How can something as cutting edge as social media be considered old school? Because it goes to the heart of communicating. That’s the upshot of a couple of talks Darren Barefoot gave at a Web Content Conference [WC08] put on by Duo Consulting in Chicago. This totally engaging Canadian started his presentation quoting from Shakespeare’s Henry V and a drawing of the theater used in Elizabethan England – not exactly what you’d expect for a presentation on the many facets of social media. Barefoot pointed out that someone drew the theater after hearing about it, then copied it and published it. It underscored for me that social media isn’t suddenly working because of the power of Web 2.0 tools. These tools simply give people who are hungry to communicate an easier way to do it.

At his second talk, Barefoot used a decidedly low-tech approach – he hung 29 cards naming social media tools on a clothesline of sorts. Borrowing from Theatre Skam's 29 Plays in 59 Minutes concept, he asked the audience to call out a social media technology. He’d rip it off the line and riff for several minutes [of course, some kept falling off the line early, providing even more comic relief]. He covered everything from the ubiquitous Wikipedia to emerging surprises like Kyte.tv and Ustream. For the last two, he even admitted to the dreaded feeling of “Kids seem to like these but I don’t know why….” Made me feel a little better for not even knowing about them yet. 29 tools in an hour and a half. Not bad.

Early in the network premiere week, it looks like the sitcom writers have discovered social media. Prime time characters are now talking about blogs, their MySpace pages and Google alerts.
 
You’d think this would open up interesting new plot lines or story angles. Not so.
 
Instead, we’re getting flat-footed jokes followed by canned laugh tracks.  “I’m putting that in my blog!” is the new comeback.
 
In primetime, social networks are now the domain of nerds. “I have a 112 friends in MySpace,” says one geek in Big Bang Theory. “Yeah, but have you actually met any of them?” quips his equally geeky friend.
 
I read today that Microsoft is considering taking a stake in MySpace. If MySpace is now the joke of primetime television, I think Microsoft missed the window.
 

This article introduces the concept of a social media plan and was written by Tola Oguntoyinbo, a former Capstrat guy.

Social Media is not an exact science by any means and it can be tough to figure out where to start.  I think that I read somewhere about "failing fast and often" as an approach to navigating the social media landscape.  I tend to think that doing that with some of our more corporate clients (or even with our own brand) is probably not the best idea. 

At the same time, I haven't found a ton of information about the process of creating and running social media-based marketing campaigns.  Earlier this year I spent some time thinking about the idea of a social media plan - a process and procedure for mitigating the risks of playing in the social media waters.  It's a little rough around the edges, but it should generate some thought.  I had fun putting it together - especially the graphics - I freely admit to having a Photoshop problem. Check out the site here.  Take a look - comments and feedback are welcome.

What Should Every Company Be Monitoring?

This thread was begun by Cameron Olthuis, expanded by Steve Rubel, then further enhanced by Jeremiah Owyang, and most recently supplemented by Joseph Jaffe and Omar Ha-Redeye. Rather than continue this expansion on a series of discrete blogs, it makes more sense to make it a collaborative effort here. It would be great if each of these got its own page with ideas about how to conduct the monitoring effort. In any case here's the list of what every company should be monitoring:

1. Company name
2. Company URL
3. Public facing figures
4. Product names
5. Product URLs
6. The industry “hang outs”
7. Employee activity/blogs
8. Conversations
9. Brand image
10. Competitors
11. Images/video like YouTube, Flickr, TVEyes, Google Video and Yahoo Video
12. Tags and Social search tools like del.icio.us
13. Social Voting tools like digg.com
14. Memetrackers like Techmeme.com
15. "Advanced Listening"
16. Feedback URL and link threads
17. “Voice of the Customer” log to track sentiment, instance, and/or voice.
18. Develop new roles to such “Brand Monitor” or “Blogosphere Watcher”
19. Self-clipping services like Google or Yahoo alerts for keyword mentions, but also audio and video hits as well...services likePODZINGER for example to ascertain conversational audio levels
20. Media mentions by news features in search engines such as Google or Yahoo
21. Relevant media news wires, such as Reuters (Intl.), AP News (U.S.), U.S. Newswire, CCN Matthews (U.K., Canada, Intl.),CNW Group (Canada), Mercopress (South Africa), allAfrica (Africa, general) and HR Net (Eastern Europe).
22. Utilize RSS and aggregators like Bloglines in order to aggregate, integrate and assimilate all relevant incoming and outgoing moments of truth (perceived truth perhaps, or even truthiness according to Rob Stevens)
23. Use wikis like PmWiki to discuss and debate pretty much everything from 1-19 and most importantly attempt to turn all the talk/conversation into walk/action.
24. Repeat steps 1-20 to look outside of your own circle. Evolve the perspective from yourself, through your direct competitive set to your indirect competitive set and ultimately to your aspirational/non-endemic/non-competitive set. This is where you want to follow the leaders so to speak - Apples, Nikes, Googles or whichever company you admire.
25. Create a PROACTIVE capability/budget in order to QUICKLY execute against everything you're monitoring - specifically opportunities like Fedex Furniture, Tiger Chipping in on the 16th.
26. Conversely, have a REACTIVE process in place to comprehensively and compellingly respond, especially when you're on the bumpy receiving end of the stick.
27. Search Term Volume
28. Search Term Rank
29. Relevant Wikipedia Entries
30. Third Party Influencers
31. Key Stakeholders
32. Press release pickups
33. Blog pickups using services like Technorati

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• page started by Shel Holtz
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