Citizen Marketer 2.1

2 Minute Recap from Bricks & Mobile 2011 Conference

2011-04-14T11:35:00.000-05:00

A couple of weeks ago, I was lucky enough to speak at a conference called Bricks + Mobile up in Chicago. The focus of the conference was the state of mobile technology, how companies are tapping into the power of the untethered device and where all of this goodness is headed.

Thanks to Kelly Stickel (the conference producer) and Tim Hayden (our panel moderator) for inviting me!

p.s. If you didn't see it, I wrote a blog post framing some of the topics we covered during our panel at B+M.

How to Earn a Customer's Loyalty

2011-04-07T16:10:00.000-05:00

Sunday night, I was flying up to Boston from Austin on US Airways. Not my favorite airline by a longshot but they are reasonably priced and my last few experiences with them have been decent. Anyway, they had wifi on my leg from Charlotte, NC (one of their major hubs) up to Boston. Because it was only an hour and a half, I decided not to pay for the wifi. However, GoGoInflight is running a special right now where they are giving away free Twitter access during April.

As we got closer to Boston I started wondering how close to on time my midnight arrival would be. Given the fact that my Twitter friends are usually up all hours of the night and always very helpful, I thought I'd ask if they might be able to look up my flight status. Of course, I was right and I immediately got several helpful responses. But it was one person in particular -- an employee at a competing airline -- who was kind enough to look for me that really impressed me.

So why was I so enamored with this occurrence? Because with nothing to gain, this person went above and beyond to give me information I needed, when I needed it. If more companies took this approach, there is no doubt in my mind that businesses would win over a lot of new customers. At the end of the day, being helpful is always appreciated, especially when there is no apparent ulterior motive.

Have you ever had this happen to you? If so, share your story in the comments.

Social Media is Better for Experiential Products

2011-03-29T16:45:00.000-05:00

Paul Mabray is the chief strategy officer for the wine industry digital think tank, Vintank. Paul is a 17 year veteran in the wine industry and is a regular speaker and blogger.

The race is on. Everyone is endeavoring to decipher the Rosetta Stone that is Social Media. Unfortunately, by definition the medium is multi-dimensional and the real applications of social media range from customer support & communication, content distribution, sales, marketing, PR, business intelligence and well beyond. With all these facets to consider, is it any wonder that there is no silver bullet?

However, a certain segment of industries are positioned to be better served by this medium. Experiential products clearly stand to benefit more from social media.

Why? Because social media is fundamentally a channel for sharing and it is inherently human nature to share our experiences. How many people really enjoy talking about soap? Pencils? Dishwashers? Of course, there is dialogue about these types of products (most of them relate to the buying experience or the quality, or lack thereof, about the product) Yes, it is possible to create campaigns to artificially stimulate dialogue about a brand or product. However, the interaction that occur as a result of natural engagement are more relevant, meaningful, and enduring. In essence, industries that offer meaningful experiences like wine, food, restaurants, travel, software, and entertainment are natural conduits for conversations that occur on the web. People enjoy sharing their personal stories and experiences related to these products. They are vocal and they are prolific. For example, the wine industry and the specialized site Cellartracker.com. With 140K users this single site has generated 1.8 million conversations about wine. In fact, in 2010 social media sites generated over 13 million conversations about wine by 3 million online profiles. KAPOW!

A recent article citing research from IBM suggests that SM consumers do not want intimate relationships with Brands. This report states that they are primarily looking for tangible benefits from a relationship (discounts, commerce) and they rank “feeling connected” and “part of the community” far lower. This is not unexpected for traditional retail and non- experiential products. Do we really want to feel part of the Best Buy community? Is it important for us to feel part of the Amazon tribe? How deeply do we really want to be related to Skittles?

Experiential products allow us to feel emotionally attached and we DO want to be “connected” to these brands--- and as a result we are more passionate and vocal about them. Whether it is a restaurant that has created a memorable experience, a wine that we love, a rock band, a movie, video game, or even a software platform (that’s why companies have dedicated UEX departments) we DO crave more of a relationship with those products. Equally as important, there is always a very active “prosumer” base that evangelizes and helps spread the message to more and more potential consumers. These voices are the true influencers in the ecosphere that prostelyze for the brand allowing these brands to be “discovered” via social media through sharing, commenting in forums, “Liking”, and retweeting. They are also prolific about creating content and messages to help influence potential new customers buying decisions.

Need proof ? Just look at a company that transcends product and focuses on experience: Apple. How many blog posts, tweets, Facebook posts do you see about their products?

Want other examples?

Check out the volume of comments and user generated content for the game BioShock

Or the number of Tweets about Lady GaGa.

Or the activity on the Fan Page of the TV show The Walking Dead.

Or real experiences being shared on the Fan Page of Morton’s Steak House.

What is most relevant is the natural phenomenon that inspires people to want to authentically share stories about brands and products. There is no need for clever marketing campaigns, to create gimmicks to get your consumers to engage in your community, and no need to create contests to stimulate conversations.

Why is this important? The major transcendence of social media is how, who and where we get our information. My good friend Doug Cook (founder of Ablegrape.com and former director of search for Twitter) has an amazing saying, "search is the fiber that connects the web." He is absolutely correct. There is nothing you can't find on the web if you know what you are looking for. Whether it is the most obscure book or replacement part for your 1972 dishwasher, search engines can help you find anything. What search cannot help you do is discover. That is the role of Social Media. Seeing authentic (not artificially induced) comments (positive or negative) about brands from people we trust encourages us to explore. With non-experiential products, brands are almost forced to create gimmicks, marketing campaigns, or contests to stimulate conversation or engagement. With experiential products, this occurs naturally, without artificial stimulation, and authentically from within our own out networks. Social media is the human fiber for sharing and discovery.

The question is, no matter what kind of product you have, are you making it experiential?

Onboarding and Engaging with Location Based Services

2011-03-24T13:27:00.000-05:00

Next Wednesday, I'm speaking at a very cool event in Chicago called the Bricks + Mobile Conference. If you're in the area, you should absolutely plan to attend (I may even be able to finagle you a discount). I mention this because I'm on a panel with some very smart people including:

Tim Hayden, CMO 44Doors (moderator)
Adam Beaugh, Director of Social Media, Jackson Family Wines
David Javitch, VP of Marketing, Scanlife
Jessica Rotnicki-Magaro, Vice President Ecommerce North America, Estee Lauder Companies

The reason I got asked to be on the panel (I think) is that I am now the head of location based marketing at global agency, WCG and am also co-authoring a book called Location Based Marketing for Dummies. In the book, my co-author, Mike Schneider, and I are focusing on how businesses -- large and small -- are tapping into the power of location based marketing. This starts with goals and offers and ends with platforms, measurement and analytics.

One of the main things that Mike and I are focusing on in the book is how businesses can derive real business value by engaging with their customers using location based services. To that end, loyalty is a major outcome that many of the companies like McDonalds, Neiman Marcus and USA Today are seeking as they engage using platforms like foursquare, SCVNGR and Whrrl.

But before companies get to loyalty through regular (hopefully fun and/or educational) interactions with their customers, is there role that location based services can play when it comes to on-boarding and engaging their customers? Of course there is.

For starters, any company that is engaging in location based marketing should consider offers that are not only universal (mayor offers are somewhat overrated), but also that encourage initial and then repeat behavior. There is a local coffeeshop/theater here in Austin, TX called the Hideout that does a nice job on this front. Their offer gives you a 2 for 1 ticket to the theater on your 1st, 5th and 10th checkins (and free admission for the mayor). This provides immediate value the first time you checkin but also keeps you checking in (and ideally coming back) to continue to get your discount.

Where the Hideout (and many other companies fall down) is not letting their customers who aren't using location base services that there is an offer. Why not have a poster up on the wall, a sign on the front door and a trained barista that asks you if you've checked in? Creating a compelling offer and then letting your customers know about it is key.

Another thought when it comes to on-boarding is what if you could check into your new television? Or laptop? Or box of Cheerios? And what if when you checked in you got special instructions (plus a reward)? Well, there are services that are starting to provide this type of functionality like GetGlue. And as of two days ago, GetGlue just announced a partnership with Lionsgate offering 40% off the Blueray DVD set of AMC's popular tv show, Madmen. While this partnership doesn't do much by way of "on-boarding," they are creating fun, excitement and engagement with Madmen fans.

Is your company using location based marketing to on-board, engage and create loyalty with your customers? If so, post about it in the comments section below.

Memories and Milestones

2011-03-17T09:10:00.000-05:00

Last night, my friend and former colleague, Rusty Williams, sent me a direct message on Twitter alerting me to the fact that I was on the precipice of a milestone. Sitting at 39,999 tweets, I was one away from my 40,000 update, which if you think about it is a lot. Just think about it... what have you done 40,000 times in your life (if anything)?

As I got thinking, I realized that it would be nice to celebrate this milestone with something worthy, something that helped others, because as I look back through my first 39,999 tweets, I realize just how lucky I am -- both personally and professionally. Over the last four and half years that I've been on Twitter, I've met some amazing people and my family and I have benefited from this experience both personally and professionally.

In the past, I've taken different approaches to milestone tweets. I've been silly and done the fake retirement thing. I've also used the opportunity to dedicate tweets to friends like Jennifer Leggio who have helped me grow and expand my boundaries in social media. But this time, I want it to be different. This time, I want to do something good with my 40,000 update. Something that helps people in need and for those of us that aren't in need, reminds us to pause and celebrate how lucky we are.

Here's my plan and I'd like your help:

I just donated $150 to the #SXSWCares which my friends Deb Ng and Leigh Durst helped kick off at South by Southwest Interactive this year. I encourage you to donate too but I also know that money can be tight.
After a massive disaster like the one created by the Tsunami in Japan (and now the nuclear fallout) people tend to move on soon after the dust settles. To help keep this fresh in our minds for at least a little while longer, I ask that you retweet this post (there is a RT button at the top of the post) to help spread the word.
Once I get to 100 RTs, I will then donate 25 of my next 100 tweets, not just the #SXSWCares but to whatever cause you would like me to (within reason of course). Just leave the name of the cause, the link and a quick blurb as to why this cause is important to you in the comments below and I will make sure it gets tweeted to the people I'm connected with on Twitter.

Thank you in advance for helping me celebrate this marvelous milestone and the multiple memories I've had over my last 39,999 tweets.

Special thanks to: Kyle Flaherty, Jim Storer, Geoff Livingston, David Armano, Chris Brogan and Ken Burbary for helping me think through this.

Samsung Curates SXSWi on their Media Wall

2011-03-15T17:37:00.001-05:00

No, this isn't my annual South by Southwest (SXSW) wrap up post. Instead, this is a little shout out to my friends at Samsung, a company I've admired for a while now. I don't have any formal relationship with them although they were kind enough to make me a VIP of the Blogger Lounge, one of my all time favorite places to hang out (and yes, that included a little high-end schwag).

Full disclosure aside, one of the things I love about this company is that they are doing something really smart with their sponsorship dollars at SXSW. Instead of just sponsoring a booth or putting up some giant signs, they worked with JESS3 to create something called the media wall. In the two videos below, I talk to Samsung social media manager, Esteban Contreras, about how they are curating -- one of my favorite topics -- the best of the best content [twitter, Flickr, SlideShare, check-ins, conference sessions, etc.] and posting it up on a giant wall.

Also good for all you SXSW goers who wish they had a way of collecting the best of what SXSWi had to offer, this feed should help.

In the first video clip, you'll hear Esteban talk about the Samsung feed/video wall.

In the second video clip, we'll get to see the wall up close and see the beautiful screen of awesome in full effect.

Thanks again to Samsung for helping make my SXSWi a better experience!

What About The Rest of The World?

2011-03-14T15:32:00.000-05:00

This is a continuation of a series of guest blog posts. Today's post comes from good friend and social media big brain, Jason Falls. Jason is a leading thinker on the social media marketing space. He blogs at SocialMediaExplorer.com and is bridging the gap by offering ExploringSocialMedia.com, a learning community geared toward teaching technology, digital and social media marketing to anyone who needs the help.

Insanity seems normal when you live in the asylum. Or so I keep reminding myself of the echo chamber that has emerged in our lovely little Web 2.0 world.

The technologists and developers and marketers and bloggers alike love to throw out statistics to prove their little world is the norm. We (and I'm in the middle of it, too) consistently point to the future as being online, connected, mobile or whatever ... so long as it doesn't involve ink or broadcast waves.
But we're wrong.

Sure, you can throw out Pew Internet and American Life statistics all you want. But you didn't look them up yourself, have no idea of the context of the questions asked and don't realize there's so much missing from the research.

Sure, 79 percent of U.S. adults use the Internet. But the statistic is "use" the internet, not follow you on Twitter. Why aren't we asking how well they use the Internet?

You know what percentage of the U.S. adult population has broadband in their home? Sixty-six percent. One in three people are still on dial-up, Jethro.

So the social fanatics want to say my doomsday drill down is a myth? Pew also tells us that of the 74 percent of U.S. adults online in 2009, the activities they used the web for were, in order, watching videos; getting information about a job; sending instant messages; downloading music and playing games. And of those, only watching videos was more than half of U.S. adults. Social networking? Thirty-five percent. Reading blogs? Thirty-two.

Now, before you go all math on me and say, "Well, 32 percent of U.S. adults is still like 100 million people." Sure, but keep in mind you are in an industry that thinks a 2% click thru rate on an ad and a 25% open rate on an email are good. Your logic is that the more bullets you spray, the more unsuspecting consumers you'll hit.

How about we focus on the 68 percent that don't read blogs? Or the 98 percent that don't click on search ads? Or the 75 percent that don't open your shitty emails?

At a trade show for retailers in a niche industry recently, I spoke with over 150 individuals about digital marketing. One-fourth of them ... 25 percent ... didn't have a website. Talking social media to them was like talking retirement when they couldn't even pay their mortgage.

Think that anecdotal data is misleading? How about the University of Maryland's Robert H. Smith School of Business's Center for Excellence in Service State of Small Business Report from January of this year? The study, sponsored by Network Solutions (disclosure: I'm on their social media advisory board), showed that only 56 percent of small business owners currently have a website. (Fourty-four percent of small businesses are NOT online.) Only 66 percent say they plan to in the next two years.
Think that's a shocker? Would you believe that when asked how often these companies that do have website update them, 41 percent said no more frequently than every 4-9 months. Ten percent said they update them less than once per year.

Social media use? Just 31 percent have a presence now with 46 percent planning one. Flip the notion before you nod in positive agreement: 69 percent of small businesses are NOT using social media.
According to the U.S. Census Bureau there are 1.2 million businesses in the United States with 10 or more employees. There are 4.5 million with nine employees or fewer. Would you believe that 98 percent of business in America are small businesses? (Those with less than 100 employees.)
That's a big market place of people out there that aren't checking in on Foursquare, aren't following you on Twitter and don't read your precious blog.

There exists a huge gap between those that know the web and those that don't. And it's high time we start being honest with ourselves and realize that social media types are not only in the minority, if web usage were religion, we'd be a fringe cult. No, this doesn't mean the Feds should come blow up our commune. But we've got a lot of work to do before real people -- those outside the echo chamber -- are here to play.

If we don't start bridging the gap and helping mainstream consumers understand and embrace social media marketing, the dot-com bust is going to seem like a market correction.
So, what are you doing to bridge the gap?

Twitter, Peanut Butter Sandwiches, and the Irresistible Heroes of the School Cafeteria

2011-03-10T02:13:00.003-06:00

The following is one in a series of guest posts on the Citizen Marketer 2.1 blog. In addition to being a good friend, Liz Strauss is CEO of SOBCon, a business strategies event, and founder at Inside-Out Thinking, a leadership, loyalty, and customer care training business. She is the author of Successful-blog.com You'll find her on Twitter as @lizstrauss.

I admit it I was a school geek. Everything about the school experience made me more curious. The good teachers took advantage of that. The not so good ones did their best to ignore it. I was curious about how everyone did things, who they were, why they cared about what they cared about, and the most interesting place of the whole school to me was the school cafeteria.

Back in the olden days, I was short and school books were light because the world had less information. School cafeterias still had cooks and ovens in which they cooked homemade food. Of course, being part of a school, laws and rules set the diet about what they could offer their patrons. For example, every day had to include one serving of bread with the meal. Each month the recommended diet included a huge portion of natural honey as an ingredient.

The brilliant nutritionist, Helen, that ran the school cafeteria knew her customers -- us kids well. So rather than using that honey in bits along the way she used it once a month to deliver a powerful WOW! She mixed the honey into a huge vat of peanut butter to make the most delicious spread.It was secret mixture I've never been fully able to replicate.

That day every month every kid -- even the ones who didn't like peanut butter -- asked for two helpings of bread. Those peanut butter side sandwiches became the currency of the lunch table. Kids traded for favors, to mend friendships, score homework help, and to meet new kids in other classes.

Peanut butter sandwiches were social media at its best.

Helen understood that when you give your customers something spectacular that only you can give, the result is something that your customers can't help but share and talk about. Helen had turned a sandwich into an event. The whole school was connected in a quest to enjoy the best peanut butter sandwiches in the land.

Kids I went to school with still talk about Peanut Butter Day. Helen had a whole school of fiercely loyal fans.

Why Austin Rocks (and Why You Want to Work Here)

2011-03-09T11:00:00.006-06:00

There's something unusual going on the universe. I'm not sure what force is behind it but about 3-4 years ago, a new set of "railroad" tracks of sorts -- that of the virtual variety -- were laid down coming from locales north, east and northeast to a little old town in Texas called Austin. Well, Austin's actually not that little. And it happens to be the capitol of Texas. But that's besides the point. The key here is that some of the smartest social business minds in the country are flocking in droves to the live music capital of the world.

While I don't necessarily consider myself in that set of "smartest social business minds," I have worked in the community/social media for business space for the last five plus years. And two and a half years ago, that same force I referenced in the first paragraph drew me like a migratory bird to the ATX (a cutesy little name we like to use to reference the capitol city). Of course it didn't hurt that my former company, Powered, was recruiting me to become their CMO. But that was only one of a dozen factors that played into my attraction to the great city of Austin.

At the risk of rambling on for too long, you'll notice that in this post [orchestrated by one of those great minds, Peter Kim] that a number of the Austin transplants I referenced earlier have weighed in on why they decided to move here to work (or in some cases, stay).

Peter Kim's post is here.
Virginia Miracle's post is here.
Kathy Mandelstein's post is here.
Greg Matthews post is here.
Spike Jone's post is here.
Kate Niederhoffer's post is here.

And to directly "borrow" Peter's closing quote...

"Our town will soon welcome 15,000+ visitors for SXSWi. You might be one of them. If so, while you're here I encourage you to think about the nice people, great weather, low cost of living, live music, nationally recognized public schools, BBQ and breakfast tacos, and the growing community of your peers that call this town home. I know all of the people on this post are seeking great talent to join their firms and you might want to drop an inquiry or two while you're here. (Click here for [WCG's] open positions.)

I have no regrets about leaving that brand new house behind in Boston, because we're building the social business capital of the world.

Any interest in joining us?"

Solis Joins Team Altimeter

2011-03-08T12:00:00.056-06:00

Wow! Big news today for Brian Solis and the good folks at research-based advisory firm, Altimeter (Jeremiah Owyang and Charlene Li's gig). According to my friend, Jeremiah, Brian will be joining the firm as a principal focusing on "change management, social business and helping Altimeter's clients adopt disruptive technologies."

Charlene Li, , Brian Solis & Jeremiah Owyang (credit: Solis)

Given Brian's meteoric rise over the last couple of years that culminated with his interview of news anchor, Katie Couric, last fall, this is a big win for Altimeter. It will be interesting to see how Brian -- a two time author that cut his teeth in the PR world -- will make the leap to analyst. Given the content Brian creates and covers on his blog, I have not doubt that if anyone can make the shift, Brian can.

By way of fun background, I've done podcasts with Charlene (co-interviewing Charlene with Jim Storer at the Community 2.0 Conference in 2008), Brian (TechSet, 2009) and Jeremiah (via the phone). I know all three personally and am excited for them as this will be big news for a group that is already moving and shaking. When you see them at SXSW, make sure to congratulate them!

To that end, Altimeter's growth won't stop with Solis. According to Jeremiah, they are also hiring in a few other fields such as mobile, business intelligence, and digital media and advertising.

Bizzy Checks Out

2011-03-08T06:18:00.000-06:00

Over the past few months, my co-author, Mike Schneider, and I have been keeping a closer eye on local business recommendation engine, Bizzy. Mike and I have both know VP of marketing, Ryan Kuder and community manager, Elysa Rice for a while. And I was lucky enough to have Ryan on the Quick'n'Dirty podcast show a few months back (Ryan was definitely one of our more engaging guests).

The reason I bring up Bizzy is that they are announced a groundbreaking new feature today called the "check-out." Yes, many of us that use location based services like foursquare and Gowalla are quite familiar with the concept of "checking-in" to a location. But checking out? What's that all about. Well, the key is that Bizzy doesn't care which service you use to check in. But when you are ready to check out, you can leave a simple review. As you can see in the screen shot to the left, this can be as simple as picking one of the three faces to let you know what you thought of the business you just patronized. Or, you can leave a Twitter-esque review that gets added to the tip of that particular venue.

Bizzy was kind enough to let Mike and I play with this functionality for the last week or so. My initial thoughts are that I like the new functionality a lot. In particular, I liked the ability to add my $.02 on the location I was visiting which I often forget to do when I'm checking into a venue. The interface was very easy to use given how simple and straightforward it was.

With that said, there are a couple of things I'd like to see in the future:

It would be nice if Bizzy physically checked you out of the location using the service you checked in with e.g. Gowalla, Facebook Places, foursquare. I know this is tricky because I don't believe any of these services currently offer up a "limbo" or "I'm not checked in anywhere" state which would be required.
I know I was testing an alpha version of the product (using a very cool development environment called Test Flight) but sometimes I couldn't always find the venue I checked into to check out of. For instance, I went to a local festival here in Austin on Sunday and while I was able to check in on Gowalla [Austin Kite Festival at Zilker Park], I wasn't able to check out on Bizzy. Hopefully this is a matter of expanding the geo-database over time and making it more real time.

If you don't use Bizzy yet, I'd suggest checking it out. They provide some great local recommendations based on information you provide. And with the added bonus of the check out, you can now review all your favorite (or un-favorite) venues in seconds.

With LBS Announcements Looming, What Motivates People to Check-in Anyway?

2011-03-07T07:39:00.002-06:00

The following is one in a series of guest posts on the Citizen Marketer 2.1 blog. Today's post is brought to you by Jill McFarland. In addition to being a friend, Jill is the VP of Marketing at TangoTab, a new restaurant industry social solution. She is also an avid Boston sports fan and a fellow location based services junkie.

With all the buzz swirling around about the many announcements to be made by the LBS players at SXSW I’ve got to wondering, is there anything a service could do that could catapult them into the lead and give them ‘mainstream’ status. When Facebook Places launched there seemed to be a general thought that everyone would migrate that way because Facebook already had the audience but this doesn’t seem to be the case (informal study). I attribute this to its lack of innovation; people want more than just the ability to check in.

I came across this article recently Why did Foursquare Succeed Where Other Location-Based Services Failed? which covers many business reasons. I think the most important thing mentioned is ‘a great user experience’… but what does that mean? Jodi Gersh was presenting an LBS session at a conference last year where Jason Falls and I piped in, elaborated and answered questions on services we knew a lot about. What was interesting about this conversation was that Jason and I used and liked the services for completely different reasons. So, I decided to do some crowdsourcing to find out what motivated people to check in, what service they use and why, in order to find out what really mattered.

Summarized findings

To see where friends are/Let them know where I am – this is a motivator for some though not nearly as many as I expected. Some chose a service because it cross-posts with other services:

Deals – A BIG motivator, in fact many users cited this as the reason that they are not loyal to one service but use many looking for the best deals and their motivation to check in is to get a deal.
Status – Virtual status matters. I was really surprised to learn how much the virtual items collected in Gowalla motivate users to check in. Many are highly motivated to become the mayor regardless of if there are any perks involved. Some got bored with a system when they felt like they maxed out on badges and were no longer virtually earning something.
Gaming aspect – SCVNGR seems to be gaining steam with its interactive game feel. I got many “SCVNGR is so cool!” but few seem to use it on a regular basis just to check in, it’s used more when they’re seeking a more interactive experience.
Reviews – many used services to read reviews and leave reviews.
Timeline – Some like that Whrrl and Gowalla keep a timeline and tell a story of your life, including photos and friends.
Ease of use/ It doesn’t crash - If locations don’t load or there are extra steps users will abandon a service and not look back. I got this response way more often than I anticipated. Users are motivated to use the app that provides the best user experience, consistently.

People often tell me I live in the early adopter bubble and am unaware that the majority of the population still doesn’t care about or use LBS. Although we know there are big announcements to be made at SXSW I’m wondering could anything be announced that could change that? Security (fear) is still going to be an issue when it comes to reaching critical mass adoption. Each day we see more variety in partnerships. Foursquare recently announced a unique partnership with American Express, SCVNGR with Dunkin’ Donuts targeting Boston sports fans, Whrrl has formed many interesting partnerships. The continuation of partnerships that make sense will help. Aaron and Mike’s book Location Based Marketing for Dummies will help. [wink]

What do you think? Is reaching critical mass important or should the focus be on continuing to innovate for those that are adopting?

I'm 'Checking In' at WCG: As Head of Location Based Marketing (aka Truck Day)

2011-03-03T04:05:00.004-06:00

UPDATED as of 8:15 AM CT
A good friend who is much smarter than me gracefully hinted at me moving the meat of my news further up. So I've created a few bullets at the top of the post for those of you that like to skim.

The News

After 2 1/2 years, I'm leaving Powered/Dachis and headed to head up mobile/location based marketing and social strategy at WCG, a global agency offering integrated creative, interactive and marketing communications services to clients in healthcare, consumer products and technology.
As you'll read below, I have nothing but mad respect for Jeff, Peter, Kate, Natanya and all my former teammates at Powered/Dachis. But this opportunity was too good to pass up.
For any of you that don't know, I'm writing a book on location based marketing w/ Mike Schneider - more on that later.
The full press release and a short video I did with my new friend and colleague, Paul Dyer, can be found here.

The Original Post

Nearly two and a half years ago I announced that I was packing up my belongings and moving down to Austin from a place I had called home for most of my life. When I decided to head south, not only was I leaving a comfortable job as VP of social media at a company called Mzinga, I was also saying goodbye to most of my family and many of my friends that I had grown to know over the years.

Since then, I've had an amazing run that's included meeting hundreds of new friends both here in Austin and all over the country; helping my company, Powered, acquire three other companies; working closely with two of my colleagues (and good friends), Joe Jaffe and Greg Verdino to launch and market their books; landing several great new clients; securing a book deal of my own with friend and co-author, Mike Schneider, to write Location Based Marketing for Dummies; and then ultimately getting acquired by social business consultancy, Dachis Group.

As you can imagine, getting acquired is not an insignificant thing. Throw in the fact that the company acquiring Powered is the largest social business consultancy in the world AND I happen to be friends with the managing director (Peter Kim) and CEO (Jeff), along with several other folks that work there and you have the potential for something pretty incredible. I tried to convey some of this excitement in the post I wrote on the day we announced the acquisition. To that end, I'm a huge believer in the power of social business design and I have been for years. But...

Yes, you knew there was a "but" coming, especially based on the title of this post (more on that in a minute). In spite of my respect for Jeff, Peter, Kate, April, Bryan and all my former Powered colleagues like Greg, Natanya Anderson, Kevin Tate, Greg Rau, Steve Kleinberg and Jen van der Meer, I've decided to once again pack up the bags and move my little old self over to another company called WCG. This time, the move requires a lot less distance and many fewer goodbyes. Fortunately for my family and me, WCG has one of their offices here in Austin so I'll just be about four blocks down the street from my old office.

At the end of the day, this has zero to do with me leaving a great company with a ton of smart people and a winning game plan. Instead, it has everything to do with me joining another great company with a ton of smart people and a winning game plan... but with a personal mandate of focusing on location based marketing. And as I mentioned earlier when I mentioned my book deal, I'm very passionate about helping companies figure out how to tap into the power of mobile and location based services like foursquare, Gowalla, Whrrl, Where and Bizzy to deepen customer loyalty.

With perhaps the longest preamble in history... that brings us to the topic of Truck Day. For any of you that follow baseball closely, you might know that "Truck Day" is the day where Major League Baseball Teams pack up their trucks and head south to the likes of Florida and Arizona to kick off spring training. Any of you that follow me on Facebook or Twitter also know that I am a HUGE Red Sox fan so after a long, baseball-less winter, I get really excited about things like Truck day because it means that the season is just around the corner. Seeing that this is my first day in the office at WCG, I look at this as my "truck day" or my day to kick off what I expect will be an amazing journey.

Before I forget, however, I would like to take a minute to thank the Powered team with special shout outs to Natanya, Kathy, Ron, Ken and David. You took a chance on me two and a half years ago and as a result we all had the opportunity to hold on for what turned out to be a crazy yet fulfilling ride. In addition, I want to thank Jeff Dachis and Peter Kim for being such good friends, supporting my decision and helping me through the transition. And finally, to Bob Pearson and Jim Weiss for giving me this fantastic opportunity to join the WCG team (this is also where I give a big hat tip to my friend, Greg Matthews, for helping start up the conversation between Bob, Jim and myself). Oh, and of course my loving wife, Melanie, who has been nothing but supportive through the entire process.

Now it's time to PLAY BALL!

image courtesy http://msmaggiemoo.blogspot.com/

5 Lessons Businesses Can Learn from the Just Bieber Experience [podcast]

2011-02-21T20:49:00.001-06:00

Yes, I saw The Justin Bieber Experience yesterday against my better judgement (kids choice). However, in spite of still not being a big fan of his music, I came away much more impressed than I thought I would. In fact, I was so impressed with Bieber's approach that I did a quick podcast today on five lessons businesses can learn from Justin Bieber.

[updated: couldn't resist adding a link to this video -- hat tip to John Johansen for finding/sending -- of James Earl Jones reading lyrics to Bieber's Baby Baby song. Brilliant!

Marketing in Social Networks: The Importance of Context

2011-02-21T20:34:00.000-06:00

As some of you know, I'm in the process of writing the Location Based Marketing for Dummies book with Mike Schneider. As a result, my blog has suffered. To help fill in the gaps, I'm slotting in some guest posts. Today's guest contribution was submitted by Tara Miller who regularly writes for psychology degree.

When marketing your business online, especially in the world of social media, it's important to understand that the term 'social' is a general sort of term. When it comes to marketing within different types of social networks, you have to make sure that you keep in mind the different contexts within which members of these networks operate. Keeping these contexts in mind and adapting your marketing strategies to take advantage of this context can help as you reach out to potential clients or customers in each network.

Two of the most popular social networks out there are Twitter and Facebook, and to the untrained eye, these two networks seem similar. In both cases, you connect with fellow users, share media and other bits of information and you create relationships that can benefit you in other areas of your life. But how can you adjust your marketing for each one?

In the case of Twitter, you have to keep in mind that when you market your blog or products, you have to keep the stream of marketing well within Twitter's 140 character limitations. The message you can communicate is greatly limited in that sense; yes, Twitter now has applications within the site that let users view images and video without leaving the site, but these are still a bit clumsy to use. Likewise, it's a bit harder to follow conversations in Twitter, so anything beyond a few back and forths can be too long for a user to stick with. But this brevity within Twitter does have its advantages; it allows you to really punch up and emphasize the relevance of your message, while at the same time directing users to seek out more context at your main blog or website by following links. Twitter gives you the ability to impress upon your users a simple, but powerful message.

Facebook, however, has the advantage of allowing its users to engage in more complicated types of media; the developers have done a good job of making that a streamlined part of the Facebook experience, so it's much easier for you to take advantage of. While Facebook users also demand timely and up-to-date information, they also have more patience to allow conversations to develop and to experience more static pages. Conversations within Facebook are also threaded, which allows for more contextual conversations versus those on Twitter. On your wall and in your feed, you can post status updates regarding how your product or blog has changed, or what's new for you and your company. You can seek out users who friend you or who exist in similar niches, and interact with them on their own walls. But be wary that Facebook does not usurp your internet presence, as it's very easy for Facebook users to stay online only within the realm of that one site.

Ultimately, if any marketing concept holds true in both social networks, it is this: you cannot automate your marketing in social networks. You must engage users personally and especially. If you can do this well and efficiently, then you can count on users to gravitate towards your brand in a positive way.

The Art of Book Marketing: Past, Present & Future

2011-02-15T10:35:00.000-06:00

This post originally appeared on Shelton Interactive's blog back in December as a guest post.

Writing a book is tricky business. I know because I'm in the process of doing so as I write this post. Marketing a book after it's published can be equally difficult for a few different reasons:

There is a LOT of content out there right now. Some good, some bad, some meh, but all of that content on a variety of different topics makes it difficult to break through the clutter.
Publishers often don't pony up a lot of money to market new books. That doesn't mean they never put marketing muscle behind a book. Just not a lot. Instead, they rely on the author to hire a publicist that can hopefully propel the book into Amazon's or the NY Times' best seller lists.
Slowly but surely, social media is making its way into the mix. But authors that are new to social media are finding that it takes more than a month or two to tap into the benefits of social. And those that have been doing social for a while aren't necessarily the ones writing the books.

For me, I've had the benefit of some past, present and soon to be future experience with book marketing. In the latter case, I'm the one writing the book. In the former instances, it was a boss or a colleague that wrote the books and I've been on the hook to help them get the word out.

In the spirit of being prescriptive, I'm including a "what worked, what didn't and what I would have done differently" for the past and present books I helped market. In the case of my Location Based Marketing for Dummies book that I'm writing with my friend, Mike Schneider, I've spelled out a few things that we hope will work based on past experience. I also have a dozen or so friends that have written books and I've included a few at the end of this post that I think did a good job marketing their respective books.

The Past
Back in 2006, not a lot of people knew about social media. In some ways, this was a good thing. In other ways, it made marketing a book about social media (or more specifically, using a community of people to crowd source a book on a wiki platform) that much harder. The book I'm referencing was cleverly titled, We Are Smarter Than Me, and was a collection of case studies provided by "the crowd."

What worked: Content creation i.e. podcasts with individuals or representatives from companies mentioned in the book. This helped to extend the book beyond its physical cover and was great SEO juice for the book website.
What didn't work: While many of the constituents that helped contributed to the book were actively engaged early on in the book writing process, we lost momentum for the six months that it took to get the book through it's official publishing process.
What could have been done different: Better outreach to the companies mentioned in the book to get them to buy the book in bulk.

The Present
During my tenure here at Powered, I've actually had the benefit marketing two books. One by my colleague, Joseph Jaffe, titled Flip the Funnel, and a second by colleague, Greg Verdino, titled microMarketing. Because the promotion of Greg's book is more recent, I'm going to focus on that one versus Joe's.

What worked: Greg and his publicist, PTA, came up with the idea of asking bloggers to review individual chapters of Greg's book versus the entire book. This way, we were able to get more of them engaged and lined up several chapter reviews a day for 10 days. The foundational post (and a review of Chapter One) can be found here on Citizen Marketer 2.1.
What didn't work: Unfortunately, Greg is a busy guy (his full time job is VP of strategy here at Powered). While Greg is always more than willing to speak at events, webinars and take interviews, his day job keeps him focused on delivering client work instead of book promoting. This is good for Powered but tough for Greg as an author.
What could have been done different: In a perfect world, I would have loved to have spent more marketing dollars against getting Greg to more events and pushing for more press coverage and earned media.

The Future
As I mentioned earlier, I'm co-authoring a book titled, Location Based Marketing for Dummies. In the plus column, this is a book that is part of a well-known series that our publisher, Wiley, has been supporting for years. It's also focusing on a topic that is near and dear to my heart. At the same time, I know there are people with a natural bias against Dummies books and while I'm thrilled to be a part of it, it's definitely not the same as writing a book from scratch. But with that said, I do plan to market the hell out of it starting now.

What (we hope) will work: We've already secured a URL for the book and we plan to start writing posts that talk about location based marketing. We'll also talk about the book writing process, include video and podcast interviews from the companies we talk to and keep a running list of sources we're using for source material. By building our "followership" early and often, we're hoping that we'll have a built in audience who wants to buy the book when it comes out.
What (we hope we don't have to say) didn't work: Mike and I never want to come off as too sale-sy. If we ever get accused of that, I know both of us will be disappointed.
What we hope to do different: Combine the power of the "Dummies series" marketing engine with Mike's and my social knowhow to create a winning product that people want to buy when it's published. Part of what will make this successful is our continuous engagement with our constituents along the way.

So who are a few of the other authors who have done a great job marketing their books? Here are five (if you want to know why, you have to ask me in the comments):

Clay Shirky: Cognitive Surplus
Charlene Li: Open Leadership
Chris Brogan & Julien Smith: Trust Agents
CC Chapman & Ann Handley: Content Rules
Joseph Jaffe: Flip the Funnel

Is RSS Dead?

2011-01-27T05:55:00.001-06:00

A few months ago I was on a panel at InnoTech with friends Kyle Flaherty, Bryan Person and Sheila Scarborough. The focus of the panel was on the future of social media and one of the topics that came up was RSS. Being the troublemaker that I am, I firmly asserted that RSS as we know it was dead. You can imagine the horror of the 200 plus audience members.

As we dug a little deeper into the topic, I backed off my position and clarified that while I didn't really think that RSS was dead, I did feel like we were nearing the end of the usefulness of RSS readers. Some of my panelists agreed with me (I believe that Sheila strongly objected) but we were able to have a productive conversation about the increasing value of XML feeds (that's all RSS really is) while the value of individual readers was on the wane.

Today, the conversation came up again with a gentleman whose shall remain nameless but let's just say that he is a pioneer in the space and I was pleased to hear that he agreed with me. And while I know at least half of you that read this (all three of you) will insist that you still read blogs regularly via your RSS reader of choice, I'm going to argue that you are a dying breed.

Why do I believe that RSS readers are going the way of the VHS tape? Mainly because they don't really allow for good curation. And by that, I mean that unless I'm reading an RSS feed of blogs that someone I know and trust like David Armano or Robert Scoble have "read" and "liked," than I'm forced to do a lot of hunting and pecking. This doesn't mean I don't like the blogs of smarties such as Joe Jaffe, Valeria Maltoni, Peter Kim, Jay Baer or Tamsen McMahon. It just means that not all of their posts appeal to me (and I'm quite sure the opposite is true). Combine that with the fact that I enjoy discovering new sources of content -- and let's be honest, there are tons of new content creators coming on the scene every day --and you'll at least understand where I'm coming from.

Before you say it, I realize that Twitter alone ISN'T the solution to better content curation. In fact, Twitter can sometimes make it harder to find the right content unless you have the right human filters. I find mine in people like Ann Handley, Lee Odden, Steve Rubel, Amber Naslund, Simon Mainwaring, Brian Morrissey, and Rachel Happe among dozens of others. So what is the solution? I'm not sure. A better Flipboard perhaps? A new and improved Delicious? If you know of one, I'm all ears.

Okay, this is the point where I turn things over and let all you folks that are smarter than me tell me the error of my ways. So comment away my friends. You know I love to be proved wrong.

POST SCRIPT: Here is an audio follow-on by friend and smart dude, Ike Pigott.

Channels

2011-01-10T16:00:00.000-06:00

A couple of years ago, I remember my friend Mukund Mohan asking on Twitter how many channels people had engaged on in a particular day. I was always amazed when I sat back and thought about the fact that I was usually somewhere near 10-11 which included things like:

The phone (landline)
Cell phone
Twitter
Facebook (which now has several sub-channels)
E-mail
Skype
Text messages
Face-2-face
Blog (via comments)
IM (AIM, Yahoo and/or g-chat)
Discussion forums

While the number of channels continues to proliferate, my preferences continue to stay the same. What's amazing to me is that more people don't pick up on other people's preferred methods of communicating. In particular, this is an important notion when it comes to one's boss, respective other, family and increasingly, in influencer outreach.

For me, I have about three channels that I like to communicate in (and I'm guessing you won't be surprised):

E-mail
Twitter
Text messaging

My three least favorite?

Phone (landline)
Cell phone
IM (increasingly Facebook IM)

Now that doesn't mean that I don't like using IM with certain people. My co-author, Mike Schneider, and I use Skype regularly to communicate about our book. It's also an invaluable tool during the Quick'n'Dirty podcast I do with Jennifer Leggio. And recently, I've found it humorous when my three year old daughter Skype calls me AND then manages to turn on the video functionality on my wife's computer. But this is a fairly private channel for me and I don't necessarily want everyone using it. It's also interruptive and requires me to stop what I'm doing to pay attention.

I also don't mind being on the phone sometimes. But it really is my least favorite channel. I'm not sure where my dislike of the phone stems from but what I will say is that my relationship with my wife has improved 1,000 fold now that we primarily use text to communicate when we aren't able to talk face to face. And with respect to everyone, I like my wife a whole lot better than I like a lot of other people.

Where am I going with this post? To the world of business of course and the fact that now, more than ever, businesses big and small need to be more in tune with how their customers want to engage them. If it's Twitter, then provide Twitter customer service... the same hours that you provide phone support. Or IM. Or via Facebook. Or on Skype (like AT&T does which is brilliant by the way).

Unfortunately, I'm still seeing a lot of companies that live in the world of in person, phone or e-mail. And of course most of those are during hours that aren't super convenient for most normal people. Hopefully this will change in 2011 as more and more companies look toward operationalizing social media. But I'm afraid it's going to be a while before we can engage companies in exactly the channels we please, when we please. Until then, I guess it's more "your call is very important to us... please continue to hold and your call will be answered in the order that it was received." Oy.

Powered and The Power of Social Business Design

2010-12-21T06:51:00.002-06:00

Cross-posted from Powered.com

A new day is dawning at Powered and its name is social business design. If you've heard that term before, you can thank the folks over at Dachis Group -- who Powered is now a part of. That's right, you can read that again, "who Powered is now a part of." That's because as of yesterday, December 20, 2010, the very same Dachis Group acquired Powered and it's subsidiaries, crayon, StepChange and Drillteam.

Social Business Design

Over the past 2.5 years, Dachis Group introduced the concept of social business design to the world and they've grown their business around it. Social business draws on many disciplines. It is composed of Enterprise 2.0 thought leaders including Dion Hinchcliffe, engaging with practitioners from the 2.0 Adoption Council, and bringing technology to life through Headshift. It draws upon the visual thinking capabilities of XPLANE and formulate business strategy through the business unit they've grown by hand since their beginning.

So how does Powered fit into social business design? Quite nicely in fact. Because Powered and its subsidiaries are all about social business customer engagement. You may know this as social media marketing, but calling it that doesn't do the concept of more deeply engaging one's customers justice. In fact, the problem with many social media campaigns is just that. They are campaigns, not sustainable programs that grow over time.

Where businesses truly succeed is when they transform from the inside out by re-engineering their processes, culture and technologies to get the most out of their relationships with their employees, partners, customers and fans. As part of the Dachis Group, Powered and its subsidiaries can now provide our customers workforce collaboration, customer participation (or engagement) and business partner optimization.

Needless to say, we here at Powered are excited to be part of the largest social business consultancy in the world. That, combined with the fact that we are part of a company with over 220 employees and offices in 10 cities across five different countries, gives us the best opportunity to win. And at the end of the day, who doesn't like winning?

Field Guide to South by Southwest Interactive (SXSWi)

2010-12-08T12:51:00.006-06:00

Originally posted on December 7, 2010 [UPDATED as of 3/7]

Every year, I have a few new friends that ask me if I have any tips for them as they get ready for SXSW -- an interactive, film and music extravaganza! Today, my friend Christine Perkett let me know that she was taking her maiden voyage to Austin next spring for this very event. My promise to her was an insider's guide to "South-by" as it's referred to by us geeks. I know I've missed a ton so I'm hoping that my fellow SXSW veterans and local Austinites will help fill in the blanks.

Lodging and Airfare
After buying your ticket to SXSW, this is the first thing you want to take care of. And by first thing, I mean now. Today. Not in two months. Trust me when I tell you that you will end up flying into San Antonio and staying somewhere halfway between San Antonio and Austin if you don't take care of this soon. Here are several hotels that are close that you should consider.

Map of Downtown Austin

View Map of Downtown Austin Hotels for SXSW in a larger map

HINT: I am not kidding about staying near San Antonio (which is an hour away from Austin) if you don't plan ahead.

Scheduling
One of the first things you will realize as you start to prepare for SXSW is that there are A LOT of things happening at the same time. This includes keynotes, breakout sessions, happy hours, etc. Per my friend, Kyle Flaherty's advice from a post he did about SXSW 2010, get focused on the 6-8 panels/sessions you really want to see. Make sure you're not just going to see the latest social media rock star but look carefully at the session title and description. Is the speaker a seasoned speaker or is this their first rodeo? As a result, you may want to have a "plan B" session" lined up for any selections you make just in case you need to call an audible.

HINT: Have all of your your notes/schedules printed out. Wifi and cell coverage can be spotty at times at SXSW.

Parties/Networking
There are a lot of parties at SXSW. And when I say a lot, I mean A LOT. More than you will ever experience anywhere else in your lifetime. This is obviously a great time to network so go light on the drinking (or at least pace yourself -- more on that in the next section). Also, just like the conference sessions, you will want to choose these wisely. Take note of the fact that for the signature parties (Mashable, DIGG, TechSet) there will be lines. Long lines. So get there early and move on to your next party before that party winds down. Also keep an eye on key people like Chris Brogan and Robert Scoble's Twitter streams. These guys create flash parties everywhere they go. Sometimes, those are the best ones. Another smart idea is to make sure you are signed up for services like Plancast and a location-based provider or two like Foursquare, Gowalla and Whrrl so you can monitor the action a little more methodically.

Another important point to touch on here is that you will do some of the best networking you've ever done at SXSW. That's at least 67% of the value of the conference. Some of that happens at parties. Other times, this can happen via coffee, breakfast or in the Blogger's Lounge (this is one of the hidden gems of SXSW). I'll put up a link to more details about the BL as we get closer to SXSW. However, because there are so many events going on simultaneously, be sure to reach out via e-mail or phone with anyone you want to connect with in advance and set a time and a place to meet.

HINT: For most parties, you will need a SXSW badge. If you attend the conference rogue (sans badge), there is usually a list of parties that don't require badges (I will link to that when it's up). What I will tell you is that unless you are 5' 10", blonde and drop dead gorgeous, there is a 99% chance you will NOT get into any party that requires a badge.

Pace Yourself
As I noted in the "Party/Networking" section of this post, there are a lot of parties that go on during SXSW. Combine that with the late nights and the fact that SXSW takes place over the course of several days, it is imperative to pace yourself. Trust me, I'm not scrooge when it comes to having fun but ensuring that you eat well, get sleep whenever you can (hint: take naps in the afternoon), drink plenty of water and try and not pull an all-nighter during the first day or two that you're here.

HINT: The weather in March is usually mid-70s to high 80s during the day and low-60s at night. Shorts and t-shirts are de rigeur but you may also make sure you bring a fleece and a few pairs of jeans for the evening activities.

Content Creation
If you're a blogger, podcaster or videographer, SXSW is a wonderful place to create content. There is usually space in the hallways of the Austin Convention Center to set up shop although they hallways can get noisy in between sessions. Weather permitting, you can also shoot/record outdoors. Just make sure you bring extra batteries and be sure to test your equipment before you come down. If you're podcasting, you might even arrange with someone to be editing remotely so that you can post during SXSW. This means pre-recording your bumper music, creating a tag/hashtag in advance, etc.

HINT: As I mentioned in the "Networking" section, you will also want to try and schedule as many interviews ahead of time as possible. This includes putting together a schedule and finding a meeting place in advance e.g. outside the blogger lounge or near the Chevy pavilion near the entrance.

Restaurants
I'm in the process of adding more places to the map below (suggestions are welcome). [POST SCRIPT 2/29/2011: Our friends at Where.com just added a curated list of Austin/SXSW faves from a list of about 20 people -- food bloggers, Austinites and people like @SchneiderMike and I that just like food). For the BEST recommendations, go to my friend (and big time Foodie blogger), Natanya Anderson's expert post on this topic.

View Good Restaurants to Visit During SXSW in a larger map

HINT: The Salt Lick is a MUST visit while you are here for anyone that likes BBQ. Because it is in Driftwood which is a good 30 minutes south of downtown, you'll need to drive there. If you do decided to go, plan on it taking a good three hours out of your night. Also note that they are cash only and because Driftwood is in a dry county, you must bring your own beer and wine if you want to drink.

Other Useful Links

As we get closer to the event, more and more "how to do SXSW" posts will crop up. So that I don't overwhelm you, I will try and keep a running list below. I promise that I will personally curate these posts so that I only provide the posts that I see offering additional value.

Do512 - as I was reminded about in the comments, these guys are all over SXSW in terms of the best events, restaurants, etc. Make sure you head over to their site before/during/after SXSW.
Great newbie post from 2010 from Bonnie Sashin (I like her perspective).
Friend, Dave Delaney, shares 20 SXSW tips via SlideShare.
On Quora, find out what Aaron Brazell and Robert Scoble think you should do at SXSW [you might not be surprised that they do NOT agree].
From the Social Media Club, another great SlideShare deck with 16 tips.
Where.com's curated list of Austin/SXSW faves from a list of about 20 people -- food bloggers, Austinites and people like @SchneiderMike and I that just like food.
Friend and foodie blogger, Natanya Anderson's, expert post on where to eat with input from the smartest foodies in Austin.
Austin local socialmedia-ite, Kate Buck's take on what's what at SXSWi.

As I noted above, I'm sure I've missed all kinds of other good tips so please let me know via the comments below. Or you can send me a link via Twitter @aaronstrout.

5 Reasons Why We Won't Experience another Dotcom Bubble

2010-12-06T16:31:00.000-06:00

Thanks to friends Darin Kirshner and Joey McGirr for listening to me rant about this over coffee. I decided to collect my thoughts and put them down on digital paper.

While perusing my Twitter stream Sunday morning, I saw a tweet from long time blogger and Edelman SVP, Steve Rubel. For what it's worth, Steve is one of a handful of people who I pay very close attention to so I couldn't resist clicking through to the Newsweek article referenced in his update. The title of the article was Dotcom Bubble 2.0 and it focused on the recent speculation by venture capitalist, Fred Wilson that the current environment is looking a lot like the dotcom bust of the early 2000's over again.

While I respect Mr. Wilson and won't pretend to know 1/100th of what he knows about investing in companies, I did live through Web 1.0 and the first internet bubble. I was also a digital frontiersman meaning I know a little bit of which I speak. To that end, I couldn't resist throwing out my $.02 about why the current social media and location-based landscape is nowhere close to the environment of 1997-2001 when irrational exuberance took the world by the throat and temporarily choked the life out of it.

Here are five reasons why we will not live through a "dotcom bubble 2.0:"

Initial public offerings are at an all time low. As a result, the only people who will get burned by investing poorly in startups will be venture capitalists and wealthy folks who make poor investment decisions. NOT the stock market. This is a HUGE difference between 2010 and 2000 (see history of IPOs here).
Because of the bubble, investors, entrepreneurs AND the public learned a thing or two. Ask an entrepreneur or two how easy it is to get VC money these days. Go ahead.
In 1997, it costs hundreds of thousands of dollars to start a business. That's because you needed a website, and infrastructure and lots of other stuff that cost a lot of money. Now, many of those services are free or incredibly inexpensive. That means good ideas are much easier to implement and get off the ground for a $50,000 tab on 3-4 credit cards.
Many of the jackasses in 1997-2001 who got ridiculous sums of money from the VCs ran out and leased expensive real estate, went on wild hiring binges and then invested in things they had no business investing in like Superbowl ads. Think you'll see Klout, Gowalla or Pandora buying a Superbowl ad anytime soon?
9/11. Yes, this had nothing and everything to do with bubble 1.0. While we'll never know if we could have bounced back more quickly from the first Internet collapse, a catastrophic event that changed the world for ever happened and sent the US (along with many other wester countries) into a tail spin. Now I can't predict that this won't ever happen again but the odds aren't good.

Am I off base? Maybe. But I don't think so. I'll agree that there are similarities between today's business environment and ten years ago but many of the fundamental factors that created the bubble just aren't here. But you know me... I love to be proven wrong.

Image credit: Doobybrain.com

What Marketers Can Learn from Singer Leann Rimes

2010-11-29T15:41:00.000-06:00

This post originally appeared on Social Media Marketing Magazine on 11/1/2010.

I have always been a music enthusiast, but I’ve never been that interested in country music. And while I’m not ready to race out and fill my iTunes account with the likes of Kenny Chesney and Garth Brooks, I recently purchased a few songs by the lovely and talented Leann Rimes. Why the sudden change of heart? If you must know, it was because of a single tweet. Well, it was actually two tweets… and the fact that during a show I saw at the ANA’s Masters of Marketing event, she was authentic and genuinely made an attempt to connect with the crowd of 1,500 senior marketers.

As someone that embraced Twitter back in 2007, I regularly use it to learn, engage, and build relationships. To that end, I often make a point of acknowledging people, companies, and organizations when I feel like they are doing a good job. This may or may not mean anything to them, but it’s my style, and so far, it’s borne a lot of goodwill and business value for me.

Getting back to Leann Rimes and her performance at the ANA conference last week: as she was wrapping up her set, I took the time to look her up on Twitter and send her a thank you tweet. Imagine my surprise when she actually tweeted me back (twice)!

The reason I’m sharing this experience is not to show off—although who doesn’t love having a successful female country singer tweet them back—but rather to point out a lesson that big brands could learn from this experience. For starters, it doesn’t hurt to follow Ms. Rimes’ lead and ensure that your brand is perceived as credible and authentic. That was the thing about Leann that got me to tweet her in the first place. But more importantly, the fact that someone as busy as she must be took the time to tweet back to a potential fan was huge.

Did she do it because she knew that I was on the fence about liking her? I don’t think so. Looking back in her tweet stream, it appears she does that with a lot of people. It’s just who she is. What I can guarantee is that while she is a very talented singer, one of the main reasons she has become so successful is because she engages her “customers.”

Now would I have been as excited if a brand like Lexus or Starbucks tweeted me back? Probably not. But I do appreciate it when a brand takes the time to acknowledge me, and it has made me more likely to stick with that brand. For example, in the case of WiFi provider Boingo, I’ve actually become one of its biggest fans, primarily because Boingo regularly engages me in conversation on Twitter. Now Boingo only earns $120 per year from me, but I tell everyone I know about Boingo, have mentioned it in blog posts, and have even gone so far as to be interviewed in an article about Boingo and the “network effect of super fans” on the FASTforward blog.

So is your company engaging its customers? It doesn’t take a lot to get started—just a good listening tool and an internal and/or external resource that can help reach out to customers (or prospective customers) who are mentioning you. You’ll be surprised how far a tweet, a blog comment, or even a Facebook “like” will go in turning people’s heads.

Social CRM FTW! (Guest Post)

2010-11-24T12:57:00.001-06:00

Today we have a guest post from Lauren Carlson at Software Advice. I don't normally do a lot of guest posts but Lauren asked very politely and as a big believer of social CRM, I thought this might be an interesting topic for the folks that read me on Citizen Marketer 2.1. Enjoy!

Lauren Carlson of Software Advice

Social CRM has gone from vaporware to one of the most buzzed about terms in the enterprise software market. Take a quick look at Google Insights for Search and you will see that the term's popularity has increased exponentially over the past few years [see Google trend data below].

Paul Greenberg, the recognized thought leader in social CRM, describes it as "the company’s response to the customer’s control of the conversation." Essentially, it takes the vendor-customer relationship from transactive to interactive. That is all fine and good, but what does that mean for companies actually using the software?

With an eye toward providing a little clarity about the space, Software Advice, decided to write up some case studies that illustrate how actual companies have implemented social CRM technologies. Each study highlights how social CRM was used to resolve real world issues and improve business operations, taking social CRM from a concept to a solution. You can view the article here and read each case study in depth. However, the following is a very brief overview in problem-solution format.

Problem: Chordiant, an enterprise software company, needed to find a better way to coordinate the needs and desires of the individuals involved in the product requirements process.

Solution: They created Chordiant Mesh, and online community powered by Jive's Clearspace, where employees, developers, customers and partners can collaborate about product development. The feedback was very positive, resulting 15 successful collaborative product releases.

Problem: Linksys, a Cisco division that provides VoIP and networking solutions to consumers and small businesses, needed to reduce support costs while upholding high levels of customer support.

Solution: The company partnered with Lithium, an early leader in social CRM, to create an online support community. The deployment of the community increased self-service participation, which reduced the need on costly phone support. Linksys reported savings in the millions.

Problem: Enterasys Networks, a data-networking company, has hundreds of employees stationed around the globe. They required a social networking tool that would eliminated geographical boundaries and let their employees communicate in real time.

Solution: They decided to deploy Salesforce.com's Chatter application. The company experienced improved service performance, thanks to real time collaboration on service issues. Additionally, the sales team was able to work more closely together and close a record number of deals in the first quarter after implementing Chatter.

Problem: H&R Block, the tax preparation experts, wanted to find a way to see what their customers were talking about in order to anticipate problems before they arose.

Solution: The company decided to use Radian6's social monitoring technology to achieve this goal. The trend analysis tool allowed the company to drill down into community conversations and see which topics were creating the most buzz. This gave them better insight, enabling H&R Block to be more proactive in their customer service.

Problem: Pepperdine University's business school was looking for a better way to encourage collaboration among students, staff and faculty.

Solution: They partnered with Yammer to create a Twitter-like environment where users could interact and communicate in real-time and with more transparency. They saw an increase in community participation, due to the familiar UI, which has helped to enhance the learning and teaching process.

Because it is still in its fledgling stage, Social CRM still has a few kinks that need to be worked out. However, these case studies stand as a testament to the potential of this new market segment. It will be interesting to see its growth and maturation of the coming years.

What Can I Do for You?

2010-11-22T14:32:00.000-06:00

As we move closer to one of my favorite holidays of the year -- that would be Thanksgiving -- I've doing a little thinking about what I'm thankful for this year. Of course I am extremely thankful for my loving family and my kick ass job, boss and colleagues here at Powered. But at the end of the day, I am also incredibly thankful for you. Yes, that's right, YOU. The people that read my blog, endure my tweets and indulge me on Facebook.

This year, with your support I've:

Landed a book deal
Been invited to speak at numerous conferences
Connected with dozens of prospects and even a few customers
Learned a TON about marketing, social media and location-based services

So now it's my turn to give back to you. Just tell me what you'd like to do (join you for a webinar, podcast, write a guest blog post, grab a coffee, help paint your kitchen). You name it. And while I can't promise that I'll do it in the next seven days, I'll try and schedule it as soon as possible. For FREE. Because you deserve it.

p.s. there is one thing you could do for me if you feel so inclined. As we wrap up Movember, I'm shaking trees for donations. Consider giving $5-10 to help kick cancer's ass?

We're Writin' a Book

2010-11-17T13:15:00.005-06:00

Okay, when I say "we're writin' a book," it's a Dummies book. Which of course is a real book. But it's not like we're creating the next great American novel. More specifically, the "we" is my good friend and geo-location savant, Mike Schneider and me. And the Dummies book (Wiley imprint) we're writing is Location Based Marketing for Dummies. To my knowledge, it will be only the second printed book on this subject. Our friend, Simon Salt's book being the first.

In the book, we plan to cover a broad array of topics including:

Choosing the right platform(s)
Building a LBS campaign
Creating a relevant offer
LBS as part of your loyalty program
Integrating LBS with other marketing efforts
Developing a monitoring strategy
KPIs and Measurement

Mike and I have started writing the book already and plan to have the book wrapped up in March of 2011. The book is scheduled to be published in June of 2011. God willing, we'll start the pre-orders around May. As soon as there is a link up on Amazon and Barnes and Noble, we'll be sure you know about it.

By the way, I'd like to give a special thanks to our acquiring publisher, Amy Fandrei. She's not only super smart but she knows her stuff and has already done a fantastic job at "herding kittens" so to speak. Let's hope she's not sick of us by the end of this process.

So How you can help?

I'm glad you asked. If you're a LBS platform or vendor, we are interested in access to your executives, platform and case studies. If you see a new LBS hit the scene, send @schneidermike and I a tweet with the hashtag #LBM4D. You can also keep checking in and letting us know if you discover cool offers, glitches, Easter eggs and any other LBS topics that might be noteworthy. Tell us if you have specific things you think the book should cover, we are always listening.

And of course, you can read the book!

Brand Haiku

2010-11-15T07:00:00.014-06:00

Some people hate the fact that wifi is now available on airplanes. Not me. That's because a few of my more creative ideas have come to me while on a plane (see my 45 in 45 series as an example). My latest is a fun little exercise that I've asked a number of my blogger friends to participate in. The goal is to write a haiku about a recent brand experience -- good or bad.

For starters, let me share my haiku about my recent experience at the Intercontinental Hotel's Crowne Plaza property in Atlanta. While I was only able to capture a brief part of my great stay at the hotel, I would argue that it was the most important part... and one that would make me come back for more.

Stayed at Crowne Plaza
Tons of workspace in lobby
They are biz friendly

And here is the list of my blogger friends that have also decided to participate along with a link to their blogs. If you want, we've made this easy by linking each blog post to one another. So while you can access all the posts from here, it may make for more fun to read them serially by clicking on the link at the bottom of each person's post:

Jay Baer
Chris Carfi
CC Chapman
Adam Cohen
Jason Falls
Laura Fitton
Kyle Flaherty
Ann Handley
Beth Harte
Jennifer Leggio (part of the original group but a late add by me - doh!)
Valeria Maltoni
Greg Matthews
Jake McKee
Tamsen McMahon
Scott Monty
Sydney Owen
Jeremiah Owyang (see below)
Christine Perkett
Bryan Person
Jim Storer
Liz Strauss
David Armano

POST SCRIPT (11/15 @ 9:45 AM CT): After a grueling last few weeks working on his Social Strategy Report, Jeremiah is taking a few days off from blogging. However, he did offer up his #brand haiku via e-mail. His is posted below:

Stayed at Encore.
Very nice rooms on the strip.
I will return soon.

And as a double added bonus, here is my friend (and occasional #bromance) David Armano's snarky haiku tribute to moi.

If you want to participate, feel free. Just let me know where your blog is and I'll add you to the list. And to keep things rolling, consider tagging one of your friends in your post so that the chain continues.

And a few ex post facto additions:

Webinar: Retain Brand Loyalty with Location-Based Services

2010-11-12T14:02:00.000-06:00

So I'll be doing a webinar with social media smarty, Cody Barbierri of Piehead, next Wednesday (11/17) titled Retain Brand Loyalty with Location-Based Services. The webinar is free and it will take place from 2:00 - 3:00 PM ET.

Here's the official writeup of the event:

Facebook has expanded the value of location-based check-ins for its 200 million plus mobile users. Twitter has broadened the horizons of its geolocation platform to provide more value for businesses and users. Foursquare has exploded to more than 4 million users and continues to offer businesses ways to build brand loyalty. Location-based services are certainly here to stay.

Utilizing mobile and location-based concepts to engage an audience on new levels can do wonders for a brand that’s looking to increase customer loyalty. The marketing potential around these services, like Foursquare and Facebook Places, represents an opportunity for brands to engage and retain their key audiences.

Location-based services represent a new access point for brand engagement and marketing opportunities. While every brand’s marketing goals and objectives are different, some of the potential uses may include special offers and discounts sent via mobile, games and mobile apps.

Join two industry leaders for this thought provoking web seminar and discover how targeted location-based service campaigns can drive increased consumer engagement and long-term brand loyalty. By attending the event, you will not only learn about the major players in the space, but also gain greater insight into how to:

Track customers using various location-based services
Engage with users to ensure increased brand loyalty
Retain and develop relationships while giving potential customers reasons to convert
Analyze marketing efforts and customer response through continuous analysis
Cody and I will also be available to answer your questions during a live Q+A session.

Hope you can join us! Register here.

Paid Media... Meet Social Media: The New Twitter Model

2010-11-08T09:07:00.001-06:00

For three years, many of us skeptics have wondered aloud about the viability of Twitter. Will they sell sponsorships? Can they corporate tools help merit their billion dollar plus valuation? Would power users be wiling to pay for their services? Apparently, the answer is no (or at least not at the core). Instead, Twitter is taking a page out of the paid media book of tricks -- but with a social twist.

Witness, the promoted trend. Some of you who still make your way over to Twitter.com may have noticed that at the top of the trending topics list, their is now a little yellow "promoted" box. According to a trusted source, this slot is purchased for 24 hours and as of right now, is selling for somewhere in the $100,000/slot range. While little data has emerged about the success of these promoted trends (or the accompanying promoted tweets), up to 80% of the advertisers who have tested promoted trends and tweets are repeat buyers.

Twitter also has a third product called recommended accounts which they plan to dial up over the coming months (beta tests with select brands ran in September). These accounts can include people, companies and services. What I like about this last model is that it fulfills on the promise of marrying social media (an annuity) with paid media (ongoing costs). It will also put pressure on companies to get strategic about their bio, picture and quality of their tweet streams.

Coming Soon

While I'm still not 100% sold on the value of the sponsored tweet (apparently they are sold on a cost-per-click basis), I do like the idea of the trends and follower recommendations, especially as things like geo, demographic and day-part targeting come into effect (I'm assuming that Twitter has plans for those in the works). All of a sudden, brands will have an opportunity an amazing opportunity to present relevant content via links based on location, profile, current trends and past behavior. And most important of all, this gets done in a place that's become a regular hang out spot for millions of regulars.

Where things could get really interesting is when tools like Tweetdeck and Hootsuite are fitted for these same types of paid media opportunities. I'm just guessing here but I have a hunch that Tweetdeck's launch of their latest version that includes real time updates is signaling a tighter integration between Tweetdeck and Twitter (otherwise, I can't imagine that Twitter would allow Tweetdeck full access to its API). It's this kind of integration that will prevent Twitter from being disintermediated from itself by the ecosystem of tools and clients that have cropped up over the last three years.

Which brands will be most successful using Twitter's new paid offerings? I guarantee that any kind of travel and entertainment business will benefit from this. Retailers -- particularly around the holidays -- should also benefit from the opportunity. B2B will definitely have a tougher time cracking this nut but then again, many B2B companies are more niche advertisers anyway.

What do you think? Will Twitter truly realize it's billion dollar plus potential this way? I have a feeling that they may just be onto something.

In the Off Chance You Needed EXTRA Mo-tivation for Movember...

2010-10-31T22:41:00.000-05:00

Here's just a few reason's why WE are supporting Movember.

If you want to get involved (and have some fun), details are here.

We're Excited about Social Media Week Atlanta (11/8-11/12)

2010-10-29T13:58:00.001-05:00

Joseph Jaffe -- Greg Verdino -- Aaron Strout

Are you planning on participating in Atlanta's Social Media Week (November 8 - 12, 2010)? It's going to be a week filled with great content, networking and of course parties. In fact, our company -- Powered -- is doing it's share to help on all three fronts. Here are the details:

For starters, our very own Chief Interruptor (and three time published book author) Joseph Jaffe, will give a keynote presentation from 3-5 pm on Tuesday, November 9 at the Newell Rubbbermaid headquarters. Jaffe will be discussing his latest book: Flip the Funnel: How to Use Existing Customers to Gain New Ones. Jaffe will follow the discussion with a Q&A and then book signings.
That same night, Tuesday, November 9, Powered will host a Meet Up, from 5-7 pm, at Wildfire in the Perimeter Mall area. Joseph and Iwill be there so we hope you'll join us for some food, networking and maybe an adult beverage or two.
Thursday, November 11, my colleague and Powered VP of Strategy, Greg Verdino, will conduct his own Author Event, from 11 am – 12 pm, also at the Newell Rubbermaid headquarters. Greg will discuss his new book, microMARKETING: Get Big Results by Thinking and Acting Small. We will follow the discussion with a Q&A and then Greg will be happy to sign at least a few books.
Immediately following Greg's event, the two of us, will moderate a Social Media Innovations panel, hosted by Social Media Atlanta, to feature homegrown innovations. The panel will be from 1:30-4 pm (November 11th) at InterContinental Hotels Group headquarters, and the panel discussion will be followed by break-out sessions allowing attendees to interact with the local technologies.

So two things. 1) each event has it's own sign up (I've linked to all of them) so be sure to register as space will be limited and 2) if you're going to be there that week, please ping me on Twitter at @aaronstrout or e-mail me at aaron DOT strout AT powered DOT com.

For more information on Social Media Atlanta 2010, or to register for any of these, and other, free events, please see http://socialmediaatlanta.org/

Location-based Services: Best Practices from Texas State University [video]

2010-10-27T21:32:00.001-05:00

Earlier this week, I had the pleasure of moderating a panel on location-based services during Texas State University's Mass Communication Week. I was lucky enought o be joined on the panel with the likes of Simon Salt, CEO of Incslingers and author of upcoming book, Geolocation Marketing, Jonathan Carroll, community manager at Gowalla and Tony Alvarado of OneTaco. We covered a range of topics including:

Why one might use location-based services (LBS) as an individual
Use cases of LBS for small businesses AND big businesses
A case study from Tony about One Taco's partnership with Gowalla during SXSW 2010
Benefits of using LBS
Risks (including privacy) and much much more...

VIDEO 1

VIDEO 2

Big thank you to Dara (which is pronounced like "Sarah" but with a "D") Quackenbush and Cindy Royal for inviting us all to participate.

Get the Facts: Cool Live Web Chat

2010-10-24T21:19:00.000-05:00

While I'm as big a fan of the sex as anybody, if you read my blog, you likely know that it's not something I write about often. And don't worry, that's not going to change any time soon. But I am a fan of supporting good causes so with that in mind, I feel like it is my duty to let you know about a cool webcast that my wife's company, GenConnect, is hosting tomorrow night at 8 PM ET (October 25).

The focus of the webcast is "sex for life" and it features noted women's health expert, Dr. Alan Altman, expert on the subject of hormone replacement therapy and President of the International Society for the Study of Women's Sexual Health. While the webcast itself will be a rebroadcast from a live event recorded a week ago, Dr. Altman will be available on the website to answer questions and talk to the attendees live. The webcast addresses things like the physiology and psychology surrounding sex (particularly from a woman's POV) after the age of 35.

So guys (particularly you old dudes like me), if you want to learn a thing or two, here's your chance to get the inside scoop. Ladies, this is your chance to validate what you probably already suspected and even better, if you have questions, Dr. Altman is just the guy to help you get the right answers.

Here's the link for tomorrow night's live chat.

How Important is Your Twitter Bio?

2010-10-22T16:28:00.003-05:00

It's funny. I've been on Twitter for almost exactly three years to the day. During that time, my Twitter bio has evolved ever so slightly. I've always included my title and company name. In addition, I've made it clear that I'm married (happily) and have three beautiful children. Recently, I included the fact that I am the co-host of the Quick'n'Dirty podcast show. That's it. I think at certain points in time I included the fact that I'm a huge Redsox and Patriots fan. But while I waiver on whether or not to add that back, I like my bio clean and simple.

Why do I do this? For a few reasons. Over the course of my three years on Twitter, I've had a chance to go through at least 14,730 people's Twitter bios. Yes, I look at every single one before I follow back. I also check and see if they have a picture and will try and get a sense of what they tweet about. I like real people... not robots. In that process, I've found that some people say a whole lot of nothing in their bios. And that's okay. It just likely won't get me to follow back.

To that end, is it okay to mention the fact that you like a particular sport, type of food, wine, sports team or music? Of course. Personal is good. In my case, my family is my "personal" part. And while I'd like to connect with other people that like the Redsox, the Patriots, BBQ, Tool or the Black Keys, I already know who a lot of these folks are. Why? Because they respond to me when I talk about them on Twitter. And if we find mutual value in each other's tweets, we start to follow each other.

So while I'm up on my soapbox, here are a few other tips I'd recommend if you're interested in getting more out of Twitter.

Tip One
Here are ~~twelve thirteen~~ fourteen* people/organizations that I'd recommend following (high signal to noise ratio):

Ann Handley - Author and chief content officer at MarketingProfs.
David Armano - SVP at Edelman Digital [*shame on me for leaving him off the first go around]
Brian Solis - Two time author and principal of FutureWorks
Marshal Kirkpatrick - Co-Editor of ReadWriteWeb.com
Robert Scoble Rackspace employee who provides tech news, videos and opinions
eMarketer - Digital intelligence for marketers and advertisers on social media, mobile, media, advertising, retail, consumer products, and more
Brian Morrissey - Digital Editor at Adweek
Simon Mainwaring - Ex-Nike/Wieden creative, former Worldwide Creative Director Motorola/Ogilvy, branding/advertising writer, author/speaker/blogger
Augie Ray - Sr. Analyst of Social Computing/Marketing @ Forrester, tracking Communities, Twitter, Influence, Facebook and WOM
Joseph Jaffe - Three time author and chief interruptor at Powered.
ANA Marketers - Official account for the ANA. Provides info on events, insights, advocacy, training workshops, and news.
Jeremiah Owyang - Partner, Altimeter Group
Brett Petersel - Business Development, Community and Events at Mashable
Ad Age - AdAge the magazine's Twitter presence. A great source of news, intelligence and conversation for marketing and media communities.

Tip Two

Don't be afraid to mix fun with business. I try and add value to everyone that has decided to follow me. Sometimes this is through sharing useful news/links. Sometimes through snark. Sometimes by expressing my feelings -- happy, sad, angry or Zen. While I'm not everyone's cup of tea, I think the people that have stuck with me over the years would agree that I'm more valuable than not. Those that disagree vote with their feet.

Tip Three

Don't be discouraged if someone doesn't follow you back. Some people don't like to follow anyone but people they know well. Some will follow after you've engaged them in dialogue a few times. But the way I go into it is that if I follow someone, I don't expect that they will follow me back. I follow them because I find what they say interesting enough not to care. With that said, I know part of the reason I've been lucky enough to have nearly 15,000 people follow me is because I mostly reciprocate when someone follows me.

Yes, there are hundreds of other good Twitter tips. But hopefully these will help. If you've got one you'd like to add, that's why God invented comments.

I Swallowed a Lot of Agression... a Long with a Lot of Pizza

2010-10-22T15:01:00.001-05:00

That's one of my favorite lines from the Movie Stripes (yes, I'm that old). The quote was from an overweight John Candy who had just joined the army. His goal of course was to become a "lean, mean, fighting machine." Well, that's my goal too. Except for the fighting part. But you get my drift.

So why am I exposing my chest and underwear to you? For two reasons. One, I'm proud of the fact that after many years of being fit and trim... and then letting my younger children and two startups... get the better of me... I'm now down 15 pounds from my high water mark of 227 pounds. Yes, as you can see I still have a little ways to go but I am much happier at 212. And my goal is to be closer to 205 or even 200.

The second reason I'm exposing myself is because my friend, Simon Salt (who is working on a transmogrification of his own) pointed me in the direction of an amazing woman named Mish G who has started a movement called -- you guessed it -- the Exposed Movement. What's cool is that Mish has gotten over 100 women and men to expose themselves. And to face up to the fact that very few people have perfect bodies. To that end, we can either loathe ourselves our love ourselves. Mish and her community have obviously chosen the latter. And so am I.

Here's most of me. And with any luck, in another 4-6 weeks, you'll see an updated picture of an even slimmer Aaron. In the meantime, I'm going to keep eating right, exercising and loving what God gave me. How about you? Will you join the movement?

Movember Time, Austin Style!

2010-10-20T14:54:00.086-05:00

Some of you may remember that last year, a bunch of us Austinites teamed up against some of my former Bostonians to raise awareness and help fight prostate and testicular cancer during the month of November. The end result of our Movember campaign was a 50 person team with over $18,000 in donations. This year, we're hoping to make it bigger... five times bigger to be exact. We have big plans to incorporate corporate donations, scavenger hunts, famous sports figures and lots more.

What's fun about this fund raising effort is that not only focused on encouraging people to donate money but more importantly, it's about team building and creating awareness so that blockheads like me who at least one point in time in their lives thought they were invincible, do something about getting regular checkups. Oh yeah, we also get to grow mustaches (or if you're female, you get to Photoshop on a mustache). In fact, the pictures you see here are some of our late stage "mo's" that team Austin grew last year.

Most importantly, you're probably asking yourself how you get involved. Well, I'm happy you brought it up. First and foremost, we'd like you to sign up. Don't worry, there isn't any hazing (well, not that we can speak of anyway). We have about ~~30 people~~ 56 people on the team now with another 20+ that have verbally committed. That means we have 170 more to go. So get your friends, family and colleagues to sign up too.

Note - if you want an easy way to pass colleagues along to this post, you can use shortened URLs:

The second way you can help is to donate. Now I won't lie to you, if we're going to get close to $100,000 this year, we need people to donate. But if I had my druthers, I'd rather have you sign up for the team and not donate a penny than the other way around. With that said, I know many folks are pressed for time (or don't want to grow a mustache) so if this is your thing, far be it from me to stop you.

Finally, we will be spilling the fun over to Facebook and a central touch-base site that my man, Wesley Faulkner will be running. Stay tuned for details on that front.

[NOTE: You (and others) can also now pledge $$ using tweets. Find out more details here on the Help Attack! blog. Or contact Sarah Vela and/or David Neff for details.]

I'll also be keeping a running list of new team members below. Let me know if I've missed you:

Joseph Jaffe
Aaron Bramley
Aaron De Lucia
Aaron Strout
Albert Morales
Alex Stivers
Amanda Adams
Amanda Wagner
Andrea Lipizzi
Andrea Schulle
Andrew Stidvent
Art Thompson
Avan Allen
Bacon Ator
Becky Parker
Beez "the dog" Chen (our first canine on the team)
Beth Gwazdosky
Bill Gillespie
Bob Dilly
Brandon Herrin
Brandon Sockwell
Bret Cunningham
Brett Agnew
Brian Kotlyar
Britt McMillan
Brittany Oster
Bryan Chaney
Bryan Menell
Bryan Person
Carlos Urreta
Charlie Browning
Chino Monteleon
Chris Bailey
Chris Dienna
Christopher Uhland
Colin Alsheimer
Corey Pudhorodsky
Cuyler Owens
D'Ann Faught
Dara Quackenbush
Darin Kirschner
David Breshears
David McCarl
David J. Neff
Dennis Hall
Dennis Kristensen
Denver Bronco
Doni Wilson
Doug Wick
Dustin Wyatt
Dylan Spurgin
Edgar Dapremont
Ehren Foss
Elijah May
Elmer Boutin
Emily Babb
Eric Weiss
Erik McMillan
Evan Sanders
Felicia Adams
Fernando Labastida
Gard Mayer
Glenn Banton
Greg Ackerman
Greg Matthews
Greg Verdino
Haley Odom
Hawk Mendenhall
Ian Greenleigh
J Noel Kvale
Jacob Burns
Jacqueline Hughes
Jake Sussman
James Young
Jared Haas
Jason Kapler
Jason Stoddard
Jason Vogen
Jeff Rousel
Jen Orr
Jennie Chen
Jennie Loev
Jeremy Brooks
Jill McFarland
Jim Bean
Jim Cochrun
Jim Keeler
Joanie Pechenik
Joe Cohen
Joey McGirr
John Cartwright
John Johansen
John Knox
Jon Dunn
Jonathan Gesinger
Jonathan Weldon
Jordan Viator
Justin Crandall
Justin Edwards
Caitlin Pesl
Karen Pascoe
Kate Buck
Kendall Schmidt
Kenneth Cho
Kevin Koym
Kevin O'Brien
Kim Hollenshead
Kimbria Andreassen
Kyle Flaherty
Laura Beck
Lee Baker
Lee Parker
Lisa Maxwell
Mark Couvillion
Mark Young
Martin Montero
Matt Curtin
Matt Harris
Matt McDougall
Matt McGinnis
Max Chirkov
Melissa Reiss
Merton Young
Michael Adams
Michael Yockey
Mike Hamilton
Mike Neumann
Mitch Wilson
Morgan Brown
Paul Bonser
Paul Walhus
Peter Poulin
Peter Bramley
Rachelle King
Ray Grill
Ricardo Guerrero
Ricardo Sanchez
Rick Vlaha
Robert Gilbreath
Russ Somers
Sam Eder
Sarah Vela
Saurabh Das
Scott Hanson
Scott Metler
Sean Bell
Sean Claes
Sethho Sulser
Shaine Mata
Sherry Lowry
Siam Saechew
Simon Salt
Sonny Johns
Stacy Libby
Sydney Owen
Talmadge Boyd
Tamar Weinberg
Texas Stars Hockey
Tim Hayden
Tim Walker
Tom Niemeyer
Tom Trantham
Tracy Trevino
Travis Kenney
Trey Swain
Wesley Faulkner
Will Staney
William Kelleher
William Mitschke
William Morrow
Yvette Leroux

Last but not least, here is our Flickr collection from THIS YEAR. ~~I'll be swapping this out for this year's once we start to get our Mo on.~~

NOTE: Weekly team conference calls every Friday at 11 AM CT. Number is: 888-693-8686 / 2053266

Verizon's "Room to Learn" Community

2010-10-20T09:00:00.020-05:00

Today Verizon and Powered are proud to announce the launch [pdf] of a new "branded engagement community" called Room to Learn. It's a big move for a smart company who operates in an industry that's not known for it's focus on customer service. In fact, the reason we're so excited about this project is because we see this as a big step toward the future of the way customer service will get done in the future.

Podcast: Director of eBusiness at Verizon, Mark Studness, and I talked about the project in a recent podcast.

What's unique about Room to Learn is that instead of waiting for customers to come to come to them with questions or complaints, Verizon is reaching out their customers with useful content. Content that will help them with all things media and home entertainment. Even better, the information and education that Verizon will provide it's customers (and non-customers) doesn't try and sell them anything. Imagine that?

Why would a company do this you ask? Because Verizon realizes that in order to maintain their leadership position in the market, they need to do something game changing. Something my colleague, Joseph Jaffe, likes to call customer service 2.0. It's the concept of the "give before the get." The results should be things like greater loyalty, deeper engagement, greater share of wallet and most importantly, referrals.

A few other exciting things to mention about this new branded engagement community:

The community manager will be none other than Becky Carroll, a seasoned social media professional who is well versed in blogging, podcasting and community.
A resident contributor in Alfred Poor. Yes, that Alfred Poor, the guy that has covered consumer electronics for 20+ years for the likes of PC World.
Community forums for customers to ask questions, talk with professionals or share ideas with one another.

What you'll notice today is that the conversations on Room to Learn are just getting started. If you're interested in joining, the good news is that you don't even need to be a customer. Obviously, Verizon expects that if you participate, you'll be respectful and will keep the language clean. But they are always looking for feedback to if you have constructive feedback or simple suggestions, you can let them (or us) know and we'll be sure to work it into the mix.

Is your company following Verizon's lead and getting proactive about customer service? If not, what's stopping you?

-

5 Take Aways from the ANA's 2010 Masters of Marketing Conference

2010-10-19T17:18:00.003-05:00

Last year, I had the pleasure of attending my first Masters of Marketing event in Phoenix, AZ (recap here). The thing that blew me away at that event and convinced me not only to come back, but also to sponsor this year, was the amount of talent amassed in one place at one time. Unlike many other conferences, the speakers all stick around and network... for three days. This leads to unprecedented access to people like:

Mark Baynes - CMO, Kellogg Company
Marc Pritchard - CMO, Procter and Gamble
Erin Nelson - CMO, Dell Inc.
Keith Pardy - CMO, Research in Motion
Ralph Santana - CMO, Samsung Electronics NA
Jim Speros - CMO, Fidelity Investments
Joseph Tripodi - CMO, Coca-Cola Company
Ted Ward - CMO, Geico Auto Insurance
Mary Beth West - CMO, Kraft Foods
Michael Francis - CMO, Target Corporation

What's amazing is that the ten CMOs I've listed above only represent about 1% of the senior marketers attending the event. Given the talent and experience the Masters of Marketing event attracts, you can only imagine the quality of the 3-day marketing "MBA" you receive after attending. And that's assuming you only make it to 50% of the sessions. Even more impressive is that many of the marketers seemed to be singing off the same song sheet. To that end, here are my five key takeaways from this year's event:

Top Take Aways

Companies are getting back to basics when it comes to defining what their brand stands for. Several speakers talked about the importance of a brand having purpose and there seems to be a greater awareness of a need for the brand to be better connected with its customers.
While the topic of social media came up in almost every presentation, it's still not a top priority for most brands. What is encouraging is that if social wasn't on last year's CMO's "must do" list, it definitely is this year, even if it's priority number 8, 9 or 10.
As a follow up to point number two, most marketers are at least "social curious." As someone that lives and breathes social media, I had at least a dozen very interesting conversations with marketers who wanted to know more about things like Twitter, location-based marketing and developing a social strategy.
While many of the presenters included clips of their 30 second spots, it felt more integrated versus "showcased" in comparison to last year's event. In fact, Coca Cola CMO, Joe Tripodi, only showed video clips from Youtube and customer research projects. By the way, with the exception of Seth Greenberg of Intuit, Joe seemed to be the most socially savvy CMO of the bunch.
The uptick in the economy this year was reflected in the event itself. First and foremost, there were easily 50% more attendees this year. Also, the quality of the receptions and entertainment were ratcheted up a notch or three. To me, that's a good sign that marketers are feeling comfortable (or at least cautiously optimistic) about spending again.

Another thing I included in last year's wrap up post were some of my favorite tweets from the event (many were quotes from the speakers). You can see all the tweets from the event that were tagged with #ANAMarketers but once again, I've selected my top ten (in no particular order) out of the hundreds for your viewing pleasure:

@ANAmarketers: Friend casting on Facebook has no media cost. Friend casting was 4 more times more effective then a banner ad for #Intuit #ANAmarketers
@StepByStepMktng: AmEx CMO John Hayes: build a narrative around the WHY of what you do inside and outside the company. #ANAMarketers
@betterads: #ANAmarketers: @Starcom Laura Desmond - "Paid Media gets the party started, Owned & Earned keeps it going all night long"
@ANAmarketers:Very cool: #Target’s take over of the Standard Hotel in NYC http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QQ_v_WrahrM #ANAmarketers
@WellsMelanie: Social media can do a lot--but it can't solve brand problems, say top marketers. #ANAmarketers http://bit.ly/dtylTj
@lisarosenberg: Univision's Graciela Eleta: There is no average American. 46% of all people under 18 are minorities. #ANAmarketers #PNID
@cindygallop1: All CMOs speaking @ #ANAMarketers showing work - PLEASE give your agency shout-out by name. Best new biz opportunity they will have all year
@StepByStepMktng: Dell CMO Karen Quintos: we love data. We measure everything. we're mining through data all the time. #ANAMarketers
@aaronstrout: Laura Desmond also talks about curation, content, conversation. Did she read @JaffeJuice's #FliptheFunnel book last night? #ANAMarketers
@maryleesachs: Joe Tripodi of Coke talks about moving from measuring impressions to expressions, from loyalty to advocacy. Makes sense. #anamarketers

Oh, and while this isn't really of value to anyone but me, my response on Twitter from the lovely and talented, Leann Rimes, was hands down my favorite tweet during the event. In fact, I did a quick podcast a couple of days later on what brands could learn from how Leann engages with her customers (and prospective customers like me).

@leannrimes: @AaronStrout thx! It was fun!!!!

All in all, this conference felt like a big success. As I mentioned earlier, my company, Powered, was a sponsor and our goal was to meet some smart people, create some additional brand awareness, demonstrate our thought leadership (we gave out copies of colleague, Joseph Jaffe's latest book, Flip the Funnel, to 500 of the ANA's members) and managed to collect a few business cards in the process. While sponsorship wasn't inexpensive, I would definitely do it all over again if I had to sign on the dotted line today.

As an added bonus, there were some great performers at the event including the Goo Goo Dolls (remember them)? If you liked the song Name, here is a live recording (thank you iPhone 4) of the performance. I have to say, the sound quality is actually pretty good.

And the Winner Is...

2010-10-16T10:40:00.000-05:00

Two weeks ago, I kicked off a photo contest on Flickr. We had about a dozen people participate and those people picked some 131 favorites out of the 5,217 that I've uploaded over the past several years. My original goal was to have my friend, Maury Postal (who just had his own gallery showing in NYC), pick the ten winners out of the 131. Unfortunately, after Maury picked his ten it left a three way tie. To resolve the matter I brought in another judge (and master photog) Ken Yeung.

What were the results? Well, I now have over 100 photos that are the cream of the crop. Even better, I have twenty pics that have been hand selected by two semi-pro photographers that I trust and respect. This is what we call curation (more on that topic in a future post). As much as I'd like to think that everyone visiting my Flickr account wants nothing more than to see ALL 5,000+ pictures, what they realistically want to see are the best of my photos. And now I can deliver that to them.

Let's not forget about the most important part and that is the contest winner(s). There were actually two of them: the first was my favorite alien and avid Quick'n'Dirty podcast listener, Howie Goldfarb (aka @SkyPulseMedia). Howie had the most favorites selected (nine out of twenty) but when I went in and looked at how many pictures Howie had favorited during the first phase of the contest, I realized that he may have slightly exceeded the suggested number of ten choices. In the spirit of fairness, I decided that I would split the prize between Howie and Deards whose true identity is yet to be revealed (she picked six of the twenty finalists). That means Howie and Deards each get a $25 gift card of their choosing (iTunes or Starbucks).

Congratulations to the two winners. Thank you to our celebrity judges and a HUGE thank you to you all for participating and making this contest a success. In addition to Howie and Deards, the entrants included: Sheila Scarborough, Jim Storer, Jay Bryant, Darin Kirschner, Steve Golab, Liz Phillips, Tyson Goodridge, Helen Rittersporn and my mom, Martha Strout.

If you'd like to see the winners, the thumbnails are below. Or head on over here to see the final results.

Black Star Beer's Commitment to Conversation

2010-10-14T17:06:00.000-05:00

In my colleague, Joseph Jaffe's, second book is titled Join the Conversation, he talks about he importance of a concept called, "commitment to conversation." You can probably guess what this means but just in case your like me and need things spelled out for you, the concept is directed toward businesses and strongly encourages them to not just join a conversation but to maintain and follow up on conversations with key stakeholders.

Glenn Banton touched on this concept of commitment to conversation in a recent post on practical uses for geolocation services. One of the examples he cited was a missed a local coffee shop's missed opportunity when I checked into a Starbucks across the street. Upon being invited to try their coffee instead, I responded that if they could promise me a great tasting Americano (my drink of choice) and a 10% discount (the same discount Starbucks provided via their gold card at the time). Instead of continuing the conversation with me and potentially winning me and maybe a few of my 14,000 Twitter followers, they went dark. Why? We'll never know. But it was a bad move on their part.

So what does this all have to do with Black Star Beer? I'll tell you. To start with, they are the polar opposite of the aforementioned local coffee shop. The conversation started a couple of months ago when they invited me to head on over to their Facebook page to participate in a very cool, experiential contest they were running. While I didn't win the contest, I was impressed enough with their contest (and follow through) to mention them in a follow up post on the value of a Facebook fan. In the post, I used Black Star Beer as an example of a company that engaged their customers and prospects through a thoughtful and clever contest.

Following my write up, I got an nice "thank you" e-mail that was accompanied by an offer to send along a press kit. Intrigued by what a press kit from a beer company might entail, I bit. What arrived was a nicely designed box with a can and bottle of a new beer they were launching in LA, the double-hopped golden larger, a CD with several videos (I included one of them which shows their new brewery in action below) and a dozen beautiful product shots. There was also a press release but most importantly, a hand-written post it note.

Rumor has it that the beer was good but the moral of the story here is that through Black Star's commitment to conversation with me, they've received several mentions in my blog, on Facebook and on Twitter... an most importantly, a dedicated blog post patting them on the back for their good deeds. You know how much this cost them? $10-15 in shipping costs and then whatever amount of time their PR/social media person, Charlotte Robertson, invested in listening and responding. While I'm sure Charlotte doesn't come cheap, I'm equally convinced that I'm not the only blogger/journalist that she's reaching out to. And the result is not only earned media which does have a value attached to it but hopefully hundreds if not thousands of new customers (or more satisfied existing customers) thanks to others like me.

Is your company making a commitment to conversation? If it isn't, maybe it's time you take a closer look at what Black Star Beer is doing. Or give my company a call. We'll be happy to share everything we know.

Location-based Services Goes Automotive

2010-10-12T13:19:00.002-05:00

A few weeks ago, my friend, Eric Miltsch, sent me a direct message on Twitter letting me know that I might want to check out his latest offering called Car Zar. Having met Eric last year at the Driving Sales event in Las Vegas, I knew how passionate Eric is about cars AND social media. Eric in turn, knows how passionate I am about social media and location-based services. What I can tell you is that I think he's onto something with Car Zar -- especially for folks that fall into the "car enthusiast" category. Unfortunately, I don't really fit in that category but I can appreciate what this app. will do for that crowd.

Here my thoughts on the app in the quick video blog I recorded.

Quick thoughts on Car Zar - LBS for Automotive from Aaron Strout on Vimeo.

Do you have an industry specific location-based app? If so, please let me know. I'd love to check it out.

Social Media Help Desk: Social Won't Kill a Crisis, but Lack of Social During a Crisis Will Kill You

2010-10-09T14:22:00.000-05:00

Date: Wednesday, October 27th
Time: 2:00 - 3:00 PM CT (note your time zone)
Speakers: Valeria Maltoni, Doug Wick (moderator) and me (Aaron)

A PR crisis comes and goes without much warning. The 24/7 environment of social media networks is a perfect farming ground for these potentially uncontrollable situations. While most companies have a solid foundation for social media engagement, these guidelines do not provide an integrated strategy, capable of navigating the murky waters of a PR storm. When the storm hits, the customer dictates how much preparation and reaction time you have. This is the worst time to learn to deal with the situation.

Establishing an integrated social media strategy is the key to weathering these situations successfully. Join Valeria Maltoni, Aaron Strout and Doug Wick as they explore the foundations for planning ahead and preparing for a PR crisis. Valeria will spend 30 minutes discussing the crisis communication groundwork and remaining 30 minutes will be focused on you and your questions. By attending, you will learn:

Why companies need to be involved and communicate early on.
The steps needed to build a communication framework for your organization and weather a crisis in real time.
How to keep your cool during a crisis.

You in? Sign up now. And if you want to ask questions ahead of time, feel free to leave 'em in the comments!

A Crowdsourced Photo Contest (Prize = $50 Gift Card)

2010-10-03T08:36:00.000-05:00

I have a fun contest idea and I need your help.

Your job is to go in and tag 10 of my Flickr pictures that you think are my *BEST* work. Yes, this is totally subjective. But that's the way art works, right?

The Rules

The contest will close next Friday at 3 PM ET (10/8). At that point, I will collect every picture that has been tagged as a "favorite." Of those, I will take the top 50 or 100 ranked by number of favorites each picture has received.
I will then have my Maury Postal -- a rock star photographer (he has his own gallery showing next week in NYC) -- pick the top 10. Whomever has the most favorites in the top 10 wins.
In the event of a tie, we will either split the cash or I might pull in another guest judge to break the tie. Final decision will arrive on 10/13.

You in? Be sure that when you mark something as favorite, there is a way I can contact you (either via Twitter or Facebook). Questions? Ping me at @aaronstrout.

Why I'm Giving My Content Away to Social Media Informer for Free

2010-09-30T13:03:00.000-05:00

You don't need me to tell you how valuable content is. After all, how many times have you heard the saying, "content is king?" So if content is so valuable, why on earth would someone give their content away for free? I'll tell you who... me. And Chris Brogan. And Simon Mainwaring. And Dave Fleet (along with another 40+ bloggers), that's who. We're all doing it on the Social Media Informer (billed as the "best social media content for business"). The reason? For me it was twofold:

Distribution - On average, I get somewhere around 4,000 unique visitors/month (plus another 4,000 or so that read my blog via RSS). While that's not a bad number, why not add several thousand new eyeballs?
Influence by association - Being included in the company of lots of other smart, well-respected people doesn't hurt my (or my company's) reputation. Quite frankly, I learned this lesson a few years back when I started podcasting and so far, it's worked!

What I like is that this model ends up being a win-win all the way around. The Social Media Informer gets great content. This enables them to find sponsors to help pay the bills. The bloggers get distribution and additional legitimacy. The readers get curation in the form of hand-picked content creators and business practitioners that they may not have found on their own.

Is there a lesson here for small and big business? You betcha. It's the concept of reaching out to their partners, customers and employees to create informative videos, podcasts, blog posts and tutorials. Yes, in some cases paying these folks wouldn't hurt. But if your company can offer legitimacy and distribution to key stakeholders in exchange for great content, what's not to like?

Samsung Encourages You to Join the Conversation

2010-09-27T16:37:00.003-05:00

Apologies to my colleague, Joseph Jaffe, for borrowing the title of his second book, Join the Conversation [LINK], but in this instance, I just couldn't resist. The "conversation" I'm referring to is one that consumer electronics giant, Samsung, is their asking their customers to "join" at the bottom of their home page.

At first blush, you might laugh and remind me that many brands these days are asking their customers to "join THEIR conversation" on Facebook, Twitter and the like. However, not so fast. In Samsung's case, they are taking a clever and unorthodox approach to engaging with their customers. Let's call it "reverse influencer outreach" where instead of asking bloggers like myself to reach Samsung's customers (and prospective customers) via my Twitter, Facebook, blogs and podcasts, they instead are asking their customers to reach out to folks like me, Brian Solis, Mario Sundar and others. And instead of talking about Samsung's products, we're talking about the lifestyles that wrap around those products. Or in my case, more conversational topics like, "If you could write a best-selling book, what would it be about?"

Wait a second? Why would a Fortune500 company like Samsung who enjoys millions of visits a day to its website waste valuable real estate on frivolous conversation? Rather than speculate about why, I asked Samsung's Social Media Manager, Esteban Contreras (the person that invited me to participate in this program) a couple of questions about the program. Here are his verbatim responses:

[Aaron] What was the impetus for your innovative approach?

[Esteban] Samsung's strategy going into this exciting project was focused on creating an online environment that further engages with our consumers. We wanted to develop a customer-centric and socially relevant site that enhanced the overall brand experience.

Our new site provides opportunities for people to engage with us and with each other. From social elements on the homepage and “like” buttons on product pages, to consumer comments, reviews and Q and As.

[Aaron] Some people might say this is a waste of valuable space on Samsung US's home page (I think it's brilliant). What would you say to those detractors?

[Esteban] We are living in a world where consumers expect and deserve more. Being customer-centric means offering an authentic and human experience. That’s why you see photos of real people on our site and an easier experience to find some of our employees and official accounts on Twitter. It’s also why we’ve provided an area for our visitors to engage not only with us, but also with others that have similar interests.

The web has become a social web and all we’ve done is bring a small part of it unto our site. We believe that giving some of our valuable digital space to our customers is important because they are the number one reason why we love doing what we do. Our customers mean everything to us.

While the "join the conversation" program is too new to measure impact, I can tell you anecdotally that I've received a couple of dozen responses (and anticipate receiving hundreds more). More importantly, I can't help but think that Samsung's customers will appreciate the fact that a big brand is taking a few minutes out of the day to get to know it's customers better (all of the inquiries come through as hash-tagged tweets with #samsung in the "@" replies I receive so Samsung can measure the traffic). Even smarter, Samsung is outsourcing the responses to subject matter experts versus tackling them all themselves -- okay, I may not be a SME in book writing but I have supported the marketing/social campaigns around three colleagues' books to date (We Are Smarter than Me, Flip the Funnel and now microMarketing).

What do you think of Samsungs' approach? Is it worth the real estate they are using on their home page? Should Samsung themselves be getting more involved in the conversation? Or are they just being a good host, handing conversations off to the "experts" and then keeping an eye on what transpires?

Facebook Fan: $136.38? $3.60 or $0.00?

2010-09-24T09:58:00.001-05:00

I've had this post in my head for a while. And given the fact that many of my Twitter friends were complaining about Facebook being down yesterday, I figured that this was as good a time as any to write this post about the value of a fan on Facebook.

Judy Shapiro of AdAge did a nice job this summer of summarizing the findings from two independent studies conducted by Syncapse and Vitrue (more on those in a minute). And my friend, Augie Ray who is a senior analyst over at Forrester has written a blog post about this. His assertion is that a fan is worth zero. It's a conversation with Augie about this topic that was the original impetus for this post. And believe it or not I completely agree with him.

Before my fellow marketers decide to take me out back and shoot me, I should probably offer a little additional information. First, I don't really believe that a Facebook fan is worth $0. And neither does Augie. In fact, it's what the fan can do for the brand that actually makes them valuable. Without getting into all sorts of facts, figures and methodologies, let me paint a picture for you.

I'm a huge Starbucks addict. My wife and I both drink one of their iced venti Americano's at least five times a week. Maybe more. Up until recently, both of us were mayors of two different Starbucks on FourSquare (I no longer own mine) so every time we go to the store, we let our social networks know we're there. In fact, if you asked a number of my friends what my drink of choice was, they'd be able to answer without even thinking about it. BUT... I'm already a fan of theirs whether I've "liked" them on Starbucks or not. And yes, there is an outside chance I would buy more stuff from them if they gave me additional offers. But probably not.

Iced venti Americano

So I am a valuable customer. And I buy a lot of coffee from them every year. But I don't by more coffee from them because I "like" them on Facebook. This is the fundamental "chicken and egg" problem I have with Syncapse's methodology that pegs a fan at an average worth of $136.38/fan. I'm not valuable because I spend more money with Starbucks (my Facebook fandom is a by-product of my passion for the brand). However, I think I am worth something to them because of my network i.e. 1,700 people that I'm connected to on Facebook and 14,000 on Twitter and my blog. Especially when you consider that a lot of the people I'm connected to are like me... they too have big networks.

The tricky part is, it's hard to put a price tag on what I or my fellow enthusiasts are worth because it all depends on how good a job the "brand" does to activate us and ultimately get us to amplify their message (or share our own versions of their message). Some sites like Atlantis Resorts (a Powered client) has done a nice job of activating their customers and the results are not only a steady growth of fans but a CEO that is now such a believer in social media that he is blogging about it on USA Today. Others like Expedia (a natural for social media) has a mere 12,853 fans (only 11K+ more than yours truly) and very little engagement on their wall. Right now, Expedia isn't working particularly hard to engage or activate it's enthusiasts. Instead, it's more focused on a broadcast strategy... one that has obviously impacted their fan acquisition.

In the spirit of being prescriptive, here are a few suggestions on what companies SHOULD do to engage and ultimately activate their enthusiasts:

Post educational content vs. informercials. This means teach people how to scrapbook or how to take better pictures instead of telling them how great your products are.
Run fun contests. Black Star Beer did a fabulous job of this by giving away a dream vacation that focused on experiences versus cash value. Even I signed up for this and I NEVER sign up for sweepstakes.
Ask people for suggestions. My wife's company, GenConnect, did this and they got some amazing responses on their wall.
Have some fun! When Dunkin' Donuts is NOT allowing soft core pornos to post on it's wall, they are actually doing an amazing job getting their customers involved in submitting ideas for their dream donut and submitting photos that might get them recognized as the fan of the week on DD's Facebook fan page.

How about you? What are you worth? And are the brands that you love tapping into your full potential?

Why Geo Location Matters and Why You Should Attend Geo M

2010-09-21T16:25:00.001-05:00

Cross-posted from schneidermike.com (with permission)

October 4-8, MITX presents Future M week in Boston. On October 4th, brands, marketers, technologists, entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, students and business people and will gather in Cambridge at the Microsoft NERD to talk about the future of geo location and the future of geo marketing. Yes. This is a promotional post for an event that my company, Allen & Gerritsen is planning, but since you have read this far, I think you will find the content helpful in making a decision as to whether or not you should attend. For the record, I think you should, particularly if you are a B2C brand or working in the B2C space.

Making Money with Location

Everyone needs to be able to make money to be able to be a going-concern. In this panel,Jason Keath of Social Fresh leads a discussion that will look at revenue streams and service models that make sense. We’ll talk to two platforms that started with revenue models. David Chang will represent Where.com and Wayne Sutton will talk about Triout’s model. We also have Josh Karpf of mega-brand PepsiCo who can tell us about how applications like Pepsi Loot are important to their marketing and revenue stream. Jason Keath is not known for shyness, so I expect he will pose the tough questions and drive panelists toward talking about useful models and cases that drive business results.

Data and Loyalty

Why does it matter? Location is an important component in doing what every brand would like to do – provide a relevant message to its audience at a time when the receiver is ready to hear and act on the message. Everyone would like a reduction of noise and an increase in overall signal. The future of marketing is not casting a wide net, rather brands conitinue to hone their communications and become trusted companions that better the lives of those who need them. In order for this to happen the way we all would like it to happen, brands need access to data and they need to be willing to give something in return to receive.

In the panel entitled “Data and Loyalty”, Melissa Parrish of Forrester leads a discussion with 2 of the industry’s top thought leaders on LBS, Aaron Strout of Powered Inc and Simon Salt of Incslingers. They have not only been vocal about the space, but built solutions that incorporate their thinking. With the focus of this panel being data, we are elated to have the founder ofSimpleGeo, Matt Galligan coming out to talk about how their database / backbone aligns the ecosystem by eliminating the disparity across platforms thereby making near limitless applications possibilities – possible.

The Future of Geo

The day culminates in a visit from 3 of the top LBS platforms on the market. In the last panel we will talk to three heads of LBS technology shops and give them the opportunity not only to talk about their current plans for word domination, but about how they see the industry evolving. Jeff Holden of Whrrl, Seth Priebatsch of SCVNGR and Dennis Crowley of Foursquare, three very different location based platforms, will be asked to talk about why location is important today and what it means in the grand scheme and how it becomes increasingly useful for everyone. The end game needs to be a win for brands, consumers and for platforms and currently the fog-of-new is still very prevalent. Each company has a story to tell about engagement with the consumer, rewards, loyalty and relevant content.

This conversation will be 90 minutes so there will be plenty of time to get deep on the topic and to get the crowd involved. I’ll be moderating and as I prepare, would love to get your thoughts on some of the things you would like to hear about from these 3 gurus. Just leave a comment.

How Much?

$130 per person. Beam Interactive thinker and disruptor, Graham Nelson tweeted about the charge and I think this is the proper forum to address the question. We want to be able to provide snacks and libation to our audience and record the event while covering some of our costs. As you well know, it takes a lot of time and effort to plan an event of this size (and it’s nothing compared to the entire Future M event, kudos to MITX!). The point of this session is to provide an atmosphere to push the conversation to the next level. As one of the missions ofFuture M, the parent conference, is to promote innovation in Boston, we are currently talking to MIT about donating any profits to an innovation scholarship.

Where’s Gowalla?

Because some of you have asked: Where’s Gowalla? Brightkite and Gowalla both expressed regret for being unable to attend. Facebook is still a non-responder.

See You There!

Come out for a day of discussion filled with a balance of best practices, ideas, innovation and though leadership.

To register, go to the official Geo M site and click register.

The Next Big Thing? Lot's of Little Things.

2010-09-20T08:01:00.012-05:00

Cross-posted on The Engaged Conumer

If you haven't met our VP of strategy here at Powered, Greg Verdino, you should try and remedy that soon. He's a smart guy who brings a healthy dose of wit and snide to any channel you connect with him in. He's also just written a book. A really good book I might add. One that is made better by NOT being about social media. Well, it includes many references to social media tools and examples... but the book itself is about marketing. MicroMarketing. If you're wondering what that is, you came to the right place to find out.

microMarketing FTW!

Before I talk about what microMarketing is, I want to go back and provide a little context for this post. In helping my friend and colleague, Greg, get the word out about his new book, Mr. Verdino and I decided that rather than just send the book out to a bunch of influential folks and ask them to write about it, we'd ask them to cover a single chapter. I'm not in any way criticizing the traditional approach but in the spirit of "micro" we realized that shorter might be better. The roster of people that have agreed to speak is pretty awesome. I've included the names/dates/chapters they are covering and a link to their blogs below. As their write ups go live, I'll swap out the generic blog links to those that point at the actual chapter posts:

Monday Sept. 20 - Chapter 1

Aaron Strout (yup, that's me)

Tuesday Sept. 21 - Chapter 2

Wednesday Sept. 22 - Chapter 3

Thursday Sept. 23 - Chapter 4

Friday Sept. 24 - Chapter 5

Monday Sept. 27 - Chapter 6

Tuesday Sept. 28 - Chapter 7

Wednesday Sept. 29 - Chapter 8

Thursday Sept. 30 - Chapter 9

Getting back to "what is microMarketing," the title of the initial chapter of the book, "The Next Big Thing is Lots and Lots of Small Things," does a nice job as summarizing the entire book. To that end, chapter one does a nice job setting the stage for the rest of the book by offering up examples of how the world is shifting from a mass to micro focus. With examples like "Sasquatch Dancing Man," the Iranian election coverage by citizen journalists and Ashton Kutcher's unlikely victory over CNN in a race to one million Twitter followers, the book demonstrates the loss of control by the mainstream media and in some cases, the government, over we, the consumer's, time and attention.

If one were to summarize the entire book into it's bare essence, this illustrative chart on page 21 pretty much says it all:

Chart: Seven Shifts from Mass to micro (p. 21 of microMarketing)

As a marketer or someone running a business big or small, it's these types of prescriptive recommendations that make microMarketing so useful. When you take a quick look at the success of a site like Facebook with it's 500 million members who share over 30 billion pieces of content each month, it's not hard to understand that there is a new sheriff in town and his name is NOT "mainstream media".

I promise that I won't ruin the rest of the book for you. And while the reviews that you'll get from my fellow bloggers over the next two weeks will be useful aids in understanding the new phenomena that Verdino writes about, it's certainly no substitute for all of the useful examples and suggestions in the book itself. In fact, if you're in the New York City area on September 27th, there's a great seminar (I'll be leading a panel with some of the folks mentioned in the book). You can also meet Greg and get your own signed copy of the book which comes with the price of admission.

If you've already read the book and have thoughts on Chapter 1 that I haven't covered here (I've yadda yadda-ed over a lot), feel free to include them in the comments.

Looking at the Future: Onstar's Live On

2010-09-15T16:49:00.001-05:00

It's an OnStar kinda night at Stubbs -- Austin, TX

Last night, I had the pleasure of attending a fabulous event at Stubb's BBQ here in Austin. The host of the party was OnStar (a Powered client) and the purpose of the shin dig was to announce OnStar's latest and greatest in mobile technology called Live On. Without getting into too much of a marketing pitch, the crux of what VP of Planning and business development at OnStar, Nick Pudar, walked us last night through focused on these four areas:

Innovative technology
9th generation hardware
Enhanced safety features
New marketing campaign

Rewinding a little bit, I had a chance to try out some of OnStar's technology a few months back when my colleague, Joe Jaffe, and I were in Detroit for the Future Midwest conference. Friend and director of social media at GM, Christopher Barger, was kind enough to lend us a Cadillac Escalade. In addition to it being a REALLY sweet ride, it was equipped with OnStar technology. What I loved about the technology (in addition to coveting the ability to remotely unlock my doors) was the fact that everything is done via voice. As someone that is married to their iPhone, I can tell you that I know how dangerous it is to try and text or tweet while driving. I also know how aggravating it is to not be able to enter an address into my GPS en route.

Joseph Jaffe, Powered and Christopher Barger, GM

Back to last night... what I like about OnStar's thinking is that they are working hard to keep drivers safe on a lot of different fronts. Considering the fact that over 6,000 people died last year in texting or other smartphone related accidents -- a number that's destined to go up dramatically -- allowing people to do the thing that they will inevitably do in a safer, smarter fashion makes a ton of sense to me. In fact, OnStar President, Chris Preuss said it best in yesterday's announcement:

Giving our customers control of their vehicles with smart phone application technology is a key advantage of OnStar's in-vehicle connectivity. This technology empowers drivers to make decisions about their travels well before they enter the vehicle, meaning their full attention can stay where it needs to be – on the road ahead.

To that end, allowing for the ability to use your smartphone's bluetooth capability to to perform text to voice OR using OnStar to be able to update your Facebook status (and listen to recent updates) is huge.

Inside a Chevy giving commands to Facebook via OnStar

The live updates coming from our car as we update from OnStar

On the "room for improvement" side of things, it does take a little doing to coordinate the Facebook updates. And once you do an update, it results in a voice >> text >> automated voice update on Facebook itself. However, this is OnStar's first shot of the gate with this stuff so I imagine that the technology and capabilities will smooth out soon. I'm also envisioning that services like Twitter and location-based applications will be included in subsequent releases of this technology.

One other thing to note is the ability to go to OnStar's site, enter in a location and then send it to your car is VERY cool and something that is a no-brainer. As I noted earlier, I can't even tell you how many times I've gotten into my car, forgotten to enter my destination into the GPS and ended up having to pull over onto the side of the road.

So a big kudos to OnStar last night for pulling off a fun and informative evening (something they replicated across the country). Also, a great big thank you to my friend, Kameya Shows, who was kind enough to invite me to last night's soiree. You can see other pictures from the event over on Flickr.

Simon Salt, Incslingers, Aaron Strout (that's me) and Wayne Sutton, TriOut & OurHashTag

Fail or Fab?

2010-09-08T16:34:00.001-05:00

At a minimum, I always try and get up a blog post a week. Sometimes I'm really motivated (and have the time) and manage two or three. Given the fact that I recycled some old material in my post yesterday [transcript from my podcast with Mahalo founder, Jason Calacanis] I felt that it was only right to do at least one semi-original post.

Trust me, this one won't be a real thought provoker... but it does summarize a few of my observations on recent web 2.0 and social launches/enhancements. As always, please feel free to disagree with me or share your thoughts on this week's "Fail or Fab" post in the comments below.

FAIL: Apple's new music social network otherwise known as Ping. If you've tried it, you know exactly what I'm talking about. To get more specific:

One of the first music recommendations it provided to me was the artist, Cher. Now I'm not offended by this but if you take a look at my library, 95% of it is made of bands like Phoenix, Pearl Jam, Rage Against the Machine, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Tool and The Exies. Yes, my kids do have a few Adam Lambert songs in there but really? Cher?
There is no easy way to connect to my friends. I can hunt and peck for friends by searching for them. OR I can invite them to join Ping via e-mail. Not a good way to make this sticky or to encourage viral.
Allowing me to connect with artists or to download the songs on their iPod playlists is just pathetic. Yes, I'm sure there will be a bunch of 13 year old girls that do this (and maybe 50 year old dads going through their midlife crises) but I don't see a ton of people falling for the banana in the tailpipe trick.

FAB: Google Instant. Now let's not kid ourselves... this is nothing more than a feature. But it's a damn cool feature. One that anticipates what you're thinking before you think it... and then auto suggests it via your search window. Wait, are there little robots in my computer that are watching my every move?
FAB: Facebook's auto-translation pop up when you are on a foreign language page. The two things I like are: one, it's subtle (the recommendation gradually drops down from the menu bar) and two, it recognizes that my language is English and that the page I was not. We need more smart technology like this (visual below).
FAIL: Like Twitter, FourSquare has screwed with me more times than I can count... yet I keep coming back for more. Call it blind love. But at least Twitter doesn't have a real competitor. FourSquare does. They need to cut back on the checkin fails... pronto!
FAIL: Blogger's new "I'm trying to be like Wordpress" spam filter. While I like how it works, the fact that it notifies you that you've got a comment, if it's flagged the comment as spam, you have no way of finding it unless you remember to go and look in Blogger's special spam inbox. As a result of this new functionality, I made poor Jeff Cutler resubmit his comment twice (and almost a third time) before realizing what was happening. With WordPress, I'm notified every time there is a comment, spam or not. At that point, I can decide what I want to do with that comment by clicking on the link in the e-mail notification.

If you like this format, let me know. Maybe I'll try and do one of these every couple of weeks or so.

Interview with Jason Calacanis

2010-09-07T17:14:00.001-05:00

Back in my days of working on the "We Are Smarter" project at Shared Insights/Mzinga, I had the opportunity to do a lot of cool podcasts with people like Tim O'Reilly, Michael Arrington and Doc Searls. For some reason, a number of the transcripts that we took from those podcasts that my friend, Bryan Person, cleaned up for me happened to appear in my Google Docs folder. Some of the interviews are fairly dated but in particular, there are a few that were interesting including my podcast with Mahalo founder, Jason Calacanis.

Here is the transcript (as verbatim as Bryan and I could muster)...

Aaron Strout:
I’d like to introduce today’s special guest. I have Jason Calacanis. Jason is the founder and CEO of Mahalo. Jason, we met recently at the Milken Conference, and I follow you on Twitter . You actually follow quite a few folks on Twitter. Thank you for joining us today.

Jason Calacanis:
My pleasure.

Aaron Strout:
So Jason, tell us a little bit about how you got started. I’ve read some of your history, and I know you’ve spent some time at AOL back in the day. You founded Mahalo. Can you talk about sort of your past a little bit and what prompted you to go this direction?

Jason Calacanis:
Sure. Well, I started as a technical person in the pre-Internet days doing local area networks and whatnot, but I won't bore you with all that. I was an IT guy, basically. And then in the early 90s I started getting into the Internet, launched a magazine in ’95-‘96 timeframe about the Internet. It was called Silicon Alley Reporter, and I covered the Internet scene in New York. And that grew really big, and I got to meet all the big CEOs and interviewed them and learned a heck of a lot. And that was great.

Just being a journalist, you should learn a ton. And just sat with CEOs who were building Internet companies, taking them public, etc., people like Mark Cuban or Scott Kurnit from About.com or Jeff Dachis from Razorfish, Sergey [Brin] from Google. I mean, I met all these guys when they had no people or 10 people, 20 people at their companies. So I learned a lot and then wound up selling that company to Dow Jones and starting Weblogs, Inc., which is a blogging company.

And after about 18 months of running that, we sold it to American Online; spent a year at American Online; redid Netscape and made it into a social news site which is called Propeller, which is sort of like Digg but with moderators and more sort of political and news based than tech based.

And then after my year at AOL, I decided I wanted to start a search engine called Mahalo, which is a human-powered search engine. You can go see it at Mahalo.com – M-A-H-A-L-O, which is Hawaiian for “thank you.” And we’re just coming up on our one-year anniversary. And we have 4 million people coming to the site every month, and it’s doing really well.

Aaron Strout:
Well, it’s a very cool site, so I would strongly encourage anyone that hasn’t looked at it to check it out. I do have a question about AOL. And not to talk trash at all, but will they make it? They seem to sort of change [inaudible] wind a lot, and most recently bought one of the larger social networks out there. They’ve done a lot to try to reinvent themselves and obviously have been dealt some strange blows. But give me your insider knowledge there. What do you see in the future for them?

Jason Calacanis:
My knowledge isn’t so insider, to be honest. The only thing I can really say about it is the brand, AOL.com – American Online, the AOL brand – I think will probably not exist for much longer, and that’s just based on an outside view. Which is, they are spending on their advertising into this Platform A business and advertising networks – sort of the flavor of the month or the year.

And so, the rumor has been they're going to spin that out into its own company, and I guess that might be true. So if that is the case, I think what you’ll see is … they’ll be less of a focus on AOL at AOL. It’ll just be Platform A. And so, I don’t know how long the brand will be around, as we know it, which is kind of sad in some ways. But, you know, life goes on. Excite and Lycos don’t exist anymore, and they were part of – AltaVista doesn’t exist anymore; Broadcast.com doesn’t exist anymore; eGroups doesn’t exist anymore. A lot of brands go away and it’s sad when a brand goes away, but I would bet the AOL brand won't exist in five years.

Aaron Strout:
To that end, you among several other folks have been vocal about the whole Yahoo!-Microsoft thing, and I believe you Tweeted an update today about some of the latest and greatest. What do you think is going to happen there?

Jason Calacanis:
That’s a crazy situation. I thought for sure that the deal was going to get done, and I think that Jerry Yang and his team did a phenomenal job of scaring Microsoft off. And I don’t know if that was in the best interest of Yahoo! shareholders. I think Yahoo! shareholders are kind of pissed off. So … yeah, it’s not a good situation for Yahoo! Shareholders, and I don’t even know if it’s in the best interest of the Yahoo! management.

One of the things is business is very personal, and I think what they're looking at is – what is there goal? And their goal, in fact, might be not similar to what typical shareholders’ goals are, which is to maximize their return. I think for Jerry Yang it’s very personal. I think he loves Yahoo! and for him, making an extra billion dollars or two billion dollars selling it now versus holding onto it and selling a couple of hundred million dollars worth of stock every couple of years and having an incredible lifestyle and owning his company and running his own show is more important to him.

And so, it’s really just this massive test case in when an individual’s concern is divergent from the shareholders’ concern or some portion of shareholders’ concern. I love Jerry Yang. I think he’s a brilliant guy, and I respect him for being an entrepreneur like this and wanting to do his own thing. You’ve got to respect the shareholders and Microsoft for giving them such a huge payday. So it really is an epic battle.
My guess is there's going to be so many lawsuits and distractions for Yahoo! that the deals gonna wind up getting done. However, Microsoft might just be so pissed off at this point, they might just be like, “You know what? This is not worth the effort. Let’s just go buy 50 companies and get those 50 CEOs in here, try to keep 10 of them. And if we keep 10 of them and they're brilliant, we’ll be fine.”

Aaron Strout:
So, shifting back to you guys. You’ve done an interesting experiment recently where you're looking for a new host and you're doing it – I believe I've read about it and sort of poked my head around a little bit – American Idol style. So, it’s these two concepts of using community to sort of figure out who you talent is gonna be. Can you talk a little bit about that?

Jason Calacanis:
Yeah. We started a search for the new host of Mahalo Daily. Mahalo Daily is a video show about Mahalo and about the topics we cover. So they might cover capoeira – which is a Brazilian martial arts show – which is what we did today. They might do something Internety, like cover the guy who sings “Chocolate Rain” and interview him on the show – you know internet phenomenon.

So, it’s a range of topics, from entertainment to technology to lifestyle to how to fly a plan or how to ask a girl – how to flirt, we did one. So, it’s just sort of funny entertainment episodes that then might bring you back to content that you like on Mahalo. And what I would say is – you know, we lost our host. She was commuting down here from San Francisco, and she wanted to work more in video games and technology.

So we had to find a new host. So instead of just picking somebody, we decided we’d let the audience participate and we did an open casting call. We had 75 or 100 people show up; got it down to 20; had them do a read in front of some judges; got from 20 to 12; had the 12 go out and do man-on-the-street kind of interviews; and then we narrowed it down from 12 to 6; and now we have 6 each producing their own episode, and we’re going to let the audience debate it and talk about it. And so – so far, so great. It’s going really well.

Aaron Strout:
Now, what happens if they pick someone that – obviously I don’t think anyone’s going to be a disaster if they’ve gotten this far. But it’s this whole dilemma that a lot of companies that are trying to use these idea catchers, or some sort of –

Jason Calacanis:
Well, I have final veto rights. I’m taking input from everybody. But yeah, there's going to be no Sanjiya [former American Idol contestant] in this formula, or whoever the guy was that was the worst.

Aaron Strout:
That was Sanjiya. I loved the fact –

Jason Calacanis:
Oh, Sanjiya.

Aaron Strout:
Yep, it was Sanjiya. So one of the other reasons why I was really intrigued by doing a podcast with you is during the Milken Institute Conference, where I sat in on your – “this is the new way of doing PR.” You sat in with some other folks that were talking about it. You’re incredibly irreverent, but what I liked about it is that you really sort of rang true and you weren’t saying things that I didn’t necessarily agree with.

And so, one of them was how involved the CEO should be in the day-to-day blogging and Twittering. And I’ve had the privilege today, actually, of talking to two CEOs, one who blogs at a company called EDR and one who Twitters – Tony [Hsieh] at Zappos. Talk a little bit about that and why it’s so important, because I think you made some excellent points when you were delivering your message.

Jason Calacanis:
It’s pretty clear that a CEO of a company – a lot of energy gets focused on that position, for better and worse. Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, now [Steve] Balmer. You know the CEO position, a lot of energy gets focused on it. And so what happens is if the CEO is not a public CEO, if they're not out there – when I say “public,” [I mean] not publicly traded but just publicly facing – it’s not good on the company, because they lose that opportunity to have a direct dialogue and discussion with their users.

I always encourage CEOs to Twitter and to have a Facebook page, to have a blog, even a video show and communicate with their audience. If you communicate with your audience, then they're going to, I think, consider your project a lot more. And they're going to think about your project a lot more, and they're going to become mavens and people who really you know promote your product.
And so, if you don’t do it, then another set of things happens, which is … compared to the people who do do it, not only do you miss the opportunity of bonding with these evangelists and getting direct feedback, [but] you also put up the perception that maybe you're scared or maybe you’ve got something to hide or maybe you're a dweeb and you're not cool and you don’t get it.

And so, when you see something like JetBlue had all their problems, you know David Neeleman was on TV immediately talking about, “Yeah, we screwed up. We suck. We’ve got a bill of rights.” Boom. That saved the company, you know? Another type of company could have just bailed on that. Name the CEOs of any other airlines and the only one you're gonna come up with is probably Richard Branson, who owns Virgin, who again, is an über available, puts-himself -out-there kind of guy. Now, I don’t know if he blogs, but …

Then you look at Steve Jobs. Not only does he blog, but he has a video show and the video show is called “keynotes.” Every 6 to 12 weeks he has one. And that’s his own TV show and people tune into it. And they go directly to Apple’s website to watch it. He gets millions of people who watch that keynote. I mean he – think about that. It’s an hour-long commercial for his products, and he gets millions of people to watch it now. It’s pretty astounding.

Aaron Strout:
Yeah, if we could all be in that position, it could be nice. So you’ve given us one really important nugget, which is why you're a CEO or at least very senior level positions, really should consider being naked and transparent and out there communicating. Any other words of advice? You’ve certainly lived, breathed community and social media for a while. What else could a company that’s just sort of getting its feet wet? What should they be doing? What should they be thinking about?

Jason Calacanis:
Well, I think that not everybody can just jump into the deep end of the pool. A lot of companies have built up firewalls between themselves and their customers, and what happens, then, is some of the toughest issues in the business are sort of trapped in that firewall. And so, think about what are the three things people hate about you most. You know I know those three things people hate about me most.
I know the 10 things that people hate about our product most. And not only that, I talk about those a lot. So at first glance, it’s like, “You’re talking about why people hate you, and why people hate your product.” Well, you know what? It’s kind of freeing. If you know why they hate you, you can at least deal with it. And so, the things people hate most about Mahalo is when they get to a page and we haven't done it. That’s the worst thing.

And the second worst thing is when they get to a page and we have an error, a mistake, a bad link, or a factual error or something. So knowing that, it’s OK. We have to do a really good job communicating to people that it’s going to take five years to build this product out and it’s not meant to have every single word. And errors, we let them know that we’re human, and it’s your job to tell us when we have an error so that we can make it better. And that’s how Wikipedia was built and other things were built.

Basically, if you're going to jump into this end of the pool, you have to realize – and it’s not really a pool; it’s like jumping off a boat in the middle of the ocean. You know there could be dangerous things in the water and you better deal with them and understand that they’re a dangerous thing. So if you understand that you have this massive hatred toward you and it’s like a giant great white shark, you might not want to jump into the water just yet. You might want to have a cage.

And in this metaphor, the cage might be maybe only have comments show up after you’ve approved them so that you don’t just get slaughtered the second you jump in the water. Or you may want to start by doing a blog that maybe is not about the entire company but an aspect of the company. So the example would be if people were kind of pissed off at Dell because of customer service, I wouldn’t suggest they start a customer service blog as their first blog.

But they could start a blog about gaming machines, and here are the people that work at the gaming center at Dell. Here they are talking about the latest video cards and the gaming computers they're making. And then people get used to it, and the company gets used to it. And then you’ll launch your next blog, and your next blog. And here’s a blog about the HR department and people talking about what it’s like to work at Dell and the HR department talking about what they look for in employees and how great it is to be here and interviewing people in the staff.

So, there are ways to sort of dip your toe and not jump into the middle of the shark pit. And, let me tell you something: The blogosphere and the internet – there’s a lot of sharks out there. And if you try to BS people, you might get slaughtered. And so, a lot of that being on message and controlling the message stuff that PR people do – and they control the press and what the press can ask you during an interview and they can withhold access – that stuff doesn’t exist on the Web, so you're basically going to get your bell rung if you try to enforce those kind of controls.

So you basically have to say, “OK, I’m going to be swimming with sharks; I have to be a shark. If somebody comes up to bite me, I have to be able to bite back. I have to be able to hold my own.” And, you know what? A lot of these CEOs, in terms of communication skills, they’re guppies. They're just going to get slaughtered.

Aaron Strout:
So, I have two final questions for you. Great advice, by the way. You follow a lot of people on Twitter; a lot of people follow you back. I think somewhere in the order of 24,000 or 25,000, the last time I checked. Someone asked me when I mentioned that I was going to be podcasting with you, “Can you ask Jason, does he really – does he listen to all those people; does he follow them? Like if people @ him, is he actually paying attention to it?” So how do you manage that on a day-to-day basis? And how much of an eye do you actually keep on Twitter?

Jason Calacanis:
It’s impossible for me to keep up with everybody who I follow. I follow them just be gracious. If they need to get to me, they actually have to put @jasoncalacanis [now just @Jason on Twitter and Jason does not follow nearly as many folks back]. I do read everything that is @Jason Calacanis, so that makes it really easy. If you need me, message me direct or put it @jasoncalacanis. But I can't possibly follow 24,000 people who are doing – if they were doing just four posts each day, that would be 100,000 posts to read. And if – you know I read –

Aaron Strout:
You’d have to read pretty fast.

Jason Calacanis:
Yeah, that would be 10,000 minutes. That would be impossible. So yeah, I don’t, is the long answer.

Aaron Strout:
Which is totally fair and I think – you know Robert Scoble, who is also in a similar boat to you, has been very open about it, and I think he’s even showed on video his Google Talk and basically the speed with which the Tweets come. I follow somewhere in the 900-1,000 range, and similar back. And I can honestly say anytime I get on Twitter, it’s like I got a new batch of them – that’s even more then I can even take care of.

Final question, and I like to ask everyone this just because I’m trying to get a good collection of who influences the influencers. So obviously, this is not gonna be the case, but if you only had one blog to read for the rest of your life, whose would it be? And why would it be that you’d read that one?

Jason Calacanis:
If I could only read one blog for the rest of my life –

Aaron Strout:
And it would be good if you didn’t say an aggregate. I think Scoble said, “Techmeme.” And I was like, “That doesn’t really count.”

Jason Calacanis:
I’m not gonna game it. I'm going to think only individual. I'm not even going to go like corporate blogs. I'm gong to say only individuals. If we’re making the decision based on business – because this is a really hard question, because you have business and entertainment and things you're passionate about. I could give you things in food; I could give you things in cars; I could give you things in consumer electronics.

Aaron Strout:
We’ll narrow it down to business.

Jason Calacanis:
I’m going to narrow it down to business and business people. I think the three people I get the most value from would be Mark Cuban, Mark Andreessen, and Fred Wilson. I think those three guys – I think for me – give me the most value as business people. You know, Scoble’s great, but he’s not like a business guy. So, he’s got great product insights but I don’t really – it’s not like I’m going to get some major piece of advice out of Scoble. I could see what he’s looking at.

It’s kind of cool to track trends, but Mark Andreessen is a guy who really writes intelligent stuff that I actually learn a lot when I read them. And he’s also really funny. Mark Cuban wears his heart on his sleeve; I read him a lot. And Fred Wilson of EV, who I share a lot of similar DNA and beliefs with – although sometimes we diverge and it’s pretty brutal when we do diverge. But I’m sort of simpatico with him. So I’d say those are my top three. I don’t know if you're going to get me down to one.

Aaron Strout:
That’s cool. And actually, I like the fact that you have those three and they're different then most other folks’ choices. So, I don’t think they –

Jason Calacanis:
You said for me – for me personally – what I get a lot out of.

Aaron Strout:
Well, the beauty is that you're not forced to just read one blog. So if I can give people 50 good blogs of what people like Scoble and Jeremiah Owyang and Shel Israel … a big fan. You know folks like that, then people have sort of a diverse range of what people are reading, what they think, why they like it. So it’s just I find it’s helpful to sort of give people the insight.

Jason, I really appreciate you being with us today. This has been helpful. And folks listening in, I’m talking to Jason Calacanis. Jason is the founder and CEO of Mahalo. Give us the blog where people can find you and maybe talk about –

Jason Calacanis:
Calacanis.com. C-A-L-A-C-A-N-I-S.

Aaron Strout:
Wonderful. Thank you, Jason.

Jason Calacanis:
Awesome. Thanks for having me. Cheers.

A link to the original podcast interview with Jason is here. Image courtesy commons.wikimedia.org.

The Power of One

2010-08-26T12:53:00.001-05:00

One may not seem like a powerful number... but it is. Like the well-known Pareto Principle (or 80/20 rule), there is another semi-universally accepted theorem about the ratio of content creators to commentors to lurkers. This is the 90/10/1 or 1% rule. Author and friend, Jackie Huba, has talked about this rule a number of times, mainly in the context of what companies and organizations can expect when it comes to expected contribution rates in social networking activities and online community.

What got me thinking about the power of one the other day was a graphic created by eMarketer that appeared in a post titled, Why should brands bother with twitter? This table says why. I've embedded the table below for ease of reference but one can pretty quickly see that when it comes to engaging in social activities, people that use Twitter over index off the chart.

Upon tweeting about the "Why should brands bother" post, my friend, Liz Phillips, chimed in...

Wow, could this be true? Obviously there is some self-selection because people who tend to be hyper-social also tend to be on Twitter. But looking at the chart, the difference in "social activities" between Twitter users and ordinary internet users is 100-400% greater. Jackie Huba (who I mentioned earlier as being a pro on this front) clarified that most of the research around the 90/10/1 ratio has been focused on online community which is important to keep in mind. But might this number be shifting?

In thinking about the numbers and what looks like a dramatic shift in the 90/10/1 rule (which is different for social media than online community), one explanation for this might be what I'll call "the Facebook" effect. With 50% of Facebook users (now over 500 million) logging on to the service at least once a day for at least an hour a day, the general internet population is getting more comfortable and familiar with the idea of posting updates, links, pictures and video while also commenting and "liking" friends and colleagues content.

Getting back to Twitter, one thing that has always bothered me, especially when it comes to discussions around following to follower ratio is how many of the people I'm connected with actually tweet. I follow over 12,000 people and you might be surprised to know that I receive no more than 10-20 direct messages (DM's) a day and those are mainly from close friends and contacts. I also suspect (although I have no direct evidence) that out of the 12,000 people I follow, somewhere south of 20% constitute 80% of the updates (there's that 80/20 rule again). With 14,000 plus people following me on Twitter, I've also wondered how many people are actively monitoring my tweet stream. My guess is maybe somewhere around 1% at any given time.

To validate this number, I took a very unscientific approach. Last night while sitting in traffic (yes Oprah, I was at a complete stop when I tweeted this), I put out this tweet...

And then I waited... for 12 hours in fact before putting out another tweet. At least 50% of my responses came back in the first hour with the remaining 50% trickling in over the next 11 hours. The number of respondents was 78 (two coming via DM). As a funny side note, many people followed the rules and gave me a straight "yes" but several people got creative and a few even included one of my favorite lines, "I see you" in their response. Doing a little back of the envelope math, 78 responses is a little more than .5% of the number of people that follow me. Taking some statistical liberties, I'm going to estimate that the number of people who responded to me represented 50% of those that saw my initial tweet (the other 50% thinking, "why should I waste my time responding to you Strout.") Guess what, if you double that .5% [drumroll please]... yup, you get 1%.

What does this mean? To be honest, I'm not sure. Except that there is a power in numbers. Whether it is 80/20 or 90/10/1, it shows that behavior can be predictable. What I'm more interested in seeing is whether my theory about the Facebook Effect really has legs. If anyone has any research on this front, I'd love to hear about it. In the meantime, if you have a different theory OR would like to dispel any of my VERY unscientific research, please feel free to do so in the comments below.

I would love to send a HUGE thank you to my friends who (at least some of the time) pay attention to what I have to say. Most of you are already in my "Trust Tree" column on Tweetdeck ensuring that I am more likely to see your tweets versus those in my general "friend" stream. For those of you that weren't, consider yourself added (see, it does pay to play along sometimes). The folks that participated are:

@savvyauntie @slowrolling @GenuineJack @leslie @schneidermike @cbarger @smashadv @mtlb @jimstorer @ektrondave @FrankEliason @minesm @blogboy @joeyTWOwheels @CBMeitzner @angelicadevere @trishrc @jblock @Movember @adamgarone @ProPaintersAmer @kpitkin @willsmom @jpitkin @cselland @rehor @nealrap @glennbanton @techguerilla @KevinMSpence @TheChrisWalters @sdigregorio @Genuine @nickhuhn @marksylvester @micheliente @ecc1977 @banane @jenhorton @nciske @asilkin @RussThornton @michaelpearsun @mikepratt @asquillace @marting @mpace101 @AnkushKarnik @csoandy @JacquelinesLife @bryanstratton @stepchange @SiobhanDullea @vascocv @Aronado @mikeneumann @JohnKinATL @DrncPno @mkknief @Irdone @shawn @BigMikeInAustin @TTaxChristine @JohnKinATL @DrewCarls @Ed @gingerw @dead_tree_media @jtdoherty @myerman @CountXero @BlackDogPromo @dmcordell @DarrinSearancke @LevelTen_Colin @carriejbond @JeanTerranova @m750

5 Initial Thoughts on Facebook Places

2010-08-20T15:30:00.000-05:00

My guess is that I'll be 50% wrong about what I'm about to say in this post... In baseball that's a fantastic batting average. In surgery... not so much.

In case you didn't hear, Facebook made it's foray into the world of location-based services yesterday with it's announcement of Places. If you haven't checked it out yet, it's pretty straightforward. To checkin, you must use the most recent version of the Facebook iPhone app or the iTouch mobile site for Facebook. Although I've discussed the potential negative impact Facebook could have on existing location-based service providers like FourSquare, Gowalla and Whrrl, I'm going to change my tune a little (this is where the 50% wrong part could come into play).

To that end, here are my five initial thoughts about Facebook Places (hat tip to friend and fellow LBS enthusiast, Mike Schneider, for helping push my thinking on this front):

Facebook 'likes' boring - I had an epiphany yesterday after ReadWriteWeb's coverage of the Places announcement yesterday. Facebook doesn't want to crush the players in the location-based field, it wants to provide the scale and infrastructure that they've been sorely lacking. Most telling was RWW's interview with former Facebook engineer, Yishan Wong, who theorized, "My guess is that Facebook's product tries to commoditize the 'boring' parts of location while providing a platform for the 'real' location-oriented companies (e.g. Foursquare, Gowalla, Booyah, Yelp) to build real products off of. Based on what I've heard from various sources, companies like Foursquare find the 'venue management' business to be quite tedious and not the real source of differentiating value... so commoditizing this aspect of their business doesn't threaten their core value proposition."
Businesses will seize the opportunity - It took all of 24 hours before all-in-one checkin rewards site, Topguest, announced that it was including Facebook Places in its service. It won't take long before others follow suit. The potential access to 500 million members/eyeballs/customers will do that.
Places appeals to the masses, not the early adopters - Mike Schneider and I were going back and forth earlier on Twitter about how disappointed he was in the lack of innovation on Places. My Quick'n'Dirty podcast partner, Jennifer Leggio, and I had a similar conversation yesterday on our weekly show. My take is that Facebook intentionally didn't include any sexy new features for two reasons a) they want to appeal to the masses so keeping the UI and functionality as simple as possible was essential and b) if bullet number one above is correct, Facebook wants other LBS players to do the innovating while it does its LBS platform thing.
Facebook will make a killing in geo-targeted ad revenue IF Places takes off - I may hate ads, but the more relevant and geo-focused they are, the more inclined I will be to react to them. Check out eMarketer's post yesterday for more details on this topic including forecasts.
Places will create a privacy nightmare for Facebook - I bet you thought I was going to yadda yadda over this one. Nope. This is the thing that could make or break Places. The major sticking point being the ability to check people into a location. While I personally like this feature in theory (and it is unique to Facebook as far as I can tell), this will cause plenty of problems down the road. It will only take 1-2 times of someone being checked into a location that you either don't want to be checked into or weren't actually at... but by the time your friend/parent/significant other sees the update, it will be too late.

How about you? I'm sure I'll get some push back on some of my predictions. But you know me, I welcome the discussion!

In Populus Nos Fides

2010-08-19T11:10:00.000-05:00

You're probably asking what the hell this title means. In case you failed Latin back in high school, it means "in people we trust." The reason I chose this title is that I've read a lot of posts/articles recently talking about the risks of location-based services (a topic that is near and dear to my heart). And while I feel that there are absolutely risks with letting people know your location on a regular basis 1) the rewards outweigh the risks AND 2) that people are inherently good. As my friend, Michelle Greer, would argue, it only takes one bad apple. But still...

This past Friday, I had a chance to reaffirm what I already believed when I participated in my friend, Jim Storer's, annual Island Pond Road Rally. Jim has been doing this all day race for 19 years now and the essence of the race is for 8-10 teams (usually 3-5 people per team) to get from a starting point in Massachusetts or southern New Hampshire up to Jim's family place in northern Vermont. The race takes about 12 hours and along the way, each team must collect items and pictures of places. The way Jim sets up the race, it requires A LOT of interaction with folks who you wouldn't ordinarily come into contact with. Some of these folks are store owners who are used to dealing with people/tourists on a regular basis. Many are not but rather are ordinary people.

Shannon, our faithful navigator

Scooch and his dopplerganger

Team Shuckri in a strangers pool

Liz Phillips posing at a barbershop with curlers in her hair

What's amazing about this race is how helpful and genuinely giving most of the people are that we encounter along the race. And when I tell you that there are certain items like convincing someone to shave off their beard, allowing your team swim in their swimming pool while they take a picture or hanging upside down in a tree with you, this takes a higher level of faith (or craziness) than just giving directions or posing for a picture.

Tying this all back to the world of social and location-based services... I've mostly found that my positive interactions with people in the real world are not mutually exclusive to the online connections that I've made over the last several years. What's different is that at least in the offline world, I can look someone in the eyes (or vice versa) and interpret their body language. In the online world, your taking a leap of faith. On the upside, you can find out a heck of a lot about a person via Google, LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter. You can also hit the "un-follow" or "un-friend" button if someone decides to abuse your newfound friendship.

I know this concept is nothing earth shattering... but it's how I feel. And while I may be alone in my beliefs, it's gotten me through nearly 42 years of my life. As a result, I've lived a good life and have been fortunate enough to meet some amazing people. How 'bout you?

Photos courtesy Shannon DiGregorio (one of my friends and fellow road rallyers)

Get Out the (Powered) Vote for SXSW 2011

2010-08-11T20:59:00.005-05:00

It's hard to believe that it's THAT time already but it is THAT time already. What time is "THAT" time you ask? Time to start voting for your favorite South by Southwest Interactive (SXSWi) panels.

This year, I'm in the enviable position of having several Powered colleagues have panels that made it to the next round. The only downside of having so many great submissions make it through is trying to promote everyone's panels while NOT pissing everyone off that follows me/us. To that end, I'm trying to consolidate efforts by putting everyone's entrees in the same place.

Below you will find the following information for each of the panels:

The title of the proposed panel
The first sentence of the panel abstract
The suggested speakers
A link to the session (SO YOU CAN VOTE FOR IT)

Just remember, you need to sign up to vote. It takes less than a minute and doesn't cost you anything (and the folks at SXSW are very respectful of not spamming people to death).

Marrying for Money: The ROI of Relationships
You CAN measure the ROI of relationships - personally, and professionally, and this seminar will show you how. No spreadsheets needed for this lecture, and only minimal algebra...
Jen van der Meer - VP Analytics, Powered
Flip the Funnel: Retention is the New Acquisition
What if we got it all wrong? What if we've been going about marketing strategy completely the wrong way?
Joe Jaffe - Chief Interrupter, Powered
VideoBlogging: Go from Amateur to Outstanding
You have a video camera and a YouTube Channel – now what? This panel will be a “Master Class” in online video and teach the next steps in building momentum in the online video space...
Joe Jaffe - Chief Interrupter, Powered
Is the Marketing Microsite Dead?
Thanks to advances in technology and the rapid adoption of social media platforms by consumers globally, marketers, brand managers and their agencies are all discussing the pros and cons of driving consumers to marketing "microsites" vs. social media destinations like Facebook, MySpace and even Twitter where they're already spending time...
Adam Keats, Weber Shandwick, Joe Jaffe, Powered, Bonin Bough, Pepsi.
Everyone’s Wrong about Influence. Except your Customers
What is influence? For a decade, Malcom Gladwell's The Tipping Point has served as a touchstone for those who believe that influence resides in the hands of a select few. Not so, says a new generation of marketers. They believe that thanks to the democratizing power of the Internet, anyone can be an Influential...
Valeria Maltoni - Director Strategy, Powered
Your Content Stinks! Drive results with Content Marketing
Are you creating content that drives results? Marketers are jumping on the content marketing bandwagon in droves, creating mountains of boring, useless, copycat content that has no impact on their business...
David Meerman Scott, author, Jay Baer, Convince and Convert, Joe Pulizzi, Junta42, Valeria Maltoni - Director Strategy, Powered
Get Big Results by Thinking and Acting Small
Each day the world sees more than 1 million new blog posts, tens-of-millions of tweets, hundreds-of-millions of new pieces of Facebook content, and more than 1 billion YouTube videos...
Greg Verdino - VP Strategy, Powered
Cage Match: Social vs Video
Social media and online video battle for mindshare among marketers. Which one totally rules? We’ll lock Craig Wax, CEO of Invodo and Natanya Anderson, VP of Content Strategy and Delivery at Powered, in a cage (metaphorically – or maybe literally) to duke it out. Tim Walker will enforce the rules...
Natanya Anderson, Powered, Tim Walker, Breaking Point Systems, Craig Wax, Invodo
Using Online Video to Build Your Company's Audience
With over 24 hours of video being uploaded every minute on YouTube and over 56 hours of video being uploaded per minute to lifestreaming sites such as UStream and Justin.tv, companies are starting to use videoblogs as a way of directly reaching out to new and existing customers...
Melissa Pierce - VeriSign (Powered client)
The Steroid Culture of Social Media: You Use?
Ever think about taking shortcuts to boost your numbers? You know, the numb that show the success of all those interactive social media marketing programs. The numbers that decide your end of year bonus...
Tim Walker (Breaking Point Systems), Laura Beck (Too Short Productions), Kyle Flaherty (Breaking Point Systems) and Aaron Strout (that's me!)
The ROI of Customer-centricity
While some of us are single-mindedly focused on social media as a phenomenon, we often lose sight of the source of its importance...namely, its ability to enable companies to be more customer-centric...
Frank Eliason (Citi), Jess Berlin (Cirque du Soleil), Reem Abeidoh (GroupM Search) and Aaron Strout
Generation C: Changing the Future of Business... Forever!
Forget about Gen X and Gen Y, it's all about Gen C -- the Content Generation. Business is changing and content is becoming king...
Edward Boches (Mullen), Sydney Owen (Weber Shandwick), Sherry Lowry (Lowry Group) and Aaron Strout
Road Rules for Mentorship: What's Appropriate (and What's Not)In a world where the saying "it's all about who you know" is more and more relevant across multiple platforms, mentoring is more important than ever...
Sydney Owen and Aaron Strout

What's in it for you you ask? Include the name of your panel and a link and I promise that I'll go over and throw you a vote as a little thank you for your participation. And if you don't have a panel, just consider that I owe you one should you choose to vote for any/all of the panels above.

Quick’n'Dirty 55 – ‘What’s the ROI of this Tweet?’

2010-08-06T13:07:00.000-05:00

In the spirit of centralizing the recaps from our weekly Quick'n'Dirty podcast, Jennifer, Rich, Ken and I have launched TheQuicknDirty blog. To that end, this week's recap is over on that site. However, for the regular readers of our blogs, we will keep lite recaps coming.

Social app of the week: SCVNGR - "a game about doing challenges at places"
Guest of the week: Forrester sr. analyst, Augie Ray - focused on whether or not our addiction to Facebook was good or bad, the death of Google Wave and the ROI of social media.
Twitterer of the week: Mike Schneider - VP at Allen Gerritsen. Humble, smart, LBS genius.
Point / counterpoint: Can Google do "social?" Special guest co-host, Kyle Flaherty and I took off the gloves on this one.

Listen to the recording of this week's episode. Or download it on iTunes (go to iTunes and Search for Quick'n'Dirty). And if you want the full recap, head over to our new TheQuicknDirty.com site.

Review: Clay Shirky's New Book, Cognitive Surplus

2010-07-27T16:52:00.001-05:00

Chances are that if you are reading this blog, you already know who Clay Shirky is. If not, it's probably a good idea that you do because Shirky is one of the leading voices in the digital space writing, consulting and teaching about the social and economic effects of internet technologies. In addition to being an esteemed professor teaching at NYU's graduate Interactive Telecommunications Program, he's also the author of the renowned book, Here Comes Everyone, among others.

Two years after publishing Here Comes Everyone, Shirky builds on his groundbreaking thesis in a new book aptly titled Cognitive Surplus: Creativity and Generosity in a Connected Age. While the focus of his last book was the role that online tools played in the explosion of social media adoption (Facebook just announced that it hit 500 million members), Cognitive Surplus spends a majority of its focus the role that culture and psychology play in driving this new phenomena.

The book starts off with a provocative opening chapter titled, Gin, Television and Cognitive Surplus -- inspired by a similarly named speech and Shirky blogpost back in 2008.* In this initial chapter, we rewind back to London's Gin Craze of 1720 where Shirky describes a city in the grips of a massive spike in gin consumption. Essentially, gin was cheap, easy to drink and most importanly, helped country folk who were working hard to assimilate into city living, "take the edge off." What I like about Shirky's gin example (along with many others in the book) is that he not only explains why the government's proposed solution (making gin illegal) had little impact on the level of gin consumption but rather that it was the assimilation of rural folks into the urban population over time that ultimately reduced the reliance on gin.

Throughout the book, Shirky uses other fascinating examples of "social" at work pointing cases like Howard Stern fans helping elect Hank the Angry Drunken Dwarf as People.com's 1998 Most Beautiful Person and Georgia Merton and Penny Cross's "couchsurfing" experience across Europe. What's unique about Shirky's style is that he gets at impetus of why people are doing these things, in many cases providing well-documented research by folks like research psychologist Edward Deci's "Soma" experiment or professors, Güth, Schmittberger and Schwarze's Ultimatum Game to explain what motivates people.

At the end of the day, the reason I agreed to read and review this book is because I am an avid believer in the fact that while social media is not about tools or technologies. Instead it's roots are grounded in a fundamental set of human behaviors that have existed for centuries... if not millennia, and these behaviors are now being shaped and changed by the availability of extra time -- a cognitive surplus have you -- and powered by new social technologies like blogs, wikis, Twitter and Facebook. Shirky drives hard on this concept in Cognitive Surplus and spends his time explaining the psychological and cultural drivers behind the phenomena. To me, it's this approach that has a much better chance of resonating with senior management and thus might help them better understand why they should be embracing rather than eschewing social media.

In summary, if I were to rate this book I would give it a solid A. It's a quick read (just over 200 pages) and it's chock full of new and exciting examples that help provide a better understanding of the "why" behind social media. It's also a book that should appeal to both social media veterans along with marketing folks that are new to the space. If you want to buy the book (I don't get anything if you do), it's readily available at Amazon and Barnes and Noble.

-----------
While this review barely scratches the surface what you'll learn in the book, this 13 minute TED video from earlier this summer should help whet your appetite.

What I neglected to mention up front is that thanks to the efforts and coordination by the fine folks at TLC Book Tours, this post is one in a series of reviews by a dozen prominent marketing bloggers. To read some of the other takes on Shirky's new book, Cognitive Surplus, take your pick from the list of smarties below...

June 22nd: Being Peter Kim
June 24th: Graywolf’s SEO Blog
June 29th: Convince and Convert
July 8th: Social Media Explorer
July 14th: Debbie Weil
July 15th: Beth’s Blog
July 19th: A Whole Lotta Nothing
July 22nd: Six Pixels of Separation
July 26th: Community Guy
July 28th: Citizen Marketer 2.1 (that's me!)
July 29th: Nine By Blue
August 3rd: Socialbrite
tbd: Web Strategy by Jeremiah Owyang

*I learned about the origins of the name of the first chapter from my friend, Jake McKee,

What Do Facebook, The Social Network, Guy Fieri and Scott Monty Have in Common?

2010-07-19T17:16:00.012-05:00

The title of this post is hands down the longest title in the history of this blog (I think). But I couldn't think of a better way to respond to my friend over at Ford Motor Company, Scott Monty's, blog post today. If you haven't seen it, he riffs off the new movie, The Social Network which parodies Facebook and their march toward 500 million members.

As part of the fun, Scott decided that he would pick a few of us out of the social media marketing crowd (some more prominent than others, ahem, Seth Godin) that could possibly appear in the movie. And if we did, who would play us in the movie? I got a kick out of my dopplerganger and Food Network star, Guy Fieri, who ironically, I met last summer in New York City. Some folks including my darling wife thought better comparisons for me might be Ben Affleck, Billy Ray Cyrus or even Bruce Springsteen (Stephanie Agresta insists I am his long lost brother).

But that's why I'm writing this post... instead, my goal is to continue with the meme that Scott started. In his post, he asks...

If they were holding open casting calls for extras and you were going to be featured, what famous person, dead or alive, would play you in the movie? Leave a comment below or reply with a post on your own blog with a link back to this post.

So I'm adding a few stars of my own. What do you think?

David Armano, sr. vice president, Edelman Digital / John Leguizamo [updated 7/20]

Maria Ogneva, social media director, Attensity360 / Scarlett Johansen

Brett Petersel, business development and events lead, Mashable / Christian Bale

Shannon DiGregorio, social media marketing, The CR / Angelina Jolie

Adam Cohen, partner at digital agency, Rosetta / Rob Thomas

And last but not least...

Kyle Flaherty, director of marketing, BreakingPoint Systems / Jack Black

[updated 7/20] And apparently, I look much more like Josh Beckett in this pic than any of my other dopplergangers above... (thank you Kyle)

Quick'n'Dirty Episode 52: We Love Your Tweets

2010-07-15T19:42:00.000-05:00

It's hard to know where to begin on the recap of this episode of the Quick'n'Dirty podcast. While the end result ended up being pretty good, the getting there part was a little nerve-wracking...

Having spent a day and a half out in Napa at the Wine Industry Technology Syposium, I knew that wedging in the Quick'n'Dirty with co-host, Jennifer Leggio, was going to be a little tricky. But with a 2:05 PM flight and a start time for the show of 12:00 PT, I figured that I would have enough time to get from Napa to Sacramento (about an hours drive) in time to get settled at a local Starbucks before doing the show. That was right up until the point where my iPhone decided to crash on me (apparently the outcome of updating all of my apps without having upgrade to the new 4.0 operating system).

Well with this post as my witness you can probably deduce that I did make it to Sacramento in time to co-host the show. The only hitch being that I had to do so from a rest area about 4 miles away from the Sacramento airport... in my rental car. For any of you wondering where I was in the chat room or on Twitter, that's where I was. So now that you know the back story, on to the recap!

Jennifer and I kicked today's show off with our social app of the week. Our choice was none other than Taxi Magic, a service that allows one to order and pay for a cab, all from the comfort of your iPhone, Droid, Blackberry or Palm app. The coolest part is that it uses your GPS to track you down so you never actually have to call the cab. Self-admittedly, this app isn't that social but it's very useful and I think may adopt more social features like integration with location-based services, etc. in the future. As I mentioned on air, a big old hat tip goes out to my friend, Chris Heuer for pointing this service out to me.

Next up was our guest of the week, the lovely and talented, Adele McAlear. If her name sounds familiar, it might be because she was our featured Twitterer back on episode 28. This go around, Adele was kind enough to share some information on her latest project called Death and Digital Legacy. While that may sound a little morbid, it's actually a growing issue and addresses some of the messiness involved with a person's digital assets (e-mail accounts, social networks, blogs, etc.) in the event that they die. According to Adele, some of the e-mail providers like Google have created a process to obtain the "contents" of a loved one's e-mail account but there are a number of validations and documents that must be produced first making the process a difficult one. One the other hand, most of the social networks really have done very little to allow for the transfer of ownership of onc's digital assets post mortem.

Our featured Twitterer of the week (and the reason for the title of this week's post) was AJ in Nashville. Jennifer discovered AJ through his regular commenting on her ZDNet Blog and liked that AJ started calling her "Scrapster" (a nod to her feistiness). Regular listeners will then a know that Jennifer has a phrase that she likes to use as we wrap up the Twitterer of the Week segment ie "we love your tweets." This week, Jennifer was a little "we love your tweet happy" and started saying it after our social app of the week. Bot being one to let an opportunity to poke a little fun slip by, I insisted on using the phrase a dozen more times during the show including in the title of the wrap up.

Last up was our point counterpoint. And for once, it was a topic that Jennifer and I did disagree on. Inspired by a recent article on Yahoo that talked about 10 brands that would likely disappear in 2011, I teed up the question of, "will brands that don't embrace social go away?" My answer was yes based on my own observations and validation from authorities like Charlene Li and Professor Jerry Wind. Jennifer disagreed and pointed to a number of B2B examples (her company included) that should do fine as long as they made good products.

Want to listen to past episodes of the Quick'n'Dirty podcast? You can find them all here on BlogTalkRadio or on iTunes by searching for Quick'n'Dirty. You can also read recaps of past shows on Jennifer's, my and now Rich Harris' blogs. So until next week, remember, "we love your tweets!"

Hotel Nikko Asks: What Could We Do to Get You to Stay?

2010-07-13T19:46:00.002-05:00

Last week, I had the opportunity to speak at the Social Media Marketing 2010 Conference in San Francisco which happened to be held at the Hotel Nikko. If you haven't visited/stayed at the Nikko before, it's a nice hotel. Centrally located (just a few blocks off of Market), bright and clean with all the charm of a boutique hotel. The rooms are well-laid out with large flat panel televisions, wet bars and bathrooms that offer separate bathtubs and showers.

Of course I enjoyed my experience at the Hotel Nikko (in fact, this was my second time staying there) but my main criteria for choosing it had more to do with location (it's where the conference was being held) and price (about $200/night all in) than anything else. While I was there, however, an interesting thing happened that led to the eventual writing of this blog post...

I was riding up in the elevator when a young woman who was interning at the hotel asked me if I was attending the conference. I said that I was which prompted her to ask me why I thought more of the attendees weren't staying at the hotel. This was a fairly easy question to answer given the fact that I knew a lot of the speakers/attendees lived locally and thus didn't need a hotel that night. It was her next question, though, that really piqued my interest. The intern asked, "what could we do to get you to stay here next time?"

At this point in the conversation, I started thinking to myself, either this is a very clever young lady who will go far some day OR Hotel Nikko may be taking an innovative approach to their customer research. Either way, I told her I had exactly the answer she was looking for... but she would need to do a little homework. I gave her three names that I told her to write down: The Roger Smith Hotel in NYC, Brian Simpson aka @bsimi (their director of social hospitality) and Brian's sidekick, Adam Wallace aka @adwal (new media director at the Roger Smith).

[NOTE: if you don't know the story of the Roger Smith and how unbelievably successful they've been through their customer-centric AND social media efforts, be sure to listen to my colleague, Joseph Jaffe's interview or read Chris Brogan's glowing post about their efforts]

Being as diligent as she was curious, the intern took out her notepad and wrote all this information down, obviously intrigued by what a hotel in NYC and two guys with hip hop sounding Twitter handles could have to do with getting me to stay at her hotel. At this point, she thanked me for the information and we parted ways. Upon our separating, I got thinking more about the question she had asked me and decided to write a prescriptive post about five things I liked about my experience at the Nikko along with five ways they could improve.

The good:

I arrived at the hotel at 8:30 AM and asked if I could check in. While many hotels are strict about their early checkin policy, the woman behind the desk was very polite and let me check in early without even batting an eyelash.
This may not be a big deal for most people but as someone that travels a fair amount AND is married to his laptop, the fact that the electrical outlets were easily accessible and that they had reliable wifi was much appreciated.
Anyone that follows me on Twitter will understand how happy I was that there was a Starbucks in the lobby.
There was a bottle of water on my bedside stand.
I'd like to think that the Nikko was the impetus behind their inquisitive interns line of questioning, even if they didn't explicitly tell her to chat up guests in the elevator. If that wasn't the case, they were still smart enough to hire a smart and motivated intern.

The "could use improvement":

When I arrived to checkin, I was as little surprised that they didn't acknowledge the fact that I had stayed there before (level of difficulty from a CRM perspective is about a 2 on a scale of 1-10). This also required NO knowledge of social media whatsoever.
The "reliable" in-room wifi was $15/night. And while it was provided by AT&T (a network that usually allows roaming via my Boingo account), I wasn't provided with a "roaming" option in spite of the fact that the FAQs on the site said that I could.
Corollary to number four in the "good" column above... while there was in fact A bottle of water on my bedside table, the aforementioned bottle was not a FREE bottle of water. I am of the strong belief that every hotel should offer at least A free bottle of water, even if it's the cheap, no name kind.
While I don't expect that many businesses will make an attempt to use or even experiment with location-based services like FourSquare, Gowalla and Whrrl, restaurants and hotels are foolish for not tapping into this capability now. To that end, I was disappointed that the Nikko did not acknowledge of my FourSquare checkin given the fact that I cross-posted it on Twitter for all to see.
They weren't the Roger Smith

All in all, you'll notice that my "could use improvement" column isn't too scathing. While I travel a lot, I have simple needs. And maybe I've been spoiled by my stays at the Roger Smith but I am really surprised that more hotels -- boutiques AND chains -- haven't done a better job at embracing social media.

How about you? Have you had a good or bad experience at a hotel that you'd like to mention? Please include it in the comments below.