Mike Arauz

Say What You Mean

noreply@blogger.com (Mike Arauz) — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 05:11:45 PST

I feel like there's a plague across the advertising and marketing industry (and maybe we're not the only ones). This isn't the first time I've mentioned this, but I think it's worth revisiting.

We use words and phrases that are not commonly understood by the people we're communicating with.

There seem to be two reasons why this happens.

1. We think that it's ok for words to have multiple meanings.
We are too generous. We want everyone to feel smart and valued and right. But, sometimes not everyone is right; sometimes some people are wrong. And making ourselves clear, saying that we mean this and not that can actually help both us and the people we're speaking to come to an understanding about what needs to be done and how it will be accomplished.

2. Jargon.
Jargon is a despicable passive-aggressive rotten sickness that we use to mask our inability to communicate clearly. Jargon words are adopted by a particular industry or discipline to refer to something unique to that work. Jargon becomes insidious when it's used in speaking with people who don't understand it. In these instances, we use jargon as a way to gain power; the other person is made to feel ignorant, and we are made to seem more knowledgeable. This power play, however, comes at the cost of understanding. And without understanding, you can never have true agreement.

In both of these situations, if you can't clearly define what you mean, then you should say something else.

Our job is to help people figure out how to communicate. We should strive to be better at communicating ourselves.

This is why (as my co-workers will attest) I like to argue about semantics. I think that knowing what we mean and the words that we choose to express that meaning matter a lot.

I think that meaningful words can help us to do better work, and make the work easier to do.

Links for 2009-11-09 [del.icio.us]

Tue, 10 Nov 2009 00:00:00 PST

what consumes me, bud caddell » kittens and porn, you’re the winner!
I ask a lot from my friends on the internet. Read this, vote here, comment there, share that, those sorta things… And a while back, I asked you to vote and comment on a SXSWi Panel that Mike Arauz and I had dreamed up, Kittens and Porn: You Choose the Winner and you actually did, because it was just announced as a panel for the 2010 SXSW Interactive Conference.

Links for 2009-11-05 [del.icio.us]

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 00:00:00 PST

I AM THE CLIENT!: What the fuck is planning?
Sweet Jesus. Sweet holy Jesus. I've spent the day with the agency boys getting my head completely smashed in by some kid in sloppy jeans and a, frankly, bizarre haircut who's their new 'planner'. Now, they tell me 'planners' are nothing new, but I've never run into one before.
Crowdsourcing a Discussion on Crowdsourcing: Agency Nil, Anomaly and Victors & Spoils | eyecube
Occasionally a topic comes up that inspires a longer post with commentary and viewpoints beyond my own. With so much talk recently about crowdsourcing it seemed like a good time to really tackle the issue. I’m positively thrilled to have input from some of the top minds in advertising and marketing communications contribute to this post. I want to thank Johnny Vulkan, Cliff Lewis, Evan Fry & Aaron Bateman who provided thoughtful commentary to this post as well as those who I have linked to for adding their insight to the discussion. I encourage you to print it out, bookmark, and of course share it with others.
Baguette Dropped From Bird's Beak Shuts Down The Large Hadron Collider (Really) | Popular Science
The Large Hadron Collider, the world's most powerful particle accelerator, just cannot catch a break. First, a coolant leak destroyed some of the magnets that guide the energy beam. Then LHC officials postponed the restart of the machine to add additional safety features. Now, a bird dropping a piece of bread on a section of the accelerator has, according to the Register, shut down the whole operation.

What is Strategic Planning?

noreply@blogger.com (Mike Arauz) — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 13:54:14 PST

When I was down at the Future Trends conference earlier this week, Rick Smyre told an interesting little anecdote that got me thinking about what I do for a living. A few years ago Rick was speaking with a big shot exec from a big shot global corporation, and this exec told Rick that his company was doing away with their Strategic Planning department, and shifting to what he called Adaptive Planning. Rick asked this exec, "Why?" The exec told Rick that Strategic Planning is founded on two basic assumptions that no longer hold true: 1) You can predict outcomes and 2) You can control the process.

Wikipedia defines the discipline as "the formal consideration of an organization's future course."

The world has changed. The new reality that this exec described sounds like it applies to the digital space. The fact that you can't know for sure what's going to happen and that the experiences and messages we design need to be able to adapt, has been a constant motif in my thinking over the past few years.

I wonder what you think? What does Strategic Planning mean to you? What do you think of those two basic assumptions? Should the discipline be called something else for the digital age we live and work in now?

A few thoughts from Twitter to kick off the discussion:

Brian Chiger: I understood it to be about understanding consumers emotions/behavior & serving their needs.

Andy Hunter: always figrd stratplan=having informed (v.s reactive) course of action, knowing those u serve, doing things better.

Links for 2009-11-04 [del.icio.us]

Thu, 05 Nov 2009 00:00:00 PST

apophenia: Some thoughts on Twitter vs. Facebook Status Updates
The functional act of constructing a tweet or a status update is very similar. Produce text in roughly 140 characters or less inside a single line text box and click a button. Voila! Even the stream based ways in which the text gets consumed look awfully similar. Yet, the more I talk with people engaged in practices around Twitter and Facebook, the more I'm convinced these two things are not actually the same practice. Why? Audience. There are two critical structural differences between Facebook and Twitter that are essential to understand before discussing the practices: 1) social graph directionality; 2) conversational mechanisms.
Twitter and Status Updating, Fall 2009 | Pew Internet & American Life Project
Some 19% of internet users now say they use Twitter or another service to share updates about themselves, or to see updates about others. This represents a significant increase over previous surveys in December 2008 and April 2009, when 11% of internet users said they use a status-update service.
Strategic planning - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Strategic planning is an organization's process of defining its strategy, or direction, and making decisions on allocating its resources to pursue this strategy, including its capital and people. Various business analysis techniques can be used in strategic planning, including SWOT analysis (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats ), PEST analysis (Political, Economic, Social, and Technological analysis), STEER analysis (Socio-cultural, Technological, Economic, Ecological, and Regulatory factors), and EPISTEL (Environment, Political, Informatic, Social, Technological, Economic and Legal).

The Social Network In Your Pocket

noreply@blogger.com (Mike Arauz) — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 05:02:40 PST

Check out more of my Slideshare docs here.

This is the presentation I gave Monday at the Future Trends Conference in Miami. Lots of good people there, and I'm sorry I wasn't able to stay for all three days.

The proliferation of mobile technology and the rapid integration of both access to the web and access to our social graph via our mobile device demands that we begin to design experiences that were previously thought of as "off line" to spread online.

Digital technology, and the role that it plays in our lives, has evolved dramatically over the past 10 years. Think about how constantly we now rely on digital technology to communicate with each other, to get information, to entertain ourselves, to organize collective action, and to document our lives.

Now think about how many of those experiences now take place within the context of your social graph, within the context of the aggregate of all of your digital relationships. Every digital experience we have now is connected to our digital relationships.

The way that we live our lives and experience the world around us has always been social. But, digital social networks are fundamentally different because they take our basic human desires to explore our identity, our relationships, and our place in society, and makes those desires explicit. Figuring out who we are, who our friends are, and how we fit in, used to be intuitive; now all of those questions are broadcast, shared, archived, searchable, and deliberate.

The era of Spreadable Media is now at hand. Videos, links, and other digital experiences do not spread by themselves. They spread because we choose to spread them. And we choose to spread content for 3 reasons: to strengthen my bond, to define our collective identity, and to gain status.

In order to design digital experiences that can spread, you need to know the network you're trying to engage, understand their shared desires, and give them the tools they need to share the experience.

That's what's going on with the web. Now consider how quickly web-based social behaviors are becoming integrated into our mobile experiences:

Mobile internet adoption has reached over 50 million users (via iPhone and iPod Touch) more than twice as quickly as it took regular internet adoption to reach that same penetration (via Netscape) (source)

The number of people using social network sites on mobile devices more than doubled from July 2008 to July 2009 (source)

The % of mobile web users posting status updates via Twitter or another service has now reached 25% (source)

Facebook now has over 65 million mobile users, approximately 26% of all active users (source)

Mobile technology is making every experience both digital and social. That means that the experiences that we previously thought of as happening "off line" now play by the same rules as online experiences. The same principles that make things spread online now need to be applied to real world experiences to help them spread in the digital space.

There are a few interesting technologies that have popped up in the past year that I think have a role to play in this new reality.

Mobile Location-based Apps

Foursquare

Brightkite

Loopt

Gowalla

Google Latitude

Mobile Augmented Reality

MIT Sixth Sense prototype (TED Talk)

Layar

Wikitude

Nearest Subway

Yelp Monocle

TAT Augmented ID

My own concepts: facial recognition and social tagging

Links for 2009-10-26 [del.icio.us]

Tue, 27 Oct 2009 00:00:00 PDT

Spreadable Media: A Cure for Viral Marketing - Sam Ford
The greatest marketing successes are not those that spread "virally" among a massive audience but instead those that have content that really resonates with a key audience and acts as cultural material for their own conversations. And, in those cases where a piece of content does become an Internet-wide sensation, it is always driven by allowing people to express themselves through your message rather than having something inherent within the video or story that people are somehow forced to send along.

Links for 2009-10-23 [del.icio.us]

Sat, 24 Oct 2009 00:00:00 PDT

Marketers salivating over smartphone potential - USATODAY.com
The number of people who use social networks from their smartphones skyrocketed 187%, to 18.3 million unique users, in July, compared with the same month a year earlier, says Nielsen.

Weekend Reading List

noreply@blogger.com (Mike Arauz) — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 06:38:56 PDT

Some great recent posts on the next evolution of branding, marketing, and digital:

Ben Malbon and Greg Andersen from BBH get the ball rolling on what it will take to implement Adaptive Brand Marketing.

We believe marketing communications are already being forced to become increasingly agile; particularly for more youth-oriented brands. In such a fast paced and dynamic media environment, relevance is increasingly determined in the moment. Recency matters. Audience and attention are fleeting. Fame spikes … even for the famous. For brands to achieve and maintain fame in this context, it’s our view that communications for certain types of brands must make a dramatic shift from highly polished epic launches to a continuous and diverse stream of messaging and content designed to ride hyper-current cultural trends, consumer attitudes and competitive maneuvering.

Tim Malbon from Made By Many writes about what your business needs in order to become a truly digital company.

...You need more than [an agile, adaptive, evolutionary approach] to deliver the kind of long-term living platforms and platform-campaigns – and value – that clients need and agencies must get better at creating. I’m starting to believe you need four things, the first two of which are well-known and increasingly often quoted: The right people, The right processes, The right culture, The right clients.

Helge Tennø shares his thoughts on breaking out of the campaign ROI mindset.

Earned media is becoming more and more important in the mechanics of the marketing eco-system. People don’t share stuff because they notice it, they share stuff because it’s valuable.

and

People will share their version of a brand’s story with other people, but they don’t care to listen to the brand’s own story.

Links for 2009-10-14 [del.icio.us]

Thu, 15 Oct 2009 00:00:00 PDT

Bringing iPhone touch technology to desktop « BBH Labs
Fairly cutting edge stuff - probably not easily accessible to everyday (’normal’ i.e. have-a-life) users, quite yet at least, but still really interesting step on the way from mouse to touch-based (more direct) interface. See what you think.

Links for 2009-10-12 [del.icio.us]

Tue, 13 Oct 2009 00:00:00 PDT

comScore and Starcom USA Release Updated “Natural Born Clickers” Study Showing 50 Percent Drop in Number of U.S. Internet Users Who Click on Display Ads - comScore, Inc
The number of people who click on display ads in a month has fallen from 32 percent of Internet users in July 2007 to only 16 percent in March 2009, with an even smaller core of people (representing 8 percent of the Internet user base) accounting for the vast majority (85 percent) of all clicks.
Stevey.com → 50 years of Space Exploration
The space nerd in me can’t stop looking at this. Stunning / beautifully drawn info-graphic of the past 50 years of space exploration.

You Get What You Measure

noreply@blogger.com (Mike Arauz) — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 06:14:28 PDT

I think we'd all be happier, and do better work, if we adopted an approach to measurement that was focused on creating proven value for the business.

"You get what you measure." I found this wonderful adage in this paper on measurement for agile development (PDF) (h/t Tim Malbon). And it helped me to put my finger on what I want to change about digital measurement.

The way we approach digital measurement needs to be fundamentally reconsidered. I propose that the experiences we create and the metrics we use to measure their effectiveness should be in service of creating proven valuable outcomes for the client's business.

It's a simple idea, and something that feels obvious. Yet, much of digital measurement as it's conducted currently, fails to meet that standard.

The single biggest failing of digital measurement over the past decade is that the measurements used are disconnected from results that actually have proven value for the business. Measurements are used to prove that we did what we wanted to do, but not that we necessarily did something that created value for the business. Creative agencies and their partners on the client side end up in situations where it's impossible to judge success because there's no way of proving that the objective has been achieved.

It's time to adopt a Valuable Measurement approach.

Click for full size image

In this alternative approach, the single overriding business objective is articulated by the client at the outset of the process. Then the client explicitly defines specific measurable outcomes that have been proven to be valuable in helping to achieve the business objective. These goals are then used to inform all decisions from there on out.

The creative agency designs an experience in service of achieving those valuable outcomes. And in collaboration with the client and any necessary numbers and measurement partner, a small number of key metrics are defined and agreed upon as the design comes into focus. What measurable aspects of this experience will contribute to achieving the agreed upon valuable outcomes?

And finally, temporary diagnostics can be used to adjust and optimize the experience once it's up and running. These diagnostics should be used to solve a specific challenge, and be discarded once the problem is solved.

There are a few key tenets at the heart of this approach:

Measurement should be in service of business goals.

Clearly defined, measurable, valuable outcomes that can be affected through digital experiences should be used to guide decisions about what experiences to invest in.

Key metrics should be defined during the initial design phase, in order to inform design decisions in service of creating valuable outcomes.

What do you think? Where are the holes or problems with this approach? What would you change or add? Comments welcome.

Sources and inspiration:
Deborah Hartmann and Robin Dymond - Appropriate Agile Measurement (PDF)
Tim Malbon - Agile measurement
Sean Howard - The Myth of Social Media Monitoring
Anjali Ramachandran - Engagement vs. measurement
David J. Carr - Social Media monitoring and the spectrum of online relationships

Hipsters Didn't Happen By Accident

noreply@blogger.com (Mike Arauz) — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 05:26:08 PDT

Click for full-size image

The hipster culture/mindset is the result of two basic values that the parents of hipsters instilled in their children:

Everything is cool.

Everyone is unique.

The hipster lifestyle is a quest to find out if these tenets hold true.

Foursquare! Epic Battle!

noreply@blogger.com (Mike Arauz) — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 05:36:19 PDT

Yesterday, Bud and Amber were riffing about how Foursquare should offer an "Epic Battle Mode" when two players trade the mayorship of a single location several times within a few days.

This got me thinking about the potential for Foursquare to compel spontaneous real-world events.

What if Foursquare issued a time sensitive challenge to certain players in the same city who shared an interest or habit (like going to small local coffee shops several times a day)?

For instance, a player might receive a special message from Foursquare that said "The Cup of Joe Trophy is now available for the next 12 hours. Your next clue is waiting for you in Bryant Park..."

What could you do with a mechanism like this?

I met up with Brian Fountain last night, and we bounced around a few thoughts. He's gonna be posting more about it, and hopefully we can pass a couple ideas back and forth.

Best of Tumblr Fridays!

noreply@blogger.com (Mike Arauz) — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 05:45:11 PDT

Here's a couple weeks worth of my favorite links, photos, and videos from my Tumblr blog.

On a related note, I've started using Google Reader (switched from Netvibes) so that I can contribute to this little experiment that Bud Caddell and Undercurrent are cooking up. I've been sharing a lot of stuff over there; if you're interested, check out my shared items feed and add me add me as a follow so that I can see what you're sharing, too.

Charlie Todd, creator of Improv Everywhere, visited Vienna and took this funny picture.

Learning the basics of typography is a very underappreciated skill for anyone who's interested in communicating thoughts. Here's a handy round of of 10 Common Typography Mistakes, like lengthy lines of text:

This video is ridiculous.

Have you seen Al Franken draw a map of the U.S. from memory, yet?

Lots of good Facebook stats with sources listed here. A few of my favs:

More than 120 million users log on to Facebook at least once each day.

More than 5 billion minutes are spent on Facebook each day (worldwide).

Facebook users are adding photos at a rate of 1 billion photos a month.

David Carr did a very cool evolution of my Spectrum of Online Friendship diagram.

This Stuff Isn't Simple

noreply@blogger.com (Mike Arauz) — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 04:42:08 PDT

I was reading last week's New Yorker article about Zappos and was reminded what a great example they are of a company that does all this "social media" stuff well.

I know that Zappos is a go to reference for a brand that gets Twitter. But, I feel like over the past 6 months or so, we've become tired of using Zappos as an example for other brands and companies who are trying to find their footing in this still nascent marketing environment.

(This may very well just be me. Please let me know in the comments if you feel the same, or otherwise.)

When clients used to ask, "Who does this stuff well?" "Who can we learn from?" "Can you give us some examples?" Zappos was always my go to. But then I started to feel like I was sounding like a broken record. I started to feel like this example was being ignored.

Reading this article made me realize that the reason why using Zappos as an example has lost its impact for me, is because it's too hard for me to explain what exactly Zappos does so well. I can't point to a specific campaign and say, "Remember The Giant Shoe Factory thing that everyone was passing around? That was Zappos." Most clients have a hard time understanding examples that don't feel like advertising campaigns.

What makes Zappos a great example is also what makes them hard to use as an example. The execute a totally organic, open, and bottom up approach to digital media that is lead by a strong unifying culture, unique brand personality, and a clearly defined calling: Service. Once those guiding forces are firmly rooted, their brand can become porous, seamlessly integrating with the rest of the web on a human scale.

This is what it's supposed to look like. This is what it will look like for all brands in the not-too-distant future.

It's not a shiny object tied up in a pretty bow. It's messy. It's a little chaotic and uncontrollable. But, most importantly, it's human.

Photojojo's Book Is Here

noreply@blogger.com (Mike Arauz) — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 05:25:27 PDT

Photojojo is one of my favorite sites on the internet. They send out a twice-a-week email newsletter with helpful tips and projects for you and your photography. And now they have a book!

What's best about Photojojo, though, is its personality. I constantly use them as a perfect example of how to cultivate a distinct brand personality on the web. Every brand can learn from them.

And one of my little 'ole photos has been used in their new book.

I got a look at an advance copy, and I can honestly say it looks awesome. Lots of fun and inspiring projects for photographers of all levels of expertise.

Check it out.

Facebook Lite - Now With 50% Less Fat!

noreply@blogger.com (Mike Arauz) — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 05:23:50 PDT

Yesterday, Facebook launched lite.facebook.com, aka Simple Facebook, aka Facebook sans Junk, aka Facebook without ads.

I was chatting about it in the office with Eric Tabone and Clay Parker Jones; while we all liked the quick and easy new experience, we couldn't avoid the irony that in so many ways the new site looks a lot like we would imagine an old version of the site would look. Less stuff. Less boxes and apps. Less banner ads and flyers cluttering up our sidebar.

I'm not sure where Facebook is going with this. What happens if everyone loves this, and wants to adopt it as the regular version of the site? As Eric pointed out, would that cause some problems for advertisers?

Crowdsourcing: What's My Motivation?

noreply@blogger.com (Mike Arauz) — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 05:10:05 PDT

Editor's Note: Apologies for the long absence. I've been moving! There's still plenty of work to be done on the new apartment; at least we're starting to settle in a bit now, and I have internet again (hard to believe how much I missed it). So, back to work...

Motivating collective creativity among a group of loosely connected individuals with a shared interest requires more than just an offer of prize money. Brands can harness social and personal desires to inspire crowds to come together for collaborative endeavors.

Daren C. Brabham is a PhD candidate who does research on crowdsourcing. A few weeks ago I came across this paper (PDF) he wrote about why Threadless members participate. (I'm embarassed to admit I can't remember where I found this. Please pipe up in the comments if you were the person who passed me this link.)

Daren interviewed 17 members who participate on Threadless in different ways and for different reasons. He found that across this spectrum, there were a few main themes for why members participated: to make money, to possibly get freelance design work, to get better at designing, because they liked the community, and eventually because they get addicted to participating.

These themes have strong implications for the many brands who aspire to get their fans to collaborate with the brand on some kind of collective creative endeavor.

First off, brands need to acknowledge that their fans need motivation in general. They're not waiting around for an opportunity to be creative. They don't need you for that. If you're going to go ahead anyway, then be sure to design the experience to deliver as many of the potential motivations as you possibly can.

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Best of Tumblr Fridays!

noreply@blogger.com (Mike Arauz) — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 03:31:46 PDT

Here are a few of favorite links, photos, and videos from the week on my Tumblr blog.

Incredible photos of New York City.

Good advice for girlfriends everywhere: THE GUIDE TO BEING SO CHOICE aka How Sloane Peterson from Ferris Bueller’s Day Off Taught me how to be an Awesome Girlfriend. (via Chad)

danah boyd takes on a recent study of Twitter conversation that claims its mostly "pointless babble."

Studies like this one by Pear Analytics drive me batty. They concluded that 40.55% of the tweets they coded are pointless babble; 37.55% are conversational; 8.7% have "pass along value"; 5.85% are self-promotional; 3.75% are spam; and ::gasp:: only 3.6% are news. I challenge each and every one of you to record every utterance that comes out of your mouth (and that of everyone you interact with) for an entire day. And then record every facial expression and gesture. You will most likely find what communications scholars found long ago - people are social creatures and a whole lot of what they express is phatic communication. (Phatic expressions do social work rather than conveying information... think "Hi" or "Thank you".) Now, turn all of your utterances over to an analytics firm so that they can code everything that you've said. I think that you'll be lucky if only 40% of what you say constitutes "pointless babble" to a third party ear.

It's very very long, but you really should read this 1993 New Yorker profile of actor/scholar/magician Ricky Jay. (via kottke.org)

Deborah Baron, a screenwriter in Los Angeles, where Jay lives, once invited him to a New Year’s Eve dinner party at her home. About a dozen other people attended. Well past midnight, everyone gathered around a coffee table as Jay, at Baron’s request, did closeup card magic. When he had performed several dazzling illusions and seemed ready to retire, a guest named Mort said, “Come on, Ricky. Why don’t you do something truly amazing?”

Baron recalls that at that moment “the look in Ricky’s eyes was, like, ‘Mort—you have just fucked with the wrong person.’ ”

Jay told Mort to name a card, any card. Mort said, “The three of hearts.” After shuffling, Jay gripped the deck in the palm of his right hand and sprung it, cascading all fifty-two cards so that they travelled the length of the table and pelted an open wine bottle.

“O.K., Mort, what was your card again?”

“The three of hearts.”

“Look inside the bottle.”

Mort discovered, curled inside the neck, the three of hearts. The party broke up immediately.

And in case you need further incentive, watch the beauty of this performance. It's so much more than a card trick.

Eric Tabone told me about this hilarious new form of internet creativity: comixed.com

How To Become A Social Brand REDUX

noreply@blogger.com (Mike Arauz) — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 04:28:38 PDT

Thanks to everyone who linked to yesterday's post and passed it around. And thanks for the great comments: Rick Liebling, Fabio Buss, Adam Wohl, Nora Geiss, Jacco, Alan Wolk, Kristine Akins, Ben Malbon, and Stephen Byrne.

And a special belated thanks to Clay Parker Jones for having the bright idea to integrate Listen, Measure, and Adjust as continual activities throughout the diagram.

Click for full size image

The biggest point I heard in the comments was what Rick said, how will your brand "bring value"? If your brand chooses to participate, it needs to contribute something of value to the community. This is something that I go on about all the time, so I want to make sure it's represented here.

I was trying to get at this in Step 2. Originally I had "Identify A Compelling Topic of Conversation." While this is still important, I want to make it a little broader.

2. Identify The Shared Desires Of The Network (See also: Desire Paths: Branding for Digital Lives)
Once you know what you want to accomplish from the brand's point of view, you need to find out what the people you're hoping to connect with want to accomplish. What brings these people together? What are the shared interests that motivate them to socialize with each other? In order to become a valued member of their network, you need to know how you can serve their shared desires. This may be through sharing information, appreciating their creativity, or developing a specific utility or tool that makes pursuing their shared desires easier.

And lastly, Stephen Byrne brought up an excellent point that you need to get the basics of branding right before you can even start thinking about this. Know what you stand for. Know how your point of view is different from everyone else's. Have a truly remarkable product. And be passionate about something bigger than your brand.

When you've got all that nailed, then your ready to become social.

How To Become A Social Brand

noreply@blogger.com (Mike Arauz) — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 04:31:30 PDT

Giving your brand a social life on the web takes more than a username and an avatar. It takes a lot of time, and a surprising amount of planning and attention.

Here are 5 key steps and 3 key continuous activities that brands need to go through in order to successfully participate in online conversations and forge meaningful connections with people who care about their product.

UPDATE: Step 2 has been altered slightly to "Identify the shared desires of the network" - read more here in Part 2.

Click for full size image

1. Define Objectives
Too often it is assumed that you should participate - immediately and everywhere - before anyone stops to ask what the brand is trying to accomplish. Are you trying to raise awareness for your brand? online or offline? Do you want people to talk about your new product? Do you want to establish relationships with your most loyal consumers? Are you trying to impress the CMO's teenage child? Do you just want to make your shareholders happy? Be honest about your motivations and adjust your efforts and measurements appropriately.

2. Identify a Compelling Topic of Conversation
Your brand is going to be talking to real people. If you hope to keep them engaged in the conversation you need to know what they want to talk about. Figure out what the people you're trying to reach are interested in, and be prepared to talk about it.

3. Participate
Now the fun starts. You know why you're doing it. You know what you're going to say. Dive in and get started. The important thing to remember here is that participation doesn't end after you post something. The whole point of this social stuff is that people can respond. After you post a video on YouTube or start a discussion on Facebook or share a link on Twitter you need to stick around, hear what people have to say about it, and respond.

4. Identify Friends and Fans
Once you've started some activity, it's time to see which people you connected with. Based on your initial objectives, which friends, followers, and fans are on board? Which people have expressed an affinity for your brand and might be able to help you reach the next level? Learn the names of the people who want to help you build your brand.

5. Foster Relationships (see also: Spectrum of Online Friendship)
Now it's time to do the work to transform your online acquaintances into advocates. Reward behaviors like engaging in a public dialogue with the brand and sharing links that are important to the brand. Exchange public and private messages with your friends and fans. This doesn't have to cost money, either. Usually the most valuable thing you have to offer is simply your attention. The quality of the relationship you foster is a direct result of the time you devote to it. (Not unlike real life.)

You could do all of these steps and not see any results if you fail to integrate these essential ongoing activities. Throughout this entire cycle it is imperative that your brand continuously Listen, Measure, and Adjust.

Listen
Every good conversation starts with good listening. Don't be the asshole who shows up and starts blabbering without ever stopping to hear what everyone else has to say. Start by monitoring Twitter search and Google Blog Search. Find the most popular blogs related to your brand and start reading them. Are there any Facebook fan pages already established for your brand or something similar? What are people saying there? Keep doing this.

Measure
How can you know if you're on track to meet your objectives if you're not measuring your efforts and results. This is as important to do before you start as it is once you begin. Make sure that the metrics you choose are appropriate for your objectives. If your primary objective is getting people to talk about your brand, don't just measure how many followers you have.

Adjust
The biggest difference between this world and the marketing world that came before it is that the brand is no longer in control. The people you interact with have as much ability to shape the discussion and affect the experience as you do. You need to be ready to react and change what you're doing to suit the exigencies of the situation in real time.

Remember that Listen, Measure, and Adjust are things that you need to do continuously as you develop your brand's online social presence.

Remember that becoming a social brand is an ongoing cycle that repeats over and over, not a campaign with a start and end date.

Remember that the results of your efforts depend on the amount of time that you're willing to put in.

I know I'm not the first person to tackle this, but I thought it was worth a try anyway.

Let me know what you think in the comments. Are these the only key steps or activities? What else would you add? or take away? Have you seen this or something else work with the brands you work with/for?

Help Learn About Our Industry

noreply@blogger.com (Mike Arauz) — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 03:40:49 PDT

Undercurrent (where I work) is running a survey about the social media industry. Please help us by taking the survey yourself and telling others about it. Blog it, Tweet it, pass it around your office, share it with friends, agencies, and clients.

http://bit.ly/socialmediasurvey
* please use the bit.ly link when sharing
** and how about the hashtag #smsurvey when tweeting

The objective of this survey is to gain a greater understanding of how social media is put in practice by agencies and clients, including: how objectives are defined, how results are measured, who is doing the work, the level of compensation, and what resources are most popular among practitioners.

Who should take the survey? Anyone that handles social media strategy, manages a social media team (internal or external), or conducts social media outreach on behalf of or within a brand.

It’s important to get a wide variety of data, so please share and spread this survey. We’ll keep the survey open during the month of August.

The survey should only take about 10 minutes of your time.

What are we doing with this data? We plan on releasing a free report (probably slideshare) on our findings, along with a free download of the full dataset. We’re hoping that what we collect will be beneficial for the entire industry. When you’re done with the survey, you’ll see a link to follow to request the report and dataset.

I really think that there's a lot we can learn from this. And the more people we can get to take the survey, the stronger the findings will be, and the more we'll all learn. Please help.

http://bit.ly/socialmediasurvey
* please use the bit.ly link when sharing
** and Twitter hashtag #smsurvey

While You Were Away

noreply@blogger.com (Mike Arauz) — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 03:57:54 PDT

This video is kind of sad, a little frightening, and darkly funny. And it's a great metaphor for why your brand can't afford to take a break from their online social life. (It's a little long, but totally worth it.)

via Clay Parker Jones

Building relationships and sparking conversations in online social environments like Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube isn't like running an advertising campaign. There's no end date to your efforts. Brands can't walk away from the fans that you earn and the dialogue you start.

There are plenty of other experiences for your fans to try and other brands for them to meet.

If you've put in the time and effort to show your fans that your listening, don't make the mistake of letting it all go to waste by going dark for 3 months while you get ready for your next big ad campaign.

Best of Tumblr Fridays!

noreply@blogger.com (Mike Arauz) — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 03:50:58 PDT

My favorite links, photos, and videos from the week on my Tumblr blog.

Watch Bobby McFerrin play with this audience. It's beautiful.

World Science Festival 2009: Bobby McFerrin Demonstrates the Power of the Pentatonic Scale

Google gives the details behind how YouTube can profit from the sudden success of a video like the JK Wedding Entrance Dance.

Last week the world watched in wonder as Jill Peterson and Kevin Heinz's wedding party transformed a familiar and predictable tradition into something spontaneous and just flat-out fun. The video, set to R&B star Chris Brown's hypnotic dance jam "Forever," became an overnight sensation, accumulating more than 10 million views on YouTube in less than one week. But as with all great YouTube videos, there's more to this story than simple view counts.

Comparing the sales of different formats of music over the past 50 years:

An illustrated story about Ben Franklin.

Netflix shares its secrets of success. Such good advice for how to run a company in here.

Culture

View more presentations from reed2001.

Functional Collective Conscious Coming Into View (Updated)

noreply@blogger.com (Mike Arauz) — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 13:30:28 PDT

The realization of a functional collective conscious is the ultimate outcome of ubiquitous digital communications. Our collective conscious refers to the things we all know, i.e. shared cultural knowledge, beliefs, morals, etc. A functional collective conscious refers to the new wealth of shared knowledge enabled by ubiquitous and instantaneous access to the internet. We are steadily moving towards a reality in which as soon as one person gains a piece of information, every human on Earth gains that piece of information. We will have the ability to access any information at will, and that function will be so quick and effortless as to be effectively the same as possessing the knowledge in our own brains.

Each year since I started writing about this back in 2007 (here here here here), this theoretical existence becomes a little less theoretical. There are a few recent developments that I see as pieces of the puzzle.

Status Updates
How many people do you know who are not posting status updates somewhere on the web these days? At the beginning of this year, a PEW study showed that the behavior of posting brief status updates is on the rise. As of December 2008 "11% of online American adults said they used a service like Twitter or another service that allowed them to share updates about themselves or to see the updates of others." That was up from 9% only one month before, and 6% back in May of 2008. Since then, Twitter has grown at a staggering pace month after month. Most recently, Compete estimates 23 Million unique visitors in June.

And now that status updates have become a normal part of Facebook and many other social network environments, the practice of continuously broadcasting both personal and public information that is important to us and our network is becoming a normal way of living.

Intelligent Location
Have you heard about Foursquare, yet: Foursquare Shows The Business Potential Of Location-Based Services and Foursquare: Why It May Be the Next Twitter. If you're predisposed to cynicism, you may skeptical of this new location-aware social mobile apps significance. After all, haven't we seen this before with Dodgeball, Brightkite, and Loopt? Well, none of them caught on like Foursquare has. And everyone I've seen use it is getting hooked on broadcasting their location and useful information about that place. They receive push notifications alerting them of a great new bar to check out around the corner from the cafe they're eating at or telling them to order the Six Point IPA because it's the best beer in the city.

Asking your local friends for recommendations in the neighborhood is nothing new. But, tools like Foursquare are creating a new level of pervasive access to that information.

Always Be Sharing
Have you found yourself visiting Tumblr or Posterous more often recently? These super simple blogging platforms have proven that they have a unique purpose on the web. They are here to help us deal with this modern dilemma: "I'm drowning in interesting information, and I want to do something useful with it." People share all kinds of stuff on these sites, design, photography, articles, quotes, commentary. But essentially they are a simple faucet of things found on the web filtered through the personal interests of one user.

We seem to be moving towards a way of living in which we feel obligated to share all information that we think would be relevant to our network. If our network is always listening, then we're always going to be asking ourselves "What do I have to tell them?"

Click for full size image

Do you agree? Have you found this to be the case in your own digital life?

Update: New statistics on Tumblr's popularity and growth are very impressive.

A Measure of Relevancy: Twitter Wins

noreply@blogger.com (Mike Arauz) — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 05:05:31 PDT

Video links shared on Twitter are more relevant on average than video links shared on Facebook or Digg.

According to this report from video monitoring site TubeMogul, people who follow links from Twitter to watch video, find those videos to be more relevant to their interests than people who are clicking on video links shared by their Facebook friends or the ones they find on Digg.

A little surprising with how much importance we place on the sacred social graph. If we compared how well we know our connection across these three sites, Facebook would probably host the closest relationships, followed by Twitter, then Digg. So why does Twitter deliver more wanted content?

The conclusion that I'm taking away from this is that a network of relationships built primarily on information shared, and only secondarily on personal relationships to the other people, is a more potent information sharing network.

Best of Tumblr Fridays!

noreply@blogger.com (Mike Arauz) — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 06:28:24 PDT

A few of my favorite links, photos, and videos from the week on my Tumblr blog. Lots of happy fun and smart posts and articles.

When I was up in Cape Cod last weekend I stumbled across this strange little scene. Luckily I had my camera with me. So I threw together this cheery little image macro. (Click image for full-size image)

Thoughtful and fascinating story about journalism, blogs, and the internet, by Michael Massing in The New York Review of Books.

This image of the Internet as parasite has some foundation. Without the vital news-gathering performed by established institutions, many Web sites would sputter and die. In their sweep and scorn, however, such statements seem as outdated as they are defensive. Over the past few months alone, a remarkable amount of original, exciting, and creative (if also chaotic and maddening) material has appeared on the Internet. The practice of journalism, far from being leeched by the Web, is being reinvented there, with a variety of fascinating experiments in the gathering, presentation, and delivery of news. And unless the editors and executives at our top papers begin to take note, they will hasten their own demise.

Jake Bronstein, the man behind Zoomdoggle, is engaged! This is probably the funnest and sweetest marriage proposals you'll ever see. And on top of that they set the world record for the longest successful whisper chain.

Big Spaceship blog looks at Spymaster.

In late May, arcane tweets about buying weapons and assassinating people began showing up in my Twitter feed. I asked what was up and received an invite to join a spy ring and play Spymaster. Opinions are divided on how ‘social’ social networking is. This Twitter-based spy game presents an opportunity to look at why.

BBH Labs talks to Jeremy Ettinghausen about interactive storytelling.

Launched last month under their Puffin label, We Make Stories is the latest in a long line of digital publishing innovations masterminded by Jeremy Ettinghausen (@jeremyet), Penguin’s Digital Publisher. In short, we’re witnessing a radical re-shaping of an industry we believe we can learn a lot from. An industry which - aside from its sheer cultural importance in the first place - has been experimenting with new creative & organisational solutions for some time now.

One of my all-time favorite sketches, from the brilliant Mr. Show:

Best of Tumblr Fridays!

noreply@blogger.com (Mike Arauz) — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 05:30:39 PDT

Collecting my favorite links, photos, and videos from the week on my Tumblr blog.

Incredible collection of classic graphic design, typography, and diagrams. This diagram shows how news used to work in the olden days.

Xiaochang Li, at MIT's Convergence Culture Consortium, breaks down the discussion around YouTube stars and sponsored content.

What this ultimately means for brands is that the best way to integrate your brand into communities online and launch campaigns that depend on social media participation is to offer yourself as a resource and let the participants decide how to make you valuable. It feels risky, but people build a more lasting relationship with your brand if you let them use your brand as a means to build relationships with one another, in their own voices, on their own terms. And at the end of the day, when you're talking about vloggers or fan producers or other people who are remixing, remaking, and creating in these new media spaces, consider what vlogger Alandistro points out: "You really can't go wrong asking creative people to be creative."

Beautiful video of the Okinawa Churaumi Aquarium in Japan, the 2nd largest aquarium in the world.

The Onion shares some great tips on how to add that Wow! factor to your next presentation.

When we first finished the PowerPoint, the content was all there, but it still lacked that certain something," head market researcher Jeremy Batson said. "For example, we wanted to drive home the fact that, in the age of Twitter, we as a marketing company have an obligation to harness the power of distinct thoughts within a limited space. So we spiced that section up by including pictures of celebrities who use Twitter. The Ashton Kutcher photo we found is freakin' hilarious.

And Tumblr gets some love from Brandweek (with a quote from me), "Tumblr: What's in it for you?"

Marketers trying to keep pace with Twitter and Facebook may want to check out another emerging social media platform: Tumblr. At first blush, Tumblr, described as a “blogging platform,” which aggregates online content on a particular theme (like, say, skateboarding), doesn’t seem to have an obvious marketing application. But IBM, EMI and Universal Music have all discovered that creating a tumbleblog (a term that preceded the two-year-old Tumblr’s existence) is a good way to help control the message online, reward fans and, in IBM’s case, position oneself as a thought leader on a given topic.

Killing the Online/Offline Friend Myth

noreply@blogger.com (Mike Arauz) — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 04:56:28 PDT

There's a vicious little rumor that keeps going around that the relationships we foster online are somehow in conflict with the relationships we foster in real life. I keep hearing unfounded concerns that all this time we spend clicking around Facebook is stealing quality time away from the moments when we connect with people offline. That Twitter is breaking up loving couples(John Mayer!? Jennifer Aniston!?) (Guess what? Their problems probably went a little deeper than Twitter use...)

First let's agree to scrap the entire concept of "online" and "in real life." The two are no longer different from each other in any meaningful way.

[Just to be specific, and in spite of its inconvenience, I'm going to refer to these two states as "relationships unmediated by digital technology" and "relationships mediated by digital technology". I'm happy to entertain alternative suggestions : ) ]

Relationships mediated by digital technology - be it a website or a cellphone - are mostly continuations or extensions of relationships that exist without the aid of digital technology.

Rather than getting in the way of relationships unmediated by digital technology, relationships mediated by digital technology either foster or create unmediated relationships. Most of the time digital technology either enhances and extends relationships that already exist without the aid of digital technology, or it serves as bridge from mediated acquaintanceship to unmediated relationship.

If you know of any research out there that either supports or disproves this assertion, please link it up in the comments.

Mike Arauz

Say What You Mean

Links for 2009-11-09 [del.icio.us]

Links for 2009-11-05 [del.icio.us]

What is Strategic Planning?

Links for 2009-11-04 [del.icio.us]

The Social Network In Your Pocket

Links for 2009-10-26 [del.icio.us]

Links for 2009-10-23 [del.icio.us]

Weekend Reading List

Links for 2009-10-14 [del.icio.us]

Links for 2009-10-12 [del.icio.us]

You Get What You Measure

Hipsters Didn't Happen By Accident

Foursquare! Epic Battle!

Trending Topics (Part II)

Trending Topics on Twitter: What does it take?

Best of Tumblr Fridays!

This Stuff Isn't Simple

Photojojo's Book Is Here

Facebook Lite - Now With 50% Less Fat!

Crowdsourcing: What's My Motivation?

Best of Tumblr Fridays!

How To Become A Social Brand REDUX

How To Become A Social Brand

Help Learn About Our Industry

While You Were Away

Best of Tumblr Fridays!

Functional Collective Conscious Coming Into View (Updated)

A Measure of Relevancy: Twitter Wins

Best of Tumblr Fridays!

Best of Tumblr Fridays!

Killing the Online/Offline Friend Myth