Dave Knox over at Hard Knox Life just posted this great slideshow on Content Marketing by Helge Tenno. Although I strongly dislike the addition of “two-dot-oh” to the end of any term, I will admit the Agency2.0 he speaks of at the end of the show sounds pretty appealing!

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The first few slides call out the development of online marketing. “2007 was all about rich media and customer participations”…”but 2008 is ..all about a range of different ideas coming together and forming a new kind of marketing changing the way brands connect to their consumers”.

The ideas are the following:

1. Culture
2. Technology
3. Mobility
4. Activity
5. Ineffective
6. Emotional Research

A few statements worth calling out:

Content isn’t king. Conversation is king. Content is just something to talk about.

The application itself is not a goal at all - it’s an obstacle between the user and their goal.

we tend to throw out the most meaningful and most revolutionary if we ask people about their preferences.

Content marketing = participating in activities facilitated by the brand.

Slide 13 states that “most products and services are actually developed by users, who then give ideas to manufacturers”. The premise (and this is one I called out in my recent review of Accidental Branding,) is that the best products are designed to address specific problems. If that’s the case, obviously why not give users the empowerment (and the forum) to help drive innovation for you?

As a developer, I probably shouldn’t like the comment that the application is not the goal. For me, though, effective marketing and strategy is not about jumping to implementation. A client shouldn’t want “a widget”. They should want “a means to drive traffic from the social networking space”. A widget is one way to do this. By assessing what the user goals are, we can work to achieve those goals, and they’ll be satisfied. But unless we determine the rationale behind a decision, we have a hard time assessing its success (and risk having an unhappy client in the end). I maintain that the decision of the best technical solution to a business need should be left in the hands of we web geeks, who have been eating, drinking and sleeping this stuff for a loooong time!

This notion of “don’t tell me what you (think you) want” is raised later in the deck as well. I can only attribute the reason that we ‘throw out the most meaningful information if we ask people their preferences’ to a lack of self-awareness or willingness to be honest. My biggest concern with a blanket statement like this is that some organizations may take this as justification not to solicit or incorporate feedback from users at all.

As someone who espouses user-centered design principles, this whole idea of “content marketing” makes sense. People are doing to “do” stuff and talk about it. Why not facilitate these activities by offering something to talk about? I am currently listening to “The Anatomy of Buzz” and Jeep Jamborees are mentioned. There is a certain demographic that buys Jeeps and has a certain lifestyle. Why not support them in their activities? We are an experiential society, and people who go off on a Jeep Jamboree weekend are your best brand advocates. They will converse among themselves, further establishing that brand loyalty, and also tell others about their experiences.

I love the idea that we are looking at establishing relationships with consumers, as well as between them. It’s no longer about focusing inward on creating that ultimate pitch: it’s about a facilitating a personalized experience for each individual based on his own needs and desired level of interaction.

The final session of the day that I attended was on strategies for blogging and social networking marketing. Some of the content was similar to the viral campaign session I’d attended earlier, I liked the use of the one specific case study to frame their work.

Right away speaker Bill Balderaz of Webbed Marketing laid out the three things you need for success:

1. a compelling hook
2. the right channels
3. identify client goals

In the case study he shared with us (Shizuka New York), the compelling hook was “bird poop facials”.

A good litmus test to whether or not your idea is compelling- would you talk about it at dinner? a new CEO hired from a competitor? Nah. But bird poop facials? Sure!

Bill mentioned four specific channels to consider:

1. SEO Press release
2. Blogger outreach
3. video
4. Social networks

I wasn’t really familiar with the terms “SEO Press release”, but it was quite interesting. Bill mentioned that they will search for specific phrases on search engines to ensure the uniqueness of their phrasing. That way they can be sure that when monitoring buzz or search queries, all the results are directly tied to their efforts. He did acknowledge that the most newsworthy your story, the more likely a journalist will snap up the idea and write about it in their own words. In this case, your carefully chosen phrasing is lost.

Through the presentation, Bill was very diligent at showing us the “before and after”, highlighting the importance of analytics and establishing your measures for success. We looked at google news, which had 2 links to the company in May, and roughly 50 post-campaign.

Blogger outreach is refers yet again to really figuring out the type of influentials to tap.

As for social networking, Bill said that they did not try to build for or leverage all the social networks. He said they actually received the most traffic from StumbleUpon, which was a surprise to me. I didn’t realize it was such a bg player. He also acknowledged that like it or not, you can’t ignore mySpace.

Supposedly CNN ran this story on the front page one day, but still 46% of the traffic came from social networks. While CNN gave a one-day spike in traffic, the networks were overall more significant.

Someone asked about the time this campaign took, and he said the video shoot was the biggest task, coming in at about 10 hours. The rest of the campaign and marketing was about 40 hours. In the end, the company saw traffic increases from all sources, not just referring sites. People weren’t just clicking on links they had presented to them; bird poop facials at Shizuka had reached a point where people were talking or thinking about them, and motivated to seek them out.

He talked some more about some compelling ideas and hooks, including the work they did for Hatteras networks (the cash cow), or the scantily clad etymologist at HotForWords.com

While I don’t know that this session really offered me many “strategies” for blogging and social media marketing, I did find the session interesting. I appreciated the focus on the results achieved, and how they were managed. I still feel in many ways that analytics is still in its infancy, and I appreciated the approach that was taken to demonstrate the campaign’s success.

The second session I attended was “Igniting Viral Campaigns”, by Jennifer Laycock. Her session was in such high demand that we had to change rooms to accomodate the number of attendees!

Jennifer presented an incredibly comprehensive slide deck on the topic. She started with an introduction to viral marketing itself, the premise being:

1. people distrust ads
2. people trust friends
3. people trust strangers
4. the web connects us

Initially I wasn’t sure I agreed with her “people trust strangers” comment, but as she explained it more, it made sense. She considered strangers to people we don’t know in real life, whereas for me, it’s people with whom we have no relationship at all.

She clearly called out the benefits and challenges related to viral marketing. While for many companies it may seem an obvious tactic given the low budget, but the challenge is in coming up with an idea that is genuinely buzz-worthy. The consumer needs to have some motivation to share it. Once again I’m struck with the idea that good marketing (as well as good design, good client relations, good anything) is just what I’d consider user-centered design. What consumer needs (realized or unrealized) are being met? Indeed, Jennifer referred to the customer reaction effect. That is, by empowering ordinary individuals to share and promote a brand, you are offering them some sense of celebrity and giving people a chance to talk about your product. In turn, the brand benefits from a level of increased credibility, as it is being ‘blessed’ with personal recommendations.
The potential downfall, however, is that you lose control over your brand messaging.

As for any project, it is important to establish goals to be able to measure the success of the project.

There are three questions to be answered when coming up with this idea:

1. what sparks passion?
2. what hasn’t been done before?
3. will they risk their reputation?

For an idea to catch on, it has to address the above questions. The last refers to the idea that a forwarder is basically offering his personal recommendation to whatever he is forwarding, and will need to believe in the message or cause.

Jennifer then did a great job at walking us through specific strategies to developing a campaign. She shared tangible examples to really drive her points home.

I was impressed with her specifics related to the delivery of the campaign. She warned us to be sure to watch out for scalability, inventory, sustainable ROI and backup servers. I suppose the idea is that you should always plan for the worst case (which in this case is the best: your viral campaign takes off!). This actually reminds me of when we helped out Wal-Mart with their holiday campagns last year. Evidently there had been some question about our use of Akamai, and someone had questioned “what if akamai goes down?” At the time, we all laughed. Our thoughts were that if akamai went down, the Internet as we know it would cease to exist.
Guess what, at the height of the campaign, Akamai went down.

She offered us a list of different campaign types: humour, debate, attack and fear. Along with examples, she listed out pros and cons for each campaign type. It was a wonderful overview while also offering us the benefit of her expertise.

The next part of the presentation specifically dealt with pitching bloggers, which is an arena where I’ve only ever been on the other side of the screen. As Jennifer went through her pitching checklist, I reflected on how I’ve been pitched to myself, and determined that I am way too easy-going I guess I don’t yet have any reason to be too picky!

Jennifer’s biggest rule was “respect the blogger’s time”, and many of her recommendations were based on this (for example, read at least 5 posts, write a few contextual comments). I also felt that this was simply good practice to ensure you’re on the right track. If you have identified this blogger as an influential, prove it by opening yourself up to be influenced

At some point during the presentation, Jennifer noticed that we were running behind, and offered to cut the presentation short. The room was unified in their desire to hear her entire presentation. It was truly an incredible session, well worth the price of admission

Jennifer walked us through a project they’d done, through using brainstorming worksheets to assessing capabilities and the actual execution of the plan. It was a great way to really understand their methodology and gave a lot of credibility to their process. While she was great in not using her presentation to pimp out her company, I was definitely interested in learning more about them, as it is obvious they shine in this area.

Afterwards I was following on twitter as Jennifer and the session attendee that was sitting next to me talked about #SBMU and despite the fact I don’t actually have a small business, I’m tempted to attend!

As anyone who follows me on twitter knows, today I attended PodCamp Ohio. PodCamps are “usually free BarCamp-style community UnConferences for new media enthusiasts and professionals including bloggers, podcasters, YouTubers, social networkers, and anyone curious about new media.”

The first session I attended was “Managing Multiple Online Identities”, by Daniel Johnson Jr.. To start off the session, we went around the room and introduced ourselves, and shared what we wanted to get out of the session. This really set the tone for this most interactive of the sessions I attended. I hadn’t been sure what the backgrounds of the other attendees would be, and this gave me some good background. The first person to introduce herself was Lara Kretler, who’d just visited my blog and commented a few days ago!

My own interest in the session was the fact that I do consider myself to have two distinct brands online: my running self and my tech self. Two blogs, two twitter accounts.

The presenter gave us a little background on himself, I thought it was great that he commutes 60 miles one way from Cincy to Dayton, and therefore “has plenty of time to consume new media”. I was doing about 95 miles one way from Columbus to Dayton, so I knew exactly what he meant. I do miss my audiobooks..

As I mentioned, the session was very interactive. After a brief overview of the definitions of marketing vs PR vs advertising and branding, we had a discussion on the personal brand. In this room of early adopters, we discussed strategies about snapping up screen names on new services to ensure the integrity of the brand, versus only signing up for services you would be actively engaging with. (with the announcement today that the “Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) has decided to open up top-level domains to most any suffix we can imagine“, the challenges of retaining a firm hold on a specific word/brand may get a lot harder). I think it’s a personal ‘brand strategy’ decision that individuals must make.

We talked a bit about eliminating old brands or labels, and one individual pointed out that sometimes having a stale account was really just more time-consuming than it was worth. That wasn’t anything I’d really considered before. Thinking about ROI does help to drive home the fact that we really are branding and marketing ourselves online, and it may be worth figuring out the best use of our efforts.

Daniel shared some of his own techniques for managing these various elements. For each service he joins, he uses an email account specifically associated with that service: {servicename}@{domainname}. I thought that was a neat way to assess where traffic is coming from. When I signed up for utterz, I started receiving spammy messages right away, and it soured me on the service immediately. He also showed how he used Netvibes to have a dashboard for multiple twitter accounts. (A funny “small world” moment: he showed a screen capture of his Netvibes page, and some guy in the audience said “that’s my wife!”.) He also mentioned twhirl and digsby. Hurrah!

I will admit that I think I wanted a bit more of a philosophical discussion on why people would have and maintain multiple identities, and how to remain authentic while creating what is essentially a fragmented brand. But I suppose that is something that each ‘personal brand advocate’ needs to figure out for himself.

I just came across the blog post ‘Learning to listen - the real “quiet revolution” that is social media‘ by Maddie Grant. I was really interested in a quote she used that stated that there are five different listening styles, ranging from appreciative and empathetic through comprehensive to discerning and evaluative. The comment is also made that a good listener becomes proficient in each style.

I began to wonder if it was appropriate for an organization to be classified as one of these types of listeners. Just as we look at the motivation of an individual online to best meet his needs, I wonder if recognizing how an organization listens is a way for us to best assess how social media can be integrated into the organization.

This is most easily illustrated with an example. Just as an individual may engage in a conversation with the simple goal to be entertained, so too an organization may desire to monitor buzz out of curiosity. This is dramatically different than the open organization that is seeking to refine or radically alter strategy based on what consumers are saying. It comes down to the level of engagement in the conversation: how actively the listener is listening may in fact impact the message of the speaker/writer.

This is another important consideration: how the organization publicizes its listening strategy. Sites like MyStarbucksIdea or DellIdeaStorm (both fueled by Salesforce) are prime examples of a company actively soliciting feedback, and then being held accountable for making changes. On the flip side of the coin may be the company that is quietly monitoring the buzz around their brand, but not publicly acknowledging it. The alternative, to acknowledge negative feedback but not respond to it, is more damaging than to appear oblivious of the negative buzz at all. Both parties in the conversation should be aware of the desired outcomes of the other.

Are certain styles of listening “best” for an organization? If we continue to personify the organization as an individual, we would expect all styles to be important. However, we have seen cases where a company has a core principle on which all their operations are based, and to deviate from this could have negative effects. An excellent example was in Made to Stick - Southwest Airlines operations are based on a core principle to be the low cost airline. Therefore, all business decisions are made to work towards this objective. Any feedback from consumers that would detract from this objective are not considered. Southwest may listen to consumers to be aware of their desires, but the information will not be integrated into business decisions. It is still important to be in touch with consumers, if only to be able to acknowledge their wants (without fulfulling them).

I am always interested in how we personify an organization. The Corporation remains a movie I refer to often. It clearly calls out how behaviours we would consider completely inappropriate or even psychopathic by an individual are acceptable from a corporation. In this same vein, while we would expect a certain level of respect and give-and-take from an individual engaging with us in conversation, we cannot be guaranteed such with an organization. Indeed, we may be lucky if they listen at all, much less endeavour to be active listeners, engaging us in conversation and ultimately bettering their own practices for it.

A month or so ago, I was invited by a publicist to read and review some of David Vinjamuri’s book “Accidental Branding: How Ordinary People Build Extraordinary Brands.” She explained to me that the “covers 7 entrepreneurs and how they broke the rules of marketing in the creation of their brand.” Never one to turn down a free read, I agreed, and she sent me the first few introductory chapters, and the profiles of three entrepreneurs.

While I work for a marketing/advertising/consulting company, I don’t have a business background. For that reason alone, I was particularly interested in the book. It is not a business book per se, but rather the bulk of it reads like a story. The first few chapters draw some conclusions about aspects of these entrepreneurs that may have contributed to their success, but this is not simply an instruction manual. As a result, it is an easy, enjoyable read in which the reader may unwittingly gain some insights on what helps a brand develop in an authentic, successful manner.

In the first chapter, Vinyamuri sets the stage, identifying some key unifying factors of all the entrepreneurs he interviewed.

These entrepreneurs all had a very clear set of values that they brought to the brand. Even though the actual products they sold would change over time for some of them, the values remained consistent. Moreover, these entrepreneurs were trying to solve their own problem.

These entrepreneurs could trust their instinct because they had retained the ability to think like real consumers

As someone who is very focused on user-centered design and user experience, these notions resonate with me. These entrepreneurs did not come up with a product or plan with the goal of becoming rich. They did not look for ideas. Rather, they identified problems that needed solving, and set out to solve them in the best way they could. This sort of clear objective makes it easy to ensure a brand is ever moving in the right direction.

The second chapter does see Vinjamuri throw out some steps to becoming an accidental brand-builder. These are as follows:

1. Do sweat the small stuff
2. Pick a fight
3. Be your own customer
4. Be unnaturally persistent
5. Build a myth
6. Be faithful

These steps range from how to develop a brand worthy of faithful customers, to how to retain and reward brand loyalists. While this checklist may be useful for the aspiring entrepreneur, it is clear from the profiles that the unwitting brand-builders chronicled in this book figured these out through their own natural inclinations and judgment.

The three profile chapters I received were:

• The Storyteller: John Peterman (J. Peterman)
• The Contrarian: Craig Newmark (Craigslist)
• The Anarchist: Roxanne Quimby (Burt’s Bees)

What I found particularly interesting in all three of these chapters was the low-key personality behind them all. Vinjamuri’s interactions with these entrepreneurs take place in the most unexpected of places: on Peterman’s ranch, sitting outside Craig’s home while he gets dressed, or out in the woods in Maine. It almost appears that these individuals have achieved financial success in spite of themselves. As I mentioned before: in every case it was a desire to solve a problem or meet a specific need that prompted the brand development.

This is not to say that every solution to a problem contributes to the success of a particular brand. But in the case of each of these individuals, it was the combination of an identified need, and a passion for an elegant solution, that contributed to a firm offering. As people begin to like and trust a brand, this dedication to quality can help to sustain a brand even as it begins to grow.

This is not to say that growth is always easy: the J. Peterman chapter tells of the company’s bankruptcy in 1999. However, the foundation of what made the brand what it was still remain. Today, the company is being resurrected from the ashes, and 75% of the employees are people who have returned from the earlier company. What a testament to brand loyalty!

While the book focusses on the entrepreneurs who started the brands, and their attention to detail and commitment to quality and integrity is highlighted, I also feel that there is something to be said about the core values of the brands themselves. Roxanne Quimby has sold Burt’s Bees, but the values on which the company was founded still remain. This separation of company spokesperson and brand is essential for a company to evolve and grow. Craig Newmark recognized this himself when he demoted himself and gave Jim Buckmaster the role of CEO. It is the selfless entrepreneur who simply states:

I was being to realize that I’m not a good manager, and some people were kind eough to point that out to me. I also remember that back at IBM I read a paper that suggested that people who are good at starting companies are not good at keeping them going.

In an effort to create a viable, successful business, Craig put the best person in charge, even if that wasn’t himself.

Overall, I found the book “Accidental Branding” very interesting. While I will admit that sometimes the prose was a bit much (I wasn’t overly interested in every article of clothing Burt Shavitz wore at his interview), overall there was much insight to be gained from the book, in an palatable form. Of the other entrepreneurial profiles, I’d be particularly interested in reading those of Gary Erickson (Clif Bar) and Julie Aigner-Clark (Baby Einstein ), and would not hesitate to actually invest in the book (!) to learn more about them.

On May 20 and 21st, I was working at the “lifestreaming/blogging” station at the social media cafe at the iCitizen conference. The conference itself had the standard speakers and panels, and the cafe was a supplementary opportunity for conference delegates to learn more about, well, social media. There were four stations: “lifestreaming/blogging”, “community conversations”, “new media entertainment”, and “mobile”. Resource Interactive employees manned each of the stations, showcasing some of these new and emerging sites and services.

Social Media Cafe

Originally uploaded by leigh_householder

For the lifestreaming station, we started with a targeted platform/service base of wordpress, tumblr, twitter, facebook, flickr, digsby and socialthing!. I mentioned in an earlier post that in preparation for this event, I was reflecting on my current online persona. This was because in order to cut down on some of the noise related to showcasing these tools, I wasn’t really myself during the conference. In order to show people how these tools worked, I was officially “iCitizen04″ for awhile. That is, I would show people how to use these different tools (and how they connected) using the moniker iCitizen04. As it was, there was PLENTY of online iCitizen buzz, and I didn’t want to inundate my regular followers with our test posts. (According to summize.com, we were actually the #1 trending topic on twitter for much of the day!)

#1 trending topic on twitter
Originally uploaded by icitizen04

Overall, it was really interesting to chat with individuals, trying to figure out what the buzz was all about. Some folks were already well-established twitterers, while others were just catching a glimmer of what this service could do for them.

In the true nature of lifestreaming, looking back at the output from the conference tells a bit of the story about the event itself. the icitizen04 tumblog pulls in tweets and photos, as well as other posts, pictures and videos I posted as I spoke to different participants at the event. We looked at the services themselves and I also liked mention Summize and Twist (http://twist.flaptor.com) to illustrate how brands could use twitter as a very simplified version of buzz metrics. Searching for a brand on flickr or youtube was a good way to see what sort of user-generated content was already out there, and in both cases, identify some of those potential brand advocates (or see what sort of risk mitigation needs to take place!).

I was always very happy to introduce folks to digsby, which is an Uber-IM Client. It supports instant messaging, multiple web mail services, facebook and twitter. You can send and receive updates right from your desktop. It was a great service to be able to illustrate the ease at content pushes and updates.

Overall, I was really excited by what we were able to pull off during the course of the event. I have some more thoughts on the event itself, but I just wanted to specifically call out the social media cafe aspect of it.

Oh, and I HAVE to share the video some of my co-workers pulled together: