 An employee for one of my clients tweeted me yesterday, pointing me to “what happens when you jump into social media unprepared.” He was talking about the launch of a new Twitter account by BCS—the Bowl Championship Series—the much-maligned system that substitutes for a playoff system for college football teams.
The account, @InsideTheBCS, launched on Thursday and has, since then, accumulated nearly 700 followers. There’s no hint about who might be posting the tweets, although one blog suggests the BCS may have farmed the task out to PR agency HDMK, since the first two people to follow the newly-minted account were HDMK staffers, neither of whom returned calls. One tweet seems to be signed by Bill Hancock, the new BCS executive director. Regardless of who’s behind the account, it has been savaged in a number of quarters since it first appeared. A Twitter search I conducted moments ago produced several pages of messages, even though @InsideTheBCS itself has tweeted only 30 times as of this writing. To the credit of whoever’s writing the tweets, several are responses to what others have said, and some are responses to critical comments. But with hundreds of comments ... read more >>
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 I promise. This is my last report for a while from the field of social media dreams. Today, I had the pleasure of participating in PR Camp New York. The use of the word "camp" in a social media context probably has its origins from the pod(casting) camps made popular when podcasting was as de rigeur as Twitter is today. Dan Greenfield came in from Atlanta to preside over the confab at the 92Y in Tribeca. And in spite of a surplus of social media gatherings on any given week, today's event drew a diverse mix of more than 100 PR peeps and marketers from the agency, non-profit and corporate spheres. I was woven to Zontee Hou, a Gen Y'er who overseas social media for Lion Brand Yarn, which just won a Groundswell and PR News Platinum Award. Yes, for yarn! Our topic: "Talking about the 'Y' Generation: Tapping the Social Media Expertise of Young Professionals to Reach Your Audience" The room broke out into four groups to exchange perspectives, after which the moderators took to the stage to report. I cited a recent RWW post that talked about Gen Y's migration to Twitter: average ages on My Space, 27, Twitter, 31, Facebook 33, and LinkedIn, 39. One of our group's members said that ... read more >>
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NESTA hosted a lovely panel discussion yesterday with Stephen Fry, Twitter co-founder Biz Stone and LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman, who discussed Twitter as a force for good - see a video of the event here.
Biz talked about the way Twitter was developed, like so many other interesting services, as a side-project, which then quickly evolved into something remarkable thanks to its sheer simplicity and malleability. He said that early reactions from potential investors suggested they couldn't see past this simplicity, and this was echoed by Reid Hoffman, who was told by VCs in 2003 that social networking would be a feature of dating sites, recruiting sites and other existing destination web sites, but not a meaningful service in its own right. Talking about future social networking services, Reid said "You ain't seen nothing yet," and suggested we have only just begun to explore the power of people, connected. How we connect with other people gives us meaning in life, and he thinks there are many more ways in which we will explore this notion with future products and services - with the next wave of web innovation being about what we do with the massive amounts of data and ... read more >>
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by B. L. Ochman
While thousands of companies have either experimental or well-established presence on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and other social media sites, those communities remain invisible on all but a tiny fraction of company homepages. Why do companies hide their social media efforts from visitors? My guess is that their reasons include
o fear that they'll lose control of their brand if too many people know they can have a say;
o lack of cooperation between marketing and IT;
o and perhaps pressure from lawyers who are nervous about new-fangled new media. It's hard to find a company website whose homepage easily and clearly allows visitors to see all of the its social media initiatives. You'd have to be Nancy Drew to find the company blog on most websites, or its Facebook page, or all of its YouTube videos.  Starbucks new homepage, recently re-designed, stands head and shoulders above the rest for clarity, ease of use and organization. Clean and clear, it has a community heading above the fold, and clearly lists Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, among other links.
A few companies try to curate their content effectively, including:
o Dell ... read more >>
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I've seen a bunch of posts bubble up over the past few days that are really sparking my curiousity about what is really going on with Twitter, so I need to do a little brain dump. Bear with me.Insight #1An article by Rosabeth Moss Kanter was just published today on the Harvard Business Review website, titled On Twitter and in the Workplace, It's Power to the Connectors. In it, she highlights the fact that there is an organizational trend moving away from the hierarchical networks of the 20th century, and towards complex, distributed, non-hierarchical structures of business organization and leadership.She also points out that success today is based on a person's ability to leverage power and influence within their social networks, to act as "connectors" between people and information, and in turn build social capital.She leaves the evaluation of the significance of Twitter open-ended, but she lays out a few characteristics of Twitter that I found most interesting:In the World According to Twitter, giving away access to information rewards the giver by building followers. The more followers, the more information comes to the giver to distribute, which in turn builds more followers. ... read more >>
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Yesterday I hosted a conversation on Twitter all about authenticity and what that truly means. It's a buzzword, to be sure, but it was interesting that the 140 character based conversation yielded many different perceptions of what authenticity means. For most honesty was a big part of it, as was having real one on one conversations with people and not taking yourself too seriously. As I thought about my own use of social media both in building my personal brand as well as what I do for clients working my day job at a big marketing agency ... I realized that I'm not a social media guy. Social media guys (I use this term collectively, as many are girls too) are becoming easy to find - and not all that respected (warning - this video has crude language). Social media is just one of the tools that I use on a daily basis. To focus on just that and make it my identity would be like calling a runner a "sneaker guy." They might love their sneakers, but it's still the method they use to get from where they are to where they want to be. The way I use social media is similar ... I use it for marketing. I'm a marketing guy first and foremost. It's why my blog is called Influential Marketing . ... read more >>
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 A good friend and former colleague of mine Dan Neely, CEO of Networked Insights reminded me recently that there will be more data created in this year than in the previous 5000 years combined! With all this data the question many CMOs wrestle with is – How to manage so much data from so many sources and separate systems to drive insights on how customers behave? With the goal being a seamless and consistent experience as customers and prospects pin pong across a variety of channels. A recent Forrester report called The Intelligent Approach to Customer Intelligence does a good job outlining the challenges of creating data that can truly be used for driving strategic marketing decisions (what they call Strategic Intelligence). But for most B2B marketers like myself – we tend to optimize by the channel of data that we have. For example I get: Social Media reports, Blog data reports, Website data reports, Campaign data reports, Launch result reports, Traditional Media reports, Lead reports and of course Budget reports to name just a few. With all these endless reports no wonder it ‘feels’ like we never can get any true customer insights – since all we can do is look down these channels . ... read more >>
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"May you live in interesting times" is as much a Chinese curse as it is a blessing and in so many ways it can be applied to the recent happenings with the FDA hearings on social media in Washington late last week. The FDA invited more than 60 speakers to present their perspective on social media as it related to direct to consumer (DTC) advertising, media, reporting and essentially accountability driven by social media. Now that the floodgates are open in this remarkable event, there is now a requirement to react and to develop best practice guidelines and regulations around transparancy. One could argue that what is happening in pharma is just the tip of the iceberg of whats to come for business and organizations worldwide.
A good blog post by Econsultancy summarizes the thrust of the FDA hearings focus as being centered on answering the following questions:
- For what online communications are manufacturers, packers or distributors accountable?
- How can manufacturers, packers or distributors fulfill regulatory requirements in their Internet and social media ...
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Social media has appeared because the web is here and people are talking to one another online, consumers create content without needing media intermediaries and as a result are free to talk about products, brands, ideas and society. Consumers now expect companies will conduct a dialogue with them online. Companies like Dell, Comcast and Zappos have changed customer expectations about what it means to reach out to a company for the simplest of requests or the most complex of complaints. Instead of calling a call center on their time, the consumer simply writes a blog post, Facebook update, or tweet anticipating a company will respond. To write well in social media is not about being the most polished writer, or a creative copywriter, rather the skills that are needed to succeed are an ability to listen, be empathic, admit mistakes where necessary, and take a stand knowing the customer is not always right. Online, the good writer is outpaced by the good conversationalist. You’ve developed your brand, spent decades on refining the look, and meaning of what it means to purchase your products. Perhaps the experience of going into one of your stores in Raleigh, North Carolina is the ... read more >>
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 A lot of casinos are trying to engage their patrons young and old; leveraging multiple social media channels. From Blogs to YouTube and a lot in between they are focused on 'showing off' their brand in an effort to dazzle the consumer. The key to engagement lies in making things convenient for the consumer, the messaging has to inform & ENTERTAIN, and you have to look for ways to leverage every interaction. Yes, not just online, but you need to involve your direct marketing channels to drive effective engagement across channels. Here are some practical ideas on how a casino can use Social Media - 1. Twitter - You should tweet about events leveraging your brand, your performers, & special events at the property. Mix up information with an occasional special coupon driven by trivia. Of course, all coupons have to be redeemed in person.
2. Blogs - Take the feedback you get from your consumers and post that on your blog. Invite some of your patrons to write about their experiences. Genuine articles work very well. People can blog about their first visit or special events that they celebrated at your property.
3. Facebook allows you in to the 'living room' of your patrons. Give ...
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