An Bui, Spelled An With 1 N

from merriam-webster.com

As a content creator, I’ve spent quite a bit of time thinking about sharing ideas and information online. I’ve seen the positive outcomes of information sharing:

• Increased pageviews to one’s blog, web site, marketing collateral
• Continuation of thought leadership - conversations beyond “It’s about the conversation!”
• Refinement and clarification of ideas - product feedback, improved processes

All of which translate to business value by decreasing operational costs, shortening cycle times, accelerating time to revenue, increasing leads, increasing close rates, increasing customer satisfaction, etc etc etc.

I’ve also seen the negative - the mass email offering damning evidence of illegal, unethical, or racist perspective e.g. authoring this email, or the Facebook photo that shows that the boss was lied to. Obviously, these examples fall into the “overshare”, defined by Encarta as “to give inappropriately personal or detailed information to somebody else, especially a stranger”

So where’s the line between sharing and oversharing? Is sharing value-additive or value-neutral? Is oversharing value-detractive by promoting or demonstrating a lack of ethics or social justice?

Could we develop a framework to run through before we create content?

1. Who does the information benefit?
2. Who are the other authors / speakers on the topic?
3. What are they saying?
4. Are your ideas or information somehow different by content or audience?

So many smart people - speakers as well as attendees - packed two days full of content on email, search and social media marketing.

The recaps below came from speakers as well as attendees. Can you guess who was in which group?

Sonny Gill on Affirmation and Testing: Last year was People and Passion… click to read what Sonny has to say about this year.

Eric Hoffman on his Digital Marketing Mixer experience: “yeah I know, Swine flu whatever – there were people in white coats here so I felt safe”

Matthew T. Grant on The Long and Short of the Digital Marketing Mixer: Five high level themes from the conference [definitely worth taking a look at - great insights from Grant!]

Michael Brito on Lessons Learned: Get it straight from the horse’s mouth - what did Brito learn?

Jay Baer on 33 Hot Social Media Marketing Tips and Eight Killer Quotes: He crowdsourced his beard. ‘Nuff said.

Mack Collier on Marketing Profs Digital Marketing Mixer Recap: Mack gives you a little sumptin’ sumptin’ to help you see the value of this event.

Thanks to Marketing Profs for inviting me to this year’s Digital Marketing Mixer, (re)connecting me with friends, and putting on a great show full of learnings, case studies, tips and discussions.

The action at Marketing Profs Digital Mixer didn’t stop. From an early morning breakfast discussing Twitter with Leigh Duncan-Durst to two moderated sessions to discuss: (1) various uses of Twitter for brands like Marketing Profs and Best Buy; (2) community building through social media.

The rate of responsiveness for Best Buy’s Twitter team was amazing - during the session, one of the attendees tweeted something about Best Buy and minutes, if not seconds later, had a response from Best Buy. This in-person, real time demo made us laugh. Marketing Prof’s Twitter evolution also highly interested me - from Ann Handley just tweeting on her own to having a more formal policy or structure demonstrated that social media use isn’t static. What one does today, how one applies various tools will change over time, as it should. Business needs and goals change as new information develops and social media strategy should evolve to take those changes into consideration.

The conference closed with the Mixologists recapping and reviewing tips and tactics that attendees could take home with them. Highlights include:

• KEYWORDS for SEARCH because people are searching! 4-5 search terms should give them your product if they are looking for it!
• Community membership is a privilege, not a right
• 80/20 rule for content - personal vs. brand for personal Twitter or brand vs. personal for brand Twitter. However, make sure the content has value for your audience
• Lawyers speak their own language - legalese. Lawyers’ risk aversion is in service to their clients, so have in-house counsel discuss social media policy development with peer enterprises
• Have a plan - know why you use the tools you use and how you use them
• Tactics without a strategy is like doing nothing, or passing up opportunity while incurring costs. If you’re looking for an analogy, tactics without a strategy is like a steering wheel without a car. Maybe it’s like a public transportation system without any stops.

Was Mom wrong with her advice: “Don’t talk to strangers?”

Ann Handley in her opening talk contradicted Mom, reminding us that we should go out of our comfort zone and talk to strangers and learn from each other.

Go forth and learn we did -

From “The Magic Combination of Rich Content and Social Media Can Land You On ‘Page One’ of Google”

If you think about creating great content - if you build it, will they come? Maybe if you make it easy for them - the “crazy viral” content doesn’t have many barriers to access. A registration form is an example of a barrier for your users. When creating content, also think about usability - something that is easy to consume, read and share will be so, especially if the content is quality.

Different media types serve different purposes. Of course, you might want to collect email, contact information and names. If you explain why you ask for that personal information to share survey results, you might realize response rates as high as 95% as Michael Stelzner did, the author of Writing White Papers: How to Capture Readers and Keep Them Engaged.

Some other quick tips:

• Develop relationships with key influences before you need to make an ask - hint - offer interesting, unique insight or value.
• Think about your signal to noise ratio - what content should be open and public, and what should be more private?
• Retweet buttons or links that allow people to share your content
• Video tools to use may be Screenflow for those who use Mac and Camtasia for those who use Windows
• Check out Sexy Bookmarks if you use wordpress

Life moves quickly, at the speed of Real Time. So what about business - how can business engage in real time? How Big Brands Engage in Real Time Conversations with Customers provided case studies of how both B2B and B2C brands leveraged online interactions to develop relationships with their customers.

• Hansen’s soda used Twitter in conjunction with street teams to grow their brand
• Intel used social media to discover the desire for the Ajay Bhat t-shirt from the Ajay Bhat commercial.

However, incentive-based contests are great for launching programs and products, not for building sustainable relationships. Social media is like a long term relationship, not casual dating. Speaking of relationships, what do you do when you screw up? You can address problems by figuring out what the problem is and addressing it. Apologize for your mistakes and ask for forgiveness.

Have we moved past the it’s-about-the-conversation/it’s-about-the-community chant? Social Media Measurement: Metrics, Impact, and Value addressed how we can measure our efforts in social media.

After a brief talk by Amber Naslund (available on slideshare) about what metrics to track and how to make meaning of so we can drive the ultimate metric.

While you can automate data gathering and visualizations, you can’t automate insight and analysis. Research will inform which social networks to participate in and lack of success provides opportunity to get customer feedback about the type of content they want to see.

Just like laundry, social media measurement only gets harder the longer you wait. Some free listening or measurement tools to investigate:

• socialmention
• backtype
• netvibes
• search.twitter.com
• GOOG Alerts
• boardtracker

If you’re really geeky, look at various APIs and RSS tools and pull together an iGoogle or Yahoo Pipes dashboard. Filtrbox also provides a more robust free social media monitoring tool than Google Alerts.

After packing my brain so full of information, it  felt like both carry-ons packed under the seatback in front of me, it was time for some leiderhosen and chatting in real life with those I’ve chatted with online for a year or more.

I haven’t been blogging here as much as I’d like to. However, I started a food p0rn blog that I regularly post to.

I’ve also been traveling quite a bit - from an amazing inaugural year at Social South in Birmingham, Alabama to my regular trips to Seattle, this month finds me turning another year older and (hopefully!) another year wiser.

This month, I’ll be in:

The Bay Area: I’ll be visiting my little sister and attending CAR EXPO in San Jose, where I’ll be meeting with DocuSign users and potential users to answer any questions they might have about electronic signature, paperless transactions, or just give out hugs.

Washington, D.C.: I’ll be visiting with a very cool nonprofit, Disaster Accountability Project. They have some great initiatives planned for the coming year, so keep an eye on them. After my experience evacuating from Hurricane Katrina, I’m inspired to work with such a motivated, committed and inspiring group.

Chicago: I’ve never been to Chicago, but I’m excited for my first time. I’ll be attending Marketing Profs’ Digital Marketing Mixer, Oct 21 - 22, and blogging with some good friends of mine, Mack Collier and Paul Chaney. Digital Marketing Mixer provides a wealth of programming. From one-on-one sessions, discussion groups, and more, you can learn how to see even more results for your digital marketing program.

If you register with the discount code “DMBLG” you’ll get $200 off the conference pass. For every pass you buy with the discount code “DMBLG” I’ll donate $100 to Disaster Accountability Project.

You get insight from amazing, talented marketers and Disaster Accountability Project gets donations… everyone wins!

Apparently I need to clear my cache, because when I went back to Mack Collier’s blog, I didn’t get redirected to his new site.

Instead, I saw this title: “The idea that ‘content is king’ in blogging is total bullshit”

According to Mack, “Being Social is [king in blogging]”

The idea that good or even great content is not enough. Besides, “Good” or “Great” content isn’t even actionable - it’s too abstract. So let’s get concrete.

What makes good content?

1. Applies to your target audience

2. Findable or discoverable by your target audience

3. Helps or is otherwise useful to your target audience

For example, if you were trying to launch a new boutique geared towards teens/early 20’s demographic, you’d want to offer clothes they’d want to wear. You’d make your retail location accessible to them and you’d make it easy for them walk in by literally leaving your doors open.

One company that did this well? Abercrombie & Fitch, which changed its business from offering outdoors gear to offering clothing for the Tweens/Young Adult demographic. They even got a mention in LFO’s summer hit (’99), “Summer Girls”

Same deal with online marketing.

1. Provide germane (relevant) content - answer questions your audience may have or give them information they want to know.

2. Findability/searchability means that search engines can crawl AND index your content. If your content can’t be found, your audience can’t find you.

3. Helps or is otherwise useful - the call to action is so valuable for this reason. If you let people know what to do next and they want what you’re offering, you’ve lowered the barrier for purchase, adoption, etc.

So why does being social matter?

1. You get invaluable feedback loops from others - your content can improve based on customer/user feedback. You learn what resonates with people and what they think is worth repeating. Given the speed of publishing social media, you can iterate more quickly - concept to publishing no longer takes weeks or months.

2. You enable people to find out about you sooner, rather than later. Trust takes time. If you’re hanging out by yourself online generating amazing content, search is basically the only channel by which others can discover you. By leaving your blog, going to others’ and leaving insightful (not spammy!) comments, you’re creating other channels for people to discover you.

3. By adding or providing value (ie - being useful) you start building trust. Intention matters. Be open and honest about who you are, what interests you, and what you find interesting.

Good content is the minimum barrier to entry and great social content helps you learn, grow and refine your thinking.

Thanks to Deb Robison for the conversation that spawned this blog post and Mack Collier for his thoughts.

When your body just won’t fall asleep and you have TV, it’s quite possible that you end up having infomercials on while doing other things. 

And so it happened that I had infomercials on in the background at 1am last night.

As the infomercial droned on, a realization permeated the recesses of my mind - 

THEY WERE SHOUTY.

Ok, to be fair, the actor(s) in the infomercial were shouty, using outdoor voices the whole time. 

Even worse, I can’t remember what it was that they were selling - knives? workout equipment? - my only takeaway was how they delivered the message.

Social media’s most successful case studies (see @comcastcares, @RichardatDell, @zappos, @TimJackson to name a few… ) demonstrate a high level of engagement.

Are you listening or are you shouting?

via flickr user welmo

My favorite memories of college were cross country and track practice. While XC and track both increase your fitness by running, the approaches were quite different. 

Cross country was more freeform. You’d go out on long runs and just run. You could run hills, through creeks, deal with trails. You adjusted on the fly and the key is going long and hard. Try running five miles at an average pace of eight minute miles. Interval training on varied terrain for 1 or 1.5k happened every week, and much of the work happened on the trails. 

via flickr user nocklebeast

In contrast, track workouts were interval based on a track. 100, 200, 400, 800 and 1000 meter repeats. Run, time, record. Try and hit consistent splits with every interval. 

Over time, your times get better. This was true in both XC and track. 

However, times in XC had more variance. Why? Courses were different. Some had more hills, turns, tree roots, rain, streams, hay bales than others. These factors affect your time.

Track times tended to be more consistent because a track is a more controlled racing environment. It’s 400m, outdoors. The surface may be cinder, rubber, or gravel. The turns’ tightness may vary, but it’s basically some form of oval.

Now what does this have to do with Social Media and PPC?

Social Media and PPC both help you reach your online marketing goals in different ways. 

Think of social media as XC. The landscape varies. Twitter, Facebook, blogs are all different. The interaction paradigms vary in part because of the content that is share and in part because of the people you can connect with. You can show up, listen and share information with people you connect with. It’s a long term marketing strategy.  

Think of PPC as track. You have the search engines. You buy your ads and keywords and you can calculate your PPC ROI and adjust over time. You try to hit your click through rates and lead gen goals. 

With both XC and track you get fit. Fitness from XC and track complement each other - you run better times for running both. 

Think that’s true for Social Media and PPC as well?

Columbia University, Rodin's Thinker, via flickr user wallyg

Yesterday, Mark C. Taylor, chair of Columbia’s religion department, wrote in a NYT Op-Ed piece, End the University as We Know It:

GRADUATE education is the Detroit of higher learning. Most graduate programs in American universities produce a product for which there is no market (candidates for teaching positions that do not exist) and develop skills for which there is diminishing demand (research in subfields within subfields and publication in journals read by no one other than a few like-minded colleagues), all at a rapidly rising cost (sometimes well over $100,000 in student loans).

From this controversial opening, Professor Taylor argues for a hgher education system that follows an interdisciplinary, collaborative model that mobilizes scholars around problems and produces scholarship in a more consumable fashion. 

Social media applications/tools have enabled its users to do what Professor Taylor is advocating. Twitter enables the rapid mobilization to address problems. Wikis result in information in a consumable fashion via real time collaboration. All of this consumer generated media (CGM) creates a body of knowledge whose value comes from the integration of various perspectives. Holding the appropriate context and understanding how the various pieces fit should be a driving force in these collaborative processes.

Do graduate students and scholars miss the point if they think that their training prepares them only for the profession of their graduate degree, be it academia, journalism, law, planning, business, etc.?

Yes. Absolutely yes if they cannot connect what they know and what they are learning to value creation and problem solving. Thinking about the process of learning, what is being learned and what that means are some of the values of a liberal arts education. Does this create students who can apply their skills in different contexts?  Will these students have more options than those who cannot?

Professor Taylor leaves us with valuable advice: 

“Do not do what I do; rather, take whatever I have to offer and do with it what I could never imagine doing and then come back and tell me about it.” 

Applying this entrepreneurial perspective higher ed will enable it to evolve with society.

Shannon Paul brought up some great points about how Twitter helps her be effective. In a nutshell, Twitter helps Shannon (and many of us) by helping us connect the dots to solve problems/address issues by allowing access to socially vetted information. 

In other words, collaborate in a distributed fashion.

Why is this important? Because geography is a less of a barrier to information acquisition. 

You should read Shannon’s original post - she’s spot on in the ways Twitter aids professional productivity and effectiveness and her commentors are pretty smart as well. 

um, except me. From my comment on Shannon’s blog:

Blocking access to Twitter and other social networks /definitely/ inhibits an employee’s ability to be effective.

Blocking Twitter and other social networks is about limiting risk and liability… all employees are a liability… the question is to what degree?

There are arguments for and against open communication into and out of an organization…

I had marked <corporate hat> around my comment about limiting risk and liability, but it got stripped out. Understanding why leadership may take a certain policy view can help us communicate with them why tools like Twitter can enable not inhibit professional productivity. 

However, I have yet to crack the nut on how to minimize data/information leakage, especially concerning sensitive, confidential information. This problem likely limits collaboration with external parties.  

Does anyone have any ideas?