The Marketing Edge, one of the longest running marketing and public relations podcasts.
Host Albert Maruggi weaves his 25 years of marketing and PR experience across business, technology and national public affairs in interviews with newsmakers, authors and business leaders.
Maruggi is a frequent speaker and conducts workshop sessions on new media. For more information or to discuss your business challenges and goals, e-mail him.
Our last tweet up before pulling into Austin is the morning of March 12 in Wichita at the Donut Whole. 7:30am – 8:30am. I’m told they have a bacon maple donut that’s TDF.
We’ll do profile pieces on innovators in social media and mobile applications in the Midwest. We’ll capture conversations about what’s working and what’s next in business and consumer technology. During the coverage of South by Southwest I will get into some of the challenging topics including, the next phase for journalism, whether greater community participation is necessary for the social web to grow, and how will life change when more than half the web connections are made with a mobile device.
Oh yes and of course TShirts, plenty of TShirts. I can chuck the map, I’ve got turn-by-turn directions. Special thanks to Verizon Wireless for sponsoring this coverage.
March 8, 2010 at 1:05 pm
· Filed under PR, marketing
Time 22:50
The second printing of best selling author David Meerman Scott’sNew Rules of Marketing and PR demonstrates A) these rules work and B) it’s OK to learn as we go. In this conversation with David, we discover that another one of the rules is ideas are fluid and when even two people focus on a topic, preconceived notions can change, and concepts can germinate into the next great case study.
The New Rules of Marketing and PR include participating in the communities with which you do business, not talking at them. Don’t worry we’ll put this in a nice list for retweeting and SEO purposes. The label David applied to this concept is “Brand Journalism” and it’s a hybrid of what trade journalists and thoughtful marketers have tried to do in the nineties. The key here is for companies to consider information that has news value and not just company/shareholder value. Information about the latest widget or big name customer being in the latter category and a more thorough conversation about issues that include technological advances, government regulation, or the ways society is changing to interact with products being in the former category. When a company’s perspective of what’s news expands, so does their number of mentions and conversations. Public relations practitioners can and should expand their thinking of news value, review the online discussions and contribute where appropriate. Not just in news release form, but in the infinite ways their creativity will take them, because any format, any locale, and any audience is now affordable and reachable.
David’s Brand Journalism idea may result in an actual job position I call the “embedded corporate journalist”, a paraphrase from the journalist embedded with military units in the Iraq War. This leads to understanding a situation more thoroughly so you can report it with perhaps greater sensitivity and depth. This is of greatest benefit if the entity being reported on seeks its audience to have greater understanding of its rationale rather than an entity that believes PR and news is a broadcast.
David’s work is insightful and I trust our conversation in this episode of the Marketing Edge is for you. Here is my take on ways to consider the New Rules of Marketing and PR
1) Who Cares? – Find out who cares about your stuff, not just mentions of your brand (that’s so narrow) but things that comprise the universe in which your company operates.
2) Do You Care? – Consider whether your entity really cares about opinions outside of the organization? Seems like a simple question, however, your lip service radar needs to be tuned in with reality here. If they are not, the New Rules of Marketing and PR will read like a novel, not a guide to your success.
3) Can We Try? – Analysis paralysis is a function of group think. We are not landing planes or experimenting with a deadly virus. We are having a conversation and no one will be injured. The prerequisites then are thoughtful, sensitive to community, readily engage comments, and be prepared to acknowledge a short coming. The rest will work itself out.
Practicing What We Preach
On a similar note, I will be covering South by Southwest this week and next on these pages. It’s a similar note because Verizon Wireless is sponsoring the trip. We will feature stories about social media innovators from the Midwest who are attending SxSw. We’ll focus on stories that I believe are hot topics for 2010, mobile applications, location based services, and the mobile web space. We are also doing some fun events and playing with neat gadgets during the week. I am road tripping to Austin with Social Media Breakfast Minneapolis/St. Paul founder Rick Mahn. His trip is sponsored by Tungle the web-based scheduling platform. We’ll be using a variety of Verizon mobile devices including the Droid, Motorola Eris, Palm Pre and Pixi, the Devour and tap into the Verizon Mifi when no wireless is around.
I suggest this project has the elements of the type of interaction the New Rules of Marketing and PR says are what is needed to engage communities.
It’s a classic a case of hip-notic marketing. Be the carrier of valued (entertaining) content, then the subject of the piece is the premium product you now desire and can purchase. Brilliant!
This is a two part series on the Marketing Edge highlighting mobile computing from the developers’ perspective and from the marketers’ perspective. I suggest that mobile is not a platform upon which to put information, but a condition that exists between data, a person’s location, and the action that person will take as a result of obtaining that information at that specific point in space. I could get into Einstein’s who spacetime thing, but you’d know I’d be blowing smoke so let’s not go there.
An example is if you received traffic information of delays relative to your location you are likely to take action. This is a different way to consider your information as a marketer, mobile becomes a dynamic concept of information in a specific context instead of a distribution channel. I also believe it further forces marketers to rank their information based on its value to the recipient rather than the quantitative measurement of eye-ball counting to determine effectiveness.
With that foundation, let’s first talk in part one of this Marketing Edge podcast about development with Minneapolis-based mobile developer Justin Grammens and founder of Recursive Awesome. He is one of the organizers of Mobile March, a day long conference on March 27 held in Minneapolis, at the Hilton Garden Inn Hotel.
Why should anyone care about development on mobile platforms? In part because more than half of web connections will be done over a mobile device by 2013, Gartner analysts assert the combined installed base of smartphones and browser-equipped enhanced phones will exceed 1.82 billion units and will be greater than the installed base for PCs thereafter.
This means mobile is a trend not a fad. So why talk on the Marketing Edge about development? Because understanding the dynamic competition among development platforms will guide marketing decisions. There is a battle raging for the platform upon which to develop applications and 2009 saw Apple overtake Windows Mobile operating system and Android burst on the scene with the power of Goggle behind it making 2010 an awesome year to be buying a smartphone. This year choice abounds and applications and network reliability will be a factor.
Lastly, mobile is a growth area for careers. Mobile development is the 2010 answer to web development in the nineties. It’s more complicated however, with more complex programming languages to understand and some developers might even say more complex rules for getting your application approved and sold.
Win a Mobile March Pass
Provident Partners will give one listener/reader a complimentary registration pass worth $20 to Mobile March, enter the drawing by sending an email to MarketingEdge AT ProvidentPartners dot Net with the words Mobile March in the subject line. Do it before March 24.
Do you view mobile as a different distribution channel or a completely different relationship between information and user?
February 28, 2010 at 5:45 pm
· Filed under social media
Social media is at its best when people come together. That was the case when I met Joel Price, the manager of interactive services for the NFL’s San Diego Chargers at the February meeting of the Social Media Breakfast San Diego. Joel, who can also be found on Twitter @joelprice, is the guest on this episode of the Marketing Edge, which we produced on video. Joel takes us through some interesting topics around the tools they use including Twitter, Facebook, and even an efficient way to use Posterous as a news release distribution system.
Think of the unique challenges of social media in professional sports:
Vocal fan base (yes fans come in all sizes and dispositions on any given day)
Huge amount of content under a variety of licenses and parameters
Not the only game in town, these days there is intense competition for disposable income and sports is a entertainment/hospitality combination
The players themselves are social media celebrities
One might think it’s a double edged sword. Me thinks social media is not only perfect for sports, but mandatory. And here’s why:
It’s all about fans following the team and players, right? sound familiar
Candid conversation, from bars to talk radio, tailgates to multiplayer Xbox Madden draft day, bring on the topics. It’s the one category of conversation universally allowed to be raised in any venue, even church.
Personal brands, yes every player is one and the type of interaction players have with the fans will have an impact on revenue, don’t believe me, ask any parent who’s kid just got an autograph.
Tweeting while you work (game time) or about sensitive information (personnel changes before they are official) can be a dicey situation that require clear policy guidelines for sure. However, the overwhelming majority of the time, social media is a unique communications experience and an extension of what has gone in for a hundred years in sports. My father would tell me when growing up in New York, it would not be uncommon to see members of the Yankees, Giants, or Dodgers around town. Those days may be gone, but that’s where social media can bring the fans closer to the players and still accommodate the barriers erected by celebrity in the 21st century.
Some in professional sports are a bit confident and out spoken, no surprises here right? Ozzie Guillen, manager of the Chicago White Sox, was ruffling some feathers because of his Tweets. I say that’s a bit odd, you let the guy give press conferences, yet you are nervous about Twitter?
What’s your take, if you owned a team, what would your policy be for your players? Remember, every comment we get, Provident Partners gives a food item to a St. Paul, MN food shelter.
This podcast is part of the Marketing Edge series of conversations with speakers at the NewComm Forum, April 20-23. This comprehensive conference produced by the Society for New Communications Research is one of the best events of the year covering social media, networks, and policies. It is a packed agenda and if you register use the promo code NCFPPP to save money off the registration price. In this podcast we feature Eric Schwartzman, who helps corporations and large government agencies establish social media policies.
Many a social media speaker will suggest that the rules regarding employee’s public discussions about the affairs of an employer are covered in most HR personnel documents. Whether those discussions take place over the telephone, been around since the late 1800s, or on social networks – I heard Andy Sernovitz talk about creating a policy that simply adds social media to the list of communications devices in public disclosure documents email, fax, telephone, social media. And yes in general that is quite true, we need not make this more complicated than necessary. When it comes to the issue of individual employees and their public disclosure about company information, a whisper at a trade show booth is no different than a Tweet ahead of the quarterly earnings report.
Great, now that we’ve established social media from the context of distribution channels, let’s examine the potential details of a policy across an organization with tens of thousands of employees with sensitive information, a visible brand, involved in controversial issues and now essentially conducting customer service in public. Yes, this requires a little bit more thought. Should there be official blogs or should everyone be allowed to blog? should there be a corporate blogging platform? Should there be a corporate workflow process to handle customer service type social comments? What are the enforcement, monitoring and punitive policies?
In this podcast with Eric Schwartzman and I highlight Eric’s presentation to the NewComm Forum. His presentation entitled Building a Social Media Policy covers the ups and downs of securing consensus and how social media involves a bit of change management to create a successful policy.
Does your company have a separate policy for social media or is social media included as another distribution channel for corporate information?
We donate a food item to a St. Paul, MN food shelf for every comment we get on this blog.
Marketing Edge World Wide Rave Book Contest Winner
Cathy Dunham a Marketing Edge podcast listener from Lannan, WI. She listens to the podcast with her colleagues at KKom Marketing. We’ll send out the book World Wide Rave by David Meerman Scott to you this week. Cathy thanks as well for your email compliments on this piece about generating leads with social media. If lead generation is a a topic of interest give a listen to Swartzman’s interview with the CEO of Slideshare about using that presentation community platform as a forum for thought leadership. His podcast is called On The Record Online.
The Marketing Edge podcast will also have more with David Meerman Scott. we’ll have him on a upcoming episode of the Marketing Edge podcast about the second edition of his book New Rules of Marketing and PR. The New Rules of Marketing and PR is available now.
As I watched the Super Bowl the talk online was about the commercials and brands. The online chatter focused on the medium and interruptive ads. Although I’d be hard pressed to say that these ads were an interruption, at least during the Super Bowl, ads are eagerly awaited, a rarity surely in the world of advertising.
I learned more about social media by watching the game. The game was a reflection of the crossroads at which corporate communications and marketing stand today. The choice to go by the book, stick to what’s been done, surely it worked in the past, but it’s been done; or the choice to be different, to be daring in the face of predictability. The choice to go against “conventional wisdom,” the choice to do something that will make people talk.
That’s right talk
What Da? he’s not going for the field goal? Did you see that,?! The Saints didn’t kick the sure 3 points in the second quarter. What Da, off sides kick to start the half? Who Dat? They must have believed in their product eh?
Second guessers, the world is full of ‘em in every profession, on every topic. Detractors, every company and every product has them, even if it’s because the product is perfect. Some people don’t think Michael Jordan is all that, they are not Jordan fans. I am not one of them, but I have run into a few.
So now that we’ve accepted the fact that we can’t please everyone and there will be critics. What are we going to do to make people talk? There is an old expression people would use to convey that the product or experience they had was mediocre, it goes, “It was nothing to write home about.” Isn’t that the antithesis of social media, I must give you something to write home about.
Well the Saints gave us something to write home about and on blogs, on Twitter, on forums, on YouTube etc etc etc. And if they lost, their decisions would still be the ingredients of our content. Why? Because they dared to be different, they dared to have confidence in their skills, their preparation, and each other. Aren’t those the attributes you want a company to have? Those attributes bring freedom.
Freedom to accept the results of your decision, freedom to try something new, freedom to believe your fans (Superdome fans or Facebook fans) will understand you.
This is the essence of being a social company, not just implementing social tactics, but truly being a social company. Why, because social media is everywhere and growing. Companies that get high marks for the social strategies are usually not those that play it safe, it’s those that play it straight. Of course mistakes will happen, own them. Of course your customer may have a better idea than the creative employee making six figures, embrace it. Of course you have hundreds of people that like what you do, give them a forum.
Thanks Sean Payton and the New Orleans Saints for breaking another barrier in this new century. A century that is shedding light on the illusions of the last century. The Illusion that we can’t really control or predict the future, but that we can only prepare for the present and react to what it gives us. Dreams can be more powerful than plans.
Alleluia the Mass Market is alive and well, we have rediscovered the masses. This is good news for all those companies that watched their mass market target disperse like cockroaches when you turn on the lights. Now the bad news, the path to reach them is through 1 percent of the people that participate on-line in social media – content creators, commenters, and communities. In this podcast, we chat with Jackie Huba, co-author of two books Citizen Marketer and Creating Customer Evangelists, about reaching the One Percenters as Huba calls them, and how they are the new gatekeepers to the mass market.
Huba is a keynote speaker at the NewComm Forum, a three day conference, April 20-23 in San Mateo, California, full of interesting learning about the application of social strategies in business, non-profit, and government, and as always excellent networking. As a listener and reader of the Marketing Edge podcast and blog use the promo code NCFPPP to receive a $200 savings if you register by March 12.
One of the interesting parts of this conversation with Huba is when she refers to social media as the “canary in the coal mine” for many companies. Huba is on the money with this metaphor. I associate this idea to political communications, a place where rumor can become perceived as fact fast. Political communicators are indeed accustomed to this position, I was in the national political environment for a decade. The speed of information puts an enormous burden on corporate communications to be tuned in 24/7 and on the corporate communications process (by that I mean approvals and empowerment) to be efficient in reacting to unfolding events.
Enjoy this podcast and use the promo code NCFPPP when registering for the NewComm Forum. Huba’s blog along with co author Ben McConnell is the Church of the Customer an interesting read as well.
How are you approaching the One Percenters? Do you think they are gatekeepers to the mass market, or do you approach them as market segments, separate communities similar to market segments?
This is not a plug or some third party affiliate cheer. I’m not one for the making money on the Internet crowd because those that scream that the loudest are old century thinkers in a new century world. Boo Hiss.
I just signed up for The Third Tribe at the early adopter rate because I view many of the individuals behind the program as rethinking the role of economics in an information society. My first peak under the members’ hood on The Third Tribe does reveal some aspects of making money online. Affiliate marketing is part of this I realize and perhaps I need to have a different perspective on it. However, the greater value of the information, seminars and forums of The Third Tribe is the new perspective of how economics are changing. It’s the hands on version of the Free Economy with substance, innovation, and creativity. In fact, in the first audio conversation, Sonia Simone and Johnny B Truant take on the “Internet Hawkers” and the world of make believe money. That’s the kind of candor that I enjoy about the substantive people on The Third Tribe and many of the other people I follow on Twitter et. al.
Other contributors to The Third Tribe I respect for their work, Darren Rowse of Problogger, Brian Clark of Copyblogger, and Hugh MacLeod among others which is another reason I want to see what’s going on in this Tribe. Their views about how communities are formed, how new tools are helping companies become social and not just use social tactics, and how value is established in a world with instant access to information and millions of content contributors instead of dozens of information gate keepers.
I also became a member because some of these ideas may have application to clients. It might not be applicable to me, but from what I’m listening to now regarding SEO and search tactics, this is something anyone in the consulting business needs to be aware of to address client challenges. It’s also another network of function experts to potentially be a member of an ad hoc project team.
Lastly, it’s a monthly pricing model that you can cancel at anytime. Today’s the last day for the “early adopters” pricing, $27/month. The way I look at it, the producers of The Third Tribe including Chris Brogan have given the community, our community, years of free information, this is a maturing of our value economy where we acknowledge valuable information with a form of currency beyond the Retweet.
Yesterday Chris Brogan and I strolled the Mall of America. This was the first time at the Mall of America for Brogan, who, as a father of young children, was amazed and delighted by the incredible distractions provided by the life-size roller coaster and other amusement rides at Nickelodeon Universe. To most outside of Minnesota, the closest you get to an amusement ride inside a mall is the $.25 horsey plugged in next to the candy vending machine.
Brogan is president of New Marketing Labs providing strategy and execution of social programs for Fortune 500 and major brand companies. We talked about trends in social emedia and how corporations are incorporating social media into their processes. I use the term processes here because it is inaccurate to single out a business function say marketing or customer service. Social media impacts all parts of a company, and last century’s corporate structure, today needs to bend with an increasingly social consumer base.
Pete Blackshaw of Ag Age has a post today called A Short and Personal History of Social Media, also pointed out what Brogan and I discussed which is benefit one - Social media is forcing silos and fiefdoms to work together. This is more like the way consumers view a company. When a consumer has an issue and tweets about it, the fact that XYZ company only uses Twitter as a media relations tool is a bogus response to that consumer. Smart corporations are using this “learning moment” to rethink their processes, to creating greater lines of communication to solve consumer issues, develop better products, and elevate the consumer, and their comments, within the company. This is a wonderful result at a number of levels.
Embracing this concept can be the difference between a company using social tactics, to being a social company.
Blackshaw writes
“So this is big — really big. But where is it going? Looking ahead, expect to hear much more about “enterprise social media” strategy. Good, old-fashioned customer-relationship management will take on new meaning and resonance, as we’ll quickly realize that half the game in social media will be understanding the relationship between existing business processes — service, employee training, product performance — and conversational output, and adjusting strategies and tactics accordingly.
Marketing organizations will continue to undergo dramatic transformation, as social media softens all silos, unleashes both friendly and hostile departmental and agency competition, and sets new standards of accountability thanks to the radically transparent nature of the content.”
Brogan comments in this video about the vast opportunities in 2010 which brings us to the second major benefit of social media – Opportunities with structure. What was referred to as the wild west of marketing on the internet a few short years ago is now taking a bit of shape — you know towns,(communities) trails,(measurement) sheriffs (FTC guidelines and trust agents). In some cases the shapes are similar to what we are familiar with, and it others it is a brave new world.
The familiar parts being implemented in the social world are functions like media relations, with a social twist ( Pitch Engine and Matchpoint ) and targeted audiences (community participation and sponsorship by corporations for example).
The opportunities presented by the brave new world part of this equation may be issues such as companies being more open in conversations. This may be implemented in a concept I’m pushing of an embedded corporate journalist. There are opportunities in new areas of measurement upon which individual employee and agency performance goals are established. Metrics such as number of conversations, Pass Along Readership (this is an old school print advertising concept that has morphed into today’s RT or retweets et. al), or number of uploaded photos.
Opportunities as Brogan mentions for larger agencies and companies to tap into social platforms like Live World, Awareness, PeopleBrowsr,CoTweet, Ning, and dozens of others, (if I missed you, comment, each comment I’ll donate a food item to a food shelf.) Blackwell mentions availability of social tools in his post as well.
Individuals too are finding ways to add value. In some cases it is by default where they play the role of trusted , personal technology trainer, and thought leader apart from the agency relationship. In some ways, they are seen as not being part of a larger revenue generation, project creation machine, but an independent auditor. One that can verify whether the time spent down some new social path is worth the effort.
Lastly, we have moved deeper into an economic landscape of individuals with individual profit and loss. Yes, more consultants, but this means free forming networks of talent, at times viewed as competitors, other times viewed as partners. From the perspective of companies in need of talent, the picture could not be better. The ability to form an all-star team is as close as your next tweet. Brogan’s venture launched today, The Third Tribe, touches on this a bit. The formation of a network sharing ideas, gaining examples and creating a dialogue that ultimately produces a more knowledgeable pool of talent. This is the land of opportunity and 2010 will give greater clarity and shape to what was once the fog of social media.
The New Rules of Marketing and PR include participating in the communities with which you do business, not talking at them. Don’t worry we’ll put this in a nice list for retweeting and SEO purposes. The label David applied to this concept is “Brand Journalism” and it’s a hybrid of what trade journalists and thoughtful marketers have tried to do in the nineties. The key here is for companies to consider information that has news value and not just company/shareholder value. Information about the latest widget or big name customer being in the latter category and a more thorough conversation about issues that include technological advances, government regulation, or the ways society is changing to interact with products being in the former category. When a company’s perspective of what’s news expands, so does their number of mentions and conversations. Public relations practitioners can and should expand their thinking of news value, review the online discussions and contribute where appropriate. Not just in news release form, but in the infinite ways their creativity will take them, because any format, any locale, and any audience is now affordable and reachable. 
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