Several weeks ago, I wrote a rather long diatribe about the marketing world's obsession with short-term sales metrics ( Restoring Marketing and Finance Balance: How Marketing Can Save the (Corporate) World). My fear is that brands are increasingly being viewed not as sources for long-term competitive advantage and value but instead as short-term assets to be exploited for immediate quarterly profits. Given my fear, it was exciting to read Ad Age's article " Unilever, Walmart, P&G Buck the Short-Term Trend." The piece hints at how marketing and business leaders are complicit in encouraging the markets' and C-suites' fixation on short-term results. If we want to advocate for more attention to the long-term value of brands, then we should consider whether the data and reports we furnish encourage the desired long-range thinking. Clearly in this economy marketers cannot afford to ignore today's sales as a primary KPI, but as I wrote in my earlier blog post, "The short- and long-term are not mutually exclusive, but they become so if we willingly concentrate on one to the detriment of the other. And if marketers won't champion the importance of long-term brand vitality, then no ... read more >>
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One of the things that you probably learned by hanging out with me here at Conversation Agent is that I tend to bring together a lot of ideas in a short space, show you how those ideas are connected, and why you need to care. But, here's the thing, you care only if I catch you in the right frame of mind, if when you're reading this post you wrestle with the very same thoughts. Attention and context In other words, I have your attention - and sometimes I'm even fortunate enough to have your take in the comments - when you're already paying attention to that issue yourself. It's like buying a car, you're thinking about a particular make and model and, lo, you see it everywhere. That's because you're attuned to it, it's on your frequencies. The mind is a very powerful instrument. It's held somewhere in the brain, the only closed system that can grow by use. What happens though is that it gets trained - we train it - to draw conclusions from partial information. We make assumptions. It's built in our genetics, too. That survival thing again and the brain's ability to compress complex stimuli and data into narrative. We take shortcuts. Something would need to be in the right place at ...
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Twitterslurp - a drop.io API app that creates a keyword Twitter stream, with a list of users and stats for your website, see an example at the Personal Democracy Forum created by the Bivings group. Tweetboard - showcase a Twitter stream in your blog. The owner and visitors to your site populate this stream by tweeting in the text box. All replies are threaded. View a history of all tweets or the lastest ones. Rather than embed this app in your blog, it acts as a tab on the side of the browser window, which you click and a window expands. If this tab is red it means there are new tweets (from the owner and visitors) since your last visit; if it’s green means otherwise. When someone tweets in the text box provided, the tweet appears at Twitter with a special link called “posted.at” at the end of the tweet. This is a unique link that points back to the site, and opens up that thread…this brings traffic back to your site where the visitors can participate in the thread discussion.
When browsing a sites Tweetboard you can click the permalink of a tweet and it launches a text box where you can copy the permalink of that tweet. You could paste this link into a blog post or a tweet, ... read more >>
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At Fullhouse, we talk with clients about the importance of "transparency." And this blog has dedicated quite a few posts to the concept of transparency in Social Media. But can our agency "walk the talk" when the shoe is on the other foot and we face a difficult, sensitive situation? I found out yesterday that we can, and our experience reinforces why transparency isn’t just a tactic to be exercised on Facebook and Twitter but instead is a strategic and cultural imperative for today's social world. At our agency, we were confronted with an unpleasant situation. It is a common story--one that is reflected in the pages of Ad Age every couple weeks: Client meets agency; Client loves agency; Agency staffs up; Client changes marketing leadership; Client shifts work between agencies; Agency loses revenue and faces difficult staffing decisions. Of course, being a common situation in the agency business doesn't make it any easier to address. When an employer faces tough situations like this, the tendency is to want to tightly control information. It seems typical for employers to try to hide the situation until such time a staff reduction is announced, and when that occurs the organization ... read more >>
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Bear with me for this somewhat long post, ‘cause I am not only discussing the sweeping changes Gmail made today, but in the end will also tell you what they are going to do next year – or perhaps after that. Gmail Changes The Gmail label changes announced today and to be released to accounts slowly (you may not see them yet, I only have them on one account) are ones that I’ve long been waiting for, and that most reviewers seem to underestimate, thinking of them as mere cosmetic or usability changes, i.e. “drag and drop”, “right-side labels retired”..etc. We can always trust good old Lifehacker to call it what it is: Gmail Gives Labels the Folder Treatment. Folders vs. Labels Because they are. Folders, that is. Just very few people realize that. The Folders vs. Labels debate is older than the tenancy debates we discussed recently, with two deeply religious camps (apologies for the extreme characterization): - Those who “just can’t live without folders”, mostly legacy users of Yahoo Mail, Hotmail and mostly Outlook. They are used to folders and won't learn new concepts, don't want to change, but are happy spending their life “organizing stuff” and even feel productive ...
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I often get asked on the benefits of Social Media: “How should we leverage social media for advertising and marketing?” or “What do we need to consider when incorporating social media into our existing strategy?” There are still a lot of questions surrounding social media. The simple way to get a grasp on it is to first understand how information flows through social media. Visualizing The Circulation EvolutionI like to visualize information so I’ve created the following graphics to describe how content travels through the traditional media channels. As you can see in the traditional model, content gets created (by few sources) then aggregated into the circulation 1.0 channel of print, radio, television, and the web. These “read-only” materials get pushed out on a one-to-many process requiring users to retrieve them. Take newspaper as an example: it all starts with the editor creating the content, then it goes through a review process before it gets printed on paper, and finally delivers to you so you can start reading the content. This is a top-down approach for content distribution with maximum control 
Now let’s looks at how social media elevates the content circulation in the ... read more >>
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It seems that the natural evolution of social media occurring is taking shape in the marketplace. We're beginning to round the first corner of acceptance and many businesses have begun to dabble in the space and for those who already have, they are talking about how it has helped them develop new methods of marketing their brands and connecting with their online communities. "By now it's a widely accepted marketing maxim that a brand isn't simply what its marketing department says it is but what its customers say it is." - AdAge
But companies are still tentative to make a solid commitment to integrating social media into their overall organizational structure including sales, marketing, PR, communications, customer service, advertising, etc. because it has yet to be segmented in a way that organizations can understand - with KPI's (key performance indicators).  read more >>
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B-to-B companies are seen as conservative when it comes to new marketing ideas. They tend to hang back and watch someone else go first, said Elizabeth Sosnow, Managing Director, Bliss PR in an interview with The Daily Dog. Sosnow was talking about an analysis they did of 46 large and small management consulting firms. “This is an industry built on content, case studies and ideas,” said Sosnow. “One big thing we found is that B-to-B firms are in a fantastic position and it’s a real opportunity for them. They’ve got the goods—the intellectual capital.” However the research also showed that these firms are not getting that expertise and thought leadership out into the social media marketplace. What are BtoB best practices? Ben Parr’s article on Mashable lays out a formula that works: - Build a reputation - show your expertise. Use a blog to feature your expertise. But once you start a blog you have to keep it up. The majority of the companies Bliss analyzed were not keeping their blog content current and did not feature identified thought leaders.
- Research your customers. Use social media tools to do research as much as you use it connect with others. ...
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 Valeria Maltoni is one of the most widely respected marketing voices in the world. And for good reason. Her extensive background spans marketing, public relations, and social media. If it exists in the realm of communications, she’s done it.
Valeria was also an integral nucleus of the Fast Company Company of Friends, a business intelligence and relationship development organization that in many ways presaged today’s social networking craze. Her blog, Conversation Agent, is an absolute must-read. (Seriously, I read a ton of blogs, and hers is top 5 on the planet, in my estimation). She’s not afraid to go in-depth, challenge your thinking, and strike the match of true conversation – as you’ll see in this eye-popping, live Twitter 20 interview from July 1, 2009. (Valeria asked in the interview for reader feedback on how blogging has changed – question 17. What do you think?) 1. @jaybaer: Your umbrella premise is that marketing & business are a long conversation. What do you mean by that? - @conversationage: Conversation is the most natural, effective, yet most complex mode of human connection.
- The goal of conversation is understanding between participants. Turns out that’s the same .. ...
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 One can't help but notice the brouhaha that Malcolm Gladwell tipped with his prominent dis-endorsement of Chris Anderson's latest book Free. His New Yorker magazine review of the timely tome, which portends an age where all media content shall be set free, prompted many in the Twittersphere to weigh in (mostly in favor of Mr. Anderson's perspective). Here's a smattering of what the pundits had to say starting with Mr. Gladwell: - Malcolm Gladwell "Priced to Sell: Is Free the Future" "His advice is pithy, his tone uncompromising, and his subject matter perfectly timed for a moment when old-line content providers are desperate for answers. That said, it is not entirely clear what distinction is being marked between 'paying people to get other people to write' and paying people to write. If you can afford to pay someone to get other people to write, why can’t you pay people to write? It would be nice to know, as well, just how a business goes about reorganizing itself around getting people to work for 'non-monetary rewards.' Does he mean that the New York Times should be staffed by volunteers, like Meals on Wheels?"
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