Citizen Marketer 2.1

Sunday, November 22, 2009

Crowdsourcing 2.0: Is it Ready for Primetime?

Over a year ago, I participated in a charity auction for my good friend (and now podcast partner), Jennifer Leggio. Also taking part in the auction were social media smarties, Chris Brogan, Geoff Livingston, Greg Verdino and Joe Jaffe. The goal of the auction was to raise money for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society with the five of us offering up a variety of speaking/consulting services to the highest bidder. In my case, a company called Genius Rocket ended up being the highest bidder.

I'll spare you the details on the back and forth discussion that the EVP of marketing at Genius Rocket, Peter LaMotte, and I had over how I would make good on my engagment but the net net was the video below (and a wrapper post) so that you would have a little context.

To Peter's pleasant surprise, I've spent quite a bit of time thinking and engaging in the art of crowdsourcing based on my participation in the We Are Smarter Than Me project. To that end, I was quite at ease sharing my opinions of how crowdsourcing can benefit business -- especially when it comes to outsourcing some elements of the creative process.

During the video, I cover the following topics:

Why I'm bullsing on crowdsourcing
Companies that are doing a good job at crowdsourcing
Reasons why crowdsourcing is becoming more mainstream
Considerations for doing crowdsourcing right
Reasons why I would consider using companies like Genius Rocket

So what about you? Are you using crowdsourcing in your business? If not, what's holding you back?

Wednesday, November 18, 2009

Day Trippin': An Interview with Tripit Co-Founder, Scott Hintz

For folks that read this blog regularly (yes, all 3 of you), you might remember that I did an interview series earlier this year called Experts in the Industry. My goal was to get forty five smart people -- authors, marketers and entrepreneurs -- in the forty five days leading up to SXSW with a goal of gleaning insights on the future of social. Not only did I end up with 75 interviews but I was lucky enough to have enough blog fodder for over two months.

Since then, most of my interviews have been saved for the weekly Quick-n-Dirty podcast I do with my partner (and blogger), Jennifer Leggio. To that end, Jennifer and I normally spend a few minutes during the show on a "featured social network. Three weeks ago, we happened to pick social travel site, Tripit. The reason I mention this is that the marketing folks over at Tripit (yes, this is a hat tip to you Angie) had their listening ears on and reached out to me once I tweeted out the URL for the weekly wrap up post on my blog. Angie was kind enough to thank me for the mention and offered up and interview with one of the two Tripit co-founders. A couple of e-mails later, I had my interview with Scott Hintz.

1. How did Tripit get started?

Gregg Brockway and I were part of the team that launched discount travel website Hotwire.com (sold to Expedia in 2003). Gregg had since moved on to run Expedia’s luxury travel business (Classic Vacations), while I stayed at Hotwire for a couple more years. But both of us had the itch to start something again, so we decided to get the band back together. We both had a lot of ideas for new businesses in travel – there are so many problems to solve in our industry! – so we started working through them and we found a few that we were both passionate about.

We chose the TripIt concept because it addressed a problem we’d both encountered routinely in our lives – that drill of going through your inbox right before a trip and hunting for all those purchase confirmations, printing them out, stuffing them into a manila folder, hand entering and printing maps and directions you would need on the trip, etc. There had to be a better way, and we thought we could develop some technology that would make that process a whole lot easier. We also felt that there was a need for a traveler-centric travel site, one that was really focused on making the travel experience better, rather than trying to selling you more plane tickets or hotel rooms. Travel booking sites are great, but they are always a little bit biased because they want to sell you more stuff.

2. For a while, it seemed like Dopplr started off as the "travel social network" site of choice and then all of a sudden, Tripit makes a sudden surge. What happened?

I think TripIt has done well because we provide so much value to the traveler once he sends his booking emails to us – and that includes both social utility and personal utility. TripIt is unique in that it builds rich itineraries full of all the detailed information you need on a trip. We invented the “Itinerator” that processes booking confirmation email from over 800 websites (and growing every day), and that’s what enables us to piece together every detail of your trip.

With that as our foundation, we have all the data needed to power social features (like detailed itinerary sharing, our Who’s Close feature that tells you when you’ll cross paths with someone you know, and our LinkedIn application) as well as personal features like detailed calendar synch, mobile access to trip plans, automatic maps and directions, etc. We also have an API that allows TripIt users to share their itinerary data with third party applications, and that enhances the value of storing your itineraries in TripIt. With over 250 developers (and growing) using our API today, the value proposition of TripIt just keeps getting better. TripIt users can link their accounts to apps like USA Today’s new travel app Auto Pilot, top iPhone app FlightTrack Pro, expense solution ExpenseBay, and so many more.

3. I see that Virgin is a sponsor. Any plans to create a one click option where you buy a plane ticket and it automatically updates Tripit?

Yes, the TripIt API makes it possible for any site to hook up directly to TripIt and seamlessly transmit booking data into the traveler’s itinerary. We get TripIt users asking for this all the time, and we know that innovative and customer-focused booking sites will start addressing those requests soon. Go Airport Shuttle (which books over 2 million airport transfers a year) already offers an “add to TripIt” button on their site, allowing their customers to zap ground transportation details directly into TripIt. We’ve publicly announced a deal with Hotwire where they’ll be adding an “add to TripIt” button on their confirmation page, as well. And BCD Travel, the third largest corporate travel agency in the world, will soon be delivering its itineraries directly into TripIt on behalf of its corporate clients. Several other travel sites are currently working on direct connectivity with TripIt, so look for more announcements soon. And, as I said earlier, the TripIt API is open to any travel site that wants to hook up to us, so travelers should encourage their favorite sites to take advantage of that.

4. I love the ability to e-mail in itineraries and have them populate trips. Even more powerful with the iPhone app. What technology did you use for this? Home grown or existing?

Thanks, we love it too! Honestly, one of the best parts of working at TripIt is that we get to read thousands of emails every week that praise us for the ease of use of getting booking data into the site. We invented the “Itinerator” technology that processes those emails, 100% home grown. We have a team of engineers that is fully dedicated to enhancing the Itinerator, adding support for new booking sites, and generally keeping everything humming along every day.

5. Which super hero did you want to be growing up?

Definitely Green Lantern from the Sunday-morning Superfriends cartoon. As he was depicted on that series, he could do anything with that ring – whereas all the other Superfriends had very specific powers. I always found it odd that he wasn’t the star of the show, since his powers were greater than all the other Superfriends combined!

6. Where does Tripit go from here? Maybe the "Friendfeed" route?

Boy, there are so many ways to answer this question, where do I begin?! The key is that TripIt has a comprehensive view of you as a traveler – we know your trip history, all the things you are doing on a trip, and where you are planning to go in the future. That give us the data we need to solve so many problems – like providing recommendations for things you might like on the trip, or alerting you when the price drops on a flight and you might be eligible for a refund, or making it easy to access your travel information on different types of mobile devices. There are also many needs we could address in the area of corporate travel, like helping your company locate you in an emergency, making it easier for your admin to plan and manage your itineraries, helping companies schedule internal meetings, or giving them data that helps them negotiate better deals with travel providers.

I think anyone who travels a lot will tell you that there are so many frustrations you encounter along the way, and so many of those are opportunities for TripIt to build features that ease the pain of travel. And we don’t have to build all those features ourselves – our API is open to all kinds of third parties who want to build apps that solve travel problems, and we’re seeing plenty of great innovation happening there every day. For example, one of my favorite new apps to use our API is FlightCaster, which is a new app that is trying to predict flight delays before the airline even recognizes that they might have a problem. Pretty cool, huh?

7. Assuming your answer to the last question is "stay the course," what future features/functionality to you have planned?

Well I can’t share our product roadmap, but I will say that our list of features is very long and there is no shortage of great ideas. We get so much feedback from our travelers every day telling us how we could make their travel experience better, so that’s a great starting point for us as we prioritize what we do next. We really try to listen to travelers and build what they want, so that feedback plays a critical role in our business. I’m so grateful that we have so many engaged users who take the time to send us their ideas – and I think they do it only because they know we listen, they already get so much value out of TripIt, and they have a vested interest in seeing it get even better. It’s really humbling to see how many people out there are relying on TripIt every day as they venture out into the world, but it’s also a lot of pressure to live up to their expectations and keep finding ways to delight them. But our killer team here at TripIt is definitely up to the task!

8. If you were stranded on a desert island and could only read one blog, whose would it be (and please don't say Techmeme - Scoble tried that with me and I had to hit him with a tazer)?

My guilty pleasure is Brett Snyder’s blog, The Cranky Flier, which I read in my Google Reader. I can’t help it, I’m a total airline geek and so is Brett, so it’s like candy to me to read his musings on the airline biz.

9. What's the ONE pearl of wisdom that you would like to share with other entrepreneurs who are just getting started?

If you’re considering ideas for a new business, make sure they are based in utility and that you can get users to form habits using your product. Utility = value = revenue. And habit forming = mindshare = free marketing. You need to find low cost ways to grow your business, and it doesn’t get any better than free marketing. And if you have real ways to generate revenue once users make it to your business, then you have the ingredients for success.

If you want to know more about Tripit, we'll have VP of Product, Will Aldrich on the Quick-n-Dirty podcast show this Thursday, November 19, at 6 PM ET / 3 PM PT.

The Start of Something Bigger?

Last night, I caught wind of some exciting news which has me jazzed for two reasons. First, I believe is the start of a larger trend i.e. the beginning of consolidation in the world of social. This morning, Jake McKee and Sean O'Driscoll of Ants Eye View announced this morning that they have acquired talented authors, Jackie Huba and Ben McConnell of Wabash & Lake to expand their professional services portfolio. This announcement comes on the heels of Altimeter Group's organic additions of three heavy hitters and Dachis Groups' announcement of their acquisition of HeadShift.

Second, I happen to know Sean, Jake, Jackie and Ben and I can vouch for the fact that not only are they good people, they are smart and possess some serious social chops. To that end, it sounds like in addition to expanding the Ant’s Eye View professional services portfolio, McConnell and Huba’s initial focus will be the creation of programs and services that help companies improve the customer experience and create customer evangelists. McConnell and Huba will serve as public representatives of Ant’s Eye View in their work as business bloggers and keynote speakers, as well as consulting with the firm’s clients. To me, this is smart business.

In Sean's words (he's the CEO of Ant's Eye View), by “adding two of the world’s foremost experts in building word of mouth and customer loyalty programs, Ant’s Eye View has built the industry’s strongest lineup of proven social media and customer experience practitioners who have led customer-focused changes at large brands.”

Bottom line, seeing friends join forces to create something valuable is always exciting. Seeing an emerging trend of smart companies like Altimeter, Dachis Group and now Ant's Eye View grow and consolidate is equally exciting. To me, it means that the market is starting to demand a higher level of strategy and service from their partners.

The big question is who will be next?

Friday, November 13, 2009

Quick-n-dirty Podcast Recap 22: It's Been a While

It's only been four weeks but it seemed like forever since my co-host, Jennifer Leggio, and I teamed up for our weekly Quick-n-Dirty podcast show. After two guest hosts (Cathy Brooks and Greg Matthews) and a week off, Jennifer and I were ready to get back into the saddle and I think for the most part, we succeeded.

Having guest, Jeremy Pepper, on the show didn't hurt. Jeremy is not only smart and insightful (sometimes inciteful) but not afraid to "call 'em like he sees 'em." Both Jennifer and I appreciate this in a person, especially when they came from a background of "Big PR." During the show, we had a chance to ask Jeremy what the "new" PR looks like which lead us down a path of the "do's" and "don't's" of relationship building. We also did a lot of laughing (apologies to the audience for that).

Beyond that, we covered off on social video hosting site, blip.tv (no relation to blip.fm). Jennifer hadn't used it before so she didn't have much to say (even if she did - her verbose co-host probably woulnd't have let her) but I liked it. Bottom line, when you have a video that's over 10 minutes long, this is a great alternative to Youtube.

We gave props to writer, podcaster and entrepreneur, Jeff Cutler. If you don't know him, check out some of his work here, here and here. I have to say, many of our "featured Twitterers of the week" are usually happy to be featured but Jeff's Twitter response once he found out he was the guy was hilarious...

@AaronStrout: How? Why? #notworthy #blushing #thanktheacademy #ifnotforthehardworkofothersIwouldn'tbehere

Jeff, we're glad to have made your day!

We wrapped up with our signature point / counterpoint focusing on the increasingly important topic of "is everyone on your social network a friend?" In this case, Jennifer summed it up by saying, "you're just nicer than I am Aaron." Her point was, I am friendly with (and follow back) a lot more people than she does. This was true but I also pointed out that at least the people that she did "connect" with knew that they were really in Jennifer's "friend" bucket. Bottom line for me, I've seen that the serendipity of connecting with tons of people has outweighed the cost of managing those same relationships. But of course I totally respect Jennifer's position. See, we just agreed again. Damnit!

If you missed the show, you can check it out here. You can also read re-caps of the show on Jennifer's blog and here on Stroutmeister.com. Be sure to tune in next week!

Social Media Revolution (video)

Two of my colleagues Jenny Olender and Matt McDougall just reminded me of one of my favorite videos on the Interwebs. It's called "Social Media Revolution" and has some absolutely amazing stats (not to mention some sweet background music). If you haven't seen it before... or even if you have, take the 4:22 to watch. It's worth the time:

Tuesday, November 10, 2009

Notes from the Desert: 5 Key Take Aways from ANA's Masters of Marketing

Prior to last week, I had not had the pleasure of attending the ANA's Masters of Marketing Conference. That was a mistake as this is obviously where the creme de la creme of the marketing/advertising world comes together for four and a half days to learn, network and golf (not necessarily in that order). In case there is any doubt, this is the list of speakers from the event:

Mark Addicks, SVP, CMO, General Mills
Frances Allen, Brand Marketing Officer, Dunkin' Brands
Cynthia Ashworth, VP, Consumer Engagement, Dunkin' Brands
Diane Brink, VP, Marketing, Global Technology Services, IBM
Brad Casper, President and CEO, The Dial Corporation
Joan Chow, EVP and CMO, ConAgra
Andy England, CMO, MillerCoors
Neil Golden, SVP, CMO, McDonald’s USA
Jeffrey Hayzlett, CMO and VP, Eastman Kodak
David Jones, Global CEO, Euro RSCG Worldwide
Barry Judge, CMO, Best Buy
Michael Keller, Chief Brand Officer, Dairy Queen
Richard McDonald, SVP, Global Marketing, Fender Musical Instrument Corp.
Stephen Quinn, EVP and CMO, Walmart U.S., Walmart Stores
Eric Ryan, Chief Brand Architect, Co-Founder, Method
Jonah Bloom, Editor, AdAge

Over the course of the three days that I was there, I had the opportunity to find out what was on the minds of the chief marketing officers (CMOs) and CEOs at some of the world's preeminent brands. I captured these learnings via video (using my newly purchased Zi8), Twitter and hand written notes. Obviously it's not easy distilling all the pearls of wisdom from such a smart group of people into one readable blog post so I'm breaking these learnings into three sections:

Ten Twenty of my favorite quotes as captured via my (and others') Twitter streams
Video and audio interviews with several industry luminaries.
My five key take aways from the event

There were literally hundreds of tweets from the event so picking just ten is not an easy task. Fortunately, you can look back in the stream yourself at all the updates that were tagged with the #ANAMarketers hashtag from the event. I also went in and "favorited" about 50 of the best tweets so you can see that longer list of good tweets here. If there are tweets that you liked that I missed, feel free to add them in the comments below:

dwied 2.5% of shoppers make up 80% of most CPG volume. Note the 80/20 rule... no longer rules. #anamarketers (quoting Jeff Hayzlett, CMO of Kodak)
irinaskaya RT @ANAmarketers: DQ has built an online consumer following with its Blizzard Fan Club, Facebook page, Twitter & DQ blog #ANAmarketers
Hillary_Ashton @Fidelity CMO James Speros: set aside a portion of budget to experiment: [i say: this is just so key to innovation] #ANA #ANAmarketers
AaronStrout @BestBuyCMO says that employees are the differentiator. Products/prices are relatively equal. It's why they use 'em in ads. #ANAMarketers
nancyleibig #Fidelity's Speros-economic tsunami has fundamentally changed way that mktrs need to execute-fast & insight-driven #anamarketers
evantlevy Forget the 4 or 5Ps. I like this better: RT @melindabluett Kodak 4E's: Engage. Educate. Excite. Evangelize. #anamarketers
nancyleibig 1/2 of #kodak biggest products are new in the last 2 yrs. All are top 3 in their category. Biggest business turnaround. #anamarketers
AaronStrout Love it. Eric Ryan @MethodTweets jokes that the way businesses can manage "Twitter Effect" ala movie Bruno is "to make a better product" #ANAMarketers
dwied Competitors spent $15MM on toilet paper. Method spends $5.1MM on advertising. Brilliant assessment. #anamarketers
AaronStrout Schwab is sitting w/ SEC to figure out how to ease themselves into social media (still great hesitancy based on regulation) #ANAMarketers
MarthaAYoung David Jones, CEO of Havas Worldwide: The new world of marketing is open source. #ANAmarketers
MWellsatForbes #ANAMarketers Miss the ANA conference? Read about today's discussions here on Forbes.com. http://tiny.cc/Evr1Q
maadman123 Wow! From Google: 5 exabytes is the amount of ALL info we produced from pre-history to 2003. Today, we produce this in 2 days. #ANAmarketers
Hillary_Ashton Google CEO Eric Schmidt realtime feedback / openness creates a constant battle AND an opportunity #ANAmarketers
prnaylor @JonahBloom from advertising age says crowdsourcing displays that brands are owned by consumers. #anamarketers
Hillary_Ashton @JonahBloom, Advertising Age editor says trend in marketing - radical transparency see social media #anamarketers
AaronStrout Andy England, CMO of Miller Coors talks RE what sells beer. It's not sex but 1) segmentation 2) positioning 3) Execution #ANAMarketers
melindabluett RT @bwiener: Mc'D's guiding principle "Market what we serve rather than execute what we market".. authenticity is big theme #ANAmarketers
bwiener Verizon CMO "Brand marketing needs to reflect fundamental truth about brand"....can't hide behind advertising anymore #ANAmarketers
AaronStrout Walmart CMO's parting thought: Marketer's job is to get our company focused on creating true value for customers. #ana

Now for the multimedia portion of this blog post. Below you'll find interviews with AOL CEO, Tim Armstrong, Kodak CMO, Jeff Hayzlett and Method co-founder, Eric Ryan.

VIDEO Tim Armstrong, CEO and chairman, AOL

VIDEO Jeff Hayzlett, CMO, Eastman Kodak Company

SIDEBAR: As promised, I mentioned to a few of the folks following my tweets from the event that I would share the Zi8/video tips that Jeff offered up prior to our interview. He uses his Zi8 quite a bit so I trust that he knows of which he speaks.

Get an external mic (one of the best features of this camera). He said that you can get a wired boom mic, a wired lav or wireless lav. I think I'm leaning toward the last as it will be the least intrusive.
If you do get a wired mic, that you get one with batteries so that it doesn't drain the rechargeable battery on the camera.
Definitely use a tripod if shooting interviews. Although the Zi8 has an anti-jitter feature, it can pick up hand/arm movement, especially if the interview is longer than just a few minutes.

AUDIO Eric Ryan, co-founder and chief brand architect, Method (from a guest interview I did with Eric on Susan Bratton's Dishy Mix podcast show)

Last but not least, here are my five key take aways:

While the social web appears to be gaining in importance, it's still not one of the top three things that most CMOs are focusing on.
In spite of many pundits (myself included) declaring that the world of advertising is dying a slow but painful death, the heads of marketing from the companies represented at this conference all show no signs of slowing down their ad spending. In fact, many mentioned that they plan to spend more next year.
Segmentation and a "back to basics" approach to marketing ruled the day. I heard several CMO's mention that their advice to other companies was to "simplify" and and "focus on what they did well."
I heard a lot less about measurement and ROI than I anticipated.
The speakers that did mention "social" spent more time focused things like Youtube videos, Facebook Fan pages and more campaign-oriented approaches than longer lasting, programmatic approaches (a mistake in this marketer's humble opinion).

All in all, I was encouraged by the positive tone of the conference and heartened that at least some of the marketers at the event (Kodak, BestBuy, Fidelity, Method, Dunkin Brands and Schwab to name a few), have "social" on their radar. I do predict that next year's conference will be much more "socially aware" and fortunately I plan to be there -- hopefully with Powered Inc. as a sponsor.

Have you been to a "marketing" conference recently? If so, what were some of your key learnings?

Friday, November 6, 2009

Content is Still King: Interview with AOL CEO & Chairman, Tim Armstrong

If you're following my tweet stream, you might know that I'm at the ANA's Masters of Marketing Conference (more blog posts/interviews coming - you can also follow conversation here). This morning, I had the opportunity to spend a little time with my friend, Tim Armstrong, CEO and Chairman of AOL. During our conversation, we covered topics like content (and why it is so vitally important), the future of advertising and how AOL plans to capitalize on these two areas.

NOTE: I apologize for any camera shakiness. It's my first time using Kodak's Zi8 hand held. I love it but still getting used it. And I could REALLY use a tripod.

Other interviews coming in the next 24 hours:

Barry Judge, CMO of Best Buy
Jeffrey Hayzlett, CMO of Kodak
Eric Ryan, co-founder of Method

Interview Like a Pro: Lessons from Maestro, Susan Bratton

A few weeks ago, I had the pleasure of being interviewed by Susan Bratton, the co-founder and host of the successful, Dishy Mix Podcast Show [listen to our podcast here]. I've known Susan for just over a year now and what I can tell you is that she is the MASTER when it comes to podcasting. Why I say this is that I enlisted her help during SXSW last year to do a series called Community Powered. The series focused on some of the "smarties" in the social space like some amazing folks like Lee Odden, Professor Henry Jenkins of MIT and authors Chris Brogan & Patricia Martin sharing their wisdom on the social web and how companies big and small could tap into its power to transform their business.

As a fellow podcaster, I was amazed at the thought and preparation that went into Susan's invite, prep and interview process. I am fairly thorough myself but Susan takes this stuff to a whole new level which is part of the impetus for this blog post.

Prior to my interview with Susan a few weeks ago, she sent me a list of questions to answer before we did the show. In addition to doing a lot of podcasting, I've also been interviewed a fair number of times by bloggers, podcasters and members of the traditional media. What I will tell you is that this list of questions was second to none. Of course I couldn't resist publishing it as it really got me thinking about myself, my job and my priorities in life. I'm including a link to some of Susan's other successful interviewing tips (if you currently interview or ever plan to interview someone, this list is a must listen).

Here are the questions she asked along with my answers. In the spirit of transparency, I promise that whether you like it or not, you'll know a lot more about me after you read this:

What do you want my listeners/viewers to know about you?
That I’m a smart marketer that is helping Powered and it’s customers tap into the power of social. If you can work in “funny” and “authentic,” that works too. ;)

What is your plan for yourself 10 years from now?
Retired. And I’m not kidding. That won’t mean that I won’t be working but rather that I can blog, travel, spend time with my family and do a little consulting on the side as appropriate, especially for non-profit companies.

Who I admire people who ______?

Work hard AND smart. Dave Evans is one of these people.

What has been your most positive speaking experience to date and why?
Two – one was a panel I did at a LOMA | ACORD event. I led a panel in front of 3,000 people from the insurance and financial services industry. Total adrenaline rush. The second was keynoting at the Inbound Marketing Summit in Dallas. I hit the timing perfectly and had several people come up to me after to learn more about Powered (that’s always my goal with speaking).

If you could keynote any conference or event, which one would it be and what would the title of your speech be?
TED – I’m not holding my breath on that one. One that I might have a shot at is the DMA. While I don’t love the conference itself, those are the people whose minds I need to change. Title of my speech would be “When Will You Understand that Today’s Advertising Models are Broken?”

What is one of the most outrageous things you’ve ever done?
Ummm, do you really want me to answer that? From a professional standpoint, it was announcing my departure from Mzinga to move to Powered on Twitter. On my 10,000 tweet no doubt. On a personal level, peeing on the Kremlin back in 1991 (oops, did I just write that?) LOL

In what area do you feel superior to most people? What talent or capability of yours is remarkable?
I don’t feel comfortable using the word “superior” because that makes me sound arrogant. I do feel like I have two great abilities however:

like you, I am an uber-networker. I’ve been doing this long before the SocNets were around
I’d like to think that I bring the right mix of humor, authenticity, how to and creativity to teaching people how to use “social” to improve themselves and their businesses. I do this on my blog, on Twitter, at live events and podcasts.

What dark or traumatic event has actually had a beneficial impact on your life?
About 2/3 of the way through my stint at Fidelity Investments, I got myself into some hot water that nearly put my job in jeopardy. While many of the issues leading up to this “low point” weren’t my fault, I shared some of the blame. This ended up being one of the most humbling experiences I’ve ever had.

What is your life purpose?
To be a great husband, dad, brother, son and co-worker.

Name your single most amazing personal gift/talent.
As I mentioned before, I am a MEAN networker. I can also throw a nasty curve ball. ;)

Describe a time when you felt like a failure and tell us how you dealt with it.
Covered this earlier in my “most traumatic experience” but instead of jumping ship and leaving Fidelity, I stuck around, built myself back up and was actually about to be promoted to Vice President two weeks before I left to go to Mzinga. I learned a TON about the importance of being humble during this process.

Who has been your greatest teacher?
I’ve really had five (sorry, can’t pick just one). My 11th & 12th grade French teacher, Ms. Latin, my dad, Rick Lyman at Fidelity, Barry Libert at Mzinga and Francois Gossieaux who kicked off my “social” career in earnest.

If you could work for another company, which would it be?
Google

If I could wave my magic wand and make one thing work better in your business or career, what would it be?
Believe it or not, you’re “waving” it right now. We just need greater awareness and your inviting me on your podcast (among other things) is key.

If one press outlet (Internet, TV, Radio, Anything) would feature you, which would it be and what would the headline or story be?
I’d pick either NPR or the Wall Street Journal. Those are THE places to be featured in my mind. Title would be “Game Changer” and it would be about me helping Powered change the game for big companies using social.

What are the three actions you’ve taken in the last 2 years that have had the most positive effect on your bank account?

Ha! Well, coming to work for Powered didn’t hurt.
Signing on with a financial advisor kept my wife and I out of trouble during the most recent downturn
Moving from Boston (expensive) to Austin (inexpensive)

What is the specific area of knowledge where you think you know more than anyone else in business? For what are you the penultimate expert?
I’m not sure I know more than anyone else here but I’d say I’m probably in the top .1% in the country when it comes to combining the power of traditional marketing and social. As for penultimate area where I’m an expert, I’m a pretty darn good photographer with my iPhone.

How do you keep up with and consume industry-related news? RSS Reader, email, surf sites?
Twitter (following specific folks as a filter), Google Reader, Yammer and a strong network of smart people in Austin that keep me abreast of what’s important

What’s one efficiency trick you use that you can share with us?
Find GREAT filters and use them as a cheat.

Describe your vision of personal success. When will you KNOW you are successful?
When friends and family can say to me, “oh yeah, I’ve heard of your company.” Secondarily, financial independence.

What’s one thing you are doing right now to change or improve yourself?
I’m constantly working on my listening skills and attention to detail. I try and be conscious of these two “areas for improvement” on a daily basis and work iteratively to improve these two areas.

Is there a place in your life where you are not walking your talk?
Not always as good a dad as I could be. I tell my kids not to yell and find myself doing that to them more often than I’d like. From a professional standpoint, I need to do more on the measurement front with our own business.

Describe a major change in your life you navigated successfully.
I’d say my move from a “digital” marketer to a “social” marketer back in 2006 was pretty successful. I’m also proud of the fact that I played a large roll in transforming Mzinga from a non-entity to one of the top 2-3 players in the social space back in early 2008.

Describe an experience that moved you to tears.
The birth of our first child — this was on two fronts. One, she was emergency c-section. Two, holding your child for the first time is beyond words.

If you could spend your time any way you wanted, without any financial worries, what would you do?
Traveling, playing with the kids, having dinner with my wife, on the beach, scuba diving, taking pictures.

What is your favorite conference to attend and why?
SXSW – best networking around (oh, and some pretty decent parties too).

What book you most recommended to your friends? Or Have you ever bought multiple copies of a book or music to share because you were so moved?
From a business perspective, I liked Groundswell a lot and have recommended it to a number of friends. On the personal side, Cormac McCarthy’s The Road was a pretty freaking amazing book. Can’t wait for the movie.

Who is your mentor?
This is somewhat ever changing right now. Let’s say that I more influenced by folks than being actively mentored. People like Todd Defren (Shift), Peter Kim (Dachis Group), Jeremiah Owyang (Altimeter), Bert DuMars (Newell Rubbermaid), my fellow podcast host, Jennifer Leggio (ZD Net), Rachel Happe & Jim Storer (The Community Roundtable), Tim Walker (Hoovers) and Kyle Flaherty (Breaking Point Systems)

What is the axiom by which you live your life?
“Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” That and “Pay it forward.”

How much do you think luck has played a role in your success?
Zero. I have hustled, worked hard and made my own luck.

Who are three of the most amazing people in Advertising and Web 2.0 and why?
You would be one of them. You’ve done a gorgeous job of combining the two. Barry Judge of BestBuy and Tim Armstrong, now at AOL.

Are you on the boards of any companies or charitable organizations?
I am. I am currently on the advisory board of BuzzGain, SavvyAuntie.com, Social Media Marketing Institue and Dialogue. I also sit on the interim board of the Social Media Club. I need to get on the board of a non-profit or two [post script: I am playing the role of team leader for Team Austin raising money (for) and awareness of men's health issues. This is for a project called Movember].

What is the one thing people misunderstand most about you?
Good question. I guess it’s them thinking that I’m “social media” guy when I’m really a marketing guy. Social media is obviously a big part of marketing but it’s not the only thing I do.

For what do you want to be remembered professionally?
The fact that I helped 3-4 companies get achieve success through digital and social marketing efforts. That and the fact that I know my shit and that I’m always happy to help others learn.

The worst “fork in the road”-bad-decision that you regret.
I wish I had gone the startup route earlier on in my career. That’s no disrespect to Fidelity because I loved my time there but I see friends like Tim Armstrong who went startup and is now running AOL after being the president of sales at Google.

Your most sinful, decadent, guilty pleasure?
A good slasher movie. Lots of blood and guts.

The thing you did that pushed your edge the hardest in your whole life?
Definitely grad school. Balancing working 30 hours a week, paying for school and trying to keep up was A LOT of work. It didn’t help that I was only 21 at the time.

If you could change one thing about the business world it would be ______?

To make it more innovative and less fearful of change.

Where will social networking evolve from today?
Like the internet, I think social networking is just going to become like electricity over time. It will be ubiquitous and people won’t even think of it as social networking.

How do you chill?
I love to grill, have a few beverages with my wife and/or friends. Take in an occasional ball game. You know, guy stuff.

Your greatest achievement?
Landing meetings with the Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google, Dan Rosensweig, COO of Yahoo and Jeff Jordan, President of eBay within a three hour window back in 2003. That was pretty cool.

What do you value in your friends?
Humor, authenticity, reliability.

Who is the wisest person you've met?
My friend Mukund Mohan is pretty damn wise. Tim O’Reilly also fits this bill.

Where were you born? Where were your parents born? Where were your grandparents born? Where were your Great Grandparents born?
Portland, ME — Portland, ME — Various parts of Maine — Scotland, and various parts of Maine.

Where were you and what were you doing:
12 minutes ago?
Austin, TX — answering these questions

12 hours ago?
New York City, NY -- sleeping

12 weeks ago?
Lots of places including San Francisco, Atlanta, New York and Boston (but living in Austin, TX)

12 months ago?
Melrose, MA

12 years ago?
Boston, MA

24 years ago?
Amherst, MA

What travel experience changed your life?
I spent to summers in Russia. It was amazing.

What is on your bucket list? Top 5 things on you would like to do?

Scuba dive in the Blue Hole in Belize
Open my own restaurant or café
Climb Mt. Everest
Write a book
Spend a winter (summer there) in New Zealand

What are you doing now as a hobby?
I love to cook (beyond just grilling) and I love to take photographs.

What activity could you do all day long without getting bored?
Ummmm... other than “that” thing, I think the other thing I could do all day is to cook. Yup, I really enjoy cooking. I could also preoccupy myself once in a while on Twitter. Perhaps you’ve noticed? ;)

What community groups do you belong to?
On LinkedIn, I’m part of the Social Media Marketing and Community 2.0 groups. As I mentioned earlier, I’m also a board member of the Social Media Club. And I’vs sort of unofficially become part of Bryan Person’s Social Media Breakfast organization (although my roll is minimal).

What is your favorite source for news?
NPR and ReadWriteWeb

Have you ever witnessed a perception-changing event in your life?
Visiting a maximum security prison in Washington DC when I was 22 was pretty perception changing.

Who defines greatness for you?
A commitment to excellence

Have you changed your lifestyle since the Global Warming issue hit the world stage?
Yes. I’m driving a more gas efficient car now and we do a lot more recycling now.

What is your big wish, idealistic or otherwise?
That my children grow up to be happy, well-adjusted adults. On the big picture front, I’d like to see us eliminate civil war in places like Africa and the Middle East.

Where do you draw your strength and inspiration?
My wife to a great degree. My parents are also quite inspiring.

What do you think are the key issues for business professionals in the 21st Century?
Green, social and adjustment to the Age Wave.

From Bernard Pivot: If you were reincarnated as some other plant or animal, what would it be?
Either a shark or an eagle.

From Marcel Proust: What is your most marked characteristic?
My dark, dark, dark sense of humor.

Two questions a la James Lipton:
What turns you on creatively, spiritually or emotionally?
I love nature – particularly the ocean which is one of the reasons I love scuba diving. Jonathan Livingston Seagull was also a pretty inspirational book.

What profession other than your own would you like to attempt?
I’ve always thought about being a college professor (and might someday).

No kidding, right?

A few weeks after I did my interview with Susan, I had a chance to be the guest host on her DishyMix show and chose to interview my friend, Eric Ryan, who also happens to be the co-founder and chief brand officer at Method. While I did not put him through the same set of questions that Susan put me through, I tried to channel my inner "Bratton." I'll let you be the judge of how I did.

Thanks again Susan for teaching me so much. I can't wait to get back at it with you next March at SXSW. We are going to rock the house!

Tuesday, November 3, 2009

EDR's Community Wins Groundswell Award: An Interview with VP Mark Wallace

A few years ago, I had the pleasure of working with my friend, Mark Wallace, at a company called Shared Insights (subsequently merged with Knowledge Planet and became Mzinga). At Shared Insights, Mark was the head of sales, our mutual friend and colleague, Jim Storer, headed up product/community management and I lead our marketing efforts. The three of us were not only lucky enough to get into the social/community space well before the social web started to gain critical mass but we also had the benefit of working with some smart companies like Deloitte, Webex/Cisco and Environmental Data Resources (EDR).

Since that time, we've all gone our separate ways with me heading to Powered Inc., Jim co-founding a company called The Community Roundtable and Mark jumping over to EDR to run their community. I mention this only because the three of us stay in semi-regular touch and of course I've taken more than a passing interest in Mark's social and community efforts at EDR. To that end, I was pleasantly surprised when I discovered that EDR's community, Commonground, had just won Forrester's prestigious Groundswell Award for Best B2B Support Community.

As someone that likes to know about these things and is always interested in sharing great case studies, I couldn't resist asking Mark to do a quick e-mail interview with me:

Tell us a little bit about EDR and what they do?

Environmental Data Resources, Inc. is the leading provider of environmental risk information services and related workflow applications in the United States. As the innovator of the most comprehensive database of environmental and historical land use information, the company provides reports, subscription services and other solutions to help its customers reduce environmental risk.

How did you come to work at EDR?

EDR was one of our early clients when I led sales at Shared Insights. When SharedInsights was recapitalized, I worked with them from while I was with Mzinga. Shortly after I left Mzinga, I was attending the Community 2.0 Conference in Las Vegas when Rob Barber, CEO of EDR, Barry Libert, CEO of Mzinga, and I started talking. Next thing I knew, Rob and Jay Gaines, CMO of EDR, created a position and I joined the company shortly thereafter.

Talk about how the commonground community came about?

EDR has always prided itself on innovation. We believed strongly in the importance of social networking and the value it would have for businesses moving forward. EDR invested resources to build commonground to enable our marketplace to harness the power of social media to improve customer loyalty, educate our marketplace, improve our web presence, expand both vertically and horizontally, and ultimately generate new sources of revenue.

What role do you play in the EDR commonground community (strategic and day-to-day)?

My title is VP of Social Media for EDR. In that role, I am responsible for leading social media strategy and monetization efforts. I do whatever is required to deliver a valuable experience for our members while focusing on achieving the objectives outlined above.

So you just found out that you won Forrester's prestigious Groundswell Award for best B2B support community. Who was your competition?

That is a great question. When we saw the other submissions from SAP, Aflac, Chicago Mercantile Exchange, Pitney Bowes, NetApp, we were pleased just to be in the same category as those market leading companies. When we found out from Josh Bernoff that we won, we were absolutely thrilled as it validated all the hard work of our members, partners, and staff.

Why do you think that Forrester picked you?

I think Forrester picked us because we were able to share real success metrics on the true business benefits to both members and EDR. Plus we have an extremely high customer satisfaction rate.

What are 2-3 lessons that you've learned that you might share with other companies thinking about community?

The three most important lessons I can share are a) Before you select technology, make sure you have a clear and concise strategy with defined metrics b) Content, either user or expert generated, or both, is the key ingredient to a thriving community. c) Many companies fail at building communities. It is not easy to build a thriving community. Therefore, set reasonable expectations up front and make sure you have the proper senior management support, resources, and organizational commitment to realize them.

Thoughts on "build vs. join" i.e. do you feel like you've got all your bases covered with your community? Or are you a believer in participating in 3rd party social networks?

I believe in both. It depends on your goals and objectives. Those will drive what makes the most sense. Often times, both in tandem are the best option. As the leader in our market, we decided the best approach was to build commonground. We also have a LinkedIn Group and a Facebook Fan page.

Freestyle - give me any other pearls of wisdom or color commentary you'd like to share here. If you feel like you've answered everything you can skip this.

When building a community, it is way too easy to get distracted. Focus is critical if you want to be successful.

NOTE: I interviewed both Mark this year in my Experts in the Industry series. If you want to learn more about him, head on over and have a look see.

Monday, November 2, 2009

So What's the Deal with Movember?

A number of folks have been asking me about what this Movember thing is all about. I included a brief overview in my earlier post on Three Worthy Causes/Events but promised that I would include additional details in a separate post. Consider this that "separate" post.

The essence of Movember is for gents to grow a mustache during the month of November for the purpose of raising money and increasing awareness in the name of "Changing the Face of Men's Health." The 30 second video below gives a good description...

There are five rules of the movement (although I've been told that there is flexibility since the name of the game is raising money for a great cause).

Fortunately, we've enlisted the help of both some gents AND ladies to help us with our team. And to that end, to make things more interesting we are going up against some of my former mates in Boston. I know I'm going to split some allegiances because many of my Boston peeps are going to be secretly cheering for me and Team Austin but will be guilted in sticking with their home team alliances. Sobeit!

I've set up a Flickr group so that you can see the progress of all the "Bro's" on our team as we "get our 'staches" on. The "sisters" that are participating will be getting creative in terms of how they decide to manifest their fake 'staches so keep an eye on their Twitter activity.

In the meantime, here are the three ways you can support Movember and Team Austin

Join our team and help us raise money.
Donate to our team (we'll take any amount - $1 up to whatever you feel comfortable with).
Pass the good word along about what we're doing via tweets, Facebook updates and blog posts.

For those keeping score at home, here are the folks that are participating on Team Austin:

So far we've raised $80 with a goal of exceeding $20,000 but we have a month to do so. I am 100% confident we will exceed that goal.

Thursday, October 29, 2009

Influencing the Influencers: Webcast w/ Atkins & Author, Jill Griffin

You all know that I love to do webinars. Well, there's a very cool one coming up next month on Thursday, November 12 (2 PM CT) with one of my friends (and sometimes podcast companion), Jill Griffin. Jill is a local Austinite and a three time author. Her main focus is customer loyalty. We'll also be joined by client and social savant, Allen Silkin of Atkins Nutritionals.

You can get all the details on the sign up page but essentially, these are the five areas we'll be covering:

Four ways to tell if a customer in your advocate
How to climb Advocacy Hierarchy
Why complainers must be managed and how to do it
9 ways to minimize detractors and maximize advocates
How to get online communities spreading your good name

Hope to see you there!.

Three Worthy Causes/Events

As an individual, one of the things that comes with influence and reach is social responsibility. I've tried to use mine wisely although I probably could be accused of not doing enough of it. To that end, I've got a triple shot of social causes on my plate right now that I'd like you to consider supporting -- either monetarily, via your social networks/blogs or through your time.

I know, I know... we get pounded a dozen times a day to support a variety of causes. And please understand that I'm not asking you to support all of these causes (although that wouldn't suck if you did). Just to think about doing something little or big for any of the three. Here are the details:

Race for the Cure Tweetup (November 1)
This one comes courtesy of Simon Salt who will be participating in the 12th Annual Komen Austin Race for the Cure®. I hope to get down and walk with Simon but if not, you can bet that I'll be sending some cash his way (and some tweets of support. I hope that you will join me.

To get involved, please consider registering as part of Simon's team or through a donation. The money raised through the Race will fund vital education, screening and treatment programs for underserved women in Bastrop, Caldwell, Hays, Travis and Williamson counties and support the national search for the cures.

If you prefer, mail your donation today to:
Komen Austin P.O. Box 2164 Austin, TX 78768.
Please make your check payable to:
Susan G. Komen for the Cure and add "Simon Salt" in the memo

Austin Non Profit Camp (November 14)
Austin Non Profit Camp is a free, facilitated and participant driven conference that will be the place in Austin for non profits to learn and troubleshoot their technology problems in a supportive, collaborative setting. The event is being spearheaded by David J. Neff, Jon Lebkowsky, Maggie Duval and Matt Glazer. Their goal is to take the successful Bar Camp model and apply it to expand understanding and awareness of free and Open Source technology within the non-profit community in Central Texas.

How It Works
Non profits and technology folks come together to have conversations about the issues that they face in a no sales, no cost environment. They bring tech experts together with nonprofits in a context that will facilitate mutual understanding.

In addition to scheduled speakers, attendees will have the option to sign up to speak about issues and solutions they know best. [Note from Aaron - my goal is to drop by to run one of the unconference sessions]

Nonprofit attendees collaboratively problem solve issues they face with running and promoting their organizations, workshopping with local technologists about the latest and most effective technologies and methodologies. These conversations will help nonprofits filter what’s useful from what’s not and keep their organizations humming and on track.

Topics
Google Apps, Data Exchange/Salesforce, Google Grants, Social Media, Marketing, Cloud Computing, Email Marketing, Fundraising in Social Media, ZERO COST Infrastructure, ROI of The Cloud

Event Details
Date: November 14th
Time: 10:00 a.m. - :00 p.m.
Location: ACC Eastview Campus
3401 Webberville Road

Register here

Movember (month of November)
What could be better than growing mustaches, a healthy competition and raising money for men's health (and in particular, prostate/testicular cancer). Check out the Movember home page here. There are three ways you can help us out:

Join our team and help us raise money.
Donate to our team
Pass the good word along about what we're doing via tweets, Facebook updates and blog posts.

More details will unfold in a separate blog post but I'll be joining forces with some of my Austin peeps Kyle Flaherty, Tim Walker, Tim Hayden, David Armano, Chris Carter, Doug Wick, Chris Anderson, David Neff, Wesley Faulkner, Tim Schmelter, Heather Strout and Simon Salt. Hopefully we'll get Bryan Person, William Hurley, Peter Kim along with some other Austin studs (and/or studettes) to battle with the boys in Boston.

Weekly Social Marketing Links: Week of 10/28

Cross-posted on Powered's blog

Yup. It's been a few week's since we last posted our team's weekly social marketing links. As some of you know, I try and do a weekly digest of the links that my team (marketing, sales and product) come up with for our recurring staff meeting. Unfortunately, (work) life just gets in the way sometimes. Here's what we've got for this week:

Beth Lopez (Marketing)

Found How to Do Social Marketing in Heavily Regulated Industries to be an interesting read on how regulated industries such as Financial Services, Healthcare and Pharma should tap into social marketing and how best to do it. The thinking is that since social marketing is a “pull” technique and not a “push” technique (where traditional regulations apply), advertisers and marketers in regulated industries should focus on…wait for it…wait for it…listening to consumers on social networks to gather research and insight (doesn’t everyone say that these days?). The author also goes on to state that for pharma (look in comments), marketers should be thinking about conversations around the disease versus the actual drugs (which is where they can get into trouble). All in all, an interesting perspective.

DP Rabalais (Marketing)

This article from Adweek, The Revolution Will Be Mobile, talks about how the worldwide adoption of mobile phones (61% of the world's population has access to a mobile phone) is influencing how marketers connect with consumers. Mobile Internet usage in the U.S. has more than doubled in barely two years, and mobile communities are emerging.

According to the article, "For a brand that would like to learn more about what its customers and potential customers want, social networks via mobile are the perfect platform with massive scale. The Japanese mobile community "Mobage Town," for example, includes 12 million people. Anyone who wants to can listen in or join discussions, and anyone who wants to sell a product or service is enabled to do so."

Bill Fanning (BizDev)

This week’s post was written by Francois Gossieaux titled, Why Brand Communities Don’t Exist. Notice he refers to “Brand” communities, not “Branded” communities. To be clear, when we say “Branded” communities we are referring to where the community is hosted (on the brands site as opposed to Facebook or other external communities) not to the Brand being the topic of the community.

Francois makes a very important point (one that we at Powered built a business on) that people don’t participate in branded communities simply because they like the brand and enjoy their products. They participate because they are passionate about the lifestyle associated with the brand. The community gives them a place to get valuable information, interact with other people with similar interests and engage with the company. He notes several examples like the communities hosted by Harley, Jeep, Mini Cooper and Fiskars….we could add several others as well.

Good post!

Doug Wick (BizDev)

[Okay, so Doug has been up to his eyeballs with RFP's, contracts and keeping his blogging hat on. So I'm going to include his most recent post on Powered as his entree of the week...]

Almost anyone who knows anything about interfacing with customers or prospective customers through the Networks (Facebook, Twitter, et al.) will tell you that you should start by listening.

So most marketers' first step is to set up a monitoring tool (maybe expensive, maybe as simple as a free keyword search on Twitter). Then, the first experience that almost every media marketer (or marketer, period) has after listening to the Networks for a bit is that the brand, product, or company they are representing will be mentioned. When this happens (“just bought a Honda at Carmax, great experience!”), it will make a positive and socially important impression on everyone who views it. This is exciting because it is essentially a free media placement, a nugget of gold dropped into people's news or Twitter feeds that didn’t cost you anything! This type of mention is often called “earned media,” earned because your company created a great customer experience that made someone tell their friends.

Jay MacIntosh (BizDev)

The Tribalization of Business Study (2009) by Deloitte and Beeline Labs.

Disclaimer: I don’t understand why anyone would refer to a group of people sharing an interest as tribes. I’ve always thought of tribes, similar to the clans of my Scottish background, as having to do with ancestry (i.e. people who came before us like forefathers/mothers). Do we really need to “dress-up” social media to get more people to pay attention to the significance of the online social phenomena? I guess so…

Anyhow, this recently released study from Deloitte paints a broad picture of where companies are at with their adoption of social media. As suspected, backed up by the conversations I’ve had with over 50 such companies the past several months, I’d say they’re at the preadolescent stage. Characterized by - beginning to care somewhat about if/how they fit in, have a rough idea of some goals, more focused on the future, beginning to care about how their appearance, etc.

I won’t go into the details (which you’ll get in the 10 minutes it takes you to look through the 28 slides), but here are a couple of the most interesting findings:

It looks like only about 20% of these communities have members in the thousands.
Approximately 60% of their company’s oldest community have been in existence for less than 1 year.
Stated goals (i.e. what they want to achieve) and metrics (i.e. how they keep score) are out of whack.
45% plan to increase their investment in social media and online communities while only 6% plan to decrease investment.

Don Sedota (Product)

Good perspectives by Jeremiah Owyang on the Google/Twitter/Bing deal announced earlier last week. Basically Google and Bing will now start incorporating URL tweets/re-tweets and the influence/reach of corresponding tweeters into search rankings (i.e., consumers now have a direct impact on search rankings).

His key takeaways include:

Companies must focus even more on listening to make sure PR flare ups and the like on Twitter are quickly extinguished
It’s becoming increasingly important for companies offer easy social sharing (e.g., via Twitter) for site content. (Also of note is that Facebook will be offering public status updates to Bing so sharing via FB/FBC becomes more valuable to companies from a search results perspective)
Companies must continue to develop in-house influencers on Twitter in order to juice the search rankings of corresponding tweets (URLs)

How about you? Any good articles/posts/research to share? We're always looking for fresh inspiration.

Monday, October 26, 2009

Quick-n-dirty Podcast Recap 20: With Guest Host, Cathy Brooks

Last Thursday I had the opportunity to try out a guest host on the Quick-n-Dirty podcast show. My usual partner-in-crime, Jennifer Leggio, was originally supposed to be on a plane during our normal Thursday time slot although her plans changed and she ultimately ended up sticking around. This led to some funny podcast-a-trois when we invited Jen to call into the show during the last 10 minutes.

In Jen's place, Iwas lucky to have the talented and socially adept, Cathy Brooks, as my guest host and fortunately, she did not disappoint. Cathy and I had met a few times before in real life (SXSW and Jeff Pulver's 140 Character Conference in NYC) so I had a pretty good sense of her style. To that end, Cathy's wit and charm helped as we stuck to the shows regular format -- and in this case, brought on TWO guests versus our normal one.

We kicked off the show with our usual "featured social network." In this case, it was social travel site, Tripit, a site that I am a big fan of. As a side note, the folks from Tripit were doing a good job "listening" and reached out to me after the fact to ask if I might be interested in interviewing their co-founders. Suffice to say, you'll be hearing more from the folks at Tripit in the not-to-distant-future.

Our special guestS (yes, two of them) were none other than Gradon Tripp and Meg Fowler, founders of Social Media for Social Change, a great organization that applies the best of the world of social to the non-profit world. Gradon and Meg not only talked about how their organization had raised a decent amount of cash for good causes but how they were also helping other non-profit organizations harness the power of social. If you haven't checked out one of their events, keep an eye out for their next event in Miami Florida called @sm4scmiami.

The featured "Twitterer" of the week was Allstate's Ben Foster. As I was talking about the reasons I liked Ben's Twitter style -- great mix of human and business -- he chimed in on Twitter with this hilarious quote:

@aaronstrout Sweet! But now I feel pressure to have smart tweets and not things like Wolf Blitzer T-Shirts and Zombie Wedding Cakes :-)

And finally, we wrapped up with our traditional point / counterpoint... this time with a focus on social advertising. Of course Cathy and I couldn't resist bringing Jennifer in for this portion of the show so we had a fast and furious three way dialogue about whether companies should or shouldn't be advertising on places like Facebook. If you want to find out who chose which side, I guess you'll just have to listen into the last 10 minutes of the show.

Check out other recaps of the Quick-n-Dirty podcast show either here on Stroutmeister.com or on Jen's ZDNet blog. We hope you'll listen in live next week!

Changing Filters

A few weeks ago, my friend, Ron Green (CTO of Powered in his spare time) and I were in New York on business. He and I are both iPhone app guys and we were comparing notes over dinner. One of the apps he strongly recommended was Best Camera by renowned photographer, Chase Jarvis. Chase's premise being that the "best camera" is the one that you have with you and more and more often, that happens to be the camera on one's phone.

Why am I telling you this? Because I love Best Camera's ability to create filters (a la Photoshop) for the pictures I take with my iPhone. In my case, I've always been a huge fan of black and white photography so not having this capability on the iPhone sucked. Don't get me wrong, I like color photos too but there's something about the way black and white photography adds an artistic flair to ordinary pictures.

Here are a few examples of before and after pictures in color and after I've applied Best Camera's "Paris filter which creates a black and white effect:

The Colorado River (color)

The Colorado River (black and white)

"Not the Moon" (color)

"Not the Moon" (black and
white w/ "cool" filter applied)

Cornfield (color)

Cornfield (black and white)

Right about now you're thinking, "okay Aaron, you've proven that you're at least a mediocre photographer who can hit a button that makes your color pictures black and white. So what's your point?!?" Fortunately, I do have one. And it's not just about showing off a few pictures I took with my iPhone. My point is that not only does adding a filter to my photos change the way I take pictures with my phone but it has also made taking pictures less utilitarian and more enjoyable.

The reason I took time to write a blog post about this is that changing other filters in your life can have similar (if not more significant) effects. For instance, think about shifting from watching your local network's news offering to listening to NPR's Morning Edition. Or add 50 new songs to your iPod. Or if you're into social media, try removing your 10 least favorite blogs/tweeters from your reader or Tweetdeck and adding 10 brand new people into the mix.

You obviously don't want to undertake these exercises blindly but rather do some research. I usually find that asking some good questions on Twitter:

what new restaurant should I try?
what great songs should I be listening too?
which people are MUST follows on Twitter or Facebook?
who writes an amazing marketing blog?

I've been amazed by the quality of what I get back once I change my filters.

What filters have you changed recently? Or which will you change? I'm always looking for new ones so please let me know.

Friday, October 23, 2009

Driving Purchase Consideration: Podcast with Jackie Huba & Rob Harles

As part of the latest "Back to School" podcast series I do for my company, Powered Inc., our goal is to focus on the intersection of business and social. The speakers are smart people who run the gamut of bloggers, authors, analysts, journalists and business practitioners. This months flavor focuses on tapping into social to drive purchase consideration. My guests were the smart (and fun) Jackie Huba and Rob Harles. Jackie is an author and business blogger while Rob is the VP of community for a company you may have heard of called Sears.

Right-mouse click to download.

During our conversation, we covered the following topics (hat tip to Doug Haslam of SHIFT for helping me craft these interview questions):

Consideration may seem like the part of the buying cycle most helped by social media: agree or disagree?
How do we let customers “Consider?” How much of it is an active engagement (for lack of a better word) with the customer, rather than a more passive approach of letting them consider?
If passive is an approach, how hard is it for companies to let go and let customers do there thing, trusting they will stay in the cycle?
How vital is content in the consideration cycle?

Brand-produced vs user-produced?
One over the other?
A preferred mix ratio?

Types of content that work best
Might consideration be used as a tool to make existing customers more profitable (repeat buyers)?
How do you measure Consideration?

Is your company using the social web to drive purchase consideration? If so, I'd love to hear more about it.

Thanks to Jim Storer for his expert editing skills. Additional thanks to Brett Petersel for lending me the kick butt "Back to School intro and outro music." Additional thanks go to Jennifer Leggio for lending me the pic of Rob Harles.

Saturday, October 17, 2009

Quick-n-dirty Podcast Recap 19: Live from BlogWorld Expo

Wow! What an amazing last few days it's been at Blog World Expo. It was tough to have to leave before the festivities were over but I enjoyed a whirlwind of great panels, content and podcasts while I was here in Vegas at one of the top 2-3 most important social conferences in the country.

As you can guess, one of the podcasts I got to do was with my pal and co-host of the Quick-n-Dirty show, Jennifer Leggio. The beauty of this episode was that Jennifer and I got to do the show live from the expo floor of Blog World. Even better, we were able to grab PR/social studs, Doug Haslam* of SHIFT and Steve Rubel, of Edelman and Micropersuasion blog fame.

*note: do I need to disclose that Doug works for my company, Powered Inc. in a PR capacity -- after all, we're paying him vs. the other way around? No? Good, I didn't think so. Just checkin'.

Rather than doing our regular format of:

Social network
Guest/case study
Featured twitterer of the week
Point/counterpoint

we went freestyle and discussed Jen's and my panels at the show. Highlights included:

A recap of the fact that we both agreed that her "sponsored content" panel could have been a seminal discussion but instead just ended up being really good (not a bad thing). Part of the problem was that Jeremiah Owyang, formerly of Forrester and now at Altimeter Group worked hard to *protect* the panelists. While this was likely the right thing to do, it did prevent some of the sparks from flying that the crowd really wanted to see. For what it's worth, Jeremiah and I discussed this over drinks the night before so don't think I'm talkin' behind his back. ;)
Jen's review of her featured morning session about not letting the bad guys "Jack your brand." This connected more with Jen's security roots (day job) vs. her ZDNet blog (spare time) focused on social business. I suspect that Jen will do a recap on her blog but what I really liked was that she allowed audience members to come up and co-present with her reinforcing her "social" side.
We also did a quick review of my morning panel on "Gaming Twitter" and why it's not a good idea. To get details, head over to hashtag #twitgame as several of us in the room (myself included) live tweeted this event and caught a majority of the salient points on Twitter. For what it's worth, I was blown away but the smarts of fellow co-panelists Reem Abeidoh, Lucretia Pruitt, Micah Baldwin and Jesse Stay.

As I mentioned earlier, we did stray from our normal show format. However, we were able to bring some fresh insight to the podcast via our special guests. The fun part was that due to our limit of two headsets, Jen interviewed Doug Haslam and I interviewed Steve Rubel. I strongly encourage you to listen to this part of the show [about 20-25 minutes in] but here is the gist of what we discussed:

Jennifer and Doug talked about the fact that PR wasn't dead but *evolved*. PR firms that weren't doing it right risked becoming irrelevant. As a client of SHIFT's (there goes that disclosure again), I can tell you that he and his team definitely get it. There was one other topic that they covered but because I couldn't hear them real-time, I'll need to go back and listen to [FILL IN THE BLANK].
Steve and I rehashed his panel yesterday on life streaming [recap on my blog here]. In particular, I asked Steve how easy it was (knowing the answer was, "not very) to take clients form "you should be doing social" to focusing on his three pillars of "create spoke and hub content/destinations, become ubiquitous/ searchable and be sure to diversify." We also touched on whether or not it was a good idea to turn off comments on Youtube.

All in all, Jen and I were probably a little less scripted and buttoned up than usual but it was a hell of a lot of fun. To that end, a great big hat tip to Deb Robison for being the sole active chat room attendee. She rocks!

For past recaps of the show, you can always bounce back and forth between Jen's and my blogs. And of course, you can always catch an archived version of the show here or over on iTunes.

Thursday, October 15, 2009

Lifestreaming with Steve Rubel at BlogWorldExpo

Some "life-streamed" notes from Steve Rubel, SVP at Edelman. from the BlogWorld Expo. He's talking about the evolution of the "inbox" e.g. e-mail, sms, IM, Twitter, FourSquare. [Note: you get a sense that this session is of high value given the fact that Louis Gray, David Armano, Shell Holtz, David Thomas and Jason Falls to name a few "big brains" are in the room taking copious notes.]

Steve's off to a good start telling us to "avoid the shiny object syndrome" and focus on the big trends (vs. the individual tools).
Businesses need to think about how they can engage in real time
All sites in next 5 years need social capabilities or will become irrelevant
Web sites in general will become less relevant.
People are starting to practice "selective ignorance." Screening out more and more news.
People are also becoming media agnostic. Just want the news that they want and many times will hear it from friends.
111 is the average number of domains an average person in the U.S. visits in a month
On average, 2,500 web pages visited/month
We are becoming addicted to short-form content (this helped Twitter - centralized and short form)
Jakob Nielsen (usability guru) found the people read 20% of web pages
People need to hear things 3-5 times before they can actually digest them

Interesting because Steve has blogged for a long time and used to do 3-5 posts/day (every day for 3 1/2 years). Once Twitter came out, that evolved to 3-5 times/week. Then with FriendFeed, that continued to evolve. He got to the point where he felt like his blog was irrelevant. And then Posterous came along. The beauty is that everything is "e-mailable" and could put it content in a centralized place but could also get cross-posted in the respective places (like Twitter or Flickr) if he wants. [Note: I signed up for Posterous a few months ago but haven't done a whole lot other than use it for inbound.]

Cool tip. Steve uses a tool called Simply Tweet and anything that he writes that is over 140 characters gets posted on Posterous with a link cross-posted on Twitter.

Big question? What does this mean for brands and how do they cope with all the streams. Steve's three recommendations are:

You have to be ubiquitous

Steve uses Posterous to do this
Create "hub and spoke" strategy: build "embassies" everywhere blog, Facebook, Twitter
Ford has done a nice job of this. You can all their content in a centralized place OR you can get it out on the individual social networks

Muliplicity and diversity

Obama campaign uses different sites/formats to tell stories different ways at different times (Flickr, Youtube, blogs)

Discoverability and visibility

Traditional PR has been the process of creating "rain" and trying to get people "wet."
Ironically, people have going to the beach to "get wet" (Google) for several years now
Goal is to get people to "pull" your content vs. always pushing content
Life stream is great because it's highly discoverable
Creating "discoverable" content makes for great SEO juice

All in all, great content. It's rare that I learn a whole lot at events like these (mainly because Twitter is such a great fountain of information) but this was a great session that now has me thinking. Thanks Steve!

post script: a few reasons why Steve loves Posterous:

content is all exportable (this is huge)
customer service is phenomenal
allow him to overlay it with his own domain - http://steverubel.com
because he e-mails everything in from gmail, he has a backup for everything on gmail.

Wednesday, October 14, 2009

Slides from my Presentation at Driving Sales Exec Summit

Today I had the privilege of speaking in front of 150 VERY smart folks from the automotive industry at an event called the DrivingSales Executive Summit. Many work in large auto dealerships and have started using social media in a number of innovative ways. Equally exciting was the opportunity to meet folks like JD Rucker, Eric Miltsch, Gary May and Jared Hamilton to name a few. Oh yeah, some dude named Chris Brogan also showed up to speak. I was like, "whatever."

Driving Sales Exec Summit - Using Social to Drive Business

View more presentations from Aaron Strout.

To see the Twitter back channel from the event, head over here.

Hat tip to Sylvia Marino and Kyle Flaherty for helping supply some of the case study content.

Wednesday, October 7, 2009

Don't Put Me in a Bucket, Yo! Live from #IMS09

I'm here at the Inbound Marketing Summit in lovely Foxborough, MA (yup, the home of the New England Patriots). This is the fifth occurrence of the event and second time in the Boston area. I am proud to say that I've attended four out of the five and this is by far the best attended out of the five. The focus of the event is on harnessing the power of things like social marketing, media and search engine optimization.

My original intention was to blog several of the panels but as you can see, it's nearly 3:00 PM ET and this is my first one. Oh well, that's what happens when you run into a group of about 100 people that you haven't seen in a while and you need to do some catching up. Fortunately, I saved the cream of the crop for you and I'm kicking this off with a friend and super smart guy, CC Chapman.

CC's talk is on "buckets" or more importantly, the importance of not putting people into buckets (he used an example of him being announced as a "daddy blogger" -- arguably, it's something he does but it's not what he wants to be categorized as. Too many times today, he sees people getting put in buckets, especially as they become well known for a particular facet of their social prowess (podcasting, daddy/mommy blogging, photography skills, etc.) This is interesting because another good friend, Melanie Notkin, founder and principal of SavvyAuntie.com, has shared similar frustrations when she's been billed as "a blogger."

In both cases, neither CC nor Melanie were trying to distance themselves from the world of blogging, but rather for being pigeonholed into one particular category. This is particular important when you think about pitching a blogger, reporter or podcaster.

p.s. the reason I chose this photo is that I had a burger with CC at 5 Brothers today lunch. I couldn't resist.

The Wonderful, the Lovely, Jenny Cisney of Kodak

Jenny Cisney isn't just your average, "I was in marketing and got asked to man our Twitter and blog accounts" corporate blogger. In fact, she's actually been blogging longer than many of today's well known bloggers because she's been doing her thing since 2000. For this reason, she has a deep knowledge and understanding and it shows in her social activities.

At today's Inbound Marketing Summit in Foxborough, MA, we got to hear from Jenny as she talked about how she and the company she works for, Eastman Kodak (heard of them -- yup, they were they invented the digital camera). She only had 20 minutes to talk but she covered some cool topics. Here are a few pulled straight from the #ims09 Twitter stream:

@pgillin: @KodakCB says Twitter helps Kodak sell high-end equipment to businesses. #ims09
@rhappe: Simple & effective idea for convincing execs - give them a beta/comp of the types of things you are planning #ims09
@MSchechter Brand, schmand... You can't develop a relationship with a brand, only with a person. #ims09
@justinlevy: Use twitter for product development. Kodak did when it made the Zi8. #ims09
@eWayDirect: @kodakcb tells us they will be hiring a chief listener #ims09 - interesting potential new role at other big companies
@miketrap: Kodak Chief Blogger: "I'm not shy about my personal life. I'm really all puppies and cupcakes, which works for the brand." #ims09
@jayatkins: Kodak connects with their audience on multiple platforms - check it out http://www.kodak.com/go/followus #ims09

What I can tell you is that Kodak (a Powered Inc. client) is a smart bunch and Jenny is a clear example of their social prowess. If you don't follow them @KodakCB, their CMO, @JeffreyHayzlett or their director of digital, @TomHoehn, you should.

If you want to check out the scrap booking community that we just launched for them, you can see it here: http://exchange.kodak.com.

Friday, October 2, 2009

Quick-n-dirty Podcast Recap 17: Yelp-ing it Up

I have a rule with e-mail. It's called the 2 minute/2 week rule. You can probably guess what the rule is but if not, it means that I try and respond to most e-mails within 2 minutes. The reason being, if I don't get to it in 2 minutes, it usually sits in my inbox until I'm on a plane so you get a response 2 weeks later.

The reason I bring my "rule" up is that I'm taking that approach with today's Quick-n-Dirty podcast wrap up. I'm hustling a little bit because I have to leave in 45 minutes to pick friends up at the airport. We're going to the Austin City Limits music festival this weekend so if I don't do this now, you won't get the recap until Monday or Tuesday of next week.

With that as a caveat [ahem, excuse] for my pithiness, onto to the deets. Oh, remember that you can always download these podcasts on iTunes, listen to show archives here or find recaps of past episodes on this blog and co-host, Jennifer Leggio's Feeds blog on ZDNet focused on social business.

Highlights from this week's show:

Featured Social Network: Gowalla. The easy way to describe it is that it's a FourSquare knock off but don't just take my word for it. TechCrunch did a good comparison of Gowalla and FourSquare if you're looking for a more detailed description of each. To that end, Gowalla does have some cool additional features like recommended user generated walking tours. Jennifer isn't a fan, especially because of it's wonky GPS capabilities. The jury is still out with me.
Special Guest: Vince Solitto, VP of Communications, Yelp. Okay, I feel a little bit bad because Jennifer and I definitely put Vince on the "Budweister hot seat" with some of our questions. Given Vince's background in politics, he seemed to handle the pressure without any problem. The one big takeaway that I didn't realize about Yelp is that only a third of their reviews/ratings are for restaurants. The rest are for services -- similar to Angie's List -- think dentists, doctors and daycare. Who knew?

Featured Tweeter: Simon Mainwaring. I've recently put Simon in my "Trust Tree" list on Tweetdeck -- that's the 100 or so people that I follow closely for one reason or another. The main reason Jennifer and I liked Simon as a choice is that 1 out of every 3 tweets is a link to some great report or statistic on social media, marketing or Web 2.0. Given his background (big brand/big agency), methinks he knows about that which he speaks.
Point / Counterpoint: This week's discussion was short and sweet. We focused on third part social networks' "ownership" of content. Jennifer said that she didn't like places like Facebook, Twitter and Ning owning some rights to her content but she went into the deal "in the know" (she reads ever word of ever terms of service). My contention is that as an individual, I don't care much that the socnets own my stuff but when it comes to business, companies should be careful. One MAJOR argument for considering a branded only community in addition to joining these places (and yes, I admitted on the show that this is a little self-serving given the fact that I work at a company that builds branded online communities). Whatever! ;)
Give away: we also gave away another pass to the upcoming Inbound Marketing Summit. The lucky winner was none other than Mr. Michael J. Russel for his very clever Q-n-D Haiku. Hope he can make it!

So that's it. That's the recap. Don't miss next week's show where we'll discuss the hashtag study that Jennifer conducted with our friend and fan, Deb Robison. If you haven't weighed in yet, be sure to do so. Also, we are broadcasting live from Blogworld Expo in two weeks. If you have suggestions on anyone that you think we should interview, tweet us or put your reco in the comments!

Tuesday, September 29, 2009

From Zero to Community: Webcast Archive

Here is the archive of the webcast, from Zero to Community, I did with Bert Dumars, VP of interactive marketing at Newell-Rubbermaid, and Rachel Happe, principal of The Community Roundtable two weeks ago.

Click To Play

This was hands down one of my favorites. How about you?

Monday, September 28, 2009

Want to Win a Pass to Inbound Marketing Summit Boston?

Our friend, Justin Levy, of New Marketing Labs was kind enough to give my Quick-n-Dirty podcast partner, Jennifer Leggio and me a few passes to the upcoming Inbound Marketing Summit: Boston to give away on our show. We've already given away passes the last two weeks during the show and we're going to give away another pass this Thursday to one lucky caller. However, we have one other pass that we're going to give away in a little bit of a different way...

Anyone that knew me in my early days of Twitter may remember my weekly "Tweet-ku" contests -- essentially a prize for the best haiku poem completed in a 140 characters. I would give away $20 iTunes gift cards. This time around, you don't need to do haiku (although your welcome to if you like) but Jennifer and I are looking for the most clever tweet ABOUT the @QuicknDirty podcast show. Yes, that's pretty vague but that's not by accident.

How do you enter you ask?

RULES

You must be following the @QuicknDirty podcast Twitter account
You can enter multiple times with multiple tweets
The tweets MUST contain a reference to the "@QuicknDirty" Twitter handle
Contest starts as of noon, PT today (September 28) and ends at midnight, PT on Wednesday, September 30.
The winner will be announced on the show (Thursday, October 1 at 3 PM PT / 6 PM ET)

I'm sure I've forgotten something so feel free to tweet me @aaronstrout or leave a comment down below.

Wednesday, September 23, 2009

Weekly Social Marketing Links: Week of 9/21

Cross-posted on Powered's blog

Oh how quickly the time passes. As some of you know, I try and do a weekly digest of the links that my team (marketing, sales and product) come up with for our recurring staff meeting. A series of all day meetings and the usual travel have conspired against me. Fortunately for you, that doesn't change the quality of the content/links that the team found.

With that as a backdrop, let's see what we've got...

Beth Lopez (Marketing)

(9/16) My article submission for this week is called The Great Trust Offensive. It appears the top 100 brands (as ranked by Interbrand) have fallen out of the trust tree with consumers. Edelman conducted a phone survey and found that only 44% of Americans stated they trusted business, down from 58% in the fall of 2007. As a result, many of the top brands are now focusing their advertising and messaging on re-building this trust with consumers and joining the “conversation”. The article goes on to provide case examples of McDonald’s, Ford and American Express and has CMO’s of these companies quoted throughout.

You can also view the 100 Best Global Brands 2009 in a slideshow format which provides a snippet of their marketing strategies. I’ll see if I can download the full report and provide to everyone. Here’s the link to the slideshow.

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(9/4) Joe Marchese throws down the traditional vs. social marketing gauntlet in the blog post,
The $1 Million Social Media Marketing Challenge, which starts with “I think there is an inherent conflict in the following statement: "We can't measure social media ROI. But when we buy television in large amounts, we know it works." He goes on to state the problem with marketers comparing social media and TV and issues a challenge: If the ROI from social media is not equal to that from traditional media, his company will deliver free media until the difference is made up.

Interesting read to say the least.

DP Rabalais (Marketing)

(9/16) As I mentioned in our meeting, I thought it would be of value for all of us to become more familiar with Net Promoter Scores, since many companies place such a high value on them.

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(9/4) The title is Social Net Branding Fails to Sway Women and the article was published today on brandweek.com. A study by ad:tech Chicago and Q Interactive that analyzes how women engage online with brands finds that 75 percent of women reported that social networking sites have little bearing on their purchasing decisions.

Sites have "somewhat" of an influence over 21.9 percent and greatly influence only 3.3 percent of users.

Only 10 percent of women said that participating in brand-related activities, such as finding information (8.7 percent) and writing reviews (1 percent), was their most common social media activity. Sending private messages to peers (34.6 percent), sharing photos (13.4 percent) and chatting (12.8 percent) ranked as women's top-three social media activities.

Bill Fanning (BizDev)

(9/16) I actually have two articles to share. The first is post on Eyecube blog titled, Congratulations TGI Friday’s, Now the Work Begins and the second post was written by Greg Verdino and posted to his blog titled, Social Media Marketers are a Shallow Bunch. Both posts highlight the latest campaign by TGI Friday’s to drive Facebook fans but are curious about what’s next. Now that they’ve blown out the goal of reaching 500,000 fans (875,170 fans as of this morning) how do they plan to keep them engaged. They’ve got a real opportunity to drive ongoing lasting relationships with their consumers and, quite frankly, revitalize an otherwise stale brand. Will they capitalize on it? We’ll keep watching and hope for the best. In the meantime, I’m looking forward to my free burger… I think.

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(9/4) This week’s shared post is from Jason Falls’ blog Social Media Explorer, titled, Brands Are People. It’s short and simple but powerful. He refers to a message he received from a friend who worked in the Golden Age of the Advertising Industry and a WWII fighter pilot. He says “It seems we got into the idea that ads were a lot easier than relationships.” I’d agree and we’ve been saying this for a while, but it just seems more credible coming from someone who actually lived and worked during that time.

The rise of TV as a mass marketing media was certainly a major contributing factor that widened the relationship gap between consumers and companies. We live and work in an amazing time where the rise of the internet has provided consumers a media that will require companies to break down the walls that divided them and re-learn how to build real relationships with consumers. The companies who choose to embrace the new media and master it will have a leg up on those who don’t.

Who knows…maybe in 30 years our kids will be watching a show like Mad Men where they act out the lives of today’s Social Media movers and shakers. If the characters are based on the folks I’ve seen speaking on Social Media panels over the last couple years, it’s bound to be funny but not nearly as classy!

Jay MacIntosh (BizDev)

(9/16) What Powered does is game-changing for marketing.

At the end of last year as I was becoming more familiar with social media marketing and our company, my intuition was that speaking with customers on their terms (i.e. things that they care about, when they’re interested and with people they trust) was the golden ticket for marketers. The disconnect for me was the lack of available data to support my intuition. What I had from our client programs, or third party sources, wasn’t quite complete or reliable enough so the results story often came up short. I think that’s recently begun to change due to a number of factors including our improved measurement & reporting capabilities as well as other practitioners publicly sharing their results.

Let’s look at one key marketing metric related to engagement – click through rate (CTR). This article from MediaPost Tuesday Super for Facebook Brand Pages talks about a study that found the average CTR on Facebook brand pages to be 6.76%. It goes on to say that certain days of the week perform multiple times better than other days of the week. Tuesday being the best and Friday being the worst. It’s encouraging to see that the Facebook 6.76% CTR kicks butt on other forms of marketing such as email (CTR 3.9%) and banner ads (CTR 0.2%). And what about Powered’s CTRs? For content our CTR is 50 friggin% - talk about kicking butt? For HP’s HHO site the CTR to their ecommerce is 7%. That’s kicking some serious booty.

And what about other ways marketing is measured like conversion, net promoter score (loyalty & advocacy), customer insight? What we deliver in these areas is also game-changing. So why aren’t more marketers going for the golden ticket? Is it lack of knowledge, understanding, familiarity, budget or something else they fear? I’d love to hear y’alls thoughts on this.

Don Sedota (Product)

(9/16) Although this probably isn’t groundbreaking insight to the team, I thought this article “When Facebook Fans Turn Ugly: Examining The Honda Accord Crosstour Page” was an interesting synopsis of a recent PR snafu that Honda had to deal with regarding their new FB page to promote the Accord Crosstour. After numerous comments from users about the ugliness of the car, a Honda rep (posing as a regular Joe) chimed in to give his support. Once he was outed, Honda had to do some quick damage control (some good, some not so good). The bad – removing the comments from the Honda rep which further enraged fans. Anyways, a good quick read that hits on some of the do’s and don’ts of containing a negative social media storm.

On a similar note, I have to feel kinda sorry for the Intuit reps that are trying to keep up with a hoard of unhappy Mint customers after Intuit acquired the financial site earlier this week. Ouch!

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(9/4) Here are a couple of pretty entertaining articles that I found this past week.

The first one from David Berkowitz’s blog called, When Augmented Reality Goes Social talks about a few applications of augmented reality (when digital is layered over real-world experiences to “augment” the experience) and social. My favorite example is a Yelp application for the Android platform which is apparently still pretty buggy but allows you to walk down a street and through your camera lens you can view Yelp overlays in the appropriate spots to show different restaurants and their ratings (really cool). Apparently more applications like this are coming down the pipe.

The second one is social related but entertaining more than anything else. It’s a blog post by Jonathon Fields called PR Gone Bad. How to Anger Bloggers and Hose Your Client. Jonathon details a back and forth exchange he had with a PR firm who was trying to get him to review a new book for their client. The PR tactics are extremely traditional and impersonal and the ensuing exchange of emails between Jonathon and the PR rep is a classic example of how certain people still don’t get the fact that social marketing is changing the way PR firms and the like have to conduct their business. Well worth the read if you have a few minutes.

Monday, September 21, 2009

Quick-n-dirty Podcast Recap (Yup, I Drew the Short Straw Again)

Somehow I managed to draw the short straw again this week... So it's my turn to do the recap of the Quick-n-Dirty podcast show again this week. Fortunately, I think this was one of our best yet -- top three at least -- so I really don't mind taking the time to be the scribe for show number fifteen.

Before I dive in, I have two housekeeping items that I'd like to cover:

We are giving away another free pass to the upcoming Inbound Marketing Summit so be sure you call into this week's show. The number is (347) 308-8632.
There is a survey on the effectiveness of hashtags that my co-host, Jennifer Leggio, and friend, Deb Robison, have put into the field that needs more respondents. Please vote if you get a second.

With that said, onto the recap!

Featured Social Network: Threadsy. Well, this one's still in private beta so unfortunately you won't be able to see much of Threadsy first hand. But you can read more about it over hear at TechCrunch. Jennifer saw their demo via streaming video from the recent TechCrunch50 event and was impressed enough to want to cover it. In a nutshell, they "take all of your online communication and shove them into a single service." Note that I have already requested an invite!
Special Guest: Michael "Britopian" Brito. Yup, he's the guy that focuses on social over at this little chip manufacturing company in Silicon Valley called Intel. Oh wait, you've heard of it? Yeah, I thought you might have. Anyway, during the show Michael dropped some serious knowledge on how he/Intel look at engaging their customers through social. In fact, Michael was kind enough to share a pretty cool example of his efforts here.
Featured Tweeter: Chris Penn. Just read his Twitter bio... Financial aid expert, Edvisors.com CMO, PodCamp co-founder, MarketingOverCoffee.com co-host, speaker, author, USF marketing professor, actual ninja, unholy DK." How can you not like this guy? Seriously though, he creates some serious value both in person, on his podcasts and in his Twitter stream. Follow him. NOW!
Point / Counterpoint: I liked this one because Jennifer and I actually kind of disagreed on this one. She whined about argued the fact that with so much noise out their in the blogosphere, it was hard for new and/or quality voices to get a say. My counterpoint was that if content isn't good, people eventually vote with their feet (she used Mashable as an example of an organization that may have lost their way). I also chimed in that people who have good content need to be better advocates for themselves. If a tree falls in the woods, nobody hears it if nobody knows the tree existed.

Onto next week's show. Our featured guest will be the lovely, Laura Fitton. You know her as Pistachio. I know her as one of my teammates on Team Shuckri. You will soon know her as the CEO and co-founder of exciting new startup, oneforty. And as I mentioned before, we'll be giving away another free Inbound Marketing Summit pass so you can't afford to miss it! Just ask last week's winner, Bill Johnston (he's a good guy so Jennifer and I were both psyched that he won).

To listen to the show, you can either click play on the BlogTalkRadio icon on my blog or head on over to BlogTalkRadio (we're also on iTunes).

Saturday, September 19, 2009

Teaching a Man to Fish: Brett's First Forray into Blogging

My friend, Brett Agnew, who is self-admittedly a little "technology adverse" (or Luddite) as Bryan Person likes to call it, is learning about the process of blogging. So, as we spend a Saturday afternoon BBQ-ing some ribs, watching college football and consuming some beverages, we are putting together a blog post so he can see how easy it is to whip something together.

To be fair, we're not completely resting on our laurels so in spite of our "manly" duties, we're also watching our two, two-year old daughters and Bryan's three year old son. A little mix of "guy" stuff and "daddy daycare."

During the course of our discussions, Brett wonders aloud about what he would cover if he were to create his own blog. The first title he came up with which Bryan and I are kind of bullish on is "The Evolution of a Man." Focus would be on how one evolves from boy to mustang to man and all the steps in between.

For any of you that have advice for Brett and how he might get started, I've offered to triage any suggestions since he's still mostly an e-mail/phone guy (to his credit, he does own an iPhone). Thoughts?

Better Late than Never: Brogan Interviews Strout

When I first joined Powered Inc. last November, one of the first tactical things we did on the PR front was to announce my arrival at the company. One of the things our agency (pre-SHIFT) recommended was picking an A-list blogger to interview me. Given my pre-existing relationship with Chris Brogan, combined with his focus on inbound marketing, I thought he'd be the perfect person.

Fortunately, Chris was only at 200% capacity at that point since he had yet to publish his NY Times bestselling book, Trust Agents, with Julien Smith. The podcast itself is fairly raw (thanks to friend, Jim Storer, who did some light editing) but I was pleasantly surprised at how relevant it still is. Particularly since I had only been at Powered for a little over a month so I was on the early part of my knowledge ramp.

If you're an advocate of content marketing (hint hint Ann Handley, Simon Salt, Natanya Anderson and Joe Pulizzi), I'd love to get your thoughts in the comments below.

Thursday, September 17, 2009

Plurk vs. Twitter: Who You Got?

Cross-posted on Deb Robison's blog

On last week's Quick-n-Dirty podcast show, my co-host, Jennifer Leggio and I spent some time talking about Twitter wannabe, Plurk, and why it never really took off (see Compete's comparative numbers). In fact, in my wrap up post, I went so far as to say that Plurk "sucked." Well, our friend and listener, Deb Robison, hopped on the show's live chat and told us not so fast. In fact, Deb argued that not only was Plurk not dead but rather that there were a number of reasons why she actually liked Plurk more than Twitter.

This conversation of course piqued my curiosity so I threw the idea out to Deb that we do a "point / counterpoint" on Plurk vs. Twitter. We agreed to divide and conquer with me writing the intro, both of us creating a list of "pro's and con's" and then Deb doing the wrap up. Since Deb gets the last word in this discussion, I have to say, she's done a great job getting me to think more about my harsh criticism of Plurk. That's not to say that I will jump back in and start using Plurk again but rather that I might take a "kinder and gentler" approach when I bring it up.

To make this a little more interactive, I did add my comments on Deb's lists in brackets -- I encouraged her to do the same (hers are in gray type):

Deb's Plurk Pro's

threaded conversations easy to follow, seems to develop conversation better, more in-depth [AWS - fair point. Although there are a few third party apps that do this for Twitter like Mike Langford's TweetWorks] Deb: yes, but is TweetWorks widely known? Oddly, one of the best apps for following threaded Twitter conversations is the app-formerly-known-as TwiterFon, now called echofon, but is only available on the iPhone and iPod Touch, so it too languishes in obscurity.
consistency of group builds relationships greeting, familiarity, connections- asking about personal/work issues
timeline and response mechanism prevent missing a conversation you were participating in [Aaron: Twitter could benefit from this although hashtags make an attempt to replicate] Deb: but you still have to do a search for a hashtag potentially taking you away from your Twitter stream- obviously not the case if you use Tweetdeck, or Tweetgrid, but both have limitations- there is often a lag time.
easier to decide who to friend-can see them participate in other conversations and how they are connected to the people you already know
groups formed around communities within plurk- plurkshops, plurk weightloss, recipe exchange
constantly adding new features (where does the money come from?)
can post from other services such as ping.fm and posterous
private conversations take place among a group of people [Aaron: in my mind, this is Plurk's biggest advantage over Twitter. I've heard that this functionality is underway on Twitter but right now, it's frustratingly absent]
**Has anyone noticed my high level of restraint here? I never mention that- Plurk rarely goes down. A lot of folks migrated to Plurk during the season of the FAIL Whale last year, but moved back once things stabilized. [Aaron: great point]

**Deb: I have added #9 as an afterthought here, can't believe I forgot it for the original list **

Deb's Plurk Con's

no community evangelism [Aaron - where's Robert Scoble when you need him?]
karma- it's only a novelty, not sure why people focus on it so much [Aaron - as I mentioned in the podcast, this is the thing I hate most about Plurk]
hard to use on a PC- mouse trackball makes it easier to scroll side to side
no SMS (IM though)
only a couple of mobile apps

---------------

Aaron's Twitter Pro's

Sheer numbers: Whether it's 20 million or 40 million (yes, there is a question as to how many of these folks are actually active), many of my friends are here en masse. Deb: yes, but the numbers are overwhelming, some days I see people in my stream and think "who the hell is that and why am I following them? Or a friend doesn't show up in my stream for days. They were active, but for some reason only some Tweeps show up in the stream. I am sure volume is the issue.
Simplicity: yes, it took a little while to figure out Twitter but it was a whole lot easier to navigate than the land of weird looking animals with bones sticking out of their necks. Deb: again, see my argument about karma- who cares? Are you subject to nightmares after seeing Plurk critters? It's about the conversation.
Third party apps: due to Twitter's open architecture, I've loved the apps that have been developed around Twitter. Deb: yep, the Plurk people missed the boat on this one. Although, I don't understand why the Twitter folks couldn't seem to innovate, Plurk constantly adds new features which seem to play the role of a third party app.
Low barrier to following/un-following: unlike Facebook, I like the fact that following or un-following someone on Twitter has very little stigma. I can "try" someone's stream if I like and then just as easily un-follow them if I don't find value. Deb: never had any problem unfollowing people on Plurk or Twitter, but I notice some people really get upset when unfollowed. What's the big deal? You have a thousand followers and you are going to miss me??
Straightforward stream: while one might argue that this is the biggest strength and weakness of Twitter, I like the fact that I can dip in and out of the stream as I choose. If I want to update and walk away for a day, there's nobody waiting on the other side for me to finish my threaded conversation. Deb: yeah, but I have having to come in mid-stream when a conversation is going on and sort through the tweets to get to the origination of the convo. That is when I reach for TwitterFon (echofon).

Aaron's Twitter Con's

Spam: with mass adoption comes opportunity. With opportunity comes scam artists. Unfortunately, this has become a huge pain in the ass when it comes to determining who to follow back. Deb: I did not have to deal with a spammer until a couple of weeks ago. It was sending me through the roof. I experienced "SpamRage."
Threaded conversations: while there are third party apps that do this, it would be nice to have this "in-line" on Twitter.
No group DMs: as I commented above, there are many a time when I would love to be able to send a group DM. For instance, I group blog with a number of friends over at Big Papelbon and it would be nice to be able to send a comment to all the contributors via DM all at one time.
Hard to follow lots of users: yes, I do use Tweetdeck which makes following discrete groups easier but it would be nice if Twitter had Friendfeed like capabilities to pre-segment people into groups. Based on Deb's "Plurk pro's" above, it sounds like you can do this on Plurk. Deb: you can create groups and/or private conversations sent to individuals of your choice on Plurk, but I rarely do it. Tweetdeck crashes constantly, so I don't use it anymore.

Gee, I feel like David Brooks and Gail Collins of the New York Times' The Conversation blog where the opposing parties exchange niceties about summer vacation, then give their POVs. The Conversation ends nicely and we politely agree to disagree. That having been said, while I wouldn't use the word "sucks" about Twitter, I don't like it as much as Plurk, but feel I have to use it for my work- held hostage by a little bird and a whale. Thanks for the lovely discourse Aaron and I hope your summer on the Cape didn't leave you with too bad of a sunburn. [Aaron: Deb, this has been a blast. And as you know, I love doing the point / counterpoint thing. Normally I spar weekly with Jennifer on the Quick-n-Dirty but I always welcome engaging with other smart folks like yourself.]

Friday, September 11, 2009

Q-n-D Recap: Kodak's Tom Hoehn and Why Plurk Sucks

14

That's right, this was the 14th Quick-n-Dirty podcast that Jennifer Leggio and I have co-hosted. I guess you could say that we've moved beyond our "pilot" phase and into the real world of podcasting. To that end, we have some exciting things to note:

Jennifer is now doing her recaps on her Feeds blog over at ZDNet. That's not to say that "Stroutmeister" or "Mediaphyter" aren't kick ass blogs... it just means that we don't have anywhere near the pull that ZDNet does. This is a good thing.
Our show has been selected as a "featured" podcast on BlogTalkRadio. I don't know how many shows BTR does this with but let's just assume it's a good thing.

So onto the recap from this week's show...

Featured Social Network: Plurk - first up, we did some trash talking about this "Twitter wannabe." Jennifer and I both joined late in 2008 but found very little value, especially when you compare it to Twitter. Jennifer and I remembered that friend, Mack Collier, was a heavy user back in the day (we won't hold that against him). We also found out that regular listener, Deb Robison, still uses Plurk. She likes the threaded conversations. To that end, Deb and I have agreed to do a joint "point / counterpoint" post. Stay tuned for that one.
Special Guest: Kodak's Director of Interactive and Convergence Media, Tom Hoehn, joined us for an extended session during the show. Our conversation focused on the way Kodak is tapping into the power of social to revolutionize one of the oldest public companies in the country. In particular, Tom talked about how Kodak CMO, Jeffrey Hayzlett and lead blogger/twitterer, Jenny Cisney, are helping him push forward with a social agenda, not just for the benefit of Kodak's customers but for their business partners as well. In fact, Tom was able to point us to their AWESOME new booklet of social media tips that Jeffrey, Tom and Jenny put together (definitely a MUST read). For additional background, see our aforementioned friend, Mack's, interview of Tom.
Featured Tweeter: Adam Cohen. Partner at interactive agency, Rosetta, Adam was one of the first 25 people I followed on Twitter (as I close in on 9,000 people I follow, that should tell you something). The reason Jen and I chose him as our "feature" was his blend of being helpful, funny and continually able to deliver great content. Viva la Adam!
Point / Counterpoint: To retweet or not retweet, that is the question... okay, so we didn't get all "Shakespeare" about this one but we did agree that some retweeting is okay, as long as you don't overdo it AND you add a little color commentary about why you are passing that info along. I personally like retweeting because I think if people are using me as a filter, they can see what types of blogs, videos, articles and podcasts I like. Jennifer was 1/2 sold on this.

Onto next week's show. Our featured guest will be Intel's, Michael Brito. Be sure to tune in. We'll also be giving away a pass to the upcoming Inbound Marketing Summit in Boston. Oh, and be on the lookout for Jennifer's interview on Bub.bilicio.us -- it should be coming out next week!

To listen to the show, you can either click play on the BlogTalkRadio icon on my blog or head on over to BlogTalkRadio (we're also on iTunes).

Tuesday, September 8, 2009

Un-Retired: The Start of Something New

Last Thursday, I took a bold step and announced my retirement from Twitter. My announcement coincided with my 20,000 update or tweet which is a pretty big deal when you think about how much time and effort it takes to do anything 20,000 times. While I knew it was unlikely that I would stay retired -- thus my comparison of my retirement to two of the greatest "un-retiring" athletes in the world -- I did enjoy my time away from microblogging.

So what did I do with my 120 hours of Twitter-free time? Well, in fairness, I wasn't completely Twitter free. In fact, a few of you caught me inadvertently sending DM's publicly (I did get a chuckle out of your mock outrage). But even though I did keep an eye on Twitter, I felt no pressure to respond, re-tweet or come up with clever little facts or quips. It was quite cathartic actually.

But you know what? I missed it. A lot. However, the time away did afford me the ability to think about what my future "social" strategy looked like. To that end, I've decided on makin

g a few changes as I move forward:

I've talked a lot about signal to noise the last couple years but I haven't always done as good a job at delivering enough "signal." Now that my tweets are appearing on our company's home page, I'm more aware than ever of my conversations. That does NOT mean that I don't plan to swear, complain or throw out the occasional snarky tweet but instead, that I will think a little bit harder about lower value conversations (more on that in the next bullet).
During my five day hiatus from Twitter, I did learn that I really do like conversing on Facebook. And you know what, Facebook is a great place for those "lower value" conversations that actually aren't really lower in value, but rather "de-valued" when they take place in front of tons of people that don't know you. What I mean by this is that out of the 9,500+ people that follow me on Twitter, I probably only know about 1,000 of them. On Facebook, I know closer to 750 of the 1,100 people that I've friended, and many are family members or friends from high school, college and live events.
I need to spend more time blogging -- and not just fluff pieces. What I mean by this is that I felt really proud about posting the Age Wave piece that I co-penned with my friend, John Cass last week. We really thought that post through, did research and delivered a point of view. I want to do more of those thought pieces, both here and on my company blog. I also need to do a better job holding up my end of the bargain on the weekly podcast show I do with my partner in crime, Jennifer Leggio.

So there you have it. I'm officially un-retired. Yes, most of you knew this would come but hopefully I can keep up my resolution to refine my presence on Twitter and deliver more value than I have in the past. For those of you that don't like the new me, just come find me over on Facebook. In fact, you'll notice that I have a new, more serious avatar on Twitter while my old "grumpy-faced" avatar from SXSW has migrated to Facebook.

While I'm at it, I'm planning on getting healthy again. Yup, I've taken too much time off from running and eating well (7 months of commuting between MA and TX will do that to you). Make sure you ask me about my progress on this front regularly as I've found that guilt works wonders with me in terms of keeping me honest.

Thursday, September 3, 2009

The NEW American Dream: An Ongoing Conversation

Back in May, two of my favorite content providers, Bill Simmons aka The Sports Guy and Malcolm Gladwell of Tipping Point and Blink fame engaged in an running blog post regarding the NBA among many other things. Not only was this a brilliant three part series but it has inspired me to create a running dialog with good friend, author and PR blogger, John Cass to do something similar regarding AMC's brilliant tv show, Madmen, the future of the American Dream and the role social media plays in changing the rules.

With that as a backdrop, John was kind enough to kick this off with his first shot. I'm not sure whether we'll continue this as a "part II" etc. but maybe we'll carry it over into the comments depending on how interested people are in the

topic...

-------

From: John Cass

Sent: Thursday, August 13, 2009 12:21 PM

To: Aaron Strout

Subject: RE: American Dream: Social Media

Aaron,

There's a documentary attached to the Mad Men DVD series that describes the culture of advertising and Madison Avenue in the 1960s. After watching the documentary, the film emphasized that advertising helped to promote the meme of the American Dream by encouraging people in the 1960s to buy products so that as an American you could demonstrate you have arrived in middle class America. As advertising is no longer as effective as it once was, who is promoting the idea of the American Dream? Does social media have a role in defining today’s American Dream? Are your peers, friends and families developing the American Dream?

Also, given the recent concerns about pay per post and the influence of consumer product companies on bloggers, is the web evolving to the point where bloggers are becoming a proxy for advertisers? Susan Getgood discusses more on this idea of advertisers using bloggers as a proxy, and describes the pitfalls of the FTC Even if you do disclose payment or receiving a free product, I wonder are today’s champions of the 1960s idea of the American Dream, bloggers?

John

-------

From: Aaron Strout
Sent: Tuesday, August 18, 2009 1:25 PM

To: John Cass
Subject: RE: American Dream: Social Media

John,

I was ecstatic when you first mentioned this concept – the fact that watching the documentary about the advertising industry on the Madmen season 2 DVD prompted you to ask the question, “if the ad men of the 1960’s essentially created the American Dream,” what does that mean in an era where advertising as we know it is all but dead? Or more importantly, what does that mean in an era where the greatest influencers of purchase behavior are now “us?”

I’ve responded with some thoughts and a question of my own. Hopefully we can engage in a few of these back and forth e-mails and then cross-post on our respective blogs. Ready?

Our mutual friend and senior Forrester analyst, Jeremiah Owyang, has an interesting theory about microinfluence / microcelebrities. I won’t pretend to be able to discuss this topic as eloquently as Mr. Owyang but the high level take away is that rather than having national or even regional ad campaigns driven by well known celebrities, we will instead seek out the folks like Robert Scoble, Chris Brogan and Gary Vaynerchuk -- leaders in the tech gadget, inbound marketing and wine enthusiast space -- to tell us which gadgets to buy, which trends to follow and what wines we should be collecting.

There is a reason I’ve singled out these three individuals is that all three have large voices in their respective fields – easily hundreds of thousands of followers that read their blogs, watch their videos and flock to them in droves at conferences and tweetups alike. These new influencers have many big brands and their agencies scratching their heads as they try and figure out how to tap into this “micro” power. Some have tried the paid for blogger route like K-Mart did via third party, Izea, with Brogan. While K-Mart, Chris and Izea all got their fair share of publicity out of this initiative, it was not exactly as they imagined. Quite frankly, I’m not sure the world is ready for paid for blogging… yet.

In the case of Scoble, he got snatched up by hosting giant, Rackspace, with a goal of having him continue his legacy of great content creation. Gary “Vee” as many of his fans know him has been the most successful by using his micro celebrity-hood to grow his family’s multi-million dollar wine and spirits business It’s only a matter of time before a big vintner or distributor scoops him up.

As the pack of micro-celebrities rise, the big question is what impact will this new breed have on “the American Dream?” Will Scoble drive future generations to schizophrenically jump from technology to technology, always seeking out the latest and greatest regardless of the brand? Will Chris Brogan lead to a new generation of voracious readers that eschew traditional marketing techniques for “new marketing?” Will Gary “Vee” as his fans know him teach people to turn the wine industry on its head by ignoring traditional ratings and reviews of current oenophiles and seek value and passion from their wine instead?

The one question you teed up inyour previous e-mail that I really like was one of “how the world will see America” in the future as a result of the shift in power from Madison Avenue to Joe blogger / Twitterer. I can’t help but think that this is going to be one of the areas of greatest impact, namely because people from all over the world can play a role in shaping opinion of products and services irrespective of their location. A developer in India can have the same voice as a designer in China, a marketer in Australia and an aspiring musician in LA. Instead of a select few ad men telling us what we’ll like and dislike, we’ll be listening to the micro-influencers while quietly helping to shape their opinion through wall posts, tweets and blog comments.

Instead of an “them vs. us” mentality, likes and dislikes will transcend geo-boundaries and rally around interests so “them” in the future might be “Google-ites” and the “us” might be “Apple enthusiasts.” So a question for you. What products that have traditionally been driven by Madison Avenue – like soft drinks, running shoes or jeans – will be impacted the soonest by this paradigm shift?

Best,

Aaron

-------

Sent: Wednesday, August 19, 2009 7:01 AM

From: John Cass

To: Aaron Strout

Subject: RE: American Dream: Social Media

Aaron,

I think Jeremiah's idea about sponsoring online celebrities makes a lot of sense. I think if you look at the Radian6 Twebinar campaign, not only was the campaign successful for Radian6, it launched the company, but the event helped propel Chris Brogan forward as well. Though to me, Robert, Chris and Gary are not really microcelebrities, certainly not Gary or Robert.

While paid for blogging might not work, hiring someone for consulting and moderating the event does appear to do, look at the twebinar again. As to your question about product, I think there's already been some movement look at Zappos and their strategy for using social media for selling shoes, I am sure the crowd has influenced their approach to selling and what to sell.

But let me think more on this question. In the meantime let me ask you this question: The American dream concept was originally meant that people had the opportunity to pursue their own personal dream. Does the advent of personal publishing, cloud computing, and the culture of participation now mean that the American dream can finally be achieved for more people

John

-------

From: Aaron Strout
Sent: Thursday, August 20, 2009 12:38 AM

To: John Cass

Subject: RE: American Dream: Social Media

John,

Great responses. Although I’m curious as to why you don’t think Robert, Gary and maybe even Chris aren’t microcelebrities? Is that because you think that they are too well known? If not them, then who are the microcelebrities? This is not a loaded question – I am genuinely curious.

Good call on the Radian6 Twebinar campaign. And I like Zappos as an example of social helping to sell shoes (and other stuff). They are a company that everyone should have on their radar. Although I’m concerned about how being owned by Amazon may affect their autonomy. I haven’t seen any drastic changes in behavior yet but I’d be surprised if they don’t try and reel in CEO, Tony Hsieh, a bit as his ongoing transparency could become a liability for the corporation. I have a couple of friends that work at Amazon. Maybe I’ll see if I can get their take. I may also consider asking Tony to come on the Quick-n-Dirty podcast show I do with my friend, Jennifer Leggio.

Onto your question for me regarding the American Dream and whether it's finally achievable thanks to social media. I'm going to give you a consulting answer and say, "maybe." By the way, I thought you'd appreciate that I'm writing my response to you while on a plane from NYC to Atlanta and the last episode of season 2 from Madmen is on - very apropos given the impetus for this post.

To drill down on my answer a little, I'll go further and say that the reason that we haven't fully achieved the American Dream due to the mass adoption of social media is that many people are still limited by time and connectivity. What I mean by this is that while WiFi access is more

accessible than ever (especially thanks to public libraries and internet cafes), a number of people, especially those who work in more traditional blue collar industries typically can't get to libraries or internet cafes during work hours. Also, for people working 1+ jobs a day, engaging in social media is a luxury. With that said, I'll say that we are close. I think that if there is a will, there is a way. Especially with the ever increasing penetration of internet enabled phones.

So, I think it's time for me to tee up a question for you. If a slice of the American Dream is for any musical artist to make money from the sale of their music, do all the downward pressures of free (albeit illegal) services like Bit Torrent and the rise of all-you-can eat services offered by Napster and some of the big wireless carriers going to rob these artists of this possibility?

Best,

Aaron

------
From: John Cass

Sent: Thursday, August 20, 2009 7:18 AM

To: Aaron Strout
Subject: RE: American Dream: Social Media

Hi Aaron,

I think I'd have to understand the definition of a microcelebrity, maybe it's someone who is only famous within their own field? But when I think of Gary or Robert I believe they have transcended their field and have broader fame. Certainly Gary has that level with all of his TV appearances.

Do you recall the interchange between the Amazon.com CTO or CIO and a blogger a few years ago about social media, it could have been Robert Scoble. Might be interesting to look back at that and see if the CTO is still around?? Perhaps its time for Amazon.com to change and not Zappos!

What you say about the digital divide is true, though you gave me an idea, perhaps most people don't know how they can use social media for creativity, I wonder if our article should also attempt to inspire people to achieve all that they can do. I've always been motivated to give adults another chance through education, even though their current life might seem as if its difficult to change. I think social media gives people another easier opportunity to change themselves into something they want to be.

Regarding music, I think we've seen so many examples of unknown bands making it big because of their use of social media, that I'd argue that social media is more of a help to music by keeping it rich and varied rather than just corporate. It seems to me the quality of
American music has improved, maybe it is difficult for me to argue that social media was the cause but I suspect it was. For some big artists there may not be the same opportunity as there was in the 80's with making as much money, but perhaps now more artists will be able to make a living. I think that artists have to look for alternative ways to make money, such as concert tickets and other goods, the music can be sold but perhaps sometimes that's the loss leader to build the long term relationship.

John

-------
From: Aaron Strout

Sent: Wednesday, August 26, 2009 1:23 PM

To: John Cass Subject: RE: American Dream: Social Media

John,

I was hoping that was the direction you were going with the microcelebrity thing. You're right in the sense that Scoble and Garyvee have become semi-well known in the non-social circles. Chris B. is on his way there. [POST SCRIPT: I talked to Brogan last night and with his NY Times bestselling book and an upcoming television appearance on Dr. Phil have likely solidified his position as non-microcelebrity]

Great point on social helping bands. I've definitely seen it help some of the bigger bands like Radiohead and I'm sure there are hundreds of stories of smaller, lesser known bands tapping into the likes of MySpace and Twitter to grow their followings (same can be said about Pandora helping out). As for inspiring people to achieve all they can do, I like that goal. I'm going to suggest that for a different post. In fact, I just watched a movie last night called Revolutionary Road. A bit depressing but very well acted and it had a great message i.e. be careful of what you settle for. You game? Either way, doing this post via e-mail with you has been a blast. Your move..

Best,

Aaron

-------

From: John Cass

Sent: Wednesday, August 26, 2009 2:43 PM

To: Aaron Strout Subject:

RE: American Dream: Social Media

Aaron,

Super, I'd definitely be up for continuing the conversation in a different post.I really like the idea of the American Dream inspiring people to be more than they are... especially already established and older people who might no longer be all that motivated because of where circumstances and choices have taken them in life. I think there's always hope, and it would be interesting to explore how social media has changed people's lives.

Great to collaborate on these ideas.. On a topical note, but seemingly related, I've been listening to some of the radio eulogies about Ted Kennedy, certainly a very inspiring man who drew a lot strength from his family, experiences and even tragedies, but who did something with those experiences.

John

Photo courtesy: http://kristisiegel.com

Wednesday, September 2, 2009

My 20,000 Tweet...

Hmmm, trying to figure out what my 20,000 tweet should be. I have a few thoughts but figured folks may be willing to give me some suggestions here. If you missed my 10,000 update, it was a doozy. I know I won't be able to trump that so I'm thinking about the following ideas:

My favorite 20 tweets of all time (mine or others)
A charity message
My favorite 20 tweeters (fraught with social danger)
20 tips for maximizing social (feeling like this might be a cop out)

So tell me oh wise ones, what should I do? I've only got about 20 tweets left before I hit the milestone.

Tuesday, September 1, 2009

Marketers Beware the Age Wave

THIS POST IS YET ANOTHER JOINT THAT JOHN CASS AND I HAVE

WORKED ON TOGETHER. YOU CAN SEE JOHN'S VERSION HERE.

92, 62 and 78.
These three numbers promise to have a major impact on marketing over the next five to 10 years. Why? The numbers highlight an on-going radical change in demographics in the United States. Seventy-eight is the number of Baby Boomers that were born between the years of 1946 and 1964. Sixty-two million is the number of Gen X-ers that were born between the years 1965 and 1979. And ninety-two million is the number of Gen Y-ers born—or ‘Millennials’ as they are often dubbed—between 1980 and 2001.*

Ken Dychtwald, psychologist, gerontologist, public speaker, and author, calls this an "Age Wave", a significant shift in demographics that replaces the “60 and 70 somethings” with “20 and 30 somethings.” Affecting not only the workforce but also consumers, marketers need to take into account the changing needs and desires of this emerging demographic.

Implications for You, the Marketer

It's obvious that Gen Y-ers spend a lot more time on the computer (and their 3G-enabled phones) than the older generations do, but what's more important to consider is the philosophical shift in mindset that is taking place.

For one, Gen Y-ers are more skeptical of advertising and rely more heavily on their peers for information and recommendations than the older crowd, who turn to more mainstream sources, like newspapers, for information.

They also expect you as a company to be more fully accessible online and to engage with them where they are most comfortable i.e. Facebook, Twitter, sites like GetSatisfaction and on Youtube.

Oh yeah, you better be on Facebook, because that's where they hang out with peers. And your Facebook page better not be full of corporate speak otherwise they'll not only not come back but they'll tell their friends that you simply "don't get it."

One needs only to look at the hemorrhaging of newspapers around the United States to see what happens when an industry doesn't change with the times. The Post Intelligencer is gone, Chicago Tribune in receivership, the Boston Globe may have the plug pulled by their New York Times Co. bosses and the hundred year old Christian Science Monitor has moved to online only with only a weekly digest coming out in paper. It's only a matter of time before other industries follow suit.

So what do marketers need to do to keep up? Here are a few simple steps that John and I have come up with to help you get started:

Listen: There's a better-than-average chance that your Gen Y customers are already talking about you online. Finding out what they're saying is a great place to start. Good, bad or indifferent, this information will help shape an approach to your audience. At the simplest, this can be accomplished by setting up Google alerts. There are also online monitoring services available from companies such as Radian6, Techrigy, BuzzStream, Nielsen, Visible Technologies, Meltwater News and Cymfony (more on this topic in a post that John and I did on ReadWriteWeb).
Converse: If your customers are talking about you on micro-blogging sites, like Twitter, set up a corporate account (but get some training/help first). Companies like New Marketing Labs and Digital Voodoo focus on advising companies in this capacity.
Engage: Show your customers you care by creating funny, creative and engaging content. A good B2B company that's leading by example in this regard is Boston-based Hubspot In the B2C realm, take a look at BlendTec and the approach they take to selling blenders.

Community Building with Gen Y

Gen Y’ers have embraced the concept of online communities and made it one of the hallmarks of their generation. Yes, places like Facebook, MySpace, Twitter and LinkedIn fall into this category, but don't limit yourself to the pool of public social networking sites.

As Aaron and I mentioned above, engaging your key audience is critical, especially as the majority of users become younger and savvier. Develop social networks that connect people locally, but also let the wider community through their friends see the benefits of your community. Connect on Facebook and other popular culture social media technologies, and create your own social network.

Demonstrate You Understand What's Important To Gen Y

Community marketing: Sponsor and work with nonprofits in your marketing efforts. Green marketing can also be effective in demonstrating your company is taking steps to do something about the environment.
Community Evangelism: Give people positions of authority in the community you will cultivate the next generation of leaders and give people more reasons to join and stay in your community if you empower them to help you build the community.
Virtual Worlds: Gen Y is overloaded with advertising, cynical to an extent and tougher to make an impression on. Provide an experience that is rich and interactive the greater the chance of making an impression. Consider setting up a virtual world for your community like some of those that exist on SecondLife.

Key Take Aways

The boomer demographic dominated the American scene for decades. As this group moves into their golden years, other age groups will fill this gap in employment and culture. Gen X’ers don’t have nearly the numbers that the boomers have, but as Gen Y matures, filling the employment gap and becoming the dominant target demographic, American culture will undergo a great change.

Gen Y is already influencing how American's live and work as they become an increasing portion of the American workforce. Boomers & Gen X’ers beat the path, but Gen Y’ers have grown up in a world of digital media. They may not have all the experience or knowledge, but they do know how to really work within this new culture. Everyone else will adopt to their cultural standard. If you want to succeed in marketing to Gen Y, the strategies are content marketing and social media engagement. Develop compelling content that people actually want to read. Use that content to engage your Gen Y audience. Oh, by the way, this is also how you can market to Gen X and Boomers as those generations increase the role of the web in their lives.

Marketing is all about understanding your audience to satisfy their wants and needs. If your audience is Gen Y, you have to understand them in order to market to them. Even if Gen Y is not your audience, their culture will become mainstream American culture. Spending time on getting to know Gen Y’ers is a business opportunity, as that knowledge will prepare you for the new realities of living and marketing in the 21st century.

*Based on US Census Data, November 2008

Photo Courtesy: http://paulthissen.com

Friday, August 28, 2009

Ubiquity Marketing UnSummit: An Event Worth Checking Out in the ATX

A couple of months ago, a friend of mine, Jason Stoddard, told me that he was pulling together a conference here in Austin. Based on the description and the group of people he was pulling together (see below for list), I couldn't help but agree to speak. To that end, I've been a bad partner in letting people that follow my blog know about the Ubiguity Marketing UnSummit.

To that end, here are the deets (if you live in Austin, you MUST come)...

Focus: How Local Entrepreneurs can Save the World and Pay the Rent in any Economic Climate

Agenda & Schedule

Date & Time: September 3, 2009

8:00am – 6:15pm

Location: Shoreline Grill

98 San Jacinto Blvd - Austin, Texas (directions)

There's also a tweetup after where Brogan will be doing book signings. If you haven't heard, he's on the NY Times bestseller list! He's selling and signing books (drinks will be available for cash as well).

Oh yeah, the most important part of this (in addition to the opportunity to see some great national and local talent) is the fact that all proceeds are benefiting the Capital Area Food Bank, Mobile Loaves and Fishes & PlanetCancer.

Thursday, August 27, 2009

Can you judge a book by its cover?

The title of this post asks, "can you judge a book by its cover?" You can when the "cover" is the front page of someone's Twitter account and you're judging whether to follow them. That page contains an avatar image (usually the person's photo), a short biography (no more than 160 characters long), a link to the person's home page (or company, blog, LinkedIn profile, etc.), and -- crucially -- the most recent 20 tweets that the person has sent. You can click through to see more tweets in batches of 20, but if you follow many people on Twitter, doing that often takes more time than it's worth.

And there's the rub: if you want more people to follow you on Twitter, you have very little time to make a good first impression on them . . . but many ways that you could string landmines of the "Don't Follow Me" variety across their path.

Recently four heavy Twitter users -- Meg Fowler, Jim Storer, Aaron Strout, and Tim Walker -- got to talking (on Twitter, of course) about the poisoned words, phrases, and other cues that automatically signal "Don't Follow" for them. The end result was that the four decided to bang out a joint blog post that talked about best practices in not following based on not liking the proverbial "cover" put forth by fellow tweeters. Here's what we came up with:

Tim Walker's "not follow" strategy

“MLM” (multi-level marketing). I’m sure that somewhere, some nice person who does MLM could explain to me how it’s not a veiled Ponzi scheme. Until then . . . you’ll pardon me if I continue to think of it as “a veiled Ponzi scheme.” No thanks.
Tweets that include “buy followers” or “hundreds of followers” or anything else in the “get lotsa followers!” genre. I try hard to earn new followers by being relevant, interesting, funny, and personable. The idea that you would buy yours in bulk -- much less promote that process -- disgusts me.
Political ig’nance. I follow people of all political stripes, from all over the world. But if you have to wear your politics on your sleeve, and if your politics are of the knee-jerk type (again, regardless of your leanings), I just can’t stand to follow you.
Calling yourself a “visionary” or “expert” or (shudder) “guru.” It’s much better to say you’re a “marketing veteran” or “experienced sales leader” or whatever. Let *others* call you a visionary.

Meg Fowler's "not follow" strategy (cross-posted on "friend" Gradon Tripp's blog)

Love it, Tim.

For me, it's more about "who do I need to block around here?" Because no one likes to be spammed. So if I see any of this in your bio and/or first 20 tweets...
Requests to "follow me back!"
Promotion of affiliate programs
Actual affiliate links as the link in your bio
Any mention of followers ("I can get you followers!" "Get thousands of followers!" "5,000 followers and growing!" "This program will get you followers overnight!")
"Make money online (from home, easily, doing practically nothing, overnight, with my system, etc.)"
Promises to "generate" anything: money, cash, followers, success, creeping rashes...
Promotion of tooth whitening programs (Seriously?)
A mention of your Twitter Grader Rank
Mention of "Sponsored Tweets"
Mention of your "Twitter eBook FREE JUST CLICK HERE"
Presence of "69" in name (or "Shelly Ryan" as your name... poor, poor real @ShellyRyan)
Rockstar/Maven/diva/coach/thought leader/guru/expert/pro/maverick
Porn-star-like attributes in avatar or links (Nudity, actual sexual acts, clear intent to seduce me with something other than words)
Requests to click through to "see your profile"
Googly-eyed "Twitter Basic" avatar (upload a photo, PLEASE)
@ing people the same link OVER AND OVER

Jim Storer's"not follow" strategy
I've never auto-followed anyone, which at this point means I've vetted (to varying degrees) nearly 3,500 people. Until recently you had to click through to a person's/bots profile page to get the skinny on who they are. Now some of that info is available in the new follower email, but what I look for is the same.

Following to Follower % (you're following dramatically more people than follow you) - If this is too imbalanced there's something fishy and I'm not biting.
# of Updates to Followers/Following #'s - In the last six months I've started to see a lot of people with 5k+ followers/following and less than 100 updates. That suggests you're just using a program to rack up followers and that just wrong (IMHO). I'm not interested in being another notch on your bedpost.
If your bio includes any of the following I'm not interested: "more followers", "make money", "expert" (at anything), "MLM" and everything else Tim, Meg and Aaron came up with. I trust them.
If the words you chose to describe your pursuits in your biography are overly loquacious I will not be inclined to follow you back. Get real... use real words and tell me who you are.
If you haven't written anything in your bio and/or you haven't added a photo, I'm not following you.
If you have zero updates how am I supposed to know what you're going to talk about? I'm not listening until you start talking.
If your last few updates are repetitive and too self-promoting, I'm not interested in seeing that day to day. I already saw what you have to say when I was checking out your profile.

Aaron Strout's "not follow" strategy

The upside and downside of going last is that 1) all the good stuff has been said but 2) it leaves less stuff for me to say. Out of the list above, I'm probably the most lenient of the four. Like Jim, I've never auto-followed (but have considered it) so that means that I've hand followed back nearly 9,000 people (yup, that's a lot). However, I have a few basic rules that I follow:

In most cases (not all), I like seeing a picture. If someone is obviously a n00b who looks to be figuring things out, I'll cut 'em some slack. Otherwise, they don't make the cut.
I need a bio. Is it too much to tell me what you do?
I also need a tweet or two (unless they are a friend of mine and then of course they get the free hall pass)
No "get rich fast, affiliate or "let me sell you some shit" in the bio or last few tweets."
One I get stuck on a lot is the news feed/blog title posts. These really depend on follow ratio and quality of the tweets. It also is up to my mood. If I'm hand following 40-50 people, these folks usually make it in. If it's 4-5, not so much.
I will follow ANYONE from Austin (pornos excepted)
Oh yeah, I don't follow webcam girls or known pornos.

So what's your strategy? Who do you or don't you follow? Share your tips in the comments below.

photo credit: library.cornell.edu

Tuesday, August 25, 2009

Panhandling for Change: A Little Vote Goes a Long Way

Yup, I'm that dude. The one with his hand out asking for some change. Well, not actual change but the social equivalent. I'm looking for a vote (thumbs up or down) and/or a comment if you can spare it. It's for the 2010 South by Southwest Interactive Conference (SXSWi) and I am lucky enough to be in the running for three different panels. I've also submitted a fourth panel for my colleague, Kathy Warren, to lead with a client and a couple of other rock star brands.

Here are the details:

Social ROI is Not a Four Letter Word

Organizer/Moderator: Kathy Warren, VP Strategy & Measurement, Powered Inc.

Panelists: Peter Fasano, social media marketing, Coca Cola; Tom Hoehn, director brand communications & new media, Eastman Kodak; Shawn Morton, senior consultant for social media at Nationwide Insurance

If you’ve ever tried tracking down a return on investment (ROI) on “social,” you’ve found that it’s nearly impossible to find. During this interactive discussion, listen as brand practitioners from Coke, Nationwide and Kodak talk about ways that their companies are deriving real ROI from social while providing best practices, case studies and examples of how companies can achieve this elusive ROI Holy Grail.

It's About the Content Stupid

Organizer/Moderator: Simon Salt, CEO, The IncSlingers

Panelists: Aaron Strout, CMO, Powered; Dave Knox, brand manager, digital business strategy, Procter & Gamble; Amber Naslund, director of community, Radian6.

Content, content, content. If you haven't heard, it's the new currency and companies are looking at new ways to create smart, engaging and most importantly, inexpensive content to engage their customers, prospects and partners. From blog comments and community forums to expert videos, this interactive session will answer the important questions such as:

Where ownership of content starts, ends and why the lines blur.
How to deal with "inappropriate" content, handling negativity, moving beyond the C level fear of what people might say.
The best ways to strike a balance between expert, curated and customer generated content.

Hitting Bombs: Better Social Business through Sports Metaphors

Organizer/Moderator: Tim Walker, Blogger, Hoover's Inc.

Panelists: Aaron Strout, CMO, Powered; Jennifer Leggio, blogger, ZDNet; Kyle Flaherty, director of marketing, BreakingPoint Systems

Teamwork. Preparation. Execution. Sports abounds with lessons for today's socially enabled business. This panel's Murderer's Row of sports fans/social media pros will make you laugh, make you think, and give you fresh perspective on how sports metaphors can elevate social media practice for you and your company.

Where the Hell Are We In the Evolution of the Social Web?

Organizer/Moderator: Bill Johnston, chief community officer, ForumOne Communications

Panelists: Aaron Strout, CMO, Powered; Jake McKee & Sean O'Driscoll, principals, Ant's Eye View; Shawn Morton, senior consultant for social media at Nationwide Insurance

Social media practice and implementation is a dynamic and volatile subject that effects all functions in a company from the obvious (product, support, marketing) to the not so obvious (hr, operations). Hear from 5 seasoned social media practitioners (plus YOU!) about where we are on "the map" of social media adoption and practice, and where we are headed. The mood will be lively, the panel bright eyed and prepared, and the audience smart (and involved).

The Virtual Tongue: How NOT to Use Facebook for Business

Anyone that reads this blog or has connected with me on Twitter, Facebook or any of the other dozen or so social networks I belong to know that I'm a pretty reasonable guy. I know I need to be reasonable because I can be a little noisy at times (okay, a lot noisy). But I do try and create value for those I'm connected with whether that's sharing good posts, interesting podcasts I've recorded or helping friends re-broadcast their own messages.

This morning, I had someone friend me on Facebook that did NOT share my same values. After sending me six messages in two and a half hours, I had to pull the plug and un-friend this person. Part of me felt bad because this was only the third person out of a thousand plus friends (and three years on Facebook) that I disconnected with. But enough was enough.

I'm not sharing names because for the most part just to prove my point, here is a timeline of the six messages I received (just in case I might be overreacting)...

6:06 AM - A wall post thanking me for my friendship (I reciprocated by cross-posting on this person's wall with a "nice to meet you too" message).
7:32 AM - A request to become a fan of this person (I hate these requests for the most part unless a) you're a company I REALLY like or b) you're a close personal friend
7:35 AM - An invite to join one this person's groups
7:38 AM - An invite to attend one of this person's events/workshops
7:51 AM - Another wall post thanking me for my wall post
8:23 AM - Another invite to join yet another group
9:15 AM - Aaron pulls the plug on our "friend-ship"

Did this person actually think that this type of behaviour was welcome? To bring this around to a dating analogy (you know I like dating analogies, right?) I felt an awful lot like I met this person in a bar, said "hello" as I was grabbing a round of drinks at the bar and then next thing I know, they were trying to stick their tongue down my throat. WHOAAAA! I don't know about you, but even as a guy I would find this to be a major turn off.

Fortunately, most brands have figured out that creating a spam-fest, especially in such a condensed period of time, is NOT a good idea. I mean this person didn't take any time to get to know me, engage me in any meaningful dialog or maybe comment on a post or two of mine. Unfortunately, there are more and more of these folks who don't get it coming into the world of social with no regard to etiquette or best practices.

Do you have a good story about a "virtual tongue" or a bad case of social etiquette? If so, please share it in the comments below.

Thursday, August 20, 2009

The Best of Quick-n-Dirty

As you probably know by now, I do a weekly podcast with my friend and co-host, Jennifer Leggio called the Quick-n-Dirty show. If you don't know the genesis of this series, you can get the back story here.

We've been at it for eleven

weeks now and so far, I think we've done a good job evolving the show, creating chemistry and devloping a great group of followers like, ahem... Kyle Flaherty (who was kind enough to stand in as a guest host for us in week eight). We're always looking to improve though so if you have suggestions, please put them in the comments.

So what's with the "Best Of" focus after only eleven weeks on the job. Kind of like a

successful NBC pilot where you just get hooked and then all of a sudden, bam, they

revert to re-runs. Well, we're not quite that bad but Jen and I were both travelling this

week so we thought it might be helpful to take a week off, gather our thoughts and gear up for another eleven week run. To that end, why not do a quick recap of what we've covered and include a few "best of"moments. If you have a favorite moment, don't be shy.

By the way, If you want to read

recaps of all eleven, they are here... 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 ,10 11.

Now onto the highlights:

On our eleven shows, we've covered ten social networks. We try and cover one every week but accidentally skipped Glue during week two so it got bumped to week three. Here are they are in order of appearance - FourSquare, Glue, Blip.fm, Daily Mile, Loopt, 12 Seconds, Shelfari, Friendfeed and Aardvark. A quick heads up on the fact that we will have have Friendfeed (now part of Facebook) co-founder, Paul Bucheit, on the show next Thursday. Scobleizer take note!
One of the other regular parts of our shows is our featured "Tweet" or exec/person that we think is worth a follow. So far, we've covered CISCO CTO, Padmashree Warrior, Nancy Duarte, CEO of Duarte Designs, Kodak CMO, Jeffrey Hayzlett, BIDH CIO, John Halamka, Technically Women (comprised of a group of very smart ladies), Cluetrain author, Doc Searls, Dr. Ogan Gurel, Red Sox tv color announcer, Jerry Remy, former Yahoo, Ryan Kuder, principal at The Community Roundtable, Rachel Happe and last but not least, tweeting couple Terre & John Pruitt.
My favorite part of our show are our guests. So far, we've had a number of great ones including Michael Feferman of C3 and Rick Calvert of Blog World but in particular, Jen and I agreed that our two favorites have been Greg Matthews of Humana and Bert DuMars of Newell Rubbermaid. Not only did both impart some major pearls of wisdom about how their companies were tapping into the power of community and social media, but Greg and Bert also showed a great sense of humor. You can bet that they will both be asked back sometime in the near future. I guess I should mention Pandora CEO, Tim Westegren too 'cause he was pretty awesome.
The reason we originally started our podcast show was as a result of a disagreement Jennifer and I had over the value of celebrities like Oprah and Ashton Kutcher joining Twitter. Since then, we've had eleven opportunities to "agree to disagree." To be honest, Jennifer and I actually agree quite a lot of the time so many times, we end up flipping a coin to see who is going to take the counterpoint of a particular topic. This is pretty fun -- kind of like debate club if you think about it. In our next batch of shows, I'm goign to have to work harder to find topics that push Jennifer's buttons. ;)

Am I missing your favorite moment? If so, be sure to either call into next week's show (we're now taking 1-2 live callers per show) or let us know in the comments below. In the meantime, keep it quick-n-dirty!

Thursday, August 13, 2009

Weekly Social Marketing Links: August 11, 2009

Cross-posted from blog.powered.com.

Each week, the members of Powered's marketing, business development and product teams pick a news article, blog post or research report that “speaks” to them. With that article, they need to come to our weekly staff meeting prepared to give a 120 second update on what the article was about and why they found it useful. I've been a little behind in my updates recently so you're getting a few weeks worth in one fell swoop.

Links are below:

Beth Lopez (Marketing)
I enjoyed reading the article, Desperately Seeking Personal Brand, which talks about how you can tell if a social marketing “expert” is really a true guru or pretender.

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Marketers Like Twitter More Than Consumers Do
Interesting stats between the different views of marketers and consumers re: Twitter. While marketers see Twitter as a platform that is here to stay, consumers either don't have an opinion or think it's somewhat useful or dead. Both marketers and consumers feel it's not a good platform for advertising or promoting products, which is interesting considering we get a lot of questions about using Twitter for just this purpose.

I do agree with the article that Twitter can be useful for awareness efforts, but I don't think that by promoting your business you will generate leads or new business from Twitter. Twitter is about relationships. It's about connecting with people that you find interesting. It's about people…not about businesses. And if consumers don't know or don't care about Twitter, then it begs the question - Are marketers wasting time and energy in trying to figure out how to use it to propel their business?

DP Rabalais (Marketing)
In doing competitive intelligence this week I cam across an interesting story about Passenger and how they’re helping Mercedes Benz tap into 20-somethings (some current, but mostly future customers) help shape their future product offerings. Definitely worth the read if you get a chance.

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Fortune 100 CEOs & Companies: Social Media Use & Statistics

Good article on how CEO’s at top companies use social media, and also how companies are using tools like Twitter, LinkedIn and Twitter.

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I liked this post by blogger, Mack Collier titled Why Many Marketers Struggle with Social Media because it does a good job of succinctly calling out where traditional marketing and advertising is relevant vs. where SM is beneficial to companies. My favorite quote:

If you’re Burger King and you’re looking to influence whether I go there or not, use plain old marketing. It’s just fine. It’s the right tool for the job. So is advertising. You don’t HAVE to use social media for that.

But, if you’re Burger King and you want to understand me, to get what’s really going on inside my head, and know what we have in common, then THAT is where social media can be useful. Talk to me. Get to know me. Ask me about me and the things that aren’t about you.

Doug Wick (BizDev)
The danger of being an innovative start-up that is a little resource-challenged is that your innovations can be easily imitated. Facebook has been slowly learning from Twitter and incorporating their features while Twitter struggles with problems like infrastructure that Facebook solved long ago. This article does a nice job of showing where the endgame for Twitter might be, now that Facebook has acquired another sophisticated Twitter-imitator, Friendfeed.

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My article this week is Virtual Worlds are Getting a Second Life. Some interesting stats about the rebounding explosive growth of virtual worlds (especially among youngsters), and how they have been faster to develop revenue models than their 2-dimensional social counterparts like Facebook and Twitter. I would guess that is related to the fact that Facebook and Twitter ultimately deliver stickiness through the exchange of content (an activity that is complementary to our real lives), where 3D simulations can expand the possibilities for other social behaviors – such as commerce – more naturally since they do not complement, but instead emulate, our own reality.

Jay MacIntosh (BizDev)
Women are more relational and nurturing while men are more transactional…at least that’s the theory from a study by RapLeaf. http://digg.com/u3AQJa I’ve always been fascinated by how women and men think and behave differently. To see it in action, pay attention to the dynamics the next time you’re in a group setting (children or adults). You’ll likely see female energy more focused on understanding others and connecting with them by validating their experiences and feelings. On the other hand, male energy is usually more focused on being understood by others especially in terms of what we know and our past success. How do these differences show up in social media environments? Though I don’t have the data to support this…yet, I’ll bet women use “friending” features more than men, while men participate more in things like reputation management. Anyhow, something to consider when talking strategy with clients.

Bill Fanning (BizDev)

Bill's been out doing some major sales stuff but time to get him back on the "article" wagon. ;)

Don Sedota (Product)
This is a good list from Jay Baer on 11 Timely Social Media Takeaways. It’s basically a short-list of 11 recent social initiatives or planned initiatives by companies/brands and a key takeaway from each. My favorite is the one on Lane Bryant and their recent announcement of a “Plus-Sized Community” for women. It’s a great example of striking an emotional chord with the customer for a brand that on the surface may not seem to be a great social candidate. Lane Bryant is also hoping to leverage member questions/comments for the purposes of product innovation which seems to be an increasing trend.

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In the spirit of interesting stats and prospective customers potentially finding Facebook Connect as an attractive demand generator, here’s a post from Brian Solis on up to date Facebook stats . Unfortunately, he doesn’t mention the source of his information but he says that the statistics will be used in his next book so take that for what it’s worth. Anyways, some highlights that could be used to sell prospective clients on the attractiveness of Facebook/FBC as a demand generation source include:

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

The average social graph equates to 120 friends

120 million users log onto Facebook at least once a day

15,000 and counting websites, devices and applications have implemented Facebook Connect since its launch in December 2008

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I found this article pretty interesting, Please Don’t Follow or Friend Me, posted by Steven Hodson on the Shooting at Bubbles blog. It talks about how the concept of “friends” is different across different social networks and whether being someone’s “friend” on one social network is an obligation to accept that person as a “friend” on all social networks. A good quote from the article that sums it up (and I tend to agree) is “The richness and value of the Friending Economy comes from the quality and closeness of your ‘friends’, not the number of them. By blindly reciprocating we dilute the value of our ‘Friending’ not just for ourselves but also for those people who do decide to follow or friend us.”

There’s also an excerpt to another thoughtful post in the article’s sidebar (near the end) called “What Have You Done for Me Lately – Keeping Score in Social Media” which is similar in spirit but speaks to the viewpoint that just because you’ve followed someone, re-tweeted their comment, linked to their blog post, etc. doesn’t mean you should hold them in debt until they return the favor. The payback will be eventual and long-term, and in the end everything evens out.

Monday, August 10, 2009

Software Advice Relocates to Austin (psst, there's free beer)

Software Advice, just moved to Austin! They're celebrating by throwing their 1st Annual Summer Bash. Let's help welcome them.

What: Free hors d'oerves and beer from Independence Brewing Co.
When: 6:00 P.M. on Thursday, August 13th
Where: 714 Congress Avenue, Suite 200 (upstairs)

They're eager to meet Austin's press, bloggers, technocrats and party people.

Software Advice Moves to Austin (more deets here)

Quick-n-dirty Social Media Podcast: Episode 10 Recap

Another day, another Quick-n-Dirty podcast show. Oh, I mean that in a positive way. It's always good when you feel like you've hit your groove with a blog/podcast show. Obviously you need to keep it fresh but understanding what's working and whats not comes from practice. It also allows you to try new things like our surprise guest dial in at the end of the show from friend, Bill Johnston of Forum One (more on that below).

For anyone new to the show, here are the recaps of episodes one, two, three, four, five. six, seven, eight and nine. If you've listened to more than a couple of our shows, we do welcome feedback so please feel free to critique us in the comments below.

If you missed this week's show, you can listen to an archive of episode ten here. If you're more of a reader than a listener, you'll find a recap of this week's show below:

Featured Social Network: Aardvark. While Jennifer and I haven't used this service a ton, both of us have answered the e-mail requests that have come from our friends. One of the main reasons we like Aardvark (in addition to the awesome t-shirt Aaron received), is that it's old world (e-mail) meets new world (social networking). It's also a clever use of geo-based social networking without the intrusivness of being gps-discoverable which Jennifer doesn't like.
Special Guest & Case Study: Dan Schawbel, "leading personal branding expert for Gen-Y," author of Me 2.0, and social media specialist at EMC. It was pleasure having Dan although I will say that he sure does know how to talk (and that comes from a guy that's pretty darn good at talking himself).
Featured Twitterer: Rachel Happe. For the second straight week, Jennifer and I picked someone that we both knew and respected (last week, we had Ryan Kuder). I worked with Rachel at Mzinga for a few months -- something that just deepened my great respect for her. In addition, Rachel is part of the group, Technically Women, an organization that Jennifer also belongs to (and something we covered back in week five). Oh yeah, Rachel is a former IDC analyst and is currently a principal at The Community Roundtable along with close friend, Jim Storer.
Point / Counterpoint: The Speaker's Group neglecting to include any women on it's "top 10 social media speaker list." I'll spare you the details as Jennifer covered it thoroughly in a post over on her ZDNet blog (Geoff Livingston also shared some thoughts here). Bottom line, Jennifer (who is repped by the Speaker's Group) thought it was most effective for her to work with the SG to help find a solution to their initial faux pas of not including ANY women on their list of top ten social media speakers. My position was, "shame on them for not getting it right in the first place." To that end, our friend Bill Johnston -- our surprise guest caller -- who runs events for ForumOne said that it was B.S. because if anything, he found it easier to land great women speakers to talk about social media and community at his events. Yay Bill!

Up next week, we'll be talking with Bert DuMars, CMO of Newell-Rubbermaid and our featured "tweeter of the week" is none other than John Pruitt. ALSO, we need your input. We're thinking of carving out more time for live callers toward the end of the show. Do you like this idea? If not, why not?

What, this recap wasn't enough? Well go and listen live or download archived podcasts here.

Friday, August 7, 2009

Facebook Connect: Rockstar Podcast Interview

Cross-posted from blog.powered.com.

In an earlier podcast I did regarding Facebook Connect, I talked about the fact that I think that this is the future of social marketing. I am so excited about it, I enlisted the help of our PR firm, SHIFT Communications, to collect three more big brains including Forrester senior analyst, Jeremiah Owyang, digital editor of AdWeek, Brian Morrissey and marketing blogger/consultant, Susan Getgood.

A few highlights from the session for those that like to read more than they like to listen:

Jeremiah Owyang (3:49 - 3:58) "In the past, we thought of interactive marketing which is user to Web site. Now, in social marketing, very different, it's user to user. "
Brian Morrissey (5:18 - 5:43) "What we're talking about here with Connect, is how brands can look at these social platforms and tool sets as ways to really further make connections with their consumers wherever they are. And Facebook Connect has the possibility of allowing them to embed social marketing into how they interact with consumers."
Susan Getgood (10:08 - 10:34) "Knowing what people find interesting to share is as important as knowing what they are looking at themselves. When we have a Web site, we can look at analytics and see which pages people are hitting and where they click-through and all this other stuff, but the idea that they thought something was important enough to share, that kind of information gives a company of any size the kind of information to know what kind of content really engages your customer and you can build more of it."

During the podcast, I also referred to some engaging statistics put together by the Business Insider regarding the effectiveness of Facebook Connect (thanks to Pearl Russell on the Powered team for finding these):

Registration: sites that use Facebook Connect as an alternate to account registration have seen a 30-200% increase in registration on their sites.
Engagement: sites with Facebook Connect see a 15-100% increase in reviews and other user generated content
Traffic: For each story published in Facebook, we see roughly 3 clicks back to the site. Nearly half the stories in the Stream get clicked on. This creates opportunities for the site to encourage more user actions – knowing that each one may result in 3 new visits to their site. With other models like search, there’s nothing you can do to increase user traffic besides optimizing for keywords.

Most importantly, you probably want to know the answer to which successful companies are currently using Facebook Connect? Unfortunately, there aren't many Fortune 500 companies using it yet but during our podcast, Brian brought up the examples of JC Penney (it's number 4 on the list of 10 in a great post by Mashable) and Red Bull. Jeremiah mentioned Volkswagon's Meet the VW's campaign.

To listen to this podcast "in page," feel free to visit the original posting on our Powered blog. To download this podcast, right-mouse click here and select "save file as."

If you're interested, we've got a slick demo of how Facebook will work with some of our Powered clients.

NOTE: The "Back to School" podcast series will be a regularly occurring podcast focused on the business value of social marketing, social media and online communities. Guests will include practitioners, authors, analysts and thought leaders in the space.

Friday, July 31, 2009

Quick-n-dirty Social Media Podcast: Episode 9 Recap

After a week off for a little family vacation, imagine how relieved I was to find out that I still had a job as a cohost of Quick-n-Dirty podcast. Apparently, Kyle Flaherty, did an admirable job filling in for me but my partner in crime, Jennifer Leggio, decided that he's more fun to make fun of than me so he was the odd man out (sorry Kyle).

For anyone new to the show, here are the recaps of episodes one, two, three, four, five. six, seven and eight. Not that the first couple of shows weren't good but we really started to hit our stride around show five and six so if you're digging back through the archives, you might want to start there.

If you missed this week's show, you can listen to an archive of episode nine here. If you're more of a reader than a listener, you'll find a recap of this week's show below:

Featured Social Network: Friendfeed. To be honest, we focused more on the contraversy surrounding Friendfeed that came up a couple weeks back when blogger/uber Tweeter, Aaron Brazell pulled the plug on his FF account. Friendfeed evangelist and big time tech blogger, Robert Scoble was less than pleased because when Aaron pulled the plug, it wiped out all of Scoble's comments. Rather than take my word for it, read Scoble's and Brazell's accounts of the story.
Special Guest: Michael Feferman, director of digital for C3. No, we didn't just have Michael on the show because his name is fun to say. But we did invite him on Q-n-D because he works in a job where music meets digital, and in particular, social media. What I liked most about our interview with Michael was his candor around the music industry's need to embrace some of these new ways of embracing their communities.
Case Study: EMC thanks to friend, Len Devanna. During the show, I shared the following bullets with the listeners:
* About 18 months old now.
* Greater than 50% adoption across a global workforce of about 38k.
* It’s been instrumental in breaking down internal walls (geo, divisional, organizational, etc.)
* Among initial intent was to drive proficiency with E2.0 across global workforce. I’d say we’ve done that in spades. Many of our current public bloggers honed their voice on EMC ONE pre going public.
* We’re seeing more and more movement away from traditional processes and migration to online collab via wikis, etc.
Len was also kind enough to pass along these two links that highlight the importance of EMC | ONE to the company.
Featured Twitterer: Ryan Kuder. What was cool about this is that both Jennifer and I know Ryan (her IRL and me via Twitter). I think Ryan was one of the first 250 people I followed on Twitter so he of course has a special place in my heart. What is particularly cool is the fact that Ryan was one of the first people to publicly tweet about his experience of getting laid off from a major company... in this case, Yahoo. If you don't follow him yet, make sure you do because he's smart, funny and always helpful.
Point / Counterpoint: Sponsored blogging. Yeah, don't get us started on this one. To be honest, neither Jennifer nor I am a huge fan of sponsored blogging. I am a little softer in my stance around sponsored Tweeting -- something Jennifer has very little tolerance for. One interesting point that Jennifer brought up that I liked a lot was that if companies want high profile folks to talk about their company/products, they'd be much better off hiring subject matter experts -- paid or unpaid -- to support their brand. We didn't mention this but certainly Wal-mart's Eleven Mom's program would fall into this category.

Up next week, we'll be talking about social network, Aardvark and bringing on special guest, personal branding expert, Dan Schawbel. Of course we'll have a featured case study, tweeter and point/counterpoint as well. Be sure to join us!

What, this recap wasn't enough? Well go and listen live or download archived podcasts here.

Monday, July 27, 2009

Time to Help Mobile Loaves & Fishes Do Good!

This is a re-post from the MLF blog. I want to support Mobile Loaves and Fishes so this is a re-post. Please feel free to re-post this to your blog as well.

Mark Horvarth (@HardlyNormal) for those of us on Twitter, has been garnering national attention for his efforts to bring voices to the homeless. His blog and his website have given him a place to explore unexplored stories, and call attention to some of our most overlooked citizens—the homeless among us. Alan Graham, President of Mobile Loaves and Fishes, (@MLFNOW) invited him to come see Austin and go on a truck run, attend the screening of Happiness Is, and serve the homeless. So, Mark decided to make Austin a stop on his nation-wide tour! He’ll be here from the 29th of July through the 1st of August.

Mark, who is, as he puts it “not a solutions guy,” is embarking on his road trip to “see homelessness” and to “help people” by calling attention to their stories. According to Mark, he has two main strengths going for him: he’s "pushy,” and he’s "loud”—not to mention compassionate. During our conversation he was particularly upset about the stories he has heard of families “downsizing” by kicking out their eldest children.

So why is he doing this now? Good question. As Mark puts it, we are entering into a “perfect storm of homelessness,” with the economy in the place it is, with government out of money. (In fact, some of his sponsors haven’t even been able to commit because of financial difficulties!) So, what better time to call attention to this immense need?

Mark will be arriving in town just in time to take part in our social media extravaganza around the movie “Happiness Is.” You’ll likely be able to have your OWN conversation with Mark at any of the events below:

Happiness Is DVD Signing:

Waterloo Records Downtown from 5-7 PM on Thursday, July 30th.
free BBQ from Stubbs and free beer from Shiner
MLF catering truck and Stubb's BBQ World Tour trailer

Tweetup (you don't have to go to both the movie and the tweetup--stop by for a few!)

Alamo Drafthouse South Lamar from 7-9 PM on Thursday, July 30th
cash bar + free popcorn
Here's a link to the twtvite (#nosuffering), spread the word and RSVP: http://twtvite.com/bn6p48/2

Happiness Is Screening [I will be watching the documentary as well. MLF is prominently featured in the movie. Preview here.]

Alamo Drafthouse South Lamar (directions) at 9:30 PM and 9:50 PM
Two theaters--one for the movie, and one for social media! You can tweet to your heart's content :)
Reserve tickets by visiting their site at www.HappinessIsTheMovie.com and clicking on the email link for “tickets” on the front page.

For more information on the events visit: www.mlfnow.org/happiness

We would love your help in spreading the compassion and awareness, please help!

Make a micro-donation to Mobile Loaves & Fishes (www.mlfnow.org/NoSuffering)
Tweet and Blog the events and the movie--what did you think?
Follow @MLFNOW
Follow Happiness Is the movie @HappinessIs_tm
Help @MLFNOW start a conversation around homelessness and palliative care by interacting on Twitter and the MLF blog
Help MLF win a $25,000 social media makeover! Retweet the following: RT to help Mobile Loaves & Fishes win a 25K social media makeover http://ow.ly/4pcs @CommuniCause #cause3324
Hand out water to the homeless

Wednesday, July 15, 2009

Former Jive CMO to Head Social "Niche-working" Co., BlackBox Republic

Remember Sam Lawrence, Mr. "Go Big Always?" I've interviewed him a couple of times in the past -- both in podcast and blog formats. He's one of my favorite people in the "social" space because he's smart, funny and thinks big... ALWAYS. Based one his announcement last night at 9 PM ET, his next move shows that nothing has changed.

Yup, Sam has taken on the roll of co-founder and CEO of new "social niche-working" company, BlackBox Republic. According to the press materials I received, Sam says BlackBox is, "focused on reinventing the online relationship market." Before you jump to any conclusions, I verified with Sam and his fellow co-founder, April Donato, that this is not another "Adult Friendfinder" or other nefarious porn/online dating site. Think of it as akin to Burning Man where "stuff happens" but there is zero judgement and adults can act like adults.

While I can tell you all sorts of thing about what Sam and April are up to, why not listen to them tell you themselves (yup, we recorded a podcast). If it's a little choppy at points, I apologize because my iPhone crapped out on me. I've tried to edit out the dead air and transitions but either way, it's definitely worth listening to. HINT: This is the future of social networking... at least one flavor anyway.

Thursday, July 9, 2009

Quick-n-dirty Social Media Podcast: Episode 6 Recap

Well, It's only taken six episodes but I think that Jennifer Leggio and I are starting to hit our stride on the Quick-n-Dirty podcast series. For one, we're starting to get used to each other's style (no easy task when you can't see one another). We've also figured out how to use Skype as a back channel for the show. A third thing that helps is that Jennifer and I do live feedback right after our broadcast which is a helpful way to look back at what's worked and what hasn't

For anyone new to the show, here are the recaps of episodes one, two, three, four and five. We'll also be posting the roster for next week's show on the Blog Talk Radio show site soon. The big news for next week's show is that we'll have CEO of music social networking site, Pandora. For no other reason, you'll want to tune in to hear what Tim Westergren has to say about the state of music, how Pandora has battled legal issues and of course, how you can fine tune your Pandora station to get the most out of it.

If you missed this week's show, you can listen to an archive of episode six here. If you're more of a reader than a listener, you'll find a recap of this week's show below:

Featured Social Network: Loopt. This geo-location based social network is helpful because it provides real time, GPS-informed data on members' whereabouts. It also allows for members to text, ping or call anyone within their network. Jennifer doesn't love the concept of geo-based networks that don't give you a full of control over who can see what (but she caveats that it's because she's a "'fraidy cat.") I like these types of geo-based services because they are a great way to connect with friends or acquaintances when at a conference or out on the town. For what it's worth, our special guest, Greg Matthews sided with me on this debate. Score one for the guys.
Special Guest/Case Study: As I mentioned, Greg Matthews, director of consumer innovation at Humana, was our special guest. He also doubled as our weekly "case study" as he talked about some of the best practices Humana is employing to change the way customers -- not just of Humana, but of the industry in general -- perceive health benefits providers. You can read more about what Greg and Humana are doing over on Amber Naslund's Altitude Branding blog. By the way, Greg's best quote of the podcast (as captured by my partner in crime) was easily, "The concepts of governance and social don't go well together." You can find Greg's blog here.
Featured Twitterer: For our first five episodes, we've focused on finding executives that Twitter and blog. As you can imagine, this is no easy task so we've decided to shift focus a little bit to a "featured twitterer." This is someone that "gets it" and that you may or may not know but should be paying attention to. This week, we highlighted none other than Mr. Clue Train himself, Doc Searls. In a nutshell, Doc is funny, human and helpful. He also follows back... okay, not everyone but enough people to avoid the criticism of being to clicquey.
Point / Counterpoint: Speaking of clicquey (our point/counterpoint two weeks ago), this time we went toe to toe on a topic Jennifer covered in her ZDNet blog, namely, Is Twitter Making Us All Self-Centered. Jen argues, "yes," because everyone is becoming too broadcast focused. I didn't disagree with her overarching point but stuck with my guns that at the end of the day, you control who you follow. If people are too broadcast focused, you vote with your feet and unfollow them.

Oh, the REALLY exciting news was that we gave away a free 2009 Blog World Expo pass. What was really exciting was that our friend, Jen Wojcik of Austin, TX won (I did the drawing randomly so no griping about the process being fixed). Congrats Jen. We look forward to seeing you at Blog World Expo this fall.

What, this recap wasn't enough? Well go and listen live or download archived podcasts here.

Tuesday, July 7, 2009

Engagement vs. Serendipity

Earlier this morning, my Twitter friend, Michael Calienes who is also the co-founder of The Conversation Factory, tweeted out a clip he did on video social network, 12 Seconds. You can watch for yourself but for those of you that prefer the written word, Michael's question was "What if over the next couple of weeks you un-followed everyone who's never engaged with you on Twitter?"

What I liked about Michael's question was that it wasn't an "eff you" kind of statement but rather a thoughtful one. His follow up question was, "Do you think it would improve the relationships you have with the people who do engage with you?"

unfollowing the unengaged on 12seconds.tv

What I liked most about this quick video was that it got me thinking about engagement vs. serendipity, two things that are possible more now than ever via social media. The first concept, engagement, is obviously something that is high on any marketer's priority list. The second, serendipity, is something that we love when it comes our way but rarely do we feel like we have much control over the phenomenon. To me, that is really the beauty of Twitter because it allows both to happen simultaneously.

But that's not what Michael asked in his clip this morning. He wanted to know would paring down on followers that are essentially "dead weight" allow us to spend more time with the people that matter. In essence, this is something that I think we all grapple with in life in general.

So here's my answer... as tempted as I am to pare down my 8,000+ followers, I never will. You know why? Because every day someone new who was in the list of "haven't previously engaged with" crops up and adds value to my life. There are a few personal examples of how this has helped here and here It's also been invaluable in my professional life helping me helping me drive leads, create partnerships, find podcast/blog interviewees, or even land speaking engagements.

What do you think? If you had your druthers, would you slim down the number of people you engaged with based on reciprocity? Or are you like me -- willing to roll the dice based on the possibility of what might be?

Saturday, June 27, 2009

Quick-n-dirty Social Media Podcast: Episode 4 Recap

For the most part, co-host, Jennifer Leggio and I got our act together for episode four. The only wild card for this one -- and it was a big one -- was the news that pop icon, Michael Jackson, had died just before our show got started. And while neither Jennifer or I are huge MJ fans, it felt only fitting to take a moment of silence during the show for "Mr. Moonwalk."

For anyone new to the show, recaps of episodes one, two, and three can be found here. We'll also be posting the roster for next week's show on the Blog Talk Radio show site soon.

If you missed this week's show, you can listen to an archive of episode four here. If you're more of a reader than a listener, you'll find a recap of this week's show below:

Featured Social Network: Blip.fm. If you like music and you like Twitter, then Blip.fm is the place for you. You can DJ your own music, listen to others, give "props" to your friends or cross-post links to your favorite songs in other networks like Friendfeed, Facebook, etc. On the positive side, it looks like Blip has some element of a business model by allowing users to buy songs on iTunes and Amazon. They also have tons of live versions of songs. On the "room for improvement" side, not every artist has allowed their songs to be played leaving a bit of a gap.
Special Guest: Michelle Heath, CMO of ForEx startup, Currensee. During our 10 minutes with Michelle, she talks about how she and Currensee are tapping into the power of social to not only create but promote a community for foreign exchange traders. Good stuff.
Case Study: Pitney Bowes/Lithium. I could talk about this or I could send you over to Jen's much better write up on her ZDNet/Feeds blog.
Executive on Twitter: This week's exec is the CIO of Beth Israel Deaconess Hospital and Harvard Medical School, John Halamka. During our conversation, Jen and I discussed the fact that John doesn't fit the normal "featured exec" mold because he doesn't follow many people back and he mostly uses Twitter for updates. However, given his field, I thought he was doing a good job at providing some transparency in a normally tight-lipped space.
Point / Counterpoint: Is social media too cliquey? Inspired by Jennifer and my mutual friend, Doug Haslam's post, we talked about whether folks in social media were shy as Mack Collier claimed or just arrogant. Find out who took whom's side by listening in.

For next week's show, we need your help. We're trying to decide whether or not to move our show up an hour to start at 5:00 PM ET / 2:00 PM PT. If you have thoughts on this front, either leave them in the comments below or tweet one of us... @aaronstrout / @mediaphyter.

What, this recap wasn't enough? Well go and listen live or download archived podcasts here.

Tuesday, June 23, 2009

Twitter as the GPS: Video from @JeffPulver's 140 Character Conference

Last week, I was lucky enough to be asked by my friend, Peter Fasano, of Coke to moderate a panel called "Twitter as the GPS for the Greater Social Media Mesh" at the 140 Character Conference in NYC. The idea was to talk about how Twitter is helping businesses navigate in a "2.0" world. Given the backgrounds of our panelists, we decided to focus on four different vertical industries: financial services, entertainment, advertising and CPG.

My fellow panelists were:

Brian Morrissey (@bmorrissey) - Digital Editor at Adweek
David Berkowitz (@dberkowitz) - Emerging Media Director, 360i
Hadley Stern (@hadleystern) - Vice-President, Fidelity Labs
Peter Fasano (@pfasano) - Principal/Lead Catalyst, Mass+Logic and Social Media Marketer at The Coca Cola Company

This is only a twenty minute video so I highly encourage you to spend a few minutes listening in. If you have thoughts, comments or feedback that you'd like to share, feel free to do so in the comments below. I have my fellow panelists e-mails so I'm happy to ping them to try and get an answer.

Monday, June 22, 2009

Why Authenticity is More Important Than Ever

This post originally ran in Mediapost's Marketing Daily on 2/18/2009

We live in an age where the Internet and the telephone have created enormous scale and opportunity for businesses large and small. For the most part, this has been a good thing, allowing companies to reach, acquire and serve more customers than ever before. While this reach and scale has helped to foster innovation at an unprecedented rate, it has also served to disintermediate companies from their customers. The end result has been a growing lack of trust on the part of the consumers.

As a business owner or someone who works at a big company, you may think to yourself, "What does it really matter if my customers trust me? Obviously, it would be better if they did but what's the real harm? At the end of the day, they will end up turning their back on me for someone that can provide my same product or service 'faster, better and cheaper.'"

While this may be true, it's where many companies have lost their competitive edge. Where's my proof?

I'll start with Best Buy, a company you are likely familiar with. Not only is Best Buy listed as the second most valuable brand according to Interbrand Design Forum's latest rankings. It's also listed as number 24 in Vitrue's list of top 100 most social brands. Granted, "social" isn't the sole driver of their more important ranking of "most valuable" brand, but it does plays a key role behind the prestigious "most valuable brand" ranking.

The reason I chose Best Buy as the example to illustrate my point is that it is the epitome of a company that understands the importance of authenticity, and it comes from the top. From its well-documented employee community, Blue Shirt Nation, to its management team which is best exemplified by CMO Barry Judge, this is a company that conducts its business openly and honestly.

During a recent voluntary separation package offer that Best Buy made available to its employees to try and stave off having to do what so many other big and small businesses are doing, Judge openly discussed on his blog the pain that he felt about losing a large number of co-workers.

The comments on Judge's blog exude empathy and compassion in spite of the fact that Best Buy is a huge company and it needed to reduce headcount, which is not unique in the current economy. But on his blog, Judge's authentic and honest tone makes him, and his brand, human. And people have a much easier time trusting a human, especially one they can empathize with, instead of a cold and unfeeling corporation.

Additionally, Best Buys' current ad campaign features real store employees recounting stories of helping customers and the reward it provides to them personally and professionally. Taking this a step further, Judge has also openly discussed the genesis and evolution of this ad campaign on his blog, going so far as to welcome public feedback and asking for input on which creative executions are the right ones to put on air.

In this example, Judge and Best Buy are not only trying to put an "authentic" face on their brand by letting their employees do the talking, they are involving their customers in the process to ensure that they get it right. In doing so, they are garnering trust -- something the Enron's and the leaders of many of the large financial institutions have stolen from us over the last several years.

These examples of what Best Buy is doing demonstrate some of the essential qualities that are increasingly becoming competitive differentiators between brands like:

Blogging from the heart -- even if if feels a little too open and honest

Using customer feedback to drive upcoming marketing and advertising campaigns

Responding to customer comments in a human voice

After all, who would you rather do business with? A company that you know and trust? Or a company that offers the lowest price? Yes, price will always be important but in a highly commoditized world, it's things like authenticity that lead to trust that will truly make one company different from another.

How authentic is your company? If the answer is "not very," it may be time for a change. Just ask Best Buy. The results speak for themselves.

Friday, June 19, 2009

Quick-n-dirty Social Media Podcast: Episode 3 Recap

The third episode of Quick’n'Dirty Social Media Podcast (#qnd) was a little smoother than episodes one and two. For starters, I remembered to set the length of the show for 45 minutes vs. 15 so all the listeners could follow along for the duration. I was also able to play our new bumper music, Bring Back the Bass, at least at the tail end of the show (thanks to Brett Petersel for providing). Next week, I promised co-host, Jennifer Leggio, that our show would go off without a hitch... we'll just have to see!

If you missed this week's show, here’s what we discussed:

Featured Social Network: Glue. They are doing some very cool things with social browsing. They also just released a press release that said that they are exposing some of their APIs so that developers can use Glue's functionality in their sites. Jen and I both like what Glue is doing a lot and will continue to keep my eye on them.
Case Study: This week's focus was all about the small business. Ever see one of those mobile food carts floating around the city? Yeah, the ones that sell bagels or tacos or sausages? Well guess what. They are starting to use Twitter and the results are paying off. In regard to Korean BBQ purveyor, Kogi, Kate Krader, restaurant editor for Food & Wine magazine says in the background article "That [Kogi's recognizable brand name is] 90 percent thanks to Twitter."
Special Guest: Mike Murray, CSIO of Foreground Security was kind enough to join us to discuss true social engineering in social networking / social media. Pretty powerful stuff. If you weren't a little wary about who you "friend" in the socialsphere before, you might be after listening to Mike speak.
Executive on Twitter: Jeffrey Hayzlett, CMO of Kodak. I had the pleasure of meeting Jeffrey and hearing him speak at this week's 140 Character Conference. I was pleased to see that he was as funny and genuine in real life as he was on Twitter. Definitely worth the follow.
Point / Counterpoint: This week was a little less of a "square off" and more of a recap of Jeff Pulver's recent 140 Character Conference. If you weren't lucky enough to attend, the videos from the event are up. I loved the conference and while Jen didn't exactly disagree with me, she decided that conference producers need to be careful to focus less on the tools and more on the goals of we business folk (think "lead gen" vs. "e-mail marketing" for instance). I agreed but my take was that we needed to ratchet it up a notch and apply that thinking to all social media events, not just those focused on Twitter.
Special Bonus: one of our listeners encouraged us to talk a little about Twitter and it's role in the latest Iranian elections. We didn't have much time to cover such an important topic but did manage to spend a couple of minutes opining on the subject.

Jennifer and I are in the process of working on next week's show but we promise it won't dissapoint. At a minimum, Jennifer has a special announcement that should get folks excited. If I say more than that, Jen may disown me as a co-host.

What, this recap wasn't enough? Well go and listen live or download archived podcasts here.

Tuesday, June 16, 2009

Live Blogging the 140 Character Conference

Photo credit: Jill Hanner

Sorry, I never gave context for this post. I'm at Jeff Pulver's 140 Character Conference in New York City and am trying to provide some running notes from this action

packed event. Today I'm keeping up. Tomorrow might be tricky (speaking at 9:20 AM and then in meetings on and off after that).

Link to conference agenda is here.

Link to the #140conf hashtag is here.

Tim O'Reilly CEO/founder, O'Reilly Media

realized that at times he was tweeting too much so started capturing/formatting his tweets in a text document. Later he would decide whether or not to tweet those updates.

Fred Wilson (venture capitalist/blogger)

Links are the currency of the internet.
Talking about how to make money from Twitter.
Links to blog coming from Facebook and Twitter are starting to eat into Google referrals.
One business model for Twitter would mimic the way Overture introduced "paid search"
Google currently spends a lot of time on environmental remediation i.e. addressing spam, phishing, etc. Twitter is going need to do the same.
Passed links on FB and Twitter are more "trusted" because they come from someone you know - as a result, they have a higher likihood to convert
http://tcrn.ch/3y0 (recap by E Schoenfeld)

John Borthwick - Founder of Twitter Search

bit.ly/140/ecosystem

General thoughts from Liz Strauss and panel with Brian Solis, Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos, Marcel LeBrun, CEO of Radian6 and Brook Lundy of Some eCards

http://search.twitter.com/search?q=aaronstrout+%23140conf

Maegan Carburry - Political Blogger for Huffington Post

Recommends reading Here Comes Everybody by Clay Shirky
Asks, "are we contributing original thoughts to socialsphere?"

[cont'd]

UBER Panel on Twitter as News Gathering Tool

Moderator: Robert Scoble

Panelists:

Ann Curry - anchor of NBC

Rick Sanchez - Host of 3PM Newsroom on CNN

Ryan Osborn - Producer NBC's Today Show

Scoble is hammering Rick Sanchez, CNN and press in general for not giving more Iran coverage this weekend.
Scoble also asks if we are evolving the coverage mainstream news gives foreign topics because we now "know" some of the people in these countries and they are more human/touchable to us.
Rick Sanchez says that social media is pushing CNN to validate whether or not elections were real or not
Ann Curry (beautiful voice in real life btw, very melodic and soothing) talks VERY passionately about covering Iran. Said that people there were talking to reporters and people were 1) risking their lives to talk to them and 2) were asking if all Americans thought that they were terrorists. Ann also stressed the importances of reporters now treating people in countries like Darfur, Iran, Afghanistan, etc. like they are your mother, sister, brother.
Rick Sanchez/Ryan Osborn said it is tricky because trad'l news is held to standard of "it's got to be right." They are required to do more fact checking.
Ann Curry - was doing some real time reporting on Twitter recently because main stream news was covering. Had to be VERY careful to make sure she wasn't passing along any information that was wrong.
Audience questions - frustration around mainstream media covering "fluff" pieces vs. hard hitting stuff. [NOTE: in theory, this is great but it's not what most people want to watch]
Rick Sanchez says that it's imperative to use Twitter to have conversations with watchers - not to use it as a gimmick.

[cont'd]

Rick Sanchez notes that if CNN or other news disappears, it takes away a lot of the content that social content creators can talk about.
Scoble retorts to Rick, "you DID disappear on Saturday and we got along just fine."

[Side note: had a fantastic conversation with Scoble, Jim Stone (camera man for

NBC) and Ryan Osborn after the panel. They agreed that this is a seminal moment in the history of social media and traditional media.]

Moeed Ahmad - Head of New Media Technology and Future Media Department Technology Division, Al Jazeera Network

First off, Moeed notes that he traveled 16 hours to get here. WOW! I will never complain
"If you are not living on the edge, you are taking up too much space"
"If it doesn't fit in 140 characters, it's not worth saying" - @riy
Now talking about Twitter's roll in War 2.0 - cites hashtag use of "#gaza"
Interesting because Al Jazeera team was skeptical about use of Twitter at first. Then @Ev tweeted a link to their site and traffic went through the roof. Now they get it. ;)
Able to run a page with live tweets with a column next to it that tells whether the news has been verified or not [brilliant idea]
Challenges: covering a party that is not popular on Twitter who wins an election (when party that lost IS popular on Twitter)
"Telling the truth is hard. Not telling it is even harder." (see poster below)

Jeremy Epstein - Marketing Navigator, Never Stop Marketing

Interesting approach to Twitter. Only follows 140 people. Looks for:
- Experts
- High signal to noise ratio
- Constantly looking to earn right to spend more time with people he wants to network with

Jeffrey Hayzlett, CMO of Kodak

Twitter is changing Kodak (not your father's Kodak anymore)
60% of people at company are new
Looking for new ways to make connections with people
Worst thing you could say about Kodak is absolutely nothing.
Said people come on their blog and say "your product is f*cking, f*cking, f*cking, f*cking, f*cking not good" is okay because it's feedback.
They are listening to their customers - want to make ink cartridges much more interchangeable.
Jeff is showing his humorous side - he is currently trying to figure out term for someone that is malicious on Twitter. Crowd consensus is "twanker."
Right now, he's calling out a particular competitor that was anonomously posting and taking shots at Kodak. Also expressing desire for Financial Times to be at 140 Character Conference
Jeff answers/triages tweets that people send when problems or questions arise. Said that this wasn't possible even a year ago.
Big moment for Kodak/Jeff - one of Barack Obama's daughters used a Kodak camera. People started tweeting Jeff like crazy. It trended and made the NY Times.
Interesting thought, what is the "cost of ignoring."

For more live tweets from people beyond me during Jeff's session, go here:

http://search.twitter.com/search?q=%23140conf+jeffreyhayzlett

[cont'd]

Wednesday, June 10, 2009

I'm now a Texan (humorous)

As any of you that follow me on Twitter or read my blog regularly now know, I've officially settled in the great republic of Texas -- Austin, TX to be exact. To that end, I'm working on acclimating myself and my family as fast as possible. Fortunately, I have co-workers like Mary Lemons who was kind enough to share a list with me via e-mail titled, "To Help with your Texas-ifying." It was a list of 40 items -- all humorous -- that I'm sure has been amassed through blog posts and e-mail forwards over the years.

Knowing my proclivity for sharing, I couldn't resist posting the "best of" this list below. Apologies to the original source of this list -- if anyone knows who owns it, let me know and I'll be sure to provide proper attribution.

You know you’re a Texan if:

You know it’s a given that the true value of a parking place lies in the shade, not the distance to the door.
You see just as many Texan flags as American flags.
You end a lot of words without the letter “g.”
You can drive all day (and more) and never leave the state
You’ve actually burned your hand opening your car door. (or front door for that matter)
You know all 4 seasons: Almost summer, Summer, Still summer, and Deer season.
You choose a brand of salsa with the same care that another might use to select a bottle of fine wine.
You know that “Fixinto” is one word.
You have owned at least one belt buckle bigger than your fist.
You aren’t surprised to find movie rental, ammunition, and bait all in the same store.
You know there are 5,000 types of snakes and 4,998 of them live in Texas.
Your biggest bicycle wreak fear is, “What if I get knocked out and end up lying on the pavement and cook to death?”
You know everything goes better with BBQ sauce.
You don’t consider people from Austin to be real Texans.
You can fix anything with Duct Tape.

Image credit: http://www.sxc.hu

Thursday, June 4, 2009

Quick’n'Dirty Social Media Podcast Launches Today

qnd_logo The Quick’n'Dirty Social Media Podcast kicks off today at 3 p.m. PT / 6 p.m. ET. As I wrote a couple weeks ago, this project is a joint one withAaron Strout, and it came about after a dinner debate in San Francisco. We’ll be doing all kinds of fun stuff — point / counterpoint, case studies, highlighting lesser known social networks, spotlighting cool members of the social media community, and we’ll even have regular guests. Our first show is going to be a little less formal since we want a chance to play with the format and get some feedback, so we won’t have a guest this week. But we will have other fun stuff.

Speaking of fun stuff, we’d also hosted a two-week long logo design contest. Well, you see the logo above. We love it! Big thanks to Kenneth Lim who designed the winning logo. He went above and beyond and gave us several options, and the design was so clean and fun that we had to go with it. Kenneth has won the following:

Seagate: Free Agent Go portable hard drive
Intel: A coveted Ajay Bhatt t-shirt
Scate Ignite: Copy of Scate Ignite 4 multi-media presentation and e-learning software
EuSecWest: Conference ticket -OR- MIMO UM710 mini monitor

I am sure we will do other giveaways and prize incentives in the future, so be sure to listen to the podcast. The BlogTalkRadio link is here. Will you join us?

Cross-posted from http://mediaphyter.com

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