10 quick hits of September levity

Posted on September 5, 2008 by marc meyer

So the stock market takes another hit. But you have your emotional health don’t you?
Shotguns and Chris Brogan hmmm.
We get to watch Fay, Gustav, Hanna, Ike, and Tina coming ashore in various states, but the government has finally realized that you can’t mess around with these things. Keep this link close by The 2008 Hurricane Info Center
Google jumped into the browser wars with Chrome, and some feel it’s just another way to mine the data that is us.
NBC made over a Billion dollars in ad revenue from the Beijing Olympics. A billion.
There is so much that requires our attention. Where the hell are we supposed to look? Do not discount social networking fatigue
We talk about social media a lot. Check out these social media trends
The US currently has 263 million mobile phone users
Of the top 10 web brands, AOL is #1 for time spent by the average US user. They average almost 4 hours per month.
China and Spongebob make for an interesting combination

What can you do today that can empower your customer using social media?

Posted on September 4, 2008 by marc meyer

“What can you do today that can empower your customer using social media”?

I was asked this by someone who works for an Amazon owned company. Their customers in this scenario are B to B but they also have B to C. The question essentially was. How can we get more ROI from our customers utilizing todays social media without going down the path of ” A blog”? What makes the best sense?

You see, their thinking is that everyone is doing the blog thing and in their industry, there is no way it will have legs, so what else is there that we can do? What will work in our space, knowing that we have to have some type of social media element? One of my points was that the B to B consumer might be slower right now to embracing the tools that social media might provide. Whereas, the B to C consumer might be more apt to utilize them. The thinking being that the B to B person is still in education mode and is going to stick to what’s tried and true in regards to traditional forms of marketing.

They seemed to think the same thing. And maybe I’m wrong, given the larger context that social media is being bandied about currently. But what does make sense for each group? Can you roll out a social media campaign for both groups that makes the best sense for both? And is it wrong to think that a blog just won’t work?

What should be the entry point? Krishna De wrote a post back in January on a similar topic, but the problem is, it was written in January. Does it still apply? Social media advances are moving at such a rapid rate that sometimes what made sense 6 months ago, might not be the case now. Jared Goralnick has some thoughts on this too but it’s more of a jumping off point for the person, not the organization who is trying to leverage social media to increase ROI.

Here’s a guest post on the My Creative Team blog site that makes a little bit more sense titled the roi of social media but the whole point is this. As a marketer you can sit across from me and educate me, but then at the end of the day, what are you going to do? With that being said Mashable has a nice post on 5 things you can do to develop a social media plan for your business. The list includes

Listen
Prepare
Engage
Go Offline
Measure Success

In conclusion: To all the social media marketers out there, this is essentially what you are going to hear from your clients and customers to be when going down the path of social media:

TELL ME WHAT YOU ARE GOING TO DO! and then tell me how it will impact me and how long will it take. See the below chart from Marketing Charts

Signal Patterns

Posted on September 3, 2008 by marc meyer

Here is my Signal Patterns personality survey result; I’d say it was pretty accurate. BTW, you can link this with your Facebook page and then compare them with your friends to see how accurate it is or how screwed up your friends are. Later, I am going to take the music survey which should be pretty interesting.

My Social Media Morning

Posted on September 3, 2008 by marc meyer

Here’s the drill and it varies, but I’m curious what you’re social media mornings are like. Let me preface that this particular morning I have a headache from 2 glasses of red wine coupled with my inability to go back to sleep at 4:30 this morning. Thus, you lay in bed and you “fake-sleep” until 6 which at that point you do fall asleep and wake up a half hour later and you’re ultimately tired beyond belief.

Fire up the machine (this particular morning we’re trying out Google Chrome) While this is occurring I try to read either DM news, electronic retailer or the latest book.
While it’s booting up I’m usually also thinking about a blog post. This morning, I’m thinking of a post in which I can compare bars to social networks-not sure there is something there though. what do you think? We all love to go to our favorite bar but why? What keeps us coming back? The beers and the drinks are no different at another establishment right?
Staring at a product that a potential client gave me yesterday wondering whether it has legs for a social media campaign let alone a marketing campaign. This happens a lot.
I have to put together a marketing matrix for another client in which I Identify the decision makers and their buying habits and then try to tie it back into social media. In this case, it’s a supply chain software company, wondering aloud if that’s possible?
Knowing we have to do a site redesign for the corporate site, I pull up some photoshop files to stare at the latest iterations. Initial thoughts: It’s not Web 2.0 enough. I’ll talk to the designer later.
Rereading an article by Aaron Kahlow in which he writes about the 5 deadly sins of social media and thinking “I’m reading this after I wrote about social media marketings 7 deadly sins” and after a quick search I realize that there is a lot of sinning going on in social media based on this 7 deadly sin post and half a dozen others. It’s at this point that I think I’m very predictable.
While chewing on that, I pull up Social Media Today, which is an incredible resource and provides lots of talking points on what’s going on in social media and I gravitate to post titled Social Media, what about the risks? by Amber Naslund. I’d suggest reading it, it brought back some not so fond memories of a rogue social networker who terrorized all of our networks and efforts and made the experience very enriching. NOT!
Thinking that Chrome is ok. For now.
I have to call a recruiter in Chicago about an SMO/SEO strategist position. Not sure what I’m going to tell him, but it’s nice to be wanted. Couple that with the fact I’m in Naples, Florida. Never hurts to listen. right?
Logging into LinkedIn, I like checking it everyday. Periodically, I like to read the answers section or ask questions. I usually have a request or two to respond to as well since I started a LinkedIn group called the “Digital Response Marketing Group”. It has a great name and has a world of potential to be developed into something larger, but hey, I gotta eat and sleep. I’m willing to partner on this, so hit me up.
Time to fire up Twitter. I’ve been digging Tweetdeck more than Twhirl of late, but sometimes Tweetdeck just freaks out. yesterday i wasn’t in a very Twitterlike mood.
I have to do a proposal for a client with a business (product) they’re getting ready to launch. I tried to counsel the CEO on the merits of social media and it’s potential. She didn’t want to hear it. She wants a DRTV proposal and that’s it. Ouch.
Starting to read some various tweets.
Need to do some related SEO/SMO stuff for another product we are marketing. Not sexy but needs done. Some people do not realize that social media marketing is hard work.
It’s only 9:36 in the morning and I’m thinking of about 3-4 different social media strategies for a few of the products that we market. But the problem is, not every user or audience is a perfect fit for social media.
Just decided to scan through Outlook mail. Also opening Hotmail as well. I dread both activities.
Have to talk to a client about creating a blogsite for his skin care line and forthcoming book. I’ll call him later this morning.
Just got an invite email from Signalpatterns.
Going to now fire up Pandora, it helps me work, though I’m worried about them lately. Logging into Facebook too. Thinking I might as well open up Ning. During Gustav I joined a Ning group devoted to the 2008 hurricane season, it is very well done.
Now firing up Google Reader, throughout the day I’ll read over a 150 blogs, or I should say scan, since some don’t update everyday. Though there are a few that are a must read, and I would suggest you create that short list as well. If you want my short list let me know.
Sitting here wondering what the next big thing is going to be in social media. I have my ideas, and to that end my thoughts are that as the number of social sites continues to grow exponentially, our usage habits might become more diluted. We may have to pick a few and leave the rest behind. But if there is a better way to aggregate them, then maybe not. I’m just sayin…
Ok, I’m done with Chrome. it’s dragging too much.

Twitter and Gustav-The value of micro-blogging just went up.

Posted on September 2, 2008 by marc meyer

Where was Twitter during Katrina was all I could think over the weekend. And for good reason too. Being a former New Orleanian, it pained me to watch not only the network coverage of Katrina, but also the lack of information and the disinformation flowing in and out. Thanks to Twitter I felt I had a better handle on what was going on in the city and its surrounding areas during Hurricane Gustav instead of relying solely on Jim Cantore. Sorry Jim.

Over the course of the last 3 days, I found myself doing the following: Tapping into #Gustav on Summize while watching the Weather Channel, texting and tweeting to friends and family who still lived on the Gulf Coast and who had evacuated (some did not), what I was learning from others via Twitter, and then sharing and pushing that information back and forth with others through my tweets. I felt like I was participating in another of David Alson’s and Chris Brogan’s Twebinars, only this one had larger ramifications. In fact, I knew of the Industrial Canal starting to spill over a full 20-30 minutes before it was broadcast on CNN and the Weather Channel, and that was scarry cool.

Even post Gustav, valuable and credible ( most of it) information is and was flowing through Twitter faster than you if were hoping to hear it on the radio, read it in the newspaper or hope to get it from your local television broadcasts. Twitter ID’s had been created specifically devoted to Gustav such as @GustavReporter which were some Chicago Tribune reporters covering Hurricane Gustav, but they still were providing reliable and informative tweets. Another was local @MarkMayhew whose tweets from the Quarter were dead on during the height of the storms landfall, and @YatPundit whose tweets before, during and after the storm have been and had been invaluable!

The point is this, Twitter was providing very very informative and real time information without the hyperbole that often accompanies the national broadcasts. The tweets were coming from people on the ground and in the city. With only 140 characters, one has a tendency to only tell you what is most important without the descriptives, if you know what I mean.

Twitter is also bridging the communications gaps between people that want to help and might not know how or who to contact. Since the storm has come ashore, countless tweets have come over of people and organizations who want to help and are essentially tweeting their availability. Sans the pitch and sans the B.S. Simply real time tweets from people who can help, who can share their experiences, who were there, who’ve been there, and who are there. It doesn’t get more real time than that! At the least, I think Twitter passes the test as a major form of communicating during extreme circumstances like a Cat 3 storm.

I know all of you at some point were paying attention to what was going on down here on the Gulf Coast, but did it dawn on any of you to follow the tweets? I’m curious.

How do you respond to social media technology?

Posted on September 1, 2008 by marc meyer

You’re a large corporation, you’re a medium sized business, you’re an entrepreneur with a start up. How would you react to the following situations?

Someone has decided to blog about the poor customer service they have just experienced

Someone had posted a You Tube video portraying your company in a poor light

Someone has created a social network for people that like your company.

Don’t think the above scenarios are occurring or happening? Better think again. And you better have your ducks in a row on how you are going to deal with each of these situations. The last thing you can do is to ignore them. As each day goes by, every person now has the tag of “citizen journalist” and with that title, they can now post, share and spread good, bad, or indifferent news about you and your company. How you deal with it will determine alot about how hip you are to the power of social media and the power of your customers and customers to be.

Case in point #1 Jet Blue does not handle well the person who decides to video an altercation between 2 passengers and then it spirals out of control when the Wall Street Journal picks up on it.

Case in point #2 A blog with numerous examples of corporate failure and success A citizen journalist has documented corporate failure. How did they react?

And Case in point #3 One of social media’s most influential thinkers decides to devote a very large post to this subject.

The bottom line is this. What is your response? How do you respond? How do you act? How do you react? Does anyone know? Who calls the shots in your company on the best way to respond and what is said? How do you and your company respond to some of social media’s and the bloggosphere’s most prolific writers and thinkers when they say something about mistakes that you might have made?

You need to have a plan in place. And you need to be able to move on it quickly. To ignore it, will be your biggest mistake.

Post Conversation-What do we do now?

Posted on August 30, 2008 by marc meyer

Once you get beyond the conversation, what’s there? For each aspect or rather in each of it’s iterations, there will always be a result or an action. Conversations, regardless of the network they are swimming in, have to have some causal net result. If not, then it’s one big dinner party or bar, where the conversations have no substance, and we all go home and wake up in the morninh with a headache and ask what happened.

There is a great discussion about this exact subject going on in a few places that I would encourage you to visit. Over at Valeria Maltoni’s site the conversation agent, Valeria has always maintained that it was always about the outcomes of the conversation. And she cites numerous sources that in one way or another support this premise. I couldn’t agree more. You have to do something with the conversations that you have participated in. There has to be an outcome. Unless of course, you converse just to hear yourself speak.

But see, the difference is that in this Web 2.0 age, our conversations take on many different forms. We reach out to have these conversations in many forms and in each form, the effort on our part is the push and we want the pull from the other party. But the conversations may have a tinge of self aggrandizement unfortunately, and that’s where we might be missing the point. I think that these days people are realizing that some of the conversations may be disingenous. It’s the dirty little secret of the social-ness of what we are all participating in. Its the nature of the fluidness of social. It’s way too easy to start the conversation and it’s way too easy to manipulate the conversation in your favor. But most of us are hip to that and I think it eventually sorts itself out. We’re able to police that part fortunately.

What happens next in each aspect is covered as well by David Armano with another one of his wonderful graphic representations in which David essentially asks… We’ve identified all the different mechanisms and networks and tools to bring forth the dialogue and raise the level of everyone’s voice beyond the tinge of a whisper so, “What next?”.

You see in each “property” in the above graphic, conversations are and have been taking place. But what comes of them? Here is a quick example. Do we blog because we want to hear and read what we speak and write about respectively? No, we do it because we essentially want to talk and we want to be heard, and we want to engage others in a dialogue. Problem is, and I’ve noticed that perhaps this one tiny aspect is often overlooked- in order to be heard and in order to converse on or in a blog platform, it does not happen immediately. It takes work, and it takes effort, and I think to a large degree, most people underestimate that. Thus they abandon the endeavor. Do we need to make it even easier to be heard and engage others? Is it still to intimidating and difficult to join in the conversation?

The outcomes of conversations in each of David’s properties all predicated on various barriers of entry. Some not as great as others, but each still requires some effort in order to be heard. Do people want to work at their conversations? I don’t think so, but in each example, conversations and the endeavor of enagaging in them is not a passive activity. never has been, unless you like to lurk.

Another aspect often overlooked in the online social world, is that there is still the aspect of engagement. Type “A”‘s might still have an easier time of engagement than type “B”s. We still have to look at easing the transitions for N00bs. Once they are engaged in the conversation, they may be ok. But then we all come back around to the beginning. And we ask ourselves, “Now what?” “What comes of this?”

Seth Godin started an invite only social network called triiibes that was tailored to his forthcoming book. There are roughly 3000 people in this network and conversations abound. The problem is, I have to think, and do, that all the people in the network are in the “take” mode. A network where everyone is looking for, according to Steve Bridger’s comments to David, “what’s in it for me” can’t be very productive, or maybe it is? Conversations have to be equally 2 way, if not, they’re not called conversations, they’re called monologues. They have to have something more to them in each web 2.0 scenario. That’s what Valeria and David are getting at. We have all these tools, so now what? What do we do with all the various ways that we now have to communicate with each other. Perhaps a Conversation Manifesto is in order?

9 posts/sites that are required reading

Posted on August 29, 2008 by marc meyer

I read so much that my eyes water sometimes. When I get home and walk in the door and set my laptop bag down, it’s nice to say-I’m home, time to take a break. Except, after about an hour or two and I’m finally settled in, what do I do? I fire up the laptop and read some more. I’m an information junkie and I suspect a lot of you are too. So since we have a 3 day weekend coming up. Here are some blog posts and websites for you to ponder over and check out.

Shel Israel has some interesting thoughts on the future fo social meda, don’t worry Shel is all about brevity but it’s still good.

Here’s a really interesting post from Veronica Giggey at Social Media Group, why? because she’s a project manager there and she’s looking for an internal collaboration tool. This struck me as odd, yet honest. Hit her up and see if you can help her!

I guess the big Yahoo Mash experiment is over. Actually I didn’t know it was just an “experiment”. Maybe that’s what you call something that doesn’t work.

This absolutely boggles my mind about Facebook and I’m still catching hell about this post I made on Social Media Today

Check out these numbers on how associations are using social technologies, over at Chris Carfi’s site, they’re actually higher than I would have thought!

Why do you exist?

How uber cool is this? meglobe

Valeria Maltoni asks what’s beyond the conversation, because she never thought it was just about the conversation itself. It’s a great piece.

And lastly, the socialization of your personal brand part III

4 reasons to be excited about the next 5 years

Posted on August 29, 2008 by marc meyer

According to the Gartner Hype Cycle, they have identified 27 emerging technologies to keep an eye on. They have also predicted that 8 of them will have a major transformational business impact. For that reason, those 8 should be strongly considered for adoption by technology planners in the next 10 years. Of these 8, there are 4 that have caught my eye and thus have a particular interest to me.

The first of the 4 is Web 2.0. Although if you look at the below diagram, Web 2.0 is currently in Gartners “Trough of Disillusionment”. Though it almost sounds like some type of business purgatory, it will emerge within two years to have a transformational impact, as companies steadily gain more experience and success with both the technologies and the cultural implications-according to Gartner. If you cannot get excited about how Web 2.0 is transforming the web and the way we utilize it, then you just might not be geeky enough. That’s ok though, there are enough of us out there that truly are “giddy” about the direction we’re heading.

The next area that Gartner feels is about to explode is Social computing platforms — you’d have to be living in a cave on the island of Fiji to not suspect that consumer-oriented social networking sites, such as MySpace and Facebook, are causing companies of all sizes to evaluate the role that these sites, or various components of these sites, including their enterprise sized brethren, might do to transform and elevate the way that they currently communicate and do business. What’s more, the individual components and their ilk are forcing people to re-think what it means to be social, to re-evaluate what communities are all about, and how all of this can change the way we might interact with each other in the future.

If it hasn’t been obvious to this point what would be on Gartner list, its Microblogging— Thanks to Twitter specifically, and Plurk and Friendfeed to a lesser degree, microblogging is the new kid on the block in the world of social networking. But if microblogging is the new kid, it’s the new kid who can hit the ball out of the ballpark the first time he picks up a bat. The potential has already been leveraged by some pockets of the online community such as social media marketers and PR people, but it is also slowly being adopted by some forward thinking leading-edge companies who are using it to communicate with its customers, and employees. It’s becoming and will become another viable tool in a companies quest to engage it’s customer, communicate with the customer and brand their products more effectively.

Lastly, I’m going to lump 2 together. Corporate Blogging and Social Network Analysis I think that corporations, because of the advent of Web 2.0 technologies and the emergence of social networks and their niches, are starting to realize the importance of communicating like they never have before. We throw around the word transparency and I think it has never been more self evident what the upside can be to these organizations. As soon as Corporations can get a handle on the how’s and the why’s of blogging, they will be well served to incorporate it into their marketing mix. My suggestion would be to start with the book Naked Conversations.

Social Network Analysis is a natural extension of Web 2.0, social computing platforms and microblogging. Because we are in the realtive infancy of these aformentioned technologies, the measurement of these is still as well, in it’s early stages. Analyzing the impact, the ROI, the level of engagement, the depth, the reach, the frequency, the conversations, the numbers- of social networks is something we talk about every day. An example of a company that does monitors social media would be Radian 6. As social networks continue to mature, look for this aspect as well to become robust and very vertical and very in demand.

So take a look at the diagram below, which ones get you excited to be in this space?

Hey, is my nose bleeding?

Posted on August 28, 2008 by marc meyer

Humility tends to be in short suppply these days. I suppose after reading and writing about the importance of relationships, ego traps and hero worshipping yesterday that I might have at least learned something or had taken my own advice to heart. Something. Anything. It’s as if I just tuned out.

Yep, in the course of ohhh say 24 hours, I have been knocked down to size and humbled by one client. I was told I was not assertive enough by another would be client that I had been working with, who in hind sight wanted me to be more agressive and forcefull. And lastly, I had another potential client essentially tell me to give them what they had asked for and not what I suggested they need. All in less than 24 hours!

Hell, I even wrote a blog post titled, “Serve me what I want, not what you think I need”. Talk about doubting yourself! What has this taught me? Alot. Below are 10 points with associated posts that I need to always keep in mind and maybe you should too!