Daily reading 11/02/2007

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Facebook’s Map Might Lead Advertisers Astray – Advertising Age – Digital

Google Takes On Facebook With OpenSocial – MediaPost, Nov. 1, 2007  Annotated

Mimicking Facebook, which opened its service to outside developers several months ago, Google’s OpenSocial system gives developers standardized tools to write applications and embed them on social networkers’ personal pages.

    Google: Master Of Digital Universe – Diane Mermigas

    iMedia Connection: Did Microsoft miscalculate Facebook?  Annotated

    By way of example, last week I started a Facebook group for executives at independent online agencies. This is a very narrow audience in every sense of the phrase. I had two dozen friends from my list of connections that I invited to join the group. Those who accepted the invitation kicked off a viral effect that would be tough to turn off even if I wanted to. Their friends saw that they joined the group. Since independent agency executives know other independent agency executives, within a day I started getting requests from people I didn’t even know to join the group.

    Now, rather than doing some sort of expensive outbound communication (like a targeted email), I instead have qualified people coming to me. Apply these marketing principles to a for-profit endeavor and you’ve got a formula for launching targeted marketing programs that don’t cost very much.

      MarketingSherpa: Tutorial: How to Market Yourself & Your Company on Facebook – 11 Steps & Strategies

        Still more AMA Webinar questions answered

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        Here are more responses to questions that time didn’t permit me to answer during the AMA Marketing Seminar on Oct. 15. Each of these permalinks is tagged “AMA” so you can easily group them together. Thanks to everyone for coming and for asking such great questions. More to come!

        Q: Jodine asks “Another great example of this marketing approach is in the new music industry. Independent distributed musicians that gain their fans from MySpace and other social networks. Is this marketing approach what they call grassroots and/or organic marketing?”

        A: That’s certainly an appropriate term for it. MySpace, for example, has been a gold mine for independent music groups who don’t have the marketing dollars to put into advertising. The idea is to create networks of friends who self-define their interests and share favorite bands among themselves. Also, people who produce podcasts and blogs devoted to music often make it a point to promote lesser-known groups. While these tactics so far haven’t duplicated the throw weight of mainstream media campaigns, their popularity testifies to their effectiveness.

        Q: Sanjay asks, “Are there any potential problems for a regional retailer with just a few locations?”

        A: Not that I can think of. In fact, that person is a natural candidate for social media. Facebook, for example, is a great place to find people nearby who are interested in the products that the retailer sells. If I was a camera store owner in Chicago, for example, I might set up a Facebook group for photography enthusiasts to discuss their favorite Chicagoland sites to photograph. You can use that as a jumping off point to create events and even more targeted groups.

        A blog is also a terrific way to showcase expertise, and if you’re careful to label the blog and its posts with regional tags, you’ll do better on search engines. For small businesses on a budget, social media is a godsend.


        Q: Kristin asks, “How will the change in social media affect crisis communications?”

        A: I can think of a couple of major ways. For better or worse, people are increasingly taking their gripes and frustrations to their blogs instead of going through customer service channels. This makes the blogosphere an excellent early warning system. You should have Google Alerts set up for every product and brand you own, and you should also create RSS feeds from sites like Technorati, BlogPulse and IceRocket that can alert you immediately to new topics of blog chatter.

        In terms of responding to a crisis, a blog is perhaps the fastest way to get information online. This bypasses the media gatekeepers and insurers that the message is coming directly from you. If you link aggressively to the blog from your website and from blogs maintained by your employees and outside constituents, you can build visibility very quickly. Sites like Twitter are also increasingly being used by marketers to get messages out to the public instantly.


        Q: Viktor asks “What’s your opinion on intellectual property rights
        with blogging?”

        A: There effectively are none, and this is a huge hairball for new media. The reality is that many people who are now publishing online could care less about intellectual property or copyright. I have had entire articles lifted verbatim from my blog and even mainstream media sites and republished without any attribution whatsoever. It’s not worth going after people legally in most cases, and that tactic can actually create unwanted publicity.

        The entertainment companies have led the charge in trying to bring some order to this intellectual-property chaos, but they have encountered a lot of resistance and their tactics have not always been diplomatic. They have done themselves few favors. I’m afraid that these issues will take years to hammer out, and that our notions of copyright may look very different a few years from now. I wish I could be more encouraging, but a lot of people are wrestling with this problem.

        How podcasting has worked at IBM

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        Podcasting has become the second-largest social media vehicle at IBM, an executive told a Podcamp audience this weekend. George Faulkner, Advanced Communications Professional at IBM and one of its most visible podcasters, gave an enlightening overview of how IBM’s podcast library has grown and flourished with almost no internal promotion, and he shared some ideas other companies could learn from.

        Podcasting has succeeded at IBM largely because the workforce is so distributed, Faulkner said. Some 40% of IBM’s 400,000 employees work primarily outside of an office. The initiative was launched four years after IBMers started blogging, but it has raced ahead of blogs in popularity. Faulkner cited the example of one executive who shifted from a weekly conference call with 500 people to a weekly podcast. The move doubled the listenership of the executive’s briefings, and made him into an evangelist.

        Next, executive speeches were converted into podcasts, followed by interviews with employees. People talk about anything and everything, he said, including hobbies and interests. IBM takes a mostly hands-off approach to dictating content.

        IBM’s internal podcast library and has more than 100,000 unique members and 12,000 files. The medium’s popularity has grown despite some rather onerous regulatory requirements. For example, IBM must transcribe the contents of any executive interview.

        Faulkner said the first podcast he produced was a battle of the bands, featuring groups made up of IBM employees. The show was enormously popular and ran for 35 weeks. IBMers lobbied for an opportunity to be featured on the program. “That was the moment I realized this wasn’t about knowledge-sharing; it was about community-building.” Faulkner said.

        The initiative has spread virally within IBM. “We never made an internal announcement that the blogging and podcasting platforms existed,” he said.

        Some secrets of the program’s success:

        • Tap your employees for inspiration — give people a platform, don’t put a lot of restrictions on them and stand back and watch the great ideas that emerge. One employee came up with the idea for a game show that had people guessing the meaning of various IBM acronyms. Yet another program called “How It Works” was launched by a “mad genius” engineer, who recorded each episode in a dark closet.
        • Sweat the basics — be clear on the audience you want to reach and the topic you’ll address. Decide how often you’ll publish and stick to that schedule.
        • Choose a good title – Some people simply call their podcasts “podcast”. They rarely get many listeners. “Without a sexy title, you’re toast,” Faulkner said. Come up with a title that’s provocative, and that piques people’s interests. Then run with it.

        Blog swarm engulfing AT&T; how will it respond?

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        A blog swarm is developing at this very moment over AT&T’s boneheaded decision to charge a California couple for a satellite dish they failed to remove from their home as they were fleeing the wildfires in California. Consumerist picked up the story, and it’s been viewed more than 11,000 times at this writing. There are already over 600 diggs, just within the first couple of hours. You can see the video from a local news station here.

        Consumerist visitors are already using the incident to tee off on the much-hated cable companies. But that’s old news. What will be interesting is to watch AT&T’s reaction as this hits the national media. If it’s smart, AT&T will fall on its sword, apologize profusely and not only forgive the debt but set the couple up with a new satellite dish and maybe a couple years’ worth of service to boot. There’s no doubt people in AT&T PR are already aware of this story. Are they scrambling to respond or are they frozen by approvals and indecision? Keep an eye on Consumerist to see how this plays out.

        Thanks to Dianna Huff for the tip.

        Update 10/27/07: ZDNet blogger Russell Shaw posts a comment from a Dish Network spokeswoman saying the whole thing is a mistake and the California couple won’t be charged for the dish. AT&T also responded to Consumerist. It’ll be interesting to see if this story just goes away now. It’s up to over 1,900 diggs.

        More AMA Webinar questions answered

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        Here are more responses to questions that time didn’t permit me to answer during the AMA Marketing Seminar on Oct. 15. Each of these permalinks is tagged “AMA” so you can easily group them together. Thanks to everyone for coming and for asking such great questions. More to come!

        Q: Stacie asks, “How will social media play out with healthcare vs. consumer products?”

        A: Very differently. People typically want to consult with expert advisers on healthcare decisions and their relationships with those people are important. They’re much less likely to turn to anonymous sources for life-and-death matters. That said, the Internet has played and will continue to play an important role in alternative medicine, wellness and background research. Social media will have an important role in helping people diagnose problems, choose courses of treatment and seek alternatives.

        In consumer products, social media is already playing a huge role in evaluation and purchase activity. The CEO of Procter & Gamble told the Association of National Advertisers last year that they have to stop trying to control the message. “Consumers are more participative and selective and the trend from push to pull is accelerating,” he said. Those are strong words coming from the world’s largest consumer products company.

        Q: Anne asks, ”Doesn’t social networking skew younger? And, do these networks apply to B2B marketers?”

        A: Yes, the most active users of social networks are unquestionably people under the age of 30. If you’re an entertainment, food or clothing company, you’re probably already using these media because that’s where your audience is.

        In some markets, though, social media is making a big impact on older age groups, and particularly in b-to-b markets. The information technology market is one of the most active users of blogs and podcasts, for example, and it’s almost entirely a b-to-b business. The travel and hospitality industry is using interactive marketing to reach business people with specific interests, such as frequent travelers and corporate event planners. Professional associations like the Air Conditioning Contractors of America and the National Association of Manufacturers are blogging to promote their members. There will be more examples of this as the younger population grows up and begins to apply the tools they use at home to their business roles.

        Q: Patience asks “So why did you choose to not self-publish?”

        A: I believe this question is in response to a comment I made about Lulu.com and similar sites that making self-publishing of books fast and relatively inexpensive. There are advantages to working with a commercial publisher, including an established distribution network, retail store presence and a certain cachet that comes from having a publisher endorse your work. This leads to intangible business opportunities that have nothing to do with royalties. You can definitely make more money self-publishing, though. If you don’t particularly care about building a speaking or consulting business, but just want to get a message out, self-publishing gives you more control and potentially bigger profits.

        Q: Brent asks, “Are there similar influencers in Europe, Asia-Pacific, and Latin America?”

        A: Yes, although to different degrees. In fact, the number one language in the blogosphere is Japanese, according to Technorati’s State of the Live Web report. Korea and Japan have a much higher penetration of broadband into the home than the U.S. does, and a very active culture of bloggers and social networkers as a result. Korea’s OhMyNews.com is the largest experiment in community journalism on the Internet.

        In Europe, the blogosphere is very healthy, although my evidence is purely anecdotal. I run across blogs in Danish, German, French and other languages I don’t even recognize all the time. Two of the most interesting corporate blogs are published by Benetton and Ducati motorcycles, both in Italy.

        I can’t speak to Latin-America specifically. The economy is not as strong in many of those countries as in the U.S., Europe and the Pacific Rim, so broadband penetration is lower. The Technorati blog tracks blogs by language and can give you some useful statistics.

        Q: Anne asks, “How do apply this to local or regional marketing? Yelp, for instance is very biased, and doesn’t feel trustworthy the way that a more neutral, traditional third party does.”

        A: I’m not sure I agree with your comments about Yelp. That site is simply a conduit for its members to post reviews of restaurants and entertainment spots. While such a system is always vulnerable to manipulation, the number of reviews that Yelp lists for some properties is remarkable. In general, the more reviews there are, the more reliable the average rating should be.

        You should always be leery of peer-review systems in which only a few people have commented. It’s like research: you should probably through out the extremes at both ends of the scale, because those people may have an agenda.

        As far as regional marketing goes, I’d just point out that some of the most active social networks are regional. Going.com, Yelp and eCrush are just three of the many networks that target people who are looking for entertainment and companionship. Also, regional interests like sports and politics are magnets for local audiences.

        Daily reading 10/26/2007

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        Jeff Jarvis on the new Dell  Annotated

        • Dell Computer, which has been burned badly in the blogoshere several times, appears to have staged a remarkable 180. Onetime critic Jeff Jarvis visited Round Rock, TX, met with Michael Dell and others and says that the change in Dell’s attitude toward online conversations is impressive. The company is fully on board with customer conversations. (via Alex Howard)
           – post by pgillin
        Michael Dell starts to sound like a Cluetrain convert himself: “There are lots of lessons here for companies,” he says. “The simple way to think about it is, these conversations are going to occur whether you like it or not. Ok? Well, do you want to be part of that or not? My argument is you absolutely do.
          That’s the crucial word you hear at Dell: relationship. Dell blogger Menchaca has led the charge in convincing bloggers that “real people are here to listen.”
            “The challenge is how you create a network of advocates for your business…. By listening to our customers, that is actually the most perfect form of marketing you could have.” And Michael Dell? He predicts that customer relationships will “continue to be more intimate” and response times faster. He even spoke of “cocreation of products and services,” a radical notion from a big company. “And I’m sure there’s a lot of things that I can’t even imagine but our customers can imagine,” Dell says, sounding darned near like a blogger himself. “

              New England bloggers talk shop

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              I walked in late to a session on business blogging hosted by blogger and Boston Globe columnist Scott Kirsner. Panelists were:

              Don Dodge, Director of Business Development, Microsoft Emerging Business Team, and blogger;

              Barbara Heffner, partner at CHEN PR and blogger

              Nabeel Hyatt, CEO at Conduit Labs and blogger

              Bijan Sabet, venture capitalist at Spark Capital and blogger,

              Jimmy Guterman, Editor of Release 2.0 and blogger, O’Reilly Radar

              Scott Kirsner, Boston Globe “Innovation Economy” columnist and blogger

              Chuck Tanowitz, director, Schwartz Communications and blogger

              Here are my rather stream-of-consciousness notes on the discussion

              Kirsner asks: “Why do you blog?”

              Responses include:
              Hyatt: It fills the space between press releases
              Sabet: Great way to communicate with colleagues across the country
              Hyatt: We have 10 employees nd four of them blog. We have internal editors go over all the entries. It may sound weird, but my opinion is that anyone who’s writing for the NY Times is writing on behalf of the NY Times. We want anything we release to be collective.

              Kirsner says (jokingly) that the Globe probably hasn’t noticed his blog yet. I didn’t want to wait six months to start writing it. To have the Globe logo on the blog has issues of oversight and I don’t want that. I think I have the same standards for the blog as for the column, but there are things you can post there that you can’t put in the column. In other words, he applies journalistic standards, but is a little freer about language on the blog.

              Jimmy Guterman notes that Kirsner’s blog voice is more engaging than his Globe voice. One of the appealing things about corporate blogs is that they better reflect the voice of the writer.

              Don Dodge says 60% of his traffic comes from Google. He could write what he writes on a corporate website and wouldn’t get anywhere near that traffic. “For anyone starting a company, I would highly recommend that you blog. You will get far more juice from that than from having a company website.”

              Dodge worked at Alta Vista at one point and knows about search. Some blogs get searched every hour and some get indexed once a week or once a month. Frequency of update relates to search engine performance (something I was unaware of).

              Barb Heffner says her agency treats bloggers generally as they do other journalists.

              Kirsner asks who’s more powerful: TechCrunch or the WSJ? Barb says Journal is an enterprise sell and TechCrunch is a consumer sell. Both powerful in their own way.

              Audience member notes that you should read the blog before sending an e-mail to a blogger. “It’s extraordinary the number of e-mails I get who haven’t read my blog. From that perspective, there’s no difference between a journalist and a blogger.” Heffner says good PR practices apply equally in the blogosphere.

              Don Dodge tells of bumping into Robert Scoble, who had two suggestions: put your name in the title and put your picture on the blog. “Those two things made an amazing difference. If your picture isn’t there, you can walk down the halls and no one will know who you are. If your picture is there, everyone knows who you are.”

              Bijan Sabet says one of his favorite blogs is Flickr. Every now and then he wants to quick Flickr, but the genuineness of the blog keeps him coming back. He says he just invested in a company where the founder decided not to use PR but to use a blog instead. They wrote all their entries last week and were ready to go, but the bloggers picked it up before the embargo ended. “we’ve had a fair share of press releases that have gone out on the wire and I don’t see much return from that. We had one investment company get picked up on Engadget and got a 14:1 return versus a mention on TechCrunch.”

              Barb Heffner warns against ghost-writing CEO blogs.

              Nabeel notes that a lot of technologists aren’t great writers, and that’s why they need some oversight and editing. We’ve got people who are great and passionate in front of an audience, but when he sits down to write, he’s pretty timid.”

              Dan Bricklin notes that not everybody writes well, but maybe they should be doing podcasts. That’s part of the job of marketing and PR people: figure out what’s the best way to get the message across. He cites a great podcast by the head of the US Navy. If you listened to it, you wouldn’t be surprised by what he said to the press.

              Scott Kirsner asks how metrics-obsessed people are…

              Author of 93South blog says he bought an iPhone so he could check his traffic while driving. “I used to check two or three times a day, but I’ve learned over the past six months to let go because I’m not doing it for traffic. I’m doing it to speak.”

              Guterman notes that metrics are misleading. They tell you different things. “It’s as misleading as an author who writes a book and then starts checking his Amazon ranking 30 times a day. There’s a lot of talk about authenticity, but people confusing authenticity with spontaneity. Don’t think of a blog as a way to get around having to think about what you’re writing.”

              Audience member George Jenkins writes a blog about identity theft. “I write because I’m passionate about the subject. I’ve had a lot of fun meeting people through the blog. I know that people from IBM visit my site (he worked at IBM at one time) but they’re reluctant to comment.”

              Scott Kirsner tells of an executive taking him to task for something he said on the blog. He spoke to the exec on the phone and recommended the guy comment on the blog but it was clear that the exec was uncomfortable doing that.

              Bijan says he has a Technorati addiction. “Blogging software is still one-way, it’s not two-way enough. We need to surface links from one blog to another.”

              An audience member from Sphere asks whether people are using widgets to drive traffic.
              Bijan says widgets are useful for driving traffic. “I’ll put them on my site for a while to see if people are engaging with them.”

              Nabeel Hyatt says that when his company recently did A-round funding, they posted on a blog instead of issuing a press release. “We saw a ton of traffic, and by watching the inbound link, we learned of small competitors we had never seen before. Perhaps they thought no one was watching, but I was.” He says he’s addicted to MyBlogLog for its widget that tells who’s coming to the site. There’s about a 5% higher return rate from visitors who like to see their faces there.

              Bijan says he’s seeing 3-4% CTR from Feedburner. He signed up to be an Amazon affiliate, so he does a lot of geeky product reviews (gives the money to charity). That leads to a few good-sized transactions every month.

              A discussion ensues about taking gifts from businesses, quid pro quo and disclosure. Don Dodge tells of meeting Patriots owner Bob Kraft at a conference, ending up with free tickets to a Patriots game and still writing a critical article about the Patriots.

              Guterman says disclosure isn’t enough. Just revealing your affiliations doesn’t excuse extreme bias. You can’t assume people notice your disclosures. Don’t let yourself be influenced and don’t take the graft.

              Sabet notes that people come to his blog to read about the companies he’s funding and he sees no problem with promoting those companies. “You have to give the reader credit. The reader isn’t assuming that the venture capitalist isn’t biased.”

              Discussion turns to most popular topics. Don Dodge notes that one of his most popular was about 1% of the search market being worth $1 billion. But the number one post of all time was a reference to a porn video site, although watching porn is not that safe anymore, since there are information about porn induced erectile dysfunction which could be a real issue for many. “I know how to get a lot of traffic if I wanted to, but I don’t do it for that reason.” Tr

              affic alone isn’t that important to him.

              Dan Bricklin says some things lend themselves to video. He went to see Vern Rayburn, who’s got a factory that makes jets. “The only way to really show people was to take the video and let people hear Vern’s voice. Sometimes the short, two-minute form is what you need.” Kirsner says it’s hard to drive traffic to Internet video.

              Dodge says we’ve been conditioned to professional standards by TV. Your standards are high. Most people who try to do video on a blog stink compared to TV.

              Kirsner says the most watched video on YouTube is Evolution of Dance, which was filmed by an amateur and looks it.

              Dodge says he tried to convince Robert Scoble not to go to video. He’s a great blogger, but when he went to video, his traffic fell to 10%.