Archive for October, 2007
Daily reading 10/31/2007
October 31, 2007Blog swarm engulfing AT&T; how will it respond?
October 26, 2007A blog swarm is developing at this very moment over AT&T’s boneheaded decision to charge a California couple for a satellite dish they failed to remove from their home as they were fleeing the wildfires in California. Consumerist picked up the story, and it’s been viewed more than 11,000 times at this writing. There are already over 600 diggs, just within the first couple of hours. You can see the video from a local news station here.
Consumerist visitors are already using the incident to tee off on the much-hated cable companies. But that’s old news. What will be interesting is to watch AT&T’s reaction as this hits the national media. If it’s smart, AT&T will fall on its sword, apologize profusely and not only forgive the debt but set the couple up with a new satellite dish and maybe a couple years’ worth of service to boot. There’s no doubt people in AT&T PR are already aware of this story. Are they scrambling to respond or are they frozen by approvals and indecision? Keep an eye on Consumerist to see how this plays out.
Thanks to Dianna Huff for the tip.
Update 10/27/07: ZDNet blogger Russell Shaw posts a comment from a Dish Network spokeswoman saying the whole thing is a mistake and the California couple won’t be charged for the dish. AT&T also responded to Consumerist. It’ll be interesting to see if this story just goes away now. It’s up to over 1,900 diggs.
More AMA Webinar questions answered
October 26, 2007
Here are more responses to questions that time didn’t permit me to answer during the AMA Marketing Seminar on Oct. 15. Each of these permalinks is tagged “AMA” so you can easily group them together. Thanks to everyone for coming and for asking such great questions. More to come!
Q: Stacie asks, “How will social media play out with healthcare vs. consumer products?”
A: Very differently. People typically want to consult with expert advisers on healthcare decisions and their relationships with those people are important. They’re much less likely to turn to anonymous sources for life-and-death matters. That said, the Internet has played and will continue to play an important role in alternative medicine, wellness and background research. Social media will have an important role in helping people diagnose problems, choose courses of treatment and seek alternatives.
In consumer products, social media is already playing a huge role in evaluation and purchase activity. The CEO of Procter & Gamble told the Association of National Advertisers last year that they have to stop trying to control the message. “Consumers are more participative and selective and the trend from push to pull is accelerating,” he said. Those are strong words coming from the world’s largest consumer products company.
Q: Anne asks, ”Doesn’t social networking skew younger? And, do these networks apply to B2B marketers?”
A: Yes, the most active users of social networks are unquestionably people under the age of 30. If you’re an entertainment, food or clothing company, you’re probably already using these media because that’s where your audience is.
In some markets, though, social media is making a big impact on older age groups, and particularly in b-to-b markets. The information technology market is one of the most active users of blogs and podcasts, for example, and it’s almost entirely a b-to-b business. The travel and hospitality industry is using interactive marketing to reach business people with specific interests, such as frequent travelers and corporate event planners. Professional associations like the Air Conditioning Contractors of America and the National Association of Manufacturers are blogging to promote their members. There will be more examples of this as the younger population grows up and begins to apply the tools they use at home to their business roles.
Q: Patience asks “So why did you choose to not self-publish?”
A: I believe this question is in response to a comment I made about Lulu.com and similar sites that making self-publishing of books fast and relatively inexpensive. There are advantages to working with a commercial publisher, including an established distribution network, retail store presence and a certain cachet that comes from having a publisher endorse your work. This leads to intangible business opportunities that have nothing to do with royalties. You can definitely make more money self-publishing, though. If you don’t particularly care about building a speaking or consulting business, but just want to get a message out, self-publishing gives you more control and potentially bigger profits.
Q: Brent asks, “Are there similar influencers in Europe, Asia-Pacific, and Latin America?”
A: Yes, although to different degrees. In fact, the number one language in the blogosphere is Japanese, according to Technorati’s State of the Live Web report. Korea and Japan have a much higher penetration of broadband into the home than the U.S. does, and a very active culture of bloggers and social networkers as a result. Korea’s OhMyNews.com is the largest experiment in community journalism on the Internet.
In Europe, the blogosphere is very healthy, although my evidence is purely anecdotal. I run across blogs in Danish, German, French and other languages I don’t even recognize all the time. Two of the most interesting corporate blogs are published by Benetton and Ducati motorcycles, both in Italy.
I can’t speak to Latin-America specifically. The economy is not as strong in many of those countries as in the U.S., Europe and the Pacific Rim, so broadband penetration is lower. The Technorati blog tracks blogs by language and can give you some useful statistics.
Q: Anne asks, “How do apply this to local or regional marketing? Yelp, for instance is very biased, and doesn’t feel trustworthy the way that a more neutral, traditional third party does.”
A: I’m not sure I agree with your comments about Yelp. That site is simply a conduit for its members to post reviews of restaurants and entertainment spots. While such a system is always vulnerable to manipulation, the number of reviews that Yelp lists for some properties is remarkable. In general, the more reviews there are, the more reliable the average rating should be.
You should always be leery of peer-review systems in which only a few people have commented. It’s like research: you should probably through out the extremes at both ends of the scale, because those people may have an agenda.
As far as regional marketing goes, I’d just point out that some of the most active social networks are regional. Going.com, Yelp and eCrush are just three of the many networks that target people who are looking for entertainment and companionship. Also, regional interests like sports and politics are magnets for local audiences.
Daily reading 10/26/2007
October 26, 2007Jeff Jarvis on the new Dell Annotated
Daily reading 10/25/2007
October 25, 2007New England bloggers talk shop
October 23, 2007I walked in late to a session on business blogging hosted by blogger and Boston Globe columnist Scott Kirsner. Panelists were:
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Don Dodge, Director of Business Development, Microsoft Emerging Business Team, and blogger; |
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Barbara Heffner, partner at CHEN PR and blogger |
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Nabeel Hyatt, CEO at Conduit Labs and blogger |
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Bijan Sabet, venture capitalist at Spark Capital and blogger, |
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Jimmy Guterman, Editor of Release 2.0 and blogger, O’Reilly Radar |
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Scott Kirsner, Boston Globe “Innovation Economy” columnist and blogger |
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Chuck Tanowitz, director, Schwartz Communications and blogger |
Here are my rather stream-of-consciousness notes on the discussion
Kirsner asks: “Why do you blog?”
Responses include:
Hyatt: It fills the space between press releases
Sabet: Great way to communicate with colleagues across the country
Hyatt: We have 10 employees nd four of them blog. We have internal editors go over all the entries. It may sound weird, but my opinion is that anyone who’s writing for the NY Times is writing on behalf of the NY Times. We want anything we release to be collective.
Kirsner says (jokingly) that the Globe probably hasn’t noticed his blog yet. I didn’t want to wait six months to start writing it. To have the Globe logo on the blog has issues of oversight and I don’t want that. I think I have the same standards for the blog as for the column, but there are things you can post there that you can’t put in the column. In other words, he applies journalistic standards, but is a little freer about language on the blog.
Jimmy Guterman notes that Kirsner’s blog voice is more engaging than his Globe voice. One of the appealing things about corporate blogs is that they better reflect the voice of the writer.
Don Dodge says 60% of his traffic comes from Google. He could write what he writes on a corporate website and wouldn’t get anywhere near that traffic. “For anyone starting a company, I would highly recommend that you blog. You will get far more juice from that than from having a company website.”
Dodge worked at Alta Vista at one point and knows about search. Some blogs get searched every hour and some get indexed once a week or once a month. Frequency of update relates to search engine performance (something I was unaware of).
Barb Heffner says her agency treats bloggers generally as they do other journalists.
Kirsner asks who’s more powerful: TechCrunch or the WSJ? Barb says Journal is an enterprise sell and TechCrunch is a consumer sell. Both powerful in their own way.
Audience member notes that you should read the blog before sending an e-mail to a blogger. “It’s extraordinary the number of e-mails I get who haven’t read my blog. From that perspective, there’s no difference between a journalist and a blogger.” Heffner says good PR practices apply equally in the blogosphere.
Don Dodge tells of bumping into Robert Scoble, who had two suggestions: put your name in the title and put your picture on the blog. “Those two things made an amazing difference. If your picture isn’t there, you can walk down the halls and no one will know who you are. If your picture is there, everyone knows who you are.”
Bijan Sabet says one of his favorite blogs is Flickr. Every now and then he wants to quick Flickr, but the genuineness of the blog keeps him coming back. He says he just invested in a company where the founder decided not to use PR but to use a blog instead. They wrote all their entries last week and were ready to go, but the bloggers picked it up before the embargo ended. “we’ve had a fair share of press releases that have gone out on the wire and I don’t see much return from that. We had one investment company get picked up on Engadget and got a 14:1 return versus a mention on TechCrunch.”
Barb Heffner warns against ghost-writing CEO blogs.
Nabeel notes that a lot of technologists aren’t great writers, and that’s why they need some oversight and editing. We’ve got people who are great and passionate in front of an audience, but when he sits down to write, he’s pretty timid.”
Dan Bricklin notes that not everybody writes well, but maybe they should be doing podcasts. That’s part of the job of marketing and PR people: figure out what’s the best way to get the message across. He cites a great podcast by the head of the US Navy. If you listened to it, you wouldn’t be surprised by what he said to the press.
Scott Kirsner asks how metrics-obsessed people are…
Author of 93South blog says he bought an iPhone so he could check his traffic while driving. “I used to check two or three times a day, but I’ve learned over the past six months to let go because I’m not doing it for traffic. I’m doing it to speak.”
Guterman notes that metrics are misleading. They tell you different things. “It’s as misleading as an author who writes a book and then starts checking his Amazon ranking 30 times a day. There’s a lot of talk about authenticity, but people confusing authenticity with spontaneity. Don’t think of a blog as a way to get around having to think about what you’re writing.”
Audience member George Jenkins writes a blog about identity theft. “I write because I’m passionate about the subject. I’ve had a lot of fun meeting people through the blog. I know that people from IBM visit my site (he worked at IBM at one time) but they’re reluctant to comment.”
Scott Kirsner tells of an executive taking him to task for something he said on the blog. He spoke to the exec on the phone and recommended the guy comment on the blog but it was clear that the exec was uncomfortable doing that.
Bijan says he has a Technorati addiction. “Blogging software is still one-way, it’s not two-way enough. We need to surface links from one blog to another.”
An audience member from Sphere asks whether people are using widgets to drive traffic.
Bijan says widgets are useful for driving traffic. “I’ll put them on my site for a while to see if people are engaging with them.”
Nabeel Hyatt says that when his company recently did A-round funding, they posted on a blog instead of issuing a press release. “We saw a ton of traffic, and by watching the inbound link, we learned of small competitors we had never seen before. Perhaps they thought no one was watching, but I was.” He says he’s addicted to MyBlogLog for its widget that tells who’s coming to the site. There’s about a 5% higher return rate from visitors who like to see their faces there.
Bijan says he’s seeing 3-4% CTR from Feedburner. He signed up to be an Amazon affiliate, so he does a lot of geeky product reviews (gives the money to charity). That leads to a few good-sized transactions every month.
A discussion ensues about taking gifts from businesses, quid pro quo and disclosure. Don Dodge tells of meeting Patriots owner Bob Kraft at a conference, ending up with free tickets to a Patriots game and still writing a critical article about the Patriots.
Guterman says disclosure isn’t enough. Just revealing your affiliations doesn’t excuse extreme bias. You can’t assume people notice your disclosures. Don’t let yourself be influenced and don’t take the graft.
Sabet notes that people come to his blog to read about the companies he’s funding and he sees no problem with promoting those companies. “You have to give the reader credit. The reader isn’t assuming that the venture capitalist isn’t biased.”
Discussion turns to most popular topics. Don Dodge notes that one of his most popular was about 1% of the search market being worth $1 billion. But the number one post of all time was a reference to a porn video site. “I know how to get a lot of traffic if I wanted to, but I don’t do it for that reason.” Traffic alone isn’t that important to him.
Dan Bricklin says some things lend themselves to video. He went to see Vern Rayburn, who’s got a factory that makes jets. “The only way to really show people was to take the video and let people hear Vern’s voice. Sometimes the short, two-minute form is what you need.” Kirsner says it’s hard to drive traffic to Internet video.
Dodge says we’ve been conditioned to professional standards by TV. Your standards are high. Most people who try to do video on a blog stink compared to TV.
Kirsner says the most watched video on YouTube is Evolution of Dance, which was filmed by an amateur and looks it.
Dodge says he tried to convince Robert Scoble not to go to video. He’s a great blogger, but when he went to video, his traffic fell to 10%.
Newspapers have been own worst enemies
October 23, 2007James Lee, senior VP and chief public affairs officer at ChoicePoint, spoke at the PRSA International Conference today about ChoicePoint’s experience with the theft of 145,000 customer records in 2005.
It was an interesting study in crisis management, but what stuck me the most was comments by him and the audience about their lousy experiences with reporters. Examples:
- The Atlanta Journal-Constitution ran a story four days after news of the theft broke that claimed that ChoicePoint’s CEO was hiding from the media. In fact, Lee said, the CEO had been unusually open to the media, compared to executives at other companies in that situation. He had given several media interviews, but was unavailable when the Journal-Constitution reporter called. The paper’s story was the only one to accuse the CEO of evasiveness.
- ChoicePoint wanted to make a careful distinction between theft of data and a hack, because the latter term implies a computer security vulnerability. This is an important distinction to investors and regulators. However, one west coast newspaper had a policy of referring to all information thefts as “hacks,” regardless of the nature of the breach. This made ChoicePoint’s problem look worse than it really was.
- Pressure to file on deadline forces reporters to seek opinion instead of facts because opinion is easier to get. “In the real world, it takes time to find facts,” Lee said. “If you don’t have facts immediately, they’ll find some [pundit] with an opinion.” Early impressions tend to stick, which means that subsequent facts are buried or ignored.
- Media outlets throw business stories to inexperience reporters, who don’t understand the fine points of an often complex story and need to be educated under deadline, leading to errors and misunderstanding.
- News outlets nearly always stick by their story, even when the evidence is overwhelming that they’re wrong.
- These problems are only getting worse as newsrooms cut staff and competition compresses deadlines.
PR people have to deal with the media constantly and so are more likely to have gripes with the media, but the level of frustration surprised me, nevertheless. This is one reason mainstream media gets so little sympathy for its current woes. Years of arrogance have left it with very few friends at a time when it could use a few.
Your questions answered: AMA webinar follow-up
October 18, 2007I had the pleasure of being the guest speaker on and American Marketing Association webinar sponsored by Aquent early this week. We had a great audience — more than 750 people attended — and there were more than 20 questions that I was unable to answer because of time limitations. I’ll answer each of them in a series of blog posts over the next few days. Each of these permalinks will be tagged “AMA” so you can easily group them together. Thanks to everyone for coming and for asking such great questions.
Q: [At one point, I referred to a story told by blogger Robert Scoble about a technology vendor who told him that a single link on his blog drew far more response than an article in a prominent technology magazine.] Jennifer asks, “How did the software company evaluate the influence of Scoble’s blog?”
A: Simply by traffic to the page linked to by Scoble. This is one of the great benefits of social media marketing: you can easily track referring links from other sites and quickly figure out who is sending you traffic. This is standard information that all Web analytics software provides. Obviously, the people who are sending you the most traffic are the people who should get more of your attention and outreach.
Q: Lidia asks, “I would like to know your opinion related to the large influence this phenomena is having on small kids that are exposed to these new media sites like clubpenguin, etc. How will these affect their personality, their habits, etc?
A: I’m not a psychologist, and it’s impossible to predict the indirect impact of the behaviors that social media sites are creating. I believe that a few changes are inevitable:
- Kids will define their relationships very differently, with geography being much less important than in the past. They are already learning to form rich and meaningful relationships with people they have never met, solely through the use of digital technology. They care little about where their friends live as long as they can communicate about topics of mutual interest. If you take this to its logical conclusion, you can see that national boundaries will become less important to relationships in the future. It seems to me that that’s a good thing.
- Kids will grow up expecting to be constantly connected and to always have information at their fingertips. Call it the Wikipedia generation. This is completely different from the world of previous generations. Today’s kids will expect to be able to access whatever information they want within a few seconds, and will be frustrated and angry when it’s unavailable. This will put pressure on institutions to open up and give people access to whatever information they need to make a decision. Again, this sounds pretty good to me.
- There’s a possibility the kids will grow up being less worldly and less well-rounded than generations that preceded them because of their ability to filter information they consume. I’m hoping that natural curiosity counteracts this trend, but the declining influence of mainstream media may create a generation that is more insular and less aware of world issues than previous generations.
- There’s a risk of negative health consequences caused by a more sedentary lifestyle. There’s no question in my mind that the current epidemic of childhood obesity is due, at least in part, to the pervasive use of video games and online entertainment instead of physical recreation. It will be up to parents, schools and government to encourage physical activity by kids who don’t have as much incentive to get out and play anymore. I don’t think we’re seeing as much progress in this area as we need to, and it concerns me.
I’m sure there will be many other long-term effects of this new digital lifestyle, some good and some bad. I think the breaking down of cultural and geographic barriers, though, will be a very positive development.
Q: Charlayne asks, “How does a company build “blog” integrity without sounding as if they are their own advertisement? How does a company build positive brand awareness via a blog?”
A: I’ll answer the first part of that question by simply saying don’t use your blog to sell. The purpose of a business blog should be to engage with customers and prospects around information that is of mutual interest. Use it to expose smart people in your company, discuss issues in the market, identify customer needs and seek feedback on your products and priorities. Don’t use it to deliver advertisements; if you do, no one will read it and you will quickly lose interest yourself.
The second question is very large and could be the subject of a book. In fact, it is the subject of several books. I’d recommend Naked Conversations by Scoble and Israel; Marketing to the Social Web by Weber; What No One Ever Tells You About Blogging and Podcasting by Demopoulos, The Corporate Blogging Book by Weil; and The New Rules of Marketing and PR by Scott. It’s impossible to summarize the advice contained in all of these volumes, so I will simply recommend that you pick any one of them and dive in.
- post by pgillin