Open The Dialogue

• Lessons and learnings from the pros - George Oates talks about how Flickr has grown into the consummate community it is today. As Jake mentioned, a must-read.

• Can’t wait for the new season of Mad Men to start up again? Calm your nerves with this great report on the characters coming to life on Twitter.

• Not the first and certainly not the last (but maybe the one w/ the most promise so far?):  snaps to MTV for picking up/developing a show w/ the crew from CollegeHumor.

Recently, Jamin Brophy-Warren of the WSJ took a deep look at the simmering trend of people sharing the minutae of their daily lives online.  This goes far past pictures of their kids or love songs written about cats and more towards the average mean of pepperoni slices consumed throughout the calendar year.

Everyone creates data — every smile, conversation and car ride is a potential datapoint. These quotidan aggregators believe that the compilation of our daily activities can reveal the secret patterns that govern the way we live. For students of personal informatics, the practice is liberating because it shows that our lives aren’t random, and are more orderly than some might expect.

Along with a host of data-centric social applications (DOPPLR, Last.fm, Brightkite/Fire Eagle), the Nick Felton-created Daytum and M.I.T.-incubated Mycrocosm are both sites that help aggregate this personal data.  The more social applications, like DOPPLR, aim to connect people in ways that weren’t possible previously while Daytum and Mycrocosm are focused on “collecton of the self.”

In an age where we have CEOs on Twitter, telling a great story means making it as believable as possible for your audience.  What better proof points than straight, sometimes raw, data?  Showing that you actually did someting or are in the process of doing something as opposed to just talking about it.  That is the power behind not only this trend but greater social technology as a whole. 

Do you think this matters for PR?  Can a company or brand use these tools to represent/humanize themselves online?

• Another case of Twitter users making money before Twitter can actually figure out how to do it for themselves:  ”Dell says Twitter has produced $1 million in revenue over the past year and a half through sale alerts.”
  • Nota bene - Before moving your entire sales operation to the big blue whale in the sky, Joe Lazarus notes that that “$1M is about 1/1000th a percent of total sales ($60B+ last year) and that they are selling mostly low margin, clearance items through the service.”

• Need some good books to start 2009 with? Lee Odden put together a great list of some standards in the social media marketing world (via thilk’s shared).

• Consumer Reports Buzzword Feature - breaking down the “what” and “why” about oft-used buzzwords with many of today’s consumer products.

• Virginia Heffernan takes a close look at the type of content today’s media world is generating and, quite frankly, why a lot of it isn’t working (see also - Kevin Kelly discussing the generative value of content):

Then there’s the troublesome third argument, the one we know is true. This is the one that admits that the content that thrives in the new distribution-and-display systems is suspiciously different from the American popular culture we used to love even 10 years ago. Thrillers, it seems, don’t flourish on Hulu. No one is reading a six-part investigative series about mayoral malfeasance on Twitter. And if it’s the afterthought message boards — the ones moderated by interns — that draw all the traffic, why are we in old media pouring so much money and time into “main event” programming that goes unread and unviewed?

• Using Barack Obama’s successful presidential campagin as a case study for engagement levels:   why blogs and Twitter are still very small pieces of the digital media pie.

Frank Gruber calls us to action, asking via video, to define what social media means to each of us:

I hope that this video thread can become the most comprehensive definition of social media we have seen to date so join the conversation and post your video response today.

The comments, so far, have been pretty focused on the basic sea change and personal benefits social media technologies have brought to the web. Rightfully so, a lot of end-user focused definitions. How we communicate, how we consume, etc.

What does social media mean for public relations though? Is it turning us into content creators? Conversation arbiters? Or maybe even dinosaurs? A quick glance around shows that it’s still a pretty good coin toss. Jason Falls says it best:

Social media is a method of communications. Social media tools facilitate these communications. To be effective in social media, whether as a marketer or just an ordinary participant, you must, first and foremost, communicate well.

So there is where the line in the sand is drawn: the message. Social media breaks down the traditional walls of publishing and anyone’s voice can be heard louder, quicker and (sometimes) clearer. PR can use these tools but gone are the days of strict amplification and one-way broadcast. Participation, honesty, transparency and immediacy are all the new pillars for brands to stand on.

This morning’s 3 Minute Ad Age video comes via our colleague of the same name. In it, NBC’s Brian Williams says his peace about the hype of digital media: offering up some pretty solid points about early adopters often looking past the common sense solutions that more traditional media channels provide.

Currently trying to dig-up full video or audio of his remarks, I’d love to know if he presents a fuller argument about how today’s newest digital technology and media channels are actually changing - for the better - how we can consume media and content. Regardless, definitely a worthy watch.

What do you think about his point-of-view?

A hearty dose of links to start off the last month of 2008 with.

• Wondering if 2008 changed anything, online, for the college set?  Nope.  Facebook still rules the coop.
• Now that Pownce has gone to that great doghouse in the sky, you’ve got one less social network/application to update.  Still overwhelmed?  Check out tarpipe.  Lets you spread the wealth, easily, via single e-mails.  Similar to switchabit.
• Interesting look at the state of the internet in Canada.
• Give me something to read.  Exactly what it says.  Quality stuff from around the web.
• Samir has a great wrap-up of some of the best social media videos around the web this past year (via dave surgan).
• Full-text indexing of over 50,000 popular magazines & newspapers from around the world (via steve).
• SmartBrief’s new social media newsletter.
• Bloggers are people too.  Just develop strong relationships, use common sense and the rest will follow.
• We’ll close with a terrific explanation of “viral” from Faris:

What we mean when something goes ‘viral’ is that LOTS OF PEOPLE CHOOSE TO PROPAGATE IT. It requires people to do something. Voluntarily. For their own reasons. It is not simply a new way to broadcast our messages through populations. It suggests we push, when in fact they pull.

P.S:  Check OTD out on Alltop!  We also made some small site enhancements over the break.  Most notably, upgrading comments to use DISQUS.  Leave us some video comments!

I want to take a moment here on OTD to make some brief announcements as well as give you a peek into what the future will bring us.  My name is Saurabh Wahi and I’m a senior vice president at MWW Group and, now, our DialogueMedia practice. I’ve been with the firm for over seven years, and during the last three, I’ve immersed myself in digital media strategy behind the scenes as I sought to bridge the gap between traditional public relations and the digital media world for our clients.

It’s been a great ride so far. I’ve learned a tremendous amount, made my fair share of mistakes, created campaigns I’m very proud of and most importantly, made some great friends along the way. And although my erstwhile partners in crime, Tom Biro and Chris Thilk, have moved on to pursue their own individual passions (movies for Chris, rock stars for Tom) – I will definitely treasure the great friendship and partnership I enjoyed with each of them and the amazing work we’ve collaborated on for our clients.

Change, as they say, is the only constant and our industry has seen more of it in the last 24 months than perhaps several years preceding.  DialogueMedia has evolved successfully, maintaining its lead through every wave of new technologies and trends and continuing to deliver great results for our clients.

The next evolution of DialogueMedia is now underway. Tectonic shifts in the media landscape have changed consumption habits. New ideas and technologies have been introduced and the role of public relations has continued to evolve. And all this has got us really, really excited here at DialogueMedia. Without giving away too much about our near term plans, I will say that you can expect some exciting new thinking and perspectives, some new faces in addition to the familiar ones, and a whole lot of innovation.

Oh and, after all this talk of change, let me just finish off by mentioning some things that won’t change.  I remain incredibly passionate about my photography and Nikon remains one of my all-time favorite brands to work on. So that won’t change. I’ll continue to lead that business while replacing my group management responsibilities with strategic initiatives for DialogueMedia.

The team and I will be ramping posts up again in the next few days and you can look forward to hearing a range of different perspectives from folks at MWW Group and DialogueMedia.

We look forward to a dialogue with you.

• Both Greg Verdino and David Berkowitz are quoted in this MediaPost article on how social media marketing efforts have the potential to significantly drive down media spending. Since these efforts cost less than traditional media programs - and we’re including everything from straight ad buys to outreach here - and they begin to move to the front of the line for available dollars, it’s completely likely overall spending numbers will come down quite a bit.
• Another story about how search marketing is doing what PR isn’t and how that’s going to wind up destroying PR. Let’s make this clear: Search marketing is, in large part, all about the same reputation management that PR is. If you’re doing PR and you’re not at least thinking about how search, either paid or organic, is impacting your company/client you should probably start doing that….now. 
• Oh, and it’s a problem in advertising shops as well, just so we don’t feel like it’s all on us. 
• The Chicago Tribune writes about microblogging and manages to use the words “detritus” and “mundane” within the first 25 words or so, meaning I once again win the pool. 
• Businessweek is absolutely right - the growth of content recognition software by media companies to find where they’re stuff is appearing online is only going to continue. And that growth is only going to mean more throwdowns between the companies and bloggers who want to grab a few quotes to make or reinforce a point. (And Shel Holtz is right - if the AP is going to make such a stink about how many words are being used elsewhere, it’s only intellectually consistent that they should have the same level of problems with their customers arbitrarily altering text.)
  
• Charlene Li is leaving Forrester, prompting more than a few “wow”’s on Twitter.
• Just because I thought it was funny I created a Social Media Yellow Card for people to use in meetings, prompting David Griner of AdFreak to create his own Social Media Red Card. Yeah, we’re insane.

I’m sure everyone who has devised and executed a social media campaign, particularly one involving outreach to writers of blogs and other sites, has been asked to provide some sort of metric to justify such efforts. Often what’s asked for are pageviews or visitors or (gulp) impressions.

But here’s the story I tell all the time when people ask about my personal site’s reach: I get, on MMM, about 800 hits to the site a day. But a good amount of those come in, via searches, to posts I wrote months, if not years ago. So if you’re including MMM in your blog outreach plans and you’re basing its inclusion on that 800 +/- daily visits, you need to know that not all those 800 people are coming in through the front door.

That means some portion of that overall number of people are not seeing whatever you’ve just pitched me - yet - though some of them are. Unlike overall visitor numbers we can tell who’s hitting the front page. That is one advantage of the web versus traditional metrics like overall circulation - we can see how people move around on a site.

The 1,000+ people who subscribe to my RSS feed, though, definitely are. That’s because via the feed they’re always seeing the most recent content and updates, and they’re seeing them at a time of their choosing, whatever time they’ve blocked off to catch up on their reading. But I don’t think RSS subscriber numbers is something that’s often asked for or included when measuring success. This despite the fact that, based on my experience, far more publishers make their RSS subscriber numbers visible on their sites - largely through a FeedBurner chicklet - than make their site visit stats publicly viewable.

The same rings true here on OTD, where the number of people snagging the RSS feed vastly outstrip the number of hits to the site.

Considering there’s such a demand for numbers as a means to justify online public relations efforts; and considering there seem to be more publishers who use that FeedBurner number on their sites; and considering that number translates into a higher percentage of the audience that’s going to see the successful results of your outreach, I think it’s past time to start factoring RSS numbers into the numbers agencies provide to clients.

Now I’ll be the first to state that swapping one number for another does little or nothing to address the fact that influence in a particular vertical niche or community held by one person does not always correlate to certain numbers. But aside from anecdotal impressions given by those familiar with the online space there isn’t much we can do to back that up. Numbers are always more reassuring since that’s how traditional media has always been measured and that’s what people are looking for.

So as long as it’s numbers being asked for it’s incumbent on those of us navigating the online space on behalf of our clients to provide the best ones available. Considering all the factors above it seems to me RSS subscribers is probably one of the better numbers we can provide.

• The Deal covers the complaint by the shareholder of 1.4% of Audible’s shares, Red Oak Partners LLC, against Amazon.com’s offer to purchase the audio purveyor. (TB)
• I’d missed covering this a few days ago, but here are Dave Coustan’s comments on people who use hashtags (you know, the #whatever you see from time to time) in their Twitter posts, and why he chooses to unfollow them. (TB)
• This week, I had received an announcement about Pingology, which claims that at launch in June, it’ll offer a “skill based alternative to costly pay-per-click” marketing efforts. I’m curious to see what this looks and feels like, but perhaps it’s a new way people will look to do business online. (TB)
• John Gruber points out a great quote from Steve Jobs’ comments to the media this week about apps on the iPhone, and I can’t help but agree. Why exactly should carriers benefit more from the sale of the apps? Isn’t a data plan enough? (TB)