June, 2009

As I write this, nothing can really hold a candle to the significance of online social media influencing the events in Iran.  But then most of us are observers, not participants, in this particular social media event. Every day, however, some of us are either traveling to industry conferences. Or, as the case may be in today’s business environment, we aren’t funded for that trip out of town or even out of the office.

In the last several months I’ve attended two conferences in which Twitter factored in as revolutionary in the conference experience. In each case, a hash tag (#) preceded a few characters to help me hone in on Tweets from each particular event. For example,

our Web Content Conference last week was Tweeted with #wc09. Instantly a community of publishers sprouted to both report the very uttering of the conference session presenters as well as to editorialize contemporaneously with great zeal like kids in the back of a classroom exchanging notes.

It may sound chaotic – some might even say idiotic. But the impact of all this chatter is jaw-dropping. Here are just some of the immediate impacts of this behavior.

• Content is memorialized – Dozens of note takers stream their 140 character thought nuggets onto Twitter where they are easily corralled for re-assembly and review.  All those interesting links and references are captured for post event recall.
• Content is shared among non-attendees – Can’t make the conference? That doesn’t mean you can’t be involved by reading the published stream. And don’t stop there. Add your own comments or questions back to the attendees or other non-attendees.  In essence, be part of the conference community really or virtually.
• Content is shared among attendees in different breakout sessions – Torn between two simultaneous breakout sessions? Attend one in person and the other virtually by following the Twitter feeds from the other session(s). Why wait to find out the other session was great. Some have been known to get up and move to the other breakout session based on the Twitter feeds.
• Content is shared among attendees at other similar-topic conferences – You’re at the marketing conference in DC but the Tech show is happening in Chicago at the same time. Now you can go to one and tune in to the other.
• Attention level & interest is apparent from Tweet activity – Was the Tweet stream active during your presentation? If not, perhaps its time to revisit your material.

I have experienced all of the above during my conference participation as attendee, presenter and long distance lurker. The impact is electric and riveting.  The engagement level is intense and, in the end, you make contact with a lot more people than you might without the tool. Only one admonition to meeting planners: Your conference venue better have wireless connectivity. Or we’ll Tweet about you.

You know you’ve been there. You open your email inbox only to find a string of emails, replies and forwards regarding something as trivial as a meeting agenda. And because everyone involved has made a change to the original document you sent out, you hunt through trying to find the most recent copy because you’re in charge of the meeting and it starts in…5 min! Ugh.

There must be a better way, you say. And there is. Stewart Mader of Future Changes and author of wikipatterns gave a keynote presentation at the Web Content Conference this morning showing us how wikis can save the day where more familiar tools like email have failed us.

Many of us are drowning in email. What was once a “cool new thing” that made communication faster and easier is actually making us less efficient today. We have come to rely on it as our sole communication tool, when in fact there are better tools for collaboration, documentation and knowledge sharing.

If you’re new to wikis – or you think a wiki is an encyclopedia – don’t be discouraged. A wiki is simply an editable Web page. Start with a pilot wiki and host a workshop to get others in your organization acquainted with using a wiki. Once you get others in your organization to adopt wikis, as Stewart says, you can stop getting started on things and instead “get done.”

If you’re like many marketers, delving into social media may feel like stepping onto a roller coaster; exciting and super scary all at the same time. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard someone say, “I don’t get Twitter. Why do I care what someone had for breakfast today?” The truth is, social media is here to stay, it can help your business and if you’re a marketer I hope you’ve already bought your ticket.

In a keynote presentation at the Web Content Conference, Rob Rose argued that we are in a transformational stage in marketing. Those of you who cringe when you hear the term “social media” will love his view that when it comes to this Web 2.0 world where there are “no rules.”

The bad news is that if you’re looking for an easy road map to follow or a step-by-step guide to guarantee success, there isn’t one. The good news is that innovation wins; and you can use the skills and ideas that you already have as a marketer to make social media work for you. Don’t be afraid to blaze your own trail.

If social media is still an unknown to you, don’t let your fears paralyze you. You don’t have to be “this tall” to ride, but you do have to jump on.

Most of us search, we find stuff, we move on. We write content, we post it, we move on. But what is the importance of the technology behind the content? Do we see the big picture? This morning I was served a dose of XML with my coffee at the Web Content Conference, forcing me to think about the backbone of everyday web applications and how that applies to marketing.

Joe Gollner of Stilo International spoke about the technologies behind the content and the relationship between the two. As business professionals and marketers we need to understand a little bit about the power behind the technology in order to consider the possibilities that lie ahead. Ann Rockley of The Rockley Group talked about how XML and other technologies allow us to provide a customized experience for customers like they’ve never had before by only delivering the right content at the right time.

There are certain things that we take for granted today, such as being able to easily move information from one application to another. I can quickly send an email with a link to my friend who can then view a video, digg it and post it on her Facebook page. We can thank XML for a large part of this. Back in the day, there were great applications, but they couldn’t talk to one another.  You can think of XML as the mass transit system of the web; your content is the passenger. It doesn’t do us any good to have great content if it’s just sitting still. Once that content can easily “travel,” that’s when the magic happens.

So how does this affect us as marketers? The convergence of content and technology allows for better performance and allows us to have better interaction with our customers. We’ve moved beyond just giving people information to giving them the ability to take action. We’re not just arming them with knowledge, we’re equipping them with tools. And we can effectively do this if we start thinking of our customers as both consumers and publishers.

True/Slant homepage

Or so said Jock Whitney, one-time publisher of the New York Herald Tribune, and now says the tag line of a fledgling news team who have taken that idea to the perfect place to test it—a social media news site.

True/Slant.com was launched  in April with some new ideas about reporting, advertising, and engaging readers. True/Slant introduces a new model in online news—one of many models we have discussed here various times that will emerge as on-line news picks up the mantle where print appears to be laying it down.
Walt Mossberg at the Wall Street Journal online reviewed the site when it launched and described the advertising model this way:

True/Slant will run regular Web ads throughout. But, in a highly unusual move, the site plans to offer advertisers their own entire pages where they can run blogs and try to attract a network of followers. These will have the same design and features of the journalists’ pages, but will be labeled as ad content.

It’s an interesting idea—a sort of on-going advertorial—that allows advertisers to be part of the site using content, ads, (and maybe links to their sites) to gain and keep the attention of readers; another reminder that perhaps content (relevant, useful content) is still king after all. Hear that Twitter? Some people still like more than 140 characters.

There are so many interesting things about trueslant.com–the  name for one. Contributors are talented, experienced journalists who specialize in a topic or area so the site as a whole has an expanse of topics much the way large newspapers do (or used to) art, food, travel, politics, money, science, fashion, entertainment.  It’s hard for traditional newspapers to get this type of seasoned and credible journalism in one place and still be able to afford to pay for it.

Readers  are welcome to join the site and act as “mini” contributors, uploading photos, commenting, recommending, like all social media site, being part of the conversation–all of which are tracked on the site– and filing out their own profiles.

Reader Stats

You can follow contributors or topics, get only the news you want via RSS, or upon logging in,  go straight to the topic or contributors page you are interested in, rather than just being handed “front page news” based on what editors think we think is important. (Which is something other sites like Newser.com haven’t had the courtesy to do yet. Nor do many other news sites have this type of  good original content–at the same time snarky and entertaining, informative and thoughtful.)

Journalists are free to talk about a more broad range of topics that sometimes focus on geographic areas of the country giving national exposure to local happenings. That brings to mind the Guardian’s Stephen Glover’s comments regarding one reason he thinks American news papers are failing at greater rates that European, that is, the strong emphasis on local, rather than national circulation.

Why are newspapers faring even worse in America than in Britain? Partly because the internet is more ubiquitous there, and has taken more readers away from print. And partly because American titles, being with a few exceptions city-based, are particularly dependent on local classified advertising, which is flying to the internet or, during the recession, simply drying up.

Maybe the idea of bringing news from around the country to one centralized location will give a little more density to the True/Slant model of on-line news.

One feature I will be watching with interest, American Crossroads, is that of a Mid-west writer with a focus on stories from the Heartland and how they mirror the US as a whole. This writer is also a documentarian, filming “a documentary about the horrific 2006 slaying of an Indianapolis family of seven.” As the film takes on life, True/Slant readers and  contributors will be encouraged to provide feedback, contribute relevant content, and be a part of the film making process or just watch as the story unfolds.  Interesting way to involve your audience, not to mention the story is a compelling one full of contradictions and “social, ethinic, political and economic” complexities that may well reflect the current angst of our nation.