Dishing on the Digital Universe

Yesterday Google did something that most companies dream about doing — they stole the thunder away from its biggest competitor. Granted, the Google/Microsoft rivalry is a big one, and they are always at each other’s throats, but from a communications perspective, it’s a great example of how timing can be everything when it comes to news in the high tech world. 

Pre-announcing vs. a live unveil is always a tricky decision in the world of communications. Pre-announcing a product can build incredible hype, as Google knew when it decided to talk about Wave yesterday. Or, it can also backfire, as it did for Microsoft Bing (why the name Bing, btw? All I think of is Mr. Crosby himself, or a bowl of cherries). If Google had not come forward with Wave yesterday perhaps the pre-announce of Bing would have been the talk of the Net, but as it was, Microsoft lost its opportunity, not just because of the power of Google Wave, but also because it could have made a much much bigger impact, despite the Google news, if it had launched the new “decision” engine yesterday. 

People want instant gratification. It’s the same with editors and bloggers who are writing the stories. So when companies pre-announce (especially weeks or months in advance) in no way will it have the same impact. Sometimes anticipation will build, but you better have a stellar product coming out of the gate.  Google Wave is impressive, but imagine the news and feedback and buzz that Microsoft would have had if Bing had been live yesterday. People would Twitter their feedback, bookmark it on Facebook, Digg the search engine finds. Microsoft would have had a much larger share of the news overall if the engine was up and running. 

One of the other challenges that Microsoft had is that it was well known when they planned on announcing Bing this week. The news had been “leaked” (probably on purpose) that the new code-named Kumo engine would be released, which gave Google ample time to decide to pre-announce their big news (complete with flashy demos to make Google devotees drool) — on the same day. 

Unfortunately, when it comes to deciding when to announce news, it’s often not the communications experts who get to make the decision. Time and time again I’ve seen mandates come down from the CEO (often as a result of pressure from board members) or from high-ranking ELT officers who feel desperate to get news out for some reason or another but don’t want to hear from communications about the pros and cons of the timing.  Time and time again during my career I’ve watched as no news splash occurred, or minimal or greatly reduced coverage resulted from not listening to, or even asking, the PR team when it comes to that decision. 

There are multiple factors involved when considering when and how to make an announcement. One of the most key things to consider is that you are announcing on a day where your news won’t be drowned out by a competitor. And when your competitor is someone like Google, who always has a trick up their sleeve, you need to be extra prepared. Either don’t pre-announce (which is hard as news of that nature is bound to be leaked) or be ready to deliver when the announcement finally comes. Otherwise, you’re setting yourself up for potential disaster. 

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• Bing Will Go Live on May 29th  (blippitt.com)
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• Google Wave: Reinventing Online Communications?  (rotorblog.com)
• Google Wave Drips With Ambition. A New Communication Platform For A New Web.  (techcrunch.com)
• Google Climbs to New Heights of Arrogance With Wave  (gigaom.com)

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I have groups of people that come to me on a regular basis, essentially saying, we know we need to start using social media, but what is it and how do we use it? Underlying each and every conversation I have with these individuals are a few bigger questions:

1. Can you tell me how to use it without me actually going there and trying it out?

2. Why do I really need to be part of the social media “conversation?”  

3. How much time is it going to take? How long do we have to do this (this meaning Twitter, or commenting on blogs, etc.)?

4.  Which social media outlet is best? 

The first question is, of course, the most annoying.  Now, don’t get me wrong, I can understand this question coming from a CEO or SVP of such and such product, but if you are in marketing, get thee to the Internet and start checking out these tools for yourself. Social media is not a fad. That means that if you want to continue to provide relevance in your role as a marketer, it may behoove you to understand how social media will influence, impact and shape all of your marketing campaigns moving forward. Most of the social media sites are very self-explanatory, take just a few minutes to sign up for and maybe a few more minutes to understand the basics of how they function. Google is your friend when it comes to finding “how-to” guides on everything ranging from Facebook to Twitter to YouTube. Don’t be lazy. This is the future of marketing and you will only be further providing value for yourself and your company if you start paying attention. Go to Mashable. Buy the Groundswell book. Read all you can…it’s not as though there aren’t enough “social media experts” in the fray to help you along.

The second question about the Why and What of the social media conversation, to some extent, goes hand in hand with my answer above. Why? Because your audience is using it. Because your influencers (media, analysts, bloggers) are using it.

A recent Forrester report,  ”The Social Technographics of Business Buyers,” by Laura Ramos and Oliver Young, published back in February, showed that B2B buyers are not just relying on traditional print and Web methods to research information. In fact, it showed that social media is becoming the norm when it comes to communication and gathering data.

As mentioned by analyst Josh Bernoff on the Forrester Groundswell blog,  this is the breakdown of how B2B buyers are using social media:

• Spectators  91%
• Critics   58%
• Joiners  55%
• Collectors   48%
• Creators  43%
• Inactives  5%

Also of note: 

“91% of these technology decision-makers were Spectators — the highest number I’ve ever seen in a Social Technographics Profile. This means you can count on the fact that your buyers are reading blogs, watching user generated video, and participating in other social media. Note that 69% of them said they were using this technology for business purposes.”

So there is the Why. Essentially, you can’t afford to not be where your audience is, which is an old school marketing mantra. It’s just that the medium has changed.

Question three: how much time is social media going to take? And how long do you have to do it? This is the problem — you can’t look at social media as a “task” with a finite deadline. Granted, you may deliver a campaign using social media channels and THAT may have some sort of ending, but your interaction with social media should not be looked upon as something that “ends” at any given point. 

The difference is that social media gives power to the people, not to the companies. It’s not the same as picking up a magazine and seeing a print ad. Social media drives conversation and discussion. It’s where you network and meet people of relevant interest. It’s a way to ask questions and find answers. Your customers, prospects, influencers and vendors are using social media for a million different reasons. Time to jump into the conversation so when the discussion turns to something relevant for you, you are ready and able to participate.

For those of you who want definitive answers on time it takes…it depends. Once you set up your networks its often just a matter of monitoring or maintaining. I probably spend 20 min a day with Twitter. About the same on Facebook. The rest is just a mish-mash of time depending on needs or projects. Some days I spend a lot of time managing my company’s YouTube channel but then will go a week without needing to touch it. If you have a lot of videos to manage that may not be the case (or if you are being redundant in areas such as Viddler or Vimeo and you need to upload multiple videos).  So really, it’s about your needs, the size of your network, the quality of the conversations in your network, any campaigns you might be running, etc.  

4.  Which new media outlet is best? 

Again, it depends. What you need to do first is to sit down and determine what the overall needs of your company are. Ask yourself some key questions.

• Who is your audience?   Media? Analysts? Auto mechanics? Web designers?  Healthcare professionals?   Knowing your audience will help you determine if you need a broad strategy or a niche possibility.
• What kind of content do you want to share with your audience?  Video? Slideshows? White papers? Podcasts? Webinars? All of the above? There are new media sites for all of those assets and many that give you the ability to share them all.
• How much discussion do you want? Most of the various social media and new media technologies give you power over commenting. Some companies are terrified of getting customer feedback in a public forum, others relish the opportunity ( http://www.twitter.com/comcastcares ). Be ready with a strategy for responses to feedback, how you will participate in the discussion, how much moderation is needed, who you choose to be part of the conversation (are you comfortable with random employees Twittering or sharing information on SlideShare?). More and more companies are hiring people to specifically respond to social media activity and for good reason.

In order to best answer #4, the number one thing that you can do to help determine the right outlets for your company is to get involved. Sign up for a few services and watch how people use the tools. Comment, respond, join in the fray. There are no definitive answers when it comes down to what is “best” or even possible. A week of futzing around to understand the new media technologies and social media sites at your disposal will go along way toward helping you fine tune what makes the most sense for your organization.

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• Looking back on our 2008 Predictions (blogs.forrester.com)
• 3 best Web books of 2008 (money.cnn.com)

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For the last few months the news has been how the “social media experts” are ruining Twitter.  People bitched (including me) of how on earth there could be so many so-called-experts in the field. Graphs such as this humorous one created by David Binkowski surfaced:

I saw comments about how the economy and lay-offs suddenly were creating thousands of these experts, merely by the fact that it was all they had to do — hang out on the Net. 

Not that hanging out makes you an expert. 

I have felt frustrated because of the fact that I have marketing and PR in my Twitter title and I think some people decide not to follow me as a result (fearing that I might, like far too many, pummel them with URLS to go back to my Web site or to read my book on how to make money, etc.). I use Twitter for a bevy of other things, including to keep up with a vibrant community of authors and writers, one love of mine. Or the chefs and foodies that make up another area of interest. Or to keep tabs on my fellow Bostonians.  So yeah, when I get bucketed into the “crap-it’s-another-marketer-following-me” category I do feel annoyed and a bit bummed out.  

And while I really love my work in marketing and communications and look for every effort to apply my knowledge of social media (which is extensive because I’ve been entrenched in the Web and technology for so many years), I can’t say I’m an “expert” in social media. 

Because I don’t think anyone CAN be an “expert” in social media. Why?

1. Because it changes all the time. 
2. Populations and demographics of any particular site are growing and changing the way the medium is used.
3. New technologies are popping out of the woodwork at a rate that is impossible to keep up with.
4. Using the various new media technologies and social media properties may yield different results for different people or organizations…there are far too many factors (and people involved) to make results consistent. 
5. People control the medium, not companies, which means that while organizations can try and shape reactions to their work in social media, there ultimately is, no control over it. 
6. And going back to #4, it means there is no right or wrong. 

I can say I’m an expert in other things and that I am passionate about social media and how that applies to those other areas in which I’m an expert, but I think that if anyone is saying they are an “expert” in social media itself, you should definitely raise an eyebrow or two.

UPDATED 4/3/09 with this great link: “You’re Not a Social Media Expert Because I’m the Only Social Media Expert

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Jeff Clark over at Neoformix has been creating beautiful and cool graphical representations of the way people use data and words:

Now he’s come up with a fascinating map of Twitter conversations that took place all over the country during the Oscars. Click the image below to go directly to the interactive maps on his site. Very cool stuff.

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Over the last few months there has been a lot of talk about whether or not blogs can truly help drive decision making power. The information is often conflicting, which may drive your average reader to more and more blogs and articles to come up with the truth in between. 

For example, a Forrester survey from Q2 2008 created a lot of buzz when it revealed that “only 16% of people who read company blogs trust them.” What I find most ironic about this is that the survey didn’t generate a large level of interest until it hit the Forrester Groundswell BLOG, which as far as I know, is a company blog that does generate a lot of trust among its readers. You could argue that an analyst firm (who is supposed to rank vendors in an unbiased fashion) isn’t  the same as the companies they are talking about in the survey, but that’s just semantics in my mind. They’re using blogs in the same way that every other business should be using blogs — to serve up expertise that will hopefully drive more people to purchase their products. 

I think that to say that a majority of people don’t trust company blogs is probably par for the course, as Forrester’s Bernoff acknowledges when he links to an Edelman article pointing out that people don’t trust companies in general. 

Yet that doesn’t mean that blogs can’t ultimately tip someone into making that final purchase.  I think its safe to say that as a rule I don’t trust company blogs, because as someone who has been in marketing for a long while I know that there is often a spin of information involved. I think that your average Internet blog reader knows this as well, but we need to give them a bit more credit. Most savvy readers aren’t relying on one source of information. They may start at the company blog, read some information and then do corresponding searches to corroborate the material. So while they may not trust the blog, it doesn’t mean that the blog was useless — it could have served as the stepping stone toward a purchase. Bernoff acknowledges that “In this case about 80% of those we polled said they did use corporate blogs,” which I think is a pretty good indicator of what I say being true. The readers may not trust them, but clearly they read and rely on them in some fashion.

I would be curious to see if those same people surveyed in the Forrester report trust the main company website over the company blog — do they prefer reading lengthy white papers and collateral docs or do they identify more with information presented in a blog? 

A ClickZ article by Enid Burns last October cites another survey, this time by Forrester company JupiterResearch and sponsored by BuzzLogic. The stats are interesting:

“Readership of blogs is on the rise. JupiterResearch noted a 300 percent growth in monthly blog readership in the past four years. Readers look to links and multiple blog sources to extend the conversation: 49 percent of blog readers, defined as someone who reads at least one blog a month, and 71 percent of frequent readers all read more than one blog per session. Multiple blog sources offer more opportunities for consumers to see blog ads. A quarter of readers say they trust ads on a blog, compared to 19 percent who trust ads on social networking sites.”

So while readers may not trust blogs, it certainly seems that they are continuing to read them. Keep in mind though, that the latter survey seems to be talking about blogs in general, not specifically delineating them into company, media or personal blogs, as is evidenced by the stat about ads. I think that most people wouldn’t trust ads on a company blog but if an individual blogger that someone reads and likes endorses a product, yes, by all means the click-throughs and purchases will be higher. I can attest to this on my writing blog, where I have received numerous kickbacks from purchases made on writing materials that I link to as an affialiate. I link to them because I trust the products and believe in them and readers trust my decision which ultimately results in a purchase. 

In a blog post last fall, communications expert Sally Falkow  points to a stat in the JupiterResearch/BuzzLogic survey that supports this: “50 percent of frequent blog readers say they have taken an action after reading a  blog.” 

While readers may not trust blogs and it still seems like people read them anyway, there is still great value in building up trust with readers to help drive the possibility of a purchase even higher. In his blog post, Bernoff gives great tips for building trust on your company blog, all of which goes back to talking less about products and letting expertise shine. People connect to you when you demonstrate passion, when you share material that is immediately useful and when you write with an awareness of your reader’s potential needs. No one wants a sales pitch from a company. Instead they want to feel like they know the people behind the products. As the Forrester Groundswell team talks about all the time, its about showing the HUMAN side of your company.

In that ClickZ piece, Valerie Combs, BuzzLogic VP of Corporate Comms, agrees. “One of the things that’s so great about them [blogs] is the personal, specific information,” said Combs. “Thorough, useful, honest creation, create a level of trust with the reader.”

Bottom line, if your company isn’t blogging, it probably needs to be. 

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Yes, I stole the title for this post from the very useful but terribly depressing Twitter moniker of the same name. In the last month it seems that there has been a lot of news (curious if the media is actually dying) about newspapers folding, magazines hanging up their hat and publishers letting their workforce go by the truckload. 

Today I ran across yet another article, this time in Fortune online, in which Google CEO Eric Schmidt pimps out how Google can help newspapers by partnering with them for advertising…even so, its still online. He admits that offsetting the paper business model cost is rather challenging. 

Over Christmas break when I was at my in-laws, I relished the time-honored morning tradition of newspapers over breakfast, something I only do when we are visiting them. I mentioned to my father-in-law that I wouldn’t be surprised if their local newspaper only has another five or so years before it folds. He was adamant that no, too many people rely on it, etc. And he’s right to some extent — it is a small town and more people are likely to go there for local news rather than the Net. Plus there is a much older generation of people concentrated in that area who may help keep it afloat for awhile. Still, is that enough?

In the article I linked above, Eric Schmidt points out that: 

 They [newspapers] don’t have a problem of demand for their product, the news. People love the news. They love reading, discussing it, adding to it, annotating it. The Internet has made the news more accessible. There’s a problem with advertising, classifieds and the cost itself of a newspaper: physical printing, delivery and so on. And so the business model gets squeezed.

And therein lies the problem that the poor Berkshire Eagle may have in its future. Gone are the days of the paper boy riding his bike up and down the neighborhood streets for a few extra bucks (when go back there, my husband always points out the old paper route and where the mean ladies and dogs used to live). Newspapers are stuck — they can’t raise the prices on newspapers to cover rising costs of paying carriers, paper sources and the like, and advertisers are realizing that they can reach more people for less money if they go online. Even worse, more and more people are migrating to the Internet for all their news.  My husband used to be a morning breakfast paper person but about five years ago we cancelled our Globe subscription because it was increasingly going without being read — we were getting all our news online. 

It’s not just newspapers, but magazines and books. The effects of the recession on the ad industry hit home for me when I was at the salon last month for a pedicure and all the fashion magazines were thinner than I have ever seen. For the first time, the content in Vogue seemed to be equal to its advertising. 

The book publishing industry is thinning out as well, much of it to do with fewer users investing in hardback and paperback books, myself included. I bought a Kindle last summer and was showing it to a few of my novelist friends and while they seemed delighted with the idea, there was great skepticism on what it meant for authors. One of my friends has an agent farming out her book right now and she’s got big reason for concern — because it means that the days of the big book advances are gone. When you can buy a hot new book for $9.99 instead of $25.99 it is bound to change the industry as a whole. That impacts me as well — the three books up my sleeve hoping for a bright future may have to settle for something a little less shiny.

I tend to agree with Schmidt, however. There will ALWAYS be readers. In fact, marketers, bloggers and social media freaks will all tell you that content is still king. Which means someone is reading the content. The new challenge for us all will be to figure out how to make churning out the content profitable.

I love the physical feel of books and newspapers, but I have to admit, I turn to my computer and my mobile for news and with my Kindle, I find it infinitely easier to juggle the little device when reading in bed, on public transportation, in the car, than I do with a big clunky tome. 

The publishing world is in transition, just as we were when moving from tapes to CD to mp3 or from manual typewriters to computer keyboards. Change is sometimes very sad and is often difficult, but the flipside can be equally exciting. It will be interesting to look back 50 years from now and say, wow, remember when? 

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To follow up on my last post, I wanted to make sure you all had a chance to check out the amazing scorecard that Pete Quily created to show how the candidates differed when it came to social media and search engine results on the Web.

While the specific breakdowns are definitely worth a look, I found the overall conclusion to be particularly interesting:

Overall Barack Obama’s campaign has

• a larger, more comprehensive presence
• more followers or subscribers on the social media websites
• more interaction with those followers
• much greater results in search engines

This is in spite of John McCain being a big political celebrity FAR longer than Barack Obama was. John McCain was first elected to congress in 1982, and even before McCain ran in 2008, other than George Bush, McCain was probably the best known, most interviewed, and most written about Republican politician. That’s why I laughed when I saw McCain’s celebrity ad about Obama, look at how many mention’s John McCain has in the Internet Movie Database, like Bill Clinton, he was jealous because he was no longer the biggest political celebrity in Washington.

Outside of Illinois, Barack Obama was largely unknown until he gave his famous keynote speech at the democratic convention in 2004. So 26 years of exposure vs 4 years and yet Obama still massively dominated the online landscape.

Clear evidence that social media can be one of the best tools around when it comes to building brand.

Give the whole scorecard a read…its an eyeopener.

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For the last few months I have to admit, I’ve been obsessed. By politics. And while I had particular emotional, moral and principled reasons for my obsession, what really grabbed me was the way that the presidential campaign played out over the Net, through specific campaign activities but also social media and countless homegrown viral efforts.

I think its fair to say that one of the main downfalls of the McCain campaign was their lack of understanding when it comes to the power of the Internet. This permeated everything from McCain’s own brand (he admitted he didn’t bother to use email), to their lack of foresight to how the Net would take any gaffe and make it bigger.

It all starts with brand. Obama had that in spades.

Since work has recently overtaken me (we’re preparing for our annual user conference), and since there are a multitude of excellent articles on the strategy behind the Obama campaign, I’ll leave you with some good starting points to find out more on how this truly was the social media election:

• The Vote: A Victory for Social Media, too
• Barack Obama, will you tap the groundswell?
• Obama election ushers in first Internet presidency
• No rest for the Web’s election weary
• Twitter, etc. - A lodestar for the ‘08 race
• The Facebook Election
• Tweet! Social network a-twitter over election
• YouTube, a battleground for presidential politics
• Web 2.0 and the Internet delivered the vote for Obama
• Favored Obama address features http not 1600
• Keen on new media: did the Internet elect Obama?

And I’ll leave you with a few more…

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• The First Social Media President

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My previous post shared a creative Sony Ericsson video that used a combination of YouTube, Facebook and email to spread the news about one of their latest mobile devices. I was struck by the campaign’s use of YouTube…videos custom created based on a few details filled out in a form and posted to YouTube.

A friend recently sent me another video that uses similar technology, this one by the Democratic political group, MoveOn.org. Now, while I typically won’t talk politics on this blog, in this case, I really want to point out an extremely creative and innovative way that these on-the-fly YouTube video creations are being used.

Here is the video, designed to make sure that Obama voters are not just sitting on the couch come election day. The website has a generic, news-seeming name, CNNBC, so that it isn’t immediately apparent that this isn’t real news.

At the end of the video users can send to all their friends, merely by filling in their full name and email address. The friend will receive a link to the video, which probably could use some work to not look like spam, saying, “You’re in this video.”

A little searching shows that not many of these types of personalized video campaigns are yet in circulation. A&E claims the first use on their promotion of season 3 of Criss Angel’s Mindfreak.

We’re on the edge of a new video phenomenon, I predict. Expect to see many many more of these types of video campaigns finding their way into your inbox, your Facebook, your MySpace and other social networks.

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