Inter:PLAY 2008
It was lots of fun. Thanks to Dave Gray, Bill Streeter and Melody Meiners for making the panel, Branding Yourself On-Line, work so well. And Dana, Melody you two did an amazing job making it happen!
If you missed it, you can still catch a part of it here.
Redesigning, Recommitting and Writing
Not sure whether it was the move from Typepad to Wordpress, other social media hang outs, being preoccupied with a home construction project gone wild, or work, kids, mom, or any combination and/or permutation of these things, but I just kind of stopped regular blogging
I found myself writing imaginary blog posts in my head but not actually writing them. Oh, I missed blogging. I missed my blog. My blog, just didn’t feel like home to me any more.
So, I tried to lure myself back…maybe I would make blogging a New Years resolution. Write that as a blog post and declare it out loud. Didn’t happen.
I signed up for the Blogger Social. Surely that was something to blog about. But, still blogger’s block remained.
I searched for cures. There was great advice available: Darren Rouse had 25 tips for battling blogger’s block. Performancing had 12 Tips. Merlin Mann said to Hack Your Way Out. LifeClever had 10 Tips for beating blogger’s block.
The problem was I just couldn’t get comfortable with the blog design. Dot-Chris suggested we just start over. So, we did. And here I am blogging about it. It’s a start, right?
Social Media 08: Obama’s Campaign “IS About you”
According to the Chicago Tribune, five days after his site went live, 4000 people have started blogs and 2400 groups had formed on Obama’s site, "ranging from Iowa Union Members for Obama and New Hampshire Firefighters for Barack to Hip Hop for Obama."
Joe Rospers, Obama’s new media director seems to understand exactly what building an online community is about: building relationships between the members of the community.
He says, "It’s about building those relationships and providing the clue that will bind people together. The more solid the relationships are among our supporters, the more impact they’ll have as advocates in their own community."
Many of the networks formed before Obama’s site went up and have been actively organizing events. Students for Obama, for instance, is on Facebook
with an invitation to an event that took place on February 2nd. Facebook indicates that the event had 1585 confirmed guests, complete with Facebook profile pictures. You could RSVP for the event and see who wasn’t coming as well as who was coming.
So, while the mainstream media campaigns sling mud and dig up dirt and even focus that unpleasant spotlight at bloggers,these online communities within the Obama and Edward’s campaigns are busy organizing grassroot events and meet ups on line and locally….and don’t forget raising money: The Obama campaign says that over 3000 people have set up personal fund raising web pages.
Lets look once again at the word of mouth data: we trust the people we know…we are more than 50% more likely to be influenced by word of mouth recommendations from our peers than advertising. This is going to have a powerful influence on campaign 08.
Technorati Tags:
Barack Obama, John Edwards, Joe Rospers, bloggers, blogs, social media, Amanda Marcotte, community, media2.0, Chicago Tribune
More Data: We Trust the People We Know
According to a new study by BIGresearch the most influential media is 100% consumer generated. This study is consistent with prior data from Yankelovich indicating that 76% of consumers in their survey don’t believe that companies tell the truth in advertising.
Of further interest, the BIGresearch study found that consumers use more than one media at a time: Over two thirds use other media while watching TV; 68 percent use other media while reading the newspaper and 70.7 percent use other media while signed into the internet.
The BIGresearch study also noted a related and important shift. In response to the question about which media most influenced purchase decisions the findings were that "consumers’ choices are rarely in line with advertisers’ expenditures." In other words you can’t buy attention with dollars; you earn attention by the value of your content, product or service. If the value is high, people point to it, link to it, recommend it and then you get attention.
So, more confirmation that consumers don’t trust advertisers but they do trust the opinions of others…plus they are not really focusing on one message, but many messages delivered at the same time by different media. The interaction of trust, technology and continuous partial attention. Tough crowd.
Marketing Vox had a post today called When User Generated Ad Campaigns Go Bad from OneParkAvenue who was making the point that Dove’s campaign dovecreamoil.com was a bust because it had only received a one star rating from the 10,000 people who had viewed it; and comments had to be closed because there were so many YouTube users who were not happy that Dove did not seem to understand their culture. Apparently the same ad did significantly better when placed on AOL. The question was posed regarding the difference in the two sites in terms of the relevance of this ad.
In the new social media world to earn attention and to generate attention you need to be relevant to those you are trying to reach…..and reach them where they are. And, while you are there, build community and trust.
Tags: Dove, YouTube, continuous partial attention, attention, Marketing Vox, BIGresearch, One Park Avenue, CGM,trust
Time Magazine Person of the Year: You (Pass the Kool Aid) but Where Do You End and Mainstream Media Begin?
The annual Time Magazine person of the year is slightly different this year….in their own words….
"But look at 2006 through a different lens and you’ll see another story, one that isn’t about conflict or great men. It’s a story about community and collaboration on a scale never seen before. It’s about the cosmic compendium of knowledge Wikipedia and the million-channel people’s network YouTube and the online metropolis MySpace. It’s about the many wresting power from the few and helping one another for nothing and how that will not only change the world, but also change the way the world changes."
Oh, but do they really like us or are they just sucking up?ÂÂ
CK, who I had the opportunity to meet at Toby’s Bipartisan Blogger’s Wonk, says, "It’s a pivotal moment to see a magazine that has boasted many presidents, philanthropists and visionaries in this annual top spot recognize the impact of a lot of "little guys" and, in so doing, relay that control is no longer in the hands of the few."
Yes, the winner is you…the content creators of the web. And I am flattered, really, to be a winning "you." I just wish they didn’t sound so….so much like us? So, Web 2.OMG! Group hug, pass the Kool-Aid.
But read on, "for working for nothing and beating the pros at their own game". If you are working for nothing, how are you beating the pros at their own game. Professional=pay; amateur= no pay. Right?
Well, Steve Rubel says that he and Robert Scoble and John Furrier have started an "important discussion" about where does citizen’s media end and mainstream media begin. Their answer is, Steve says: getting paid, in real time cash money. The mainstream media is using our stuff…blogs, wikis, podcasts and so on; they even try to write in a more casual style. On the other side, there are lots of bloggers whose blogs and podcasts and videos provide them with their primary source of income; income from advertising. So, this means just one thing: they are media. If you are passing the Kool Aid and supporting yourself from your Kool Aid stand….by Steve’s definition as well as Time’s, you are not a person of the year.
Well, I hate to have to note that there does not seem to be any diversity in this important discussion among Steve, Robert and John…we ask not "Where are the Women Bloggers?" but where is their voice in the important discussion?
Tags: Time Magazine, Person of the Year, KoolAid, Marianne Richmond, Robert Scoble, Steve Rubel, John Furrier, Toby Bloomberg, CK’s Blog, MySpace, Wikipedia, ,YouTube, Women Bloggers, Blogs, MSM, Main Stream Media, WIMN’s Voices
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State of the Blogosphere/State of the Hubbasphere
Dave Sifry issued his State of the Blogosphere this morning and suffice it to say its bigger than it was last report (57million blogs tracked world wide, 2 blogs created each second of every day, 1.6 million posts per day, 55% of blogs are defined as active which means that they have been updated at least once, in 3 months). English and Chinese remain the top two languages but Farsai is now in the top ten languages. Well okay then….
Now the question that we really care about…..influence. Here is the way the Technorati sees it: Low Authority (3-9 blogs linking), Middle Authority (10-99 blogs linking), High Authority(100-499 blogs linking) and Very high Authority (500+ blogs linking). As explained by Dave, any authority designation is still authority because there are 1.5MM blogs with 10 or more links (versus 57 million total) and authority is directly related to time blogging and frequency of posting.
OK, so I have many issues with the manner in which links are counted but since I don’t really have the expertise to talk spiders and parsing and what is really behind the curtain at Oz, I will not take that on; however, I do have a few comments on the numbers as related to influence, the privilege of rank and "blogger relations" issue between Michael Arrington at TechCrunch and Mothers Click that is making the rounds.
It relates back to a post by Clay Shirky called Power Laws, Weblogs and Inequality and the fact that the power law curve is heavily weighted towards those with the highest ranking. The rich get richer and so it is Technorati ranking terms. According to Shirky, the "size of the system increases the gap between the #1 spot and the median" and the highest ranked blogs (based upon links) are part of a self perpetuating, exponentially growing network of influence.
 In the words of Fred Stutzman at Unit Structures, the top ranked bloggers are the hubs who receive a disproportionate amount of in-bound links, that are flowing in a mostly non-reciprocal, low to high, ranked manner like airline hubs; the hubs then feed a significantly lesser number of links downward to the spokes. It is a kind of social multiplier model of influencers and influencer followers.
So, this leads to what Steve Rubel called the Underground Blogosphere: "The Underground Blogosphere is an intricate web of hundreds of thousands of emails that bloggers send to each other every day. In essence, they are "pitching" their latest posts in hopes of getting a link. Sometimes, bloggers are genuinely looking for good feedback, but more often than not all they are just looking for traffic." Steve gets pitched a lot and would prefer not to be emailed requests for links.Use del.ici.ous, please.
According to the PR firm for MothersClick, here is what happened: We have a client who was obsessed with getting their new 2.0-style company featured in TechCrunch. We approached it the right way, through the right channels, with respect for the people and processes at Arrington’s gig. We tried. We failed. It happens. Otherwise, the early reception in other media has been good. But the client was obsessed with TechCrunch. Without consulting their SHIFT team, the company’s founder left a critical comment at TechCrunch. The client basically questioned Arrington’s integrity. This comment got picked up by ValleyWag. Which got picked up by Digg. Which led to Mr. Arrington posting at-length in defense of his integrity.
Robert Scoble, in a post titled, "A-list bloggers keeping the little guy down?" weighs in an agreement with Steve Rubel: don’t email me, post a comment to my blog.
Tara Hunt says, "Now…for Mother’s Click…wtf are they thinking? Why even target Mike and TC? Huh? The majority of your audience isn’t even there - you want to go to BlogHer and Dooce and individually talk to all of the mommy bloggers you can about giving it a try. TechCrunch? I don’t know if Mike has stats, but I’d imagine that his audience is largely male. Not that being on TC isn’t still valuable…but putting all of your energy in that direction is ridiculous." She advices that using a PR firm to send a "Dear Blogger" is not the right approach to getting a link, anyway.
So….the State of the Blogosphere? Its big, still growing, driven by an inequitable model of influence as measured and perpetuated by Technorati, that makes it challenging to rise above; but study the model, learn the culture, target your efforts, and like Strumpette, fight for your links.
Tags: Technorati, MothersClick, Tara Hunt, Michael Arrington, Blogher, Dooce, Techcrunch, ValleyWag, Marianne Richmond, Links, Steve Rubel, influence, Dave Sifry, Digg, Strumpette, Fred Stutzman, Clay Shirky
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Is Blogging An Attitude That Can Be Taught? If you have the right attitude….
I just received a participant’s copy of the study Thinking Like A Blogger: Is Blogging an Attitude That Can Be Taught? conducted by Nora Ganin, PhD and Eric Mattson. The full study is published by the Society of New Communications Research and available for purchase through Lulu.
Two hundred and sixty-six bloggers invited to participate in the study; 80 bloggers responded and their answers to the on-line survey are the basis of the study. According to the report the 80 bloggers represent "some of the best business blogs and most successful independent blogs in existence as well as smaller, less well known blogs." In looking at the data provided it looked like they had a reasonably representative sample in terms of number of visitors, feed subscribers, link counts and length of time blogging to lend credibility to their results. They mentioned several well known bloggers by name as having participated in the study: Shel Israel, John Winsor, David Carter, and Hugh MacLeod.
In a nutshell, a majority of bloggers in this study believe that the attitude and behavior associated with effective blogging can be taught but there is a caveat: If you have a blog compliant attitude that encompasses the open, transparent, and authentic culture of effective blogging. See Diva Marketing for elaboration of the culture of blogs.
For businesses, the question was, given the willingness to be open, transparent and authentic, could the activity of blogging be taught. The answer was "yes." The answer was also "yes" that businesses could be taught to be "blog like" without actually blogging.
Overall message: Blogs are "the best current communication tool for humanizing a business," and to be effective, require transparency, passion, authenticity and two way communication. However, being transparent, passionate, authentic and truthful should be the way business is conducted and this attitude can be taught; and those who operate with that attitudes can probably be taught to blog; those who don’t learn the attitude, probably cannot be taught to blog.
Tags: Nora Ganin, Eric Mattson, Society of New Communication Research, blogging, bloggers, Diva Marketing, Marianne Richmond, Shel Israel, John Winsor, David Carter, Hugh MacLeod
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Two Faces of the Same Book: Dilution of the Brand and Conflicting Social Contexts
In continuing to read opinions regarding the recent announcement that Facebook was going to go niche-less and open its network to everyone, I found it interesting to note that almost no one thought the move was a good thing. I say almost because surely there must be someone who thought it made sense, I just have not been able to find them or their blog.
Further noteworthy was the fact that "big mistake" could be expressed in compliance to the standards of various disciplines and still mean the same thing. Danah Boyd for instance used the term "conflicting social contexts." Danah is a PhD Student at UC Berkley School of Information and does social media research. She wrote,
"I do not believe that social network sites are able to sustain lots of conflicting social contexts. Or, rather, I don’t believe that they can continue as a hang-out space. I know that Facebook will continue to grow but I believe that the core value of it will be lost for the sake of growth."
David Bell, uses the term, "dilution of the brand." Bell, an Associate Professor of Marketing at the Wharton School of Business does research on price setting, price dispersion and the effect of word of mouth and variables such as "free shipping" offers on Internet sales wrote,
"By expanding, "you can dilute what the community stands for. Once that happens, people leave. It’s a key tension between growth and dilution of the brand."
Conflicting social contexts and dilution of the brand have similar outcomes: loss of cool, people leave and don’t hang out anymore.
After many years in brand marketing and advertising I returned to grad school to study clinical social work. A professor asked me what I was studying and what I had done before. When I told him, he said, "Oh, you want to manipulate people’s minds in a different way, now." Well, no not really all that different….I will just use different words to describe the same thing.
Tags: Danah Boyd, David Bell, Facebook, social media, Marianne Richmond, social networks, marketing
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Snakes on a Plane: Bad Is The New Good
Yes, I am really writing a second post on Snakes on a Plane. Why? Because my 13 year old son asked me this morning if he could go see it. His reason? "Because I heard it was really stupid and I want to go see what its about."
And that just about sums up the impact of all that blogger buzz translated into the spoken word of the target demo (Mack pointed out today that I wasn’t in the target demo, but I am the mother of two card carrying members of the target demo so I do think I have a proxy opinion).
Now, Seth Godin pointed out today that awareness doesn’t translate into purchases. He said, " I fear that people are missing a fundamental truth: just because people know who you are doesn’t mean they’re going to buy what you sell." It is indeed a fundamental truth that seems to be frequently forgotten, or at least disregarded. But, what about "Because I heard it was really stupid and I want to go see what its about."
Well, I asked my son who else was going to the movie he named two friends. When he says "I heard" it doesn’t mean he read a blog (THAT he thinks defines stupid), read it in the newspaper, or saw it on the evening news. Most likely he saw the trailer at another movie (he has gone about twice a week this summer) and/or saw commercials on ESPN. He and his friends most likely "talked" about the movie on IMs. It is highly possible that their were more than the three of them "talking" about the movie and "how stupid" it was online. OK, the sample size is small. But, I think it gives credence to the "its the experience, stupid" contingent. Mack, you called it
Jackie Huba wrote a post about the five lessons to be learned from Snakes on a Plane. Number 5: "The experience is the difference between profit and failure. SoaP was not just a film but a film-going experience…. some people said it was the most fun they’d had at a movie in years. That’s welcome news for an industry whose revenues keep declining."
So, when I picked my son up from the movie he got in the car, grinned and said, "It was awesome, mom."
"Awesome?"
"Yes, he said, It was so bad it was hysterically funny." And there you have it….it was funny. They had fun. OK, maybe not THE "film going experience" but a positive nonetheless. They are not going to go out and buy rubber snakes and go see it twenty more times.They are not planning an audience participation party. But, they will tell their friends, who will tell their friends…..This may just make the difference between profit and failure.
Now, I am not taking back anything else I said previously, even, " I think part of the experience is a good movie; a good experience requires a good movie." I will revise the definition of "good movie." They thought it was FUNNY….this made it a good movie. This made it a good experience. In my opinion, Seth Godin is right: "The best way to succeed is to have a really great product." OK, well this one we will just call a good experience. Bad is the new good. Or the new awesome.
I still believe that bloggers could focus on more deserving movies. Like Karl Long wrote, "Dear Blogosphere, Can We Promote A Better Movie Than SoaP to Promote Next Time?" But then again, the MSM is hanging onto the Jon Benet Ramsey/Mark Karr story for dear life. John Stewart nailed that one. CNN, Fox, and MSNBC really didn’t cover the plane carrying Mark Karr taxing down the runway, live. Did they?
Tags: Snakes on a Plane, SoaP, Seth Godin, Marianne Richmond, Jackie Huba, John Stewart, CNN, Fox, MSNBC, bloggers, blogs, word of mouth Mack Collier, Karl Long
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President John Edwards Delivers the State of the Blogosphere…
A John Edwards presidency may be that moment that we look back upon and say, "He was the first president of the social media age." He seems to "get it." His wife, Elizabeth seems to "get it." I am not saying that just because he was the keynote speaker at Gnomedex. Visit his website and you will see a veritable showroom for social media…not only does he have a blog, he launched it in Beta.
You can receive updates on your mobile device; he has podcasts, he has video. He is using YouTube. Want to know what he talked about at Gnomedex? That’s correct, go to YouTube. He has a blogging family, Elizabeth and Cate. You can chat and there is community.
If John Edwards delivers the State of the Union in January of 2009,
can we expect authenticity and transparency? Will we nod and say, "its
the blogosphere, stupid." Will there be a national dialog on the
question: "Are all links created equal?" Will we need laws that state
that discrimination on the basis of race, gender, religion, age and Technorati
links is not permitted? John Edwards, if elected will become our first
blogging president; Elizabeth will become the first blogging First
Lady. Pass the Kool-Aid, please.
Tags: John Edwards, blogs Gnomedex, podcasts, videoblogs, Elizabeth Edwards, Technorati, YouTube
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