After taking leave from his day job as an adjunct professor at NYU’s film school to work for the candidate, he returned to the university last night in his first public appearance, sponsored by frog design and Fast Company. Chaudhary spoke to a packed crowd about the use of video by political campaigns in an age when everything is documented and how that is impacting the political process.

The one hour chat was moderated by Fast Company senior writer Ellen McGirt,  who reported on the campaign in the April 2008 cover story “The Brand Called Obama.” There were a lot of great gems, but I wanted to focus on two things Chaudhary said.

The first was the example he gave of Hilary Clinton’s 3 AM ad:

When the ad aired, it turned out that the sleeping girl in the stock footage the campaign used was actually an Obama supporter. Four years ago, there was little you could do to get that message out. But Chaudhary’s team found the girl, Casey, and put together a YouTube video. At one minute, it was still too expensive for TV, but it had the opportunity to spread online:

As the campaign moved forward and the YouTube channel became a destination to post footage from Obama’s speeches and appearances, the community started talking back. Comments below the posts, emails to the new media team and general feedback at events yielded two findings:

1. The audience for the YouTube video skewed towards an older demographic – 45-55 year olds — not the typical 18-34 age group most people expect to find on YouTube.
2. People didn’t want short, edited clips. They wanted to watch the whole video.

What? People want to watch long form videos?!?!  Chaudhary went on to say that based on what they’ve heard from the community, people aren’t interested in sound bites and clever edits. According to the numbers, full speeches at important moments are underestimated. That might be unique to the political process, where people want more context as every quote has the potential to be politicized (ask Jesse Jackson). But I don’t think so.

Key takeaways:

• People want transparency
• Don’t make assumptions about your audience – listen first!
• You never know which moments people will respond to, so test and test and test. You might be surprised by the outcome.

What say you?

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My newest Mashable post is up today, where I provide a brief tutorial on how to track 500 business blogs in 10 minutes a day.

I’m traveling right now so I don’t have a lot to add, but please read the post and contribute your own thoughts to it as well!

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I have noticed that the release is dominating my Twitter and FriendFeed streams. Hopefully someone is watching the chatter, as this will make an interesting case study about the role of social media in product launches.

• What edits are being made to the iPhone Wikipedia page in real time?
• How many posts will document the unboxing of the product through photos, that will then be shared via Flickr streams?
• Who is Twittering about standing in line waiting for the product?

And of course, the excitement will quickly be followed by the product glitches and subsequent criticism of the company  through social media.

That’s also part of the new product lifecycle. I wonder if Apple has a strategy for dealing with this already in place…

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My post on Mashable today discusses how businesses can begin using social media for community building and conversations. Obviously it’s impossible to construct a plan based on a single post, but I hope there are some good ideas mixed up in there to get the juices flowing.

After the tutorial was published, I shared the link with my Twitter community, asking them for their thoughts. Several people responded:

• @MSGiro said, “I’d also toss in be prepared for the good and bad yet don’t fear the bad. Embrace and learn from it.”
• @PaullYoung said, “Good outline mate, solid for the newbs. Go offline is always handy, but not essential. Good concise writing!”
• @RobertCollins said, “I’ve found capturing 3 things our client’s exec staff are passionate about & sharing gets them to listen and engage faster.”

Thanks for all this feedback. That’s the part of social media that I enjoy most: the ability to bat ideas like this back and fourth in near real time with people I respect all over the world.

There’s a lot more that probably deserves to be covered as part of this topic, so I’ll try to do so here over the next few days.

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Last week I was traveling, so I wasn’t able to share that my first post for Mashable on How to Live Blog a Conference was published on July Fourth!

If you’re not familiar with the blog, Mashable is one of the world’s top 10 blogs according to Technorati, and really one of the premier blogs on social media news and information.

I’ll be posting there a couple times a week over the next few months, so please add it to your RSS reader and leave comments!

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At the conclusion of my social media workshops, there’s always one or two people that approach me and remark that they’ve never seen someone present with so much energy. I tell  them that it’s because I am so passionate about my work, and I’m glad that it shows.

It’s true, and it’s the same reason that I write this blog.

The bloggers that I read are pretty plugged in to the social media community, and I am certainly not writing for them (although of course I hope that my commentary can sometimes lend a new perspective to their thinking here). And this isn’t a destination for daily social media news and updates. If that’s what you’re looking for, check out these.

After seeing that indeed, people who participate in the workshops I lead are reading this blog for more information about this space, I think that my core audience is communications professionals who are just beginning to explore social media.

So if you’re reading this, here’s what I think I know about you:

• You are between 30-50 years old
• You are a male or a female (just threw that in to see if you’re skimming)
• You are a seasoned communications professional
• You have been tasked with integrating social media into your communications plans, or perhaps you just want to learn more about this space so you can provide strategic counsel to your executives

Please do me a favor and leave a comment on this post. Let me know a little bit about you so that I can do my best to ensure this content is relevant to you.

As always, thanks for reading!

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At the International Association of Business Communicators (IABC) conference this week, Bill Marriot was honored as the 2008 EXCEL Award Winner. I figured he’d reference the irony of speaking at the Hilton in his first sentence, but he waited until his second.

This was one of the speeches I was most looking forward to. Bill is in his late seventies and one of only a handful of CEO bloggers in his peer group. And since he’s not in the tech indstury, it’s even more remarkable.

Here are some quick notes from Bill’s remarks:

• Bill doesn’t type his posts, but he records them and they are transcribed
• The blog has received over 500K visits since January 2007, and according to Bill, generated nearly $4 million in hotel sales (NOTE: he was asked how he was able to track this and played the old man card, claiming he didn’t understand the technology)
• His most popular post to date was this one on tipping

And a couple of choice quotes:

I would recommend blogging to any CEO. It’s worth it.

Whether we like it [social media] or not, we have to get on board.

Stories are the things that people remember.

What seems to make Bill a great blogger is his passion for his company and his ability to spin a good yarn. Reading these posts feel very authentic. But not every CEO has this gift, nor the same type of hands on approach to running a company as he has. Bill travels to 300 Marriot properties a year, which provides lots of fodder for colorful stories and blog topics.

Now I guess we can debate a bit about whether Bill’s blog is a true blog or not. He doesn’t actually type the posts  himself, as I mentioned above. I’m sure they are edited a bit as well. And he has the submitted comments printed out once in a while for his review, but he certainly doesn’t maintain this dialogue on his own. But he makes no attempt to hide it, and I appreciate the transparency.

I don’t thing that it makes sense for every CEO to blog. In fact, I would probably say that most shouldn’t. Engaging in a conversation of this nature is important, but it takes a certain type of individual to communicate well on this platform. It’s not for everyone, but there are certainly those within every organization that are more adept at it than others. Embrace them!

Having heard him speak, the blog feels very authentic. Mr. Marriot has been in this business his whole life. He’s passionate about the people that work for him, and he’s got a team that helps him share this vision using a new platform. Whether or not he actually types the posts seems a bit nitpicky all things considered. At least when I’m reading his stories, I know what I’m getting.

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When you go to the actual graphic (by clicking on the graphic or the above link), you can scroll over the blogs for a brief synopsis and then click on the icons to view the actual blogs.

This might help you find some new reading material!

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Portolio’s Daily Brief reports that Premier Wen has garnered more than 50,000 supporters in 30 days, primarily in response to his handling of the situation following last month’s devastating earthquakes. The profile, obviously not created by the Premier himself, displays his image as well as some publicly available information about him and relevant URLs in a mix of English and Mandarin.

Now the Party probably doesn’t rely on Facebook as a barometer for how their policies are received by its citizens, but perhaps a future generation of leaders will.

One of the opportunities here is to listen to the feedback from constituencies. It might seem obvious, but I doubt that many government agencies are doing this. Yes, they are monitoring these networks, but for security reasons, not for feedback.

But a lot of good can come from listening. Some companies are already seeing the value of this. It’s time for governments to do the same in a much more transparent way.

And if they’re smart, they’ll check the pulse of the population in other large Asian social networking communities like 51.com, Friendster or Hi5 as well.

What do you think? Am I way off base here?

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