50 Awesome Online Lectures for Social Media Masters.

She brought it to my attention in case readers would find it interesting. I know I did.

Thanks Kelly for allowing this to be reposted here.

She writes:

Social media addicts and the developers, designers and business managers who run social media sites have totally revolutionized the way the rest of us get our news, network, promote our businesses, and connect with (and meet) friends. But even if you think you’re a social media smarty-pants, check out this list of 50 awesome online lectures dealing with social psychology, member-driven community structure, identity, etiquette, and marketing.

General

These general guides deal with Facebook hacks, page views, social media careers, and more.

1. Finding High Quality Content in Social Media: Carlos Castillo from Yahoo! Research Barcelona shares tips on digging through social media sites to find quality information and items.
2. A Large-Scale Study of MySpace: Observations and Implications of Online Social Networks: Here you’ll learn about spam, online deception and MySpace.
3. Facebook Pages and Media Hacks: This podcast shares hacks for building up your Facebook profile.
4. The Facebook Effect: This short video considers how Facebook has evolved to compete with MySpace and offer so many marketing and networking tools.
5. Social Media in Plain English: This video offers up a metaphor for the birth of social media, especially social bookmarking sites.
6. A Career in Social Media: Find out what it’s like to work in social media as an editor, blogger and consultant.
7. Politics and Social Media: This presentation from professionals from the University of Washington, Seattle Times and Microsoft Research explores the relationship between social media and politics.
8. What makes a social media expert an expert?: Find out what it takes to become a real social media expert here.
9. Even Poor Kids are Social Network Savvy: Read the transcript or listen to the podcast to learn how social media has reached all demographics and helps educate children on technology.
10. 2009 Social Media Predictions: See if you agree with what this man has to say about the new trends for 2009 in social media.

Marketing and Analysis

Learn all about the marketing techniques and data that drive social media promotion and profit.

1. Graph Mining Techniques for Social Media Analysis: Mary McGlohon from Carnegie Mellon University explains the purpose of and basic techniques for graph mining for social media.
2. How to Create a Social Media Strategy: Here you’ll learn about developing a smart strategy for standing out online.
3. World Wide Rave: David Meerman Scott, author of The New Rules of Marketing and PR discusses new trends in digital marketing and consumer generated media.
4. PubCon South: What’s Happening with Social Media and Business?: Discover how businesses are figuring out how to use social media for marketing.
5. Social Media Marketing: This Q&A session is all about marketing trends and techniques.
6. How to Create a Buzz Using Social Media Tools: This intense video shares tips for cutting through the noise, staying relevant and staying competitive in the overpopulated social media universe.
7. Social Media Marketing, Social Bookmarking, Video Sharing: Learn about these social media marketing platforms.
8. New Rules of Marketing: Learn about cause marketing, basic PR and social media marketing in this podcast.
9. Social Media Marketing Strategies with Search Engine Optimization: Get SEO tips for boosting page views and more.
10. Digital Podcast 45: How to Make Social Networking Profitable: Help your company profit from all your social media marketing and networking.

Networking

Here you’ll find lectures that share tips for networking and remaining competitive.

1. The Secret of Social Media Success: Here you’ll learn how to develop and achieve your social media goals.
2. Is Social Media in YOUR Company’s DNA?: This podcast explains why social media is so valuable to companies.
3. Networking with Social Media and Strategies that Generate Leads: Learn about the best networking strategies for social media.
4. Capitalize on Social Media: Get tips for bolstering your reputation and promoting yourself with social media.
5. Second Life and Social Media: Networking Goldmine or Time Sink?: Discover whether or not Second Life is actually worth it for networking.
6. Facebook Social Media Optimization: Learn how to use Facebook for promotion and networking.
7. Social Networking Tools Simplified: Discover which social networking tools are most worth your time.
8. Social Networking + Social Media + Social Bookmarking = Traffic: Get more traffic by implementing these online networking techniques.
9. Social Networking and the Value of User Communities for Technical Communicators: This podcast looks at social networking generally, and as a tool that can help technical communicators connect with customers.
10. Social Media 101 – Intro to 8 Key Tips to Get Noticed Among the Noise: This series of videos helps you figure out how to find your niche and get your message out to the world.

Structure, Etiquette and Identity

Discover the fundamental building blocks of social media in these lectures, including social theory, identity perception, projection, basic structure and more.

1. Wikipedia Self-Governance in Action: Motivating the Policy Lens: Learn about Wikipedia’s social structure in this lecture.
2. Space Planning for Online Community: This Microsoft project goes over strategies and principles for organizing communities online.
3. What elements of an online social networking profile predict target-rater agreement in personality?: Consider how profiles and online identities attract each other online and in social history.
4. WhoAmI — A Web 2.0 Platform for Faceted Identity Management through Aggregation of Social Media: This 10-minute lecture explores how identity is created and shared through social media.
5. Social dimension of social media: This lecturer wonders why there is little to no relationship structure in social media.
6. Will Monetization Models for Social Media Ever Come?: These professionals wonder why sites like YouTube and Twitter still haven’t figured out a way to make money.
7. What’s New in Social Media?: This video highlights what’s new in social news and bookmarking sites, as well as new trends in social media company structure.
8. Utilize Social Media But Don’t Forget to Manage It: Lisa Buyer of The Buyer Group shares tips on staying organized and effective while using social media.
9. Built for Conversation: The interaction of design of social media: This hour-length video argues that social media networks “can only be effectively guided by means of a researched and learned examination of social psychology.”
10. Social Networks 3.0: LinkedIn is used as a model example for how social networks continue to evolve, in terms of structure, features and managing identity.
11. How to Build a Community Website: This technical guide will help you create a member-driven website.

Media Trends

Learn how some social media outlets and trends are starting to outshine traditional media sources.

1. Jimmy Wales of Wikipedia on the Future Brand Building with Consumer Media: “The Wikipedia guy” Jimmy Wales talks about the future of consumer-generated media.
2. Exploring Social Media Scenarios for the Television: Noor Ali-Hasan from Microsoft explores the interactivity trends prevalent online and how they can be adjusted for TV.
3. Finding Influencers and Consumer Insights in the Blogosphere: Discover who creates trends in the blogosphere.
4. Using Blogs to Provide Context for News Articles: Continue the debate about the relationship between blogs and traditional news media.
5. The moment when social media became the news: This lecturer discusses how social media is now considered a primary news source, in some cases.
6. Amsterdam plane crash: Twitter, social media and the anatomy of disaster: As Twitter users continue to break news faster than the traditional media, consider the pros and cons of democratic news sharing.
7. Social Media and the 2008 U.S. Presidential Election: Take a look at how social media impacted the 2008 U.S. presidential election.
8. Science and Social Media: Nancy Shute from U.S. News and World Report encourages science writers to use Twitter and other social media outlets.
9. Twitter a Hot Topic and mb’s ‘Journalists and Social Media’ Panel: Mediabistro.com’s panel includes reporters and professionals from NPR, BusinessWeek.com, PressThink, The Daily Beast and others, all of whom came together to talk about why social media is important for journalists.

I got into a minor accident which has rendered my vehicle temporarily inoperable.

This has prevented me from scoping out meetup points for The Los Angeles Hikers and Photographers Meetup Group which I’ve organized over the past year. The group has built some momentum over time, growing in size after each hike and I didn’t want to allow the accident to slow that momentum down.

After reading Seth Godin’s article “Ignore your Critics”,  I asked myself:

“What can I do so that the group can continue its hikes and grow as a group without continually relying on my lead?”

It was simple.

Seth’s article asked us to “delight these people”.

So, I empowered them.

I emailed the group asking if there was anyone interested in an Assistant Organizer position so that way the responsibility of organizing or finding hiking locations never had to continuously fall on a single member of the group. Since hiking locations around Los Angeles are at times hard to get to, having Assitant Organizers in those locations makes it easier from the to get to and describe the Meetup point and location.  It’s no coincidence that the people who wanted to become Assistant Organizers were not only delighted to do so but were among the most active and passionate members of the group.

In this case, I believe, what delighted the “sneezers” most, was the opportunity for them to become an active part in the growth of the group.

11 Reasons Why I Use Social Media

11. Helps me to be seen as resourceful

10. Current content maintains my visibility throughout the Web without having to pay for sponsored links or ads

9. It generates a “buzz” about my business

8. Connects me with my audience at an emotional level

7. When I serve my customers well, they’re more likely to pass my name on to others

6. Establishes my business identity

5. Connects me with people in places I currently don’t have access to

4. Helps future clients get to know me better as a business professional and as a person

3. Connects me with businesses whose services I may need

2. Helps me to understand who my customers are

………….and the number one reason Why I Use Social Media is……..

1. Builds trust between me and my customer

Trust is the new currency.

25 Most Shocking Crimes in Social Media History

(Reprinted by Permission)

By Laura Milligan

http://www.mastersincriminaljustice.com/blog/2009/25-most-shocking-crimes-in-social-media-history/

The popularity and near necessity of social media sites has grown tremendously in the last few years, helping small businesses make connections, giving freelancers and students the chance to network with people they’d never be able to meet otherwise, and allow a place for all kinds of interest groups to chat and make friends online–from gardeners to book lovers to sports junkies. There is a dangerous and corrupt side to social media creators and users; however, and the ability to create fake profiles and violate privacy and copyright rules is still more than possible. Read below for 25 of the most shocking crimes in social media history.

Copyright, Hacking and Blackmail

From Facebook’s big lawsuits to MySpace hackers demanding pay-back from celebrities, these copyright, privacy and blackmail cases can get ugly.

1. ConnectU vs. Facebook: Facebook founders Mark Zuckerberg, Eduardo Saverin, Dustin Moskovitz, Andrew McCollum and Christopher Hughes got in big trouble in 2007 when their former Harvard friends filed a lawsuit claiming that Facebook was a rip-off of their brand ConnectU. Zuckerberg did programming work for ConnectU during its start up and is accused of stealing the business model and basic codes to form Facebook. Because Facebook is such a popular social media site, the case garnered a lot of attention, but ConnectU’s charges of copyright infringement didn’t hold much weight, since “the majority of the allegations date back to the days before either Facebook or ConnectU was a formal corporation,” according to CNET UK. In April 2008, though, Facebook settled, awarding ConnectU founders “an undisclosed sum of cash and stock,” Boston.com reported.

2. Miss New Jersey blackmail case: During the summer of 2007, then Miss New Jersey Amy Polumbo was scandalized when private Facebook photos were published in tabloids. The pictures were acquired as part of a blackmail attempt and featured Polumbo in PG-13 poses with her boyfriend and drinking at parties. The Miss America organization did not decide to dethrone Polumbo, but she decided to release the photos herself anyway, to clear the air.

3. Facebook vs. Montreal spammer: In November 2008, Facebook won its CAN-SPAM lawsuit against Canadian Adam Guerbuez, a spammer who clogged account holders’ pages with pornographic websites and other unsavory pitches. Guerbuez and the 26 others accused of spamming Facebook users were found guilty, and Facebook was awarded $873 million.

4. Chang v. Virgin Mobile USA, LLC: In January 2009, a Texas teenager and her mother sued Virgin Mobile for using one of her personal photos uploaded on Flickr for an Australian advertisement. The lawsuit insisted that Allison Chang’s right of publicity had been exploited and that the use of her photo violated the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 license she attached to her photo. The case was thrown out due to a discrepancy in jurisdiction, and no court could decide where to hold the case.

5. Allison Stokke vs. WithLeather.com: Allison Stokke was just a regular California pole vaulter ready to start college when she became a sex symbol and Internet sensation after the blog WithLeather.com posted her photo. The photo in question was taken during a competition and showed Stokke resting with her pole across her shoulder in a skimpy, but standard, track and field uniform. After the photo was featured online by various bloggers, Stokke received thousands of MySpace messages and e-mails and had a competition video posted on YouTube. The Washington Post reports that the photo eventually found its way to Matt Ufford of WithLeather.com, who wrote, “meet pole vaulter Allison Stokke. . . . Hubba hubba and other grunting sounds.” The original photographer threatened to sue Ufford and someone even created a fake Facebook page for Stokke–which was eventually taken down–but no criminal charges could ever be filed.

6. Twitter hijacking: Twitter users generally enjoy a pretty straightforward social media experience, but a scam in 2008 hacked major celebrity accounts, including Bill O’Reilly, Barack Obama and Britney Spears. CNN anchor Rick Sanchez’s account was also hacked and featured fake tweets that said “i am high on crack right now might not be coming into work today.” Gawker’s ValleyWag points out that this scam was virtually pointless, as the hackers didn’t profit financially from the phishing.

7. Facebook phishing scam: This phishing scam posted messages on users’ profiles warning friends that they were going to delete their profiles and that friends should click on a link to the new profile. The new profile link, however, was really a fake login page that tricked Facebook users into logging in and letting hackers steal their information.

8. Soulja Boy vs. MySpace hackers: Soulja Boy got mad when his MySpace was hacked and e-mail password was published online. The hackers left obscene messages on his MySpace page “where Soulja Boy purportedly declared his homosexuality” and insulted fans. The rapper was scammed by members of 4chan, who demanded that Soulja Boy pay them $2,500 “in order to regain control over his account,” Cyber Crimes reports. Soulja Boy’s record company contacted MySpace, who returned his account.

9. Miley Cyrus MySpace hacker: Teen actress and singer Miley Cyrus has had her share of scandals, and when her MySpace page was hacked and photos of her midriff were circulated around the Internet, parents got mad. But whatever you think of Miley, her hacker Josh Holly was the real one to blame and was eventually caught in an FBI raid on October 2008.

10. Shaun Harrison and Saverio Mondelli: Long Island friends Shaun Harrison and Saverio Mondelli were caught when they tried to track MySpace users through e-mail by creating their own code, demanding that the social media network pay them $150,000 as a consulting fee. Under their plan, MySpace users would be able to view the IP and e-mail addresses of all the visitors to their profile, but MySpace’s terms of agreement prevents that sort of monitoring. MSNBC reports that “two counts of attempted extortion and another illegal computer access count were dropped in the deal,” however.

11. Universal vs. MySpace: In November 2006, Universal Music Group sued MySpace for copyright infringement. Universal claimed that “that Myspace has looked the other way as users unlawfully uploaded copyright music videos,” and facilitated the easy spread of unlawful music sharing across the site, according to CNET News. Although MySpace had already been trying to cut back on copyright infringement for music sharing, Universal believed that MySpace was still exploiting artists and the company.

12. Facebook v. Power.com: This lawsuit is shocking according to TechDirt because it simply doesn’t make sense. Facebook sued Power.com, a social networking aggregator that lets users manage all of their social media profiles at once, for copyright and trademark infringement, unlawful competition and violation of the computer fraud and abuse act. According to TechDirt, Power.com does not try to trick anyone to believing they are using the original Facebook and actually serves to “actually improve the value of Facebook, rather than diminish it.”

Sex Crimes, Assault and Murder

Tragically, social media sites like MySpace serve as an easy venue for sex predators and bullies to track their victims. These grisly crimes have affected innocent teenagers and kids.

13. Megan Meier suicide: The tragic suicide of Missouri teenager Megan Meier was a top news story in 2006 and 2007. Meier was the victim of a prank that involved a classmate’s mother, Lori Drew, who set up a fake MySpace account and pretended to be a boy named Josh, who befriended Meier online. Drew apparently wanted to know whether or not Meier was gossiping about her own daughter and became close with her under false pretenses. “Josh” eventually said “he didn’t want to be [Meier's] friend anymore, that he had heard she wasn’t nice to her friends,” according to Fox News. “Josh” continued to post messages taunting Meier, even calling her “fat” and a “slut.” Meier hanged herself in her bedroom, and six weeks later, her parents found out about the fraudulent MySpace account. In May 2008, Drew was indicted on three counts of accessing protected computers without authorization to obtain information to inflict emotional distress, and one count of criminal conspiracy, according to Wikipedia.

14. Middletown, CT, sex assaults: In 2006, seven teenage girls from Middletown, CT, reported to authorities that they had had consensual sex or engaged in sexual relations “with men who turned out to be older than they claimed,” according to MSNBC. The girls, all under the age of 18 and as young as 12, met the men on MySpace.

15. Kara Borden and David Ludwig: Pennsylvania teenager Kara Borden had to run away from home after she watched her boyfriend, David Ludwig shoot and kill her parents. The pair were tracked down by people who found their MySpace profiles and Xanga blog, and left obscene messages on their pages. Both Kara and David’s social media pages served as a platform for the public and journalists to speculate over their innocence or guilt.

16. Doe v. MySpace: In this case, a minor and her mother sued MySpace after she was sexually assaulted by a nineteen-year-old man she contacted on the social media site. The lawsuit claimed that MySpace did not support or protect minors from predators, but it was eventually dismissed from Texas and New York federal courts.

17. Judy Cajuste murder: Judy Cajuste’s murder is another example of MySpace predators who take advantage of vulnerable teens online. In January 2006, 14-year-old Cajuste was strangled to death in New Jersey and dumped in a dumpster. Friends believe Cajuste had already met the man offline before he allegedly killed her, saying that “she felt comfortable with him,” already.

18. The Olivia Haters Club: The new phenomenon called cyber bullying was the focus of a thirteen-year-old girl’s existence in 2006. Olivia Gardner has epilepsy, and inspired a mean girls’ club called “Olivia Haters” that kids from her middle school set up on MySpace. Gardner’s family could not charge the girls with any sort of crime, but it was still a shocking revelation for them.

19. Teens charged with child pornography: Teenagers aren’t immune from being charged with child pornography, and in March 2006 in Providence, RI, 19-year-old Elizabeth Muller and a 16-year-old girl were charged for uploading pornographic pictures of themselves on MySpace.

20. Lewis & Clark College sex assault: The campus at Lewis & Clark College in Portland, OR, became involved in a complicated sex assault case after sophomore Helen Hunter reported being sexually assaulted. In response to the assault, students set up a Facebook group that gossiped about the case and posted hostile messages towards her alleged assaulter, Morgan Shaw-Fox, even though Hunter never submitted a formal complaint. After Shaw-Fox made his own complaint about the Facebook page, he was suspended but never charged with a crime.

21. Michael Macalindong blackmail and child pornography: In October 2008, Michael Macalindong was sentenced to 34 years in federal prison for posing as a teenage girl, soliciting a teenage boy, and trying to blackmail him for not posting sexual videos of himself on Facebook. After striking up a friendship with the boy, the Chicago Tribune reports that Macalindong, 25, “told the teen he could have sex with her” but only if the teen had sex with her male friend first. Macalindong was that male “friend,” police said.

22. Fontana, CA MySpace sting: California teenagers who set up a fake MySpace profile as a joke ended up luring a sex predator and having him arrested. The boys created a fake profile for a 15-year-old girl, which attracted a man who sent sexually explicit message to “her.” Eventually, the boys agreed to meet the man in a park, “and, when the man arrived, they called police,” according to MSNBC.

23. Andrew Lubrano: Wired writer Kevin Poulsen created a code that would find sex predators on MySpace, a controversial tactic that actually helped catch Andrew Lubrano. Lubrano was arrested and convicted of sex crimes in the 1980s and 90s but was eventually released. In 2005, he signed up for MySpace, where he found teenage boys to “friend.” Poulsen directed Long Island police to Lubrano’s page, letting them conduct an investigation, which results in his arrest.

24. Amanda Knoble shooting: Cyber bullying became an almost-deadly reality for Amanda Knoble in 2008, when another teenage girl, 15-year-old Andrea Haskins, threatened to kill her in a message on MySpace. Haskins shot Knoble in the leg after sending her the message and was charged as an adult for attempted first-degree intentional homicide.

25. Florida teens beat-down: This serious beating of a teenage girl started on MySpace. The victim’s father, reports ABC News 24, says the girls wanted to create a video that would become popular on You Tube. But the mother of one of the arrested teens says the victim provoked the attack by threatening and insulting the girls on My Space. The victim was jumped by six girls who gave her a concussion, bruises and injured her eye and ear while two boys stood watch. All eight teenagers were arrested.

I have officially declared 2009, “The Year of No Fear”.  My friend has dubbed it “Less Whine in 2009″

Whatever the case, Happy New Year!

Here are my favorite snippets of  definitions of Social Media that I came across in 2008 via my interactions with folks on LinkedIn. Enjoy!

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Start with what they already know: It’s easier to define it mostly by what it is NOT:

1. Social Media is not Heritage or traditional i.e. professionals who create media based on what they think will gain an audience and neutral standpoint (vs bloggers who write about what they are interested in, and passionate about)
3. Social Media is not Social Network Marketing i.e. sending around agency created content as viral videos. If all the network are doing is passing it on, don’t get to add to it, then its viral, not social.
2. Social Media is not Social Networks (Non-Media) – non-media based social networks include p2p telecommunications (Meraki), peer to peer banks (Zopa), and other non-media industries.
Then you can go to the general meaning: In summary, social media is content created by non-agency, non-heritage media and uses social not broadcast channels to distribute (pass on, discuss and rate) that content.
Laurel Papworth  http://laurelpapworth.com/

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A great term we just learned at our recent industry event, special events, was that social media was like an on-going “Cocktail Party” with your invited friends, family, and colleagues to share your stories, moments and events.
Carol Moxam  http://www.linkedin.com/in/carolmoxam333

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If I had to explain it to my mother, I’d say they are internet-based tools that allow people to express themselves by creating a profile and sharing text, pictures, videos and audio they created or gathered from multiple sources, they can also find their previous friends and meet new ones that share their interests.

Mariano Andres Garcia  http://www.marianoandres.com.ar/

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Social…….Media……Words have a meaning. A medium granting the chance to communicate between people, on the Internet. Start from the beginning, then make examples.

Stefano Nicoletti http://www.linkedin.com/in/stefanonicoletti

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In short, SM is the use social sites as tools to create strategies that make our costumers participants of our services and products, enhancing their experience in relation to our brand.
Francisco Kemeny  http://www.neuralis.cl/

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Social Media the communication is a conversation unlike the unidirectional communication of traditional media. Social Media depends on the interactions between people. Audience response, whether it is commenting on, or editing the original message/content, is the key element.

Scott Krinsky http://www.linkedin.com/in/skrinsky

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I would rather say that media has become social in itself. The prosumer (consumer is a producer too) uses media to express himself. Media is no longer the goal anymore, it’s a mean to distribute a personal message. Whether it comes from a particular person or an enterprise doesn’t matter. 1-1 possibilities in communication makes that all media eventually become social.

Tim De Coninck  http://www.communicatiemannen.be/

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Social media is the collection of tools that allow people to communicate amongst themselves. While the web and Internet are clearly part of the mix and faciliate the spread of a message, they are by no means the only tools (cell phones and SMS). The choice of how broadly to communicate is left to the individual – it may be a bull-horn announcment (top blogger or pundit) or a private and personal tweet recommending a new book. To a large degree social media simply allows the individual to choose the audience,  the message and the content.

Anthony Power http://apowerpoint.blogspot.com/

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Social media is still evolving – and for many marketers, the ability to sell the concept hinges on monetization, and proof of measurable impact; either ROI, lift in LCV, etc.. Successfully building metrics around social media means aligning these initiatives with your database; because this provides the means to capture contact information, track interactions, and map future behaviors. Those data points provide the intelligence which proves social media’s value. The question for many marketers, is how, and to what degree, social media can add value which is supported by metrics.

Carol Lynn Martens   http://www.linkedin.com/in/clcmartens

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Social media is a way for people to communicate online usually through discussion and is often used for raising the profile of, marketing or selling products or services. They include message boards, blogs or networking sites and some examples are LinkedIn, Facebook and YouTube.

Christine Cooper  http://www.linkedin.com/pub/5/b62/1a6

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To keep it simple, without all the marketing mambo-jumbo, I’d say these are all the tools that give you a chance to directly and honestly communicate (in both directions!) and connect with your friends, customers, or anybody sharing common interests, passions, problems or concerns; letting all the interested parties create their own, subject-specific community.
Krzysztof Nowak http://www.linkedin.com/in/nowakka

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“Internet-based technologies that allow direct communication between self-selecting groups of people”.  Alternatively: Any internet medium where a group of like-minded people can gather to discuss issues such as “how do you define social media’”.
Chris Noble http://www.linkedin.com/in/infowranglers

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Web-based tools used to share and exchange information.

Tim Allik  http://techprgems.com/

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An internet based application or site with “gathering power” (i.e. a driving force for traffic) that favors and enhances one-to-one and one-to-many communications, usually basing it on a member-get-membert strategy or group affinity.
Matteo Fogli  http://www.pecus.it/

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Digital tools that allow individuals to share, connect, and interact with their friends and their friends of friends.
Jason Dojc http://www.squidoo.com/jd

I had the chance to speak with Tom O’Brien, CMO at MotiveQuest and ask how MINI-Cooper capitalized on this campaign by “listening to the community”.

Before a marketing or advertising campaign is launched, businesses come to MotiveQuest for specific answers about their customers or potential customers. According to MotiveQuest, you are able to “see the “peaks of passion” in online conversations to understand customer motivations.” Through research, they determined that “understanding the drivers of brand advocacy can inform the creation of new marketing campaigns and even product strategy.”

RS: How do you define “community”? How do you begin listening to your audience and what ways do you actually go about doing that?

A community has its own characteristics, its own motivations, and its own interests. To me, if you want that community to love you, the first thing you need to do is understand them.
I’ll give you one example. We’ve done a ton of research on cell phones. In the cell phone world, you use to launch a phone with great fanfare and you’d have a first wave of buyers. You could essentially get a phone out there with good marketing. In today’s world, you can’t do that anymore. Because as soon as the phone is available, there’s 15, 20 or 100 people who are going to analyze it in great detail and then they’re going to post they’re finding out there on the web. Look at a place called HowardForums.com. There are about 8 million messages a year out there on cell phones. People talking to each other about cell phones. And so this is a community. It’s not owned by any of the cell phone companies. It was started by a guy named Howard. This is only one example but it is the essence of one of things going on on the Web. It use to be that I would talk to the people close to me about buying an HDTV or a car or cell phone. Now, essentially the Internet breaks down the boundaries of time and space in such a way that I can get 300 opinions on cell phones, HDTV’s and cars at the stroke of a keyboard. And they’re not very hard to find. There are mavens already out there who know how and what to do and have already answered the questions I’m going to ask. This exists in every category. So, you can no longer hide poor product performance with good marketing because the word gets out there too fast. To some degree product and marketing have become one.

RS: How was it even determined a “community” is there to begin with?

All you have to do is look and what you’ll see is that in cars and virtually everything else there is a very large and passionate conversation around that thing. And if there is no conversation about it, there’s a pretty good bet there is no community. No conversation, essentially, no community. What we do is mine those conversations, organize them and analyze them to understand what are the core human motivations and drivers expressed in the conversation and what are the implications of that for our clients. We call what we do “Online Anthropology”. We’re sitting outside this village observing how people interact and trying to build a model of how it works. Because if you understand the village and how it works, you have a much better chance of doing the right thing from a marketing perspective.

RS: And then you can address the specific concerns that the village is talking about; what drives them and what motivates them.

TO: You can also understand what they already believe to be true about you and your competitors. You can also understand that the consumers may think entirely different than from any marketing message you’re trying to get across. So if I’m New Balance and I want to go against Nike, I better figure out what they believe to be true about me and Nike before I determine what my positioning is, unless I have hundreds of millions to try and convince everyone otherwise.

RS: But you want to start from a more authentic standpoint?

TO: Yes. Figure out where the passion is before you start marketing and then connect to the passion, rather than trying to create some new thing.

RS: It really is going back to the very fundamentals of marketing which is understanding your audience.

TO: And what we have here with the Web is the world’s largest focus group. And it’s raging continuously. All we’re doing is listening in. Let’s look at the MINI Case study. One thing about the work we did with Butler, Shine, Stern & Partners (BSSP) and MINI on this one is that we did the research on the existing MINI community that convinced them that the essence of the MINI Brand DNA was not “small”, but was really about “creativity and collaboration”. That insight led to a huge shift in positioning MINI.

RS: Through your research you identified features and traits that drove customer affinity for various models. Looks, style, performance, cost, handling, driving, customization, space, comfort and fuel efficiency. What would you say was most important MINI owners?

If you’re looking at this slide, this about the 30th slide in a deck that organizes all the conversation around MINI: how much conversation is there, what are the topics of conversation, what is the positive and negative, where is the conversation happening and compare it to their competitive set. There is a lot of organizing the data and comparing it.

When BSSP came to us they said, “We want to compare MINI to these guys.”

First of all, they had a different competitive set.

RS: Meaning?

They didn’t have Jetta as part of their competitive set. What we found, by looking at the conversations, we can tell who they’re cross shopping against. Because people say “Should I buy a MINI or a Jetta”? We have a very consumer centric view of the world. You don’t have to tell me who your competitive set is. I’ll figure it out just by listening to the conversation. So we follow the data. That’s one really important point.
As you mentioned, the second thing what they asked us to look at were the items in red (see chart). Performance, exterior features, driving style so on and so forth. What we found was that those were not sufficient to bucket all the conversation. People in the community talk about the features of the car a lot but they talk about a lot of other things too.

RS: That’s one of things I found fascinating about this chart was that the competitive set would talk more about the features of the car but the MINI owners were talking more about the social aspects; sharing pictures, dedications, relationships, events, gatherings.

TO: And they’re real. There are real relationships there. We come to know each other, trust each other and talk about all sorts of things beyond the features of the car or whatever the community is about. So these communities are real. They’re not just about the car.

RS: From that information, how would you describe the “creative customization car culture of MINI owners”?

MINI in particular is a pretty tribal community. It’s about belonging to the MINI tribe.

BSSP was asked by MINI and MINI’s charter was:

“We have no new models coming out this year. Can you guys put together a campaign that sells more cars and prove to us that your campaign sold more cars?”

The interesting thing that BSSP did was that their method of selling more cars, was to target the existing MINI community rather than to target people who currently don’t own MINIs. This is a huge leap of faith, in my opinion. We were hired by BSSP to understand the community. They’re hypothesis was if we can get the MINI community more jazzed about the MINI, we’ll sell more cars. To do that you have to understand the community. They hired us to understand what the MINI community was about and what the MINI brand was about through the eyes of the community. The big “A-ha!” from this analysis was that MINI was about “creative customization and collaboration”. It was not about “being small”. If you remember the early ads about MINI, they were all about small. They had MINI on top of an SUV or pulling into a really small parking space. The MINI community is not organized around “small”. It’s all about creativity, collaboration and belonging to the MINI tribe.

The way this project worked was first, analyze and understand two things:
1. What does the MINI community care about?
2. What is the brand DNA of MINI through the eyes of the community?
They’re two slightly different questions. One is about community motivations.
The other is about brand truth.

RS: So after the community was defined, what steps were taken?

So if you go down to Chart #7, Campaign Development, here are the elements that Butler Shine did.

1.They did a covert mailing to current MINI owners where they sent them this puzzle where they went online and worked with other MINI owners to solve a problem.
2. Then, they did the “MINI Takes The States” where they drive across the country having these big jamborees where MINI owners get together with food and music; a kind of tribal “lets get together and show off our MINIs” event.
3. If you participated in one of these things, they gave you a transponder to place underneath the car, so when you drive by one of these billboards, it gives you a personalized message, such as “ Hi Kate, Nice Day For Your Convertible”.

It’s all about being a part of the tribe. What we could see was changes in what we were measuring. So our role was first “help us understand (the MINI owner) and help us measure the effectiveness of the campaign.” Secondly, measure the change. Third, link it to sales.

RS: When “galvanizing brand community” there are two objectives you focus on: “look backwards before looking forwards” and “identify the social currency”. Explain those.

TO: Understand first. Ask, “What’s motivating people?”. This is the “currency”. In the MINI community it’s about belonging or showing off. In a hybrid car community it may be about changing the world, saving the planet. We understand it by listening and analyzing.

RS: How does a company create loyalty?

You create loyalty by understanding what people want and giving it to them. I think it’s really that simple. You create loyalty in the MINI community by giving them more opportunities to interact with each other and find and participate with the MINI tribe. If I was to try and create loyalty within a hybrid car community my actions would be very, very different because a hybrid car isn’t a tribal community, it is an evangelistic community.
Then the second piece about creating loyalty, and this is the hardest part about this whole “social media marketing”, and it’s this: It’s not about marketing. It isn’t.

RS: Based on this conversation here it’s all about listening and understanding.

TO: Right. And what do you do with that? If you’re smart, what you do is figure out how to have relationships with people that are meaningful. Figure out how to be helpful to that community. Here are two different paths I can take. I can post “MINI for Sale!” or “Here’s a deal!” or “Would you please recommend this to a friend?” and I can spend all my time doing that. How do you think that would be received? They’d drive you out of there! Or I can go in there and say, “ I see this particular customization coming up a lot. Here’s a technical service bulletin you can check out that I think explains it. If it doesn’t let me know. You can become a valued member of the community or you can sell at them. They are two very, very different things. And it has huge implications.

I was at the WOMMA conference in Las Vegas, and someone told a story about what they’re doing in social media and they said the hardest thing about it is that its not about marketing campaigns, its about relationships. Now, relationships don’t have a start or end date does they? It’s an open-ended commitment.

The other thing is, it’s not just Marketing. So in order for her to go forward with the program, she had to get Marketing, Customer Service, Engineering, Legal and Executive all to sign off on it. Because it involves all those departments. You can imagine if I wanted to be a valued member of the MINI community it would touch all those things wouldn’t it? It challenges companies because it goes across the traditional silos.

RS: This forces departments within companies to have more and more conversations with each other.

TO: Right.

RS: Given all that’s been said here, what is your definition of social media and how is it affecting traditional media & marketing? What are some examples of the ways in which social media is changing the communications business?

TO: I think we’re just beginning to figure out “social media”. It’s not “media”. It’s really social computing. Me asking questions about how to install DIRECTV is not media. The way I look at this word is this; there’s plumbing that’s available now and the plumbing is the Internet plus all the applications and devices. That allows me to talk to anybody, anywhere. I can find people. I don’t need the marketer to provide me information about their stuff anymore. I bought a digital camera last year. I didn’t go to Canon or Nikon to ask questions about digital cameras I went to the digital camera community. I don’t need the marketer anymore. I honestly don’t. So if they want to be relevant, they ought to be participating in those communities. And participation in the communities is about relationships and not about selling.

I get asked that often by clients, friends and family members. It’s not entirely simple but there are 3 tools I use to keep track of ongoing events, people, places and things. Some of this may be old news for some who are involved with Social Media, but for others…here you go….

http://www.TweetBeep.com 

Allows you follow keywords that come up in posts on Twitter. Say you want to track the word “social media marketing”. Add that word to your TweetBeep alerts and every time that word comes up you’ll be sent an email. A digest of posts is sent hourly or daily, your choice.

http://www.google.com/alerts

Same concept here although Google scours the web for your keyword AND you’re getting more than just someone’s Tweet. Links, videos, blogposts, you name it are all sent to you regarding your specific keyword. You can track up to 1000 words on Google Alert then you’ll have to sign up for another email account to have other alerts sent there.

http://www.monitter.com

A relative newcomer but this one is downright fun! See keywords in Twitter as they appear IN REAL TIME! You can set up numerous columns that will allow you to track multiple keywords on the same screen. Using this over the course of the day it was very intriguing how posts became more and more personal the closer it got to the end of the day and into the evening. 

As mentioned, its not entirely easy to stay on top of the issues of the day but these tools can help anyone be more in tuned with your audience

This is one of the cornerstones of Social Media Marketing. Listening to your audience.

A friend in our community lost her family dog in the West Hollywood, CA area at Sunset Blvd. and Poinsettia Place late Friday evening November 7th. We are looking for information from anyone south of Sunset and West of La Brea.

Please copy and paste this link to your Facebook / MySpace / social media friends in the West Hollywood, CA area and ask them if they have any information on friendly “Oscar”.

Please email me if you have any leads or information.

Let us prove once again that Social Media works on many levels!

“8 Great Case Studies on the Best Social Media Programs at Large Corporations”

Hosted by  The Blog Council and Gaspedal

Blogwell San Jose Convention Center 10/ 28/2008 -1pm -5pm PST

Opening Remarks

Andy Sernovitz, CEO Gaspedal

“Social media is learning to talk to people, like people, understand people and treat people better….”

1:30pm   Lindsay Labresco, Corporate Blogger for Graco.

“Graco is one of the world’s best known and most trusted juvenile products companies.” (from company website)

Graco -18 months in Social Media

Social Media Strategy – “building relationships”

1. Enable Advocacy- capitalize on WOM between Moms and 1^st time and expectant mothers
2. Humanize the Brand – Instill trust in the brand highlight that people behind the brand are parents too
3. Connect and Educate – Build relationships through

Listening – conversation mining, listen to the conversation online, don’t do anything without doing this first

1. Gauge public sentiment

2. Strategic Planning – this helps set goals

3. Provides information for production

Staying Informed – knowing what’s going on with customers and in the industry

“People love the product, but we want people to talk about the brand.”

Engage and Participate

Graco – Engaged – personal engagement

“Graco Get Togethers“ – regional blogger meetups, hosted 9 events so far, avg. 125 attendees, 55 post-“posts” talking about the parties

End result of this event – Graco having a guest shot on the Today Show…something that they didn’t aspire to, but came organically out of “Graco Get Togethers”

Also:

• Joining online communities – Blogher, Cafemom, Facebook, Twitter and being in those places as people
• Adding to conversations – commenting on parenting blogs
• Recognize bloggers with monthly nods – pick favorite Blog of the Month
• Giveaways and product reviews
• Flickr – post events

Graco – Participation

• Graco corporate blog, participate in parenting conversations which builds trust and gives Graco a face in that community
• Strategic Content Generation yields positive SEO results

All of this results in:

“true authentic engagement with their targeted consumers” and “Have people come authentically” including:

Bloggers

Retailers – coming to them for advice

Media – being seen as a recognized peer

Twitter - http://twitter.com/GracoRoadAhead

Youtube Videos – with demos of products

2:10pm - Nick Ayres, Interactive Marketing Manager at The Home Depot

Social Media Strategy

1. Recapturing customers

2. Connecting with a new set of customers – 1^st time home owners and ones just coming out of college

3. Engage associates in ways that are relevant to others lifestyles.

EXAMPLE 1 : Twitter and Natural Disasters

The Home Depot on Twitter: http://twitter.com/TheHomeDepot

Home Depot is the leader in natural disaster preparation and recovery efforts for both customer and associates donating money and materials

The Challenge for Home Depot:

Could Social Media get us to help better and faster?

How did they engage?

Trusted

Timely

Relevant

Accurate

Appropriate – Ex. using Twitter – letting customers know stores were open later than normal during a time of crisis or, making their community aware of what products were available at which location ex. Generators

He mentioned they could not have gotten this message out fast enough using traditional media methods.

All of these actions were building blocks for “long term brand presence.”

Example 2: Video Syndication

Youtube “How To” Videos

Home Depot Take-Aways

1. Find out what customers want first

2. Find others at your company who are passionate about brand, make them evangelists

3. Scratch and claw for small wins

4. Do not let social media turn into another campaign

3:40pm UPS - Debbie Curtis Magley - Public Relations Office Manager at UPS

Lessons Learned from Social Media monitoring

The largest piece of the monitoring process was to discern which conversations were customer sentiment as opposed to just venting sessions –  the term “UPS” generates many unrelated terms “pushups, pullups”

UPS Social Media Strategy

1. Determine what you want to learn and for what purpose

2. Look at general brand conversations

a. Degree of chatter that mentions your brand

b. Reputation topics – monitor issues that represent opportunities or threats

c. Business Industry sector – what is the brand’s role within the market sector

Recognize the limitations of monitoring

Although they had TNS build a dashboard for them to help them monitor, the need for a human “filter” is essential. Not all conversations can be automated.

The task of analyzing conversations was distributed among co-workers. Co-workers became even more aware of issues and these individuals were being seen as an expert on the issues they addressed.

4:20pm Suraya Bliss, Sr. Director Communications and John Andrews, Sr. Marketing Manager, WALMART

2.2 miliion employees worldwide

Purpose Driven Company

“Save Money. Live Better.”

Whatever they decide to take on, Wal-Mart looks through that lens to make a difference.

Internal social networking just started a month ago whereby they tap into the wisdom of employees for development

Guding Principles

• Increase Loyalty
• Gain Understanding
• Reduce costs
• Reinforce Brand Pillars