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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.
This series, Social Media Innovators in the Midwest, profiles several business communicators in the Midwest, a place where innovation that’s practical gets high marks. I developed it in part because I believe that innovation is not limited to the few, or the brightest, but is born along a path of experience. Some on that path challenge convention to create innovation, some are innovative within the parameters of convention. The latter may well be a more difficult feat.
On my road trip to the South by SouthwestInteractive Festival, I thought of the enormous collection of ideas, opinions, and individuals that social media presents to our society. As a consultant in this field I’ve established relationships with many of them who are generous with the time and experiences. This makes everyone richer, which is recycled as others build upon and expand the conversation, keeping the community nourished.
I decided to turn the camera on a few of these individuals during this 3,000 mile journey from Minneapolis, through Des Moines, Omaha, Kansas City, and Wichita, to ask three general questions.
1) Why are you participating in social media?
2) Have we seen all the benefits social media can provide or are there more?
3) What types of innovation have your seen in the Midwest?
I hope you enjoy their commentary and this series, contribute to enrich the path, and share these videos as you see fit.
Nathan T. Wright – Lava Row
Nathan Wright, founder of the firm Lava Row, has his foundation in advertising, but saw the potential of incorporating social media to achieve business objectives for clients. Follow Nathan on Twitter as @nathantwright
Nathan has the perspective of small business and large corporations which is typical of the dynamic of the Midwest. Des Moines is home to high finance and agriculture, a fairly wide spectrum that gives Nathan a good view about the practical applications of technology.
Disclosure Credits:
I developed this series while on assignment for the Midwest region of Verizon Wireless. Verizon Wireless is an active participant in social media communities in the Midwest, follow Karen Smith on Twitter @karenVZW
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 with the Social Media Explorer Jason Falls who is at South by Southwest highlights whether there is a new next big thing or not. Since SXSW is a place to unveil new technologies is there the next Twitter that will capture the fascination of early adopters. For Jason, his takeaways were inside the box and out in the cloud of computers sharing power around the world. He reports on exciting ways the chip manufacturer AMD is enhancing video and computer performance with new product sets.
The impact for marketers is to think visually. It’s similar to the change from dial-up to broadband. As the ability to distribute more information is available both to the desktop and the mobile device your ability to tell a more powerful story and create interactivity is enhanced.
This is an interview I found interesting with Charlie Rose and Jen-Hsun Huang, CEO Nvidia that paints, and I use that word almost literally if you can do such a thing, a future for the way society will share knowledge. It is one where the visual sense dominates and computer graphics that enhances the user experience and share greater knowledge is pushed to greater usage.
As a teenager when someone would say future, I interpreted that as a long time from the present. Today, when someone says future, especially when it involves technology, I think it’s couple of years and I’m going to have to deal with it. Now the ability to go from idea to usage is so fast that the things we are talking about in this podcast, are likely to be issues the typical marketer will need to address in the next two years.
Hope to See You at the NewComm Forum and InBound Marketing Summit
A terrific conference is scheduled for April 27-29 in San Francisco. It is a combination of the Society for New Communications Research of which I’m a senior fellow and the marketing conference produced by Chris Brogan, Jason Falls, Paul Gillin and David Meerman Scott. Here is a $100 discount code for Marketing Edge readers and listeners, SNCRFRIEND if you only want to attend the New CommForum (see agenda) or if you want to attend the New CommForum and the InBound Marketing Summit use this code NCFCOMBO2 to get $200 off the listed price.
South by Southwest is the meeting of music, film, and interactive technologies. This makes it the perfect venue for Phil Wilson of Local Tone Radio in Minneapolis. The concept of Local Tone Radio is to feature local bands, allow website listeners to vote on the ones they like and essentially give greater exposure to bands who otherwise would have to work their way through the gatekeepers of radio stations. This concept of bypassing gatekeepers is something social media does very well. From using LinkedIn to by pass the regular screening of resumes to raising money without an ounce of ink or a single phone call, SXSW has an interactive track that discusses these disruptions.
We chat with Phil Wilson who can be followed on Twitter or on Minnov8 about how he is navigating the conference. Social media is causing many industries to take notice, and the music industry was among the first to feel the pressure from social sharing and the wisdom of crowds. Now bands sell their songs on MYSpace, and DJs, like my Twitter friend DJIRIE are business entities spinning unique mixes and branching off into merchandise and apparel.
The overriding issue that makes SXSW a “go to at least once” event is the integration of ideas, cultures, and innovation. From suits to shorts at the conference, new products and services are emerging from the synergies created in Austin, TX this week. But the irony here is that most of that knowledge is being shared online. Yeah, crazy I know, but much of the ideas in Austin on are online in discussions from Twitter, to Ustream, to blogs. Even more will fill the web in the coming weeks so stay tuned and connected to South by Southwest. Or follow the up to the Tweet action on this Twitter page using the SXSW keyword.
I have thought for a long time that for society to gain the maximum benefits from social media many current cultures in a typical corporate structure would need to change. From legal to finance, HR to PR, the ways of the last 100 years would need to change if transparency is to be rewarded, and improvement was to be an accepted continuing process.
I also believe that social media is more a movement than a marketplace. Not just a tool for someone to exploit, but an opportunity to engage in more of our shared humanity. Today, the actions of one courageous healthcare leader solidified that belief.
Paul Levy, CEO of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, has been a prolific blog writer since October 2006. Levy’s blog is called Running a Hospital.
On it he has had an open discussion about his hospital, its work, and his own performance. This openness about successes and failures has received acclaim in the press, praise from many and murmurs of dubious wonder from others. I know from speaking with many in healthcare during presentations and meetings there are some who wonder how Levy can get away with being so transparent.
It’s simple, he is about improving, every day, throughout his hospital, profession and life. He is also, it seems, sincere about caring for people, both those in the care of BIDMC and those employees who are on the frontlines of healthcare delivery. This has infected the other cultures around him so that they too are committed to a cause of caring in an environment that rewards improvement.
Paul Levy, President and CEO Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center
credit Globestaff/Pat Greenhouse
This however, is not a rose colored glasses story about how social media is improving medicine, while it maybe true, this story is about how social media is making better people of us. It is a story about the human desire to be a part of something larger, to be acknowledged as of value and connecting to each other.
Levy doesn’t use corporate speak; his writing is about real situations, from surgery procedures to improving the use of protective equipment, from the joys of a moonlit backyard to numerous stories of hospital employees.
It is with this foundation of candor, this unprecedented transparency that Paul Levy stood at the front of an auditorium full of employees who came to hear his decision about laying off workers during difficult economic times.
Instead of an announcement, he asked for their opinion of a potential solution that may avoid layoffs. Levy travels his hospital corridors plenty, enough to know how many people it takes to deliver quality care. To keep the level of personnel that he believes necessary to deliver quality care, he asked the following as reported by Kevin Cullen of the Boston Globe.
“I’d like to do what we can to protect the lower-wage earners – the transporters, the housekeepers, the food service people. A lot of these people work really hard, and I don’t want to put an additional burden on them. “Now, if we protect these workers, it means the rest of us will have to make a bigger sacrifice,” he continued. “It means that others will have to give up more of their salary or benefits.”
The reaction according to Cullen was “Thunderous, heartfelt, sustained applause. “
The seeds of this applause were sown in the many places and people that Levy has touched. A fertile field for all to see is his blog with hundreds of posts. I believe this body of work, the hundreds of comments, and the dialogue he has participated in with patients, employees, supporters and critics are a measure of the man.
Which brings me to the cultures that need to change, for transparency to work in an organization, there needs to be a mutual respect and a commitment to improve. In reading the comments submitted to the blog from the Boston Globe story, listening is a major quality of Paul Levy. It’s not a coincidence that listening is also an important quality to have in a successful relationship and I believe social media is merely a channel for relationships.
Much of America has a very long way to go to eliminate the culture of “gotcha,” of confrontation, a culture of “keep the info, keep the power.” All these insecurities and tactics of greed will hinder the benefits of what social media can bring to an organization and our society. With each blog post, each honest answer to a criticism, each good idea raised and implemented, the organization becomes stronger.
This defining moment is an example of how powerful social media can be in the hands of people who are committed to make things better. Thank you Paul Levy and the wonderful people of BIDMC.
I’m a fan, friend, and peer of Lee Odden. His blog post on the Top Rank Blog today is about the best social media podcasts. It is classic in that it serves several purposes.
Provides helpful information for the community (key to all of social media)
Taps the interests and mention of his post by the people he writes about (you know you want people talking about what your are writing)
Drives traffic from several networks by adding a voting component (Ain’t that the idea?)
Giving is at the core of social media, in my mind, and this is a list not just of the popular, but of what the popular hosts listen to. You know it’s like who does your doctor go to type of thing.
By writing about those on the list it generates at least a little conversation among those on the list. “Gee, what’s Odden up to now, let’s go take a look.” Whether that is a list of social media junkies, or the top doctors, or the most desired gifts for Xmas, lists work because they create a foundation for buzz. Add to that the aspect of voting (which Odden does in allowing voting for your favorite podcast) and you have a winning post. The issue is not which podcasts get the most votes, it’s about learning of new podcasts, recognizing the work of those that Odden’s readers support, and appreciating the abundance of talent available through and enhanced by social media.
Odden will be in the Marketing Edge studio on December 29 (that’s my 50th birthday really) and our conversation will be posted soon thereafter. We’ll be talking plenty about SEO, social media, and give a look into how search drives topics and copy.
Companies operate in a world with equal access to information (minus the occasional government obstacles like China and Iran) but for the most part it’s all good. It’s a world where distance and time matter little, and sincerity and participation matter a lot.
The downsides of such access are the horror stories of price comparisons and margin evaporation. Let’s face it information used to be power when a few people had it. Now it is more about how people use the information, with whom do they associate with as they exchange it, and how do those relationships add value.
Scoble and I had a great conversation with a few laughs and insights into how he avoids information overload with technologies including Twitter and Friend Feed. He is a prime example of how social media works, give of yourself, and watch others give back to many.
Comment below or call 206-426-1117 and we’ll field some of them on the next podcast.
This month’s book giveaway contest is Millennial Makeover, MySpace, YouTube and the Future of American Politics, by Michael Hais and Morley Winograd. Enter drawing by emailing MarketingEdge AT providentpartners DOT net. Put Makeover in the subject line.
So when I heard the authors of Millennial Makeover Michael Hais and Morley Winograd interviewed on the News Hour talking about how YouTube, et al social media was going to impact the future of American Politics, I had to reach out to them as guests on the Marketing Edge podcast.
The nature of social media and the timing of this technology fits perfectly with the Millennial generation. The millennial generation is comprised of individuals born in the 80s and early 90s. During their upbringing they were taught to share, play nice, not keep score, and that they were special by their parents, Barney and Mr. Rogers among others.
I also assert that there is a confluence of hardball politics, greater media segmentation spawning like-minded echo chambers and the dissolution of mainstream journalism that has prompted millions of people to connect outside of traditional institutions. They are turning to social media, blogs, twitter, Facebook and many others.
This book and our conversation is not just about politics however, social media is, well social. It can not be segmented like other forms of marketing or communications. The civic minded, and ultra connected Millennial generation are buyers, business leaders, and in a neighborhood near you. Combine this generation with other age demographics that are using social networks like LinkedIn and iGoogle, and you have a whole new paradigm for communications.
If you want to get a chance to win the Millennial Makeover book send me an email to Marketingedge@providentpartners.net with the word Makeover in the subject line.
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