Jim Tobin to Speak in Michigan on Social Media Marketing
March 31, 2008 | Leave a Comment
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Jim Tobin, president of Ignite Social Media, will run two back-to-back seminars on how small businesses can use social media marketing to connect on a deeper level with customers and prospects. The seminars are a part of “Business Remixed: the Small Business Conference“, on April 2, at the Birmingham Conference Center in Beverly Hills, Michigan.
Jim will introduce people to the 11 Types of Social Media, along with examples of each. He’ll review the 5 most common social media marketing mistakes and how to avoid them, and he’ll give real world examples of companies that are using social media right now.
To register for the conference, click here. If you go, please introduce yourself at the conference!
Why Social Media Leadership Won’t Come from Public Relations Teams
March 31, 2008 | 5 Comments
Steve Rubel of Edelman wrote a post the other day that got me thinking. His premise was that social media specialists will no longer exist in the near future. Given what we do at Ignite Social Media (we are social media specialists after all), I disagreed, but I’d like to explain why it would be both unnatural and unlikely for social media thought leadership to come from public relations agencies.
Let me start by saying, I’m not against PR firms in the slightest. I worked for years in PR and marketing before getting the idea to build Ignite. So I understand it well enough to see the differences in goals, methods and skill sets between the disciplines, but I do it out of great respect for both.
Divergence is the most powerful force in the universe
Charles Darwin noted that “the Great Tree of Life” grew because branches divided, or diverged. In their 2004 book,
“The Origin of Brands“, Al and Laura Ries note that “the Great Tree of Products and Services” also grows by divergence of existing categories.
- Where first there were computers, that branch split into mainframes, personal computers, laptop computers and handheld computers;
- Where first there was television, now there is analog and digital television, regular/EDTV/HDTV, satellite/cable/IPTV and even Joost.
- Where first there was coffee, that branch split into freeze dried, decaf, organic, fair trade, gourmet, cappuccino, lattes and more. Even food categories diverge.
As the world progresses, it gets more complicated, not less. And with every split in the tree branches, there is a new leadership opportunity. It’s almost never the brand leaders who cause the split and almost never the brand leaders who emerge as leaders in the new area.
That’s why (the old) AT&T used to lead on landlines, then cellular came out and new brands like Cingular and Verizon led the way. (Remember when AT&T Mobile folded up shop completely). Then IP phones came out and companies like Vonage took off. Now a new AT&T (really in name only) had to come around and buy its way back in the game. They certainly didn’t innovate.
Nature favors divergence, but entrenched leaders don’t diverge because they usually can’t. It’s against their business interests because divergence is disruptive.
It would be unnatural for public relations firms to provide social media leadership. Just as we have SEO firms (which, one could argue, should’ve been done by PR firms if they were effective “catch all” public stewards of a brand), so shall we have social media agencies and social media specialists. Website development should have/could have been “owned” by advertising agencies, but we saw web development leadership in the late 90s come from new fast growth companies.
Does this mean that no social media people will work at PR firms, or on PR teams in companies? Of course not, lines are never that crisp and clear. But social media thought leadership (meaning the best work, the coolest innovations) will not come from those firms. Here’s why:
Social Media Leadership Will Come from Social Media Specialists
Social media is one-part public relations. But it’s also one part SEO (not PR agencies’ strengths), one part usability design (not PR agencies’ strength), one part programming (again, not), one part customer service (ditto, although arguable) and one part anthropology/sociology (which PR people can be pretty good at). To do some blog posts, or blog pitches, or leave comments in social networks, you can be a PR person.
But to maximize the likelihood for breakthroughs in social media marketing (meaning to figure out the very best, coolest, most effective ways to pull all these parts together and then to implement it correctly), you should pull a team of folks from all those disciplines together and have them think about nothing else. Have them learn and practice the rules of social media marketing. Have them twist and contort the tracking tools, the analytics tools, the widget tools in new ways. Have them understand the assets you have in social media marketing and how different they are from your assets in a PR campaign. That’s exactly what a social media agency is, at least how we’ve defined it at Ignite.
This process of divergence never stops. At some point in the next 5 years or so, even social media agencies will begin to specialize. Just as PR firms now have specialist shops in investor relations, technology PR, analyst relations, crisis management and countless other niches, so shall we see specialties within social media.
Five years hence, Steve’s company will likely still be a major player in PR. But there will be new major players leading the way in social media marketing agencies. I can’t guarantee one of those will be Ignite (although we’re working on it), but I can guarantee you that (a) they will exist and (b) they won’t be the big PR brand names–not unless those folks write a big check to buy an innovative specialist firm (which they might).
It’s not personal. It’s not that they’re not nice folks or smart folks. It’s just laws of nature.
What do you think? Am I right? Is this a new specialty? Or is Steve right, and companies like Ignite won’t lead the way? Let me know in the comments section and, generally, what your background is.
This Week’s Posts that Are Igniting 3-28
March 29, 2008 | 1 Comment
The following are Ignite’s favorite posts coming out of this week. Enjoy!
What is Your Social Media Marketing Strategy
Amen to Lee Odden who reminds social media marketer’s yet again about the importance of social media strategy.
Dofollow Blog Commenting Netiquette vs. a Barbeque Party
SEO 2.0 creates one of the most practical posts we’ve read lately on how to leave blog comments in a natural and effective way. Lisa also loves the “Barbeque Party” analogy (although they call these “Pig Pickin’s” where she is from…)
PR Event: Social Media- The Assassin or Savior of Traditional Media?
This is a great post discussing traditional media’s advantages in dealing with social media as well as some of the obstacles that traditional media faces. I think Ben Matthews does a wonderful job discussing how many of the fears that traditional media personnel face are in turn positive in the long run. I especially like Richard Millington’s comment on the post as well.
Why Does Your Search Traffic Suck? The 7 Most Likely Reasons
SEOmoz’s article on 7 of the most basic reasons for bad search traffic. Brian hasn’t evaluated this article yet, but as someone with less SEO knowledge, I think it gives a good base for what you can evaluate when looking at search traffic analytics.
What Do You Want From Social Media?
SocialMediaTrader.com does a great job of preaching exactly what we do at Ignite. What do you want from social media? It’s the first question that all businesses considering an intense social media campaign should ask themselves. This post lists some of the things you should consider.
The Flip vs. RCA Small Wonder - Video creation on a budget
March 27, 2008 | 5 Comments
Video creation is becoming more and more mainstream. Technology is becoming increasingly affordable and applications are becoming easier to use (potentially). The Flip came out with a ton of buzz around the product late last year. It’s the first device to push the envelope on ease of use, and market itself towards the less technological advanced user.
Jim Kukral is the one who turned me onto The Flip last year. He is a well known video blogger and hosts theDailyFlip, where he posts daily videos about all sorts of Internet marketing topics.
So here at Ignite Social Media, we decided to do a bit of a test. RCA has licensed the technology behind the Flip and have created their own version, The RCA Small Wonder. It costs 85.99 right now on Amazon and has several features that the Flip doesn’t have such as:
- Media card slot
- High quality/low quality switch
- Flip out screen for recording yourself
While the Small Wonder can only record 30 minutes of footage at a time on high quality, the media card slot mentioned above is one way to add extra memory.
Below is the video we recorded with the Small Wonder. You will notice the difference in video quality and sound. Once the video was broken down to .wmv format and uploaded, it appears to actually be a little better than The Flip.
The Flip Ultra (the version we tested) on the other hand costs 144 dollars (Plus around 17$ S&H) on Amazon right now. It has fewer features than the the Small Wonder, but allows for 60 minutes of taping, which is a huge plus. The sound and picture quality seem to be a little different than the Small Wonder. The video when downloaded off of the player looks better and sounds less noisy, until you convert it over to a lighter format, and upload it to your favorite video hosting site. Decide for yourself by viewing the Flip video below:
Additionally, Lisa compared the packaging and “extras” that each comes with. The basic difference between the two (besides fancier packaging from the Flip) is that the Small Wonder actually comes with a small USB adapter, which is very handy addition considering plugging these devices directly into your computer can be a challenge.
Here are two screenshots of each piece of software that comes with the cameras. Both are very basic and do not allow for really any kind of editing or effects like you might find in your average video editing software.
The Flip Screenshot:
RCA Small Wonder Screenshot:
The videos come out as .avi format, and the Small Wonder doesn’t work with a Mac, keep in mind.
I am curious if others have found Video devices that are easy to use, and of good value like The Flip and Small Wonder?
Jim Tobin to Appear on Detroit Radio Program Thursday
March 26, 2008 | Leave a Comment
Anywhere near Southeast Michigan tomorrow? Check out WDET-FM, 101.9 around 10:20.
Our very own Jim Tobin will be live on the Detroit Today show on this public radio station. Jim is talking about, not surprisingly, social media marketing in advance of a set of 2 seminars he’s leading in Birmingham, Michigan on April 2.
More on that later.
But if you get a chance, listen to WDET-FM, 101.9 on your FM dial around 10:20 tomorrow. If they’re taking callers, be sure to call in and heckle Jim a bit. He likes that sort of thing…
Extending the Life of Social Media Marketing Beyond Flight Dates
March 25, 2008 | 1 Comment
Yesterday an Adweek came across my desk that I actually read, which is amazing because in full disclosure these magazines normally sit on my desk for months and eventually find their way into my trashcan. However this time an article caught my eye that had insight worth reading and sharing.
The article, written by Brian Morrissey, is entitled “Flights of Fancy? How Social Media and Search are Extending the Life of Marketing Campaigns“. As you may deduce from the headline, Brian’s article raises the notion that social media doesn’t have clear start and end dates in comparison to the standard flight dates of a traditional marketing campaign, as strategies for social media move away from a short-lived “pushed message” of advertising and towards an ongoing conversation with consumers. The article also quotes John Battelle, founder of Federated Media who added that many social media campaigns have failed for this very reason - they are designed for a set period of time instead of an ongoing process that is revised and tweaked.
In reading this statement, I can’t help but feel conflicted. On one hand, I see the value of ongoing campaigns so much so that I wish we had these type of campaigns with all of our clients, and yet on the other hand I know that this isn’t likely to be a reality for quite some time. Why? Because companies and traditional marketers are faced with the following dilemmas:
1. Budget & Resources - Currently most marketers are limited to a yearly budget, which has typically never included social media. To get around this, savvy marketers are cutting corners in the budget that is usually only enough to support short-term social media efforts. Therefore, budgets for longer ongoing campaigns are rare at this point because many companies are employing short-term efforts to gain internal buy-in.
2. Short-Term Goals - With social media being included as a part of a company’s overall marketing efforts (being included in the advertising budget), it often shares the same short term goals like increasing sales or awareness of a product rather than longer (and potentially more valuable) goals like creating valuable, on-going conversations with consumers. Therefore, if a social media effort is based on short-term goals, this makes it harder for marketers to extend this effort beyond the original flight dates.
3. Internal Structures- Typically ongoing social media efforts like Dell IdeaStorm and the latest My Starbuck’s Idea bridge into aspects of customer service, product development, overall business structure/philosophy, AND marketing. Because of this, most marketer’s don’t have the authority or internal buy-in in their company to develop a social media campaign that can intersect in these areas. Therefore, most social media efforts at this point are limited to efforts within the marketing department.
So, what will it take for marketers to advance past these hurdles and begin ongoing efforts? I personally think that it will take social media training and education, thought-leading companies to forge the way, and the company itself to begin experimentation in this space. While some may determine these experiments as short-term social media campaigns that have fallen short, I tend to view these campaigns as baby steps into larger efforts down the road. At least, that is what we are hoping here at Ignite 
This Week’s Social Media Posts That Are Igniting- 3.20
March 21, 2008 | 2 Comments
The following are Ignite’s favorite posts coming out of this week. Enjoy!
This post by Social Media Optimization gives a firsthand account into the progress and results of a strategic social media campaign.
Tamar gives an excellent review of an audio search optimization session in the 2008 Search Engine Strategies Conference. This article has excellent podcasting optimization tips.
Jeremiah gives a review of Starbuck’s latest social media effort: My Starbuck’s Ideas. He beat us to the punch on covering this one
Jason Falls gives an excellent critique of H&R Block’s new attempts to delve into social media. And I have to say, I’m very impressed with H&R Block’s techniques.
Part I is great, but in Part II David Harry (a.k.a. theGypsy) does a wonderful job of giving an in depth discussion as to the value of social media marketing. He looked to others to give readers a more well-rounded point of view, and it definitely adds to the thoroughness of the post. (p.s. Thanks for coming to us for info Dave!)
25 Social Media Buzzwords Explained (Part II of II)
March 20, 2008 | 8 Comments
Picking up on yesterday’s post on social media buzzwords explained, here are explanation for numbers 14-25, as included in our original tongue-in-cheek post. Enjoy.
14. Social Media Monitoring: This one is no joke. It’s step one for social media. You’ve got to listen before you can take part in a conversation. There are lots of tools to do this, depending on exactly what you’re trying to do. Basically free things like Google Reader or Bloglines let you track certain feeds. Services like Terraminds let you search Twitter. More advanced tools such as Radian6 and BuzzLogic cost money but let you do more analysis than you otherwise can. You’ve got to monitor to know what to say and monitor to know how you’re doing.
15. User-Generated Content: Hopefully this one is obvious, but instead of a company or organization generating content for a website you can have your users-generate content. Think broadly on this one. Sure it’s “Submit a video”, but that’s hard. It’s also comments left on a site, reviews, etc. More content on your site is great. Imagine if you can get others to do it! Some extra cool folks use acronyms for this buzzword, like UGC or CGC (for consumer generated content). Try that at your next meeting!
16. Web 2.0: This phrase was coined by Tim O’Reilly in 2003. In December 2006, even he was still trying to define it. I like to think of this way: Web 2.0 is the transition of websites from static holders of information to sources of content. Picture Web 1.0 websites as half-filled buckets, sitting upright, while Web 2.0 websites are three-quarter filled buckets, pouring slowly out to fill other buckets. Some like to say it’s the transition of the web as a platform. It’s also, importantly, a change in philosophy as to how information is generated and shared. Some people are already trying to define Web 3.0, but I won’t dignify any of that nonsense with a link.
17. Social Networks. You know this one. Facebook. MySpace. Easy, right? Sure. Just don’t forget the niche social networks that abound when you’re doing social media marketing. For our clients, we’ve often found far more engaged communities in places other than Facebook and MySpace.
18. Blogosphere: The blogosphere is an imaginary atmosphere in which all the nattering bloggers chatter floats around. People say things like, “the blogosphere was abuzz with talk of the Elliot Spitzer scandal.” While it’s a buzzword, you’ll find as you follow a group of people on a certain subject that the blogosphere starts to take on a certain personality.
19. Viral Marketing: The definition is simple. It’s a marketing campaign that is so compelling that people share it, so it spreads, like a virus. But the reason we chuckle at it is because people frequently ask us to make something “go viral.” Or make a “viral video.” Two problems with that. #1) Viral is impossible to predict. (Could you have guessed before you saw the video below that it would take off? It did. Like crazy.) #2) Doing something “wacky” enough to go viral can hurt a brand. Yeah, yeah, I know all about Dove Evolution, and I can tell you why that’s actually NOT a good example of social media marketing, as brilliant as it is.
20. Ruby on Rails. Oh yeah, using this one in a conversation scores you big points. Through in the term 37signals while you do it for bonus points. Here’s what it is. Ruby is a programming language. The guys at 37signals made it really easy to use it quickly. (Get it? They put it “on rails”.) It really was brilliant what they did. Very robust platform. We use it here sometimes. Gene’s a big fan. If you can compare it to CakePHP, then you shouldn’t be reading this post at all!
21. Social Media Press Release. The merits of the social media press release have been pretty heavily debated since Shift Communications came out with a template for it. Basically, the idea is to make your release easy for anyone, including bloggers, to pull from. Extract key points. Embed your photos and videos on their site, etc. An interesting idea. I personally think there’s work to do to make it practical, but the idea that the traditional press release could be improved is no doubt true.
22. Vlogging. Not to be confused with “flogs“, which are fake blogs. Vlogging is short for video blogging. Instead of writing all this stuff, why not do a video about it. Here’s a quick video that I did explaining why I started Ignite Social Media. It’s an example of a vlog post, although some folks only do video on their blogs. (There are search engine problems with having no words, though.)
23. Microblogging. Microblogging is, as you might guess, really short blog posts. Twitter is a good example. Some say that Tumblr is, too. If you don’t know what Twitter or Tumblr are, go back to Part I from yesterday.
24. Transparency and Authenticity. If you’ve been looking at social media for more than 10 minutes, you’ve come across these words a lot. That’s because all the companies who have gotten in trouble trying to do social media marketing got in trouble because they tried to be too clever for their own good. Just read this post if you want to know what I mean. Sometimes the best marketing is to just say what you know. The only time Wal-mart has gotten credit in social media is when they decided to just be honest.
25. White Label. White label means that someone built a program and they’ll let you have it (sometimes free, sometimes at great expense) so that you can put your design around it and make it your own. You get all the brand benefits, and all the functionality of a great tool, without the expense of building it. Often you can choose which elements you want, move them around, etc., to make something truly unique. KickApps is white label social network building. Clicky is white label analytics. White label can be a great option for quick, cost effective deployment, as long as you still think about strategy and user experience as you implement it.
So that’s it. You’re up to speed. I’ve even created a social media buzzword bingo sheet generator for your next meeting, or impress your friends at the next “Web 2.0″ internal meeting you have to suffer through.
Remember, tell me how I did. Any definitions that missed the mark? Leave me a comment with your two cents, or your favorite social media buzzwords.
March Social Media Club: Live Streaming and Real Time Conversations for Fun and Business
March 20, 2008 | 4 Comments
This month’s Social Media Club event will be led by Wayne Sutton, Community Content Manager of http://mync.com and co-founder of the website Social Carolina (a website which connects the community to the events).
In our meeting,Wayne will take us on a tour of the live streaming services, cover the pros and cons of one way video streaming sites, and look at some of the newer si
tes thats have launched with multiple camera support and two-way video conversations via the web. Wayne will also take us through the best services for live conference streaming or for personal use.
Location: Edge office
400 Glenwood Avenue
Raleigh, NC 27603
( Click Here to View a Map)
(Click here to view a tour of Edge offices)
When: March 25th (next Tuesday) @ 6:30pm
Below are the live streaming services that Wayne will cover. If you’re unable to attend, you can watch the event here and follow along on twitter here.
Live Stream Sites:
Ustream.tv
Mogulus.com
Justin.tv
LiveVideo.com
Live.Yahoo.com
Other:
Mobile live streaming
Desktop Applications:
ooVoo
Instant messenger applications:
yahoo, aol, msn, iChat
25 Social Media Buzzwords…Explained (Part I of II)
March 19, 2008 | 6 Comments
In December, as part of a tongue-in-cheek print ad, we listed 25 social media buzzwords that make you feel cool if you say them. Surprisingly, that post still gets a fair amount of traffic, and with so many people new to social media, we still get questions about, “What do these all mean?” The most recent request for definitions was just last night. So, without further adieu, here are my brief definitions in layman’s terms.
We’ll make this like a quiz in reverse. How did I do? Think I missed the point on any of them? Let me know in the comments.
1. Social graph: The social graph is a diagram of the interconnections between people, with the people
serving as nodes, and the lines between them showing the connections. But hey, it sounds much cooler if you now refer to it like this. Thus, it’s a buzzword. Well respected blogger (actually, some say inventor of blogging), Dave Winer says that social graph and social network are the same thing, and you sound like a monkey if you use the term social graph.
2. Twitter: This one is easy. Twitter is either a “presence app” or a “microblogging tool” depending on whom you ask. In English that means, it’s a place where you send short updates to say what you’re up to (thus the word “presence”) and/or it’s a place where you can do very short (140 characters or less, like a text message) posts that might share good articles, etc. It’s a great tool for keeping in touch with a group, believe it or not. You can see my “Tweets”, as they’re called, here.
3. LinkedIn: Often called Facebook for grown-ups, but I think that’s wrong. Linked-In, in my view, is your resume online plus the ability to connect with a wide array of folks. Good place to find jobs, connect with people for new business, ask a question and get a good answer, etc. Maybe it’s Facebook for work. I could live with that explanation. If you’re reading this, and you’re not on LinkedIn, join right now. I don’t know why you wouldn’t.
4. Semantic Web: Ok, you’re really cool if you casually work this one into conversation. Picture that all the data on the web was sort of tagged and defined so that computers themselves could know what those pieces were. If so, then the Internet itself (or actually the computers connected to it) could analyze that data and do some of the “thinking” for us. Cool, huh?
5. Wiki: Wikis are collaboration tools. They allow multiple people to work in the same document, and that document lives online. Plus, it saves all the old versions, keeps a history of who changed what, etc. So it’s way better than Word in that respect, particular for groups that aren’t on a shared server. But, besides Wikipedia, these haven’t taken off like people thought they would, in part because you need to know a few wiki codes to make things bold, etc.
6. Widget: I define widgets as mini-applications that can live away from their parents. Probably not the definition that you’ll see in a dictionary, but it works for me. These might be desktop widgets that update the weather for you automatically, for example. (Vista and Mac OS both have widget capability.) Or they live in Facebook, Open Social, or many other places. A lot of folks are using widgets to drive traffic to their sites, which is sort of counter-intuitive.
7. KickApps: This one is just fun to say, because everyone thought you cursed there for a second. But KickApps is a very cool tool for building your own social networks. And they’ll give it to you free if you let them run ads on your network. (Or you can buy out the ads. If you do, you can have no ads or you can sell your own ads and make money.)
8. Tumblr: I’ve only played a little with Tumblr, but it’s a way to post really short blog posts. Some people call it the blogging platform for busy people. You can also pull in feeds from your other posts, share pictures, etc. Think of it as in-between super-short Twitter and super robust WordPress (which this site uses).
9. del.icio.us: Ah, it’s fun to say delicious seemingly out of context, too. Del.icio.us is (a) very hard to remember when you type it the first few times and (b) a better way to save your bookmarks. Say you like a page and want to hang on to it. You can CTRL-D and save it as a bookmark on your computer (and only that computer) or you can save it to del.icio.us. If you do the latter, you can get it on any computer. More than that, there’s a social component to del.icio.us. For example, if you are the one who always bookmarks stuff I like, I can follow your tagged entries. Poof, look at all the time you saved me!
10. Enterprise 2.0: In my mind Enterprise 2.0 is simply this: Using all this social media stuff to change the way we work within an organization. How we collaborate. How we use the wisdom of crowds. That sort of thing. And again, think of how cool you sound when you say this. w00t!
11. Social Media Optimization: Ok, you’ve got content. You put it out in press releases, white papers, yada yada. Social Media Optimization is about making that data portable. Can it be subscribed to through RSS? Can someone submit it to Digg? Can someone take your video and embed it on their site? That sort of thing. A social media newsroom is a great example of SMO for press content.
12. Meme: First of all, how do you say this? It rhymes with dream. To me, memes are ideas that catch on, and a variety of people run with them, build on them, expand on them. The definitions for this one are somewhat varied, but I just sort of think of them in the simplest terms as an idea that spreads.
13. Mash-ups: Mash-ups are great. Take two pieces of content and mash them together to make something new. One very, very common one is a custom Google map, for example. Here’s one that Gene in our office did a while back. But mash-ups are limited only by your imagination and computer skills, so don’t just think they are Google maps.
That’s it for today. I’ve got some work to do, and this is taking a bit longer than I expected. Look for Part II tomorrow or Friday. I’ll link to it here when it’s up.
How am I doing so far? Any that you think I missed the boat on? Let me know in the comments.