Mitch Joel's Blog: Six Pixels of Separation, page 351

Social Media Experts And The New Marketing Integration

Episode #266 of Six Pixels of Separation - The Twist Image Podcast is now live and ready for you to listen to.

Joseph Jaffe is widely regarded as one of the top Marketing Bloggers (Jaffe Juice) and Podcasters (both Jaffe Juice in audio and Jaffe Juice TV in video). He is the author of three excellent books (Life After The 30-Second Spot, Join The Conversation and Flip The Funnel). A long-time friend (and one of the main inspirations behind the Six Pixels of Separation Blog and Podcast), we've decided to hold monthly conversations, debates and back-and-forths that will dive a little deeper into the Digital Marketing and Social Media landscape. This is our 16th conversation (or, as I like to affectionately call it, Across The Sound 16.20), and this one focuses on the giants of Social Media... and what that really means. What does an expert look like? (do you know the saying: "if it walks like a duck and quack likes a duck..."?) and what does the future hold for integrated marketing solutions? Enjoy the conversation...

You can grab the latest episode of Six Pixels of Separation here (or feel free to subscribe via iTunes): Six Pixels of Separation - The Twist Image Podcast #266.

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managing the gray

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Six Links Worthy Of Your Attention #60

Is there one link, story, picture or thought that you saw online this week that you think somebody you know must see?

My friends: Alistair Croll (BitCurrent, Year One Labs, GigaOM, Human 2.0, the author of Complete Web Monitoring and Managing Bandwidth: Deploying QOS in Enterprise Networks), Hugh McGuire (The Book Oven, LibriVox, iambik, PressBooks, Media Hacks) and I decided that every week or so the three of us are going to share one link for one another (for a total of six links) that each individual feels the other person "must see".

Check out these six links that we're recommending to one another:

Big Brother isn't watching you - Guardian UK . "I'm going to chime in on the UK rioting too. And the most eloquent bit I've seen is from, astonishingly, Russell Brand, the Katy-Perry-boinking, Get-Him-To-The-Greek-filming, endorsement-flooded British ex-shock-jock. But his background qualifies him to chime in, even from the comfort of LA, and he provides a surprisingly good answer to Why It All Happened. 'As we sweep away the mistakes made in the selfish, nocturnal darkness we must ensure that, amidst the broken glass and sadness, we don't sweep away the youth lost amongst the shards in the shadows cast by the new dawn.'" (Alistair for Hugh).

Why MG Siegler is wrong about email (and right too) - Robert Scoble . "Robert Scoble jumps from platform to platform more than a video game character. He loved Twitter, then Quora, and now he holds court on Google Plus. So you'd think he'd be beyond email as a messaging platform. But in this post on Plus, he explains why email is still an essential medium, and along the way, shares some of his rules and tricks for handling a huge flood of information. Form follows function, he argues, and the function of email is to filter and organize so you can get to the good stuff." (Alistair for Mitch).

Panic on the streets of London - Penny Red . "It's been an extraordinary week of riots and unrest in London, and many cities throughout England: a potent cocktail of ghettoized ethnic neighborhoods, chronic and massive unemployment of young men coupled with exclusion from productive society, a good dose of thuggishness and kids who just don't respect things, police hostility to dark-skinned youth, and also (but not finally) massive cuts to Britain's social budgets. And much, much more. The results are breathtaking, violent, scary and significant. I don't know what to make of it, but this essay is a good place to start seeing hints of some of the many frayed strands of the story." (Hugh for Alistair).

What Happened to Obama? - The New York Times . "Barack Obama's election was greeted with an euphoria that people like me (middle-class, white lefty folk), and many people not like me, haven't had cause to experience from politics in our lifetimes. He talked of hopes and dreams in eloquent and moving ways, and we all thought Mr. Obama signaled a great change in the course of the world. Boy, were we wrong. Hillary Clinton - his opponent in the Democratic primaries - said when they were opponents (more or less): 'He is all talk, no experience, and the Republicans will walk all over him.' I don't know if that is the problem, but one thing is for damn sure: the euphoria is gone, and we haven't seen a hint of eloquence when it matters. Something else we haven't seen: a principle Obama is willing to stake his presidency on. What does Obama stand for? Who knows? This New York Times op-ed is an outline of what we (that is, I) would have liked to hear from Obama, but have not. Oh, have we not. The emptiness of what we've heard instead is shocking." (Hugh for Mitch). 

The Creator Of TED Aims To Reinvent Conferences Once Again - Fast Company Design . "When people think of TED , they tend to think of Chris Anderson . The real creator of TED is Richard Saul Wurman - a true visionary, artist and entrepreneur for our times. Anderson bought the TED conference from Wurman and brought it to the global conscience that it celebrates today, but Wurman had the initial idea of gathering people from technology, entertainment and design to create the ultimate dinner party conversation. It looks like Wurman is about to re-invent the conference space once again, and this piece details his plans. As always, his ideas are inspiring." (Mitch for Alistair).

The worst gig we ever played: musicians on their on-stage lows - Guardian UK . "After over a decade in the music industry, you would think that I had seen it all. I thought I had. I have not. This piece is funny, tragic and inspiring as well. People think art happens in isolation. It doesn't. Much of the great art is created by teams. Art is messy and it gets even messier when you mix in differing personalities, money, personal politics and let's not forget the sex and drugs." (Mitch for Hugh).

Now it's your turn: in the comment section below pick one thing that you saw this week that inspired you and share it.

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All We Are Saying...

How hard can this be? What would it bring to the world? This is an idea that needs more Marketing...

 

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jeremy gilley

one day of peace

online video

peace

ted talk

The Social Media Fatigue Myth

Are you getting tired of Social Media?

A few years back, there was a slew of Blog posts, Podcasts and in-person conversations about Social Media fatigue. This was just before Twitter broke big. There was a feeling of, "yes, I'm now connected to a lot of people and we're all sharing all sorts of stuff, but now what?" Foursquare and Twitter broke the fatigue because it brought Social Media to the palm of your hand. Social Media truly went mobile and local. In doing so, it also made Social Media much more personal and powerful. It turns out that Social Media niches never became as popular of a concept (at least, not yet) as the platforms filtered down to the local level through mobile connectivity.

It seems like mobile and local is where much of the new innovations in Social Media are coming from.

In a strange twist, there seems to be a new boiling up of conversation around the idea of Social Media fatigue. Anecdotally, several people over the past few weeks have asked me if I am getting tired about writing and talking about it. Some feel that all of the conversation has already been talked about, while others are just now starting to get overwhelmed by the sheer volume of content that gets shared within these channels. The concept of Social Media fatigues seems to be most prevalent in those who have added Google + into their online diet. These eager beavers are now grappling with how Google + fits into the mix. They're trying to figure out what's good for Twitter, then Facebook and how it all differs from Google +... ahh, the choices.

Social Media fatigue is a myth.

It's not a myth because of any data or graphs that have come out in recent weeks, and this has nothing to do with news that Facebook may be hitting plateaus in certain markets. My statement that Social Media fatigue is a myth is based solely on the notion that when something becomes so ubiquitous, it doesn't mean that there is any fatigue (we're not using it any less or abandoning it), it just means that when it's everywhere, it's less exciting to talk about (like the air we breathe). When was the last time you picked up the telephone, made a call, hung up and then turned to the person next to you to marvel at the invention that is telecommunications?

Social Media is ubiquitous.

Platforms and channels will come and go. Some will survive, while others die and then we'll have new ones enter the fray that will capture our attention. In the end, we'll still want to be connected and sharing with others. We're just less excited to marvel at it as we were ten years ago (and yes, Social Media is well over a decade old at this point). Podcasting is just another form of audio. Blogging is just another form of publishing. YouTube is just another form of broadcasting. Facebook and Google + are just another form of networking.

The next few years will be about...

Making Social Media an integrated part of our daily diet. Making something that has so quickly become ubiquitous in our lives function as a valuable tool. For some, this will be around their personal lives and how much information they share (and with whom), for us businesspeople, it will be a much bigger challenge. If people continue to deep dive into Social Media, interrupting them with marketing messages will be like interrupting a phone call or crashing a party, instead of the current perception that it's like advertising on TV or taking an ad out in the newspaper. When the ubiquity of Social Media evolves into being much more about networked communications over it's current popularity (which is, mostly, driven by people trying to show themselves off), it's going to become a completely different game for Marketers and Businesses.

So, while you may be suffering from Social Media fatigue, consider that it may be the next big opportunity as it morphs into something completely ubiquitous. 

[update: just saw that Mathew Ingram had a Blog post today over at Gigaom titled, Maybe a little social-media fatigue isn't such a bad idea. Wish I would have seen this before writing.]

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Don't Forget About Marketing

It's commonplace to hear non-Marketers give advice like "forget about marketing" to up and coming businesses.

This is a big mistake. This is a stupid mistake. This is advice being given by people who don't even know and/or understand what the definition of Marketing is. In almost every case where I see mention of the "forget marketing and focus on your product," commentary, the individual writing this statement is confusing "marketing" with "advertising." No, not every company that is just starting out has to use advertising to generate awareness and sales, but advertising is only a small component of the marketing mix.

Marketing 101.

Not to get into a whole "Marketing 101" lesson, but The Four P's of Marketing (Product, Price, Place and Promotion) are all functions of Marketing. Seth Godin often says that the best products and services have the marketing "built into it," and he's right (he usually is). When someone tells you to focus on the product, they're forgetting that the product must be something that people will buy, talk about and share, for it to be successful (and we're talking about everything from silverware to a rock band). Anything that is out in the market for people to attach themselves to requires marketing. It requires attention paid to what is being placed in the marketplace (the product), how much it is being sold for to be competitive (the price), where it is being sold (the place) and how you're going to create awareness and excitement about the product (promotions).

Take the music industry as an example.

If a modern band thinks that all it has to do is focus on the music, they've lost their collective minds. Artists create music to attract an audience. The very act of putting pick to guitar strings is an act of marketing - it's an act to get attention. From the clothes that the artists wear to their genre of music, they are marketing a look, sound and feel. That first gig that they're going to play in some dumpy bar? How are they going to get people there? They're going to get their friends to talk about it on Facebook and Twitter. They're going to post videos to YouTube. They're going to put up posters at the local hangouts. They're going to try and get their band mentioned in the local listings, etc... They're going to price admission to the show at a cost that makes it affordable for their audience and they're (hopefully) going to have some swag to sell to people at the event. After they play that first set, they're going to hang around, meet the fans, takes some pictures and sign some autographs. That's all Marketing. That is all a function of everything that happens after the product (in this case, the music) has been created.

Don't forget about Marketing.

I have no idea why there is this sudden trend to have people not think about Marketing. Any product or service that is put into the market better have a message (and a story) to tell. It better be something that will get people excited, that will raise an eyebrow or that solves a problem. If creating, pricing and getting that product in-market is not a function of marketing, then everything in business has gone haywire.

Marketing is critical to your business' success. Forget Marketing... and you can forget success.

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The Biggest Mistake Brands Make When It Comes To Social Media

What is the biggest mistake that brands make when it comes to Social Media?

Without question, this is the number one question I get asked in interviews, at speaking events and at roundtable forums (in fact, it happened today during a panel conversation for Connected For Business Magazine). You can shore up the many little instances, fumbles, mistakes and blunders into this one concept: The Social Contract. Prior to these Social Media channels, brands had a social contract with the media (for the most part, this social contract still exists, to this day) that worked/works like this: Something happens and the brand has a PR crisis on their hands. They are called to task by the media. The brand formulates a strategy and a plan, trains the media spokesperson from within the organization and then comes out publicly with a response - which is typically done in the formats of interviews, press releases and a press conference). From there, the media formulates their take (they may even go back to the company to ask for clarification or more information) and then the information gets disseminated to the public through these mass media channels. During this time, the company rarely interfaces with individuals from the public. They communicate through their chosen media platforms. There is an unwritten social contract between businesses and the media - an agreed upon process of response and how it all comes together. This isn't done to slant the story, it's just the way the "Gods of Production," as Jay Rosen calls them, works.

People - like you and I - don't have a social contract with brands and this is tripping them up.

The mistakes that happen in Social Media (everything from United breaks guitars to Dell Hell) all demonstrate that people do not act in accordance to the way that trained and professional journalists act, and that brands can't interact with individuals with the same kind of language, posture and social contract that they have with the mass media. The biggest mistake that brands make is thinking that they can act, respond and communicate with these individuals as if they are speaking to a journalist.

It's not just in the communications... it's the marketing to.

When brands fail at Social Media (and then ask "why?"), one look at most of their "marketing efforts" reveals a broadcasting and/or advertising posture that is not only narcissistic but self-serving. The platforms already exist for advertising, so if a brand is leveraging a Facebook page, YouTube videos or a Blog to speak to individuals in the same way that they have traditionally developed a magazine or television ad, it's missing the point (and opportunity) as well. Don't get me wrong, many brands are getting results from these types of tactics, but it tends to be the brands that are leveraging the power of their ad budgets to both interrupt and clamor the consumer's online engagement experience. That not Social Media marketing... that's advertising in Social Media channels and there's a big difference between the two.

It's a mindset.

Brands can overcome the mistake of following the traditional media social contract in one simple move: real interactions between real human beings. Leverage the actual people within the organization to speak to people as the people that they are. This is driven by a mindset of compassion and care by the brand to build loyalty over a customer service mandate that sounds and reads as if it's being read out of a manual or a script. While the move is simple, the ability for the organization to change is hard. The mindset is not a personal or an individual one, it's groupthink that permeates an organization and that is deadlocked by the legal department. See, individuals don't have these issues, so they tweet, Blog and update their status' with whatever is on their minds and - when it's something negative about a brand - the brand tends to react as if there is that implied social contract.

It's nothing new.

Social Media has been banging this drum of human interaction for over a decade now (need I remind us that The Cluetrain Manifesto is nearly twelve years old?). This kind of talk was happening long before this past decade entered the fray (and all of the technology and connectivity that came along with it). In the end, it's not really a "mistake" that brands are making when it comes to Social Media. It's actually a mistake that brands are making at a culture level (the DNA of the modern organization). The good news is that it's not terminal. This is a reversible disease.

It makes you wonder why after all of the in-market proof, brands still struggle with it?

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Cloud Computing And The Streaming Of Everything Will Change Media Forever

We're getting much closer to the world of dumb clients... and that's a smart thing.

Five years ago, the conversation about live video streaming was always relegated to a conversation about "the pipe" (the technology and the ability to deliver this type of data intensive media with the same flawless flow as broadcast TV). While it's still not perfect and many people still grumble over video buffering issues while they try to watch on their computers, tablets and smartphones, the technology is improving and we're getting very close to that moment in time when grabbing and watching videos will be as speedy and flow-perfect as grabbing your email. The biggest change is going to be that you won't have to really download anything, as all content will not only live in the cloud, but will be accessible to you on-demand.

This isn't streaming as you've thought of streaming to date.

Amongst media and marketing professionals, the idea of streaming is more commonly thought of as a way to broadcast live where the data and information is never stored on the consumer's hard drive - they can simply enjoy the content (text, images, audio and/or video) live and "in the moment." That is the streaming of yesterday. The streaming of today looks very different. Take a look at what Apple is attempting with their upcoming iCloud product. The idea is that all of your content (or the data you used to save on your hard drive) will now be stored "in the cloud." This way, whether you're opening your laptop, tinkering with your iPad or roaming with your iPhone, the content that you want can be streamed from one central location and acts as if it is resident on your hard drive (it's also pretty great if your hardware crashes... now you won't lose everything). Now, push this even further and imagine that your content is not just the things you have downloaded to date, but it now becomes anything and everything that can be sold via iTunes (and beyond). Suddenly, the notion of streaming has a new paradigm. The world's catalogue of content is now your catalogue.

Imagine a media world...

Imagine a media world where the consumer doesn't own any one piece of content, but simply has unlimited access (for a fee) to any piece of content on any of the devices they choose. In essence, you own it all. This is the true promise of streaming and it's the type of technology and media delivery mechanism that should get the traditional broadcasters and publishers either extremely nervous or amazingly innovative. Consumers used to be very different. We collected this content and built shelving in our home to store it and display it to our friends. This is what Seth Godin now refers to as "the artifact" -  having a record collection, a library of books, or a DVD collection. As the digitization of media continues to evolve, the idea of having these collections becoming akin to the way certain individuals collect old Coke signs (it's more about the art than the functional use). The majority of people will simply be able to access every type of TV show, movie, music artists, book, magazine, newspaper, radio station, etc... when they want, on the device they want and they won't need any hard disk space for it or built-in shelving units to house it.

Bandwidth is the new hard disk space.

As the Internet becomes the ultimate archive for all of your personal stuff (photos, emails, etc...) and it's mixed with the full streaming of content, bandwidth becomes the new hard drive. This will be the big (and hard) media hurdle. To date, the cable and mobile carriers have made it difficult. Many of them have invested lots of money in existing infrastructure that becomes out-of-date much quicker than they can recoup their investment. We have issues of bandwidth throttling and the ability to have unlimited data is becoming (once again) a topic of heated discourse. The truth is that technology can't be stopped. Unlimited data through high speed and mobile access is an inevitability and it's also going to be an amazing media experience for the consumer. Getting the content producers, hardware manufacturers and access providers to play nicely (and fair) is where the challenge lies. This form of streaming is inevitable, and once consumers experience it and understand it... they're going to demand it.

If you thought broadband changed everything, just wait until you see what the streaming future of media holds for us all.

The above posting is my twice-monthly column for The Huffington Post called, Media Hacker . I cross-post it here with all the links and tags for your reading pleasure, but you can check out the original version online here:

The Huffington Post - Cloud Computing and the Streaming of Everything Will Change Media Forever .

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Journalism And The New Media With Jay Rosen

Episode #265 of Six Pixels of Separation - The Twist Image Podcast is now live and ready for you to listen to.

My professional career started off in Journalism (this was prior to becoming both a Publisher and Marketer), so yes, I have a soft spot for all things Journalism. There's also an important link between Journalism and Marketing. There are few who are looking at Journalism and the New Media with a sharper eye than Jay Rosen. I'm a huge fan. Rosen teaches journalism at New York University, where he has been on the faculty since 1986. He is the author of PressThink, a blog about journalism's ordeals in the age of the Web, which he launched in 2003. In 1999, Yale University Press published his book, What Are Journalists For?, which was about the rise of the civic journalism movement. In July 2006 he announced the debut NewAssignment.net, his experimental site for pro-am, open source reporting projects. The first one was called Assignment Zero, a collaboration with Wired. A second project was OffTheBus with The Huffington Post, for which he served as co-publisher with Arianna Huffington. Enjoy the conversation...

You can grab the latest episode of Six Pixels of Separation here (or feel free to subscribe via iTunes): Six Pixels of Separation - The Twist Image Podcast #265.

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arianna huffington

assignment zero

blog

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business book

cc chapman

chris brogan

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content rules

david usher

digital dads

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hugh mcguire

human business works

iambik

in over your head

itunes

jay rosen

journalism

julien smith

librivox

linkedin

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managing the gray

marketing

marketing over coffee

media hacks

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new media

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newassignment

offthebus

podcast

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third tribe marketing

trust agents

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BYOG - Bring Your Own Gear

Locking down computers from accessing certain websites is a common practice.

Companies will site everything from security, liability issues and computer virus threats to bandwidth issues and productivity. In the end, companies don't want their employees futzing around on YouTube and having to pay the tab as it is happening. I've always said that locking employees out of Facebook won't make them more productive, they'll just find something else to waste their time with (like smoking or talking on the phone). In a hyper-connected society this type of practice (which is still commonplace) is creating growing concerns. One major issue is new employee recruitment. It's hard to recruit the best and the brightest and then have to explain to them that the tools they use to communicate (and many of these tools these younger individuals use more than talking as a form of communication) are verboten in the workplace. I have one friend whose smartphone is so locked down at work that they can't even take pictures with it (the company is afraid of liability issues) and another senior marketer of a multi-national brand whose computer is so locked down (this includes no access to sites that use Flash) that they actually have their own laptop and USB mobile Internet stick that they use instead of the office computer.

Busted! 

This has become such a serious issue that some companies have created corporate policies that don't allow employees to bring or use their own personal computers and smartphones during office hours. Some go so far as to not allow any form of personal technology on company property. Imagine having to work at a company like that. The tide is slowing turning. The Globe & Mail published an article yesterday titled, Workplace use of personal electronic devices on the rise. At first glance of the headline, I suspected that this article would be all about individuals who are sneaking their laptops and smartphones into the office and using their own devices to access online social networking sites, etc..., but it turns out that companies are now (slowly) beginning to open up and allow their employees to not only bring their own gear to work, but to use it for work-related issues.

It's an ever-changing world and companies are not keeping pace.

From The Globe & Mail article: "Currently, only 44 per cent of employers have a formal BYO device policy and just as many ban them outright. But nearly all the employers expect to have a formal BYO policy within two years, the survey of 700 information technology officers - 100 of them in Canada - conducted by remote working applications developer Citrix Systems Inc. found. Just 6 per cent of employers said they don't anticipate allowing employees to use their own devices at work. That's despite the fact that many already do, whether or not there is a policy. Laptops and smart phones are the personal devices most commonly used today, the IT managers said, but tablet computers are on the rise. The survey found that employers expect a quarter of employees will bring personal tablets to work within two years, compared with an average of 8 per cent today."

It's the iPad, stupid.

While some may be focused on how quickly the adoption is happening, I was more intrigued by the line about tablet computers and their rapid ascent. As technology gets easier, cheaper, more fun to use and connected, there's almost little-to-nothing that companies can do to keep their employees disconnected. In fact, even thinking about a disconnected individual in a world where some regions see Internet access as a human right (for more on this: The Internet As Your Birthright) is becoming somewhat laughable. One of the biggest evolutions in the business world that happened because of connectivity is this: for the first time in our civilization, individuals are ahead of the brands when it comes to marketing. They're more informed, more empowered and much more connected. Brands (and the businesses that are behind them) are - for the first time - playing catch-up.

Hint: employees, consumers or whatever... are all the same thing: they're people. Companies need to get smarter.

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technology

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youtube

Six Links Worthy Of Your Attention #59

Is there one link, story, picture or thought that you saw online this week that you think somebody you know must see?

My friends: Alistair Croll (BitCurrent, Year One Labs, GigaOM, Human 2.0, the author of Complete Web Monitoring and Managing Bandwidth: Deploying QOS in Enterprise Networks), Hugh McGuire (The Book Oven, LibriVox, iambik, PressBooks, Media Hacks) and I decided that every week or so the three of us are going to share one link for one another (for a total of six links) that each individual feels the other person "must see".

Check out these six links that we're recommending to one another:

Civil servants' web habits revealed - BBC . "Just how far can a freedom of information act go? Pretty far, apparently. A formal request into government employees' online activity forced the UK Department of Transportation to disclose the 1000 sites its workers visit. Given the blurring between public and private lives in today's society, is this an invasion of privacy? Or just a sign of the New Transparency?" (Alistair for Hugh).

Plot Device Is a Viral Masterpiece - Mashable . "This video by Red Giant is a showcase for their video tools. But it's also a great film in its own right. Mashable thinks they nailed the viral video, and I tend to agree." (Alistair for Mitch).

The Robot-Readable World - Berg . "Matt Jones explores the ways in which design and esthetics will begin shifting as our devices - extensions of our eyes and ears and voices - start interacting with the world around them." (Hugh for Alistair).

How Google Dominates Us - The New York Review of Books . "If it's in The New York Review of Books , and if it's about technology, you should read it. This one is about Google reading our minds." (Hugh for Mitch).

Can New York Rival Silicon Valley? - The New York Times . "In a world of hyper-connectedness and the ability to run a multi-million dollar business on a MacBook Pro from the corner cafe, I'm constantly and consistently fascinated with the notion that for a start-up to make it, it has to go to Silicon Valley. Why is this? Why do humans have this traditional notion that a physical location creates better odds of success (especially when the product that is being created is digital)? It's an issue that was tackled in Montreal during the International Startup Festival and it's one that has now seeped into this highly interactive discussion over at The New York Times ." (Mitch for Alistair).

Pen Type-A : A minimal pen - Kickstarter . "If you wanted to design, produce and market a pen, where would you turn? I'm a huge fan of Kickstarter - a place where people can post their projects and offer those willing to fund it different levels of access and exclusive gifts. In this instance (which I found out about via Bob Lefsetz ), they were looking for $2500 in funding for their pen project. Currently, they're at over $210,000. Fascinating. People who love pens have an appetite for the unique and, clearly, these folks mis-read their market (in a good way). The other lesson is one of marketing: take a long look at how they posted this project - from the content and images to the choice of levels for funding that were created. This is a brilliant case study in Social Media, mass collaboration and the power of The Long Tail." (Mitch for Hugh).

Now it's your turn: in the comment section below pick one thing that you saw this week that inspired you and share it.

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