Citizen Marketer 2.1

Aaron Strout

Quick-n-dirty Podcast Recap 26: Let’s Get it Started

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Not surprisingly, my podcast partner, Jennifer Leggio, and I were a little punchy as we geared up for our two week hiatus during the holidays. This was a good thing and the momentum — along with some silly behavior — carried over into the chat room (I think we had a record number of participants). It didn’t hurt that was had a true social mediast on as our guest in Jess Berlin.

Jess is the social media manager of Cirque du Soleil and not only does she kill it on Twitter and Facebook but she brings her social nature (and awareness) into the offline world. I witnessed this at BlogWorld Expo ’09 as did Chris Brogan at BWE ’08. During our call, Jess talked about engaging Cirque’s customers via social media, their fan run group on MySpace that is 40,000 strong and the importance that bloggers play in helping share the good word about Cirque.

Prior to bringing Jess on the line, Jennifer and I talked about social platform, Squidoo. In a nutshell, it’s parts Wikipedia and Mahalo or in other words, human currated pages or “lenses” for a variety of popular topics. Mike Arrington of TechCrunch did not flatter Squidoo or Seth Godin (one of it’s backers) in the background post I read. And to pile it on, Jennifer had read a lot about people getting spammed with malware links on Squidoo pages. However, our friend and occasional guest host, Kyle Flaherty, demonstrated how good a Squidoo page could be with his company, Breaking Point’s, presence.

Next up, we showered Boston PR man and Twitterer extraordinaire, Doug Haslam, with all sorts of praise. In summary, Doug has pioneered on Twitter using it for Red Sox tweets, raising money for charity and of course, providing “love” for his company, clients (I’m one) and occasionally his podcasts/blogs.

Finally, we came to our signature part of the show: the point / counterpoint. Unfortunately for Jennifer, I took the wind out of her sails a little bit by agreeing with her recent post about branded online communities failing to evolve. While I am still VERY bullish on the future of branded communities, I know that many companies have not done them well, failing to focus on the crucial elements like strategy, content, ongoing management and measurment. Jennifer and I did have a productive conversation about some of the successful communities out there like Nike+, Sears and Powered’s very own, Sony community.

So as I mentioned up front, we are off the next two weeks although look for wrap up posts listing out all of the social networks, guests, featured Twitters and point/counterpoints over the last 26 shows. Speaking, if you missed our last show, you can read the recap here or you can listen to archived shows here (also available for download on iTunes). Happy holidays!

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

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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:

  1. Social network
  2. Guest/case study
  3. Featured twitterer of the week
  4. 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.

Experts in the Industry: Doug Haslam (10 of 45)

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I’ve known, Doug Haslam, account director at PR powerhouse, SHIFT Communications, for a couple of years now. I think we first met at one of Bryan Person’s Social Media Breakfasts in Boston and all I could think of is why is this guy’s name “Dough?” Dough is of course Doug’s calling card on Twitter, a tool he has become incredibly good at. Doug is also synonomous in my mind with the “utter-cast” or a short podcast, usually done from a mobile phone via the microblogging site, Utterli.com.

But enough about Doug and on to his answers to the five questions in my Experts in the Industry: 45 Interviews in 45 Days:

In one sentence, please describe what you do and why you’re good at it.
I create best-of-breed, out-of-the-box communications solutions for bleeding-edge clients, because I am expert in human-interactive paradigm shifts. (I’m in public relations, and I’m good at it because I am forever a student and lover of the media.)
How did you get into the world of online community, social media or social marketing?
On a dare (I saw blogs rising in 2004, and dabbled. Became more active upon joining Topaz Partners in 2005, and started a Podcast there as well– -from there, Twitter, Second Life, you name it. I was and remain a serial social media tool user.)
If you had $10 million to invest in one company and one company only based on their use of “social,” which company would it be and why?
Facebook- they have become the first true mainstream social network. Everyone is there now, including people who ignored me in high school who now want to Super Zombie Poke and have pillow fights with me (why didn’t they want to have pillow fights when I was 17? That would have been cool).
Which business leader, politician or public figure do you most respect?
I’m glad you didn’t say “like” because the ones that get my respect don’t care about being liked, and I don’t necessarily like them myself. My congressman, Barney Frank, is one of those people. He fights and doesn’t care what people think. You don’t have to be a flaming liberal to respect that, but it helps. Another, believe it or not, is Jason Calacanis. He may or may not be a complete jackass and often deserves the bombs thrown his way in public discourse, but he delivers and he has been successful no matter what you think of him. Plus he gives back to the community– just on his own terms.
Yes. Two painful root canals and an 11 year-old who is good at brushing, but always could use a nudge about tooth care. Plus, I would enjoy grossing people out with my wisdom tooth story.
Freeform – here’s where you can riff on anyone or anything – good or bad. Or just share a pearl of wisdom.
Duke Ellington said there are two kinds of music in the world: good and bad. He was also fond of the phrase “beyond category.” That’s great to remember when we try to box up people and tools into categories. Define things for yourself, but don’t get thrown off when someone else defines it a totally different way– even if it’s your brand. Oh, and I understand the Duke was pretty sharp with the ladies.

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