Let’s face it. Seth Godin’s blog is a wondrous thing. It’s consistently No. 1 or No. 2 on the Ad Age Power 150. More importantly, it’s pure insight. At least once a day, every day, there’s a little homily on marketing, or brands, or quality, or on something else that makes you say “hmmm” or “that’s right” or even “that’s wrong” – but something that’s worth your time.

Do you have any idea how hard this is? Nobody else does this.

When I contacted Seth to interview him about his blog, he was bemused. “I don’t know how to bottle what I do,” he wrote. “I just do it.” OK, let’s admit you cannot imitate Seth – you don’t have what he’s got under that bald head of his. But I am hoping you can learn by observing some of what he does. So here goes: an email interview with Seth Godin about blogging:

The clarity of your posts tells me that you have a clear idea of your audience and what they will get out of it. On the other hand, from reading you for years now, it seems you’ll write on just about any topic. When you write a blog post, who do you imagine writing for?

There are things we do with words in mind. For example, it's easy to say, "I wonder what my cousin would like for her birthday, let's see, she's twelve..." and then go find something. There are other things we do without vocalizing. Tying your shoes, say, or picking out a bouquet of flowers. 

I don’t sit down and say, “I wonder what Josh needs?” Instead, I’ve carefully curated a voice in my head that blogs in a way that appears to resonate with people. I’m guessing (though I have no talent) it’s a lot like curating a sound on the saxophone. Training helps, listening to records helps, but mostly you blow a lot until you resonate and then repeat, prune, experiment, prune, repeat, prune until a groove occurs.

One reason I encourage people to blog is that the act of doing it stretches your available vocabulary and hones a new voice. You won’t get it for a while, but you’ll get it. To one person who wrote in and said he didn’t think he had anything interesting to say, I asked him whether he was boring in person too? Boring at breakfast? Boring on a date? That boring?! Probably not.

Every blogger needs grist for the mill. In looking at your posts, they’re sometimes based on current events or other people’s blog posts (like your post on Malcolm Gladwell’s review of Chris Anderson’s book Free) but more often than not, they are just some freestanding insight. Where does this stuff come from? I can’t imagine that you sit down and it just comes pouring out. What do you read/follow/think about that stimulates this stream of insights?

How come some people can visit a place like New York and see a thousand amazing things, take hundreds of great photos (like Thomas Hawk) or even write a novel... and other people visit, eat at Applebee’s and send home a John Lennon postcard?

It's not where you go, it’s what you look for.

An insight a day is an incredible pace to keep up, but you never seem to miss. Do you write ’em in bunches and dole them out daily, or do you always have a pile that you’re working on, or do you really just write one every day?

I write at least one a day. I queue up the extras, and replace ones I don’t love with a new one. This discipline does two things... first, it treats each post as a precious opportunity (which it is) and second, it cajoles me into overcoming whatever little voice in the back of my head says, “nahhhh.”

Your blog doesn’t sell ads, and you’ve resisted becoming TechCrunch or ReadWriteWeb and turning it a sort of blog/destination with multiple writers. But the blog must reward you in some way beyond the pleasure of writing. What does your blog do for you and your business?

I have a problem with the second part of the question. Two problems, actually.

First, why is it that once business gets involved, it’s assumed it’s okay to do things that aren’t fun or rewarding or kind or generous, but only things that make money?

And second, why is it assumed that people can’t do business-like activities without getting paid?

Those guys at AIG getting the big bonuses? I don’t understand the mindset that says the millions they’ve got aren’t enough, that they shouldn’t skip a quarter or two, that the work is so horrible and grinding and deadening that they couldn’t possibly consider doing it just because they’re great at it and love it...

Sorry for the rant, but the only reason I blog is because I love it. I love being able to create something that feels like a gift, giving an idea that spreads, that may improve something for someone. I’m certain (just speaking for myself) that if I figured out a way to profit from it, I’d probably be starting down the road to wondering how to maximize that profit, and if I tried to do that, I’d fail.

For example, I don’t mention Squidoo.com (a company I started) on my blog now and then because it would make me money (the mentions have so little impact as to be less than the cost of hosting), I mention it because I genuinely want to share what I’ve got, or give people a tool they will benefit from.

I think there’s plenty of room for blogs that exist to pay the blogger, or blogs that exist to turn a profit. That’s just not the kind of blog I’m writing, and I’m not the kind of blogger that could do that.

Your blog accepts trackbacks but no comments. You respond to emails but Twitter only links to each post. I sense a carefully considered set of decisions here. Can you help us to understand why it works that way?

What works for me of course won’t work for everyone. But for me, the issues are distraction, time management, the little voice of self-doubt and the desire to push through the Dip of mattering. Comments and Twitter are like a Fresnel lens. You can use them to focus attention if you’re very disciplined and very good, or, if you’re like me, you’ll end up finding your energy and attention diffused into a maelstrom, lost to the winds of inanity, anger or trivia. It’s in my DNA. I can’t do it, just as I can’t read in the car.

For those that are succeeding (and I have to confess, the number I see isn’t as big as you’d think given all the hoopla) I say mazel tov. To those that are using it as a defense mechanism, an opportunity to stay busy while not actually doing anything, I wonder if that’s a good choice.

Like Guy Kawasaki, whose blog is also full of delightful little nuggets, you could edit and reorganize your blog into a very nice book. Ever considered it?

Where, exactly, do you think Guy got the idea, Josh?

http://www.smallis.com

If I wasn’t the first bestselling author to do this, I was close. I even won a fancy audiobook award for it. It inspired Scott Adams’ book too, which is better than mine.

I have another collection coming out along these lines, but in a different format that I hope to announce soon...

I said before that people couldn’t imitate you, because they don’t have your software between their ears. But I bet there is something you’ve learned from blogging that the rest of us might be better off if we did it, too. Which of your habits should we imitate?

Oh, I think imitating my habits is a great idea. Habits like blogging often and regularly, writing down the way you think, being clear about what you think are effective tactics, ignoring the burbling crowd and not eating bacon. All of these are useful habits.

Thanks for the questions, Josh. This was fun.

More than just a straight profile, Osnos explores China’s media scene and how Shuli (and her Caijing magazine) manage to avoid getting jailed while writing some of China’s raciest journalism.

Two choice quotes:

Xinhua reports the news before it happens:

Last September, Xinhua published a story on its Web site detailing how China’s Shenzhou VII rocket made its thirtieth orbit of the earth. The story had plenty of gripping detail—“The dispatcher’s firm voice broke the silence on the ship.” Unfortunately, the rocket had yet to be launched.(The news service later apologized for posting a “draft.”)

How Caijing lets others take the lead before publishing:

In political-corruption cases—which are acutely sensitive—Caijing’s investigative reporters often collect information for weeks or months while they wait for an opening. In many cases, once Xinhua makes a brief announcement of an official being arrested, Caijing is ready to publish a full story.

When, on June 8th, Xinhua issued a one-sentence report saying that the mayor of Shenzhen had been detained in a corruption probe, Caijing posted an in-depth piece twenty-nine minutes later.

Technorati Tags: Evan Osnos, Hu Shuli, New Yorker

By now, many of you have seen or heard about the Dave Carroll YouTube video and how United Airlines’ baggage handlers mangled his guitar.  It once again demonstrates the power of authenticity, creativity and compelling content to grab attention and send PR executives reeling. 

Before I begin, I don’t want to beat up on United Airlines, but what happened last week is a case study on why companies need to take videos and their online response very seriously.  They did speak to reporters, but as this post will show, key social media channels were neglected.  And I am not privy to all the behind the scenes efforts that went on to work with Mr. Carroll and other upset passengers. I only see what the public sees.

The numbers of YouTube views and Twitter tweets are just staggering.  Like the infamous Comcast customer service rep video, Dave Carroll’s video undermines United Airlines’ reputation and hurts its brand.  

Numerous traditional media outlets covered the story (LA Times, USA Today, Chicago Tribune), but it was YouTube, Twitter and blogs that fueled the flame. In Carroll’s own words, here is what happened: 

In the spring of 2008, Sons of Maxwell were traveling to Nebraska for a one-week tour and my Taylor guitar was witnessed being thrown by United Airlines baggage handlers in Chicago. I discovered later that the $3500 guitar was severely damaged. They didnt deny the experience occurred but for nine months the various people I communicated with put the responsibility for dealing with the damage on everyone other than themselves and finally said they would do nothing to compensate me for my loss. So I promised the last person to finally say no to compensation (Ms. Irlweg) that I would write and produce three songs about my experience with United Airlines and make videos for each to be viewed online by anyone in the world. United: Song 1 is the first of those songs. United: Song 2 has been written and video production is underway. United: Song 3 is coming. I promise.

It’s a great story of how a little guy took on the indifferent corporate giant, but the numbers behind the story are just as interesting.

By the Numbers

A comparison of the numbers demonstrates the viral effect of YouTube.  Consider the following. As of this Monday:

Sons of Maxwell YouTube video:

Number of views:  2,544,668 view

Number of comments: 13,288 comments

In contrast: 

United Airlines YouTube Channel

Channel Views: 84,791

Most viewed video:  86,415 views 

Most discussed video: 122 comments

Channel Comments: 115 comments (12 in the last few days; the rest, but one, over a month ago)

And look at the negative Channel comments with no response from United Airlines: 

And now look at Twitter:  9 tweets mentioning Dave Carroll on the United Airlines Twitter page compared to the flood of tweets about Dave Carroll elsewhere. 

Here is a random sampling of the thousands (can’t verify number) of tweets about Dave Carroll (note the number of video views from Friday: 1.325 million):

And let’s look at Facebook. 13 comments were about Dave Carroll, all were negative. Now, InsideFacebook lists the United Airlines fan page as “unofficial.” A lost opportunity to engage with the more than 9,000 fans. In comparison, check out Southwest Airlines Facebook page - more than 70,000 fans strong, and it’s official.

And note, no news from the UA pressroom (though they did speak with reporters).

Beyond the Numbers

So what should we make of the numbers?  Clearly, it demonstrates the power of YouTube, turning an obscure musician into a video star and corporate headache in less than a week.

The Internet became for United Airlines an open platform for critics, and United Airlines could not or did not want to keep up with public reaction. Their traditional news channel remains silent.  Their YouTube Channel has become a platform for snarky, negative comments with no reaction from United Airlines. And the 9 posts on Twitter don’t communicate, in my opinion, an authentic, heart felt apology. Making a charitable donation is nice, but it doesn’t address the the problem that prompted Dave Carroll to make a video in the first place. And Facebook is a non factor.  

And look at the content on YouTube’s corporate channel: repurposed commercials and promotional videos.  It’s no wonder the number of views for their most popular video pales in comparison to the number of views of the Dave Carroll video.  Yes Dave Carroll’s video went viral, but United needs to do a better job serving up connect.  Consider Delta’s inflight safety video:  1,313,428 views!

And I should also add, I have overseen crisis communications.  Sometimes legal and HR issues require a low profile.  I am not sure this is one of those instances.

Recommendations

Again, I don’t want to pick on United. I am a PR guy after all.  Social media is forcing all companies to reevaluate their PR strategies.  To be fair, companies can’t compete with satire and entertainment in the battle for public opinion. But Carroll resorted to something that works: authenticity. And he did so in a way that was meaningful and entertaining.   It recounted an experience that we all can appreciate.  And so with all the resources that it has, United Airlines was crushed by creative storytelling. (Forget news releases and investigative reporting when you have music videos.)

First of all, United Airlines did follow the first rule of crisis communications by apologizing and  trying to make amends.  It’s their failure to leverage and integrate their online channels that is at issue.  

I would advise them to examine their YouTube Channel for content and their response policy for comments. Customer service is an issue. Therefore have more videos on what you are doing to improve service and instructional videos on what to do if your baggage is damaged or lost. Like what Comcastcares has effectively done with Twitter, use this experience as way to monitor and respond to customer service complaints, and reach out to the people who tweeted.

This crisis will pass.  One entertaining video will not bring down an airline.  And the good news is that the next video will have to be amazing to get this kind of reaction.

But here is my final point. Customers need to be careful what they wish for.  YouTube gives power to the people, but this video certainly raises the stakes of what is needed to get attention and make news.  Less talented people will still need to write letters and reach out to local news action reporters.

Let me get back to you.

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Subscribers and fans i.e. “a community” are a key ingredient of popular web sites. They are integral to increasing the reach of your communications steadily month after month. If you don’t have a passionate, interested group of people subscribed to your site now, put a plan in place to acquire them. Building an active community is a pillar of successful social media marketing.

Some of the top reasons subscribers and fans are a vital element of an online marketing growth strategy include:

The ~11% of web users who know to use RSS include the users savvy enough to be web publishers

Yes, the RSS adoption rate is only around 11%, and some speculate it may be peaking at that number. That’s actually okay and here’s why: participation inequality is also at nearly the same percentage rate. Hardly a coincidence, as those who are most savvy with information consumption are also the most savvy with information sharing and production. By reaching those fluent in technology, you’re building relationships with valuable, influential people who are at the top of the participation inequality pyramid, or the contributors of the web. Reach them with messages worth spreading and your content can resonate exponentially.

You’ll become a go-to area to link to

Links send web site traffic directly and indirectly because of the affect on SEO. Bearing you maintain a positive signal to noise ratio, in time the subscribers you attract will consider you a go-to source of content to link to. This takes time to develop, as first you need to cultivate a known reputation for quality. Once this starts happening, if you continue with the level of quality you set forth (or even increase it as time goes on) your success in terms of organic linkbuilding will become a virtuous cycle, encouraging more to link to you over time. Link bait once in awhile is a good part of an overall strategy, but if you maintain quality with everything you publish, in time visitors will become conditioned to link to you without having to create content designed to get links. It’s the reason why the same bloggers and web publications end up on everyone’s weekly link roundups.

Subscribers are your sneezers

“Sneezers” ala Seth Godin, are those who actively tell the most other people about you. Because of the nature of being a subscriber and the relationship built over time through a long-term connection, subscribers are the ones most likely to spread and share your messages. Success is self-reinforcing here, and explains why popular things just get more popular.

A base of well-connected fans could very well be the cornerstone of your social marketing strategy

If you’re publishing content to one central area, yet you have subscribers and fans who share content in places large and small, your messages will permeate the social web naturally. Many popular content-based sites have banked their entire growth strategy on leveraging the active participation of readers on the social web.

Community is what makes sites worth visiting

Ideas such as “Twitter will kill Digg” miss the point.  New social communities by themselves don’t necessarily kill others.  Rather -  flourishing and ultimately more compelling communities are what draw members away from other sites and are what cause the rise and fall of networks. The technology or platform isn’t what makes sites like Digg or Reddit interesting, it’s the community.

Subscribers will motivate you to create better content

As more people opt-in to your messages and your reach grows, your motivation to produce better, ultra-relevant content will grow along with it. This is due to the fact that inevitably, with a growing subscriber base, you’re going to get more feedback from the content you produce. That feedback only serves to help you learn more about your niche and how to serve them best.

A consolidated network presence is the most effective

A simple, effective way to have your messages make the largest impact is to build one consolidated source for distribution. Once you’ve chosen that place, focus on funneling as many people to subscribe to it as possible and make it the authoritative voice for your brand or industry.  Spawn satellite networks too, but with the purpose of feeding the main hub.  Don’t lose sight that the end goal is to create one popular area.

The fastest way to amp up the worth of your own network is to bring smaller networks together with it so they can act as one larger network and gain the total n² value.

…Three thousand members in one network are far more powerful than one thousand members in three networks.

–Kevin Kelly

Social proofing

When coming to a new site for the first time, elements such as thousands of subscribers/community members, comments, or Tweets all act as social proofing elements to site visitors. These are cues to new visitors the content is relevant, authoritative and worth subscribing to. When web visitors read content that matches the story the social proofing is telling, you’ll convert them to new community members.

Subscribers and a fan base make you less reliant on push PR

If you have your own brand of media and the right people are reading it, you can become less reliant on certain types of traditional outbound promotions such as pitching other media or bloggers in a push PR effort. Embracing a subscriber growth strategy means seeing increasing returns for your communications over time in a publishing arena you control. There is also the growing trend of media quoting leaders of popular web destinations, communities and blogs, as ownership of an authoritative content-based site establishes credibility. Media coverage occurs unsolicited and without pitching.

Conclusion

Businesses who build relationships with savvy and specific audiences continue to find themselves better positioned than those who don’t. An interested and empowered audience you’ve built personally and connect with frequently is essential to the future growth of your brand on the web.  Those connections mean better relationships with current and potential customers. Isn’t that what growing a business on the social web is all about?

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Jason Falls

If you’ve been around social media for more than a few days, you probably subscribe to a handful (or more) RSS feeds. What was originally an inside scoop for geeks who read those crazy, senseless diary things called blogs, has turned out to be the single-most effective technology in enhancing people’s productivity the Web 2.0 world has given us. RSS means you can surf all or part of the web you want to see in a fraction of the time.

I’m constantly asked what my favorite feed reader is. I’ve experimented with a half dozen or so but keep coming back to the old standard — Google Reader. It’s simple, intuitive, organized and efficient. But there are a couple of features to Google Reader many people either don’t know are there, forget about or simply don’t use enough. One such feature is the trends tab, shown below circled in red.

What your Google Reader trends tell you is pretty self-explanatory, though consider that most of the data is generated from the previous 30 days. The above-the-fold data you see at the top of the page shows you a display of the number of posts versus the number you’ve read in each of those days. As you can tell from mine, I actually read only a fraction of what I subscribe to. As you can see, I subscribe to 317 different feeds, only a few of which are feeds for clients or other projects that I wouldn’t subscribe to otherwise. I’ve read only 327 items from those feeds in the last 30 days. Those feeds produce between 500-600 posts per day during the week. (Click on any remaining graphic to see a larger version.)

What you can gather from these numbers is, in a general sense, how much of what you think you read, you actually read. I happen to subscribe to many news feeds and search terms as RSS feeds in my reader that produce many results each day. I subscribe so that I can search those posts when I need them. (Searching your feeds is another feature many people forget about, by the way. That search box at the top isn’t for the web, but your Google Reader subscriptions.) Taking that into consideration, you can see that I don’t mind not reading the vast majority of what I subscribe to. If I were trying to be more efficient with my reading and didn’t need those search-able feeds, I could improve my posted-to-read ratio.

Below the main graphic, you get some very useful information. To the left of the middle of the page is a list of the feeds you access most often and what percentage of their total posts you read. As you can see, this top-10 list reveals what I read the most in terms of number read. It appears I read about half of what Chris Brogan posts and read him often. The Google Alerts results for a search of my name are second (am I vain or protective of my personal brand … or both?). I read a higher percentage of what Valeria Maltoni, Todd Defren and Amber Naslund write, but not as many as Brogan. Of course, none of them post as frequently as Chris does, but, with apologies to him, perhaps that’s an argument for quality over quantity.

Anecdotally, Zen Habits is my “For Me” blog. Leo Babauta’s advice is always sound and helps bring a bit of calm to me. Accidental Hedonist is a fantastic food and spirits blog written by Kate Hopkins. I started reading it for my spirits clients. I now read it for myself because Kate is an excellent writer and writes fantastic pieces.

You can also see the feeds you most frequently star items from, share with others, email to friends and read on a mobile device. I share items sometimes, but don’t really use the other mechanisms much.

To the right of that chart is perhaps the one I find most useful. Subscription trends shows you tabs of the feeds that are most frequently updated, inactive and most obscure, meaning the ones the fewest people subscribe to. (My Google Alerts feed for my name is pretty obscure. Heh.)

But the inactives tab is the sweet spot. I click on it frequently to unsubscribe from feeds that haven’t been updated in some time. As you can see from the graphic, I don’t unsubscribe to all the non-updated feeds. The Social Media Release site/page is relevant to me. If those running it ever update it, I’ll want to know. Matt Winn’s blog hasn’t been updated in almost a year. Matt’s a VC guy here in Louisville who is smart as hell and has a lot to say. I have faith he’ll be back. The others on the list I have reason to hold on to a bit longer for one reason or another.

The point is, you can cull your lists by getting rid of those not updated frequently, which you wouldn’t really notice if the trending information wasn’t available.

You’ll notice you can expand the lists to 20 or even 40 entries. It makes organizing and editing your feeds pretty efficient.

At the bottom of the Trends page, you see a list of your Google friend’s trends. You see who shares most frequently and who has the most subscribers to their shared lists (most popular). The other side of the page shows a tag cloud displaying the most populated of your folders/categories in Google Reader with darker indications of words indicating you read those more than others.

While it tempts me to throw out a number of uses for your Reader trends, I’d rather open it up and see what you think its uses are. How does this information help you manage your feeds? How can these statistics help you draw insights from feeds you monitor for your business or your clients? (PR folks ought to see some uses here!) Give it some thought and let us know what you can or do use Google Reader trends for. Please share in the comments.

And if you’re not using Google Reader for your RSS feeds, what are you using and can you pull these types of insights from your reader? I didn’t dive in to others to see if there’s something better out there. If there is, please share and tell us what you think of that option. I’m diving into Fever right now (see TechCrunch article below) and will report back as well.

Related articles by Zemanta and Jason Falls

• Fever, A Self-Hosted Feed Reader, Heats Up Your RSS Subscriptions (techcrunch.com)
• Speeding Up RSS (techcrunch.com)
• How to connect Google Reader and Evernote (enquiringmimes.com)
• How to search your Twitter DMs with Google Reader (Chris Penn)

Over the weekend, Shiv Singh from Razorfish, sent me an advance copy of their soon to be released report on Social Influence Marketing.  Once again, the folks at Razorfish delivered a solid report that captures the essence of what Brand Managers need to be thinking about in a world where “actions speak louder than advertising.”

While I highly recommend reading the whole report, here are a couple of nuggets that really jumped out to me:

• Brands must socialize with consumers: It won’t be enough for brands to craft powerful messages and push them through different media channels. They will need to participate directly in conversations with consumers and provide more meaningful value exchanges.
• Brands must develop a credible social voice: Brands will need to focus on developing credible voices for SIM. These voices will need to be more engaging, personal, humble, authentic and participatory than traditional advertising messages.
• Brands must provide a return on emotion to their consumers: Social media is a great tool for building symmetrical brand relation- ships, in which both the brand and the consumer reap equal returns from their relationship.
• Brands must know the effect of influencers throughout the marketing funnel: It is essential to know how influence changes in each stage of the marketing funnel. That information should drive when to focus on which influencers and how to surface content from those influencers on corporate-owned digital properties.
• Brands lack significant credibility in the digital realm and on social platforms: Brands should explore new ways of marketing on the social platforms that help build trust and credibility first and foremost. It is no use devoting significant marketing efforts to this space unless you’ve already figured out how to serve as a trusted brand. The social platforms require a new marketing language - one that mustn’t be overlooked.

In addition to the above, I was also fascinated by the new Social Influence Marketing (SIM) Score that Razorfish has released.  The SIM Score measures two critical attributes:

• The total share of consumer conversations your brand has online (measure of reach)
• The degree to which consumers like or dislike your brand when they talk to each other about you online - consumer sentiment (measure of likeability)

Measurement continues to be a factor that holds back Social Media marketing so it will be interesting to see if SIM begins to take hold.

Finally, the report touches on two remaining trends that I think have tremendous potential for Brand Managers:

1. Social Ads: As the reports states, “Social ads are about infusing social content and a user’s social graph directly intothe ad unit itself.  Advertisers can build social features into the ad units - when and where appro­priate.”  In my opinion, some of the best work in Social Ads comes from SocialMedia.com and their People Powered Ad Products.
2. Social Graphs: Razorfish defines the social graph “as the network of personal connections through which people com­municate and share information online. These personal connections can be based on common interests, professional experiences and offline social relationships.”  As I have written before, Social Graphs may be one of the most powerful forces for Brand Managers in the year to come.

Fluent is a great read and really touches on many key points around Social Influence Marketing.  And I think they summed up the report best with this point:

Being an active brand means accepting the fact that the days of formulating one big idea with multiple executions are behind us.  Being an active brand means that each day you interact with your consumers based on how they interact with you and with each other.

Well said.  Now the hard part for all of us is starting to really act like an active brand.

Google has 46 separate Twitter accounts when I looked just now.

Like every other company looking at tools like Twitter, they’re no different – Google people want to be where other people are online.

Clearly, Google-owned Jaiku (remember that?) isn’t the place at all – to be fair, maybe it’s focus has changed now – although the company is publicly supportive of that micro-blogging service as this comment by Marissa Mayer in an interview in June and published in The Guardian last week suggests:

The Guardian: You tried your own sort of real time service – it was the same sort of idea, wasn’t it, some real-time messaging service which doesn’t seem to have gone – I think you released the code now as open source…… have you in effect given up on that or what’s the thinking behind it?

MM: I think you may be referring to Jaiku. We think Jaiku is an excellent service and our team is really quite good. We do still have a real-time messaging service because we have Google Chat and Google Talk, that allow users to communicate with each other in real time. So there is some of that, but Jaiku itself, the team, has turned it over to open source, their servers, and they’ve moved over to helping with Google Chat and Google Talk.

It’s all about Twitter really.

© 2009 - visit the author for more great content.

Building traffic/leads to your business is tricky. Especially so in China where many of the medium are either too broadly targeted, too expensive, or simply faked numbers. So here’s the logic:

A quick rundown of your options looks something like this:

PRINT: Magazines will cost you about RMB 20k - 100k/page/month; while newspaper advertising will average about RMB 50k/page/day.

OUTDOOR:Good luck here, you’re looking in the millions of RMB per year; for lightbox ads, you’re looking at a hefty investment as well (I believe its RMB 40k/month/lightbox, with a minimum buy of 3 months, and 10 lightboxes).

Ok, what about your online options? Well you can go with online banner ads; though this is a dangerous arena. Many of the medium/small websites will charge you upwards RMB 15k/month, but almost all of these sites will lie about their traffic figures ( I know this from my own personal media buying experience). That leaves the big dogs like Sina and Sohu; their numbers are so ridiculously high they don’t need to lie; but then this truth is counter balanced by selling ads for RMB 300k/day (yes… per DAY; check out Sohu’s media kit).

The main takeaway? Advertising in China is expensive, sifting through piles of false data from vendors is a pain, and ROI is very difficult to track. In this increasingly social world, why do Brands continue to invest in expensive one way communications, when they could invest in 2 way, relationship building methods that are cheaper and allow tracking of advertising ROI?

A potential solution.
I’ve been dealing with the above problem for about 3 years now, running different campaigns for clients in China. With the economic climate seriously cutting down marketing budgets, companies are looking for better, more accountable ways of spending their money. The solution?

Well I don’t have a miricle solution - but I do have a really nice case study that may point us toward the solution we seek. Bear with me as I reveal BA’s tiny in-house project and what we’ve been able to do in about 6 weeks through China’s social networks.

The results.
Usually I put the results at the end, but since this is going to be a long article, I figured I’d tell you now in case you got too bored to make it to the end.

 So here it is:Within 6 weeks we pulled in 135k traffic, 1100 email newsletter sign ups, 6000+ followers on China’s social networks, and enough ad revenue from AdSense to buy the office coffee for 3 months (the last one isn’t that impressive, I know - but hey, free coffee is free coffee).

The challenge.

To create a previously unknown Brand and build a significant amount of trust and goodwill from scratch.

Target China’s youth market, a competitive difficult market to enter.

Use only SNS channels for advertising; we will not spend any money on banner ads or PPC.

The brand.
Since we were trying to build significant numbers quickly, we went with content that was easily accessible by a wide audience.

We ended up with translating viral stories from the West into Chinese, these stories had the best chance of catching our audience, and were essentially easy to reproduce on a consistent basis. Being fun to read and a break from the daily grind for the staff also played a part in this decision.

Missniuniu’s brand is simple - a cute girl tuned into the funny oddities in life. She serves as a diplomat for Chinese youth to the West’s offbeat culture; stories include viral oddities, dating, and love advice. Very simple and very easy to access.

“Missniuniu” is actually BA’s Sherry Xie (who has written a few articles for LRB). Since she looks a lot better in a two piece bathing suit than I do, we figured we go with her as the brand ambassador.

Missniuniu.com went through a few redesigns - with more to come in the future, but the current look/feel is as you see below - or failing that, simply check out the site.

Onward.

Newsletter growth.
Our newsletter growth (as tracked by mailchimp) has leaped upwards. I take this as a sign that visitors find value in our content and want to keep connected. This is further proven by our above industry average email rates below.

Missniuniu currently has 1100 subscribers, and emails sent to this list have a 50% open rate (vs. the standard 15.2%) and a 7% click rate (vs. standard 2.7%).  Missniuniu’s list then, is of relative high quality.

The above stats are from an earlier campaign - we haven’t sent a newsletter for a few weeks due to some odd technical problems via feedproxy, a Chinese RSS system; when we get this issue fixed, I’ll re-post our results.

Social network site traffic:
71% of our traffic comes from referring social network sites; over time, we seem to be sticking in people’s minds, leading to a significant amount of direct traffic to missniuniu (26%).

Out top ten referring sites are below - we began with Douban, and are now fanning out to other SNS and microblogging sites.

Our traffic is from a mix of China social network sites and micro blogging sites like twitter and fanfou; we also receive a nice chunk straight from google; it’s nice to see our SEO efforts take hold so early in the life of the site.

Our Followers:
Missniuniu’s followers are close to 6000. A more accurate total will need to wait after China lifts the SNS block (I can’t access some of these sites now).

Of these followers, a significant amount of them re-tweet Missniuniu’s posts. I’ll have Sherry write up a little case study of this later in the month.

Search Engine Traffic.
Though our site is very young, we’ve also seen a consistent growth in organic hits from search engines. It’s nothing to get too excited about - but the trend seems to indicate we are doing the right thing.

You’ll notice a big traffic spike around June 18 - this was due to one of our articles gaining a quick burst of interest. It looks nice, but essentially is an anomaly. The key idea here is the general growth overall.

Geographic Reach.
Geographically, we’re all over China, with a distinct emphasis on Beijing and Shanghai. This is to be expected.

Potential sales leads/revenue.
AdSense serves as an easy way to test potential click through leads to a clients website. Over the last few weeks Missniuniu has seen a consistent upward trend in clickthroughs from the main site to AdSense advertisers.

How is this significant? Generally the idea is that if you can pull visitors from SNS sites, and then serve relevant ads, you can use the community (in this case, Missniuniu) as a way of filtering leads to your company website.

The takeaway.
What’s it all mean? Well its simple in its own somewhat complex way. By creating a small community (ie: Missniuniu) that serves relevant, interesting, and targeted content, we can then begin to pull visitors from satellite social networks into our community space. From there, based on our goals, we can have them do a number of things that:

Build our brand on the basis of value-add to our visitors

Create loyalty, trust, and reciprocation (or re-tweets).

Turn this “love” into actual sales, or mutually beneficial results.

The critical trick then is finding, creating, or aggregating that information; and making it accessible, relevant and interesting to your readers.

If any of this was of interest to you - and you’d like to build your own community - then let me know. I’m currently in the process of building several communities for clients for both B2B and B2C clients, and would love to talk to you about your project, and if there is anything I can do to assist.

Earlier this week (July 2nd 2009) we spoke to several sources who each have some insight into Facebook’s financials (none of them know precisely). Taking the sources’ input together, we’d estimate the company’s expected 2009 revenue this way:

• $125 million from brand ads
• $150 million from Facebook’s ad deal with Microsoft
• $75 million from virtual goods
• $200 million from self-service ads.

Total: $550 Million.

The trick is figuring out what bits are valued and how much, and by whom, and in what way. That’s the thing…

In this case, the virtual goods (Facebook birthday cake for $1 anyone?) and the self-service ads (Facebooks answer to Google’s Adsense, or Adwords or whatever it’s called) are surprisingly high, no? I mean, compared to the traditional deals…

Nick Roshon asks why Facebook revenue is so low compared to MySpace. I venture to guess that MySpace Google ad deal is included in their $2.17 per member per year – that’s a nice chunk of change. MySpace also run event management - such as product launches and album launches for major labels, so they have additional revenue streams. Also MySpace is a more mature organisation… though cutting back their staff (450 international staff to 100)  is going to severely limit growth.

Technorati Tags: business models, Facebook, Monetization, Money, MySpace, revenue, revenue streams, virtual goods

What Wal-Mart got right:

• Established a Twitter page within their Web site: Like brands such as Dell and Zappos, Wal-Mart has launched a page on their site to promote the company's Twitter accounts. The page (http://walmartstores.com/Twitter/) offers several benefits for the brand: It alerts consumers to Twitterers they may wish to follow, promotes the brand's efforts in Social Media, and gives Wal-Mart a chance to separate the official Twitterers (they currently have seven) from the fake accounts and cybersquatters.
  


• Set customer expectations: Wal-Mart did something I haven't seen before, and I believe it makes a lot of sense: their site includes a Discussion Guidelines page to communicate what consumers can expect from Wal-Mart on Twitter. For example, these guidelines state, "While we’ll do our best to reply to your comments, generally, we won’t be able to reply to store or service issues through Twitter." Some in the blogosphere have criticized Wal-Mart for a half-hearted approach to customer support on Twitter (and I tend to agree), but it's difficult to argue with the practice of setting customer expectations.
  
  Of course, it is unlikely many Twitter users would have happened upon the Discussion Guidelines page on WalmartStores.com, so Wal-Mart did something else that is pretty smart: most (but not all) of their official Twitter bios include the text, "Official Twitter page and discussion policy: http://tinyurl.com/twitterwmt." This provides a means for Twitter users to understand what they can can count on from Wal-Mart.

What Wal-Mart got wrong:

• No uniform branded presence: For a brand that has a strong sense of its visual identity in everything from signage to ads to stores, the Wal-Mart Twitter accounts seem to reflect little of the company's focus on design. The profile pictures have no uniform branding to help establish the accounts as official Wal-Mart accounts; the backgrounds vary; and there is no Wal-Mart logo apparent on most of their official Twitter profile pages. Twitter may be a place for personal connections and individual personality, but these Twitterers should look and feel like Wal-Mart when speaking on behalf of Wal-Mart.
  


• Too promotional: There is probably no single trap in Social Media that trips up brands as often as focusing far more on themselves than on their customers, and Wal-Mart makes this common mistake. Of course, you expect accounts like @SamsClubDeals and @WalmartSpecials to be promotional in nature, but even the individual employee accounts like @Walmartkelly and @Walmartkevin focus far more on what is happening at Walmart than they do what is happening with Wal-Mart customers.
  


• Lack of activity: Establishing a Twitter page and Twitter accounts is smart; letting them age with little activity is not. In the last month, @Walmartkelly hasn't tweeted even once, and @Walmartmeeting has tweeted just twice. @Walmartkevin and @walmartcheckout haven't shared anything on Twitter in over two weeks. And even Wal-Mart's three promotional accounts (@SamsClubDeals, @WalmartSpecials, and @WMSoundcheck) have a combined total of just five tweets in the past week.
  
  People are listening--these seven accounts have amassed over 7,000 followers--but Wal-Mart's official Twitterers don't seem interested in sharing very much. The combined total of Tweets from all seven accounts doesn't even exceed 900 as of yet, which is 85% less than my neighborhood liquor store. (Of course, quantity doesn't equal quality, but I happen know that @blatzliquor is seeing demonstrable success from its activities and connections on Twitter; I doubt Wal-Mart can say the same thus far.)
  


• Failure to Follow: The three individuals who represent Wal-Mart on Twitter are being followed by over 1,000 people but apparently find only 21 of them worthy of returning the favor. When employees Twitter on behalf of their employers, it's a good practice to follow back every follower unless there is a reason not to (such as spam, inappropriate language, etc.) After all, if people indicate you and your company are interesting enough to follow, what does it say to those folks when the company doesn't find them interesting enough to do the same in return? As one person recently tweeted to Wal-Mart's Kelly: "why not follow back?"
  


• Failing to live up to Wal-Mart's own Twitter promises and neglecting dialog: Having gone out of its way to set expectations for its participation on Twitter, Wal-Mart doesn't seem to be living up to these expectations. According to Wal-Mart's own Twitter Discussion Guidelines, "we encourage dialogue with customers" and "we’ll do our best to reply to your comments," but their official Twitterers are having very few discussions with customers on Twitter.
  
  There is quite a lot of buzz on Twitter about Wal-Mart and Walmart (the company uses both variations)--the brand is mentioned thousands of times a day by both fans and detractors. Obviously, sifting through the mountains of tweets and responding to even a fraction of them would be a monumental effort, but perhaps making some real and visible effort to do so is what might be expected of one of the world's largest brands and a company that promotes its desire to "encourage dialogue."
  
  Failing to respond to tweets that aren't directed at you is one thing; ignoring the ones that are is an altogether different and worse practice. No one will blame @Walmartkevin for ignoring a spammy tweet offering "information on acqusititon [sic] to take walmart to the next level in the home theater market," but failing to respond to or retweet a message that compliments Wal-Mart's sustainability efforts seems indifferent and rude. @Walmartmeeting has tweeted often about the company's environmental program, so ignoring a question about whether the company has considered wind power for stores seems impolite.
  
  Of the seven official Twitter accounts, only one is being maintained in a way that demonstrates an understanding of the power of @replies and retweets--WMSoundcheck; otherwise, there is little reason for consumers to believe Wal-Mart is committed to and acting upon its stated objective of engaging customers in dialog.

Most of Wal-Mart's Twitter problems are solvable by creating and enforcing rules for employee Twitter engagement. Brands participating in Twitter must define expectations for employees assigned to the task, and these rules must be explicit enough to provide guidance for employees and furnish a foundation for evaluating employee performance on Twitter. These rules might consider:

• How many tweets per day or week are expected


• Rules for tweeting; what topics or language is acceptable and what is not


• Follow-back guidelines--when should followers be followed?


• Expectations for when and how to respond to @replies (or direct messages)


• Expectations for retweeting


• Expectations for seeking out new followers--since following people is a successful way to build a list of followers, how many new people should be followed each week and what are the criteria?


• Expectations for monitoring for and responding to brand mentions on Twitter


• Expectations for engaging with and showing interest in followers regarding non-brand matters.

Wal-Mart has demonstrated foresight in establishing their Twitter page and discussion guidelines, but it seems their employees are being left to their own devices with little guidance for their very public, very visible participation on Twitter. The notoriously strict brand marketer wouldn't leave their advertising to this sort of chance. Creating and communicating a clear set of rules for Twittering employees would help Wal-Mart better establish its brand on Twitter and diminish the chance of Social Media missteps.

Shopping can be one of the most social activities. Then again, I often shop alone. It really depends on what I am going for. On the more social side you have:

• asking friends what they think of a particular Victorinox rolly bag

• reviewing ratings or reviews by strangers or friends
• group buying which is really a form of crowd-buying - still quite social
• finding endorsements from friends or 'strangers with expertise'
• Wish lists and registries
• Affiliate sales networks (e.g. Amazon)
• Relevant recommendations (e.g. iTunes Genius function)

As word of mouth is one of the most influential purchase drivers across many product categories, it only makes sense that we will all continue to push the intersection of social media and shopping.From product reviews like the robust ones found in Amazon, YELP and TripAdvisor to the offshoots like Trusted Opinion, review have been around since the dawn of time. For any brand that sells a product or service, I would rank reviews as the most underleveraged social strategy just behind search engine optimization. If you don't have one, get a product review strategy especially if you are a retailer or sell a retail product of some kind.

If product reviews are fundamental, then what is next? Three things I can see emerging fast:

• Real-time Recommendations via Facebook, Twitter and other social networks
• A new wave of Affiliate Marketing
• Event Shopping

Real-time Recommendations

While reviews may have defined social shopping over the past 10 years, now it is about "real-time recommendations" - a phrase I first heard from Sean Muzzy at Neo@Ogilvy. When I am shopping - that search, assess, decide and purchase activity - how can I tap into my own social graph to get an opinion or some type of feedback?

Some retailers are doing this by integrating Facebook Connect like the backpack manufacturer Jansport. By embeding the Facebook login in the ecommerce pages, I can share my interest in the 22" Purple Sunflower via facebook. I can see what my friends may have said or if they have "liked" it. This will become standard practice for many of us on those products where we value a second opinion. As a business traveler, luggage is one of tehose categories (and I would hope as a Facebook friend you would wave me off the purple sunflower motif for my own good).

Many of us in digital marketing especially on the social media side of life have been creating and stewarding programs for brands that pay off in the middle or top of the funnel - Engagement up to Awareness. Or our approach to driving action or conversion has been a click-through or coupon download or similar action. Now we really can apply "social" to not just shopping but to conversion or sales.

Affiliate Marketing
While the power of building authentic positive word of mouth and even recommendation for a product will drive product preference (see our Conversation Impact measurement model), using social to drive sales will become a new focus for many of us.

As a blogger, would I raise my hand to become an affiliate marketer for the brands, I myself, use and appreciate? Yes. As marketers continue to over-do influencer outreach - trying to capture the attention of influentials like mombloggers and food bloggers such that they authentically talk about products - we will see some simpler and more direct solutions to transparently engage those influencers as affiliate marketers. The benefit back to them is a percentage of sales - all very transparent, of course. Clearly that works best for retail brands vs. manufacturers. I could easily imagine having a Hugo Boss store widget on my site ads the ultimate storefront for black jeans (hell, just my clickthroughs alone would move the needle).

Curated Event Shopping
Remember the Amazon "Gold Box"? It was a collection of time-sensitive specials on Amazon that you could browse through. I never bought anything and I guess others didn't fare much better as the feature is gone.

Now I subscribe to ideeli.com. They send me emails of sales events on great stuff - mostly for women. I have bought some great jewelry there for my wife. If I knew anything about bags, I am certain I could score some gems there as the always seem to have some great ones. The pricess are advantageous - but like the Home Shopping Network, sales are timed so you need to act promptly. The goods are curated and high quality. The combination of timeliness and quality curation makes it sweet. I have told many people about ideeli.com which is another way the "social" quality of the service works. (Essentially, it gives me a little bit of 'social capital' to spend with people I know.)  

There are a lot more innovations on social shopping happening than just these three trends. In fact, the social shopping space is exploding with innovation.

Our thanks to Gavin Heaton for being part of our community.