Last month there was much made about social media’s impact on the coverage of protests in Iran. At the 140 Conference
Robert Scoble moderated a panel of journalists and producers that discussed the impact of Twitter on mainstream news media, specifically using the Iran election to illustrate the power of essentially the people. You can see this panel on mainstream media and Iran coverage after a short registration.

In this case it was the people of Iran who were heard around the world as events unfolded in that secretive country. Profiles like change4iran on Twitter and the ability to see the Iranian protest and election issue tracked online gave this medium credibility and power. The medium gave a voice to those in the streets, and to those that had their voices silenced. The image of Neda instantly became an icon of the brutality visited on protesters.

There is a human desire to be heard, especially when the intrinsic values of right and wrong which are universally understood are violated. The social technology in place today helps facilitate that desire. So beyond monetizing a blog and wondering how Twitter will make money, I’ll use today, Independence weekend in the United States, to share a video I did last year with Robert Scoble and Ning CEO Gina Bianchini.  After interviewing them, it struck me that many of their comments were about freedom, basic human freedoms wrapped in the context of social media. So I put this Little Diddy together set to John Mellencamp’s Crumblin Down.

Freedom is Social from Albert Maruggi on Vimeo.

Ning is a wonderful platform with hundreds of thousands of social networks from around the world. In the spirit of uncovering oppression, one of my favorite networks on Ning is the Frontline Club and the Frontline Club website

Let freedom ring.

Book Giveaway Drawing – Trust Agents, by Chris Brogan

The book a lot of people are talking about will be available in late August, called Trust Agents by Chris Brogan, with Julien Smith. We will hold a drawing and pre-order the book for one Marketing Edge listener/reader. Email me at marketingedge AT providentpartners DOT net with the word TRUST in the subject line. We will name a winner at the beginning of August.

We enjoy your comments here or on the comment line 206-600-6887.

Time 15:19

The idea of a group of people sharing information can apply to hobbyists (like whitewater,try KayakMind, a product launch team, or a global force of loyal fans. One of my current favorites is Natasha Bedingfield Many companies struggle with whether such a beneficial collaboration is a technology question. There are plenty of platforms that exist for significant sharing of multimedia, and text along with other features like blogging, and forums.

Today we speak with Gina Bianchini, the co-founder and CEO of an exceptional platform for creating and growing social networks, Ning. Provident Partners has a private network for listeners of the Marketing Edge podcast and readers of this blog on the Ning platform. To receive an invitation just email marketingedge AT providentpartners.net and put Sandbox in the subject line.

Saturn cars inspires owners to exchange stories and ideas as well as company representatives to share what’s new and trendy in the car market. There’s plenty for movie lovers to enjoy on the Netflix pics site, and on the Provident Partners Social Media Sandbox you can ask questions, get answers, upload photos and video and form groups and forums for more detailed collaboration.

Bianchini said the Ning Creators social network, a network of thousands of Ning users, is an excellent place to develop new feature ideas, get feedback from users, and a central place to praise and vent.

It’s all about the interaction, the information, and the journey that the group goes on together. Jump on.

Time 13:37

I spoke on a panel last week at the Bulldog Reporter Media Relations Summit in San Francisco. This trip was a great exchange of ideas with many early adopters and PR and marketing practitioners. This podcast we’ll highlight two ah ha moments with two leaders in social media, Gina Bianchini, CEO and co-founder of Ning, and Robert Scoble world renown blogger and managing director of Fast Company TV.

During a keynote session at the conference with Robert Scoble, I realized how new social media is for the majority of communication professionals. He asked how many people are familiar with Twitter and about 20 percent of the room of 600 (that might be generous) raised their hand. Then, on the fly he connected to the web, and took the audience on a journey of relationship building and technology that demonstrated how time and distance simply no longer matter in how individuals communicate. He highlighted Twitter, Tweetscan,(if memory serves me right) FriendFeed, Twittervision, and QIK.

After his keynote and panel, Scoble and I spent time talking about information overload and how to avoid that overwhelmed feeling people get when they see Twitter for the first time. His response surprised me because it wasn’t a technology solution. He uses a tactic called attention management with attribution to Linda Stone This is clearly different than time management and Scoble in our interview takes it to a logical conclusion about focusing on what’s important to you.

Test One

I applied this logic to how companies should evaluate Twitter as a communication tool and determined that the first place to undertake that evaluation is not Twitter at all but Tweetscan. This “google-like” search engine for Twitter posts will give a snapshot of whether the keywords important to your company are also important to any of the million plus users of Twitter. My suggestion, do 10 separate searches of keywords that are relevant to you, your company, profession, or industry.

For example, a search for Kimberly Clark revealed several tweets among them a blog post about CIO Ramon Baez, a representative from Mom Central tweeted that she was meeting with Kimberly Clark marketing folks in Appleton Wisconsin, links to a news release about the Boys and Girls clubs of America and Kimberly Clark, a tweet about drug testing for an employee candidate, and last but not least, this post – Llega info del Programa “Comienzos Compartidos” que realizan Kimberly Clark Argentina y la Fundación Leer, en San Luis y Quilmes. Twitter has a million people around the world so the post in Spanish was made by this Twitter user http://twitter.com/rseonline – I don’t speak Spanish so the translation is up to you.

My point is, searching Tweetscan before you going into Twitter allows you to focus on what is important to you before jumping into the raging river of Twitter. Once you know what is in the water, it makes the ride more productive.
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Test Two

I also traveled south from San Francisco to Palo Alto and the home of the social network company Ning. Ning is a web-based platform people, organizations, and companies use to build social networks that can be public (open to anyone on the web) or private (only accessible to those you invite). There I had a delightful conversation with CEO and co-founder Gina Bianchini about the value of a social network. This discussion was enlightening because Gina peeled away the current fashionable lexicon of “social media” and Web 2.0, to describe the core value of people communicating on a network.

In this case, the issue is creating a place, (specifically a Ning based website) where a group of people focused on, and responsible for, an objective can share ideas. It’s just a place to get things done and in most cases improve, which is the result of sharing ideas. Those ideas can come in the form of words, audio, video, images, dialogue, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. All of these formats can be shared on Ning.

As you’ll hear in Gina’s comments in this podcast, Ning found tremendous benefit in a forum called Ning Network Creators which is comprised of many customers using Ning’s platform to create sites that facilitate communication among group members. It’s kind of like communicators talking about how better to communicate, yeah that works for me. To get to these Ning based sites you’ll need to register with Ning in a simple form, well worth the tour of social networks. There are about 250,000 networks on Ning now and growing.

My observation here and in dealing with many company executives is that perhaps the word social, as in social network, throws off corporate executives as to the business value of such networks. I mean social may inadvertently imply to them not business. My suggestion, lose the term social, and build a quick “business communication website” for a focused project, say a sales meeting, product launch or customer feedback forum over a specific time period. Get a small group of team members to buy in to the concept and use the platform.

Using this space created at no cost on Ning will allow you to test the waters of social networking. If that is a bit too ambitious, then here’s the next best thing, explore this type of forum in the Provident Partners Sandbox. It is a private network, private meaning I have to invite you to join so that only listeners of the Marketing Edge podcast or readers of this blog are in the Sandbox. We created it as a place to ask any questions you like, upload videos, images, post blogs, just come on in and experiment. It will give you a first hand look at a business communication platform with little effort. Then your imagination will lead you to the ways this type of communication platform can be applied in your own world of business or “social” objectives. Just email me at marketingedge@providentpartners.net with Sandbox in the subject line.

Upcoming Events

Take a look at the NewComm Forum conference agenda. It’s a comprehensive three days where you can get detailed answers to our questions about all types of social media, as well as integrating into a mix of other marketing tactics. This conference covers a spectrum of uses in the corporate, profit, and government arenas.

Marketing Edge Book Drawing

The book we are giving away in May will be The New Rules of Marketing and PR by David Meerman Scott. Send me an email to marketingedge@providentpartners.net with New Rules in the subject line.