we. Sure, some of the reviews are planted by competitors, perhaps even by the manufacturer, but we believe that we can read through that. The more opinions that appear on the site, the better it is for customer and company alike.

Yelp.com is a standalone community that continues to grow, breaking 25 million monthly users in May, according to Compete.com. Yelp is based on your experiences with restaurants, services, and night life ... and about anything else in a given community. By making their content easy to reach and navigate on mobile devices, their content and membership is growing - and becoming a better predictor of where we should be spending our money.

Best Buy takes you from leaving your comment page and asks "Would you like to answer some questions about other products in this category?" They try to keep you engaged on the site, and speaking your mind. Their new TXT service, (not yet fully rolled out,) will allow you to get product specs from your cell phone. And it is fast.

The reason that everyone wants your content is simply that CONTENT = $.

They want your word of mouth in their communities, and to engage with you one-on-one through Twitter and Facebook. They want to retain your mindshare, and the better companies work hard to make sure that you stay happy. @ComcastCares and @Zappos work very hard on Twitter to reach that goal. Dunkin Donuts leverages Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter to keep your interest. They've launched their Dunkin Run application for your computer or iPhone that makes you the office hero with a run for coffee.

These companies realize that they do not control their company's message. In fact, no company controls "their" message. Word of mouth, the person-to-person storytelling about a brand is what becomes our perception of a company or brand. And our perception becomes reality. Some companies are smart enough to have a seat at the table to politely correct errors, and share information of general interest.

Business continues to move toward having us share our opinions and be, in some way, rewarded for them.

People continue to be a more social and mobile society.

Still, there are an amazing number of companies who are putting this move off. Big, respected companies are hiding their head in the sand the way many missed the coming of the Internet.

It's just hard to be social with your head in the sand.

The Forgotten Social Media Tool

2009-06-25T17:00:00Z

Old Media, New Tricks
The Forgotten Social Media Tool
by Robert Quigley

Facebook just surpassed MySpace in total monthly U.S. visitors, and now it is estimated that everyone's mother has a Facebook account. Twitter's growth has slowed quite a bit, but it's still making sensational headlines, this time surrounding the controversial Iranian election and bloody aftermath.What has been forgotten in all the excitement over the rise in social media is online bulletin boards. Before you scoff, I argue they should not be overlooked.

There are countless bulletin boards out there, for just about every niche possible. Millions of people spend hours a day on these boards taking part in communities that are often more close-knit than anything that Facebook or Twitter can inspire.

Nakisha Thomas, the director of customer satisfaction for Invision Power Services, told me this week that Invision, a bulletin board provider, has about 25,000 paying clients. Invision, which we use at the Austin American-Statesman to host our Longhorns sports board (http://forums.hookem.com), is neck-and-neck with a company called vBulletin in providing bulletin boards for a fee.

Besides the tens of thousands of boards sold to Web sites by these two companies and others, there are countless sites that use one of the many readily-available free bulletin boards out there.

There are boards for just about every possible niche, from hunting to knitting ... to local news. Despite being decades old, online bulletin boards have aged well. The flexibility and tools they offer to a community manager have been perfected over time - and the rise of the headline-grabbing social media sites hasn't hurt business, Thomas said. "Overall, we haven't seen a decline in demand," she told me.

Media companies often use bulletin boards for niche topics, such as sites for moms. It works well on moms sites because bulletin boards make it easy for parents to share advice and experiences about raising kids. The same is true with sports and other topics.

If you aren't familiar with boards, or haven't visited one in a while, you might be surprised by the available features, including advanced moderation control (often with many levels of control), robust community profiles, RSS sharing, easy photo and video sharing and more.

The moderation control on a well-built board makes a community manager's job somewhat easier (though it's still a tough job). I highly suggest that the community manager identify and deputize some honest, good users. Give those users the power to delete posts and perhaps even punish bad community members. If you get a good group of deputies, you can reward them with access to secret parts of the board and better icons, etc. - it's amazing how that can do the trick. Having community members empowered to police their own is a cornerstone, in my opinion, of any successful online community.

At the same time, like any community, trolls can ruin things. At a South By Southwest Interactive Festival panel that included Fark.com's Drew Curtis, trolls were a big topic of conversation. Fark has banned thousands of users, and Curtis made it clear that he thought the best way to deal with bad apples was through aggressive action. He might be on to something.

The good news is, once you clear your community of trolls, you'll find there are a lot of people who will really care about you community. And the online bulletin board format really fosters that.

When it comes to exciting new social media applications, it's easy to dismiss bulletin boards as not being worth the time. But if you are able to build a strong, faithful community on your site through a bulletin board, you'll find that the people who become regulars are the type who hang around your site a long time, post links to your stories and talk about your products. It's hard to dismiss that.

Robert Quigley, the social media editor at the Austin American-Statesman, writes a media blog with Daniel Honigman at http://oldmedianewtricks.com

Social Media Measurement, Part 2: What I Really, Really Want

2009-06-22T20:53:49Z

My Story and I'm Sticking to It
Social Media Measurement, Part 2: What I Really, Really Want
by Mark Story

In my last article, I made an unflattering reference to the Spice Girls and expected to be flamed in the comments section from Spice Girls fans. Or at least by David Beckham. Oh, wait. There aren't any Spice Girls fans anymore.

But back to my point. In my prior article, Part One, a "For Immediate Release" podcast (and call-in) discussion got me thinking about "what I really, really want" out of a monitoring service. There are many good ones out there who will capture information - the sort of information that lies under rocks, and a few will actually pre-sort the wheat from the chaff and provide useful information. But in 15 years in the public relations agency side, one and a half on the client side and a nascent consulting business, I have never, EVER seen anyone do measurement right.

I bow at the Altar of Katie Payne, who to me, figured out the public relations answers long before any of us knew the questions. What is the burr under my monitoring saddle is the fact that most agencies continue to digest and regurgitate the worst possible statistic: "impressions."

What are "impressions," you might ask?

At one agency, we said that it was circulation times 2.9, accounting for "pass alongs."

At another agency, I was told that their measuring stick was 2.5. It just was.

At another, impressions were circulation statistics.

Know what? Like all of the Spice Girls, the above just STINK.

What Stinks

The first rule of managing up in any job is that you never offer up a problem without a solution, so here you go: If you want to know what you "really, really want," it's not impressions, it is "messages communicated."

Again, this is attributed to Katie Paine, but she are I are in violent agreement about this topic. When an agency measures impressions and presents them proudly "You garnered 73 million impressions last quarter," I pull out my knife. What impressions does NOT measure is:

Was your article on A1 above the fold, or right across from the obituaries?

Were your key messages in the article?

Where did your key messages appear in the article? In the headline, the sub-head or the first paragraph? Otherwise, the chances that they were read and understood decrease by 50 percent.

What Doesn't Stink

Again, I encourage everyone who reads this to pick up a copy of Katie's book, "Measuring Public Relationships," about measuring messages received in a much more powerful statistic - and one that very few technologies or agencies provide.

Here's the deal. Usually a human being, and less often, a piece of software, need to read the article, determine how many pre-defined messages appear in the article and give weight to each. For example, let's say that you are analyzing a piece that has messages from your point of view and those opposing you. Fair and balanced, right?

Not so much. I wish I could have counted the number of times that I have been called by the press for the "obligatory quote," the one that usually appears at the bottom of the article that says "Mark Story, a spokesperson for Company XYZ, said that all of the above is crap."

That quote, although it is a message communicated, is not equal to those that appear above it. So if your agency is measuring messages communicated, the score might be Them = 3, Us = 1. BUT - and this is a big BUT - if your competing messages appear higher in the article and are more favorable to the other point of view, they count more. People don't read entire articles anymore.

I have often wondered by more organizations don't use this golden statistic of messages communicated - and even better cost per messages communicated - but I don't want to steal too much of Katie Paine's gems. The best analogy that I can leave you with is window-shopping vs. buying. Can you imagine this conversation?

Retail store boss: Yo - Schmendrick! How many of those dresses in the display window did you sell today?

Retail store flunkie: We didn't sell any, boss, but the great news is that 547 people walked past, saw it and MAY have considered purchasing the dress!

Sound ridiculous? The equivalent of this happens every day in thousands of companies when touching on media measurement.

"Messages communicated." It's what I want. What I really, really, want.

Mark Story is a part-time, adjunct professor at Georgetown University, Director of New Media at the SEC in Washington, D.C and writes the "Intersection of Online and Offline" blog. Coincidentally, he hates crappy measurement. Prior to the government, Mark worked for 15 years in some of the largest online public relations shops in the world. Follow him on Twitter at mstory123.

The Kindle and Media Mini-Evolutions

2009-06-19T20:28:45Z

New Tools, Old Rules
The Kindle and Media Mini-Evolutions
by Doug Haslam

All media must crawl before it can walk.

After reading about the launch of the latest version of the Amazon Kindle, I had a couple of thoughts:

I'm not buying one of the things, but if they give me one I bet I'll love it. Think of Gillette giving away razors so we then buy the new blades. Amazon can make money off me selling electronic books, newspapers and magazines.

The durn thing is in black and white! What?

Regarding the first point, I understand the Kindle is not a commodity they can give away--yet. However, the price point is steep for one who considers himself an "early observer" rather than "early adopter."

As for the second; how can the Kindle replace our current reading media if it doesn't come in color? The answer? Every change in media comes with its own mini-evolution. To illustrate, think of a more high-level evolution of communication:

Cave drawings

Oral/speech

Text/written

Printing (add pictures back)

Movies

Audio

Video (television)

Color

Portable media (audio, video)

...and so on. Granted, this is over-simplified, and many things overlap.

How does this relate to the Kindle? Think of the way some of these media evolutions overlapped, and repeated. Movies were silent, then added sound, then added color (not strictly in that order, but for simplicity's sake I'll call it that way). Television started with black and white and tiny, low-resolution screens. Gradually, color was added, resolution improved, and even distribution and content opened up.

Audio-only media has had similar evolutions. I'll just pick one out of the group: the transistor radio. Music sounded terrible, but it was portable audio in a way we could not have imagined prior to the transistor's invention. Eventually, the transistor gave way to better-sounding "boom boxes," the Walkman with hi-fi headphones, the Discman, and the iPod and its cousins.

Why drone on about disparate media innovations? I think the Kindle is repeating history. People embrace the utility despite its limitations (the original transistor radio, the lowly black-and-white console TV), and gradual improvements will be added as technology allows and in response to demand (color TV, hi-fi Walkmen).

The Kindle is still crawling. I have to think that color is coming, as I can't imagine reading many periodicals--and even many books--without having the full visual element. I suspect that's coming. I also suspect improved audio, visual, and interactive elements could come as well.

I understand the limitations of the Kindle. I suspect the Kindle will continue to catch on, and improve with each generation. I'm still waiting for a color Kindle. And for Amazon to give them away like razors. I'll buy the blades.

It's quiet...too quiet...

2009-06-19T20:19:39Z

Radio Roundtable
It's quiet...too quiet...
by Media Bullseye Staff

Please pardon the two-week absence of the Media Bullseye Radio Roundtable. Host Jen Zingsheim had the good fortune of escaping to Tuscany for vacation, and Chip Griffin had meetings to attend.

We will be back next week for another scintillating discussion of all things communication, PR, and social media. Have a great weekend!

State of the Twittersphere (and Our Secret)

2009-06-18T19:36:51Z

State of the Twittersphere (and Our Secret)
by Wayne Kurtzman

It's like Christmas morning, all eight nights of Chanukah and your birthday in one day! Boston marketing software company Hubspot has released their 2009 State of the Twittersphere Report. The funny part is I really don't know if I'm being sarcastic: I just look forward to reading, and reading in between the lines of this report.

Twitter is the social media network that everyone knows, but seemingly few know how to use. Those of us who've learned the ways of Twitter love the edge it provides: contacts and relevant information. The Hubspot report relies heavily on their web tool, Twitter Grader, to draw results. On the up site, that includes measuring some 4.5 million users - or roughly 1 in 4 Twitter users.

Twitter is based on following a person who interests you - or subscribing to what they have to say (their "tweets"). Follow the wrong people and it looks like you're reading your junk e-mail. Simply "unfollow" them and search for people who share your interests with content that is relevant to you, and things get better quickly.

Daily Twitter users will not follow you unless you have certain elements, like a profile with your interests, changed the default avatar to a photo, or at the very least, tried to share and be social. The report found several of these misgivings were more commonplace than I would have expected:

• 79.79% failed to provide a homepage URL like a blog, LinkedIn page, etc.
• 75.86% of users have not entered a bio in their profile. I must assume they are interested in nothing.
• 68.68% have not specified a location (Make up your own joke).
• 55.50% are not following anyone's tweets. Hint: click the 'find people' link and look for shared interests.
• 54.88% have never tweeted (communicated). "What good is sitting alone in your room . . . ?"
• 52.71% have no followers (people subscribed to their tweets).

My analysis of these numbers: Most people were not social and do not get that being social is more about sharing what you love than waiting for someone interesting to find you. Imagine being on Facebook without any friends. That's how you start off. The best way to act is as if you were at a business related social function. Listen and meet people one at a time. Talk to those people with whom you share a mutual interest.

It takes three to four weeks to search on people who may interest you, and follow them. And then you can unfollow your mistakes. It's no different than setting up a professional network - it takes time to find the right people.

And never confuse followers with influence. It is better to have sincere influence with 50 people than no influence with 1,000.

The report states the Twitter is growing 5,000 to 10,000 new accounts per day. Last year, this report stated that more than 80 percent of users shared their interests in their bio line in Twitter. This year, only 24 percent of users felt it necessary to share that with others. Not very social, is it?

This explains why so many users drop off: they don't see the relevance in Twitter because they just don't know how to use it. They jumped on the bandwagon, but were never made aware of how this thing works.

Harvard Business School's report on Twitter said that "the top 10% of prolific Twitter users accounted for over 90% of tweets." I think the HBS study (with 300,000 random users) has their percentages a little bit too extreme, but they and the Hubspot data (4.5-million measured users) can be read that people bail out and don't learn how to use the platform.

Thus, I will repeat Wayne's basics for personal users who wish to start on Twitter:

Listen, listen, listen. Use a tool like tweetgrid.com and type in words of interest to you. You will be amazed at the conversations and knowledge being shared.

Follow 20 people who are the most interesting. Don't tweet yet.

Decide who you are: What is your personal online brand? What will you say, and what won't you say. Learn what others are saying and see what bores you and what interests you.

Use the 'find people' link from the Twitter page and find 20 people within your area who are interesting.

Add 10 news sources and let the news follow you. Search local and international sites.

Look for a few people to follow closely and find a mentor. Don't tell that person they are your mentor - you'll just weird them out.

Change your icon to a photo. One of you would be nice.

Add a one line bio. Share a bit with us.

Speak to others as you would like to be spoken to. Speak plainly and frankly; share articles you are interested with and remember, you can't take things back.

Don't tell me you're going to the movies. Tell me, in 140 characters, what you thought of the movie. Even better, blog about it and tweet a link to it.

While every one else is hearing how people are leaving Twitter, we can keep the secret: It's still the best place to be exposed to more useful ideas per minute than anywhere else on the planet.

Lessons From the MarketingProfs 2009 B-to-B Forum

2009-06-10T21:33:18Z

Lessons From the MarketingProfs 2009 B-to-B Forum
by Nathan Burke

This week I was lucky enough to attend the 2009 MarketingProfs B-to-B Forum held here in Boston. I say I'm lucky because I was able to go for free, as they were kind enough to give me a press pass.

Before I dive into the specifics of the conference, I should probably back up a little bit and give a little context. Before my most current gig, I was still doing startup marketing, but only in the B-to-C realm. The idea of having a product to sell that actually costs money was completely foreign to me. It's a little bit easier to blast out user acquisition campaigns when the user doesn't have to pay a red cent; it's an entirely different story when you introduce the subtle art of separating a person from their money.

Now that I'm working at a B-to-B company with a product launch on the horizon, the timing of this event couldn't have been better. I had the following questions in mind:

What are some lessons learned by other startups when it comes to lead generation that would be useful to someone coming out of the gate?
While social media and community building are all the rage, what are the actual results companies are seeing in conversion compared to time spent?
How do you balance SEO and creating content that is really engaging when you're really trying to sell something?

To me, the third question is the hardest. Everyone knows that the key to driving quality traffic to a site is to create useful, compelling content that speaks to what customers want. But in the end, the goal is to make a sale, so finding the balance between "hey, we have something to sell you if you're interested" and the Billy Mays style of in your face, aggressive sales pitches is a difficult one. So with those questions in mind, I hit the sessions.

I. Day One

Session 1: Bringing SEO In-House Without Missing a Beat

The description:

Many companies are considering bringing SEO in-house to save money, but doing so is challenging. It's usually done with a lot of trial and error and often has a detrimental impact on the program. In this session, we'll show you how companies are bringing their SEO programs in-house wihtout missing a beat. You'll discover real-life examples about how companies are implementing SEO in-house across the globe.

At a startup, bringing SEO under the marketing umbrella is a necessity. With constraints in both time and budget, it's just not feasible to work with an outside agency to handle the SEO tasks. Since I'm planning the PPC campaigns, developing the link building strategy and creating all the content, it just makes sense that SEO would fall into my bucket. So despite the description, it seemed like this session might be perfect for me.

The speakers were Jessica Bowman of SEOinhouse.com and Bill Scully, the Director of E-Marketing, Siemens Water Technologies. Though Jessica was supposed to go first, she wasn't there, so Bill jumped forward and gave his half of the presentation, which focused on the daily, weekly, and monthly SEM tasks that he employs:

Daily SEM tasks:

Listen to SEO and Online Marketing Podcasts- Downloading and listening to them going to and from work.
Reading SEO/SEM Newsletters and Blogs
Check Twitter Account for breaking news
Keep a journal- Keeping a log of tests and changes
Check Analytics

Weekly SEM tasks:

Analyze web logs and reports for:

Key campaign traffic changes
Goal changes
Overall Traffic Changes
404 errors
Linking Generation Reports

Monthly SEM tasks:

Attend WebEx
Audit site/templates
Check all no-follows are still in place
Make sure robots.txt file is still correct
Check custom 404 Page is still working
Check redirects are 301 and go to the proper pages
Update XML site map

Yearly:

Put together a 1 and 3 year SEO strategic Plan
Budget
Review staffing, service, training needs

To me, the session was just okay. The only reason I say that is that it was the wrong presentation for me, as the target audience really was the marketing rep from a big corporation looking to take more control of their SEO efforts. So, if I were from a large company looking for advice into how to get more $$ for an in-house PPC campaign, this might be a really informative session for me. I'm definitely not knocking it; I'm just not the right audience.

Session Two: Developing Robust Online Content to Keep Prospects and Customers Engaged

I was really excited about this one, as I love Christopher S. Penn's presentation style. He always gives usable, actionable tactics that can be tried immediately. That's a rarity in a lot of conferences I go to. There's a lot of high-level social media kumbaya, "join the conversation" talk, and things like that, but Christopher does an awesome job of giving real-world takeaways.

This session had 5 panelists:

Philip Juliano VP, Global Brand Management & Corporate Communications, Novell
Valeria Maltoni Director, Marketing Communications, SunGard Availability Services
Chris Penn CTO, Student Loan Network
Mike O'Toole President and Partner, PJA Advertising and Marketing
Matthew T. Grant Moderator, Doctor of Philosophy, Thought Ronin

As the panel started, the moderator seemed to really have a problem with people typing during a presentation. He asked that everyone close their laptops and refrain from blogging, using twitter, etc. Of course, no one complied, and the twitter stream that ensued was very funny. Being the rebel that I am, I took a few notes from the session:

MG: How do you manage the conversation so the message stays consistent on different platforms?PO: At some level you can't, when people are creating their own content about you, that's somewhat out of your control. It's important to be consistent, but not lock-step. You have to let people say their own things and let the personality come through. I've always been impressed with AutoDesk which has over 100 employee blogs. They do it well.

CP: Take a list of the top 100 customers you have, and go to twitter, facebook, blogger, etc and find out how many of them are there. If it's a high percentage, you want to spend some time there. If they're not, you're probably going to waste your time. Another example: go to those same 100 customers and ask them where they spend time online. Great example: I was sitting next to an 80-year old grandmother on a plane, and she was stereotypical to a T except she had a kindle. I asked why, and she said that everyone at the senior center has one and loves it because you can change the text size to make it as big as they way. I asked "do you read blogs on that?" she said "what's that?" I then took a look and she'd subscribed to a dozen blogs. I asked "what's that?" and she said "oh, that's the news." The takeaway: People are talking about you and your industry/products, but they may be doing it in different places using different

Though the presentation wasn't focused on giving any new information, it was an excellent way to reinforce the ideas that I think most marketers are familiar with, but don't always do. It's difficult to have a strict process to come up with relevant keywords, create content to go after those keywords, measure how the content is doing, etc. It's a hell of a lot easier to blog your ass off and hope good things are going to happen (ahem, what I've been guilty of a LOT), but I think the results prove otherwise.

Session 3: Website Development & Analytics: Building the Optimal Website That Delivers Business Results

The description:

B2B Companies need their websites to be their first sales call and their lead nurturing system. In part one of this two-part session, we will show you how to get your brand positioning front and center on your site, while also creating a navigation and content structure that moves buyers and influencers through their decision process and become qualified leads. We'll show you examples of several website renovation projects with different challenges where all necessary components of a new web site were built in from the beginning- SEO, analytics, and set up to guide continuous improvement of customer experience and engagement.

Talk about a session custom-made for my current situation, right? Well, that's what I thought. Unfortunately, the presentation just felt wrong. Now, I've already admitted that I come from the B-to-C side, and my BS detector is cranked way up. Because of that, I felt like the presentation was just an hour long commercial for the agency putting on the show. With a bunch of slides showing logos of their customers, case studies that talked about the services they provided, etc., I felt like I was sitting in the audience of an infomercial. I completely understand that there's a balance, and that the speakers are there to give their business a plug. I get it. But the only real advice I derived from the session was: Just call us and pay us. We'll take care of everything for you. Again, I'm new here. Maybe this is the norm in B-to-B conferences, and I'm wrong for calling these guys out. I just hope not.

II. Day Two

I didn't attend the sessions on Tuesday, but have been following the twitter stream. It seems like everyone in attendance is live-tweeting from the sessions, and nearly every presentation is available on the marketingprofs site. Looking through the twitter stream, Tuesday's focus was on the big question: "Sure, we understand social media is great and that it can increase traffic, sales, etc......but how do we measure it?" Ah, measurement. We marketers sure do like our stats, don't we? And though on some level we just want to have mountains of data just because, there are reasons for our affinity for numbers. First, we're often called upon to justify our existence by proving that our programs are actually adding value to the business. Additionally, we need metrics to show us which programs are working and which are sad old dogs. And when something like social media enters the picture and we can't add our tracking code to things like facebook, twitter, and linkedin, the tendency is to panic. Well, Katie Paine came in to talk the b-to-b marketers off the ledge. First off, she said something that was retweeted many times:

HITS stands for How Idiots Track Success

I think that makes a lot of sense. When trying to understand the ROI of social media, things like mentions, referrals, and impressions are nice, but they don't really tell you anything about the success of your campaign. When your end goal is to make a sale (or register users), you need to find out which campaigns are bringing in the conversions. I think that Chris Penn said it best in his presentation:

If you're selling a gulfstream jet that costs $94 million and you have a podcast with 100,000 listeners, but no one is buying, you're wasting your time. If you have a podcast with 3 listeners and 2 buy the planes, you're going to Maui for the next 2 years.

Forum Takeaways

B-to-B marketing is completely different from B-to-C. Things like blogging, using twitter, and participating in all forms of social media are all brand new to B-t0-B marketers, as they just haven't had the ability to test them out. In the startups I've worked for, I've always had the ability to try something out and see what sticks. In bigger companies, that's just not possible.
Social media scares big b-to-b companies- The marketers at this conference seemed to have a sense of anxiety about understanding the emerging social technologies. They don't know how to feel about not having control of their message. They dread seeing negative comments about their brand on blogs.

Now, before this starts sounding like I'm bashing b-to-b folks, I want to make something abundantly clear: these aren't value judgements. Instead, they are the natural emotions associated with an ENORMOUS change in the way business has been done in the past. What I saw during this conference was the acceptance of the fact that social media is something B-to-B marketers can no longer ignore. It was the admission that blogging and other social technologies are no longer to be considered kid stuff.

The days where a company can set itself apart from the competitors by simply having a blog, a twitter account, and a facebook page are gone. This conference proved to me that being involved with social media isn't something that will put you ahead of the curve as a b-to-b company. Instead, it's going to be the price of admission.

Nathan Burke is the marketing manager at Aprigo, a Waltham, MA based company developing a suite of SaaS Data Management Applications. You can read his blogs at Blogstring.com and MarketingStartups.com

The Art Of The Leak

2009-06-09T21:57:23Z

Digital Citizen
The Art Of The Leak
by Katie Harbath

The way your traditional communications and public relations professional leaks a story usually follows the same route: Schedule a press conference; send out the advisories; pick one news outlet to leak story a few hours ahead of time; hold the press conference; schedule surrogate interviews; and repeat. While it makes sense at the outset, the above series of events drives me nuts and I'll tell you why - it does nothing to address the Internet age we live in.

We live in a day and age where the main provider of information is Google--in fact, 74 percent of people used the Internet for information in the 2008 elections. Furthermore, social networking is the fourth most popular online activity--even ahead of email.
Considering all this, just two weeks or so ago, President Obama announced Sonia Sotomayor as his pick for the Supreme Court. However, it boggles my mind that when the leak came out, there was no web site or Google ads - people looking for information on the nominee were stuck with Wikipedia. Even as I write this column there is only one organization buying Google ads off of her name.

I've seen it time and time again in politics where the traditional communications and public relations professionals forget about the Internet. They've become lemmings when it comes to how you perform a leak, and any deviation from that process is swiftly dismissed.

Now, a few politicians have started to dabble with the web, but they do it as a hook (i.e., politicians announcing an intent to run for office via YouTube). That's great and all, but I've seen where leaks are made the traditional way and then go on YouTube. Or they put it up on YouTube with no follow up. Still all wrong.

The reason this all bothers me so much is that with any announcement, you only have a small window of time when people care enough to seek information about you. You can capture their information to keep them involved, but in today's Twitter world, that "window of time" is often a nanosecond. People will research the announcement at the first instant they hear of information: They're not going to wait around after the leak to see what else is to come. In no time, they'll be on to the next trending announcement on Twitter.

In my ideal world the leak of big news would happen like the way I've listed below. I'll use Sotomayor's nomination as an example - both for what the White House and third parties should have done - and whether pro or against.

1)      Before an announcement or decision is made, organizations know the people on their media short list and have been gathering information on all of them. While doing this, reserve pertinent URLS - do it privately if you don't want people to know it was you - and start to mock up some very simple sites. Launch these sites when the decision is made and then change the header and copy to fit the nominee. Keep the site password-protected until the appropriate time.
2)      Write the search ad copy for all the potential nominees and get approvals from the appropriate people. Set up accounts and put on pause.
3)      Research and possibly reserve social media handles and profiles to the potential nominee names.
4)      If you are the White House in this scenario, and the time comes to make the announcement, update your site with the appropriate header and copy with the nominee's name. Go ahead and leak the name to the outlet of your choice. Just remember that no matter who receives the leak, they will put it out on Twitter before anything.

a) A few minutes after the leak is out, take the password protection off of the site you built and turn on your search ads. As people hear the nominee's name and start searching for information, your ads appear and will bring them to your site, and not just Wikipedia.

5)     If you're not the White House in this scenario, it will take more time to update your site with information as you wouldn't have had it ahead of time.   Yet, if you have your research done ahead of time and the pick isn't totally out of left field, you should be able to get everything done and up within the hour.
6)      After the site and ads are up, immediately get your social networks going. Get your information posted on Facebook, Twitter and Friendfeed and keep updating it throughout the day and the nomination process.
7)      As surrogates and other representatives go on TV, news articles are written and radio interviews are conducted. Down capture everything you can and put excerpts on YouTube, your web site's blog, Delicious, Digg, etc.
8)      Once everything is together and humming along, utilize your sites analytics and tools. Items such as Google provide insight to see what people are searching in addition to your nominee's name. Based off of the results, adjust your content and ads accordingly The aforementioned sounds like a lot, but if everything is prepared ahead of time and it's all done quickly as the news is leaked, it will do wonders in terms of ensuring that people get the information you want them to receive. An added benefit is that this method will help gather emails, donations, or any other activity you want people to do with regards to your news!

Katie Harbath is the Director of Online Services at DCI Group. She has more than 5 years of experience in the online political sphere including work during the 2008 and 2004 Presidential Elections. Her personal blog is at www.katieharbath.com and she's on Twitter @katieharbath. The opinions expressed in this article are solely those of Katie Harbath.

Reinventing Email In Their Own Image

2009-06-05T20:28:40Z

Reinventing Email In Their Own Image
by Wayne Kurtzman

E-mail is more than 40 years old, but what would it look like if were invented today? Google Wave answers that question with "a new tool for communication and collaboration on the web." And frankly, it will change the way kids learn in school, families communicate and keep in touch, and encourage collaboration in a way that can fuel amazing innovation.

Google Reinvents E-mail in Their Own Image

Google Maps engineers (and brothers) Lars and Jens Rasmussen with project manager Stephanie Hannon showed "a very early version" of Google Wave at the Google I/O developers conference in San Francisco last week. [Introduction video | Additional resources].

Like any innovation, it will be hard to describe what it can do without showing it to you, but I'll give it a go.

E-mail was developed to be similar to the postal service. We knew what a letter was (or is), and that familiarity helped in the eventual mass acceptance of e-mail. Google Wave takes the social networking, documents, videos, photos, and instant messaging that digital natives are comfortable with and incorporates them in one place: the "wave."

"A 'wave'," according to Google, "is equal parts conversation and document, where users can almost instantly communicate and work together with richly formatted text, photos, videos, maps, and more." And it is not only a collaborative platform where others can share their content and skills, but it all happens in near real-time.

Google decided to make a large part of this open source, effectively making the base code available for nearly anyone wishing to develop additional program extensions. Think of these extensions as the add-on programs you can use with the Firefox web browser. Google Vice President of Engineering Vic Gundotra said plainly, "We need developers to help us complete this product." And when he says complete, he means creating anything and everything you can imagine to extend the abilities of Google Wave.

Contrast and Compare: E-mail to Google Wave

In this example, you just sent an e-mail to several family members to determine where the family vacation will be this year. Even if you're lucky enough to have everyone you wanted copied on the e-mail in the first place, their responses will still scatter across your inbox spanning days or weeks making it difficult to quickly read.

Google Wave allows you to add those family members to the "wave" and ask the question. The wave keeps everything together, even as people add photos, links to reviews, maps, videos and almost any other data element to the wave. Just drag and drop them onto the wave. Each wave takes up the equivalent of one line in your inbox regardless of the number of responses.

When Aunt Sophie found out about the trip, she wanted to go as well. You reluctantly added her to the Wave. She can now see the Wave back to the first question, and step through it one reply at a time with the "playback" function. Think of it as rewind and fast forward on a video. And yes, you can hide responses to individuals in the wave.

Unlike e-mail, attachments are not being sent back and forth. This hosted solution means smaller data transfer with more types of data at a faster speed. It will transfer the larger content files if and as you need them. Google will make mobile devices a big part of the Google Wave solution. That means you will be able to share the sights and sounds of the vacation within the Wave.

Congratulations! You had a great trip! All the families can now use the same wave (or a new one) to simultaneously share their photos and caption each others' photos in live time. You can all be simultaneously adding to the wave and populating the family blog if that is your choice. Choices are abundant and they are strangely intuitive.

Take the same abilities from the trip example, and apply them in writing a school report on a complex subject. Edits are marked so you can see who made them. Any instant messaging you would have done is part of the wave with the document, video, sound and images. The teacher, if part of the wave, can even check the progress of the report and offer a few comments or suggestions.

Since Google is an e-mail provider for many universities, this will almost ensure quick adoption among a large 18-23 year old group that values productivity (a.k.a. personal time) and is comfortable in a social media space.

To be clear, I do not know if this will be part of the educational or business e-mail solutions, but this is too good not to use.

Bottom line: This is going to become super popular very quickly. Remember those people in the 1980's who didn't want to use computers? Don't be one of THOSE people now - you will be plowed under quickly. Learn the benefits of social media and get comfortable with procedures and practices.

The ability to innovate at an unbelievable speed, make errors and learn from them a faster pace is what could make this a killer application. (Please note: this is the first time I've ever used that phrase in my writing).

Now add in the tens of thousands (or more) developers who can integrate gaming, business-specific applications and almost anything and everything else within this platform, and you can't help but have a winner.

Now let me put on my darker hat: Google is a master at connecting buyers and sellers through gaining as much data from you as possible. They try to keep those connections as relevant as possible for you. It is unclear how this will be leveraged within Google Wave. The amount of content that will be shared by individuals will be tremendous, but in some ways, so will be the benefits to the user.

Google should take the lead of the open source community with regard to content ownership - it belongs to those who developed it. Google Wave's ability to document the evolution of an idea will clearly show the content that led to innovation and should ultimately help determine who should own the patents and copyrights.

The Shortest Show Ever

2009-06-05T19:48:31Z

Radio Roundtable
The Shortest Show Ever
by Media Bullseye Staff

Jen Zingsheim, host of Media Bullseye's Radio Roundtable flies solo this week. Since she's not prone to having full discussions with herself--and almost never argues with herself--on the show she simply highlights three topics from this week's social media landscape and leaves you, intrepid listener, to ruminate on the topics for yourself.

Click here to listen to the 4-minute solioquy.

First, how different would the world view Tianamen Square had social media existed then as it does now? Are bloggers and individuals the only reliable sources of news in repressive regimes?
Next, Mitch Joel points to some interesting numbers coming out of Deloitte's workplace survey. If employees aren't thinking about what they post online and don't think it's any of their bosses' business anyway, what's the best way to protect a company's reputation?
Finally, BusinessWeek Editor in Chief John A. Byrne discloses that he had to "bribe" reporters to engage online. Jen isn't really sure what to make of this, but thinks each evolution in media has brought reporters one step closer to their audiences. Short of having a reporter over for dinner, interacting on Twitter is probably closer than most people get to those who deliver the news.

Click here to listen to the 4-minute soliloquy.