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May 11 2009

Ning Jujitsu: Nine Tips

May 11, 2009 – 2:38 pm

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Friends of Live Earth Senior Ambassador Alexandra Rampy and Ning’s Charles Porch.

Some of us on the Friends of Live Earth team recently had the opportunity to sit down with Charles Porch from ning, who gave some general pointers on network building best practices. Porch has worked with thousands of the 1.1 million communities now using the ning social community platform. So here’s your quick jujitsu:

1) The network should have a purpose. It shouldn’t be just a fan club, instead it should try to achieve something, and if it’s a nonprofit have a clear call-to-action.

2) Give them a welcome wagon. Make it personal and easy for people to come in. Let them feel welcome, give them tips, and allow them to move into the socnet naturally.

3) Give people clear ways to engage. Make it easy for them. Give them the power to engage in subgroups by topic and by region. Let them “spiff up” their own profile page. Provide people feedback mechanisms and loops. Ensure there are icebreakers for people to easily participate with.

4) Understand the push-pull effect. Never just push information, and always assume it’s a two-way conversation.

5) Enable people who want to be active. Provide ways to allow them to rise to the top and lead. Create a leaders group, feature most active and distinguished members, and allow people to become heroes!

6) Make the network a little sexy. People love video, photos and checking out other people’s profile pages. These are the features that people are most interested in. Use the latest activity stream to highlight the latest and hottest topics, content and media that community members discuss.

7) To start, keep it simple. You may not need every single feature on Ning to make the network successful. Add features as your network grows and function demands.

8) Commitment to the community means creating content and opportunities to talk regularly, from once a week to once an hour depending on the level of activity you have.

9) Consider creating some guidelines, too. Suggestions help people self regulate their own community.

What would you add to the list? Also, if you are interested in an even deeper information, check out this Ning Workshop which Charles recommends.

If you are interested in the Friends of Live Earth initiative, stay tuned or join the network. We are revamping the site currently, but there are some exciting things about to happen!

P.S. For the record, my work with Friends of Live Earth is strictly on a volunteer basis. I am not getting paid as Senior Advisor; I just believe in the cause that much, and have decided to spend a few months of my extracurricular time helping the good people organizing Live Earth.

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AddThis Social Bookmark Button By Geoff Livingston | Posted in Digital Marketing | Tagged , , , , , | Comments (1)
May 10 2009

Nice Guys Finish Last Online

May 10, 2009 – 7:11 am

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Copyblogger Brian Clark Presents at SOBCon

One of the more controversial sessions at SOBCon was the nice guys finish last [online] conversation, inspired by Brian Clark‘s discussion of classic positioning theory. The point: It’s better to be hated and known for a strong minority opinion than to be liked. One gets you discussed, read and positioned in the marketplace, while the other — especially if you are not already a thought leader in an established space — leaves you behind in the discussion. My experience and core beliefs subscribe to this theory.

Yet, when discussed in the session and online many people struggled with this topic right out of the gate for semantic reasons. As children, we are taught to be “nice” from the moment we enter public settings. But what is nice?

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Whether you see nice as being kind, pleasing, agreeable or delightful, no where do the terms opinionated, nonconforming, strong, objectionable, or dissenting get associated with the word. Yet these are things a thought leader must engage in to stay on top. To me, nice means safe. Safe does not mean winning. Winning means doing whatever is necessary to achieve a goal, and removing distractions and unrelated concerns from his/her life even when it hurts others.

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A thought leader must actually lead at times, and that means doing what’s uncomfortable and/or unpopular at moments. In such times words like “not nice,” a subjective opinion of tone and stance, are often bantied about. It’s my experience that such moments are when a thought leader is tested on character. Will he/she cave to the need to be popular and “liked,” or do they have the meddle to stand strong?

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This is as true online as it is offline. Great blogging and social media means delivering content and opinions that either rises above the pack or is separate and unique. And sometimes people — present company included — achieve that by saying what they truly believe, even when it flies in the face of everything people want to believe. Thus they are considered not “nice.”

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I’ve experienced this with my own adamant position that personal branding is a bad strategy for enterprises, and in the long term for individuals. As further examples I submit Jason Calacanis and Michael Arrington and their oft controversial, yet unquestioned market leadership.

Seeing as this is Mother’s Day and this is largely a semantical conversation, I’d like to offer another word out there to consider. That word is good, something or someone who is morally excellent, virtuous, righteous or pious. There’s a noticeable difference between being good and nice. I’d rather win and be good, than be nice. Nice guys finish last.

What do you think?

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AddThis Social Bookmark Button By Geoff Livingston | Posted in Digital Marketing | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments (20)
May 8 2009

My Big Hit This Week Wasn’t On The Blog

May 8, 2009 – 10:33 am

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This week I delivered a big hit in social media, but  it wasn’t on the blog.  It occurred on my Flickr blog in the form of SOBCon 09 pictures.  If you include photo views from Friday and Saturday at the conference, photos generated more than 4,000 views or almost 10% of my all time Flickr page traffic. So what does this mean from a content creation standpoint?

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Amber Porter Cox

There are a few obvious conclusions:

1) The best way to serve a community is to give them stuff they’re interested in.  The SOBCon content was great! But at the same time, part of meeting in such an environment is socializing.  And what better way to help people enjoy a social event than take great pictures of them so they can remember their time there? Photos are always a big hit at in person networking events.

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David Armano and his steed.

2) Learning how to use a media form well makes a big difference.  I tried video, and that was hard, but since evolving my photography skills from point and click to manual DSLR shots, my Flickr traffic has increased significantly. In fact, one of the hotel industry’s top blogs picked up my SOBCon Hotel 71 shot and ran it on their blog as a story.  I still have a lot to learn, but using a medium well can make a big difference.

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The View from Hotel 71

3) My blog writing sucked this week :) Truth hurts, huh?

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SOBConners Brat Pack: Shannon Paul, Brian Clark, Jason Falls, Zena Weist, Derek Halpern 

4) Thinking about other people is always the key to social media.  Liz Strauss reminded me of this at our Morton’s event and once again, it reminds me that others, not being smart, but others is what matters.

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Will English IV and Liz Strauss

5) Do what you love online. My favorite creative outlets have always been writing and painting.  I can’t pain anymore because I don’t have time, but photography is fulfilling that need.  Is it any coincidence that the two things I’m best at online are blogging and taking photos?  Do what you love online. Your natural desire and talent will shine through.

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Amber Naslund

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AddThis Social Bookmark Button By Geoff Livingston | Posted in Digital Marketing | Comments (7)
May 7 2009

Net Neutrality Still An Issue

May 7, 2009 – 7:59 am

Anyone involved in the Internet for a long time knows that net neutrality has been a long-term issue. Net Neutrality deals with the freedom of choice on which content we view on the Internet, as opposed to media or Internet companies selecting the content we should see or how content is “prioritized” for us. It’s an important issue that we in the business of media and communications need to stay on top of, and was the primary reason why last year’s BlogPotomac benefited the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

Geek Entertainment TV Maven and an old college buddy Irena Slutsky just ran her 200th episode, a serious take on Net Neutrality. She interviewed Dr. Tim Wu “the guy who even the FCC trusts to help them make fair laws about such things as the AT&T and BellSouth merger.” Irena said:

Professor Wu is credited with popularizing the concept of “network neutrality” in his 2003 paper Network Neutrality, Broadband Discrimination. In 2006, he co-authored the book, Who Controls the Internet? Network neutrality is essential to free speech, equal opportunity and economic innovation in America, so if you use the internet — or at least, if you watch porn on the internet — here’s your chance to learn exactly why you should care.

Check out this important video to get up to speed on Net Neutrality. And congratulations to Irena on what has been a very successful and continuing run with Geek Entertainment TV.

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AddThis Social Bookmark Button By Geoff Livingston | Posted in Digital Marketing | Comments (3)
May 5 2009

Newspapers Are Like Department Stores

May 5, 2009 – 11:41 pm

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There’s much crying about the fall of the major metropolitan newspaper, a process hastened by the severe economic recession. There are many reasons cited, from the rise of new media to poor change management. Yet one can see a similar pattern in recent history, when another mass market product — the department store — also succumbed to the pressures of smaller, more nimble competitors (Original Image: Hamburgers 1920 by army.arch).

For department stores, many chains found their death in a trojan horse — the mall. With the rise of the mall, department stores were asked to anchor these megaplexes. But inside the smaller stores were more nimble, better competitors who specialized in deeper lines of products. Electronics, women’s shoes, hardware, whatever it was, from big box to pretzels chains took shoppers away from many department stores.

Ironically, like the mall, the Internet was supposed to be the future of newspapers. But for some reason the 90s passed and the opportunity was never realized. Perhaps that crack known as print advertising was just too good to give up. Or maybe, change was really that hard.

At the same time, technology enabled easy publishing in the form of weblogs and new influentials rose to the fore. The best voices offered new writing styles and ways of thinking about specialized topics. Often these topics were not covered by the mass newspaper or general industry trade. Social networks like Twitter, StumbleUpon and Digg hasten the speed and widespread delivery of these specialized content creators. Within years, social media voices rose to challenge and endanger the traditional news model.

Often the quality of these voices has been called in question when compared to older, more traditional media. The truth about blogs and other forms of new media: The cream of the crop is really good. They have standards of excellence, and the voices are often subject matter experts, even former journalists.

Considering the larger dynamics at play, newspapers that are suffering probably should be. Like their industrial era department store counterparts, they are slow and ineffective. The product is often lacking in relevance.

When was the last time a metropolitan newspaper had a consistently relevant business section for the region day in day out? Or for that matter, when did each individual reader really want all of those sections? On the Internet, we can choose from the best voices in each of our own subject matter interests. Even if it is stamp collecting.

Just like the best department stores, the best newspapers will survive this time. But they will likely need to evolve to some extent and meet the times. And with the economic waters puncturing so many hulls, newspaper veterans may have no choice but to choose a new course.

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AddThis Social Bookmark Button By Geoff Livingston | Posted in Digital Marketing | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Comments (15)
May 4 2009

Ch-Ch-Changes

May 4, 2009 – 4:09 pm

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When you have a regular readership, it’s important to communicate changes.  With the CRT/tanaka acquisition, Marinel Mones and Michael Nelson, and their features Great Blogs of Fire and Buzz Meter will move over to the main company blog effective tomorrow.  Their features will augment the senior leadership’s regular entries and provide the industry a regular, valuable look into the changing space of communications. I hope you’ll continue to support them (cheese by Laura Martinez).

That means for the first time in more than two years, the Buzz Bin will become a one man show, similar to Todd Defren’s PR Squared or Toby Bloomberg’s Diva Marketing blog.  As such, there’s no way I can commit to a post everyday, but you can count on about three posts a week. 

In addition, I may shed a little more light into some of my extracurricular activities as they relate to communications and/or social causes. Don’t expect the mundane personal details, though.  There’s a neglected personal blog for that.

202px-Live_Earth_Logo08  One of those projects you can expect to hear about is Live Earth 2009. I’ve accepted a volunteer role as Senior Advisor for Social Media with Live Earth, and look forward to helping this year’s effort become a smashing success. 

To make room for this effort, I’ve also tabled the book Social Media for Social Good for the time being. I’m sorry to those who have expressed an interest in this effort.  The Live Earth opportunity is a once in a lifetime chance to use my skills for good, and for the cause I care deepest about – the environment.  Besides, the front-line experience of architecting and marshalling a social media effort on this kind of scale will provide invaluable insights into a next book. I promise to share my experience and hope!

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AddThis Social Bookmark Button By Geoff Livingston | Posted in Digital Marketing | Comments (5)

SOBCon Presentation: Integrating Social Media into the Larger Mix

May 4, 2009 – 12:20 am

The SOBCON presentation “Integrating Social Media into the Larger Mix” that I gave on Saturday sparked quite a discussion at the event as well as on Twitter. Here is a brief narrative version to accompany the deck, which is also embedded in this post.

Integrating Social Media – SobCon 09 Presentation
View more presentations from geoliv.

Integrated marketing communications (IMC) theory and campaigns were very common until the disruptive nature of social media. IMC was a big movement in the 90s to ensure that all outbound communications worked together. For example, AOL used banner ads, store displays, direct mail CDs, newspaper inserts, PR, etc. to become the number one dial-up service in America.

As social media has arisen, we’ve come across the strange duopoly of social media experts who are tactically proficient and corporate communicators who don’t know what to do with two-way communications. The resulting confluence creates a stand-alone silo where social media is experimented with and regarded as a shiny object. In essence, it’s not safe to (or unfathomable to) integrate social media as part of the natural, larger communications mix.

The problem lies in that people don’t consume media in a single-track fashion. People don’t use just Twitter, they participate in multiple social media conversations in different places. Further, they use more than just social media. They read traditional media properties, watch TV, see billboard ads, listen to the radio, etc., etc. It’s a multichannel world.

Complicating this matter is the ROI problem. Business efforts in social media are confounded by how to demonstrate actual results that impact the bottom line or drive perception change. It’s really hard to make a conversation into something more than that… Unless you can create ways and means for people to do more than just talk.

That provides the ideal opportunity to use social media and content as a form of relationship building and attraction. Coupled with non-intrusive “soft-sell” calls-to-action provided through more traditional forms of media, conversations can become more and turn into “results.” In that sense, the social media conversation turns into the top of a self-identified prospect funnel. To progress deeper into the funnel, our stakeholders have to trust our organizations and the people behind them. Then they may want to opt into a deeper conversation or discussion.

Here are some forms of traditional calls-to-action that can be used:

  • Email
  • Webinars
  • White papers
  • Events
  • Offers
  • Ads
  • Loyalist activities

    • Of course, social media can be used as a call to action within traditional forms of communication. It only makes sense. Again, consider that people don’t single track their media usage. So as communicators, why should we?

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    AddThis Social Bookmark Button By Geoff Livingston | Posted in Digital Marketing | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments (11)