Janet Lee Johnson | The Art of Marketing

In a fascinating article in Fortune - “Welcome to Conference 2.0″ - Dan Fost reported on a SXSW interview that was completely disrupted by backchannel via Twitter. His description of the pandemonium that erupted was most excellent:

“Consider author Sarah Lacy’s disastrous interview of Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg at the annual South by Southwest Interactive Festival here. Lacy, a Business Week columnist and author of a forthcoming book on Zuckerberg and other Web 2.0 titans, drew the crowd’s wrath by asking Zuckerberg too many questions about his age and his company’s outrageous $15 billion valuation and not enough questions about issues more fundamental to how Facebook operates - things like trust, privacy, and accessibility to software developers. On top of that, Lacy interrupted Zuckerberg, seemed to flirt with him, and then grew hostile as the crowd turned against her.

And did it ever turn. Many in the audience started posting their thoughts on Twitter, a service that broadcasts instant messages, and the ire built. The crowd began hooting and jeering, and finally, when she opened the mike to questions, the first person asked Zuckerberg: “Other than rough interviews, what are some of the biggest challenges Facebook faces?” Lacy turned to Zuckerberg, asked, “Has this been a rough interview?” and the audience member said, “I wasn’t asking you, I was asking Mark.” The crowd went wild.”

I’ve been blogging conferences live for years. It’s a great way to share the love with folks who aren’t able to attend…. but what I’ve been doing is spreading what’s largely been a one-way conversation, barely brushing the collaborative (and yes, sometimes disruptive) potential that new social media tools can unleash.

At SEMpdx on Monday, I listened to people who said they Twittered their notes in conferences, and I actually enjoy watching what people are thinking as they’re listening to speakers (the beauty of the immediacy of Twitter) - I was fascinated by the accounts of SXSW discussions I read on Twitter myself.

But facilitating disruption in the room? It underscores for me as a speaker and panelist, that I’m going to be held even more accountable to the audience in providing solid, factual, and (yes) entertaining information EVERY time I step on stage. That’s good for me, and great for conference attendees everywhere.

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Here are the notes from my SEMpdx afternoon. I wasn’t able to get connected to wireless to live blog or tweet the notes, so you’ll get ‘em here, delayed but useful, nonetheless, I hope. Certainly I’m not going to format, but if anyone has questions, ask away!

Marketing with Social Media -

Hallie - Anvil Media - Moderator
Paul Colligan - paulcolligan.com
Sandra Ponce de Leon - BuzzLogic
Dan Harbison - Portland Trail Blazers

Buzzlogic ranks #1 (over Wikipedia - quite a feat) in definition for “what is social media?”

Paul Colligan - bring social media into your marketing mix in a smart way, using:

Social News - digg, reddit
Photo Sharing - flickr
Video Sharing - YouTube
Bookmarking - del.icio.us
Social Networks - Facebook, LinkedIN
Answer Services - Ask.com
WIKIs - AboutUs.org

But remember the “one eared mickey mouse” - don’t let social media try to stand alone for your brand, be sure to integrate social media into your greater media strategy.

S3 Internet Marketing
Strategy - figure this out first
Search - make your keywords work (and URLs) for you from the start
Social Media - utilize these tools in the following ways:
- social media tools: don’t do the work of a computer, let the tools work for you
- subscription mindset: quality content will drive people to subscribe to your thoughts
- strategically delivered: with the brand in mind

ubersyndication - Paul googled define: ubersyndication on thursday last week, 0 results - today 85 results via microblogging techniques
Consider what makes good “spider food” - on your web site and other sites like Twitter, etc.
Use multimedia - podcasts, video, etc.

Brand your Twitterpage
- encourage your twitter followers to Twitter about your ideas…

Subscription mindset - push not pull…

Strategically delivered, SEO friendly

He’s gotten higher CTR on his best tweets than his best email lists

Twitter application on Facebook - Twice message and reach - no need to visit twitter
TwitterSearch.com - who’s saying what?
SocialPoster.com - uberposting tool

twitter your notes rather than blogging them, making it easy… all done.

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dan h. - make your product fans do your marketing for you…
fans have opinions - their passion is what drives them to you and on your behalf

Blazer Fan site:
- started with video testimonials
- linked it to a marketing strategy for engagement and passionate fans
- taking the voice from a few to many
- enable a contagious environment
- integrated it with a ticketing component - people could form groups and get a discount

Successfully sold season tickets to rabid fans (bringing college basketball attitude to pro basketball) +100 season tickets for a special section + got a title sponsor for the community (Blazer Maniacs)

augments their traditional, 1:1 marketing - especially in email
integrates with their main, Trailblazers.com website

Recommends integrating social media with your business online and offline to further real connections and conversations in all spaces

uses Twitter - first around the draft debate - realtime updates
YouTube channels are there
Facebook and MySpace
Fan Toolbox - place for widgets, arm fans with photos, etc.

All of this generates content that can be indexed - “spider food” spread across myspace and twitter, elsewhere - pushing to multiple sites, linking back to your sites
RSS pushes get spidered and indexed much more quickly than traditional updates
mobile integration is coming - struggle now is consistency across all mobile channels

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Sandra - BuzzLogic
IDs influential discussions online
“Conversation Targeting” - to drive ad performance
- think of psychology of users
- metrics - traditional do apply, but engagement measurements (passing along, comments)
- copy - read up and find out how bloggers are talking about your topic
- creative - how will you get their attention??

Blog reach rivals media
57M reading - 60% access blogs to get opinions, 65% go to blogs to make decisions
Who’s influential on any topic, who’s following the conversation?

BuzzLogic socially map conversations - show link direction, whther on, or off topic, whether popular, who’s influencer?

Reach pockets of engaged audiences
Brand is lifted linking to new media influencers
Linking can tell you about your customers,
Conversational nature can aid in advertising

Question from audience: Tools to monitor social media?

Feedburner - for RSS feeds - ensure they’re clean, shows subscriber rates and clickthru rates
- use yourbrand feature - www.you.com - brand your domain name not feedburner - it’s free
- as an insurance policy leverage your feed and brand
Flock - browser - built on Firefox engine, uses plugins for Facebook, Flickr, YouTube, your RSS feeds, etc.
Buzzlogic - helps interest influencer

Track your domain name - through any social media method utilize your domain names and track them

Alternative ROIs for social media ? sponsorship, advertising, content syndication, attention
don’t try to do too much with your social network engagement - phase it in.

ning and kickapps - free tools to get your feet wet, but your brand should be hosted on your URL…

One interactive agency put their culture up on twitter - got business from their twitter feeds

jott.com - killer twitter tool - who do you want to jot? audio recording goes through transcription - adding text to your voice… put a speed dial on your phone and verbally update your twitter account.

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Internal communications can be hard - even when you’re a small company. Especially when email is so precarious.

Cases in point, just today:

1. I was copied on an email from a broker to a client about a personal loan. I had no business being copied on that note, and have NO idea how it happened, but I didn’t read it (is that unusual?) and immediately deleted it.
2. I copied and pasted a few email addresses from an internal email to a small group of people, and inadvertently cc:d someone outside the organization. Who knew kthomas was Kevin Thomas, not Karen Thomas? Neither Wes (in the first instance) nor I (in copying his email addressees) did.

The ONLY way - in a fast-paced, multiple email address world - to protect and control internal information is to have your internal constituents opt in to RSS feeds for collaborative environments.

The Problem:

I have five email addresses that I maintain. I’m probably a little unusual, but I’ll bet most people have at least two - one personal, one business - in each content record. Poor Wes, in using Outlook, probably entered “Thomas” into his Outlook “To:” file, and Kevin popped right up. God forbid he was on his PDA addressing the note. If he’s like me, and he didn’t have his glasses on, there was no hope for accuracy…

Email is prone to human error, and RSS is a defacto, double opt-in, secure way to get the right information to the right people at the right time. Enterprise-level, managed RSS systems are particularly secure, requiring user authentication from within a firewall.

We have no room for human error when the collective intelligence of well-written tools can protect us from ourselves. I’ve started recommending that clients use RSS systems - like that from one of my clients, Attensa - to collaborate and communicate updates internally. Email is simply too precarious, and too reliant on human accuracy, to protect internal IP.

My friend James Dellow invited me to get the word out about Enterprise RSS Day of Action, which is currently in planning stages. There’s an official WIKI here, and James posted on ChiefTech about it, with the notion of starting a discussion on practical implications of enterprise RSS adoption. I plan to be a vocal advocate.

My email experience today is just one matchstrike fueling the fire for the Enterprise RSS adoption.

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