7 sites to visit today.

Posted on August 25, 2008 by marc meyer

I’m going to make it easy on you. Here are 7 things that were interesting to me and maybe you should read them in your spare time today or tomorrow.

Chris Kieff says that Seth Godin screwed up, I know it’s shocking isn’t it?

Adam Cohen thinks that there is a danger of communities becoming too diluted I think what he means is that social networks are becoming too water downed, too many choices perhaps? You decide.

Kami Huyse espouses that a course in basic human etiquette might be better than one in blogger relations, which I think we could all use since manners and etiquette have gone away quicker than you can text BRB.

Discover the real you here at Signal Patterns

Rohit Bhargava, freshly back from China, posts on an Insiders guide to marketing on Flickr, in detail.

Brian Solis with the second part of his three part series the socialization of your personal brand

Here is a rockin post by Geoff Livingston that you have to read, titled The Naturals

The politics of social media

Posted on August 25, 2008 by marc meyer

This past Friday I was interviewed by the AP about a blog post I did awhile back on the top political social networks. Given that the Democratic national convention was firing up this week in Colorado, the reporter wanted to know what I thought people’s current perception and usage might be of social networks for political groups and their associated impact and influence. A valid question. I told him that surprisingly enough, from what I found, the number of actual social networks devoted to politics was not as great as one would think or I would have expected, given the current state of affairs. But that’s changing, and it’s changing fast.

This is not to say that there are not tons of blog sites with political themes, or You Tube videos with political themes, or a myriad of polticians with websites, Facebook pages and or blogs, that’s a whole ‘nuther story. It’s just that politics and social media are just evolving slower than I would have thought.

But back to my point. Though there are not AS many social networks as one might think, the usage of what is available online in regards to Web 2.0 tools has never been higher. Take what Barack Obama did with enlisting his followers and everyone else to sign up for the email and text message on who his VP would be. Clearly Obama has realized the power of mobile and is using it as another way of communicating his message. A political candidate communicating in as many ways as possible. Novel concept.

No doubt we have evolved into a text messaging mad society, so this made perfect sense. Embracing social media and the micro-blogging platform, however, is something that someone in the Obama camp thought might make sense as well, and thus he is now being followed by 67,000 people on Twitter.

On the other hand, objectively speaking, it would appear that John McCain is slow on the draw given that he only has a website. With no offense meant, I told the AP reporter that it appeared the Obama was embracing Web 2.0 and McCain was embracing the Commodore 64.

I think what you might find even more interesting though is that according to Think Progress , Joe Biden is one of the most wired politician of the bunch. he currently has a presence on Facebook, MySpace, a blogsite, a website, a Flickr page, and a YouTube presence. Not sure about the Twitter presence though.

As I have always maintained, contrary to an earlier post, that social nets need to go vertical in order to be successful in their own right. For politics, this never made better sense. Eventually, what you’ll see is each social cause or political concern will have it’s own social media platform in which to engage its users, trumpet their causes, raise awareness and most of all… raise money. If anything, the emergence and usage of social media has armed every citizen with the ability and opportunity to now speak their voice via, wiki, blog, youtube video, chatroom, and social net, like they have never been before.

As the awareness levels continue to rise on just what a social network can do not only for the regular person on the street with a cause, but also for a candidate or politician, so will the number of active social networks specifically geared towards these niches. Because of social media, never before has the average American had as big an opportunity to speak and be heard above the noise. But what comes of it, still remains to be seen.

Social media pie charts for 2008

Posted on August 22, 2008 by marc meyer

Sometimes I feel like social media is like the following pie chart.

Where the majority of people are talking about it (blue), some are actually doing some pretty cool things in the space (red) and others wannabe in the space and think they are in the space (green) and very very few are actually experts (tan). What do you think? .

Twebinar 3, a Mashup of Heavy Hitters

Posted on August 20, 2008 by marc meyer

So yesterday was the final Twebinar in the series of 3. I’ve written about how successful the other 2 were and this one did not disappoint. What makes these twebinars better than good, are the components, that in their own right are singularly successful. Combined into a mashup of staccato like proportions though, they then take on a life of their own.. It is in short a live show, a webinar, live video, taped video, live Q & A, and twitter. Will it blend? Ohhhh yea it did and yes it does.

Each of the Twebinars is and was hosted by Chris Brogan from Crosstech Media, who currently is the pied piper of all things social media related and rightly so. Chris knows everyone and everyone knows Chris, so it works. Along with David Alston from Radian 6, Chris and David have melded multiple technologies and people into a workable format for robust discussions. In the course of the hour plus twebinar Chris trots out all of the hitter heavy hitters in marketing, PR and social media like Todd Defren, Maggie Fox, Sally Falkow, and Paul Gillin, to name a few, and in rapid fashion they give you their take on all things, in this case, the art of listening in the space that we all are swimming in right now. How to listen, as I tweeted yesterday is not a novel concept, but you would be surprised how often it is ignored and overlooked as a tool of measurement. All of yesterdays guests and fellow twitterers essentially said nothing to the contrary either.

I’ll tell you why I like twebinars. It’s an opportunity to share my thoughts and ideas and opinions on what I think works, with my peers, with my colleages, and with people that are looking for answers. All in an insanely fun and interactive format. In fact, all of the participants have that exact opportunity because we are as much a part of the twebinar as are the people that Chris had on. It’s why it works.

Glitches? A few but all temporary and expected. The upside? 95% of those who participated woudl do it again. And the downside? I’m sure there was a downside if someone chose to find one, but on the surface, I’d say Chris and David, and all those who were a part of the Twebinars, would say in baseball parlance, went three for three. To check out the tweets from yesterdays Twebinar, Try #tweb3 on Summize. I would keep your 2 ears open for the next one.

In social media, What’s more important? The technology or the user experience?

Posted on August 19, 2008 by marc meyer

Recently, I had the opportunity to sit down with Kim Kobza, the CEO of Neigborhood America. If you are not familiar with NA, they are one of the top players in the social media platform space. To say that it was interesting is putting it mildly. We kept taking the dry erase pen from each other constantly in the course of an hour to drive our points home on a white board about our thoughts on all things community and social media related.

My take away points were many but I kept thinking about one thing even 3 days later. That being-What drives the community? What is more important in the social media communities that we swim in? Is it the user experience or the user interface? Kim and I discussed what makes the community thrive and there are some interesting variables that determine this. Not the least being if we look at the 6 degrees of seperation theory, the sixth person is as important as the primary or focal person in the chain. Kim’s point that if you has a brand champion, this person is important yes, but the others on the peripheral are as well. In my head the best way I can wrap my arms around this is to perhaps think of worker bees being as important to the community as the queen is. They are integral to the survival of the colony.

My point to Kim, was that I could have this new and shiny social community ready to launch, and in my mind I totally got it, it made sense to me perfectly, and my thinking would be it would totally rock the social media space. My thinking and hope being that the buzz would bring in some fantastic members and thrive, quickly. But what if the technology was too slick? Could it have too many bells and whistles. Absolutely!

Which brings me to my point-Isn’t the user experience as important if not more than the platform? I don’t like to say dumb it down, but as technology people, we are exposed to cool tech stuff everyday and we get it. But put yourself in the shoes of the stay at home mom or the somewhat savvy electrician who has a familiarity with Myspace or Facebook for example. Will they get it? Maybe , maybe not? Do you want to take the chance that they “might” get it?

The user experience and the user interface are each predicated and determined by the other in my mind. If you have the technology but it’s broken and doesn’t perform, then you can forget it. If you have a community ready to go but they can’t understand how to use the technology, then they are gone. If you have a community that can grasp the technology quickly, and the technology is solid. Guess what? The user experience is elevated. With that being said, as managers and developers of communities, we need to walk that fine line between what works for the user and what the user can work with

Serve me what I want, not what you think I need.

Posted on August 18, 2008 by marc meyer

The word community is derived from the Latin communitas (meaning the same), which is in turn derived from communis, which means “common, public, shared by all or many. Makes perfect sense to me what makes a community thrive. Give the people what they want. What they want, is people that they have something in common with and then beyond that, an experience to share and talk and engage. If they can’t do those things because of things out of their control. They’ll go elsewhere.

Ironically, how many times have you seen companies stray from what they do best, in the hopes of making more money doing something that they might be marginal at? And then failing? They lose their customers in droves.

The examples are plentiful and graphic and yet it still happens over and over and over again. If we take online social networks and communities, the drive for market share and penetration is on the minds of the people that launch these things. It dominates their thoughts. But what sometimes occurrs, is they see what is being offered and feel they too must deliver what social network A is doing, and provide what platform B promises, etc etc..Losing sight perhaps, of the technology or offer or idealistic goals, that initially prompted them to get in the game in the first place!

The one problem is, rather than trying to do one thing very very well, they do a lot of things that are somewhat average.

Case in point. McDonalds, we have all eaten there but why? A) because they brand the hell out of the product better than anyone and B) you always know what to expect-consistency. Keep the comments about consistently bad to yourself- but the point being they have strived to do those 2 things well while concentrating on their core business- Hamburgers. Yes they test and launch different products to cater to the whims and desires of a more health conscious public, but at the end of the day they are still dancing with the partner that got them there. Hamburgers. The McDonalds community revolves around-Hamburgers. Billions and Billions Served.

A word to all of the designers, entrepreneurs and architects of these new shiny online social networks and communities: Do one thing right and make it repeatable. First and foremost, being the community, with the communities best interests at heart. Yes we like bells and whistles, and yes they are sexy, but when all is said and done, if it doesn’t work or fails to deliver, our ever decreasing attention span will lead us back to the things, the sites and the tools that we know will deliver day in and day out. Make it consistent, make it repeatable and make sure it delivers without fail.

If you give me what I came here for and it’s exactly what I expected, I will come back. And if it is exactly the way it was the first time, not only will I come back, but I will tell my friends. But if you fail me, not only will I tell my friends, I will tell people that I don’t even know about the bad experience.

The Junta 42 Top Blogs

Posted on August 18, 2008 by marc meyer

A nice surprise occurred over the weekend as the Emerson Direct Blog cracked the top 25 of the top 42 blogs according to Junta 42. Any time we can be recognized for anything we do on behalf of the industy that we work in, it’s a nice feather in the cap.

The Top 42 Content Marketing Blogs list was designed to organize and feature the best blogs on the internet that discuss some aspect of content marketing. Content marketing is all about the creation of great, story-form content (delivered through any channel) that ultimately influences someone to buy your product, take an action, or believe in a cause Here is more detail on the Junta 42 selection process. Thanks Joe Pulizzi

You don’t know who your customer might be!

Posted on August 16, 2008 by marc meyer

I was with a group of people today. We played golf. No big deal. I found out what one of the people did for a living. I did work for one of his competitors. He was a nice guy and I was thinking of maybe seeing if he might need help with his business. He seemed nice enough that maybe I could help him too!

Then he said something funny, but I was the butt of the joke. He did not take the time to think about what I might think. Guess what? He had the potential to earn the business of someone that could have helped him out but he did not take the time to learn more about the person he was with. In the end, a client, or a customer, take your pick mis-read the situation and blew it. How well do you know the potential relationship?

Sorry Bob, you just Effed up!

Social Media Visualization Part III:10 Wordles of your peers, do they fit?

Posted on August 15, 2008 by marc meyer

In deference to Hermann Rorschach, I give you 10 Wordles from some of the more popular or notable people in the social media, marketing, and internet space that we swim in. Interestingly enough, what makes them unique, is what makes them different, yet similar. Lets check them out and come up with a few words that might describe each of their blogs.

For the uninitiated, Wordle is a toy for generating “word clouds” from text that you provide. The clouds give greater prominence to words that appear more frequently in the source text.

Our first Wordle belongs to Jeremiah Owyang, the notable Forrester analyst:

What sticks out? Content, brands, social, personal, chanel, community and Youtube. All of which, in one way or the other, speak to what he writes about on a day to day basis. The one that is the real head scratcher is Ronald. Jeremiah?

Next up is Toby Bloomberg’s wonderful blog, Diva marketing Blog

I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that Toby is all about blogging, blogger relations, business strategy, marketing and social media. Your thoughts? How did I do?

Next up is Todd Defren’s Why is the McCain reference so prominent? Todd’s wordle appears to look like it’s been tagged by some of Boston’s best graffiti artists. But PR does jump out of the mix, thank goodness.

Well, lets bring in Chris Brogan, the very prolific, as of late, Chris Brogan

Actually Chris’s wordle is very much like him as of late, all over the place. Lots of words. I mean lots. but Speech and Post certainly reveal what Chris is all about-in a good way of course. But so does email?

With that being said, Lets look at the wordle of Brian Solis

As you can see, the word information was cut off, but was essentially alone at the bottom. I find that odd for someone with this type of blogsite. As if there is some sort of disconnect between PR and the conversation and information? The wordle does reveal the things that Brian blogs about, are dead on with his passion. PR and social media.

Did someone mention Hugh Macleod?

Given the nature and style of Hugh’s blog, its interesting and appropriate to see the word prominence falling on…of all things, people! But companies and organizations fall in behind the term along with thought and know.

The next few people are certainly people we all know about, so lets see how their wordles compare. The first being David Armano’s Check out how prominent Twitter is, and like people, as well as media, talking, social and brand.

Next is Shel Israel’s Whic speaks to everything that Shel is about. Very representative.

Speaking of representative, check out Scoble’s.

And lastly here is mine: Social, media, conversation, value and people all figure prominently.

Are we all too predictable? Or do we all just stick to what we know?

13 websites that you might want to bookmark

Posted on August 14, 2008 by marc meyer

Sometimes I come across websites that seem to make sense for one reason or another. At least they did when I bookmarked them. Then I go back and wonder why. Some ring a bell at the time and others are downright headscratchers. Has that ever happened to you? They must have had some sort of real world relavance. Nevertheless, while trying to streamline the hundreds of blogs and sites that I have accumulated, I came across these.

CrunchBase is the free directory of technology companies, people, and investors that anyone can edit.

The tagline for Liferemix is “Great writing about great lives…”

Perhaps I should read more of what Steve Pavlina is pushing given these interesting times in our lives?

How can you not learn something from the Harvard Business Blogs?

I like the premise of Tech Cocktail ” to help amplify the technology signal in under served markets and have fun doing it.”

At The Consumerist, where the shopper bites back, you get your fair share of horror stories from the customers perspective.

Here’s a podcast audio player widget from personal life media

Here’s a a social microblogging service similar to Twitter when I was pissed at them, built on open source tools and open standards. Allows users to send text-based posts up to 140 characters …called Identi.ca

But then I found the love again with Twitter and was curious as to just how popular I was and Twittercounter does just that…

Roomatic is similar to Summize

PostSecret is so cool, the books are awsome and so is this site. We all have a post-secret, and if you think you don’t, you’re full of it.

Finding signal in the noise with the most popular stories over the last 8 hours on RSSmeme

and who doesn’t want to Get Slightly Famous?

OK, so there, this should get you through to the weekend. Who knows? If you had to share one bookmark or site of your own what would it be? Tell me, as my Indian programming counterparts used to say on a regular basis.