Influential Marketing Blog

How "Location Shifting" Could Reinvent GeoTargeted Online Marketing

There's a pretty simple idea that could transform the landscape of targeted online communications, but no one is doing it ... yet.  If you have ever done any online marketing that has been targeted by geography, you know that there are pretty much only two ways to do it currently online:

1. Based on IP address of where the user is accessing the Internet. Notoriously unreliable because of shared servers and inability to truly pinpoint a user's location.
2. Based on a profile that the user has created indicating where they live. This is much better with two big assumptions ... that people tell you the truth about where they are, and that they are usually there (as opposed to travelling).

For someone like me, this system makes it impossible to target me on a geographic basis. I am always travelling, often using Internet through shared connections in multiple locations, and my Facebook profile says I belong to the San Francisco network (intentionally), even though I live in DC.  My email address has the word Australia in it and I registered it while I was living in Australia and never changed my region. There are a lot of other consumers like me, making it tough for any business to truly target geographically by relying on such uncertain data. The one solution with promise involves using the mobile platform to geotarget based on where a person physically is. This is good, but still incomplete because it doesn't allow you to predict where someone will be.  What if there was a way to geotarget your messages not to where a user currently is, or even where they say they live, but to where they will be?

This is possible today, because more than ever before, people are now broadcasting where they are going to be and what they are currently doing through social media.  Look at a platform such as Twitter, where people routinely update their status to indicate where they are and what they are feeling.  Or a travel site like Dopplr, which I use to update my upcoming trips.  To a degree, this is private information - but many people publish it live for anyone to see.  Location shifting means geotargeting your marketing communications based on information about location that your consumers are giving you or posting online.  As a result, if smart marketers started using this information, a whole range of things could be possible:

1. Banks could verify that you are travelling and not have to cancel your cards because of suspected fraud
2. Marketers could send special offers to people who express a particular sentiment in a certain location (eg - someone Twitters that they are hungry in Manhattan, and gets a Twitter message back with a coupon to a local pizza shop)
3. Car services could automatically update their drivers who are waiting for pickups
4. Your friends could invite you to events through social networks based on where you will be and not just where you live

What else could be possible with location shifting?  Let me know if you think this idea works.

Marketing In The Age Of Disposable Email

Some guy named Bob probably hates me. I don't know him and he doesn't know me ... but he's the unfortunate registrant of Bob.com and has used his first name for his email address. Yup, you guessed it - that makes his email address bob@bob.com. That also happens to be the email address that I have used for the past ten years to fill out forms that require an email address that I don't want to give. For more than a decade, Bob has been getting my junk email and to tell you a truth, I feel bad about it. That alone isn't the reason I've had to give up my use of Bob's email, though. The reason is that I can't pick up those confirmation emails that you need to click on in order to activate an account.

Recently, I came across a site called Mintemail that has found an interesting solution ... disposable email. This is essentially what it sounds like - an email address that is good for four hours, usually just long enough to use to register for a site, get a confirmation email and pick it up. The service has lots of smart features built in, such as automatically saving the email address to your clipboard so you're ready to paste it into a form. Every once in a while, there is a solution so simple you wonder why no one else has done it first. I love seeing things like that and this definitely qualifies. If you have a form that requires your audience to enter an email address they are not interested in giving you, it looks like you won't be able to rely on the confirmation email to get you a working email address anymore. In the age of disposable email, it looks like you're going to have to work harder to earn the right to ask for a user's email address. I suppose the upside is that now those bogus emails will bounce after four hours. I bet poor Bob wishes I found this site a lot earlier.

Link Credit: http://www.vqcdesigns.com/blog/

Everywhere Mag and the Arrival of the User Generated Magazine

As someone passionate about travel and the travel industry, I pay a lot of attention to sites that are out there.  Travel has long been an active industry online, whether you talk about people's behaviour with increasingly booking travel online, or the slate of review and opinion sites that let people share their opinions about travel destinations. From Yelp to Driftr to Dopplr there are new travel sites that let you do just about anything you want and they are all great ... yet none have quite found the right formula to harness the one thing that travel enthusiasts like me all have in common: a passion for talking about travel and sharing my experiences.

Sure, I could post a review on Yelp or publish my own travel blog - but what about something a bit more ... substantial?  Something that I get a bit more credit for.  Travel magazines are usually substantial in that way because they do manage to capture the wanderlust that characterizes many travel enthusiasts and offer a real experience you can hold in your hands.  The problem is, very few of them build on the great content being created by individual travellers online because they have a professional editorial staff to do it for them.  Everywhere Magazine is a publication composed entirely of user generated content.  Every month, the editors select the best articles and photos (based on their editorial team and a system of voting on their website) and lay out a new magazine. This is brilliant for a number of reasons, but most specifically the costs they save on hiring a staff of writers and paying their expenses is put into the production of the magazine which is every bit as professional and beautiful as any other travel magazine likely to be on your coffee table. 

I joined the community and have several ideas for articles that I am just itching to write about, because they relate to places or things that I experienced and am passionate about, or tips for travelling better.  Either way, it will be interesting to see if this model of a completely user generated magazine could work in other industries.  Is this unique to travel because of the passion people have for writing and photography in this category, or could it work for any industry?  Anyone seen other examples?

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.

How NBC Universal Is Helping CES Go Beyond Gadgets

The International Consumer Electronics Show every January in Vegas is one of the largest trade shows in the world and usually the one event that drives the world gadget wild.  Featuring international debuts of all kinds of new products, some of the early buzz about CES this year has focused on new products like a 150 inch plasma screen, innovations like laser TV and lots of big name invite-only parties.  CES takes over Vegas for a week and all accounts I have heard about it so far make it seem akin to a trip to India (ie - if you haven't been, you have to go ... but be prepared for a bit of chaos).

This year, I'll be there as part of the Intel team and one of my key roles will be to share content and happenings in real time (as well as sponsoring the "It Won't Stay in Vegas CES Blogger Party," of course).  For all the pre-buzz about CES this year, however, there is one interesting thing that is happening for the very first time worth thinking about as we head into 2008.  At the world's largest exhibition of gadgets, one of the largest booths at the show will be from a company that produces no technology or gadgets at all.

NBC Universal has what they are calling the "first-ever "pure content company to present at CES." They are also the official broadcast partner, with two full studios where they will be broadcasting live throughout the event as the "official broadcast partner" for CES. Aside from gathering all 300 brands of the company in one place, the booth will have downloadable content, live reels, and a sex appeal that many other pure tech booths will find it hard to match.  Not everyone can bring in stars like Masi Oka, Brian Williams, Donny Deutsch and others so easily. 

At the start of 2008, this is a telling sign of the new world of tech which has already arrived.  One where gadgets are not just symbols of geekiness, but tools to help us get the content that we want wherever we want it, at a higher quality and on demand.  The future of tech is about enabling access to content, and NBCU is going to be right in the middle of it at CES.  Whether you are a fan of the network or not, you have to appreciate the marketing strategy behind marrying their library of content with the technolust that CES will fuel.  Ironically, one of the hottest stories of CES this year might just be a booth whose coolest "gadget" is just a 2GB branded USB flash drive.

The PR Revolution Amazon's Kindle May Be Bringing

Do you have a Kindle yet?  All the buzz about the Wii aside, the most lusted after gift this holiday season for media pros may just be Amazon's new digital content reader called the Kindle (which sold out within 5.5 hours upon first release a few weeks ago).  The device may not have an Apple-esque level of sex appeal, but it does represent a huge shift in thinking that may just propel portable digital content and ebooks in particular to the kind of widespread adoption that digital music has already enjoyed.  For that reason, many people are calling the Kindle the next ipod.  If you are like me, you're probably fed up with hearing about how everything new is about to "revolutionize" the world of media.  Let's take a little reality check.  Not everything has the impact that they think they can have on the world of media.  There are a lot of voices out there. 

So what makes the Kindle different?  More importantly, what makes it something that you need to pay attention to today?  Here are four reasons why the Kindle may be bringing a PR revolution (for real):

1. It makes RSS a necessity. If you have managed to get by this far without using RSS feeds (or offering them to your content if you are a content publisher), those days will soon be over.  The way that Kindle users subscribe to new content is by adding RSS feeds, similar to how you can download music or subscribe to podcasts on iTunes.  This means having a web site is no longer enough.  If your content is not available in RSS format, you may soon be invisible.
2. It finally integrates the reading experience.  The problem right now with magazines, newspapers, blogs and books is that most exist in their own channels when it comes to reading.  This means you may subscribe to RSS feeds from a newspaper and blogs, and get a magazine and still buy books ... but you have to carry all of them.  With the Kindle, you can buy all or read any of these in the same place ... and even send your own documents to the Kindle so you can read them on the go.  It really can be a house for all documents of any kind.
3. It is puts a premium on real time information. For most of us, the types of devices we are used to using all synch with your computer.  In that sense, they are nothing more than glorified hard drives.  That's all the ipod is.  But the Kindle has built in EVDO wireless connectivity which means users are never left looking for a hotspot to connect and always have the latest information from their favorite media sources.  Think about this for a second ... if all media can be updated real time, then editorial errors can be corrected (rather than publishing apologies), and users have an increased appetite and expectation of media that is never out of date.
4. It takes advantage of Amazon's Library. The important thing not to forget about the Kindle is that it also has immediate full access to the full library of Amazon.com ... which means just about every book.  And with a direct tie-in to a user's Amazon account, you can purchase just about any book or piece of content Amazon sells instantly.  From an on demand resource shelf, this is phenomenal (imagine having the AP Stylebook available at a moment's notice). 

If you put all these pieces together, the interesting conclusion is that the Kindle may represent the first real product that challenges our perceptions about how people are consuming content.  Once this starts to change, the way that media publishers create and distribute their content will really change ... thus creating a new environment for PR pros to operate within.  Are you ready for a real time rss-based always on media landscape?  If not, now's the time to start.

Note: This post is republished from the original that was written for the 360 Digital Influence Blog.

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. 

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.

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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!

8 Unique Reasons People Like Twitter (And Why Microblogging Matters)

On the surface, capturing what you are doing on daily, hourly or even minutely (double meaning intended) basis seems like a useless activity.  Who has the time to send these incessant "tweets" all day long?  As it turns out, lots of smart folks with respectable jobs, but that's besides the point.  Driven by Mark Simon's dismissal of Twitter and my hectic travel schedule of 5 cities in 5 days last week, I decided to give Twitter a real test run and become an active user of my dormant account I created several months ago but never really used.  This post is a compilation of the lessons I learned about Twitter and an inside look at the appeal of microblogging and why smart marketers should pay attention to this trend and some ideas for the possibilities it offers. 

1. Broadcast Yourself For Real. This may be YouTube's tagline, but it really applies more to Twitter.  As you start sending these messages to update what you are doing right now and gain "followers" - you start to feel like you are broadcasting yourself.  When you're Twittering, you're on the grid and sharing your thoughts and actions real time.
2. Replace Invasive Instant Messaging. I don't use instant messaging at work, because it is interruptive.  Even when you set your status, you'll often get instant messages that are hard to ignore.  Twitter has the same qualities of instant messaging, without the interruptive qualities.  As a result, it lets you send quick short instant messages to people that they can view and answer when they have a moment.  I found myself quickly using direct tweets the way I might use instant messaging to ask a quick question to one of my contacts.
3. Build An Entourage Quickly.  With the easy import feature from Gmail and the relatively low barrier for following someone, I was up to more than 70 contacts in my Twitter account within 5 minutes of starting to use the site.  Not bad for a quick payoff, considering how long it would take to build a friends list of that many people for a new user of any other social network like Facebook or Linkedin.  Even better, the vast majority of people who you follow will start following you right away.
4. Get Satisfaction by Venting. Throughout the week last week I found myself occasionally annoyed at a stupid ad or a flight delay.  I would never "waste" a blog post on these topics most of the time, but found myself twittering them with great satisfaction.  Somehow, just sharing the negative experience of having to walk all the way to the last gate in the B terminal at O'hare made me feel better about it.
5. Always Find Out What's New.  With Twitter, I knew right away when Matt posted a photo of the guys from our panel at Promo Live, and when Gordon Moore finished his chat at IDF.  The running commentary of the latest news from my contacts was actually really useful and somewhat addictive.  Longer term, at the very least I'll be sending a Twitter update every time I publish a new blog post.
6. Fills A Gap Left By Blogging. Now that I have gained a few thousand consistent readers, I find myself considering more carefully what I write about.  The people who subscribe to this blog invest their time and expect to find something of use ... and there are often times when I abandon a topic because I don't have a strong point of view about it.  My blog has never been about pointing out things out there without some commentary.  Yet sometimes there is something that is interesting which I would just like to share a link on, but not necessarily write about.  Twitter is the perfect way to share those links and a quick thought without spending a whole blog post on it.
7. Highly Useful for Live Blogging. There are several events in the past few months that I have had the chance to attend and live blog.  For most, my live blogging consisted of taking notes during sessions, coming up with a point of view and posting a blog post on it.  This is what I did at the CCR event, and the Ogilvy Verge event.  At Intel's IDF and Promo Live, I tried using Twitter for live blogging instead and found it to be really useful because you can get your thoughts out much more quickly, you can really do it real time, and it forces you to focus on capturing the really key points.  I'll be Twittering many of my other upcoming events now as well.
8. Facilitate Meetups.  When I was heading to a media event after the first day of IDF, I was looking for bloggers to invite to the event.  Luckily Karl from ExperienceCurve spotted me on Twitter and suggested we meet up.  This is one of the earliest benefits that I realized some time ago about Twitter, but it was really nice to see it in action.  Imagine this blown out beyond cities to destinations and you can really visualize the potential power of Twitter.

So what does this all add up to?  For me, Twitter is a compelling platform that can easily become addictive once you start to use it ... a quality that many great sites share.  The marketing opportunity here is super simple:

1. Start following people that care about what you do
2. Respond to their messages where appropriate to start dialogue
3. Send consistent and substantial updates of your own
4. Use Twitter as a platform to inform your followers of news they might care about

Today the end of my week long experiment, I'll be continuing to use Twitter and I'd suggest you give it a go as well.  Now I need to go and send an update to my group letting them know this post is live ...

How To Find Sites Faster Online Without Using Google

Google is great when you are searching for a single webpage or source of information.  Many of my searches still fit that category - so I'm a big Google user.  The problem is, more and more often I find myself searching not for a single page, but for a web site.  A lot of times that may be a new website or a popular website that many people have found useful.  When it comes to a search like this, Google is not so helpful.  Here are a few reasons Google doesn't work so well in these situations:

• Newer websites seldom appear highly because they have not been out long enough to get ranked and assessed in Google's algorithm
• The most useful content is sometimes not optimized and therefore appears too low in results to ever be found
• Crawler brings back any page, and not just the homepage of sites, not useful if you want to find a site instead of a page
• There is no popularity index to see what sites or pages people recently found useful (pagerank is based on links and clicks)
• Using keywords and algorithms is sometimes not as powerful as using tags and keywords other people have assigned to content online

Instead, I use del.icio.us. Rather than using an algorithm, you can use del.icio.us to "search" using the tags that people have assigned to links.  Each link has a rating based on the number of others who have also saved that link. The difference is, you are finding sites instead of individual web pages.  For an example of the difference, here's an experience I recently had when seeking new online food communities to check out:

Google search for "online food community web2.0"
(Useful sites returned in first page: Tablefinder - if only I could read Swedish)

del.icio.us tag search for "food+community+web2.0"
(Useful sites returned in first page: foodio54, OpenBottles, Cork'd, Tastefora, GroupRecipies, OpenSourceFood, Imcooked, Chowhounds, TheDailyPlate)

Just this week I have already used del.icio.us to find usage statistics for women online, popular new online food and cooking communities (example above), and a list of green blogs.  Each search was much faster on del.icio.us and yielded useful results much more easily.  This is the power of using tagging and social bookmarking to find information online.  It is also the reason why the next time you seek information online you might want to start on a site like del.icio.us instead of with Google.

The Complete Guide to Short Term Blogging

One of the most challenging aspects of blogging that hold many companies and individuals back from jumping into starting their own blog is the ongoing commitment that blogs often require.  Creating a blog and posting frequently for a month - and then letting it slowly die is sadly common for corporate blogging initiatives.  Clearly starting a blog is easier than maintaining one.  The reasons are relatively well known ... sometimes it is a lack of commitment or leadership, other times it is simply that the group blog is not considered a priority or is not clearly outlined as a job related responsibility of an individual or a group of individuals.  The least understood reason, however, is that perhaps the blog should never have been created as a permanent effort in the first place. 

Having had our fair share of shorter term blogging experiences for client engagements (including one current one for the Pandemic Flu blog which will end tomorrow and our recent live blogging experience for the CCR event in London) - there are a host of lessons we have learned about the role of short term blogging and when to use it effectively for marketing and promotion.  For reference, I consider a short term blog to be a blog that is intended to live and be actively maintained for anything less than 3 months (not including time when it might be live but abandoned).  Below is a guide to help you determine when to use a short term blog and tips for doing it effectively.

When to Use a Short Term Blog:

1. Situation #1: Event Blogging - This is by far the most common situation for short term blogging and involves creating a blog either for live blogging an event or to create anticipation in advance of an event.  Typically these blogs are run by the organizers or main sponsors of an event and include voices from participants and speakers from the event.  On a non-business level, this could include blogs launched to get ready for a family reunion or any other type of personal event.
2. Situation #2: Product or Service Launch Blogging - As it sounds, this type of blogging involves sharing insights, backstories, or any other type of information to help inform customers and enthusiasts as well as build a buzz about a soon to be launched product or service.  This type of blogging can also be a great way to solicit feedback in advance of a big launch. 
3. Situation #3: Marketing Campaign Blogging - Efforts in this category range from short term blogs as part of online sites or microsites that are launched for marketing campaigns.  Blogs in this category typically allow for real time updates, more interaction and add a conversational element to what might otherwise be a static site.  We are working on several of these projects at the moment, and they can work extremely well for engaging consumers.

How to Make Your Short Term Blog Successful:

1. Be clear about the "run dates" - Whenever a big new theater production comes to town, it always comes with run dates.  You know when the show will premiere and you know when it will leave town.  This creates an expectation, and though it can often be changed with "extended runs" (and often is if a show is popular) - theater goers usually know what to expect.  A short term blog should be treated in the same way.
2. Promote the fact that you are posting on a bell curve - With any short term blogging effort, you are likely to see posts and activity resemble the traditional bell curve of activity.  This is particularly true when short term blogging happens around an event.  Regardless, the fact that there may be one post per week until the time of the "main event" where you have 6 posts per day is ok.  In fact, it can even be a selling point if used as an incentive to get readers to return at a particular time when activity on the blog is likely to be at a peak (during an event, close to product/service launch, or another relevant moment).
3. Get ready to move in real time - A short term blog is something like a sprint, where momentum is critical to keep up because you only have a limited time to make it work.  In a sprint, you need to move fast and be ready to actively monitor and engage users in real time.  This means approving comments fast, responding to queries quickly and paying attention to the blog 24/7.  When it comes to short term blogging, get ready to live and breath everything about the blog during the time it is live.
4. Turn off your comments when you stop listening - It may seem counterintuitive as a recommendation in the context of social media, but if you won't be listening, turn off your comments.  In an ideal situation, its important to note that you should never stop listening, but the reality is usually less than ideal.  Think of it as the equivalent of the "gone fishing" sign that hangs outside local stores if the owner had to step out.  Of course, this will produce frustration from some users who expect to be able to comment forever ... but when it comes to short term blogging, if you are going to abandon the blog or leave it in a static state - you need to act like it.
5. Have a good exit strategy - You always need to have an exit strategy.  Most likely, your exit strategy for the short term blog will go in one of two directions.  Either the blog will run its course and then live on as a static site but not be actively maintained anymore, or you will transition the blog to a more permanent entity.  There is no single right answer for what to do with a short term blog ... but you may likely find that the smartest way of leveraging the initial traffic you build for the blog is to convert it into a more permanent online property.  A good exit strategy means knowing when to abandon and when to transition.

If you have recently launched or worked on a short term blogging effort, how did your experience compare to these notes?  Any other lessons to share?

Rebranding And Announcing A New Book Deal

This blog quietly turned two years old about two weeks ago - and though it was tempting to do a post just about that, there was a good reason for waiting.  Today I have two announcements - one relatively small and one relatively big.  The first small one, is that I have rebranded this blog to drop the "Interactive" from the title.  Over the course of two years I have realized that my passion is writing about marketing ideas in all forms, not just marketing that happens online or fits into a category people might consider "interactive."  Those of you who have seen my business cards or email signature already know that the promotional URL I started using for the blog is www.influentialmarketingblog.com anyway (though I am still using http://rohitbhargava.typepad.com as the primary link due to all the Technorati links that URL has now).  Rebranding to simplify also makes it a lot easier to include the blog in your blogroll without running over two lines - which I have had several complaints about!  If you are already linking to this blog and it's not too much effort, I would appreciate if you could change your link to read "Influential Marketing" or "Influential Marketing Blog."  No need to update the URL.

The second announcement is somewhat larger.  I am going to be writing a book focused on marketing authenticity and social media and am thrilled to announce that McGraw-Hill has acquired the book and Herb Schaffner (Publisher in the Business Group at McGraw-Hill Professional) will be editing.  Aside from the chance to take my writing to the next level with a more ambitious project, there are a number of other things that excite me about this partnership.  McGraw-Hill is well known and respected as the company behind publishing BusinessWeek magazine as well as a large number of books for education, business, and many other categories.  They have a huge global operation and have marketing and sales people on the ground in more than 30 countries around the world.  In short, they are the perfect publisher for this project with a large distribution network and plenty of ability to promote the book in the market. 

I plan to solicit plenty of feedback over the next few months and hope to count on many of you who read this blog consistently for candid opinions (positive and negative) to help improve the final product.  Of course, I'll be giving you full credit for any contributions you make (I believe blog karma extends to book karma).  Incidentally, if you are interested in the process behind getting a deal like this together, I would suggest checking out Tim Ferriss' post about it on Noah's blog.  Though I didn't follow exactly the same road as Tim, I certainly hope to duplicate his success and he was a great help to me in getting this project together (also, we are both with the same smart agent - Steve Hanselman).  Over the next few months, I will be rolling out several other online companion efforts around the book.  Stay tuned for more details to come ...

Rohit Bhargava: Social Media Today Podcast Just Launched!

Last week I was invited to do a podcast interview as part of the Social Media Today Weekly Podcast series being put together by Maggie Fox.  I am part of a group called the Social Media Collective which is a group of bloggers that write often about social media and it's impact on business and marketing.  Our content is republished on the Social Media Today site and it is a wonderful collection of writers and thinkers in the social media space.  During my brief conversation with Maggie, we had a good dialogue about the future of blogging, social media marketing, effective techniques and a few thoughts about social media optimization.  You can check out the podcast on the original site or on Maggie's Blog, or you can download it direcly from here. 

Trendspot: Using Social Media to Tell the Inside Story of a Book

Getting the "inside story" is an appealing thing.  Whether you are talking about business, or entertainment, or even gossip about people's daily lives, knowing the inside story means you are part of an elite club.  Inside stories are engaging, and they pass quickly from person to person (often, regardless of whether they are meant to be secrets or not).  In the publishing and entertainment world, giving people the inside story has become a big marketing trend.  "Making of" documentaries are produced for films and events.  DVD releases of films include "behind the scenes footage.  Some films (eg - King Kong) or books (eg - The Long Tail) even publish ongoing blogs throughout the creative development process.  Simon and Schuster is taking another step towards helping authors connect with readers with the recent announcement last week that they will be partnering with Turn Here to create a series of author videos to help promote books.  As Sue Fleming from Simon & Schuster explains in a ClickZ article:

"Publishing in particular has been thought of as a very old media industry, and we have a tendency to only think one-dimensionally. I think all of us who are working in [online media] have a challenge to think multi-dimensionally," said Fleming. "Books have always been promoted on television, and through a visual experience. You see an ad, or hear an ad, or you see an interview on the news... Video for us seems a logical extension."

Meeting the challenge of standing out in a sea of content competition, this type of new thinking about marketing is more and more likely to become a core part of publisher's efforts to sell books.  I wrote some time ago about 5 case studies for what I felt were very smart examples of book marketing with new thinking.  Blogs from book authors around their books are increasingly common.  Authors can "claim" their book on Amazon and respond directly to feedback in the world's largest book marketplace.  Podcasts, video interviews posted online, and even commenting on blogs are all viable ways of connecting directly with readers.  The future of book marketing is not solely about more book tours, speaking engagements and signing sessions in book stores.  It is marketing the inside stories that can make a book more than it's pages, and now more than ever authors are in a position to share them.  Social media may be changing the media landscape by giving everyone a platform to be a content creator, but it's also shifting the way that publishers market the oldest form of published content they have ... printed books.

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A Few Non-boring Ways to Use Twitter For Marketing

Since around the time of SxSW and perhaps earlier, the buzz on Twitter has gone through the roof.  Collecting groups of text messages and emails from people cataloguing "what they are doing now" might seem like a colossal waste of time, but it has found a devoted following from bloggers and those actively engaged in social media because of the immediacy and real time appeal of sharing your thoughts.  This is different than blogging, this is like carrying a text based recorder on your shoulder to broadcast your location and current thoughts to the world.  It's not hard to see why this would appeal to bloggers who are already sharing their personal views of the world online.  Twitter adds a frame of reference and has the same live appeal of instant messenger.

Still, a quick visit to the homepage of Twitter may leave the uninitiated unimpressed.  It's mostly a collection of people you don't know talking about doing stuff you don't care about.  Even if you read these updates from people you do know, it's tough to get excited about.  The tool, though, offers a great platform for sharing experiences real time and has plenty of potential for marketing.  Here are just a few non-boring ways to use Twitter for marketing:

1. Capture the live pulse of an event - This is one of the most popular marketing uses that I have seen for Twitter, where it is used to offer a visual display of conversations happening around an event.  More and more interactive events have this, and I suspect other non-Web related events will start to incorporate it as well to offer participants a visual way to track the pulse of an event and determine where to spend time.
2. Deepen a static experience through live commentary - I saw an interesting story last week about how Fox is going to be using Twitter to promote their new show Drive by having the director provide live updates and directors commentary via Twitter throughout the show.  We will definitely be seeing more of this type of marketing in the near future. 
3. Facilitate collaborative watching - When it comes to watching video content online or on television, Twitter can allow you to watch something "alongside" anyone anywhere by sharing your impressions and reading impressions from others as a program unfolds.  This is a powerful new method of sharing feedback and ideas   
4. Add a new dimension to promotions - Scavenger hunts, user generated content campaigns, and other reality based marketing promotions are growing popularity as ways to encourage interaction from customers.  Twitter can offer a way of encouraging dialogue between promotion participants and adding an "instant message style" dimension to a promotion without the privacy and contact acceptance barriers normally associated with using IM for marketing.

Tapping Twitter for marketing is still a relatively unique ocurrence -- but from what I can see, there are plenty of opportunities.  If the popularity of the site continues to grow it's likely these opportunities will continue to get more appealing, and the list of ideas for using Twitter in marketing will grow as well.

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A Friday Question: Do We Need Platformism?

This idea is sure to rile some people up.  We are all familiar with the concepts of other "isms" where we are judged based solely on looks, race, physical appearance or some other subjective measure.  Sexism, Racism, Elitism ... these are things no one likes, and most educated people know these are wrong.  The issue many people have with blog measurement tools at the moment is that they apply the same unilateral notion of equality to all blogs and URLs.  Blogs done on Typepad are searched the same as those done on LiveJournal.  Dotcom URLs are weighted the same as DotInfo URLs.  what if this weren't so equal?  What if having a dotcom URL actually meant your site would be taken more seriously?  What if standard searches for corporate brand mentions excluded sites on more personal platforms such as Livejournal, Vox or Blogger?  Judging blogs without understanding their content is what algorithms are made to do - yet the problem with most is that they simply take terms that are mentioned and offer back jumbled results.  Just go to Blogpulse and type in any brand name you can think of, look at the search results and you will see what I mean.  In a world where URLs and platforms mattered more, a choice of platform to use would be based on reputation more than price or any other factor.  Would it be good or bad to live in a world like that?  What do you think?

A Recap of the PSFK Conference

Yesterday I had the opportunity to attend the first conference event put together by Piers and the team at PSFK focused on trends and ideas.  The agenda was very compelling going into it, and I did leave with many interesting insights and new ideas about marketing and communications.  Though I unfortunately had to duck out early due to client commitments, here are a few key observations I made in my notes:

1. Getting the "doers" to come and speak. At many industry events, there are lots of great (or average) speakers that are trained to position companies.  The tone at the PSFK was definitely more real, with Piers choosing to feature many "doers" rather than speakers.  The result at times was the necessity to really focus on the essence of what someone was saying rather than being caught up in the speaking, because the presentations could be halting or awkward.  In the end, I think that added to the appeal of the event.
2. Blogs fill a void in vertical media. This is something I had experienced, but not thought about ... how blogs are augmenting vertical trade publications in just about every industry to offer another channel for learning and information.  Elizabeth Spiers started the day with a somewhat sales-pitchey presentation about her collection of sites for Dead Horse Media, but did share the interesting observation that the secret of success behind Dealbreaker.com was that it allowed lots of 29 year old financial services workers to read something entertaining while "allaying their guilt because it is peripherally related to their jobs."  Seems like a lesson lots of other blogs have learned as well.
3. Most toaster designs suck. This is something I would never have thought of before Allan Chochinov's presentation from Core77.  He shared lots of imagery, talked about the design asthetic and illustrated how his sites was truly focused on design ideas.  Bucking the trend for many popular blogs, Core 77 does not necessarily post what they like, but rather what sparks the most ideas.  His tour of Flickr, Worth1000 and other sites were worth checking out - as is Core77 and coroflot.  If you have anything to do with design in your job, or are passionate about it, this collection of sites are must-reads.
4. Gaming was the first social revolution (maybe even leading to UGC?). This sentiment was echoed both through the presentation from David Rosenburg from JWT and Kevin Slavin from area/code.  Until about 2004, video games were played alone against the computer.  Slavin pointed to this as what people 20 years from now might call the dark ages of gaming.  Now it's social, huge and for everyone (especially people in categories you might not expect, like women and boomers).  Rosenberg's survey of the many different types of gaming, evolution of gaming and built in videos was a great 20 minute survey of a very ambitious topic. 
5. TrendSpotting is not as important at TrendUnderstanding. Simon Sinek  had many great moments as part of this panel, and one of them was pointing out that much of the crappy marketing work published recently comes from brands blindly following trends without understanding the underlying reasons and motivations for them.  Positioning the difference between the academic world and the business one, Grant McCraken from MIT shared the perspective that the academic world is very good and understanding the underlying reasons, but not quickly spotting the trend.  As Simon noted, the marketing world is just the opposite.  I'll be subscribing to his Re:focus blog in my rss reader ...
6. Using continuity instead of consistency to create a great brand experience. Going against the trend of sameness in retail locations, George Murphy (the former VP of Brand at Starbucks) shared the example of how Starbucks creates an experience of continuity without resorting to consistency.  With so many brand marketers focused on making every aspect of an experience fit together and giving consistency an undue reverance, Murphy's observation offered an insightful caution about avoiding your brand becoming stagnant because of sameness. Planned inconsistency can make a big difference in fostering your brand experience and offering some personality without losing your consistency.
7. Good guerilla marketing is not deceptive and sometimes even useful.  In a strong panel about guerilla marketing, folks from several agencies shared some core principles of doing guerilla marketing right.  The first idea that stuck out was that you cannot be deceptive otherwise you risk pissing off consumers.  The other interesting concept was that now messages could become inherently useful by offering messages or guides to locations that people need.  Floyd Hayes of Cunning also shared an interesting observation about how we use so many militaristic terms in marketing (guerilla, campaign, targeting, etc.) and perhaps we need to stop treating customers as "targets" and more as people.  Amen.
8. How to invent assvertising without becoming the "assvertising agency."  This is a topic of particular relevance for me as I focused late last year on participating in dialogue about Social Media Optimization without wanting to become the "SMO guy."  Darren Paul of Night Agency shared the story behind coming up with "assvertising" and how it helped to put his agency on the map to do much more.  It's a great lesson in not being afraid to introduce a big idea even if you are afraid of getting "type-cast" with it.  There's always a way to move on.
9. Big games and building a "public secret" really work.  Kevin Slavin's presentation about the Brand as activity was one of my favorites of the day, as he shared lots of examples of great games and real life contests that used brands as the focal point for interactive experiences.  This is the concept at the heart of the "creationstorming" idea I posted about earlier this week.  The Tucson Conqwest is a great early example of a mobile "big game" and how effective it can be.  Kevin shared lots of other examples I will be checking out, including several I am linking to in my resource link list below.
10. Art as advertising is not anonymous.  Most attendees of the event would be familiar with the intense frustration creative professionals feel after spending long hours to produce artistic work as part of a marketing effort, only to have their involvement be anonymous and hidden to everyone but the advertising community through awards shows and trade pubs.  The panel on using art for advertising was illuminating because it represents a different kind of advertising where the art is identified with the artist and the brand is simply a participant.  This was the concept we explored through our popular effort with Julian Beever for Aveeno - and seemed to represent a different type of respect for advertising that most aspired to.

As with most of these kinds of events, I also noted many sites for a follow up visit (or revisit) because of mentions in presentations and tagged them in del.icio.us.  You can check out my list of sites at http://del.icio.us/rbhargava/psfkconference.

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Understanding The 12 Main Sources of Blog Traffic

Something odd happened about ten days ago, and it got me thinking about hidden blog traffic.  As many of you who read this content directly on my blog might have noticed, I publish my Feedburner RSS subscriber count on the right hand sidebar of my