Category Archives: social media

What are you waiting for?

Drew sent out this email today pointing out the the current status of The Age of Conversation:

“A little over 3 months ago, we launched Age of Conversation with our fingers crossed. We came screaming out of the gate. 103 authors, most of whom have never looked each other in the eyes. From 10 different countries. Working together for a common vision — to publish a book they could be proud of and raise money for the world’s children.

So, how are we doing so far? In the 90+ days since our launch, together we have raised $10,380.81! (That’s 1,351 books). That’s the good news. The bad news is that 98% of those sales took place in the first 60 days. “

You haven’t bought it yet you say? What are you waiting for? You don’t like charity? You don’t believe in ‘the conversation’? (which is even a bigger reason why you should get it really!) Or maybe you did get it already, but did you think about buying it for your clients? Or your team? Everyone at the agency?

aocheader.jpg

Anyway, there are far more reasons to buy this than not to. So don’t hesitate and follow this link right now so you can have it shipped to you today.

Announcing the “Blue Monster Show”

The Blue Monster Show: now this might become interesting. I’ve got as much information as you about what this is going to look like (that is after watching this video) and probably nobody really knows. To some point, that is part of what made the Blue Monster so interesting to me so far, the fact that you never really know where it is going. Apart from the fact that it is a good conversation starter for better conversations about Microsoft and where the company is going.

Here’s the video announcement of Loic Le Meur and Hugh MacLeod on Seesmic, since that’s where you should be able to find the “Blue Monster Show”. As Hugh states, the Blue Monster isn’t really owned by anyone, which is good. I know that many benefit from it, and that’s maybe even better.

bluemonsterseesmic2.jpg

And Loic, if you read this, thanks again for the Seesmic invitation but I haven’t had time to record anything on it yet… but I’ll get to it ;)

Technorati Tags: , , , ,

Finally adding a blogroll

After 2 years of blogging I finally added a blogroll to my blog. If I remember well I probably did so in the beginning as well but then too many feeds got into my feedreader that I decided to take the blogroll away. After some conversation with Valeria Maltoni about the use of the blogroll and also after some feedback from people like Sarah Blow recently I figured I had to put the blogroll back into the navigation.

The biggest difference with my first trail is that I don’t want my blogroll to reflect all the feeds in my reader anymore but only the ones that I like the most. So check out the my ‘favorites’ in the navigation. And if you want to check out all the feeds in my reader then go to ‘share your opml‘. Enjoy.

The new balance

Last week I presented at Customer First about Microsoft and social media. Literally a day before that presentation I decided to change my little speech a little. I hear so much of companies setting up their own blog, their own Facebook or whatever that it gets on my nerves. I’m a believer, but heck, when fellow marketing colleagues are ‘totally getting it’ because they want to set up controlled areas for consumers to come to and engage with their brand… I have a problem with that. Why, because they haven’t gone out first to tune into the ongoing conversations already. Like a consumer only tells his opinion about you when you’ve set up an area for them to do so.

So I changed my introduction and decided not only to talk about some of my own experiences in social media with microsoft, but to clarify some things first. Here is also where I talk about what I believe is a new balance. In short (slide 5-6) we’ve gone from a balanced situation in the relationship between brands and consumers a long time ago to a situation where the business solely owned the power to send out messages and consumers could basically only receive these. With social media that power came back to the people, to consumers and hence it created a new balance between brands and consumers. This is obviously a very good situation and one that is much more normal than what we experienced the years before… but brands aren’t feeling comfortable in that new situation, at least a lot of them aren’t.

This is also where the ‘conversation’ comes in. Pete Blackshaw asked on his CGM Facebook group recently if we are overusing the term ‘conversation’. I don’t think so at all. I find the ‘conversation’ metaphor a very easy and powerful way to help brands to understand why they need to change. How they have to imagine the situation of both the brand and the consumer sitting at a table, where both parties have the same value in the conversation… and more importantly (which many forget) where both parties can start the conversation!

The definition found at Wikipedia is maybe even a better explanation. Keep this in mind when you start evaluating your next campaign and maybe it will make a difference.

“Conversations are the ideal form of communication in some respects, since they allow people with different views of a topic to learn from each other. A speech, on the other hand, is an oral presentation by one person directed at a group. For a successful conversation, the partners must achieve a workable balance of contributions. A successful conversation includes mutually interesting connections between the speakers or things that the speakers know. For this to happen, those engaging in conversation must find a topic on which they both can relate to in some sense.”

Age of conversation indeed, no question about it.

Technorati Tags: , , , , ,

That’s a wrap

Soo little time, soo much work to do… and so much more stuff to write about. Therefore I’m writing this post to wrap up the week.

It was a busy week with many events. On Wednesday I was Bea’s guest at the first Brussels Girl Geek Dinner, kudos to Clo for organizing this. Some familiar faces and some new ones and a little goodie bag for everyone. And yes Sarah, I’m bringing one of those for you on Wednesday ;)

On Thursday & Friday I was present at the second Customer First event in Brussels, and of course to the MIXX awards on Thursday night. Again these events are mainly interesting to network and to hook up with some people you haven’t seen for a while. The Belgian internet advertising industry is rather small, so it’s fair to say that everybody was pretty much there :) Great results at the MIXX awards by the way since Geert and Openhere won the Gold Award in the category Brand Awareness for Bring The Love Back. I recently started a group on Facebook for Bring The Love Back by the way, 163 members in the first week, join us here.

I also did a presentation on Microsoft and Social Media at Customer First, which I’ll post here in a separate post. Feedback was quite ok so that’s always nice.

What’s holding you back?

There’s an interesting conversation going on at MarketingProfs Daily Fix about what should come first: the policy or the blog? 

“Should a marketer simply start blogging or wait instead until all of the blogging policies and procedures are established before beginning? Although the absolute answer is that it depends on the organization, the industry, the product or service, I suggest strongly that the blog come before the policy.”

I think that is very well put, especially by adding the notion that it does depend on the organization or product, but basically saying that you should just go and try for yourself. It’s how I started little over 2 years ago and I it really is the only way to really understand what this is all about. I thought I knew as well, but the experience learnt me different.

Stephen Denny adds to the conversation by saying the policy should definitely come first, and I see his point. but too many people use this lack of clarity, this lack of rules as a reason for not trying out for themselves. And that’s my main reason why I wouldn’t focus on the policy first. Ideally you have a small guideline, but like Cam comments: common sense should apply. I couldn’t agree more, remember my chapter in the ‘Age of Conversation‘: you get a long way with common sense.

Also don’t forget that engagement with social media already starts by reading, leaving comments, … so there really is not that much reason not to try this out for yourself today. Congrats C.B. for your first post at Daily Fix – it’s a really good one ;)

Technorati Tags: , , , , , ,

Use your imagination!

Writing my earlier post about Firebrand, I had to think of a recent example where some company approached me requesting coverage on my other blog. I won’t mention who it came from, but it’s a good example of how you can do better.

Much has been written already about blogger outreach and how this should be done. Posts like ‘How do you influence the influencers‘, ‘7 ways to successfully pitch bloggers‘, ‘Blog seeding, approaching the people behind the blog‘ etc… my personal favorite being this little quiz from the Bad Pitch blog. Ogilvy even created a Blogger Outreach Code of Ethics, of which I still don’t know exactly what to think. It sounds too much like: “look how good we understand all this” and then again, it’s good they’re open about their own approach.

Anyway, let’s come back to this request I received earlier. My other blog is basically one fun (it is for me at least) quest to find good ways (using the internet) to get myself a classic 1965 Ford Mustang one day. A couple of weeks ago, I receive this email from a new car website asking me to review the site and that they are willing to pay me for my time and effort to do so. They can also write me a custom review if I want. So what went wrong here?

  • The mail was personalized and yet it wasn’t. The sender did use my name, but there wasn’t really a link with the quest I’m writing about on that blog and the offer… other than that it’s both about cars.
  • The offer to write the review themselves for me to post, didn’t sound to good to me either

But the most important thing that I missed was imagination. It’s something that you won’t read in the posts I mentioned earlier, neither is it something specific to blogger outreach, but it remains very important. On ‘I blog Mustang‘ I can’t be clearer what it is I’m after so how difficult can it be to offer something that is actually related to that matter? They are approaching me in person anyway so it seems it’s important to them (the offer to post the review was $500 by the way) so why not use a little bit of imagination in that approach. And no, I’m not talking about shipping me a real car but there are plenty opportunities here… and heck, I would have written about if for free.

Use your imagination if you want to stand out. It really makes a difference you know.

Technorati Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,

Brands on fire

There are a few reasons why I got very interested in the email Chris Abraham sent me a week ago about Firebrand. Not only did it seem to be about a very interesting project, but also the approach Chris and Firebrand took to get the news spread was a good example of good engagement in social media. Since Firebrand is not live yet for public viewing (launches on October 22nd) I will talk a bit more about their outreach to bloggers and leave the review for once I get access.

firebrand

Here’s just a little introduction to Firebrands though, so you know what I’m talking about:

“Firebrand is a new, opt-in entertainment and marketing destination that gives consumers interactive access to their favorite brands, products and promotions.  Firebrand programs the “coolest” TV commercials the way MTV used to program music videos and its multi-platform network, slated to launch on October 22, is the first to go “live” simultaneously on TV, the web and mobile.  Firebrand even has CJ’s (commercial jockeys), the same way MTV had VJ’s, who will contextualize the commercials as art and entertainment, and guide consumers through playlists, contests and promotions.”

And while the above copy may sound like your average PR speak (and it is from the press release obviously) the approach taken by Firebrand is interesting:

  • The email from Chris Abraham announcing Firebrand was personalized enough to make it feel personal. I know many people will have received an email that was pretty similar to mine, using my name and blogname in the email shows the effort to make it personal. And I can tell you that – even though that simple – that doesn’t happen very often.
  • They invited influential bloggers to their press event together with press, not as a separate event.
  • It’s right on target as well. Advertising, marketing, etc are amongst the topics I cover regularly so telling me about Firebrand makes sense. Again, pretty obvious to some, ignored by many. I receive emails about the most random things and I don’t even consider myself influential… think about the silly stuff bigger bloggers are getting.
  • Apart from their blogger approach, they also used social media in a smart way. Not by just creating the next Youtube video, but really making good use of the power of MySpace, Youtube, Delicious, Flickr and Facebook. All links which were included on the PR site (click on the links to see the examples).

It remains to be seen whether the service will become a success but I can only notice they seem to have their act together at Firebrand and given some of the most popular videos on the web are actually ads there’s definitely potential. Hopefully I can tell you more in a few days/weeks.

Technorati Tags: , , , , , , , , ,

A blog is like a tattoo

I was reading a story the other day how (again) somebody posted something on the internet, then heard he shouldn’t have and pulled the post offline. Of course this didn’t go without people noticing it and they dug up the post of the the search engine’s cache. This made me think of how a blog in many ways resembles a tattoo, here’s why:

  • Personal expression

Just like a tattoo, a blog is a way to express your thoughts, feelings, ideas, … about everything you can think of. You find both in all colors and shapes, languages etc. And you’ll find them both used by people out of all layers of the population, no matter what their level or interests are.

  • Identification & status

Think of how tattoos where used (unfortunately) with the Jews during the holocaust, or how the Maori use it… or some criminal gangs. Tattoos are part a way of saying who you are, to what group you belong to and in many cases also what your status is in that group. Blogs aren’t that much different. From this blog you can tell at least to some extend who I am and with all the social ranking (Technorati and others) attached to it – even if you didn’t ask for it – there is a status system in place as well.

  • Conversation starter

A tattoo, especially a really good one is a conversation starter pretty much like a blog is. When you see someone with a great tattoo you want to know where and why this person got it, what it means, how people react to it, etc… A good post on a blog is a bit the same, it’ll ignite people’s mind and quickly enough you’ll be in a conversation with people you know or don’t know about what you’ve just written.

  • Infinite

Finally – and this is probably where most people thought of I guess – it’s pretty infinite. To use a famous Vegas quote: “what happens on the internet, stays on the internet” and although it might not mean exactly the same as what they meant in Vegas, it says pretty much what it means. Once something goes online, it’ll be there forever. Once a blogpost is there, don’t think you can delete it… meaning you could on your own system but that’s about it. Just like a tattoo, everything you do online is pretty much there forever. And now I know you can get rid of a tattoo, but it takes a lot of effort and time and you’ll always see some trace of it. I think that counts for the internet as well.

Maybe you can think of more, add them in the comments if you do.

Technorati Tags: , , , , , ,