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The Beancast - Episode 90: Flyover Country

Had the pleasure of making my debut on The Beancast - a great marketing podcast hosted by Bob Knorpp.  Fellow guests included Bill Green from MTLB, Jim Mitchem from Smash Communications and Dirk Singer from the Rabbit Agency.

A fun conversation on topics like the Super Bowl, Toyota, Glee, Second Life (yes, Second Life) and Foursquare.

Have a listen or subscribe here.

Social Media Is Not A Moment In Time

I was thinking today how hit and miss social media can be if you base your approach on reaching people at a specific moment of time. 

It simply doesn't work to say, let's Tweet this on Thursday to coincide with our widget launch. 

What if President Obama stubs his toe on Thursday ... no one will care about your widget launch.  Less dramatically, what if your most influential brand fans happen to miss your Tweet [which in the fast-paced world of Twitter streams and Facebook updates is likely to happen]? 

If your approach doesn't account for these scenarios, you'll almost certainly miss chances to engage the people most likely to champion your message.

It comes back to the mantra we're all familiar with by this point ... social media is a conversation not a campaign.

Marketers interested in capturing a moment in time should buy the Super Bowl or Oscars.  And to be clear, I do think in some cases this is a smart approach.  But barring that kind of budget, you better think about a calendar of conversations over a period of time.

Though I suppose a few marketers in Cupertino would tell you that all it takes is a few years of speculation and a bunch of Apple loyalists to make a single press conference a massive social media happening.

I just wouldn't count on it for your widget launch.

Paid Media = Scale for Domino's Pizza Turnaround

A lot of talk over the last few days about Domino's Pizza's "Pizza Turnaround" - equal parts blog | website | Twitter aggregator.  The effort is centered around Domino's transparent re-engineering of its signature pizza offering.

I like the spirit of this ... good talk-value; makes me want to keep following along; most importantly, makes me want to give Domino's another shot.

One of the most talked about features of the campaign is a short documentary [produced with help of Crispin Porter + Bogusky].  At the time I write this [Dec 28 @ 5:30pm CST] the video has logged nearly 328,000 views [in just a few days, over the holidays].

I noticed today that Domino's is running paid media units on YouTube's homepage. 

While I have no knowledge of this brand's spend, I have looked into YouTube packages and can tell you this is no small financial commitment.  What I suspect Domino's has figured out - that many brands have not yet - is that paid media, as a compliment to 'social' media, can give your brand's blog | video | Facebook page | etc. the push it needs to scale to a larger audience. 

Interested to watch this unfold.  The one thing I really hope is that Domino's doesn't cave to the inevitable snarkiness that many marketing and social media 'gurus' will heap upon it.  Stay the course, Domino's!

Social Media in '10 (Most Definitely NOT Predictions)

I'm not big on predictions (namely because there are rarely consequences for being wrong).  These are just five things I personally look forward to in 2010 ...

1. A kinder, gentler, more thoughtful tone.  Less finger wagging at brands who just don't get it; more willingness to help brands understand and implement best practices.  I've met some of the people I think are at the forefront of this new benevolence ... have you? 
2. An end to the shoot first - ask questions later approach so many top-tier bloggers take to reporting news.  Reputations, livelihoods and [drama alert] lives are at stake.  Getting the story right, even if it means getting it 2nd.  Fact checking.  Protecting sources.  Basics of solid journalism.  All to often ignored.  But I expect that to change as more readers migrate from print to online and demand a baseline of integrity.
3. Watching luxury brands get deeper into social media (e.g. Generation Benz, Art of the Trench).  I know I'm not alone in thinking there is tremendous upside here.  My colleague, Rohit Bhargava, wrote about it recently.
4. A shift from "we need a [fill in popular social network here] strategy" to "what are our business objectives, and how can social media help achieve them?" approach.  A no-brainer, but I still see the former employed much more than the latter.
5. Social media penetrating the C-suite in a meaningful way.  I'm not expecting CEOs at every Fortune 100 company to go wild on Tweetdeck or start a Posterous blog, but I do hope at the very least they become familiar with the basics and understand how their stakeholders (employees, customers, etc.) are using the medium.

Any comments on my list?  What are you looking forward to next year?

Follow me on Twitter.

Improving Internet Users' Opinions About Your Brand

Notice the top three are all about listening?  Such a crucial first step that's too often glossed over.  

And take notice of the least important - somewhere Alan Wolk is smiling.

We Must Do Away With "Social Media"

We've got to kill the term social media as a way of describing what we do.  

You suffer from serious lack of situational awareness if you haven't noticed the eye-rolling at the mere mention of the phrase.

How dare you Ian??

Really?  Watch the videos and visit the websites.  I'm not making this up.  This is happening.  It's funny, right?  Hopefully it makes you a bit uncomfortable [it did for me]. 

I know I'm not the first to raise this concern.  And I sense the drumbeat getting stronger.  

I realize it's been widely socialized, and thus won't go away overnight.  But I'm encouraged that some other really annoying terms that were once popular are rarely used these days [e.g. "dandy" and "slacks"].

Rather than crowd-sourcing a new catch-all and beating it into the ground, I propose we develop our own lexicons ... our own way of describing the discipline.  And that might involve a more nuanced approach than a convenient phrase like social media.

Hi, I'm Ian Sohn.  I'm a communications specialist, counseling brands on how digital conversations in online communities drive business results.

Not quite there, but better.

Ambient Awareness & Class Reunions

Just a quick thought ...

Ever since Clive Thompson published his New York Times article, I'm So Totally, Digitally Close to You, the term 'ambient awareness' has been tossed around liberally in social media circles.  And for good reason ... it's a nice way of describing the connections enabled by communities like Twitter and Facebook.  As the article describes it ...

It [ambient awareness] is, they say, very much like being physically near someone and picking up on his mood through the little things he does — body language, sighs, stray comments — out of the corner of your eye.

Later in the article ...

Each little update — each individual bit of social information — is insignificant on its own, even supremely mundane. But taken together, over time, the little snippets coalesce into a surprisingly sophisticated portrait of your friends’ and family members’ lives, like thousands of dots making a pointillist painting. This was never before possible, because in the real world, no friend would bother to call you up and detail the sandwiches she was eating. The ambient information becomes like “a type of E.S.P.,”

It's that last bit, about E.S.P., that particularly hits home after spending this past weekend celebrating a milestone high school reunion.  As my eyes floated around a room filled with people I hadn't seen or spoken to in many years, I felt totally in-the-know ...

Teddy?  San Francisco, two kids.  John?  Chiropractor, stays in touch with Gregg.  Dina?  Can't believe her twins started 5th grade.  Micah?  Wonder how he likes living in the suburbs?

No big takeaway here ... just that after using the term 'ambient awareness' so often in the last year, it all finally makes sense; and I now have a good example to use when describing the term.

Follow me on Twitter at www.twitter.com/iansohn.

the3six5 Project

Len Kendall - he of Constructive Grumpiness - has taken on quite an ambitious project for 2010.

Everyday next year a different person will pen a 250 word entry about their experience that day. No specific topic - just as long as it relates to something going on that day.  Come December 31, Len expects to have collected the story of one year, told by 365 individuals.

It's called the3six5 ... you can check it out at www.the3six5.com.

I was thrilled Len asked me to contribute.  I chose January 8 for three reasons: (1) I figured it might help get my mind going after the holidays (2) I wanted to go early enough as to not be influenced/intimidated by months of great entries and (3) It's my son's birthday.

If you're interested in contributing, email the3six5@gmail.com [sounds like Len has been getting a lot of emails, so be patient]. 

What I Like About Posterous

Posterous is the popular new kid on the block.  There are a number of good reasons to like the service ... from how ridiculously easy it is to post, to how it syndicates content across the social web, to the great bookmarklet and more.  Mashable has a nice post about some of the killer 'hidden' features.

But thinking about it today, what I like the most about Posterous is how egalitarian it is.  Whether you're a big shot like Alex Bogusky and Guy Kawasaki or a regular Jane like Stephanie Lim, Posterous is not about bells, whistles and fancy design. 

And that's what I like about Posterous - everyone starts with the same visual template.  It's the content you put into your Posterous feed that will make it stand out from the crowd.

The Ethics of ‘Outing’ an Anonymous Commenter

There is a battle raging on one of my favorite blogs, PSFK, about a new campaign for Levi's from Wieden + Kennedy [that's an advertising agency for those of you who don't live in the echo chamber].  If you're interested, check out the post and comments here.

But this post isn't about the campaign, but rather something I noticed in the comment thread.  Someone, identifying herself only as "megan," left an anonymous comment for Piers Fawkes [who wrote the post] saying "your negative rants on wk are getting boring."

I happen to believe that anonymous commenting is pretty cowardly.  But I'm neither naive nor dogmatic about it - I realize that for a variety of reasons people sometimes feel they need to hide their identity, or just aren't comfortable identifying themselves.  But still, I'm not a big fan.  Apparently Piers has a zero tolerance policy, judging by his 'outing' of Megan as a W+K employee

So the question I pose [and I invite Piers to respond, and I hope he appreciates the spirit in which this post is drafted] is, what are the ethical standards for a blogger 'outing' an anonymous commenter? 

Do we owe our readers a disclaimer that their identity may be revealed, despite their desire for anonymity?

As masters of our own domain (pun intended) do we have a right to do anything we want with the back-end analytics at our fingertips?

What's the upside of 'outing' commenters?  Does it level the playing field?  Force people to own up to their words?

Please leave your comments - I hope the subject-matter here compels you to leave your name.