Paul Gillin's Blog - Social Media and the Open Enterprise

Study Finds Rapid Enterprise Adoption of Social Networks

2008-09-12T15:19:00.003-05:00

New research funded by Awareness finds that Web 2.0 technologies are gaining rapid acceptance in enterprises and being combined with internal systems. I haven't had a chance to read the full report yet, but you can download it here after filling out a short registration form (note, you may get a call from a sales rep later).

Here are highlights from a press release distributed today:

Employers are starting to allow social media participation more freely in their organizations: The number of organizations that allow social networking for business purposes has increased dramatically to 69 percent in 2008, up from 37 percent last year;
Employers are finding the benefits of using social media: 63 percent are using social media to build and promote their brand, 61 percent are using it to improve communication and collaboration, and 58 percent re using it to increase consumer engagement;
75 percent of employees are already using social networking sites such as Facebook, MySpace and LinkedIn for business purposes, up 15 percent from 2007;
Use of internal-facing communities is on the rise with 6 percent of organization already reporting they deployed internal-facing communities, while 33 percent indicate their organization plans to implement internal-facing social media initiatives;
External-facing communities are increasing: 27 percent of respondents said their companies are planning to deploy external-facing communities while only 13 percent indicated their organizations already have external-facing communities;
Online communities directed at specific interests and groups of people allow for more targeted marketing techniques and better results so for this reason 37 percent of organizations have specific areas of focus for their communities;

Twittering T3PR

2008-09-11T13:30:00.001-05:00

I'm one of several people Twittering the PRSA's T3PR conference. Great speakers. Here's the stream.

While I Talked, People Twittered

2008-09-11T12:56:00.002-05:00

Have you ever had an audience comment loudly on what you were speaking about while you were actually speaking? I did this week, and I found the experience to be weird, invigorating and a little bit
The scene was the New Marketing Boot Camp, a seminar I conducted with Chris Brogan and CrossTech Media. The group was the most tech-savvy I have addressed in some time. About a half-dozen of the members were using Twitter, the short-message microblogging service that inspires a fanatical following.

Sitting down after my presentation, I was able to call up search.twitter.com and read what people had been saying while I talked. Most of them simply summarized points I made, but a few added their opinions, and not all of those opinions were complimentary.

I can tell you that the act of presenting to a group that is actively talking about you requires new skills. Simply knowing that thoughts are being exchanged can be flustering; the tendency is to speak to the people in the room who you know are documenting your talk, hoping to get an inkling of what they’ll say. There's also a certain ego-drive voyeurism that comes from this kind of instant feedback. I found myself wanting to hustle back to my computer to get the online evaluations of what I had just said!

There was a famous story at the South by Southwest Conference last March in which a keynote session was disrupted by negative Twitter messages from some members of the audience. In that case, the speakers were in the difficult position of having those comments actually scroll across a public screen while they were on stage. That was an extreme case, but an increasing number of events are incorporating Twitter conversations into the experience by encouraging attendees to share messages with each other using specific tags or keywords.

Like most new technology developments, there are both good and bad sides to this new form of instant feedback. On the positive side, speakers and conference organizers need as much audience reaction as they can get, and the sooner the better. Having recently waited six months to get audience evaluations from one presentation, I can tell you that the immediacy of the tweeted feedback was wonderful. I was able to use it to get a read quickly on the tech-saviness of the audience and adjust accordingly for the rest of the day. Hopefully, that was a good thing for everyone.

The major downside of this trend that I see is that real-time feedback from a small number of people can force a speaker to unintentionally focus on trying to please that vocal few. This is dangerous if the small but loud group isn’t representative of the majority of listeners. It's human nature to fixate on criticism, and focusing on the comments of a few audience members can throw a presenter off track. The feedback is great, but keep it in perspective.

I’m telling you this because many of you work in the technology industry. You will soon find (if you haven’t already) that attendees to your meetings and events will use tools like Twitter to share their observations. Encourage this. Ask attendees to use Twitter’s hash function (#) to label their messages for your event. Use search.twitter.com to filter their comments and save the search query as an RSS feed so you can collect all this feedback in one stream or even display it on a public screen.

However, Twitter feeds aren’t a replacement for the tried-and-true tactics of feedback forms and post-conference surveys. Real-time impressions can be incomplete and misleading, so take them with a grain of salt. But seek all the feedback you can. Your presentation or event will only be better for it.

Update: on Twitter told me about RateMyTalk.com, a "service that allows conference attendees to provide immediate feedback on a conference via Twitter or through our web site." I haven't tried it yet, but it's a very timely idea.

How NOT to Cope With Bloggers

2008-09-09T22:02:00.001-05:00

My passion for journalism keeps me in close touch with the newspaper industry, a business whose perilous decline I've documented through my Newspaper Death Watch blog. A trend has been playing out there recently that is relevant to anyone who is trying to cope with the new influence of citizen publishers on their market.

Nearly every major newspaper company has recently seen blogs spring up that speak to their problems and future. Among them are TellZell (Tribune Co.), McClatchy Watch (The McClatchy Co.) and The Gannett Blog(Gannett Co., Inc.) It's the Gannett example that intrigues me most.

The independent Gannett Blog is written by Jim Hopkins, a former Gannett editor and reporter. It covers all kinds of topics related to Gannett's business and its future. These days, that content includes a lot of speculation about layoffs and cutbacks at a company that recently announced it will cut 1,000 jobs, or about 3% of its workforce.

The Gannett Blog has gone viral in its quest to become a sounding board and information source for employees. Jim Hopkins recently revealed some traffic statistics: 91,000 visits and 189,000 page views in the last 30 days. That's serious blog traffic, and much of it comes from Gannett employees who feel they can't get a straight story from their employer. Gannett Blog has become the virtual watercooler for a company of 46,000 people.

The conundrum for Gannett is what to do about Hopkins. So far, it's chosen a strategy of benign neglect. Tara Connell, Gannett's chief spokesman (and interestingly, a former managing editor at USA Today) has gone almost silent recently as rumors have swirled about layoffs and cutbacks, Hopkins says. Meanwhile, traffic has grown. This recent post has drawn more than 160 comments, many of them from people who identify themselves as Gannett employees. People are now actively trading rumors about layoffs at their individual newspapers, with Gannett blog functioning as the gathering point.

Gannett's strategy is worse than "No comment." Not only has the company not contributed its perspective to the flood of comments, it now barely even responds to Hopkins' requests for information, he says. As the chorus of pleas for guidance from the company grows in volume, Gannett becomes more closed and insular. Gannett didn't respond to my own requests for comment.

Gannett is approaching this problem in the worst way possible. Regardless of its opinion of bloggers and citizen journalists, the fact is that The Gannett Blog is drawing huge attention among the company's own employees, who are the most valuable spokespeople it has. Gannett's failure to respond to the speculation and allegations of this critical constituency has become almost as big a story as the company's business problems.

In the new world of citizen-powered publishing, institutions have fewer places to hide than ever. Silence is an invitation to speculation, and individuals now have the means to state their opinions in a very public way. A better course of action for Gannett would be to respond to the comments posted by Jim Hopkins and his readers. Even if that response is a "no comment," it's at least an acknowledgement that their concerns are being noted.

You might argue that an engagement strategy is risky for a publicly traded company. That's just wrong. Public companies live under all kinds of regulations, but there is nothing to prevent them from acknowledging that they care about and listen to the concerns of their stakeholders. Any comment is better than silence.

One of the great ironies of watching the newspaper industry collapse has been to see the same media icons that have long scolded institutions for their insularity become reclusive and inwardly focused when the spotlight is turned on them. Gannett Blog is exhibit A in how not to handle new influencers.

Daily Reading 09/08/2008

2008-09-08T08:30:00.001-05:00

Study: 58% Aren't Familiar With Social Networking
More than half the people surveyed by Synovate said they don't know what social networking is. Perhaps more interesting that a third said they're getting tired of the networks they belong to.

Synovate says it "spoke to" more than 13,000 people globally (we doubt that; this was probably an online survey). While the results aren't statistically valid, there are some interesting international comparisons. The Dutch and Canadians are more active social network users, although the Canadians are losting interest faster. They prefer MySpace to Facebook. The Japanese are losing interest the fastest.
tags: daily_reading, social_network, research
destinationCRM.com: A Company Like Me | Diigo
Paul Greenberg believes that businesses have to develop the same kinds of relationships with customers that customers develop with their friends. This is difficult to do, but in the new customer-empowered world, it's the only way to gain a sustainable edge. Do your customers trust you as much as they trust each other? Is there something you can do to earn that level of trust? Read this thought-provoking article for a very lucid perspective on the changes being brought about by social media.
tags: daily_reading, crm

Daily Reading 09/07/2008

2008-09-07T08:30:00.001-05:00

Events Industry: Robust Growth Through 2011
Events are emerging as the brighit spot of an otherwise dismal media industry. A new white paper sees growth of 5.5 percent annually through 2011, with biggest opportunities overseas.
tags: daily_reading, events
Gap Widens in Online Advertising
Online advertising continues to grow at a 20% annual clip but search is pulling away as the vehicle of choice. Search ads are forecast to represent 42% of overall U.S. online ad spending in 2008, according to eMarketer, up from 40% in 2007.
tags: daily_reading, google, search, advertising
Google Chrome is fastest browser
A variety of independent tests have established that Google's new Chrome browser is the fastest on the market, particularly when running javascript applications.
tags: daily_reading, google
Facebook micro-payments total $35 million, VC says
Facebook may book $35 million in small-dollar virtual gifts this year, or about 10% of its total revenue, estimates venture capitalist Jeremy Liew. This indicates that people are willing to pay good money for items that have no practical value, as long as the sentiment is there. Facebook could be an innovator in creating the kind of micro-payments system that has been unsuccessful in other markets.
tags: daily_reading, facebook

Daily Reading 09/05/2008

2008-09-05T08:30:00.001-05:00

50 Ideas on Using Twitter for Business
Chris Brogan is THE MAN on Twitter and this list of 50 tips on how to apply Twitter to business will demonstrate why.
tags: daily_reading, twitter
A List of Social Media Marketing Examples
Peter Kim has gathered together the social media activities of nearly 160 brands. You'll find all kinds of great ideas here, and very few of these examples are tech companies. Equally impressive is how many are big brands.
tags: daily_reading, reference

Let a Thousand Networks Bloom

2008-09-04T16:45:00.004-05:00

News that the American Bowling Congress will launch a social network arrived last week, raising the question of whether this social networking thing has gone just a little too far. There are, after all, nearly 2,700 social networks on the Internet according to Go2Web20.net. Facebook and MySpace together command over 85% of social networking traffic, so what’s the point of starting another?

This is just the beginning, folks. The boring job of picking the social network winners is already done, and now the action shifts to the small communities where innovation can really flourish.

I'll give you one example. About two years ago, my wife Dana and I took up geocaching. It’s a global game that uses global positioning satellites (GPS) technology to create a worldwide treasure hunt. Players use handheld GPS receivers to find containers full of trinkets placed by other enthusiasts in locations ranging from city street corners to remote mountaintops. People log their finds on a website and try to make up elaborate clues for others to unravel.

Dana and I became so captivated by this game and the culture that has grown up around it that we decided to write a book about it. In the process of interviewing some of the most active and successful geocachers in the world, we've come upon some remarkable stories.

Geocache hidden in a hollowed-out rock

People have told us that geocaching has brought their families together, introduced them to new friends and reinvigorated their lives. One man credited the game with helping him shed 150 pounds and give up smoking. Several have said it saved their marriages. One disabled war veteran even told me geocaching gave him a reason to live at a time when he was contemplating suicide.

The online street corner for caching enthusiasts is a website called geocaching.com. This is where people can log their discoveries and share their stories. People go there to seek out others and start relationships that may develop online or in one of more than 100 local geocaching clubs around the U.S.

There are probably a couple of million people who love to geocache. That number is a rounding error on MySpace’s member list, but for active geocachers, it’s a lifeline so strong that enthusiasts often put their personal safety in the hands of other geocachers they’ve never even met. It’s a perfect example of a micro community.

There are two points to this story. The first is that small communities tend to be more engaged than large ones. The more time and effort someone has invested in learning a craft, skill or sport, the more passionate he or she is likely to be about it. People at Communispace, a company that manages private communities for corporate customers, tell me that they advise their clients to break up communities into smaller subgroups once their membership surpasses a few hundred. Think of it: No one is particularly passionate about Facebook, but they may be very engaged with communities within Facebook. Small is beautiful.

Secondly, the folks at Geocaching.com didn’t set out to organize an existing community. They created the community. It was almost impossible for people to play the game until a resource existed to coordinate their efforts. This is a great example of the Internet actually enabling special interests to flourish.

Have social networks gone too far? On the contrary, they haven’t gone nearly far enough.

Cast a Vote for "Down the Avenue"

2008-09-03T16:02:00.003-05:00

My good friend and PR pro Renee Blodgett is in the finals of the PR Week Blog Competition. The winner is chosen by popular vote and Renee’s creativity and impressive contact list have enabled her to overcome some very large agencies to get this far. Please do her a favor: go to the voting page and click on “Down the Avenue” where it says “Vote Here.” It takes two seconds. Hurry, because the competition ends Friday. And then check out Down the Avenue, because we could all learn a few tricks from it.

Daily Reading 09/03/2008

2008-09-03T08:30:00.001-05:00

TV's Future Looks Like Web's Present
Forrester Research says that in the future, TV will look increasingly like the Internet. Most programs will be "delivered on-demand with targeted ad messages based on location and behavior, along with community functions."
tags: daily_reading, television

Daily Reading 08/25/2008

2008-08-25T08:30:00.001-05:00

Is your brand at social media's ground zero?
Sound advice on how to prepare for and execute a social networking campaign. Analyzes interesting new Facebook promotion for "I Can't Believe It's Not Butter" for likely success.
tags: social_networks, daily_reading

A Fast and Efficient Approach to Developing Content

2008-08-21T06:15:00.002-05:00

From my weekly newsletter. Subscribe using the sign-up box to the right.

One of my clients has been experimenting with an innovative and efficient approach to content development and I want you to know about it.

The company is in a highly specialized and big-ticket b-to-b industry. Its executives are very busy and very well paid. The VP of marketing wanted to develop some thought leadership white papers, but the prospect of pinning down these executives for hours to develop the content wasn’t practical. Instead, the marketing departing is using podcasts to construct white papers from the ground up

Here's how it works: We schedule a 30- to 45- minute phone call with these busy executives to capture background information and hot topics in their areas of expertise. I then create a list of questions that are intended to draw out the executives’ thinking (journalists are pretty good at this!).

We record an interview of approximately 30 minutes’ duration. An edited version is posted as a podcast on the company's website, but the marketing group also has the full interview transcribed via a low-cost outside service. Marketing cleans up and reorganizes the transcript and posts the document as a position paper.

Over a series of interviews, an executive's observations and experiences can be rolled up in interesting ways. Multiple interviews with one executive can yield an in-depth white paper. Or point interviews with several executives can be combined into a corporate backgrounder. Customers and prospects can also subscribe to the podcast series. For the small transcription fee (services can be had for as little as a dollar a minute) and some inexpensive editing, the VP has a series of byline articles from the most visible people in his company.

Rethinking Research
I’ve recommended this approach to more and more clients lately. New online tools enable us to rethink our approach to assembling complex documents. It used to be the process demanded hours or days of research. Now we can take notes in real-time and assemble them later.

Blogs are ideally structured as collections of thoughts, observations and insights expressed in short bursts. It's fast and easy to capture these brainstorms online. Got an idea? Twitter it for prosperity. When you go back and look at information assembled in this way, you often see relationships that weren't obvious at the time. Between search, tags and bookmarks, it's possible to assemble these building blocks in different ways.

Some thought leaders take this to the limit. Marketing guru Seth Godin, for example, is known for writing entire books based on collections of interesting blog posts. The blog is his notepad for ideas that can be combined into coherent themes.

In some (though certainly not all) cases, this is a more efficient way to research a topic than spending hours mining the Web or library stacks. For my client, it's also a way to repurpose content across multiple media. Maybe it will work for you. What do you think? Twitter me @paulgillin.

Daily Reading 08/13/2008

2008-08-13T08:30:00.001-05:00

IPhone Software Sales Take Off: Apple's Jobs
The new iPhone apps are moving very briskly, too, with Apple selling about $1 million a day in mobile software. Sega says its iPhone sales have been so strong that the iPhone could quickly emerge as a mainstream gaming platform.
tags: daily_reading, mobile
Why Twitter Hasn’t Failed: The Power Of Audience
Gregor Hochmuth explains the enduring popularity of Twitter, despite its many service hiccups. If you want to understand why Twitter resonates so much with its audience and creates such a fanatical following, read this.
tags: daily_reading, twitter
Holy cow: Apple sells 3 million iPhone in debut month
Capitalizing on the popularity of digital accessories as well as the iPhone's emerging status as a fashion statement, Apple's new iPhone 3G had a blowout first month. It took three days to sell 1 million of the new iPhones. For comparison, it took 74 days for the original iPhone to hit the one million sold mark. The new 3G iPhone has already sold nearly half as many as the original iPhones in total.
tags: daily_reading, mobile
Ben & Jerry's Jumps Into Social Media
The ice cream maker is promoting its new "Imagine Whirled Peace" flavor with a John Lennon-themed social network at which visitors can post "messages of peace" and upload relevant images.
tags: daily_reading, social_network, advertising
Citi: Yep, The Kindle's A Huge Hit. $1 Billion For Amazon In 2010
Kindle might be the iPhone of the book world. Wall Street analysts are euphoric about reports that Amazon may be on track to sell $1 billion worth of the handheld e-book in 2009 and could sell more than 375,000 units this year. That may make e-books a legitimate marketing channel in the not-too-distant future.
tags: daily_reading
Reaching Baby Boomers Online
Rich Newman debunks the myth that baby boomers don't use social networks. While it may be true that they don't use Facebook, he says, they're just as active online as people 30 years younger than them. It's just that they go places that researchers don't measure.
tags: daily_reading, research
Social Networks Surge On Growing Global Audiences
Did you know that Facebook is now larger than MySpace? A surge of international registrations is driving social network growth. That includes traffic growth of 66% in the Middle East and Africa to 30.2 million, Europe increasing 35% to 165 million and Latin America rising 33% to 53.2 million.
tags: daily_reading, research, social_networks
- traffic growth of 66% in the Middle East and Africa to 30.2 million, Europe increasing 35% to 165 million and Latin America rising 33% to 53.2 million.
Excuse Me, Do You Work Here? No, I Just Need to Fold Clothes
The Gap and its retail imitators have spawned a generation of Americans who are addicted to folding. And now that obsession is beginning to have unintended consequences, especially marital strain that results from one partner constantly refolding the other's clothing.
tags: daily_reading, fun
AOL Study Says We're Even More Addicted to Email
AOL released the results of its annual e-mail addicition survey. Among the findings:
*62% of people check work email on the weekends;
*19% choose vacation spots with access to email;
*59% check email from the bathroom

(I just don't get that last one)

More: 46% of email users said they're hooked on email (up from just 15% last year) and 51% check their email 4 or more times a day (up from 45% in 2007). New York, Houston and Chicago top the list of cites "most addicted" to email; 27% are so overwhelmed by their email that they've either declared "email bankruptcy," deleting all their email messages to start anew, or are seriously thinking about doing so. Twenty percent of users said they have over 300 emails in their inboxes.
tags: daily_reading, email

Daily Reading 08/11/2008

2008-08-11T08:30:00.001-05:00

Ten years of email - David Strom
Google's Gmail service just passed the 7G-byte threshold, meaning that's how much email storage users get for free (it's unlimited on Yahoo Mail). David Strom, once co-authored a book about e-mail, marvels at how far we've come in just 10 years. It wasn't that long ago that most e-mail packages were proprietary and the industry haggled over standards, he remembers. Today, it's accepted that all e-mail is Internet-based and this has helped embed this tool quickly into the fabric of our everydays lives. Now if only someone would do something about security.
tags: daily_reading

Daily Reading 08/08/2008

2008-08-08T08:30:00.001-05:00

Influencer marketing: Effective or defective?
Neil Davey at MyCustomer.com scrutinizes influencer marketing. Does it really work? Skeptics like Duncan Watts says it's an unproven theory that's convenient to believe while Keller Fay Group insists that influencers move markets. I'm somewhere in the middle. Good new insight from Watts in this piece.
tags: daily_reading

Imitation is the Sincerest Form of Flattery

2008-08-07T15:19:00.003-05:00

And to think I canceled my subscription...

Report Examines Changing Influence Patterns Created by Social Media

2008-08-06T16:23:00.003-05:00

The Society for New Communications Research (SNCR), a nonprofit organization dedicated to the understanding and application of new media research, has just released a report that I helped develop, and I hope you'll check it out. It's free.

“New Media, New Influencers and Implications for Public Relations” features detailed findings of a survey of communications and marketing professionals focused on changing patterns of influence that are resulting from social media and other new communications technologies. The survey is interesting, but I think you'll find the case studies of the American Red Cross, Blendtec, The Coca-Cola Company, Emerson Process Management, the Mayo Clinic, MARC Research, Quicken Loans, and the Seattle Union Gospel Mission particularly compelling. Each of these organizations is using different social media in different ways and each is achieving notable results.

I was personally lucky to interview George Wright, the marketer behind the Blendtec viral video phenomenon, and blogger Merrill Dubrow, CEO of MARC Research. Both were great interviews.

You can download a PDF for free or purchase a hard copy through the SNCR bookstore.

Nominate Yourself and Your Clients for a Social Media Award

2008-08-06T06:00:00.003-05:00

Just three days left to take advantage of discount pricing to submit your entries for the Society of New Communications Research's (SNCR) Excellence in New Communications Awards.

Details are below, but this is basically a good way to get your new-media accomplishments in front of a group of thought leaders and to get an important third-party endorsement for your great work. Jen McClure continues to cultivate an organization that is committed to guiding and advocating for adoption of social media without becoming beholden to a lot of commercial interests. SNCR gets better every year.

By the way, its annual Symposium & Awards Gala is coming up Nov. 13 & 14 in Cambridge, MA. If you want to rub elbows with some of the top journalism, marketing and PR bloggers, this is the place to do it. At $395 for the symposium, it's a good deal.

Full disclosure: I'm a SNCR Research Fellow, which means I do volunteer work for and donate money to this fine organization.

Details from the awards page:

These awards honor corporations, governmental and nonprofit organizations, educational institutions, media outlets, and individuals who are innovating the use of social media, mobile media, online communities and virtual worlds and collaborative technologies in the areas of business, media, and professional communications, including advertising, marketing, public relations and corporate communications, as well as entertainment, education, politics, and social initiatives.

Awards are granted in six divisions:

Corporate
Government
Media
Nonprofit/NGO
Academic
Technology Innovation (for vendors)

There are seven categories:

Online Reputation Management
Behind the Firewall
Blogger Relations
External Communications & Communities
New Media Creation
Collaboration & Co-creation
Mobile Media.

It costs $49 to submit. More details here.

Daily Reading 08/05/2008

2008-08-05T08:31:00.001-05:00

The worst SEO mistake you can make
Brandt Dainow has some interesting insight on why search engines don't like dynamic content management systems (CMS). He says SEO consultants need to be brought in before a site is launched. Repairing the wreckage wrought by a bad CMS can be nearly impossible, he says.
tags: Search, daily_reading
Microsoft backs open source work
Microsoft continues to extend a tentative olive branch to the open-source community, investing $100,000 to become a platinum sponsor of the Apache Software Foundation and promising to open some of its communications protocols to developer scrutiny.
tags: daily_reading, open_source, Microsoft
Top 10 social media misconceptions
Noah Elkin offers some useful tips for creating and measuring social media campaigns.
tags: daily_reading, metrics, social_media
Microsoft sees end of Windows era
Microsoft has launched a research project to develop a successor to Windows that isn't tied to a single machine. But whether Microsoft can make money from an operating system that isn't tied to a single computer is an open question. Microsoft may have no choice, though. Users of the future will increasingly be mobile and promiscuous about the hardware they use.
tags: daily_reading

Gettysburg Tours Are a History Bargain

2008-08-05T06:06:00.003-05:00

About six years ago I stopped by Gettysburg, PA with my son for a half day while on a trip to nearby Baltimore. I've wanted to go back ever since. Gettysburg is like no other historical attraction I've ever visited. The National Park Service has maintained the site and battlefields in a condition that mirrors almost perfectly their state on July 1, 1863, when the pivotal battle of the Civil War began.

This week I got a chance to go back with the luxury of some time for exploration. A full day at Gettysburg still doesn't do the place justice, but I discovered the history bargain of a lifetime: the private guides provided by the Park Service.

For just $55, you can hire an expert to accompany you in your car for a two-hour tour of the battlefield. After that, you can return at your own pace, armed with the wisdom your guide has imparted. With group bus tours running $26/person, this service pays for itself quickly. Our guide was Mike (left, explaining cannon ballistics for my kids), one of about 150 contractors who work in this capacity, and his knowledge was voluminous. There was barely a question we could throw at him that he didn't answer.

The great thing about tour guides is that they're unique. You can take the same tour with two different guides and learn entirely different things. The last time I toured Gettysburg, we had a group tour guide who was an expert at describing the scene on the battlefield. Mike was great at defining military strategy, and we couldn't have had a better setting for his expertise.

Standing in a wooded area, looking across an open field, we could almost see the Confederate troops advancing on Cemetery Ridge for the fateful Pickett's Charge, the tactic that nearly turned the war in the south's favor but ultimately forced Lee into retreat. The great thing about Gettysburg is that the entire six-mile battlefield is spread before you. You can survey the scene almost exactly as the generals did before the battle.

Mike told us how authorized tour guides have to leap tall buildings to gain NPS approval. He said he had to finish in the top 10 of roughly 200 people who took a written exam, then submit to an oral test and finally a tour of the battlefield with experts who fired all sorts of trivia and trick questions at him. All this so he could earn $25/hour giving tours (I tipped him a well-deserved $20). That is dedication. And the Park Service has no shortage of applicants for these jobs.

I also recommend the Eisenhower house tour. My knowledge of our 34th President was minuscule, and the self-guided 90-minute tour of his final home in Gettysburg gave me new respect and admiration for him. The Park Service guides punctuated the visit with bits of wisdom and skillfully answered all questions without being intrusive.

Daily Reading 08/04/2008

2008-08-04T08:31:00.001-05:00

SEC To Recognize Corporate Blogs as Public Disclosure. Can We Now Kill the Press Release?
Brian Solis analyzes the SEC's decision to give some social media-based corporate communications the same gravity as press releases. If the SEC is indeed shifting its stance, then companies may be able to reduce their use of expensive newswire services and disclose more information directly, with the benefits of reader feeback and SEO-optmized content.
tags: pr, social_media, daily_reading

Help Us Eat Our Own Dog Food

2008-08-02T09:24:00.006-05:00

Many years ago in the days BI (before Internet), I worked at a publisher that was installing a new client/server-based publishing production system. Since the publication was all about information technology, we got the great idea to write about our own experiences moving to the new software. The first couple of published articles went well, but then problems began to occur.

It turned out that the reference customers the software vendor had give us weren't actual customers but rather test sites. We were, in fact, the only live customer. The software was riddled with bugs and the interface to our previous production system was atrocious. For months, reporters and editors worked with both a terminal and a PC on their desks because the new system was so unreliable. The project, which was originally scheduled to last six months, dragged on more than three times that long.

This presented an interesting problem for our little experiment in transparency. The project was a disaster and the vendor, which had initially been enthusiastic about the idea, was now pleading with us not to document the problems we were experiencing. We continued with the diary, but as internal political pressures mounted, we toned down our coverage considerably. The extent of the disaster was never fully revealed.

This time, we don't have that option.

Announcing Project Dogfood, an experiment in community website development. This is an innovative idea from a fast-moving company named CrossTech Media, which produces a new conference called New Marketing Summit. I'll be co-anchoring this event Oct. 14 and 15 at Gillette Stadium in Foxboro, MA along with bestselling author David Meerman Scott and social media superstar Chris Brogan.

The event's website is currently standard brochureware, but CrossTech isn't the kind of company to stick with the basic. The company got its start building conference registration systems and the technology-driven team had a brainstorm. Let's transform a series of flat HTML pages into a vibrant social media foundry. And let's ask the community for help.

Project Dogfood's name is a nod to that venerable tech industry phrase, "Eating our own dog food." It means companies should run themselves on the software they build for customers. As the site develops with input from the community, it will become the foundation for future New Marketing Summits. People who register for the events will be able to continue their conversations and relationships long after the curtain has rung down on the last speaker.

So go register! Tell us which topics you'd like to see and features you'd like us to include. And sign up for the New Marketing Summit while you're at it.

Unlike my previous experiment in transparency, this one doesn't have the option of backing out. You'll see a social network take shape before your eyes. And if we fall on our faces a couple of times, you'll see that, too. This is Web 2.0, after all!

A Mobile Game-Changer

2008-07-28T22:28:00.002-05:00

Apple unveiled the iPhone Application List and boasted that it sold one million of the new 3G (third generation) devices in the product's first weekend on the market. More important than the sales figures is the coup that Apple has pulled off: The iPhone 3G looks to be the first mobile device to make the leap from telecommunications to data. That makes it the first mobile platform to merit serious attention from marketers.

The iPhone inspires a passion among its users that few technology products have ever achieved. Ask an iPhone user to tell you what he or she likes and you’ll get a 20-minute sermon, complete with demos. What strikes me is that most people tell me they use the iPhone more for data than for telephony. This is where the product is a game-changer.

The mobile Internet has been an unholy mess for several years. Each handset maker, network operator and service provider uses a slightly different technology. This pointless incompatibility has frustrated application developers so much that many have decided simply to wait out the market until consensus is reached. About the only standard anyone has been able to agree upon is Mobile Web, a hobbled subset of the World Wide Web standards that doesn't do anything particularly well.

Apple is bidding to change all that. The two big innovations in the iPhone are a usable http Web browser and sufficient local memory and storage to run applications on the device. This second feature is critical. Few people will choose to interact with their iPhone primarily through the browser, although they will browse to retrieve information. The beauty of native applications is that they can take full advantage of the iPhone’s speed and interface. When combined with a robust Internet back end, some truly interesting uses will develop.

In industry lingo, this setup is called client/server. Millions of people already take advantage of a mobile client/server architecture every day when they use their BlackBerries from Research in Motion. The BlackBerry’s e-mail interface is second to none, but an equally important usability factor is the device’s rapid performance. That’s because the BlackBerry downloads messages continually and displays them locally for rapid access. If the Blackberry’s performance was as slow as a Web e-mail program like Yahoo! Mail or Gmail, I suspect few people would bother with it.

Apple’s applications initiative is meant to give developers the means to build client/server applications on the iPhone. This can give users a fast, pleasant experience that’s optimized for the platform. Mobile Web doesn’t come close.

With an impressive list of more than 500 out-of-the-box iPhone applications and the capacity for developers to create really functional client/server programs, the iPhone stands to be the first truly mobile data device.

No cell phone maker I've seen has yet produced a meaningful competitor. Their origins are in voice, and most still don't get the data thing. Apple's early lead with mobile applications makes it the front runner in his new field.

Here's the opportunity for marketers. Facebook pioneered the idea of using applications as a means to sell products, but there are so many Facebook applications right now that it's almost impossible to break through the noise. The iPhone is currently an open field, and since people spend a lot more time away from their computers than in front of them, there's more potential for audience engagement. The audience may be smaller, but the prospect of getting them to actually use your service is greater.

The applications that succeed on a mobile device will undoubtedly be different than those that work on a social network. Location awareness will be critical. Think in terms of what people want to do and know when they’re standing on a street corner or waiting in an airport. Give them services that help pass the time or entertain them. Better move quickly, though. I suspect the iPhone Application List won’t be a short one for very much longer.

Daily Reading 07/26/2008

2008-07-26T08:30:00.001-05:00

Complaining Bloggers Have a Cable Company’s Ear
Comcast, which owns one of the worst reputations of any US company, is finally listening. The cable firm has deployed a team of people to listen in on and respond to customer complaints at a speed that is almost creepily fast. Customers are noticing and the tide of negativity is turning.
tags: daily_reading, twitter

I'm Going Viral: 250 Free Galleys of My Next Book Available

2008-07-24T10:37:00.004-05:00

In the spirit of viral marketing, and with my publisher's enthusiastic consent, I'm giving away 250 copies of my new book, Secrets Of Social Media Marketing, to anyone who fills out this form on my website. I’m betting that if people start talking about the book before it reaches the shelves, it will be good for sales.

I'd like to take credit for the idea, but it was actually proposed me by my friend and colleague David Meerman Scott, who co-authored Tuned In, a business book that has been number one on Amazon several times in the last few weeks. Scott’s New Rules of Marketing and PR was the number one marketing book of 2007 on Amazon, so if it's good enough for him..