Corante Marketing Hub

"The Peachtree" Road Race - Lessons Learned

Toby — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 14:25:00 GMT

Happy Fourth of July!

Run, walk, watch or read tweets #peachtree road race - The Peachtree is Atlanta's tradition for the 4th of July morning. Today the 2009 Peachtree Road Race celebrates its 40th anniversary back where it started at Piedmont Park. 5500 will proudly wear the 2009 Peachtree Road Race t-shirt this year.

The race is so integrated into Atlanta culture that we simply say "The Peachtree" assuming that all the world understands what that means. Talking with @Pollig this week brought that one home. My friend from Boston, well Weymouth, MA, was confused when I mentioned that after The Peachtree I'd probably join friends in Midtown tonight to watch fireworks.

I thought it does sound funny - "Watch the Peachtree." Why would you watch a street and which Peachtree street might that one be since Atlanta has 50 zillion Peachtree Streets?

How many times do we get caught up in our own company's or industry's buzz words? How often do we confuse customers and especially prospective customers? We don't mean to .. it's just part of our culture. But in doing so we construct barriers that our customers have to figure out by themselves how to maneuver around.

In marketing, especially social media marketing, that seems to happen all the time. So much so that worlds that seem obvious become platitudes. A term that social media consultants and marketers love to toss around is conversation. What are these "conversations?" What does it mean to be authentic? How do you define transparency?

Lessons learned from The Peachtree Road Race: Give your customers an unobstructed course to run your The Peachtree!

Where Have PrimeTime Viewers Gone and What Do They Find When They Get There

Grant McCracken — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 21:40:00 GMT

These are numbers from the estimable website TV By The Numbers (refs. below).Bill Gorman shows two things: 1) the decline of broadcast networks (yellow column to the left)2) the rise of cable networks (yellow column to the right) As Gorman notes today, cable is not just growing but moving to the center. In the case of Bravo, for instance, this means moving from indie film, drama and the performing arts to reality, fashion and celebrity. TLC was once a "place for learning minds" and now gives us Jon & Kate Plus 8. The cable alternative now has a carnie instinct for a cruder entertainment. The question is this: does this movement to more popular themes represent a compression of cutural offerings and a dumbing down of programming. We can argue this a number of ways. But I am impressed with the fact that reality television is often a very successful ways of getting something like the lives of real(ish) Americans into the programming mix. Without the innovations driven by cable, there is no way we would now have such detailed ethnographic treatments of, say, the Housewives of New Jersey and Orange CountyIt's a question then of winners and losers.Two groups are relatively displaced by the "new cable:" the avant garde who prefer indie content, and taste elites who care about arts content. Two groups are served: a carnie audience interested in sensational coverage and the rest of us who like this window on other worlds. ReferencesGorman, Bill. 2008. Updated: Where Did The Primetime Broadcast Audience Go? TVbythenumbers.com. December 03, 2008. here. (source of the image above)Gorman, Bill. 2009. As Cable Networks Abandon Their Roots to Grab Audience, Where Do The Niches Go. TVbythenumbers.com. here.

SEDONA | The Moore Boys (home video)

johnmoore (from Brand Autopsy) — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 19:51:00 GMT

NOTE: OFF-TOPIC blog post Since the Fourth of July weekend is usually when families gather together, I'm sharing a recent gathering of the Moore Family.

Technology makes home movies and old-school slide shows so much better. Super 8 home movies and Kodak Kodachrome slides on the projector screen were great back-in-the-day. However, these days, we have iMovie to make our home movies of vacations more enjoyable and sharable.

Recently I spent a few days in Sedona, AZ with my father (age 74), brother (44), nephew (13), and of course me (39). We called it our “3 Generations” trip and the Moore Boys had fun seeing the natural beauty of Sedona.

I compiled some photos and videos from the trip and whipped up a home movie using iMovie. It’s over 10-minutes long so posting it to YouTube was a no-go. Instead, it’s posted on Vimeo.

Have a look-see, if ya like. (Note: the helicopter video is really cool. It begins at the 11:20 mark.) Enjoy the video and enjoy spending time with your family this weekend.

SEDONA | 2009 ... The Moore Boys from john moore on Vimeo.

Cision’s Top 10 UK PR blogs

neville@nevillehobson.com (Neville Hobson) — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 16:19:00 GMT

Business and communication intelligence firm Cision updated their list yesterday of the top 10 PR blogs in the UK, which now looks like this:

I don’t know their ranking methodology but I must admit to being quite flattered that my blog is ranked by Cision as the #1 PR blog in the UK.

In prefacing the top 10 list, Cision says:

[…] Covering the latest developments in communications technology, the impact of the web on political dialogue and the convergence of PR with other communications activity, the blogs listed below represent the most visible, engaged and social of the UK PR blogosphere.

I know of all the others blogs, and actually know quite a few of the bloggers themselves. All a good and worthy group on any list!

Cision has produced a number of other lists that rank the UK blogosphere in varying ways:

Useful and credible business resources.

Inputs on IABC conference connectivity

neville@nevillehobson.com (Neville Hobson) — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 11:38:00 GMT

One thought about the 2009 IABC World Conference in San Francisco has been floating in my mind since I was at the event in early June.

That thought is to do with connectivity.

By that, I mean the difficulty I experienced (as did others) in getting a consistent and reliable-strength wifi signal in most of the conference areas in the San Francisco Marriott Hotel where the event took place.

The pic here shows my podcasting partner Shel Holtz sporting a nifty wifi t-shirt that lit up whenever it detected a wifi signal, and progressively illuminated according to the strength of that signal.

In this instance, I remember we were standing in the conference exhibition area when I took the photo – pretty solid strength as Shel lit up!

Certainly not typical if you went down a floor to the session rooms. On that floor, if there was a common comment I heard from many people, it was “Is there wifi?” or “You have wifi? I can’t get a connection.”

I also encountered another reality of big-venue events – inflexibility over connectivity. Let me give you an example.

I led a pre-conference podcasting workshop on the Sunday afternoon. Part of the setup I requested was internet access. They gave me wired access, which was fine, but what I really needed was wireless (wifi) so I could do my experiment with Audioboo from the iPhone.

The wired connection couldn’t be changed without paying for a new account. I was willing to do that until the hotel told me the price was in the hundreds of dollars. Even the idea of unplugging the wired connection and then just using wifi wouldn’t work – they note IP addresses and weird stuff like that and would see a separate, chargeable, connection.

Outrageous, frankly. But a zero-cost solution did present itself (and that’s all I will say about that).

All of this came to mind yesterday when I completed the survey IABC asks all conference speakers to do as a means of capturing thoughts, opinions and suggestions that IABC’s conference planners may find helpful when planning the next international conference (which, if you want to note your diary, takes place from June 6-9, 2010, in Toronto, Ontario, Canada).

Funnily enough, it wasn’t wifi that came to my mind first when I did the survey, but rather, the lack of power connectivity that I observed.

You know how it is at most conferences – those with laptops or any device requiring an electrical connection sit around the periphery of a room, wherever power outlets are located.

Whichever conference venue sorts this issue out by having plenty of outlets in convenient locations for everyone to plug into – and in some older buildings, they’ll need lots of power strips – as well as gets wifi sorted out will clean up the conference market in their city, I reckon.

Anyway, here are the specific suggestions I made to IABC when I got the the right question in the survey:

11. What changes, additions or improvements would you recommend?

One of the interesting things I observed was the large numbers of conference attendees constantly searching for power outlets into which to connect their devices, whether those devices are laptops, mobile phones, whatever. Helpful, therefore, at the next venue to provide power strips in strategic locations in meetings rooms, etc, so that people can focus on what they can do with their devices to connect and communicate rather than be concerned about whether they have enough juice.

Related – wifi connectivity. Absolutely appalling in the SF venue: once you went down those escalators, either you couldn’t get a signal or the one you did get was part of the hotel’s business wifi packages that had secure access and a very high $$$ cost to use.

Consider negotiating a conference pricing deal with an ISP for wifi connectivity for the next conference. Better still, find a sponsor who will provide free wifi for the event.

Hope it helps.

As a final comment, let me say that this post is by no means a criticism of anyone at IABC. On the contrary – the 2009 conference was simply terrific!

Related post:

Conferences are about frameworks and participation

Interesting Week 27 of 2009

Tom Asacker — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 08:00:00 GMT

1. Malcolm Gladwell on why Chris Anderson is wrong about "Free" and Anderson's response.Gladwell in The New Yorker. Anderson on his blog. And a few words from Seth Godin.2. You Can't Beat HabitThe economy has even the most habitual customers rethinking what they buy -- forcing you to win their loyalty all over again, according to Neale Martin, author of "Habit." Entrepreneur3. Leadership in a (Permanent) CrisisWhen the economy recovers, things won’t return to normal -- and a different mode of leadership will be required. Harvard Business Review4. Scientist: Influencer Theory Is BogusYahoo's Duncan Watts says the influencer idea isn't even a theory, it's a 'rhetorical device.' Brandweek5. Why Your Gut Is More Ethical Than Your BrainIt's believed that to live ethically, we must engage our reason, which reins in the whims and follies of emotion. But what if unethical behavior is actually spurred, rather than prevented, by reason? Fast CompanyNote to my U.S. friends and family: Have a safe and happy 4th of July celebration! Here's a little video to inspire you: Great Quotes from Great Leaders

Atlanta Women In Social Media Marketing_4

Toby — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 04:10:00 GMT

Atlanta has a lively interactive and traditional marketing community. As Jenn Bonnett's new Startup Chicks has proven there are lots of women launching exciting businesses with a tech focus. BUT I wondered .. Where are the women in Atlanta who use social media as a marketing tool? Sooo .. I'm doing what any social media marketer would do reaching out to my network on blogs, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and offline too. My goal is to create a resource list.

If you meet this criteria please let me know. Using social media as a marketing strategy for your company/brand or helping clients use social media as a marketing strategy. Check out the other Atlanta Women in Social Media Marketing mini interviews.

Jaime Lackey Pizzeria Venti (Atlanta) @pvatl Pizzeria Venti (Atlanta) Blog

1. What does social media marketing mean to you? - I started social media marketing initiatives with the idea that I could help promote my family’s new restaurant. But once I joined Twitter, I realized how much more there is to social media. For example, we’ve been involved with several charity fundraiser events for local organizations that I discovered through Twitter. In other words, Twitter is helping us to become a better corporate citizen - and the online community connects us with our physical community.

2. My favorite social media tactic is Twitter. At Pizzeria Venti, we have a Facebook page and a blog, but I find Twitter to be more interactive and I really enjoy that.

3. In 140 characters - What is Atlanta's greatest challenge in becoming a social media hub? The stigma of “what I had for breakfast” tweets. Users must experiment to find connections w/value & learn to use social media effectively.

4. 2 sentences about your company. - At Pizzeria Venti, we strive to bring the food and atmosphere of Italy’s trattorias to Atlanta. The food is authentic Italian, and we do our best to create an atmosphere that is casual and family-friendly but that puts customer service in the highest priority.

5. I began offering social media marketing this year, after opening the restaurant in December 2008. We established our Facebook page first and then realized it isn’t very easy to have a two-way conversation with fans or to reach out to people who are not yet fans, so I looked into Twitter. Because of the 140-character limit, I realized I needed a blog so I could link to details that take more than 140 characters. So we launched our blog in May.

Stephanie Beckham BrainJocks @sbeckham

1. What does social media marketing mean to you? - Social Media Marketing is an outreach effort for your personal or company brand. Anyone who views it as only a way to push a product, blog or services will miss out on a huge opportunity to connect and listen.

The key word here is “social”. Social media adopters are very reluctant to being “marketed” to, so it’s kind of ironic that we actually call it marketing. Social Media is a tool that should be integrated as part of an overall marketing effort, not as a single strategy to sell. The key here is to communicate, network and above all, be real.

2. My favorite social media tactic is being social. Seriously! That’s it. Oh, and there are all these great tools that help brands strategically target the people they want to engage. These tools are free, easy to use and extremely effective.

3. In 140 characters - What is Atlanta's greatest challenge in becoming a social media hub? Pushing past our southern stereotype and proving the strength of our interactive community.

4. 2 sentences about your company - BrainJocks is an established Atlanta web technology company that provides web application and product development services grounded in thorough requirements, analysis and strategy consulting. BrainJocks combines their expertise and experience with the latest trends and technologies in web development and online marketing to help power online ideas. I primarily focus on: Sales, conversation and what’s for lunch?

5. I began using all the latest social media tools in 2008. By the way, what’s a twitter?

Lindsay Blankenship Lindsay Blankenship Razorfish @lcblankenship

1. What does social media marketing mean to you? - Razorfish calls it Social influence Marketing (SIM) in recognition of the increasing role that online social influence plays in brand affinity and purchasing decisions. Consumers are communicating and sharing opinions more and more online through social networks that shape other’s opinions whether its family, friends or a complete stranger.

2. My favorite social media tactic is testing pushing promotional snippets out to Twitter and Facebook for my clients with trackable URLs and seeing the compound effect it has on getting the message out and now turning into revenue for clients.

3. In 140 characters - What is Atlanta's greatest challenge in becoming a social media hub? Making sure we showcase our social media work locally and nationally to get social media street “creds” from our peers

4. 2 sentences about your company. - I primarily focus on Search Engine Marketing; however my company (Razorfish) is a full service digital agency and is one of the largest interactive marketing and technology companies in the world. Razorfish employs more than 2,000 people in 21 offices worldwide and have a world-class client list that includes brands like Carnival Cruise Lines, Kraft, Levi’s, McDonald’s and Starwood Hotels.

5. I began SMM personally in the Myspace days - maybe 5yrs ago. Razorfish has offered Social Influence Marketing to clients for a few years now.

Sandi Karchmer Solow I Send Your Email I Send Your Email Blog @sandisolow

1. What does social media marketing mean to you? - I think of social media marketing as a way to have a direct dialogue with your consumers and stakeholders. The channels defined as social media allow for a unique type of interaction that other marketing channels cannot achieve.

2. My favorite social media tactic is email!

3. In 140 characters - What is Atlanta's greatest challenge in becoming a social media hub? Our city needs to find a way to differentiate itself from other major U.S. cities - what's our niche?

4. 2 sentences about your company. I am an independent email marketing consultant for companies of all sizes. Whether the company has an established program or is just getting started, I act as an outside resource for all stages of their email marketing program’s strategy and execution lifecycle.

5. I began offering social media marketing in my blog I like to cover ways for incorporating email into Twitter and Facebook. With clients I am frequently discussing coordinating their email programs with their social media plans.

Atlanta Women In Social Media Marketing

Donna Lynes-Miller GourmetStation
Grayson Daughters WaySouth Media
Lya Sorano Lya Sorano.com
Melissa Galt Today By Design
Jeaneane Sessum allied
Melissa Libby MelissaLibbyPR
Amber Rhea Being Amber Rhea
Jacki Schklar Funny Not Slutty
Laura Nolte Green Theory Interactive
Barbara Giamanco Talent Builders
Sue Rodman Field Trips With Sue
Sherry Heyl oncept Hub, Inc
Nadia Bilchik Nadia Speaks
Jen Gordon A Clever Twist
MIchelle Batten iMediaWorksConnects
Peggy Duncan PeggyDuncan.com
Diane DeSeta White Knight
Carol Flammer mRELEVANCE
JoAnn Hines Packaging Launch
Linda Lindsay Insol
Jamie Lackey Pizzeria Venti (Atlanta)
Stephanie Beckham BrainJocks
Lindsay Blankenship Lindsay Blankenship Razorfish
Sandi Karchmer Solow I Send Your Email
and me! Toby Bloomberg Diva Marketing

Extraordinary minds shaping modern thought

Jennifer Rice — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 01:20:49 GMT

One of the coolest and most thought-provoking sites I've been on in ages... check out Sputnik Observatory for the Study of Contemporary Culture. I think the name's a bit misleading, as the site includes a lot of scientific thought that isn't connected to culture.

Taco Bell green spoof

Jennifer Rice — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 01:12:45 GMT

A great spoof by The Onion about Taco Bell's environmental efforts. "Taco Bell's new green menu takes no ingredients from nature." It's pretty funny.

Leading a sustainable enterprise

Jennifer Rice — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 00:55:15 GMT

IBM recently released its 2009 report on sustainable enterprises, and the findings were similar to last year's: "Develop new sources of operational, supply chain and customer information to gain new levels of insight for meeting strategic sustainability objectives." Astonishingly, 37% of respondents have done no research to understand their customers' expectations around sustainability. If you work for one of those companies, we need to talk.

The Hobson and Holtz Report – Podcast #462: July 2, 2009

neville@nevillehobson.com (Neville Hobson)Neville Hobson — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 20:24:22 GMT

Content summary: Lee Aase, manager of syndication and social media for The Mayo Clinic, joins Shel as guest co-host; please vote for FIR on Podcast Alley; Lee and Shel discuss the growth of social media in health care; the Media Monitoring Minute with CustomScoop; Dan York reports on Facebook privacy changes; News That Fits: Malcolm Gladwell vs Chris Anderson, a Johns Hopkins executive blogs and tweets her kidney donation, why you should monitor your URLs on Twitter, the Blog Council becomes the Social Media Business Council and moves to socialmedia.org, half of intranets have adopted Enterprise 2.0, senior journalists are jumping ship for new careers in the PR industry; David Phillips reports on research he’ll present at a conference at Lake Bled, Slovenia; listener comments; music from Chester Bay; and more.

About our guest co-host: Lee Aase is manager of Syndication and Social Media for Mayo Clinic. His team’s focus is developing quality medical news resources for mainstream media, and using social media applications to create more in-depth, extended relationships directly with key stakeholders. Lee lives in Austin, Minnesota and is the chancellor of Social Media University Global (SMUG).

Be sure to listen to our interview with Lee from February 2009.

Get FIR:

Messages from our sponsors: FIR is brought to you with Lawrence Ragan Communications, serving communicators worldwide for 35 years, www.ragan.com; Save time with the CustomScoop online clipping service: sign up for your free two-week trial, at www.customscoop.com/fir.

For Immediate Release: The Hobson & Holtz Report, for July 2, 2009: A 71-minute podcast recorded live from Concord, California, and Rochester, Minnesota, USA.

Links for the blogs, individuals, companies and organizations we discussed or mentioned in the show are posted to the FIR Show Links pages at The New PR Wiki. You can contribute – see the show notes home page for info.

FIR #462 show notes at The New PR Wiki

Share your comments or questions about this show, or suggestions for future shows, in the FIR FriendFeed Room. You can also email us at fircomments@gmail.com; call the Comment Line at +1 206 222 2803 (North America), +44 20 8133 9844 (Europe), or Skype: fircomments; comment at Twitter: twitter.com/FIR, or at Jaiku: fir.jaiku.com. You can email your comments, questions and suggestions as MP3 file attachments, if you wish (max. 3 minutes / 5Mb attachment, please!). We’ll be happy to see how we can include your audio contribution in a show.

Join the FIR Discussion Forum and extend your conversations with the FIR community. You can also join the FIR Facebook Community and become an FIR friend.

To stay informed about occasional FIR events (eg, FIR Live), sign up for FIR Update email news.

So, until Monday July 6…

(Cross-posted from For Immediate Release, Shel’s and my podcast blog.)

The Hobson & Holtz Report - Podcast #462: July 2, 2009

Thu, 02 Jul 2009 19:16:23 GMT

Content summary: Lee Aase, manager of syndication and social media for The Mayo Clinic, joins Shel as guest co-host. Please vote for FIR on Podcast Alley. Lee and Shel discuss the growth of social media in health care. Media Monitoring Minute. Dan York reports on Facebook privacy changes. News That Fits: Malcolm Gladwell vs. Chris Anderson, A Johns Hopkins executive blogs and tweets her kidney donation, why you should monitor your URLs? on Twitter, the Blog Council becomes the Social Media Business Council and moves to socialmedia.org, half of intranets have adopted Enterprise 2.0, senior journalists are jumping ship for new careers in the PR industry; David Phillips reports on research he’ll present at a conference at Lake Bled, Slovenia; listener comments; music from Chester Bay; and more.

About our guest co-host: Lee Aase is manager of Syndication and Social Media for Mayo Clinic. His team’s focus is developing quality medical news resources for mainstream media, and using social media applications to create more in-depth, extended relationships directly with key stakeholders. Lee lives in Austin, Minnesota and is the chancellor of Social Media University Global (SMUG). Be sure to listen to our interview with Lee from February 2009.

Get FIR:

For Immediate Release: The Hobson & Holtz Report, for June 29, 2009: A 71-minute podcast recorded live from Concord, California and Rochester, Minnesota, USA.

FIR #462 show notes at The New PR Wiki

Join the FIR Discussion Forum and extend your conversations with the FIR community. You can also join the FIR Facebook Community and become an FIR friend.

To stay informed about occasional FIR events (eg, FIR Live), sign up for FIR Update email news.

So, until Monday, July 6…

How to end the Catch-22

Tom Asacker — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 09:00:00 GMT

I hear it all the time: "How do I get my people to embrace these brand concepts? To live these brand principles?"Here's the simple answer: The same way you get customers to respond to your brand. First, by appealing to what matters most to them, which is them -- their lives, their families, their futures. Start by covering the table stakes in your competitive environment: things like fair wages and benefits, an emotionally healthy work environment, fairness and transparency in your dealings with them, control over their own work, and recognition for achievement. Then provide opportunities for learning and growth.But here's the Catch-22. You can't provide all of that unless you start to grow. That’s why growth through innovation is the imperative. It’s a virtuous cycle. Growth leads to more opportunities, higher morale, and enhanced communication, which in turn gets everyone passionate about the brand.You can’t simply ask people to change -- to work better together -- and to expect it to happen. They have to want to, as well as know why and how. So put the brand -- the growth strategy -- in your people's hands, and it will become impossible for them not to become engaged and to take responsibility. And then that Catch-22 -- fueled mainly by fear, flawed reasoning and bureaucratic nonsense, will cease to exist.

Convergence in B2B and B2C Mobile Marketing?

Christopher Carfi - Cerado, Inc. — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 01:59:38 GMT

(A recent column I wrote for Mobile Marketer.)

On the surface, there are stark differences between business-to-business marketing and business-to-consumer marketing: audience size, volume of sales and magnitude of purchases. But as mobile becomes ubiquitous for connecting with customers, are we starting to see a convergence between the two?

I would contend that the answer is, yes – if we have the courage to think creatively and move beyond the already-tired clichés of mobile marketing such as text campaigns and mobile couponing.

In fact, with a bit of creative thought, the opportunity for connecting with new customers in both audiences is quite remarkable if we concentrate on the experiences that can be provided with today’s mobile devices.

So what are the ways that we can get creative?

Let’s look at the root of that word, “creative” for a second. It stems from create.

Every one of our prospective customers – both B2B and B2C – has not just a tiny screen onto which we can foist our message, but now has the ability to create things as well – photos, videos, conversations and relationships.

Let’s look at the taken-for-granted camera phone capabilities.

Again, why not think about how we can bring prospects into the process by enabling and encouraging them to be a creative part of the sale, instead of a passive recipient?

In the B2C case, we can, for example, encourage contests and participation where customers take their photos with the most interesting/scenic/extraordinary usage of our products and submit them to a community site.

Similarly, we can encourage B2B customers to send their sales reps photos of their unique environment/circumstance/prickly problem so that the reps can better understand the situation and propose an insightful solution.

In the B2C case, we could encourage video testimonials to be pulled into a powerful montage.

In the B2B case, we can gather videos of customer best-practice tips to illustrate how our products perform in the real-world and how they are being used to solve real problems in an efficient manner.

But, more important than the technical tools, why not enable prospects to easily connect with the people and information they need to make a decision to buy?

It is all about the connections and the relationships.

In the B2C case, a great example of this would be making it easy for customers to locate and, after the initial sale, create reviews of their experiences with a product from other customers.

Similarly, in the B2B realm, this entails providing tools to connect the prospect with other similar past customer references, testimonials, case studies or a knowledgeable sales associate.

The upshot is that for both B2B and B2C we have a real opportunity with mobile: the opportunity to differentiate based on how we encourage, empower and enable active, social customers instead of passive targets.

The organizations that crack the code on this are going to be the winners in using this medium.

So let us use mobile to bring both B2B and B2C customers into the process, instead of simply throwing marketing messages at them.

Let’s challenge ourselves to start conversations, and enable prospective customers to engage with us and with each other, regardless of what bucket – B2B or B2C – in which they have historically been classified.

Refresher Course: BROKEN WINDOWS

johnmoore (from Brand Autopsy) — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 22:32:19 GMT

Seeing this hideously dirty ceiling tile at my dentist’s office today reminded me of the Broken Windows theory and how it relates to businesses.

The Broken Windows theory hypothesizes higher crime rates occur in cities when broken windows are left unrepaired because people will conclude no one cares enough to fix them. More windows will become broken and attitudes of lawlessness will spread, resulting in higher crime rates. Michael Levine applied this theory to business in his book, BROKEN WINDOWS BROKEN BUSINESS.

According to Levine, broken windows are telltale signs to customers that a business doesn’t care, that it is poorly managed, and or it has become too big and arrogant to adequately deal with little details.

He warns businesses that customers draw wide-ranging conclusions based upon their perceptions of the broken windows they find. These negative perceptions will undermine a business as they can turn once highly-satisfied customers into very-dissatisfied customers who choose take their business elsewhere.

I’m not saying my Dentist poorly manages his business. I am saying his patients could draw wide-ranging conclusions based upon the fact he hasn’t replaced the severely water damaged ceiling tile.

Every business has broken windows. The easiest way to tell if your business has a broken window is when you find yourself saying, “A customer will never notice that.” Because chances are, they will … just as I did with the way too soiled ceiling tile at my Dentist’s office.

Learn more in this vintage Brand Autopsy post (Dec. 2005).

Branding is a dance

Tom Asacker — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 08:00:00 GMT

We like the reassurance of a familiar face, don't we? Of course we do. But we also want to be surprised and to laugh. Yes, we want order, but we also want some randomness -- an adventure. Yes, we love excitement, but we also crave quiet time. Everything that touches our senses -- especially those things we love the most, like music -- is an alternation of stimuli: on, off, on, off, on, off. The experience with your audience should be similar. Tickle their minds and their hearts. Don’t smother them to death. As the philosopher Alan Watts once said, “If you put your hand on the knee of a beautiful woman and leave it there, she’ll cease to notice it. But if you gently pat her on the knee, she’ll know you’re still there. Because you come and you go. Now you see me, now you don’t.”There’s an old Zen maxim, “You can’t control the waves, but you can learn to surf!” We’re living in a new world now -- one that revolves around the rapidly changing expectations of the customer. There’s no stability. None. You must move with people, like a life preserver in a shifting sea. You must catch their wave. So get out there and interact with your audience. Find new and compelling ways to become meaningful to them. Try something new and see if it takes hold. You can’t build a great brand by avoiding risks. Instead . . . dance!

Twitter Flickr

neville@nevillehobson.com (Neville Hobson) — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 06:28:00 GMT

A new feature has come to Flickr, the photo-sharing service, that means you can post notifications and other announcements about your photos to your Twitter account from Flickr itself.

The new feature is simple to set up and works well, as a test tweet I did indicates.

Once set up, you can click on a ‘Blog this’ button on a photo page when available (account holders can turn off this feature on their photos, so you may not always see it).

You’ll get a page similar to the screenshot above where you can type your text in a text box, up to 116 characters (leaving the balance between that and 140 for the short URL).

Then you post the entry and get a tweet!

Many people will find it a useful feature that lets you broadcast details of your pics (and videos) on Flickr to your community on Twitter.

The only hesitation I have is thinking about other means I’ve already set up that include Flickr photos in notifications that go out to my Twitter community, all of them automated.

Friendfeed, for instance, which notes every time I post photos to Flickr. Mobypicture, too, which cross-posts photo uploads to my Flickr account, and which get auto-tweeted.

So I’d want to think carefully about tweeting so that I don’t overload everyone with information they may already have via other means.

But if you don’t have any other means set up, then you’ll find this handy.

Note the URL shortening service Flickr uses – their own.

The wording you see when you set this up and when you want to tweet a photo suggests to me that it’s an extension, so to speak, of what Flickr already had set up for posting info about pics from Flickr to a blog and via email to Flickr – “Blog this photo” and other descriptors aren’t how you’d talk about Twitter.

And the only thing I can’t see clearly is whether tweets get sent automatically whenever you upload photos to Flickr, or whether it works only if you manually tweet one, as I did in the test. I think it’s manual only (I’ll find out on the next uploads I do; if it’s different, I’ll update this post).

Still, it’s a great additional service from Flickr.

Soundbite 2.0

mike manuel — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 22:40:08 GMT

Often it’s the small twists and tweaks to ‘established practices’ that can really take things in a new direction — case in point, I was recently reading your run-of-the-mill-mega-company-internal announcement, however, this one was followed by several supporting points pre-packaged in 140 character tweets with all the shortened links and hashtags served right on top. It was one of those moments where your natural reaction is to just gag on the silver spoon working its way down your throat, but after a closer look at things, it really wasn’t over-the-top-type-stuff that this company had pre-defined, it was actually all fairly basic. It was the type of stuff I might, if I was an employee, just retweet for lack of a stronger opinion on the matter. My takeway was this: framing the company news in snack size chunks was helpful for A) holding attention; B) summarizing the news; and C) enabling people to actually do something with it — quickly, at the point of comprehension. I can’t see this working well for every company, but it’s interesting nonetheless…

Love social media releases or hate ‘em, they work

Tue, 30 Jun 2009 22:27:56 GMT

PR agency Text 100 is out with a global survey of bloggers and damned if the results don’t reveal that social media releases—which inspire passion among those who object to them—work.

The survey first determined that bloggers have grown in importance to corporations, measured by the increased outreach by businesses and their PR people. And the vast majority of these bloggers want companies and their PR people to reach out to them. While awareness of social media releases avaries from market to market, among those who know what they are, they’re perceived favorably.

What’s more, bloggers have noticed an increase in the number of social media releases they’ve received. But the real value derives from the elements of the release actually being used by bloggers. In the past year, 26% of Asia-Pacific bloggers have used the various pieces of a social media release, while 15% of European bloggers have taped into these assets. None in the U.S. had, but Text 100 attributes this to a small survey sample of U.S.-based bloggers. The experience must have been good, though, because more than 60% of bloggers in Asia-Pacific and Europe plan to take greater advantage of social media releases in the upcoming year, along with nearly 45% of US bloggers.

To me, this makes tremendous sense, given the disdain bloggers expressed for traditional press releases and their preference for incorporating images, video and audio into their posts. Social media releases (among many other things) make it easy to cherry-pick and embed multimedia assets into posts which, in turn, makes it easy for a blogger to customize the post to his audience rather than regurgitate the same text-based release that everybody else is copying and pasting.

The survey covers a lot of other information, such as the degree to which bloggers are inclined to abide by embargo requests and the sources they use in order to find content about which to blog. Michael Netzley recorded a brief interview with Jeremy Woolf, Text 100’s global social media practice lead, for Monday’s FIR, and a longer FIR interview with Jeremy should be up in a day or two.

But the growing acceptance of and willingness to use social media releases should be heartening to the members of the social media release working group. Our next tasks include further promotion of the social media release; fleshing out the website that contains social media release news, information and resources; and getting to some kind of agreement among companies that distribute releases (both wire services and do-it-yourself sites) to adopt the tagging standard developed by the technical subcommittee and embraced by the group.

With evidence beginning to emerge that using social media releases pays off, I’m guessing interest in adopting them will also rise.

If you’ve distributed a social media release, I’d love to know what kind of results it produced.

Mining the MJ community

neville@nevillehobson.com (Neville Hobson) — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 11:42:56 GMT

This is going to be huge.

The official Michael Jackson website invites its visitors to share their MJ memories in classic blog comment form. As of writing there are 354 044 memories “from Michael Jackson fans worldwide”, and growing naturally. Meanwhile, the Facebook page now clocks in 2 414 413 fans. On June 26, the same page had 880 991 fans…

(Via The Blog Herald: Share Your Michael Jackson Memories.)

As I write this post, the memories count has gone up to 366,543 and the Facebook fans number is 2,500,059.

[Later] See Nick Burcher’s analysis he posted yesterday: Michael Jackson Facebook Fan Pages gain over 1 million new fans in 3 days.

Note that the official Michael Jackson website is produced by record label Sony Music Entertainment and whose name appears as copyright owner. No Creative Commons there!

Related post:

Gearing up for a Michael Jackson bonanza

What it takes to be a citizen journalist

neville@nevillehobson.com (Neville Hobson)Neville Hobson — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 11:30:43 GMT

Google just launched the YouTube Reporters Center.

Ever captured a natural disaster or a crime on your cell-phone camera? Filmed a political rally or protest, and then interviewed the participants afterward? Produced a story about a local issue in your community? If you’ve done any of these things or aspire to, then you’re part of the enormous community of citizen reporters on YouTube, and this channel is for you. The YouTube Reporters’ Center is a new resource to help you learn more about how to report the news. It features some of the nation’s top journalists and news organizations sharing instructional videos with tips and advice for better reporting.

US-focused of course but a pretty good place to get some tips and ideas on how to create video content that has a better chance of standing out, being noticed, being commented on, linked to, etc.

Does a place on the web like this make everyone a “citizen journalist”? Arianna Huffington thinks it does in this video, one of more than 30 on the site.

Pay attention at around the 3:40 mark as Arianna tells that that to be a citizen journalist, “all you need is passion, a little training and the desire to tell a good story” (that “little training” bit might be a big step for some).

I’d add “be in the right place at the right time with a device that has a network connection.”

So is that all it would take to be a citizen journalist? Maybe it is – take a look at the Wikipedia definition.

In any event, the YouTube Reporters’ Center is a useful resource wherever and however you plan to use your video content, on YouTube or any other place, or provide guidance and help to others.

Change leads to insight

Tom Asacker — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 07:54:00 GMT

Creating an enduring brand is a huge challenge in today’s rapidly evolving marketplace. It’s similar to raising a child: it requires focused attention, intuition, and a lot of patience. It also requires a desire to change and adapt. Our natural instinct, however, is to shelter our brands, like our children, from the knocks and bumps that come in life. We want to keep our arms around them, keep them safe and under our control. But for children and brands to thrive in today’s world, they must grow. We must encourage them to try new things, trip and fall, learn the hard lessons, find out what works and what doesn’t, and be exposed to a variety of outside perspectives and truths.The culture of the world is different today than it was years ago, just like raising a child today is different than it was years ago. And although we are exposed to a dizzying amount of opinions and techniques, the best way to address the complex job of brand-rearing is to recognize that, like raising a child, raising a brand takes a village. And that village is the complex web of relationships among your people, your customers, your partners, and other stakeholders. So teach your brand to be compassionate, authentic, appreciative, respectful, and, by all means, vibrant and alive. Allow it to stretch and try new things. Because in a confusing environment, and as Milton Erickson made clear, "change will lead to insight far more often than insight will lead to change."

The Hobson and Holtz Report – Podcast #461: June 29, 2009

neville@nevillehobson.com (Neville Hobson)Neville Hobson — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 20:03:01 GMT

Content summary: Steve Crescenzo joins Shel as special guest co-host in Neville’s absence. The Mayo Clinic’s Lee Aase will fill in for Neville on Thursday. FIR Live from June 26 is up featuring a conversation about influencer outreach with special guest Gary Vaynerchuk, along with John Cass, Connie Bensen, Connie Reece, and Kaitlyn Wilkins of OgilvyPR. Neville welcomes Steve and explains his absence. Follow-up to a conversation from episode #459 about the value and future of paid conferences, with comments from Robin Brown, Chris Thilk and Tony Molloy. Michael Netzley reports from Singapore. Media Monitoring Minute. Discussion topic: One social media battle won, but now how do we get people to do it right? News That Fits: the cost and payoff of investing in social media; how to get your company to pay you to blog. Listener comments. Music from Uncle Seth.

About our guest co-host: Through his work as a consultant, writer and seminar leader, Steve Crescenzo has helped thousands of communicators improve both their print and electronic communication efforts. Recognized as one of the nation’s leading experts in employee communications, Crescenzo is the leader of three popular workshops: Strategic Employee Communication Vehicles, Integrating Print and Online Communication Vehicles, and The Master Class of Employee Communication. He has also taught seminars at IABC’s 2001 through 2008 International Conferences as well as at numerous IABC chapter and district events throughout America and Europe. He was the number one rated speaker of IABC’s International Conference in 2002 and 2008, and has been asked to speak in IABC’S “All Star Track” for the past four years. Steve also writes a regular column in IABC’s Communication World.

Get FIR:

For Immediate Release: The Hobson & Holtz Report, for June 29, 2009: A 67-minute podcast recorded live from Concord, California and Chicago, Illinois, USA.

FIR #461 show notes at The New PR Wiki

Join the FIR Discussion Forum and extend your conversations with the FIR community. You can also join the FIR Facebook Community and become an FIR friend.

To stay informed about occasional FIR events (eg, FIR Live), sign up for FIR Update email news.

So, until Thursday, July 2…

(Cross-posted from For Immediate Release, Shel’s and my podcast blog.)

Noisy planet earth: are we becoming the frat house of the Milky Way?

Grant McCracken — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 19:40:01 GMT

Steve Rubel, long a maven of PR and the new media, is now committing his life to digital memory.

To the right, Steve's diagram of how various media will work to capture and communicate the fine details of his professional life.

In a couple of centuries, this may make him our Samuel Pepys, a man who speaks for us all when someone comes to see what it was like in and around 2009. (Steve, put in a good word for my blog!)

The pre-digital Steve Rubel probably gave us several thousand words a year: presentations, releases and essays. Most of these had no more than a fleeting appearance in the public sphere. Now Steve is single handedly responsible for a great profusion of words, images and, what shall we call them, "sense impressions" each week. And all of them stick.

In the old days, the pre-digital era, very little human communication made it into an enduring record. All those thoughts, conversations, images, and interactions would blink on. And then off. Nothing much stuck. And even when we managed to commit our ideas to persistent media and those media to a place of safe keeping, some one of us could be relied upon, in a moment of military rage or administrative incompetence, to burn the thing down. Good bye to the library at Alexandria, and the riches of the classical world.

What does this digital profusion look like from afar? What does earth look like to the observer on planet XB3892? She's been scrutinizing us for years with a watchful, very wary, weary eye. The first digital signals to reach her were early (and scary) German experiments in televisionduring World War II, followed by the thin stream of content from the American television networks post-war. (What did she make of The Lucy Show? Does she do a Ricky imitation?) Now the signal is inky dense with fantastically particular data. (What was Steve Rubel reading at 10:00 this morning? Check it out here.) All that blog data. All those many millions of tweets. Many more TV signals than before. (Or does cable deny these to the heavens?) A veritable wind storm of data now issues from planet earth.

What does our planetary observer think now?

"Good lord, they've gone hyperactive."

"Chatter boxes! It takes them forever to get speech and now they can't shut up!"

"Those people are on something!"

"There goes the neighborhood."

Are we the new noisy neighbor in the galaxy? Is planet earth a houseboat where they "party hearty, Marty" all night long? Just when our planetary observer is putting her feet up after an exhausting day of signal search, this superbly sensitive creature begins to pick up little gusts of laughter, music, glass breaking, car doors slamming. It grows louder and more obnoxious. She tries to sleep. Surely, this will have to end sometime. But, no, no sooner does one lot of humans turn in than the world spins to release another great burst of data. There is no far side to this moon! They are tag-teaming her, she see's that now. She can run, but she can't hide from the party animals on planet earth.

Brace yourself, darling, someday all of us will be Steve Rubel.

The Hobson & Holtz Report - Podcast #461: June 29, 2009

Mon, 29 Jun 2009 19:00:40 GMT

Get FIR:

For Immediate Release: The Hobson & Holtz Report, for June 29, 2009: A 67-minute podcast recorded live from Concord, California and Chicago, Illinois, USA.

FIR #461 show notes at The New PR Wiki

Join the FIR Discussion Forum and extend your conversations with the FIR community. You can also join the FIR Facebook Community and become an FIR friend.

To stay informed about occasional FIR events (eg, FIR Live), sign up for FIR Update email news.

So, until Thursday, July 2…

Beware (be aware) of abstruse ideas

Tom Asacker — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 07:23:00 GMT

I once read about a psychological study designed to see how people would react to flawed reasoning, even when it flew in the face of their own very sensible judgment. It was quite revealing. In the study two people, A and B, were seated on opposite sides of a dividing wall, looking at a screen. Each person was instructed to learn by trial and error how to recognize the difference between slides of healthy cells and sick cells. For each slide, they had to push one of two buttons in front of them, “Healthy” or “Sick,” at which point one of two lamps, labeled “Right” and “Wrong,” would light up. Person A received true feedback, meaning that his “Right” lamp would light up when he was correct and his “Wrong” lamp would light up when he was incorrect. These people—the A’s—learned to tell the difference between healthy and sick cells with a high level of accuracy. Person B’s situation was quite different. His right or wrong lamps lit up based not on his own guesses but on Person A’s guesses. He didn’t know it, but he was searching for an order where none could possibly exist. A and B were then asked to work together to establish the rules for determining healthy vs. sick cells. The A’s told the B’s what they had learned and what simple characteristics they had looked for to tell the difference. Bs’ explanations, by necessity, were subtle and quite complex—and completely bogus. Here’s the amazing part. After their collaboration, all B’s and nearly all A’s came to believe that the delusional B had a much better understanding of healthy vs. sick cells. In fact, A’s were impressed with B’s sophisticated brilliance, and felt inferior because of the pedestrian simplicity of their assumptions. In a follow-up test, the B’s showed almost no improvement, but the A’s scores dropped because the A’s had incorporated some of B’s completely baseless ideas. This study teaches us two important aspects with regards to branding or, for that matter, any business concept. First, once an explanation for something has taken hold of our minds, information that should refute that explanation may produce not an appropriate change of mind but rather an elaboration of the flawed explanation. It also teaches us to beware (be aware) of abstruse ideas, no matter how convincing the presentation or how brilliant the so-called expert.The signal-to-noise ratio in the fields of branding and marketing is becoming dangerously low as the level of background noise becomes more and more obtrusive, enabled by platforms like blogging and Twitter and amplified by traditional publishers desperately searching for an audience for their rapidly shrinking businesses. If you're an A in this environment, you should be very, very careful. And try like hell to stay away from the B's.

Gearing up for a Michael Jackson bonanza

neville@nevillehobson.com (Neville Hobson) — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 05:56:00 GMT

At various times during the weekend when I was out and about, I was checking the latest news on my iPhone, usually with the excellent Sky News app.

It did amaze me at one point on Saturday to note that every major news story I saw was something about Michael Jackson.

That’s almost all there’s been on TV news since the entertainer died unexpectedly last Thursday.

But if you thought the news every which-way angle about what happened last week was overwhelming, and wondered when (or even if) your favourite radio station would again play music other than Michael Jackson tracks, get ready for what’s coming from the entertainment industry as the marketing machine gears up to maximize revenue opportunities from a huge re-issue of Jackson’s music catalogue.

First, take a look at what’s starting on eBay as increasing amounts of Michael Jackson content appears for sale. (Hmm, I have an original 1982 copy of the Thriller CD. I love the music but I wonder…)

Some of the signals in the mainstream media:

Sales of Jackson music, videos climbs online – Yahoo News US/ Associated Press

Michael Jackson’s death has led to skyrocketing sales of his music and videos, with major retailers like Amazon.com Inc. and Barnes and Noble Inc. selling out of products that have regained immense popularity overnight.

Bill Carr, Amazon’s vice president of music and video, said Friday that once the world learned that the pop icon had died Thursday, the Web site sold out within minutes all CDs by Michael Jackson and by the Jackson 5 — the group Jackson and his four older brothers formed out of Gary, Ind., in the late ’60s.

Sixty percent of Amazon’s CD orders Thursday were for Michael Jackson music, something Carr called "stunning." He said he’d "never seen anything like this" before at Amazon after the death of a pop culture icon.

As of Friday afternoon, Jackson’s albums accounted for all 10 of Amazon’s "Bestsellers in Music" list, with the 25th anniversary edition of the celebrated "Thriller" album taking the top spot.

Michael Jackson Catalog Sales Soar on iTunes, Amazon – Rolling Stone

As the entire world mourns the death of Michael Jackson, many are celebrating the King of Pop’s unparalleled musical legacy. Following the news of Jackson’s sudden passing, Jackson songs and albums immediately begin climbing the sales charts at digital music stores. Over on iTunes, the current top five albums, and seven of the Top 10, are all Jackson releases, with The Essential Michael Jackson, Thriller and Off the Wall all leading the charge. The same goes for the Amazon MP3 store, where Jackson is listed as the service’s top-selling artist of the day. Last.fm also documented the incredible jump in people on their service listening to Michael Jackson in the moments following Jackson’s death, with a peak of roughly 42,000 MJ songs being played on the service between 6 p.m. and 8 p.m. ET yesterday [June 25].

Michael Jackson tops UK album charts as sales surge – The Guardian

[…] Jackson’s Number Ones album, that features many of his biggest hits, reached the top spot and four other albums made it into the top 20.

In total 11 Michael Jackson or Jackson Five albums made it into this week’s top 200 and 43 out of the top 200 singles featured the singer.

Music retailers said demand for his music had been overwhelming since his death on Thursday. HMV spokesman Gennaro Castaldo said the music store had seen sales rise 80 times over in the 24 hours after Jackson’s death – the biggest one day increase for any artist in the store’s history.

"There’s been huge demand for Michael’s recordings over the past few days – so it’s really no surprise that Number Ones has gone to the top of the official UK album charts, which pretty much has all his greatest hits on, and is the CD most people have been going for," Castaldo said.

Jackson ‘album sales massively increase’ – Digital Spy UK

[…] Eight of Jackson’s albums now dominate the iTunes Top 10, with his recent ‘Number Ones’ collection claiming the top spot.

The iTunes Top 100 singles currently include thirty-one of his solo songs and three by the Jackson 5. 1988 single ‘Man In The Middle’ is leading the pack at number ten.

According to Jackson’s record label Sony Music, the star has sold an estimated 750 million records worldwide.

Demand soars for Jackson music after singer’s death – Yahoo News UK / Reuters

[…] His death has sparked renewed interest in his albums and videos. Everyone from the labels that produced his albums to media outlets, retailers and street vendors selling Jackson T-shirts is set to cash in to the tune of millions of dollars.

"Michael pulled an Elvis. It’s probably the best thing that happened to them this year," Wayne Rosso, a music industry consultant and publicity executive, said of various Sony record labels that own Jackson’s music.

Jacko’s Dad: Michael Will Be Bigger In Death – Sky News

[In a statement from the family, father Joe Jackson] told fans: "Michael would not want us to give up now. Please do not despair, because Michael will continue to live on in each and every one of you.

"Continue to spread his message, because that is what he would want you to do. Carry on, so his legacy will live forever."

The family is believed to be planning a series of simultaneous global celebrations to honour the star.

Wealth of Michael Jackson could be boosted by death – The Times

He conquered the pop world and created sales records that could remain unchallenged, but Michael Jackson may have another number one position waiting for him: the highest-earning dead celebrity.

The annual Forbes magazine list of big earners that are deceased tells the story of death’s ability to boost a brand. Bob Marley, Kurt Cobain, Johnny Cash and Tupac Shakur are all on it, each making millions every year and in some cases more than living singers such as Madonna.

For the past two years, Elvis Presley has held the top position with annual earnings of about $50 million (£30.3 million). If the Neverland Ranch is opened to the public and the current frenzy for his music continues, Jackson could find his earnings hitting twice those of Presley. The figure could be even higher if, along with the untangling of his finances and some clever management, a rumoured album of unreleased songs emerges quick enough for sales to be driven by what some music industry figures are referring to as “grief momentum”.

These are just signals: the marketing machine hasn’t moved out of first gear yet.

A morbid thought perhaps, but this looks like only the start of a process that could see more sales of Michael Jackson’s music and memorabilia than when he was alive.

Not only by and for the family and the music industry, and not just about obvious products, either – just take a look at this imaginative fan site, Billie Tweets, that plays Billie Jean and pulls in tweets that sync key words in each tweet to the music.

The site is liberally sprinkled with affiliate links to places on Amazon.com where you can buy Michael Jackson’s music.

An opportunity for everyone, then.

Related post:

RIP Michael Jackson, you thrilled us

Mashable’s one-stop guide to Twitter

neville@nevillehobson.com (Neville Hobson) — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 05:36:03 GMT

Pete Cashmore of internet news site Mashable asks:

Where’s the user manual for Twitter? Where do new Twitter users go to learn about Tweeting, retweets, hashtags and customizing your Twitter profile? Where do you go if you want to know all about building a community on Twitter, or using Twitter for business? How can you find advanced tools for using Twitter on your phone or your desktop?

One answer is The Twitter Guide Book from Mashable.

Mashable is one of the best places on the net for useful information about Twitter. Their feature in January about 40 brands on Twitter and the people behind them is especially notable.

So this one-stop place on the net for just about everything you want to know about Twitter and how to use it for business is worth checking out.

Section headings are:

Twitter 101 – The Basics
Building Your Twitter Community
Twitter for Business
Top Twitter Follows
Sharing on Twitter
Managing Your Twitter Stream

And much more on the site.

A useful resource.

Traditonal Publishing & Social Media New BBF?

Toby — Sun, 28 Jun 2009 18:30:00 GMT

This morning, after I washed the news print off of my fingers from the Sunday New York Times, I downloaded some sample chapters on to my Kindle. Several of those books were recommended to me by my dear friends at amazon.com. Others I found on blogs and through Twitter. The world of publishing is not simply changing .. it is colliding with technology and the world of social media.

Don't just take the word of a digital author but people in traditional publishing are taking out their red pens and looking at their current models with a critical eye. If the publishing business is to stay in business I would encourage publishers and editors to take a cue from the lessons that marketers have learned over the past few years. What is important to understand is that these changes come with options for the reader/customer. The "delivery channel" choice may be as important as the content. Do your readers want digital or traditional or an integration of both?

This month Debbie Stier @debbiestier - SVP, Associate Publisher, Harper Studio, Kaylie Jones @KaylieJones - best selling novelist ("Lies My Mother Never Told Me." "A Soldier's Daughter Never Cries"), Kevin Heisler (@KevinHeisler - literary executor and Ron Hogan @RonHogan - curator, Beatrice.com gave their insights about the future of publishing at the 140 Character Conference. The video is well worth a view.

Then there is the other Big Question: How are readers finding books in the new world of tweets, Facebook, blogs? Is the library still important? How has the promotion and building a readership community changed? Publishers and agents tell me not to even consider submitting a proposal without a comprehensive marketing strategy that includes social media tactics. The rules of engaging with editors are in flux also. If you follow me on Twitter or you Friend me on Facebook does that mean it's okay to send you a proposal without an agent?

Nathan Bransford, Literary Agent recently asked his readers- "Where did you hear about the book you're reading?" Over 300 people responded. I was curious about the break down and did a very informal tally. What is probably valid is not the count but the weight of each category.

Friends (including book clubs) - 78
Blogs (including author blogs) - 62
Bookstores - 45
Websites/reviews sites - 33
Library - 22
Amazon recommendation/reviews - 22
Twitter - 19
Book tours/met the author - 11
Blog promotion/contests - 5
Read other books by author - 4
Other (ezines, book fairs, TV, Radio, book reviews, podcasts, cover/jacket - 29

It will be interesting to see how social media impacts traditional publishing, what emerges as new publishing model/s, who will lead the innovation and who will close their doors. In the mean time I'm curious .. "Where did you hear about the book you're reading?"

From Hucksterism to Healing

David Wolfe — Sun, 28 Jun 2009 16:05:00 GMT

(This post first appeared here on June 18, 2004) When I first introduce an audience to the idea that marketing is morphing from hucksterism to healing, I often see in some people's faces their suspicion that I’m preaching from some New Age gospel. Most of those faces relax to reflect greater openess to my claims after I display logos of a few companies that have taken on the role of...

Cescenzo, Aase guest co-hosts on FIR this week

Sun, 28 Jun 2009 14:01:42 GMT

With Neville unavailable for episodes 461 and 462 of The Hobson and Holtz Report (June 29 and July 2) we’re pleased to announce special guest co-hosts who will fill in for those shows.

Joining Shel on June 29 will be Steve Crescenzo, a well-known consultant, writer and speaker who specializes in employee communications. Steve’s blog, Corporate Hallucinations, is a great read with more than a few laugh-out-loud moments. He also writes a regular column for IABC’s Communication World magazine and contributes to the CW blog.

On July 2, Lee Aase sits in the co-host chair. Lee is director of syndication and social media for the legendary Mayo Clinic, one of the first hospitals to embrace social media. Lee is now a regular speaker and frequent interview subject as the media reports and others report on hospital adoption of social media. Lee is also the force behind the Social Media University Global (SMUG), a blog that offers courses on business use of social media.

Neville plans to have audio contributions for both shows, as well.

Impressions of TweetCamp

neville@nevillehobson.com (Neville Hobson)Neville Hobson — Sun, 28 Jun 2009 09:35:00 GMT

An extremely enjoyable day is how I’d sum up my overall thoughts about TweetCamp London 09 which took place yesterday, June 27, in Richmond.

I reckon there were well over 100 people at this event, superbly organized by Farhan Rehman, Desigan Chinniah and Jon Bishop plus a host of contributor-organizers (the ones wearing dark blue t-shirts such as Matt O’Neill [photo] and Benjamin Ellis).

I was especially impressed by the excellent organization of the event. That’s down to the three organizers – I’d hire them to organize an event! – and all the helpers plus the sponsors without whom I don’t think TweetCamp could have happened.

According to the t-shirts (photo above by Adam Tinworth), those sponsors were PayPal – the event took place in the UK office of their parent company, eBay – Gumtree, Addlestones, mymuesli and Sun Startup Essentials.

I’ve recorded some thoughts in an Audiboo, below, but let me bullet-point some of my impressions.

Excellent organization, as I’ve mentioned.
The venue was great: good wifi but a seriously complicated WPA password, though.
Terrific schwag in the goodies bag.
The ‘paper wiki’ is an excellent concept but it didn’t really capture people’s imaginations. Hopefully creator Jon Bishop will explain his thinking sometime because it is a good idea.
Everyone was well looked after in terms of refreshments (bacon butties to start, for instance, and an always-full Coke machine) and outstanding lunch with plenty to go round. Thanks again to the sponsors.
Met loads of familiar faces plus an equal load of new ones: the essence of TweetCamp.
Terrific conversation during the lunch period with Sarah Blow who sorted out my Tweetmeme plugin for WordPress and also ended my laptop sticker virginity.
Equally great conversation with Chris Heuer who got what he wanted with a WordPress plugin to live-blog tweets.
Another terrific conversation in the afternoon in a breakout group with James Cridland, Kate Arkless Gray and Jim Anning about the future and the role of social media such as Twitter. The answer, of course, is 42.
Did I mention TweetCamp was well organized?

Listen!

Crescenzo and Aase on FIR next week

neville@nevillehobson.com (Neville Hobson) — Sun, 28 Jun 2009 08:53:50 GMT

Both episodes next week of For Immediate Release: The Hobson and Holtz Report, the twice-weekly podcast that I co-present with Shel Holtz, will have a different sound to them.

As Shel notes in a post on the FIR blog, Monday’s FIR 461 on June 29 and Thursday’s FIR 462 on July 2 will have guest co-hosts – Steve Crescenzo and Lee Aase respectively.

The reason I’m not co-hosting the show as usual for two episodes is a simple one – conflicting schedules. On both days, I’ll be in London and just not able to do the show at the time we usually record, 5pm in the UK.

I’ll have a couple of contributions in for both shows and I’ll be back with Shel on FIR 463 on Monday July 6. Meanwhile, sit back and enjoy two episodes with different voices and no doubt different focuses.

Can’t wait to listen to hear what those guys have to say!

One role for print: making dull messages stand out

Sat, 27 Jun 2009 20:11:33 GMT

Communicating mundane messages to employees is one of the tasks that has been made harder for internal communicators by the adoption of Web 2.0 capabilities on internal networks.

Consider, for example, the communication of a benefits enrollment deadline. There’s little that gets communicated inside companies duller than employee benefits information. But employees still paid attention 20 years ago because the reminder was one of a few messages being broadcast to employees. Back then, the role of communications was to produce one-way, top-down messages to ensure employees knew what they needed to know (like, for instance, not missing the benefits enrollment deadline). With communicators acting as gatekeepers, it was easy to maintain a flow of content that the average employee could digest.

Today, communicators produce only a fraction of the messages through which employees must sift. Depending on the dgree to which the company has embraced the Web 2.0 concept internally, employees consume messages from communities of various stripes, employee blogs, internal RSS feeds, updates on enterprise social networks, employee-generated videos, internal presence networks like Yammer, the list goes on.

Not that this is bad; in fact, it’s great. The more employees can network with each other, the more quickly they’ll find the information they need to do their jobs, get answers to question, connect with others with whom a relationship is beneficial and form ad hoc teams to tackle problems and jump on oportunities.

But still, with all this content, how prominent can you make an email or intranet item on those drab-as-dishwater messages that still need to get out?

The solution is to go analog. While this won’t work where employees are scattered and working from wherever, but for those organizations whose employees still gather in office buildings and manufacturing facilities, analog communications can stand out from the sea of digital messages.

Who’s going to miss a brightly colored poster on an easel by the elevators, in the lobby and in other high-traffic areas? How about table-tent cards in break rooms and the cafeteria? When I worked for ARCO back in the early 1980s, Employee Communications Manager Dave Orman drew attention to a 401(k) plan by hanging mobiles all over the ARCO Towers and other facilities; each of the pieces hanging from the mobile reinforced the enrollment message.

Even a print publication can get attention. One communicator I spoke with several years ago had ceased publication of a company magazine, moving all content to the intranet. But when a critical issue arose, she produced a special print issue that was distributed to employees’ desks. The reaction from employees was, “Wow, if they’ve gone to the trouble to print this, it must be important.”

I remember one boring message that was printed on movie theater-style popcorn boxes, then filled with popcorn and distributed on cafeteria tables for employees of one big manufacturing company. That was a message that employees not only remembered, but talked about.

Not only is print not dead, it’s a means of getting mundane messages to stand out.

FIR Live #15 with Gary Vaynerchuk

neville@nevillehobson.com (Neville Hobson)Neville Hobson — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 21:29:50 GMT

Content Summary: In today’s FIR Live on Blogtalk Radio, a panel discusses effective influencer outreach. The topic was kicked off by John Cass’s commentary on an email pitch sent out on behalf of online entrepreneur Gary Vaynerchuk, and the ensuing discussion that included considerable engagement from Gary. (The post attracted a separate set of comments from its cross-post on Social Media Today.)

Discussion participants were FIR co-hosts Neville Hobson and Shel Holtz. In addition, we were joined by the following guests:

Gary Vaynerchuk, entrepreneur and host of Wine Library TV
John Cass, longtime blogger and current director of Marketing for ideaLaunch
Kaitlyn Wilkins, Vice President of Digital Strategy at Ogilvy PR, principal author of the agency’s blogger outreach code of ethics
Connie Bensen, whose employment with Techrigy, Inc allows her to help people focus on social media monitoring.
Connie Reece, Chief Community Officer for New Media Lab, a startup that offers curriculum-based learning experiences designed for business professionals new to social media.

Callers to the show included Krishna De and Paull Young.

The transcript from the BlogTalk Radio chat room is available here.

Get FIR Live:

You can email your comments, questions and suggestions as MP3 file attachments, if you wish (max. 3 minutes / 5Mb attachment, please!). We’ll be happy to see how we can include your audio contribution in a show. To receive all For Immediate Release podcasts including the twice-weekly Hobson & Holtz Report, subscribe to the full RSS feed.

This FIR Live Call-In episode is brought to you with Lawrence Ragan Communications, serving communicators worldwide for 35 years. Information: www.ragan.com.

(Cross-posted from For Immediate Release, Shel’s and my podcast blog.)

Related – Krishna De’s analysis: Guidelines For Blogger Outreach: Gary Vaynerchuck Case Study, posted June 26, 2009.

FIR Live #15: June 26, 2009

Fri, 26 Jun 2009 19:41:28 GMT

Content Summary: Communicators are often frustrated in their efforts to protect or restore an organization’s reputation by attorneys who simply block any communication at all, or minimize the response. In today’s FIR Live, a panel discusses effective influencer outreach. The topic was kicked off by John Cass’s commentary on an email pitch sent out on behalf of online entrepreneur Gary Vaynerchuk, and the ensuing discussion that included considerable engagement from Gary. (The post attracted a separate set of comments from its cross-post on Social Media Today.)

Discussion participants were FIR co-hosts Neville Hobson and Shel Holtz. In addition, we were joined by the following guests:

Gary Vaynerchuk, entrepreneur and host of Wine Library TV
John Cass, longtime blogger and current director of Marketing for ideaLaunch
Kaitlyn Wilkins, Vice President of Digital Strategy at Ogilvy PR, principal author of the agency’s blogger outreach code of ethics
Connie Bensen, whose employment with Techrigy, Inc allows herto help people focus on social media monitoring.
Connie Reece, Chief Community Officer for New Media Lab, a startup that offers curriculum-based learning experiences designed for business professionals new to social media

Callers to the show included Krishna De and Paull Young.

The transcript from the BlogTalk Radio chat room is available here.

Get FIR Live:

This FIR Live Call-In episode is brought to you with Lawrence Ragan Communications, serving communicators worldwide for 35 years. Information: www.ragan.com.

FIR Live #15: with Gary Vaynerchuk: June 26, 2009

Fri, 26 Jun 2009 19:41:02 GMT

Content Summary: CIn today’s FIR Live, a panel discusses effective influencer outreach. The topic was kicked off by John Cass’s commentary on an email pitch sent out on behalf of online entrepreneur Gary Vaynerchuk, and the ensuing discussion that included considerable engagement from Gary. (The post attracted a separate set of comments from its cross-post on Social Media Today.)

Discussion participants were FIR co-hosts Neville Hobson and Shel Holtz. In addition, we were joined by the following guests:

Gary Vaynerchuk, entrepreneur and host of Wine Library TV
John Cass, longtime blogger and current director of Marketing for ideaLaunch
Kaitlyn Wilkins, Vice President of Digital Strategy at Ogilvy PR, principal author of the agency’s blogger outreach code of ethics
Connie Bensen, whose employment with Techrigy, Inc allows herto help people focus on social media monitoring.
Connie Reece, Chief Community Officer for New Media Lab, a startup that offers curriculum-based learning experiences designed for business professionals new to social media

Callers to the show included Krishna De and Paull Young.

The transcript from the BlogTalk Radio chat room is available here.

Get FIR Live:

This FIR Live Call-In episode is brought to you with Lawrence Ragan Communications, serving communicators worldwide for 35 years. Information: www.ragan.com.

How the approval process needs to change

Fri, 26 Jun 2009 19:23:53 GMT

Among the tiny early-adopter subset of the total online population, a lot of buzz is dedicated to a perceived shift from blogging to lifestreaming. Edelman Senior VP Steve Rubel, the most widely read of PR’s many participants in social media venues, has shuttered his Micro Persuasion blog in favor of a Posterous lifestream, asserting that “blogging feels old” and “publishing today is all about The Flow.” (More on this in an upcoming post.)

In the real world, though, communicators employed by companies struggle to overcome a phalanx of obstacles to the most basic of online engagement. One such obstacle about which I keep hearing is the institutionalized content approval process. I was with an organization recently in which the simple concept of blogging was confounding in light of the fact that every word that goes public is subject to a daunting round of approvals.

Before most organizations can join Steve and the other innovators and early adopters at the vanguard of social media, they will need to come to terms with era of the 140-character news cycle and establish processes and cultures that allow communicators (and others) to communicate effectively, unhindered by vestiges of outdated and archaic policies.

The approval process that became the standard in most organizations is based on several assumptions:

Employees who are charged with creating content, such as press releases and authoritative statements of record, don’t know enough to avoid saying things that could cause problems for the company. Therefore, those who are in the know must vet the document in order to minimize the risk.
The vetting process is designed to scrub the content clean for external consumption.
Adequate news cycles exist that ensure there is enough time for the document to wend its way through the various layers of approval. A press release updating a crisis, for example, didn’t need to be in the hands of the media until 15 minutes before the 6 p.m. newscast.

Neither of the last two points is valid any longer, which requires organizations to think differently about how they address the first one.

First, the messages delivered internally are subject to external scrutiny, like it or not. While some organizations have awakened to the need for transparency, all organizations are having transparency thrust upon them. The line between internal and external communications is blurring. Communications to any audience need to be considered from this perspective at the time they’re crafted.

Second, there are no more news cycles (or, as I like to say, they’ve been reduced to 140 characters). Given the speed and volume of information filling the conversation space, the time it takes to process content through an approval process is time during which thousands of other messages can define your story and shape the public’s opinion. Especially in a crisis, you need to get your information into the mix now.

Given these realities, how does an organization prevent the communication of a message that contains inaccuracies, regulatory boo-boos and inconsistencies with the official company position? The answer, in most cases, is to alter the thinking about approvals from reactive to proactive. Rather than wait for each bit of content to be created, those tasked with communicating on behalf of the organization need to have a series of sit-downs with Legal, Regulatory Affairs and all the other specialists in order to be trained on the issues that could cause the company grief. Done well, this would leave lawyers and others confident that these communicators will produce problem-free content. They’ll also be confident that communicators will seek out their counsel when they’re not sure whether something they’re planning to say is problematic.

Ultimately, a new view of the role of internal communications can have largely the same result with all employees, not just the communicators.

But make no mistake: Before organizations can catch up to where the Steve Rubels and Stowe Boyds of the world were even two years ago, issues like the approval process will need to be addressed first.

branders brand, consumers speak

Grant McCracken — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 16:49:01 GMT

Look how great this is. It's a promotional video for the novel called Lowboy by John Wray. (Brilliantly reviewed by James Wood in the March 30 New Yorker). Subway riders read from the novel while travelling. Wonderful.

We can see why they did it. The novel is set in a subway. But for branding purposes, this is metaphorically apt. The brand will begin with the brander. But it will take its cadence and phrasing from the consumer.

Well, actually, the consumer is still more involved. Not just reading someone else's words, but supplying their own meanings to boot. But still.

Twitter connections in real life at TweetCamp

neville@nevillehobson.com (Neville Hobson) — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 12:30:57 GMT

I’m going to be at TweetCamp London 09 in Richmond tomorrow, June 27.

In common with quite a few others, I want to see what an unconference that focuses on the cross-over of relationships developed primarily on Twitter into the real world is like, what I’ll learn and what I can provide for others who will be there.

Here’s how organizers Farhan Rehman, Desigan Chinniah and Jon Bishop describe TweetCamp London 09:

TweetCamp is about bringing communities together, in real life. It’s about accelerating the conversations that happen on Twitter, in real life. It’s about creating richer, more personal connections, in real life. It’s all about bringing the people together who you know from and through Twitter, into a physical space, and then having some of those great conversations and interactions you would have online, but in real life.

According to the attendee list on the booking website, 190 people are listed to be there tomorrow. That’s quite a crowd.

If you’re not planning to be there, you can still be part of things by following TweetCamp on Twitter, the TweetCamp Facebook group and, of course, the #tweetcamp hashtag.

Looking forward to it all!