People brought their bosses. Some speakers from last year invited their bosses to come and speak this year. Others brought their peers or bosses to attend. Every annual conference wants to draw loyal attendees. Few manage to deliver so much value that a year later they become the desired destination for bosses and colleagues too.

That’s the best introduction I can offer to a gathering of several hundred attendees and speakers at the New Yorker hotel over the past two days to discuss opportunities, strategies and insights around using social media for big brand marketing. With over 35 of the biggest brands in the world gathered together, there were plenty of insights to come from speakers across two days of panel discussions.

Here are 15 highlights – curated from a combination of my own notes, conversations with speakers I moderated, and my reading the stream of tweets from the event (hashtag #csmny). Feel free to check out the conversation yourself and let me know if I missed anything …

1. “Reward Experimentation” – Outback

To celebrate an Australian golfer poised to win a big tournament, one of the social media team members at Outback steakhouse decided to give away free meal coupons to 5 lucky winners over Twitter. The next day, when he told CMO Mike Kappitt about the stunt … Mike asked only one question: “why didn’t you give away 500?” For many brand marketing teams, campaigns are meticulously scripted and managed – but Outback believes empowering staff will encourage more experimentation. And experimentation will lead to success. While not ideal for every situation, their steadfast focus on rewarding smart thinking instead of punishing innovators is a big lesson more brand teams could use.

2. “Context Matters” – Express

We hear often about second or even third screen experiences. “There is only one screen that matters,” explained Express Director of Online Marketing Eric Gohs, “the screen in front of us.” In this single screen experience, context is everything because the way you experience a brand depends entirely on where you are. If you are walking down the street or in a retail Express store – your entire experience will be mobile. If you are at home browsing, it may be more tablet or laptop. Either way, the screen you are on should offer the perfect experience for the context you are in. For any brand that has placed QR codes on airline magazines (generally read on flights without internet access!) … this is an important lesson to remember.

3. “Engage the Rogues” – Wells Fargo

Workarounds are a popular use of technology. As Wells Fargo SVP and Head of Social Business Strategy Nathan Bricklin shared, “if you don’t have tools in house, people find workarounds.” Often those work arounds cause collaboration problems, because people are not communicating in a streamlined way. The less collaboration you have, the more people reinvent the wheel in every department – a problem Wells Fargo faces daily across more than 50 different business units and departments. The solution, according to Bricklin, is to “embrace the rogues.” In other words, find the people in your organization who are creating these solutions and leading the workaround groups, and find a way to work with them to solve their problems. As long as you can find them early.

4. “Educate Your Lawyers” – McDonald’s

If there is a consistent tension that nearly every brand marketer in the audience shared, it was the sometimes strained relationship that happens between legal and marketing. As McDonald’s Senior Director of Communications Heather Oldani shared stories of how her brand embeds social across multiple departments, one key learning became clear – she has good lawyers. But how can any brand build such a positive connection with their legal teams when sometimes real business issues may stand in the way? The key is that more marketing teams need to take responsibility for educating their lawyers. Often marketing people assume that it’s the legal team’s responsibility to understand social media. It won’t usually happen that way. Instead, finding moments to offer shared learning and education, and gain great understanding of both marketing and legal team’s roles is critical to building a more successful working relationship.

5. “Embrace Data Gymnastics” – Footlocker

In one of the best buzzword moments of the day, Footlocker CMO Dave Lokes shared the concept of “data gymnastics” as a method for using sometimes incomplete or overloaded data to uncover big business insights – such as how consumers are moving from consideration to conversion. As big data continues to be a huge topic for brands, the idea of using data in new and unexpected ways to deliver business insights is a huge topic that was on the mind of many brand marketers attending the event. Similar to the clamoring from brands for better listening platforms several years ago – this new topic of how to understand and manipulate data was a consistent thread of interest (and confusion) for many brand marketers attending the event.

6. “Lose Control” – Mastercard

Mastercard doesn’t own the priceless campaign anymore. It may be a surprise to hear that one of the most iconic brand campaigns of the last several decades is now officially in the public domain – but it shouldn’t be. In an engaging keynote presentation, Mastercard SVP and Group Head of Global Digital Marketing Michael Donnelly shared a new way of looking at the power of the Mastercard brand. “Mastercard is a technology company,” he shared, and went on to talk about the many ways the brand is probably already a part of your life and powers billions of transactions every year. The theme across his presentation was not only that Mastercard doesn’t need to own “priceless” anymore … but that this may be the same future any brand that manages to build an iconic reputation can expect at some point.

7. “Follow The Passion” – Sears

People love what they love. For Sears, this led them towards creating a community focused on grilling called “Grilling Is Happiness.” On it, people can share what they love about grilling, when they do it, photos and plenty more. It was a perfect example of the secret truth of engagement that many brands have uncovered: follow the passion. For Sears, this means finding communities of people who love certain products, and encouraging that conversation by finding authentic ways to jump in.

8. “Know What Matters Most” – Dunkin Donuts

“Hell hath no fury like a customer who drives to a Dunkin Donuts which happens to be closed.” Among the many truths that might have come on stage at CSM, this was one of the most incontestable. As Scott Hudler, VP of Global Consumer Engagement from Dunkin Donuts shared in a presentation focused on using mobile for consumer engagement, the most imporant piece of information that consumers want to know about any Dunkin store location is whether it is open or not. So that information is front and center in any location search through their app. It was a powerful reminder that no matter how much cool and interactive content or experiences you might offer in multiple channels … there is still no substitute for giving your customers exactly what matters most to them. Even if it is as unsexy as listing opening hours.

9. “Tell Real Stories” – Chobani

Every company starts with an idea and nearly all of them have founder’s stories. Hardly any of them, however, involves a founder whose first step was buying a factory with a small business loan. On stage at CSM, Chobani SVP of New Ventures and Innovation John Heath used great visuals and powerful storytelling to share how the Chobani brand started, and the inspiration that led founder Hamdi Ulukaya to first buy that factory. He went on to share how Hamdi would later develop this new yoghurt brand that would grow over five years to be worth more than a billion dollars. The product is good, but the real lesson is that the story and the philosophy of the brand is what really powers the enthusiasm of their customers and employees on social media and beyond.

10. “Be Ready To Change” – Hertz

You may remember a time when Hertz first launched kiosks for renters to check in and get their cars, similar to the kiosks offered for checking into a flight at the airport. Consumers hated them – so the brand ditched them. It was just one moment in the evolution of Hertz to a technology brand that symbolized what they would need to react to over and over. In a dual presentation from CMO Bob Stuart and CIO Joseph Eckroth, there were plenty of insights about everything from getting marketing teams to work together with IT to integrating more innovative ideas through events like brand hosted hackathons. The underlying message is one that you’d expect to hear from a startup instead of a nearly hundred year old brand – embrace flexiblity, move quickly and be ready to change.

11. “Retire Content” – ESPN

It is one of the most common mistakes in social media for brands to believe that every initiative or effort must last forever. Instead, ESPNw Director of Social Media Strategy Katie Richman shared that content may be useful for some time, but then people can stop sharing it. When that happens, it’s time to “retire” that content. I often share on stage that the word “archive” is one of the most underused in social media. However you choose to describe it, the fact is content creation doesn’t need to be a black hole that sucks your time and effort forever. Sometimes the best thing you can do is walk away.

12. “Find Your Rich Uncles” – General Mills

With this humorous description, General Mills Director of Public Relations Kirstie Foster shared the important fact that being able to try more innovative work and integration with social media requires finding someone on your management team who can be your champion (presumably male OR female!). When you have an internal champion, then resources, budget, and value all become easier stories to tell to managers and internal leaders who are hungry for results.

13. “Celebrate Your History” – KLM

As a nearly 100 year old brand, KLM has plenty of tradition. They find many ways to share this tradition online through social media – which has been a consistent thread of engagement for this completely Dutch brand. As they do, they find new ways to engage consumers and tap their excitement to be part of the greater community of KLM enthusiasts.

14. “Dig Into The Poo” – PETCO

With the popularity of cats online, the advantage PETCO has over other brands to find topics for engagement is almost unfair. Almost. In an entertaining discussion on stage, Director of Social Media Katherine Smith talked a little about the opportunities and pitfalls in this wealth of content. People love to share photos of their pets and engage with other pet lovers. Sometimes the result is cute puppy photos. Other times, it’s poo … literally. But that’s nothing to be afraid of. The greatest conversations come from honest dialogue – even if it includes that “accident” in the living room you’d rather not think about.

15. “Create a Dedicated Team” – Target

One of the highlights of the conference was the chance to look behind the scenes at Target’s new personalized discount app called Cartwheel. The app has been featured in the media over the past five weeks and at CSM Product Leader Alan Wizemann and Social Strategy Manager Sarah Peterson shared some of the key learnings from the process of building the app. Chief among them was the value of building a dedicated in house team within the greater Target team. Though there was plenty of collaboration, this team operated as a startup within the larger brand. They iterated frequently, listening to consumers and publishing weekly updates to the app. Their independence was encouraged … and the end result was a pioneering product that many competitors and the retail industry is looking at as a precursor to the mobile future of loyalty programs and deeper consumer engagement.

As you’ll see in the interview below, she’s also one of those people who happens to be gifted at making connections and building an amazingly connected and powerful network – and her lessons should be valuable for you no matter how good you think you are (or aren’t) at building your own network.

1. One of the big pieces of advice you start your book with is how people can uncover their passions and find their purpose.  Can you share a little about what that process was like for you in your own career?  Did you know immediately what you wanted to do, or was finding your calling a more gradual process?

 Great question. For me, the process of finding my passions has been a gradual process. I’ve had multiple careers and have found that the more authentic and honest I am, the more I’m able to operate from a place of faith and passion and not fear.  I’ve also done a lot of self-reflecting over the years and learned how to overcome some of my own self-inflicted barriers.

2. I found it really interesting that you chose to start your book by asking people to uncover and list the barriers that may be holding them back from achieving the success they want.  Sometimes the barriers ahead of us are easy to see (micro-managing boss, bad product, etc.) – but sometimes they can be much tougher. For anyone struggling to understand what may be holding them back, what are a few tips that you think could help?

When most people think of networking, they automatically have a vision in their head of cocktail parties and conventions. My approach to networking is based on a transformation process and not a transactional game. Therefore, to authentically network I believe it’s important to look inside first and outside second. I encourage people to take an inventory of all the actions and behaviors that may be interfering with their ability to connect. In Your Network Is Your Net Worth I share stories of people that have overcome fear of public speaking, addiction issues, negative thinking and more. Several questions to consider include:

Do you have barriers that get in the way of your success and happiness?

Do you emotionally or physically want to change any behavior or improve your appearance?

Do you have any fears or phobias that keep you from activities?

Do you change jobs often or find yourself under- or unemployed?

Do you make excuses or not follow through?

Do you have any compulsive or addictive behaviors, or have others on more than one occasion singled any out?

3. I love that your book is filled with real examples of people and their personal success stories.  I’m curious to know how much you needed to go out and research their stories versus pulling together a collection of amazing stories from people within your network.  In other words, did the power of all the personal connections you had built over the year make writing a book of advice on building your own network easier?

I could not have written this book without the power and support of my network. Every story in the book is either a personal story, about a person in my network or about a person referred from my network. I conducted all the interviews myself and thoroughly enjoyed the process. Each person has a story if you ask the right questions. I did humorously try to score one interview outside of my network, with Bill Clinton, but that never happened. You can read about that process and why you shouldn’t let the “no’s” stop you from going after your dreams.

4. In networking events, people often think they need to make as many connections as possible. I have often shared with people that I tend to do the exact opposite, and aim to have fewer but more meaningful conversations.  As an author and entrepreneur, at every event you visit you probably have many demands on your time.  How do you balance the desire to make deeper connections with the challenge of only having a limited time to spend at any event getting to know people?

I am a fan of quality over quantity-based networking. My suggestion is that prior to any event, try to review an attendee list and think about the three people you’d like to meet. Once you have your list, do your homework and think about how you can add value to your potential conversations. Don’t focus on ME focus on the WE, what can you bring to the table to help your new potential connections.

5. If you could tell readers one big insight that they will take away from reading your book, what would it be and how could it change the way they think?

If I could tell people one thing, it would be to keep helping others at the heart of your networking. I call this “Give Give Get” or put more focus on giving than getting. Or, simply put don’t expect anything in return for your actions. Help people because you’re genuinely interested in building strong, long-term authentic relationships. One simple question to remember is, “How can I help?”

6. One of my favourite chapters in the book is where you talk about the role of content strategy in building a personal network – and how “Everyone is a Producer.”  Recently I have been sharing with many brands and marketing leaders that aside from producers and consumers, there is a new third category emerging of curators.  The curators are the ones that make sense of the noise of content out there, without necessarily producing anything new themselves.  Can you share some thoughts on how curation might offer a new way for people to produce without necessarily being great writers or filmmakers themselves?

I love the concept of curating. Being a curator is a great way to add value to a conversation or category. My believe is that the best curators probably have a strong awareness of their passions, purpose and are specific with the topics and articles they share. For example, Jessica Northey @jessicanorthey has done a fantastic job of curating and building content around Country Music. Don’t try to be all things to all people. Focus your curating and conversations around your passion.

7. A story that we share in common is that Tim Ferriss connected us both to Steve Hanselman as our literary agent.  I have shared that story a few times over the years as an example of how the power of connections sometimes works in unexpected ways. When I met Tim back in 2007 at SXSW, he was a guy in a t-shirt with an idea, and not yet a best selling author / life hacking guru.  My chance taking an hour to meet with him back then made a big difference in my career. It’s the ultimate proof that we don’t know where people will go, because we can only see them where they are. As a final question, can you share the role that serendipity and just being approachable has played in your own success and how anyone might be able to create those same chances for themselves?

Serendipity is a very powerful thing. I’ve made powerful and career impacting connections on airplanes, at conferences, on virtual coffee chats and more. My advice for people comes back to defining your passions and your purpose. When you know your desired road map, it will be easier to connect people in unexpected ways. So,get interesting and get interested. Don’t get stuck in a routine or travel about life with “headphones” on. Remember Your Network Is Your Net Worth and one new connection can greatly impact your life, happiness and success.

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Want to get a free copy of my upcoming book?  Join the exclusive webinar on June 18th >>

Content curation is a hot topic these days, as marketing teams everywhere are starting to put more time and effort into building a strategy for how to pull together great content on a topic to add value for people. When I originally wrote about curation several years ago, I defined a curator as someone who helps organize information on a specific topic.

Recently I’ve been seeing more and more signs from a handful of smart social media and content creation sites that the old lesson of storefront windows may be making a resurgence through what I’ve started to describe as curated windows.

Curated windows are a way for sites and platforms to showcase some of the best and most compelling content from their communities.

Here are a few clear benefits that using these curated windows can offer your brand, along with three examples of brands that are already using them effectively:

1. Create a better first impression of your site and community by featuring the best content. (Shutterstock Curated Collections)

Finding stock images is a notoriously time intensive activity – you can spend hours flipping through images and never quite find the right one.  Shutterstock has a curator on staff who creates collections of images on relevant topics.  Her latest “Life is a Beach” lightbox is the perfect collection of summer images for designers working on promotions for the upcoming season.

2. Provide more value to users by adding more visiblity + credibility to their content. (Vimeo Staff Picks)

For anyone creating video that cares deeply about the quality of the viewing experience, Vimeo has emerged as the ultimate backup choice for creators wanting to avoid the assembly line chaos of YouTube.  Vimeo, for their part, found the perfect way to foster this niche community with their own “Vimeo Staff Picks.”  Similar to how your local video rental store staff from five years ago might have spotlighted great movies for you to watch – these staff picks showcase interesting and engaging videos on Vimeo – and the “Staff Pick” is quickly emerging as an online honor similar to being selected by critics at a film festival.

3. Offer a guide for any users of a site on what great content looks like. (Slideshare Presentations Of The Day)

Years ago, Slideshare launched a series of contests to find the “World’s Best Presentation.”  I have written before about my own experience entering one of those contests.  These days, the site uses its popular homepage to showcase some of the best content uploaded to Slideshare. Apart from being able to share great content, the featured presentations offer a visual reminder to anyone creating slides that there are definitely rules around what makes a great presentation.  The power of story, captivating visuals, big fonts – all these tend to be hallmarks of successful presentations … and sharing new presentations every day reminds anyone creating their own presentations what it really takes to have one that stands out.

These are just a handful of brands using this concept of creating curated windows as a way to engage their users and showcase great content.  It is a model that I believe more startups will be using as people start to create content that is worth sharing and look for ways to get it in front of more people.  In some cases, this concept of curated windows may also open up new advertising and content sponsorship ideas for brands or individuals who want to get their own content featured in higher visibility locations.

Do you think curated windows offer other brand opportunities?  Are other startups and content sites already using this technique effectively?  Let me know what you think.

The problem is, they both are … in the right situation.

The Challenge of Obscurity

If you are trying to launch an unknown brand, you have the challenge of obscurity. No one has heard of you and what you are trying to sell or provide. There is a natural barrier to your message getting out there, because there is lots of noise to compete against. In that sort of environment, just getting ANY attention is usually a good thing. The more people share your name and talk about your brand, the better off you are.

Brands with the obscurity challenge need to focus on getting noticed.  So using guerrilla marketing or big stunts to attract attention can work. Flash mobs to introduce a product or holding up crazy signs or dressing in silly costumes at a large event can get coverage. You might call this the “Go Daddy Strategy.” In the early days of the Super Bowl, Go Daddy reached a national audience by creating over the top ads that were banned from airing on television because they were deemed “too racy.” So the online domain seller drove people online and introduced themselves to the market as THE PLACE to buy domain names. Every year after the Super Bowl, their guerrilla marketing stunts worked so well, they typically lead to record sales days. The PR may not be good, but it works.

For years, all PR was good PR for Go Daddy.

The Challenge of Reputation

On the other hand, if you have an established brand that everyone has heard of – you have the challenge of reputation. The most important thing isn’t introducing your name to the world, it is changing or maintaining your reputation to be a positive one. Many brands with this challenge resort to measuring the value of their PR based on the volume of coverage they get. But measuring media clips every month doesn’t work anymore, because simple mentions of brands in media aren’t enough anymore.

Brands with the reputation challenge need to focus on measuring sentiment. And as soon as you start to focus on sentiment, the “all PR is good PR” argument is flawed. Simply getting people to talk has little value because your brand is already known. What matters more is WHAT they are saying about you. The ultimate example of how this works is something we could call the “KFC Strategy.”

In the early 90s, the fast food brand Kentucky Fried Chicken decided to rebrand to KFC in response to growing negative media pointing to fried chicken as an unhealthy food item. They changed hardly anything on their menu, choosing instead to “solve” their problem with a rebrand. For years, they continued to be criticized. Recently, their new campaign “iatethebones” was created to launch their latest “innovation” – boneless chicken with the same famous original recipe. The campaign has been getting mixed reviews, some good PR and some bad.

The larger problem is that the brand has seen a huge 36% drop in sales due to a combination of the Avian Flu crisis and reliance on foreign sales in China to compensate for “a tale of eroded market share, bankruptcies, and franchisee lawsuits,” according to BusinessWeek.  A catchy new tagline and contest is driving some PR … but the long term value to the brand will be minimal.

In what may seem like the biggest irony, the answer for how to contrast the good PR with the bad may actually come from the very brand that started by focusing on creating controversy at all costs: Go Daddy.  Several months ago I wrote a post about how Go Daddy may offer the perfect lesson for brands on how to grow up.  It was an unpopular way to look at the value of their longstanding sexually charged advertising. But it does point to the real truth when it comes to the value of positive or negative PR … that it works best as an evolution.

In other words, believing in the old adage that all PR is good “as long as you spell the name right” only works until they already know how to spell it.

Source for Cartoon Image: Marketoonist

On June 12 and 13th in New York, The Corporate Social Media Summit will bring together several hundred corporate brand marketers to talk about a single broad topic: the business value of social media for large brands.

It is this singular focus that led me two years ago to agree to take on the role of Chairman for the event because I believe in the process that the organizers are using to create value for everyone in the room. In particular, there are three big reasons this event always stands out for me:

1. Better Topics. The agenda is created based on months of data collection and surveying of top marketing managers around the world.
2. Real Practitioner Speakers. The speaker list is fiercely protected – so EVERY speaker is from a corporate brand and brings real insights.
3. Discussion Style Presentations. The event is run discussion style, with no keynotes or boring long winded presentations.

As a result, the pressure is on for session moderators (like myself) to do our homework and inspire great conversations on stage. As someone who routinely speaks or attends more than 50 events a year, I believe more of them should take this approach. In case you can make it to join us, there are still a few slots left (and you can use the discount code “IMG150″ for a discount).

Even if you can’t make it, here is a preview of 16 big topics we will be discussing, as well as the very smart corporate marketing minds who will be contributing to each of the discussions:

1. How does social media fit into a broader marketing strategy?

Speaker List:
Sears & K Mart Seasonal and Outdoor Living, Jennifer Dominiquini, CMO
Footlocker/Eastbay, Dave Lokes, Chief Marketing Officer
Organic Valley, CROPP Cooperative, Theresa Marquez, Chief Mission Executive
Outback Steakhouse, Mike Kappitt, Chief Marketing Officer
MasterCard Worldwide, Alfredo Gangotena, Chief Marketing Officer
The Hertz Corporation, Bob Stuart, Chief Marketing Officer
The Hertz Corporation, Joseph Eckroth, Chief Innovation Officer
Chobani, John Heath, Chief Marketing Officer

2. How can brands extend social beyond marketing and embed it across multiple departments?

Speaker List:
Southwest Airlines, Linda Rutherford, Vice President of Communication and Strategic Outreach
FedEx, Victor Reiss, Director Digital and Social Media
McDonalds, Heather Oldani, Senior Director of Communications

3. What type of social infrastructure is needed to engage customers at multiple points?

Speaker List:
Whole Foods, Bill Tolany, Senior Director, Marketing & Integrated Media
ARAMARK, Tom Carusona, Senior Director, Digital & Social Media
The Home Depot, Jean Niemi, Director of Social Media

4. How can your brand energize your community to interact with purpose and spot new engagement opportunities?

Speaker List:
Oxygen Media, Harleen Kathlon, Senior Vice President
Wells Fargo, Kimarie Matthews, Vice President Social Web

5. How do brands find and engage the highly influential evangelists and enthusiasts who matter?

Speaker List:
Michael Kors, Farryn Weiner, Director of Social Media, Worldwide
Johnson & Johnson, Devon Eyer, Director Corporate Communications

6. What does it take to create exciting, useful and valuable content online?

Speaker List:
ESPNw, Katie Richman, Director of Social Media Strategy & Social Product Development
The Hershey Company, David Witt, Director, Global Digital Marketing and Brand PR

7. How do brands build long term relationships with influencers to lend credibility to their products or services?

Speaker List:
Dell, Cory Edwards, Director of social media and corporate reputation
Caterpillar, Kevin Espinosa, Social Media Marketing Manager
Schneider Electric, Tanya Donnelly, Global Social Media Director, Global Marketing

8. How do brands take an underwhelming product or service and create engaging content around it?

Speaker List:
Premier Farnell, Dianne Kibbey, Global Head of Community and Social Media
Automatic Data Processing, Inc, Matt Petitjean, Vice President, Marketing

9. What advanced social CRM strategies can brands use to build a fuller picture of their customer-base?

Speaker List:
Thomson Reuters, Jen McClure, Senior Director, Social Media Strategy

10. How can brands use social channels as a helpline to deliver better customer service?

Speaker List:
Bank of America, Emily Berg, SVP, Social Media
AT&T, Phil Bienert, SVP, Digital Experience

11. How can social media be used internally to drive increased collaboration, innovation and efficiency?

Speaker List:
Wells Fargo, Nathan Bricklin, Senior Vice President and Head of Social Business Strategy

12. How do brands create an advanced SoLoMo (Social-Local-Mobile) strategy to deliver deeper engagement?

Speaker List:
EXPRESS, Eric Gohs, Director of Online Marketing
Dunkin’ Donuts, Scott Hudler, Vice President-Global Consumer Engagement

13. What measurement strategies, tools and platforms can help to analyze the overall brand value of social engagement?

Speaker List:
General Mills, Kirstie Foster, Director of Public Relations and Social Media
Lego, Lars Silberbauer, Head of Social Media

14. How can brands understand audiences better to create more effective audience segmentation and targeting?

Speaker List:
PETCO Animal Supplies Inc, Katherine Smith, Director Social Media

15. How do brands use social media in real time for crisis response to preserve brand reputation?

Speaker List:
JetBlue Airways Corp, Jenny Dervin, Vice President Corporate Communications
Procter & Gamble, Paul Fox, Director, Corporate Communications

16. How can brands establish the right framework to capture, manage and analyze social data?

Speaker List:
American Airlines, Jonathan Pierce, Director, Social Communications

Want to know the answers to these questions? I will be working with the team at Useful Social Media to capture some of the insights that panelists share on stage during the Corporate Social Media Summit on June 12th and 13th in New York and share them in a future recap blog post after the event is over.

To receive that post, as well ongoing posts from this blog about new marketing ideas – please subscribe by email to my blog!

The timing couldn’t be more perfect for a new open source blogging platform called Ghost that is currently running its first Kickstarter campaign this week. The platform has been getting early rave reviews and is being developed by a team of veterans who have spent time working at WordPress, Firefox and Moo.com. Their team smartly wasted no time capitalizing on the uncertainty of Tumblr to share a declaration with their backers by that they will never sell out – a believable claim considering the Ghost platform is being founded as a nonprofit organization.

So if you happen to be considering where to host your own blog (or where to move an existing blog), the options may seem to be getting smaller and smaller. The best news about this flux in blogging platforms, though, is that most of them offer data portability – so you can take your work on a previous blog platform and move it easily to a new one if you need to. Looking at the big picture, it does seem that some fundamental shifts are evolving in the platforms that should make it easier to decide which platform to use – depending on your goals. Here’s a quick guide:

Affiliate Blogs (Blogger/Tumblr)

If your primary goal from blogging is to create content that will be monetized through running advertising of some sort, Blogger and potentially Tumblr (with the Yahoo integration) should allow easy options to integrate affiliate advertising into content. The challenge will be to create valuable content worthy of people reading, as it always is. The better the content, the more potential to make money from the related advertising.

Integrated Blogs (WordPress/Squarespace/Typepad)

Increasingly blogs are becoming just one element of a more integrated website and online presence either for companies or for individual’s personal brands. These integrated platforms are really build to allow anyone to create a full web presence, including a blog – and stand out as the best choices for most company websites or professional sites as well.

Pure Blogs (Ghost)

This final category is typically the one that sees the largest changes. There are always new boutique blogging platforms offering some interesting functionality and tailored for segmented groups. Ghost is one of the few that promises to start by developing a pure blogging platform and nothing else. It’s structure as a nonprofit organization also should help create differentiation.

Contributed Blogs (Open Forum/Forbes/LinkedIn)

One of the growing strategies that more brands will be embracing is creating their own blog networks of contributors. In some cases, this will create opportunities for individuals to start blogging under the banner of other more recognizable brands. The benefit is obviously in the ability to gain visibility and audience without starting from scratch. The danger is that the ownership of that audience is not your own – so the data can be lost or difficult to access.

The good news amidst all this competition is that the platforms mostly have gotten far less complex and far more user friendly than they have ever been. So choosing a good platform doesn’t have to be a stressful choice. At least you know that you can always migrate you blog to another platform if you need to.

But the real star of the show left last year – a lovably lonely character named Michael Scott played by Steve Carrell. Over the years, his character illustrated the highs and lows of having a grown child for a boss. In a signature moment early in the series, Michael Scott is asked by the documentary crew about his philosophy of leadership. Would you rather be feared or loved, they ask. After thinking for a moment, he responds: “Easy, both. I want people to be afraid … of how much they love me.” That was The Office.

A little off center, always entertaining, and routinely smarter about offering sage business advice than anyone usually appreciated.

So to celebrate the show, here are five of the most unforgettable marketing, leadership and business lessons I will remember from Michael Scott and the cast of The Office:

1. Vulnerability Builds Trust.

The moments in the show when you see a glimpse of the real sad personality of Michael Scott are the moment when the audience (and the other characters in the show) connect with him. They trust him because it is easy to see what he feels in his heart. Of course, his character is an exaggeration of this type of personality … but the lesson in it is a powerful one for building trust. The less guarded we can be, the more likely someone will see our real personalities and trust us more as a result.

2. The Boss Isn’t Always The Leader.

Though the boss at The Office changed several times throughout the show, it was always clear that the heart of The Office was the character of Jim, played by John Krasinski. He created the memorable pranks that became the signature opening segments for every episode. He organizes the “Office Olympics.” And when he leaves, there is a real void in The Office unlike at any other moment. In real life, there are people like Jim who form the heart of a corporate culture. Often, they are not the boss. But identifying them is always critical to retain (or change) an office culture.

3. Love What You Sell.

The character of Dwight, played by Rainn Wilson is unapolegetically an enthusiast for paper. He loves to sell it and knows all about it. At one point, when his character looks for another job – he considers “Scranton Breadworks.” His rationale? “Bread is the paper of the food industry. You write your sandwich on it.” Of course his love of paper is over the top, and a little unbelievable … but in the show he also routinely wins any competition for top salesman. His passion shows results – and that happens in real life as well.

4. Flip The Camera.

In later seasons, the audience starts to get a chance to go behind the scenes of the documentary. We see the sound guys and camera guys filming. We go behind the scenes, and the show becomes more real as a result. In companies, this can have the same effect. Though brands are often reluctant to turn the camera around, sharing some “making of” style content and taking people behind the scenes of what you do can pay off highly in terms of building more understanding for what you do.

5. Don’t Overestimate Technology.

One of the most entertaining storylines in the show for anyone who works with digital technology or online marketing has to be the way that the show continually pokes fun at the out of touch technogeek who embraces the tools “of the future” without regard for how silly or wrong they may be. The ecommerce initiative for the paper company fails miserably – because it fails to make life easier for the sales people. Dwight introduces his avatar in Second Life and reminds Jim that “Second life is not a game. It is a multi-user virtual environment. It doesn’t have points or scores; it doesn’t have winners or losers.” To which Jim perfectly responds, “oh it has losers.”

And that may be the perfect moment to capture what made The Office so funny in the first place. It was one of those rare shows, like Seinfeld, that had the ability to take the things around us and shine a much needed spotlight on the hidden humor we might otherwise have missed. And sometimes the lessons are so profound we can only remember them through humor. As Michael Scott so memorably said, “Sometimes you have to take a break from being the kind of boss that’s always trying to teach people things. Sometimes you just have to be the boss of dancing.”

I want to give you a free copy of my new ebook … but I don’t want you to keep it.*

Let me tell you why. On June 18, my newest ebook will be released and I am writing it for an audience that may not include you. Unless of course you happen to be in high school or college, or starting your career right now.

It’s graduation season and there are lots of pieces of advice floating around the Internet these days. Some are going viral – like the video inspired by a forgotten commencement address from late fiction writer David Foster Wallace back in 2005.  About a week ago a small video production agency in LA created a video of his address, titled “This is Water.” In it, Wallace shared some cold hard truths with graduating seniors from Kenyon College about what they would soon face amidst the tedium of daily life. The speech was part warning, part inspiration … but it inspired the video recreation because one of the creators of the project said he heard the talk and couldn’t get it out of his head.  Watch it here:

Great pieces of advice are like that. They stick in your head. They cause you to create videos years later. They inspire. I have continually benefited from advice like that across my career. The nice thing about being a writer and speaker is have many chances to share what I have learned with others in person at many events. For years, I have been planning to do more than that. Now I finally have the chance.

Always Eat Left Handed: 15 Surprisingly Simple Rules Of Success is a book about the unexpected rules of success that have helped me throughout my career … but that I have generally only managed to uncover by mistakes or through extremely insightful advice. Eating left handed is a technique I started using at networking events, to be able to shake hands with confidence – without starving, fumbling plates or glasses, resorting to “elbow bumps” instead of handshakes, or transferring “networking cooties” from person to person. It is a symbol of the type of learned trick that we all use in our daily lives to make the things we need to do a bit easier.

It is also a symbol of the type of little advice that sometimes gets lost in all the big picture guidances we seem to revel in sharing with graduating youth about to face the next stages of their lives. Showing passion, never giving up, or doing what you love are all perfectly reasonable pieces of advice to tell someone just starting their career. Unfortunately, they are not terribly unique or insightful.

Instead, the aim of this ebook is to share 15 non-obvious pieces of advice that you probably haven’t heard before. The book will talk about why learning to play the cello and hating cauliflower are both great career moves. Why leaders never wear sweatpants and why great listeners interrupt in every conversation. Through a combination of stories from my own life and across history, the book will offer real tips on how to stand out in a faceless sea of similarly competent people. It will be a jargon-free guide to being more successful by learning lots of little skills.

If that sounds valuable, use the link below to register for my launch webinar (hosted by my friend Adam Metz and UberConference). Everyone who registers will get an email on June 18th (when the book comes out) with instructions on how to download your free copy!

*PS – You are, of course, welcome to keep your own free copy of the book whether you are graduating or not!  It should offer a few ideas you can use no matter what stage of your career you happen to be in.

For Americans who are used to their own country putting mere 75 year old documents behind bullet proof glass, though, nothing could be more confusing than the longstanding debate about the fate of the Oseberg ship – a remarkably well preserved 1200 year old Viking ship unearthed from a burial site in Norway in the early 20th century.

I have been spending this week in Norway for a series of events and meetings, and yesterday I had the chance to visit the fascinating Viking Ship Museum on the western side of Oslo in a small peninsula called Bygdøy.  For over ten years there has been a proposal and debate about possibly moving the ship to a new museum in Bjørvika, Oslo. The hesitation is understandable. Such an old ship may be too fragile to move. And the long term effects of today’s preservation techniques are unknown.

In the current museum, there is a video of a scientist talking about how the preservation techniques used nearly 100 years ago actually caused artifacts to disintegrate over time – the exact opposite effect of what was intended. Ironically, this also leads to the “strategic waiting” debate that the museum struggles with today.

Should the preservation team of archaeologists and scientists preserve the artifacts and ships with currently known best practices, or wait for a newer and better technology to be developed by our future scientists?

This is the same question we might be faced with ourselves as it relates to business strategy. Wait or launch? Use what you have or wait for something else to come along?

Entrepreneurs often say go. Historians say wait. The difference comes from how much patience you have  to wait for results.

And that’s ultimately what strategic waiting comes down to – calculating how much you are willing to pay for short term results versus the time cost of waiting and acting later (and presumably more strategically).

In other words, are you better off waiting like an American … or a Norwegian?

1. Use a trailer to show the best scenes of the film.
2. Use random quotes for endorsements and social proof.

To see any film break from that traditional model seems like news in itself. The marketing for the upcoming animated film Epic is so dramatically differently, that it may just be the most authentic movie marketing campaign ever. What’s the big difference? The strategic choice to ask the actors to share their genuine excitement for the film by introducing the animated characters that they lend their voices to. The film brings together singers and actors to create an ensemble cast of superstars that each can pull their own fan bases toward the film. Here are a few of the actors who have recorded trailer videos talking about the characters they play:

Steven Tyler:

Pitbull:

Josh Hutchinson:

Beyonce:

And here is the full traditional movie trailer:

As we head towards another big summer movie season kicking off with the Iron Man 3 premiere tonight, the Hollywood marketing machine will be following the script week after week to inspire us to visit the theater often. One of the facts I shared with an audience several months ago during a keynote to the Americans for the Arts Conference was that personal connections make a difference when it comes to the passion people feel towards the arts. Do I feel connected to Beyonce? Probably only as a fan. But hearing her explain why she is excited about Epic takes me beyond the story. It makes it slightly more authentic than “The Voice.” And yes, I’m now just a little more inclined to go and see the movie in theaters as a result.