Lifestreaming and the Dead Blog Debate

I want let you into a little debate that has popped up a few times online and left me with a new insight into how I organize my online presence. The debate went something like this:

Some people said “The Blog is Dead” and then a whole bunch of other people said “The Blog is NOT Dead” and the vast majority of people on this earth said nothing, because “who cares?”.

Yet, somewhere in the cloud of debate I became aware of the term Lifestreaming, it was hurled by Steve Rubel of Edelman Digital, a smart dude who has given up his blog in exchange for a Lifestream.

Lifestream What ?

I started to think about how I offer value to people who follow me online. Sure my blog plays a role, it’s where I share deeper insights, talk about ideas, projects events and people, but the vast majority of people who come across me on the web are introduced by an interesting link I shared on twitter or Facebook, not by my blog.

Then I started to ask, why am I just sharing links into the void of the net? Could I be doing something that’s more valuable to people that follow me?

Then the Ah ha! happened. That’s what Steve Rubel was on about.

I started the Jess Sloss Lifestream.

Why Posterous? It Let’s Me Sydicate Out

Lifestream? via @steverubel

Now instead of grabbing a link that caught my eye, adding my few cents (within the confines of twitters 140 character limit) and sending it out to those following me, I post it to my Lifestream. Posterous does the rest, updating my twitter and facebook accounts (and most others should you wish).

I’m able to add more context to why I thought a link was great, showing the way I think and adding more value to the reader. So the Jess Sloss Lifestream will be the place for everything that I find cool and interesting in Social Media, marketing and the effects it’s having on business and society. It will have links, videos, picture and short posts. My blog posts will be discoverable there too, it will be the place where you can find it all.

My Blog?

Now I’m not getting rid of my blog. I like it too much. It lets me post deeper thoughts and publishes them to a list of interested subscribers. It’s customizable and I own it. Posterous and the Jess Sloss Lifestream give me a way of sharing a whole lot of cool things, leaving my blog for the really cool things I wan to share.

I would love to hear your thoughts, you can join me on Posterous but regardless, you’ll be seeing how this different approach unfolds through the multitude of ways you may or may not already be subscribed to my feeds.

Photo Cred: Cayusa

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Good Ideas In Storytelling was awesome, don’t let the tardiness of this post suggest otherwise.

PSFK’s Good Idea Salon brought together a talented group of panelists and an equally amazing audience, with the panel feeling more like a passionate conversation between interested friends than a panel. DDB’s Brett Macfarlane moderated, well, more like tried to get a few words in, as he was joined by Author Douglas Coupland, David Allison of Braun/Allison and Giant Ant Media’s Leah Nelson.

Brief Tangent

First, I’ve got to be honest, I was expecting a different Douglas Coupland. I had heard about the quirky requests and detailed planning that go into scheduling his public appearances and thought I would see a shy and introspective creative genius in an awkward standoff with the audience. I was incredibly wrong. Coupland and the Audience warmed to each other as an early monologue showed his excitement for how technology is shaping his art as well as the bigger effects it’s having on politics and society.

While early indications where that Coupland would dominate the conversation, both David Allison and Leah Nelson enthusiastically shaped the discussion with their unique points of view as an Advertising Veteran and Award Winning Film Maker respectively. The conversation was broken down into 3 main questions and while the three offered numerous insights, there were a few that i found most interesting.

Storytelling as the Storyteller

Coupland started things of by talking about his interest in what he calls “Fractal Stories”, referring to how as one views a story as smaller and smaller pieces, more and more pieces become apparent. He referred to recent phenomenons such as Susan Boyle, the #iranelection and Micheal Jackson as examples of stories that are much different in speed, scope and depth, than ever before.

The staple change agents of greater connectivity and falling barriers to entry have led to new interpretations of fame, success and what is good. As Coupland said, “The only constant is that the next big thing is going to come out of left field.”

Noise and Filters

The discussion then turned to the panelists thoughts on all the noise created by the unprecedented access we have to each other. Allison brought up the increasing importance that we will put on filters, describing his fantasy as a “personal journalist, who recommends the best things specifically to me” His thoughts seemed to focus on the idea of a service or application that could recommend things based on his inputs of like and dislikes.

Leah posed the idea that we already have filtering systems through the popularity of link sharing, stumbling, blogging and tweeting. More importantly, she noted, the crowd is increasingly becoming the filter, with users of social media tools sharing, liking and re-tweeting quality information so it can rise to the top. She said something to the effect of “Stories used to be filtered by 10 guys in an office building in New York, now they’re filtered by the millions of people connected on the internet. Which is better? I like to think the million people model. ”

I happen to completely agree with her here. The crowd is the filter and it’s smarter than those 10 guys.

The Distribution of Storytelling

So here’s where my memory get’s a little fuzzy, though I do recall one really interesting topic that the panel latched on to. The question was something like this, “What new ways are storytellers being compensated for their work”

Both David and Leah immediately started talking about the non monetary compensation that drives much of today content creation. The general consensus was that, in many cases, the audience is the compensation. Leah noted the impact that receiving immediate and unfiltered feedback on her work, specifically noting Sleeping With MySpace (Her and partner Jay Grandin sent a message to their MySpace following saying something like “we’re traveling to Europe, anyone have a couch we can crash on?”) The immediate gratification of knowing someone liked your work can be a huge motivating factor.

Brands and storytelling

Rounding out the discussion was the topic of brands in storytelling. The panelists listed a variety of brands, though the one that stuck in my mind as an excellent example was Obama and his presidential campaign. Some great discussion on his use of story and social media can be found here.

The conversation moved to how technology has changed the way brands communicate, focusing on trust, authenticity and honesty in messaging. David noted “I just don’t think Betty Crocker would cut it today” with Coupland chiming in “ya, Martha Stewart is the new Betty Crocker”

Again my memory is fuzzy on the details, so I’ll add a few personal thoughts on the subject. I think its an important point, consumers are demanding more access to real people and real stories while wanting less of the traditional one way messaging that has been the staple brand storytelling for most of it’s recent existence. One member of the audience summed up the discussion perfectly when he asked, “So what would you prefer, a Brand to be entertaining or honest?” The resounding answer, from the panel and the audience, was Honest.

Wrapping it Up

So there we have it, a vague recollection of a great conversation hosted by Good Idea’s Salon Vancouver. Kudo’s to Brett and Matt for organizing the event. If you where there, and have something to add please do so, I’ll update the post and add as many thoughts as I can.

In the meantime, you can check out David Allison’s thoughts on the event. You can also check out my post on the last event PSFK’s Good Ideas in Media or visit the Good Ideas Salon blog for some more Good Ideas.

Photo Cred: Duncan Joseph Photography

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1. Good Ideas Salon Vancouver: Media
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The Contest

The Result

Almost 500,000 clicks!

Tracking the Stats

Lucky for us, Moonfruit used the bit.ly url shortener, allowing all of us to track its progress (probably not on purpose). You can see the current number of actions by visiting http://bit.ly/96bxC+ ( hint, you can track the stats on any bit.ly link by adding the “+” character to the end of the link)

Along with nearly half a million clicks, the company has grown its twitter account to almost 45,000 followers and #moonfruit  was a top trending hash tag on twitter for days (until twitter manually removed them from the list, more on that here)

What it Means for Your Business?

Like most things in social media, copying strategies blindly probably won’t work. What the Moonfruit campaign does show is the power of rewarding followers for their action and the massive pull that an online sweepstakes or campaign can have.

Cost?

Based on the cost of a Macbook Pro, the 13″ model being given way is priced at $1699, the contest will probably cost Moonfruit just over $20,000, including design and community management time.

Is 500,000 clicks and a massive amount of awareness worth $20,000, my vote is yes. What do you think? Is this something your company could benefit from?

Update: Karim shares some great thoughts on the Campaign on his Online Marketing Blog . Worth a read.

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If the word Evangelists immediately triggers thoughts of religion, conversion and Sunday morning TV, you haven’t been reading enough business blogs.

In business and marketing we talk about  Evangelists as valuable and special folk who like to share their thoughts and feelings about an industry, company or product.

Dictionary.com refers to them as: “a person marked by evangelical enthusiasm for or support of any cause.”

They share news, review offerings, connect people and build a following of interested and usually like minded folk.  Evangelists like being  the first, loudest, strongest and have probably built a big following around their niche.

You May Have Heard Of…

Guy Kawasaki was Apple Computer’s Evangalist (now he’s a Guy/Alltop Evangalist), Gary Vaynerchuk is a wine evangelist (and a Gary evangelist) while Chris Brogan and Seth Godin are communications and marketing evangelists ( i read both religiously). The latest Evangelist that I’ve been following closely is Louis Grey, they call him a “real time web evangelist” . Some evangalists are so loud that I can’t follow them at all *cough* Robert Scoble .

While Evangelists may cover very different topics, the common trait is that their thoughts and opinions are seen as valuable, by many people. Because of that value,  they have a bigger, louder voice than most of us, leading smart companies to court their favor.

The idea of having Seth, Chris, Gary or Guy talk about your company is exciting, but the odds are stacked against it. Everyone wants their attention. Instead, I want to introduce you to a different type of evangelist, one that’s growing bigger and more powerful everyday.

The Everyday Evangelist

If the traditional Brand Evangelist is an innovator or early adopter, then Everyday evangelists are based firmly in the early majority, they’re the hump (well probably just before the hump). They like lots of things and probably have a variety of interests. They’re not necessarily the first, loudest, strongest and they don’t have the biggest following.

But, there are a lot of them. there are a lot of us.

“They” are the people like you and me who have a voice online, however big or small it may be. Alone we probably wont create ripples in an industry like Guy Kawasaki or Louis Gray or Chris Brogan, but there are way more of “us” than there are of them.

Voice and Impact

The great thing about the mass adoption of communications tools like social networks, blogs and twitter is that we don’t need to have a huge voice, to have an impact. Everyone building a network of friends connected by twitter or Facebook is building a voice. While it may be small, it has impact.

Think back to the last movie you went to, or book you read. Who recommended you see /read it? Probably a friend or a loved one, regardless it was someone who’s opinion you trusted enough to spend the $10 and hours of your time.

We’re Here

The Everyday Evangelist is here. It’s you, me and the friend of a friend that added you to facebook because you met once. We are the friend to friend channel, the most valuable channel for a brand or message to be passed around in.

So, I have a question for you, how is your company catering to the Everyday Evangelist?

I guarantee your business has them, you probably call them customers.

Photo Cred: feastoffun

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I get asked two questions more than any other. “How tall are you?” and “How do I get followers on Twitter”

Weird, eh?

The answers? 6′7″ and read this Mashable post by Josh Catone: 10 Ways to Find Followers on Twitter

How to Find Followers

Here are the services linked to in the Mashable Post, for your quick reference. Check out the original for way more info on each service and why it made the list.

1. Twitter People Search – Twitter’s built in people search isn’t the greatest way to find people on Twitter, but it’s probably where you should start.

2. Tweepz – Because the biographical information Twitter collects is minimal, no Twitter people search engine can improve on Twitter’s that much. Third-party site Tweepz does an admirable job, though.

3. TweepSearch – TweepSearch lets you search by Twitter name or location, or search a specific username to get a list of all friends and followers.

4. TwitDir – TwitDir is another search engine, but if the crawling stats are accurate, it’s well behind the curve, searching about 3 million fewer users than Tweepz.

5. Twellow – Your best bet for finding like-minded Twitter users might be to use a directory, and Twellow is certainly one of the most complete.

6. WeFollow – Created by Digg (Digg) founder Kevin Rose, WeFollow is a Twitter user directory that organizes people by hashtags.

7. Just Tweet It – Just Tweet It is another user created Twitter directory.

8. Twubble – Twubble recommends people to follow by spidering the people you’re already following and recommending users that they’re following.

9. Twitterel – Twitterel attempts to find people you might be interested in following by doing keyword searches of tweets.

10. Who Should i Follow? – Enter you Twitter username into Who Should i Follow? and the service finds users who are similar to those you’re already following.

above via Social Media Blog: Mashable

Two Things to Think About Before Building Your Following

1) Quality of Followers

Added to the list above are countless services offering too build hundreds if not thousands of followers for you instantly. Sounds great, if you don’t care who you follow (spammers love these tools) or who follows you. Yes, having a large follower count is a benefit, but having a targeted large follower count is WAY better. The helpful twitter applications Mashable lists above should allow you to search keywords or categories to find the relevant Twitter users to your business. It’s better to have 100 True fans than 1000 who don’t care about you in the slightest.

Once you’ve found users that might be interested in what you have to say, follow them. They might just follow you back.

2) Friend/Follow Ratio

We all get excited, but seriously, Slow Down. Building a true following takes time. Yes, the tools above can help you find people to follow, but how many should you follow at once? and Does it matter if you’re following way more than follow you?

My take on the follower/friend ration question, especially when building an audience is to take it slow. A sizable discrepancy between users you follow and those that follow you back screams lame. It shows potentially new followers that you are not worth being followed, as voted by the numerous people that you followed and never followed you back.

Take it slow, build your presence a little bit everyday.

I would love to know your thoughts on these services, leave a comment, subscribe or check out some of the great related posts below. Or, check out my post Answers to Questions Brands Are Asking About Twitter

Photo Cred: Thomas Hawk

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Have a look in the sidebar, do you see that beautiful odd looking human being they call Bubbles? (not that handsome picture of me top right, scan down a little!) Weird right? It’s part of an outreach campaign by Vancouver Based Movieset.com aptly titled “Trailer Park Boys Secret Bribe Program”( shhhhh )

While I’m more used to being the out-reach-er, than the out-reach-ie, I have to give kudos to the Movieset.com team for their tact in what essentially is a pay for our attention plan.

The long and short of it is this, they will give me $50, as long as I plop that banner you see in the side bar and send out a tweet.

There’s more too it though. Here’s how they outlined the offer:

The MovieSet gang lifted 4 bags full of Trailer Park Boys DVDs but we can’t hold onto the stash so are giving the booty away with a sweepstakes. We gotta let all of Sunnyvale know about the goods so we’re offering you a bribe to spread the rumors.

Whatcha get:

1. Bottle of Ray’s liquor – $20

2. Bag of Nova Scotia’s finest – $20

3. Kitty – free + $10 for shots

Then comes the money shot:

We’ve done enough law breaking to know we can’t just mail all this contraband so instead we’ll send you a cheque for $50. You gotta be in USA or Canada to get the payola and be invited by MovieSet.com specifically. No hanger-ons and groupies.

3 Reasons Movieset.com Bought my Attention

1. Money isn’t the value proposition

If the email subject said “Post this link and We’ll Give you $50″ I might not even have clicked it. Offering money would risk making me feel cheap. Instead they played of my enjoyment of free kitties, liqour and contraband to peak my interest. When they finally drop the “We’ll Send you Money” line, I’m interested in the story more than the money.

2. The story is more than the sum of it’s parts.

The story provided me an angle, made $50 way more interesting and justified inclusion in a post such as this. Their strategy is represented by this equation: Obvious Angle + A Story Worth Talking About = Blog Posts

3. Humor goes a long way

There’s no hiding the end goal here, banners and links and traffic from more sites around the web, and movieset isn’t shy about it. The Secret Bribe Contest . That blatant and cheeky attitude, along with the underlying honesty it showcased removed any fears that I may have had around posting a banner and warrented me telling you about it. Humor brought me in and built some trust.

So how can you increase your chances of buying attention? Check it:

Tips for Buying Social Media Attention aka. Social Media Outreach

1) Tell a story
Even better, make a story obvious to a blogger by appealing to their niche and content type. ( I wrote about this from a social media angle, others may write as fans or haters of the show or real life trailerpark residents themselves, there are a variety of possibilities)

2) Answer the “Why?” Question
Offer value, whether that’s inside info, a prize or a away of being closer to your brand or product, trading value for attention is essential, it gives a blogger or visitor a reason to pay attention or take an action. The lesson from Movieset is that money is not the only, or even the best way, to offer value.

3) Be real
I “know” people behind movieset because I follow them online ( and some I know in real person too ). So previous social media interaction is a plus. Show bloggers you are a real person, share ways for the them to find out who you ( the out-reach-er) are. This is easily done by linking to your twitter account or blog.

So there you have it, a few simple ideas to make your social media outreach a little more successful. Now check out that contest for your chance to win some DVD’s! As a side note, I’ll be donating that beer money to a valuable cause, my volunteers helping me move next week. Thanks Movieset

Photo Cred: Principessa [Michelangelo]

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Yesterday we launched the video and micro site, DirtyforSwain.com and were lucky enough to get a great post on Treehugger (which will hopefully be followed by a others blog posts as the weeks go on)

The idea is that through using social networks and online video, we can raise awareness across many different blogs and social networking platforms all for a great cause while offering value  for the projects sponsor, Timberland. Time will tell how well the campaign does and invite you to check it out, tweet about and leave your feedback here or anywhere for that matter. Check out DirtyforSwain.com

Dirty for Swain

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I’m adding this. Seth Godin and his TED.com talk on Tribes. I strongly suggest you take a look and keep these questions Godin lays out,  in your mind:

Who are you upsetting?

Who are you connecting?

Who are you leading?

Seth Godin Tribes

He talks about Tribes further here: Tribe Management

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7 Questions Some Brands are Asking About Twitter

1) Should we create multiple accounts for different divisions? How should we name them?  How should the content be different?

While this will vary wildly from company to company based on organization structure and product offering I do have a few thoughts. First, I think the biggest opportunity for companies to leverage twitter is found with their employees. Employees represent the first line of fans or advocates of a brand, they’re real people with real connections and are (hopefully) able to have real person to person interactions.

Tony Hsieh and team at Zappos is the perfect example. The majority of Zappos employees are on Twitter and the vast majority of tweets they send don’t revolve around shoes or the Zappos brand. Have a look at what they’re tweeting about now.

So how does Zappos see value? They get access to a valuable friend to friend relationship. Sure it’s not accessible by corporate communications on a whim, as it shouldn’t be. Zappos employees will tweet about company info, events or products when it makes sense to them, making those interaction vastly more valuable than any scripted or controlled message.

Focus on empowering people to be active online.

2) Is it ok to just tweet out news on our main corporate account? Or should we be conversational?

Yes!

3) How do we get our corporate reps (sales, product teams) to use this tool, and be conversational?

Great idea! My suggestion is to set them up with personal accounts and encourage them to connect and interact with each other as ‘people’ first and sales or reps second. People (who just may be potential clients) don’t want to connect with companies or sales reps, they want to connect with people and that’s exactly the benefit Twitter offers both companies and users.

Beyond encouraging employees to set up accounts, training and coaching programs can be a great way to further the use of the medium and ensure that users see value for their investment of time. Coaching programs usually include a focus on how to interact, how to grow a following and provide an encouraging and connecting force to really ramp up the value of their Twitter usage.

4) Should we follow folks? If so, what’s the protocol? Should we only follow folks that follow us? We don’t want to appear like ‘big brother’

One thing companies need to get their head around is that people want to connect online, as long as they see value. Seth Godin put it best when he described Twitter as One Big Cocktail Party. By following someone you are essentially shaking their hand and saying hello. That person then has the option of following you back, or not.

I recommend actively searching for people that are interested in similar things as you.  If you’re a wine retailer, search “wine” or “best Chardonnay” or “Zinfandel” on search.twitter.com and follow people that are talking about those terms. Even better, search for and answer their questions, provide encouragement or offer them value some other way (like special deals!). Just don’t go out and follow hundreds or thousands of people right off the bat, you’ll look like a spammer (and essentially are) so don’t.

Focus on offering value to your followers and watch those relationships grow.

5) What are the tools to use to manage multiple authors/tweeters?

I recommend using HootSuite for multiple authors/editors. Hootsuite provides other great features such as scheduled tweets, built in metrics and a rich search feature. One drawback is that the current URL shortening service, ow.ly, uses an Digg Bar-esque iFrame tool bar that slows page load times and may annoy some users. I have, however, been told by it’s developer (Invoke) that an option to remove the tool bar will be coming soon. Here’s to hoping!

Another tool I like to use is Tweetdeck. Though it doesn’t allow for multiple authors, it does have a multiple columns structure that can be used to provide a Heads Up Display of sorts. You can run near-real time searches on multiple key words and trends, making it valuable for users to keep their finger on the pulse of a given conversation.

6) How can we find other examples of B2B twitter examples?

You can find good lists here , here and here.

7) How should we brand our Twitter backgrounds images?

The most valuable real estate on your twitter profile is you 160 character bio, user name and a link to more info about you or your company. Beyond that, you have the option of uploading a background image to be displayed behind your update feed. The Twitter background is a great branding opportunity. Check out what Tree Hugger, a leading environmental website has done with theirs.  Zappos Tony uses it to show his face and provide viewers with other ways to connect with the company. I just use it to show off my manly features.

Rule of thumb: When in doubt, keep it simple. Simple!

More Twitter Help: Find Twitter Followers and Build an Audience with These Applications

So there we go, some answers to Twitter questions that you may or may not have know you had. Did I miss someting? Get somethign something wrong? I would love to hear about it in the comments.

or hit me up on Twitter – http://www.twitter.com/thattallguy

Update: Check out Antonio’s answers: B2B Twitter and Sampad’s Indian Perspective on them

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What’s Bald, has a beautiful smile and raised over $4000 for BC Children’s Hospital? My Sister Leila of course!

Leila, motivated by the passing of our then 13 year old cousin from Cancer over 4 years ago, decided to shave her head for the BC Children’s Hospital Balding for Dollars program. Money raised goes to support families fighting Caner and Blood Disorders.

The Social Media Effect

Leila brought up the idea with me and we decided to try to leverage Social Media to build awareness around her plan. Over the course of a week, with the help of Giant Ant Media’s Jay Grandin and Leah Nelson, we filmed a few videos with Leila and BC Children’s Hospital Parent/Patient Advocate Dan Mornar. I built a quick blog ( www.LeilaSloss.com ), set her up on Twitter ( @leila_s ) and taught her the basics of blogging, tweeting and sharing online. She’s a natural.

Bringing in the Money

As I write this, her videos have nearly 8,000 views, her blog has been visited by nearly 2000 people and Leila, with the support of friends, family and strangers, has raised over $4000 (well exceeding her goal of $1000 when she started)

Her impact is was felt beyond raising money. Comments from other women who have lost their hair, both from similar fundraisers and Chemotherapy, were overwhelmingly positive. Friends tweeted, shared, linked and spread awareness of Balding for Dollars and the great work that Children’s Hospital does for those in need.

Thank You

I want to thank Leila for her brave decision to make a difference, and for allowing me to help in some small way. Thank you to Jay and Leah at Giant Ant Media for their creative video making skills that got Leila a bunch of attention on YouTube. Thanks to Derek from Ottawa for supporting the cause with a fun countdown widget created out of the blue, without us even asking. Finally, thanks to all of you who sent kind words, a donation or shared the link with a friend.

We’re in an era where all of us have unprecedented access to media and the public, Leila’s fund raising drive shows the impact that one person with a goal, the support of a small network of friends and the desire to make a difference can have.

Thank you!

Check out her Videos or Bald Photos

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