Video- From Cowpaths to Mastadons
Hold on to your hats, folks. This is a four-part video covering some of the ideas that I plan to present over the coming several weeks. I’m speaking Monday at the Inbound Marketing Summit. I’m speaking Tuesday at the New Marketing Bootcamp. I’m speaking a few weeks later at BlogWorld Expo. And then in October, I’m doing New Marketing Summit, and then the Marketing Profs Digital Mixer. (I might have even missed a few.)
The following are the raw ideas that will become the basis of the FRONT part of several of my upcoming presentations. What comes after will be the “how to” part, but this is the theory and storytelling part. It seems a bit crazy. For those of you who’ll be in the audience at any of those events, you can nod knowingly when you see where this all grows in the coming days and weeks.
I’m calling this video presentation (totals just a hair over 10 minutes in four parts), “From Cowpaths to Mastadons.”
From Cowpaths to Mastadons
Part 1:
Part 2:
Part 3:
Part 4:
I’m really interested in your perspective. Feel free to make videos, audio, text posts. Go off and riff on your blog. Whatever. This is what’s on my mind. I’m curious as to how you interpret it.
I’m a big fan of sharing. Feel free to use this post elsewhere for your own purposes (except to make money). Just please add a link back to [chrisbrogan.com] . Thanks!
Put Away Your Shotguns
Marketers and PR humans: is it *really* working? Is shotgunning your target still giving you the results you need? Have you figured out that what works in one arena doesn’t work in another? I promise, this will only hurt a lot.
Stop. Shotgunning. Me.
“What set Brogan off?” I know you’re wondering. I’ll share.
I just got about 700 words or so from a company that will be exhibiting at a conference I’m attending next month. It was a big fat blurt. We do this. We’re awesome. People say this about us. You can do this, this, *and* this with our product. We’re offering a drawing.
I mean, this individual threw the entire marketing/PR clichebook into one email. Vast in its depth.
Thoughts for Improvement
I know there are two schools of thought in messaging media:
- Hit them with everything in one big fat email (as above).
- Go gently into a new relationship. See if I’m going to care.
I get that #2 takes a bit longer. I understand that. But if you’re going to reach out to the folks actively spending time in the social media space, you might learn how to get involved, build relationships, and market to us in a more personal style.
Read up a little bit about blogger relations. Learn from experts like Susan Getgood and Brian Solis and Lee Odden (and dozens more). Learn WHO you’re pitching, even just a little bit.
And please put down the shotguns.
Am I wrong?
These posts are made for sharing. Feel free to repost all or portions of this (as long as it’s not for profit). If you do post it, please make sure you kindly link back to [chrisbrogan.com] and give me credit. Thanks!
Photo credit, SC Fiasco
Is Your Blog a Media Property
There are many ways to blog, and there are many reasons to use these tools to build content for the web. No one way is right. Here’s a blogging tip: decide early on whether you’re writing your blog for your own entertainment or if you’re building something with it.
This fork in the road is a useful one for deciding what level of success you can aspire to achieve. If you’re writing for yourself, that’s excellent! You’ll certainly find people who appreciate what you write about. But if you’re intending to build a media property, either to support your business or as the very core of your business, this requires different consideration. My goal with this post is to point out a few differences between blogging styles, and to give you ideas on how you might build your blog into a media property, should that be your goal.
Quick definition: I intend the term “media property” to mean that the blog stands alone, offers easy and obvious value to its subscriber base, and supports a point of view and subject matter. This can range anywhere from a great personal blog that covers a certain topic area, or it might be a new media property, with several blogs and authors. It could be your company blog, if done well.
First, a Random Sampling
I went to Twitter Search and put in a search for people posting new blog posts. Here were the first five I pulled up:
- How to Take Effective Notes
- Metallic Silver DS on the Way
- Castle Crashers Is Everything Too Human Isn’t
- Imagine When This is How It Works
- Local Flavor: It’s Really All About the Flavor
Post 1 comes from someone who’s clearly blogging to provide information. It’s proudly a geek’s blog, and I found the punchy posts informative. Though it doesn’t appear the author is making a play to grow or be a larger media property, I think the basic premises could go in that direction, should that be an interest.
Post 2 is from a site that’s clearly intending to be a media property, with a gazillion ads around the post, and a little bit of informative news. It obviously competes with the Engadget/Gizmodo crowd. Nothing wrong with this, and with the right amount of traffic, this site’s probably making the author(s) a little money, too.
Post 3 is from a game enthusiast’s blog. It’s not intended to be a media property per se, but there’s some opinion information for one to enjoy.
Post 4 looks to be a personal blog. It’s interesting, but very personal.
Post 5 was from a company, a market, and it was definitely a media property in support of a business. The post was entertaining. The blog design was fresh. And the information was useful to me as a reader.
From here, let’s talk about what the core components of your blog might be, should you decide to build your blog to be a media property.
Elements of a Successful Media Property
Entertain Me - First, if you’re intending to blog in this form, be entertaining. Is the story entertaining? Because without that, there’s precious little else you’ll accomplish. Read Duncan Riley’s The Inquisitr. It is perpetually entertaining. He went with a blend of popular news and tech news. Why? Do they really mix? Who cares? It’s working for Duncan.
Be Productive - If you’re going to put out media, do it all the time. Christopher S. Penn produces information all the time for the Financial Aid Podcast and blog. He’s the authority people go to for quality financial aid information, partly because it’s great material, but also because he delivers it all the time.
Deliver Value - I really love what Mike Gunderoy’s been doing with Web Worker Daily. Mike and the rest of the team there give me something useful every day. In fact, most of the GigaOm sites are winners to me, and I get a sense of value out of the posts there.
Be Unique - It’s important to keep your blog fresh. This is soooo challenging, and yet, lots of people are doing it every day. Be very cautious about not doing a “me too” property. There are clones and clones and clones out there of certain bloggers and blogging theme areas. Please don’t add to the clutter. If you’re writing a “yeah, what ____ said” blog post more than twice a week, you’re not working hard enough. I’m sorry, but that’s not going to cut it in the longer run. Riff off other people’s stuff from time to time. By all means. Linking and sharing on the web is great. But if you’re not breaking new material out and doing your own unique thing, it’ll get tiresome fast for most readers.
Be Responsive - Blogs are a two way communications product. It’s okay to act more and more like a professional media property if you want (cough cough Huffington Post cough cough). But if you’re bothering to use a blogging platform and working within the space, be human and make two way connections on your platform. One person doing this consistently well for years and years is Robert Scoble. He’s always been human, and still participates in the flow of it all daily.
With this in mind, here are a few more steps for moving your blog from something that’s interesting and receives a few comments here and there, to being a product you’re proud to produce, and that provides value to yourself or your company. Your mileage may vary, and feel free to add your own ideas to the comments section.
Some Blogging Tips for Moving Towards Being a Media Property
- Build your posts with a goal in mind. “If I write this type of post, I’ll get more business offers,” or “When I write this post, I’ll get more links,” or “This kind of post is great for conversations.” I’m not here to judge your goal, but rest assured that media properties have goals.
- Consider an editorial calendar. If you’re blogging daily, it might be useful to put up a quick calendar with topics, so that you can measure out how many posts a month are about X and how many are about Y. This helps you balance your coverage. Also note which posts do well, on which days, etc.
- Edit. If you’re going to write quality stuff, edit. Remove excess writing. Take out the dead weight. Edit.
- Bank a few posts for when you don’t have a ready topic for your next post. Not months in advance, but a few days or a week out is reasonable.
- Obsess over your audience (aka the people who comment and give you feedback). It’s a synergy, this media property stuff, and you can’t just write in a vacuum. (Well, you can, but that’s traditional media).
- Find ways to offer more. Give more value. Create special extras. Go somewhere different for your readership.
- If it’s a business, treat it like one.
- If it’s for passion and thought leadership, be passionate and lead.
There are many ways to blog. No one way is the best. Experiment with what you’re comfortable with, and learn from your efforts. And should you find yourself following some of this advice, and you find your efforts are hitting a certain level of response and growth, excellent. If not, share with us what’s going on, and maybe some of the smart people who visit this site can share and help you push through.
What did I miss?
These posts are made for sharing. Feel free to repost all or portions of this (as long as it’s not for profit). If you do post it, please make sure you kindly link back to [chrisbrogan.com] and give me credit. Thanks!
Photo credit, noise collusion
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Social Media Pastor Part Two
Go to Jon Swanson’s blog where Jon has written the second part of the Social Media Pastor workflow. Jon’s a real live Pastor. He’ll no doubt take this even further than I could.
10 Communications Objectives of Social Media
Douglas Walker has an interesting post where he wants to talk about metrics for social media. That’s great, and I encourage you to go over there and dig in and discuss that, but I have a question for you, for my own understanding. (Remember that I’m a technologist and not a marketer, so I sometimes come at this from a different direction.)
Walker says these are the 10 communications objectives for using social media (in a marketing sense):
- Generate awareness.
- Drive Trial.
- Product Launch.
- Establish Need/Want
- Product/Service Comparison.
- Positive Association.
- Form/Change Opinion.
- Influence the Influencers.
- Drive Action/Traffic.
- Establish/Regain Trust.
Now, maybe this language mirrors Marketing/Communications 101, and because I’m a technologist by trade, I just haven’t heard this. But if not, I found the list an interesting model/framework around which to contemplate the execution of social media marketing. I’m thinking there’s one missing to the tune of something like “community good will” or the like, or whatever one might call it when you’re not trying to sell, but instead are just proving that you’re a contributing human.
And that’s my question to you: do those 10 goals/objectives make sense for how you’re using social media?
I think it’s an interesting and worthwhile list. And like I said, go to Douglas’s site and comment on the measurement aspects, for those of you who are into measuring.
What’s your thoughts on those goals, though?
Photo credit, Foundphotoslj
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Noise Reduction
What if there’s a lot of congestion in a certain market? What happens when there are too many of the same conference to attend? Robert Scoble points to the question of whether startups should attend DEMO or TechCrunch50. He cites the extra power TC50 has by way of Michael Arrington’s platform, and what that means to startups. In technology, we find ourselves with a lot more noise to sift through, and several more choices than the typical person. This example says that the possible deciding factor between two conferences is the additional media value of one over the other. I’m thinking there’s something there to consider for other situations and settings.
Standing Out
If there are five realtors in town, with one on top of the heap, sales and marketing-wise, what will you do as part of the rest of the pack to stand out? Would having a media platform behind you help? What if you built the town’s community events calendar and blog? Further, what if you became the place to go for people to see pictures and video of the latest houses on the market. Would having a media property aligned with you make a difference? I suspect it might.
The Inclusive Play
What if you’re trying to differentiate your product in a marketplace of similar products? If you’re Fast Company magazine, you might add a community website ( they did), and start promoting the people in the community around you. Further, you might run a video show that interviews all the interesting tech and business players ( they do) such that people feel like they’re part of the action at your property. Is that play working for Fast Company compared to its competition? I don’t have numbers, but it feels like it’s working.
Personality
For every pale imitation and clone out there, someone is shining bright and delivering an original piece of value. Getting there first and doing your own thing well adds value. There are many venture capitalists out there, but only one Guy Kawasaki. For every dozen investors we don’t know, there’s only one Fred Wilson.
It’s not that everyone must blog, but if you’re looking to stand out, to reduce noise, to share your perspective in a crowded space, it can certainly help.
Does every business need to make social media and dive into this space? No. But would you readily throw away a tool that helps your product or service or company stand out, help your customers feel included, and highlight the unique personalities within the organization?
What’s your take?
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These posts are made for sharing. Feel free to repost all or portions of this (as long as it’s not for profit). If you do post it, please make sure you kindly link back to [chrisbrogan.com] and give me credit. Thanks!
Workflow - Social Media Pastor
( cowritten and deeply inspired by Jon Swanson) Emilio rises at six and starts coffee. His RSS reader has many blogs to read, plus links to a “Bible in a Year” website that sends him daily updates. It’s no longer strange to be reading the Bible in his RSS reader. It just feels like another way to connect. Emilio is thinking of setting alerts for his community in general, plus for specific issues facing the people in his congregation.
Emilio has a personal blog for reflections, and a website for the Church, as well. Most recently, he’s added a section for using UStream.tv to show live sermons. Not that every house has a broadband Internet connection, but if this is another way that someone who can’t make it to the church can feel connected to the community, why not give it a try.
Other churches are putting up sermons and special events on YouTube and GodTube. Emilio has found ideas for sermons online regularly, or rather, ways to refresh his own ideas with the wisdom of others.
Some churchgoers in his extended online community are doing things like Twitter their local service. Others have been confronted for bringing technology into the church. In some affluent churches, there are even Second Life outposts, and online campuses. It’s a balance of concerns and considerations: are you still part of a community when represented digitally? Does God hear your prayer in pixel form? Emilio leans towards yes, but he knows that others aren’t as understanding.
Emilio knows that there are more challenges to taking religion into social media. He’s read and studied the book UNCHRISTIAN, by David Kinnamon. In this book, Kinnamon talks about what outsiders think about Christianity: hypocritical, focus on conversion, antihomosexual, sheltered, too political, judgmental. Emilio feels there’s a much greater risk of these concerns spreading in the online world, where some context is lost.
Emilio recently upgraded his cell phone, which allows him to receive email from people with questions, receive text messages from people seeking a quick check-in during a rough moment, and it’s allowed him to be able to take pictures and share them online with the larger community. As Emilio visits a lot of hospitals, he sometimes records quick audio messages with someone sick, to be able to store and play this message for a family member later on.
There’s still so much face to face that he does, and much that doesn’t require an Internet connection, but through these options, Emilio has reached out far beyond his local congregation. He feels friendship with people from all around the world, and he understands the larger struggles people are having through his exploration of other blogs and online media.
With so much more to do, Emilio is happy for his first steps, and looks forward to even more respectful contact with others.
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How does this sit with you?
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These posts are made for sharing. Feel free to repost all or portions of this (as long as it’s not for profit). If you do post it, please make sure you kindly link back to [chrisbrogan.com] and give me credit. Thanks!
Photo credit, Chicago Eye
Workflow- Social Media School Teacher
Dharmesh wakes up a little late. After a quick shower, he skips checking email, but goes right to his RSS reader to see updates of where the students worked within the social network. Luckily, Ning (and lots of services) send new activities out via RSS, so they’re easy to track.
It looks like Margarite has added more YouTube videos to the video section, and Franklin has written a blog post about the town’s historic water cooler. Jeremy has already commented that Franklin forgot to cite a source, saving Dharmesh the effort. He eats a breakfast bar, and hops in his car for the commute to work.
On his iPod, Dharmesh listens to last week’s book reports read out by the students. The quality of their work has improved a great deal since switching to the audio requirement. The second report, by Kelly, is a little loud and the audio clips a bit. Dharmesh makes a mental note to show Kelly how to level the audio in Audacity.
At school, the first period media students are all frustrated. They’ve built a media room in FriendFeed, but haven’t figured out what they’re going to use to present their collected information. Dharmesh lets them discuss the benefits of a blog versus just adding a group to Ning. He asks if they’ve tried Scrapblog yet, which makes simple pages in a primarily drag-and-drop interface. They agree to check that out.
Period four is right before lunch. Dharmesh has special permission to mix the two time frames, so he takes his class out on a walk, asking them to snap pictures with their cell phones’ cameras. Only one student doesn’t have a smartphone, and Dharmesh gives him a Flip camera, instructing him to shoot some video of the student’s collecting their photos. Now there’ll be a documentary to go along with the photo walk project.
There’s only one fast computer in the class room. The others are horribly out of date. But Mister McBrian has done a great job of keeping them updated, and their browsers work well enough to be mostly useful. Because the school has opted to use only web apps instead of buying software for each computer, they were able to use some money to improve memory on the machines. It’s not ideal, but classrooms are rarely state of the art for long.
Before the end of the day, Dharmesh has recorded a quick video on the fast computer, giving the next week’s assignments audibly. He’s already sent the assignments as a forum update to their Ning group, so the class doesn’t have to write anything down to remember. It’s already in their RSS feed.
On the commute home, Dharmesh listens to more podcast book reports and thinks about what he can do to raise money to get just a few more good computers into the class room. Before these kids get to fourth grade, he figures, they should know that not all computers take two minutes to load a page. Maybe a fundraiser, he think, as he drives home to meet up with his family for dinner.
What do you think? Make sense? Was it surprising that I have this as a 3rd grade classroom? It’s not inaccurate. My daughter is entering first grade and she knows how to navigate a browser, iTunes, and various websites.
These posts are made for sharing. Feel free to repost all or portions of this (as long as it’s not for profit). If you do post it, please make sure you kindly link back to [chrisbrogan.com] and give me credit. Thanks!
Photo credit, LizMarie
Workflow- Social Media for Marketers
What does a day in the life of a social media marketer look like? I’m not a marketer, so if I get some of your terms wrong, forgive me. I thought maybe we could do a walkthrough of a fictitious social media marketer, Yolanda, for a small hotel group (four hotels) in Boston. I picked hotels just because otherwise I’d have picked a software company. Let’s walk through a workflow, and then reconstruct it in bullets at the end.
Rise and Shine
First thing in the morning, Yolanda sends a quick tweet out to Twitter saying that she’s wondering what’s going on in Boston this week. A few of the locals give her some news she knows, but @loudmouthman mentions that he heard there’s a tech conference there Thursday. She searches around and finds it. Score, an opportunity to find some potential guests for her hotel.
Yolanda checks her RSS reader to see who’s been talking about hotels in Boston, meetups in Boston, conferences, events, tweetups, vacations, etc. She has several targeted searches with RSS feeds cooked for each, so browsing through to get the pulse of the city is easy. Yolanda also has a few hotel blogs and travel blogs in her reader, in case the occasional great idea is something she can run with. She hasn’t started blogging yet, but comments regularly. People know her name.
After getting the lay of the land, Yolanda pours her second cup of coffee and browses Yelp. She’s not frustrated like some business leaders. Instead, Yolanda has a proactive approach. She’s built a process at her four hotels such that on sign-in, guests are invited to get a Yelp account, so that they can learn what people are saying about restaurants and other venues in Boston. There’s also a polite encouragement to rate their stay via Yelp. (It’s a bit gutsy, and the CEO was a bit spooked when she started the practice, but so far - fingers crossed - people are giving her hotels a good rating.)
After Lunch
Mid-day, Yolanda’s helped her VP of marketing with some more traditional business for a few hours. She was happy to hear the VP say that she was willing to try out a YouTube promotion idea, and also to put some sponsor dollars towards a few Boston tech blogs that don’t write about hotels, but that are central to some events where people might find the affinity and choose her hotels over others. The VP kept wondering why the budget for both projects was so low, thinking there was an accident, but hey, social media isn’t about money: it’s about smaller victories.
Yolanda’s listening posts have found someone complaining about a bad stay. She goes onto the blog in question, apologizes for the situation, and offers a free night the next time this blogger is in town. This merits four comments from the blogger’s audience saying that this is good service. Yolanda feels happy. She worries about what listening will be like if this kind of interaction takes on.
On Twitter, Yolanda helps two people talking about the Red Sox to know where they might want to grab a bite after the game. Not at her hotel’s restaurant. None of her four are really known for post-baseball celebrations. She recommends the Boston Beer Works, which is always fun after a game, though a bit noisy.
Before Leaving Work
Yolanda wraps up her website analytics reports and realizes that she’s getting decent traffic from a specific blogger’s post. She thought it was positive, but had no idea it would drive so much awareness of the site. She makes a note to think about hosting a few bloggers’ meetups in their meeting rooms, free of charge, and seeing if that brings in some more guests. Yolanda closes the lid on her laptop and heads off to a Web Inno event in Kendall Square. It’s not her crowd, but she’s got a hunch it doesn’t hurt for her to hang with the geek crowd.
Summary
Yolanda used Twitter, some listening tools (Technorati.com and blogsearch.google.com), mixed with an RSS reader (Google Reader), commented on several blogs, and focused on Yelp as an active part of her marketing mix.
Now it’s your turn: is this realistic? Would you see this adding value? What else might she have done?
Is this post helpful?
These posts are made for sharing. Feel free to repost all or portions of this (as long as it’s not for profit). If you do post it, please make sure you kindly link back to [chrisbrogan.com] and give me credit. Thanks!
Photo credit, kennymatic
Cherp is a Twitter-Flavored Agency
In the realm of “not really sure what to think,” I’ll bring you Cherp, a creative agency meets Twitter. Mind you, I’m wondering just how creative one gets in 140 characters. Further, how do you bill for that? What’s the tie to the rest of the strategy? Can Twitter and microblogging platforms be enough of a slice for someone to cut a check?
There. I think I’ve asked all my questions.
I’m all for nifty social media projects, but this one has me wondering. You?
Note: I use Skitch to do screenshots. It’s cool.
