Influential Marketing Blog

Plse Forgiv Typoes - Jott Fights Terse Reply Syndrome

For anyone who uses a Blackberry religiously, or works with those who do - you also know that there is a new language that has emerged for that mode of communication. Similar to text messages, brevity is a growing necessity with Blackberry communications and it is leading to people doing things like including a disclaimer at the bottom of their emails apologizing for the short replies, and possible grammatical and spelling errors of their message. Apparently having small keys is enough of an excuse to spell poorly and forget about periods or commas.  I wish we had that excuse when were were in school. Still, we have all seen this effect and to a degree have probably learned to accept it because there wasn't an alternative.

Probably, you don't even think about it anymore ... until a campaign like the "Terse Reply Syndrome" from Jott reminds you that those short mistyped replies are no way to communicate. Jott has a beta service that allows you to speak a reply into your Blackberry and it will type it for you. That alone is an interesting and useful service (assuming it actually works), but as a marketer you can learn a lot from their approach to launching it. The Terse Reply Syndrome (TRS) is a situation that most businesspeople will immediately recognize, whether they have been on the receiving or sending end of these types of messages. And we would all love to find a better way. The campaign works because it talks about a real situation of need that many business people will be familiar with, and presents a solution that allows you to use the same tools you are used to using. Their videos (shot in the style of a "when the moment is right" Viagra ad), promise "side effects" of longer more thoughtful replies, less thumb stress, and more free time.

This is where the message really hits home, because you can have better communications without giving up your Blackberry. Their useful blog offers further tips on how to effectively use their service, and it even works with lots of common social media tools. The service is in limited beta and free at the moment, but you should sign up quickly because eventually it will be a paid service. It's easy to imagine this is one of those few services where once you try it for free, you are probably going to pay for it.*  Smart marketing combined with a great and useful service. This is the type of Web2.0 service we could all use more of.

* Note - This post is about the marketing behind Jott. I haven't been able to try it yet as it doesn't appear that you can use it on a Blackberry that is issued from work when your employer doesn't pay for phone access (which my employer doesn't). If anyone knows a way around this, please share!

Inside Lenovo's Olympic Blogging Program

This past week in the string of posts about the book coming out, I've been stockpiling ideas for "real" blog posts and wanting to write about them more and more. Thankfully now that I launched the Personality Matters blog, I will post most of the updates about the book there and refocus on marketing strategy and insights here. I can't promise I won't share the occasional post about the book ... but I know that you're giving me your time to read this blog because you want marketing ideas and you want lots of them. So this post is about one I'm particularly excited about.

The Ogilvy 360 Digital Influence team recently finalized the details to take the lead on what I would have to call my dream project. Those who know me know that I am what you might call a full on Olympic enthusiast. I went to college in Atlanta and was there for the 1996 Olympics. I moved to Sydney in 1998 and lived there during the Sydney Olympics, and my first son was born right in the middle of the Athens Olympics (during the women's marathon, ironically). So I've been there and seen it, and more importantly, I think it is a world stage that nothing else even comes close to.

Which brings me to this very ambitious project that we are helping Lenovo with. David Churbuck, our main client, posted about the idea behind the project on his blog and it is a brilliant summary of a big vision that Lenovo and David himself has for this project. Here it is in a nutshell:

The Problem: Media coverage of the Olympics has become about melodrama that is broadcasted as "real" stories. But those producers only choose the athletes who have overcome quadruple knee surgery and the lack of a college degree to become a world champion ... in other words, the extreme stories.

The Insight: What about the real athletes who spend every day training and working hard just to get to the Olympics whether they have a shot of winning or not?  Their voices could be the most powerful and this Olympics more than any other promises to offer the chance for them to do that.

The Project: We are seeking 100 potential Olympic athletes from around the world to all start and maintain a blog all about their experience leading up to and during the Games. In return, Lenovo is offering all participants the chance to use a new IdeaPad laptop for their blogging and help from our team to set up and maintain their blogs. 

This is a big project on a scale that is completely global, multi-lingual and very ambitious. Lenovo, to their credit, are not content to sit back with their sponsorship of the Olympic Torch Relay and Olympic Village (already considerable efforts) and call it a job well done.  If this is the year for Olympics 2.0, this program should be one of the best examples of it. Our main goal right now is finding Olympic athletes, so if you know any (or you happen to be one), please get in touch with myself rohit [dot] bhargava [at] ogilvypr.com or David.

Be Part Of The Personality Not Included Book Launch On March 28th

There are a lot of ideas for how to launch a book online. As I head toward launching* Personality Not Included this Friday, I've looked at most of them. Some authors create a group and ask all their contacts to all hit an online bookstore like Amazon at one time to create a surge in sales.  Others coordinate big launch events in the real world and aim to use those to propel interest in their book. Bigger books might buy advertising to announce a launch and, of course, there is the old PR method of blasting lots of press releases at people who may or may not be interested in the book. There is one big problem with all these approaches: none of them are very conversational.

A conversation does not start instantly with a big spike and then trail off. A really good conversation builds momentum steadily and eventually turns into something more powerful. So my aim today is not to create a short term spike, but to start a conversation about the central idea of the book - which is that personality matters, and continue it over the next few weeks and months. To jumpstart this conversation, I'm asking for your help - and offering you something in return.

My idea is simple: if you send me five questions that you want to know about the book or personality, I'll write you a response on Friday that you can publish on your blog. Let's call these virtual interviews (ie - interviews by email). You choose whether to post the interview on your blog or not after you get my responses, but I am essentially offering for ANY BLOGGER to send me interview questions and I will respond with answers that are NOT cut and pasted, but specific to your questions. I will send all my responses to you on Friday in the order that I get your questions, and I will link to all the posted interviews on Friday.  On Monday, I'll be running a competition on my blog to let readers vote on the Best Interview. The winner will get a signed copy of my book and a gift certificate for $100 from Amazon. Here are a few reasons you may want to do it:

1. For relatively little effort, you'll get a customized post by me that you can use exclusively on your blog
2. Your blog will be featured in my follow up post compiling all the interviews (getting you more visibility)
3. You have a chance to win a signed copy of my new book and a gift certificate for from Amazon.com if your post is voted "Best Interview" by the readers of my blog.

That's about it. I'll be answering review questions in the order that I get them, so please send me yours soon at rohitaustralia [at] gmail [dot] com and I will add you to the list. If you don't have a blog, you can still ask questions by leaving a comment on this post - there will be a prize for best question from the comments too. For the latest news about the book launch and access to exclusive content which you can't get anywhere else, be sure to join my Facebook group for the book if you haven't already and also follow the launch in real time by adding me to your Twitter follow list (Twitter ID - rohitbhargava), or friending me on Facebook (which republished my updates if you are not a Twitter user).

Update (3/26/08): Up to 25 interview requests in less than 24 hours ... thanks to all the bloggers for your interest - I'm hoping to make it to 50 request by Friday!

* The book bindery date is this Friday, which means the book is complete and printed and they will be shipping out to those who preordered over the weekend or on Monday (so you should have your copy by early next week). The official date when they will be in bookstores across the US and Canada is likely to be around April 14th - and the book will be released internationally about 4-6 weeks after that (across Europe, Asia, Australia). If you have a specific query about your country and when the book will be out, please send me an email and I can let you know.

The Blogstar Delusion: We're Not As Famous As We Think We Are

Twitter wasn't the only story from SXSW. There was a second thing I noticed at the show that far fewer people are writing about.  It is a topic that I have wanted to write about for some time now, and it always comes up after I have the chance to attend another interactive or social media event.  It is a growing phenomenon that I call the Blogstar Delusion.  This is the too common situation where a semi-famous blogger assumes that everyone has heard of him or her because they have legions of followers at events like SXSW and online.  This is not a criticism of any single person, just a note about a trend that I have seen with increasing frequency.  Of course, meeting people who have an outsized view of themselves is not unique to bloggers.  So what is causing this rise of blogstar delusions?

In part, it is the growing popularity of blogs ... but the real culprit is each one of us. Every time you treat a blogger that you admire like a rockstar, you are encouraging the rise of the blogstar delusion. As any parent will tell you, if you want to discourage a certain kind of behaviour, don't unintentionally reward it.  So, to do my part - I am making a pledge to help reduce the number of blogstar delusions in the world by doing the following:

1. Do not allow myself to suffer from blogstar delusions.
2. Treat any blogger like a real person rather than a movie star.
3. Interact with bloggers, regardless of Technorati rank, as peers.
4. Avoid joining any group engaging in idolatry towards bloggers.

Any other pledges you would add to this list?  Join me and help curb the spread of the blogstar delusion ... it is taking over the world of social media far too fast, and we all need to do our part to help fight it.

10 Easy Ways to Piss Off A Blogger (from SXSW)

At SXSW yesterday, I ran a "core conversation" called 10 Easy Ways to Piss Off a Blogger.  This year at SXSW, these aptly titled "conversations" were a type of speaking slot where there was a round table and the challenge of engaging people in a discussion about a particular topic.  Mine was one close to my heart ... the best way to piss off a blogger.  I had created a Facebook event page before the session to try and build the buzz and going into yesterday I had almost 50 people signed up.  So I figured we'd get about 20 to 25.  After the session, I spoke to one of the participants who said he counted about 70 - so we had a really tough challenge of having a conversation with 70 people.

Learning from some of the feedback that came from a panel on Social Media Metrics that I had participated in a day earlier, my main aim was to make sure everyone walked out of the session with what I had promised them ... the 10 easy ways.  The format of the session was a bit different too - as there was no presentation or powerpoint, and I didn't walk in with the 10 ways.  Instead our aim was to collaborate, discuss and walk out with the ten.  I think we managed to make it to more than ten.  A few folks kindly offered to take some live notes and have posted about the ten, but without further ado ... here are the 10 Easy Ways to Piss Off a Blogger, as defined by a group of super smart and engaged folks who all made it to be part of this conversation:

1. Invite bloggers to participate in something and don't give them a chance to talk about themselves. This was what I opened the session with, followed by letting people around the group introduce their name and their blogs.  A list of people who chose to share their names and blogs is at the end of this post.
2. Pretend to be a "long time reader" when you actually just visited the blog once and read a few posts.
3. Use a blogger's content or identity without giving proper attribution
4. Send irrelevant information that exhibits no understanding of what they care about or fail to personalize it
5. Add them to a PR list and don't let them get off of it
6. Make it hard for them to link to something by hiding your content behind usernames/passwords, giving them uncertain directions or requiring them to take multiple steps
7. Ask for favors as part of your first outreach to them without building a relationship or earning the right to ask them to help you
8. Fail to identify yourself or falsely represent yourself as something or someone you are not.  This includes failing to mention something about your or your employer that is relevant.
9. Set an unreasonable expectation for a blogger and expect things in an unreasonable amount of time ... ie - sending informaiton and expecting them to post within a few hours.  Quick poll of our session showed that for the vast majority of bloggers, it's not their day job.
10. Get the journalism relationship right.  Some bloggers consider themselves journalists and others don't.  It was clear from the participants that this is a tricky subject, as some people also noted after the session. 

I think we actually ended up with more than ten, but these were the main ones.  I'm looking forward to hopefully hearing more thoughts from some of the participants as the SXSW haze settles and they get a chance to get back to their computers.  It's a crazy show ... lookout for a post here tomorrow on what I think has been the most interesting cultural and technological story of the show: the dominant use of Twitter.

Finally, special thanks to Aaron from Longstation and Steve Harbula (Director of Marketing for the Denver Broncoes) who were both kind enough to take live notes and post them almost right away after our session.

============================

Partial List of Participating Bloggers (from a list passed around - we missed many bloggers, so please add your name and thoughts in a comment if you were there and I'll update the post):

• Destin Joy Layne - The Green Fork http://www.eatwellguide.org
• Biray Alsac - Fitness & Technology Blog http://www.befitwithberay.com
• Beth Carls - K-Ized Mindoh! http://mindoh.wordpress.com
• Lindsay Yaw - Body, Mind & Soul http://www.bethree.com
• Sunil Doshi - http://blog.swiftmob.com
• Adam Brohman - http://amediacirc.us
• Brian Buser - http://www.minggl.com
• Daniel Englander - http://www.greentechmedia.com
• Meghan Warby - http://withoutayard.blogspot.com
• Ruth Ward - http://ruthward.wordpress.com | http://www.sxswm.com
• Jonny Goldstein - http://www.jonnygoldstein.com
• Eric Bryn - Real Estate Relativity http://www.realestaterelativity.com
• Heather Barmore - No Pasa Nada http://www.nopasanada.com
• Amy Bills - Bullblog http://www.bulldogsolutions.com/bullblog
• Eloy Zuniga - http://www.eloyz.com
• Aaron Long - http://www.longstation.com
• Greg Swan - Perfect Porridge http://www.perfectporridge.com
• Danielle Kozich - http://danipennsylvania.blogspot.com
• David J. Neff - Futuring and Innovation in Non Profits http://www.fispace.org
• Marjan Jindrich - Consumers Union Blogs http://www.consumersunion.org/blog
• Tara Anderson - http://iquitforlijit.typepad.com/i_quit_for_lijit/
• Eric Berto - http://www.etelos.com/blogs
• Jackie Huba - http://customerevangelists.typepad.com/
• Samantha Warren - http://www.badassideas.com

Also, thanks to Maura Welch, Sanjay Sabrani, Tracy Locke, Liz Link, Shannon McKarney, Gladys Kong, and many other participants who didn't add their names to the list for sharing their perspective as people who interact with bloggers and want to do it better.  We may have focused on ways to piss off bloggers, but clearly there is some great interest and emerging guidelines on how to end up with happier bloggers.  For reference, the guidelines from our 360 Digital Influence team that I mentioned to several of you at the session can be found here: http://blog.ogilvypr.com/?p=244

technorati tags: sxsw sxswi southbysouthwest coreconversation marketing socialmedia blogs
del.icio.us tags: sxsw sxswi southbysouthwest coreconversation marketing socialmedia blogs
icerocket tags: sxsw sxswi southbysouthwest coreconversation marketing socialmedia blogs

 

Blog Marketing Skill #1: Master the Ego

Blogs are all about ego.  Anyone who disagrees is just kidding themselves.  Of course, ego is a word that comes with all sorts of connotations.  Many people assume it is bad.  To a degree, marketing has always been about ego, because it is a necessary element of each of your personalities.  However, here is the biggest flawed assumption about ego: having an ego is not the same thing as being egotistical.  Ego, in itself, is not bad - it's natural.  The reason I am reminded of this fact now is that Guy Kawasaki recently launched a site called Alltop.com that has been generating some great (and heated) conversation online.  The site is essentially a simplified aggregation of blogs categorized in a several different categories including fashion, green, celebrities, and "ego" among many others. 

The conversation basically breaks into three points of view:

1. This is nothing new and is available through other tools like Netvibes or PopUrls
2. This fosters the kind of A-lister vs. other bloggers rhetoric that Guy himself has railed against
3. Offense at being included in the group provocatively titled "Egos"

Personally, I think the site offers one of the simplest UI models that you can have, whether is just took a day to build or is more complicated than that.  I wish our Blogfeeds http://blogfeeds.ogilvypr.com (a similar concept to Alltop) were built on an interface like this.  But obviously there are probably other solutions out there to accomplish this as well.  Which really brings me to the title of this post ... blog marketing skill #1.  Whether you are a blogger or do outreach to bloggers, you will rapidly have to learn that ego is all important.  I would argue that many of the most commonly cited blog outreach campaigns where products were offered, such as the Microsoft Laptop Giveaway or the Nikon D80 program as two case studies were mainly criticized negatively by those who had bruised egos from not being included.

What Guy knows about blog ego is that having one of his categories for the site titled in this way is sure to stand out and get people's reactions.  Along the way, his site (which may very well be only slightly different from other competitive sites in terms of functionality) gets a lot more attention, conversation and traffic.  Since the site's launch, Guy has also been actively commenting on posts, and inviting bloggers to share their thoughts (full disclosure, he also sent me a note - but I had this post half written over the weekend anyway).  All of this adds up to what anyone would have to consider a successful launch into the blogosphere of a new service.  He has used his reputation to build a buzz, got some top "egos" writing about the site and created just enough controversy to make the site memorable.  Don't let ego get in the way of letting you see the obvious marketing lesson here.

What You Can Learn From Guy Kawasaki's Model for Blog ROI

For those who are fans of Guy Kawasaki, there is a phenomenon he is fond of calling "Guy's golden touch."   It is his own trademark reversal of a well known saying, where he likes to note that "everything that turns to gold is what whatever is gold Guy touches." (Correction for the confusing structure I used before).  One site that is definitely gold right now is Twitter, riding a wave since it's popularity at SXSW last year, the site steadily seems to be getting more and more users.  Whereas the early reports on Twitter were that it was solely for uber-connected geeks and social media types who had nothing better to do all day than broadcast their latest feelings ... Twitter is getting unexpected enthusiasts.  Guy is one of them, using microblogging to help promote his new site, Truemors ... and it is just one example of how he manages to use his personal brand to promote the brands and products that he supports (or invests in).

Truemors has an interesting mission - to allow people to share rumours that are true (as opposed to gossip) and accepts user contributed headlines similar to digg or any other content sharing site.  The site's aim is to help sift through the cascade of content we all deal with everyday.  The juiciest headlines from the site make it into the Truemors Twitter stream and are often irresistible stories to click on, such as "Hugo Chavez Offers to Pose Topless for Naomi Campbell."  Guy also uses his personal Twitter stream to ask questions designed to build buzz about Truemors or to help make it better. 

Most bloggers look at Adwords or Amazon affiliate links as their sole option to make money or get an ROI with their blog.  Others limit their idea of "ROI" from blogging to their own personal brand and nothing else.  Guy's example shows that these are not the only ways to see a benefit from your efforts in blogging.  He builds trust and respect by continually offering content that is worthwhile and thought provoking, and along the way he integrates the experiences of the brands and companies he supports.  In the end, he avoids coming off as underhanded or selling out and actually makes his blog a promotional platform that justifies the time he spends on it. The ongoing value is clear, whether it was talking about judging a contest for Slideshare, or including a rating widget from JS-Kit.  It's not about the ad units that he sells through Federated Media.  Guy's blog demonstrates the power of his endorsement.  And it works too.  Because of him, I have started using SlideShare, iStockPhoto, and now Truemors.

The point is, why have a world renowned blog that thousands of people read if you are unwilling to use it to promote the companies you support?  Especially if you are a VC.  Guy's golden touch may mean that he associates himself with the right projects, but the irony is that in the process he may just be building his own model to turn startups into gold once he endorses or invests in them.

The 4 Elements of Getting Videos to go Viral

Note: This post is republished from the original posted on the Ogilvy 360 Digital Influence blog.

On November 24, 2007, a fellow named Dan Ackerman Greenberg wrote the kind of blog post that was either the dumbest of his career, or the most brilliant … depending on how you look at it.  The post was a guest piece for TechCrunch, one of the most widely read blogs in the world.  In it, he described the real tactics his firm employs to get their client’s videos to go viral and get at least 100,000 views.  He described the key steps, and even shared his firm’s philosophy that if they cannot get you at least 100,000 views, they don’t get paid.  Sound good?  Read on.

The real problem people had with the 9 points he shared in his post is that some were squarely in the category of what most people would call spamming behaviour.  He advocated creating fake profiles, launching multiple user accounts in forums and using built up “friend” circles on social networks to inflate views.  Bloggers and readers of TechCrunch were incensed … leaving more than 500 comments against his original guest post and triggering a follow up post from Dan to clarify his point of view.  Of course, the post generated big publicity for Dan’s relatively small firm as well … hence the dual views on whether you think this was a bad move, or a brilliant publicity play.

Either way, the easy thing to do is vilefy Dan for his inauthentic approach to seeding his client’s videos.  The only problem is, it obviously seems to work (if your end goal and metric is number of views).  Dismissing Dan’s approach on principle also obscures some real useful lessons that he shares in his post that anyone promoting videos on YouTube should pay attention to.  Which raises the central question - is it possible to intentionally generate lots of video views on YouTube, without employing the same underhanded tactics?  It is a question our team here has spent a long time thinking about, and the approach to doing this breaks down into four key factors of your video:

1. Content - Is the subject matter and story compelling enough to get people to pass it along?  This is a different question to whether or not it is entertaining.  The real challenge on YouTube is getting someone to find your video, so it has to be shareable so people pass it between one another, otherwise it will get a few engaged views and then fade into obscurity.
2. Optimization - This has to do with how long the clip is, how you optimize it, what tags you use, and when you submit it.  In this regard, Dan’s post has lots of good suggestions, from capping videos to keep them short, to making sure the exact middle frame is something engaging (which YouTube uses to generate your thumbnail), to submitting multiple videos at once so you don’t force watchers to wait for the next one.
3. Outreach - Obvious, but often forgotten … a key element to getting a video viewed is finding the right influential people to tell about it and increase the chances that they may pass it along.  The best way to do this is to truly spend the time to find the people that the video will actually be relevant for and share it with them.  The worst way is to spam large groups of people and fabricate identities, which leads to the fourth key factor …
4. Inflation - Unfortunately, a key element of Dan’s success in promoting his client’s videos amounts to what I would consider inflation.  Put simply, there are the views gained by spamming friends, creating fake profiles, or hiring “click monkeys” (low paid people paid to watch videos or click links to inflate stats.  One of the most distressing things to me is that many SMO firms are dedicating themselves to employing these types of tactics, bringing the entire fledgling category down with them.

Given the war that YouTube and most other sites are waging against fraudsters employing inflation and spamming, it is possible to craft an approach that avoids stooping to the fourth factor.  I am ready to admit that this may mean you don’t reach that elusive 100k number of views on YouTube.  The better question to ask is whether you really want 100k fabricated and fraudulent views in the first place.  Views beget views … meaning if you can get a swell of views you make it on the right pages or lists and get even more people to watch.  At the end of the day, a much better metric for success will usually be whether the right people saw your video … not whether you hit an arbitrary number of views.

Inside the 5 Badges of the Conference Caste System

At every conference or tradeshow, you get a badge.  I have a box full of them on my desk, an increasing number of them with the title of "Speaker" affixed beneath my name.  I recently had a conversation with some colleagues about the importance of being a speaker at an event.  Often, the most important benefit is not just the visibility of speaking, but the license that speaker tag gives you to have a conversation with other speakers.  If you think about it, the badges at a conference are like a caste system.  Your badge identifies which group you belong in and can often dictate how people embrace or shy away from a conversation with you. 

There are usually only five types of badges that you can get at a conference (listed in order of importance):

1. Speaker
2. Media
3. Sponsor
4. Attendee
5. Vendor

Being a speaker is usually the best choice, because it positions you as an expert at the event and you also have a chance to demonstrate your expertise in front of a subset of attendees.  Media is usually second best, because just about all the sponsors and vendors want to get media coverage.  Last week at an event like the Consumer Electronics Show, however, most people would agree that media was definitely number one because of the relative importance of media coverage to that event.  The interesting thing about "media" at CES (as well as at most other large events today) is that this group is usually divided into two categories: bloggers and press.  For CES, the blogger badges were gray, and the press badges were red.  Thinking this would be a good chance for a bit of a social experiment, I went and got both badges ... the blogger badge by virtue of my blog, and the press badge as a result of my writing being republished by the good folks at Digital Media Wire (sorry I missed the Insider event, Ned).

What did I learn?  Probably not surprisingly, the blogger badge got a lot less attention and special treatment.  It was an odd feeling to walk through certain booths first with my gray badge and then switch to the red one.  There were different rooms for bloggers versus press, and in the press room there was real food (not just snacks), rows of press releases that you could pickup and many invites for private parties or events.  Clearly, there is a gap in perceived value between bloggers and journalists from the organizers of CES, as well as many of the vendors exhibiting at the event.  It really is no different than a caste system where individuals are judged based on the color of their badges.  The question is, when will we see this situation change?  Already, there are signs that it is changing.  Most notably, the fact that there is a blogger room and blogger credentials at an event of this size at all.  The way I see it, in another few years, events like this will start to embrace bloggers and media on the same level and apply a similar criteria to who gets credentials.  This means the real metric will be audience and reach.  Regardless of whether you write for a blog or something else, your credentials will be based on the number of people you reach.  It's just a matter of time before it happens.

Blogger Social 2008 and the Art of Personalized Outreach

The first thing I should say is that I was planning to write about Blogger Social 2008 anyway.  You'll see why I started with that disclaimer in a moment ...

Just about everyone in any kind of communications role has probably reach out to at least one blogger at some point to share something of value and ask for a link.  For most bloggers, the greatest value they can offer to someone is to choose to post about something they are doing.  One lesson I have been reminded of time and time again, though, is that sometimes having great and relevant content is not enough.  I was reminded of this fact on two distinct occasions over the past few days.

The first was Steve's recent post on Adrants about how Amber Lee (Obama Girl) created a personalized video for him talking about how much she loves Adrants.  It's a brilliant move by BarelyPolitical.com to create something specifically targeted at Steve and Adrants, as well as a strong relationship builder.  There's a lesson in this for any marketer hoping to build a connection with a highly influential blogger in any industry.

The second was when I started to see lots of anticipation posts from fellow marketing bloggers sharing that there are just 90 days left until Blogger Social 08.  This is going to be a great informal gathering of marketing bloggers and something long overdue.  Organized primarily by marketing bloggers CK and Drew McLellan, the event now has a trailer of sorts, thanks to Mark Goren.  The video features images of all the bloggers attending the event, including me.  Which brings me back to my disclaimer from earlier.  I was planning to write about this event.  The video made it personal again for me and helped propel me to do it sooner rather than later.  It just goes to show, sometimes a bit of personalization (along with a play to blog ego - which we all have) makes the difference between just having great content and getting it talked about:

PS - If you are a marketing blogger, you should definitely consider registering yourself for Blogger Social 08 - it will be in NY on the weekend of April 4th.  Below is the list of just a few marketing bloggers already registered:

Susan Bird Tim Brunelle Katie Chatfield Terry Dagrosa Matt Dickman Luc Debaisieux Gianandrea Facchini Mark Goren Gavin Heaton Sean Howard CK Valeria Maltoni Drew McLellan Doug Meacham Marilyn Pratt Steve Roesler Greg Verdino CB Whittemore Steve Woodruff Paul McEnany Ann Handley David Reich Tangerine Toad Kristin Gorski Mack Collier David Armano Ryan Barrett Lori Magno Tim McHale Gene DeWitt Mario Vellandi Arun Rajagopal Darryl Ohrt Joseph Jaffe Rohit Bhargava Anna Farmery Marianne Richmond Thomas Clifford Lewis Green Geoff Livingston Kris Hoet Connie Reece CeCe Lee Jonathan Trenn Toby Bloomberg Seni Thomas

My 3 Social Media New Year's Resolutions

Today is the day for new year's resolutions.  For most people, this means the inevitable pledges to get healthy, lose weight, work less and spend more time with family.  Like any good blogger, though, I have several social media resolutions for the new year.  In no particular order, here are my three big ones:

1. Comment more. In the rush of client work and blogging, the easiest thing to stop doing regularly is reading and commenting on other posts.  Putting out content that people are interested in is great, but the best way to participate in the conversation is still frequently commenting on other people's blog posts.  Not just thanking someone for a link, but reading blogs that I normally wouldn't and extending my community (as well as my mind).  I know that I discover many new blogs through the people who leave comments on my posts.  Other bloggers are just the same.
2. Answer the phone less. In order to have time to comment more, something else needs to give.  For me, it will definitely be the phone.  I have caller ID and can recognize calls from family, colleagues or clients.  If the number doesn't show as any of those three that I recognize, I don't answer.  Ever.  In the latter half of 2007, I started doing this and it helped to avoid time-sucking calls.  For anyone interested in ever pitching me anything, the worst possible way to do it would be to call me.  Best would be email, and that will likely continue into 2008.  Technically speaking, I realize this is probably not a social media resolution as much as a general one.  If that bothers you, feel free to call me.
3. Make better friends (and be one too). The first thing I should clarify is that this is not a criticism of online friends that I have now.  The danger is, with all these social networks and invites flying back and forth, there are people who are now my "friends" that I don't know very well.  My third resolution is to try harder to get to know them.  Though it's tempting to get into a race where your aim becomes to reach 1000 followers on Twitter or and equally high number of Facebook friends, it doesn't offer anything more than a temporary ego boost.  I want to be friends with people that I have some sort of personal connection with, and who feel the same with me.  I should be able to send each one a note to ask for help with something, and they should feel the same ability to do so with me.  That's what I mean by better friends.

I figure, if I can do those three things then I'll be on my way to a great 2008.  Well ... that and eating better or exercising more often, of course.

The Dilbert Blog and the Danger of Blog Dissonance

The author of one of the greatest blogs on the Internet announced a few weeks ago that he would be posting far less often.  In a world where it seems that everyone (and their mom) is starting a blog for one reason or another, seeing one prominent and popular blogger decide to do it less often captured my attention, and it should capture yours too.  The blogger I'm talking about, of course, is Scott Adams - creator of Dilbert.  His blog serves up his signature wit in narrative form and offers his reasoned approach to highlighting stupidity in the world, both inside and outside of the workplace. 

Recently, he published a book compendium of his blog posts titled Stick to Drawing Comics, Monkey Brain! and noted on his blog that his original reasons for blogging were fourfold:

1. Advertising dollars
2. Compiling the best posts into a book.
3. Growing the audience for Dilbert
4. Artistic satisfaction.

Ultimately, he realized he was failing on two of these counts, and his experience offers an interesting case study of a situation where blogging may not be the panacea that many marketers today are tempted to see it as.  He notes in his post that though he gets great satisfaction from writing on his blog, he sometimes offers political commentary that some Dilbert readers don't understand or agree with.  His voice, in my opinion is a brilliant and necessary one on the wrong choices that society and politicians are making all around us ... but the problem that he faced was that readers and lovers of Dilbert did not necessarily translate into fans of his blog.  Invariably, he would get comments from people who would swear never to read Dilbert again because of what he said on his blog.  Right or wrong, the blog ended up lowering Scott's audience, not increasing it.  That combined with the fact that people were using RSS feeds to get around the ads meant that reasons 1 and 3 from his list of reasons to start blogging were not coming true. 

You can certainly argue with Scott's desire to make money on his blog or fault him for having the wrong expectations about what his blog could achieve ... but his example offers an important lesson about blogging.  Great content is not enough to keep and sustain a blog if your blog creates a blog dissonance (an inconsistency between your blog and your brand).  The power of blogging is that it can bring your identity forward to help you more authentically connect with your audience.  The problem for Scott is that the voice many Dilbert readers expect from him is the voice of Dilbert ... not the voice of Scott Adams.  For people like me, who think Scott himself is brilliant, we are likely to read the blog.  For other Dilbert readers, however, the blog is a different voice to that of Dilbert.  It is the classic writer/actor versus character problem.  It is why people still walk up to Patrick Stewart and call him Captain Picard, or why Michael Richards will always be Kramer.  It is also the reason why the Dilbert Blog, written in the voice of Scott Adams created a blog dissonance.  Free or not free, if your blog ends up having a different voice than what your audience expects, then you may need to come to a similar realization about your blog. 

17 Unpublished Posts And A Blogging Lesson

Over the last two and a half years of blogging, I've published many tips and tricks to help people who are just starting blogging on how to find time to blog, styles of blogging or ways to optimize your blog.  One thing I haven't written that much about is how I decide whether something is good enough to post.  To say I write about what I'm interested in is probably pretty obvious - but I don't always like everything I write.  What I realized recently was a lesson that I had learned and been using on my blog, but never shared before. 

One trick I have talked about before is that I have a simple notepad document where I write my blog posts, collect ideas, and essentially keep all my rough thoughts and writing before cutting and pasting them into Typepad.  You can probably imagine that over two and a half years, this file is pretty long.  During my time away from blogging, I went through it to see if there were some posts I had written previously which I could publish.  To my surprise, there were 17.  Not 17 ideas for posts (I have dozens of those), but 17 fully written blog posts that I never published for one reason or another.  Sometimes I didn't like my perspective in them.  Other times I didn't feel that I had a strong point of view.  Still other times, the post was good but the timing for posting was wrong.  For one reason or another, I wrote all of these posts and then decided to bench them. 

My first thought was that some of these posts could be a perfect archive of material to quickly publish while I would be away from blogging.  Unfortunately, as I read through them, I could tell they were mostly average and would not make the greatest posts.  Of course, I could improve or rewrite some of them, but the easy thing to do would have been to just post them as good ideas and not worry too much about the writing.  I didn't, which leads me to my piece of advice for bloggers who are building their blog and struggling with continually putting out good content ... don't let "blog guilt" or a feeling that writing is a necessity drive you to publish content that you're not happy with.  Sometimes what you don't write says more about you than what you do. 

Announcing The Ultimate Marketing Bookstore

Several months ago I participated in the LitLiberation Blogger Challenge launched by my friend Tim Ferriss to try and raise money for DonorsChoose.org (a site which allows teachers to submit funding proposals to ask for help doing something they don't normally get the funding for).  Around the same time, I started playing around with Amazon Affiliate links and made more than ten bucks on links by just using a few links on several blog posts.  That's only a small amount of money, but it got me thinking about the potential of using an affiliate program to generate money for charity in the marketing world.  Over the time that I was away from blogging, one of my side projects was to start contacting several influential people to see if they would be willing to participate in a new kind of bookstore - which I called The Ultimate Marketing Bookstore.  Today I am launching it (although I will resist the temptation to call it a "Beta launch").  Here's how I described the purpose of the site and what makes it different:

This site is different because it features all the reading lists of marketers that you already know and respect in one place.  From CEOs to marketing directors to top marketing bloggers - The Ultimate Marketing Bookstore lets you see and shop from all their reading lists ... and all for a good cause.

The way most of us find out about great marketing books is the same way that we learn about great products ... through recommendations from people we trust.  Most online bookstores are just categories of books selected by one or two people.  They are great if you trust those people, but they are not comprehensive. 

As I describe above, all the proceeds from affiliate commissions that this site generates will be donated to DonorsChoose.org on a monthly basis and I plan to try and spread the word in the marketing community about this new bookstore and will be adding new names on a weekly basis.  Here are a few reasons why I think this idea can work:

1. Collects a central hub of reading lists from marketers that are currently widely distributed online. 
2. Encourages marketers who are not sharing their reading lists to do so in an easy way.
3. Makes great marketing books easier to find and buy.
4. Creates a community of marketing book readers and allows them to contribute to a good cause
5. Offers a platform for new marketing books to get promoted to an interested audience

That's the initial idea, but I'd love to hear some feedback on what you think could make it better.  I am still reaching out to marketers to add their book lists, so stay tuned in the next few weeks as I will likely be adding lots more names to this list, and I plan to publish updates with money raised and associate this bookstore with a challenge on DonorsChoose.org so the amount raised (and what the dollars are being spent on) is highly visible.  Blog badges and other tools to promote the site are in the works as well.  Any other suggestions?

Note: A big thank you to all the people who responded to my LinkedIn question about which charity could be the best to support for this.  DonorsChoose.org was the most popular suggestion.

A Recap of Ideas from Nielsen's CGM Summit 2007

I spent the day today at the Nielsen CGM Summit in NY listening to some panels and presentations from Nielsen and many of their clients about the future of measuring CGM.  One thing I was looking forward to about this event in particular is that the percentage of brands vs. agencies in attendance would be much more favored toward brands.  It is sadly ironic when you think about all the events that agency folks attend to basically talk to themselves, while their clients are all interested in (and spending time attending) events on measurement (which few creative folks from agencies would be able to stay awake through).  I must admit, I had a bit of a hard time staying awake myself today ... but to be fair, that was probably due to my redeye from the west coast to NY last night. 

In any case, I managed to stay awake throughout the day long enough to take some notes on some key takeaways from the summit which you will find below.  I also had the chance to meet several folks in person that I have been reading or known from afar, including Peter Kim, Henry Copeland, and Emanuel Rosen (author of The Anatomy of Buzz).  Though some of the "wonder of Nielsen" presentations that I expected throughout the day ran a bit long (not yours, Pete!) - overall the day was a great deep dive into all the ways we can and should be measuring.  As one speaker shared earlier in the day, "media is not an island" and is interconnected as consumers watch and interact with messages across mediums. Marketers may be specialists in one particular channel (TV, Online, Mobile, WOM, etc.) ... but consumers are most definitely becoming experts in all of them and use them concurrently. 

Anyway, here are some key notes and insights I took away from the event:

1. Influencers are emailers.  There was an interesting data point in one of the presentations that said that 55% of people who were considered "speakers" (those who share opinions vocally) have emailed directly to a company about a product that they liked.  This was a big insight throughout the day, as it indicated that brands seeking their influencers may simply need to listen more closely to the feedback they are already getting.
2. CGM generates powerful insights, not just influential voices to "target" - In response to a question from Max, I shared this point of view during the recap of the day and it was something that came up repeatedly throughout the morning.  Listening to CGM can drive strategy if you find the gaps which you can use CGM and social media to solve.  One example I shared was using CGM to find the conversation about Julian Beever (a sidewalk chalk artist) before we started our Fountain of Youth program for Aveeno.  We learned that there was lots of discussion online where people wanted to see more of his images and know how he does it.  So we created a Flickr gallery of all his images and a video of him drawing to rave reviews online.
3. Buzzphrase #1: Consumer Fortified Media - This was a new concept that Pete introduced in his presentation about how brands are putting their commercial messages online (like Dove Evolution), and consumers are talking about them and adding credibility to these messages, thus making them fortified.  Of course, there is a handy acronym for this as well: CFM.  (I suppose it could be CFM2 when those commercial messages are for products already "fortified" ... um, like Fruit Loops).
4. A new reason 2008 Superbowl ads will be better than the game - The guy from Fox Interactive shared that next year Fox has a deal with the NFL to create an official site where the 30 second spots will be accompanied by "long form video."  The smart marketers will take the chance to create "making of" secondary ads around their $3 million Superbowl spots.  Not sure how CGM plays a part here (unless lots of brands do the "you can create our Superbowl ad" thing again), but I still thought this idea of extending the most watching ads in the world with long form content behind them is a great concept.  Maybe worth an idea bar post at some point ...
5. "Getting out of the way" is a strategy - During the panel where media brands shared what they believe will happen in 2010, the guy from CBS talked about the things that they are doing and noted a significant moment where a random user placed a clip from Letterman where he interviewed Paris Hilton on YouTube and the clip got millions of views.  His point ... we didn't go after him, which signifies a great case study.  I loved the irony that getting out of the way is now considered a strategy.  Actually, sometimes it's the best one. 
6. Buzzphrase #2: Consumer Emulation - In this second concept from Pete's presentation early in the day, he talked about how we are in the midst of a wave of "consumer emulation."  Citing examples like the JetBlue and Mattel CEOs addressing the public as if they were doing consumer produced Youtube videos, or politicians and celebs who have Facebook or MySpace pages  - the point he made is that the pros are sometimes emulating the amateurs.  And of course, sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't ...
7. It's not about volume anymore - The great conflict with how brands used to purchase media to buy influence online versus how they do now is that tricky measure of CPMs.  When you are buying in blocks of thousands of impressions, it is impossible to say you are not buying volume.  Yet as many marketers noted today, less is really becoming more.  One thought I shared is that sponsorships of blogs and social media sites that are persistent can offer a much higher value, but not measured in terms of page views, but rather in terms of brand perception.
8. The silo-fication of marketing remains a barrier - Many of the brands that participated in the day were large ones, and all seemed to struggle with similar issues when it comes to ownership.  This was not about the typical debate on whether blogs belong in corporate comm, or product development, or marketing, etc.  The silos on a macro level are those between marketing/communications, customer service, product testing, and other large divisions.  In many large organizations, these groups are in geographically disparate locations.  CGM may be a brilliant place to gather insight, but if the marketing team who gets the blog monitoring reports isn't sharing them with product development, or the customer service team who is speaking with a blogger doesn't share that information with marketing ... the power of CGM is never realized.

technorati tags: nielsen nielsencgmsummit cgm cgmsummit consumergeneratedmedia socialmedia cocreation marketing peteblackshaw rohitbhargava

del.icio.us tags: nielsen nielsencgmsummit cgm cgmsummit consumergeneratedmedia socialmedia cocreation marketing peteblackshaw rohitbhargava
icerocket tags: nielsen nielsencgmsummit cgm cgmsummit consumergeneratedmedia socialmedia cocreation marketing peteblackshaw rohitbhargava

Blog Action Day: 7 Tips on Eating Differently To Impact Climate Change

One thing I can't resist is an ambitious project.  As a marketer, if there is a groundswell for something that I believe in or find interesting, I am highly likely to try and be a part of it.  That's why I join all sorts of groups, and why I try to lend my voice to causes that I believe are worthwhile.  The latest effort that I have been looking forward to being part of is also the reason why I'm posting twice in a single day ... something I don't usually do.  Today is Blog Action Day - something I have been promoting on the sidebar of my blog for several weeks now.

The aim of the project is to collect together all kinds of bloggers to talk about the environment.  The site featured a very smart way of letting bloggers sign up early and attaches a currency to being first in how all the blog participants are listed (in order of joining rather than by size of blog - so I'm in the 4001 to 5000 list).  The built in measurement of the site is also done through aggregating the readers via RSS, which they planned for by requesting the RSS link for every blog that wanted to participate when you signed up.  So far, it's a brilliant model for how to run a blog centric social marketing campaign - and the results are stellar so far.  The site boasts more than 15,000 blogs participating with an aggregated RSS reach of more than 12 million readers, and is publishing real time updates on buzz on the Blog Action Day blog.

Let's consider this reach for a moment.  One of the big measurement challenges in blogging is to equate an RSS reader with a regular old impression.  Impressions are typically measured on a monthly basis and multiplied out.  RSS readers are individual readers and therefore far more accurate.  I happen to believe an RSS reader is more involved than a regular impression as well - but how much more?  Even if you conservatively say it is worth 2x as much, this gives the reach of Blog Action day nearly 25 million readers.  On a single day.  That's pretty impressive.

But the point of this post is to talk about the reach but to talk about the environment.  My original thought was to come up with something new to say about it ... but while I was live blogging at the Corporate Climate Response event a few months ago, I published a post about tips for eating differently to impact climate change.  That's my contribution for Blog Action Day, republished below:

7 Tips on Eating Differently To Impact Climate Change

During a session run by Tara Garnett from the Food Climate Research Network at the Corporate Climate Response Conference, she shared a wide range of interesting research that was likely difficult for most participants to absorb quickly enough (and extremely difficult to keep up with for blogging purposes!). Luckily, FCRN has a fantastic research archive published online at their website and also provide links to an assortment of research from other groups collected into a single archive. One of the more interesting points Garnett raised was what steps regular consumers could take in order to change their own eating habits to make an impact on CO2 emissions. This is often a little talked about topic, and as Garnett noted, it is notoriously difficult to ask consumers to do - mostly because of the huge cultural significance of food and the difficulty of sacrifice. For many consumers, however, it may simply be a lack of information. For all of them, here are 7 tips Garnett shared about ways you can change your eating habits to have an impact:

1. Change the balance of what you eat (less meat and dairy, “lower down” on the food chain)
2. Choose seasonal field grown foods (require less storage, heating & transport)
3. Do not eat or purchase certain foods (including foods that are hothoused or those that are air freighted)
4. Reduce your dependence on the “cold chain” (get rid of the second freezer, choose less processed robust foods and do more frequent non car-based shopping)
5. Waste less food (improve your “food turnover” to eat what you buy sooner and reduce wastage)
6. Cook more efficiently (cook for more people and for several days at a time, use the oven less frequently)
7. Redefine your ideal for quality (be willing to accept variability in quality and supply

In addition to this post, here are a few other posts from this blog over the past year which may hopefully inspire your thinking and perhaps even inspire some action:

"Greenest Hits" From Influential Marketing Blog:

• The Greenest Sports Event on Earth
• The Marketing of "An Inconvenient Truth"
• Live Earth Includes DC, Thanks To The Native Americans
• One Hour No Power Campaign - And Other Ways to Save the World
• Wikimapia, Google's Green Summer and Marketing Mashups

technorati tags: blogactionday green environment climatechange blog marketing socialmarketing inconvenienttruth
del.icio.us tags: blogactionday green environment climatechange blog marketing socialmarketing inconvenienttruth
icerocket tags: blogactionday green environment climatechange blog marketing socialmarketing inconvenienttruth

10 Truths of Marketing in a Web2.0 World

I am in Austin today participating in the eMarketing Summit as part of the Innotech Conference.  I had the chance to do a lunch keynote presentation following Allen Olivo of Yahoo - focused on marketing in a Web2.0 world.  The presentation had a great crowd of engaged people and most (surprisingly) managed to stay awake despite my excellent spot right after lunch.  Below is the presentation I gave at the event, and I am told there will be a podcast of the presentation with audio synched with slides online in the next day or two so I will share the link for that as soon as I have it.

Update (10/15/07) - Read a Dutch Translation of this presentation from Enthousiasmeren

Influential Marketing Blog Featured in Wall Street Journal

Many of you may have already caught this yesterday, but this blog was cited in the Recommended Reading  section of the Wall Street Journal yesterday in an article by Keith Huang.  As Jay Berkowitz from Ten Golden Rules shares on his team blog, my blog was one of 60 resources that they recommended to the journalist as part of their reading list and was selected from that list as a recommended resource for companies looking to "optimize their online presence."  Here's the writeup:

Influential Marketing Blog, rohitbhargava.typepad.com
Rohit Bhargava's blog is intellectual and educational. In a recent post, he discusses the art of stamp collection and how, even today, many smaller countries use stamps as a key marketing tool. He writes, 'Next time you pass a post office in any country, pay attention to how they are using their philately to promote the country, cater to tourists, or commemorate moments of significance.'

It is a great media hit and to be selected from a list of what I am guessing were 60 stellar resources is flattering.  I'm in awe at being included among the other bloggers and authors mentioned in the article - including Seth Godin, Steve Rubel, Matt Cutts, John Battelle, Chris Anderson, Joseph Jaffe, and Danny Sullivan. Thanks to Jay for including me in this great list, and to Keith for selecting to include my blog!

Casting Call: Your Chance to Speak at Ad:Tech NY

One of the questions I have gotten from more than a few readers is how to get into speaking at events and conferences.  It is surprisingly more easy than it may seem, but the real challenge is breaking into your first conference speaking chance.  Perhaps you work for a small company, or you are still starting out your career.  Whatever the reason, you might feel like speaking at events is open to a closed realm of people.  It's not.  In an effort to open up what can sometimes seems like an insular world of marketing speakers, I got clearance from the organizers of Ad:Tech NY to do something different in recruiting speakers for my upcoming panel at Ad:Tech.  Consider this post an open casting call for a speaking slot on the panel.  Here is a description of the panel:

wednesday, november 7, 11:00am - 12:00pm
Creating Talkability: Using WOM Lessons to Make Your Marketing Go Viral
No one creates a "viral" video. As much as any marketing team wants to go into a campaign with the goal of having it take off and get discussed all over the Internet, the real aim is to create something talkable. Once enough people talk about it, you go viral...but that is an outcome, not the intial goal. In this session, we've gathered individuals who know all about going viral—both on purpose and by accident. Each will share tips on what it takes to go viral, and whether doing so should be your aim. If you want to know how to avoid getting ignored, create something worth talking about and understand whether a science exists for taking something viral, this panel has the answers.

I could fill this panel with folks that I know (as most panel speakers are selected) - but I thought it would be more interesting to see if we can use the panel to discover a new speaker.  Someone who hasn't spoken at an event before but is looking for their first chance. 

So, here's your shot.  Here's how you can participate:

1. Write a paragraph or two explaining what perspective you would bring to the panel that the audience would be interested in.
2. Post your submission through a comment on this post, or on your own blog a