Janet Johnson | The Art of Marketing

With the chatter today around Google’s Friend Connect code being announced, there’s a wealth of new optimism for the notion of “open” social networks… where social networks become the fabric of the web, not the “walled gardens” we’re forced to manage separately with different logins, passwords, connections and feeds.

Charlene Li, Forrester Research, blogged of that notion last March, when she projected that this day would come - that technology would open up the networks to share information: “ubiquitous Internet access and the servers to enable real-time social graph access.” You can’t get more ubiquitous than Google giving away social connectedness to any web site for free.

Google’s description of Friend Connect:

Attract more visitors. Visitors bring along friends from social networks like Facebook, orkut, and others to interact on your site.

Enrich your site with social features. Choose engaging social features from a catalog of gadgets provided by Google and the OpenSocial developer community.

No programming whatsoever. Just copy and paste snippets of code into your site, and Google Friend Connect does the rest.

As they opened up the world of web analytics to “the rest of us,” so shall they open up the world of social networks to any organization interested in implementing social networking features. And these are important features like inviting friends to connect, vote and easily share the information already out on millions of web sites. For example, again from Google:

• An academic site - Discuss and review articles in context with colleagues and the broader community. Filter the discussion to colleagues only, or widen your view. Forge connections with new participants whose comments seem particularly insightful.
• A shopping site - Read expert reviews and tips right next to the camera you’re thinking of buying, and find a friend who has already purchased the same item.

(Note: they’re not shipping the code yet, but they are taking preview release participants here.)

How do we get ready for this brave new world? In many ways, both large and small. I’ll tackle the first (large, but simple) step today.

Track your digital reputation.

Old Joke: You shouldn’t Google yourself too often because you’ll go blind…

New Reality: Frankly these days, you’re blind if you don’t Google yourself often.

1) Set up persistent searches so a free RSS reader - like Google on the low end or Attensa on the high end [Attensa offers search of 18 different social networks/search engines] - will keep an eye out for online mentions on the following:

Your name/your company name/your product names… it’s quite simple to do - here’s proof:

2) Once you set up the search, check your results (you can get the feed results delivered into your Outlook inbox from Attensa) at least a couple times a week (if you’re not active in the blogosphere/social network) or more often if you are.

3) You’ll be able to train Attensa (they’re a client of mine) to know the difference between “Janet Johnson, the FL realtor,” “Janet Johnson, the former Congresswoman,” and “Janet Johnson, the marketing strategist” over time.Simply tag, check or delete the results and, depending on the relevancy, Attensa will will learn which instances to serve up first, below:

After all, millions of conversations are going on every moment of every day. More likely than not, some are about you/your company/your products. At that point, you can enter into the conversation and manage your online reputation actively.

Knowledge is power. These tools are free. From this point forward, it’s incumbent that you know…

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I’ve been doing a bit of networking lately, and have received some fascinating feedback as a result:

“I occasionally read your blog to catch up, and rarely understand a word you say; but you sound very, very smart.”

<ouch>

“I’ve seen your blog, and it’s quite a collection of ‘bright and shiny things’ you talk about.”

<guilty as charged>

“I went through your paper, and it’s very, very technical. Who’s your audience?”

<great question!>

These comments have given me pause, and they couldn’t have come at a better time, as I am personally trying to define my own use of social media tools in my business, in order to better clarify their uses for others.

In an effort to do so in public, here’s a stake in the ground:

RSS: Every time I get a new client, I set up a new RSS feed in my Attensa RSS reader to gather news and information about them. (I posted screen shots on SlideShare, in case you like pictures to walk you through how it works.) I also subscribe to a few blogs that I find interesting - and read them within Attensa because it’s more convenient to have one place to go to read and comment on them all.

RSS is like the nervous system of social media - it grabs news from the entire universe and routes it to the brain.

RSS readers are the brains of social media - we train them to understand what we pay attention to, and the smart readers anticipate how to prioritize the information to feed our attention properly.

Blog: I use my blog to personally comment upon things that move me. Whether it be a new tool, a personal experience, or software to help marketers. I agree with Ken, though, that it seems a collection of bright and shiny objects. I’m okay with that, although I think it might be time to mix it up a little more. The danger in blogging is that I seem to be obsessed with, and harp on similar themes; so my posts might become boring for those who subscribe or visit often. But this is my space, so I get to be the medium of “me.”

Blogs are the hearts of social media to me - if I care enough to write about something at length, I’ll blog it. My readers know how I feel about pretty much everything I choose to share. For businesses, blogs can create a glimpse inside your organization and get right to the people who make it work, connecting with their obsessions, thoughts and (yes, even) emotions.

Twitter and other “micro-blogging” tools: I use Twitter to connect with what people are thinking/doing “in the moment.” It fits my “bright and shiny object” proclivity to a tee. Through it, I can check out breaking news, get to know people I work with in a much more casual, personal way, and share thoughts/jump into conversations and engage quickly and directly - right now.

Twitter is like the eyes and ears (maybe all the senses) of social media to me. Blink, turn your head, sneeze and you’ve missed something. But it adds color, depth, taste, and texture to the people, problems and knowledge of those I follow. I tell people in business that teams who are working together should follow each other on Twitter. Especially virtual or geographically diverse teams… they’ll learn more from each other, be more accessible, and get more done with each other as a result.

I ‘d love to hear what others think… as I’ve found this week, it’s most enlightening and helpful to get feedback. It helps focus my thoughts and further define my messages and how I relate them to others.

Which is the true beauty of social media and marketing to me.

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In a great post last Friday, Marshall over at ReadWrite Web set forth a great set of examples of how they (RWW) use Twitter in their journalistic efforts. Head on over and read the whole thing - but in a nutshell, he tells how they use Twitter:

• the discovery of breaking stories,
• performing interviews,
• quality assurance
• and promotion of our work.

What was fun for me personally about this post is that I finally met Marshall (in person) the afternoon he was writing it - via Twitter. I was waiting for another networking meeting, and was watching my Twitter feed via iTweet:

How many “Earthhippy” buildings in the Pearl are there? I surmised I was sitting in the exact spot (EcoTrust Building/World Cup) I’d find him. And I looked up toward the register, and le voila… an introduction eased by coincidence.

Fast forward to Monday. I went to meet Scott Kveton, also down in the Pearl. On autopilot, I had neglected to check where we were to meet, and went to World Cup again. I wondered whether I had crossed my wires, when, at 2:08, I hadn’t seen Scott walk through the door for our 2:00 yet. Knowing Scott is an avid Twitter advocate, I checked my feed only to see:

Ugh! wrong place… so I immediately DM’d Scott (sent him a direct message) letting him know I was in the wrong spot, and we quickly arranged to meet in the middle. He DM’d me back saying “meet in middle?” and the rest was captured here:

So: (and I know I’m on a rave about Twitter recently) the two events are linked in my mind forever as little examples of the beauty of “in the moment” speed, usefulness and connectedness that Twitter provides me.

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I put up a slideshow on SlideShare last night that shows (rather than tells) screenshots of how easy and powerful a smart RSS reader (like my client Attensa’s) can be to setup and use. (View it in ‘full screen’ mode so you can see the screen shots easily.)

I’ve blogged before about how much my productivity has been enhanced by using it to keep up with news and information about clients.

Thought it might be useful to people to see how easy Attensa’s RSS reader for Mac is to use.

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The Enterprise RSS Day of Action is coming up this Thursday, and it’s fun to see the conversations bubbling about it around the web. I especially liked Charlie Davidson’s matter-of-fact post about it the other day over on the Attensa blog.

In his very succinct post - “RSS is what RSS does” - he summed it up nicely…

“Ironically it is also the tool I am using daily to participate in this community of thought.”

Scott Niesen described a meme he’s been following that positions the technical and business points of view on collaboration and communications flow, where he succinctly describes how Attensa’s started talking in a very different way about “enterprise RSS” to enterprises who are struggling to get their arms around all the information they’re being asked to manage:

“When it comes to talking about getting your arms around the information you and Enterprise RSS, it all comes back to Andrew McAfee’s SLATES:

Search | Links | Authorship | Tags | Extensions | Signals

“SLATES describes the combined use of effective enterprise search and discovery, using links to connect information together into a meaningful information ecosystem using the model of the Web, providing low-barrier social tools for public authorship of enterprise content, tags to let users created emergent organizational structure, extensions to spontaneously provide intelligent content suggestions similar to Amazon’s recommendation system, and signals to let users know when enterprise information they care about has been published or updated, such as when a corporate RSS feed of interest changes.”

Replacing the abbreviation RSS with words like signals, alerts, delivery is far more descriptive and useful to customers. One of our customers has named their RSS initiative project: Communication & Collaboration Delivery. That’s got a much better ring to it than Enterprise RSS.”

As long as we don’t replace RSS with SAD, I’m cool with it, Scott.

James Dellow, over on the Enterprise RSS Day of Action WIKI, has envisioned this day and the WIKI space to set aside some time to review the following:

Enabling Communication and Collaboration To Do List:

1. Develop a resource pack, containing slides, posters etc, that people can use to run their own day of action
2. Create a list of Enterprise RSS solutions (servers, feed readers and other related tools)
3. Develop an Enterprise RSS FAQ and Glossary
4. Collect case studies of early adopters
5. Enterprise RSS Company bios

I plan to spend the morning on Thursday talking communication and collaboration online. Care to join in?

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