Your Social Media Basic Training. Where to Start.

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

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.

  1. Marshallk Marshall Kirkpatrick is the VP at ReadWrite Web and one of the best new journalists out there, IHMO.
  2. ChasNote Chas Edwards was co-founder or Federated Media but has moved on to Digg and covers the digital advertising space.
  3. Web-Strategist Jeremiah Owyang is probably best known for his work at Forrester and is now a partner at the Altimeter Group.
  4. Louis Gray is a prolific geek blogger and probably one of the more consistent bloggers on this list.
  5. BattelleMedia John Battelle the founder of Federated Media, author of the Search and a really smart guy.
  6. 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.
  7. 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.
  8. 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.
  9. Scobleizer Robert Scoble, love him or hate him, he is a force unto himself.
  10. 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,

  1. ReadWrite Web My personal favorite tech blog. Unlike many bloggers they consider themselves journalists and the post with that level of quality.
  2. TechCrunch The grand daddy tech blog but is a business not journalists.
  3. Mashable the current leader in site traffic but is a more geared towards social media marketers as much as the tech crowd.
  4. GigaOm doesn’t often get the credit that these first three do but is right up there in traffic and quality.
  5. 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.
  6. Gizmodo is high volume, pure geek, tech and WTF. Don’t even try and read every post.
  7. Engadget more tech than you could ever handle.
  8. PaidContent The content side of the business and one of my favorites.
  9. The Next Web social tech geek from across the pond.
  10. 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.

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What I learned from HP about co-opetition

On April 30, 2009, In Biz, By Tac Anderson

What I learned from HP about co-opetition

We like competition. We thrive on it. We pit our children against eachother in near prehistoric rites of manhood called “Little League”. In all honesty without competition I doubt the human race would exist.

But what do we do when competiton doesn’t work anymore and we are driven to co-opetition?

HP (like most uber big companies) is complicated. Who doesn’t HP compete with? In the IT space there are very few companies that they don’t compete with on some level. While simultaneously there are very few of those competing companies that we don’t also partner with at some level. It’s very complicated.

As an example, my Samsung BlackJack 2. HP competes very heavily with Samsung on both PC’s, printers and phones (yes HP makes phones). After taking my first picture with my phone I was presented with three options: Send Multimedia Msg, Send to HP’s Snapfish and Cancel.

I was amazed that a company we competed so heavily with enabled their customers to send photo’s to the HP owned Snapfish. Snapfish had obviously worked their own deal with Samsung.

HP has always had a strong belief that each business unit was enabled to do whatever it took to grow that business, even if it meant working with a company that HP competed with. This is often referred to as co-opetition

Arguably one of the most profitable examples of co-opetitions is the HP LaserJet printer.  The LaserJet printer is HP’s most profitable product to date and was co-developed with one of HP’s biggest competitors; Canon. Canon still manufactures the engines.

Social media is all about sharing right? What about your competition? Aren’t you supposed to crush them? We all know this, but let me tell you something, competition is good.

What would PC’s be like if Apple didn’t exist? They’d probably be ugly, big and hard to use.

What does this mean to social media professionals? I’ve had an ongoing friendly relationship with Bruce Eric at Dell (one of the few companies we compete most fiercely with and don’t partner with).  While we’ve talked about family, life, travel, Web tools and social media we’ve never talked about Dell and/or HP.

While social media means we get to be human and share, you have to know what’s appropriate and what’s not. We were still competitors after all. At one point I was even invited to contribute to the Digital Nomads blog but declined because while I’m happy to support a cause I wasn’t willing to contribute to a site that was pushing competitive product.

Now that I work at Waggener Edstrom I find myself  “competing” with friends I’ve worked with at Porter Novelli (PN is an HP agency). I also find myself “competing” with people I respect and have learned a great deal from. But the fact of the matter is I don’t see myself as competing against them even if ouor companies are competitors.

Mike Manuel just posted about how agencies (who all now do social media) are being asked to work with eachother by clients. This happened before the rise of social media but it’s almost becoming more common than not.

I for one welcome this. If you think you and your agency know more than any other individual or agency out there you are in for a rude awakening.

As with social media companies (especially agencies to begin with) need to embrace co-opetition. I garuntee you that your business will be far more profitable if you can manage this.

Even if you or your company culture isn’t ready for this (very few outside of tech are right now) you need to at least head the advice given by Mark Solon, managing partner at Highway 12 Ventures and respect your competition.

If you really want to know where this trend will lead I suggest you check out Open Business Models: How to Thrive in the New Innovation Landscape by Henry Chesbrough. This is just the begining.

As a prelude to a forthcoming blog post I also believe this is another factor in why large enterprise companies are on their way out.

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Communication Convergence

On March 2, 2007, In Biz, By Tac Anderson
Communication major dimensions scheme
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Mike Manuel is one of my favorite bloggers and has been for quite a while.  His posts are always thought provoking.  This one especially struck a nerve with me.  He points out the amount of overlap in companies and agencies right now surrounding new media.

Media Guerrilla: New Media Twister, Everybody’s Playing…
Some folks will say that with this convergence comes a collapse, at least for some sectors and disciplines, but I honestly couldn’t tell you which ones. Personally, I don’t really care, it’s a fun time to be in the soup.

I love communications.  I love online communications.

This has lead me to do online PR, new media marketing, which lead to SEO, I do internal communications, work with IT people to develop intranet platforms.  The list goes on.

Am I trying to be all things to all people?  As consultants we all do to some degree.  I’ve always done these jobs because of a love for the work.

Helping people communicate with people online.  Isn’t that what it’s all about?

Who cares if it’s internal or external to an organization?  Who cares what it’s called?  But like Mike points out; it sure is fun.

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