Marketing Conversation » Blogging

Choosing Content for Your Video Marketing Strategy

speters — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 03:41:06 +0000

Bloggers, site managers, and SEO specialists are always looking for new ways to boost traffic to their page and exposure for their business. They use social media platforms to market their website, they utilize backlinks and interactive features to maximize views and click-throughs, and they try to increase conversion rate with live chat software. Now, many of these people are looking to an old medium as the next frontier for online marketing and SEO: video.

By now, you’ve probably heard of the many benefits that video content can offer. For a marketer, it can drive traffic by diversifying your site’s content, its sophistication, and its likelihood of appearing towards the top of an organic Google search. On the SEO front, video allows for the incorporation of keywords and media libraries that can boost a site’s page rank. Video is also an appealing platform for advertisers (among whom embedded video ads are currently all the rage) and social media experts (who can more successfully integrate a site and a social media page through the use of video). There’s no question about it: video is all the rage these days, and people from all walks of internet life have been racing to get on board.

So for all these reasons, you may naturally be looking to start making video posts yourself. But there’s just one problem: you don’t know what content to put in these videos. You have an online business or blog upon which written content is not unfamiliar, but you have no idea how to translate that into video – and, moreover, how to make videos that will also engage the viewer and positively promote your business in the process.

On that note, here are a few of the most successful and proven approaches that you can take when it comes to video content:

-The Humorous Infomercial. This approach allows online businesses to contrast a serious written tone with a humorous video approach. Humor is a great way to interest and engage the viewer, after all, and the infomercial setting provides a great way to explicitly market a product or service without being forceful about it.

-The Corporate Culture. Some video marketers take a more relaxed and less scripted approaching, opting instead to showcase the business’ employers using the company’s products or services around the office. The shoe retailer Zappos has used this style with considerable success.

-The Informative One-On-One. Many videos will simply show the blogger, business owner, or site manager talking candidly into the camera. While these videos may not generate as much excitement as more humorous ones, they provide a great forum to address consumer issues and put a human face onto a virtual enterprise. Companies such as Google have made extensive use of this technique.

These are just a few of the main approaches taken towards video content. No matter what approach you choose, make sure that your video is clear, professional, and informative on some level. If done correctly, you will hopefully realize a traffic or SEO boost as a result.

Bloggers and Brand Influence

Jenny Moon — Thu, 08 Dec 2011 16:09:33 +0000

We all know that the blogosphere is an immensely large community with interconnections between bloggers and readers everywhere. The blogosphere is continually growing with powerful influentials who can change the way we think and look at things.

Internet marketing company eMarketer Mobile recently published an article that proves just how influential bloggers, whether hobbyists or professionals, truly are when it comes to conversation about products or brands.

About 38 percent of all bloggers post about brands that they love or hate and about 34 percent write product or service reviews, according to the “State of the Blogosphere 2011″ report from Technorati.

In addition, Technorati reported that about 29 percent of bloggers were influenced by other blogs that they read last year. This year, the number increased to 68 percent, which is more than half of bloggers.

With the increasing numbers and influence of bloggers, it is essential for brand representatives to maintain good relations with these individuals. We wouldn’t want another episode between The Bloggess and Brandlink now, would we?

Click here for the full article from eMarketer Mobile titled “How Blogs Influence Purchases and Recommendation.”

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Technorati State of the Blogosphere in 2011 (nextbigfuture.com)
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2010 Technorati State of the Blogosphere Report Release Today (prweb.com)
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NetShelter’s New Platform Curates Bloggers For Advertisers (forbes.com)
NetShelter Technology Media Unveils “inPowered” Platform for Brand Advertisers (prnewswire.com)
BrandLink Communications Has the Internet Drop on its Head (whatever.scalzi.com)
2010 Technorati State of the Blogosphere Report Release Today (prweb.com)

Keep your blog posts short and concise

Jenny Moon — Fri, 18 Nov 2011 16:43:33 +0000

Scott Berkun brings up a good point in his recent post, “Can you say much in 500 Words? Essays vs. Blogs.”

Good blog writing isn’t about how many words or sentences you use. Nor is it about making your language as fancy and flowery as possible. It’s about the quality of your writing and being clear and straight to the point with your message.

“The rub is that good writing must be concise without being shallow,” Berkun notes.

I agree. The key to successfully communicating a message to an audience is stating the facts or telling the story simply as it is. It can be a challenge to find that good balance, but when in doubt keep it simple.

In our modern fast-paced generation, everything is on-the-go with content overload filling up our Facebook and Twitter feeds and with new sources of information crowding the web. We’ll never experience a shortage of information online. That’s for sure.

Due to the high volume of sources in news streams today, people need to read articles and posts quickly and easily so that they may go on to the next.

Self-publishing: Author Scott Berkun shares his experiences (writerway.com)
Scott Berkun: Free download ebook (postadaychallenge2011.com)
Scott Berkun’s “Mindfire” eBook Free Until November 3rd (readwriteweb.com)
Scott Berkun’s “Mindfire” eBook Free Until November 3rd (q-ontech.blogspot.com)
Can you say much in 500 Words? Essays vs. Blogs (scottberkun.com)

9 important reasons to blog

Jenna Levy — Sun, 23 Oct 2011 17:54:27 +0000

Dan Reich over at Forbes has some great insight as to new reasons why all entrepreneurs should blog. Here’s my take on each one:

1. It’s your new resume. As long as its well-written and clearly displays your areas of interest and/or expertise, a blog can only serve as a positive supplement to any other CV materials.

2. It’s your new hiring tool. And vice-versa. Always check out potential employees and their online presences. No judgement– but if they’re the voice behind a marshmellow escort service, they may not be the best match for the digital media firm you’re applying for.

3. Network with new people. There’s a large difference between accepting everyone who sends a friend request your way and actually investigating those who you may similar interests with on blog sites, Twitter and LinkedIn. Look at past employment, look at mutual friends and look at content. Your blogs may complement each other and serve as perfect SEO tools to help one another out.

4. Turn messy ideas into neat ones. Use your blog as a blank canvas. Brainstorm, do story webs, do free writes and have your friends give input. Don’t put something out there, just to put it out there. Refine it, you’ll probably find hidden gems that you didn’t know you had up there to begin with.

5. Get some peace of mind. It’s relaxing! Grab a glass of Pinot, (over 21-er’s only, please *disclaimer*) and practice idea #4. There’s no more rewarding feeling than unleashing your ideas on a blank screen and seeing where they take you. You might just be the next Pete Cashmore, or even Chris Abraham! (And we all know how much he practices idea #4 :-))

7. Create your own PR machine. Your online presence is your biggest tool and your biggest weapon. This is an age where you are just as likely to succeed at a career of marketing yourself as you are marketing someone else. Read up on successful bloggers and see where their followers are coming from. Copying can sometimes be the most sincere form of flattery. Promote what you love, and the golden rule of blogging may just serve you in return.

8. Juice up your writing skills. Elementary, my dear. Mechanics will irk me until I’m 84 and probably can’t type anymore. (Hope not!) Have a free Sunday? Look at the history of your blog and how far your writing skills have come. You’ll be astounded!

9. Produce more, consume less. Marketing Conversation has an endless battle over this one. Quality versus quantity. You know the upshot– if you have something to say, say it and say it well!

9 Reasons You Should Blog (danreich.com)
9 Reasons You Should Blog (salhajri.wordpress.com)
10 LinkedIn Groups Lessons Learned (blogs.cisco.com)
5 Steps to Ensure Your Business Blog Isn’t Boring (hubspot.com)
ROW80 Fourth check-in! (showard76.wordpress.com)
9 Reasons to Blog (bramhalluo.wordpress.com)
How to Find New Clients via LinkedIn (xemion.com)
ROW80 checking in for the 6th time! whoot! (showard76.wordpress.com)
Happy Blogday: One Year of Blogging (thehrjuggler.wordpress.com)
WordPress Bloggers: Why You Should Be On All 3 Major Social Networks (pressography.com)
The Future of Hiring New Employees (danreich.com)
Making sense of the Big 3 – Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn – Social Media for the Confused (bizcommunicator.wordpress.com)
L4B 5: 6 More Ways to Power Lead Generation via LinkedIn (blogs4bytes.wordpress.com)
LinkedIn Quiz: How Well Do You Know LinkedIn? (edmusesupon.wordpress.com)

9 Reasons to Blog (bramhalluo.wordpress.com)
How to Find New Clients via LinkedIn (xemion.com)
ROW80 checking in for the 6th time! whoot! (showard76.wordpress.com)
Happy Blogday: One Year of Blogging (thehrjuggler.wordpress.com)
WordPress Bloggers: Why You Should Be On All 3 Major Social Networks (pressography.com)
The Future of Hiring New Employees (danreich.com)
Making sense of the Big 3 – Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn – Social Media for the Confused (bizcommunicator.wordpress.com)
L4B 5: 6 More Ways to Power Lead Generation via LinkedIn (blogs4bytes.wordpress.com)
LinkedIn Quiz: How Well Do You Know LinkedIn? (edmusesupon.wordpress.com)

Do Americans care at all about A-list blogs?

Chris Abraham — Thu, 06 Oct 2011 00:49:22 +0000

I had breakfast with John Bell of Ogilvy a number of years ago. He didn’t see the value of investing limited budget, time and resources on the long tail when those treasures would better be used to woo the high-fliers, professionals, top-cows and A-listers.

That’s fair enough, and surely a common question, and a question we must address close to the beginning of every sales call we make at our agency when we propose blogger outreach to a prospective client.

The value comes from penetration, permanence, perseverance and persistence. There are only a finite number of members of every organization’s email list. Mashable and TechCrunch have a sizable but vertical (narrow) audience. When we reach out and pitch to thousands of bloggers, however small or niche, if they’re within maybe one but generally a handful of loosely defined topics, we always reach well outside of the echo chamber of a conversation that tends to get contained within the walls of a tech blog or mommy blog.

By reaching out ever further, we don’t assume that anyone outside of the five major urban centers are obsessed with the top five major papers or the top five major blogs. Doing so makes the critical mistake that if you get covered by the FT, the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times, you’ve got the world covered. In fact, I will use a newspaper analogy to try to illustrate my point.

The top A-list blogs and bloggers are analogous to David Gelles and the top journalists at the FT, the Times, Washington Post and the Journal. Though highly prestigious, getting your new startup covered by Mr. Gelles may very well not be enough. Outside of Chicago, New York, LA, San Francisco, Washington, DC, Boston and Miami, the United States is also a collection of regional, city, town and village daily papers as well as weeklies and newsletters and journals, both academic and professional, and email lists and Web-only news sources.

People have only a finite amount of time, so their consumption of content, information, news, reviews and alerts is limited. The closer you can get to the media organ that your target market consumes primarily and religiously, the higher the probability that content will register with the reader, will resonate with the reader, and will feel like it is intimate to the reader and his local community and experience of the world.

The Internet is such a gift. Never before has it been remotely possible to reach out to thousands of publishing platforms in one go, with just a team of five, globally or geographically, with a couple follow-ups and concierge service, with the reliable results of hundreds of posts and their associated tweets, retweets and secondary coverage. Add to this long-tail “theory of everyone” campaign a more one-to-one, relationship-based, Rolodex outreach to your most connected agents to-to list and you can have all the mentions in the rarefied air of the A-list as you can manage in the time allowed (and with what you have to pitch — sometimes the quality or sexiness isn’t there and it can be a super-tough sell, requiring horse-trading, etc.) in addition to the hundreds of earned media mentions that one can very reliably acquire — with the first posts showing up two weeks after the contract is signed and going on for another four weeks.

Building connections with the top influencers

One of the biggest issues with A-list outreaches that I experienced when I was at NMS and Edelman is that what happens when you only have a prior relationship with only a handful of top-tier semi-professional and professional bloggers and blogger networks that are germane to the topic or demographic of the client? What happens if you don’t know enough and the ones you do know aren’t interested or don’t think it’s interesting or a viable post?

There are times when you’ve been given a huge retainer by a huge client to push a “meh” product to an A-list that’s not interested and the time passes, the bell rings and you’ve rolled snake eyes. Nothing. No coverage — or very little, surely not aligned to the client’s expectation — or your boss’s.

We discovered that we were a lot less vulnerable to panic attacks when we bought insurance. At my agency, we do pursue A-listers, of course. But those relationships are real. They take time. Since we don’t have a strong vertical, we don’t know who we’re going to need to engage in the A-list at any one time. And, when we do sort out the A-list in any particular blogosphere, thanks to the help of eCairn, then we need to spend time building that connection, personally, with the top influencers. While that is happening, we task our seven blogger researchers with finding everyone else, using a very well-thought-out collection of keyword phrases. In general, we have two weeks or less before our first outreach. The clock is ticking.

Via Biznology & Socialmedia.biz

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We don’t need no steenking ‘Blogger Outreach’ (globalneighbourhoods.net)
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Write online to be taken completely out of context

Chris Abraham — Thu, 28 Jul 2011 10:00:23 +0000

I am in the middle of guiding some of my new bloggers over at Marketing Conversation on how to blog most effectively. It is pretty exciting and instructive because there are many things I take for granted. One of the biggest trends I see is internal shorthand. What I mean is that my bloggers tend to write based on a lot of assumed context. When they write my company name, they might choose AH instead of Abraham Harrison; and, since that AH is on a corporate blog, they might forget to link it to the best page in the corporate Web site.

They simply assume that people who are reading content from Marketing Conversation or Because the Medium is the Message–or even an article on the corporate Website–are in on the joke. That they grok the context.

Not only is that not true but it is dangerous, because I am guilty of it myself. I would say north of 80% of the people I engage with on a daily basis online don’t know that I am president of a digital agency with over fifty staff and dozens of clients. See, I make the same assumptions.

I assume that I shouldn’t be so self-referential because “they” surely know who I am by now, I have been branding for years. Pretty darn shamelessly if you ask me — at least I thought so. Not so.

And I have not even gotten to the most important part: even if people know who you are, what you do, the company you own, and its products and services intimately, their brand perception hasn’t evolved at the speed of your business. What I did in 2006 is quite a bit different than what Abraham Harrison does now, as a company.

Even worse, after we spend all of this time, resources, hours, money, and brain trust on creating insightful analysis and share it for free on our blogs and via Twitter and Facebook, we’re living in a Derridian world: “there’s nothing outside the text.” Let me explain . . .

In a world of excerpting, reading, sharing, retweeting, and sharing shares, or decontextualized via RSS or auto spamblogs, simply all of the breadcrumbs required to bring a reader down the road back to you, your brand, and your sales channel needs to be contained not only in that blog post but also in that tweet, if possible.

Each post needs to be as self contained as a biosphere.

You need everything that you could possibly need to have your post make sense on the same page, within the same post–for three reasons:

If you’re quoting another post, excerpt as much of that content to make your point and make it unnecessary to need to link out to read that other article–they won’t make it back
If you don’t have everything sorted out, completely contextually-inclusive both with references as well as with your branding, your products and services, all on your article’s back, then something might get left behind
If everything’s not completely clear and tidy and tied with a bow–fully sorted–then you’ll lose them anyway because you need to grab them in short-order, every time.

Do not use acronyms unless your brand is that acronym. Abraham Harrison, LLC, is not yet AH or even AHLLC–we’re no IBM. Abraham Harrison should always be linked. Every name of every employee should be linked to their bio on the corporate website at best case or to a LinkedIn, Twitter, or Facebook profile at the very least. Every product or service should be linked to its exact corresponding sub-page on the corporate website if at all possible.

In blogging, we often do a much better job of linking to other people, companies, and blogs in the form of attribution than we do ourselves.

Even more essential to these constantly contextualizing linking strategies is that the keywords should be hyperlinked and not some worthless [link] or a pithy here or there or my work or any of that, if at all possible.

Search abhors a pronoun.

Finally, any and all posts should be wrapped in analysis, if at all possible. Don’t just excerpt a social media news article onto your blog or site, make it your own. While collecting news and propagating it through your blog with attribution links and excerpts and all that can result in your colleagues and neighbors and even prospects to learn of your existence, you’re not really adding value when you just propagate–it is essential to interpret, analyze, and synthesize, allowing all the marrow of your experience to be extracted in answer to, “well, that’s great content, but it is content from your competitor so maybe we should be using them instead of you if they’re so insightful.”

In a perfect world, with a corporate blog, people should be subscribing to and reading posts on Marketing Conversation in order to learn more about the products and services and quality of mind of Abraham Harrison and not just to get an aggregation of the latest social media marketing news.

Sometimes I forget that and it is something I would like to share with you in addition to sharing it with my new bloggers.

Via Biznology via Socialmedia.biz

The Intimidating Realm of Social Media

Matt Carroll — Fri, 22 Jul 2011 23:52:09 +0000

Social media continues to have a large effect on how companies operate.

While this new age is exciting, it is leading companies into uncharted territory. For many reasons, companies are treading lightly in an effort to take innovative steps, but cushion themselves in the case a campaign goes awry. But isn’t it time companies dive into the social media realm instead of dipping their toes in it?

Corporations such as Starbucks have experimented with new forms of customer engagement, utilizing social media Websites. Starbucks gauges customer reaction to its product by creating business pages devoted to listening and monitoring to what its customers have to say. This benefits all parties as customers feel they are being heard, and the company has a chance to improve something that needs improving. Starbucks can bounce ideas off customers by posting new trends and analyzing audience reactions. With positive feedback, the company can move ahead with their plan. With apprehension or negative feedback, the company can prevent a disaster before it even occurs.

A recent study by the Economist Intelligence Unit has shown that companies “old” methods of measuring customer worth don’t work. Many companies believe that measuring how much customers spend is an accurate portrayal of the only way a customer relates to a company. While at some point that may have been true, customers now engage in brands far more than just buying the product.

The study also states companies need to distinguish between the unwanted noise of customers, and the important business information provided by customers. New ideas and strategies can be drawn from customers reactions through social media outlets, which ultimately could benefit the company. Furthermore, companies need to utilize social media as a tool for gaging customer reaction.

But social media must be used wisely. Take Skittles for example. Marketing managers tried to make customers feel like a part of company using Twitter, but users ended up posting indecent and inappropriate tweets, forcing Skittles to remove the feed from their Website. While the company had good intentions, it just goes to show that social media can be a company’s best and worst friend. The best way to solve this is to author a protocol with consistent practices for all situations. Crisis management always needs to be present in an ever-changing medium like the internet.

Bottom line? Companies need to just do it– sorry Nike. With customer engagement, AND CONVERSATION, proper listening and monitoring services, and protocols for consistent use, companies will find a happy medium in which their company can grow in a new and exciting way.

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Turning Haters into Social Media Lemonade

Robin Pangilinan — Wed, 09 Feb 2011 16:31:07 +0000

In participating to social media, it is to be expected that not all people would be pleased with your existence. As stated on a previous post, it is only normal because you are exposing yourself, your contents or your brand to people — all kinds of people. The larger the audience is, the higher the probability that you’ll start attracting ‘Haters’.

These are the folks who would take time to talk about you behind your back, slander you online, and not give you any credit or the benefit of te doubt. They aspire to bring dirt to your name. They lurk around your comment boxes or wherever they can put their negative two-cents in.

Truth is, we can always turn the bad into good good, but how? Here are some ideas to try to reverse the intended effect of these negative comments or words :

Don’t look for the negative. We have the tendency to be sensitive in various things, we don’t want anybody throwing dirt to our face, we are becoming too conscious about matters like that which leads us to really looking for negativity in every situation. Try to understand what the words are telling you first before concluding that it really is a negative input — as Howard Rheingold recommends: “assume good intent.” We tend to go negative when the problem is more probably a mis-communication
Do not take it personally. If you looked at the comment, for instance, with very objective sight and still you categorized it as a negative one, do not take it personally, it might be directed to what you posted, what you wrote, what you said, what you did, but not you, yourself. It will really mean so much more if you take it as a personal jab at you. Be professional as much as possible. As we say at Abraham Harrison: always give them hugs and not the horns. Or, to quote Philo of Alexandria, “Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle” — we live by these words.
Understand the inner sentiment. Be a psychologist for a moment, and try to feel what the commenter is feeling when he said what he said to you. Try to answer the question “why,” why did he say that? For example, someone will say “You already posted this elsewhere, this is nothing new — it’s redundant!”, you may think that the inner sentiment of the statement goes like this “I have read your works, I am following your every post because I am expecting something new”. Basically try to be in the person’s shoes and act as you would.
Disassemble the words and extract the message. After answering the question why, answer the question “what does this person want me to do?” Surely, the person wants something out of you by delivering those words for you. He may say “This post has so many points, it is so vague.” it might not be directly said but he wants you to organize the idea of the post thoroughly. He might wants you to focus on something instead. You can actually learn from the criticism — turn the hater’s message into constructive criticism. Also, since there are a thousand lurkers for every hater, his frustration and hating might be representative of a much larger issue. Try to dig to the meat of the message.
Have a unique, witty and immediate response. This is one way to prevent people stress out the same points again. You don’t want negative comments to be posted again and again, so stop it with a great counter immediately but make it a positive one. However, that said, stay a hundred miles way from being snide, ironic, snarky, sarcastic, or dismissive. Remember, hugs not horns!
Finally, Learn something. You should learn something from the encounter, a criticism wont appear if there were no mistake, even a single one. The mistake may be yours or the commenter, either way you should learn from that mistake and be smart enough to study how to avoid it next time. Again, you can actually learn from the criticism — turn the hater’s message into constructive criticism. Also, since there are a thousand lurkers for every hater, his frustration and hating might be representative of a much larger issue. Try to dig to the meat of the message.

If done correctly, this list of tips may turn bad comments into a good input for you.

Now’s the Best Time Ever to Start Blogging!

Chris Abraham — Mon, 03 Jan 2011 18:35:57 +0000

2011 might be the best year to start a blog with one caveat. Ed Lee agrees in Blogging – Alive and Kicking. I actually have more to add to this:

There is less competition for any particular topic
While there may be a number of professional blogs out there blogging on your topic, the relative number of blog-curious and casual bloggers has decreased. It is impossible to be a successful casual blogger and blogging is hard, so the blogging “middle class” has thinned out.

Therefore, most of the people who are saying that blogging is dead or who have given up their blog for Twitter or a Facebook Page actually just don’t have the heart, passion, talent, or commitment. They’re the same people who tell you to forget about writing a book because books are dead. No, books are not dead and neither are blogs — they’re just hard!

Most of the remaining blogs out there are ghost towns on life support
Now there are just aggregation blogs and spam blogs in the ghetto and there are the professional and advanced amateur blogs in the elite. Since blogging is so hard and requires so much commitment and talent resources, all you need to do is commit time, talent, and long-term budget and you should be dominating your space in no time — well, as long as you consider “no time” to be between 6-18 months.

What that means is a minimum of four short posts and one long post a week, each and every week until forever. Yes, forever. Until your company closes or you sell it — and even then, you might want to keep the blog as it will help you leverage yourself into you next thing.

A blog is like an African Gray Parrot in that it is a long-term investment requiring that you build it into your estate planning. In the past, businesses really didn’t think long-term about their social media and blogging strategy and their plan often didn’t outlive their Summer Intern.

If you plan to honor your employer, your company, or yourself, you need to be willing to not just maintain your blog on life-support just by paying for hosting and renewing your domain name but you really need to invest.

Success begets success in blogging and with your blog
Case in point is Marketing Conversation, Abraham Harrison‘s corporate blog. Until 6 months ago, I was really the only person writing for it. Then Phillip Rhoades got the passion, and now we have made it a priority to hire bloggers to fill out the daily posting requirement. In just a couple months, our ranking on AdAge Power 150 went from almost 300 to 130.

While I had never let Marketing Conversation become a ghost town, it wasn’t a priority of the company as a while. I didn’t have enough buy-in from the 34 other members of the team. Now, everyone’s committed. And success begets success — and success makes it much easier to assure that I will have the budget of talent and money I need to make sure MC keeps improving and growing, including budget for a design and template make-over.

I hate to say it but people really so love a winner.

Blogging technology and blogging platforms have gotten easier, simpler, and more convenient
With Tumblr and Posterous as well as Twitter, Facebook Pages, and old reliables such as Blogger and WordPress.com, it couldn’t be cheaper, simpler or more convenient.

Even Moveable Type, WordPress, Drupal, Joomla, and other blogging and content platforms have gotten less complex — and even hosting companies have started to meet their clients half or all the way to installing blogs.

One click and your software is updates, one click and you’ve installed a new plugin, one click and you have installed WordPress, Drupal, and Joomla from your Web Hosting administration control panel dashboad like cPanel, Webmin, SirectAdmin, Fantastico, etc.

Plus, it is easier to get a pretty nice template for free or for just a little bit of money. I am not proud but I use the Thesis WordPress Theme from DIYthemes for both Marketing Conversation and for Chris Abraham — Because the Medium is the Message. I plan to upgrade them both, but for now it is essential that I just make everything as simple, easy-to-read, and SEO-friendly as possible as Thesis meets all of those needs for me for now.

Blogging courses, blog platform developers, and blog template designers are easier-to-find and afford
Back when I started blogging back in 1999, it was all me. Even 5-years ago, it was tough to find s Drupal guy or a WordPress guy — it was even tougher finding a quality (and also affordable) designer who did more than create a design in Photoship, slice it up, and dump it on me to shoehorn and hack it into a proper Drupal or WordPress template.

Now, awesome programmers, developers, plugin developers, Drupal and WordPress programmers, and designers and shops that are able to go from initial branding brainstorming through blog and site design, through to user experience and content, through designing and approval, all the way to a final product: an easy to install, widget and plug-in compatible, theme template. What’s more, they’re able to add all the bells and whistles, too, as well as develop and program any particular bespoke plugin that can really make your blog or social media web 2.0 website hum.

These folks were almost impossible to find and when you did, back in 2006, 2007, 2008, even 2009, they were not what they purported to be or they were over-booked, too expensive, or unresponsive. In 2010 and 2011, with the economy as it is and since most of the deepest pockets already are wired for sound, these coder rockstars are willing to work with you to make sure that everyone comes out feeling like they’re a winner.

Bloggers, community managers, content curators, and comment moderators are well-trained and plentiful
If you decide that you want a blog but can’t really commit to more than one post a week or one post a month; or if you’re considering turning off the comments on your blog; or, if you’re keeping away from committing to Twitter or Facebook Pages; or your current blog, Twitter profile, or Facebook Page is a ghost town, then you really need to hire a dedicated blogger, a blogger who understands that writing is only 1/4 of the job.

Another 1/4 needs to be spent on engaging with the social mediasphere and blogosphere, moderating comments, responding to questions and comments, and the like.

The third quart needs to be spent monitoring what people are saying online to make sure you remain on top of what people are saying as well as searching for opportunities to engage in questions and conversations online, on Twitter, on Facebook, on blogs, and on message boards.

Finally, the last quarter needs to be spent on marketing and promoting the blog and your brand online. Making sure you remain part of the conversation. Reading other peoples’ blogs, keeping on top of your industry and the other blogs in your space, and seeing if you can connect to them and become part of their community.

In the past, finding someone like this was almost impossible. It is still tough but easier. And there are so many people looking to get into this sort of work that the fees are reasonable.

Don’t expect your community management to be found all in one person, however. Your social media team requirements might require several people. Be sure to try out Odesk and Elance as we have found some excellent staff there. Also, be sure to check out Craigslist, though I highly recommend not making “must be in the same city as the company” a requirement as the best people are often not in your city or even in your country.

The real-time web is alive and blog content is hotter than ever before, just ask Google
In the past, Google treated every page on the Internet with just about as much attention. Since the resources allocated to Google was finite, it did tend to give more attention to online content that was updated regularly, but blogs were no different than newspapers or any other active content. However, in recent years, Google has felt the heat from the real-time web, its biggest dog being Twitter. Search.twitter.com as well as Facebook search have replaced Google in many situations in the past when Google wasn’t able to keep up with tasks such as monitoring. In response, however, Google has caught up. Now, any blog that is not a spam blog is considered to be just about holy.

Google now has a dedicated blog index, Blog Search, and makes a point of indexing blog content immediately. If you sign up for Google Alerts, you will see your blog content come into your inbox just seconds after you commit to Publish or Post — if you’re blogging on a daily basis, Google will allocate more than your fair share of Robots to indexing your blog.

Blogs are inherently better at search engine optimization because search engines still prize text above all things
A blog is written in text and search engines are expert at indexing and finding content online based on literal strings of search text. While the future does hold fuzzy-logic searches that use synonymic and logical search results, for now, literal text is still king. If that string isn’t on your corporate website, your site won’t come up.

Blogs, on the other hand, are a culmination of hundreds or thousands of articles written by and commented on by lots of different people in different situations and a sundry of contexts, therefore, there is a prodigious amount of messy copy — lots and lots of similar string of content that mean something close to what your company does and offers and sells but not exactly what you would say or how you you say it.

That’s a good thing.

It is called keyword diversity and keyword diversity is good because unlike your behavior when your do a vanity search on your company or your company keywords, you can never be sure how your prospective clients will find you.

For example, when I started in 2003, what I did was new media and I was an expert in new media strategies and new media marketing. Then it was emarketing and ePR, then digital PR, social media marketing, and all these other things. Blogging allows me to keep up every day as opposed to the once or twice a year when I edit and update the Abraham Harrison corporate website — if that.

So, there is lots and lots of keyword diversity, lots and lots of natural keyword density — not stilted like is often found on a professionally search optimized website — and there are links, hyperlinked keyword phrases, and lots and lots of pages with copy and text by the barrel-full.

What’s more, each page of a WordPress or Drupal blog has a user-readable URL, such as http://ahpr.us/case-studies instead of http://ahpr.us/node/196 — which is something you see all the time and not very pretty.

Finally, while your corporate website probably had dozens of pages updated periodically, blogs have thousands of pages, each of which can be seen any number of ways: via post, category, tag, year, month, week, day, etc. This means that, in aggregate, you can have 5x-10x the number of “pages” for search that you actually have posts for.

If you’ll notice, though, that I put all these SEO incentives at the end of this post. If you write a blog based only on its SEO prowess, then your blog is going to really suck. You will write your blog into that ghetto I talk about.

All modern blogging platforms have RSS built in, making sharing with Facebook and Twitter effortless
Each and every blog post has its own unique page and each of those pages has a unique URL. That URL represents not a static page but a record in your blogging platform’s relational database. While that URL represents a page, your blog can render that content in other way. For example, as an RSS feed. Blog posts with their unique, user-readable links and their RSS feeds are super-easy to share as well as index as well as reference as well as link to — much easier than a lot of companies make it with their Adobe Flash-based sites that don’t have “permalinks” or “anchor links” built in.

Twitter and Facebook thrives on content links. If you run a blog and install “digg this,” “share this,” “tweet this,” “like this,” “reddit this,” and “Facebook this”to make sure sharing your content is as convenient as humanely possible — and write compelling, timely, and popular content — then you too can be part of feeding the giant maw of the 24/7/365 Twitter, Facebook, and social media monster that lives and thrives on content like yours.

That’s it for now — and sorry to hit you with this firehose! Happy new year !

Here’s Ed Lee original post in full: Blogging – Alive and Kicking:

I’ve seen a few posts from the Pew survey talking about the decline of blogging and the rise of Twitter. Boyd has the best link here but my first thought was:

Isn’t Twitter a form of blogging? RSS feed? Reverse chronological order? Comments? Blog roll (of sorts)?

Last I saw there were 200m blogs being tracked by Technorati – of which 10m or so are probably legitimate (not spam) and active. There are 160m Twitter microblogs and about 6m tumblr accounts – also blogs.

So like RSS, where the act of subscribing to a feed may be on the decline but the use of RSS is still alive and kicking as the backbone of the Internet, blogging as an expression of longform content may be waning – but blogs as a technology and trend is very much alive and kicking.

(Originally posted by me at Chris Abraham — Because the Medium is the Message)

8 Reasons Why Now is the Best Time to Start Blogging

Chris Abraham — Sun, 26 Dec 2010 20:37:14 +0000

2011 might be the best year to start a blog for your personal brand or for your company. Ed Lee agrees in Blogging – Alive and Kicking. Here are the 8 reasons why I believe that 2011 is the the perfect time to convince your CMO or boss or to decide that blogging and the blogosphere has finally matured enough to demand serious reconsideration and here’s why:

1) There is less competition for any particular topic
While there may be a number of professional blogs out there blogging on your topic, the relative number of blog-curious and casual bloggers has decreased. It is impossible to be a successful casual blogger and blogging is hard, so the blogging “middle class” has thinned out.

2) Success begets success in blogging and with your blog
Case in point is Marketing Conversation, Abraham Harrison‘s corporate blog. Until 6 months ago, I was really the only person writing for it. Then Phillip Rhoades got the passion, and now we have made it a priority to hire bloggers to fill out the daily posting requirement. In just a couple months, our ranking on AdAge Power 150 went from almost 300 to 130.

I hate to say it but people really so love a winner.

3) Blogging technology and blogging platforms have gotten easier, simpler, and more convenient
With Tumblr and Posterous as well as Twitter, Facebook Pages, and old reliables such as Blogger and WordPress.com, it couldn’t be cheaper, simpler or more convenient.

4) Blogging courses, blog platform developers, and blog template designers are easier-to-find and afford
Back when I started blogging back in 1999, it was all me. Even 5-years ago, it was tough to find s Drupal guy or a WordPress guy — it was even tougher finding a quality (and also affordable) designer who did more than create a design in Photoship, slice it up, and dump it on me to shoehorn and hack it into a proper Drupal or WordPress template.

5) Bloggers, community managers, content curators, and comment moderators are well-trained and plentiful
If you decide that you want a blog but can’t really commit to more than one post a week or one post a month; or if you’re considering turning off the comments on your blog; or, if you’re keeping away from committing to Twitter or Facebook Pages; or your current blog, Twitter profile, or Facebook Page is a ghost town, then you really need to hire a dedicated blogger, a blogger who understands that writing is only 1/4 of the job.

Another 1/4 needs to be spent on engaging with the social mediasphere and blogosphere, moderating comments, responding to questions and comments, and the like.

In the past, finding someone like this was almost impossible. It is still tough but easier. And there are so many people looking to get into this sort of work that the fees are reasonable.

6) The real-time web is alive and blog content is hotter than ever before, just ask Google
In the past, Google treated every page on the Internet with just about as much attention. Since the resources allocated to Google was finite, it did tend to give more attention to online content that was updated regularly, but blogs were no different than newspapers or any other active content. However, in recent years, Google has felt the heat from the real-time web, its biggest dog being Twitter. Search.twitter.com as well as Facebook search have replaced Google in many situations in the past when Google wasn’t able to keep up with tasks such as monitoring. In response, however, Google has caught up. Now, any blog that is not a spam blog is considered to be just about holy.

7) Blogs are inherently better at search engine optimization because search engines still prize text above all things
A blog is written in text and search engines are expert at indexing and finding content online based on literal strings of search text. While the future does hold fuzzy-logic searches that use synonymic and logical search results, for now, literal text is still king. If that string isn’t on your corporate website, your site won’t come up.

That’s a good thing.

8) All modern blogging platforms have RSS built in, making sharing with Facebook and Twitter effortless
Each and every blog post has its own unique page and each of those pages has a unique URL. That URL represents not a static page but a record in your blogging platform’s relational database. While that URL represents a page, your blog can render that content in other way. For example, as an RSS feed. Blog posts with their unique, user-readable links and their RSS feeds are super-easy to share as well as index as well as reference as well as link to — much easier than a lot of companies make it with their Adobe Flash-based sites that don’t have “permalinks” or “anchor links” built in.

That’s it for now — and sorry to hit you with this firehose! Merry Christmas!

Reinvention Summit Wants You!

Robin Pangilinan — Fri, 12 Nov 2010 06:37:57 +0000

Reinvention Summit invites you to be a part of the first ever Virtual Summit for the Future of Storytelling as we all try to reinvent the whole world through the creative process of storytelling – blogging.

The starting date is November 11 and you can still join up to the 22nd, Reinvention Summit encourages you to participate through the following ways :

Write a Blog post with your POV on reinvention/storytelling
Record a YouTube video with your POV on reinvention/storytelling
Reveal your personal reinvention story in blog or video post
Share the LINK to free download of Storytelling Manifesto
Share the LINK to Reinvention Summit (access starts at just $11.11)
Share the Coupon Code to Reinvention Summit (REINVENTION)

The sessions of the summit will be recorded for playback and that’s why you can still blog and promote through the 22nd. This innovation in the world of storytelling is a road to further understanding the power of narrative. As you contribute to this summit there will also be a bonus for your efforts and talent that you will share, they offer contributors a discount coupon that you can share with your audience, a complimentary download of their Storytelling Manifesto and a FREE PASS for you :

Coupon for $25 OFF an Activators or Explorers Pass. Use code: REINVENTION

“Believe Me: a Storytelling Manifesto for Change-makers and Innovators”. Our 88-page gift to you! Complimentary download is available at http://www.believemethebook.com

To Redeem your FREE Press Pass send an email to Jodi with the words Blogger Outreach in the subject. Include the following information: Name, Email, Twitter ID, Blog URL. You will receive an email Monday, 11/8 with summit details and access information.

It sounds really awesome to be a part of this world changing event. You express how you feel while telling your own stories, collaborating with fellow storytellers, and painting a bigger picture for the future of narratives and blogging itself.

This is not just for bloggers and storytellers, entrepreneurs and marketers will also benefit through this summit, you can learn how others can communicate and spread their stories with lots of people, applying the same philosophy,you would also like to spread words about your products and services to people. This is quite an investment to storytellers and marketers, they will enhance the connection to the world with new tools, vocabulary and frameworks of storytelling.

The summit is a convergence of excellence and expertise as reflected to its selected speakers which includes John Gerzema, Tiffany Shlain, John Elkington, Nancy Duarte, Julien Smith, Annette Simmons, Johnny B. Truant, Katya Andresen, and many others that are crafted with artistry of narrative.

Being produced by Get Storied, this summit is also made possible by a lot of their friends and partners.

So even if you are a professional or self proclaimed blogger, you can join this innovative summit to have some new insights or techniques on storytelling or just wanted your story to be heard of many who are in the same industry.

Here is the whole invitation for the summit : Bloggers are the Ultimate Storytellers!

Malware Can Take Down Your Personal PC, But What Could Happen to Business Computers?

Stevie Wilson — Thu, 16 Sep 2010 20:09:33 +0000

Recently I have had a lot of emails, tweets, phone calls and texts from friends who remember me as part of the McAfee Fake Anti-Virus Scareware Initiative.

What’s the impact of this Fake Anti-Virus or Scareware?
- “Scareware,” or fake anti-virus software, could cause the most monetary damages to consumers and their computers in 2010.
- “One company, known as ‘Integrated Marketing’ made $180 million through these scams, and more than two million consumers contacted the company regarding its software.”
- According to McAfee, there has been a 400% increase in reported incidents in the last 12 months. It’s been the number one call-driver to McAfee’s Virus Removal Service team for the past six months, with more than 19,000 calls logged in January 2010 alone.

Fake anti-virus threats are rampant and growing. There’s been a 400% increase in reported incidents in the last 12 months alone, and it’s the number one call driver to McAfee’s Virus Removal Service team for the past six months running. There were more than 19,000 calls to McAfee’s Virus Removal Service team in January 2010.

There are more than 3,000 known fake AV products, with more being developed every day by cybercriminals around the world. (McAfee Labs)

One in five online consumers was a victim of cybercrime in the past two years. (Consumer Reports, 2009)

Almost a half-million households had to replace PCs due to malware in the past six months (source: Consumer Reports, June 2009.)

When this initiative launched on March 9, 2010, I would never have guessed the kind of reception it would get. It ran in tech sites and journals. I was interviewed for Readers Digest (August 2010) and also for KCBS-LA TV who had a segment up there for several months till reporter Dave Malkoff (the author of the piece) moved from KCBS to KTLA 5 in LA. Poof! The piece vanished from the KCBS archives despite it being a great public service piece and that his presentation provided a clearer explanation than what goes on with the video above. The numbers listed above have skyrocketed and these malware attacks come in a variety of presentations and are equal-opportunity when it comes to platform. In other words, MACS are not immune. I already know a few people personally who have had to deal with this problem.

What’s even weirder is the proliferation of credit card thefts through this malware and given that a credit card was fraudulently obtained in that little episode, one has to watch one’s back in terms of those details. Just as you should and would scan credit card bills for unusual purchases, you need to be aware of what’s going on when these sorts of events happen– because how you react (or don’t react) will determine the outcome that costs you thousands of dollars and lots of valuable time of yours. That’s on the your end– of credit cards being used.

While I have told friends, acquaintances, relatives and random people who have contacted me how to get their computers functioning and providing a bit of tech education on what’s out there in the “big bad tech world” for them to be concerned about, I myself became concerned when I saw security breaches within large corporations that should have had their security nailed down. It was enough for me to seek to close accounts or obtain more information from the business in question (financial, education, health-care institutions) to allay my fears or make sure I tightened up my personal security blanket.

Let’s take this a step further because as consumers we need to be better educated about what could happen in the world. As employees, business owners or even senior officers in larger businesses, we all need to be aware that our livelihoods, i.e., the companies for which we work, are also at risk. Those security breaches at places like Chase weren’t random or careless. They might actually be careless but never random. The careless part isn’t necessarily due to the lack of diligence on the part of in-house IT staff or external IT consultants. Just as the personal computers malware attacks are well-coordinated, deeply researched and highly planned events, so are the breaches of business security at any level (corporate, medium or small– no one is immune)

What really got me thinking was a recent episode of the USA Network series Covert Affairs (odd how that plays into this) about how the internet computer grid was taken down for a short period of time and what would happen to a business, neighborhood, city, state or even nation if our computer or utlities grid was taken off-line. What would you do if you worked in a hospital, a bank or a school where computers were essential? What about street-lights, traffic signals, and the basics of daily living on which we rely? That might seem far-fetched to you, but I can tell you that the US government does not think it’s a fairytale but google United States Cyber Command and see what that brings up.

Breaches happen often because someone is exploiting a vulnerability within programs used for work within the company computers on a daily basis. How is this possible? I happened to run across this site in my search for more documention on the McAfee Iniitiative and ran across something on a Rapid7 Security Blog

Don’t let the beginning of this blog get you bogged down in details you don’t understand. Here’s the short — or rather shorter –version of what the Rapid7 blog is stating.

In the course of the discussion about the vulnerabilities (read patches and fixes by Microsoft) in August, HD Moore, an employee for Rapid7 blogged about the other Microsoft flaws/patches/”exploits” that had been found, there was further discussion of other programs that were affected by certain “vulnerabilities” (bear with me, I had to talk to a couple tech people to get this clear in my head). While updates come from your software providers, it’s important to keep the software up-to-date.

The point that I am making is that the necessity of having an IT professional– whether on staff daily or consulting on a monthly, bi-weekly or weekly basis– is also a necessity particularly when setting up your network. In the business arena (as well as at home), a network router provides another firewall between you and the “wild wild west ” of the internet. Given the proliferation of scareware, malware, viruses, you need to have not only anti-virus protection but a very real firewall between you and the web to prevent your computers and their valuable data being breached. While the likelihood of that is small, there is no guarantee unless you have your computers locked down tight and updated with the latest patches from various software brands. Your IT pro would make sure your computers and their valuable data are protected because that data could be client lists, financials on your company and other companies, contact lists, and more depending on your industry.

On the other end is PCI compliance: if you are in the business of taking credit cards for payment of goods or services you have to have a PCI compliant firewall or subject your business to PCI inspections which can take a lot of time. Whether it’s your firewall, your host or you are self-hosting your site, you need to be PCI compliant to protect the credit card information of all those clients. Don’t give any potential hacker or across the world cyber-criminal a reason to make a pit-stop at your company website. Again, it’s a matter of having a knowledgeable computer tech who can provide you with the latest updates, the most efficient and cost-effective equipment and software to protect your company. Can you afford not to be protective of other people’s personal and professional financial status?

For the big corporation, they have IT staff on the floor on a daily basis to take care of internal network issues and for those familiar with the term, inside the corporate firewall through which all computer traffic goes (not the Windows, Macintosh or computer firewall). For those with meduim to small business, IT guys might not be on the list of everyday employees. The crucial point I am making is that hardware can be replaced, software can be reinstalled, but the data or work you have produced that generates the money that runs your business can’t be replaced. It’s the heart and soul of your business. That’s the crucial element in all this.

You need to back up your data based on what you cannot afford to lose– meaning that if something crashed and you lost all the data since the last backup ( a week, a day, 2 hours…) would you be “SOL” if you lost that data? If that’s the case, you need to have a IT consultant give you advice on security backups and protection. Do not forget about off-site master copies in case a local gas main should explode; a plane fall out of the sky; or a flood or tornado might happen. The point being that it should be significantlly off-site to not be damaged (the trunk of your car might not be sufficient). Just as you should and would scan credit card bills for unusual purchases, you need to be aware of what’s going on when these sorts of events happen– because how you react (or don’t react) will determine the outcome that costs you thousands of dollars and lots of valuable time of yours in repairing damage and that time is lost from making the money that keeps your business running.

Whatever you can think of in terms of disasters — both physical and virtual– you need a back-up plan, hence the suggestion of an IT consultant and one with the knowledge of software to secure your data– much like what Rapid7′s products are (Nexpose and Metasploit are their claims to fame — and they seem to be doing a bang-up job of it) and their equally skilled competitors’ products. Rapid7 is not the only player in the marketplace. However I have gone through their site and learned something about their products. The referenced Rapid7 Security blog was highly instructional– while it did require some “education” from my tech friends, it totally brought me up to speed on why I need to back up again (and probably weekly and then provide another layer of back-up in terms of external hard drives.

While this security is slightly applicable to the consumer, the level of products from Rapid7 and that class of IT security is not for the consumer. It’s primarily being driven by for small, medium and large business clients . Given today’s world, it’s nice to know that there are products readily available for a small or medium size business because in this kind of economy, even failure of one computer can cost you a week’s work of pay and you can’t survive that way. No one can.

While I have mentioned Rapid7, I have not been paid by them; I do not work for them or any other person for placement in this post. They had other blogs where I understood about 1-2 out of every 8 words– and while I am not an IT engineer– I am not entirely clueless either. The blogs were something that I happened to hunt down i search of information on internet security and business. Try googling that sometime and see what you come up with.

. Hope that helps you out on both the consumer and business levels.

Stevie Wilson

It’s a true fact, the carrot and stick don’t work

Phillip Rhoades — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 00:43:40 +0000

Daniel Pink makes a very compelling argument for a change in the way we should look at motivation. Studies show that offering more money, gifts, and other extrinsic rewards can’t compare to offering the intrinsic rewards of autonomy and a sense of purpose when it comes to cognitive tasks.

This is precisely why people put so much work into their blogs, twitter accounts, podcasts, and other social media. It’s also why reaching out to bloggers with information about products, services, and news they’re interested in works so very well. Bloggers are already motivated by that intrinsic interest, sense of purpose, and autonomy. You’re bringing them something that they are ready to write about.

To quote Daniel Pink, “This is a true fact.”

What do you think?

Blog Celebrity Can Get and Keep a Job

Chris Abraham — Sun, 12 Apr 2009 14:21:00 +0000

I keep on telling undergrads that they need to start blogging in order to get a job — they need to become a publicity rockstar because becoming a rock star blogger in marketing, PR, and communications before you even leave college is a complete competitive advantage — none of your fellow students are doing it (believe it or not). Well, Mosnar gets it. They see that becoming a publicity rockstar with a rockstar brand while in your company can become the competitve advantage that lets you keep you job, PR Tips to Keeping Your Job: Become a Indispensible Publicity Star:

How to become a publicity rock star for your company?

Start making trade publications – If you have ideas, expertise, concepts etc this is newsworthy information that would be of interest to trade publications.

Join social media sites – Yes, joining sites such as Twitter, Facebook, Stumbleupon etc can bring a lot of recognition as well as exposure. These sites are excellent outlets to promote business services.

Write articles for promotions – Use your expertise and write articles that can be submitted to sites like Ezinearticles.com. Also submit articles for publications to media resources with audiences that your company targets.

Launch a company blog – If you company does not have a company blog you can pitch your boss on the great branding exposure and how you can be the editor for the company blog.

Incorporate a personal blog – A great way to attract business is to start a personal blog and mentioning your business for brand exposure.

27 Tips for Bloggers from Top Bloggers

Chris Abraham — Sun, 12 Apr 2009 14:18:08 +0000

Darren Rowse always has amazing stuff — consistently and over the long haul. Again, the ProBlogger knocks it out of the park with 27 Must Read Tips and Tutorials for Bloggers:

Here are the posts that the bloggers I asked nominated as their best tips for bloggers:

Seth Godin from Seths Blog

How to Get Traffic to Your Blog

How to Send a Personal Email

First, ten

Rand Fiskin from SEOmoz

21 Tactics to Increase Blog Traffic

Blogging in an Oversaturated Market is Usually a Poor Decision

21 Tips to earn links and tweets to your Blog Posts

Skellie from Skelliewag

A Complete Guide to Finding and Using Incredible Flickr Images

How to Start or Start Over Building Your Personal Brand

25 Paths to an Insanely Popular Blog

Chris Garrett from ChrisG

Grow your google authority

Diggbait, Linkbait, Flagship Content and Authority

The art of getting things wrong

Yaro Starak from Entrepreneurs Journey

How To Write Great Blog Content – The Pillar Article

Why Don’t Bloggers Understand Email Marketing?

Jeremy Schoemaker from Shoemoney

My Top 10 Worst Ideas to Make Money

Why You Should Embrace Negative Press

Maki from Dosh Dosh

6 Fool-Proof Steps to Make More Money With Your Website

Rethinking Blog Comments: Much More Than Just A Quick Way to Get Web Traffic

You’re Not Just a Writer, You’re the Editor-in-Chief.

Liz Strauss from Successful Blog

10 Reasons Readers Don’t Leave Comments

The Secret to Massive Digg/StumbleUpon Traffic Without Spamming

7 Great Ways to Connect with Other Bloggers While You’re Out Reading Blogs

Daniel Scocco from Daily Blog Tips

43 Web Design Mistakes You Should Avoid

How to Find Advertisers for your Website

Chris Brogan from ChrisBrogan.com

50 Ways to Take Your Blog to the Next Level

40 Ways to Deliver Killer Blog Content

27 Secrets to Power your Community

Six things social media marketers must do to remain relevant

Jonathan Trenn — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 15:43:18 +0000

In light of the many analyses and predictions that social media will see many budget reductions during this deep economic recession, I’ve begun to take a look at what practitioners should do to help stave off heavy cuts brought on by axe wielding marketing executives looking to stay on familiar ground with what they perceive works. If we don’t begin to develop solid business cases as to the value of social media, we’ll find ourselves (and what we do) devalued, done in-house by non-practitioners, or by traditional agencies that will being going out of their way to undercut us because they don’t want to lose business.

I’m mostly looking at this from a bird’s eye view for the industry as a whole as opposed to an on the ground viewpoint in which we can’t see the forest for the trees.

1) We need to recognize reality.

That’s right. We need to recognize that this is going to be a deep, deep recession. One’s that’s going to last for a long time. Recessions have major ramifications on how consumers spend their income, how companies formulate their budgets, and, perhaps most importantly, how marketing is viewed. In a recession, marketing is often viewed as an expense…not an investment. Companies often get “selfish” when it comes to marketing, where the most important thing is immediate cash flow from sales. A company may forget that people, especially in hard times want VALUE when they spend their money.

Decision makers often want to work with “proven” models that they’re familiar with. And these models will often be pushed by their traditional agencies because those agencies provide these services. Of course, proven may not – or may no longer mean effective – but at least it has been done before and for the decision makers, it’s best to stick with what is familiar.

We also need to understand that, business is business and business can be ruthless. Traditional agencies – ones that we may be working alongside or subcontracted through may think nothing of undercutting us by devaluing the concept of social media to their clients or by trying to learn some basics through observing our work, and then summarily dismiss us as they bring these capabilities in house on some level.

2) We need to embrace outward integration and recongize that traditional marketing still very much has a primary role.

No, traditional is not dead. Traditional agencies (both advertising and PR) and their services are still very much needed. Needed to introduce and position products, to work with the media, to explain features and benefits. People still watch TV, listen to the radio, and yes, read magazines.

Companies that provide these services are often the ones that have the ear of potential clients. They may often be the gatekeepers.

So there are two major points here. One is that we can’t afford to dismiss traditional type stuff as being “so 20th Century“. The end user – the consumer – will be getting the information they seek on products from various sources. That’s reality.

The second point is the most important. We need to understand and preach integration. Social media may not be for every business. Or, more realistically, the emphasis placed upon social media will vary depending on the client’s needs and the industry they are in. In practically every case social media will be only PART of the equation. That’s reality.

Therefore, we MUST learn how to best integrate what we do with what the traditional types do. Both online and offline. In an economy such as today’s, we can’t afford to offer a haphazard slew of services that isn’t tied into their overall marketing picture. Meaning everyone…the ad agency, their PR firm, their SEO firm, their website company.

This means we’ll have to ask clients if we could have access to and then get to know these other companies. What they’re about. How to best integrate everything. It blows me away when I hear of an ad agency that is running a marketing campaign that doesn’t know who the PR firm is. That has to stop. We have to insist on it. Otherwise, we me be looked upon as the least important part of the puzzle, the “kids” of the group.

Sure there are risks doing this, but the rewards will be greater. We’ll be putting ourselves at the same table as our cohorts, establishing our presence. And the client will be infinitely better served by having a mostly seemless marketing team.

In the long run, this is how we need to look at things as well. We are, to use a cliche, solution providers. Not just blogging consultants or Facebook adherents or Twitter experts.

3) We need to embrace inward integration and become strategic driven as opposed to offing a slew of tactics.

Having a slew of tactics is one thing. It’s another thing to be able to understand a client’s needs enough to meld them together to offer strategic solutions for clients. It may sound like a cliche, but what clients really want are solutions. Many of them may not know where to start. It should be up to us to show them the way.

Now in defense of social media strategists, many clients and potential clients are so lost on this stuff that it may be best to offer tactical capabilites at first. But we have to soon get beyond this. John Bell of Ogilvy writes in Digital Influence Mapping Project:

Many social media purists resist the discipline of strategy and marketing as if the fundmentals of strategy were the problem. They may resist or they may just not know how to create it. Tactics like blogger outreach, viral video online and the dreaded facebook application come tumbling out. Strategy and how you get there is as fundamental and necessary as architectural plans to building.

Understanding that we must offer strategic thinking to our clients means that we understand the so-called big picture…and not just our client’s needs, but the industry that they happen to be in. And it also means that we’ll need to understand what their current and potential clients and customers are about. This will enable us to better apply our services to our clients needs. That’s an essential business concept. Each client will receive a customized, crafted plan. Thinking primarily tactically means we often will be applying things haphazardly, simply because we have a particular offering that they may (or may not) need.

Customized plans mean that we really need to make the effort to understand our clients, their business needs and goals and their culture.

In other words, we can’t be thrilled to offer them the capability of offering them a Facebook app if they don’t need one.

4) We need to think how we position our services to provide immeidate, tangible ROI to budget cutting executives.

This is especially important now. Companies are cutting back marketing budgets and social media may be a juicy target becuase of the ignorance and fear factor.

Companies are going to suffer during this recession. They’ll have needs. Generating sales leads. Maintaining customer loyalty. Social media can play a roll.

You know what? This is a whole other post I should work on.

5) We have to stop the hype and anti-traditionalist banter. And the cockiness that sometimes comes with it. It harms us. And it ain’t true. (Mostly)

Engage or die. Traditional advertising is dead. Marketing messages are a thing of the past. The people formerly called the audience.

Please. All hype. All wrong. Ladies and gentleman, this is a transformation. An evolution. One that is bringing about substantial change. But the change isn’t absolute nor is it complete. People may not want every brand to try to “engage” them. They want to buy something and be left alone. It may at times in fact be good to use traditional channels to get the word out to the masses. It may serve as a perfect introductory method for a product. And it may take marketing messages to inform them…the audience that they are.

We need to stop the shrill “change or die/nothing will ever be the same” mantras. Yes, change is happening, but we need to remember that we are pioneers and early adopters. Not eveyone has a Facebook profile or a Twitter presence. Most people don’t religiously read blogs.

Will some companies suffer because they choose not to use social media? Ignore it? Miss opportunities? Definitely. But we have to continually prove ourselves in several industry categories before we can be taken as seriously as other forms of marketing disciplines. As we see, social media is often one of the first things being cut. That doens’t surprise me. It may not be the wisest decision, but it’s what to be expected during a recession.

This sometimes blind belief in what we do isn’t shared by a key constituency of ours – the marketing decsion makers that we’re trying to get business from. They may hear us and groan and roll their eyes. They may be sick and tired of hearing about Web 2.0.

6) We have to stop the cockiness. It’s amateurish and unprofessional.

Here’s an (ahem) brilliant commentby a determined fellow on Adam Ostrow’s article in Mashable, Data: What are the Benefits of Social Media Marketing? The 15% he is referring to our those who don’t quite see social media as an effecitve means of customer engagement.

The unwashed 15% are the same that still believe that traditional big-budget SEM and static websites are worthwhile investments. Sometimes all it takes is for a proof-of-concept social media portal to hit a Google PR6 ranking in under a month using core social media tactics before they take notice. Then you hit them across the head with customer engagement numbers vs. their SEM budget returns and then you see the weeping.

Love the subtlety. The sense of modesty. That will go over well in a meeting with a marketing exec. Or the web team that build that static site. Or the SEM people. I mean the guy’s attitude even shows disdain for other forms of digital marketing. It shows me he has no idea that the marketing decision maker may (unwisely) be choosing to cut that proof-of-concept social media portal form the budget. It shows me that he has no idea of the concept of integration of marketing…as if all consumers are the same and the only way needed to market to them is through his brilliant solutions.

I usually don’t call out people like this, but I had too.

We’re in for some tough times. As a whole, and as marketers, and as social media strategists. We have to prepare ourselves to work through this as we establish ourselves, our companies, our industry.

Blogs Have Either Died or Consolidated

Chris Abraham — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 15:32:59 +0000

While I have only met James Joyner of Outside the Beltway fame once, we keep in touch a little bit. I have always admired his business and blogging acumen. Well, it is James’ 6-year blogiversary, and he writes, via Ryerson Review of Journalism Blog:

The blogging landscape has changed markedly in the intervening period, with many of the top blogs of early 2003 long gone and quite a few relative newcomers having taken over the top rungs. Relatively few of those who started when Steven and I did are still at it.

Political blogging has gone from an almost entirely amateur niche enterprise into something much more similar to the mainstream press, a process that has been both good and bad….

Because there are so many voices now, though, and many of the best have been acquired by major media outlets and think tanks, there’s a certain Establishment feel to the blogosphere that didn’t exist years ago. The rise of RSS readers and aggregators like Memeorandum mean that fewer of us are using our blogrolls or just keeping a log of interesting things we’re finding on the Web; instead, we’re much more apt to write about what everyone else is writing about.

Via Chris Abraham

Online Blogger Relations Presentation

Chris Abraham — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 19:30:21 +0000

My Top 91 Social Media Blog Posts

Chris Abraham — Mon, 26 Jan 2009 03:45:05 +0000

I am not willing or able to say that the following 91 blog posts about social media, blogging, new media, social networking, etc, are the definite top-91 posts because I didn’t have the time or attention to go through all of my 5,437 blog posts over on chrisabraham.com:

Sure blogging has changed, but it hasn’t

Jonathan Trenn — Sat, 08 Nov 2008 15:52:51 +0000

Nick Carr is continuing the meme that Paul Boutin discussed last month. It’s the idea that blogs or blogging or the blogosphere is dead. They’re wrong, but it’s understandable that they think that way.

It only makes sense that blogging has now become what it is. It’s no just longer several thousand thinkers, theorists, and thought leaders exchanging ideas within niche groups. It’s now populated by what should actually be looked at as online magazines where the writing is often of professional caliber. It’s now millions of people, many starting up and then abandoning their efforts. It’s a conglomeration of ad networks and cohesive groups.

That’s the way it goes.

What happened is that people – publishers, that is – realized that there’s money to be made in bringing together decent writers with some sort of knowledge ona subject and give them a forum where they can regularly weigh in on whatever subject the blog – or publication – is about. Many of these bloggers are either not paid at all or share in ad revenue…revenue that amounts to beer money.

But these bloggers, I would think, are doing it for two reasons…just like the original pioneers way back in, let’s say, 2004. They’re doing it for the love of writing, of sharing ideas, of being part of a conversation. They’re also doing it to be recognized, to “put their name out there”. Just like those early pioneers.

One thing I’ve noticed though. There’s a definite hierarchy when it comes to blogging. And there always has been. It’s informal and for those on the upper echelon, it’s often a result of hard work. But I would notice a lot of pandering and elitism mixed in this scenario. How do I explain this…

Well, I first started blogging late 2005. From time to time I’d research an issue or a trend or a current news story and write a long, comprehensive post about it. I’m not trying to brag here, but sometimes the post would show solid insight. Perhaps I was closer to the issue than most. Or perhaps I did an extensive amount of research. I’d go to Technorati and see what others had been saying about the subject matter in past posts.

For instance, I once wrote a series of posts about a social media company here in the Washington area that was floundering because of their own incompetence. Beforehand, I did extensive research to see what others had been saying about the company all along. I also had some direct experience with the company that was somewhat negative. So I put out series of blog posts. In some cases I would directly contact those that had been blogging about the company and the space that they were in beforehand. It may have been what would have been considered a “mid-level” blogger in the topical area of interest. They’d write back and tell me that what I wrote was “telling” and that I seemed to have “a keen insight as to what is happening” with the company. But of course, they wouldn’t leave a comment. No problem – that’s life. But then would notice something else.

In the meantime, a rockstar blogger would write perhaps a post on the company that I profiled. It would be less insightful because the person may have been a casual observer of the company while having a deep interest in the space that the company was in. Their observations may have been somewhat generic or even what could be called the early part of the echo chamber. Not bad writing, but they would often be writing without any real deep knowledge of the company.

The mid-level blogger that I had contacted would read the rockstar’s post and then leave a glowing comment as to how great it was. Then the mid-level blogger would write their own post and refer back to the rockstar blogger’s post, calling the rockstar by his or her first name. No mention of my post in their post, none at all. Then the mid-level blogger would write yet another comment on the rockstar’s post, pointing back to their own post.

I’m not writing that to whine, I’m writing that to show that the blogosphere has always had a taint of a hierarchical self-awareness in relation to others. It’s always been seen as a self-promotional tool. Just now, it has taken on a professional flair and it involves people making money.

In the case with me, my guess was that my blog, at the time, wasn’t worth the effort to comment on. Odd thing though. What I had predicted in my posts (something that most rockstar bloggers missed) came true. The company tanked about six or seven months later.

Whatever.

So while I agree with the idea that the culture of blogging has been somewhat damaged in the way Paul and Nick feel it has died, I think that romantic past of your was a little less romantic than what is remembered.

Blogging’s still got game

Jonathan Trenn — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 17:29:09 +0000

Paul Boutin, writing in Wired, has just pissed off a bunch of people. With good reason. He makes a reasonably cogent argument against blogging, but blows it by starting out as a dismayed populist then slides on over and becoming a disgruntled elitist. He waxes sentimental as to how blogging once was, yet fails to see that for many, perhaps for the many who are just now entering the blogosphere, that their current experiences are just as meaningful as those that he experienced just a few short years ago. And, to highlight his issues, he uses examples of leading bloggers so prominent (and perhaps unknowingly and unintentionally puts himself in their category) that I would hazard to guess that most of us readers can not relate to. Sort of a “the cool people don’t do that anymore…it’s only the masses that do”.

All of that masked an intriguing and insightful article. Today’s blogging atmosphere IS quite different from that of only a couple of years ago. It has is some ways become more cluttered, reducing the level of discourse. It has become more “professionalized”, with corporate leaders (or ghostbloggers) writing positive stories in blogspeak. And it most definitely become a domain for marketers, advertisers, and PR people to promote and push ideas, products, and services. And, sure, that’s had a negative effect.

But each individual’s blog is a their own thought platform. That hasn’t changed. And while he suggest bloggers move over to Twitter, Flickr, and YouTube – they ain’t the same. Twitter, which I love, allows us 140 character spurts of info. Not enough for real intellectual thought. Flickr is important, but it’s a photo album. And YouTube may not be for everyone as they may not want to speak to a camera and have the world see their thoughts.

Paul starts out by saying “Thinking about launching your own blog? Here’s some friendly advice: Don’t. And if you’ve already got one, pull the plug.”

That’s not necessary. That’s because many entering it right now – those that may be considered to be cut-rate journalists – aren’t looking to be respected amateur thought leaders. Those days have passed and those of us that have been part of it have grown to accept it while those entering it now for the first time won’t really know the difference.

The point I take the most issue with is his use of Jason Calacanis and Robert Scoble as examples as trendsetters for us all. They aren’t. They are of the blogosphere elite who have earned their reputations but I won’t be comparing myself to them anytime soon. I’d say most of the readers of this article wouldn’t – or shouldn’t either. And we shouldn’t do what they do because, simply put, we aren’t in their league. It would have been better off if Paul Boutin interviewed a couple of mid-level former bloggers who stopped or have considered stopping. By highlighting the elite as examples, he brings forth the very hierarchy that blogging was supposed to neuter.

Overall, he’s absolutely right. Blogging has changed and not always for the better. And that’s not necessarily what I would want as well. But maybe it’s time we altered our view of blogging and what makes it worthwhile.

Jonathan Trenn interviewed on Media Bullseye

Jonathan Trenn — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 14:18:15 +0000

On October 10th, I was interviewed by Sarah Wurrey and Jen Zingsheim of Media Bullseye. It was an honor to be asked. Many thanks to Sarah and Jen. The session was called “Social Media and the Meltdown”.

We talked on three topics.

First we talked about how rogue and anonymous employee bloggers can post a threat to their employers – but can provide a service to their fellow employees. This may be especially important in slowing economic times where companies tend to cut back and often do so in a insensitive manner.

We then discussed how online reviews and/or complaints, while still relatively new and not as prevalent, pose a disproportional threat to companies because of their reach and longevity.

And finally, we took a look at how social media might be affected by the recession. I don’t really paint a rosy picture as many of us in social media have yet to develop solid case studies with tangible ROI or haven’t been able to develop many direct relationships with clients (as opposed to been outsourced to via ad agencies and PR firms).

Thanks again to Sarah and Jen!

Blog Day – what countries will you pick?

Jonathan Trenn — Fri, 22 Aug 2008 02:34:45 +0000

Saul pointed out to us this site:

http://www.blogday.org

It’s going to take place on August 31. Here’s a description:

What is BlogDay?

BlogDay was created with the belief that bloggers should have one day dedicated to getting to know other bloggers from other countries and areas of interest. On that day Bloggers will recommend other blogs to their blog visitors. With the goal in mind, on this day every blogger will post a recommendation of 5 new blogs. This way, all blog readers will find themselves leaping around and discovering new, previously unknown blogs.

I’m going to look for blogs from Ireland, Iran, Israel, Ghana, and the Philippines. We’ll see.

I think it’s a great idea.

What Chris Kieff’s wife can tell us

Jonathan Trenn — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 13:37:59 +0000

I’ve been having a running conversation with Chris Kieff about the ideas of authenticity, transparency, and flogging. We agree on most things, disagree on some others.

I have a problem with something he says. Not because I disagree, but because I think he may, in the end, be correct. And there’s not much we can do about it.

Until last week, he was one of the purists. Someone who would be upset at flogging and want to point it out. Then he had a conversation with his favorite focus group. It was a focus group of one. His wife.

“It’s just advertising” she said, meaning of flogs and false persona blogs. (For the record, I say it’s not advertising. It’s marketing, there’s a difference.)

That got Chris to thinking. Hmmm…maybe it is. It may not be what should be, but what should be and what is are two different animals. And in the real world, “what is” carries the day 95% of the time.

Essentially Chris is saying “Let’s face it. It’s going to happen. Fake blogs are coming. In fact, they’re already going on now. I may not like it, but whether or not I like it, isn’t important. It’s happening and it’s going to continue to happen. The problem is that we haven’t developed the cues to recognize flogs”.

In other words, we know what a commerical looks like on TV. Most of us now know what an infomercial is. A print ad in a magazine or newspaper often has a frame around it saying “Advertisement”. Those are the cues that tell us “Advertisement”. And the problem is that we haven’t been able to develop the cues to directly identify a flog.

That’s an excellent point because it’s true. And some marketers will take advantage of this and create flogs. They’ll often get away with it as best practices develop. We can’t prevent this because it isn’t against the law.

Where I disagree with Chris is that I see blogs as a form of personal expression and direct relationship building platforms. It goes beyond a comment here and there, it’s about trust and sharing. People, on some level, rely on that trust. So to me, personal blogs – unless patently obvious or explicitly stated are wrong.

But back to Chris’ wife. “It’s just advertising”. Think about that.

That mindset is the result of years of being advertised too. Of years of being somewhat misled, fibbed to. Outright lied to. We are all that way to an extent. I know I am. The advertising industry has created an atmosphere that has caused tremendous cynicism in people who are under the age of, say, 105.

Her opinion is important as any of ours. Because it’s opinions like hers that will both allow flogs to exist…yet make them struggle. Why? Because the expectations are lowered. And people aren’t going to engage with a blogger if they feel as if they’re being lied to. And it’s also important because she’s not an ‘industry insider’ and it could reflect the attitude of the masses out there that think authenticity and transparency (or at least translucency) is important. It would be nice, but it’s not expected.

She, as a consumer, is a thought leader. She didn’t know it. Neither did Chris. Neither did I.

In the end, I still have to disagree somewhat. I think that a false personal blog, one that is cleverly wrapped up enough that one can’t tell has the potential to cause great harm And not just to brands, but to readers.

But I also know that many on the marketing side don’t care about these principles of which we speak. So they’ll forge ahead, creating flogs and spoiling what some of us hold up in an idealistic manner…proving Chris Kieff’s wife right the entire time.

It’s just advertising.

How social media will get screwed, Part One

Jonathan Trenn — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 18:23:16 +0000

Yesterday I hopped over to Chris Kieff’s blog, 1 Good Reason, and came upon an excellent post that sparked a discussion both online and off. I ended up talking to Chris and five others about what likely is to be a major problem in the upcoming years regarding online marketing and PR, especially through the social media lens. The five were Jen Zingsheim, Bryan Person, Dave Evans, Jake McKee, and Mark Davidson.

I’ll start by saying that I think often that those of use who practice social media are, if not naive, very idealistic in our thinking on the principles we espouse. And I’d say that a confluence of emerging trends, mindsets, events, and business practices could come back and knock a lot of us on our asses.

What caught my attention from Chris’ blog was his interaction with a young woman who had been hired as a blogger by a clothing company:

Yesterday at Social Media Camp NYC hosted by Mashable, and Yoono, there was a very lively discussion started by a young woman who presented herself as a “Persona Blogger.” She was joined in this discussion by a company (who I have decided to not name, yet) who is employing her to blog for them.

She discussed how she assumes the persona of several people; 52 year old woman, 25 year old man, 20-ish woman, and then blogs, twitters, and creates pages on social networks like Facebook, MySpace, and others as these people. She spoke about how this is a 24/7 job that requires her to maintain this work constantly to keep up the facade.

I’ll not mince words, this is simply lying, and as I’ve stated in this blog before, lying is a terrible way to build a relationship.

The audience at SM Camp NYC seemed to divide somewhat along generational lines, with some of the younger people taking the side that it’s understood that people can’t be trusted on the internet. Their arguments followed the logic that everyone on the internet makes things up. They’ve grown up understanding there are different levels of honesty.

I chose to highlight that last sentence because it’s very problematic. It’s both true and bullshit. Honesty, by definition would seem to be an absolute. But people, out of convenience have altered it to fit their needs and circumstances. We all do it. I’ve done it. We rationalize. We justify. That’s life. We’re human. But there’s consequences.

What stuck me is Chris’ point on the outlook of the attendees regarding the concept of the “persona blogger”. It “seemed to divide somewhat along generational lines” My concern here is more through the aspect of looking through the eyes of practitioners as opposed to potential audience members.

How Did This Come About?

Consider the following:

1) We’ve had a President of the United States, someone who often sits atop the “Ten Most Admired Men in the World” surveys, who by his very position is a role model for our nation’s youth, recklessly having an extramarital affair with a woman young enough to be his daughter. He then lies to cover it up and attempts to position the woman as delusional and, if not a stalker, somewhat obsessed. Oops, a blue dress appears with a certain stain on it, and, well, it turns out he did ~~not~~ have sex with that woman, Ms. Lewinsky. We’re then told that this really doesn’t matter, it’s only an affair, and of course he lied under oath, but so what?

Say what you want about it, but I’ll say it tarnished the Office of the Presidency and it demeaned the institution of marriage. Meaning, it lowered the standards of what we expect out of our leaders and it created different levels of honesty.

2) So let’s fast forward a couple of years. Wall Street. Greed is Good. Irrational exuberance. Brokerage houses telling their brokers to push certain stocks. Outright lies. A couple of companies went under, a couple of people went to jail, but more importantly thousands lost their life savings because a few who were already rich got even more greedy.

In a lot of cases, the amounts measured up to a couple of days profits. Those brokerage houses still exist, still treat themselves as noble entities, still are looked upon by the business media as having thought leaders.

From this, we subtly learn not to trust institutions…but often those same institutions are the only ones out there.

3) If you’re Catholic, like me, you soon found out that the very people who represent God before your very eyes are not only failing to protect the most innocent, they are covering up the grievous sins of their subordinates. On a national scale. For some (no, not me) it was as much as part of the Church as a sacrament. Nothing is sacred.

4) Speaking of presidents, we’re now at war in Iraq because ~~they have weapons of mass destruction~~ ~~they likely have ties to al Queda~~ ~~to spread democracy in the Middle East~~. ~~We’ll be greeted as liberators and then we’ll be out of there in a few months, where we can say “Mission Accomplished”~~. ~~The war will pay for itself with Iraqi oil money.~~

Oops. We ~~don’t~~ need more troops. We ~~don’t~~ torture. ~~We’re in the last throes of the insurgency.~~

What we’ve seen with all of this – and it’s coming out in memoirs of administration aides – is that there was a huge propaganda campaign coming out of said administration, pushing falsehoods on practically everything. Dissent within the administration was squelched and that attitude seemed to spread around the country. Ask the Dixie Chicks. The media often went along for reasons only they know.

In my conversation with Jake McKee, he pointed out how many of today’s young people don’t question authority. They may not follow it blindly, they may just accept that they are going to be lied to.

So it’s been reinforced that it’s OK to fudge the truth and dissent is often bad.

5) Like sports? Like steroids? This generations’ greatest hitter and greatest pitcher are heavily believed to have been juiced up. As were Olympic hopefuls, past Gold medal winners, and Tour de France winners. Toss in souped up cars in NASCAR and Formula 1 and you’ve got cheaters everywhere. Whatever it takes to win. The end justifies the means. If he’s on our team, that’s cool, as long as he produces. People may fall from grace, but that’s after winning millions of dollars.

What we learn here is that it’s not how you play the game, it’s whether you win ~~or lose~~.

I’m not writing all this to shove down your throats moral standards or to condemn society or to shame us as role models for our nation’s youth or to point out how young people are going to be less ethical than we are.

I’m writing this instead to shove down your throats that, at the very least, we’re likely going to have to deal with some serious issues in the near future. Those same standards fo authenticity and transparency may not be worth snot. I’ll further explain in How Social Media Will Get Screwed, Part Two.

So then what is social media all about?

Jonathan Trenn — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 15:32:43 +0000

With all the discussion on what social media is, what it’s future will be like, who will control it, I often feel we fail to see the forest for the trees.

I see it as too diverse of a phenomenon to pin down with one easy definition. Its applications go far beyond the neat capsules that can be used to pick a particular department or function that should “own” it. Social media is creating, empowering, and accompanying a paradigm shift in the way we use all media.

Are we fully there yet? Of course not. These are only the early stages, part of an evolutionary process that often comes step by step. But those steps are happening and happening and soon we’ll look back and be amazed how far we’ve traveled. Then before we know it again, we’ll be stepping again and look back again and we’ll be amazed how much we’ve come from that first time we looked back.

Yes, organizations are going to have to harness social media in ways that they can benefit from, to reach ROI. This means trying to create some sort of structure for it without “siloizing” it. Very difficult indeed.

I’ve tried to lay out what I see social media as. Not from a specific definitional standpoint, but from a several miles up point of view.

Interested in your feedback…

Social media can be a practice within itself

Social media’s possibilities extend beyond any traditional established practice (advertising, PR, sales, etc.) to the point that it can be a practice within itself. It can be spread across many departments and, thus, will often need practitioners who can implement coordinated efforts within an organization. The strategic methods used will often have enough attributes on a stand alone basis that it shouldn’t come underneath the heading of another specific department. I’d put social media on the same par as advertising and PR. Full service social media firms have sprouted up such as Abraham Harrison to meet today’s needs.

Social media can be a service

Because social media is still in its nascent stages, clients and potential clients don’t always need comprehensive solution packages. They may need to know how to set up a blog and how to get traffic for it. Simple as that. Helping a company to start a blog is a service. So is creating a podcast. Many clients look to cherry pick services to satisfy their needs. For some in social media, providing a non-coordinated menu of services is where it’s at. While social media agencies are an emerging industry, there’s not widespread demand quite yet, leaving many practitioners as service providers.

Social media is strategy based

A company decides to let go of some (but not all) control of its marketing communications message. It views its customers and users on a somewhat equal level and not as blocks of ears to be shouted at and throats to have messages shoved down.

Another company uses blogs to work with customers to improve products or come up with new ones.

These are strategic changes that are being implemented. Social media can change the nature of an organization because it changes the way an organization looks at itself and its relationships with its stakeholders.

Therefore the strategy behind social media empowers change like nothing else can.

Social media is tactically based

The many tools of social media can be designed to manage a problem or a series of problems. That’s not something that necessarily changes an organization. It’s can implemented based strictly upon need.

This can cause a lot of frustration amongst social media strategists as we see a lot of potential opportunities for business not being fulfilled. For others, applying tactics itself is an opportunity. A foot in the door.

Social media is technology based

Social media can involve a host of technologies that are often complicated to learn and understand. Setting up RSS feeds, monitoring online conversations, designing a blog for better SEM, putting together a widget. It takes technical know how to implement much of these. And that’s a reason why so many ad agencies and especially PR firms have been resistant in adopting social media.

But the technology is constantly changing, adapting, growing, as is the myriad of ways they can be used for clients. It often takes someone who is comfortable with technology to succeed.

Social Media is theory based

Authenticity. Transparency. Community. Engagement. Listening. Give up some of your control. All constantly espoused by social media strategists. These are theories that often go against the grain of traditional thought. More on engagement and less on contrived messaged, push on people. This blog post is theoretical. The theories formulate the methodologies that are behind the practices and the services.

These theories are why so many of us blog and offer our opinions and commentaries. It’s why we read one another’s blogs, friend one another on Facebook and follow one another on Twitter.

Social media is rule based

Aren’t authentic or transparent? Watch out! You’re gonna get nailed by someone in the blogosphere and it will cost you. An instant case study as to how NOT do something. The rules of the game were collectively created and enforced.

We’ve seen traditional agencies, large and small, ignore these rules and push ahead with fake blogs and such. Ask the folks at Edelman and Zipatoni.

Social media is anti-bureaucratic

This may be one of the most important points of all. Because its capabilities go beyond the silos of the current corporate communications, because the public arena can embrace it as their own, because it is always changing, and because it involves giving up a serious amount of self control, social media bucks the bureaucratic structure within organizations while it fundamentally changes the relationship between the organization and its stakeholders.

Online as a whole can shift between advertising and PR, causing disruption. Social media adds to this by bringing in customers, users, and in some cases, communities into the mix. It resists authority when the authority becomes too controlling. And authority usually wants control.

Organizational bureaucracies will be changing soon enough because of social media.

Social media can be vertical – part 1

Again, I see social media as being often a separate animal from traditional PR and advertising. For that matter, online advertising itself first created that difference. Social media extends that difference. It has its own methodologies that are totally separate from offline advertising. The divisions here may not be silo based; but often the pool of knowledge for success in the social media arena can’t be found in traditional types.

Simply sticking it under a particular division within an organization can cause stifled growth as it will be badly nurtured by people with a particular preconceived mindset.

Social media can be vertical – part 2

It’s vertical in another manner as well. And this is more of a prediction than a statement of the current conditions, but we will soon see more and more specialized firms pop up that will be geared toward certain segments of the population. Just as there are agencies that are geared toward the Latino market and PR firms that are geared toward the GLBT communities, we’ll see social media agencies that have developed the expertise in reaching out to certain segments of the population. All you have to do is listen to the many mommy bloggers that complain about their constantly getting hit by pitches from agencies that have no clue on what it’s like being a mom.

Social media can be horizontal – part 1

From what we all hear, social media will have implications in advertising, public relations, sales, customer service, human resources, investor relations etc. It will take an enterprise wide strategy to implement all of that. And it will take an actual social media strategist who understands all of those departments and who understands the technologies behind social media to devise a plan for that enterprise. He or she will have to be strong enough to lead the way and manage a lot of personalities, but gentle enough to let each department blossom.

Social media can be horizontal – part 2

Outside organizations, agencies such as Abraham Harrison and others will continue to emerge and become successful because they will stay on the forefront of all that is happening and how it should be applied. Companies won’t have the internal expertise nor will they have the time nor the personnel to implement cross functional social media strategies.

So, just as we see ad agencies and PR firms today, we’ll continue to see social media agencies. There will definitely be a need for them.

Social media is push

Yes, social media still allows you to deliver marketing messages. It can be the conversation starter. A blog can be push as can a podcast. Maybe this is obvious but I’ve heard so much talk about sitting back an listening I wanted to add this. Yes, social media can be overtly promotional. It just has to be done right.

Social media is pull

Yes, listening is important. Then engaging is important. Done right it creates trust. Trust is pull. Pull is good. Social media is good.

Social Media can be web presence centric and dispersed at the same time

No need to dis the hub of a website. Core elements of an organization’s social media efforts can emanate from but then be dispersed throughout blogs, Flickr, YouTube, etc.

Social media can be created from within

This is obvious.

Social media can be created and enhanced by others

The greatest threat. The biggest fear. The challenging factor that causes many an enterprise to resist, to delay implementations. But those on the outside aren’t waiting.

So to me, social media is so multi-dimensional that it can’t be easily defined in one definition, explained in a singular context, bottled up in a particular department.

The procession to failure

Jonathan Trenn — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 15:03:28 +0000

I’m in the process of pitching a potential client. From what I see, if this works out, it will be an excellent opportunity. They’re a marketing service provider that offers the traditional services to their client base. The methods they use are still very much needed, they aren’t out of date, and they won’t be out of date any time soon. But in this era of digital marketing, those methodologies clearly aren’t enough. Not when the users of their clients products are more likely to look online for those very products.

That being said, there were several aspects of conversations I’ve had with potential clients that have showed me why online marketing has yet to receive the respect that it deserves. Budget allotments, questions about handling things internally, executive level buy-in, a determined need to find specific, immediate ROI. While I realize that the whole concept of online is still emerging, I nevertheless find this somewhat amazing. Most people today have integrated the internet into their lives, and have done so for many years. In fact, most of us use it for communication, or entertainment for research. But, still, there’s that initial resistance in many people in business. It’s not only a reluctance to not only endeavor into this no longer new arena, but to also to take the very steps to learn about it.

So I’ve put together a few reasons why I think this is the case. Each may serve as an “objection” that will need to be overcome. Whether on a one-to-one level upon pitching a potential client. Or on an industry-wide basis.

Lack of Vision

When companies can’t see beyond their basic core services, when they don’t understand – or worse, when they don’t take the time to understand industry trends, they show an alarming lack of vision. And it’s a lack of vision that could kill their business. It goes back to that “where should we be in five years?” question. They don’t understand that they have to answer it constantly.

I’ve seen decision makers in some fields effectively make choices to not learn anything new. And it’s not just because they lack an understanding that they need to change, but they never display the curiosity to learn. The very curiosity that acts as the impetus in creating a vision that will create change.

I’ve noticed this in the political arena. In between elections, I’d be attending conferences that would discuss the use of the internet in political campaigns. They’d be attended by mostly relatively young people, all of whom were politically sharp and internet savvy. Come election time, they wouldn’t get a seat at the table. The more seasoned members would praise them as being “upcomers” and they’d describe themselves to being “out of the loop” when it comes to “all this technology stuff”, but they’d always make sure that these young people they’re supposedly impressed with be kept in the back room with a microscopic budget and no say in any formulation of strategy.

The Disconnect

The mentality seems to be, at best, that the upcoming changes (if they’re aware of them) don’t apply to them. Somehow they feel as if they’re separate from the rest of the business world.

The mentality is “Sure I do the majority of my business correspondence via email, and I just bought a book on Amazon for my brother-in-law, and my co-worker’s now engaged to a guy she met on Match.com, and I’m planning a vacation by looking at Hotels.com, and I have to check my bank account status today online, and I’m gonna read that story in the Post that my friend forwarded to me, and I should donate online today to Obama/McCain, and ooh, here’s an Evite to go to thank event by the river, and I’ve got to update and add some photos to my Facebook page, and I should read that restaurant review online, and I’ll just go to the client website to get information, and that was an inspirations quote I was emailed today, and then there was that hilarious video on YouTube, and here at work, I need to place an order through that online catalog, and I want to check out the site for that vet that I need to take Scruffy to, and I should order a film from Netflix.”

Then they think, “But I don’t see how the internet affects my business. It’s not tangible to what I do.”
Lack of Priority

If one thinks in terms of traditional methods, then one is going to make traditional decisions. If online is the constant afterthought, the add-on at the end, the low priority, then it’s never going to move up. Again, if decision makers don’t take a step back to learn and see the entire picture, then it will never happen. Or when it finally does happen, we get…

We Can Do It Ourselves

There’s a trend in business to day to bring in every aspect of markeing communications in house. That’s quite common here in the DC area with all of the associations and tech companies. Many of these organizations turn to the “folks in IT” to create the new site that to replace the old one sorely needs an update. This is the extension of the trend of having one’s nephew create something on his spare time and then put it up on the web. The result is often marginal improvements that add nothing to the brand or user experience. And by not examining beyond the confines of the offiice walls, they never see “what’s out there”.

An extra degree of separation

I don’t know if that’s the right term for all of what I’ll explain, but I see a lot of the traditional ad agencies and PR firms – the ones that are the first ones many potential clients go to – know so little about the fundamentals of online marketing – let alone the specialty of social media – that they muck up many marketing efforts. Flash on homepages of websites, making them slow to download and invisible to search engines. Things like that. Blogs that post puff pieces and reworked press releases.

The problem is that those ad agencies and PR firms have the ear of the client, first and foremost. The marketing company hasn’t taken the time to learn new strategies, technologies, and methodologie while the client doesn’t know enough about to tell the difference. The marketing company blocks new concepts from being brought up out of their own ignorance and territorialism. The client says, fine, you guys are the experts.

The online folks are often then one degree of separation beyond this. All too often the ear we have is that of the marketing company who may see us as a threat.

Soon, I’ll talk about what many in the online arena do wrong.

Guess, I’m just frustrated. In a bad mood.

The pitfalls of the political blogosphere

Jonathan Trenn — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 13:56:08 +0000

Throughout this past week, I’ve been thinking much about how America was founded. There’s plenty of articles written lately on patriotism, on liberty. From Time Magazine’s cover piece to essays on Washington, Franklin, Hamilton, Adams, Jefferson, and Madison.

If you read the great documents such as the U.S. Constitution, the Declaration of Independence, and the Federalist Papers, you get a sense that these men were perhaps America’s real “Greatest Generation”. They not only understood the beauty of the philosophies of Locke and Voltaire and Rousseau, but were able to translate them into action, establishing a new nation based upon freedom and liberty.

They were also amongst the most elite of their time. The wealthiest, the most educated, the most “connected”.

A study put out this week by George Washington University’s Henry Farrell, John Sides, and Eric Lawrence bring out to the surface an issue that I think is problematic for American politics and culture: the polarization of the political blogosphere. This had become more evident over the past few years as the country’s political dialogue has grown ever more coarse.

The study finds that those that participate in the political blogosphere are more likely to be further to the right or further to the left, more rigid in their beliefs, less likely to engage in discussions across political ideologies and (as I have personally discovered in my own involvement on blogs) less tolerant opposing views.

I find this troublesome because their study also shows that those whose views are more tolerant, less rigid, and less idealogical are less likely to be politically involved as those who take an active participation in the blogosphere. That’s not good. Here’s why…

Solving Issues Becomes More Difficult

National Security. Iraq. Health care. Social Security. Competitiveness. Climate Change. All ~~important~~ vital issues. All issues that on some level, effect practically each and every one of us. Problems that need to be addressed and solved.

In the current political environment, it seems that most major issues have become a hot potato, a semi-equivalent of abortion. Question the legitimacy of going into Iraq? Many in the GOP said that was traitorous. Re-examine Social Security and take a look at personal accounts? That’s a complete betrayal of our elderly.

These types of charges are often fortified in the blogosphere. In fact, they electrify the blogosphere. We can’t solve issues if we can’t address them.

Never a Consensus, Always a Battle

Solving complex issues is often done by consensus. It occurs when everyone swallows their pride a bit and gives in on key points for the greater good of passing meaningful legislation. The reason we can’t solve issues is because we can’t address them. We can’t address them because we seem to now have two opposing sides who would rather not have consensus.

If bloggers never take time to engage the other side, it will only serve to increase the desire engage in battle and not develop consensuses that are often so important to solve our challenges.

The Battle Becomes the Cause

At times now I think that both sides are more interested in entering political battles in order to trash the other side rather than address the issues they’re trying to supposedly solve. This essentially makes solving the problems we face TWO challenges away. The first is trying to overcome the lack of desire to reach consensus, the second is the stronger desire to bash the other side rather than even think of trying to reach a consensus.

It Will Increase Bigotry and Prejudice

A segregated blogosphere is a prejudiced blogosphere. It’s not just race, it’s about being anti- the other side. It’s not about just those on the left being discriminated. It’s everyone.

We Won’t Learn From One Another

Will a lefty be willing to learn how the surge is working in some areas of Afghanistan? Will a righty be willing to examine how discrimination still hurts minorities? I doubt it. Not when leading voices out there are the Malkins and the Kos’.

It Will Decrease Citizen Involvement

I’ve constantly heard people get disgusted about political discussion around elections because both sides continually trash one another. It’s getting worse with bloggers as they treat rumors as truth.

One man’s secret is another man’s bullshit

Jonathan Trenn — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 16:40:38 +0000

For the past two months I’ve been in a mental funk when it comes to blogging. Maybe it’s because I got caught up a bit too much following the political primary season and felt that I’d end up focusing too much on politics.

But now I have Brian Solis, Loic Le Meur, and Robert Scoble to thank for getting me back into the game.

Perhaps the one I should thank the most is Loic because I found much of what he wrote in response to Brian’s TechCrunch article to be misdirected toward his own experiences.

It started with Brian’s May 25 article in TechCrunch “PR Secrets for Startups”. Now that headline itself is a bit silly as it sounds as if it’s a headline used in an overhyped industry rag, but the meat of the artilce is pretty much straightforward. He doesn’t lay out secrets at all, just sound advice. And while I don’t agree with the fine line depicted between PR 1.0 and PR 2.0, but there is no question that all of strategic marketing communications is undergoing a transformation and that the internet – and social media in particular – are playing key roles in that.

In the article, Brian outlines a series of points that serve a great guideline for most younger startups. Loic tells us that Brian has many valid point in his post and that Brian knows what he’s talking about and that he really likes Brian and then he proceeds to write that what Brian is saying is bullshit.

Well, I like Loic and think he has many valid points and he knows what he’s talking about, but what Loic is saying is bullshit. Loic’s advice is correct for a finite amount of CEOs and a finite amount of startups from a finite amount of industries. It’s solid advice in certain circumstances.

I’ll start out with Loic’s major point:

Get a community and focus on your friends is the way to go.

Good grief.

It’s not that this is directly wrong, it’s that it’s ridiculous in that it’s a practically impossible to accomplish task to achieve in the amount of time needed to boost a start up. In fact, formulating one’s own community can be as difficult as successfully launching a start up in the first place. Establishing a community can take years – Loic himself talks of how it took him eight years – and there’s no guarantee that the community will stick.

Most prominent blogger don’t have communities. They may think they do, but they don’t. They have readers instead. Most companies don’t have communities. They have customers. Most products and services don’t have communities. They have users. Cultivating a community is similar to cultivating a loyal customer base…only more difficult. It takes time, it takes energy, it takes a special touch. More often than not, it’s an elusive accomplishment.

It’s not as if one can go down to the local K-Mart and buy a community – as if it comes in a box – one that’s on sale this week only for the low price of $79.95 – twenty dollars of the regular price of $99.95.

No, there’s no Easy Button to press in getting a community. As commenter Jeremy Toeman points out “Loic, I think your assessment is fairly biased to your personal experience. The truth is most companies and individuals aren’t nearly as well connected as you are, and to just dismiss PR by saying “just go build a community” is frankly, naive.” Which is soon followed by Vinh, “Where can i get a community? Is it expensive? What happens if I need audience now?” Bingo.

Loic himself proves the difficulty in establishing a community by writing “I took me 8 years since I started blogging in 2003 to have a community and it is no marketing.” First of all, he’s so exhausted from establishing that community that he’s added wrong. It’s either 5 years since 2003 or 8 years since 2000. Whether it’s 5 or 8 (and I believe it’s 8), that’s way to long of a time period for a CEO to wait to effectively kick in as he or she is launching a startup.

Allen Stern has two great comments regarding Loic’s claim…

First, he points out that it takes more than a desire to have a community to actually accomplish the huge task of establishing a community. “Loic – it’s important to remember that not everyone has the “instant-on” connections you do today. While I agree with what you are suggesting about a community completely – not everyone has “instant-on” that you do.” He follow this with a clear statement of total sense. “This is why I suggest you work on building your network while you build your startup. Don’t expect to finish your product and have a network ready to launch it for you.” Words of wisdom.

The reality is that the essence of community building is something that’s often elusive. One needs talent, time, luck, and a topic or series or topics that engender an interaction amongst readers. That’s rare indeed. Loic has been able to establish this over several years through hard work, a warm and colorul personality, and an effective writing style. He also benefits from the fact that he’s launched a company that, at its core, is at the heart of social media.

Community is one of the most dangerously overused terms in social media. It’s often bandied about by people who treat the subject matter as if communities already exist or are readily available. And this then underplays the importance – and the essence of community.

Next, I’ll look to take on the Brian vs. Loic debate point by point.

Why some basic articles mean so much

Jonathan Trenn — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 21:24:26 +0000

Rich Karpinski just wrote an article that’s featured on the front page of BtoB. The information in the article is basic. It’s not groundbreaking. It’s about a trend that, if you’re reading this blog, then you’re already familiar with. It’s about how businesses are now embracing blogging.

Karpinski points out how only aroudn 12% of Fortune 500 companies run corporate blogs. But he gives key examples of how companies such as Dell, Kodak, Intel, SAP, and IBM run coporate blogs.

The reason articles such as this can be important is because it is located in a targeted business publication. It’s readers, many of whom are at he very least involved in corporate markting at some sort of senior level, need to be exposed to more articles such as this. Larger publications such as Business Week feature similar articles that carry influence.

The more exposure senior managers – be they in marketing or technology or finance – get exposed to blogging and, more importantly overall, social media as a business cultural paradigm, then the more likely they are finally going to “get it”.

Articles such as these are a form of professional-word-of-mouth. Many of the decision makers – those that are in the 88% of the Fortune 500 that don’t have corporate blogs aren’t going to be reading social media marketing blogs. Many of them haven’t heard of Todd And’s PowerList or the Age of Conversation or ooVoo. They’re not on Twitter. They don’t care about any of that. And there’s enough of them out there that that’s fine…for now.

So that’s why wee need more basic articles like Rick Karpinski’s.