Posts Tagged ‘Chris Brogan’

Social Media Marketing Best Practice: Use multiple media

September 9, 2008

Continuing Mitch Joel’s excellent suggestion to write about social media marketing best practices, today’s post is about the differences in media.

The social media universe now includes many, many types of web sites and media. It’s not just about blogging. Social media includes podcasting, videocasting, networking, photo sharing, instant messaging, and texting. And importantly, it includes dialog in all of these media.

Blogging still figures importantly for a variety of reasons. The written word can be powerful, and importantly, most people can respond and give feedback via a blog, which is not as true for other media. Also, reading the written word is much faster for most people than listening to a podcast or watching a videocast of the same information.

There are some people who are tied to the blogging and the written word. While there may be valid reasons for blogging, a social media marketing campaign will have greater reach and participation if other media are also incorporated. Just as some people prefer to create in a certain media, (written word, audiocast, videocast), people also prefer to “consume” in certain media. And many people consume different media depending on the situation. Some people access the internet in the evenings at home, and enjoy watching video clips. Others like to listen to information on their commute, so prefer audio versions. Yet other folks scan the internet while at work and want information in written form so that they can read and digest the information they are seeking quickly.

Once you have developed your core message, adapt it to the nuances of each of these very different presentation media. Written word, video, and audio media are all different, and each should be utilized properly. After all, we wouldn’t use a TV ads’ audio for a radio commercial– a radio commercial needs to be created knowing that there are no visuals to go with the audio.

For those discovering this meme, and want to learn more, here are other outstanding contributions:

I have been remiss in tagging others to add to this meme. I tag William Azaroff, Aaron Strout, Tim McAlpine, and Trey Reeme.

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Posted in Blogging, Marketing 2.0, Strategy, World 2.0 | 3 Comments »

Social Media Marketing Best Practice: Reaching out

September 2, 2008

Last week, Mitch Joel of Six Pixels of Separation announced he is working on a project of best practices in social media marketing.

Here’s my third Social Media Marketing Best Practice: Reach out to others. Most people don’t find you by accident, they find you through referrals. No matter how large or small your following, you can increase readership and visibility by reaching out to others. Here are six ways to do that:

1.) Write a guest blog post for someone else. The key to making this work is that the blog you are guest writing for MUST have the same, or very similar, target audience as yours. If you write for a blog with a different target audience, there will be minimal beneficial effect. I found this out the hard way. I gave a big news scoop to someone else, but did not see much increase in traffic after the initial surge. And even the initial surge wasn’t as big as I was expecting. And I think it was mostly due to less overlap in target audience than I thought we had.

2.) Ask a popular blogger to write a guest post for you (simultaneously mentioning the guest post on their own blog). Figure out what you can do in return for the guest post, or perhaps the cross-promotion will be enough of a fair trade. Or you can ask others to talk about/link to your article on their blog. Again, the target audience must line up for this tactic to work. If your friend has a distinct readership from your own, his/her referral will drive traffic and awareness your way.

3.) Develop a blogger outreach program. I first ran across this concept being employed by Mabel’s Labels. Mabel’s Labels’ blogger outreach program includes giving away free samples. What kind of free samples or schwag could your company give to bloggers?

4.) Comment on others’ blogs. Many bloggers want feedback, critique, and reinforcement on what they are writing. By commenting on others’ blogs, you are increasing awareness for your own. Not only will the author most likely check you out, the author’s readers may also check you out (though the rate of readers clicking through to you might not be very high).

5.) Put your friends’ and target audience’s names in lights. People enjoy reading about themselves. When you blog about someone, be sure to a.) let them know about the fact that you blogged about them, and b.) tag your post with their name. This EverythingCU World 2.0 Adventure blog receives many hits on people searching for other people’s (or their own) names. When a person meets someone for the first time, and are interested in furthering the relationship, whether its business or personal, nowadays people will google their new friend to learn more. Why not have your blog come up in search results on the people you are writing about?

6.) Ask other bloggers to write about a subject that is important both to you and to them. That’s exactly what Mitch Joel did to touch off this meme. It’s only a few days old, and already its been written about by Chris Brogan, Corby Fine, Liz Strauss, Drew McLellan, SuzeMuse, and Kate Trgovac. A benefit for Mitch is that all of these blogs are now linking back to his blog, increasing his visibility among all of these blogs’ readership, as well as search engine rankings, such as Technorati. That Mitch Joel is one smart cookie!

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Posted in Blogging, Marketing 2.0, Strategy, World 2.0 | 7 Comments »

Ideas for PodCampBoston 4

July 25, 2008

Chris Penn -First morning's unKeynoteI want to congratulate Chris Brogan, Chris Penn, Steve Sherlock, Sooz, and the other PodCamp organizers for having the vision and creating an incredible PodCamp. It was an amazing setting in the heart of Boston. It was inspiring that an un-conference could be held in such an beautiful space. The scheduled sessions were wonderful, and plenty of room was given for impromptu meetings, gatherings, and mingling in the hallways. The organizers did a spectacular job and deserve a round of applause.

With an event of about 400 attendees, it’s easy to feel like this is a regular conference, and not one where I can directly make contributions. However, I need to remember that while the organizers have experience with these PodCamps, I need to not sit back, take an active role, and share my insights. So rather than expecting others to create the perfect PodCamp experience, I need to pitch in and help. Here are ways that we could create an even better PodCamp:

PodCampBoston Morning TwoWhen I arrived on Saturday night of PodCampBoston2 in October of 2007, just in time for the after-party to be winding down, I saw a live PodCamp twitterstream projected on the wall. The information was eye-opening. Even though I had starting using twitter in a regular way a few months prior, this was still profound. I had never seen it used at an event before; I had only used it at my home or office. I could see, right there on the wall, how campers were talking to each other, saying where they were going for dinner, for drinks after, what sessions they were looking forward to tomorrow, etc. These folks had been using twitter in this way for a while, but as newbie, I had not.

I was surprised that the camp’s twitter stream was never projected anywhere during the PodCampBoston3 weekend. The session on microblogging might have been a good time for it, but it didn’t happen there. Because we all agree that we want those new to social media to get up to speed, an important idea to remember for future PodCamps is to project a live twitterstream in several places. It would have been cool to have a live twitterstream going 24/7 in the upstairs breakroom/dining area and in the main hallway on the ground floor. We could have also shown the camp’s twitterstream during breaks in the auditorium. Another possibility would have been to show it during the conference wrap-up. (I’m sure that would be amusing.) We could have also had a twitter channel dedicated to lunch, dinner and party meet-ups.

There is no better way to get newbies up-to-speed on social media than to show them such a twitterstream, never mind the actual insight that they would get by watching it for a few minutes. For folks new to it, seeing a twitterstream like this is eye-opening. Even if you had heard about twitter, and were starting to use it, you would not have access to a stream like this, simply because you don’t yet know who to follow. This being my second PodCamp, I assumed that all attendees already knew about Twitter, but I was reminded that that is definitely not the case, when someone asked “what is this whole Twitter deal?” in the VERY LAST session of the entire weekend! Imagine how much connecting and knowledge people in that category, (and I’m sure it’s surprisingly large percentage) missed out on!

Not only should we create a spot to project the camp’s Twitter stream 24/7 during the event, we should also create some type of sign-in poster for people’s twitter handles, so that folks can exchange those during the conference. It would of course be voluntary. But I feel there is no faster way to create a better sense of community between veterans and newcomers to PodCamp than to connect them up via the social media tools that we are all here to discuss, n’est pas?

Since, as the PodCamp has matured, we have both veterans and first-timers alike. I think the success of social media and PodCamp is going to be measured by how many more people, especially professionals, come on board. One way to insure both the veterans and newbies are taken care of at an event is to indicate for which audience sessions are intended. Veterans tend towards the hallway and impromptu sessions while newbies go for the scheduled sessions. But both veterans and newbies alike will find value in the rooms and in the hallways if they know what to expect there.

Another way to connect people coming to the camp is through CrowdVine. It’s kinda funny that I first discovered the benefits of CrowdVine via BarCampBankSF, and not PodCampBoston. This Bay Area company has a site than anyone can use for free, to engender connections and networking leading up to, during, and after an event. I assumed that the PodCamp organizers knew about this tool, and had good reasons not to use it for PodCamp, but I am probably erroneous about that.

While Twitter is an amazing way to make connections and friends, I don’t want to have “twitter-level” intimacy with everyone. There are some people, who, brilliant as they are, just tweet too much for me. For those folks, Facebook is the right level of closeness. I can “check in” with them virtually once in a while. Therefore, I would love to see the Facebook page of the PodCamp event be used and populated for friend-connecting, even though it’s not the official site of the un-conference.

One more idea: I know it must be tough to try to capture the combined output of 400 social media types. And while there is an official PodCamp tag (pcb3), I still think it would be worthwhile to set up a central wiki where everyone who has blogged, photographed, recorded, uttered, podcasted, slideshared, etc. from the event could supply their links. I’m amazed already at how many different and wonderful perspectives on the event that I’ve seen, just from the people who I met and connected with. But I connected with less than 1/4 of the campers. My knowledge would be broadened if I had a way to view what others have thought and captured of the PodCamp.

These notes are not meant as criticisms to the PodCamp organizers. Thank you, Chris, Chris, Steve, Sooz, and other organizers. You did an amazing job, and all campers thank you for an unforgettable event. PodCamp is a large undertaking that you deserve to be proud of, and was a success for everyone who participated.

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Posted in Blogging, Events, Marketing 2.0, Strategy, World 2.0 | 7 Comments »

Thoughts from PodCampBoston 3

July 24, 2008

Panel on PR and social mediaI just returned from an incredible weekend of PodCampBoston 3. This was my second PodCamp, both in Boston, and my sixth ‘camp’ of any type. (FacebookCampToronto2, PodCampBoston2, BarCampBankSF, BarCampBankNewEngland, BarCampMoneyNYC). I first heard about “Camps” when I was invited to, then read post-event blogs about, BarCampBank Seattle, the first camp of its type held in North America. Reading about the sessions as they were posted to the web in near-real time, and how amazing the experience was universally for the attendees, made me eager to learn more about it.

Chris Brogan-First morning's unKeynoteMy first PodCampBoston (number 2) was a great experience. Even though I had years of experience in online community building because of my work creating EverythingCU, I was an outsider and newbie to PodCamp. It seemed like everyone already knew each other. I’m fairly social though, and did meet many great people. But never having been there before, especially when a great number of folks had the common bond of having CREATED the first one out of thin air, I naturally had the feeling of an outsider.

Joseph B Martin Conference CenterBut this one was different for me. Because I had met many people at PodCampBoston2, I had many “great to see you again” moments at PodCampBoston3. Also, because I had started interacting online with many people involved with social media in the greater Boston area, I had many “nice to meet you in person at last” moments, including with someone from my neck of the woods in Western Mass. One thing that really floored me was that when Chris Brogan arrived in the morning, he recognized me even though I wasn’t wearing a name tag yet. Wow, he’s good.

Best photo:
Parking Meter – FAIL
by Shelley Greenberg, aka the Spotted Duck

Best quote:
“And that’s where I ran out of Schlitz.” – from @JoeCascio getting to the end of his slides at the distributed microblogging session

Best tweet:
from @limeduck “Twitter can haz revenyoo model pls?” (view original)

Best unexpected delight of the camp:
Free parking in the middle of Boston

Best shirt:
Steve Garfield
(captured by Gradon Tripp)

Runners up:
Adam Zand,
Todd Van Hoosear

Best unexpected person I met:
Stewart Sims, the marketing genius who brought the Rubix Cube to the United States.

Best photo concept: Greg Peverill-Conti attempting to get a head shot of every camper

Best analogy:
Adam Zand for Social Media as High School

Best post-event blog summary:
Five Lessons from PodCamp Boston from the Spotted Duck

Gradon is looking at Suki's answersBest live-tweeting of the sessions:
@Gradon Tripp

Best personal revelation based on what someone else tweeted:
Twitter is like having a room full of friends inside your head (view original) (Fortunately, it comes with a mute button.)

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Posted in Blogging, Events, Marketing 2.0, Travels, World 2.0 | 6 Comments »

36 Credit union social media do’s

July 15, 2008

This morning I saw that social media sage Chris Brogan had put together a list of 50 social media strategies. Without peeking at his list (honestly!), I decided I should put together a list of Do’s and Don’ts for social media as it pertains to credit unions. I’m sure that I left out plenty, so feel free to add your additional ones here! And here’s a nice buttoned-up, three-page PDF version of the 63 CU social media do’s and don’ts.

Oh, and by the way, I’m delivering a webinar on Building Relationships with Social Media on EverythingCU on Thursday. I’ll be discussing 7 case studies, among other things. I’m really looking forward to it, and am very excited we have 36 credit unions signed up so far.

Because this list is long, I’ve split up the Do’s and the Don’ts into two entries:

Do’s:

  1. Do become well-versed with all of the available social media tools before diving in. (Blogs, Twitter, Facebook, podcasting are great starting points.)
  2. Do start your social media marketing strategy planning by thinking about what your TARGET AUDIENCE is interested in.
  3. Do make sure that your social media strategy reinforces your CU’s overall business or branding strategy, and is designed to, at the least, create awareness of what your CU is great at.
  4. Do feature your online initiatives in a computer kiosk in your lobby. That way your members will not only learn about what they can do remotely, they’ll also associate what they see online with a tangible presence.
  5. Do learn the basics of how RSS and blogs work.
  6. Do give guidelines to anyone who will be contributing to your CUs blog.
  7. Do put your rates into RSS format.
  8. Do comment on your members’ blogs. They LOVE that, and will share the love in return. That’s the best way to increase readership of YOUR blog.
  9. Do put valuable information that is currently in your print letter ALSO onto your blog so that your members can comment. Feel free to inform that online commenting is available at the end of the print newsletter articles that are also featured on your blog.
  10. Do feel free to blog your newsletter articles before they appear in the print version. Many people aren’t paying attention to your blog, and will be reminded to go there when receiving the print version in the mail.
  11. Do write down your social media strategy so that the rest of the management team can see the cause and effect chain from your marketing efforts to how its helping the CU generate awareness, leads, new referrals, new members, and new sales, or in general reinforcing the CU’s brand.
  12. Do start with the overall campaign concept, then figure out what social media tools are the best fit.
  13. Do reinforce your traditional marketing campaigns with your online efforts and vice versa. These are not separate silos.
  14. Do build up a network of friends among your members BEFORE you start trying to “market” to them.
  15. Do use social media to start conversations among your members about your CU and ask for honest feedback.
  16. Do monitor discussion about your CU on third-party sites using Google Alerts.
  17. Do create a business fan page for your CU on Facebook.
  18. Do be a real person and use real language in all social media venues. Be as polite and professional as you would face-to-face.
  19. Do always make sure your blog posts are attributed to the author, and not to the faceless credit union.
  20. Do only write a blog post when you have something important to say to your members.
  21. Do put your fun and interesting CU events onto Facebook.
  22. Do write your blog posts in a way that invites your members to comment on it. We’ve been so used to one-way communication with our members, that we have to retrain our brains to write in a way that invites dialogue.
  23. Do realize that for the most part, your members are more interested in other members’ comments on your blog, than on the article you originally wrote. Feature comments front and center.
  24. Do optimize your web site and online banking to work on mobile phones, Blackberries, Treos, and iPhones.
  25. Do call your core processor’s rep every day until she gives you a mobile banking offering for your members.
  26. Do attend the nearest PodCamp to you to learn more about what this social media thing is all about.
  27. Do understand that your members expect you to be present in the online conversation about you. They’ll interpret a lack of presence as a lack of caring about their concerns.
  28. Do understand that you’ll have to hold many of your members hands if you want them to participate in your online efforts. But each time that you do, you will be earning their gratitude, and perhaps loyalty. Everyone likes to learn how to do cool new things, without being made to feel like they are stupid.
  29. Do read web sites and books about it: The Cluetrain Manifesto by Christopher Locke, Naked Conversations by Robert Scoble, and The New Influencers by Paul Gillin
  30. Do read blogs about it: this one right here, OpenSource CU by Trabian, Marketing Whims by Ron Shevlin, NetBanker by Jim Bruene, Currency Marketing by Tim McAlpine, CU Hype by Tony Mannor, and scores more.
  31. Do realize that your members know better your CUs strengths and weaknesses than you realize.
  32. Do realize that your front line staff are your best and most important allies in social media marketing. They are far more familiar with it, and trusted by their own friends than you are.
  33. Do involve your front line staff with your social media efforts every step of the way.
  34. Do involve your members at every step of the way with your social media efforts.
  35. Do realize that the relationship your members have with each other is often as important, and sometimes more important, than the relationship they have with you or your credit union.
  36. Do involve your members in competitions and let them see how they stand. Members love that, and will check back often if you do!

Here are the 27 Don’ts.

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Posted in Blogging, Marketing 2.0, Strategy, World 2.0 | 5 Comments »

PodCampBoston Wrap Up

October 30, 2007


The best takeaways from PodCampBoston:

0:00 – Utterz – Podcasting via cell phone
0:48 – Pod Group Twitter
1:48 – Lolsaurs
2:46 – StalkerStalker
4:01 – Moo Cards
4:27 – Live Video over Net
5:55 – BarCampBankNewEngland
Mobile post sent by mmpartee using Utterz.  Replies.  mp3

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Posted in Blogging, Events, Strategy, Travels, World 2.0 | 4 Comments »

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