CrapHammer

Blogger has media executives eating out of his hand.

  eating out of my hand 
  Originally uploaded by id-clare.

Media is changing.  This article from the NY Times is one of the best examples of this.  A young college student's blog has become the source for big media types around the world.

When his postings dropped off last month after his girlfriend dumped him, Mr. Stelter found himself fielding complaints from powerful network executives about when he was going to get over his romantic travails and get back on track.
Source: NY Times, The Kid With All the News About the TV News, Julie Bosman

Many of us have had ego-blog moments.  Where we break a threshold of viewers or receive an email from someone we really respect in the industry.  But this kid is redefining these moments with TV executives feeding him 20 or 30 tips a day that often turn into real scoops.  And the leaders in the industry actually becoming addicted to his blog.

So here I sit in meetings every week with people that don't understand what a blog is.  Or that want to come up with a new word for "blog" before they will use it.  See Mike Sansones article on this one.  In reality, my clients and associates are struggling with every aspect of social media - from distributing their message to interacting with bloggers.

There are so many inter-related areas that make blogging difficult for organizations.

• Disruption (of control, communication channels, ownership, etc.)
• Creating content of value (voice vs. control)
• Policies
• and more...

I believe the first step is engaging people (those overlooked entities inside organizations) to begin reading blogs.  Give them the tools to begin monitoring and visiting social media sites. My arguments for this are easier for them to grasp and take action on.

• People are talking about you. Are you even aware of these conversations?
• Are you interested in who the new innovators in your space are and what they are saying?
• The key to all social media strategies is having a network of people you consider associates or friends.  How will you find these people if you aren't using these tools?
• And most importantly, I want you to be in touch with what social media is and what it is becoming.

Because.

What social media really is might just surprise all of us.

Thanks to the wonderful Servants of Chaos for this find.

Craphammer.ca launches

Craphammer launches with a new URL!

http://www.craphammer.ca/

Please update any links so I don't become a zero link technorati newb again  ;)

Thanks to the guys in the office for the awesome shirt.  I was hoping for a designer label.  But crap wearers can't be choosy, I suppose.

Links for the week.

I don't tend to do a lot of "link" posts, but we are renovating our new offices and time is at a premium in my life.  So here we go.

Is your brand a joke?  Maybe it should be.  So argues Mike Wagner.

For my geekier readers, The WOMMA looks at applying catastrophe modeling to a customer satisfaction model.  Free PDF.

Pete Blackshaw discusses the transparency of advertising on sites like YouTube.  Check it out.  (Sadly, the video in question has been removed from YouTube.)

Last, and FAR from least, are two Canadian case studies from the man who leads Word of Mouth  marketing in my book, Mr. Sean Moffitt.  The first is on lululemon and the latter from Secrets from your sister.

Greenpeace "Blame Canada" campaign is a social media oversight.

Okay, at risk of getting my citizenship revoked, I want to share a recent Greenpeace campaign titled "Blame Canada".  Flames from fishermen notwithstanding, this is a potentially effective campaign that has had time, resources and money applied to it.

So.  Explain to me why I had to go into the HTML and steal the code for embedding the movie below.  Is it a skill test to ensure only geeky bloggers help to spread the message?  Or a way to strip out all but the most highly motivated left-leaning activists?  Or is it just a way to piss off social media marketers like myself?

I apologize for the rant, but this lack of focus on distributing content gets under my skin.  How does the end result of hard-to-share content come to be?  Is it ignorance?  Or does someone actually sit down and say to the web folks,

We want to get the message out!  But only if they come to our site.

I actually stole the above quote from one of my corporate clients (paraphrased.)  Close-site-edness is nothing new. I guess what surprised me was it's the last thing I expected to witness in a not-for-profit campaign where the goal is to raise awareness and create action on a topic. 

A lot of effort went into creating this piece of content. So, I'm assuming it's an oversight in this case.

In that vein, here's some free advice for you, Greenpeace.  Spread the word!  Take a look at the greenmyapple campaign (that you created.)  You have an entire section devoted to getting the media and message as wide a distribution as possible.

Help (and encourage) your audience to support you in your mission.

For anyone who wants to share this flash movie, I've placed the code below.

<object width="430" height="313" classid="clsid:D27CDB6E-AE6D-11cf-96B8-444553540000" codebase="http://download.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=6,0,29,0">
&nbsp; <param name="movie" value="http://www.greenpeace.org/international/assets/binaries/blamecanadaswf.swf" />
&nbsp; <param name="quality" value="high" />
&nbsp; <embed width="430" height="313" src="http://www.greenpeace.org/international/assets/binaries/blamecanadaswf.swf" quality="high" pluginspage="http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer" type="application/x-shockwave-flash"></embed></object>

Word of Mouth and creating a Social Media Score

An amazing mouthful

I speak to an MBA class at Schulich every quarter or so.  But this time I had the great fortune of speaking with Sean Moffitt.  I gave a presentation on social media and he spoke about Word of Mouth.

He captures the ethics, passion and power of word of mouth marketing like few I have ever heard.  I stole the cartoon on the left from his post on how "most people pay attention, listen and act on advice from other people not ads".

I recommend checking out his blog and company if you are even a bit interested in word of mouth marketing.

We spoke and chatted about the challenges with adoption in the corporate space.  And that there are so many barriers from education to dealing with "loss of control" and the disruption inherent with social media activities.

Social Media Score

So, with Word of Mouth companies utilizing a "Net Promoter Score" to better gauge the opportunities for WoM, why not a similar tool to better gauge whether corporations are ready (or a good fit) for social media tools?

John over at the Digital Influence Mapping Project raised the development of a Social Media Score to this very end.  His list of questions had me chuckling.  And as much as I'd like to ask a client about their relationship to IT in the context of a "giant sphincter"... I don't know if I have the "balls".

The list of questions raises some interesting questions.  How dependent is the move into blogging on an existing awareness of the "blogosphere"?

What about the environment and the fit with the communication or brand objectives?  How much can passion or a desire for stronger customer involvement overcome deficiencies in other areas?

So, I follow in John's footsteps and propose the following list of questions. I've pulled a bit from Sean Moffitt's talk last night.  I've placed less emphasis on familiarity with the act of blogging, for example.  I don't discount the benefits of familiarity.  Just that I've not found it to be a barrier to entry.  I'd argue that once the desire and fit is there, it's a matter of educating and getting them involved.

So here's my list of questions.  Using a Lykert scale where 1 is low and 10 is high.

1. Disruption
   1. How often do you involve customers in internal meetings to gain their perspective? (1 is infrequent, 10 is frequently)
   2. How often do you use unofficial channels for distributing announcements and communications about your company? (1 is infrequent, 10 is frequently)
   3. How much freedom do employees at all levels have in regards to being a voice of the company?  (1 is none; refer to official positions only, 10 is full freedom; as they see best.)
   4. How often does legal become involved in external communications? (1 is always, 10 is rarely)
   5. Does the competition or your distribution network negatively impact your ability to communicate with customers/media? (1 is "Every day", 10 is "Screw them")
2. Product
   1. How would you rate the quality of your product (as a consumer/customer): (1 being "don't make me do this", 10 being "insanely awesome.")
   2. How much positive word of mouth activity naturally occurs? (1 being "only if we pay them", 10 being "we can't stop people from saying good things.")
   3. How do your customers view your product/service? (1 being as a commodity, 10 being "more dear to them than air".)
   4. If you remove your logo from it, how will the product stand up? (1 being "uh oh.", 10 being "we still have the best product.")
   5. How differentiated is your product in the marketplace? (1 being "did we mention our logo?", 10 being unique.)
3. Passion
   1. How high within the organization does this interest in social media go? (1 being janitor, 10 being CEO/Chairman/God)
   2. How keen is the organization to taking calculated risks? (1 being "we got a cappuccino machine last year", 10 being "we built our brand around taking calculated risks.")
   3. What is driving this desire in the organization to investigate social media? (1 being because the Jones' are doing it, 10 being the potential opportunities)
   4. How important is the voice of the customer/consumer to your organization? (1 being only so far as they purchase, 10 being they are involved directly in product development and refinement.)
   5. How willing/able is your organization to engage in actual conversations directly with consumers? (1 being "Can you repeat the question?", 10 being "been there, done that.")
4. Bigger Picture (karma)
   
   1. How involved is your company in social or environmental causes? (1 being "what?", 10 being "your company redefines involvement on these issues".)
   2. How aware are your customers (potential and existing) of your company's involvement in social or environmental issues? (1 being "people aren't buying it", 10 being "the company name is synonymous with the issue")
   3. How pertinent is your involvement to your customer base?  (1 being "not at all", 10 being "it's the issue for them."
   4. How far do your social or environmental programs penetrate your organization? (1 being a group of employees, 10 being all levels and locations of the organization.)
   5. How empowered are individual employees to take part in social and environmental issues/initiatives? (1 being "they did what???!!", 10 being "our janitor was written up in The NY Times.")

I hope someone from Interface calls me.  If this holds even a bit of weight, they would blow the doors off the scales.

What's missing?  How would your customers rate?

Corporate aversion to safe linking.

"We want our site to be more interactive."

I hear this a lot.  And it's usually a great start for a discussion on fulfilling communication objectives by distributing content.  ie:  It's less about sites being interactive and more about the content reach and subsequent opportunities for viral growth.

(See Kate's post referencing Feedburner data showing that giving story content away without requiring links back to read the full article actually drives more site visits.)

This part of the conversation generally goes well with lots of nodding, buy-in, and sometimes even excitement.

And then we turn to links.  Or what bloggers often refer to as "link love". An integral step in building the connections necessary to drive opportunities for distributed content.

This rarely goes so well.  The idea of actively promoting users to click on links that take users away from a corporate platform causes a clenching of jaws, a gnashing of teeth or, at best, a very profound silence.   It is as though I have suddenly morphed into an object of unusual and questionable merit.  To which end everyone becomes very interested in their blackberries and notebooks.

I think I now understand what they are picturing when I bring up the concept of "link love."  Oy.

So now I'm left with the question, "Even if we get over the misconceptions, how applicable are external links to a corporate blogging environment?"

A bit of Dove sanity

Not to take away from the success, but with all the hype and talk about the Dove "Evolution" campaign I was starting to see double.

As I work on the Dove account, I can't comment too much.  But I can direct you over to this gem of an article by  Brendan  Hodgson. 

With so many companies struggling with how to define success and ROI on viral and social media initiatives (Dove included), it's nice to see someone discussing the merits from a big-picture perspective. Thanks Brendan.

Save the Internet, Ninja Style.

I have struggled a number of times to educate colleagues, students and clients on the concept and relevance of Peering and Net Neutrality.  And to do so in a way that doesn't cause half the audience to go to sleep.

AskaNinja does all this.  While building a brand.  And delivering compelling content to his site.  Just wish it was easier to access an RSS feed.

I urge all bloggers to learn more about peering and net neutrality.  Visit AskaNinja.com or SaveTheInternet.com to find out more and add your voice.

P.S.  Skip the Moby video on the SaveTheInternet site unless you are REALLY into cheese.  ;)

Truffles or bust and the laughing baby

Many thanks to the ubiquitous kawasaki for this lead.

Anything but a photo blog, here is a wonderful use of photos as part of a story-telling device.  See it for yourself on the Amateur Gourmet.  Adam uses humor and a comic-book technique to share an ego-blog-moment with all his readers.  Priceless (if a bit long).

Most impressive to me is the comment-mania on his post.

Perhaps the medium is less about the technology (photo blogs, video streams) and more about telling stories that readers enjoy and more intimately connect with.  Blasphemy.  I know.  But something good to remind us all of now and again. ;)

Viral beyond words

I couldn't help myself.  I had to share this.  And I don't even have a kid.

Transient Youth Fleeing. Are comScore numbers trustworthy?

  fickle 
  Originally uploaded by mani_p.

Continuing (and wrapping up?) my current theme on youth, I was forwarded a really interesting article from the WashingtonPost.com that speaks to the "fickle" nature of youth and online social sites.

To a youth market [...] MySpace is just the latest online fad. Before MySpace, the place to be was Xanga, and before that, Friendster, MiGente and Black Planet.
Source: Washingpost.com, Social Sites Find Fickle Audience, Yuki Noguchi

The author proposes that youth are leaving these sites because of privacy and other changes.  And that this behavior is nothing new for youth. I feel it important to note that while the article speaks of usage curves (time spent on site) as a key indicator of attrition, it provides no references to dropping usage data on MySpace or YouTube.  Just anecdotal evidence.

In the blogosphere, and media in general, we appear quick to identify YouTube and MySpace as winners.  And by impact and numbers, they are.  And its well-recognized that the challenge now facing these services is whether they can make the transition to mainstream.  If the washingtonpost.com article is on-track, the pressure to do so may be critical if indeed their primary audience is leaving them.

Consider the most popular teen sites tracked by Nielsen-NetRatings. Topping the list last month were Snapvine.com, PLyrics.com, Picgames.com -- none of which appeared among the top 10 for April, or the list a year ago.
Source: Washingpost.com, Social Sites Find Fickle Audience, Yuki Noguchi

Okay.  So kids are fickle.  But does this imply that they are leaving their current sites?  I don't believe it's a causal relationship.  So I decided to look a little deeper.  And the amazing and overworked Danah Boyd on her Many-2-Many blog provided some potential insight.  She points to a potential source for this belief.  The myth that MySpace and other online sites are quickly swinging to older audiences.

comScore is often cited in the industry as a solid source for user activity online and the graph on the right shows a marked increase in the number of older people using social networking sites.  But Danah has a different take on the numbers.

[...] the fact that there are more 100+ year olds on MySpace than are living should make people think about reported data.
Source: comScore misinterprets data..., Danah Boyd

She raises questions on how comScore gathers its data and that this could lead to growing mis-interpretations in the data collected.  Teens using their parents computers and not changing their "comScore profile", for example.  Certainly something that we are educating parents on (not allowing children to surf alone, but rather to use a family computer in a more public area of the home.)

So Danah does what any respected researcher and PhD student would do.  She performs her own random sample of 100 profiles with UIDs over 50M (newer accounts).  Here is what she found.

• 26 are under 18
• 45 are 18-30 (with a skew to the lower)
• 10 are over 30 but under 70
• 1 is over 70 (but looks less than 18)
• 6 are bands
• 11 are invalid or deleted
• 1 is a completely fake characters

This account data hints that the general assumption that approximately 25% of users are minors is correct. Of the remaining, the bulk is under 30. Qualitatively, I’m seeing the most active use from those under 21. Given account practices, I don’t think that I’m off in what I’m seeing.
Source: comScore misinterprets data..., Danah Boyd

Perhaps someone out there will fund Danah to do a more detailed study?  She is interested in seeing comScore numbers on something that can be better verified, such as LiveJournal.

Quick Aside:
The Washington Post online offers a number of interesting tools and blog tie-ins.

See the image on the left for an example of what I am speaking of.  This is a prominent feature, not buried.  They showcase links from other blogs that link to the article currently being read.  Potentially driving traffic off the site.  And at the bottom, they make it EASY to save the current article in a variety of ways.  Wow.

I'm assuming the pay-off for them is like many web 2.0 services.  Part advertising, part subscription.