Is Personal Branding A Load of Manure?

Photo courtesy of Ardonik @Creative Commons

In their early November podcast , Mark Schaefer and Tom Webster dissected the value of "personal branding."

Does everything we do (or don't do) -- on or off the social web -- end up creating our personal brand, like it or not? Should we care?

Mark says yes. Tom says no.

Check out their differing points of view.


Schaefer POV
• Today, we have the ability to create a reputation/image/brand through what we do, say, and write on the social web. Therefore, it's important to establish our reputation online to demonstrate our values, how we work, and how we think.
• A few years ago I had the opportunity to interview at a Fortune 500 company in NYC, but a friend of mine told me to be sure that I would be allowed to continue to work on my personal brand, even if I were employed by this company. I never thought of it that way before. In my experience, when you worked for a big company, you were subsumed by that company.
• Personal branding and authenticity go together. Tom has talked about how he is careful because he represents his company in some way. Like it or not, a certain "containment" or "formula" guides what we choose to present or not present on the web. That is part of our "brand."
• Marketing myself would never occur to me while I'm working for a company, but today that is probably a smart thing to do.
• What can an accountant, for example, do to become "known" for his brand? He/she could create a blog about new principles/regulations, which would create a brand. It's also about networking, speaking, and writing. He/she could become established on LinkedIn or other online networking tools to demonstrate, "This is whom I am, this is how I think."
• The brand you present can be commensurate with your experience. Even if it's not a lot of experience, you can show, "This is what I believe, this is what I read, this is who I know, this is what I am curious about, etcetera."
• Personal branding also involves being smart about building business relationships. You still have to connect person-to-person. Social media doesn't deliver business like personal relationships do.
• I would encourage marketers to think about personal branding strategically. Even if you are secure in your job today, think about creating a long-term online presence.

Webster POV
• In short, I'd say personal branding is a load of manure.
• Where does "brand" come from? It's where a product or company tries to give itself a personality. I already have a personality, which is a result of what I have done.
• To me personal brand was invented and discarded by Tom Peters 50 years ago in his book on 50 ways to build brand "you."
• Personal brand is not about spreading your fame. What is most important is that a group of my colleagues and clients believe that I will do what I say I will do.
• Your personal brand needs to take second place to the corporate brand. When Mark talks about developing "personal brand," he is talking about displaying your skill.. which makes him unique from, say, an accountant.
• To me personal branding is telling a story about yourself, not simply having an online presence. Networking, for example, is as old as the hills.
• I get that it's good to have things you own that demonstrate who you are: content and so on. The dark side of personal branding is that inexperienced people who do this, often demonstrate that they aren't very good. In other words, mere links, if they're weak, don't drive business.
• In the early phase of social web, you could be at the top if you were good at content marketing. However as the web matures, you also must be good at what you do, not just good at content marketing or how you present yourself.

Thank you, gentlemen, for a fascinating conversation that, we're sure, is to be continued ...


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If Managing Your Online Branding Hurts, SYNQY Could Ease the Pain

SYNQY -- a new start up near San Francisco -- is introducing an innovation designed to help organizations standardize and update the information that current and prospective customers see online.

Chairman and CEO Michael Weissman says SYNQY applies Meta embed code to a subscriber’s “brand assets”—logos, photos, messaging, video, registration forms, donation pages, white papers, slide presentations, articles, brochures, and so on. Thereafter, when an online user clicks on any coded asset, the right intended information pops up.

How It Works

To demonstrate, Weissman points to an Internet user who’s browsing an online fashion magazine that features a red dress sold by a major online retailer. Typically, when the user clicks on such a photo, she’s yanked off the magazine's website and plunked onto a seller's website. Too often, she has trouble getting back to the online magazine again. With SNYQY, wherever she sees the red dress online—either at the magazine’s site or anywhere else—her click pops up consistent information without jumping to a new site.

That’s the buyer’s (and the magazine’s) advantage. But Weissman says the marketer’s advantage is greater. As the CMO responsible for selling that red dress, SYNQY code automatically ensures that the buying experience is going to be the same for every buyer, every time.

Right for You?

Whether SYNQY is right for a given organization depends on how often people search for or buy that organization’s product(s) online. Weissman explains: “A printing company that depends on direct sales, but very little inbound marketing, is less likely to be a SYNQY customer. But an integrated communications firm that does content marketing and creates news stories to drive sales would be an excellent candidate. Large fundraising organizations with networks of partners or advocates would find SYNQY an option in managing their brand assets, as would a franchise company, political campaign, automobile dealership, or any organization with chapters.”

A New Process

Weissman differentiates SYNQY from so-called brand asset management entities that simply store digital materials for distribution. That process depends on human effort, he says—a sales person, chapter or branch manager, dealer, franchise owner, and so on.  By contrast, SYNQY manages and distributes brand assets without human involvement, thereby saving money. “So often, marketers are involved in non-bonus activities like updating content and keeping channels current. But there's no return for these labor-intensive activities. SYNQY can take over that job."

Build It Yourself?
The concept is easy, but building a competing technology would be very difficult and expensive, Weissman adds. “That's why it hasn't been done before. It would take millions of dollars to replicate what SYNQY does and millions more to keep it updated, but using SNYQY software is easy and inexpensive.”

How Much?

SNYQY costs $100 per user per month, which includes one SYNQY embed code. Additional SYNQY embeds cost $100 apiece per year.

Weissman, who has 25 years of high-tech marketing experience, suggests the price is a bargain for marketers who must spend thousands of dollars—or more—updating widespread, disparate Internet content. “Simply turning a static asset into a SYNQY is a 10 to 15 second effort, from start to finish. So, to take a catalog of 10 brand assets and turn them into trackable, manageable code would take less than five minutes and cost $1,000 — very little for most companies.”

What about retrofitting all the brand assets currently floating on the Internet?

“Many of our customers are starting with new assets,” Weissman says. “Eventually, we expect they will retrofit. The other approach is to put an entire product catalog inside a single SYNQY. This gives the best of both worlds.”

Free 30-day trials are available at SYNQY.com. Click below for a short video.

Objective: Get Publicity. Tactic: Publicize Publicity.

What adds up to “publicity” today? How about the fact that you already got publicity.

I subscribe to PR Newswire for Journalists. The top – and only -- release this morning was as follows:

05-Jul-2012 

 * Bliss Drive Reaches #1 Position for Highly Competitive Key Phrase: 'Orange County SEO'

And your point is .... ? 

Here's what the first paragraph of the press release says: "Bliss Drive, a full-service Internet marketing and web design company that is located in Irvine, California, has just achieved a crucial milestone. They have climbed their way to the top of Google's search results, and now the company's website sits proudly at the number-one position for a highly competitive key phrase, Orange County SEO."

No doubt, today's press release will Bliss-Drive the company's Google positioning up even further.

And, really, that’s what search engine optimization is all about, isn’t it?

Annoying, perhaps. Effective, definitely. Executed, blissfully.

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Smart Marketers Are Already Mastering Gamification. Should You Be Playing?

According to allfacebook.com, 50% of Facebook log-ins are specifically to play games like Farmville, Zynga Poker, and Words with Friends.

Yes, we love ourselves some games -- and smart marketers are using the gaming passion two ways:

1. To increase efficiency, customer loyalty, and engagement
2. To improve results in marketing campaigns.

Gamification is the term being used to describe this use of traditional game mechanics in non-game businesses.

According to Gartner Group, gamification is the newest type of loyalty marketing. The analyst firm predicts that by 2015, a gamified service for consumer goods, marketing, and customer retention will become as important to companies’ marketing engagement efforts as Facebook and Twitter. Gartner further predicts that in less than three years, more than 70% of Global 2000 organizations will have at least one gamified application. 

Among respondents to the Acxiom/Loyalty 360 survey, only 14% of respondents already use gamification in their customer retention efforts, but nearly one-third (29%) plan to add gamification. At the time of the survey, more than half (56%) said they have no plan to try ramification and will be putting their resources elsewhere. Ha! We'll see about that ...

The Gamification Summit, which is meeting in San Francisco tomorrow through Wednesday, notes that "Gamification is radically changing the way companies do business, driving unprecedented engagement with customers, employees and stakeholders."

The gamification blog notes that enterprise gamification designers and marketers face a unique set of challenges. "We must advocate for the concept and win budget," says Tyler Altrup -- who also says that gamification is a marketers' business, not the stuff of platform managers.

Altrup describes four familiar marketing steps for good design/marketing gamification : set goals, define behaviors, establish rewards/incentives, and -- listen up: here's the key point -- framing the result according to status. "Every gamification program must be framed as a component of a meaningful status for the user," he says.

For more about gamification in the marketing context, check in with this video from Bunchball's founder and chief product officer, Rajat Paharia.

Game on!

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In a Flourish of Solopreneurship, This Artist Uses Social Media to Sell Direct

Dora Woodrum's Twitter introduction says, "Hello! My name is Dora. I am a contemporary abstract artist from Cleveland, Ohio. I paint original abstract and contemporary paintings, landscapes, and much more. to view my painting please take a look at my website: nicemodernart.com."

I don't know Dora personally. I do know that, according to Twitter, she has 31,092 followers, but follows only 7,646. Granted, automated progams like TwitterListBuilder or TweetBuilder can put anybody's count through the roof, but, in my observation, that particular Twit game generally ends up with equal parts follower and following. So, Dora would appear to be playing the social media game rather well.

She also has a Facebook page: Dora Woodrum Art. There you'll find photos and evidence of the 1,354 "likes" her page has garnered. So, yes, somebody has been efficiently building this gal's online presence.

Meanwhile, her LinkedIn profile notes that 11 of her paintings will be seen in Hello, I Must Be Going, a Sundance film festival pick scheduled to be released in theaters September 7, 2012. Impressive!

Maybe selling art on Twitter works for Dora Woodrum and maybe it doesn't. Online art and craft sales have worked for Etsy's 800,000 storekeepers since 2005, so why shouldn't creatives of all ilk go directly to the source of buyers? Certainly, Dora Woodrum appears successful and -- for certain -- her follow persuaded me to both follow-back and check out her website. And write this blog.

In short, thanks Dora, for showing others that solopreneurs with products to sell can tweak the social media model to work for them.

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Now Is the Time to Try Barcodes + Mobile Because ...

According to eMarketer, the pairing of printed quick response (QR) barcodes and mobile marketing works.

Successful coding isn't difficult, says ad tracking firm Competitrack. Put mobile barcodes in attention-grabbing places and then give customers a clear link to content,  Once folks arrive, make sure content is easy-to read … and do consider video as a landing-page option.

The Trend Works Well in Retail, But Wait .. There's More
So far, mobile barcodes are attracting the most users in the retail (22%) and technology (13%) sectors, although Oppenheimer Funds -- an investment management firm -- has used more mobile barcodes than any other sector, with 85% of Oppenheimer's print ads featuring the small squigglies.

Buying and Entertainment Trends Add Up to New Barcode Possibilities
Even though Quick Response (QR) codes have yet to gain widespread consumer acceptance, by January this year, 50% of smartphone users had, indeed, scanned them, according to a Chadwick Martin Bailey study -- and even non-users recognize a QR when they see it.

As a marketer, remember, too, that mobile doesn't necessarily mean your user is "out and about." A March 2012 survey showed that close to half of all mobile entertainment gamers -- including both action/sports and puzzle gamers) -- play at home. 

It's time to think beyond retail shopping. More likely than not, your mobile user is at home, relaxed and ready to consider buying. The user could be watching television and still be on a smartphone or a tablet (check out this CMB research from February that confirms tablets and mobile devices are replacing traditional home entertainment).

Point is, when shown the code, savvy folks know the QR drill and will use it ... which is why smart marketers are offering the option.

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Image(s): FreeDigitalPhotos.net http://www.freedigitalphotos.net/

Study Shows B2B Marketers Do Better with These Ten Skills

An article in this week’s B2B  reports that corporate marketers have 10 key roles in the organization:

1. Devise a marketing plan that’s flexible, but tight.
2. Act as your brand's advocate, articulating the organization’s big vision.
3. Bring the voice of the customer into corporate strategy and planning.
4. Help technology-trained staff understand business marketing.
5. Deploy specialist teams within established business units, as needed.
6. Share marketing perspectives with staff coming from a scientific or engineering background.
7. Make sure “internal integration” means aligning the entire organization to an overriding objective.
8. Communicate during a crisis.
9. Keep up with and introduce new trends and tools to the staff and the organization.
10. Master funding and measurement skills and work with the CFO.

Source: B2B article by Kate Maddox based on a study conducted jointly by the Penn State Institute for the Study of Business Markets  (ISBM) and Blue Canyon Partners, Evanston, IL.

How "Shaky, Shaky" Could Evolve to "Thought Leadership"

The CMO Council reports that marketers want an agency partner who can "do it all" -- mobile, social, multi-channel, web, search, CRM. Ouch!

Is this demand reasonable? It may not matter, since 58 percent of marketers say they aren't happy -- and disgruntled marketers lead to shaky vendor relationships. It happened suddenly last summer when quite a few big guys switched agencies. United Airlines. Monsanto. S.C. Johnson. Sprint.

Industry observers are taking note of the shake-ups. Some say the shift is away from traditional "advertising" to a marketing platform that emphasizes talking with -- not at -- customers . . . like Facebook, for example.

On Leap Day 2012, Facebook evolved from an advertising to a marketing platform. Central to the switch was Facebook's determination to ramp up engagement with current fans and back-off the push for new fans. Facebook is betting that a deeper focus on "storytelling" can turn content into a word-of-mouth recommendation. They call this switch to storytelling a "sponsored story."

Marketing Prof's February 29 "Marketing Smarts" podcast featuring Mike Levy explains the essential component of this storytelling. Levy says "thought leadership" naturally emerges from the unique experiences, insights, and abilities that set one company apart from another. "The stuff that fascinates you and that you found helpful and the stuff that helps you live your life...there is a population out there that will find the same things fascinating and the same things helpful."

A personal story brought this concept home to me: ifixit.com.

Because I work on a Mac, I discovered this company years ago and fell in love with their dedication to helping me "fix it myself." They posted videos and detailed instructions on how to get inside the Mac to add memory and do other self-maintenance. Ifixit paved this road to repair because the founder believed in it profoundly. A few years ago, they took the concept even bigger, stretching their beliefs to self-repair of anything and everything. Not only is ifixit's philosophy eco-friendly, it's empowering to those of us who are frustrated that simple repairs evoke migraine headaches. I really love ifixit and the people who founded and run it. That's how they've built their business: by being who they are and letting the marketplace "find them" … in short, by exercising "thought leadership."

Erika Napoletano agrees. "Popular is the last thing smart business people should want to be … By pursuing an unpopular path, you are actually narrowing down and refining your notion of the audience with whom you truly want to be popular after all."

Reflection, authenticity, storytelling, outreach: Shaken by the poisonous atmosphere of political advertising, will 2012 move our marketing toward thought leadership? I believe it will.

"Pretty" Social Media Raises the Bar

In late February, Bloomberg reported that some retailers have abandoned Facebook because ROI isn’t there. While some may argue that making money isn’t the purpose of Facebook, the deeper point here may not be the efficacy of Facebook, but the fact that this $6 billion IPO-ster doesn't quite “own the social space.”

Here are two recent developments that suggest consumers are still looking for their perfect socialscape.

Tumblr
Tumblr is a microblogging platform that lets users post content to a short-form site that’s rich with short posts, videos, links, and photos. Nowhere near Facebook proportions (yet), Tumblr may well be the future. The company isn’t new – it launched in April 2007 – but as of February 13, this little powerhouse had some 44.3 million bloggers. Six days later, on February 19, Tumblr had 45.1 million users and more than 17 billion total posts.

Popular with teens and college-age user segments, 50 percent of Tumblr’s visitor base is under the age of 25. Moreover, teenagers age 12-17 are about twice as likely as the average Internet user to visit Tumblr, while 18-24 year olds are nearly 2.5 times as likely. To stay in touch with Generations Y and Z, in October 2011 the Obama campaign launched a Tumblr experiment for 2012. [Note: Obama link format is how you find folks on tumblr; for example, I set up at nancyscott.tumblr.com].

Top celebrities on Tumblr include Val Kilmer, Lady Gaga, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, along with celebrity rip-offs like this paen to Ryan Gosling. Writing for 360 Digital connections, Matt Wurst suggests that Tumblr may be the answer to excessive options marred by short attention spans. “No one wants to sit through 1,000-word blog posts .. because words alone no longer tell the story.” Wurst calls Tumblr “a cross between a blog, a Twitter feed, and a Facebook profile.” Still not convinced? Well, maybe if it’s good enough for the New Yorker, it’s good enough for you. Check out newyorker.tumblr.com.

Pinterest.
Pinterest went live as an invitation-only website in March 2010. By January 2012, the website was a darling of self-expression for some 12 million enthusiasts who can’t wait to share their idea of visual “cool” with the world. In December 2011, Pinterest made#5 in Hitwise’s list of top ten social networks, beating out Linked and Google+.

Pinterest helps users set up any number of “bulletin boards” to which they can “pin” (that is, embed) photo and film urls from all over the Internet, including their own desktop. Does Pintereest have a corporate application? Writing in AmEx Open Forum, Marketing Strategist Ivana Taylor called Pinerest a “big mover” in the social media space that offers a powerful branding opportunity. “Think of Pinterest as a virtual corkboard that says something about who you are and what interests you.”

For consumers who want to know something about “who you are” without an attached sales message, Pinterest has appeal. In addition, Taylor suggests Pinterest for inspiration, exposure, e-commerce and market research. Savvy Blogging suggests that Pinterest is an excellent way to promote a blog. “Add the ‘pin it’ button to every post and page on your site," Savvy says. "This will make it simple and easy for readers to pin your posts.”

Finally, check Hubspot for their free e-book, “How to Use Pinterest for Business.” This report notes that any business that relies on driving a high-volume of website traffic to increase sales should consider joining Pinterest. Early research indiciates that Pinterest is more effective at driving traffic that other social media sites, even Facebook.

Red Alert: Currently, a controversy surrounds whether or not Pinterest activity engages in copyright infringement. The Pinterest Terms of Service – particularly the Limits of Liability section – should be carefully studied and perhaps reviewed by an attorney before you engage in this new social media option. For more information, be sure to read Alyson Shonell’s February 28 posting on BusinessInsider.com.

Smart Marketers Are Always *Thinking.* Get This. It's Brilliant.

Entrepreneur and corporate strategist Colin Jensen has a great post up on Quora. Jensen says, "No matter what kind of business you're starting, you need more than one source of revenue, and hopefully at least one your competition won't have thought of."

That reminded me of a GoogleOffer that showed up in my mailbox just this morning. Fairfield Inn & Suites (Marriott property) has a hotel near Dulles Airport. Anybody who lives in the Washington, D.C. area has utterly NO reason to go to the Dulles area, except to fly or pick up fliers. But wait! Maybe there's something out there in Dulles land after all ...

Fairfield was making an amazing offer -- 14 days of parking and free every-half-hour shuttle service to and the airport for only $20! Fairfield says that's a $140 value and I believe it. Moreover, Fairfield is offering staff help to haul luggage in and out of the shuttle bus. (No, I don't work for them and, yes, I never knew they existed until this a.m.). Wow.

In fact, this offer was SO wow that I went to the Fairfield website just to see if they would let me use the service other times. Yes, we can! But, for Fairfield, the real benefit is that their hotel is now on my radar. I found out they have inexpensive weekend packages and I can also consider staying there overnight before an early flight.

The discounted offer won't make any money of course, but it won't cost Fairfield any money, either. In short, this is some of the best hotel advertising I've seen in years. I'm sure many other curious local gawkers hopped to their website this morning, too .. where we found all manner of other offers besides "fly and park" also featured. This is very smart marketing, right Colin?

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Can -- and Should -- Creativity Be Crowdsourced?

Crowdsourcing our own opinions and relying on others' is all the rage: Yelp, Angie’s List, Facebook Likes -- apparently, we won’t buy anything unless we consult to see if groups of strangers think it’s okay.

Crowdsourcing, first name-tagged in a 2006 Wired magazine article, has infiltrated the creative arts, too.

For instance, the Japanese are heavily into keitai shosetsu -- thumb novels written by collaborating hoards of teenagers and 20-somethings who knock out romance novels and crime thrillers via mobile phone texting.

The trend to crowdsourcing film has been tested in the Netherlands. The Dutch filmmaker who undertook this effort said, “We wanted to make a movie that shows the opinion of the public, created by the public, on a subject that concerns every tax-payer: The bankruptcy of DSB Bank in the Netherlands (2009) … We did not have any budget. Lucky us, we have an excellent … social system in the Netherlands.”

Mashable demonstrated the possibilities of creative crowdsourcing when it featured “10 Cool Crowdsourced Music Video Projects.” Similar collaborative projects have popped up at Fashion Stake, communal problem-solver Innocentive, photo sharing site Flickr Creative Commons, and Wiki-Art.

Naturally, somebody saw the dollar signs in crowdsourcing. In Chicago, the enterprise Crowdspring.com has sprung.These online marketing folks allude to crowdsourcing in their name, but others describe the process as a worldwide contest wherein folks in the creative arts (design, website development, writing) are invited to “work for spec” and, if they’re lucky (?), be chosen to actually work on a project and get paid. Chances of being chosen and getting paid are very slim, say detractors – and some (like Brian Yerkes) who have participated are, frankly, furious.

In a Nutshell, Please: Can Creativity Be Crowdsourced?
Garrick Schmitt addressed that question exactly in AdAgeDigital in 2009. Garrick concludes: "For agencies, crowdsourcing forces us to re-examine how great work gets produced and where the best talent resides ... For marketers, crowdsourcing creative services poses both great risks and rewards ... And finally, for the industry as a whole ... time will tell."

Point Is, There's Crowdsourcing and Then There's Working for Free
In his article, Garrick came up with some excellent examples of creative crowdsourcing, as has econsultancy. In many of these examples -- though not all -- true sharing and collaboration occurs when participants group together in a common pursuit. A different scenario emerges when dozens (or hundreds) of folks of all ilk compete fiercely, investing time and resources in pursuit of a positive outcome that only one will ever enjoy.

And, now, for MarketingBrillo's Final Word ...
Crowdsourcing for creative inspiration and a good time? Definitely yes.
Crowdsourcing spec work in hopes of landing a job or getting cheap work? Definitely stupid, probably exploitative.

More Resources For Deciding How You Feel About Crowdsourcing
As for whether crowdsourcing can work for commercial enterprises looking for publicity, this report demonstrates that effective crowd sourcing requires 1) a crowd, 2) incentives, and 3) an easy project.

For an authoritative voice on the economics and ethics of crowdsourcing, check out writer/designer/entrepreneur/Ironman competitor Andrew Hyde's various blog posts on the subject (alert: Andrew thinks spec work is evil, period.)

For more info on what’s new in crowdsourcing, see The Complete Idiot’s Guide here.

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What Can Home Invasion News Teach Us About Content Marketing? These Eight Realities.

Three months ago I conceived homeinvasionnews.com. The content strategy was three-fold:
1) demonstrate my ability to create content for any topic, including one with which I had no experience;
2) demonstrate the added value of content displayed in a dynamic format;
3) demonstrate the various formats in which content can be presented.

I was able to take Home Invasion News from concept to launch in 30 days. Since launch, I have been maintaining the site, adding new content daily. I will launch a PR push in the next few weeks, but the site is already ranking on page one of Google in a variety of home invasion related topics: news, statistics, safeguards, laws, etc.

Here's are eight realities that confirm the validity of the original three-point strategy:

1. Content development is about intelligent content curation. If you have a body of knowledge at your disposal, content will come. If you don't -- but if you know how to research on the Internet -- you will find all the content you need: statistics, expertise, opinion, case studies, definitions, and controversy for any topic, any project.

2. The best content adds something extra: A viewpoint, a sense of humor, a different take, an unusual way of presenting. In short, the best content starts with dry information and adds YOU.

3. How you present content makes all the difference. Give the reader/browser something extra to look at, chew on, think about. At Home Invasion News, this something extra would be the active layout of the homepage and the editorial point of view.

4. Specialized infographics can play a key role. The top menu bar of the site features "Faces of Home Invasion." That link jumps to an interactive graphic used to publicize the site through press releases.

5. Video has a place. In the case of HIN, limitless video is free for the asking and we embed it everywhere. Most any topic you can think of has related video somewhere on the Internet. Most of it is free and easy. Figure out how to use it and do so.

6. RSS feeds are good -- both for content curation and for readers' viewing pleasure. HIN features a feed based on the term "home invasion." The feed is continuous and it creates great fodder for daily consumption, as well as background for the "top story" weekly blog post.

7. Content curation sites like Scoop-It help track national stories. For some sites (like HIN), linking to your Scoop-It site on a separate page makes for solid, in-the-moment content. [Tip: You can set up Scoop-It to make sure your own site is first on this feed.]

8. Understanding the various e-media possibilities -- video, slideshows, webinars. etc. -- helps guide content development. For example, we recognize that -- as resources grow -- interviews and podcasts are a natural progression in the Home Invasion News effort.

A final thought: Sites like WriterAccess aggregate a pool of writers looking for content development projects. The last time I checked, WriterAccess had 3,800 writers signed on. Perhaps this model creates work for journalists closed out in the newspaper shrinkage. I certainly hope so. In any event, WriterAccess is a huge step up from content sweatshops I wrote about awhile back. On the other hand, lining up with 3,800 other writers feels a bit like trying to land a job -- or locate a Chief Marketing Officer -- on MONSTER (not that there's anything wrong with that :-)

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The Two New TVs: Branded and Social. Are You Ready?

Just when you thought it was safe to relax in front of the TV, it isn't. In fact, one of your new marketing tasks may involve putting up the content on your organization's own TV channel. That would be called a branded content channel.

Rob Davis, who heads the online video practice at adverting giant Ogilvy, says in this interview that his agency is working closely on branded content channels on YouTube.

Here are some sound bites from Rob.

"We're finding that with a lot of our clients it goes beyond 'I want to have a video and hope it goes well.' [The push] is about making use of the tools YouTube has available. We're focusing a lot of the effort around identifying the opportunities available with a brand channel. The brand channel model itself on YouTube is growing up. It's a place to curate content; it's a place where we're seeing people using the channel for direct marketing.

"Cure Bad Breath, for example, is a YouTube that's all about moving product, moving the Orabrush. We've just done a brand new channel for IBM that's about curating the best IBM content on the web on YouTube and bringing it into one place.

"When we talk about value of video content, we're looking at engagement, at views plus length of view and completion rates. At Ogilvy, we talk about PPI -- post play interaction. We help our clients identify what the next click should be in their strategy. Is it direct marketing, is it lead generation, is it awareness, is it about viewing more videos or going to a landing page and getting into the sales funnel. Different strategies require different measurements.

"Branded content is a major part of what we're doing. We're still focusing on VSEO (video search engine optimization) for a lot of the content we're creating. It's finding the right blend to get the eyeballs to the branded content. We're not leaving out the notion of blogger outreach and influencers, either. [The strategy involves] getting the content into the right hands so your audience finds the content where they are participating, rather than the old method of trying to drive them to a url.

[In branded channel TV] you want high production values. You don't want to cut corners on the content. The industry is ready for it, although the Internet audience may not be totally ready for it just yet. But I think it can happen. Technology is in place for this year -- 2011 -- to be the year."

And then there's Social TV. Even if you're not developing branded content for your own TV channel, you will probably be pulled into Social TV before long. So what is that?

If the MIT Technology Review on Social TV in 2010 is correct, it's coming on strong. In fact, social TV was named by this group as one of the 10 most important emerging technologies.

How about some real-life examples? Maybe you'll recall seeing Twitter integrated into a TV show. Or maybe you were part of Facebook reactions to the U.S. team's rise and fall at the Women's World Cup. Check out these and more at "Social TV," a blog on the subject.

LostRemote is another blog that covers the social TV scene. One story describes integrating TV into socialization via the Dexter app that allows users to set up their own text-messaging group chat surrounding Showtime's "Dexter" TV show.

And then there's Miso, a phone app designed to notify friends which TV shows you're watching. The process works much like Foursquare, as participants "check in" to report viewing.

Mashable gives us a quick run-down of how social TV is faring, according to TV Guide research. Surprise, Smallville, a program that's one of Nielsen's lowest-rated, has a huge social media following.

Content options provide audiences with additional content that is engaging, unique, and innovative, so that the experience is simultaneously available across platforms.

Wikipedia describes the burgeoning phenomenon this way: "Social TV is creating the cyber-living-room and cyber-bar to enable increased interactivity around shared programming, both live and time-shifted."

See you on the telly.

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Today’s “Show Me” Website Is A Content Marketer’s Dream

A content marketer’s job is to share what an organization knows. We can do that piecemeal in blogs, videos, slideshows, whitepapers, articles, and so on. But nothing puts it all out there like a “show-me” website.

I just finished writing a short ebook (free for the asking) that describes how to launch a show-me website in 30 days, from concept to launch – and that’s starting with zero content and no background in the topic area.

To demonstrate this could be done, starting on May 17 with only a topic in mind, I developed enough original content for Home Invasion News to go live on June 17. When I searched the generic term “home invasion news” on Google this morning, the site had moved up from seventh place, to fifth and sixth positions on page one, just behind recent TV news reports. We’re also ranking on the first page for “home statistics,” and “FBI home invasion statistics.”

Is this some sort of extraordinary achievement? I don’t think so. If you are still reading this article, I am absolutely certain you can do the same.

But why bother? I mean, why is launching this sort of a website so important right now? Ho-hum websites without color and a profusion of choices for the visitor are worse than ineffective. They are a detriment to the content itself.

Information consumers today are used to splash and dash. They don’t want to think about how to find and navigate content. That part should be easy. The show-me website is the architecture content marketers need to make their work shine and succeed.

To clarify, the following list presents a quick run-down of ways a show-me website makes content marketing so much more effective.

1. Offers Instant Choices. At first glance, a show-me website offers a visitor many, many intriguing content choices.

2. Creates Information Categories. Navigation of a show-me website is intuitive because information is so beautifully organized.

3. Ignites the Imagination. The visuals on a show-me website are dynamic, shifting, changing, sliding, and colorful. The user gets excited deciding to what to look at first.

4. Dances As a Unit. On a show-me website, all content marketing options harmonize. Rather than appearing to be separate “chunks” of information, video, slideshows, podcasts, images, articles, and stories create a tight symphony.

5. Facilitates Natural Advertising. Show-me websites can be constructed to make ads a seamless part of the presentation.

6. Encourages Play. We may be used to information delivered in static columns when we’re reading, but when we’re playing on the Internet, we want a dynamic grid that’s more like a movie than a book.

7. Invites Infographics. Infographics as content are growing in popularity. Show-me websites incorporate options for presenting and cycling through multiple samples of these popular visuals.

8. Makes the Content All About the Visitor. Because of the way a show-me website organizes and displays content – by content category – the focus remains on what the visitor is looking for, not what the organization is selling.

9. Matches Contemporary Information Delivery. The show-me website breaks the typical Internet website static-column gird. The show-me website helps content marketers emulate the information presentation tactics employed by leading magazines and newspapers.

Finally, if you’re wondering what a show-me website looks like, the book gives 30 examples, including these: GQ Magazine, Atlantic Monthly, and National Geographic. You’ll notice right away that these and so many other amazing show-me websites are loaded with content, delivered within a framework that makes information pop.

If you’d like a copy of the ebook “How To Launch Your Own Show-Me Website in 30 Days,” please send a request using the button on the right.

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More Signs That "Listening," Personalization, and Customer Collaboration Are the “It” Trends

• Google News now features automatic personalization. “Last summer we redesigned Google News with new personalization features that let you tell us which subjects and sources you’d like to see more or less often. Starting today -- if you’re logged in -- you may also find stories based on articles you’ve clicked on before.”

• Wrangler asked its customers to design the next pair of jeans. “They have incredible ideas about what they want their jeans to look like and how they want them to function. Now, the ability to collaborate with consumers is at an all-time high, thanks to the ever-growing digital and social space. We thought this was the perfect time to put the design process directly into consumers’ hands.” From PromoMagazine.

• Musicians are cashing in on consumers’ demand for immediacy and participation. Coca-Cola hosted a 24-hour live session to write and produce an original song from Maroon 5, created while fans watched and interacted with band members.

• Malcolm Faulds pointed out in AdAgeCMO Strategy, “With a few candid words, the right highly connected consumer can get people all over the web stampeding to buy products.” Faulds’ company. BzzAgent, recently did an in-depth study of so-called “brand advocates” and tells marketers five ways to reach this influential group:

• get the products in their hands;
• display your stuff on Amazon.com; brand advocates go there to check out product reviews and stay on top of what’s new;
• feed brand advocates a steady steam of fun stuff to engage with and share with colleagues;
• be genuine and never manipulate, but engage with advocates on social networks;
• honor your brand advocates by featuring them on Twitter, Facebook, in ads, and elsewhere.

• A Mashable article by Leyl Master Black in early June agrees that customers should be rewarded for their loyalty. Black suggests offering Facebook fans exclusive discounts, coupons, and content; tying charitable donations to the growth of the fan base; responding to each and every comment or listening in other innovative ways; and recognizing individual fans.

• In his May 26 blog post, Jacob Morgan, principal at Chess Media Group, writes, “Collaborating with customers isn’t about sending them offers, news, information, or messages. Collaborating is about putting the customer at the center of how your organization conducts business, it’s about integrating the voice of the customer … This is far more powerful than simply using social tools and technologies to get your message across … So when you say you want to collaborate with your customers, do you really mean that, or are you really talking about ways to use social channels to spread a message?”

Inviting and encouraging commentary on social media may be a good first step in collaboration. A June 27 article at Marketing Vox reports that The Rockville Central blog abandoned its website and began posting on Facebook, instead. The result? More readers began interacting with the stories through comments and “likes.” Facebook posts that promoted Rockville Central stores are netting about 2,000 “impressions” each, per month.

The Washington Post covered the blog-to-Facebook story also. The Post interviewed Reggie Bradford, chief executive of Vitrue, a social-marketing software firm whose job it is to place a value on social pages. Viture released research that attempted to place a media value of $3.60 per “like” on individual Facebook connections. The Post article also cited findings from a Fortune 100 companies study by Adgregate Markets. Of the Fortune 100 companies surveyed, 68 percent said they're experiencing shrinkage in unique visits to their website, with an average drop of 23 percent. Out of 44 of those companies sampled, 40 percent found that they had higher traffic volumes to their Facebook page, according to this Retail Online Integration wrap-up of the study.

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