CrapHammer

Rethinking Digital and Social Marketing for the Arts

Or the five hardest questions I've ever been asked.

Rethinking Digital and Social Marketing for the Arts

The presentation that I gave today to the International Society for the Performing Arts.

Eat. Sleep. Blog. episode 9.

Lord help us all, we have a Facebook page.  Though I should point out we haven't figured out how to feature any of our videos there yet. ESB #9 is Paul, Gavin and myself talking about a variety of trends and emerging platforms.

Eat, Sleep, Blog #09 from paulmcenany on Vimeo.

Thanks to Gavin for the recap.  I quote.

• The sudden appearance of Friend Connect on blogs such as Armando Alves’ A Source of Inspiration and Paul’s Hee-Haw Marketing (1:46)
• Google needing to accelerate their partner network to catch up with Facebook (2:20)
• Is the future of websites “social” and do these services change what we consider a “destination site”? (4:00)
• Will the benefits of “group sourcing” rather than “crowdsourcing” transform “influence networks”? (6:00)
• What is the power of “where our friends are and where they choose to respond”? (7:30)
• Sean explains the value of services like Gigpark (8:10)
• Recommendation engines and influence segmentation (10:00)
• Where is the point of monetisation and how does aggregate data work for marketers? (12:00)
• Why semantic evaluation will not deliver the answers that marketers want (but think they can extract) (14:00)
• The need for human interpretation of data to extract insight (20:00)
• Will social media, influence networks and reputation engines scale in a useful way? (21:00)
• Can we predict who we trust? (23:30)
• What happens when the Internet REALLY explodes as a network with the mass adoption of technology across the world – and what does this mean for “scale”? (25:30)
• Is the semantic web a survival mechanism for the Internet? (28:00)
• Will the web simply become another form of TV measurement? (30:30)
• We send a shout out to our #1 fan, Mack Collier (33:00)
• A new world of privacy (36:00)
• The uselessness of website T&Cs (40:00)
• The attractions of the Dallas Waffle House (47:00) – yes, it goes downhill quickly!

Future of Account Planning (JWT)

I have to come clean.  I've too often put slides in front of my audiences touting the insane number of mobile subscribers globally or the penetration of broadband in North America.

Guy Murphy's talk on the future of account planning gives a sobering view of a world where "more people in the world do not have a mobile phone than do have one, that only 13 per cent of the world have a computer and the global penetration of broadband is just 4%".  It's an awesome and cogent plea for a focus on building global brands, albeit a little strong on the ever increasing profits front. 

"There is no such thing as a global consumer. There are only local consumers enjoying more and more globally available things."

"Ideas for global brands will be rooted less in consumer insight and more more in human truth."

Guy Murphy:'What would Stephen say?' from JWT on Vimeo.

A quick shout out to Paul at Hee Haw for this find.  His post is worth checking out as it had no less than 5 tantalizing links from Mantyhose to an amazing book I have finally put on my wishlist.

Wordle Me Pretty

The above is what happens when I run craphammer.ca (my RSS feed) through wordle.net.  An online application for building clouds that are quite lovely.  Be neat if they still worked as a navigation cloud (ie: clickable.)

Found on Leigh's Blitherings.

Say Hello to Ellen!

I'd like to introduce everyone to a wonderful woman and a new blog that just popped onto my radar.

http://www.ellendiresta.com/

Ellen has a serious and deep background with marketing.  Nothing new there, eh?  But there's something different about Ellen.  I met her at Overlap08 - a self-organized conference at a retreat center in upstate Connecticut with a focus on Design and Innovation.  Beyond being a sharp cookie, her work is anything but top-down and her perspective on engaging customers to generate real insights was eye opening to say the least. 

In fact, she refers to herself as "an innovation and growth strategy consultant."  And the focus of her work "is connecting consumer insight to opportunities to create value for my clients."

Woot!

Here are a couple articles on her recently "gone public" blog that I recommend checking out:

• How an aversion to saying "I don't know" is killing innovation
• Innovation through storytelling

 

Social Books

  Image Source: cindiann

I am meeting with some authors on how to utilize social networking tools for an interesting venture they are launching.  I was pulling together a bit of a primer for them and thought I would share it here for anyone else that might find it of value.  It is meant for those just beginning to take their first steps.

Background

It didn't take very long to realize that authors are generally frustrated by the marketing efforts of their publishers.  Except for a few big names, authors do not appear to get a significant amount of attention, effort or spend when it comes to marketing them or their books.  Even when there is significant effort, it does not always result in book sales.

Opportunity

There is a significant opportunity for authors to build their personal brands, market their works and even generate deeper insight and collaboration on existing and new works.  This can be done in tandem with a publisher's efforts and need not be an either/or scenario.  There is just one catch.  It takes significant effort and time on behalf of the author. 

So it all comes down to one thing.  How do we position it as something of value for the artist/author?  The rewards have to be tangible and more immediate than some 1 year plan.

The social networking space has a lot to offer.  In this article, I am going to focus on blogging.

Some Authors Using blogs

I was so happy to have Patry Francis brought to my attention.  Her site has all the signs of healthy community engagement.  Her posts have dozens of comments (often in the 40's or 50's) and the comments are more than just readers saying "great post".  They are conversations in which Patry directly participates.  She is also active on many of the blogs of her visitors. In essence, Patry has a community to support her and she supports them as well.

Susan Hendersen is another author with strong online community participation.  The previous author, Patry Francis, was in hospital during the release of her first book and was unable to bring any marketing or publicity effort to bear, so Susan brought the community together and organized a "PR bumrush" for Patry's book.

On a slightly less fictional front, The Freakonomics guys are continuing the conversation from their book with their NY Times blog.  They post with a crazy regularity (multiple posts a day) and seem to generate significant (but varying) levels of response from their readers.  I was a bit dismayed to see that while they allow comments, they don't appear to respond to these comments, keeping the line between them and their readers distinctly drawn.

On March 2nd, Dwight Garner of the The New York Times Sunday Book Review wrote "These days, thanks to the magic of blogging, it’s possible to watch a novelist respond to his or her reviews in something like real time. Take Lauren Groff, the author of the winsomely dark first novel “The Monsters of Templeton,” which enters the fiction list this week at No. 14."  Sadly, Laruen Groff's blog offers no community engagement.  It's nothing but an online diary where she can post her thoughts (or response to bad reviews) with no response from readers or engagement of the community. 

The Platform

Blogs are a tool, nothing more. They display the most current entry at the top of the page and generally support RSS feeds. Blogs should allow visitors to comment on the content and what blog wouldn't be complete without a dizzing array of widgets on the page. 

Blog platforms have come a long way in a short period of time.  They allow the blog owner to create pages, manage multiple contributors and even tag and categorize the site's content.  They are a simple but effective way to create a website presence that actively supports community engagement features.

From the author examples in the previous section, I hope it is clear that what matters is how we use the tool, not just the features it offers.  That said, you are going to have to select a blogging tool to use.  How to choose?

It is useful for this article to break blogs into two camps:  hosted and installed.  Hosted blogs are those where a third party takes care of the configuration, hosting, etc.  Installed blogs require someone to install the blog, configure it and then manage all aspects of the blog directly.

Hosted blogs are far less work and perfect for anyone just starting out.  Many expert bloggers use them as well.

Hosted Blogging Platforms:

• Typepad: Averages around $15 a month and one of the easiest to use blogging platforms I have been exposed to.  It is a hosted solution.  I run my blog (craphammer.ca) on typepad. 
• Blogger: Probably the leading free blog platform.  Relatively straight forward and easy to use.  Not as full featured as Typepad. 

Great.  Time to create an account, right?  Nope.  Anything but.

Getting Started

I recommend that a person takes an active interest in the tools and conversations happening online before just launching blindly forward.  Find other authors already blogging and begin to follow their sites, becoming more familiar over time with this whole online publishing phenomenon.

As Bill Murray would say, "Baby steps."

Most people quickly hit the wall of "commitment." What to say, how much time it is going to eat up and confusion over what step to take next. 

Take a few deep breaths and clear these things from your mind.  Purge them.  Keep breathing. The Internet has a secret and I am about to share it with you.  Yup.  Right here.  Right now.

After porn, the Internet is about research.

It's that simple and I would hope that most authors already do this (No, not porn. Research.)  And if that's the case, you are well on your way to engaging with a community of potential contributors and readers.

Sure, the secret is a bit of a gargantuan oversimplification.  The truth is always more complex than desired, however for the purposes of getting started, research is the perfect place to start.

Want to get to know wheelchair dancers? the voices of people on the ground in Iraq?  Artsy Fartsy Christians?  Portuguese-American activists in Amsterdam?

How to Find Them

The world is changing and anyone can publish.  Our audience suddenly has a voice.  I remember when I first stumbled across people inside Iraq blogging about the conflict.  Suddenly the stories and news footage I saw every night took on a new tone.  I had been touched by those struggling to hold their lives together amidst the turmoil.

But how to find these bloggers in the first place?

One of the best methods is Google's blog search.  http://blogsearch.google.ca/

I generally start with google blog search when searching for blogs related to a specific topic.  Once I start to close in on what I am looking for, I switch to looking on the blogs I'm finding for more links.  I am looking for links that these bloggers feel are worth placing on their blogs.

Here are some other sources:

• technorati.com (tracks 3 months of posts from millions and millions of blogs)
• blogdigger.com (I find it's not as ubiquitous as Google)

How to Keep Up

Finding a blog that you enjoy or is of value quickly leads to a number of other people writing blogs.  Most bloggers offer links to other blogs/people they feel are of interest or value.  This is called a "blogroll".  It can get pretty crazy pretty fast.  Bookmarks in your browser can quickly become ungainly and ineffective.  Not to mention it is impossible to tell when someone has updated their site with new content.

The answer?  RSS.

Below is an embedded video that explains RSS and how to use an RSS Reader.

So to recap: Find, read and follow.

Welcome to a world of research with a depth and reach never before possible in the history of humankind.

The Conversation

An important skill to develop is how to have a conversation online.  It's a new social space with its own rules and nuances.

From conversation comes engagement.  From engagement comes ideas and innovation, not to mention readership and even community.

So when you feel comfortable, start to comment on the posts of the bloggers you are most interested in.  Most blogs will allow you to leave a comment. 

Fill out your name, email address and webpage.   Type in your comment and then hit the Post or Submit button.

Welcome to the conversation.

You are now ready to begin launching your blog.  A topic for another article, no doubt.

For Publishers

Just in case any publishers are following this (though doubtful), here's an interesting presentation worth reviewing: Community of Readers

Many Thanks

A big shout out to all the people who responded to my twitter plea for authors who blog successfully.

Tamera Kremer for pointing me to Nancy Pickard.
Colin McKay for his redirect over to the freakonomics dudes.
Kristin Gorski for her amazing email with no less than 5 author case studies and an amazing writer/author in her own right.  I recommend her blog "Write Now is Good" very highly.

Not many bloggers left.

What do a 15 year old girl, a dentist, an engineering student and a blogger all have in common?

In this case, they are the last of the english-speaking blog owners inside Iraq, giving us a view of what life is like on a daily basis.  I found them through a referral from Remi to a wonderful, must-read article from the BBC.

"How could they give us this water? Why should I respect, obey or even recognise my government if they are not providing us with electricity, water, or even security?"

" Breathing slowly.  In and out. That's what I have to do to keep myself from crying, and stay alive."

"We're really strangers in our country... oh well, excuse me, I don't think "our" should be used anymore. I'm not sure whose country it is, but it's not mine for sure."

I spend a lot of time following interesting thinkers in my industry.  I've also been known to visit blogs or sites out of a drive to understand or gain insight into an ethnicity.  But sometimes blogging exposing me to a world I couldn't see any other way.  And these moments move me and cause me to pause.

This article was one of those.  Here is the link again.

Shifting Spheres of Influence

So, while I was in Florida I realized that I had mistakenly set a post up to publish while I was away without ever finishing said post.  Pretty brilliant, eh?

So here is the re-post as I was meaning to make it.

"Social networking is not a platform, it’s not a destination, it’s a behaviour."

Katie is speaking out against this tendency of brands to worry about how they can get their brand into facebook or myspace rather than really leverage this emerging phenomenon.

I couldn't agree more.  But let's break it down a bit.

Social Networking and this whole Age of Conversation has taken the continuing fragmentation of media and made it non-linear.  If we thought the media world was fragmented before, we now have an unlimited number of forever forming and reforming communities within just one social networking site, let alone all of them combined.

Being on YouTube or Facebook doesn't guarantee viewership.  It's the same with every social networking site.  Understanding and engaging the communities within and outside of these social networking sites that matters.

So this raises a number of questions.

• How are people using these tools?
• How do different communities use the same tools?
• How do we identify the behaviors of people and communities we desire to interact with?

But as I sat and thought about this some more, I was taken back to an old associate, Stuart MacDonald, and a phrase he used to love to drop like a bomb in any meeting. 

"Where's the value?"

Consuming media is wonderful.  But it is a subset of activity that I participate in when I log into my personal spaces.  I am also looking to create media, build relationships and have conversations.   Ironically, these other activities generally result in my consuming media.  Only the media I'm consuming is directed and positioned by how the community and those I'm interacting with perceive its value.

• So is it really just a challenge of seeding as many "new media" firms would have us believe?
• How should we segment or target our engagements in a non-linear environment? (who should we engage?)
• What should we measure? (so we actually understand the value we are creating/participating in)

I'm going to go out on a limb.  What if it is all about behavior?  Could I not maximize my reach within twitter by looking to engage with all of the people on twitter that are speaking on a topic of interest to the engagement or campaign in question?  And then follow this activity into other platforms?

Calling it a "Conversation Age" is great, but we can't personally engage in a conversation with every person, customer or prospect.  And if this phenomenon is truly non-linear in nature, then that means we can't identify it in simple variables.  We would have to apply the principles of chaos to marketing.

That means it can't be seen when looking at the number of visitors to a site, the number of conversation online, views of our media or even reach or brand equity measurements. These are the individual data points and alone they tell us a misleading story.  We would have to be looking for patterns of engagement.  Ways that these (or other variables) interact and present emerging patterns.  Ultimate success would be when these patterns are stable yet non-linear in nature.  Continuing to morph and adjust as they interact with emerging communities online.

Is system thinking coming to Marketing?

Eat Sleep Blog, Episode 5

I want to dedicate this episode to Mack Collier and all the others who kept asking us when we were going to put out the next ESB. 

And thanks to Kaltura, here she is.  Episode 5.  [embedded video]

Links:
Richard Huntington's Are Brand Ideas Too Big for Advertising
Fight for Kisses campaign
Think you can market contest
The Texas Weather

[ Belated Edit:  Been so out of mind that I forgot to give links to my co-creators:  Gavin and Paul. ]

Blog Monetization

Mack discusses blog monetization, a much visited topic in blogdom, but as in all things viral garden, he does so with style and substance.  And he directs a rather pointed finger at Jaffe and his latest sponsorship idea.

And he ends by raising a question to the rest of us.

"What are your thoughts on blog-monetization? Does an example like the Target blog work for you, or are you just fine with Jaffe's iPhone deal? Or can you think of other examples that could directly benefit readers as well?"

Time for me to come clean.  I'm all for monetizing a blog under certain circumstances.  CK and I have discussed it and I've emerged with only a slightly bloodied lip and blackened eye.  But I don't mean to take her on as I totally get and support where she's coming from.  The problem is in the definitions and by translation, the context.

Blogging is a bad term.  David Armano has called for us to not refer to people as bloggers.  And I finally understand his concern as the concept of a "Blog" is equally misleading and key to this discussion.  It's like referring to Time Magazine, The Economist, The Mary Peabody Association for Ants Newsletter, a personal diary and my craphammer blog all as the same thing.  We wouldn't think to do this.  We intrinsically understand they are each different.

Yet we refer to every blog as a single entity without meaning to do so.  As a blog.  And they are anything but a single thing.  There are so many different types of blogs which is further compounded by an endless number of purposes and intentions.

There are blogs that aggregate content by topic or area.  There are blogs that are looking to be an online 'zine of sorts.  And there are blogs that are basically extensions of the blog owner.  Just to name a few.

Okay.  Now I can answer the question.  Let's assume we are talking about an individuals site.  Not some multi-author zine with editors and online ads to fund it.

How do you deal with the bias?  We all have bias.  But when someone is giving us a gift or money, does this not change our evaluation of their site or offering?

To put myself on the spot, how do we handle this as consultants?  We're paid to asses a company's products, messaging, organization, what have you.  It's part of what many of us do. 

When a company brings me on board, I assume they want me to be real.  To be harsh where necessary.  Part of what they are paying me for is to mirror back to them what they cannot see because they are too close to it.

But, if I am truly honest with myself, it also means I am agreeing to play by their rules, however inane and subconscious these may be.  I am agreeing to provide them a certain level of service in a certain manner.  Anyone who has ever lost an account for "social" or "unusual" reasons has felt this quite directly.

Mack asks some great questions. I wish I had some better answers.  But hopefully there is value in having this conversation.