Entrepreneur, Founder, Renaissance Caveman, Heretic, Idea Guy, Crafter of Digital Stuff

So I haven’t blogged in a while because… I have been busy as all heck.

Many have blogged and twittered and videoblogged and webinared how to work with twitter. Some of the more egregious “click my junk”ers even charge users for the “inside information”.

I advise clients on strategies in integrating digital and social tools within their marketing architecture and inside the enterprise. Finding, implementing and using tools like blogging, twitter, video, wiki, etc is what I do. In the last 24 hours I have had 2 conversations around guidelines for working with Twitter (and a big thanks to @Micah on twitter and http://learntoduck.com/ and who got me thinking about this). How to jump in, use it, not abuse it, get something out of it and connect with people. This isn’t a post about getting to 25,000 users (I only have 1000+) or making money with Twitter, or how Social Media saved my . Here are some tips I give clients about Twitter, and getting in the right way.

1. Be human. Have a real person behind the @name - even if it is a brand, you need someone there, a real person and preferably someone in the org and not the agency (ghost twittering isn’t authentic). BestBuy’s developer group has Keith Burtis, @Comcastcares, etc. are all real people. They talk about real stuff. Sure, sometimes it is more corporate, but its nice to see the human behind the curtain.

2. Listening, listening, listening - whats the point of having this live, 24/7 stream of distributed consciousness/conversation and dozens, hundreds, or thousands of followers if you dont bother to listen to the users when they mention you, your product, your brand, your category you are leaving money on the table. Pandora does a great job of listening, so does JetBlue (who responded to me via DM after an incident at the gate for one of their flights). Start with Summize or take a big-boy step up to use search in tweetdeck or go nuts with Radian6 or one of their competitors and really start paying attention.

3. Attention is a currency. Following back is a gesture. Retweets are a powerful way to say to your followers “I dig this” and to the person you are retweeting “I dig you”.

4. 50-50 rule, Pay-It_Forward, etc . Do you want fail at twitter? Talk about yourself all the time. Me, Me, Me, is Boring Boring, Boring. Spend half as many of your tweets on your followers and the people you follow as you do yourself. Spend the time to show you are listening by paying into the shoutout economy - celebrate what your users are doing, congratulate them for a job well done, or send your condolences when their dog dies. You can do this publicly w/ an @ or privately with a DM. If one of your followers says something interesting, profound, funny or worthwhile, RT (retweet it). Add value and then your followers won’t mind checking out your new blog post, or youtube video, or “hey guys can you take my poll”. My friends don’t ask me to “click their junk”

5. Consider following back other real people. Someday your ratio might matter

6. If you can’t commit to twitter its OK. Don’t force it. Don’t make the intern run the twitter feed. Don’t agonize over every tweet. If you are the agency, don’t drop this on the client as the next big thing without helping them understand it. Walk them through it, have them open their own personal twitter accounts. Even better, get their internal team on Yammer to use microsharing INSIDE the org first.

7. Make your tweets inherently “retweetable”. Brevity is the sole of wit and kindof a requirement when you only have 140 characters. Take advantage of a URL shortener, there are a bunch (and some are built into tweetdeck and the twtiiter architecture itself uses tinyurl). Supposedly bit.ly has an interesting measurement capability if you want to see the reach of a tweeted URL - i need to look into it

8. Auto DM is generally bad. Especially if you have a “click my junk” in your autoDM. When you go on a blind date, do you start with a “free e-book offer”?

9. Fill out your whole profile. Make a background image with your URLs (linkedin, facebook, website, blog, etc.). Make sure your main URL is part of your profile so it is clickable.

10. You can leverage twitter if you build trust. @skydiver is on there a lot with urgent HARO requests, because he has paid it forward. Macheist recently did a giveaway for Devonthink software. You can ask your followers questions and they will respond - see #2 above

11. Rinse, repeat, make mistakes, learn from them, get better and don’t give up.

Tagged as: guidelines, how-to, twitter

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Chris Brogan writes (in a great post you need to read here):

How much does one of those opportunities cost? It can’t be cheap to put up a billboard in an airport, right? That same amount would fund a social media project for an entire year, and you’d have clickable metrics for the effort. Wouldn’t that be a better return?

Did Chris remember the name of the company sponsoring the phone/laptop charging station (Samsung)? The Advertising worked (and got the fringe benefit of promotion on Chris’ blog)

Did Chris remember those Vending Machines in the airport (Apple and Best Buy)?? The Advertising worked (” fringe benefit” comment again).

Did Chris remember the 2 billboards before the Hudson News stand? How about the 2 page spread in the middle of this month’s WIRED? The 12 commercials that ran between when you sat down at Fox Sports Bar and when you got up?

Little Guy In The Subway With A Bag of $

The two examples he used (Samsung charging stations and the Apple or Best Buy vending machines) worked because they either provided immediate value (needing to juice up, a HUGE problem in most airports, or chargers, iPods, etc.) or potential future value. They fit within his/yours/my context. If my mom was travelling at the same time, she wouldnt notice who sponsored the power, because she doesnt travel with devices that need power. She might notice the Apple vending machines because they are novel/unique to her, but 5 years from now she will ignore them because they will be commonplace.

Billboards are a “shotgun” approach (with a ton of metrics behind it). The hope is, the right person happens to walk by who happens to have that product or service as part of their context (along with Direct Marketing phone, email, URL to let them find out more AND to let the marketer see effectiveness) or the creative in the ad connects with the user (for a brand campaign - the iconic APPLE ads are a great example of this). In the case of Brand ads, the marketer is paying for impressions (and they pay through the nose - those boards aren’t cheap). In the case of ads with some kind of direct component, the ROI can be (to a certain extent) measured. There are impressions and clickthrough rates to measure against. Is it personal? Nope.

Here is the thing: this stuff, these traditional techniques (print, radio, tv, out-of-home, ad banners, PR, etc.) aren’t going away. Sure, more of the budget is going to digital, but not all of it. There are more of them (less digitally savvy or complete luddites) than there are of us (people reading this, living this, sharing this thing of ours). Marketers still think of us in terms of CONSUMERS and demographics. The reason the old school isn’t going away, the reason we don’t have the advertising apocalypse is because of one thing - IT STILL WORKS.

While we keep saying Social Media is no longer an experiment, we need to keep the marketer’s context in mind. The CMO wants to be innovative, and the brand manager wants to change the world, but both have numbers (leads, impressions, brand value, etc.) that they have to meet to be successful, to grow their brand, get their bonus or in some cases keep their job (the avg lifespan of a CMO is currently something like 22 months). No one ever got fired for doing yet another Direct Mail campaign (where a 1% response rate is considered successful), billboard or tv/radio spot - they are part of the marketing mix. Even ad banners get clickthroughs and they are the “ritz crackers” (low value, not tasty or very effective) of digital advertising.

Small, growing and new brands can go all-in on Digital and Social because they need an edge, and the edge is reach and cost and hopefully shortcut the need for brand recognition and jump right to a relationship. P&G knows it needs Social and is working towards it for the long term (the same thing they did with radio and TV). Ford and GM know they need it, but have to work harder to connect emotionally and with passion (two things that are kinda requirements). If all you do is SELL SELL SELL, its kinda hard to “start a conversation” - you have to invest a lot (time, money, humility) to get respect and to get people to listen. That investment is happening now.

As the Social Media side of Digital grows and matures (and we get more news like the Dell metrics) it can make the case to take a bigger piece of the marketing pie. Digital is no longer sitting at the kids table when it comes to the Agency-Client relationship. Digital is getting more and more budget because it is effective and less expensive and has greater, time-agnostic reach. Sure, we might start shooting commercials for Hulu (or whatever replaces it) and we may see more immersive and experiential and integrated efforts in the future, but the Old School isn’t going away. An ad agency I interviewed a few months ago WILL NOT HIRE an account, strategist or creative without digital in the portfolio or CV. Its becoming that important.

But Social can be the “red thread” that ties the traditional and the digital together, make them more connected, connecting, relevant and responsive. Social (listening, outreach, participatory) can start changing the marketing mindset from campaign to commitment. But that is going to take time.

In 10 years we will have Marketers (CMOs and Brand Managers) who have grown up with Digital in their toolbox from the beginning. Thats when things will start getting weird (in a good way).

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Like it? Hate it? Leave a comment below

Tagged as: $$$, Advertising, cost, effectiveness, marketing, reach, ROI, social

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The 50/50 Rule is something I started sharing with clients a while back. It’s nothing new or earth-shattering and TONS of individuals and companies are doing it EVERY SINGLE DAY. The idea is simple - to connect in the Social spaces where the users live, you need to spend half as much of your time talking about the users as you do about your brand/product/service/website/effort/whatever.

You need to be a neighbor, not Vince from ShamWOW (who I think is AWESOME, but not a good example of starting/having/maintaining/sharing a conversation). If all you do is pitch AT them all day, they will tune you out. If you spend at least half of your time celebrating them, encouraging them, recognizing them, sharing with the rest of the community what they are doing/have learned/successes/challenges, then they might listen to the other 50% of your “stuff”.

Link Love is described in Wikipedia as “the effect that web pages rank better when they have more and higher quality links pointing at them.” It is partly about attribution (making sure you acknowledge where a discussion or quote came from), but it is also about sharing these connections that you value with your users - and hopefully they will check out those links. This is a powerful gesture, because in the digital space, links are a currency. They have intrinsic value, links are an outward, public display of paying attention. Says Doc, “In simpler terms, humans are distinguished no only by their ability to talk, but also by their ability to point.”

Some real examples of Link Love:

• Blogrolls are Link Love: they share with the readers of any given blog the other “voices we like”.
• Trackbacks are Link Love: they create a connection between my blog post and another blogger’s post - a discrete, ping-based connection that says to the user and the blogosphere “hey, these things are related”.
• Twitter posts are Link Love - I think enough of what someone is doing to share it with my circle of followers/friends
• Comments (although sometimes NOT counted by Google thanks to comment spam) are Link Love - I think enough of the ideas in this post to not only leave a note, but also where I can be found later for thanks/feedback/comments/a beating.

How do we connect in with this link economy? Where does Reciprocity fit in?

We need to link to the voices and ideas outside our “four walls”. If our blogroll only contains the other blogs our company has created and not the blogs of the users then we aren’t using that currency properly. If we only comment on other corporate blogs, then we aren’t connecting with our community. If we have a twitter feed with thousands of followers, but only following a few users, then we are missing out on an opportunity to participate. As publishers/pundits/journalists/program managers and “experts” we need to send the link love out there first (real, authentic), without expectations that it will be returned until we have earned it - and earning it is completely in the mind of the user. You either add value or you don’t. You are sponge-worthy or you are not (to use a Seinfeld reference). Reciprocity in this context is less about obligation (”oh hell, he linked to me, so now I need to link to him”), and more about attention and intent (”X is paying attention to my ideas”, or better yet “wow, those guys from Company Y spend a lot of time talking about what the members of their community are doing”). Its about adding enough value that others think you are worthy of their currency (links, attention, comments - whatever your measure of success is).

One of the clearest, fastest ways of seeing the 50/50 Rule in action is on Twitter with users like Richard @ Dell and Zappos. Richard@DELL is one of the leaders in corporations working with social software like twitter and making business personal. He spends as much of his time sending users to other voices and links as he does “Dell Business” with his twitter feed. Zappos uses his tweet time to talk about the people he is meeting with and interacting than he does his own site (along with DMs to users who ask questions about Zappos.

Liz Strauss has this to say in her killer blog post about the 25 Twitter Traits/ Twitter Folks she admires:

Certain value and actions make people who care about having relationships and conversation before transactions easy to spot…
5. talk mostly about the accomplishments of others….
12. shout out good news, help in emergencies, and celebrate with everyone.
16. offer advice when people ask. Help whenever they can.

If you want people to talk to you and about you, then link to them for all the right reasons. Spend the time and the social capital to celebrate what they are doing. Show where you see the value in them. If you want them to link to you, give them lots of opportunities to find something valuable in what you are doing. A shout-out is a personal gesture regardless if it comes from the DJ booth, the radio or a blog post.

Thing to do:

1. If you are building a community anywhere (twitter, facebook, ning, wordpress, Meetup, etc.) spend the time to look at how much you are talking about “Me Me Me Me Me” and course correct NOW.
2. If you have nothing to to link to (don’t really have a relationship with the users beyond their consuming your “stuff”) then start that conversation NOW.
3. Use the features of the community to connect with users: ask them if they have blogs and add ‘em to your blogroll (or have a special blogroll for your community members), send Link Love to them through microblogging platforms like Twitter, use the forums as a commons for discussion and to point out the achievements of the users
4. Celebrate your users and set an incredible example that shows the rest of the community just how much you appreciate them - small, simple gestures can have a real impact.
5. Reciprocity is like love - it isn’t an obligation, but something freely given. Hope but don’t demand, ask, but not too often.
6. Be “linky”, use the currency of the web to show your users what/who you think is valuable.
7. Be real. Don’t engage in linkbait, users notice and your credibility will suffer as a result
8. Send half of your time talking about the users, the community, the people outside your org, company, startup (the 50/50 rule)

Tagged as: link love, linking, outreach, reciprocity, social, syndication

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I love the Interwebs (think it was Digg.com) for giving me access to stuff like this:

So I found Adam Savage’s (from MythBusters) Dec 12, 2008 presentation on FORA.tv that he gave at the Entertainment Gathering (Richard Saul Wurman’s new conference), on his own obsession with things, in this case, the Dodo and the Maltese Falcon. Along the way he discusses some of his background as a model maker, the history of these objects, and a pretty amazing community of movie prop afficianados/fanatics that he spends a lot of time with. The video includes:

• the Dodo (and how the last complete Dodo skeleton was “destroyed” in a fire) and his attempts to have his own
• the Maltese Falcon and his attempts to have his own
• the connection of the Maltese Falcon to the Black Dahlia, James Ellroy the author
• How Savage has a hand-held laser scanner that fits in a cereal box

My favorite part is the closing:

… and then maybe, then, I’ll achieve the end of this exercise. But really, if we are all gonna be honest with ourselves, I’ll have to admit that achieving the end of the exercise was never the point of the exercise to begin with was it?

Tagged as: dodo, Entertainment Gathering, MAKE, maltese falcon, model making, obsession

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So my good friend Halley and I were chatting the other day about work and video and she asked if I had seen Bill Cammack in a new vid for IndyMogul… I said NO (most of the time I see Bill’s work on his own videos, be he is a good friend to a LOT of videobloggers so I wasn’t surprised). He is a special guest star in this episode and plays the “Millipede” (as opposed to SLJ’s Octopus) in their takeoff of what the SPIRIT does on his day off.

Play it below or click through here:

How did they get the tie red while most of the rest was in Black and White? (see the comments, there will be a special, “the making of The Spirit’s Day Off!).

You can check out Bill’s own blog and videos here, and his twitterfeed here.

Tagged as: Bill Cammack, Friends, Fun, special effects

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So when I worked for CorePerformance.com, I got the chance to work with a video company called CoBrandit on a series of videos that were different than what we had done before.

As a company, CorePerformance has an amazing amount of intellectual property in the health and fitness space (as part of Athletes’ Performance, the CP gets to leverage the knowledge and day-to-day experience of working with elite athletes in almost every sport). Like most great companies, the real secret of the operation was the amazing team behind the company.

One of our goals for the video program was to inform and educate our users by sharing the stories from the amazing people inside the company. CoBrandit worked with us to capture, edit and produce these stories in a way that was accessible and (in the future) share-able and give us some learnings on producing short form videos in an always-on environment (amazing people are insanely busy and we can rarely get them all in one place - so we need to go to them to shoot these stories).

Here is an example of their work:

Owen and Jesse (the founders of CoBrandit) are an amazing team to work with. They have a deep understanding of the social side of video, can shoot and edit, have a great reel, and THEY KNOW HOW TO LIGHT (which is a big deal). They also do a lot of work with linking and syndication of content and helping companies get their video in front of users.

I am a big fan of these guys and will work with them again.

To check out more CorePerformance videos (specific movement videos AND more educational pieces), go to CorePerformance.com and check out the Mindset, Nutrition, Movement, Recovery sections.

Tagged as: cobrandit, Friends, social, Video

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David Mullen nails it with his post on “Save the Ghosts for Halloween”

Think this is a great post and should be required reading for companies that want to “use” social media.

It may seem like splitting hairs, but in my mind there’s a difference between ghost writing the typical items mentioned above and ghost writing blog posts, Twitter “tweets,” and blog comments. That’s because there is a different expectation in place when it comes to social media engagement.

If we really believe in this stuff, not just paying lip service to cluetrain and treat “the conversation” like the newest jug of snake oil, then ghost blogging has to be seen as inauthentic, not real, and BAD IDEA.

Strategists, “gurus” and agencies need to stop treating their clients like junkies and acting as crack dealers. They need to stop “blogging for”, “communicating for” and “using social media” for their clients and work with the clients to develop a real sustainable culture within the communications (marketing and PR and events) teams of DOING THIS THEMSELVES. Are you really joining the users in a conversation if you are doing it by proxy (ghost blogger)? Acting as a filter between the user and the client is inherently INAUTHENTIC, FALSE AND WRONG.

The main reason I got involved with digital media in the early days was because it was different, special, unique. The same goes with Social Media. How is blogging different from a press release if it isnt real?

Are you really joining the conversation if you are having someone do it for you?

Strategy at its core is about education. Guru by definition is a teacher or guide. These roles arent meant to be cutouts between the user and the org. We “experts” need to help the clients tell their stories and connect DIRECTLY with the users. I would rather see the intern in the client’s Comm department blogging than have some wonk in the agency write it for them.

In Social Media, WHO says it is as important as WHAT is said. Otherwise this will end up like press releases and advertising… and users will move on.

Tagged as: Advertising, authenticity, blogging, communication, education, ghost blogging, pr

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Had a great interview today with John C. Havens. on BlogTalkRadio.com.

John and Shel Holtz recently released their new book Tactical Transparency: How Leaders Can Leverage Social Media to Maximize Value and Build their Brand (where yours truly is quoted). Check it out.

>>> Editors Note: I am an idiot and got my “Shel”s mixed up, originally posting John’s co-author as Shel Israel, and not Shel Holtz, who IS the co-author of Tactical Transparency. My sincerest apologies to John and Shel, and thanks to Shel Israel who pointed out my error. I have corrected it above.

Tagged as: Advertising, business, Social Media, transparency

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Another mind-bomb from the desk of Chris Brogan concerns Comment policies for corporations. Its a solid piece of experience and sharing - comments aren’t scary, users aren’t all looking to “dis” you, but you have to plan and have principles and rules to follow.

You might say, “let the chips fall where they may.” But the thing is this: the audience who’s chosen to engage with the blog isn’t there with carte blanche to do what they wish. This is a chosen engagement. This is a relationship point. It’s NOT the right place for every interaction with an organization. It’s a place.

Before moderation and defining which (sometimes poor) soul is going to have to read all the comments, a discussion around what is and is not acceptable needs to happen within the corp and between the corp and its agencies. Legal needs to be brought in EARLY AND OFTEN to give them context for the who/what/when/why and most importantly HOW of comments. Getting the legal team and the PR team and the Marketing kids all on the same page is critical. The Corporation has to identify where the “third rails” are: what opening up conversations actually means to the people who work there (morale is a currency), the industry press (comments can be valuable as well as fodder), and the users who will never comment, but who will read EACH AND EVERY ONE.

Once the context around comments is set, once legal completely understands and appreciates and is engaged (continuously, not consulted and then ignored), and the communications twins (Marketing and PR) are on-board, then you can set the rules and principles. Rules are hard and fast - no cussing, no racist stuff, no lies. Principles are guidelines that for keeping things moving and flowing: act like an adult, this is OUR space not YOUR space, don’t post in all-caps, Funny is better than funny and mean, let the thread die.

Part of this Rules/Principles exercise is to set what the community standards are for the space. This is what we will not allow. Everything else, these are the guidelines and standards of behavior.

The result of this needs to be the “rules of the sandbox” - for moderators AND the users. And it needs to be made clear to the users that comment, clear to the users that are old members of the community and CLEAR TO THE MODERATORS. And not in a EULA or TOS that will be checkboxed and ignored, but in some way that the users SEE what you BELIEVE. This sets the levels for all users of the commenting system. Keeps it clean and aboveboard, and most of all, lets users know where they stand, what will be permitted and why things are/were removed.

So turn comments on, moderate them, but first, clearly define your rules and principles, live by them, and apply them consistently.

The users (all of them) will appreciate it.

Tagged as: comments, moderation, participation, Social Media

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