Janet Lee Johnson | The Art of Marketing

I got an email two days ago from someone I didn’t recognize - Lauren Cook. It started like this:

Hi Janet,

My name is Lauren and I’m the Editor at BeThree.com….

And I thought to myself - wow. How cool is that? I blog about one of my favorite newsletter articles, and the person who wrote it actually reached out to thank me…

…thank god you liked the “poop smoothie” description (because when writing it, I second-guessed myself about a million times… “am I REALLY saying this????”).

People wonder whether they’ll be able to spend the necessary time a blog really takes in order to thrive. It’s things like this - connecting with someone you’d never imagine you could - that has kept me firmly in the game blogging for more than 4.5 years.

And I’m not alone. According to a Universal McCann study published recently (via MediaPost), among adults 18-34, social media now is the dominant form of personal communication media, with 85% relying on one or more Web 2.0 platforms to stay in touch with others.

“Although age is the driving force behind usage patterns of these technologies, it is clear that a fundamental shift has taken place in all of our lives about what it means to communicate in the 21st Century.”

This fundamental shift has happened, in large part, because of what I’ve just experienced. Surprising connections, enabled by social media (and those people who are smart enough to watch the web for mentions of their brand via RSS).

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In a case of severe understatement, I read an article in CIO Asia magazine that quoted Wallem Shipping CIO Patrick Slesinger as saying:

“There’s enough problems controlling and managing IT infrastructure when you know precisely where it is,” says director and CIO Patrick Slesinger, “let alone when it is constantly moving at sea.”

Oh, yeah.

Wallem is a ship broker and ship management company with more than 8,000 employees in 21 countries. Wallem gives shippers full, on-line access to things like procurement records, accounting and personnel records for their ships. Patrick has developed quite a system to do so. He uses Attensa’s managed RSS platform to immediately notify employees, ship owners and service providers when their ships change their itinerary - due to weather, etc. That way, employees needing to work the ship would immediately know whether there would be a delay. And if service providers needed to change their plans, they’d know as well. It’s really quite an amazing system.

Four years ago, I worked for a company with the BC Ferries system as their client. They used RSS in a similar way. Because so many people in the BC area relied on the ferry system to get to work, people were able to subscribe to the BC Ferries web site and get service notices delivered to their PDA’s or email when ferries were delayed, etc.

One of the most innovative uses of RSS by BC Ferries was to constantly update how many people were waiting at the dock to board the ferries - you could always tell how full the ship was by how full the parking deck was. And every time a car passed through the parking gate, an attendant would send a count from her Blackberry to the web, where it was reflected in a graphic of how full the parking deck was. It was a very cool mashup (I actually just typed maship, which I rather like) at the time.

Somehow these shipping guys know how to use RSS to get the right information to the right people at the right time, no matter where the information originates. Like a rippling tide.

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I’ve blogged before about tools to measure buzz / “memes” and reputations online. The first tool you should use is a smart RSS reader, like that from Attensa. But there are many other tools out there to measure buzz, and some very fun ones are beginning to be developed.

Over on the Search Insider blog, David Berkowitz profiles “Seven Buzz Monitoring Sites to Watch.”

A short list:

• Facebook Lexicon: Lexicon is Google Trends for Facebook
• Summize: a Twitter search engine I discovered recently. But David points out that using Summize Labs you can also use a “near:” modifier to narrow results to people writing from a certain zip code - in case you want to find like-minded folks nearby. Cool.
• Flaptor is another Twitter search engine, and has a trend tool called Twist that you can use to compare search terms. You should always run your Twitter searches through a couple of engines, as they’re not yet perfect. I’m looking forward to the day that Attensa takes care of all of these searches for me, persistently.
• Using Quantcast you can track the demographics of searchers for a particular keyword. David helps you figure out how easily, and I won’t steal his thunder… go have a look on his post.

There are tons of additional tips and explanations there anyway… It’s going in my del.icio.us file. For sure.

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Sometimes it’s just hard to be creative. It really is. I consult with many technology and start-up organizations, and I work with dreamers who love to drain the right side of my brain. By the end of a work week, my creativity is often tapped out.

And as a part of my business, and as a way of giving back, I blog. And (I often liken it to caring for a dog) just because you’re tired doesn’t mean you can neglect your blog.

This past week I’ve been talking a lot about blogging as I’ve been networking around town. And one of my basic tenets of blogging for business is this:

Never tie a corporate blog to just one person.

It’s precisely because we get tired (or go on vacation… or get sick… or are out walking the dog…) that we sometimes just need a break from blogging.

If you don’t have the luxury of relying on others to keep the blog dynamic and scintillating, you can still rely on others for good blog fodder when you’re out of ideas yourself. Here’s a brief synopsis of where I get great content ideas for my blog:

1. Newsletters to which I subscribe and are delivered into my email - my personal favorites (on the topics of marketing, technology and social media) are those from the ClickZ network and the IAB Smartbrief.
2. Blog posts from the blogs to whom I subscribe and read via my Attensa RSS reader. RSS readership, by the way, is growing this year - 34% percent of global respondents to a March social media survey from Universal McCann said they had “ever” subscribed to an RSS feed, up from 15% in 2007 (via ClickZ).
3. Research in the marketplace. Just this week I got a link from my friend Bryce to a fantastic piece of research from the California Health Care Association called “The Wisdom of Patients: Health Care Meets Online Media.” A woman named Jean Sarason-Kahn of THINK-Health (who blogs at Health Populi) wrote it, and it’s a must read for anyone looking into health care or social media.
4. Invite guest bloggers to post for you. I got such an invitation a few weeks ago from my friend Meryl over at Meryl.net. Her blog turns 8 years old tomorrow - 8 years! - and in celebration, she’s taking some time off. So she invited friends to provide her with some guest posts so she can take time off. I wrote one that will run sometime next week - talk about a little extra pressure, writing for someone else’s blog! But it was great fun, and I look forward to seeing it run.

If you’re going to post using other’s ideas, add some value: sprinkle a little of your own opinion and make sure your examples add to the conversation. That way, even though you’re not being overly taxed to be creative, at least you’re collaborating with- and contributing to- their work in some way.

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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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