Jason Falls

I’ve long been of the belief that the vast majority of social media thinkers and doers easily lapse into the self-gratifying bubble that is our little online world and forgets the primary audience to which we should speak lies not on Twitter or Facebook or blogs. We are good a sharing social media. We are better at stroking each other and the latter is easier to accomplish.

But what it accomplishes is little. I’ve said before that I feel we should spend less time talking to each other and more talking to the un-enlightened. I’ve made speaking commitments for 2009 at conferences and engagements outside my comfort zone for that very reason. The Social Media Club Louisville will take a decided direction on education, offering paid boot camps for non-profits, educators, public relations professionals and more this year. We will focus on the tools, the basics and getting to know social media so that when we do have events to talk strategy, we aren’t met with deer-in-headlights looks and cricket chirping.

But what can we do for our clients, our businesses and our immediate social media needs to get outside that box as well?

Forrester Research's Social Technographics Ladder from Flickr.

Let’s start with Forrester’s now familiar Social Technographics Ladder. This image proposes Internet users are made up of six groups of participants: those who don’t participate in social sites; spectators who look, but nothing more; joiners who maintain profiles but don’t really get “into” it; collectors who will vote, add tags and maybe use RSS feeds but little else; critics who contribute comments, ratings, edit articles in a wiki and participate on other sites but not their own; and creators who publish their own materials.

According to Forrester’s 2008 statistics to fill in those roles, 21 percent of Internet users are now creators, up from 18 percent in 2007. Surprisingly, 25 percent are inactive, down dramatically from 44 percent in 2007. And an astonishing 69 percent are now spectators (up from 48 percent). All other categories increased as well.

Forrester Research's Social Technographic Profile of U.S. Online Adults via Flickr

Here’s what these numbers mean to me and how they translate to actionable strategies for your 2009 social media activities.

1. More people are adopting the social web as a regular activity.
2. With almost 70 percent of all Internet users now watching what is happening on social sites, companies are now at a critical point in time in doing something meaningful there to capture those attentions.
3. The traditional marketing mindset, however, seeks numbers, eyeballs, etc., so the programs developed are aimed at influencers hoping for the trickle-down and long-tail effects of “going viral.”
4. This means the way we are approaching social media targeting is flawed.

Instead of developing programs to entice the creators or critics into talking about our companies, products or services, why don’t we develop ones that focus on the spectators and serve their needs? By giving them what they’re looking for, we connect our brand to their experience in a meaningful way. And frankly, if we do that, the creators and critics will follow.

It’s worth a shot, right?

Here’s a snippet of what I mean:

Let’s say you’re the brand manager for the Smart Car. You develop a lifestyle website around the Smart Car with content focused on green issues, other eco-friendly companies and programs, helpful tips and pointers to a green lifestyle, environmental event coverage, charity partnerships, etc. Think of it as a tree-hugger’s magazine online. (I don’t say “blog” because that’s the first word that turns most spectators — read: brand managers — off.) By giving the spectator the type of experience online they’re perhaps looking for, but also intertwining your very relevant brand into the content and messaging, you’re giving them something useful. By doing so, you enamor your brand with them and have a chance at sales, conversions, etc.

That’s just one idea and not one given a lot of thought. Imagine, Mr. or Mrs. Smart Car Brand Manager, what we could accomplish if I were fully functional, being paid and off my pain meds. (Heh.)

So my challenge to all of us in 2009 is to not stop thinking about the influencers, but start thinking about the larger audiences of people just toe-tipping the social web, too. Let’s give them something to consume, something to do, some people to interact with on behalf of the brand. Why does it have to be on an influencer’s blog? Why can’t it be on our dime, our time and our server? Let’s see what we can do to not scare them off and show them that we’ve been listening. We know you don’t want to be marketed to. We just want to welcome you to our new world where we talk, listen, share and collaborate.

If we do that, 2009 will be our best yet.

Related articles by Jason Falls and Zemanta

• The Incredible Efficiency of Social Media
• Social Media Strategy: Aligning Goals and Measurements
• Top 10 Social Media Tips For Connecting With Non-Blogging Customers
• Social Media Marketing & The Need For Focus

Jason Falls

One of the social media tools I get the most use out of yet see the fewest people adopting is social bookmarking. For the purposes of this post, I’m going to refer to Delicious.com quite a bit. Not only is it my social bookmarking mechanism of choice, but it is the one utility essentially geared for just that — bookmarking. Not voting, or front page-getting or popularity contests. Delicious is about a place to store your favorite sites and share them with your friends along that network if you choose.

Of course, being all social media’d up, Delicious offers several ways to bookmark (copying and pasting the URL straight into Delicious; using a toolbar bookmarklet for one-click access to the entry field; or even zany sync functions with your browser’s bookmarks or favorites, which make no sense to me if you’re going totally web-based, but I digress.) It even allows you (or anyone for that matter) to subscribe to your bookmarks via RSS or — even better — you can subscribe to certain tags applied to your bookmarks via RSS as well. So if I tag a certain number of bookmarks, “rockstar” and you want to subscribe to all the content I bookmark and then tag “rockstar” to indicate that it was written by a rockstar, I’m a rockstar (and vain) or it’s about Rockstar energy drink, then you can subscribe to just that tag and not see all the other crap I save.

At any rate, Delicious kicks ass and I use it in a number of ways. But tagging content, I recently found, is something I’m not very good at.

What you see below are my top Delicious tags as of late Thursday night, granted after parsing quite a few and transferring several client-based tags to a corporate account. (Hence the most popular “for:DoeAnderson”.) A few top level tags standout that make sense for me — PR, blogging, Louisville, bestpractices, advertising. “SME” is the purposed tag I use to populate the “What I’m Reading” side bar on my blog.

Delicous Tags - Jason Falls 1-1-09

But if you look closer, you can see massive redundancy and disorganization. There are tags for brandenthusiasts, branding and brands. Separate ones for forum and forums. And a run of social media related ones that include no fewer than sellingsocialmedia, socialbookmarking, socialmedia, socialmediamarketing, socialmediameasurement, socialmediarelease, socialmediaroi, socialmediastrategy, socialmediatools, socialnetworking and socialnews. Oh, and there are separate entries for business, CEO and corporate.

And that’s just the snapshot of the top 200 tags. If you get down into the minutiae of my tags, you’ll find entries for (and I kid you not): baseballbats, celebrity, coffee, crafts, culturalbias, DIY, forumettiquette, giving, inspirtation, knitting, lawsuits, methanedigester, parenting, sarahpalin, slander, startingablog, TomTom, widgets, wine, WVU, yuwie and my personal favorite, cowfarming.

The reason for all this disorganization is two-fold. First, tagging is free-wheeling, off-the-cuff and can be whatever you want it to be. The concept is simple. Tag the content with a word or a couple of words that you will remember when looking for the content again, making it easier to find in a search. This can, however, often lead to inconsistencies in your tagging habits over time which is the second problem that resulted in my mess. Being inconsistent with what keywords I used to identify, say, social media measurement articles, produced multiple tags for the same essential information. Had I developed either a system, or kept it bare-bones simple from the start of my tagging life, some two years ago, this mess would not have happened.

So, starting over today, and Lord knows if I’ll ever get time to actually fix it all, here are my practical tips to tagging your content:

Keep It Simple

I would recommend using no more than 2-3 tags per piece of content and keep the words very generic. If it’s about social media measurement then maybe tag it “socialmedia” and “measurement”. If you’re ever tempted to get into monitoring, ROI, quantifying success, etc., default to “socialmedia” and “measurement”. And remember that tagging, especially in Delicious, is space sensitive. Thus “social media” will be tagged as “social” and then also as “media.” Be sure to eliminate the space and make it “socialmedia.”

Keep It The Same

If you’re following the Keep it Simple rule, you’ll probably find it easy to follow this one. Remember, inconsistency is what has killed my organization. So you have to keep coming back to the hard fast rules. If you’re bookmarking tax fraud cases in several states for your law firm, then bookmark them, “taxfraud California” and “taxfraud NewJersey” so you have one laundry list (taxfraud) and can then break it down by state with other filters. Don’t go off putting prosecutors names or state abbreviations or other extraneous information you won’t need. Keep it simple and the same.

Periodically Review

To remind yourself of the tags you are using and to help clean out ones you perhaps threw in by accident in your last, late night fit of social bookmarking, you should log in to Delicious periodically and see your mess. If you have hundreds of tags and none of them make sense, you’ve probably done something wrong. If you see a handful of categories that are popping out as the most bookmarked and you can easily filter and find what you’re looking for at a glance, you’re keeping with the program. It’s kind of like your file drawer - the less you look at it, the more it makes you sick when you do. So be a good steward, remembering that the public can see your mess online, and clean up your junk from time to time.

Don’t Bookmark Everything

This one is a hard one for some to grasp, but bear with me. I bookmark fewer and fewer items these days for one simple reason: I subscribe to just about everything I find interesting online via RSS. If I want to find an article I read on Mark Dykeman’s blog a year ago, I can search my RSS feeds and find it. It’s not much more time consuming or difficult than bookmarking it, so I don’t need bookmarking as much anymore. However, there are purposes and reasons for aggregating everything I find on certain subjects, so bookmarking hasn’t lost its relevance. But I only bookmark what I’m going to later need when writing an article on the subject or preparing presentation for clients, etc.

And as a bonus, here are some Delicious tricks.

1. Use the bookmarklet to add things to Delicious. It’s just quicker and easier. Go here to learn how, it adds an icon in your browser, when you’re on the page you click and the dialog box pops up so you can add descriptions, tags, etc. If you still copy-paste, you need to spend some time getting up to speed on stuff like this. Trust me. it will make your life easier.
2. To share a bookmark with a friend on Delicious, just add the tag “for:username” - so to share one with me, it would be “for:JasonFalls”.
3. To subscribe to a certain tag, just select the tag, then scroll down to the bottom of the page. You should see the orange RSS icon in the lower left.
4. To purpose a certain tag, just create a unique name for the tag and add it to content you want used for that purpose. For instance, I use the tag “sme” to produce the RSS feed of articles I want to appear in the sidebar of my blog as “What I’m Reading.” When I find an article I want to place there, I bookmark it, tag it with “sme” then I take the RSS feed of that tag from Delicous, and format the feed to fit in my sidebar using CSS styles. It sounds more complicated than it is. Ask a web dev type for some help. It’s actually not hard. (And once it’s set up, all I do is tag. Everything else is automatic.)
5. If you’re editing your own tags, there’s a new Beta version of a bulk editor in Delicious now, so you can change a bunch of tags all at once. However, it won’t allow you to bulk add a “for:” tag, so you can dump all your corporate stuff at once. Yep … I had to transfer over 250 Maker’s Mark tags one-by-one. Sucked.

As always, this is an effort in collective intelligence. What are your secrets for tagging, bookmarking, Delicious or similar. The comments are, as always, yours.

Related articles by Zemanta and Jason Falls

• Social Bookmarking In Plain English (from CommonCraft)
• Delicious Mobile? Still a Pipe Dream
• Search results show Delicious remains a tech niche
• Delicious: Tagging The Web For Five Years And Counting
• Web Strategy: Using Delicious For Market Research

By David Finch

Let’s face it, we’re all looking for that “special” tool or application that will make our job or online experience easier and more productive. Every year there are a list of tools and services that are released to help make this happen. However, the challenge is weeding out what works and what doesn’t.

Over the past year, I’ve added some innovative tools to my social media toolbox. Here are my favorites as well as those that I continue to go back to.

My Top 5 for 2008:

1. Tweetdeck - Tweetdeck is a desktop application that allows you to take all the information that comes through Twitter and break it down into more consumable pieces. Tweetdeck will allow you to setup columns into groups, replies, search as well as a live feed.

You’ll be surprised how much your Twitter experience changes by adding Tweetdeck to your social media toolbox.

2. Twitter Search - Twitter Search allows you to keep up with all the conversations that are taking place within Twitter. Twitter Search will help you filter all the real-time information by topic, keyword or Twitter user. Twitter search works great to track replies as well as daily trends.

3. Twellow - Twellow is a Twitter search engine and search directory. Twellow is a great tool to find individuals that have similar interests. It makes it easy to find those that are involved in marketing and advertising, as well as accountants and graphic designers. One additional feature is that it lists their last “tweet” and the number of followers. If you’re building a Twitter community around your niche, this tool can be extremely beneficial.

4. Google Trends - Google Trends is one of the best tools for tracking what’s hot at the moment. It provides charts and graphs of searches as well as trends for any particular day. It works great in helping you monitor what type of content is getting the most attention.

5. Yahoo Pipes - Online Brand Protection - Yahoo Pipes is a web application that provides a user interface for building applications that aggregate web feeds, web pages, and other services. The Yahoo Pipe, Online Brand Protection works great to monitor conversations that are taking place online about your brand. Adding the RSS feed to your feed reader makes it easy to track and monitor what’s being said.

While this is definitely not everything that’s in my toolbox, these are the tools that I use on a daily basis.

What are your top social media tools? Which ones do you use on a daily basis? Leave a comment. I would love to hear what’s in your toolbox.

Kat French

If you read this blog, odds are good that you follow Jason on Twitter or Facebook. If that’s the case, you’re probably aware that Jason is currently recovering from surgery.  

Unless, of course, you were actually following our suggestion from last week that you spend your holiday break not checking social media sites.  (I wasn’t able to do it entirely either, natch.)  So for this week, at least, you’ll have to make do with David and me.  

As we’re approaching the new year, it’s a natural time to start making those big picture, long range plans to dominate the world of blogging, podcasting and other social media in 2009.  

In the French household, we traditionally have a New Year’s Eve movie party, where we hang out with friends, eat, drink, and watch our perennial favorite movies from over the years.  Every year, we plan to watch either the Lord of the Rings or Star Wars saga in all its unabridged, 12-hour glory.  Every year, we fail to do so.   So I thought I would combine my love of cheesy cult movies with some End of Year Planning for today’s post.

First Cult Movie Lesson:  Be Helpful and Transparent About Your Motivations.

Inigo Montoya: I donna suppose you could speed things up? 
Westley: If you’re in such a hurry, you could lower a rope or a tree branch or find something useful to do. 
Inigo Montoya: I could do that. I have some rope up here, but I do not think you would accept my help, since I am only waiting around to kill you. 
Westley: That does put a damper on our relationship. 

- The Princess Bride

Social media runs on social capital.   Social capital is earned by giving.  Be helpful, be a resource, “find something useful to do.”  But let’s face it–we all have our own motivations for doing this–and that’s okay, as long as we’re open and honest about them.  Especially if your motivations are evolving as you move into 2009, keep communicating that evolution.  Some motives (making money among them) will probably never win you any popularity contests.   Be honest about them anyway.  

Second Cult Movie Lesson:  Remember the Fundamentals 

Lisa: You had to be big shots didn’t you. You had to show off. When are you gonna learn that people will like you for who you are, not for what you can give them. Well, in your race for power and glory, you forgot one small detail. 
Wyatt: We forgot to hook up the doll. 
Lisa: You forgot to hook up the doll. 

- Weird Science

Social media practitioners are early adopters, always on the lookout for newer, faster, shinier tools.  We tend to tinker, always tweaking our blogs and profiles with new widgets or a new theme.  But in that constant tinkering, pimping, tweaking, and experimenting, it’s important to not lose sight of the basics.   Producing great content.  Maintaining consistent frequency.  Optimizing for search.  Building relationships.  Do this well, and you can get by without every bell and whistle.  Don’t do it well, and there’s not a widget on earth that will help you succeed.   

Third Cult Movie Lesson: Always Be on the Lookout for Allies

Reggie Lampert: I already know an awful lot of people and until one of them dies I couldn’t possibly meet anyone else. 
Peter Joshua: Well, if anyone goes on the critical list, let me know. 

- Charade 

If you’re thinking about strategy for 2009, you need to be thinking about strategic relationship building.  Do you have a mentor? If not, finding one needs to be on your 2009 to-do list.   If you’re a “journeyman” practictioner, consider taking on a protege or two.   We often learn by teaching better than we do by studying others.   Either way, be judicious in your search–find someone who is motivated, but doesn’t stay constantly too overcommitted to make a good partner. 

Final Cult Movie Lesson:  Balance is Key. 

Daniel: When do I learn how to punch? 
Miyagi: Better learn balance. Balance is key. Balance good, karate good. Everything good. Balance bad, better pack up, go home. Understand?

- The Karate Kid 

It’s easy to get consumed by the work, because honestly, this is fun work.  It’s easy to let things get out of balance.  As you work your social media strategy for 2009, remember to take time away from the keyboard to maintain a life that’s rich in relationships and real-world experiences.  The bonus is that those things can only improve your work.

So that’s my list of four valuable lessons to be learned from Hollywood while planning for 2009.   Got any to add?  Drop them in the comments.

We’re spending time with our families for the rest of the week. But we didn’t want to leave you hanging. Here’s the first-ever look at the three of us together. Happy Holidays to you and yours.

By Jason Falls

I recently arranged for a group of bloggers in a certain industry to receive some exclusivity in advance notice of a new product. There was no stipulation from my client that they write about the product, though we anticipated they would given some of the first, hands-on exposure to it. All of them wrote about it and most in favorable fashion. The new product is off to a good start and I’m happy that some good, new-fashioned public relations helped.

(I say new-fashioned because old-fashioned is sending blast emails to hundreds of media outlets or bloggers and calling it a day. New-fashioned is reaching out personally to individuals to build a relationship and working with them to meet their needs and yours in symbiotic fashion.)

What’s even more impressive about the success of the new product outreach is that when I originally approached this group of bloggers about the possibility of getting them on the inside of a product launch they responded with a complaint.

“Why is it that your clients think we’re good enough to try and hock their PR crap on, but when we approach them for advertising dollars we get the run-around?”

Fair question.

The answer wasn’t easy for them to swallow, but here it is:

First, you don’t have eyeballs. Clients who work with advertising agencies are normally paying a lot of money to reach as many people as possible. Traditionally, advertising dollars are spent trying to reach the most number of people at the lowest per-person cost. While advertising on your blog is far cheaper than any other form of media buy my client might have, your total audience is a rounding error in what they normally reach. The PR outreach includes you because A) bloggers are often looking for good material, especially the exclusive kind, and it might be an easy sell to place our product information in front of your audience and B) bloggers often serve as clearinghouses for material for larger audiences and influencers, even traditional journalists. Your blog is niche, but influential. We wouldn’t spend dollars on your blog because you don’t have quantity in audience. We’ll gladly spend some nominal time and dollars with a PR effort, however, because we think you have a higher quality audience.

Second, you don’t make it easy for us. For a blog to put itself into serious contention for advertising dollars, the buyer needs to know your traffic, your demographics and your reach. Unless your site is big enough to be measured regularly by ComScore or you’ve added the Quantcast code to produce some analytics of your audience, we don’t know who your readers are. I can’t convince a brand manager to spend $500, $1,000 or $10,000 on a blog ad buy if I can’t reasonably say the audience includes the target demographic we’re trying to reach. And I’m sorry, “Well, we write about cars, so our audience is dudes,” doesn’t cut it. Most bloggers don’t want to share their traffic numbers. They either are ashamed they have a small audience, jealous of those with bigger audiences or just don’t realize if they did they might get more advertisers. You have to help us before we can reasonably help you.

Last, online advertising is much less effective than online editorial coverage. Think about it. When’s the last time you clicked on a banner ad? When’s the last time you even looked at one long enough to recognize the product, the message and consider clicking? Now tell me what product or service Chris Brogan wrote about in his controversial Dad-O-Matic post from Dec. 2? I read the post. I remember the product, learned something I didn’t know about it and perhaps even brought it back into my consideration set. (Not really. I don’t shop. But still.)

Gladly, this small group of bloggers was delighted I was so honest with them. I’m sure a few of them ran out and signed up to have Quantcast measure them or at least reconsidered how they package and approach sponsors. Despite the reasons listed, though, I pursued an advertising buy on behalf of the client. While due diligence went a long way in forging a better relationship with the bloggers, ultimately the plan didn’t work out. They still warmly received the product and wrote about it on launch.

The combination of my experience working through advertising issues with bloggers, the prevailing wisdom that traditional advertising is broken - at least to the point that its performance is being questioned now more than ever - and the hullabaloo over Brogan’s paid post got me thinking about the future of advertising again. I’ve said before I think a new way of advertising to customers is coming. From, “The Demise Of Online Advertising Is Upon Us,” on Sept. 8:

We have to come up with something better.

By we, I mean some combination of advertising professionals, marketers and media outlets. Whomever cracks the code first will have a leg up on redefining an entire industry. What’s intriguing is that the answer is going to be a blend of advertising, content and engagement which makes me think social media thinking will have something to do with it.

Pay-per-click and cost-per-thousand are becoming tired for chief marketing officers because they under-perform expectations which, in and of themselves, are all out of whack because of the bullshit Nielsen, Arbitron and others have been feeding them for decades. So smart marketers are looking toward engagement and content - elements of social media - to reach their audiences. Some, like Izea, are pushing the boundaries and experimenting with sponsored posts, which are more effective in delivering messaging so long as they’re read. What this proves is marketers are looking for more effective ways to deliver their messages to consumers.

Was Izea wrong to lure influencer bloggers into a $500 gift card in exchange for a post scheme? No. Was Chris Brogan wrong for accepting the offer and blogging about K-Mart? Not unless Chris Heuer was, too, which he wasn’t.

In my opinion the sponsored post will find a nice living space in social media because most blog readers and mainstream consumers either A) Don’t notice it’s sponsored or B) Don’t care as long as the content is relevant to their need in reading said blog. I browse the posts at Uncrate.com fairly regularly. If one of their posts was sponsored it wouldn’t bother me so long as the product fell into the category of stuff guys would love. If it was for Nice-N-Easy hair coloring for women, it might bother me. Let’s hope Uncrate’s editors aren’t that dumb. Darren Rowse’s blog is chock full-o-ads. Doesn’t bother me in the least because I get value from his insights and the man has mouths to feed. Brogan caught heat for his sponsored post for one reason: To date he has epitomized the core tenants of social media philosophy - sharing, transparency and a near void of consumerism. On ChrisBrogan.com, that post would have been highly inappropriate. It was on DadOMatic.com where it was exceptionally well received, by the way.

What has been lost in this whole debate is that all Izea did was offer up a tried and true PR tactic. They provide access to the product for a media outlet to write about it. While I’m personally not a fan of the play or no pay approach, you can’t find a PR firm out there that hasn’t shipped free products, paid for media junkets or offered gratuitous perks to media outlets to fan the flames of a pitch. Crossing the line to insist on coverage in exchange for the perks does make it advertising and is less credible as such.

So what happens now? The Izea experiment has shown that A) Sponsored posts do get the word out there but that B) In some circles they’re not well received. Developing what advertising will look like in our new, social connectivity-dominated web was nothing more than trial-and-error in what will eventually become the greatest communications invention of our time: the effective and engaging online advertisement.

But what the experiment also tells us is that whatever the future of advertising is, it will be centered on content and engagement which is what good public relations has been doing for years.

Right? Wrong? The comments are yours.

Related articles by Zemanta and Jason Falls

• Web ad spend growth set to plummet in 2009, says eMarketer report
• When Bloggers become Corporate Sponsors
• Can Advertising Truly Be Social?

image by:MarvinKuo

In the summer of 2004, on the hottest day of the year, I loaded up a moving truck, and moved to a city where I had no contacts, no network, and no friends. The only thing I had was a blog and a few early social media tools.

My goal was to hit the ground running with the anticipation of a few bumpy weeks, but with a solid plan it wouldn’t be long before a new network would be built.

The way I achieved this was by listening and reaching out. I set lofty goals to meet new people as well as a plan to maintain these new relationships. At times those goals were met, and other times I fell way short.

Have a Plan
In anything, as well as social media, you’re only as good as your plan. My plan was to use the tools I had to generate an offline meeting. I wanted to add value, participate in conversations and if possible connect in face-to-face meetings. The purpose of meeting face-to-face wasn’t to get something in return, but to listen to the stories of others, their thoughts and ideas, and last but not least, allow them to put a face with a user name. Not to mention, face-to-face meetings produce a connection that online tools can’t produce.

Use the Tools
We are definitely not short on social media tools. The best thing is to find out where your niche group is conversing online and use those tools to connect. Don’t be afraid to try anything. If someone recommends a new tool, try it. If it generates productive conversations, stick with it. If it doesn’t, move on.

If you are new to the social media space, sign up for a Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn account. Join groups within the social media sites that offer them. Turn your passion into a gallery. Register a domain name and setup a blog where you can produce conversation pieces.

Experiment with video and put it on sites such as YouTube and Viddler. At the very least put yourself in a position to be seen and also in a place where you can listen.

Be Consistent
The secret behind networking and social media isn’t necessarily the volume, but the consistency. Connecting one person at time, providing something of value to that person and gaining their trust. Set a goal on how much time you’ll spend using social media tools and be consistent at that.

Don’t Be Afraid to Be Rejected
I’m like anyone else, I hate to be rejected. Unfortunately I have a collection of rejection stories as well. The more you engage ideas and relationships, rejection is certain to happen. However, if you continue to follow a simple social media protocol (listen, give, and then receive), you’ll discover that you’ll build a network of healthy relationships.

Listen
The key to success in social media is your ability to listen. It’s not the time to pitch your stuff, but to listen to others and see where you can add value. I’ve always embraced the idea that those that are willing to listen at some point will be invited to speak.

This is a great lesson to learn. If not, you’ll be labeled as a social spammer and not someone that’s truly open to being a part of the conversation.

Add Value
One of the hardest concepts to accept is the reward that comes by giving away something of value to someone else first. It may be introducing people within your network, or sending a tip or idea their way. Whatever method you choose, by giving something of value you’ll have a greater chance of building a network, not just a collection of “friends” and “followers.”

That’s my story, what’s yours?

How are you using social media to build an offline network? What tips would you offer? Leave a comment. I would love to hear your experiences.

I had the pleasure of attending my first Doe-Anderson Holiday Party last week.  It was a good chance to mingle with some of the folks around the agency that I don’t get a chance to talk to very often.  Mostly what we talked about was work (because advertising people are functionally incapable of not thinking about work.)  

At any rate, I was taken aback by something a coworker said to me.

“Do people really listen to podcasts?”

Ironically enough, when I first met Jason, he’d already heard about me, and my perspective on social media–from a podcast.  

Not only do people listen to podcasts, but earlier this year eMarketer predicted podcasting advertising spend to quintuple over the next five years.  In 2006, $80 million was spent on podcast advertising.  For an emerging media, that’s a substantial figure.  According to ReadWriteWeb, Wizzard Media (a podcasting network) reported that they’d reached the 1 billion download mark in 2007.  I’d have to assume that those numbers are dwarfed by those of iTunes, the dominant podcast client.  

So for those who are unfamiliar with podcasting, here’s a handy video from Common Craft that explains what podcasting is, in plain English:

Podcasting as a marketing tool can be really powerful.  Particularly if your brand includes an educational element, podcasts can be a great way to communicate with those who are passionate about learning more.  A good example is cookware.  

People who are passionate about food are always looking for new recipes, tips, and for the best way to care for that expensive cookware to make it last.  If a cookware brand produced a fun, engaging podcast that provided content geared towards feeding that passion, then they’ve created a powerful, direct communication channel to their most enthusiastic brand fans.   If they opened the podcast up to user questions, they’ve made that communication channel feel deeply personal. 

Podcasting can be a nice option for companies who want to start experimenting with social media and begin communicating in a more human voice, but who aren’t ready to deal with moderating comments on a blog.  It’s far more common for a podcast to be delivered in ways that don’t allow for comments than it is for a blog to have comments closed.   

Video podcasting is another element of podcasting that has experienced explosive growth, and which doesn’t require a great deal more equipment or technical proficiency than audio podcasting.  According to ITwire, more people listen to podcasts from their PC than from an iPod anyway, so if you’re considering a video podcast, market penetration of video-enabled media devices shouldn’t be a deterrant.  

Promotion and distribution is a more difficult task than production, in most cases.  For a brand, featuring the podcast prominently on their website is a good idea, and so is utilizing multiple distribution networks.  

Promoting a podcast is much like promoting a blog–networking with other content producers in your niche is a good way to get noticed.  But ultimately, the only way to achieve long term success is to keep producing compelling content, reliably and frequently.  

If you’re interested in finding out more about the nuts and bolts basics of how to do a podcast, you can find that here.   Ultimately, though, the success or failure of a podcast is going to lie in its content strategy, rather than technological wizardry.  

As I wrap this post up, I’d love to hear from others in the comments.  What have your experiences with podcasting been like?  What was the hardest part?  What benchmarks do you set for yourself as a podcaster?  Surprises along the way?

A few weeks ago, I told you of a new challenge for me with Doe-Anderson and that I would be hiring a few folks to help me tackle my role as Director of Interactive and On-Line Communications. Yesterday, two of the four posted positions were officially filled.

On the social media front, I’m excited to welcome David Finch to the team. A friend and fellow Social Media Club Louisville board member, David is an established blogger and thinker in the social media space, has a sharp mind and an astute business sense and happens to be pretty darn good at driving traffic to websites, too.

And from the development side of things, Seth King joins Doe as a web developer. He’s tremendously talented, has a nice blend of application work to go with an outstanding web design portfolio and even has some traditional design and creative experience that will come in handy as we try to forge a stronger relationship with our agency creatives.

I’m sure you’ll see David here as he’ll join the SME staff as a contributor along with Kat French. Seth may very well make a guest appearance as well. Certainly his work will on the occasion we launch and share some of our craftsmanship.

I’ve had several people ask me what Doe Interactive is going to do differently and, while I’ve been lost in the weeds serving as director, project manager and social media dude for the last month and haven’t had time or opportunity to formulate some formal plans, I’d answer by saying that we’ll do a lot differently. From the way the department is managed to the outcomes we expect of ourselves, I intend to try things that haven’t been done at an advertising agency. Below are some thought starters on what I want our philosophy, actions and outcomes to be. I’d love your input, opinions and thoughts on them as well.

What I hope for Doe Interactive:

• We build content-centric websites that engage audiences and drive them to the client’s intended outcome.
• We balance form and function in a way that produces both utility and beauty.
• We get out of the habit of building websites and into the habit of creating ongoing elements of the greater consumer experience.
• We bring search to bear fruits for all of our clients.
• We innovate, for our clients, for our agency and for our audiences.
• We are driven by results, excited by opportunities and enthused by collaboration with each other.

I’ve told my staff, which also numbers Kat, Jen Isaac and Jeff Hennis and will soon also include a project manager, that I am not the boss nor am I the coach. I’m the quarterback. We’re all on this field together and we all have roles to play. Everyone’s contribution is an equal part of our success, every opinion counts and the only bad ideas are the ones you don’t share.

Perhaps I’m being idealistic about it all. Perhaps we’ll get six months into this thing and the bottom line will prove I should give up the management part and go back to my full-time social media role. But with the team I’ve started to build, I have a hard time thinking we’ll be anything but successful.

Welcome David and Seth. Here we go.

I was honored to be asked to contribute to a collaborative post going live this morning on the blogs of several thought leaders in the social media space. Peter Kim, formerly of Forrester Research and now with a stealth startup in Austin, Texas, coordinated and compiled it all. What follows are snippets of thought from the likes of Charlene Li, Rohit Bhargava, Chris Brogan, David Armano, Jeremiah Owyang, Andy Sernovitz, Todd Defren, Ann Handley and more. The full set of predictions is available in the white paper/PDF (linked and embedded). Give it a look see and share what you think 2009 might hold in the comments. Below is what Kim coordinated from all of us: Community and collaboration are wonderful things. Fourteen great minds on social media have shared thoughts on what 2009 may have in store for us. Here’s some of what they’re thinking:

• “Although it is now cheaper to launch an initiative leveraging Web 2.0 technology - it requires qualified and passionate people to make them successful.” - David Armano
• “You may not always start the year as a leader, but you can certainly finish it that way.” - Rohit Bhargava
• “Intimacy touches emotion; emotion powers conversation.” - Pete Blackshaw
• “Doors are going to close all over the social web. Why? Because the money didn’t come the way people thought it would.” - Chris Brogan
• “The tipping point has not only *not* been reached, but could still tilt *away* from Social Media.” - Todd Defren
• “There’s a lot of fixing that needs to be done.” - Jason Falls
• “Dwindling budgets suddenly make low-cost social media look like the pretty girl at the ball.” - Ann Handley
• “We’re going to develop a set of better metrics to help guide, direct and validate ‘commitment’.” - Joseph Jaffe
• “The movement is rooted in a desire to have quality, not quantity, as people cocoon in the face of the economic crisis.” - Charlene Li
• “After a pre-qualifying wrestling match…” - Ben McConnell
• “These will be cumulative events and interactions that will build brand loyalty for the companies that pay attention to them.” - Scott Monty
• “The recession will force revenue results out of social technologies.” - Jeremiah Owyang
• “Companies that focus on earning love will thrive during hard times, and kick ass when good times return.” - Andy Sernovitz
• “Suddenly, being Facebook friends with your mom will seem less ridiculous than following 4,000 strangers on Twitter.” - Greg Verdino

Everyone’s thoughts have been assembled in this PDF. You can also read the document in-line below.

Your feedback is appreciated and I’d love to hear your thoughts on this.

Yesterday I had the pleasure of hosting a Public Relations Society of America (PRSA) teleseminar called, “The Art of Listening,” where I (hopefully) helped participants learn a little about the free and paid monitoring services out there for finding conversations about brands, businesses, products, services and other topics. The presentation was geared toward the public relations professional not familiar with what many of us in the online space consider to be basic tools of the trade. You’d be surprised how many folks out there don’t know about Google Alerts.

The Art of Listening View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: social media)

As I was preparing for the session, I started running through a list of potential questions that might come up. One of them was, “How do I engage someone being very negative about my brand and not put it at further risk?” Not having actually pontificated a specific answer to that — I just do it like it’s part of a natural, social interaction or conversation, a recommendation I had for the participants — I jotted down a few steps to take. Not having time to go over them on the call, I thought I would offer them here.

How To Engage Detractors

1. Acknowledge the other person’s position

Nothing makes mad people more mad than the feeling they aren’t believed, recognized or acknowledged. If you’re upset about waiting in line at Wendy’s and the clerk behind the counter is running at about 1/4 speed, nonchalant-ing every interaction and lazily asks if she can take your order, it makes you more upset at the poor service, right? But if you wait in line all that time and the clerk politely and meaningfully apologizes for the delay and gives you impeccable service otherwise, you’re not as mad. By starting off with, “I’m sorry you had a bad experience,” or “Wow, that’s unusual, tell me what happened,” you’re validating their concerns and making them feel respected.

2. Investigate the cause of the conflict

Much like the title of yesterday’s teleseminar, there is an art to listening. If you do it well … heck if you even do it half way … the speaker feels respected, validated and important to you. Plus, by asking questions and being inquisitive as to the root of the problem, you come across as someone genuinely interested in helping. That automatically takes you out of the defensive and puts you in a positive light with the detractor. Plus, even a few cursory questions can often lead to telling answers. “Wait, you said the salesman said the Mazda was the Consumer Reports worst rated car? Well, the salesman actually works for the car dealer who was probably trying to push overstocks of other models out the door. I work for Mazda. Let me get you the right information.” In my experience, three questions in and you know why the person is mad. Making them happy is 10 times easier when you do.

3. Take responsibility for the solution

Notice I didn’t say take responsibility for the problem, but the solution. “I am going to find the answer to your question.” “I am going to find someone who can fix this for you.” Those might be the most powerful words you ever use with a customer. You’re telling them they are important to you and your company. They matter. Sometimes that’s all they want.

4. Encourage continued feedback

Let’s be honest, sometimes the customer doesn’t get their way. But if they feel respected, validated and that they matter, plus they have a person to turn to for future problems (not to mention they know you’re listening and watching online conversations) you’ve probably won a brand fan for life. They may not sing your praises at every corner, but they’re always going to talk about how the PR person from X company even called them to help fix something. That’s valuable. On my old personal blog, I once wrote something critical of Dell computers. It wasn’t Dell Hell or anything, but it was critical. John Pope responded to the post and since then I’ve always given Dell the benefit of the doubt. Of course, meeting folks like Lionel Menchaca and Richard Binhammer and seeing how innovative and tide-turning Dell has become, I love them. We wear them out as a case study because it freakin’ works.

Looking at that list, it might seem rather open-ended. It’s supposed to be. Perhaps the detractor’s situation gets solved and they are happy. Say, “I’m glad we fixed it. Please let me know if I can ever do anything else for you.” But leave the door open for No. 4. If it doesn’t get fixed, say, “I’m sorry we weren’t able to help you. Is there anything else I can do to make the situation better? Please let me know. You know how to get hold of me.”

The only potential drawback in following these steps is that you might actually have to engage a customer from time-to-time. If that scares you, find another line of work. By acknowledging, investigating, taking responsibility and encouraging, all with the aim of serving the customer and, thus, the company, I’d be willing to bet that 95 percent of the time, you’ll win them over. The other five percent? You weren’t going to win those over in the first place.

This is one man’s opinion. Please, share your thoughts on how to engage detractors and win them over. The comments are yours.

NOTE: Part of the preparation for this post involved a Tweet I sent out asking for conflict management resources. Special thanks to Doc Kane of Roscommon for an interesting company slide presentation and to Sandi McKenna for an interesting post from Elizabeth Tull on the topics.

This kinda speaks for itself. Sorry to bring you down.

If you want to tick off a bunch of bloggers, call yourself a “social media expert.”

If you want to give Hugh McLeod fodder for some hilarious cartoons, call yourself a “social media specialist.”

In fact, it seems like a lot of people don’t much like the term “social media,” either.

If you believe Steve Rubel, social media expertise as a career specialty, soon won’t even exist.   (Darn, that was brief!  Guess I better brush up those radio announcer skills from my wasted youth…)

Then again, OnlineMarketerBlog is convinced that there are at least 5 social media careers that will spring up in the next 5 years.

Along similar lines, I really liked what Kristina Halvorsen had to say about “content,” and who should be managing it, on the Brain Traffic blog.

With the economy still stressing everyone out about their future career prospects, rather than get hung up on job titles, what are some skill sets that are going to continue to be valuable to businesses, and relate to collaborative, community-inclusive, content-centric websites (also known as “social media”)?

Or, if you’d prefer to stir the pot, and join Jason in taking a stab at prognostication, what are some job titles/specialties that you think are going to either:

(A) Die a horrible, ignominious death of obscurity;

(B) Suddenly appear on the scene as a viable career path;

(C) Experience explosive growth/Take over the world, Pinky.

On a related rambling, I recently mentioned a book I read on parenting on my own blog.  Within a week, I got a comment and an email from a “Director of Content” who thanked me for the mention, and offered a couple of copies for a giveaway.

I’d never heard of a “Director of Content,” per se, before, but I see the value in having someone who takes responsibility for all brand-related web content, including developing content for brand-owned properties as well as finding, rewarding and promoting positive user-generated content.   That’s a different mindset than OnlineMarketingBlog’s proposed “Conversation Manager,” to my mind.

IMO, the difference in mindsets run along the lines of the Serenity Prayer:

“Give me the serenity to accept what I can’t change, the courage to change what I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.”

A Director of Content is focused on making sure great content that is brand-consistent, honest and authentic keeps streaming onto all the brand-controlled channels.  Additionally, a Content Specialist would work to encourage, promote, reward and recognize positive user-generated brand references.  A lot of work, and most of it focusing on the realm of “what I can directly change/control.”

A Conversation Manager mindset would seem to me to be more about customer and media relations.  In short, it’s less about the words than the opinions of the people behind them.  I would think that the Conversation Manager would live firmly in the land of “what I can’t directly change/control” (but can influence) most of the time.  I could see a Conversation Manager jumping into an online conversation about a product quality problem.   I might be wrong, but I don’t see a Director of Content doing that.

What do you think? I would imagine that a lot more organizations are culturally prepared to have a Director of Content role than a Conversation Manager role.

Oh, and I can’t wrap this post up without a hat-tip to Avinash Kaushik, whose Web Analytics Career Advice post, in addition to some of the posts linked above, prompted me to write this.  Business insights are another important part of this vocational skillset burgoo, and even if analytics isn’t your primary specialty, you need a passing familiarity with it to do well in any kind of online marketing.