Open The Dialogue

Above is the original notepad that inspired IBM’s storied ThinkPad laptop computer line (via Merlin Mann).  Being digital professionals and our worlds moving a mile a minute online – what are some things, as PR professionals and trusted communication counselors, that we can do to help focus ourselves?

Switching from e-mail and phone call and conference room to really helping keep the big picture in mind not just for your team but your clients as well can be helped by simple, daily exercises that will take less time than you think and – hopefully – reward you down the line.

• Talk to every person on your team – what is everyone working on?  Maybe it impacts some of your projects?  Or sharing what you’re doing can help someone think about their work differently or offer different perspective on your own.  This isn’t a formal meeting, this doesn’t have to be face-to-face but it’s important to look up from the grindstone and check-in with your team.

• Double-check a budget or goals/objectives for a program, campaign, etc. – what comes next?  Is what you’re working on the right thing that needs to be done?  Often, when projects are launched into, everyone focuses on the immediate next steps without managing the finish line – doing this will not just help deliver a great product to your client but help you think strategically about the program, campaign or project you’re working on.

• Take 5 minutes to think – as easy as this sounds, you’d be surprised about how few of us do it during the course of a day.  Focus on a new skill or a topic you want to know about, or try to connect ideas between clients and trends.  The small savoring of mental focus might just give you your next big idea!

Want more?  Check out The 99 Percent.  A think tank from the awesome folks at Behance (which inspired this post), it’s a great site that focuses on what happens after your team walks out of that brainstorm – when it’s time to put ideas into action and all the things to take you from point A to B.

Seth Godin is on the tip of everyone’s tongue’s today (as he probably planned to be).  Not only did he launch the Brands in Public project yesterday evening but I was able to be in attendance (thanks HarperStudio!) today while he gave a talk to the Digital Publishing Group addressing critical issues in today’s publishing landscape.  Before getting into the re-cap about the event, a bit more about Brands in Public:

Squidoo has built several hundred pages, each one about a major brand. (Here are some examples). More are on the way. We’ll keep going until we have thousands of important brands, each on its own page (and we’ll happily add one for you if you like). Each page collects tweets, blog posts, news stories, images, videos and comments about a brand. All of these feeds are algorithmic… the good and the bad show up, all collated and easy to find.

Of course, these comments and conversations are already going on, all over the web. What we’ve done is bring them together in one place. And then we’ve made it easy for the brand to chime in.

That last sentence is probably most important.  For this ease-of-use, Seth wants $400/month for a brand to use this page as a portal to interact with consumers on the web.  Is this the right thing to do?  Is it worth it?  Where is the value for consumers and the brand?  There has been significant debate surrounding this move and even Seth himself says “BIP” probably shouldn’t be the 1st option:

If you have the tools and wherewithal to build a page like this on your own site, you should consider that. The challenge is getting it done, regardless of where the page lives.

A big post from Jason Falls today debates this even further.  He wonders if BIPs are holding brands hostage:

At first glance, you just think, “So what? The brands can just participate in the conversations on the various social networks and they Brands in Public spider will pick up those conversations as well. Hopefully, Brands in Public isn’t doing anything shady by parsing out the brand participation and that theory will hold true. However, think for a moment of the power, reach and influence Godin has. If his idea takes hold (it probably will because on the surface it’s a good one) and he markets it the way he’s capable of, Brands in Public could be come THE place to go see the “unfiltered” conversation about brands everywhere.

If that scenario plays out, then the $400 or more fee Godin’s company plans to charge is, in a way, blackmail.

It’ll be important to watch how this develops over the coming weeks and months.  There is no denying that time time is now to engage with consumers, directly, online but is this the best way to do it?  How many “walls” should be between you and your audience?  Seth talked a lot about platforms and tribes in today’s #digpub event and a lot of what one sees in this BIP execution also was discussed today in regards to the publishing industry.

During today’s talk, Seth made strong analogies between the necessary innovation that must and is happening in the music industry to what has to happen in the publishing industry in 2009 (arguably, it should’ve started 10 years ago).

• Thinking less about the physical product.  Actual books as “dead trees” shouldn’t be the focus but more books should be the vehicle of great ideas which people will forever be attracted to.
• Applicable to marketing in all industries, he then ran though some solid strategy points -
  • Permission marketing – it’s about developing relationships, creating value and making marking (with permission) a two-way street
  • Scarcity – simply, if you have something of overwhelming value and cap access – it usually becomes more sought after
  • Selection related to risk – as a publisher, you want to be in a position to be finding writers for your readers instead of the other way around
  • Finally, it’s all about attention – if the tools and content you’re producing are creating overwhelming value for your audience, you’ll often hold their attention and, subsequently, their permission

Update:  Seth posted a change in direction for the Brands in Public project today.  In what I think is a smart move, if a brand wants to participate, it becomes opt-in and they must contact Squidoo directly.  All the pilot pages set-up for brands to adopt are now inactive.

Image via Wikipedia

Yesterday I had the opportunity to listen-in on a webinar being presented by WOMMA about Ethics and Endorsements on today’s web.  Specifically, discussion surrounding best practices for disclosure (summary of reactions).  With the FTC’s regulations pending, the panel kicked-off WOMMA’s efforts to create an industry-wide set of standards and defenitions for marketers and communication professionals when it comes to disclosing brand involvement, affiliation, compensation, etc.

It was a solid panel and discussion presented by several big voices – John Bell, Jory Des Jardin, Sean Corcoran, Tom Collinger and Anthony DiResta.  Most of the discussion surrounded how different parties would approach disclosure – mainly marketers & brands vs. publishers.  Each panelist was able to offer unique perspective in relation to their background – especially POV from Mr. Collinger & DiResta, who spoke about the actual definitions and legal fortitude of disclosure.  Building legal language standards and definite explicit points of view for disclosure can help clarify confusion – especially for the consumer who, often, don’t have the history and background about a relationship a marketer or publisher has when they first click on that link.

John Bell was able to kick-off the panel with several practical points of advice for brands and influencers to work with whenever entering into a relationship where editorial opinion could be affected:

• Create terms of engagement for both parties – being clear and explicit about the terms of the program, make them public as well.
• Official agreement promising true opinion – to protect both the publisher, brand and most importantly, the reader.
• Disclosure execution – explicit explanations per post and on the greater property (i.e. blog, Twitter, etc.)
• Stick to your guns – show your readers that these set of ethics permeate throughout by adding notes in bio sections and aligning with organizations like Blog With Integrity or WOMMA

Jory and BlogHer’s standards for disclosure represented the best tactical examples on the panel but I think the true publisher voice was missing.  What about the people writing these posts and running these blogs?  Their perspective would’ve added valuable context to this discussion.  Certainly, how an author wants to and does handle affiliation on their property is a necessary piece to include when discussing relationships between brands and those whom they’re trying to influence (both the publisher and the publisher’s audience).

Since the webinar and sitting down to write this post I’ve had several healthy discussions with people who are both close and far from this subject.  With signs pointing towards sponsored conversations, how does that affect the value of engagement?  My colleague Laura and I would argue that outright sponsorship, even with proper disclosure, devalues a brand’s participation ROI.  In theory, an influencer’s audience is engaged for reasons that a sponsored conversation can’t support.  I’m most likely reading someone else’s blog because I value their opinion or perspective.  When I find out that they’re being paid to express such – credibility is lost (regardless of negative or positive opinion).

A full summary will eventually be live on WOMMA’s Ethics Review blog but, in the meantime, how do you feel about disclosure?  What are your standards?

Here are some “back-to-school” links of note from Twitter & FriendFeed.  Later this week we’ll be publishing a handy guide for things you can do to start the “school year” off right.

• Facebook Adding Stream Clicks to Page Insights – no individual clicks just yet, but we’re getting there.  This is certainly an important metric to have.

• SEO lessons from Google News – insight from Google themselves on how items for Google News are ranked.  Important from a PR POV when helping clients craft news and announcements.

• MSNBC acquires EveryBlock – first Newsvine, now EB (a major player in the hyperlocal news/aggregation world).  Some pretty interesting moves.

• Google and their systems – Domestic Trends gives us a cool way to analyze economic data and now PageRank helps scientists study ecosystems.

• WordPress.com becomes real-time – RSS muscles back on to the scene and now millions of blogs can push their updates into the social web.  Pretty big step in terms of tech with a lot more, I’m sure, to come.

As much as constant software updates are a pain, they’re essential in today’s digital world.  If you have a blog on the web and unless you use WordPress.com, TypePad, Tumblr, Posterous or the like – odds are you might have the nagging “update me!” notice hanging around every couple of weeks or months.

Earlier this week, WordPress announced a new security release of their popular publishing software that plugged a pretty serious hole:  one that would’ve allowed someone to gain administrator access pretty easily.  While minor software updates usually sit on the bottom of to-do lists around the web, a few of the more prominent voices were targets of attacks trying to gain access before they upgraded their blogs.

Paul Stamatiou was saved by some extra security plug-ins he has in place (ed note:  What were they?) while Robert Scoble’s blog was actually comprimised.  Robert’s logic for not updating right away is fair but “1/8th” is a risk I’ll take to make sure all of my public publishing systems are secure.

So, if you have some downtime this weekend, take a look around your web and make sure everything is up-to-date.  WordPress has automatic updating features and even if your server isn’t configured to handle that, the regular update process is easy as well.  If you’re in the agency world, the same goes for any client projects you work on as well.

Photo credit: CarbonNYC

Staci Kramer over at paidContent pretty much sums it up:

On the internet, any media outlet can overcome its single-dimension status offline. Print outlets can excel in video, local TV stations can add text and stills, radio can get visual. When NPR.org relaunches overnight, it will add all kinds of features to enhance and extend its audio, including improved search, embedding and transcripts, and more multimedia. But at a time when others are pushing ahead with video, National Public Radio is standing still.

I’ve felt this way about NPR’s approach to video for quite some time.  In April of 2008, I heard a great new band on the now-defunct Bryant Park Project.  They were a new indie rock band called Smoosh.  A big fan of one of the songs they played, I promptly embedded the video into my personal blog after it was available online.  Fast forward to March of this year, when I felt like listening to the song again only to see that the video embed had been disabled.  Now, this isn’t uncommon.  Content providers do this all the time, in fact.  Pageviews are pageviews and revenue is revenue.  I don’t blame them.

However, to me, this is antithetical to NPR’s culture and without the focus on video within this new direction – probably a shot in the foot to a very influential media brand.  They’ve always been scrappy; embracing new technology to spread the word about their great content and programming.  New audiences are using new technologies – embracing that tech helps get content (and subsequently “culture”) in front of new people.  In this case, it worked exactly the way it should for me.  I don’t often listen to the radio, but I heard this segment and was able to share it with my friends.  Quickly and easily.  What’s not to love?

Ben McConnell says it straight:  Word of mouth is a byproduct of a remarkable culture.

Why, then, make the decision to cut-off an integral vehicle in spreading that culture and, consequently, lose out on word of mouth capital?  This is a big issue staring not just media outlets but brands as well, straight in the face.  Content can be expensive to produce but how do you create life-long loyal fans and generate tangible social captial without providing something valuable and interesting upfront?  Ultimately, it has to come from somehwere and you can’t (NPR included) lose sight of the big picture.

What’s more valuable?  Saving money now or building exemplary passion through culture-sharing?  Odds are, the choice to put yourself out there will translate better to an invigorated base of supporters whom can carry you though the rough patches for years to come.  Walking away from video’s “unproven” value when new, vibrant audiences are certainly reachable through it hopefully won’t prove to be a mistake for NPR in years to come.

On Monday, Mashable posted an interesting study done by sharing company, AddToAny.  AddToAny is in a unique position to exmaine at the resulting data gathered from people using its service while sharing things among their networks.  Some great insights came out of the study as well as some accompanying perspectives from around the web:

• Facebook leads the pack – this is in-line with the size and growth of Facebook.  It also signals a generational change of communication practices.  People are spending more time communicating on the web inside social networks more than e-mail, which is extremely important to note.

• Don’t ignore direct communication – while the news is about Facebook, e-mail still holds strong.  When developing content sharing strategies, never overlook the power of a direct and focused e-mail.  It’s valuable to think of the context surrounding people when they’re communicating – most people are at work in front of a computer throughout the day and priorities get shifted to Inboxes instead of News Feeds.

• What’s missing? – A few things.  Mashable doesn’t disclose the sample size and the report itself doesn’t take into account somet things that commentors point out:  huge properties like CNN and The NYT have native systems.

• Mike Hudack, CEO of blip.tv, starts a pretty healthy discussion on Tumblr about the merits of focusing your sharing options.  Instead of using a widget, what if you had highly customized Facebook-only or Twitter-only sharing options?

• Christine Beardsell counters:  how valuable in the sharing ecosystem is someone on Digg or Yahoo vs. Facebook?  Properly, she points out two huge strategic caveats – who is your audience and how are you measuring?

Meme Curve | Zachary M. Seward, The Nieman Journalism Lab

Last week, Zachary M. Seward at The Nieman Journalism Lab put together an interesting post about breaking news, the origins of memes and how the influence of news orginzations (blogs included) fit into the big picture of information dissemination on the web.  From the post:

Another way of looking at the data is that influential blogs hanging out on the far-left tail are more likely to report on iterative developments as they happen, while mainstream news outlets feel compelled to fit memes into a broader narrative. The study lists several phrases that were first “discovered” by blogs more than a week before peaking, like when Sarah Palin quoted Ronald Reagan at the end of a debate. That immediately raised flags among bloggers who identified the quote’s origins in a 1961 Reagan speech opposing Medicare, but it didn’t gain traction until more than a week later, when Medicare briefly became an issue in the 2008 campaign.

However you view the chart, it feels like each news organization has situated itself quite intentionally along the curve, staking out a role in the political news cycle. With the meme-tracking technique demonstrated in Kleinberg’s study, news outlets could themselves keep track of where they stand and adjust their reporting strategy if they prefer another spot on the cure. They might consider, for instance, whether they add anything at all to the political discourse by reporting on a meme so close to its peak.

This falls in line pretty succintly with the constant argument surrounding networks like Twitter vs. networks like CNN when it comes to “breaking news.”  Lots of critics cry that major news networks are far behind the “8 ball” when it comes to this capacity.  While that might be true when it comes to event-reporting, I’m often seeing too many people make blind arguments/sweeping generalizations about news outlets for other types of reporting.  It’s pretty tough for 140 characters to give you all the context you’ll ever need about current events and, according to Zach’s research, it looks like news organizations large and small are appropriately finding their place in line vs. constantly fueling an arms race that will likely never end.

• 9 Ways People Respond to Your Content Online:  the great article that goes with the image above.  Rajesh Setty maps out how people pereceive and value content online.

• Sometimes focusing deeper on your customer base is much better than widening product offerings.

• Mediaite launched to bruising traffic and much debate.  A fresh new look at the media industry as a whole.

• John Cass on measurement strategies and social media goals.  Some good discussion surrounding the disconnect between value on the web and direct business results.

• Facebook unlocks the live streaming application that was made famous during CNN’s inaguration web coverage.

• Don’t have a blog?  Some great ways to be active online that don’t require a long-form base.

• The recent Morgan Stanley study on teenage social media use generated lots of feedback.  Mashable points to the importance of anecdotal vs. factual evidence whenver doing these kinds of reports (which is embedded there to read as well).

• David Finch on what social media is not.  Most importantly?  It’s not a short-term fix, a solid business culture commitment is required.

• Micah Baldwin on the lie of community.  Technology and modern marketing has shifted our perceptions of what a community is in the digital world.  Good lessons on getting back to basics.

Time to turn all these open tabs in Google Chrome into fun links for you!  As always, we’re sharing these on Twitter and FriendFeed.

• Vanity metrics vs. Actionable metrics – Eric Ries talks about really making measurement work and solving problems, not just finding numbers that don’t mean a whole lot.  For example, you have 5 billion page views?  Great.  Why?  How?

• Human Motivation & Your Brand – I’m glad more people are looking at the psychology behind marketing.  It helps us do our jobs better and more effectively.  There are reasons behind why people share things on Facebook.  Match these needs up first with your objectives and then go from there.

• Want to slap a Creative Commons license on your Facebook content?  There’s an app for that.

• The GOOG is riding the Wave and re-thinking how we communicate on the web.  It makes sense, things like IM and e-mail are relatively archaic.  OR:  is this the “Google Operating System”?

• More legal fun.  Can you copyright a tweet?  Maybe.

• State of the Hispanic blogosphere report 2009.  Spain leads the pack.

• Be there before the sale.  Why are we still using the word “campaigns” if this world is supposed to be built on long-term, sustained relationships?

• Some Wikipedia-foo on interpersonal ties (via dave):

In mathematical sociology, interpersonal ties are defined as information-carrying connections between people. Interpersonal ties, generally, come in three varieties: strong, weak, or absent. Weak social ties, it is argued, are responsible for the majority of the embeddedness and structure of social networks in society as well as the transmission of information through these networks. Specifically, more novel information flows to individuals through weak rather than strong ties. Because our close friends tend to move in the same circles that we do, the information they receive overlaps considerably with what we already know. Acquaintances, by contrast, know people that we do not, and thus receive more novel information.

• The Grey Lady hired a “social media editor” to be a guiding light for their journalists on the web.  The cynics (myself included) were loud on this one.  Thankfully, David Kaplan took some time to give Jennifer Preston some solid advice.

• Facebook crosses 60mm monthly U.S. users but fewer people over 55 are using the site on a regular basis.

• GigaOm throws their hat into the premium content ring with GigaOm Pro:  ”created to address the gap that exists in real-time expert industry analysis on emerging technology markets.”  Seems moderately attractive for only $79.  See also ReadWriteWeb’s Guide to Community Management & TechCrunch’s trend reporting.