Video is Now a Must Have for Marketing and PR

On December 1, 2009, In Biz, By Tac Anderson
Finally got a Flip
Image by Tac Anderson via Flickr

So after much ranting on my part it turns out that the new Flip will be getting WiFi.

Why do I care so much? I love my Flip. It goes almost everywhere with me and use it all the time. The Flip (and small portable inexpensive HD camcorders in general) are bringing about a boom in online video.

It’s so much cheaper to produce short Web content than the old approach of publishing highly produced video. Video quality is important but it is not a substitute for interesting content.

And with WiFi becoming more and more prevalent the ability to shoot and publish immediately can literally be in anyone’s hands.

The @WaggenerEdstrom Flip camera
Image by Tac Anderson via Flickr

As we move our PR and marketing clients into the Real Time Web the ability to shoot and post basic photo’s and video’s is a must. I personally wouldn’t hire a marketing person today who couldn’t create and publish content (meaning text, photo and video). To me it’s a basic skill set. (And I don’t mean “knows how to”, but actually has and does.)

If you or someone on your team isn’t regularly outfitted with a video camera you’re missing huge opportunities. Behind the scenes interviews. In the moment reactions. The ability to connect your online customers with your offline experiences is amazingly powerful.

If you are questioning my sanity right now it’s because you obviously haven’t even tried yet. Trust me on this.

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A Glimpse into the Future of Social Media, Journalism and Advertising

On October 1, 2009, In New, By Tac Anderson
Playing with the TypeDrawing app.
Image by Tac Anderson via Flickr

What will the future of social media look like? You just need to look around because “The future is already here – it is just unevenly distributed.”

In rapid order I came across three articles that help paint that picture (all emphasis are mine):

Marc Meyer rightfully points out:

So I ask you, what is next? Social Media as you know it right now, will not be recognizable in the next 3-5 years. Think long term.

Chas Edwards discusses the success of Digg ads and hints at the future of advertising filtered by (and I’ll throw in co-created with) their customers:

Digg Ads: It’s Just the Beginning

As marketers perfect their skills as web publishers and invest more aggressively in content creation content about their products and services, as well as general content that might be useful to their customers it creates an opportunity for better advertising experiences: ads we don’t feel the need to block, skip or ignore. Digg Ads, we hope, will give those marketers a real-world proving groun” a place to measure their success in making content that’s relevant to their customers.

Now combine that with the LA Times story about how Google Wave (and many of the technologies coming out that are similar) could transform reporting:

Collaborative reporting: You may notice that double bylines aren’t very common. That’s because trying to co-author a news story stinks.

The process usually [...] result in a mess of incompatible and unrelated research that gets either thrown out or somewhat-awkwardly wiggled in.

We’re not going to e-mail our co-writers with every new lead and minute detail we dig up. But if we’re sharing a virtual notebook, we can scan through …

… or search the newest findings as they’re logged, make comments and highlight our favorite bits.

Then, when it comes time to write, we can rearrange and discuss the story’s flow in the same software. Thanks to the openness of Wave, collaborative pieces between bloggers could become more common.

To be fair collaborative, real-time or (what Shel Israel calls) Braided Journalism, has already been happening but it’s primitive compared to what is to come.

  • Imagine for a minute that this blogger collaboration doesn’t have to be limited to bloggers or journalist writing for the same publication.
  • Imagine that the story was reported on in real time in the public as it evolved.
  • Imagine if the readers were invited to participate it the reporting.
  • And finally imagine that marketers were invited into the journalism process and their contribution was judged for the value it added not the value of the ad buy.

What do you see now? I see a new business model for journalism. I see relevant advertising. I see a world in 3-5 years where journalism and advertising are better than anything we’ve ever had before.

As I think about this new model I think of the idiocy behind pay walls and intrusive advertising and for the first time in a long time I’m optimistic for the future of both advertising and journalism.

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Social Media Trifecta the Wiki-Blog

On July 10, 2009, In New, By Tac Anderson

For 2 years now I’ve had this working idea for a book I’ve called The Social Media Trifecta.

What’s a wiki-blog and why are you using one?

[Update: This blog has been taken down]
[Warning: This blog got hacked, partially because of this plugin and partially because I wasn't managing it well]

What: If you take WordPress and install the WP-Wiki plugin you get some wiki functionality built into your blog. I’ve been wanting something like this years. So far I love it.

Why: The main reason I wanted a wiki blog is that I think it would be an ideal format for writing a book. You get the benefits of a blog like CMS and the syntax and collaboration of a wiki.Being this is a book about social media and it’s benefits I thought I would eat my own dog food here.

For a great demonstration on what a wiki page looks like see the How-To page. For more about the site you can see the About page or the first post.

In the true wiki spirit the site will be constantly evolving as I move over the content I’ve already created here, add to it and edit it. As always I’m not totally sure what I’ll do with the book; self publish, seek a publisher, just leave it as a wiki-blog or if I’ll actually ever finish it. Who knows.

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What Should We Ask Gary Vaynerchuk to do for this Blog?

On June 11, 2009, In Comm, By Tac Anderson
Gary Vaynerchuk at Affiliate Summit West 2009 14
Image by affiliatesummit via Flickr

I don’t get a ton of blog pitches. Maybe 2 or 3 a month, tops. And 2.5 of those are usually complete crap. But this is probably the best one I’ve received. It’s not the pitch itself, that’s fine (the influx of readers line is a bit much). It’s the proactive part. My blog is not a huge blog, especially in the social marketing space, so Gary and Marcus had to reach pretty far down the long tail to get to me.

Now I’m not delusional to think that Gary picked me out of everyone (mass email to list of Marketing bloggers). But I am interested in testing to see how serious Gary is with this. (I don’t doubt that he has the energy and passion to respond to every single blogger if he so chooses.)

Hey Tac,

My name’s Marcus, I work at the brand consulting agency, Vaynermedia. Over the next four months I’m working specifically with Gary Vaynerchuk. Gary has found success in branding himself through the use of social media. Due to this success he’s signed a ten book deal with Harper Collins; you can read more about it in this WSJ article. The first book is slated to come out this October, it’s called Crush It: Why Now Is the Time To Cash In on Your Passion.

Basically, I’m e-mailing you because Gary’s trying to get together a promotional bonanza around the release. We’re getting requests for interviews and stuff like that but we decided it would be better to be proactive and contact all the business and marketing blogs and see what we can do for them. He’d love to do book giveaway contests, interviews, Q&A sessions, an interpretive dance summarizing a chapter, really anything that you think your readers would like to see.

On your side, anything you do with him is going to get an influx of readers to your blog due to his massive and loyal following. If you’ve got anything specific as to what you want to do or if you just want to start bouncing some ideas around shoot me an e-mail.

So I have two questions for you:

  • What do you think of this outreach program?
  • What should we ask Gary to do to help promote his book via this blog?

I’m not a wine guy so Gary’s show does nothing for me but I love this video of his Web 2.0 keynote.

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The New Economics of Social Business is about Enabling Unrealized Value

On June 3, 2009, In Biz, By Tac Anderson

The New Economics of Social Business is about Enabling Unrealized Value.

I’ve always been fascinated with business models but lately I’ve been on an Economics kick lately. (Scary, I know.) It’s kind of hard these days to be thinking about new types of business models without addressing the larger macro-economic models that are evolving.  Some of my light reading:

Yes I discovered the second Blown to Bits when I was buying another copy of the first Blown to Bits. I’ve also been reading a lot of blogs, articles, the recent edition of Wired as well as some of the readings from business school.

Economics has always been one area I’ve been a little behind on. That’s part of the reason why I went back and got my MBA. There’s so much great thinking happening in the field of Economics right now. Between the continued disruption of the Web and the recession everyone’s rethinking all their models (that’s when things get fun).

I’m really looking forward to Chris Anderson’s new book Free: The Future of a Radical Price which apperently will be distributed for free via the Web. If you can’t wait you can read Wired’s cover story on the subject.

I’m still trying to wrap my head around all these thoughts (and I’m still wading through most of these books). I wanted to share with you one of the thoughts that came to mind:

The new economic model that all of these previously mentioned authors are talking about in some variation (whatever it ultimately looks like) isn’t about giving away value.

The ‘New Economics’ of Social Business is about enabling unrealized value.

If your company can make money on something you had better do that. Don’t give it away. But every company, every individual, has assets they will never be able to realize (or fully realize) the value of. And in some cases your assets would realize more value if you gave it away and recovered profits elsewhere (advertising, Open Source Software, etc).

From DRM to open co-opetition to the near unlimited capacity of the Internet, if it hasn’t already, your business model will adjust. Even if your business model has already changed it will undoubtedly change again.

So as a bonus, Zemanta is now recommending last.fm tracks. Here’s what it pulls up as Lawrence Lessig Radio (?).

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If Chris Anderson Can’t Reinvent the Publishing World, Who Can?

On May 25, 2009, In Biz, By Tac Anderson
Wired cover July 2001
Image by Tac Anderson via Flickr

If Chris Anderson Can’t Reinvent the Publishing World, Who Can?

This post originally ran on the Studio D blog last week.

Wired Struggles to Find Niche in Magazine World – NYTimes.com

Even as Chris Anderson makes a boatload of money of his ideas, subsequent books and high dollar speaking engagement, Wired (his editorial charge), is one of the biggest losers in the ad game.

I think Chris’s ideas are spot on. He’s a brilliant guy with some serious thought leadership. Wired is a great publication, both the Online and the print versions but can he translate great content and thought leadership into a real business for Wired? If Chris can’t then who can?

This really only leads me to two rationale explanations:

  1. Chris is to caught up in his own celebrity.
  2. Chris is hamstrung by parent company Conde Nast to implement any of that great thinking.

The third possibility is that we have yet to see Chris’ master plan in action. I’m hoping for number three. Wired and the whole publishing world (Online and print) need some innovation.

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How to Win the Real-Time Web Publishing Battle

On May 22, 2009, In Comm, By Tac Anderson
www.Army.mil
Image by Army.mil via Flickr

As the Web moves into hyper-drive the ability for organizations to turn out high quality content has never been more important. From my own experience as well as what I’ve seen others publish the life span of link shared on Twitter is 5 minutes. After that it’s old news waiting to be discovered by search engines.

While Twitter is not your only distribution vehicle this example is indicative of all Web streams (which, eventually, the Web will simply be a network of streams).

The notable exception to this rule is the RT. Links that get re-tweeted have another 5 minutes of life. The more RT’s the more 5 minute life spans. This is also true of other LifeStreams like FriendFeed and Facebook, except instead of a RT you’re hoping for a like or a comment. This resurfaces the content and shares it out that persons network.

This does not mean that companies and other content producers need to turn on the firehose. (I know this is a futile plea but I’ll make it anyway) Please do not focus on quantity. Focus on quality.

The number one way; the best, most cost/time efficient way to win the real-time publishing battle is to create high quality highly shareable content. Create compelling content and then make it easy for others to repurpose it. You can attempt to higher an army of content producers or you can enable the existing army* or content producers out there to re-create your content.

*Your existing army is much larger than you are thinking about right now. Most companies think about their customers advocates and their employees but the must underutilized node in every companies social media strategy is the partner node. More on that later.

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Sponsored Posts: Advertorial 2.0

On April 22, 2009, In Comm, By Tac Anderson

There are a lot of debates happening around sponsored posts and what’s acceptable.  I’ve posted before on my take. I think that the method is neutral, it has the potential to be equally used for good or ill.

Chris Brogan has a post about his support and use of sponsored posts. ReadWriteWeb takes a more traditional advertorial approach.

Information, not ads, important to consumers – Blogs & Content – BizReport

…consumers are finding advertorial type content, articles/reviews and other forms of custom media more appealing that traditional advertisement. Nearly 75% of consumers noted in the report that compiling product information from a variety of sources rather than a simple advertisement is more appealing to them.

The bottom line is that if users get value, publishers get revenue and companies receive an appropriate return then this will model will continue.

I think that why people like Andy Sernovitz are concerned is because of the potential for abuse. But honestly anytime money is involved then there is the potential to abuse.

While I remain somewhat neutral (I think it’s in the implementation) on the topic I should note that right now, I would not recommend my current employer or future clients use this method. It’s too big of a hot button and I think there are better ways to achieve the goals a company would have in pursuing these tactics.

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15 Years Later: The Rise and Fall of WordPerfect

On April 6, 2009, In Biz, By Tac Anderson

I loved WordPerfect. It was such a great product in it’s day. Yes I know it’s still out there as a product but it’s not the same (I’ve tried it). I’m really interested in checking out this book.

Almost Perfect by W. E. Peterson The Rise and Fall of WordPerfect Corporation

I love that the author of this book has made it publicly available once it went out of print. There are something like a bajillion (give or take a few zillion) business books published every year and something like 0.01% make it big. I wish more authors would release their books into the wild once their publishing contract was done.

It seems to me like there has be a business in this somewhere.

My personal tip on out of print business books is Amazon’s used books. I can’t tell you how many out of print business books I’ve found on Amazon and ended up loving.

Two of my favorites are:

Blown to Bits How the New Economics of Information Transforms Strategy. You can get this book for a penny (plus shipping and handling of course) This book was published pre dot bomb but was dead on about so many things that are still happening today.

The Value Factor This was a book written by Mark Hurd before he came to HP. It really give you a good sense behind why he’s made a lot of the decissions he has. It’s a very short read, lots of case studies interjected with personal insight.

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There’s nothing wrong with journalism. Their business model is just broken.

On February 15, 2009, In Comm, By Tac Anderson

This article got me thinking. WSJ Editor Claims Google Devalues Everything | Techdirt

Journalists seem to be stuck in one of two camps:

  1. Complaining about why their business is ruined, who’s at fault and why they need to go back to the way they were
  2. Documenting with the fascination of watching a long drawn out train wreck the demise of their industry with little to say except “the sky is falling”

We’ve seen small experiments in revolutionizing the business model but nothing substantial. I wonder if they’ll need to hit rock bottom before we see the real innovation.

[update] After more thinking, we have seen some innovation around Web content, aggregation, news sharing but I don’t think this is hitting the real issue. I have a feeling that we’ve yet to see the real answer to journalisms problems. Maybe I’m looking for too much.

Twitter Replies:

A_F @tacanderson Give away a free Kindle to subs – get rid of the “ball & chains” of physical delivery

kevnd @tacanderson you have hit the fundamental problem. First step for journalists – stop taking it personally – get on with a new model.

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