Transmedia, Reputation and the Masses
“Spin doesn’t work anymore…. the Internet has a built-in BS detector.” - Chris Pirillo
My friends Johnny Hartman and Rod Pitman sent me a great little four minute video that they produced featuring people like Chris and Joshua Green from MIT talking about “transmedia; (define)” and how companies (and each of us as individuals) need to take a completely holistic approach to what constitutes new “media” entry points for effective storytelling and reputation monitoring in this brave new world.
Even though I agree with Chris about the BS detector, it’s incumbent on each of us to carefully manage our reputations online. It’s no secret that anyone has the ability to write about anyone’s brand, person, or product.
Spin isn’t really dead, it’s just been plopped in the hands any consumer, partner, competitor or detractor who wants to take it… marketers have lost control before they even release their carefully crafted messages.
But that shouldn’t make us hopeless. Once educated, we can manage this fundamental shift….
How?
Learning What Kids Already Know
Business is just learning about new media entry points. Kids have been learning about them for years.
Joshua Green heads up MIT’s “Transmedia Convergence Culture Consortium (C3);” set up specifically to advise media and entertainment (among other) businesses how to navigate the waters of brand and reputation management as media becomes more accessible to the masses.
From their site: “C3 explores the ways the business landscape is changing in response to the growing integration of content and brands across media platforms and the increasingly prominent roles that consumers are playing in shaping the flow of media…”
Two years ago this spring I spoke at a conference at the University of Washington on Media Literacy - where educators, social services professionals and media literacy advocates from around the world gathered to share information about teaching media literacy to kids. In short, (define:) media literacy helps kids know what’s real, what’s not real, what to expect online and in other forms of media they’re inundated with on a daily basis: television, movies, etc…
It seems business is just now catching up with the kids in knowing what’s real, what’s not real, and what to expect online with regard to their brands.
What’s real/not real?
The first thing we need to do is track exactly who’s saying what about us… in real time.
The Law of Large Numbers and the Personal Web
The thing is, you don’t have to be a big entertainment consortium to produce amazingly effective, entertaining stories - true or not - about pretty much anything.
Today, anyone can be a content producer and generate interest and awareness from millions of people. Look at dooce.com - a very entertaining blog (that I enjoy every day) by Heather B. Armstrong. The word dooce has become synonymous with being fired for blogging, as Heather was
“fired from my job for this website because I had written stories that included people in my workplace.”
In 2005 her website (a suite of blogs) started pulling in enough ad revenue to support her family, as it continues to do today.
It’s the law of large numbers, as my learned friend Paul Kedrosky would say.
With 1.3B people currently connected to the web, there are a plethora of us producing personal, public content. We’re spending time updating our Twitter posts, managing our LinkedIN profiles, chatting with friends on Facebook and trying out Plaxo’s Pulse; it’s only a matter of my content coming up in search results that will connect me with hundreds, thousands, and even millions of people around the globe.
Consider these (smaller, but still significant) numbers:
- LinkedIN counts more than 17M members - mostly business people
- Facebook has more than 43M members - businesses are pouring in
- Technorati is tracking more than 112M blogs - businesses are beginning to blog (the spigot isn’t turned on far yet)
Tracking conversations about my products, my company, my personal reputation is critical in this more complex, transmedia world.
Online Reputation Monitoring - Essential to Your Brand
I talk about monitoring online conversations a lot in this space (dare I say, My Space?) because it’s a critical component of marketing and brand management. And it’s simple to do - using managed RSS technology tools.
RSS readers are free. And there are excellent, free RSS readers with a reach far beyond Google, including those from (my favorite, my client) Attensa.
How do I monitor my brand?
- Download Attensa (or other RSS reader of choice). It’s free, and your results can be sent to your inbox or a web site specifically set up to track your feeds. Go to www.attensa.com/get-it and just do it (to borrow heavily from a great brand tagline).
- Go into the Attensa application and set up a persistent search. All you have to do is put in your company name, your product’s name, your own name, and tell Attensa to keep a watch out online for ANY mention of your name(s); and it’ll do so automatically, persistently scanning 18 different search engines (way beyond Google - although if that’s all you do, good for you!) for instances of [your name(s)].
- Any time something is said about [your name(s)], you’ll get it in your inbox or on your web-based reader.
- When it happens, follow the link, see what you think, engage in conversation, drive to closure.
I’ve told audiences for years - in answer to the ubiquitous question, “What if someone says something bad about me?” - if they do, wouldn’t you rather:
- Know who’s saying what?
- Be able to address what’s real, what’s not real, and
- Provide your point of view?
… than not know they’re saying such things?
After all, you can’t please a million/thousand/hundred/all of the people all of the time.
But you can listen, learn and interact - using your own finely-honed BS detector.
And that, my marketing friends, is what brand awareness and engagement are all about.
