Next up was our aforementioned guest, Mark Hendrickson, CEO of Plancast. You can see our earlier recap of Plancast here or see what Mark's former boss, Michael Arrington, had to say about this social network that many dub "FourSquare for future events." Two things I will say about Mark:
The seeming trend recently has been that my Quick-n-dirty podcast partner, Jennifer Leggio, and I have been more apart than together. This has been mostly my fault as my travel schedule has been a little nuts, but this past week, Jennifer got to take her "week off" as she was attending an RSA Conference. As a result, we had another special guest host. This week, it was none other than Laura Fitton, founder and CEO of oneforty.com and co-author of Twitter for Dummies.
Of course no show would be complete without our featured social network of the week. This week's choice was social aggregator, Nomee. Having just seen a demo of all their slick funcationality, I couldn't resist highlighting them (thanks to Renee Leger whome my colleague, Bill Fanning, and I met at the recent Social Media Club Dallas event for connecting us with Nomee). The thing I liked most about Nomee was the fact that it allowed you to follow a group or individual's activities across 140 different social networks via a desktop (or iPhone) app and then drill down on a network at any given time.
For our featured Twitterer of the week, we were pleased to announce Keith Burtis. Keith is an unusual combination of photographer, community manager, developer, podcaster and blogger. He's currently consulting but most recently was working for BestBuy and helped with their blogger outreach at last year's SXSW. This year, he's connected with a mutual friend, Patrick Moran of Fuzebox and is evangelizing new Fuzebox offering, Tweetshare. I haven't seen the app yet but based on what Patrick and Keith have told me, it's pretty cool. So if you like anything that has to do with community management, social media for business or photography, you'd be a fool not to introduce Keith into your Twitter stream.
This week, Jennifer and I were back in the saddle again with me broadcasting live from Jackson Hole, WY (yes, I took one for the team). We had an action packed show starting with our featured social network of the week, Hollrr. Neither Jennifer or I had had much of chance to play with Hollrr but saw some decent potential in this site that Mashable likens to "Foursquare for product discovery" (full review here). Both Jennifer and I appreciated Hollrr's off-the-shelf integration with other social networks like Twitter and Facebook and I personally look forward to getting product recommendations from friends and connections. Oh yeah, they have a pretty cool logo too.
Next up was our featured guest (and former "Twitterer of the week,") Simon Mainwaring. If you don't know Simon, you should. Officially, he is a branding consultant, advertising creative director, blogger, author and speaker. A former Nike creative at Wieden & Kennedy, Portland, and worldwide creative director for Motorola at Ogilvy, he now consults for brands and creative companies that are re-inventing their industries. During this week's show, Simon shared some fascinating updates from a recent trip he took to the Middle East as a guest of the Brookings Institute. The focus was on social media and foreign policy, two disciplines that traditionally don't share the same space. I won't pretend to do Simon's interview justice so just this one time, I'm MANDATING that you listen to at least Simon's portion of the show (starts about 7 mins in and runs for aproximately 25 minutes).
While episode 24 of the Quick-n-Dirty podcast show ended up being a lot of fun, it definitely didn't start off that way. Without going into too much detail, technical difficulties prevented my partner in crime, Jennifer Leggio, from dialing into the show until about 2 minutes int. Having done hundreds of podcasts and webcasts, I am pretty good at rolling with the punches but this definitely took me out of my "Zen" mode for the first five minutes of the show. To that end, I apologize to social network of the week, Sponty, because I was definitely a little distracted during this portion of the show.Sponty is a mobile and web app that lets you create and discover social activity feeds around you. Many of our users create topical feeds that tell you about fun things happening around town, like indie music and hipster parties. Others use it to organize casual get togethers with friends. You can see the current activity here: http://www.thesponty.com/whatsup.
While location is important, Sponty's premise is that the type of the activity, and which of your friends are going is a bigger determining factor for whether to go to something. I mean, if you're already at the bar, it's too late for me to join because I'd still need to jump and the shower and then the T (Boston's public transportation). Sponty let's people broadcast their social intentions so that their friends can join them.
During our 25 minute conversation, we all got a good laugh (Peter is a funny dude) at some of Peter's insights and remarks when it came to "social media gurus." In fact, his quote of the show, "If you have the word guru or expert in your Twitter name or bio, you're not" got retweeted over a dozen times. Personally, I loved Peter's prediction for next year that social becomes ubiquitous vs. companies trying to "do social." He's also endeared himself to me because he is a fellow hater of voice mail (a future post from me on that topic is in the works).
Next up was our Twitterer of the week, Dave Fleet. Dave is the account director for social media at Thornley Fallis Communications and does a little blogging in his spare time. I let Jennifer take the lead on this one as Dave was her choice. Jennifer likes Dave because of his cynical yet smart writing style. Personally, I've followed Dave for a couple of years and enjoy him for exactly the same reasons. Maybe we'll have Dave on the show live sometime in the not too distant future.
While I don't personally use social media dashboard/tool, HootSuite, I have a number of friends and colleagues who do. At some point, I plan to give it a try. To that end, I do take a personal and professional interest in knowing as much about the spectrum of social tools and networks as possible, particularly since I'm on the hook for staying on top of these things for work and for the weekly podcast I do with Jennifer Leggio of ZDNet (note: live interview on the Quick-n-Dirty podcast show coming with Hootsuite founder, Ryan Holmes, on January 14).
This update sees HootSuite morphing from Twitter client to badass social media dashboard. We're constantly listening to our users to hear what they want. Beyond that, we're thinking about what they might want that they haven't even imagined yet. We think about these things and then try to make them a reality.Anyone that knows me at all will recognize that Ryan's words are music to my ears. Congratulations to the folks at Hootsuite. I look forward to hearing more!
Having guest, Jeremy Pepper, on the show didn't hurt. Jeremy is not only smart and insightful (sometimes inciteful) but not afraid to "call 'em like he sees 'em." Both Jennifer and I appreciate this in a person, especially when they came from a background of "Big PR." During the show, we had a chance to ask Jeremy what the "new" PR looks like which lead us down a path of the "do's" and "don't's" of relationship building. We also did a lot of laughing (apologies to the audience for that).
We gave props to writer, podcaster and entrepreneur, Jeff Cutler. If you don't know him, check out some of his work here, here and here. I have to say, many of our "featured Twitterers of the week" are usually happy to be featured but Jeff's Twitter response once he found out he was the guy was hilarious...@AaronStrout: How? Why? #notworthy #blushing #thanktheacademy #ifnotforthehardworkofothersIwouldn'tbehereJeff, we're glad to have made your day!
@aaronstrout Sweet! But now I feel pressure to have smart tweets and not things like Wolf Blitzer T-Shirts and Zombie Wedding Cakes :-)
Our friend, Justin Levy, of New Marketing Labs was kind enough to give my Quick-n-Dirty podcast partner, Jennifer Leggio and me a few passes to the upcoming Inbound Marketing Summit: Boston to give away on our show. We've already given away passes the last two weeks during the show and we're going to give away another pass this Thursday to one lucky caller. However, we have one other pass that we're going to give away in a little bit of a different way...
Anyone that knew me in my early days of Twitter may remember my weekly "Tweet-ku" contests -- essentially a prize for the best haiku poem completed in a 140 characters. I would give away $20 iTunes gift cards. This time around, you don't need to do haiku (although your welcome to if you like) but Jennifer and I are looking for the most clever tweet ABOUT the @QuicknDirty podcast show. Yes, that's pretty vague but that's not by accident.
As you probably know by now, I do a weekly podcast with my friend and co-host, Jennifer Leggio called the Quick-n-Dirty show. If you don't know the genesis of this series, you can get the back story here.
Humana and Bert DuMars of Newell Rubbermaid. Not only did both impart some major pearls of wisdom about how their companies were tapping into the power of community and social media, but Greg and Bert also showed a great sense of humor. You can bet that they will both be asked back sometime in the near future. I guess I should mention Pandora CEO, Tim Westegren too 'cause he was pretty awesome.
disagreement Jennifer and I had over the value of celebrities like Oprah and Ashton Kutcher joining Twitter. Since then, we've had eleven opportunities to "agree to disagree." To be honest, Jennifer and I actually agree quite a lot of the time so many times, we end up flipping a coin to see who is going to take the counterpoint of a particular topic. This is pretty fun -- kind of like debate club if you think about it. In our next batch of shows, I'm goign to have to work harder to find topics that push Jennifer's buttons. ;)
After a week off for a little family vacation, imagine how relieved I was to find out that I still had a job as a cohost of Quick-n-Dirty podcast. Apparently, Kyle Flaherty, did an admirable job filling in for me but my partner in crime, Jennifer Leggio, decided that he's more fun to make fun of than me so he was the odd man out (sorry Kyle).Well, It's only taken six episodes but I think that Jennifer Leggio and I are starting to hit our stride on the Quick-n-Dirty podcast series. For one, we're starting to get used to each other's style (no easy task when you can't see one another). We've also figured out how to use Skype as a back channel for the show. A third thing that helps is that Jennifer and I do live feedback right after our broadcast which is a helpful way to look back at what's worked and what hasn't
l network is helpful because it provides real time, GPS-informed data on members' whereabouts. It also allows for members to text, ping or call anyone within their network. Jennifer doesn't love the concept of geo-based networks that don't give you a full of control over who can see what (but she caveats that it's because she's a "'fraidy cat.") I like these types of geo-based services because they are a great way to connect with friends or acquaintances when at a conference or out on the town. For what it's worth, our special guest, Greg Matthews sided with me on this debate. Score one for the guys.
For the most part, co-host, Jennifer Leggio and I got our act together for episode four. The only wild card for this one -- and it was a big one -- was the news that pop icon, Michael Jackson, had died just before our show got started. And while neither Jennifer or I are huge MJ fans, it felt only fitting to take a moment of silence during the show for "Mr. Moonwalk."The third episode of Quick’n'Dirty Social Media Podcast (#qnd) was a little smoother than episodes one and two. For starters, I remembered to set the length of the show for 45 minutes vs. 15 so all the listeners could follow along for the duration. I was also able to play our new bumper music, Bring Back the Bass, at least at the tail end of the show (thanks to Brett Petersel for providing). Next week, I promised co-host, Jennifer Leggio, that our show would go off without a hitch... we'll just have to see!If you’re reading this blog, there’s a good chance your company is in the process of formulating an online community strategy. Somewhere during that process, the question of whether to “build” vs. “join” is sure to come up. While both strategies make sense, there are definite benefits that come with each:
Why Not Build AND Join?
Have you ever heard the expression, “you can please all the people some of the time, some of the people all the time but you can’t please all the people all the time?” That saying has never been truer than in the case of online communities. While it seems logical to want to focus on picking one of the approaches above, my recommendation — one that several other social media experts like Forrester senior analyst, Jeremiah Owyang, also endorse – is to do both.
To be clear, both approaches (build and buy) require internal resources to effectively manage a company’s online community activities. This can sometimes be the same resource depending on the size of the community and the level of engagement a company seeks (more is better as one might imagine) but over time, these activities require two similar but different skill sets.
Although I am recommending building an online community along with joining pre-existing third party communities, it is wise to pick one to get started with and then phase in the second approach at a later date. In many cases, creating one’s one branded online community first often makes the most sense. After all, having a destination to drive traffic beyond just your company’s website is a great way to get your key constituents to engage with you. However, if as a company you are looking to “dip a toe in the water,” the fastest way to do so is likely via creating a presence on a third party community.
So what makes “build” AND “join” complementary activities? Here are a few reasons to consider this approach:
Third Party Online Communities/Social Networks You Should Consider:
Who’s Doing a Great Job with “Build” AND “Join?”
If you’ve paid any attention to the current presidential race, you’ve probably heard about Democratic-elect candidate, Barack Obama’s, clever use of social media and online community to drive support, awareness and most importantly, funding. Obama campaign is anchored around his site “my.barackobama.com.” This is where Barack’s team create and house a majority of the campaigns blogs, videos and interviews are housed. If one Googles “Obama,” this the first link that comes up. It doesn’t stop there though. With 200 million plus users on MySpace, 80 million plus members on Facebook, 100 million visitors served up daily on YouTube and a million plus active members on Twitter (many of whom are A-list bloggers and reporters from mainstream media), Obama and his staff are also “fishing where the fish are.”
Companies like Ernst and Young [Facebook], Crest [Facebook}, Dell Computers [Twitter] and even Comcast [Twitter] are taking this approach and are finding that are not only garnering tons of positive media coverage for “thinking outside the box,” they are also engaging their customers where their customers like to hang out. This inevitably leads to things like better customer service, deeper customer loyalty, improved market research and of course increased viral marketing.
Getting Started
There are a few ways your company can think about getting started:
Feeling overwhelmed by all these choices? Don’t be. The beauty of online community building is that it’s an iterative process. At the end of the day, what’s important is engaging your customers in conversation. Ideally you do this in as many places as possible but even more important is doing it right.
