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November 10th, 2008

Welcome to the Be the Voice blog and podcast. There are lots of great stories here. Please read, listen, and add your comments.

Remember to subscribe to my podcast on iTunes and this blog. You can also follow me on Twitter and read my other blog, The Spark Minute.

If you or someone you know is a great industry voice that I should interview, please let me know. Email me at david AT sparkmediasolutions DOT com. Thanks for visiting.

Social media consultant Chris Brogan is one of the top 200 bloggers and considered one of the top 50 men in social media.

Summary (Chris Brogan):

• Large companies know that their marketing dollars aren’t cutting it like they use to.
• While not everyone is ready to publish in social media, everyone can agree to begin a listening campaign.
• When you listen, don’t just look for your company name, but think how the consumer would write about issues related to your product.
• Begin building relationships now with influencers. It’ll be a lot easier to talk with them down the line when you have positive and negative news.
• Brogan purposely doesn’t finish his blog posts and that invites lots of comments. People love to give their opinion and he wants readers to feel welcome to do that.
• Transparency is a misused term. Not all companies can be transparent, but everyone can disclose a relationship where others may perceive a conflict if it wasn’t disclosed.
• Being part of the conversation means actually learning the language and being more of an appropriate immigrant to this new digital community.
• Don’t assume social media doesn’t exist until you arrive.

Full article:

Chris Brogan is in the trenches of social media. He’s a top tier blogger, a social media consultant, and one of the founders of the new media conference, Podcamp.

I spoke to Brogan about how he conducts his business as a social media consultant. Brogan talks with a lot of large corporations about incorporating social media into their marketing mix. What I was eager to find out from Brogan was how he got these large corporations to take the social media plunge. For years I’ve dealt with companies that only can think like a traditional marketer (e.g. make sure you hit all your message points). I asked Brogan, how do you get companies to shift from marketing-type thinking and more into the storytelling and informational nature that’s required of social and new media communications.

Recognizing you can’t build Rome in a day, Brogan doesn’t immediately recommend companies start going into full blown social media production mode. He first tries to get a level of agreement with potential clients that marketing has changed for their business. That they’re getting less and less uptake for the number of dollars they’re putting into traditional marketing. They usually agree to that. In fact, they probably agreed to that before he walked through the door. There’s a reason they asked him to come.

What’s different today about these social media marketing meetings, said Brogan, is that now he’s meeting with senior level people. In the past, he would talk to kids in the organization who were chomping at the bit to get something done. Things have definitely changed. You’ve got CMOs and VP’s of Marketing realizing that they’re slow out of the gate, but they know they want to do this. And Brogan feels that this trend shows that the market is evolving. Companies are taking social media seriously as a place they actually want to place their dollars.

Commitment to listening

I asked Brogan how committed these companies are on the long haul and he said what they are committed to is listening, not necessarily exposing their voice online. “They’re almost always willing to commit to a listening program. Because I can almost always find either dirt or really interesting competitive information for free on the Web every single day,” said Brogan.

Brogan describes one company (could not mention name) that was doing some listening, via Google alerts, but only around their company name. They didn’t actually do any listening around what their product was and how people would actually talk about it (e.g. “My ____ service sucks”). “They weren’t putting in things that would get into the mindset of what the customer would write about this,” said Brogan, “They were doing it from their brand.”

To help the company, Brogan started putting in search terms as to what a customer would say if they were having a good or bad experience with the company. What they discovered is there was a lot more being said about them positive and negative. Brogan used Google blog search, Twitter search, and Technorati to see where those conversations were happening.

For hearing what people are saying about your company, products, and services, Brogan started plugging a company Radian6 that delivers as their CEO describes, “Listening at the point of need.” Radian6 is a dashboard tool that you can tweak and listen across multiple social applications, the Web, discussion boards, and communications services. Radian6 has many competitors like BuzzLogic, Nielsen BuzzMetrics, and Visible Technologies. Brogan argues that these services are too expensive, charging upwards of $50,000. Radian6 has some solutions that are as low as $500/month. The big difference, said Brogan, is with Radian6 you get the toolset, not just a report at the end of the month that tells you what’s happening. Other services may charge you for every requested change. Radian6 lets you change the terms and tweak until you see what you need to see.

Brogan said large companies respond well to the listening and that’s simply because listening is an easier sell than trying to push a big campaign that gets the company fully embedded in social media. Although Brogan admits not all companies can listen. “A couple of pharmaceutical companies I worked with had to decline because it turns out that if somebody says something gripey, anecdotal, or negative about their product, they have reporting requirements that say they have to hand it in to some federal [monitoring] groups,” said Brogan. In other words, pharmaceutical companies can’t afford to listen. Especially if boneheads are typing in random symptoms connected with some pharmaceutical company’s product.

Taking it slow with big corporations

“When I talk to a large corporation I look for a comfort level first,” said Brogan, “They all say the same thing, ‘We feel like we’re a little slow to get on this. We feel like we’re behind everyone else. We’re really not sure.’ And they’ll cite one of the bigger social media blunder stories of the universe (e.g. Wal-Mart’s RV bloggers).” Once he understands where their comfort level is, then he gets into a discussion about commenting and what it’s like to comment on a blog, or what news outlets and blogs they should read that have anything to do with the company’s vertical.

“If you’ve already got a blog out there in the space and you’ve already started to build small relationships, then if some kind of big news hits or if something sweeps out across the social media space, having a blog in place and having even a small amount of relationships in place certainly is a lot easier,” said Brogan. You don’t want to have to launch as soon as there is a problem, said Brogan. “Having a platform (e.g. a blog) is a nice step, it’s just never my first step,” Brogan continued. Brogan suggests listening and then commenting to get yourself acclimated.

How to get tons of comments

On Brogan’s blog, he can have some posts that get north of 85 comments. He says his norm is between 30 to 60 comments per post. Yet, there are some of his posts that will only get zero to two comments. Of the posts that get few to no comments, Brogan is pushing the reader off to another location to either read another article or to see a video. For the posts that get tons of comments, Brogan purposefully doesn’t finish what he’s writing. Leaving lots of issues unanswered is an invitation to readers to add their thoughts.

“I usually write my blog posts so that they’re not entirely finished. I leave a lot of open space for you to add your opinion. And the reason I do that is because I want you to feel like there’s some contribution and some give or take to the experience. I’m not writing thesis and essay and editorials. I’m writing things where I have something in my mind and I want to share it and get your ideas too,” said Brogan. He’s constantly asking questions in his posts to elicit answers. He asks lots of questions. It’s very strategic for him. People love to give their opinion.

Biggest misunderstandings about social media

“Join the conversation” and “transparency” are buzzwords Brogan can do without. They’re the terms that are constantly demanded as requirements if you want to get into social media. But Brogan realizes that businesses can’t be completely transparent because private company information is a competitive advantage. You don’t want to be giving away trade secrets. It’s more of an issue as to “what” should be transparent. You don’t put your company strategy on the Web.

What most people mean by transparent is let’s not have “Wal-marting across America” again. That was the case where bloggers traveled across America in their RVs staying at Wal-Mart, never revealing they were hired by Wal-Mart. There wasn’t any disclosure and there should have been. “Transparency would be better said as disclosure and that’s where people get it wrong all the time,” said Brogan, “What we’re really saying with transparency is, is be open and honest about situations where there might be a prior relationship that would cause you something of an upsetting nature to happen should someone reveal that information.”

I referenced what Chris Shipley said in an interview (select the video) with me about not being able to control people’s opinions. You can only disclose and people will form their own opinions as to what that means. So if you say you’re working with some company, some will think it’s great that you’re getting inside information, and others will think you’re a shill for the company and that’s why you’re writing about them. Brogan referenced Robert Scoble when he was working at Microsoft as being a great example of the former way of thinking in that he was very open about who he worked for, but had no problem talking about the company positively or negatively.

I asked Brogan how somebody pulls off what Scoble did. Work for a company yet still talk negatively about them in a public forum. In Brogan’s upcoming book in May called “Trust Agents” co-written with Julian Smith, he talks about how to be open and honest on the Web. In the Scoble case, he wasn’t being negative strategically about the company, but rather he was “being one of us.” He was saying what many of us were thinking, but he said it with more authority because it was coming from someone within the company. He may have received plenty of internal heat for comments like that, but he got tons of props from the community at large.

Scoble could get away with his pro and con opinions about Microsoft because he had an audience, and that audience has value. “If he’s got an audience, then Microsoft wants to know what that audience thinks, and that’s better than paying some girl in a mall with a clipboard to get your opinion as you walk by,” Brogan said.

For companies looking to offer up the same freedom Robert Scoble had at Microsoft to its employees, yet not let them go over the line, Brogan suggests first opening up your company’s email policies. Ninety percent of blogging policies mirror a company’s email policies. The additional part is to add information about not being disloyal to the organization. You could say you want products to be a certain way. Brogan gives an example of how Robert Scoble might talk about how he prefers Firefox over IE. “There’s a big difference between Robert saying, ‘I wish IE would take some hints from Firefox’ than him saying, ‘IE will never be good. I can’t believe this company is bothering. I think we should drop this browser line entirely,’” explained Brogan.

With all that advice, Brogan still admits it’s not a science and company blogging is a live and learn situation.

As for the phrase “join the conversation” Brogan believes there are far too many opportunities to get this wrong. Some companies come in with a bullhorn and start talking. What you need to do is listen first and comment on what’s being said. “Being part of the conversation means actually learning the language and being more of an appropriate immigrant to this new digital community,” Brogan said.

As you begin to comment around the Web, it’s a good idea to take advantage of a commenting tool. Brogan recommends Disqus which allows you to track all your comments all over the Web. I use a service called Cocomment that does much of the same thing.

I asked Brogan is there are any large companies engaging in social media that really impress him. Excluding the way Whole Foods’ CEO, John Mackey, handled himself in the past, Brogan’s impressed with what the company is doing currently. They have a lot of online content, blogs, podcasts, video, and even Twitter. They have a Twitter person of the day where they just find someone who’s doing some good online and they give them recognition and an award which is usually a Whole Foods product. They’ll also talk a lot about community events going on in and near local stores. What he likes most is they’re putting a human face on Whole Foods and also trying to create that local market feel using social media and Twitter.

Don’t assume that social media doesn’t exist until you arrive

Brogan admits he’s made some massive blunders in social media. One case was when he reached out to the New England podcasters’ bulletin board and said he was going to invite all the social media rock stars to come to Boston for Podcamp. Nobody responded to what he thought was a generous offer until he saw a response on the board that said, “There are a lot of rock stars in Boston and it’s kind of offensive you got to import them from other places.” Brogan learned from his mistake. Wherever you go on the Web realize there’s been a history. Don’t assume you know everything and discredit what’s been done before you arrived, Brogan said.

“Social networks allow us to assume familiarity a little too fast,” Brogan said, “We presume by having these two way conversations on the Web that the other person knows and is comfortable with our interactions with them already. And so we sometimes overstep accidentally what we could request or make a joke that isn’t appropriate to that level of interrelationship.”

For the individual businessperson that wants to put their best social media foot forward, Brogan offers this advice, “Make sure you dress up your profile and who you are on the Web and how you’re representing yourself through these platforms appropriate to the space where you are and be human about it, instead of just putting the bare minimums of an account together just so that you can observe and be part of something or try to extract value before you’ve shown yourself there to be a persona.”

Filed under: Blogging, Collaboration, Podcast, Web 2.0 | 10 Comments »

Be the media rather than surround the media

October 17th, 2008

Joe Pulizzi is the founder and Chief Content Officer for Junta42, a custom publishing and content marketing search engine and resource.

Summary (Joe Pulizzi):

• Launch your own media network rather than surround somebody else’s voice (a traditional media outlet) with your messaging (ads).
• You don’t NEED to advertise with a traditional media network. You might want to, but it’s no longer necessary. You can publish directly to your audience rather than place your messaging around someone else’s leading content.
• Custom publishing is the answer to search engine optimization (SEO).
• A custom publishing effort must focus on customer needs, not your company’s products and services.
• 30% of B2B marketing budgets are going to content development and execution (source: Junta42 study).
• If you just push product with poor content, you’re not going to have a good social media experience.
• Talk to your customers, ask them what their needs are today, and then you need to predict what their needs are going to be tomorrow.
• Learn the art of storytelling, hire people with journalistic talent, or contract out those services.
• Before you launch a content project determine how you’re going to measure its success.
• Be prepared to do lots and lots of work.

Full article:

Before the social and new media explosion, custom publishing was primarily about customer retention. Companies did not have conversations with customers, measurement was poor, rationalization to do custom publishing was poor, and in many cases, custom publishing happened because the CEO was so vain wanting nothing more than his or her picture on the cover of their magazine. This was custom publishing just ten years ago, said Joe Pulizzi (blog) founder and Chief Content Officer for Junta42, a custom publishing and content marketing search engine and resource. Pulizzi is also the founder of the consulting and custom publishing group Z Squared Media and author of “Get Content. Get Customers.” I spoke to Pulizzi about his believe that companies need to “be the media, rather than surround the media.” Translated, it means become the industry voice rather than surround somebody else’s leading voice (a traditional media outlet) with your messaging (ads).

Be discovered by search engines

“The biggest thing to happen to custom publishing and content marketing is search engine optimization,” said Pulizzi, “You get all these marketing people who want to be on that left side of that search engine. And what everybody’s realizing is what does it is great content. Because of the search engine and because of Google, people are starting to realize that maybe content is king. You really need to look at the type of information we’re communicating to our prospects and customers on a continuous basis.”

Produce content about and for your customers, not yourself

Companies that fail at custom publishing only focus on their products and services. “They want to tell, tell, tell. They want to talk about we’re great at this and we have this awesome product that. And when you have a client that starts there you have a little ways to go to get them to move around and really position it from the customer’s perspective. And that’s what content marketing is all about. It’s all about the customer,” said Pulizzi.

To get them there Pulizzi asks the common questions any marketer would ask of his client. “What are your customers’ pain points? What are your customers’ informational needs? What keeps your customer up at night,” said Pulizzi, “The answers to those questions are what you need to be communicating.” Pulizzi admits that this is not revolutionary thinking, but to his clients it is revolutionary because they have their marketing sales hats on all day long and all they think about is how they can sell more product. “You can’t just communicate about your products and services anymore and really grow your business. You really have to deliver consistent information to your customers’ pain points,” said Pulizzi.

During his days at Penton Publishing, Pulizzi had a tech client (couldn’t mention the name) that created a content strategy where the goal was NOT to sell. Up until that point, this company had been so focused on selling. In this instance, they just wanted to create some customer-focused content. All the editorial produced was focused on the needs of customers. The only reference to the company was a brief description and a mention that they were the sponsor of the publication. Pulizzi claims that nine months later (the time it takes to make a baby) they had millions of dollars in the pipeline (the cost of raising a baby) for an e-newsletter that was designed NOT to sell. One key to this growth was that the company was targeting a new market area, manufacturing, for which they had no foothold. They were simply exposing themselves to a new industry.

Be the media rather than surround someone else’s content

Any company can be their own media network thanks to the low to zero cost of publishing and distribution, brands can now communicate directly with their customers. Advertisers don’t NEED to spend money with a traditional media network. That’s not saying they don’t want to. They do still want to advertise with a traditional media outlet because they’ll have access to the media outlet’s distribution network and can align their brand with the media network’s brand. But given the leveling of the communications playing field, nobody really NEEDS to advertise with a traditional media brand. “You can be the thought leader. You can be the trusted expert resource for your industry,” said Pulizzi, “The most important thing is how are you going to be that trusted expert resource?”

Custom publishing is not marketing. It’s not about your message points. It’s editorial. It’s storytelling

Pulizzi and I discussed that the “consulting” we do for custom publishing often falls into the trap of advising people on how to be a normal human being. Company people often get stuck in their marketing world and are incapable of having a conversation about their product or industry without hitting their product message points.

Pulizzi explains the dynamic of the traditional marketer trying to get into social media. They’re eager to get into it, so they ask, “How do we get our products and service information out there?” To which Pulizzi responds, “Social media is like having a one on one conversation with somebody. If you don’t have something valuable to say, how long does that conversation last?” If you just push product with poor content, you’re not going to have a good social media experience.

Pick up the phone and talk to your customers

Talk to your customers and ask them, “What is the information you need to do your job better?” When they give you that answer, use your wisdom of the industry and take it one step further. You can’t just give customers what they need because a lot of what they need they don’t know yet. Take what they think they need and then show them additional opportunities. This is where you can be seen as an industry leader. And don’t fall into the trap of thinking that if the traditional media covered an issue, you can’t. They’re not the only expert. You are too.

I told Joe the story of my days writing for eWEEK where companies would constantly pitch me stories to write for the magazine. Many of the pitches were very good, but I couldn’t accept them all. Either I couldn’t write another story or it wasn’t an appropriate fit for the editorial of the publication. Regardless, I always thought, if the story is that good, why don’t you just write it yourself? And no one ever did. The best you could ever hope for is a press release and who ever reads those, or reacts to them the same way they do to an article that tells a story?

The traditional media doesn’t have to be the only one who tells your story. “Why don’t you be the expert trusted resource on that content instead of somebody else? That means bringing in journalistic talent in your company,” said Pulizzi.

Learn the art of storytelling, or hire someone who knows it

Pulizzi said he’s starting to see companies hire marketing people with journalism backgrounds to be able to tell the company story. That surprised me that there would be any companies so hip to the trend of storytelling. It’s not happening on a widespread basis, but Pulizzi’s starting to see some movement.

More companies are creating their own media. According to an internal Junta42 study, close to one-third of all B2B marketing budgets are funding the creation and execution of content,  said Pulizzi. This increased funding to content is not coming from a growing budget, its coming from a reallocation of moneys, Pulizzi continued.

Impressive content plays

After I asked Pulizzi to give me some examples of his own content success stories, I asked him to point to some other impressive “content instead of marketing” examples. Here are three of his favorites:

HomemadeSimple.com - A site from P&G that covers everything to do with making your home more appealing when it comes to cleaning and food. More than 1 million people have opted in for information and are in return offering feedback. As a result, this site has been one of the most popular research tools for P&G.

Beinggirl.com - Another P&G site geared towards 11-16 year old girls. Pulizzi said a Forrester Research report shows the site has been three times more effective than any marketing P&G has ever done towards this demographic.

Willitblend.com - Adopting a little humor from Letterman, the blender company Blendtec posts humorous videos showing what it looks like when you blend various objects like golf balls and iPhones. Blendtec launched the site for less than $1000 and the compellingly silly videos have drawn millions of views. Blendtec says year over year revenues have grown 500% and they attribute all of that success to the videos.

Before you launch a custom publishing project decide how you’re going to measure success

When I asked Pulizzi about mistakes he’s made in custom publishing, he admitted that back in the day he used to launch custom magazines with no idea on how he was going to measure it. In the end, he never had any indication of how successful or unsuccessful a project was. He went fully on qualitative feedback. Today, Pulizzi determines what the measures of success will be before he launches a content project.

In one case, Pulizzi measured the success of an e-newsletter with a follow up courtesy call. That can be a success indicator if many people read it and take action on it. But to actually determine ROI off of a content campaign is not easy because it’s difficult to determine the causality of it. Today, content campaigns are integrated into overall marketing efforts unlike years ago when custom publishing sat out on an island, said Pulizzi.

The formula for creating your own media network

Here’s some basic advice from Pulizzi on launching your own media network:

• Be prepared to create lots and lots of content. It’s an ongoing project that takes effort and money.
• Learn as much as you can about your customers. Can you talk to them and find out what their needs are outside of your products and services?
• Launch a blog. Commit to a consistent level of writing. You won’t get traffic initially, but it will grow over time.
• Look at other blogs that your customers are on and get active in those communities.

If you own an area in your industry and create good content, you’re going to become successful, said Pulizzi, there’s no doubt about it.

Filed under: Blogging, Editorial, Podcast, branding | 3 Comments »

Speed to cool

October 14th, 2008

Bill Ryan is the cofounder of Mandala, a branding and messaging services company. I sat down with Bill Ryan in his home in San Francisco to talk about how his business architects all the pieces of a company’s voice from branding to PR to messaging and to marketing.

Summary (Bill Ryan):

• Companies poorly communicate their story to those that need to hear it (e.g. analysts, bloggers, journalists, and customers)
• Nobody wrote a check because they thought your company was “interesting.” You need to get them to the point where they say, “cool.”
• You need to sell the problem or the opportunity before you sell your solution.
• The lenses for which you and your audience look at your company are completely different.
• You need to be out in front telling your company’s story before your audience does it for you, which may not be to your advantage.
• If you have a situation where there’s no market, then you need to evangelize the space, bring interest to it, and own it.
• Increase discoverability by getting to every point on the influence chain. The further back you get, the more powerful it is.
• The biggest complement you can pay to a writer is to demonstrate that you’ve read what they’ve written.

Full article:

From the individual up to the company level, we all tell stories. A company lives inside a story. The problem is there are many people who work in a company, and if you talk to five different employees, you’ll often get five different stories. That discontinuity within the organization is inevitably carried outside-to people who get pitched (e.g. press, bloggers) and everyone else.

Bill Ryan, cofounder of the branding and messaging services firm, Mandala, wanted to know how well companies communicated their “story.” Ryan talked to story recipients (e.g. analysts, VCs, and journalists) and asked them, “What percentage of companies have the ability to come in and tell you ‘what they do, why they’re different, and why you should care’ in a quick and efficient manner?” Sadly, the average response was 10% with the highest being 15%. Bad for the companies in question, great for Ryan who is in the corporate clarity business. Ryan is also a senior member of the marketing services company, Comunicano, where he leads their Words & Stories directorate.

Most people don’t have their story in place and just keep echoing their five message points, said Ryan. The most you can hope for is a long hour and a half discussion where they’ll inevitably get to the point and you’ll finally discover their story.

How fast can you get them to say, “cool”?

“Speed to cool” is Mandala’s own internal benchmark to determine how good someone’s company pitch is. During a pitch the listeners will often just nod their head and say, “Oh, interesting.” But as Ryan pointed out, “Nobody wrote a check because something was interesting.” What you’re going for is the moment in the presentation where it shifts from them saying, “interesting” to them saying, “cool.” That’s the moment they get it. Their body language changes, and they’re eager. It’s the point when the presenter can shift from just pitching, to closing. “Speed to cool is how fast can I get that audience to the point of saying, ‘cool.’ How can I get them beyond ‘interesting’ which is out of their heads and into ‘cool’ which is into their emotions and it’s all based of real value,” explained Ryan.

A solution without a problem or opportunity is irrelevant

“If you haven’t sold the problem, the fact that you have an elegant solution is irrelevant,” said Ryan, “It has to start with a sense of relevance.” There’s relevance in the sense of are you solving a business problem that they know they have. The flip side of relevance is opportunity. The Internet itself created all new opportunities. “You either have to sell the problem or you have to sell the vision of opportunity, first,” explained Ryan, “If you haven’t done that you will always stay in ‘interesting’ land.”

You have to give them a taste of the opportunities and you have to be willing to give a little bit of the secret sauce that is making you successful or as Ryan refers to it, “the gift of knowledge” marketing. Go so far as writing a book about what you know. For the person who fears giving away too much, Ryan reminds us that “management would rather bring in the consultant who wrote the book than have to actually read the book and try to implement it themselves.”

People look at your company differently than how you look at yourself, yet no one pays attention to those differences

People look at your company through five lenses. Companies look at themselves (from the inside out) through three different lenses. Bill Ryan summarizes the differences:

A company’s identity is defined by their:

• Vision - What’s the core belief that started the company and what continues to drive its innovation.
• Position - Where the company sees itself in the industry ecosphere as determined by who is the customer, how are we different, how are we pricing this thing, etc. The big vision is made practical around positioning.
• Brand voice - How you express your brand to the world. That’s not necessarily your vision because your vision may be a competitive advantage and you don’t want to share.

The world looks at your company through the following lenses:

• Relevance - Do you solve a business problem that people already have?
• Superiority - Is yours the best solution according to the criteria the customers use to make a buying decision? That can be very different as to why you think you’re the best.
• Ecosystem competency - Are you the company everyone wants to do business with? Are you a follower, or do people not know of your existence? Ryan points to Microsoft here, explaining that they score very high in this area, but not in innovation as version 1.0 of all their products IS usually poor. Later versions are where general adoption is at its highest. More importantly, Microsoft controls the environment. How savvy you are as an ecosystem player gives the perception of the strength of your company.
• The team - Who’s running this show? The strength of the company’s team plays a lot in how the company is perceived as a player in the world.
• Sustainability - Do you have what it takes to stay in business for the long haul to service your customers who will need you to be there for them?

Bridging this gap between how you define your company and how the public defines you requires you to be out in front telling your company’s story to the world. It’s a brand narrative, and you better be able to do it correctly before your audience does it for you, which might not be to your benefit. This isn’t like the old days where you just courted journalists and analysts. There are far more voices out there and it’s important that you’re out there telling your story, or as Ryan puts it “Be the shepherd of your story.” More specifically, he believes that your CEO needs to be the super shepherd telling the company story and why it’s relevant to customers.

There are two ways to tell you story, and it all depends on whether there’s a market or not. “You can either evangelize hygiene or you could sell soap,” said Ryan. If you have a situation where there’s no market, then you need to evangelize the space, bring interest to it, and own it. It’s a common mistake to only sell the product and not the market. It’s easier to just sell the product because it’s something you know. You don’t necessarily know the market. Or if you do, you definitely don’t know it as well as you know your own product.

A great example, Ryan pointed out, was McDonald’s “You deserve a break today” campaign. The campaign didn’t sell burgers. It sold the idea of eating out, specifically towards moms with kids. They were trying to grow that specific market, moms with kids eating out. Since McDonald’s already owns a percentage of the “eating out” category, they can grow their own business if they simply grow the entire category of people eating out.

Ryan is one of the earliest Internet PR players. One of his earliest clients was Yahoo! when they were still at the address www.yahoo.edu. In the early days of the Internet, nobody could see the Internet’s value. So one of Ryan’s first marketing strategies for Yahoo! was to evangelize the Internet and make the two words synonymous, Yahoo! and Internet. Jerry Yang’s early appearance on Terry Gross’ Fresh Air did not discuss the technical architecture of the Internet and search, but rather how the Internet was going to revolutionalize communications. And Yang told the story of how he got his grandmother up on email and how his relationship with his grandmother grew because of it. Ryan saw the value of that story, even if he’s not sure if Jerry had a living grandmother at the time. The net result of this positioning caused Jerry Yang and David Filo to become the poster children of the Internet. And any time anyone wanted to do a story about the Internet, they needed to get those two, or it wouldn’t be a complete story.

Be more discoverable by finding the connectors and influencers

If your company is not already on the consideration list when people are deciding to purchase a product or service in your category, you need to increase your discoverability. And doing so requires you to understand your audience and go where they live. More importantly, said Ryan, is to determine who are the people that influence them. “You want to get to every point on the influence chain. And the further back you can get, the more powerful it is,” explained Ryan.

Bill Ryan actually brought up Ken Rutkowski of KenRadio who I’ve mentioned multiple times as the ultimate connector in the tech and entertainment space. Rutkowski hosts meet ups and dinners where he brings people together. He is the connective tissue. In fact, Bill Ryan and I met during a Ken Rutkowski dinner just a few months ago. And then we were reintroduced virtually by Ken’s cohost, Andy Abramson of Comunicano, yet another connector.

“The trick is to find the Ken Rutkowski’s of the world in your particular marketplace that are creating those connections between the people who are influencing the market and the people who are actually creating the innovation. [You have to start] getting those connections made and gauging those people in thinking about your business,” Ryan said.

“You need to understand the chain of influence in your ecosystem.” While that may still involve taking a journalist out to lunch, it also involves understanding the influential bloggers and understanding how their connections fit into the sphere of influence.

“The biggest complement you can pay to a writer is to demonstrate that you’ve read what they’ve written,” said Ryan, “It has nothing to do with you agreeing with what they say. In fact, a good blogger or a good journalist will fall in love with you faster if you disagree with what them and you have a good heated argument and you talk about it, and you really go back and forth, and you listen to what they say…Let them talk, listen to what they say. They may teach you things about your business you never know about before. And if you do that, they will fall in love with you, and they will respect you,” Ryan said. The end result is you’ll learn more about your market and better be able to define the problem, the opportunity, and your story.

Filed under: Collaboration, Editorial, Podcast, Video, branding | 1 Comment »

Build company knowledge by taking conversations out of email

October 13th, 2008

Ross Mayfield is the cofounder, chairman, and president of SocialText, a social business software platform.

Summary (Ross Mayfield):

• You can’t dictate collaboration within an organization. Find a small area where it would excel, introduce it, and then roll it out in concentric circles to other groups that have interest and can provide unique value.
• Collaboration needs a clear business purpose. You can’t have collaboration without a goal.
• Take all content out of email to build a company knowledge base of the revolving door of employees, plus a back channel on what the company thinks on a given issue.
• If one significant person changes their process to be more collaborative and open, it can change the process for an entire organization
• PR has evolved to add value in conversations and be agents for collaboration. It’s not just about connecting clients with press.
• When you ask for permission to market to your audience, immediately offer some value in return.
• Even if someone’s collaboration intentions is purely to promote themselves, still engage if there’s a connection to your brand.
• Collaboration needs to involve multiple individuals within an organization and not just one person, because that one person is just a resume away from leaving and taking that company goodwill with him.

Full article:

Pushing close to 5000 followers on Twitter and a popular blog, Ross Mayfield has been a leading voice in the creation and development of collaborative media. He’s the cofounder, chairman, and president of SocialText, the first wiki developers back in 2002, said Mayfield. Today, SocialText develops and sells a social business software platform.

When Mayfield first started SocialText, before he even incorporated, he wanted to share the process of building his company by launching a company-wide blog. His coworkers had already been comfortable blogging as individuals, but now they were going to use it as an open development platform which was very rare back in 2002.

“I say ’share the process’ because one of the mistakes most people do is they think about blogging as an activity of promoting outcomes,” said Mayfield, “That’s a very different thing. It’s a press release mentality to say, ‘We have achieved this, we’re launching this, here’s the big bang message we’ve been carefully working on in the laboratory, and now it’s ready for the mass consumption.’”

You can’t dictate collaboration

Collaboration doesn’t just happen by you announcing, “OK, it’s time for everybody to collaborate.” Mayfield advises companies to find a location within the business where a public social software deployment would really excel, by prototyping in private. Meaning, what internal project can you put a social platform on top of to get people into the groove of using collaboration software and see its benefits.

The example Mayfield points to is IBM who wanted employees to engage in public blogging, but before they did, they asked employees within IBM as to what their blogging policy should be. Instead of starting an email thread that someone would have to edit, IBM set up a wiki which acted as an editable document. It also established the all important company back channel.

“If there’s a crisis communications event that happens publicly, they will first turn to that back channel, privately inside the company, before airing things out in public,” said Mayfield.

Getting people to start using a new communications tool the way you want it used is not easy. I asked Mayfield what tricks he’s seen work to increase adoption of his tools and get people more involved.

“First, you need a clear business purpose. There’s no such thing as collaboration without a goal,” said Mayfield. We both attended the Enterprise 2.0 conference and this realization was often echoed during the sessions at the conference.

In addition, you have to invest some time and money in how the tool is going to be introduced. Some people are going to need training to get comfortable with editing their thoughts on your new software in public.

Social networking: from cheating to business collaboration

People take to the software differently, depending on where you deploy it (e.g. sales and marketing vs. engineering) and who you deploy it to (e.g. baby boomers vs. the Net generation).

“The Net generation just entering the workforce. They grew up doing their homework on Facebook and that’s called cheating. They come to the workforce, that’s called collaboration,” said Mayfield.

Recognize the differences for the environment that you’re adapting the software, said Mayfield. But as you’re training internally and getting people comfortable with the software, start rolling it out in concentric circles over time. An internal group that collaborates on a project will obviously have interest in that project. But there’s also a group outside of those creators that will have interest, and can provide their own unique value. Keep an eye on those groups and over time roll it out to them. Let them participate, and then look for the interest and the connection to roll it out to the next group. This is how collaboration can just grow and grow.

One person’s process change can change that of an entire business

Over the past six years, SocialText has evolved from a wiki-only type collaboration environment for knowledge sharing to a more vertically integrated process implementation for collaboration. Mayfield explained that SocialText’s software is deployed in a way to help them more productively get their work done, and knowledge sharing is a byproduct of getting their work done.

A video game news company called 1UP.com used to handle all of its communications and processes via email. A simple request to an art director to create a graphic could be an endless thread and flurry of emails. That art director decided to change HIS process. All he did is ask that all requests and edits for his work be placed on his wiki page. When the job was done, the person would be notified with a link within the wiki page as to where to find the files. That art director created a process where there wasn’t one before. He became so successful inside the company that he went on to publicly blog for the company as well.

Take content out of email so it has value and life beyond the inbox

One of the other huge advantages of taking content out of email and onto the Web is that it has a life and value when that person leaves. There’s so much knowledge and information that’s locked into each individual’s personal knowledge management systems. Companies need to break free of each person having their own “system” and set up one that everyone is comfortable with and has value for the whole company when employees are and aren’t there. “All of Web 2.0 is just taking things out of email that existed before and adding backlinks, pings, and restructuring them in a more transparent discoverable way,” said Mayfield as he admittedly oversimplifies the Web 2.0 environment.

As a personal example, I used to work at an ad agency and I produced a ton of content for them. Proposals, ideas, concepts, etc. All of that information lived on the hard drive of my computer at work. When I left, they simply formatted the hard drive instead of saving the information for later. They later called me asking for it, and I told them it was on that hard drive. Unfortunately, they erased my three years of information I created for that company with that move.

“People are sharing more than ever,” said Mayfield, “There’s new patterns of sharing by default. You see it particularly in the ‘net generation. Cause that’s how they’ve grown up, that’s what they’ve always done. They don’t necessarily see the reasons not to.”

Mayfield brought up the CIA who presented at the Enterprise 2.0 conference (I wrote about them and conducted an interview with them as well.). The model of the CIA is the complete opposite of open collaboration-type thinking, yet that’s what they’re doing. Traditionally, the CIA has operated under a “need to know” philosophy, they are slowly switching into a “need to share” culture, yet still with levels of security clearance.

Don’t let one person in your company possess the “King of Collaboration” title

Culture change can’t be the goal of a collaboration initiative. It has to be a byproduct. Those who share will be rewarded, and those who horde will be at a disadvantage, Mayfield said.

During my interview with Dana Gardner of Interarbor Solutions, he stressed the need to build a network of individuals to develop your industry voice. That it was detrimental to leave that up to just one person because they’re one resume from walking out of the company with all that built up goodwill. Mayfield continued that line of thinking by repeating results from studies that show that people trust individuals within a company more than they trust brands (source: Edelman trust barometer, six out of ten countries trust individuals as peers rather than institutions as reliable and credible sources of information). In addition, half of all individuals trust a rank and file employee more than a CEO of the same company.

PR has evolved to provide value in conversations, not just connecting clients and the press

Mayfield believes that the role of PR is actually increasing and not declining. “You have a much more decentralized, fragmented media landscape that organizations need help understanding,” said Mayfield, “You have a new role of a PR person as a public actor in the conversation.” PR persons are no longer agents to allow conversations between their clients and the press, but rather people that are providing value and developing relationships within the conversation. And PR is no longer relegated to training top executives to hit the top message points, but also the entire company who has interactions at lower levels like support or developer relations.

“An overall social media strategy needs to be diverse in its tools. It needs to be diverse in its empowerment of different individuals,” said Mayfield. While most of the social media being presented by the media and pushed is very public, Mayfield sees a trend to more intimate type relations like a social communications network between PR firm and client. Or maybe new relationships between PR agents and those that they’re contacting. For example, instead of setting up two separate interviews with two different analysts, why not get both of them in a room as you’re giving your presentation and see what new rises from that interaction. For more on the importance of developing a relationship for communications, see episode #3, Build your audience by sharing their ideals and beliefs.

As I implored Mayfield to give me stories of what it takes to get people to collaborate, he straightened me out by explaining, “There’s no collaboration panacea,” said Mayfield, “It really just takes some conviction to identify what the true collaborative problem is and get agreement from a group to try to solve it and with what steps.” To start that off, Mayfield suggest looking for those people that have already taken to online collaboration outside of the organization (e.g. say they started a local social network of cat lovers). These are people that feel comfortable with social tools and are passionate being a community manager. Let them lead the charge.

Permission to market to your audience

As you’re developing a relationship with your audience, when you ask them for information like how to get a hold of them (e.g. contact information), you need to immediately reply back with some value (e.g. an invite to an event, or a trial of a product).

“[Ask yourself], ‘What can I give away to let people distribute, reuse, attribute, bring sources back to you, not just find on the Web, but carry forward into social networks,’” said Mayfield. It’s also not just your direct business, but the goodwill you bring to the environment. It’s something Mayfield has been doing for years, and he’s hoping it’s what is going to keep him afloat.

Even if people just want to promote, engage in conversation

When I asked my traditional, “What are the worst mistakes you’ve made?” question Mayfield admitted that he didn’t initially see the value of engaging with people who were obviously just interacting with him for their own ego and to push forward their own initiative. People would come on, self promote, and Mayfield would ignore them. Today he realizes “You really want to engage with every conversation that relates with your brand,” Mayfield advised, “Even if you don’t want to necessarily draw attention to the existence of a competitor.” How open is your discussion about your competition is an issue Mayfield still wrestles with today. It’s different industry by industry. A general rule of thumb about sharing information is to share the process, not the outcomes.

Filed under: Blogging, Collaboration, Podcast, Video, Web 2.0 | 1 Comment »

If everyone is following a rule, doing the opposite will do at least as well - podcast

August 28th, 2008

Episode nine of the “Be the Voice” podcast stars Harry McCracken, editor and founder of Technologizer and former editor in chief of PCWorld magazine.

Summary (Harry McCracken):

• Want comments on your blog? Lead off with an opinion than straight reporting.
• All websites need to be works in progress forever. Adjust to what people read and don’t read.
• PCWorld realization: Almost any story can be done as a list. And if it’s done as a list, people will read it.
• There’s an abundance of “news” out there. It’s a commodity. Get seen by offering your take on the story.
• Very few tech sites do really good reviews of Web services.
• Often if everyone is following a rule doing the opposite will do at least as well.
• Don’t assume if you build something people will come. You need to start the conversation, prod people, and invite people in.

Full article:

How to quickly launch a brand new tech blog

Harry McCracken, former editor in chief of PCWorld, left the magazine to launch a brand new tech blog called Technologizer. Launching a brand new tech blog for money is a scary proposition given the abundance of competition in the tech blogging space and the audience you need to amass before you can start reaping a decent income.

But McCracken wasn’t starting from point zero. Having decades of tech journalism experience under his belt, thirteen of which were at PCWorld running the mothership, McCracken already knew his audience of tech enthusiasts. He also knew how to write compelling articles and eye-catching headlines. And he also knew what did and didn’t work online. Even though “Technologizer” is a new brand, “McCracken” isn’t. Thanks to his years at PCWorld, Harry McCracken is well known and well respected in tech circles.

When I spoke to McCracken, he was only seven weeks into production of Technologizer and already he was drawing thousands of readers a day and his posts are commonly featured on Techmeme, Gabe Rivera’s metablog that finds hotly discussed stories for the day.

Technologizer is more tightly focused than the editorial of PCWorld, said McCracken, concentrating more on personal technology. But as McCracken realizes, “All websites need to be works in progress forever…I will adjust what I do based on what people read. And I will do more of the stuff people care about and less of the stuff people don’t care about.”

Revenue for Technologizer comes through advertising which is being handled by Federated Media who also manages advertising for top tech blogs like TechCrunch and GigaOm.

When I asked what it took to get that much attention so quickly, the initial advice was obvious. You have to look at the news sites (e.g. Google News, Digg, Techmeme) and see what are the topics that are attracting people, said McCracken. He then picks hot stories that fall under his ever-evolving editorial mandate and adds his spin. There’s a lot of “McCracken-style” opinion on Technologizer and that’s what defines the brand. Technologizer is not a news site. That’s a commodity, believes McCracken.

“I never want to be generic. I always want to have my take on things. And by doing so I want to invite my readers to share their take on things,” said McCracken. “I’ve been pleasantly surprised to see that on a lot of my posts I’ll get dozens of people responding. And some of them will agree with me. And some of them will disagree with me. But I’m starting a conversation and that’s far easier to do when you lead people off with an opinion rather than straight reporting.”

Dealing with the competitive overabundance of tech blogs

McCracken’s goal is to reach out to a much broader audience of tech enthusiast. Even though sites like TechCrunch and Scobleizer are extremely well known with the tech elite, they don’t have that same general audience penetration as did computer magazines (e.g. PCWorld, PCMagazine, and PCComputing) did in the 80s and 90s. McCracken is hoping to achieve that kind of recognition with Technologizer’s opinion and writing. He knows he’s never going to compete with sites like Gizmodo and Engadget in sheer volume of content. Those sites can crank out 40 to 50 posts a day. Even more during CES.

Brewing the editorial for Technologizer

While McCracken doesn’t think he’s going to be developing year long investigative or reader survey articles like he did at PCWorld, he does spend time developing his posts taking as long as a day for a single post. Most successful tech blogs have a team of journalists and McCracken knows that Technologizer will need to extend just beyond himself. He does plan on bringing on more talented journalists to write in the style of the blog. In addition, McCracken plans to more tightly tie in his community section (powered by Ning) with his content.

Almost any story can be done as a list

McCracken and I got to talking stylistically about how he writes posts to draw traffic. McCracken admitted to the PCWorld tactic of always putting a number on the cover of the magazine when his editorial team realized that “almost any story can be done as a list,” said McCracken, “And if it’s done as a list, people will read it.”

Headlines and stories should be clear, quirky, funny, and/or a little off beat. “Because if Intel announces something, there will be fifty stories with a really boring straightforward headline, if yours is a little more fun, people will read on,” said McCracken as he wants the site to be less formal and he’s willing to be silly from time to time. I mentioned the blog Good Morning Silicon Valley for which I think is the model for funny tech headlines.

Very few tech sites do really good reviews of Web services

While there are many sites that will play with a new Web service for five minutes and write a “review” there are actually very few that will do an in depth analysis. It’s one of the editorial mandates at PCWorld that they had to do solid tech reviews for their audience. McCracken feels that reviews will be a differentiating factor that makes his site more successful because in a lot of tech categories you simply can’t find them.

From zero to thousands of readers a day in just seven weeks

Here’s Harry McCracken’s advice on how to grow your blog audience quickly:

• Start with content your audience would care about.
• Dive in and don’t stress out. Get over your fears about negative feedback. The Web is an informal medium and typos can be fixed unlike his days working in print.
• Don’t get entranced initially by search engine optimization. “If people don’t care about the content, none of that stuff matters,” said McCracken.
• Ping people who do other blogs that might care about the content. Often they will link to your content.
• Use social bookmarking tools and community sites like Digg, StumbleUpon, Yahoo! Buzz, and Slashdot
• Don’t assume if you build something people will come. You need to start the conversation, prod people, and invite people in. Robert Scoble with Scobleizer is very successful this way in that he’s always engaged in the comments. It’s an area McCracken knows he needs to spend more time.
• Don’t get hung up on the “rules” of success on the Web. It’s possible to break every single rule on the Web and still do well and you can follow every rule and be an abject failure. McCracken points to the “rule” of posting on Monday and Tuesday and only post in the morning. McCracken has actually had his greatest success on a Sunday and he’ll often post in the afternoon because that’s when people are often NOT posting so he’s not cluttered by all the other “noise” online. “Often if everyone is following a rule doing the opposite will do at least as well,” said McCracken.
• Add a lot of opinion, ask for feedback, and don’t require people to register to comment.
• Don’t be afraid to promote your own stuff, as long as you’re above board about it.

Technologizer set to launch

Technologizer is still in soft launch phase now, but McCracken plans on making a more public announcement in September where he’ll bring on more journalists plus offer a rating system for his reviews.

Filed under: Blogging, Editorial, Podcast | 3 Comments »

Your audience doesn’t care about you. They care about themselves. What are you going to give them? - podcast

August 27th, 2008

Episode nine of the “Be the Voice” podcast stars online media mogul Susan Bratton, co-founder and CEO of Personal Life Media.

Summary (Susan Bratton):

• Podcast production: deliver exactly the same format consistently gives listeners the comfort that you’re there for them.
• Have an individual in mind (ideally a thought leader) when you’re asking questions during your show.
• Personal Life Media’s network of 25 programs have taken off thanks to the network effect which we all know by the other name of social media.
• Don’t be afraid to approach someone yourself if you think you’re the ideal candidate.
• Ad agencies need to follow UGC, not try to control it, and encourage engagement.
• Your audience doesn’t care about you. They care about themselves. What are you going to give them?
• Bloggers are not journalists, but some are. Proceed with caution.

Full article:

Susan Bratton is the co-founder and CEO of Personal Life Media, a podcast and blog publishing company that produces 25 weekly programs on the subjects of personal growth, relationships, longevity, and spirituality. One of those programs, DishyMix, hosted by Bratton herself, is a series of one-on-one interviews with leading members of the digerati. With each interview Bratton hopes to find out what these thought leaders are doing that makes them so special and what can her and her listeners do to copy their behavior?

I just figured out how to produce my own show, now I have to figure it out for everyone else too?

DishyMix is just one of dozens of programs that make up the Personal Life Media brand. To build the brand’s editorial, Bratton sought out top notch voices that fit under her editorial umbrella of “personal life media,” and taught them how to podcast. Using a “MadLibs production format” as Bratton called it, she rattled off a “how to” list that was obvious she has said many times before. Bratton explained her production formula for a great Personal Life Media podcast.

1. Introduce yourself, the show, and your guest
2. Explain who your guest is and why they were invited to be on the show.
3. Go over the top things you’re going to cover.
4. Play the show intro with music bed.
5. After the show is edited, put highlights of that show immediately after the intro with music, so the audience knows what they’re going to hear.
6. Once again tell the audience what you’re going to talk about so they know what you’re going to deliver.
7. Do the show.
8. Have a break.
9. Wrap it up and say thanks.

“I do that exact same format every single week so my listeners know what I’m going to deliver for them,” said Bratton, “I think that consistency of always delivering in exactly the same format gives the listeners the comfort that you’re there for them.”

If you’re not of interest to other thought leaders, then you can’t be a thought leader yourself

Those are just the mechanics of producing a show. To deliver great content you have to keep the individual listener in mind. Its best to think of a real person you know that would be the ideal audience for your podcast. For Bratton’s DishyMix show which is filled often with social media thought leaders, she speaks to Andy Sernovitz, author of “The Word of Mouth Marketing” book, and a leader in conversational media. Andy becomes the representative audience member that she thinks about when she does her show. It’s something she didn’t believe Andy knew…until now.

The reason she picks a person like Sernovitz is because he’s a though leader in the same space for which she’s interviewing others. As she’s preparing and interviewing a guest, she always thinks about Andy. Would Andy find this interesting? Is this the kind of information that would help Andy’s business? “It just gives me someone to talk to and think about so that my thoughts are collected at a pretty senior level when I’m doing my show which is my intent,” said Bratton.

Building an online media network allows you to take advantage of “the network effect.” Remember that? It’s also called social media.

Podcasting for Bratton is “The Global Microphone.” For Personal Life Media, “[It's] an ability to connect with an audience on a weekly basis and take them through a process of self empowerment in any given category. Whether it was your relationship or your weight or your body image or whatever it might be,” said Bratton.

Each host has their audio show, their blog, and their community. And they make money through advertising and given the similar nature of their media, sponsors will typically sponsor a minimum of five up to all of the shows across Personal Life Media. No one show makes or breaks the network, but each one helps each other grow because they actually like each other, enjoy being part of the Personal Life Media community, and cross-promote each other’s programming. As a result, in just a little over a year, Personal Life Media’s entire 25 program network has between 400,000 - 500,000 listeners, with each show having a listenership somewhere between 2,000 to 80,000, said Bratton.

Bratton understands how important it is to hold on to those listeners and nurture those relationships. That’s why the hosts of the shows also have blogs and contact information so they can engage with their listeners. Bratton is in the process of building out a community site for Personal Life Media and they just began offering a widget from Gigya that allows listeners who have blogs or profile pages on social networks to put the audio playing widget on their site so that they and their visitors can listen to the show in their own online space.

Susan Bratton isn’t scared of David Spark

I’m thrilled that Susan Bratton introduced herself to me for the Be the Voice podcast. She found my content online, realized that she would be an appropriate interview, and offered herself as a potential interview including a bio to show that she is in fact a leading voice for her market. I was so impressed by her approach and then I realized during our interview, this was far from the first time she’s introduced herself as being perfect for the job. In fact, that’s how she became a member of the board at Ad:tech.

Attending the Ad:tech conference back in 1996, Bratton was enthralled. She walked up to the founder and said, “I love this and I have ten ideas for you.” His response was, “You’re going to be on my board.” Since that first meeting Bratton’s programmed many worldwide events for Ad:tech and is still chair emeritus today.

How to deal with the ad agency question of “How many people am I going to reach and how much is it going to cost me?”

Given Bratton’s background in advertising, I asked her a question that always made pitching to ad agencies difficult for me. Ad agencies boil down everything to “How many people am I going to reach and how much is it going to cost me?” Because that’s how they buy media, in known quantities. When you’re dealing with an organization that knows its audience and its size, like a TV network or magazine, then you can answer that question. But the realm of social media doesn’t allow you to answer that question.

Bratton split her answer into two parts, first discussing user generated content where you don’t have control of the audience’s take on your brand, yet you still need to keep an ear to what people are saying. She recommended Andy Beal’s book, Radically Transparent and Pete Blackshaw’s book, Satisfied Customers Tell Three Friends, Angry Customers Tell 3,000 for an understanding of how to get a handle around your online reputation.

The second part, as Bratton sees it, is social media, which is not about how the public is going to trash your brand, but rather “What more can I do to play with my customers, to listen to my customers, to give them some experiences with my brand rather than buying media and looking at impression measurements,” explained Bratton. There’s so much more engagement that can happen as people take your content and forward it or discuss it with their friends. “You might have to widen the aperture of your lens on how you measure impressions, [but] impressions can still be very aptly measured in the social media space,” Bratton said.

Honey, I want you and I to go to the next level. I want us to begin a campaign

Bratton agreed with me that the term “campaign” is dying as a term to associate with social media. Because social media is about relationships, and you can’t put the kind of effort you put into a campaign (which is a lot) into a relationship with your audience. It’s too costly and too exhausting. Social media tools like Facebook and Flickr allow you to create ongoing and sustainable relationships. Something a traditional ad campaign simply can’t do.

The initial cost of a social media engagement doesn’t end with the creative push. You have to be prepared with staff and funds to manage the feedback. Because while you may predict everyone’s going to love what you put out there, people are still going to have questions and criticisms of what you’re doing. Think about what your end goal is and make sure you’re “leaving room in your budget to have the time and the energy to really work it all the way through to customer satisfaction with any program you do in the social media realm,” advised Bratton.

The problem that Bratton is still having with social media is how she scales while she manages individual relationships. It’s a problem she continues to face when she sends out a well intended message to two hundred and fifty hand picked friends from a database of 8,000, and still gets messages back telling her to “take me off this list.”

The other issue she’s having is trying to find the right balance of communications with bloggers who are “being really prickly right now,” said Bratton. It’s a response I’ve heard before, of which I remarked, bloggers come in all shapes, sizes, and levels of ethics. Many don’t have to adhere to an editorial mandate from someone else, and most don’t get paid for what they do, so often they feel they can do what they want to do.

Getting started the Susan Bratton way

Like her steps for producing a great podcast, Bratton advises wanna be online voices to begin developing in the following way:

STEP 1: “You have to understand what you represent to someone else,” explained Bratton, “Why they want you and why they care about you. They don’t actually care about you. They only care about themselves. What are you going to give them?”

STEP 2: With every blog post, podcast, or video, show that you can deliver on that objective.

STEP 3: There’s never such a thing as an overnight success. You have to keep plugging at it and build your audience. Realizing this, Bratton delivers consistently on the production of her shows.

STEP 4: Don’t try to do too much. Meaning, don’t try to do a podcast, Facebook, Twitter, blog, videos, etc. all at once. Pick one to start with and be really good at it.

Filed under: Blogging, Collaboration, Editorial, Podcast, Web 2.0 | 2 Comments »

The blog is the new resume - podcast

August 27th, 2008

For episode number seven of “Be the Voice” I talk with Paul Dunay, Global Director of Integrated Marketing at BearingPoint and prominent blogger at Buzz Marketing for Technology.

Summary (Paul Dunay):

• The blog is the new resume
• Starting a personal/professional blog can be your social media sandbox. Play with it and learn the tricks and traps before you launch something within your organization.
• If you work at a large organization, you’re going to need to some corporate blogging guidelines. There are tons.
• You want to grow your audience so write content to elicit conversation, not act as the voice of G-d telling people what’s right and wrong.
• Pick your platform wisely. You don’t want to run into a situation where you’re on one platform (e.g. Blogger) and want to switch to another (e.g. WordPress) and you’re hesitant because the change in addressing will cause you to lose your “Google juice.”
• The best way to get a blog audience is to follow the people you want following you.
• When hosting a podcast, ask questions that will elicit honest responses to experiences rather than the talking points marketing wants to hit.
• Veotag allows you to take advantage of podcasts’ shortcomings by bookmarking chapters throughout your program.
• Know what’s on your audience’s minds and follow the news and the trends. To grab an audience always try to hook your editorial with the day’s headlines.

Full article:

Back in May I was working at The CMO Club, producing editorial coverage for the organization’s first ever conference specifically for high level marketing executives. One of the presenters I wrote about was Paul Dunay of BearingPoint who gave a fantastic presentation about putting social media into the mix for a total media/marketing campaign. I was really impressed with the total level of involvement BearingPoint was committing to social media. They weren’t just doing one blog and one social network, they were everywhere, with lots of content, contests, and conversations in many different locations. In some cases they were creating their own properties for content (e.g. New Thinking blog at BearingPoint), and in other cases they would open up discussion groups in locations where people were already congregating (e.g. on Facebook).

What Dunay orchestrated for BearingPoint didn’t come overnight. It all began when he started building his own voice through his own blog. I asked Dunay about how he began.

The blog is the new resume

Paul Dunay’s inspiration to write the Buzz Marketing for Technology blog came after reading Keith Ferrazzi’s book, Never Eat Alone. Specifically, Dunay pointed to Ferrazzi’s projection that “the blog would be the new resume” (honestly, Dunay couldn’t remember if the line was actually in the book or he just read that phrase between the lines).

From that advice, Dunay felt he should start writing a blog for his own professional growth. A good idea, but immediately he though, what am I going to do with this? “What kind of content can I create on an ongoing basis that would be an interesting conversation for most people,” Dunay asked himself as he started his blog. “I didn’t have a voice at that moment. [I] sort of started and hoped [I'd] figure it out down the line,” said Dunay, “For me it was a sandbox for me to play with a little bit before I introduced it internally.”

Following corporate blogging guidelines?

Dunay began his personal/professional blog without alerting anyone at BearingPoint. About a month into writing the blog they got wind of what he was doing and he got “the call” from corporate and they asked him, “‘Are you adhering to any sort of corporate guidelines around [the blog]?’ And of course I typed in ‘corporate blogging guidelines’ at the time to a Google search engine and came up with the IBM corporate blogging guidelines and I said, ‘Oh yes, I’m using the IBM corporate blogging guidelines.’” Not realizing he was winging his answer on the call, BearingPoint’s legal department was so happy that he was following some sort of official type guidelines that they asked him to send him a copy. And so Dunay, after seeing the IBM corporate blogging guidelines for the first time, downloaded them, and sent them off to BearingPoint’s legal department.

After that conversation, Dunay added the following copy on the front page of his blog to indicate the division between Paul Dunay the individual thought leader and Paul Dunay the consultant who works for BearingPoint.

“The postings on this site are my own and don’t necessarily represent BearingPoint’s positions, strategies or opinions.”

Developing a blogging strategy, and hooking readers

Dunay wanted to take charge of the social media strategy at BearingPoint and he knew the best way he was going to learn social media is just by doing it (How very “Nike” of him). There were two aspects of social media he needed to learn: the technical (e.g. how to set up a blog, how to configure an RSS feed, how to post a podcast) and the strategy. At the beginning, Dunay’s only “strategy” was to blog. Over time he thought about his audience, the buzz marketer, and how he should target them. Initially, Dunay was just giving advice on what they should specifically do to create “buzz.” But he quickly realized that came off as a “voice of G-d” telling you what you should do and it didn’t encourage conversation.

Dunay began to tweak his writing style to engage readers more in conversation. But to really hook people to read his posts he quickly realized that those first few words of his title were critical as they are the first words a search engine sees. Which is very true, although the way Dunay has his Blogger blog set up, the first words a search engine sees are actually AFTER the title of his blog, “Buzz Marketing for Technology.” Just prior to our interview, I had attended a WordCamp conference (a conference for WordPress users) whre SEO (search engine optimization) expert Stephen Spencer of Netconcepts recommended that bloggers put the title of their blog AFTER the blog post. This is the content that appears inside the <TITLE> tag of a blog post which gets indexed very highly on search engines. Luckily, for WordPress users, Spencer offered us a free plugin called SEO Title Tag that could do just that. Is there an equivalent plugin for Blogger?

Dunay and I then got into a discussion about the value and problems with migrating your blog to another platform. There are two ways to publish a blog. Publish it on the blog company’s servers or publish it on your own server. The advantage of the former is there’s no maintenance and it’s completely free. The disadvantage is you’re connected to their addressing system (e.g. http://davidspark.blogspot.com/interestingpost.html). While there are plenty of tools to migrate a blog from one platform to another (e.g. Blogger to WordPress) Dunay fears he’ll lose all his “Google juice,” because the addressing system will inevitably have to change. While you can bring over readers, it takes time for the search engines to rediscover your content.

“Pick your platform and your URL wisely,” advised Dunay who was having second thoughts about his blog being hosted on Blogger.

Build an audience for your blog by linking to others

Dunay said that developing an audience for his blog required linking to people, commenting on other blogs, and linking back to stuff on your blog that was relative to what they were saying. “The best way to get a blog audience is to follow the people you want following you,” recommended Dunay. It was even easier for Dunay because he would invite bloggers he liked to be interviewed for a podcast.

Dunay was posting two, maybe three times a week. Many of the people he followed were far more prolific than him. He thought of increasing his posting but realized he needed to create a balance with his work and that the schedule he created so far was sufficient.

BearingPoint has a blog as well now called New Thinking. All interactions with that blog - views, downloads, comments - are cross-referenced with other marketing that BearingPoint is doing. They’re tracking the audiences’ interest and interactions and responding. The information, updated weekly, is invaluable to them.

Dunay and I got into talking about link baiting techniques. For example, using lists or specifically going negative with posts that start “The Worst…” or the “The Biggest Mistakes…” BearingPoint does go negative for traffic, but they’re not so crass and have to be more politically judicious, so they’ll substitute the word “pitfalls” instead.

Taking advantage of podcasting’s shortcomings

Dunay admitted one of his greatest “pitfalls” came during his early days of podcasting. His first show, never actually published, was a disaster. He wrote a paper and hired a voice talent for $2,000 to read the paper into a microphone, and that was going to be his “podcast.” It didn’t sound like a show. It sounded more like a book on tape and he and his colleagues were horrified when they actually listened to it. Realizing that hiring talent to read podcasts was not going to be the solution, Dunay looked for another podcast format that was conversational and avoided the stilted premise of having a vendor come in and shill their product.

When I worked as a host of The Sprint podcast, I would often get marketing people as guests on the show. And marketing people can’t shut off that part of their brain that causes them to talk only in sales mode. They know their talking points and they can’t help themselves from repeating them. While hosting the podcast, I kept begging Sprint, please stop sending me marketing people, send me geeks to interview.

Dunay had a somewhat similar situation. While he didn’t get marketing people and got the geeks, the geeks were being trained or questioned with traditional marketing questions like, “What are the six implementation pitfalls?” Dunay shifted focus and started asking more qualitative questions such as “When you delivered this, what did the client say and what was the reaction internally?” It got around to the same point, but he realized that the medium (podcasting) was different than blogs or even video, and depending on which one you choose, “you have to design into each medium,” advised Dunay.

Dunay also confirmed something that I’ve seen time and time again about podcasting. I’m a very strong proponent and consumer of podcasts on my iPod. I subscribe to them, download them, and take them with me to listen to on my commute or when I’m working out, Problem is I’m in a severe minority. I keep seeing statistics that 70% of all podcasts are heard on the computer at the moment and not via a subscription like iTunes or on the iPod.

To facilitate that ‘listening at your computer experience, Dunay implemented Veotag’s technology on his podcasts which allows the publisher to title chapters of his podcast and let listeners skip to portions of the show. “They want the question they want answered, and that’s the end of it,” said Dunay realizing that sometimes listeners don’t want to hear his entire show. Other advantages of Veotag for podcasts is the tags improve SEO and he can run slides or video alongside the audio of the podcast.

Crafting your editorial to coincide with what’s on people’s minds now

The core of BearingPoint’s messaging is through its editorial. Building their editorial requires knowing the top concerns of their audience which revolve around issues of identity theft and personal privacy. To increase interest, BearingPoint carves its editorial to tie in their issues with topical news. For example, and admittedly not a good one but it gets the point across, BearingPoint might write a story, “What should Michael Phelps be concerned about with his presence on Facebook?” Hooking your editorial with top of mind issues increases your chances of being recognized.

A good trick to knowing what are top news stories is to follow social bookmarking sites such as Google Trends, Hitwise, Technorati, Techmeme, Digg, and Tailrank, to name a few.

Be like Dunay

For those of you just starting out, Dunay advises first and foremost that you just start. Like the lottery “You have to be in it to win it,” Dunay said. Once you start, follow what is and isn’t working. “What is getting the reaction compared to what isn’t getting the reaction,” Dunay said. If people are gravitating towards a certain subject, then build it out. Turn it into a multi-part series, invite others to comment and join in the conversation. Like any marketing you might do, success comes with time.

Filed under: Blogging, Editorial, Podcast, Web 2.0 | 2 Comments »

How to launch a community from nothing - podcast

August 25th, 2008

Episode five of the “Be the Voice” podcast stars Pete Krainik, who is the CEO and founder of “The CMO Club.”

Summary (Pete Krainik):

• The CMO Club filled a pent up demand for top level marketing executives that were looking for peers to lean on for advice.
• The CMO Club’s brand has risen to be defined as “content for conversation, not content for presentation.”
• Keeping CMOs interested means finding topics of discussion that cross industries.
• Launching a grass roots organization requires touch, meaning face-to-face communications, not mass mailings.
• Creating an organization means you’re going to have to take on the branding role of “the connector.”
• Competition in a very green industry is good because it provides more editorial where there is none and raises the profile for the entire category.

Full article:

Pete Krainik is the CEO, CMO, and founder of “The CMO Club” an organization for only top level marketing professionals to engage in high level discussions and concerns that CMOs are going through (CMO stands for Chief Marketing Officer, not Chief Medical Officer which is what my father, the doctor, thought it stood for.)

Hey, want to join my exclusive club? Please?

Krainik has been very fortunate to have worked in a variety of high-level marketing and executive positions at many organizations including M&M/Mars, Seybold, Avaya, and DoubleClick. The idea for The CMO Club came out of his own frustration not being able to meet any of his peers. He’d go out to dinners at events and he’d be the only CMO. There was never an opportunity for a peer discussion. Conversations would either be very basic marketing 101 or they’d be sponsored-driven pitches.

Two years ago Krainik gathered six CMO friends for a dinner just to have that high-level discussion he was so eagerly seeking. It turns out his frustration is shared by others. Over the past two years The CMO Club dinners have spread to twelve cities with dinners every other month. Krainik had his first conference in NYC with 60 CMOs (Krainik hired me to produced editorial content at the event), and this February he launched The CMO Club exclusive site that already has 735 registered and approved CMOs.

Krainik attests the early success to just good ‘ole fashioned hard work which requires meeting and calling CMOs, personal conversations, and word of mouth recommendations. Plus, his dinners are not pay-to-play sponsored dinners. People are invited because he thinks they would provide valuable content and conversation.

Oh yes, you paid for dinner, so I guess I have to listen to your company pitch

The benefit of his events is that they cut through traditional hidden agendas, said Krainik, and CMOs can address issues that affect them like rebranding, going public, and dealing with PR issues. “Who better to help me as a CMO understand the issues I have, the challenges, or the strategies I’m about to unfold, than someone who is a peer of mine and been there,” said Krainik. Everyone comes looking for those few nuggets of advice from someone who has gone through these issues and let’s them know “don’t do this, do this” or “here are some people I recommend.”

And it’s these conversations that have become the most powerful for the attendees. Krainik’s “voice” is that of the facilitator allowing those conversations to happen. In fact, the feedback he got from his first event in May was “Great event, but we want even less speakers,” said Krainik, “They wanted more discussion.”

In fact, one of the CMOs coined a phrase that’s become the moniker for The CMO Club: “It’s content for conversation, not content for presentation.”

Krainik’s success proves there’s pent up demand for a CMO support group. The role of a CMO is tenuous they cycle through companies quickly. Eighteen months at one organization for a CMO is considered a lifetime. The high turnover is not because they’re getting fired, but rather because they’re fed up and want to move on.

Benefits of The CMO Club from Jen Sanning, CMO Rainbow Rewards

CMOs can get bored quickly, so keep them interested

At this point in the conversation, Krainik and I shifted roles and I began to question him more about the issues he’s having growing The CMO Club and the brand. His number one challenge is to come up with topics and vehicles to get CMOs to want to participate and share their insight beyond the dinners. He truly wants to differentiate his organization from similar high-level executive organizations.

Topics that cross multiple industries do very well, said Krainik. For example, How do I keep great marketing stars? How do I influence change at the C-level? How do I approach social media and how do I think of it as being connected to all my other components? How do I manage globally?

At the end of each dinner Krainik sends a recap out to all the attendees. It’s an excellent way to build relations and provide extended value from an event. But he has to keep this recording of information to a minimum because one of the values of his dinners is the privacy of information.

One way he’s maintaining balance is by conducting short video interviews with a Flip camera asking CMOs at the dinner what was their number one takeaway. It has two-fold value: it respects the CMO’s time (it only takes a minute) and other CMOs love to hear what’s on other CMO’s minds. The response to these videos has been very positive.