2009 September

Social Media [Insert Made Up Buzzwords Here]

On September 30, 2009, In Comm, By Tac Anderson

How to really talk about (social media marketing) books you haven't read.

Why do we have buzzwords? What service do they fill? Why do so many people complain about them?

Every sub-culture and every movement needs it’s own language. It doesn’t matter if it’s an art movement, a political party or a fortune 100 company. Having a unique language creates a sense of community and servers as a way to keep others out.

This is actually a very important part of community development. We may complain about it but it’s necessary.

Over the last five or so years the community fought and complained about these buzzwords. That was a natural part of community forming. The language and the terms were being developed to fit how the community saw the space. But today we’re seeing a new kind of problem arise.

The problem is that as we continue to enter the main stream, early majority,Â mass market phase of social media other people start to adopt the terminology. People with little understanding of the terms or meaning want to appear as memebers of this community. Yes I’m speaking of the ever popular, self proclaimed “social media expert.”

This is probably the most hated entity to the community. Other communities use terms like “poser,” “faker,” or “wannabe.” Social media is not the only community to experience this. Remember “wiggers,” white people trying to “act black”? Any subculture that moves into the main stream experiences this.

So what do you do about it? You can get really really mad about it. You can continue to change the language. We’ve already gone from New Media to Web 2.0 to Social Media. Or you can accept that it’s going to happen. Ignore the posers and continue to work for the common goals that bring a community together.

Too often we get so wrapped up in keeping our little community unique and different that we forget that the common goals that brought us together were to spark broader change and that in order for that change to happen our little community would no longer stay little or unique.

Imagine for a minute if the Founding Fathers had stayed a small group and complained when other “posers” started having their own tea parties.

I’m Thinking. (altitudebranding.com)
Where is the Soul in your Social Media? (nettiehartsock.com)
3 things I loved & watched lose their soul: Punk Rock, Skateboarding & Blogging (newcommbiz.com)
The Next Big Thing is… (newcommbiz.com)
Conversations vs Sharing. Where’s the Value? (newcommbiz.com)

Popularity: 1% [?]

Diigo v4 is the Best Social Bookmarking Tool Ever!

On September 29, 2009, In Biz, By Tac Anderson

: Image via CrunchBase

To me social bookmarking is one of those basic tools anyone who works on the Web has to be using.

If you took my social media basic training course you should now be signed up for Diigo. They just released the newest version of their services with some exciting updates. You can read the Diigo blog post here or check out Diigo’s v4 FAQ.

I have been using Diigo for over 3 years now. What was my first bookmark? A story back in August of 2006 on the scary correlation between the rise of Web 2.0 and housing prices (doesn’t seem so crazy anymore does it?)Â http://www.diigo.com/07bo3. That is an annotated link. Click it and even if you’re not using Diigo you’ll see the sections that I highlighted. Just one of the very cool features in Diigo.

Diigo snapshot

But imagine for a minute that the article or blog you bookmarked doesn’t exist anymore. Diigo crawls every page you bookmark and stores an HTML version. Plus as you’re bookmarking the page you can have Diigo take a snapshot of the page to save as a JPEG. This is especially handy for bloggers.

While you’re booking that page, saving an HTML version of it and taking a screen shot to later use in a blog or for whatever you can also tweet a link to the post. Talk about streamlining your work flow. Oh did I mention that you can also have Diigo auto post to your blog for you? I’m probably most excited about the fact that for the link posting feature they finally switched from TinyURL to Bit.ly because this was a feature I suggested back in January.

Other exciting features: a series of coming smart phone apps, the iPhone app is waiting approval. A significantly improved UI, better search, meta data and enhanced groups. Plus they have switched “friending” other users for the Twitter like “follow/following” relationship.

And as always for you Delicious users you can still cross post your bookmarks to your Delicious account. The best of both worlds.

Diigo is one of those tools that has more features than you could possible ever use (which is a little bit of it’s Achilles heel). Sean Brady has a whole series of videos explaining the new features in Diigo v4. Here’s the intro video.

Have I convinced you to use Diigo yet?

Social Media is a Wicked Problem (newcommbiz.com)
Diigo Lists (knowledgefordevelopment.com)
Demonstrating the effective use of Internet Resources (boxoftricks.net)
A Guide to Annotating using Diigo (boxoftricks.net)
Diigo Social Bookmarking Receives A Major 4.0 Upgrade (shegeeks.net)

Popularity: 1% [?]

Tagged with: Blog • Delicious • Diigo • Web 2.0

Your Social Media Basic Training. Where to Start.

On September 29, 2009, In Biz, By Tac Anderson

BootCamp

Someone asked me yesterday to share with them where I get my news from. What feeds did I subscribe to and who did I follow on Twitter. Well I subscribe to 401 blog feeds and follow 3500+ people on Twitter and each source was manually added by me over the last 3+ years. I’ve worked my way up to where I am and I don’t recommend anyone try and get to where I’m at from a stand still.

So here is a list of my recommendations as to where everyone should start. For many of you this may to basic, if so pass it onto your friends who are just getting started.

First off if you’re not using Google Reader you need to. There is no better feed reader out there right now.
I believe social bookmarking is a basic tool everyone in this space should be a using. Go sign up for Diigo right now. I prefer it over Delicious (but that will work too).
Next, sign up for Posterous if you aren’t blogging yet and start using it.

Now for the feeds. Visit each link and add each site to your feed reader.

The People

These are the people that are pioneering this space. Read each and every blog they post. I’m happy to report that I’ve met all of these guys in real life, except Peter Kim (but we’ve talked on the phone so that’s almost the same), and they’re all genuine, smart and all around good guys.

Marshallk Marshall Kirkpatrick is the VP at ReadWrite Web and one of the best new journalists out there, IHMO.
ChasNote Chas Edwards was co-founder or Federated Media but has moved on to Digg and covers the digital advertising space.
Web-Strategist Jeremiah Owyang is probably best known for his work at Forrester and is now a partner at the Altimeter Group.
Louis Gray is a prolific geek blogger and probably one of the more consistent bloggers on this list.
BattelleMedia John Battelle the founder of Federated Media, author of the Search and a really smart guy.
Steve Rubel recently gave up blogging for life streaming and besides being a smart digital PR guy he has tons of tips and tricks that will make your life better.
BeingPeterKim Peter Kim, also from Forrester and now with the Dachis Group is one of the leader taking social into the next phase of business.
Mike Manuel is one of the hardest working PR people in this space and sadly doesn’t blog nearly enough but it’s worth subscribing to his feed for when he does.
Scobleizer Robert Scoble, love him or hate him, he is a force unto himself.
Global Neighborhoods Shel Israel, is co-author of Naked Conversations (along with Robert) and recent author of Twitterville.

Bonus Homework. Each of these blogger is on Twitter and instead of making it easy for you as you subscribe to each of their blogs also find the link to their Twitter account and follow them.

The Tech Blogs

This is the source of news for our industry. These blogs all post at considerable volumes. You don’t have to read every post. Try to at least skim their headlines but if you fall behind just mark them all as read and move on,

ReadWrite Web My personal favorite tech blog. Unlike many bloggers they consider themselves journalists and the post with that level of quality.
TechCrunch The grand daddy tech blog but is a business not journalists.
Mashable the current leader in site traffic but is a more geared towards social media marketers as much as the tech crowd.
GigaOm doesn’t often get the credit that these first three do but is right up there in traffic and quality.
Venture Beat has always been a little more focused on the money side of the equation but is really steering more into main stream waters lately.
Gizmodo is high volume, pure geek, tech and WTF. Don’t even try and read every post.
Engadget more tech than you could ever handle.
PaidContent The content side of the business and one of my favorites.
The Next Web social tech geek from across the pond.
TechDirt all this overlap in tech content and social ends up with a lot of stepped on toes. TechDirt is the best source for the legal/business side of all this. I promise it’s better than I made it sound.

That’s probably enough for now. Are there any must read blogs I didn’t cover? Leave a link in the comments.

RSS, Human Filters And Real Time Streams (regulargeek.com)
How to Blog. A Lot. (newcommbiz.com)
The Next Big Thing is… (newcommbiz.com)
5 Ways to Get Into a Bloggers Head (newcommbiz.com)
Shel Israel and Twitterville Come to Third Tuesday Montreal (adelemcalear.com)

Popularity: 1% [?]

Tagged with: Chas Edwards • Jeremiah Owyang • John Battelle • Louis Gray • Marshall Kirkpatrick • Mike Manuel • Peter Kim • Robert Scoble • Shel Israel • Steve Rubel

Gen X [meme]: Slackers, Sellouts or Saviors

On September 28, 2009, In Comm, By Tac Anderson

Generation X

Maddie Grant from SocialFish has started I meme asking if GenX has sold out. I can’t help but jump in here. Being a proud Gen Xer I’ve said a few things about my generation and our contribution to society.

Every generation resents the status quo. Every teenager has angst so lets set that aside.

My first thought is that despite theÂ general rage and discontent we were and still are largely apathetic (hence the slacker tag). We all make trade-offs as we “settle down” if we don’t we usually end up being homeless or in jail. But as I said in the comment on her Maddie’s blog:

I love this topic. Thereâ€™s a great HBR case study called The Next 20 Years, I highly recommend it (you can get it as an audio book on iTunes and itâ€™s not very long). In it they talk about the different archetypes (thereâ€™s 4) and cycles that each generation follows.

Boomers are selfish (they said it â€“ but yes I agree with it) and Xers are more pragmatic. Boomers sold their collective hippie souls for corporate jobs with fat paycheck doing things they didnâ€™t like. Xers as a whole donâ€™t take jobs just for the money (we do like money though). If we donâ€™t like something we have no problem walking out the door and making our own way, with our own rules.

Despite being half as small as either the Boomers or GenY, we are the single most entrepreneurial generation EVER!

We may not rage against the machine anymore but thatâ€™s only because we are finally empowered to fix things and do what we see as right. We donâ€™t have to take â€œthe manâ€™sâ€ shit anymore.

Yes we may take â€œjobsâ€ and â€œplay niceâ€ but, collectively, we were never anti-capitalism. We just didnâ€™t like being told what to do. Now we donâ€™t have to and, yes, it takes some of the edge off that rage. But just try telling us we canâ€™t do something.

In all fairness every generation makes a huge impact both for better and for worse.Â I admit to still having some angst at the way my parents generation did things, and I tend to remember much of the negative but we wouldn’t have been able to do the things we have done if they hadn’t done the things they had done.

History will judge us and it will be interesting to see how we’re portrayed. I hope our entrepreneurialism is remembered but more than anything else I hope that like the Baby Boomers and their parents and their parent we serve as an example to lead the Gen Y and my children and their children to bigger and better than things than we could have done.

Now to keep the meme alive I tag:
Justin Foster
Steve Nipper
Michael Brito
Jeremy Meyers
And my beautiful wife Jen.

Popularity: 1% [?]

Tagged with: Generation X

What will Twitter do with $100 Million? [Acquisitions]

On September 25, 2009, In Biz, By Tac Anderson

: Image by TW Collins via Flickr

While there are some great debates over Twitter’s newest round of funding the bigger question is what is such a small business (29 employees) going to do with all that money?

I’ve said it over and over again. They will buy their business model. I believe that Twitter is building out a core functionality that will enable a whole ecosystem of products and services. Within a few years people will be using services and not even realize they are being enabled by Twitter.

They’ll build some features and tools (the easy ones). They’ll start making the kind of partnerships that Facebook is making in selling data to other companies. But I think they are going to start getting serious about acquiring companies.

I’m hoping they make some really creative ones like Adobe did when it bought Omniture. You know like buy Iceland or something.

I don’t believe cold fusion or hyper local (tacanderson.com)
The Tweet Stream (newcommbiz.com)
An Interview with Retweet.com about Ripping off Tweetmeme.com (newcommbiz.com)
Be a Social Media Black Belt with Posterous (newcommbiz.com)
Write Great Content. Fragment. Distribute Everywhere. (newcommbiz.com)

Popularity: 1% [?]

Tagged with: Business model • Funding • Twitter

On Being an Influencer and Marketing as Media

On September 25, 2009, In Comm, By Tac Anderson

Influence the Influencers. If you’ve hung around in PR circles you’ve heard this phrase. But what does it mean in today’s digital age?

Many of you may be familiar with TwitterGate the incident where TechCrunch posted internal documents from Twitter after someone hacked into their Google Apps account. Many people called foul. TechCrunch obviously realized the kind of traffic this would create.

What happened a few weeks later many people may not be familiar with. (TechGeist has a full write up on this.) Twitter has a Suggested User List (SUL) that new users are encouraged to follow (Twitter’s kind of pointless if you’re not following anyone). The top three tech blogs, TechCrunch, Mashable and Read/Write Web have benefited greatly from being on this list. TechCrunch doesn’t get that benefit anymore. A few weeks after the TwiterGate incident TechCrunch was removed from the SUL. What does being off that list mean?

Some may ask whether it really matters to TechCrunch if they don’t have as many Twitter followers as their competitors.

Recently Mathew Ingram (MW) from Canada’s Globe and Mail debated with Mike Arrington (MA) over that very fact on Twitter:
[This conversation has been edited to remove other strings and I did my best to get it in the right order]

MA @mathewi prblm isn’t if we’re on [the SUL] or not, it’s that we’re not on it and competitors are. hobbles us.
MW .@arrington: I can see Twitter wanting to apply pressure – but does it really hobble you in any significant way to not be on it?
MA @mathewi oh, it’s relevant. twitter is shaping the press to be what they want. I’ve had incredible pressure put on me to “play ball”
MW .@arrington: but does the SUL really “shape the press” in any meaningful sense? do you care whether you have 1 million or 1.5m followers?
MA @mathewi of course it does. we all fight for readers and traffic, then twitter reassigns stuff via the SUL to the people they like.
MA @mathewi it’s about 20% of all traffic.
MA @mathewi what i’ve told Twitter privately is that tech press should never be on it, period. but they’re using it as a reward and punishment

20% of traffic is pretty significant for a large tech blog. But what does that really mean?

Their traffic is actually going down. You can imagine their concern if this trend continues.

We’ve been told by online journalists that they find themselves caring if our clients Twitter accounts post links to their stories. Why? Because of the traffic it can send to their site. Some of clients have significant followings and the amount of traffic Twitter can send is not trivial. This is one of the reasons we encourage clients to engage with influencers on Twitter and use the channel as a way to amplify their own messages and 3^rd party coverage.

But in my mind the debate is not about using social media as a reward or punishment. The real message here is that our companies are on an equal playing field. We are just as much media as the media. Companies are no longer at the mercy of the gate keeper. We have an equal voice and an equal right to be part of the conversation.

We need to evolve our thinking and our communications structures, from this:

To this:

But to do this you first have to build out your channels with good, consistent content. You need a platform to host your content on and you need to develop the connecting channels from your content to your audience. But you have to do this in an authentic and real way. If you only shout marketing messages at people, they donâ€™t have to, and wont, follow you.

Companies exist to solve market needs. Why should our marketing be any different? Marketing itself is now media. If we want it to survive in this field of noise out there we have to create just as compelling content as the media we used to rely on.

The tables have turned. Which side do you want to be on?

Which Bloggers Generate the Most Buzz and Which Bloggers are the Most Paranoid? (newcommbiz.com)
You are Crazy not to Measure the ROI of Social Media! (newcommbiz.com)
These are the Early Days of Social IT Investment (newcommbiz.com)
What Does the Future of Marketing Organizations Look Like? (newcommbiz.com)

Popularity: 1% [?]

Tagged with: Public relations • Social media • Twitter

How to Blog. A Lot.

On September 24, 2009, In Comm, By Tac Anderson

: Image by Tac Anderson via Flickr

I get asked a lot lately how I’m able to blog so much. If you look at the bottom of my right hand column you’ll see I’ve had this blog for ~2 1/2 years. You’ll also see that as of the first of this year, my posting went up dramatically. Here’s how dramatically:

For the first 23 months I posted 242 times. That’s just over 2 posts a week
For the last 9 months I posted 293 times. That’s about 8 posts a week

What happened? I got serious about blogging.

The first step is to decide to blog every single day and then do it.

The best advice I ever received about blogging came From Jeremiah Owyang. He told me to take the first hour of my day and before I do anything else to read blogs and then blog. He also told me that a post should only take twice as long as an email of the same length.

Some days you may not feel like you have much to say. Some posts will be better than others. But over time you will get better. This is the only reason I watch my stats. If my visits, subscribers and number of times people share my posts goes up, I’m doing a good job.

Be a collector and use the tools.

I use Google Reader w/ Feedly, Twitter’s Favorites and Diigo to collect interesting things I find as I read throughout the day. I also use my Posterous site to collect things when I’m mobile. Then when an idea reaches critical mass I use ScribeFire or Windows Live Writer to pull it all together when I’m ready to write.

Zemanta then helps speed up the process by recommending links and pictures to use.

Remember: I am not advocating that popular blogs have to post everyday. The goal of posting every day is not quantity. The goal is consistently good content. But in order to get there you first have to blog a lot.

This is the short answer. Every blogger has tools, tips and tricks that work for them and there are probably hundreds of blogs dedicated to blogging. But until you make the commitment to start blogging regularly all the tools in the world won’t help you.

Why Would You NOT Blog? (newcommbiz.com)
Mobile App Blogging Thanks to Posterous: Regator vs MeeHive vs Byline (newcommbiz.com)
Marketers as Aggregators Creators and Distributors (newcommbiz.com)
Tutorial: Getting Started with Zemanta (zemanta.com)
Google Reader as a Lifestream Search Engine (philbaumann.com)

Popularity: 1% [?]

Tagged with: Blog • Posterous • Zemanta

Doing Well by Doing Good

On September 23, 2009, In New, By Tac Anderson

Image via Wikipedia

This blog was cross posted on the WE Studio D Thinkers and Doers blog.

I love working in the tech space. Iâ€™m a geek and an early adopter. I love tech. Sometimes we can easily forget that thereâ€™s more happening on our little planet than the latest gadget or app.

I normally don’t randomly promote client projects here, but these are special. Three projects that weâ€™ve been working on at Waggener Edstrom make me proud of the place I work. What do I love about all of them? They show the power that digital storytelling can have to change the world.

Half the Sky

Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn recently wrote a book called “Half the Sky.” It highlights the horrible abuses happening to women all over the world and how these very women are the answer to many of the world’s problems.

This was a pro-bono project we did because we believe in the cause. Take a few minutes to visit the Half the Sky Web site. You can spread the word through your social networks and get involved.

Breast Cancer Emotion

This one just launched. Our client GE Healthcare is celebrating the 10-year anniversary of the mammography machine and just launched BreastÂ Cancer Emotion. GE is posting stories of cancer survivors, physicians, and medical staff and advocates from all over the world. At launch there are a small number of stories, but GE has ambitious plans for the next year. If you know of a story they should tell, you can find out more here.

Soccer Saves

This is another pro-bono project we just took onÂ and one I can relate to. Iâ€™ve played soccer since I was 5. Itâ€™s one of the few team sports I enjoyed. Soccer Saves is a program to help disadvantaged youth around the world lead healthier lives.

Weâ€™re just getting involved in this one, so we havenâ€™t done anything yet. Our hope is to build on the grass-roots efforts of the founders and help them get the support the program deserves. Stay tuned.

Update: More proof that I work at a great place – Waggener Edstrom was just named one of the Top 10 PR agencies to work at by PR News.

Popularity: 1% [?]

Tagged with: BreastCancer • Half the Sky • Soccer Saves

Why is Gen X so Entrepreneurial? Dysfunction.

On September 23, 2009, In Comm, By Tac Anderson

: Image by Tac Anderson via Flickr

I’m a proud member of the vastly outnumbered Generation X. We grew up being called The Slacker Generation (ironically by a bunch of washed up hippies who sold their soles). While the Baby Boomers and Generation Y both are about twice as big as Gen X, we have become the most entrepreneurial generation ever.

We posses amazing resourcefulness, tenacity and don’t take no for an answer. VentureBeat ran a guest post by Steve Blank that may give us a hint. Gen Xers were the original latch key kids. We saw divorce go from a taboo topic to almost something that was expected or fashionable.

Our generation put the F U in dysfunction.

Some have turned that into resourcefulness and created great things. Life isn’t about what happens to you, it’s about what you do next.

Do dysfunctional families breed entrepreneurs? | VentureBeat

Over the last five years Iâ€™ve asked over 500 of my students how many of them grew up in a dysfunctional family (participation was voluntary.) Iâ€™ve been surprised at the data. In this admittedly very unscientific survey Iâ€™ve found that between a quarter and half of the students I consider â€œhard-coreâ€ entrepreneurs/founders (working passionately to found a company,) self-identified as coming from a less than benign upbringing.

Founders as Survivors
My hypothesis is that most children are emotionally damaged by this upbringing. But a small percentage, whose brain chemistry and wiring is set for resilience, come out of this with a compulsive, relentless and tenacious drive to succeed. They have learned to function in a permanent state of chaos. And they have channeled all this into whatever activity they could find outside of their home â€“ sports, business, or â€¦entrepreneurship.

Therefore, Iâ€™ll posit one possible path for a startup founder â€“ the dysfunctional family theory.

GenX FTW!!! (tacanderson.com)
Successful Twitterers, Bloggers and Small Business Owners are just Extroverted Over-Achievers. (newcommbiz.com)
Get Weird People (newcommbiz.com)
Some Thoughts on Disclosures [and Some Disclosures] (newcommbiz.com)
Big is Broken (newcommbiz.com)

Popularity: 1% [?]

Tagged with: Business • Generation X • startup

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