The land grab is officially starting. For the first time since the popularization of the Internet, the big news today is that ICANN is opening up the ability for the creation of new suffixes that come after the dot, such as .com or .org. The open application process lets any organization apply to be the manager of a new top level domain (TLD) and applications are expected for everything from categories and industries like .ngo (for charities and nonprofits) or .city (for cities). In addition, of the over 2000 applications expected (despite the $185,000 application fee), more than 2/3rds will expected to be brands who are registering their own brand out of fear of cybersquatting.
This may not matter as much as many marketers and brands think it will. In fact, here are five big reasons why as of right now this is an overhyped development in technology:
1. History hasn't been kind to TLDs.
Wouldn't it be great if you were in the travel industry to be able to signify your site with a .travel domain name? Or for career sites to use .jobs? Or museums to use .museum? Well, all of those top level domains already exist. How often have you navigated to a site that uses any of them? New TLDs don't matter until people's behaviour starts to change for using them.
2. Any changes are years away.
The application process will be open for the next three months, and then will close. From that point, experts are predicting that it will be at least another year or two before ICANN is able to decide which of the TLDs are approved. The most obvious proof that this process will take years? There are a bunch of new consulting companies popping up as experts who can smell money to be made in the interim.
3. Categories will require a shakeout.
When tags started becoming popular to describe content online, it was seen as great news. Now you could describe content in a way that would index it automatically. The only problem is that people use different words. Some people call a retail place a shop and some call it a store. Will more people use .shop or .store? How about .bazaar or .boutique? Until there is a single word, a TLD for a category really won't matter.
4. Google is still the kingmaker.
What most people are forgetting in all the hype is that a TLD really won't matter at all unless almight Google decides to list it in search results. So which TLDs get approved matter less than which ones Google chooses to index as part of their regular search results.
5. The web is now global.
In the early days of the web, .com (short for communications) was ok because the vast majority of sites were in English. Today the web is a different place. So TLDs that are in English may not see wide adoption globally. And different countries may use different TLDs. So the truly global TLDs like .com or .org may be few and far between ... and they may not be in English at all.
Let me tell you a little secret. I look forward to putting together an annual trend report the same way that some people look forward to having Turkey for Thanksgiving dinner. I realize that may sound a bit strange, but ever since I did my first trend recap last year I was hooked. This year, the process of collecting the trends took all year. I have a folder on my desk labelled "Trends 2012" and throughout the year I would rip out articles from magazines or printout webpages to save. Last November I started actually writing my trend presentation and finally released it on Slideshare yesterday.
A few things surprised me about the trends this year. Here are a few of the most unexpected things:
Only 2 out of 15 trends are based on innovative technology (Trends #10 and #13). Given the prominence of technology in our lives and more and more digital tools, I expected that more of the trends for 2012 would be based entirely on technology innovation. That ended up not being the case as most of the trends focused more on either behaviours or the use of sites and technology that already exist and don't really require much innovation in order to keep growing.
Creativity and design are more important than ever. While it would have been too obvious to point this out as a trend on its own, many of the trends that were included in the presentation were highly dependent on encouraging more creativity and delivering great design. Measuring Life, for example, has taken off in part thanks to great product and interface designs. Pointillist Filmmaking or Social Artivism are clearly based on creativity and design. Even Retail Theater, Tagging Reality and Charitable Engagement are all trends that require creative thinking and strong ability to use design to engage people.
People actively seek opportunities to participate, collaborate or experience something. Doing something together came up as a big motivator for many of the trends this year, as Social Loneliness led people to look for more opportunities to have great experiences or be part of something worthwhile. Pointillist Filmmaking, Civic Engagement 2.0 and Retail Theater are all examples where people are seeking the chance to participate in something. Charitable Engagement ChangeSourcing and Co-Curation are other trends where people offer their time and passions to collaborate together on something.
Let me know what you think about these trends with a comment here or on Facebook, or feel free to send me an email at influentialmarketing@gmail.com. Next week I'll be starting my trend folder to gather stories for 2013 ...
Yesterday I spent the day at the Corporate Social Media Summit, a big gathering of some of the best minds in leading social media efforts on behalf of large corporate brands. The event was put on by the team at Useful Social Media - and that indeed was the theme of the day as panelists offered real case studies, answered tough questions and generally demonstrated that there is real hope for large corporate brands to actively use social media to generate real business value in multiple ways. Here are some of the biggest lessons that 10 brands featured on Day 1 of the event shared in their presentations:
1. American Express* - "Altruism has a long tail."
Uniquely qualified to talk about the impact of altruism, American Express Open Forum VP of Social Media Laura Fink went behind the scenes of the hugely successful "Small Business Saturday" campaign that American Express launched back in November of 2010 to create a day where consumers could get rewarded with a $25 statement credit for shopping at a small business location. According to Fink, the campaign engaged more than 1.2 million small businesses around the country and also helped those businesses to see a 28% sales lift on the day of the promotion. Perhaps more importantly, it showed that doing something good can generate a real business impact for customers as well as for the big brand putting on the campaign.
2. Union Pacific - "Never underestimate local communities."
One of the largest railway companies in the United States, Union Pacific has also been around for nearly 150 years. To celebrate this heritage, Senior Manager of Media Technology Tim Mcmahan shared a case study of a crowdsourced competition that Union Pacific held to get people to vote on the ideal route for one of their old steam engines to take on the "Union Pacific Great Excursion Adventure." The voting was split into several rounds, with some fierce competition from unexpected locations. Through each round, Mcmahon shared that the consistently surprising result was that smaller towns like Tuscola, IL were routinely outpacing big metro markets like Chicago. The point, he noted, was that sometimes the most passion for a campaign like this can come from smaller local communities for whom winning may be a bigger deal. Across the campaign, there were nearly 200,000 votes recorded, over 100,000 email addresses captured and the brand plans to reprise the campaign next year.
3. Coca-Cola* - "The most important number in social media is 360."
Through the brilliant video below, Coke's Director of Digital Communications Ashley Brown told the story of a big ambitious PR idea which turned into the largest social media campaign the brand had ever done. The mission was to send three lucky travelers on a journey to all 206 countries around the world where Coke was sold. The trio embarked on their journey on January 1, 2010 and anyone could choose to follow their travels and adventures on the website Expedition 206 (which sadly doesn't seem to be available online anymore). Their goal in each country was to find what made people happy - which Brown noted was perfectly on strategy for Coke to build on their existing brand platform and marketing campaign centered around the idea to "open happiness." The answers they got ranged from family to music to dancing to soccer (yes, they made it to the World Cup in South Africa). Through the lens of this beautiful social experiment disguised as marketing, the team managed to reach what may be the most profound conclusion of all ... that happiness is always simple, whatever form it takes.
4. Best Buy - "Nobody owns social media."
In one of the most eye-opening talks of the day, Gina Debogovich shared some big lessons learned from her time over the last 3-4 years building up the Best Buy customer service and social care center to what is now called the "Twelp Force. As a former customer care person herself, she talked about how Best Buy uses the overarching mission of "creating meaningful communications in the virtual world" to guide all of their efforts. They have an inner circle of about 26 team members dedicated to social media at their team, and then an extended 3000 employees who are actively encouraged to use social media and offered lots of different forms of training on how to do it. Her team is a resource that individual stores can use for advice on such tasks as how to effectively use Facebook specifically for their store. In addition, their team is the only customer care team in the world who currently has their own production studio for creating content such as their Best Buy Unboxing feature. In one case, Gina shared the unheard of stat of how they managed to reduce the volume of one "call driver" (customer service lingo for a top reason that people call a contact center) by 50% simply by producing a video to answer that question.
Disclaimer: I moderated this panel where Gina spoke.
5. Samsung - "Negative experiences are our biggest opportunity."
Samsung is a brand that has made lots of strides recently in integrating social media into their customer service, and has been very active in joining conversations about their brand online. One of the leaders of this, Jessica Kalbarczyk (@samsungjessica) shared her insights about how her small team of four colleagues manages to engage people online about Samsung, and help solve their problems. For Jessica, coming from a marketing and PR role into one more focused on customer service was a fulfilling role because every day she manages to address real problems and change consumers experiences one by one. Anyone in a marketing role who has suffered through never ending meetings about social media without a real vision or tangible outcome will easily be able to imagine how nice a feeling it much be to actually solve real problems and the sense of accomplishment that would offer on a daily basis. As part of that, she shared a point of view which is common among customer service pros ... that they would much rather find negativity and have a chance to fix it and change that consumer's perception. Marketers, on the other hand, tend to run scared in the opposite direction from any negativity. There is clearly a lesson here about the necessity of integrating marketing and customer service more closely.
Disclaimer: I moderated this panel where Jessica spoke.
6. Dell - "Forget ROI and focus more broadly on business value."
At the top of most analyst's lists of brands that have managed to integrate social media into their operations in a real and tangible way would likely be computer maker Dell. During his talk, Richard Binhammer from Dell shared a historical perspective of how social media became integrated into the organization, and one of the most powerful points in his presentation was where he shared the six business areas which have fully embraced social media for different business reasons - marketing, product development, sales, online presence, customer service and communications. While other brands focus on one of these at a time, Dell has reached a point where they can "inhale and exhale at the same time" as Richard shared in his talk. Ultimately, his biggest point is that "ROI" is such a restricting term when it comes to describing what social media can offer and there is a much stronger way to describe the real value behind it that we need to think about including in more of our discussions.
Disclaimer: I moderated this panel where Richard spoke.
7. Southwest - "Have fun and be human."
Fun and airline are not two words that anyone would typically use in the same sentence, yet Social Media Manager from Southwest Airlines Alice Wilson devoted a good part of her talk about how Southwest creates a more human brand by using an irreverant voice. The questions that keep many other large brands up at night in terms of making sure they have backup for employees who are running social media channels, or mapping everything back to some specific campaign or column on a spreadsheet don't seem to matter as much for Southwest. They have guiding principles around their social voice, yet Alice shares that most people who speak out for the brand "just get the hang of it." Without that formalized training or overly bureaucratic approach to managing every aspect of Southwest, the brand succeeds because they have such a strong culture that people start to take it on as their own from day one and this translates into social media.
Disclaimer: I moderated this panel where Alice spoke.
8. Kodak - "Real time listening pays off."
Kodak is a brand that has won a lot of respect for how forward thinking they have been in moving into social media over the past several years, even publishing a guidebook which was available for the attendees on how to use social media and what they had learned. In his talk Tom Hoen, the Kodak Director of Interactive Marketing, shared a number of examples demonstrating the power of listening. In one example, the brand awoke to a barrage of negativity from fans of a Nickelodeon TV show called Degrassi because there was a rumor that the brand had pulled all their advertising due to the show's sometimes adult themes. Fairly rapidly, they were able to use social media to diffuse the rumor (it was actually just a natural pause in flighting for their ads) and engage those angry voices - leading one person to share on Twitter "Now I feel bad. I told the Kodak people to eff themselves sideways, and they sent me a tweet being all nice." Aside from the newly found good feelings, Degrassi and Nickelodeon offered up 2 free spots to Kodak during their season premiere. Not a bad ROI for engaging a few irate teens.
9. New York Life - "Brands need to trust their people."
An unexpected voice at the event came from Gregory Weiss, the AVP of Social Media for New York Life. He started with an entertaining look at the hypcritical nature of business, and how many large brands are afraid of what their employees might do with social media even though they let those same employees have phones and use fax machines and talk to people outside of the company. His main point was that if you can't trust your employees to do the right things and make the right choices, then maybe you need to hire better people. He offered several real tips for using social media in a corporate environment, including supporting your existing sales force, getting on the agenda of new hire initiations so you can tell them about social media, and even simple things like encouraging people to add your social media properties to the end of their email signatures. A point I took away as well, though he didn't mention it was about the importance of picking your battles. Apparently, New York Life also has a vetting process they use internally before any social media property can link to an outside website. That might seem like overkill for many brands, but Greg manages to work around it without making it a big issue.
10. Pepsi - "Reward people for everyday behaviour."
The last presentation of the day came from Josh Karpf, who focuses on an area that more brands should consider having as part of their marketing efforts ... digital research and development. His group runs many forward thinking experiments on how to use social media to engage consumers, and he shared some real examples and hard data from a few of their efforts around trying to offer couponing as a layer on top of geolocation and encouraging people to check in. For one campaign with Hess convenience stores, they found that using a Foursquare promotion in a particular location offered a 47% boost in volume of purchase over previous weeks where the campaign was not running - a great result for the retailer. On the Pepsi side, they interesting learned that coupon redemptions were much higher when offered to people as a reward for some type of behaviour, which seems to offer the logical conclusion that people are more likely to follow through a claim the discount or product from a coupon if they feel they had to "earn" that coupon in some way such as by checking into the gym for 10 days in a month.
*NOTE: Several of the brands mentioned in this post are current or previous Ogilvy clients. In particular, Coca-Cola and American Express are both clients and some Ogilvy team members may have worked on both of the campaigns mentioned. In both cases, I did not work in either campaign and also have not been compensated or encouraged in any way to write about these two brands or these campaigns. I am also a contributor to the American Express Open Forum website.
For a little less than a year, I have been contributing technology articles to an interesting blog launched by the USA Network (a cable television network) to celebrate people and organizations who are having a positive impact on American culture. Along with fellow writers who focus on all kinds of topics from food to music - my focus has been on technology and highlighting some of the most interesting and innovative products and people who are helping to make a cultural impact.
Sometimes, it is through big ideas - like IBM's Watson super computer that recently competed on Jeopardy ... and sometimes it is micro ideas, like a stylishly designed AM radio. Big or small, thinking about the impact of technology on culture is a lens that can be easily forgotten within the daily struggle to stay on top of all your email or come up with a pithy comment to share over Twitter.
Tonight at 11pm EST/10pm CST, the USA Network will air an hour long special featuring some of the nominees in every category who have blazed new paths in their respective disciplines. The New Media and Technology honorees are the co-founders of Foursquare, Dennis Crowley and Naveen Selvadurai. Others on the list include Emily Pilloton for Design and her nonprofit design firm Project H, and singer, songwriter, dancer, and "futuristic funkstress" Janelle Monae.
As the social media "twitterati" get ready for what many consider the biggest Interactive festival and conference of the year at South By Southwest this weekend in Austin, USA's Character Approved project offers a nice reminder that behind all the gadgets and networks there is a real impact that technology and new media can have not just on how widely you can broadcast your opinion to the online world ... but also on the culture that we are all playing a role in shaping.
Life is good for the traveller who knows where they are going. There are dozens of great and useful sites online where you can see everything from reviews of hotels to side by side comparisons of airfares from one destination to another. Planning a trip to San Francisco was never so easy ... but what if you haven't answered the first and most important question of where you want to go? All of a sudden, life is a lot more difficult. Finding out about destinations is a labrynth of government sponsored tourism sites, linkbaiting sites promising information about a destination but only delivering a long list of pay-per-click links, and individual attractions within a destination.
For a traveler still trying to decide where to go, life isn't so simple ... but curation can help.
A hot topic among those who work in social media is the idea of curation and how individuals can share their knowledge and passion on any subject not only by creating original content about it, but also by scouring the web and curating the best content into a single location. Back in 2009, popular travel writer Rick Steves spotted the potential of this idea early when he wrote a blog post about the "Travel writer as curator" - sharing his view of what the guidebook of the future might offer.
Today content curation is rapidly finding roots in the highly immersive world of travel as more people share their personal experiences as a way to influence others on not only where to stay and what to do ... but also where to go in the first place:
1. Jetsetter
A part of the hugely successful online luxury retailer Gilt Groupe, Jetsetter is a private online community filled with curated deals on what the site calls "the world's greatest vacations." The site features up and coming travel bloggers like "monkey connoisseur" Farryn Weiner and former hospitality industry workers to hand select travel locations and experiences which are then offered to members. You need to be invited into the network, and all deals are only offered for a limited time. (Note: the links in this post include a $25 joining incentive). Popular deal website Living Social is also offering similar curated experiences on a more local (and less costly) level at their Living Social Escapes feature.
2. Trazzler
A community built from submissions by travel writers, Trazzler now presents those experiences with a focus on those which are within driving distance of your home as opposed to exotic locations around the world. The smart model used by the site encourages people to share local experiences that they are passionate about in exchange for the chance to win local trips. You don't need to be a travel writer or prolific blogger to participate, just a person with a great story and recommendation to share. It is a curated content model at its best, because they are encouraging writing and content creation from those who have a passion but don't necessarily have a place to share it ... until they find Trazzler.
3. Offbeat Guides
A site that has been around for a few years, Offbeat Guides specializes in letting you create and print your own guides to destinations on demand. A key unique factor for these guides is that you can enter your dates that you will be travelling to a destination and where you are coming from to customize information such as the weather reports for that time period and currency conversion rates. Bringing together curated content from across the web, the guides offer a collection of information that is updated in real time and generally more reliable than travel guides which can be months or years out of date. If only the site allowed you to include multiple destinations in one travel guide (ie - London & Oslo) so you wouldn't have to carry around two guides if you are hitting two destinations, the idea is being partially duplicated now by a few other sites like Stay.com.
The Bottom Line: Curation is already transforming the way that people answer the all important question of where to go, but so far innovations are coming more from technology based startups rather than destinations themselves. In the near future, we will start to see more local, state and country tourism boards as well as convention and visitor bureaus using curation to better promote their destinations to all kinds of travelers.
The eBook won’t kill publishing, but the traditional book and its indifferent author just might. There was a time when the stereotypical aspiring author with a big idea would go from publisher to publisher in search of a believing partner. Few books would make it through the editorial filter to get published, but those that did felt significant. Not every book succeeded, but having the book published meant something in itself.
Today the popularity of real time media makes it easy to do everything from instantly reviewing a movie, to broadcasting our location and reactions to the world around us. As gratification has become instant, many have lamented the loss of a more considered, private and intellectual lifestyle. When media is instant, reflection becomes the missing link because there is rarely time to nurture and share it.
Books on how to use Twitter or Facebook are bought, written and published in a matter of months. Self publishing has afforded the ability for anyone with any kind of idea to create and publish their own tome without any filter at all. On one level, this democratization of publishing is liberating. Great ideas which may never have made it through the sometimes harsh editorial sphincter can now survive and thrive. The negative, of course, is that the quality can vary widely. Just because anyone can publish a book doesn’t mean they will publish a good one.
Now consider the new role of the author in this world. More than any other time in our past, there has been a rise of what you might term “indifferent authors” — the authors who care less about how many books they sell and more about the ego and reputation boost that having a book can offer. Indifferent authors are changing publishing because their priorities are different from the publishers they partner with.
While a publisher may care solely about book sales, the indifferent author has a much wider success metric. Speaking engagements, consulting work, guest article opportunities … each of these matter more to the indifferent author than the sales themselves. These authors are happy with niche sales, ready to step away from the bestseller list book race, and enjoy the reputation lift of having a book – whether the quality is there or not.
More than eBooks or digital content, the rise of this type of author presents a significant threat to not only the world of publishing, but the value that readers place on books themselves. This is a challenge we all must rise against. It is not about recreating a closed club of the “in crowd” where great ideas from outsiders never see the light of day. This is about respecting the ideal that a book should be significant. It should say something important. And it certainly should say more than an insightful blog post or a pithy 140 character observation.
These are the types of ideas that people will continue to pay to read, whether they are sold as a digital download or a printed hardcover book … and the future of publishing depends on finding and supporting the shrinking pool of authors who create them.
Think about the best article you read last year. The hard hitting, excellently researched, insightfully written article that you just couldn't put down. Now think about how much money you spent to read it. Was it in a magazine you subscribe to? Or perhaps a website that you accessed and read for free? For every conversation anyone starts about the future of journalism, the question that seems to follow closely behind is: what does the new business model for journalism needs to be in a world where the average citizen is increasingly expecting journalism to be a service provided for free (or at least, subsidized by someone else).
Over the past few years, every time I spoke at a gathering of local newspaper professionals at the American Press Institute (API) or participated in a journalist-centric event from an organization like the South Asian Journalism Association (SAJA), the signs of worry in the industry were clear. A solution has started to emerge that is not only making waves in the field of journalism today - but also has the potential to reinvent the way that we consume and share media with one another.
Entrepreneurial Journalism describes a field of media where journalism is the underlying discipline upon which to create content-based businesses and services that can make money. Rather than the popular view of journalism as a type of objective professional public service to be provided to the citizenry of the world - entrepreneurial journalism offers the chance to think of content creation in business terms. As it gains popularity, this field also has the potential to change the way that we find and consume information, and change our world in the process. Here are a few ways it is already happening:
A New Generation Of Entrepreneurial Journalists. Predictably, the idea of entrepreneurial journalism found a rapid home among forward thinking Professors of Journalism who have started to incorporate this into their coursework at both the undergraduate and graduate levels. Last year, CUNY announced the first 4-semester dedicated Entrepreneurial Journalism program as part of the Tow-Knight Center for Entrepreneurial Journalism. Author and Professor Jeff Jarvis* leads that program, and also founded a wiki where other educators teaching similar programs could gather to collaborate and share curriculum or ideas. This combined with visionary educators like Columbia School of Journalism's Sree Sreenivasan who has been teaching journalism students social media skills for years will lead to a new generation of voices in journalism who are trained to think entrepreneurially and embrace social media.
New Ideas Influencing Older Media Entities To Evolve. In the middle of 2010, a brilliant experimental journalism site called True/Slant was purchased by Forbes. In his final blog post after the sale, founder Michael Roston shared that what made the site unique was the arrangement they created with 300 writers who were incentivized to create content directly for their audience instead of pandering to an editorial filter. This new editorial model thrived on the site and demonstrated to the world that there was a valid place for this type of journalism - and a place that a "traditional" media organization like Forbes saw great value in.
Startups Create Excitement And Pioneer New Forms Of Media. The Poynter Promise Prize was one of the first of what will likely be several competition style idea gathering efforts to bring some of the most pioneering ideas in entrepreneurial journalism to the attention of many. As more of these startup-style ideas enter into the discussions about the future of journalism, they will unlock new forms of content creation and new business models that the entire industry will eventually look towards.
Overlaps With Big Social Media Trends Such As Content Curation. One of the biggest trends that is already shaping the future of marketing is the focus on content curation as a way to provide value to consumers and share an expertise without necessarily creating content. Aside from creating content as parts of new stand alone organizations, more and more individuals with journalism backgrounds will be sought after by companies to create and organize content on their behalf. "Journalists-In-Residence" will become a part of large companies, opening up yet another entrepreneurial career path for those with journalism training.
This is a link to an interesting panel discussion from the Carnegie Journalism Educators Summit last year about the future of Entrepreneurial Journalism as well, for those who are seeking more context and information.
*Note: Best wishes to Jeff for a speedy recovery, as he recently shared on his blog that he is now once again fighting cancer. His work and thinking have been a big inspiration for me and many others, so I wish him the best in his new battle and am sure he'll emerge on top as he has before.
I am spending the end of this week surrounded by fellow bloggers at the annual Blogworld Expo in Las Vegas and it is one of my favorite events of the year both for the quality of the show and speakers as well as for the singular focus on blogging as a topic. This year, I have the privilege of doing a keynote session with Doug Ulman, the CEO of LIVESTRONG, where we will talk about how his organization has managed to go from a cause to a movement and what role social media has played in that evolution.
Aside from this great topic, though, I have spent a considerable time leading up to this event thinking about the topic of how to consistently create great content and keep a blog up to date. It is something that I personally struggle with all the time, as my blog is a personal one and is not something that I rely on to make money or support my family with. As a result, it is sometimes tough to keep up a commitment to post here. My philosophy over the six years of writing this blog has always been to write only when I have something meaningful to say and the time to do it right.
The challenge of knowing what to write about isn't easy. But the biggest advice I can offer is to get over your "blog guilt" for not writing more often and try to create situations for yourself where you can most easily be successful at continually creating great content. Here are a few tips to do that:
Keep an archive of ideas. I have a document where I write down all the ideas for posts that I have. I keep it on my computer and consistently add to it. Sometimes there are ideas that I have which I keep there for months until something else comes up which reminds me of it and then I post about it. My recent post about the GAP logo was one example. I had the idea for that post some time ago, but it was only when the whole issue with GAP changing their logo and then reverting back to their old one came up that I was reminded of it and the topic for the post became timely once again.
Half-write posts and always title them. Often I will get inspired to write something into a post but not have enough information or research in order to finish the post. Writing half of the post is something I can do in 10 or 15 minutes, even though I know doing the rest of it may take another hour or two. So I will write what I have in my head, and put a title on the post so I can remember the main point I was making. Then I have something I can return to when I have a bit more time and the process of writing doesn't have to start with a blank screen.
Always include links and always try to click them. Links are great for providing context, but they can also connect your blog post to other things that are out there. By clicking your own links, you can subtly let the person or organization who you linked to that you wrote about them. Because most people pay attention to their web stats, they will see where the link came from and either visit through a Google Alert or similar tracking method to come back to your post.
Think creatively about your content. One presentation that I did several years ago which I am still proud of was called the "25 Styles of Blogging." It was created to outline several types of blog posts that any blogger could use to keep their blog content fresh and interesting. I am embedding it at the end of this post so you can easily read and digest those tips as well - they continue to help me when I hit a wall in terms of what to write about.
Create your own set of rules for what works. After you have been blogging for some time, you'll start to get a sense for what works best in your area. For me, using conventions like numbered lists to share thoughts or incorporating images or video tend to work very well. I know that I focus on having a blog where I am not just identifying something interesting, but sharing a definite point of view about it and whether it is good or bad. This is a mix of forming a writing style and knowing what your readers want to read and it is vital as you start to build your audience on your blog.
The day that Michael Jackson died, I turned to MTV for the first time in several years. Like others in the so-called MTV Generation sandwiched between the youngest of Generation X and the oldestof Generation Y, I remembered growing up in the 80s with the battle cry of "I want my MTV!" On that day, however, I was greeted not with news coverage about Michael Jackson's death - but with a reality TV series about teen pregnancies. Confused, I shared in a tweet what many of my generation had felt for years:
"MTV is officially irrelevant. Michael Jackson just died and they are airing 16 and Pregnant."
In a time where services like VEVO are taking the role of offering 24 hour music video on demand, MTV has certainly had to reinvent itself. Others have written about how the brand has evolved (changing to a newly transparent logo) - but in that evolution the connection to the music has been almost completely lost. MTV is not about music anymore and this is a disregard for brand heritage that we see often in the world of television and entertainment. TBS was once a "superstation" offering all kinds of programming and sports and now is trying to focus on comedy and being "very funny." The Food Network, dealing with its own growing pains will be launching launched a cooking channel to separate the how-to cooking style programming from other food related programming. You could be forgiven for thinking that having a consistent brand really doesn't matter much in the world of entertainment.
Today the USA Network is launching a group contributed blog tied directly to the network's overall brand positioning focused on celebrating characters of all types. This blog, called Character Approved is featuring 10 voices in a variety of categories from Art to Food and I have been invited to write the Technology/New Media category.*
While the blogging project focuses on sharing stories of individuals, products and organizations that are having a positive impact on American culture - the marketing lesson worth repeating from this is how it is the latest effort in a branding campaign that essentially started more than 5 years ago where the USA Network created a vision for their brand that still exists and drives the brand today.
The tagline of "Characters Welcome" that you may have seen on the cable channel guides the programming decisions and recently has taken form outside of the network through programs such as the Character Approved awards and now this new blog. What I love about this guiding principle is that it allows the network to stand for something and extend beyond just the current programming of the moment. As of now, the strategy seems to be working - with USA currently placed as the #1 network in all of basic cable, with its programming being seen in 98.5 million U.S. homes. For me, focusing on sharing the stories of characters that are having an impact on the culture of America through technology and new media is a powerful idea and one that I am very excited about exploring and writing about over the coming year. Check out some of the initial posts now live on the blog and let me and the rest of the writers on this project know what you think!
*Disclaimer - I am compensated for my participation on the Character Approved blog as a contributing writer, however this and any future posts about the USA Network that I share on my blog are not compensated or scripted in any way and represent my own true opinion.
Who is the most influential person online?That is the tantalizing question behind the Influencer Project, a brilliantly conceived marketing campaign from Fast Company magazine dedicated to getting people to engage with the idea of online influence and pass along their participation to their entire social networks. The Influencer Project is a simple site that gets you to register with a few details, include your photo and then spits out a custom URL for you to use in all your influential efforts online. The more people you get to click on your URL, the more influence scores you can generate for yourself. (Note - the link above is to my personal URL)
The payoff, as with many of these types of campaigns, is personal reputation and bragging rights - but for the growing ranks of people for whom social media offers an additional limb upon which to balance their virtual identities this reputation is more important than money. It could be considered a simple journalistic effort to do this, but if you look at how the project has been executed, it offered a great case study on how to use the power of the Internet to engage people and build an audience online.
Have a strategic message behind your campaign. The idea of seeking the most influential person online could have been done by any publication, but the fact that Fast Company has chosen to do it sends a strong message about how they want to be perceived: as the magazine that people who are highly influential online read. There are plenty of choices to fit this category, but Fast Company has long been one of my favourite printed publications that I actually subscribe to in print format and read every copy of cover to cover because of their dedication to merging the worlds of online and offline together to paint a picture of the future of business. It is why I have written for them before and why I often recommend the magazine to colleagues.
Make it easy to spread the word. Core to this idea is the fact that every participant gets a shortened URL to use for their own bio. This URL is what anyone can use to pass along the promotion to their social network and is also the primary way that the site can measure your influence. You can also integrate your Twitter and Facebook profiles, but unlike other promotions that can turn into popularity contests through the number of friends and followers you have - the Influencer Project is focused on actual action. The more clicks you generate, the higher your influence score.
Support your promotion with your core business. In the case of Fast Company, their business is producing editorial content. Instead of just sticking a banner on their site and sending out some emails to their subscribers, they are also integrating the Influencer Project into their editorial by releasing a series of interviews with influential people online. The first was with Gary Vaynerchuck and presumably the others they do will help add more context to the idea of influence online and take advantage of Fast Company's editorial voice as a way to bring more people into the Influencer Project.
Have multiple payoffs to attract more participants. The ultimate payoff, as I noted above, is the ego stroke that having your photo appear larger will give and that will likely drive many people to participate. Fast Company will also publish a large photo in their magazine with a spread of all the participants as well - which adds a dimension to the reason for participating and likely will attract people for whom the online credit may not be enough.
Integrate long term brand assets with a short term campaign. One mistake many marketers make is to drive a lot of attention and engagement around a short term effort without generating any longer term value for their brand. Fast Company has the Influencer Project, which will have a definitive start and finish, but they also integrate it with their branded Facebook and Twitter pages, which are longer term assets for the brand. By doing so, they can use the spike in activity around the Influence Project as a way to build greater long term value for their brand and a bigger base of engaged people that they will be able to promote content and activities to in the future.
Update 07/07/10 - For more context on this campaign and how it attempts to track influence, check out Amber Naslund's great post countering Fast Company on how they are confusing ego with influence. She has a great point about how this is an overly simplistic and ego driven way to track whether people have influence online. Though I agree it is an incomplete metric in terms of influence, I still think there are many marketing lessons you could take from this effort as I talked about in my post - but I found her alternate take on the campaign made me think more deeply about it and I highly recommend you read her post and decide how you land on this campaign for yourself.
Rohit works at Ogilvy Public Relations Worldwide, part of WPP - a world leader in advertising and marketing services. The views expressed on this blog are his personal opinion and do not necessarily reflect the views of his employer or its clients.
