Techno//Marketer

Don't forget the rest of the digital puzzle

With all of the buzz around social media it's easy to overlook the rest of the digital marketing puzzle. Yes, it's fun to talk about Twitter and Facebook and the other new bright shiny objects, but they're just one component of a balanced online marketing strategy.

Take a look at the following chart from e-Marketer that shows how US adults prefer to have companies communicate with them. Note that email is still almost twice as requested as web sites.

That being said, social media has the opportunity to help drive business, create valuable content and serve as a landing point for various customer segments. Content is the foundation of any quality experience online, just ask anyone who's run a website.

Email - Social media (from Twitter to blogs) is centered around constant content updates. It's also a rule that very few people actually participate by commenting or adding content. Most people participate by reading and clicking (which is just as valuable in my opinion). Email is a perfect way, however, to summarize the best, most relevant conversations that are taking place.

Search - Search engines absolutely love social media content. It's categorized, updated frequently and is full of metadata. Results from blogs and other social media outlets are showing up in search result pages alongside corporate websites and official releases. The more relevant, popular, trusted sources will rise to the top...many times they'll be blogs.

Advertising - Sites like Facebook are full of user data that is being leveraged by marketers to create timely, relevant, targeted ads. Facebook made poor decisions early on with their Beacon program, but smart marketers are using the targeting to eliminate waste and only pay for the qualified clicks.

With social media as one component of digital marketing mix, keep thinking about how it can integrate with other tactics. How can you use the content generated in emails, ads, mobile messaging, search targeting, etc.? How can you extend it offline into physical items for marketing. Look at examples like Moo.com that allow you to create social artifacts that lead people back to your space online.

Social media is not an island,
it's a high-power engine on the larger marketing ship.

Social media isn't the end-all-be-all, but it offers marketers unparalleled opportunity to participate in relevant ways. It also provides a launchpad for other marketing tactics. Social media is not an island, it's a high-power engine on the larger marketing ship.

Technorati Tags:
digital, marketing, Matt Dickman, social media, Techno//Marketer

Social reputation patterns

I found a very interesting post on the Yahoo User Interface blog today discussing social reputation patterns. Reputation is a way to create engagement inside a community and plays an important part in many social networks and other action-driven sites.

Some quick examples of reputation systems are LinkedIn's profile completeness and eBay seller ratings. Having these levels of reputation in the system give interactions an added value. In eBay, sellers are given the incentive to deliver what they say they will, because they know they'll be rated afterward. LinkedIn's profile completeness level is dependent on helping others in the system and encourages more interaction.

Here are the patterns that Yahoo mentions:

These patterns can also be used in different types of community environments. They range from altruistic, nurturing communities to combative, winner-takes-all environments. Certain brands can use each to deliver value to their community.

Take a minute now and think about the communities that you participate in where users are given an incentive for taking action. Where does it fit in these patterns? Most sites use multiple patterns to engage different groups of users and it's a very powerful technique to engage users online and drive repeat visits and extended loyalty.

Technorati Tags:
conversations, marketing, Matt Dickman, social networks, strategy, Techno//Marketer, Yahoo, reputation

Personalized brand experiences; Radiohead's Nude Re/Mix

By now you most likely know about Radiohead's experimental release program for their newest album "In Rainbows". Basically, the band set up a site where their fans could buy the album for whatever price they wanted to pay. People could have paid $0 or $100 if they wanted. You can read my original post along with what I decided to pay here.

Radiohead is continuing to find innovative ways to allow fans to own the brand in a personalized way. The latest idea is a contest in partnership with Apple and their Garageband product. It allows people to buy their song "Nude" (track three) with all of the independent pieces of the track. So, you can buy the drum track, the bass track, the guitar track, the strings track and the voice track all independently.

Once people have the pieces of the track, they're encouraged to remix the song using Garageband to create a completely unique take on it. Once they have a file they then go to the site www.radioheadremix.com and load their track into the community. Once there, people can vote for each track and create a widget to promote their entry.

This is a fantastic idea as a way to allow fans to get involved with the Radiohead brand, create something that is their own and join in a community of other, like minded fans. More companies, bands, products, teams, etc. need to look at this model as a way to create deeper engagement. Providing raw assets that can be used to create original, personal by-products could be powerful. It's not for every brand, but for Radiohead and their fan base it works well. Take a listen to some of the songs, they're quite incredible and took an obvious time investment.

Technorati Tags:
community, marketing, Matt Dickman, Radiohead, social media, Techno//Marketer, trends, widget, branding

Who are you looking for? Criminals or evangelists?

Easily the most value that I receive from writing this blog is the interaction with you in the comments. Yesterday's challenge to marketers to wake up and start looking for ways to leverage new media (instead of shutting it down) was no exception. Great comments like those always lead me to new ideas and questions, so much so that I have a hard time sleeping.

One comment yesterday sparked me to think about a fundamental shift in thinking that needs to take place for companies to be able to fully engage in their community.

When you look at your brand's social media universe, are you looking for criminals or evangelists?

It seems like too many companies are looking for malicious intent right from the start. They treat loyal, fans and content creators like they're criminals when they should be engaging those people in alliances and helping them to add value to the larger community.

But, how can you tell friend from foe? This can, admittedly, be a little complex at first glance. I think the easiest way to tell friend from foe is to engage them in a conversation. Shoot them an email, be positive and see what they have to say. Online it's easy to reach out to the person taking the time to create on your behalf. Look at their intentions (which should be pretty clear) and come up with a plan to engage them whether the intent is positive or negative.

I do understand that there are legal protections that have to be maintained through the marketing process. Shel Holtz had a fantastic response to my post on his blog where he talks about blaming the law and not the lawyers and he's right. However, progressive companies that are willing to lay a little more on the line can really capitalize. Smaller companies could have a huge advantage over their larger, more bureaucratic, litigious counterparts.

What additional steps would you take to find more about somebody's intentions? What steps have you taken to engage evangelists when you spot them in the wild? These are passionate people who can be a powerful force in grassroots marketing.

First//Look: Seesmic (pre-alpha)

What do you get when you combine video, social networking, micromedia and a very savvy French entrepreneur? You get Seesmic. Seesmic is the brainchild of French blog-star Loïc LeMeur and aims to do to video conversations what Twitter did to text-based conversations. The site is a social network where the primary content is video. Users record video, post it to the site and other users reply in video.

The site is in pre-alpha (only about 300 users testing right now) and a lot will change over the course of the next couple of months and I'll re-post when it goes into beta. Enjoy the video:

[Feed readers please click through to the post if you cannot see the video.]

Here is an example of the user-side of the video experience from Seesmic:

Key takeaways for marketers:

• The move toward video as an intimate, personal form of communicating is here
  
• Technology has caught up to consumers and video is easy to record on Seesmic right through the browser
  
• Conversations will be mobile on this site down the road so you can create, send and reply to videos from a mobile device
  
• Content created by the users is re-mixed into a daily video best-of video that is then shared with everyone
  
• Hooks into YouTube, Twitter and Skype help auto-promote content to larger, external networks
  
• The company is asking for suggestions and proactive responding to them in video
  
• The openness that the company is providing as they share how they are growing is a model more companies should follow
  

Through the videos they've created I have found myself becoming attached to the company and the model they are using to build a company. I will keep an eye on this in the future and let you know when more invites become available.

If you have a site that you would like me to look at and possibly do a post like this on, drop me an email or leave a comment on the post.

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If you use another podcatcher you can grab my podcast RSS feed here.

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Technorati Tags:
First//Look, marketing, Matt Dickman, social media, social networks, Techno//Marketer, technology, trends, video, Seesmic, Loic LeMeur

Buzz Friday for November 16, 2007; mega edition

Here is a look at what is happening across social media and new marketing this week. If there is anything that you would like to see in this post or if you have something you think is Buzz-worthy please drop me an email or leave a comment on this post. I want to make this as beneficial for you as I can.

Buzz Friday is also available as part of the Techno//Marketer Podcast on iTunes. Click here to subscribe and take the Buzz to go.

[Feed readers please click through to the post if you cannot see the video.]

Inside the video:

• Google announced two huge platforms over the past couple weeks. OpenSocial aims to make app development easier across multiple networks and Android looks to be the OS for mobile devices of the future.
  
• OpenSocket has created a container to allow apps developed on Google's OpenSocial platform to run in Facebook. Where there is a will there is a way.
  
• Blogger Social 08 Ramping up. Are you going?
  

And in other news:

• Toby continues her recap from BlogWorld in Vegas.
  
• Andy Beal looks at the platforms most used in the blogosphere. Blogger leads with Wordpress in a close second in front of Tyepad.
  
• Faris points out a very humorous message in MIT's campus map software.
  
• Hadn't seen this Apple/PC commercial with the PR lady. Too funny.
  
• Josh Hallett is sick of bad presentations at conferences. Can't say that I blame him. Sadly, the same people speak repeatedly to audiences making everyone less smart. Conference organizers, get new, better speakers!
  
• Geoff looks at some key points to consider when looking into social media for your company. His are similar to my points; have something to say, want to say it, say it, get out of the way, support the community.
  
• In what seems a natural tie-in Embark has created a Facebook application to let college students apply to colleges right from the app.
  
• Scott (at my company, DigiKnow) looks at the value of engagement as a metric.
  
• Search Engine Watch compiled a nice list of the top 10 common SEO mistakes.
  
• Joel Spolsky writes a great article on how to demo software. If you do this for a living, take a couple minutes and invest in this.
  
• Tangerine Toad points to a great, emotional ad from JC Penney. Wow!
  
• John Moore looks at Starbucks new TV ad plan. If anybody can break this down, it's John. If you're interested in the changing world that Starbucks needs to adapt to, check out John's Change This manifesto.
  
• Geoff points out November's most influential bloggers. Go Valeria!!
  
• Drew asks a great, timely question. Are you so confident in what you deliver that you'd let your customers choose what they pay?
  
• Noah has some great points he's collected on SEO. Take a look.
  
• Are you being talked about? Olivier Blanchard has a post on why you may not be talked about.
  
• Jim thinks that traffic is B.S. He's pushing for attention and influence. What do you think?
  
• Scoble has problems with his MacBook Pro. Apple community gets him up and running in five comments. That's the difference between Apple's fans and other computer companies.
  
• Greg Verdino is up in the running for a Silicon Alley people's choice award. If you know Greg head over and help him out.
  
• LinkedIn is the fastest growing social network, according to Nielsen, outpacing Facebook and MySpace.
  
• Watch maker Tag Heur is going online with its first campaign.
  
• Mack thinks that AdAge has hoodwinked bloggers with their mis-use of the Power 150 rankings. I tend to agree, what do you think?
  
• Lewis Green's newest book is launching and he's looking for ideas to help get the word out.
  
• Last.fm is launching an OpenSocial app on Ning.
  
• Patrick looks at measuring social media and tags me. I'll respond next week, but check out his post in the meantime. Mack also has a post on the topic.
  
• Ann Handley is guest blogging on Rohit's blog. Check out her post on the top 10 network and blog rankings.
  
• Brijit, a "digg for writers", launched this week. More on this in a video post next week.
  
• A Dutch teen is getting jail time for stealing virtual furniture. Yes, I said virtual.
  
• Ads sent via SMS to your shopping cart? Yes indeed.
  
• How should companies respond online? Mike has some good tips on analyzing the situation.
  
• Publicis is creating a new agency called 'Insight Factory' from a combination of other agencies.
  
• Charlene Li notes why you need to be on Facebook and MySpace as a company.
  
• Stephen posts a good example of a social media news release and how to use RSS to make it better.
  
• Joe Jaffe asks who is responsible for Second Life's lack of reach. Who do you think is to blame?
  
• Duncan at TechCrunch thinks that online content providers will be the winners from the CBS news writers strike. Definitely will give online a boost as the go-to source.
  
• Om Malik looks at the rise of WebKit mobile in line with Google's Android mobile platform.
  
• Flickr hit 2 billion photos this week.
  
• Marvel Comics will put 2,500 comics online for reader enjoyment.
  
• Bebo released their open platform push with Open Media.
  
• MarketingProfs book club is open with this month's feature "Robin Hood Marketing".
  
• My friend George, a Cleveland blogger, reports on his experience from BlogWorld Expo in Vegas.
  
• Kevin has a great PDF of 10 things never to say to the press. Check it out.
  
• Canon's launched a cool site to promote their new 40D DSLR.
  
• Iain points out a cool video for a Minority Report-esque hack for the Nintendo Wii.
  
• Joanna has a great intro to experience design post. If you're looking for basic information on UXD check this out.
  
• Sean at Copyblogger has good points on creating headlines that will get read.
  
• Tangerine Toad wrote a provocative post on the impact freelancing has had on agencies.
  
• Want to know more about nerds and what makes 'em tick? Check out this clever handbook from Rands.
  
• David Armano looks at office influentials. I think he hits the nail firmly on the head on this. Do you know one? How do you maximize their value?
  

Top Five Web2.0 Movers of the Week (using Alexa data)

1. StumbleUpon
   
2. Geni
   
3. Bloglines
   
4. Upcoming
   
5. Technorati
   

More

Top Ten Marketing Blogs from Viral Garden

1. Seth's blog
   
2. Duct Tape Marketing
   
3. Search Engine Guide
   
4. Daily Fix
   
5. Logic + Emotion
   
6. Diva Marketing
   
7. What's Next
   
8. The Engaging Brand
   
9. Brand Autopsy
   
10. Influential Marketing
    

View the top full top 25

Top 5 "Viral" Videos This Week

1. Por que no te callas?
   
2. Android demo
   
3. Not the daily show, with some writer
   
4. Why we fight
   
5. Spice tesco 2007
   

More

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To help you stay on top of what is happening and to filter the myriad options, you can now subscribe to the Techno//Marketer podcast on iTunes. Get updates in real time when new videos become available.

If you use another podcatcher you can grab my podcast RSS feed here.

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You can watch this and other Techno//Marketer videos on your video channel of choice:

   
   

Technorati Tags:
trends, buzz, buzzfriday, matt dickman, Techno//Marketer

The power of first-person content

There is something very compelling about seeing what is happening somewhere in the world through the eyes of the people who are there. I saw a segment on the History Channel for a new feature they were running on their site. It's called "Band of Bloggers" and features original, un-edited content from our troops on the front lines.

There is no editor or producer here and the clips are raw. The power of seeing our troops in action and hearing what they think is impressive and a nobel use of this technology. Troops can get a camera and then all they need is a computer to type their message, upload the videos and submit photos. All of this is woven into the site and forms a powerful story.

I urge you to check it out. For all of the talk of navel-gazing and bright shiny objects, the tools we're working with in social media are changing the world. Not five years ago you would have NEVER seen content like this unless you were related to somebody who was serving.

On a related, and belated, note many thanks to all of the men and women who serve now, and have served in the past, for the freedom we enjoy today.

Technorati Tags:
Matt Dickman, social media, Techno//Marketer, user generated content, band of bloggers

Inside//Out: Utterz (beta)

Utterz is a new micromedia service along the same lines as Twitter, Pownce and Jaiku. Utterz, however, concentrates more on multimedia than straight text with options to record audio and send video and photos. All of this content is tied to the user's cell phone, so all you have to do is dial in and Utterz knows who you are. The same thing goes with video and photos, just send the file in an email and they post it to your account.

As with any social network, and micromedia networks are no different, there is a balance between audience and functionality. The people make up the network and Utterz is new to the scene and has low adoption right now. On the other hand, the service makes it so easy to create content and automatically feed it out to existing services (website, blog, Facebook, MySpace, etc.) that it is worth a look.

Check out this Inside//Out look at Utterz:


[Feed readers, please click through to the post if you cannot see the video.]

What you need to know:

• Utterz allows for micromedia content from a mobile phone to be easily created and distributed
  
• Content creation is down to the level where anybody who has a mobile phone can be a creator
  
• Content can include voice, video, photos or text
  
• Content can also be accessed through the web or through applications built on their API
  
• Utterz allows for quick creation, but the power is in the distribution (widgets, RSS feed, etc.)
  
• Uses include communication breaking events in photo, video, voice and text, update messages to customers ("the network is down and we're working on it")
  
• The use of multimedia allows more expression in out attention-casting
  
• The success of these tools is getting the content to the audience, Utterz is a network, but your customer may not be there so extending the content to other networks is a key strategy
  

Here is one of the widgets that allow you to take the content to

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To help you stay on top of what is happening and to filter the myriad options, you can now subscribe to the Techno//Marketer podcast on iTunes. Get updates in real time when new videos become available.

If you use another podcatcher you can grab my podcast RSS feed here.

---

You can watch this and other Techno//Marketer videos on your video channel of choice:

   
   

Technorati Tags:
Inside//Out, marketing, Matt Dickman, social media, social networks, Techno//Marketer, technology, trends, user generated content, video, web2.0formarketers, Utterz

The blogger, journalist divide

This post is a little off-topic for Techno//Marketer, but I think it's an important issue to address concerning social media and it happened in my hometown. (This post is not, and will never be, political in nature.) The local newspaper here in Cleveland, The Plain Dealer, took a fairly progressive step and created an area of their site dedicated to political debate and hired four bloggers to create the content. Two covered things from a liberal perspective and two from a conservative under the banner "Wide Open".

As of November 2, 2007 the project has been cancelled in the midst of quite a bit of controversy. Here is how things played out. These four bloggers were hired by the paper to present their opinions as bloggers. One of the bloggers openly attacked a politician's policies and stated that he had contributed to the campaign of that politician's opponent. The politician who was attacked complained to a Plain Dealer reporter who relayed his concerns to the PD's editor. The editor asked the blogger to refrain from covering that candidate and when the blogger refused, he was fired. Subsequently, one other blogger quit the project in protest which led to its suspension.

According to the blogger who was let go, he (and the others) were hired as just that. Bloggers. Not reporters. The bloggers were being paid, which is where I think this gets a little gray and his contribution to the opponent's campaign just adds to the fire.

So let me turn this to you, my readers and get your input on the crossroads of blogging and journalism. Here are some important questions to ponder:

• Can a newspaper include blogger content and have editorial separation?
  
• Are bloggers and journalists separate anymore?
  
• If they are, are they bound by the same code of ethics?
  
• Does paying the bloggers create the conflict of interest?
  
• Do you think the Plain Dealer would have pulled an editorial piece under pressure from a politician?
  
• Can traditional newspapers survive against pressure from citizen journalism?
  
• What if no money had changed hands and the bloggers just contributed? Does that change things?
  

Let me hear what you think! Can we all just get along?

Technorati Tags:
Cleveland, Matt Dickman, Techno//Marketer, Plain Dealer, Newspapers, Journalism, Blogging, Ethics

Attention-casting

There has been a lot of talk about the idea of "life streaming" lately. The term, however, doesn't sit right with me. Life streaming is defined as the use of one online web service to collect RSS feeds and aggregate them into chronological order. The problem I have is that it's not life-streaming. Justin.tv is true life streaming. If you want my life-stream you'll have to follow me around with a camera (which would be pretty boring most days).

What you are streaming is your attention and so I am re-terming this attention-casting. My attention-casting locations look at what I post on this blog, what I bookmark on del.icio.us, the videos I add to YouTube, the items from other people's feeds (350+) that I think are important, photos I take and add to Flickr and items I digg on Digg.com. All of these feeds, when combined in chronological order, tell you what has my attention at that moment and lets you see trends as they happen.

The latest stream that I've created is on Twitter under the username TechnoMarketer. This feed is the best way to see what I think is important in the world of social media in close to real-time. If you decide to follow me there you'll know within 30 minutes when I:

• Share an item in my Google Reader account I think is valuable (this is how I build my Buzz Friday posts too)
  
• Post a video on YouTube (way before I blog about it)
  
• Digg something on Digg.com
  
• Bookmark something on del.icio.us
  
• Add a photo to Flickr
  
• Add a new blog post here on Techno//Marketer
  

I do this through the service Twitterfeed.com which looks for updates from each service every 30 minutes and creates a new Tweet at the TechnMarketer account. Even if you don't use Twitter, you can subscribe to the feed from that account or you can subscribe at one of the other services I use for the same purpose (Jaiku and Tumblr).

One problem with this, and my biggest point of contention, is that this is one-way communication. Because these are aggregated from other services, there is little chance of feedback unless you come back from the original source. I do, however, think that there is value here is being able to see what I think is important almost immediately if you want to stay up to date on news and trends in new media and marketing.

What do you think? Is it valuable to you? Do you like to get information in one big chunk like my Buzz Friday posts?

Technorati Tags:
marketing, Matt Dickman, Techno//Marketer, attention-casting