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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.
Mackay has been on the New York Times best-seller list multiple times, and these two books are on the top 15 inspirational business books of all time, according to the New York Times.
Mackay built a failing envelope company into a $100 million business employing 600 people. He did it with relationships — caring relationships based on truly getting to know the other person. And so, as social media continues to take shape, I thought it important to seek the advice of those who understand a few things about relationships.
An example is the Mackay 66 , a guide to learning about each other, whether it’s as simple as making connections to the same college or favorite sports team or learning about whether the person is focused on the present or the future. Those who use Facebook, LinkedIn or any other social network can gain value from Mackay’s wealth of experience and advice on nurturing relationships.
Ten million copies of his books have sold and his column is syndicated in 52 newspapers across the country. Here are some of my favorite of Mackay’s words:
“What every salesperson — and not enough entrepreneurs — know: The sweetest sound in the world to you, and to your customer, is the sound of your own name on someone else’s lips.”
“Little things don’t mean a lot. They mean everything. In a business, there are 1,001 ways to screw up every day, and almost all of them can be avoided with a little more attention to detail or common courtesy.”
“Challenge yourself to learn something new every chance you get.”
“Business is a collaborative art, not an individual one.”
The technology dilemma: New technologies are developed quickly and less costly today than even 10 years ago. New technology implementation requires the precise work of three groups: path finders, bridge builders and commoditizers.
1) Path finders: They forge a wild river. They develop for the joy of a challenge and/or the dream of wealth. Many times they traverse to unknown places. They prudently cut a path with precision moving toward a desired destination. They may not know exactly where they are going, but they are learning and discovering with every step.
2) Bridge builders: These are the ones who help the masses on the populated side of the river come across. They painstakingly educate those fearful of going over the bridge and in some cases hope they don’t loose sight of the path finders.
3) Commoditizers come along with the masses and build different uses for technologies that have become common. They help drive the price down, expand usage and, with it, less risk in implementing that technology in a typical business.
The issue that Jeremiah Owyang of the Web Strategist Blog raises in his Utterz post from Nov. 29 is whether the technologists are moving too fast. In my parlance, are the path finders rushing ahead so fast that they are in danger of being alone in the wild?
The pace of what technologists can do is outracing how significant portions of the population can use it or can pay for it. The question technologists and consumers should answer jointly is: Can the new technologies be applied to provide sufficient value that it is worth changing from what we do now?
Social media and different issues than the 90s:
A more fragmented market, which could mean less total revenue per technology
Less costs, which potentially mean higher profits per technology
Insanely short product life-cycles, putting all technologies in danger of being overtaken
Potentially misunderstood brand power of technology, when the real asset is the communities
The Bar Syndrome
What would make me the most nervous as an investor? Understanding exactly what the asset is and how will that asset sustain itself and grow. I believe a good metaphor is that many of these social media technologies are like investing in a bar or restaurant. If that establishment can be replicated to attract enough people, then you’ve got a winning franchise. If, however, the people are fickle or a new bar opens down the street with better looking, livelier people, then what is left?
The accessories
We are to the point of application accessories; widgets is the accepted term. The issue is how these accessories are going to be paid for. An interesting question formed in the negative, just to make it more painful: What two technologies can you give up today?
A typical business with an abundance of meetings, limited budgets and cautious management needs time just to understand how these technologies are going to add value to the company. Patience is a virtue. Will the marketplace reward patience?
I worked at a venture capital firm in the 90s. There were companies working on 360-degree images of shopping malls, med-tech applications for desktop radiological reading, and video-on-the-Web capabilities. It was just a question of timing more than applications. Those ideas are well in place today and profitable.
History does help predict the future; we just need the patience for the future to catch up with us.
The first stop for marketers who are attempting to determine how to approach social media is to listen to the conversations taking place on the web. Most executives are going to ask, what are people saying about our company or our industry? Who are they and does it matter to us?
While the numbers for social networking are mind boggling, an estimated 60 million users on Facebook alone, the perplexing issue for marketers that have must justify their spending is what is the impact to the company, will it grow sales, brand, influence? Or conversely, will not being there hurt us in some way?
In this podcast we highlight one company that can help answer those questions. Umbria, who can be found at www.umbrialistens.com. There tools search blogs, product review comments, and other social media sites looking for company mentions and more importantly context. For example, it is not good enough to learn that Starbucks was mentioned, but that a woman having a bad day found a moment of peace over an egg nog latte at Starbucks. Now that is listening. Umbria industry reports include healthcare, consumer electronics, and other industries
For those into the viral marketing concept, whether Umbria or a strategy that includes alerts and watches from Google, Technorati, Digg and others, the key is having a process that puts your ear to the ground – sorry had to use a cliché somewhere in this piece. Other tools include Sentiment Metrics and Cymfony, there are plenty of choices. Ths issue is with growing numbers of participants in social media, this tactic should be on your 2008 coporate marketing budget.
Do you have a strategy for listening to social media? What tactics do you find helpful?
Join the Conversation Giveaway
Joseph Jaffe’s book Join the Conversation is a good one. Well worth the read. We are giving away a copy with my comments included in the margins. It’s my way of joining the conversation – email me at marketingedge@providentpartners.net with Conversation in the subject line. We’ll have a drawing for the winner on December 19.
Giving Back
Every comment and email we get Provident Partners donates a food item to a St. Paul food shelter. Last month 24 items were donated. Thanks for sharing.
Ah! I really like Brightcove, but there model is changing which may cause users to look at other alternatives. Here’s the email they sent out this morning. Those using Brightcove need to review their videos and potentially move them before Dec 17.
Dear Brightcove.TV member,
Beginning December 18, 2007, we plan to end support of direct consumer uploads to Brightcove.TV. As a result, you will not be able to upload new videos to Brightcove.TV after December 17, 2007. But videos you have already uploaded to Brightcove.TV will remain available on the site and through your Brightcove.TV channel. Videos you have embedded in other sites and blogs will also continue to play.
If you have a Brightcove Platform or Network account, which means you use the Brightcove Console, then you will still have the option to promote videos on Brightcove.TV.
Brightcove.TV will continue to be a guide to great video from Brightcove media and business partners. The site will have new videos added to it daily from these partners and these videos can be saved as favorite videos in your channel.
If you work for a media company, marketer, non-profit, or business and are looking to purchase the Brightcove platform to publish and distribute video on your own site, please visit the Brightcove Products Overview section of our website.
We appreciate your interest in Brightcove and apologize for any disruption this change may cause you.
Sincerely,
The Brightcove Team
Added November 28, this is a great article by Jeremy Allaire, CEO of Brightcove about the current landscape for video players on the net and the 2008 for the category. http://www.brightcove.com/about_brightcove/perspectives.cfm
The problem? After listening to the clip posted on that site 10 times, I can’t hear it. I went to the movie on Thanksgiving and it wasn’t even a question. Never even thought about it. Why? ‘Cause the language is not there. There is nothing remotely that sounds like that.
So is this a case of blogosphere hysteria? Just cranking it up for the “link love,” as Web gurus are fond of saying?
The original post by Peter Sciretta claiming the profanity was made at 12:18 a.m. today, Nov. 26. In his comments, he posts the following:
Just to clarify: The story was corrected two minutes after you posted your comment (the posting log says 12:18), this was long before Will read the story or posted his comment. The only thing I have added since Will’s posting was the bolded text telling people to read the rest of the story following the video. I felt that if Will missed it, than other people would as well.
However, I could not find any reference to a correction and why is the original post still up. The fact is, it is wrong. This is the kind of thing that must drive corporate marketers and PR folks mad.
Should Disney even respond? As of this posting, I was unable to find a response. Perhaps it doesn’t deserve one, but given the dollars still left in the Christmas movie-going season, I think it pays to call it like it is.
It’s a blogsphere prank, but nonetheless a real-world situation in the making. What would you do if you were Disney?
The old maxim “you don’t argue with the guy who buys ink by the barrel” isn’t as accurate as it once was. The combination of blogs, new online publishers like TechCrunch and the Huffington Post, and social media sites are creating new opportunities for professional and unpaid journalism.
The key to social media’s success is voices. The dilemma for social media is finding and determining the valuable content of those voices for you. Helium.com is a Web site designed for long-form written content and has an interesting way of sorting out what’s valuable. The site attracts those who have a desire to write, and its 90,000 members rate the articles on the site, giving all readers some guidance on the quality of the content.
This community grading apparatus rewards objective, accurate articles and banishes self-promoters to the valley of propaganda. (There really is no such place on Helium.com. That was my editorial license to say that garbage articles are ranked at the bottom.)
It’s a combination social media community, wiki (kind of ), blog and content provider. There is also a way for other publishers of Web sites and print publications to post requests for articles. Writers then submit articles for that particular topic for the publisher to potentially purchase. It is like a job board that matches buyers of articles to providers of content. Hey, it might not be enough money to quit your day job, but it is a way to fulfill a passion, share knowledge, and build your expertise and writing portfolio.
Helium.com also allows for contributions to non-profit groups, including Teachers Without Borders and Collegiate Society of America, as articles are purchased. It’s the concept of giving back to the community for writers as well as tapping into those non-profits as sources of quality articles.
Communicators should review this site as another step in determining the social media strategy. These are the interesting attributes of Helium.com:
Source for industry trends across tens of thousands of topics
Venue for your ideas and passion
Potential revenue if articles are purchased
Establish greater credibility as a writer
Give exposure to issues that are not being covered in the mainstream media
Plant the seeds of debate that others nurture -– that, after all, is the essence of social media
2. Join the Conversation book giveaway contest: Joseph Jaffe’s latest book is the talk of the Amazon charts, and we will give a copy away on Dec. 19, with an added bonus. In the spirit of joining the conversation, I have included written commentary in many of the chapters. It’s the ultimate form of keeping the conversation going. Send me an e-mail with “Conversation” in the subject line and you’ll be included in the random drawing.
3. Movie trivia in this podcast episode: Listen toward the end of the podcast for a sound clip from a movie. Tell me what movie you think it came from and we’ll give one person who provides the correct answer a $10 Subway gift card. Hint: It’s a classic! Either send me an e-mail or submit your answer in the comment section.
NOTE: Provident Partners donates a food item for every comment (on the blog or by e-mail) we get. Our monthly budget for this community program is $100/month.
A word about trust on in the blogosphere and social media in general:
There is considerable discussion about how businesses can tap into these conversations. Another angle is the practice of paying bloggers, which some say is no different than paying ghostwriters of a book.
All of the above will be tested during the next couple of years as society continues to use social networks and other sites that have “word of mouth”-like components. A key to figuring out how business can use social media is to understand why social media is different than any other media.
Social media is a movement. Social media is a people place, not a market place.
The blogosphere has had millions participate because of a need to be recognized, even by just one other person. Social media has taken hold in equal numbers because of the need to be a part of a group, the need to connect. These are basic human needs, not driven by economics.
There is also a cynicism in the U.S. that I believe has contributed to the rejection of most forms of advertising, a growing distrust of corporations and a political system viewed as destined to be at odds for the foreseeable future.
The major structures of our society — financial, legal, and political — have their roots deep in the last century of ridged, industrial growth and are not yet capable of appreciating or assimilating a more open discussion created by social media.
If you are a marketer, a business, and look at social media from the perspective of it being a movement, it will change the way you approach social media. You will be a participant rather than a party-crasher, a thoughtful listener rather than a loud bore, and a valuable contributor rather than a self-serving taker.
Blogs that contributed to my thinking on this were:
What’s your take? Make a choice: Is social media more movement or marketplace? Remember, every comment we get we will contribute a food item to a St. Paul food shelter.
Look, I like Scholastic just as much as any parent. We get some of their wonderful magazines and books. So please don’t get this post wrong. I just dislike getting something that says, Send this back in X days and write cancel and you won’t be billed. No, no — keep the book it’s free as our gift.
Agh!
Folks, I must look extremely well-organized, and I think after helping raise five children, two dogs and being married for 21 years (happy anniversary, honey), that I can keep the trains running pretty well. You’d think I can send back a reply card within 7 days. Unfortunately, I was on vacation for 10 days, then work, and oh yeah, Ellen’s Girl Scout camp and, well, you know.
Here’s the story:
Moving on to the “love”
Also we’d like to thank the Bootstrapper blog for listing the Marketing Edge among its Top 100 Entrepreneur podcasts. Please share with us your comments about the blog and podcast. Also, we’re interested in answering your questions, so share one with us in the comment section and we’ll do are best to get it answered.
The undercurrent at BlogWorld is churned by the sudden absence of noted bloggers and a lack of blogging on the part of some CEOs whose companies depend on bloggers.
OK, no worries, sports fans, because there are plenty more of us here and out there. Now, that’s the power of social media. This post is not to recount the reasons why these new media, this new industry — whatever you’d like to call it — needs to be more mature. Jeremiah Owyang and Chris Brogan, among others, have done a good job of that.
This slant is to underscore what Leo Laporte said in the keynote: Paraphrasing, the medium is about everyone, not limited by format, money, subscribers, nothing. A new blog hero can rise to fill the shoes of someone that has lost interest. Mark Cuban’s, a replacement keynoter, a pretty good hero to have. Go Mavs.
What corporate types should watch for from this conference speed bump is how quickly the community dialogues, supports and gives voice to those who might be in the shadows today and the spotlight tomorrow. Yes, dialogues. And this same reaction can happen to any brand, product, and issue, at any time, even our own. Perhaps the next one will be yours.
What’s your take? Is this blogging world really information anarchy or the somewhat unpredictable result of when people of various opinions disagree?
The panel from BlogWorld on “Tracking Reputation in the Blogsphere” provided excellent insight into how corporate skeptics can make sense of new-media junkies’ hype about online conversations. More importantly, determining in a methodical analysis whether those conversations are something for corporate execs to be concerned about or join.
The ability to listen to the conversations taking place online is of the greatest value to companies. The reason is that they don’t need to be told about losing control of their brand, which can drive brand managers and CEOs insane. They don’t need to come up with frequent content that makes people happy or to write responses to blog posts, which can drive marketers to drink (more than they currently do).
No, the ability to listen to the conversation plays to the corporate desire and history for research. The corporate structure appreciates research of markets, research of competitors, and research of potentially new product demands.
It is also a way to validate whether there are conversations going on that company leaders should care about. An example would be if a brand manager, VP of a line of business, or product development manager was handed a report that said, “In the month of April, there were 25,000 mentions of your product on 250 blogs and user review sections. Twenty-five percent of those mentions were negative, 50 percent positive and 25 percent neutral.”
Take that the to the next level of detail by highlighting the context of those conversations.
One of the presenters on the panel was Howard Kaushansky, president of Umbria, who highlighted how conversations can be ascertained though sophisticated language processing and searching of blogs and other social networks, such as MySpace and, soon, Facebook.
Excellent presentation, as you can see the level of detail available with some of these tools. Companies need to understand the wealth of information that will increase enormously during the next 2 years and can be analyzed, if corporate executives looks at the blogsphere as a research resource and not just a play thing for MySpacers.
This interview with Howard, called “Listen to Conversations,” has a case in point about how consumers purchasing a pair of jeans labeled themselves. For example, Gen Xers have moved into the “fit” category as opposed those who label themselves as caring about the labels they wear. Another example in this conversation with Howard is how you can pick out mentions within the body of a blog. So, for example, if a blog about parenting mentions that the mom or dad had a great pumpkin latte at Starbucks, Umbria brings that mention to light and gives it some context.
Click on the Utterz player at the right or click here to listen to that interview.
What is your take on whether companies can gain value from just listening to the conversations, especially if they are skeptical of participating?
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